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Cold Case Cast Catch-up – October 2021

After a lengthy gap, extended due being caught out by the mere 30 days in September, the look at the on-going careers of the Cold Case cast that aren’t Kathryn returns.

What order to talk about them?  Let’s go left to right in the image above.

Not seen any news on John Finn (John Stillman in CC) this year.  He has a habit of cropping up in something, including various Irish dramas, so as the world starts to open up again it can’t be long before we hear from him.

I have a feeling that Tracie Thoms (Kat Millar on CC) might be taking a lot more column inches than John.  She usually manages to outdo everyone due to the incredible breadth of work she does.  Over the summer Tracie continued her guest starring role in the cross-emergency service Fox drama series 9-1-1.  Like everything, production was effected by you-know-what, causing season 4 to start late, have a short run, and end late.  This meant that the season 5 première came around very quickly.  Tracie reprised her role as Karen Wilson, the partner of one the main characters.  That aired in late September.  I don’t think Tracie’s been back since but it is bound to happen soon enough.

Similarly to 9-1-1, Tracie has a recurring role in the ABC drama series Station 19, which is a spin-off from Grey’s Anatomy, based around a fire station and its crew.  As we touched on in a previous CCCC-up, Tracie was in an episode early in the summer.  She returned a week or so ago for the 4th episode of season 5.  Her character is a counsellor helping the fire fighters deal grief etc.  Another role that will be revisited I’m sure.

A new bit of news is a new comedy film for Tracie called Paulie Go.  Principal on-location filming is said to have happened in 3 weeks spanning the end of August and into September.  The film is about a boy who travels across the country to meet a reclusive professor he feels is one of the few people that will understand him.  Jack Green writes/produces.  Director Andrew Nackman apparently worked on a 2012 short film called Paulie about a boy dealing with a bully.  The same actor, Ethan Dizon, is listed in the title character role in both films, which with a 9 year time gap is… interesting.

There aren’t any significant updates on Tracie’s other projects Bolivar and The Requiem Boogie.  Both are in ‘post-production’, which as we know can be a length process.  More on these when we can.

Next in the picture is Jeremy Ratchford (Nick Vera in CC).  Sadly we don’t have anything new about the quiet Jeremy.  Unfortunately we find ourselves having to say the same thing for gentle giant Thom Barry (Will Jeffries in CC) as well.  If only he’d been in the Space Jam sequel… maybe not.

Which brings us to door number 5: Danny Pino (Scotty Valens in CC).  We know going in that there is at least one thing to say about Danny.  Back in May’s CCCC-up we already reported that film-of-the-musical Dear Evan Hansen was set for launch this past month.  I think it is fair to say it was hotly anticipated by many fans of the stage production, and it is equally true that it appears to have had mixed reviews.  Generally positive, but projects adapted from stage to screen have to make changes to make the most of the medium, otherwise you might as well just point the camera at the stage, and that always upsets the purists.  The story is based around a mix-up when a self-help letter Evan Hansen (Ben Platt, who played the role on stage) writes to himself is found with a fellow student that committed suicide.   Danny and Amy Adams (Enchanted) play the dead boy’s parents and Kaitlyn Dever (Last Man Standing) his sister.  Julianne Moore (Still Alice) is Evan’s mother.

Over the summer, here in the UK, the BBC showed motorcycle gang drama, and spin-off from Sons Of Anarchy, Mayans M.C. season 3, which ended in the USA in May.  A fourth season is expected to air early in 2022.

July saw Danny have a small role in The Good Fight, the streaming service Paramount+ spin-off from The Good Wife, starring the always great Christine Baranski (Cybil).  It was in mid-5th season episode 5.  Not sure what the involvement of Danny’s Ricardo Diaz was in the storyline.  The main action centred around a man suing a hospital for allegedly discriminating against his daughter, leading to her death.  It was a topical storyline about you-know-what.

In early August Netflix released a Sony Pictures musical animation called Vivo.  ‘Hamilton’ star Lin-Manuel Miranda voiced the main character Vivo and also wrote all the original songs for it too.  Miami Sound Machine’s Gloria Estefan also stars, and not surprisingly sings a lot too.  Danny was typecast again as ‘bus passenger’!

Less than two weeks ago the NBC network’s Law & Order: SVU hit the milestone of 500 episodes.  It was the 6th episode of season 23!  Shows like to do special things to mark such occasions.  After leaving Cold Case, Danny spent four seasons on SVU as Nick Amaro.  You won’t be surprised to read that Nick returned for a special appearance, requesting the SVU squad help with an unsolved crime.  A cold case you might say.  After leaving the SVU Amaro joined (or maybe setup) a company helping in such cases.  The fact that he was well suited to such a position did not go unremarked by Mariska Hargitay’s Olivia Benson.  Amazingly Mariska has been in all 500+ episodes of SVU, as well as guest appearances in the spin-off shows like Chicago P.D. and new one Law & Order: Organised Crime.  That latest variant see the return of Christopher Meloni as Elliot Stabler, a role he played in SVU for 12 years.

Cold Case Cast Catch-up – January 2021

tracie_thoms_001_430x180Welcome to the first Cold Case Catch-up post of 2021.  For anyone new here (where have you been?), these monthly articles are where we take a look at the on-going careers of the main actors (and a couple of significant players behind the scenes) in Cold Case that aren’t Kathryn Morris.  Clearly this site is focused on the show’s lead actor, but we recognise that fans of the show are interested in the others as well.  These posts are just brief round-ups, and not an attempt to be comprehensive or up to the minute.

The continuing world wide situation with you-know-what means that production on TV shows and movies is being hit.  Newly enforced lockdowns has halted production on many.  This will inevitably impact the amount of news we can report, but we’ll bring you what we can.

Starting as we expect to go on, we’ll start with Tracie Thoms (Kat Millar on CC), because she is incredibly prolific, is constantly working, and crosses genres.  Tracie reprised her occasional guest role on the Fox TV multi-emergency service drama series 9-1-1.  Her Karen Wilson was back in last Monday’s (25th Jan) episode and will continue in tomorrow’s (1st Feb).  In July of last year we reported that Tracie would be taking a role in a new series called Blood Relative, also due to be on Fox.  It is a crime drama based on a newspaper article about two women combining forensics and genealogy to solve mysteries.  News broke a couple of weeks ago that Tracie would not be taking the role due to conflicts caused by the pandemic.  Dawnn Lewis (Carmen Sandiego) will be replacing her.  Changes in casting like this are very common as the project developers.  As far as I can tell the show is still in the works but may have been rolled over to the next pilot season later this year or early next.  Speaking of rolling over, there is another project that Tracie looks to have been involved in last year that I’ve only just noticed.  Not sure if I missed it (very likely) or it has only recently appeared on IMDb.  Either way, it is a short film called BTSD by Terry Gingles.  The initialisation stands for Black Traumatic Stress Disorder.  The film looks at the effects on the wider black society of violence perpetrated against it.  Assuming the film has been made it will probably be submitted to various short film festivals during this year.

A couple of bits of release news for Danny Pino (Scotty Valens in CC).  First up, the film Fatale, starring Michael Ealy (The Perfect Guy) and Hilary Swank (Million Dollar Baby), in which Danny plays Hilary’s politician husband was briefly in cinemas in December and made available on VOD platform in January.  If you are in America want to get your hands on a physical format the Blu-ray and DVD versions will be available on the 2nd of March 2021.  You can find it HERE on the USA version of Amazon.  Secondly, the film Dear Evan Hansen, based on an award winning Broadway musical which we spoke about a few times last year has had a release date announced.  It is set for a North American première for the 24th of September 2021.  Danny’s role, the husband of Amy Adam’s character, has been created especially for the film and is not in the stage version.

Another possibly example of ‘one that got passed me’ is news of John Finn (John Stillman in CC) in another Irish project.  A few years ago John starred in an Irish TV mini-series called An Bronntanas about a lifeboat crew faced with a dilemma after discovering a stash of drugs on fishing boat.  John must have strong ties to the old country as it looks like he went back last year to star in another TG4 network show.  This one is called Is Olc an Ghaoth and was released as a TV special in early November.  If my research is correct (and feel free to tell me how wrong I am in the comments) the name means something like ‘it’s a bad wind’.  The project is a 3 part overlapping drama set during the current pandemic, and explores issues around death and how social distancing etc. impact the normal ways of dealing with it.  I am presuming that John’s character of Mairtín is largely seen in flashback form as the first part of the series sees his body brought back from America in a coffin.  The weight of casket and body is a factor.

A quick reminder that Jeremy Ratchford (Nick Vera in CC) is guest starring role in an episode of Everyone Is Doing Great was available on the Hulu plaform from the 13th of January.  The episode is number 6 and is called “What Are You Afraid Of” (no ‘?’ ?).  You can read more about that in the December 2020 CCCC-up.

The mobile-only, short-form video platform Quibi underwent a real roller-coaster ride in 2020.  If that roller-coaster was all down hill after a very short climb.  It could have been brilliant.  It was launched at a time when smartphones with access to high speed networks were becoming ubiquitous.  The less than 10 minute long videos with a strong narrative element was chosen to fit in well with people’s busy lives and short attention spans.  The platform had considerable creative talent and industry heavyweights backing it.  Unfortunately it launched a few weeks into a global pandemic taking hold, when many people had a lot of time at home on their hands, and were willing to binge watch whole series of traditional TV dramas.  In December the towel was thrown in to little fanfare.  It was a brave venture when we all have access to YouTube, amongst other existing options.  The CC writer producer Veena Sud was one of those talents brought in make quality content for the platform.  Her 10 part drama series, The Stranger, is amongst the many pieces of Quibi content that has find a new home on the streaming platform Roku.  The deal done in early January, marks something of a departure for Roku as they don’t currently do much original content.  This expected to change as they attempt to compete with other streamers like Apple TV+ and Disney+.

Cold Case Cast Catch-up – December 2020

Today (at time of posting) is the last day of 2020 and I think it is fair to say “good riddance”.  However, before we finally wish a less-than-fond farewell to the year we get to do a traditional annual look-back round-up of the Cold Case Catch-up posts from the past 11 months.

First up we need to cover any updates on the on-going careers of the non-Kathryn Cold Case cast from December.

Let us start with Danny Pino (Scotty Valens in CC) and his film work.  In August we talked about the film Fatale, starring Michael Ealy (The Perfect Guy) and Hilary Swank (Million Dollar Baby).  The thriller involves Ealy as a man caught up in a situation with a vengeful police office (Swank) who isn’t going to let things go, Fatal Attraction-style.  Danny plays the politician ex-husband of the cop who she is also making suffer.  There’s lot of opposite stuff going on here.  In The Perfect Guy, Ealy was the stalker.  Hillary is not often cast in the ‘bad guy’ role.  Danny is not the cop (he did play a politician in the wonderful but shortlived BrainDead).  The film received a limited theatrical release in North America on December the 18th, and is expected to go to video on demand services in January.  A trailer for the movie can be seen on YouTube HERE.

Nothing to add for Tracie Thoms (Kat Millar on CC) on the TV/movie front for December.  Tracie has been active in online videos though.  We have her in an Zoom-based spelling bee early in the month on Facebook HERE and a campaign to encourage everyone (eligible) to vote in the upcoming Georgia state Senate run-off election.  A variety of Broadway stars have gathered (virtually) to perform the song ‘Georgia On My Mind’ for the group Fair Fight Action.  Included in the large number of singers involved are Lin-Manuel Miranda, Vanessa Williams, Bellamy Young, Josh Gad, Billy Porter, and Rosie Perez.  You can watch a version of the released single on YouTube HERE.

Several years ago One Tree Hill stars James Lafferty and Stephen Colletti set about putting together a comedy drama about two ex-stars of a once hit show trying to find their way back to the same levels of same fame.  This show, Everyone Is Doing Great, has been in the works for a while.  The two stars wrote and directed the series, they also spent a long time trying to get funding to make the show.  In 2018 and 2019 some element (possibly a pilot) was shown at a few festivals.  A few weeks ago it was announced that the streaming service Hulu had picked up the series and would make it available from the 13th of January 2021.  The reason we’re mentioning Everyone Is Doing Great here in the CCCC-up is because Jeremy Ratchford (Nick Vera in CC) is guest starring in an episode, number 6 if the details are correct.  The fact that his character shares a last name with one of the main characters suggests a family relationship (father?) but I don’t have more than that.  Hulu has released a trailer for the show on YouTube HERE.

And now for the look back at 2020 CCCC-ups.

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Cold Case Cast Catch-up – November 2020

Some of you will have spotted the obvious mistake I made in the Cold Case Cast Catch-up for October.  There was no CCCC-up for October.  My senility and workload got the better of me and I just plain forgot.  To be honest, I don’t think there was much to talk about.

With that dealt with, let’s take a look at the news about the on-going careers of the non-Kathryn Cold Case cast from the past 2 months in the November 2020 CCCC-up.

The main US network TV shows have started returning to the schedules in the past few weeks.  Most face shortened production runs, with fewer episodes planned due to you-know-what.  Maybe if things improve they can add more.  In general the entertainment industry, realising the current situation could be around for a while yet, have been trying to get back to some sort of normal, within limitations to minimise the risks to all involved.

We so rarely get to talk about Jeremy Ratchford (Nick Vera in CC) that we have to give him top billing when ever we do.  Looks like this might be old news but it is not something I’d noticed before.  I try to keep track but it is possible this got past me.  Back in March Jeremy guest starred in an episode of an Canadian cop show called Hudson & Rex.  A new one on me.  The show is variant on the cop + dog format, as seen in the 1989 Jim Belushi film K-9, and is apparently based on a German show.

One things regulars to these round-ups will know is that it takes more than a global pandemic to stop Tracie Thoms (Kat Miller in CC) working.  Mid-November saw Tracie guest star in the second episode of the latest season of NCIS: Los Angeles.  She’s in uniform again, and appeared to be a military prosecutor (a JAG?) in a case about a war crime.  I’ve seen it mentioned that this episode continues a case from the end of the previous season of the show.  This being the trial portion of it.  Wasn’t that what they could have done with NCIS and the show JAG when that was still on?  Tracie appeared in some publicity material for the episode.

Back October, Amazon Prime and Blumhouse Productions teamed up to release a series of original feature films on the online retailer’s streaming service.  Occasional regular on the CCCC-ups, Veena Sud (writer/producer on CC) directed and co-wrote one these films.  It is called The Lie.  You may remember that we first posted about this film in the April of 2018 CCCC-up.  The film stars Marielle Enos and Peter Saarsgard, both of whom lead Veena’s post-CC smash TV series The Killing.  As is generally the case with lies, they are eventually uncovered.

Cold Case Cast Catch-up – June 2020

I’ll keep this Cold Case Cast Catch-ups for June 2020 brief.  Partly, I will admit, due me nearly forgetting (blame work and a short month) and doing this at the very last minute, and there being not much to report.

In the last few days Tracie Thoms (Kat Miller in CC), for it is nearly always her, recommended a film to watch, one that had only just come out.  Tracie herself doesn’t appear to be credited in the film but does appear briefly in the trailer.  Go figure.  She certainly has close connections to many of those involved in the project.

One of those people is the reason we’ve dug out the Jeremy Ratchford (Nick Vera in CC) banner for the first time in a while.  Jeremy is credited in Wednesdays (aka aTypical Wednesday (yes, with that odd spelling)) which came out last week.  He named as Detective Parlow.  Typecast again Jeremy?

The film is a comedy described as “a young man embarks on an adventure with another patient at his therapist’s office, who he visits every Wednesday.”  It is by writer/director/star J. Lee (The Orville) and also stars Cooper J. Friedman (Shameless), Emmy Raver-Lampman (The Umbrella Academy), Michael Ealy (The Perfect Guy, which Kathryn was in), Seth Green (Buffy The Vampire Slayer), Bresha Webb and (Ride Along 2).

I’m beginning to think that IMDb’s credits need majorly updating as they are not only missing significant people like Michael Ealy and Tracie, but also another person we can link to Cold Case, the composer Michael Levine.  Levine did a lot of original music for Cold Case, his work formed the majority of the soundtrack album released from the show.

You can watch a trailer for Wednesdays HERE on YouTube.

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