THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 78 NOVEMBER 6, 2019
TAALL ENNTJonathan Majors / 30
“If Gus Van Sant pulls you
out of school,” says Majors,
“you go.” The Dallas native
was in his last semester of
his graduate program at
the Yale School of Drama
when he was cast in limited
series When We Rise. In the
three years that followed,
Majors, the son of a pastor,
has become a film festival
regular with titles like White
Boy Rick and The Last
Black Man in San Francisco.
The actor has since jumped
into bigger budgets and
higher concepts with Spike
Lee’s Vietnam War drama
Da 5 Bloods and Jordan
Peele’s sci-fi HBO series
Lovecraft Country.
CRAZIEST WAY MY LIFE HAS
CHANGED “I live nowhere
but have four addresses.”
PERSON I’VE BEEN
MOST STARSTRUCK BY
Scottie Pippen“I don’t give a fuck
if it’s popular as long
as it makes sense to
me,” says Jonathan
Majors (pictured with
Hunter Shafer) of how
he chooses his roles,
from White Boy Rick to
Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods.
“Because if it makes
sense to me, it’ll make
sense to everyone else.”return, she’s worked on Righteous
Gemstones and Mrs. Fletcher, and
is shepherding Run, from Phoebe
Waller-Bridge and Vicky Jones.
TALENT I’M DYING TO WORK WITH “Cate
Blanchett and Catherine O’Hara,
ideally in the same show.”
RISHI RAJANI / 27
President of Film and TV,
Hillman Grad
The NYU alum first met Lena Waithe
as an executive at Jeff Robinov’s
Studio 8 when the company
optioned the graphic novel Black
that she was set to co-write. The
project didn’t move forward, but it
didn’t take long for Waithe to tap
him for the top role at her budding
production company. Rajani has
spent the past year running TV and
film for the seven-person outfit,
which has a deal with Amazon. “The
first text I send in the morning is to
Lena and the last text I send at night
is to Lena,” he says. This year alone,
he oversaw three films (includ-
ing Queen & Slim), three TV series
(Boomerang), a pilot, four music
videos, five short films and three
commercial campaigns. Adds Rajani:
“We want to build out something
that rivals a Plan B or a Bad Robot.”
BIGGEST CHANGE I’VE WITNESSED IN
HOLLYWOOD “Stories created by and
about people who have tradition-
ally been ‘othered’ are starting to be
considered as viable projects.”
MAX CUTLER / 28
Founder and Managing Director,
Parcast
The L.A.-raised son of a radio
producer has devoted his career
to a more modern audio format:
podcasting. Cutler started Parcast
in 2016, and when his first show,
Unsolved Murders: True Crime
Stories, reached more than 100,000
downloads in its first month, he
knew he was onto something.
Over the next three years, he
built Parcast into a home for dark,
gritty storytelling, from true crime
to conspiracy theories. In March,