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\t\t\t\t\tWarren Littlefield and Elisabeth Moss talk about their producing partnership on \u201cThe Handmaid\u2019s Tale\u201d and \u201cThe Testaments\u201d at the Milken Institute conference on May 4 at the Beverly Hilton hotel.<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\trachael b photography 310.466.25<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \n\tIn her conversation with Kelly, Williams explained that she is motivated by knowing that less than 2% of all VC money flows to female entrepreneurs. And she is excited about the potential to tap into her connections and resources to help grow technology-driven companies with the potential to change the world.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI just wanted to change people writing the checks. I think if the same people are writing the same checks, it\u2019s always going to be this circle that continues,\u201d Williams said. \u201cBut when you shake that up \u2013 setting aside a certain percentage to go to women, to go to underrepresented founders \u2014 I feel like it\u2019s changing the landscape of the top of the funnel. There\u2019s so many companies in our portfolio that are doing so well because of us, and they\u2019re going to be massive, massive companies because of what we bring to the table.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tWilliams is energized by the opportunity to invest in firms that will influence \u201chow we live our lives, how we let our kids live our lives,\u201d she said. \u201cWith everything that\u2019s happening in AI today, we need to be looking at these opportunities. We need to make sure that we also are investing in that because this is as big, if not bigger, than the industrial revolution.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tLongoria zeroed in on how she has deftly leveraged the value of her personal brand in a business context during her May 6 session with Yorn and Keegan.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIf you look at Hollywood and celebrity culture \u2014 we\u2019re trusted voices within a certain market,\u201d Longoria said. \u201cI\u2019m Hispanic. I\u2019m a woman of a certain age, so you might go, \u2018That\u2019s pretty targeted.\u2019 And I probably have a bigger distribution than NBC or ABC \u2013 like, I could reach more people,\u201d Longoria said. \u201cBrands want that end user, and they want the conversion. Because it\u2019s not just about clicks and likes. They want you to convert. How many things did we sell and how many? Or are we exposing a brand, or are we trying to get people to buy something? And so what\u2019s the call to action with these brands?\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tYorn offered his perspective that Longoria was a natural as an investor, as someone who had strong instincts about material and the courage of her convictions. Yorn cited a bit of little-known Hollywood history that Longoria\u2019s firm stepped in with a key source of funding more than a decade ago when the first \u201cJohn Wick\u201d action film was coming together.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt was my naivete that allowed me to take that risk. Because it\u2019s a very high-risk venture to invest in movies. We don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to hit,\u201d Longoria explained. <\/p>\n \n\tFundamentally, Longoria explained that she had faith in director Chad Stahelski and writer Derek Kolstad and their vision for an action movie franchise headed by Keanu Reeves. <\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThey were young, scrappy and hungry. They had this relentless drive and hunger to make the best action movie anybody\u2019s ever seen. And you go, wow, there was like, no denying that they were going to not fail,\u201d she said. \u201cI didn\u2019t fund the whole movie, but I did [provide] emergency situation funds. And \u2018John Wick\u2019 [franchise] went on to make $1 billion at the box office. Again, it was about investing in people who are going to execute what they say they\u2019re going to do.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tFor Yorn, being an investor who is exposed to the cutting-edge of tech innovation has had benefits for his day job as an advocate for creative artists. It certainly helped him drive a path-breaking deal recently completed for client Matthew McCounaghey to trademark his distinctive voice and likeness as a guard against AI thievery.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI\u2019m a protector of intellectual property My goal is to protect someone\u2019s stealing somebody\u2019s voice,\u201d Yorn said. \u201cI\u2019m investing in responsible AI.\u201d On that score, he pointed to the AI-driven audio firm ElevenLabs<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cMatthew McConaughey is very into AI, and he and he did invest with ElevenLabs, and he almost insists that he wants to use ElevenLabs with certain things that he\u2019s doing. But at the same time, I\u2019m his lawyer, and I\u2019m going to get yelled at by everyone in Hollywood. \u2018What the heck are you doing? You got McConaughey going to ElevenLabs and all of a sudden voice actors are gonna be out of work and all this stuff.\u2019 But the same time I have to look at things like, what\u2019s happening here? This is not going away. We actually trademarked his voice and we also trademarked his likeness. We were the first ones to do it with an artist.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tYorn also touched on the soaring value of celebrity personal brands in the area of consumer goods and retail extensions. The way that Hailey Bieber\u2019s Rhode beauty brand leverged branded content to build awareness of Rhode is a prime example, as Yorn detailed.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cEverybody knows beauty brands are so hard. They all fail pretty much every single time,\u201d Yorn said.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe have this person who could be trusted because she represents beauty. And then she had to find the right group to help with making the stuff that people use. It\u2019s got to actually work. But then the third thing was that she was smart enough to connect up with a company called OBB Media. All they do is create content with the storyteller in a way that really resonates with their audience. They just have a special skill,\u201d Yorn said. \u201cSo she had three things that were the special sauce \u2014 massive social media following and trust, a good operator who helped make the product. And then third, this unbelievable amplification of this amazing group that helped her tell a story. And then it worked.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe importance of building and maintaining trust in business relaitonships was a key theme for Moss and Littlefield during their May 4 conversation moderated by Cynthia Littleton, co-Editor in Chief of Variety. Moss shared the story of how she asked her talent representatives to \u201cbring me a Warren Littlefield-type\u201d of producer to work with when she first set out to star in and produce \u201cHandmaid\u2019s Tale\u201d for Hulu more than 10 years ago. She was overjoyed when Littlefield himself turned up.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt\u2019s so much about trust,\u201d Moss said. \u201cWhen you\u2019re embarking on a project, I think the most important decision \u2014 especially as an actor, whether you\u2019re a producer or not \u2014 is that first decision of who are you getting into bed with. Who are you going to be standing alongside? Who\u2019s going to be making those 200 decisions that you make when you are preparing for a show?\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tMoss detailed the gestures and the decisions small and large that Littlefield and \u201cHandmaid\u2019s Tale\u201d showrunner Bruce Miller made out of respect for her role as a producer. For actors, it can be a fraught process to be taken seriously in a different role behind the camera. Littlefield and Miller made Moss feel like a full partner from the start of the Emmy-winning series that ran for six seasons on Hulu, Moss said.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThere were 100 things they did that first season,\u201d Moss recalled. \u201cI\u2019ve been very spoiled. I know that\u2019s not normal.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tLittlefield told Moss that he recognized from the start she had the makings of a great producer, in part because of how she juggled the competing demands on her time.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cYou were in pretty much every scene, so the the workload that we were putting on your shoulders day and night and on weekends was tremendous,\u201d Littlefield recalled. \u201cAnd yet Lizzie wanted to be in these production meetings. We would shoot two episodes together at a time. We were usually $3 million to $4 million over budget as we were prepping and had to get the budget there. And you were part of the solution, part of the process of saying \u2018I wonder if we could combine this, and what if we did this?\u2019 And so it became really clear to us that [Moss\u2019 producing credit] wasn\u2019t just a reward because you were amazing actor in the show. It was because you had producing muscle.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t(Pictured top: Eva Longoria and Kevin Yorn at 2026 Milken Global Conference)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source variety.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Serena Williams delivered a bold statement during a Q&A session about her work in venture capital at the Milken Institute conference. \u201cThis part of my career is going to be much bigger than anything I\u2019ve ever done before,\u201d the tennis great said confidently from the stage at the Beverly Hilton hotel as she discussed her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2419734,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[332987,26988,474015,354384,474016],"class_list":["post-2419733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-elisabeth-moss","tag-eva-longoria","tag-milken-institute","tag-serena-williams","tag-warren-littlefield"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Serena-Williams-Eva-Longoria-Elisabeth-Moss-Talk-Biz-at-Milken.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2419733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2419733"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2419733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2419735,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2419733\/revisions\/2419735"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2419734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2419733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2419733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2419733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}