Ku’damm 77, the latest installment in the long-running hit German period drama series, will have its world premiere at this year’s international TV trade fair MIPCOM, which runs Oct. 13–16.
The three-part historical drama, created and written by Annette Hess (The Weissensee Saga, Interpreter of Silence) and directed by Maurice Hübner (Kitz, Family Braun), continues the story of the Schöllack family, centered around the “Galant” dance school on Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm. Set in 1977, the series follows three generations living under one roof as they navigate themes of emancipation, self-discovery, and social change.
The returning cast includes Sonja Gerhardt, Maria Ehrich, Claudia Michelsen and Emilia Schüle, joined by new members Carlotta Bähre, Marie Louise Albertine Becker, Massiamy Diaby, Florian Stetter and Aziz Dyab.
The premiere will take place on Oct. 14 in the Grand Auditorium of the Palais des Festivals, with a screening followed by a Q&A with the creative team and cast.
Ku’damm 77 follows the earlier series Ku’damm 56, Ku’damm 59 and Ku’damm 63, which were ratings successes in Germany and sold to more than 30 territories worldwide. The franchise was previously nominated for an International Emmy. ZDF Studios is handling worldwide sales of the series.
Produced by UFA Fiction for ZDF, the series is overseen by producers Marc Lepetit, Nico Hofmann and Markus Brunnemann, with Heike Hempel, Bastian Wagner and Beate Bramstedt serving as commissioning editors at ZDF.
Markus Schäfer, president and CEO of ZDF Studios, called the selection for a world premiere in Cannes “proof of the importance of German drama series in this top-class international arena,” adding that the company expects Ku’damm 77 to achieve similar success to earlier installments.
Lucy Smith, director of MIPCOM Cannes and MIPJunior, said the franchise’s “authentic, universal, and compelling storytelling has struck a chord with audiences,” and welcomed its return to the international stage.
Last year, MIPCOM Cannes drew more than 10,500 delegates from more than 100 countries, making it the largest global market for television and streaming content.
Raymond, 20, travelled on a 17-hour flight from Beijing to Hull to see Coldplay at Craven Park Stadium
A Coldplay superfan who took a 17-hour flight from China to see the band perform in Hull said his “dream had come true” when he was invited onto stage by lead singer Chris Martin.
Twenty-year-old Raymond, from Chengdu in China, arrived at the city’s Craven Park stadium at about 05:00 BST on Sunday after he had taken a flight from Beijing to London and then got a coach to Hull.
Martin said he had read on the BBC website how someone had taken care of the young fan who was looking cold and disorientated when he first arrived in the city.
The singer told the crowd “people in Hull are full of love of kindness” as he welcomed Raymond on stage on Tuesday night and they sang True Love together.
Martin said: “Normally when I pick someone from the audience I’ve never met them before.
“But last night on the internet I read your story on the BBC which said you flew from China to Hull alone.
“You’re the bravest fan I’ve ever seen.”
Jasmine Lowe/BBC
Raymond said Hull was “a very relaxing city, but a little bit cold”
Martin held up Raymond’s sign which read ‘Please let me play, wanna speak my true love out’.
The pair then sat side-by-side at the keyboard as they sang True Love together, which the Coldplay star said he had not played for 11 years.
After the event, Raymond thanked those involved in making it happen and said his “true love is for everyone” and that his “dream had come true”.
His story emerged after he encountered security guard Michael Sergeant when he first arrived at the stadium early on Sunday morning.
Mr Sergeant took pity on him, saying he was “fairly disorientated and cold”.
“He’s only 20, so I gave him a KitKat and told him to get some warm clothes from Primark,” he said.
Jasmine Lowe/BBC
Security guard Michael Sergeant helped Raymond when he arrived at Craven Park on Sunday
Hold onto your champagne, Hayley Atwell and Rupert Everett are joining the cast of Rivals.
Disney+ unveiled on Wednesday that MCU and Mission Impossible star Atwell, as well as beloved British actor Everett have boarded season two of the Jilly Cooper adaptation as guest stars. Principal photography on the drama, produced by Happy Prince (part of ITV Studios), is underway in the U.K.
Atwell will be playing Helen Gordon, Rupert Campbell-Black’s ex-wife and mother of his two children, Marcus and Tabitha. Everett is set to take on the role of her husband Malise Gordon, Campbell-Black’s former show-jumping coach and mentor.
Further talent joining the ensemble have also been announced: Maxim Ays (Boarders), Holly Cattle (Young Sherlock) Oliver Dench (Hotel Portofino), Amanda Lawrence (Malory Towers), Bobby Lockwood (Wolfblood), Eliot Salt (Slow Horses), and Jonny Weldon (‘One Day’, ‘Brassic’).
The new additions join the all-star lineup from season one including David Tennant, Alex Hassell, Bella Maclean, Aidan Turner, Emily Atack, Danny Dyer, Katherine Parkinson, Nafessa Williams and Victoria Smurfit, among others.
Set against the backdrop of the stunning Cotswolds countryside and the glamorous, high-stakes world of 1980s British television, the second instalment will see the return of the cast that won the hearts of fans and critics last year.
Lee Mason, executive director of scripted originals, EMEA Disney+, said: “Rivals is a landmark series for Disney+, quickly becoming one of our most beloved British U.K. original dramas. I’m delighted to welcome Hayley and Rupert to our extraordinary family of actors. They are a perfect match for the world of Rutshire, so lovingly created by Dame Jilly and the team at Happy Prince.”
Showrunner and Happy Prince CCO Dominic Treadwell-Collins and Alexander Lamb, Happy Prince creative director, added: “We are utterly thrilled to have Hayley and Rupert join us to play Jilly Cooper’s legendary characters Helen and Malise Gordon. Alongside our other new wonderful actors and truly brilliant returning cast, Rivals series two absolutely showcases the best of British and Irish talent. With further exciting guest stars to be announced, we can’t wait for everyone to see what’s next for the residents of Rutshire.”
Rivals will return to Hulu in the U.S. and Disney+ in the U.K. and internationally. All episodes of Rivals season one are available to stream now, on Disney+.
This article presents a case of AF that mimicked a dentigerous cyst and occurred in the anterior region of the maxilla. Additionally, it conducts a comprehensive analysis of the clinical manifestations, imaging characteristics, and treatment approaches while integrating relevant literature for a more in-depth discussion. Such documentation carries significant clinical significance. Ameloblastic fibroma (AF) is a rare mixed odontogenic benign tumor, accounting for only 2% of odontogenic tumors.1 It is characterized by the presence of neoplastic epithelial and ectomesenchymal tissues. Notably, this tumor does not induce the formation of enamel and dentin. Over 80% of cases occur in the mandible, especially in the posterior dental region, while it is relatively rare in the anterior region of the maxilla.2 Due to its association with impacted teeth and a well-defined radiographic border, it is often misdiagnosed as a dentigerous cyst.
Currently, research on AF mainly focuses on common cases in the mandible. Systematic studies on lesions in rare locations such as the anterior region of the maxilla are relatively scarce. Moreover, existing literature reports on the clinical characteristics, diagnosis and treatment rules, and prognosis of AF in the pediatric population are also scattered, lacking support from large-sample data, resulting in obvious research gaps.
This article reports a case of ameloblastic fibroma occurring in the anterior region of the maxilla that mimics a dentigerous cyst. In addition, it conducts a comprehensive analysis of the clinical manifestations, imaging features, and treatment methods of this case, and carries out in-depth discussions combined with relevant literature. The detailed recording and analysis of such rare cases can not only enrich the clinical data of AF occurring in special locations, provide references for clinicians to identify such atypical lesions, reduce the occurrence of misdiagnosis and mistreatment, but also lay a foundation for subsequent research on AF in relevant rare locations and special populations, which has important clinical significance and scientific research value.
This study was approved by the Medical Ethics Committee of Jinan Stomatological Hospital and informed consent has been obtained from the child’s family.
Case Report
The patient was a 6-year-old female who visited our hospital with the chief complaint that the upper anterior teeth had not erupted. When the child was 2 years old, tooth 62 was found to be impacted, and an X-ray examination at another medical institution revealed a supernumerary tooth in the anterior maxilla (Figure 1).
Figure 1 The arrows indicate a supernumerary tooth and an impacted tooth 62 in the anterior maxillary region. Upon meticulous inspection, a low-density shadow is discernible encircling the coronal portion of tooth 62.
Specialty examination: The maxillofacial region exhibits bilateral symmetry, with normal skin coloration. The lips are free of purpura. There is no significant tenderness anterior to the bilateral tragus. Both the degree of mouth opening and the opening pattern are within normal limits. Teeth 51 and 61 are retained, and tooth 62 has not erupted. The oral hygiene condition is good. There is no soft scale (-) and no dental calculus (-). There are no obvious abnormalities in the gingival mucosa. There is no redness or swelling at the orifices of the bilateral parotid gland ducts, and when squeezed, clear fluid is secreted. No enlarged lymph nodes are palpable in the maxillofacial and neck regions.
The cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) examination showed that there was an inverted supernumerary tooth between teeth 11 and 21. Tooth 62 was impacted at a low position. There was a low-density radiolucent shadow surrounding the crown, with a size of approximately 5mm × 6mm × 6mm. The boundary was clear, but the margin was not regular. The root apexes of teeth 11 and 21 were at the 8th stage of development, and the periodontal membrane was continuous and intact. The root apex of tooth 22 was at the 7th stage of development (Figure 2). Based on the radiographic and clinical findings, a tentative diagnosis of dentigerous cyst was formulated.
Figure 2 Preoperative CBCT images (September 26th, 2023)(A) (axial view) (B) (sagittal view) (C) (coronal view) (D) (three-dimensional reconstruction) show a low-density radiolucent shadow surrounding the crown of tooth 62 and a supernumerary tooth in anterior maxillary region.
Under general anesthesia combined with local anesthesia, the extraction of the supernumerary tooth and the removal of the mass in the maxilla were performed. During the operation, it was shown that the mass was cystic, with a thick wall, and no obvious contents were seen. The mass was sent for postoperative pathological examination.
Pathological result: Tumor cells were arranged in the form of cords and islands. The periphery was composed of cuboidal or columnar cells, and there might be a small number of stellate reticulum cells in the center. Immunohistochemical results: CK-pan: (+), Vimentin: (+), CK5/6: (+), CK7: (+), S-100: scattered (+), Ki-67: (the number of positive cells was approximately 2%), P63: (+). The pathological diagnosis was ameloblastic fibroma (Figure 3).
Figure 3 Pathological diagnosis: Ameloblastic fibroma. (A) (Histopathological microscopy): The lesion consists of proliferative spindle cells and numerous nest-like basaloid cells. (B and C) (Immunohistochemistry): CK-pan (+), Vimentin (+), CK5/6 (+), CK7 (+), S-100 focally (+), Ki-67 (positive cells account for approximately 2%), and P63 (+). These findings are consistent with ameloblastic fibroma.
The reexamination conducted on April 12th, 2025, revealed that teeth 11 and 21 had erupted normally. Additionally, the root apex of tooth 22 was found to be at the 8th stage of development, as illustrated in Figure 4. Notably, there were no indications of recurrence.
Figure 4 Clinical and imaging manifestations: (A and B) (CBCT images) show that tooth 11 and tooth 21 have erupted normally, and the root apex of tooth 22 is at the 8th stage of development. (C and D) (Clinical examination) show that the teeth are normally developed.
Discussion
AF was first described by Kruse in 1891.3 In 1946, AF was defined as a benign neoplastic entity and was named soft odontoma.4 It was subsequently classified under mixed odontogenic neoplasms by the World Health Organization in 1992.5 In 2022, AF was classified as a benign mixed epithelial and mesenchymal odontogenic tumours by the WHO.6 AF is more commonly seen in children and adolescents, with an average age of onset of 15 years old (ranging from 7 weeks to 89 years old), and there is no obvious gender preference (some studies show a slight male predominance).7,8 These reports were in accordance with our case, wherein the patient was 6 years old. In the early stage, AF usually has no obvious subjective symptoms. As the disease progresses, patients may experience local mass in the jawbone, swelling and bulging, tooth loosening, etc. Some patients are incidentally diagnosed during routine X-ray examinations. A few cases are also accompanied by symptoms such as pain and numbness of the lower lip. Our case is a small lesion with no obvious subjective symptoms. AF is often accompanied by the obstruction of tooth eruption. Our case is also associated with impacted tooth 62.
Pathological Features: The ameloblastic fibroma is composed of epithelial components arranged in an enamel organ-like pattern and a cellular, myxoid stroma. The cells exhibit no obvious atypia or nuclear polymorphism. The epithelial components typically manifest as cords or islands. The periphery consists of cuboidal or columnar cells, while the central area resembles the stellate reticulum layer. The stromal components predominantly consist of loosely arranged fibroblasts, and myxoid degeneration can sometimes be observed. Blum proposed the “maturation theory”, which suggests that an AF will develop through a continuum of differentiation and maturation into an ameloblastic fibroma odontoma and eventually to an odontoma. Accordingly, an AF would be an early stage of developing odontoma.9,10 This theory is controversial. Some authors claimed that AF is a separate specific neoplastic entity that does not develop into a more differentiated odontogenic tumor.7 In the present case, thanks to the presence of a supernumerary tooth, there was an opportunity to observe the growth of the lesion over a four-year interval. The lesion did not exhibit evident maturational progression toward odontoma over a four-year period.
In this case, CBCT played a significant role. CBCT images clearly showed the location, extent and nature of the lesion. Radiographically, ameloblastic fibromas typically present as unilocular lesions; larger lesions may exhibit a multilocular appearance with smooth, well-defined margins.2 AF can be radiographically confused with dentigerous cysts due to their common association with unerupted teeth. In this case, CBCT showed no obvious bone expansion, which is different from dentigerous cysts. The coronal view revealed that the margin of the lesion presented a lace-like appearance.
Histological examination is the gold standard for diagnosing AF. Microscopic Examination: The biopsy specimen reveals a tumor composed of neoplastic epithelium and primitive mesenchymal tissue, exhibiting typical features of a mixed odontogenic tumor. The epithelial component primarily consists of cord-like or island-like arrangements, with peripheral columnar cells demonstrating palisading nuclei and hyperchromasia, resembling ameloblasts. The central areas contain stellate reticulum-like cells with loose arrangements, similar to the enamel organ structure of a dental germ. However, no enamel or dentin formation is observed, consistent with the characteristic lack of inductive changes in ameloblastic fibroma (AF). The mesenchymal component is composed of densely packed spindle cells with scant cytoplasm and oval nuclei, interspersed with minimal collagen fibers, exhibiting features of immature connective tissue resembling dental papilla. The tumor is relatively well demarcated from surrounding normal tissue though focal areas show epithelial cords extending into the mesenchymal stroma. Immunohistochemistry: The epithelial component is positive for cytokeratin (CK), while the mesenchymal component expresses vimentin. These histopathological findings align with the typical features of AF as reported in the literature.
It is necessary to differentiate AF from diseases such as ameloblastoma, odontoma, and odontogenic fibroma. The epithelial components of ameloblastoma are mostly in a follicular or plexiform pattern, and the stroma is fibrous connective tissue; odontoma contains hard dental tissues; the odontogenic fibroma has fewer epithelial components, and the stroma is fibrous tissue.
Surgical resection is the main method for treating AF. The specific surgical approach needs to be selected according to the size and location of the tumor. For smaller tumors, curettage can be used; for larger tumors or recurrent tumors, partial resection of the jawbone is required. During the operation, it is necessary to ensure a sufficient resection range, and if necessary, segmental resection of the jawbone should be performed to reduce the risk of recurrence.11
The recurrence rates of AF reported in the literature vary considerably, with values ranging from 12.5% to 60%.12,13 Multiple recurrences may lead to malignant transformation into ameloblastic fibrosarcoma (AFS). In our case, after one and a half years of follow-up, there were no signs of recurrence either radiographically or clinically, and the teeth erupt normally. Limitations of this study: One and a half years of follow-up period is relatively short, making it difficult to evaluate late recurrence; CBCT cannot assess soft tissues, so further MRI studies are recommended.
Conclusion
For AF with cystic changes, a biopsy is mandatory for definitive diagnosis, while CBCT aids in differential diagnosis. Regarding management, small AF lesions require conservative resection, whereas extensive or recurrent cases necessitate radical surgery.14 Given the high recurrence risk, lifelong postoperative monitoring is essential. This case provides insights into the “maturation theory” of AF. Due to the rarity of AF in pediatric patients and maxillary involvement, current evidence remains limited. Further studies are crucial to establish robust diagnostic and therapeutic protocols.
Ethics Statement
This study is a retrospective case report and conforms to ethical norms. In accordance with the policies of the Ethics Committee of Jinan Stomatological Hospital, this retrospective study is exempt from ethical approval, including for publication, as it involves no intervention and ensures adequate privacy protection.
Informed Consent
Informed consents to publish have been obtained from the patient’s parents for the case.
Funding
No financial support received for this work.
Disclosure
The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.
References
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3. Kruse A. On the development of cystic tumors in the mandible. Arch Path Anat. 1891;124(1):137–148. doi:10.1007/BF01984917
4. Thoma KH, Goldman HM. Odontogenic tumors: a Classification based on observations of the epithelial mesenchymal, and mixed varieties. J Pathol. 1946;22:433–471.
5. Kramer IR, Pindborg JJ, Shear M. The WHO histological typing of odontogenic tumours. A commentary on the second edition. Cancer. 1992;70(12):2988–2994. doi:10.1002/1097-0142(19921215)70:12<2988::AID-CNCR2820701242>3.0.CO;2-V
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7. Slootweg PJ. Ameloblastic fibroma/fibrodentinoma. In: Barnes L, Eveson JW, Reichart P, Sidransky D, editors. Pathology and Genetics of Head and Neck Tumours. Lyon, France: IARC Press; 2005:308.
8. Philipsen HP, Reichart PA, Praetorius F. Mixed odontogenic tumours and odontomas. Considerations on interrelationship. Review of the literature and presentation of 134 new cases of odontomas. Oral Oncol. 1997;33(2):86–99. doi:10.1016/S0964-1955(96)00067-X
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Among the half-dozen tattoos Ty Myers has accumulated in his 18 years on earth, “probably the dumbest,” he says, is the armadillo he picked out from a set of ready-mades at a festival in Oklahoma.
“They had like 20 options they could do quick,” the singer and songwriter from Austin, Texas, says with a shrug.
Myers has a plan to improve the tattoo, though, next time he’s home in the city where his hero Willie Nelson famously found renewal in the early 1970s at the Armadillo World Headquarters.
“I’m gonna add a red bandanna and put Willie braids on it,” he says — a music nerd’s reference to the fabled honky-tonk that shuttered nearly three decades before he was born.
Myers, whose other tattoos include the name Leroy (after Jim Croce’s “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown”) and the logo of Muscle Shoals, Alabama’s FAME Studios, is a young person with vintage tastes. His 2025 debut album, “The Select” — its title nods to the Parisian brasserie from Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” — puts bluesy guitar riffs against low-slung soul-rock grooves, as in the twangy “Let ’Em Talk” and the waltz-time “Ends of the Earth,” which has been streamed more than 70 million times on Spotify and is slowly moving up the country radio chart.
Yet the singer has built his growing audience the new-fashioned way. In 2023, not long after he started posting music online, his song “Tie That Binds” went viral on TikTok; these days, the platform is filled with videos of teenage girls, many even younger than Myers, screaming along with him at concerts like the one he played this last weekend after a Royals game at Kansas City’s Kauffman Stadium.
His latest single: a stately ’70s-style ballad called “Through a Screen” about falling in love with someone you’ve never met in the flesh.
“I knew yall would relate to this one,” he wrote on TikTok in one of the many, many videos that teased the song before its release last Friday.
As a clean-cut heartthrob type, Myers stands out somewhat in the country scene, which has been dominated over the last few years by the burly, bearded likes of Luke Combs and Jelly Roll and, of course, by Morgan Wallen, whose lightly villainous bad-boy energy is as crucial to his popularity as his knack for a deviously catchy hook. In Myers’ music, which he writes mostly himself, even the drinking songs feel pretty suave; he’s always using his dreamy eyes to beam a gentlemanly sincerity.
“I don’t think I’ve ever tried to be seen that way,” he says with a laugh over coffee at the Chateau Marmont during a recent swing through Los Angeles. “Obviously, when I’m onstage doing the flirtatious stuff and it gets a reaction — that’s all part of it. And I love clothes — style definitely plays into it too. But that’s never been at the forefront of my mind.”
Even so, one of the music industry veterans behind Myers acknowledges that he was “seeking a gap in the marketplace” when he signed the singer to his label.
“Everything in country was feeling a little mature,” says Barry Weiss, who founded the company he calls simply Records after heading up the Jive and RCA labels in the late ’90s and early 2000s. “You’re trying to hit the ball where they ain’t. And I felt like there wasn’t a male country artist who’s really young and really appealing to young folks.”
Why not? “Generally speaking, the Nashville community is very purist,” Weiss says. “The minute someone feels young, it means they don’t have musical credibility, which is so not the case with Ty. I mean, he’s basically John Mayer and Otis Redding in an 18-year-old’s body.”
That’s perhaps an overstatement. But it’s true that Myers backs up his fresh-faced good looks and his cutesy social media content with real chops. His guitar playing is casually assured, and his voice has a weary scrape beyond his years; as a songwriter, he knows how to punctuate a story with a burst of emotional detail, as in his song “Help Ourselves,” where he and a duet partner, Harper O’Neill, play a couple stuck — if that’s the word for it — in a toxic relationship.
“This ain’t no goodbye / You’ll come crawling back when you’ve had your fill,” Myers sings, bruised but still steady. “I’ll get a call in the night at half past 12 / Three months later, I should f— myself.” (Hey, he’s a good guy, not a choirboy.)
Myers grew up in Dripping Springs, Texas, as part of a musical family that includes a great-uncle who co-founded the band Lonestar and another great-uncle who plays keys for George Strait. By elementary school, he was known around town as a singer — “I vividly remember my PE teacher making me get up and sing ‘Check Yes or No’ for the whole gymnasium,” he says of the old Strait hit — and at 11 or 12 he discovered Stevie Ray Vaughan on YouTube.
“It was ‘Lenny’ from ‘Live at the El Mocambo,’” he says, referring to the blues-rock star’s classic concert film. “I was like, ‘That’s what I want to do.’”
Playing guitar and writing songs became “a borderline addiction,” as Myers puts it, that he squeezed between going to school and playing football and baseball, the latter of which he described as “a way of life in Texas.” Yet a sports injury in his sophomore year — “Blew my knee out and tore everything: ACL, MCL, meniscus, PLC” — took him off the field. Myers’ mom made him a TikTok profile to help focus his attention on something else; his sister, he says, became “the mastermind” of his online presence.
The “Tie That Binds” video blew up while the family was on vacation in Key West, Fla.; Myers recalls an instant deluge of queries from record labels and management companies, including Nashville’s Starstruck Entertainment, the firm headed up by Narvel Blackstock, who was married to Reba McEntire from 1989 to 2015.
“My mom obviously grew up watching Lonestar on the CMAs and the ACMs, and she remembers every time Reba would win an award, they’d pan to her and Narvel right next to her and pop his name up on the screen,” Myers says. “So they knew who he was.” (Blackstock’s son Brandon, who worked with his father and had two children with his ex-wife, Kelly Clarkson, died this month of cancer at age 48.) Myers signed with Starstruck, whose other management clients include Blake Shelton and Carly Pearce, then spent about a year taking meetings with labels.
“I think we met with all of them,” Myers says. “By the end, I was about done with meetings.”
Weiss recalls flying to Austin to meet with the singer and his parents. “The mom recognized my name because she saw me written up in the Britney Spears book,” says the exec, who helped shepherd Spears, NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys to stardom. “That can cut both ways, but it turned out to be a huge positive, because she’s a Britney fan.”
Myers says he went with Weiss’ company, which signed the singer in a joint deal with Columbia Records, in part because Weiss understands “how to use youth in a way that propels you instead of it being like, ‘Well, he’s really young …’”
Though Weiss predicts that “Ends of the Earth” will end up a top 5 record at country radio — “if not a No. 1 record,” he says — both he and Myers are thinking bigger than the country audience. “We’re talking about girls in Greenwich, Connecticut, coming to these shows,” the exec says.
Yet “trying to make super-commercial pop records — that would be the kiss of death,” according to Weiss. Myers has been recording his next album at FAME, the studio known as the cradle of the so-called Muscle Shoals sound popularized by Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett and Etta James. And he’s playing more gigs on the road this year than he ever has — 109 at last count. It’s a number he’s thinking of commemorating with one more tattoo, maybe when he fixes his armadillo, since he can get it done legally in Texas now after turning 18 last month.
“Some places are tough with it,” he says. “We called a shop in Austin a while back: ‘Hey, it’s a 17-year-old — think you can do it?’ They were like, ‘No, that’s child endangerment.’” He laughs. “‘Jesus, I got two months, then you’ll do it, no question.’”
Fiona Campbell, BBC iPlayer and BBC Three Controller, told a crowd this morning at the Edinburgh TV Festival that she plans to commission five current affairs documentaries from indie production companies as part of a new young adult commissioning scheme. Campbell invited indies to submit pitches for docs, which will sit on both YouTube and iPlayer. “We are looking for a maximum of five stand-out films from five different Indies that uncover arresting characters, voices or perspectives that will resonate amongst 16-34s in the UK,” Campbell said. “We want Indies to come to us with ideas that explore a riveting world, tell a gripping story, or show confronting perspectives that reflect issues facing young Brits today.”
‘Dead Howling’ Lands ANZ Release
Rialto has picked up werewolf horror Dead Howling for theatrical release in Australia and New Zealand. The film is directed by John Soto and follows the story of Carter, a lone werewolf fighting for survival in a world overrun by zombies. Taking vengeance for his murdered family, he spends his days hunting down the living dead for sport, until he finds a new purpose after saving the lives of two humans seeking a rumoured sanctuary for survivors. However, despite Carter now joining them on their journey as a powerful ally, the group faces new and unimaginable danger when they discover that their undead enemy is beginning to evolve.
Seriesly Berlin Selects 16 For Pitch Competitions
Seriesly Berlin has selected the projects that will compete in its Co-Production Pitch and Writers’ Pitch competitions. Both will showcase eight projects, with the Co-Pro Pitch focused on those already in development and the Writers’ Pitch on early stage ideas. Among the projects is The Life Changers, a Taiwan-South Korea crime-thriller co-pro from Fu-Hsiang Hsu (Treat or Trick) and producer Danielle Yen (Your Name Engraved Herein), with executive producer TJ Park (Snowpiercer, Mother) and an international writers’ roo, attached. Birthright, from Nigeria, is billed as “a sweeping historical saga from CAA-repped Sundance Cultural Impact Fellow Kaelo Iyizoba, while The Last Baroness is from Slovakia, written by Biba Bohinská (Sestričky) and produced by Katarína Krnáčová, winner of the Berlinale Crystal Bear. German contributions include musical drama Tonight: Lola Blau, from Gabbie Asher (The Tattooist of Auschwitz) and co-produced by ZDF Studios. Zebras, a Franco-German co-pro, pairs Nadja Dumouchel with Nicolas Ducray, co-writer of the Karlovy Vary Crystal Globe winner As Far As I Can Walk. Elsewhere, there is Italian-Danish horror comedy The People We Eat, Dutch doc The Promise of India and Nordic mystery romance Villa Hilda. Each pitch will be seeking partners and financing. “The selected projects reflect the remarkable diversity of today’s creativity in serialized storytelling. Stories come from across the globe and cover a broad range of genres and subjects,” said Festival Director Dennis Ruh.
MFF & Co Teams With Globo For Telenovela Slate
L.A. studio MFF & Co has struck a deal with Brazil’s Globo to adapt a slate of daytime and prime-time telenovelas for North American audiences. MFF & Co, which has bases in Brazil and the U.S., will work with American writers. Among the titles ready for adaptation are International Emmy-winner Empire (Império), Silvio de Abreu’s classic telenovela Belíssima, The Other Side of Paradise (O Outro Lado do Paraíso), and All the Flowers (Todas as Flores), a melodrama with thriller-like pace from João Emanuel Carneiro, creator of Brazil Avenue. Overseeing development is Miura Kite, President of Global Content at MFF & CO, who was previously Executive Vice President of Global Television at Participant, where she was executive producer of Hulu’s Interior Chinatown, Netflix’s Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey and BBC’s Noughts + Crosses.
In 2001’s “Zoolander,” Ben Stiller delivered “Magnum,” the stunning facial expression of his fictional male model character, Derek Zoolander. Twenty-four years later, Stiller walked onstage at the Cinespia movie screening of “Zoolander” to deliver that look again, shocking a crowd of fashion-lovers.
On hot summer evenings at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, the final resting place of film icons such as David Lynch and Judy Garland, crowds of film fanatics crest the peaceful green hills with glittering outfits and lawn chairs in hand for Cinsepia. The 24-year-old screening series held at the cemetery is a tradition for some and a dazzling L.A. novelty for others. Nowhere else in the city could one snuggle up for a movie surrounded by a couple hundred fellow fans and also surrounded by several thousand star-studded grave sites.
The “Zoolander” screening, which happened on the breezy evening of Aug. 16, began with a lot of wigs. Curly, tall white wigs to channel the hilarious “Zoolander” antagonist Mugatu (Will Ferrell), shaggy blond wigs to emulate Owen Wilson as Hansel, and obviously jet black coifs reminiscent of Derek Zoolander himself.
Passing by a hefty, chiseled statue of Johnny Ramone mid-riff, a Mugatu-wigged man took off the tall hairpiece to reveal a bald head. “Pretend you didn’t see that,” he joked to laughing companions. “Actually, bald is so hot right now.”
With that Mugatu catchphrase and the readjustment of the wig, he excused himself to walk the runway, which was presided over by the DJ, Daisy O’Dell, and the magnetic emcee Love Bailey. Bailey, a red-haired showgirl and artist with a crown of inflatable spikes, moaned, sang and gave wry remarks to each attendee that graced the runway. From her extravagant commentary came beauty. “That’s what I love about fashion, it isn’t about who you are or what you are, it’s about serving a look — and anyone is welcome to serve a nasty look,” Bailey said.
Even those dressed for everyday comfort channeled the spirit of the movie, doing their best “Magnum” face as they gathered around charcuterie boards and pizzas in the warm sunset light on the lawn.
Guests were also excited by the possibility of seeing their favorite movie alongside their favorite actor. Kirsten Dunst, Drew Barrymore and Paul Reubens have all crashed shows in the past. At this screening, there were whispers that a Zoolander actor might take the stage.
As Love Bailey passed the microphone to Cinespia founder John Wyatt, he smiled furtively, diving into routine thanks and reminders of upcoming shows. Then, he cleared his throat and began an introduction. “Right now, we’d like to bring to the Cinespia stage a special guest. He’s the co-writer of ‘Zoolander’ …” Mild cheers arose, one person yelled, “Who is it?!”
“He’s also the co-producer of ‘Zoolander,’” Wyatt said. “He directed ‘Zoolander,’ he’s also the star of ‘Zoolander.’ Give it up!”
The cheers were deafening as Ben Stiller took the stage, sauntering in character as his model persona from 20 years ago. As he thanked the crowd in Derek Zoolander’s slow voice and raised eyebrows, fans were inconsolable, screaming their hearts out with arms raised.
“Thanks for coming, I hope you enjoy the movie with those dead people underneath you,” Stiller said. “Just relax and have a good time.”
The USC Trojan Marching Band took the stage, led by “Severance” star Tramell Tillman. The moment was part surreal, part celebratory of Stiller’s career, bridging the gap between his early cult classic with his latest directorial project.
Stiller directed the band to play a “Zoolander”-y song and the familiar sound of “Relax,” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, the unofficial theme song of the film, rang out to dancing fans as a dramatic show-off between Tillman and Stiller ensued.
Stepping offstage, Stiller spoke to Image about revisiting “Zoolander” years later.
“It’s so much fun, the fact that people still wanna see ‘Zoolander’ and to do it here in the heart of Hollywood,” Stiller said. “It’s something I never would’ve thought about all those years ago when I worked on it. It’s really special.”
In a night of cinematic fashion, memories and surprise, “Zoolander” found a way to be unexpected all over again. We spoke with Cinespia attendees about channeling the iconic fashion film through their looks.
Cindy Chanin
“You haven’t lived in L.A. or experienced L.A. if you haven’t been to this. This is something that is so iconic and sacred to me. This is under the stars, Hollywood sign, palm trees. [There’s] charcuterie, music, all-out looks and friends. It’s for cinephiles, but there’s something laid back and sophisticated about it. I travel a lot for work, but I will always come back in time to never miss a Cinespia screening. It’s a celebration of life.”
Hon Hoang, Holly Hubbell and Travis Grant
“I remember when the movie came out, I was just a kid and I just thought it was hysterical. Will Ferrell, especially, played such an iconic role and it became a classic overnight. It’s a type of comedy that they don’t really make anymore, one that makes fun of [an industry] while honoring [it]. I wanted to channel that goofiness while looking good,” Huang said.
Victoria Goodhart
“I kept this jumpsuit I wore in the ‘70s, which I love to bring back when I can. Anybody that wants to express themselves in an artful way, no matter if it’s grunge or streetstyle or a flapper, it’s all bringing people together and relating to one another.”
Riese Lutz
“This is an old Halloween costume I wore in Mexico City. My mother taught me at a very young age to express myself however I want. I would be the little child who wanted the beautiful princess dress. And my mom would say, ‘Absolutely, let’s at least find one in your size.’ It was so beautiful and I wish that for everyone, being able to express yourself in a supportive environment.”
Chiara Issa
“For me, fashion is putting together and combining pieces from different parts of my life and things that maybe you wouldn’t think to put together. I had to rush out of the house, and I was like, ‘What’s my formula?’ Mini skirt, T-shirt, and you always need some gold. My man is the founder of Cinespia, so I might be biased but I think it’s one of the most iconic things L.A. has.”
Chloe Cus and Elodie Azoulay
“‘Zoolander’ is very nostalgic for me, and my first idea of what the fashion world was like. It’s the perfect opportunity to be a little over-the-top and wear glitter lipstick. We’ve been ‘Blue Steel’-ing all night. My twin brother would make that face a lot and it would make my mom laugh. It was a family joke,” Azoulay said.
Ben Stiller surprised fans at the Cinespia “Zoolander” screening.
“Severance” star Tramell Tillman made an appearance, leading the USC Trojan Marching Band into a rendition of “Relax” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood.
Mostaque had answers for all of this, but investors lost confidence anyway. Four months after the article came out, VCs from both Coatue and Lightspeed left the board of directors, signaling they no longer had faith in the business. By the end of the year, the company’s head of research, chief operating officer, general counsel, and head of human resources had left as well. Many of Stability’s prominent researchers would follow. Under pressure from investors, Mostaque finally left the company on March 22, 2024—just a few weeks after Lady Gaga’s greenhouse soiree.
Akkaraju and Parker wasted no time in taking over Stability, installing Akkaraju as CEO and Parker as chairman of the board. They never spoke to Mostaque, although the former CEO says he reached out to offer his support.
The pair set about trying to remake Stability AI for the moment. Not long after they took over, the competition got fiercer. That September, another startup, Runway, signed the AI industry’s first big deal with a movie studio. Runway would get access to Lionsgate’s proprietary catalog of movies as training data and develop tools for the studio. “The time it takes to go from idea to execution is just shrinking—like a lot,” says Cristóbal Valenzuela, CEO of Runway. “You can do things in just a couple of minutes that used to take two weeks.” In the coming years, he predicts, “you will have teams of two, three, four people making the work that used to require armies and hundreds of millions of dollars.”
The deal with Lionsgate pushed the AI-fication of Hollywood into overdrive. “I can tell you, last year when I came to Los Angeles versus today, it’s night and day,” says Amit Jain, CEO of Luma, another Stability competitor. “Last year it was ‘Let’s prototype, let’s proof-of-concept’—they were deferring the inevitable. This year it’s a whole different tone.”
Moonvalley, an AI company founded by former Google DeepMind researchers (and the parent company of Asteria, an AI film studio cofounded by the actor Natasha Lyonne), recently told Time magazine that more than a dozen major Hollywood studios are testing its latest model—signaling openness to the technology, if not yet a full embrace.
“It was really about me and Sean coming in and providing that direction, that leadership, and really taking advantage of what we call the three T’s: timing, team, and technology,” Akkaraju says.
I’m sitting not at his TED Talk but in his $20 million mansion near Beverly Hills, on an immaculate overstuffed white couch overlooking a manicured garden. Akkaraju is fit, with a gleaming white smile and a button-up that shows off his biceps. His eye contact and handshake are equally strong.
Early on in his tenure, Akkaraju says, he decided that Stability would no longer compete with OpenAI and Google on building frontier models. Instead, it would create apps that sat on top of those models, freeing the company from enormous computing costs. Akkaraju negotiated a new deal with Stability AI’s cloud computing vendors, wiping away the company’s massive debt. Asked for specifics on how this came about, Akkaraju, through a spokesperson, demurred. Investors, however, came flocking back.
Amid brightly colored stands selling spices, candies and imitation Labubus in all shades, the mono-monikered actor Tonatiuh sips on a hibiscus agua fresca at El Mercadito in Boyle Heights. The indoor market has been a staple of Latino life and commerce since it opened in the late 1960s.
Not far from here, his aunt still runs the business that she and Tonatiuh’s mother, an immigrant from the Mexican state of Guanajuato, opened decades ago. “My mom cut hair for a long time, so I grew up in a beauty salon,” he says, casually dressed in a light blue button-up shirt. “That’s why I talk so much.”
The school Tonatiuh attended as a kid, Our Lady of Lourdes, is also in the vicinity, as is the place where he learned to ride a bicycle, Hollenbeck Park. To say that the streets of Boyle Heights, where he was born, nurtured his worldview would be an understatement.
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“These last few months have been really difficult,” Tonatiuh tells me, referencing the recent ICE raids that have ravaged the fabric of the city. He calls them vicious: a “PR cycle against people with dignity, taxpaying individuals who are feeding their families and running businesses, quite literally living the American dream, as cliché as that may sound. ”
Even as his own dreams are beginning to materialize, Tonatiuh, 30, remains tethered to these places and people. His career is about to launch into Hollywood’s firmament with a dual role in director Bill Condon’s screen adaptation of the stage musical version of “Kiss of the Spider Woman” (in theaters Oct. 10). The rising Mexican American actor shares dramatic space with superstars Jennifer Lopez and Diego Luna.
Reviews out of the Sundance Film Festival, where the movie debuted in January, praised Tonatiuh’s performance as a breakthrough. His electrifying turn is equal parts heart-wrenching, deliciously irreverent and technically impressive.
For the bulk of the film, Tonatiuh plays Luis Molina, a passionate gay prisoner in jail during Argentina’s 1970s-era Dirty War who is infatuated with the dazzling escapism of the movies — especially with the allure of fictional screen diva Ingrid Luna (a standout Lopez).
Tonatiuh in the movie “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”
(Ana Carballosa / Roadside Attractions)
Molina indulges in fantasies to stay sane, a dreamscape we experience as scenes from a 1940s classic Hollywood musical. In them, Tonatiuh sings and dances as the dashing Kendall Nesbitt dressed to the nines in elegant tuxes. The musical portion of the film was shot in New York, while for the prison sequences only involving Tonatiuh and Diego Luna as Valentin, a rugged revolutionary, the production relocated to Uruguay. The effect, Tonaituh says, was like making two separate movies.
To perform alongside Lopez, he rehearsed with Broadway dancers for a month leading up to the shooting. “When I first met Jennifer, I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s Jennifer Lopez, what the hell?’” he recalls with contagious energy. “I must have turned left on the wrong street because now I’m standing in front of her. How did this happen? What life am I living?”
One would think Tonatiuh’s mother knew he was destined to become a star when naming him after the brightest heavenly body.
“She had a dream when she was pregnant with me where she was in a field surrounded by golden orbs and they turned into the sun,” he explains. “And because of the Aztec mythology of Tonatiuh being the sun god, she woke up from the dream and was like, ‘My kid’s name is going to be Tonatiuh.’”
Growing up around Latinos, his Indigenous name didn’t raise eyebrows. But that changed once Tonatiuh got a taste of the demands of assimilation. “As we moved to West Covina, everyone tried to impose their anglicized identity onto me, and I went with it for many years,” he says. “Then I started realizing, ‘Why am I denying even my own name to fit in?’ It’s so stupid.”
The entertainment industry proved just as unwilling to accept all of him. Those advising him warned him to play ball. “It’s already hard enough given the way you look,” Tonatiuh recalls hearing from them. “I was just like, ‘Are we going to change my name to Albert?’”
As for his last name, Elizarraraz, he conceded it might be a bridge too far for English-only speakers. “My first name’s already difficult enough,” Tonatiuh says. “They are not ready for that.”
Increasingly, he found the concept of a mononym enticing. “I was like, ‘How many other Tonatiuhs are in the industry?’ I looked it up on SAG, and it was just me,” he says.
Enamored with drama from a young age, Tonatiuh remembers watching James Cameron’s “Titanic” on VHS as a formative experience. But it wasn’t until a friend’s mother invited him to see a live performance of “Wicked” when he was a teenager that acting grabbed him.
“I like stories with a hook and a bite to it,” he says. “‘Wicked’ is about segregation and the rise of it in America. But it’s in metaphor. ‘Animal Farm’ is the same way. There are beautiful, entertaining works that are also poignant, with messaging. That messaging is what’s most interesting to me.”
“My body is being used for a purpose much greater than just entertainment,” Tonatiuh says. “I didn’t have any nepotism. I was very fortunate that people believed in me, and they gave me opportunities.”
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Despite his love of performing and storytelling, a more conventional path seemed likely. At the end of high school, Tonatiuh had been accepted to multiple universities to study political science.
“I have a very strong intolerance to injustice,” he says, a past victim of bullying and, like many children of immigrants, his mother’s de facto translator and legal avatar. “In my mind, I was like, I can help and be of most use if I became a lawyer or a politician.”
But thanks to an English teacher who suggested he should instead pursue his true passion, Tonatiuh doubled down on acting. His mother would drive him in traffic from West Covina to the South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa every morning before work so that he could have a chance at a proper acting education.
“I must have done something to earn her, because she’s such a loving person and her biggest thing was that she just wanted me to be happy,” he says of his devoted parent.
Formal training at USC followed, though Tonatiuh still felt uncertain on how to carve out space for himself, joining local L.A. theater companies while auditioning for TV and film roles.
“The hardest part of acting is the auditions, because it’s awkward,” he says. “Once you put the pieces in place, submitting to the story and using the words as your weapons to guide you through it, acting is just so fun.”
Showrunner Tanya Saracho became aware of Tonatiuh after seeing him in a play. She invited him to join the ensemble of “Vida,” a series filmed in his native Boyle Heights, in the role of Marcos, an academically accomplished queer man.
Sociopolitically outspoken material has shaped Tonatiuh’s resume so far: “Vida” dealt with gentrification, while the 2022 ABC series “Promised Land” followed undocumented characters who amassed power by way of wealth. Now, “Kiss of the Spider Woman” examines authoritarianism through a queer lens.
“My body is being used for a purpose much greater than just entertainment,” he says. “I didn’t have any nepotism. I was very fortunate that people believed in me, and they gave me opportunities.”
“Spider Woman” director Condon credits producer Ben Affleck with the liberty to cast someone talented but not yet a household name. “He said, ‘I know how important this is,’” Condon, an Oscar winner for 1998’s “Gods and Monsters,” recalls. “He took that off the table right away.”
The search for Condon’s Molina/Kendall was as extensive as the one he did for Effie in his film version of “Dreamgirls” 20 years earlier, the role that famously went to singer Jennifer Hudson.
“Hundreds of actors in South America, Central America, Mexico, Spain, New York, Los Angeles, London and other cities,” remembers Condon. “But it wasn’t like with all those hundreds there were dozens of credible choices. There were really just a handful.”
Among them, Tonatiuh grabbed attention on a self-taped audition. Condon sought someone who could be persuasive within the gritty realism of a prison movie, while also credibly being a larger-than-life Hollywood musical star. Tonatiuh inhabited both modes seamlessly.
“Tona has the most extraordinary, open, beautiful face,” says “Kiss of the Spider Woman” director Bill Condon. “But it’s the depth of feeling that he can convey that mattered most.”
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
“Tona has the most extraordinary, open, beautiful face,” Condon says. “And his eyes just invite you in. There’s a lot of camp humor and that’s not something that comes naturally to someone of Tona’s generation, but he just has it in his bones. But it’s the depth of feeling that he can convey that mattered most.”
Tonatiuh seized the chance to play two distinctly complex characters within one movie. His task, he says, was injecting contemporary ideas about queerness into a period piece.
“When I got this one, it felt super special because I don’t think Hollywood always gives people like me an opportunity to play a character this dynamic,” Tonatiuh says. “There is such a return when Hollywood invests in Latin talent and treats us like normal people. Give us a good story. We’re not a genre.”
And though he and Condon discussed Molina’s mindset as well as the historical context and circumstances, Tonatiuh reveled in creative freedom because he wasn’t the focus of intense supervision.
“There was a certain level of mischief and magic that was happening because I was the least-known person on set,” he says. “And a lot of the eyes were on everyone else.” (That cover of anonymity might not last long.)
Throughout the production, Tonatiuh felt that “Kiss of the Spider Woman” spoke to his aspirations directly, not only to those of his characters. “There was this moment where Jennifer looked at me in the song ‘Where You Are,’ and sang, ‘Close your eyes and you’ll become a movie star. Why must you stay where you are?’ And in a weird way, it’s happening.”
Tonatiuh flew his mother and stepfather out to New York to witness “Where You Are,” an imposing musical number involving close to 70 people in front of the camera. When Lopez and Tonatiuh performed their dance duet, his mother was in awe.
“Now she wants to be Kris Jenner — she wants to be the momager,” Tonatiuh says, only half-joking. “In this time where Latinos are getting a lot of s—, it makes me really happy that I can bring her some pride.”
Yet, his mother hasn’t seen the finished film. He wants her to experience it at the upcoming premiere. “I want her to get the full experience of getting to walk the carpet,” he says.
His eyes wet, Tonatiuh recalls an emotional scene with Luna’s Valentin, Molina’s improbable love interest, that once again seemed to him as if film and his reality were in direct conversation.
“When I’m telling Valentin, ‘The film’s almost over and I don’t want it to end,’ it broke my heart because I realized that the film was actually almost over and I didn’t want it to end,” he says. “I bawled my eyes out as if I’d lost the love of my life, and that, for me as a person — what a gift, because it’s fake but it was real for me.”
Since wrapping “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” Tonatiuh has acted in Jeremy O. Harris’ play “Spirit of the People” and Ryan Murphy’s upcoming series “American Love Story.” For his next act, he wants to start from scratch.
“I want to do something completely different than Molina because I love being a shape-shifter,” he says. “I want to be unrecognizable every time I come on screen.”
When making a movie about the behind-the-scenes saga of one of the most transformative and influential films of all time, one might not expect it all to hinge on a haircut. And yet for the team behind “Nouvelle Vague,” about the production of Jean-Luc Godard’s radically freewheeling 1960 feature debut, “Breathless,” it kind of did.
As the film’s director, Richard Linklater, puts it, “All the roads led up to the haircut moment.”
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Linklater, himself a generationally influential filmmaker for movies such as “Slacker,” “Before Sunrise” and “Boyhood,” first worked with actor Zoey Deutch on the 2016 baseball comedy “Everybody Wants Some!!” It was then that he first mentioned to her the idea of playing Jean Seberg, the American star who took on the female lead in Godard’s Paris-set film about a doomed low-level gangster on the run from the police. (Having premiered earlier this year at Cannes, “Nouvelle Vague” will touch down at festivals in both Toronto and New York before coming to theaters Oct. 31, then on Netflix on Nov. 14.)
Deutch as Jean Seberg and Guillaume Marbeck as director Jean-Luc Godard in “Nouvelle Vague.”
(Jean-Louis Fernandez / Netflix)
Seberg’s haircut in the original film, a super-short, blond pixie cut, rewrote fashion trends around the world and encapsulated a spirit of youthful, diffident insouciance. Working with colorist Tracey Cunningham and stylist Bridget Brager in Los Angeles, Deutch recreated the look. During a recent interview at Netflix’s offices on Sunset Boulevard with a straight-on view of the Hollywood sign, Deutch says she had no fear about the transformation.
“It was so much harder for everybody else around me,” says Deutch, 30, her hair currently at a sleek shoulder length and dyed a rich dark brown. “I found that people, women and men, were like, ‘How do you feel? Are you OK? This is so crazy. What’s it like?’ It was the focal point of every discussion. It was like a cool social experiment.”
For Linklater, it was worth the wait.
“You can imagine for months and months I’m in Paris, saying, ‘This is Jean Seberg,’ and people are seeing this dark-haired American,” recalls Linklater in a Zoom call from his home in Texas. “I was like, ‘She’s the perfect Seberg, trust me.’ And then in through the door comes the pixie-cutted Zoey as Seberg. And everybody was like, ‘Oh, OK. That’s her.’”
Deutch often brings a mischievous playfulness to her performances, a knowing sense that she gets it, regardless of the genre or situation. Which fits in well with the movie-mad world of Godard and the community of French New Wave filmmakers in “Nouvelle Vague.”
“Zoey’s a good old-fashioned chameleon,” says Linklater, calling her a “body-of-work actress” for the broad range of roles she is capable of, from the teen drama “Before I Fall” to rom-coms like “Set It Up” and even a legal thriller in “Juror #2.”
“You look at her films, she can be very different and not afraid to play an a— or someone who has very strong feelings, and so there’s a certain constant bravery to Zoey that I really admire.”
In the intervening years since shooting “Everybody Wants Some!!,” Linklater and Deutch have remained in-touch and he casually mentioned the Seberg project once or twice. A few years ago, on the off chance it might actually come to be, Deutch began studying the films of the French New Wave and learning to speak French.
“I thought just in case, let me be ready to be lucky,” she says, in Los Angeles for a day while on a break from shooting the upcoming “Voicemails for Isabelle” in Vancouver.
There was a television interview from August 1960 in which Seberg gives a tour of her apartment in Paris, speaking both French and English, that became a touchstone for Deutch. You can hear Seberg attempting to mask her natural Midwestern accent with a more mid-Atlantic flavor popular among performers at that time — and then also speak French on top of that.
“I find her to be an incredibly mysterious person,” says Deutch of Seberg. “There’s a certain set of challenges with doing an entire movie in a language you don’t speak, but a huge gift because it helped me understand her essence.” Deutch, photographed at Netflix Epic in Hollywood.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
“I was grateful that I got to play her at a moment in time when her French wasn’t perfect, because that was less intimidating,” says Deutch.
She adds, “I find her to be an incredibly mysterious person. And me not speaking French and having to learn the language helped me kind of step into her a little bit a lot more, between that and the hair. There’s a certain set of challenges with doing an entire movie in a language you don’t speak, but a huge gift because it helped me understand her essence.”
Originally from Marshalltown, Iowa, Seberg leaped to fame following an international talent search by director Otto Preminger for the leading role of his 1957 medieval epic, “Saint Joan.” The actor was physically harmed while shooting the film’s climactic burned-at-the-stake scene, then suffered terribly from the film’s bad reviews. Preminger cast her again in his 1958 “Bonjour Tristesse” and again psychologically tormented her during the film’s production.
After “Breathless” made her an international star, Seberg’s career continued to have its ups and downs, with her radical politics leading to her being put under surveillance by the FBI. In 1979, her body would be discovered in the backseat of her car in Paris, her death ruled a suicide.
“Is the rest of her life incredibly fascinating and intense and tragic? Yes,” says Deutch. “But Rick was really adamant on telling a story at a very specific moment in time. We’re not telling anything that happens after. Godard is not a legend yet. You don’t know who this guy is, what he’s doing. He’s not who he was later. Don’t read the last page of the book when we’re still on Page 1.”
The teasing dynamic between Seberg and Godard (played by Guillaume Marbeck) is the core of “Nouvelle Vague,” with Seberg often exasperated by the emerging director’s unconventional ideas — and vocal about it. Deutch’s impressions of Marbeck’s deadpan Godardian grumble, sometimes affectionate, sometimes sarcastically biting, are a comedic highlight of the movie. Eventually the two come to appreciate each other.
In preparing for the film, Deutch realized she would in essence be playing three parts: the actual Seberg, the character of Patricia in “Breathless” and the moments when Seberg is popping through while playing Patricia.
The re-creation in “Nouvelle Vague” of one of the most famous scenes from “Breathless,” — Jean-Paul Belmondo and Seberg sharing a flirtatious stroll down the Champs-Élysées — required Deutch to exhaustively match the onscreen movements of Seberg as Patricia while also speaking as Seberg, since the film had its dialogue recorded later, essentially playing two characters at the same time.
While Seberg may have been plucked from obscurity and tossed into a literal trial-by-fire with her first two movies, Deutch was born in Los Angeles, the child of “Back to the Future” star Lea Thompson and veteran director Howard Deutch (“Pretty in Pink”). Still, she recognized something in Seberg’s struggles.
“There is a sort of collective unconscious understanding amongst anyone who’s been a young actress — you get it,” says Deutch. “No one’s exempt from the experience of what it means to be a woman in Hollywood at a young age, regardless of what year it is.
“But I have immense empathy and feel deep pain for her circumstances of not having a community around her that could help her, when she was 19, navigate in these in insane waters,” adds Deutch. “She’s an incredibly strong, brave, brilliant woman. It’s absolutely correct we have very different backgrounds and I feel for anybody that comes into this world and doesn’t have a foundation or a support system around them.”
Deutch, right, as Jean Seberg and Aubry Dullin as Seberg’s co-star Jean-Paul Belmondo in a scene from Richard Linklater’s “Nouvelle Vague.”
(Netflix)
The production of “Nouvelle Vague” had access to voluminous information on the production of “Breathless,” from many books and documentaries to the paperwork of the original shoot itself. The actual camera used by cinematographer Raoul Coutard to shoot “Breathless” is the one seen onscreen capturing the action in “Nouvelle Vague.”
While the film’s costume designer, Pascaline Chavanne, did deep-dive research into the origins of the clothes in the original film, some garments were provided by Chanel, including a reproduction of a cappuccino-colored striped dress that Deutch liked so much she wore it to the photo call for the film at Cannes.
The production had to recreate the iconic T-shirt worn by Seberg for the Champs-Élysées scene featuring the logo for the New York Herald Tribune. It has become one of the film’s most cherished images.
“There were places where we could be more fluid and interpretive, but that shirt was not one of them,” recalls Deutch, with genuine seriousness. “We wanted the ribbing to be perfect. We did so many different variations of it with the text and the size and getting it perfect.”
Deutch also reverse-engineered moments from “Breathless” that she would drop in elsewhere in “Nouvelle Vague,” such as skipping onto set or repeating a line with different inflections, to imply that Godard may have plucked them from the world of the film’s production and inserted them into the story. She observed this was a technique Linklater had used when they were shooting “Everybody Wants Some!!” to bring the unpredictable liveliness of the making of the movie into the movie itself.
“I basically just obsessively watched ‘Breathless’ and said, ‘What are some weird moments that I’m confused why they’re there?’” says Deutch, who sees Godard and Linklater as similar in spirit. “They are both directors of deep and true authenticity. And I liked the idea that both of them would do something like that because they’re present and they’re looking.”
Linklater describes making the new film as “a kind of séance” with the dead, noting that only two people portrayed in the movie are known to still be alive. Recreating a famous moment — such as when Seberg runs her finger over her lips as Belmondo had done — was deeply meaningful to him: an invocation.
“My favorite moments are when you finish a scene — an actor does something just great — and you’re the first one to know it,” says Linklater. “You’ve worked on it and you recognize it and you know what they just did was fantastic. And you can’t wait to edit it and put it in the movie.
“But then they say ‘cut’ and the real world quickly fills up that space,” he adds. “Magic just happened but then, OK, we’re moving on. Just the way life seeps back into the magic — what did it look like to everyone else there?”
“There’s always that layer when you’re filming a movie, it’s just people don’t know it’s there,” says Deutch. “No one ever watches the movie and knows that day you got into a fight with your husband or your dog died or it was raining and your mascara was smearing. No one has any context and no one really cares. Generally they see it for what it is. But you feel it and see it and remember.”
She’s articulating a mission statement as good as any. In combining the emotions of “Breathless” with the story of its creation, “Nouvelle Vague” finds a heart and meaning of its own: when people with ambition, talent and creative drive step into their own power.
