Latest news with #AStreetcarNamedDesire
Buzz Feed
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
Pedro Pascal Talks Childhood Crushes, Harrison Ford
Good news if you've ever wondered whether or not you're Pedro Pascal's type, because the actor just revealed his childhood crushes. The 50-year-old has generally kept his romantic life out of the public eye, previously telling Vanity Fair, 'I'm very unprivate in my private life. I just know that personal relationships are such a complex thing to navigate even without having this enormous lens on them." In an interview with the publication Fotogramas to promote the movie The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Pedro said of his initial crushes, "Oh gosh, it started early. It started with Olivia Newton-John." Continuing the catsuit theme, he said, "Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman." Then, "Indiana Jones, all the way to The Last Crusade. All the way to now. Sort of like a double Harrison Ford, isn't it? Han Solo." When his costar, Vannessa Kirby, said Marlon Brando, Pedro affirmed, "Marlon Brando appears on screen in A Streetcar Named Desire and you can't stay seated." As for Vanessa's crushes, she said Jack from Titanic, Baby Spice, and "my ski instructor." Pedro actually wore an Indiana Jones Easter Egg to the Fantastic Four premiere, specifically referencing The Temple of Doom, leading some to suggest that perhaps Pedro might be the next incarnation of Indy. Well, a good day to be Harrison Ford!
Daily Mirror
12-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
EastEnders' Michelle Collins takes break from soap to play blonde bombshell
EXCLUSIVE: Michelle Collins is taking a break from EastEnders to tread the boards as Marilyn Monroe in a one-woman show at the Edinburgh Festival next month As EastEnders' villain Cindy Beale, Michelle Collins is used to dropping bombshells… but now she's set to tread the boards as the ultimate blonde bombshell, Marilyn Monroe. Michelle is taking a break from the BBC soap to star in a one-woman show at the Edinburgh Festival next month. And the dark comedy Motorhome Marilyn has been a labour of love for Michelle, 63. She said: 'It's been years in the making so I can't wait to get it out there but I'm very nervous. "Think Shirley Valentine meets the Coen Brothers meets Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire. It's one of the most terrifying things I've done. My lines are in my handbag everywhere I go.' The play, inspired by Michelle's real-life encounter with a woman known as Motorhome Marilyn, is about a Monroe-obsessed actress' heartbreaking failure to live up to the icon's fame and beauty. Michelle has big dreams for the show. She said: 'I'm hoping it will eventually go on TV.' But she assures 'Enders fans that she will be back on Albert Square after a month-long break. Michelle joined EastEnders as scheming Cindy in 1988 but left 10 years later and went on to appear in Coronation Street and Casualty. Cindy's cheating ways – mainly at the expense of ex-husband Ian Beale (Adam Woodyatt) – earned her a reputation as an Albert Square homewrecker. She even tried to kill Ian before fans were led to believe that she had died during childbirth in prison. But when Cindy returned to Walford in 2023 after a 25-year break, it was revealed she had actually been put into witness protection under a new identity. She is now also the ex-wife of George Knight (Colin Salmon) and has sparked plenty of drama since her return by having an affair with George's estranged son, Junior (Micah Balfour). At the Tric Awards last month, Michelle said of her character: 'There's been lots of trials and tribulations with the men around. 'People are seeing a different side of Cindy… it's exhausting being a b**ch all the time. She's been on her own for a while, and it's good for her. She's being a good granny. I can't believe I'm saying that about Cindy.' Michelle's success back on the Square is being reflected in her bank balance. Accounts show she has almost £200,000 cash reserves in It Worx Limited, which handles her TV work. This is up from £20,000 before her new deal on EastEnders. This comes after Michelle revealed that her dramatic comeback as the iconic Cindy Beale in EastEnders has paid off not just creatively, but financially, with her personal company, It Worx Limited, seeing a major surge in earnings following her return to Albert Square. The actress, who founded the company in 1996 to manage income from her television work, saw its cash reserves jump from just £20,000 to nearly £200,000 in the year ending March 2024. According to newly published Companies House records as seen by The Sun, she now faces a Corporation Tax bill of £69,694, suggesting her earnings from the period were roughly five times that amount. Despite the financial success, Collins admitted she initially felt uncertain about reprising her role as Cindy after 25 years off-screen.
The Spinoff
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Spinoff
Why do so many New Zealand plays have such short lives?
Playwright Sam Brooks on the importance of looking back to move forward. Theatre is an ephemeral art form. That's the beauty of it. For an hour or two, the performance exists for the people who are in the same room as it, and then it goes away. The next night, the same actors might say the same lines in the same places, but it's still different. It's never the exact same thing. Then the play closes, and it goes away. Sometimes, it goes away forever. Whether it happened at a tiny fringe venue or a massive stage, there are plays that are one-and-done, for whatever reason. That's especially true in New Zealand, which unfortunately lacks a culture of revival, or revisiting shows. Reviving a show is something that the average theatregoer might be aware of without knowing the exact definition. Essentially, it's the practice of putting on a show again after its premiere run, with a completely new team and interpretation. The recent production of Black Faggot that played at Christchurch's Court Theatre and then Q Theatre is a revival of the 2013 production, for example, with none of the same creative team. That's meaningfully distinct from, say, Silo Theatre's upcoming production of Mother Play – while it might be a New Zealand premiere, it is a completely new production. Other countries, particularly those with strong theatregoing traditions, have much stronger revival cultures. Shows get enshrined into the canon and have new productions, and new interpretations of them produced regularly, with people often showing up in droves. For example: If you're a certain brand of homosexual, you'll have strong opinions on Audra McDonald's take on Gypsy's protagonist Gypsy Rose Lee compared to Patti LuPone's take, compared to Bernadette Peters', and so on. If that meant nothing to you, sub in 'All Blacks kicker' for 'Gypsy Rose Lee', 'Dan Carter' for 'Audra McDonald', 'Beauden Barrett' for Patti LuPone', and 'Andrew Mehrtens' for 'Bernadette Peters' (apologies to both fans of musical theatre and the ABs). This is the kind of thing that doesn't happen here, even for international plays. There have been two professional productions of A Streetcar Named Desire in Auckland in my lifetime, for example, which means two chances for me, and any Auckland theatregoer, to see one of the most acclaimed plays of all time. New Zealand, simply put, does not have that same culture of revival – especially when it comes to our own 'canon'. Once a play is performed, it often exists for its initial season and very rarely again. There are a few reasons for that. The relative youth of playwriting in this country is one of those – Roger Hall's Glide Time is widely regarded as the turning point for audiences recognising that New Zealand could generate its own theatre is only 50 years old, and even the grandfather of New Zealand theatre, End of the Golden Weather, is just 75 years old. (That one was actually revived earlier this year, as the show that opened Christchurch's Court Theatre's new venue.) The worldwide theatre canon is hundreds, even thousands of years old. Compared to that, our canon may as well be a catalogue – and I might say that our best plays hold their own on the world stage with theatre cultures older and better supported. This same thinking has also historically been applied to basically anything New Zealand has succeeded at, but I promise it is also true of theatre. We also have a culture of making, and developing, new work. We develop, we produce, we premiere and we move on. Premiere productions being performed only once is an issue that extends beyond the cultural to the commercial – getting funding for a new work is easy, for whatever reason, but increasingly difficult for subsequent remounts. It does mean, however, that there are absolute diamonds that exist for one moment of brilliance, remembered by only those who saw them, before dipping into the archives, with only the most nerdy theatre people remembering they existed. (I think of work like Silo Theatre's Cellfish, and Miria George's and what remains as works that feel even more relevant now than when they premiered.) There is also a lack of access, for commercial reasons. We are a small country where theatre is often vying for funding against art forms with deeper roots, which means less money is available for venues to stay open, companies to develop and produce theatre, and even for playwrights to write them. With perhaps a little bit too much transparency: of the 53 plays I've written, I have been commissioned to write once, and received funding from Creative New Zealand to write two of these. The rest have been written under my own steam. In short: Less money means less art, less art being made means less art being seen, means less art in the canon. That access extends to it being difficult to find and read scripts in the first place. Places like Unity and second-hand bookstores might have a play section, but very rarely will you find New Zealand plays there. Similarly, libraries might have a resource, but while a great many New Zealand plays have been published, they are more representative of our canon than they are entirely reflective. Playmarket, New Zealand's playwriting agency, is a great resource for New Zealand work if it takes your fancy! Also? Reading a play – and I say this in earnest as someone who both writes and reads plays – is not the most interesting thing. It's a very different thing to imagine the world of a play in your mind compared to, say, imagining the world of a novel. Plays are often written for enthusiasts and experts to read and interpret, not for a general audience. They're less like books and more like blueprints. A play isn't like a book. It's not a song. It's not like a movie – even in the rare case when a play is filmed, it's no substitute for actually being there. Once those things are produced, they exist. If they're lucky enough to be a part of the canon, they're enshrined in perpetuity. Plays are a different beast. 'You had to be there' is tragically real – for a play if you actually weren't there for the premiere production, there's a very real chance that you might have missed it. This week at Auckland's Basement Theatre, I've been fortunate enough to be asked to curate a series of playreadings called Firing the Canon, which will involve five plays being performed for free, with 37 actors, emerging and experienced, performing across the week. These five include the aforementioned Glide Time by Roger Hall (marking his Basement Theatre debut), Smashed by Tawhi Thomas, Rēwena by Whiti Hereaka, The Packer by Dianna Fuemana and Cow by Jo Randerson. The goal is for the series to run long-term, in venues across the country, and to breathe new life into plays that might otherwise not be performed, for any of the above reasons. There's no way I can cover the huge spectrum of New Zealand theatre with only five plays. I couldn't even do it with 50. But it's a little bit of a light shone in the right direction. Our theatre history might not be as huge as the UK's, or the USA's, but it's pretty mighty. But without an audience showing up, an audience taking interest, it might not be there at all. Theatre is an ephemeral form, but when an audience shows up, it can feel eternal.
Daily Mail
28-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Paul Mescal was my co-star - but I'd never seen Normal People and had no idea he was so famous... until I saw him get mobbed by swooning fans
He's one of Hollywood's hottest heartthrobs, especially after showing off his ripped body in Gladiator II. Yet while millions of women would kill to be in the company of Paul Mescal, actress Patsy Ferran spent countless hours on stage and in rehearsal with the Normal People star, without having a clue quite who he was. It was only when she saw crowds of swooning fans gathered outside the stage door after their performances of A Streetcar Named Desire in London that the penny finally dropped. 'That's when it really dawned on me how well-known he is,' the 35-year-old actress, tells You magazine today. 'I knew of him, obviously, but I somehow was living under a rock the whole time Normal People came out, so I hadn't seen it.' She did then watch the coming-of-age drama Aftersun, for which Mescal earned an Oscar nomination. 'I told him how much I enjoyed it. And he went, 'Thanks very much.' 'Then, cut to doing the play in the evening, I looked at him from across the stage, and I just thought, 'Oh my god!' I got really fan-girly and flustered.' They were appearing together at London's Almeida Theatre, before Mescal had been cast in the ancient Roman epic. Critics raved that the Spanish-British actress upstaged her better-known co-star and she has gone on to be compared to acting greats Maggie Smith, Judi Dench and Glenda Jackson. Her latest film, Hot Milk, is released on Friday and co-stars Fiona Shaw. And she appears opposite George Clooney in the ensemble comedy-drama Jay Kelly due out in December. In contrast to her experiences with Mescal, Patsy said she was starstruck working with Clooney. She said: 'It was just a crazy experience. You've been watching these people your whole life and when they walk into your own reality, it's like a glitch... You're not supposed to be real!'
Daily Mail
28-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
‘Paul Mescal made me feel all flustered and fan-girly!': PATSY FERRAN outshone the Normal People star on stage... and she is about to do the same to George Clooney in their new movie
If you travelled to the London borough of Islington between January and February of 2023, there was a decent chance you would see a large, shivering crowd of women standing at night outside the stage door of the Almeida Theatre. They were there to see Paul Mescal, the Normal People and Gladiator II actor, who was starring as Stanley Kowalski in the theatre's production of A Streetcar Named Desire. But if those girls on the pavement came for Mescal, they stayed for – and they remembered – Patsy Ferran, the 35-year-old Spanish-British actress who played the show's heroine, Blanche DuBois. 'Mescal is tremendous,' said the review in The Times, but 'he'll surely admit that it's Ferran's night'. The Daily Mail agreed: 'Much the best reason for seeing this sold-out show – or at least praying that it transfers to the West End – is not so much Mescal, as the sensational acting of Patsy Ferran as Blanche.' 'I don't actually read reviews,' says Ferran, sitting in a large garden after finishing the YOU photoshoot. Well, I say, everyone thought you were great. She laughs. 'Phew!' Ferran is, in the theatre world, one of Britain's most-loved and hardest-working actresses. She made her debut aged 25 in 2014's Blithe Spirit, which starred Angela Lansbury, and, a few months later, had a lead role at the National Theatre. Afterwards, a critic in The Observer said she was 'one of the best young actors I have seen in the past decade'. By 2017, she'd done her first film – God's Own Country, alongside a pre-Prince Charles Josh O'Connor; by 2019, she'd won a best actress Olivier Award; and by January 2020, Vogue had picked her as one of 25 'bright young things' from around the world who would, they predicted, 'define the decade ahead'. The Telegraph once compared Ferran to Maggie Smith. The theatre critic Nick Curtis disagrees: 'I'm inclined to say she's actually more like Judi Dench. Or Glenda Jackson.' Like both iconic actresses, he thinks Ferran has 'the ability to disappear into roles absolutely'. Ferran was born in Valencia, the middle of three children, to a mother who worked in a biology lab and a father who was in finance. (Her parents are Spanish and the family speak the language at home.) Because of her dad's job, they shuffled around: when Ferran was a few months old they left Spain for Southampton, then moved to Amsterdam, then The Hague. By the time she'd turned eight, they had settled in Surrey. There's pressure to get this background information right. Ferran once gave an interview to The Times and a few days later the paper published a letter from a disgruntled reader called Carmen Narbona in Weybridge, Surrey. It said: 'Your article on Patsy Ferran claims that she was born and brought up in England. In fact she was born in Valencia. I should know: I am her mother.' Did her mum consult her before writing it? 'No! Not at all! I found out months later. I am actually very proud of her, though. She's got sass, my mum.' Ferran went to a girls' convent school, which meant she always had to act as boys in the plays. One of her early roles was Shylock – the complicated protagonist of The Merchant Of Venice who is, normally, played by a man in his 50s or 60s. Ferran, however, gave the part a go aged 15. She performed alongside four other school productions at a 'Shakespeare Festival', which was watched by the actor Paterson Joseph. At the end of the festival Joseph singled out and praised Ferran. 'I think that was just what I needed. I still do, to a certain extent; I need people outside of myself to tell me I can do this.' Doesn't everyone need that, I ask? 'Well,' Ferran says, in a stage whisper, 'I've met a couple of male actors…' She studied drama at Birmingham University and then went to Rada in London. During her last year, Ferran had a tiny part as a maid in the musical High Society. 'I was just in the background for most of it, holding a tray.' It must have been first-class tray holding, though. One evening the agent Deborah Willey came to watch. Willey knew that that spring Angela Lansbury (then 88) was returning to the West End for the first time in 40 years to star in Blithe Spirit. She also knew the production had yet to find someone to play Edith, the maid. 'So she scribbled down, while she was watching, the name of Blithe Spirit's casting director,' says Ferran. 'And then she wrote: 'Patsy Ferran? Maid?'' (Willey became, and remains, Ferran's agent. 'She kept that first piece of paper and years later she sent it to me in the post.' The note is now stashed in 'a box of memories' in Ferran's flat in London.) A few days later, Ferran auditioned for said maid with the play's director, Michael Blakemore. 'I just remember him sort of smiling without smiling.' At the end he said: 'Well, I don't have any notes.' Within hours, she'd been given the part. It was another tiny role, but again she impressed. The Guardian called her 'scene-stealing', The Telegraph instructed people to 'look out for [her] little gem of a performance', and The Times declared that 'the small role of Edith the maid is wrought up to maximum comic pitch by Patsy Ferran… it is her professional stage debut, and a hoot'. Curtis remembers seeing the production. 'Angela Lansbury was great but she [Ferran] absolutely stole the show from her – and from everybody else.' Afterwards, 'People were going: 'Who is this woman?!'' (Ferran concedes that she does give good maid. 'Every time I put on a maid's costume, if I'm doing a period piece or something, the costume designer always says: 'God, this really suits you.' And I'm like: 'I know, I know. I was born to play a maid.'') By 2019 she'd been nominated for best actress at the Olivier Awards for a Tennessee Williams play called Summer and Smoke. At the ceremony, she was sitting near the back of the room, and in the middle of the row – and assumed this awkward positioning meant she was not going to win. But, surprise, she did. So, she got out of her seat, clambered over various people, walked the long way down the aisle, got on the stage, and began her speech by saying: 'Hello, I'm Patsy.' Well, she says of this today, 'there were lots of people in the audience I didn't know!' When I meet Ferran, she has just returned from New York, where she had, alongside Mescal, revived A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway. The reviews were excellent there, too – which was good because 'I was convinced they were going to hate me'. Why? 'Because I am not a conventional Blanche. She's usually tall and blonde. I don't want to diminish her but she's quite princess-y, very feminine. And I'm definitely not that.' She wasn't supposed to do the play at all; the director Rebecca Frecknall had first cast the actress Lydia Wilson as DuBois. But, two weeks before the first preview, Wilson had been forced to pull out because of an injury. Ferran had just got married (her husband is an actor, but she wants to keep his identity private) and was due to go on honeymoon. Still, Frecknall asked if she would step in and Ferran agreed, cancelling her honeymoon – without actually looking at the script. The day before her first rehearsal, Ferran opened the play and discovered 'the relentless talking from Blanche DuBois'. There were so many lines. 'I had the closest thing to a panic attack I've ever had in my life. That night, I was in bed, and at three in the morning I felt the adrenaline going through my body. I was unable to breathe. I just thought: 'What have I done?'' In the following days, all she did was learn lines and rehearse. Weirdly, it worked. 'I remember Paul coming over to me during the second or third day of rehearsal, and saying: 'How are you doing it?'' On Mescal, Ferran admits she didn't really know who he was. 'I knew of him, obviously, but I somehow was living under a rock the whole time Normal People came out, so I hadn't seen it.' I ask if she's watched it now and she says, in a sheepish way, no. 'But I will!' She did, however, watch Aftersun – the film for which Mescal was nominated for an Oscar – at some point during the play's run. The next day, 'I told him how much I enjoyed it. And he went: 'Thanks very much.' Then, cut to doing the play in the evening, I looked at him from across the stage, and I just thought: 'Oh my god!' I got really fan-girly and flustered.' Still, Ferran was shocked to see all 'those people waiting outside of the theatre for [Mescal]. That's when it really dawned on me how well-known he is.' The pair are now friends. 'He's one of my favourite actors I've ever worked with, because he really cares about the job. And he's also stupidly talented.' (That sentiment is shared: Mescal has described Ferran as an 'acting wizard'.) The play had a lot of fake rain, which was tricky. One night, the stage had been hot-mopped beforehand, accidentally removing its grit. It became an ice rink. There was a moment where Mescal was supposed to run across the stage, and instead 'he got on to his knees and did a knee slide from one end to the other'. Like a football celebration? 'Yes, or a rock'n'roll moment. I thought it looked quite good. He was embarrassed people might think it was…' she puts on a very thespy voice, 'a choice.' The day before I met Ferran, I saw a video of the singer Lorde leaving the Broadway version of Streetcar. She was unaware and is delighted – 'Lorde came to see the show?! Shut up' – then promptly trumps me by saying that Angelina Jolie watched it in London. They didn't meet but she saw her from afar, in the theatre's café. 'She just walked into my reality for a second.' At home, she made her husband guess who she'd spotted. 'I was like: 'Think of the most famous person on earth.'' Ferran has had to get used to starry company. In the last year, she's had a part in Mickey 17, alongside Robert Pattinson and Mark Ruffalo; a lead role in Black Mirror, with Paul Giamatti; and this week she's co-starring in new film Hot Milk with Fiona Shaw and Emma Mackey. Shaw was 'amazing'. They shot the film while Ferran was rehearsing to play Eliza Doolittle at London's Old Vic theatre. 'I think she [Shaw] had decided that she wasn't going to do theatre any more. But there were moments within the conversation where she would just start reciting Shakespeare. Her memory is incredible.' This February Ferran played Jane Austen in the BBC show Miss Austen. It was ostensibly about an older Cassandra Austen (Jane's sister, played by Keeley Hawes) burning Jane's letters, but, as the review in The Daily Mail had it: 'The real stars, though, are Patsy Ferran as Jane herself, aged about 20, and Synnove Karlsen as the young Cassandra.' Lots of young British actors moan about being pigeonholed by period dramas; not Ferran. 'I hadn't really scratched that itch. I loved the idea of playing someone who could be the smartest person in the room.' Also, the costumes were comfy. 'It was the best. Because of the structure of those dresses, you could eat what you wanted.' In December, Ferran will be in Jay Kelly, a film about two middle-aged friends on a weekend reunion that was co-written by Emily Mortimer and has a stupidly starry cast: George Clooney, Adam Sandler, Laura Dern, Jim Broadbent, Riley Keough. Ferran is tight-lipped, but says they filmed for three weeks in the UK and three weeks in Italy. 'It was just a crazy experience. It was sort of like seeing Angelina Jolie, where you've been watching these people your whole life and when they walk into your own reality, it's like a glitch happens. You go: 'I'm sorry,'' she gestures to an imaginary George Clooney, ''you're not supposed to be real.'' Well, if I were George Clooney, I would be nervous for the reviews to come out: Ferran will, almost certainly, steal the show. THE FERRAN FACTOR Idea of holiday hell Safari. Last piece of clothing you bought A pair of shoes from Sandro. Spotify song of last year Denial Is A River by Doechii. Cat or a dog person? Dog. The word you most overuse Outrageous. Last thing you can remember losing One hoop earring. Superstition you can't shake I can't walk over three consecutive drains. Book you often gift to people Less by Andrew Sean Greer. Favourite possession Coffee mug with Charles M Schulz's cartoons on it. Average screen time Around 2 hours 45 minutes. Website you spend too much time on YouTube. First thing you do in the morning Coffeeeee! Wordle starting word Tears. Picture director: Ester Malloy. Stylist: Anna Hughes-Chamberlain. Hair: Sven Bayerbach at Carol Hayes using Hair by Sam McKnight. Make-up: Caz Wren using Tatcha skincare and Ilia Beauty.
