HOLLYWOOD CALLING
By Chuck Cascio
For M.J. Marino Stemp, the thing she remembers most about meeting Prince Harry was the hug and warm conversation.
“He was very open and kind,” Marino Stemp said. “We talked for a minute or two – I told him I loved what he was doing for the military, and we talked about his mother – before everyone started to pounce on him.”
The 2016 encounter with the young royal scion at a sporting event in Florida was just one interesting anecdote from a career filled with such moments. You see – Marino Stemp may be a military wife in Ashburn Village plus a mother to two sons and a grandmother to four grandchildren, but she’s also a television and movie producer with many interesting credits to her name.
In 2018, Marino Stemp collaborated with a film company in Hollywood to produce the movie “Burden,” starring Forest Whitaker, Usher, Garrett Hedlund and Andrea Riseborough.
The intense, controversial film is about the Ku Klux Klan in a South Carolina town. An idealistic reverend played by Whitaker strives to keep the peace by urging the group’s leader to disavow his racist past.
“Siding with the angels can seem like a snap in films, but ‘Burden’ has the grace to show how difficult and wrenching a choice that can be,” wrote Kenneth Turan, a critic with the Los Angeles Times.
Marino Stemp was also a producer on the film “Lonesome Soldier,” released in 2023. Based on a true story, the movie portrays the life of Jackson Harlow, a small-town Midwestern musician who becomes a haunted Iraq War veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome.
Alexander Randazzo is a producer, writer and actor. He was one of the writers of “Lonesome Soldier,” and he also played the lead role in the film. He and Marino Stemp have worked together for more than six years now, and it’s a relationship he treasures.
“Her role as a producer on ‘Lonesome Soldier’ ranged from connecting me to financing, to assisting with production and communications with both the real-life people the film was based on as well as with talent, to … helping us with distribution connections,” Randazzo said. “It is rare in the film business for someone to come across a producer as wonderful and good-hearted as M.J., let alone as driven and connected. She is truly unique.”
Marino Stemp first had the chance to immerse herself in media-related work in 1993, when she was living in St. Charles, Md. Her husband, Don, was a pilot stationed at Andrews Air Force Base. One of their two sons, Donnie, was acting in high school plays and auditioning for television parts.
“The more I took him to auditions, the more I became interested in the activity that was going on,” Marino Stemp said. “Little did I know that TV was in me too.”
Marino Stemp met another mother through her sons’ school who was involved in local show business. “That mom was doing a children’s show at our local mall, and she asked me to help,” Marino Stemp recalled. “As a result, I wound up creating a show called ‘Southern Maryland Living,’ which appeared on local Maryland TV.”
After moving at least eight times over the years, including a stint in Germany, the family settled in Ashburn when Don retired from the Air Force in 1996. By then, Marino Stemp’s list of media connections had grown considerably. This led to work producing programming for local television in Loudoun County and Northern Virginia.
She produced a show about legendary Loudoun County Public Schools teacher and coach John Costello that drew acclaim and soon she had her own show – “Where’s M.J.?” – for which she interviewed and produced feature stories about Loudoun residents and businesses.
All the while – getting involved in movies never crossed her mind. “I never wanted to produce a movie. I didn’t know it was in me.”
That is until she was introduced to a Southern reverend who had worked with a young man to help him escape the clutches of the Ku Klux Klan. This led to a decade-long odyssey to bring the story to film – what became “Burden” – her first feature as a producer.
“In the beginning, I was a little star-struck,” Marino Stemp recalled. “Who gets to work with Forest Whitaker and Usher in their first film? Working on it for so long and then having it come true was pretty amazing.”
Donnie Stemp now has his own career in Hollywood, where he works as an actor, musician and singer-songwriter. He says it’s been great watching his mom achieve so much.
“I think it probably was a lifelong dream of hers, but she never thought she would act on it, let alone be successful at it,” Donnie Stemp said. “I’m not sure she could have imagined that one day we would be at the Sundance Film Festival, hanging out with celebrities and Hollywood power brokers, premiering a film that she produced.”
Over the years, Marino Stemp has worked with or interviewed such famous personalities as President Barack Obama, Joe Mantegna, Gary Sinise, Cal Ripken and John Legend.
As her circle of connections and credits continues to grow, Marino Stemp is already thinking about what’s next.
“I do have another soldier story I’m considering. And I was working with a woman who was trafficked at age 12 until age 19,” Marino Stemp said. “She died unexpectedly this year. I have the rights to her story and I’m writing a script. And there has been some interest from Hollywood.”
“What to do?” she said as she pondered the future. “What to do?”
Chuck Cascio is a longtime freelance journalist and author whose works can be found at www.chuckcascioauthor.com