The December Cold Case Cast Catch-up is made up of two parts. Part number one is the normal monthly latest news on the on-going careers of the CC main actors. The second section will be a look back at the year of CCCC-ups.
Errr… Looks like December has been a relatively quiet month on the news front for all our regulars.
Mid-month Tracie Thoms (Kat Miller in CC) was back home in Baltimore to take part in a reading of Thorton Wilder’s short one act play The Long Christmas Dinner. The event was held in the Baltimore Center Stage theatre as part of a fund raising effort to support various programs the venue runs. Written in the 1930s the 30 minute play covers 90 years worth of Xmas dinners of a particular family. Tracie played Leonora, the wife of family member Charles. After the reading there was a discussion/Q&A with the cast and crew.
Earlier in December was the release of the Apple TV+ drama series Truth Be Told. The first three episodes ‘dropped’ on the 6th. The remaining seven have been/will be released on a weekly basis across December and January.
Some of the older people amongst you may remember the sitcom Mad About You, starring Paul Reiser (Stranger Things) and Helen Hunt (Twister). As seems to be the trend these days, the show has been revisited for a new series (crossing fingers for CC). The original ran for seven seasons and 162 episodes starting in 1992. It made the two leads into huge stars. After MAY Paul primarily stayed working in TV whilst Helen mostly shifted to movies. The new series is a continuation of the show, set all these years later. Due to its distribution not being on a major network, despite the original being on NBC, the publicity has been relatively low key. This would be why I managed to miss the fact that Tracie apparently guest starred in the second episode, released on November 20th. That’s my excuse anyway.
Anyone else want to step forward? No?
OK, then Let’s move swiftly on to the review of the year’s reviews.
Sadly we didn’t see any news updates for Jeremy Ratchford (Nick Vera in CC) or Thom Barry (Will Jeffries in CC) during 2019. Hopefully we will hear more for them in 2020.
So we’ll start with Danny Pino (Scotty Valens in CC). Danny’s year started off in January (the rebel!) with a release of drama series Gone. The show had an unusual start by being first shown in Australia in 2017 but really got going in early 2019 with Germany followed by America. It was a pan-global production but as NBCUniversal made it, you’d think they’d get first call on it. Leven Rambin (The Hunger Games) and Chris Noth (The Good Wife) starred in the FBI-based drama about cases of missing people and abductions.
In February Mayans M.C., which dominated Danny’s year with us, was broadcast here in the UK by the BBC. Speaking of which, a second season announcement was made for Mayans in June. It premièred in September after a teaser trailer was released during the July San Diego Comic-Con. The year was topped of with the November news of Mayans getting a 3rd season.
John Finn (John Stillman in CC) is one of less regular regulars but 2019 was a stellar year for him (you’ll get that joke later). It started in February with the release of The Enemy Within, a sort of police drama about the FBI using a traitorous, jailed ex-CIA operative help track down a group of criminals. Hilarity ensued. Maybe. John was in the pilot episode but did not re-occur.
Nearly three years after first reporting about it, the film Finding Steve McQueen was released. It was based on the true story of an attempt to steal millions of dollars thought to have stashed away by the US president. Doesn’t sound very likely: the US president feathering his own nest during his time in office! John was Mark Felt, an Associate Director of the FBI who gave information anonymously about the Watergate scandal to the reports Woodward and Bernstein under the pseudonym ‘Deep Throat’.
One of the big stories of the year was the continued fallout from the #MeToo movement. The Fox ‘News’ network had found itself at the centre of things after various female staff members, including on-screen presenters like Gretchen Carlson, came forward with reports about the boss Roger Ailes. There was something of a rush to put the story on the screen. The recently released movie Bombshell (Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron, Margot Robbie) was beaten to the punch by the Showtime network mini-series The Loudest Voice (Russell Crowe, Naomi Watts, Sienna Miller). John made a single episode appearance as the CEO of General Electric Jack Welch.
At the same time we reported that John was directing a short film called Saved Rounds, about a Iraqi War veteran dealing with life back home. The film was talked about being released in 2019 but we’ve not heard any more on it since. We’ll keep an eye out for it during 2020 and let you know.
Remember that ‘stellar’ ‘joke’ I made earlier. Here’s the punchline… In June there was two trailers released for the epic space film starring Brad Pitt (Kathryn’s ex-husband in Moneyball), Ad Astra. Further trailers were released in the following months ahead of a September world-wide release. John, mostly in voice over, featured in several of those clips.
John continued his very much not dead career with a reprise of his character in the 10th season of The Walking Dead. After a long hiatus for the holiday period the show is set to return in February 2020 on the AMC network. An 11th season has already been signed-off. No news on John’s return. With these shows you never know who will survive the episode, let alone a season.
To crown the year (another classic on the way) John managed to get himself a role on the Netflix juggernaut that is The Crown. Obviously we can’t allow an American to play a member of the British(ish) Royal family so we let him be a Texan race horse owner instead.
Which pretty much leaves us with Tracie Thoms (Kat Miller in CC), the lady that almost single handedly makes these monthly posts possible. Phrases like ‘the hardest working person in [insert profession]’ are easily banded about but in Tracie’s case it seems very apt.
We’ve already covered one of Tracie’s roles because she was also in the show Gone with Danny. In that same January article I reported on a film called 10-13 and how it had been in the works for many years by writer/director David Zayas. Things seemed to be moving along but we’ve heard nothing further since.
The broadcasting of Cold Case on the Start TV network this year led to a few articles around Kathryn doing interviews for them to promote the show. Tracie was also involved and broke it to the world via some lovely ‘selfies’ on social media.
Apple’s big announcement in March of their streaming service Apple TV+ included updates on the shows they would be hosting, many made especially for them. We’d already heard about Truth Be Told, albeit under a different name.
Tracie continued her guest starring roles with new ones in the sitcom Abby’s, and dramas The Good Doctor and The Affair. That was as well as recurring in the cross-emergency service drama 9-1-1 on Fox. There were 8 episodes of that alone for her during 2019.
Possibly linked to the Mad About You news at the beginning of this piece, Tracie was back treading the boards (that’s in a play to you and me) in June. The link between Tracie and MAY in the play Working: The Musical was Helen Hunt, who also starred in the short run production.
For the big screen Tracie worked on a movie called Back To Lyla. Filming ended in June, just before our reporting, and a release is expected next year. It’s a rom-com. Tracie’s role looks relatively small. Another couple of films that Tracie stars in called Boy Genius and Straight Up were shown at film festivals this year and are pending general releases. More to look out for in 2020.
There are two more people we occasionally talk about in the CCCC-ups. Two of the most significant people in the life of Cold Case. They are show creator Meredith Stiehm and writer/director/producer Veena Sud.
This year it was announced that Meredith Stiehm (Homeland) was writing a screenplay of the book ‘The Banker’s Wife’. Amazon picked up the show for production. Gone Girl star Rosamund Pike was initially due to be the lead but things changed and she dropped out. Production is still going ahead. We await updates.
Veena Sud (The Killing) featured a couple of times across the year as we reported on a new streaming service due to launch next April called Quibi. The focus of the service is short pieces best suited to viewing on mobile devices. Veena is making a drama series called The Stranger said to involved ten 10-minute long episodes.
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