Kathryn Morris UK

Make way for May 2017’s Cold Case Cast Catch-up.  News of the careers of the other major Cold Case actors must be heard.

Let us begin with John Finn (John Stillman in CC).  John (there’s been a lot of John in this post already!) has found himself in a film called Bent.  It’s a thriller about a jailed police officer (framed of course) out for revenge on those that helped put him away, who gets caught up in solving a connected murder.  Karl Urban (Dredd) leads the impressive cast, with Sofia Vergara (Modern Family), and Andy Garcia (The Untouchables).  John is currently listed as playing ‘Driscoll’, which doesn’t give too many clues as to the nature of the character.  No release date yet.

If you were to walk into a room that contained a certain Jeremy Ratchford (Nick Vera in CC) and shout “Is there a certain Jeremy Ratchford here?” he might very well run away.  Or, he might reply in a rather affected tone “I am that man.”  If he did it would help me out greatly in linking to this next item.  I Am That Man is a movie returned to our revenge theme.  It is the directorial debut of British actor Matthew Marsden.  He’s had quite a career already having had short stints in two of the UK’s biggest soap operas (Coronation Street and Emerdale) and gone on to star in some major American films (Black Hawk Down, Rambo (2008)) and TV (NCIS, Castle, Two And A Half Men).  And, he was in Anacondas: The Hunt For The Blood Orchid with a certain special someone’s special someone.  Not being a complete fool (he is British after all) Matthew has cast himself in the lead role.  Alongside him are Christine Lakin (Family Guy), presumably as his wife, and Jeremy as Mike Spence.  Filming only started early in May so we probably have a bit of a wait for a release.

Tracie Thoms (Kat Miller in CC) returned to the small screen in America just the other day in the Starz network’s new drama/sci-fi/fantasy series American Gods.  It is available via Amazon Prime in some other countries.  They are throwing the proverbial kitchen sink at this one.  Lots of big special effects, big imagery, and big names in the acting world.  Relatively unknown Ricky Whittle (another Brit, Hollyoaks) is the latest ex-con in this post who, on his way to his wife’s funeral, meets Ian McShane’s Mr Wednesday.  Things take a turn for Ricky’s ‘Shadow Moon’.  That big name cast includes one of the hardest working actors today Gillian Anderson (The X-Files), Crispin Glover (Back To The Future), Emily Browning (Sucker Punch) and Pablo Schreiber (The Brink), Peter Stormare (Fargo), and Cloris Leachman (Young Frankenstein), to name just a few.  Tracie starred as a police detective (don’t know where they got that idea from!) in ‘Lemon Scented You’, the fifth episode of the 10 part run.

In other Tracie news the Broadway musical Falsettos that she appeared in has been nominated for several Tony Awards.  The Oscars of the theatre, the Tony Awards 2017 ceremony is due in a couple of weeks time.  It has already won several awards and is nominated for more.  Break a leg!

You know the drill.  It’s very late in the month so it must be time for the latest Cold Case Cast Catch-up.  The on-going careers of the main Cold Cast cast that aren’t Kathryn are worth keeping an eye on since the show ended.

It’s not often we get the chance to back-to-back lead-off with John Finn (John Stillman in CC).  Last month it was as a guest star the new CBS legal drama Doubt.  The role was minuscule, little more than an extra, presumably a victim of the many changes made to the show during a long and complicated gestation period.  John’s latest guest role was not dissimilar.  He was the supportive father of a more significant character in an episode of long-running powerhouse NCIS.  It was actually a reprise of a role John played in two-parter six years ago.  The now retired Marine Commandant Ellison’s daughter was a terminal cancer patient looking for justice for a dead colleague.

Speaking of NCIS, it looks like Jeremy Ratchford (Nick Vera in CC) will be in the spin-off New Orleans series episode next week (4th April).  It involved a drug running ring and possible corruption within the local police force.  Jezza plays Richard Marino.  Could be cop, could be mob.  Can’t tell.

We love Tracie Thoms (Kat Miller in CC) here on the CCCC-up.  She keeps us supplied with regular new work to report on.  Plus, she’s a talented actor and singer.  What’s not to love?  This month has been a bit quieter than some but that’s on the Tracie scale, which is differently calibrated from everyone elses.  Mere hours after the last CCCC-up was posted (so often the way) Tracie posted about a new crowd funding scheme to raise money for a film project she’s involved with called Say Goodnight And Go.  Karri Bowman (writer/director/actor Bandwagon), Lynn Wactor (Bandwagon) and Tracie (Bandwagon) have re-teamed to make the film.  The money raising is to cover the costs of a 3 minute trailer to help promote the project.  You can see the GoFundMe page HERE.  A finished project of Tracie’s is Love.  The whole 12 episode season of the Netflix series Love dropped early in the month.  Tracie guest starred again as Susan Cheryl, the producer of a fictional show-within-the-show.  This time she was only in a couple of episodes as that aspect of one of the main character’s lives was reduced in comparison to season 1.

In the CCCC-up from May last year I mentioned that a film starring Tracie was in post-production.  That film was The Drowning.  A bit of digging, or maybe splashing about a bit, showed that I’d actually made reference to the project a whole year before as it was being developed under the name Border Crossing.  It is based on a book of that earlier name by Pat Barker.  Now it looks like the film will get a release in mid-May having been recently acquired for distribution.  Julia Stiles (10 Things I Hate About You) and Josh Charles (The Good Wife) star in the drama about child violence.

Wow!  It’s the end of January already.  1/12th of the year has gone.  Somehow it simultaneously feels like it’s passed so quickly and yet taken so very long.  Has it been long enough to get some new news about the on going careers of the wider Cold Cast cast.  Welcome to the first CCCC-up of 2017.

Let’s start the year with some great news.

We don’t often get to headline with Jeremy Ratchford (Nick Vera on CC) but it wasn’t long ago (November in fact) that we last did so.  Then it was do with a guest starring role in the TV series Chicago P.D.  This time it is because of the movie Small Town Crime.  Previously we mentioned STC last May as Jeremy found himself cast amongst such luminaries as John Hawkes (Deadwood) and Octavia Spencer (Hidden Figures).  Early in the new year STC was one of the first films announced to première at the 2017 SXSW (South By Southwest) film festival which takes place in Austin, Texas in March.  SXSW is a big event that gets a lot of media attention.  STC is thriller involving the murder of a young woman and an alcholic ex-cop (Hawkes).

Jeremy’s movie premiering in a few months has pushed Tracie Thoms (Kat Miller in CC) in to second place in our run-down this month.  That doesn’t mean she has been anything other than incredibly busy as always though.  No sir.  But where to start?  First up there was promotion for the release of the CD soundtrack of stage musical Falsettos that Tracie has been a part of.  The 2 disc set of over 30 songs is not an audio recording of one of the regular performances.  They were studio recordings done especially for the CDs.  It is available from all good (and probably some not so good) retailers (including outside the US) now.  As well as that one of the stage performances was filmed for broadcast at a later date on the American PBS network.

Speaking of stage shows, Tracie did two nights (11th and 14th) of her one woman show in the 54 Below club.  I’m sure the crowd loved it.  Speaking of love, Tracie also let it be known that production has begun on the second season of the Netflix romdramedy (I just made that up:  romance, drama, comedy) Love.  The show stars Community alum Gillian Jacobs and Comedy Bang! Bang! star and writer Paul Rust, who also created and wrote Love along with Judd Apatow (so many comedies) and Leslie Arfin (Brooklyn Nine-Nine).  Love season one was released last February and is available on Netflix.  The new run lands in early March, just as the SXSW festival starts in fact.

Barely pausing for breath after returning to Los Angeles, and before we saw Love back in her life, Tracie was working on a short film called Top Ramen by Rebecca Hertz.  It appears that Tracie plays the mother of two girls.  Beyond that we don’t know much.

A film we do know more about is C.R.E.A.M: The American Dream.  Tracie will have to spend some time in Florida to make this drama centred around the gangs of the criminal underworld in Miami.  The story is said to be based on a housing project specifically built for low-income African-Americans which suffered a drug wars problem in the late 1990s.  To answer the question I had as well, it stands for Cash Rules Everything Around Me.  The film written by Juan William Jackson and David Haynes is still in the pre-production stages so we’re a way of seeing any release date.

A new promo video for the new CBS legal drama Doubt removes some of the… er… doubt I had about seeing John Finn (John Stillman in CC) in an earlier video.  I’m even more convinced it is him but there is still a question mark.  John has been listed in the show’s cast for a long time but there have been many changes and delays since then and he has not been mentioned in the official press release which has an extensive set of credits for the guest cast.  The new series starring Katherine Heigl (Grey’s Anatomy), Elliott Gould (Ocean’s Eleven), Dulé Hill (Psych), Laverne Cox (Orange Is The New Black), and Dreama Walker (The Good Wife), is due to première on the 15th of February (a Wednesday).