Category: Acting

Categories
Acting Amanda Seyfried botox Movies

Amanda Seyfried gave up Botox for a year for her historical film

amanda-seyfried-gave-up-botox-for-a-year-for-her-historical-film




Amanda Seyfried’s new movie The Testament of Ann Lee came out of the Venice Film Festival with a lot of momentum, for both the film itself and Amanda’s performance. Mona Fastvold directed the film from a script she co-wrote with her real life partner Brady Corbet, making this movie complementary to last year’s The Brutalist which they also co-wrote, and Corbet directed. Ann Lee follows the titular character, a real woman from the 1700s who founded the Shaker religious sect in America. Fastvold makes a point, though, of saying that the movie is “inspired by” the real Ann’s life, as opposed to a straight up biopic. The film includes a lot of the Shaker’s signature singing and dancing, often described as “ecstatic,” making the project an excellent showcase for Amanda. Not to get all Marlon Brando about it, but she could be a real contender during awards season. And while many actors in her heels have trotted out the campaign talking point of the physical transformation/sacrifice of a role, Amanda has been citing one very 21st century luxury she had to do without: Botox.

At the Toronto International Film Festival premiere of her film The Testament of Ann Lee on Tuesday, Sept. 9, the actress, 39, opened up about giving up Botox and makeup for her role as Ann Lee, the founder of the Shakers.

In speaking with Etalk on the red carpet, Seyfried said that the “sacrifice” was well worth it.

“I’m an actor and that’s my job and that’s what I love to do,” she told the outlet. “I don’t necessarily need all that in my life. I just like it. The things that I like, I can sacrifice a little. Of course I can.”

She added, “We did make sacrifices, and it was worth it. Every day was fun. We didn’t just survive, we thrived.”

The actress previously spoke about forgoing Botox as part of director Mona Fastvold’s no-makeup rule for The Testament of Ann Lee in an interview with Vanity Fair published on Aug. 26.

“I couldn’t get Botox for a year,” she told the magazine. “That was a big assignment… When I first got [Botox], I was, like, ‘This is amazing,’ because I frown a lot. But then it all came back in a way that was absolutely necessary for all the work I was doing.”

The Testament of Ann Lee had its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival on Monday, Sept. 1. The historical musical drama earned a 15-minute standing ovation after the screening — the longest of any film at this year’s event, surpassing the 13 minutes of applause given to Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein.

In video footage shared by Variety, Seyfried was captured getting emotional at the ovation as she gazed around in awe at her colleagues, including director/co-writer Fastvold.

Per a synopsis from the festival, The Testament of Ann Lee is “an epic fable inspired by the life of Ann Lee, the founder of the Shakers, a radical religious movement that began in the late 1700s.”

[From People]

Take a quick trip with me, reader, if you will. Think of Austin Butler, years after filming Elvis and he was still all “I just can’t shake the accent!” And then, by contrast, we have Amanda Seyfried, proudly stepping up to the mic and declaring, “I gave up Botox, you guys!” I love her for this! Genuinely, I’m not being sarcastic or facetious at all! (I know sometimes it can be hard to tell…) This is what I’ve always enjoyed about Amanda: she is never too cool for school. She’s full unapologetic theater kid energy, yet without veering into Rachel Berry obnoxiousness. I’m thinking especially of how candid she’s been about how hard she worked for her six Wicked auditions to play Glinda. She wanted it bad! And then didn’t hide or deny it publicly, even though it didn’t go her way. But it sure sounds like playing Ann Lee is going her way in a very big way. And in Testament she still gets to show off her singing and dancing chops, only she’s traded flying monkeys for, according to Fastvold, “the best prosthetics we could possibly get for birthing vaginas.” Well, that’s me sold.

Photos credit: IPA/INSTARimages, IMAGO/Anna Maria Tinghino/Avalon, Cover Images, Stefano Costantino TTL/Avalon, Cobra Team/Backgrid

Categories
Acting Careers Emmys Kathy Bates

Kathy Bates on possibly retiring: ‘I would miss being the center of attention’

kathy-bates-on-possibly-retiring:-‘i-would-miss-being-the-center-of-attention’




I’ve been saying (over and over and over again) how I think at this year’s Emmys, the Best Actress in a Limited Series category is a race between Michelle Williams in Dying for Sex and Cristin Milioti in The Penguin. A nail-biting toss up between two exceptional performances that really can’t be compared. However, when it comes to Best Actress in a Drama, I’m ready to make a bold prediction: Kathy Bates for Matlock, baby! It goes without saying that Kathy’s work is brilliant, and this year I think she also has a huge swell of public favor that will carry her to a win. Kathy is having so much fun with the role of Matty, that it makes it a joy for us to watch. It’s easy to support/vote for an actor having the time of their life like that. Kathy has been candid about how much this show rekindled her fire for the craft of acting, and dug into the subject recently on the LA Times The Envelope podcast. So she’s definitely campaigning, yet also chock full of wisdom. A few highlights:

Listen to this pro’s scene prep: I study a lot. I use an app called Scriptation, which is really helpful. I’m kind of anal about how I choose the colors and how I highlight everything. And then Erica [LeBlanc, her assistant] and I share them. And Jennie [Snyder Urman, “Matlock” reboot creator] gives us tone meetings. … But we have the tone notes that I have specifically for each scene where Matty is in her arc, so we print those up and we put them in my script, or I print up other things like photographs that I’m inspired by.

Still striving to ‘hit it’: I had moments last season — there were very few — but that I felt in tears at times that I wasn’t able to do the scene. There were days when I was just — I love [the pianist Vladimir Horowitz], and there’s a wonderful recording, they’ve restored it and it’s all in color now, and he’s playing Rachmaninoff, the third piano concerto. And at the beginning of this one that’s been upgraded, he talks about his own work and how he doesn’t always hit it. And to hear someone of that massive talent say that he doesn’t always hit it and that will he do it again that night kind of makes you feel more like one of the club. We’re all artists, and we’re trying to hit it. … And you’ll see a performance like Daniel Day-Lewis in “Lincoln,” and he comes in and he is Lincoln, no false note ever. And that’s what you aspire to. I haven’t gotten there. I haven’t gotten there, but that’s wonderful because we keep going, and we’re human beings that are trying to do the best we can do at our career and in our lives.

What she’ll miss when (if!) she retires: You know what, and it’s a strange thing for me to say because I’m really a hermit, I think I’m going to miss walking on those soundstages and hearing people and the cacophony of the voices, or the quietness, the smell of it, the laughter that’s coming from somewhere, walking onstage, seeing people from the day before. When you’re beginning and you’re beginning to form relationships with people, sometimes it’s automatic, sometimes it’s gingerly. And I think it’s taught me how to be a more compassionate person who listens more and watches more. I would miss that. Let’s face it, I would miss being the center of attention.

[From LA Times]

What a difference a year makes! Remember, back around the 2024 Emmys Kathy was scaring the living daylights out of us talking about how Matlock was her “last dance,” before loosening up to “I’ll keep acting as long as Matlock is running,” and then declaring she hoped to make it as far as Betty White. And now? Kathy’s all like, “I’d miss the attention!” But it’s more than that, and I loved Kathy describing how she’s still trying to “hit it.” Though it’s somewhat ridiculous she doesn’t see herself on the same level as Daniel Day-Lewis, cause I can’t say I’ve ever seen Kathy deliver a false note either! But the humility is genuine and makes me love her even more. There’s loads more to the interview, including how Kathy says she watches a lot of TV to see what her peers are up to. She gives a great shout-out to The Pitt and Noah Wyle, whom she apparently shares a driver with! Maybe they’ll carpool on September 14, where it’s very likely they’ll both be named best leads in drama. Honestly, the only part of this I’m not looking forward to is that Kathy is probably gonna be wearing those goddamn Sneex!

PS — Being anal about highlighter color choices in her script? Be still my beating heart!

Embed from Getty Images

Embed from Getty Images

photos credit: Faye’s Vision/Cover Images, Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency/Avalon, Nicky Nelson/Wenn/Avalon, Getty

Categories
Acting Careers Neal McDonough Religion

Catholic Neal McDonough ‘lost everything’ because he refused to kiss women onscreen

catholic-neal-mcdonough-‘lost-everything’-because-he-refused-to-kiss-women-onscreen




I would call Neal McDonough a successful character actor. He’s worked steadily for decades in primarily supporting/featured roles, in high profile projects like Justified and Yellowstone. Even if you don’t recognize his name or face, chances are you’ve seen him in something. Again, I consider that a successful acting career. But McDonough says Hollywood blacklisted him for an agonizing two years in which he “lost everything.” Why? Because as part of being a devout Catholic and married man (to wife Ruvé since 2003), McDonough refuses to kiss women onscreen. To me, the translation of that statement is, “McDonough refuses… to do his job.” But McDonough claims it’s in his contract, so it was grossly unfair that he was fired from the 2010 ABC show Scoundrels for not stepping up to smooch, which in turn led to a couple very dry years for his career. McDonough has discussed all this before, but the conversation was resurrected (Catholic pun!) on a recent episode of the Nothing Left Unsaid podcast:

“For two years, I couldn’t get a job, and I lost everything you could possibly imagine,” McDonough said. “Not just houses and material things, but your swagger, your cool, who you are, your identity — everything. My identity was an actor, and a really good one. And once you don’t have that identity, you’re kind of lost in a tailspin.”

Although McDonough struggled professionally and personally after the alleged firing, including a bout with alcoholism, “The Last Rodeo” star said he doesn’t regret taking a moral stance in his career. He credited his spouse Ruvé and his renewed faith with helping him overcome the ordeal.

“When I stopped drinking, everything just kind of changed. Literally, the clouds parted,” McDonough said. “I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t need this crutch. Oh, people are calling me. Oh, I am successful. Oh, I do like myself again. OK, I am God’s child, and I have a job to do. Stop wallowing in self-pity. Dust yourself off and go hit it hard.”

He added: “At 59 years old, I’m more busy than I’ve ever been in my whole because I have this clarity, I have a goal and I have a vision. I have one boss, and it’s God, and I’m going to do whatever it takes to make my boss happy.”

McDonough has also found a healthy middle ground for navigating intimate scenes onscreen. The actor, who plays retired rodeo star Joe Wainwright in “The Last Rodeo,” said he convinced his wife — who is not an actress — to play his love interest in the film.

“She was so great in the movie, and to kiss my wife, my real-life wife, in a movie that I wrote and produced and gave glory to (God) in,” McDonough said. “I can’t imagine anything really better than that in my life when it comes to my career because it’s finally one of those things where I made it, and I did it our way.”

[From USA Today]

You guys, he lost his swagger! There’s so much here. Obviously McDonough is entitled to his own convictions. That being said, I think if you’re refusing to do intimate scenes with costars, you can’t also be surprised that certain work is lost to you, particularly at the the level of production that McDonough has been frankly blessed (Catholic pun) to work in all these years. Also, once he started talking about the heavy drinking, I couldn’t help but wonder if that had more to do with his losing work during those years, than his kissing ban.

As for McDonough roping his wife in to play his love interest, I cry Nepo Spouse! Actually, Ruvé plays his wife in only a couple flashback scenes in his latest movie, The Last Rodeo, which McDonough cowrote and stars in and came out earlier this summer. Meanwhile, Ruvé clearly realized the optics weren’t looking good on her husband’s comments, because she and Neal jointly made “clarifying comments” after the podcast came out, in which they repeatedly exclaim, “Thank you, Hollywood!” As one great American prophet said, “Well, it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord/But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”

photos credit: Avalon.red

Categories
Acting Matthew McConaughey

Matthew McConaughey did his first movie in 6 years: ‘acting is a vacation for me’

matthew-mcconaughey-did-his-first-movie-in-6-years:-‘acting-is-a-vacation-for-me’

Embed from Getty Images


A few weeks ago, I watched the movie Dazed and Confused for the first time. I had no idea until I went down the Wikipedia rabbit hole afterward that it was Mathew McConaughey’s first movie or that he got “discovered” when he met and drank with the movie’s casting director at a bar. That’s so freaking on brand.

Anyway, Matthew’s latest acting project is a movie called The Rivals of Amziah King. The film, which premiered at SXSW’s Film & TV Festival on Monday, also stars Kurt Russell, Cole Sprouse, and newcomer Angelina LookingGlass. Matthew plays the title character and LookingGlass plays the foster child whom he is mentoring. To promote the film, Matthew did an interview with Variety in which he talked about Amziah, filming a non-voice acting role for the first time in six years, how writing his memoir, Greenlights, changed him, and what he thinks about his season of True Detective.

He was nervous to act again after six years: On the first day shooting “The Rivals of Amziah King,” Matthew McConaughey, his right eye swollen from a bee sting, walked onto the set, raised his hand and asked, “Is anybody else nervous except for me?” The cast and crew let out a collective laugh. “Alright, alright, alright, I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t the only one,” the actor said, sounding like a mixture of a preacher and a surfer with his signature drawl. But McConaughey wasn’t joking. He admits he felt creaky returning to the screen after a six-year hiatus, during which he wrote a memoir, “Greenlights,” recorded a few voice roles in films like “Sing 2,” spent time with his family and kept a lower profile. “I needed to write my own story, direct my own story on the page,” McConaughey says of his time away from being in front of the camera.

Why Amziah was the right project: “It’s not where I grew up, but I know of these kind of people and these places and these kind of characters that live in the middle of the country,” McConaughey says. “This group of people in southeast Oklahoma where the film takes place know the Constitution, they know the rules they are living by, and they’re not looking for or getting approval from the rest of the world. I understand them.”

Director Andrew Patterson always wanted Matthew for that role: Patterson had labored on the project for years, enlarging it at one point into a seven episode mini-series, before shrinking it back down again. He always felt that McConaughey possessed the free-wheeling charm that he needed for Amziah, who has a roving band of bee-keepers and musicians who follow him like a caravan of apostles. “I wanted an actor with the type of personality where he could just hang out with them for hours,” he says. “It had to be somebody so disarming, who would just do their thing inside this world I was trying to evoke, and who could be comedic in a dramatic movie. There aren’t many people like that.”

Acting is a ‘vacation:’ “I remembered a couple of things,” he says. “One, how much I truly enjoy performing. Two, I remembered, hey, McConaughey, you’re pretty damn good at this. And three, I remembered that acting is a vacation for me, and what I mean by vacation is that when I’m performing, it’s my singular focus. When I walk out the door in the morning, my wife says, ‘go kick some ass. I got the kiddos. We’re good.’ That’s vacation. Because I’m not multitasking. I’m not compartmentalizing. I’m fully focused on finding the truth of my character.”

Writing his book made him a better actor: “The memoir was extremely honest and it forced me to be honest with myself,” McConaughey says. “It cleared up things you’ve been thinking about for 35 years. And it makes you realize that’s kind of who you are, Matthew. Let’s admit that and shake hands. Bravo. That gave me even more trust in myself, because, you know, there was less to maybe hide about myself. I had shared it. So that’s made it easier for me to be honest as an actor.”

He thinks his season of True Detective is the best one: “I watched, I saw it. Yeah, there’s a lot about it that I appreciated,” McConaughey says, haltingly. “My favorite season — and I feel like I can say this objectively — is Season 1.” He’s picking up steam here, sounding tickled by his own admission. “I happen to be in that one, so I thought that was incredible, incredible television and a great series. I watched it weekly, like everyone else, on Sunday night, and that was an event for me. And I got to sit back and enjoy that. I loved the water cooler talk on Monday morning. Even though I made it, I sort of forgot what was going to happen next. It was one of the great events in TV.”

On his Amziah co-star, Angelina LookingGlass: “She only knows how to do what so many of us actors forget to do when we learn to quote, unquote, act, which is listen and respond honestly to the truth of a situation,” McConaughey says. “That’s it. That’s the secret. An actor doesn’t want to get caught acting. Every actor worth their salt knows what I’m talking about.”

[From Variety]

I was curious to know what Matthew’s last role was, so I looked at his iMDB page. He’s credited as a voice cameo for Deadpool & Wolverine (Cowboypool) and starred in the animated movie Sing 2, which came out in 2021. Based on his description, I’m not sure if I’d classify acting as being a “vacation,” but I get the point he’s trying to make here. When he’s filming a movie, it’s the only thing that he’s focused on doing at the moment. He has been involved in a slew of other endeavors over the past few years, so I understand what he’s trying to say. Him saying that writing his book helped him become a better actor is also *peak* McConaughey, lol. But hey, a little bit of introspective is almost always a good thing.

Let’s see, what else? Those were some really nice words that he had about LookingGlass. I also looked her up and learned that she’s 20 years old. I look forward to seeing her in the role and where her career takes her. Oh, and he’s not wrong about the first season of True Detective being the best one. I really enjoyed the third and fourth seasons, but season one still holds the title. I said what I said.

Embed from Getty Images

Embed from Getty Images

photos credit: Getty and Jennifer Graylock-Graylock.com/Avalon, Jeffrey Mayer/Avalon

Categories
Acting Demi Moore Movies

Demi Moore: ‘There’s interest in our stories. There’s room for us. And that’s exciting’

demi-moore:-‘there’s-interest-in-our-stories-there’s-room-for-us.-and-that’s-exciting’




Demi Moore continued her winning streak over the weekend when she picked up Best Actress at the Critics Choice Awards on Friday. I’ve only encountered people who absolutely loved The Substance, or positively loathed it, with no middle ground. For my part, I thought the acting from the leads was excellent — Demi, Margaret Qualley, and Dennis Quaid, too. I didn’t know he had it in him to be that camp! (Does that mean he’s at risk of MAGA rescinding his membership?) In her “popcorn actress” speech at the Golden Globes, Demi kind of perfectly articulated what this career moment is for her: getting recognition, validation, and respect for her art (an extension of herself), after being put in a box to the point where she believed that’s where she belonged. Well, Demi just took part in Variety’s Awards Circuit Podcast, where she dove even deeper into the craft she brought to this role:

“This whole journey has just been a shock and awe,” she says with humility and amusement. “I had no expectations, so everything has been a surprise, and honestly, that’s a really beautiful place to be sitting in.”

At 62, Moore has just earned her first Academy Award nomination for best actress, a recognition that was both unexpected and long overdue. Her performance in Coralie Fargeat’s body horror thriller “The Substance” is raw, fearless and, at times, deeply unsettling. The film, which satirized Hollywood’s obsession with youth and beauty, sees Moore’s character undergo a grotesque transformation after consuming a mysterious product.

…But it’s a moment in front of the mirror where she methodically smears lipstick across her face in a moment of profound self-destruction that is her most haunting moment. “It was really tough,” she admits. “Coralie likes to do a lot of takes — we didn’t do fewer than 15 in each segment. But I knew that this was such a pivotal moment in the film. It’s the beginning of the real violence against oneself.” She pauses. “It’s also the ‘F–k it!’ moment. You want her to be happy, and she’s so close.”

The role required Moore to go deep — deeper than ever before. “I realized I didn’t have the benefit of feeding off other actors in many of these scenes,” she explains. “So I had to create a dialogue with myself. I went through every beat, every moment so that when I got there, I could just let it go.”

If there were doubts about her ability to carry a film of this magnitude, Moore never let them in. “I knew the movie was ambitious, but I also knew that Coralie had something to say — and she wasn’t just taking cheap shots at Hollywood. The story had substance,” she says, relishing the unintentional pun.

…But what’s more remarkable is the shift that Moore is witnessing and leading in Hollywood. “We’ve all heard the narrative — women of a certain age in Hollywood are discarded, overlooked,” she says. “But look at what’s happening now. There’s interest in our stories. There’s room for us. And that’s exciting.”

She reflects on the moment she felt her career might have reached its natural end. “I had hit a low point where I didn’t feel like I was expanding like I wasn’t being challenged,” she admits. “And I thought, maybe the universe is telling me I need to do something else. But then ‘The Substance’ came along, and I thought, ‘Okay, this I can dive into. This is something I can bring all of myself to.’”

[From Variety]

Demi is running her campaign so well. I love hearing her break down the preparation she did for the mirror scene, and I bet that’s the kind of thing Oscar voters will also be into. And it’s such a good point, that she is alone in that scene, so she didn’t have anyone else to play off of or react to. She had to create it all herself, which in some ways is harder. In fact, so much of The Substance is Demi on her own, in that apartment. Which brings me to something that I feel has been criminally left out of most Substance conversations: what is the floorplan of that pad?! Seriously, between the endless, curving hallway of catastrophe, to the large (yet more utilitarian than luxurious) bathroom, the layout of that place was the biggest mystery of the entire film, to me.

Anyway, the Variety piece is a great read. The absence of her dog Pilaf is noted (with great disappointment) by the interviewer, and Demi also gives a touching update that she visits ex-husband Bruce Willis and his family weekly, “because that’s what you do for the people you love.”

photos credit: Faye’s Vision/Cover Images, Jeffrey Mayer/Avalon/

Categories
Acting Ian McKellen Lord of The Rings

Ian McKellen listened to a recording of J.R.R. Tolkien to get the voice for Gandalf

ian-mckellen-listened-to-a-recording-of-jrr.-tolkien-to-get-the-voice-for-gandalf




Ian McKellen is still doing interviews for his latest movie The Critic, in between reading Prince Harry’s Spare and continuing his recovery from a theater accident this summer. What happened to our dear Gandalf on stage? He fell. Yes, I’ve been gleefully making the Gandalf references when writing about Sir Ian. I don’t think he minds so much, given he recently called Lord of the Rings “the great unexpected joy of my career,” but I don’t mean to ignore or disrespect his extensive other work, either. It seems Entertainment Weekly was faced with the very same conundrum, as they recently acknowledged that they “couldn’t conduct a complete conversation about ‘The Critic’ without mentioning Gandalf.” Sir Ian was an amiable wizard, as always, and even confirmed something LOTR director Peter Jackson said over a decade ago: yes, Sir Ian did listen to a recording of J.R.R. Tolkien to develop the voice for Gandalf. But it was bigger than just imitating the voice; don’t take him for some conjurer of cheap tricks.

Of all the performances in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films, Ian McKellen’s portrayal of the wizard Gandalf has long resonated the most with both fans and newcomers to J.R.R. Tolkien’s work. He is the only cast member from any of the big-screen Tolkien adaptations to receive an Oscar nomination for his acting and is also one of the few actors (and certainly the only main cast member) to carry over into Jackson’s prequel trilogy of The Hobbit films. More recently, McKellen has even expressed interest in possibly returning to the role for the future films in development by Warner Bros.

Why does McKellen’s Gandalf stand so tall, even as other Lord of the Rings adaptations are appearing on screen? Perhaps it’s because the actor channeled Tolkien himself. In a 2013 interview, Jackson said that McKellen based his performance on the author’s own voice and mannerisms. So when Entertainment Weekly recently caught up with McKellen about his new film The Critic (now playing in theaters), we asked him if that part was true.

Indeed it is! Listening to Tolkien’s voice both shaped McKellen’s depiction of Gandalf, and assured him that the adaptations were in keeping with the author’s original intent.

“We found a recording of Tolkien reading a bit of The Hobbit. It was very useful to hear the smoky voice — very English, rather professorial. Well, he was a university teacher!” McKellen tells EW of Tolkien, who died in 1973. “It was encouraging to me because he was not acting it particularly well, but the idea of it being heard out loud appealed to him, because that’s what he was doing. It’s not that big of an extension from the audio to making a movie, and of course he sold the Lord of the Rings film rights. So unlike some of his family, he was very happy to think of them as films, although he never saw our version, of course.”

McKellen has had a long and illustrious career over several decades of acting on both screen and stage, but his work in The Lord of the Rings took him to a new level of recognition. After all, we couldn’t conduct a complete conversation about The Critic without mentioning Gandalf, and that’s true of many people McKellen meets.

“I was just doing my job and suddenly everybody knew about it,” McKellen says. “That level of attention was unusual and I’m very lucky. I’m a rather shy person, but I can go into a room of strangers these days and there’s bound to be at least one person who wants to have a word with Gandalf.”

[From EW]

“I was just doing my job and suddenly everybody knew about it.” That sounds more humble hobbit than worldly wizard to me, am I right?! Sir Ian strikes me as really genuine in his gratitude and recognition of what a blessed career he’s had. Personally, I get the feeling he’d still be calling himself lucky as an actor even if LOTR never happened for him, down to the breadth of his stage work alone. But he’s been very gracious with the colossal fame that role has brought him. And he’s not kidding when he says people want to have a word with Gandalf, as he travels on the road that goes ever on and on. Just last year Sir Ian ran into a man on a birthday pub crawl who was dressed as Gandalf, and congenially took a photo with the aspiring wizard. Yet Sir Ian is also firm with his boundaries, clarifying when necessary that no matter the price, “Gandalf doesn’t do weddings.” This wizard cannot be bought!

Embed from Getty Images

Embed from Getty Images

Embed from Getty Images

Photos credit: kpa Publicity / Avalon and Getty

Categories
Acting Courtney B. Vance Ryan Murphy Travis Kelce

Donna Kelce’s comments about her son Travis’s acting career are pretty harsh

donna-kelce’s-comments-about-her-son-travis’s-acting-career-are-pretty-harsh




Travis Kelce has his hand in several different pots right now. He’s still playing football for the Kansas City Chiefs, he and his brother Jason Kelce just reportedly inked a $100 million deal with Wondery for their podcast, “New Heights,” he’s starring as the host of the upcoming first season of the rebooted Are You Smarter Than a Celebrity?, and he’s about to make his scripted acting debut on Ryan Murphy’s new series, Grotesquerie, starring Niecy Nash and Micaela Morgan. I respect that Travis works hard, hustles, and keeps busy. Some people just work best when they’re going non-stop, but that doesn’t mean it’s always going to be their best work.

All of that said, Travis and Jason’s mom, Donna Kelce, recently did an interview with Variety. During the interview, she noted that her younger son has the power to “manifest things” (100% agree). She also then had some pretty harsh words about her son’s acting career.

Donna Kelce, mother of Kansas City Chiefs star Travis Kelce, spilled on the advice she gave her son ahead of his scripted TV debut on FX’s “Grotesquerie.” The football star, who has previously hosted “Saturday Night Live” and once appeared in the comedy series “Moonbase 8,” is set to make his major acting debut beginning in the third episode of the new Ryan Murphy horror series.

Donna Kelce, in an interview with Variety, said she knows her son wanted to do the show and that he can “manifest things.”

“He has no fear of trying things, and he has no fear of failure,” she said of her son, who is dating pop superstar Taylor Swift. “You know, sometimes parents want to fix things for their kids. But sometimes it’s better to just let them fail. You learn the most from things you don’t do well. Hopefully, if this is something he wants to do, he’ll get better at it.”

Donna Kelce showed support for her son as she dropped by the New York premiere of “Grotesquerie” on Monday.

The series sees Detective Lois Tryon (Niecy Nash) working with Sister Megan (Micaela Diamond) as the two look into “heinous crimes” where they “find themselves ensnared in a sinister web that only seems to raise more questions than answers,” according to an FX description of the show.

Travis Kelce plays a bed nurse in the series, according to Variety, in a casting decision that “Grotesquerie” co-star and executive producer Courtney B. Vance admits “just helps” the show.

“I mean it would be one thing if he wasn’t a nice guy,” Vance told Variety. “But really, he’s a nice guy. It helps everybody. Ryan [Murphy] is all about publicity, and he does it better than anyone.”

[From Huffington Post]

LMAO. Poor Travis! It’s so funny that not only does his mom recognizes that acting isn’t his thang, but also that Courtney B. Vance basically acknowledged that Travis was only cast because he’d bring some ratings. My motto is always to never be afraid to try new things, so, good for Travis for putting himself out there (even though that role could have gone to a day player who actually needed the money that they’d have made from that gig). That said, there’s also always value in knowing your limits. Like I noted earlier, Travis and Jason just got a $100 million podcast deal, which is absolutely nuts. This all feels like the Universe is telling Travis, hey, maybe just stick to making money off of being yourself.

Embed from Getty Images

Photos credit: Jennifer Graylock-Graylock.com / Avalon, IMAGO/Eibner-Pressefoto/Florian, Robert Bell/INSTARimages, Jesse Bauer/startraksphoto.com, Backgrid and Getty