Cryptocurrency analytics company CryptoQuant pointed out a notable anomaly in its latest report on the TRON network. According to the analysis, despite the rise in the price of TRON ($TRX), there is a significant decrease in network activity.
According to data shared by the company, the $TRX price increased by nearly 20% from $0.278 to $0.333 in approximately 74 days, between February 7 and April 21, 2026. While this increase paints a positive picture at first glance, on-chain metrics point to a different story.
In particular, the “number of active addresses” data, which measures the network’s usage level, recorded a significant decline during the same period. According to the 7-day simple moving average (SMA-7), the number of active addresses on the TRON network decreased by 21.13%, falling from approximately 5.3 million to below 4.2 million.
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CryptoQuant describes this divergence between price increase and decrease in network activity as a “bearish divergence.” Such signals typically indicate that price action is not based on strong fundamentals and that speculative buying may be influential.
According to the analysis, the decrease in user engagement suggests that the fundamental health of the TRON network may struggle to support current price levels. This is interpreted as indicating that the recent rally may be fragile and increases the risk of a potential correction.
Most spinoffs expand their flagship shows in a direction. That direction could be forward, following a beloved character past the events of the original story, á la “Frasier”; it could be backward, fleshing out the origins of a person or place with pre-established significance, the approach taken by both current “Game of Thrones” offshoots. It could even be lateral, simply transferring a concept to a different setting within the same universe in the time-honored tradition of procedurals like “CSI” or “Law & Order.”
For its first official TV extension, “Stranger Things” opts for none of the above. (A theatrical production, “The First Shadow,” took place in the 1950s.) “Stranger Things: Tales From ‘85” is animated rather than live action, an obvious visual cue we’re no longer watching the show that wrapped its blockbuster run on Netflix earlier this year. It turns out such a signal is sorely needed, because “Tales From ‘85” winds back the clock to tell the exact same story as “Stranger Things” proper, with the exact same characters, in the exact same archetypal small town of Hawkins, Indiana.
The primary distinction is that this version of the Hellfire Club, now voiced by a fresh set of actors, will never face the main constraint on a serialized story about young children: They don’t age. “Tales From ‘85” is a transparent attempt to preserve “Stranger Things” in pixels rather than amber, allowing Netflix to keep capitalizing on the phenomenon long after its original faces have moved on to other projects.
Per the title, “Tales From ‘85” takes place between the events of “Stranger Things” Seasons 2 and 3 — before the Battle of Starcourt Mall, the introduction of fan-favorite character Robin (Maya Hawke) or, most crucially, the main protagonists started to visibly transition from adorable tweens to post-puberty adolescents to, eventually, young adults. Exactly what occurred between those two chapters has never been a subject of great suspense. “Tales From ‘85” is quite literally doodling in the margins of “Stranger Things” mythology, or would be if the creative team (led by showrunner Eric Robles, with the Duffer Brothers executive producing) had opted for a hand-drawn look inspired by the kind of ‘80s cartoons its heroes watch between interdimensional adventures. But instead of “Transformers” or “He-Man,” “Tales From ‘85” as produced by animation studio Flying Bark looks like any number of contemporary, computer-generated shows, just with flashes of neon and other period details.
To summarize the plot of “Tales From ‘85” is redundant, because it’s the same plot as any other season of “Stranger Things”: besties Will (Ben Plessala, subbing in for Noah Schnapp), Mike (Luca Diaz, for Finn Wolfhard), Lucas (EJ Williams, for Caleb McLaughlin), Dustin (Braxton Quinney, for Gaten Matarazzo), Max (Jolie Hoang-Rappaport, for Sadie Sink) and their superpowered friend Eleven (Brookly Davey Norstedt, for Millie Bobby Brown) team up to fight an interdimensional threat from the Upside Down as local adults remain oblivious. That the gate between our world and the Upside Down in the Hawkins Laboratory basement is technically shut at this point in the master narrative is a mere technicality that’s easily handwaved.
The group’s internal dynamics and story beats are just as identical as the overall mission. Mike is protective of Eleven; Lucas and Max have sweet (then-platonic) chemistry; Dustin hangs out with reformed bully Steve Harrington (Jeremy Jordan, stepping in for Joe Keery). Dustin even re-christens the group the Hawkins Investigators Club, a particularly groanworthy development since there’s already a fictional member’s group that unites the ragtag gang. (Did the Hellfire Club not survive the digital transition?) If “Stranger Things” was already a nostalgia exercise, then “Tales ‘from ‘85” caters to nostalgia for nostalgia, a recursive loop with a predictably diminished impact.
The ensemble’s main new addition is Nikki (Odessa A’Zion), a pink-mohawked punk whose individuality is encouraged by her mother Anna (Janeane Garofalo), a substitute science teacher. Why haven’t we heard any mention of Nikki in subsequent seasons? Perhaps because she serves as a kind of proto-Robin, a queer-coded role model to encourage Will’s individuality before he even understands what makes him different. Once the real Robin shows up down the line, Nikki could be safely memory-wiped. As engaging an aural presence as A’Zion, a rising star, may be, it’s hard to fall in love with someone you know won’t be around in just a few months of in-universe time, never to come up again.
More than the presence of such technically new faces that slot neatly into pre-established tropes, what distinguishes “Tales From ‘85” is that the characters are no longer tethered to flesh-and-blood humans. Without the liability of actors whose voices will deepen and heights will shoot up over time, Netflix can continue to exploit this IP as long as its audience desires, looking ever-more-solipsistically inward rather than branching out. I’ll give “Tales From ‘85” this much credit: it’s as creepy and unsettling an idea as this horror-adjacent franchise has produced in years.
All eight episodes of “Stranger Things: Tales From ‘85” are now streaming on Netflix.
Renowned investor Kevin O’Leary has made noteworthy new assessments regarding the cryptocurrency market. After experimenting with various digital assets for a long time, O’Leary argued that he has narrowed his investment strategy and now only two cryptocurrencies deserve a place in portfolios.
In an interview with Stuart Varney on the Varney & Co. program, the President of O’Leary Ventures stated that many tokens have lost their value proposition as institutional investors’ influence in the market increases. O’Leary, who previously invested in dozens of different altcoins, said he restructured his portfolio, particularly in the last year, due to changing regulatory expectations and institutional analysis.
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The experienced investor, who has held positions in 27 different crypto assets in the past, argued that this approach is unsustainable, stating, “Now all you need to own is Bitcoin and Ethereum. These two assets account for 97 percent of the volatility of all other ‘junk’ coins in the market.”
O’Leary also noted that thousands of small-scale crypto projects disappeared following the market downturn last October. He stated that this reinforced his decision to exit these assets, saying, “Thousands of projects collapsed and didn’t come back. So why not focus only on these two strong assets?”
By my count, there are exactly two and a half good reasons to watch Netflix’s animated spinoff, Stranger Things: Tales From ’85.
One: You are a child, by which I mean a literal child and not an adult who’s whimsically childlike at heart. You’ve heard good things about Stranger Things, but Mom and Dad have deemed you too young for its TV-14 rating. The slightly mellower Tales From ’85, with its TV-PG rating, could be enough to sate your curiosity for now.
Stranger Things: Tales From ’85’
The Bottom Line
At least the graphics are prettier.
Airdate: Thursday, April 23 (Netflix) Cast: Brooklyn Davey Norstedt, Jolie Hoang-Rappaport, Luca Diaz, Elisha “EJ” Williams as Lucas, Braxton Quinney, Ben Plessala, Brett Gipson, Odessa A’zion, Jeremy Jordan, Janeane Garofalo Developed by: Eric Robles, Jennifer Muro, based on Stranger Things, created by Matt Duffer and Ross Duffer
Two: You’re a Stranger Things fan who expresses your devotion through fanatical completionism — you will not rest until you’ve consumed every last scrap of footage or word of dialogue this universe has to offer. In that case, go with God. Nothing I’m about to say here will matter to you anyway.
The half-reason is Odessa A’zion’s Nikki. Burly, brash and topped with a strawberry-pink mohawk, the new character is just fresh and charming enough that it seems a shame Original Flavor Stranger Things didn’t dream her up in time to give her a live-action counterpart. But unless you already fit into categories one or two, even she’s not quite enough to justify sitting through a series that otherwise just feels like more of the same, only less.
As the new story, developed by Jennifer Muro and showrunner Eric Robles, opens in early 1985 — that’s between seasons two and three, for those as bad as Mike’s dad is at keeping track of ages and timelines — our young heroes are still riding high off their recent victory. Having closed the gates to the Upside Down for good, or so they believe, they have happily returned to ordinary kid lives stuffed with junk food, Dungeons & Dragons and awkward tween flirting.
What we know that they don’t, of course, is that they’ve still got years’ worth of battles left to fight. This idyllic winter break is just that: a break, and a short-lived one at that. Once people around Hawkins start getting snatched by sentient, otherworldly vines, middle school buds Mike, Will, Dustin, Lucas, Max and El are all back on the case — this time with a bit of additional help from Nikki, daughter of the new substitute science teacher (Janeane Garofalo as Mrs. Baxter).
Tales From ’85 indicates very little interest in rocking the Stranger Things boat, narratively or tonally or any other-ly. Even the shift in medium from live-action to animation seems rooted more in a desire to return the story to its stronger early seasons, when the kids still looked and acted like, well, kids, than to shake things up. (That the crisp, polished, colorful cartoon version is actually much prettier than the murky CG of later seasons is a nice bonus, though.) Otherwise, it’s all business as usual.
So while the monsters are never-before-seen creations, they more or less amount to Demogorgons cross-pollinated with Audrey II. When the characters get embroiled in interpersonal drama, they’re only rehashing arguments we’ve seen before. Although Nikki, who has a knack for DIY mechanical engineering, is able to furnish the gang with new gadgets, their plans pretty much always come down to almost getting eaten by some enormous otherworldly creature before being rescued at the last possible millisecond by El’s telekinesis.
Speaking of El, the character remains so dramatically overpowered that the only real tension across the season’s 10 half-hour episodes comes from wondering what new excuse the show will come up with to incapacitate her long enough that she can swoop in for that “surprise” save. It’s not the only persistent narrative issue to follow Stranger Things into Tales From ’85, but like Mike’s overbearing protectiveness of El or Dustin’s obnoxiously arrogant genius, it’s one that felt easier to forgive in live-action, when the young actors’ superb individual performances and crackling collective chemistry often papered over shortcomings in the script.
By contrast, the all-new voice cast for Tales From ’85 is stuck trying to duplicate the performances that came before, though only Braxton Quinney, who plays Dustin, and sometimes Jolie Hoang-Rappaport, who plays Max, are true soundalikes. Were these actors (including Luca Diaz as Mike, Elisha Williams as Lucas, Ben Plessala as Will and Brooklyn Davey Norstedt as El) granted space to make these characters their own, the discrepancies might not be a problem. But the series dares not let their performances dig very deep, lest they turn up anything inconveniently contradictory.
These versions of the characters might go through the motions of a joke Max might crack or a declaration (“Friends help friends”) El might make, and in flashes it almost feels like enough. But lacking the nuance and naturalism that once made them so lovable, these pale imitations quickly grow tiresome, then irritating. It doesn’t seem a coincidence that the only true bright spot in this ensemble is Nikki. As a new girl who figures not at all in seasons three through five, she’s allowed to evolve or grow her relationships in ways that the more familiar faces cannot, lest they break from established canon.
In Nikki, Tales From ’85 offers a taste of the potential this project could have had were it not so determined to play by the rulebook. Instead — for better if you’re an executive jealously protecting your golden goose IP, maybe, but mostly for worse if you’re anyone else — it plays things as safe as a brand extension can. I suspect viewers content to settle for a diet version of Stranger Things, whether because they’re too little for the real thing or too fanatical to pass it over, will find little to object to in the spinoff’s faithful if watered-down recreation of the original’s appeal. But I can’t imagine most of them finding much to adore about it, either.
Kim Kardashian‘s robbery at gunpoint in an apartment during the 2016 Paris Fashion Week is getting the docuseries treatment.
“Kim, the Diamond and the Grandpa Robbers,” is a four-part series from Pernel Media (“Missed Call,” “The Au Pair’”) for Canal+ Originals. As per the description, the series “pulls back the curtain on one of the decade’s boldest celebrity heists, drawing on rare and exclusive access to those at its centre – including members of the gang and the lawyers who defended them.”
Despite having endorsed much of her life being put on screen (“Keeping Up With the Kardashians” ran from 2007-2021 and was soon followed by “The Kardashians”), Kim is not involved in this series, Variety understands.
The heist — which sparked headlines around the world and posed major questions about the dangers of online exposure — saw five masked men posing as police officers storm Kardashian’s Parisian apartment, bound the reality star at gunpoint with duct tape and plastic cable ties and lock her in the bathroom. They fled with an estimated $6 million in stolen jewelry, including a 20-carat diamond ring, gifted by her then-husband Kanye West, that she had been showing off on social media just hours earlier. 12 people were eventually tried in early 2025, with eight defendants convicted and two acquitted. The suspects in court were nicknamed the “Grandpa Robbers” by the press as they were all of or near senior age.
According to the filmmakers behind “Kim, the Diamond and the Grandpa Robbers,” the story “reveals a clash between two worlds: a hyper-visible global celebrity and a group of veteran criminals attempting one final score.”
As they note, the crime was not a “chaotic, opportunistic robbery, but a carefully planned operation shaped by insider knowledge.” However, it quickly spiralled out of control due a central paradox: the robbers understood the value of the diamond, but not the scale of the world surrounding it. “In targeting one of the most visible figures in modern culture, they triggered a global event that transcended the crime itself becoming amplified, distorted, and consumed in real time,” the description reads.
“With roots in France and one of the most famous names in the world, this premium pop crime series sits very much within the DNA of the international productions that we at Pernel Media love to put together — combining strong storytelling with projects designed to travel,” said Samuel Kissous, founder of Pernel Media and executive producer.
Added executive producer Fabrice Frank: “What makes this project unique is the access and the perspective — hearing directly from those involved allows us to move beyond the story the world thinks it understands and build a much more immersive, character driven account. It’s about reconstructing the story in a way that feels both authentic and cinematic.”
“Kim, the Diamond and the Grandpa Robbers” is produced by Pernel Media for Canal+ Originals. Executive producers are Kissous and Frank, with Clément Roquigny as creative producer. It’s being directed by Agnès Buthion. An international version is in production, with delivery scheduled for early 2027.
A 5% stake in AI coding startup Cursor that FTX’s bankruptcy estate sold for $200,000 in April 2023 would be worth about $3 billion today, following SpaceX’s agreement this week to acquire the company at a $60 billion valuation.
SpaceX said Monday it has the right to buy Cursor later this year for $60 billion or to pay $10 billion if the full acquisition does not proceed. The deal is founder Elon Musk’s move to close the gap with OpenAI and Anthropic on AI coding tools, an area where he recently said xAI, the Musk-run AI company that merged with SpaceX, is behind competitors.
SpaceX is holding off on immediate acquisition because of its planned initial public offering targeting a $2 trillion valuation, with the $10 billion serving as a breakup fee.
The crypto angle sits in the cap table. In April 2022, Alameda Research, the trading firm founded by Sam Bankman-Fried and run alongside FTX, invested $200,000 in Anysphere, the company that builds Cursor.
That investment bought roughly 5% of the company at a $4 million valuation. One year later FTX had collapsed, Alameda and FTX were in bankruptcy, and the court-appointed estate sold the Cursor stake for the same $200,000 Alameda had paid.
The stake is worth $3 billion at SpaceX’s $60 billion price tag, meaning the gap between what the FTX estate received and what the position would fetch today is roughly a 15,000x return. It was instead realized by whoever bought it from the bankruptcy rather than the creditors the estate was supposed to be maximizing recovery for.
The timing cuts awkwardly for FTX’s bankruptcy administration.
Bankman-Fried, currently serving a 25-year federal sentence, has spent the past year arguing from prison that FTX’s estate destroyed billions in value by liquidating assets too quickly during the bankruptcy, and that customers could have been made more than whole if the process had held positions instead of selling them into what turned out to be the bottom of crypto prices.
In February, he shared a projection suggesting FTX’s net asset value would have reached $78 billion if the estate had held assets through the subsequent recovery rather than selling in 2023 and 2024.
Cursor launched its AI coding product in early 2023, the same year the estate sold the stake, and the company’s trajectory from that launch to its current valuation three years later is among the steepest in software startup history.
FTX customers have since been made whole in dollar terms under the bankruptcy’s distribution plan, receiving back their claim values plus interest. What they did not receive is the upside from what those assets became between the bankruptcy filing and now, which in the case of the Cursor stake alone represents about $3 billion of forgone recovery against $200,000 realized.
Bankman-Fried’s parents have publicly advocated for a pardon, appearing on CNN in March arguing that FTX customers were ultimately repaid and that the case against their son should be revisited. The Cursor number is likely to feature prominently in the family’s continued campaign, and in Bankman-Fried’s own letters from prison, as the single clearest example of the kind of value he claims the estate destroyed through forced selling.
A key indicator tracking the overall health of the bitcoin market has just flashed a neutral signal for the first time since prices peaked above $126,000, signaling that the bear market may have ended.
But here’s the catch: The neutral reading on the indicator turned out to be a false signal a few years ago.
That indicator is CryptoQuant’s Bitcoin Bull Score Index, a composite metric that measures the health of the bitcoin market by analyzing ten key on-chain indicators, including blockchain activity, investor profitability, and liquidity.
It has climbed to 50 for the first time since the downtrend from $126,000 began. That number means exactly half of the index’s underlying indicators are now bullish, while the rest remain bearish. In other words, the indicator has flipped from bearish to neutral, confirming the end of the bear market, as first suggested by BTC’s price bounce from nearly $60,000 to $78,000.
For an index that has been stuck in bear territory throughout this cycle, reaching neutral is a genuine milestone. Note that readings below 40 signal a structural bear market, while readings above 60 indicate a strong, sustainable uptrend.
But history has a warning
CryptoQuant’s analyst pointed to a relevant historical precedent: March 2022, when the index rose to 50, signaling the end of the bear market at the time.
Similar to today, prices had rebounded from around $35,000 to nearly $48,000 in the weeks leading up to the signal. That price action led many market participants to believe the bear market, which began near $70,000 in November 2021, had ended.
But guess what, prices more than halved to under $20,000 in the following months. In other words, the bear market deepened.
“First time in this bear market that the Bull Score Index enters neutral zone (50). In March 2022, the Bull Score entered neutral territory for about a week, and then the price resumed its decline,” Julio Moreno, head of research at CryptoQuant, said.
A turn, not a trend
The bull score index hitting neutral is meaningful data, showcasing a real improvement in on-chain conditions rather than just price action.
However, the March 2022 precedent is a reminder that transitional phases can go either way, especially given that positioning in derivatives currently indicates a lack of conviction in the price recovery.
“Front-end vols around 40 vol remain subdued relative to realized, skew still favours downside protection, and term structure is only modestly upward sloping. Positioning continues to point to range-bound conditions rather than a sustained breakout,” Singapore-based QCP Capital, one of the largest digital asset trading firms, said in a market note.
Input Output, the private engineering company that built and continues to develop the Cardano blockchain, is seeking about half the funding it requested last year from the project’s community treasury.
The company submitted nine proposals totaling $46.8 million for 2026 on Tuesday, down from $97.5 million in 2025. Several of the proposals focus on scaling Cardano to increase its transaction processing capacity and expanding into Bitcoin DeFi.
Cardano, like most major blockchains, maintains a shared pool of money funded by network fees, which community representatives vote to allocate toward development work. Input Output historically has been the largest recipient because it employs most of the engineers building the underlying software.
The reduced ask is the first concrete step in a plan to phase out that dependency. Input Output said it now aims to shrink its annual request each year until the company can sustain itself on its own revenue, with community funds going instead to a broader set of smaller engineering groups.
By the end of 2026, Input Output expects smaller, more specialized teams to take on most of the work it currently does in-house, including firms such as VacuumLabs and Midgard Labs that focus on specific layers of the Cardano software.
Scaling and bitcoin DeFi
The nine proposals group into two themes. The larger funds a consensus upgrade called Leios, which Input Output claims will increase Cardano’s transaction processing capacity by 10 to 65 times, targeting more than 1,000 transactions per second.
For context, that would move Cardano from a relatively slower chain to one competitive with Solana and the fastest Ethereum layer-2 networks on throughput alone. Leios is scheduled for a test release in June and full deployment by year-end.
The second flagship proposal funds a system called Pogun, which aims to bring Bitcoin-based decentralized finance to Cardano. In practice, it would let bitcoin holders borrow and earn yield on their holdings through Cardano without giving custody to a centralized intermediary. Pogun’s lending component is targeted for public release in the second quarter.
Smaller proposals cover performance improvements to Cardano’s smart contract engine, security testing infrastructure, developer tools, and expanded API services.
Each proposal names specific delivery leads and ties funding to delivery milestones rather than releasing money upfront. Imagine paying a contractor in stages as different parts of a house are completed, instead of handing over the full budget at the start of construction.
Voting opens Tuesday and runs through May 24. The decisions are made by roughly 1,000 elected delegates known as DReps, who represent ADA holders much as proxy representatives do in a publicly traded company. Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Input Output, is scheduled to release a video this week making the case directly to those delegates.
The vote will test whether Cardano’s governance, which has expanded significantly over the past two years, treats Input Output like any other grant applicant or continues to approve its requests largely on a basis of deference.
Last year’s $97.5 million proposal passed, but in the interim the Cardano Foundation has taken over the project’s grant-funding arm, and Intersect, the governance organization running this vote, has assumed stewardship of core Cardano software. Both shifts mean alternatives to Input Output now exist in a way they did not when previous votes went through.
Meanwhile, Input Output also cited progress in the ecosystem in its release. A new Cardano stablecoin, USDCx, reached 14.6 million tokens in circulation within weeks of its launch. Total assets deposited on Cardano, a common measure of a network’s usage, rose from $137.5 million to $142.7 million over the same period.
Whether the full slate passes, gets partially funded, or is reshaped entirely by DReps will signal how much the Cardano community’s thinking has shifted now that the tools to fund development without Input Output exist.
Expectations regarding the Fed’s interest rate reduction process are being postponed again due to inflationary pressures created by the war in the Middle East.
According to a recent survey of economists by Reuters, the Fed is expected to wait at least six more months before cutting interest rates this year.
The war, which has lasted for about two months, has drastically increased energy prices, reigniting already high inflation. Rising fuel costs have driven consumer confidence to record lows, largely erasing expectations of an early interest rate cut that had been priced into the markets.
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Even the most dovish members of the Fed are now arguing that inflation remains “disturbingly high,” weakening the likelihood of a rapid easing of monetary policy. In a survey conducted between April 17-21, 56 out of 103 economists predicted that the policy rate would remain stable between 3.50% and 3.75% until the end of September. This represents a significant decline compared to the nearly 70% expectation in the late March survey for “at least one rate cut by September.”
Nevertheless, most economists still expect at least one interest rate cut by the end of the year. The median forecast is for a single rate cut, consistent with the Fed’s “dot plot” projections released last month. However, nearly a third of those surveyed now believe there will be no rate cuts this year; this figure has almost doubled compared to the previous survey.
An 80th birthday sounds like a happy occasion. But things are much more complicated in the case of the powerful Spanish Novak family at the center of The Tribute (El Homenaje), the new SkyShowtime Spanish original series premiering today, Thursday.
The family thriller, from the creative minds behind Shades (Matices), which was a hit for the European streaming joint venture of Paramount and Comcast that is available in more than 20 markets, will debut four episodes, followed by the remaining four episodes a week later, on April 30. Shades stars Eusebio Poncela, in his final fiction role before his death, Miriam Giovanelli, Juana Acosta, Enrique Arce, Raúl Prieto, Luis Tosar, Luisa Mayol, and Elsa Pataky also feature in The Tribute, which tells a different story with different characters. They are joined in The Tribute by the likes of Manu Ríos, Álvaro Rico, Ángela Molina, Georgina Amorós and Óscar de la Fuente.
Pataky also serves as an executive producer on the series, which was directed by Sergio Cánovas, who is also an executive producer. The series was written by Javier Naya and Martín Suárez and created by them together with Cánovas.
The Tribute tells the story of Adolfo Novak, portrayed by Poncela, the “patriarch of one of the most powerful families in the country, who gathers his family and close friends to celebrate his 80th birthday,” reads a show synopsis. “Behind the toasts and smiles lie decades of secrets, betrayals, blind loyalties and a strong desire for revenge. The evening will end up blowing up and revealing a truth that, when it finally comes to light, will be much more unexpected and surprising than any previous suspicion.”
SkyShowtime chief content officer Kai Finke has touted the original series’ “magnificent cast and gripping storyline.” The Tribute was produced by Secuoya Studios and Stellarmedia in association with SkyShowtime and in collaboration with Prime Video, which has second-window rights to the show.
Pataky, known for her role as Elena Neves in the Fast & Furious franchise and her work in such movies as Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, talked to THR, in a video call from Madrid, about The Tribute, her roles on and off screen and how a surprising cameo of her real-life family came about.
Thank you for the wild ride of a show! I feel that everybody who thinks that their family is difficult may come out of watching the series with a slightly different view. Can you tell me a bit about what was so appealing to you about The Tribute?
Yeah, what an amazing family! What attracted me to this project was the psychology of every character and how [it shows that] we are basically victims of our circumstances, of what happened, especially in our childhood, all those experiences that you have with your parents and with your brothers and sisters. What is interesting about this family is that they are all competing.
I don’t think it’s really about power and how much money they have. It’s about love. They’re competing for that love that they never had. [That also] influences your mental health … and your relationships. So it was really, really complicated, and interesting at the same time, to tell a story that involves so many feelings and sensations.
Tell us a bit about your character, Stella Novak. She is very intelligent, very focused, very driven, but also has all sorts of issues with her mother. It is quite a different character from your role in Shades. How was it for you to dive into this new character with a lot of the same members of the creative team that you worked with on Shades?
It was great because the team felt like a family. We love working together. We wanted to do something together again when [Shades] was done. [Sergio Cánovas] came up with the idea for a series with the same actors, but with a different story. The difficulty was to create a story that would attract all of us. They put us all together again, and they imagined something so that everyone would be happy and say, “Oh, I love my character.” Instead of saying: “Oh, I want his character. Her character is so much better!” But I think the creator knew us so well that he could develop a story that each of us was happy with.
Eusebio Poncela and Elsa Pataky (right) in ‘The Tribute.’
Courtesy of SkyShowtime
Stella gives up, in a way. She wants to … just forget about everything and forget about her family. But she also feels that she needs to just find peace with herself. She comes [at it] with great intentions — to be forgiven for something she thinks her sister was really angry about, because Stella feels that she abandoned her. She abandoned the whole family and is trying to come back for a good reason. And then it becomes so complicated, even with good intentions, because of the circumstances of the family and the unconditional love Stella has for her Dad. She ends up doing things because she feels that she has to protect the family in a way, so that everything ends up in a good place. But she still has those big wounds.
‘The Tribute,’ courtesy of SkyShowtime
Courtesy of SkyShowtime
You not only act in The Tribute, but you also executive-produced the series. How do you like the producer’s work, and how did you end up in that role?
I was talking to Sergio, the director, when we finished Shades, and I told him that this was something that I really wanted to do. I was trying to put together some projects and trying to get the rights to books. He said, “You will be an amazing producer. Why don’t we do this one together, so that you have that experience?” We’re real friends.
And it was great. It was very natural. You see things from the other side, including all the problems. So, you learn a lot. It’s great. I love that role. It’s something that I’m really interested in and that I enjoyed a lot on this project.
Did your acting experience help in your role as an executive producer?
It’s different. When I was really in a scene [as an actress], the director kept me [focused] there. But I remember one moment that was really interesting, when I put my producer’s hat on. It was a scene in which one of the actresses had to punch somebody. I could see that the actors were suffering. The director said this is not working. And I was like: “No, this is going to work. We’re going to make it happen.”
So I stepped in. The actress was really scared, because she has not done action movies. So, she was really scared to just hurt the other person. So, I came in with all this energy: “This is how you have to do it. And this is the reaction [move] that she has to do when she gets punched.” So I threw a punch for her and showed the physical reaction to make [it look and feel] real. It was great, because nobody there had done an action movie, and I’ve done it. I felt proud of myself, because it was a producer’s moment when nobody could do anything, and I had to get in and make it happen.
Eusebio Poncela and Luis Tosar (right) in ‘The Tribute,’ courtesy of SkyShowtime
Courtesy of SkyShowtime
There is a scene with you and your real-life family in a cameo, which I’m not going to completely spoil for readers. I was rubbing my eyes because I thought I recognized this Thor frame of this man on screen and a young man, who I hear is your son. How did that cameo with your husband Chris Hemsworth and one of your sons come about?
As a producer, you always like the cheapest way to do something. We knew that we had to shoot in Australia. The director said we had to shut down [the production in Spain], and we were not going to pay for everybody to go to Australia. I said: “No problem, we’ll do it. I’ll get my husband, I’ll get my kids, and get my brother behind the camera.” We shot it very simply, with one camera. Of course, Chris was there, and it was close to my house. It’s a little surprise. And it’s so unexpected.
The Tribute is only premiering now, but given the fun the creative team had on Shades, could we see another series from this team?
We’ve actually been talking about it, because we do have such a good relationship. And I think that energy is something that you can see. When you have the opportunity to work with the same people that you love and you have such a beautiful experience with, for sure you [want to do more]. We’re trying to just get the director and the writers to do another one.
