Peter Straughan breaks down the power plays and personal tragedy in ‘Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light'
Few screenwriters working today are as adept at exploring the ins and outs of power—who has it, who wants it, and who will do anything to get it — as Conclave Oscar winner Peter Straughan. After picking up the Academy Award, he returned with another twisty, intricate tale of men plotting behind one another's backs with Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, the second and final adaptation of Hilary Mantel's historical novels that just finished airing on PBS Masterpiece.
"Hilary's very accurate," Straughan tells Gold Derby over Zoom. "All the externals are accurate. And then, her great gift was to make the internals come to life."
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Mantel's beloved novels cast a fresh look upon the court of Henry VIII, in particular his advisor and confidant, Thomas Cromwell. And though Straughan had to condense Mantel's Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies into a single season, The Mirror and the Light gets a full six episodes. And Straughan relished the challenge of distilling a nearly 800-page book into six hours of TV.
"It's a huge novel, but I would give anything, any day, to have books like that to adapt," he says. "The material is so great. It's full of things you can use for drama: incredible scenes, great dialogue. The task was, of all the TV dramas you could make out of this, which one do you want to make?"Ultimately, Straughan focused on the ways in which Cromwell is unable to extricate himself from Henry VIII's seductive — and dangerous — inner circle, despite more than a few opportunities. And one of the great gifts of The Mirror and the Light is getting to see Damian Lewis and Mark Rylance return as Henry and Cromwell, playing their sometimes fraternal, sometimes fractious relationship for all its worth.
"It gives you tremendous confidence when you're working with actors of that caliber," Straughan says. 'It makes you feel like you can do a lot of things that might make you nervous otherwise. When you're nervous about a scene, you put a lot more scaffolding in to make sure everything's clear. When you've got someone like Mark or Damian, you can [write] it with fewer touches, because you know they're gonna fill it all in with their faces, with their eyes."
Those moments are among the most memorable — not just because of the performances, but because of Straughan's unerring eye for the telling detail and his pitch-perfect selection of what will work onscreen from Mantel's book. Think of Henry VIII's disappointed eagerness with Cromwell's reaction to his fancy dress costume, or Anne Boleyn's heartbreaking trembling in the moments before her execution, which opens the series.
In this version, the executioner makes a noise behind Anne, which she turns towards, still blindfolded. And in the span of that moment, he steps back to her other side and slices off her head. The moment is unnerving, a stark reminder of the very real life-and-death stakes at play in Henry's court. There's another remarkable moment in that scene that Straughan also pulled from the book and singles out: 'She puts her hand up, and Cromwell says, 'Put your hand down. Put your hand down, because he'll cut through the hand.' Which is a horrible detail, but it always gets to me.'
And though casual history buffs know that Cromwell, too, will end up on the executioner's block, Straughan's scripts have a level of immediacy that allows us to forget. 'We all know death's at the end of the journey. Always. The important thing is how does it happen?' Straughan says. 'And the thing that was so interesting with Cromwell's story was it's not very linear. It wasn't a slow decline. It was more like he was holding onto a balloon, then he goes higher and higher and you get scared for him. But I do think it's amazing that I felt myself, when I was watching it, that even though you know how it's gonna end, there's a bit of, like, Anne in the end of the first season, who still hopes somehow she's gonna be saved.'
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Inside ‘The Daily Show': The team behind the satirical news series on politics, puppies, punchlines — and staying sane
Since its debut in 1996, The Daily Show has been a cornerstone of political satire and late-night comedy. Under Jon Stewart's iconic leadership from 1999 to 2015, it evolved into a cultural phenomenon that reshaped how America engages with the news. After Stewart stepped down from his daily hosting duties, Trevor Noah took over the news desk. Following Noah's departure, Stewart made a return in 2024 as a weekly guest host on Mondays, joining a dynamic team of rotating hosts — Jordan Klepper, Desi Lydic, Ronny Chieng, Michael Kosta — and correspondents Troy Iwata, Josh Johnson and Grace Kuhlenschmidt. Each brings their own sharp perspective to the desk and in the field, continuing the show's tradition of blending humor with hard-hitting commentary. The Daily Show won two 2024 Emmy Awards for Best Talk Series and Best Picture Editing for Variety Programming from seven nominations, as well as the 2023 Emmy Award for Best Talk Series. 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Kosta: I get a lot of people thanking me for what the show does. I try to lower their expectations and say, I'm not a journalist, I'm a comedian. I've had a few people push back and say, stop, this is really important. You're one of the only shows that is consistently and effectively speaking truth to power, ridiculing who's in charge, and we think that's really important. Chieng: I might be meeting the same people Kosta's meeting because it's almost the exact same conversation, but I also just get a lot of like, "Hey man, good job, love your stuff." And then people are usually nice enough to just move on and not bother me anymore. Iwata: A lot of people say they love that they can go to us to get more palatable information on what's going on in the world and that we provide sort of escapism and calling out hypocrisy and just making them laugh at it because if you just watch the news all day, it's very heavy. 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Kuhlenschmidt: I find levity in almost exclusively watching reality TV, so that's kind of my curse, but it's working for me. Right now I'm watching Survivor, which is I think is an excellent season. Johnson: As far as things that I use to wind down or give me some sense of joy and fun — a lot of fail videos. There's nothing like a good video of a guy racking up a lot of weight for the bench press and and then sometimes you can tell this is belief, this is a guy who's like, "I saw Captain America do it, and I'm feeling pretty good. I had two apples today, so looks like we're going to push 360." And then watching that bar slowly come down and seeing the realization on his face of like, "Oh, these are all heavy." Everything in here is heavy is a powerful reminder that we're only here for so long and it's important to cherish the time that we have. Klepper: I fell in love with the NBA because that just takes me out of the news world. So NBA and Tim Robinson videos will set me straight. Kosta: When I go home and on the weekends, I say I'm a camp counselor. I have a 5- and a 2-year-old, and there's no better way to get taken out of the news cycle than having to put together some toy for my 5-year-old — and then I do it wrong. Chieng: This job has helped me rediscover reading again. I had to read to prep for some guests and reading is the perfect antidote to social media. Honestly. You can feel your brain damage decrease when you're reading a book. The New York Public Library and I'm sure whatever library in your city, is pretty amazing. This is a severely underutilized resource, so more people should be using a library. Lydic: Ronny, that is such a healthy and well-rounded answer. I was going to say bourbon and reality TV. 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How big will ‘How to Train Your Dragon' be? Opening weekend for live-action remake could hit $80M
Universal's How to Train Your Dragon, a live-action remake of the 2010 animated film based on Cressida Cowell's 2003 novel, takes flight in theaters this weekend. Directed by Dean DeBlois, the film is poised to ignite the 2025 box office, with a projected blockbuster debut of $80 million. The action-fantasy film is soaring to an impressive start, raking in over $11 million during early previews, according to Deadline. These figures are comparable to Frozen II's preview gross in 2019, which ultimately launched with a $130 million opening weekend. How to Train Your Dragon is bolstered by a stellar 99 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and a "certified fresh" rating from critics, currently sitting at 77 percent. More from GoldDerby 'Agatha All Along' star Ali Ahn: Getting Patti LuPone's approval while singing was 'like I had died and gone to heaven' Inside 'The Daily Show': The team behind the satirical news series on politics, puppies, punchlines - and staying sane Ripped from the headlines: How the showrunners of 'Monsters,' 'Apple Cider Vinegar' and 'Good American Family' mined truth for drama The How to Train Your Dragon animated trilogy, which grossed a combined $1.6 billion worldwide and earned four Oscar nominations, set a high bar for success. The live-action remake, however, is poised to soar even higher at the box office. The strongest opening of the original trilogy came from How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World in 2019, which earned $55 million in its first weekend. Also debuting this weekend is Celine Song's Materialists from A24, the highly anticipated follow-up to her Oscar-nominated feature debut, Past Lives. Meanwhile, Mike Flanagan's The Life of Chuck, a potential awards contender and winner of the People's Choice Award at last September's Toronto International Film Festival, expands to wide release courtesy of Neon. Gold Derby readers predict that How to Train Your Dragon will win the June 13-15 weekend with between $75 million and $100 million domestically. Lilo & Stitch is the runner-up selection of our oddsmakers. NEW RELEASES Director: Dean Deblois Distributor: Universal Pictures As an ancient threat endangers both Vikings and dragons alike on the isle of Berk, the friendship between Hiccup, an inventive Viking, and Toothless, a Night Fury dragon, becomes the key to both species forging a new future together. The live-action remake, starring Mason Thames, Nico Parker, and Gerard Butler, has a running time of two hours, five minutes, and is rated PG. How to Train Your Dragon is certified "fresh" with a 77 percent score per the aggregated critic reviews at Rotten Tomatoes; "mixed" reviews compiled by Metacritic resulted in an overall score of 60 percent. Director: Celine Song Distributor: A24 A young, ambitious New York City matchmaker finds herself torn between the perfect match and her imperfect ex. The romantic comedy, starring Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, and Pedro Pascal, has a running time of one hour, 56 minutes, and is rated R. Materialists is certified "fresh" with a 87 percent score per the aggregated critic reviews at Rotten Tomatoes; "generally favorable" reviews compiled by Metacritic resulted in an overall score of 70 percent. BOX-OFFICE PREDICTIONS How to Train Your Dragon will keep the box-office fires burning with an $80 million opening weekend, with more optimistic projections suggesting it could reach the $100 million mark. Holding steady in second place is Disney's Lilo & Stitch, which will add another $14 million to its $348 million domestic total (and $807 million worldwide), cementing its status as the year's second-biggest release behind Warner Bros.' A Minecraft Movie. The Materialists is expected to debut in third place with a strong $13 million opening. Completing the top five are Lionsgate's Ballerina, which is expected to earn $12 million, and Paramount's Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, pulling in $9 million. Here are Gold Derby's predictions box-office rankings for the top five: 1. How to Train Your Dragon 2. Lilo & Stitch 3. Materialists 4. Ballerina 5. Misson: Impossible — The Final Reckoning Do you agree or disagree with those rankings? Make your predictions right now — it's fun and easy! Join the box-office discussion in our forums. Best of GoldDerby Stephen King movies: 14 greatest films ranked worst to best 'The Life of Chuck' cast reveal their favorite Stephen King works, including Mark Hamill's love of the 'terrifying' 'Pet Sematary' From 'Hot Rod' to 'Eastbound' to 'Gemstones,' Danny McBride breaks down his most righteous roles: 'It's been an absolute blast' Click here to read the full article.
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The Real-World Places Behind ‘Andor' Season 2's Architectural Marvels
Andor, the live-action Star Wars prequel series created by Tony Gilroy and starring Diego Luna, concluded its second and final season last month. Spanning the years prior to the events of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the series has garnered massive praise from Star Wars fans and critics alike for its deft storytelling, stirring lead performances, and majestic setpieces. This is especially true in the show's second season, which sees the former thief-turned-rebel-fighter on the run for his life while working as an agent saboteur and covert operative for Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård), a spymaster laying the groundwork for what will eventually become the rebel alliance first glimpsed in the original Star Wars. From the wafting wheat fields of Mina-Rau and the cosmopolitan grandeur of the Ghorman Plaza, to the sprawling ecumenopolis of Coruscant, every location feels as lived-in as it is visually breathtaking. Coruscant, in particular, takes on renewed resonance in Andor season two. First glimpsed on-screen in a scene added to the 1997 re-release of Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi, the capital of the Galactic Republic and later Empire appears much as it did in the prequel trilogy—a bricolage of glittering skyscrapers, Brutalist support columns, and endless lanes of hovercrafts tracing the sky like ley lines of iridescent silver—albeit rendered with a more practical heft and tactile depth than in any incarnation seen before. Andor's take on Coruscant took inspiration from many real-life architectural sights, specifically the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia, Spain. 'In the middle of season one [of Andor], I sort of identified certain architectural styles that would work for Coruscant like Santiago Calatrava and Zaha Hadid,' Andor production designer Luke Hull told io9. 'I did a big location scouting trip before we went into production for season two, just to buildings I always found interesting and had good shape language for Star Wars. That took me to Paris, to Barcelona and Madrid, and even Portugal, and we looked at Valencia as well. So it was kind of a little bit of a weird European road trip, some of which was kind of a good reference, and some of which was like, 'Wow, I wish we could film here,' but we're not sure what [Andor season two] was yet. And then some of it was like, 'Okay, this really has the bones of something 'Upper Coruscant' about it,' which is what I thought Valencia had.' Designed by Santiago Calatrava and Félix Candela, the futuristic 350,000-square-meter educational and cultural complex was built along the dry bed of the old Turia River, which was drained and diverted following a flood which devastated the nearby city in 1957. The project broke ground in 1991, with the first building, the Hemesferic—Spain's largest cinema and planetarium—opening in 1998. The complex was expanded over the next decade, with the most recent building, the Agora Plaza, completed in 2009. 'With this location in Valencia, you could just walk around in every corner of it, [and it] looked like Coruscant,' ILM visual effect supervisor Mohen Leon said in an interview for 'We ended up shooting so much and it perfectly meshed into our whole approach of trying to ground everything in locations, and then just enhance and augment them. So this location specifically really felt very upscale and formal in a way that you could believe that this could be government offices.' Fans of Andor will recognize the Prince Felipe Science Museum, a large building buffeted by large skeletal rib-like columns, as one of the centerpieces of the plaza adjourning the Imperial Senate Building, particularly for its appearance in season two's ninth episode, where Cassian Andor is tasked with rescuing Senator Mon Mothma from being arrested by the ISB. The Senate plaza wasn't the only location based on the City of Arts and Science, however, as two more locations—Davo Sculdun's palatial skyscraper seen in episode six and the final meeting place of Luthen Rael and his ISB mole Lonni Jung—were based on the Queen Sofia Palace of the Arts and the adjourning Montolivet Bridge, respectively. 'We knew we were going to only use up to a certain point on the plaza for the Senate anyway,' Hull told io9. 'Because we were going to put the Senate offices, basically, where the building was that we ultimately used for Davo Sculdun's building, we replaced that with the Senate offices. So then we were like, well, this building is up for grabs.' Hull added, 'I just really loved this idea that you could treat the bit at the front [of the Queen Sofia Palace of the Arts] as a sort of landing pad. You really feel all of Coruscant around you as you kind of bring the limo down. It's very glamorous and Bond-esque to kind of arrive that way and then also be able to see the partygoers through the glass from outside. It's kind of rare that you get this opportunity. I love filming on location anyway, but I've always fought very hard to try and film on location because I do think it gives us scope that CGI can't give. CGI can give scale, but it can't give scope all the time.' The same fastidious level of attention was also given to the costume designs of the people within the Senate. Michael Wilkinson, the costume designer for Andor, worked hand in hand with Hull to craft clothing for the senators and staff that felt grounded with complexity and reality. '[Coruscant] is a really good example, because you have so many different types of people at the Senate, and the audience has to very quickly understand who's who and who's doing what,' Wilkinson told io9. 'So we have senators at the very top of the pyramid; they're from all different corners of the galaxy and represent lots of different cultures. So we had to sort of try and express that through their clothing. Then you have the people that sort of work at the Senate; the more bureaucratic people, the senator's aides, the people who help run the Senate, so they have a very different type of costume as well, nothing quite as grand as the senators, a little bit more like the Star Wars equivalent of an everyday corporate look. Then we had Senate security, so they needed a uniform, and then we also had the journalists and the people from the outside world that have come to report about the things that are happening at the Senate.' Andor isn't the only sci-fi series to feature Valencia's City of Arts and Sciences. The campus has been indelibly embedded within the visual lexicon of modern science fiction, with appearances in such shows as Westworld as the exterior of DELOS headquarters and in the 2017 episode 'Smile' of Doctor Who. It also appeared on the big screen Brad Bird's 2015 sci-fi drama Tomorrowland. When asked why he thinks why the City of Arts and Sciences exerts such a powerful influence on the collective imagination of artists and directors alike, Hull was quick to credit the scope and diversity of Calatrava's vision for the complex's structure. 'It's just so innately science fiction, and there's the scale of it,' Hull said. 'The scale is monumental. It's a very coherent, encapsulated vision. There's a lot to play with. It's not just one building, and it's so rare to find that. For our purposes, I really felt it just embodied some of Star Wars' visual language. I mean, everything Calatrava designs looks like it's from the future, so it's sort of inherently going to attract that sort of type of filmmaking and in order to tell those types of stories.'While writing this piece, I learned that a group of Spanish Star Wars fans met up at the City of Arts and Sciences to celebrate May the Fourth in 2005, mere days before the theatrical premiere of Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith and nearly 20 years before the campus itself would appear in Andor. Knowing that, it feels like nothing short of an act of the Force to see Calatrava's masterpiece finally make its appearance in a galaxy far, far away.
