While we could never find Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) annoying, we might not want to be in the room with him while watching Game of Thrones. The actor recently spoke with Extra, divulging he'd started watching the show - with its penultimate episode. He admits to being confused and also a bit overenthusiastic about the number of stuntmen he's acquainted with who work on the series. "I was there like, 'I know that guy, and I know that guy who's on fire now, and I know him.' So I'm a very annoying person to watch it with." You can view Extra's full interview below.
While the actor may be a really, really latecomer to the
Game of Thrones phenomenon, he is a dedicated fan of Cartoon Network Adult Swim's
Rick and Morty, and showrunner Dan Harmon has offered Radcliffe an opportunity to get involved,
Newsweek reports. While Radcliffe wasn't offered an entire episode of his own with which to go wild like Kanye West (we're really happy for him - we're gonna let him finish, but Daniel Radcliffe would have one of the best
Rick and Morty episodes of all time), Harmon said the actor was welcome to drop by the writer's room any time to
"try out a few characters."
Radcliffe was also looking sharp Wednesday as he hit the red carpet at the 2019 WarnerMedia Upfronts at the Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York City. You can check out a few photos of the actor below, courtesy of Just Jared.
We all know and love her as the actress behind Ginny Weasley, but Bonnie Wright is also emerging as a talent behind the camera as well. Wright has directed several short films and music videos, and Vents reports her most recent video project was for a new song by London-based singer-songwriter Maguire, "Fallible." The track will be included on Maguire's upcoming debut EP, set for a June release, and you can watch Wright's video below.
James Phelps (Fred Weasley) is inviting you to join him on a biking excursion through the French Alps to help raise funds for Windsor's Thames Hospice.
The Windsor Observer says more experienced riders can join Phelps and pro cyclists in Tour de France–style climbs through the Alps, with a gentler Matterhorn course available for less-skilled riders. Phelps also extended a special invitation to
Harry Potter fans.
I've known Thames Hospice for several years and have always admired the incredible support they offer their patients and families. When I heard about the new hospice build, I was delighted to do my bit to support it. If you're into cycling, 'Harry Potter', or both, we invite you to join us for a stunning long weekend in the Alps.
Riders can register for the Big Mountain Challenge here.
We've been keeping you informed about the upcoming Judy Garland biopic starring Renée Zellweger and Sir Michael Gambon (Albus Dumbledore), and the film's first trailer has now been released. You can check out Zellweger's incredible transformation into Garland below. Jany Temime, the costume designer for the last six Potter films, also did the costume work for Judy.
Dame Emma Thompson (Sybill Trelawney) was a hit last week on the
Mother's Day episode of
Saturday Night Live. Among her hilarious sketches was one that saw her impersonate a fellow
Harry Potter alumnus:
Dame Maggie Smith (Minerva McGonagall).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrWNDlxGSVg
Thompson appeared on
The Tonight Show prior to her SNL debut, divulging to host Jimmy Fallon that she'd tried her hand before at both sketch and stand-up comedy, but neither had worked out.
"At the time, a lot of my material was about herpes and Margaret Thatcher, who were both very big at the time and kind of similar." Thompson also chatted about her upcoming release
Late Night, telling Fallon that costar Mindy Kaling's script is
"one of the best scripts I've ever read." In a clip shown from the movie, Thompson's character is told that Fallon had washed a sheepdog with one of the guests on his show, so naturally, Fallon invited the actress to bring that bit of fiction to life.
In other Thompson news, we let you know last week that the actress's name was in the conversation for a role in Disney's upcoming Cruella de Vil backstory flick, Cruella, and Variety said this week that Thompson is officially "in early talks" for the role! Her new series, meanwhile, Years and Years, which premiered earlier this week on BBC in the United Kingdom and will arrive in the United States June 24 on HBO, is already attracting attention. Check out the trailer below, released Thursday by HBO, and you'll understand why. Years and Years also features Jessica Hynes (voice of Mafalda Hopkirk) and Rory Kinnear (Barry Fairbrother in The Casual Vacancy).
It's beginning to feel as if some wicked, cat-stroking villain somewhere has it in for the newest film in the
James Bond franchise. The movie, currently operating under the working title
Bond 25, has already experienced several delays due to directorial shake-ups and issues with the script, and now,
Variety reports filming has been suspended due to an injury to star Daniel Craig.
Craig - who is back for the final time as Bond while Ralph Fiennes (Lord Voldemort) reprises his role as M - reportedly injured his ankle while sprinting during one of his final scenes and was flown to the United States for X-rays. Shooting on the film was intended to move to Pinewood Studios in London at the end of this week, but that session was canceled. Craig has had a rough go of performing his own stunts, having knocked out two teeth during a scene for his first Bond film, Casino Royale, sliced off the tip of a finger on Quantum of Solace, and injured his knee while filming 2015's Spectre. Clearly, being 007 is not all it's shaken (not stirred) up to be.
MuggleNet informed you in February about David Thewlis's (Remus Lupin) romantic dramedy Eternal Beauty, in which he stars with Sally Hawkins, and we're excited to announce that the Hollywood Reporter says the film has been acquired at Cannes by Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions. The multi-territory deal includes the US, the UK, Canada, and several other countries. We'll let you know as soon as a premiere date is released!
Timothy Spall's (Peter Pettigrew) Summer of Rockets is coming up May 22 on BBC2, and the Daily Mail released a look at the actor in his role as Lord Arthur Wallington, establishment member and leader of a right-wing plot, this week.
Spall also spoke with the Sun, making very clear that he does not romanticize the man behind his character - Terry Perkins - or any of the other men involved in the actual crime that inspired The Hatton Garden Heist. The Hatton Garden Heist debuts Monday on ITV.
They are not lovable rogues. They are criminals. And as we all know, criminality requires ruthlessness. That's a given part of the chosen profession. It ruined the lives of ordinary people and small businesses. This drama shows the consequences. Criminals don't care about victims.
Jason Isaacs (Lucius Malfoy) was spotted this week by the Hollywood Reporter attending the premiere of horror-comedy The Dead Don't Die at the Cannes Film Festival.
While Isaacs isn't among the cast of that picture - which stars the likes of Bill Murray, Danny Glover, and Steve Buscemi - one of his recent projects is being shopped at Cannes, Variety reports. Skyfire - China's first big-budget disaster movie, about people at a tropical resort who find themselves caught up in a volcanic eruption - is hoping to find a buyer. Isaacs plays Jack Harris in the film.
Isaacs is additionally among several wizarding world alumni lending their vocal talents to The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, and Dark Crystal Podcast posted a selection of first-look images from the series to Twitter this week. You can see that post below. Age of Resistance also features Helena Bonham Carter (Bellatrix Lestrange), Ralph Ineson (Amycus Carrow), Toby Jones (voice of Dobby), Ólafur Darri Ólafsson (Skender, Fantastic Beasts), and Natalie Dormer (narrator of the Harry Potter: A History of Magic audiobook).
What's On Stage says Nat Tena (Nymphadora Tonks) has been added to the cast of an upcoming 25th-anniversary production of Europe. Tena will portray Katia in David Greig's play about the forces of globalization following the civil wars in the Balkans. The production will run June 20–August 10 at the Donmar Warehouse in London, and you can purchase tickets here.
Helena Bonham Carter (Bellatrix Lestrange) was one of several celebrities who turned out May 9 to the Roundhouse in London to support Save the Children UK at its Centenary Gala. The event helps raise funds for the organization, which works on behalf of children in dangerous and unhealthy situations.
The BAFTA TV Awards were certainly a big event for winners Fiona Shaw (Petunia Dursley) and Jessica Hynes (voice of Mafalda Hopkirk), but the star-studded event was also attended by other wizarding world alumni, including Helen McCrory (Narcissa Malfoy). The Daily Mail shared photos of McCrory as she stunned in a black ruffled Alberta Ferretti gown alongside husband Damian Lewis (Homeland). You can check out a few photos in the gallery below.
We're also eagerly awaiting the release of Season 5 of Peaky Blinders, in which McCrory portrays Aunt Polly. The new season is expected to arrive this summer, and to whet your appetite, we've got a little glimpse of Polly being her typical badass self.
Meanwhile, you can also catch Shaw in a guest-starring role in Season 2 of Fleabag, which was released to Amazon Prime today. Digital Spy says Shaw's appearance as a "slightly sexually explicit therapist" was unexpected and the result of a "delightful" lunch the actress had with creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who also created Shaw's hit series Killing Eve.
[Phoebe] was spinning plates in that she was acting in it, she was rewriting it while I was sitting in that chair. She was just changing things and acting in it. It was the most astonishing morning for just this tiny sequence.
Brendan Gleeson's (Alastor Moody) new film, Frankie, will soon make its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. Gleeson plays Jimmy, and you can check out the film's first trailer below.
The long-awaited sequel to 2014's
Maleficent,
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, has finally released its first teaser, and it's a good one. Angelina Jolie is back as the horned harpy with a heart of gold, although her heart appears to have blackened a bit around the edges again since we last left her.
Imelda Staunton (Dolores Umbridge) is returning to her role as fairy Knotgrass in
Mistress of Evil, which also features
Jenn Murray (Chastity Barebone,
Fantastic Beasts) in an unnamed role. The film is set for an October 18 premiere, and you can view the trailer and new film posters below.
Staunton took a trip back to school last week - and didn't torture a single student! - when her former secondary school, La Sainte Union, in Highgate, England, named its new drama studio after her. The actress was humbled and proud of the school's addition of a drama studio. You can view a few photos in the gallery below.
This new studio shows the school's commitment towards drama - and it is commitment you need to have in your life, whether it is for drama, music, science, or whatever subject you choose to study. I am really jealous of this wonderful new studio; we used to have to rehearse in the dining hall when I was here. Science classes have their own labs, and it is only right drama also has its own dedicated space.
Staunton and her husband, Jim Carter, were also featured recently in an article in the Telegraph that focuses on the couple's love of gardening. "It makes no demands on you, a garden," Staunton said. "If you just sit, it will heal, or ease, or calm. It just allows you to be." You can read the full interview, which features tips on how gardening can help strengthen a marriage, here, and check out a photo of the pair in their garden in the gallery below. Staunton and Carter are members of several environmental charities, including Greenfingers, which creates hospice gardens for children with terminal illnesses and will be exhibiting a garden designed by Kate Gould at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show May 21–25 in London.
Just two weeks left until the debut of David Tennant (Barty Crouch Jr.) and Miranda Richardson's (Rita Skeeter) new Amazon Prime show, Good Omens, and the AV Club further piqued our interest this week with a few exclusive stills. Tennant's hair alone is worth tuning in for.
Warwick Davis (Griphook/Filius Flitwick) stressed the importance of hearkening back to the ironically more social days that preceded social media during a visit to the seventh annual Yaxley Festival last week, Peterborough Today reported. The family event featured a variety of activities and was particularly meaningful for Davis, who lives in the area.
What’s great about the festival is you see the community come together in this day and age of social media. It was great to see families together enjoying themselves. There are not a lot of activities for young kids and adults. There was a lot of awareness raised about charities working locally. People are then aware they can contribute to them or they are there if they need them in the future. That’s really great.
The popular film 24 Hour Party People, which, the Digital Fix says, painted an "exhilarating portrait of the '80s music scene" as experienced by Factory Records founder Tony Wilson, will be released for the first time on Blu-ray next month. The 2002 movie stars Shirley Henderson (Moaning Myrtle) as Lindsay, and the Blu-ray will feature a whopping four-and-a-half hours of bonus material. You can preorder your copy here.
John Cleese (Nearly Headless Nick) is continuing to crack us up as he gallivants about on his current tour - the dates of which you can find on his Twitter feed - and he sat down this week with Bloomberg to reflect on his career and approach to writing comedy. Enjoy!
And now, for something completely different: Cleese was also recently involved in a documentary adaptation of Aaron James's New York Times bestseller Assholes: A Theory, which was recently screened at the Hot Docs Film Festival in Toronto, Canada, and will be screened at the end of this month and early June at Doc Edge in Auckland, New Zealand. You can read Cleese's interview about the project with Fast Company here. In more unfortunate Cleese news, ABC's Speechless, in which the actor appeared in Season 3 as Minnie Driver's character's father, has been canceled. To clarify: It has ceased to be. It is an ex-sitcom. Okay, we're done.
The East Anglian Times reports Bill Nighy (Rufus Scrimgeour) joined fashion designer and artist Nicole Farhi recently at the opening of her new sculpture show, "Heads and Hands," at Gainsborough's House in Sudbury, England. Farhi created numerous "portraits" of famous artists' and celebrities' heads and hands, including Nighy, Helena Bonham Carter, and Dame Judi Dench. The show will run through June 16, and you can check out a few photos below.
Nighy also appeared last week on ITV's This Morning and publicly admitted to being a smuggler... of Marmite.
I got busted at Heathrow for a big jar. I was trying to impress someone, I had a big jar. He took it out and said, 'You can't have that.' I said, 'Come on, it's Marmite,' and they were all laughing. I said, 'Well, can't I decant into something smaller?' and they said, 'There's no decanting of Marmite this side of security.' I said, 'Show me that written down!' and they were all having a laugh, but they still took my Marmite. [...] That's the second time. I've been busted twice for Marmite smuggling.
You can view the video of Nighy - who should totally be Marmite's next spokesperson - here.
Adrian Rawlins (James Potter) has been busy of late with HBO series Chernobyl, which also stars Ralph Ineson (Amycus Carrow), but the Scarborough News says he'll be returning soon to his role as the artistic director of the East Riding Theatre in Beverley, England, to direct a production of Chippy. Rawlins describes Chippy as "a play based on Macbeth set in an East Riding chip shop." It's scheduled to run June 19--29, and you can purchase tickets here.
We let you know last month about Simon McBurney's (voice of Kreacher) upcoming seven-part series, The Loudest Voice, which stars Russell Crowe as Fox News founder Roger Ailes. The series is set to premiere June 30, and Showtime released an official trailer last week, which you can check out below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAnJJHrq0Ws
McBurney will also be directing a production of
The Cherry Orchard at Internationaal Theater Amsterdam,
BroadwayWorld.com reports.
Internationaal Theater Amsterdam is a true ensemble, and I feel that [Anton] Chekhov's pieces call for an ensemble. I love the tragicomic sensitivity of this piece, which is not only very Chekhov, you can find it across the board in Russian literature. I know 'The Cherry Orchard' on its own as a text, but I have never seen a convincing production in theatre.
The Cherry Orchard will run June 13–23, and you can purchase tickets here.
New life was breathed into Nick Moran's (Scabior) intent to direct a movie based on powerhouse 1990s music label Creation Records when Danny Boyle (Trainspotting) came on board to executive produce, as we told you in April, and Rolling Stone says the project is now on track and expected to begin filming in London this summer. Creation Stories will focus on the life and musical discoveries of label founder Alan McGee, Moran says.
Alan and his label reinvented the music industry. Certainly in the UK at the time of the early '90s, record sales were on the wane and the music industry was in the grip of a sterile corporate cloud. Creation rekindled the indie scene into a mass movement that became the most explosive period in Britain's cultural relevance since the '60s. All this from an office run on nothing but recreational drug use and anarchy.
Henry Lloyd-Hughes (Roger Davies), as we let you know in April, has joined the cast of Killing Eve as the peculiar and intriguing Aaron Peel. You can see a still of Lloyd-Hughes in his role below and read an interview with the actor by IndieWire here.
Peter Mullan (Corban Yaxley) and the cast of the 1999 Scottish cult classic he created and directed, Orphans, were reunited recently in a documentary for BBC Scotland titled Orphans Reunited. The Evening Times says that in the documentary, Mullan takes viewers on a tour of the area in which the movie was set, the south side of Glasgow, where he grew up. Mullan says the film's characters were based on the four different stages of mourning he experienced following the loss of his mother. For more information on the documentary, visit BBC Scotland's website.
The third and final season of Mum, in which Mullan stars opposite Lesley Manville, premiered this week on BBC2, and viewers are already expressing how much they'll miss the realistic sitcom's take on middle-aged people falling in love. The Sun says that the tranquil feeling of the series was somewhat foreign to Mullan when he began filming Mum back in 2016. "I kept asking, 'When do I get to cut her head off?'" he joked. "That's normally what I do. I'm lost without bloodshed."
BroadwayWorld has a few first-look images from the upcoming London production of The Firm, starring Ray Fearon (voice of Firenze) as Gus. The play tells the story of a notorious criminal gang reunited after 12 years at a London pub and is running at Hampstead Downstairs through June 8. You can purchase tickets here.
Alfonso Cuarón (director of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) will need to add a wing to his home to house all the awards his Netflix film Roma has amassed so far in 2019, and he added a few more May 12 at the sixth annual Premios Platino, an Iberoamerican awards ceremony. Variety reports Roma dominated the competition, winning for direction, cinematography, screenplay, sound, and Best Iberoamerican Film.
To kick off Mental Health Awareness Week, a #MentalHealthMinute was broadcast simultaneously across UK radio stations Monday, featuring short messages from the likes of Prince William, Katy Perry, and Stephen Fry (narrator of the UK Harry Potter audiobooks). "There are people out there desperate to be heard, and you can help by taking the time to listen, even if you're a prince," Fry said. You can hear the full broadcast below.
William Ross, who adapted and conducted John Williams' themes for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, was honored Wednesday in Beverly Hills, California, at the 35th Annual BMI Film, TV & Visual Media Awards with a BMI Classic Contribution Award. Ross, right, is pictured below with BMI Icon winner Terence Blanchard.
