You don’t get a bigger breakout opportunity than a show like The Pitt. Taylor Dearden’s already made a big impression in the gone-too-soon MTV series Sweet/Vicious and the second season of American Vandal, but The Pitt just sent her star soaring in a wholly different way.

The Pitt is undeniably (and deservedly) one of the most celebrated new shows of the year and Dearden’s performance has proven to be an especially big standout among an ensemble full of aces. She plays Dr. Mel King, a second-year resident about to begin her very first day at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital's emergency room, aka, The Pitt. While there are nerves at the start of the shift, Mel’s an extremely skilled doctor who excels under pressure and also has the emotional capacity to connect with patients in ways others can’t.

With the show on the cusp of what could be an extremely successful Emmy season, Dearden carved out some time on a day off from filming Season 2 to swing by the Collider Ladies Night studio and run through her experience playing Mel and adapting to The Pitt’s one-of-a-kind filming schedule. We also took the time to zero in on a few key scenes from Season 1, one of which has become an especially beloved fan-favorite — the “Savage” scene.

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As though starring in a new Jurassic World movie isn’t a big enough deal, Luna Blaise also boasts an especially exciting franchise achievement. She’s right smack in the middle of one of the most iconic set pieces from Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park novel, a set piece that was famously cut from Steven Spielberg’s original film.

In Jurassic World Rebirth, Blaise plays Teresa Delgado. Just before starting her first year at college, Teresa takes a boat trip with her father (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), her little sister (Audrina Miranda), and her boyfriend (David Iacono). Little do they know, they’re sailing through Mosasaurs territory. Fortunately, Scarlett Johansson’s Zora Bennett and her team swoop in to save them, but the Mosasaurs sets its sights on their boat instead and the entire group winds up stranded on Ile Saint-Hubert, an island that InGen once used to run a secret R&D facility.

While trying to make their way to a rumored village on the island, Teresa and her family are left with no choice but to steal an inflatable raft right out from under a sleeping T-Rex’s nose and ride it down river to get them closer to this supposed safe haven.

With Jurassic World Rebirth now playing in theaters nationwide, Blaise joined me for a Collider Ladies Night conversation to revisit her journey to the franchise, a journey that included two hit TV shows - Fresh Off the Boat and Manifest. She also recapped her Jurassic World audition, revealed her character’s backstory, explained why she thinks of Garcia-Rulfo and Iacono as family, and, of course, walked me through exactly what it was like to film that river raft scene.

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Allison Williams’ filmography is loaded with variety, but it’s also packed with examples of how one project can influence another — even if they’re in entirely different genres. There’s the hit HBO comedy-drama series Girls, which first sent Williams’ star skyrocketing. As that show wound down, Williams headlined a feature film for the very first time, Jordan Peele’s Academy Award-winning horror movie Get Out. Williams continued to enjoy great success in the genre, but wound up exploring an entirely different corner of it with the horror-comedy M3GAN. Now, M3GAN 2.0 let’s her do just that yet again as the horror-comedy concept becomes a horror-comedy-action film.

M3GAN 2.0 picks up about two years after the events of the original film. Since Gemma’s (Williams) A.I. creation went on a murderous rampage, she’s put her focus on advocating for government oversight of artificial intelligence. However, when Gemma discovers that the M3gan tech wasn’t entirely destroyed and was used to create a military-grade weapon called Amelia (Ivanna Sakhno), she’s left with no choice but to resurrect and team up with M3gan to stop Amelia from growing too far beyond the control of her human creators.

With M3GAN 2.0 now playing in theaters nationwide, Williams joined me for a Collider Ladies Night conversation to retrace her journey in film and television thus far, and to dig into how her craft in front of and behind the lens has evolved.

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