Notizie

This Saturday, Netflix will reveal info about a lot of its new shows coming later this year, including The Sandman, based on Neil Gaiman's beloved comic book series. The Sandman is about...well, a lot of stuff, but it boils down to a story about an immortal entity named Dream (Tom Sturridge) who rules over the realm of dreams, where we all go when we fall asleep.

'The Sandman' reveals Destruction and Puck in EW's exclusive first look. Showrunner Allan Heinberg sets the stage for season 2, comments on the Neil Gaiman of it all, and explains why this is really the story's endgame. https://t.co/JkpB4DS8Lm

— Entertainment Weekly (@EW) May 28, 2025

The Sandman comics run for 10 volumes, with the first season only covering the first two. And yet, this second season will be the last. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, showrunner Allan Heinberg said they decided...

Varada Sethu is joining the Doctor Who team in 2025, and will star alongside Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson.

Back in January, it was reported that Andor star Varada Sethu had been cast as the new Doctor Who companion and that Millie Gibson, who plays Ncuti Gatwa’s current companion Ruby Sunday, would be leaving, but would also continue to make sporadic appearances in the series. There was no comment from the BBC.

Now, the BBC has issued a statement confirming not only that Sethu is the new companion, though it did not reveal details about her character, but also that Gibson is staying on in the Tardis. As such, Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor will have two companions.

Sethu said, “I feel like the luckiest person in the world. It is such an honour to be a part of the Whoniverse, and I’m so grateful to the whole Doctor...

A new cast member will be joining Doctor Who. Making her companion debut is Varada Sethu, who will be serving as a second companion to Ncuti Gatwa's Fifteenth Doctor.

It has been officially revealed that Andor's Varada Sethu is set to join Doctor Who for its second season as Ncuti Gatwa's companion. Although it was previously reported that Sethu would be replacing Gatwa's current companion Millie Gibson's Ruby Sunday, instead Sethu will be joining both actors in the upcoming season. The speculation of replacement arose after Sethu and Gatwa were seen shooting together, but has now been dispelled following new photos of the three at a table read together.

Related Doctor Who 2024 Episode Titles Tease a Steven Moffat-Inspired Era BBC released the episode titles for 2024's Doctor Who Season 1, including one that hints at Steven Moffat's influence on Ruby Sunday's story. Praise For the Latest Tardis...

A new update for Doctor Who season 15 confirms that Ncuti Gatwa's Fifteenth Doctor and Millie Gibson's Ruby Sunday will be joined by Varada Sethu. Gatwa took the keys to the Tardis in 2023's third 60th-anniversary special "The Giggle," before meeting Gibson's Ruby Sunday in the following seasonal special, "The Church on Ruby Road." Sethu is known for her role as the determined rebel fighter Cinta Kaz in Andor seasons 1 and 2.

Despite reports Gibson would leave the Tardis in 2025, it is confirmed the crew will instead grow as Sethu officially joins Doctor Who season 15. Check out the images from BBC Doctor Who's X tweet (formerly Twitter):

Two for Season Two! â.¤ï¸.â.¤ï¸. Here's a first look behind Season Two as Varada Sethu joins the Fifteenth Doctor and Ruby Sunday in the second season of #DoctorWho, airing in 2025. pic.twitter.com/fzT1fBryaa — Doctor Who (@bbcdoctorwho) April 12, 2024

Alongside the announcement,...

The more companions, the merrier!

Varada Sethu has officially joined “Doctor Who” Season 2 as the new companion of Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor — but she won’t be replacing current companion Millie Gibson, as previously reported.

In January, rumors swirled that Gibson, who made her debut as companion Ruby Sunday in the sci-fi show’s Christmas special, would not be returning for Season 2 after Gatwa was spotted filming with Sethu. However, it seems the three will take on time and space together in the second season, which is currently in production and slated to debut in 2025 on Disney+ worldwide and on the BBC in the U.K.

Sethu is best known for her role as Cinta Kaz in Disney+’s “Star Wars” spinoff “Andor.” She has also appeared in “Jurassic World Dominion,” “Annika” and “Strike Back.”

“I feel like the luckiest person in the world. It is such an honor to...

Doctor Who has cast Varada Sethu (Andor) for Season 2 as the Doctor’s new companion, alongside current companion Ruby Sunday. The series is currently in production and slated to debut in 2025 on Disney+ and the BBC in the UK.

“I feel like the luckiest person in the world,” shared Sethu in a statement. “It is such an honor to be a part of the Whoniverse, and I’m so grateful to the whole Doctor Who family – because that is what they are – for welcoming me with open arms and making me feel so at home. I couldn’t ask for a better team than Ncuti and Millie to be on this adventure with. This is So much fun!”

Most recently, she portrayed Cinta Kaz in the Disney+ Original series Andor. Her additional credits include Jurassic World Dominion, Annika and Strike Back.

“I first worked with Varada on a BBC production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream,...

The dust still hasn’t settled on the 96th annual Academy Award nominations due to the uproar over the “Barbie” snubs for Best Actress for Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig for Best Director. They still earned Oscar nominations for the cultural phenomena that was the No. 1 film of 2023 with an international box office of $1.4 billion. Robbie and Gerwig received noms as producer for the Best Picture nominee and Gerwig also was garnered a nomination for co-writing the adapted screenplay. But the film is about female empowerment, so it’s beyond ironic it was Ken (Ryan Gosling), not Barbie, who received Oscar recognition.

Gosling wasn’t happy: “Against all odds with nothing but a couple of soulless, scantily clad, and thankfully crotchless dolls, made us laugh, they broke our hearts, they pushed the culture and made history. Their work should be recognized along with the other very deserving nominees.”

America Ferrera,...

No official announcement has yet been made by the BBC or production company Bad Wolf, but that hasn’t stopped Variety confirming, or IMDb listing, that Millie Gibson’s successor as Doctor Who companion will be Andor and Jurassic World Dominion actor Varada Sethu.

Sethu is rumoured to be filming with Ncuti Gatwa on series 15 already, and to fulfil the role of the Doctor’s new companion in all eight episodes of that series. So… who is she?

Cinta Kaz in Star Wars Andor

Tony Gilroy’s live-action Cassian Andor prequel series Star Wars: Andor aired in late 2021 on Disney+. Set five years before 2016 movie Rogue One, it’s about the formation of the Rebel Alliance in opposition to the fascistic Galactic Empire. In it, 32-year-old Sethu plays Cinta Kaz, a member of a rebel cell operating on the planet Aldhani who works alongside her partner Vel Sartha, a cousin of Senator Mon Mothma.

Best Film Editing and Best Picture have had an important relationship throughout Oscars history. While the two awards don’t always necessarily go to the same film, it is rare that a Best Picture winner isn’t at least nominated for Best Film Editing. Only two out of the last 20 Best Picture champs were snubbed by the editors’ branch: “Birdman” in 2015 and “Coda” in 2022.

One of the best cutters in the business is Thelma Schoonmaker. This longtime collaborator of Martin Scorsese reunites with him for this year’s red-hot Oscar contender, “Killers of the Flower Moon.” This story tells the true tale of the murder of several Osage tribe members in the USA in the 1920s, which led to an FBI investigation involving J. Edgar Hoover. Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, and Lily Gladstone star.

Schoonmaker reaped her record ninth nomination for her work on this epic. Her other bids were as follows: 1971 for “Woodstock,...

Taymor's latest Shakespeare film, shot by her "Frida" cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, combines her 2014 acclaimed Brooklyn live theater production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" with hand-held close-up filming. (See video highlights of my onstage Q & A with her below.) Shakespeare is Julie Taymor's touchstone. She comes back to him not only in countless stage productions but on film as well, from the exhilarating visual and violent "Titus" with Jessica Lange and Anthony Hopkins to Helen Mirren's incomparable take on Prospero in "The Tempest." Taymor also loves the Beatles ("Across the Universe"), Frida Kahlo ("Frida"), "The Lion King" (the $1 billion-grossing Tony-winning musical), opera (Mozart's "The Magic Flute," life partner Elliot Goldenthal's "Grendel") and her swooping version of the Broadway hit "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark"--for which she successfully sued to get...

Former Harry Potter star recognised for performance in The Cripple of Inishmaan while Rupert Grint also wins prize

• Michael Grandage rules out second season of West End shows

Former Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe has won the WhatsOnStage best actor award for his performance in The Cripple of Inishmaan, part of the star-studded Michael Grandage Company season in the West End, which took three other awards including best director for Grandage himself.

Radcliffe's former co-star Rupert Grint won best newcomer for his performance in the revival of the Jez Butterworth play Mojo.

The other big winner was the musical The Book of Mormon, which among four awards won best new musical, beating both Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Light Princess, and best actor in a musical for Gavin Creel.

Helen Mirren was awarded best actress for her role as the Queen in The Audience, which also won best...

Stage and screen actor known for playing battle-axe aunts, village gossips and servants

When Mel Brooks visited the film set of Up at the Villa (2000), in which his wife, Anne Bancroft, was starring, he proclaimed Barbara Hicks, who has died aged 89, the funniest woman he had ever met. This stalwart character actor, always lodged some way down any cast list as if to prove the truth of Stanislavski's dictum that there are no small parts, only small actors, was a fund of stories, many of them unprintable. And Hicks, though slight of build, with a long face and asymmetrical features, was certainly not a small actor.

As another admirer, Alan Bennett, once told her wistfully: "When you go, Barbara, there'll be a terrible hole in Spotlight." And so there is, for since first appearing on television in 1962 playing Miss Print, a comedy sidekick to Richard Hearne's popular Mr Pastry,...

Photographer celebrated for his informal portraits of artists, actors and musicians

David Farrell, who has died aged 93, was known primarily for his photographic portraits of the most prominent artists, actors, authors and, particularly, musicians of his time. These ranged from classical performers such as Yehudi Menuhin, Ravi Shankar and Jacqueline du Pré to Louis Armstrong, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. He would take his portable darkroom with him to filming locations, where he photographed Albert Finney, Julie Christie, Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson, among others. His main body of work dates from the mid-1950s to the 1980s, by which time he was working primarily in cinema, but he continued with his photography well into the digital age.

Taking Henri Cartier-Bresson's "humanitarian" photography as his model, Farrell specialised in taking portraits in informal situations – he preferred to photograph artists at home or in the studio, rather than in...

A Fake Moon rises over Bristol at the Ibt festival, Philip Pullman's I Was a Rat! scurries into Birmingham, and James McAvoy tackles the Scottish play in London

North

The big opening this week is Roger McGough's new version of Molière's The Misanthrope at Liverpool Playhouse, which should be fun. Theatre meets music gigs in 154 Collective's Dancing With the Orange Dog, which is at Stockton Arts Centre on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Hairspray is out on tour again and is at the Lowry in Salford. In Manchester, meanwhile, Queer Contact celebrates the best in Lgbt art and culture this weekend. The moving first-world-war drama, The Accrington Pals, continues at the Exchange. David Copperfield begins at the Oldham Coliseum tonight. This looks intriguing: at Haphazard at Z-arts on Saturday is Word of Warning's day of live art for all ages. The Edinburgh hit, Unmythable – all the Greek myths in 70 minutes...

It looks set to be an intriguing year on stage that will also see Philip Pullman take on Cinderella and the RSC tackle Voltaire

The Audience

After starring in Peter Morgan's The Queen, Helen Mirren gets a second go at Hm, this time on stage, in the same writer's account of the monarch's weekly audience with prime ministers from Churchill to Cameron. Presumably it'll be a battle of the handbags when it comes to those allegedly frosty encounters with Thatcher. Stephen Daldry directs. Gielgud, London W1 (theaudienceplay.com), 15 February to 15 June.

Feast

This epic exploration of Nigerian Yoruba culture is a multi-authored show focusing on three sisters separated by a mischievous trickster and obliged to travel the world. Top actors such as Noma Dumezweni and Kobna Holdbrook-Smith join forces with drummers and Cuban dancers. Young Vic, London SE1 (youngvic.org), 25 January to 23 February.

Peter and Alice

In 2009, John Logan...

Grandage will direct Jude Law, Judi Dench, David Walliams, Daniel Radcliffe and many more at the Noel Coward theatre

Michael Grandage, who for a decade led the pocket-size theatre the Donmar Warehouse to a string of stage triumphs, from Michael Sheen as David Frost to Rachel Weisz as Blanche DuBois, is to return to the London theatre – this time with his own star-filled company for a 15-month season of plays in the West End. Tickets will cost as little as £10.

The five-play season will feature Jude Law as Henry V, Judi Dench opposite Ben Whishaw in a new play, David Walliams as Bottom opposite Sheridan Smith's Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Simon Russell Beale as a cross-dressing army captain in Peter Nichols's Privates on Parade. The lineup is completed by Martin McDonagh's The Cripple of Inishmaan, starring Daniel Radcliffe. All will be directed by Grandage.

London — Jude Law, Judi Dench and Daniel Radcliffe are among the A-list actors signed up for a new London theater troupe, which hopes to attract new theatergoers by offering hundreds of 10 pounds ($16) tickets for each performance.

Simon Russell Beale, Sheridan Smith, David Walliams and Ben Whishaw are also part of the company formed by director Michael Grandage, who led the award-winning Donmar Warehouse troupe for a decade until early 2012.

On Friday Grandage announced a five-play, 15-month season beginning in December with a production of the musical "Privates on Parade."

Future productions include new play "Peter and Alice" by John Logan; Shakespeare's "Henry V" with Law in the title role; "A Midsummer Night's Dream"; and a production of Martin McDonagh's "The Cripple of Inishmaan" starring Radcliffe.

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Online: http://www.michaelgrandagecompany.com...

Actor whose unpredictability never undermined his electrifying talent

Nicol Williamson, whose death of oesophageal cancer at the age of 73 has been announced, was arguably the most electrifying actor of his generation, but one whose career flickered and faded like a faulty light fitting. Tall and wiry, with a rasping scowl of a voice, a battered baby face and a mop of unruly curls, he was the best modern Hamlet since John Gielgud, and certainly the angriest, though he scuppered his own performance at the Round House, north London, in 1969, by apologising to the audience and walking off the stage. The experience was recycled in a 1991 Broadway comedy called I Hate Hamlet, in which he proved his point and fell out badly with his co-star.

Williamson's greatest performance was as the dissolute and disintegrating lawyer Bill Maitland in John Osborne's Inadmissible Evidence at the Royal Court theatre in 1964. It was...

"Nicol Williamson, the British actor best known for his role as the wizard Merlin in the 1981 film Excalibur, has died of esophageal cancer," reports the AP. "Williamson had dozens of film credits to his name but won more plaudits for his stage acting. Playwright John Osborne once described him as 'the greatest actor since Marlon Brando.' He was nominated for a Tony Award in 1966 for his role in Osborne's Inadmissible Evidence and again in 1974 for Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. He also was nominated three times for acting honors at the British Academy Film Awards, Britain's equivalent of the Oscars."

"He made his professional stage debut at the Dundee Repertory Theatre in 1960, before appearing in Tony Richardson's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Royal Court Theatre," notes the BBC. "He later teamed up with Richardson again, to star his Hamlet production at the Roundhouse. It was so successful,...

A striking stage presence for more than 60 years and a familiar face on TV

Sheila Burrell, who has died aged 89 after a long illness, was a cousin of Laurence Olivier, and a similarly distinctive and fiery actor with a broad, open face, high cheekbones and expressive eyes. She stood at only 5ft 5ins but could fill the widest stage and hold the largest audience. Her voice was a mezzo marvel, kittenish or growling and, in later life, acquired the viscosity and vintage of an old ruby port, matured after years of experience.

In a career spanning more than 60 years, she made her name as a wild, red-headed Barbara Allen (subject of the famous ballad) in Peter Brook's 1949 production of Dark of the Moon (Ambassadors theatre), an American pot-boiler about the seduction of a lusty girl by a witch boy and the hysterical reaction of her local community.

The role remained one of her favourites,...

Award-winning actor with a fastidious intelligence and a hint of inner steel

Anna Massey, who has died of cancer aged 73, made her name on the stage as a teenager in French-window froth. She then graduated, with effortless and extraordinary ease, to the classics and to the work of Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and David Hare. In later years, she became best known for her award-winning work in television and film. What constantly impressed was her fastidious intelligence and capacity for stillness: always the mark of a first-rate actor.

Born in Thakeham, West Sussex, she was bred into show business although, in personal terms, that proved something of a mixed blessing. Her father was Raymond Massey, a Canadian actor who achieved success in Hollywood; her mother was Adrianne Allen who had appeared in the original production of Noël Coward's Private Lives. Anna's godfather was the film director John Ford.

Since...

Here's a pub-quiz question: which one-time TV actor in Coronation Street and Crown Court released a record on which he sang selections from The King and I with Julie Andrews, before being told by two of the Beatles that he should really take up a musical career? You want a clue? His middle name is Pandit and he once played Doctor Watson to Michael Caine's Sherlock Holmes... Give up? Have another go: which Oscar-winning Yorkshireman appeared in Peter Hall's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, played The Hood in the movie version of Thunderbirds, and appeared as himself in an episode of The Sopranos?...

Dame Judi Dench has spoken of her fears that money for the arts is being taken away to pay for the 2012 Olympics. Dench, 75, said she was shocked at the 'huge cuts' and said the state of the arts was 'precarious'. The Nine star will be appearing on stage in Kingston, London, next year in the Shakespeare play of A Midsummer Night's Dream. She said that she was 'doing my bit to keep [the theatre] open' and added that she was 'concerned that they've taken a lot of the subsidy to the arts away for the Olympics'. The Culture Secretary, Tessa Jowell, said in 2007 that the Arts Council England would lose over £100million of...

A tearful Dame Helen Mirren dedicated her Best Leading Actress BAFTA to her "mentor" actor Ian Richardson, who died on Friday. The pair starred together in 1968 movie A Midsummer Night's Dream - the actress' second ever film role - and Mirren insists Richardson played a huge part in her success story. After lifting the BAFTA for her role as Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen, Mirren fought back tears to tell the audience at London's Royal Opera House, "Many years ago when I started off as an actress I had the immense good fortune to work with an actor who was so generous in sharing his craft. He became a mentor to me, he helped me believe in myself. Ian Richardson, I'm not too sure I would be here today if it wasn't for you."...