We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Misha Crosby a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Misha, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
I must have been around 5 years old. My dad used to play in the orchestra for West End Musicals so I would get to go along and sit in the orchestra pit. Sometimes I’d be in the audience watching the shows. The focused energy was fascinating to me. When I connected with the actors up on stage and their ability to collectively have the audience feel different things, I knew that’s what I wanted to pursue.
Misha, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I specialize in different aspects of storytelling. I’ve starred in some very popular TV shows that have been broadcast internationally, including a run in FX’s American Horror Story a couple of years ago. When I first started working in TV and film, it became apparent to me that directors varied in their abilities. Some would be great at working with the DP on a technical front with an eye for the shot, others would be stronger at getting a performance. I knew that one day, I wanted to be both.
I was blessed with very good ears. I was a musician as a kid and it’s certainly helped multiple aspects of my life today. The ability to hone in on the truth, to identify different accents and have the musical literacy to work with composers during the scoring process has been invaluable. I’m not sure this is unique, but my obsession has served me well when it comes to my work. I believe you have to be your own harshest critic to a point. I don’t care how many hours I have to put in—when it comes to my art, there are never enough hours in the day.
I’m proud of what we’ve got on the horizon. We’re producing a show that I co-created and directed called Unsinkable starring Brian Cox, John Malkovich, Nathalie Emmanuel, Harry Hamlin, and Thomas Brodie-Sangster. Many people may know Thomas as Sam from Love Actually, and more recently from his role as Benny Watts in the hugely successful Netflix show Queen’s Gambit. Unsinkable captures the epic story of the San Demetrio, the ship that would not die. It was one of the most extraordinary maritime events of WWII. Datura Studios and North Atlantic Ridge, in association with B7 Media and AUDIOMARVELS®, worked to assemble a world-class team for the production of the series.
Audio movies embrace the production style and values of cinematic feature films by creating an immersive blockbuster audio experience for the ears. The sound design and mix is headed up by Jimmy Boyle and George Reilly (Casino Royale, Band of Brothers, Wonder Woman 1984). We partnered with John Mawson’s North Atlantic Ridge to transform his award-winning screenplay, The San Demetrio, into Unsinkable, and we plan to exploit the rights to its accompanying television series in the future.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
I’ve not found pivoting easy, it’s incredibly difficult after you’ve invested everything into trying to achieve something only to realize that it may no longer be a path that’s viable. Determining when’s the right time to change direction can be the difference between destruction and future success.
About 10 years ago I invested 4 years of my life into a feature film that I was also going to star in. We’d attached the creative team along with the key crew and signed agreements for the movie’s financing. My character required me to loose a lot of weight. I’m a 6″2 man who currently sits around 165 lbs – I’m relatively lean. I did a fighter’s weight cut where I lost 16 lbs in 14 hours as a test run with my director. Unfortunately I couldn’t shoot with that level of dehydration and so I had to loose the weight another way for our proof of concept scenes. I eventually got myself down to 141 lbs to shoot the opening scenes and remained close to that for quite some time as we secured our financing and signed our deals.
As we were ramping up pre-production, closing in on our principal photography date, our financiers bailed on us and our contracts. We were in a tough spot. We’d made plans and commitments to a whole crew of people who we were now going to have to let down on top of being deeply disappointed on a personal level.
We could have decided to spend time securing another finance partner, but with the talent attachments we had at the time it could have taken months, if not years years.
We decided to pivot and develop an entirely new movie. A cheaper script that we could finance internally alongside a few smaller equity investors. That movie came together very fast. We based the story on true events surrounding an armed robbery at a friend’s cannabis farm and sourced a location in Northern California that we were able to write the screenplay around. We re-assembled our crew, worked through pre-production and shot the movie all within a few months of starting the process. We went on to sell the US distribution rights of that film to Lionsgate.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Any creative that comes to Los Angeles and survives without being bankrolled has resilience. This town is not easy, and it’s certainly not easy for guys who come from another country barely knowing anyone. No one wants to open the velvet rope for young men who haven’t found recognizable success yet. It’s difficult to be subjective around your own journey. I know that my circumstances have been easier than some and harder than others. I think that anyone who dares to make a living off their art in LA has to have resilience.
Contact Info:
- Website: DaturaStudios.com
- Instagram: @mishacrosby
Image Credits
Datura Studios, LLC