radha blank plays
Radha Blank is the star, director and producer of the film. And it’s all a personal affair: Radha Blank plays the main character (named after herself) and is also the writer, director, and producer. Radha Blank (born September 1, 1976) is an American filmmaker, writer, and actress. Before producing The 40-Year-Old Version, Blank landed representation from the agency WME. “In her debut feature, writer-director Radha Blank plays the deeply personal lead role, a magnetic presence with a unique perspective, creating a film that is a fresh addition to the New York City slice-of-life canon.” In addition to Blank, the cast includes Peter Y. Kim, Oswin Benjamin, Reed Birney, Imani Lewis, and TJ Atoms. When she turns 40, she decides to reinvent herself as RadhaMUSPrime, a rapper. In an article by The Guardian, Blank stated that Spike Lee's 1986 film She's Gotta Have It is one of the most influential movies on her own work. Reed Birney and Radha Blank in The Forty-Year-Old VersionPhoto: Netflix There’s an intimacy to The Forty-Year-Old Version, the first feature film written and directed by Radha Blank, that will ring especially familiar to struggling artists of any medium. And it’s all a personal affair: Radha Blank plays the main character (named after herself) and is also the writer, director, and producer. Her plays include HappyFlowerNail, Casket Sharp, nannyland and the critically acclaimed SEED which The Huffington Post called "fresh, lively...and poetic". “One of my roles as an artist is to demystify things,” she says. [2][11] For her work on the film, Blank won the U.S. She also directed it. Dramatic Competition Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival.[3]. The 30-Under-30 playwriting award sits in her small Harlem apartment taunting her as she goes through the motions of her life teaching drama to rowdy high schoolers and toiling away at projects that she knows won’t get made. In the film, Blank plays herself, Radha, a character who was a rising star, named as a top 30 under 30 playwright and considered to have imminent success in her career as a writer. Credit: Netflix For Radha Blank, turning 40 is just the beginning. It Only Took a Lifetime", "Gotham Award Nominations 2020: 'First Cow,' 'Nomadland,' and All Best Picture Noms by Women", "CAROL BLANK Obituary (2013) - New York Times", "Radha Blank's Lockdown Breakout Film Doubles as Her Own Origin Tale", "Radha Blank's The Forty-Year-Old-Version Isn't Autobiographical — Or Is It? When she turns 40, she decides to reinvent herself as RadhaMUSPrime, a rapper. December 11, 2020 Review: The Forty-Year-Old Version December 11, 2020 / Tanaka Mutizwa / Tanaka Mutizwa "[17] For her work on The 40-Year-Old Version, Blank received nominations from the Gotham Independent Film Awards, for the Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award and for Best Screenplay, winning the latter. In an interview with Indiewire, she states that “I’ve been rhyming since I was about 10 years old.” She also states that “I do feel like hip-hop as an art form, you kind of have permission to brag, to live in a place of bravado and just kind of speak the truth in ways that we wouldn’t ordinarily do.” She has also found work in the writer's rooms of the television series Empire and Spike Lee's series She's Gotta Have It.[10]. She's a Helen Merrill Playwriting Award recipient, an NEA New Play Development Award recipient (for SEED) ... Another [1] Born and raised in New York City, Blank is known for writing, directing, producing, and starring in The 40-Year-Old Version (2020),[2] for which she won the U.S. Her plays include HappyFlowerNail, Casket Sharp, nannyland and SEED. Unlike Radha in the film, Blank has never freaked out on stage. Each come from an artist mother and a jazz musician father. Blank shot the film on 35-millimeter black-and-white film stock. In her loosely autobiographical comedy, Blank plays a version of herself, a playwright and one-time recipient of the 30 Under 30 award, a prestigious honor bestowed upon rising talent within the theater world. [24], "Netflix in Talks to Buy Radha Blank's 'The 40-Year-Old Version, "Radha Blank: Joke About Writing Harriet Tubman Musical in '40-Year-Old Version' Is All Too Real", "The biggest breakout stars of Sundance 2020", "Radha Blank: 'Failure is a great tool in comedy, "Kindness, Again by Strangers (Published 2011)", "Radha Blank's Seed Opens Off-Broadway at Harlem's National Black Theater Sept. 16", "Hollywood Writer Radha Blank: From A Bronx Kid To Empire And Beyond", "Radha Blank of 'The Forty-Year-Old Version' isn't late - CityNews Toronto", "Radha Blank's 'The 40-Year-Old Version' "Confronts Frustrations" About Gatekeepers Of Storytelling – Sundance Studio", "Netflix Doesn't Buy Movies at Sundance — It Buys Voices That Can Become Brands", "How Hollywood Relentlessly Fails Women Directors", "A Writer-Director-Star Breaks Through. [22][23] Blank's brother Ravi is featured in The 40-Year-Old Version as himself. Blank produced two seasons of the Netflix series She’s Gotta Have It, an adaptation of Spike Lee’s 1989 film, and she also wrote for the popular TV series Empire and The Get Down. In her directorial debut film The Forty-Year-Old Version, Radha Blank plays "Radha," a struggling playwright who decides to become a rapper. Radha Blank directs, writes, produces and stars in a Netflix film about an unsuccessful playwright who makes the unlikely decision to become a rapper. B-Rabbit - 8 Mile (2002) In a heightened version of himself in the 2002 biopic 8 Mile, Eminem proves … Seed was a 2010 recipient of the National Endowment of the Arts New Play Development Award. Radha Blank plays a fictionalized version of herself — a struggling artist from Harlem, who was hailed years earlier as a promising playwright. Blank achieved widespread acclaim for writing, directing, producing, and starring in The 40-Year-Old Version (2020). [14] The film was released on Netflix on October 9, 2020,[15] and received positive reviews from film critics. During this time, Blank performed as a comedian and rapper under the name RadhaMUSprime/[9] She invented the persona after she was fired from a screenwriting job several years ago. Writer, director, producer and star Radha Blank plays a semi-fictionalized version of herself in “The Forty-Year-Old Version,” which debuts on Netflix Friday By LINDSEY BAHR AP Film Writer October 7, … In this piece, she talks about her writing process. Scroll down to video First look: The official trailer for The Forty-Year-Old Version, starring Radha Blank, dropped on Wednesday, August 26. The story is about […] If Radha Blank had a tagline for her film, “The Forty-Year-Old Version,” it would be: “You don’t age out of your passion.” Blank wrote, directed and stars in her debut film, a heavily autobiographical tale, shot in black-and-white and on 35mm, about a middle-aged playwright in Harlem struggling to … And it’s all a personal affair: Radha Blank plays the main character (named after herself) and is also the writer, director, and producer. Blank began her career as a playwright, writing several plays that never made it to the stage; in an interview with The Guardian, Blank claimed to have "about 12 plays that haven’t seen the light of day. The prolific playwright goes beyond your typical “starving artist” narrative to deliver a story about how genuine passion […] In it, she plays Radha, a lightly fictionalised version of herself – a playwright stuck in a rut. [6] Seed opened in Harlem in 2011 and followed a jaded social worker who lost her mother and struggled to make sense of her career ambition. RADHA BLANK This is probably my first and last acting job — I have too much respect for actors to even call myself an actor. She may now be on the other side of 40 but there is no doubt The Forty-Year-Old Version, the feature film writing, directing, producing and starring debut of playwright Radha Blank, means a star is… Radha Blank describes her debut film 'The Forty-Year-Old Version' as art, and says too much talking about it detracts from appreciating it. ", Black Reel Award for Outstanding Screenplay, Black Reel Award for Outstanding Breakthrough Screenwriter, Gotham Independent Film Award for Best Screenplay, New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best First Film, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Radha_Blank&oldid=1018505545, American women dramatists and playwrights, 21st-century American dramatists and playwrights, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, B.E. Blank wrote the movie. The film’s name is a play on the 2005 comedy “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” and right away, Blank establishes this film’s fearlessness and humor. Radha Blank is a proud Native New Yorker, Performer and Writer for TV, stage and film. [7] The Huffington Post called Seed "fresh, lively...and poetic. Her film is loosely based on her experiences as a playwright in New York. Produced by Waithe, and written, directed, and starring Radha Blank, the film tells the story of a semi-fictionalized Radha, who plays a struggling playwright in the midst of a gear shift toward pursuing her dreams of becoming a rapper—a tough market for women in general, but especially for women approaching their forties. Radha Blank, the writer, star, director, and central character of The Forty-Year-Old Version, is a playwright in real-life as well. [20] Her mother, Carol Blank, who died in 2013, was an artist, teacher, and curator,[21] and is referenced in The 40-Year-Old Version. [19] When talking about this film to Indiewire, she states “There was a time when storytellers took more risks, so I’m hoping that this film sets the tone for the kind of career I want to have, where people are not expecting me to be safe.”, Her father Roger Blank is a jazz drummer. 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