Latest news with #BigLittleLies'
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
David E. Kelley Deep Dives Into The 'Quiet, Cognitive Oppression' Of ‘Presumed Innocent,' His Knack For Adapting Books & Telling Stories From The Heart
On a humid Friday afternoon in Austin, Texas, an audience is treated to the first episode of Presumed Innocent before creator David E. Kelley is bestowed with ATX TV Festival's inaugural Showrunner Award. Backstage, Kelley is also watching the episode for the first time in quite a while. 'I usually don't go back and watch things after they're all done…but we're really proud of this one, so it's not painful,' he jokes. More from Deadline David E. Kelley Is "Hopeful" For 'Big Little Lies' Season 3: "We All Want To Do It Again" David E. Kelley Speaks Of "Compromises And Capitulations" By "Corporate Industry Partners" & "Darker Times" In Rousing Gothams Speech Denis Arndt Dies: 'Basic Instinct' Actor And Tony Nominee Was 86 Revisiting his work isn't something he's 'philosophically opposed to' or even necessarily actively avoiding, per se, he adds. 'It's not something I do. I feel like one day I will,' he tells Deadline, sitting down for an interview ahead of his award ceremony. 'I've not seen an episode of Ally McBeal or Picket Fences in 20 years…So, I'll probably forget the plots and then I can enjoy them like a new viewer.' Of course, Presumed Innocent is still pretty fresh on his mind. Season 1, which premiered one year ago on Apple TV+, is based on Scott Turow's novel of the same name and follows the criminal case against Chicago prosecutor Rusty Sabich (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) charged with murdering a colleague, and the nightmare at home that the murder trial visits on the family of the accused. Kelley is currently developing a second season of the series, which will be an anthology. Season 2 will not follow any of the characters from the first season and will instead adapt Jo Murray's upcoming legal thriller Dissection of a Murder. Presumed Innocent was initially planned as a limited series with no intentions of continuing beyond the first season, Kelley says. 'I think that the genesis of it first came from Apple [asking], 'Have we got another one in us?' And we didn't, for these characters,' he explained. 'But the themes of Presumed Innocent, the psychological thriller, the elements of infidelity and betrayal, that's timeless. So we thought maybe there's other IP that we can mine the same terrain, so people can feel they're coming to the same series, but with different storytellers. We thought, if we find the right material, we will do it, and if we don't, we won't.' Ultimately, a few different contenders emerged, including another book by Turow. 'We chose Dissection of a Murder for year two. But in success, it could go on beyond that,' adds Kelley. Turow has built out a bit of a universe within his novels, revisiting Rusty several times and also writing stories around other ancillary characters from Presumed Innocent. Upon learning Kelley had weighed another one of Turow's novels for Season 2, I ask if he'll consider revisiting any of those characters himself in future seasons or aims keep it a true anthology. 'We did talk about that,' he confirmed. 'My fear in doing it without Rusty is that it would feel like a subset of the whole. Jake was pretty extraordinary in Season 1. He is the face of the series. So to come back with the same ensemble and not have him be part of it, I think that it would just feel a little bit less than. So we thought better to start with a new blank page.' Kelley never really thought he'd enjoy adapting novels. That is, until he brought Liane Moriarty's best-seller Big Little Lies to the small screen for HBO. 'Breaking [a story] is hard, hard work, and the fuel for it is often the idea. When that idea comes pre-baked or the story is already broken, you haven't got the adrenaline to supply the fuel for the writing process,' he said. 'So I thought, 'That's like being a carpenter and not getting to be the architect. I'm not sure I will like it.' But turns out, I really did.' Generally, he explains, he is most responsive to works with strong character development, but he also very much values 'the opportunity to take departures from the original IP.' Kelley has become known for adding unexpected twists to well known literary source material, and Presumed Innocent is no exception. An attorney by trade, Kelley surprised fans of the book by revealing an entirely different killer at the end of the eight-episode series. 'The job is never easy, whether it's original writing or adaptation. It's hard finding good stories and finding good story twists, so you're always a bit daunted coming into any project,' he said. Maybe less so with Presumed, because the architecture was so tight in that book, that probably provided me with more comfort than less, because I knew it worked. I knew it worked on the page of the book. I saw it work in the movie. Maybe the anxiety, if any, on Presumed was I don't want to be the one who screws it up.' In the novel, Rusty's wife Barbara murders his colleague Carolyn Polhemus in a jealous rage after learning Carolyn and Rusty were having an affair. Spoiler alert, for anyone who hasn't seen the series yet, but the finale of the series instead reveals that Rusty and Barbara's daughter Jaden killed Carolyn — and Rusty, having found Carolyn's body shortly after and assuming his family was involved, ties her up like a prior victim on a case that Carolyn tried to divert suspicions. Kelley says he didn't necessarily intend to rewrite the ending when he began adapting Presumed Innocent. 'I was open to changing the ending, and it was one of the possibilities, because we knew we had to be different from the book…Probably by [Episode] 3, I decided that it would be Jaden,' Kelley tells Deadline. 'I wanted to be true to the themes of the book.' One thing he did know was that he wanted Barbara, played by Ruth Negga, to have a larger presence in the series than she does in the book. That set up nicely for either her eventual reveal as the murderer, or a convincing red herring to allow Kelley to surprise audiences, should he choose to shake things up. 'If she was going to be the killer, we had to figure out why, and it had to be a little bit more than jealousy. So we really started developing a pathology for her, that she was a guardian of that family, almost in a dangerous kind of way. Once we started mining Barbara's character that way, we quickly tumbled to the idea that we could do that with Jaden as well, and drawing those same personality traits, it would justify her being the killer as well as Barbara,' he explained. 'So we actually gave a few lines to Barbara early on [like], 'I will protect this family at any cost' to set up the idea that it could be her. But we gave Jaden that same DNA so it would be credible when we revealed it to be her.' All too quickly, the Presumed Innocent premiere is nearing its end. In a few moments, Kelley will step on stage to receive his award and discuss his lengthy and illustrious television career, which spans nearly four decades and includes the likes of L.A. Law, Doogie Howser, M.D., Ally McBeal, The Practice, Big Little Lies, The Lincoln Lawyer, and Nine Perfect Strangers. But first, he smirks as he watches Gyllenhaal go toe-to-toe with Peter Sarsgaard's Tommy Molto in the final moments of the episode, when Rusty is confronted about his affair with Carolyn, much to the surprise of the former district attorney Raymond Horgan (played by Bill Camp), who is now defending him. 'It's such a delicious scene, because this story's going on in all their faces. Raymond is hearing this stuff for the first time and trying to keep a poker face. The nuance of that scene, where Bill has to play a scene and convey that he's learning information that he hadn't heard before, but he's not playing it for the other actors in the scene. That's tricky acting,' Kelley muses. 'And Peter with Molto, it's like he doesn't want this moment to end. He has taken such shit from Rusty for so long, and now he's got the upper hand. It's like a meal. He doesn't want to wolf down. He just wants to savor it. That's what he's doing here.' As for Gyllenhaal's display of Rusty's emotional turmoil, he adds, 'you can feel his insides churning as the walls are are closing in.' 'It's not a traditional cliffhanger type scene. There's no action sequence. No one's chasing anyone with a car or firing a bullet. This is all very quiet, cognitive oppression going on here,' Kelley explains. The episode ends with a bombshell revelation that Carolyn was pregnant when she died, planting the ultimate seed of doubt regarding Rusty's innocence. It's got all the hallmarks of Kelley's signature style, leaving the audience with just enough intrigue to lure them to the next episode — a skill he will exercise again and again over the course of each of the remaining eight episodes. Before he accepts his award, I have one final question for him. What piece of advice would he give himself, if he could go back in time to his first days as a television writer? 'That's a hard one, but I probably would've gave the same piece of advice that Stephen Bochco gave me when I first walked through his door and it's just start writing from here [points to his heart],' he said. 'You certainly got to think and be smart and pay attention to storytelling, but don't ever forget that it should come from here.' Best of Deadline Sean 'Diddy' Combs Sex-Trafficking Trial Updates: Cassie Ventura's Testimony, $10M Hotel Settlement, Drugs, Violence, & The Feds A Full Timeline Of Blake Lively & Justin Baldoni's 'It Ends With Us' Feud In Court, Online & In The Media Where To Watch All The 'John Wick' Movies: Streamers That Have All Four Films
Chicago Tribune
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
QB Aaron Rodgers married someone ‘a couple months ago.' So who is the mystery woman?
Aaron Rodgers revealed at a press conference Tuesday that he secretly married someone 'a couple months ago,' but he didn't reveal any basic details, such as the name of his questionably lucky bride. Yes, 'questionably lucky' because two of his famous ex-girlfriends, Danica Patrick and Shailene Woodley, have been vocal in recent months about how each of their respective relationships with the divisive NFL quarterback were 'emotionally abusive' and 'toxic.' 'Everything was torn to bits,' Patrick said on the May 21 episode of 'The Sage Steele Show,' People reported. 'Yeah, he leaves a trail of blood,' the former race car driver said about Rodgers, who just signed a one-year contract with the Pittsburgh Steelers. 'I don't think I'm saying too much earth-shattering stuff after we — there's been enough out there,' Patrick said. Meanwhile, Woodley told Outside magazine in December that her relationship with the former Green Bay Packer star, which ended in 2022, 'was a toxic situation.' The 'Big Little Lies' star also previously said that the 'darkest, hardest time in my life' took place in the fall of 2021, a time that coincided with the final months of her relationship with Rodgers and when he sparked national controversy by ranting critically about the COVID-19 vaccine. Back in December, the 41-year-old Rodgers, then playing for the New York Jets, revealed that he had a new girlfriend named Brittani while appearing on the 'The Pat McAfee Show,' according to People. He casually dropped the news about Brittani while discussing his Christmas shopping habits. He admitted to feeling some holiday stress when the gift he ordered online for Brittani was late in arriving. 'There was one package left for my girlfriend Brittani that hadn't showed up yet,' Rodgers said. 'I was waiting on this to show up, it showed up today.' The revelation appeared to catch host McAfee off guard, People reported. AJ Hawk, McAfee's cohost and Rodgers' former teammate from the Green Bay Packers, jokingly asked, 'Spears?' 'Not Brittany Spears, no, this is Brittani with an 'i,'' Rodgers clarified, going on to say that his new partner doesn't watch 'The Pat McAfee Show' and doesn't have social media. The football player has long said he generally prefers to keep his personal relationships private, and he's been reluctant to discuss his infamous estrangement from his Chico-based parents, Ed and Darla Rodgers. He, nonetheless, has found himself in several high-profile romances, going back to actor Olivia Munn, whom he dated from 2014 to 2017. That relationship may have been a factor in his estrangement from his parents, or Rodgers began to bristle at their 'dogmatic religious' beliefs when he was playing football at Butte Community College, before transferring to UC Berkeley to play for the Golden Bears, according to ESPN. After ending things with Munn, Rodgers dated Patrick from 2018 to 2020. They even purchased a home together in Malibu, but Patrick told Steele they experienced a 'sudden' breakup in the summer of 2020, during COVID-19 lockdown. Rodgers soon became secretly engaged to Woodley, which the 'Divergent' actor revealed in a 2021 interview with Jimmy Fallon. But the romance with Woodley only lasted another year. Rodgers followed up Woodley by becoming romantically linked in 2023 to Mallory Edens, a model and the daughter of one of the Milwaukee Bucks' primary owners, Wes Edens, People reported. Now, there's possibly Brittani — with an 'I,' She could possibly become America's new favorite WAG. That is, wife or girlfriend of a professional athlete. If so, Brittani would probably have to start showing up at games to cheer her husband on, like Taylor Swift, Brittany Mahomes, Simone Biles and the 49ers' Olivia Culpo and Kristin Juszczyk. But Brittani probably will need to get on social media so she can post photos of her game-day fashion choices.
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Sarah Jessica Parker 'Shocked' By Unpopularity Of ‘AJLT's Che Diaz, Says She Loved Working With Sara Ramirez
With the arrival of season three of And Just Like That, the sequel to Sex and the City, viewers have noticed the absence of Sara Ramirez as Che Diaz, a non-binary stand up comedian who was previously the love interest of Miranda (Cynthia Nixon). The character proved polarising with fans, with some critics describing her as a caricature of queer culture and an example of how the show has clumsily tried to update itself for the reboot. More from Deadline David E. Kelley Is "Hopeful" For 'Big Little Lies' Season 3: "We All Want To Do It Again" Sydney Sweeney Teases 'Euphoria' Season 3: "Cassie Is Crazy" Mickey Down & Konrad Kay Reveal The Tarantino-esque Series They Were Working On Before 'Industry' - SXSW London Now, star and producer Sarah Jessica Parker has said she was 'shocked' to discover the character was so deeply disliked. Parker told The Guardian newspaper this weekend: 'A friend of mine brought it up to me, and it's like: 'What are you talking about?' And he said: 'Yeah, there's all this conversation.' 'I've been an actor for 50 years, and I've almost never paid attention to peripheral chatter. I loved working with them.' As for her own character Carrie, on her enduring romantic rollercoaster supported by the more constant consolations of her friends and her love of fashion, Parker said she was delighted by the use of the word 'antihero' to describe her. 'I prefer that to any other description of her, because it allows her to be as male as the men have been. I love The Sopranos so much, and I look at all the times [Tony] was unlawful, and we loved him. Carrie has an affair and everybody falls apart. 'An antihero, to me, is somebody that's not behaving in conventional ways, and she hasn't ever… A lot of people love her too, though!' Sex and the City ran for 94 episodes between 1998 and 2004. The third season of And Just Like That is currently airing on HBO Max. Best of Deadline 2025 TV Series Renewals: Photo Gallery 2025 TV Cancellations: Photo Gallery 'Stick' Soundtrack: All The Songs You'll Hear In The Apple TV+ Golf Series
Yahoo
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
David E. Kelley Deep Dives Into The 'Quiet, Cognitive Oppression' Of ‘Presumed Innocent,' His Knack For Adapting Books & Telling Stories From The Heart
On a humid Friday afternoon in Austin, Texas, an audience is treated to the first episode of Presumed Innocent before creator David E. Kelley is bestowed with ATX TV Festival's inaugural Showrunner Award. Backstage, Kelley is also watching the episode for the first time in quite a while. 'I usually don't go back and watch things after they're all done…but we're really proud of this one, so it's not painful,' he jokes. More from Deadline David E. Kelley Is "Hopeful" For 'Big Little Lies' Season 3: "We All Want To Do It Again" David E. Kelley Speaks Of "Compromises And Capitulations" By "Corporate Industry Partners" & "Darker Times" In Rousing Gothams Speech Denis Arndt Dies: 'Basic Instinct' Actor And Tony Nominee Was 86 Revisiting his work isn't something he's 'philosophically opposed to' or even necessarily actively avoiding, per se, he adds. 'It's not something I do. I feel like one day I will,' he tells Deadline, sitting down for an interview ahead of his award ceremony. 'I've not seen an episode of Ally McBeal or Picket Fences in 20 years…So, I'll probably forget the plots and then I can enjoy them like a new viewer.' Of course, Presumed Innocent is still pretty fresh on his mind. Season 1, which premiered one year ago on Apple TV+, is based on Scott Turow's novel of the same name and follows the criminal case against Chicago prosecutor Rusty Sabich (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) charged with murdering a colleague, and the nightmare at home that the murder trial visits on the family of the accused. Kelley is currently developing a second season of the series, which will be an anthology. Season 2 will not follow any of the characters from the first season and will instead adapt Jo Murray's upcoming legal thriller Dissection of a Murder. Presumed Innocent was initially planned as a limited series with no intentions of continuing beyond the first season, Kelley says. 'I think that the genesis of it first came from Apple [asking], 'Have we got another one in us?' And we didn't, for these characters,' he explained. 'But the themes of Presumed Innocent, the psychological thriller, the elements of infidelity and betrayal, that's timeless. So we thought maybe there's other IP that we can mine the same terrain, so people can feel they're coming to the same series, but with different storytellers. We thought, if we find the right material, we will do it, and if we don't, we won't.' Ultimately, a few different contenders emerged, including another book by Turow. 'We chose Dissection of a Murder for year two. But in success, it could go on beyond that,' adds Kelley. Turow has built out a bit of a universe within his novels, revisiting Rusty several times and also writing stories around other ancillary characters from Presumed Innocent. Upon learning Kelley had weighed another one of Turow's novels for Season 2, I ask if he'll consider revisiting any of those characters himself in future seasons or aims keep it a true anthology. 'We did talk about that,' he confirmed. 'My fear in doing it without Rusty is that it would feel like a subset of the whole. Jake was pretty extraordinary in Season 1. He is the face of the series. So to come back with the same ensemble and not have him be part of it, I think that it would just feel a little bit less than. So we thought better to start with a new blank page.' Kelley never really thought he'd enjoy adapting novels. That is, until he brought Liane Moriarty's best-seller Big Little Lies to the small screen for HBO. 'Breaking [a story] is hard, hard work, and the fuel for it is often the idea. When that idea comes pre-baked or the story is already broken, you haven't got the adrenaline to supply the fuel for the writing process,' he said. 'So I thought, 'That's like being a carpenter and not getting to be the architect. I'm not sure I will like it.' But turns out, I really did.' Generally, he explains, he is most responsive to works with strong character development, but he also very much values 'the opportunity to take departures from the original IP.' Kelley has become known for adding unexpected twists to well known literary source material, and Presumed Innocent is no exception. An attorney by trade, Kelley surprised fans of the book by revealing an entirely different killer at the end of the eight-episode series. 'The job is never easy, whether it's original writing or adaptation. It's hard finding good stories and finding good story twists, so you're always a bit daunted coming into any project,' he said. Maybe less so with Presumed, because the architecture was so tight in that book, that probably provided me with more comfort than less, because I knew it worked. I knew it worked on the page of the book. I saw it work in the movie. Maybe the anxiety, if any, on Presumed was I don't want to be the one who screws it up.' In the novel, Rusty's wife Barbara murders his colleague Carolyn Polhemus in a jealous rage after learning Carolyn and Rusty were having an affair. Spoiler alert, for anyone who hasn't seen the series yet, but the finale of the series instead reveals that Rusty and Barbara's daughter Jaden killed Carolyn — and Rusty, having found Carolyn's body shortly after and assuming his family was involved, ties her up like a prior victim on a case that Carolyn tried to divert suspicions. Kelley says he didn't necessarily intend to rewrite the ending when he began adapting Presumed Innocent. 'I was open to changing the ending, and it was one of the possibilities, because we knew we had to be different from the book…Probably by [Episode] 3, I decided that it would be Jaden,' Kelley tells Deadline. 'I wanted to be true to the themes of the book.' One thing he did know was that he wanted Barbara, played by Ruth Negga, to have a larger presence in the series than she does in the book. That set up nicely for either her eventual reveal as the murderer, or a convincing red herring to allow Kelley to surprise audiences, should he choose to shake things up. 'If she was going to be the killer, we had to figure out why, and it had to be a little bit more than jealousy. So we really started developing a pathology for her, that she was a guardian of that family, almost in a dangerous kind of way. Once we started mining Barbara's character that way, we quickly tumbled to the idea that we could do that with Jaden as well, and drawing those same personality traits, it would justify her being the killer as well as Barbara,' he explained. 'So we actually gave a few lines to Barbara early on [like], 'I will protect this family at any cost' to set up the idea that it could be her. But we gave Jaden that same DNA so it would be credible when we revealed it to be her.' All too quickly, the Presumed Innocent premiere is nearing its end. In a few moments, Kelley will step on stage to receive his award and discuss his lengthy and illustrious television career, which spans nearly four decades and includes the likes of L.A. Law, Doogie Howser, M.D., Ally McBeal, The Practice, Big Little Lies, The Lincoln Lawyer, and Nine Perfect Strangers. But first, he smirks as he watches Gyllenhaal go toe-to-toe with Peter Sarsgaard's Tommy Molto in the final moments of the episode, when Rusty is confronted about his affair with Carolyn, much to the surprise of the former district attorney Raymond Horgan (played by Bill Camp), who is now defending him. 'It's such a delicious scene, because this story's going on in all their faces. Raymond is hearing this stuff for the first time and trying to keep a poker face. The nuance of that scene, where Bill has to play a scene and convey that he's learning information that he hadn't heard before, but he's not playing it for the other actors in the scene. That's tricky acting,' Kelley muses. 'And Peter with Molto, it's like he doesn't want this moment to end. He has taken such shit from Rusty for so long, and now he's got the upper hand. It's like a meal. He doesn't want to wolf down. He just wants to savor it. That's what he's doing here.' As for Gyllenhaal's display of Rusty's emotional turmoil, he adds, 'you can feel his insides churning as the walls are are closing in.' 'It's not a traditional cliffhanger type scene. There's no action sequence. No one's chasing anyone with a car or firing a bullet. This is all very quiet, cognitive oppression going on here,' Kelley explains. The episode ends with a bombshell revelation that Carolyn was pregnant when she died, planting the ultimate seed of doubt regarding Rusty's innocence. It's got all the hallmarks of Kelley's signature style, leaving the audience with just enough intrigue to lure them to the next episode — a skill he will exercise again and again over the course of each of the remaining eight episodes. Before he accepts his award, I have one final question for him. What piece of advice would he give himself, if he could go back in time to his first days as a television writer? 'That's a hard one, but I probably would've gave the same piece of advice that Stephen Bochco gave me when I first walked through his door and it's just start writing from here [points to his heart],' he said. 'You certainly got to think and be smart and pay attention to storytelling, but don't ever forget that it should come from here.' Best of Deadline Where To Watch All The 'John Wick' Movies: Streamers That Have All Four Films 2025 TV Series Renewals: Photo Gallery Tony Awards: Every Best Musical Winner Since 1949
Perth Now
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
Alexander Skarsgard 'adores' Nicole Kidman
Alexander Skarsgard "adores" Nicole Kidman. The 48-year-old actor played the Oscar-winning star's abusive husband in 'Big Little Lies' and they went on to work together again in 'The Northman', in which she played his character's incestuous mother and he has praised Nicole as "one of the greatest" performers in the industry. He told Observer magazine: "I adore her. My experience on 'Big Little Lies' is what made us approach Nicole for 'The Northman'. "It was incredibly difficult on 'Big Little Lies' to explore that intense, abusive relationship with Nicole but she's one of the greatest out there for a reason. She's so committed, generous and ego-free. She does whatever serves the scene. "There was no question we wanted her as Amleth's mother in 'The Northman', which is another very complicated, dark relationship." The pair are keen to work together again in the future but would rather a lighter project. Alexander said: "After that, Nicole and I basically said: Let's do something else together but without any incest or abuse. Maybe a light romcom. Perhaps we could play siblings who open a cake shop together." Alexander's brothers, Gustaf, Bill and Valter are also actors and he is thankful they don't go out for similar roles. Asked if they are competitive with one another, he said: "No. Maybe it would be different if we went up for the same role, but we don't really. "Imagine if we were all reading the same script, getting excited about the same part, then one of us got it but the others didn't. You'd hear about it at every family dinner for years." The 'Succession' star is relieved he found success before the "nepo baby" tag became so widespread, but admitted his association with his dad, screen legend Stellan Skarsgard, has resulted in him grappling with imposter syndrome over the years. He said: " I don't know if it's harder today but it's probably more annoying. You have to discuss it more. "When I first started, people still compared me to my father or asked if I got jobs because of my last name. "I definitely questioned that as well in times of insecurity. 20 years later, I still have imposter syndrome moments when I'm like, 'I probably wouldn't have gotten this if it hadn't been for my dad. F***! Am I any good?'
