Amazon Prime means these six games are free
From now until Prime Day kicks off on 8 July, Prime Gaming members can add six fan-favourite PC games to their Amazon account. Those are Saints Row IV, Star Wars: Rebellion, Saints Row 2, Toem, Dungeon of the Endless Definitive Edition and Tomb Raider I-III Remastered.
Amazon's picks are a selection of both old and new games, but they include some real must-plays and lesser-known hits you might have missed. Any free games you add to your account are yours to keep forever, even if you cancel your Prime subscription.
Alongside the huge Prime Day haul, members can also claim July's standard line-up of free titles. Those include Boxes: Lost Fragments Paquerette Down the Bunburrows, Endless Space 2, Besiege: The Splintered Sea DLC, Venba, I Love Finding Wild Friends and Heroes of Loot.
What is Prime Gaming?
Prime Gaming is included with your Amazon Prime subscription and is one of the most underrated perks of membership. It features a rotating selection of free downloadable PC games each month, which are yours to keep forever, even after you've cancelled your subscription.
You also get a free subscription to a Twitch channel of your choice every month, as well as access to a library of free in-game content and cosmetics for popular online games like Pokémon Go, Grand Theft Auto Online and World of Warcraft.
An Amazon Prime subscription costs £8.99 per month or £95 when you sign up for a year. As well as unlocking a bunch of free games with Prime Gaming, you get benefits like unlimited one-day and same-day delivery on eligible orders, access to Prime Video for streaming movies and TV shows, and exclusive deals and discounts.
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Daily Mail
21 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Eva Longoria, Shakira and Christie Brinkley share emotional reaction to catastrophic Texas floods
Eva Longoria, Shakira and Christie Brinkley are among the Hollywood stars sharing their devastated reactions to the catastrophic Texas floods that have left at least 67 dead. On Sunday, Longoria, who was born in was born and raised in the Lone Star State, took to Instagram to share her heartbreak for all the victims and families in Kerr County. The Desperate Housewives star, 50, revealed her heart was 'heavy' for 'all the flood victims in Texas.' '[It's] unbelievable, the flooding, and the camp that was affected. I know so many families that have been going to those camps for years,' she said in an emotional video. 'So sending my prayers to those families and communities. I'm so far away, so it feels harder when you're not close to do more.' The mother-of-one detailed how it has also been challenging for her to watch the ICE raids 'from afar' as she films her new series, Eva Longoria: Searching for France. Longoria went on to praise those 'fighting the good fight' after leaving a church and saying a prayer for all the immigrants out there. 'It's a heavy world right now. And I hope everyone is taking care of their mental health and dipping in and out of the news. You can't just stay in that cycle... it'll make you crazy but, at the same time, staying aware and on top of it,' she told her followers. Colombian superstar Shakira revealed she would be donating a portion of the proceeds at her San Antonio stop to a non-profit organization. 'Dear San Antonio, Our hearts and prayers are with those affected by the flood in Central Texas,' she wrote on her Instagram Story. We are donating a portion of tonight's show proceeds to Catholic Charities of San Antonio, who are providing disaster relief to the families impacted.' She continued: 'If you would like to join me in donating, please click on the link below. Your help is important and appreciated.' Stars like Christie Brinkley, Maren Morris and Katherine Schwarzenegger shared resources for how to help, including donating to the Red Cross, World Central Kitchen, Mercy Chefs and Kerrville Pets Alive!, a group working to rescue pets lost in the flood and reunite them with their families. Miranda Lambert, who founded the nonprofit organization MuttNation Foundation to help rescue animals and shelters, jumped on Instagram to urge fans to support her group's fundraiser. 'Hey y'all, I just wanna jump on here and say how devastated we are to hear about the floods in South and Central Texas. I can't come up with any words for the loss that everybody's suffering,' she said. The country star said she and MuttNation Foundation were working on finding ways to help pet owners in this disaster and get more information on the situation. 'Keep sending prayers and I'll keep you posted,' she said. Brooklyn Decker encouraged those living in Austin, Texas that want to provide flood relief support to Kerville, Ingram, Hunt and the surrounding areas, to drop off 'canned food, bottled water, clothing (all sizes), hygiene products, trash bags, brooms, shovels, basic cleaning and emergency supplies' to Commodore Perry Estate. Joanna Gaines shared that her heart goes out to 'everyone affected by the flooding along Guadalupe River, especially those still waiting for news about missing loved ones.' 'To the families, first responders, and entire communities impacted: we're praying for you, and are with you,' she concluded. As of Sunday morning, 67 had been confirmed dead, and 11 girls and one counselor from Camp Mystic are missing. Of the dead, 46 are adults and 21 are children, local officials said. The tragic fatalities occurred after the Guadalupe River surged nearly 30 feet above its normal height, devastating a children's summer camp and ripping apart families.
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Reboots and remakes: why is Hollywood stuck on repeat?
On Monday, the director of the new Jurassic Park movie explained his aim for the seventh film in the series. Innovation it was not. Rather, said Gareth Edwards, it was karaoke. To prepare, he binged Steven Spielberg clips on repeat, hoping to accomplish genre cloning. 'I was trying,' he told BBC's Front Row, 'to make it feel nostalgic. The goal was that it should feel like Universal Studios went into their vaults and found a reel of film, brushed the dust off and it said: Jurassic World: Rebirth. 'And they're like: 'What's this? We don't remember doing this!' I wanted it to feel like a film they'd discovered from the early 90s.' Time travellers from that period to the present day would be forgiven for wondering whether their DeLorean was on the blink. Not only are Oasis and Pulp soundtracking the summer with hits from Britpop's golden years, but film-makers, too, are – to paraphrase another mid-90s cultural touchstone, the Ferrero Rocher ads – really spoiling us. In a fortnight, we return to the scene of the crime of 1997's ripe slasher sensation I Know What You Did Last Summer for a new movie boasting exactly the same title, as well as key cast Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr – whose very names act as a Smash Hits madeleine. The 2025 film continues the events of 1998's I Still Know What You Did Last Summer but – purists take note – ignores 2006's now non-canonical I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer. Mind your adverbs. August brings The Naked Gun, with Liam Neeson slipping into the Swiss army shoes vacated by Leslie Nielsen's bumbling police lieutenant in 1994, as well as a remake of 1989's The War of the Roses, this time called The Roses, with Olivia Colman locked in marital battle with Benedict Cumberbatch. Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan return for a very belated sequel to their 2003 bodyswap comedy Freakier Friday, while currently marauding through cinemas is 28 Years Later, Danny Boyle's reanimation of the zombie horror series he started in 2002. Still hanging on strong across multiplexes, meanwhile, is Final Destination: Bloodlines, the first new instalment for 14 years of the franchise that's been confirming people's worst fears about tanning beds, log trucks and acupuncture since the turn of the century. Also on offer during the holidays are a rebooted Superman, a new Fantastic Four movie and assorted anniversary reissues including The Goonies (which turns 40), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (20), Human Traffic (26), Sense and Sensibility (30) and Spinal Tap (41). Hollywood, it appears, is stuck on repeat, sucked with an ever-more deafening gurgle into a death cycle of creative bankruptcy desperately presented as comfort food. That this packaging strategy works is thanks in part to the dire state of the world beyond the cinema; audiences are really eager for escape. 'It makes me think of that Gil Scott Heron quote,' says the veteran film journalist Steven Gaydos. ''Americans want to go back as far as they can, even if it turns out to be only last week. Not to face now or the future, but to face backwards'.' That they seem to be spending a lot of time in 1994 is because those people making decisions in Hollywood, and commissioning others to execute them, came of age around this time (Edwards turns 50 next weekend). They are therefore particularly keen to relive a more innocent pre-smartphone era – as well as introduce it to their offspring. Cinemas actively encouraging this sort of indulgence is not new. George Lucas's breakthrough, American Graffiti (1973), harked fruitfully back to his own youth, just as Back to the Future (1985) – which Spielberg executive produced – lucratively teleported parents to their mid-50s heyday. The difference is that those movies were developed in an entertainment ecosystem with sufficient ambition and capacity to support them. Both films advanced cinema accordingly. There is no way Back to the Future would be made today, said its writer, Bob Gale, on Thursday. Not just because of the colossal cost and reams of theoretical physics. 'We'd go into the studio and they'd say, what's the deal with this relationship between Marty and Doc? They'd start interpreting paedophilia or something. There would be a lot of things they have problems with.' Small wonder studios today are so risk-adverse. This is an industry in freefall, clutching at the surest things in sight as it scrabbles to regain footing after Covid – which closed about 8,000 screens worldwide, half of them in the US – and the nearly six-month strikes of 2023 and subsequent dearth of content. Both these moments proved huge opportunities for streamers to stake a yet greater claim on the marketplace. Says Robert Mitchell, director of theatrical insights at Gower Street Analytics, playing safe is simply good business sense: 'Look at this year's biggest hits to date. [Chinese animation] Ne Zha 2, Lilo & Stitch, A Minecraft Movie. All are either sequels or based on a massive IP.' As Andrew Cripps, head of theatrical distribution at Disney, acknowledged at the CineEurope convention last month, the top 15 US releases of last year – including Inside Out 2, Deadpool & Wolverine, Moana 2 and Despicable Me 4 – clearly indicated 'the market reality of what consumers are looking for. On the other hand, you can't generate new franchises without launching original content.' And here comes the looming problem, as easy to spot and hard to dispatch as a hillside of zombies. Barrels can only be scraped so far – and many feel they long ago spotted the bottom. Original concepts strong enough to spawn spin-offs are not only costly, they are rare as hen's teeth. In the 15 top-grossing films of all time, only two non-sequels make the list: Titanic and Avatar, both by James Cameron and both today unthinkable to finance ('Everybody knows the ship sinks!' 'A paraplegic marine mind controls a CGI blue alien …'). Studios are in a bind, says Charles Gant of Screen International. 'They need fresh stories and characters to launch franchises and create new sequel opportunities – but landing that plane can be hard. It doesn't look like Elio is going to be creating much financial value for Disney, or yielding any sequels.' The long-awaited new Pixar innovation, Elio defied friendly reviews last month to be a hideous commercial bust, so far recouping just half of its (conservatively estimated) $150m production budget. Other high-end attempts to break new ground have suffered similar fates: Black Bag, Steven Soderbergh's glossy spy thriller with Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender, made back just two-thirds of its costs. Mickey 17, Bong Joon-ho's sci-fi cloning thriller with Robert Pattinson, has done slightly better, but given its production budget was $120m, there's little chance it will end up in the black. These 'original disappointments from big name directors', says Mitchell, meant 'the mood music was: it's going to be even harder to tell original stories on a big or even medium budget'. The past tense is important. Since that pair of flops, new hope has glimmered: Brad Pitt's motor-racing drama F1: The Movie finished last weekend's box office race in top position, earning back $167m of its $300m budget. And don't forget that in April, Sinners, a supernatural horror directed by Ryan Coogler and starring Michael B Jordan, took $365m from a $90m budget. These numbers, says Mitchell, 'demonstrate a clear desire among audiences for an original story'. Others are less upbeat. 'Describing either of those films as original is a red herring,' says Gaydos. Sinners was marketed as the latest reunion for the team behind Black Panther and Rocky spin-offs Creed. It was also, thinks Gaydos, 'highly derivative of From Dusk Till Dawn, and of Crossroads' – the 1986 Robert Johnson drama, not the 80s soap set outside Birmingham. F1 was bankrolled in part by a big, pre-existing brand, while its fittings stick rigidly to the template of a 90s action film, just as new release Heads of State is an unapologetic throwback to the White House thrillers of the same period, which generally starred Michael Douglas and half a ton of shoulder pads. Both F1 and Sinners, says Gaydos, have more in common with the latest Mission: Impossible and Avengers movies than they have differences. All are 'huge budget diversions: amusement-park procedurals, gigantic and colourful and built like video games. 'Whether the IP is fresh, reworked or recycled, they all conform to the same formula. The big change is in the indie and mid-market sector. Truly original, provocative mainstream drama which deals in recognisable human dilemmas no longer has a place in cinemas.' Instead, it has shifted to TV, where the success of Adolescence and Baby Reindeer, as well as boundary-pushing series such as The White Lotus, Severance and Black Mirror, seems to tell a more edifying story to that being offered by the big screen. At home, at least, dramatic engagement with the real world appears to be exactly what people want. 'Once upon a time,' says Gaydos, 'Adolescence would have been a hit movie. But imagine pitching it today: 'It's about the penal system and the desensitisation of kids.' The sound of crickets would be deafening.' Insulated from the brutality of weekly box office returns, their business model propped up by subscriptions rather than ticket stubs, streamers have scope to stretch the remit. Jesse Armstrong's urgent tech-bros satire Mountainhead was to all intents and purposes a film, but it was never in cinemas: backed and distributed by HBO and Sky and out just in time for contention at the Emmys – not the Oscars. Hoping there's a lesson for Hollywood in such successes is academic, says Gaydos. No notes will be taken, 'because there is nothing called film culture left in Hollywood'. This may be overegging the wake. They may not be megabudget, but there are still a handful of genuinely original movies in cinemas this summer to divert those weary of spandex and explosions. Celine Song's Materialists – a romcom starring Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans – leads the UK counter-programming push, as does Bring Her Back, a horror starring Sally Hawkins that has had early audiences alternately in raptures and retching. Eddington, Ari Aster's Covid western, also stars Pascal, alongside Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone, and tackles social media misinformation in an age of self-appointed messiahs. Some critics at Cannes were unconvinced, but studio A24 is nonetheless proceeding with a costly campaign – and no one could accuse the film of failing to offer audiences something chewier than the usual slop. Plus, sequels do not always result in inferior films – just ask The Godfather Part II director Francis Ford Coppola. 'I don't think it's fair to call all franchise films creatively bankrupt,' says Gant. '28 Years Later did feel something different from the two previous films, and I was ready to re-enter that world. I had a good time watching it – a better time than watching Black Bag or Mickey 17.' There may even be some fun to be found in the tumbleweed; the title of the forthcoming Spinal Tap sequel is Spinal Tap II: The End Continues. Twenty years ago, Gaydos said he believed the new economics of the blockbuster meant Hollywood was as close as it had ever come to being in the packaged goods industry. Nothing, he says, has happened since to reverse that assessment – lending a strange validity to Donald Trump's perception of the industry, as outlined in his tariffs plan. By the end of the weekend, Jurassic World: Rebirth will have been exported to 82 territories and taken about $260m. At the cinema, anyway. Once you add the Nintendo games and Lego kits, official 'power devour' T-Rex toys and dad-targeted skin survival kits, special-edition 'big gulp' Slurpee cups and limited-release peanut butter M&Ms, the numbers start to really snowball. The future of cinema isn't just the sequels. It's the Slurpees, stupid. This article was amended on 6 July 2025. It is Dakota Johnson, not Dakota Fanning who stars in Materialists.
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘We're told to be polite and small and dainty. But that's not me!': Megan Stalter on starring in Lena Dunham's new romcom, Too Much
When Lena Dunham messaged, Megan Stalter lost it. 'Like d'uhh,' Stalter is explaining – delighting, really. 'Who wouldn't? I was at home: this really bad apartment in Laurel Canyon [in the Hollywood Hills]. The area is haunted, and it was actually a really scary building, and nothing ever got fixed because apparently in the lease I signed they didn't have to repair anything! I don't actually live there now …' Stalter, 34, has a tendency to wander off on tangents. So Dunham? 'OK yes, so we were just about to start filming Hacks again.' The wildly popular, 48-times-Emmy-nominated HBO comedy in which Stalter plays nepo-baby Kayla, a chaotic and kind-hearted talent agent, her total-commitment-to-the-bit characterisation making her a breakout star. 'And there Lena was in my DMs.' Stalter opened the message, which said: 'I have a project I want to talk to you about.' 'That's when I lost my mind,' she adds. 'Panic set in.' 'I'm not,' Stalter clarifies, 'a celebrity person. I don't fangirl over people – but with Lena I do. She's a creative genius; I'm such a Girls nut, and always felt so connected to her.' In its six seasons, Dunham's HBO hit transformed television through its unflinching portrayal of millennial women. Eight years since the final episode broadcast, the Dunham buzz hasn't abated. Breathe, Stalter had to remind herself. 'OK, calm down, diva – 'project' is vague. It might be a commercial, an event, a task, maybe.' Not that Stalter was fussy. 'Anything she wanted me to do, I would obviously say yes.' Turns out, Dunham didn't need errands running. 'And thank God, honestly.' Dunham was in the early stages of developing Too Much, her semi-autobiographical Netflix 10-parter, which is released on 10 July. Following Jessica (Stalter), an American thirtysomething workaholic who relocates from New York to England in the deepest throes of heartbreak, the show plays out as an offbeat romcom, with Will Sharpe (The White Lotus, Flowers) playing the indie-musician love interest. Stalter's attempts at regional British accents, and a cocaine-fuelled dance break from Richard E Grant, are some of the show's unexpected highlights. Loosely, it's based on Dunham's own experiences: after splitting from music producer Jack Antonoff, she met her now husband, British musician Luis Felber, in London. They wrote Too Much together. 'Jessica is going through a really horrible breakup,' Stalter says, 'and this person she was with previously made her feel she's 'too much', and not in a good way. She falls for someone new pretty quickly who does accept who she is and, when she's surrounded by people who appreciate her, realises she's yes, a little bit much, in a great way.' In the show, Dunham plays Jessica's older sister. 'When Lena and I got on Zoom we just clicked. She said right away that if Girls was about sex and discovering who you are, Too Much is a story of love and discovering acceptance. For Lena, like Jessica, finding someone who accepted her the way she is encourages her to embrace herself.' Pre-Hacks, Dunham had been introduced to Stalter by Andrew Scott, who drops by for a cameo in this series. 'From the moment I conceived the character,' Dunham says, 'even before I began collaborating with Luis, it was always Meg. I had a feeling that she could be both intensely funny and do something darker and more vulnerable.' Pre-Hacks, Stalter built a cult social media following, regularly posting clips of kooky skits and characters (small-town butter shop during Pride month; Woman flirts at a bowling alley) that caught Dunham's eye. 'Meg is never looking down on the characters she plays,' she says, 'no matter how delusional or silly they may seem. She truly falls in love with, and goes to bat for, whoever she's playing – and it's contagious.' It's late March when I first meet Stalter, in the lobby of a central London hotel. Shooting on Too Much has wrapped, but it's early stages in the months-long slog of a press and promo schedule a Dunham x Netflix collab demands. She's late, 15 minutes maybe, although she's staying right upstairs. 'I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry!' she gushes, all smiles, dropping her teddy bear phone case on the table. 'We were working on the ponytail for the day and got carried away! Almond latte?' Both Stalter and Dunham found bringing Jessica to life an intimate undertaking. Long before shooting started, they spoke extensively about the material and Dunham's own experiences. Script by script, they'd dissect. 'Lena had a small writers' room where they'd bounce ideas together,' says Stalter, 'then after that, it would come to me, and I would have lots of questions: her previous bad relationship; her family; how she was feeling.' Dunham remembers these well. 'Meg is a very intuitive performer,' she tells me, 'not method, but she has her method. She asks specific questions that may seem random or left-of-centre and then it always finds its way into the work.' Stalter made lists of how she and Jessica were similar, then differed. 'So, like, in common: we are both very anxious people. Not in common: she's lost her dad, I haven't. Jessica is straight and I'm a mostly lesbian bisexual. But I have dated men. And Jessica might not date women, but sexuality is a spectrum … Me and Lena both agreed that if she'd explored a little, maaaaaybe she would have dated women.' On set, over four months in London, this proximity continued. 'If it felt like an emotional scene,' says Stalter, 'I'd want a moment just with her, so I felt more connected.' There's a post-coital scene where Jessica's sexual self-confidence falters. 'Lena and I talked a lot about how, after a breakup, no matter how hot or beautiful you feel and are, you can be so beaten down that insecurity hits.' The pair spoke extensively, too, about the show's title, with its heap of gendered connotations. Is 'you're too much' a phrase she's had lobbed in her direction? Stalter furrows her brow. 'Excuse me, sir, no; people see me as calm, cool and collected.' Three seconds of deadpan, before the laughter erupts. 'I am definitely seen as too much. Any loud woman will be told she's too much at some point. We are made to feel small or too big, sometimes both at the same time, unless we're neatly in a perfect box. A lot of women experience it: me and Lena were both told we were too much, but then decided we like that about ourselves. I think it's so sexy to be loud and funny, weird and strange, silly and goofy. It was at school that I realised those traits are often welcomed in boys, but not girls.' At the Stalter family home in Cleveland, Ohio, this just wasn't the case. 'I'm a loud woman from a loud family: 20 cousins, mostly women, a few males thrown in, I guess.' Dad's a tattoo artist, and mum a nurse. 'I have two sisters, a brother and lots of aunts. These are funny, opinionated, not-very-quiet women with big personalities – and that was totally normal. So it was, umm, interesting to then be in the real world where women are made to feel they can't be those things.' She scrunches her face, lugging her voice up an octave: 'We're told to be polite and small and dainty.' Pitch back down. 'But that's not me, girl.' Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion She found this first at school. 'I was a cheerleader, but like, a nerdy one. Not popular. Teachers made me feel small and not smart. I found myself shrinking into myself, getting quiet and nervous, except in drama and performance. I'd never get good parts; people thought I was bad, but I could be myself at least.' Through her late teens, Stalter tried all sorts at community college. Teaching wasn't a good fit. Neither was nursing. 'Listen, nurses are incredible,' she says, 'but I'm not supposed to be a nurse. I pass out at blood. Emotionally I was into it, but practically, it was not working.' Nothing was sticking. 'OK so I also love Jesus,' she continues, no change in pace. 'I'm a real God-girlie. If I wasn't going to do something I loved, I wanted to do something that helped God. I tried some mission work, and stuff with my church.' She attended a Pentecostal church from a young age, and aged 20 spent six months with a Christian youth organisation in South America. She gave Bible school a go, too. 'I tried for several years, but I really missed performing. I thought: 'If this is in me, maybe it's my service. Maybe God wants me to do what I really want to do, and share it with the world.'' Stalter joined a local improv class. 'I thought I was so good,' she says, 'but everyone there for some reason kept telling me I wasn't? Later on, a friend told me I was a bit like Michael Scott in The Office: walking on and messing things up. But I always felt deluded in my talent and how special I was, which really kept me going until I actually got good.' Aged 24, she moved to Chicago to pursue standup. 'And I performed for years there. It went OK, but not much was happening for me.' Everything changed when she started posting – an art for which Stalter has a knack – launching a spoof self-titled online talkshow. 'I was on Instagram live every night with a new theme. I'd set up weird things: 'Crazy trip to Paris night'; be a travel agent and pretend to book things. That is when it all took off.' In 2019, she moved to New York, and the gigs kept coming: Hacks, indie film Cora Bora, sell-out standup shows and now Too Much. In June, we speak again over Zoom, Stalter now back at home in Los Angeles in a thankfully ghost-free residence, with her girlfriend. 'Oh, and our two kitties, and a terrier who is really attached to me. Too attached, really. The separation anxiety is a problem.' It's intense, Los Angeles right now: anti-ICE protests and the general bad Trump vibes percolating. 'It's really upsetting,' Stalter says, 'devastating and scary.' She's been to some marches. 'People have to keep coming together to protest and support one another. We're fighting for each other.' Throwing herself into Too Much has been a much-welcomed escape. It's no affront to Stalter's range to see a through-line from her characters: from those early viral creations all the way to Jessica. Whether self-invented for standup and socials, or brought to life from scripts on screen, they tend to be big, bold, slightly berserk. 'What,' she's grinning, 'am I not as crazy as you expected? I like to play people who are nervous-confident: women who have a level of self-love but are falling apart and pretend they're not. I do a lot of standup with a persona I've built, too, where the character – me – pretends to be really talented but the show crumbles.' Stalter sees some of herself in these characters. 'I'm wild in that way,' she says, 'although I'm not horrible, I'm actually very nice. But I feel so confident on stage acting this crazy bitch. Something inside of me is over the top. When I'm at my most relaxed and comfortable, like on stage, it also comes out of me.' Playing characters who often move through the world unconcerned by judgment has made Stalter reflect. 'There's something really freeing about playing someone like that,' she believes. 'In real life, I'm such a people pleaser. I struggle with wanting everyone to be happy all the time, for them to be happy with me, scared of upsetting someone or having someone be mad at me. It's my greatest fear: like I'm going to die if someone is mad at me. It's something I'm working on in therapy.' Might that be a tricky trait in her industry? Dunham told New York magazine in 2024 she refrained from casting herself as the lead in part because she 'was just not up for having my body dissected again'. Too Much is Stalter's first leading TV role, and it's a big-hitter: there will be reviews, comparisons to Girls, so much more exposure. Stalter feigns a look of panic at the prospect. 'Wouldn't it be so funny if I passed out?' She smacks her hand on the table, leaving her latte wobbling. Another smile. She shrugs off the pressure. 'I'm a woman comedian who puts stuff on the internet, babe,' comes her reply, 'and I'm not skinny. So I've already had the meanest stuff said about me. Any woman posting – yes, skinny women, too – will get it. So I'm not worried when someone says something unkind, or doesn't like me in a show, honestly. I literally have a viral clip that's me reading out the worst, craziest abuse: 'Fat white comedian does crazy bomb set.'' She pauses for a moment. 'It's only in my personal life that I'm a massive people pleaser. If strangers say they hate Too Much, or me, whatever: I think I'm hot, I love how I look, and I love my comedy. I am who I am, and can't be anything but my loud self.' Too Much is on Netflix from 20 July.
