We may have a hostage situation on our hands.
Our affection’s at risk of being captured by the charm, realness, and bubbly energy of budding star June Laporte, part of the impressive cast of the buzzy series American Hostage.
When we first connected, I only had brief promo exposure to the show, but the hook was clear: Jom Hamm is back in a suit. No, you know what — we’re not objectifying him this time around. You’d have to be a mad man not to recognize the magic Hamm works at the helm of a ‘60s-70s period drama.
But I’ll be damned cause, just like on Mad Men, there’s a stacked cast around him bringing this based-on-true-events story to screen, including personal favorite William Jackson Harper (The Good Place) and new favorite Laporte.
Our conversation uncovered a number of layers and parallels between the show and Laporte’s life and between it and the General State of Things™. Laporte plays Ginny Hughes, a young professional with ambitions of building a career in radio (aka, pre-digital podcasts).
“I often think that art can imitate life in funny ways,” Laporte reflects. “Working with Will, working with John, it felt like art imitating life. It was like, yeah, I'm here with you guys too. And you're older, wiser, have a lot to offer, and I'm stepping up to meet you in this space too, which is really where Ginny is at.
“So it worked. It was like everything that I was feeling could just be what Ginny was feeling too.”
The show is labeled as a thriller — and it does have it thrills — but I’d say at heart it’s a story of desperation, humanity, and empathy as much as anything. It follows radio broadcaster Fred Heckman (Hamm) as he navigates hostage-taker Tony Kiritsis (Giovanni Ribisi) demanding to be publicly interviewed on his show.
Laporte highlights that even though it’s a period show, the themes are universal to today’s struggles. “I think [the] themes of what it takes to be pushed into extremes, familial trauma, intergenerational trauma, and [...] what happens when someone is fed up and the system is unfair, which I think so many of us feel in different ways today.”
Preach. Many of us do indeed have warranted (and even at times visceral) reactions to unfair systems. It seems like that’s coming out for Hostage viewers.
“[W]hat I hope and what I feel like I'm starting to see in the discourse online is a lot of people being really captivated by Giovanni's really amazing portrayal of a man who has been really pushed into something and is quite complex, and that's been really cool to see.”
Though journalism rarely carries the glamour of entertainment, there are a lot of struggle points shared between breaking into those fields, which gave Laporte plenty to tap into for the role.
“I think for my character [...] it was really cool to be completely immersed in the world of radio journalism in Indianapolis in the 70s, and to really be immersed in what this path would have been like for a woman of the time in journalism,” Laporte recalls. “These codes for journalism that are quite different from where we are today — that was just really fascinating to delve into.”
Of course, that also brings to light the consideration of the impact, ethics, and mechanisms of journalism then vs. now.
“I definitely think the themes of American Hostage are super relevant. Though it's a series that takes place in 1977, it is so relevant to where we are today,” Laporte says.
This may be Laporte’s most high-profile role to date, but it’s also one that they connected to early on.
“I'm really drawn to really nuanced characters of people because I love psychology, and I think our pains and our grief are really interesting for me to delve into and relate to,” they shared.
“I really love stories about grief, loss. I know that sounds heavy, but I think that those are the stories that I enjoy watching because I feel less alone myself. And so my hope when making stories like that is that other people will watch them and feel less alone as well.”
Certainly, Laporte’s previous work realizes that intention, including playing the lead in the queer coming-of-age drama You Can Live Forever, which premiered at the Tribeca Festival in 2022.
But in meeting the person, you probably won’t readily see that heavy depth of character; rather, a smiley, down-to-earth person who loves playing DND and tried drag under the name “Rome-ho” (a play on Shakespeare’s Romeo, and arguably just as poetic). They even recommended taking clowning classes.
“I know that everyone has a clown in them,” they believe. “[O]n set, I would often ask people: who's your clown? [...] Rest assured that in between takes, we were clowning.”
Audiences can be rest assured, though, that Laporte is no joke, and this is likely the start of a big break (they have projects in the works they could not yet share with us) that will keep us captive for years to come.