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Podcast – Big Little Lies EP Nathan Ross

Executive producer Nathan Ross talks about working with like-minded creatives on projects such as Big Little Lies and Sharp Objects.

Bitches, Fierce Femmes and Molls - In Praise of Difficult Screen Women panel at Screen ForeverBitches, Fierce Femmes and Molls – In Praise of Difficult Screen Women panel at Screen Forever

Ross, who is currently working on the second season of Big Little Lies and a John Lennon/Yoko Ono biopic, discusses how he switched from working at talent agency ICM to producing Dallas Buyers Club – the first of many projects he and director Jean-Marc Vallée would collaborate on.

In the first of three episodes recorded with international guests at the Screen Forever conference in Melbourne (November 2018), Ross talks about how he and Vallée went on to work on features Wild and Demolition and moved to television with Big Little Lies and Sharp Objects. The second season of Big Little Lies is the first project Ross has produced which Vallée didn’t direct.

“For us (TV) was just an extension of filmmaking, just in a longer medium,” he says, adding they treat TV shoots like extra-long film shoots.

In January 2018, he and Vallée launched their own production company Crazyrose, which has a first-look deal with financier and sales company Bloom, who are in-turn owned by Endeavour Content.

Another common thread in Ross’ projects is working with Australians – Bruna Papandrea (who formerly founded Pacific Standard with Reese Witherspoon and now runs the Australian production company Made Up Stories) produced Wild, and both seasons of Big Little Lies – which was also produced by Nicole Kidman’s company Blossom Films. And the feature Demolition starred Naomi Watts, while the the series Sharp Objects (based on Gillian Flynn’s debut novel) stars Australian newcomer Eliza Scanlen.

Ross says if you’re producing with someone, it can be more than two years of working together, so you want to make sure you can get along, but challenge each other.

“When you find a person or persons or collaborations who you’ve got a good thing with and you’ve got a good shorthand… I think you want to try and stick with them.”

This episode was recorded at the Screen Forever conference in Melbourne.

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