Latest news with #JohnProctorIstheVillain
Elle
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Elle
Olivia Rodrigo Just Confirmed This Is Summer's Chicest Bag Trend
Every item on this page was chosen by an ELLE editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy. Olivia Rodrigo kept it low-key this week. The 'Vampire' singer was spotted in attendance of the hit broadway musical John Proctor Is the Villain, starring Stranger Things actress Sadie Sink. Rodrigo was all smiles sporting a cream linen babydoll dress and her brand-new Kate Spade Liv shoulder bag in a leopard print. The purse was a perfect complement to the easy and minimal dress and proves that mini shoulder bags aren't going anywhere anytime soon. The red strap and studded sides added a chic edgy element, balancing girly with grunge—the perfect formula for any outfit, especially for a hot summer night at a Broadway play. After the show, Rodrigo posed onstage with Sink and the pop star's longtime best friend Conan Gray. Over the weekend, Sink attended the Tony Awards, where she was nominated for Best Actress in a Play for her work in John Proctor. It was the first such nomination for the actress, marking a major moment in her career on the eve of the final season of Stranger Things. Ultimately, Sarah Snook took home the award for her incredible one-woman performance, playing 26 characters, in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Rodrigo is also fresh off of her 2025 Governors Ball performance from over the weekend, where she brought out a surprise guest performer, the legendary David Byrne, for a duet of 'Burning Down the House.' After a playful rendition and dance performance, the singer then closed her set with a four-song encore that included her hits 'Brutal,' 'Good 4 U,' 'All-American Bitch,' and 'Get Him Back!'
Cosmopolitan
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Cosmopolitan
Fina Strazza's 2025 Tony Awards Getting Ready Diary With Cosmo
At just 19 years old, Fina Strazza is having the kind of moment most actors only dream about. Currently captivating audiences eight times a week in John Proctor Is the Villain, Fina's searing performance as Beth Powell landed her a Tony nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play, cementing her status as one of Broadway's brightest new stars. But theater insiders have had their eyes on her for a while. The provocative, modern coming-of-age play has racked up praise across the board—earning seven Tony nominations, along with nods from the Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and Drama League Awards. And not that we're keeping count (we are), but Fina also picked up a Dorian Theater Award win for Outstanding Featured Performance in a Broadway Play. Broadway is buzzing about Fina, but so is the silver screen. Most recently, she made waves as Tiffany Falconer in Fear Street: Prom Queen, a chilling addition to the cult-favorite horror franchise on Netflix. She also led Amazon Prime's time-traveling teen saga Paper Girls as KJ Brandman, instantly becoming a fan favorite. If it seems like she was born to be on stage, it's because she practically was. Fina made her Broadway debut at the age of 8, stepping into the iconic title role in Matilda the Musical. Whether she's battling monsters, time-hopping through alternate realities, or tearing up the stage with raw, emotional firepower, one thing is clear: Fina Strazza isn't just one to watch—she's one to remember. We caught up with the actor as she got ready at the Mandarin Oriental for her first-ever Tony Awards. It's a lot. But before I answer that, though, I'd like to first confirm with everyone in this room that I have indeed remained grounded. *laughs* I was just having this conversation with my mom the other day. How I feel like I'm in this dream world right now where I'm not in charge of what's happening to me and everything is so much bigger than me. It's almost like I can't possibly even claim these fortunes in a way. You know? I am, I am. *laughs* I mean, it's not like I don't think I deserve them or something. It just feels like I've been given these gifts, and I don't take that for granted. Everything I'm getting to do is so fun. It's like being on a playground. If you're on a playground, you don't act highfalutin and better than everyone else. I'm just playing! All the time. And I love it. Well, it was a little delayed, because I was trying to watch the broadcast, but something was going on with my WiFi. And my computer kept stalling. My category hadn't even come up on my screen yet, but my phone just started blowing up. I got a ton of calls all at once. I picked up my mom's call and she yelled that I was nominated. It immediately felt like the world rushed past me. All in one second. I just kept repeating, 'Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.' Nothing else was coming to mind and nothing else would come out of my mouth. That's just kind of where I was for the rest of the day. None! I haven't had the time. Well, Eureka Day and English closed before my show opened so I didn't get to see either of those. I know that Purpose has a Sunday evening show, which I've been meaning to catch. But I've been able to get to know some of my fellow nominees a little bit through all the Tonys press, and everyone is so grounded and welcoming. Tala and Sanaz invited me over to teach me how to do a proper curly hair routine and get chicken and rice bowls uptown. I saw Oh, Mary! and I am obsessed. Loved it. So funny, so fun. And I saw Maybe Happy Ending when it was in a workshop years ago. I'm cheering them on. Not that I have favorites or anything, but I have friends in that show and I'd love to see them win something. I first read this play when I was 17 for a workshop of it with Sadie [Sink] and the director Donna Taymor and the playwright Kimberly Belflower. I remember walking out of that presentation and feeling such electricity leaving the room. The performance was still vibrating in my body. The way Kimberly writes is so authentic and real, and it sets this blazing fire throughout the whole show that just doesn't go out until the blackout at the end. I felt how special it was in my bones. It was a feeling that stuck with me for two years, because I didn't hear anything after doing the reading. So for two years, I thought about that show. Every single day. I would ask my team for constant updates. 'Is there anything new with John Proctor? Anything happening with John Proctor?' And the thing is, I've done tons of readings before so have kind of learned to not get attached to them. Especially as a child, because I'd grow out of the role before it got to production. But there was something about this show where I couldn't see a world in which I wasn't in it. I had to be in it. I can't explain it. Because I don't think Beth and I are super similar, but I do feel a kinship with her. There's a certain energy, you know? We understand each other. No, no, no. *laughs* Tiffany and I are not connected. She was like playing my opposite, which was fun in a different way. I felt very free with Tiffany because I was able to be as absurd as I wanted. She's a whole different beast. I feel like so often when you watch shows or any kind of media with teenagers, specifically high schoolers, whoever is the smartest one is usually the most unlikable. And it's like, why are these intelligent girls always these unlikable human beings? That's not the case in real life. At least I don't think so. I love that about this show. Beth is the person in the room with all the answers, but she also has the most questions. She's often the smartest person in the room, but she is so open to new ideas. She doesn't ever feel like she is done learning. She's intelligent but also very tenderhearted. I think that's very admirable. Yes. We were just talking about this last night! We had this kind of pre Tony Awards seance and stayed in the theater very late last night to share our gratitude with one another and talk about the show. Our entire cast, including our understudies, consists of 15 people. Do you know how rare it is to find a group of 15 people where nobody is an issue and no one has a problem with anyone else? We joke that it's pretty boring sometimes because there's no one to gossip about, but it's really just a very supportive, loving environment where we all have a lot of respect for each other's tracks, which is so important in a show with such emotional weight. It can be very easy to walk off stage and keep yourself in that headspace. If we didn't have someone to lean on, it would be really hard. But luckily that's not the case. We have each other. And the second I walk off stage, I know there's someone there who I can laugh with. We'll be crying on stage one minute and then giggling about someone in the audience who had a weird laugh the next. I feel very lucky that we all enjoy one another. And the head of our social media, Austin Spero, is so great at capturing that. He's also open to any ideas we have. I love that he collaborates with us. I still feel like I'm waiting for it to feel like I'm actually in the show. It all still feels so unreal in a way. I'm kind of waiting for it to kick in, which has me worried that I'm gonna leave the show still in this dream world. I want to make sure I lock in before it's over and feel truly grounded. Because we really have such a cool job. My costar Amalia Yoo reminded me of that the other night. She was washing her face and turned to me with her makeup still smudged on her face and was like, 'Our job is really, really cool.' And I was like, 'Yeah. It really is.' I'm wearing Michael Fausto. He's a New York designer, which I love because I'm a born and raised New Yorker. I told my stylist, Sarah Slutsky, that I've always wanted to wear a ballgown. Tonight felt like the one night where I could get away with it without anyone thinking, Who does she think she is? I told Sarah I wanted to try and nod to the show in some way as well. So there is this slight Puritan aspect to the look where it feels like it could potentially be something in the realm of 1666. There's something a little bit vintage about it. It feels like an elevated version of what the girls wear at the end of the show. I wanted the glam to be like this [Fina feigns an innocent doe-eyed expression caught between surprise and delight] *laughs* I don't know how to put that into words. But my hairstylist Corey Tuttle and makeup artist Amanda Thesen have figured it out. We have the entire family in the room. My boyfriend and my mom and my dad and my sister are all coming. My mom is my official plus-one. Everyone else bought tickets. I haven't seen what my mom is wearing yet, but no one is coordinating. My boyfriend looks like a penguin though! I'm excited to see Jonathan Groff again. I've really enjoyed talking to him through the season at all of our different events. I think Lizzy McAlpine might be at some parties later tonight, and I'm excited to see her again. I've known Sadie for a long time because I was in Matilda with her brother when I was younger. She and her brother both have this incredible nonchalance about them, which helps me find my center. She's very like, 'Whatever happens, happens.' Fated. It all feels like fate. The Tony went to Kara Young for 'Purpose' in what ultimately felt like a wide-open category. Congratulations to Kara, Fina, and all the nominees!
Yahoo
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Inside the ‘Witchy Circle' of the ‘John Proctor Is the Villain' Cast
It comes as no surprise that the women of 'John Proctor Is the Villain' have an especially epic group text. The Broadway hit, which heads into this weekend's Tony Awards with seven nominations including Best Play, is set in a rural Southern high school classroom and follows a set of mostly young female students who have been classmates their whole lives, so bonding off set was crucial when it came to selling the story. More from WWD Sarah Hyland Doubles Down on Tonal Dressing in Patrizia Pepe Set With Chocolate Brown Pumps at 2025 Drama Desk Awards Amal Clooney Recycles Archival Gold Barely-there Gianvito Rossi Plexi Pumps for Broadway Date Night with George Clooney How Actress Samantha Williams Harnesses the Headstrong Heroine In Tony-nominated 'Pirates! The Penzance Musical' 'Danya [Taymor, the show's director] was so good about that because I think especially for these students in a small town, you're in the same class with the same people your entire life, and that chemistry is really important,' says star Sadie Sink, over Zoom from her dressing room. 'And that was never lost on Danya at all. So she would really incorporate a lot of team-building exercises into rehearsal that would maybe seem silly at first, but over time just really added up and became super meaningful and important into establishing that kind of connection.' The real bonding — which is evident from chatting with Sink and costars Molly Griggs and Fina Strazza, each from their respective dressing rooms — has come since the show officially opened, be it from picnics in the park between shows or the 'witchy circle' of 'giggling and being dumb' they form before each show. 'After you're out of rehearsals and previews and you get out of your own actor brain where you're thinking you're doing everything wrong, then you get closer with your cast and there's room to breathe,' Sink says. 'We have a lot of weird downtime together and that's when the friendships really get deep,' Griggs adds. 'And we have a group chat that is powerful.' 'John Proctor Is the Villain' is one of this season's biggest hits, with Tony nominations for best play, best actor for Sink, best featured actress for Strazza and best direction, among others. The production, written by Kimberly Belflower, is set in a high school in small town Georgia amid a class reading 'The Crucible.' 'The show is such a special story about young women taking up space,' Strazza says of what drew her in. 'Being a young woman myself, I loved how much Kimberly captured the accuracy of being a teenage girl and what it really feels like to be misunderstood by your community and wanting to make real change when you're often looked down upon and silenced.' Griggs meanwhile immediately related to the authenticity of the Southerness in the characters, being from the South herself. 'They really do sound and feel like Southern people and the rhythm of their speech, and in the sense of humor too, that just feels so cozy to me,' Griggs says. 'I know that feels like a surface thing, but it's actually really deep for me. It is about home and it's about a place and it's about sensibility.' Sink grew up in Texas, and recalls trying to shake her Southern accent when she first moved to New York City. 'So I was really charmed by how this play depicted not only teenage girls, but teenage girls from the South too, and how it really just embraced that culture and the parts that felt resonant to me, but also in the flaws as well. It was just this perfect cocktail of a love letter to girlhood and also the South, which I was really drawn to.' The show is drawing a wide audience, but in particular many teenage girls, who often come to the stage door to meet the cast at the end of the night. 'We've had a lot of young people in the stage door line say that this is their first Broadway show,' Griggs says. 'And that is so cool to me that not only did they have a really wonderful experience with our play in particular, but it may open the door for them to be theater people and to be people who want to come and see plays every season.' They're also meeting high schoolers who have been in productions of the show themselves: the rights to the play were released to students before it arrived on Broadway. 'I love when people at the stage door have already done the play themselves in their communities, and so they already have this really deep connection with it, and they're so excited to see it done on stage,' Strazza says. The show references the Lorde song 'Green Light' several times throughout, and while the pop star has yet to make it to a show, the cast knows that she's well aware of her song's role in the show. 'We know she wants to come, but it's busy being Lorde,' Sink says. 'But we're dying to get her here.' 'We do the show for her every night,' Strazza adds. 'It'll happen whenever it happens,' Sink says. 'We'll have to summon her in our circle one day.' Best of WWD Maria Grazia Chiuri's Dior Through the Years: Runway, Celebrities and More [PHOTOS] Brigitte Macron's Style Through the Years [PHOTOS] A Look Back at Venice Film Festival Best Dressed Red Carpet Stars: Amal Clooney, Dakota Johnson and More [PHOTOS]
Chicago Tribune
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
2025 Tony Awards: Steppenwolf Theatre's ‘Purpose' wins best play
NEW YORK — 'Purpose,' a drama by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins that was commissioned and first produced by Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company, has won the Tony Award for best play at the awards ceremony at Radio City Musical Hall. The play, with a stort loosely based on the family of civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, was nominated alongside 'The Hills of California,' 'John Proctor Is the Villain' and 'Oh, Mary!' The win is a major victory for the famed Chicago company that last wowed New York theater with Tracy Letts' 'August: Osage County' in 2008. Actress Kara Young, who was added to the Chicago cast of 'Purpose' for the Broadway production, also won a Tony for best featured actress in a play. In accepting the award, Glenn Davis, Steppenwolf's co-artistic director and a cast member and Tony nominee himself, had the chance to remind New York and the television audience of Steppenwolf's accomplishments over the years. Playwright Jacobs-Jenkins thanked 'the city of Chicago for making this show what it was.' He also said Chicago had 'the best actors in America.' The 2025 Tony Awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and Broadway League in a ceremony Sunday at Radio City Music Hall in New York, hosted by 'Wicked' star Cynthia Erivo and broadcast on CBS and streamed on Paramount+.PHOTOS: Tony Awards 2025: Red Carpet Arrivals
Yahoo
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Sinners' bonus feature: See how the gnarly makeup effects came to life
From its music to cinematography, special effects and production design, Ryan Coogler's Sinners was a cross-departmental masterclass, which undoubtedly helped to make the period vampire flick the breakout hit of the year. And now, as the movie makes its way onto digital platforms, we're getting more of a peek behind the curtain to see how it all came together. More from GoldDerby Danya Taymor could make Tony Awards history with a win for 'John Proctor Is the Villain' How 'Severance' creates Lumon's 'manufactured perfection' through VFX 'Say Nothing' star Anthony Boyle on playing IRA activist Brendan Hughes: We 'get to the humanity as opposed to the mythology' To mark the release, Gold Derby has a look at the special effects makeup from Sinners and the team responsible for putting all the gory wounds and practical otherworldly monsters on the screen. Coogler had originally become aware of prosthetic makeup designer Mike Fontaine's work after seeing Jeremy Saulnier's brutal container thriller Green Room. "I hadn't been that viscerally moved by makeup since I saw The Thing," Coogler says in the featurette. "It kind of left a mark on me." Once onboard, Fontaine met with Coogler to hear directly from him about what his goals for Sinners' makeup were and to land on a shared point of view. "Ryan and I were having a conversation early on, and I started to get a sense of what his vision was for the film," Fontaine says. "The process for me always begins with the script and the initial images that come to mind. From there, Fontaine went off to begin a months-long process that evolves from drawing to paintings and sculpting, some of which you can see in the video above. Sinners is available now on digital platforms. Best of GoldDerby Stephen King movies: 14 greatest films ranked worst to best 'The Life of Chuck' cast reveal their favorite Stephen King works, including Mark Hamill's love of the 'terrifying' 'Pet Sematary' From 'Hot Rod' to 'Eastbound' to 'Gemstones,' Danny McBride breaks down his most righteous roles: 'It's been an absolute blast' Click here to read the full article.
