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If you’re not glued to Hollywood casting news, you might have missed the part where Twilight and Happiest Season actress Kristen Stewart was cast as Britain’s Princess Diana in the movie Spencer. Well, she was, and now we have our first promo look at Stewart playing the People’s Princess.

Here’s a first look at Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana in #Spencer, Pablo Larraín’s imagining of the weekend Princess Diana decides to leave her marriage to Prince Charles. pic.twitter.com/LSn4C7cF0h

— IMDb (@IMDb) January 27, 2021

Stewart’s casting took some heat when it was first announced, mostly due to the fact that one of the most iconic British people in modern history would be played by an American. As you can see from the above shot, she’s definitely committing to the bit, and makes for a convincing Diana visually. The movie is coming from Chilean director Pablo Larraín, who directed Natalie Portman’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in a similar biopic style in Jackie. Larraín had previously explained his decision to cast Stewart, per Glamour UK:

“To do this well, you need something very important in film, which is mystery, Kristen can be many things, and she can be very mysterious and very fragile and ultimately very strong as well, which is what we need,” Larrain told entertainment news site Deadline.

The film’s director also spoke about Stewart’s qualities on camera. “As a filmmaker, when you have someone who can hold such a weight, dramatic and narrative weight just with her eyes, then you have the strong lead who can deliver what we are looking for.”

Spencer won’t be a comprehensive take on Lady Diana Spencer’s life but rather a sort of zoomed-in look at one particular stretch of days in which the Wales’ imploding marriage further imploded. The film will focus on the royal holiday weekend at Sandringham Estate in 1992: “Over Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day, Diana realises that her marriage is breaking down and that she doesn’t want to be the future Queen.” Other than Stewart’s central part, no other roles have been announced yet, though IMDb has Sally Hawkins, Sean Harris, and Timothy Spall on its Spencer cast list.

Steven Knight, the creator of the excellent/nail-biting British period crime drama series Peaky Blinders, is on board as screenwriter, an aspect that makes me all the more interested in this movie. I’m keen to see how Knight’s trademark edgy, foul-mouthed, razor-sharp tone translates over to this topic. I’m also curious whether the popular Netflix series The Crown’s recent foray into this same time period has whet the audience appetite for more of the story or made them feel like they’ve seen it all already. I thought actress Emma Corrin did a fantastic job embodying Diana in The Crown, so it will be interesting to see Stewart’s interpretation.

I think Stewart is a talented actress, though it’s a bit difficult to imagine her as Diana, if only because she hasn’t done this sort of “prestige biopic” feature before. (Though she did star in JT Leroy, so biopics are not totally new.) If this works, it will likely be considered a transformative turn that could net her many awards and plaudits. Stewart is also quite the online LGBTQ+ icon these days, and has a loyal following of fans who will be excited to see what she has in store. This casting seems like a bit of a gamble, but it just might pay off. What do you think of Stewart’s look?

(image: Summit Entertainment)

Here are some other things we saw today:

• Iconic actress Cloris Leachman has died at age 94. Leachman worked on stage and shone on TV and film screens, winning eight Emmys and an Academy Award for The Last Picture Show. She was also a standout on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein, and many, many, many memorable roles. (via ABC News)
• This is so cool: a site dedicated to the historical language of science fiction—and lets you look up when certain futuristic terms were first used—has just launched. (via BoingBoing)
• The Great Gatsby is apparently getting a TV adaptation, and while I’m incredibly excited about the promised inclusivity in terms of diversity and LGBTQ+ representation, I also wish we could let this story die and find another. Gatsby seems all but unadaptable. Let him rest. (via Vulture)
• Senator Patrick Leahy, who is set to preside over Trump’s impeachment trial, was taken to the hospital “in an abundance of caution,” and has since been released. (via HuffPo)

• A number of people who are now on a to-do list have sent me the below grotesque image today. My take is that whoever’s responsible needs to go directly to the bzzzt chair. https://t.co/MWuljLiuc8

  — Scott Wampler™ (@ScottWamplerBMD) January 27, 2021

• Bridgerton was the most-watched series in Netflix history. (via Yahoo Entertainment)
• If you’ve heard about the mystery of Elisa Lam and LA’s sinister Cecil Hotel, this upcoming Netflix true crime series, Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel is for you. It looks great—I got goosebumps.

What did you see out there today? Trade any stocks?

twitter right now: pic.twitter.com/Hclezfy5Th

— penne benne (@pasta_ben) January 27, 2021

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The post Hear Black Healthcare Experts Talk Fibroids, COVID Vaccines, Improving Sleep & More appeared first on Essence.

Malcolm & Marie is a really good short that keeps going for another hour and twenty minutes. The artistic endeavor, the result of Covid-era boredom and big Hollywood money, is indulgent and claustrophobic. The first and last twenty minutes do hit as Zendaya gives us the best that she’s got. But is it worth the wait? The specter of the disease that’s shut down most of the world and keeps us apart looms, a ghost haunting the edges of our vision as we settle in for an extended domestic dispute laid out in black and white on 35mm film. It felt like hearing a listener letter on The Read and being a kid listening to my parents fighting throughout the house all night. If that sounds like a good time to you—and I say this with 0 judgment…mostly—then this is the nearly two-hour watch for you.

“Girl, Break up with Him”

“Break up with him.” I wanted to say after that first twenty minutes of fighting. Then they made up and fought again for the next hour-plus of the film’s run-time. Is Malcolm & Marie bad? No. Is it good? Sometimes. Is it too long? Absolutely. It’s a passion project on a big budget and distributed by a major streaming service. It’s you plus your mans and nem getting together to make a movie except all of y’all are celebrities with beaucoup bucks. And, instead of slanging the Venmo link to your project, Netflix is shooting it to its 182 million subscribers.

Sam & Zendaya Make a Movie

The film has that experimental, gritty freedom of a student-produced showcase. It’s clear that the folks steering this ship were only beholden to themselves. Writer and director Sam Levinson wrote the screenplay in six days, basing it on a situation he experienced with his real-life wife and co-producer Ashley Levinson. The film’s stars Zendaya and John David Washington also co-produced, though only Zendaya was involved in the development of the story and script. On a meta-level, it’s very refreshing to see this kind of creative freedom without an overabundance of stilted studio input. On a basic viewer enjoyment level, this wasn’t the movie for me.

Emoting in the Background

Zendaya brings her best acting to this movie, silently suffering in the background, foreground, in the other room, in silhouette, and out of focus while Washington storms, shouts, and tantrums through the beautiful home in the hills they used as a set. Malcolm gets the most lines and the most focus as he unleashes his worst and most cruel on Marie—who was absolutely in the right, don’t @ me—in their night-long argument. Honestly, what Zendaya does with the material she’s given makes me wonder if I would’ve been more along for the ride if she’d been the one allowed to expand and explode all over this fictional relationship.

If you enjoyed A Marriage Story, this might be the movie for you. If the thought of the invisible labor of the wives, girlfriends, and partners of “brilliant” male artists makes you want to commit arson, this one might be difficult to make it through.

6 Unbaked Macaronis in a Pot out of 10

Want to find other movie reviews? Find BNP’s other reviews of the series here.

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The post Girl, Break Up with Him: ‘Malcolm & Marie’ Review appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.

Source: Lifetime/Kinetic Content / Lifetime/Kinetic Content

If you watched the last season of “Married at First Sight,” fans were most enamored with Miles and Karen, mostly because we didn’t know what they were going to do on decision day. Until the very end, we were on the fence about whether these two would stay married or get a divorce. Literally, the cameras made it seem like every day was touch and go.

But reality tv isn’t always…reality. And in the months since the show aired, Karen and Miles have launched their own YouTube channel where they take questions from fans who followed their journey.

They’ve done this before. But in the most recent YouTube video, the couple shared some things that I definitely wanted to know, including Karen’s true thoughts on masculinity, who said I love you first and why it took Karen so long to warm up to Miles in the first place. See what they both had to say below.

Why it took Karen so long to warm up to Miles

Miles: Off camera there are a lot of other influences that are factoring into what you see. The camera stuff was tough. We weren’t as comfortable there. Then, at home, it’s a different reality because you’re being fed all these questions on the third day. ‘Are y’all in love yet? Is this the person you want to be with for the rest of your life? When are you having sex?’ And this pressure gets in your head. For me, a lot of pressure of being a husband,  being married—a lot of that weight was on my shoulders and I was like, ‘Let me not mess this up. I see the value in Karen, how do I not mess this up.’

Early on, I was very intense and not completely myself because I was trying to make sure that she felt comfortable and could see the good person that I was. And by doing that the energy felt forced and didn’t feel completely authentic. The way that you responded was receiving that energy and all the other energy that was going around.

Karen: I struggle sometimes to talk about this. Everyone sees Miles and they’re like, ‘He’s great. He’s Prince Charming. What’s wrong with you? You haven’t immediately fallen in love with him because he talks to his grandparents on the phone so he must be perfect.’ But it’s like, you can’t get around energy. You can’t get around what you feel when you’re with someone. And one thing I wanted to make sure, when I first entered this journey was that, me and my partner could both authentically be ourselves, no matter what, good or bad. And even though, yes it looks good and not taking away from the good guy Miles is, because he’s a great guy. But I still was like, something’s not fully there. He’s giving me Mr. President, Mr. Perfect. And the reality is, you can never be perfect. No human is perfect. And so, there were times where I felt like he didn’t share as much with me or he didn’t really give me that raw, real feeling. Or how he was feeling, what he was going through [for] the sake of just trying to make me comfortable. And instead of making me more comfortable, it had the opposite effect. I was like, ‘This doesn’t feel all the way real.’ And that was something we had to work through. We had many, many miscommunications simply because he was trying and I was trying and things just weren’t syncing. We’re good people and we know that but something is still off and we can’t figure it out.

It was never that I thought he wasn’t a good guy. And it was something that I wish would have been shown a little bit more to be honest, where I was like, ‘Yes, he has all these good qualities. He’s a great person but something’s missing.’ That was really it. I felt that energy and I needed more than that.

Source: Kinetic Content / Kinetic Content

Who said I love you first.

Miles: Answer that one.

Karen: I may have said it first.

Miles: Break it down.

Karen: Ok, I said it first. What had happened was…I did it kind of weird y’all. But again, I’m an energy person so if it feels right, I do it. So, I was up one night just like awake, just thinking, processing a lot, thinking about my life. I was thinking about all the people in my life I’m grateful for. And I was also reflecting on me and Miles’ relationship.  And I was like, ‘You know what, I really love him.’ And I want him to know it and it was on my mind. He was sleep. And Miles sleeps like a baby angel. Literally when he’s sleep, he has a smile on his face. He might be snoring and smiling, depends on how tired he is.

I ended up texting him while he was sleep because it was on my mind and my heart and I didn’t want to wake up him up because he was in his zone. But I know with me and Miles, we’re always going to communicate more. So next morning…

Miles: I was like what was that last night?! What got into you.

Karen: I think you were just like…

Miles: Where did that come from? And then we talked about it.

Karen: And I told him why I did it in that moment. And that I loved him and that was it.

Did some of the backlash from social media affect their relationship?

Karen: I say yeah. I don’t think it affected our relationship in terms of good or bad but honestly, we had to lean on each other through that. We had lean on each other. We had to communicate a lot. We had to be very honest and have some vulnerable moments so from that perspective, yes it affected our relationship. It didn’t make our relationship ten times harder it was just something we had to get through together.

Miles: I think it definitely made us stronger so I guess that’s good.

…

Were Karen’s feelings hurt by people’s reaction to her wanting to move slow?

Karen: Yeah. I felt let down by people not having more understanding but I also had to realize, at the end of the day, it’s a tv show. They don’t know me in real life and if they did, they would have a much different opinion. And I’ll leave it there.

Miles: It was hard for me because I knew Killa and I know Killa better than anybody—not anybody but better than most people in the world. And so, I felt like I constantly had to justify my decision to stay with you based off the backlash that people were sharing. ‘You deserve better than how Karen’s treating you.’ ‘You deserve better.’

Karen: The whole time, spoiled!

Miles: I’m sitting at the crib eating lobster…

Karen: Getting back rubs.

Miles: Beard scrub massages.

Karen: I’m like dang! …Gifts for no reason.

Miles: And I go on Twitter, ‘Karen ain’t sh*t. Cancel Karen.’ That was hard. Other people I felt in time would see. But the people who were closest to me, I wanted them to know I’m fine, I’m good. I’m taken care of, I’m supported, I’m appreciated. So that was the hard part for me. Because people are very protective of me, even strangers. Which has been very interesting. You’re very protective of me. But for strangers to be very protective of me and not as protective of you, bothered me. So as a supporter, as a protector, it bothered me to see how hard they went on you for things that one, weren’t true but two, they didn’t have the full picture. But it’s tv and it’s reality tv.

Karen: That’s why I felt let down because we as women know how hard it is. We know how hard it is on a daily basis being a woman. We know how hard it is dating, trying to be in relationships. We know the things we have had to go through as women. So to see so many women gang up on me and throw me under the bus, I was just like, ‘Dang!’ These people don’t know me. They don’t know what I’ve been through. Then just, like woman to woman, ‘Girl, you know how hard it is out here.’ You know what happens out here sometimes. So we’re just going to gang up and throw somebody away like that, when there’s clearly a reason why you liked me.

Miles: That part! Miles you’re this wise, intelligent, articulate person but then it was, ‘Why is he staying? He must be naïve.’ But then on the other end, [no one asked,] ‘What’s missing? Something’s missing.’ I promise you I’m not that hopeless of a romantic that I was going to be abused or disrespected by anybody, much less Karen who’s probably one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met. So I think that really bothered me. So I’m glad we were able to work through that. But that was frustrating.

Source: Kinetic Content / Kinetic Content

Her use and misuse of the word masculinity

Karen: I will say I did not explain myself thoroughly in those moments of what I view masculinity as and I did misspeak in certain moments where I used that word. That wasn’t the right word to use. A better word, in those moments would have been ‘more direct’ or ‘taking more initiative.’ And I think when I said more masculine, that’s is what I was trying to speak to you, being able to take the lead. One thing I will say is that, I don’t have a toxic masculinity. I don’t think if a man shows his feelings, he’s weak or less of a man. One thing, that I asked the experts for was somebody who could communicate about their feelings. And I think a lot of assumptions were made because of how things played out. Again, taking full accountability for how I used the word, out of context, or it would have been better for me to use a better adjective.

But I really haven’t changed my true definition of masculinity because it was never as toxic as, ‘a man needs to be stoic and never show any emotion.’

Miles: Or I need to put my hands on you. That sh*t blew me.

Karen: Yeah! That drove me. When I use the term, ‘put me in my place’ or ‘take charge’ that’s another area where I’m like, Ok, come on y’all. I don’t literally mean someone to beat me or put their hands on me. And for so many people to assume that’s what I meant, it was disgusting for so many women who have had to endure that. And it was disrespectful from a standpoint of why would you assume that that’s what somebody wants. It’s very insensitive.

Ultimately, did I use that word appropriately, no. But did I mean that masculinity is all of these toxic things? No. The projections that I saw. And I struggled with how to share I don’t like this or I wish you would do xyz. That’s hard to talk about in front of cameras and I’m just getting to know you…You may not always word things appropriately but I had to communicate my feelings because I cared about Miles. And it wasn’t fair for me to say, ‘This is hard to talk about or I don’t have the right words, so I’m not going to tell you how I’m really feeling.’ That wouldn’t be fair to you or our relationship.

Miles: We can be frank, when she first said that to me, I was pissed. Like are you trying me, right now? Are you challenging me as a man? And that blew me. But I also knew her heart and the type of person that she is and she was not communicating  the way that she wanted to. So once we got through that, you want me to be more direct, take more initiative, ‘I can do that, bet. That’s what I know how to do.’ I was trying to be so democratic. And once I realized you wanted me to lead us, we’ve taken off since then.

You can watch their full question and answer session in the video below. The good part starts around the 21 minute mark.