On the “Pod Meets World” podcast, co-hosts Danielle Fishel, Rider Strong and Will Friedle have often given their guests — many of whom are actors who grew up on TV in the 90s — the opportunity to debunk any headlines about them.
During the Feb. 12 episode, Andrew Keegan was ready to do just that.
“You mean when I woke up one day and I was anointed a cult leader?” he asked with a laugh during the iHeart podcast. Keegan, best known for his roles in “10 Things I Hate About You,” “7th Heaven,” “Party of Five” and for being a “heartthrob” in the early aughts, went on to explain that he moved to Venice Beach in his early 20s, and “got immersed in the culture and the community.”
“There was this interesting group of hippie types, if you will, in Venice. I’m sure if you went on the Westside, there’s definitely a lot of spirituality,...
During the Feb. 12 episode, Andrew Keegan was ready to do just that.
“You mean when I woke up one day and I was anointed a cult leader?” he asked with a laugh during the iHeart podcast. Keegan, best known for his roles in “10 Things I Hate About You,” “7th Heaven,” “Party of Five” and for being a “heartthrob” in the early aughts, went on to explain that he moved to Venice Beach in his early 20s, and “got immersed in the culture and the community.”
“There was this interesting group of hippie types, if you will, in Venice. I’m sure if you went on the Westside, there’s definitely a lot of spirituality,...
- 2/12/2024
- by Emily Longeretta
- Variety Film + TV
Earlier this year, we heard that Tim Blake Nelson and Vera Farmiga (The Conjuring) would be starring in The Leader, a true crime biopic about a story that shocked the world back in 1997, the mass suicide of the members of the Heaven’s Gate cult. Now Deadline reports that Michael C. Hall (Dexter) and Grace Caroline Currey (Shazam! Fury of the Gods) have joined the cast, which also includes Simon Rex (Red Rocket).
Farmiga will be playing cult leader Bonnie Nettles, a.k.a. Ti. Nelson’s character is the cult’s infamous frontman, Marshall Applewhite, a.k.a. Do. According to Deadline, “Hall will play a key devotee: a wealthy addict who attempts to win favor with Applewhite by financially supporting the cult with his trust fund. Currey will play an Oregon-based boutique owner who drops out of society in the late 1970s to join the cult – leaving her family and fiancé behind.
Farmiga will be playing cult leader Bonnie Nettles, a.k.a. Ti. Nelson’s character is the cult’s infamous frontman, Marshall Applewhite, a.k.a. Do. According to Deadline, “Hall will play a key devotee: a wealthy addict who attempts to win favor with Applewhite by financially supporting the cult with his trust fund. Currey will play an Oregon-based boutique owner who drops out of society in the late 1970s to join the cult – leaving her family and fiancé behind.
- 10/31/2023
- by Cody Hamman
- JoBlo.com
Tim Blake Nelson will be reprising his The Incredible Hulk role of Samuel Sterns in the upcoming Marvel movie Captain America: New World Order, where we’ll find that Sterns is now a villain known as The Leader. And while he gears up to work on that movie, Nelson has also signed on to star in a film called The Leader – but this isn’t a Marvel project. This one is a true crime biopic about a story that shocked the world back in 1997, the mass suicide of the members of the Heaven’s Gate cult. Nelson will be joined in the cast of The Leader by Vera Farmiga (The Conjuring).
Farmiga will be playing cult leader Bonnie Nettles, a.k.a. Ti. Nelson’s character is the cult’s infamous frontman, Marshall Applewhite, a.k.a. Do.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, The Leader tells the true story of...
Farmiga will be playing cult leader Bonnie Nettles, a.k.a. Ti. Nelson’s character is the cult’s infamous frontman, Marshall Applewhite, a.k.a. Do.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, The Leader tells the true story of...
- 2/16/2023
- by Cody Hamman
- JoBlo.com
Berlin: Tim Blake Nelson, Vera Farmiga to Star in Heaven’s Gate Cult Biopic ‘The Leader’ (Exclusive)
Tim Blake Nelson and Vera Farmiga are set to play the founders of the religious cult Heaven’s Gate — which participated in a mass suicide in 1997 — in true-crime biopic The Leader, The Hollywood Reporter has learned
Being introduced to buyers at the European Film Market by The Exchange and with Cinemand and Balcony 9 Productions producing, the film sees Farmiga play cult leader Bonnie Nettles, aka “Ti,” with Nelson as the group’s infamous frontman, Marshall Applewhite, aka “Do.”
The Leader tells the true story of the 39 members of Heaven’s Gate — an American UFO cult that believed its followers could transform into immortal extraterrestrials and would ascend to heaven — and how they would commit the largest mass suicide to ever take place on American soil. The film tracks Nettles and Applewhite as they develop the religion, build a devout following and face unforeseen conflict when the spaceship they believed...
Being introduced to buyers at the European Film Market by The Exchange and with Cinemand and Balcony 9 Productions producing, the film sees Farmiga play cult leader Bonnie Nettles, aka “Ti,” with Nelson as the group’s infamous frontman, Marshall Applewhite, aka “Do.”
The Leader tells the true story of the 39 members of Heaven’s Gate — an American UFO cult that believed its followers could transform into immortal extraterrestrials and would ascend to heaven — and how they would commit the largest mass suicide to ever take place on American soil. The film tracks Nettles and Applewhite as they develop the religion, build a devout following and face unforeseen conflict when the spaceship they believed...
- 2/16/2023
- by Alex Ritman
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
In 1997, 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate cult were found dead by suicide in their Rancho Santa Fe, California, home, which they dubbed “The Monastery.” Central to the group’s belief was that they would go to heaven on a UFO. On March 11, a two-hour 20/20 special looks to unravel the mysteries surrounding the chilling, ritualistic mass suicide and what would lead people to follow its bizarre principles.
During The Cult Next Door: The Mystery and Madness of Heaven’s Gate special, Diane Sawyer interviews two survivors who share their stories for the first time.
During The Cult Next Door: The Mystery and Madness of Heaven’s Gate special, Diane Sawyer interviews two survivors who share their stories for the first time.
- 3/3/2022
- by Althea Legaspi
- Rollingstone.com
Like many people, J. Clay Tweel, director of “Heaven’s Gate: The Cult of Cults,” first heard of Heaven’s Gate when the bodies of 39 members of the group were discovered in March 1997. “I was in high school at the time in 1997. I grew up in a household that watched a lot of news, so I was inundated with it for about a two-, three-week basis. It just sort of took over the whole 24-hour news cycle back then,” Tweel recalls during Gold Derby’s Meet the Experts: Documentary panel (watch above). “I think I saw it through the lens of a lot of Americans back then, which was it quickly became a joke, something to be exploited and laughed at. I watched all the nightly news clips about it, the monologues for all the late-night shows.”
Tweel didn’t really think about Heaven’s Gate again until the opportunity came up...
Tweel didn’t really think about Heaven’s Gate again until the opportunity came up...
- 5/17/2021
- by Joyce Eng
- Gold Derby
From the 1975 disappearance of 20 people in small-town Oregon to the 1997 mass suicide of 39 people all wearing the same pair of Nike Decades in San Diego, “Heaven’s Gate: The Cult of Cults” sketches the evolution of the UFO-worshipping cult that mystified Americans in the last quarter of the 20th century. Director Clay Tweel’s new four-episode HBO Max docuseries ambitiously works to humanize the otherwise dotty members of Heaven’s Gate, led by messiah-wannabe closet case Marshall Applewhite. While most viewers are likely to tune in for, and possibly even skip ahead to, the final episode that details “The Exit,” there’s plenty of fascinating material in the lead-up — even if it doesn’t exactly warrant four hourlong installments.
A half-baked, hokey blend of pseudo-Christianity, New Age mysticism, and “Star Trek” lore, Heaven’s Gate was built on the belief that humans were, in fact, extraterrestrials living in shells known among the sect’s members as “vehicles.
A half-baked, hokey blend of pseudo-Christianity, New Age mysticism, and “Star Trek” lore, Heaven’s Gate was built on the belief that humans were, in fact, extraterrestrials living in shells known among the sect’s members as “vehicles.
- 12/3/2020
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
Frank Lyford left the Heaven’s Gate cult four years before 39 of his “classmates” committed mass-suicide in 1997. Now, you can watch him tell his story in HBO Max’s “Heaven’s Gate: The Cult of Cults” docuseries — including a mid-series explanation of why his voice sounds the way it does.
Heaven’s Gate was led by Marshall Applewhite, who went by the name “Do,” and Bonnie Nettles, who went by “Ti.” Nettles died of cancer in 1985, but Applewhite went on to lead the cult until ’97, at which point he and the remaining cult members ingested barbiturate-laced apple sauce followed by vodka and covered their heads in plastic bags, which killed them. The group believed that once they freed themselves from their earthly bodies, they would be able to board an alien spacecraft that they thought was trailing behind the Hale-Bopp comet.
Lyford, who was part of the cult for 18 years, said that...
Heaven’s Gate was led by Marshall Applewhite, who went by the name “Do,” and Bonnie Nettles, who went by “Ti.” Nettles died of cancer in 1985, but Applewhite went on to lead the cult until ’97, at which point he and the remaining cult members ingested barbiturate-laced apple sauce followed by vodka and covered their heads in plastic bags, which killed them. The group believed that once they freed themselves from their earthly bodies, they would be able to board an alien spacecraft that they thought was trailing behind the Hale-Bopp comet.
Lyford, who was part of the cult for 18 years, said that...
- 12/3/2020
- by Margeaux Sippell and Tony Maglio
- The Wrap
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