Filmmaker Chris Smith on the Need for Scam Docs Like ‘Hollywood Con Queen’: ‘They Help Educate People’
variety.comAddie Morfoot Contributor In “Hollywood Con Queen,” director Chris Smith chronicles one of Hollywood’s most audacious scams that involved an impostor who posed as top entertainment studio executives to swindle aspiring artists.
Based on the original reporting of entertainment journalist Scott Johnson, and his book, “Hollywood Con Queen: The Hunt for an Evil Genius,” the three-part Apple TV+ docuseries features first-hand accounts and insights from Johnson, private investigator Nicole Kotsianas, the alleged con artist, Hargobind Tahilramani, and his victims.
In 2018, it was revealed that an imposter was posing as a variety of well-known female Hollywood executives and their assistants in a bid to lure victims out to Indonesia with the promise of work.
Tahilramani became something of a media sensation when it emerged he had been impersonating women such as former Sony chief Amy Pascal, Marvel Studios executive VP Victoria Alonso and Lucasfilm’s Kathleen Kennedy, and NBCUniversal Studio Group chair and chief content officer Donna Langley in order to defraud unsuspecting film industry workers who believed they were getting their big break. (Tahilramani was arrested in 2020.) In the docuseries, Smith interviews a handful of Tahilramani’s alleged victims, one of whom lost hundreds of thousands of dollars flying around the world “on assignment” for Amy Pascal.
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