Latest news with #Oedipal
Forbes
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Katie Lowes Talks About The Once-In-A-Career Role In ‘The Hunting Wives'
Katie Lowes talks about the incredible experience she had starring in 'The Hunting Wives.' Viewers cannot stop talking about The Hunting Wives. Love it, or not, it's a twisted thriller with a lot of steamy sex scenes and a fun binge-watch. But it's not just the sheer amount of nudity that has gotten viewers hot and bothered; as high ratings for this show and a slew of like-minded reality series prove, watching beautiful, wealthy people misbehaving makes for good TV. Perhaps, it's voyeurism intertwined with a dose of Schadenfreude when karma comes knocking, that serves as a sort of justice. Katie Lowes, well known for her roles in soapy dramas, said she's never experienced anything quite like her character Jill, a preacher's wife and obsessively doting mother with a dark side that's hidden beneath meticulously coiffed hair and a plastered-on smile. 'Jill is the type of juicy character that every actor dreams of playing. This was a once-in-a-career opportunity. ' The sex-driven drama, originally set to premiere on Starz, is now streaming its first season exclusively on Netflix in the U.S. for one year. Fans are hopefully optimistic that there will be a second season, but there has been no official word yet. However, the show reached No. 3 on Netflix's global English TV Top 10 list with 5.2 million views and No. 3 on the U.S. only English TV Top 10 list. Making the cut suggests that we might hear good news soon. Despite Jill's obvious issues, Lowes defends her character, who, like many in the show, faces an unfortunate demise. When asked if Jill got what she deserved, Lowes immediately replied with, 'Absolutely not! She did nothing wrong!' Well, as fans of the show know all too well, none of these characters are exactly innocent, but as Lowes points out, Jill killing Chrissy Metz's Starr was self-defense and justified. 'I stand by my character.' Though the viewer does see Starr approach Jill's house, shotgun in hand and ready to rumble, we do not see exactly what happened when Jill opened the door. We just know it wasn't good. The viewer, like Malin Akerman's Margo and Jaime Ray Newman's Callie, see the result of whatever that exchange was, which was Starr's bloody corpse splayed out on Jill's pristine kitchen floor. This fan is hoping Lowes and Metz can return in flashbacks in a second season to fill in the blanks on this. Of course, we also need to know what happens between Margo and Brittany Snow's character, Sophie. Lowes acknowledges her character's imperfections and has empathy for her lonely existence. 'She has a weird Oedipal obsession with her son. She's a helicopter parent, but this is a heightened version of that. She needs a lot of therapy. And her marriage is horrible; I think she's had sex with her husband a handful of times, if that. She has nothing other than her son and the church, but he comes first. I don't think she's been loved by anyone or anything in her life. She got married very young and had a baby, and didn't have many intimate experiences in her life. And so I think a lot of her wiring has gotten crossed.' As for her character's dramatic death at the end of what could be a first season, Lowes knew this was the deal when she first signed on to the Rebecca Cutter-helmed drama. Cutter, who served as showrunner, writer, and executive producer, adapted May Cobb's bestselling novel of the same name for television, and if you're a fan of The Hunting Wives, her drama Hightown is also streaming on Netflix. 'To say, 'You c**ts' and then die is something that will only happen once in my career, and I'm so grateful to Rebecca. Jill deserved the best death scene because I had the best time portraying her. I've never received this many texts and calls about a show! I'm just gobsmacked,' she exclaimed, referencing the number of messages she's received about the numerous steamy sex scenes and frontal nudity woven throughout the eight episodes. 'I'm getting texts from people of all ages, but there's a difference in what they're saying. My older friends are commenting on the amount of nudity, including full frontal, and the numerous sex scenes. Younger friends are obsessed with the show's twists and turns and the plotlines, and they're not even mentioning the sex at all.' Currently, Lowes can be seen in three series on Netflix: Shonda Rhimes' Scandal and Inventing Anna, and now The Hunting Wives. Though she's well known for sudsy dramas, Lowes is also fantastic in lighter fare, including the adorably charming Merry Kiss Cam, directed by Lisa France. The rom-com, currently streaming on Hulu, has had a surge in viewing following the Coldplay incident. Katie Lowes in 'The Hunting Wives' on Netflix. As Jill, who might just be the only person in the East Texas town of Maple Brook who isn't fornicating with friends and neighbors behind her husband's back, Lowes missed out on the steamy sex scenes. 'My clothes stayed on,' she laughed, somewhat relieved about one thing. 'I have yet to make that phone call to my dad to prepare him.' As for whether she'd be open to filming sex scenes like several of her co-stars, Lowes replied, 'I'm totally game if the storyline calls for it.' She also explained that she feels differently now about these types of scenes than she did when she was a younger actress, and she praised the show for its brave take on female empowerment around sexuality, admitting it's had her thinking. 'Once I turned 40, I had this new feeling about sex scenes. I'm just sort of like, 'F**k it.' I used to be really careful about things like that. I used to be conscious about being naked. I've been naked on stage before, but that was before the invention of the iPhone,' she said, referring to her time at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, where such on-stage nudity was considered artsy. 'Nudity was part of a lot of the plays I did, but I haven't done anything like that since. I've always been conscientious, and I don't know, I've sort of been like, 'Oh, my gosh, I had two kids. I'm in my mid-40s. I'm coming up on menopause.' I don't know what that would be like now, but I feel like I could stand to spice it up a little bit.' She reflected on the behind-the-scenes fun the cast and crew had during the five months of filming in Charlotte, North Carolina. 'This was the first time many of us had ever left our children for a job,' adding that they each traveled back and forth, and their families also came to visit. 'I had always taken my kids on every job. And now we're at that crossroads where they're in school, and I couldn't pull them out. I had a lot of anxiety about leaving them.' Katie Lowes and Jaime Ray Newman in 'The Hunting Wives' on Netflix. The experience wasn't short on fun, she added, saying they had almost as much fun as their respective characters. 'We all lived in the same apartment building, like Melrose Place with a pool in the middle. After filming, we'd go honky-tonkin' at Coyote Joe's.' Lowes is filled with gratitude for the entire experience. 'I'm a New Yorker, a Long Island girl. What a dream to play a Southern belle…a clutch-your-pearls, the higher-the-hair, closer-to-God, larger-than-life woman. I had so much fun and am so grateful to Rebecca for trusting me with her.' She hypothesized about a few additional questions, including whether she believes that Jill knew that Margo and Brad were having an affair, and that Margo got pregnant and had an abortion. 'I don't think so because she might have killed her at that point!' Back to the question about Jill's death with the possibility of a season two hanging in the air, Lowes said, 'I'd follow Rebecca to the ends of the earth and do whatever she wanted. Hopefully, Jill's ghost will get some revenge.'
The Independent
14-07-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
In a deeply weird NATO presser, ‘Daddy' Trump made one announcement — and then another, and then another
In June, during a NATO summit in The Hague, things took a turn for the Oedipal when Dutch prime minister-turned-NATO chief Mark Rutte referred to Donald Trump as "Daddy". The remark came after Trump compared Iran and Israel to unruly children in a schoolyard fight, prompting Rutte to quip, 'Daddy has to sometimes use strong language to get them to stop.' Trump, naturally, ran with it, telling reporters, 'He did it very affectionately: 'Daddy, you're my daddy.'' Rutte tried to clarify later that he wasn't actually calling Trump his daddy, but merely making a metaphor about American leadership. The White House ignored the nuance entirely and leaned in, hard, by posting a video montage of Trump's NATO visit set to Usher's 'Hey Daddy (Daddy's Home)' with the caption: 'Daddy's home… Hey, hey, hey, Daddy.' Because we killed Harambe, this is the reality we live in July 2025. And today, Rutte and Trump met at 'Daddy's' White House to discuss the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. Rumors proliferated before the two men appeared in public. It was said that the president's patience had worn thin with Vladimir Putin (the Russian premier 'talks nice and then bombs everybody in the evening,' Trump said at an earlier press conference in the Rose Garden, adding: 'There's a little bit of a problem there, and I don't like it.') The Russian strongman, known for jailing political activists and outlawing protest, had apparently 'surprised everyone' by turning out to not be a very nice guy after all. Trump is 'really pissed' about that, according to Senate mean girl Lindsey Graham. And then, at 11 a.m., a press conference began that featured all the Trumpian greatest hits: weird flattery, bombastic nationalism, random asides about Gazan real estate, quasi-romantic compliments about other world leaders, accusations of election-stealing from the Democrats, along with obsessive and repetitive insults aimed at Joe Biden. The gist: As expected, U.S. weapons will be deployed to Ukraine through a slightly convoluted method, and Europe will foot the bill. And large secondary sanctions on countries buying Russian goods and oil will come into effect in 50 days, in the hope of forcing Putin back to the negotiating table. 'We are very unhappy — well, I am — with Russia,' Trump said, before adding that Ukraine is 'not my war, it's Biden's war.' A few minutes later, turning to Rutte, he said, apropos nothing, that 'Mark' was 'just a highly respected, pretty young guy' who has had an 'amazing career.' As the highly respected, pretty young guy — who is 58 years old — nodded along with the U.S. president's increasingly coherent speech, Trump then cycled through claims that he had personally stopped a nuclear war between India and Pakistan, that his diplomacy with Rwanda had changed Africa, that the Gaza Strip was 'the worst real estate deal ever made' because 'they [presumably Israel] gave up the oceanfront property,' that he's beginning construction on the so-called Golden Dome, and that, when it came to Putin, 'I was the apple of his eye.' 'It's nice when the Nile River has water,' he said at one point, as Rutte continued to nod sagely. We have now seen a number of White House press conferences between Trump and world leaders attempting to remain cordial with him. I say press conferences, but really it's just a succession of people finding out that if you sit beside Trump and smile for long enough without contradicting him, he will keep pushing into freewheeling absurdity, and you will inevitably get hit with some of the splatter. So it was as Trump opened for questions at the end of his presser with Rutte and eventually devolved into a long monologue about Biden's use of an autopen. 'I hope you'll back me up in this,' he said to Rutte at one point, while claiming that America was 'dead' a year ago because of Biden and now we 'have the hottest country anywhere in the world.' Again, Rutte nodded. Wrapping up, Daddy rewarded Rutte by calling him a 'star'. If you think this is a deeply unserious way in which to approach a new weapons deal with Ukraine, a succession of global tariffs and a continuing conflict in which thousands of innocents have been killed, you're absolutely correct — and you're absolutely out-of-touch. Because this is modern-day diplomacy, baby. Putin's out; NATO's in, and Donald has a new apple of his eye. If Vlad wants to get back in the good books, he'll have to high-tail it back to Istanbul and promise he won't do a colonial invasion again.
LeMonde
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- LeMonde
2025 Cannes Film Festival: 'The Phoenician Scheme,' Wes Anderson's intricate film full of humanity
For approximately 30 years, we have been receiving, in the form of eccentric messages tinged with distress, the works of Wes Anderson, who turned 56 on May 1. An American dandy long-settled in France and England, this master of whimsical adventure and vintage design has something about him that suggests he narrowly escaped some ineffable family saga. Family, indeed, whether natural or blended, biological or friend based, is Anderson's preferred subject. Dysfunctional by nature, often in Oedipal triangulation, quirky in its developments, ultimately supremely endearing. The mental chaos and absurdity of the resulting situations are contained by a rigorous ordering of the form that encompasses them. This leads to the theory that Anderson became a filmmaker precisely to frame the secret madness that haunts him – a basic Freudian hypothesis that no one is obliged to bet a penny on. In any case, Anderson frames, organizes, categorizes, symmetrizes, models, automates, enumerates, colors, aligns and squares off a world that wobbles a bit too much for his liking. Frames, boxes, maps, lists, compasses, manuals, signs, diagrams, instructions, old typography, sets and chapter divisions all contribute to the rigorous ordering of things. All that remains is to name them, and Anderson is a genius at this: The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), The Darjeeling Limited (2007), Moonrise Kingdom (2012), The French Dispatch (2021). Who wouldn't want to take a closer look?
The Guardian
17-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Julie Christie at 85: her 20 best films – ranked!
There are many things wrong with Kenneth Branagh's galumphing slab of actor-manager Shakespeare, but Christie as Gertrude is not one of them. Her casting might have been conducive to the Oedipal side of the Danish prince's feelings towards his mother – if only the director's bombastic performance had allowed room for it. A mostly non-Irish cast goes full begorra in this Sean O'Casey biopic, with Christie in a brief but eye-catching turn as a sex worker called Daisy Battles. Jack Cardiff took over directing duties when John Ford fell ill; the results are rambling, but the anti-British riot scenes are ace. Irish accents again, as Christie reunites with her Don't Look Now co-star Donald Sutherland in 1980s Donegal, playing the widow Helen Cuffe, whose husband was accidentally murdered by the IRA. The pair's old chemistry is still there, and the landscape is splendid. But, alas, when it comes to the men in her life, this unfortunate woman has the worst luck ever. Three nicely calibrated female performances keep this tasteful adaptation of Rebecca West's 1918 novel afloat. Christie plays a narrow-minded snob who is outraged when her husband (Alan Bates) returns traumatised from the first world war and fails to recognise her, but reconnects instead with a working-class sweetheart (Glenda Jackson) from his youth; Ann-Margret is wonderful as a compassionate cousin. This is must for anyone studying English literature, though Christie's wilful heroine, all fringe and mascara, smacks more of swinging 60s London than of Thomas Hardy's Wessex; Terence Stamp, Christie's former off-screen boyfriend, sports a Sgt Pepper moustache as Sgt Troy. The best bit is when Alan Bates's sheep fall off a cliff. John Schlesinger's film about the rise of a good-looking but shallow playgirl epitomises all that was good-looking but shallow about the British new wave. Christie won an Oscar for looking fabulous; Frederic Raphael's misogynistic screenplay also won an Oscar, but now feels suspiciously like a petty act of revenge on some unknown woman who was once mean to him. The romance between Omar Sharif as Zhivago and Christie as Lara is the least convincing thing about David Lean's spectacular epic, set against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution, but shot in sunny Spain. Once again, anachronistic hair and makeup make Christie look more like a Chelsea socialite than a Slavic muse, but it was the box office double whammy of this and Darling, in the same year, that cemented her status as an international star. The third of Christie's collaborations with Warren Beatty is a breezy remake of Here Comes Mr Jordan (1941), with Beatty co-directing himself as a Los Angeles quarterback temporarily returned to Earth in the body of a murdered industrialist. Christie plays the earnest eco-activist who wins his heart. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala adapted her own Booker-winning novel for the Merchant Ivory team's first big success, part of a 1980s British fad for all things Raj. Christie (born in Assam, north-eastern India) plays an English woman visiting India, but her exploits in the present day are less compelling than the flashbacks to her great-aunt (Greta Scacchi) in the 1920s. Critics were aghast at the idea of an A-list actor playing a woman forcibly impregnated by a computer in a genre film they considered 'silly'. But Donald Cammell's sci-fi thriller couldn't be more pertinent to 2025, with its themes of domestic abuse and overreaching AI. Christie – rightly – gives it her all. Christie plays the disapproving mother of widowed Kate Winslet, whose sons inspire JM Barrie (Johnny Depp) to write Peter Pan in this weepie biopic. It's not mentioned here, of course, but Christie's character, who mellows as the film goes on, will soon be grandmother to Daphne du Maurier, who wrote Don't Look Now. Two couples in Montreal swap partners in Alan Rudolph's stilted sex comedy. Whenever Christie is working her magic on screen as the unhappy wife of handyman Nick Nolte, she makes you forget the contrived situations and clunky dialogue, and sweeps you up into a sublime, deservedly Oscar-nominated performance. A 12-year-old boy, spending the summer at a school friend's country house, is cajoled into carrying secret messages between his chum's older sister (Christie) and a tenant farmer (Alan Bates). After looking distractingly modern in other lit-flicks such as Doctor Zhivago, Christie is perfectly credible as an Edwardian aristocrat in Joseph Losey's quietly devastating film adaptation of LP Hartley's novel, scripted by Harold Pinter. Sarah Polley's directing debut, adapted from a story by Alice Munro, gives Christie the best late role of her career, as a married woman showing symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. She checks into a nursing home, but her husband wonders if she's exaggerating her memory loss as revenge for his past infidelities. Ambiguous to the end, Christie makes it about more than just dementia, and earned a fourth Oscar nomination. In the real-life ex-couple's second film together, Beatty plays a philandering Beverly Hills hairdresser who still carries a torch for his former girlfriend. Hal Ashby's satire, set on the eve of Nixon's 1968 election victory, now seems more sad than funny, but Christie, rocking a backless black sequined Jean Varon gown, is a hoot as she drunkenly tries to fellate her ex at a posh dinner party. The current American trend of banning books makes François Truffaut's charmingly retro-futurist film of Ray Bradbury's novel feel like a wake-up call. Oskar Werner is a colourless leading man, but Christie makes up for it in her dual roles as his hilariously conformist wife and a rebellious neighbour who asks: 'Do you ever read the books you burn?' John Schlesinger's film of Keith Waterhouse's novel leavens its social realism (shot on the streets of Bradford!) with the fantasies of Billy (Tom Courtenay). In her breakthrough performance, Christie radiates liberation and natural glamour, but miraculously makes Liz not just a dream girl but a fully realised character. She's the girl next door – if the girl next door were a stunner. Christie dials up the kooky as an unhappily married woman who attaches herself to a San Francisco surgeon played by George C Scott. The drama starts off frothy but becomes progressively downbeat, until you belatedly realise you're watching a tragedy, nudged along by nonlinear inserts now considered more typical of the film's cinematographer, Nicolas Roeg (and editor Antony Gibbs), than its director, Richard Lester. Nonlinear inserts abound in Roeg's haunting kaleidoscope of a chiller that is also a heartbreaking portrait of a marriage under stress. Christie and Sutherland play bereaved parents who relocate to Venice, where a blind clairvoyant claims to be in contact with their dead daughter. The wife accepts what she can't see, while the husband's scepticism blinds him to the truth until it's too late. Christie came up with most of her own dialogue as the cockney brothel-keeper in Robert Altman's melancholy revisionist western, set in a muddy mining town. Whether she's tucking into fried eggs, striving to keep her relationship with McCabe (Beatty) on a business footing, or drifting away in an opium daze, this is peak Christie, and one of the funniest, saddest love stories ever filmed.
South China Morning Post
30-03-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Meet Nicholas Duvernay, the New York actor who plays Zion in The White Lotus: from Hollywood dreams to a Banana Republic fashion campaign … and starring with Blackpink's Lisa in his breakout role
Fans were first offered a glimpse of The White Lotus spa manager Belinda's son, Zion Lindsey, in the third instalment's cold opening. Played by actor Nicholas Duvernay, Zion was formally introduced in the season's sixth episode as a graduate student flying to Thailand for some quality time with his mother. In the show, it's clear that Zion and his mother have a close relationship, while actress Natasha Rothwell, who plays Belinda, has nothing but praise for the 25-year-old. Nicholas Duvernay plays Zion in The White Lotus. Photo: @nicholasduvernay/Instagram Advertisement 'Yeah. I mean, Nicholas Duvernay, he is that. He's a walking heart,' Rothwell said in an interview with Decider. 'He's very symmetrical, so it got a little Oedipal at times because I was just like, 'I cannot be attracted to my son!'' Rothwell admitted before adding, 'But no, seriously, he is so giving, so talented.' Here's everything to know about The White Lotus' handsome newcomer, Nicholas Duvernay. He's from New York Nicholas Duvernay was bitten by the acting bug when he was a teenager. Photo: @nicholasduvernay/Instagram Duvernay was born in June 1999. The actor hails from Long Island, New York and was interested in pursuing acting from a young age, reports Esquire. He made his debut with a minor part in 2016 movie Bad Girl. His first notable role was as Dante Reid in the 2017 TV series Gritz. Since taking minor roles in TV shows such as Magnum P.I., Duvernay's most notable projects have been Peacock's Bel-Air, Tyler Perry 's Assisted Living and the 2022 romantic-drama movie Purple Hearts, starring Nicholas Galitzine and Sofia Carson. He was confident he'd bag the role of Zion
