The teaser for The White Lotus Season three dropped and it delivers the usual traits that we love about the series. Immediately, we get clueless foreigners trying to find meaning in their lives as they live out their days at the titular resort set against an exotic opulent setting. Also, things unravel and then... A MURDER. Just another week at the White Lotus.
Originally meant to be set in Japan, Thailand wooed The White Lotus creator and writer, Mike White, to their sunny shores. Filmed at the Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui and Anantara Mai Khao Phuket Villas, we get a new cast and one familiar face for this season: Natasha Rothwell reprises her role as Belinda Lindsey, whom we last saw in season one.
Among the new cast, we see Blackpink's Lisa as part of the resort staff; Walton Goggins (looking better than his last show) and Aimee Lou Wood are a May-December couple; Jason Issac and Parker Posey are the uppity Ratliffs with their children in tow and Carri Coon, Leslie Bibb and Michelle Monaghan—a trio of besties—having a girls' night that's gone kinda debauched.
With Thailand's serene beauty and postcard-worthy visuals and that undercurrent of dread, the show doesn't stray too far from its formula.
But that's what we thought in the last season and White pulled the rug off under us in that finale.
The White Lotus season three debuts Monday, 17 February on Max and will be available on HBO
This story contains spoilers from the season finale of The Penguin.
Rhenzy Feliz knows how to keep a secret. The Penguin star dabbled in the superhero genre on Marvel’s Runaways, but he was never part of a shocker like the one we saw in the season finale. Playing the role of the Penguin’s sidekick, Victor Aguilar, Feliz is a major player in the most gut-wrenching twist that HBO has pulled off since The Last of Us finale.
Let me set the scene. When the Batman spin-off series begins, Victor is a wayward teenager looking for any way to escape the slums of Gotham. A chance encounter puts him in the path of the Penguin, who is played by a transformative Colin Farrell. They foster a father-and-son relationship as two outcasts gaming the system of the city’s criminal underbelly. Well, at least until the heartbreaking finale ends in cold-blooded murder. The Penguin simply decides that Victor knows too much about his crimes, so he kills him.
Now that Feliz can finally discuss his demise, he’s ecstatic. “It was gruesome,” the twenty-seven-year-old actor tells me. “By the end, you’ve grown to like Victor a bit—and you need to like Victor so that when he kills me, you hate Oz.”
As much as audiences fell in love with Farrell’s performance over the course of The Penguin, Victor’s death solidified the Batman villain’s cruelty. Hate Oz? That seemed impossible just a week ago. Gotham’s very own Tony Soprano was the primary reason to turn on your television for the past two months. Still, it was The Penguin’s job to sell him as a formidable villain before his reemergence in The Batman Part II, which will hit theatres in 2026.
Farrell’s character suffocates Feliz’s in the final scene, meaning that the actor had no idea what the moment looked like until he watched the finished edit. “I was in his gut, looking at the ground,” he says. “But what Colin was doing… I was in awe. That face he’s making at the end, you can see what he’s going through. I found it so cold and painful.”
With The Penguin’s finale finally out in the world, Feliz shares what it was like to watch the explosive episode for the first time, the pressures of playing a character with a stutter, and the tunes that got him through the show’s most stressful scenes.
ESQUIRE: Obviously, this is the end of the road for Victor. But it’s so heartbreaking! Were you satisfied with how his story ended?
RHENZY FELIZ: Yeah, by the time I got to the end I was satisfied, but I always expected that to be the end. That was always the story to me, the natural ending. So I never even thought about more, because I knew where we were headed. For what we wanted to do, to serve the story, it was necessary for the audience to see [the Penguin] as irredeemable.
I loved when Oz picks up your driver’s license and confirms that you’re just Victor Aguilar. For everyone theorising at home, you’re not some secret Batman character. It really sold the moment for me.
Yeah, and what a brutal moment that is, too. The whole show, Oz is telling him [imitating Colin Farrell’s Penguin], “They’re going to remember us, kid. They’re going to remember our names. You can be somebody.” For him to take out my license and just leave me as this John Doe of a body in the river, that no one will ever know who I was… it’s brutal.
Fantastic Oz Cobb impression, by the way. I can’t stop quoting him myself, even around the office. Has Colin heard it?
No, not in front of Colin. [Laughs.] I keep that to myself. But when I’m around my friends and we’re watching the show, it’s fun to put on the voice.
You seem to have a knack for voice work. One of the things that impresses me the most about your performance is the stutter.
Definitely. When I first got the audition, [the script] didn’t mention it. I came back to meet the director, Craig [Zobel], and he sprung it on me in the middle of the audition. I did a couple scenes without it, and then he said, “Why don’t you just try it?”. As an actor, you feel like you can’t say no. I was just like, “Yeah, sure, I’ll give it a shot!” It must’ve been decent enough, because they wanted me to meet Colin. I hired my own dialect coach in between and I stayed in the stutter for a couple of days. I got the call later that they wanted me to come shoot. They hired a fluency consultant, Marc Winski, and he was incredibly helpful.
I wanted it to feel genuine to me. So we spent a lot of time going out in public with it, calling people on the phone, and really figuring out not as much the technical aspects of the stutter but more the mental and emotional side. Mark also has a stutter, so that was invaluable. I was concerned about the entire community of people who live with this every day. If I came in as someone who doesn’t have [a stutter] and didn’t take it seriously enough—or they felt like I was making fun of it—I was very afraid of the idea that they would reject me. Thankfully, everyone’s been incredibly kind. It was a relief.
I loved the scene that you have with Colin in episode 3, when you’re at a fancy lunch and he defends you from the waiter interrupting you while you stutter.
It was one of my favourite scenes to shoot. It’s really the first time you get to hear Victor speak. Before then, it’s only a sentence here and there, but then he actually talks about himself a little bit. He opens up and Oz listens to him. That day was beautiful. Colin came up to me after we were done and patted me on the face. He didn’t even say anything, but I could feel the energy was like, “That was nice. We’re doing a good job.” He and I knew that was an important scene for Victor, for his development with Oz, and as a character in front in the eyes of the audience.
It was probably easy for Colin to get in and out of his character, since he had to literally put on or take off a mountain of prosthetics. But was there anything you would do to get into the mindset of Victor before shooting?
I used music a lot. I made a playlist called “Vic.” There’s one song by Eminem called "8 Mile", and I used that the entire last half of the season. If anyone listens to "8 Mile", they’ll see.
“8 Mile” checks out.
I also have “Flight from the City” by Jóhann Jóhannsson. And I have the Howl’s Moving Castle soundtrack on here, too.
That feels like the opposite vibe of The Penguin. Was that just to mellow out after a really intense scene? Like a palate cleanser?
Exactly. I would use Howl’s at the beginning of every day just to go to a neutral place. It’s meditative. Calming. But then, by the time I was in the makeup chair with my lines in my hands, then I’m listening to the Victor music.
Was it hard to play a character who continuously makes bad choices?
The only time I was mad at Victor was when he would mess up the mission. I did my best to try to understand where he’s coming from. In his heart, he’s good. He doesn’t want to be doing any of these things, but he does them in spite of himself because he wants to be useful to Oz. He finds a love for Oz and he doesn’t want to let Oz down. It’s more out of necessity.
We all have choices to make—and we have a lot more control of our destiny than we feel. Victor, Oz, Sophia, even Francis—none of them are in a good position by the end of the show. When Victor kills Squid, that’s him thinking, I can’t let him hurt Oz and Francis, because they’re my new family.
I doubt Victor could show up in any potential Bat-verse projects from here on out, but from what I’ve read in your interviews, you seem like a guy who would rather move on to something new anyway.
Yeah, you’re definitely right that I am looking forward to the next thing. I just want to play even more interesting characters and be a part of as many exciting projects that I can. It’s not necessarily a role that I’m looking forward to, or a specific character that I want to play, but there is one in the back of my mind that I’ll want to play once I get a little older. I’ve always loved Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Hamilton is one of my favourite pieces of art ever made. I would love to get to do that at some point—just got to get my singing lessons up to par.
You were in Encanto. Seems like you’ve got an in with Lin-Manuel already.
Yeah. [Laughs.] I don’t know what it is about me. I just need to be better if I want to be able to perform that musical. That’s something that I’ve always looked forward to down the line.
Originally published on Esquire US
I've written far too many words about 2008’s Cloverfield, the cult-classic, found-footage monster romp that reinvented movie marketing for the digital age. But you’re about to read an interview with the director of that movie, Matt Reeves, so I’m sure as hell not stopping now. Not even two minutes after the 58 year-old popped up on Zoom—about a week before the premiere of the HBO series (slash spin-off of his 2022 feature, The Batman), The Penguin, on which he serves as an executive producer—I had to ask about the trailer. Yes, that trailer.
If you’re unfamiliar: Cloverfield’s first preview, which premiered ahead of showings for 2007’s Transformers, didn’t even feature the title of the damn movie. Audiences saw clips of a birthday party from some dude’s camcorder, the Statue of Liberty’s head crashing into the middle of Manhattan, and the release date (1-18-08). The Internet wasn’t yet a place where you could Google answers to this sort of thing; it broke a lot of brains and went viral before you even called anything viral.
“We were still shooting the movie when Transformers came out over the Fourth of July,” Reeves remembers. “So my girlfriend and I went to the [theatre] and we said, ‘Can you let us go in? Because actually there’s a trailer for something that I’m doing.’ And then we went in there and watched the audience respond. It was really cool. But that was so scary for me because we were so early in making the movie. We’re going like, ‘Oh my God, everyone is waiting to see what it is, and we’re still making this movie!’ ”
Fast-forward nearly two decades and—not to criminally breeze past his revered Planet of the Apes trilogy—Reeves has the keys to Gotham. In 2022, he debuted The Batman, which starred Robert Pattinson as the Caped Crusader. And Mr. Wayne’s notoriously hard-to-please fans...really...loved it? Pattinson flashed Batman’s detective chops, Zoë Kravitz shined as a wonderfully sly Catwoman, and Paul Dano delivered a QAnon Riddler who was downright chilling. In fact, the approval rating for Reeves’s Nirvana-coded Batman universe is so damn high that one of its characters—Colin Farrell’s Oz Cobb, aka the Penguin—is about to enjoy the small-screen treatment. Spoiler: Batman loyalists will love it, too. Its many triumphs include Farrell’s unhinged, Batman-fucked-with-Tony Soprano performance and more time in Reeves’s Gotham, which turns out to be far more intertwined with our world than you’d ever think.
In advance of The Penguin’s premiere on Max, Reeves opened up about his Spielbergian origins, his inspiration for the upcoming Batman Part II, and what the hell possesses Colin Farrell when he becomes Oz Cobb.
This interview, presented in Reeves’s own words, has been edited and condensed for clarity.
When I was a kid, I made 8mm movies, like Spielberg. When I was thirteen or fourteen, I actually met J.J. Abrams because we were in an 8mm film festival—we became friends through that. And then we showed our films at a new art theatre in Los Angeles. And Spielberg, who had that experience as a kid, was like, “I need to see these movies.” So they gave the program to him and he watched it. I heard back from his assistant at that time. She said, “He really enjoyed seeing the films. Thanks.” She called again six months later and said, “We just found all of these 8mm films. Because they’ve been in a hot basement for all this time, they need to be repaired. [Spielberg asked,] ‘Can you get them repaired?’ And I was like, ‘Who’s going to do that?’ He goes, ‘Those kids.’
So the war movie that they’re making in The Fabelmans, that’s Escape to Nowhere. That’s one of the films that we re-spliced together for him. We’re just going, “These are Steven Spielberg’s 8mm films!” And we were these kids. It was mind-blowing.
I was born in ’66. I grew up in a period of American film that really was inspiring. There were a lot of American directors who took other genres and subverted them. Chinatown is really a subversion of a noir. It’s funny, because those movies tremendously influenced me—but I don’t think I ever thought that I would be a genre filmmaker. I started in the vein of thinking that I wanted to be someone like Hal Ashby and make these kinds of sad comedies. My first film [The Pallbearer] didn’t light the world on fire. But it was very personal. When you spend your entire youth as a filmmaker, it’s like a bunch of kids who are getting together and they make their first album. If they’re twenty-five, it really took twenty-five years to make. I spent the first twenty-five years of my life making that first movie, and then that didn’t work. I started having opportunities where I was like, “What would it be if I tried to find a personal way into genre filmmaking?” And Cloverfield was one of those movies where it was like, “Okay, I need this to be about my anxiety. What would I do?”
The intense division that there is right now. On the one hand, you say it’s a thing going on in the United States—and obviously Gotham is an American city—but really it’s worldwide. There’s just tremendous division, the way that the world gets its information, its news. Everybody is in their own silo. That sense of the environment of today, where it’s just very easy for people to be completely separate and at complete odds—that’s definitely one of the things that we’re looking at in Gotham. Some of that is just the way that society is, but some of that is intentional—and to the degree that that’s intentional, and how that fits into the larger picture of what the motivations behind that might be, that’s one of the things that we’re exploring as well.
I always said, we’re going to continue [the Penguin’s] story. Initially, the idea was to continue it in the next film. And then when we were talking about doing shows, I was talking to [The Batman producer] Dylan Clark and [HBO heads] Casey Bloys and Sarah Aubrey. Casey said, “Look, I just want to say, I hope you’re not going to save the marquee characters for just the movies. This is HBO.” And I was like, “Okay, let me tell you what this kind of Scarface-esque story is.” It isn’t his origin story. It’s sort of like Batman’s story—the way that I did it—because there’d been so many origin tales. It’s the early days; it’s the origins of all of the rogues’ gallery characters. Because in the comics, those characters make themselves really in reaction to the arrival of this presence, this masked vigilante. So this is almost like a gangster movie. The idea was to see Oz reach for power in this moment.
Colin is a force of nature. He’s just an incredible actor. And the way [designer] Mike Marino transformed him, that unleashed him. My experience with him in the movie and the show is that I feel like that’s another person. It’s uncanny. There’s something incredible going on. The idea was that then we found [showrunner] Lauren [LeFranc], and we started talking about doing this character study—and to talk about that rise and the obstacles of that. And she came in and pitched the story for the pilot, which I loved. It was so illuminating to Oz’s vulnerabilities.
It’s important to me that all of these characters are doing what they’re doing out of personal motivation. I love the comics, but sometimes there’s an oversimplification. One of the things that I thought that we could do in the movie, and then what we did in the series with Lauren, was to make sure that we were looking into something that felt grounded and real in psychology. Obviously, that’s what Riddler is doing. He thinks he’s doing the right thing. In fact, he’s inspired by this vigilante.
Lauren really was the one in the series who came up with that particular take as it related to Oz. All of it really stems from this idea that his ego is such that he desperately wants to be revered. He desperately wants love. And so that sense of wanting the neighbourhood to revere you is to fill that void of never getting enough love....That’s the idea we’re trying to explore in Batman, too. There’s the simplistic version where he sees himself trying to save the city. But what is it he’s coping with psychologically? What happened to him? It’s funny, as Mattson {Tomlin] and I are finishing writing the second movie, the thing that I always think about is how Batman is not just trying to do something for the greater good. It’s the only way he can make sense of his own life. In a way, it’s saving him.
He’s more of a spectre in the city. I really wanted what we did in the first movie, and what we’re doing in the second movie, to be focused on Batman’s arc. A lot of the other movies, once they do their sort of origin tale—which, of course, is Batman and Bruce’s—then they almost pass the baton over to the rogues’ gallery in such a way that their story actually is the story. But I really want this to continue to be a Batman point-of-view series of movies. So one of the things that was really exciting about the opportunity to do a show was to let it really focus on that rogues’ gallery character and change points of view. The whole movie is done very deliberately from Batman and Bruce’s point of view. The only scenes that aren’t from his point of view are from Riddler’s point of view. And that was done to make you think for a moment: Wait, is that Batman’s or Riddler’s point of view? This was like: What if we could just go down that alley and follow Oz in the wake of what happened in the movie?
I was very conscious about wanting to make the Gotham of The Batman a Gotham that was our world. Even though it’s a fictitious city, the idea was that it would be our Gotham. The interesting thing is: I had been approached before Batman and before Planet of the Apes about other franchises, and I couldn’t do them. I turned them down because I was like, “I don’t know what the way is.” I was really fortunate with Apes and with Batman that those two franchises, I can do something where I can connect personally. And then I’m not handcuffed anymore. I can find a path.
As a producer, I make sure that I’m working with people who have that same kind of personal connection to their work so that it isn’t just the IP. That’s not any judgment. For me, that’s survival....That’s what movies are, right? You go to a movie to have this empathic experience where filmmakers and actors put you in the shoes of people who you are not for a period of time. Then you go and experience it through them in this transportive way. To me, that is the ultimate goal. That's what’s exciting to me about movies.
I just love movies so much. Getting that bug as a kid, expressing myself, and having a place to tell stories, it was really an escape from the craziness of growing up, my family, all this kind of stuff. I just hope that that tradition continues. When I was growing up, movies were so important. And now we have to fight to make sure that movies and streaming content—whatever we want to call it, shows—can connect to people so that the next generation can be just as inspired to tell stories. I just hope that that happens, because I’m excited to see what stories younger people have. I want them to tell it with passion.
Originally published on Esquire US
Colin Farrell was so transformative as the Penguin—yes, that's Colin Farrell under all those prosthetics, if you can believe it—that the actor earned The Batman villain his own spin-off series. Premiering on HBO this fall, The Penguin will showcase the return of nightclub owner Oswald Cobblepot as he seeks to claim Gotham's criminal empire for himself.
To promote the series, HBO is going all out for The Penguin ahead of the show's San Diego Comic-Con panel. The Batman director Matt Reeves, Farrell, and showrunner Lauren LeFranc (Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) are set to unveil a new trailer—alongside a fan event at a recreation of Penguin's Iceberg Lounge. Hopefully, Reeves will also share a bit about the road ahead for The Batman Part II, as well as his vision for the Caped Crusader's franchise moving forward. For everything we know so far about The Penguin, continue reading below.
Following the destruction of Gotham City at the end of The Batman film, the streets remain flooded. However, all that water is perfect for the Penguin. According to Sarah Aubrey, the head of original content at HBO, "The goal of this is to show what Oz’s life is like and that’s very much in the streets of Gotham...As a hustler and a strategist with his own ambitions."
The series stars Cristin Milioti (Palm Springs) as Sofia Falcone, the daughter of recently deceased Gotham kingpin Carmine Falcone (John Turturro). Michael Kelly (Special Ops; Lioness) stars as Falcone underboss Johnny Vitti, and Clancy Brown (John Wick: Chapter 4) appears as gangster Salvatore Maroni. Craig Zobel (Mare of Easttown) directs the first three episodes of the eight-episode series.
No. The Penguin directly follows Reeves's The Batman (2022) starring Robert Pattinson and Zoë Kravitz. Elements of the series will also tie in to the sequel film, The Batman Part II, set for release in 2026. The Penguin has no connection to James Gunn's rebooted DC Universe (DCU). Neither does The Batman or The Batman Part II.
Gunn has his own plans for Batman in the near future, with a film titled The Brave and The Bold, directed by The Flash's Andy Muschietti. Reeves' Batman stories will continue on in their own universe labelled "DC Elseworlds," along with any other DC Comics project not within the official DCU canon. And what about Todd Philips's Joker movies with Joaquin Phoenix? That's a whole different universe as well. Are you with me so far? Because there's more. Reeves is also developing an Arkham Asylum series that Deadline reports is actually included in the new DCU. As Gunn explained on Threads, "He'll be producing stories both within his The Batman universe and within the DCU." Got it!
The Penguin will premiere on HBO and stream on Max this September. HBO has yet to reveal the official release date, though The Penguin's Comic-Con panel will likely reveal the premiere date. If not, at least you might catch a ride in the Penguin's "iconic Purple Maserati." I remember when the Penguin cruised around Gotham in a big yellow duck, but it seems as if times have changed. Maybe we'll at least see some penguins with fireworks attached to their backs.
Originally Published on Esquire US
Lords and ladies of the court, it’s time to once again assemble in the throne room and bend the knee to the King of Television, Cutter of Cords, and First Commander of the Screen: House of the Dragon. The series returns for season 2, ushering in the much-anticipated next chapter of HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel. But before the first episode airs, there’s just one little issue to address: Who are all these people again?
For audiences preparing for more dragon fights and political backstabbings, nearly two long years have passed between seasons 1 and 2. But for the characters onscreen, it’s only been a few hours. When you hit play on House of the Dragon once again, the producers aren’t going to line everyone up to remind you of their names and who they’re related to! Even if they did, we would still have enough Rhaenyras, Rhaenys, Rhaenas, and Aegons to drive us all into the dragon pits. Luckily for you, dear reader, I’ve already done the work. If you ever feel lost during the season, check back here for a detailed guide to who’s who in Westeros.
Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) is arguably our main character. The daughter of the late King Viserys Targaryen, Rhaenyra was the rightful heir to the throne. However, when her father passed away in the middle of the night, his council conspired against her and plotted to give the crown to her young stepbrother, Aegon II. Now residing in Dragonstone, Rhaenyra assembles her allies to retake the Iron Throne. Her forces include her uncle-husband Daemon, her cousin Rhaenys and her husband Corlys Velaryon, and her five children: Jacaerys, Lucerys (who was recently murdered), Joffrey, Viserys, and Aegon III.
Alicent (Olivia Cooke) and Rhaenyra were childhood friends in King’s Landing. Everything changed between them when she wed Rhaenyra’s much-older father, King Viserys, and essentially became her best friend’s stepmother. Following Viserys’s death and Alicent’s son Aegon II ascending to the throne, the Queen Dowager now attempts to stop wanton violence from erupting between her side of the family and Rhaenyra’s.
Rhaenyra’s husband and her uncle, Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) is a fierce warrior who resents his older brother Viserys for bypassing him to name Rhaenyra heir to the throne. For whatever reason, he remained drawn to the princess romantically. It’s gross to marry your niece, of course, but Game of Thrones fans are used to this sort of thing with the Targaryens. The couple had two children together, named Viserys II (after her father) and Aegon III (yes, yet another Aegon). He also had twin girls with his former wife, the late Laena Valeryon, named Rhaena and Baela Targaryen. He rides the dragon Caraxes and wields a powerful sword named “Dark Sister” that used to belong to the great Aegon the Conqueror’s sister-wife.
Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney) is the current King on the Iron Throne. He is Alicent Hightower and Visyers Targaryen’s firstborn son, Rhaenyra’s younger stepbrother, and husband to his sister-wife Queen Helaena. Together, they have three young children of their own: Jaehaerys, Jaehaera, and Maelor. Aegon II rides the dragon Sunfyre.
Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) is King Aegon II’s young brother and the second-born son of Alicent Hightower and Viserys Targaryen. Back in season 1, he lost his left eye in a childhood fight with Lucerys Velaryon. In the season finale, he drew first blood in the war and sought revenge by murdering Lucerys at Storm’s End. Aemond rides Vhagar, the oldest and most fearsome dragon in Westeros.
Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) is the Hand of the King, Queen Alicent’s father, and grandfather to King Aegon II, Halaena, and Prince Aemond. He was the primary driver in season 1 in marrying his daughter to King Viserys, and a central figure in the coup to place his grandson on the throne. Now he continues to mold politics and plan for war as the king’s right-hand man and trusted advisor.
Known as the “Queen Who Never Was,” Rhaenys (Eve Best) was famously passed over in the line of succession when a council at Harrenhal voted her first cousin Viserys to become the king instead. She is married to Corlys Velaryon, with whom she had two children—the believed-to-be-dead Laenor (Rhaenyra’s former husband) and the late Laena (Daemon’s former wife). She currently serves on Rhaenyra’s Black Council at Dragonstone.
The Lord of Driftmark and one of the wealthiest men in Westeros, Corlys Velaryon (Stege Toussaint)—aka “the Sea Snake”—is the head of House Velaryon and naval commander of the royal fleet. Before King Aegon II’s ascension, he served on King Viserys’s council as the Master of Ships. Toward the end of the first season, he was attacked by pirates in the Stepstones. Now he and his wife Rhaenys Targaryen serve by Rhaenyra’s side at Dragonstone.
Rhaenyra’s first-born son, Jacaerys (Harry Collett), was secretly fathered by Ser Harwin Strong (before the knight burned to death in Harrenhal). He believes that his father is Leonor Velaryon, though the whispering world knows largely of his mother’s tryst. After King Aegon II ascended the throne, Jacaerys flew north to Winterfell on his dragon Vermax in search of allies. He is betrothed to his cousin Rhaena. When he returns to Dragonstone, he’ll likely seek revenge against Aemond for the murder of his younger brother, Lucerys.
Originally published on Esquire US
This story contains spoilers for the season finale of The Last of Us but not the video game, The Last of Us Part II. You're safe. (For now.)
Grizzled fans of The Last of Us, we have some big news. Season 2 of the post-apocalyptic series will reportedly continue to follow the plot of the game closely, which will have massive ramifications for those who know exactly what goes down between Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) in the second installment. "If that does take place in the show," Ramsey told Esquire in our cover story, "I don’t know that I’m emotionally ready for it."
In the first season of the HBO series, the unlikely duo of Joel and Ellie set out on a cross-country trip to find a cure for a deadly fungal infection that turns victims into zombies. (We're simplifying, we know.) It proved to be a smash hit—even setting viewership records during its 2023 airing. The series also managed to keep fans of its source material, 2013's The Last of Us video game, relatively happy with its faithful retelling of its dark, emotional story.
According to our 2023 interview with Pascal, the adaptation will remain true to the game in season 2 "like entirely, I think." The actor added in Esquire's accompanying "Explain This" video that, "It wouldn’t make sense to follow the first game so faithfully only to stray severely from the path. Now, more recently, on the red carpet at Sundance Film Festival for the premiere of his new film, Freaky Tales, Pascal told Deadline that the showrunners are, "always going to find ways to build on the incredible source material that they have, and surprise us with how they can use that material in a different format like a television show." Still, the leading star maintained that he, "wouldn’t want to spoil it for anybody, and the truth is, I don’t actually have all of the information as of yet."
For those looking to dive deeper, both The Last of Us Part I and The Last of Us Part II are available to play on PlayStation. The Last of Us Part II also just received an official remaster ahead of season 2, which is out on January 19. "I tried to play the game but I was really shit at [using] the controller," Pascal revealed to Esquire. "It looks like a lot of f**cking fun, but I was so bad at it."
According to HBO chief Casey Bloys, the network isn't eyeing a release for season 2 until 2025. Still, there's a lot to look forward to between now and then. Check out everything we know about The Last of Us season 2 below.
Yes. HBO has officially locked in the actors for season 2's most important players: Abby, Jesse, and Dina. To start us off, Kaitlyn Dever (Dopesick) is officially joining the cast as Abby—AKA, the most influential member of The Last of Us Part II's insane story twists. Though we won't spoil anything here, just know that fans of the video game who are aware of what lies ahead have been eagerly awaiting this announcement. We'll just leave you with a short teaser from HBO that describes Abby as, "a skilled soldier whose black-and-white view of the world is challenged as she seeks vengeance for those she loved."
According to Deadline, Dever emerged as the frontrunner following the end of the SAG-AFTRA strike back in November. "Our casting process for season 2 has been identical to season 1: we look for world-class actors who embody the souls of the characters in the source material," co-creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann said in an official statement. "Nothing matters more than talent, and we’re thrilled to have an acclaimed performer like Kaitlyn join Pedro, Bella and the rest of our family."
But that's not all. The Last of Us has also cast two other major players for season 2. Young Mazino (Beef) was announced as Jesse, while Isabela Merced (Madame Web) will play Dina. Jesse is a selfless member of the duo's new community, according to HBO, while fans of The Last of Us Part II will recognise Dina as Ellie's eventual love interest. Merced also recently starred alongside Dever in the Shakespearean film Rosaline back in 2022. Speaking about casting Mazino, the Last of Us creators stated that he is "one of those rare actors who is immediately undeniable the moment you see him."
Of course, The Last of Us season 2, like season 1, will have a clear roadmap to follow: 2020's divisive The Last of Us Part II. The sequel has even more material to cover than the first season—which compiled all of the events of the first game into its nine episodes. "This should be fairly obvious to anyone by now, but I don’t fear killing characters,” Mazin revealed to Esquire. “But the important thing to note is that neither Neil nor I feel constrained by the source material."
Showrunners Mazin and Druckmann hope that the remainder of the show will have something for anyone watching—from newcomers to devoted fans of the video game series. If you need reassurance that the HBO series will pull off any changes to the game, just look at episode 3's story of Bill and Frank, or even the flashback scenes of Ellie and Ramsey from episode 7. "We will present things, but it will be different," Mazin told Variety. "Sometimes it will be different radically, and sometimes it will be barely different at all. But it's going to be different, and it will be its own thing. It won't be exactly like the game. It will be the show that Neil and I want to make."
Pascal and Ramsey will also be back in Vancouver, according to Deadline, where a majority of the second season will be filmed. Though The Last of Us takes place in the U.S., much of the first season was actually filmed in Calgary, Alberta. For fans of the series, they're already well aware that the duo's time in the Pacific Northwest makes for a majority of the story to come.
Well, even though the series plans to follow the plot of The Last of Us Part 2 "exactly" there's a big question about whether or not the show will end after just two or three seasons. What happens when HBO runs out of material? Will Mazin and Druckmann start dreaming up new plot points to finish the TV series like Game of Thrones? It's a tough choice, especially since creator Druckmann and his video game company, Naughty Dog, are also busy with the next installment in the The Last of Us video game franchise.
"Our plan is to do it not just for one more season. We should be around for a while," Mazin told a panel in Las Vegas, according to Deadline. Earlier, he also told IndieWire that, "Even though we were greenlit for a season of television, Neil and I felt like we can’t just make a season of television without considering what would come after. There is more The Last of Us to come. And I think the balance is not always just about within an episode or even episode to episode but season a season." That includes, potentially, original stories in other cities told beyond the material from the game. We could be looking at a whole world of Last of Us stories, and not just material adapted from two video games.
That's all we'll say about that! We don't want to accidentally reveal the shocking events that occur in The Last of Us Part II. In the coming months, Esquire will break down even more about how the HBO series will adapt the franchise's brutal second entry. For now? Just enjoy the good news: clickers will be sniffing you out well into 2025.
Originally published on Esquire US
Adaptation of a book can be a herculean task. And none more daunting than Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem. As the first instalment of a trilogy, Liu's Three-Body, it will take a deft hand to adapt it to a different medium. Our trepidations are allayed when news broke that David Benioff and DB Weiss—who were behind HBO's Game of Thrones—will handle Three-Body. (Hopefully, it won't falter like GoT's final season but that's another story.)
Joined by Alexander Woo, who co-created The Terror, Benioff and Weiss will use the suicides in the scientific community as a jumping point for 3 Body Problem. At least, according to the full-length trailer that just dropped (a teaser was shown at last year's Tudum event). With Liu's blessings, 3 Body Problem will have narrative tweaks to the adaptation. Stuff like chronological shifts and characters and the setting being in the present-day UK. The trailer has Radiohead's "Everything in its Place" playing hauntingly in the background. Benedict Wong, plays the detective assigned to the case. As the trailer progresses, he recruits a scientist, Auggie Salazar (played by Eiza González), to assist him.
But this premise of weird deaths soon explodes into something far-reaching. And something beyond the ken of human experience as we stand at the precipice of an extraterrestrial invasion. Netflix commissioned eight episodes of 3 Body Problem. With an average of USD25 million spent on each episode, this series will be Netflix's most expensive production to date. It will also be the second-most expensive behind Amazon's The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
3 Body Problem premieres March 21 2024 on Netflix.
For a filmmaker who purports to be foremost interested in realism, John Wilson has a knack for absurdity. In Friday night's “How to Track Your Package,” the superlative series finale of Wilson's show, a missing parcel first sends our hero to a shipping center. And when that fails, to a psychic. If you’ve been watching How To for the past few years, this will hardly strike you as an unusual detour. Wilson is the sort of guide who will turn the most straightforward task—say, appreciating wine—into an existential odyssey.
Throughout its three-season run, How To's unpredictability has been one of its greatest joys. (Editor's note: there may be some spoilers ahead.) In the process of investigating how to cover your furniture, Wilson discovered an effort towards foreskin restoration. Also, during an episode on memory, he chanced upon a man consumed with the Mandela effect at the grocery store. His camera is unparalleled at capturing small wonders. Be it a woman in the act of bagging a pigeon or a man dancing atop a moving subway train. Ultimately, How To can be understood as a detective show dressed up as a Kafkaesque tutorial. With Wilson, above all, searching for anything that will make him (and us) say, "Wow." And while the show’s wows often are born from little moments of unexpected comedy, more times than not they naturally lead Wilson back to the most profound subjects.
Like, uh, you know, mortality. How To has, from the start, had the tendency to encounter death in unexpected places—at MTV! Spring Break, for instance, or during Wilson’s quest to find a parking spot—probably as a result of Wilson’s worldview. “Thinking about mortality and grief is baked into the way I perceive things in daily life,” Wilson told me in a Zoom interview. This was following the finale’s premiere at Rockaway Film Festival last weekend. “I tend to take things to their logical extremes, an mortality is the ultimate question with no answer—and that's what I try to orient the show around.”
Fittingly, the finale gets to The End quite quickly. In a consultation about Wilson’s missing package, the psychic pulls the “death card". Then tells him that he has “commitment issues… a lot of commitment issues.” (It's a trait Wilson himself has mentioned in past episodes.) The psychic’s reading turns out to be portentous. A series of dada transitions brings Wilson to Arizona’s Organ Stop Pizza, home of the "largest theatre pipe organ ever created." There, Wilson meets a member of Alcor, a leading cryonics organisation.
How To loves nothing more than a gathering of niche obsessives. And as fate (or shrewd planning on the show's part) would have it, Wilson arrives in Arizona just as Alcor is about to have its 50th anniversary party. Wilson attends the celebration, where he surveys the various guests on why they want to be frozen. There is excitement for the future (“If you see the future as good, wouldn’t you want to be part of it?”), sci-fi fantasising (imagine your head on “a wardrobe of bodies”), and flat-out denial (''I don’t accept that,” one woman says of her father’s death). Many of the people Wilson interviews come off as comically eccentric—but the series, taken in full, gives them context. People, be they Avatar superfans or vacuum enthusiasts, come together and devote themselves to something for connection in the here and now. Also, perhaps, to cope with the ephemerality of existence.
And while Wilson wouldn’t himself pay to have his body and/or head frozen for eternity, he said that he connected with the impulse. The inclination towards preservation, after all, was the seed of his show. Long before he started making How To, Wilson felt compelled to use his video camera to document his surroundings. “Living in New York for so long, you become used to the tragedy of your favourite thing disappearing,” he said. “I just wanted to get ahead of that and preserve as much as I possibly could visually from my own perspective.”
In the grand scheme of things, Wilson’s archive is a narrow record. But more than truly preserving a period in time, these three seasons of How To are testament to how much there always is to marvel at so long as you have your eyes and ears open. After all, when Wilson first started the show, he worried that the magic moments he was capturing weren’t replicable. That he was catching lightning—or collapsed scaffolding, as it were—in a barrel. But by the show’s third season, he came to trust the process. That if he interviewed enough people and his team spent enough time on the street, they’d find gold. “Once we figured it out, it was just a numbers game,” Wilson said. Along the way, he found that actually, “it's much more common that people have a shocking history or obsession than that they're normal in any kind of traditional definition.”
So, near the end of the finale, when the Alcor member Wilson met at Organ Stop Pizza reveals that, as an adolescent, he castrated himself and “cut some nerves in the penis” to deal with unwanted sex drive, Wilson hopes viewers will empathise rather than gawk. “I feel like if you have a long enough conversation with anyone something like this might surface,” he said. “There are extremes in everyone's lives, and that's why the show speaks to a lot of people—because it's a bit of a mirror to their own eccentricities.”
Wilson, though, ever toeing the line between mischievous and sincere, said that he also hopes that that final interview will help fans of the show cope with How To concluding its run. “So much of the show is about the denial of satisfaction in the city because of whatever strange roadblock to getting what you want here,” Wilson said. “And especially with the show ending, that interview about castration, I felt like I wanted to give the viewers the tools to deal with [the impossibility of true satisfaction] in a way.”
Meaning?
“I never personally felt the urge to castrate myself, but if people are having a really hard time dealing with the end of the show, I gave them the tools to do it.”
Originally published at Esquire US
Procrastinators, boss-havers, degenerate undergraduates, lend me your ears. Have you ever added extra spaces on an essay to meet a minimum page requirement? Sneakily increased the font size on periods to pad your page count? Claimed to be working toward a deadline even if you were most clearly not?
If this sounds like you, then come sit by George R.R. Martin. Martin, who you may remember, is suffering from the most public case of writer’s block in human history. He’s been writing The Winds of Winter, the highly-anticipated penultimate volume in his Game of Thrones series, since at least 2010—and lately, as if to make up for over a decade of missed deadlines, he’s speaking out on how the book is worth the wait (funny, I think I told my British Lit professor the same thing when I needed an extension). Last year, in a livestream arranged by his publisher, Martin claimed that The Winds of Winter is "about three-quarters of the way done," although he's hesitant to provide a release date for fear of disappointing his readers. He also revealed that this will be the longest Game of Thrones title yet, calling it "a monstrous book as big as a dragon."
But can we believe Martin? After all, we've been deceived before, and the guy sure doesn't like to be reminded of missed deadlines. "I've given up making predictions, because people press me and press me: 'When is it going to be done?'" Martin said. "And I make what I think is the best case estimate, and then stuff happens. Then everybody gets mad that I 'lied.' I've never lied about these predictions. They're the best I can make, but I guess I overestimate my ability to get stuff done, and I underestimate the amount of interruptions and other projects, other demands that will distract me."
Now, reader, it's my duty to inform you of Martin's latest non-writing endeavour: buying a ticket to Barbie. It could be the one instance of procrastination I can overlook. On Monday morning, Martin posted a pinkified image of himself to social media, with the caption, "I went to see Barbie with my lovely wife; she said pink is my colour. #imkenough" She's right, I have to admit, especially with Martin's pink bow and fuzzy flamingo scarf! Martin seemed positively giddy. At the screening, did Martin's fellow theatre goers shout, "Hi George!" at him? Or did they just heckle and ask for a Winds of Winter update? (I would've done both.)
I went to see Barbie with my lovely wife; she said pink is my color. #imkenough pic.twitter.com/4E0LJMQpmC
— George RR Martin (@GRRMspeaking) July 31, 2023
About all of this. Just how did Martin dig himself into this hole? Allow me to take you back in time, dear reader, on a journey through the ghosts of deadlines past. Our story begins in 2010, when Martin gleefully announced on his blog that four chapters of The Winds of Winter were complete. Then, in 2011, the first rumbles of trouble: in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, he declined to give a timeline on when fans could expect the sixth book, saying, “There’s an element of fans who don’t seem to realize I’m making estimates. I’ve repeatedly been guilty of an excess of optimism.” How young we were in 2011! How naive!
In 2012, speaking with the Spanish blog Adria’s News, Martin claimed that The Winds of Winter would arrive in 2014, though he did couch that promise in, “I am really bad for predictions” (just wait, this is going to become a theme). Then, after 2014 came and went with no Winds of Winter, Martin’s publisher poured cold water over fans’ heads. “I have no information on likely delivery,” Jane Johnson of HarperCollins told The Guardian. “These are increasingly complex books and require immense amounts of concentration to write. Fans really ought to appreciate that the length of these monsters is equivalent to two or three novels by other writers.” You hear that, everyone? We should just be grateful and stop holding the guy to his word.
In March 2015, Martin told Access, “I still have a lot of pages to write, but I also have a lot of pages that are already written.” Spoken like a true college student. Then, a month later, he told Entertainment Weekly that he hoped to release the book in spring 2016 to coincide with the sixth season of HBO’s Game of Thrones, saying, “Maybe I’m being overly optimistic about how quickly I can finish. But I cancelled two convention appearances, I’m turning down a lot more interviews—anything I can do to clear my decks and get this done.” But no sooner did 2016 arrive than he said in January of that year, “I am not going to set another deadline for myself to trip over. The deadlines just stress me out.” I’m going to try that one on my editor next time. Fans were alarmed in September 2016 when Amazon France listed The Winds of Winter with a March 2017 release date, but according to HarperCollins, it was a big ol’ nothingburger.
Cut to January 2017, when Martin insisted that this was definitely going to be his year: “I think it will be out this year. (But hey, I thought the same thing last year),” he wrote on his blog. But then, he kept toying with fans, writing, “I am still working on it, I am still months away (how many? good question), I still have good days and bad days, and that's all I care to say… I do think you will have a Westeros book from me in 2018... and who knows, maybe two. A boy can dream…” How about you finish one book, sir, and then we’ll talk about two?
In June 2018, it was announced that HBO had ordered a pilot for the first of many Game of Thrones spin-offs, and that Martin was co-writing the pilot. Fans eagerly awaiting his next book were understandably concerned, so he took to his trusty blog to reassure them: “Work on Winds of Winter continues, and remains my top priority,” Martin wrote. “It is ridiculous to think otherwise.” Ridiculous!
When the virus forced everyone into isolation in 2020, Martin was finally stranded at home with nothing to do but write. This was the perverted fulfillment of fans' wishes. “If nothing else, the enforced isolation has helped me write,” he commented on his blog. “I am spending long hours every day on The Winds of Winter, and making steady progress. I finished a new chapter yesterday, another one three days ago, another one the previous week. But no, this does not mean that the book will be finished tomorrow or published next week. It’s going to be a huge book, and I still have a long way to go.”
Martin wasn’t kidding when he said he had a long way to go. In June 2021, he seemed downright incensed at the thought of being held accountable to all his missed deadlines, writing on his blog, "I will make no predictions on when I will finish. Every time I do, assholes on the internet take that as a 'promise', and then wait eagerly to crucify me when I miss the deadline. All I will say is that I am hopeful.”
About those assholes on the internet (could he talking about me?)—Martin sure seems sick of hearing from them. In an interview with IGN, he spoke out about the pressure he faces from the Thrones fandom, saying, "I get that Winds of Winter, the sixth book, is late. I could get a hundred good comments, but there are still a few fans who are going to remind me on my blog; I say, 'Happy Thanksgiving' and they say, 'Never mind Happy Thanksgiving, where's the book?' I love the fans, although I do think Twitter and the internet and social media has brought out a viciousness I never saw in the old days. Love and hate are very close, particularly with something like comic books or any established franchises." If you can't take the heat, sir, why not just finish the book?
Martin appears to have a new tactic: to divert attention from the book's tardiness, he teases readers with suggestions about its content. The author discussed the differences between the book and the television series in a blog post. “An architect would be able to give a short, concise, simple answer to that, but I am much more of a gardener," he wrote. "My stories grow and evolve and change as I write them. I generally know where I am going, sure… the final destinations, the big set pieces, they have been my head for years… for decades, in the case of A SONG OF ICE & FIRE. There are lots of devils in the details, though, and sometimes the ground changes under my feet as the words pour forth.”
It also sounds like The Winds of Winter and A Song of Ice and Fire (the upcoming final volume in the series—I don't even want to talk about it) may have a different body count than the television series. “One thing I can say, in general enough terms that I will not be spoiling anything: not all of the characters who survived until the end of GAME OF THRONES will survive until the end of A SONG OF ICE & FIRE, and not all of the characters who died on GAME OF THRONES will die in A SONG OF ICE & FIRE," Martin continued. "(Some will, sure. Of course. Maybe most. But definitely not all) ((Of course, I could change my mind again next week, with the next chapter I write. That’s gardening)). And the ending? You will need to wait until I get there. Some things will be the same. A lot will not.”
This all brings us up to the present—where now, even animated characters are getting on Martin's case. In an episode of Stephen Colbert's Tooning Out the News, Martin appears as a guest of animated host Dr. Ike Bloom, who introduces the author as “a struggling writer—let me revise that, truly pathetic—who is having trouble meeting deadlines.” You took the words right out of my mouth, Ike! The segment quickly devolves into a good-natured roast when Bloom calls up James Patterson in the hope of getting Martin "some tips on how to be a successful author."
When Patterson asks for the lowdown, Martin reveals that he missed his deadline 11 years ago. "I've heard of writer's block; this is more like writer's constipation," Patterson jokes. Martin goes on to reveal that he’s written around 1,100 to 1,200 pages of the book so far, and has just “another 400, 500 pages” to go. Patterson suggests breaking The Winds of Winter into three separate books, saying, "Your problem is solved. You break down the 1,100 pages into three books, you submit them one per year—they'll be happy and suddenly you'll be ahead of schedule." As if Martin's readers would fall for that, after all these years of false starts, but it's a nice idea.
Are we certain all the missed deadlines were worth it for this incredibly lengthy, fantastic, nearly finished book? Even though it seems as though Martin's suffering would never end, we are still holding out hope. Hey, friend, have you heard of Procrastinators Anonymous? Maybe they can help. And as for the next and final book in the series, A Dream of Spring... I don't even want to talk about it.
Originally published on Esquire US
Killers of the Flower Moon took a while to be adapted. The rights to adapt David Grann's book started in 2016 but like any other project, the development of the film was halted due to the global pandemic. Still, the film was finally finished. It made its premiere at the 76th Cannes Film Festival on May 20, 2023 and received a nine-minute standing ovation.
While we have to wait a few months to watch it, Apple TV+ unveils the trailer of Killers of the Flower Moon today.
With stirring Native American pow wow chants spliced with dubstep ("Stadium Pow Wow" by The Halluci Nation née A Tribe Called Red), the trailer brings across the palpable tension of a community gripped with terror.
The American Western crime drama (that's a mouthful) is based on the real-life murders that plagued the Osage Nation. Set in the 1920s, the epic is directed and co-produced by Martin Scorsese and stars an ensemble cast that includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone and Jesse Plemons.
Given the subject matter, Scorsese involved the Osage Nation during the film's development. In a press release, Scorsese said, "We are thrilled to finally start production on Killers of the Flower Moon in Oklahoma. To be able to tell this story on the land where these events took place is incredibly important and critical to allowing us to portray an accurate depiction of the time and people. We're grateful to Apple, the Oklahoma Film and Music Office and The Osage Nation, especially all our Osage consultants and cultural advisors, as we prepare for this shoot."
In light of the current book bans and revisionisms in America, we are glad that someone made use of the medium to spotlight America's "hidden histories". (Another example was HBO's Watchmen which featured the Tulsa Race Massacre.)
America's history may not strike a chord with Singapore audiences but the cast and the dramatisation of a real-life event should be enough to get butts in seats.
Killers of the Flower Moon is tentatively slated to be in theatres on 6 October and later for online streaming on Apple TV+.
