Hello, my dear friends. How are you all feeling? Are you hanging in there? I’m thinking of you and sending you my love along with today’s Pop Culture Fix.
+ Ammonite, maybe you’ve heard of it? Well, THR has a whole profile with Kate Winslet today, and she’s happy to let you know that these lesbian sex scenes were her safest ones she ever filmed and she and Saoirse Ronan choreographed them thank you very much.
“Saoirse and I choreographed the scene ourselves,” Winslet explains of the most explicit one. “It’s definitely not like eating a sandwich. I just think Saoirse and I, we just felt really safe. Francis was naturally very nervous. And I just said to him, ‘Listen, let us work it out.’ And we did. ‘We’ll start here. We’ll do this with the kissing, boobs, you go down there, then you do this, then you climb up here.’ I mean, we marked out the beats of the scene so that we were anchored in something that just supported the narrative. I felt the proudest I’ve ever felt doing a love scene on Ammonite. And I felt by far the least self-conscious.”
+ Well. This Kate McKinnon Tiger King biopic is really happening, I guess! She sure is going to be playing Carole Baskin! NBCU’s NBC, Peacock and USA are all buying it together?
+ Over at Variety, Caroline Framke chatted with Janelle Monáe and others about Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You: “As a fellow android exploring what it means to be human, watching Michaela be vulnerable on-screen as she walks in her truth gives me and so many the bravery to walk in ours.”
+ Amber Benson, for one, is really excited about the idea of a Buffy reboot with a WOC lead.
+ Samira Wiley is playwright Lorraine Hansberry, Sense 8’s Jamie Clayton is trans actress Christine Jorgensen and lots more LGBTQ+ superstars are other groundbreaking real life gays in HBO Max’s four-part mini-series Equal.
+ Lena Waithe’s Twenties has been renewed for season two.
+ Speaking of Lena Waithe, don’t miss Carmen and Natalie’s conversation about The Chi‘s third season.
+ Greg Berlanti to do his gritty reboot thing with The Powerpuff Girls (and knowing what we know about Greg Berlanti, one of them’s surely going to be gay).
+ The Berlin Film Festival is switching to gender neutral acting awards.
+ The West Wing cast is reuniting to get people to vote Trump out of office in 2020.
+ Blitz Bazawule will direct a Color Purple feature musical.
+ Peek into the The X-Files: The Official Archives creepiest cases.
+ Katie Barnes is doing some of my favorite writing this year. This week: Bring It On: From spirit fingers to appropriation, the cult sports film is much more than a teen rom-com (This was also featured in yesterday’s Also.Also.Also. including a tweet from Gabrielle Union!)
+ Why white male coming-of-age stories should be the exception.
+ Celebrities dole out unprofessional life advice on Don’t Ask Tig and Black Frasier.
