Archive for the ‘Chris Messina’ Category
+ Met Gala – 5/05/13 (Updated)
+ FOX Programming Presentation – 5/13/13
+ FOX Programming Presentation After Party – 5/13/13
All doctors get to heal people, but not all doctors get to bring new life into the world on a regular basis, but that’s the job of the OB/GYN, like the ones portrayed on FOX’s Tuesday-night comedy ”The Mindy Project.”
Inspired by the OB/GYN mom of star, producer and writer Mindy Kaling (“The Office”), the freshman show (already renewed for a second season) focuses on romcom-loving Dr. Mindy Lahiri, who’s in practice with Drs. Danny Castellano (Chris Messina,“The Newsroom”) and Jeremy Reed (Ed Weeks).
Although Danny can be gruff on the surface, Messina — taking a break before starting work on the show’s penultimate episode on the New York street set at Universal Studios in Los Angeles — thinks it was a little baby magic that set him in his professional path.
“I always thought he went to med school for something else,” Messina tells Zap2it, “but he had to make an emergency delivery, and that was it. From there on, he maybe changed his course as a doctor.”
While Mindy has had her romantic ups and downs, a lot of fan speculation centers on a possible relationship for her and the divorced Danny — but he has issues to deal with first.
“I like Danny,” Messina says. “He’s incredibly brokenhearted and set in his ways. He’s got a chip on his shoulder. He says it like it is. That’s what I like about him. He’s like Inspector Clouseau — he acts one way, but he’s really fumbling, falling. Even when it’s not such a big fall, on the inside, he’s really vulnerable.
“So, it’s been fun to play with that. Danny’s definitely compensating.”
While conventional TV wisdom says that putting flirting couples together kills a show, Kaling doesn’t think it’s necessarily a terminal situation.
“I know funny couples,” she says, “and the great thing about this, with Chris Messina, even if those two characters were a couple — and I’m not saying we’re headed there, and I’m really enjoying what’s going on in the show right now — they’re so different, and they’d have different attitudes about something as a married couple.
+ Screen Actors Guild Awards – 1/27/13 (Chris)
+ “The Mindy Project” Cast at The Grove – 2/11/13 (Cast)
+ “The Mindy Project” at PaleyFest – 3/08/13 (Cast)
+ 4th Annual Milk+Bookies Story Time Celebration – 3/10/13 (Chris)
Lily Rabe will play the title character in Neil LaBute’s adaptation of “Miss Julie” at the Geffen Playhouse this spring, an individual with knowledge of the production told TheWrap.
The “American Horror Story” actress will star alongside Chris Messina of “The Mindy Project” and “Damages,” and Laura Heisler, who recently appeared in the Geffen’s production of Michael Golamco’s “Build.”
Rabe, who just signed on for the third season of the hit FX show “American Horror Story,” was nominated for a Tony Award in 2011 for her portrayal of Portia in “The Merchant of Venice” with Al Pacino. She last appeared on Broadway in Theresa Rebeck’s 2011 play, “Seminar.” The actress is the daughter of playwright David Rabe and the late actress Jill Clayburgh.
Chris Messina made his debut on Broadway in a small role in 2003′s “Salome,” also starring Pacino. He also appeared in several off-Broadway plays, including Caryl Churchill’s “Far Away” at New York Theatre Workshop, Melanie Marnich’s “Blur” at Manhattan Theatre Club and Craig Lucas’ “This Thing of Darkness” at Atlantic Theatre Company.
In this world of abundant entertainment, genre-tailored and delivered across fractured lines, Chris Messina‘s is the face you have undoubtedly seen in the past 12 months, 2012′s version of “that guy.”
Like the studio Oscar contenders? He was a co-star in Ben Affleck‘s Argo. Watch any indie romance films? Try Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg‘s Celeste and Jesse Forever, Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan‘sRuby Sparks or Jenna Fischer‘s Giant Mechanical Man. He has a star role in a network comedy; he’s Mindy Kaling‘s cocky, divorcee co-doctor on The Mindy Project. Messina is on cable, too; he has a recurring role in HBO’s The Newsroom and finished the run of DirecTV’s Damages.
At 37, Messina has broken out to become one of the busiest working actors in the industry, and 2013 will see him add a new credit to his name: writer and executive producer.
Messina co-stars in the new indie dramedy Fairhaven as a guy who escaped his small-town childhood in Massachusetts but is drawn back — reluctantly — to attend his estranged father’s funeral. There, he meets up with two old friends, played byTom O’Brien (also the film’s primary writer-director) andMad Men‘s Rich Sommer. Secrets of their pasts (including one involving Sarah Paulson) and subsequent mixed-fortune adulthoods spill out, making for a mix of catharsis and nostalgia that redefine relationships.
The Hollywood Reporter: The movie starts with a Tom Brady TV interview, in which he questions whether, even with all his success: “Is this it? There’s got to be something more than this.” Do you ever feel like that?
Chris Messina: Yes and no. I wonder if when I get to where I think in my head that I need to be, or where I dream to be, I wonder if I feel like I had arrived and I got there or that I would more be thinking about what Brady said, like, “Well, now I’m here; is this it?” But at this point in my life, I feel very grateful for where I am. I won’t lie to you; there’s a lot more to do, I have a lot more to say and a lot more places I want to go, but I’m very fortunate I ended up here at this moment in time.
Among the six movies and three TV shows Chris Messina appears in this year, “28 Hotel Rooms” holds a special place in his heart, as he also produced and helped conceive the heavily improvised film about a couple (Messina and Marin Ireland) who carry on an adulterous affair during meetings in hotel rooms across the country. Also special? Being regularly employed. Messina is appearing on TV screens every week in “The Mindy Project” — after popping up this summer in HBO’s “The Newsroom” — and that kind of regular employment is something special, he says.
This entire movie is really just the two of you. How much more pressure is that as an actor?
Yeah, that’s scary because if the audience doesn’t connect to either one of the characters then they’re pretty much not going to want to stick around. It’s a hard movie to make, to get people to get on board with — just these two people in hotel rooms. And probably a harder film to edit, because there was just hours of improv and footage and a lot of different takes he had to dig through.While the relationship in this film is based in infidelity, there’s a refreshing lack of judgment in how it’s presented.
Yeah, I liked that. We discussed that, that we didn’t want to say these people are bad people or these people are great people. They’re just people that made this choice at a particular time in their lives. We knew that people would be angry with them, and we hoped that people would be sympathetic to them or either want them to break up with their significant others and get together or just stop cheating altogether and just figure it out.
