Innholdsfortegnelse for December 15, 2021 i The Hollywood Reporter

Jason Derulo was frosting some cookies. He just didn’t know how to decorate them. So he turned to his viewers. “Should I decorate them with an ornament? A present? Or a snowflake?” he asked. The singer-songwriter was live on Twitter on Nov. 28, selling Kitchen Aid mixers and Keurigs as part of a livestream shopping event the platform hosted with Walmart. The merging of shopping and TV is not new — the Home Shopping Network was founded in 1982, after all — but the emergence of social platforms and the ease of one-click buying through PayPal, Apple, Instagram and TikTok have transformed the experience to allow for seamless interactivity, unusual entertainment concepts and fewer “Call now!” hard sells. In addition to Twitter, companies like TikTok, YouTube and NBCUniversal have been…

BEST ACTOR Twenty-six years since his Oscar win for Leaving Las Vegas, Cage is in serious contention again. He beat out Joaquin Phoenix, Bradley Cooper, Javier Bardem and Leonardo DiCaprio for a Critics Choice nom Dec. 13. BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR This deaf theater vet, who plays the father of a hearing child in Sian Heder’s film, received Critics Choice and Golden Globe noms Dec. 13 and impressed many at a Dec. 10 Q&A after a screening for Academy members. BEST ACTRESS For her big-screen debut in Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest, this pop star landed Critics Choice and Golden Globe noms. Co-star Cooper Hoffman got best comedy actor Globe and best young actor Critics Choice noms. The Oscar winner was toasted at a Dec. 8 Spago lunch for her portrayal of…

When comedian Jo Koy asked Chelsea Handler if he could give her a call around this time last year, she responded the way she has to many men before, “Not if you’re trying to fuck me.” Koy, who was keenly aware of Handler’s caustic sense of humor, having once been a regular on her E! talk show Chelsea Lately, was hardly deterred. Over the next eight months, he would call her — and in time, she’d call him — as their friendship blossomed into something more. It wasn’t until August, however, that he made a move, and only at Handler’s suggestion. “She basically asked me to kiss her,” Koy explains, with Handler interjecting: “I said, ‘I think you have a crush on me, and if you do, you should do…

For the graduating cohort of The Hollywood Reporter’s Women in Entertainment Mentorship Program — which since 2010 has worked with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Los Angeles to pair female high school students with high-level women executives in the entertainment industry — THR’s (once again) annual WIE gala Dec. 8 was not a reunion. Rather, it was the long-awaited in-person fete that for the Class of 2021 had for so long been out of reach. As with other events and gatherings around the world, the 2020 WIE breakfast slated for December 2020 had been canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic, meaning that the then-incoming 13 mentees had no formal celebration to kick off their entry into the program. They met their mentors for the first time over Zoom and…

Sex and the City returned to New York City on Dec. 8 with the premiere of the HBO Max revival And Just Like That at the Museum of Modern Art, where original stars Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon and Kristin Davis were joined by newcomers Sara Ramirez, Karen Pittman and Sarita Choudhury. And of that one missing character in the iconic quartet, “with Samantha, it gave us an opportunity to show that friendships change, no matter the age,” writer Samantha Irby told THR. Got tips? Email rambling@thr.com…

Nicole Byer had little interest in opening her first hourlong special the way so many other comics do, talking backstage or walking the streets of New York. It all felt too pedestrian, and Byer is anything but pedestrian. So, Big Beautiful Weirdo, which became available on Netflix on Dec. 7, begins instead with Byer swinging around a stripper pole, dressed in a hamburger bikini that she tracked down on the internet. “I’m genuinely a lot,” she jokes over Zoom, where she’s logged in under the name Whoopi Goldberg. Byer, 35, is at her home in Los Angeles — where she has a pole of her own in the backyard — preparing for what’s poised to be a pivotal next phase in her already busy career. A week after the special…

Historically, poison was considered a woman’s weapon. Poison is covert — it can easily be slipped into food and drink or simply be mistaken for herbs and other medicinal tinctures. While men across various cultures generally had more freedom to publicly fight out their conflicts, women often had to wage silent warfare in the shadows. Poison, though, doesn’t always come in little glass vials. In three of some of the most talked-about film awards contenders of 2021, forward-thinking wives wield acidic words to accrue and exert power on behalf of their weaker husbands. It’s a literary trope debated in just about every high school English class across the U.S.: Are biblical Eve-like women inherently malevolent and megalomaniac, or are they victims of a hegemonic power structure that forces them to…

A few dozen Los Angeles properties that are currently on the market feature a tennis court. Most listings start at $10 million, and real estate agents say these types of homes are now highly sought after, a big change from earlier years when many homeowners were replacing courts with pools, gardens or other amenities. “What we found in COVID, with everybody staying home, is that everybody wants additional space. People want an estate, and an estate is a house with a tennis court,” says Hilton & Hyland agent Linda May. She’s listing an English-style, 16,439-square-foot property on 3 acres at 1201 Tower Grove Drive in Beverly Hills. It includes a tennis court with an adjacent pavilion that leads to a screening room and two home offices. Her highest-end clients do…

ASCENSION Life in contemporary China — and the pursuit of “the Chinese dream” — is the subject of this fascinating documentary from director Jessica Kingdon and MTV Documentary Films, which offers an illuminating examination of consumerism, innovation and class through hypnotic, observational vignettes. FLEE Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s internationally celebrated film tells the story of Amin, the director’s childhood friend who reveals for the first time his harrowing experience as a child refugee fleeing Afghanistan. Using hand-drawn animation to protect Amin’s anonymity, Flee also examines the subjective nature of memory. IN THE SAME BREATH Filmmaker Nanfu Wang looks at the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic through a bureaucratic lens, examining the ways China’s staterun media controlled messaging around the virus and impacted other countries’ response to the health crisis as…

THE NEW ORLEANS AND ITS surrounding area that are depicted in Blue Bayou are a far cry from the bustling tourism of the French Quarter and party-time antics of Bourbon Street. Instead, the film’s protagonist, Antonio (played by writer-director Chon), dwells in a grimy, working-class neighborhood with ramshackle houses. “It’s very grounded in reality,” says Chuang, who served as co-DP on the film with Chon’s usual cinematographer, Cheng, who adds: “We were working with a lot of first-time actors and used a lot of close-ups, and also trying to bring an authentic vibe to New Orleans and the characters.” Inspired by the films of John Cassavetes and his visceral, vérité approach to drama, the director and his DPs chose to shoot on Super 16 with a 1.66 aspect ratio, which…

When Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story opened to a dismal $10.6 million at the domestic box office over the Dec. 10-12 weekend, Hollywood was despondent. The next question: How quickly will the musical go to streaming if it doesn’t rebound in theaters? West Side Story is hardly the only film caught in the crosshairs of a dramatically altered landscape that has seen the theatrical marketplace become a shell of itself because of the pandemic, at least for anything that isn’t a superhero movie or a film like Free Guy that can rally younger male moviegoers in the 18-to-34 age group. Every studio is now having to figure out how early to send a movie to a streaming service to boost subscribers or to premium VOD. Before the pandemic, theater owners…

Nearly a year ago, TikTok unveiled its Black creatives program, a three-month incubator in partnership with Charles D. King’s Macro media company, to support an inaugural class of 100 creators and propel their careers forward. Since then, creators have attended town halls and meetings with TikTok and entertainment industry execs and received training on topics like how to turn their platforms into brands. In November, TikTok and Macro said they were awarding 10 Black creators $50,000 grants each to pursue a larger project and help cover the costs of equipment, staffing and other resources. Jason Linton, who goes by @dadlifejason on TikTok and has 11.6 million followers, is a recipient of one of the grants and says he was grateful the incubator brought him together with other Black creatives. “We…

As an Oscar-winning director and screenwriter, Steven Soderbergh is inspired by an array of subjects. Environmental activists and epidemiologists are as integral to his oeuvre as drug traffickers and male strippers. But, as a local bon vivant, he’s shockingly predictable. “I would be the easiest person in the world to assassinate,” he tells The Hollywood Reporter. “Because I go to the same places constantly.” Nonetheless, he’s gotten to know the Los Angeles food and beverage scene better than most. In 2014, he launched Singani 63 — his own expression of a brandy native to Bolivia that he discovered while filming the biopic Che. When he’s not busy making movies, he’s busy making sure his favorite venues are keeping the quaffable clear spirit in stock. You can find it in a…

The Hollywood Reporter’s annual Women in Entertainment event, presented by Lifetime and tied to the publication of THR’s Power 100 list, returned in force Dec. 8 at the Fairmont Century Plaza. Jennifer Aniston was presented with the Sherry Lansing Leadership Award — highlighting a woman who is a pioneer in her field — by her Morning Show co-star Steve Carell, and she called the honor a reminder “to keep pushing boundaries, in storytelling and in the business,” while Selma Blair received the Equity in Entertainment Award from friend Michelle Pfeiffer. Amid her public battle with multiple sclerosis, Blair called for inclusion of the disabled community: “My story is but one of many. Disability is not a distant monolith. It is an intractable part of our shared humanity.” Jennifer Garner, Tessa…

Byer has just added network sitcom star to her résumé, which also includes author (2020’s #Very Fat #Very Brave), podcaster (with four raucously funny pods, including Team Coco’s Why Won’t You Date Me?), reality show host (Wipeout, Nailed It!) and stand-up comedian. To celebrate the latest achievement, she and her co-stars of the just-launched NBC comedy Grand Crew — an ensemble about a group of wine-loving Black friends — got commemorative tattoos. Yes, Byer now has the show’s logo etched on her back (it joins 20 to 30 other tattoos on her body). Next, the actress would like to try her hand at directing, something she learned plenty about through shadowing on the set of Grand Crew.…

Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley begins as ambitious huckster Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) enters a 1930s traveling carnival. Built near Toronto at Markham Fairground, the carnival featured authentic period pieces including a Ferris wheel and merry-go-round. Handmade banners were inspired by the style of noted circus artist Fred Johnson, and 40 tents were created by 100-plus-year-old tentmaker Armbruster Manufacturing. “Dark and real,” “confused” and “lost” are some of the words that production designer Tamara Deverell uses to describe the ominous carnival. “With Guillermo, we tend to look at art history and color palettes,” she says of the inspirations for the visuals in the film, which is based on William Lindsay Gresham’s 1946 novel. “We were looking at Matisse and early Picasso, like the blue period, and compositionally we were looking…

On the surface, singer-songwriters Camila Cabello, Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi, Anderson .Paak, and brothers Ron and Russell Mael (aka Sparks) don’t have much in common — their ages span 24 to 76, their birthplaces range from Havana to Cleveland, and their music genres are all over the map. But when the quintet gathered for THR’s Songwriter Roundtable in November, it quickly became clear that they speak the same language — music — and before departing they exchanged hugs, phone numbers and snapped selfies, along with plans to get together and perhaps even collaborate. In theory, they could also meet up at the Oscars, given the buzz around original songs they co-wrote with others and sang in their respective films: pop star Cabello’s “Million to One,” written with Scott Harris for…

MOST PEOPLE WORKING at Disney+ had no idea this was coming. When the second-season finale of The Mandalorian aired on Dec. 18, 2020, a mid-credits scene revealed a spinoff series titled The Book of Boba Fett. That this happened just a week after Disney had revealed 10 new Star Wars shows in development during its Investor Day livestream made the announcement all the more baffling — didn’t the company just present its Star Wars slate? Is The Mandalorian canceled? Confused reporters flooded the email inboxes of equally confused publicists, and showrunner Jon Favreau was quickly booked on Good Morning America to clear things up. “Even Disney didn’t know we were going to drop it like that,” marvels The Book of Boba Fett co-showrunner Robert Rodriguez. “I got to see the…

FOR BLUE BAYOU’S ANTONIO, APPEARANCES are deceiving. His wardrobe of stained white tank tops might declare “tough guy,” but he’s as gentle as a lamb. As a tattoo artist, he struggles to land extra work not only because of his record for theft, but also because his full-neck tat, with wings framing his face, lends him an air of menace, despite his attempts to stay on the straight and narrow. “The tattoos actually made my job a lot easier,” says costume designer Lee, “because no matter how you dress, to put tattoos in such pronounced places, you are really telling a story about yourself and the decisions you make.” Lee, 34, was born in Anaheim, California, to Korean immigrant parents. She refers to her father, who headed his own engineering…

In 2014, when Warner Bros. drafted LeBron James to star in its Space Jam sequel, the film was tailored to appeal above all else to the mighty Chinese market. After all, James was a huge commodity in the basketball-obsessed country, where his signature Nike sneakers are made. Along the way, the future Hall of Famer avoided poking the China bear, even if it meant drawing outrage when he criticized Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey in 2019 for tweeting his support for Hong Kong protesters, calling him “misinformed” — a notable move given James’ vocal stance on police brutality issues and former President Trump’s socalled Muslim travel ban. At the time, videos of police crackdowns on Hong Kong’s pro-Democracy movement were circulating widely while it was well reported that more than…

PARTY TIME! PLEASE HAVE PROOF OF VACCINATION READY In-Person Holiday Parties Are Back — Vaccinations Required ’Tis the season for holiday parties, and across Hollywood in-person gatherings are back. But there’s no rubbing noses under the mistletoe. Of the invites THR fielded in recent weeks, all have required proof of COVID-19 vaccination. MGM hosted a holiday toast at the Houdini Estate on Nov. 13 that included an on-site testing tent. Disney Branded Television and National Geographic teamed for a reception Dec. 14 at Terra at Eataly in Century City with masks “strongly encouraged” and proof of vaccination required — same for Array’s holiday fete as the Ava DuVernay-led company opened up its Los Angeles campus for an afternoon soiree Dec. 10. Actor Dulé Hill tells THR that invites are coming…

Weddings Graham Alexander, creative director at Endeavor, married Kathryn Agarth on Oct. 30 at Terra Mia Vineyards in Paso Robles, California. The couple honeymooned at Hotel Mousai in Puerto Vallarta. Ira Bernstein, co-president of Lionsgate’s Debmar-Mercury, married news anchor/author Tamsen Fadal on Oct. 2 at 620 Loft & Garden in New York. Births The Handmaid’s Tale star Yvonne Strahovski and husband Tim Loden welcomed their second son, she announced via Instagram on Dec. 9. Congrats Kelly Bradshaw was tapped as senior vp at MTV Entertainment Brands International on Dec. 8. Martyn Freeman was elevated to COO of BBC Studios on Dec. 10. CAA hired Matthew Tsai as a gaming agent, promoted Lydia DeCoud and Rachel O’Brien to digital talent agents and added Liz Gibson and Kerry Landolfe as digital executives on…

In his dozen years at IATSE Local USA 829 — United Scenic Artists — national business agent Carl Mulert says he’s never seen members as engaged as they are now, with more calls coming in to his office and heightened attendance at the organization’s meetings. “We have awoken a sleeping giant,” he says, explaining that the pandemic has reframed expectations about worker quality of life and broadened labor’s primary focus beyond wage bumps. “People didn’t realize how important rest periods were until they actually were getting rest. How important a meal break was until they were having three meals a day at regular times.” Lockdown life, along with the pressures of corporate consolidation and streaming, have prompted a roiling Hollywood labor rebellion. “It’s been an extraordinary year in terms of…

In 2020, during the earliest stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, when sheltering at home seemed an infinite reality, a neon green beacon of light shone through the darkness of mandatory isolation: tennis. A traditionally outdoor, largely socially distanced sport, known for its promise of good exercise and competitive companionship, it rose in popularity. According to an annual study from the Physical Activity Council, 21.64 million Americans hit the courts in 2020, a 22.4 percent increase compared to 2019, after years of plateauing. Of those players, 6.78 million were either new to the sport or had returned after an extended period of time. Tennis became a popular pandemic activity in Southern California in particular, with the lack of court-compromising weather making tennis a year-round sport. There are long wait times across…

Blue Bayou, Justin Chon’s third consecutive drama that seriously explores the Korean American experience, presented the filmmaker with his biggest challenge yet. In the Focus Features release, the writer-director also stars in the central role of Antonio, Korean by birth but brought up in Louisiana by an abusive adoptive father and an adoptive mother who looked the other way. Despite the obstacles in his origin story and employment troubles because of his criminal record, Antonio builds himself a loving family with his pregnant wife (Alicia Vikander) and stepdaughter. But an unprovoked arrest by a bigoted cop leads to Antonio’s discovery that he is undocumented, and now he faces deportation from the only home he has ever known. Because the film was shot on location in Louisiana and involved an Oscar-winning…

These days, Peter Jackson is earning praise for his three-part Disney+ Beatles documentary, Get Back. But 20 years ago, he made his mark on pop culture with another three-part series about a beloved band of sorts — The Lord of the Rings, which debuted in theaters Dec. 19, 2001. Based on the novels by J.R.R. Tolkien, the trilogy’s first film, The Fellowship of the Ring, kicked off the saga of the Hobbits from the Shire who join forces with Men, Elves and Dwarves to undertake an arduous journey to defeat the evil Sauron and restore peace to Middle-earth. Jackson cast Elijah Wood, then 18, in the lead role as Frodo Baggins. The all-star ensemble included Ian McKellen, Liv Tyler, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Astin, Cate Blanchett, John Rhys-Davies, Billy Boyd, Dominic…