“… Our consciousness as to what being powerful is has changed. And for me, what is powerful is being truthful. A truthfulness that is your own truth, following what is inside of you, whatever it is you’re going to create, however you see your life and shape it …”

With a brain as sharp as a needle, and a laugh as sexy as silk stockings, Sukanya Krishnan, Moves Power Woman extraodinaire, just makes our world better.

by Chesley Turner     photography by Tony Gale

Changing the Rules.

In 2007, Sukanya Krishnan was named one of the New York Moves Power Women of the year. Since then, she’s knocked out 12 years of career building and family growth. Now, it’s time to take a beat, take a breath, and envision what’s next.

“I think the world has changed. You know, the #MeToo movement and everything like that. Our consciousness as to what being powerful is has changed. And for me, what is powerful is being truthful. A truthfulness that is your own truth, following what is inside of you, whatever it is you’re going to create, however you see your life and shape it.”

Sukanya isn’t shy about her state of mind. After two decades of New York City newscasting, the familiar fan favorite took a sudden step back, a surprise to many who were used to seeing her every day. But she knows exactly what she’s doing.

“I feel like I’ve been on this fighter jet every day. Like, shot out of a cannon every morning. And I’ve been go-go-go-go-going, and I never had real downtime. So this has been incredible.” She isn’t completely checked out. Krishnan is still dipping a toe in radio and digital media. But for the most part, she’s taking a break. “I’ve just been thinking and redefining myself. And I know that sounds really selfish, but I’ve never been selfish! So that’s what I’m doing right now. It’s even hard for me to say it.”

But for her it’s important to take this break, particularly to determine who she wants to be. “There’s no way to really look at my potential and what is the next cycle and recreation of who I’m going to be if I don’t actually sit back and look at it.”

There’s never been time for self-searching before. “For so long, we just do what’s expected of us, or what we think life should be. And we kind of fall into these traps.” Keeping up with the Joneses, or the producer’s preferences, or the public opinion took priority for so many years. That’s television. But she’s not a young and impressionable girl anymore. Experience has changed the way she defines her life. “What I would have assumed ten years ago changes with age, with perspective. Power is truth. It’s standing in your own truth, your own life, whatever that is.” At 48, Sukanya is approaching a new decade and a new perspective on life. She’s taking the time she feels she richly deserves to find the truth of what her life will look like next.

“As I move into my 50s, how am I going to shape these two little minds that I waited so long to have?” Admitting her career development delayed the start of her family, she’s thinking about life differently. It’s less about what people think of her, and more about what she thinks of herself. “It’s all these things you get trapped with while you’re climbing the ladder to success and then you stop and go, ‘My God, I never really valued myself. I never really valued my time.” Especially in the television industry, she’s used to other people’s opinions being foisted on her—about her looks, her image, even her name. Enough is enough. “Who is that 48-year-old Sukanya Krishnan? Well, I’m trying to figure that out. What’s gonna make me happy, ultimately? What does that look like? I got so tired of being on Survivor Island. I was like, you know, I’m gonna get off. I’m gonna walk away, and I’m gonna gamble on me. I’m gonna figure out me, and I’m not gonna be worried about how people see it, perceive it, define it.”

At home, her two children, Kiran, aged ten and Shyla, aged six, keep her honest. “My son and my daughter, they’ve been so supportive. It’s so weird. My daughter, she’s like, ‘You’re doing okay today, Mommy?’ And I’m like, ‘Yes, I’m doing great!’ And she goes, ‘Good. You look great. I’m happy you’re good.’”

Shyla’s more than just a great pep-talker, though. She is the one audience that her mother could never fool. “You know what, that little girl has made me stand in my truth in more ways than one. I mean, there’s something about having a girl baby in your family. Boy does she hold you accountable. She’s a mirror every time I look at her. She’s a mirror if I’m being honest. She’s a mirror if I’m being truthful and happy…. What kind of person am I going to be? How am I role modeling? She’s my mirror, and she has freed me of so many things. It’s incredible. And she’s helped me forgive myself for past mistakes and to help me heal.”

Perhaps because she has a young daughter, Sukanya is able to identify the things women give up as they grow older. She’s eager to gain some of that back. “I think somewhere along the line, women forget to dream. When we’re young girls, we have dreams.  And then you stop that creative dreaming and that process and that hopefulness that you used to have.” But you can get it back if you try. “I think that’s what I’m doing right now. I’m dreaming again. I’m dreaming of what my life might look like. I’m dreaming of what I want for my children. I’m dreaming of what I want for my family.”

It’s no surprise that the role models and power women in her own life impacted her at a young age. The influencer that stands out the most? The amazing Mrs. Lannigan. “Ernestine Lannigan. She was the volleyball coach.” As a 13-year-old immigrant child matriculating in New York City’s vast, diverse, and unruly high school system in the 1980s, Sukanya was shy and unassuming. That is, until Mrs. Lannigan approached her in the school cafeteria and told her to come to volleyball try-outs. It didn’t matter that she’d never played a sport before. “I’ll teach you,” she was told. Krishnan started to bust out of her shell because a teacher took an interest. “It’s teachers and coaches who gave a crap about me and told me I mattered. When somebody else sees that fire inside of you and sees you for who you can really be…. That was a moment of awakening.”
Those role models and fire-starters set her on her path with confidence and charisma. The shy girl is long gone, replaced by a woman who’s been the voice of reason and comfort through times of real trouble and times of playful happiness. from 9/11 and Superstorm Sandy to interviews with Donny Osmond, she’s become a habit for so many New Yorkers.

Building a life comes with ups and downs, both professionally and personally. But for Sukanya, it’s important not to mistake the trials and errors of life for failure. “I believe that when things don’t work, it’s not meant to work at the moment. That’s not a loss, or being broken. It’s just not time yet.” She believes that the universe holds our choreography, and that our course is mapped out. We don’t need to stress quite so much about the small stuff. “It’s not failure. It’s not that you’re broken or there’s something wrong with you. That’s something I think that women get a chance to realize with age.” With age comes wisdom, so they say. And while the 20-year-old is hustling, the 30-year old is becoming, the 40-year old is analyzing and redefining, the older you get, the more flexibility you have. “You know, people always say in your 50s and 60s things start getting better, because you really do accept yourself for exactly who you are. You are lighter. You forgive easier. You don’t hold grudges. you don’t take things so personally. And all of that is power. And all of that gives you the ability to be free, to redefine, to recreate, to reimagine.

“That’s how I see power now.”

And while dreaming and taking time are definitely on the docket for this downtime, so is the simple joy of trusting herself. “I trust my gut now, more than ever. Before, I used to do things because it was the right thing to do, or because we needed money to pay the mortgage, or to put aside for the kids. I would do everything for everybody, even though my gut would be like: Step back. Time to not say yes to that. You’re worth more. You’re valuable, You are a valuable entity in New York City. Trust that.”

For Sukanya Krishnan, it’s time to redefine; to reimagine; to trust her gut. And she’s got the power to do it. “Life is about choices. Forever begins any day you want it to. Disappointments of the past? Leave them behind. Personal decisions? Forget about them. Forget about anything that defines you. It’s time to do it differently. But this time, it’s just gonna be for me, and my kids. It’s not gonna be for anyone else.”

By Moonah Ellison

Photography by Nathan Johnson

James Badge Dale’s 2019 is reaching the sort of buzz levels most actors strive for. His face is the one you know, but can’t always quite get the name spot-on as an “instantly recognizable” Hollywood commodity. But boy is he coming up fast as that main stream lead.

The first time I saw Badge Dale on screen he was shooting Leonardo DiCaprio right between the eyes in Martin Scorsese’s 2006 Best Picture Oscar-winning film, The Departed, only to get whacked a few seconds later by Matt Damon’s character, Colin Sullivan.

Since then you’ve seen him in Iron Man 3 with Robert Downey, Jr., World War Z with Brad Pitt, and the big-budget World War II HBO miniseries The Pacific from Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg. Or maybe you saw him in Parkland, the 2013 drama that centered on the JFK assassination, another Hanks-produced film.

But first, he’s got to get past the fall. And a deal of recent traveling.

He is feeling zen. Well, relaxed and rested when I caught him after a recent surfing trip to El Salvador, a trip planned to “clean that character off me and start over again and get acclimated to myself” as he puts it, a cleansing process. The hours of working have caught up to him. He went to El Salvador for the first time and immersed himself in the country’s local vibe.

“I met some amazingly beautiful people, some amazing local people that took me around. I worked on my Spanish and I learned about their history and their families and you make friendships that can last a lifetime,” he says with a grin in his voice.

Such a happy-go-lucky attitude is at the forefront of Badge Dale’s MO. Fresh off his trip, he’s back in LA when we talk, the San Fernando Valley to be exact, off on a long hike in the scorching heat. 700 degrees or feels like it, he claims tongue-in-cheek. Or not.

He remembers these hills from high school. “My family had this little ranch house up in the hills and all my friends lived in the San Fernando Valley. On Friday after school I’d take my skateboard and I’d run down all these dirt paths from like Cold Water and Mulholland all the way down into like Ventura Boulevard and friends would pick me up and we’d just go cause trouble for 48 hours and then on Sunday I’d walk up all the trails back home.”

Life has been good to Badge Dale. He just shot his first television show in 10 years (the last was Rubicon on AMC), an eight-episode show called Hightown for Starz set to debut this fall, about heroin trade on Cape Cod.

He plays a narcotics officer with personal demons and Badge Dale is no stranger to personal conquest. He had wild teenage years, was “out of control,” went to five high schools and got into a lot of trouble, got arrested and spent eight months in a group home.

His life changed when he was 18 years old and got a second chance at life. It’s risky material like Hightown, or Mickey and the Bear—an indie film debuting this fall where he plays a opioid-addicted, PTSD-inflicted veteran in constant conflict with his teen daughter in Montana—he doesn’t shy away from.

“I love independent film, I like getting down and dirty,” he says. “When you’re out in the middle of Montana with a young film crew, no one’s doing it for money, everyone’s doing it for respect, everyone’s doing it for the right reason, everyone’s doing it to tell a good story,”  “Every once and a while a movie squeaks through and it gets seen and Mickey and the Bear looks like that movie right now.”

And he’s getting rave reviews for the role, a script that he felt in the pit of his stomach. Variety says Badge Dale provides an “arresting role” and Hollywood Reporter says Badge Dale turns in a “superb” performance.

It’s gritty roles like Hank that bring Badge Dale a sense of purpose in choosing roles. And this one called to him. “There are moments when you read something and you become afraid. There are moments when you read something and you go, ‘Oh my God this is so risky. I don’t know if I can take this journey.’ But I thought I had something personal to bring to it.”

When making Mickey and the Bear, Badge Dale prepped three months, spending a lot of time with servicemen who have been overseas, a lot of time with people who have come back and who go back time and time again—servicemen who have a hard time assimilating back into society.

He also had a chance to bring personal experience to the role and learned a lot and went back to his past acting experiences and people he’s worked with to take it all in.

“I’ve spent a lot of time with people with traumatic brain injuries. I had some personal things to bring to it as I have a long history of concussions and I was talking to some people I’ve met down the road from years ago, from guys I worked with on The Pacific, guys I worked with from Thirteen Hours.There’s a lot of different kinds of threads going on in there, but at the end of the day when an actor takes a job, it’s yours and you gotta trust your instincts.”

Camila Morrone, a lifelong model and fairly new to the acting world, plays his daughter Mickey. Badge Dale knows she’s going to be a star. “It’s a beautiful thing watching Cammi work, Cammi shows up,” he gushes. “She’s 21 years old, this is her third movie ever, her first lead role and we’re just meeting for the first time, I mean, you think about all these circumstances and she sat down and she had done extensive research and she personalized everything and she was like, ‘I’m Mickey.’ She trusted her own instincts and it was one of the greatest experiences of my acting life and career watching her change and how she did that work through this movie. I’m so proud of her.”

blue shirt his own
Custom Jorge Morales jacket, Carlos Campos shirt, Edwin USA jeans
Carlos Campos shirt

photographer Nathan Johnson
stylist Jorge Morales
groomer Kumi Craig
location Burke & Willis nyc

In Autumn de Wilde’s upcoming adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma Mr Flynn combines his longtime love of the Austen oeuvre with an uncanny ability to look through the camera lens straight into our eyes and give us a Mr Knightley never seen before.

“… what are the important stories to tell now? How relevant is this?’ It’s an urgent age for storytellers across the board and we can’t waste our breath …“Johnny Flynn is walking and talking in the rain on a drizzly London day and has to find a quieter place, a quieter seat, to continue our chat. I’d like to think of the raindrops hitting him as a metaphor for how many roles he’s going to be offered this year, and based on his current resume, a monsoon is upon us. Every actor worth his weight has experienced the moniker of “potential breakout year” but for Flynn, 2020 could be just that.

The British actor and musician will soon star as Mr. Knightly in Autumn de Wilde’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s classic 1815 novel Emma. He’s also portraying a young David Bowie in Stardust, a Tribeca Film Festival entry that focuses on Bowie’s first visit to the US in 1971, a trip that inspired the invention of Bowie’s iconic alter ego Ziggy Stardust. Flynn has two World War II films on the horizon: he recently finished filming the Netflix UK feature film The Dig with Ralph Fiennes, and is currently filming Mincemeat opposite Colin Firth, Matthew Macfadyen and Penelope Wilton. Flynn also stars in the UK thriller film Cordelia opposite Antonia Campbell-Hughes.

But next up is Emma. Flynn loved Austen’s book and studied it cover-to-cover. (The book also happens to be his high school English teacher’s favorite book, the same teacher who was a mentor and believed in him, inspiring his love of poetry and literature. He still keeps in touch with him to this day.) But like so many adaptations from book-to-screen, Flynn was cautious because for every hit, there are a ton of literary flops. “The other part of me was a little skeptical about [being a part of] another version of Emma because it’s been adapted so much, and as an artist it’s always hard to be like ‘what are the important stories to tell now? How relevant is this?’ It’s an urgent age for storytellers across the board and we can’t waste our breath.” But then Flynn met Autumn de Wilde, famed photographer and now director, and quickly realized how special this was going to be. “Her vision for her pitch and her aesthetics, her references. It’s kind of a profound story which at first is not necessarily apparent, in that it’s about a woman in 1815 who doesn’t have much agency but then she did, using her intelligence and wit for the one thing she can control which is the social interactions of her circle, and that in itself is kind of the profound thing,” says Flynn.

“…  It’s a really tough moment we find ourselves in. I’m struggling at the moment. I feel like I have days when it’s just too much. I’ve been out in the street for protests about Brexit to try to educate my kids about climate change and some of the political things going on …“
Flynn’s profound journey, which began with violin lessons at age 6 in Winchester UK, started out with a lot of foreshadowing: his mom used to take him to lessons every week to the house where Jane Austen died. “It was very atmospheric, and I was friends with the daughter [of the persons who owned the home] and at her birthday parties we’d always play hide and seek and I was nervous to find a dead Jane Austen, whoever she was, underneath one of the cupboards,” Flynn reflects. “We rented a tiny flat in the village, which was kind of proper Jane Austen country, and felt like I knew the villages she was describing when I finally got to read her books.”

His dad was a singer and an actor, and it was Flynn’s love of music that instantly created a a special connection with de Wilde. “To work with Autumn, whose background is music and being a photographer and being on the road with Elliott Smith and to talk to her about that stuff and how she approached the work. And then she asked me to write this song for the film from the perspective of my character.

“I had been living with that character for so long and had his perspective of Emma and so I was allowed to just picture it like a broad ballad film, like one of those period songs about one of those things around the piano. I was listening to a lot of folk songs from that period. You have to channel that.”
A family man, Flynn is doing his best to educate his children on the world around him, knowing all too well real-life struggles with his mother’s family from South Africa and witnessing firsthand the effects of apartheid. “It’s a really tough moment we find ourselves in. I’m struggling at the moment. I feel like I have days when it’s just too much. I’ve been out in the street for protests about Brexit to try to educate my kids about climate change and some of the political things going on.”

Brexit deepens the divide for Flynn. “I think it’s based on a series of lies that we’re told to believe about ourselves being individuals or a side of humanity that is fundamentally selfish. This is the thing I wrestle with every day: who am I? What do I want in the best version of myself? To quote John Dunne, ‘no man is an island.’ The best side of myself is the version that stands with my brothers and sisters around the world and part of that community. What politicians would have us believe in order to divide and confuse us is that we need to fight for ourselves, and that’s where there’s more money to be made.

“I keep clinging to the phrase ‘talent is everywhere, opportunity isn’t.’ We, the people who are privileged to be in a position having a voice or a platform, we need to step aside. Make the change and ask questions. Which stories need to be told? I think I can try to support stories to be told that haven’t been heard before and that’s what I’m excited for at the moment.

At the moment, Flynn is readying himself for a planned trip to New York City. He hasn’t been back since 2018 so it’s been a while. His return trip is to promote Stardust, and being a huge fan adds a little bit of extra pressure for Flynn and the rest of the cast – but will no doubt revel in the moment.

“This is huge and he was huge for millions of people,” insists Flynn. “I wanted to savor this thing. Our film is very small, it will be playing at festivals. It’s about enjoying the moment, it’s not like these big moments. It’s about enjoying these as an artist.”

Johnny Flynn’s own star  is rising rapidly.

Photograher: Autumn de Wilde
photo assistant: Ben Tietge
personal assistant: Sarah Graley
Johnny is wearing a Paul Smith suit, shirt & shoes.
Groomed and styled by Autumn herself.

“…Of course I face racism, of course I face other types of discrimination, but the one thing that I’m most concerned about generally are the lives in Africa and Asia and South America where for various reasons there is just a huge income inequality compared to the western nations…”

Words by Martine Roth

Photography: Emily Assiran

“…I’m aware that in this world there are those who have the least amount of power economically and politically…I’m not inclined to spend a lot of time talking about the, ‘Woe is me…”

It’s not often you talk to someone from the Yoruba tribe, an ethnic group from West Africa. Much less someone from said group that is starring in a soon-to-be blockbuster superhero film. So stepping into the spotlight is OT Fagbenle, fresh off of landing a lead role starring opposite Scarlett Johansson in Black Widow, the latest stand alone installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But although Fagbenle is not a household name (YET) doesn’t mean you haven’t seen him on your picture box. In fact, you’ve probably seen A LOT of him, starring as Luke in the Golden Globe and Emmy award winning drama series The Handmaid’s Tale, playing June Osborne’s (Elisabeth Moss) husband. Fagbenle also had lead roles in two UK series, Harlan Coben’s The Five on Netflix and The Interceptor for the BBC.

But Fagbenle isn’t just a television-turned-movie actor. He’s also got theater chops. And a knack for
directing. He led the National Theatre cast of August Wilson’s New York Drama Critic Circle award-winning play, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, to the Olivier Award. He was also nominated for Best Actor
(alongside his alma mater Ralph Fiennes) for the illustrious Evening Standard Awards; Fagbenble’s short film Moth won Best Horror Sci-Fi at the London Film Festival. With appearances in Breaking and Entering opposite Jude Law, Robin Wright, and Juliette Binoche, and I Could Never Be Your Woman
alongside Michelle Pfeiffer, Paul Rudd, and Saoirse Ronan, is there anything this guy can’t do?

To know about Fagbenle is to know his name, and where he came from, how his name changed over time due to colonization. “My name is originally longer, it was Ifagbenle and Ifa is the traditional religion of the Yoruba people and after that land was colonized by the British and the indigenous languages were banned, Christianity was brought in through my family hundreds of years ago and they distanced themselves from the Ifa religion.”

Born and raised in London, as well as places like Spain and Nigeria, Fagbenle played the saxophone in bands across Europe and performed at the Edinburgh Festival, Wembley Arena, and the Royal Albert Hall. At 16, he landed a role in a Nigerian adaptation of Macbeth and attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. After many theater performances across the UK—national tours of shows such as Ragamuffin, Romeo & Juliet, Porgy and Bess—he garnered multiple awards and nominations and grabbed the M.E.N. Theatre Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award nominated play Six Degrees of Separation.

But Fagbenle is aware of his privilege and it is not lost on him. He knows of income equality and how
different the West is. And it is of concern. He won’t hide behind celebrity and shelter himself and
recently launched the charity organization ABC Foundation which is dedicated to providing tech
opportunities to young women in Africa. “I’m aware that in this world there are those who have the least amount of power economically and politically,” says Fagbenle. “I’m not inclined to spend a lot of time talking about the, ‘Woe is me.’ Of course I face racism, of course I face other types of discrimination, but the one thing that I’m most concerned about generally are the lives in Africa and Asia and South America where for various reasons there is just a huge income inequality compared to the western nations.”

“I think about injustice. I think about the injustice of sexual violence in our countries and then I think about myself. It’s hard to divide one’s time according to what’s actually important, what actually matters. It’s not always obvious.”

He has seen a change in how black actors are seen on television and in the movies. More and more
each day, the playing field in the industry is being leveled piece by piece and a large reason is our need to consume content, mainly with online streaming platforms. Good times indeed. “I just think we just live in the most extraordinary times, things are moving so fast and in terms of content there is such brilliant diversity of content and such high quality,” Fagbenle raves. “When I graduated in 2001, there wasn’t really a Black British actor that was known in America. Like there was no black movie and now we have Chiwetel Ejiofor, Daniel Kaluuya and you have David Oyelowo. The industry has grown so large and so diverse to encapsulate so many artists.”

Fagbenle’s big role is in The Handmaid’s Tale. He got the part rather quickly and laments on how many auditions after auditions an actor will go through and not get the part. This was different. “There’s so many times as an actor you do round after round of auditions and then it doesn’t work out, but I just got the audition sent to me and they asked me to put myself on tape,” laughs Fagbenle. “I recorded a couple of scenes in my kitchen and then I got the part. I was in Tanzania when I got the news.”

Black Widow is just the tip of the iceberg. More to come through the pipeline, his life has had hits and
misses, and a few roles he wished he didn’t say no, highs and lows so to speak. One role in particular still makes him ache. “There were a couple of roles, either an audition or something I didn’t follow through on for various reasons. One was American Gods. I was asked to do short list audition for that and at the time I booked a part in a play at the Ascot Theater, a part that I wanted to play since I was 19 and in the theater the money you would make in six months is about one week you would make in one week on American Gods. I was really questioning quite hard.”

But it’s not about the roles he could’ve had, it’s about the future and his pursuit of two main projects: One is an African History project he’s developing; the second one is for his ABC Foundation, this year having delivered tech equipment to over 60 young women and helped support the establishment of a tech hub going into Zimbabwe.

Photography: Dorian Caster

RYAN EGGOLD

Star of the New York Hospital Drama,     “New Amsterdam”, Ryan Eggold is just as good as he looks …but twice as bad as he seems!
 
He dishes on healthcare, gun control, and education. Everything important in this country. Celebrity? Yes. Someone who has a soul and empathy mixed with drive and smarts?

Definitely yes.

Actor Ryan Eggold would love to change the world. Or at the very least have his television show on NBC, New Amsterdam, change it, maybe ignite a conversation with people in the real world who can affect change.

Entering season two, Eggold stars as Dr. Max Goodwin, a medical director at a fictional American hospital. Goodwin’s drive is to provide quality healthcare for the patients who make their way through his doors, but skeptical staff aren’t sure because they’ve heard it before—too much bureaucracy clouds and prevents the staff from working in a fully-functioning environment with the best tools and coverage available to them. Come to think of it, much like our present day system. The show was inspired by Bellevue Hospital Center located in Kip’s Bay in New York City.

“In the US since the 70’s, healthcare has moved more towards a business and less towards a service that everybody can depend on,” says Eggold. “American exceptionalism is so deeply ingrained into the culture and the country.”

It’s these types of thoughts that engulf Eggold, and create a common thread throughout each episode of New Amsterdam. The show can bring you to tears, the thought of healthcare in this country can have that effect on anyone nowadays. I honestly don’t know how Eggold does it but he does, although he’s used to being a part of the medical field: his mother is a doctor.

It’s education that Eggold feels should be heralded and looked up to in our society. Teachers, teachers, teachers. They are the ones that make the difference in someone’s life… and in Eggold’s eyes, they don’t get their due. “I think they’re so under appreciated in our society,” cries Eggold. “Either their pay is so much less from what they deserve, especially when people like myself who have the privilege of working on a TV show and make so much more.

“It’s sort of an imbalance. Many teachers have affected my life. A teacher I had in this little theater where I grew up when I just started dipping my toes in the [acting pool]. Just encouraged creativity and freedom and lack of judgment. I was one of those kids that liked attention and talked too much and get in trouble and she kind of rewarded me for it in a way and pushed it into a world where it made sense and I could make something out of it. I think there’s a version of that story for everybody.”

But like healthcare as well as education in this country, how are we getting it all wrong? That both of these crucial systems that are necessary for survival are just another example of commercial entities bound to capitalism. Don’t we deserve better than this?

“In the U.S. there’s the desire to make as much money as possible sadly and it is such a part of the quote-on-quote American dream,” says Eggold. “A spiritual revolution is what the country needs. I don’t know if and when that will come. It’s such a different model in a country like Denmark with healthcare and education, especially college, and [their citizens] are taken care off and it’s built in the demographic of that society.”

It’s all about the money I tell Eggold. Politics and money, as we veer into the gun issue in America, an issue he feels very strongly about, how our world is very different than the days of our Forefathers who were coming out of violent revolutions. Eggold insists he can talk about this topic for hours and hours but believes like so many Americans, don’t make weapons of mass murder available and ready for anyone.

Whatever societal worldwide problems we have, Eggold will let his talents do the talking. He plays the piano and the guitar, yet doesn’t have the time.  In addition to New Amsterdam, Eggold is writing a project he eventually would want to direct. But for now, New Amsterdam is all Eggold.

“I have to say this is the most generous and collaborative group of folks I’ve ever worked with in a sense that everybody is supportive of everyone else,” enthuses Eggold. “They’re always directing and trying to educate me and they are incredibly helpful and trying to make the job a little bit easier.