The Point Radio: HANNIBAL Ready To Terrorize Your Summer

It’s truly The Beast and The Beauty as we explore HANNIBAL, the NBC series about to launch it’s 3rd season. Creator Bryan Fuller talks about some big changes in the show. Plus meet Lea Black. She was a REAL HOUSEWIFE OF MIAMI, she runs a multi-faceted company and now has a new fiction franchise about to hit bookshelves.

Everybody is talking AVENGERS AGE OF ULTRON, but there is another superhero film hitting the market this week you might want to check out. We sit down with the writer/director here in a few days. Be sure to follow us on Twitter @ThePointRadio.

Transcript

The Point Radio. Hey, it's Mike Raub, a real episode of Beast and the Beauty this time starting with Annabelle. Season 3 about ready to debut on NBC and we talked to Brian Fuller about just how far he's willing to go this time. Plus me, Leah Black.

You knew her from The Real Housewives of Miami. Now she's hitting the bookshelves with a brand new novel, but is it fact or fiction? Let's get to The Point. This is The Point. The Point Radio.

Get The Point Radio. NBC's Annabelle is back for a third season debuting on the network in June, but the big question is, how do they go on considering what happened at the end of season two? For the answer to that, creator writer Brian Fuller. For us, going into the third season, the pun of it was we're kind of off the reservation,

that we're breaking away from the FBI and we're telling a story, excuse me, that is very much about, we were talking about horror emojis and really there's a Frankenstein quality to season three because if you look at what happened to Will Graham, somebody who was gutted, left for dead, and come back to life, stitched together, and now he's in pursuit of the man who made him this way because Annabelle essentially created a new Will Graham with

everything that he's putting him through in the first two seasons, so now it's too ill to understand what that means to him now. And the exciting thing for us in the writer's room is because of this traumatic event and everybody either dying or dead, they're changed. You can't help but change a person from that perspective.

So we get to write new versions of these characters that have different perspectives on the story in the world that they didn't have previously and that gave us a great sense of energy. Things take a new direction right off the bat. The first episode, which kind of functions as a brand new pilot for a different series

because it is about Bedelian and you don't see any of the other characters and in the episode it goes to the root of their relationship with Flashback. We find out what the deal was with the patient. So we answer a lot of those questions in being able to understand why Bedelia got on that plane and she didn't get on that plane because she's stupid.

So she's got to be, I don't think anybody would buy Gillian Anderson playing that character being a fool. With Annabelle, the big question has always been how much can they get away with? What exactly are they allowed to show on primetime television? Under David Slade.

Yeah, I think it's, I remember I didn't have, I came into the first two episodes in post production with Soundmix and everything and when I saw the body terror part, I was just like, and I actually went to the sandwich and took some of the noises off. Yeah, I was like, this is just like, and the way I always put it is, you know, what Hannibal tries to do is be visceral.

Not viscous because viscous is, you know. I remember once somebody pitched a movie to me, it was called Burst and it was about a bunch of people and they burst in 3D. And I was like, oh, and that's viscous. Where two people embrace each other and one of them gets gut and people die in blood.

That's visceral because it hits you here. And I think, you know, part of what we get, I know for a fact we get away with more than most shows, but I think part, and a lot of that is darkness and, you know, mizzen scene theatrical things of keeping it away, giving the sense of feeling rather than seeing it. But I think part of it is actually the way Brian writes, you know, writes very responsibly.

You know, we don't show birth for God's sake. We can be operatic and make a point. I mean, the first, the whole first season was about the destructive power of looking at violent things. So it kind of had its own equilibria.

And going to the second season, I think, you know, Brian writes incredibly operatically. I get to get that and I get to find a way to put that on screen that's possible, but that hits you emotionally. That doesn't make you want to look. What I want you to do is lean in and look.

I think it's more powerful if you've prayed the image in your head. And sometimes people have come to me and said, that thing where you did, and we didn't, it was just the collision of images and they're inventing an image in their mind. I think if you can do that, that's the best place you can be. The new season of Hannibal debuts in June on NBC.

Find out what you've missed right now. Get up on Hulu Plus. All right, so Avengers did huge box office, but what else is going on in pop culture? Well, now it won't be as easy to see episodes of Game of Thrones before the episodes actually air because HBO is now no longer sending out its preview DVDs to reporters and websites.

Those who need to see those episodes before they air will be given a link to an online streaming connection, but there will be no more physical DVDs circulating in the marketplace. The people who did the Kim Kardashian app are now doing ones for Britney Spears and Katy Perry. Glue, who did the Hollywood app that's been downloaded some 23 million times and made

some 43 million dollars in the first five months. We'll be producing new apps for those female superstars sometime over the next few months. Sci-fi is bringing the best selling a series of books, the magicians to television. They green lit the new series set in a secret university that specializes in magic. Sarah Gimbal from supernatural wrote the pilot for the series, which is set to debut later

this year. Two more years for the Simpsons. Fox has renewed the show for seasons 27 to 28, which of course breaks all sorts of records in television history. The comedy is picking up about 2.7 million of viewers in the coveted 18 to 49 year old

age bracket and about 6 million total viewers for this new season. So who's winning in morning television? Well, the Today show has been inching ahead of ABC's Good Morning America and the coveted 25 to 54 year old demo. In fact, on April the 20th, Today beat GMA by about 174,000 viewers, making it the best

single day for the show since September of 2014. Showtime has announced plans for a boost in their programming, starting with season four of Inside Comedy, which premieres this week. And then there'll be third seasons of Ray Donovan and Masters of Sex that will both launch in July on the network.

And over the summer as well, there'll be documentaries on indie filmmaker Richard Linklater, Dennis Rodman and the boy band One Direction. Laura is coming back to General Hospital. Actress Jeannie Francis is returning to the ABC soap, where she first played the character Laura as far back as 1976.

The news was announced last week over Twitter, but no date has been set for Jeannie's return to the show, which more than likely will happen sometime during May. The point, the point. Leah Black is an entrepreneur known for a lot of things, including her prominent role on the reality TV show, The Real Housewives of Miami, and now as an author with a new

fiction franchise that debuts in a few weeks. So how early in life did the business bug hit her? I actually, you know, right out of high school and when I was struggling through sort of part time college, I started my first business and I've been doing businesses ever since. I've had the world of Leah Black website forever and then Leah Black Beauty, which

is my skincare and jewelry and handbag line. I've had that forever. And my blog, Leah Black, Inc., I've had that for a long time. So I've always worked. I'm a working girl.

So how did she get on Real Housewives to begin with? The producers came to Miami and found me somehow. And I think they said, like everyone they talked to directed them to me. And I said, I don't know if this is for me, but you know, I know a lot of people that might be good at it.

And I brought in a bunch of people for them to interview and I kind of, I think, took over the interviews to bring, you know, get these girls to try to look their best on the tape. And the producers kept saying, you have to do this, you have to do this. And finally I said, oh my God, I'll just do it.

So I did it. And I had never watched one of the other shows when I signed on. I didn't really even know what I was signing on for. But I figured if it's reality, I mean, so they're just going to tape what I do. All you think it's interesting or they'll think it's boring who cares.

And I just, I really was always just myself. If you go back to the various seasons, I suck. I just who I am throughout the season. Some of these girls, you know, they kind of change or the success of their head or the attention or you see them drumming up storylines.

I was always just who I am from the beginning till through the third season. So it kind of worked out for me. Working in reality television. The one thing you have to always get used to are cameras pretty much everywhere. Was that tough for Leah to get used to?

Yeah, I just do my life and then they do that they can capture whatever part of it they want and you know, the setting up a part of it an hour here and an hour there. I always made use of the time when they were doing that. I mean, you're on the phone or on my emails or you know, whatever, but I didn't change really much about my life during the filming.

I pretty much just do my life the way I do my life. And if they like it, they can video it. And if they don't, then you know, they can go video somebody else. It's less interesting. So what inspired her to write to begin with?

You know, someone said to me, you should, you know, I've always written. I've written for the Huffington Post. I've written for lifestyle brands. I've written for lifestyle magazines. I have the Leah Black Ink column that I've had.

I've always written. So it's just something it's easy for me. It's kind of just a raw talent that I just. I just can do it. And so someone said you should do Jackie Collins type book about Miami.

And I thought, you know, I do kind of know a few bodies are where they're buried. And I know a lot of interesting characters. So I did. And then when I gave it to this agent, she sent it to some publishers and several were interested in.

And I liked Buford. I went with them and they said, we don't just want this book. We want three books. And I said, I'll do that. And and then I sent it out to some really credible authors.

Award winning authors, Pulitzer Prize winning authors, New York Times bestselling authors. And I got so many great reviews. Like they, you know, one said that it was a cross between answered prayers by Truman Capote and Bonfires of the Vanity. And another one said, you know, Jackie Collins move over, you know, the OK magazine gave me

a great, great quote. Ross Matthews said, it's just like a real Hollywood party. You know, it's gossip and fun and clandestine. And I just got so many great reviews for it. Hilton, I just on and on and on.

And I thought, oh, my God, you know, maybe this book is really going to be fun. And then I did my first book signing. We sold out. We were 150 books short. And then Amazon's already sold out right now.

They're ordering right this second to get more books in. And the bookstores got some book signings coming up. May the second at Val Harbor. They've already got two or three hundred confirmed there. And I do made at books and books.

And then May the 13th, I'm doing New York Union Square. And they've got a packed house already. And I'm doing bookends in New Jersey on the 12th. And they're lining up people. So I don't know.

I think that I just kind of got lucky, I guess, you know, and I think it's a fun, fascinating, sarcastic, scandalous read. You know, it's trashy. It's just it's just gossipy trash. You know, basically, it's like, it's like a no brainer to read.

You know, you don't have to like focus and think and struggle. You can read it like going to a movie. And by the way, I have some people from Broadway interested in some movie people interested. So let's see if anything happens out of it. For me, it was fun writing it.

I like writing it. So it doesn't really matter. It's not going to change my life really one way or the other. I hope people have fun with it. So is the book really fiction or is there some reality mixed in here?

Well, all the characters in the book are composites of different people. The main character has kind of got a little bit of my background in it, but not a lot of it's true. It's an embellished version. It's got a lot of the gala stuff.

What can go wrong will and you know, all the socialites and all the wannabes and all the hadsvins and all the Botox and all that in there. And the sex scenes are in there. There's a lot of, you know, it's kind of it could be exaggerated maybe in some parts, but they're all composites of different people that I find fascinating and interesting.

And even the ones that are kind of the con artists and the evil ones and the rotten ones are still fun and fascinating to watch. And there's a twist to almost every one of them somewhere along the way. And then they're all self promoters. Everybody's wanting something out of something.

And so they all in the end kind of get what they deserve and or what they want. And the ones that get what they want are like, they should have been careful what they ask for. So I like the fact that they have consequences and that it's kind of got a, you know, cause and effect storyline underneath and in the end.

And it's just, I love the characters in the book. I mean, they're so fun and fascinating. And when I look at who I based most of them on, I picked like the juiciest parts of all the composites of all the fabulous people I know and threw them all in the book. Play a black's new book, red carpets and white lies available right now on Amazon.

And you can catch up on episodes of Real Housewives of Miami too at bravotv.com. That's it for now. We're back in a few days and well knowledge you've seen Avengers a couple of times. Are you ready for a different kind of superhero movie? We talked to the guy who's putting it on the big screen and you'll be really amazed to

find out exactly what turns up. All that and more on great websites like ComicMix.com, michaeldavisworld.com, getthepointradio.com and of course in the iTunes podcast directory. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram under the point radio and we'll see you right back here in just a few days.