Entertainment

Conversations with Friends takes the “it’s complicated” relationship status to a whole new level.

The Hulu adaptation of Sally Rooney’s debut novel, from the same team that brought us 2020’s Normal People, follows the intersecting relationships between four people. Alison Oliver and Sasha Lane play best friends and exes Frances and Bobbi, who become entangled with a married couple, Nick and Melissa, portrayed by Joe Alywn and Jemima Kirke.

“I was really interested in kind of, I guess, the dynamic between these four characters and how, you know, when one shifts how it affects all the others,” Oliver says of what drew her to the story.

It’s a four-way affair of sorts, which Alwyn and Oliver can only describe as “a mess.” “I guess it’s a really productive ‘love mess,’ in a way,” Oliver laughs.

One thing’s for sure — the show is definitely a conversation starter. So what conversations are the cast hoping to spark when people watch?

“I hope maybe they’re, like, sitting with their partner and they’re like, ‘Would you ever…?’ And I just want to see how that one unfolds,” Lane says.

“I would like to see people have the F***, Kill, Marry conversation after they watch this,” Kirke adds, laughing.

Conversations with Friends debuts this Sunday on Hulu.

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Kerry Washington and Delroy Lindo are set to star in a new comedy series from Disney’s Onyx Collective.

Unprisoned, created by relationship author Tracy McMillan, is inspired by McMillan’s own life. It follows a relationship therapist and single mom, played by Washington, whose life gets thrown for a loop when her father, played by Lindo, gets released from prison and comes to live with her and her teenage son.

Washington and Lindo will also serve as executive producers on the eight-episode series.

“From the moment Tracy McMillan brought this project to [my production company] Simpson Street, we knew that it had the potential to be provocative, groundbreaking and life-affirming,” Washington says in a statement. “I love this show. I love these characters and the stories that they inspire. And I’m extremely excited to be working, once again, with both Onyx Collective and ABC Signature and honored to be collaborating with this talented group of creative partners.”

Washington previously produced the Onyx legal drama Reasonable Doubt.

Unprisoned marks the first scripted comedy series from Onyx. It will be streamed exclusively on Hulu in the U.S.

Disney is the parent company of ABC News.

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Just in time for Friday the 13th, Apple TV+ teases the star-studded animated film Luck. The teaser has Simon Pegg voicing Bob, a black cat who welcomes viewers to the Land of Luck.

It’s here, you see, that luck is partitioned out to our world, both good and bad — but don’t put that on the black cat himself. Bob explains that in his native Scotland, black cats are good luck.

Instead, the magical creatures of Land of Luck work behind the scenes, like the critters in Monsters, Inc., to affect the human world. However, when a human lands there — also a la Monsters, Inc. — things go awry.

Sam, the unluckiest girl in the world, voiced by theater vet Eva Noblezada, accidentally ends up in Luck, with comedic results.

The film, which also stars the voices of Oscar winners Jane Fonda and Whoopi Goldberg, as well as The Suicide Squad‘s Flula Borg and Free Guy‘s Lil Rel Howery, debuts August 5 on Apple TV+.

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(NOTE LANGUAGE) The Time Traveler’s Wife debuts Sunday night on HBO, based on the best-selling book by Audrey Niffenegger.

The time-travel love story stars Theo James as Henry, the guy who moves through time, and Rose Leslie as his wife, Clare. James tells ABC Audio it’s all about what would change — or not change — if you could travel through time.

“Time travel is an interesting concept, not only for changing where you’re going to go, but also imagining what you could have changed in the past as well,” he explains. “…Would you change things in your life or are all the things that happen in our lives, mistakes, warts and all, did they make us the person that we are?

There are several rules to time travel within the story, and the first, says James is that “for Henry, things happened to him once. So in the larger scheme, there’s a cycle of time that’s going like that essentially, and the main Henry’s in the middle of it and these things happen to him once.”

Additionally, Henry is “brought back to moments that are significant to him and he visits people that are significant to him in life,” which James explains “is a metaphor for, you know, traumatic events in our history… and how we perhaps would visit them more than the more mundane ones.”

Another rule is that Henry “can only travel within his lifespan” — or does he? James and Leslie can’t seem to agree.

“It’s a bulls*** rule I guess,” jokes Theo.

“No, it’s not a bulls***. rule. It’s not,” Leslie interrupts. “I’m thinking of, but I’m going to be giving away a spoiler. But I have a line whereby you can only time travel within your lifespan, but only occasionally do you go beyond that.” 

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It’s curtains for the musical adaptation of Robin Williams‘ 1993 hit movie comedy, Mrs. Doubtfire.

The production that opened December 9, 2021, was plagued by COVID-1 delays, and also hurt by Broadway’s post-pandemic restrictions. It will close May 29.

“Even though New York City is getting stronger every day and ticket sales are slowly improving, theatre-going tourists and, especially for our show, family audiences have not returned as soon as we anticipated,” explains producer Kevin McCollum in Playbill. “Unfortunately, it isn’t possible to run the show without those sales, especially when capitalizing with Broadway economics on three separate occasions.”

The production recently earned a Tony nomination for lead Rob McClure, who played Williams’ role as a divorced dad who pretends to be a British nanny just to see his kids.

For his part, McClure had no regrets. He posted on Twitter, “When I was a kid… I would practice for 4 months, 7 hours a day, for a show that we knew we would get to perform 3 times. 3. Those 3 performances were heaven.”

He added, “I have 18 performance left of Mrs. Doubtfire. That’s 6 heavens. That kid demands I treat them as such. See you there.”

The producers say the musical will start a U.K. run in fall 2022, then reportedly return to the U.S. for a 2023 tour.

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(NOTE LANGUAGE) Following his termination as executive producer and director of ABC’s hit Wonder Years reboot, Fred Savage is reportedly doing “a lot of self-reflection.”

That’s according to a source who told Page Six he’s “committed to reflecting on any wrongdoing.”

Savage was fired from the show after what the network called an investigation into “allegations of inappropriate conduct” by the actor. The allegations were not sexual in nature, the publication confirmed.

Savage “knows he can be an a**hole at times,” the source explained, noting, “There are some unresolved issues that Fred wants to deal with.”

“Fred has really taken this issue very seriously and is doing a lot of self-reflection about how he could and should have handled different circumstances better,” the source says.

The former child star has logged serious time behind the camera in the years following the original Wonder Years, directing shows like Always Sunny in Philadelphia and the recently wrapped black-ish.

Page Six reports Savage is getting “overwhelming support” from friends and his former Wonder Years colleagues, as well as his wife, Jennifer Lynn Stone.

The new Wonder Years focuses on a Black middle-class family in Montgomery, Alabama during the 1960s and follows preteen Dean Williams, played by Elisha “EJ” Williams.

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The Lincoln Lawyer is driving on to a TV set near you this weekend –- the Netflix series about a lawyer who works out of the back of his various Lincoln cars is based on the wildly popular book series, which was made into a movie starring Matthew McConaughey in 2011. Manuel Garcia-Rulfo Garcia-Rulfo stars in this latest version, and he tells ABC Audio he plays it different than McConaughey, though he loves him. 

“I remember watching the film, Matthew McConaughey’s film, back in the day, when it came out and loving it, loving what he did. I mean, it’s Matthew McConaughey, he’s amazing,” the actor gushes. “I especially remember the character, because I wasn’t familiar at the time with the books… what a great character.”

Stepping into the lead character’s shoes as a Mexican actor is a dream come true for Garcia-Rulfo, who says, “That’s the great thing about America…it doesn’t matter where you come from, you can make it.”

“I think I was very thankful to be playing not the cartel,” he continues. “It’s such a cool thing to be a lead as a Mexican actor, to be playing that is really, really something.”

“When I when I got [the lead role], I’m like, wait, am I playing the lawyer? You know, like, is this the lead, are you sure?” the actor recalls. “It’s so important. It’s it was such a pleasure. And I’m really thankful for that.“

Although thankful for the role, if Garcia-Rulfo were a lawyer he wouldn’t be working out of the backseat of a moving car like his character does. 

“I get car sick very easy,” he admits. “Like I can’t read, you know? No I couldn’t do it.”

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They’ve toured the world and elsewhere, but apparently David St. Hubbins, Nigel Tufnel, and Derek Smalls — better known as Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, and Harry Shearer from Spinal Tap — are playing one last show.

That’s the idea behind an apparent sequel to the beloved 1984 mockumentary, from its director, Rob Reiner.

Reiner, who played Scorsese-spoofing filmmaker Martin “Marty” DiBergi in the original, there to document “England’s loudest band,” tells Deadline he’ll be back to direct Spinal Tap II, with a March 19, 2024 release date.

“The plan is to do a sequel that comes out on the 40th anniversary of the original film and I can tell you hardly a day goes by without someone saying, why don’t you do another one?” Reiner explains.

“For so many years, we said, ‘nah.’ It wasn’t until we came up with the right idea how to do this. You don’t want to just do it, to do it. You want to honor the first one and push it a little further with the story.”

According to Reiner, the band is forced to reunite.

“They’ve played Albert Hall, played Wembley Stadium…They haven’t spent any time together recently, and that became the premise,” he explains. “The idea was that Ian Faith, who was their manager, he passed away…Ian’s widow inherited a contract that said Spinal Tap owed them one more concert.”

“She was basically going to sue them if they didn’t,’ Reiner goes on. “All these years and a lot of bad blood we’ll get into and they’re thrown back together and forced to deal with each other and play this concert.”

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In the months before his death from cancer in September of last year, stand-up comic Norm Macdonald recorded a final stand-up performance.

His former SNL co-star, David Spade, revealed as much in an installment of his Fly on the Wall podcast with Dana Carvey.

“We went to a memorial…and it was supposed to be more of a celebration, we never had a funeral for him,” recalled Spade, who noted Netflix cameras were documenting everything for an upcoming project.

“The audience was peppered with SNL people, writers, comedians, Conan O’Brien hosted, Bill Murray from SNL, comedians, [Adam] Sandler…,” Spade told Carvey.

Afterward, Spade and five others were “sequestered” in a private room, and watched the last stand-up set Macdonald ever performed.

“He just said, ‘You know, I keep trying to do my set,’ and he was getting weaker, which we didn’t know,” Spade of Macdonald before his death. “They keep shutting down theaters [for COVID], and they wouldn’t let him go, so then he goes, ‘I’m just gonna run it once, just kind of say it out loud.'”

Spade described the footage, shot by Macdonald’s assistant, with no audience, featured, “classic Norm stuff,” but added some of it was unpolished. “But for what he does, it was perfect. I was excited to be a witness for that,” Spade said.

“I definitely cried,” he admitted. “…You’re watching a guy…he looks a little different, a little gaunt, [but] he was better than my special,” Spade added with a laugh.

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Elizabeth Olsen can currently be seen in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, but in a profile in The New York Times, she admits she had some early “frustrations” being a contracted part of the MCU.

“This is me being the most honest,” Olsen said of her commitment to the Marvel Studios series, in which she plays Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch.

“It took me away from the physical ability to do certain jobs that I thought were more aligned with the things I enjoyed as an audience member,” the actress admits. “I started to feel frustrated. I had this job security but I was losing these pieces that I felt were more part of my being.”

“And the further I got away from that, the less I became considered for it,” she said.

Olsen’s since come to love the character, which earned her an Emmy nomination for WandaVision. When asked if she’d do a standalone movie about the powerful magic user, she said, “I think I would. But it really needs to be a good story.”

Olsen also recently defended in the MCU against criticism from those who don’t consider the movies art. She told The Independent, “From an actor’s point of view…I get it; I totally understand…there’s a different kind of performance that’s happening.” But she adds, “I do think throwing Marvel under the bus takes away from the hundreds of very talented crew people. That’s where I get a little feisty about that.”

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

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