Young Hollywood: From R.I. to L.A., local talent makes its mark in the world of entertainment

Featuring Sam Ewing, Timothy Mendonça, Pat Lambert, and Kai Dolbashian

Newport County has been a wellspring of artistic expression for centuries, nurturing writers, artists, visionaries, and creatives of every kind. Nearly 70 years ago, High Society, featuring Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly and set in Newport, debuted. In 1974, Robert Redford and Mia Farrow filmed The Great Gatsby here. An impressive slate of major motion pictures followed, so it’s no surprise that a new generation of local talent — from composers to producers and everything in between — is now pulling the strings in Hollywood.

As a companion to last year’s feature, “Spotlight on Local Filmmakers,” we profile four visionaries who, no matter where their careers have taken them, have never forgotten the place and, most especially, the people, that made it all possible.

SAM EWING | Composer

When Sam Ewing was 12, his father took him to a Radiohead concert, an experience that inspired him and paved the path for his future in a way he never expected. The day after the concert, he returned to St. Michael’s Country Day School and told his music teacher, Art Manchester, all about the show. “You think of the music classroom like, ‘OK, here’s Beethoven and Bach, we’re gonna learn about Duke Ellington,’ but was like, ‘this rock concert, it was so sick!’ and, Art was like, ‘YES!’” Ewing says. “I felt so validated … and then he was throwing me guitar solos and cover stuff that really encouraged me.”

Manchester told Ewing’s parents he could see Sam being a music professional, even connecting them with a guitar teacher. Later, at Portsmouth High School, band director and teacher Ted Rausch further emboldened Ewing. He urged the young guitar impresario to take a class integrating music and computing, which would lay the groundwork for a future in music composition. Rausch also helped Ewing once he set his sights on attending the renowned Berklee College of Music in Boston. “Ted really helped me push the jazz chops which, at least at the time, were a huge part of what Berklee looked for in applicants,” says Ewing. “Everything from the enthusiasm and the vision, or recognizing me lighting up with music, 100 percent, these teachers on Aquidneck Island have certainly been a huge part of my path.”

Their work paid off handsomely with Ewing earning admission and some scholarships as well. Soon, he was thinking big picture. “The idea was to pivot into something that would honestly just make me money, because I was pragmatic enough, even at that age, to know I want a job. I wanted to make money,” he laughs. His work caught the attention of Michael Sweet, who led the video game scoring curriculum at Berklee. Sweet thought Ewing would be a great match for an internship with Emmy Award-winning film, television and video game composer Bear McCreary. By 2014, Ewing was moving to Los Angeles to work with McCreary full time.

“I just got in at the right time because things were really just taking off in his career, and also just in Hollywood, L.A. in general,” Ewing says. “The breakthrough gig for me was co-scoring The Walking Dead, the mothership show.” Since then, Ewing’s career has skyrocketed, composing original work for Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Outlander, Black Sails, Black Mirror and more; plus, top video games like the God of War franchise (including The God of War Ragnarok: Valhalla DLC), Arkheron, and many more award-winning games.

“It’s been a super cool experience,” says Ewing.

Now a husband and father, Ewing, 34, has had space to reflect on his journey. And about how life-altering it can be to have people in your corner, especially when the things that light a fire in you perhaps aren’t regarded as the most traditional, stable, or secure pursuits.

“You’re not determining your career path at 18. You’re exploring, so I think if you’re, if you’re into something, you should be totally stepping on the gas,” he says. “And definitely, hats off to those teachers and to parents for recognizing that and not shying away from it.”

TIMOTHY MENDONÇA | Artist, Writer, Producer

“Growing up, I was always into film, performing arts, and was involved with the Newport Children’s Theatre, but I feel like the turning point was definitely in high school,” says Timothy Mendonça. The artist, writer and producer, who was raised in Newport and Middletown, credits Renee Bissell, an art and photography teacher at Middletown High School, with setting him on the path that would define his career. “She was a huge influence on me.”

Bissell helped get Mendonça on a student jury at the Newport International Film Festival (the precursor to today’s newportFILM), a gesture that turned out to be life-changing. It not only ignited his passion for filmmaking, it sparked a curiosity about independent film and the art of independent filmmaking.

By his senior year, Mendonça had written and directed his own short film, which premiered at the festival. The thrill of seeing it all come together — the vision, the creativity, the vulnerability, the labor — and having others experience it, has never left him. Even today, he gets that same rush.

“There’s nothing like being in the theater when the work plays on screen that you put so much of yourself into, and where you worked all of these long hours,” he says. “Especially with that film, I was kind of scared at first. With any artist, I think you’re always a little bit scared or self conscious of what people are going to think.”

Mendonça didn’t have to leave home to break into the industry. As a teen, his persistence landed him an internship with local casting director Anne Mulhall. “She introduced me to the behind-the-scenes machine of making a project and the whole production world that I really started falling in love with,” he says. That led to work as a casting assistant on Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, the crime series Brotherhood, and other productions filmed in Rhode Island.

Mendonça, 33, studied film at the University of Rhode Island and continued to gain production experience on local sets, including The Discovery with Robert Redford and Woody Allen’s Irrational Man — both predominantly shot in Newport — as well as other films.

“What’s great about coming up through the production office is you have access to everyone,” Mendonça says. “You have access to the producers. You have access to the writers. You have access to the production manager. You’re dealing with casts, you’re dealing with agents, you’re dealing with people at the studio, so you’re a sponge, and you’re soaking up all of this information.”

But it was an opportunity to be a production coordinator on a hit series that brought him to New York. From its second season on, Mendonça was dedicated to The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

“It was definitely the biggest project that I’ve worked on, budget-wise and success-wise and awards-wise,” he says, “and it led me to have relationships with some of the cast and the producers and took me to the Emmys three times.”

Productions and festivals have taken him to many places, in fact, from across the country and beyond. Earlier this year, Mendonça was at the Cannes Film Festival with a short film he co-produced. He has numerous projects in the pipeline and maintains a relationship with URI, never forgetting the places where he got started or the people who encouraged him. “I actually got one of the students a job on the M. Night Shyamalan film that’s filming in Rhode Island right now,” he said. “It’s not an industry where you can kind of sit around and wait for something to happen. You also need that drive to have it be sustainable as a career.”

Mendonça stays in touch with Bissell, and says if he ever receives a major award, she should expect a shout out. “It only takes one person to open up a whole new world, to spark your imagination a little more, who can give you that confidence that your work is good. You just need that one person to say yes.”

PAT LAMBERT | Executive Producer, Development Executive

For as long as he can remember, Pat Lambert has been a performer. “It was instantaneous. Little Compton had community theater in the summer, and I started doing classes when I was five. I was at every single one. And then when they started doing regional theater in Little Compton, it shaped my world.”

By the time he reached Portsmouth High School, Lambert was a regular in school plays and in regional productions at the Little Theatre of Fall River. “I was a mock trial kid. I was in chorus; anything that I could do to get on a stage, I did,” he says. “I found what I loved and lit up doing it.” Even while working as a busboy at the Stone House Inn in Little Compton, Lambert saw opportunity. “C-list celebrities would come through, and I’d be like, ‘This is my ticket to Hollywood. This is my moment!’”

The son of a lobsterman and a schoolteacher, he describes his family as “authentic Irish Catholic small- town folk.” He worked to secure scholarships to Emerson College in Boston, widely recognized as a performing arts, film, and entertainment school that Lambert calls “mini-Hollywood.” There he learned the ins and outs of the film business, both in front of and behind the camera. When films were shot in and around Boston, Lambert made it a point to get on set. To gain experience, he worked at WGBH, Boston’s much-loved public radio station, booking high-profile guests ranging from academics to celebrities.

“I didn’t know that was a job, so I just started being the person who booked people like Alec Baldwin, Jennifer Coolidge, and Tina Fey … and then it was negotiating the contracts with the agents,” he recalls, “and I didn’t realize that was talent booking and talent producing.” The gig gave him just enough experience to get his start in Los Angeles.

As a news and talent booker for NBC, ABC, FOX and E!, Lambert booked everyone from former presidents and Oprah to Honey Boo Boo on talk shows and news programs. Booking led to development, a term for the early-stage process of turning an idea for a show, movie or documentary into a viable project. From working with agents and talent to securing financing, Lambert oversaw lifestyle programming and investigative documentaries, developing projects with Kendrick Lamar, Kevin Costner, Whoopi Goldberg, Sean Hayes, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Jessica Biel and others.

Lambert, 35, says he seeks impact-driven stories seen through the lens of pop culture. He has set up wide ranging projects at Hulu, A&E, BET, and MTV, and was an executive producer for the 2024 Lifetime docuseries Where is Wendy Williams? The series drew more than 12 million viewers and struck a cultural nerve with its exploration of conservatorship, addiction, and fame.

Lambert’s Hollywood journey, which has led to his current position as a creative executive at Live Nation Productions, has included no shortage of Rhode Island connections. He’s worked with Viola Davis, high profile agents and publicists from the Ocean State, and Little Compton’s eight Kinnane Brothers (profiled by Newport Life in our March/April 2024 issue as part of the “Spotlight on Local Filmmakers” series) — writers, producers and directors with a number of hits to their name, along with a new film written and directed by the brothers starring Kevin James and Alyson Hanigan is slated for a February release.

“There’s a lot of us Rhody girls,” Lambert jokes. But it takes more than connections to sustain a career in the industry.

“Hollywood is a working-class town, so you can be a nepo kid and have all the connections in the world, but at the end of the day, it’s grit that gets you through,” he says. Dedication and what he calls a “cheerleader personality” are critical for success. “Those are the people who break out and survive. It’s a survivor’s game.”

It also takes tenacity, he says. It’s not all glitz and glamor. “You have a hit for a week, nobody cares the week after. You have to just do it for the love of it; because you don’t love anything else as much.”

Gloria Crist, an award-winning actress who served as artistic director of the Little Compton Community Theatre in the early 2000s, encouraged Lambert from an early age to pursue his dream. Now an adjunct professor in Salve Regina University’s Music, Theatre, and Dance Department, Crist played a formative role in his early artistic development, he says.

“I would never have had the idea that this was achievable if I hadn’t had her,” he says. While Lambert now calls California home, he hasn’t forgotten his roots. “I love Los Angeles,” he says, “but East Coast summer is the way to live life.”

KAI DOLBASHIAN | Executive Producer

A few film classes at St. George’s School piqued Kai Dolbashian’s interest and led him to Southern California to pursue a BFA in Creative Producing at Chapman University. “As with all these film schools, it’s an incredible learning experience, but it’s a lot about the people you’re meeting,” says the Middletown native. An internship at MGM led to an entry-level job at the company, and it didn’t take long for Dolbashian to climb the ladder and land a spot on the company’s scripted television development team.

It was there he met Andrew Mittman, who branched out in 2020 with his own production company, 1.21, bringing Dolbashian along to head up development. Mittman previously was an executive producer for the studio’s animated movie The Addams Family, so when the two developed Wednesday, a spinoff series, MGM struck a deal. The series was a smash hit on Netflix, which just released a second season.

“We were able to hit the ground running with that show,” says Dolbashian. Just after, he developed The Consultant, a TV series thriller. “We got really lucky with timing, and then from that, we’ve been doing both film and TV for the last five years,” he said.

Over the past year, the pair has watched the success of their independent film Together, starring Dave Franco and Alison Brie. After developing the script in 2020, they found a filmmaker, secured financing, shot in Australia, took it to the Sundance Film Festival, and got an independent film production and distribution company — Neon — onboard. The film hit theaters in August.

“It takes so long to get these things made,” says Dolbashian, 32.

When he headed west, he blazed a path all his own, but with the encouragement of those who matter most to him. And that’s what he says has made all the difference over the past decade.

“It’s a crazy industry to get into, especially if you don’t have any connections,” he says. “I think a lot of [my success] has to do with growing up in a really, really supportive community, with a really supportive family. And at St. George’s, a really supportive teacher, Ray Woishek.”

Being nearly 3,000 miles from his childhood home has given Dolbashian a new appreciation for Aquidneck Island. “No matter how long it’s been, it’s always the bridge, the beach, and, anytime I’m driving through that neighborhood where I grew up between First and Second Beach — it’s super nostalgic, because it’s so unique,” he reflects. “Sometimes you don’t fully appreciate growing up there, until you live in other states, and you’re like, ‘Oh, that was actually one of the greatest places to grow up.’”

EDITOR’S NOTE: We’re always looking for locally connected people doing cool things, so if you think of anyone we missed or should spotlight next time, let us know! You can send an email to Helena at htouhey@newportlifemagazine.com.