Latest news with #TheLordoftheRings:TheRingsofPower
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Kathy Bates, Minha Kim, Elisabeth Moss, and the best of our Emmy Drama Actress interviews
Over the past two months of Emmy campaigning, Gold Derby has spoken with several contenders in all categories. Now with voting underway ahead of the July 15 unveiling of the nominees, we have compiled 16 interviews for stars vying for Best Drama Actress, including: Annaleigh Ashford (Happy Face), Kathy Bates (Matlock), Morfydd Clark (The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power), Nicola Coughlan (Bridgerton), Tawny Cypress (Yellowjackets), Emma D'Arcy (House of the Dragon), Shanola Hampton (Found), Minha Kim (Pachinko), Ali Larter (Landman), Britt Lower (Severance), Melanie Lynskey (Yellowjackets), Helen Mirren (1923), Elisabeth Moss (The Handmaid's Tale), Niecy Nash-Betts (Grotesquerie), Sophie Nélisse (Yellowjackets), and Carrie Preston (Elsbeth). Read on for highlights from each interviews and links to watch our full video Q&As. More from Gold Derby An 'honored' Denis Villeneuve will direct the next James Bond movie: 'To me, he's sacred territory' 'I was taken with the idea of a spy show': How 'Talamasca: The Secret Order' showrunners expand Anne Rice's Immortal Universe in new AMC series For the Paramount+ series, Ashford plays Melissa Reed, the daughter of Dennis Quaid's Keith Hunter Jesperson, aka the Happy Face Killer, who's in prison for murdering eight women. "My mom is actually the true crime aficionado in the family," she explains. "So, I called her right before I read the script, and she gave me the lowdown. But the podcast is quite extraordinary. Not only do you get to hear Melissa's journey, but you also get to hear her navigate her conscience, her relationships with the people in her family, and also the relationships that she has to the victims' families. What was the most interesting to me about the real Melissa is how she's become an advocate for people who've been touched by the trauma of crime." Watch our complete interview with Annaleigh Ashford. For the CBS legal series, the title character is a smart, savvy, 70-something lawyer who takes a job at a firm to ostensibly pay off her late husband's debts, but is actually seeking evidence of a coverup of the opioid issues that contributed to her daughter's death. 'Even though I've had a long career and people know who I am, I was feeling a little bit invisible,' says Bates. 'But more than that, I wasn't challenged by the work in the same way. I hate to say I was losing interest in what I love to do, but you really need to find something that you really love to do. And it was a miracle to find something this well-written, this exciting, this unusual, and this deep.' Watch our complete interview with Kathy Bates. For the Prime Video series, Clark plays Galadriel, an elf who in this time period has been tricked by the evil Sauron (Charlie Vickers) and now will stop at nothing to destroy him. "It was amazing for me to be back with Charlie but him giving a completely different performance," says Clark. "It was really exciting for me as an actor to be able to see this craft of Charlie's" in his new guise as Annatar, the Lord of Gifts. "I could barely recognize him. ... Charlie's such a lovely person that it was really quite incredible for me to be frightened of him." Watch our complete video interview with Morfydd Clark. The third season of the Netflix series ended with Nicola Coughlan's Penelope Featherington marrying Luke Newton's Colin Bridgerton. At the beginning of those episodes, Penelope has "sort of given up on herself," Coughlan explains, and "she's kind of accepted her fate [and] given up on the idea of love, which is something that has driven her since the beginning." But when Colin comes back into Penelope's life, everything changes. "I loved the charting of the whole season and the way that there was something so compelling in each episode," she says. Watch our complete video interview with Nicola Coughlan. By the beginning of the Showtime drama's third season, Taissa (Cypress) has completely blown up her life. Having become the first state senator to "impeach herself" before taking office, she has destroyed any chance she had at a political career. "I always thought that Taissa was a narcissist. Everything she says comes from an 'I' perspective. You can go back to Season 1 — everything she says, even when she is trying to get rid of her wife in Season 1, she's like, 'I don't know what I'm gonna do.'... So I knew that about her, and so I took that even further," Cypress shares. "I was like, 'Oh, this is narcissism to the nth degree where she has completely created this other thing that she can blame that's not her.'" Watch our complete interview with Tawny Cypress. For the HBO series, D'Arcy plays Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen, who experienced some truly epic moments during Season 2 of the Game of Thrones prequel, including meeting up with Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) in secret and watching as Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) finally pledged his loyalty to his queen. They say, "It was a favorite scene of mine. Getting to act with Liv is one of the great privileges in my life. But as a result of such scarcity, there was quite a lot of pressure on it. You have two big, knotty dialogue scenes in which to house the whole of that relationship. It felt to me like we were being asked to achieve an epic scale within quite small, narrow parameters. It's very silly as well, because it's a high stakes environment, and I'm wearing a wimple. [Laughs] I'd say that's more work for Olivia than it was for me, because she would have been the one looking at me." Read our complete interview with Emma D'Arcy. For Hampton's Gabi Mosely, the second season of the Peacock series was a quest for penance. And although her team at Mosley & Associates eventually forgave her for keeping her kidnapper Hugh Evans, aka Sir (Mark-Paul Gosselaar), imprisoned in her basement — and lying to them about it — she has yet to be able to give herself the same grace. "Even after all the good she does, the one thing that Gabi is a master at is torturing herself," the actress says. There's "a lot of work that she still has to do. Healing is a process; it takes years. We are used to seeing characters tied up in a nice little bow, but that's not real life. And what we're trying to do, in a lot of ways, is show that process and how long it can be, so that people watching it can be like, 'OK, I'm still in my stuff too. I don't have to be finished.'" Read our complete interview with Shanola Hampton. Kim stars as Sunja, who is introduced in Season 1 for the Apple TV+ series as a young woman in Japanese-occupied Korea who falls pregnant after an affair with married businessman Hansu (Lee). She eventually marries pastor Isak (Steve Sanghyun Noh) and they move to Japan to start anew. "She's still young. She's 35 years old. I am 30 years old right now, and I'm still a baby, but in that era, it's a different thing. I had to convey how she suffered," she explains. "I had to talk about it a lot with the directors and Soo, and with our makeup department to make very subtle wrinkles, a very subtle like eyeshadow to make her look exhausted. I talked a lot with the actors as well, like how could I have to walk, and I had to search a lot of things that made a voice different when they got old." Watch our complete interview with Minha Kim. The Paramount+ series stars Billy Bob Thornton as Tommy Norris, the right-hand man for a powerful West Texas oil executive (Jon Hamm). Larter plays Tommy's ex-wife, Angela, who is first introduced during a FaceTime call while vacationing with her new husband. It doesn't take long for her to make her way back to Texas. Larter was immediately drawn to working with creator Taylor Sheridan, who "loves his women to be emotional roller coasters. That to me, as an actress, is so exciting because I'm trying to hold it together for my family and figure out how I'm going to piece this together." She adds, "I love getting to play this woman who lays it all on the line. She wears everything on her sleeve. It's really exciting to get to play somebody that powerful." Read our complete interview with Ali Larter. The second season of the Apple TV+ series is about a near-future, retro-tinged dystopia where people could separate their work selves from their personal lives. The team behind the show, including Lower, joined our recent group discussion, where she discussed her approach to playing the innie and outie versions of her character. "For me, I use a lot of analogies. They sound like different music in my head. I use music a lot when I'm getting ready in the morning," Lower explains. "I'm also informed by how my costars are behaving with me, how the scene is written, how it's directed. There's a lot of inspiration once you get to set by the elements around you that are shifted slightly based on where you're at. Obviously when I'm Helena posing as Helly, Helena had a similar job to myself as an actor, which was to blend into this family that she is encountering for the first time. And she's having to do the same kind of role as we do as actors, which is to assume an identity and to move around like that person. And I think it was something we worked really closely on with [director] Ben [Stiller]. We were trying to figure out what things slip through. When is her acting not so good? And when is she able to tap into that part of her, that inner-rebel that she's maybe abandoned from childhood or has maybe never had full access to. Especially in [Episode] 204 ['Woe's Hollow'], she gets a kick out of playing against Milchick and getting to be the one in the classroom who's disrupting. Well, not the classroom, but the campfire." Watch our complete interview with Britt Lower. Season 3 of the Showtime series saw Lynskey's character, Shauna, delve into darker, more chaotic territory — a turn the actress found exhilarating. "It was fun because it felt like what the character has been building to," Lynskey explains. "From the beginning, I had the information that she's really trying to repress this side of herself. It's been fun when I've been able to let it out in little bursts. In [the first two] seasons there were little moments where it came out — but it went so wild this season. It was fun." Watch our complete interview with Melanie Lynskey. The Emmy and Oscar winner stars as Cara Dutton opposite Harrison Ford for the Paramount+ western series created by Taylor Sheridan. She says, 'Both Harrison and I, for the first time in our lives, had to commit without reading a single word of the characters or the story or anything. Because Taylor said he likes to write for the actor that he's got, he likes to write knowing who he's writing for, which I thought was very interesting.' But for Sheridan, she was willing to take the chance. 'We knew the history of Taylor's writing, And you know what? What a remarkable, brilliant, extraordinary talent he is. So we took a leap into the dark.' Watch our complete interview with Helen Mirren. The star, executive producer, and director were in the same physical place by the end, but the eight years between the series premiere and finale of the Emmy-winning Hulu adaptation of Margaret Atwood's seminal novel saw a huge evolution for both her and her character. "As an actor at the end, and as a director as well because they're so intertwined, it was so meta," Moss says. "I hadn't been back to the Waterford house in however many years it has been since June had been there. But I know how that felt, and I was able to then carry it into the scene. There [were] a lot of amazing memories, and there [were] also a lot of complicated memories of being very cold and it being very late at night and things like that — not quite as complicated as June's memories." Watch our complete interview with Elisabeth Moss. The FX series from Ryan Murphy begins with Nash-Betts' Det. Lois Tryon investigating several horrific murders in a small town, but viewers are soon thrown for a loop. "I will probably be working with Ryan until the day they throw dirt on my face," she says. "I love Ryan Murphy. I love him as a partner. I love him as a creator. I was so interested to see what was next, what was going on in his mind. And when I read that script — oh my gosh!" Watch our complete interview with Niecy Nash-Betts. The Season 3 finale for Showtime left fans with another cliffhanger — Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) calling for help from a mountaintop as Shauna (Nélisse) takes her throne as the Antler Queen. "I remember reading it and being like, 'This is so sick!' We were so excited, and I really wish that all of the cast could watch the finale together because it's such an important moment for us," says Nélisse. "When it ends with Natalie on the mountain, I was screaming out loud. We weren't there when she was shooting that scene, but I knew exactly how she was going to act it out, and I was like, 'This is going to leave people with their jaws just dropped on the floor.'" Read our complete interview with Sophie Nelisse. Preston has portrayed Elsbeth Tascioni — a delightfully unpredictable attorney — for more than 15 years. What began as a recurring Emmy-winning character on The Good Wife evolved into a fan-favorite performance that continued on The Good Fight and now leads her own CBS series, Elsbeth, heading into its third season. 'I love Elsbeth's curiosity and her wonder and her positive attitude,' she says. 'It takes discipline to approach the world that way. It's infectious. I love getting inside of that mindset every day because it really helps me in my life.' Watch our complete interview with Carrie Preston. Best of Gold Derby Lee Jung-jae, Adam Scott, Noah Wyle, and the best of our Emmy Drama Actor interviews Everything to know about 'The Pitt' Season 2 Adam Brody, Seth Rogen, Jason Segel, and the best of our Emmy Comedy Actor interviews Click here to read the full article.
USA Today
6 days ago
- Business
- USA Today
As Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez's wedding kicks off, a look back at their romance
Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez are tying the knot, and it might just be the biggest wedding of the year. The techpreneur and socialite's upcoming Italian nuptials have turned the internet (and the city of Venice) upside down as photos and reports emerge of lavish celebrations and a who's who of A-listers arriving via boat. The Amazon founder is among the world's richest men, and Sánchez, his romantic second act, is an ex-journalist who has lent a quasi-feminist spin to his oft-critiqued business ventures. Their romance has captured the world's attention, and its opulence will be on full display this month as a slew of celebrity guests arrive to watch the power couple say "I do." Here's a look back at their relationship timeline. January 2019: Rumors of a romance swirl Bezos and Sánchez were first reportedly linked in 2019, around the same time both parties announced splits from their previous partners. Bezos and his ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, with whom he shares four children, split officially that same year. Sánchez was already in the process of divorcing her husband, Patrick Whitesell, with whom she shares two children. February 2019: Bezos accuses National Enquirer of blackmail In a post to the blogging website Medium in February 2019, Bezos accused the National Enquirer of blackmailing him with intimate text messages and photos he and Sánchez exchanged, several of which, the outlet claimed, showed him still with his wedding ring on. "Of course I don't want personal photos published, but I also won't participate in their well-known practice of blackmail, political favors, political attacks, and corruption," Bezos wrote in the post. 2019: Vacations, Wimbledon, more Throughout 2019, the couple were spotted out and about, vacationing together and attending sporting events. The first year of their romance was marked by a slow ramp-up of public appearances, contrasted heavily with their current, more saturated presence in the public eye. 2020: A trip to India In 2020, the pair jetted off to India for a trip to the Taj Mahal and several public engagements. 2021: Sánchez watches Bezos work For one of the world's leading businessmen, public appearances are often varied and high-powered. As their romance heated up, Sánchez became a familiar figure on his arm not just during personal outings, but during business ventures as well. In 2021, the former TV journalist accompanied her partner to business meetings with world leaders, a speech at his space company Blue Origin, and a charitable gala. 2022: Movie premieres, commencements, oh my! Sánchez and Bezos stayed on the party circuit in 2022, attending various movie premieres, including one for "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power," a spinoff released on streaming under Amazon Prime, the entertainment subsidiary of Bezos' e-commerce giant Amazon. They also shared a laugh at a commencement ceremony for MIT graduates. 2023: A multi-million dollar engagement Bezos popped the question to Sánchez on his yacht during a trip to the Cannes Film Festival in May 2023. He hid a box containing a $2.5 million pink engagement ring under her pillow, Sánchez shared with Vogue, telling the outlet: "When he opened the box, I think I blacked out a bit." January 2025: Inauguration Day Bezos, who has shared a fraught relationship with Donald Trump over the years, attended the 47th president's second inauguration this year, along with a bevy of other tech leaders in an apparent attempt to cozy up to the executive. Sánchez was by his side in an all-white getup. Lauren Sánchez, Jeff Bezos' fiancée, wears white to Trump inauguration: See the photo April 2025: A trip to space In April, Sánchez took a flight alongside other celebrities and scientists in a much-critiqued, all-female mission aboard a Blue Origin capsule. Bezos greeted her upon landing, and the two embraced. June 2025: Wedding bells ring As the summer heats up, Bezos and Sánchez are set to shut down a large portion of Venice, a major tourist destination, for their wedding festivities. This week, celebrity guests began arriving for the nuptials and protestors took to the city to voice dissatisfaction with the billionaire's growing wealth and opulent display. Contributing: Saman Shafiq
Newsweek
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Newsweek
Best Prime Video Original Series in 2025 and Beyond
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Entertainment gossip and news from Newsweek's network of contributors The future of Prime Video is looking bright thanks to its stellar line-up of upcoming series. In this list, you'll see every single show heading to Amazon's streaming platform over the coming weeks, months, and years. From more superhero shenanigans in Gen V Season 2, to the continuation of epic fantasy action in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 3, these series are all a must-watch. Expect exciting reality shows, gripping documentaries, and unmissable dramas. While diverse, there's one unifying theme to the following entries on our list of best shows on Prime Video: they're all exclusive, as confirmed by Amazon MGM Studios. That means the only way to watch is with a subscription to Prime Video. Morfydd Clark stars in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Morfydd Clark stars in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Amazon Prime Video So keep reading to see everything coming to Prime Video, plus their corresponding trailers where available. Best Prime Video Original Series in 2025 and Beyond June 12, 2025 American Thunder Nascar To Le Mans Deep Cover June 13, 2025 ROMCON: Who the F**k Is Jason Porter? June 15, 2025 The Chosen: Last Supper June 18, 2025 We Were Liars June 23, 2025 Giada in My Kitchen Head Over Heels June 25, 2025 Countdown July 9, 2025 Ballad July 11, 2025 One Night in Idaho: The College Murders July 16, 2025 The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 3 August 13, 2025 Butterfly August 15, 2025 Abandoned: The Woman in the Decaying House August 27, 2025 The Terminal List: Dark Wolf September 17, 2025 Gen V Season 2 September 24, 2025 Hotel Costiera November 7, 2025 Maxton Hall - The World Between Us Season 2 Coming in 2025 Dime tu nombre El Fin del Amor Season 2 Hotel Costiera Malice 2026 and Beyond Barrabrava Cochinas Cromañón Helluva Boss Season 1 & 2 The House of Spirits LOL: Last One Laughing Argentina Season 3 Menem The Runarounds The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 3
Toronto Sun
18-06-2025
- Business
- Toronto Sun
Amazon CEO says AI will reduce its corporate workforce in next few years
Published Jun 18, 2025 • 2 minute read Andy Jassy, Amazon president and CEO, attends the premiere of "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" at The Culver Studios, Aug. 15, 2022, in Culver City, Calif. Photo by Jordan Strauss / Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP Amazon CEO Andy Jassy anticipates generative artificial intelligence will reduce its corporate workforce in the next few years as the online giant begins to increase its usage of the technology. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account 'We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs,' Jassy said in a message to employees. 'It's hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.' The executive said that Amazon has more than 1,000 generative AI services and applications in progress or built, but that figure is a 'small fraction' of what it plans to build. Jassy encouraged employees to get on board with the e-commerce company's AI plans. 'As we go through this transformation together, be curious about AI, educate yourself, attend workshops and take trainings, use and experiment with AI whenever you can, participate in your team's brainstorms to figure out how to invent for our customers more quickly and expansively, and how to get more done with scrappier teams,' he said. Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Earlier this month Amazon announced that it was planning to invest $10 billion toward building a campus in North Carolina to expand its cloud computing and artificial intelligence infrastructure. Since 2024 started, Amazon has committed to about $10 billion apiece to data center projects in Mississippi, Indiana, Ohio and North Carolina as it ramps up its infrastructure to compete with other tech giants to meet growing demand for artificial intelligence products. The rapid growth of cloud computing and artificial intelligence has meanwhile fueled demand for energy-hungry data centers that need power to run servers, storage systems, networking equipment and cooling systems. Amazon said earlier this month that it will spend $20 billion on two data center complexes in Pennsylvania. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. In March Amazon began testing artificial intelligence-aided dubbing for select movies and shows offered on its Prime streaming service. A month earlier, the company rolled out a generative-AI infused Alexa. Amazon has also invested more heavily in AI. In November the company said that it was investing an additional $4 billion in the artificial intelligence startup Anthropic. Two months earlier chipmaker Intel said that its foundry business would make some custom artificial intelligence chips for Amazon Web Services, which is Amazon's cloud computing unit and a main driver of its artificial intelligence ambitions. RECOMMENDED VIDEO
Los Angeles Times
17-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
How ‘The Rings of Power' translated Tolkien's Balrog to the screen
'I wanted this to be something that would have been hanging on my bedroom wall,' says senior visual effects supervisor Jason Smith about the heroic depiction of King Durin III (Peter Mullan) sacrificing himself to a fiery monster during the climactic Season 2 finale of 'The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.' The immortalizing moment, which follows a tearful goodbye between father and son, drew inspiration from J.R.R. Tolkien's description of the Balrog as a being of 'shadow and flame.' 'We didn't want to ruin the poetry of Tolkien's writing by showing too much. He leaves space for your mind to help tell the story in a way that you will find compelling, so we tried to do that,' explains Smith. A mixture of milky blacks and crimson hues brought the photorealistic scene together, the contrast in color elevating the nightmarish image where every detail, down to the white-hot flames and lava-red horns, was designed to captivate the viewer. 'The first thing we wanted is for people to feel the emotional journey of the story,' says Smith. 'Then we leaned into the symbolism while maintaining realism. You'll notice the creature is a creature of shadow and flame.'
