TheOtherOne

Ernie Hudson has been cast as Magic. https://deadline.com/2022/03/quantum-leap-ernie-hudson-nbc-reboot-pilot-1234973289/

https://deadline.com/2022/02/peacemaker-season-one-finale-james-gunn-interview-spoilers-1234935500/ Tell us about landing Jason Momoa and Ezra Miller for the Justice League cameo GUNN: Jason, I have known for a while. So, we had a preexisting relationship, and also Peter Safran, who’s the producer on the show and he’s one of my closest allies and friends, he’s friends with Jason because he produces the Aquaman movies. So, we asked Jason. We knew Jason was probably going to do it very early on. Ezra came in as more of a surprise. I found out through a couple of friends that Ezra liked my films, and so then I connected with him and asked him to do it, as well. So, yeah, we were just lucky with the two of them. That was just a great, great touch, and then to hear Aquaman go blue was just great. GUNN: I know. You hear Aquaman just cursing. I think both of those guys deserves total props because he does f*** with both of them the whole season, and so the fact that they have such a great sense of humor about themselves, I really appreciate both those guys and what they did. The Ezra outtakes are probably the greatest things I’ve ever had. He literally went on for 30 minutes, and he hadn’t seen the show. I just showed him the scene of them walking away, and he kept calling Harcourt the little blonde boy. The best outtakes of all time are from him. They have to put that on HBO Max. GUNN: I know. Marvel shot it for us, which was really nice of them. Marvel did? GUNN: It was nice because we shot it on the set and with the crew of Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3. You know, they were kind of paying us back, though, because DC, Chukwudi Iwuji, we used the Peacemaker crew to shoot Chukwudi’s screen test for Guardians 3, and DC was really cool about that, and then Marvel was really cool about letting us use our crew to shoot Ezra.

Yes, he's her husband. Interesting enough, the actor who plays him is the same age as the actress playing her, but he does read a lot younger than 45/46.

Vulture has an interview with the writers where they discuss the season and their choices. The main takeaway for me is that these people are idiots who simply don't understand that the biggest problem isn't that people disagree with their choices--it's that the show was so poorly written. Any choice can be justified when written well. Miranda's arc was not. The breakup was not. Che Diaz was not. You idiots.

Yeah, totally a prop. I didn't think it looked very realistic, but the fact that Kristin Davis was touching it makes it clear to me that it wasn't real. Even if Evan Handler was comfortable having his co-star touch his dick, I doubt they would ask the actress to do that, even with intimacy coordinators and the like involved today. (Maybe the second frontal was added so they could say there was at least one actual penis in the episode, but seeing a real one just made the first look even more fake.)

I don't think it's been mentioned yet, but funny enough, this episode was written by the writers of that very episode. Evidently they couldn't be bothered to remember either.

He doesn't sound as bad on the soundtrack as he did live. I think it helps that since he's not trying to project like he was in the theater, he's not pushing as hard, so he can simply act and go for the emotion. And I don't doubt they did what they could in the studio to sweeten the vocals (and the music sounds on the verge of drowning him out).

Anyone remember when Sara Ramirez was introduced on Grey's Anatomy and there was a whole brouhaha about Callie not washing her hands after using the bathroom (and claiming she actually went down to the kitchen and washed her hands--yeah, right)? Maybe Sara Ramirez is being typecast as "characters lax in their hand washing." 😏

The girls of The Facts of Life will be... Jennifer Aniston (Blair), Gabrielle Union (Tootie), Allison Tolman (Natalie), and Kathryn Hahn (Jo). https://deadline.com/2021/11/jennifer-aniston-gabrielle-union-kathryn-hahn-allison-tolman-live-in-front-of-a-studio-audience-facts-of-life-1234881847/

Evidently the composers wrote a new score for the film to better match the vision of the director and reworked the songs. So there's a chance the music will be less terrible than the stage version! (Maybe they better tailored the songs to Dinklage's voice, since it seems unlikely he's suddenly able to sing.) https://www.indiewire.com/2021/11/cyrano-original-score-oscar-national-1234678238/

Yes, it did. https://tvline.com/2021/06/25/girls5eva-wickie-cribs-episode-2-renee-elise-goldsberry-video/

I saw the musical when it played in NYC a few years ago, or at least half of it. I left at intermission. I thought it was dreadful. The music in particular was grating and monotonous and if I'd had to sit through another minute of it I was likely going to scream. (And no, Dinklage could not sing. Unless being frog-voiced was another thing that was supposed to replace the nose as some sort of impediment. That would actually be sort of clever.) The soundtrack is on Youtube for those who want a sample:

Yep, the Emmys did that stupid thing where they held it outdoors...but built a tent with walls, creating an enclosed space, which defeats the whole purpose of having it outdoors in the first place. So dumb. In the linked video of his win, no one is wearing masks. https://www.emmys.com/video/2021-cae/hairstyling-period (He closes his backstage remarks by thanking his two-year-old dog. Hopefully one of his friends gave it a new home. 😥)

Marc Pilcher, Emmy-Winning ‘Bridgerton’ Makeup Designer, Dies of COVID-19 at 53 So sad. He was double-vaccinated, too. Everyone still needs to be on their guard.

If they had been eliminated, that likely would have spared Martin to stay another week, no? Risking spreading a deadly virus vs inflicting Mr. Kove on the viewing audience again. Choices, choices...

Thinking about all the guest stars reminds me of all the interviews I've read with some of them over the years. I always enjoyed Amy Hill's with The AV Club, where one of the things she talks about is doing the show:

Yeah, it's kind of annoying how incomplete that list is. The first ones that immediately came to mind were Carol's obstetrician (who I think was the actual first black character on Friends, in the second episode, not Jenifer Lewis in the third) and Phoebe's, who told her she was having triplets ("Doctors are wrong all the time.") But yeah, the Asian representation was a lot/even spottier. Hoshi, Pete's ultimate fighting trainer; Chandler's co-worker who wanted to get smacked on the butt by their boss in the same episode; Amy Hill as the loud-sex-having neighbor who wanted candy...

She didn't even take a bite with all the layers! Ya gotta take a bite with all the layers! But yeah, the fact that they didn't show this when there was so much stuff they didn't really need is dumb.

I'm sure some of the audience is laughing AT her, but personally what I loved about the fat version of Monica dancing is how happy she seemed. Regular Monica is uptight and neurotic and brittle, but whenever we saw her when she was fat (or the "what if she was still fat"), she seemed sweet and happy. I love watching this, because there's so much joy in it.

I don't think this one's been posted. Nice story about the making of the special and the work that went into it. Inside the ‘Friends’ Reunion With Director Ben Winston

It's interesting that you think they should donate the money they were paid from this to charity, yet you don't say that the billion-dollar corporation that will make much, much more more money than the cast from this should donate their proceeds. People don't deserve to get paid, but corporations do? Very interesting.

It's probably already been mentioned, but I love how Lisa knew Mr. Heckles' real name, even if she didn't know the character's name. When the women are all struggling to remember and David says, "And his name would be...?" and everyone is talking over each other, Lisa says, "Larry Hankin," and then kind of smiles, knowing it won't be accepted. But of course she's right.

I'm all for people getting paid what they're worth, even if they're already rich. In this case, I'd definitely rather see the cast get paid rather than just a corporation getting rich, since they're the reason people are interested in this. And all evidence is that they were worth every penny. When the trailer was released, it spawned fresh interest in the show (lots of charts and numbers here): "Friends: The Reunion special on HBO Max has also driven a surge of U.S. and worldwide demand for the original sitcom. As of May 24, Friends was the fourth most in-demand overall show in the world—behind only Game of Thrones, Attack on Titan, and La Casa de Papel (Money Heist)—and the eight most in-demand overall show in the U.S., behind stalwarts such as The Simpsons and The Mandalorian (both on Disney+)." And this: And this: ‘Friends: The Reunion’ Was Almost as Big as ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ on HBO Max "“Friends: The Reunion” was watched by an estimated 29% of U.S. streaming households on May 27, the first day of its release, as measured by TVision, a connected-TV analytics provider. Viewers of the special on HBO Max were 55.4% female, and more than 50% were in the 35-54 age demo. By comparison, DC’s “Wonder Woman 1984” reached 32% of U.S. streaming households when it bowed on Christmas Day 2020 on HBO Max, per TVision. According to Nielsen, “WW84” was the most-viewed title across U.S. streaming services for Dec. 21-27, 2020, registering nearly 2.3 billion minutes streamed." So yeah, it's driving people to HBO Max, which was the whole reason for it. If Warner Bros./AT&T is getting paid, I'm glad the cast did too.

Here's the Helen Baxendale interview: "She refuses to blame the Friends' cast for not giving her a warmer welcome - they have guest stars on all the time, she says, it is hardly worth their while making best buddy overtures to all of them. She won't single out anyone as being especially cold, but will say that the nicest cast members were Matt LeBlanc and Lisa Kudrow. It is a mark of how distant they were that she still calls them by their character names - Joey and Phoebe."

The thing I suspect some actors who don't do a lot of sitcoms (like, had Turner done many, or any, before Friends?) don't get is that it's going to be different from a movie set or while doing a play. The actors are learning a new script every week so there's less downtime than on a movie or during play rehearsals--especially on something like Friends were they were only working two or three days a week by the later seasons. In the Golden Girls Forever book (which is great), there's a quote from Inga Swenson who guest-starred as Rose's sister, which I thought was illuminating about sitcoms in general: "As I had learned doing Benson, when you’re a nuclear family on a sitcom like those four ladies were, you have a lot of work to do, learning a new script every week—if not every night, because the writers change it every day. So you don’t have time for socializing or chatting with strangers on the set. Doing The Golden Girls, I had the same expectations—as the guest star, I didn’t expect anyone to hang out with me." (Though there were dogs on set that week, so she said she and Betty White, a well-known animal lover, had a nice conversation about dogs.) So...yeah. The guest stars are the equivalent of temps in an office...and how friendly do people tend to get with temps who are only going to be there a week? There are shows that were known to have friendly sets (evidently Frasier had some kind of setup where they had one green room (or something like that) for everyone so all the actors--the regulars and major guest stars--hung out before shows), but I would expect that to be the exception rather than the rule. (It can also work both ways. I remember that Helen Baxendale said the cast wasn't particularly friendly--the exceptions being Lisa Kudrow and Matt Leblanc, which given their personalities, yeah, I can see where they might be the warmest to outsiders. At the same time, there's an old interview with David Schwimmer where he says she didn't want to be friends with them: 'To be honest with you I don't think she wanted any part of us,' he says. 'I felt like I, at least - and the others - welcomed her with open arms into the family, but she kept a real professional and personal distance. I was disappointed that she didn't want to engage. Some kind of connection would have been nice - after all, we were going to be married.' So who knows? Sometimes people just don't connect with each other.)