Have you watched the trailer for Netflix’s The Woman In Cabin 10? I’m including it at the end of the post – the film looks enjoyable, a sort of thriller-on-the-sea, starring Keira Knightley. Keira has been doing more work with Netflix, and I think she enjoys the partnership, and enjoys the diversity in projects she’s being offered. When I saw the trailer for this, I was genuinely surprised that Keira is the lead – it feels like something they would have offered to Emily Blunt and like ten other actresses before they got to Keira. That’s not a slam, it’s cool to see Keira in this kind of thing. The film costars Guy Pearce, Hannah Waddingham, David Ajala, Daniel Ings. Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Kaya Scodelario, and David Morrissey.
Last night was the London premiere, and I’m including some photos in this post. Keira wore Erdem, an ochre-colored high-neck dress with some very beautiful floral embroidery. I love the fabric and embroidery, but I find the high neck with the frill much too fussy. I also don’t really get the double-belt situation. I dig her boots though. Bring back that style – the pretty high-feminine dress with sh-tkicker boots.
I actually love when Aussie Guy Pearce does a posh British accent and plays someone really haughty, evil and rich. He’s very good at it.
Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw were so good in Black Doves, but I thought the series was lacking somehow. It needed more kick assery and less lovelorn pining. Plus it was so dark visuallly, like I could barely make out some of the scenes. It turns out that was a setting on Netflix I figured out after I squinted through the whole thing. Oh well. If you want to see an amazing spy/assassin show, watch Day of The Jackal with Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch! That’s worth subscribing to Peacock for.
Keira wore a Chanel empire waist sequin, velvet and feather gown that I would like better without the dippy bown at the top. She looks effortlessly luxurious though, there’s something so fashionable about her. It might be how tall and whispy she is. I also really like her blunt cut. As I mentioned earlier today, I’m so tempted to chop my hair into a bob, but I don’t know how versatile that would be. I’m thinking about it! Kerry was nominated for Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Series, Drama, for Black Doves. That category went to Anna Sawai for Shogun.
Keri Russell seems like she’s nominated for something just about every year. I guess she just picks prestige projects. She was also nominated in this category, for The Diplomat. Keri wore a giant white Stephane Rolland zoot suit dress. She takes a lot of risks with her fashion and they don’t always pay off. To her credit, she does not seem to give a sh-t and I admire that about her.
Jessica Gunning won Best Female Supporting Actor, Television for Baby Reindeer. She’s also won an Emmy and is nominated for Critics Choice Award for that role. I didn’t realize that she’s English, not Scottish like her character! Jessica was in a velvet Christian Siriano gown with a ruffled neckline. I love how rich and colorful this gown is. I love a good jewel tone, but we didn’t see that many last night.
Allison Janney was nominated in Jessica Gunning’s category, for her role in The Diplomat. She was also in Siriano, in a lovely cold shoulder navy column gown. The necklace makes the look! Check out her glambot video.
Last week, I was on an international flight with a selection of Christmas movies that were free to watch. At one point, I got up to use the restroom and as I walked back to my seat, I saw that the entire economy section of the plane was basically watching three different movies: Home Alone 2, Love Actually, and The Holiday. The woman sitting diagonally across from me was watching Love Actually with subtitles on. I am one of those fliers who raw-dog the flight map while doing other things, which in my case, became reading the subtitles as that woman played Love Actually. Yes, I acknowledge that this is weird, but when you’re on a plane for eight-plus daytime hours, you have to do what you can to pass the time.
Anyway, while creeping on my flight neighbor’s screening of Love Actually, I watched the famous cue card scene. It comes out of nowhere but is meant to symbolize that unspoken love that one person has for someone who is completely uninterested in them. Even if you haven’t seen the movie, that particular scene has been mimicked tons of times, most famously in 2016, with Kate McKinnon playing Hillary Clinton trying to warn us about Donald Trump. While the scene may be well-known, the context has always been a point of debate. During an interview with Variety, Keira Knightley talked about filming the famous cue card scene. In her opinion, the whole thing was “quite creepy.”
The Love Actually star—who played Juliet in the 2003 movie—shared that she had to re-shoot the Richard Curtis-directed Christmas classic’s iconic cue card scene with costar Andrew Lincoln (who played Mark) to make his grand gesture seem less “stalker-ish” for viewers.
“My memory is of Richard, who is now a very dear friend, of me doing the scene, and him going, ‘No, you’re looking at [Andrew] like he’s creepy,’” Keira told Variety in an interview published Dec. 6. “And I’m like, ‘But it is quite creepy.’”
That’s why Keira changed up her facial expression to try to improve the scene, recalling that she continued by “having to redo it to fix my face to make him seem not creepy.”
And while the moment—in which Mark shows up at the doorstep of Juliet, the wife of his best friend Peter (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor), and confesses his love in hand-written cue cards—wound up becoming one of the most famous romantic scenes of the last two decades, the Oscar nominee still sees the clip as having a “creep factor” for another reason: She was only 17 years old when it was filmed.
“I knew I was 17,” Keira explained. “It only seems like a few years ago that everybody else realized I was 17.”
Of course, the Pride & Prejudice actress wasn’t alone in admitting the scene could read as inappropriate. Last year, Richard—who wrote the movie in addition to directing—revealed that he views Mark’s confession as a “bit weird” now.
“We didn’t think it was a stalker scene,” he told the Independent at the time. “But if it’s interesting or funny for different reasons [now] then, you know, God bless our progressive world.”
And Keira isn’t the only Love Actually star who wasn’t head over heels for one of their iconic moments in the film. Hugh Grant, who played newly elected prime minster David Grant in the flick, shared that he wasn’t thrilled to shoot his memorable celebratory dance to The Pointer Sisters song “Jump (For My Love)” after his character stood up to the U.S. president.
“I saw it in the script,” Grant said in 2022 for The Laughter & Secrets of Love Actually: 20 Years Later – A Diane Sawyer Special, “and I thought, ‘Well I’ll hate doing that.’”
I honestly had no idea that Keira was only 17 when they filmed that movie. That fact alone is definitely creepy, and yeah, it makes an already questionable scene even weirder. It’s all well and romantic to watch a scene like that because we movie-goers already know that he’s ultimately harmless, but it could also have dangerous repercussions in the real world. Personally, I always thought that even though she knows and trusts him as her husband’s best friend, it was bonkers that Juliet runs after Mark to give him a kiss on the cheek.
Even then, I don’t think that’s the most problematic storyline in the movie because at least the characters were all supposed to be the same age with equal power dynamics. I take more of an issue with the Colin Firth and Hugh Grant storylines because of the power dynamics in play. The Emma Thompson/Alan Rickman (RIP) one involving the character Mia always felt like it was the most realistic while the John/Judy (Martin Freeman/Joanna Page) one always felt like the one to root for. I’m basically so split on this movie overall! I know so many people still actually love (see what I did there?) the movie in general, so I don’t want to yuck anyone’s yum. I just personally think that Love Actually is a product of its time. That said, it should have been a miniseries that could have fleshed out the characters to provide more context and feel less creepy.
Keira Knightley is shown earlier this month at the Black Doves premiere and in 2003 at the Love, Actually premiere. Photos credit: WENN/Avalon, Jeremy Kathrens/Avalon/Avalon, James Warren/Bang Showbiz/Avalon
Keira Knightley is currently promoting Boston Strangler, a film where she plays the real-life Record American reporter Loretta McLaughlin who first referred to the serial killer as “the Boston Strangler” in the 1960s. Keira in a historical drama/thriller? Yes, give it to me. Keira covers Harper’s Bazaar UK to promote the film and she acknowledges that it’s been a while since she’s been on a promotional tour or given an interview to a magazine. She has two daughters, an 8-year-old and a 4-year-old, and she’s still married to James Righton. A big chunk of this interview is Keira talking about how great James is and how he’s a hands-on father who relocates with Keira when she’s filming on location. Some highlights:
She lost her engagement ring on his Bazaar shoot. “I didn’t say anything to my husband when I got home. I’d already been onto the insurance, looked up cheap alternatives online. We were watching TV and I was desperately texting the team to see whether it had been found, and James was like, ‘Who are you texting?!’ I’d make a great spy.” Fortunately, it was found on the balcony and returned to her the next day. “I experienced loss, I came to terms with it, the ring came back. I am whole again.”
The husbands in her friend group are hands-on fathers: “The guys are super-active. Maybe that’s not normal. But [in my situation], it has to be a partnership. The heavy lifting of childcare has to be acknowledged. It’s hard work, it’s vital, it’s undervalued. And it’s so exhausting…. During filming, the hours are unpredictable and extreme. I worked out I needed three people to do what one full-time parent did. When you hear somebody say, ‘I’m just staying home with the kids’, that’s not a ‘just’. That’s a huge thing.”
She dislikes being asked about balance: “We’re constantly asking it, because what we actually want to know is, how are you doing it? Because I don’t feel like I’m doing it.”
Location shoot for ‘Boston Strangler’: “James is a really good traveller – that takes a lot of stress off the logistics. He’s fearless about exploring and doing all the research.” However, they were plunged back into the pandemic as the move coincided with a tidal wave of the Omicron variant. Filming was delayed by 10 days because the whole family caught Covid, and Righton ended up caring for Delilah throughout the production period (which doubled to four months), as group activities were cancelled. “My husband became a full-time dad. I felt a lot of guilt because I had suddenly put my very sociable two-year-old into a situation where she was basically in lockdown the entire time. It was amazingly bad timing. We were foiled by the plague.”
Playing a female journalist: “Women in public spaces – it’s a constant problem. From the everyday office situation, where your voice isn’t being heard, to the most extreme aspect, femicide. The film told an interesting story that covered the whole spectrum.”
Playing Elizabeth Swann in Pirates of the Caribbean. “She was the object of everybody’s lust. Not that she doesn’t have a lot of fight in her. But it was interesting coming from being really tomboyish to getting projected as quite the opposite. I felt very constrained. I felt very stuck. So the roles afterwards were about trying to break out of that.” She considers the period between 2003 and 2008 “a very tricky five-year window… she felt “quite powerless”. “I didn’t have a sense of how to articulate it. It very much felt like I was caged in a thing I didn’t understand.”
Burnout in her 20s: “I was incredibly hard on myself. I was never good enough. I was utterly single-minded. I was so ambitious. I was so driven. I was always trying to get better and better and improve, which is an exhausting way to live your life. Exhausting. I am in awe of my 22-year-old self, because I’d like a bit more of her back. And it’s only by not being like that any longer that I realise how extraordinary it was. But it does have a cost.” What is that cost? “Burnout.” Knightley took two years out from working after being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. “There was never an ounce of me that wasn’t going to find a way through.”
I remember reading her interviews from her dogsh-t 20s and realizing how overwhelmed and miserable she was during that time. It was like a weight was lifted from her shoulders when she turned 30 and became a mother – it was almost like she was thinking “oh, I don’t have to be the It Girl/ingenue anymore, YAY!” Her husband sounds like a real one, super-supportive of her career and like a really good father. I love that she expected that from him.
Keira Knightley covers the latest issue of Harper’s Bazaar UK. She’s promoting (vaguely) the film Silent Night, which was filmed just before the pandemic hit and the release has already been delayed. So she’s mostly promoting her Chanel contract. For years, she’s been the face of Coco Mademoiselle, and she talks a lot about Chanel clothes, Karl Lagerfeld and what she did during the pandemic. She even talks about her husband, more than she usually says about him, and she speaks for a while about the murder of Sarah Everard. This is a surprisingly nice interview and I enjoyed it a lot, but I love Keira anyway. Some highlights:
Meeting Karl Lagerfeld for the first time in 2007: “I was probably too young to be terrified of him, and I didn’t know enough about fashion. I was staying at the Ritz, and when I opened the wardrobe, I found all these Chanel clothes in there. I just thought the room hadn’t been cleaned, so I phoned down to reception to say someone had left their clothes behind, and they said they were for my stay. But not to keep. It’s always a Cinderella moment.”
She tried to wear Chanel every day of lockdown: “We have a trampoline in our garden, and we decided we were only allowed to wear dresses on it. I put on red lipstick every day, and every bit of Chanel that I have in my cupboard, and my daughter Edie had Chanel ribbons plaited into her hair and fairy wings. I thought, ‘What is the point of these lovely things sitting in the wardrobe, when it feels quite apocalyptic and scary outside?’ It felt so important to be really happy for the kids! And so you’d do it, and you’d forget – and then the shopping would arrive and you’d have to wipe it all down before you put it away, do you remember?’
She appreciates how easy she had it: “When you’re in a scenario like this, and you know there’s nothing you can do but stay at home, you realise the utter frivolousness of your existence – and the utter awe for nurses. How could you give them only a one per cent pay rise? That’s a feminist issue!”
Her husband did the cooking: Righton is “quite extreme, vaguely OCD – it’s what makes him a really good cook.” Having read a slew of environmental books over the first lockdown, he decided that the whole family should eat only vegetables sourced from regenerative farms during the second. “But I’m not a big root-veg fan, and in these regenerative boxes we were getting – this is so middle-class, I can’t bear it – there were four celeriac. And I hate celeriac! I didn’t realise I could feel so strongly about a vegetable…” When Righton offered to whip one up for supper, in place of a much-longed-for takeaway, she lost her temper and threw it at the kitchen floor – “it made quite a thunk.”
She hasn’t been working: “I haven’t worked for a year… I was meant to be doing a TV show in September for four or five months, but I couldn’t make it work with lockdowns and childcare. I was very lucky to be able, financially, to make that decision, so it felt like it was a choice, but it was a crap choice.”
Thinking about the late Sarah Everard: “It was when women started listing all the precautions they take when they walk home to make sure they’re safe, and I thought, I do every single one of them, and I don’t even think about it. It’s f–king depressing.”
On street harassment: “I love that politician who said there ought to be a curfew for men and men were outraged, and you think – but there’s a curfew for women and there always has been.” Has she experienced harassment herself? “Yes! I mean, everybody has. Literally, I don’t know anyone who hasn’t been, in some way, whether it’s being flashed at, or groped, or some guy saying they’re going to slit your throat, or punching you in the face, or whatever it is, everybody has.”
One, there should be a curfew for men. There should be a curfew and it should be enforced. Even if it’s just for one day a week. Two, even famous actresses deal with childcare crises and turn down work because of it. I wonder what her husband was doing that was so important he couldn’t look after their kids for a few months while mom worked? Three, Righton putting his family on a root-vegetable diet during the pandemic is f–king cruel!! Jesus. I know she loves this man and she had babies with him, but Righton sounds like he was a lot to deal with during the lockdowns.
Long-time-no-see Keira Knightley is the cover girl off the December issue of Harper’s Bazaar – and inside, the gorgeous actress talks about becoming a mom and how her priorities changed compared to her skinniest days.
On the way pregnancy changed her body and changing her perspective:
“It’s a different body, as it should be, because it’s done an extraordinary thing…I thought I was going to go, “God, I’ve got to get back into shape.” I actually went completely the opposite. I went, “F**k that, I’m not putting that pressure on myself in any way.” So it’s taken me a long time to get back into my jeans. I’m nearly there. Not quite there, but nearly there…”
… says 31 year-old Keira, who gave birth to her first child, daughter Edie in May last year.
Step Back in Time: Keira in her skinniest days back in 2016:
As we discussed yesterday, director John Carney gave an interview to The Independent a few days ago and the interview has gotten a crazy amount of attention. Carney directed Keira Knightley in Begin Again, a film released a few years back. Carney claims – repeatedly, and with some blatantly sexist language – that Keira is a diva constantly surrounded by an entourage, that she made it difficult to get “real work done,” that she doesn’t have the requisite “honesty and self-analysis” to be a proper actor, and that she is a “supermodel” (which is apparently the worst pejorative ever). The whole interview made me feel sick to my stomach. He dragged Keira so hard, you would have thought she had hurt his family or something.
Thankfully, it seemed like most people saw through John Carney’s sexist bulls—t. Keira still hasn’t said a word and I hope she doesn’t say anything about it, because why would she? But her friends in the industry are tweeting about Carney’s interview and defending her. Mark Romanek directed Keira in Never Let Me Go in 2010, and this is what he had to say:
My experience with #keiraknightley was utterly spectacular on every level. I have no clue what this guy is talking about. #arrogantshithead
— mark romanek (@markromanek) May 30, 2016
My recollection of #keiraknightley’s “entourage” was that her mum visited the set one day for an hour or two.
— mark romanek (@markromanek) May 30, 2016
Lynn Shleton, who directed Keira in Laggies, tweeted this:
Working with #KeiraKnightley was magnificent, top to bottom. She is the real deal. #Knightleylove
— Lynn Shelton (@lynnsheltonfilm) May 30, 2016
Director Lorene Scafaria, who worked with Keira in Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World responded to both Shelton and Romanek:
.@Lieryn @markromanek I agree with Mark. Keira was a joy to work w/. Present & easy & really, really good at her job. Just lovely.
— Lorene Scafaria (@LoreneScafaria) May 30, 2016
And finally, this is what David Cronenberg had to say about Keira after working with her in A Dangerous Method.
Cronenberg greater than what’s his face from that one movie #keiraknightley pic.twitter.com/BBx8E9HRPW
— Tina K. (@tkalogeropoulos) May 31, 2016
While we already knew that John Carney was and is an a—hole, and we didn’t NEED to see Keira’s coworkers defending her, it is nice to see. I’m glad that she has so much respect and love within the industry.
