First Look: Ryan Murphy’s sumptuous new limited series ‘Hollywood’ for Netflix flips the script on race, gender and sexuality

Erik Anderson April 2, 2020

Samara Weaving (left) as Claire Wood and Laura Harrier as Camille Washington in HOLLYWOOD (SAEED ADYANI/NETFLIX)

The Golden Age of Hollywood gets a major makeover with the new limited series from one of television’s biggest directing and producing icons, Ryan Murphy (Glee, American Crime Story, American Horror Story) with Ian Brennan as a part of Murphy’s massive deal with Netflix and does it ever look like glitzy, juicy fun.

Hollywood follows a group of aspiring actors and filmmakers in post-World War II Hollywood as they try to make it in Tinseltown — no matter the cost. Each character offers a unique glimpse behind the gilded curtain of Hollywood’s Golden Age, spotlighting the unfair systems and biases across race, gender and sexuality that continue to this day. Provocative and incisive, Hollywood exposes and examines decades-old power dynamics, and what the entertainment landscape might look like if they had been dismantled.

With the present so fraught and the future uncertain, we turned to the past for direction, uncovering buried history to spin an aspirational tale of what ifs: What if a band of outsiders were given a chance to tell their own story? What if the person with greenlight power was a woman? The screenwriter a black man? What if the heroine was a woman of color? The matinee idol openly gay? And what if they were all invited into the room where the decisions are made, entering fully and unapologetically themselves to leave victorious and vaunted, their place in history cemented. Hollywood is a love letter to our little industry town where dreamers dwell, stars are born, and magic transcends reality.
Writer/Director/Executive Producer Janet Mock

Hollywood stars David Corenswet as Jack, Darren Criss as Raymond, Jeremy Pope as Archie, Laura Harrier as Camille, Samara Weaving as Claire, Dylan McDermott as Ernie, Holland Taylor as Ellen Kincaid, Patti LuPone as Avis, Jim Parsons as Henry Willson, Jake Picking as Rock Hudson, Joe Mantello as Dick, and Maude Apatow as Henrietta.

Netflix will release the entire limites series on May 1. Here is your first look.

Jake Picking (left) as Rock Hudson and Jeremy Pope as Archie Coleman (NETFLIX)

Jeremy Pope (left) as Archie Coleman and Darren Criss as Raymond Ansley (SAEED ADYANI/NETFLIX)

Holland Taylor as Ellen Kincaid and David Corenswet as Jack Castello (EDDY CHEN/NETFLIX)

From left, Patti LuPone as Avis Amberg, Dylan McDermott as Ernie, Holland Taylor as Ellen Kincaid, and Samara Weaving as Claire Wood (SAEED ADYANI/NETFLIX)

David Corenswet as Jack Castello and Patti LuPone as Avis Amberg (SAEED ADYANI/NETFLIX)

Michelle Krusiec (left) as Anna May Wong and Laura Harrier as Camille Washington (SAEED ADYANI/NETFLIX)

Laura Harrier as Camille Washington and Darren Criss as Raymond Ansley (courtesy of Netflix)

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.