#i expect to see it play in the globe theatre in London next year

[emily-mooon]

Hehehehe (evil laughter)

I truly would see it (mostly for the clown and jester costumes)

Also…

Me when the Shakespeare translation of the cheap hospital pepsi post gets a stage adaptation:

[queencarolinemikaelson]

A Mystery Never Fully Explained

//Klaroline AU Week// - Day 1 - All Human AU

x

There really was no two ways about it, Klaus Mikaelson was a diva.

A prima donna, even.

There was an urban legend in the theatre industry that once, while rehearsing his role as Beast in Beauty and the Beast, Klaus opted to sit his dressing room, rather than ‘save’ his leading lady from the wolf attack at the beginning of act two.

“I was just throwing the moron to the wolves,” Klaus allegedly said smugly, to the rightly irate director.

Yep, he was biggest drama queen in the theatre industry.

All who worked with him agreed Klaus was actually a soprano in a baritone’s body. Though they would never say it to his face. Nope, to his face, all were perfectly lovely.

Because, no matter how many three-year-old-esque tantrums he threw, or crazy demands he slung at a company, or assistants he fired, Klaus Mikaelson was still the best.

Contemptuous he may have been until the very last second, but once he was under the spotlight, he was magic.

No note, nor line was missed. His honey voice caressed every ear like a lover. His impeccable acting could bring to life every character from King Herod to Jean Valjean.

So naturally, when casting for a reinvigorated West End production of Phantom of the Opera, whom else was to set to play the titular character?

Rehearsals certainly weren’t easy for the crew.

The nature of the show meant already two divas needed to be cast for the roles of Christine and Carlotta. How were they to cope with a third.

But they had managed to make it to opening day without too many scuffles until – 

“What the bloody hell do you mean Bonnie’s in the hospital!?” Klaus roared. “Who is going to do my make up?”

“Have some compassion, Niklaus!” Elijah, Klaus’ brother – who also happened to be his manager, (and what was more pertinent, the only one who could make any sense of a tantrumming Klaus) – sighed. “She is in the hospital, after a car accident!”

“We are opening in three and a half bloody hours, Elijah! I refuse to have my Phantom butchered by some blonde-bimbo-beauty-school-drop-out, playing face paint, just because Bonnie decided to have an accident!”

“Oh be reasonable,” Elijah snapped, though made the mental note to tell Ms Bennett just how indignant Klaus was about working with anyone else. Surely that was some vote of confidence? “She was hit by a car!”

Klaus glowered, but didn’t return fire. Even Klaus, diva or not, knew car accidents were bad.

“There are two options,” Elijah said, after both men had a moment to calm themselves. “You can have your makeup done by the associate head of make up. This will require you to leave your dressing room, and join some of the other cast members.”

“I don’t mingle with the peasants, Elijah,” Klaus pouted, petulantly. “They chatter and natter about inane things, and I cannot focus on what is important. Which is the work!”

“Fine! The second option is you trust Bonnie’s substitute. A Ms Caroline Forbes, currently the head of artistry on Broadway’s Phantom of the Opera.”

Klaus rolled his eyes intensely. He hated Broadway. He hated working on Broadway. And with people who worked on Broadway. And just people in general, but that was beside the point.

“Brother, my feelings about Broadway aside, I’m not sure if you’ve seen a globe recently. But this is London. Not New York City.”

It was Elijah’s turn to roll his eyes – honestly maybe it was time to quit, and live as far away from Klaus as possible.

“I’m well aware of the geography, Niklaus,” Elijah groaned, rather uncharacteristically. “Ms Forbes, an old friend of Ms Bennett, is currently visiting London. Had tickets for tonight’s show, in fact, so is very well placed to aid us tonight.”

“Fine,” Klaus grumbled, after a moment of contemplation – though there wasn’t much to contemplate, no make up was so bad that he would endure the blather of other cast members. “This Broadway woman will have to do. But I refuse to be pleasant to her.”

“I would expect nothing more of you, Niklaus.”

Just then, there was a knock at the door of Klaus’ dressing room.

 “Ahh, that will be her.”

 “You did not just approve her to come backstage before consulting me brother!” Klaus growled.

“Well,” Elijah said, buttoning his suit jacket as he stood up, an air of finality in his tone. “As you so eloquently put it, brother you’re ‘opening in three and a half bloody hours’, there really isn’t any time for your arguments.”

Elijah strode away from the sulking Klaus, and greeted the woman on the other side of the door.

“Ms Forbes,” he said politely. “Please come in, and thank you so much for this, the company is indebted to you.”

“Please, call me Caroline,” Klaus heard a bright, cheery voice say, though she was still blocked from his sightline. “Anything for Bonnie!”

“And how is she after the accident?”

“Shaken,” the woman said, her bubbly voice suddenly laced with worry. “Her injuries are mostly superficial, but her arm will be in plaster for the next few weeks.”

“I see,” Elijah said, before they both came round the corner, and Klaus was able to get a good look her for the first time. “This is Niklaus.”

“Hi!” she said, smiling a smile so bright, he should have been wearing sunglasses. “Caroline.”

She held out her hand for him to shake, but Klaus just looked spitefully at it, before looking away.

Klaus couldn’t believe his misfortune. She was a blonde bimbo.

“Right,” Caroline said, a little disheartened, as she withdrew her hand.

“Anyway, Miss Forbes, I’m terribly sorry, but I have to dash. The world does not cease for Niklaus, although he’d like to believe it would. I’ll catch up with you both later.”

The two of them chuckled together, much to Klaus’ chagrin, and then Elijah left, the same way Caroline had just arrived.

“So,” Caroline said, sitting herself daintily beside him. “You and Bonnie have been working on some pretty cool techniques for your look.”

Klaus said nothing, just stared pointedly at her.

“She took me through her plans for tonight, anything you –”

“We actually open very soon, and I would very much appreciate it if you just got on with it,” Klaus snipped. “Though try not to talk, love. It will be a bit painful otherwise.”

“There’s no need to be rude,” she said, as she raised her eyebrows coolly. “I was just going to ask, if there’s anything you wanted to tell me before you get started. Latex allergy, warm ups that need doing, that kind of thing.”

“No, nothing to share,” he muttered. “And as if I would need to do warm ups.”

“Okay!” Caroline said brightly, trying to ignore his cockiness. “Then let’s get –”

“I do warm up, but not near the help,” Klaus interrupted. “If you want a free show then go back to Broadway.”

“Yep, I get the picture. I’m just going to –”

“Urgh, the quality of Broadway is nothing on the talent of those of us on West End.”

“Mmhmm, I understand, Broadway is the worst. But please –“

“In fact, I swear Broadway casting directors just goes to Times Square and nab any old riff-raff street performer to make up their ensembles. It’s lunacy _”

“Uh huh, I get it, Broadway suck, but Klaus I really –“

“I’m literally the best in the country. I have won multiple tony awards, even a grammy award. I have more original cast recordings under my belt than –”

In years to come, Caroline would swear herself black and blue that it was an accident. That it was a mere, yet mildly severe, slip of the hand brought about by loss of concentration because of Klaus’ continual ramblings.

And she would never live it down. But she would also be revered by many because she actually managed to make Klaus Mikaelson shut the hell up for once in his life.

For, at that exact moment, Caroline’s deft hands wiped fast drying liquid latex over Klaus’ mouth, and Klaus, who was completely stunned by the movement, did not move quickly enough before the latex dried.

Sealing it completely shut.

“Oh my god, Klaus, I’m so sorry!” Caroline said, with all the correct emotions. She certainly sounded convincingly mortified, until she followed up the with a quirked eyebrow and the comment, “though, try not to talk, love. It will be a bit painful otherwise.”

And, to Caroline’s amazement, Klaus stopped squirming, stopped trying to form words when his amplifier was completely blocked, and Caroline was finally able to get to work.

“What a happy little accident,” Caroline said, jovially, now a little more at ease that he wasn’t being so obnoxious. “Might just snap a little picture, I’m sure Elijah would appreciate it.” 

Klaus narrowed both his eyes at her.

“Oh? Don’t like that idea?”

Klaus just remained stock still, the menacing look still etched on his face.

“But you are so cute when you’re not talking!” Caroline joked, before quickly realising what she said, and going a lovely shade of magenta.

Somehow, Klaus managed to smirk, even without full use of his mouth.

“Oh don’t look at me like that,” Caroline said, with all the bravado of someone trying to dig themselves out of a hole. “You know you’re cute, why deny it?”

Klaus just shrugged, and dismissively inspected his nails.

“Fine, let’s get on with it,” Caroline said. “And if you’re a good sport, I’ll dissolve the latex before it’s time to sing!”

xxx

“All done!” Caroline beamed, happily inspecting her work.

It was a little under two hours since Caroline began Klaus’ transformation, and a little under twenty minutes since she freed him from his gag.

In the past twenty minutes, even though he had the option of railroading her for having the audacity to seal his damn mouth shut, Klaus found himself, funnily enough, keeping his damn mouth shut.

Experiencing Caroline as she worked was rather mesmerising.

She certainly wasn’t anywhere near just a blonde-bimbo-beauty-school-drop-out as he feared. She was very talented, extremely precise, and had an almost unparalleled eye for detail.

But further than that, at any given moment, her face was liable twist and change, letting him know exactly what was going on. It was rather endearing.

She filled the silence in with bits of chatter, about the different steps she was up to in his transformation, about her life, and just about many inane things really.

And, though Klaus despised the inane, coming from Caroline it felt natural and a little bit lovely.

“You do look fantastic,” Caroline said, proudly, spinning him around in his chair so he could more closely inspect her work. “Definitely like a weird dungeon dweller who’d fall in love with beautiful young things who sing to you!”

“Then you nailed the brief love,” Klaus quipped. “I don’t recognise myself.”

“Well, I would be worried if you did!” Caroline giggled, squeezing his shoulder briefly. “Then you would have to admit to me that you’re a weird dungeon dweller who’d fall in love with beautiful young things who sing to you!”

“I’d never admit it, love,” he said nonchalantly. “Though, I have to say sincerely, your work is impeccable. Bonnie’s work is excellent, but you’ve provided just an extra spritz of something else.”

“Not bad for a Broadway babe, huh?” Caroline winked, nudging him with her hip.

“Not bad at all.”

In that moment of eye contact that so often follows a tease, Caroline was stolen by the glint in Klaus’ eye.

“So umm,” she said, looking away. “Where to next for you, Mr Phantom, sir?”

“Warm up, last minute director notes, back here for a costume and touch ups.”

“I’ll stay here until you’re ready for your touch ups.”

“I look forward to it.”

And with a wink, Klaus was off.

xxx

A few hours later, Caroline was back in front of Klaus’ face, tenderly wiping away the residual make up.

The show had gone off seamlessly. And honestly, Klaus was so completely on cloud nine by how it all went, he was actually being pleasant to those around him.

And now he was with Caroline again, and that was a joy in and of itself. Though he’d never ever admit it to anyone.

Klaus couldn’t help noting how soft and delicate Caroline’s fingers, and the stroked along his skin at different places.

“Nearly done,” Caroline murmured, concentrating on removing a particularly stubborn strip of latex. “Nearly done.”

“Not a problem, love,” Klaus said, absently. “This is the most relaxed I’ve felt in months.”

“Opening night behind you,” she replied. “That’s got to be a relief.”

“Mmm.”

He shut his eyes, and felt himself get mildly lost in the sensations, until –

“Klaus,” she said, softly.

“Mmm?”

“We’re finished.” 

“Oh.”

“Umm,” Caroline said, searching for something to say. “I guess I’m done for the night, unless…”

“Unless?” Klaus prompted.

“Well, I’m really hungry, but I don’t know where is any good around here…”

“Are you asking me out?” Klaus smirked.

“What! No?” Caroline blustered. “I mean, I am asking you to go out, but not out. Not like on a date out.”

“Glad to hear you’re so indignant at the idea of a date with me,” Klaus teased in mock offence.

“I’m not indignant! Dating you would be fun, I think! But this wasn’t a date! I’m just hungry, and I thought you would be too!”

“Dating me would be fun would it?”

“Oh shut up. I’m leaving.”

Caroline grabbed her coat and huffily stalked from the room.

“But you’re hungry, and don’t know where to eat,” Klaus grinned, hurriedly gathering his own things so he could follow her out.

“I can google it, I just thought company might be nice,” she snipped. “Glad you arrested me of my illusions so promptly.”

“You wound me, love!” he laughed, catching her hand in his, and stroking a thumb along it gently – apparently her skin was as soft under his hands, as it was on his face. “Come on, let me take you to my favourite post show hang out. You’ll love it.”

Caroline stopped walking, and narrowed her eyes at him.

“I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?”

“Not a chance, love,” Klaus quipped.

Caroline couldn’t help the wry smile stretch across her lips.

“Fine.”

And so it was, the two went to that post show hang out that night. And the night after that. And the one after that. Until Caroline had to leave, back to her home, back to Broadway.

And, in a mystery never fully explained, Klaus put aside his distaste for the iconic New York creative hub, and somehow ended living in New York, reprising his role as the Phantom on Broadway, only a few short months later. Before going on to perform many more incredible shows there.

It was a mystery.

Unless you were familiar with Caroline Forbes.

Then it wasn’t much of a mystery after all.

 xxx

This prompt came from ~somewhere~ literal years ago! “You’re the one person who can do my elaborate stage makeup so every night you spend half an hour in close proximity to my face and I am distressed”. I started writing this in 2015, and it finally was in a state that was nice and shareable. Hope you enjoyed! Happy AU week klaroliners!

[angrylizardjacket]

Brian May Exclusive Enterview: Queen, Debauchery and Freddie Mercury (May 21, 2017)

Originally from The Times (which you have to pay to read) but found on SpearHead News (who republished the whole thing for free and I love them for it). Not sure if people had seen it much before but Rock Dad Brian May is v sweet, and the spearhead link has images attached. 

Tragedy, debauchery … and dwarves — the guitarist Brian May gives Krissi Murison an access-all-areas account of his life with Freddie Mercury and rock’s most flamboyant band. by The Sunday Times 

Brian May does a great Freddie Mercury impression. He leans forward in his chair, clasps his hands together conspiratorially and channels the high-speed, staccato delivery of the greatest showman of the late 20th century: “ ‘I had an idea … you know Michael Jackson did this album and it’s called Bad?’ Yeah, Fred. ‘Well, the album we’re making, we could call it Good.’ ”

May laughs. “He would always knock you sideways. Sometimes it was great and sometimes it wasn’t.”

The visitors to Freddie’s dressing room started to change from hot chicks to hot men. It didn’t matter to us — why should it?

May, the guitarist in Queen since their 1970 inception, remembers when Mercury finally announced to him that he was gay, “years after it was obvious”. “In the beginning, the band lived on a shoestring. We couldn’t afford individual hotel rooms, so I would share a room with Freddie … There isn’t a lot I don’t know about Freddie and what he got up to in those days — which was not men, I have to tell you. It was fairly obvious when the visitors to Freddie’s dressing room started to change from hot chicks to hot men. It didn’t matter to us, why should it? But Freddie had this habit of saying, ‘Well, I suppose you realise this, that or the other,’ in this very offhand way, and he did say at some point, ‘I suppose you realise I’ve changed in my private life?’

“And years later, he said, ‘I suppose you realise that I’m dealing with this illness.’ Of course, we all knew [he had Aids], but we didn’t want to. He said, ‘You probably gather that I’m dealing with this thing and I don’t want to talk about it and I don’t want our lives to change, but that’s the situation.’ And then he would move on.”

Dredging through old memories has been the subject of May’s latest project: a compilation book of his personal collection of 3D photos from his time striding around the globe during Queen’s heady reign of stadium-rock supremacy. The accompanying words mark the first time any member of Queen has written about their experiences in the band.

It is harrowing to read of Freddie’s final days and the devastating effect the HIV virus took on his body before he died in late 1991. “The problem,” May writes, “was actually his foot, and tragically there was very little left of it. Once, he showed it to us at dinner. And he said, ‘Oh Brian, I’m sorry I’ve upset you by showing you that.’ And I said, ‘I’m not upset, Freddie, except to realise you have to put up with all this terrible pain.’ ”

Equally hard is May’s belief that the “magic cocktail” of drugs that has since stopped Aids becoming a death sentence was discovered just too late to save Freddie.

“He missed by just a few months,” May sighs. “If it had been a bit later he would still have been with us, I’m sure. It’s very …” he breaks off sadly. “Hmmm. You can’t do ‘what if’ can you? You can’t go there because therein lies madness.”

Brian May on his Queen picture book and Freddie Mercury

Honestly, I had expected to meet a sanctimonious old git. May has been dubbed “the world’s grumpiest rock star” thanks to his online blog, Brian’s Soapbox, on which he posts pious rants about politics, the press, badger culls and animal rights. There are flashes of the same hectoring tone in the book. But it must be a mean trick of the typing, because in real life he seems a terribly gentle and pleasant soul.

I meet him in Windlesham, Surrey, in the vast pile where he has his offices. The bookshelves are lined with antique cameras and 19th-century volumes of Punch. In the middle of the room is a female mannequin wearing a sweeping Victorian crinoline skirt — another of May’s esoteric interests.

He wanders in wearing clogs, gardening trousers and a woven red jacket, almost as arresting as his bright grey corkscrew barnet. Under the jacket is a white shirt, unbuttoned dangerously low for someone who turns 70 in July. Bohemian chain pendants clatter against nipple as he leans in to say hello. He is very tall — or maybe that’s just the hair — and frightfully easy-going.

Tea is arranged and he briefly excuses himself. I assume he’s gone to use the facilities or take an urgent phone call. But after 20 minutes I look out the window to see him tottering around the back garden taking pictures of his rhododendron. Has he forgotten me? When he finally returns, it’s with a box containing his treasured collection of “stereoscopic” (3D) cameras and some of the original slides he took.

He shows me one of his favourites: a picture of Freddie and the Queen bassist John Deacon on a private plane in 1977. A blonde woman gazes at Freddie from the seat next to him.

“That’s Mary, his long-term girlfriend.” Despite Mercury’s sexuality, Mary Austin was his longest relationship and the woman he called “the love of my life”. “They were still very close right to the end,” May nods. “He took care of Mary in his will.”

We look at another photo of Freddie having his make-up applied before a show. “You just feel he’s so close there, don’t you?” May smiles. “It’s almost painfully real. He was this strange mixture of flamboyance and shyness,” he says, remembering his first impressions of Mercury. “He had already built this image around himself, which was very confident and colourful. He was a rock star long before he made a record. In the old days they would have called him a dandy. And more recently a metrosexual. He was like a peacock, a person who brought his own fantasy to life.”

Mercury was born Farrokh Bulsara in Zanzibar, east Africa, to Indian Parsi parents in 1946. He had already started calling himself Freddie before his family came to England, fleeing the Zanzibar revolution for Feltham in west London when he was 17. May grew up a few miles away in leafy Hampton, a studious only child who would later quit a PhD in astrophysics at Imperial College London to pursue his rock’n’roll dreams. (He eventually completed it 36 years later in 2007, specialising in zodiacal dust.)

May tells me about the day he met Freddie. The guitarist was already in a university band called Smile. One day Smile’s singer unwittingly brought his colourful, outspoken mate from Ealing Art College to watch a rehearsal. “Freddie was full of enthusiasm, really fired up,” May remembers. “He loved watching us. Then, on the other hand, he was: ‘But you’re doing all of this wrong. Why are you just standing there looking at the floor? Why aren’t you giving a show for people?’ ”

Was he angling for the frontman job himself?

“I think so. He was very complimentary to me. He said, ‘You should be my Jimi Hendrix.’ Freddie loved Hendrix, he followed him everywhere, he was like a disciple.”

A band, Queen, was born with Mercury as singer. I had no idea how revolutionary his crowd interaction was until May explains that most audiences going to watch a rock band in the early 1970s would sit on the floor, nodding. “These days groups encourage audience participation, but Freddie asking people to sing along was almost uncool in those days. It was viewed as something that might happen in cabaret. What we did, if you want to be crass about it, is we amalgamated rock with music hall. That’s why we wrote We Are the Champions, We Will Rock You and Radio Ga Ga — it was consciously allowing the audience to be part of the show.”

Then there were the outfits. May’s book features some beauties: early 1970s Freddie in flowing locks and Zandra Rhodes’s white pleated “winged” capes; gay-icon Freddie, barechested in black leather trousers and black leather biker hat; “Mediterranean prawn” Freddie with his porno moustache, bouffant wig and strappy red leotard.

Wasn’t he scared of getting beaten up?

“No, not really. There were times when we went, Fred, are you really going on in that? I think the maroon sequin shorts were close to the edge as far as we were concerned. But he loved to outrage people. We were very much a people’s band. If people stopped us in the street and got excited, it was generally bricklayers or truck drivers. Freddie had an amazing way of being in contact with everyone, making people feel like their inner selves were going to come out. We liberated a lot of people.”

Mercury the daring peacock, May the soft-spoken brainiac … it is hard not to see them as two polar opposites, but May disagrees. “We were all striding around the world being big-time rock stars, but actually we’re quite fragile inside. It’s probably the reason we’re rock stars, because it’s a big compensation thing, playing a loud guitar or strutting around singing. You do it because you want to feel confident, you want to find yourself and achieve your potential.”

It says much about Mercury’s light-sapping charisma that May spent much of his time in the shadow of the singer while he was alive. And it says much about May’s strategic brilliance that he hasn’t subsequently faded into obscurity, but become the figurehead of a band that is now even more successful than it was during Mercury’s lifetime. According to this year’s Rich List, May is worth £125m, while a recent survey named Queen the favourite band among fiftysomethings.

Next year will finally see the release of a long-awaited Freddie Mercury biopic, with Rami Malek playing the singer, and May and Queen’s drummer, Roger Taylor, on board as music producers. We Will Rock You, a musical based on Queen’s hits, ran at the Dominion Theatre for 12 years from 2002. Since 2012, Queen have toured live with the American Idol finalist Adam Lambert singing Mercury’s lines (heresy in my opinion, but apparently Freddie would have loved him). Nothing, though, can eclipse May’s 2002 moment astride the top of Buckingham Palace, playing a guitar solo of God Save the Queen for the jubilee. The roof was his idea; the organisers had initially envisaged him wandering through the state rooms for the performance, but he thought it lacked impact. Perhaps he is more like Freddie than we will ever know.

Absent from any of the post-Mercury Queen activity is the bassist, John Deacon, now said to be a recluse. “I don’t see him at all, no,” says May. “It’s his choice. He doesn’t contact us. John was quite delicate all along. He could be very outgoing and very funny, but I think some of the stuff that happened in Munich gave him a lot of damage, and I think losing Freddie was very hard for him as well. He found that incredibly hard to process, to the point where actually playing with us made it more difficult.”

Munich was where Queen holed up at the end of the 1970s and early 1980s to write and record. Things got out of hand. May coyly refers to it in the book as a period of heavy drinking in a local bar, “living in a fantasy world of vodka and barmaids”.

Today he is more forthright: “We all lost our minds … we were all in a perilous place where our emotions were out of control. It manifested itself in way too much drinking, a certain amount of drugs, which I didn’t share — but certainly an awful lot of vodka went through my body. We all fell to bits. That’s the moment Freddie wrote It’s a Hard Life. If you look at the video, it’s a metaphor. There’s all this wonderful, fanciful clothing and excess of food, wine and debauchery, but Freddie’s saying ‘It’s a hard life’ as the grapes are thrust into his mouth. The Freddie writing that song was actually in a very painful, emotional place.”

It inevitably also had an impact on the band dynamic. “We overreacted with each other at times. We all left the band at some point. The studio’s a hard place for a band anyway, but in our case all four of us as writers had had worldwide hits — and I think that’s unique, I don’t think there’s another band in history where that’s true. You have four writers trying to create the next statement of what we are, so what could that statement be except a fight between the different visions? The lifestyle we led magnified that conflict.” In Deacon’s case, it culminated in “John disappearing to Bali and seeing God or whatever”.

When it comes to legendary Queen decadence, May’s book does its best to brush over the carnage. So let me be the one to remind you: there was the Madison Square Garden aftershow party at which male guests were served by topless waitresses in stockings and heels and female guests by men in nothing but gym shorts (to avoid accusations of sexism). And the champagne bill for Freddie’s 35th birthday in New York in 1981, which is said to have been £30,000. Most outrageous, though, was a 1978 album-release party in New Orleans, involving “a flock of transvestites, fire-eaters, dancing girls, snake charmers and strippers dressed as nuns”, according to Mark Blake’s well-respected Queen biography. The tales of what happened next range from the lurid (naked mud-wrestling, public fornication) to the unprintable, but perhaps the most famous involves a fleet of dwarves carrying platters of cocaine strapped to their heads. Does May remember seeing them?

“We knew a lot of dwarves,” he concedes. “I’m still very friendly with the dwarf community because my wife, Anita, used to do pantomimes. I don’t want to sound big-headed, but I’m pretty big in the dwarf world. I’ve spent many long nights propping up bars with dwarves.”

Of New Orleans, he says: “We chose to launch the album there because it was completely broad-minded. We knew a lot of people on the ‘edge of society’, as you would have called it then. You wouldn’t call it that now, you’d call it LGBTBF or whatever it is now. To that party came all sorts of pretty outrageous performers of every sex — and there are a lot! It was fun, nothing sinister went on at all. Nobody was abused, nobody was taken advantage of.”

Fat Bottomed Girls — I was proud of that song. The nude photoshoot was fun at the time, but I wouldn’t find it amusing now. Attitudes change

He would rather distance himself from some of Queen’s less politically correct japes. “For instance, Fat Bottomed Girls. I am very proud of that song, but as part of the album packaging we had this nude [female] bicycle race for a photo session and it all seemed quite innocent and fun at the time. Now I wouldn’t think that was amusing. Attitudes have changed to lots of things.”

He was far from the hardest-partying member of Queen. He’s never even tried drugs, having decided while still a student that “I want to get to the end of this and know that everything I felt was real”.

His weakness was always “company”. He bemoans his sensitive and emotionally immature nature, which meant he was endlessly trawling the world for “the perfect bond with the perfect partner … the place where you could dissolve with someone to the point where you don’t know where they start and you end.”

Did he ever find it? “No, it’s impossible. I’ve glimpsed it. Various times, various moments. But it’s a wonderful fiction, really.”

Don’t feel too bad for him. While he was searching, his then-wife, Chrissie Mullen, was stuck at home with their three children.

“It was very different in those days. There were no mobile phones and phone calls were incredibly expensive if you were on the other side of the world. There was this feeling that life on the road was this separate bubble from your life back home. Nowadays you can’t even begin to think that because communication is so good. We lived in a time that was very exciting, but lonely because you were cut off. You were exploring the frontiers of what was around you, but also the frontiers of what was inside you. In the same way as people who went to look for the Northwest Passage in the 1950s. It felt a bit like you were an explorer in another universe.”

As justifications for adultery go, I suppose it’s a pretty classy one.

He met his second wife, Anita Dobson — aka Angie, the original Queen Vic landlady from EastEnders — in 1986 at a film premiere, while he was still married to Mullen. He and Dobson wed in 2000. There was much amusement in the early days about them both having the same huge poodle perms — though May’s is the real deal and Dobson has been platinum and straight for some time now. In his book’s acknowledgments, he thanks her for managing to live with “possibly the most infuriating man in Britain for 30 years”.

“I know I’m not easy,” he says. “I’m constantly obsessed with one thing or another — astronomy, stereoscopy, music, saving animals … Living with someone like that is appallingly difficult, so I think she deserves a medal. I’m not going to tell you she’s easy, either. She’s an artist and a fearsomely creative person, so our life has always been turbulent, but I suppose that’s what’s kept us young.”

He has previously spoken about the depression he suffered from in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as he dealt with the fallout from his first marriage breaking down and the deaths of both his father and Mercury. Last year he cancelled a tour due to a mystery “persistent illness”. And on Christmas Day he published an alarming blog on Brian’s Soapbox. “I’ve been going through some radical and painful changes in my life … if you had seen me a few weeks ago, you would’ve wondered if I was going to make it to Christmas,” he wrote, before publishing a “tool kit” of apps, a book and a prayer to help others struggling to cope “physically or mentally or spiritually”.

“I went through a very bad period before Christmas and cancelled everything, not just the tour, everything,” he explains. “I just knew I couldn’t handle it.”

Would he call it depression?

“Strangely enough I prefer not to call it depression now. I’ve recently got very much into the body and mind. All my life I’ve been pathetic at doing exercises. I now have a regime — every morning I do 40 minutes’ exercise, then I finish with meditation. It’s really enabled me to recentre. I feel like I’m in a much better place.”

He is an advocate of mindful meditation — a way of living in the present that he believes Mercury used in the final days of his illness. May is happy to speak openly about his own mental health. “I noticed Prince Harry opened up in a similar way. I’ve always thought it’s nice to be open and I get reinforced in that because I get tons of mail saying the fact that you talked about it has helped me feel like I wasn’t alone and wasn’t a freak. I don’t think all this taboo business is helpful at all.”

I wonder if it might be a better use of his platform than his zealous activism on behalf of badgers, which seems a rather niche concern. In brief, then: he is a fierce campaigner against the policy of culling badgers to try to eradicate bovine TB. It is his scientific belief that the cull isn’t working. But it is muddled by his more deep-seated conviction: “Martin Luther King said we hold it self-evident that every man is born equal. I hold it self-evident that every creature is born equal.”

He can point to numerous childhood traumas that led him to this conclusion: watching his mother pour boiling water over an invasion of ants on the path outside his house; squirting a bumblebee with the pesticide DDT, then recoiling in shame as it dropped to the ground, buzzing to its slow and agonising death. If he hasn’t yet had therapy for the latter, he really should.

The animal fanaticism is odd, because on everything else he seems so calmly rational. Perhaps he learnt some of that composure from Freddie. Despite his pain, Freddie was determined to keep working during the band’s final days together in a recording studio in Montreux.

“What we did was get on with business as usual, which is what Freddie wanted,” May remembers. “He said, ‘I don’t want anything to change. We just do what we always do and we love what we do, so it’s going to be fine.’ Certainly those days towards the end were fabulous, full of laughter and joy, Freddie as wicked as ever. He was incredibly matter-of-fact about everything. ‘Oh darling, I’ll just get on with it.’ There wasn’t any self-pity at all. He wanted a ballad, so I very quickly sketched something in the studio and Freddie liked it. He said, ‘Gimme some words’. It was a question of scribbling a few lines and he’d chuck a couple of vodkas down — because he could hardly stand at that point — ‘Oh darling, I’ll do it now.’ Then he’d prop himself up on the desk and sing the lines. We didn’t quite get to the end. I gave him the last verse and he said, ‘Oh darling, I’m not feeling too good now, so I’ll come back to it. In a couple of days I’ll be fine, we’ll do it then.’ And he never did.”

May finished the song after Mercury’s death. It’s called Mother Love, “an attempt from the two of us to look at life and sum it up, to reconcile the end with the beginning, although we wouldn’t have put it that way.”

What does he think Freddie would be doing now if he were still alive? “I don’t think he’d have the patience for social media, because I hardly do and he was much more impatient than me. I don’t think he would be tweeting, he would probably be still writing his little memos on pieces of paper. He was becoming more and more reclusive towards the end of his life. That was partly because he was becoming more and more visible, but partly not wanting his illness to be public. But he was very private anyway and I think that would have continued.”

He is adamant Mercury would still be creating music. “His creativity would have carried on. He was unstoppable and very lateral-thinking. Always coming up with things that were surprising. Often Roger and I, if we’re creating something for Queen, both of us have said that we feel like he’s in the room and you know what he’d say. You can tell if he would have been scornful or enthusiastic — although of course the whole thing about Freddie was that he wasn’t expected.”

We have touched upon May’s depression, infidelity, the painful death of one of his closest friends and the painful death of a bee. Yet there is one subject so sensitive, I have avoided raising it until the very end. His hair. He hates talking about it, but he must on some level like the attention it brings, otherwise why doesn’t he just cut it off?

“I’m comfortable with it,” he says. “It’s completely real. For a time when it was going grey I got very worried that I had to keep it a certain way or I wouldn’t be me any more. Anita encouraged me not to worry about it.”

Would he ever cut it off?

“If it would achieve world peace, I’d do it tomorrow. If it would stop the badger cull, I’d probably do it tomorrow. Because the badger cull is a worthless, senseless operation, it’s not working and sooner or later our government has to realise …”

The images in May’s new book are not just any photos, but 3D pictures, taken on one of the Queen guitarist’s prized “stereoscopic” cameras.

Alongside music, astronomy and badgers, May is deliriously passionate about 3D photography. He first became hooked, aged 12, when Weetabix gave away free stereoscopic picture cards. He petitioned his parents to send off 1s 6d for the photo viewer so he could see them properly in 3D. “It’s probably about £2.50 by today’s money. But we were poor in those days — £2.50 was a lot of heating and lighting.”

“Stereoscopic” photography was originally a Victorian phenomenon and May’s book is published through the London Stereoscopic Company, a 19th-century business he brought back to life in 2008. He has also designed and prototyped his own stereoscopic photo viewer, the Owl, to see the images in their full, 3D majesty; it comes with the book. “It’s just magic to me,” he says, “when you see a picture of Freddie in the viewer and he springs to life.”

[theheartofpenelope]

SIMPLE THINGS - Prologue

The prologue is my first building block - thank you for being patient with me... much more Tom in the next chapter... promise! Meanwhile, I do hope you enjoy this part.  

Tag list: @winterisakiller, @devikafernando, @scorpionchild81, @messy-insomniac-bookgirl, @smutsausage, @hiddlesbitch1

Author’s Notes/Warnings: Not beta’d.

Also on AO3 through this link Bonus : click here for the pinterest moodboard:

London

1.

The seminar was everything Charlotte had hoped it would be. It nurtured her desire for more in-depth information on specific subjects of her interest and the attending professionals were amiable, their visions thought provoking. The fact that she would take the stage for a discourse the very next day was both a source of excitement and anxiety.

She’d promised herself to not dread this adventure she was currently experiencing, but rather to embrace it. With both arms wide open. And surprisingly enough, up until now she had managed to do so rather well… if you didn’t take into account the gut-wrenching, nerve-wracking 10 minutes she had to suffer through every time she was about to present herself on stage. You see, what Charlotte had in intelligence, she lacked in self-confidence.

After the last speech of the day, Charlotte had allowed herself a mere 15 minutes of networking before eagerly dashing off to her hotel room where she straightway jumped into the shower to freshen herself up. She swiftly slipped into a cobalt-blue dress (a summer favourite of hers, she would have to confess) and slid her feet into a pair of midnight blue pumps. Grasping her matching clutch, she set sail through the doors and into the summer night.

 Oh, the lure of recreation after a day of exertion …

Charlotte hadn’t felt so excited in a long time. It was quite strange really. The moment she set foot in the UK again, a sense of happy nostalgia settled upon her. Charlotte wasn’t British, not really. However her maternal grandparents had British roots. Although her grandfather’s job had led him all through Europe back in his young years, and his wife and 2 daughters along with him. Together they’d seen a fair share of countries, before the family ultimately settled down by the English seaside near Whitstable, Kent.

A soft smile curled across her lips as she vaguely remembered summer days spent by Whitstable Marina when she was a child, her tiny hand in her granddad’s as they strolled around looking at boats, attending the Oyster Festival and watching those silly yet traditional parades. She loved it. Although, truth be told, she was more infatuated with the girls who got to dress up as mermaids. Secretly wishing that somehow, one day, she could dress up to play a mermaid as well. It was her silver lining to the Oysters Festival. Grown-ups indulged in the culinary event, but to a child the whole Festival-site just smelled ‘funny’, ‘fishy’ and ‘yucky’. Even to this day the stench haunted her. It set her off oysters for life…

As a result of their lifestyle her grandparents’ two daughters were brought up speaking multiple languages and were encouraged to take part in life wherever it would bring them. It was a characteristic both daughters mechanically bestowed upon their own children. While both daughters aimed for permanent habitat as they grew into adulthood, a life that didn’t involve moving around all the time, they insisted their own children to travel explore and learn.

Yes, the effects on Charlotte’s generation were clear. While her brother had submerged himself in science and unsurprisingly settled for a life on the other side of the world (at NASA). Charlotte grew up to be a curious and avid traveller as well as an Anglophile, with an outspoken passion for English literature that extended from literature into drama. Her mum had prided herself on the English bedtime stories they would all read together when her children were mere kids; truly crediting this had provided the solid base for her children’s future successful endeavours. Her husband did not protest, but smiled back at her in loving admiration.

But tonight, this night, Charlotte’s excitement wasn’t solely based on happy nostalgia. Not entirely. Fact of the matter is that she had always dreamed of catching a play at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London. Someday. The fact that Sir Ian McKellen was performing King Lear at the exact time when she would be in London for professional reasons was just perfect. A dream come true. Were it not that from within the bounds of her country it had seemed sheer impossible to book tickets for said play.

It had driven her absolutely mad. So when opportunity knocked some 10 days ago and she was offered a ticket, she most definitely did not decline. Quite the contrary. Charlotte was not one to beg for anything but when someone wanted to bestow a ticket upon her as a means of saying ‘thank you’, who was she to refuse it…

2.

So far, it was the perfect night already. The underground was running precisely on schedule and so Charlotte made it into the Globe Theatre right on time.

Both delighted and amazed by the sights of the Theatre under that setting summer sun, she sauntered towards the entrance, ready to watch that Shakespeare play performed, as it would have been for those watching it back in the 1600’s. Somewhat. A content smile crept across her lips, her giddy inner child leapt for joy.

The e-mail sent to her advised Charlotte to check in at the Box Office where a ticket would be kept aside under her name. She made a mental note to send a thank you note of some sort afterwards to her generous benefactor even though most likely it was his publicist who’d essentially done all the work. And subsequently mused that she would - and should - make a point out of addressing the publicist and his efforts quite clearly…

Once ‘inside’ Charlotte was formally ushered into a – in her opinion - beautiful box. The entire Theatre was constructed out of wood. The seats were plain, yet beautiful, wooden benches built in between makeshift boxes. The Theatre in its own was quite basic, taking place in open air. But the history surrounding it humbled her instantly.  

The box in which she would be seated was set in the centre of the middle floor, from where the view on the stage was nothing short of spectacular. “The RADA-box, ma’am,” the usher had courteously informed her. And it had to be said, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art really did have the perfect seats within the entire Theatre. Charlotte happily accepted the faux-velvet cushion that was offered to her before she made her way to her designated place in the box, anxious and curious for what would ensue.

The Theatre was filling up quickly, she observed. The RADA-box however was not. When the lights faded and the curtains were about to open, she noticed one seat was left unoccupied. Shame, she thought, you’d at least expect RADA to fill up its seats, night after night… The moment Sir Ian McKellen took the stage, however, she abandoned all other thought and revelled in pure bliss. The actor, the theatre, the play, they all moved her heart.

The well-known story swept her away instantly and intermission came far too soon to her liking. While the fellow theatregoers left the box in search for refreshments, Charlotte chose to head the opposite way and walked towards the banister from where she absent-mindedly watched the Yard down below and the audience there who trickled on out into the hallway.

 She never took notice of the one man who remained in the box with her, who observed her and her inquisitive ways with an amused look. It was only when she eventually turned around - ready to get a drink herself - that his pair of familiar clear blue eyes sympathetically locked with hers…  

[peckhampeculiar]

Jade’s journey

WITH A CAREER SPANNING TV, THEATRE AND FILM, ACTOR AND POET JADE ANOUKA CAN TURN HER HAND TO ANYTHING.

She talks about filming with Idris Elba, her one-woman show Heart and how she took hundreds of local youngsters for a night out at Peckhamplex

WORDS: EMMA FINAMORE; PHOTO: LIMA CHARLIE

Some people just seem made for storytelling, and the magnetic Jade Anouka – equal parts actor and poet – is most definitely one of them.

Now living in Camberwell – near her favourite brunch spot, Kurdish cafe Nandine on Vestry Road – Jade grew up in Bexley, later moving out to Dartford. She kept up her local connections though, going to secondary school in Lewisham, and it was here in south-east London she had her first proper break in acting.

Inspired by Saturday drama classes, a 17-year-old Jade entered a competition in the local paper and landed a week-long workshop at Greenwich Theatre. It ended with a production of the musical Golden Boy, alongside Olivier-nominated Jason Pennycooke – now in hit West End show Hamilton – and Sally Ann Triplett, whom Jade describes as a “musical theatre legend”.

“I was actually doing a project on her at school when I went to Greenwich Theatre,” she says. “Whenever I was in a play I enjoyed it so much, it would become my world. My parents could see it too, before I even knew I could do it as a job. I just loved it.”

It was a love she grabbed with both hands. Jade headed to the National Youth Theatre on a scholarship and then on to university, to Guildford School of Acting.

“It was a bit of a culture shock,” she remembers. “There were lots of people there who knew the whole ‘acting world’, they knew people’s names, they knew playwrights – and I didn’t know anything. I just liked messing about on stage.

“There were people there whose worlds were so different, who’d had totally different upbringings to me. So that was a bit of a shock. But I made mates for life, friends from different worlds, which is really good but also from the point of view of an actor – to be able to empathise and not be closed into your own world. It was amazing to meet an array of people and make friends.”

Despite once being told by her voice teacher she would “never do Shakespeare – I got completely slated for my voice”, Jade was hired immediately after graduating in 2007 by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, where she not only landed a spot in an internationally touring play but earned a postgraduate award in teaching Shakespeare.

She was hired by the RSC for a role in The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood’s twist on Homer’s epic The Iliad, focusing on a group of women who make just a brief appearance in his original. The all-female cast took the production to Atwood’s home country of Canada, where she came to see it, setting Jade up for a 14-month stint with the company.

Since then, she has taken the worlds of both stage and screen by storm – picking up numerous awards and accolades. In 2011, she received a commendation at the Ian Charleson Awards for her performance as Ophelia in Hamlet at the Globe, and in 2014 she won the Stage Award for Acting Excellence for her one-woman show at the Edinburgh Fringe. She was also named among InStyle’s Bafta breakout stars for 2018.

A woman of many talents, Jade has landed television roles in Doctor Who, Chewing Gum, Stan Lee’s Lucky Man and Trauma. Earlier this year she appeared alongside Sheridan Smith in Cleaning Up, a six-part drama on ITV.

Her most recent adventure in television is alongside megastar Idris Elba in his Netflix comedy series Turn Up Charlie, based in London and Ibiza, in which he plays a down-on-his-luck DJ, while Jade is Tommi – a slick, successful sound engineer.

“That was so much fun, I’ve never worked so long on a comedy before. I’d done a bit on Chewing Gum but nothing like this,” she smiles. “And he [Elba] created such a great vibe on set, because he was producing it too. I loved the cast – Piper Perabo [of Coyote Ugly fame] is great, she’s so cool. We went to Ibiza to film too – I got the jammiest deal.

“Idris is great – he improvises a lot, so we’d finish the scene but then keep rolling. If it feels like something’s fizzing they’ll keep it going.”

She has fond memories of when the cameras switched off too. “Oh my God, I swam in that sea,” she laughs. “Everyone was there, cast, producers, crew... we all had a dip and I remember looking round and thinking, ‘This is mad! Work should not be this fun’. I was proper pinching myself.”

Jade had another pinching-herself moment in March, when her film Fisherman’s Friends hit the cinema screens and made the top four movies in the UK – behind only Dumbo, Captain Marvel and Us. It follows the story of 10 fishermen from Cornwall who get signed by Island Records and achieve a top-10 hit with their debut album of sea shanties.

Jade plays a key role in the story. “It’s a proper feel-good British film,” she explains. “I play the head of Island Records, who signs the fishermen, who is a real person in real life, but is a man.”

Gender-hopping in roles isn’t unusual for Jade, who despite proudly flying the flag for female actors – in Phyllida Lloyd’s all-female Shakespeare trilogy at the Donmar Warehouse in 2016, for example – has played parts such as Henry IV’s Hotspur and Mark Antony in Julius Caesar, and has spoken previously about wanting to tackle James Bond.

“I was thinking about that the other day. And I also play roles on stage that are ‘male’ roles too. I kind of love that,” she smiles.

The idea of playing with identity feeds into her other life as a poet, in which she writes and performs verses, often exploring issues like gender and ‘otherness’.

Poetry has been with her since drama school and it was something she embraced on the road on acting jobs. “It was a way to be creative and be in control,” she explains. “When I couldn’t be in control in the acting world, I could be in control of my poems.”

In 2016 this led to her publishing a volume of verses – called Eggs On Toast – and last summer she gave a TEDx talk at Theatre Peckham on “being black, being a woman, being other”, featuring many of her own poems. Bounty, for example, explores the complexity of race and identity, with powerful, emotive lines.

“It ended up that the talk was going to be about identity,” Jade explains. “I knew I had to use poetry, because that’s how I can communicate with my voice best.”

She closed the talk with I Am A Woman – a powerful homage to Maya Angelou and her seminal poem Phenomenal Woman – peeling away societal expectations of femininity, getting to the root of what being a woman means to Jade.

What it means to be a woman of colour, and an actor, is also important to her, and it inspired a local event she organised last year called Black Panther Peckham.

“I love superhero films,” she explains. “I grew up obsessed with them, but there were so few black women. I was so disappointed with Halle Berry as Catwoman, because I love Halle Berry and thought it would be amazing... and then it was such a bad film. The script was just all wrong.

“So when I heard about [superhero film] Black Panther I thought, ‘Oh my God this would have been my absolute life when I was young’, and I just thought that people like my little cousins needed to watch it.”

Seeing Oscar-winner Viola Davis raising money in the US to send underprivileged young people to see the film, Jade sought to do something similar here in London. “We shouldn’t take it for granted that everyone can just afford to go to the cinema. Peckhamplex is obviously good anyway ��� £4.99, get in! – but even that for some people is a luxury. So I just started a GoFundMe page, and it went absolutely mental!”

Jade raised thousands of pounds for hundreds of local children to see Black Panther at Peckhamplex, with popcorn, drinks and Disney merchandise donated to the evening, along with a post-show Q&A for the young audience.

“It was so heartwarming,” she smiles. “It was so great that we could do it. I kept popping into the cinema and hearing the crowd’s reactions. There was something about a load of young people being in a room alone with their peers, that kind of shared experience, that was really special. They were having so much fun.”

Jade recently took another 140 young people from Peckham and other parts of south-east London to see the play Emilia in the West End. “I just thought it was so important for young people to see this production,” she says.

“The first of its kind with three women of colour in the lead and on the poster, in a play set in Shakespeare’s time about a forgotten, hidden story of a woman who found her voice. I was able to use some money left over from Black Panther Peckham to help make it happen.”

The second half of this year is set to be as action-packed as the first, with Jade appearing in A Black Actress – a photo exhibition celebrating black actresses that is set to open this summer. She will also appear alongside Blake Lively and Jude Law in The Rhythm Section, a big release hitting cinemas in November.

When we meet, she has just finished a run of her own one-woman show, Heart, at The Vaults under Waterloo Station, and it marks another branching-off in her creative life.

The 50-minute monologue is a journey of the heart, following a woman from her wedding day for the next seven years. “It’s a kind of call-to-arms, a call to look at society,” she explains.

“Really, again, it’s all about identity, and maybe feeling ‘other’. The idea of that and of heartache –where that sits you in society. It’s funny, but most people were crying at the end. They said they could recognise their own stories or moments in it.”

Opening on International Women’s Day with an all-female team made it all the more poignant, along with the fact that Jade was performing her own material in the setting of a play, rather than someone else’s script, or speaking poetry.

“It was different because it was my words,” she says. “There’s nothing to hide behind, but it was amazing. It was the start of a journey – I’m definitely going to do it again [Heart will be coming to a London theatre this autumn] and hopefully publish it. I just want it to live on, I want it to be told and told.”

[globefan]

Globe director Michelle Terry on untapped potential in Shakespeare’s great plays

 The actor-manager’s second season of plays resonate with a time of great national upheaval

Sarah Hemming

 Michelle Terry arrives for our interview fresh from murdering a king, going mad and killing herself. She has just stepped off the stage after performing Lady Macbeth, one of the most harrowing female characters in Shakespeare’s canon. Not only that, but she will return shortly to do it all again, in the intimate candlelit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse adjacent to Shakespeare’s Globe in London — it’s a two-show day and we are meeting in the brief interlude between matinee and evening performances. She’s remarkably focused, under the circumstances, if ever so slightly wired.

“It’s not the mountain you have to climb when you’ve got Hamlet to do,” she says, with a grin. “But it’s really grim . . . You have to work as hard to get out of character as to get into it.”

Get out of it she must, however, as she is here in her capacity as artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe, to talk about what comes next. Terry is the second person to lead the Globe as an actor (Mark Rylance was the first) rather than as a director. It’s a combination that has a rich heritage (Laurence Olivier, for instance, led and forged the National Theatre company), but is less common nowadays.

She’s a friendly, open and down-to-earth person — which is probably just as well. She took charge last April at a turbulent time in the theatre’s history: her predecessor Emma Rice had left following a bitter row about the use of contemporary lighting and amplified sound (now discontinued). Terry herself had no previous experience of running a building. And she found herself at the helm of an organisation in flux. It’s been quite the learning curve, she admits.

“[That period] was toxic and difficult, but out of it came a very clear agenda for what the Globe could offer,” she says. “The organisation was at the beginning of figuring itself out again. And to bring an actor-manager in, that’s quite a big pebble to throw in a pond already full of ripples. So I think it has taken all of us a year to figure out what that means. There is genuine great will to think and behave differently, to offer a different, more collaborative way of working.”

Now she launches her second season at a time of divisive national upheaval. The first play in the main open-air Globe space in 2019 — it is closed all winter — will open just a couple of weeks after the UK is scheduled to leave the EU. It’s perhaps no surprise that she has chosen Shakespeare’s great examination of leadership, responsibility and national identity — his history play cycle — to be the centrepiece of this summer’s action. After Richard II in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, the 2019 season rolls through Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2 and Henry V on the big outdoor stage, and then returns to the SWP for an intimate staging of all three parts of Henry VI. Alongside will be more boisterous fare in The Merry Wives of Windsor, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair.

“We’re at a critical point in our international and national history,” Terry explains. “So there is no better time to look at a playwright who was looking back to understand his own present: we are sort of doing the same thing.” Terry knows from personal experience how live those plays can feel: she was performing Henry V in 2016 (playing the title role) when the referendum on EU membership took place. “The play suddenly took on a different life because of national events.”   

If our job is to hold a mirror up to nature, [we should ask] who is holding the mirror and who is being reflected It’s not unusual to find contemporary resonance in Shakespeare. For Terry, however, the significance lies not just in the works themselves, but in the casts that stage them. The entire cycle will be staged by one ensemble and will continue the practice, begun with her opening shows Hamlet and As You Like It, of applying gender-, race- and disability-blind casting.

“As crucial as the content of the plays is, I think there is also something crucial about who is making the work,” she says. “If our job is to hold a mirror up to nature, [we should ask] who is holding the mirror and who is being reflected.”

This is a policy that chimes with the current drive to achieve more equal representation throughout the theatre industry. It follows Phyllida Lloyd’s excellent all-female Shakespeare productions and recent illuminating gender-switch performances: Maxine Peake as Hamlet, Glenda Jackson as Lear among them. It’s a practice that can also attract heated criticism. Terry has had vitriolic letters about it, some of which attack her personally. So why continue?

“I persist because this is why [the work] will survive another 400 years,” she says. “We’re only at the beginning of unlocking the potential of these plays. Having a deaf actress playing Celia [in As You Like It], for instance, revealed the play in a way we could never have imagined. These plays were never about being literal: they were about transformative, imaginative transactions. To get back to that we have to smash up all of that literal expectation.”

In the depth of winter, the Globe’s great wooden O is dark and silent. But in the summer it’s a palpably democratic space, open to the elements, with a large standing audience and shared light (everyone can see everyone else), which fosters a particularly vivid engagement between audience and actors. It also demands openness, flexibility and spontaneity in both cast and crowd. Direct experience of those conditions, Terry reflects, is something she, as an actor-manager, can bring to running the theatre.

“I would be no use sitting at a desk,” she says. “I am much more useful on the stage thinking, ‘The audience aren’t with us on this one, why not?’ What is difficult is trying to do both.”

So what has she learnt? Terry pauses.

“That change is slow,” she replies, finally. “And how important it is to articulate the common purpose. I think what the Globe can offer is Shakespeare for all, by all. And that has to be the people who criticise me for my gender-blind casting as much as the people who love it. That’s quite a hard place to sit.”

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2019. All rights reserved.

[bigtinyworldtravel]

We spent five days in London and could see quite a few things in that time. However, there were plenty of things we didn’t get to do while we were there. Some were because they were too expensive while a few others we didn’t even know about. It is such a large city, so it is impossible to do it all. London is a perfect blend of old architecture and vibrant culture. With a few days, you can get a good feel for the city and see many of its highlights.

We took a bus to London from Belgium and went through the channel tunnel which was an exciting adventure. The bus was loaded on a train and then we rode through the tunnel under the water. That was awesome! Once we arrived in London, the bustling city greeted us with double-decker buses and rain. The rain didn’t stop us from getting out to see as much as we could, but we still couldn’t do everything because the city has so much to offer. Here are 6 things we didn’t get to do while in London and what we did instead.

Tower Bridge

The iconic Tower Bridge is well known around the world. With my love for bridges, I had to see it and cross over it. The bridge was fairly crowded as 40,000 people cross it daily. We walked over the lower deck and made a loop back over the Millennium Bridge, which was wonderful. We found out later that the upper deck of Tower Bridge is accessible with a ticket. The upper deck is an exhibition that features a glass floor where you can look down at the tiny cars below. Eek! Maybe next time we can splurge and go to the top. Before our walk, we found that the best views of the bridge are near the Tower of London on the west side of the bridge.

Tower Exhibition Ticket Cost: £27.50 ($36 USD) per adult (see website for current prices)

London Eye

On the south bank of the River Thames is the London Eye. I named it this because you are able to see 25 miles in all directions with a full view of the city. As we are budget travelers, this was another that was too expensive for us to do. We ate some frozen yogurt on top of a converted double-decker bus instead, which was much more affordable. On our next trip, we will find a way to get a discount so we can enjoy the expansive views of the city. It was worth looking at it from the opposite side of the river just to see how large it really is. Perhaps next time.

London Eye Ticket Cost: £40 ($52 USD) per adult (see website for current prices)

Big Ben

On our trip, this was a bust as Big Ben was scaffolded. Apparently, this is a large renovation project that started in 2017, but is expected to be completed by 2021. The clock tower is the main feature, and it contains a bell that weighs 13.5 tons. You can climb to the top by walking up the 334 steps but only if you are a UK citizen. Citizens can contact their MP in writing to make arrangements to climb the tower for free. Since we are overseas visitors, there is no chance we can get in, unfortunately. We have seen similar bells in many European cathedrals so it isn’t a big deal. We care more about the outside and next time we are in London we will want to see this beautifully lit up at night.

Globe Theatre

The original Globe Theatre is where William Shakespeare performed his plays and it was famous for its special effects by having several trap doors. The current version is a replica that was built in 1997 as the previous versions were burned or shut down. We stopped by the Globe Theatre but did not go inside as Brianna had already been there years ago. We wanted to see a performance there, but we went to Greenwich instead.

Globe Theatre Tour Cost: £17 ($22 USD) per adult (see website for current prices)

Royal Greenwich Observatory

The zero-degree longitude is called the Prime Meridian, and it is the divider of the two hemispheres. It is an imaginary line that a group of astronomers agreed upon in the late 1800s. It could have been placed anywhere. We went there, but we did not go into the Royal Greenwich Observatory as we didn’t want to pay for it and it was closed when we arrived. Instead, we had fun trying to get our phone compass to read 0 longitudes without success. Maybe next time.

Royal Observatory Greenwich £16 ($21 USD) per adult (see website for current prices)

The Shard

The Shard is a 95-story building that has 11,000 panels of glass which cover 56,000 square meters. It is a pointy building with an observatory and stands at 1,016 feet high (310 meters), making it the tallest building in the UK. It has an entry fee with several packages that you can book online. We opted to not go there but pleasantly found two other places that didn’t cost money to enjoy the view. One was the Garden at 120 which is free to enter and has a lovely garden on top. The other was the Sky Garden which you need to book in advance but it is also free to enter. We do not regret these choices but if we can visit the Shard at a reasonable price, we will next time.

The Shard Tickets: £25-39 depending on the package ($32-50 USD) per adult (see website for current prices)

Free Things We Did Instead

Changing of the Guard

The changing of the guard is one of those quintessentially British ceremonies to watch. We knew it would be very crowded with spectators, so we sought ways to see them without the people. We opted to watch them set up instead of the full ceremony. This was good enough for us and a way to get our fill of fuzzy hats and even enjoy a few songs as they practiced.

Shoreditch

If you want to see some of the best street art in the city, then Shoreditch is the place to be. We enjoyed walking the streets and seeing the colorful artwork. It was well worth spending a morning just wandering around enjoying the murals. There are also many trendy restaurants and coffee shops in the area.

Leadenhall Market

Known for its many shops, restaurants, and even a filming location in Harry Potter, Leadenhall Market was fun to visit. It is a beautiful indoor market that was built in the 14th century. If you catch yourself on a rainy day in London, this makes for a great stop. We ate at a wonderful fish ‘n’ chips restaurant as it is one of my favorite dishes. The rest of the time there we were photographing the place and looking for the entrance to Diagon Alley.

Platform 9 and 3/4

Speaking of Harry Potter, there is a touristy Platform 9 3/4 at the Kings Cross station. There, you can wait in line to have your picture taken with a luggage cart that appears to be halfway through the wall. The photos will cost you, but they do allow you to take a picture with your own camera. You are handed a scarf for your choice of house and then they fling the scarf up in the air to provide the illusion that you are going through. It was a fun place for a quick photo and to geek out on Harry Potter.

St. Dunstan in the East

This was an off-the-beaten-trail thing to do where we met one of our native London followers who had never heard of this place. St. Dunstan in the East was formerly a church that was demolished in WWII. The remaining ruins are now a free park and garden. The garden is definitely more off the tourist path and a great place to relax, take photos, or meet friends.

Day Trips

Windsor Castle, Leeds Castle, and White Cliffs of Dover

If you have extra time in London, there are many day-trips you can do. Some that we missed include Windsor Castle, Leeds Castle, and the White Cliffs of Dover. These three will be priorities for our next visit.

With a simple one-hour train ride, Windsor castle is the easiest to get to from Paddington Station. Brianna had been there before so it wasn’t a high priority.

Next time we will go to Leeds Castle and the White Cliffs of Dover in one day. This trip would be best by car as it is about an hour and a half drive to Leeds Castle and then another 30 minutes to get to the Cliffs of Dover. It is possible to do this with trains and buses, but at that point, you might as well stay closer to them.

Stonehenge and Bath

While we missed a few possible day-trips, we did manage to go to Stonehenge and Bath, which can be visited from London as well. These were both fantastic places to go to.

Stonehenge is best by car with a two-hour drive, but taking a train is just slightly longer at two and a half-hours.

Bath is best by train as it takes only an hour twenty minutes from Paddington Station.

Final Thoughts

Even though we were there for 5 days, we could not possibly see it all in that time. We are not disappointed in what we did not do, and this allows us to go visit a second time. We seem to run into this all the time as you can’t possibly see everything.

What places did you miss in your last trip that are worthy of a revisit?

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  We spent five days in #London and did our best to see all of the #highlights. There were many things we didn't get to with the limited time that are worth a #revisit. Check it out! #bigtinyworld #longtermtravel #travelcouple We spent five days in London and could see quite a few things in that time. However, there were plenty of things we didn't get to do while we were there.

[113-things-to-see]

2019

... aka the one where my blog is still broken. Don’t fret, not all is lost, but due to technical difficulties I had to re-import my blog content and 70 posts just fail to show any photos. I will eventually fix all of them but have decided to completely revamp my blog at another point, especially since I will be busy writing my Master’s thesis during the coming semester. So until then, we still have Tumblr. Anyway, I decided to continue the yearly tradition of reflecting on the past 12 months and setting new resolutions (how original!).

In my New Year’s post of 2018 I described a challenging year and was firmly set on improving my self-care in 2019, fully committing to mental health recovery. 2019 was the year where I would start DBT, hopefully the turning point in my mental health journey after feeling stuck in a continuous downwards spiral. I went into 2019 feeling hopeful and expecting change. Spoiler alert: I am in a much better place now. However, getting there has been the most difficult challenge I have ever encountered.

When I set off into the New Year feeling positive and hopeful, I did not foresee that a) this would last for about a week and b) that the turning point I needed lay elsewhere. The packed days leading up to Christmas behind me, the events from the last year started to catch up with me. Re-traumatised by experiences in the mental health system I felt more misunderstood and lonely than I had in a long time and it felt like like the carefully assembled house of cards was finally collapsing, destroying whatever it could in its wake. Although DBT was giving me skills I desperately needed, I found myself at a point where I was unable to listen, so caught up in the over-powering emotional intensity that comes with BPD, so caught up in the downward spiral, so caught up in feeling undeserving of help. The nexts months were chaos. Somewhere amidst the storm, I managed to celebrate my friend’s birthday and then my own 23rd, which was the biggest emotional roller-coaster of all. My mum and me went to Sketch and saw Les Mis, the latter meaning a dream coming true. But blowing out my candles at midnight, all I could think of was how on earth I would make it to 24.

It wasn’t DBT that presented the turning point in my life. Neither was reaching rock bottom or my turbulent birthday or seeing crisis services. No, the turning point happened only when I decided on it. The truth is that BPD (and probably most mental illnesses) will always convince you that you aren’t sick enough. That others have it worse. That xy needs to happen before things change. That you haven’t quite reached rock bottom yet. All in all, I was waiting for a turning point that would never come. That could only created by myself, by deciding that enough was enough. By deciding that I deserved better. By committing to recovery despite my emotional/impulsive side definitely not wanting recovery but quite the opposite. And this was when things finally started to shift. No, it hasn’t been easy and I can’t say that there haven’t been any setbacks. But that’s okay because recovery is 5 steps forwards and 3 steps back. I have now been doing DBT for almost a year and the sessions and skills I have learned have been life-changing (along with medication). Although BPD is still my daily companion, we can co-exist now. I am no longer thrown around between my emotions, no longer in so much distress that pain is the only way I know to cope, no longer feeling unworthy in a group of people. BPD is not me, I am so much more. To spread awareness, I continued to be vocal about my struggles on social media and shared my experiences in blog posts that many others related to. And it was the realisation how commonly people with BPD suffered in the MH system, ranging from re-traumatisation to being left acutely unwell with no support, that made me start my own petition - Lives on the (Border)line. (Eternally grateful if you signed it!).

In non-mental health related news, 2019 was the year I graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology. Although my graduation day was one of the hottest of the year, I got to celebrate if with my family and best friend, drinking cocktails above the roofs of London - it was wonderful and almost let me forget the stressful months of revision leading up to this moment. But despite the stress, studying Psychology has been of the best decisions of my life, allowing me to grow so much academically and personally. Plus I will miss my class a lot, they taught me what kindness and looking out for each other mean. I have now started my Master’s in Clinical Forensic Psychology which includes a placement in a medium secure unit and so far, I have been enjoying it and can see myself working in that field – or another field of clinical psychology – in the future. I can’t believe that I am about to begin my last semester and that by the end of 2020, I will be looking for my first graduate job. I am proud of myself for coming this far and I am so grateful for the opportunity to help others recover.

2019 came with so much more than mental health recovery and a degree. As so often, it is the small things that made the biggest difference. Study sessions that ended in Thai food and wine on the balcony, picnics in Hyde Park, movies, musicals, birthday celebrations, Christmas carols at the Royal Albert Hall, falafel wraps (if you know you know), amazing books and adopting new plants (that are still somewhat alive). I read more classics than ever, partly due to the fact that I struggled with physical illness this year. Following sinus surgery a couple of weeks ago (this one had been coming for years really), I am no longer feeling ill every day and I am excited to be able to well, breathe. Despite illness, I had an incredible summer during which some of my closest friends and my sister came to stay – think mostly really good vegan food with the occasional play at the Globe Theatre (that makes me sound a lot more fancy than I am) and walks along the river. Last but definitely not least, my brother and me spent a week in Crete – think more excellent vegan food, paired with blue lagoons, beaches and cats. Generally, 2019 was a year of friendship for me, both online and offline and then there are those friendships that start online but turn out to be one of the best offline as well and feel like you have known each other for 8 years rather than 8 months. The kind of friendships that become your rock during difficult times (and make you get doughnut deliveries).

Again, I didn’t do too badly on my new year’s resolutions from 2018. I have said that 2019 would be the year of healing and talking openly about mental health and it has been, although I still have a long way to go. My second resolution last year had been to take care of my body and I have, even though being ill forced me to go at a different pace than thought. Lastly, I have managed to meditate more and at least I got further than ‘Necessito un sombrero’ on Duolingo this year. So far so good. So what about 2020? The new decade? (sorry I had to). This year, I not only want to focus on recovery but also on self-acceptance and improving potentially the most important relationship in my life, the one with myself. I want to slow down, take things ad they come and practice gratitude. At the same time, I will continue to raise awareness for mental illness – and mostly BPD – online and share my petition to hopefully get our voices heard. I do believe that together we can make a difference – even if the process is slow, each step will get us there and break the stigma. As said last year, I want to nourish my body and take care of it and I can’t wait to pick up swimming again (and please make me cook something different than pasta every single day, I need ideas (although pasta is pretty darn amazing)). I am also planning to continue my zero-waste journey and start buying my clothes second-hand, something I have wanted to do for a very long time. Last but not least,I want to improve my Spanish, especially since I am planning to visit one of my closest friends in South America this year and talking about hats won’t really sustain a conversation with her family. But until then: hasta la vista.

[vacanpaathy]

BRYONY HAWTREY  

GENERAL INFORMATION

Bryony Enid Hawtrey Nickname: Bri/Bry, Enid, Kitten Age: 19 to 100+ verse dependent  Nationality: English Species: Human Ethnicity: White Sexual Orienation Physical Disorders / Disabilities etc: None currently / None currently known Mental Disorders / Disabilities etc: None currently / None currently known Religion: None, raised Anglican  City of birth: London, England Currently living: Verse dependent Occupation: verse dependent, usually  Income: generally none just a barter / trade system with other magic types Marital Status: single, refuses to mingle Language ( s ): English, French, German, Spanish more probably but with varying skill Dialect: some Received Pronunciation Bullshit Birthday:  November 26 NOTE: Bryony is the Guardian of a magical artifact that is the source of her immortality and some of her more impressive abilities. I intentionally do not give much information about this artifact pretty much anywhere for 2 reasons: 1) Bryony actively withholds as much information about it as she can get away with and never really speaks of it, so not having much info on it to be read means less chances for ooc knowledge accidentally slipping into ic content 2) While I’ve got the basic nature / idea of it nailed down the details / backstory are still pretty vague so there’s no point in getting into it now.  Really what’s useful to know about it is that :         1. It’s the source of her immortality         2. It’s stupid powerful but she can’t tap into it whenever she wants         3. It’s not something ON her person it’s literally INSIDE her and she will only admit to              this in a truly dire situation ( ex. someone is after it, might actually succeed and she                needs her allies to know important info  )         4. It creates forcefields or repels things that could potentially harm her as she is still just          a squishy human, this can in theory be overcome if the attacker is a strong enough                  magic user         5. It allows her to do incredibly powerful magic that can potentially negate standard                laws of magic if the correct conditions are met ( these conditions vary with context )

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS

Height: 5′3″ Eyes: Blue Hair: Dark Brown Skin: Aristocratic Pale  Style: As close as you can get to looking like an Edwardian woman without looking like you stepped out of a BBC drama FAMILY

Mother:   Martha Hawtrey ( nee Price ) Father:    Richard Hawtrey Brother ( s ) :  Bennet ( first ) , Eugene ( second ), Willas ( fourth ), Thomas ( seventh ), Sister ( s ) :   Nora ( third ) , Philomenia ( fifth ) , ( Bryony is 6th in  birth order )

PERSONALITY / HABITS

Addictions: None Bad Habits: brusk, stubborn, bulldozers over other people, very demanding, tends to treat things like a business transaction, talks over people Good Habits: very patient and understanding of complications / troubles, stands up for others even strangers, efficient traveler / packer,  Hobbies: reading, knitting, sewing, hunting through markets, learning about where ever she is at the moment, discovering new restaurants / bakeries / coffeeshops / etc Likes: books, fabrics and clothing, useful trinkets ( usually magical ) , traveling, lengthy discussions and chats, long walks, meeting new people Dislikes: bullies, aristocracy, bigotry, driving, how quiet you have to be in a library, musical theatre Strengths: intelligent, passionate, compassionate, independent, business savvy, highly adaptable, cunning, always eager to learn Weaknesses: petty, self-serving, at times needlessly cruel, belligerent, aloof, unable to settle in one place for too long, bossy Fears: that the magic artifact in her care is forcibly taken from her Hopes: to continue traveling and seeing the world and seeing how it changes over time

ABILITIES / TRAITS / TALENTS

Education: Largely governesses, a few attempts at proper schools which ended thanks to her unruly behavior and essentially an internship at the shop of an old man she befriended Intelligence: 8/10  Overall very smart and ever eager to learn more and educate herself about everything Naturalist: 7/10  Knows a lot about plants, mainly for medicinal or magical use Musical: 8/10 Can play piano, violin and guitar and is a solid singer. has dabbled with various other instruments over the years as well with varying success Logical-mathematical: 9/10 Excellent  Existential: 9/10 the perk of immortality : a lot of time to think about stuff Interpersonal: 8/10 While she tends to shoot herself in the foot with her attitude, bryony is very sensitive to others and very good at at least reading the mood and engaging with others generally  Bodily-kinesthetic: 7/10 enjoys most physical activities and doing / making / solving things manually  Linguistic: 7/10 she's had like 100 years to pick up a few languages and skills for learning them Intra-personal: 7/10 not the most introspective person but has a decent capacity for it and has engaged with it more over the years Spatial: 5/10 about as good as the next guy

MAGIC & PSYCHIC ABILITIES:  Before becoming the Guardian Bryony already had potent psychic abilities and aptitude for magic though her psychic abilities were largely untrained and she’d only started truly practicing magic a few years before. Once she became the Guardian the what magic she could do / how she did it changed wildly, while still able to perform all usual spells that rely on incantations, items, ingredients etc she also became able to do things that are best described as miraculous but only if certain conditions / parameters / prices are met. examples of sub-abilities/applications: Clairvoyance, Minor Clairaudience, Clairsentience, Claircognizance, Divination, Psychometry, Retrocognition ( largely via psychometry ) , Scrying , Automatic Defensive Forcefields ( Guardian Ability only ) , Improved Healing / Durability against Mundane Damage ( Guardian Ability only ) , Magic usually considered impossible / too dangerous for a human ( Guardian Ability only ) AREA OF EXPERTISE: TBA 

MENTAL

Self-perception: Fairly healthy and positive, does a good job of not beating herself up or getting too angsty about the immortality thing though she can also be blind to her own failings or overly defensive about things about herself when she really should be Assumed external perception: A potent world traveler with a strong personality and an untamable woman  Self-Confidence:  incredibly healthy  Rational Or Emotional ? Largely very rational even when she’s getting fired up but once you hit a certain threshold or topic boom instantly 1000000000% emotional.  Introvert or Extrovert ?  Extrovert Prefer to Give or to Take ? Give, she prefers to keep her books largely balanced but also knows it’s better to have others in your debt than you in theirs  Nice or Rude ? Is in actuality a pretty dang nice person but can come off as rather rude and bossy since she’s a very strong personality.

BACKGROUND

TLDR VERSION

      ►  Bryony is born to the upper class Hawtrey family in the Victorian era       ►  It becomes quickly clear that she is a fucking menace and cannot be tamed       ►  Notices in her later childhood she can do weird things / gets hunches and                           occasionally follows up on them       ►  Her relationships within her family become increasingly strained as she continues to            submit to expectations and in fact actively work against them       ►  Around 16 befriends local elderly shopkeeper and effectively interns with him,                     learning how to run an efficient business       ►  Officially enters society and gets sent out to events at 19 with the express order from         her father to find a husband, proceeds to intentionally spike her reputation into the                 ground       ►  One of her many plans pulls through and the nice old shop keep leaves his estate .            and store to her, she immediately leaves home and sets up there       ►  Runs her new business and begins to form a more paranormal based one on the side         over the years       ►  Somewhere around 25-35 she becomes the new Guardian of the mysterious magical         artifact       ►  Stays in London for a few years as she gets her affairs in order and finds a someone           to take over her business then begins to travel the world alone.       ►  Literally just travels around the globe from then until now.    

LONGER

TBA

[laularlau8]

The history of India’s independence and the creation of Pakistan had been unfamiliar to Gillian Anderson when she took the role of Lady Mountbatten for her new film Viceroy’s House. The actor had once hired a private history tutor, a dozen years ago, to fill in some gaps of history she was hazy on – “Stuff that just wasn’t in my brain” – but this had not been one of them.

“No, I’d thought let me start with a couple of things that I don’t actually know that much about, or I can’t remember that much about, which was the first and second world wars.” She starts to laugh. “But it was a disaster. Because I have no memory. I took notes, blah, blah, blah, but couldn’t remember a thing he taught me. Nothing. I’m not even sure, if you’d asked me the next day, I could have told you what I’d learned. You know, even my favourite books, I couldn’t tell you what they were about. It’s always been that way.”

The menopause hasn’t helped, and lately things have become so bad that she’s going to get herself tested to see if she might actually be dyslexic. “Somebody had said to me that dyslexia isn’t just about seeing words backwards, it’s also about the assimilation of information. I’d always been afraid to look into it, because I was afraid that if I found something out, I would think that I couldn’t do anything that I wanted to do. I have this impression that I can do whatever I make up my mind to. But the reality is...” She lets the sentence fall away with a grimace.

By a bit of luck, the one thing the actor has always been able to remember are her lines. “But of course that’s terrifying for me, thinking, well, what if this problem that exists in the rest of my life shows up in that respect, too? Then I’d be buggered.”

If this creates an impression of a ditzy blonde, it would be misleading. We meet at the photographer’s studio, where a rack of stylist’s clothes stands unused; she chooses to be photographed in her own, and the way she chuckles about this makes me think the preference is par for the course for Anderson on shoots. Her fitted black trouser suit and heels are a sort of corporate/fashion hybrid, and her manner is similarly friendly but business-like. Apart from her enormous eyes, everything about Anderson is tiny, and the compactness reinforces the sense of efficient self-possession she conveys. She was just 24 when, as FBI agent Dana Scully in the paranormal TV drama that would make her a global star, she captivated X-Files fans for 10 years with her hyper-rational cool, before moving to London where her career has been equally sure-footed. From period dramas (Bleak House, House Of Mirth, War And Peace) to big-budget TV series (Hannibal, The Fall), to independent movies (The Last King Of Scotland, A Cock And Bull Story), comedy (Boogie Woogie, Johnny English Reborn) and theatre (A Doll’s House, A Streetcar Named Desire), Anderson seems to get busier the older she gets. It’s a tall order for a beautiful blonde to play consistently powerful, intelligent women, but Anderson has pulled it off.

The actor brings her air of serious purpose to the role of Lady Mountbatten, giving us a less flighty version of the aristocrat than the good-time girl caricature we’ve been accustomed to. She evokes her character’s classic colonial glamour, but depicts her dashing about nursing the sick and injured, and being a generally good egg.

“One of the things that I was surprised by in studying Edwina was that there was certainly a turning point in her life when she went from being predominantly a socialite, and wafting around and having affairs, living pretty much from holiday to holiday and leaving her children at home. But when the war happened and she started to participate in nursing et cetera, her escapism completely switched over to being of service, so everything she did from that moment on was about properly digging in and working around the clock.”

Viceroy’s House opens with the arrival in India of Lord Mountbatten and his wife in 1947, to oversee the nation’s transition from colonial rule to independence. Hugh Bonneville plays Edwina’s husband, and their official residence – Viceroy’s House – is not so much the film’s setting as the third star member of the cast. Sumptuously filmed, at moments the movie is a sort of Downton Abbey of the Raj, with all sorts of romantic intrigue going on below stairs among the 500 Hindu, Sikh and Muslim household staff. But there is not so much as a hint of the affair Lady Mountbatten was rumoured to take up with the man about to become India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Their romance was to have been the subject of a 2009 film, Indian Summer, until the Indian government took exception to the salacious storyline and forced the movie to be cancelled. In the hands of British director Gurinder Chadha, whose own family were among the 14 million displaced in the violence and bloodshed of the period, this new version of India’s independence is less racy, if rather more substantial, and concerns itself with the politics of partition.

Anderson says she was always conscious while making the film that some viewers will find the concept of a “good” colonialist inherently problematic – “yes, absolutely, absolutely” – and 70 years after independence, she found herself revisiting colonialism’s dynamics on location. They filmed in Jodhpur, staying at the Umaid Bhawan Palace hotel, where the film was also shot, using the palace to double for the real Viceroy’s House. “And, you know, we’re in a situation where we’re in a developing country and we are filming at the height of luxury and, yes, there’s an uneasiness to it. There was one actor we worked with, who does a lot of work around the world in – I can’t remember whether it’s around poverty or Aids – who would not stay there. He refused to stay in the hotel, and wanted to stay in some place that felt more like India.”

Even by the standards of activist actors, Anderson’s own involvement in social and political causes is prolific. The 48-year-old has campaigned variously for women’s rights in Afghanistan, against sexual violence towards girls in Myanmar, for better access to HIV treatment in South Africa and education in Uganda, against domestic violence in the UK and child trafficking across the globe, for the rights of indigenous tribes in South America and conservation of cheetahs in Namibia, against deforestation in the Amazon and rabbit fur farms in China – and that is nothing like the full list. I was therefore expecting her to be quite forthright about current political affairs, but am completely wrong.

“I generally have a tendency to steer away from outright political discussion in interviews, because I am an actor, and there’s so much that I don’t understand, and I don’t for a second feel like I have a right to that platform. I don’t want to get into a discussion about Trump or about Brexit or any of that – I feel it’s best left to people who really understand the very, very complex issues. Not for a second am I going to pitch in, because I don’t really know what it is that I’m talking about. I have opinions, but I don’t think my opinions are more valid because I’m an actor and have more of a platform than others.”

I wonder if this is her way of saying she shares the view that actors ought to stop turning awards ceremonies into anti-Trump rallies, but she looks faintly alarmed. “No, no, no, I’m not saying that at all. I’m only talking about myself. I don’t have an opinion on whether or not actors should speak out.”

She has, on the other hand, just co-written a book called We: A Manifesto For Women Everywhere. Rather like Anderson, it is less polemical than one might guess from the title, and more a manual for spiritual self-improvement. Co-written with her close friend Jennifer Nadel, a former barrister and BBC documentary maker, Anderson has described it as a work of advice to her younger self. “I have struggled with self-esteem myself,” she said last year, “and in looking at the ways that I have dealt with overcoming those things, I started to think that maybe some of it might be potentially useful for other people of all ages.”

According to the introduction, it is a “manifesto for a female-led revolution”, and Anderson stresses that it is “not a self-help book”, although it reads a lot like one. Chapters are called things like Acceptance: Making Friends With What Is, and Courage: Ending The Victim Trap, and its pages promise to “change your life”. It prescribes a detailed programme of fairly recognisable techniques, which range from meditation, affirmations (“This is who I am and I’m glad to be me”), messages to oneself on Post-it notes stuck to the bathroom mirror (“My name is Decca. I am a good and kind person. I do not need to please everyone. I do enough. I am enough.”) and a nightly gratitude list of reasons to feel grateful to the universe. As is often the case with this sort of book, I find myself torn between cynical giggles and the mesmerising thought: what if it works?

Anderson swears it does, but she has such cut-glass British poise that I struggle to picture her solemnly reciting affirmations. It might have been easier to reconcile her voice with the book’s rather Californian, new-age tone had we met in America, for she is what’s called bidialectal; when in the US, she speaks in an American accent, but here she sounds completely British, and says she has no control over it. “I was in Los Angeles recently with a couple of Brits and I thought, I’m going to see what it’s like to talk among Americans with a British accent, and I felt so uncomfortable. It felt so disingenuous, and I kept thinking they must think I’m a complete twat. But when I’m here, it’s nearly impossible for me to maintain an American accent.”

Anderson was born in Chicago but moved to London aged five, while her father attended film school in the city. When she was 11, the family moved back to the States, to Michigan, but continued to spend summers in London, and by her early teens Anderson was rattling off the rails. Punk rock, drugs, an addict girlfriend and a much older boyfriend all featured heavily in her adolescence, and her classmates weren’t wrong when they voted her “most likely to get arrested”. On the night of graduation, she broke into her school to try to glue the locks shut, and was charged with trespass.

She has been in therapy since the age of 14, and the book is interspersed with personal passages on her own experience of mental-health difficulties. “There were times,” she tells me, “when it was really bad. There have been times in my life where I haven’t wanted to leave the house.” But there’s a bit of a dance between disclosure and discretion, because whenever I ask her to elaborate on the personal vignettes in the book, she shuts down.

I kept hearing myself say, ‘I’ve got to slow down, I’ve got to slow down, I’ve got to slow down’

The book contains enough 12-step-style advice to make me think addiction issues went beyond teenage experimentation for Anderson, and when I say so, she nods. Could she say a little more? “No.” After 24 years in therapy, and writing the book, I’m guessing she has a good idea where her problems stem from, but the question receives a chilly, “Pourquoi?” There are “quite a few”, she says, but “I would have put them in the book if I wanted to talk about them out loud.”

Her first husband was a Canadian art director she met on the set of The X-Filesand married at 25. Their daughter Piper was born a year later, but the marriage was over within three years; her second marriage, in 2004, to a journalist and producer, ended within two. Months later, she announced she was pregnant, and had two sons – Oscar, now 11, and Felix, nine – with a British businessman, before they split up five years ago.

I’m curious about how a single mother who has been working flat out for 25 years (she was back on the X-Files set nine days after giving birth to Piper) can even find the time to practise all the spiritual techniques her book recommends.

“Well,” she smiles, “I’ve definitely deliberately slowed down. Because I kept hearing myself say, ‘I’ve got to slow down, I’ve got to slow down, I’ve got to slow down.’ I must have said that for 10 years, or maybe even 20 years. I was just sick and tired of hearing myself. I just thought, why do I do this to myself, and why have I done it for so long? People would laugh at me because I’d be like, ‘I had an extra 10 minutes, so I stopped in to say hi, you know.’ It became enough of a joke among my friends that I had to start paying attention to it. So one of the things I try really hard now to do is, no matter what, after I drop the kids, I go back home so I can meditate.”

Why has she always pushed herself so hard? “Well, the bigger-picture part is that I’m responsible for quite a lot of people financially, so it’s that. But it’s also a little bit of fear of what happens when one slows down. When I think about an empty period of time, fear comes up. I’m quite good at being on my own, so it’s not necessarily fear of myself, but probably fear of facing those things like: why do I drive myself so hard?”

Does she really compile a list of things to feel grateful for every day? “Yes! I do a gratitude list every night. I mean, it’s in my head now, but I go through stages where I think I’m just complaining all the time again. It’s too floating in my head, it needs to be on paper.” Complaining all the time is “probably one of the things I struggle with most. I suffer from great intolerance. Such intolerance of so much.” Such as? “Oh, intolerance of myself. Intolerance of situations. Intolerance of people on the street. Intolerance of whatever. So I have to constantly settle myself down from the state of being aggravated.”

I try to picture her stropping about, grumbling about roadworks or noisy neighbours, and find this image easier to conjure than the new-age version of her intoning, “My name is Gillian Anderson, I am a good and kind person.” She has a steeliness about her that I really like, but whether it’s proof of the success of her spiritual techniques or indicates the limits of their powers, I can’t decide. She certainly feels like someone in full control of herself and her life, and if this keeps her at a slightly cool distance, it is also rather enviable.

She says she used to be pitilessly intolerant of her own physical self, but won’t elaborate on how that manifested itself, because she refuses to allow herself that line of thinking. “I will not go there. I simply will not allow it any more. Because the things that we might be critical of ourselves about actually don’t matter. The only thing that really matters in terms of our peace of mind is our peace of mind itself, and how we react to things. All I know is that when I meditate, one goes beyond the physical, and it is possible to tap into a sense of absolute contentment and joy in that place. So if that’s where you’re starting, then actually none of this,” and she gestures to her body, “means anything, really.”

How is it possible for a working actor to liberate herself from concerns about physical appearance, when her existence is so entwined in it? After eight seconds of silence, she replies: “I don’t know. I mean, as I get older, I imagine the roles that I’m able to get are going to change. There will be a certain point where I’ll make the decision to go grey, you know. There might be a certain point where I decide that it’s silly for me to continue being blond when I’m in my 60s. I’ve also always wanted to direct, I’ve also always wanted to be an artist. Maybe when the kids are out of college, I can decide to downsize and go grey and get less work.”

The art of acceptance is one of her new book’s biggest themes. As someone who is terrible at it, I’ve never been sure how realistic an ambition true acceptance really is.

“Well, there’s an opportunity for fear around every corner, fear of the future, fear of what if,” Anderson says. “But the acceptance of wherever we are, whoever we are, is freedom. So, you know, I can sit and bemoan the fact that I don’t get the same roles, or bemoan the fact that my skin is starting to look like chicken skin, or bemoan whatever it is. But that’s not reality. That’s fighting reality.”

[riveracrossthepond]

Happee Birthdae River

In September 2015, I bought tickets to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and convinced Kailey to do the same. For September 2016. And thus began a year-long plan to do the Harry Potter tour of the UK.

Kailey and I met at Platform 9 3/4 because how could we not (and it was actually convenient). Those people do their jobs well.

Afterwards, we dropped our stuff off at our hostel and did a day of typical London stuff as Kailey had never been.

The British Museum

Trafalgar Square

It was assaulted... peanut.

Buckingham Palace priorities

While on the bus to the British Museum, we saw an ad for Wicked and did a quick what if... Turns out this what if was totally achievable, and so after the touristy shenanigans, off we went to see Wicked. It was good, but like way over hyped for me. Sorry Idina.

The next day was a full day dedicated to the greatest thing to every happen to humanity – Harry Potter. Let us make no grand illusions by singling out Cursed Child for that title (even though that’s what the full day was about), but let it also be said that the play blew my expectations out of the water. It was magical.

Around the corner from the theatre was a ramen restaurant called Bone Daddies, which I swear to god is just as worth noting at the play itself. We went twice.

Also around the corner was a pop-up Mina Lima shop, who are the graphic designers of the HP films. They had all the original props over three floors and it was incredible and totally free.

The next day we met up with Kailey’s cousins who flew to London from Italy for the weekend, and went to the Tate Modern.

Modern art

Afterwards (or maybe before, I don’t remember at this point), we went quasi-mudlarking on the Thames so that Kailey and her cousin could collect rocks to bring home as souvenirs. Who knew that was a thing. That night we decided to see another impulse play – Imogen at the Globe. Partially because the Globe is an iconic tourist spot, and partially so we could say we saw three plays in three days. Imogen was a modern hip-hop-y remake of Cymbelline and it was INCREDIBLE. Like, so so good.

The next day we got up early to catch a flight to Edinburgh – the place where the magic all started. (For those PLEBEIANS who don’t get it, Edinburgh is where Harry Potter was written.) We went to the National Galleries of Scotland to see the Inspiring Impressionism exhibition, which laid out how all the impressionists drew inspiration from each other and it was SO well done. I never go to a museum that has an entry fee, but I would play that one twice over.

After that, we went to Edinburgh Castle for some photo ops (of which I apparently did not partake because I have literally zero photos), and probably ate haggis and drank whiskey. I don’t know, this was five months ago.

The next day we went souvenir shopping and found the greatest souvenir – this photo

There was just some dude and his owl on the street, and for a donation to his owl sanctuary, you could hold the bird. Surprisingly heavy and surprisingly soft. Mom, I want one.

Our day continued on the animal theme because of another what if... Turns out Edinburgh does have a cat cafe, and it turns out they did have an open appointment.

This cat embodied my soul

That night we met up with some friends of mine that live in Edinburgh, and then they recommended a restaurant whose name I very unfortunately cannot remember because it was deadly good. This is a travesty.

The next day was myyyyyy birthdayyyyyyyyy! We took the bus to Glasgow airport, where we picked up a rental car and started on the road trip portion of our trip. The first stop was Luss and Loch Lomond, which has a tie to the movies.

Then we continued on to Glencoe, which had the most Scottish Highland-esque views ever.

There is basically nothing to do in Glencoe, and our hostel was in the middle of a forrest and it was raining, so we spent my birthday writing postcards to our friends and watching my favourite TV show, Naked Attraction. It was a great birthday.

The next day, we rode the Hogwarts Express. I RODE THE HOGWARTS EXPRESS. In muggle life it’s called the Jacobite Steam Train, and runs from Fort William to Mallaig. The views are INCREDIBLE.

Afterwards, we drove to Ben Nevis (which also has a tie in to the films) and took the cable car to the top of the mountain.

Then we (*I*, I want all the credit) drove back down to Glasgow, where we had more amazing ramen. We basically ate ramen all week. Like I’m not even exaggerating, it was at least four times.

We were only in Glasgow for one thing, and it was a thing well worth going to Glasgow for.

After getting inked, we flew back to London the next day for the Harry Potter Studio Tour. This place is incredible, but what was even more incredible was that I felt like I had already been here because Wizarding World of HP does SUCH a good job of recreating the whole set. But either way, I took a million and a half photos.

And that wrapped our Harry Potter tour of the UK. There’s a million other places we could have gone as well, but time was limited. Guess we’ll just have to do it again.

[gossipnetwork-blog]

50 Pop Culture Events Guaranteed to Get You Excited for 2018

New Post has been published on http://gossip.network/50-pop-culture-events-guaranteed-to-get-you-excited-for-2018/

50 Pop Culture Events Guaranteed to Get You Excited for 2018

Getty Images; Melissa Herwitt/E! Illustration

Ladies and gentlemen, get those crisp, empty calendars out!

The time has finally come to say goodbye to the highs and lows of 2017 and hello to a new and totally cool 2018.

As pop culture super fans at E! News, we wanted to help celebrity lovers get pumped for the brand-new year. What better way to accomplish that goal than to create a handy guide of the movies, TV shows, concerts and trends coming sooner rather than later?

From Beyoncé‘s highly anticipated headlining performance at the Coachella Music Festival this April to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle‘s fairytale wedding in May, we’ve got you covered in our gallery below.

So sit back, forget about those resolutions and get excited for what’s to come in the year ahead.

JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/Getty Images

Princess Charlotte Heads to School

January: The two-year-old tot has an important year ahead of her as she begins attending Willcocks Nursery School in London. 

ABC

Arie Luyendyk Jr. Becomes The Bachelor

January 1: He’s back! Before Bachelor Nation is treated to the Winter Games spin-off, Arie will be given a shot at love. “I’m definitely a romantic,” he told E! News. “I love being the type of partner that surprises who I’m with and tries to do special things with them.” 

Courtney Hizey Photography & Emily Maultsby

Married at First Sight Returns

January 2: Six strangers have agreed to take a chance at love and get married at—you guessed it—first sight! Lifetime cameras will be there to document every moment and see if the couples decide to stay together or go their separate ways.

Fox

The X-Files Returns

January 3: Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny are returning to their iconic roles of Dana Scully and Fox Mulder in the six-episode event series on Fox. 

Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images

Oprah Winfrey’s Golden Globes Appearance

January 7: The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has announced that the talk-show legend will be honored with the prestigious Cecil B. de Mille Award. And yes, we can’t wait for that acceptance speech either. 

Eric Jamison/Invision/AP

Camila Cabello Releases First Solo Album

January 12: After leaving Fifth Harmony, the singer is ready to release her debut solo album that already has huge hits including “Crying in the Club” and “Havana.” 

Entertainment Weekly

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story Premieres

January 17: Penelope Cruz, Darren Criss, Edgar Ramirez and Ricky Martin will bring the tragic story of Versace’s murder at the hands of Andrew Cunanan to life on the small screen. And yes, the genius Ryan Murphy is behind the project. 

Bravo

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy Returns

February: All things just keep getting better! Netflix has a new Fab Five that will forge relationships with men and women from a wide array of backgrounds and beliefs often contrary to their own.

Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

Justin Timberlake Performs at Super Bowl 52

February 4: No matter who’s playing on the football field on game day, music fans will appreciate the “Suit and Tie” singer’s halftime performance. Will Janet Jackson make a surprise appearance? Stay tuned! 

CBS

Big Brother Celebrity Edition Premieres

February 7: For the first time, CBS will assemble a group of celebrities to live in the famous house. “Picture everything about Big Brother, but nonstop action because it’s going to be on a fast-forward button,” host Julie Chen teased to The Hollywood Reporter. 

Nathan Congleton/NBC

Olympic Winter Games Kick Off

February 8: Let the games begin! The best athletes from around the world will compete for Gold in South Korea. Prepare for hours of suspense, tears and inspiration. 

Focus Features

Fifty Shades Freed Hits Theatres

February 9: Your Valentine’s Day plans are already made thanks to the return of Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan. The third installment promises plenty of suspense, surprises and sex.

Marvel

Black Panther Hits Theatres

February 16: Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan and Lupita Nyong’o star in Marvel’s latest big-screen project that is sure to be a box-office smash.

YouTube

Frozen Comes to Broadway

February 22: Disney’s latest production tells the timeless tale of two sisters, pulled apart by a mysterious secret. Both are searching for love, they just don’t know where to find it. St. James Theatre here we come!

Island Records

Demi Lovato Begins New Tour

February 26: The “Sorry Not Sorry” singer is hitting the road in support of her sixth studio album, Tell Me You Love Me. DJ Khaled will serve as a special guest.

TLC

Trading Spaces Returns

Spring: After a 10-year hiatus, the hit TLC show is back with host Paige Davis and beloved carpenters Ty Pennington and Carter Oosterhouse. 

Foxwoods Resort Casino

Guy Fieri’s Restaurant Hits the Seas

Spring: Carnival Cruise Line’s next cruise ship called Carnival Horizon will include Guy’s Pig & Anchor Bar-B-Que Smokehouse|Brewhouse. BBQ, beer and boats? Count us in! 

Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Pink’s Beautiful Trauma Tour Begins

March 1: Thanks to the success of her seventh studio album, the Grammy winner is hitting the road. Expect hits, flips and plenty of surprises throughout the country. 

Walt Disney Studios

A Wrinkle in Time Hits Theatres

March 9: The feature adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s iconic children’s novel has earned plenty of well-deserved buzz thanks partly to its star-studded cast and director Ava DuVernay. 

ABC

American Idol Returns

March 11: Host Ryan Seacrest will join judges Luke Bryan, Katy Perry and Lionel Richie for ABC’s revival of the singing competition show. 

Facebook/Mean Girls on Broadway

Mean Girls Comes to Broadway

March 12: Tina Fey’s fetch movie is, like, coming to Broadway at the August Wilson Theatre. Cady Heron may have grown up on an African savanna, but nothing prepared her for the wild and vicious ways of her strange new home: suburban Illinois.

Pottermore

Harry Potter Comes to Broadway

March 16: Based on an original new story by J.K. Rowling, the show follows Harry as he grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs. Seven stars of the original West End cast will reprise their roles at the Lyric Theatre.

ABC

Roseanne Revival Premieres

March 27: Get ready for the Conners’ comeback! Featuring the complete original cast including Roseanne Barr, John Goodman, Laurie Metcalf and Sara Gilbert, ABC promised the show’s return will explore life, death and everything in between in the classic series’ brutally honest tone. 

Daniela Vesco/Invision for Parkwood Entertainment/AP Images

Beyonce Performs at Coachella

April: She’s back! After welcoming twins in 2017, the “Crazy in Love” singer is set to deliver an unforgettable headlining set during both weekends of the music festival. 

Chris Jackson/Getty Images

Kate Middleton Welcomes Baby No. 3

April: Prince George and Princess Charlotte will have a younger sibling when the Duchess of Cambridge and Prince William welcome their third child. 

Eliot Lee Hazel/Photo Courtesy of John Legend

Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert! Premieres

April 1: John Legend is NBC’s Jesus Christ in the live musical production airing from the Marcy Armory in Brooklyn, New York this spring. 

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Kenny Chesney Begins Stadium Tour

April 21: Country music fans listen up! The “Come Over” singer brings his hits to the Trip Around the Sun tour that includes stops at multiple stadiums across the country. 

HGTV

Joanna Gaines Releases Cookbook

April 24: Cooking just like the Fixer Upper star got a whole lot easier. “I’ve been working on this project for quite some time now, and the whole process has really been so fun,” the HGTV star shared on her website. “The cookbook is full of my personal tried and true dishes, favorites from family and friends, and some recipes from our restaurant that I wanted to share.” 

Reese’s

Reese’s Outrageous Bar Hits Stores

May: Reese’s new candy is full of creamy peanut butter, surrounded by caramel and crunchy Reese’s Pieces candy and then covered in smooth milk chocolate. 

Larry Busacca/LP5/Getty Images for TAS

Taylor Swift Begins reputation Tour

May 8: In support of her latest record-breaking album, the Grammy winner will travel to stadiums across the country to perform her biggest hits. Expect star-studded crowds and surprises! 

Eddie Mulholland/Daily Telegraph/PA Wire

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Wedding

May 19: While there are plenty of Hollywood couples who will likely say “I Do” in the year ahead, this royal wedding will capture the eyes of the world. We’re already prepared—and pumped—to set our alarms. 

Kevin Winter/Getty Images for Clear Channel

Maroon 5 Begins New Tour

May 30: The band behind huge hits like “What Lovers Do” and “Don’t Wanna Know” announced a 33-date North American tour in support of their album Red Pill Blues.

Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP

Faith Hill & Tim McGraw Continue Soul2Soul Tour

May 31: The country music power couple are hitting the road together again for their top-selling Soul2Soul tour. And yes, we are crossing our fingers for joint performances of “Speak to a Girl,” “I Need You” and more. 

Disney

Toy Story Land Comes to Disney World Resort

Summer: The new land located in Disney’s Halloween Studios will feature two new themed attractions including a family coaster. 

Emojipedia

Redhead Emojis Arrive

June: According to Emojipedia, phone users will finally be able to give emojis red hair. 

Christopher Polk/Getty Images for iHeartMedia

Kesha & Macklemore Begin New Tour Together

June 6: The Adventures of Kesha and Macklemore Tour kicks off in Phoenix where $1 from every ticket sold will be donated to Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) and PLUS 1. 

Barry Wetcher/Warner Bros. Pictures

Oceans Eight Hits Theatres

June 8: Perhaps it’s the star-studded cast? Maybe it’s that intriguing trailer? Whatever the case may be, excitement is building for the follow-up to the Ocean‘s trilogy.

Disney/Pixar

The Incredibles 2 Hits Theatres

June 15: Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) is left to care for Jack-Jack while Elastigirl (Holly Hunter) is out saving the world in this highly anticipated sequel perfect for the entire family. 

Universal Studios

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom Hits Theatres

June 22: Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard mount a campaign to rescue the remaining dinosaurs from a dangerous volcano.

Stuart Franklin/Getty Images

Shakira Begins New Tour

August 3: The El Dorado world tour is slated to kick off in Chicago. While the singer had to postpone dates because of vocal cord recovery, fans are still excited to see the superstar singer perform her biggest hits of her career. 

Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images

Ed Sheeran Begins Stadium Tour

August 18: After the success of Divide, the singer is on board for a North American stadium tour that will kick off at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. 

Neilson Barnard/Getty Images

Kelly Clarkson Joins The Voice

Fall: The original American Idol winner has signed on for a spin in those iconic red chairs as a coach for season 14. “We’ve gone back and forth about a role as a coach for years, but the timing hasn’t been right until now,” Kelly shared at the time of the announcement. “I have always loved appearing on the show as an adviser or performer…Watch out Shelton, I’m comin’ to win!!”

People’s Choice Awards

People’s Choice Awards Moves to E!

November 11: The E! network has acquired the fan-favorite award show, which celebrates the best in pop culture and is voted on entirely by fans. Get ready for a star-studded show you won’t forget. 

Alex Dolan/PR Newswire

Lady Gaga Begins Las Vegas Residency

December: Pack your bags Fame Monsters because the “Born This Way” singer is headed to Monte Carlo Hotel & Casino’s Park Theater to sing her favorite songs for audiences around the world.

Walt Disney Pictures

Mary Poppins Returns Hits Theatres

December 25: With a cast of Emily Blunt, Meryl Streep, Colin Firth and more, something tells us the waiting until next Christmas will be worth it for this Disney movie.  

Taco Bell

Taco Bell Expands $1 Menu

All Year: Step aside, McDonalds. Taco Bell hopes to satisfy fast-food lovers with 20 new options on its Dollar Cravings Menu throughout the year. Their most recent add was a $1 “Stacker.”

Universal Studios

Kung Fu Panda Comes to Universal Studios Hollywood

TBD: Another level of awesomeness at DreamWorks Theatre will feature Kung Fu Panda as parkgoers are immersed in a brand-new multisensory attraction. Join Master Po on an unstoppable adventure of awesomeness destined to stimulate your senses, exercise your wit and unlock the hero within through the power of kung fu.

Gustavo Caballero/Getty Images for SOBEWFF

Giada De Laurentiis Opens New Las Vegas Restaurant

TBD: The celebrity chef and Food Network superstar plans to open her second restaurant. Called Pronto by Giada, the establishment will be inside Caesars Palace and serve as a quick-service eatery with Italian and Californian fare. 

Photos

See More From 50 Pop Culture Events Coming in 2018

Anyone else feeling excited for the months to come? Let’s do this 2018!

Don’t miss E! News every weekday at 7 and 11 p.m.

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[theliterateape]

This New Road Will Some Day Be the Old Road, Too

by Don Hall

There were many things I enjoyed about London but London was not one of them.

It was best in the earliest hours on either end of the day - before anyone has risen from sleep, as the streets are slightly abandoned or after most sensible people have retired for them night and the only folks out are the desperate or the lucky.  Even then, however, the place was too jammed in like an entire city population too fat for the skinny jeans they had been squeezed into.  And dirty.  Not dusty.  Wichita is dusty.  Sedona is dusty.  This was grimey as if a layer of greasy soot coated the cracks and spaces untouched and made your skin feel like you were being slightly prepped for sautéing.  

It was decades ago but the realization that I only love New York City for a maximum of two days in a row before I want nothing more than to leave solidified over several trips to The Big Apple.  To fully enjoy NYC, I need to not be staying in the city but just outside of it and for as few days as possible.

Leading up to our third wedding anniversary, DMJ and I decided at first we wanted to go to Edinburgh, Scotland for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe but decided that August was a bit too early for the trip and we didn't want to be landlocked to the non-stop activity that takes over Edinburgh that time of year.  We talked it over and decided it would be London in September with a day trip to Scotland if we wanted to in the moment.

I perused the Priceline deals and things went from a $4800 trip to a $2600 trip and we nailed down flights (the cheap tickets included a seven hour layover in Detroit going there) and our modest hotel and we were set.  Travel guides were read, plans were planned and discarded and planned again.  Ten days in London, England.  Rock On. 

CHAPTER ONE: NAKED TV and PLUSH PLAGUE RATS

We stayed in a small 3-star hotel on Bayswater (a few blocks from Hyde Park and the Paddington Station hub for trains and the Tube.)  The room was tiny but the bed was adequate.  The bathroom, however, was so Lilliputian that I could rest my chin on the sink while dropping a deuce (seated sideways because of spacial constraints...) 

The first night found us watching British television.  We landed on a strange dating show called "Naked Attraction."  Like any other dating show except that the choser gets to see the six possible dates naked before he/she chooses, starting with the feet and working up.  Obviously, it's the genitals that get the most on-air attention.  And, of course, we were fascinated.

This show set a stage for some fairly bizarre stuff we encountered on our stay.  

The documentary on penis size.  I mean, a whole documentary about guys with giant dicks.  DMJ loved it.

The random Persian guy who was suddenly very friendly, who thought he'd ingratiate himself to us by telling us how much he loved Trump, who tried to get us to hang out with him by quoting his father "Where there is a contact, there is a contract." Insisting that we have coffee with him.  He was holding a book - “From MTV to Mecca” - and insisted that the author was his girlfriend but the book seemed brand new, she hadn’t signed it and maybe the Trump-love colored my perceptions but he seemed off.  I'd watched enough Better Call Saul to know where that was going so we got away from him and felt certain at coffee there would arrive a friend of his and the task of separating our money from our persons would be in play.

And, at the Globe, in the gift shop, the plush toy Plague Rats.  Seriously.  Someone thought in a store filled with reminders of Shakespeare, a cuddly stuffed rat that had brought the bubonic plaque to England was a real seller.

CHAPTER TWO: Finding Wonder in a World of the Driven

DMJ and I always have a specific source of dissonance when we go on holiday: she prefers to avoid anything touristy and enjoys walking about the place discovering things that make her smile while I prefer to immerse myself into those historic and/or gaudy places that give me a sense of the history of the city.  In other words, DMJ is all about the present as discovered in the now and I am all about the past as discovered by paying a serious fee to enter and avoid being sold plastic bullshit along with the history.

There were many things we both loved about London but London itself was not among these things.  The city felt like New York City 200 years after the Empire had fallen - the Center of the Universe, the Hotbed of Commerce and International Focus Left Behind.  The sense of seas of unhappy faces streaming into the Tube or along the streets to their jobs, dressed for business rather than comfort, the rat race embodied, was far more standard than my expectation of Europe.

On the other hand, amidst the hustle of the business class swarming the city in search of pounds, we discovered or paid for a series of lovely experiences in London.

Madame Tussauds was the London version of the place and sort of like Wax Museum Central worldwide.  For some unexplained reason, I LOVE wax museums.  So, of course, we had to go.  DMJ had never been to one and now can say she's been to the best, therefore she never has to go to one with me again.  This one provided one of my favorite photo ops of the entire trip:

Sir John Soane's House was one of DMJ's planned outings.  An architect and collector, his house was three floors and a basement of the most meticulous hoarder or architectural ephemera imaginable (including a sarcophagus.)

The British Museum was one that DMJ passed on but I had to go experience.  One of the oldest museums in the world and free at that, this place could've taken me two days to truly explore but I managed to get a solid visit in under four hours and was amply blown away by the sight of ancient shit, mostly taken legally, from all over the known world.  Mummies, busts, the Rosetta Stone, a clock made by Copernicus.

Shakespeare's Globe Theatre was kind of amazing.

Hyde Park/Kensington Gardens.  DMJ loves to be outside in the sun among green stuff and people.  Therefore, we toured almost every park and every garden (including an incredible little Oriental Garden in the center of Holland Park) in London but the biggest and best was the giant park just blocks from our hotel.  The Kensington Palace, tributes to Diana, an Italian Gardens, the Serpentine Gallery with an extraordinary exhibit on the nature of being black by Arthur Jafa.  We also managed to run into Robert Neuhaus and his wife Amy - we agreed that after me leaving "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!" it was far more likely to hang out in London than in Chicago.

Covent Garden Market was one of several open-air marketplaces in the city that we visited.  This included a woman singing opera in the courtyard, some of the best gelato ever, and a Moomin store.  I had never heard of Moomin but DMJ went apeshit when she saw there was a store.  Of course, we bought things there.

Of course there were more minuscule and grandiose pockets of extraordinary places we encountered.  Buckingham Palace, the Tower Bridge, the Tower of London, and the Leighton House Gallery with a unique Alma-Tadema exhibit that DMJ had a Moomin-like reaction to as well.

And fucking Abbey Road.

CHAPTER THREE: Wherein I Realize That, While I Am in Relatively Good Shape, My Body is as Fragile as a Fucking Faberge Egg

Sunday afternoon, after a quick nap from walking all creation and back, I get up, bend over to put on my shoes and my lower back goes into a spasm that is an eight on the OMG Pain Scale.  Later, my mother tells me that, in her opinion, these back spasms hurt worse than childbirth.  Having never given birth, I can't corroborate but it fucking hurt in a huge WTF?! surprise that left my brain spinning and my body immobile.

DMJ went out and bought me heat packs, ibuprofen, and made a makeshift cold pack.  I lay on my back with my legs elevated.  I slept on the floor in agony that night.  The next morning, I was in pain but could get up.  We went out but I realized pretty shortly that , while I could walk, I couldn't sit down for more than 20 seconds before a shooting pain went from my back down my legs and up again.

I felt like I was suddenly 94 years old.

We ate in a restaurant on Portobello Road called The Distillery.  The food was maybe the best meal we had the whole time and they were gracious enough to allow me to stand at the bar to eat instead of stand at a table like a bizarre jackass.

I was just a walking ache but managed to muscle through it for the most part.  I mean, what the fuck are you gonna do?  Stay in your hotel room, lying on the goddamn floor, 6,000 miles from home?  Nah.

The worst I had it was three days after.  The pain was rough and I had eaten something odd the night before.  We were walking around downtown London, checking things out, when I was suddenly hit with some intestinal distress.  Like most major cities, there are no public toilets in London.  DMJ suggested a church.

Which is how I found myself dropping a massive deuce in 15-second increments because it hurt so much to sit down and shit that I had to keep standing up in the bathroom of a 500-year old place of worship and stretch my back.

Back in the States, I've mostly recovered with the exception that the skin on my right thigh up to the right half of my crotch is numb.  Which is weird.

CHAPTER FOUR: Scotland Makes Me Wish I Had Been Born There

The afternoon three days before we were to head back to Chicago, London had begun to take her toll.  DMJ had wanted to go to Somerset House and, while it was fine, between her missing home and/or Paris and me feeling like I was being twisted in half 65% of the time from the waist down, we were both feeling less than upbeat.

I decided to head off on my own to the British Museum, she decided to go back to the hotel.  I did go to the museum and loved it, she instead drank red wine for a few hours.  When she came back to the room she was a bit lit and in a rotten mood.

"Let's go to Edinburgh tomorrow.  Anyplace but here!"

So I booked our high-speed rail tickets and splurged on a $400 a night hotel room smack dab in the center of the city.  The next morning, we packed for an overnight stay and headed to Scotland.

I had been to Edinburgh for a month in 1995 when I took two shows to the Fringe and had maintained a sense that Scotland was magical.  I frequently told people that Edinburgh was the one other place on the planet I could live outside of Chicago.  As we trained our way across the beautiful, green countryside, I wondered how much of my love for the place was an exaggerated thing exacerbated by the distance of 22 years.

It was not overblown.  From the second we pulled into the station, I felt a unique calm and delight.  I felt like I was home again.  The hills.  The green.  The castle turrets.  The craggy rocks.  The brick streets.  The sights and sounds.  The smell.  And DMJ felt it, too.  Suddenly, the trip took on the wonder of traveling someplace amazing that we had hoped we'd experience in London.

It was lovely.  We went and toured Edinburgh Castle.  We had whisky and I had a deconstructed haggis that was outstanding.  We walked through cemeteries and up hills and drank and talked about the things we loved about London.  It turned out we had enjoyed ourselves more than the last few days seemed.

And then again, back to our little hotel room and out the next day to fly ten hours home.

EPILOGUE

The most important thing on this entire trip was that we flew out to the United Kingdom to celebrate our third anniversary and we did.  The night of September 12, we walked a few blocks to a traditional pub called "The Swan," went upstairs, ordered drinks and food and dessert and toasted our good fortune at finding one another.

In Edinburgh, in a quaint courtyard square that housed the Writer's Museum, there were engraved stones peppered about on the walkway.  One of them nailed exactly how I was feeling:

"And yet - And yet, this New Road will some day be the Old Road, too." - Neil Munro (1863-1930)

My life with DMJ is just that - a series of New Roads that quickly become Old Roads (or at least roads we have travelled upon together) - and in my imagination of what has come before and what new roads and adventures lay ahead, it is the together part that makes it worth doing.

[trendingnewsb]

Bafta TV awards: What to look out for at this year’s ceremony – BBC News

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Benedict Cumberbatch (The Hollow Crown) and Claire Foy (The Crown) are in the leading actor and actress categories

The Bafta Television awards take place on Sunday, with the lavish royal Netflix drama The Crown dominating the nominations.

The event at the Royal Festival Hall will be hosted for the first time by former Great British Bake Off presenter Sue Perkins.

Here are a few things to look out for on the big night.

Who can we expect to see on the red carpet?

Image copyright Getty Images

The glittering guestlist includes Alan Carr, Amanda Holden, Ant and Dec, Benedict Cumberbatch, Claudia Winkleman, Daniel Mays, David Walliams, Ed Balls, Jessica Raine, Kim Cattrall, Louis Theroux, Nicola Walker, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Olivia Colman, Pearl Mackie, Sarah Lancashire, Scarlett Moffatt, Suranne Jones, Thandie Newton, Tom Hollander and Zawe Ashton.

And by the look of the seating plan (above), The Crown’s Claire Foy will spend the ceremony sitting next to EastEnders’ Danny Dyer.

She can tell him about Queen Elizabeth. He can tell her about the Queen Vic.

But why’s Graham Norton not presenting as usual?

Sue Perkins is taking the reins this year because Norton will have been busy presenting the Eurovision Song Contest in Ukraine one day earlier.

When she was announced as host in March, Perkins tweeted: “Beyond chuffed to be the one keeping the inestimable @grahnort ‘s seat warm this year.”

Cheeky.

Which shows have the most nominations?

Image copyright BBC/Minnow Films/Joe Albas

Image caption Damilola, Our Loved Boy (BBC One) has three nominations

The Crown – 5

Damilola, Our Loved Boy – 3

Fleabag – 3

Happy Valley – 3

See the full nominations list

What can we expect from the winning speeches?

Not just a long list of “thank yous” if 2016 is anything to go by.

At last year’s Baftas several winners used their speeches to defend the independence of the BBC. The ceremony took place just days before the government published a white paper on the corporation’s future.

This year a general election is looming.

Bafta is reported to have emailed nominees asking them to offer “a short anecdote or an interesting detail about the production” in their victory speeches.

According to The Guardian, some of its recipients have dubbed it “a ham-fisted attempt to avoid controversy”.

Will The Crown reign supreme?

Expect plenty of right royal headlines if the big budget show scoops the drama category.

The Crown’s first 10 episodes launched on Netflix in November. Writer Peter Morgan intends to tell the entire story of Britain’s monarchy from the reign of George VI, the Queen’s father, over 60 episodes.

Claire Foy is up for leading actress for her portrayal of the young Queen Elizabeth.

Jared Harris, who plays George VI, John Lithgow (Winston Churchill) and Vanessa Kirby (Princess Margaret) are all nominated for their supporting roles.

Last year Bafta changed its rules on eligibility which has allowed shows with international funding, such as The Crown, to be entered outside the international category.

The best actress race is one to watch

Image copyright AP/Getty Images

Image caption Leading actress nominees (clockwise from top left) Claire Foy, Sarah Lancashire, Nikki Amuka-Bird and Jodie Comer

This is Claire Foy’s second consecutive nomination for lead actress. Last year she was nominated for her role as Anne Boleyn in Wolf Hall, but lost out to Doctor Foster actress Suranne Jones.

This year’s competition is just as tough.

She’s up against NW’s Nikki Amuka-Bird, Happy Valley’s Sarah Lancashire and Jodie Comer for BBC Three abduction drama Thirteen.

Could streaming services win big?

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption The cast of Netflix’s Stranger Things

Yes, we’re talking about those shows that weren’t made for the traditional broadcast channels.

Netflix has never won a TV Bafta, so victory for The Crown would be a big deal.

It has another shot at glory with sci-fi hit Stranger Things, a strong contender in the international category.

Last year that category went to Netflix rival Transparent, on Amazon Prime, about a Los Angeles family who discover that their retired father is a transgender woman.

And who did it beat? Netflix’s Narcos, among others. Ouch.

Transparent is nominated again this year – but there’s also stiff competition from HBO’s crime drama The Night Of and the Golden Globe-winning The People v O J Simpson: American Crime Story.

And let’s not forget all the nominees from online-only channel BBC Three.

Will the stars of Fleabag be jumping for joy?

Image copyright PA

Image caption Phoebe Waller-Bridge is up for best female comedy performance

Talking of BBC Three, its breakout comedy hit Fleabag has three nominations.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who adapted her own one-woman theatre show, plays a sarcastic, sex-obsessed young woman attempting to navigate modern life in London.

Fleabag is nominated for best scripted comedy, while Waller-Bridge and Fleabag co-star Olivia Colman are up against each other for female comedy performance.

They are up against Lesley Manville for Mum and Diane Morgan for Cunk on Shakespeare.

Joanna Lumley won’t be going home empty-handed

Image copyright PA

It’s already been announced that the Ab Fab star is being honoured with the prestigious Bafta Fellowship.

Perhaps best known for playing champagne-sipping Patsy Stone, Lumley has had one of the most varied careers in British entertainment.

After starting out as a model she was propelled to fame in the 1970s as Purdey in The New Avengers.

She once took 27 takes to kiss Leonardo DiCaprio when they were filming a scene for The Wolf of Wall Street.

Surely that deserves a Bafta all of its own.

When can I watch the ceremony?

The Virgin TV British Academy Television Awards will be broadcast on BBC One on Sunday at 20:00 BST.

Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.

Related Topics

Netflix

Amazon

Television

Read more: http://ift.tt/2pwJUUk

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[trendingnewsb]

Bafta TV awards: What to look out for at this year’s ceremony – BBC News

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Benedict Cumberbatch (The Hollow Crown) and Claire Foy (The Crown) are in the leading actor and actress categories

The Bafta Television awards take place on Sunday, with the lavish royal Netflix drama The Crown dominating the nominations.

The event at the Royal Festival Hall will be hosted for the first time by former Great British Bake Off presenter Sue Perkins.

Here are a few things to look out for on the big night.

Who can we expect to see on the red carpet?

Image copyright Getty Images

The glittering guestlist includes Alan Carr, Amanda Holden, Ant and Dec, Benedict Cumberbatch, Claudia Winkleman, Daniel Mays, David Walliams, Ed Balls, Jessica Raine, Kim Cattrall, Louis Theroux, Nicola Walker, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Olivia Colman, Pearl Mackie, Sarah Lancashire, Scarlett Moffatt, Suranne Jones, Thandie Newton, Tom Hollander and Zawe Ashton.

And by the look of the seating plan (above), The Crown’s Claire Foy will spend the ceremony sitting next to EastEnders’ Danny Dyer.

She can tell him about Queen Elizabeth. He can tell her about the Queen Vic.

But why’s Graham Norton not presenting as usual?

Sue Perkins is taking the reins this year because Norton will have been busy presenting the Eurovision Song Contest in Ukraine one day earlier.

When she was announced as host in March, Perkins tweeted: “Beyond chuffed to be the one keeping the inestimable @grahnort ‘s seat warm this year.”

Cheeky.

Which shows have the most nominations?

Image copyright BBC/Minnow Films/Joe Albas

Image caption Damilola, Our Loved Boy (BBC One) has three nominations

The Crown – 5

Damilola, Our Loved Boy – 3

Fleabag – 3

Happy Valley – 3

See the full nominations list

What can we expect from the winning speeches?

Not just a long list of “thank yous” if 2016 is anything to go by.

At last year’s Baftas several winners used their speeches to defend the independence of the BBC. The ceremony took place just days before the government published a white paper on the corporation’s future.

This year a general election is looming.

Bafta is reported to have emailed nominees asking them to offer “a short anecdote or an interesting detail about the production” in their victory speeches.

According to The Guardian, some of its recipients have dubbed it “a ham-fisted attempt to avoid controversy”.

Will The Crown reign supreme?

Expect plenty of right royal headlines if the big budget show scoops the drama category.

The Crown’s first 10 episodes launched on Netflix in November. Writer Peter Morgan intends to tell the entire story of Britain’s monarchy from the reign of George VI, the Queen’s father, over 60 episodes.

Claire Foy is up for leading actress for her portrayal of the young Queen Elizabeth.

Jared Harris, who plays George VI, John Lithgow (Winston Churchill) and Vanessa Kirby (Princess Margaret) are all nominated for their supporting roles.

Last year Bafta changed its rules on eligibility which has allowed shows with international funding, such as The Crown, to be entered outside the international category.

The best actress race is one to watch

Image copyright AP/Getty Images

Image caption Leading actress nominees (clockwise from top left) Claire Foy, Sarah Lancashire, Nikki Amuka-Bird and Jodie Comer

This is Claire Foy’s second consecutive nomination for lead actress. Last year she was nominated for her role as Anne Boleyn in Wolf Hall, but lost out to Doctor Foster actress Suranne Jones.

This year’s competition is just as tough.

She’s up against NW’s Nikki Amuka-Bird, Happy Valley’s Sarah Lancashire and Jodie Comer for BBC Three abduction drama Thirteen.

Could streaming services win big?

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption The cast of Netflix’s Stranger Things

Yes, we’re talking about those shows that weren’t made for the traditional broadcast channels.

Netflix has never won a TV Bafta, so victory for The Crown would be a big deal.

It has another shot at glory with sci-fi hit Stranger Things, a strong contender in the international category.

Last year that category went to Netflix rival Transparent, on Amazon Prime, about a Los Angeles family who discover that their retired father is a transgender woman.

And who did it beat? Netflix’s Narcos, among others. Ouch.

Transparent is nominated again this year – but there’s also stiff competition from HBO’s crime drama The Night Of and the Golden Globe-winning The People v O J Simpson: American Crime Story.

And let’s not forget all the nominees from online-only channel BBC Three.

Will the stars of Fleabag be jumping for joy?

Image copyright PA

Image caption Phoebe Waller-Bridge is up for best female comedy performance

Talking of BBC Three, its breakout comedy hit Fleabag has three nominations.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who adapted her own one-woman theatre show, plays a sarcastic, sex-obsessed young woman attempting to navigate modern life in London.

Fleabag is nominated for best scripted comedy, while Waller-Bridge and Fleabag co-star Olivia Colman are up against each other for female comedy performance.

They are up against Lesley Manville for Mum and Diane Morgan for Cunk on Shakespeare.

Joanna Lumley won’t be going home empty-handed

Image copyright PA

It’s already been announced that the Ab Fab star is being honoured with the prestigious Bafta Fellowship.

Perhaps best known for playing champagne-sipping Patsy Stone, Lumley has had one of the most varied careers in British entertainment.

After starting out as a model she was propelled to fame in the 1970s as Purdey in The New Avengers.

She once took 27 takes to kiss Leonardo DiCaprio when they were filming a scene for The Wolf of Wall Street.

Surely that deserves a Bafta all of its own.

When can I watch the ceremony?

The Virgin TV British Academy Television Awards will be broadcast on BBC One on Sunday at 20:00 BST.

Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.

Related Topics

Netflix

Amazon

Television

Read more: http://ift.tt/2pwJUUk

from Viral News HQ http://ift.tt/2pKY3Zn via Viral News HQ