Brigette Lundy-Paine, breakout star of Netflix’s Atypical and United Artists’ Bill and Ted Face the Music will star as the lead in City of Ghosts, a supernatural neo-noir fiction podcast set in New York City. Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani, star of AppleTV+’s upcoming sci-fi series Invasion, also will play a pivotal role in the supernatural audio drama.
City of Ghosts’ first two episodes will premiere on October 12th, with new episodes dropping every Tuesday until December on all major streaming podcast platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, Amazon Music, Pandora, and Stitcher. The ten-episode podcast is produced by Storyteller’s Ink Productions.
Featuring a diverse, star-studded cast, talent including Moises Arias (Hannah Montana, The Jockey), Erin Darke (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Good Girls Revolt), Rich Sommer (Mad Men), Kevin Pollak (A Few Good Men, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), Navid Negahban (Homeland, Aladdin) along with Brigette Lundy-Paine (Atypical, Bombshell) Golshifteh Farahani (Invasion, Extraction, Body of Lies) lend their voices to accompany creators Ryan Patch and Carina Green’s debut audio series.
“The Covid-19 pandemic certainly changed the way actors were able to collaborate on and contribute to projects,” said Lundy-Paine. “Working over Zoom already gives you the feeling of talking to ghosts so, the whole thing felt apropos. I learned so much working on City of Ghosts – how to record on a Zoom, that ghosts are real, and about the political games and municipal corruption that affect us all.”
She adds, “It was such fun to immerse myself in the world of City of Ghosts alongside the passionate and playful cast and crew. The work began as we were all put into lockdown, so it was a chance to dance in our collective imagination, soaring over the city and solving crime all from the comfort of our bedrooms.
The show was produced entirely in quarantine across four time zones by sending a complete home audio setup to every actor. “Building a makeshift recording studio in a Pennsylvania farmhouse was the COVID challenge I never saw coming,” said James Scully, star of Netflix’s You and voice of James Chapman on City of Ghosts “It was so cool to be able to create a workspace on my own terms which is not something you typically get to do as an actor.”
In City of Ghosts, Lundy-Paine plays El Rivkin, a misanthropic information broker who makes a living collecting and selling the dirty secrets of New York’s elite, assisted by her business partner and only friend, the agoraphobic internet whiz Prizrak (Moises Arias).
The two are hired to investigate a journalist’s murder, and are taken from a burned-out apartment building to the highest levels of New York’s elites – a society El’s sister Talia (Erin Darke) is marrying into as she weds the old-moneyed James Chapman (James Scully).
The deeper El presses into the investigation, the more she is forced to confront her own history of trauma and mental illness. As she starts speaking back to the voices that haunt her, she discovers that one of them belongs to Sahar (Golshifteh Farahani), the murdered journalist herself.
The series, featuring an immersive urban soundscape and a moody synth soundtrack, was created and written by fiction author Carina Green and filmmaker Ryan Patch, directed by Patch, and produced by Joanne Vo. Patch said, “Collaborating with Carina to write this was thrilling. She brought beautiful, well-rounded characters and a gripping, supernatural journey into El’s psyche, to which I layered my love of New York and political and financial thrillers.” Listen to the trailer and first episode below:
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Patch notes, “I hope these all have combined into a story that melds the best of what these genres have to offer into something that feels fresh and new. I also hope the story we tell in City of Ghosts presents a compelling look into the way that small acts of municipal corruption and favor-giving in government can have enormous consequences that affect all our lives.”
The podcast debuts today, October 12, across Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, Amazon, Pandora, and more
CREDITS:
- Co-created by Carina Green and Ryan Patch
- Written by Carina Green and Ryan Patch
- Directed by Ryan Patch
- Produced by Ryan Patch and Joanne Vo
- Edited by Ryan Patch
- Sound design and mixing by Rick Rush and the Ott
- House Audio Team, supervised by Cheryl Ottenritter
- Music by Amper Music
- Main theme composed by Samuel Estes
- Casting by Daryl Eisenberg and Ally Beans at Eisenberg/Beans Casting
- Assistant Editing by Jeremy Chin
- Audio Consulting by Blake Goldberg
- Production Assistance by Zachary Cincotta
- Remote recording kits provided by Gotham Sound
