Angle on Producers with Carolina Groppa

Sherry Thomas is one half of Bialy/Thomas & Associates, the casting powerhouse behind Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, The Walking Dead, The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments, Barry, The Righteous Gemstones, Dead to Me, Apple TV+'s Sugar, and Broadway's Jersey Boys. She and Sharon have earned multiple Emmy nominations together across their 25-plus year partnership. Their most recent Emmy nom is for Apple TV+'s Pluribus, which is Vince Gilligan's follow-up to Breaking Bad.
It's a full-circle moment: Sherry and her partner Sharon Bialy are the team who first brought Bryan Cranston to Gilligan's attention nearly two decades ago. 
In this episode, we go all the way back to New Hampshire and Massachusetts, where a girl obsessed with Donny and Marie and Three's Company had no idea she'd end up building an empire in casting. She landed in LA not knowing a single person. She slept on couches for two years. She worked retail at the Gap. And then, through a chain of small moments (a charity basketball game, a fundraiser, a woman named Victoria Burroughs) she found her way into a casting office and never looked back.
We dive into: 
Her first job as a location casting assistant on Contact
Meeting her business partner Sharon Bialy at a Starbucks and building a 25-plus year partnership without ever putting anything in writing
What she wishes every producer understood about working with casting directors
Her honest, unfiltered take on AI in casting and what it means for actors
How becoming a mom to two teenage daughters changed the way she sees ambition and grit
Sherry is candid, funny, and doesn't hold back, whether she's talking about the gritty early days or the future of our industry. This is a primer for building a career (and a business) on relationships, resilience, and staying true to who you are. 
AOP SUBSTACK
📫 Musings, Mixers, Workshops, and Exclusive Content
https://angleonproducers.substack.com/
 
AOP WHERE TO WATCH/LISTEN
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@angleonproducers
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6UBux9RgxeW1MiQDXSMrnr
iTunes: https://apple.co/3FDyhmC
 
JOIN THE AOP COMMUNITY
📸 Instagram: / https://instagram.com/carolinagroppa | https://instagram.com/angleonproducers
📱 TikTok:   / https://www.tiktok.com/@carolina_groppa
👩🏻‍💻 LinkedIn:   / bit.ly/2BqHs8L
QUESTIONS
❔Answering your questions on our Subtasck! Submit here:
anglonproducerspodcast@gmail.com
 
Keep creating, keep hustling. And as always, thanks for doing this life with me. — C.

Dana Ledoux Miller ​is a shape shifting scribe. ​
S​he was PA'ing on Lost and The Descendants when she first said out loud that she wanted to be a writer. A decade later, she's co-written and co-directed Moana 2 and written Disney's live-action Moana, in theaters July 10 — becoming one of the ​f​ew Pacific Islander writers steering a major Disney IP. In this episode, we trace ​h​er full arc: from set life in Hawaii, to landing in Aaron Sorkin's writers' room on The Newsroom, to the surreal call that brought her onto Moana.
We talk about what it actually feels like to carry the weight of representation on a project this big — the pressure of getting it right, the imposter syndrome that hasn't fully gone away even after a billion-dollar movie, and how she handles public reaction to work she's poured herself into.
We also get into PEAK, the nonprofit she co-founded so she's not the only name on the list of Pacific Islander storytellers working in Hollywood.
Plus: desert island essentials, her favorite Hawaiian island, and what The Rock is actually cooking.
 
AOP SUBSTACK
📫 Musings, Mixers, Workshops, and Exclusive Content
https://angleonproducers.substack.com/
 
AOP WHERE TO WATCH/LISTEN
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@angleonproducers
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6UBux9RgxeW1MiQDXSMrnr
iTunes: https://apple.co/3FDyhmC
 
JOIN THE AOP COMMUNITY
📸 Instagram: / https://instagram.com/carolinagroppa | https://instagram.com/angleonproducers
📱 TikTok:   / https://www.tiktok.com/@carolina_groppa
👩🏻‍💻 LinkedIn:   / bit.ly/2BqHs8L
 
QUESTIONS
❔Answering your questions on our Subtasck! Submit here:
anglonproducerspodcast@gmail.com

What does it take to hike 26 miles at 14,000 feet with no signal, no Uber, and two of the funniest people alive?
We're about to find out. 
Join me as I sit down with comedy legends Bob Odenkirk and David Cross at the 2026 Tribeca Film Festival to discuss their documentary Bob and David Climb Machu Picchu — a film about friendship, mortality, and what happens when Hollywood strips away and the mountain shows you who you actually are. 
Plus:
Why David chose Bob for this — and why Bob almost said no
How Bob's heart attack during Better Call Saul gave the whole journey a different kind of weight
The moment the mountain cracked them both open — and what they found on the other side
Special thanks to Greenslate, Theorem Media, and Portrait for making this panel happen! Greenslate has been a longtime partner of AOP and it never gets old talking about the ways they have revolutionized production payroll and accounting for independent film. They had 22 projects at Tribeca this year and Bob and David Climb Machu Picchu was the one we chose to spotlight, via their client Left/Right.
AOP SUBSTACK
📫 Musings, Mixers, Workshops, and Exclusive Content
https://angleonproducers.substack.com/
 
AOP WHERE TO WATCH/LISTEN
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@angleonproducers
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6UBux9RgxeW1MiQDXSMrnr
iTunes: https://apple.co/3FDyhmC
 
JOIN THE AOP COMMUNITY
📸 Instagram: / https://instagram.com/carolinagroppa | https://instagram.com/angleonproducers
📱 TikTok:   / https://www.tiktok.com/@carolina_groppa
👩🏻‍💻 LinkedIn:   / bit.ly/2BqHs8L
 
QUESTIONS
❔Answering your questions on our Subtasck! Submit here:
anglonproducerspodcast@gmail.com

Colby Day is a breath of fresh air who refuses to be performative. In an industry that runs on heat and carefully curated perception, he just gives it to you straight. Day is an Emmy-nominated writer whose credits include the Netflix film "Spaceman" starring Adam Sandler and "In the Blink of an Eye," which premiered at Sundance this past year. He also served as a writer and story editor on Apple TV's For All Mankind season five.
He is also the creator of Hollyweird, a Substack where he documents the unglamorous reality of being a working writer in Hollywood with more honesty than almost anyone else in this business.
His directorial debut "The Comedy Hour "with Tim Heidecker and Tatiana Maslany is up next.
This was one of my favorite chats of the year so far. Colby and get super real about 10-year timelines, selling a show and watching it collapse, why transparency is a radical act in this industry, and what keeps us going when everything falls apart.
Tune in! xx CG

Post is where a movie becomes a movie. Where a TV show gets it's bells and whistles. The edit, the VFX, the color, the sound mix, the sound design, and everything in between. It's where everything comes together. And yet for years, California has had no standalone incentive to keep that work here.
In this episode I sit down with Marielle Abaunza, President of the California Post Alliance and EVP of Business Development at Signature Post, to talk about AB 2319, the proposed standalone post-production tax incentive that could be game changer in helping keep jobs in LA. We get into: 
How we took Hollywood for granted and where we go from here. 
How 1,800 post jobs have been lost since 2012 and what that actually means for working crew. 
What AB 2319 does and why the "shoot anywhere, finish in California" model is the shift the industry needs. 
How New York netted $47 million in state revenue from post credits in a single quarter
The people this bill protects are not Hollywood elites. They are editors and sound designers and post producers trying to log enough hours to qualify for health care. This is a movement. And there is not a lot of time.
Go to www.californiapostalliance.org to join, donate, or submit a letter of support for AB 2319. Legislators read those letters. Your story matters! 
Angle on Producers spotlights the magic makers in Hollywood. Hosted by Emmy-nominated producer Carolina Groppa, the show goes beyond the highlight reel to explore the craft, challenges, and unfiltered truths behind one of Hollywood's most essential, and often misunderstood, roles. 
AOP SUBSTACK 📫 Musings, Mixers, Workshops, and Exclusive Content https://angleonproducers.substack.com/