Marc Malkin-Senior Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor While “The Bear” captures the grittiness and intensity of working in a restaurant kitchen, it doesn’t shy away from showcasing the dreamy stares of Jeremy Allen White and Ebon Moss-Bachrach. “They both have insane eyes,” Ayo Edebiri, who plays Sydney on the hit FX series, told me Wednesday at a tastemaker screening of Searchlight Pictures’ upcoming comedy “Theater Camp.” “Ebon once told me, ‘I could turn them on.’ And I’m like, ‘No, you can’t.’ And he was like, ‘I know how to face the light in a certain way that will turn them on’. I was like, ‘You literally sound insane,’ but then he turned them on in front of me. It was the craziest thing I had ever witnessed.”

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor When Shea Whigham signed on for “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One,” he was sure he’d learn that some of Tom Cruise’s death-defying stunt work involved “smoke and mirrors.” How wrong he was. “He does everything himself. He really does,” Whigham told me at the “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” premiere. Whigham had to get in on the action too – although nothing was as drastic as Cruise’s already iconic motorcycle drive off a mountain in Iceland. “I do all my own driving in it,” he said. “There’s no stunt driving. We went hard in Rome. We also chased Tom on foot a lot in Venice. I pulled muscles left and right. I’m still recovering.”

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor As if Pride Month couldn’t get any gayer, “And Just Like That” Season 2 and Kim Cattrall’s new Netflix series, “Glamorous,” are premiering on the same day, June 22. “Isn’t that incredible?” says Cattrall’s co-star, actor and musician Miss Benny. “That is the gay stuff that I love. I’m excited for our show. I’m excited for that show. I’m excited for the spectacle of it all.” In “Glamorous,” Miss Benny plays Marco, a gender-nonconforming wannabe influencer who lands a job working for a beauty mogul (Cattrall). Miss Benny says Cattrall signed on to “Glamorous” after watching a clip of them playing a “sexual, raunchy and queer” character on “American Horror Stories.” “That blows my mind because I did that whole part saying, ‘What if I do it with a little bit of Samantha?’” they say. “I mimic her portrayal of Samantha a lot in my campier work.”

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor Rose Byrne is getting ready to say goodbye to “Physical,” as the series ends with its upcoming third season. “It’s all very bittersweet,” she says on this week’s episode of the “Just for Variety” podcast. Byrne stars on the Apple TV+ show as Sheila Rubin, an aerobics entrepreneur in the 1980s whose business is booming just as her marriage is falling apart and she secretly suffers from an eating disorder. “It’s challenging,” Byrne said in depicting the illness on a dark comedy. “I did a lot of research. I spoke to people in recovery. I spoke to a wonderful young woman who worked in an ED recovery center who was every day with people in recovery and all of the behaviors.”

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone have boarded “Relighting Candles: The Tim Sullivan Story” as executive producers. The documentary short, co-directed by Zeberiah Newman (“Unexpected”) and Michiel Thomas (“Game Face”), is a portrait of West Hollywood candlemaker Tim Sullivan. It chronicles the 82-year-old Bronx native’s journey coming out as a gay man, how he got sober more than 40 years ago and his tradition of hiring homeless and newly sober people at his company, Timothy Jay Candles. McCarthy and Falcone tell me in a statement, “Once we heard the lovely story of Tim Sullivan and began to understand how many people he’s helped in his life through the making of beautiful candles, we realized these filmmakers were telling exactly the kind of story we want to help get out into the world.”

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor Bel Powley stars in the National Geographic series “A Small Light” as Miep Gies, the woman who helped hide Otto Frank and his family during WWII. During a reception for the show Thursday at the San Vicente Bungalows in West Hollywood, the actor recalled being on set when she first heard about Kanye West’s antisemitic comments in October 2022. “We were filming the show when all of the Kanye stuff was happening,” Powley told me. “I was obviously living in the world of the show, which has a lot of Nazi rhetoric because we’re making a show about the Nazi occupation in 1942, but then suddenly seeing and hearing that same rhetoric spoken now by a world-famous celebrity with huge influence was so freaky and unsettling and saddening.”

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor The new Max dating series “Swiping America,” from “We’re Here” creators Stephen Warren and Johnnie Ingram, follows a diverse group of New Yorkers who try dating in other cities throughout the U.S. “The beautiful thing about this show is we are the most inclusive, nonjudgmental dating show out there,” Warren told me Tuesday night at the show’s premiere at NeueHouse in Hollywood. “We have queer people, lesbians, we have trans, we have nonbinary. There are no judgments because love is love.” Calling the show a “rom-doc,” Ingram explained during his intro to the screening that “Swiping America” is not a competition show and “is not about manufactured drama.”

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor Eva Longoria jokes that she’s taking an extended vacation to get some rest after her whirlwind promotion of “Flamin’ Hot,” her feature film directorial debut. “I am going to sleep for about three months,” Longoria told me Thursday morning. “When I come up for air, I hopefully will know what I’m doing next.” Joking aside, she said, “I will tell you it’s been very difficult. I’ve been sent many scripts already. I’ve been reading so much, but there’s nothing so far that has sparked in me the intense passion that I had for telling this particular story. “I was asking my agent, ‘Do I have to feel this way about every story I want to direct? Because I haven’t felt it yet,'” Longoria continued. “He said that should be the bar.”

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor In Jennifer Coolidge’s Variety Actors on Actors conversation with Jeremy Allen White, she proposes that Tanya return to “The White Lotus” as a seagull, so she can poke out the eyes of her evil husband Greg (Jon Gries). Haley Lu Richardson, who played Tanya’s assistant, Portia, weighs in on killing off Greg during this week’s “Just for Variety” podcast. “Jon and I worked together in the first movie I ever did — when I was 17 — called ‘The Last Survivors,’” she recalls, adding, “I was the hero and he was the villain. I killed him at the end of the movie with a samurai sword.” She says she’d like to re-create that moment in Season 3 of “The White Lotus,” which takes place in Thailand. “Portia is somewhere in Asia with a samurai sword and kills Greg,” she says, laughing.

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor Amy Pascal will never forget the world premiere of the first “Spider-Man” movie in 2002. She was the head of Sony at the time, and was so worried that the film wouldn’t succeed she “spent the entire time in the ladies’ room crying,” Pascal recalled at the “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” premiere in Los Angeles. “I sure did,” she continued. “I was terrified. “How do you know? You never know!” But, she said, her fears disappeared on opening day: “It was one of the greatest days of my life.”

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor I’m on the phone with J. Harrison Ghee when they walk into their dressing room at the Shubert Theatre before Tuesday night’s performance of “Some Like It Hot.” It’s their first show since winning the Tony about 48 hours earlier, taking home the prize for leading actor in a musical for their work as Jerry/Daphne.  “Oh, my God,” Ghee says. “There are a lot of flowers here.” Then they sigh and choke up. “I can’t believe this,” says Ghee, who identifies as nonbinary. “Flowers from Billy Porter!” The card reads, “Welcome to the club, bitch.”

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor Jennifer Lawrence is ready to play the girl on fire again. The Oscar winner says she is open to returning to the “Hunger Games” franchise after she became a household name for her work as Katniss in the four movies. “Oh, my God – totally!” Lawrence told me Friday morning during a Zoom video interview while promoting her new coming-of-age comedy, “No Hard Feelings.” “If Katniss ever could ever come back into my life, 100 percent.” Looking off camera, she added, “My producing partner just clutched her heart.”

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor Leslie Grace has a very personal reason for deciding to become what she calls an “ambassador” for “Translators,” a new documentary short about bilingual Latino children in the U.S. who become translators for their Spanish-speaking parents. “I’m first generation Dominican American,” the “In the Heights” star tells me. “My grandmother relied on her kids — my mom and her siblings — and then her grandkids. It’s a very common thing when I see my grandmother that my sister or I or my cousins, we take turns sharing the mail and translating for her.” The doc, directed by Emmy winner Rudy Valdez, highlights several families in which the children help navigate their parents’ lives, from explaining bills that need to be paid to the tremendous worry of having to translate proper medical care for their siblings. “I’m really excited for people that haven’t had this experience to be able to witness it through the doc,” Grace says. “Also there may be some assumptions and misconceptions that you might have about someone who doesn’t speak a language or even speaks English with an accent.”

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor Laura Benanti has left Amazon’s upcoming TV adaptation of “Cruel Intentions.” The Tony-winner was set to appear in the recurring guest star role of Caroline’s (Sarah Catherine Hook) mother, Claudia. “Unfortunately due to a scheduling conflict, I’m no longer able to participate in ‘Cruel Intentions,’” Benanti told me Thursday afternoon. “I’m sure they’ll find a wonderful actress to play this role.” Benanti co-stars in the upcoming “No Hard Feelings,” the raunchy coming-of-age movie headlined by Jennifer Lawrence and Andrew Barth Feldman. She’s also currently sharing the stage with Matthew Broderick in an off-Broadway production of A.R. Gurney’s “Love Letters.”

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor Spotify has announced its plans for Cannes Lions, the world’s largest celebration of the advertising and creative communications industry. Running June 19-22, Spotify Beach will include masterclasses with appearances by Emma Chamberlain, “Call Her Daddy” host Alex Cooper and soccer star Cesc Fàbregas. Daily programming will also include sound bath meditation sessions, an immersive Songs of Summer soundscape, a Football Club Barcelona play zone, a coffee and juice bar and a custom sunglasses gifting station. The full calendar of events is below.

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor ‘Shucked’ co-composer Brandy Clark says the ultimate goal of the Tony-nominated musical is to provide audiences with pure joy. Mixed in is also a big serving of queer representation. “I always think it’s hard to hate something that you know and love, and it’s a lot easier to hate something that’s just an idea or something you’ve heard about that you should be scared of,” Clark told me during a phone conversation from the Drama Desk Awards in New York City, where she and co-composer Shane McAnally were presented with the award for outstanding music. “So I think if you walk out of ‘Shucked’ with any hate in your heart, I don’t know if I can help you. You’re probably a descendant of Hitler.”

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor “RuPaul’s Drag Race” Season 7 winner Violet Chachki will honored with the Cultural Icon Award at Tom of Finland Foundation’s 30th annual Tom’s Bar fundraiser. The drag artist, burlesque performer, model and singer will be presented with the award by Dita Von Teese. “Mean Girls” movie musical and “Looking” star Daniel Franzese emcees. The all-day festivities take place June 18 at The Avalon & Bardot Hollywood in Los Angeles. The theme for this year’s bash is “All roads lead to Tom.” “Tom’s Bar is a place where all corners of the LGBTQ+ community and its allies converge for a big party under one roof,” ToFF creative director Richard Villani said in a statement. “Leathermen, pups, kinksters and fetishists of all stripes are welcome to dance and party all day long.”

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor Jennifer Esposito remembers being asked to audition for “The Sopranos” more than once. She declined each time. “I chose to not go up for it when they would call me in because it was like, ‘I can’t relive this,’” Esposito recalls. “The only thing that used to make me crazy about the show when I did watch it was the character of Meadow because she was very nice. The girls I grew up around wanted to kill me, wanted to kill me every day. So it was PTSD.” Esposito grew up among organized crime on Staten Island. “Staten Island is the same Staten Island from when I left when I was 18 years old,” says the 50-year-old actor, whose credits span from television’s “Spin City” and “Blue Bloods” to the Oscar-winning “Crash.” “It’s still the same place. You need to understand that nothing leaves this island. It’s a very strange time warp of a place.”

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor Playing a man who gets entangled in a murder investigation because his wife (Kaley Cuoco) is obsessed with true crime, “Based on a True Story” kind of hits close to home for Chris Messina. When he was a kid, he and a friend actually may have actually discovered a crime scene. “I grew up in Northport, Long Island,” Messina told Variety at the Peacock series’ premiere Thursday at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood. “I grew up on Makamah Road, about a block from the Long Island Sound. A buddy and I walked to the Sound and – it was very ‘Stand By Me’ – we found a hand that washed up on the beach.” They immediately called the cops. “We had to report it,” Messina recalled. “I was pretending to be River Phoenix in ‘Stand By Me.’”

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor At Thursday’s Los Angeles premiere of “Based on a True Story,” I asked Kaley Cuoco what’s the closest she’s ever been to a crime — because she stars in the new Peacock series as a woman who ends up in the middle of a murder investigation because she is obsessed with true crime stories. Without missing a beat, Cuoco said, “Scandoval.” The “Big Bang Theory” star said she’s been a “Vanderpump Rules” fan since the first season. Like so many viewers, she was “shocked” when it was revealed that Tom Sandoval was cheating on his girlfriend of 10 years, Ariana Madix, with her best friend, Raquel Leviss.

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor Back in April, James Gunn told me what he was looking for in the new Man of Steel for “Superman: Legacy.” “The next Superman has to be someone who has all the humanity that Superman has, but he’s also an alien,” he said. “It’s gotta be somebody who has the kindness and the compassion that Superman has and be somebody who you want to give a hug.” He added, “We have some really great choices, which I’m excited about.” Could former “The Bold and the Beautiful” star Pierson Fodé be on Gunn’s list? I hear that the 31-year-old actor could be in the running for the coveted role. Sources tell me that Fodé sent in a self-tape, which included a montage of footage showing his very Clark Kent-like childhood on a farm in the small town of Moses Lake, Wash. I’m told Gunn liked what he saw.

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor Chanel and the Tribeca Festival’s annual Artist Award Program dinner will take place June 12 in New Yor City. Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, Paula Weinstein and Chanel host the festivities. Artists Ana Benaroya, Beverly Fishman, Christie Neptune, Lisa Lebofsky, Natia Lemay, Patricia Encarnacion, Renee Cox, Sheree Hovsepian, Shinique Smith, and Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz will honored. Each have been invited to contribute original artwork to be presented to the 2023 Festival filmmaker winners. “Tribeca and Chanel recognize the significance of representation and the undeniable impact women artists can have when their work and stories are in the spotlight,” Tribeca Festival co-founder and Tribeca Enterprises CEO Jane Rosenthal said in statement. “We are dedicated to celebrating creativity and culture, fostering diverse voices, and encouraging the development of a new generation of visionaries. Our eighteen-year partnership with Chanel underscores our joint commitment to honoring powerful storytelling, artistic excellence, and the spirit of artists supporting other artists. We invite audiences to join us in this celebration and discover the transformative power of women’s artistry, which reflects our reality and shapes our understanding of the world.”

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor You’d think CBS would have jumped at the chance to snag Carol Burnett’s “90 Years of Laughter + Love” birthday special. Not only did the comedy legend’s variety show run on the network for 11 seasons, but so did its 50th anniversary special in 2017. “We first went to CBS, but they passed,” Burnett told me at an FYC event for the birthday special. “I did my show with them and all my specials, so naturally we went to them.” Fortunately, NBC bought the special, and it went on to score an impressive 7.6 million viewers. It’s now favored to pick up an Emmy nomination. “NBC couldn’t have been greater,” she said. “They’ve been so supportive right from the get-go.”

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor As “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” finally hits theaters this weekend, the producers behind the trilogy have their attention set on the third installment, next year’s “Beyond the Spider-Verse.” However, that’s not the only web-slinging project that’s on their minds. Producer Amy Pascal says a Spider-Woman and live-action Miles Morales movie are in the works. “You’ll see all of it,” she told me Tuesday at the “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” premiere in Los Angeles. “It’s all happening.” Producer Avi Arad teased that moviegoers will see a “Spider-Woman” movie “sooner than you expect.”

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor “Euphoria” actor Jacob Elordi and Zachary Quinto star in “He Went That Way,” a film based on the wacky true story of a celebrity animal trainer (Quinto) and his TV chimp Spanky, who spent three days with a serial killer (Elordi) in 1964. While some press reports have described the film as a queer project, Quinto tells me we won’t be seeing him and Elordi steam up the screen: “I wouldn’t say it’s an overtly queer story, but I will say that there are undertones of both emotional and physical tension between these two characters.” The actors became close during filming. “We talked a lot about his desire to do theater,” Quinto recalls. “I was like, ‘Go do a play in London. Go do a play in New York. That’s where you really cut your teeth.’ I’m sure we’ll see him onstage at some point.”

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” star Ismael Cruz Córdova is opening up about the cast and crew’s mental health while shooting the Amazon Prime Video series. During an appearance on this week’s “Just for Variety” podcast, the actor tells me that an on-set therapist was on hand to offer help after the show received racist backlash against its inclusive and diverse casting. “You need support when this happens because the voices are so loud and they’re coming at you from so many places,” Córdova says. Córdova, who was shooting Season 2 in the U.K. when we spoke, says the therapist’s presence alone was beneficial. “I loved seeing her there, even if we didn’t speak,” he said. “I knew there was someone there seeing me completely. It wasn’t just as an actor.”

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor About an hour after Bravo released the ratings for the Season 10 finale of “Vanderpump Rules” on Tuesday, producers Lisa Vanderpump and Alex Baskin were in Hollywood campaigning for Emmy consideration at an FYC event. The finale scored big, ending on a series-high with a combined audience of 4.1 million viewers on Bravo, on-demand and the Peacock platform within three days of its May 17 airing.  No doubt interest in the show skyrocketed because of #Scandoval, the drama stemming from Tom Sandoval cheating on his girlfriend of a decade, Ariana Madix, with her best friend, Raquel Leviss.

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor Is there going be a musical episode of “Only Murders in the Building” in Season 3?! While it hasn’t been officially confirmed that Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez will be singing and dancing at some point, I recently got a tease from musical impresarios Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman. “We’ve worked on the next season of ‘Only Murders in the Building,’” Shaiman said. “We’re not allowed to say anything more than that, but you could probably do that math.” The third season also includes appearances by Meryl Streep, Paul Rudd and Jesse Williams.

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor Zooey Deschanel loves to cook. Her specialties include risotto and various French dishes she learned from visiting family overseas. Even so, her new Max food series, “What Am I Eating?,” is not about her life in the kitchen. “I didn’t want to do a show where it’s like, ‘I’m an actor – watch me cook!’” Deschanel told me Monday night at a dinner celebrating the “What Am I Eating?” premiere. “Nobody wants to see me do that.” Except maybe her boyfriend, “Property Brothers” star Jonathan Scott. “Whenever someone says something to me like, ‘How was your pandemic?’ I always say, ‘I was living my best life,’” he said. “She is gourmet. She is a great chef.”

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for “Fast X,” now playing in theaters. Vin Diesel says spinoffs of the “Fast & Furious” franchise are already in the works, including a female-led installment. “I started developing the female spinoff…in 2017 with other spinoffs, and the sooner I deliver the finale, the sooner I can launch all the spinoffs,” he told me Saturday at the Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project (CTAOP) Block Party. “Fast X” is the first of a two-part ending, but “it’s bittersweet to think of a finale,” Diesel said. In an interview on May 12 at the Rome premiere, he teased that the ending might be spread out over three films. “Look how many characters and great talent there is in the movie,” Diesel said of the possible 12th film. “There was no way I can pull that off unless I had everyone on for five seconds. These characters are appealing and we need to see more of them.”