Graves and Lipman were partners in both life and art for three decades. Their acutely observed images, taken at American social rituals from proms to football games, capture fleeting moments of connection, of longing, of restraint and desire
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This Is Going to Hurt’s Ambika Mod: ‘Whenever I did a caesarean I was buzzing!’
Playing junior doctor Shruti is a far cry from the standup’s ‘really silly’ sketch comedy but her improv background helped her find moments of levity in Adam Kay’s NHS drama
When Ambika Mod was cast in This Is Going to Hurt, Adam Kay’s TV adaptation of his diaries as a junior NHS doctor, it was late 2020 and health workers were facing a new Covid wave. “It felt like, now more than ever, it was an important story to tell,” she says. “I was filled with fear because of the sheer responsibility.”
Mod plays Shruti Acharya, a junior doctor under the tutelage of Adam (played by Ben Whishaw). “It’s so rare to see a well-written, complex, young south Asian female character,” she says. “Her arc is so brilliant.” The character is an amalgamation of people Kay worked with. “I share a lot in common with Shruti,” says Mod. “We’re both young Indian women, we’re both children of immigrants, so Adam was really receptive to my thoughts. I remember him saying: ‘If Shruti doesn’t make sense to you, she’s not going to make sense to anyone.’”
Continue reading...The big idea: how can we adapt to life with rising seas?
Traditional defences may fail, and migration won’t be possible for everyone. But we may yet find more creative ways to live
We have passed the point of no return: rising seas will soon directly affect hundreds of millions of people around the planet. They will indirectly affect many millions more as transport connections, water supplies and factories in low-lying areas are lost or have to be relocated. What exactly are we facing? The latest research suggests we are likely to see a rise of a metre by the year 2100. Given how much carbon dioxide is already in the air and oceans, as much as three metres may be baked in over the 200 years or so that follow. And while that might seem like a long way off, coastal groundwater levels will rise much sooner, wrecking infrastructure and causing toxic pollution well before cities such as Miami, New York and San Francisco are permanently inundated.
Where will all those people, warehouses, water treatment plants and rail lines move to, given that the interior of large land masses will have become drier? The forced migration of hundreds of millions of people will undoubtedly lead to serious international conflict over space and basic resources like fresh water. Conflict is another word for war.
Continue reading...Kabul to California: how the ‘hip-hop family’ mobilised for young Afghans
With breakdancers, artists and parkourists facing a bleak future under the Taliban, a global network stepped in to help, drawing on the activist spirit of rap culture
A veteran of the hip-hop scene and internationally celebrated breakdancer, Nancy Yu – AKA Asia One – has her fair share of people contacting her looking for advice. But the message she received in 2019 from a young Afghan was a little different.
Frustrated by his breakdancing crew’s inability to get visas to perform internationally, Moshtagh* was wondering if Asia could help. “He felt they were really good, but they felt, like, invisible to the world,” she says. “I liked him. He wasn’t trying to bug me or say ‘we need this right now’ … He seemed rather humble and honest.”
Continue reading...Life on Ukraine’s eastern frontier – in pictures
Alienated civilians, ruined homes and Ukrainian soldiers on the frontline
Continue reading...‘All that Hollywood glamour doesn’t feel like me at all’: Joanna Scanlan on self-doubt, sexism and being the red-hot favourite at the Baftas
After years of great roles in comedies such as The Thick of It and Moving On, the actor is now being feted for her devastating dramatic performance in After Love. She talks about ‘serious’ acting, a breakdown in her 20s and learning to fight for herself
When Joanna Scanlan arrives, she is hidden beneath a yellow raincoat, glasses steamed up, blown through the door as if the gathering storm outside has washed her ashore. “I am so sorry for dragging you out here,” she says, laughing slightly hysterically, as she sheds the layers. Scanlan is filming in rural Wales – she, her husband and their dog are renting a cottage nearby – and this cafe, also in the middle of nowhere, was her suggestion. Even the women who work in the cafe were surprised to be called in. We are the only customers, but there are pots of tea and welsh cakes, and Scanlan is great company, so all is well.
She grew up in Wales, so this job – filming The Light in the Hall, a psychological thriller, for which she has had to learn some Welsh – is something of a homecoming. Being here is also a detachment from London, and everything that goes with her job outside of being on set or stage – the bit, you sense, she could take or leave. And so she’s a bit distanced from the buzz around her Bafta nomination for best actress for her role in the extraordinary film After Love. “When you sit here in Tywi Valley, just learning your lines for tomorrow, it’s hard to take that in,” she says. “I feel very long in the tooth to be coming to this sort of prominence.”
Continue reading...Charlie Brooker: ‘Mr Dystopia? That makes me sound like a wrestler’
As he releases the latest fruits of his new megabucks deal with Netflix – an interactive cartoon about a cat – the Black Mirror creator discusses gaming, nuclear war, and why his generation has wrecked the UK
Charlie Brooker is sitting at a desk, a big cardboard box in the background, miscellany spilling out of bookshelves. “What you can’t see,” he says, since we’re on Zoom, “is all the shit all over my desk. I’m shambolic.”
He got his first gig doing a comic strip when he was 15, for 80 quid a week; he dropped out of Westminster University as the only dissertation he wanted to write was on video games, and scrambled into a career in journalism – “there was no planning, I wasn’t somebody who was out hustling” – via working in a shop and writing video game reviews. He shifted, via Screenwipe, Gameswipe, Newswipe and Weekly Wipe, into screenwriting, and achieved astonishing success with the anthology series Black Mirror. His production company with Annabel Jones, Broke and Bones, has just been bought by Netflix for an unspecified sum; the rumour is that it’s so enormous that, well, I had to get out a calculator to work out what “nine figures” over five years means ($100,000,000). I just can’t wrap my head around why he still has Billy bookcases from Ikea.
Continue reading...Jamal Edwards, SBTV founder and music entrepreneur, dies aged 31
Edwards’ company confirms YouTube star awarded MBE in 2014 for his work in music has died
Jamal Edwards, known for founding media platform SBTV, which helped catapult grime and a wave of new artists to a global audience, died on Sunday morning aged 31.
Edwards was also a director, author, DJ, entrepreneur and designer, and was awarded an MBE in 2014 – when he was 24 – for his work in music.
Continue reading...Jan Pieńkowski, illustrator of Meg and Mog books, dies at 85
Celebrated author and illustrator’s work inspired by Polish childhood and experience as wartime refugee
Jan Pieńkowski, the beloved illustrator and author of more than 140 children’s books, has died aged 85.
Pieńkowski, whose work included the Meg and Mog pop-up books, had been living with Alzheimer’s.
Continue reading...‘It’s the end of a big adventure’: Cillian Murphy bids farewell to Peaky Blinders
Cillian Murphy’s icy stare has transfixed viewers around the world as Brummie gang boss Tommy Shelby in Peaky Blinders. As the stellar series reaches its finale, he talks about music, empathy and trying not to overthink things
Cillian Murphy pops up on screen with the discomfited gaiety of a man about to submit to dentistry. He is courteous and friendly, but without ever quite shaking off the impression he would rather be almost anywhere else. It’s just before Christmas, and the rampant Omicron variant of Covid-19 has put paid to in-person meetings. You don’t get the impression Murphy minds too much. At a Zoom’s remove, he sits back in his chair, hair restored to luxuriant cruising length after the savage chop required for Peaky Blinders. His storied peepers – organs that have inspired countless column inches and exhaustive maritime imagery – are, for once, hard to discern.
I recognise the spare white wall behind him, which is decorated with a poster for the band Grizzly Bear and a painting. This must be his famous basement. In the Dublin home he shares with his wife, Yvonne McGuinness, an artist, and their teenage sons Malachy and Aran, the basement is Murphy’s fortress of solitude. He has spent a lot of time here over lockdown, noodling around on guitars, scrolling the news about the pandemic and recording impressively eclectic radio programmes for BBC 6 Music.
Continue reading...‘The history of fantasy is racialized’: Lord of the Rings series sparks debate over race
Introduction of characters of color into Tolkien’s fantasy world has some fans complaining but as others point out, it’s not less authentic to cast Black actors
As the new Lord of the Rings series gears up for its September launch on Amazon, the company finds itself navigating treacherous, if familiar, waters and has already triggered a fierce debate over race by introducing characters of color into JRR Tolkien’s fantasy world.
The tech giant has spent a dragon’s dungeon of gold on adapting the beloved story famous for its cultish fans, some of whom are deeply enmeshed in the rightwing culture war industry. Yet it is fully aware its final product has to reach a broad and modern audience to justify its eye-popping expenditure.
Continue reading...Two of Nigeria’s looted Benin bronzes returned to traditional palace
Colourful ceremony marks artefacts’ homecoming more than a century after they were pillaged by British troops
Two Benin bronzes were returned on Saturday to a traditional palace in Nigeria, more than a century after they were pillaged by British troops, raising hopes that thousands more artefacts could finally be returned to their ancestral home.
The artefacts, mostly in Europe, were stolen by explorers and colonisers from the once-mighty Benin Kingdom, now south-western Nigeria, and are among Africa’s most significant heritage objects. They were created as early as the 16th century onwards, according to the British Museum.
Continue reading...Andrew Garfield reveals ‘precise agony’ of losing his mother to cancer
Oscar-nominated actor speaks of his grief and how it left him struggling to make sense of world
Andrew Garfield has opened up about the grief of losing his mother to pancreatic cancer, saying it left him in “precise agony” and struggling to make sense of the world around him.
The actor, 38, who was recently nominated for an Oscar for his role in Netflix biography Tick, Tick… Boom!, started filming just after Lynn Garfield, a teacher from Essex, died in 2019.
Continue reading...Lindsey Pearlman, US TV actor, found dead after being reported missing
- Pearlman, 43, appeared in General Hospital and Chicago Justice
- Los Angeles police said Pearlman had failed to return home
Lindsey Pearlman, an actor known for television series including General Hospital and Chicago Justice, was found dead in Hollywood several days after going missing, authorities and her husband said. She was 43.
“Today around 8.30am, Hollywood area officers responded to a radio call for a death investigation at Franklin Avenue and North Sierra Bonita Avenue,” Los Angeles police said on Friday.
Continue reading...Beverley Knight: ‘On stage I feel the goddess that I am’
The singer, 48, on always knowing that her voice was different, speaking out about abusive relationships and singing for Prince
I was given a special instrument at birth. Mum, Dad and my siblings all sang, but I understood my voice was different. By the age of eight I’d decided I’d do it professionally. But I had no idea how Beverley from Wolverhampton went from watching Top of the Pops to being on it.
My parents were dedicated Christian folk. We were always at services and meetings, and music was a constant presence. It was only when I stole the radio from my parents’ bedroom I discovered a whole new world of sounds.
Continue reading...Ideas to change the world: Margaret Atwood talks to seven visionaries fighting for a brighter future
The author’s hand-picked panel share their ideas on music, mushrooms, zombies and more
What do you get when you bring together some of the most revered thinkers, most progressive-minded activists and one of the most celebrated novelists writing today to discuss the immense challenges we face? A debate about the Spice Girls, of course! For the Guardian’s Saturday magazine, Margaret Atwood wanted to gather some of her favourite experts from around the globe, to ask how they see the world we live in – and what they believe is key to creating the future they want to see.
The lineup included bestselling author Raj Patel, dubbed the “rock star of social justice writing”; Senator Yvonne Boyer, the first Indigenous person appointed to the Canadian senate from Ontario; Akala, a writer, musician and poet; the excellently named Merlin Sheldrake, an expert on fungi; Kate Fletcher, whose speciality is sustainable fashion; Jessie Housty, a young Indigenous activist with a focus on decolonisation and community; and Yasmeen Hassan of Equality Now, which works to combat gender discrimination. The panel, hand-picked by Atwood, reflects the many disparate subjects the author is passionate about, and she was as keen to hear from them as they were to understand her vision and ideas.
Continue reading...The abortion travel agents: ‘Some women know what they need, others just say: help’
With reproductive rights being increasingly restricted in Europe, people are relying on a network of volunteers to help them
When The Handmaid’s Tale first came out in 1985, the initial response was broadly that people thought such threats to women’s bodies and reproductive rights “couldn’t happen here”. By the time it aired as a TV series in 2017, just after Donald Trump was inaugurated in the US, people were no longer so sure. With every headline about gains in reproductive rights – Ireland repealing the eighth amendment in 2018, which had effectively banned abortions – there are others that underscore how fragile these rights are, wherever you live.
Recent changes to abortion law in Texas, which have prohibited abortions after six weeks – one of the most restrictive rules in the nation – and Poland’s near total ban on the procedure last year make it clear just how slippery the slope still is. We have to ask: what kind of country do we want to live in? A democratic one in which every individual is free to make decisions concerning their health and body, or one in which half the population is free and the state corrals the bodies of the other half?
Continue reading...Bob Odenkirk on Better Call Saul and surviving a heart attack: ‘I have to keep going. Life is great’
Having escaped an ‘existential lightning bolt’, you might expect the comic actor to be slowing down. You’d be wrong
For at least a couple of weeks after it happened, Bob Odenkirk couldn’t remember he’d had a heart attack. He would wake up, feeling pretty good, and think about heading to work. “And everyone would say: ‘Calm down, you had a heart attack,’” he recalls. There is an absurdity to this daily revelation of bad news that I think Odenkirk – a connoisseur of the absurd – might enjoy.
“Here, let me show you this,” he says. “This is something my daughter made for me because every day was the same thing of not remembering.” He gets out his phone and finds a picture he took of a whiteboard with a timeline of the events of that week or so in July last year – collapsing on the set of his TV drama Better Call Saul, hospital, his family arriving – so that Odenkirk would know what had happened. He holds it up to the screen. On day one, she has written “die” (the quote marks are hers).
Continue reading...Margaret Atwood on feminism, culture wars and speaking her mind: ‘I’m very willing to listen, but not to be scammed’
At 82, the Canadian author has seen it all - and her novels predicted most of it. Just don’t presume you know what she thinks, she tells Hadley Freeman
‘How are you? You’re named after Ernest Hemingway’s first wife,” Margaret Atwood announces by way of a greeting when we meet on a hotel’s heated patio near her home in Toronto. Atwood, 82, has often been described as a prophet, thanks to her uncanny ability to foresee the future in her books. When Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in January 2021, it looked, terrifyingly, like a scene out of The Handmaid’s Tale, when the government is overthrown and the dystopian land of Gilead is founded. She seemingly predicted the 2008 financial crash in her nonfiction book Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, published that year. Atwood has always scoffed at any suggestion of telepathy, pointing out that every atrocity in The Handmaid’s Tale had been carried out by totalitarian regimes in real life, and she “predicted” the crash by noticing the number of adverts offering to help people with their personal debt. But as she stands in front of me, snowflakes glittering around her like stars, the flames of the hotel’s gas heaters leaping on either side of her, dressed all in black save for her little red hat, correctly guessing who I’m named after, she certainly seems to have a touch of magic about her. How did she know about the Hemingway connection?
“Because I’m deep into Martha Gellhorn,” she says, launching into a long discussion about the celebrated war correspondent and Hemingway’s third wife. Atwood isn’t writing a book about Gellhorn (yet), but she found a letter from her to the father of her late partner, Graeme Gibson, who died in 2019, and is now a Gellhornologist. After six or so minutes, I wonder if we’ll ever talk about anything else, but Atwood has a regal quality that makes interruption unthinkable. It does not, as I later learn, render argument impossible.
I don’t like to favouritise my books. The others would be out to get you: ‘How could you? I spent all this time with you!’
Continue reading...Row about Congolese statue loan escalates into legal battle over NFTs
Gallery at site of uprising against colonial rule accuses US museum of stonewalling request for artefact
A statue depicting the angry spirit of a Belgian officer beheaded during an uprising in Congo in 1931 is at the centre of a tug of war between a US museum and a Congolese gallery at the site of the rebellion.
The statue of Maximilien Balot, a colonial administrator, has travelled to Europe but the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is accused of stonewalling requests for a loan to the White Cube gallery in Lusanga in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
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