Of course, we had to throw Big Ed in there!
You have to see “Bugonia” to appreciate how far out there Jesse Plemons goes with Teddy, the obsessed conspiracy freak beekeeper who kidnaps Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), the CEO of Big Pharma company Auxolith, convinced that she is an alien out to destroy the earth. This week, “Bugonia” played Venice and Telluride to upbeat response from critics and audiences. It’s one of two Focus films at Telluride likely to figure in the Oscar race, along with Chloe Zhao’s “Hamnet.” Will Emma Stone and Plemons both go for lead? That is the remaining question.
All Plemons knew to begin with, he said, was what Yorgos Lanthimos told him: The movie was an adaptation of a Korean film (“Save the Green Planet!”) from the early 2000s. Plemons looked up the synopsis. Then he finished “Kinds of Kindness” (2024). Then he read the script. “Are you kidding me?” he said.
How did it read that first time? “Like an explosion,” he said. “It was really funny. I laughed so much, I was so moved, all that range of emotions and responses. We didn’t know when we were going to do it. Maybe there was some disbelief, or I hadn’t fully allowed myself to think like I’m actually playing this part.”
Five months later, Plemons read the script again, “knowing that it was real and that it was going to happen, and maybe Yorgos had made some little adjustments at that point, but I had a very different experience reading it. It was a much heavier experience. And also I felt: ‘How am I going to do this?’ I was a little scared.”
He had never been this scared before approaching a role, because “I loved the script so much,” he said, “and I loved the part so much. To try and find my way in and do it justice was intimidating.”
Naturally, Plemons jumped down the rabbit hole of internet conspiracy theories. “It’s infinite,” he said. “Because it’s so timely, and because there are so many Teddies out there in varying degrees, most of them lesser degrees that I was, it was fascinating.”
He was seeking the odd story that “does something to you,” he said, “gets your motor running and gets you excited.”
And the screenwriter Will Tracy (“The Menu”) was also helpful. “I’m always curious how these things happen,” Plemons said, “and where they come from.”
The character Teddy starts with a specific look: Rumpled, filthy long shorts and shirts, straggly greasy long hair, scruffy beard. He’s compassionate about bees, but he’s angry at the local Big Pharma company that put his mother into a coma with an opioid recovery drug. In one scene he admits to having sampled alt-right, alt-lite, and Marxism, without finding his proper niche.
It’s intense to watch Teddy go up against the wily Fuller. He shaves her head so her fellow aliens won’t be able to trace her. He chains her to a bed in the basement. And he has his accomplice cousin (Aidan Delbis) stand guard with a rifle. When she doesn’t give him what he wants, he tortures her.
Charlie Kaufman recommended Naomi Klein’s book “Doppelganger.” “It’s a companion piece, in some ways, to ‘Bugonia,’” Plemons said. “It’s so thorough on this subject. One line is talking about the shadow self, within individuals, within nations, and this line about how the oppressed can become the oppressors resonated with me. He has this deep, deep pain.”
“Doppelganger” helped Plemons to cope with the violence. “Maybe this was a way for me to rationalize it and not judge,” he said, “but I looked at it as the way a child’s rage comes out. There’s a lot about Teddy that’s childlike. Children are magical creatures. I’ve got a four and a seven year old. Everything’s just so raw? He’s kind of brilliant, and he’s kind of dumb, and also kind of childlike; he’s easily duped.”
When he unchains Fuller, thinking that she is the empress alien, they face off in a lengthy dinner scene over spaghetti and meatballs. “The dinner scene was as much fun as you can have as an actor,” he said.
When I ask Plemons about working with the non-pro Delbis, who likes to be called autistic, he chokes up. “Talking about this movie, I get emotional,” he said. “Aidan is the MVP of the movie, his presence, him being a part of the process, and being on set and watching. I was worried in some ways, making sure that this was going to be a positive experience for him. My mother is a teacher, and for a long time she specialized in teaching children with autism and so I’ve always had a special place in my heart. What he did, it’s not easy.”
Plemons and Stone were promoting “Kinds of Kindness” when they were supposed to be rehearsing “Bugonia,” so they didn’t get as much time to play around as usual, just a few days and some fight choreography. “I wish there was more,” said Plemons. “This felt relentless. There was no opportunity to even process the scene that just happened, that took place today, because you have to look at what awful thing is coming. I didn’t know how I was going to do the third act, the endurance of that. The relentlessness probably helped, because I had to focus on what was at hand.”
Next up: In mid-September, Plemons starts the next “Hunger Games” installment, “Sunrise on the Reaping” (2026) opposite Florence Pugh. “There are a lot of parallels with the world that we’re living in now and what we’re all struggling with,” said Plemons, who plays head gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee, a role originated by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman. That made Plemons hesitate for a moment. He had played Hoffman’s son in “The Master” in his early 20s. “It was one of the best classes I’ve ever taken,” he said, “because I have a few scenes with Hoffman and [Joaquin] Phoenix, but I was there for pretty much the duration of the shoot, and so I just watched.”
At this point, those of us watching Plemons are starting to believe there’s no limit to what he can accomplish.
Tony Leung Chiu-wai’s first European film ever, “Silent Friend,” is about to premiere in Venice. But he already wants to reunite with director Ildikó Enyedi.
“I would like to work with Ildikó again, if we get a chance,” he tells Variety. Two years ago, he picked up the Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement Award at the Italian fest.
“When I was still in Hong Kong before the shoot, I asked her: ‘What do I need to do to prepare for this character?’ She said: ‘You just need to be there.’ This was my first time doing anything like this. So I went there, and went with the flow,” he laughs.
In 2021, Tony Leung Chiu-wai made his long-awaited English-language debut in Marvel Studio’s “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” alongside Simu Liu, with fans calling out for his return as Wenwu. But following delays, its sequel is still in development.
“I don’t know what my next step will be and I never plan anything in my career — again, I go with the flow,” he says. While “Silent Friend” marks another big step for the star, he’s not actively seeking out international projects.
“It’s not like I suddenly want to work with all these different teams in every other country. It’s all about instinct. The first time I talked to Ildikó, online, I just knew I wanted to work with her and that’s why I said yes. Instinct.”
He adds: “After ‘Silent Friend,’ I haven’t done anything else and it has almost been a year. I never plan, because when you do, the outcome is always different from what you expect. So why bother?”
In the century-spanning film, he plays a neuroscientist stuck in a university town in Germany during the pandemic. All alone, save for an imposing ginkgo tree and a suspicious security guard he can’t even communicate with, he starts a new experiment encouraged by a fellow enthusiast (Léa Seydoux).
“When I got the script, Ildikó left me a note that said: ‘It’s a sci-fi with a sense of humor.’ She told me she watched some videos of me being interviewed and just saw something inside me. That’s why she created this character for me.”
“I think he’s a very lonely guy. But the film proves that even if we don’t speak the same language, as long as you feel others with your heart, you’ll understand them. I love playing this kind of role without much dialogue. It’s much more challenging.”
But it wasn’t the story itself that made him want to work with Enyedi, also behind Oscar-nominated “On Body and Soul.”
“I was only interested in Ildikó. When she approached me, she showed me her films and I just went: ‘Wow, this is wonderful.’ I really love this person – not just her work. I felt I could trust her,” he recalls.
“We didn’t just talk about the script. It wasn’t the usual actor-director exchange. She’s a friend, a very good friend and a teacher. She sent me some books and one of them was by Alan Watts [known for popularizing Eastern philosophy and religion]. I told Ildikó I was a Buddhist, that I study philosophy. I said: ‘We clearly have something in common’.”
Leung Chiu-wai is known for Oscar-nominated “Hero,” Ang Lee’s “Lust, Caution,” “Internal Affairs,” later remade by Martin Scorsese, and his collabs with Wong Kar-wai – “In the Mood for Love” brought him Best Actor award in Cannes. But “Silent Friend” is still his “only experimental movie.”
“I haven’t seen it yet. I usually try to avoid [watching my films] because every time, I only see missing parts.” Was there ever one he considered to be perfect? “Never.”
Making it changed his own relationship to nature.
“I would read about early cognitive development of babies, about plant intelligence and it really changed my perspective towards the world. I pay more respect to it,” he admits.
“Why do we assume that plants don’t have intelligence when other living beings do? It just exists in a different form; one we don’t quite understand. I really didn’t think this way before. It really makes sense. They are living beings, right next to us, but we are not aware of it. You know, humans always think we are at the top of the food chain, but we need to stop doing that. We should be more humble.”
Now, he hopes the viewers will feel the same.
“I really hope it will change their point of view, too. And make this planet a better place.”
Tony Leung Chiu-wai in ‘Silent Friend’
Courtesy of Films Boutique
With the looming termination of Kamala Harris‘s Secret Service protection in the next few hours, the security of the former Vice President of the United States has become the latest battlefront in the political war between Gavin Newsom and Donald Trump.
About to start a 15-date book tour on September 24, one day after her 2024 campaign memoir 107 Days comes out, the ex-VP saw Trump revoke her extended Secret Service protection on August 28.
The usual six months of Secret Service protection an ex-Veep receives had been extended to 18 months by Joe Biden in the last days of his presidency for his former running mate. That semi-secret order came in no small part I’m told by the threats the first woman and first person of color to hold the office had been subjected to in the pretty polarized America we live in.
Not the first and likely not the last of the former Celebrity Apprentice host’s such moves against rivals and critics, Trump ended all that in a very short letter last week to the Department of Homeland Security: “You are hereby authorized to discontinue any security-related procedures previously authorized by Executive Memorandum, beyond those required by law, for the following individual, effective September 1, 2025: Former Vice President Kamala D. Harris.”
This isn’t the first hit Trump has taken at Harris since taking office again. Back in the spring, Trump pulled the former VP’s security clearance, along with those of Joe Biden Hilary Clinton and others
Circumspect to a fault as always, Harris’ office kept its public reaction short. “The Vice President is grateful to the United States Secret Service for their professionalism, dedication, and unwavering commitment to safety,” Harris aide Kirsten Allen said of the end of the protection detail by Trump. Harris’ office did not respond to a further request Deadline for comment today.
However, that initial curt response may be in part because it appears that persistent Trump troller Newsom, who has taken on the role of Leader of the Opposition in the minds of many against POTUS’ increasingly authoritarian rule, has ordered a security arrangement for his long time ally Harris. Nothing has been made public yet, but reports that the California Highway Patrol, will take over protection tomorrow for Harris have been confirmed to Deadline by law enforcement sources.
“Our office does not comment on security arrangements,” Gov Newsom’s Communications chief Izzy Gardon has said, holding the official line. “The safety of our public officials should never be subject to erratic, vindictive political impulses,” he added.
Still, in what a state insider termed “a matter of conscience and decency, as well as an effort to diminish Trump” by Newsom, a combination of CHP and LAPD protection for Harris has been given the greet light.
To that, the former Veep will have the protection level that a dignitary like the Governor, First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom and Lt. Governor Eleni Kounalakis enjoy. While an insider cautioned not to read too much into it, there is no word on how long the CHP and LAPD protection for Harris, who recently announced she would not run for Governor of the Golden State in 2026, will last. Discussions about protection for the former VP when the ex-state Attorney General and Senator is traveling outside California are ongoing and “complicated,” I’m told.
Kicking off in NYC late next month, Harris’ 107 Days book tour has only two stops in her home state right now. The 2024 Democratic Party candidate for President will be at LA’s Wiltern on September 29 and in San Francisco on October 5. The tour ends in Miami just before Thanksgiving on November 20.
California Highway Patrol officers arrest a protester on the 101 Freeway during an anti-ICE protest in downtown LA on June 8, 2025 (Photo by BENJAMIN HANSON/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
It should be noted that CHP officers played a contentious role containing and arresting protestors on the streets of DTLA back in June. They also played a widely applauded role in maintaining order in the aftermath of the devastating wildfires that ravaged LA in January.
Contacted by Deadline, the Secret Service, which is a part of DHS, referred us to the White House for comment and clarification on the whys and hows of the discontinuation of Harris’ detail so soon before she is about to make her first significant public appearances since leaving office on January 20. The White House did not respond our request for comment or insights into Trump’s seemingly sudden and very public swipe at his 2024 election opponent.
Yet, with a preamble of political neutrality, more than one federal law enforcement official told Deadline that Trump’s yanking of Harris’ detail was no more unusual that the extension the ex-VP had been given. In fact, there were no reports of significant threats against Harris, sources says. There were, however, some concerns her upcoming nationwide book tour, which also has stops in Canada and the UK, could strain her detail.
Six months of Secret Service has been the norm for Vice Presidents since Congress legislated the protection in 2008. While past VPs like Al Gore have asked for extensions of their agent detail, it was President Barack Obama’s executive order for Dick Cheney in 2009 that truly put the process in motion. Cheney, called Darth Vader by many for his ruthlessness, was granted a further six months by DHS that saw him covered until January 2010. He currently has no Secret Service protection, nor does Trump’s first VP Mike Pence, who was denied an extension by the Biden administration.
There is also another factor that plays into all this underneath the partisan rancor, one federal law enforcement source stated. “Don’t forget about the U.N.,” he said deadpan.
In less than 10 days, the U.N. General Assembly is set to begin in New York City, with leaders from all over the world in attendance and Trump scheduled to his first speech to the organization since returning to office. “it’s a heavy lift, with over 100 heads of state receiving Secret Service protection,” the source said, noting how the September 9 – 29 U.N. General Assembly requires extra resources and agents be pulled from all over the DHS unit.
Still, already in the anti-Trump trenches over the masked ICE raids and abductions that the administration unleashed purposefully on LA earlier this year and the stationing of troops in the city over protests following the detentions of the undocumented, green card holders and some US citizens, Mayor Karen Bass quickly said what many thought of the Trump action against Harris. The ex-Congresswoman and longtime Harris ally called the move late last week “another act of revenge following a long list of political retaliation” by Trump. “This puts the former Vice President in danger and I look forward to working with the governor to make sure Vice President Harris is safe in Los Angeles.”
LA mayor Karen Bass & the VP Kamala Harris during a march for abortion rights in Los Angeles, April 15, 2023 (Photo by APU GOMES/AFP via Getty Images)
A Hollywood producer who has been a major donor to Democrats over the years, was a big contributor to Harris’ short campaign last year, and is no big fan of Bass vehemently seconded the Mayor’s remarks by calling Trump “a would-be dictator who thinks he can bully and scare everyone into submission.” The deep-pocketed producer added Trump “clearly doesn’t know Kamala Harris very well if he thinks that’s going to work.”
As the Secret Service pull their agents (some of whom have been with the former VP since the 202 campaign) and equipment out of Harris’ Brentwood home tonight ahead of that September 1 deadline, state officers from CHP’s Dignitary Protection Unit are already moving in place, I’m told.
That’s just step one.
“DPS also provides, as directed, protective services to national and international dignitaries who are visiting California on official business,” the unit says of its mission. “This includes: the advance security assessments of sites and locations to be visited, safe and secure transportation, protection at designated venues, collaboration with allied agency law enforcement, and other services as required.”
In short, it’s no Secret Service, but its not nothin’
Aside from four years at the VP’s official home at the Naval Observatory in Washington DC, Harris and her husband, ex-Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff (who lost his Secret Service detail a couple of months ago too) have had their house on the West Side of LA as their primary personal residence for years. That house has had a Secret Service presence since 2021. That protection didn’t seem to stop two individuals all in black from getting onto Harris’ property in the early morning last January during the wildfires curfew. Harris herself was not at the house and LAPD were called to the scene and detained the duo.
A state of affairs that will now be the new normal for the ex-Veep.
For the record, former Presidents Clinton, Bush, Obama and Biden have lifetime Secret Service protection, for now.
[This story contains spoilers from season two of Netflix’s My Life with the Walter Boys.]
Team Alex isn’t ready to give up in season two of Netflix’s My Life with the Walter Boys.
In the 10-episode season that premiered on Aug. 28, Ashby Gentry returns as Alex Walter, who fell in love with Jackie Howard in season one, only to be left heartbroken after she leaves and returns to New York after kissing his brother Cole. The last time Alex interacted with Jackie, he was drunkenly telling her he loved her, so having to reel from that absence impacts Alex both mentally and seemingly physically. The once bookish nerd is now seemingly confident and has caught the attention of ladies at his school.
“When I was 16 and my first relationship ended, there’s almost an over compensation with regards to the freedom that one has,” Gentry tells The Hollywood Reporter. “I think Alex is a suppressor. You see that with the heartbreak with Jackie. ‘I’m fine. It’s fine. We’re good. Let’s just move on. It’s over.’ He’s a pusher. He suppresses his deepest and most potent feelings.”
Despite attempting to make things right with both Alex and Cole as she finds her way once again after returning to Silver Falls, Jackie can’t fight her feelings and her and Alex end up giving things another go — however keeping their romantic reunion secret from everyone. Of their reunion, Gentry admits he wasn’t surprised but also didn’t necessarily agree.
“If this was my friend, I would be like, ‘Bro, what are you doing? What is wrong with you?!,’” he tells THR. “But I was not surprised, because Alex, he’s stubborn and determined. I think he’s going to be dead, buried six feet under before he gives up. I was more surprised she took him back personally.”
As one corner of the show’s love triangle, Gentry admits he initially didn’t understand how people couldn’t be team Alex during season one. “Then I watched the show, and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s how.’ They’re cute together. So I get it,” he says of the chemistry between Nikki Rodriguez’s Jackie and Noah LaLonde’s Cole.
But Team Alex is in full force in season two with Gentry crediting his character for being “the person who’s willing to sacrifice what he has to sacrifice for the people that he cares about.”
“I just wonder if those people deserve him truly,” he says.
Gentry spoke with THR about studying for cowboy camp (while walking through a graveyard), Alex’s other potential suitors and his reaction to that confession in the finale.
***
We ended season one with a shocked and heartbroken Alex. Going into season two, what were you hoping to explore with Alex this season?
We don’t really know what’s going to happen until very close to shooting. I received scripts for some of the episodes that we’re filming in a few weeks and so over the hiatus, which was a long hiatus because we finished shooting season one August 2022 (the show didn’t come out until December 2023), we didn’t start shooting again until August 2024. So in between working, there was a two-year period where I had to wonder what was going to happen, much like the audience does.
My mind went in a lot of different directions, because I think what happens is formally traumatic, meaning that it’s a big disruption. She leaves and that’s traumatic, very sudden, and it changes things forever after that point. There are a lot of different ways you could respond to that. I brainstormed about those. It’s tricky to work before you’ve really seen material, because I don’t want to make assumptions about what’s going to happen, and then have to alter those assumptions once I get the script. But of course, I definitely had some ideas.
What were your ideas?
They’re somewhat similar to what happens. When I was 16 and my first relationship ended, there’s almost an over compensation with regards to the freedom that one has. I think that’s hinted at, though not seen explicitly in season two. I think Alex is enjoying his singularity, and figured that was one of them. I had imagined a lot more of the grieving and a lot more of the heartbreak than I think is showed in the show. He is a sensitive guy and there’s a whole plot point in season one about him crying after he found out about his brother and his first girlfriend which is totally reasonable, but we don’t see that in the show. There’s a time gap, and a big period of summer break where he goes to cowboy camp and hits puberty,. So I imagine a lot of the heartbreak took place during that period that we don’t necessarily see, which is nice to have that privately to myself as an actor.
Alex is seemingly camouflaging his heartbreak and giving a 2.0 confident version now. He’s really popular there among the ladies. After learning what was in store for Alex, how he was reacting to everything and where he is now how did you view who this new Alex was?
All three of the characters in season two are figuring out who they are. I think that’s the theme of season two. A season of identity. It’s a season of everybody discovering where they fit, which is what adolescence is; That’s where you learn what you want, what you like to do, who you love, who you want to be with. In psychoanalysis, there’s discussions about authenticity. My understanding of Lacanian psychoanalysis is that even your inauthentic parts are authentic to you. When we see Alex behaving in various ways in season two, even if it’s not, quote, unquote, the real him, the fact that he’s trying it on means it is authentic to him. So we get to see him craft this personality that might not be necessarily organic, but it’s so interesting to watch what kind of inauthenticity he decides to portray.
Before diving into his relationship with Jackie, I did want to touch on Alex and Kylie, because this season they’re seemingly not as close as they once were. Alex also still seems to be oblivious to her feelings towards him. Do you think that Alex truly is truly unaware of her feelings for him? Do you ever see him seeing her as anything more than a friend?
I’ve met a lot of people, and have been close to a lot of people who are like this. Though, I wouldn’t necessarily say I’m like this. I think Alex is a suppressor. You see that with the heartbreak with Jackie, he’s fine. [He’s like] “I’m fine. It’s fine. We’re good. Let’s just move on. It’s over.” He’s a pusher. He suppresses his deepest and most potent feelings. I would be shocked if there wasn’t something suppressed. But do I think he’s consciously aware of any sort of romantic Inkling between him and Kylie? No I don’t.
So he really is just that oblivious?
Yeah! I really do. I wonder about her though. It’s been brought to both of their attention. It’s brought to Alex’s attention by Skylar in season one, episode four, and it’s brought to Kylie’s attention by Cole in season one, episode 10, right? Both of them deny it. Both of them are like, “You’re tripping!” And so I do think it’s suppressed.
We see Alex train for what you called “Cowboy camp.” What was the preparation you had to do for that this season and was it different, in any way, from what you did for the first season?
I learned about cowboy camp in the break before shooting. I just researched as much rodeo as I could. Obviously a lot of the preparation for season two was physical stuff. He’s supposed to look different, so there was all of that. I live in Brooklyn, and there’s a park nearby, but before you get to the park, there’s a graveyard that you got to walk through. I would walk through the graveyard every day, walk to this park and then back to my house and I would listen to podcasts about the history of rodeo and about bronco riding, and how that works. [I’d] just watch a bunch of cowboy videos. And there’s actually a series on Netflix called How to be a Cowboy, which I watched. It’s all it’s kind of special for me. So it was fun!
Learning about cowboys while walking through a cemetery is the best preparation apparently!
Hell, yeah. That’s my style. You got to prepare like Ashby Gentry!
From left: Natalie Sharp and Gentry.
Courtesy of Netflix
Alex seems to be maybe oblivious again and continuing to break hearts after having a connection with his rodeo mentor, but he turns her down after realizing he still has feelings for Jackie. What did you make of Alex and Blake’s dynamic?
I very much feel like Alex is almost a little brother to me, where I’m like, “What are you doing?! Why? Like, dude!” With the Blake stuff, my personal response to that was, “You idiot! You are fumbling this beautiful girl who likes you a lot on speculation that the girl who kissed your brother is gonna want you back.” That being said, though he’s a good gambler, because he was right. But I was still frustrated.
This season, it’s clear Jackie is still dealing with feelings for both Alex and Cole but acting more on her feelings for Alex. What do you think was the point where Alex stopped denying his feelings and wanted to open his heart up again to Jackie?
I have a very confirmed answer to this. Okay, when Alex goes to the arcade to play darts, it’s the same arcade that Alex went to with Jackie in season one. And he sees the racing game there and is reminded of her and the time they spent together, and he can’t get her out of his head, even when he’s kissing Blake. That’s why he fumbles Blake. When he gets back to the barn that night, pre-lightning, I think that’s the moment that he realized that he still loves her. I know this is true, because we filmed that stuff. It just didn’t make the final cut.
Were you surprised Alex and Jackie gave it another go?
Yes! Oh my God. And okay, was I surprised? No, no, I wasn’t. Did I agree? Also, no. If this was my friend, I would be like, “Bro, what are you doing? What is wrong with you?” But I was not surprised, because Alex is like a bull. He’s stubborn and he’s determined. I think he’s going to be dead, buried six feet under before he gives up. I was more surprised she took him back personally.
Why’s that?
I think because I got to witness the way her and Cole interact. I mean that’s clearly strong. It’s so funny. When I was doing season one, I was very much of the school of thought of like, “In what universe could you not be team Alex?” It just didn’t make sense. And then I watched the show, and I was like, “Oh, that’s how.” They’re cute together. So I get it. I was a little surprised she went back to him because I thought maybe she was gonna figure things out with Cole.
Do you think she maybe went back with Alex out of guilt?
I think that totally has something to do with it. I don’t think it’s like a pity relationship entirely. I think she loves Alex. I think she’s figuring out who she is and I think she decides that she does not want to be the person that cheats on her boyfriend with his brother and then leaves him in the dust. And so I think it’s about her own retribution in a way.
Gentry and Nikki Rodriguez in My Life With the Walter Boys season two.
Netflix
When Jackie tells Alex about what happened with Cole, he doesn’t seem surprised and almost seems relieved because his instinct about there being something between them was right. Then even knowing about them it still doesn’t stop him from wanting to pursue things with Jackie again. What did you make of how he reacted to the reveal of what happened with Jackie and Cole? Why was he so forgiving this time?
I think that’s probably one of the most redeeming points in Alex’s arc of the character, because he’s kind of being gaslit the whole first season. He knows there’s something going on and is made to feel crazy and is made to feel clingy and overprotective and neurotic. And then he’s right in the end! Then, not only is he right, he’s lied to about it by his brother and his ex-girlfriend for half of the second season. And then is finally brought to justice, and even says, “At least now I know I wasn’t crazy!” Though the even more mature way of handling the situation is he says, “It doesn’t matter, because I still love you.” I think that even though it frustrates me as an audience member, that’s how people work through this stuff. People make mistakes. “I don’t care, because I still love you, and at the end of the day, I still want to be with you.” That’s what matters to me, which I think is a very redeeming part of his story, even though it is simultaneously so frustrating.
In contrast to last season, Alex and Cole don’t necessarily dislike each other but seem cordial despite there being in the elephant in the room with their feelings towards Jackie. In a love triangle, people can get so caught up in their teams but forget that these two are actually brothers and a relationship can be impacted there. What did you make of their new dynamic this season?
You know I’ve been in this situation a few times in my life, and with the other guy, it’s always like, you don’t necessarily get over it ever, or at least I haven’t. But at the same time, I also don’t hate them forever. In a weird way, it’s almost like a dialectical relationship, where the contradiction is the truth in that in a subconscious way, bond over the thing you have in common, which is the fact that you both love the same person. So I think with Alex and Cole, he gets it. He can’t blame him. He loves her, too. It makes sense. So I think, in a way, that eases the tension. Whereas if he had God forbid done Jackie, wrong in a malicious way, because he hated her, I think it would be much more easy for Alex to write him off as this evil person. They’re brothers, so they have a history there, but I think the brother thing just increases the literal familiarity between them. It’s so much easier to fight with your brother than it is to fight with a friend. It’s easier formally, but it’s harder in the actual content of it.
From left: Gentry as Alex and Noah LaLonde as Cole in My Life with the Walter Boys.
David Brown/Netflix
It’s going to make for some awkward family gatherings that’s for sure.
No kidding! I’m like how are they going to have dinner after this? You know how much I think about that? They have these big blowout fights, then it’s like “Bro I can’t go into the bathroom right now cause Cole’s in there right now.” Like that’s awkward. They got to drive together in the same car! It’s so weird!
Well speaking of awkward, this season ends on a cliffhanger once again with Alex hearing Jackie confess her love to Cole. Where do you see them go from there?
I’m gonna guess to the hospital! That’s the bigger problem that we also see at the end of season. But where do I see them go from there? I don’t know. I mean, I do know, right? I’m not gonna say (Laughs.) I just feel like, geez that’s gotta suck as an audience member. Like round three, dude. It’s round three. I barely give a second chance. This guy needs to do some serious soul searching to rationalize his life existence. Because I’d be like, I should just like, move. I should just run away from home, because the humiliation that I would feel in that situation is absolutely crazy! I’m really interested this year in exploring where Alex goes for himself. And this is just Ashby. That’s what I care about. I care much less about where him, Jackie and Cole go because I think the interesting thing is, how do you as a person swallow a pill like that for the third time in your life in a period of two years?
I think anytime there’s a show or film where there’s a major love triangle, fans are quick to pick teams of who they prefer be together. What’s your pitch for why Alex is the one for Jackie?
My pitch for why Alex is the one for Jackie is because can you imagine not giving up after that? I can’t! Well, I did have to. That’s my job (Laughter.) I think Alex is just willing to do the hard thing for her. And that’s rare, and you’ll find in life that people that are willing to do hard and inconvenient things are the people that are the most valuable. Unfortunately in contemporary life, most people are often few and far between, even amongst your close family. And that’s my critique of Cole. If Cole really loved Alex, he would get over it. He would squash it. He would do the right thing, and he would not infatuate with his brother’s girlfriend (laughs) which to say out loud is actually an insane thing. Alex is the person who’s willing to sacrifice what he has to sacrifice for the people that he cares about. I just wonder if those people deserve him truly. That’s my oddest honest reaction to the show so far.
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My Life with the Walter Boys is now streaming on Netflix. Read THR’s interviews with Nikki Rodriguez, Noah LaLonde and showrunner Melanie Halsall.
Plenty of viewers flocked to the final episode to see what Billy’s decision would be, with Ashleigh ready to get married and, to her delight, Billy too. That was until three months in, as Ashleigh told RadioTimes.com, when the army physical trainer ended their marriage.
In an exclusive interview ahead of the reunion, Ashleigh explained she felt as though Billy began “dating [her] again and exploring things” while married, while she “went into the marriage as a marriage”.
“[I was] looking forward to the future, looking forward to him moving down south and as soon as the cameras were off, he didn’t want to come to the south,” she explained. “He didn’t have any intention of moving to the south, which was huge because how are we going to make this marriage work if you’re not going to compromise slightly on that?”
When it came to the end of the relationship, Ashleigh told RadioTimes.com that Billy expressed he felt “disconnected” from her, and he “wasn’t willing to fight or anything else and that was really heartbreaking”.
She added: “So that happened in the January and [it was] a shock. I wish he was braver and I wish he truly thought about what he wanted because I think he should’ve said no to me at the altar.”
Upon reflection, Billy told RadioTimes.com that while he did feel disconnected from Ashleigh, it was her job as cabin crew that saw his withdrawal from the marriage.
He explained: “Coming on the show I never wanted to be here. I think you kind of have to be true to yourself, so when me and Ashleigh stepped away, all my worst fears came true. It became a challenge, being cabin crew, and I personally feel like I tried as hard as I possibly could going down to see her. But the one thing you can’t account for is jet lag.
“So yeah she’s away for a couple days but when she comes back, she has to rest. So it’s always me going down and it just took its toll and then we just started distancing. We stopped saying ‘I love you’, we were disconnecting and it was probably more me than her, but we just got to a turning point where we had to go one way or the other and unfortunately I made the decision and said, ‘No, that’s us done.'”
Billy had been married and divorced before, something he didn’t want to happen again outside of the pods, noting that his split from Ashleigh was the “hardest” break-up he has done because he “genuinely cared for her so much and I still do”.
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The king of Flavortown has spoken! Just one day after his son, Hunter Fieri, tied the knot with his now-wife, Tara Bernstein, the Food Network host is opening up about the nuptials.
Guy Fieri shared his thoughts about his son’s lavish wedding, which took place on the family ranch in Sonoma, California. The Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives host was also able to snap a gorgeous photo as Hunter and Tara were saying “I do,” specifically the moment two gorgeous swans were floating by.
Ondi Timoner doesn’t sit around. She was prepping a documentary feature about the Nazis in Budapest when she found out her house of 14 years had burned down in the Altadena fire. And she kept on shooting. Now more than ever she realizes that home is her work. And sure enough, when she got back to Altadena and started to deal with the myriad of things (insurance, rebuilding), she kept recording her life. It’s who she is.
She wasn’t really finished with her latest short, “All the Walls Came Down,” when we talked on Zoom from her new digs in Joshua Tree. “Even though everything I’ve created, most of my archives are gone, I can still go and make something else now that’s new,” she said. “I do take refuge in the stories I’m telling, they helped me to order the chaos, and to find the silver lining. When I’m dealing with trauma, I record it, so I could, one day, possibly make something, make lemonade out of lemons. If I don’t record and have the matter with which to practice that form of alchemy, there’s not even an option. So I’m lucky enough that I have friends who have cameras, and I had with me a couple of cameras. I lost so many cameras, like lenses and tripods and all my lighting, but I had a couple cameras in my suitcase because I was in Europe.”
Timoner shocked herself with the speed of the edit. “I truly have never edited anything so fast,” she said. “It just came flying out. It shocked my whole team.” She submitted the short late, way past the deadline, but festival director Julie Huntsinger accepted it anyway. Now Timoner is rushing to finish it in time. “All the Walls Came Down” premieres Sunday.
The toughest moment for Timoner was landing in LA and not being able to go home. “I was in a real state,” she said. “And it was tough, but I knew to film because of ‘Last Flight Home.’” That film was an intimate (and healing) family chronicle of her father’s death by euthanasia.
Timoner started filming her razed home as well as her brother’s, and reached out to her neighbors. “Here we are all in this pile,” she said, “and I’m processing, trying to make sense of the whole thing. What is all of this going to come to? And what is this about? What can I learn about this as somebody right in the middle of it, going through it myself, that I can share with other people?”
As we talk, Timoner realizes that she wants to add the last picture she ever took in the house. She’s still fussing with the edit. “Many of us are going to have to deal with this [climate crisis] on some level,” she said, “whether it’s floods or fire or earthquake. The climate is not happy.”
As Timoner talked to her neighbors she recognized that she was coming from a relative place of privilege. “We’re all under-insured,” she said. “They still haven’t paid me to my property limits, even though I lost literally all the property that I insured. They also owe us money for rent. They haven’t paid any of it. The reality is, I’m a working director who has made films that people care about, at least to an extent, that I can survive right now.”
Altadena resident and activist Heavenly Hughes of My Tribe Rise told Timoner: “You moved into a Black community, we’re not a priority.” Timoner was shocked. “I felt such white blindness,”she said. “How naive I am to think that because I pay my taxes, I expect a fire truck, emergency services, at least, to evacuate my neighbors and my community, but there was nothing. And now it’s been proven.”
Timoner’s West Altadena neighborhood didn’t get fire trucks. Her mother’s closer to downtown did.
So Timoner started filming her neighbors. “Everyone has different circumstances, even if we live in the same spot, even if we’re walking our dogs down the same street and loving the same peacocks and loving the same town,” she said. “We shared a deep love for Altadena. When the title of the film came to me, is that the walls came down and these relationships have blossomed, just like the grass that’s springing out of the ground, despite all of this, you’ll see fresh growth. The garden we’re creating, it’s a community determined to maintain its integrity in the face of a massive move toward gentrification. This land is very valuable.”
“All the Walls Came Down” shows that all insurance is not created equal. One family in the film was about to lose everything, but Heavenly Hughes and others are fighting back. “There are people living in their cars, who were not homeless,” said Timoner. “There are people who have lived there for decades and decades, who have lost all of their generational wealth, and they need help right now. It’s an urgent situation, and it’s something that we read in the news and such, but the power of film is to take audiences beneath the headlines, to actually meet the people who live there, who are going through whatever they’re going through.”
Timoner is looking for a distributor, and will give any profits toward Altadena’s recovery. The film will open at the Glendale Laemmle on September 12 for a qualifying run, complete with a birthday celebration for Hughes.
When does a gambling habit become a gambling problem? Is it when you’re down to your last wadded-up banknote, which you keep stuffed in your sock till all else has been spent? Or maybe it’s that extreme moment you’re forced to fake your own death, just to throw off your creditors. Surely things have gotten out of hand when the British government sends a private detective (who looks an awful lot like Tilda Swinton) all the way to Macau to collect the fortune you swindled from an unsuspecting old lady to subsidize your addiction.
In “Ballad of a Small Player,” Colin Farrell is a reckless high roller, all flop sweat and false bravado, who’s taken up residence in a decadent Chinese casino-hotel. He has three days to settle his HK$145,000 hotel bill, or else they turn him over to the authorities. (For now, they won’t send another bottle of bubbly to his suite or let him use the house limo service.) Gambling is all about stakes, and these don’t seem quite high enough — at least, not until a body goes hurtling past the window of the dining room where he’s eating, and then we realize what rock bottom looks like: a corpse crumpled on top of a car in the parking lot below, having hurtled itself off the roof only moments before.
Edward Berger’s polar-opposite follow-up to last year’s “Conclave” is also the polar opposite of movies that it would seem to resemble: films like “Leaving Las Vegas,” “Under the Volcano” and “Uncut Gems,” where desperate men (always men) burn the fuse right down to the quick. Farrell’s character calls himself Lord Freddy Doyle, though in fact, he’s little more than a fraud, spending other people’s money in pursuit of whatever thrill winning gives. But it’s not winning this man wants. It’s easy come, easy go where money’s concerned. Doyle is motivated by the fear of complete financial ruin and whatever consequences that might bring.
The locals call guys like this “gweilo,” or ghosts, which doesn’t feel quite right for Doyle, who’s anything but invisible, striding through town in his bespoke burgundy suit, neatly tied ascot and bright yellow gloves. This conspicuous foreigner looks like a cross between Quentin Crisp and a 1970s Harlem pimp. He doesn’t exactly blend in — although, to be fair, it takes a lot to compete with the garish neon casinos that rise up about him like the debauched skyline of Rouge City in Spielberg’s “A.I. Artificial Intelligence.”
“Lord” Doyle is what we might call a cad. He believes that a man can reinvent himself in Macau, but his past keeps catching up with him. That’s what the private detective with the cheap shoes and designer spectacles, who calls herself Betty but is really named Cynthia Blithe (that would be Swinton), serves to remind. She’s there to collect something like a million pounds, which Doyle owes her client. He has practically none to his name, but if she’ll just spot him 500 quid, he can turn it into enough to square his debts (well, some of them, at least).
“How ’bout dinner and a dance?” he says. “We can come to some kind of arrangement.” Blithe obliges, and sure enough, like some kind of magician, Doyle starts winning. But he’s still a long way from a million, and Blithe (who doesn’t look like any detective we’ve seen before) gives him 24 hours. For a so-called small player like this, deadlines don’t mean much. Everything’s negotiable. And so the movie becomes increasingly tiresome, watching Farrell oscillate from low to high, as DP James Friend shoves his high-def camera right up in his pores, or else shoots the actor from halfway across town, so he’s nothing but a tiny speck in a world of excess.
Adapted from the book by Lawrence Osborne, “Ballad of a Small Player” should feel like a film noir (Doyle could be lifted from one of Graham Greene’s novels), but Berger takes it in the other direction. Visually, it’s a stunning, vibrant film, as detailed and decadent as Paolo Sorrentino’s “The Great Beauty,” with the colors narrowed to a Wong Kar Wai palette. Hong Kong is just a stone’s throw away, after all, though Doyle is persona non grata there. He’s run out of options, having exhausted his credit at even the Rainbow Casino, where a filthy-mouthed grandma (Deanie Ip) wipes him clean at baccarat.
Enter the movie’s loose equivalent of a femme fatale, Fala Chen (Dao Ming), who lends money to losers at exorbitant rates, but sees something in Doyle that, frankly, the rest of us don’t. The two spend a night together by the shore, and Doyle awakens with numbers penned on his palm: a test of character that raises his already bombastic redemption/self-immolation several notches higher. It’s hard to follow how much of what’s happening from here on is real, as Berger never really establishes how gravity works in this world.
We watch Doyle win his way back on top, but the roller coaster has gone off the rails by this point. One minute, he’s having a heart attack, the next he’s shoveling fistfuls of lobster into his face. It’s no fault of Farrell’s. The actor is fully committed to this anxious caricature of a man who doesn’t know when to call it quits, but Doyle’s psychology is all over the map. Compared with great portraits of people dominated by their gambling compulsion — “Bay of Angels,” “Bob le Flambeur,” “Mississippi Grind,” “The Cooler” — “Ballad of a Small Player” looks great, but lacks the fundamental human insight to make it a winner.
Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani was hospitalized after sustaining serious injuries in a New Hampshire car crash, but is “in good spirits and recovering tremendously,” according to spokesperson Michael Ragusa.
Per the official statement, Giuliani was involved in a motor vehicle accident yesterday evening, prior to which he was “flagged down” by a woman who was a victim of domestic violence. The former U.S. Associate Attorney General then “immediately rendered assistance” by calling 911 and remaining on the scene until authorities arrived to help.
“Following this, while traveling on the highway, Mayor Giuliani’s vehicle was struck from behind at high speed,” the statement read. “He was transported to a nearby trauma center, where he was diagnosed with a fractured thoracic vertebrae, multiple lacerations and contusions, as well as injuries to his left arm and lower leg.”
Ragusa indicated Giuliani’s business partner and medical provider arrived shortly to oversee his care, and no further updates are available at this time.
In a separate comment, Ragusa — who noted he was Giuliani’s head of security — added: “This was not a targeted attack. We ask everyone to respect Mayor Giuliani’s privacy and recovery, and refrain from spreading unfounded conspiracy theories.”
Speaking to the New York Post, Ragusa said the GOP official is expected to stay in the Manchester, N.H. hospital for two to three days and will be required to wear a brace for the broken spine.
The former advisor and personal lawyer to president Donald Trump has kept a relatively low profile over the years. Last year, he was disbarred in New York following a state appeals court ruling that he repeatedly made false statements about Trump’s 2020 election loss.