Latest news with #InfinityPool
Los Angeles Times
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
In ‘Murderbot,' an anxious scientist and an autonomous robot develop a workplace-trauma bond
Alexander Skarsgård was initially worried 'Murderbot' would be too dark. The actor had come off a string of intense films, including 'The Northman' and 'Infinity Pool,' and he was looking for something more comedic. The title of the series, based on Martha Wells' popular science fiction books, didn't suggest it would be particularly funny. 'I wasn't familiar with Martha's novellas, so I just heard the title and I heard 'sci-fi,' ' Skarsgård says, speaking over the phone from Los Angeles. 'If you're not familiar with the books, you think it's probably going to be an incredibly testosterone-driven, tough guy android kicking ass in space. But I was pleasantly surprised when I started reading [the script]. I had never encountered a character like this.' The actor was so struck by the titular character that he not only signed on to star in the Apple TV+ series but also joined as an executive producer alongside creators Paul Weitz and Chris Weitz. 'Talking to Chris and Paul and getting to know them got me even more excited,' he says. 'They're so brilliant, and their vision for the character and for the show got me fired up.' Season 1, which began streaming in May, is based on 'All Systems Red,' the first book in Wells' futuristic series 'The Murderbot Diaries.' It follows a private security cyborg, known as a 'SecUnit,' who hacks its governing module, allowing it newfound autonomy. An eclectic group of researchers, led by Dr. Mensah (Noma Dumezweni), are forced to accept the SecUnit as part of a planetary mission, and it slowly begins to learn the way of humans. The relationship between Mensah and their SecUnit, who refers to itself as Murderbot, is charmingly awkward. The pair are forced to trust each other as the mission goes awry, leading to an unlikely friendship. In 'Command Feed,' the sixth episode released on Friday, Mensah saves Murderbot from destruction by reluctantly performing surgery on its wiring. 'Is that what they call trauma bonding in this day and age?' Dumezweni says of the scene in a separate interview over Zoom from New York, where she is preparing to star in 'Duke & Roya' on Broadway. 'Filming it was extraordinary because the special effects guys were amazing. It [Murderbot] was literally in front of me, but that obviously wasn't Alexander. It looked so real.' 'That dynamic was led by the script, and it was very interesting,' Skarsgård adds. 'It was clear that Mensah would be an empathetic character. And Murderbot is not used to being treated respectfully by humans or even being treated as a sentient construct. He's always been a piece of equipment. Noma and I talked a lot about it. It was a gold mine to explore because there's so much comedy in their differences.' Leading a TV series is a first for Dumezweni, who has previously been cast in smaller roles. She wasn't convinced by the initial pitch at first because sci-fi hasn't traditionally had a lot of major roles for actors of color. 'Usually I'd come in and play the receptionist,' she says. 'I love to watch sci-fi. But I wondered: Who am I going to be in this sci-fi world?' However, once she learned more about the world and the character, the actor changed her mind. 'It was an absolute joy to discover that there was nothing that Chris and Paul had to change to make it representational,' Dumezweni says. 'It's lovely not to have to fight for people's positions in the world based on their skin color.' Both actors were drawn to the series in part because of its unique tone, which lands somewhere between action, comedy and drama. Murderbot is stoic but awkward and unaccustomed to human emotions, which it learns about by surreptitiously watching hours of soap operas. Mensah's Preservation Alliance team is composed of misfits, including David Dastmalchian's Gurathin and Sabrina Wu's Pin-Lee, who often confound Murderbot's expectations. The laughs don't come from intentional punchlines, but instead from situational circumstances and Murderbot's dry voice-over, as well as its disinterest in dealing with humans. 'The writing was so surprising and different and had such a unique tone from the beginning,' Skarsgård says. 'What works is that it has this instant combination of being a big, action-packed sci-fi show, but it's also a workplace comedy.' Because the voice-over is essential to the story, getting it right took a lot of trial and error. Skarsgård says he worried about how it would be incorporated during shooting, particularly because Murderbot is so expressionless and not very verbose in many of the actual scenes. 'How would we juxtapose that with an inner monologue that is more expressive?' he says. 'How do you find a fun and interesting balance between the way Murderbot speaks and the way he thinks?' The voice-over became an evolving component of the episodes. On set, an assistant director would sometimes read the narration off camera if it felt relevant for the actors to hear during a particular scene. After filming, Skarsgård, Chris and Paul got together in Stockholm, New York and Los Angeles for several recording sessions to try out different versions of the voice-over lines. 'It was quite exhausting, but also quite fun creatively because you could see how much the tone of the scene changed when we tweaked the voice-over a little bit,' Skarsgård says. 'You could have a moment where there's no voice-over, and it's like a non-moment where nothing happens. But then just by adding a little commentary by Murderbot, it suddenly pops into a funny little moment.' Although the series adheres to Wells' book, some aspects of the characters have been expanded. In the show, Mensah struggles with anxiety in a few vulnerable moments, which differs from her portrayal on the page. Dumezweni says she has observed some pushback from fans of the book about the changes, an experience she understands from playing Hermione Granger in 'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child' when it opened in the West End. 'That's what you have to do in film and TV,' she says. 'You have to expand, not change. You have to fill in. I love it because only Murderbot can see what's happening to her in that moment. None of her team can see it until Episode 4. I love those moments. For me, they grow her.' For Dumezweni, these scenes give Mensah a point of connection for the audience, as does the way Murderbot is 'autism-coded,' as some fans have noted. Skarsgård says the creators didn't set out to make the character overtly neurodivergent in the series. 'It's very clear when you read the novellas and the scripts that it is a character who is not always comfortable in settings with other people and can find interactions with humans tricky to navigate,' Skarsgård says. 'To me, it was a character we hoped would be relatable to people in the neurodivergent community, but also in a lot of fans in the LGBTQ community. Murderbot not having a gender or being subscribed to binary sexuality could be relatable, but it's natural to Murderbot. That was important — this is how Murderbot was created, and none of this [identity] is a big deal to Murderbot.' At the core of the show is the concept of Murderbot's free will, something that gets more fully explored in upcoming episodes. 'It's now understanding it has free will truly and that there are choices to be made in the world,' Dumezweni says. 'Meeting these people gives it a chance to understand that not all human beings are idiots.' 'For me, the inner journey for Murderbot over the course of the season is about what to do with that autonomy,' Skarsgård adds. 'The character has unleashed something inside of itself by hacking the governing module and gaining this independence. The journey becomes: I have this autonomy now, but who am I? What am I capable of? What am I willing to do? What are my desires?' Although 'Murderbot' has yet to be renewed for a second season, there is a lot of source material available. Wells has written seven books featuring Murderbot, and Skarsgård is excited about the potential for more episodes. 'I love Murderbot,' he says. 'I love playing Murderbot. Chris and Paul are not only supremely talented but incredibly nice and generous. If you talk to anyone who worked on the show, I guarantee that everyone had the time of their lives.' The remaining four episodes will reveal the antagonist behind the attacks on the Preservation Alliance and whether they'll successfully be able to escape the planet. They also offer essential backstory into characters like Mensah and Gurathin. 'I can't wait for people to see each and every story,' Dumezweni says. 'And what Alex does in the last two episodes is amazing. I don't care if I'm in no more seasons, but Alexander Skarsgård has to carry on making seasons of 'Murderbot.' He does so much with the tiniest movement of his face. He is extraordinary and he honors the character beautifully.' 'Murderbot's job will get harder and harder trying to protect these very lovely but also quite naive and inexperienced humans,' Skarsgård says. 'It's not a spoiler to say that eventually Murderbot will care about these humans, but we didn't want to rush into that. We leaned in slowly. So much of the comedy results from the character's absolute reluctance to save their lives.'
Irish Times
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Infinity Pool by Vona Groarke: Subtle observations take readers on journey of the senses in accomplished collection
Infinity Pool Author : Vona Groarke ISBN-13 : 978-1917371094 Publisher : Gallery Press Guideline Price : €11.95 If poets are to be either 'visual' or 'haptic', as Randall Jarrell once suggested in a review of Marianne Moore, then Vona Groarke (like Moore) is visual. Her latest book, Infinity Pool , exemplifies this. The starting point of these poems is inevitably how a subject strikes the eye: the dense clouds above Knock as seen from an aeroplane window; a future passed through, 'like a car through fog'; or the poem itself – the 'infinity pool' of the title – a blue rectangle held against blue, so the viewer can't quite 'tell the edge'. This is a depiction of the watched world and the effect for the reader is an immediacy of vision: a scarecrow 'derided' by the wind; a butterfly that 'chases itself down, very lightly, between stalks/ of cow parsley up to my neck'; 'Antique dusk/ with its yellowing pages'. I imagine the cow parsley as Sligo – the poet's county – on a May afternoon; while the antique dusk is surely England , the yellowish glow of Cambridge where Groarke is poet-in-residence. The writing inhabits both places with focused and tender attention. READ MORE There is a third place also, the place of poems, a complicated realm into which the poet climbs 'through tears in the brocade'. This strange state of existence – described in Hindsight as a 'pipe of light I pull myself through/ like a rag through the barrel of a shotgun' – is tested and questioned throughout. The result, as always with Groarke, is exciting intellectual exploration. [ The Illegals by Shaun Walker: The Russian agent who couldn't get Irish people to shut up, and other spy stories Opens in new window ] [ The fall of an ancient tree is a sad occasion. It marks the death of a living monument Opens in new window ] Hers is a 'thinking eye', to borrow Klee's phrase: the immediacy of the visual is always joined and powered by the working-out of an idea. The Future of the Poem, for instance, is a verse-essay in miniature, each brief section a prophesy, or a dare: 'Watch it become something smaller./ Watch it rot.' Although the book closes with a magnificent sequence written after reading Chinese love poems, Groarke, again like Moore, favours anti-Romantic subject matter: a maths copybook; a ball of lint; a coin game where 'the batten sweeps forward to nudge them all in'. In this poem (Tipping Point), a skilful play with negatives leads us towards its heartbreaking conclusion – just one triumphant example of the subtle manipulations of light and surface that illuminate the whole collection.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Alexander Skarsgård's short shorts have the gays going wild: 'I wanted to be sexy today'
Alexander Skarsgård is making yet another splash with his bold fashion choices, this time appearing on the ITV talk show, Lorraine, on Friday wearing teeny tiny shorts. Guest host Ranvir Singh quickly drew attention to the True Blood star's outfit, complimenting how "out there and free" he is with his style. "I wanted to be sexy today," he admitted, "and I thought there's nothing sexier than a middle-aged man in a British schoolboy uniform." Per Singh's request, Skarsgård subsequently stood to show off his legs properly, and audiences were very pleased with the whole situation. — (@) "He's so babygirl here" — (@) "Alexander Skarsgard is so Miu Miu it-girl coded. In another universe, he's Miuccia Prada's muse." — (@) "Celebrities being fun again is so wholesome to see" — (@) "alexander skarsgård on 'lorraine': ''So great to have Alexander Skarsgàrd in the studio looking as stylish as ever!'" — (@) "He just understands the vibe in a way that almost no other actor does, like this diva is feeling the FANTASY" This certainly wasn't the only time Skarsgård has turned heads with his fashion lately. Appearing at the Cannes Film Festival for the premiere of Wes Anderson's The Phoenician Scheme, he threw on some thigh-high leather boots over an otherwise normal tailored Skarsgård attends the "The Phoenician Scheme" red carpet at the 78th annual Cannes Film Festival at Palais des Festivals on May 18, 2025 in Cannes, France. The fetish-adjacent choice was purposeful — meant as a nod to his role as the BDSM-enthusiast leader of a biker gang in the upcoming Pillion. Of course, fans will also consider it reminiscent of the time he donned a collar and leash for Infinity Pool press back in Skarsgård attends 2023 Sundance Film Festival "Infinity Pool" Premiere at The Ray Theatre on January 21, 2023 in Park City, Utah. Oh, then there was that time he just skipped pants altogether for the 2016 MTV Movie MTV Alexander Skarsgard (L) and Samuel L. Jackson speak onstage during the 2016 MTV Movie Awards at Warner Bros. Studios on April 9, 2016 in Burbank, California. Keep doing what you're doing, sir!
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Handmaid's Tale' star Amanda Brugel is excited to 'grow' after the series, reveals one show she can't watch after her exit
One of Canada's most acclaimed actors, for more than 25 years Amanda Brugel has starred in beloved projects, comedies like Kim's Convenience and Workin' Moms, to dramas including Dark Matter, The Handmaid's Tale and Brandon Cronenberg's film Infinity Pool. She was also a judge on Canada's Drag Race. An absolute powerhouse as an actor, Brugel's career in entertainment actually began as a ballet dancer, where she recognized that she had a love for performing at a young age. But a moment on stage in a high school play solidified that this was the right career path for her. "I really wanted to be an actor when I was younger and tried to type out little letters to agents, and my parents just wouldn't let me," she said. "I tried to mail them and I found them actually hidden a couple years after my parents told me they sent them. I found them hidden behind a bookshelf." "The moment I stood on that stage, facing outward, it was an empty auditorium, but the moment I stood on that stage, it's very cliché, but I just felt whole and like I belonged." Looking back, Brugel is happy that her parents put the brakes on her attempt to be a child actor. "I just don't know if it would have been great for a Black, biracial kid growing up in the '80s to be thrust into on sets," she said. "And so I'm really thankful for them that they did that." "One thing my parents did ... when I decided to go into acting for university, and even when I quit acting ... in my early 30s, and then decided to go back into it, my parents encouraged me, and they said, 'This is your dream. It's not the most stable, it's chaotic. It's probably going to break your heart, but it's your dream, so go for it.'" But while the film and TV industry has long favoured young women for the best roles, Brugel highlighted that being on her most high-profile projects in her 40s, working toward success for decades, there's a "resilience" that she established. "I've seen people have the reverse, where they had very big, large success at the very beginning and without that resilience, as soon as they sort of started to hit a wall, it almost broke them. And so I'm appreciative for the hell that I went through," she said. Brugel was still in university when she landed a role in the 1999 movie, starring Christopher Walken, Bruce Davison and Joaquim de Almeida. Set in 1890 New Orleans, Vendetta is based on a true story about the largest lynching in American history. After the police chief was killed, Sicilian dock workers were tried for murder. "I was just just really excited to be able to start being on film sets," Brugel said about working on the film. "I went to theatre school, I went to York [University], but film sets are an entirely different beast." "[Christopher Walken and I] had a scene and he was very nice, and the scene was cut. I wasn't even devastated. I was just so happy to have had the the chance." While Brugel went on to continue to audition for different projects, taking on roles in episode of various TV shows like Soul Food, Leap Years, Wild Card, Doc and The Newsroom, Brugel described the process of auditioning, particularly during that time, as "devastating and heartbreaking and confidence shattering." "To be able to be successful in this business as an artist, you have to be two very different personalities," she said. "And so luckily for me, I am the type of person that when presented a challenge, I don't crumble. I rally against it. That's not always good. That's stubbornness, that's a slight amount of arrogance, which is necessary. But it is in me. "So even though it was really difficult, sometimes working three jobs, I worked as a perfume salesperson at [Holt Renfrew] and I sold dog and cat perfume, ... and I worked at a hostess at a restaurant at Yonge and Eglinton [in Toronto], and then I would do temp work sometimes for offices. And so you're doing that and then you get a call for an audition. ... But it really built up a resilience that I really appreciate." Brugel actually went to university with Kim's Convenience co-creator, Ins Choi, and even read a first draft of the play at a coffee shop on campus. Playing the role of Pastor Nina Gomez, the show was one of few Canadians projects that wasn't just embraced in Canada, but had international fandom. "It felt like a first," Brugel said. "It's not like it was in hindsight that we realized, 'Oh, this is sort of a first and we are relatable globally,' we really were cognizant of that, and it was exciting, and there was a lot of pride in it." "When you have a group, a company, your cast and crew, a part of something that you know is bigger than you, it really lifts it. I really think that it built everyone. It made everyone bring their A-game. Because not only were we doing this for our own individual careers or only individual successes, we realized that we had a story to tell that was impacting people on a global level, which was really exciting and very rare, particularly for a Canadian television show. And so it was thrilling. I still call it summer camp. It's still one of my favourite jobs that I've ever done." Fans of Kim's Convenience will remember the unexpected cancellation of the series. Brugel feels "equally as disappointed" about the show's ending now than she did when it happened back in 2021. "I think I would not have been as disappointed if we had been warned, if the stories had been wrapped up with the same amount of care and just grace that we had been given from season to season," she said. "It just felt like the carpet was ripped out from under everyone, and that the characters weren't honoured in the way that they should have been." While Brugel is likely more known for her more dramatic roles, Kim's Convenience shows her great range as an actor, and an example of how she likes to jump and forth between different genres. "It started as a very specific strategy between myself and my agent, in which we were really trying to not have me typecast as a Black, biracial woman in Canada. There were only so many roles available," she said. "And very quickly I realized I was only being offered just the the most stereotypical roles that you can imagine in the '90s and then early 2000s, and so we just decided if I tried to ... seek out different genres, people wouldn't really be able to pin me down." "Drama is the trickiest for me, I will say. ... I think my personality is not really muted. I'm quite emphatic. I'm a little silly and loose, and for drama, technically, you have to sort of be still, a little more stoic. You can be crazy, but just technically, for me, there's not as much room to improvise and play, and have a lot of fun and take a lot of really crazy swings. And so that's why I feel a little more constricted with drama and that I have to behave." Among all of Brugel's impressive projects, being a judge on Canada's Drag Race Season 2 will always be a memorable moment for her. "I only got to do one season and I still love it," she said. "I loved it wholeheartedly. I love drag queens. I love the art of drag. I loved my cast. The experience, it was beautiful." She added that it's "still a big deal" that she could only participate in one season on the non-union production. "I haven't watched the seasons afterwards because I can't, and I'm not that kind of person. If I don't get a job or if I lose out to a role, I'll still watch the movie and celebrate the actor." "But Drag Race, no, no, I can't watch it after my season. I'm too heartbroken. Still, I'll talk to my fellow judges. I talk to them a lot, but I can't watch my chair filled by another." Collaborating with Jeremy LaLonde and Jonas Chernick, her fellow co-writers for Ashgrove, it all started with an idea to improvise a movie. The result was a psychological thriller set during a water pandemic and Dr. Jennifer Ashgrove, played by Brugel, is the world's best chance for a cure. But experiencing a "blackout," she's instructed to take some time off of work, heading to a rural farmhouse with her husband Jason (Chernick) and their friends. "I wish that every project that we were able to, specifically actors, were able to go into it like we did with Ashgrove," Brugel said. But the way Ashgrove came together as a film was actually a surprise to Brugel. "It was pre-COVID, but [Jeremy LaLonde and Jonas Chernick] had this idea to do sort of a dramatic exercise, in which we would improvise a movie," she explained. "Structure all of the scenes and be quite detailed with the story we wanted to tell, but having the ability to play and have freedom and improvise together." "That being said, I did not know that behind my back they were creating a different story. And there was a documentary being made about the fact that I thought I was on one path, making one movie, where in reality, they were making a completely separate movie, and I was new to all of the decisions and choices. So all of the reactions are in real time. And I had no idea how the story was going to end, and I did not know that everyone else was in on it, except me." For another Dark Thriller, Brugel took on the role of Blair Caplan in the Apple TV+ sci-fi, thriller series Dark Matter, and sharing the screen with Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Connelly was a highlight for her. Teasing what we can expect from Season 2, Brugel gets to really dive into the research for the character, specifically for the quantum physics elements of the show. "To be completely honest, I thought if I have a couple scenes with either one of them, I would love to have it for my reel," Brugel said. "I really did it thinking it was just going to be ... a fun role for me to play, not realizing how much I would fall in love with Chicago, with the Chicago crew, the showrunner and creator Blake Crouch and his wife, [Jacquelyn Ben-Zekry]. They're just the nicest, most collaborative people, and they're so generous and and the story is fantastic. The acting is great. It is currently, in my adult life, my dream job." With The Handmaid's Tale in its sixth and final season and filming of the series spanning 10 years, Brugel's character Rita quickly became, and still is, one of the most beloved characters in the show. While the series has been a massive success, Brugel is ready to move on to new projects. "I am eternally grateful for what that show did for my career at 40 years old, in a business that has told me from the beginning that I will expire by then," Brugel highlighted. "But I am thrilled to be able to venture off into other things." "Staying with the character for 10 years, you get very comfortable, which is beautiful because it can help with performances. ... As an artist you need to be challenged. You need to fail. You need to have to go and research quantum physics. You just need to grow. And I felt like I had grown as much as I possibly could, and I'm thrilled for it, but I'm happy to say goodbye." While Margaret Atwood's 1985 novel has been particularly impactful for many since it was published, the story was amplified when the show was released, with the resurgence of the red Handmaid's cloak as a symbol in the fight for women's rights around the world. "I still don't know if I really wrapped my brain around the impact of it, and the only time I am able to is when I go to really remote places around the world, a small towns outside of Hungary and I'm the only visible minority in the area, and people will run and want to hug me and talk to me about Rita," Brugel said. "The human connection with strangers and the stories that have come out of it are the thing that I really started to realize, oh, this is massive. This is different. It's one thing to be a fan of a show and a character, but it's one thing to be able to connect with people on such an intimate level so quickly that I don't know if I will ever have that again, and that is what I will miss. That is what I do still love and did love about being a part of something like that, with the conversations that were inspired from our show."
