She plays a depressed fisherwoman. He plays a man made of wicker who is solely dedicated to her pleasure. How did the actors feel about this strange, emotional connection – and what did Colman draw from her own marriage?Another year, another raunchy comedy-drama in which Alexander Skarsgård is the answer to a social outcast’s erotic dreams. “I fucking loved Pillion so much!” says Olivia Colman, reliably sweary straight out of the gate, as she brings up last year’s British indie hit starring Skarsgård as a leather-clad dom with a timid traffic warden as his submissive. “And when they kissed at the end … Aww.” The 52-year-old Oscar-winner for The Favourite gives a mock-sniffle and a little shake of her frizzy grey locks, then pretends to dab her eyes.Seated beside her in a London hotel room and wearing a bright orange “I’m With Stupid” T-shirt, Skarsgård tilts his head appreciatively. In Pillion, it was Harry Melling who had the privilege of being ravaged by the 50-year-old Swedish actor. Now it is Colman’s turn in Wicker, an earthy adult fairytale filmed in Budapest and set in a medieval village populated almost exclusively by British comic actors who converse in language both archaically formal (“Happy to transact with you”) and bluntly colloquial (“I’d better fuck off”). Among them is Phil Daniels as a leering butcher and Richard E Grant as a doctor who is even more inept at his job than Grant was as a Celebrity Traitor. Continue reading...
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The star takes on her biggest challenge yet: resurrecting her family’s Cantonese restaurant. She discusses the stress of rewatching her sitcom, nearly becoming a meat inspector … and her beloved matriarch, who passed away after filmingI’m embarrassed I didn’t bring anything. It’s 10-something in the morning, and I’m meeting Nora Lum, 38 – best known as rapper, comic actor and writer Awkwafina – the morning after the Bafta TV awards. I feel that I should have brought her a pastry pick-me-up. Yet here I am empty-handed. “It could have been Chinese buns,” she playfully suggests.Yes, it could have been. Especially because we are meeting to discuss her new series on Apple TV, Awkwafina: The Unlikely Cook. It sees the star of box-office hits Crazy Rich Asians and Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings travel across the US to learn from a new generation of Asian American chefs, in the hope that she might revive her own family’s long-closed Cantonese restaurant. But there’s one problem: she can’t cook. Continue reading...
The mind behind The Arrival returns with a triumph of a graphic novel, a vivid fable about a girl who is told by a stranger that she doesn’t belong in the only world she knowsGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailTwenty years after the publication of The Arrival – the wordless graphic novel that won several literary awards – writer and illustrator Shaun Tan has penned another career-defining masterpiece. Taking nearly a decade to complete, Hometown is a triumph in visual storytelling and fable, presented in Tan’s confident and controlled voice and style.Where The Arrival explored the complexities of migration and belonging in a mystifying new place, Hometown ponders the question: what if you really came from somewhere else? The new graphic novel is not a follow-up to The Arrival, but a dexterous continuation of Tan’s fascination with and talent for creating strange-yet-familiar worlds, and how his characters belong within them.Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Sunday morning Continue reading...