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      The Swag Must Go On: Hollywood’s Pandemic Oscar Campaign

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Awards SeasonOscar Nomination PredictionsOscars Dos and Don’tsOscars DiversityDirectors Guild NominationsBAFTA NominationsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Swag Must Go On: Hollywood’s Pandemic Oscar Campaign“There is a why-are-we-even-doing-this feeling,” one industry insider said of jockeying for nominations, to be announced on Monday.Billboards like this one in Los Angeles are recommending films for Oscars as usual, but Hollywood is feeling its way through other promotions.Credit…Tag Christof for The New York TimesBrooks Barnes and March 14, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETLOS ANGELES — As a potential Oscar nominee for film editing, William Goldenberg should be feeling dizzy right about now. So many tastemaker cocktail parties to attend. So many panel discussions to participate in.So much flesh to press.Instead, his tuxedo has been gathering dust. Mr. Goldenberg, who stitched together the Tom Hanks western “News of the World,” has participated in get-out-the-vote screenings on Zoom, and that’s about it. During afternoon walks with his dog, a handful of neighbors have called out from windows and driveways to say they liked the film. Mr. Goldenberg, an Oscar winner in 2013 for “Argo,” described those impromptu encounters as “really fun.”Such is life on Hollywood’s virtual awards scene, where the pandemic has vaporized the froth (Champagne toasts! Standing ovations! Red-carpet reunions!) and created an atmosphere more akin to a dirge. There is a dearth of buzz because people aren’t congregating. Screenings and voter-focused Q. and A. sessions have moved online, adding to existential worries about the future of cinema in the streaming age.And some film insiders are privately asking an uncomfortable question: How do you tastefully campaign for trophies when more than 1,000 Americans a day are still dying from the coronavirus?Oscar nominations will be announced on Monday, but almost none of the movies in the running have even played in theaters, with entire multiplex chains struggling to stay afloat. “In terms of campaigning, there is a why-are-we-even-doing-this feeling,” said Matthew Belloni, a former editor of The Hollywood Reporter and co-host of “The Business,” an entertainment industry podcast.Ever since Harvey Weinstein turned Oscar electioneering into a blood sport in the 1990s, the three-month period leading up to the Academy Awards has been a surreal time in the movie capital, with film distributors only ever seeming to push harder — and spend more — in pursuit of golden statuettes. In 2019, for instance, Netflix popped eyeballs by laying out an estimated $30 million to evangelize for “Roma,” a film that cost only $15 million to make.But it’s not as easy to influence voters and create awards momentum during a pandemic. Roughly 9,100 film professionals worldwide are eligible to vote for Oscars. All are members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which has nine pages of regulations that campaigners must follow. Film companies, for instance, “may not send a member more than one email and one hard-copy mailing” per week. Telephone lobbying is forbidden.The 93rd Academy Awards will take place on April 25, pushed back by two months because of the pandemic.Calling off the campaigns is not an option for Hollywood, where jockeying for awards has become an industry unto itself. Stars and their agents (and publicists) also pay keen attention to campaign parity: Hey, Netflix, if you are going to back up the Brink’s trucks to barnstorm for “Mank,” you’d better do it for us, too.“There are so many egos to serve,” said Sasha Stone, who runs AwardsDaily, an entertainment honors site.Contenders, wary of tone-deaf missteps, have been feeling their way.Sacha Baron Cohen, for one, has been openly mocking the process, even as he has participated in Zoom events to support “The Trial of the Chicago 7” (Netflix) and “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” (Amazon). Asked by phone how the virtual campaign trail was going, he quipped, “I imagine it’s much better than being on an actual one.”At least no one has pushed him to break into song, he said, recounting how, in 2013, he was asked to belt out a number from “Les Miserables” at a campaign stop. (He declined.)At times, however, Mr. Cohen has been willing to play along. In a skit on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” this month, he pretended to be moonlighting as a black-market vaccine procurer for desperate celebrities. “It seems like you should be focused on your Oscar campaign,” Mr. Kimmel said at one point. Mr. Cohen responded dryly, “This is my Oscar campaign.”There is business logic to the seasonal insanity. The spotlight generates interest from the news media, potentially increasing viewership. For streaming services like Amazon, Hulu, Apple TV+ and Netflix, awards bring legitimacy and a greater ability to compete for top filmmakers.“The business benefit is that we will win deals that we wouldn’t have otherwise,” Reed Hastings, Netflix’s chief executive, told analysts on a conference call last year.Because in-person events have been scuttled this time around, less money has been flowing into the Oscar race.“In a good year, the awards season represents 40 percent of our annual business,” said Toni Kilicoglu, the chief executive of Red Carpet Systems. “And it’s gone. Just gone.” Last year, Red Carpet Systems handled more than 125 awards-season events, including Golden Globes parties and the SAG Awards.Caterers, chauffeurs, florists and D.J.s have also suffered major losses. All after a year when more than 36,000 motion picture and sound-recording jobs were lost in Los Angeles County, according to a county report that was released last month.At the same time, studios and streaming services are still spending heavily on “for your consideration” spreads in trade publications. For $80,000 to $90,000, for instance, campaigners can cover Variety’s cover with voter-focused ads. Hulu recently promoted “The United States vs. Billie Holiday” that way. (“For your consideration in all categories including BEST PICTURE.”) Netflix and Amazon have given films like “Da 5 Bloods” and “One Night in Miami” similar treatment.“It has been a huge, really strong season for us,” said Sharon Waxman, the founder and chief executive of The Wrap, a Hollywood news site. The Wrap hosted 40 virtual awards-oriented screenings in January, underwritten by film companies.“We have another whole round on the way,” Ms. Waxman said.The price for events can be steep. A virtual panel discussion, hosted by Vanity Fair or The Hollywood Reporter, costs around $30,000, the same as last year, when receptions accompanied the events. Studios normally pay $15,000 to $25,000 for a table of eight at the Critics Choice Awards, an additional opportunity to solidify a film’s place in the awards conversation. This year, each guest was charged $5,000 for a “virtual seat,” which some saw as an exorbitant price for a square on a computer screen. (Joey Berlin, chief operating officer of the Critics Choice Association, said it was needed to produce a three-hour TV special and come out even.)With fewer people out on the roads, the billboards don’t appear to be hitting the eyes of as many Oscar voters this year.Credit…Tag Christof for The New York TimesAnd don’t forget the for-your-consideration billboards. One eight-block stretch of Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles has nine of them, with Netflix pushing “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and Warner Bros. extolling “Judas and the Black Messiah.”Those blocks are typically brimming with voters; Paramount Pictures is there, as is Raleigh Studios, where Netflix rents production space. With most people in Los Angeles still holed up at home, however, the thoroughfare was eerily quiet last Monday at 5:30 p.m. Actual crickets were chirping at Paramount’s closed Bronson Gate, which bore a sign reading, “Per government direction, access to the studio is now restricted.”Comical at best, absurd at worst?“The public must be so confused,” Ms. Stone said.None of the studios or streaming services angling for awards would comment for this article. Campaigning, while commonplace, remains a taboo subject. No film company wants to look as if it is trying to manipulate voters.It is easy to understand where they are coming from, though.“Like a political campaign, you have to crest at the right moment,” said Paul Hardart, director of the entertainment, media and technology program at New York University’s Stern School of Business. “You need the maximum exposure at that time. And that’s a hard thing to do. How do you become top of mind at the right time?”So the swag must go on.As part of its promotional effort for “Nomadland,” about an impoverished van dweller, Searchlight Pictures sent a bound copy of the screenplay to awards voters. The Hollywood press corps received “Nomadland” wine glasses, a “Nomadland” license plate, “Nomadland” keychains, a “Nomadland” T-shirt and a 5-by-2-foot “Nomadland” windshield sunshade.To celebrate the film’s Feb. 18 virtual premiere, Searchlight teamed with local small businesses to have a “curated concessions crate” delivered to the homes of invitees. It included artisanal beef jerky, wild berry jam, oranges, pears, dried apricots, dill pickle slices, banana bread, salami (“humanely raised”) and a canister of chocolates.Still, it is hard for publicists to know if such buzz-building efforts are working. They don’t know what academy members are talking about with one another because academy members aren’t talking to one another.“People are relying more on what the critics are saying than what their friends are saying, because people aren’t congregating,” Mr. Goldenberg, the “News of the World” editor, said.On the bright side, the pandemic has made it easier for studios and streaming services to attract voters to awards-oriented screenings, which are followed by Q. and A. sessions focused on various specialties: art design, editing, song composing.In years past, when attendance obstacles included Los Angeles traffic, filling the 468-seat Writers Guild Theater for such an event involved sending out more than 5,000 invitations. Similar events — held virtually — have recently had a higher turnout rate: 1,000 invitations might yield 200 attendees, most of whom even stick around for the post-screening discussion, organizers said.Campaigners have been generating interest with celebrity moderators. Oprah Winfrey interviewed Viola Davis (“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”) at one. Former President Barack Obama participated in a chat to support the A24/Apple documentary “Boys State.”Netflix paired Amanda Seyfried (“Mank”) with Cher. It may not sound like an intuitive coupling, but even if you weren’t terribly interested in “Mank,” wouldn’t you tune in just to get a peek into Cher’s living room?AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Subway Product Placement Makes It a Star of Korean TV

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyKorean TV’s Unlikely Star: Subway SandwichesThe sandwich chain’s aggressive use of product placement has made it a ubiquitous presence on the country’s television shows.Subway has appeared in at least 17 Korean shows, according to an informal tally by The New York Times.March 14, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETIn an episode of the Korean television show “The K2,” which takes place in a world of fugitives and bodyguards, a man is being treated with a defibrillator when he enters into a dream state. On the fringe of death, he recalls taking a past love to a Subway restaurant and to a park for a picnic, where he gently feeds her a sandwich and soft drink with the Subway logo facing the camera.The detail is not a narrative quirk. It is a result of South Korea’s broadcasting regulations and the aggressive use of product placement in the country’s shows by Subway, the American sandwich chain famous for its $5 foot-longs.“People joke, ‘If I had a drink every time Subway popped up, I’d be drunk before the first half is over,’” said Jae-Ha Kim, a journalist in Chicago who reviews Korean dramas. “Everyone here’s like, ‘I never got a Subway sandwich that looked that good, with that much meat.’”Product placement in TV shows is a reality the world over. But South Korea’s terrestrial stations are prevented from inserting commercial breaks during programming, meaning many Korean companies must be creative about getting their wares in front of viewers. As Korean dramas have become more popular with international audiences, global brands have pushed to be part of the action.And no company has pushed harder than Subway, which has grown into the world’s largest fast-food chain by store count since its founding in 1965 in Bridgeport, Conn.Colin Clark, the country director for Subway in South Korea, said product placements in popular dramas like “Descendants of the Sun” had a positive impact on global sales, specifically citing markets in China, Taiwan and Singapore.“I swear to you, it was a difference between night and day — before the product placement and after the product placement — the effect it had on the customers,” said Mr. Clark, who declined to provide specific sales figures.Subway’s country director in South Korea credits product placement in Korean dramas with a positive impact on global sales.Credit…Jean Chung for The New York TimesSubway did not provide a total of how many Korean dramas its products had appeared in, but an informal tally by The New York Times counted appearances on 17 shows. That can add up to a lot of people seeing the company’s cold cuts. Netflix, with over 203 million worldwide members, has become a leading portal for Korean dramas. When the highly anticipated Korean drama “Sweet Home” was released on Netflix in December, 22 million viewers watched the show in its first month.By sleekly presenting its products on Korean dramas as a harbinger of cool, Subway is also presenting a fresh image to American viewers who are increasingly watching the shows.Recently, the company has faced scrutiny of its bread, which an Irish court ruled is not bread, and its tuna, which a lawsuit claimed is “anything but tuna.”But on TV, pristinely clean Subway shops pop with bright colors serve as the setting for business meetings, social gossip and dates for beautiful couples. Instead of cookies and tea, elderly Korean TV characters keep freshly wrapped Subway sandwiches at the ready — you never can know when an unexpected guest will drop by and crave an Italian sub.On the popular Korean drama “Crash Landing on You,” North Korean soldiers and a South Korean businesswoman find common ground through Subway sandwiches.Product placement in Korean shows began in earnest in 2010, when South Korea’s stringent broadcasting laws eased restrictions on the practice in an effort to increase network revenues and promote Korean goods. In 2018, South Korea’s networks sold $114 million worth of product placement, up 15 percent from the previous year, according to Soobum Lee, a mass communication professor at Incheon National University.Shows collect an average of about $900,000 from product placements, although 2016’s “Descendants of the Sun” sold triple that amount, Mr. Lee said. It was also criticized by some viewers for excessive product placement.Other American companies, like Papa John’s Pizza, have used product placements in Korean dramas, but none are as ubiquitous as Subway.Ms. Kim said these kinds of shoehorned ads had become popular topics of discussion online, with some fans claiming they disrupt plots and threatening to stop watching altogether.She pointed to criticism of the show “Guardian: The Lonely and Great God” (also known as “Goblin”) and a scene where it’s inferred that the protagonist prevents a man from committing suicide; in an effort to cheer him up, the suicidal man is handed a Subway sandwich. Subway is also celebrated in death; in another episode, the Grim Reaper is shown enjoying a meal from the chain.“I know in the U.S. people are sick of it,” Ms. Kim said of the product placement. “We’ve had Subway, we know it’s not good. Stop trying to make it seem good.”While American viewers may roll their eyes at Subway’s being portrayed as haute cuisine, Seung-Chul Yoo, a communications professor at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, said product placement had been proved to work.Subway “tastes way better in South Korea,” said Seung-Chul Yoo, a communications professor at Ewha Womans University in Seoul.Credit…Jean Chung for The New York TimesWhen the actress Jun Ji-hyun wore red lipstick on the 2013 series “My Love From the Star,” similar products sold out in stores throughout Asia. Books featured on Korean dramas have become best sellers.Marja Vitti, who covers Korean television for the website Dramabeans, said some fans had watched dramas to spot new products from companies before they were released to the public.“I seem to notice a new Samsung feature in every drama,” Ms. Vitti said. “It’s like, ‘Oh, I guess we’re getting folding phones soon.’”Keeping up with trends, Subway has begun teasing new sandwiches on shows. In October, the company released its own mini-drama on YouTube, “Someway,” about a young woman who develops a crush on a Subway employee and regularly eats at his location to win his affection.Each episode begins with a character expressing fondness for a new sandwich variety, like one made with Altermeat, a meat substitute. The first episode of “Someway” has more than 1.3 million views.“There’s humor in the advertising we’re doing,” Subway’s Mr. Clark said. “As a brand, if you take yourself too seriously, you’re going to end up always getting into trouble.”Subway opened its first South Korea location in 1992. Now there are more than 430 Subways in the country, its second-largest footprint in Asia behind China.To continually appeal to its target demographic of 15- to 25-year-olds, Subway is also becoming more inventive with how it is presented. On the drama “Memories of the Alhambra,” gamers competing in an augmented reality game collected valuable swords and coins by going to Subway.In real life, newer restaurants with digital menu boards display the chain’s appearances on shows.Product placement “was a relatively cheap way to get us brand awareness,” said Mr. Clark, who has also overseen collaborations with the K-pop star Kang Daniel and a limited-edition Subway streetwear release with Fila. “It was something the other brands were doing, but weren’t really kind of owning that space the way Subway started doing.”Mr. Yoo said that in South Korea, Subway was generally viewed as a healthier option than burger chains, which added to its appeal. During the decade he lived in the United States he rarely ate at Subway, he said, but now he regularly enjoys its sandwiches in Seoul.“To be honest, it tastes way better in South Korea,” Mr. Yoo said.Brands like Subway will soon be able to do more traditional advertising on South Korean television. In January, the Korea Communications Commission announced plans to allow commercial breaks on terrestrial stations.Product placement is not likely to disappear, though.Mr. Clark said that terrestrial advertising was too expensive and that those stations didn’t reach Subway’s desired young customer base, who frequently stream episodes on their phones.Besides, the practice of product placement has already become a plot point.On the show “Because This Is My First Life,” the lead character dreams of becoming a television writer. When she lands a job in the industry, her assignment is to jam product placements into the scripts of popular Korean dramas.In Subway’s YouTube mini-drama, a young woman develops a crush on a Subway employee and regularly eats at his location to win his affection.Credit…Jean Chung for The New York TimesAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Harlan Coben, Suburban Dad With 75 Million Books in Print

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to ReadNew Books to Watch For This Month25 Book Review GreatsHow to Raise a ReaderListen: The Book Review PodcastAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHarlan Coben, Suburban Dad With 75 Million Books in PrintWith a 33rd novel on the way and deals with Netflix, Amazon and Apple, the prolific author writes in Ubers, at Stop & Shop and just about anywhere else he can.“Every book I write, I still say, each time, ‘This book sucks, and the one I did before was great. How did I lose it?’ And then five minutes later, I’m like, ‘This book is great!’” Harlan Coben said.Credit…Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesMarch 10, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETRIDGEWOOD, N.J. — The thriller writer Harlan Coben has some free advice for anyone who cares to ask: “If it produces pages: good. If it doesn’t produce pages: bad.”With 32 published books and an estimated 75 million copies in print worldwide, he has produced many pages during the course of his career. His 33rd novel, “Win,” will be published by Grand Central on Tuesday. He recently added streaming media to his portfolio in the form of a 14-project deal with Netflix.For all his success, Coben, 59, remains as unfussy as his favorite writing tip. A 6-foot-4 former college basketball player with a Bic’d head and an oeuvre full of kidnapping, murder and narrative twists, he is also a menschy suburban dad who likes to talk about his four children and dotes on his two shaggy Havanese, Winslow and Laszlo, who trail him around his New Jersey house like eager little mops.“You meet him, and he’s really tall and maybe a little intimidating,” said his eldest daughter, Charlotte Coben. “But I’ll walk down the stairs, and he’ll be lying on the floor with the dogs around him going, ‘Who’s the cutest dog in the world? Who’s a puppy? Who’s a puppy?’”“Win,” the latest from Harlan Coben, is out on March 16.Harlan Coben met his wife, Anne Armstrong-Coben, when they were starting power forwards on their respective teams at Amherst College. (“She was better than I was,” he said.) They celebrated the 39th anniversary of their first kiss on Feb. 10.They married in 1988, and about a decade later moved to an old Victorian in Ridgewood. The gray and white home is accented with friendly touches of royal blue, but from the curb it still looks like it could be the set for a vintage horror movie. (When you Google “Victorian houses,” one of the related questions supplied by the algorithm is: “Why are Victorian houses so creepy?”) The house was maybe a little “on the nose” as a place for a mystery writer to live, he said, but he and his wife bought it anyway and have lived there ever since.Because Armstrong-Coben is a pediatrician — today, she is also a senior associate dean for admissions at Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University — before the pandemic, she had a daily commute. Coben stayed home, so he drove the kids to school, picked them up and took them wherever they needed to be.And in between, he would write.“I’m not great at writing in the house, though I’m better now,” Coben said in an interview last month, nearing the one-year anniversary of the Covid-19 shutdowns in the United States. “I would take them off to whatever school, and then I would find a coffee shop or a library or any weird place. I keep changing places. Most writers have a set routine, a set place. My routine is to not have a routine.”While one of his sons was in high school, Coben spent six months writing at a Stop & Shop deli counter with a coffee stand next to it. “I came home smelling like olive loaf,” he said, but the pages were good. For his book “The Stranger,” he spent three weeks taking Ubers everywhere he went because he found he was writing well in the back seat. He finished the book that way.“I like to ride a horse until the horse collapses, and then I look for another horse,” he said.Siobhan Finneran and Kadiff Kirwan in “The Stranger,” a Netflix series based on Coben’s 2015 novel.Credit…NetflixCoben starts each book with an idea, rather than a character, and by the time he sits down to write, he already has the ending in his head, a habit that he said allows him to plot out better surprises for the reader. He takes about nine months to write a novel, with the ending often pouring out of him because he has imagined it for so long. He said he wrote the last 40 pages of “Win” in a day.“At the end of a book, I’m crazy,” he said. “I grow a playoff beard. I don’t shower.”“Win” is a new spin on an old franchise for Coben. The title character, Windsor Horne Lockwood III, has been the sidekick in Coben’s 11-part Myron Bolitar series since the first of those books was published in 1995.Coben describes Myron as “me with wish fulfillment.” They are both tall Jewish guys who play basketball, he said, but Myron is funnier, better on the court, smarter, stronger. The character of Win was originally modeled on Coben’s best friend from Amherst, a handsome blond who was a member of all the right golf clubs.In the new book, Win acts as a rich vigilante untangling a murder mystery that has ensnared his extended family. It is peppered with Coben’s customary bombshells and surprises, from dark secrets to a fearsome gangster who has lost his taste for revenge, and that page-turning special something that keeps readers up too late.Coben tries to stick to a schedule of publishing at least a book a year, a timetable he has kept up even as he’s added a new dimension to his working life: TV and streaming. In addition to Netflix, he has deals with Amazon Studios, MGM International and Apple.Coben in his New Jersey home. He tries to stick to publishing a book a year, a schedule he has maintained even as he’s struck streaming deals.Credit…Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesThe Netflix deal takes advantage of Coben’s international appeal. He sells more books abroad than in the United States, he said, and is one of the biggest contemporary writers in France, period, according to his agent.“I’m the Jerry Lewis of crime fiction,” he proclaimed from the sunroom at the back of his home, Winslow and Laszlo asleep in warm patches of light near his feet.His 2007 novel “The Woods” (as Coben described it, “20 years ago, four kids disappeared, and now one of them comes back”) became a show on Netflix Poland last year. “The Innocent,” from his 2005 book about a former inmate’s attempt to shed his past, was produced by Netflix Spain. “The Stranger,” from 2015, was produced by Netflix in the United Kingdom, as was “Stay Close,” from 2012, which is filming now.Coben is an executive producer on these shows, not a writer, but his daughter Charlotte has written for “The Stranger” and “Stay Close.” “Adding that professional aspect was a lot easier than I think either of us expected,” she said of working with her father on the Netflix shows. “He’s so supportive of my ideas, but not the bad ones. I appreciate that.”Larry Tanz, who oversees Netflix’s original programming for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said that most people who have achieved Coben’s level of success tend to surround themselves with associates and handlers who get things done. But Coben does the work himself, Tanz said. He comes up with the ideas, he watches the rough cuts of scenes, he joins the phone calls.“He’s very flexible, and you don’t see that a lot with creators of his stature,” Tanz said. “There’s quite a lot that gets added or modified from the original book, and Harlan is always like, ‘Great, I love it!’”“Stay Close” started filming in the north of England last month, Covid protections and all. Coben regularly jumps on calls to field questions from actors or the writers’ room, even as he works on his 34th novel. “It does not get easier,” he said from behind a black mask decorated with a pink, red and white XO pattern.“Every book I write, I still say, each time, ‘This book sucks, and the one I did before was great. How did I lose it?’ And then five minutes later, I’m like, ‘This book is great!’” he said. “All that insecurity goes on and on and on. I don’t think that’s ever going to go away. I think when that goes away, it’s probably time to stop.”Follow New York Times Books on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, sign up for our newsletter or our literary calendar. And listen to us on the Book Review podcast.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      'I Care a Lot': The Inspirations Behind the Movie

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMood Board‘Jackie Brown’ and Tangerine Dream: What ‘I Care a Lot’ Is Made OfThe writer-director J Blakeson behind the blade-sharp Netflix thriller shares the films, images and sounds that guided him in crafting the movie.Credit…Seacia Pavao/Netflix, via Associated PressMarch 9, 2021Updated 7:03 p.m. ETRosamund Pike recently earned a Golden Globe for her portrayal of the cunning, utterly amoral Marla Grayson in the Netflix thriller “I Care a Lot.” Marla shrewdly, confidently games the system to con elderly folks out of their savings — until her latest victim’s son (Peter Dinklage) starts paying close attention. It is a dagger of a performance that is of a piece with the writer-director J Blakeson’s film, a “slick, savage caper” dominated by bold visual and sonic choices, and humor as black as Marla’s outfits are bright.In a video call from his home in London, Blakeson discussed some of the photos, songs and movies that inspired him when he was working on “I Care a Lot.”‘Jackie Brown’ (1997) by Quentin TarantinoCredit…MiramaxCredit…Seacia Pavao/Netflix, via Associated PressLike Pike’s Marla, Pam Grier’s title character is a smart master of the double cross and steers this vastly entertaining crime movie. “This is a film that I talked a lot about with both my cinematographer [Doug Emmett] and my production designer [Michael Grasley],” Blakeson said. “It felt like a good touchstone, tonally, for where we might end up.”As a flight attendant, Jackie Brown spends quite a bit of the film in her uniform. “She has that blue suit that she wears and now and again you’ll see that just against this bright green wall,” Blakeson said. “The joy I get from that is similar to the joy I get from seeing some of those Godard films where you have people in bright yellow or bright red or bright blue against a neutral background, and they really pop out in this sort of Technicolor/Kodachrome palette. In ‘Jackie Brown,’ she has a job where she’s always kind of wearing the same clothes, but you get this iconic look that she carries through the whole movie. And I really wanted Marla to feel iconic and memorable as a character — a very cinematic character rather than a realist character.”Harry GruyaertCredit…Harry Gruyaert/Magnum PhotosCredit…NetflixA major influence on the visual language of “I Care a Lot” is this acclaimed Belgian photographer. “It’s street photography, more or less, but the real world is really colorful and really interestingly framed,” the director said. “There’s a photograph where the yellow lines are really bright and somebody’s walking down the street wearing a brightly colored coat. It looks orchestrated, but it’s not. Our world is colorful, we just don’t see it because we don’t stop and look at it very much.”Marla herself benefits from people not looking, which feeds her confidence. “She has big windows in her office and you can just see in; she knocks on the door of a blue house in a yellow suit,” Blakeson said. “She’s not hiding away in a dark corner — she’s doing it out in the open.”‘Rid of Me’ by PJ HarveyCredit…NetflixBlakeson was listening to music at the gym when the title track of PJ Harvey’s second album (1993) really hit him. “The beginning of the song is very quiet, so you’re turning it up to try to hear, and suddenly it gets to the chorus and it blows your head off,” he said. “I started thinking about somebody trying to kill Marla, and she’s not going to die. The section where she escapes from a car underwater was written in my head while I was listening to ‘Rid of Me.’ Just a basic idea of, ‘I’m not going to go away, I’m not going to be beaten.’ When she gets out of the water, she screams — it’s like singing along to ‘Rid of Me.’”Pike asked the music-loving director to put together a list of songs Marla would have listened to as a teenager, and he included a lot of 1990s rock titles from bands like Ministry. “She sent me a text saying, ‘I think I just got caught speeding because I was listening to your playlist,’” Blakeson said.‘Ace in the Hole’ by Billy WilderCredit…Paramount PicturesCredit…NetflixA longtime admirer of the director of “Double Indemnity” and “The Apartment,” Blakeson singled out his 1951 pitch-black film about a corrupt journalist, Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas), who exploits an accident in which a man is trapped in a cave-in, even prolonging the ordeal. “He was so mercenary, would do such disgustingly manipulative things for his own gain,” Blakeson said of Tatum. “His ambition is driving and he’s just a passenger.”This, of course, is very much like Marla, whose ruthlessness and fearlessness fully emerge in a confrontation with Dinklage’s character. “Usually in the movies that’s where the woman is weeping and begging for her life, but Marla sees it as an opportunity to give her elevator pitch to a wealthy person,” Blakeson said. “There’s a bit in ‘Ace in the Hole’ where he’s trying to reassure the guy underground, and he’s lying because he could actually just get him out really quickly. That sort of manipulation of people is really interesting to me.”Alex PragerCredit…Courtesy Alex Prager Studio and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul and London.Credit…NetflixAnother photographic influence was this American artist’s meticulously staged pictures. “There is a sense of the surreal, but it is dramatic and melodramatic,” Blakeson said. “There’s a forced absurdity about it that we wanted to bring to this [film] a little bit. Like when Jennifer [Dianne Wiest] goes into the care home with those muted colors — all these nurses offering their chocolates and smiling at her, that sort of seems odd and surreal and disconcerting. Also certain moments in the scene with Peter and Rosamund facing off in the quarry. The lighting is kind of blue and red and like giallo [films] or something. We really wanted to push it.”‘Love on a Real Train’ by Tangerine DreamCredit…Warner Bros.Credit…NetflixThis German electronic band started off as an underground purveyor of so-called cosmic rock before bursting into the mainstream with its dreamy, repetitive contributions to such 1980s movies as “Risky Business” — where this track appears.“‘Love on a Real Train’ makes me think of the future and the past at the same time,” Blakeson said. “You feel like there’s ambition in there: The world is going to be a better place somehow if we join the American dream.”That feeling is echoed, often with menacing undertones, in Marc Canham’s pulsating electronic score for “I Care a Lot.” When working on the film, Canham, the composer, and Blakeson brought up the minimalist composers Philip Glass and Steve Reich, early-1980s tracks like Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman,” and more recent abstract electronic work by Aphex Twin and Orbital, but Tangerine Dream was a constant. “There’s a very dreamlike quality, which is sort of nostalgic and yearning but also kind of cold and calculating, and that’s a film about capitalism and business,” Blakeson said of “Risky Business.”“Obviously, it’s a very different version of business than in ‘I Care a Lot,’” he added, laughing.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Making Chess Sing: ‘Queen’s Gambit’ to Be Adapted for the Stage

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMaking Chess Sing: ‘Queen’s Gambit’ to Be Adapted for the StageA creative team has not yet been set for the proposed show, which would be based on the 1983 novel that spawned the hit streaming series.Anya Taylor-Joy and Thomas Brodie-Sangster in the Netflix adaptation of the novel “The Queen’s Gambit.”Credit…via NetflixMarch 8, 2021, 11:02 a.m. ETBeth Harmon is making her next move.A production company led by a Disney heir is planning to adapt “The Queen’s Gambit” into a stage musical. The fictional story is about an orphan girl — that’s Harmon — who becomes a pill-popping prodigy in the overwhelmingly male world of chess.Level Forward, a company whose founders include Abigail Disney, a grandniece of Walt Disney, said on Monday that it has won the rights to adapt Walter Tevis’s 1983 novel, which has become newly noteworthy thanks to the enormous success of last year’s streaming series adaptation on Netflix.Level Forward is not yet announcing a creative team or any other details of the project.The company has a decidedly progressive bent (it describes itself as “an ecosystem of storytellers, business people and social change organizers”), and is a relatively recent but active player in the theater industry, co-producing four Broadway shows in 2019: “What the Constitution Means to Me,” “Slave Play,” “Jagged Little Pill” and a revival of “Oklahoma!”The game of chess, although seemingly unlikely fodder for song-and-dance, has inspired at least one other musical: In the 1980s, the lyricist Tim Rice collaborated with Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus of Abba to write “Chess,” a fictional account of a tournament between an American and a Soviet grandmaster. The show had a well-received score that remains an object of affection and fascination for some, but, despite repeated efforts at revisions, it has not found success onstage; it ran for two months on Broadway in 1988.“The Queen’s Gambit” project is just at the start of its developmental life, and it’s not yet clear when or where there might be a production.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      The Best Movies and TV Shows New to Netflix, Amazon and Stan in Australia in March

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Best Movies and TV Shows New to Netflix, Amazon and Stan in Australia in MarchOur streaming picks for March, including ‘Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell,’ ‘Bill & Ted Face the Music’ and ‘Coming 2 America’‘Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell’Credit…NetflixMarch 2, 2021, 12:05 a.m. ETEvery month, streaming services in Australia add a new batch of movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for March.New to NetflixMARCH 1‘Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell’, Director Emmett Malloy draws on a wealth of rare home videos and in-depth interviews in this revealing documentary, finding some fresh angles on rapper Christopher Wallace (a.k.a. Biggie Smalls and the Notorious B.I.G.). “Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell” devotes a lot of its running time to Wallace’s teenage years in Brooklyn, where he made money as a crack dealer while honing his musical style. Malloy doesn’t focus as much on Wallace’s tragic murder, except to frame his story as a case study in wasted potential.MARCH 3‘Moxie’Unlike the typical Netflix adaptation of a Young Adult novel, the movie “Moxie” isn’t so much about relationships and romance (though there’s plenty of both) as it is about high school girls standing up for themselves. Based on Jennifer Mathieu’s book, “Moxie” stars Amy Poehler (who also directed) as the divorced mother of Vivian (Hadley Robinson), who discovers her mom used to be a feminist punk rocker in the ’90s. Frustrated with her sexist male peers, Vivian channels her mother’s spirit and starts an anonymously authored ‘zine in hopes of starting a revolution.MARCH 5‘City of Ghosts’In this odd and charming children’s show, a band of young Angelenos investigate paranormal activity around the city by interviewing friendly ghosts and the people they haunt. The episodes aren’t exactly plot-driven; they’re more like mini documentaries, teaching kids about the history and residents of L.A.’s neighborhoods. Animation fans should note that the series was created by Elizabeth Ito, who previously worked on “Phineas and Ferb” and “Adventure Time.” Here she’s come up with something visually striking, combining simplified characters with photographed backgrounds.MARCH 12‘The One’ Season 1In our era of advanced genetic testing, DNA can reveal everything from people’s ancestry to their criminal culpability. But can it connect soul mates? That’s the question posed by the John Marrs novel “The One,” now adapted by the writer-producer Howard Overman into a TV series. The show features multiple interwoven story lines, following both the troubles faced by the CEO of a DNA-matched dating service and the problems her customers encounter as they get to know their scientifically determined true loves.MARCH 17‘Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal’The documentary filmmaker Chris Smith should be well-known to Netflix subscribers as the director of “Fyre,” a fascinating expose of what went wrong at an infamous music festival. Smith now turns his attention to another tale of hubris and privilege with “Operation Varsity Blues,” an examination of the 2019 scandal in which several wealthy Americans were caught trying to buy their kids’ way into elite colleges. The documentary details the nuts and bolts of a scheme that involved expensive tutors, cheating on exams and bribing university staff.‘The Irregulars’Credit…NetflixMARCH 26‘The Irregulars’Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mythology gets a radical reimagining in this crime series, which focuses on the gang of streetwise youngsters known as “the Baker Street Irregulars.” Created by Tom Bidwell, “The Irregulars” imagines an irreverent version of the Holmes saga in which the detective stays in a constant drugged-out fog while his disreputable assistants do all the actual mystery-solving. Bidwell also adds some supernatural elements to the story.Also arriving: “Murder Among the Mormons” (March 3), “Pacific Rim: The Black” (March 4), “Sentinelle” (March 5), “Bombay Rose” (March 8), “The Houseboat” (March 9), “Dealer” (March 10), “Last Chance U: Basketball” (March 10), “Marriage or Mortgage” (March 10), “Paper Lives” (March 12), “Yes Day” (March 12) “The Lost Pirate Kingdom” (March 15), “Zero Chill” (March 15), “RebellComedy: Straight Outta the Zoo” (March 16), ‘Waffles + Mochi” (March 16), “Under Suspicion: Uncovering the Wesphael Case” (March 17), “Nate Bargatze: The Greatest Average American” (March 18), “Country Comfort” (March 19), “Sky Rojo” (March 19), “Navillera” (March 22), “Who Killed Sara?” (March 24), “Bad Trip” (March 26), “Nailed It!: Double Trouble” (March 26), “A Week Away” (March 26).New to Stan‘Bill & Ted Face the Music’Credit…StanMARCH 2‘My First Summer’Katie Found wrote and directed this film about the bond between two teenage girls, who find each other right when they’re on the precipice of emotional maturity and caught between love and friendship. The accomplished young Australian actresses Markella Kavenagh and Maiah Stewardson play Claudia and Grace, who try to keep their relationship hidden away from anxious adults and their prying questions for as long as possible. With its striking visual style and its rich performances, “My First Summer” captures the beautiful fragility of adolescent romance.MARCH 4‘Shirley’Elisabeth Moss plays the reclusive author Shirley Jackson in the disturbing and moving period drama “Shirley.” The story is told largely from the perspective of a young faculty wife named Rose (Odessa Young), who becomes an aide and confidant to the acerbic and depressive Jackson, slowly becoming overwhelmed by the writer’s cynicism. The director Josephine Decker and the screenwriter Sarah Gubbins adapt a Susan Scarf Merrell novel, which is mostly fictional yet heavily influenced by Jackson’s life and work — capturing her sour, soulful take on human weakness.MARCH 9‘Bill & Ted Face the Music’The long-awaited third movie in the “Bill & Ted” series re-teams Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter — for the first time since 1991 — as the fun-loving, dimwitted, time-traveling best buds Theodore Logan and William Preston. In “Face the Music,” the boys have grown into middle-aged men, but still believe they’ll one day change the world through rock ’n’ roll. When they hear reality itself will be destroyed if they don’t get their act together immediately, Bill and Ted (and their daughters, Thea and Billie) have another adventure across the timeline, with the help of some of humankind’s greatest musicians.MARCH 10‘She Dies Tomorrow’Written and directed by Amy Seimetz, this arty horror film takes an unusual approach to a post-apocalyptic story, dramatizing the eerie premonitions that herald the end of everything. Kate Lyn Shell plays an ordinary woman who becomes convinced she’s living through her last day on Earth. Her strange behavior proves infectious, passing from friend to friend, leaving them either devastated, agitated or oddly calm. “She Dies Tomorrow” has the quality of a dream, but it’s a disturbingly realistic one.‘The Legend of Baron To’a’Credit…AmazonMARCH 14‘The Legend of Baron To’a’In the energetic action-comedy “The Legend of Baron To’a,” Uli Latukefu plays a Tongan New Zealander named Fritz who found his fortune in Australia but has returned home to defend his family’s legacy. The movie’s title refers to Fritz’s father: a former pro wrestler who also served as his neighborhood’s unofficial protector. When gangsters start bullying the locals, Fritz has to learn the fundamentals of combat in order to finish the job his dad started.MARCH 19‘Save Me Too’In the sequel to the thrilling crime drama “Save Me,” the British actor Lennie James returns to a role he wrote for himself, playing a luckless lad named Nelly who has a habit of being accused of crimes he didn’t commit. “Save Me Too” picks up about a year after the events of the first series and sees Nelly tying up some loose ends from old mysteries, while also trying to prove that he’s innocent of a murder. Part procedural and part character sketch, James digs deep into the soul of a stubborn individualist.MARCH 29‘City on a Hill’ Season 2The first season of this Boston-set crime series told a complete story, about an ambitious attorney (Aldis Hodge) and a corrupt FBI agent (Kevin Bacon), reluctantly working together and navigating the choppy waters of local politics to take down a local gang in the early 1990s. In season two the two lawmen are back to being rivals, but their paths cross again when trouble erupts at a drug-plagued housing project. Though the show takes place nearly 30 years ago, the issues it raises — about policing, race relations and institutional rot — remain timely.Also arriving: “The Affair” Season 5 (March 1),“The Handmaid’s Tale” Season 3 (March 1), “Sick of It” Season 2 (March 2),“Secret Safari: Into the Wild” (March 3), “Bethany Hamilton: Unstoppable” (March 4), “A Murder of Crows” (March 4),“Manhunt: Deadly Games” (March 5), “Bloods” (March 11), “Cryptid” (March 11), “Black Hands” Season 1 (March 17), “Close to the Enemy” Season 1 (March 18), “The Disappearance” (March 18), “Safe House” Seasons 1 & 2 (March 25), “Between Black and Blue” (March 26), “Outback” (March 29).New to Amazon‘Coming 2 America’Credit…AmazonMARCH 5‘Coming 2 America’Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall reprise their roles from the hit 1988 comedy “Coming to America” in this sequel, which picks up the story of an African ruler and his trusty aide decades later. Like the original, “Coming 2 America” is filled with comic situations that allow Murphy and Hall to play multiple roles that riff on Black culture from the perspective of insiders and outsiders. The film also features appearances by some very funny comics — like Leslie Jones and Tracy Morgan — who have followed in the footsteps of Murphy and Hall.MARCH 26‘Invincible’The superhero cartoon “Invincible” looks charmingly retro, like something that would’ve aired on TV in the 1990s. But the series has a much more adult vibe than the likes of “X-Men” and “Superman.” Based on a long-running comic book written by Robert Kirkman (who also cocreated “The Walking Dead”), “Invincible” has Steven Yeun voicing a famous superhero’s teenage son, who’s enlisted into a series of fights to save the world almost as soon as he starts developing superpowers of his own. Like the comic, the show is fast-paced, colorful and clever — and also incredibly violent and shockingly bloody.Also arriving: “Honest Thief” (March 12), “Making Their Mark” (March 12), “Words on Bathroom Walls” (March 19), “La Templanza (The Vineyard)” (March 26).AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Biggie Smalls, the Human Behind the Legend

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s NotebookBiggie Smalls, the Human Behind the LegendThe new Netflix documentary “Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell” captures the rapper before fame, and history, got a hold of him.“Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell” is mainly a prehistory of the Notorious B.I.G.Credit…NetflixMarch 1, 2021, 6:56 p.m. ETThere are only a few known photographs of the Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur standing side by side, but just one that’s truly canonical. It’s from 1993. Biggie is on the left in a checkered headband, posed tough, toothpick jutting out of his mouth. Pac is on the right, in a THUG LIFE beanie and a black leather vest over a skull-and-bones T-shirt, extending both middle fingers. They look a little standoffish to each other, two people taking a photo they’re not quite interested in sharing with the other.Photos are incomplete snapshots, of course. And Biggie and Tupac were friends before they became rivals. That’s clear from footage of that same day — from their friend era — which appears late in the new Netflix documentary “Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell.” They’re sitting at a table together, and Tupac is rapping for Biggie, an optimal audience. Both of them are lighthearted, two young rising stars finding a little respite with each other. As for the photo, a pose is just that.Memory — history — is what’s left standing when all the rough edges are sandpapered down. And in the case of the Notorious B.I.G. — who was one of the most commercially successful and creatively impactful rappers of the 1990s, and whose 1997 murder was a wound to the genre that remains unsolved — history has perhaps been unreasonably flattening. Almost two and a half decades later, the Biggie Smalls narrative (music aside) often feels reduced to a few image touchstones, or even just facial expressions, to say nothing of the generations-later conflation of the Biggie and Tupac story lines into one, especially given that their musical careers told very different tales about hip-hop at that time.The story that “Biggie” wants to tell is about how Christopher Wallace became Biggie Smalls, not how Biggie Smalls changed the world.Credit…NetflixThis fuzzying of the truth is a problem addressed head-on by “Biggie,” which is, in the main, a prehistory of the Notorious B.I.G. Maybe half of the film is about his music career, and of that, not much at all is devoted to his commercial prime. This makes the film anti-mythological, but also far more robust.The first footage you see in “Biggie” is of the rapper, then in his early 20s, shaving and joking about trying to hold tight to looking like his 18-year-old self. A little bit later, he’s goofily singing Jodeci’s “Freek’n You,” a slithery classic of ’90s R&B. For so long, Biggie has been enshrined as a legend, a deity — it unclenches your chest a bit to see him depicted as human.The story that “Biggie” — directed by Emmett Malloy, and reliant upon ample ’90s videotape shot by Biggie’s childhood friend Damion (D-Roc) Butler — wants to tell is about how Christopher Wallace became Biggie Smalls, not how Biggie Smalls changed the world. It delves into the relationship between his parents: Voletta Wallace, who has become a public face of mourning and grief, and the father he barely knew. It recounts childhood time spent in Jamaica, where his mother was born and where much of his family still resides, leaving largely unspoken the way that Jamaican toasting and melody slipped into his rapping.The film explores Biggie’s relationship with Donald Harrison, a saxophonist who lived on the rapper’s Brooklyn block and exposed him to art beyond the limits of their neighborhood.Credit…NetflixIt spends time with Donald Harrison, a saxophonist who played with Art Blakey, McCoy Tyner and Lena Horne, and lived on Biggie’s Brooklyn block, and who had a mentor relationship with a teenage Biggie — playing him jazz albums, taking him to the Museum of Modern Art, encouraging him to think beyond his neighborhood and to treat his rapping as an artistic practice.Harrison’s mentoring, though, is only one part of Biggie’s childhood education. The drug bazaar on Fulton Street, just around the corner from the stoop his mother rarely let him stray from, beckoned him and his friends. Eventually, he was selling crack, and the operation he and his crew ran took in a few thousand dollars a week, according to an old interview excerpted in the film. One time, he left crack out to dry in his bedroom, and his mother, thinking it was old mashed potatoes, threw it out.Before he was offered a pathway into the music business by Sean Combs, then Puff Daddy, selling drugs was Biggie’s most likely route. And for a while, the two careers commingled. Even Easy Mo Bee, who produced six songs on “Ready to Die,” describes driving onto Fulton to see if Biggie was on the block, offering to take him for rides as a strategy for disentangling him from his street business. But in 1992, Biggie’s childhood friend and running buddy Roland (Olie) Young was killed by his uncle, Carl (I-God) Bazemore, in a street dispute, and afterward, Biggie turned hard toward music.By that time, Biggie had already appeared in the Source magazine’s Unsigned Hype column. He’d also participated in a Brooklyn corner freestyle battle (that was fortuitously videotaped) that helped connect him with the D.J. 50 Grand, who he would record his demo with.Biggie with 50 Grand, the D.J. who worked with the rapper on his demo.Credit…NetflixBut even though his career was a spectacular comet ride, most of the parts of the film about that robust success focus more on how he treated his friends, and brought them along for the journey (under the Junior M.A.F.I.A. moniker). At one point, Biggie and a cameraman bust in on Lil’ Cease in a hotel room, undressed, and Biggie immediately turns into a big brother, turning to the camera lens and asking for privacy for his friend. Occasionally there is commentary from Combs, who is almost literally shining, a visual representation of the luxurious life that hip-hop would provide an entree to, which Biggie rapped about as fantasy but wouldn’t live to see.Most of the meaningful footage here is happenstance — a brutal trip on a tour bus without air conditioning or casual chatter in a room at Le Montrose, the Los Angeles hotel, during his final time in California. (The helicopter footage of Biggie’s funeral procession is also deeply moving, framing his death, and life, as a part of the city’s very architecture.)In the March 1997 San Francisco radio chat that’s presented as his final interview, Biggie is already sensing the way in which history will be selective in how it retells a deeply complicated narrative. Asked about his troubles with Tupac — who by then had died, but who had become a vicious antagonist before — Biggie doesn’t sound or look even slightly resentful. Instead, he’s measured, hoping to unravel a tricky knot before it becomes fixed. “Take a chance to know the person before you judge a person — that goes with anybody, not just me,” he tells the interviewer. “Try to get the facts first.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Emma Corrin, as Princess Diana, wins her first Golden Globe for ‘The Crown.’

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Awards SeasonGolden Globes: What HappenedMoments and AnalysisGlobes WinnersGolden Globes ReviewAdvertisementContinue reading the main story‘Nomadland,’ ‘Borat Subsequent Moviefilm’ and ‘The Crown’ Led a Remote Golden GlobesEmma Corrin, as Princess Diana, wins her first Golden Globe for ‘The Crown.’Feb. 28, 2021, 9:20 p.m. ETFeb. 28, 2021, 9:20 p.m. ETEmma Corrin accepts her award for best performance by an actress in a television series, drama.Credit…NBCEmma Corrin’s uncanny and sympathetic portrayal of Princess Diana on Season 4 of Netflix’s “The Crown” — aptly nicknamed “The Diana Season” — earned her a Golden Globe for best performance by an actress in a television series, drama. This was her first Golden Globe nomination.After thanking the H.F.P.A., and the show’s cast and crew in her acceptance speech, she thanked the princess. “Most of all, thank you so much to Diana,” said Corrin, 25, who originated the role and plays the princess from the ages of 16 to 28. “You have taught me compassion and empathy beyond any measure that I could ever imagine, and on behalf of everyone who remembers you so fondly and passionately in our hearts, thank you.”[embedded content]When she was cast in the role, Corrin was a recent graduate of Cambridge University and a relatively unknown actress. On Sunday night, she beat an impressive roster of nominees including her co-star Olivia Colman, who plays Queen Elizabeth II, and Jodie Comer from “Killing Eve.”Corrin — who played opposite Josh O’Connor, who returned in Season 4 as Charles, Prince of Wales — dazzled viewers by capturing many of the princess’s mannerisms, like those just-so head tilts, and by tackling some of Diana’s biggest struggles, including her battle with an eating disorder, the disintegration of her marriage and the birth of her sons. But embodying Diana, who died in 1997 at age 36, an international superstar who had been covered relentlessly in the tabloids, was hugely demanding. And so, Corrin decided to make the depiction her own.“It’s very difficult; it’s a lot to take on and a lot of pressure, especially as we get close to when it comes out,” she told The New York Times last year. “I never went into this thinking I wanted to embody or mimic her,” she said. “I think of her more as a character, and this is my interpretation of her.”Next season, the role of Diana will be taken over by Elizabeth Debicki, who will most likely portray the princess’s final years.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More