You hear his striking, Emmy Award-winning music every time you watch Succession. He’s Nicholas Britell and he’s one of the brightest lights in the world of contemporary film and television scoring. His collaboration with filmmaker Barry Jenkins has yielded two Oscar nominations to date—for Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk. A New Yorker through and through, he remains disarmingly unpretentious and was happy to chat with Leonard and Jessie about the music he provided for Whiplash (which he also co-produced), The Big Short and Natalie Portman’s directorial debut, Eve, among others. He’s still got a big career ahead of him. 

If best-selling author and filmmaker Stephen Chbosky weren’t quarantined he’d be shooting the movie version of the Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen—which we can’t wait to see. Meanwhile, his beautiful film Wonder is a Maltin Movie Club recommendation. Leonard and Jessie welcome him back to the podcast to discuss his wide-ranging career, starting with The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and his mentor, screenwriter Stewart Stern, who wrote Rebel Without a Cause and inspired Stephen from the moment they met.