Tag: Entertainment-HollywoodReporter

Mariska Hargitay, the Emmy-winning Law & Order: SVU actress who is back in Emmy contention for My Mom Jayne, the acclaimed HBO documentary that she directed about her late mother Jayne Mansfield, will be honored with the Napa Valley StreamFest’s Icon Award, The Hollywood Reporter can exclusively report.

The festivities will begin at 6 p.m. on Friday, April 24, at the Uptown Theatre in Downtown Napa, when Hargitay will sit down with yours truly for an hourlong career-retrospective conversation that will be recorded for subsequent airing on THR’s Awards Chatter podcast.

Immediately after, the fest will present Hargitay with her award, which is an acknowledgement of both her career (her 27 years and counting as Olivia Benson on SVU makes her the longest-running female lead of a drama in primetime TV history, and she just won the best documentary Producers Guild Award for My Mom Jayne) and her activism (her Joyful Heart Foundation helps survivors of sexual assault to “reclaim their lives”).

“We are so excited to celebrate Mariska Hargitay’s unparalleled ability to bring both fierce strength and profound vulnerability to her work, which has made her an industry legend and the definitive choice for this year’s Icon Award,” festival co-founder Fearon DeWeese said in a statement.

The fest, which will run April 23-26, also announced its full lineup of programming, which includes a daily slate of screenings, panel discussions and special events designed for industry tastemakers and streaming aficionados alike.

DeWeese emphasized, “The industry doesn’t need another festival where high-level networking is sacrificed to logistical chaos. We’ve rejected the traditional model of scattered venues and endless waitlists and centered the entire program on one curated stage. When you aren’t sprinting between screenings, you’re actually engaged — fostering connections, making deals and being truly present.”

Added festival co-founder Juliana Folk, “StreamFest is about more than screenings — it’s about community. As an actress and writer myself, I know how vital it is to feel supported and seen by the festivals you attend. With an artist-first lens and constant commitment to our non-profit mission, we’ve curated a slate that focuses on visionary female storytellers.”

A full list of festival programming follows.

INDUSTRY CONVERSATIONS

FILM, TV AND SHORTS

2026 HONOREES

SIGNATURE STREAMFEST EVENTS

If you were on the Paramount lot over the weekend and saw a figure standing on the Melrose Avenue lot’s iconic water tower, and then asked yourself, “Hey, is that Tom Cruise on the water tower?,” the answer is, why yes, that was Tom Cruise on the water tower.

Sources say Cruise was shooting scenes for a video that will promote the “brand new day” at Paramount, which last summer was acquired by David Ellison and his Skydance media company. It is unclear what other stars or filmmakers will appear in the piece, which is a work in progress, according to sources. Nor is it clear if it is meant to be for internal or external viewing. (April’s CinemaCon, perhaps?)

Jon M. Chu, the director of the recent Wicked movies, is helming the video, which is meant to celebrate the history and legacy of the studio, as well as its future, the topic which has gripped Hollywood for the last several months. Chu is also part of the New Paramount family, having signed a first-look deal with both the movie and television side of the company in December.

A Paramount spokesperson declined to comment.

The video comes as Ellison is remaking Paramount through a flurry of dealmaking. There’s the $110 billion pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery, of course, but also a slew of talent deals signed under co-chairs Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein, with the likes of Chu, the Duffer Brothers, Will Smith’s Westbrook, James Mangold, Issa Rae and others. He has also courted IP-driven deals and acquisitions, acquiring Bari Weiss’ The Free Press and installing her at CBS News, inking a $7.7 billion deal for UFC rights and signing a deal with Activision to create a Call of Duty film franchise.

Should the WBD deal proceed, Ellison’s empire would extend to DC Comics, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones and a bevy of other franchises, making it a scaled mega player in Hollywood, rivaling only Disney for IP firepower and Disney and Netflix in terms of reach.

Cruise has had a strong association with Paramount dating back decades, thanks in part to Top Gun and Mission: Impossible and movies such as Days of Thunder and The Firm. He and Ellison have worked together for years as Skydance co-financed Top Gun: Maverick as well as the recent Mission: Impossible movies.

The actor decamped from the studio in January 2024 and signed a “strategic partnership” with Warner Bros. The only movie to emerge from that collaboration at this stage is Digger, the new Alejandro G. Inarritu film coming in October. With the impending acquisition, the actor finds himself back in Paramount’s embrace.

Cruise had a busy weekend. On top of Saturday’s shoot, the actor was front and center at Sunday’s Saturn Awards, where he presented his longtime collaborator Christopher McQuarrie with the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films’ Visionary Award. The actor took the moment to say hi to several colleagues, among them Guillermo del Toro, James Cameron and Alex Kurtzman. He also led the standing ovation after George Lucas received a Saturn Award.

I don’t think there is anyone happier to be at the #SaturnAwards than Tom Cruise, with the possible exception of Guillermo Del Toro, Hollywood’s geek ambassador. Always first on his feet for ovations, always smiling, always laughing at Joel McHale’s jokes. pic.twitter.com/OUQ3UQFsWu

— Borys Kit (@Borys_Kit) March 9, 2026

Obvious comparisons will be drawn between Project Hail Mary and other space survival movies like Gravity or The Martian, the latter also based on a sci-fi novel by the same author, Andy Weir. Others might call it Cast Away in space. But if we’re going with simplistic movie kinships, I prefer the marriage of two other outstanding Ryan Gosling performances, as a schoolteacher in Half Nelson and an astronaut in First Man — both jobs that connect to his character in Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s soaring interplanetary buddy movie.

The first feature in 12 years from co-directors Lord and Miller — whose collaborations include The Lego Movie, the Spider-Verse films, 21 Jump Street and its sequel — the new film shows their facility for buoyant humor and heartfelt emotion very much intact. Even if Project Hail Mary at times leans into the sentiment to an almost saccharine degree, the movie’s natural sweetness is disarming. And it’s impossible to imagine an actor more adept at striking that tricky balance than Gosling, whose low-key comic timing has never been better.

Much has been written about Amazon MGM’s bid for a major theatrical blockbuster with this $200 million-plus production. But what’s far more striking while watching is the realization of how seldom we now get to see non-franchise original sci-fi of this scale or emotional depth. Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar is an obvious precedent, in its NASA-supported space science as well as its scope; another is Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival, which shares an awestruck sense of wonder at extraterrestrial contact.

Lord and Miller drop in a winking nod to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and many will recall E.T. once a key character dynamic kicks in. But what’s special about Project Hail Mary is its potential to tap into memories of different space sagas and alien lifeform movies for different generations. The creature that turns up midway to pool problem-solving resources with Gosling’s Ryland Grace reminded me of a more benign version of Galaxy Quest’s Rock Monster. (And no, that’s not a trivializing reference — Galaxy Quest rules.)

What’s most gratifying is the extent to which the filmmakers sought practical solutions and physical sets rather than relying solely on the digital toolbox or flattening the action with endless green-screen sequences. The emphasis on in-camera effects makes a massive difference to the wraparound feel of the experience. Nowhere is this more the case than with the puppetry and voice work of James Ortiz as the alien Ryland christens “Rocky,” a five-armed, blocky little being whose mechanical ingenuity is just the starting point for a poignant central relationship built on mutual curiosity and loneliness.

Or at least it’s one of the central relationships. The other is between Ryland and Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller), the head of an international task force charged with tackling an escalating crisis to ensure humanity’s survival. Eva plucks Ryland out of his Cleveland classroom based on a hunch that the same unpopular molecular biology and biochemistry theories that got him branded as a pariah in the science community make him uniquely qualified to figure out the atmospheric threat causing the sun to dim at an alarming rate.

Eva is a complex character, flinty and businesslike, deadly serious about her mission and willing to make ethical compromises to move it forward. She clearly develops an affection for Ryland and a wry appreciation for his humor, mostly while maintaining an outer shell of brisk, emotionless efficiency. But even with that thaw, interpersonal relations come a distant second in her utilitarian priorities.

With a lesser interpreter in the role, Eva might have read more reductively as just a ruthless bureaucratic leader. But the extraordinary German actress Hüller, who broke through internationally in a big way in 2024 with Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest, never lets the character’s clipped professionalism snuff out her humanity. Her most captivating scene is an unexpected moment of self-revelation that’s best kept under wraps. Let’s leave it at a thank you to Harry Styles.

Ryland’s recruitment on Earth and his negotiations with Eva come back to him slowly in fragments of memory after he emerges from an induced coma on a spaceship — the Hail Mary — light years from home. His straggly hair and beard indicate a prolonged hypersleep period, and Gosling nails his initial befuddlement with gentle humor that instantly establishes the kind of goofy self-deprecating dudeness behind which he hides a brilliant scientific mind. His hilarious choice of T-shirts further points up that duality.

Screenwriter Drew Goddard, who adapted Weir’s The Martian for Ridley Scott, gives Gosling great stuff to work with as Ryland struggles to regain use of his limbs or to form words while desperately wondering how he got to wherever he is. “What are we, like Neptune-ish?” he asks the ship’s AI operating system, of course named Mary (voiced by Priya Kansara). But as jokey as Ryland is by nature, the gravity of the situation is immediately apparent to him, especially once he discovers he’s the sole survivor of the three-member crew.

It’s touching to witness Ryland’s efforts to eulogize people of whom he has no memory, and there’s something both pragmatic and deeply spiritual about the finality of him jettisoning their bodies out into space. Mortality is as important a theme here as collective and individual survival.

The purpose of the mission this reluctant hero finds himself on is to unlock the mysteries of the solar parasite Astrophage, a single-celled alien microorganism that feeds off the energy of stars — including Earth’s sun — progressively dimming their light. A Russian scientist identified what became known as the Petrova Line, an infrared arc created by massive amounts of Astrophage moving to Venus to reproduce. If not stopped it has the potential to cause an extinction-level global ice age. Hence the grim determination with which Eva approaches the mission.

The filmmakers decline to dumb down the science, which is mostly accessible, though how much you keep up with the details seems optional, and unlikely to curb your involvement in the story either way.

The glimmer of hope comes in the discovery that one star, Tau Ceti, has somehow remained immune to infection, creating a gap in the Petrova Line. When Ryland travels to that star he encounters a ship from Erid, a planet with a different solar system but a common goal, and the one survivor on that ship makes contact.

Lord and Miller and their superb craft and technical departments — notably production designer Charles Wood; sound designers Erik Aadahl, Malte Bieler and Dave Whitehead; VFX chief Paul Lambert; and creature effects supervisor Neil Scanlan — make something genuinely majestic out of this meeting of two worlds.

Any movie lover nostalgic for a time when space exploration on the screen could still thrill and surprise us will get a huge kick out of the sequence. The time and attention to detail afforded it by Lord and Miller suggest that the directors are as susceptible as any of us to that amazement, elevated by the moving solemnity and celestial dimensions of Daniel Pemberton’s beautiful score.

The monumental scale and engineering complexity of the alien spacecraft alone are breathtaking, its intricate design hinting at the metal-rich composition of its home planet. Shooting in IMAX, cinematographer Greig Fraser — such an integral part of the world-building on the Dune films — captures the staggering size and structural sophistication of the ship, as well as both the vastness and the solitude of space with astonishing force.

There’s infectious joy and wonder as the Eridian who will come to be known as Rocky begins communicating with Ryland, at first with rudimentary signals and then with more complex language once Ryland rigs a translation device. These two strangers from different planets are rarely in the same space for much of the movie, due to their incompatible atmospheric requirements. But the growing rapport between them is lovely — even more so once Rocky builds an irregular prismatic form, a kind of rolling airtight terrarium, that enables him to board the Hail Mary.

Gosling maximizes the benefits of acting opposite another being rather than a blank space to be digitally filled in later, underlaying the playful humor and frequent frustration of their duologues with a tender sense of gratitude for Rocky’s companionship. Ortiz, through both his vocals and puppetry, makes Rocky no less emotionally receptive, albeit articulated in different ways.

As readers of the novel will know, the mission doesn’t follow the standard path of setbacks and breakthroughs but remains in constant flux, requiring new solutions at every turn as they attempt to save their two worlds. The pacing slackens a little as the complicated process inches forward, but the ending tugs the heartstrings in enormously satisfying ways.

Ryland is a great role for Gosling, whose easygoing charm makes him the ideal actor to mask anxiety and sorrow with throwaway humor, serving as a conduit for the story’s affecting contemplation of altruism and sacrifice. It’s a gorgeous performance, one of his best; he keeps us deeply invested in Ryland’s wins and losses throughout.

This marks a superlative major studio production debut for Hüller, who also has Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Digger coming in the fall, in which she stars opposite Tom Cruise. And it’s a delightful foray into features for Lionel Boyce, so wonderful on The Bear, playing a seemingly terse mission engineer who becomes a valuable collaborator to Ryland.

Lord and Miller have just the right lightness of touch combined with depth of feeling and technical control to bring this material to life, and the right love of vintage movie craft to make it a universe we can almost reach out and touch. What a pleasure to have them back in the director’s chair after too long away.

Alcohol consumption in Cambodia has increased fivefold over the past two decades, and beer has been the big driver. The country in Southeast Asia has no legal drinking age and few, rarely enforced, directives on alcohol, making it the Wild East for local and global brewers.

Cambodian Beer Dreams, the new documentary from Laurits Nansen (Welcome to the Frontline, Emilie Meng – An Investigation Gone Wrong, The Town Where Children Disappear), now explores the cocktail of factors at play far away from much of the world’s eyes and raises all sorts of ethical questions. “Through aggressive marketing, young ‘beer girls’ and promises of cash prizes, the poor population is encouraged to drink more and more alcohol – sometimes to the point of death,” the press notes for the film highlight, for example.

In Cambodian Beer Dreams, world premiering at the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival CPH:DOX on Thursday, March 12, Nansen follows Kim Eng, a lone activist who stands up to the beer industry and “neo-colonial alcohol capitalism” in his fight for a national alcohol law.

Audiences can find out what the filmmaker sees and hears on this journey in the F:act Award section of the Danish festival, whose 23rd edition runs March 11-22. But you can expect Cambodian Beer Girls, produced by Malene Flindt Pedersen of Hansen & Pedersen and Signe Skov Thomsen, to go into the dreams, such as promises of money, success and life as a party, and the nightmares, including phone threats and wandering hands. 

Nansen talked to THR about how he came to make Cambodian Beer Dreams, including his personal experiences, the universal themes behind his exploration of alliances between power and money, and how he tries to take audiences inside the heads of alcoholics.

I had no idea about the rapid growth of the beer industry in Cambodia and the dangers involved. How did you find out about this and decide to make a film about it?

I wanted to do a story about alcohol because it affects a lot of people, and I wanted to look at the forces that drive and shape the way we look at alcohol. In Denmark and in Europe overall, you almost can’t see the problem, because it’s so big and so embedded in our culture. So I needed to find a new angle into this, so that we can reflect on it.

I started to do a lot of research and then stumbled onto Cambodia and saw that they don’t have a national alcohol law, alcohol consumption was just booming, and this was very intriguing to me. So I just bought a plane ticket to go there with my camera. I had an idea of what this story could look like, but when I arrived in Phnom Penh in 2022, I was still pretty surprised. I felt beer had an even bigger impact than I had expected.

In Phnom Penh and other cities, there were so many beer commercials. In many places, there are more than street signs. This is not in the film, but Kim Eng and I were driving on a road, and he was counting the beer commercials. He reached 46 within one kilometer’s drive. And they are also using the ring on beer cans and bottles – you can win a motorbike or thousands of dollars with that.

This idea of connecting gambling with alcoholism to [market to] a very poor population made me ask so many questions. What is going on here? What drove this development?

I heard you also have personal experiences with the dangers of alcohol in your family?

Yes. Like many Danes and Europeans, I have a history with that. My father died [after several years of alcohol abuse]. But I did not want to tell a personal story about that. I wanted to find out about the bigger structures behind this so that everybody can relate to it.

For me, it’s always about chasing the bigger story to see what drives it and how it affects ethics, morality and human behavior. When you have these two forces just driving parallel and together, alcohol and raw capitalism, it’s just so powerful. Both forces are so powerful and so wild. So, what happens when you unleash them like two wild animals?

Speaking of the bigger story: There are all sorts of universal angles to the story you tell…

Yes, I hope that the film has universal aspects. I hope that people can see that it’s not just a film about Cambodia and beer, but it’s a lens into our time and the future as well. Cambodia is kind of a laboratory to observe what happens when authoritarian regimes and big corporations make alliances in a way that benefit them both economically and on the power level, but it’s not necessarily good for people.

Dreams and their destruction is also a theme in the film. Cambodian people are warm and hardworking, and you have people who dream of a better life, of a better future. And in some way, these dreams and hopes are being used and corrupted to sell something. In that sense, it’s not only a story about the beer industry, but the fact that simple commodities can be used to shape people and society.

Market forces are not neutral. They have consequences. They shape people, and it can be pretty profound when profit outweighs ethics. So, it’s not an anti-beer or anti-alcohol film. I like a good IPA myself. It’s more about the scale and ethics of it.

Your doc touches on how Carlsberg has stopped working with big prices, but it has focused on another area that raises questions...

Instead, they are focusing more on young people, which is another problem. Because they would not do that back home, right? Yeah. A big part of the Cambodian population is very young. And if you are in the marketing department, you look at population numbers and you know what to do. But again, it raises ethical questions. But nobody’s watching – unless you go there with a camera.

Did you know about the use of “beer girls” to entice people to drink more before you arrived in Cambodia? Hearing about what their work involves was harrowing.

I knew about that already because of Carlsberg. There had been reports in the Danish press about beer girls and the way they handle them.

How did you approach the aesthetics of the film, going from drinking and party scenes to the serious issues and sections that have a feel of a hangover?

We wanted to create a film where you see hopes and dreams, but then also the tensions and the claustrophobic feeling that an alcoholic would experience. We are sometimes going into the mind of an alcoholic in the film, where you are kind of stuck and cannot get out. I wanted to describe this duality, the energy and the dreams, as well as the nightmares, because I think it’s important.

What’s next for you?

I have my own production company, called Eight Pictures. We are in production on a film in the U.S. right now. It’s about the obesity epidemic, another interesting issue.

In 1960s Italy, there was a promise of a connected future. The state-of-the-art Salerno–Reggio Calabria highway was unveiled and touted as one of the most important Italian and European engineering works. The goal: to connect the economically struggling south of the country with the financially healthier and more advanced north.

However, as seems to be the case with many an infrastructure project, things didn’t quite play out as rosily as advertised. Far from it. The promises made were “as pompous as the scale of the project,” highlights a synopsis for Tirrenica, a documentary from director and director of photography Rosario Minervini, that dives into the stories of people living along the edges of the highway to “reveal Southern Italy beyond its stereotypes.”

World premiering in the Newcomers Documentary competition lineup of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival in Greece on Tuesday, March 10, Tirrenica‘s narrative travels between the present and the past. Among the people viewers meet is a man who, after losing his job after 12 years, becomes a shepherd and lives in a caravan without water and electricity. Among others, people salvaging and repairing discarded objects and practising target shooting also feature, as does Francesca, who fights for civil rights.

Press notes for the film describe them with such descriptions as The Revolutionary, The Hoarder, The Shepherd, and The Sharpshooter.

As it unfolds, the film explores how the huge highway project, which ended up taking more than 60 years to finish, became synonymous with the areas it connects, from the outskirts of Naples to Salerno, but “for all the wrong reasons,” as a synopsis highlights. It also exposes “the structural pathologies of the Italian state like no other, effectively confirming the narrative of a ‘country of two speeds.’ Through the striking comparison of yesterday’s expectations and the mundane reality of those who were born and raised in the shadow of a phantom project, Rosario Minervini performs a dissection of clinical precision of the delays that have weighed down Italy’s collective psyche over time.”

Or as Minervini, who serves as the artistic director of the documentary section at the Giffoni Film Festival. says in a director’s statement: “Tirrenica is an observational film that explores Southern Italy beyond its cultural clichés. Set along the Salerno–Reggio Calabria highway, the film unfolds as a visual and emotional journey through the lives of those who inhabit its margins. This iconic road becomes a connective thread, linking stories of solitude, survival and quiet resistance.”

THR can now exclusively reveal a trailer for Tirrenica. It may be in Italian, but it shows off the mix of current and archive footage, the colorful characters, and the music of the film. So, buckle up for a trip to Southern Italy and see a side of Italy that promises to be very different from what tourist guides tell and show you.

If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, The Hollywood Reporter may receive an affiliate commission.

For fans of award-winning TV, Oscar-nominated films, the Marvel universe, family-friendly movies and beyond, Disney+ and Hulu is running one of its best promotions of the year. In fact, outside of Black Friday, it’s one of the only annual savings events offered by The Walt Disney Company’s streaming services. Through March 24, customers can get three months of Disney+ and Hulu for $4.99 per month (reg. $12.99 per month).

Regularly priced at $12.99 per month, the ad-supported Disney+, Hulu Bundle promotion comes out to a savings of 62 percent, perfectly timed with the height of Ryan Murphy’s Love Story (FX on Hulu), and just days before the streaming premiere of Disney’s Zootopia 2. Following the three-month period, subscriptions will auto-renew at $12.99 per month (or the then-current regular monthly price), but can be cancelled at any time.

Learn more about this limited-time promo and other streaming savings opportunities below.

Best Disney+ Bundle Deal 2026: Disney+, Hulu

Prefer a commercial-free experience? You can upgrade to the ad-free Disney Duo Premium package for $19.99 per month, which still comes out to a savings of 47 percent compared to signing up for each ad-free plan on its own.

Best Disney+ Bundle Deal 2026: Disney+ With Verizon

The best free Disney+ offer is at Verizon, which is gifting users six months of the streamer’s ad-free version (Disney+ Premium) for free when switching to select unlimited plans. After the trial period, the subscription auto-renews through your mobile service at $18.99 per account; learn more at Verizon here.

Best Disney+ Offer Without Bundling: Get Two Months Free

Prefer to subscribe to Disney+ on its own? The ad-free Disney+ Premium plan normally costs $18.99 per month, but you can get two months free when you sign up for an annual plan at $189.99 per year. The savings essentially work out to getting 12 months for the price of 10.

Does Disney+ Offer a Free Trial?

Unfortunately, Disney+ discontinued its seven-day free trial in 2020. For the best deal right now, upgrade to a Disney+ bundle to save on two or more streaming services while adding to your content library.

When The Pitt‘s executive producers first approached Shawn Hatosy with their pitch for Dr. Abbott’s season two arc, he balked. “There was some discussion early on when I joined the show about how maybe Abbott would come back full-time in season two, so I was eagerly awaiting the news,” he explains. “And then they came back to me to suggest that he’s in the E.R. in the middle of the season and I was like, what does that mean? Why am I coming in the middle? Am I dying? Am I coming in on a gurney?”

The actor came around quickly once the creators explained that they were going to have Dr. Abbott serve as part of a SWAT team. “I loved the idea,” he added.

Hatosy is currently in Toronto filming his next project, the FX limited series Cry Wolf, alongside Olivia Colman, Brie Larson, showrunner Sarah Treem (The Affair) and director Anne Sewitsky. He can’t say much about the series yet, outside of teasing that it’s “one of the best scripts” he’s ever read and that it is the sort of narrative that constantly leaves the viewer off balance. The actor is also looking forward to meeting more fans of The Pitt than on his last trip to the country. “Animal Kingdom is huge in Canada, I think it must have been on during COVID or something,” he says. “When I was here during the summer, I couldn’t walk to the elevator in my hotel without somebody being like, ‘Oh my God, you’re Pope.’”

Below, he takes a break from set to break down season two, including his The Pitt directorial debut.

Let’s start with Abbott’s SWAT storyline. When does this man sleep?

I guess he doesn’t. He has his days free and he does all this stuff. I think he’s very lonely and just trying to figure out things to keep him occupied. I really love how he brings up the therapist, because he misses the point in such a big way. I remember having a conversation with my therapist when I gave up drinking, and I was like, I need something. I found tennis through that session. So I can imagine Abbott having a similar conversation, and he probably went and tried to play golf and it was not his thing so he decided to join the SWAT team.

Without giving anything away, I’m curious if, when you were learning about this season’s arc, you thought Robby was actually going to go on his motorcycle trip?

I did. I was disappointed because I thought it was so clear to Abbott through the mass casualty event what his purpose was. Even though he’s a bit confused about how to live that out, because he’s doing SWAT, he’s still trying. I guess this is Robby’s version of self-reflection, but no-helmet motorcycle-riding… it’s disappointing.

Have you ever or will you ever ride a motorcycle?

No. I love the idea of it, but I don’t trust other people. I like to ride a bike, and then when we were shooting the roof scene in season one, that was a functional hospital. We had to stop probably 12 times throughout filming because helicopters were coming in, and our technical advisor was like, yeah those are all bike and motorcycle injuries. It was just like, well, fuck.

Did you notice an immediate shift after the success of the first season of The Pitt? Did your phone start ringing more?

I guess the phone was ringing. The way I was getting the at-bats was different. The self-tape request would come, and I don’t love to do self-tapes anyways because you’re often guessing at what they want. After some of the success of The Pitt, I was getting into meetings with casting directors rather than having to provide a self-tape. I don’t think Ready or Not 2 would have happened — they were big fans of The Pitt. I was unfamiliar with the first movie, so when [the script] arrived, I was like, what is this? But I was immediately taken with its dysfunction. It was disturbing and hilarious.

You really engage with the fandom in a way that feels unique. Do you remember the point at which you realized viewers of the show were becoming quite rabid?

I don’t think I understood it as it was happening. I’m certainly somebody that was online and paying attention to stuff, but I wasn’t on TikTok. But then I would see these edits come through, and the comments. Our fan base is so forensic, and they look and read into everything. Around the Emmy nominations, I could sense that it was taking on something totally different. Then Animal Kingdom started streaming on Netflix, and it was the confluence of those two things that made me really pay attention to what people were saying.

Have you ever felt shy or embarrassed by the attention that is being directed specifically towards you, and often specifically about you being hot? I’m thinking about the reaction to Abbott’s shirtless scene, or even the reaction to the news that he would have a shirtless scene.

I try to never take any of it seriously. Yes, that episode really blew up and it’s weird. Certainly, it creates these lines where things can get a little complicated, like if I’m out in public with my family. I don’t want to be the guy who isn’t taking the picture with the fans because I know that it means something to them. Especially when I’ve talked to fans who are really moved by the show, I’ve had people say they were struggling and then watched Abbott not jump [off the roof]. But then when it comes to me and my pasty, flabby back out in the world, yeah, it can get a little weird. I just try and enjoy it.

You directed episode nine; did that come out of those same discussions about Abbott having a bigger role this season?

Well, because I’ve worked with John [Wells] for a number of years, I’m always throwing my name out there. I remember last year we were shooting episode 15 and John was directing. Abbott had so much medical [dialogue] that episode — and I’m not Noah, OK? He’s very good at looking at that day-of and just being able to do it. Like Laurence Olivier. I take a lot of repetition and preparation. So anyways, in between takes, John was like, “Would you want to direct this show?” I’d just directed Rescue High Surf, another one of our shows, and it had just aired, so he was asking me if I’d want to do it again and on this show. I was like, I don’t know if I can do Abbott and be a director at the same time. And then I went home that night and thought, Did I just talk myself out of a job? So I made sure to call him and say, “I didn’t mean that I don’t want to direct period.” And then I think in season two, somebody ended up not being able to do it, and I was able to step in.

Did everything go smoothly?

No. (Laughs.) There were some changes in the script early on, and it caused a whole trauma to be moved into the episode. And Isa had appendicitis, and she had a lot in the episode, so we shot out of order for basically the first time so that we could put her stuff at the end. Also, the first thing that John’s office said to me when they called me about this is, “We want you to direct but we want you to know that Abbott’s in the episode.” And it was fine, because Abbott isn’t in it a lot. I don’t know how Noah did it [in episode six]. The scene I was most anxious about was filming outside; it was an exterior, and I had Howard with the oxygen on his face and he’s talking through the iPad to his sister on a FaceTime on the screen, and I’m in the scene.

Was that actress actually on FaceTime, or is that done in post?

We built a little room in the hospital, and the actress was there that day. We had her on the phone and we were able to do it live. Usually, you’d have a script supervisor read those lines and then we would burn in that image on the phone.

Did you solicit any advice?

Noah directed episode six, so he was editing and finishing it at the time. The thing about our show is that our scripts are dense. There’s a lot of pages, and we fly. The dialogue moves very fast, and so much of the show is transitioning from scene to scene in a continuous way. So you can create really beautiful transitions but if the show is long, those are the first things that are going to be cut. I had a couple that I thought were indefensible. I thought they were bulletproof. That they can’t cut them. And of course they did. The episode was very specifically written to start on [with] Robby and Dana at the hub, watching the madness, and then they share a look and she walks over to the bell and starts ringing it. So I created this very cool shot where I was over Robby, looking at the hub, hearing it and it rotated around him and found them both. I loved it, I thought it was the coolest thing ever, and then after the producers got done with the cut, it started with her walking to the bell. I was like, damn it. (Laughs.)

Can fans expect another Abbott-themed playlist for season two?

I was actually just thinking about this. I will do it for sure, because it seemed to be very popular in season one. I like to feed the fans.

On the eve of its $1,500-per-person Los Angeles pop-up, which starts Mar. 11, Noma — often ranked the world’s top restaurant — has been exposed as a creative institution that built and sustained its reputation on physical and psychological workplace abuse. The New York Times investigation, published Mar. 7, came as no surprise to the fine dining world. Star chef Rene Redzepi’s misconduct had long been an open secret. In fact, he’d himself disclosed more than a decade ago in an essay that he’d “yelled and pushed people” at Noma, explaining, “I’ve been a bully for a large part of my career.”

The revelations detail how Redzepi would assault and degrade employees in the pursuit of his exacting standards. This included punching underlings, striking them with kitchen implements and slamming them against walls — as well as threatening, according to the Times, “to use his influence to get them blacklisted from restaurants around the world, to have their families deported, or to get their wives fired from their jobs at other businesses.” The chef has since apologized.

What’s most telling is how Redzepi enacted a collective punishment theater at his restaurant in Copenhagen, which is known for revolutionizing Nordic cuisine with its emphasis on foraged ingredients and innovative fermentation techniques. His staff was forced to witness degradations against employees he believed had failed him. This complicity ritual — common in gangs, cults and other authoritarian organizations — lessens the likelihood of dissent.

I’ve long covered fine dining for The Hollywood Reporter. Yet Redzepi’s dark dynamic with his mistreated acolytes brings most to mind my experience over the years investigating L.A.’s toxic high-control groups, in which charismatic, visionary leaders — of an acting conservatory, a fitness studio, a personal-growth workshop — have wielded unimaginable power over followers to devastating effect. Like Noma, they’re hermetic subcultures in which dreams of ascension and perfection often instead turn into unintended nightmares.

The restaurant industry is known for its normalized cruelty and casual nihilism. Anthony Bourdain wrote multiple bestselling books about it, and FX’s acclaimed The Bear is an exploration of the consequences. But the singular dilemmas of its fine dining realm, with Noma as Exhibit A, are perhaps best understood not within the context of hospitality. Instead, the better analogue is arthouse filmmaking.

Both scenes exploit the desire for — and peril of — prestige. These hothouses draw an inexhaustible supply of idealistic pilgrims who’ve chosen to forego more stable and remunerative career paths in pursuit of the high-wire act that is a meaningful creative life. The vicious crucibles they then encounter are all too often rationalized as just another step along their hero’s journey of sacrifice on the way to hoped-for success. In other words, this makes them easy pickings.

In recent decades, Hollywood has romanticized haute cuisine — its aesthetics, personalities, strictures, ingenuities, excesses — in everything from Bravo’s long-running competition Top Chef and Netflix’s hagiographic Chef’s Table to the satirical but still adoring horror-comedy film The Menu. In each project, there’s an understanding that what sets fine dining apart from all other dining is that it’s a conscious performance. Those tasting menus are the original binge entertainment.

Wolfgang Puck, the industry’s favorite chef, famously pioneered the open kitchen in high-end restaurants nearly a half-century ago at Spago. This act turned diners into spectators within a stage set where the chef is the star.

Several of Redzepi’s employees described how he subverted Noma’s own open kitchen, which was an outward display of masterful technique and mindful professionalism. While they prepared dishes in view of the dining room, he crouched out of sight below the counters, jabbing his charges in the legs.

Redzepi closed the original Denmark location of Noma a few years ago, citing its unsustainable financial model, which relied on the unpaid labor of many of the lowliest of those pilgrims, who’ve now been revealed as abused. Since then, it’d been refashioned as a mobile global brand, propelled by what was until now his exalted public reputation.

It’s unclear whether Redzepi’s misconduct will hurt him and Noma. After all, if nothing else, he’s a nimble performer: virtuoso kitchen genius, community-minded symposium guru, contrite artiste. There are few others in fine dining with his range. Now we’ll see if he can pull off a villain arc.

Kanye West will perform a one-night Los Angeles concert at SoFi Stadium in April, the venue announced Monday, marking the rapper’s most high-profile U.S. show in years after West had faced widespread backlash across the entire entertainment industry over his stream of antisemitic comments going back to 2022.

West will play SoFi on April 3 for what is advertised as his “only performance in Los Angeles,” according to the venue’s announcement. The stadium said a general on-sale for tickets will take place on Wednesday at 11 a.m.

West’s concerts have been rarer since the controversial rapper’s antisemitic comments from 2022 onward. His comments have ranged from spreading stereotypes about jews to voicing his admiration of Adolf Hitler and calling himself a Nazi. He’s He performed several shows and listening events in China and Korea in 2024 and 2025, and he played two shows in Mexico in January.

West’s booking agency CAA dropped him as a client in 2022 after West had tweeted a call for “death con 3 on Jewish people,” and Cara Lewis had reportedly represented him in 2024. Though by February of 2025, he was represented by booking agency 33 and West, with the agency’s Daniel McCartney dropping him following another round of antisemitic actions when West infamously took out a Super Bowl ad directing viewers to a website where West was selling t-shirts with swastikas on them.

Booking West has become a risk for promoters for years not just because of hateful comments, but because of reliability concerns as well. West famously canceled the remainder of his Saint Pablo tour after suffering a mental health breakdown in 2016, and in 2022, he canceled headlining sets at both Rolling Loud Miami and Coachella weeks before those shows.

A representative for SoFi Stadium confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter that rapper Rod Wave’s promotion company Mainstay Touring would serve as the promoter for April’s concert.

West’s upcoming show comes as the rapper looks to be mounting another comeback. He took out an ad in the Wall Street Journal earlier this year apologizing for his hateful statements, citing his untreated bipolar disorder and brain trauma for his claims while further saying “I love jewish people.”

“I regret and am deeply mortified by my actions in that state, and am committed to accountability, treatment and meaningful change,” West’s ad said.

While West’s actions lost him CAA as well as deals like his Adidas Yeezy venture, he’s remained one of the most streamed artists in the industry, coming in at 10th on Spotify’s year-end 2025 list for top-10 artists in the U.S. He currently has nearly 70 million monthly listeners on the platform.

Amid news of the apology, it was confirmed that West’s next album Bully would be coming March 20. Independent music company Gamma, whose roster also includes Mariah Carey, Usher and Snoop Dogg, is partnering with West for the release. The Journal reported in January that the deal was in the mid-to-low seven figures.

The deal, coupled with an upcoming promoted concert at one one of the most prominent venues on the planet, shows that even through the most extreme controversies, if there’s an audience who may be willing to buy, Hollywood will come back to partner up.