The beloved British actresses were in central London Tuesday for a screening and informal discussion about their upcoming Netflix film Goodbye June. Winslet’s directorial debut — anchored by a gut-wrenching script from her 21-year-old son, Joe Anders — is a Christmas film with just as much joy as it has heartache.
Helen Mirren stars as the titular character who, upon receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis, has her swarm of four children (played by Winslet, Riseborough, Toni Collette and Johnny Flynn) and their families descend on her hospital room ahead of Christmas Day. Winslet’s Julia and Riseborough’s Molly are forced to confront their long-running feud while everyone tussles with their bubbling grief. Timothy Spall, Stephen Merchant and Fisayo Akinade also star in the movie, in theaters Dec. 12 and hitting Netflix Dec. 24.
And over a cup of tea and a macaron at a Netflix-hosted event, the Titanic star further detailed bringing a brilliant batch of actors together. “They are great people. I had to cast people who not only were going to be the only people who could play those parts, but who were going to be lovely,” Winslet says. “I knew they all were — even if I didn’t know them personally, I knew their reputations, because word gets around if someone’s tricky.”
The original plan had been to take the film out to financiers and get another director on board, but Winslet didn’t want to let Goodbye June go. The magic she and Anders were able to conjure on set was more than enough validation. “He really found it fascinating,” she says about Anders seeing his project come to life through his mother.
“We shot it in 35 days, and I had Helen Mirren for 16 days,” she continues. “So I had to be really ready. All those adult actors, all those children, the whole group, loads of different locations, I had to be really, really ready. So for [Anders], there were moments when he turned to me and [would] go, ‘What’s happening? How have we done all this?’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know! Let’s keep going!’ We just had to hold hands and run at it.”
Some stellar performances from the film’s child actors strengthen an already solid cast. “The trick with children is you just mother them,” Winslet explains about working with the kids. “I used all of my own experience as a mother in empowering children, showing them how to have fun by saying to them, ‘Don’t learn any lines and make lots of mistakes. OK?’”
What you don’t want is a child memorizing an abstract bit of dialogue, Winslet says. “We didn’t want that, because children bring the joy. And when you’re in a situation where there’s tragedy happening … they just get on with what they’re doing with the coloring or playing or hiding in the bed.”
“It was so funny,” she recalls, “because I would carry the little ones on to set. They always felt like, ‘Oh, where’s Kate taking us?’ I said to them: ‘Do you know, that in that bed, I’ve actually hidden something…’ So then they’re looking for the hidden thing under the sheets [with] no idea that we were filming an entire scene around them and quite complicated emotions.”
Those in attendance at the Netflix event were desperate to get the chance to talk with a prolific actress who has masterfully executed her long-awaited turn in the director’s chair. But Winslet is also just a mother gushing with pride. “He has brilliant ideas. He’s very, very smart,” she says about Anders. “For as long as I can remember, he’s always written… He’s very humble and very shy.”
“I just wanted him to learn,” she continues. “And I wanted him to be around all these incredible actors.”
There is an ever-burgeoning genre in the world of film and TV: that which can be ascribed to something like a “rest home caper.” From Book Club to Poms to Queen Bees to A Man on the Inside, the growing genre isn’t without its merit. However, apart from A Man on the Inside, there has yet to be a truly standout offering within this category in recent years. The Thursday Murder Club proves no exception to the rule. And, like most movies (whether Netflix or otherwise), it is adapted from a novel of the same name. Though one imagines the book’s author, Richard Osman, didn’t quite have this in mind when envisioning the translation of his work from the page to the screen (but then, he likely never suspected that Netflix and co. would come knocking on his door at all, so why not just take it as a blessing, no matter how the final product turned out?).
Of course, to cushion the blow of the, shall we say, “wonky” execution, there is the cast: Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley and Celia Imrie. A veritable who’s who of British heavy hitters of “a certain generation.” But it’s Imrie who has the most experience with this genre, having previously appeared in Calendar Girls and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (along with its sequel). Alas, her “experience” with this kind of material does little to spare it from being a hatchet job. Regardless of Steven Spielberg being a producer on the project via Amblin Entertainment. And yes, one imagines that it was Spielberg’s long-standing relationship with writer-director Chris Columbus that landed him the gig, replacing Ol Parker as director. Yet it is Parker who has more adjacent experience with the “rest home caper” genre, with The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again all under his belt. No matter, apparently. The production went on with Katy Brand and Suzanne Heathcote taking over the screenwriting process and, in so doing, trimming away here and there at the book’s original structure, which often features diary entries from Joyce (Imrie), the retired nurse that Elizabeth (Mirren), Ron (Brosnan) and Ibrahim (Kingsley) invite into their club to help them with a particular “humdinger” of a case involving a woman named Angela Hughes, whose murder ultimately went unsolved in 1973—indeed, the Thursday Murder Club specializes only in cold cases.
Cold cases that require a sharp mind to solve. So it is that, by bringing Joyce into their group, she quickly learns two things: 1) part of the reason she’s been enlisted is to replace Penny Gray, a former detective inspector recently transferred to hospice care and 2) because of Penny’s former profession, they have access to these types of files that would otherwise be confidential. In the book, Joyce acknowledges these two points as follows: “I suppose there had been a vacancy, and I was the new Penny… Penny had been an inspector in the Kent Police for many years, and she would bring along the files of unsolved murder cases. She wasn’t really supposed to have the files, but who was to know? After a certain age, you can pretty much do whatever takes your fancy.”
To that point, when you get right down to it, that is what this genre is all about—reminding people that the elderly aren’t to be underestimated or written off. For to do so is often at one’s own peril. And yes, it’s also a “gentle” nudge for those audiences outside the demographic it’s aimed for to remember that they, too, will “be there” someday. Albeit probably not in a place as tony as Coopers Chase, which also happens to be one of the linchpins to solving this seemingly quagmiric mystery. One that all goes back to the murder of Hughes.
However, it isn’t Penny who brought this cold case to the TMC’s attention, which should be the first red flag to viewers. Instead, it’s Elizabeth who fished it from the proverbial wreckage, curious at how a woman could have died from a stab wound in that particular part of her body so quickly—this stabbing done before being thrown out of a window. And thrown out of it just as Hughes’ boyfriend, Peter Mercer (Will Stevens), happened to be walking home from the pub, seeing a masked man run away from the scene of the crime. It is from this very moment, the outset of the movie, that the believability factor, combined with the acting delivery, is made apparent in its badness by how “la-di-da” this Peter character is about chasing after his girlfriend’s presumed aggressor, barely bothering to walk after him, let alone run as he shouts, just once, “Stop!” But, of course, after about another two hours of circuitous attempts at offering “red herrings” (in the spirit of Agatha Christie, which the book version of The Thursday Murder Club had intended), the viewer is at last shown, in an extremely dry iteration of how Mystery Incorporated (a.k.a. Scooby and the gang) unveils their findings, who the true killer is. And, in truth, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! actually does offer more sense (and entertainment) in terms of the final results of their cases.
With The Thursday Murder Club, it’s obvious that the tone and wit of the book dissipated in the translation, making the way in which the case unfolds less of a “joy” and more of a grin-and-bear-it fest. And no, even the presence of some younger British heavy hitters, like David Tennant and, increasingly, Naomi Ackie, can’t do much to alleviate the core problem of the movie: it insults the intelligence of its intended audience with its hyper-saccharine nature. To be sure, Chris Columbus does tend to be responsible for making these types of movies (e.g., Gremlins and The Goonies). However, in the past, the final result has been far more, let’s say, “aware of itself” (see also: Mrs. Doubtfire, the obviously far better collaboration between Columbus and Brosnan).
Whereas, with The Thursday Murder Club, it’s clear that Columbus feels there is an “elevated” aura to it…and surely, in part, because of the “Spielberg cachet.” What’s more, Spielberg, too, is well-known for being a champion of the saccharine. But, like Columbus, he has had much better luck in the past with carrying it off than he does here, where the mantra of everyone involved seems to be, “Just an entire vat of sugar makes the medicine go down” (even if you might almost immediately yak it up right after).
That medicine, in this scenario, being the notion that—gasp!—the elderly can have a life after “a certain age.” Can still use their bodies and, even more importantly, their minds to great effect. Often to greater effect than those younger than they are. Just not when it comes to this particular adaptation of a book.
Some of the most compelling moments in White Bird, Marc Forster’s mostly slushy adaptation of R.J. Palacio’s graphic novel of the same name, take place during flashbacks to the 1940s. These are the recollections of an aging grandmother trying to teach her grandson lessons about kindness. They’re also stories of survival, and Forster, with DP Matthias Königswieser, films them in a way that avoids the trappings of sentimentality.
In them, the German-Swiss helmer behind Monster’s Ball, Quantum of Solace and more recently A Man Called Otto reaches for a specificity and a clear-eyed honesty that liberates parts of this young adult film from narrative contrivance. Unfortunately, too much of the rest of Mark Bomback’s screenplay tends toward saccharine manipulation.
White Bird
The Bottom Line
An affecting story undermined by pat conclusions.
Release date: Friday, Oct. 4 Cast: Ariella Glaser, Orlando Schwerdt, Bryce Gheisar, Gillian Anderson, Helen Mirren Director: Marc Forster Screenwriter: Mark Bomback
Rated PG-13,
2 hours
White Bird functions as both a prequel and a sequel to Wonder, another Palacio work adapted for the big screen. That story followed Auggie Pullman, a 10-year-old boy with Treacher Collins syndrome who is tormented by kids at school, including the wealthy Julian (Bryce Gheisar). This one opens a few years later with Julian, slightly older but still played by Gheisar, starting his first day at a new school. It’s an opportunity for Julian to remake himself and shed his unsavory past, and he’s decided the best course of action is to stay under the radar. When a classmate (Priya Ghotane) invites Julian to join the vaguely named Social Justice Club, the teenager, perpetually hidden under his hoodie, declines.
Later that evening, Julian explains his plan to his grandmother, Sara (Helen Mirren), a sophisticated woman who has traveled from Paris to New York for the opening of her retrospective at the Met. (She humorously deems the honor an institution’s way of apologizing to older artists they have either forgotten or altogether neglected.) As Sara guides Julian to the dining room for dinner, she expresses disappointment — she doesn’t believe becoming a wallflower is the correct course of action for someone once suspended for bullying. Over a meal whose intimacy is signaled through warm lighting and close-up angles, Sara shares the tale of her childhood and how the compassion and courage of one boy saved her life.
White Bird then jumps back to the fall of 1942, where a young Sara (Ariella Glaser) enjoys what her older self now describes as a relatively spoiled youth in small-town France. She spends her days at school, drawing intricate doodles and crushing on Vincent (Jem Matthews), a popular boy. Though news of Nazi invasions dominate the news, occupation feels to the young girl like a distant issue unlikely to reach her corner of the world.
But then Sara’s reality changes, slowly at first and then more dramatically. Shops she once frequented now have signs saying they do not serve Jewish people. Those she called friends treat her with an uncharacteristic frostiness. In heated late-night conversations, her parents, Max (Ishai Golan) and Rose (Olivia Ross), argue about whether or not to leave their town.
The Nazi influence and presence in the area becomes still more apparent as the roundups begin, with soldiers barge into homes, offices and schools making violent arrests. Sara only narrowly escapes a frightening incursion at her own institution with the help of Julien (Orlando Schwerdt), a quiet boy left disabled by polio. He leads her through an underground labyrinth to the barn where she’ll live for years, gradually becoming part of his family. Julian’s mother Vivienne (Gillian Anderson) takes special care of Sara, keeping her fed, making her clothes and fiercely protecting her from the gaze of nosy neighbors who might be Nazi informants.
Forster’s steady direction keeps this thread of White Bird affecting even when it conforms to predictable narrative beats. Glaser and Schwerdt are a charismatic duo, and the specificity of the details about the constrictions of the Nazi state make their friendship more tactile and raises the movie’s stakes. It’s easy to believe that these children care for one other and that their interactions — whether in real life or in the cocoon of their imaginative play — deepen their understanding of each other and the world.
The same can’t be said for the flimsy framing narrative about the connection between an older Sara and her grandson. These scenes struggle to shake off the stiffness of vague platitudes and shallow character development. Whenever White Bird leaves a young Sara and Julien, whether to consider the changing sociopolitical landscape of Nazi-occupied France or to return to the present day, it loses its magic.
That Julien’s meant to extract only lessons about kindness works less well here than in Wonder. If he were to become passionate for a particular cause, rather than just being asked to attend the blandly named Social Justice Club, the messages of White Bird might stick better and feel less manipulative. Instead, audiences are left with Sara’s contextless invocation of Martin Luther King Jr. — a figure whose quotes have been so watered down by general application that the force of their meaning, much like Sara’s story, is always at risk of being lost.
Full credits
Distributor: Lionsgate Production companies: Lionsgate, Participant, Kingdom Story Company, Media Capital Technologies, Mandeville Films, 2DUX² Cast: Ariella Glaser, Orlando Schwerdt, Bryce Gheisar, Gillian Anderson, Helen Mirren Director: Marc Forster Screenwriters: Mark Bomback, R.J. Palacio (based on the book by) Producers: Todd Lieberman, p.g.a., David Hoberman, p.g.a., R.J. Palacio Executive producers: Jeff Skoll, Robert Kessel, Kevin Downes, Jon Erwin, Andrew Erwin, Renée Wolfe, Alexander Young, Mark Bomback, Kevan Van Thompson, Christopher Woodrow, Connor DiGregorio Director of photography: Matthias Königswieser Production designer: Jennifer Willians Costume designer: Jenny Beavan Editor: Matt Chessé, ACE Music: Thomas Newman Casting director: Kate Dowd, CDG
Rated PG-13,
2 hours
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Mattel is celebrating Barbie’s 65th birthday with the creation of eight new “role model” dolls from eight different countries. Among those getting the “Barbie” treatment are Viola Davis, Shania Twain and Helen Mirren.
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A number of Hollywood celebrities are “adopting” people kidnapped by Hamas.
From Michael Douglas to Helen Mirren, A-listers are posting photos and information about some of the around 240 people held hostage by the militant group in Gaza.
The military arm of the Palestinian group launched an air and land attack in Israel on October 7, killing more than 1,400 and kidnapping others. Four of the hostages have been freed on medical grounds and one was rescued.
[MAIN IMAGE] Michael Douglas attends a photocall at the 76th annual Cannes film festival on May 16, 2023 in France. [INSET IMAGE] A poster bearing a photo of Israeli hostage Dafna Elyakim is seen in Sydney, Australia on October 27. Douglas is one of many celebrities to call for the release of Israeli hostages by Hamas. Dominique Charriau//WireImage
Israel retaliated against Hamas by launching “Operation Swords of Iron,” which has been a series of unrelenting air raids and ground operations in Gaza. More than 9,000 people have been killed since Israel began its attacks in Gaza and more than 130 in the occupied West Bank, according to The Associated Press.
While celebrities have spoken out about the war and are divided on the topic, a number have taken to social media to call for the release of the hostages. They shared the official “kidnapped” posters of individuals being held hostage with information about them, from the Instagram account Kidnapped From Israel.
The stars include Jamie Lee-Curtis, Zooey Deschanel, Andy Cohen, Brett Gelman, Dr. Phil, Skylar Astin, Howie Mandel, Brooklyn Peltz Beckham, Amy Schumer, Alyssa Milano, Mayim Bialik, Mandy Moore, Phil Rosenthal, Chelsea Handler, Uzo Aduba and Sharon Osbourne.
Douglas shared three photos of a mother and her two children to his Instagram.
“On October 7th, 2-year old Aviv, her 4-year old sister Raz, her mother Doron and grandmother Efrat were kidnapped from their home when Hamas terrorists invaded Israel. Aviv, Raz, their mother and grandmother are among over 229 hostages being held captive in Gaza in unknown conditions for over three weeks. Release Aviv, Raz, Doron and Efrat now!” Douglas wrote.
But one website described the celebrities’ actions as “adopting” the hostages.
Lior Zaltzman, deputy managing editor of Kveller, a Jewish parenting site, wrote by “putting out individual cries for their release,” the famous faces were thereby “adopting” the hostages.
In Hebrew, the verb “to adopt” means the same thing as in English but also refers to “hug someone or something tight, close to one’s bosom,” according to the Jerusalem Prayer Team website.
“It is actually saving a human being’s life… Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the root of this word shares the same spelling as the word o•metz which means: bravery, courage, and valor,” the website reads.
Zaltzman explained to Newsweek that she chose to use the word “adopt” because “it felt right in that instance.”
“There is something intimate in the action of taking on one face, one person, one story as your personal cause, especially from these incredibly recognizable celebrities,” she said. “But in doing this, celebrities aren’t necessarily taking ‘the side of Israel’…. a few of the celebrities in this project have called for a ceasefire and demanded humanitarian relief for Palestinians.”
But many celebrities have also voiced their support for Palestinian people and called for a ceasefire in Gaza to allow humanitarian aid to enter.
Former adult star Mia Khalifa has been one of the most vocal, as have supermodel sisters Bella and Gigi Hadid. Singer Zara Larsson and actress Tilda Swinton have also called for a ceasefire.
“My thoughts are with all those affected by the unjustifiable tragedy, and every day that innocent lives are taken by this conflict—too many of which are children,” Gigi Hadid wrote on Instagram.
“I have deep empathy and heartbreak for the Palestinian struggle and life under occupation, it’s a responsibility I hold daily. I also feel a responsibility to my Jewish friends to make it clear, as I have before: While I have hopes and dreams for Palestinians, none of them include the harm of a Jewish person.”
Swinton signed an open letter calling for a ceasefire alongside more than 4,300 people in the arts and entertainment industries.
“Our governments are not only tolerating war crimes but aiding and abetting them,” the letter read, and also condemned “every act of violence against civilians and every infringement of international law whoever perpetrates them.”
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Helen Mirren had never taken a risk like Golda. For an actor of her stature—with an Oscar, a Tony, and four Emmys to her name—it’s not easy to discover uncharted territory, let alone decide to take the plunge and explore the thing. But a big leap had long loomed. For decades, the 78-year-old Mirren avoided extreme physical transformations for the screen, those uncanny makeup jobs and mimicry approaches that define many a prestige biopic. “You’re too busy looking, going, ‘Oh, my God, that’s brilliant. How did they do that?’ rather than following the story,” says Mirren. “You’re in quite a tricky situation in film. You’ve got to be good—but not too good.”
It’s a good problem to have for an actor like Mirren, who not only knows the difference but really can be that good, should she get the call. The British star has brought a thrilling naturalism and tart wit to historical icons like Queen Elizabeth II and Catherine the Great; audiences believe her embodiments less because of their exacting impersonation than their emotional precision. It’s how she’s always stood apart. Then came director Guy Nattiv’s offer for her to portray Golda Meir, Israel’s groundbreaking and controversial prime minister whose distinctive visage, cadence, and physicality demanded a level of cinematic replication. Mirren decided to, at last, give it a try. “It was nerve-racking, because you don’t know until you try whether anything is going to work at all,” she tells me. “Is this going to be absolutely ridiculous?”
The resulting performance, a tough but vulnerable portrayal of a leader who reluctantly guides her country into the Yom Kippur War of 1973, finds Mirren operating in a stirring new key. The actor is basically unrecognizable, from the voice to the face to the walk, yet she endows Golda with a dedicated pragmatism familiar to her most beloved roles. This is very much a Helen Mirren character, even if she doesn’t look like one. I sense it’s why, as she Zooms in from London, Mirren tells me from the outset that this project is deeply, uniquely meaningful to her: “It’s a milestone in my personal career,” she says. And yet: She’s barely been able to talk about it.
About a month before Golda was released in US theaters via Bleecker Street on August 25, SAG-AFTRA went on strike, preventing Mirren from doing press for the movie, even if she technically could have. (The film was produced under an Equity union contact in the UK, rendering it ineligible for a SAG interim agreement.) Because the studio is not in the AMPTP, and with more distance from the strike’s launch, Mirren has begun campaigning for the film with her guild’s blessing as it leads a second life on digital (it’s now available on-demand and on platforms like Apple TV+ and Prime Video) and as Oscar season heats up. “I was given a written email from SAG to say…I can talk about it,” she says. “It’s a low-budget film, we don’t have a big marketing budget—so yes, it’s great to be able to talk.”
During production on Golda, Mirren spent three or so hours in the makeup chair every day, designed by a team led by prosthetics artist Karen Hartley Thomas for what the actor calls a “head-to-toe” transformation. She’d listen to Golda speaking for hours as she sat patiently, absorbing every detail. She was nervous about losing herself as a performer in the creation of Golda’s Golda: “It can be like trying to fight your way out of a suit of armor—you are trapped in this world.” But Mirren actually, weirdly felt freed inside the character’s skin. “On the contrary, it liberated me; I loved being in that,” she says. “It really, really helped me inhabit the person, the character, the history. I got so used to it that she became me.” In the evenings, when Mirren suddenly looked like herself, she’d be surprised by the way she appeared, taking a moment to remember that the person in the mirror was in fact her.
She brings up actors like Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro over the course of our conversation—actors who have done (and won Oscars for) this kind of thing before. It’s not that Mirren wondered what she was missing by not going down that route of performance; it’s that, as she reminds me, you often think of the actor before the character here. When she won her Oscar for playing Elizabeth II in The Queen, Mirren didn’t use any prosthetics at all, only a wig. (“Wigs are great!”) She’s never viewed her job as one of selling an illusion. “What we do as a job is so weird because everybody knows I’m not Elizabeth I, they know I’m not [Prime Suspect’s] Jane Tennison,” she says. To become Golda, she saw no choice but to take the portrayal that extra step: “Anybody playing Golda would’ve had to have certainly obeyed the physiognomy of the woman because she was so recognizable, so iconic.”
Golda’s oversight in Israel’s early struggles in the Yom Kippur War, as well as her dismissive comments about Palestinian people (she once said, “There was no such thing as Palestinians”), rendered her a divisive figure for the biopic treatment. Mirren felt no hesitation at all in taking on the part, however. The film depicts a committed, strong-willed PM unafraid of making difficult and defining decisions; Mirren embraced that nuanced character study. “I didn’t see Golda as a controversial character,” Mirren says. “She took responsibility for what happened in the war as a good politician should. She was a woman that I admired—let’s put it that way.”
Mirren at the Golda world premiere press conference in Berlin.
Andreas Rentz/Getty Images
One stickier aspect of total transformation for the camera: You’re stepping into an identity outside of your own. While Golda’s family had initially recommended Mirren for the part, backlash still took shape over the notion of a non-Jewish actor taking on not merely any Jewish figure, but an icon of Israel. In the past, Mirren has called debate around her casting “utterly legitimate,” but wasn’t able to speak on it further once the film was released, due to the strike. As I ask her about the topic now, it’s clear she’s spent a great deal of time since trying to understand the varying reactions to her playing Golda—especially as conversations around representation, and who should play what, have evolved so rapidly over the past few years.
“When I was coming into my career, I was incredibly grateful that I was a white woman, because there were a lot more roles for me available,” Mirren says candidly. “When I was in my 20s, you never saw a Black or an Asian face on television, ever. I’m not saying one accepted it—one didn’t accept it, but one didn’t profoundly question it either. You realize your own blindness and your own idiocy as time progresses.” Mirren calls broader cultural reckonings, in that regard, “exciting and fantastic,” and sympathizes with the feelings of actors in underrepresented groups: “The terrible frustration and anger and resentment, I can imagine, absolutely.”
Mirren does wonder exactly who would be permitted to play Golda, in an ideal world, given her background. “Well yes, maybe a Jewish person should have played Golda, but a Sephardic Jewish person or an Ashkenazi Jewish person?” she says. “There’s a big racial difference between those, so now we’re getting down into this sort of nitty-gritty of the whole issue. But I do believe it’s a discussion.” One part of the discussion she’s thought deeply about is the emotional experience of portraying Golda, who like most Jewish people of her generation lost loved ones during the Holocaust. “The trauma of the Holocaust is in the DNA of Jewish people—Ashkenazi, Sephardic, no matter what,” Mirren says. “Losing your whole family, your mother, father, brother, sisters, uncles, aunts, and being left as the only one—I can’t imagine. How can anyone who didn’t live that imagine that?”
In 1971, in the dawn of her career, Mirren starred in Miss Julie for the Royal Shakespeare Company. In one of the play’s grislier scenes, a bird is pulled out of a cage and senselessly killed. This production took place in a small theater and prized avant-garde authenticity; every night, there was a real bird fluttering around in a real cage that the audience could see. The way the killing was staged felt visceral; even though a trapdoor at the bottom of the cage freed the bird, a classic sort of theatrical trick, the action fooled even the most discerning viewers into thinking it was real. Some people fainted in the audience, says Mirren. Others screamed in rage and horror. A critic argued in a review that Mirren remembers quite well that the bird scene was so convincing it took him completely out of the play otherwise, to its detriment.
As Mirren recalls, “It was like, ‘How the fuck did they do it?’”
This took place more than 50 years ago, but Mirren’s memory of it remains crystal clear. She recounts the story for me, in fact, because it haunted her right into Golda, as the ultimate example of what happens when you take the magic of make-believe uncomfortably into the realm of the believable. “It speaks back to the whole thing of prosthetics,” she says. “If it’s too real, it just takes you away!” This went for her actual performance too. Mirren wanted to get Golda just right—she studied the way she held her cigarette, why she’d pause while deep in thought—but consistently minded how far she could take that effort. Above all else, she had a story to tell.
There’s a metaphor, perhaps, for Mirren’s career. As she got deeper into her research for Golda, the actor realized this 20th-century Israeli leader had far more in common with both Elizabeth I and Elizabeth II—two of her most remarkable roles—than she expected. “Golda’s emotional and political and intellectual commitment to her country was absolute,” Mirren says. She moves onto Elizabeth I: “Once the mantle fell upon her, the acceptance of the responsibility was absolute, was total—there was absolutely no turning away from that.” That space is where you find, in Golda, the Mirren who’s made indelible impressions on screen and stage for decades—the witty, capable, legendary professional determined to get the job done. Only now, finally transformed.
Listen to Vanity Fair’s Little Gold Men podcast now.
In the new biopic Golda, the prime minister dubbed Israel’s “Iron Lady,” isn’t entirely the steely stateswoman she was purported to be. The film, which dramatizes about a dozen tumultuous days in 1973, stars Helen Mirren—with a prosthetically enhanced face and a multipiece bodysuit—as Golda Meir, the 75-year-old chain-smoking politician with no military experience who, due to inconclusive intelligence, finds herself leading a country ill-prepared for coordinated attacks by both Soviet-backed Egypt and Syria during what became known as the Yom Kippur War.
With the young country’s survival on the line, and unbeknownst to Meir’s squabbling cadre of male military advisers—or US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (Liev Schreiber), from whom Israel needs fighter jets—the head of state is also waging a private battle that only her loyal aide, Lou Kaddar (Camille Cottin), knows about. As casualties mount, and hundreds of outnumbered soldiers are surrounded and taken prisoner in captured territories, a despairing Meir—who keeps count of the death toll in a little red book—is also secretly undergoing cobalt radiation treatments for lymphoma.
Mirren’s casting as the woman born in Kyiv and bred in Milwaukee, who moved to what was then British Palestine at 23 and served as Israel’s fourth and only female prime minister from 1969 to 1974, has been criticized because the British actor isn’t Jewish. Mirren herself told the Daily Mail last February that she knew her casting might be controversial: When approached for the film, she told Israeli director Guy Nattiv, “Look…I’m not Jewish, and if you want to think about that, and decide to go in a different direction, no hard feelings. I will absolutely understand.” But, Mirren said, “He very much wanted me to play the role, and off we went.”
Indeed, Nattiv tells VF that the barrier-breaker’s own grandson, Gideon Meir, saw something of his grandmother in Mirren. Gideon suggested she play his sometimes badass *bubbe—*a woman who, in the film at least, engages in diplomatic brinkmanship with Kissinger over a bowl of borscht in her Tel Aviv kitchen. “Remember, I am first an American, second I am Secretary of State, and third I am a Jew,” he bluntly tells her in the film. “You forget in Israel we read from right to left,” she replies.
Courtesy of Bleecker Street.
Special effects makeup designer Karen Hartley Thomas—who previously worked with Mirren on The Duke, and has tended to famous faces, including Hugh Jackman, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Red, White & Royal Blue hunks Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine—took a less-is-more approach to Mirren’s transformation. “You’re looking to give the silhouette and essence of the person…and not a caricature,” she tells VF, while acknowledging that Mirren’s makeover was the most extensive she’s ever done. It was a particularly daunting undertaking because the film inserts images of Mirren-as-Meir into actual archival news footage of Meir.
Mirren wore only makeup to play Elizabeth II in her Oscar-winning turn in The Queen. But to become Meir’s doppelgänger, the actor spent two and a half hours in the makeup chair daily. Contact lenses turned her blue eyes brown, and silicone bags were placed beneath them. Fake bridge and tip pieces were added to her nose, along with cheeks extending down and around it. Mirren’s mouth remained free, to accommodate Meir’s incessant smoking. Old-age stippling was applied to her face, as was a jowly neckpiece; her fingers were faux-nicotine-stained.
It’s among the few mononyms that invoke an immediate visceral reaction—whether reverent or contemptuous—within people. God. Madonna. Barbie. And, like the aforementioned Italian-American pop star, Barbie, too, is a baby boomer, “born” (just a year after Madonna) in 1959—and yet another girl who would change “the game” for all of womankind irrevocably. And that game, of course, is the one called Patriarchy. The system that’s set up to make sure pretty much everyone without a (congenital) white dick will fail. Or at least have a much more arduous time succeeding. And for those who say that’s just “a copout” “now,” one need only refer to a pointed line in Barbie from a white male Mattel employee: “We’re still doing [patriarchy], we just hide it better now.”
This admission echoes something Seymour (Steve Buscemi) from Ghost World tells Enid (Thora Birch): “I suppose things are better now, but…I don’t know, it’s complicated. People still hate each other…but they just know how to hide it better.” In Barbie Land, no one hates anyone. Except maybe Ken (Ryan Gosling). The “man” who becomes the surprising (yet somehow totally expected) antagonist as the narrative of Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach’s script goes on. Because, as it is for many an incel, a latent resentment toward a woman who won’t “put out” starts to brew and bubble to the surface within Ken as he not only competes with the other multi-ethnic Kens for Barbie’s attention, but also deals with the brutal realization that Barbie is never going to 1) let him stay the night at her Dreamhouse or 2) look at him as anything other than ultimately platonic background to her Technicolor dream life.
As for the Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) he’s after, she’s starting to feel a few cracks in the pristine veneers of her world. It starts with unwanted thoughts of death as she interrupts her usual nightly dance party with the question no one wants to hear, “Do you guys ever think about dying?” When the reaction results in deafening silence and horrified glances, Barbie saves the mood by rephrasing it as, “I’m dying to dance!” Even on those pointed-toe feet of hers. Or at least, they were pointed—until the thoughts of death came. That turns out to be the harbinger for cold showers, burnt plastic toast, imaginary milk that’s expired and, yes, flat feet.
Sharing this news with the other Barbies, they not only shriek in disgust, but also inform her that she’s going to have to see “Weird Barbie” (Kate McKinnon) about this. Weird Barbie is the only one who knows how to fix “weird” things, after all. She’s sort of the Shakespearean answer to the Weird Sisters in Macbeth like that. And also the answer to Barbie’s dose of a The Matrix allusion—except rather than offering her a blue pill, red pill scenario, Weird Barbie offers her a high heel, Birkenstock scenario. The latter, obviously, meant to represent knowing the truth about the Real World—where nothing is nearly as effortlessly glamorous or pretty as it is in Barbie Land.
Although Barbie picks the high heel—stay in Barbie Land and know nothing of the Real World—unfortunately, she’s told that the shoes were only meant as a ceremonial way for Weird Barbie to present her with the “illusion” of choice. But actually, she doesn’t really have one if she wants to get her pointed feet back and remove the blatant cellulite that’s started to form on her thighs. Weird Barbie also imparts her with the knowledge that, to “restore order” (a.k.a. “be perfect” again), she must find the sad girl who’s been “playing with her” (“We’re all being played with,” Weird Barbie adds) and reconnect so that the sadness goes away and stops infecting Barbie’s body and mind.
“Leaving Oz,” as it were, is no easy feat though. Far more difficult than simply “following the yellow brick road,” let’s put it that way. And yet, there’s no challenge Barbie can’t surmount—even when she’s no longer feeling quite as powerful in her “lusterless” state. “Lusterless,” in this case, being a lot like what Jennifer Check (Megan Fox) in Jennifer’s Body describes as, “My skin is breaking out, and my hair is dull and lifeless. God. It’s like I’m one of the normal girls.” And Barbie was never meant to be “normal.” Even if that’s what “normal” girls have been indoctrinated to believe is normal. She’s supposed to be extraordinary (effortlessly so), precisely because Barbie is Woman. Everything to everyone, everything all the time. And it is in this spirit of how the doll is meant to represent “women” that sets off Gloria (America Ferrera), an illustrator who works at Mattel and rescues B from the execs who want to literally put her back in a box, on a tirade not unlike what Camille Rainville explored with her “Be A Lady They Said” text.
A text that, just as Gloria’s speech does, expounds on all the ways in which women are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t. “Be sexy, but not too sexy…” or, to use a portion from Rainville’s statement on how women can never live up to the impossible and conflicting standards (let alone the standards of a “Barbie body”) they’re held to by a merciless patriarchal society: “Be a lady they said. Don’t be too fat. Don’t be too thin. Eat up. Slim down. Stop eating so much. Order a salad. Don’t eat carbs. Skip dessert. Go on a diet. God, you look like a skeleton. Why don’t you just eat? You look emaciated. You look sick. Men like women with some meat on their bones. Be a size zero. Be a double zero. Be nothing. Be less than nothing.” Be whatever he wants you to be at any given moment. And yet, because Barbie Land is actually that rare thing—a matriarchy—the Kens who exist within it have never known anything like what the men of the Real World get to “enjoy” (if subjugating is what you’re into): total power and control. When Ken sees how Real World “functions” upon crashing Barbie’s “Restore Barbie Body” mission, he can hardly believe his eyes and ears. That, all this time, he could have been using his “Kenergy” to “make” Barbie his.
The thing he doesn’t account for—as so many men do not—is that no one can really “make” a woman do anything she doesn’t want to (though, not to be crass, the Taliban tries). Not when her heart isn’t really in something. And as we’ve seen happen in many a fairytale/Disney movie, when a woman is figuratively and/or literally locked up against her will (à la Rapunzel or Belle in Beauty and the Beast) by a man who didn’t get the message (she’s not interested), she’ll do whatever it takes to set herself free. And it is Gloria’s speech about the impossible nature of what it is to Be A Woman in Real World that becomes a means to deprogram the Barbies who have fallen prey to Ken’s “message of patriarchy.” With Stereotypical Barbie being the only Barb immune to the rhetoric because she had already been exposed to it in Real World, Gloria compares the way in which the other Barbies become so susceptible to this “plague” to how indigenous people fell prey to smallpox in the 1600s because they hadn’t experienced it before. Luckily, her speech is the vaccine, allowing Barbie and Weird Barbie (along with some questionably named discontinued models) to pluck the deprogrammed ones, Barbie by Barbie, and reinstate Barbie Land to its true status quo (though Stereotypical Barbie herself will never be the same again).
Of course, the work of having to “teach” Real World men that they can’t always get what they want—women included—is something that Gerwig clearly takes very seriously. After all, she just had a second son with Barbie co-writer/frequent collaborator Noah Baumbach. She must indeed feel the weight of that—the responsibility all mothers have to raise sons who aren’t misogynistic pricks. And yet, it is the mother-daughter relationship that Gerwig addressed with such heartrending efficacy in Lady Bird that appears here again, too. Not just between Gloria and her anti-Barbie tween, Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), but the one between all mothers and daughters, as Barbie witnesses the joy and pain of motherhood when Ruth Handler (Rhea Perlman), the creator of Barbie and a key talisman from earlier in the film, allows her the chance to feel like a human. Like a woman. And yes, some women “just” want to be ordinary. “Just” want to have children. “Just” want to be, full-stop. They don’t need the additional pressures of Physicist Barbie or Robotics Engineer Barbie. Maybe, as Gloria suggests with a new pitch to Mattel’s CEO (Will Ferrell), it’s “enough” (not to be confused with Kenough) to “just” be Ordinary Barbie. In short, being a woman “allowed” the same luxury as men—which is to be merely “mediocre” without risking condemnation.
With Barbie, one hopes the very clear message will get across to younger generations of men and women, who can both understand not only the damage patriarchy does, but also the fact that it’s not always an end all, be all “goal” to secure a romantic partner just because that’s what you’ve been told you “should” do. Alas, will Barbie, in the end, be just another “thing” patriarchal-run industries and governments can point to and say, “See, we let women ‘do’ things all the time” simply because they’ve become more comfortable with “letting” women “talk their shit” as a clever means to ultimately still keep them “in check”? That, one supposes, is something that only time and subsequent generations will tell (if they live long enough in this increasingly hostile environment to do so).
Helen Mirren suffered an accident while doing her own stunts on “Shazam! Fury of the Gods”.
The actress, who plays Hespera in the sequel to the 2019 flick, tells Graham Norton on Friday’s episode of his talk show that she really wanted to get in on the action herself.
The 77-year-old recalls, “I did some of my own stunts, but I broke my finger.
“I was incredibly brave and didn’t say anything or complain because I wanted to be a real ‘stunty’ person.”
Mirren says of the film, “Don’t ask me about the plot, it’s too complicated!
“We are angry goddesses wearing unbelievably heavy costumes. It was very hot and uncomfortable and in fact Lucy (Liu) said at the end of the first day’s shooting, ‘They are trying to kill us’ in all seriousness.
“I wanted to do it because I loved the first ‘Shazam’. It was sweet and funny. I am not a big superhero type person, but I loved the idea of it and happily signed up for the second one. It is great.”
Mirren stars in the film alongside lead actor Zachary Levi, who is reprising his role as Shazam, as well as Lucy Liu’s Kalypso, Rachel Zegler’s Anthea, Adam Brody’s Super Hero Freddy, and more.
A synopsis reads, “The film continues the story of teenage Billy Batson who, upon reciting the magic word ‘SHAZAM!’ is transformed into his adult Super Hero alter ego, Shazam.”
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Sally Field will be honored at the 29th Screen Actors Guild Awards with the SAG lifetime achievement award.
The actors guild announced Tuesday that Field will be the 58th recipient of the tribute award, following recent honorees including Helen Mirren, Robert De Niro, Alan Alda and Morgan Freeman.
“She has an enduring career because she is authentic in her performance and always projects likability and humanity — she just connects. That’s part of why she has sustained her massive fandom and incredibly rich and layered career,” said Fran Drescher, SAG-AFTRA president, in a statement. “Sally is a massive star with a working actor’s ethos — just keep doing the work, being as good as you can. Every stage of an actor’s life brings different opportunities, and you just need to keep working. Sally does not stop and we hope she never does.”
Field, 76, has won two Oscars (for “Norma Rae” and “Places in the Heart”) and three Emmys (“Sybil,” “ER,” “Brothers & Sisters”). She received the National Medal of Arts in 2015 and the Kennedy Center Honor in 2019. Her recent credits include playing Jessie Buss on “Winning Time” and the 2015 film “Hello, My Name Is Doris.” She co-stars in the upcoming “80 for Brady.”
The SAG Awards will take place Feb. 26 at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles and be livestreamed on Netflix’s YouTube channel.
They worked hard, with the rewards coming slowly but surely. Then something came along — often a key role or sometimes a cluster, maybe an album — and it all became next-level, a shift triggering where-did-you-come-from vibes.
Sink had been on Broadway and worked alongside stars such as Naomi Watts and Helen Mirren. But playing Max Mayfield in the fourth season of “Stranger Things,” she broke through as a brave skater girl who never lets go of her Walkman, who hates pink, plays video games and is a “Dragon’s Lair” champion.
Hsu also was a Broadway veteran with a few TV credits when she was asked to play both a sullen teen and an intergalactic supervillain in the movie “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” That led to an unforgettable performance that included dressing as Elvis and walking a pig on a leash.
Like many of the others on the list, Kalukango had racked up plenty of Broadway credits when she took a risk and played the lead in a Broadway musical, “Paradise Square.” It led to a best actress in a leading role Tony Award and a stunning moment in the telecast when she sang “Let It Burn.”
“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” isn’t one of Huerta’s biggest roles but the Mexican actor suddenly launched a hundred memes as the mutant leader of a kingdom based on Mayan and Aztec influences beneath the ocean for centuries. Huerta, known for roles in the Netflix series “Narcos: Mexico” and the movie “The Forever Purge,” has taken a big step for movie diversity.
Nwigwe, just nominated for a Grammy as best new artist, has been bubbling up with noted appearances on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series and earning a spot on Michelle Obama’s 2020 workout playlist with “I’m Dope.” This year, the Houston-based artist was featured on the “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” soundtrack and dropped the EP “moMINTs” to acclaim.
McCormack has worked consistently since 2018 but 2022 seems to have turned into something special with a constellation of roles — “Peaky Blinders,” the buzzy, dark comedy thriller “Bad Sisters,” plus a star-making performance as the title character in the film “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” opposite Emma Thompson.
Ashley, a British actress of Indian heritage with a Tamil background, found herself leading season two of the Regency-era period drama “Bridgerton.” She had a role in the series “Sex Education,” but playing the fiercely independent Kate Sharma for Shonda Rhimes was her first lead character in a major production.
Deadwyler burst into the awards race this year with her performance in “Till” as Mamie Till-Mobley, the mother of teenager Emmett Till, who was lynched in 1955. She has also appeared in “The Harder They Come,” “Watchmen” and the Netflix series “From Scratch” and “Station Eleven.”
Vellani, another member of the Marvel Cinematic Universe on this list, is the exception, having had no such slow burn. The 19-year-old actor in “Ms. Marvel” plays a high school student enamored with all things superheroes only to find herself suddenly wielding powers of her own. And Vellani, in real life, is just starting to find her powers, like all the entertainers nominated here.
They worked hard, with the rewards coming slowly but surely. Then something came along — often a key role or sometimes a cluster, maybe an album — and it all became next-level, a shift triggering where-did-you-come-from vibes.
Sink had been on Broadway and worked alongside stars such as Naomi Watts and Helen Mirren. But playing Max Mayfield in the fourth season of “Stranger Things,” she broke through as a brave skater girl who never lets go of her Walkman, who hates pink, plays video games and is a “Dragon’s Lair” champion.
Hsu also was a Broadway veteran with a few TV credits when she was asked to play both a sullen teen and an intergalactic supervillain in the movie “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” That led to an unforgettable performance that included dressing as Elvis and walking a pig on a leash.
Like many of the others on the list, Kalukango had racked up plenty of Broadway credits when she took a risk and played the lead in a Broadway musical, “Paradise Square.” It led to a best actress in a leading role Tony Award and a stunning moment in the telecast when she sang “Let It Burn.”
“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” isn’t one of Huerta’s biggest roles but the Mexican actor suddenly launched a hundred memes as the mutant leader of a kingdom based on Mayan and Aztec influences beneath the ocean for centuries. Huerta, known for roles in the Netflix series “Narcos: Mexico” and the movie “The Forever Purge,” has taken a big step for movie diversity.
Nwigwe, just nominated for a Grammy as best new artist, has been bubbling up with noted appearances on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series and earning a spot on Michelle Obama’s 2020 workout playlist with “I’m Dope.” This year, the Houston-based artist was featured on the “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” soundtrack and dropped the EP “moMINTs” to acclaim.
McCormack has worked consistently since 2018 but 2022 seems to have turned into something special with a constellation of roles — “Peaky Blinders,” the buzzy, dark comedy thriller “Bad Sisters,” plus a star-making performance as the title character in the film “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” opposite Emma Thompson.
Ashley, a British actress of Indian heritage with a Tamil background, found herself leading season two of the Regency-era period drama “Bridgerton.” She had a role in the series “Sex Education,” but playing the fiercely independent Kate Sharma for Shonda Rhimes was her first lead character in a major production.
Deadwyler burst into the awards race this year with her performance in “Till” as Mamie Till-Mobley, the mother of teenager Emmett Till, who was lynched in 1955. She has also appeared in “The Harder They Come,” “Watchmen” and the Netflix series “From Scratch” and “Station Eleven.”
Vellani, another member of the Marvel Cinematic Universe on this list, is the exception, having had no such slow burn. The 19-year-old actor in “Ms. Marvel” plays a high school student enamored with all things superheroes only to find herself suddenly wielding powers of her own. And Vellani, in real life, is just starting to find her powers, like all the entertainers nominated here.
As if Margot Robbie as a towering first-edition Barbie and Ryan Gosling in fringed leather were not enough of a delight, the first Barbieteaser trailer, which premiered Friday morning, also featured a surprise narrator cameo from none other than Dame Helen Mirren. “Since the beginning of time, since the first little girl ever existed, there have been dolls,” Mirren says in the preview, an unexpected homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey. “But the dolls were always and forever baby dolls, until…”
Mirren, acting as Barbie’s personal emcee, introduces the film’s namesake—a massive, Barbie-fied Robbie, wearing a black-and-white strapless swimsuit, cat-eye glasses, and blond bangs. Barbie lowers her sunglasses and winks once to nearby girls playing with their baby dolls, who immediately drop or violently smash their toys.
In an interview with Vanity Fair on Friday, pegged to Mirren’s leading role in the Yellowstone spin-off 1923, which will run on VanityFair.com Monday, the Oscar winner says she “was fairly thrilled” that Gerwig, a previous collaborator, “would ask me to be a part of” the trailer. “I thought it was an incredibly funny, fun thing to be involved in,” says Mirren.
The actors go back a little over a decade to 2011’s Arthur, the largely forgotten remake of the Dudley Moore rom-com that starred Russell Brand as the title character. In it, Mirren played Arthur’s nanny while Gerwig played his love interest. Mirren admits that the film “was a bit of a disaster, really,” but her relationship with Gerwig thankfully survived the movie’s memory.
“We formed a good bond together,” says Mirren, noting Gerwig’s impressive filmmaking career since. In 2018, Gerwig earned twin Oscar nominations for writing and directing the critically lauded coming-of-age drama Lady Bird. Two years later, she earned a follow-up Oscar nomination for writing 2019’s Little Women, which Gerwig also directed. “She’s an amazing visionary and an extraordinary talent,” says Mirren.
Asked whether she appears in the film, which was written by Gerwig and her partner, Noah Baumbach, Mirren says that she filmed a brief cameo but isn’t sure whether it will make the final cut of the film, which opens in theaters July 21, 2023.
“I did shoot an appearance, but whether that’s gotten to stay in the movie, I don’t know,” says Mirren. Asked whether she too plays a Barbie—many people have noted that the Queen Elizabeth Barbie resembles Mirren, who earned an Oscar for playing the monarch—the actor laughs, “Good lord, no. Playing myself basically.”
Mirren declines to give more details, but Will Ferrell, who costars in the film as a fictional Mattel CEO, gave a few more clues about the script in an interview earlier this year.
“It is, in my humble opinion, the ultimate example of high art and low art,” Ferrell told WSJ. Magazine. “It’s a loving homage to the brand and, at the same time, couldn’t be more satirical—just an amazing comment on male patriarchy and women in society and why Barbie’s criticized and yet why every little girl still wants to play with Barbie. Boy, when I read it, I was like, This is fantastic.”
Barbie also costars Simu Liu, America Ferrera, Ncuti Gatwa, Emma Mackey, Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Emerald Fennell, Hari Nef, and Michael Cera.
In a cover story for Vanity Fair, Robbie spoke about adapting the iconic Mattel product through her production company LuckyChap Entertainment.
“Making an obvious Barbie movie would’ve been extremely easy to do,” Robbie said, “and anything easy to do is probably not worth doing.… People have got strong feelings. I’d much rather that than indifference. Now, let me subvert your expectations. It’s much scarier, but it’s also a great place to begin.”
In Vanity Fair’s conversation with Mirren, the Oscar winner spoke about subverting expectations herself—as Cara Dutton, the gun-wielding female lead of the Yellowstone spin-off 1923. Speaking about traditional female roles in Western films and movies, the actor says, “I never liked Westerns, because the women [characters] were always so awful. They always had breasts [on display] in ghastly dresses. Awful dresses. Either they were nice school teachers or the tart with the heart—you know, the madam of the brothel who really looks after everyone.” (Mirren notes that one exception to this rule was Doris Day’s Calamity Jane: “She was pretty cool.”)
Mirren’s Cara Dutton gets a much grittier role, and even opens the series with the kind of action-packed sequence rarely given to female actors of any age. Later in the episode, when Dutton’s husband, Jacob (Harrison Ford), leaves the ranch, it is Mirren’s character who steps up to manage the property herself.
LOS ANGELES — While a healthy slice of America awaited Sunday’s return of the hit series “Yellowstone,” star Kevin Costner was in Moab, Utah, scouting locations for yet another Western epic, “Horizon.”
Costner’s 60-some film credits, among them “Field of Dreams,” “The Bodyguard,” “JFK” and “Bull Durham,” are an eclectic mix of dramas, baseball-centric tales and the occasional comedy. But the West’s history and land have proven his creative bedrock.
His breakout role came in 1985’s “Silverado,” followed by starring roles in “Dances with Wolves,” his Oscar-winning directorial debut; “Wyatt Earp,” and “Open Range,” which he also directed. He’s donning the actor-director Stetson again for “Horizon,” planned as a four-film saga about pre- and post-Civil War western migration.
The Paramount Network’s contemporary “Yellowstone,” created by Taylor Sheridan (“Hell or High Water”), already has generated a successful prequel, “1883.” A second, “1923” (formerly titled “1932”), with Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren as its headliners, is set for a Dec. 18 release.
In its fifth season, “Yellowstone” opens with Costner’s Montana rancher John Dutton awaiting the outcome of his reluctant run for governor — a big-swing effort to shield his family’s vast land and business against challenges from developers and empowered Native Americans.
Dutton’s populist-style campaign promised to safeguard Montana values, or likely those that dovetail with the interests he’s gone to extremes to protect. Would Costner himself consider seeking office? “No, I don’t think so,” he said.
In an interview with The Associated Press, he discussed why “Yellowstone” has gained a following, the series’ portrayal of Native Americans, and his long-held regard for the Western genre done right. Remarks have been edited for brevity and clarity.
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AP: When you joined Taylor Sheridan on the drama series, what made you think it could work?
KEVIN COSTNER: I thought it had a chance to be relevant, in that this work is still going on in America and most people kind of take it for granted how stuff ends up at their dinner table. We intuitively know, and we don’t really know. The show is able to highlight at times the beauty of ranching, and it certainly talks about how difficult it is. We’re set in one of the most beautiful places in the world, and I think the idea of mountains and rivers captured people’s imagination. But it’s a working ranch. It’s how it’s still done. I think it spoke well of that, with its kind of heightened sense of drama.
AP: While John Dutton says he’s no politician, he’s seeking power and there’s more than a suggestion he intends to use it for his own ends. How do you see the character?
KEVIN COSTNER: He’s not naive. He’s no politician in the sense that he wants to collaborate. I think he’s capable of hearing the best idea, but he’s not looking for middle ground. It’s not how he’s conducted his life. What’s maybe good for his ranch might be good for all the rest of the ranches in Montana as well — the preservation of a way of life, less expansion. His ranch is highlighted, he says it out loud. But I think he sees this working for other ranchers.
AP: ‘Yellowstone’ prominently includes Native Americans, as did ‘Dances with Wolves.’ How do you view the series approach to the characters?
KEVIN COSTNER: I think they show it’s all complicated. For them, everything has been stripped away, and they’ve had this little niche called gambling and even that’s being nibbled at, being pawed over. Anytime there’s money, there’s going to be disputes no matter what culture you’re dealing with. So you see power plays inside the Native American community. You see ambition, you see selfishness. It’s really normal behavior. We might flinch at it, we might be embarrassed by it, but it exists on all levels. The political machinations of what happens on the rez (reservation) are equal to what happens on our national stage. There’s bitterness, there’s resentment. There’s good ideas, there’s bad ideas. So who gets left in the lurch? Generally speaking, it’s the people.
AP: The series received a Screen Actors Guild nomination for best ensemble drama but has been largely overlooked by the Emmys. Could that reflect a bias against Westerns?
KEVIN COSTNER: I’m not sure, because we’re a very verbal show. We’re not reduced to ‘yep’ and ‘nope.’ It’s very literate in its expression. You can be minimalized, you can be marginalized, you can be ignored. But we’ve been able to create a show that didn’t start out being popular but did it on its own terms.
AP: You’ve said that watching the 1962 movie ‘How the West Was Won’ as a youngster made you a fan of the Western. What chord did it strike and why does the genre continue to resonate with you?
KEVIN COSTNER: When it’s done well, you realize how vulnerable (people) were. We see freeways and cities now, but if you roll back about 120 years, you were out here by yourself. How you made it or didn’t would depend sometimes on your decisions and most of the time on just luck. There was no law, there was no army, we were taking away land from people that have lived there for thousands of years. I think to myself, ‘My God, what made people keep coming West?’ They sometimes didn’t share the same language, they were from different countries in Europe. When I see it in its rawest form, I’m inspired by it, I’m in awe of it. I realize that what made people cross the country was nothing but hope of something better than where they came from.
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This story corrects that the series is on the Paramount Network, not Paramount+.
LOS ANGELES — When “The Crown” returns Wednesday after a two-year absence, the splintering marriage of Charles and Diana and more woes for Queen Elizabeth II are in the drama’s elegant but intrusive spotlight.
There’s swirling off-stage drama as well for the Netflix series that began with Elizabeth’s marriage in the late 1940s and, in its fifth season, takes on the British royal family’s turbulent 1990s. The queen famously labeled one stretch her “annus horribilis” — Latin for “horrible year.”
The safe distance of history is gone in the 10 new episodes set within recent memory for many and whose stories, sight unseen, have been denounced. The death of Queen Elizabeth, 96, in September adds an uneasy dimension: We speculate freely about the famous before and after they’re gone, but is more owed a country’s beloved and longest-serving monarch?
Among the prominent critics is Judi Dench, an Oscar-winner for her role as Elizabeth I in “Shakespeare in Love.” In a letter to The Times of London, the actor blasted elements of the drama as “cruelly unjust to the individuals and damaging to the institution they represent.”
She called for each episode to carry a disclaimer labeling it as fiction. It’s a demand that Netflix has heard before and continues to resist, framing the series as drama inspired by historical events. Series creator Peter Morgan was unavailable for comment, Netflix said.
Dench is not amused by the streaming service’s intransigence.
“The time has come for Netflix to reconsider — for the sake of a family and a nation so recently bereaved, as a mark of respect to a sovereign who served her people so dutifully for 70 years,” she wrote.
Her plea followed a rebuke of the series from former Prime Minister John Major, shown in the new season being lobbied by Prince Charles — now King Charles III — to help maneuver the queen’s abdication. A spokesman for Major labeled the scene as false and malicious.
Cast members including Jonathan Pryce, who plays Elizabeth’s stalwart husband Prince Philip, beg to differ with the series’ detractors.
“The queen is in no danger from ‘The Crown,’” Pryce told The Associated Press. He said critics are lambasting the new season despite ignorance of it, reminding him of what the British once termed “the Mary Whitehouse effect.”
Whitehouse had “a huge following and she criticized programs she’d never seen,” he said. “I think a lot of the protests this time, people haven’t seen this series. They don’t know how these issues are treated. I have to say they’re treated with a great deal of integrity and a great deal of sensitivity.”
Imelda Staunton, stepping in as the latest actor to play Elizabeth, defended the series, its award-winning creator and its viewers.
“I think it’s underestimating the audience,” Staunton told AP. ”There have been four seasons where people know it’s been written by Peter Morgan and his team of writers.”
Morgan, writer of the movie “The Queen” and play “The Audience,” both starring the Oscar- and Tony-winning Helen Mirren as Elizabeth II, has made royals a specialty. The recent criticism may suggest his winter of discontent is ahead, but Morgan has it easier than another writer who feasted on the British monarchs as material: William Shakespeare, who dramatized the reigns of seven kings.
All were in the past, with Shakespeare treading lightly around the rulers of his time, Elizabeth I and James I.
“We all imagine it being sort of sweetness and light, and we’ve all seen ‘Shakespeare in Love’ and everyone’s sitting around drinking. Actually, it was like Stalinist Russia in many ways,” Shakespearean expert Andrew Dickson said of the rigidly controlled society in which the bard worked circa 1585 to 1613.
Plays were approved by the master of the revels, a sort of civil servant with the power of censorship, said Dickson, author of “Worlds Elsewhere: Journeys Around Shakespeare’s Globe” and “The Globe Guide to Shakespeare.” Authors could and were imprisoned, or worse, for transgressions, he said.
“His very few representations of royals recent to his time were pretty flattering, and and early audiences even called them patriotic,” said Harvard teacher-scholar Jeffrey R. Wilson, author of “Shakespeare and Trump” and “Richard III’s Bodies.” Theater in general was viewed as illusory and deceptive, he said.
“He told this politicized version that was flattering to the powers that were in his time,” Wilson said. It became the “dominant framework for telling English royal history all the way through the 18th and 19th centuries. It’s now called the ‘Tudor myth,’” he said, a reference to the House of Tudor that ruled for more than a century.
It’s problematic if people similarly begin recounting the Netflix show’s “fictionalized version of history as fact,” he said.
Lesley Manville, who plays the queen’s sibling Princess Margaret this season, said she defers to those in charge of “The Crown” on whether a disclaimer is or isn’t warranted.
“For my part, I can only be crystal clear that what I’m doing is a drama,” Manville said. “We’ve never supported it to be anything other than a drama about a real family, a very world famous family.”
Staunton said she’s grateful that the season addresses a period that was “quite tumultuous, and therefore that creates quite a good drama.” She traced the recent protests about the series directly to the queen’s death.
“There’s no doubt that if we were releasing the series two years ago there wouldn’t be this amount of sensitivity, which again is absolutely understandable,” Staunton said. She found herself deeply affected by the queen’s death, which she learned of after a day of taping on the show’s sixth season.
“’Why am I feeling so distraught?’” she recalled asking herself. “But of course I’d been living with her for two and a half years” of preparation and production.
For Pryce, working on the series has provided a better understanding of the royal family.
“They’ve always been a part of society and it looks like they’re going to continue for some time,” he said. “I’m looking forward to King Charles’ reign, and seeing what he can do to change things.”
