On a hot fall afternoon just outside Charlotte, North Carolina, Antony Starr is busy getting punched in the kidneys, slammed against a wall and kicked in the solar plexus. As he pauses for a breath, a command comes: "Let's work on that strangling again!" Just a typical day on the set of Banshee.
Flash back to late April. On the first day of shooting, the actor playing Starr's opponent in a brawl came at him a bit too strong. "He cracked me in the face and split my lip open," Starr recalls, "but our schedule was so tight, I didn't get to the hospital for six hours." That's when Starr realized just how different filming Cinemax's noirish thriller would be from the comedies and dramas he was used to making in his native New Zealand. "They shot...read more
In Cinemax's new action drama Banshee (already picked up for Season 2), Antony Starr plays a thief who assumes the role of sheriff in Banshee, a small town in Pennsylvania's Amish country, yet finds it hard to escape his past. Jonathan Tropper and David Schickler created the show, which also boasts True Blood's Alan Ball and House alum Greg Yaitanes as executive producers. Yaitanes explains why you should visit Banshee.
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Greg Yaitanes: There's always room for dessert. Banshee is a delicious mix of sex, action and...read more
When choosing his next television project, former House executive producer Greg Yaitanes simply wanted to get out of a hospital.
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And so, he landed on Banshee, the latest sexy, pulpy thriller in Cinemax's expanding slate of original programming. Also produced by True Blood creator Alan Ball, the show takes its title from the quiet Pennsylvania town in which it's set. But the relative calm of the rural Amish country locale is quickly upset when a recently freed ex-con (Antony Starr) comes to town and, in a violent twist of fate, assumes the identity of the new town sheriff Lucas Hood.
Even though Yaitanes was looking to get away from lupus and lab coats, he says he found more similarities between Banshee and House than he first considered. "Lucas Hood and Gregory House both play by their own rules, and both characters are emotionally immature," he tells TVGuide.com. "They've been stunted in a moment in time...read more