Latest news with #Zoolander2
The Herald Scotland
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Ben Stiller's actress daughter says they have discussed writing a play together
She told US publication Teen Vogue: 'My dad and I talk a lot about writing together, and I think we eventually want to write a play together for the two of us, hopefully. 'I would love, love, love to work with everyone in my family, just because… growing up, that's what my dad always said — when you watch his movies, so many of the little random parts in it are family members or a family friend or something. Ben Stiller attending the Zoolander 2 UK premiere (Ian West/PA) 'And it's almost just a hidden gem Easter egg thing… you can put little parts of your own self and life into it.' Her father has led comedy films including Zoolander, Meet The Parents and The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty. Ella said: 'I think my dad and I are very similar in the way our brains work and the way we view art and writing and creativity. 'I feel he and I are very much cut from the same cloth. 'I feel I get a lot of my everyday stuff or mannerisms from my mom. We all, collectively, get our sense of humour from each other. 'We have a very specific way of joking in my family, which I love so much… I am surrounded by a lot of really smart people who make really smart jokes without ego.' She added: 'I grew up with access to people. My parents, my grandparents were amazing actors and writers and that's incredible and that's an amazing privilege, but I wanted to also have my own people and pave my own way and have my own voice be put out there. 'I always want to make sure the people that I work with and who I surround myself with are people who really see me as my own person and my own artist.' Emmy-award winning actor Ben also shares a son called Quinlin with his wife, actress Christine Taylor.
Indian Express
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Denzel Washignton and Spike Lee reunite for Highest 2 Lowest, featuring ASAP Rocky and Jeffrey Wright. Watch teaser
Veteran actor Denzel Washington and legendary director Spike Lee are reuniting after 19 years for a film titled Highest 2 Lowest, produced by A24. The studio released a teaser on Monday, sparking excitement among fans and admirers eager to see the outcome of this powerful collaboration. Led by Denzel, the cast of the film also includes Academy Award nominee Jeffrey Wright, Ilfenesh Hadera, Jose Baez, and hip-hop artistes ASAP Rocky and Ice Spice. Although this will mark Ice Spice's Hollywood debut, Rocky has already featured in several films and documentaries, such as Dope (2015) and Zoolander 2 (2016). The teaser of Highest 2 Lowest opens with a visual of the Brooklyn Bridge while a dialogue by Denzel Washington plays in the background. He says, 'There is more to life than just making money. There's integrity – what you stand for, what you actually believe.' While the dialogue runs, titles of previous films that Denzel and Spike have worked on keep running, such as An Inside Man (2009), Mo Better Blues (1990), Malcolm X (1992) and He Got Game (1998). WATCH | The Smashing Machine trailer: Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson is battered and bruised in Mark Kerr biopic A montage plays, showing Denzel's character in a series of contrasting moments, as his voiceover reflects on the pursuit of success and the chaos that often follows. He poses a series of pointed questions: 'Can you handle the mayhem? Can you handle the money? Can you handle the success? Can you handle the failures? Can you handle the lovers? Can you handle the memes? And can you handle everything that is in between?' Though Spike Lee has firmly established himself as one of the greats, he faces a significant challenge with this project. Highest 2 Lowest is a remake of the 1963 Japanese classic High and Low, directed by the legendary Akira Kurosawa. Lee now takes on the task of capturing that same intensity and depth, reimagining the story against the backdrop of New York City. The film will release in select theatres on August 22 and will be available to stream on Apple TV+.
The Guardian
06-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘I did it for the money!' The films that made Tim Roth, Benedict Cumberbatch and more apologise
When it comes to what movies can get away with, tastes change fast. Just ask Benedict Cumberbatch, who decided to play for laughs a non-binary character named All in Ben Stiller's 2016 film Zoolander 2. That said, the role was controversial at the time – there was an online petition urging a boycott. But it has only looked more tone-deaf over time. In 2022, Cumberbatch offered an almost-apology, telling Variety: 'In this era, my role would never be performed by anybody other than a trans actor. But I remember at the time not thinking of it necessarily in that regard, and it being more about two dinosaurs, two heteronormative cliches not understanding this new diverse world. But it backfired a little bit.' Apparently, the role still plays on his mind, since this week he offered a further lament to Variety. 'I've had to apologise for that quite a lot. It's a difficult one to talk about,' he said. 'I love that group of people and it was the chance to be part of something that the first time around was iconic … But it got complicated and it got misunderstood and I upset people. I respect that, so I probably wouldn't do that again now.' Her career has flourished in the past decade, but in 2015 Emma Stone was staring down the barrel of a career-ender. The culprit was her role in Cameron Crowe's Hawaii-set Aloha. In Aloha, Stone – a woman from Arizona with Swedish, German, English, Scottish and Irish ancestry – was cast as the air force pilot Allison Ng, a woman described as being of one-quarter Chinese and one-quarter Hawaiian descent. Even before the film was released, activist groups were calling out the film's whitewashing of Asian culture, which prompted Stone to say that she had 'learned on a macro level about the insane history of whitewashing in Hollywood and how prevalent the problem truly is. It's ignited a conversation that's very important … There's a lot of conversation about how we want to see people represented on screen and what we need to change as a business to reflect culture in a clearer way and not in an idealised way.' When Sandra Oh made a crack about the film at the 2019 Golden Globes, noting that Crazy Rich Asians was 'the first studio film with an Asian-American lead since … Aloha,' Stone yelled: 'I'm sorry!' from the audience. It's hard to think of a film quite as ill-conceived as 2014's United Passions, a Fifa vanity project released shortly before Fifa was engulfed in a jaw-dropping corruption scandal. The film was a flop, failing to make back even $200,000 of its $32m budget. The man who played the now disgraced Fifa president Sepp Blatter had no qualms about apologising for his part in it. Talking to the German newspaper Die Welt in 2015, he said: 'I apologise I didn't question the director, I didn't question the script. This is a role that will have my father turning in his grave.' He expanded in a Reddit interview: 'I hated doing it, it was the wrong film, but for the right reasons. I had two kids in college so I had to make a decision and it was probably poorly judged, but once you make that decision you have to follow through. It's a hard road, being in something you don't want to do, but I'm glad I did it for my family.' In other words, as he told Yahoo Movies, United Passions was 'a crap movie that I did for money'. Almost everyone involved in 2018's Green Book has apologised for something or other – its writer for tweeting that Muslims in Jersey City were cheering when the 'towers went down' on 9/11; its director for flashing his penis at colleagues during meetings in the 90s – but none quite as hard as Mahershala Ali, who played the real life concert pianist Don Shirley. Despite Ali winning an Oscar for the role, some viewers complained that Shirley's agency had been removed to accommodate a 'white saviour' narrative. None were more outraged than Shirley's brother, who called the film 'a symphony of lies'. Amid this, Ali rang Shirley's family. 'I got a call from Mahershala Ali, a very, very respectful phone call, from him personally. He called me and my Uncle Maurice in which he apologised profusely if there had been any offence,' said Shirley's nephew, Edwin Shirley. 'What he said was: 'If I have offended you, I am so, so terribly sorry. I did the best I could with the material I had. I was not aware that there were close relatives with whom I could have consulted to add some nuance to the character.'' Paul Newman's screen career seemed to get off to a flying start in 1954, when his first feature performance, in Victor Saville's The Silver Chalice, resulted in a Golden Globe nomination. Despite this, the film has not been well remembered, holding a 13% rating on Rotten Tomatoes for its lumbering script and inauthentic sets. However, it was Newman – who played the artist who made the chalice that Jesus drank from at the Last Supper – who had the worst to say of it. Calling the film 'the worst movie produced during the 1950s', Newman actively tried to scupper its legacy. When it played every night for a week on a Los Angeles TV station in the early 60s, Newman took out adverts in trade papers reading: 'Paul Newman apologizes every night this week – Channel 9.' This only drew everyone's attention to the film, which received unusually high ratings. Mark Wahlberg doesn't readily gives himself over to apologies, probably because he is too busy getting up at 2.30am to exercise. But sometimes – just sometimes – he crosses the line so egregiously that it would be wrong if he didn't acknowledge it. We are talking, of course, about his role in M Night Shyamalan's 2008 film The Happening. A bad movie in the classic sense, in that you can't tell whether the cast and crew are doing it on purpose or not, The Happening is a film about telepathic trees who drive humans to suicide. It is so stupid that it briefly made Wahlberg a laughing stock. Eventually, the din became so loud that Wahlberg felt forced to give the closest thing to an apology he has ever given. Behold: 'It is what it is. Fucking trees, man. The plants. Fuck it. You can't blame me for not wanting to try to play a science teacher. At least I wasn't playing a cop or a crook.' One for the all-time apology archives, you'll agree.
Yahoo
06-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Benedict Cumberbatch isn't happy he upset people with non-binary role: 'I wouldn't do that again'
Benedict Cumberbatch has said he wouldn't play a non-binary character again after his controversial performance in Zoolander 2. The actor appeared in the 2016 comedy sequel as a character named All, a non-binary fashion model. LGBT+ activists led a boycott of the film, with a petition amassing up to 25,000 signatures. The petition criticised the decision to play the character 'as an over-the-top, cartoonish mockery of androgyne/trans/non-binary individuals'. It continued: 'By hiring a cis actor to play a non-binary individual in a clearly negative way, the film endorses harmful and dangerous perceptions of the queer community at large.' Speaking to Variety for the publication's 'Know Their Lives' video series, Cumberbatch expressed regret over his divisive role in Zoolander 2, which made only $28m (£23m) at the domestic box office. 'I've had to apologise for that quite a lot. It's a difficult one to talk about,' he said. 'I love that group of people and it was the chance to sort of be part of something that the first time around was iconic and I was a huge fan of,' Cumberbatch added of the Zoolander team. 'But it got complicated and it got misunderstood and I upset people. I respect that, so I probably wouldn't do that again now.' Back in 2022, Cumberbatch claimed there has been a societal shift since he took on the role in Zoolander 2 in 2016. 'I think in this era, my role would never be performed by anybody other than a trans actor,' he said. 'But I remember at the time not thinking of it necessarily in that regard, and it being more about two dinosaurs, two heteronormative clichés not understanding this new diverse world,' the actor added. 'But it backfired a little bit.' It comes shortly after the Sherlock actor discussed the intense reaction to his physical appearance when he first rose to fame. 'I'm not Brad, I'm not Leonardo, I'm not a typical movie star,' he said. 'People were scrambling for 'Why is he at all attractive to us?' But for me to guess and try to understand that is so f***ing weirdly navel-gazing.' He added: 'I'm not sitting around thinking, 'Why am I sexy?' I worry about myself in the mirror as I age, like every other f***** does.' Cumberbatch also took umbrage with 'celebrity' as a term. 'It's so derogatory, and just lumps anyone famous together,' he said. 'Am I a 'celebrated' person? Well, for what? For selling cheese? For being on a reality show? For doing something outrageous? For being an actor?'
The Independent
06-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Benedict Cumberbatch isn't happy he upset people with non-binary role: 'I wouldn't do that again'
Benedict Cumberbatch has said he wouldn't play a non-binary character again after his controversial performance in Zoolander 2. The actor appeared in the 2016 comedy sequel as a character named All, a non-binary fashion model. LGBT+ activists led a boycott of the film, with a petition amassing up to 25,000 signatures. The petition criticised the decision to play the character 'as an over-the-top, cartoonish mockery of androgyne/trans/non-binary individuals'. It continued: 'By hiring a cis actor to play a non-binary individual in a clearly negative way, the film endorses harmful and dangerous perceptions of the queer community at large.' Speaking to Variety for the publication's 'Know Their Lives' video series, Cumberbatch expressed regret over his divisive role in Zoolander 2, which made only $28m (£23m) at the domestic box office. 'I've had to apologise for that quite a lot. It's a difficult one to talk about,' he said. 'I love that group of people and it was the chance to sort of be part of something that the first time around was iconic and I was a huge fan of,' Cumberbatch added of the Zoolander team. 'But it got complicated and it got misunderstood and I upset people. I respect that, so I probably wouldn't do that again now.' Back in 2022, Cumberbatch claimed there has been a societal shift since he took on the role in Zoolander 2 in 2016. 'I think in this era, my role would never be performed by anybody other than a trans actor,' he said. 'But I remember at the time not thinking of it necessarily in that regard, and it being more about two dinosaurs, two heteronormative clichés not understanding this new diverse world,' the actor added. 'But it backfired a little bit.' It comes shortly after the Sherlock actor discussed the intense reaction to his physical appearance when he first rose to fame. 'I'm not Brad, I'm not Leonardo, I'm not a typical movie star,' he said. 'People were scrambling for 'Why is he at all attractive to us?' But for me to guess and try to understand that is so f***ing weirdly navel-gazing.' He added: 'I'm not sitting around thinking, 'Why am I sexy?' I worry about myself in the mirror as I age, like every other f***** does.' Cumberbatch also took umbrage with 'celebrity' as a term. 'It's so derogatory, and just lumps anyone famous together,' he said. 'Am I a 'celebrated' person? Well, for what? For selling cheese? For being on a reality show? For doing something outrageous? For being an actor?'
