Damson Idris addresses Black Panther casting rumours
Damson Idris has neither confirmed nor denied he has been cast as Black Panther.
Following the passing of the previous T'Challa actor Chadwick Bosemen in 2020, the F1 star, 33, has been linked to the Marvel superhero, and Idris has now addressed the rumours he has taken on the role for the third Black Panther movie.
During an appearance on the Today show, presenter Craig Melvin asked Idris if he had spoken to Marvel about becoming the next Black Panther, to which the actor said: 'Yes, no!'
The Snowfall star was then quizzed on if he would accept an offer to play Black Panther, to which Idris simply replied: 'Yes!'
Bosemen had portrayed T'Challa in Ryan Coogler's 2018 blockbuster Black Panther, and had also appeared elsewhere in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) with 2016's Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War in 2018 and Avengers: Endgame in 2019.
After a secret battle with stage III colon cancer, the actor passed away in August 2020 at the age of 43.
Following Boseman's death, the 2022 Black Panther sequel, Wakanda Forever, saw the mantle get passed to Letitia Wright - who portrays T'Challa's sister Shuri.
Director Ryan Coogler is set to helm a third Black Panther movie, and the filmmaker recently confirmed Denzel Washington would appear in the blockbuster after the actor let slip he was attached to the project.
Speaking on the 7 p.m in Brooklyn podcast, the Sinners director said: 'That's a big f*** with it. F*** with it or f*** out of here. You crazy?'
Coogler added he was writing an original character for Washington that has not been seen in the Marvel comics.
Speaking about Washington's role, he said: 'There's no fiction out there about that.'
The director previously said he was 'dying' to work with the Gladiator II star.
Speaking on the Nightcap podcast, Coogler said: 'I'm dying to work with Denzel and I'm hoping we can make that happen. I got every intention of working with him in that movie and as long as he's interested - it's going to happen.'
Coogler went on to hail Washington a 'living legend and a great mentor'.
He added: 'He's all about looking out for us.'
The director also teased fans will have 'not long' to wait for the third Black Panther film.
Washington had spilled his potential involvement in the next Black Panther flick when he was laying out what his final projects would be before he retired from Hollywood.
He told Australia's Today show: 'At this point in my career, I'm only interested in working with the best, I don't know how many more films I will make, probably not that many. I want to do things that I haven't done.'
Sharing the roles he had lined up before he sunsetted his acting career, The Equalizer star teased: 'I played Othello at 22, I'm now going to play it at 70. After that, I'm playing Hannibal. After that, I've been talking with Steve McQueen about a film.
'After that, Ryan Coogler is writing a part for me in the next Black Panther. After that, I'm gonna do the film Othello. After that I'm gonna do King Lear. After that, I'm gonna retire.'
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Sydney Morning Herald
2 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
The most demanding role Hazem Shammas has ever played
When Shakespeare wrote his tragedy Coriolanus he was coming off the back of an outrageous run of successes. In just a few years he'd penned Othello, King Lear, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra. This was a writer at the peak of his powers, and with Coriolanus he pushed himself into even more daring territory. And yet the coming Bell Shakespeare production of Coriolanus is the first that Australia's pre-eminent adapters of the Bard have mounted in almost 30 years, and only the second time Bell has tackled the play at all. The last time around, the title role was played by company founder John Bell. This time, the fearsome Coriolanus will be incarnated by Hazem Shammas, who both wowed audiences and divided critics as Macbeth in Bell's 2023 production. 'I am working the hardest I ever have. A marathon is an understatement. I thought Macbeth was a marathon but this way surpasses it,' he says. Why is this play performed more rarely than Shakespeare's more obvious crowd-pleasers? Shammas says it's a more complex and ambitious work. 'It's a big block of granite and it is like Michelangelo carving his forms out of this rock. That's hard work. Maybe we're not liking hard work any more.' The rewards are many, though: 'the depth and complexity of his poetry, the writing and the insights, and the way he expresses psychological and dramatic states'. Bell's Coriolanus gives audiences the rare chance to see a Shakespeare play they might know nothing about. The story is surprisingly simple, Shammas says. After defeating his enemies in the Italian town of Corioli, the Roman general Caius Marcius is given the nickname Coriolanus. As he ascends the ranks of Rome's political power structures, however, he grows angry at the democracy that gives non-military citizens any form of power and eventually defects to the side of his former foes, to team up and try to take on Rome itself. 'It's either Rome's destruction or his destruction. He's a highly decorated war hero with not much political nous,' says Hammas. The machinations of war hawks and power-hungry despots certainly aren't alien to our lives today but Shammas says this is because they've always been with us. 'It's a study on power and its tentacles. However they're playing out now, it's not new. It's cyclical, and it keeps happening and happening.' For that reason he thinks of Coriolanus as a kind of morality play. It's provocative but he hopes audiences will engage with what they see. 'If they're willing to bring themselves to it as political humans with ethics and morals and ask themselves questions honestly about what comes up in the play, they're going to have a great night out. They're going to take something away.' Not that a night at the theatre is any kind of cure-all. 'It makes me sad because we keep telling these stories, and we keep having these rituals together to share these stories, and we don't seem to learn, or we don't even see it around us.' Coriolanus himself is a monster, Shammas says: 'There should be absolutely no sympathy for him.' At the same time, you don't have to look far to see monsters these days. 'I guess we all have capacity to be monsters. That's perhaps what it's about. Temptations of power … maybe being a monster is not that hard. This guy, it doesn't seem like there's much effort in his blood-lust because society allows it. Or society worships it, actually.' Shammas is keen to emphasise that the production doesn't treat a play by one of the great masters of theatre as a vehicle for any particular politics of today. It doesn't need to. 'What's fascinating is that Shakespeare can sit and have these meditations and write this for us to ponder 420 years later. It's all in the text. It's all in the script.' It's one of those roles that requires its performer to have the sort of life experience a young actor probably can't claim. Like King Lear, you don't give Coriolanus to a 20-year-old. Now 50, Hammas is confident he has the goods: 'the wisdom … well, at least, experience'. He's certainly enjoying a long streak of success. For his turn in 2018's TV thriller Safe Harbour he won a Silver Logie for most outstanding supporting actor. He was nominated for an Audience Choice Award for The Twelve at the 2022 AACTAs and has had recurring roles in Bump, Ladies in Black and other film and TV productions. I am working the hardest I ever have. A marathon is an understatement. Live theatre is a different beast, of course. You'd think the challenge of such a demanding role, night after night, would be heightened even further given Coriolanus' wife Virgilia will be played by his real-life partner Suzannah McDonald. The last time they played opposite each other was in Bell's 2013 production of The Comedy of Errors. The tone of that play couldn't be further from this tragedy. The creative bug runs in Shammas' extended family, too. His cousin Hanna is one of Haifa's leading satirical comics; his uncle and godfather Anton is a novelist and professor in Michigan; another cousin has made his name as a cinematographer. 'You know, Palestinians – we're storytellers,' he says. Not that any of that was enough to have the young Hazem's parents unreservedly encourage his acting career. 'I had a first-gen ethnic father who said I had to get a proper job before I became an actor. So I did a degree and worked in construction and probably should have flown to Dubai and built towers when all my other graduate friends were travelling over there.' He maintained his interest in the arts while studying for that more practical degree, and the skills he learnt have proven surprisingly helpful since. 'Dabbling in the arts and creative thinking was a nice balance to dabbling in engineering and constructive thinking. That's such an amazing skillset that I have that I can apply to all processes. To acquit projects is a skill that everyone should be able to learn.' He did finally study acting – a one-year course at Sydney's Actors Centre led to a three-year degree at the prestigious Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA). He'd satisfied his parents' pragmatic expectations and was free to pursue his dream. 'The most beautiful success story about my parents is that they came out here with nothing and, yes, they're poor, but they did give us education and freedom. That's the most perfect legacy.' Loading Hammas has three young sons of his own now and, with two actors as parents, they're growing up around film sets and theatres. The nature of the business means periods working long days and nights alternate with more hands-on stretches with the kids. 'If I'm not working I'm looking after three boys. They're my buddies and we meet the world together every day. We bushwalk, we ride bikes, we make stuff. We paint, we draw, we read, write.' His eldest has even started sharing the stage with his dad during poetry readings recently. Would he give his own children a free pass if they wanted to follow in his creative footsteps? He laughs. 'Not unless they do something proper first.'
The Age
2 hours ago
- The Age
The most demanding role Hazem Shammas has ever played
When Shakespeare wrote his tragedy Coriolanus he was coming off the back of an outrageous run of successes. In just a few years he'd penned Othello, King Lear, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra. This was a writer at the peak of his powers, and with Coriolanus he pushed himself into even more daring territory. And yet the coming Bell Shakespeare production of Coriolanus is the first that Australia's pre-eminent adapters of the Bard have mounted in almost 30 years, and only the second time Bell has tackled the play at all. The last time around, the title role was played by company founder John Bell. This time, the fearsome Coriolanus will be incarnated by Hazem Shammas, who both wowed audiences and divided critics as Macbeth in Bell's 2023 production. 'I am working the hardest I ever have. A marathon is an understatement. I thought Macbeth was a marathon but this way surpasses it,' he says. Why is this play performed more rarely than Shakespeare's more obvious crowd-pleasers? Shammas says it's a more complex and ambitious work. 'It's a big block of granite and it is like Michelangelo carving his forms out of this rock. That's hard work. Maybe we're not liking hard work any more.' The rewards are many, though: 'the depth and complexity of his poetry, the writing and the insights, and the way he expresses psychological and dramatic states'. Bell's Coriolanus gives audiences the rare chance to see a Shakespeare play they might know nothing about. The story is surprisingly simple, Shammas says. After defeating his enemies in the Italian town of Corioli, the Roman general Caius Marcius is given the nickname Coriolanus. As he ascends the ranks of Rome's political power structures, however, he grows angry at the democracy that gives non-military citizens any form of power and eventually defects to the side of his former foes, to team up and try to take on Rome itself. 'It's either Rome's destruction or his destruction. He's a highly decorated war hero with not much political nous,' says Hammas. The machinations of war hawks and power-hungry despots certainly aren't alien to our lives today but Shammas says this is because they've always been with us. 'It's a study on power and its tentacles. However they're playing out now, it's not new. It's cyclical, and it keeps happening and happening.' For that reason he thinks of Coriolanus as a kind of morality play. It's provocative but he hopes audiences will engage with what they see. 'If they're willing to bring themselves to it as political humans with ethics and morals and ask themselves questions honestly about what comes up in the play, they're going to have a great night out. They're going to take something away.' Not that a night at the theatre is any kind of cure-all. 'It makes me sad because we keep telling these stories, and we keep having these rituals together to share these stories, and we don't seem to learn, or we don't even see it around us.' Coriolanus himself is a monster, Shammas says: 'There should be absolutely no sympathy for him.' At the same time, you don't have to look far to see monsters these days. 'I guess we all have capacity to be monsters. That's perhaps what it's about. Temptations of power … maybe being a monster is not that hard. This guy, it doesn't seem like there's much effort in his blood-lust because society allows it. Or society worships it, actually.' Shammas is keen to emphasise that the production doesn't treat a play by one of the great masters of theatre as a vehicle for any particular politics of today. It doesn't need to. 'What's fascinating is that Shakespeare can sit and have these meditations and write this for us to ponder 420 years later. It's all in the text. It's all in the script.' It's one of those roles that requires its performer to have the sort of life experience a young actor probably can't claim. Like King Lear, you don't give Coriolanus to a 20-year-old. Now 50, Hammas is confident he has the goods: 'the wisdom … well, at least, experience'. He's certainly enjoying a long streak of success. For his turn in 2018's TV thriller Safe Harbour he won a Silver Logie for most outstanding supporting actor. He was nominated for an Audience Choice Award for The Twelve at the 2022 AACTAs and has had recurring roles in Bump, Ladies in Black and other film and TV productions. I am working the hardest I ever have. A marathon is an understatement. Live theatre is a different beast, of course. You'd think the challenge of such a demanding role, night after night, would be heightened even further given Coriolanus' wife Virgilia will be played by his real-life partner Suzannah McDonald. The last time they played opposite each other was in Bell's 2013 production of The Comedy of Errors. The tone of that play couldn't be further from this tragedy. The creative bug runs in Shammas' extended family, too. His cousin Hanna is one of Haifa's leading satirical comics; his uncle and godfather Anton is a novelist and professor in Michigan; another cousin has made his name as a cinematographer. 'You know, Palestinians – we're storytellers,' he says. Not that any of that was enough to have the young Hazem's parents unreservedly encourage his acting career. 'I had a first-gen ethnic father who said I had to get a proper job before I became an actor. So I did a degree and worked in construction and probably should have flown to Dubai and built towers when all my other graduate friends were travelling over there.' He maintained his interest in the arts while studying for that more practical degree, and the skills he learnt have proven surprisingly helpful since. 'Dabbling in the arts and creative thinking was a nice balance to dabbling in engineering and constructive thinking. That's such an amazing skillset that I have that I can apply to all processes. To acquit projects is a skill that everyone should be able to learn.' He did finally study acting – a one-year course at Sydney's Actors Centre led to a three-year degree at the prestigious Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA). He'd satisfied his parents' pragmatic expectations and was free to pursue his dream. 'The most beautiful success story about my parents is that they came out here with nothing and, yes, they're poor, but they did give us education and freedom. That's the most perfect legacy.' Loading Hammas has three young sons of his own now and, with two actors as parents, they're growing up around film sets and theatres. The nature of the business means periods working long days and nights alternate with more hands-on stretches with the kids. 'If I'm not working I'm looking after three boys. They're my buddies and we meet the world together every day. We bushwalk, we ride bikes, we make stuff. We paint, we draw, we read, write.' His eldest has even started sharing the stage with his dad during poetry readings recently. Would he give his own children a free pass if they wanted to follow in his creative footsteps? He laughs. 'Not unless they do something proper first.'
West Australian
3 hours ago
- West Australian
What to Watch: Stranded On Honeymoon Island, Joh: Last King Of Queensland, The Bear, Ironheart & Squid Game
Let's face it, our attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, and in this stacked TV landscape, it's taking increasingly wild reality formats to gain — and hold — our interest. Enter: Stranded On Honeymoon Island! As formats go, this one's an absolute doozy. It sees 12 Aussie singles paired up after a speed-dating event and packed off to marry one another. Not long after saying 'I do' they are turfed overboard (still in their wedding attire) from a boat floating somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, and must swim to a deserted tropical island — their home for the next 21 days! Yep — they are literally 'stranded on Honeymoon Island' . . . get it? 'Laying bare their past, stripping away emotional baggage and facing their fears head-on with nothing left to lose, they're about to take the biggest leap of their lives,' says an official release. Sign us up! Every few days a mysterious crate washes ashore, containing news from home, memories and games designed to help connect the couples with each other and the others also doing the experiment on nearby islands. They gather at Couples Cove regularly to discuss how things are going, and you know the tea will be spilt. If you've read this far and aren't immediately excited for this 'Survivor meets MAFS' concept, then this show is most definitely not for you. But for the rest of us — see you on the island! This feature-length doco sees actor Richard Roxburgh bring to life one of Australia's most controversial leaders. His dramatised scenes, directed by Kriv Stenders, are woven throughout the film, which takes a look at the divisive politician's life and time in office. Roxburgh gives a stunning performance, and for anyone with even a passing interest in this controversial figure, there will be much to absorb. Bjelke-Petersen is a towering presence in Aussie political history. One for history buffs and politics junkies alike. Based on the Marvel character of the same name, this miniseries is the 14th TV iteration of a comic book character from the Cinematic Universe — keeping up? This one's all about MIT student Riri Williams, who returns to Chicago after the events chronicled in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Dominique Thorne reprises her role from that film, and this is all about how her character gets mixed up with Parker Robbins/The Hood. If you are a Marvel fan, you'll know what that means. One for fans. The clock is ticking for Carmy and the crew to make things work at The Bear. But as we check back in with them for a fourth season, things are on a knife edge. If you've seen the trailers you'll know that Uncle Jimmy is turning the screws on them financially, and they'll need to band together to weather the storm. But is that even possible? There is a LOT of water under that particular bridge. I'm fascinated to see where they take us this season — here's hoping it isn't the show's last. To say this series has been a worldwide hit would be doing it a gross disservice — it's been nothing short of a global phenomenon. This third season is its last, and fans are eagerly awaiting the series drop (all episodes land at once), to find out how the disturbing story ends. Something tells us it's going to be nothing short of epic as Gi-hun (Player 456, played by Lee Jung-jae) and Front Man (Lee Byung-hun) square off one final time. This one's big — do not miss it.
