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The White Lotus perceived her character Portia as a villain.Richardson played Tanya’s (Jennifer Coolidge) young assistant in season 2 of Mike White’s hit HBO series, which aired late last year to critical acclaim.The role ended up being Richardson’s most high-profile to date, and, speaking on the Just For Variety podcast, she admitted that the spotlight took some getting used to, especially when Portia was criticised by some for seeming entitled or spoiled.“I just hadn’t been in that situation before, so I did get sad,” Richardson says. “There was probably the first couple of episodes where I was seeing some things and reactions to things with Portia and me that I was taking personally or I wasn’t fully sure how to take it or how to process it.”[via Variety]She grew to realise that it was a good thing people were talking about the show in such detail.

Ben Croll With “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” riding high to the tune of $1.3 billion in global receipts, and as Pharrell Williams lay in the wings to offer the producer a lifetime achievement award, Illumination CEO Chris Meledandri made sure to direct the lion’s share of attention to “Migration” director Benjamin Renner as the pair sat before a packed auditorium at the Annecy Animation Festival on Wednesday. Taking the stage after premiering 25 minutes of “Migration” footage, Meledandri stepped (quite adeptly) into the role of interviewer, putting Renner in the spotlight and peppering the French filmmaker with questions about inspiration and artistry. If the interest was genuine, it was also no doubt strategic, as Meledandri inferred to Variety in an interview following the presentation.

Illumination founder and CEO Chris Meledandri was feted at the Annecy International Film Festival Wednesday morning with a “Golden Ticket” lifetime accreditation in a surprise session featuring Grammy-winning musician and Louis Vuitton designer Pharrell Williams.

Editor’s note: The following interviews were done outside of the FYC event series, as there was no panel or screening.

Naman Ramachandran Illumination founder and CEO Chris Meledandri was presented with the Annecy International Film Festival’s lifetime accreditation Golden Ticket on Wednesday. In a surprise appearance, two-time Oscar nominee and Grammy-winning global superstar Pharrell Williams presented Meledandri with the festival’s honor. Meledandri is the creative producer behind “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” the Despicable Me, Minions, Sing and The Secret Life of Pets franchises, and the upcoming action comedy, “Migration.” Williams, a longtime creative partner with Illumination, earned his first Academy Award nomination for his blockbuster song “Happy” from the studio’s “Despicable Me 2.”

On their latest shows, Brett Goldstein and Theo James have created characters who unpeel deeper truths beyond their hunky appearances. Goldstein, who’s won two Emmys for portraying soccer player and coach Roy Kent on “Ted Lasso,” returned for the Apple TV+ comedy’s third season. (He’s also a co-creator and writer on “Shrinking,” about a therapist played by Jason Segel.) James joined the second season of HBO’s “The White Lotus,” set in Italy and from creator Mike White, as a chiseled, privileged vacationer. THEO JAMES: How did you end up writing for “Ted Lasso”? BRETT GOLDSTEIN: I’d done a pilot for Bill Lawrence. The pilot didn’t get picked up, but we stayed in touch, and he knew I was a writer as well as an actor. When people ask me for advice, I’m always like, there’s no magic phone call. It doesn’t happen. But I did get a magic phone call here, from Bill, out of the blue, saying, “I think you’d be good for this football show.”

No, we didn’t ask Leo Woodall about the “scene” in “The White Lotus” season two. Maybe we should have.

The White Lotus star Jennifer Coolidge could “absolutely” get her own spin-off series, according to the show’s creator.Coolidge starred as Tanya McQuoid in the two seasons of the hit HBO show, the only character to carry over between both season one and two.Tanya met her death at the end of season two, but creator Mike White has said that there is the possibility of a prequel series focusing on the character.“I absolutely think that’s possible,” White told press at the Vivid Sydney Festival this weekend (June 10), as reported by Deadline.“We were just talking about that. It’s a funny idea,” he added, discussing the potential joy of “making Jennifer 20 years younger” to become a younger version of Tanya.“That would be fun too,” White added.

Jennifer Coolidge the huge success of two seasons of “The White Lotus” represents both a huge career revival and a hard act to follow. “I have to move on,” Coolidge told fans in Sydney, Australia, this weekend. “Offers have come in and I would love to do a film next, but ‘The White Lotus’ holds this very high bar, so it will be hard to choose.” Coolidge and the show’s creator, writer and director Mike White were in Australia’s biggest city for Vivid Talks, part of 23-day Vivid Sydney, the largest festival in Australia. Their 90 minute “Conversation” was attended by a sold-out crowd of 9,000 at Sydney’s Aware Super Theatre stadium.

Elizabeth Olsen and Meghann Fahy deliver two of the most nuanced performances of the Emmy season, both playing complicated women who are wives and mothers. In “Love & Death,” Olsen’s Candy Montgomery is based on a real housewife in late-1970s Texas, who out of boredom instigates an affair with Allan (Jesse Plemons), a member of her church — an illicit assignation that eventually leads to Candy being on trial for murdering Allan’s wife, Betty (Lily Rabe). In a very different setting, Season 2 of Mike White’s “The White Lotus,” Fahy plays Daphne, a character on a luxury Sicilian vacation with her husband, Cameron (Theo James), and another couple: Ethan (Will Sharpe) and Harper (Aubrey Plaza). As the tension among the four escalates, it’s both sexual and violent — and oddsmakers were entirely wrong about the identity of the dead body in the season-premiere flashback.

Carole Horst This year, the Annecy Animation Film Festival hosts a variety of first-looks and works-in-progress, including the anticipated “Migration,” from Illumination, to be released by Universal on Dec. 22. On the heels of a presentation at CinemaCon in April, Illumination chief Chris Meledandri will present never-before-seen footage of the feature at Annecy June 13. Meledandri and “Migration” director Benjamin Renner (“Ernest and Celestine,” “The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales”) will also be in conversation about the film. The film stars the voice talents of Kumail Nanjiani and Elizabeth Banks as duck parents who lead their family on an adventure. Rest of the cast is rounded out by Casper Jennings, Tresi Gazal, Awkwafina, Carol Kane, Keegan-Michael Key, David Mitchell and Danny DeVito.

Jennifer Coolidge is taking over Australia!

Next stop for HBO’s “The White Lotus” series could be Australia, creator Mike White said

The White Lotus season three.In the finale of the show’s second season, Tanya (Coolidge) goes on a shooting spree aboard a yacht against a group hired by her husband Greg (Jon Gries) to kill her. Following the massacre, Tanya accidentally falls overboard and dies when trying to escape.Speaking to Variety, Coolidge explained that she hopes there’s some “comeuppance” for Greg in the next season.“My hope for Jon is that he’s not finished with Greg,” Coolidge said. “I hope there’s some comeuppance for evil Greg.

Jennifer Coolidge’s award-winning portrayal of Tanya McQuoid in “The White Lotus” may have met her untimely demise in the second season’s finale, but that doesn’t mean she’s ready to bid farewell to the scene-stealing character.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Jennifer Coolidge will not be starring in “The White Lotus” Season 3, as series creator Mike White killed off her beloved character Tanya is the finale of the second season, but that doesn’t mean she’s ready for Tanya’s story to end. Tanya’s husband, Greg (Jon Gries), is still alive after trying to orchestrate her death in Italy in a power move to inherent her fortune. During a conversation with “The Bear” star Jeremy Allan White as part of Variety’s “Actors on Actors” series, Coolidge revealed she wants Greg back for “The White Lotus” Season 3 so that Tanya can indirectly get her revenge. “My hope for Jon is that he’s not finished with Greg,” Coolidge said. “I hope there’s some comeuppance for evil Greg. I think he should, I don’t know, end up in a meat-grinding machine.”

Lily Moayeri A theme song sets the tone for a series. This is certainly the case for HBO’s awards favorite, “The White Lotus,” which won an Emmy for “Aloha” last year. The jungle sounds, exotic tones, yodels and screams laid over percussive rhythms and high-pitched flutes became instantly identifiable and an echo of the contentious characters vacationing at the Hawaii-based titular resort. Considering how iconic “Aloha” became, changing the theme for the Sicily-based second season was a bold choice. Chilean Canadian composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer drew his original musical ideas from the script and from conversations with series creator Mike White. White “wanted the music to feel like it was boiling under these characters,” de Veer says from his studio in Montréal.

Lily Moayeri The impact of “Renaissance,” the main title theme for the second season of “The White Lotus,” is felt far beyond the screen. Since the season’s premiere in Fall 2022, “Renaissance” has ushered in the Killers as they arrived on stage and Dominic Fike has closed his sets with it. But where the song has really hit is on the dance floor. Grammy-winning DJ/producer Tiësto, a huge fan of the series, began including it in his sets toward the end of 2022. His “Renaissance” remix got its official release, with HBO’s blessing. For the second season, Chilean Canadian composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer drew his original musical ideas from the script and from conversations with series creator Mike White. White “wanted the music to feel like it was boiling under these characters,” de Veer says from his studio in Montréal.

Theo James has been asked ad nauseam about his prosthetic penis in “The White Lotus,” and Meghann Fahy is starting to feel left out. “Nobody ever asks me about my prosthetic,” she says with a laugh. When the two reunite over Zoom to discuss their roles, they’re perfectly in sync and often answer questions in unison, evoking their characters’ deliciously duplicitous cat-and- mouse relationship. In the second season of Mike White’s hit HBO drama, they star as cunning finance businessman Cameron and chipper stay-at-home-mom Daphne, who are vacationing with strait-laced couple Ethan and Harper (Will Sharpe and Aubrey Plaza, respectively). After engaging in the world’s most elaborate “Wife Swap” plot, they depart Sicily as loved-up as ever — and perhaps rubbing off on their friends.

It’s highly likely there’s not a single person out there who doesn’t know the name Sydney Sweeney.The 25 year old probably has the Emmy winning drama series Euphoria to thank for that, not to mention her chaotic character Cassie who made her the star she is today. While Sydney had appeared in some pretty high budget productions prior to the HBO show, including Everything Sucks! and The Handmaid’s Tale, it wasn’t until she stepped foot in the fictional town of East Highland, California that people really started to take note of her talent. Which is why it’s so surprising that she has recently opened up about the fight she had to put up to get cast in Mike White’s satirical anthology series, The White Lotus.

Incredibly, the super-talented Murray Bartlett is still on a roll. The Aussie native spent years working in television and film on both sides of the Pacific but outside of a prominent role in HBO’s “Looking,” Bartlett was a bit under the radar even in Hollywood.

“White Lotus” creator Mike White has a few ideas up his sleeve regarding the future of the hit HBO series.

Some of Hollywood’s highest paid writers have been noticeably absent from the picket line over the last eight days — that is, until Tuesday.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor As the Writers Guild of America goes on strike, late-night television has been put on pause, including NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” which is on an indefinite hiatus. Multiple sources confirm to Variety that, in the unlikely event the strike is resolved in the coming weeks, “Succession” star Kieran Culkin is scheduled to take the stage at Studio 8H on May 13, with musical guest Labrinth, while “The White Lotus” star Jennifer Coolidge is set to close out “SNL’s” 48th season with Foo Fighters. This would have been Culkin’s second time hosting following his season 47 appearance. After being brilliantly imitated by “SNL” cast member Chloe Fineman, Coolidge would have made her long-awaited debut on the show.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter Kumail Nanjiani and Elizabeth Banks will lead the voice cast of Universal and Illumination’s upcoming “Migration,” an animated adventure about a family of ducks on the go. “I find ducks so irresistible,” Illumination founder Chris Meledandri told the crowd at CinemaCon on Wednesday as he unveiled the compete voice cast for the original cartooned comedy. “In our movie, ducks worked beautifully to convey the relatable quirks and truths of a modern-day family.” Attendees of the annual Las Vegas-bassed exhibition industry trade show were also treated to an extended first-look at “Migration,” which opens in theaters on Dec. 22. The road-trip story follows a family of ducks, who try to convince their overprotective father to embark on the vacation of a lifetime.

Jennifer Coolidge is reacting to Natasha Rothwell returning to season 3 of , and she's intrigued about what it could mean for her character!The 61-year-old actress was in a bit of a jesting mood Wednesday while on the red carpet for the TIME 100 Gala at the Lincoln Center in New York City — where she's hosting and also being honored — and she told ET's Rachel Smith she hadn't heard about Natasha Rothwell returning to the hit HBO series. But she offered her thoughts on whether fans might see her character, Tanya McQuoid, return to haunt Rothwell's character, Belinda Lindsey, from the dead.«Oh, I didn't hear that [she was back] but now that Belinda's in.

Illumination Boss Chris Meledandri announced the voiceover cast for the studio’s upcoming animated pic, Migration, set for a Dec. 22 release.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor Variety Awards Circuit section is the home for all awards news and related content throughout the year, featuring the following: the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and Tony Awards ceremonies, curated by Variety senior awards editor Clayton Davis. The prediction pages reflect the current standings in the race and do not reflect personal preferences for any individual contender. As other formal (and informal) polls suggest, competitions are fluid and subject to change based on buzz and events. Predictions are updated every Thursday. Visit the prediction pages for the respective ceremonies via the links below:

F. Murray Abraham has issued an apology following a report alleging that the actor was let go from the Apple TV+ series,, as the result of two sexual misconduct complaints made against him. «This is a sincere and deeply felt apology,» the 83-year-old actor said in a statement to ET.

Another memorable character from Season 1 of HBO’s The White Lotus is making a return. Natasha Rothwell will reprise her Emmy-nominated role as Belinda Lindsey, who was the spa manager of the Hawaiian White Lotus resort in Season 1, in the upcoming third installment of Mike White’s anthology series, Deadline has confirmed.