I caught up with Abbott Elementary’s Sheryl Lee Ralph on a very surreal day, for both her and Hollywood at large. It was the morning of the Emmy nominations, and she had just received her second consecutive nod for supporting actress in a comedy series.
“I’m so happy that we’re talking now, because up until just about an hour ago, I was just a weeping ball of emotion,” she tells me. “I was underneath the covers crying, and I said, ‘I do not know why I am underneath the covers crying with my eyeglasses on.’ I am a mess, but now I’m just feeling grateful, thankful, happy, joyful for my journey.”
But as we signed on to record Little Gold Men, Ralph, who won the Emmy in this category just last year, had other things on her mind. She had just gotten off a call with the Screen Actors Guild negotiating committee, which was deep in final discussions before announcing a strike that would take effect the very next day. As a member of the SAG-AFTRA national board, Ralph had an inside view of what was about to happen, and had a lot to say about why actors had to go on strike, even though she acknowledged how much of a strain and a stress it would be on this community.
Ralph, who plays veteran elementary school teacher Barbara Howard on the hit ABC series Abbott Elementary, told Little Gold Men all about expanding her character’s story in season two, the inspiration the writers took from her own life, and what she’s fighting hardest for in the now very real strike.
Vanity Fair:The show was such an instant success in its first season. Does this second consecutive nomination feel any different?
Sheryl Lee Ralph: I’m just so happy that anything that I have been doing has been so well received by those who look at television and say, “Yeah, I like that. Yes, I resonate with that.” That that doesn’t happen often. Honestly, in doing this role, it was so subtle in what she had to say and do, and I thought nobody was going to see my work. I really thought, I’m here to do some good work and collect a check.
It’s funny, because I know Quinta Brunsonsaid before the first seasonthat she wanted to give you the role that would finally get you an Emmy.
She absolutely knew. She looked at me and knew it. She literally said, “we’re going there.” She’s like a little magician. There was a moment when she and [executive producer/director] Randall [Einhorn] said, “just do nothing,” which was a challenge for me to hear the direction, and really lean on my abilities as an actor to still give this character life without trying to bring all the bells and whistles that we might have in comedy.
After starring in the 2015 Broadway revival of The King and I,Ashley Park became friends with her costar Daniel Dae Kim. “He had become such a great mentor and champion of mine,” she tells Little Gold Men. “Just really believing in me and encouraging me.”
One day a few years later, Kim texted Park that he’d heard about a new film in the works that he thought she might be right for. At the time, it was called Joy Fuck Club. “I don’t think I’ve read a script where I laughed out loud that much,” she remembers.
The film, helmed by Crazy Rich Asians cowriter Adele Lim, would be a raunchy, hard-R comedy in the vein of Bridesmaids or The Hangover, centering on four friends who travel to China together and end up on a wild adventure involving drug smuggling, threesomes, and K-pop.
At the time, Park had a healthy career onstage, and she’d earned a Tony nomination for playing Gretchen Wieners in the Broadway adaptation of Mean Girls. But her screen time had been limited; she hadn’t yet appeared in Netflix’s breakout series Emily in Paris or the comedy series Girls5eva. So she wasn’t sure she had a chance. “I remember really feeling like, I would love a shot at this, but even if I’m not involved, this is definitely a movie I will go watch first thing when it comes out,” she says “I was just so excited that it was happening.”
But Park actually booked the lead role of Audrey, a lawyer who goes to China on a business trip and ends up looking for her birth mother, leading her to discover much more about her identity. She’s joined by her childhood best friend (Sherry Cola), her friend’s eccentric, K-pop-loving cousin (Sabrina Wu), and her former college roommate who’s since become a Chinese soap star (Stephanie Hsu). The film, now called Joy Ride, is a wild, laugh-out-loud ride that also explores friendship and identity through its characters’ story. Hitting theaters July 7, after premiering at the South by Southwest Film & TV Festival in March, it’s also a rare studio film written by, directed by, and starring people of Asian descent. And for Park, it marked her first time leading a film, allowing her to grow as both an actor and a person.
Vanity Fair:Audrey seems very put together at the beginning of the film, but definitely goes on this journey of growth. What did you like about her arc?
Ashley Park: What I really connected to was that I was first starting to reflect on being in an industry and in a world that was very much built by and for white people or people who didn’t look like me. I really connect to all of the negotiation that Audrey goes through to find a way to be genuinely ambitious and excited to be in this world that she really had no part in at first. And also just the fact that she really—it wasn’t that she was trying to ever deny being Asian, but she just really had never faced that part of her identity and was fine with it. I think that it really mirrored that time in my life too.
In his 16 seasons on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, a few things may have been forgotten about Glenn Howerton. He’s a Juilliard graduate who, when first breaking into the business, struggled to get taken seriously as a comic actor. He’s a performer of great range and depth, true even within the ever absurd Sunny context, as his character Dennis Reynolds is taken in bizarre new directions with each passing year. And he’s a guy eager to show what he can do, beyond the sitcom he co-created and that made his name in Hollywood. The better known you are for something, the harder it gets to become known for anything else.
Enter BlackBerry, an energetic little indie that’s already lived a long life since its May theatrical release, and that has subtly, brilliantly reintroduced Howerton onscreen. The thriller-comedy biopic written by Matt Johnson and Matthew Miller, and directed by the former, explores the rapid rise and spectacular fall of the smart-ish phone, and the handheld phenomenon it helped usher in. Opposite Jay Baruchel, who plays BlackBerry’s founder Mike Lazaridis, Howerton brilliantly embodies investor and eventual co-CEO Jim Balsillie, a hot-tempered businessman whose volatility keeps the film’s energy level at an 11 from the moment he’s introduced onscreen. The intensity that Howerton has honed so playfully on Always Sunny seamlessly fits the role—but it’s backed by a dramatic heft and a bracing authority that helps explain why it’s one of the year’s best performances so far.
Accordingly, some quiet but persistent Oscar chatter is beginningtohover around Howerton. It’s a very new experience. But, as he explains on this week’s Little Gold Men (listen or read below), it’s one he’s been waiting for.
Vanity Fair:This movie has lived a great life already, and it was made for not a lot of money. How have you experienced the rollout since it was released?
Glenn Howerton: The truth is, I haven’t done a lot of movies, which is partially a byproduct of the fact that I’ve been just mostly unavailable and busy most of the time. There were always ways to carve out that time, but I only wanted to do it if it was for something that I was really excited about. I didn’t want to work in film just for the sake of working in film, I wanted to work on good things. A lot of the stuff that I’ve done, honestly, has been with friends too, which I also love doing because it’s just fun. So I’ve never done a movie even this size, where I was the lead.
We did a lot of premieres, I’m not used to going to so many premieres. We did the world premiere in Berlin, which was really exciting, because it’s such an incredible festival—the fact that we even got in, that just blew my mind. Then we did the US premiere at South by Southwest, and then we did the Canadian premiere in Toronto. We even did an LA premiere, although that was a little bit smaller, it was a friends and family and industry people thing. So I’ve now seen the movie with an audience three or four times.
Because you haven’t done a lot of film, and this is such a great role that you really run away with, what is your reaction when it comes your way? What does it feel like to see that on the page, and to feel like you have the opportunity to get to do it?
I was honestly pretty blown away. The script was so good, and the role was so incredible, that sadly my first thought was, “Why aren’t they offering this to a bigger name in film?” I hold some sway in the world of television, but I just felt like this is the kind of role that they could get a huge star to do. That’s just not what Matt Johnson, the director, wanted. He saw something in me as an actor, he’s familiar with my work, mostly in comedy—on It’s Always Sunny and A.P. Bio and stuff like that—and he just saw what he wanted for that guy. I can see the lineage between some of the characters that I’ve played and Jim in BlackBerry, but it’s slightly circuitous. It’s nice when you feel like somebody sees what you’re capable of outside of what you’ve actually done.
Yea, and on a human level, the journey doesn’t stop there because you’ve come to some understanding. It is a continual practice to be alive. Maybe this is an origin story, who knows?
The three of youreleased a statementafter hearing the reaction to David Choe being a part of the series. What was that process like for you?
Personally for me, I don’t really care to go too much into that aspect of the show. Talking about the show is most important, but I think for us, we didn’t want to leave people in mystery. We wanted to say what we wanted to say and the statement was pretty complete for us.
I think you have incredible taste. In just the past few years you’ve been inSorry To Bother You, Okja, Burning,__Nope __and nowBeef. What is your secret to saying yes to a script?
I don’t have any secrets. I am incredibly fortunate that I find myself being in positions where scripts that I didn’t know existed, or stories that I didn’t know existed, or directors that I didn’t know knew me approach me. So, I have to lead with that I’ve had a lot of luck. But for me, the thing that I always gravitate towards is “is the story trying to say something?” I don’t even mean like, is it trying to teach something? I don’t really care to teach anything. Is it trying to reflect something off of our society or off of something that I believe. I think every script thus far that I’ve said yes to had something that deeply resonated with me.
You’re mentioning how people are coming to you now with their stories. When did it feel like that opportunity really opened up for you?
I think for me it was director Bong [Joon-ho]. He really took a chance on me with [his character in Okja] K and I feel so grateful to him because he saw me when a lot of people didn’t see me. Even myself, really.
I think there were people that maybe were open to me, but I had to also have space and openness for them by saying no to a couple of the things that came right after Walking Dead. Let’s be honest here: it wasn’t like 10, 15, 20 things. It was like, “do you want to play like a tech CIA agent on the run?” And I was like, “no. I don’t.” If anything, The Walking Dead afforded me the ultimate privilege in feeling financially secure, amongst many other things. I’m very grateful for that experience for sure.
Yeun with Wong in Beef
ANDREW COOPER/NETFLIX
Listen to Vanity Fair’s Little Gold Men podcast now.
Leading a TV series for the first time on a show she describes as “No Country for Old Looney Tunes,” Gilpin is somehow finding new ways to surprise audiences — and herself. She talks about it all on this week’s Little Gold Men.
I had to act first. Well, I think I simultaneously had to send in an acting audition and also something of me singing. I sent like a little voice note, I think of me and my husband singing together. And my voice was very soft. It was by no means like a powerful singing video. And they kind of said, “This is great, but Daisy needs to be able to really sing.” I think at the time they were looking at professional singers. So I sent another video in, but I was kind of hitting this wall where I was thinking that I wasn’t capable of doing what they needed in terms of vocal performance. They said she needs to belt. I didn’t know, literally, how to do that with my voice. So, I was sitting in the car and my agent was like, “just try and sing the Lady Gaga song ‘Shallow.’” And I was like, “you don’t just, like, bust out Lady Gaga.” So I was sitting in the car and I pulled over and just tried, and it just sounded so bad. It just sounded so horrible. And I sat there and I started crying because I was just so frustrated. It wasn’t even just about getting the role. It was that I’m not gonna be able to do something that I had an idea that maybe I could do, if I put work in.
I sat there and I was just kind of feeling sorry for myself, and then I said I’m going to get a vocal coach and really give it a chance. So I went to a coach and I worked with him over the weekend. And then I went home and all of a sudden, “Simple Man” by Lynyrd Skynyrd came into my head. I think in hindsight it was just in my key. So I went back again and I was able to belt for the first time.
Because of your performance in the show, I assumed that you had a long history with singing, obviously with your family legacy and music. Would you say that it’s because of your family’s legacy that music is something you shied away from on purpose, or was it just because acting was more of your interest?
I don’t think I shied away from it on purpose. From as far back as I can remember, I was just obsessed with movies and acting, and writing and I wanted to direct. I don’t think I really thought about it. I loved music, but it wasn’t something that I felt drawn to in the same way that I did with film.
Youtalked to my colleagueabout how when you were actually in production, it was sort of a really tough time for you personally and dealing with some autoimmune stuff. Did you ever think about backing out of the project?
I had lost my brother while we were sort of on pandemic hiatus. We were supposed to film a few months later, and at the time I was like, “I don’t think I’m able to perform well or give anything.” But then it pushed again, it pushed like six months. I kind of went, “okay, well maybe this happened for a reason.” And that push also really helped us with our music and our instruments and our singing because we ended up having a year to rehearse. So in many ways it felt like it came exactly when it was supposed to. I also have some autoimmune issues, so I was really struggling. But I just decided to do it. And I think there was something about this project that was really joyous and different. Typically, I’ve done darker, more serious work and, and I really felt like I needed to do something that felt like I needed to do something that felt like a fun experience at this point in my life.
Everything Everywhere All at Once is the third movie in Oscar history to win three acting Oscars, following 1976’s Network and 1951’s A Streetcar Named Desire. It is the first movie to do so and win best picture. The film fielded the first Asian woman and second woman of color to ever win best actress, in Michelle Yeoh, and the third duo to win best director, in Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan. It won the most Oscars (seven) for a best-picture winner in over a decade, going back to 2008’s Slumdog Millionaire. And it led the charge in an especially unprecedented night for its scrappy studio, A24, which completely swept the big six categories in picture, directing, and all four acting categories (Brendan Fraser rounded that out with his best-actor win for A24’s specialty box-office hit The Whale).
It’s worth zooming out a bit to consider the performance of Everything Everywhere All at Once at Sunday night’s Academy Awards—a dominance of truly historic proportions for this nearly 95-year-old awards show. It wasn’t even that much of a surprise, after the movie achieved similar success with various industry guilds over the past few months. As we discuss in our annual Little Gold Men Oscars postmortem (listen above), this film—with talking rocks and hot dog fingers and multiverses—was the overwhelming industry favorite. Yes, these are very much not your parents’ Oscars. Inside the Dolby Theatre, evidence of just how much has changed, even since Green Book, was, well, everywhere.
But I keep going back to the groups beyond the Oscars. The unions of tens of thousands of film and TV professionals who have often leaned more conservative than the arty Academy, guilds whose sheer size often leads to bland consensus. Organizations for actors, directors, producers, writers, and more resoundingly decided on Everything Everywhere All at Once. The Academy has made great strides to diversify and expand its membership, but if we look back at how this season has evolved, it’s Hollywood as a whole that tells the real story of transformation, and maybe evolution, here. The Oscars merely sealed that envelope.
In its own way, this year’s Oscars felt like a vote for Hollywood’s future. Everything Everywhere All at Once was a box-office phenomenon for A24, grossing over $100 million globally on an indie budget and achieving a full theatrical run, to say nothing of its robust life on digital since the summer. On the campaign trail this season, Guillermo del Torosaid in a conversation moderated by Deadline, “When I see a film like Everything Everywhere All at Once, and I realize how much it is impacting the generation of my kids, and how they embrace it in the same way I embraced The Graduate when I was their age, I love that.” I think many of his peers agreed with that sentiment, that the film signaled a more inclusive, emotionally resonant path for (wild) originality in Hollywood going forward.
Beyond it, rather than a crafts sweep like we saw last year with Dune, the Oscars spread the wealth—more accurately representing what, for most, the year in film looked like. Take the two biggest movies of the year, neither of which went home empty-handed: Top Gun: Maverick won for its roaring sound design, while Avatar: The Way of Water was rewarded for its astonishing visual effects. The last big best-picture nominee, Elvis, was snubbed despite a strong nominations haul—my biggest surprise of the night. That can mostly be attributed to the surging affection for All Quiet on the Western Front, the German war film that played its own unique role this season, organically capturing the hearts of craftspeople as it sat on Netflix’s backburner, while the streamer’s most heavily campaigned contenders fizzled out. At this point, even if an unusual choice—I wouldn’t exactly call All Quiet the most acclaimed or buzziest streaming movie of the year—the Academy cannot and should not ignore streaming, given the sizable chunk of the industry it now represents. (In that sense, last year’s win for CODA felt forward-looking as well.)
The only movie to win an above-the-line award outside of Everything Everywhere and The Whale’s Fraser was Women Talking, for Sarah Polley’s superlative adaptation. Surprisingly, given its tough road on the circuit, the UAR-MGM release was the only indie of a certain prestige class to nab any gold at all on Sunday. I found it particularly fascinating that Polley met such an enthusiastic standing ovation, given the smallness and divisiveness of her movie. Her story in Hollywood, from traumatized child actor to highly regarded filmmaker—challenging the way sets and productions are run—got a real moment, and this felt in its own way like a vote for a brighter Hollywood future, as Polley alluded to in her speech.
Less optimistically, perhaps: The respectful admiration for critically acclaimed box-office duds The Fabelmans, Tár, and The Banshees of Inisherin remained just that—of the 22 nominations between them, not a single win to show for it. The applause was notably tepid for the trio as they kept coming up on nomination rolls, relative to other movies, and you have to wonder about the town’s temperature for this sort of filmmaking right now. Each movie, in this writer’s opinion, is tremendously worthy and exciting. But just as they did with the broadcast itself, the Academy seemed to listen to its critics and try to meet a rapidly changing moviegoing public where it’s at. They could’ve done worse than deliver a historic night to the movie that, in more ways than one, defined American cinema in 2022.
All the stars are aligning for the 2023 Vanity Fair Oscar party. And this year, you can join the action with not one but two live streams from the red carpet.
First up, at 9 p.m. PT, Hollywood Black List founder Franklin Leonard will join VF’s Katey Rich and Mike Hogan for a live stream featuring celebrity interviews as well as analysis of the 2023 Oscars. By then, we’ll know who prevailed in all the most competitive races, and whether Everything Everywhere All at Once completed its Cinderella run to best picture. That show, titled After the Awards With Vanity Fair, will air on VF.com as well as Vanity Fair’s YouTube and Twitter channels.
Then, at 10:30 p.m. PT, tune in to the Vanity Fair Oscar Party Live show. By then, the red carpet will be packed with nominees and winners, as well as the many A-listers who don’t attend the Oscars but do want to get dressed up and celebrate. Featuring candid, fun interviews and plenty of eye-catching fashion, Vanity Fair Oscar Party Live will be available on Vanity Fair’s TikTok channel and vf.com/oscarparty.
Hosted by VF editor in chief Radhika Jones, this year’s party will once again take place in a custom-built venue at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills. Now in its ninth year, photographer Mark Seliger’s famous portrait studio will welcome an array of guests, nominees, and winners throughout the evening, with images debuting in real time on VF.com and Instagram.
For more than 25 years, Vanity Fair has invited Oscar winners and nominees to mix with Hollywood’s most dynamic stars for an intimate celebration immediately following the Academy Awards. It’s the must-attend destination for the industry’s top talent, where newly minted Oscar winner Billie Eilishcan mingle with nominee Timothée Chalamet, and Leonardo DiCaprio can pose for victory photos with his collaborators.
Everyone from Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt to Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck,Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber, and Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton have taken their turn in the photo booth or on the dance floor, as documented in this comprehensive history of the Vanity Fair Oscar party. To stay in the know ahead of Hollywood’s big night, sign up for the “HWD Daily” newsletter, and follow Vanity Fair on Instagram and Twitter. And join VF for a front row seat to the 2023 Oscars on Sunday, March 12.
Campaign logic was turned on its head in this year’s surprising, at times thrilling, slate of nominees. We break down how it happened, and what it means.
