A quiet New York screening with loud industry signals
On a crisp November night in SoHo, the Crosby Street Hotel turned into a compact crossroads for film, theater, and awards-season strategy. Angelina Jolie, who plays Maria Callas in Netflix’s upcoming biographical drama “Maria,” hosted a tastemaker screening that drew veteran star Candice Bergen, stage actors from the Tony-winning musical “The Outsiders,” and a cluster of below-the-line heavyweights who helped build the film’s mood and detail.
The room skewed small and intentional—exactly the point of a tastemaker event. These are built for word of mouth, not red carpets. Screen the film for people who speak to the industry, let the buzz move sideways into guilds and critics groups, and get the conversations going before the big voting calendars kick in. Netflix has used this playbook before, and it rarely wastes an intimate screening on a title it doesn’t see as a contender.
Jolie’s turn as Callas is the hook. It’s her first lead role in a prestige biopic since directing and producing dominated her last decade. The film, directed by Pablo Larraín, zeroes in on the opera legend’s late-life solitude and reputation—territory the Chilean filmmaker knows well. With “Jackie” and “Spencer,” he carved psychological portraits that shrink the timeline and expand the interior life. Expect that same pressure-cooker approach here rather than a cradle-to-grave sweep.
The guest list blended eras and mediums. Candice Bergen—whose résumé jumps from Murphy Brown to Miss Congeniality to decades of magazine photography and fashion circles—brought old-guard clout. Danai Gurira, a force on stage and in blockbuster franchises, and filmmaker Mira Nair, known for “Monsoon Wedding” and a sharp eye for cultural texture, added the kind of creative range tastemakers are designed to tap.
Also present: key collaborators from the “Maria” crew. Cinematographer Ed Lachman, whose work on “Carol” and “Far from Heaven” is a master class in color and atmosphere, helped shape the film’s visual language. Costume designer Massimo Cantini Parrini, a detail obsessive with an eye for silhouette, had the unenviable task of honoring Callas’s famous style without turning it into museum cosplay. Production designer Pamela Goldammer handled spaces that speak for the character—rooms that keep secrets, rooms that echo. Director Pablo Larraín steered the evening’s post-screening conversation, joined by critic Siddhant Adlakha, framing the film less as a biography and more as an encounter with a woman trapped between genius and myth.
Why this screening mattered—and why Broadway was in the room
Jolie wasn’t just the star host. She was also the bridge. As a producer of “The Outsiders,” she pulled in members of its Broadway company, turning the screening into a low-key reunion for a show that stormed the 2024 season. That crossover is unusual and savvy. Theater actors often vote in guilds. They sit in rooms with casting directors, choreographers, designers, and directors who talk. Those conversations can bend momentum in subtle ways.
The “Outsiders” attendees included Kevin William Paul, Trevor Wayne, Jordan Chin, Victor Tracey, Brody Grant, SarahGrace Mariani, Melody Rose, Milena Comeau, Barton Cowperthwaite, Tilly Krueger-Evans, Renni Magee, Sky Lakota-Lynch, RJ Higton, Alex Eckhardt, and Miranda Cornell. A mouthful on paper, sure, but in a screening room it reads like connective tissue across two New York scenes—one musical, one cinematic—both riding awards chatter heading into winter.
“Maria” leans on the facts of Callas’s life while focusing on what made her a singular presence. Born in New York to Greek parents, trained into a once-in-a-generation voice, she became La Divina—the standard for 20th-century opera stardom. Her public life was as operatic as the roles she sang: blazing triumphs at La Scala and the Met, storms with the press, and a relationship with Aristotle Onassis that turned private pain into common property. Late in life, Paris offered distance but not silence. That’s where Larraín’s film reportedly lingers, letting performance, memory, and isolation collide.
Costume and image carry extra weight here. Callas’s look—clean lines, sculptural gowns, cat-eye makeup—was more than glamorous; it was armor. Parrini’s challenge was to capture that armor without freezing it in place. Expect period textures and lived-in tailoring rather than costume-party exactness. Production design picks up the rest: rehearsal rooms that know every note, hotel suites that feel like sanctuaries and traps, and stage spaces that still hum after the applause dies.
Lachman’s visuals are likely to chase tactility—light on skin, fabric moving through shadow, rooms that feel touched. His filmography often favors atmosphere over flash. When paired with Larraín, that can become a tight, intimate portrait where the camera almost breathes with the subject. Don’t be surprised if the film’s mood does as much storytelling as the script.
What does Netflix want from a night like this? Simple: early validators. The streamer has built a reputation on mounting serious awards campaigns, and tastemaker screenings sit at the center of that plan. They seed essays, spark panel invites, and encourage specialty press to carry the baton. The venue choice—the boutique theater tucked inside a design-forward hotel—signals “selective” without feeling stiff.
For Jolie, the role doubles as a statement. She’s stepping into a part that demands technical precision and emotional restraint, two things audiences don’t always associate with her blockbuster persona. Callas wasn’t a saint; she was disciplined, exacting, and sometimes withering. Playing that without caricature is the test. The buzz out of rooms like this usually turns on whether the actor disappears or just dresses the part.
There’s also a soft cultural current underneath. Opera doesn’t always travel in the age of endless content, but the stories around it do—ambition, reinvention, rivalry, and the cost of living in public. Films about icons can feel like wax museums. Larraín’s signature is refusing that trap. He prefers the weekend that changed everything, the winter where the walls closed in, the breath before the note. That choice puts pressure on performance, design, and sound to carry history without reciting it.
The guest mix helped underline that. Bergen’s presence connected a Hollywood past to an arthouse present. Gurira and Nair threaded contemporary global storytelling into the room. The Broadway cohort grounded the evening in New York’s live-performance energy. The crew sat beside them, a reminder that below-the-line crafts are often the difference between an admired biopic and one that lingers.
Names at the screening included:
- Candice Bergen
- Danai Gurira
- Mira Nair
- Kevin William Paul
- Trevor Wayne
- Jordan Chin
- Victor Tracey
- Brody Grant
- SarahGrace Mariani
- Melody Rose
- Milena Comeau
- Barton Cowperthwaite
- Tilly Krueger-Evans
- Renni Magee
- Sky Lakota-Lynch
- RJ Higton
- Alex Eckhardt
- Miranda Cornell
- Massimo Cantini Parrini (costume designer)
- Ed Lachman (cinematographer)
- Pamela Goldammer (production designer)
- Pablo Larraín (director)
- Siddhant Adlakha (critic)
No big speeches, no staged photo calls—just a carefully curated room and a film meant to be talked about in the lobby. That’s how a campaign starts in New York: softly, on purpose, with the right people leaning in.
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