You are listening to The Next Best Picture podcast, and these are our interviews with the cast and the

director and writer for Mass. First up, we have my interview with Ann Dowd, followed by Will Mavity's

interview with Reed Bernie, then my interview with Jason Isaacs, then Daniel Howitt's interview with

Martha Plimpton, and then finally my interview with Fran Kranz.

Mass is currently playing in theaters from Bleaker Street, and we do discuss spoilers in these

interviews, so we hope that you check out the film first before listening.

Thank you.

How many people are coming?

There'll be four of them.

Richard, Linda. This is Jay and Gail Perry. Thank you for agreeing to meet us. You're welcome. I'm going to leave you alone. Let me know if you need anything.

Hi, Ann. How are you? I'm doing well today. How are you doing? Very well, thank you. Where are you?

I'm over in Brooklyn, New York.

Oh, nice. I'm in Manhattan sitting here listening to someone playing a lovely instrument on his

balcony. I'm super excited. I will actually be at the event later on this evening. So I'm looking

forward to seeing you and the rest of the cast there later on.

But I want to first start off by saying that I saw this movie at its premiere at Sundance,

and it was a complete emotional knockout from me.

I knew right away upon watching it that it was one of the best films of the year

and also a very incredibly special screenplay that had been written about a very sensitive topic.

Can you first start off by telling us what your gut reaction was to this

really brilliant screenplay that Fran Kranz wrote for this? Yes. Thank you for starting with

that, the beautiful screenplay, it's astonishing and extraordinary. So start there, you know,

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