Variety 11/16/2022

Almost six years ago, Timothée Chalamet talked to Variety as he was about to board an airplane for the Sundance premiere of “Call Me by Your Name.” The actor, then 21 and best known for a recurring role on “Homeland,” claimed that he hadn’t seen the indie movie that would change his life. “I’m trying to hold out,” he explained. “I want to see it in the theater, too, for the first time.” When we talked to Chalamet again 10 months later, he was in the bubble between when a movie premieres at a film festival and when it gets released to the public, a pocket of time where he could retain his anonymity. He still rode the subway in New York. Did his fellow commuters recognize him? “Not at…

International correspondent Nick Vivarelli went to London to talk with Timothée Chalamet, Taylor Russell and Luca Guadagnino about first love between two American cannibals for our “Bones and All” cover story. That evening he had a veggie pizza. Reporter Selome Hailu traveled to the Catskills to interview Steve Burns, the original host of “Blue’s Clues,” one of her favorite shows growing up. On her drive to the town where he lives, right in front of her car, a chicken crossed the road. TV features editor Emily Longeretta laughed, cried and laughed again while speaking to “Dead to Me” stars Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini and creator Liz Feldman for the trio’s only interview together ahead of the show’s final season. British photographer Jason Hetherington snapped our “Bones and All” cover…

For the Grammy Awards, a nomination field lacking in big surprises is a good thing. The goal, as with most awards shows, is “first, do no harm” — and the Recording Academy did memorable harm to itself two years ago when leading candidate the Weeknd received zero noms. Particularly in the absence of any snafu like that, this year’s Grammy field looked especially strong when revealed Nov. 15, with top-shelf returnees Beyoncé, Adele, Kendrick Lamar and Brandi Carlile leading the pack, as predicted. The biggest relief for the Academy may have been the presence of Bad Bunny amid the list of 10 nominees for album of the year. It’s never a bad thing for the Grammys when the runaway blockbuster release of any given year gets a nod; it would…

Five years after allegations surfaced against Harvey Weinstein, the bombshell investigation that exposed the movie titan to be a serial sexual abuser is getting the Hollywood treatment — and his victims are helping filmmakers tell the story. “She Said,” based on the book by New York Times investigative journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, who first reported on Weinstein’s history of sexual harassment and assault in depth, hits theaters this weekend. The film doesn’t just center on the two reporters. It’s also about the women who came forward to expose Weinstein’s abuse across decades, igniting the hashtag #MeToo, blazing a cultural and societal fire of truth-telling and knocking down systemic abuses of power in the workplace. The Universal-distributed movie includes an unprecedented level of participation from these same women, many…

Given Hollywood’s obsession with tales of great financial ruin — and the trophies many actors have collected for playing the figures behind them — we say confidently that it is only a matter of time before we get a scripted account of the still-unfolding Sam Bankman-Fried disaster. Bankman-Fried is the wildhaired 30-year-old Silicon Valley whiz kid seen as a savior by the financial news establishment, a generous bundler for the Democrats and a deep-pocketed partner to celebrities like Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen. Most interesting? He no longer has a job. The entrepreneur (known mostly by his initials, SBF) has in the past week seen a stunning collapse of his cryptocurrency platform FTX, which at one time held a reported $50 billion in assets. Upwards of $2 billion in customer…

With nine shows, Taylor Sheridan can’t be as hands-on as he once was. So, after writing the “Tulsa King” pilot in three days, and getting Sylvester Stallone to quickly sign on to the project, Sheridan handed over the reins to “Boardwalk Empire” and “Sopranos” vet, Terence Winter. Now it’s Winter’s show. After reading the “brilliant” first script, he called Sheridan to talk over some changes — moving the premise from Kansas City to Tulsa, for starters — and went from there. “Taylor was like, ‘This is your baby. I have visitation rights.’ He stayed true to his word,” Winter says. “I went off to the show and I met him one time after that, in person right before we started shooting.” On paper, the Paramount+ show is about former Mafia…