Latest news with #WhiteWitch
Metro
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Metro
Fired WWE star makes 'scary' admission 5 months after being released
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Leaving WWE can be a terrifying prospect for any wrestler, and Isla Dawn is trying to 'live in the moment'. The 31-year-old Scottish star was signed by the sports entertainment giant in 2018 and captured the NXT and WWE Women's Tag Team Titles during her seven years with the company. In February, it was revealed Isla had been released by WWE with her 90 day notice finishing in May, and she exclusively told Metro about her approach now she's a free agent. 'I want to just wrestle and travel and do all the things and whatever door opens, I will be straight through,' she said days before making her Burning Heart Pro Wrestling debut in Manchester against Aleah James on August 3. She added: 'It's scary and exciting, because I'm kind of like, 'Oh, I don't know I'm doing with my life!' But then there's also all these opportunities to do things.' The White Witch didn't rule out a move to AEW or TNA Wrestling, she also has her sights set on Australia and a return to Japan. She explained: 'I want to have all these little things that I want to do and look back on and go, 'Oh, yeah, I've done this cool thing, and I've done that cool thing' rather than being so rigid.' Isla has managed to stay positive, and even turned the day she got the call about her release into a 'great weekend in Nashville' with Irish star Lyra Valkyria after arriving a couple of nights before Raw. It wasn't a shock. But I don't really remember much of the phone call other than me just being very polite,' she laughed. ''Hey, it's okay, no no, you're fine.' I was almost apologising, 'No, no, don't you worry, you're good!'' Since her exit, she's had support from the likes of Bayley and former United States Champion Chelsea Green, and she admitted as much as she loves wrestling, it's 'the people that make it'. That's been true the entire time, going back to her first ever WWE appearance the week of her tryout, when she faced Asuka on Monday Night Raw in 2017. 'I was just there in makeup, terrified of being on WWE and I remember Bayley and Mercedes [Mone, AKA Sasha Banks] just coming over and being the nicest people alive and helping me,' she recalled. 'Before I went into Gorilla to have the match, I remember the two of them coming up and being like, 'Oh, you're gonna kill it. You look amazing'. Just actively building me up to make me feel good.' Isla was signed the following year, and rose up the ranks through NXT UK and NXT, where she worked under Hall of Famer Shawn Michaels – and while she has fond memories of the Heartbreak Kid, her mum might not agree. 'My mum is terrified of Ouija boards, hates them. And I remember Shawn being like, 'Oh, we're gonna get you Ouija boards'. And me being like, 'Oh, that is really cool, Shawn, but my mum's gonna kill me, oh noooo,'' she said. She can remember telling her mum about the idea, and her mum insisting she'd 'just have to tell Shawn Michaels no', which wasn't going to happen. The highlight of Isla's time in WWE came last summer, when she and fellow Scottish star Alba Fyre – known as the Unholy Union – won the Women's Tag Team Titles in Scotland with their family watching. WWE Hall of Famer Molly Holly was the one who told her they'd be winning gold, but Isla tried not to get carried away with the idea in case plans changed. 'It was nice to have that with her, because she's Molly Holly! She was also excited for us,' she smiled. 'It was very cool.' Clash At The Castle itself feels 'like a blur now', and Isla admitted she can't remember much beyond the 'surreal' ending with 'all of Scotland' cheering them on. 'One thing I do remember, and I'll hold it against him for the rest of his life, is my nephew, who was three at the time,' she chuckled. 'I was making my entrance and standing in the corner and looking at my family, and he was on his iPad!' Looking to the future, Isla is happy to take things as they come – but she's keen to build on what she's done so far. More Trending 'I'm never going to do a full 180 and be like this new person. What I've done my entire career has always been an extension of me,' she pointed out. 'I'm a different person, I'm an older person. So it's just a newer version of me, which is Isla Dawn, and Isla Dawn is me, and we are one.' View More » Isla Dawn has been announced for Burning Heart Pro Wrestling. For more information, click here. Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. MORE: Netflix quietly cancels 'gem of a series' with 100% on Rotten Tomatoes MORE: Hulk Hogan's son shares heartbreaking tribute after dad's 'extremely difficult' death MORE: Major WWE SummerSlam match at risk with top star 'blocked from entering US'
Time Out
17-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' review
This review is from 2019. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe returns for 2025 in a production based upon Sally Cookson's original that's redirected by Michael Fentiman, with set and costume design by Tom Paris. Katy Stephens stars as the White Witch. Kind of caught halfway between 'Game of Thrones' and 'The Wind in the Willows', it's fair to say that CS Lewis's 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' – with its well-spoken child heroes, twee talking animals and heavy Christian vibes – can be left looking a bit old-fashioned. Endlessly adapted long before the current era of sophisticated CGI-driven fantasy, has its time passed now that everything from 'His Dark Materials' to 'The Wheel of Time' is being adapted for the telly? Truthfully, the answer to that question probably lies with the fate of Netflix's imminent lavish adaptation. But for now, we have a very smart stage version from Sally Cookson, that balances the stiff-upper-lipped charms of the book with a real sense of the encroaching wildness – even madness – of the fantastical kingdom of Narnia. The opening section is jolly hockey sticks à gogo, with the audience cast as wartime child evacuees, spirited away from the Blitz on the same train as Lewis's young heroes the Pevensies. By the end, it's become something that feel rapturously wild, as Narnia awakes in a frenzy of colour and feeling from the century-long magical winter placed on it by Laura Elphinstone's sleekly malevolent White Witch. Yes, Lewis shoved loaded, fairly blatant Christian allegory into his story, chiefly in the death and resurrection of the noble lion Aslan. But it was never as straightforward as 'The Bible'-but-with-lions, and Cookson's take feels more indebted to ancient rites of death and rebirth that Christianity absorbed. Aslan, in particular, is out there, a glowing-eyed psychedelic monstrosity with blue wings that looks like a fusion of lion and dragon, with a human avatar in the form of musclebound, fur-clad Wil Johnson, who's more barbarian shaman than Christian priest. It if it's not as overly dark as many fantasy books, it's perhaps easiest to remember it for all the cute stuff at the beginning, as the youngest of the children, Lucy, steps through a wardrobe into snowbound Narnia and befriends the neurotic faun Mr Tumnus. It's harder, perhaps, to recollect that by the end a sort of strange incarnation of Father Christmas has given the kids real weapons and they have engaged in a bloody fight to the death with the White Witch's army of demons. Indebted more to childhood fantasies of pretend sword battles than grim psychological realism, the journey from youthful innocence to stabbing killer wolves in the face is a pretty full-on trajectory to realise on stage, and with the exception of John Leaders's uptight Edmund, the Pevensies here don't really make the impression that the lion or the witch do. But if a slight lack of psychological acuity is the trade-off for embracing the full-on weirdness of the book, it's worth it. Cookson and designer Rae Smith delight in the novel's eccentricities rather than fight them: their Narnia is a DIY-inflected nirvana where a very funny sight gag about talking animals communicating via cans on strings can sit next to Elphinstone being genuinely terrifying, swelling to enormous height as cackling fiends gather around her. Pretty much everything in the book is retained, and if the first half slightly struggles to find a coherent tone to process it all, in the second half it arrives at its destination – a wilderness of pure imagination, unshackled, ecstatic and pagan.
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Carey Mulligan joins cast of Greta Gerwig's Narnia adaptation
Carey Mulligan is reportedly in talks to join the cast of Narnia, Greta Gerwig's forthcoming adaptation of CS Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia fantasy novel series. The first instalment of the Oscar-nominated director's two-part film series will be released for a two-week run in Imax theatres worldwide next November, before moving to Netflix on Christmas Day, 2026. Gerwig's film will be based on the sixth novel in Lewis' series, The Magician's Nephew, which is a prequel to the series and features the creation of Narnia by Aslan the lion, one thousand years before the events that take place in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The Magician's Nephew follows two children, Digory and Polly, who are subject to the White Witch's fury after their uncle dabbles with magic. In huge casting news for Gerwig's first directorial project since 2023's record-breaking Barbie, Mulligan will play Digory's critically ill mother, per The Hollywood Reporter. Mulligan, considered by many the leading English star of her generation, has been nominated for the Best Actress Oscar three times for her performances in Bradley Cooper's Maestro (2023), Emerald Fennell's Promising Young Woman (2020) and Lone Scherfig's An Education (2009). Casting rumours have been flying about Narnia, with Meryl Streep reportedly in talks to voice Aslan. There's also been speculation that Daniel Craig will play the children's uncle and Barbie and Sex Education star Emma Mackey is set to play Jadis, the White Witch, following rumours that pop star Charli XCX was previously under consideration for the role. The Independent has contacted Netflix for comment. Published between 1950 to 1956, Lewis' bestselling book series chronicles the adventures of various children who are transported into the fictional world of Narnia. Three of the seven titles have been adapted for the big screen, including The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), Prince Caspian (2008) and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010). Gerwig became attached to the new project in 2020, the same year her critically acclaimed Little Women adaptation was nominated for several Oscars. Before that, her solo directorial debut, Lady Bird (2017), also earned numerous Oscar nods. She has since continued to blaze trails in the film industry. In 2023, her Barbie comedy, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, raked in over $1bn at the box office, making her the highest-grossing female director of all time.
The Herald Scotland
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
'Spectacular': Review: The Lion, Witch & Wardrobe @ Festival Theatre
Festival Theatre, Edinburgh Neil Cooper Five stars A World War Two soldier is playing We'll Meet Again on the piano at the start of this latest tour of C.S. Lewis' classic morality tale. The melancholy melody is about the most down to earth thing you're likely to see over the next two hours of a show that turns its dramatic world upside down in epic fashion. Scaled up by director Michael Fentiman from Sally Cookson's 2017 version at Leeds Playhouse, the result is spectacular. The opening song sets the tone for the wartime evacuation of the four Pevensie children, who are decamped to Aberdeen, where the allure for their new home's spare room proves too much for the eternally curious Lucy. Before she knows where she is she has gone beyond the flea ridden fur coats and landed in Narnia. As imagined by designer Tom Paris and original designer Rae Smith, the Narnia under the queendom of Katy Stephens' White Witch's more resembles some Fritz Lang styled dystopia driven by a constructivist chain gang who seem to have stepped out of a 1970s adult SF comic. Read more Yes, the White Witch has got the power, as she proves with her jawdropping metamorphosis at the end of the first act, but Spring is coming. This is the case even if Lucy's daft brother Edmund sells out his siblings for a bumper sized box of Turkish Delight personified by way of Toby Olié and Max Humphries' larger than life puppetry. Fentiman's slickly oiled machine is driven by Barnaby Race and Benji Bower's chamber folk score played by the cast of more than twenty throughout. Despite the show's grandiose staging, it is the humanity of the piece that gives the show its heart and soul. This is even the case with Stanton Wright's messianic looking Aslan, embodied by a life size lion puppet beside him as he spars with the White Witch and her well drilled minions. As Shanell 'Tali' Fergus' choreography navigates the cast from dark to light, it is the Pevensie clan who shine. Joanna Adaran as Susan, Jesse Dunbar as Peter, Kudzai Mangombe as Lucy and Shane Anthony Whiteley stepping up as Edmund for a Thursday matinee briefly halted by technical gods all rise to the occasion in a big show that never loses sight of the eternal story at its heart.
New Indian Express
27-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New Indian Express
Emma Mackey cast as the White Witch in Greta Gerwig's Narnia
The White Witch has arrived in Narnia. Actor Emma Mackey is reteaming with Greta Gerwig after Barbie to play the evil queen in the upcoming adaptation of CS Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia books backed by Netflix. Reportedly based on the sixth Narnia book The Magician's Nephew , Gerwig will be writing as well directing the upcoming film. Mackey is taking over the baton from Tilda Swinton who played the iconic character in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005). She is set to join Meryl Streep, who is in negotiations to play Aslan, the lion who is Narnia's guardian and guide for the entire community who reside in it. Earlier, Margaret Qualley was in talks to star as the White Witch. The White Witch's real name is Jadis, is the main antagonist for The Magician's Nephew and the beloved Narnia book The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe . She turns her enemies into statues and is infamous for putting Narnia in an eternal winter. The film is scheduled to debut in theatres on Thanksgiving Day in 2026 for two weeks before its OTT run—a rare move for the streamer—following Gerwig's request. Gerwig, whose Barbie broke box office records in 2023, has been attached to the Narnia project since 2020 after earning critical acclaim and an Oscar nomination for Lady Bird. Netflix acquired the rights to the beloved fantasy series in 2018 and aims to turn it into a major franchise. Emma Mackey, widely recognized for her role in Netflix's Sex Education , has secured major parts in several upcoming projects. She stars alongside Glen Powell and Jenna Ortega in JJ Abrams' upcoming Warner Bros. feature, appears in Julia Ducournau's Alpha —set to premiere at next month's Cannes Film Festival—and takes on the lead role in James L. Brooks' comedy Ella McCay , arriving in theaters on December 12.
