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absolutebl · 1 year

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This Week in BL - 2023 Begins!

Jan 20232 Wk 1

Being a highly subjective assessment of one tiny corner of the interwebs. Organized by which ones (in each category) I’m enjoying most.

Ongoing Series - Thai

Never Let Me Go (Tues YT) 4 of 12 - I keep saying this, but I can’t get over how delighted I am to have Perth back on my screen, and under the GMMTV umbrella. He is a stellar actor. I like that the first kiss of this show wasn’t btw the leads. Felt more realistic to high school. Big drama next week!

My School President (Fri YT) 5 of 10 - I missed these two so much last week. But also there was A MUSICAL INCIDENT and it caused a bit of a rant from yours truly.

Between Us (Sun iQIYI) 9 of 12 - no ep this week, resumes tomorrow WATCH ALONG HERE.

609 Bedtime Story (Fri WeTV) 7 of 11 - Game remains my spirit animal (pushy fucker), and the plot of the main couple is interesting even if I don’t like the cheating component.

Cutie Pie 2 You (special) 1 of 4 - Oh it’s a full on special. Very very pretty and, is possible, more sappy and full of manufactured angst. Nuea protecting Hia’s interests was sweet. Lots of making out. So... more of the same, basically. What year are we in now, anyway?

I Will Knock You (Fri Gaga) 8 of 12 - (note from my Thai language spy rgr ep 5: the writing on the stone tablets was their names + 2 family members) And now we are suddenly firmly in BL territory and baby Dom is just a baby Seme. No bisexual identity crisis needed... just diving into cheese fest.

Remember Me (Sun Gaga) 13 of 14 - I would have kept JaFirst apart for longer, quite frankly. I mean otherwise why bother split them up in the first place? Please just end this show already.

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

The New Employee (Korea Weds Viki) 3 of 8 - I love them so much, and they are so cute, and this is not open to discussion. Viva la age gap!

The Director Who Buys Me Dinner (Korea Weds iQIYI) 7-8 of 10 - There is a lot implied about the leads history together, but it was still nice to get backstory plus GAT KISSES. I love it when they flip the dynamic and give the uke agency. I’m really enjoying this show now, I’m even invested in the love triangle.

HIStory 5: Love in the Future (Taiwan Weds Viki) 2 of 10 - Side couple ascension: Daddy Long Legs trope, it’s been a while since I have seen this in ANY romance drama. I’m not really into the main couple, at least not yet (and I totally missed that they hadn’t met each other in person yet), but I really love the side dishes. It’s like H4 all over again only with less dub con.

Candy Color Paradox AKA Ameiro Paradox (Japan Fri Gaga) 4 of 8 - nothing this week.

It’s Airing But I’m Not Watching It

Love Bill (Vietnam Sat YT) - Bah Vinh is back but I’m too distracted. Also there’s a lot of fund raising stuff going on with them. I can wait.

The Star Always Follow You (Vietnam YT) - same Team RL peeps we have seen before (Sunshine, Stupid)

Moonlight Chicken GMMTV’s Midnight series (Weds YT) 1 of 8 eventually - first segment has begun bit it’s not the EarthMix messy gays. Sorry all, I’m so not interested in messy hets, so I’m waiting until they grace my screen.

Questions!!!

Should I watch The Warp Effect? Tublr seems excited about it and BL bits look good? Will they end happy? Thoughts anyone?

Till the World Ends (Thai YT) finished at 10 eps, the heat looked good but I don’t know about the ending with that kind of title, so did anyone risk it and want to tell me what they thought? I haven’t seen much chatter on my feed so I am not optimistic.

In Case You Missed It

2022′s The Usual Night (Twitter account) from Japan is a 10-ep fake documentary series starring the members of Jpop group the Fantastics. It flew under everyone’s radars but apparently has a BL subplot featuring Yagi Yusei (My Beautiful Man) and Seguchi Leiya. This officially means they beat OnlyOneOf to the punch as the first inter-group BL pairing. Keito Kimura (Onoe from Candy Color Paradox) is also a member of Fantastics and in the show. Source reddit. No word on official international release. Japan is like that.

OnlyOneOf’s Nine dropped the last (?) in their BL Kpop series, 'beyOnd' (be #6)

I posted all my 2022 wraps, top picks, industry stats, etc..

Next Week Looks Like This:

Jan 19: Individual Circumstances 8 eps - A reunion romance between a movie director who was once promising and a writer who disappeared due to past wounds. Stars JunQ (main rapper of 2nd gen group MYNAME) and Han Jung Wan (Mr International Korea winner).

2023 forthcoming BL master post is in the works... wait for it... I had to finish all the 2022 wrap ups first. Also waiting for the last of the studio announcements.

THIS WEEK’S BEST MOMENTS

Never Let Me Go

Ah the love triangle.

The Director Who Buys Me Dinner caught himself a live one.

(last week)

Current Kpop earworm? You gotta check out VIXX (sub unit) new single. Gonna Be Alright = 2 BL stars in one croon. (Hyuk Color Rush 2 & Leo Happy ending Romance). *props chin on hand and bats eyes winsomely at Ken* So?

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champagnepodiums · 8 months

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Could you explain the merge of CART and IndyCar?

OKAY so reunification of CART and INDYCAR (I'm going to just be operating under the thought that we know why CART and IRL split in the first place). I'm going to keep it as straightforward as possible but it's messy lol

So after the Split, CART was in a better position -- it had the cars, the sponsorships, the big names etc. CART saw an increase in annual revenue from $38M in 1995 to $68M in 1999. But it was not even because oval attendance was tanking. Television ratings were terrible and the revenue from TV was abysmal (all season CART would make $5M which was less than what some singular NASCAR races made). They also did a public stock offering, selling 35% of the company, raising $100M.

In 1999, young star Greg Moore and emerging talent Gonzalo Rodriguez were killed in two separate racing incidents, two months apart from each other and that started raising safety questions.

In 2000, CEO Andrew Craig was forced by the car owners to resign. He was replaced with Bobby Rahal (yes, Graham's dad lol).

While oval attendance was declining, street course attendance was healthy and CART decided to focus on that as well as oversea ovals which angered some of the more traditional owners and sponsors.

In 2000, Chip Ganassi's team returned to the Indy 500 (and won).

In 2001, CART released a very ambitious schedule -- 22 races in the US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, the UK, Germany and Australia. One of the races added was the Texas oval which had put on an exciting IRL race the year further.

But the season went like this: Brazil was cancelled when promoters didn't pay, Texas had to be cancelled because the drivers were sustaining too many G-Forces and blacking out in the corners and it was a PR nightmare essentially.

The three manufactures of CART at the time were Honda, Ford and Toyota. Honda and Ford had developed a turbo pop off valve (I don't know what it is lol) and Toyota complained so when CART mandated a change to equalize things, Honda obtained an injunction allowing them to use it which pissed everrrrrybody off. Toyota announced it was going to IRL in 2003.

The German 500 happened the Saturday after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The teams were unable to leave because airspace was shut down so they decided to go ahead with the race and that pissed people off... including ESPN who refused to air the race live. Alex Zanardi lost both legs in an accident at the German 500 so like we're just shoveling the bad PR on at this point.

To make matters even worse for CART, ABC/ESPN which had been airing their races signed an exclusivity deal with IRL (to keep the Indy 500 rights) so CART went to the SPEED channel and they bought time on CBS but really, this is just the straw that breaks the camel's back because without the exposure from ABC/ESPN, sponsors don't stick around etc.

And remember how they put 35% of the company up for public offer? This comes back into play because they allowed teams to disinvest and sell their stocks which meant new voices were coming in and there was just instability and turmoil.

In 2002, Honda announced it was going to IRL so Ford would be the only manufacturer left which further tanked the stocks and at this point, most everybody has already or are going to jump ship to IRL.

CART declared bankruptcy in 2003 and rebranded to Champ Car and was able to keep themselves afloat. I want to leave Champ Car there for a hot second.

The Split killed a lot of interest in American Open-Wheel racing and allowed NASCAR to become the most popular motorsport series in the US. So even though IRL had the ABC/ESPN deal and had the top teams and manufacturers jumping ship to join them, interest is waning (and that is bad because sponsorship, attendance etc etc). And also, the die hard IRL fans are getting mad because they feel like their sport is getting overtaken by CART again -- it doesn't help when the 2005 IRL schedule includes 2 road course races, ending the 7 seasons of oval only.

Manufacturers withdrew support starting in 2006 and that caused major issues for IRL because teams were struggling financially and teams had to cut back or quit full time racing altogether.

By January 2008, both Champ and IRL were starting to worry that they wouldn't have enough cars on the grid to maintain their contract minimums so Tony George offered a merger deal with IRL buying all of Champ Car's assets basically. They kept racing under the IRL banner until 2011.

In 2012 it was rebranded as INDYCAR and that is when they dug out the Astor Cup from the depths of IMS and reunification was complete.

That turned into a much longer essay than I planned. Please, any clarification questions (or just general questions) are so welcome. I love talking about this stuff and no question is stupid, I want people to know and understand motorsport history so please feel free!! I cannot stress that enough lol

#indycar #the split #reunification of the split #motorsport history

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tricitymonsters · 27 days

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Kickstarter Shipping: The Trials and Tribulations Of!

At this point, tracking numbers should all be out to applicable backers! Keep an eye on those packages as I think people will begin receiving them late this week or early next!

Please reach out to me if you run into any issues but I'm hoping everything arrives to you safe & sound!

Now that I can take a breath...

So I wanted to do several devlogs about various processes regarding running a Kickstarter and now that shipping is wrapping up (everything is on route to its final destination) I want to take a minute and sort of go over our goals and processes for setting this all up.

Firstly, TCM is my second Kickstarter and that gave me a leg up in many respects- I knew how the platform worked, I knew mostly what prospective backers were interested in, and I knew how to budget for overages pretty well. As it turns out, my past experience turned out to be a little bit of a detriment as well, surprise surprise.

In 2018 I ran a Kickstarter to support The Wyrd of Stromgard, a mythic Norse standalone setting for the TTRPG Dungeon World. I offered physical books, poster sized maps, and GM Screens in addition to digital files as a reward (remember that number: only 3 physical products, it will come back to bite me in the ass lol). In all, the campaign was stable and saw success fairly early, plus researching printing prices was pretty straight forward, and manufacturing costs were reasonable.

I was also able to save significant shipping costs by partnering up with multiple fulfillment centers in various regions around the world. If you've never done global shipping before, basically a fulfillment center will act as a middleman. You send product directly to them from the manufacturer and they leverage their size to negotiate better discounts on shipping rates, pack your orders, and help you with international customs legalities, etc etc.

When I was shipping Stromgard, I used a fulfillment center based in Europe to handle UK and the EU as well as a fulfillment center in China to handle Asian and South Pacific orders. I handled all the US and Canadian shipments out of my own house as domestic shipping inside the US isn't too bad and I only had about ~10 Canadian shipments. In total I think i had about 300 shipments, about half of which were US-bound.

The thing about 2018 is that was before the most intense Brexit changes and boy did things change.

With Stromgard, there were some Duties&Taxes that I took on as the shipper because I didn't want those to get thrown onto the buyer. I advertised the campaign as EU/AUS Friendly. My fulfillment centers took care of everything and things were really easy to deal with, all things considered.

This time, everything was different. Not only did I up the complexity of the campaign by offering a total of nine different products, I also used Add-Ons and a 3rd party pledge manager (Pledgebox, more on them later) to help me manage everything.) I continued advertising low cost shipping to overseas buyers as I intended to pay the Duties & Taxes for those shipments. I thought this would make for a more attractive price point. Before the Kickstarter was ready to launch, I researched a bunch of fulfillment centers to make sure everything was still doable the way I wanted. I found a fulfillment company in the US that advertised that they used their global network to fulfill internationally, their price point seemed good and I set my attention instead on other things.

It takes a long time to prepare and run a Kickstarter, plus many more months organizing and completing digital rewards, commissioning and receiving artwork, and finalizing physical merch manufacturers and other specs. If you're curious to know, I ended up working with Vograce to get all my merch produced. Their prices are pretty reasonable and they have many products but the real star of their show is their customer service. Pour one out for Angelina, she helped me work out every product. But anyway... once merch was finally in production, I was ready to get my account set up with my fulfillment center.

My internal estimated timeline was about 2.5 months to ship when I decided it was time to get my fulfillment center account set up and all my SKUs/picking/packing information ready to go so the merch could move easily from the manufacturer to the fulfillment center. Unfortunately, I ran into some nasty surprises. My first choice in company actually didn't offer global fulfillment, it turns out, to anyone shipping less than 350 pieces a month continuously. Of course this fine print was only accessible on a part of their website behind a paid log in. So I had to scrap plan A and pivot. Plan B was to look into a whole mess of other companies that I had previously researched just in case something like this happened. To my incredible stress and dismay, none of them were willing to take on my fulfillment needs.

Amplifier, Shipbob, James and James, Floship, Spainbox, Simpl Fulfillment, Easyship, Shipwire, Blackbox, and Fulfillrite were just a few of the bigger name places I tried to go to. There were many reasons they weren't a match for my needs but here are the two most common:

Not enough volume to qualify for service

I was not permitted to pay Duties and Taxes for EU/UK shipments, passing that cost onto the backer on delivery

In the end, there was only one fulfillment center who could help us and that's Spiral Galaxy Games, a fulfillment center that got their start as a brick and mortar board game store in England and had so much expertise in global logistics that they were able to make a name for themselves as a shipping hub as well. In truth, Spiral Galaxy was my UK/EU fulfillment choice in 2018 for Stromgard and I had a great experience with them. It's a smallish operation but my contact from last time took the time out of his busy schedule to walk me through what had changed since then one step at a time. He explained that he could ship my products in the UK and I could pay taxes on them, however because of Brexit, shipping to the rest of the EU was trickier and he advised me to register a VAT ID in order to recoup some of the costs of greater EU delivery. I have to make it clear, I don't even have an American business tax ID (I do have a registered business name but that's it). Spiral Galaxy advised me that there were also costs to set up an account with them, fees for using their importer tax IDs, packing & picking, material costs, etc. In the end it came down to several hundred dollars just to get things ready to go.

In the meantime, I priced shipping out of my own home in the US by shopping for shipping on ShipStation and EasyShip, both sites that leverage deals with various carriers to get more competitive pricing. Early estimates for all TCM Kickstarter orders put International shipments at about 1k and domestic shipments at about 1.9k for a whopping total of about 3k to get everything out the door. Not including packing materials, by the way.

So in doing the math- in rough estimates as well as I could- I worked out that between Spiral Galaxy's set up costs versus the return on some Duties & Taxes earned from shipping to the EU from the UK, it was almost a wash. Now, I have to clarify that I still HIGHLY recommend Spiral Galaxy Games as a shipper and as a storefront. They're experts, they're fairly priced, and they're highly responsive. It's just unfortunate that in this case it didn't seem like things were going to work out but I hope to work with them again someday.

So at this point, I decided to ship out of my house. I spent about 100-150$ on supplies, included some Studio Peaches branded mailers, some stickers, etc. I was able to save a little because I had just bought a huge box of 4x6 labels for another project so at least all that was ready to go.

The merchandise arrived from Vograce in top condition, everything had been packaged very carefully and I was thrilled that not a single thing had been damaged in transit. I sorted everything out and conscripted my poor partner to give up his Sunday and help me ship.

It took 13.5 hours to pack each order, create it's shipping label, seal/print/apply the labels, and double check our work. It took another hour or so to drive to USPS, UPS, and Fedex drop off locations.

Now, final numbers are still tallying- not everything has reached it's destination yet so there may be damages or mistakes to correct, but in total- for labels only- I spent about 2k. So, good news, I managed to save a little money (theoretically, we'll know for sure in a couple weeks) but bad news, shipping is HELLA more expensive than I remembered it being.

The merch arrived from Vograce safe and sound.

The akello and amir standees

Mori had his own drawer

My shipping "area" that I set up as best as I could lmfao

I promise i didn't let my cats get their fur all over the merch. I took pics quickly and evicted them even though they REALLY wanted to help.

FINALLY everything is packed and sorted and then in the morning it took up most of my truck bed while I went to drop everything off.

#LONG READ #kickstarter stuff #lessons were learned #devlog #or maybe its a post mortem

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coxblogs · 7 days

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These Top 5 Leggings Colors Can Go With Anything

You want to know which leggings colors are repetitively chosen by almost every woman? Check out in this blog!

#best sustainable leggings uk #ladies gym wear usa #leggings colors #leggings manufacturer in los angeles

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princepaddy · 2 years

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‘I wanted all eyes on me’ – The OA and Shadow and Bone star Patrick Gibson on his acting pedigree

After the Netflix series that gave Patrick Gibson his break-out role was cancelled, it was no doubt tempting to jump at the next thing that came along. But the Dubliner — who has been acting since age eight — has chosen his roles carefully to forge a long-term career. It helps that he’s had his thespian parents, Lenny Abrahamson, and a clown professor to guide him.

A solidarity exists among those who survived hotel quarantine during the pandemic. On encountering a fellow detainee in the free world, an immediate bond forms over a shared experience in enforced confinement, and occasionally, so does a dynamic of oneupmanship.

“A fortnight without an open window,” I’ve smugly responded of my own quarantine episode, to those who underwent a mere week to 10 days with a terrace. “It was tough, yet strangely cathartic, and actually quite spiritual in some ways,” I then deliver with a martyred air.

Consequently, I feel completely diminished by Patrick Gibson’s multiple bouts with room-serviced captivity. “I think I did it five times,” the actor casually estimates, scratching a whiskered chin. “Once in Australia, once in America and a couple of times while going back and forth between the UK and Belgium.”

He’s unsure how long in total, something I chalk up to a coping mechanism from the residual trauma. “Maybe,” he agrees. “I mean, the days blended into each other. I did keep a video diary as a way not to lose my mind, but I’m too terrified to look back at it now. And I had it easy compared to some of my friends who’re actors. A couple I know were in and out of quarantine once a month.”

With each stint in confinement preceding an acting job, Gibson explains that all delivered the perfect duration in which to learn lines; to find a character’s motivation, and even workshop with a clown professor. Yes, you read that right — a clown professor.

“I was quarantining in Brisbane to work on a film I was shooting in Australia called The Portable Door which has a lot of physical comedy in the script, something I’ve never done. I’ve never done comedy — there’s actually nothing scarier than doing comedy because the reaction is so much more immediate. You know if you do something and people don’t laugh, you’re in trouble. It’s not as nuanced as drama.

“So I did workshops on Zoom with a clown professor. He’s an amazing movement coach teaching in one of the best drama schools in Australia. And it was about facing the fear of falling on your face, which is at the core of clowning; getting comfortable with that, not giving a shit if you make an idiot of yourself. It was actually way more philosophical than I expected. The theory of clowning is so fascinating.”

I’m disappointed with the distinct lack of clown tropes in his account of the experience: no red squeaky nose, no water-squirting flower. There must have been some slapstick involved.

“There was a physical [slapstick]. He would get a chair, give himself a simple task to unfold the chair and do a 60-minute routine, which was hilarious. And I learned from that, just doing simple things and allowing myself to flow with it. He’d have me waving my arm around, and then he’d click his fingers, and I’d be waving the other one, or my leg, or some other crazy action. Jumping up and down. Using my whole body.

“If I was being monitored [during quarantine], they’d have thought I was losing it in there.”

It’s Friday evening in Los Angeles. Gibson (27) who found fame with the Netflix cryptic fantasy series The OA, talks to me from his hotel room. “At least this one I can come and go from,” he laughs with a drawn-out titter.

He periodically repositions the camera during our video call, often at an upward angle, which for most of us would manufacture a furl of unfortunate chins, but only serves to enhance his pale, cinematic features.

The Dubliner, raised in Stillorgan and schooled at Gonzaga College in Ranelagh, is on a flying visit to meet his agents, Dar Rollins and Andrew Kurland at Creative Artists Agency (CAA), who between them represent and negotiate for screen luminaries such as Michael Keaton, Samuel L Jackson and Sarah Michelle Gellar.

I’m imagining the agency as an open-plan office, with blinding white furnishings, floor-to-ceiling views of the Hollywood sign, and skittish assistants clumsily clutching scripts and offering green juices. “Well no, not quite,” Gibson smiles.“ But we went for a coffee on a roof of some fancy hotel, which was still very LA.”

Since a breakout role as a disaffected delinquent in The OA — a supernatural, sometimes baffling series, circling near-death experiences and alternate universes — Gibson has ricocheted from sumptuous costume saga in The Spanish Queen; to Gen Z romcom In A Relationship, alongside Emma Roberts; and a West End stage debut in Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer-winning Sweat.

Meanwhile, the fruits of his quarantine labour are set for imminent release, including a second season of Channel 4 crime series Before We Die; independent teen drama, Good Girl Jane, lauded at the recent Tribeca Film Festival and a central role in the next run of Netflix mega-hit Shadow and Bone.

As a rule, agents largely guide and counsel an actor towards success, while sometimes inadvertently steering them into failure. Does Gibson feel comfortable placing his full faith in his LA-based representatives?

“Good agents, who you feel completely at ease with, who understand your goals and what’s right for you, they will have your back. And [my agents] have my back. Right now, there’s so much content being made with all the streaming platforms, it’s important to know the next thing you’re going into is right for you. Because once you’re in, it’s a big commitment.

“Shadow and Bone, that’s six months of the year. That’s a massive project to sign on for, so it’s important to have a team of people to discuss with, feel it out. Some have their own motivations and will encourage you to work on something that serves the immediate, rather than the long-term plan. A good agent will encourage you to say no if you need to.”

At just 27 and still in the infancy of his career, is saying no to work frightening? “Saying no is scarier than saying yes but it shouldn’t be. Also, if you say no to something, people can then assume you’re not working but I don’t think it’s good to make decisions over what others might think of you.”

For Gibson, performance is in the DNA. His parents, Irish mum Kate and his dad, Richard, who was born in Uganda and raised in the UK, met and fell in love as actors on London’s West End. “One of them was doing a Noël Coward play I think, I can’t remember what the other was [doing].”

While Kate walked away from acting, ultimately transitioning into marketing, Richard continued his career on stage and screen, notably doing a 10-year stint as Nazi buffoon Herr Flick in the iconic BBC sitcom ’Allo ’Allo!.

During summer breaks from school, young Patrick and his older brother Billy played backstage during Richard’s touring stage productions, mingling with cast and crew. For Patrick, a seed was planted. “The costumes, the transformative atmosphere, the creativity — it captured my imagination.”

Gibson tagged along to his father’s theatrical agency in Dublin, communicating his desire to act. Aged eight, he landed his first commercial for Vodafone and enrolled in afterschool drama classes, the latter a futile exercise.

“I remember briefly doing Betty Ann Norton, Billie Barry [stage schools], and my parents being told, ‘This kid is not designed to be in this environment, he’s too mental’. I imagine I was incredibly annoying to teach; must have been a nightmare. I had no interest in group collaboration. I wanted all eyes on me.”

This unapologetic self-interest proved rewarding on the local audition circuit, with Gibson and his brother cast as Liam Cunningham’s sons in a 2007 RTÉ production of Maeve Binchy’s Anner House. Shot in Cape Town, it’s the only time Gibson has travelled to the African continent. While far removed from his father’s childhood home in Uganda, it gave Richard the opportunity to introduce his children to a taste of his African upbringing.

“Dad left Africa when he was 10, moved to London when his father was working there and he had a mad transition. Uganda was all he knew, and he’s told us how wonderful it was to grow up there and then he moved to the UK where it was grey and miserable. So being able to revisit Africa with us as kids was significant for him. He brought us to Kruger National Park, which isn’t in Uganda but he had been there as a child and it was a special trip for all of us.”

By the time Gibson attended Gonzaga, he had appeared in a couple of episodes of The Tudors and was a ‘lost boy’ in Neverland, Sky’s expansive adaptation of Peter Pan. “That’s where the penny dropped. That’s when I realised, ‘Yeah, I really want to do this’.”

Disappointment came with an audition for Game of Thrones’ adolescent despot Joffrey Baratheon, a role which ultimately went to Cork’s Jack Gleeson. “I was 15, maybe 16 and I know I got close. Not final two, but I got really close. But Jack was Joffrey. There’s a DNA in every part that casting directors are looking to match that up with. When you see it, it’s undeniable. I’ve had parts I don’t get because no matter how hard I work on that character, there’s somebody who matches up [more than I do].”

A successful casting for Lenny Abrahamson’s What Richard Did as an impressionable young sidekick to Jack Reynor’s titular anti-hero heightened his profile and fostered an enduring relationship with the Oscar-nominated director. Abrahamson was directly instrumental in Gibson studying philosophy at Trinity College.

“I was thinking about doing philosophy, and at the same time talking about drama school and Lenny gave me the nudge. He said: ‘If you want to be an actor for the rest of your life, do something now that’s different. And if you’re going to act for the rest of your life, philosophy demands you look at everything from every angle.’ It encourages you to analyse and assess beyond a linear point of view.”

However, Gibson struggled to balance work and college. “I missed classes, tutorials. I missed my exams two years running,” and after landing The OA in 2015 and relocating to New York for five months, his studies had to be ultimately sacrificed. “I will go back, some day,” he promises with a cackle.

The OA was a complex learning experience for Gibson. Conceived by Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij, the creative duo behind indie efforts The East and Sound Of My Voice, the series was a psychedelic blend of comic-book fantasy and murky mystery, and hailed as being both brilliant and baffling. One critic called it, “bonkers with a vengeance,” while another dismissed it as “gripping but annoying”.

With Marling taking centre stage as a blind woman missing for seven years who reappears with her vision restored, a mysterious carving on her back and a flat-out refusal to disclose where she had been, the show amassed a keen audience who were left bereft after the shock cancellation in 2019, leaving the storyline on a cliffhanger.

Some were so disappointed they raised funds for a ‘Save The OA’ digital billboard in New York’s Times Square, with one devotee going on hunger strike outside of Netflix’s LA offices.

Gibson was deflated by the cancellation. “I got a call from Brit and Zal when I was coming back from a music festival, which was a slight buzzkill. And they said, ‘We have some sad news’. From their side, while everything in that show had been a challenging thing to make, I found the whole journey was so bizarre and magical. And it didn’t feel that out of the ordinary the way it ended. With something like Shadow and Bone, that would surprise me if it was cancelled that way but, with The OA, it felt right in a strange way.”

Shadow and Bone is Gibson’s second punt with the Netflix machine. Joining the hugely successful show in its second season, after the debut series drew in 55 million viewers in its first 28 days, long-term success appears a more likely outcome.

Adapted from a series of popular fantasy novels by Leigh Bardugo, the glossy saga boasts a central band of heroes and cads with varying degrees of magical capabilities. Starring Chronicles Of Narnia’s Ben Barnes, British-American actor Zoë Wanamaker and Irish newcomer Danielle Galligan, audiences were gripped by an interspersing, sweeping narrative framed against the battle for Ravka, a fictional realm heavily influenced by Imperialist Russia and the reign of the Tzars.

Joining the conflict is Gibson’s Nikolai Lantsov, a prince of Ravka masquerading as a pirate — a duality the actor relished. “He’s a prince and a pauper, an alter ego in disguise and he brings this massive bravado; a pirate who has this massive ship, has got this massive swagger. Kind of like Robert Downey Jr in Iron Man, he gets on people’s nerves but he’s also hard to hate. Underneath, he’s vulnerable, not given a chance by his family. It was fascinating to be able to explore both sides of that person.”

With Lantzov a standout fan favourite of the book series, the actor is keenly aware of a pressure to please with his take on the character. Unusually for an actor in his 20s, Gibson employs a veteran’s perspective to quieten such anxieties.

“With movies and TV shows, everything is talked about like it’s life and death, and it can often feel like it is, but at the end of the day, it’s not. Other people’s jobs are — some literally.”

He tells me his brother Billy — now a father of two, who works as a cardiologist in a Dublin hospital — is a massive inspiration.

“Working a 24-hour shift, then taking his kids to the pool, has a few hours off, then goes straight on to another night shift. And the stakes he’s dealing with, the health and well-being of people, their actual lives — it always puts it in perspective for me.”

Quite the effective reality touchstone, I remark. But does it always work?

“You hear actors complaining all the time. We’re the number one for it. But you know what, it’s absolutely unwarranted because to get to do this as a job is the most fortunate thing in the world. It really is. And I won’t take that for granted.”

#patrick gibson #paddy gibson #patrick gibson interview #paddy gibson interview #shadow and bone #shadow and bone cast #shadow and bone netflix #s&b #grishaverse #the oa #the oa cast #nikolai lantsov

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