News

Mamoudou Athie can practically taste the lobster rolls from the Carlton hotel. He smiles wistfully as he taps into that sense memory of his first trip to the Cannes Film Festival. In 2023, Athie voiced the lead role in Disney-Pixar’s “Elemental,” which closed the fest. And he’s returning this week as part of the first-rate ensemble of Yorgos Lanthimos’ offbeat movie “Kinds of Kindness.”

Discussion of the crustacean-filled dish might seem irrelevant, but it’s perhaps not incidental. Athie begins our conversation by revealing that his first encounter with Lanthimos’ unique sensibilities was 2015’s “The Lobster.” The Mauritanian American actor, who was studying at Yale School of Drama at the time, was captivated by the originality of the material and the conviction the filmmaker brought to his craft.

“I love something that feels fresh and innovative and risky,” Athie says, sitting down with Variety in late April and eagerly...

Exclusive: Wind of Change, the wild podcast that asks whether the CIA wrote the 1990 Scorpions hit song, is being adapted for television at Hulu.

Deadline understands that the streamer has landed the project, which is being developed by Alex Karpovsky, in a competitive situation.

The Patrick Radden Keefe-hosted podcast, which launched in May and became one of the buzziest audio series of the year, is produced by Pod Save America producer Crooked Media, Pineapple Street Studios, which produces podcasts such as The Clearing and The Catch and Kill Podcast with Ronan Farrow, and Spotify.

It is being written and exec produced by Karpovsky, who starred in Amazon’s television adaptation of Homecoming and wrote and directed Oh Jerome, No — which was part of Fxx comedy Cake — and exec produced by Single Parent and Life in Pieces EP Jason Winer. 20th Television is the studio and is producing in association...

Quibi, in its awards-season debut, picked up two trophies at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards on Thursday night.

Both were for “#FreeRayshawn,” a police drama from from executive producer Antoine Fuqua: Laurence Fishburne and Jasmine Cephas Jones won the acting awards in the Emmys short-form category. It was Fishburne’s third career Emmy win, and the first win for Cephas Jones (“Hamilton”) and her first nomination.

The first Emmy wins for Quibi, which is led by Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman, don’t come as a surprise: The well-funded mobile streamer has paid handsomely for its originals — upwards of $100,000 per minute of programming from A-list Hollywood talent. All of its entries were in the short-form categories, which historically have been populated by series that are sidecars to TV shows.

Overall, Quibi had picked up 10 Emmy Awards nominations. But it was mainly competing against itself, since it captured four of...

There must be something in the water at the Yale School of Drama, as Mamaoudou Athie is the latest alum to climb the ranks of Hollywood in a short amount of time. Joining the likes of Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Athie is grateful to have the support of his fellow Yale grads whenever he needs it — whether that’s audition advice or deciding on a role. Athie was recently surprised to learn that he’d been nominated for an Emmy by way of outstanding actor in a short form comedy or drama series.

The series in question is ...

An esteemed up-and-coming actor known for turns in films including Patti Cake$, Unicorn Store and The Front Runner, Mamoudou Athie recently earned his first Emmy nomination for short-form series Oh Jerome, No, though he could never have anticipated this result.

A recurring segment within Cake—a short-form comedy anthology, which premiered on Fxx last fall—the series centers on Jerome, an overly sensitive young man living out a series of bizarre scenarios in New York, who goes through his fair share of trials and tribulations in his quest for love.

Written and directed by Teddy Blanks and Alex Karpovsky, the project began its life as a one-off short, with seemingly little chance of leading to anything else. A couple of years ago, while wrapping the Patti Cake$ shoot, Athie got an email from the writer/director duo, asking if he’d like to be involved. “I was a little confused,...

“I just really wasn’t expecting anything at all,” reveals Mamoudou Athie in his exclusive interview with Gold Derby (watch the video above) about being nominated for Best Short Form Actor at the Emmys, speaking from London as he prepares to resume filming on “Jurassic World: Dominion.” “One of the first messages that I read was one of my best friends Yahya Abdul-Mateen, who also got nominated this year, which is really, really exciting, so, yeah, it was cool to share that moment with him,” continues Athie with reference to the breakout “Watchmen” star up for Best Movie/Limited Supporting Actor.

SEEour slugfest with initial reactions to the nominations.

Athie is nominated for starring as Jerome Nolte in “Oh Jerome, No,” a romantic comedy on which he also served as an executive producer. Adapted from Ray-Ban’s 2016 short film of the same name that featured Athie in the same role,...

With a title like “Oh Jerome, No,” the series was always building to the point where its title character turned that phrase on himself. When it happens in the opening segment of the two-part finale, Jerome (Mamoudou Athie) laments his inability to follow through on a New Year’s Eve idea.

Over eight episodes of Alex Karpovsky and Teddy Blanks’ series about one man’s emotional highs and lows, that tussle between expectations and reality happens a lot. “It was important for us to have a character that gets into all sorts of wacky and absurd and sometimes full-on ridiculous situations, but ultimately it’s coming from a person that’s always relatable,” Karpovsky told IndieWire. “You don’t want to stretch it too far where we feel like this person exists in a completely sci-fi universe. The fact that the show is so Pov-driven and driven, we can really...

Fxx describes its new series “Cake” as a “comedy showcase.” It’s an apt description, especially because trying to sum up the show in any more than two words is a much harder task than you might expect.

To follow the food metaphor the show’s title invites, “Cake” is the product of a number of ingredients all working together to produce a distinct flavor. To torture that metaphor further, “Cake” is something closer to a sugary casserole, an energetic mixture of disparate comedic styles that aren’t so much whipped up into batter but presented with large chunks still intact in each bite. In an entertainment world that’s increasingly supported by algorithms, “Cake” doesn’t allow viewers to get silo’ed into one headspace – and that’s the glory of the show.

Each half-hour episode throws together a cross-section of live-action and animated shorts. “Cake” makes reducing things...