6

C R I T I C S’ C H O I C E A W A R D N O M I N A T I O N S S C R E E N AC T O R S G U I L D AWA R D N O M I N A T I O N S
®

INCLUDING
INCLUDING

BB EES TSD IT P I CB E T
RECTOR
URE
ST ACTOR
OUTSTANDING CAST
SPIKE LEE D E LROY LI N DO BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR CHADWICK BOSEMAN

NATIONAL BOARD OF REVIEW AWARDS

WINNER INCLUDING

BEST PICTURE
BEST DIRECTOR - SPIKE LEE

“ THE BEST PICTURE OF THE YEAR.“

“+++++
SPIKE LEE HAS MADE MORE THAN
A SOUL-STIRRING FILM FOR OUR TIME.
He’s made one for the ages.”

“THIS MOVIE IS A GIFT RIGHT NOW,

and there’s no other director that could have made it. DELROY LINDO is mesmerizing.”

F O R Y O U R C O N S I D E R A T I O N

WRITTEN BY DANNY BILSON & PAUL DEMEO AND KEVIN WILLMOTT & SPIKE LEE DIRECTED BY SPIKE LEE

FILM.NETFLIXAWARDS.COM
 STUDIO SCORECARD RACIST ... SEXIST ... CLASSIC? DISNEYLAND’S DARK DAYS
The Hollywood majors that How streamers are handling lucrative Vaxxing in parking lots while waiting
profited more than expected libraries packed with problematic content for Newsom to lift the lockdown

March 3, 2021

THE RESURRECTION OF

KELLY MARIE TRAN

The Raya and the Last Dragon star emerges after intense online trolling during Star Wars
stronger and surer than ever: ‘I’m proud of the ways I showed up for myself — and I’m still here’
ART DIRECTORS GUILD OF MUSIC 2 GOLDEN REEL CINEMA AUDIO
G U I L D AWA R D S SUPERVISORS AWARDS AWA R D S SOCIETY AWARDS
N O M I N E E N O M I N E E N O M I N A T I O N S N O M I N E E
EXCELLENCE IN BEST SONG BEST SOUND EDITING
PRODUCTION DESIGN WRITTEN AND/OR RECORDED FOR A FILM FEATURE DIALOGUE / ADR OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT
(PERIOD FEATURE FILM) “HEAR MY VOICE” BEST SOUND EDITING IN SOUND MIXING
DANIEL PEMBERTON, CELESTE WAITE, FEATURE UNDERSCORE MOTION PICTURE – LIVE ACTION
SHANE VALENTINO PETER AFTERMAN, ALISON LITTON
BEST DIRECTOR BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR BEST ACTING
AARON SORKIN AARON SORKIN SACHA BARON COHEN ENSEMBLE

THE “

BEST
PICTURE
OF THE”
YEAR.
GOLDEN GLOBE AWARD WINNER
®

BEST SCREENPLAY A ARON SORKIN

3 SAG AWARD NOMINATIONS WRITERS GUILD
®

I N C L U D I N G
AWARD NOMINEE
OUTSTANDING BEST SUPPORTING
ACTOR ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
CAST SACHA BARON COHEN A ARON SORKIN

FILM.NETFLIXAWARDS.COM
 “ONE OF
THE MOST
EXCITING
MOVIES
I’VE SEEN
IN QUITE
SOME TIME”
A.O. Scott,
F O R Y O U R C O N S I D E R A T I O N

BEST PICTURE
BEST DIRECTOR REGINA KING

WINNER
2020 TOP TEN
 Issue No. 9, March 3, 2021

FEATURES
48
The Resurrection of
Kelly Marie Tran
After intense online bullying
caused the Star Wars actress to
shut down, Tran, now starring
in Raya and the Last Dragon,
has emerged stronger and
surer of who she is.

56
Racist, Sexist … Classic?
As streamers build out their
libraries, older content (and the
baggage that comes with it)
is crucial. With no playbook,
studios are experimenting
with label warnings, context
panels and even purges.

60
The Journey From
Script to Screen
Four scribes reveal how some
of their favorite — and most
pivotal — scenes changed
through the rewriting process.

64
The Making of
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
A script cloaked in secrecy
by an “unbreakable code”
(i.e., many typos) turned into a
Globes-winning political mes-
sage film wrapped in an ambush
comedy movie that led to Rudy
Giuliani’s public humiliation.

“If someone doesn’t understand

me or my experience, it shouldn’t
be my place to have to internalize
their misogyny or racism or all
of the above,” says Kelly Marie
Tran. She was photographed
Feb. 19 in Los Angeles.
Cong Tri gown, Irene Neuwirth earrings.

Photographed here and

for the cover by Dyan Jong
 A M A Z O N O R I G I N A L S

3 GOLDEN GLOBE
®

®HFPA
AWARDS

Ⱥ WINS
BEST PICTURE
MUSICAL/COMEDY
Sacha Baron Cohen
Monica Levinson
Anthony Hines

%(67$&725˚027,213,&785(
MUSICAL/COMEDY
Sacha Baron Cohen

WINNER
%(676833257,1*$&725
7(/(9,6,21
John Boyega

28
THE REPORT
17 Disneyland’s Dark Days
After being shuttered for nearly a year,
the Anaheim amusement park is now in
use as a vaccination site as employees
await word on when Gov. Gavin Newsom
will allow a reopening.
20 Studio Profit Report
In a tumultuous year, Netflix reigned
as Hollywood majors cut their losses on
theatrical titles but saved on lowered
marketing and production costs, THR’s
annual analysis shows.
24 Feinberg Forecast
26 7 Days of Deals
ABOUT TOWN
28 Next Big Thing: Taylor Takahashi
The first-time actor made an improbable
move from personal assistant to leading
man on director Eddie Huang’s Boogie.
29 What Stars Do to Liven Up
Hotel Quarantines
Celebrities get creative while filling
weeks stuck alone in a room ahead of
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
56
46
shoots: “Make sure the windows open.
That stuff matters.”
32 Rambling Reporter
THE BUSINESS
35 How Westbrook Media
Has Prospered in a Pandemic
As many Hollywood firms stagnated
amid COVID-19 shutdowns, soaring
social content has kept Will Smith
and Jada Pinkett Smith’s company in
the fast lane.
37 Balancing Rom-Com, Thriller
and Horror
Writer-director Emerald Fennell charted
the course on Promising Young Woman’s
tonal shifts, but film editor Frédéric
Thoraval then had to cut from one mood
to the next as the film follows Carey
Mulligan as a woman on a secret crusade.
38 Is There an Advantage in
Coming Late to the Party?
While other awards hopefuls have
been streaming for months, Sony
Pictures Classics is betting The Father
and French Exit can still get plenty
of attention with their 11 o’clock bids.
10
STYLE
42 Best Dressed at the Globes
Celebrities and their stylists made a
return to all-out glamour at the partly
virtual bicoastal ceremony, wearing
custom gowns, bold colors and
major jewelry.
46 WFH Styles That Can Go
Back to the Office
A-list stylists and executive wardrobe
consultants share their current faves —
from the “new housedress” to cashmere
hoodies — that are all about “elevated”
meets “warm and cozy.”
REVIEWS
68 Winter TV Wonders and Blunders
THR’s critics break down a sleepy small-
screen season that still offered treasures
for those willing to seek them out.
BACKLOT
70 How Often Does Oscar Agree
With the Critics?
Ignoring the outlier of best picture,
the Critics Choice Awards selections are
eerily accurate predictors.
M A RCH 3, 2021
Issue No. 9, March 3, 2021
28
“I kind of came of age [in this
movie] along with Boogie,”
says first-time actor Taylor
Takahashi of himself and the
character he plays.
46
This Celine shearling
Triomphe Open Slide feels
good on the feet; $690,
at Celine, New York, and
celine.com
56
Gone With the Wind now
plays on HBO Max with
an introduction by TCM
host Jacqueline Stewart that
frames the movie as one
that “denies the horrors of
TAKAHASHI: JONNY MARLOW. WIND: COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION. SLIDE: CELINE BY HEDI SLIMANE.
slavery as well as its legacy
of racial inequality.”
CORRECTION
Journalist Kimmy Yam was
misidentified as Kimmy
Pooh in a story about rising
hate crimes against Asian
Americans (THR 2/21).
H B O C O N G R AT U L AT E S
MARK RUFFALO
ON HIS GOLDEN GLOBES WIN
®

BE ST PE RFO RM A N C E BY AN A C TOR I N A LI MI TED SE RIE S,

AN THOLO G Y SE RIE S OR A M O TIO N PICT UR E MA DE FO R T E LE VI SI ON

THANK YOU, HFPA MEMBERS,

FOR YOUR RECOGNITION
 THE HOLLY WOOD REPORTER
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Photo courtesy of Amazon Studios

and

Sacha, Buddy, Monica, Anthony and the cast and crew of BORAT SUBSEQUENT MOVIEFILM
Against all odds, you produced an award-winning film during the height of the pandemic.
We are proud to have been your COVID-19 Safety and Testing partner.

www.phmcovid19.com/production I www.privatehealth.com
“THE BEST PICTU

PROMISING
YOUNG WOMAN
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY EMERALD FENNELL
RE OF THE YEAR”

6
U S W E E K LY

CRITICS CHOICE AWARDS NOMINATIONS

INCLUDING

B E S T P I C T U R E
BEST ACTRESS CAREY MULLIGAN
BEST DIRECTOR EMERALD FENNELL

WINNER
BEST PICTURE OF THE YEAR
San Diego Film Critics Society Music City Film Critics’ Association Columbus Film Critics Association Sunset Circle Awards Kansas City Film Critics Circle Nevada Film Critics Society

W R I T E R S G U I L D A WA R D S N O M I N E E SCREEN ACTORS GUILD AWARDS NOMINEE ®

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY OUT S TA N D I N G AC T R E S S

© 1995 SAG-AFTRA
EMERALD FENNELL CAREY MULLIGAN

“This daringly directed, ultra-modern fable is

seductive, bruising and utterly intoxicating”
TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

IN ALL CATEGORIES INCLUDING

BEST PICTURE
BEST DIRECTOR
EMERALD FENNELL

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

EMERALD FENNELL

BEST ACTRESS
CAREY MULLIGAN
 Film
Studio Profit Report
Netflix reigns, Paramount,
Sony make gains p. 20

↑ Culture
‘Improv on Zoom’
The Re ort Behind the Headlines
How sketch comedy brands
are surviving COVID-19 p. 21

Heat Index

Tim Story
The director’s Tom & Jerry
adaptation for Warner Bros.
claims $14 million in its debut,
a good sign for exhibitors
as New York City theaters
open March 5.

Ali Sar
The HFPA president, criticized
over lack of diversity among
members, presides over a
Golden Globes ceremony that
averages 6.91 million viewers,
a 13-year low.
Disney’s Stalemate With Newsom:
When Will Its Parks Reopen?
ZELNICK: STEFANIE KEENAN/GETTY IMAGES FOR TAKE-TWO INTERACTIVE. STORY: J. COUNTESS/GETTY IMAGES. SAR: NBC. LORRE: DAVID LIVINGSTON/GETTY IMAGES. MALONE: MICHAEL KOVAC/GETTY IMAGES FOR VANITY FAIR,

One year after Disneyland shuttered, the location is a vaccination site while the Hollywood giant and
legislators are locked in a standoff with the governor to speed up the return of visitors and employees
Chuck Lorre BY RYAN PARKER
The mega-producer’s CBS

comedies Young Sheldon and
B Positive both hit season
highs among the adults 18-to-
49 demographic with their
Feb. 25 episodes.
John Malone
The mogul’s Liberty Media
sees its operating income
swing to a loss of $603 million
for the three months ending
Dec. 31, compared with a year-
earlier profit of $302 million.
Showbiz Stocks
$68.72 (+7.9%)
VIACOMCBS (VIACA)
The merged firm’s streaming
pitch for Paramount+ made an
impact with investors, sending
its stock price up a mountain.
$28.22 (-3.7%)
AT&T (T)
The partial sale of DirecTV
for a massive write-down
as well as a commitment to
spend $23 billion on new
wireless spectrum spooked
shareholders.
Feb. 24-March 2
I
t’s the quiet Mike Morrison
finds most striking. A
Disneyland Resort employee
for 16 years, the manager of engi-
neering services for Anaheim’s
California Adventure Park is used
to the bustle that accompanies
one of the most popular theme
parks in the world. But for nearly
one year now, the Disneyland
Resort has been shuttered amid
the pandemic. “The days feel
longer,” says Morrison, who leads
the team responsible for the
maintenance of the attractions
in California Adventure even
when there are no visitors. “You
have this eerie sense of silence
as you’re walking through. And
occasionally that silence is broken
by the chirping of birds, some-
thing from the outside world that
you would never typically notice.”
Disneyland closed its gates
March 14, 2020. Before that time,
the park only had been shut for
24-hour periods after major
national events, such as the
assassination of John F. Kennedy
and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Locked in a standoff with Gov.
Gavin Newsom on when the park
can reopen amid a pandemic,
Disney has taken a financial
hit — $2.6 billion in the past
quarter alone — and furloughed
thousands of employees who
don’t know when they’ll return to
work. And the Democrat is facing
political pressure to reopen more
businesses as organizers aim to
collect 1.49 million
signatures before a
March 17 deadline
to kick-start a recall
election.
Sidhu
Anaheim Mayor
Harry Sidhu notes that the theme
park’s closure has had a “pro-
found impact” on the region.
“Unemployment in our city is now
9 percent, or 15,000 people, and
Illustration by Jaya Nicely
has been as high as 12 percent —
numbers not seen since the Great
Recession,” Sidhu says. “Anaheim
faces a $115 million budget deficit
from lost revenue from hotel stays
and visitor spending.”
An effort is underway to break
the stalemate with the state.
On Feb. 4, California Assembly
Members Sharon Quirk-Silva
(D-Buena Park) and Suzette
Valladares (R-Santa Clarita)
proposed legislation aimed at
speeding along a reopening. The
bill would allow Disneyland to
reopen if Orange County moves
into the “moderate” pandemic
risk tier (a seven-day average
rate of 1 to 3.9 cases per 100,000
tests) rather than when it hits the
“minimal” tier (less than 1 case
per 100,000 tests). The county
remains in the “widespread” tier
as of March 1 with 11.7 COVID-19
cases per 100,000 tests. Disney
hasn’t commented on the bill, but

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 17 M A RCH 3, 2021

 The Report
Behind the Headlines
Sidhu’s office has endorsed it.
In the meantime, Disneyland
employees are hurting. “We
know members are experienc-
ing economic stress because of
the pandemic,” says Chris Duarte,
union president for Workers
United Local 50, which represents
food and beverage employees in
the Anaheim park. “Struggling
to pay rent, mortgages and other
bills is something we hear in
online chatter or directly when
people contact us looking for
assistance options.” In one bit
of good news for employees, the
Downtown Disney shopping
and dining district — which has
been partially open since July
and resumed outdoor dining in
January — will see the return of
1,000 union workers as California
Adventure expands shopping and
dining in March.
For the better part of last year,
SoCal theme parks have been
at odds with the state as the
businesses pushed to reopen.
In October, Disneyland Resort
president Ken Potrock criticized
state guidelines as “arbitrary”
and “unworkable.” Disney’s Walt
Disney World serves as a coun-
terpoint case study. The Florida
location, which reopened July 11,
has enforced temperature screen-
ings, social distancing, new
cleaning procedures and a face-
covering mandate. (Disney didn’t
comment for this story, nor did
Newsom’s office.)
The California Attractions
and Parks Association, the
group repping parks including
Universal Studios Hollywood,
Six Flags Magic Mountain and
Legoland, has been the main
voice advocating a reopening.
“COVID transmission rates are
improving, and the vaccination
distribution is underway, yet
California’s major theme parks
have no timeline and no realistic
pathway toward reopening if left
in the yellow/minimal tier of state
guidance,” says Erin Guerrero,
executive director of CAPA.
In early January, Disneyland’s
Toy Story Parking Area was
converted to a COVID-19 vaccina-
tion site, with six clinics offering
the two-shot Pfizer vaccine to
eligible individuals. Disney has
not said how long it will host the
site, and the state hasn’t unveiled
a timeline for when nonessential
workers and younger adults will
be eligible for the vaccine.
There’s evidence the public is
feeling safer about visiting parks
again. During the week of Feb. 25,
about 27 percent of Americans
said they felt comfortable return-
ing to an amusement park amid
the pandemic, per data intel-
ligence firm Morning Consult,
which conducts weekly surveys of
2,200 U.S. adults. That percentage
marks a high in public confidence
since 20 percent stated the same
during the week of June 5.
UBS Research, a division of
the investment bank, forecast
in a Jan. 22 report that Disney’s
parks division isn’t expected to
“approach historical performance
and attendance metrics” until the
end of fiscal year 2022. And for
the Anaheim park, UBS noted:
“At this point we do not expect
it to reopen until mid-2021 and
The wait on
Jan. 13 at
Disneyland’s
parking lot
COVID-19
vaccination
site in
Anaheim.
will likely face 25 percent capac-
ity limitations for some time.”
Top Disney execs have noted the
longer road to recovery for the
location. “There’s no doubt that
when we reopen a park after it’s
been closed for a prolonged period
of time, there’s going to be some
reopening costs,” Disney CEO
Bob Chapek said at a Morgan
Stanley event March 1. “We’ve got
to go rehire labor, which we’re
more than glad to do. We want to
put people back to work.”
Tina Taipale, a 42-year
Disneyland employee who has
kept her role as security duty
manager during the pandemic,
adds that workers are ready to
return when the park is reopened.
“We have great safety protocols
and the PPE [personal protec-
tive equipment] and supplies
we need,” notes Taipale. “I feel
safer here at work than I do going
pretty much anywhere else.”

Why Did Time’s Up Go to Weinstein Lawyer to Rep a Cosby Accuser?

Attorney Charles Harder discloses in his new Gawker Slayer book that he was asked in 2018 by the workplace equity foundation
to take a case to the Supreme Court

O n March 8 — a few days short of the fifth

anniversary of a $140 million jury verdict
that bankrupted gossip site Gawker and shocked
the media establishment — the attorney behind
the legal strategy will publish his new book
recounting the trial. But Gawker Slayer: The
Professional and Personal Adventures of Famed
Attorney Charles Harder, by Charles Harder, also
features an eyebrow-raising disclosure beyond
anything related to his experience working on
the Hulk Hogan sex tape case. The Beverly Hills
entertainment litigator writes: “In 2018, I
was honored to be asked by the Time’s
had subsequently become central to the #MeToo
movement. While Harder’s time with Weinstein
was brief, and he’d no doubt like to disassociate
himself from the disgraced figure (Weinstein’s
name doesn’t come up in Gawker Slayer and
Harder is suing Weinstein for unpaid legal bills),
it still raises questions for Time’s Up, which has
seen increased visibility amid its Golden Globes
campaign aimed at the Hollywood Foreign Press
Association’s lack of membership diversity.
Putting aside Harder’s role, there’s the nature
of his petition to the Supreme Court. The
case was brought by Kathrine McKee,
the headlines in February 2019 was a concurring
statement from Justice Clarence Thomas calling
for a reexamination of the actual malice standard
under defamation law.
Had other justices taken up the McKee case and
joined Thomas here, it could have been a disaster
for the #MeToo movement. In January, Time’s Up
told The New York Times that 33 of the 193 cases
it was supporting at the time involved defend-
ing workers who had come forward about sexual
harassment only to be subsequently sued for def-
amation. Was attempting to make libel suits easier
for plaintiffs really wise? “I don’t think we should
DISNEYLAND: MARIO TAMA/GETTY IMAGES. HARDER: GERARDO MORA/GETTY IMAGES.

Up Foundation to take a case to the
U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of one of
Bill Cosby’s accusers.”
That would mean that mere months
after representing Harvey Weinstein in an
unsuccessful attempt to squelch a breakthrough
October 2017 report in The New York Times
about sexual misconduct, Harder was getting a
client referral from the very legal foundation that
one of the individuals who attempted to
sue Cosby for defamation over denials of
Harder sexual abuse. She couldn’t prevail because
a court deemed her to be a public figure
who couldn’t demonstrate actual malice. Her
petition asked the justices to consider whether an
individual must prove more than negligence after
making a public accusation of being victimized.
The Supreme Court denied review, but what got
change defamation law,” says attorney Nancy
Erika Smith, who represented Gretchen Carlson
against Fox and also would represent several
women in a defamation suit against Bill O’Reilly.
“We don’t have to sacrifice the First Amendment
along the way — or make it easier for harassers to
threaten and further harass their victims.”
Time’s Up didn’t respond to an opportunity to
comment. — ERIQ GARDNER

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 18 M A RCH 3, 2021

 PROMOTION

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and explore contending their creators both industry & consumers
films & series in moderated Q&As with a robust media package

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synopsis/details
 The Report
Behind the Headlines
Netflix Reigns as Paramount, Sony Gain
In a tumultuous year, Hollywood majors cut their losses on theatrical titles and Disney took the biggest hit,
but the pandemic also lowered marketing and production costs, THR’s annual analysis shows BY GEORG SZALAI
Netflix
$25B | ↑24%
$25B
raise external financing for our day-to-day operations”
$20B
$15B
$10B
$4.6B | ↑77%
$5B
Bridgerton
The streamer accelerated
its growth in 2020 thanks
to stay-at-home orders in
many parts of the world,
adding a record 36.6 mil-
lion users and ending
the year with 203.6 mil-
lion global subscribers.
Revenue rose sharply
and its operating profit
overtook all Hollywood
giants’ studio units.
Importantly, Netflix
swung to positive free
cash flow for 2020 to the
tune of $1.9 billion (after
a 2019 loss of $3.3 billion)
and forecast it would
roughly break even for
2021, followed by free
cash flow profits after
that. With Hollywood
pushing into streaming,
Netflix is keeping up its
programming spending,
unveiling a huge film slate
of 71 titles and noting
that, as of January, it had
500 film or TV projects
in postproduction or
prepping to debut. During
a Jan. 19 earnings call,
co-CEO Ted Sarandos
emphasized plans for the
service to “expand well
beyond a movie a week”
to entice subscribers.
Warner Bros.
On Jan. 19, Netflix disclosed that it won’t “need to
given its subscriber-growth projections.
$12.2B | ↓15%
$2.1B | ↓12%
Tenet
The studio overtook
Disney in THR’s profit
ranking despite a decline
from record operating
income in 2019 driven by
the pandemic. Theater
closures spurred a
76 percent box office
hit to less than $1.1 bil-
lion. The TV production
arm, the biggest part
of Warners’ business,
widened its revenue
lead thanks to a small
3 percent dip to $6.2 bil-
lion. Video games and
other revenue decreased
21 percent to $1.6 billion,
but Warner Bros. Games,
relying on catalog fare,
posted record annual
profit. Warners’ total
revenue fell 15 percent,
but its bottom-line drop
came in less pronounced,
with a 15.8 percent
reduction in operating
expenses, helped by
lower production and
marketing spending, to
$10.1 billion. This year, all
eyes will be on how the
strategy for the movie
slate — in which titles
will debut day-and-
date in theaters and on
HBO Max — fares.
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
studio profit report
Revenue
Disney
$7.6B | ↓42%
$1.7B |↓48%
Mulan
Studio profit was nearly
cut in half amid COVID-
19 cinema closures,
presenting a painful
comparison with the
unprecedented $11.1 bil-
lion global box office haul
that Disney films brought
home in 2019. Notably,
the company sent Mulan
straight to Disney+ at a
$30 premium price in the
U.S. and other markets,
while theatrical releases
for the title in China and
Russia were muted. One
caveat: The October-
to-December period
saw Disney change its
financial reporting amid
a corporate restructuring
for the streaming age,
making comparisons with
2019 difficult. Analysts
say the new disclosure on
“content sales/licensing
and other” is the closest
equivalent to the former
studio unit, but financials
are not directly compa-
rable. Disney reported
a $188 million operating
profit for that segment
for the final quarter
of 2020, down from
$776 million in the year-
ago period.
20
Profit
NBCUniversal
After seeing success at the box office with Sonic the Hedgehog, which grossed
$320 million worldwide since its February 2020 release, Paramount sold Coming 2
America to Amazon and The Trial of the Chicago 7 to Netflix as the pandemic hit.
$5.3B | ↓18%
$785M |↓6%
The Croods: A New Age
The studio’s profit didn’t
fall as much as expected
given an 18 percent
revenue drop fueled by a
71 percent box office blow.
But COVID-19 also meant a
21 percent cut in operating
expenses, thanks to a drop
of 43 percent in adver-
tising/marketing costs
and a nearly 12 percent
programming/produc-
tion dip due to fewer
releases. Universal did
have theatrical success
with February’s lower-
budget The Invisible
Man ($143 million). And
its home entertainment
revenue decline slowed to
1.4 percent while content
licensing grew 9.7 percent,
helped by “increased sales
of titles made available on
demand,” such as Trolls
World Tour. Universal’s
landmark premium VOD
deal with exhibitors
provided incremental
revenue to the company
and a lifeline to struggling
theaters. And The Croods:
A New Age, released in
November on the way to
$156 million in worldwide
grosses to date, was
a highlight.
M A RCH 3, 2021
Sony
$8.3B | ↓8%
$665M |↑22%
Bad Boys for Life
Like its peers, Sony felt
pandemic pain at the
box office, with revenue
tumbling 64 percent to
$504 million. And since
its film unit includes
TV channels, it also
took a hit in advertis-
ing. Despite an overall
revenue drop, the studio
improved its film profit.
How? Management cited
lower marketing costs
due to a depleted theatri-
cal slate and the cost
benefits of a decision
to prune its portfolio of
international TV chan-
nels the past couple of
years to 65 at the end
of 2020 from 76 a year
earlier. Also helping were
lower expenses thanks
to production delays.
The studio unit boasted
a 3 percent gain in home
entertainment revenue
and higher TV produc-
tion licensing revenue.
Sony even celebrated
being the top studio at
the domestic box office,
powered by Bad Boys for
Life, Hollywood’s biggest
global earner of 2020
(the film has taken in
$426 million overall).
Paramount
$2.6B | ↓13%
$215M | ↑169%
TENET: MELINDA SUE GORDAN/WARNER. BROS. MULAN: JASIN BOLAND/DISNEY. CROODS: COURTESY OF DREAMWORKS ANIMATION. LIFE: BEN ROTHSTEIN/COLUMBIA PICTURES. SONIC: COURTESY PARAMOUNT PICTURES AND SEGA OF AMERICA.
GROUNDLINGS: ARAYA DIAZ/GETTY IMAGES. ZELNICK: JEROD HARRIS/WIREIMAGE. ROBINSON: TIBRINA HOBSON/GETTY IMAGES. UPRIGHT CITIZENS BRIDAGE: DIEGO DONMARIA/GETTY IMAGES FOR SXSW. BRIDGERTON: LIAM DANIEL/NETFLIX.
Sonic the Hedgehog
Last year, the first since
the recombination of
Viacom and CBS, saw
the studio more than
double its adjusted profit
to a multiyear high after
it returned to a slight
gain in 2019. It cited
“lower distribution and
film production costs
resulting from fewer
theatrical releases”
due to the pandemic.
The studio recorded a
19 percent overall dip in
expenses to $2.3 billion,
which more than offset a
revenue drop. With just a
6 percent decline, licens-
ing remained the largest
revenue generator for
Paramount, with $1.6 bil-
lion, followed by home
entertainment, which
recorded a gain of 14 per-
cent to $709 million,
driven by “higher sales of
catalog titles and titles
from Miramax,” of which
the company acquired
control in the spring.
But theatrical revenue
declined 67 percent to
just $180 million in 2020
as the studio delayed
major titles or sold them
to streamers.

‘We Figured Teaching Improv
on Zoom Would Be a Disaster’
With live revenue decimated, sketch comedy brands like The Groundlings,
Upright Citizens Brigade and Second City — now owned by
game mogul Strauss Zelnick — try new paths BY SETH ABRAMOVITCH
I
n July, The Second City was facing an
existential crisis. Its namesake improv
theaters in Toronto, Los Angeles and
Chicago had shuttered amid the COVID-19
pandemic, effectively eliminating all revenue
overnight. Meanwhile, former members were
taking to social media to call out the storied
comedy brand — where Tina Fey, Eugene Levy,
Steve Carell and Jordan Peele, among many
others, got their start — for institutionalized
anti-Black bias. The controversy led longtime
Second City CEO (and 50 percent owner)
Andrew Alexander to resign, admitting that he
“failed to create an anti-racist environment
wherein artists of color might thrive.”
Eight months later, The Second City is
hitting the refresh button. In December, the
company installed Jon Carr, a veteran Black
improv performer and playwright, as a senior
executive. And on Feb. 18, a private equity firm
called ZMC — led by Strauss Zelnick, CEO of
Take-Two Interactive (Grand Theft Auto) and
former chairman of CBS Corp. — said it had
purchased the legacy brand for an undisclosed
sum. (The Financial Times put the price tag at
about $50 million.)
A digital media mogul taking over a chain
of live comedy cabarets? It’s not as unlikely a
marriage as it might seem, Zelnick tells THR.
“ZMC is in the business of investing in growth
businesses that are taking advantage of what
digital technology can do to benefit them and
benefit their consumers,” he says, suggesting
the migration online during the pandemic
could point to a new path for profitability for
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
live-comedy brands. “We actually thought
it was kind of a natural fit, because we are
attracted to story brands that captivate con-
sumers — and that’s what The Second City has
done for 60 years,” he says.
Second City is far from the only improv
mecca that’s had to be quick on its feet
through the tumult of the past year. The
Groundlings (the Melrose Avenue school
where Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo created
characters like Barb and Star) and Upright
Citizens Brigade (co-founded by Amy Poehler)
have faced their own racial reckonings while
scrambling to remain afloat due to pandemic
closures. “The first shutdown was nerve-
wracking to say the least,” says Groundlings
managing director Carrie Gergely. “We had
to cancel dozens of classes and figure out
refunds and credits and things.” Early on,
the theater company held emergency meet-
ings to map out a game plan. “We figured
Pre-pandemic times: An Upright Citizens Brigade sketch
during SXSW in Austin in 2019.
21 M A RCH 3, 2021
teaching improv on Zoom would be a disaster.
But we were pleasantly surprised that it could
be quite delightful. Students had glowing
reviews,” Gergely says.
For its annual Groundlings Holiday Show,
the theater pulled out all the stops, putting
on a live, Zoom-based performance featur-
ing 120 video cues and 40 audio cues on top
of the ridiculous wigs and costume changes
fans have come to expect. The Melrose theater
seats 99 — but the show had as many as
200 paying households per performance. “The
audience lives in the chat room,” says Leonard
Robinson, the director of the holiday show.
“People will literally type ‘LOL.’ ”
Robinson is one of the three Black
Groundlings — out of 26 main company
members — and leads diversity panels at the
theater. He says the online shows and classes
have worked out so well, they’ll likely continue
post-pandemic. “You used to have to be in L.A.
to study at the school,” he says. “Now we have
students in South Africa, Vancouver, Boston.
It’s been a little bit of a blessing in disguise. I
don’t want to paint a picture that everything
is rosy. But I think we’ll be better off in the
future because of it. It’s a moment to take a
breath and account for a lot of what we want to
accomplish, particularly in terms of diversity,
equity and inclusion. Hopefully in six months,
you’ll see audiences returning to what looks
and feels like a new Groundlings.”
Hardest hit has been UCB, which because of
the virus and over-expansion laid off staff in
L.A. and New York and shuttered its East Coast
facilities (a theater in New York’s
Hell’s Kitchen and a training
center in the Garment District)
a year ago, then eight months
Zelnick later sold off its Sunset Boulevard
headquarters, unable to make
mortgage payments. In June,
amid the George Floyd protests
and demands for racial equality,
Robinson a group of former performers
calling itself Project Rethink
confronted UCB for “systemic racism.” Now
the only physical UCB space that remains is
a Franklin Avenue theater in Hollywood, but
its future is uncertain. “While the UCB can’t
speak for improv theaters in general,” the
organization tells THR, it plans on “creating a
nonprofit to which we will hand over control
of the theater and school in Los Angeles.”
Adding to New York’s comedy woes, The
Peoples Improv Theater (or the PIT), the
second-biggest improv hub in the city after
UCB and a place that has counted Ellie Kemper
and Kristen Schaal as performers, said in a
Feb. 19 Facebook post that it would vacate its
24th Street main stage. “The PIT was never
just a space,” wrote Ali Reza Farahnakian, who
founded the theater in 2002. “But tomorrow is
promised to no one during a once-in-a-century
global pandemic.”
 FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION IN ALL CATEGORIES INCLUDING

BEST PICTURE
BEST DIRECTOR
ROBIN WRIGHT
BEST ACTRESS
ROBIN WRIGHT
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
DEMIÁN BICHIR
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
JESSE CHATHAM AND ERIN DIGNAM
“LAND IS AN EXTRAORDINARY TESTAMENT TO
THE POWER OF HUMAN KINDNESS.
Robin Wright delivers a perfect performance”
Pete Hammond, DEADLINE

“Demián Bichir is magnificent in an award-worthy performance”

Richard Roeper, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

Written by JESSE CHATHAM and ERIN DIGNAM

Directed by ROBIN WRIGHT
Sign up at FocusInsider.com for exclusive access to early screenings, film premieres and more.
For more on this film, go to FocusFeaturesGuilds2020.com. © 2021 FOCUS FEATURES LLC.
 The Report 202 1 AWA R D S S E A S O N

PROMOTION

FEINBERG FORECAST

With a Turn of the Golden Globe,

the Competition Gets Reshuffled
The Hollywood Foreign Press has come and gone,
and now it’s on to the next stop on the carousel BY SCOTT FEINBERG

Best Picture Director

Palm Springs Chloé Zhao

This Neon/Hulu dramedy’s Oscar pros-
pects would have been boosted if it had
beaten its Globes competition — includ-
ing Music, Hamilton and The Prom — but
it lost to Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, and
Andy Samberg lost to that film’s Sacha
Baron Cohen for best actor.
Nomadland
Claiming her place in the record books,
Chloé Zhao (right) became the second
woman and the second filmmaker of
Asian descent to take the Golden Globes’
prize for best director, as her film was also
named best drama.

Actress

Andra Day
The United States vs. Billie Holiday
The popular singer, who plays the film’s
titular jazz legend, pulled off the biggest
upset of the Globes when she won best
actress in a film drama, becoming only the
second Black winner of the prize, 35 years
after The Color Purple’s Whoopi Goldberg.
NOMADLAND: JOSHUA JAMES RICHARDS/20TH CENTURY STUDIOS. EMMA: LIAM DANIEL/FOCUS FEATURES. LOT: SEACIA PAVAO/NETFLIX. MANK: COURTESY OF NETFLIX. PALM: JESSICA PEREZ/HULU. HOLIDAY: TAKASHI SEIDA/HULU.
Rosamund Pike
I Care a Lot
The HFPA really likes this Brit — it was one
of the few groups to nominate her two
years ago for A Private War — but few pre-
dicted her best actress in a film comedy win
over Borat’s Maria Bakalova and French
Exit’s Michelle Pfeiffer.

Supporting Actress Production Design

Amanda Seyfried Emma

Mank
Though she lost her Globes bid, she
should get a boost when her friend and
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again co-star
Cher makes a rare (virtual) appearance
to moderate a March 4 Academy Q&A.
Maybe people forgot about this film
because it came out so long ago —
Feb. 21, 2020, before the pandemic shut
down theaters — but whatever the rea-
son, it was a notable omission from the
Art Directors Guild nominations Feb. 25.

24
 NOMINAT IONS INC LUDING SAG AWARDS WRITERS GUILD AWARDS
NOMINATION
BEST PICTURE NOMINEE BEST ORIGINAL
BEST ACTOR RIZ AHMED
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR PAUL RACI BEST ACTOR RIZ AHMED SCREENPLAY

F O R Y O U R C O N S I D E R AT I O N I N A L L C AT E G O R I E S I N C L U D I N G

BEST PICTURE
BEST DIRECTOR BEST ACTOR BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Darius Marder Riz Ahmed Paul Raci
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Screenplay by
Darius Marder & Abraham Marder
Story by
Darius Marder & Derek Cianfrance
 The Report

7 Days of DEALS
Who’s inking on the dotted line this week

AT&T SELLS STAK E IN ‘WORST

ACQU ISITION,’ DIR ECT V, FOR $1.8B IN CASH
In the summer of 2015, AT&T closed its acquisition
Deal of satellite powerhouse DirecTV, touting its new
of the role as “the largest pay TV provider” in the world.
Week Price tag: $67 billion, including debt. AT&T
ended that year with 25.4 million U.S. pay TV
subscribers. Fast-forward to this Feb. 25, when AT&T
AT&T sold a 30 percent stake in DirecTV and its will own
other video services, U-verse and AT&T TV, to 70 percent
and TPG
private equity firm TPG Capital. The deal valued the will own
Stankey new entity, titled DirecTV, at $16.25 billion, “down 30 percent
considerably,” as Moody’s analyst Neil Begley noted of the new
DirecTV.
— 76 percent to be precise. AT&T ended 2020 with
17.2 million U.S. video subscribers, a third lower cash. It is betting on buying in at a low price and America
than in 2015. leveraging its media experience “in support of the Ferrera
“AT&T’s DirecTV is inarguably one of the worst new DirecTV’s position as a competitive video pro-
Trujillo acquisitions of all time,” MoffettNathanson analyst vider,” stated TPG partner David Trujillo.
Craig Moffett wrote to his clients after the sale was Debt analyst Begley expects AT&T to use the
FILM
unveiled. “Most put the ‘real’ valuation of the deal money from the sale “to help offset” the $23 billion-
Ta-Nehisi Coates (UTA,
at closer to $12 billion.” The driving factor: cord- plus it agreed to spend on 5G wireless spectrum.
Del Shaw) will write the
cutting and the rise of streaming. “The anemic And some on Wall Street think that this deal is
script for a new Superman
valuation shows just how dire things have gotten another step to a DirecTV merger with rival satel-
movie, produced by J.J.
in the pay TV ecosystem,” says Wells Fargo ana- lite TV provider Dish, which Cowen analyst Colby
Abrams, for Warner Bros.
lyst Steven Cahall. Even AT&T CEO John Stankey Synesael called “the most compelling opportunity.”
had to admit Feb. 25: “We certainly didn’t expect But Moffett says that antitrust concerns about such
George Clooney (CAA,
this outcome.” a deal remain: “Eventually, they’ll be allowed to
Lichter Grossman) and
For TPG, whose investments include CAA and merge, but by the time it happens, the combined
Julia Roberts (CAA,
Spotify, the deal allows the firm to get a 30 percent valuation might still be less than the stand-alone
Hirsch Wallerstein) will
stake in the video business for just $1.8 billion in valuation of DirecTV today.” — GEORG SZALAI
star in Universal Pictures’

KRAVITZ: AMY SUSSMAN/GETTY IMAGES. GUADAGNINO: DANIELE VENTURELLI/GETTY IMAGES. BOOK: COURTESY OF SIMON & SCHUSTER. FERRERA: FRAZER HARRISON/GETTY IMAGES. COATES:
romantic comedy Ticket

STANKEY: RODIN ECKENROTH/GETTY IMAGES. TRUJILLO: NICHOLAS HUNT/GETTY IMAGES. DIRECTV: CHRIS RANK/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES. BATEMAN: JESSE GRANT/GETTY IMAGES.
Scarface Remake Among Films Nabbing Tax Credits to Paradise.

Nearly a year after Together, the projects are estimated to Rachel Zegler (ICM) has

Hollywood shuttered amid
Big
Deal the pandemic, the industry
is plotting a major return
to filming in California. The
state’s film commission revealed that 22
features have been selected for the latest
round of tax credits under its incentives
program. That includes 11 indies and 11 stu-
dio films, among them Universal’s Scarface
remake, written by the Coen brothers
and to be helmed by Luca Guadagnino;
Netflix’s Here Comes the Flood, written
by Simon Kinberg and to be directed by
Jason Bateman; and Steven Soderbergh’s
HBO Max film Kimi, starring Zoë Kravitz.
Jason Bateman, Zoë Kravitz, Luca Guadagnino
Other features qualifying for the tax
credits include the Eva Longoria-directed
Cheetos origin movie Flamin’ Hot, the
Reese Witherspoon-produced adaptation
of Ashley’s War and the Jeremy Pope-
led Sammy Davis Jr. biopic Scandalous!
ISMAEL QUINTANILLA/GETTY IMAGES. FAGBENLE: PAUL ARCHULETA/FILMMAGIC. HOME: REDFIN. CASSIDY: COURTESY OF SUBJECT. FRANCO: TOMMASO BODDI/WIREIMAGE.
generate more than $430 million in “quali- joined Zachary Levi in
fied” spending (below-the-line wages to New Line’s Shazam: Fury
California workers and payments to in-state of the Gods.
vendors), as well as thousands of high-
wage jobs and an estimated $642 million in Common (UTA, Grandview,
overall in-state spending. When it comes Myman Greenspan)
to jobs, the films are on track to employ an will produce God’s Long
estimated 2,546 crew, 695 cast and 2,613 Summer, a biopic on civil
background actors and stand-ins over a and voting rights activist
combined 718 filming days in California. Fannie Lou Hamer.
Says California Film Commission executive
director Colleen Bell: “We’re excited to wel- Keith and Kenny Lucas
come so many projects — from big-budget (UTA, Fourth Wall,
studio films to low-budget indies, and Hansen Jacobson)
everything in between.” — BRYN SANDBERG will write and star in a

Rights Available! Hot new books with Hollywood appeal BY MIA GALUPPO

Yolk (SIMON & SCHUSTER, MARCH 2)
BY Mary H.K. Choi AGENCY UTA
A sibling-centric family melodrama, the book follows estranged
sisters Jayne and June, who moved from South Korea to New York
together and are forced back into each other’s lives after the elder
receives a cancer diagnosis.
Bone Rattle (KENSINGTON, APRIL 27)
BY Marc Cameron AGENCY Writers House
The veteran novelist, known for writing four of Tom Clancy’s Jack
Ryan books, offers franchise potential with the third installment
in his own series about Arliss Cutter, a seasoned U.S. marshal who
must solve a number of disappearances in the Alaskan bush.

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 26 M A RCH 3, 2021


Coates
semi-autobiographical
Universal comedy, with
Judd Apatow producing.
Ryan Gosling (CAA,
Sloane Offer) will star in
and produce The Actor,
an adaptation of Donald E.
Westlake’s novel Memory.
Rebel Wilson (WME,
Sloane Offer) will star in
and produce high school
comedy Senior Year for
Paramount Players.
Tomb Raider showrunner
Tasha Huo (Gersh) will write
fantasy reboot Red Sonja
with director Joey Soloway.
TELEVISION
Rose Leslie (UTA, the
U.K.’s Hamilton Hodell,
Peikoff Mahan) and Theo
James (UTA, the U.K.’s
Markham Froggatt, Sloane
Fagbenle
Offer) will star in HBO’s
series adaptation of The
Time Traveler’s Wife.
Spike Lee (ICM, Grubman
Shire) will direct NYC
Epicenters 9/11 2021½,
an HBO documentary
marking the 20th anniver-
sary of 9/11.
The Handmaid’s Tale’s
O-T Fagbenle (Buchwald,
the U.K.’s Curtis Brown,
Hansen Jacobson) will
play Barack Obama in
Showtime’s The First Lady.
Phoebe Robinson (UTA)
will star in and write a
series adaptation of her
book Everything’s Trash,
but It’s Okay for Freeform.
DIGITAL
America Ferrera (CAA, B
Company, Peikoff Mahan)
Chelsea Handler bought the Bel Air property in 2010 for $6 million.
will adapt YA novel I Am
Not Your Perfect Mexican
Daughter for Netflix.
Kelsey Grammer (UTA,
Vault) will reprise his
role as Dr. Frasier Crane
in a Frasier Paramount+
revival series.
Taylor Kitsch (Untitled,
Range) has joined Chris
Pratt in Amazon thriller
series The Terminal List.
Amy Schumer (WME,
Maverick, Schreck Rose)
will return to Inside Amy
Schumer for five specials
on Paramount+.
Mattson Tomlin
(Grandview, Goodman
Genow) will showrun and
exec produce a Terminator
anime series for Netflix
and Skydance.
Jeremy Renner
(CAA, Felker Toczek)
will star in and exec
produce Taylor Sheridan’s
prison drama series
Mayor of Kingstown for
Paramount+.
For All Mankind creator
Ron Moore (CAA) is
developing a Disney+
franchise set in Disney’s
Magic Kingdom.
Brinda Adhikari (UTA)
will serve as showrunner
for Jon Stewart’s untitled
Apple TV+ series.
REAL ESTATE
Chelsea Handler
(Hilton & Hyland) has
sold her six-bedroom
Bel Air home to music
exec Guy Moot for
$10.4 million.
— COMPILED BY KIRSTEN CHUBA
6MBig
AMC Networks’ total 2020
streaming subscribers across AMC+
Number and niche services like Acorn TV,
Shudder, Sundance Now and UMC.
Rep THR,
Sheet Esq.
Taylor Cassidy, a TikTok CASE James Franco v.
star, signed with WME. former acting students
Melba Wilson, a TV chef WHY IT MATTERS
and restaurateur, signed The actor has reached
with Buchwald. a settlement with two
former students of
The Weeknd, after his his acting school who
Super Bowl turn, signed claimed they were
with CAA. sexually exploited. Sarah
Tither-Kaplan and Toni
Callum Woodhouse, Gaal in October 2019
who stars on PBS’ filed a putative class
All Creatures Great action against Franco
and Small, signed and others involved in
with APA . Studio 4. Full details
of the deal have not yet
Jean-Rene Zetrenne, been released, but a
formerly at Ogilvy USA, motion for preliminary
has been hired as chief approval is expected to
people officer at UTA. be filed by March 15.
 People, Places, Preoccupations
N E X T BIG T HIN G

Taylor
Takahashi
The first-time actor made an
improbable move from personal
assistant to leading man on director
Eddie Huang’s film Boogie By Rebecca Sun

aylor Takahashi has a hell of an ori-

T gin story.
Just five years ago, he moved from
his Bay Area hometown of Alameda
to Orange County to work as a personal
trainer. After about a year, the ex-high school
basketball star missed playing hoops, so he
joined a recreation league in Monterey Park in
L.A.’s San Gabriel Valley. To his surprise, one
of his teammates was Eddie Huang.
Takahashi, 28, was a fan of the chef turned
TV personality’s Vice show, Huang’s World,
and the two ended up bonding over their
shared passions for basketball and cooking
(Takahashi was also working part time as a
yakitori chef at a Japanese restaurant). Huang
invited the younger man to cook with him for
some of his catering events, where he noticed
Takahashi’s aptitude for taking direction.
That led to a conversation about whether
Takahashi had ever thought about working in
the entertainment industry. “Not a day in my
life,” he answered truthfully. Huang said he
could show him the ropes and sent him the
script for his directorial debut, Boogie, a com-
ing-of-age story about a Chinese American
high school basketball star, out March 5 from
Focus Features. The next thing Takahashi
knew, he was flying to New York, where his
duties as Huang’s personal assistant included

Taylor Takahashi and co-star Taylour Paige in Boogie.

Before being cast in his debut acting role, he says, “I’d be
the last person you’d want to record in front of a camera.”

28
 training the young actor cast in the title role
to credibly portray a top hoops prospect.
With about three weeks left in preproduc-
What Stars
tion, Takahashi showed up for work to find
Huang waiting for him outside. He thought
he was about to be fired. Instead, the direc-
Do to Liven
tor (who had decided that he needed to recast
the lead) told him to go into the production
Up Hotel
office and read a scene on tape. “He sent it to
the studio, and by that Monday I was Boogie,”
Takahashi says.
Quarantines
Celebrities get creative
Early on, Huang had a feeling that his assis- in filling weeks stuck alone
tant was actually his star, but kept that idea in a room ahead of shoots:
close to the vest. “Already nobody wanted to ‘Make sure the windows open.
make this film,” Huang says with a laugh. “If I That stuff matters’
By Kirsten Chuba
was like, ‘Yo, I think my assistant is Boogie,’ I
would’ve been shut down.”
Takahashi was hesitant to take the part.
“Eddie, not for your first movie, man,” he
told Huang. After all, Boogie is an intensely
P reproduction quarantines are the
new norm in Hollywood, with cast
and crews holed up in hotel rooms
“I didn’t realize how nuts I went until
after quarantine,” Quaid says. “I would go
to the studio for fittings or get coffee with
personal story for Huang, an iconoclastic per- around the world for two to three weeks some of my castmates in the park and real-
sonality who has been vocal about his belief before ever stepping on set. ize, ‘Wow, I am rusty at being around other
that ABC’s adaptation of his 2013 memoir, Many of these stays, and the accompa- people.’ I forgot how to have conversations
Fresh Off the Boat, sanitized his unfiltered nying struggles, are broadcast on social that weren’t on FaceTime.”
perspective as an Asian American man. To media: Taika Waititi documented 14 days Brittany Snow, who quarantined for
convince Takahashi, Huang pointed out stuck inside a hotel room with his daugh- 20 days in New Zealand in a hotel before
how rare it was for guys like them to have a ters in New Zealand ahead of directing shooting horror film X, created a film
character in American Thor: Love and Thunder in Australia, and festival for herself of four to five classics
pop culture to relate to. Lulu Wang took to Twitter, looking for a day, along with yoga, journaling and
“There’s never going virtual friends to “get drunk [with] and do “FaceTime dates with my husband and
VITAL
STATS to be another Asian an AMA or Clubhouse or dance party” dur- my friends where I would get dressed up
American basketball ing a 21-day quarantine in Hong Kong for and we would have a meal together over
AGE 28
role,” Huang told him. Amazon’s series The Expatriates. the phone.” The lockdown also provided
BORN
Alameda, California
For the shoot, Huang Jack Quaid performed nightly lip-sync “set aside time to work on the character,”
BIG BREAK used Takahashi’s rookie numbers on his Instagram stories during a she says. “I definitely knew all my lines by
Boogie nerves to the film’s 14-day Canadian lockdown. “It started out the end.” You’s Jenna Ortega, also in New
REPS advantage. “He’s not fairly simple, just me dancing. Then I real- Zealand for X, says that as an introvert, she
Artist International a trained actor,” says ized that I had to get more creative with it,” enjoyed the time alone for reading, writing
Group
Huang, “so it’s finding says Quaid, who is shooting season three and sketching.
TAKAHASHI: JONNY MARLOW. GROOMING BY DAVID SONG. STYLING BY BTITTO LITOW. BOOGIE: NICOLE RIVELLI/FOCUS FEATURES. QUAID, ORTEGA: COURTESY OF SUBJECT.

a way to get Taylor’s of the Amazon hit The Boys in Toronto. “All Productions that are outside the country
emotions in that place.” of a sudden I was trying to figure out how I generally face stricter quarantines than
Takahashi, the all-time leading scorer at could make myself look like I was driving a those inside the U.S.; both Ortega and Big
Alameda High, had no trouble with the car using a TV, a pizza tray and a blow- Little Lies’ Douglas Smith note that they
basketball sequences. “The hardest part was dryer.” He also credits playing video games received calls from the government with
remembering what it was like when you’re on his PlayStation with getting him through updates and checks on their status.
18, more on the edge and things sting a little the two weeks, as well as workouts, movies, “L.A. quarantine is a joke,” says Smith,
more because it’s all new,” he says, adding, cooking and text chains with his co-stars. who is in Toronto working on CBS’ Clarice,
“I’m pretty chill in real life.” Yet the first-time citing Canada’s new rules that require a
Above: Jenna Ortega during her New Zealand quarantine.
actor delivers a charismatic performance that Below: Jack Quaid in his Toronto hotel room during his stay at a government-authorized hotel
is credible in its portrayal of a young athlete 14-day lockdown. while awaiting COVID-19 test results.
whose on-court cockiness is a cover for adoles- Arriving just before those protocols were in
cent insecurities. place, he convinced production to put his
Takahashi and Boogie aren’t identical: hotel budget toward a private rental home
Although the actor says he also was fairly with a backyard and a piano, which he
rebellious in his teen years, as a yonsei (fourth- “played for 20 hours a day.”
generation) Japanese American, he didn’t grow For those heading into their own quaran-
up with the immigrant family issues that both tines, Smith recommends “knowing what
Huang and Boogie experienced. Still, there is you’re getting yourself into. Maybe ask a
one major point of similarity (besides basket- few questions that you normally wouldn’t
ball) that Takahashi feels with his character. “I ask to your reps and your travel coordina-
kind of came of age [in this movie] along with tor. Maybe stay at an apartment that has
Boogie,” says the newcomer. “Before all this, I a balcony or backyard,” he says. “Don’t go
did not like the spotlight. To fast-forward and for the five-star hotel if you can’t use any
see the leaps and bounds, it’s one of the most of it. Make sure the windows open. That
life-changing experiences I’ve ever had.” stuff matters.”

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 29 M A RCH 3, 2021

 About Town

Yes, I Did Say That! Quotes

A look at who’s saying what in entertainment

Compiled by Emily Hilton

“We always have an

SAT word in the
lyrics somewhere
“My goal is to unify.” because people
appreciate
EMMANUEL ACHO
The Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man author and host, learning a word.”
on Instagram, announcing that he will step in for Chris Harrison on ROBERT LOPEZ
The Bachelor’s post-finale special, After the Final Rose. The Frozen and Coco co-songwriter,
to The New York Times, elaborating
on the songwriting process behind the
hits he has created with his partner
and wife, Kristen Anderson-Lopez.

“We set out “I’ve been on a diet

to do something “I have never met for three years
Aaron Rodgers.” for this movie … so
[and] we won.”
DAVID GOODMAN
JODIE FOSTER
The actress, speaking to the press
there’s cake outside.”
The WGA West president, after her Golden Globe win, ANDRA DAY

to the Los Angeles Times, detailing
the guild’s victory in its nearly
two-year battle with top talent
agencies over conflicts of
interest regarding packaging fees.
ACHO: CINDY ORD/GETTY IMAGES FOR SIRIUSXM. FOSTER: ETHAN MILLER/GETTY IMAGES FOR CINEMACON. HARRY: DAVE BENETT/GETTY IMAGES FOR AUDI. GAGA: FRAZER HARRISON/GETTY IMAGES. TATNA: GEORGE PIMENTEL/WIREIMAGE.
putting to rest rumors that she set The singer and actress, to People,
up actress Shailene Woodley sharing her plans to celebrate
with her fiance, Green Bay Packers her Golden Globe win for best actress
quarterback Aaron Rodgers. in a drama for her debut in The
United States vs. Billie Holiday.

“My biggest concern “This is not your

was history father’s Viacom. “You’re forever
repeating itself.” This is not my a hero.”
PRINCE HARRY father’s either.” LADY GAGA
The Duke of Sussex, in a teaser for The singer, on Twitter, thanking
an upcoming CBS interview with SHARI REDSTONE
The ViacomCBS chairman, in a her dog walker Ryan Fischer,
Oprah Winfrey, referencing his late who is recovering after being shot
mother, Princess Diana, who was Paramount+ presentation, evoking
her late father, Sumner, while while trying to protect Gaga’s
hounded by the media after entering French bulldogs from being stolen.
royal life. She died in a car accident emphasizing excitement over the
while fleeing paparazzi in 1997. conglomerate’s rebranding.

FLASHBACK! JAN. 5, 2018

Did I “There’s a difference between being a

journalist and being a Golden Globe voter.”
Really MEHER TATNA
Say The former HFPA president, to Vanity Fair, responded to Jada Pinkett Smith’s critique on
the group’s lack of diversity. HFPA leaders again are under fire for having zero Black members
That? and making only a small attempt at contrition during the Globes’ Feb. 28 telecast.

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 30 M A RCH 3, 2021

 PROMOTION

M A N Y T H A N K S T O T H E F O L LOW I N G B R A N D S F O R T H E I R G E N E RO U S
C O N T R I B U T I O N S T O T H E 2 0 2 1 G O L D E N G LO B E G I F T B AG S .

A L A S T I N / B O M B A S / C L A R I N S M E N / C L E A N K E Y / E U K A / F R A Î C H E U R PA R I S
I VA N A Z A N I E R AT O / L AVA Z Z A / O C E A N B O T T L E / T H E A R T O F T E A
T R AV E L C L E A N / T U M I / W A N T L E S E S S E N T I E L S / XO U XO U
 About Town

Heard Around Hollywood

and CEO Kevin Tsujihara was
Clockwise ousted after a scandal involving
from left: Joey
Lawrence, actress Charlotte Kirk. “All of a
Stacey Dash and sudden people had to examine
Jon Voight star
in Roe v. Wade, their behavior, not just around
co-directed sexual harassment but around
by Nick Loeb.
the attitudes that allowed that to
go on … it wasn’t unique to the
entertainment industry, but [it]
had turned a bit of a blind eye to
it,” she added. “That has changed
things way faster than I ever could
have imagined. So here we are
six or so years later, and there’s
Rambling Reporter been a lot of progress.” Speaking
of change, Myers is in the thick of
By Chris Gardner
another controversy as Newsom
battles a widespread recall effort
Roe v. Wade Actors Call Foul Over No-Show Paychecks in recent weeks.
Nick Loeb said it was a “no-brainer” to premiere Roe v. Wade at CPAC in
Orlando on Feb. 26 because the film, which he co-wrote and co-directed Author: Huffman, Loughlin
with Cathy Allyn, “aligns with the conservative message,” not to men- Deal Differently With the Blues
tion the first public appearance of Donald Trump since the election. But Fast Company senior writer Nicole
not everyone is happy. Susan LaBrecque says she and as many as nine LaPorte was the first out of the
ABC baseball comedy pilot: “She
said she was sorry, she went to
jail, didn’t complain, didn’t fight
it the way Lori did, she admitted
she was wrong from the get-go.
If you can tick all those boxes —
and I believe she was genuine — I
think you are allowed to come
back to Hollywood.” Loughlin,
however, is a different story. “I
think the public still wants more
of an explanation from her. I
wouldn’t be surprised
if she did some ver-
sion of Oprah where
she sat for an hour of
LaPorte television and is hon-
est and remorseful,
talking about how she’s changed
and what she’s learned. Then, she
would be good to go, but I think
there’s still something missing.”
Social Distancing With Wax

ROE: COURTESY OF FILM. WAX: COURTESY OF PETER LUGER STEAK HOUSE. VOIGHT: AMY SUSSMAN/GETTY IMAGES. LOEB: PAUL ARCHULETA/GETTY IMAGES. CONRAD: RACHEL MURRAY/GETTY IMAGES FOR THE LITTLE MARKET. LAPORTE: ORIT HARPAZ.
other actors have yet to be paid since the New Orleans shoot in 2018. gate with an Operation Varsity Jon Hamm

BOOK: COURTESY OF TWELVE BOOKS. HUFFMAN: STEVE GRANITZ/WIREIMAGE. LAKE, WELLINGTON: COURTESY OF SUBJECT. WARD: GEORGE NAPOLITANO/FILMMAGIC. PIZZI: COURTESY OF BUNIM/MURRAY PRODUCTIONS. TOBLER: COURTESY OF ARRAY.
After receiving “every kind of excuse” from production, they went to Blues book deal, and now her New York City restaurants are
SAG-AFTRA, which, per LaBrecque, judged in their favor. “Honestly, we Guilty Admissions: The Bribes, now open for indoor dining with
have been respectful, but not now,” she says. “It’s about principle. But Favors, and Phonies Behind the a cap of 35 percent occupancy.
it’s also the idea that they hold a premiere and everyone pat[s] them on College Cheating Scandal, which One iconic restaurant, Peter Luger
the back for making this abortion film with certain values when there’s hit shelves Feb. 23, details Felicity Steak House, found a way to fill
a bunch of us who haven’t been paid.” Allyn says producers had released Huffman’s and Lori Loughlin’s unoccupied space without sacri-
the funds to SAG as of Feb. 10. “It’s up to SAG to release [them],” she says. scandal timelines. So, what will ficing safety amid the pandemic,
their futures in Hollywood be thanks to Madame Tussauds. The
Ex-WB Exec Dee Dee Myers Rule the World, said she was “really like? LaPorte says she was not Brooklyn restaurant teamed with
on Hollywood Sexism taken aback” by the lack of women surprised to learn of Huffman’s the Times Square wax museum to
Dee Dee Myers, Warner Bros. in senior decision-making roles fill the empty spaces with rec-
executive vp corporate com- when she arrived in Hollywood ognizable figures, on loan until
munications turned senior in 2014. “They would literally say March 1: Jon Hamm by the bar,
adviser to California Gov. Gavin things like ‘Well, we just hire the Audrey Hepburn holding court at
Newsom, recently reflected on her best. This is a really demanding a table, Jimmy Fallon playing host,
Hollywood career at Chapman industry, and really only the most Michael Strahan greeting guests
University’s Dodge College Master talented people can succeed here.’ and Al Roker directing diners to
Class series (Bryan Cranston and I could not believe my ears,” she a second floor. Said Peter Luger
Lena Waithe have spoken there said. Myers also commented on vp Daniel Turtel: “Reactions from
recently). On Feb. 17, Myers, a for- the #MeToo movement, a subject staff and customers alike were
mer White House press secretary that impacted her former com- fantastic, ranging from enthu-
Madame Tussauds’ space fillers include
and author of Why Women Should pany: Ex-Warner Bros. chairman Jon Hamm at Peter Luger’s. siasm to shock to the occasional

Lauren Conrad and Hannah Sofia Vergara chatting about economic independence;
Social Action Skvarla’s The Little Market and Amy Schumer, Chelsea Handler and Jameela Jamil
— a nonprofit fair-trade shop committed to empowering sharing takes on social activism, among others. “We asked
Lauren women by featuring ethically sourced, artisan-made prod- people to talk about things that they were really passionate
Conrad (left) ucts — is mounting a Conversations With Changemakers about and that they wanted to bring light to,” says Conrad.
and Hannah
Skvarla will program on March 8, International Women’s Day, that will The duo previously hosted an in-person event, but the move
host starry feature a slew of stars. Dubbed “panels with a purpose,” the to virtual allows access for women across the globe. “In the
Conversations free program presents the co-founders in conversation with past, we were limited as to how many people can come to
With
Changemakers Jessica Alba talking about empowering mothers; Charlize our event and hear the speakers,” says Skvarla. “I love that
on March 8. Theron in a community leadership dialogue; Kelly Ripa and we’re able to share this with everybody.” — C.G.

Got tips? Email rambling@thr.com

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 32 M A RCH 3, 2021

 failure to discern between wax
figure and human; on Thursday,
a customer asked Jon Hamm’s
Hitched, Hatched, Hired
Inside the industry’s celebrations and news
likeness twice, ‘Where’s the bath-
room?’ before realizing that he
wasn’t the maitre d’. The highlight
was a drop-in by Jimmy Fallon to 2
have dinner with … Jimmy Fallon.”

Hollywood Hotel Under Fire

Hollywood’s 2021 Thompson
Hotel opening hit a snag when Top
End Terrazzo’s David Paternostro
enforced a lien over unpaid
contractor fees of $313,418. “In
38 years in the business, this is
the first time I’ve had to enforce
a lien on a project,” says the 1 Ricki Lake and Ross Burningham
2 Olivia Frances Wellington
president of the firm known for 3 Douglas Turner Ward
its contributions to the Hollywood
Walk of Fame. “I had to pay for 3
it just to have my guys continue.
I would understand if our work
was not good, but they told me
that they loved it.” The lobby
job included flooring, terrazzo
tile and countertops. Involved
parties Relevant Group, Suffolk
1
Construction and Thompson
owner Hyatt haven’t responded
to requests for comment. Says Engagements Congrats Marc Buhaj was who co-founded
a Thompson Hollywood rep: Actress-producer Mark Cheatham and named vp unscripted New York’s Negro
“While COVID-19 has led to Ricki Lake got Joe Hadley were series and specials Ensemble Company,
minor construction delays, we engaged to attorney appointed co-heads for Disney Branded died Feb. 20 in
expect to receive our Temporary Ross Burningham of CAA’s global Hip- Television on Feb. 19. New York. He was 90.
Certificate of Occupancy in less on Feb. 14 at their Hop/R&B touring
than eight weeks and look forward home in Malibu. He group Feb. 25. Alan Robert Murray,
to opening Thompson Hollywood proposed during the Oscar-winning
this spring.” an evening dip in Susan Fox was upped sound editor and
the jacuzzi. to senior vp govern- decades-long col-
ment relations for laborator with Clint
Felicity Huffman’s Shailene Woodley the Walt Disney Co. Eastwood, died
incarceration is confirmed her on Feb. 23. Feb. 24 in Los
covered in Nicole Tobler
LaPorte’s new engagement to NFL Angeles. He was 66.
book about the
Operation Varsity star Aaron Rodgers Jeff Tobler was
Blues college on The Tonight Show hired as chief mar- Ronald Pickup, the
scandal.
on Feb. 22. keting officer for British actor who
Ava DuVernay’s starred in the Best
Births ARRAY on Feb. 24. Exotic Marigold Hotel
Tom Wellington, films, died Feb. 24.
head of TV at WME, Pizzi Wheelhouse Labs He was 80.
and wife Ariana brought on Madelaine
Wellington wel- Julie Pizzi was named Guppy and Patrick Peter S. Davis,
comed Olivia Frances president of Bunim/ Schmidt as managing who produced the
Wellington on Jan. 28 Murray Productions directors Feb. 24. 1986 film Highlander,
at Cedars-Sinai. on Feb. 24. died Feb. 21 in
WME partner Calabasas, California.
Mandy Moore and HBO and HBO Max Richard Weitz joined He was 79.
musician husband promoted Janet the Center Theatre
Taylor Goldsmith Graham Borba to Group’s board Feb. 25. Irv Cross, the pio-
announced via executive vp produc- neering co-host of
Instagram the tion and Susanna Deaths CBS’ The NFL Today,
arrival of August Felleman to execu- Douglas Turner Ward, died Feb. 28 in
Harrison Goldsmith tive vp business the playwright, Roseville, Minnesota.
on Feb. 23. affairs Feb. 24. director and actor He was 81.

To submit, send email to hhh@thr.com

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 33 M A RCH 3, 2021

 Behind every
icon is a story.
Candid conversations with this
award season’s leading contenders.

LISTEN WHEREVER PODCASTS ARE HEARD

 The Business Analysis

The Smith family’s digital content arm has driven marketing for
big-ticket Hollywood films and spawned multiple series.

this year and several more Snapchat projects,

including a series starring Ryan Reynolds.
The business boosted revenue at the
profitable Westbrook Media division by more
than 300 percent in 2020, says president
Brad Haugen. His 40-person team is hoping
to build on that momentum, even as studios
welcome crews back to their lots and movie
theaters begin to reopen doors. “Pre-COVID,
there was a misnomer that premium meant
a big, glossy, expensive shoot. No, premium
means unique,” says Haugen, a digital
media veteran who joined Westbrook after
four years at social news shop ATTN:. “An
intimate moment with Will Smith or Jada
Pinkett Smith or Alicia Keys on an iPhone
is sometimes just as poignant as a beautiful
shot of the Alps from a drone that cost way
more money.”
Westbrook Media launched in July 2019 as
part of the larger effort to supersize the clout
Smith had built from his nearly four-decade
DIGITAL | NATALIE JARV EY career as an actor and recording artist through
cross-platform holding company Westbrook

How Westbrook Media Inc. The parent company, headquartered in

Calabasas with 80 employees, serves as the

Has Prospered in a Pandemic umbrella for the Smith family’s business

endeavors. Naturally, that includes produc-
tion shingles: Overbrook Entertainment has
As many Hollywood firms stagnated amid COVID-19 shutdowns, soaring social produced such Smith vehicles as Bright and
content has kept Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith’s company in the fast lane Bad Boys for Life as well as TV shows like Cobra
Kai, and Westbrook Studios is in

L
ast year in early March, just as it was
becoming clear that the U.S. wouldn’t
be able to avoid a COVID-19 lockdown
SMITH: JASON MENDEZ/WIREIMAGE. PINKETT SMITH: JON KOPALOFF/GETTY IMAGES. KEYS: LESTER COHEN/GETTY IMAGES FOR CITY OF HOPE.
was immediately on board. By mid-March, so development on a dramatic adap-
was Snapchat. Will From Home premiered a tation of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
few weeks later, giving viewers a 12-episode for NBCUniversal’s Peacock.

for much longer, executives at Westbrook
Media began to discuss backup plans. The
digital arm of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett
Smith’s fledgling multimedia firm had started
to hit its stride as a producer of social media
marketing materials for films like Aladdin
and Bad Boys for Life. But with theatrical
releases looking unlikely in the months ahead,
the team, like many Hollywood operations,
needed to pivot.
It didn’t take long before an idea hit: What
if Smith filmed a show in isolation from his
garage? The movie star, who had been mak-
ing the Warner Bros. biographical drama King
Richard and suddenly found himself with a
very free schedule after production paused,
NATALIE JARVEY is senior digital media editor
for The Hollywood Reporter.
glimpse into Smith’s early pandemic life hang-
ing around in a tracksuit and video-chatting
with famous friends like Tyra Banks. It quickly
became one of the social media service’s most
popular series, attracting 35 million viewers.
“It was very in line with the kind of things
we were trying to do during more constrained,
challenging times,” says Snapchat head of
content Sean Mills. “I’d be hard-pressed to
think of something that happened faster and
yet came out with such a high-quality project.”
Amid a pandemic that upended productions
across the entertainment industry, Westbrook
Media has earned a reputation for quickly
mounting affordable yet star-studded proj-
ects. In 2020 alone, it sold 12 shows, including
a Fresh Prince of Bel-Air reunion special that
debuted on HBO Max in November, an Alicia
Keys docuseries that YouTube will premiere
Reynolds But it was also set up to move
the Smiths onto new platforms.
They’ve done that already through Red Table
Talk Enterprises, the multimedia brand that
came from Pinkett Smith’s breakout Facebook
Watch talk show with daughter Willow Smith
and mother Adrienne Banfield-Norris, and
merchandise business Good Goods, which
houses consumer brands including Just Water
and clean beauty-focused Hey Humans.
Westbrook Media enjoys a symbiotic rela-
tionship with its famous co-founders and the
rest of their entertainment empire. When
Pinkett Smith was preparing to launch Hey
Humans in Target stores in late February, it
was Haugen’s team who delivered all the prod-
uct shots and helped to oversee the marketing
campaign. And when Smith — who in recent
years has refashioned himself into a social

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 35 M A RCH 3, 2021

The Business
Analysis
1 Jada Pinkett Smith (center) hosts Red Table Talk with
daughter Willow and mom Adrienne Banfield-Norris. 2 The Fresh
Prince reunion on HBO Max. 3 Tyra Banks on Will From Home.
media superstar with more than 51 million
Instagram followers and 9 million YouTube
subscribers — signs onto a movie, Westbrook
Media often also strikes a deal to produce
social video and photo assets that will allow
him to directly market the project to fans.
“We have seen this company in our minds
for decades — the artistic quality, the synergy
of our team, the service and healing aspects of
our content and the revolutionary
approach across the board,” Smith
said in a statement.
Haugen recalls realizing just
Keys how much influence Westbrook
Media could have through social
when his team created marketing assets for
Disney’s live-action Aladdin remake. Sneak
peeks of Smith as the blue-tinted Genie origi-
nally voiced by Robin Williams had not gone
over well with fans, so the team commissioned
a side-by-side drawing of the two Genies to pay
homage to the late comedian. The Instagram
post that accompanied the image, in which
Smith acknowledged that he had “some big
shoes to fill,” got more than 2.6 million likes,
per Haugen, helping shift sentiment around
the film. “We started to see that we can really
have an impact,” says Haugen, explaining that
it led to work on other titles.
With Smith projects in its portfolio,
Westbrook has been able to land A-list clients
like John Boyega (during the promo tour
for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker), Jessica
Chastain (for It Chapter Two and X-Men: Dark
Phoenix) and Keys (as she was preparing to
drop her 2020 album Alicia), who tells THR
that collaborating with the company was “like
making magic.”
Many clients first work with Westbrook
Media during what the company calls “creator
days,” where it links talent with digital native
creators to produce original social content.
Those one-off projects can sometimes lead
to more expansive deals in which Westbrook
might embed a videographer on a film set
with a star to capture behind-the-scenes
footage they can later employ to market the
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
project. “Talent is often used to a typical
media day where you have to sit in front of a
teleprompter and read a bunch of stuff, and
that doesn’t always excite them,” says Sadao
Turner, Westbrook Media’s vp social media.
“[Creator days] is where they get to do the
fun stuff.”
Westbrook Media also has a small but grow-
ing brand business, working with Airbnb
to stage a promotion tied to the 30th anni-
versary of Fresh Prince where the vacation
rental business’ customers could stay in the
real-life home from the show for $30 a night
or producing a Candy Crush tournament
for Activision Blizzard. “We’re not a social
agency,” says senior vp revenue and strategy
Ashley McCollum. “We really want to do big-
ger storytelling. It’s the brands who feel like
their mandate is to say what they believe in
and be more of an entertainment brand, those
are the ones we’re attracted to.”
All of Westbrook Media’s work — whether
it’s for A-list clients, brands or distribution
partners — is produced in a timely, cost-effec-
tive way, a strategy that the group has dubbed
“fastlane IP,” or FLiP.
“Their speed to production to distribution
really makes a difference,” says Mills. “When
you really are in tune with the cultural conver-
sation, you need to move quickly.”
After working with Westbrook on Will
From Home, Snapchat ordered The Solution
3
36 M A RCH 3, 2021
Committee with Will and Jada’s son, Jaden,
which aired a few months after renewed Black
Lives Matters protests sprung up across the
nation, and the Ryan Reynolds-starring Ryan
Doesn’t Know, in which the Deadpool star
learned new skills like latte art and ice sculpt-
ing from experts in their fields.
Sometimes one project can even spawn
others. After Will Smith hosted a virtual Fresh
Prince reunion during an episode
of Will From Home, the Westbrook
Media team realized they could
turn that concept into some-
Boyega thing even bigger. They pitched
a 90-minute reunion special to
WarnerMedia, and executives, seeking ways
to promote that HBO Max was the exclusive
streaming home of all six seasons of the 1990s
sitcom, immediately bit. The special, which
was filmed in person on a set designed to
look like the living room from the show, drew
RED: SOPHY HOLLAND/FACEBOOK. PRINCE: HBO MAX/SAEED ADYANIÅ. BOYEGA: FRAZER HARRISON/GETTY IMAGES. REYNOLDS: JASON MENDEZ/WIREIMAGE. HOME: COURTESY OF WESTBROOK.
praise from critics after its bow.
Lizzie Fox, senior vp original nonscripted
programming for HBO Max, says the reunion
performed well for the streamer, which
doesn’t release ratings, thanks in large part to
the social media rollout that coincided with
its release. “Westbrook had a lot planned out
prior to the production about how they wanted
to capture content specifically for social, and
that put them a step ahead,” she says. “Not all
production companies have that capability.”
With more film and TV productions start-
ing back up as COVID-19 restrictions loosen,
Westbrook Media expects to have a busy
year, especially at it seeks to keep up the pace
on new digital projects while building its
entertainment marketing business back up.
Already, the team embedded on the set of King
Richard, in which Smith plays the father of
tennis icons Venus and Serena Williams. His
Instagram is sure to be full of that content
ahead of King Richard’s Nov. 19 premiere on
HBO Max. “Will always says that social digital
shortform is not ancillary, it is priority,” says
Haugen. “He and Jada have seen the value in
the direct-to-audience conversation.”
 PA I D A D V E R T I S E M E N T

‘ENVIRONMENTALISM AND EMPATHY’:

THE MAKING OF WOLFWALKERS
IN THE FINAL ITERATION OF CARTOON SALOON’S FOLKLORIC FANTASY TRILOGY,
DIRECTOR TOMM MOORE BROUGHT TOGETHER VR-ASSISTED “ WOLF VISION,”
HIS SIGNATURE HAND-DRAWN ANIMATION STYLE, AND A SONG BY AURORA .

W olfwalkers builds on the previous two movies, delivering

a potent story about empathy, which lives at the core
of an emotional tale based on folklore and history —
all of it told with Moore’s dreamlike signature style of
hand-drawn animation.
the  Book of Kells, set in ninth century Ireland. His follow-up, 2014’s
Oscar-nominated  Song of the Sea is a fantasy film based around a
child who is a selkie, a being from Irish legend that can transform
from human to seal.

Directed by Moore and Cartoon Saloon vet Ross Stewart, the third in

The trio of films are made by Kilkenny, Ireland-based Cartoon Saloon, the set, Wolfwalkers  (a co-production between Cartoon Saloon and
of which Moore is a co-founder. The first title, 2009’s  The Secret of Mélusine Productions in Luxembourg), tells the story of a young English
Kells — Moore’s directorial debut, which earned an Oscar nomination girl named Robyn (voiced by Honor Kneafsey) who is summoned with
for best animated feature — is a fictional account of the writing of her father (Sean Bean) to Kilkenny in 1650. The town lives by the rule
 ‘ENVIRONMENTALISM AND EMPATHY’: THE MAKING OF WOLFWALKERS CONTINUED

“THE FINAL BACKGROUNDS WERE DRAWN

FRAME BY FRAME WITH PAPER AND PENCIL.
SO, THAT WAS A LABOR-INTENSIVE THING”

more fluid during the course of the story), in contrast with Mebh,
whose look is more curvy, like the shapes of the forest.
The villain, Lord Protector, “represented the idea of squareness, rigidity
and inflexible power. He needed to be a physical challenge, so we made
him burly. His eyebrows are really stern, slightly evil-ish, but his eyes
are kind of emotionless about everything that is going on,” character
designer Federico Pirovano relates, adding that this character is based
on Oliver Cromwell, who ruled the British Isles in the 17th century.
“We used a lot of that reference … many warts,” and also took some
inspiration from voice actor McBurney. Less obvious to the audience,
some of the background characters were designed as likenesses of
artists from Cartoon Saloon, including Moore and Stewart. Pirovano
adds with a laugh, “They were really happy, but they said they were
prettier than how I drew them.” 
The film’s signature look is hand-drawn, though computers are used
to augment the process. “We still draw every frame, but we’re not
animating on paper like we used to,” Moore explains, elaborating that
their tools allow them to draw each frame as if it were traditional hand-
drawn animation, but the images go directly into the computer. “We
use special digital brushes to look as much as like the pencil line that
we want,” he adds. “Backgrounds are painted with watercolors, but
the linework is also done on paper with pencils and pens. They’re
combined and photoshopped to make the final background.”
For this movie, the team also conceived a look that they refer to as
“Wolf Vision” — effectively a different look and color scheme from
Robyn’s perspective, when she is in wolf form. It started with virtual
previsualization of the shots: The artist would wear virtual reality
goggles to move the camera through the environment. “Each frame
of that would be printed off, and it would be very rudimentary,” says
Moore. “The final backgrounds were drawn frame by frame with paper
and pencil. So, that was a labor-intensive thing.” Adds Stewart, “the
pre-vis allowed Tomm and myself to have a sense of what the camera
is doing.” 
Screenwriter Collins’ early research focused intensely on hunters’ lives
in and outside Kilkenny during the era of the Cromwellian War, saying
of his deep dive into the details of daily life at that time, “It’s important
to fill up, but not get bogged down by it. I also had great research
assistants in the form of Tomm [Moore] and Ross [Stewart], as anytime
I visited them in the studio the walls were covered in concept art and
drawings of the period.” He continues, “It made my life a lot easier
when trying to imagine the world of the story.” For Stewart, “The story
is the most important thing. There’s a time and a place for historical
stories and being really truthful to the original, but that doesn’t mean
that everything has to stick to that. Stories have to adapt to the way
that they’re being told in this century, and they’ll be different in the
next century.”
 PA I D A D V E R T I S E M E N T
ANIMATION’S COMING OF AGE:
THE EVOLUTION OF GKIDS
WITH THE ADVENT OF APPLE TV + ’S FIRST ANIMATED FEATURE ‘ WOLFWALKERS,’ GKIDS IS FINDING
HARMONY WITH STREAMERS AND DIPPING THEIR TOES INTO DEVELOPMENT AND PRODUCTION,
ALL IN HOPES OF RAISING ANIMATION’S PROFILE IN THE FILM L ANDSCAPE FOR GOOD.
I
ndie distributor GKIDS launched in 2008 with a focus on
animated movies, but despite its moniker, its releases are not
just for kids. “I had been running the New York International
Children’s Film Festival. We were the de facto entry point for
a lot of really amazing animation, and because we define children
very loosely at NYICFF, a lot of the films we presented were films
for adults as well,” relates GKIDS founder and CEO Eric Beckman.
“The passion for me and for [company president David Jesteadt],
initially, was this idea that animation was this vibrant art form, on par
with live action.”
They have since assembled a diverse portfolio of international films.
One of the company’s earliest releases was The Secret of Kells, the
first feature from what was then a little-known studio in Ireland,
Cartoon Saloon, and the directorial debut of Tomm Moore. The
film’s unique animation style, along with strong storytelling, is what
caught Beckman’s eye when it started to screen at festivals in 2009.
“You sit back in your chair and you watch that film unfold on the
screen and it’s like, ‘Oh my God, have you ever seen something
so insanely beautiful in all your life,” Beckman relates, adding that
he then received an unexpected call. “I got a frantic call from [the
sales agent] that the person who bought it never paid the money
and wasn’t going to release it, and did we want to release the film?”
Beckman signed the film only three days before Oscar submissions
deadlines, and it set the tone for the distributor.
GKIDS releases have now garnered 11 nominations for best animated
feature film. This includes the first three movies from Cartoon
Saloon, Moore’s Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea (in 2015), along
with the Nora Twomey-helmed  The Breadwinner  in 2018. It also
includes  A Cat in Paris  (France) and  Chico & Rita  (Spain) in
2012,  Ernest & Celestine  (France-Belgium) in 2014,  Boy and the
World (Brazil) in 2016, My Life as a Zucchini (France-Switzerland) in
2017 and Mirai (Japan) in 2019.
Also on the list are The Tale of the Princess Kaguya in 2015 and When
Marnie Was There in 2016, both from Japan’s Studio Ghibli, home
of legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki. GKIDS received a particularly
high level of attention when Kaguya and Song of the Sea were both
honored with best-animated feature Oscar nominations in 2015.
Today, GKIDS handles the North American right to all of Studio
Ghibli’s films. Explains Beckman, “We started doing theatrical on
their catalog for them first, then they invited us to do new releases
for them, starting with From Up on Poppy Hill (2011). Then we took
over the home video catalog a couple of years ago. And then, more
recently, we orchestrated the worldwide [with the exception of
Japan and China] launch of Studio Ghibli on digital networks.” This
includes the Studio’s recent release Earwig and the Witch, helmed
by Goro Miyazaki, son of Hayao Miyazaki, which dropped in the
U.S. in December.
For Earwig, the English-language voice cast includes Richard E. Grant
and Dan Stevens. “I think the bottom line is that great actors like
to be in great films,” Beckman relates. Previous voice castmembers
have included the likes of Forest Whitaker, Paul Giamatti and Susan
Sarandon. “We have a structure whereby if the film does well, then
everyone meaningfully shares in the success of the film. … We’ve
been fortunate to be able to work with such amazing talent.”
With the growth of streaming, GKIDS’ business is evolving. “As a
small independent, you have to navigate, you know, the land of the
giants, whether it’s Disney and Universal and other big companies or
now, more recently, Apple, Amazon, Netflix,” Beckman admits. 
He acknowledges that streaming companies such as Netflix “have
sort of jumped into GKIDS business and are distributing [animated
indies] … They also end up being the home for the vast majority
of GKIDS film.” He adds, “We have great relationships with pretty
much all the streamers. We have product on them. We’re working on
projects together with several of them.” Wolfwalkers, for instance,
is Apple TV+’s first original animated release and the streamer
holds worldwide distribution rights with a few exceptions, including
North American theatrical rights, which belong to GKIDS. “Because
we’re independent, we don’t have to keep pursuing the same
business model, and we’re starting to get pretty deeply involved in
development and production of animation as well,” says Beckman,
who, like Jesteadt, is credited as exec producer on Cartoon
Saloon’s Breadwinner and Wolfwalkers.
Still, GKIDS hasn’t strayed from its founding mission of expanding
the way people think of animation. With this goal, GKIDS launched
the Animation Is Film Festival in the U.S. in 2018. (It wasn’t held
in 2020 because of the pandemic, but Beckman hopes to restart
later this year.)
And Beckman notes, as a sign of change, “I’ve anecdotally heard
from a lot of people that Wolfwalkers is in their top four or five films
of the year, not [just their top] animated films. … Once you start
looking at animation and looking at the storytelling and think. ‘This
is another film that just happens to be an animated film,’ then all of
a sudden some of the real strengths of these amazing films start to
become apparent.”
 PA I D A D V E R T I S E M E N T
SPOTLIGHT ON CARTOON SALOON
AFTER EARNING THEIR PL ACE IN ENTERTAINMENT’S UPPER ECHELON, THIS IRISH ANIMATION
STUDIO HAS ITS SIGHTS SET ON DIVERSITY, EDUCATION, AND GLOBAL IMPACT.
C artoon Saloon was formed in the city of Kilkenny, Ireland,
in 1999 by Paul Young, Tomm Moore and Nora Twomey,
all of whom met while studying at Ballyfermot College in
Dublin. Since then, the studio has developed a signature
hand-drawn style and earned a strong reputation for its storytelling
in the international animation community.
It has also enjoyed enviable success, with its first three features all
Oscar-nominated: the Moore-helmed  The Secret of Kells  (2009)
and  Song of the Sea  (2015), both of which were produced
by Oscar-nominated Young; and the Twomey-directed  The
Breadwinner  (2018). In 2019, the studio’s work earned a fourth
Oscar nomination, for Late Afternoon, a moving hand-drawn short
about a woman with dementia, which was written and directed by
Louise Bagnall.
Its fourth feature,  Wolfwalkers, helmed by Moore and Cartoon
Saloon vet Ross Stewart (and produced by Moore, Young, Twomey
and Stéphan Roelants), has already accumulated a string of
accolades and completes Moore’s Irish Folklore trilogy.
At the start, the studio worked on commercials and other projects
— anything that would pay the bills — while they made their first
feature film, The Secret of Kells, a fictional account of the writing
of the Book of Kells, centered on a 12-year-old boy named Brendan
who lives in an abbey under threat of Viking attack, set in ninth
century Ireland. “We had no work when we started, but we had
a grant from Young Artist Filmmakers, so we spent half the week
working on, like, e-cards or commercials. The start was hard; we
were just a bunch of kids,” recalls Moore, whose mix of folklore and
storytelling, along with the hand-drawn look of Kells, was quickly
embraced in the animation world and earned an Academy Award
nomination.
But the studio itself still was challenged. “Because it came out in
’09 and we were still kind of reeling from the economic crash … it
didn’t do that well at the Irish box office. We genuinely were looking
at disbanding the company for a few months because we got into
so much debt just to finish it,” Moore recalls. “The fact that it kept
on winning at festivals in ’09 and then got nominated in ’10 for the
Oscars, that was crazy. That was game-changing because we felt it
was a mandate to keep going.”
Moore has now completed what the studio refers to as his “folklore
trilogy,” with Song of the Sea involving the mythical selkies — beings
that can transform from human to seal — while Wolfwalkers recalls
 ‘ENVIRONMENTALISM AND EMPATHY’: THE MAKING OF WOLFWALKERS CONTINUED
of the authoritarian Lord Protector (Simon McBurney), who is
forcing Robyn’s father to kill the region’s wolves. In the woods one
day, Robyn befriends a young Irish girl, Mebh (Eva Whittaker), who
comes from a pack of “wolfwalkers” that transform from human to
wolf form — and she soon becomes one herself.
Written by Will Collins (Song of the Sea) from a story by Moore
and Stewart,  Wolfwalkers  has roots in the Cromwellian invasion
of Ireland (Lord Protector is based on Oliver Cromwell) and Irish
folklore about the Wolves of Ossory, a tribe of beings who could
transform themselves into wolves.
In a recent episode of  THR Presents, Moore explained that
thematically, the story is about empathy. “We very quickly hit on
this idea of telling this story of people on opposite sides being able
to see each other’s point of view, and it’s only become more and
more relevant,” explains Moore. “We thought, what if a little child
of a hunter became the thing he is hunting, and also becomes
friends with one of the creatures they were hunting? These themes
just become stronger: environmentalism, empathy, polarization
between people and how kids can sometimes see past that.” He
adds: “Nature isn’t something for us to decide whether we want to
protect or not. Our invasion of wild habitats is a big part of where
the pandemic has come from ... I hope that there’s some kind of
inspiration that maybe we can come together and heal it rather
than keep on dividing ourselves.”
“WE THOUGHT, WHAT IF A LITTLE CHILD OF A
HUNTER BECAME THE THING HE IS HUNTING,
AND ALSO BECOMES FRIENDS WITH ONE OF THE
CREATURES THEY WERE HUNTING?”
Moore and Stewart developed the film’s visual style to show a
contrast between period Kilkenny — with its blocky look to convey
its oppressiveness, inspired by 17th century woodcuts — and the
more fluid, free look of the forest. “[Robyn’s home in Kilkenny] is
a cage, and the visuals reinforce that. The linework is very harsh
and very black-and-white. There’s high contrast and there’s a lot of
geometric patterning, like a kind of a warped perspective,” Stewart
says, adding that to convey the freedom of the forest, “we leaned
into very sketchy, rough pencil work and linework describing all the
forms with lots of curves, lots of flowing lines. You got a sense that
the entire environment is alive and very luxurious and lush, almost
rococo style.”
Maria Pareja, who created the production design with the directors,
adds that for period Kilkenny, they took creative license but also did
research, including stops at Kilkenny’s Rothe House. “That is one
the oldest houses in Ireland,” she notes. “We did a lot of trips to
this house to see how it was built inside ... the details, decorations
and how people would live in that period because that house is
exactly from that period.”
Stewart relates that color reinforced the notion of two worlds.
“The forest leans into high saturation of orange and green and
tries to push the amount of color. It’s very sumptuous, and then
the town is quite cold and gray and muddy.” The characters also
have contrasting styles. Robyn — who Moore conceived as a sort
of Greta Thunberg — is angular, like Kilkenny (a look that becomes
 SPOTLIGHT ON CARTOON SALOON CONTINUED
“WE ARE LOOKING FOR SOME KIND OF
TRUTH AND ORIGINALITY [IN OUR STORIES].
THAT IS WHAT LEADS US”
the Irish legend about the Wolves of Ossory, who can shape-shift
from humans into wolves.
Twomey’s  The Breadwinner — a co-production between Cartoon
Saloon, Aircraft Pictures and Mélusine in association with executive
producer Angelina Jolie — was based on the children’s book of the
same name by Deborah Ellis and follows an 11-year-old Afghan girl
named Parvana who must disguise herself as a boy so that she can
get work and feed her family.
“Sometimes the struggles of women are very subtle; sometimes
they are very open and public. Oftentimes women and young
girls are the first to suffer in a society where something has gone
terribly wrong,” Twomey told  THR  during a 2017 interview. “The
Breadwinner  expresses something, more than anything else, about
the preciousness of young girls in our world.”
The film’s impact was felt far beyond the awards circuit, with Twomey
participating in screenings and discussions at such institutions as the
United Nations, as well as an event in Washington, D.C., attended by
Rula Ghani, the first lady of Afghanistan.
Today Cartoon Saloon employs 167 people and is almost entirely
focused on its own projects. It also set up a sister company for
commercial projects, Lighthouse Studios, which employs an
additional 150. Says Moore, “There’s a lot of cross-pollination
between the studios, but they have different focuses.”
Twomey, once the only woman at Cartoon Saloon, reports that
today the team is 58 percent female, 40 percent male and 2 percent
nonbinary. Sixty percent of the staff are Irish, with the rest made up
of an international team of artists from countries including Denmark,
Italy and France.
“We are consciously trying to make the studio more diverse,”
Twomey says, noting that this work includes a focus on expanding
representation in leadership roles. “I understand that I have to
be quite visible … so that I can open avenues for others. I look
forward to a time, possibly if I have a granddaughter, that if they
are filmmakers it’s purely about their work.” For her part, Twomey
is now in production on her next movie,  My Father’s Dragon,  for
Netflix. Based on Ruth Stiles Gannett’s 1948 children’s book, the film
is written by Oscar nominee Meg LeFauve (Pixar’s  Inside Out) and
involved Late Afternoon helmer Bagnall as assistant director.
“We are looking for some kind of truth and originality [in our stories].
That is what leads us,” Twomey sums up the studio’s approach to
storytelling. “The animation is so time-consuming, you can take a
decade on a story, three years in production. The only thing that takes
you through it is, you have to believe in the story you are telling.” 
 The Business 202 1 AWA R D S S E A S O N

BEHIND THE SCREEN | CAROLY N GIARDINA

Balancing Rom-Com, Thriller and Horror

Writer-director Emerald Fennell charted the course on Promising Young Woman’s tonal shifts, but film editor Frédéric Thoraval
then had to cut from one mood to the next as the film follows Carey Mulligan playing a woman on a secret crusade

T
he black comedy of writer-
director Emerald Fennell’s
Promising Young Woman
effortlessly shifts from comedy
to thriller to rom-com to hor-
ror movie, often within a single
scene, as the Focus Features
release tells the tale of the clever
Cassandra Thomas, played by
Carey Mulligan, who was viewed
as a promising young woman
until mysterious circumstances
prompted her to drop out of medi-
cal school.
“It was set up in the script. We
knew how Emerald wanted to play
with the different genres and set
up those clear moments that are
more horror movie, more thriller
or rom-com. Her writing is very
precise,” says film editor Frédéric
Thoraval, who in working with
Fennell for the first time took on
CAROLY N GIARDINA is THR’s
tech editor.
THORAVAL: ANDREA E. HARRISON. PROMISING: COURTESY OF FOCUS FEATURES (3).
the challenge of maintaining that
delicate tonal balance. “The main
thing was to follow the character
of Cassie; she helps us to follow
the changes of tone. [Once you]
have the connection with the
main character, you hopefully
can accept when Emerald pulls
the rug out [from under you], and
Emerald is changing those emo-
tions very fast.”
An example of the film’s roller-
coaster tonal shifts is a scene
that starts with Cassie sitting in
a waiting room of her former uni-
versity. The Roman numeral “II”
appears over the image, signaling
that this is the next step in her yet
to be fully revealed plot. So when
Cassie enters Dean Walker’s office
for a meeting, “We know some-
thing will happen,” says Thoraval.
Cassie begins the meeting by
saying she wishes to re-enroll in
the medical program; the dean,
played by Connie Britton, is
seated behind her desk in control
of the conversation. Then Cassie
starts to talk about her college
friend Nina and what happened to
her one night when she was drunk
while in a room with some male
students. “It’s a turning point in
the movie; suddenly, the audience
is told what happened that night,
that Nina was the victim years
ago,” Thoraval says.
“We are in a face-off
now, on profile shots
where you can see
Thoraval the dean physically
backing off slowly.
The balance of power starts to
shift in Cassie’s favor.” As the
conversation continues, the dean
is losing control, trying to justify
why she didn’t take action when
the incident was reported, saying
the boys should have “the benefit
of the doubt.”
“In this moment,” the editor
explains, “the audience perceives
that scene is done. But in reality,
this is the start of a new phase — a
‘reset’ of the action for the tension
to slowly build again as Cassie
plays with the dean, telling her
what she supposedly has done to
the dean’s daughter — visually,
with the camera tracking in on
Cassie, and sonically, with an omi-
nous score starting and a sound
effect creeping in underneath —
until the climax where a panicked
Dean Walker is shouting.”
The shouting continues, but a
cut takes the viewer back outside
the dean’s office, where another
student is waiting for a meeting.
“This awkward moment helps
to deflate the tension and bring
back some lightness,” Thoraval
notes. When the scene then cuts
back inside the office, Cassie’s
“reaction when the dean is finally
saying ‘you’re right’ is the most
important, so we stay with Cassie
on her close-up.”
Clockwise from top
left: In her club-
going guise, Carey
Mulligan’s Cassandra
leans on a fellow
bar patron (Sam
Richardson) for
support; she adopts
a disguise of sorts
as she prepares for a
night out; and, in
a pivotal scene in the
film, has a one-on-
one meeting with a
university dean
(Connie Britton).

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 37 M A RCH 3, 2021


I
t seems as if the year’s
extended awards season has
been going on forever. But for
Sony Pictures Classics’ entries
— including The Father, starring
Anthony Hopkins, and French
Exit, showcasing Michelle Pfeiffer
— the quest is just beginning in
earnest. The question is whether
making such a late bid amid this
season’s prolonged marathon can
prove a winning strategy or if it
puts the films at a disadvantage
when so many others are already
widely available.
After all, some of the most
prominent contenders have
been on streamers for months,
viewable with just a click of the
remote: Da 5 Bloods surfaced on
Netflix way back in June, with the
service then offering The Trial
of the Chicago 7 in October and
Mank in December. Rival Amazon
served up Sound of Metal in
December and One Night in Miami
in January.
With many theaters across the
nation still closed, specialty film
distributors like Focus Features
have supplemented limited
theater bookings with premium
VOD, where its Promising Young
Woman has been playing since
Jan. 15, while Feb. 19, the Disney-
owned Searchlight ushered its
Nomadland onto Hulu, part of
the Disney empire, after limited
showings on Imax screens.
Meanwhile, SPC, whose co-
presidents, Michael Barker and
Tom Bernard, have long culti-
vated slow and careful theatrical
rollouts for their films, has kept
its powder dry. They originally
planned to open The Father, which
they acquired just before its
Sundance debut in January 2020,
on Dec. 18. But when the Academy
of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences announced it was push-
ing the entire Oscar calendar by
two months — instead of Dec. 31,
its qualifying deadline would be
Feb. 28, while the awards cer-
emony itself moved from Feb. 28
GREGG KILDAY, former THR
film editor, covers awards season
movies for the magazine.
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
The Business
THE R ACE | GREGG KILDAY
Is There an
Advantage in Coming
Late to the Party?
While other awards hopefuls have been streaming for months,
Sony Pictures Classics is betting The Father and French Exit
can still get plenty of attention with their 11 o’clock bids
to April 25 — they scrubbed that
plan. Essentially they decided to
treat this January and February
as if they were the November and
December of a more traditional
Oscar year, shifting the release
profiles of their 2020 hopefuls
into 2021.
Similar late-in-the-season
openings have worked for SPC in
the past: In 2017, SPC introduced
Call Me by Your Name toward the
end of November before going
wide in January and scored
four nominations and a best
adapted screenplay win. In the
case of 2014’s Still Alice, which
earned Julianne Moore a best
actress Oscar for her portrayal
of a woman struggling with
dementia, SPC gave that film an
Oscar-qualifying one-week run
in December but didn’t begin its
actual theatrical engagement
until mid-January.
The distributor is now betting
38
202 1 AWA R D S S E A S O N
that it can adapt the same last-to-
the-party strategy for its current
contenders, and that even if other
movies have been more visible for
months, theirs will step forth as
fresh alternatives.
The Father, in which first-time
director Florian Zeller guides
Hopkins through a
maze of dementia-
induced confusion,
began a limited
Barker Oscar-qualifying
run Feb. 26 (in L.A.,
where theaters are
closed, it played at the
Vineland Drive-In)
Bernard and will go wide
March 15. As luck
would have it, that gambit is
benefiting from the fact that
New York City intends to reopen
theaters March 5 at 25 percent
capacity. That has allowed SPC to
book The Father on an estimated
800-plus screens nationwide. And
M A RCH 3, 2021
while SPC normally doesn’t offer
its films on VOD until 90 days
after their theatrical release, it
plans to make The Father (booked
in theaters through May) avail-
able on premium VOD as a $19.99
rental on March 26 — a first for
the distributor.
SPC’s other entries will follow
suit. Azazel Jacobs’ French Exit,
which finds Pfeiffer playing a sud-
denly impecunious grand dame
who flees to Paris to contemplate
her life, had a limited debut
Feb. 12 and will break nationwide
April 2. The Oscar-shortlisted
documentary The Truffle Hunters,
about scavengers who search out
the precious delicacy in the woods
of Piedmont, Italy, is scheduled
for March 5, and the shortlisted
short film The Human Voice, Pedro
Almodóvar’s adaptation of the
Jean Cocteau play starring Tilda
Swinton, is set for March 12.
The Father got a boost at the
Golden Globes, where it received
four noms, including best picture,
though Hopkins and co-star
Olivia Colman were overshadowed
by the winners in their respective
categories, Chadwick Boseman
(Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom) and
Jodie Foster (The Mauritanian).
Pfeiffer was nominated for French
Exit but lost out to I Care for You’s
Rosamund Pike.
But while the two films are
only now getting mainstream
play, SPC hasn’t exactly been hid-
FATHER: SEAN CLEASON/SONY PICTURES CLASSIC. EXIT: COURTESY OF SONY PICTURES CLASSICS. BARKER, BERNARD: GEORGE PIMENTEL/GETTY IMAGES.
ing them under a bushel, either.
The films are on the Academy’s
Screening Room site. Screeners
and links have been sent to voters
in other awards groups. And to
establish their awards potential,
The Father played virtual film
festivals from Toronto to the
Hamptons, while French Exit was
prominently featured at the New
York Film Festival. Hopkins and
Colman also have scored SAG and
Critics Choice noms.
SPC’s movies may be only now
making a bid for the attention
that other competitors have been
enjoying for months, but, says
Barker, “Tom and I are both confi-
dent that Academy members will
see the films.”
“THE BEST PICTURE

“AN URGENT, EXTRAORDINARY FILM FOR THIS VERY MOMENT.

SIDNEY FLANIGAN’S PERFORMANCE IS ASTONISHING” MARY SOLLOSI

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OF THE YEAR”
7
FILM INDEPENDENT SPIRIT AWARD NOMINATIONS
INCLUDING

BEST PICTURE OF THE YEAR

BEST DIRECTOR & BEST SCREENPLAY ELIZA HITTMAN

WINNER WINNER
BEST ACTRESS - SIDNEY FLANIGAN BEST SCREENPLAY
New York Film Critics Circle Boston Society of Film Critics New York Film Critics Circle Indiana Film Journalists Association
Chicago Film Critics Association National Society of Film Critics Greater Western NYFC

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION IN ALL CATEGORIES INCLUDING

BEST PICTURE
BEST DIRECTOR ELIZA HITTMAN BEST ACTRESS SIDNEY FLANIGAN
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY ELIZA HITTMAN BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS TALIA RYDER
 Style Red Carpet

1 2 3

Glamour Is Back at the

2021 Golden Globes
After nearly a year of lockdowns, stars (and their stylists) fervently embraced all-out luxury for the partly virtual,
bicoastal ceremony, shining and sparkling in couture and custom gowns, bold colors and major jewels: ‘We’ve all been stuck in
sweatpants and pajamas for a year, so let’s give everyone something aspirational,’ says stylist Law Roach By Laurie Brookins

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 42 M A RCH 3, 2021

 1. ANYA TAYLOR-JOY IN DIOR 5
Stylist Law Roach worked with
Dior Haute Couture to create
a custom green Lurex gown for
the Globes winner. It was paired
with an evening coat, matching
shoes and Tiffany & Co
diamonds. “We really wanted to
do something that felt retro to
pay homage to her character
from The Queen’s Gambit,”
Roach tells THR.
2. ANDRA DAY IN CHANEL
A winner for The United States
vs. Billie Holiday, Day wore a
gray silk-tulle couture gown
with hand embroidery that
required roughly 1,100 hours in
the atelier, as well as diamonds
from Chanel Fine Jewelry.

3. AMANDA SEYFRIED
IN OSCAR DE LA RENTA
Seyfried’s stylist Elizabeth
Stewart was with her the day
the Mank actress got her
nomination. “Fernando Garcia
from Oscar de la Renta sent
sketches and swatches to set,
and we literally got a custom
gown going that day,” Stewart
tells THR. Seyfried paired her
silk flower-embellished gown
with diamonds by Forevermark
and a jeweled watch by
Jaeger-LeCoultre.

4. REGINA KING IN
LOUIS VUITTON
King’s custom draped silk cady
gown by Louis Vuitton was 7
finished with more than 41,000
shimmering hand-sewn sequins
and crystals. Her stylists 4
Wayman and Micah finished
the look with roughly 50 carats
of Forevermark diamonds.
On Instagram, King wrote of
the design, “Feeling like a 6
TAYLOR-JOY: SAMI DRASIN. DAY: MYRIAM SANTOS. SEYFRIED: MARCUS MAM. KING: WAYMAN & MICAH. ERIVO: TODD WILLIAMSON/NBC. LEVY: LEWIS MIRRETT. CORRIN: GREG WILLIAMS/COURTESY OF SUBJECT. FANNING: GARETH GATRELL.

bottle of champagne.”

5. CYNTHIA ERIVO
IN VALENTINO
The presenter’s fluorescent-
green scuba dress from
Valentino’s spring/summer
2021 collection was paired
with ivory leather opera-length
gloves and towering gold
platform shoes, plus diamonds
by Wempe Jewelers and
Maria Tash.

6. DAN LEVY IN VALENTINO

The co-creator of winning
comedy Schitt’s Creek
wore a citrus-toned look,
including an asymmetrical
belted jacket, that was part
of Valentino’s first-ever haute
couture collection for men,
which bowed in January. Also
a supporting actor nominee,
Levy wore a watch and rings
by Cartier: “Not a bad way
to spend a Sunday night,” he
remarked on Instagram.

7. ELLE FANNING IN GUCCI

The Great nominee channeled
Grace Kelly in a mint green
draped satin gown with crystal
embellishments, a custom 8
design by Alessandro Michele
for Gucci that Fanning called a
“glorious dress.” Vintage jewels
by Fred Leighton completed
the golden-era Hollywood vibe.
8. EMMA CORRIN IN MIU MIU
A winner for The Crown,
Corrin worked with stylist
Harry Lambert on a custom
Miu Miu look inspired by the
neck ruffs of Pierrot clowns,
while hairstylist Daniel Martin
and makeup artist Florrie
White took beauty inspiration
from ’60s-era Twiggy. The
actress also wore an emerald
and diamond high-jewelry ring
and earrings from Cartier.
1. LESLIE ODOM JR.
IN VALENTINO
The One Night in Miami 1
double nominee wore a look
from Valentino’s inaugural
haute couture collection for
men, a chocolate brown suit in
a trompe l’oeil print with a pale
rose shirt and neon green silk
cady turtleneck. The outfit,
says his stylist Avo Yermagyan,
is “timeless and elegant, but
there’s also a punch.” Odom
also wore an Octo Roma
timepiece by Bulgari.

2. JULIA GARNER IN PRADA

The Ozark nominee opted
for flapper-inspired glamour
in a crepe gown with a
deep-V neck and crystal and
stone embroidery, paired
with jewels from Verdura’s
80th Anniversary collection.

3. GILLIAN ANDERSON
IN DIOR
A nominee for The Crown,
Anderson shimmered in a
gold lamé gauze halter gown
with a hand-pleated skirt and
Chantilly lace inlays from
Dior’s spring/summer 2021
haute couture collection.
Anderson wore floral-inspired
jewels by Dior Joaillerie.
4. SUSAN KELECHI WATSON
IN GEORGES HOBEIKA 2 3
The This Is Us actress, a
presenter, wore a dazzling
Georges Hobeika two-piece
dress in ocean blue and silver 5 6
with a lush fringe. Kwiat
diamonds finished the look.

5. TIFFANY HADDISH IN
ALBERTA FERRETTI
Her stylist, Law Roach, says
the presenter’s wish for the
night was a simple one: “To just
feel really pretty.” She wowed
in a custom strapless gown
crafted of a mix of bronze and
silver metallic disks, creating a
chainmail effect. “We’ve
all been stuck in sweatpants
and pajamas for a year, so
let’s give everyone something
aspirational,” Roach tells THR.

6. KALEY CUOCO IN
OSCAR DE LA RENTA
The Flight Attendant nominee
injected a little fun into her
stay-at-home Globes moment,
posting an image on Instagram
that showed her eating pizza
and drinking champagne
from the bottle in her gray
tulle embroidered Oscar de la
Renta gown. Classic diamonds
from Harry Winston added to
Cuoco’s lockdown glamour. 4

7. ROSAMUND PIKE IN
MOLLY GODDARD
A winner for I Care a Lot, Pike 7
blended princess and punk
with her frothy red tulle dress
by British designer Molly
Goddard that the actress
purchased last year at Dover
Street Market. “I did have
some more sensible options,
and then I thought, ‘This is
an outlying year that calls for
outlying options,’ ” Pike said
during a post-show interview.
8. VIOLA DAVIS IN
LAVIE BY CK
For the Ma Rainey’s Black
Bottom nominee, stylist
Elizabeth Stewart worked with
Claude Kameni of L.A.-based
brand Lavie by CK on a custom
gown made in a fabric from the
designer’s native Cameroon.
Stewart calls the dress “bold
and vibrant, just like Viola.” The
actress added diamond and
rose gold jewels by Pomellato.
 Style

Red Carpet

425 Hours, 8,000 Beads and Crystals:

Nicole Kidman’s Louis Vuitton Gown
The Golden Globe nominee for The Undoing wore an exquisite halter-neck dress custom made by the brand’s
women’s artistic director, Nicolas Ghesquière, that’s ‘timeless’ with a ‘little bit of glitz’ By Ingrid Schmidt

icole Kidman’s styl- Crafted in the fashion

N ist Julia von Boehm
took THR behind
the scenes as the star
prepped at home in Sydney
for the awards.
1. Kidman’s gown, which
began with a sketch,
was custom-made by
Louis Vuitton women’s
artistic director Nicolas
Ghesquière. “He is a friend
of hers, and we have worked
together,” explains von
Boehm. “The history,
tradition and authenticity
felt reassuring.”
2. The wool cady apron
dress with pleated silk
georgette detailing is
embellished with a metal-
lic braid pattern of about
8,000 beads and crystals.
ODOM, JR: PHOEBE JOAQUIN/PHOEBE JOAQUIN VIA GETTY IMAGES. GARNER: HUNG VAANGO. ANDERSON: ANDREAS ORTNER/COURTESY OF DIOR. WATSON, HADDISH: TODD WILLIAMSON/NBC/NBCU PHOTO BANK VIA
GETTY IMAGES. CUOCO, PIKE: COURTESY OF SUBJECT. DAVIS: SHAMAR BENOIT/COURTESY OF SUBJECT. KIDMAN: COURTESY OF LOUIS VUITTON (2). DRESS, SKETCH: GREGOIRE VIEILLE/COURTESY OF LOUIS VUITTON.
house’s Paris atelier, the 1
dress required 25 hours
to sketch and another
425 hours to embroider.
3. Liz Kelsh (left) and Renya
Xydis tended to Kidman’s
face and curls.
4. Kidman completed the
look with an Omega De Ville
Trésor watch and her own
Cathy Waterman sword
drop earrings in recycled
gold with ethically sourced 2
diamonds. Says von Boehm
of the gown, “I like the
sophisticated, timeless
style. And yes, there’s a little
bit of glitz. It’s about find-
ing the fine line between
what looks gorgeous and
makes people dream but is
also appropriate.”
3

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 45 M A RCH 3, 2021


3 mid the COVID-19 vaccine rollouts — sparking a feeling that office
1 By Malene Birger’s
silk top will pop on Zoom “but
could also go into the office
under a blazer,” says stylist Cat
Pope; $350, net-a-porter.com
2 The Row’s Fairy cashmere ballet
flats; $790, saksfifthavenue.com
3 Ulla Johnson’s Dasha dress;
$445, ullajohnson.com
4 Basic Rights’ Camp Collar
knitted shirt, $145, basicrights.com
5 The Weitz Effect’s
Andrew Weitz
4
5 For shoes, stylist Neda Rouhani is a fan of slides as well as cashmere
Style
6
Fashion
6 Consultant Andrea Lublin
7 Diane von Furstenberg
silk pajama top; $338, dvf.com
8 A.P.C. wool drawstring
POLISHED CASUA L trousers; $335, mrporter.com
9 Loro Piana cotton-
WFH Styles That Can and-cashmere hoodie; $2,425,
loropiana.com
10 Brunello Cucinelli’s gently
structured cashmere-jersey
Go Back to the Office jacket; $3,495, mrporter.com
11 Greats’ The Foster
slipper; $99, greats.com
A-list stylists and executive wardrobe consultants share their current
faves — from the ‘new housedress’ to cashmere hoodies — that are
all about ‘elevated’ meets ‘warm and cozy’ By Vincent Boucher
8
A
life may return in the coming months — THR spoke with style experts
who cater to the town’s creative and executive class about their new
work-from-home must-haves. These are pieces that could make the transi-
SLIPPER, BASIC RIGHTS CAMP SHIRT, HOOD LEASURE BOMBER: COURTESY OF BRAND. MALENE BRIRGER TOP: COURTESY OF NET-A-PORTER. LUBIN: COURTESY OF SUBJECT. THE ROW FLAT: COURTESY OF SACKS.COM.
tion to offices, even though for many people right now, “it’s hard to muster
WEITZ: @THEWEITZEFFECT/INSTAGRAM. A.P.C TEOUSERS, BRUNELLO CUCINELLI COAT: COURTESY OF MR. PORTER. DASHA DRESS: COURTESY OF ULLA JOHNSON. DIANE VON FURSTENBERG TOP, GREATS FOSTER
up the energy to put together a full look when you’re just going to walk five
steps to your kitchen table to do a meeting,” says stylist Andrew Gelwicks.
Stylist Jeanne Yang (who dresses Jason Momoa) likes suits and sport
jackets in knits “that feel like a cardigan,” which can be worn with a
T-shirt now and “dressed up later.” She also suggests drawstring-waist
wool trousers. Armani, A.P.C., Boss and Givenchy all have suitably
polished ones that offer the comfort of sweatpants. What wardrobe
consultant Andrea Lublin (whose clients include Virgin Music president
Jacqueline Saturn) is “really big on” is “the new housedress. Stress the
‘new,’ ” she says, from brands like Ulla Johnson and Zimmerman. “I would
define a housedress as anything that lets you breathe,” she says. And
stylist Cat Pope likes pajama-style silk tops. “It’s loungewear but it’s also
workwear, especially in a more colorful version,” she says.
Men’s fashion consultant Andrew Weitz of The Weitz Effect (whose cli- 9
ents include Tom Brady) has been recommending lightweight cashmere
zippered hoodies and tracksuit jackets to his industry clients. “If you’re
doing a conference call at home, there’s an elevated look to them,” he says,
“and later you can just pair it with a polo or a button-up.” Or, as a relaxed
stand-in for the usual polo, stylist Ilaria Urbinati (who dresses Dwayne
Johnson) likes men’s knit camp shirts from Basic Rights. “They’re kind of
vintage, but not weird vintage,” she says.
10
booties from The Row. “They’re sophisticated and warm and cozy,” she
says. Consultants Stephanie Gisondi-Little and George Kotsiopoulos are
both embracing the ease of high-waisted pants. The former likes Celine’s
“comfortable” flared jeans, while the latter has been buying up vintage
’80s pleated men’s styles from The Real Real. As Gisondi-Little sees it,
it’s all about taking WFH comfort back to the office: “I feel like no one is
going back to very uncomfortable clothes, period.”
11
46
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 The

of

After intense racist and sexist online bullying

caused the Star Wars actress to ‘close up shop,’ Tran,
now starring in Raya and the Last Dragon,
has emerged stronger and surer of who she is:
‘It’s all about how I protect myself to continue to
lift the stories that the world needs to hear’

By Rebecca Sun
Photographed by Dyan Jong

“When I started [in this business],

I was so excited but also scared,” says
Kelly Marie Tran, who was photographed
Feb. 19 in Los Angeles. “And now
I feel like a totally different human.”
Styling by Wayman Bannerman and Micah McDonald.
Cong Tri gown and gloves, Irene Neuwirth earrings,
Tasaki pearl earrings.
K
ELLY M A R IE TR A N’S FIRST R ECOR DING SESSION FOR R AYA A N D
the Last Dragon involved a leap of faith. As the titular warrior
princess, she stood in a booth in Disney Animation’s Burbank
offices and performed the dialogue, an incantation meant to
awaken a mythical creature that could help save the world.
The taping went smoothly, but right before the scene
wrapped, Tran spoke up: “Hey, actually … would you mind if I
tried something?”
She explained to the directors, Don Hall and Carlos López
Estrada, that if she were in Raya’s situation — having extended
a gesture of friendship, only to invite a world-ending betrayal — she would feel a lot more
conflicted, almost chagrined at reaching out with no guarantee anyone would respond. They
told her to go for it.
“We really — we really need your help,” Tran murmurs as Raya, alone in a cave. “To be
honest, I need your help. I made a mistake. I trusted someone I shouldn’t have. And now the
world’s broken,” she said, her trembling words in a near-whisper.
Says López Estrada, “There were five or six of us in the booth on the other side, and we all
had tears in our eyes.”
The final cut features Tran’s own words. “[Raya] sees the world in this doe-eyed idyl-
lic way, and then the world sort of breaks, and it changes the way in which she interacts
with the world,” she says now, just before the film’s March 5 release in theaters and on
Disney+. “That was my way [into the character]. I’ve definitely in the past viewed the world
through rose-colored glasses, and now I feel like I’m in the back, smoking a cigarette, [say-
ing], ‘I’ve seen things.’ ”

HEN THE WOR LD FIRST MET

W Tran, she was the girl who had

won a golden ticket — and wanted
to bring everyone along on her tour of the
chocolate factory. The unknown actor who
had catapulted from improv stages to Star
Wars, the biggest movie franchise in the
world, met her moment with pinch-me glee.
She felt grateful to be chosen.
Not that she was some starry-eyed naïf.
As prerelease publicity for Episode VIII —
The Last Jedi got underway, she started an
Instagram account and used it to poke holes “Harassing the actors/actresses will do nothing,” tweeted
John Boyega to trolls after Tran left social media in 2018.
in the Hollywood mythos that makes the
unfamous feel like lesser mortals. “I never Episode VII.) They polluted her feed with
thought I’d be in a world where someone racist and sexist insults, she deleted all her
would pay for people to dress me, do my posts, and by the time The Rise of Skywalker
hair, do my makeup. We spend our whole premiered in December 2019, the girl who
lives trying to hold ourselves up to a stan- happy-cried her way down her first red
dard that is truly unattainable,” Tran wrote carpet two years earlier had been replaced
in the caption to an October 2017 post in by a woman who stared down the cameras
which she juxtaposed a red carpet photo at the El Capitan Theatre, lips sealed in a
with a snapshot of herself posing on the defiant pout.
street in a Jaws T-shirt and novelty oversized It wouldn’t be a surprise to find Tran, now
glasses. “This chick on the left is who I am 32, closed off and unwilling to engage with
1% of the time. That girl on the right is who a public that returned her goodwill with be, [like] the succession of events in which
I am 99% of the time. And you know what? bile, so it’s a relief instead to peer through a I left the internet for my own sanity,” she

They’re both worthy of love.”
“TBH, this is the only way to behave when
you become famous,” BuzzFeed declared in an
article celebrating her account in December
2017, a week before The Last Jedi’s premiere.
Everyone knows what happened after the
movie came out. Rian Johnson’s vision of a
galaxy far, far away divided obsessive fans,
and Tran, as the franchise’s most promi-
nent newcomer and first woman of color in
a lead role, bore the brunt of the haters’ ire.
(John Boyega and Daisy Ridley faced similar
harassment when they were introduced in
Zoom screen and find her barefaced, smiling
and game to process the unique set of life
experiences that brought her from obscurity
to Star Wars trailblazer to Disney princess,
attended by dual torrents of intense scrutiny
and toxic fandom.
Tran’s decision to wipe her Instagram —
all that remains is a one-line bio: “Afraid,
but doing it anyway” — in June 2018 made
headlines, to her consternation. “What’s
interesting to me about working in this
industry is that certain things become so
public, even if you don’t really mean them to
PREVIOUS SPREAD: HAIR BY DEREK YUEN USING UNITE AT A-FRAME. MAKEUP BY HINAKO USING SUQQU AT
THE WALL GROUP. VIRTUAL PRODUCTION BY PYRAMID3 STUDIO. THIS SPREAD: JEDI: DAVID JAMES/©WALT
says. “It was basically me being like, ‘Oh,
this isn’t good for my mental health. I’m
DISNEY STUDIOS MOTION PICTURES/© LUCASFILM LTD./COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION.
obviously going to leave this.’ ”
At the time, she was in the final week
of production for the first season of the
Facebook Watch drama Sorry for Your Loss,
a meditation on grief in which she plays a
recovering alcoholic. “She was very candid
about being in a real uncharted territory,”
says creator Kit Steinkellner of their con-
versations on the CBS Radford lot in Studio
City. “It’s a rare and awful thing to have
that level and volume of hate come at you

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 50 M A RCH 3, 2021

 “If there’s anything I can take from the past five years, it’s that I’m proud of the ways I showed up for myself, because it was really hard, and I’m still here,” says Tran.
Cong Tri gown, Irene Neuwirth earrings.

so relentlessly. I was really impressed with to therapy, where she learned, “If someone “I left. I said no to a lot of things,” she
how she dealt head-on with the intense and doesn’t understand me or my experience, it says. “It felt like I was just hearing the voice
complicated feelings that anybody would shouldn’t be my place to have to internalize of my agents and my publicity team and all
have about this, while continuing to really their misogyny or racism or all of the above. of these people telling me what to say and
give as an artist and friend and human.” Maybe they just don’t have the imagination what to do and how to feel. And I realized, I
(Steinkellner likens Tran’s performance to to understand that there are different types didn’t know how I felt anymore. And I didn’t
a chiaroscuro painting — “all the lights and of people living in the world.” remember why I was in this in
the darks.”) Other than an op-ed in The the first place.
ABOUT THE PHOTOS
Tran says the whole experience felt like New York Times, in which she Photographer Dyan Jong “Any time that happens, I have
worked with her virtual
she “fell in love very publicly and then very penned an assertive, moving production team, Pyramid3, to close up shop and go away
to create 3D scenes with Tran
publicly had an embarrassingly horrible declaration of renewed purpose incorporating such references for a while and really interact
as lotus leaves, an homage to
breakup.” She leaned on her tight-knit to combat the “lies” that society the national flower of Vietnam in the real world — read books
(on the cover and page 48),
pre-fame circle of friends, including the teaches about women and people green terrace steps inspired and journal and go on hikes and
by rice paddies (above) and a
members of her all-Asian American female of color, Tran also withdrew Vietnamese temple (page 54). look at a tree and remind myself
improv troupe Number One Son, and went from the spotlight altogether. that there was a fire that burned

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 51 M A RCH 3, 2021

Symbolism of Swords, Energy of Night Markets
Raya’s Southeast Asian influences came courtesy of research trips and a Lao anthropologist
Walt Disney Animation Studios’ fantasy Raya and the Last Dragon
found inspiration from Southeast Asia, a process that began with
research trips to Laos, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia,
Singapore and Malaysia. “One of the things that moved [directors
Don Hall and Carlos López Estrada] the most and made the team
really want to ground the inspiration of the film in Southeast Asia
was the sense of community that they encountered, the sense
of ‘we,’ the importance of ‘we’ over ‘I,’ ” explains producer Osnat
Shurer. “It was so deep and so complete that they came back and
← ←
Kumandran greetings, thank
yous and goodbyes involve
forming a gem shape with
your hands. The higher the
gesture, the more it conveys
respect. “That’s a creative
take on the common
greetings you’ll see in the
entire [Southeast Asian]
region, where you have
clasped hands. It’s called a
nop in Lao and a wai in Thai,
but it’s the same theme
of bringing your hands
together,” says Arounsack.
we started diving into also the rest of the beauty, the textures, the
fabrics, the food. That became the grounding principle, the inspira-
tion behind this fantasy world of Kumandra.” This world forms the
shape of a dragon and includes five lands: Heart (Raya’s home), Fang,
Spine, Talon and Tail, each of which has a distinct look. Costume
research involved studying breathable draping styles, such as the
sabai top and sampot pant. The filmmakers also formed what was
dubbed the Southeast Asia Story Trust — a team of consultants led
by Lao visual anthropologist Steve Arounsack. — CAROLYN GIARDINA
Raya grew up in Heart,
which is bathed in the colors
of water, but as an adult,
“she wanted to be incognito,
so we took the palette
away, but gave more subtle
allusions. There’s a raindrop
pattern on her bolero,” says
production designer Paul
Felix. Raya’s hat takes a cue
from warrior helmets: “The
base of the stupa [shape]
represents the Earth,
and that curve upward
represents water,” says
visual anthropologist Steve
Arounsack. “The thematic
part is that Raya’s journey
tapers to a point of wisdom
and clarity, to the very tip.”
Screenwriter Qui Nguyen,
who is also a martial arts
choreographer, equipped
Raya with weapons ranging
from Arnis sticks that she
uses as a child to a fighting
style that leans on Pencak
Silat to a sword that was
inspired by the Kris.
Sisu, the story’s water
dragon, was inspired by the
Naga of Southeast Asia,
semi-divine beings that can
manifest as serpents or
humans. In keeping with
the water motif, her colors
are blues and greens. “The
crest is a symbol of where
CREDITS HERE AND HERE
her powers come from.
It’s her majesty,” says
Arounsack. “That has to be
the highest point in almost
all of the framing, showing
reverence and respect.”
 inside of me before Star Wars, before any of
this. And I needed to find that again.”

ONSIDERING THE LENGTH Y

←
The land of Talon was
influenced by the floating
markets and night markets
the team visited around
C gestation period for animated
features, Raya and the Last Dragon
lands with some timely parallels. Although
Southeast Asia. Says a sinister atmospheric force (much like a
Arounsack, “Whether the
markets be in Laos, Thailand virus) provides the overt threat in the film,
or Indonesia, you’re going the story’s true antagonist is disunity, as
to see the density of the
stalls and frenetic energy. the fictional land of Kumandra has been
That’s why you see a lot fractured into five kingdoms while people
of movement, lights, people,
kids, older people, food, give in to their impulses of power, greed
smells, everything.”
and mistrust. And with disparate Asian
American communities in real life offering
a variety of responses to the spike in hate
crimes over the past year, Raya, the first
Disney animated film to be directly inspired
←
Tail is a desert land at the by Southeast Asian cultures, takes on addi-
end of Kumandra’s Dragon tional resonance (even as the movie has also
River, which takes cues
from the Mekong River that received criticism for casting East Asians in
runs through Southeast
Asia. Says Felix, “There’s several key roles).
more of a self-determining During development, Disney added new
nature to the people there,
so we were envisioning members to the project’s creative team —
them as smaller pockets of directors Hall (Big Hero 6) and López Estrada
villages without a [more]
unified sense. There is more (Blindspotting), plus playwright Qui Nguyen
of a rustic, handcrafted feel
to the aesthetic.” (Vietgone) to join screenwriter Adele Lim
(Crazy Rich Asians) — who tweaked various
elements of story and character, including
Raya herself. Originally voiced by Degrassi:
The Next Generation alum Cassie Steele
(who is of partial Filipino descent), the title
character was recast when she shifted from
←
With its militaristic feel, stoic loner to a warrior who possesses a bit
the land of Fang has a more more levity. “For a comp we looked at Star-
geometric, monumental
design, influenced by such Lord from Guardians of the Galaxy in terms
stops on the research trip
as Cambodia’s Angkor Wat. of having a little of that swagger,” Hall says.
The character Namaari, “I don’t remember exactly the moment when
from Fang, uses combat
styles inspired by Muay we threw out Kelly Marie[’s name], but we all
Thai and weapons-based lit up, just knowing that she’s got impro-
Krabi-Krabong, also
from Thailand. visational comedic gifts, lightness and
buoyancy, but also badassery.”
For Tran, the role was not only a bucket-
list item for a diehard Disney nerd (her
← email handle in high school was “lil_disney_
Water motifs dominate in dorko”), but also an opportunity to represent
Heart, says Felix, because
of the people’s reverence her heritage for the first time in her career.
for water dragons inspired “I’ve never had this experience before where
by Naga. “The Naga are
protectors of the water I’ve looked at sides and read words that were
realm. Whenever we go to
temples or anything that taken from the Vietnamese language,” says
relates to water, you’re the actor, who worked with Nguyen to fine-
going to see symbols of the
Naga as a protector,” adds tune and offer suggestions on pronunciation
Arounsack. “So, the Naga and slang used in Kumandra.
seemed to be a natural
way to lead into this world As the first woman-of-color Star Wars lead
visually and thematically.”
and first Southeast Asian Disney princess,
Tran is well aware that she is a symbol of
representation, and is getting better at
wearing the mantle without letting it suf-
focate her. “I understand why there’s that
← sort of label on the things I’ve done. As a
Giant black bamboos “the kid, I saw people working in this industry
size of redwoods” mark the
land of Spine, says Shurer. and thought they were somehow elevated
“In Vietnam and other
places, they use bamboo human beings, and that if I ever got to that
place, I would never feel any insecurity or
RAYA: COURTESY OF DISNEY (8)

for amazing craft, and

so everything is made of
CREDITS HERE AND HERE

it in the village.” Spine was doubt, and that’s just not true,” she says. “So
“given a warrior culture,”
says Felix, and a cold clime
with “thicker” costumes
displaying the “principle of
wrapped clothing.”

53
“My favorite part about Raya is that she’s allowed to be viscerally, justifiably angry, and I have not seen that before in a movie like this,” says Tran as the newest Disney princess.
 I acknowledge and validate the label of these
things being historic, and I’m so grateful to
be part of them, but for my own sanity I have
to not think about that too much.”
Says activist Amanda Nguyen, a close
friend who found kinship with Tran over
being rare Vietnamese American young
female public figures in their respective
fields, “It’s a constant tug of figuring out,
‘I’m doing this because I love doing it,’ but
also being so cognizant of the lack of repre-
sentation and because of that, all of a sudden
you’re the de facto person representing the
whole group of people. That’s an immense
amount of responsibility that quite frankly
is a little unfair to people, and Kelly has
handled it with so much grace.”
SK THE FILMM A K ERS A N D
A creators who have worked with Tran
what she was like on their sets,
and they all volunteer a specific version of
the same anecdote: “She would introduce
herself to everyone on the crew,” says The
Last Jedi’s Johnson. “She’d poke her head in
departments and ask, ‘What do you guys do
in here?’ I’d turn around and she’d be help-
ing sew in Porg feathers.”
Steinkellner says, “You hear of divas and
superstars, and there are also [actors] who
just come in and do the work and are polite
and courteous to below-the-line crew. But
Kelly makes a point of really seeing people.
To use a woo-woo L.A. word, honoring
everybody. She’d ask in a respectful way if
she could just shadow and observe the other
parts of the machine that normally an actor
doesn’t [get involved with].”
Raya is an animated film whose pro-
duction took place remotely during the
pandemic, but Tran was “embedded in
our family more than actors usually are,”
says López Estrada. She was a part of the
crew’s extracurricular activities throughout
production, from participating in a Laotian
Baci ceremony of blessing to kick off the
project, to interviewing multiple crewmem-
bers for making-of featurettes, to recording
a goofy duet of “Mockingbird” à la Dumb and
Dumber with López Estrada as a wrap gift
for the animators. “I think if we hadn’t done
the work from home, she probably would’ve
come like once a week to the studio to just
hang out with everyone,” he says.
When told that her behavior is unusual
for an actor: “That makes me want to die,”
says Tran. “Maybe it’s because, to this day,
I still have worked longer as an admin
assistant than a working actor, and because
I didn’t grow up in the industry. Going into
my first movie, I remember people being
like, ‘Oh, you’re hanging out with the PAs
on the weekends,’ and I’d be like, ‘Yeah,
COURTESY OF FACEBOOK WATCH
so?’ I still don’t ever want to believe these
made-up status titles we have in Hollywood.
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
Tran played the adopted sister of Elizabeth Olsen (left)
in Facebook Watch’s Sorry for Your Loss.
I tell my agents all the time: ‘The day that
becomes me, I will go back to college and
become a scientist.’ ”
R A N WAS A N OU TGOING THEATER
T kid from San Diego, performing in
local musical productions and an
active participant of too many high school
clubs. Her parents were refugees from
Vietnam who did what they had to in their
new country (including working at a funeral
home) to provide for their three daughters.
Tran, the middle child, studied com-
munications at UCLA and then joined
Los Angeles’ aspiring actor ranks. While
working a day job as an office assistant, she
honed her comedy chops in local improv
shows and video sketches, where the oppor-
tunities for an Asian American trying to
act onscreen in the early 2010s yielded her
roles like “Daughter,” “Boba Chick” and “Full
Asian.” Still, while working on spec scripts
in Koreatown cafes on days off, it became a
running gag among friends that Tran would
always inevitably pipe up: “You guys, look
at us. We are doing what we want to do for a
living! Isn’t it cool?”
Comedian and writer Jenny Yang, a close
friend who met Tran through an Upright
Citizens Brigade class 10 years ago, recalls
the first time she saw the future star take
the improv stage. “She was a shiny button,”
Yang says. “Her energy, purity, enthusiasm,
smile — you could tell she was just so happy
to be there, and I think that’s what attracts
people to her, because she’s in an industry
that can get people very jaded.”
Yang believes those aspects of Tran’s
nature became a lightning rod for the polar-
ized responses to her involvement in Star
Wars. “Do you remember ‘Protect Kelly Marie
Tran at all costs’? That was a line people felt
compelled to say over and over again, because
she embodied relatability. She came from
such a humble path and became a movie
star,” Yang says. “I think it also makes sense
that the worst of the internet would latch
onto that and say, ‘Yes, bitch, you should be
grateful.’ That’s the easy flip that people can
make off of the energy that she conveyed,
which is her gratitude and vulnerability.”
55 M A RCH 3, 2021
R A N IS U N LIK ELY TO R ET U R N TO
T social media. “I’ve truly just been so
much happier without being on the
internet,” she says. “I’ve had my agents tell
me [I’m] forgoing brand partnerships, but
I’m not here to sell flat-tummy tea to young
girls.” She admits she engages in what
she and her friends call “one-sided social
media,” in which she’s very aware of current
events and trending topics, but she self-
imposes “extreme limits” when looking up
reactions to her own work.
“We can talk about the interaction
between mental health and social media,
but also mental health and this idea of
fame and what it does to you. It is not nor-
mal. For me, that navigation is about how I
protect myself in a way where I can continue
to work in this world, and continue to lift
the stories that I feel like the world needs
to hear.”
Those stories include Lily Topples the
World, a documentary Tran is executive
producing that will premiere at SXSW this
month. The feature follows college student
Lily Hevesh, a Chinese adoptee and the
world’s most accomplished domino artist
(her YouTube channel has amassed more
than 1.1 billion views). Tran describes a
scene in which Lily runs a business meet-
ing with a group of middle-aged white men
about her upcoming domino line: “She’s
much younger than me, and here’s a woman
in this space doing her thing, without hav-
ing to be like, ‘How does it feel to be Asian?’
I want to continue to amplify those stories,
but I also want to be that person.”
She’s getting there. “Kelly has defi-
nitely become more of a shit-kicker,” says
Yang, meaning someone willing to “cut
through the bullshit” and upend Hollywood
norms. “She’s much more willing to draw
boundaries, she proactively asks for what
she needs and brings to her team the work
she wants.”
When she reflects on her intense journey
over the past few years, the part that makes
Tran choke up now isn’t the public personal
attacks that muddied the most thrilling
time in her life. It’s this part: “I think we
forget as working actors that even being
in this world at all is a miracle.” Her voice
is heavy with relief that she’s managed to
retain the part of herself — that passion
for the magic of storytelling — that she
treasures the most. “Hope, for me, looks like
reminding yourself that to get where you
are, you’ve survived some shit,” Tran says.
“When the world is moving so quickly and
there are all these voices saying ‘If you don’t
do this, you’ll never work again,’ if you really
come into your power and surround yourself
with people who are honoring your voice and
their own voices — I guess that’s how I got
through it.”
RACIST, SEXIST
E
E V E RY M O NTH , D I S N E Y
convenes an eclectic group of
advisers via videoconference
to tell the media conglomerate
what it and the many entertain-
ment companies it has acquired
over its nearly 100-year history
have gotten wrong. It’s a long list.
Song of the South. Jar Jar Binks.
That episode of The Muppet Show
where Johnny Cash sings a duet
with Miss Piggy in front of a
Confederate flag.
“We’ve had some very raw
conversations on those Zooms,”
says Gil Robertson, president
of the African American Film
Critics Association, who sits on
Disney’s advisory council, part
of its Stories Matter Initiative,
alongside representatives from
groups like the Coalition of
Asian Pacifics in Entertainment
and the Geena Davis Institute
on Gender in Media as well as
representatives from various
departments at Disney, including
programming, public policy and
diversity and inclusion. Disney
asks Robertson and his col-
leagues to watch content that may
contain stereotypes or insen-
sitive imagery and offer their
perspectives. Some shows and
films, like certain episodes of The
Muppet Show that Disney added
to its streaming platform Feb. 19,
have ended up with disclaim-
ers cautioning viewers about
“negative depictions and/or mis-
treatment of people or cultures,”
a kind of pop culture equivalent
of a surgeon general’s warning.
“They want to make up for any
offensive messaging they may
have been a part of,” Robertson
says. “It feels sincere, and it’s also
good business.”

Illustration by Taylor Callery

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 56 M A RCH 3, 2021

... CLASSIC?
AS STR E AM E R S B U I LD O UT TH E I R LI B R AR I E S , O LD E R CO NTE NT I S CRU C IAL .
BUT IT COM ES WITH BAGGAG E . WITH NO PLAYBOOK, STU DIOS ARE EXPE RI M E NTI NG WITH
L AB E L WAR N I N G S , CO NTE X T PAN E LS AN D EVE N PU RG E S : ‘TH E S E AR E VALUAB LE
PRO PE RTI E S THAT YO U CAN N OT J U ST D I S R E GAR D. YO U WANT TO KE E P TH E M , B UT YO U
HAVE TO MAKE S U R E TH E Y D O N ’ T DAMAG E TH E B R AN D ’ BY R E B E C CA K E E GA N
For traditional studios launch-
ing new streaming services and
trying to attract 2021 audiences,
their libraries are precious
resources, assets to draw viewers
saturated with entertainment
options via the powerful forces
of nostalgia and brand recog-
nition. But these decades-old
archives also are minefields of
racism, sexism, homophobia and
other forms of bias that were
publicly acceptable in the eras in
which the content originally was
produced. Studios are taking a
range of approaches to grappling
with that part of their legacies,
from adding content warnings to
removing shows or films entirely
to creating new content that con-
textualizes older programming,
as WarnerMedia’s classic TV net-
work, TCM, is doing with a new
series called Reframed: Classic
Films in the Rearview Mirror, which
begins March 4.
“Nobody’s canceling these
movies,” says TCM host Ben
Mankiewicz. “Our job is not to get
up and say, ‘Here’s a movie that
you should feel guilty about for
liking.’ But to pretend that the
racism in it is not painful and
acute? No. I do not want to shy
away from that. This was inevita-
ble. And welcomed. And overdue.”
Older shows and movies are
still big business. On Disney+ in
2020, nearly 80 percent of the TV
demand was for the streaming
service’s licensed shows — only
about 20 percent was for origi-
nal shows like The Mandalorian,
according to Parrot Analytics. On
HBO Max, more than 90 percent
of TV demand was for licensed
WIND: COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION.
shows and less than 10 percent for
originals. (Parrot does not tabu-
late the numbers for films.) “You
attract subscribers with original
shows, but you retain them with
library content,” says Alejandro
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 57
Rojas, Parrot’s director of applied
analytics. “These are valuable
properties that you cannot just
disregard. You want to keep them,
but you have to make sure they
don’t damage the brand.” In 2019,
Miramax’s 700-film library was
valued at $750 million; the librar-
ies at Disney and WarnerMedia
are multibillion-dollar assets,
says Chris Kirk, consultant at
8020 Consulting.
The need for studios to reckon
with their racist histories took
on a new urgency last summer,
as Black Lives Matter protests
were unfolding across the U.S.
in response to the police kill-
ing of George Floyd, and brands
of all varieties weighed in with
charitable donations, public
statements and corporate town
halls about diversity and inclu-
sion. At AT&T’s WarnerMedia,
that moment of national tumult
meant reexamining one of the
company’s crown jewels, Gone
With the Wind, the 1939 Civil War
epic that remains, adjusted for
inflation, the highest-grossing
film of all time. Screenwriter
John Ridley wrote an op-ed in
the Los Angeles Times calling for
WarnerMedia to temporarily
Watching Gone With the Wind as a child, says TCM host Jacqueline Stewart, “The adults
in my family knew all of the famous scenes by heart and rolled their eyes when Butterfly
McQueen or Hattie McDaniel would deliver lines that were particularly demeaning.”
M A RCH 3, 2021
remove the film from its then-
less-than-2-week-old streaming
service, HBO Max, because Gone
With the Wind sentimentalizes
slavery and perpetuates stereo-
types. “At a moment when we
are all considering what more
we can do to fight bigotry and
intolerance, I would ask that all
content providers look at their
libraries and make a good-faith
effort to separate program-
ming that might be lacking in its
representation from that which
is blatant in its demonization,”
Ridley wrote. HBO Max removed
the film within hours of Ridley’s
column being published, eventu-
ally returning Gone With the Wind
to the service later that month
with a four-minute introduc-
tion by TCM host Jacqueline
Stewart framing the movie as
one that “denies the horrors of
slavery as well as its legacy of
racial inequality.”
“I was heartened that HBO
Max took a pause to consider
what it means, at this historical
moment, to present a legendary
and beloved film that glorifies
the Confederacy and romanti-
cizes slavery,” Stewart says. “I put
together my introduction in a
matter of days, but they were very
long days.” In it, Stewart noted
that objections to the film are not
just a contemporary phenom-
enon — in 1936, NAACP secretary
Walter White wrote to producer
David O. Selznick suggesting
he hire an African American to
fact-check Margaret Mitchell’s
novel glamorizing the antebel-
lum South before adapting it for
the screen. She also pointed out 1 2
that Hattie McDaniel was not
included in the film’s premiere
in Atlanta and was marginalized 5
at the Oscars ceremony, where
she became the first African
American to win an Academy
Award. “Gone With the Wind
raises questions about racial
politics on- and off-screen, in
Hollywood’s past and in the pres-
ent media landscape,” Stewart
says. “I wanted to connect all of
those dots.” WarnerMedia has
assembled a group composed
of historians and advisers from
6
outside the company as well as
representatives from various
Warner divisions to examine
its archives. “Our approach is to
confront and contextualize our autobiography. “I was the only Crowd upset conservatives back Drawing attention to prob-
history,” says Christy Haubegger, Negro in the theater, and when in 2010 for comparisons the host lems in their own archives does
WarnerMedia’s chief enterprise Butterfly McQueen went into her drew between the cult of celeb- carry risks for studios. “Kermit
inclusion officer and head of mar- act, I felt like crawling under the rity culture in the film and the Canceled?” asked a headline on
keting and communications. rug,” the activist wrote. Some state of contemporary political the conservative website The
TCM, where Stewart became intros examine the expectation of commentary. “The Goatee’d One Daily Wire when Disney rolled
the first Black host in September who an audience for a film might can interpret the meaning of Elia out disclaimers on 18 episodes of
2019, will apply a similar concept be — in the case of classic movies, Kazan’s masterpiece in today’s The Muppet Show. When the hosts
with its new series devoted to producers were thinking almost world all he wants, but he needs of Fox News’ Fox & Friends asked
legendary films that often are exclusively of white audiences. “It’s to keep that interpretation to Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton about
problematic to today’s audiences important to come face-to-face himself and show his viewers the the disclaimers on Feb. 24, the
for their approach to race, gender with that uncomfortable idea that respect of allowing us to inter- lawmaker brought up the studio’s
and LGBTQ issues. Reframed will what many of us have considered pret it for our own selves,” wrote relationship with China and its
feature the network’s five hosts safe is the opposite of that for conservative blogger John Nolte at thanking of government agen-
in roundtable discussions of such other people,” says TCM host Alicia the time. Says Mankiewicz about cies in a province that is home
films as Gone With the Wind, The Malone. “One person’s safety can the new intros: “I don’t think we to detention camps that house
Searchers, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, be another person’s trauma.” ought to be afraid of irritating Uighur Muslims in the credits for
Woman of the Year and Guess In many ways, TCM hosts have some people. Putting a movie into its 2020 China-set adventure film
Who’s Coming to Dinner from a been quietly adding this type of context does not mean saying, Mulan. Cotton pointed out that
21st century perspective. historical nuance to their intros ‘Hey, look, man. People were rac- the company’s business interests
In the discussion about Gone for years, even when it some- ist in 1939, so let it go.’ Ultimately matter most above anything.
With the Wind, TCM host Eddie times irks audiences looking for what we end up doing is making “They don’t take these things
Muller notes Malcolm X’s men- escapism. An intro Mankiewicz sure that these movies stay as down,” the senator said of Muppet
tion of the film in his 1965 shot for the 1957 film A Face in the part of the conversation.” Show episodes. “They still want
that $12.99 a month.” (Disney+ is
actually $6.99 a month.)
These types of cancel-culture
critiques have not deterred
PUTTING A MOVIE INTO CONTEXT DOES studios. Disney put short con-
tent warnings on the original
NOT MEAN SAYING, ‘HEY, LOOK, MAN. animated versions of Dumbo
PEOPLE WERE RACIST IN 1939, SO LET IT GO.’ ” (1941), The Jungle Book (1967) and
Aladdin (1992) when the company
launched its streaming service in

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 58 M A RCH 3, 2021


November 2019 — a disclaimer
telling audiences the films “may
THUNDER: DREAMWORKS DISTRIBUTION/COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION. SWING, SEARCHERS, BREAKFAST, HOUR, DUMBO, SOUTH: COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION. ALADDIN: BUENA VISTA/COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION.
3 4
1 Though satiric, some
regard Robert Downey Jr.’s
7 performance in 2008’s Tropic
Thunder as a Method actor in
blackface as offensive.
2 Fred Astaire employed
blackface in 1936’s Swing Time.
3 The crows in Disney’s
Dumbo (1941) depicted African
American sterotypes.
4 The controversial 1946 film
Song of the South has not been
shown in a theater since 1986.
development and inclusion strate-
gies at Walt Disney Imagineering,
5 Mickey Rooney played
an Asian neighbor in 1961’s
Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
6 John Wayne’s The Searchers
(1956) has been widely
critiqued for its depiction of
Native Americans.
7 1961’s The Children’s Hour,
starring Audrey Hepburn (left)
and Shirley MacLaine, treats
lesbianism as an affliction.
8 Aladdin (1992) now bears a
content warning.
8
the Wind, there won’t be any
more Gone With the Winds is a
continue to this day. … We are
therefore presenting the original
episode in its entirety.”
ViacomCBS has yet to signal
how the company will deal with
some of its potentially offen-
sive titles when it launches
Paramount+ on March 4.
Although ViacomCBS chair-
man Shari Redstone opened the
studio’s presentation Feb. 24
by declaring, “This is not your
father’s Viacom. This is not my
father’s, either,” Paramount+ will
rely on a library of more than
30,000 episodes of television and
2,500 movies. That’s a list that
potentially includes everything
from Fu Manchu movies of the
1930s to 2008’s Tropic Thunder,
which features Robert Downey Jr.
in blackface and liberal use of a
schoolyard put-down for people
with developmental disabilities.
When Martin Scorsese pub-
lished an essay about Federico
Fellini in Harper’s Magazine in
February critiquing the way
streaming service algorithms
rob classic cinema of its romance
and context, the piece reignited
a long-standing Film Twitter
debate around the merits of

contain outdated cultural depic-
tions.” In the fall, the studio
further strengthened the warn-
ings to read, “This program
includes negative depictions and/
or mistreatment of people or
cultures. These stereotypes were
wrong then and are wrong now.”
Disney’s most controversial film
may be Song of the South, the 1946
Reconstruction-era live-action/
animated musical that the studio
has not aired on TV since 2001
nor screened publicly in a theater
since 1986. Disney also has kept
Song of the South off its streaming
service and is removing char-
acters from the movie from the
Splash Mountain attraction at its
theme parks, replacing them with
characters from The Princess and
the Frog, the 2009 animated musi-
cal that was the first to feature a
Black Disney princess. The studio
theme park designers already had
been discussing updating the ride
but announced their plans amid
the racial justice protests last
summer. “It is important that our
guests be able to see themselves
in the experiences we create,”
Carmen Smith, vp creative
said in a blog post in June.
Multiple Hollywood compa-
nies have been using an artificial
intelligence program designed
by researchers from USC’s Viterbi
School of Engineering to ana-
lyze films and shows for issues
like gender representation and
violence — now one studio also is
weighing using AI to scan scripts
in its archive for content like
racial slurs.
Not everyone thinks that
it’s wise to entirely remove an
offensive film or TV show from
circulation. Some scholars feel
it can fetishize the work, or that
it removes an opportunity for
study. “The teacher in me is not
interested in vanishing anything,”
says Kristen Warner, assistant
professor in the department of
telecommunication and film at
the University of Alabama, who
studies racial representation
in the media. “These things are
useful, and I don’t think wiping
them from the face of the earth is
going to resolve anything except
have things re-created without
an origin source. The assumption
that if you get rid of Gone With
specious claim.”
Blackface has proved an
especially persistent reminder
of Hollywood’s racist past —
even its quite recent past — and
at least now, most studios are
scrubbing it from their catalogs.
Over the summer, producers
began pulling blackface episodes
of NBC shows like 30 Rock, The
Office and The Golden Girls from
circulation. Lionsgate took a dif-
ferent tack with a 2009 episode
of AMC’s Mad Men in which
John Slattery’s Roger Sterling
sings “My Old Kentucky Home”
in blackface during a Kentucky
Derby party, leaving the episode
up but emphasizing the series’
historical context for the scene.
“This episode contains disturb-
ing images related to race in
America,” reads a title card for
the episode, which now streams
on Amazon’s IMDb TV and AMC+.
“One of the characters is shown
in blackface as part of an episode
that shows how commonplace
racism was in America in 1963.
The series producers are commit-
ted to exposing the injustices and
inequities within our society that
older movies. “Stop jumping on
people who don’t like old movies,”
tweeted Punisher: War Zone direc-
tor Lexi Alexander. “It’s such a
pretentious ‘I went to an expen-
sive film school’ thing to do. Old
movies rarely hold up, plus they’re
racist and sexist AF.”
As time passes, audiences and
studios may settle on a subtler
approach to understanding older
films and shows, one that leaves
room for both pleasure and
hard analysis.
The first time Stewart saw Gone
With the Wind, she was a child at
her grandmother’s house in the
1970s, and the film was airing
on television, a major primetime
event. “The adults in my family
knew all of the famous scenes by
heart and rolled their eyes when
Butterfly McQueen or Hattie
McDaniel would deliver lines that
were particularly demeaning,”
says Stewart. “It was an early
lesson for me about how Black
audiences have always juggled the
pleasures and problems of main-
stream media. I was learning that
you can enjoy a film even as you
are critiquing it.”

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 59 M A RCH 3, 2021


The Journey From
Script to Screen
The scene, of a man
undressing what
he thought was a
very drunk woman
in his bed, only to Fennell says Brody’s
look up and see her, character (called Jez
stone-cold sober, in the original script
saying, “What are but Jerry in the film)
you doing?” was thinks he’s in a romantic
Fennell’s first comedy, while viewers
seed of an idea for can see that Carey
the film. Mulligan’s character is in
a very different story. “It
really needed somebody
who was going to
commit to the romance
of that, and that is
Jerry (Adam Brody) why it’s so unbearably
and Cassandra (Carey embarrassing and
Mulligan) meet at a horrific because you
club in the first scene believe he believes it,”
in Focus’ Promising she says.
Young Woman.
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
202 1 AWA R D S S E A S O N
THE W R ITERS
“When he kisses her, it is
completely one-sided, and yet
he thinks it’s the best kiss of
his life,” says Fennell. “It’s not
like a porno-disgusting kiss, it’s
worse. It’s like, romantic.”
Fennell says the original
scene was “much longer. We
got a much better sense of
who [Brody’s character] was.
But it actually was not useful
because we don’t really need to
know that much about him —
because you just need to know
what kind of person he is.”
60
Playbook
Four scribes reveal how some of their
favorite — and most pivotal — scenes
changed through the rewriting process
BY R E B E C CA F O R D
Promising Young Woman
EMERALD FENNELL
Eight pages into the script, Cassandra (Carey
Mulligan), seemingly very drunk, is taken home
from a club by Jerry (Adam Brody) for “one more
drink.” When he tries to have sex with her, his nearly
unconscious date suddenly snaps to attention
and catches Jerry in his bad behavior, leaving him
stunned and embarrassed.
FENNELL: RICH POLK/GETTY IMAGES FOR IMDB. PROMISING: MERIE WEISMILLER WALLACE/FOCUS FEATURES. VERSION: JEONG PARK/NETFLIX. BLANK: JOE SCARNICI/GETTY IMAGES.
For Fennell, it was about adding
specific details to show what kind
of person he was: “He fills her
drink up more than he fills up his
own. He doesn’t actually ask her
any questions or he doesn’t wait
for any of her answers,” she says.
The scene, which plays before
the title card, was the only part
of the script that Fennell pitched
when looking for financing. “It is so
important because it establishes
everything that comes after,” she
notes. “It was really useful to show
everyone what they’re in for.”
M A RCH 3, 2021
 Original
Screenplay

Archie (Peter Kim) questions Radha’s (Radha Blank) choice to pursue rapping instead
of focusing on her play in this scene from Netflix’s The Forty-Year-Old Version.

The Forty-Year-Old Version

RADHA BLANK
After Radha (played by director, writer and producer
Radha Blank), a struggling nearly-40-year-old playwright,
performs her own raps (as “RadhaMUSprime”) in a make-
shift studio for the first time, she meets up with her friend/
agent Archie (Peter Kim), who has just made a major
sacrifice to help get Radha’s play produced and finds her
newfound obsession for rap a bit confusing.

Blank first wrote the project about a

playwright turned rapper as a web series in
2013. Then her mother died, and she put it on
the shelf for several years, later rewriting the
script as a feature. “It just felt too pedestrian,
and it also felt like I was trying to play the The scene is intended to first
young kids’ game. The web series just felt like reveal the building tension
the millennials’ sport,” she says. between the two former high
school friends. “I did feel like
it was a time for them both,
for Archie, especially, to lay
After working with Peter Kim at the 2017 it on the line and say, ‘These
Sundance Directors lab, Blank changed are the stakes. This is what
Archie from a “skinny, white, 20-something I need you to do,’ ” she says,
gay guy” into a Korean American man who “and to see a small fissure in
was best friends with her character. “Once their relationship.”
I met Peter and we started working together
on theater-related stuff, I really felt like, ‘Oh
my goodness, it’s just supposed to be my
best friend,’ ” she says. “This is a dynamic
you don’t see often — the friendship between
a Black woman and a Korean man.”

Blank points out that the two don’t have a

lot of scenes together. She rewrote this one
multiple times to get the tension just right.
“She’s looking for Archie to really validate
her,” she says, “and she doesn’t quite get the
response that she was expecting.”

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 61 M A RCH 3, 2021

 202 1 AWA R D S S E A S O N Playbook

Adapted
Greengrass and co-writer
Screenplay
Luke Davies adapted
the 2016 novel by Paulette
Jiles for the film.

Left: Paulette
In Jiles’ book, Johanna Jiles’ book, which
was physically abused centers on a
by her aunt and uncle. man who reads
“I didn’t want the aunt newspapers to
and uncle to be cruel. the public for
It just didn’t seem a living. Below:
like it belonged in the Helena Zengel
landscape of the film,” and Tom Hanks in
says Greengrass. He Universal’s News
chose to make them of the World.
stern but have Johanna
tied up only because she
kept trying to run away.

An earlier draft had Kidd coming to the farm to discover

that Johanna had run away. He would try to find her for
quite some time. “The problem with it was that it felt like
it kept the film going. You’d had so much sadness by that
time that you didn’t want any more,” says Greengrass.
“For what traumatic reason are we withholding them
coming back together? What lesson do we want them to
learn by doing that? The more I sort of thought about it
and read it, the more it felt actually far from being
the right ending. It was really the wrong ending because
it didn’t have the courage of its convictions.”

News of
the World Greengrass realized that the scene should focus
PAUL GREENGRASS on Johanna, a character who has not been allowed
to make many choices for herself throughout
Toward the end of the film. “It became apparent to me that it was
the film, Capt. Kidd all about her. She has spent her life, her destiny
(Tom Hanks) returns being controlled by the Kiowa — when they killed
her German family and kidnapped her, when the
to the farm where he soldiers came and killed her Kiowa family and
left Johanna (Helena put her in a wagon to take her back to people she
Zengel) with her aunt didn’t know. She’s never given a choice.”
and uncle after real-
izing that he wants to
“The scene had to be about Kidd giving her the
bring her along with choice and the aunt and the uncle giving her the
him. He finds her tied choice. And then suddenly, it all made sense,” says
up in the yard. Greengrass. “The film was about people who are
lost but unbroken in the shadow of great trauma.”

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 62 M A RCH 3, 2021

 Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
RUBEN SANTIAGO-HUDSON
As the band prepares to record with blues singer
Ma Rainey (Viola Davis), trumpet player Levee Green
(Chadwick Boseman) launches into an emotional
monologue about witnessing his mother being
attacked by white men when he was 8 years old.

Screenwriter Santiago-
Hudson says he did
“very little in rewriting”
any of the original
dialogue from August
Wilson’s play. “My task
was to manage his
words, not to change
them,” he says. “And I
said that, and to some
disputes at one time
earlier on, and I finally
just said, ‘I can’t do. It’s
too sacred to me.’ ” Santiago-Hudson’s first draft of the adaptation
kept Levee’s scene “very, very stark and plain
and focusing on eyes and camera just slowly
GREENGRASS: DAVE J HOGAN/GETTY IMAGES FOR THE MOET BRITISH INDEPENDENT FILM AWARDS. NEWS: COURTESY OF UNIVERSAL PICTURES. BOOK: COURTESY OF HARPERCOLLINS. SANTIAGO-HUDSON: WALTER MCBRIDE/GETTY IMAGES. PLAYBILL: COURTESY OF PLAYBILL.COM. BOTTOM: DAVID LEE/NETFLIX.

creeping in and then also checking in with the

other people’s reactions.” But in a rewrite, he tried
to make it more dynamic, adding in flashbacks
that focused on hands — “hands grabbing the
woman’s shoulder, hands ripping her dress, hands
grabbing the knife, a hand slapping the boy.”

Before Boseman was

hired, Santiago-Hudson
knew that “whoever you
cast for that role has
to be able to hold this
movie in this moment,”
he says. “August writes
But Santiago-Hudson arias and writes them for
says the flashbacks a reason because they’re
became “too much. So a person’s journey in a
we opened it up even moment in their life, in a
more. And then finally scene in their life.”
we agreed, after all that
experimentation, that
the way I originally wrote
it — that simplicity and
the power of the story
— would be the most
extraordinary way to
convey this.”

Boseman, in his last role,

had “so much complexity
and life and integrity
— and he understood
how to release it, when
to release it,” says
Santiago-Hudson. “He
also knew how to let
you experience it in Netflix’s Ma Rainey’s Black
pure truth. Chadwick’s Bottom, based on a 1982 August
performance was not to Wilson play, stars Chadwick
get August’s play right, Boseman in his final role.
it was to get it true. And
that’s what he did.”

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 63 M A RCH 3, 2021

 THE M A K ING OF

Borat Subsequent
Moviefilm
A script cloaked in secrecy by an ‘unbreakable code’ (i.e., many typos) led to a Globes-winning political
message film wrapped in an ambush comedy movie that led to Rudy Giuliani’s public humiliation
BY T Y LE R COAT E S

hen Jason Woliner appeared on Baron Cohen’s Da Ali were constantly changing in Guatemalan to Bulgarian to

W was first approached

with the idea of
helming the latest
film from Sacha Baron Cohen,
he had no idea that the top-
secret script — delivered via an
encrypted link that would expire
in a matter of hours — would be
an early draft of Amazon’s Borat
Subsequent Moviefilm.
But once Woliner began read-
ing, it quickly became clear what
the project was. “I figured he
wasn’t making a movie about
G Show before “starring” in his
own film in 2006.
According to Anthony
Hines, Baron Cohen’s longtime
collaborator who served as
producer and head writer for the
film, the early drafts of the script
an effort to maintain the secrecy
around the project. “Sacha
was becoming increasingly
neurotic and crazy,” Hines
says with a laugh. “Borat’s
nationality changed about five
times. He went from being
4 unbreakable code, but it was
Moldovan to Azerbaijani.”
Because drafts were sometimes
full of typos, the find-and-replace
feature was nearly unusable —
resulting in scripts in which the
name of Baron Cohen’s character
changed multiple times. “Sacha
would think this would be an
really an exercise in futility,”
Hines says. “Anyone within three
minutes would figure it out.”
It’s understandable why Baron
Cohen would cloud the project
STILLS, BTS: COURTESY OF AMAZON (3), MAKEUP: KAREN BALLARD.

a journalist from Guatemala with the kind of secrecy of a Star

named Sergio,” Woliner recalls Wars release. Borat himself had
of the script’s attempt to conceal become incredibly famous and
the true identity of the film’s recognizable after the smash suc-
protagonist: Borat Sagdiyev, cess of the first film. There was
the bumbling, mustachioed also incredible pressure; not only
Kazakhstani journalist who first was the first Borat a box office

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 64 M A RCH 3, 2021


1 Jason Woliner (left).
hit, it was also a critical success
that earned an Oscar nomina-
tion for best adapted screenplay.
Not to mention that Baron Cohen
wanted — needed, even — the
film to open just ahead of the
2020 presidential election.
“Donald Trump meant that
the racism, anti-Semitism and
misogyny I touched upon in the
first movie, back then a dark
underbelly of society, had burst
into the open,” Baron Cohen
says of the one-term president.
“I felt that American democracy
was in peril, and I couldn’t be a
bystander. As a comedian and an
actor, there’s not much you can
do other than doing your work. I
felt I had no other option than to
bring Borat back, because he was
this perfect tool to get those who
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
202 1 AWA R D S S E A S O N
1 “It was a good
reason not to bring the
character back with
another movie,” Sacha
Baron Cohen says of
the first Borat’s massive
success. “But I had to
take a stand [against
Trumpism].”
2 For Maria Bakalova, who
was fresh out of acting
school, the film was an
incredible introduction to
moviemaking. “It’s beyond
everything that I’ve seen
in my entire life,” she says.
3 The father-daughter
relationship is the heart
of the film. “Deep down,
he has paternal instincts,”
Baron Cohen says of
Borat, here in disguise.
“It’s a shocking discovery
for him.”
4 “Sacha and I connected
on a desire to run toward
the most challenging
thing possible, the
thing that seems nearly
impossible,” says director
follow Trump to reveal what they
were ready to tolerate.”
So the political became per-
sonal, and Borat Subsequent
Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious
Bribe to American Regime for Make
Benefit Once Glorious Nation of
Kazakhstan became Baron Cohen’s
mission. “The first movie was a
satirical comment that exposed
the realities of American society,
but [our job] was to make the
funniest movie possible,” he says.
“This movie, primarily, was a
form of peaceful protest.”
BARON COHEN ADMITS HE WAS
terrified by the prospect of bring-
ing Borat — the centerpiece of
a hit that generated more than
$262 million at the global box
office on an $18 million budget
65
Anatomy of a Contender
3
— back to the screen 14 years
after his first cinematic out-
ing. Woliner describes that film
almost as the first and last of its
kind. “I was such a huge fan of the
first movie,” he says. “Like mil-
lions of other people, I remember
the experience of seeing it in a
theater for the first time and how
revolutionary it was.”
When Woliner met with Baron
Cohen after reading the draft
of the script, he expressed how
excited he was to assist in Borat’s
return — but also how intimidat-
ing the idea was. “It’s very hard to
do a comedy sequel, and it’s even
harder to do a delayed comedy
sequel,” Woliner says. “I basi-
cally said to Sacha, ‘Everything is
against this movie working.’ But
the second part of that sentence
M A RCH 3, 2021
was, ‘If we were able to pull it off,
it could be pretty incredible.’ ”
In the 2006 film, Borat was
accompanied on his journey by
his producer, Azamat Bagatov
(played by Ken Davitian), bringing
a buddy-comedy narrative to bal-
ance the political satire. Borat’s
return would require a similar
sidekick, and Baron Cohen and
Hines found potential in the char-
acter of Tutar, Borat’s 15-year-old
daughter. Tutar would drive the
plot (Borat brings her to America
as a gift to Vice President Mike
Pence), but she could also interact
with the film’s interview subjects
without being recognized. And
she would serve as the heart of the
film’s emotional journey — which
sees Borat becoming an unlikely
father figure.
Bulgarian actress Maria
Bakalova was one of thousands
of women across the world who
submitted audition tapes for the
role of Tutar without knowing
what the project was. Reading
from a brief script provided by the
writers, Bakalova began impro-
vising in her self-tape. “We sent a
monologue [in which Tutar brags]
about how her father is the best
father in the village, bragging
that her cage is nicer than the
other girls’ cages — very cartoony
stuff,” Woliner recalls. “And then
Maria started bragging about how
good she was at smoking ciga-
rettes, and how she would rub it
in her dog’s face, like, ‘You stupid
dog, you don’t know how to smoke
as well as I do!’ ”

The producers flew Bakalova,
fresh out of acting school, to
England for a chemistry test
with Baron Cohen. Posing as a
documentary crew filming a piece
about a father and daughter, Baron
Cohen (in disguise) and Bakalova
filmed a scene with an English
couple — and Bakalova sprang
into action. “She was trying to
climb up a staircase, acting like
she had never seen stairs before
and didn’t know how to operate
them,” Woliner says. A second
chemistry test, this time with just
Baron Cohen and Bakalova, sealed
the deal for the director. “We did
a kind of breakup scene, and she
rejects him. Sacha and I were
nearly moved to tears. We knew we
had found a one-of-a-kind person.
She could really do it all.”
Hines describes Bakalova’s
performance as shaping the film’s
narrative: “The father-daughter
relationship became more integral
to the film when we discovered
how brilliant and compelling
she was.” Woliner, too, praises
Bakalova for her fearlessness,
especially when it came to being in
tense and confusing interactions
with the nonactors. “There was the
occasional threat of physical dan-
ger,” he says. “The whole crew had
to run from the police constantly,
because people will just call the
cops when they’re confused.”
Bakalova admits she wasn’t as
fearless as Woliner thought. In
a scene shot early in production,
Tutar addresses a conserva-
tive women’s group, excitedly
describing for them the experi-
ence of having just examined her
vagina for the first time. Baron
Cohen was to appear, too, until a
producer recognized one of the
women as having appeared in the
first Borat. Bakalova recalls cry-
ing when she learned she would
have to go on her own, terrified of
being found out and ruining the
film. “I called Sacha, and that was
the first time he told me, ‘Use that
fear,’ ” she says. “And I listened to
him, because he is a genius.”
A BORAT PRODUCTION IS USUALLY
in chaos, which producer Monica
Levinson, who worked with
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
202 1 AWA R D S S E A S O N Anatomy of a Contender
1
1 Rudy Giuliani, with Bakalova
(and Baron Cohen as Borat, 2 3
disguised as a crewmember),
refused a COVID test before his
interview. “The Rose Garden
massacre hadn’t yet happened,”
13
Monica Levinson says,
referring to the White House
superspreader event in late
September. “So we didn’t know
that their testing abilities aren’t
as stringent as we had hoped.”
2 Baron Cohen spent five
days in quarantine as Borat
with two QAnon believers.
“They welcomed and helped a
foreigner,” he says. “In a very
divided America, it’s easy for us
to dismiss that.”
3 Bakalova still keeps in touch
with Jeanise Jones (right),
whom Borat hired to serve as
Tutar’s babysitter.
Baron Cohen on the original Borat basis and people ignoring their attorney and former New York
and Brüno in 2009, is used to advice,” Levinson says. “I think mayor in a compromising posi-
managing. But that was before a they enjoyed having a distraction, tion in a Manhattan hotel room
pandemic brought the world — and I was thrilled that they gave before Borat ambushes the inter-
and Borat Subsequent Moviefilm us the time of day.” view in order to save Tutar.
— to a halt in March 2020. The crew raced to complete the “[Giuliani] was trying to
About half of the film had been film in time for its late October push the Hunter Biden laptop
shot by then; in the months before release, which would see a scandal, hoping for an October
production resumed in July, the streaming premiere on Amazon surprise,” Woliner recalls. “And
writing team figured out how to Prime Video in lieu of a theatri- the day after that, the review
incorporate the COVID-19 crisis cal opening. While Baron Cohen embargo lifted on the movie. I
into the plot while Levinson saw the movie as an effort to think it helped discredit him.”
scrambled to find ways to resume show how Trump had poisoned In the election aftermath, with
filming and maintain the cast and divided America, Woliner Giuliani’s efforts to overturn
and crew’s safety. can’t say if it had any impact on the results becoming more
That required talking to the 2020 election and Joe Biden’s unhinged, Woliner now sees the
epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins eventual victory. He does, how- former mayor’s appearance in
and ER doctors and nurses ever, point to the lucky break of the film a little differently: “In
across the country. “They were getting Rudy Giuliani to agree hindsight, the scene in our movie
COURTESY OF AMAZON STUDIOS (3)
dealing with death and dying, to an on-camera interview with is probably the most dignified
horrendous things on a daily Tutar that catches the Trump Rudy looked.”
66 M A RCH 3, 2021
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CRITICS’ CONVERSATION
Winter TV Wonders and Blunders
THR’s TV critics break down a sleepy small-screen season that still offered treasures — including Omar Sy,
Fran Lebowitz, It’s a Sin, The Lady and the Dale and The Great North — for those willing to seek them out
INKOO KANG It’s been nearly a year
since the first COVID lockdowns
went into effect — and with them
the mass shrinkages in the enter-
tainment industry. Winter 2021
saw Sundance go online, awards
season content migrate to tech
platforms and new TV offerings
diminished by corona-related pro-
duction struggles. Unsurprisingly,
the state of television, compared
to, say, a year ago, feels anemic.
That doesn’t mean that Winter
TV — roughly defined here as last
year’s holiday season to now-ish
— lacked for buzzy program-
ming. Period soap Bridgerton,
Netflix’s first Shondaland series,
and slow-burn Marvel mystery
WandaVision, Disney+’s first major
hit after The Mandalorian, became
veritable cultural phenomena.
Two nonfiction shows also
captured the zeitgeist, or at least
the attention of the chatterati:
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
Television
the “Framing Britney Spears”
episode of FX’s The New York Times
Presents and the four-part Allen v.
Farrow on HBO, by documentar-
ians Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering
(On the Record).
WandaVision is the most ambi-
tious of these shows and the one I
find least compelling. As some-
one who’s watched lots of Marvel
movies but rarely gotten invested
in them, I’m feeling that familiar
numbness and detachment here.
The conceit of Elizabeth Olsen’s
Scarlet Witch cycling through
various decades’ sitcoms is fun,
but the gimmick is getting in the
way of the emotional beats. And
I’m enjoying Kathryn Hahn’s per-
formance, but I keep waiting for
the show to give her more to do.
DANIEL FIENBERG I enjoy the show’s
sitcom homages as well as the
impeccable turns by Olsen and
Paul Bettany. As for Hahn, there’s
68
some rueful bemusement in see-
ing her get this much attention
for what probably isn’t even one of
her 20 most interesting perfor-
mances, but if this is a gateway
to the stardom she’s always
deserved, I’m here for it. I do get
bored when the show slips into
by-the-numbers Marvel conspir-
acy stuff, though Kat Dennings
and Randall Park soften the blow.
You called the current TV
lineup “anemic.” I’m going to
push back on that a bit. At the
moment, WandaVision really does
feel like the only thing “every-
body” is talking about regularly,
and it has relaunched the recur-
ring debate about the benefits of
airing weekly versus the dangers
of disposability inherent in the
binge model. Those dangers
didn’t seem to hamper Bridgerton;
star Regé-Jean Page went from
relative unknown to SNL host in
M A RCH 3, 2021
almost record time. Plus, air-
ing weekly and mining the most
familiar intellectual property
imaginable hasn’t helped recent
broadcast shows about Clarice
Starling, Walker (the Texas
ranger), Superman and the
Equalizer. If anybody cares about
those series, they care in a per-
functory way, like, “Well, it’s big
and it was advertised during the
Super Bowl, so I have to watch.”
So I would argue that the cur-
rent TV landscape is actually ripe
for people to discover shows and
for buzz to be created organically,
via word-of-mouth, rather than
by desperate promotion or hollow
branding. Quirky and bizarre
things are catching on these days,
like Martin Scorsese sitting and
laughing at Fran Lebowitz’s snark
in Netflix’s Pretend It’s a City. And
maybe it isn’t all that surprising
for a glossy, international heist
 1 Allen v. Farrow 2 Bridgerton 3 Clarice
4 Cobra Kai 5 The New York Times Presents’
“Framing Britney Spears” 6 It’s a Sin
7 The Lady and the Dale 8 Lupin 9 Mr. Mayor
10 Pretend It’s a City 11 WandaVision
7 given the gravity of the subject
8 gest disappointment for you? My
thriller like Netflix’s Lupin to
become a hit, but it’s entirely in
French, and the star, the magnifi-
cently compelling Omar Sy, isn’t
a household name in the U.S. It’s
not exactly the type of show you’d
imagine American viewers falling
for, but here we are.
KANG Lupin is the purest example
ALLEN, LADY: COURTESY OF HBO. BRIDGERTON: LIAM DANIEL/NETFLIX. CLARICE: BROOKE PALMER/CBS. COBRA: CURTIS BONDS BAKER/NETFLIX. FRAMING: COURTESY OF FX. SIN:
of a show I only checked out
BEN BLACKALL/HBO MAX. LUPIN, PRETEND: COURTESY OF NETFLIX. MAYOR: COURTESY OF NBC. WANDAVISION: COURTESY OF DISNEY+. BACKGROUNDS: ADOBE STOCK (2).
because of the enthusiasm for it
on my social media timelines, and
I’m glad I did. It’s far from perfect,
but it’s got enough elements for
you to happily lose an afternoon or
evening to its debut half-season.
Sy is indeed magnetic as a second-
generation Senegalese immigrant
“gentleman thief” who uses his
Blackness as an invisibility cloak
around his white upper-crust
targets, who only see him as “the
help.” Plus, at a time when we
can’t (or shouldn’t) travel, those
Parisian cityscapes are a delight.
The two shows I’ve been rav-
ing most about are HBO Max’s
miniseries It’s a Sin and HBO’s
four-part bio-doc The Lady and
the Dale. Created by Russell T.
Davies, the former sweeps across
the ’80s in a remembrance not
just of how many lives (and how
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
much potential) were lost to AIDS
but also of the freedom and joy so
many queer people and their loved
ones did get to experience before,
and even amid, the plague. It’s an
astonishingly exuberant show
matter. The Lady and the Dale is
just as well-rounded in its por-
trait of a trans con woman who
tried to sell America a car that
didn’t exist (made of bulletproof
plastic, which isn’t a thing). I love
these shows for spotlighting mar-
ginalized communities — and
for being candid about the often
messy humanity within them.
What has been the winter’s big-
answer would be NBC’s Mr. Mayor,
which has squandered its excel-
lent cast week after week with its
painful genericism. I don’t think I
would’ve guessed before its debut
that Tina Fey and Robert Carlock
could come up with something so
… toothless and indistinct.
FIENBERG Mr. Mayor isn’t good,
but it has become a Golden Ratio
show for me, which means that
every episode makes me laugh
exactly enough — usually at
Bobby Moynihan or Vella Lovell —
to keep me coming back the next
week. Never more. Never less.
As for disappointments, CBS All
Access’ adaptation of The Stand
was a confusing chunk of epi-
sodic structuring that completely
drained the momentum from the
Stephen King source material; it’s
a series about a global pandemic
that somehow doesn’t feel the
least bit timely. I wish CBS’ Clarice
was less beholden to its broadcast
format. I wish NBC’s Young Rock
had fewer obtrusive cameos from
the, um, old Rock. And I wish
Allen v. Farrow had been more
tightly edited to avoid distracting
and overreaching digressions that
undermine the intellectual heft of
Dick and Ziering’s argument.
It’s a Sin and The Lady and the
Dale are two of the shows I’ve
been trying hardest to push on
people. They’re both great exam-
ples of how to do sensitive, dark
storytelling with exactly the right
amount of levity. As someone who
considers documentary reenact-
ments akin to a personal nemesis,
I loved the cheeky, partially ani-
mated approach The Lady and the
Dale took to fill in narrative gaps.
69
I’m also trying to get folks to
watch The Great North, Fox’s new
animated comedy from a gang
of Bob’s Burgers vets featuring a
great vocal cast — Jenny Slate!
Nick Offerman! — and ample
offbeat charm. It would be great
if people gushed about it as much
as they do about, say, Cobra Kai,
which got an audience boost from
airing its third season on Netflix.
Based on the cheapness of those
Vietnam flashbacks, it could
stand to get a budget boost for the
fourth season.
KANG Being home so much has
made me more attuned to which
shows give me the right kind of
claustrophobia and which give
me the wrong kind. I’ve bristled
at shows that exhibit overt mid-
COVID production strain like the
first of HBO’s Euphoria specials,
which was mostly a (well-acted
but ultimately forgettable) diner
conversation between Zendaya’s
Rue and her sobriety sponsor
(Colman Domingo). In contrast,
I loved the claustrophobia of the
first half of Search Party’s fourth
season (HBO Max), which found
Dory (Alia Shawkat) in a vaguely
Oldboy-esque faux apartment,
captive to a violent psychopath
(Cole Escola) who just wanted to
be her friend. It’s not really fair
to compare the season, which
wrapped in February 2020, to the
spate of mostly drab “chronicling
COVID” shows we got last sum-
mer and fall (like Social Distance
and Love in the Time of Corona), but
I do wish creators with limited
resources were able to harness
our collective trapped-ness in
ways that feel more resonant.
Another kind of trapped-ness
was chronicled in “Framing
Britney Spears,” an ostensible
overview of the #FreeBritney
movement. Directed by Samantha
9
M A RCH 3, 2021
Stark, the 74-minute doc feels
both important and insuffi-
cient, mostly because it dips a
toe into the cultural reexami-
nation of Spears (as we’ve done
with Monica Lewinsky, Tonya
Harding, Marcia Clark, et al., in
recent years) when what’s needed
is a deep dive. The film’s reduc-
tive dichotomy of Spears — as an
adolescent star who used to be in
control of her image and career
and a now-39-year-old mother of
two who’s lost her autonomy —
doesn’t take into account the fact
that, especially in her early years,
the performer felt to many like a
commodity “being sold to [girls]
by a group of men in a room
somewhere,” per podcaster Sarah
Marshall’s memorable phrasing.
It’s not the doc’s fault that it’s one
of the first mainstream projects
to relitigate the gender dynam-
ics and power structures behind
Spears’ “not a girl, not yet a
woman” image with two decades’
hindsight; first drafts seldom get
it all right. But there’s certainly
a lot of material untouched for
future commentators to pick over.
FIENBERG I’ve been trying to offset
my own claustrophobia with
shows like Pretend It’s a City,
HBO’s miraculous How to With
John Wilson and its very solid
Painting With John, series that
blend travelogue with internal
journeys of the mind. There’s
always room, of course, for less
insular travel shows like CNN’s
endearingly self-explanatory
Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy,
which has already been renewed
for a second season of mouthwa-
tering adventures.
Peeking ahead, March looks like
a bit of a TV wasteland; hope-
fully that’s not a sign of how far
and wide we’ll need to search for
Spring TV’s discoveries.
10
11
 Backlot Innovators, Events, Honors Critics Choice
Awards

March 7
Virtual

How Often Does Oscar Agree With the Critics?

Ignoring the outlier of best picture, the Critics Choice
selections are eerily accurate predictors By Mikey O’Connell
R enewed criticisms against the Hollywood Foreign Press
Association and its Golden Globe Awards have many in the
industry again rethinking the top of the awards-season alma-
branch members of the Critics Choice Association have voted in line
with The Film Academy 73 percent of the time in the six major catego-
ries — best picture, best director and the four acting races — for the
nac — namely, who gets to set the tone in the run-up to the Oscars. past five years. The odds are best in the supporting actress category,
The Critics Choice Awards are a natural choice for prognosticator, with the critics’ choice mirroring Oscar’s without error since 2010.
as the second major kudos on the calendar arriving one week after the As for discrepancies, best picture and best actress remain wild
Globes, on March 7. And while critics are hardly immune From left: cards. In 2019, the Critics actually gave out two best
to controversy of their own, they’re surprisingly reliable Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Mank, actress trophies — neither going to eventual Academy
Minari and News of the World
predictors of who’ll get an Oscar. The roughly 400 movie lead Critics Choice noms. Award recipient Olivia Colman.

STATUETTE: COURTESY OF ©A.M.P.A.S. BOTTOM: DAVID LEE/NETFLIX. MANK: COURTESY OF NETFLIX. MINARI: JOSH ETHAN JOHNSON/A24. WORLD: COURTESY OF UNIVERSAL
PICTURE DIRECTOR ACTOR ACTRESS SUPPORTING SUPPORTING
ACTOR ACTRESS

STUDIOS. JOON-HO, DEL TORO, AFFLECK: STEVE GRANITZ/WIREIMAGE. KING: ALBERT L. ORTEGA/GETTY IMAGES. LARSON: JASON MERRITT/GETTY IMAGES.
  
CC Once Upon a Time   
Bong Brad Pitt,
2020 in Hollywood Joon Ho,
Joaquin Phoenix, Renée Zellweger,
Once Upon a Time
Laura Dern,
Oscars Parasite Joker Judy Marriage Story
Parasite in Hollywood


 CC Glenn Close, 
  CC Christian Bale, The Wife, and Lady Gaga,  Regina King,
2019 CC Roma
Oscars Green Book
Alfonso Cuarón,
Roma
Vice
Oscars Rami Malek,
A Star Is Born (tie) Mahershala Ali,
Green Book
If Beale
Street Could
Oscars Olivia Colman,
Bohemian Rhapsody The Favourite Talk


 
 Guillermo  
Frances McDormand, Sam Rockwell,
2018 The Shape
of Water
del Toro,
The Shape
Gary Oldman,
Darkest Hour
Three Billboards Three Billboards Outside
Allison Janney,
I, Tonya
Outside Ebbing, Missouri Ebbing, Missouri
of Water

 
  Casey CC Natalie Portman,  
2017 CC La La Land
Oscars Moonlight
Damien Chazelle,
La La Land
Affleck,
Manchester
Jackie
Oscars Emma Stone,
Mahershala Ali,
Moonlight
Viola Davis, Fences

by the Sea La La Land

 
CC George Miller,  CC Sylvester Stallone,
 
 Brie
2016 Spotlight
Mad Max: Fury Road
Oscars Alejandro G.
Leonardo DiCaprio,
The Revenant
Larson,
Creed
Oscars Mark Rylance,
Alicia Vikander,
The Danish Girl
Iñárritu, The Revenant Room Bridge of Spies

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 70 M A RCH 3, 2021

 P R O M OT I O N

N O TOPIC IS OF F LI M ITS
AW A R D S E A S O N ’ S S I G N AT U R E S H O W

with

EPISODES

DOCUMENTARY PRODUCERS ACTRESSES

1/6 1/20 2/10

ANIMATION CINEMATOGRAPHERS WRITERS

1/8 1/27 2/17

DIRECTORS SONGWRITERS ACTORS

1/13 2/3 2/24

ALL E PISODES AI R ON TH R.COM

A L S O AVA I L A B L E O N
 91 Years of THR

Memorable moments
from a storied history

19
981 199 822 19
98 3 1 988 4 1985 1 9 86 19887 1 9 888 199 8 9 1990 1991 19
9 92 1 99
93 1 994 199
95 1 9 96
6 1 9 97 19988 19
9 99 20
000 2001

Rodney King’s Beating Was Videotaped 30 Years Ago

In the early morning hours of infamy. It is also the earliest and had seen. When it aired later 30 years later, the feds still have
March 3, 1991, a plumbing sales- most notable instance of citizen that night, he says, “that’s when possession of the original with
man named George Holliday journalism, which has exploded everything blew up. All the other the Schwarzenegger footage. They
would alter the course of U.S. in recent years with the advent TV stations, CNN, all the other did, however, knock on Holliday’s
history. He did so by simply point- of smartphones. But the camera, ones, were calling, wanting a door not long ago and return
ing a new Sony video camera at a Valentine’s Day gift to his wife, copy of the tape.” The FBI quickly his Sony Handycam. He put the
the commotion unfolding less had always been intended for fun. confiscated the camera and tape, device up for auction in July 2020,
than 100 feet from his apartment “Before the beating, right across but not before KTLA made a copy starting the bidding at $225,000.
balcony in the San Fernando the street from where we lived of the video, allowing airing of “But nothing happened,” he says.
Valley. What Holliday filmed was was a biker bar, and they were the footage to proliferate. Now, “Not one bid.” — SETH ABRAMOVITCH
the brutal beating by four LAPD filming Terminator 2: Judgment
officers of Rodney King. The sub- Day there,” says Holliday, now 61.
sequent acquittal of those officers “I actually have footage on the
on April 29, 1992, sparked the Los original tape of Schwarzenegger
Angeles riots, a violent chapter getting on the bike and riding COURTESY OF USC DIGITAL LIBRARY. INDEPENDENT COMMISSION OF THE LAPD COLLECTION,

of civil unrest that resulted in off.” Holliday at first brought the

63 deaths and 12,000 arrests. King tape to local station KTLA
Holliday’s video is up there with and left it with the news team,
Abraham Zapruder’s 8mm film of unsure if it had any value. Later
John F. Kennedy’s assassination that day, they sent a reporter
in terms of sheer scrutiny and to his house to interview him
for its lasting place in American and his wife about what they

A frame from George Holliday’s infamous recording of Rodney King’s beating by LAPD on March 3, 1991; THR ran a banner headline (inset) about the riots that followed the officers’ acquittal.

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