FROM LOS ANGELES TO ATLANTA

Entertainment industry couple settle in Brookhaven

Cristen Barnes, an actress, and Aaron Milus, a scriptwriter/director/producer, met through mutual friends at a party in Los Angeles in 2011.

“Cristen walked in, and my friend leaned over to me and said, ‘See that blonde girl right there? I’d be OK if you married her.’ Seven or eight years later, we got married.”

In 2019, Barnes and Milus relocated to Brookhaven from LA. Atlanta had everything they wanted: more space so they could build their dream home and the ability to still work in film and television.

“We love our community, neighbors, friends, seasons. We’re getting a more well-rounded life and are still able to pursue what we love to do,” Barnes says. “I like being close to anything we need, and I appreciate how green Atlanta is.”

Though they moved right before the pandemic hit, they found work. Milus was involved with the writer’s room on a Marvel project, and Barnes has done voiceover work for six commercials and played Jackie on an episode of “The Ms. Pat Show” in 2021. “When I booked ‘The Ms. Pat Show,’ it felt like we made the right decision to come here,” Barnes says.

Acting in theater since she was 5, Barnes is auditioning for film and TV this spring. The New Orleans native has done many commercials and acted in indie films and TV shows, including, “Rizzoli & Isles.” In January, she flew to LA to shoot a proof-ofconcept film that will be submitted to festivals. She wants to get more in- volved locally by joining the Atlanta Actors Collective and performing sketch comedy. “A lot of us [from LA’s Straitjacket Society] are out here now, so we started looking at our sketches and scouting out theaters.”

Since Milus was a kid growing up in Illinois, he knew he wanted to be part of the movie industry. He’s worked in post-production doing editorial and design visual effects, built pitch decks for directors and written, shot and directed a few seasons of a web series. Last year, he worked with the NFL on an episode of the YouTube show “NFL Explained” covering the history of team logos. One of his favorite projects was connected to “Project Greenlight,” when he produced a series of promotional videos for a horror film contest.

“We didn’t win, but the people at Adaptive Studios/ ‘Project Greenlight’ liked our pitch video and asked us to produce these videos. So I got to shoot, direct and do post-production and all the graphics for three videos.”

These days, Milus is focused on writing. He’s working on a comedy pilot and a pitch for a production company that wants to build a show around a written article. He also freelances and is a remote teaching assistant for a San Francisco State University screenwriting class. Milus has also written multiple feature scripts (some have been optioned) that he hopes to find homes for in Atlanta.

Milus and Barnes aspire to work with more of the shows filming here, such as “Stranger Things.” “I’ve had many auditions for ‘Stranger Things.’ I really like TV, the set-up, the schedule,” Barnes says.

“I want to write the next ‘Stranger Things,'” Milus says. n cristenbarnes.com • aaronmilus.com

While Jenifer Goldin moved around the country for her training and work as an audiologist, one thing was always part of her luggage: a box crammed with hand-written notebooks that formed the basis of a book she began 30 years ago.

It took a pandemic to pry open that box.

“When COVID hit, everything scaled back, and the timing was great,” says the Miami native who has called Dunwoody home for 12 years. “I had more free time to look at those notebooks written when I was in school in D.C. and didn’t even have a computer.”

Goldin, who is not deaf, was in the capital to study audiology at Gallaudet University. A fellowship at the University of Miami’s hospital took her back to Florida, where she worked in the emerging field of cochlear implants. That expertise led to a three-year stint at a children’s hospital in St. Louis followed by another position in Chicago. Twenty years ago, when she shifted to working for an implant company and could be based anywhere, Goldin picked Atlanta, where she met her husband and gave birth to two daughters. As they got older, she switched to parttime. Then came COVID and a bit more free time to surf the internet.

“In particular, I kept reading these posts on mom pages that always get tons of comments, some nice, some snarky and some downright mean,” she says. “But similar themes around moms and marriage grabbed my attention. I wondered how the mom wound up in this situation, and that turned into a book with all the funny, snarky mom drama.”

Goldin’s debut novel, Anonymous Mom Posts, built on that idea but with a fictitious plot and posts. She also used the psychological thriller to explore topics she wanted to share: raising a special-needs child, toxic friendships, antisemitism and deaf culture.

“But the overarching theme is the pros and cons of social media and what’s at the heart of genuine connection,” she says. “Getting people to think about that would be great.”

Goldin found working on the book so enjoyable, it was hard to