Latest news with #ElisabethMoss
Daily Mail
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews The Veil on Ch4: Homeland fans won't want to miss this clever and compelling spy drama
The Veil (Ch4) TV schedules are like lumpy porridge. Sometimes, you dig in and get plenty to chew on. At other times, it can be pretty thin gruel. A packed Sunday night saw the launch of new serials on BBC1, ITV and Channel 4. By Tuesday, we had nothing to pick from but women's football, the Sewing Bee, a Repair Shop rerun and the tail end of various dramas. But that's what catch-up services are for. When there's nothing on, you always have something else to watch. I confess I skipped Elisabeth Moss 's new thriller The Veil at the weekend. Ch4 has only just finished showing the final series of her dystopian fantasy The Handmaid's Tale, which long ago collapsed into nonsensical, repetitive hysteria. Still, The Veil is written by Peaky Blinders ' creator Steven Knight, and all six episodes are now available to stream at Channel 4 online, so I thought I'd give it a go. What an excellent decision that was. Knight's stories are usually convoluted, multi-character pieces of theatre, but this is different — practically a two-hander between Moss and her co-star, Yumna Marwan. Marwan plays Adilah, a Frenchwoman in a snowbound refugee camp run by the United Nations in Syria, where almost everyone is female because Isis fighters massacred all their menfolk. The other women suspect her of being an Isis commander herself. Given half a chance, they'll lynch her or stab her to death - and since the slimy UN aid co-ordinator is fully occupied with coercing hungry refugees into having sex with him, Adilah is left literally fighting to survive. Moss is the British secret agent, codenamed 'Imogen', sent to extract her and bring her to the West, where French and American security services suspect she is involved in masterminding a terror attack. Adilah insists she's a genuine refugee, and that's the real question at the core of this thriller: who is she? And who is 'Imogen'? Multi-lingual, handy in a knife fight, a natural liar, she also appears to be an idealist. When she learns Adilah has abandoned a 12-year-old daughter back in France, Imogen looks angry enough for a moment to strangle her with her bare hands. Blackout of the week: The Our Lives documentary Guardian Of The Night (BBC1) urged us to protect starry skies from light pollution. The Beeb must think it is being helpful by filming dramas such as The Narrow Road To The Deep North in near-total darkness. 'A mother should never have to lose her child,' she fumes - but she denies having children herself. The obvious comparison is with Killing Eve, another clever and emotionally compelling spy drama about the relationship between a British woman agent and a female terrorist. But the shifting layers of psychological mystery and the pervading sense of Western values under attack make this perfect fare for anyone who loved the first few seasons of Homeland, the 2012 thriller starring Damian Lewis as a suspected Al Qaeda double agent and Claire Danes as the CIA agent intent on exposing him. Plus, The Veil has Elisabeth Moss doing a hoity Kensington accent and smiling brightly a lot.
Metro
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
Steven Knight's 'compelling' thriller series quietly added to free streamer
A thriller series starring Elisabeth Moss is now streaming for free (Picture: FX) A week after her long-running series The Handmaid's Tale came to an end, UK fans can now binge an 'underrated' thriller starring Elisabeth Moss. Released on Hulu in the US and on Disney Plus locally last year, The Veil was written by Steven Knight, best known for creating Peaky Blinders and SAS: Rogue Heroes. Ahead of its release, it was teased the cat-and-mouse storyline would appeal to fans of Killing Eve and promised to keep viewers on the edge of their seats. 'The Veil explores the surprising and fraught relationship between two women who play a deadly game of truth and lies on the road from Istanbul to Paris and London,' the official synopsis said. 'One woman has a secret, the other a mission to reveal it before thousands of lives are lost. In the shadows, mission controllers at the CIA and French DGSE must put differences aside and work together to avert potential disaster.' Elisabeth plays Imogen Salter, a veteran MI6 agent with a specialty in undercover work. The Veil follows two women engaged in a 'deadly game of truths and lies' (Picture: FX) To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Up Next Previous Page Next Page The Veil also stars Yumna Marwan as Adilah El Idrissi, a French woman suspected of being an ISIS leader planning an attack on the West, Dali Benssalah as Malik Amar, an agent with French intelligence agency DGSE and Imogen's boyfriend, and Josh Charles as Max Peterson, an obnoxious CIA agent collaborating with Malik and Imogen. After a two year wait for the show to hit screens, a year later UK fans can now finally also tune in for free. This week Channel 4 uploaded the entire series to its streaming service. Although the six-episode series divided critics and fans, those who did love it gave glowing reviews. 'Exciting and astonishing, The Veil beautifully balances stunt-filled escapades and a rich narrative,' Variety wrote. It was originally released last year and is now available on Channel 4 (Picture: FX) 'Overall, The Veil seems like a fun show to get lost in as you unravel the mystery each week,' Common Sense Media shared. 'By the end of the six episodes of The Veil, I was convinced that this is Moss' best role, and best performance, yet. She's amazing,' NPR added. Meanwhile fans said it was 'utterly compelling', 'underrated' and 'full of constant twists'. After her breakout role as Zoey Bartlet in The West Wing, Moss went on to star as Peggy Olson in Mad Men, before playing June/ Offred in The Handmaid's Tale, which ran from 2017 until this year. Speaking to RTE ahead of the initial premiere of The Veil, the actress said this had been one of her hardest roles to date. The series was created by Peaky Blinders' Steven Knight (Picture: Alan Chapman/ Dave Benett/ WireImage) 'It was much more challenging than I've ever experienced given the different skills and different things I had to do with the dialect, the stunts, fight training, and speaking a couple of different languages here and there, and then traveling around the world, so it definitely felt like, if possible, I've found something even more challenging than The Handmaid's Tale,' she said. During filming she even fractured a vertebrae in her back, an injury that left her lying on a roof in Istanbul for two hours. After 'hitting a wall the wrong way' when undertaking a stunt, Moss was still determined to push on and was back on set the next day, but with limited mobility. 'I didn't know if we were going to be able to come back and shoot on this rooftop in the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. It's not like that is an easy thing to accomplish. But luckily, we, as a production, and then FX, thank God, let us go back and shoot it again. Which was incredible, an incredible opportunity,' she told Variety. Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. Arrow MORE: South Park scores groundbreaking $1,500,000,000 deal after fans vow to cancel streaming subscriptions Arrow MORE: Malcolm-Jamal Warner's powerful 'last message' leaves fans heartbroken Arrow MORE: 7 of the most thrilling TV shows to watch for Shark Week
Metro
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
'Spine-chilling' horror remake with near-perfect RT rating now streaming
A horror film lauded as 'outstanding' is streaming right now on Amazon Prime Video. The Invisible Man, directed by Leigh Whannell, revitalised interest in Universal's proposed Dark Universe, which was set to bring the classic Universal Monsters back to the big screen. Following the box office flop that was The Mummy, Whannell's 2020 adaptation of The Invisible Man was widely praised by critics thanks to how it tackled themes of domestic abuse. It stars Elisabeth Moss as Cecilia Kass, a woman trapped in a violent and controlling relationship with wealthy optics engineer and businessman Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). After finally leaving, it is reported that Adrian has died by suicide. But Elisabeth is still subjected to his terror after it is revealed that he developed technology to become invisible and torment his ex. It grossed a whopping $145million (£107.7m) worldwide against a $7m (£5.2m) budget and received numerous accolades, including a Critics' Choice nomination. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video The Invisible Man boasts a 91% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with the critics' consensus reading: 'Smart, well-acted, and above all scary, The Invisible Man proves that sometimes, the classic source material for a fresh reboot can be hiding in plain sight.' In their review, The Times said: 'It uses its serious theme to give extra force to a tale that already has plenty of flair as a pure and simple spine-chiller.' The Ringer wrote: 'A thriller whose mandate is to startle its audience with surface-level shocks while simultaneously subverting expectations in a deeper way, dropping us out of our comfort zone toward some sunken place.' The Jewish Chronicle added: 'Elisabeth Moss delivers an outstanding performance as a woman teetering on the edge of reality in this thoroughly engaging reboot.' 'Whannell expertly plays with our fears: the sudden metallic screech of a dog dish accidentally kicked in the quiet; the house's labyrinthine hallways; the breathing darkness of an empty road,' Seattle Times praised. In 2019, it was confirmed that a spin-off titled The Invisible Woman was in development with Elizabeth Banks set to star. However, she revealed that the film was on hold while Universal focused on a sequel to The Invisible Man. More Trending 'For one thing, what happened was they made an Invisible Man movie, and they're making another one,' she told 'So I think Universal wants to see that through. I'm really interested in the idea that we have, and it is still there, but it's not something I'm actively working on in this moment in time.' Last year, Moss confirmed that developments on the sequel were ongoing, and it was then announced that her production company, Love and Squalor Pictures, was working with Blumhouse Productions on the film. The Invisible Man is streaming now on Prime Video . Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. MORE: Huge Leonardo DiCaprio blockbuster now streaming on iPlayer MORE: Bring Her Back boasts one of the most horrifically disturbing scenes I've ever seen MORE: James Gunn admits Henry Cavill's Superman firing was 'terrible'
Elle
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Elle
'Absolute Travesty': Fans Shocked By Huge Awards Snub For 'The Handmaid's Tale' And Elisabeth Moss
After an absolutely action-packed finale that had viewers on the edge of their seats and critics lapping up each plot-turn, many would've thought The Handmaid's Tale was a sure thing in yesterday's Emmy announcements. However fans (and critics, many of whom had predicted a slew of nominations for the show and its star Elisabeth Moss) of The Handmaid's Tale were shocked yesterday when the huge awards show - arguably the biggest television awards in the world - snubbed the show. The Handmaid's Tale received only one nomination for Cherry Jones, who played Holly, June's mother. She was nominated in the category of Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series. Many expected the show to sweep the nominations board as it was the last series and the final chance to celebrate a show that's been loved by so many fans. But a nomination for Elisabeth Moss' portrayal of June, which saw her experience every emotion under the sun and lead a revolution in the show's sixth series, seemed a dead cert. Her failure to receive an acting nomination was marked as one of the biggest snubs by most industry publications, many of which had themselves put her at the top of the list for mentions. Some have speculated about the political nature of the show and whether that made nominating it particularly tricky. Of course it could just be that, in a particularly strong year for television, the show was crowded out. Severance and Adolescence in particular led the lists of show received 27 nominations and The Studio beat Ted Lasso's previous record for nominations for a new show with 23 mentions. Other shows that got nominations include Andor, The Diplomat, The Last Of Us, Slow Horses, The White Lotus and Paradise. So, while it is a crowded year, fans will also wonder why the quality of The Handmaid's Tale didn't make that cut. The show has had nominations before - 77 in total - and, in 2017, Elisabeth Moss won the award for Lead Actress In A Drama Series. That year the show also won Outstanding Drama Series. Regardless, fans of the show were outraged on social media. On X, one fan wrote: 'The Handmaid's Tale got no Emmy nominations? Absolute travesty.' Another cited the performances of Yvonne Strahovski, saying: 'The fact that the handmaid's tale ended and this queen never got to hold an emmy for her portrayal of Serena Joy should be considered a crime.' ELLE Collective is a new community of fashion, beauty and culture lovers. For access to exclusive content, events, inspiring advice from our Editors and industry experts, as well the opportunity to meet designers, thought-leaders and stylists, become a member today HERE.
Irish Times
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Alex Ross Perry on his Pavement documentary: ‘The concept was an absurd notion that this band would ever go gold or platinum'
More than 16 years into his film-making career, Alex Ross Perry can shake the most algorithm-trodden viewers out of their complacency. His unapologetically caustic, literary milieu, populated by spiky, self-absorbed humans, remains defiantly indie, made on modest budgets, with zero concessions towards 'relatable' entertainment norms. In Listen Up Philip , from 2014, Jason Schwartzman plays a misanthropic novelist who alienates everyone around him. In Her Smell, playing Becky Something, Elisabeth Moss delivers a ferocious performance as a volatile, drug-addled punk rocker. In the earlier Queen of Earth , Moss excelled as a grieving woman descending into paranoia. The film-maker's devoted following intersects with that of Paul Schrader, John Cassavetes and the American authors Thomas Pynchon and Philip Roth. Pavements, Perry's new hybrid documentary portrait of Pavement, indie rock's least-bothered legacy act, is a thrillingly maximalist curveball from an auteur with such a disciplined, character-driven oeuvre. It's a world away from those films that Perry's cinematographer, Sean Price Williams, has described as 'people talking in rooms'. READ MORE 'You hope that everything you create will be a new process, no matter what,' says Perry. 'You're looking for that every time in some way or another. But, by definition, there are 40 primary characters in Pavements whom you're keeping track of. That is extremely rare and complicated – except for movies like Nashville [directed by Robert Altman, from 1975]. 'The movie is actually really several smaller movies. The challenge was making little tiny movies that fit into a bigger movie. I wanted to make something complicated and unprecedented.' Nearly 35 years after a band of self-styled slackers from Stockton, California, emerged with a batch of lo-fi, inscrutable songs, Pavement remain an outlier in American indie rock. They were never meant for the mainstream. Formed in 1989 by Stephen Malkmus and Scott Kannberg (aka Spiral Stairs), Pavement began as a studio experiment of distorted guitars and nebulous mumbling. They sold self-distributed cassettes and secured some basement shows. They scored an unexpected success with their much-loved album Slanted and Enchanted from 1992, but their jagged sound and nonsensical lyrics would never truly go mainstream. 'I always was hoping that it was music for the future. I mean, I think everyone who's not that successful in their time tries to think that,' says Malkmus early in Perry's film, a documentary that occasionally gives you the sense that you're watching the biggest act on the planet. A lot is going on. An anchoring timeline chronicles the band's 2022 reunion tour – their first since 2010 – featuring rehearsals and performances from dates across North America and Europe. Off-Broadway, hopefuls audition for Slanted! Enchanted! A Pavement Musical. A pop-up Pavement museum, ostentatiously titled Pavements 1933–2022, features authentic artefacts and apparent fakes. There's more chicanery in Range Life: A Pavement Story, fragments of a grandiloquent Hollywood biopic filmed within the film, starring Joe Keery as Malkmus, with Schwartzman as Chris Lombardi, founder of Matador Records, the band's long-time label. There is even a completely made-up awards-season denouement, featuring Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach. It's an epic sprawl that came together surprisingly quickly following an approach by Matador. Lombardi pitched the idea, with Malkmus giving a clear directive: they didn't want a typical documentary or a scripted screenplay. The frontman's only note was a request for something 'confusing and weird'. 'Within six weeks of being contacted to come up with some sort of radical or unusual idea that could be a suitably unique Pavement movie, all of those strands were there,' says Perry. 'When I look at my early documents, the only thing in my notes that is not in the movie is a fictionalised art-house film – I had the idea that, in addition to a very cliched, silly, bad Hollywood movie, there would be an art film like Edvard Munch by Peter Watkins. All of the ideas were there from the outset. My first thought was the movie ought to be a mosaic.' In 1999, after a decade that had seen them have moderate hits with Cut Your Hair, Gold Soundz and Range Life, Pavement broke up with the same shrugs they brought to their live performances. They had sung and played off-key during shambolic television appearances. Their inclusion on the bill of the Lollapalooza festival in 1995 – an odd fit alongside Sonic Youth, Hole, Cypress Hill, Sinéad O'Connor, Beck and Coolio – almost started a riot. Do Pavement fit Perry's description of his most acerbic creations as 'people who can't get out of their own way'? 'When I first heard Pavement as a young person, I had no understanding of the complexity of what an artist's goals are,' the film-maker says. 'You don't think about that stuff when you're 13. You're just hearing a good song and catching a concert. That level of insight is invisible to a lot of the public, and often only visible in hindsight. 'But it certainly became their story in the 20 years after they broke up. After the reunion it became the story of unfulfilled ambition and missed opportunities and untapped potential. 'During my research for the film, which was all done in 2020, deep into the pandemic, when nobody in the band had seen each other since the 2010 reunion tour, the narratives I was given by everyone involved with the band spoke to that disappointment.' Then came a plot twist. Harness Your Hopes, an obscure track recorded in 1996, unexpectedly became one of the band's most popular songs. Despite never being released as a single or receiving significant radio play at the time, the track gained traction on Spotify in the 2010s – it now has more than 210 million streams – before igniting a dance craze on TikTok. 'At some point, making the movie, I looked at their Spotify page expecting to see Range Life or Cut Your Hair as their number-one songs. And suddenly I'm asking, 'Why does this song have tens of millions more views than everything else?' 'This song hasn't even been on my radar for narrative purposes. And then I googled it and discovered this crazy thing happened. By the time the band were rehearsing for the 2022 tour, this song had blown up and they were playing it as part of every show. I shot the video for it before we shot the movie.' It is a delightful second act, not just for Pavement but for Pavements. Perry's grandiose, counterfactual account of the band now feels strangely prophetic. 'We made this movie over a five-year span,' he says. 'The concept was an absurd notion that this band would ever go gold or platinum. We weren't thinking, Oh, that'll be funny, because sooner or later they'll have gold records. It was, like, This is the most ridiculous thing imaginable, because they haven't been a band for 25 years. And now the movie is out and the success that had eluded them for forever has happened.' Pavements is in cinemas from Friday, July 11th
