Movie People: Interviews & More From the Southampton Playhouse

As  Project Hail Mary  makes waves at the box office, co-director Phil Lord talks through the unique challenges of the project and what its success means for the state of theatrical movies.

This week, we're joined by Dr. Shawn Domagal-Goldman, the head of astrophysics at NASA, who advised on Andy Weir's hit book that inspired Project Hail Mary . Dr. Domagal-Goldman explains the hard science behind the spacefaring adventure and how movies inspired his career.

This week's episode features a reunion between Southampton Playhouse artistic director Eric Kohn and his former colleague, IndieWire's Anne Thompson, a veteran entertainment journalist who has been covering the Academy Awards for decades. Plus, on our Playhouse People segment, Think Inc. trivia founder Paul Johnson shares his movie fandom.

The new animated Pixar hit Hoppers follows a teenager who befriends her local beaver population. Like many Pixar favorites, it combines big ideas with imagination and heart. Director Daniel Chong talks to Movie People about how he navigated that formula and the films that inspired his own work. This episode also features South Fork Natural History Museum's Frank Quevodo on the defunct beaver popul...

With four Oscar nominations and a year's worth of acclaim, the Brazilian period piece The Secret Agent has made waves around the world. Director Kleber Mendonça Filho and producer Emilie Lesclaux traveled to the Southampton Playhouse in the final week of Oscar campaigning before voting closed to discuss the genesis of the project and its global resonance. Also in this week's episode: Filmmaker Nat...

Comedian Jimmy Tatro talks about his role in Scream 7 and how comedy prepared him for doing a horror movie.

This week's episode features longtime Baz Luhrmann collaborator Jonathan Redmond, who was nominated for an Oscar for his work on 2022's Elvis . The duo have followed up that achievement with EPiC: Elvis in Concert , a dazzling look at the King of Rock 'n' Roll in action with never-before-seen footage. Redmond shares the history of the project as well as how he came to work with Luhrmann more than...

With Sinners cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw poised to make history as the first female cinematographer to win an Oscar in her category, this week's Movie People looks back at another woman who deserved it more than 20 years ago. Just in time for Valentine's Day, veteran cinematographer Ellen Kuras visits the Playhouse to discuss her experiences with the masterful sci-fi romance Eternal Suns...

One year after Sinners first opened on IMAX, in the wake of the movie's historic 16 Oscar nominations, we're kicking off Black History Month by taking a look at the backdrop of the movie that goes beyond the South where it takes place. Southampton African American History Museum founder Brenda Simmons joins Movie People to discuss the legacy of the juke joints seen in the movie — and so much more.

This week's episode featuring Jennifer Venditti, the woman behind the many memorable faces of last year's breakout hit Marty Supreme . Venditti has been a significant player in the casting director universe for years, but it was only in 2026 that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decided to add a new category recognizing her craft — and now, she's one of five nominees up for the very...

This week's episode features Sundance Film Festival director Eugene Hernandez, an East End resident who has spent the past 30-odd years advocating for independent film. As the festival enters its final edition in Park City, Utah, Hernandez shares his insight into the importance of the festival for anyone who cares about film culture -- and what might come next.

This week's episode features veteran sound designer and Sag Harbor resident Leslie Shatz, whose credits go back to Apocalypse Now and The Empire Strikes Back . His latest credit, Dead Man's Wire , marks his latest collaboration with Gus Van Sant. In this conversation, he explores on the past and (difficult) future of his profession.

We are wrapping up a busy year with a truly wonderful guest: Oscar-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, one of the most celebrated directors working today. From the early genre efforts like Cronos and The Devil's Backbone all the way through Pan's Labyrinth and The Shape of Water, del Toro has built a career out of generating empathy for monsters and mining them for all the metaphorical value the...

Filmmaker Josh Safdie and veteran cinematographer Darius Khondji join the Southampton Playhouse to discuss the new dark comedy Marty Supreme , which stars Timothée Chalamet as ping pong pro Marty Mauser, and share some of the films that inspired them. Then, expert 35mm projectionist James Faller explains his craft and why watching movies projected on film is sometimes better than digital alternati...

The Playhouse closes out its East End Cinema series with a 50th anniversary celebration of the most famous Hamptons movie of all time, the legendary documentary Grey Gardens . Producer Susan Froemke, co-director Muffie Meyer, and Rebekah Maysles of the Maysles Documentary Film Center joined Playhouse artistic director Eric Kohn to discuss the genesis of the movie and its ongoing legacy.

This week, we're joined by the brilliant author Sigrid Nunez, who has been churning out imaginative stories for over 30 years. However, her work has been adapted to the big screen only recently with two movies both released at the top of 2025: The Room Next Door , the first English language movie directed by Pedro Almodovar, which stemmed from Nunez's novel Where Are You Going -- and The Frie...

This week, we're wrapping up a month of Halloween program with a very special conversation about the legacy of one of most resilient horror franchises of all time, Scream. When Wes Craven's movie was released in 1996, the horror genre was in a bit of a dormant phase. That changed rather quickly with this comedic riff on the horror movie formula, a meta take on the genre about a ghost-faced killer...

This week, we've got a Halloween season double bill: First, a conversation with NPR journalist Larry Maslan, whose new book Hitchcocktails pairs films from the master of suspense with first-rate drink recipes. Then, we'll hear from a real-life ghost hunter: Michael Cardinuto, co-founder of the Long Island Paranormal Investigators.

This week, we're keeping the spirit of Halloween season alive. First we looked at vampires, then zombies, and now it's ghosts...thanks to this conversation with Black Phone 2 editor Louise Ford, best known for her collaborations with director Robert Eggers ( The Witch , The Lighthouse , Nosferatu ). Tune in to learn more what it takes to cut a good horror movie!

This week, we're keeping the spirit of Halloween season alive, following on recent episode, which focused on the vampire monstrosities of I Am Legend . Now we're moving on to zombies...and, specifically, Zombieland , the 2009 horror-comedy starring Jesse Eisenberg. In addition to looking back on this major turning point in his career, Eisenberg spoke about his unique challenges as an actor an...

This week, we're joined by Akiva Goldsman, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of A Beautiful Mind . Goldsman is a truly eclectic writer with a number of major Hollywood achievements under his belt beyond that major crowdpleaser, from Batman and Robin to The Da Vinci Code . In late August, he joined artistic director Eric Kohn at the Playhouse to discuss one of the more fascinating chapters of his care...

This week, we're joined by David Nugent, the chief creative officer of the Hamptons International Film Festival, which begins October 3 with screenings at the Playhouse taking place October 9 - 12. If you're lucky enough to have access to a festival of this caliber, it means that you can take the temperature on the state of world cinema from many angles at once. This year's lineup does that with h...

This week, we're joined by two of the greatest independent film producers of the modern era -- Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler, co-founders of Killer Films. The pair came to the Playhouse over the summer to celebrate the 30 year anniversary of their bold production company, which is best known for supporting fierce, original voices working on the margins of American cinema, including renowned...

This week, we have two very different segments tied to two very different -- but equally fun -- new releases. First up, the new dark comedy Caught Stealing from Darren Aronofsky stars Austin Butler as a former baseball player who gets stuck in a web of gangsters and murderers searching for a missing bag of money. Set in the 90s New York City, the movie is an accurate depiction of that grittier era...

This week, we're joined by one of the greatest American actors working today: John Turturro. If you know anything about movies, you're probably a Turturro fan: From Spike Lee's  Do the Right Thing  to the Coen brothers'  Barton Fink  and  The Big Lebowski , Turturro has been a powerful cinematic presence who always goes to unexpected places. Most recently, he has been wide...