Fleabag creator says she was never told 007 script role was to help with female characters
Phoebe Waller-Bridge will be only the second woman ever credited on a Bond movie script but she has insisted gender was not the reason she was hired.
The Fleabag creator said it was “mad” and “exciting” to work on No Time to Die, in which Daniel Craig will play 007 for the final time. But there was never a conversation about her being there to help with the film’s female characters.
Continue reading...Exiled Somali Kamil Ahmed says her job at Gargaar FM is more important than ever as the threat of closure hangs over the camp
Sitting in a small shipping container, Kamil Ahmed, 20, prepares to begin her live radio show.
“I feel like the whole community is waiting for me,” the only female reporter at the station says, flicking through her notebook.
Continue reading...The chronicle of an activist who filmed the destruction in Aleppo wins prizes for best film, documentary, director and editing
For Sama, the acclaimed documentary about life under siege in the Syrian city of Aleppo, has unexpectedly triumphed at the British independent film awards, winning the top prize, best British independent film, as well as best documentary and best director for Waad al-Kateab and Edward Watts.
Described by the Guardian’s Mike McCahill as a film to “break your heart and sear your soul”, For Sama is a chronicle filmed by Syrian activist-director al-Kateab as Aleppo is targeted during the country’s ongoing civil war. Al-Kateab spends much of the time in a hospital where her husband, Hamza, works, recording the destruction and horror. For Sama won a total of four Bifas, including best editing – previously announced with other Bifa “craft” awards on 15 November.
Continue reading...The late film star was a trailblazer for diversity in fashion and film. His loss deprives the growing Chinese entertainment industry of a fine talent
Taiwanese-Canadian actor Godfrey Gao was famous for being the first Asian international supermodel but he was much more than just a pretty face – he had a reputation for being one of the friendliest stars in an intensely competitive industry.
“He was known for being a very nice guy,” says Cecilia Pidgeon, a former celebrity editor at GQ China. “He had a very good reputation among other actors. He was always nice to his fans. All of the colleagues he worked with only had good things to say.”
Continue reading...James died at his home in Cambridge on Sunday almost 10 years after his first terminal diagnosis
Clive James, the broadcaster, poet and television critic, has died aged 80 after a long illness.
The Australian died at his home in Cambridge on Sunday, his agent confirmed. A private funeral attended by family and close friends took place in the chapel at Pembroke College, Cambridge, on Wednesday afternoon.
Continue reading...Theatre director also had career in medicine and was member of Beyond the Fringe
Sir Jonathan Miller, the writer, theatre and opera director, and member of the Beyond the Fringe comedy team, has died at the age of 85.
In a statement his family said Miller died “peacefully at home following a long battle with Alzheimer’s”.
Continue reading...No reason given for withdrawal from show, called ‘homosexual flotilla’ by pro-Orbán journalist
Hungary will not participate in next year’s Eurovision song contest, amid speculation the decision was taken because the competition is “too gay” for the taste of the country’s far-right government and public media bosses.
While no official reason has been given for the withdrawal, the move comes amid an increase in homophobic rhetoric in Hungary, where the anti-migration prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has launched a “family first” policy aimed at helping traditional families and boosting birth rates.
Continue reading...Shooting poachers, circling polar bears, flailing four-tonne seals, singing rhinos and the world’s worst sea … the team behind Attenborough’s latest extravaganza relive their thrills and spills
Chadden Hunter, producer, North America and South America
Continue reading...The actor who played Queen Daenerys says she’s been pressured to shoot naked since the show, but is ‘a lot more savvy’ now
Emilia Clarke has revealed she felt uncomfortable acting in some of her nude scenes in Game Of Thrones.
The British actress played queen Daenerys Targaryen in HBO’s sprawling epic, which became notorious for its explicit portrayal of sex and violence.
Continue reading...Prime minister collects chat show host from the airport in first episode of ‘The Newest Zealander’
The Late Show’s Stephen Colbert engaged in potentially copyright-infringing carpool karaoke with prime minister Jacinda Ardern and pranked Lorde at a barbecue – aka a “New Zealand state dinner” – as he made good on a promise to get as far away as possible from news about Donald Trump.
The chat show host got straight to it in his sit-down interview with the New Zealand prime minister for Tuesday night’s opening episode, called the “Newest Zealander”, pleading to become a citizen and offering to marry Ardern and partner Clarke Gayford.
Continue reading...In 1969, it changed the rules for children’s television and in the years since, it’s continued to innovate and provide groundbreaking inclusivity
On a fall day, 50 years ago, PBS began airing Sesame Street, a show inspired by a question: what if the visual flash and frenetic pace of TV were used to teach kids about letters and numbers instead of about breakfast cereals?
Within a year of its 10 November 1969 debut, Sesame Street was a sensation. Children loved it. Hard-working parents were grateful for it. Critics and academics alike couldn’t stop talking about it – both positively and negatively. Some pundits wondered if a popular series geared toward short attention spans would result in a generation that never learned to focus. Others were suspicious of the show’s secondary mission, to make an educational program that reflected the lives of its audience … from their unspoken anxieties to the color of their skin.
Continue reading...Conleth Hill jokes ‘there’s no proof’ to claims by co-star Emilia Clarke that he was behind gaffe
The Game Of Thrones actor Conleth Hill has denied being responsible for the show’s coffee cup blunder.
Viewers poked fun at the fantasy epic when a rogue container was spotted on a table during an episode in the final season this year.
Continue reading...The new streaming service may offer the best British dramas in TV history – but it seems hamstrung from the start. We dig into its offering to spare you the bother ... and another subscription
One of the best offerings on BritBox – the new archive streaming site officially launched by ITV and the BBC today – is arguably the greatest single-series British TV drama ever made: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the 1979 BBC adaptation of John le Carré’s espionage novel.
But the opening of another digital bank of programming will confront even the most assiduous viewer with a new parody of the children’s counting song – Netflix, Amazon, Apple, BritBox, Disney, Why?
Continue reading...The actor, director and activist talks about his return to the Stephen King universe and his frustrations with the state of the US
There’s an unmissable sense of the now in the second season of Castle Rock, Hulu’s anthology series recombining the best-known works of Stephen King. The Maine hamlet of Jerusalem’s Lot, first dreamed up by the master of the macabre as a feral vampire stronghold, contends with a more earthbound set of problems in its newest iteration. The opioid epidemic sweeping New England has seeped into town, driving area pharmacists to install locked glass cases for select products. More pressing still is the mounting tension in town between the Somalian immigrant community and the largely Caucasian local populace, each distrustful and fearful of the other. The impending turf war reflects a widening cultural divide in American life, as xenophobic sentiments gain traction with an increasingly vocal faction of reactionaries.
Related: The best Stephen King movies … ranked!
Continue reading...They’ve conquered the box office. Now it’s payback time. As they are attacked by filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, are TV and movie superheroes fighting a losing battle against reality?
Alan Moore’s celebrated 1986 series Watchmen revolved around a conspiracy to kill off masked vigilantes, and in effect that’s what it did in real life. Compared with the complex, mature, literary nature of Watchmen, most other comic-book titles looked juvenile and two-dimensional. This was at a time when “comic-book movies” meant Christopher Reeve’s wholesome Superman series, and when the only inhabitant of the Marvel movie universe was Howard the Duck. The entire industry had to up its game, and a new era of mature “graphic novels” was born.
Now we appear to have come full circle – which is fitting for a story so heavy with clock symbolism. With uncanny timing, HBO’s lavish new Watchmen series arrives at a moment when comic-book movies are again in what you might call a decadent phase of the cycle. They have decisively conquered our screens and our box offices, with ever grander and more improbable forms of spectacle, to the extent that we’re now beginning to question how much more of them we need. Could Watchmen kill off the superheroes once again?
Continue reading...Royal speaks of struggling to cope with her new life in interview for ITV documentary
The Duchess of Sussex has revealed she was warned before her marriage to Prince Harry that the British tabloids would “destroy” her life, as she spoke of struggling to cope with the reality of being part of the royal family.
In an interview for the ITV documentary Harry & Meghan: An African Journey, she said the last year had been “hard” and that she had had “no idea” of what she would face.
Continue reading...Forster was a versatile character actor whose career was unexpectedly rescued by his Oscar-nominated role in Quentin Tarantino’s cult thriller
Robert Forster, the handsome and omnipresent character actor who got a career resurgence and Oscar nomination for playing bail bondsman Max Cherry in Jackie Brown, died on Friday. He was 78.
Publicist Kathie Berlin said Forster died of brain cancer following a brief illness. He was at home in Los Angeles, surrounded by family, including his four children and partner Denise Grayson.
Continue reading...Facetious statement comes after reports that show was banned in China after episode critical of the country
South Park’s creators have responded with a mock apology to reports that China has censored the programme, ridiculing the country and comparing President Xi Jinping to Winnie the Pooh.
The “apology” from Trey Parker and Matt Stone comes after reports on Monday that China had scrubbed all episodes, clips and content related to the long-running comedy cartoon from Chinese streaming and social media platforms in response to a recent episode that was critical of the country.
Continue reading...BBC chat show presenter explains why he stopped writing advice column
Graham Norton has said he stopped writing for the Daily Telegraph because the newspaper’s recent “toxic” political stances increasingly made him feel “nauseous”.
The BBC One chat show presenter wrote the newspaper’s advice column for 12 years before stepping down without explanation at the end of 2018. Norton has now said he decided to leave the outlet after it defended the likes of US supreme court then-nominee Brett Kavanaugh and published articles by future prime minister Boris Johnson containing falsehoods.
Continue reading...The actor says she discussed her part in The Crown with the deceased royal herself
Some actors avoid excessive research, but for Helena Bonham Carter to play Princess Margaret in The Crown meant reading all the biographies, talking to friends, ladies-in-waiting and relatives, and consulting an astrologer, a graphologist and a psychic.
The last meeting meant she could talk to the princess herself, the actor told Cheltenham literature festival.
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