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The thrill of the ‘Kill’
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BY: MARGI HERWALD ZITELLI City Editor
Two Jewish Clevelanders light up the small screen in “The Kill Point”
Five men walk into a bank with a plan to rob it, but everything goes wrong. Suddenly, they’re in the middle of a shootnout with cops, responsible for 13 hostages, and facing a formidable opponent in the city’s top negotiator.
This is “The Kill Point,” a new mininseries currently airing Sunday nights through Aug. 26 on Spike TV. Filmed in Pittsburgh, the nationally broadcast series features several Cleveland actors, including Laurel Brooke Johnson and teenager Ethan Rosenfeld.
“The Kill Point” pits negotiator Horst Cali (Donnie Wahlberg) against wouldnbe bank robber Mr. Wolf (John Leguizamo). The blacknandnwhite situation turns to shades of gray when it’s revealed that Wolf and his henchmen aren’t hardened criminals, but damaged Iraq War vets who feel abandoned by their government.
If the original scripted series is successful, it could change the landscape for Spike, a network aimed at male viewers, which until this point has primarily aired reruns of “CSI,” James Bond films, and Ultimate Fighting.
But that’s all secondary for Johnson and Rosenfeld. “The Kill Point” is the first television job for each actor, and as Johnson says, “I just get such a kick out of the fact that I’m on TV!”
Introducing Ethan Rosenfeld as Robby Sabian
“One review described my character as a ‘loveable smartass,’” boasts Ethan Rosenfeld of his role in “The Kill Point.” The 16nyearnold Solon resident features prominently in the series as Robby Sabian, a computer genius who is among the bank hostages. Unbeknownst to the police, the hostagentakers employ his technological skills to help them communicate with the outside world.
Robby is “very selfnconscious,” Rosenfeld explains, rocking leisurely in a chair in his family’s living room. “He makes fun of himself before others can. And he has a very bad relationship with his father.”
As a hostage, Rosenfeld spent a lot of time on (and off) set with actor and comedian John Leguizamo. “When I saw he was on the cast list, I said, ‘I’ve gotta do this!’” Rosenfeld says.
In no time the pair were friends, singing “Fiddler on the Roof” songs to each other during latennight shoots.
Leguizamo “taught me a lot about improvising,” the young actor says. “He never sticks to the script. And his favorite word (when improvising) is ‘Man.’ Watch the show and see how many times he says it.”
Leguizamo also led Rosenfeld into an offncamera life of “crime.” The pair stole some valuable props from a table on the bank set. With a sly smile, Rosenfeld notes that if you know what you’re looking for, the absence of the pilfered props is noticeable in later episodes.
Rosenfeld, who became a bar mitzvah at Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple, started performing with youth theaters at age 5. Until landing his role in “The Kill Point,” he had only worked on stage, including at Chagrin Valley Little Theatre, the Weathervane Playhouse, and the JCC’s Playmakers Youth Theatre. He also won a Best Supporting Actor award at Stage Door Manor performing arts camp.
“The stage requires a little more discipline,” Rosenfeld explains. “You have to stay on script, but on a TV show, the script changes every day, and you never know what you’re going to say ’til that morning. On stage, there could be 300 people watching. On TV, there are maybe 30 people watching you shoot, and they don’t really care because they have to do their jobs. So, I wasn’t as nervous.”
The nervousness, Rosenfeld confesses, cropped up the night the show premièred. His family, including parents Sherry and Bob and sisters Emily and Elisabeth, hosted a viewing party for family and friends. To calm his nerves before the première, a friend took him to the Great Lakes Medieval Faire, where he was recognized from “The Kill Point” commercials.
“I had seen a few parts of different episodes” while on set, Rosenfeld says. “I was upset with myself watching it. But when I saw it (on TV), I actually thought I did a good job. Watching it didn’t seem like it was me; it was some weird kid on screen.”
Bob Rosenfeld, with whom Ethan also participates in Civil War reenactments, accompanied his son on multiple trips to Pittsburgh for “The Kill Point” shoot. “He didn’t stay on set with me,” Ethan says. “He found all the museums.”
The young actor shot for the entire month of April and returned to the set at points in May and June. He didn’t miss school in the strictest sense: After his freshman year of high school, Rosenfeld was unhappy and switched to ECOT, an online school. “I download all my assignments; it’s great,” he declares. But without access to the Internet while on set, Rosenfeld had to “cram a whole semester into six weeks.”
Next up for Rosenfeld is a juicy role as a drug dealer in “A Hatful of Rain” at the Acting Out School. “I’m typecast a lot,” he says with frustration, “I usually play the comical role.” With a grin, he adds, “But this time, I’m definitely the antagonist.”
For now he’s enjoying his television debut. “My family keeps saying ‘a star is born,’” Rosenfeld scoffs. “I’m, like, no! I’m an actor. I don’t want to be called a star. The real stars are the people in Iraq, the ones these guys (from ‘The Kill Point’) are portraying. It’s weird how people idolize other people on screen when they’re just actors.”
Introducing Laurel Johnson as Lucy Cali
At 28, actress Laurel Brooke Johnson is just hitting the point, she says, “where I’m being cast at my actual age or older, not just playing college kids.” Nonetheless, when she auditioned for the role of hostage negotiator Horst Cali’s pregnant wife Lucy in “The Kill Point,” she was initially turned down for being too young.
But three weeks later, she got a call saying she’d gotten the part. “It’s my first time playing a wife and mother,” notes Johnson as she sips a fruit smoothie at a coffee shop on a Sunday afternoon. “(My character) is an adult. A very mature, worried wife who really has the best interests of her husband at heart.”
Johnson, who appears in the Aug. 12 episode and Aug. 26 finale, can’t divulge much more about her character, except to say she is involved in a plot twist. “You can say I get caught up in the action,” she hints with a grin.
While the cast of “The Kill Point” pilot episode met in advance and had some rehearsals, Johnson joined the shoot later on. She pretty much had to show up on set ready to go and to mix in with experienced film and television actors.
“I didn’t feel out of my league; I thought I would,” Johnson admits. Rather, she found being on set “exciting. It felt like the right place to be.”
Playing wife to Donnie Wahlberg, former teen idol from the singing group New Kids on the Block, was a bonus for Johnson, who remembers being in sixth grade when everyone was singing along to “The Right Stuff.”
Johnson, who shares an onnscreen kiss with Wahlberg, has been dubbed a “hero” by women who had crushes on the star in their youth.
“Donnie’s a goofball. He was so nice, I didn’t have to be starnstruck,” she says. “But a little starnstrucknness helped to form the character n to create a husbandnwife relationship with someone so cute and wonderful.”
Wahlberg frequently joked with Johnson. While watching the playback of their scenes together, he would tease her with comments like, “I look like I love you there, right?”
A Gates Mills native who became a bat mitzvah at Temple Israel Ner Tamid, Johnson discovered theater somewhat by accident while attending Mayfield High School. She originally wanted to be a radiologist after she was impressed by a doctor who discovered she had been unknowingly injured while doing gymnastics. She only auditioned for Mayfield’s production of “The Miracle Worker” her junior year because she was intrigued by Helen Keller.
Johnson continued to act throughout high school. “I thought it was fun,” she says, “but I was going to be a doctor.”
While at Brandeis University, Johnson again felt the “overwhelming desire” to act, scoring a role in William Inge’s classic play “Picnic.” She filled her final two years at Brandeis with acting classes n although she graduated in 2001 with a degree in linguistics and cognitive science.
Shortly after graduating, she moved to New York City to pursue a career in acting.
While she credits her New York years with providing her with good experience, in summer 2006, Johnson began “looking at my career and my life as a whole,” she says. “Unless you’re making a million dollars a picture, (an actor) has to have a day job. I didn’t want to be a waitress forever and ever. I didn’t want to live in all that concrete. And I wanted to be near family. I wanted to be a success story, and all signs pointed to Cleveland.”
Johnson wished to return to Cleveland, in part, because her grandfather David “Doovy” Kirschenbaum had fallen ill (he would die shortly after she moved back). She had already lost two aunts to cancer while living in New York, and she didn’t want to be far from her large extended Northeast Ohio family, including parents Amy and Jeff and younger brother Simon, during the difficult time.
Johnson did research the Cleveland theater scene before uprooting her New York life, however. She was surprised and impressed by the variety and quality of work being produced here.
“I came home, and I’ve been working ever since,” she notes, listing credits at The Bang and The Clatter, Cleveland Public Theatre, and Chagrin Valley Little Theatre. This fall, she will appear in “Some Girls” at The Bang and The Clatter and in “Holy Ghosts” at The Beck Center.
“I thought I’d have to go to New York or L.A. to work but keep a residence here,” Johnson says. “But no, I have a career here. L.A. and New York casting agents always said I was too Midwestern. So I said, ‘Fine! I’m moving back!’”
While she did manage to escape waitressing, Johnson still works a day job as a recruiting coordinator at Brulant Internet marketing company. “They’re wholly supportive of my (acting) career,” she says. “The other day, my boss said, ‘I’m going to be so sad when we lose you to the movies.’”
mherwald@cjn.org
Five men walk into a bank with a plan to rob it, but everything goes wrong. Suddenly, they’re in the middle of a shootnout with cops, responsible for 13 hostages, and facing a formidable opponent in the city’s top negotiator.
This is “The Kill Point,” a new mininseries currently airing Sunday nights through Aug. 26 on Spike TV. Filmed in Pittsburgh, the nationally broadcast series features several Cleveland actors, including Laurel Brooke Johnson and teenager Ethan Rosenfeld.
“The Kill Point” pits negotiator Horst Cali (Donnie Wahlberg) against wouldnbe bank robber Mr. Wolf (John Leguizamo). The blacknandnwhite situation turns to shades of gray when it’s revealed that Wolf and his henchmen aren’t hardened criminals, but damaged Iraq War vets who feel abandoned by their government.
If the original scripted series is successful, it could change the landscape for Spike, a network aimed at male viewers, which until this point has primarily aired reruns of “CSI,” James Bond films, and Ultimate Fighting.
But that’s all secondary for Johnson and Rosenfeld. “The Kill Point” is the first television job for each actor, and as Johnson says, “I just get such a kick out of the fact that I’m on TV!”
Introducing Ethan Rosenfeld as Robby Sabian
“One review described my character as a ‘loveable smartass,’” boasts Ethan Rosenfeld of his role in “The Kill Point.” The 16nyearnold Solon resident features prominently in the series as Robby Sabian, a computer genius who is among the bank hostages. Unbeknownst to the police, the hostagentakers employ his technological skills to help them communicate with the outside world.
Robby is “very selfnconscious,” Rosenfeld explains, rocking leisurely in a chair in his family’s living room. “He makes fun of himself before others can. And he has a very bad relationship with his father.”
As a hostage, Rosenfeld spent a lot of time on (and off) set with actor and comedian John Leguizamo. “When I saw he was on the cast list, I said, ‘I’ve gotta do this!’” Rosenfeld says.
In no time the pair were friends, singing “Fiddler on the Roof” songs to each other during latennight shoots.
Leguizamo “taught me a lot about improvising,” the young actor says. “He never sticks to the script. And his favorite word (when improvising) is ‘Man.’ Watch the show and see how many times he says it.”
Leguizamo also led Rosenfeld into an offncamera life of “crime.” The pair stole some valuable props from a table on the bank set. With a sly smile, Rosenfeld notes that if you know what you’re looking for, the absence of the pilfered props is noticeable in later episodes.
Rosenfeld, who became a bar mitzvah at Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple, started performing with youth theaters at age 5. Until landing his role in “The Kill Point,” he had only worked on stage, including at Chagrin Valley Little Theatre, the Weathervane Playhouse, and the JCC’s Playmakers Youth Theatre. He also won a Best Supporting Actor award at Stage Door Manor performing arts camp.
“The stage requires a little more discipline,” Rosenfeld explains. “You have to stay on script, but on a TV show, the script changes every day, and you never know what you’re going to say ’til that morning. On stage, there could be 300 people watching. On TV, there are maybe 30 people watching you shoot, and they don’t really care because they have to do their jobs. So, I wasn’t as nervous.”
The nervousness, Rosenfeld confesses, cropped up the night the show premièred. His family, including parents Sherry and Bob and sisters Emily and Elisabeth, hosted a viewing party for family and friends. To calm his nerves before the première, a friend took him to the Great Lakes Medieval Faire, where he was recognized from “The Kill Point” commercials.
“I had seen a few parts of different episodes” while on set, Rosenfeld says. “I was upset with myself watching it. But when I saw it (on TV), I actually thought I did a good job. Watching it didn’t seem like it was me; it was some weird kid on screen.”
Bob Rosenfeld, with whom Ethan also participates in Civil War reenactments, accompanied his son on multiple trips to Pittsburgh for “The Kill Point” shoot. “He didn’t stay on set with me,” Ethan says. “He found all the museums.”
The young actor shot for the entire month of April and returned to the set at points in May and June. He didn’t miss school in the strictest sense: After his freshman year of high school, Rosenfeld was unhappy and switched to ECOT, an online school. “I download all my assignments; it’s great,” he declares. But without access to the Internet while on set, Rosenfeld had to “cram a whole semester into six weeks.”
Next up for Rosenfeld is a juicy role as a drug dealer in “A Hatful of Rain” at the Acting Out School. “I’m typecast a lot,” he says with frustration, “I usually play the comical role.” With a grin, he adds, “But this time, I’m definitely the antagonist.”
For now he’s enjoying his television debut. “My family keeps saying ‘a star is born,’” Rosenfeld scoffs. “I’m, like, no! I’m an actor. I don’t want to be called a star. The real stars are the people in Iraq, the ones these guys (from ‘The Kill Point’) are portraying. It’s weird how people idolize other people on screen when they’re just actors.”
Introducing Laurel Johnson as Lucy Cali
At 28, actress Laurel Brooke Johnson is just hitting the point, she says, “where I’m being cast at my actual age or older, not just playing college kids.” Nonetheless, when she auditioned for the role of hostage negotiator Horst Cali’s pregnant wife Lucy in “The Kill Point,” she was initially turned down for being too young.
But three weeks later, she got a call saying she’d gotten the part. “It’s my first time playing a wife and mother,” notes Johnson as she sips a fruit smoothie at a coffee shop on a Sunday afternoon. “(My character) is an adult. A very mature, worried wife who really has the best interests of her husband at heart.”
Johnson, who appears in the Aug. 12 episode and Aug. 26 finale, can’t divulge much more about her character, except to say she is involved in a plot twist. “You can say I get caught up in the action,” she hints with a grin.
While the cast of “The Kill Point” pilot episode met in advance and had some rehearsals, Johnson joined the shoot later on. She pretty much had to show up on set ready to go and to mix in with experienced film and television actors.
“I didn’t feel out of my league; I thought I would,” Johnson admits. Rather, she found being on set “exciting. It felt like the right place to be.”
Playing wife to Donnie Wahlberg, former teen idol from the singing group New Kids on the Block, was a bonus for Johnson, who remembers being in sixth grade when everyone was singing along to “The Right Stuff.”
Johnson, who shares an onnscreen kiss with Wahlberg, has been dubbed a “hero” by women who had crushes on the star in their youth.
“Donnie’s a goofball. He was so nice, I didn’t have to be starnstruck,” she says. “But a little starnstrucknness helped to form the character n to create a husbandnwife relationship with someone so cute and wonderful.”
Wahlberg frequently joked with Johnson. While watching the playback of their scenes together, he would tease her with comments like, “I look like I love you there, right?”
A Gates Mills native who became a bat mitzvah at Temple Israel Ner Tamid, Johnson discovered theater somewhat by accident while attending Mayfield High School. She originally wanted to be a radiologist after she was impressed by a doctor who discovered she had been unknowingly injured while doing gymnastics. She only auditioned for Mayfield’s production of “The Miracle Worker” her junior year because she was intrigued by Helen Keller.
Johnson continued to act throughout high school. “I thought it was fun,” she says, “but I was going to be a doctor.”
While at Brandeis University, Johnson again felt the “overwhelming desire” to act, scoring a role in William Inge’s classic play “Picnic.” She filled her final two years at Brandeis with acting classes n although she graduated in 2001 with a degree in linguistics and cognitive science.
Shortly after graduating, she moved to New York City to pursue a career in acting.
While she credits her New York years with providing her with good experience, in summer 2006, Johnson began “looking at my career and my life as a whole,” she says. “Unless you’re making a million dollars a picture, (an actor) has to have a day job. I didn’t want to be a waitress forever and ever. I didn’t want to live in all that concrete. And I wanted to be near family. I wanted to be a success story, and all signs pointed to Cleveland.”
Johnson wished to return to Cleveland, in part, because her grandfather David “Doovy” Kirschenbaum had fallen ill (he would die shortly after she moved back). She had already lost two aunts to cancer while living in New York, and she didn’t want to be far from her large extended Northeast Ohio family, including parents Amy and Jeff and younger brother Simon, during the difficult time.
Johnson did research the Cleveland theater scene before uprooting her New York life, however. She was surprised and impressed by the variety and quality of work being produced here.
“I came home, and I’ve been working ever since,” she notes, listing credits at The Bang and The Clatter, Cleveland Public Theatre, and Chagrin Valley Little Theatre. This fall, she will appear in “Some Girls” at The Bang and The Clatter and in “Holy Ghosts” at The Beck Center.
“I thought I’d have to go to New York or L.A. to work but keep a residence here,” Johnson says. “But no, I have a career here. L.A. and New York casting agents always said I was too Midwestern. So I said, ‘Fine! I’m moving back!’”
While she did manage to escape waitressing, Johnson still works a day job as a recruiting coordinator at Brulant Internet marketing company. “They’re wholly supportive of my (acting) career,” she says. “The other day, my boss said, ‘I’m going to be so sad when we lose you to the movies.’”
mherwald@cjn.org
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