With ‘Shiva Baby’ hitting selected theatres and VOD this Friday, Dianna did a zoom interview with Breakfast Television Toronto yesterday morning. She got disconnected for a minute or two, but keep watching, as she eventually gets her computer/wifi sorted 😉 You can watch the segment below, and as usual, find screen captures in our gallery! I’m really loving this new hair color.

Super exciting news, Dianna fans! Our girl has been cast in a new project, the upcoming Mayim Bialik directed film “As Sick as They Made Us”. Dianna will play one of the leading characters Abigail, and will star alongside Simon Helberg as Nathan, Dustin Hoffman as Eugene and Candice Bergen as Barbara. What a cast! Very little information has been released about the film so far, but the official plot line reads: “A divorced mom tries to make peace with her dysfunctional family as she finds a second chance at love.”

Mayim Bialik did an interview with Forbes on February 18 this year, where they wrote the following about the upcoming project: Next, Bialik will be bringing her production knowledge and firsthand experiences surrounding mental illness to the big screen as she adds writer and director to her resume for the feature film As Sick As They Made Us. “I did write a story after my father passed away about growing up in a home with mental illness and how that impacts siblings differently and how it impacts the entire family,” Bialik reveals. She goes on to say that as of now, the project is scheduled to start filming this summer in New Jersey and will star Dustin Hoffman, Candice Bergen, and her Big Bang co-star Simon Helberg. Bialik says of her upcoming filmmaking experience, “It’s very terrifying and exciting. I’ve always viewed things from behind the camera perspective, even as an actor when I was younger. With a mighty director of photography, I’m hoping to create a beautiful story that’s also visually pleasing.”

Dustin, Simon and Candice were cast back in November 2019 alongside Olivia Thirlby (who it seems Dianna has replaced), but I can imagine the pandemic put a pause to the remaining casting and production. I’ve posted an article Deadline shared about the project back in 2019 when it was first announced for those interested!

Deadline – EXCLUSIVE: We can reveal that Mayim Bialik, known for her role as Amy in The Big Bang Theory, is set to make her directing debut on comedy-drama As Sick As They Made Us and has gathered a starry cast for the pic. Starring are Dustin Hoffman, Candice Bergen, Olivia Thirlby (Juno), and fellow Big Bang Theory cast member Simon Helberg. Bialik also wrote the screenplay, which is about a successful divorced mother of two who rekindles love in her life amidst the crazy antics of her dysfunctional family. Now she attempts to convince the stubborn, and comically unfortunate family members to hold it together while they embrace one final farewell.

Project comes from producers Anne Clements (Stage Mother), and Ash Christian (After Everything) and Clay Epstein’s Film Mode Entertainment, which is shopping it at AFM.

Bialik is a two-time winner of the Critic’s Choice Television Award for best supporting actress for The Big Bang Theory, she also played the title role in 90s sitcom Blossom. Her production company, Sad Clown Productions, recently inked a multi-year deal with WBTV including a talent-holding provision for her acting services; she also holds a PhD in Neuroscience from UCLA and has published four books.

“It is an incredible honor and a writer and director’s dream come true to work with actors I’ve respected and adored my entire life. I cannot wait to see what we can create together,“ said Bialik.

“We can’t wait to see this stellar cast bring such lovable and interesting characters to life. It’s evident that these amazing actors share our love of the materials and we are thrilled to see Mayim’s vision become a reality,” added Epstein.

In preparation for the premiere of ‘The Laureate’ next month at the Berlinale 2021, our gallery has now been updated with the first official poster, behind the scenes photos and HD screen captures from the very first teaser trailer for the film (which you can watch below if you haven’t seen it yet!). The Covid-19 pandemic will unfortunately greatly affect how much the cast will be able to promote the film, but we still hope we’ll get a fair share of new Dianna content the coming month. *Fingers crossed*

If you’re interested, you can also view a special ‘A Director’s View’ featurette over at youtube, in which Writer/Director William Nunez talks about The Laureate in New York City before it went into production.

Set against the glamorous backdrop of Britain’s roaring ’20s, The Laureate tells the story of young British War Poet Robert Graves, who is married with four children when he meets and becomes romantically involved with Laura Riding, a writer from America. Defying the conventions of polite society, Riding moves in with Graves and his wife living as a menage a tois. Then with the arrival of strappingly handsome Irish poet Geoffrey Phibbs, the arrangement becomes a menage a quatre. But soon tensions and rivalries become so fraught that Graves is a suspect for attempted murder.

Directed by William Nunez, and co-starring Tom Hughes, Laura Haddock, Julian Glover, Patricia Hodge, Christien Anholt & Fra Fee, The Laureate is set to have its premiere at the Berlinale 2021’s Industry Event from March 1–5!

Hello Dianna fans! You might have noticed our site went offline for a few days, caused by a bad hack/virus which affected every part of our website. I had to clean every folder and every file to make sure the site was safe to be re-uploaded and published, which is why it unfortunately took me several days to have it all fixed. Everything should be in order now, but please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you find any broken links or come across an error message. Both our gallery, video archive, press library & graphics archive have been been fixed, so you should once again have full access to all our Dianna content!

Right before the site crash, I uploaded another big batch of rare outtakes from one of Dianna’s earliest Glee photoshoots! Check them out below. More updates are on the way, including some 2021 candids, The Laureate pics & articles, stay tuned.

Jason Sheppard recently did an interview with William Nunez, the director of Dianna’s upcoming film The Laureate, in which he shared a lot of interesting information about the project! I’ve included my personal Dianna-related highlight, and below you can read the full interview with Nunez. I’ll have a big The Laureate photo update for you soon!

Source | The Laureate stars Tom Hughes (Victoria), Dianna Agon (Glee), Laura Haddock (Netflix’s White Lines), Fra Fee (Les Misérables) and Julian Glover (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) in this romantic drama about British war poet Robert Graves (Hughes) and the women in his life, wife Nancy Nicholson (Haddock) and American writer, Laura Riding (Agron) who served as his muses in London during the 1920s.

William Nunez, a graduate of NYU film school and a former TV news director, wanted to film this story for many years. As an admirer of Grave’s written works, Nunez was equally interested in exploring the topics of desire fuelling creativity and how PTSD affected individuals after the war. With his background in news and passion for history to aid Nunez in authenticity and getting straight to the heart of his characters, and with the cooperation of members of Graves’ family, Nunez has now made his literary ménages à trois, The Laureate. He spoke to us about the long journey to bring the movie to screens.
Jason: Can you tell me a bit about how you got involved with The Laureate and what appealed to you about the story of Robert Graves?

William Nunez: The Laureate has been a long gestating project of mine. The genesis of it started back in the ’90s. Robert Graves was always my favorite writer, mainly because as a kid I would watch I, Claudius, which was shown on public television once a year. My mother had a book of his and as I learned more about Grave’s work, I loved it. In the ’90s, I read a biography of his and knew he lived in Majorca, Spain, but that was about it. I read about his partnership with Laura Riding and thought it might make an interesting movie, but I was just out of university and was young, and didn’t think I was authoritative enough to write and direct something with these adult themes and relationships. So I put it away for a while and over a decade later, I came back to it.

Jason: What was it about Robert Graves that compelled you so much to want to bring his story to the screen?

William Nunez: I’m always fascinated by creativity and whether it’s a painting, piece of music, or a book, the struggles and the internal conflicts and inspirations that artists go through interest me. That’s what drew me to Robert. He needed a muse, in order to create his expressions and his first wife, Nancy, was one and then Laura Riding became his next one. And even after he broke up with Laura, he continued with that practice. It fascinated me how we need conflict, which I guess most artists do in a way to create and The Laureate has a lot of conflict in it, which is a kind of outrageous, but that is how he transitioned himself from the well-known war poet to author which is what he became known for in poetry circles, aside from Goodbye To All That and I, Claudius.

Jason: Can you describe the methods of research you underwent in order to depict the 1920s on film?

William Nunez: The history I already kind of knew, but since I knew what my budget would be, I needed to be contained. I mainly researched production design and the fashions of the time, the mannerisms, even to how the light switches looked like. I try to get it as accurate as possible. In terms of the history, I knew what it was anyway, because history has always been my other passion. And I just went into my research trying to get all the minor details right so that people can go, ‘okay, these guys got these little bits right, and they got the era right, in the language of everything correctly.’ So that’s where my research mainly laid for this project. Read More

Hello again Dianna fans! As you know, the long-anticipated “Headlock” (or “Against the Clock” as it was re-titled to right before the official release) was released early last year. I have finally updated our gallery with HD screen captures from the film! We discussed this film in length over at twitter last year, so I won’t go into the film too much here; but it truly showcases Dianna’s beauty, and the screen captures are definitely worth a look. Previews and links below!

PS: Our friend Mike Ownby has managed to purchase a blu-ray version of the film, and is posting a big bunch of beautifully edited screen captures on his flickr that you can check out here. I hope to have my own blu-ray version of the film eventually, but for now it’s sadly not available in my region – I hope you still enjoy the new photos! If you live in the US, you can purchase your own copy over at Amazon here.

After CIA agent Kelley Chandler’s (Mark Polish) overseas intelligence mission goes awry, he returns home on life support with one foot placed preemptively in a body bag. As the CIA, spear-headed by foul-mouthed genius Hotchkiss (Andy Garcia), are destined to pull the plug on Kelley, it is up to his wife, Tess (Dianna Agron), to uncover the truth of what really happened. HEADLOCK is a high-suspense conspiracy spy-fi thriller, with Tess and Kelley forced to tackle both mental and physical extremes in the hope that together, they can unlock the answers.