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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 – May 2021

It’s finally the end of May.  Summer is starting and things are slowly opening up and restrictions relaxing in many places around the world.  In these monthly posts we look at the careers of the other Cold Case cast members.  They’ve been such a large part of our time with Kathryn we should do our small part to honour that.

Let’s kick-off with our headline (see pic above) act: Danny Pino (Scotty Valens in CC).  Movie studio Universal Pictures has released a trailer for Dear Evan Hansen.  You can watch it on YouTube HERE.  I should warn that at over 3 minutes long, it does show many of the major elements of the plot.  If you want to go into the film knowing little, might be best to give the video a miss.  It was posted by Universal themselves less than 2 weeks ago and, at time of writing, as over 12 million views.  Putting it well inside the top 100 most watched videos on the channel already.  We get to see Mr Pino about 1 minute in.  I say ‘Mr Pino’ as he is looking very distinguished with his greying temples.  Danny (that didn’t last long :-) ) is playing the father of a boy called Connor.  Amy Adams (Enchanted) plays his wife.  The Evan of the title, played by Ben Platt (Pitch Perfect), is another boy at the same school who gets inadvertently caught in a situation.  In many ways it is good thing that happened to him, but it will inevitably come crashing down.  Julianne Moore (Still Alice) is Evan’s mother and Kaitlyn Dever (Last Man Standing) is Connor’s sister.  The film is based on an award winning stage musical.  Currently the film is slated for a late September release across most of the world, with the UK a few weeks later.

Last month’s CCCC-up covering of Tracie Thoms (Kat Millar on CC) mentioned her guesting in a ‘Virtual Hot Pink Evening’ in support of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.  Due to ‘current events’ the normal fund raiser was held online but it still raised around $6 million.  Well done to all who took part of contributed.  Tracie was involved as part of the cast of Rent.

Tracie had a good May, albeit relatively quiet by her standards, with a guest appearance in the animated series Family Guy.  The episode was called ‘Family Cat’.  Appropriately enough our Kat played the cat.  The family adopt said cat, Pouncy, and Brian believes the cat is evil.  Come on!  Not exactly a big secret.  All cats are evil really, even the good ones.

There is also news of Tracie starring in a new comedy/drama movie called The Requiem Boogie.  Odd title, and the synopsis doesn’t turn that around.  It is said to be about a former child TV star, best known for being in a sit-com, and various people visiting his house whilst he is dealing with the recent death of his father, also a famous actor.  The film is said to be in post-production, suggesting it has been filmed.  There are some well know faces in the cast alongside Tracie.  Ever Carradine (A Town Called Eureka) and Hill Harper (CSI: NY) will be recognisable to most.  No word on a release date.

In the latest in our series of ‘how long does Hollywood take?’ posts we bring you unfortunate news for our occasional co-star of the CCCC-up: Meredith Stiehm.  Meredith created Cold Case and wrote several episodes.  She also executive produced The Bridge and Homeland.  The last time we mentioned Meredith here was to do with a new show based on a book by Cristina Alger called The Banker’s Wife.  Nearly 3 years go (September 2018) was when news of this new project broke.  Actor Rosamund Pike (Jack Reacher) was ‘attached’.  In July 2019, it became known that Rosamund would no longer be involved but Amazon Studios had ordered 8 episodes for their Prime streaming service.  Now it has been reported that the project has been abandoned.  It had been delayed for obvious reasons, but the requirement to film in multiple countries across Europe to follow the story has made the production impossible the way things are in the world at the moment.

Cold Case Cast Catch-up – April 2021

tracie_thoms_001_430x180As the ‘you know what’ issue lockdowns start to ease in some parts of the world TV productions could start to pickup the pace.  However, in the normal annual process the production process tends to be slowing down around this time of year.  This was always going to make this month’s Cold Case Cast Catch-up a bit tricky to fill as we look at the on-going careers of the Kathryn’s co-stars.  We’ll do what we can to pad this out though.

We always like to give the guys a shot at getting the top billing in these monthly posts because, frankly, they don’t stand much a chance against Tracie Thoms (Kat Millar on CC).  Positive discrimination only gets you so far.  We just have to bow down the one-woman entertainment industry that is Tracie.  She is not really able to do her regular stage performance at the moment but she is putting in the hours on the TV sets.  In the past few weeks Tracie has been back on the small screen in two episodes of the multi-emergency service Fox drama series 9-1-1.  In this program Tracie is the partner of one of the main characters, which could be a small role but has netted her 25 appearances in 3 years.  9-1-1 has been successful enough to have branched out with spin-offs.

Speaking of which, Tracie was again in an episode of the Grey’s Anatomy spin-off Station 19, which is is drama set around fire station.  This looks like a very timely episode as it revolves around the death of an unarmed black man.  Tracie’s Dr Diane Lewis returns for a third time as a counsellor for the team.

Sticking with Tracie she is also doing her bit to support a good cause.  On May the 20th, she will be one of the many special guest stars at the Breast Cancer Research Foundation’s ‘Virtual Hot Pink Evening’.  Liz Hurley is set to host dozens of famous names including Sir Elton John, Neil Patrick Harris (Doogie Howser, M.D.), Edie Falco (Nurse Jackie), Gayle King (CBS News), Adam Pascal (Rent), and Paul Shaffer (Late Show with David Letterman).  You can read more about the event HERE.

Danny Pino (Scotty Valens in CC) continues to appear in the FX network drama Mayans M.C. The third season started in mid-March and the show is set to continue for a couple more weeks.

Stretching our reach a little further than normal, as we do occasionally, we follow up on a story from our January 2021 CCCC-up.  Back then it was announced that the short-lived, short-form, mobile video platform Quibi’s content has been purchased by streaming platform Roku.  Recently the news was released that the various shows would be branded Roku Originals.  On the face of it it sounds like a slightly cheeky name, considering they’d bought it from someone else.  However, apparently their are quite a few shows that were never released by Quibi.  We mention this because Cold Case writer and producer Veena Sud created a show for Quibi.  It did make it out during the life of the platform, but will be available free on Roku this year.

Cold Case Cast Catch-up – March 2021

I know, I know.  But, let’s face it, February is such a short month that it hardly even counts as a month.  Nothing happens in February.  You missed nothing :-)

Welcome to the second (cough) Cold Case Catch-up post of 2021.  This is obviously about Kathryn and her career, but Cold Case was (almost) as much about the other characters as it was about Lilly Rush.  In this (normally) monthly posts we look at the on-going careers of her fellow actors of the show.

The continuing global situation is still being felt across the entertainment industry.  Even TV shows that are being made are having to reduce episode counts due to more complicated production schedules.  Hopefully the corner is being turned so that across the summer things can get closer to normal ahead of the autumn/fall season.

Let’s start with our banner image star for March: Danny Pino (Scotty Valens in CC).  A couple of weeks ago the FX network drama Mayans M.C. return to US televisions after a somewhat forced absence.  This is the third season of the spin-off from the often acclaimed Sons Of AnarchyMayans M.C. is not a show I watch, but from something I read somewhere a while ago, I was under the impression that Danny would not be returning, based on his character’s actions, not his.  How wrong I was.  The fourth episode aired last night (30th March) and the remain 6 will continue until mid-May.  In the UK, previous seasons of Mayans M.C. have been shown by the BBC, often in pairs late on Sunday nights.  I presume this will be repeated for the new one at some point in the future.  Both the first two seasons are available on the BBC iPlayer.

Regulars to these posts will know that we are never far from Tracie Thoms (Kat Millar on CC) news.  She pretty much single-handedly keeps this segment going.  If she ever takes a break from showbiz there’ll be nothing to watch.  In early March, Ms. Thoms, brought her character of Karen Wilson back to the cross-emergency service drama series 9-1-1, over on the Fox network.  Karen is the partner of one of the main characters, played by Aisha Hinds (Under The Dome), so is usually peripheral to the main stories lines but she regularly crops up.

Clearly Tracie is very much into saying yes at every opportunity that arises.  She did so for the Netflix movie Yes Day, starring Jennifer Garner (Alias), which was release a few weeks ago.  Jennifer took advantage of being stuck at home to be able to Zoom/Skype/Teams call into nearly every chat show in the world to promote this family friendly fare.  Apparently some people do this Yes Day thing, where they (within legal bounds) only say yes to their kids for the day.  Madness.  Tracie has a small role as ‘Billie’, a ‘concert co-ordinator’.

Not sure if I missed this previously but I see that Tracie is listed as being in a new film called Bolivar. It is described as currently being in post-production, meaning it has been filmed and is now being edited etc. prior to a release.  As we’ve seen, this can often be a lengthy period, with many films never seeing the light of day.  Nell Teare, who has done a lot of bit-part acting and a lot of writing/directing/producing work as well, stars as a woman dealing with the loss of her mother.  One to keep an eye on.

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+.

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