Latest news with #GreatBlackHope
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Ana de Armas on ‘Ballerina,' Breaking Barriers and Finding Balance in Hollywood
Ana de Armas has been in a James Bond movie, has been to the Oscars as a nominee and has premiered a film at Cannes — and yet nothing prepared her for the scope of fandom that greeted her at Comic Con in Brazil last fall. 'I had never seen that many people in my life,' the actress recalls. 'It was crazy. That's the closest you can be to being a singer.' More from WWD In 'Great Black Hope,' Rob Franklin Explores Class, Race and the Dark Underbelly of New York Glamour in Bold Debut Novel A Lot to Sea: Inside the World of Superyacht Design Weighted Matters: Make That Workout Tougher Since its announcement, the John Wick spinoff movie 'Ballerina' has been feverishly anticipated, as its star experienced in Brazil. Officially out June 6, 'Ballerina,' which Tom Cruise has already promised 'kicks ass,' sees de Armas step into the lead of the John Wick universe in a new chapter for the Oscar nominee. 'It feels like it's a big responsibility, or at least it feels that way to me,' the 37-year-old says, over avocado toast on a recent morning in New York. The actress, dressed in a white knit Louis Vuitton dress, has been up since pre-dawn hours to tape 'Good Morning America,' but you'd never know it from her enthusiasm for talking about her new movie. 'You also feel the love. And I think people are really excited for this movie, and I think we're going to give them what they expect,' she says. De Armas was approached by the filmmakers when the script was still in process, but she saw the potential 'right away' on the pages. 'I loved what Chad [Stahelski] and Keanu [Reeves] have done with these movies and how the fans loved these movies and how many people these movies bring into the theaters. So it was a big deal,' she says. 'Ballerina' is set between the Chapter 3 and 4 John Wick films, released in 2019 and 2023, respectively. It follows Eve Macarro, an orphaned ballerina assassin who sets out to avenge her father's death. Eve is introduced in other John Wick films but 'Ballerina' is her origin story, and the character depth appealed to de Armas in equal measure to the full-on action. 'As much action as there was on the page, I could see the heart too,' she says of reading that initial script. 'The character has such a beautiful journey. The emotionality of the character is so important in the film, I was just like, 'oh, I have to do this.'' 'Ballerina' is a reunion for de Armas and Reeves, who first worked together in the 2015 movie 'Knock Knock,' which was the actress' first fully English-language film. 'The first day I met Keanu, he had just finished the first 'John Wick,' and he was telling us about it at lunch,' she recalls. 'It's crazy because I grew up watching his movies, 'Speed' and 'The Matrix' and this and that, and back then I couldn't believe I was working with him. But even now, that I'm a part of something that means so much to him and that he's put so much work into…by joining me in the movie, it was kind of like his blessing or passing the torch to me,' she continues. 'Every day on set with him, rehearsals and then on set, I just learned so much from him just by watching him. He's just nonstop. He's like me: we are perfectionists. We want to do it again and again and again, and it's never enough. So it is tough to say 'cut' when we're filming.' De Armas was in Budapest shooting 'Ballerina' in early 2023 when she found out she was nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal of Marilyn Monroe in the movie 'Blonde.' The filming schedule meant she missed much of the lead up to the Oscars, including events and opportunities to get to know her fellow nominees, but in hindsight working was a fitting way to mark her nomination. 'I love those kinds of moments, good news days or my birthday or things like that, when I'm filming. Because it's an amazing reminder that I am actually doing what I love to do,' she says. Getting a nomination for a serious dramatic role while at work on a blockbuster action film was especially sweet for de Armas. 'It was a reminder of 'look at the career I'm having, look at all the things I can do. This is exactly what I wanted.' It's usually that you are either only an action star and you can only do that, or you are doing indie low-budget films that not many people get to see because they're barely publicized,' de Armas says. 'So to be able to manage both sides of it and have it all in my own way, it's amazing.' It's especially remarkable considering the actress only moved to the U.S. 10 years ago, and didn't speak much English at the time. In fact, when she first met Reeves, for 'Knock Knock,' they weren't able to have a full conversation. 'Moving to L.A. was never part of the plan,' de Armas says. 'I never thought I was going to move to the U.S. in general, even less to Hollywood or anything like that. It just kind of came my way and it happened. And I did see the opportunity and I took it, because that's what I do. But it was challenging. It made me feel very vulnerable.' While working in Spain after immigrating from Cuba, de Armas spent all her paychecks on English and accent classes. 'I didn't have money for rent — my team, my agents, my manager, my lawyer, everyone had to loan me money to pay my rent and food. But I knew that that was a priority for me,' she says of learning English. 'I wanted to do it. I started doing auditions before I could even speak English, I would just learn this script.' Several of her initial English-language projects, such as her 2016 films 'Hands of Stone' with Robert De Niro and 'War Dogs' with Jonah Hill and Miles Teller, were done in this way, where she would memorize the lines without understanding what they meant. 'Acting in a different language is very tricky. But to perform is not about saying the lines — the lines mean nothing. You need to understand what you are saying and how you can change the meaning of that line if you hit different words and the humor and the culture of what you're playing. And the moments where directors would change the line on the spot, as happens all the time, or an actor would improvise, and I would die. I would literally walk to a corner and cry,' de Armas says. 'I remember telling ['War Dogs' director] Todd Phillips, 'Please don't change the line. I can't say that.' And it made me feel less, less of who you know can be, like you're not complete.' The same struggle prevented her from getting to connect with those costars in the way she dreamed of. 'I remember my first movie, 'Hands of Stone,' when I met De Niro, I was dying of frustration because I couldn't just stick to him and ask him a million questions. And the same with Keanu and the same later with Todd Phillips and everybody I worked with. But it only got better,' she says. 'And I still managed to somehow communicate with Keanu and bond with him and show him who I am to him and the kind of artist that I am. And that's how we created that friendship and how all the other jobs came after.' Several of her next moves are still under wraps. She's completed work on the David O. Russell series 'Bananas' with Oscar Isaac, and is currently in London for a couple projects that, given her costar, have been tabloid fodder for months. 'Obviously, everyone knows I'm working with Tom Cruise. We're working on something with Doug Liman and Christopher Mcquarrie, and those guys are unbelievable at everything they do. And they're so lovely and a great team, and the process we're having is amazing,' she says. 'And of course I'm doing crazy training, as you do when you're working with Tom. It's another level that just keeps setting the bar higher and higher. But it's so much fun. And we're not only working on that thing that we're training for, but also a couple other things too,' she adds. 'We just got excited.' Following her Oscar nomination and the completion of 'Ballerina,' after five years of back to back movies, de Armas decided to take a several month break, despite the urge to use the momentum to book the next thing. 'It was a weird time. I wanted to find what was next for me. I really wanted to see what I wanted to do and what I wanted to get involved in and who I wanted to work with. So I just took my time,' she says. 'Yes, I did have meetings and I did get some scripts, but sometimes that's also kind of hard. You make it harder on yourself because somehow you make up your mind and you have certain expectations about something that should be arriving, but it's not. Or maybe it is, but you're so fixed on something that you might be missing out on whatever you have in front of you.' She took some time to regroup at home in Vermont, where she's lived for the past few years, answered Ron Howard's call to take part in his film 'Eden' and now is back at work with renewed focus. 'I was just still finding my thing. And I think I'm in a good place now,' she says. 'I think I know what I want to do, and I also want to be surprised. I want things to come my way. And sometimes you get in that dynamic of project after project after project, and you are doing a project while you're reading the next thing. It works better for me if I just take my time and just see what I really want to do.' View Gallery Launch Gallery: Ana de Armas, Fashion Moments for WWD Weekend Best of WWD Celebrating Lenny Kravitz, Rock Icon, Actor, Author, Designer and Style Star: Photos Cannes Film Festival 1970s: Flashbacks, Celebrities and Fashion Highlights from WWD's 'Eye' Pages [PHOTOS] A Look Back at Cannes Film Festival's Best Dressed Red Carpet Stars: Blake Lively, Angelina Jolie, Princess Diana and More Photos
CBS News
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBS News
Book excerpt: "Great Black Hope" by Rob Franklin
Simon & Schuster We may receive an affiliate commission from anything you buy from this article. In his debut novel, "Great Black Hope" (to be published June 10 by Simon & Schuster), author Rob Franklin follows a young African American man whose family launched him for success – but after an arrest for drug possession and the death of a close friend, his once-bright future feels anything but guaranteed. Read an excerpt below. "Great Black Hope" by Rob Franklin Prefer to listen? Audible has a 30-day free trial available right now. Prologue In the grand scheme of history, it was nothing. A blip, a breath. The time it took Smith to pocket what might have looked like a matchbook or stick of gum to an unwitting child but was, in fact, 0.7 grams of powdered Colombian cocaine — flown in from Medellín, cut with amphetamine in Miami, and offered to him in Southampton by a boy he knew from nights out in the city. 0.7 grams heavier, he loped back through the crush of rhythmless elbows and cloying perfume, which wafted up and dissolved in the damp and sultry night — the very last of summer. Looking around, it was really just a restaurant. By the front door, at least fifty people huddled, breathing down each other's necks as they shouted the names they hoped would capture the doorman's attention, while in the backyard, hundreds congregated. Dozens of tables now shook with the weight of dancing, bodies alit with the particular mania reserved for the end of East Coast summers, when one becomes aware of the changing season, the coming cold. But for now, it was silk and linen, the expensive musk of strangers. Every face appeared familiar — some because he actually knew them while others only bore a sun-tanned resemblance, the pleasing symmetry of the rich. These were the faces which seemed to populate the whole of his young life: colleagues and one-night stands from the clubs called cool downtown. These faces had appeared at bars, brunches, birthdays, holiday soirees where black tie was optional — and, before New York, in freshman seminars and frat parties and before that, on teen tours or tennis camps with their original forms intact, acne-spotted. And here they'd all come, every one of them, to escape the inhospitable heat of Manhattan and enjoy a seaside breeze. Picture him, stumbling. 6 feet and 3 inches, he towered like a tree, bark-brown and quietly handsome. Picture him crouched in a corner as he snorts from a key, the metallic taste of his tongue. The night gleamed back into clarity as he steadied himself to return — when out of the crowd, two men emerged, stern eyed and square jawed, barking orders he could barely discern. Calmly, he followed — he didn't wish to make a scene — out through a side exit and onto the street, silent but for the bass of a bop that had reigned the charts all summer. Here is where the night splits open along its tight-stitched seam. The realization, arriving at a tan vehicle marked Southampton Police, that these men, though not in uniform, were not the club security he'd assumed at first they were. The night bent surreally. Smith watched himself be searched as if from a perch above, watched his limbs grow limp and pliant as they bent behind his back. The rotated view of girls in wedges: their clothes wrong, the stars wrong. Yes, the greater sense was not of shock, but unreality. All of this was staged. A prank, a punk – the actors in the front seat, too handsome to be cops. The men were swift and practiced as they'd bundled him into the back of the car. After he'd handed over five-hundred dollars cash from an ATM upstairs at the station, they took him down to be printed, ID'd, and photographed. They were done in twenty minutes, after which he was handed a slip and his things in a plastic bag, then sent back out into the wounded night. He called an Uber. On the curb, Smith watched phosphenes blinker in the darkness, a chorus of cameras flashing. He'd worn, in his mugshot, a vintage Marni gingham shirt, loose-fit linen trousers, and a gently startled expression. From "Great Black Hope" by Rob Franklin. Copyright © 2025 by Rob Franklin. Excerpted with permission by Simon & Schuster, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Get the book here: "Great Black Hope" by Rob Franklin Buy locally from For more info:
