Multi-hyphenate Rachel Annette Helson [1],[2],[3],[4],[5],[6],[7],[8] (Full Frontal), dancing queen Kaitlin Mesh [1],[2],[3],[4],[5],[6],[7] (Breasts) & Naturi Naughton (Breasts) in Power [S2E7]
[ PW: s03ksk2amm ]
“And caught the Sunday smell of someone frying chicken. And Lord, it took me back to something that I’d lost”…
Couple of nude debutant whose family and friends might be shocked to learn of their risquĂ© endeavor. Living in New York isnât cheap. You gotta make a living. Pay the bills. Still, the sight of their ‘babies’ naked, snorting coke, lezzing and f*cked from behind……Oh lĂ lĂ : )
Kaitlin is a dancer and stage artist from Kansas. Dancers are usually comfortable with nudity. She’s also appears to be a Marilyn Monroe devotee.
Rachel is a different story altogether. Excluding the possibility she might have moonlighted as a nude model, Rachel has lot going for her if you buy into her entrepreneurial skills. My guess is that Rachel was tired of being a goody two shoes all her life and wanted to do something totally out of character. Maybe she wanted to show off her sexy new bod. Pre-marital bucket list including sky diving and getting naked for the first time on-cam? Yet this role is way too extreme for a first timer with Rachel‘s background.
I’m glad the cablers are casting real actors and not aspiring porn girls/nude models. However, we are living in tough times. Highly competitive biz with everyone competing for a shrinking pie. So don’t be surprised if Kaitlin or Rachel…basically regional-based performers….did some ‘porn-y’ stuff along the way until they found their feet in a strange, imposing city.
Rachel & Kaitlin bonded (assuming they didn’t know each other before working together) after the shoot before the former deactivated her twitter.
Rachel Annette Helson
http://www.rachelannettehelson.com/ |
Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, Helson moved to New York City in 2006 at age seventeen to attend New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. While in school at NYU, she became the youngest producer in Broadway history to ever be nominated for the Tony Award. In 2008, she produced Broadway’s “[title of show],” as well as 2 Broadway benefits for the Susan G. Komen for the Cure. In 2009, she worked as a producer on Neil LaBute’s “reasons to be pretty” earning her both a Drama Desk and a Tony Nomination.
In addition to her producing work, Helson is a Webby-nominated writer for her web series “stalkTALK,” a comedy about a rehab group for celebrity stalkers. She has co-written and illustrated two published children’s books “The Global Game Changers” and “Philanthropy… A Big Word for Big-Hearted People” both of which encourage young children to give back at an early age. She herself has raised over $175,000 for philanthropic causes that include providing weekend meals for children on the federal free and reduced meal program, raising funds for HIV/AIDS research and awareness and raising funds for Breast Cancer research and awareness.
Helson is also an accomplished actress. In the Autumn of 2012, she appeared in the Off-Broadway run of “Bullet for Adolf” directed by Woody Harrelson and is a member of the Old Vic, New Voices Network overseen by Kevin Spacey.
She resides in New York City.
She can be seen on TV in Season Two of Steven Soderbergh’s THE KNICK and in Episode 2.07 of POWER. She has appeared onstage at the Atlantic Theater Company (24 Hour Plays),  New World Stages and Playwrights Horizons. She is represented by Davis/Spylios Management and Ingber & Associates.
Her art can be found in homes across the United States and in the children’s picture book The Global Game Changers (1) – Developed by a mother-daughter team, Jan Helson and Rachel.
She is also the proud co-owner of One Cute Dog Productions, New York’s Premiere Video Communication Company.
Awards
- Tony Award (Nomination), Best Production of a Play reasons to be pretty, 2010
- Drama Desk Award (Nomination), Best Production of a Play reasons to be pretty, 2010
- Webby Awards (Nomination), Best Writing stalkTALK, 2012
- At age 20, she became the youngest TONY nominated producer in Broadway history.
- Rachel, along with her writing partner Suzanne Gangursky, was nominated for a 2012 Best Writing Webby Award for her work on “stalkTALK.”.
Catch AGR’r Rachel Annette Helson as “Sarah” on TONIGHT’s episode of @Power_Starz. #actorslife #acting #auditions pic.twitter.com/xmg0TvJQa6
â The Actors GreenRoom (@AGRNYLA) July 25, 2015
rachelannettehelson#tbt to shooting with @josephsikora4 and @kaitmesh for Season 2 Episode 7 of #powertv. Be sure to check out the awesome @josephsikora4 killin’ it as Tommy in the Season 2 #powerpremiere this #Saturday at 9PM on #Starz! #powertakesnyc #nyc #june6 |
rachelannettehelsonVery excited to marry my best friend. #engaged #NYC #love #wedding Puzzle Ring by Norman Greene www.puzzlering.net [July 17 2015] |
rachelannettehelson#love [July 26 2015] |
Seeing Double
The young woman wanted to raise some money for charity by putting on a show, and because she was in New York, she decided to stage it on Broadway. After all, it has the biggest theaters, and thus the potential to generate the most income. It didn’t much matter that she was just off the bus from Kentucky, or that she was 17.
So began the Broadway career of Rachel Helson, who at 20 is now the youngest producer ever nominated for a Tony Award, for her work on reasons to be pretty, a nominee for best play. She is one of several youngish impresarios shepherding the Neil LaBute playâDoug Nevin, Erica Lynn Schwartz, and Helson’s producing partner, Heather Provost, are the othersâbut her age, moxie, leadership in organizing breast cancer benefits, and work on the musical [title of show] have earned her a reputation as someone to watch. And with the theater world facing the twin challenges of a steep recession and an aging audience, Helson could be arriving at just the right time. Unless, of course, she decides to put her energy elsewhere.
“I think we’re going to lose her to acting,” said Annette Niemtzow, a mentor of Helson’s who has produced Frost/Nixon, Jane Eyre, and The Kentucky Cycle on Broadway. “She thinks we won’t. But I think once she gets involved, acting will sweep her off her feet.”
Helson, with a confidence born of youth and sugar-free Red Bull, maintains that she can do both. “I have developed the opinion from working over the past couple of years that really talented people do a lot of things, have their hand in different parts of the industry,” she said recently, a few hours before she was to graduate from New York University. “I don’t think of myself as a producer and actor; I think of myself as someone who produces and acts. I don’t like to label it. For example, I have a book coming out on philanthropy. I’m a writer, but I don’t want to do one single thing my entire life.”
Old Pro
Truth is, she was a veteran producer by the time she arrived in New York from Louisville. When Helson was 15, an aunt was diagnosed with breast cancerâthe fourth of her parents’ siblings to contract the disease. Leaning on her theater background, she decided to stage a benefit production of The Rocky Horror Show, whose film version has a large cult following in the city. She raised $12,000 for the Komen Foundation, which bills itself as the largest grass-roots organization of breast cancer survivors and activists in the world. The following year she raised $25,000.
“When something like that happens to my family, I want to protect them,” she said. “And that was my way of doing that.”
Helson comes from a certain means. Her father is the president of a food-processing company and her mother is its executive vice president, and their contacts helped, at least in the beginning. But it was Helson’s idea to produce a breast cancer benefit in New York, and she did all the legwork, which has involved a lot of wheedling, cajoling, and, at times, beggingâall necessary skills for a producer.
For the benefit at Broadway’s American Airlines Theatre, she had two actors drop out of the role of the narrator. Eventually she got Neil Patrick Harris to take it on. She finished with $35,000 in ticket sales, and The New York Times reported that she raised an additional $33,000 in corporate sponsorship. All told, she has earned more than $100,000 for the Komen Foundation.
“I come from a family of movers and shakers; my mother in particular is a very positive person,” Helson said. “Even if you think there’s no way, she’ll find a way to make something work. I really take inspiration from my parents.”
Before the benefit, in April 2007, a story about Helson’s exploits ran in The New York Times. It caught the attention of Niemtzow, who is involved with the T. Fellowship, a program designed to nurture the next generation of creative theater producers. (Orin Wolf, who just produced Groundswell Off-Broadway to positive reviews, received the first fellowship.) Niemtzow contacted Helson, and the two had lunch.
From the beginning “it was clear that she was a peer,” said Niemtzow. “There was no sense that she needed mentoring. She needs more information, but the fact is that she understands why she’s doing what she’s doing and why it’s important.”
At Play
Niemtzow wasn’t the only influential person in the theater world who saw the Times article. Tina Fallon, founding producer of The 24 Hour Company, read it as well and asked Helson to become part of The 24 Hour Plays: Old Vic New Voices, a program for 40 theater professionals of promise. Participants of the Old Vic New Voices program have since formed another company, At Play Productions.
The company has done a series of 24-hour play fests, in which a play is written, rehearsed, and staged in one day, and in the fall it will present its first full-length production, Holiday Girl. Helson said she cherishes her time with the group because she isn’t its producer; all she has to worry about is acting. Given her range of interests and goals, if Helson had to pick a role model, it would be Philip Seymour Hoffman. “I think he has the perfect career as an actor,” she said. “He gets to do the films that he wants to do and he runs his own theater company in New York City. He balances everything, and I’m kind of in awe of that.”
As for her own acting, Helson plans to move to Los Angeles in July and become bicoastal. She said her biggest challenge is to bring her classical training to bear on more-contemporary work: “I come from the Stella Adler studio, which focuses intently on Shakespeare, Chekhov, MoliĂšre, and Ibsen, which is great, but you don’t get to do those things a lot, unless you’re in a rep company. I would need to focus on working with contemporary language. I’m never cast in Mamet things or LaBute things.”
The New Frontier
In the 1980-81 Broadway season, patrons 50 and older composed 20 percent of the audience, according to the Broadway League. In 2007-08, the latest season for which statistics are available, that age group made up 37.5 percent. Audience members aged 24 and younger represented 19 percent of the audience in ’80-’81 and 24 percent in ’07-’08. But it’s the middle group that may cause trouble for Broadway. Three decades ago, theatergoers aged 25â49 made up more than 60 percent of the audience; now they’re less than 40 percent. If that demographic continues to shrink, will enough of them go to shows in their older years, when they typically have more time and money?
Helson said that maintaining its relevance in the face of an aging fan base should be one of Broadway’s key objectives. To do that, she argued, producers need to expand their view of marketing. They can’t rely solely on the old formula of positive notices, a display ad in the Sunday Times, and word of mouth. Nor can they depend on star and stunt casting. A multiplatform effort in new media is required.
For reasons to be pretty, Helson developed a text-messaging system for student rush tickets. “Text messaging is going to be the new frontier for Broadway,” she said. “I’m sitting in class and I have to choose between two shows. One I have to go to the box office, the other I can use my BlackBerry. I’m going to do what’s easier.”
Also on the new-media front, associate producer Adam Cunningham is developing webisodes written and performed by people such as Steven Weber, Susan Blackwell ([title of show]), and cast members from Reno 911!. Helson and Cunningham have talked at length about how Broadway needs to be marketed more like Hollywood, she said. “We both feel that we need to bring hip, edgy things back to Broadway. It needs to be the thing to do.”
It’s that type of thinking that has endeared Helson to Jerry Frankel, who, with partner Jeffrey Richards, has produced six shows on Broadway this season. “She always has something to add and something interesting to say,” he said. “I’m not saying everything she says is pearls, but a lot of it is something to use or think about.”
But reasons to be pretty demonstrates the problem producers face in finding a widespread hit or a show that appeals to younger audiences. As the story of a young man grappling with a disintegrating relationship and a sense of displacement in the world, it would seem a sure thing for that group. But despite positive reviews and three Tony nominations, the play has struggled to fill more than 40 percent of the Lyceum’s seats in any given week.
Helson thinks the marketing moves are beginning to take hold and will turn things around soon, but she concedes that no one has yet invented a foolproof formula for success. “We don’t have stars in our cast; we have four actors,” she said. “How to take that and translate it into ticket sales is the big question right now: How do you find a hit on Broadway?”
That’s a problem that producers have always faced, and Niemtzow hopes Helson will get a lot of help in trying to solve it for her generation. “That’s the point, after all,” she said. “It’s not simply to set up Rachel as an untouchable role model, but rather to have many more Rachels.”
@katiecouric Once a year family reunion fun time. Good to connect with extended family, but missing my daughter @RachelAHelson in NYC!
â Jan Helson (@janhelson) September 4, 2012
@Josh__Banks Love this photo of @GlobalGameChgrs illustrator and co-author (and my wonderful daughter!) @RachelAHelson @BNBuzz NYC! Thanks!
â Jan Helson (@janhelson) October 25, 2012
Visit @BankStreetBooks to see the children’s Superhero book @GlobalGameChgrs my daughter @RachelAHelson and I wrote! pic.twitter.com/oTfsGLA1
â Jan Helson (@janhelson) December 11, 2012
Celebrated daughter @RachelAHelson 24th Birthday today! She is such an awesome young woman. Loved visiting her in NYC. #proudmom
â Jan Helson (@janhelson) February 5, 2013
The Entrepreneur Championing Compassion Through Education Reform [May 5, 2014]
WHO: Jan Helson
HOW SHE DOES IT: A lifelong businesswoman and philanthropist, Kentucky mother Jan Helson taught her kids at an early age the importance of both business savvy and a passion for giving back. Itâs no wonder, then, that when her daughter Rachel learned that another one of her aunts (making it four) had been diagnosed with breast cancer, the aspiring actress staged a local performance of âThe Rocky Horror Showâ to raise money for breast cancer research. Rachel, then 15, raised a whopping $12,000 and eventually went on to produce the play as a one-night benefit on Broadway in 2007.
For Jan Helson, the experience confirmed her long-held belief that encouraging a childâs true interests holds the key to professional and personal success. Today, sheâs spreading that message through the Global Game Changers, an educational nonprofit she founded with Rachel in 2011. GGC offers after-school programs through local organizations like the YMCA, summer camps and a Common Core-compliant curriculum that encourages kids to pair their passions with their talents to unleash their âsuperpowerâ to change the world. âWe believe that itâs important for kids to find the educational aspects of what theyâre learning to be fun and engaging and something thatâs relatable,â Jan Helson told NationSwell. âBy using the equation â my talent plus my heart equals my superpower â the goal is to show them that giving back is part of who they are and not just something that they do.â
HOW YOU CAN HELP: Sponsor a child for a Global Game Changers workshop here.
Kaitlin Mesh
Kaitlin Mesh is an actress and dancer currently residing in Los Angeles, CA. Being the daughter of a theatre coach and director, Mesh was bit by the performance bug at an early age and spent the majority of her youth in the Kansas City theatre and dance scene. After graduating high school she immediately moved to NYC where she briefly studied at the New York Conservatory for the Dramatic Arts but wasnât able to complete her training because she booked a European tour of Hair the Musical with choreography by David Parsons of Parsons Dance Company.
Quickly after returning to the states she made her Broadway debut as an original cast member of the 2009 revival of West Side Story, which included live performances on the 63rd Annual Tony Awards as well as being featured on the Grammy Award Winning, New Broadway Cast Recording. She also understudied the role of Anybodys and was fortunate enough to perform the role over 60 times. Mesh then went on to originate the role of Lily in the Off Broadway production of The City Club. She then joined the 2011 Broadway revival of Anything Goes in the role of Virtue. Her latest Broadway appearance was in Nice Work If You Can Get It starring Matthew Broderick.
When not on stage, Mesh can be seen in the pilot episode of the new Amazon Studios series Mozart in the Jungle as well as national and international commercials for Carioca CafĂ©, Alfani Suits, and Sally Hensen, among others. In addition, she is an ongoing student at Anthony Meindlâs Acting Workshop in Hollywood, CA.
kaitmeshOk, 2015, lets do this! #power #starz [Jan 7 2015] |
kaitmeshThat’s a wrap! #starz #powertv [Jan 8 2015] |
â Kaitlin Mesh (@KaitMesh) January 8, 2015
kaitmesh“Do not feel lonely, the entire universe is inside you” -Rumi [July 23 2015] |
kaitmeshDaddy’s girl #tbt [July 23 2015] |
A million people just saw my sister have a tv threesome and this is how she feels about it pic.twitter.com/tLgQntDo9P
â Molly Murphy (@MoMurphyyy) July 26, 2015
MY SISTERS ASS LOOKS INCREDIBLE ON TV
â Molly Murphy (@MoMurphyyy) July 26, 2015
For the record it’s for a TV show…
â Molly Murphy (@MoMurphyyy) July 26, 2015