Close Up with the Hollywood Reporter - Season 2

Six of the year's most sought after drama actresses Sarah Paulson, Julianna Margulies, Kerry Washington, Constance Zimmer, Kirsten Dunst, Regina King, and Jennifer Lopez discuss the new landscape of TV, and what their first big splurge was.

Six of the television season's most eclectic drama actors - including Rami Malek, Bobby Cannavale, Wagner Moura, Cuba Gooding Jr., Forest Whitaker, and Paul Giamatti - reveal the challenges of letting emotionally demanding characters go.

TV's leading funny ladies - Rachel Bloom, Gina Rodriguez, Allison Janney, Niecy Nash, Lily Tomlin, Ilana Glazer - disclose the best advice they ever got, the moment they knew they wanted to become actors and their funniest fan interactions.

Comedy masters Jeffrey Tambor, Aziz Ansari, Anthony Anderson, Tony Hale, Jerrod Carmichael, Rob Lowe, Keegan-Michael Key divulge their most embarrassing moments, who inspires them and the challenges of taking a comedic look at serious topics.

Six of television's top drama series bosses - Sam Esmail, Julian Fellowes, Nina Jacobson, Marti Noxon, Melissa Rosenberg and John Ridley - open up about the stories that made them genuinely nervous in Hollywood and what it takes to cast their shows.

Comedy TV writer - producers Kenya Barris, Marta Kauffman, Aline Brosh McKenna, Alan Yang, Nahnatchka Khan and David Mandel talk condoms, stunt guests and what they have (and haven't) been able to get away with on the small screen.

TV's top reality talent - Mark Cuban, Jane Lynch, Guy Fieri, Nick Cannon, Mike Darnell and LL Cool J - discuss on-set psychologists, coaxing contestants and America's first reality star presidential candidate, Donald Trump.

The directors of this year's most acclaimed films, Damien Chazelle, Mel Gibson, Barry Jenkins, Mira Nair, Oliver Stone, Denzel Washington, talk about the filmmaking process.

Casey Affleck, Mahershala Ali, Jeff Bridges, Andrew Garfield, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Dev Patel discuss how they go about researching roles, being typecast and what it's like working with celebrated directors.

Amy Adams, Annette Bening, Naomie Harris, Taraji P. Henson, Isabelle Huppert, Natalie Portman and Emma Stone talk about what inspired them to go into acting, having stage fright and what it's like working with Hollywood's best directors.

Darren Aronofsky, Todd Black, Matt Damon, Frank Marshall, Marc Platt, and Emma Tillinger Koskoff have a conversation about developing scripts, making decisions on the fly and what it takes to be a successful producer.

Pedro Almodovar, Tom Ford, Noah Oppenheim, Kenneth Lonergan, Allison Schroeder, and Taylor Sheridan discuss what principles guide their writing, how to escape writer's block and ways that their writing draws from personal experience.

Documentary filmmakers Ezra Edelman, Werner Herzog, Kirsten Johnson, Josh Kriegman, Raoul Peck, and Roger Ross Williams talk about how they got into filmmaking and what draws them to commit to a specific story.

Songwriters Tori Amos, Alicia Keys, John Legend, Sting, Justin Timberlake and Pharrell Williams reveal their process and how to emotionally connect songs to movies.