Category: Entertainment

Interview with the Vampire filmmaker Neil Jordan pulled off a dream casting coup with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.

But much to Jordan’s chagrin, Cruise immediately found himself at the center of a casting-related nightmare. It wouldn’t be the last time he faced scrutiny over playing an iconic literary character, but his go-round nearly two decades later as Jack Reacher came with one notable distinction.

Jack Reacher series author Lee Child endorsed Cruise’s casting at the time, despite the actor not matching the physical description of his massive ex-Army investigator. It wasn’t until 14 years later, amid the success of Reacher, the hit Amazon Prime series starring 6-foot-3, 240-pound Alan Ritchson, that Child ultimately conceded that readers were right to protest the 2012 and 2016 movies’ lack of fidelity to the title character’s imposing presence.

In the case of Interview with the Vampire, the call came from inside the house. Novelist and screenwriter Anne Rice led the charge against Cruise’s casting as Lestat de Lioncourt, a French theater actor in the 1700s who’d already become an immortal vampire by the time he’s introduced. Rice had been tied to the movie’s development since the late ’70s, and over the years, she’d envisioned a bevy of names to play the tall, blonde bloodsucker, including Rutger Hauer, Julian Sands, Daniel Day-Lewis, John Malkovich, Tom Hanks and several others.

While Rice later went to great lengths to apologize to Cruise after seeing his performance, even commissioning a two-page spread in various outlets to heap praise on him, Jordan says the circumstances created an unwanted dynamic on set.

“It was a pain in the ass for me as a director, for him as an actor and for the entire production, when the whole world was saying, ‘Oh, you’re wrong,’” Jordan tells The Hollywood Reporter in support of Interview with the Vampire’s new 4K Blu-ray release. “The opposition that Anne Rice took to his casting was an absolute distraction. It wasn’t a welcome thing at all.”

As one would expect, Cruise was fueled by the naysayers.

“When everyone told him he was not the right choice for the part, he liked the challenge of proving them wrong,” Jordan says. “He was just beginning to explore the non-Tom Cruise aspects of himself, and there are a lot of sides to Tom that he has yet to explore, let me put it that way.”

Rice even suggested Cruise and Pitt swapping roles, something Pitt may have been open to in retrospect. Nobody complained when Pitt received the part of Louis de Pointe du Lac, a wealthy plantation owner in the late 18th century whom Lestat would eventually sire after Louis is consumed by grief over the death of his wife and child. But the strain of playing a vampire during a nocturnal production and its unusual makeup process drove Pitt to the brink of asking producer David Geffen how much it would cost for him to vacate the role mid-shoot. (The answer was $40 million.)

“It’s all my fault. We had intense discussions about it. We shot six months at night in New Orleans, Paris and New York. He found it very oppressive in a way that Louis himself found it oppressive,” Jordan shares. “The combination of the part and Brad’s unease about shooting constantly at night — and me hanging him upside down and painting the veins on his face and putting haptic lenses in his eyes — maybe all that got to him a little bit.”

Bear in mind, Pitt was on the verge of superstardom at the time. He was coming off Thelma & Louise, as well as A River Runs Through It. He’d also just filmed Legends of the Fall, which, along with Interview, were destined to cement his movie star status by the end of 1994. Jordan theorizes that his dissatisfaction with playing the submissive Louis opposite the dominant Lestat may have influenced the choices he’d make from there.

“When we later see Brad Pitt in Fight Club, Se7en and the Quentin Tarantino movies, he’s much more muscular, aggressive and all-American,” Jordan says. “So maybe that’s the direction he wanted to go in, but at the time, he was between directions in a way.”

Across its theatrical and home video releases, the sumptuous vampire drama would go on to gross over four times its $50 million to $60 million production budget. Warners soon contracted Jordan to write a sequel, The Vampire Lestat, based on Rice’s second installment in her The Vampire Chronicles series. However, Cruise’s then-lack of interest in sequels — and in reprising the role — has kept that script in a drawer ever since.

In 2022, AMC began adapting The Vampire Chronicles as a TV series, starting with two seasons devoted to Interview with the Vampire. The third season evolved into The Vampire Lestat, exploring Lestat’s time as a rock star in a modern context alongside his origin story in the 18th century. Jordan says his sequel would have focused more on the latter.

“I wasn’t as interested in Lestat as a David Lee Roth, Iggy Pop kind of rock star with leather pants and a muscular torso. It seemed a little bit cornball to me,” Jordan reveals. “The bulk of the script that I wrote was about Lestat’s story in the 18th century, how he was turned into a vampire against his knowledge and against his will. I would’ve loved to have done that. I would’ve opened it on the Golden Gate Bridge [like the end of Interview with the Vampire].”

Below, in a conversation with THR, Jordan also discusses remaining faithful to Rice’s Interview with the Vampire despite reworking what he considered to be a “limp” ending.

***

It’s always interesting to revisit movies many years later. We process them differently with time and distance, and I imagine filmmakers have a particularly unique version of that experience. What struck you most when you opened Interview with the Vampire back up for the new 4K release?

When I watched it again, I really was just glad I was allowed to make it. I like the movie, and it still seems like the kind of movie that studios don’t normally make.

Following The Crying Game, you probably had multiple doors you could’ve gone through at the time. Do you remember the circumstances that led you through this one?

I was being asked to do very many things by different people. I wasn’t going to direct another Indiana Jones, although I suppose now I’d be doing a Marvel movie, wouldn’t I?

The jump from indies to franchises is often how it goes now.

I wouldn’t have done that. I’m Irish. I liked the vampire thing. I liked the challenge of turning a vampire movie into a huge historical epic, all at night. The visual challenges of it really excited me, and I liked Anne Rice’s book and the script she had written. A decade earlier, I had made a movie called The Company of Wolves with [novelist-screenwriter] Angela Carter, and it was a fantasy — a fairy tale gone dark, wrong and weird. Before she died in 1992, she wanted to make a movie that she was going to call Vampirella. So I saw The Interview with the Vampire as a companion piece to what myself and Angela had done all those years before. That was it, basically. It was a weird thing, but it was cool and lovely.

Casting Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt was the coup of all casting coups, especially since Cruise’s character is absent for a 40-minute stretch in the second hour. Considering he was, and is, the biggest movie star in the world, did Cruise voice any concern at the time?

No, he didn’t. Not at all. He just liked the challenge of playing a flamboyant monster. When everyone told him he was not the right choice for the part, he liked the challenge of proving them wrong. It’s a great part, and he’s a great actor. He was just beginning to explore the non-Tom Cruise aspects of himself, and there are a lot of sides to Tom that he has yet to explore, let me put it that way.

The backlash to his casting included the aforementioned author and screenwriter Anne Rice, so he used that as bulletin board material?

It was a pain in the ass for me as a director, for him as an actor and for the entire production, when the whole world was saying, “Oh, you’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong.” You don’t want the challenge of having to prove yourself right. You want the challenge of making the character work and the movie work. So the opposition that Anne Rice took to his casting, and stuff like that, was an absolute distraction. It wasn’t a welcome thing at all. But I don’t think it was a contributing factor to what he did with the part. I think he did what he thought was interesting.

I mentioned the 40-minute stretch in which Lestat does not appear, but there are rumors of deleted scenes where he teamed up with the Théâtre des Vampires to get revenge against Louis and Claudia. Did you actually shoot any material with Cruise for that Paris section?

Yeah, I did. I shot one little scene, but it wasn’t very good. It wasn’t very interesting. I don’t know why. But when we met him again in New Orleans, it was fucking great. We’ve included deleted scenes on the [4K Blu-ray].

Yes, I watched them. I wondered if Lestat’s Paris scene would be among them, but now I know why you didn’t include it.

It didn’t make sense, really. The character would not have been that weak [in the Paris scene]. It was more interesting to find him in that abandoned house in New Orleans. There was something ghoulish and denatured about him in some strange way. That was much more interesting than seeing him with a bunch of strange … The fact of the matter is, the Theater of Vampires displayed itself best in the scenes in the theater itself. This coven of vampires living in these crypts was only interesting when you began to chop them with a scythe like Brad Pitt eventually did.

Of all the deleted scenes, is Louis’ confession the one you regret not including the most?

I cannot work out why that’s not in the finished movie. I’m sorry about that. I just can’t work it out. It’s been 30 years. I had long discussions with the editor about it. We were trying to track down our very first cut, and we couldn’t find it in the Warners vaults. But we did find these deleted scenes, some of which are interesting. So that’s why I’ve included them.

Brad, in hindsight, talks about how miserable he was shooting nights in the makeup and being hung upside down to drain the blood from his face.

It’s all my fault. All of that.

So it’s not retroactive exaggeration?

No, I sensed it at the time. We had intense discussions about it. You’ve got to face it. We shot six months at night in New Orleans, Paris and New York. Then we got some respite on the Pinewood set we used. But the problem is that the character suffers. Interview with the Vampire is Louis’ account of how he was turned into this thing by somebody who jumped him in the middle of the night. And he has spent the rest of his life trying to understand what this thing is. So that’s the part that Brad played, and he found it very oppressive in a way that Louis himself found it oppressive. So the combination of the part and Brad’s unease about shooting constantly at night — and me hanging him upside down and painting the veins on his face and putting haptic lenses in his eyes — maybe all that got to him a little bit.

He’d done Thelma & Louise, Legends of the Fall and A River Runs Through It. He was on the cusp of defining what kind of actor he wanted to be. When we later see Brad Pitt in Fight Club, Se7en and the Quentin Tarantino movies, he’s much more muscular, aggressive and all-American. So maybe that’s the direction he wanted to go in, but at the time, he was between directions in a way. He was still quite a young actor, but a great actor.

Kirsten Dunst’s character, Claudia, really tells it like it is, and from my interaction with her, Kirsten herself is also a straight shooter. Was she direct and forthright even as an 11-year-old kid?

She was a kid, but the minute I met her and tested her, I knew she’d be acting for the rest of her life. I didn’t feel the normal trepidation one has when casting a kid. I said to her mother at the time, “You do realize she’ll be acting for the rest of her life?” And her mother said, “Yes, she knows that.” So we cast a kid who was not only a superb actor, but she also played one of the most interesting parts in the whole story. Claudia is a child who is never able to grow up, and there’s something fairy tale-ish and ghoulish about it. There’s something of a porcelain doll about it. Of all the dilemmas that all the characters faced, it was the most interesting dilemma.

Nowadays, so many movies set themselves up for sequels, but in the ’90s, it was a rare occurrence. And to me, the ending in the Mustang always felt like it was setting up another movie. Were you actually thinking about a potential The Vampire Lestat movie when you shot it?

No, I just wanted to bring the character back in. I thought the ending of the book was kind of limp. [Christian Slater’s] Molloy says, “I want to be what you are.” And Louis says, “You’ve not listened to anything I’ve said, have you?” Then he vanishes, and Molloy runs down the street without knowing what he’s done. I just thought it was a bit limp. So I wrote this fun ending to bring Lestat back into the picture because I enjoyed the Lestat that Tom Cruise gave birth to in the earlier sections of the film. It was great to see him back again.

There was a conversation with [producer] David Geffen. He’d bought the rights to the whole string of [The Vampire Chronicles books]. After we made the movie, Warners asked me to write a script for the second book, The Vampire Lestat, which I did. But I wasn’t as interested in Lestat as a David Lee Roth, Iggy Pop kind of rock star with leather pants and a muscular torso. It seemed a little bit cornball to me, but I did write a script.

The bulk of the script that I wrote was about Lestat’s story in the 18th century, how he was turned into a vampire against his knowledge and against his will. He was an actor in the Commedia dell’arte troupe, and it was fascinating to me. His mother gets sick, and he turns her into a vampire. It was kind of cool. I would’ve loved to have done that. If I had done that, I would’ve opened it on the Golden Gate Bridge [like the end of Interview with the Vampire].

[Writer’s Note: At that point, Cruise not only didn’t make sequels to his own movies, but he also declined the chance to reprise Lestat, effectively ending the short-lived follow-up idea.]

There’s been a lot of debate this year about creative license in adaptations. The Odyssey in particular received so much guff for its changes, but a movie adaptation is not meant to be a 1:1 translation. So how did you approach that tug of war between the source material and doing what’s best for the movie?

Well, there was no tug of war at all, really. When I was given the project, it had been hanging around for years. I just heard that Anne Rice spoke to Tom Hanks about playing Lestat at one point [n ’93], and there was an earlier version of it where she apparently wanted to change the character of Louis to a woman and have Cher play that role.

[Writer’s Note: Rice’s novel was optioned upon its release in 1976, but the project stalled in development, which she believed was largely due to its homoerotic themes. As a last-ditch effort to get the film greenlit in the ’80s, she gender-swapped the role and heterosexualized the Louis-Lestat relationship. Geffen then approached her in 1992 for a more faithful adaptation.]

The novel was beautiful, and I could feel the atmosphere of it. I could touch it almost. But a lot of stuff had been taken out of the existing script. So when Geffen and Warners asked me to do it, I said, “I’d love to do it, but will you let me do my own pass on the script?” And they did. So I went back to Anne’s book and reintroduced a lot of elements from the book.

One of the main changes that Anne had introduced in the script was Louis lamenting not the death of his brother, but the death of his wife, when the story opens. It’s not a huge change, really, but I do think the movie is as accurate to the book as a movie can probably be without turning it into a version of James Joyce’s Ulysses. I tried to reproduce exactly the feeling I had when I returned to that novel, so I think it’s pretty accurate.

The metaphor of two men, sexuality and blood is intact. The fact is that it’s a gay family with a child at the center of it. The child is created to keep this family together. It’s all there, really. The most dynamic aspect of the book was this family. There’s Lestat, the dominant; Louis, the passive; and Claudia, the kid. That was it. So I thought I’d make a movie about the story of this family, and it’s as accurate to the book as I could make it. I can see how you could take that material and go anywhere with it, but I regarded my job to reflect the novel itself.

***
Interview with the Vampire is now available on 4K Blu-ray.

During August’s inaugural Chef’s Table Festival in Park City, David Gelb watched Massimo Bottura, one of Italy’s most celebrated chefs, rescue a pizza. A cook working with Franco Pepe was about to discard a pie that hadn’t met the pizzaiolo’s standards when Bottura intervened and told him to fold it into a calzone. Then Bottura started saucing it, slicing it and feeding event attendees who had gathered to watch the spectacle unfold.

“I felt like it was scripted,” says Gelb, creator of Netflix’s Chef’s Table. Bottura was the series’ first subject in its 2015 premiere, and starred again in episode four of Chef’s Table: Pizza in 2022.

The four-day Utah festival and its follow-up Vegas weekender, Wynn Revelry by Chef’s Table, which ran Sept. 18–20, brought chefs and viewers together for restaurant takeovers, collaborative dinners and a firsthand look at how the show is made. For Gelb, seeing its subjects cook together felt like an Avengers-style team-up. “Each episode of Chef’s Table is the individual story of a chef, and now it’s like a crossover where we have so many chefs from the show collaborating, hanging out,” he says.

In Vegas, Bottura DJed the marquee event, The Feast, and then cracked open a massive wheel of cheese onstage, making it rain Parmigiano Reggiano all over the crowd. Thomas Keller also hit the decks at Wynn’s Encore Beach Club, alongside DJ Clutch.

Bottura, who declines cooking at most food events nowadays, was driving when Gelb called to invite him to Utah and Las Vegas. “I didn’t even look at the calendar. I said yes because I trust them,” he says. That confidence stemmed from Gelb’s thoughtful, artful approach to Bottura’s original Chef’s Table episode.

In 2013, Gelb developed Chef’s Table after directing Jiro Dreams of Sushi. “Chef’s Table was a vision about telling not just how chefs cook, but why they cook,” he says. Netflix was the only outlet willing to take the pitch: a food show without a celebrity host, filmed with cinema cameras and lenses, with the drama coming from the chefs and their stories.

For years after its 2015 debut, Gelb had heard from viewers who wanted to taste the food onscreen but couldn’t get a reservation or make the trip to the restaurants featured on the show.

“We were always limited by the fact that audiences would only be able to see and hear the show,” Gelb says. “It has always been a dream to bring Chef’s Table to life in a way where people can experience it with all of their senses.”

Justin Connor, president of Chef’s Table Projects, approached Gelb and fellow executive producer Andrew Fried several years ago about taking Chef’s Table “360.” United Airlines now serves chef-designed menus in Polaris international business class on select long-haul routes, including Nancy Silverton’s burrata with braised leeks and beef brasato on flights departing Los Angeles. In-flight videos explain how the dishes came together. Through Airbnb, guests can make cavatelli with Kirby Shaw, executive chef of Michelin-starred Osteria Mozza, then sit down to a family-style meal.

“The brand itself is so low-ego, and it’s just an amplifier for incredible chef talent,” Connor says.

Netflix’s response when Gelb began taking the concept beyond its platform was highly supportive. “Their commentary was, ‘Can I come?’” Gelb says. Many of the executives who work on the series attended both events.

Other streaming hits have moved offscreen: Bridgerton’s Queen’s Ball invited fans into a Regency-style evening of music and dancing, while Stranger Things: The Experience combined live performances, effects and interactive adventures in Hawkins. Connor senses a wider appetite behind those shifts. “People are tired of a wholly digital experience,” he says. He envisioned the Park City and Vegas concepts as a food “un-festival,” seeking something different from the familiar circuit of tasting tents, small bites and plastic forks. Italy’s Ein Prosit provided a model in which visiting chefs cook in local restaurants, and guests choose whom they want to spend an evening with rather than racing between booths to sample everything.

“The culinary industry isn’t about the meet and greet,” Connor says. “It’s about experiencing hospitality, and it’s about getting to connect with people as they tell you their story, whether it’s in person or it’s through their food.”

Across seven days in Park City and Las Vegas, Chef’s Table’s first two outings encompassed more than 100 events. Connor says Park City drew more than 80 visiting chefs for its four-day run, while Wynn’s three-day Revelry featured more than 30 chefs from five continents. The culinary baseline, Connor says, was that “every single bite needed to be amazing.” Beyond that came what he calls the “unscripted, emergent moments” — encounters among chefs and guests “that you can’t plan for and that you can’t pay for.”

Gelb also brought in the filmmaking process. During live food shoots, his team demonstrated how it creates the series’ “food symphony” sequences, using cinema lenses and a camera dolly moving along tracks. Guests could eat a dish, then look at a monitor and see how the camera transformed it.

The team recorded podcasts and chef roundtables and filmed dishes for Plates, a video format developed with American Express and Resy. The shorter format gives Gelb another way to introduce chefs who haven’t had full episodes. But he says any expansion depends on protecting what attracted viewers in the first place, including giving chefs the ingredients and support to cook properly.

Sarah Thompson, executive chef of Casa Playa at Wynn Las Vegas and the 2026 James Beard Award winner for Best Chef: Southwest, saw firsthand how closely guests had followed the series. “The show has done something rare, and it’s made people feel like they know a chef before they’ve ever sat down at their restaurant,” Thompson says. “People aren’t just there for the food. They want to feel like they’re part of the story, too.”

Through their participation in both cities, Thompson met Serigne Mbaye, the 2026 James Beard Award winner for Best Chef: South and chef-owner of Dakar NOLA. “Honestly, I don’t go to festivals because I love being at the restaurant,” Mbaye says. “My restaurant’s busy, and I try to be there as much as I can.” Chef’s Table was different. “When they told me about it, I thought, what an opportunity to meet all the people who inspired me over the years,” he says.

At Wynn Revelry, Thompson cooked at the Icons Dinner and The Feast, while Mbaye participated in The Feast and, for a select group gathered in a Wynn villa, shared the Senegalese ataya tea ritual that closes the tasting menu at Dakar NOLA.

Aaron Paul was one of the fans of the series willing to travel for a taste. “When Chef’s Table landed on Netflix, it was such an obsession of mine,” says the Breaking Bad star. “Not only was I watching every episode, but I was tracking down those restaurants whenever I was traveling. I would make sure, ‘OK, is there a spot I learned about on Chef’s Table near me?’ It really had that impact on me.”

Paul arrived in Park City with Ambassadors Clubhouse, the Punjabi restaurant from the team behind two-Michelin-starred Gymkhana and one of New York’s most in-demand reservations. He brought two of his companies: The Only Caviar and Dos Hombres, the mezcal brand he co-founded with Breaking Bad co-star Bryan Cranston.

In Las Vegas, Paul and Cranston joined chef Sarah Glover to cook a massive seven-bone tomahawk ribeye over an open fire. Cranston leaned into the theatrics, taking a drill to the bone to the delight of onlookers. At the Icons Dinner, The Vampire Diaries actor and Brother’s Bond Bourbon co-founder Ian Somerhalder held court, sipping bourbon and mingling with guests as they made their way through the star-chef buffet.

Nancy Silverton, the 2014 James Beard Outstanding Chef winner behind Michelin-starred Osteria Mozza in Los Angeles, was profiled in volume three, episode three, in 2017 and still sees the show’s effect in her dining rooms. She says “a large percentage” of the diners in her restaurants are there because of Chef’s Table. Some guests tell her they have watched her episode dozens of times; others cry as they explain what it meant to them.

“No matter what level you’re at, what Chef’s Table did for all of us was priceless,” says Silverton.

Kwame Onwuachi, the 2019 James Beard Rising Star Chef of the Year behind Tatiana in New York and Maroon at Sahara Las Vegas, was the subject of the second episode of volume seven in 2024. He participated in Park City after opening Maroon this spring; it is now one of Las Vegas’ hottest tables.

“Not everybody’s going to read a book. Not everybody’s going to read every single article, but some people are going to watch a TV show,” he says. “I think it expanded my audience.”

On Sept. 22, Onwuachi celebrated the release of his cookbook, All Hours: Crazy Good Food for Whatever, Whenever, at Lincoln Center Theater with cooking and conversation presented in the style of a late-night show. He is also building the team for a screen adaptation of his memoir, Notes From a Young Black Chef, first announced with A24.

An episode is not a prerequisite for being invited to cook at the festivals. Most of the chefs who participated at Wynn had not been featured on the series. The wider roster introduced attendees to internationally established and rising talent, including Mark Iacono of Lucali, one of New York’s most sought-after pizzerias; Rodolfo Guzmán of Boragó in Santiago, No. 23 on the 2025 World’s 50 Best Restaurants list; Alejandro Chamorro of Nuema in Quito, No. 10 on the 2025 Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants list; Álvaro Clavijo of El Chato in Bogotá, No. 1 on the 2025 Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants list; and Ukrainian architect-turned-pastry artist Dinara Kasko of Dinara Kasko Pastry Art, internationally known for geometric desserts created with 3D modeling.

“If I were able to, I would shoot 100 episodes per year,” Gelb says. The selection criteria remain “a chef who cooks with passion and purpose and tells a story with their cuisine.”

In Vegas, Friday’s sold-out, $1,000-a-ticket Icons Dinner at The Buffet marked 80 years since El Rancho introduced the first Strip buffet. Thomas Keller, featured in episode three of Chef’s Table: Legends in 2025, and Chutatip “Nok” Suntaranon, whose Philadelphia restaurant, Kalaya, won the 2026 James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurant, anchored the connection to the series. Suntaranon opened Chef’s Table season seven in 2024. They were joined by eight-time James Beard Award winner Marcus Samuelsson of Red Rooster; James Beard Best Chef: South winner Nina Compton of Compère Lapin; three-time James Beard Award winner Alfred Portale of Zero Bond and Sartiano’s; and Doug Psaltis of Asador Bastian, a New York Times Best Restaurant in America.

Mason Royal, the chef at Phil Rosenthal and Silverton’s Max & Helen’s — one of Los Angeles’ most talked-about new restaurants, where waits can stretch four hours — brought his pancakes, which have a cult following, to Sunday’s Grand Revelry Brunch at Mizumi. (With no wait.)

The alumni’s role in deciding who enters this elite circle of talent became more formal in Las Vegas with the inaugural Chef’s Table Honors ceremony. Hosted by comedian Tom Segura, the invitation-only “chefs honoring chefs” event featured 2022 James Beard Outstanding Chef winner Mashama Bailey of The Grey in Savannah, as well as Bottura, Keller, and Silverton. Silverton honored Keith Corbin, the James Beard Award-nominated chef-owner of Alta Adams in Los Angeles.

The Chef’s Table Festival will return to Park City in summer 2027, and Wynn Revelry by Chef’s Table will return to Las Vegas next year as well. Connor says additional cities could be announced in the coming months, while the United Airlines and Airbnb collaborations will continue. Gelb’s team also has footage, podcasts and conversations from Park City still to release.

“Is it possible to have too much of a good thing?” Gelb asks. “We’ll continue to experiment with that.”

Jean Smart is joining the Stone family for the holidays.

On the heels of her fifth Emmy win for her portrayal of Deborah Vance in Hacks earlier this month, Smart has been cast in Searchlight Pictures’ sequel to the 2005 holiday classic The Family Stone, which sees much of the original cast set to return.

Titled The Families Stone, the sequel will see Claire Danes return as Julie Morton, Rachel McAdams as Amy Stone, Dermot Mulroney as Everett Stone, Craig T. Nelson as Kelly Stone, Sarah Jessica Parker as Meredith Morton, Luke Wilson as Ben Stone, Tyrone Giordano as Thad Stone, Elizabeth Reaser as Susannah Stone, Paul Schneider as Brad Stevenson and Brian White as Patrick Thomas.

Thomas Bezucha, who wrote and directed the original film, is also returning to write and direct the sequel. Principal photography is set to begin this fall in New York.

Here’s the official logline for The Families Stone: “Twenty years after their mother’s passing, the Stone family reunites for Christmas only to face the season’s biggest surprise: their father has unexpectedly invited the woman he’s fallen in love with to meet the family.”

The 2005 film followed Everett (Mulroney), the eldest son of the Stone family, as he brought his uptight girlfriend, Meredith (Parker), home to meet his parents — played by Diane Keaton and Nelson — and siblings — played by Wilson, McAdams, Giordano and Reaser — for Christmas. Everett planned to propose to Meredith, but after she became overwhelmed by the family’s hostile reception, she asked her sister, Julie (Danes), to join her for support, sparking a chaotic holiday visit.

Keaton’s Sybil Stone dies of a terminal illness at the end of the original movie. Keaton died of primary bacterial pneumonia in October 2025 at age 79. “After the death of Diane Keaton, it’ll be even more meaningful because she was so great to be around on the first one,” Wilson said to Entertainment Tonight in July.

The Family Stone grossed $92.9 million worldwide and has since become a holiday staple.

Smart, a veteran actress, has earned numerous accolades over the course of her career, including eight Emmys, three SAG Awards, two Golden Globes and six Critics Choice Awards.

She most recently wrapped the fifth and final season of Hacks. Smart is also known for Babylon, Garden State, Sweet Home Alabama, Mare of Easttown, Watchmen and Fargo. Up next, she will co-star in the romantic comedy Egg Baby from Amazon MGM Studios.

The Families Stone producers include Michael London and Shannon Gaulding for Groundswell Productions, Parker and Alison Benson for Pretty Matches Productions.

Smart is repped by WME and Untitled Entertainment.

The Ada County Sheriff’s Office in Boise, Idaho has finally figured out the real identity of “The Unknown Wanderer,” a man who went by the alias William M. Toomey and died by suicide in a local church in 1982. It’s cool to close any cold case, but this previously unsolved mystery looks like it may crack an even bigger one: Toomey, whose real identity was revealed on Wednesday to be Dr. Mathew Francis Betkouski, an organic chemist, may also be the infamous Tylenol Murderer. Enter: Unsolved Mysteries.

Today’s press conference was a joint effort between Ada County Sheriff’s Office and the long-running true crime brand, which is a bit unusual. Unsolved Mysteries was there not for “The Unknown Wanderer” necessarily, but for his potential ties to the Chicago-area poisonings that left at least seven people dead. In 1982, the Tylenol Murderer uncapped bottles of the popular pain medicine at various stores, dumped the powder contents of capsules out, replaced it with cyanide, and returned the bottles to store shelves. (This was before the advent of the safety seal and directly led to its widespread adoption.)

Betkouski’s cause of death was deemed to be cyanide ingestion. Betkouski went through a lot of effort to change his appearance prior to his suicide, and it is believed by some that he made confession in Sacred Heart Catholic Church, where his body was discovered. The Tylenol Murders were never solved.

“He was a brilliant man, but he struggled to connect with people in life,” Ada County Sheriff’s Office Det. Tim Cooper said of Betkouski on Wednesday. “Dr. Betkouski had a documented fascination with chemistry and the use of explosives from a young age, and did put others at risk on more than one occasion.”

“In 1974, Dr. Betkouski sustained a traumatic brain injury, which caused some of his problems to manifest in more concerning ways than they had before,” Cooper continued. “In 1975, Dr. Betkouski worked for a flavors and fragrances company in the Jacksonville area, and after about three years, concerns mounted after coworkers reported Dr. Betkouski discussing the perfect crime and how cyanide could be used as a less messy means of taking one’s life.”

It gets worse: Betkouski was fired by Lockhead in 1982 “following an incident at a local pharmacy.” Betkouski “attempted to obtain some type of pills or capsules…for an experiment,” Cooper said.

“Where this leaves us is while our office may have identified some possible connection between Dr. Betkowski and the [Tylenol Murders], we’re not naming him as a suspect, and we cannot say he was in Chicago during the final week of September 1982,” Sullivan said. “More information does exist in this case that we won’t be releasing today.”

All of this and more is covered in documentary Unmasking the Tylenol Killer, which premieres on The Roku Channel on October 9, 2026. Cooper and his work are the stars of the show.

“This case and everything you’ve heard today is going to be the subject of a brand-new Unsolved Mysteries documentary called Unmasking the Tylenol Killer. It streams October 9 on the Roku Channel, and it’s going to go into detail we simply don’t have time for today,” Sheriff Matt Clifford said at the press conference. “Our goal in working with Unsolved Mysteries was simple: we wanted more tips, and we wanted more evidence to come forward.”

It is not on Ada County to name Betkouski as a suspect in the Tylenol Murders as that is a Chicago case. The Idaho police did share all of their findings with the Chicago PD.

If this all sounds familiar, that’s probably because Netflix tried it. In 2025, Joe Berlinger’s Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders attempted to solve the now-44-year-old killing spree. Directors Yotam Guendelman and Ari Pines (well, really it was producer Molly Forster) got the FBI’s lone suspect James Lewis to participate in the three-part series, but it now appears Lewis is probably not their man.

Lewis was never charged in the poisonings, but he was convicted of extortion for sending a letter to Tylenol maker Johnson & Johnson taking responsibility for the deaths and demanding $1 million to stop them. Lewis said later that his letter was an attempt to point authorities to his wife’s former boss. Lewis got a 10-year prison sentence, and died shortly after the three-part Netflix series wrapped.