‘Gunpowder Milkshake’ stars Karen Gillan, Angela Bassett gush about “girls nights” and “peaceful” vibe while on set

Courtesy of Netflix

Avengers star Karen Gillan knows a thing or two about action movies, but usually she’s surrounded by a bunch of guys. In her latest film, Netflix’s Gunpowder Milkshake, out Wednesday, she plays an assassin for hire who teams up and kicks butt with a bunch of women, which she tells ABC Audio was awesome.

“I mean, truly, that was just the best experience ever,” Gillan gushes. “I never realized how rare it is to actually have that many women in the main cast. And so we just had so much fun.”

“I mean, we were having girls nights and wine and laughing. And it was just like, oh, this is just brilliant. I want to do this all the time,” she laughs. 

Angela Bassett and Carla Gugina, who kick butt alongside Gillan in the action-packed film, echoed the same sentiment about the vibe on set. 

Gugino says, “There is no doubt something about a female energy that with that many women around that was super organic and peaceful.”

“Collaborative, supportive,” Bassett adds. The actress, also shares that she left filming with “a little tweak” in her ankle that serves as “a little reminder of the good time I had in Berlin.”

“To this day [it] still clicks and clicks and clacks a little bit as I walk or when I’m accelerating driving,” she reveals.

If it already wasn’t obvious by the name, Gunpowder Milkshake utilizes guns in the film but when it comes to glorifying guns or gun violence, Gillan says, “I certainly don’t want to be promoting that in any sense, but at the same time, like it was authentic to the characters. And it is a movie and it’s not a realistic movie.”

“It’s extremely like heightened, stylized,” she adds.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

‘Gunpowder Milkshake’ stars Karen Gillan, Angela Bassett gush about “girls nights” and “peaceful” on-set vibe

Courtesy of Netflix

Guardians of the Galaxy star Karen Gillan knows a thing or two about action movies, but usually she’s surrounded by a bunch of guys. In her latest film, Netflix’s Gunpowder Milkshake, out Wednesday, she plays an assassin for hire who teams up and kicks butt with a bunch of women, which she tells ABC Audio was awesome.

“I mean, truly, that was just the best experience ever,” Gillan gushes. “I never realized how rare it is to actually have that many women in the main cast. And so we just had so much fun.”

“I mean, we were having girls nights and wine and laughing. And it was just like, oh, this is just brilliant. I want to do this all the time,” she laughs. 

Angela Bassett and Carla Gugino, who kick butt alongside Gillan in the action-packed film, echoed the same sentiment. 

Gugino says, “There is no doubt something about a female energy that with that many women around that was super organic and peaceful.”

“Collaborative, supportive,” Bassett adds. The actress also shares that she left filming with “a little tweak” in her ankle that serves as “a little reminder of the good time I had in Berlin.”

“To this day [it] still clicks and clicks and clacks a little bit as I walk or when I’m accelerating driving,” she reveals.

If it already wasn’t obvious by the name, Gunpowder Milkshake features a lot of gunplay but when it comes to the film glorifying guns or gun violence, Gillan says, “I certainly don’t want to be promoting that in any sense, but at the same time, like it was authentic to the characters. And it is a movie and it’s not a realistic movie.”

“It’s extremely like heightened, stylized,” she adds.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Deadpool asks to join the MCU as he and Korg review Ryan Reynolds and Taika Waititi in ‘Free Guy’ trailer

Disney

Deadpool and the stone creature Korg — better known, perhaps, as Ryan Reynolds and Taika Waititi — have teamed up to review the trailer to the actors’ new movie Free Guy

Apart from the fact that both actors do the video review in character, complete with Korg’s CG-body that Waititi voiced and motion-performed in Thor: Ragnarok and Avengers: Endgame, the snippet is especially clever, as Reynolds-as-‘Pool doesn’t hold back snarking on both Disney+ and the Marvel Cinematic Universe — and why Deadpool isn’t in the MCU yet. 

They also poke fun at the plethora of trailer-review YouTubers, and review their alter-egos’ performances, with Deadpool noting that Reynolds has a “punchable” face, and Korg sweetly assessing Waititi’s villain character in Free Guy: “I like him!” 

Deadpool even references criticism of his own sequel when he describes “fridging” — or killing off a female character just to make the male hero suffer. “[It’s] also known as Deadpool 2,” he quips.

Free Guy was a 20th Century Fox film before Disney acquired the studio, hence Deadpool’s review that the trailer looked “fun in a ‘last days of Fox fire sale’ kind of way.”

When the trailer ends, Deadpool asks Marvel movie vet Korg if he “has any tips on joining the MCU.”

Korg gives a rambling answer before recommending to check for an email from your agent.

“Yeah, I prefer Dark World,” Deadpool replies, referring to what’s generally thought as one of the weaker MCU entries — or perhaps because it contained a creature that looks exactly like Korg but who couldn’t speak, and quickly was obliterated by Thor’s hammer.

Free Guy, which also stars Jodie Comer and Lil’ Rel Howery, opens August 13. 

Disney is the parent company of ABC News.

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Melissa Joan Hart reveals fun new way parents can support No Kid Hungry charity

Gary Gershoff/Getty Images

Melissa Joan Hart is doing her part to ensure every child is able to eat the most important meal of the day — breakfast.

To celebrate World Emoji Day, which is July 17, the actress is teaming up with Eggo to launch a waffle with a cause: the Eggoji waffle.

While kids may enjoy waffles shaped like well-known emojis such as the heart eyes or laughing faces, the Sabrina the Teenage Witch alum explained to ABC Audio how buying a box can benefit the national charity No Kid Hungry.

“If you go on your social [media] and you hashtag #EggojiNoKidHungry, Eggo will donate up to 100 breakfasts for each hashtag… up to a half a million breakfasts,” said Hart, noting that parents can make it fun for kids by challenging them to take pictures to accompany their social media posts. “Hashtag them, spread the word and… let’s get kids fed!”

Hart stresses that outreach efforts like this are crucial at this moment in time because of “the pandemic and everything that’s going on.”

No Kid Hungry recently stated that one in six children may go hungry as a result of the pandemic, adding that schools sometimes provide children from food insecure households their only meal of the day.

Hart, who is a mother of three, says the #EggojiNoKidHungry hashtag is up and running and invites everyone to take part, calling it “a great, all-around win.”

As for why it was important for her to get involved, says Hart, “To be able to give back to children around the world [and] put a smile on their face and some food in their bellies…. Why would I not?” 

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Obamas developing ‘Blackout’ for Netflix; limited series on female Baseball Hall-of-Famer in the works; & more

ABC

Michelle and Barack Obama are teaming up with Netflix’s Fatherhood producers for a new film and TV event called Blackout

According to The Hollywood ReporterBlackout is “being adapted from six different love stories, each penned by a different writer.” This means the project is being developed concurrently as a TV series and film adaptation and some of the six stories could wind up in the film, while others are in the TV show. Blackout centers on twelve teens perspective during a New York city power outage during the summer. A premiere date for the project has yet to be announced.

In other news, a limited series is being developed about Effa Manley, the first and, to date, only woman to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, Deadline has learned. Based on baseball historian James Overmyer’s non-fiction novel Queen of the Negro Leagues: Effa Manley and the Newark Eagles, the limited series will chronicle the “dramatic efforts by tenacious civil rights activist Effa Manley and her husband Abe as they embark upon a risky business venture [of] starting their own ball club” in the Negro Baseball Leagues. No casting details have been announced.  

Finally, Emmy nominations were announced on Tuesday, with some groundbreaking nods. Jonathan Majors and Jurnee Smollett, of the recently-canceled Lovecraft Country, made history as the first two Black leads to be nominated from the same series. Meanwhile, Pose‘s Mj Rodriguez made history as the first trans actress to be nominated in any major Emmy category.  And for the first time, the lead drama actor category, which included This Is Us‘ Sterling K. BrownLovecraft Country‘s Jonathan MajorsBridgerton‘s Regé-Jean Page, and Pose’Billy Porter, was led by people of color.

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Hard work pays off: Antony Starr on the struggles that earned ‘The Boys’ five Emmy nominations

Amazon Studios

(NOTE LANGUAGE) While Amazon’s skewed-view superhero show The Boys may have been a natural fit for Emmys’ visual effects categories, its nominations Tuesday morning in the Best Drama category turned some heads. 

Based on Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson‘s very graphic graphic novel series, the show centers on an Avengers-like group of superheroes known as The Seven — and unlike their Marvel counterparts, most of them are anything but heroic. Opposing them are The Boys: Karl Urban as Billy Butcher and Jack Quaid as Hughie, and their pals — who all have various scores to settle with the not-so-super super people. 

For Antony Starr, who plays the megalomaniacal Homelander, the positive reaction from fans and critics to the second season is gratifying. “I got to be honest, it was like pulling teeth through the season,” he tells ABC Audio.

“It was because it was all really new stuff, you know: Homelander parenting and doing all these bizarre things — and also having that character on the back foot was really very weird. And then also any sort of romantic involvement that he gets up to was all really new. And I was like, ‘How do we do that?!'”

Starr allows, “But the end result…has been looked at favorably, which is really nice.”

“We work our a**es off, so it’s great to have some positivity around,” he noted. (AUDIO IS ABC 1-ON-1)

 

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‘Behind the Attraction’ trailer: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson helps pull back the curtain on Disney parks

Disney+

Disney+ has released the trailer to Behind the Attraction, a 10-part peek behind the scenes at Disney Parks that features Jungle Cruise star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

Johnson serves as your tour guide as the series takes you from “It’s a Small World” to “Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge” and everywhere in between, with never-before-seen archival footage and photos, and interviews with the Imagineers who bring the attractions to life. 

Brian Volk-Weiss co-produced the project. He explains, “I don’t know if you remember the scene in The Matrix, where they’re in The Matrix and they’re on the roof and Trinity is like, ‘Yo, I need to fly a helicopter,’ then the guy’s like, ‘boop, boop, boop’ and then she can fly a helicopter? That’s what we try to do for people that have been to the park a billion times and people that have never been to the park.”

He continues, “They can be like, ‘Oh, my God, now I know how Jungle Cruise is related to the castles and how it’s related to Haunted Mansion’…So that’s what we tried to do, but in a fun way.”

Volk-Weiss first met The Rock after the superstar posted to Instagram that he’d been watching Brian’s Toys That Made Us series.  

“He is so awesome,” the producer says sincerely. “I’ve worked with a lot of famous people over my career. There’s usually like an inch of daylight to 50,000 miles of daylight between their public persona and who they really are. There is zero daylight with Dwayne. I mean, what you see is what you get. He is the hard-working guy he claims to be. He is the nice guy he claims to be.”

Behind the Attraction drops on July 21 on Disney+.

Disney is the parent company of ABC News.

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‘Pose’ star Mj Rodriguez makes Emmys history with lead actress nomination

Walt Disney Television/Yolanda Perez

The awards show isn’t until September, but Pose star Mj Rodriguez has already made Emmys history.

The actress was nominated for best actress in a drama series Tuesday morning, becoming the first trans actress to ever garner an Emmy nod in a leading acting category.

In 2014, Orange Is the New Black actress Laverne Cox became the first transgender person to ever be nominated for an acting Emmy; Rain Valdez, creator and star of the short Razor Tongue, became the second last year.  Neither Cox nor Valdez won.

Last year, Pose fans voiced their frustrations that the series’ transgender stars were snubbed on Emmy nominations day. Pose actor Billy Porter, however, was nominated for best actor in a drama series; Jeremy Strong of Succession went on to win the category.

Rodriguez has not yet commented on her groundbreaking nomination, though GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis called it “a long-overdue recognition for her groundbreaking performance.”

Ellis continued, “Additionally, the show’s nomination for outstanding drama series, as well as Billy Porter’s third nomination for outstanding lead actor in a drama series, mark a historic show that undoubtedly raised the bar for trans representation on television and changed the way viewers around the world understand the trans community.”

“As over 40 leading LGBTQ organizations pointed out in our open letter about Pose to Emmy Award voters [last month], representation matters. Congratulations, Michaela Jaé, Billy Porter, and the entire Pose team — the world is standing with you and applauding your talents.”

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‘The Crown’, ‘The Mandalorian’ lead the field with 24 noms; ‘WandaVision’ conjures 23 for 73rd Emmy Awards

Disney+, Netflix

Netflix’s The Crown and Disney+’s Star Wars series The Mandalorian led the field with 24 nominations for this year’s primetime Emmy Awards, which were just announced.

Following close behind is another Disney+ series, Marvel Studios’ first small-screen MCU spin-off, WandaVision, which earned 23. 

As previously predicted, this year’s Emmy nominations were a mix of surprises and sure things, with newcomers like WandaVisionCobra Kai, and The Boys taking their places next to shows that were expected to be nominated, including Ted LassoThis Is Us and Mare of Easttown

Emmy-winning father-daughter team Ron Cephas Jones from This Is Us and Blindspotting‘s Jasmine Cephas Jones read the nominees separately, but together via video — with some audio delay interrupting their cute father-daughter banter.

Here’s a list of the nominees in the major categories. Find the full list at Emmys.com.

The 73rd Emmys will be held live and in person from on Sunday, September 19 at 8 p.m. Eastern on CBS.

Outstanding Drama Series
The Boys (Amazon Prime Video)
Bridgerton (Netflix)
The Crown (Netflix)
The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu)
Lovecraft Country (HBO)
The Mandalorian (Disney+)
Pose (FX)
This Is Us (NBC)

Outstanding Comedy Series
black-ish (ABC)
Cobra Kai (Netflix)
Emily in Paris (Netflix)
Hacks (HBO Max)
The Flight Attendant (HBO Max)
The Kominsky Method (Netflix)
Pen15 (Hulu)
Ted Lasso (Apple TV+)

Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series
I May Destroy You (HBO)
Mare of Easttown (HBO)
The Queen’s Gambit (Netflix)
The Underground Railroad (Amazon Prime Video)
WandaVision (Disney+)

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series
Sterling K. Brown – This Is Us
Jonathan Majors – Lovecraft Country
Josh O’Connor – The Crown
Regé-Jean Page – Bridgerton
Billy Porter – Pose
Matthew Rhys – Perry Mason

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series
Uzo Aduba – In Treatment
Olivia Colman – The Crown
Emma Corrin – The Crown
Elisabeth Moss – The Handmaid’s Tale
Mj Rodriguez – Pose
Jurnee Smollett – Lovecraft Country

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series
Anthony Anderson – black-ish
Michael Douglas – The Kominsky Method
William H. Macy – Shameless
Jason Sudeikis – Ted Lasso
Kenan Thompson – Kenan

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series
Aidy Bryant – Shrill
Kaley Cuoco – The Flight Attendant
Allison Janney – Mom
Tracee Ellis Ross – black-ish
Jean Smart – Hacks

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie
Paul Bettany – WandaVision
Hugh Grant – The Undoing
Ewan McGregor – Halston
Lin-Manuel Miranda – Hamilton
Leslie Odom Jr – Hamilton

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie
Michaela Coel – I May Destroy You
Cynthia Erivo – Genius: Aretha
Elizabeth Olsen – WandaVision
Anya Taylor-Joy – The Queen’s Gambit
Kate Winslet – Mare of Easttown

Outstanding Variety Talk Series
Conan
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
Jimmy Kimmel Live
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

Outstanding Competition Program
The Amazing Race
Nailed It
RuPaul’s Drag Race
Top Chef
The Voice

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Zendaya spills on possibility of starring in fourth ‘Spider-Man’ movie

ABC/Lou Rocco

Ahead of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s upcoming third Spider-Man movie, Zendaya is weighing in on the possibility of a fourth installment.

Speaking recently with E! News, the 24-year-old actress — who stars as Spider-Man’s, a.k.a. Peter Parker’s, love interest, Michelle “MJ” Jones — admitted she has no idea what’s next. 

Confirming that the third movie, Spider-Man: No Way Home, recently wrapped filming, Zendaya expressed, “It was so much fun. It was just kind of bittersweet.”

The upcoming Space Jam: A New Legacy star added that neither she nor the cast “know if we’re going to do another one, like, is it just going to be three and done?”

“Normally you do three movies and that’s pretty much it,” Zendaya explained. “I think we just were all absorbing and taking the time to just enjoy the moment being with each other and being so grateful for that experience.”

Noting she did the first movie when she was 19, the actress continued, “It’s pretty special to have grown up all together and be apart of another legacy.”

“There’s been so many different Spideys before us,” Zendaya added, referencing the past Spider-Man incarnations played by Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. She feels “very, very lucky” to have been part of the latest Spider-Man franchise, which stars her rumored boyfriend Tom Holland as the webslinger.

Spider-Man: No Way Home swings into theaters December 17.  

Marvel Studios is owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC News.

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