Hugh Jackman never thought he’d be a karaoke guy. But then Neil Diamond happened.
Starring opposite Kate Hudson in the Christmas Day release “Song Sung Blue,” the 57-year-old Australian actor portrays not the legendary Grammy winner and shaggy-haired sex symbol, but rather a Neil Diamond “interpreter,” the real-life Mike Sardina, who, with his wife and stage partner, Claire (Hudson), found unexpected success with a tribute band in mid-1990s Milwaukee.
It was this film that recently brought the “Greatest Showman” star to Diamond’s Colorado ranch, where the two participated in a singing session that convinced Jackman to buy his own karaoke machine.
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“Normally, I’m like, ‘I don’t want to do that,’” says Jackman, over Zoom from a New York hotel room, as if he’s confessing a mortal sin. “But I did karaoke with Neil, and I’m like, ‘All right, now I’m in.’”
What did they sing? Diamond soloed on “I Dreamed a Dream” from “Les Misérables,” paying tribute to Jackman’s musical theater bona fides, before the two duetted on Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love” and, of course, Diamond’s own “Sweet Caroline.” The good times never seemed so good.
It was a hang session so epic that Hudson, joining the call, seems green with an envy that matches her sweater. “I can’t believe I missed this karaoke party,” she says. “I have a whole karaoke setup at my house with a microphone and everything. I feel very left out.”
Thankfully, when it came to making “Song Sung Blue,” it didn’t seem so lonely for her. Based on Greg Kohs’ 2008 documentary of the same name, the film is as much Claire’s tale as it is Mike’s, following the real couple’s love story set to the tune of Diamond’s extensive songbook. At the height of their success, which included playing with Pearl Jam at Eddie Vedder’s request, the Sardinas became local celebrities, billed as the duo “Lightning & Thunder.”
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Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson in the movie “Song Sung Blue.”
(Focus Features)
A Vietnam vet and mechanic with a dream of entertaining, Sardina seems a role tailor-made for Jackman, who can go from Wolverine to Broadway in a single season. “Song Sung Blue” writer-director Craig Brewer, who first saw the documentary at a small film festival in Memphis, Tenn., never envisioned anyone but Jackman as the insatiable Wisconsinite.
“It was always Hugh because there’s not anybody else out there who could understand the wild showmanship that Mike Sardina had,” says Brewer, calling from his Memphis home. “He’s doing two layers of a character. He’s playing this working-class guy that loves to entertain any way he can. If he’s got to wear sequined shirts, he’s going to. He’s going to give you everything he has.”
The role presented a puzzle for Jackman, despite having played career impresarios like pop idol Peter Allen and P.T. Barnum. “I had to lose Hugh Jackman to be Mike,” says the actor, relaxed in an umber-colored button-down shirt. “How does Mike find himself within his love of Neil? It took me a second to find him and lose my shtick, because I’m a performer too.”
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Ultimately, the solution wasn’t his Neil Diamond impersonation, though Brewer encouraged Jackman to make a meal of that. “You can lay a little bit more butter on it,” the director remembers telling him.
Instead, Jackman’s breakthrough came via deep self-identification.
“His dream was always huge but this was not how he thought it was going to go,” Jackman says. “It was that ‘one plus one equals three’ thing where, all of a sudden, they found themselves being the next big thing.” Similarly, Jackman never intended to become a movie star synonymous with musical theater. He’d never even sung before a post-university audition changed the course of his life.
“One of the hardest things to do is fake chemistry,” Kate Hudson says. “You can’t do that. You have to actually fall in love with each other and find the chemical connection.”
(Victoria Will / For The Times)
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Hudson is a less-obvious casting choice. Though she’s made a career playing rom-com heroines, with “Song Sung Blue,” she’s already generating awards buzz for her turn as a guileless Midwestern mom miles away from the glittering women Hudson typically portrays, and one with her fair share of trauma. She has to go to some dark places, channeling Claire’s depression, addiction to painkillers and more — but despite her penchant for playing more carefree women, Hudson says she wasn’t intimidated by the role’s meatier aspects.
“When you grow up with storytellers,” she says, referencing her actor parents Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, “you forget the camera’s there. You’re not thinking about anything glamorous. You’re looking at the role and what it needs. It’s what you long for as a performer. It allows you to almost leave your body.”
For Hudson, the opportunity also dovetailed with a new act in her own life as a recording artist. Even though she released her debut album “Glorious” only last year, Hudson has long identified as a singer-songwriter. “I was always so scared of it,” she confesses of her fear of going public about her songwriting. “But the studio is where I’m very happy. I’ve been in the studio since I was 19, but I just never shared my music because I was too scared to put it out.”
It was a discovery Jackman made while they were recording their vocal tracks for the film. “I said, ‘You’re a musician,’” he recalls, Hudson beaming at him. “You were so relaxed and in your home.”
“I’ve always had a lot of cheerleaders for me to do music,” Hudson replies, sheepishly.
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Some might see it as a full circle moment for Hudson, who received an Oscar nomination for her performance as the groupie Penny Lane in Cameron Crowe’s 2000 rock memoir “Almost Famous.” It was such a formative experience that Hudson still remains close with Crowe. She tells me she’s reading his new book, “The Uncool,” to prepare to interview him on his tour.
But no matter how much Penny Lane has shaped her life, Hudson doesn’t see a through line from her to Claire. Instead, she draws a line between fandom and musicianship, specifically the distinction between those who chase the high of being in the room or backstage living the lifestyle, and those who have a song they have a visceral need to share.
“With Claire, it needs to come out,” she continues. “It doesn’t matter where or what we’re doing or how we’re doing it — we just need to do it. That is also how I feel about music.”
The real-life Claire Sardina and her two children (played by Ella Anderson and Hudson Hensley on-screen) threw their full support behind “Song Sung Blue.” But Hudson’s instinct was to build her own version of Claire without too much outside influence. “You want to make a choice in a film because it’s the right choice for the character, not because you’re trying to mimic something,” says Hudson.
Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson in the movie “Song Sung Blue.”
(Focus Features)
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That need to avoid mimicry and feel the moment was particularly crucial for the film’s heartbreaking second act, in which Claire is hit by a car in her front yard and loses a leg, plunging into self-loathing, depression, body dysmorphia and addiction. Hudson had to do extensive physical work to prepare to authentically represent Claire’s lived experience. “Movement is a huge part of what actors do,” she says. “There’s the emotional part but the physicality is like rebalancing your brain.”
In addition to watching YouTube videos of amputees and speaking with those in the disabled community, Hudson got useful advice from another screen legend — her dad.
“Kurt said that Claire is like Rocky,” she says, referring to the iconic character’s grit and determination to go the distance. “The part that really got my dad emotional was that she just wanted to figure out how to get on her feet.”
Jackman marvels at the bravery and skill of Hudson’s performance, noting that she even captured something the real Claire told him off-camera.
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“Claire said, ‘The thing is Mike was a leg guy,’” he remembers. “Kate played that so well. That feeling of shame about: Is my partner attracted to me anymore? I found that incredibly moving.”
Hudson welcomed the challenge, but she did worry about one thing outside her control. For “Song Sung Blue” to work, the actors playing Claire and Mike need to be in perfect alignment: one the words, the other the tune.
“One of the hardest things to do is fake chemistry,” Hudson says. “You can’t do that. You have to actually fall in love with each other and find the chemical connection. That was my biggest anxiety.”
Jackman shared this concern. “I remember the first day after our table reading, you said, ‘This movie works if we work,’” he reminds her.
They needn’t have worried. “They were a net for each other as the other one was up on a tightrope,” Brewer says. “It was incredibly inspiring for the crew to see that kinship and respect.”
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Their mutual generosity is evident in the way Jackman checks in with Hudson after each anecdote during our interview, confirming she has nothing to add or correct. Though this is their first film together, their repartee is so easy and warm it’s hard to believe they haven’t co-starred in at least a dozen movies.
“It felt easy to just inhabit these characters,” Jackman says. “The word that comes to me is trust. All of the scenes, particularly in that darker period, we could just live in that — the frustration, the paranoia, the anger, the loss, the fear. Every take felt really very different. I felt very free.”
Hudson agrees, adding with a giggle, “I told Hugh, ‘I’m really tactile. Just tell me if I make you uncomfortable. I’m going to kiss you all the time.’”
It helps that Hudson and Jackman are naturally sunny, curious people, celebrities who’ve never cared for the sound of being alone. “We like to connect with people,” Hudson says. “There’s no internal process that removes us. We’re both community people. We like to be in the circus. When we’re on set, we sit on set. There’s no separation of crew and cast. It’s very rare that you work with someone who is like that.”
Ultimately, that openness allowed Hudson and Jackman to approach Claire and Mike with honesty, essential for a film that’s a fullhearted paean to dreamers at their highest and lowest.
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“Eddie Vedder told me something that moved me so much,” Jackman says, a note of emotion in his voice. “He goes, ‘Some might say these people led small lives. Their dreams were so huge and perhaps, naive. But dreams are so powerful that 30 years later, it’s come true.’”
From playing Milwaukee dive bars to becoming the subjects of a major motion picture, the Sardinas have far exceeded even their own expectations. To quote another beloved Diamond tune, it’s enough to make anyone a believer.
A family and friends gather for a naming-day ceremony at a Danish seaside hotel, but an unexpected appearance by one uninvited attendee (Trine Dyrholm) ruptures the veil of bland, happy-clappy familial unity in director Mads Mengel’s gutsy, well-wrought debut feature, The Guest.
The most audacious move here may be Mengel and co-screenwriter Christian Bengtson’s choice to write something that will inevitably invite comparisons with Festen (The Celebration), arguably the most notorious Danish-language film of the last 30 years, which similarly revolved around a bougie gathering disrupted by angry revelations. But there’s a savvy 2026 vibe about the way the film refuses to create florid melodrama out of quotidian crisis, and instead observes with generosity as the characters grope awkwardly toward emotional détente and mutual forgiveness.
The Guest
The Bottom Line
When wetting the baby’s head goes too far.
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Venue: Karlovy Vary Film Festival Cast: Simon Bennebjerg, Trine Dyrholm, Josephine Park, Peter Gantzler, Petrine Agger, Mette Klakstein Wiberg, Kristine Kujath Thorp, Buster Lund Luscher Director: Mads Mengel Screenwriter: Christian Bengtson, Mads Mengel
1 hour 40 minutes
Festen-alumnus Dyrholm, having a bit of a career moment with outstanding performances both here and in the recent The Girl With the Needle among others, leads a uniformly excellent cast in a work that deserves celebration on the festival circuit and beyond.
Dyrholm’s Vibeke is technically the first person we meet, although she’s seen only in shadow at first as she smokes and drives while her unattached seatbelt, caught outside by a closed door, clatters on the road. This is the kind of unsafe driving her son Karl (Simon Bennebjerg) so deplores, a point of contention later on in the story when he will steal her car keys in interest of her own safety and that of others.
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But well before we get to that flashpoint, the film introduces Karl, effectively the film’s protagonist, as he arrives at the swanky resort with his wife Emilie (Mette Klakstein Wiberg) and their infant son Elliot (Buster Lund Luscher). The young family, who’ve chosen this new, secular tradition instead of a christening to welcome their child to the world, are there a day before the ceremony to meet up with core family members.
As this advance party settles down for dinner, a table that includes Karl’s sister Rikke (Josephine Park) and Emilie’s parents Frank (Peter Gantzler) and Kirsten (Petrine Agger), there’s a surprise: Vibeke is coming, courtesy of Rikke’s invitation. Karl is quietly furious and seems determined to turn her away, even when she shows up minutes later. Poor Frank and Kirsten look on confused, determinedly polite in their insistence that all family members should be welcome.
Bengtson and Mengel’s economical script carefully dripfeeds backstory as the film unfolds to explain that Karl hasn’t spoken to his mother in years, that Rikke has taken over all the daily mom management and that she’s very worn out by it. Even so, she insists Vibeke is regularly taking her medication and isn’t a problem these days, although to Karl every weird anecdote and moment of emotional intensity is an augur of impending chaos. Rikke counters that their mother is just “big, that’s her personality not her condition.”
Interestingly, that specific condition is never named throughout, although armchair diagnosticians might spot many of the signs of bipolar disorder. But the film’s emotional focus on the person and her actions rather than the label is also very contemporary, reflecting a more holistic, inclusive mindset and approach to dealing with mental health issues.
Which is all fine and dandy, until Vibeke duly does skip a dosage and starts getting manic. One of the first signs of chemical imbalance arrives during the ceremony on the beach, when Vibeke carries little Elliot much further away from the shore than anyone wants, creating a panic. From there it just gets worse as Vibeke picks up on the censorious feeling emerging from the other party guests, who had found her so charming the night before when she’d led everyone to the casino to play roulette and diverted a bunch of partying teenagers from the room next to Karl and Emilie so they could get some sleep. When the toasts at the formal dinner begin, Vibeke’s mood darkens much further, and if we’ve all learned one thing from Festen, it’s be very afraid when a Dane gets up to make a toast.
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Cinematographer David Bauer’s nimble-footed lensing and use of natural light does indeed hark back considerably to the look of those Dogme 95 movies back in the day, as does the naturalistic editing style deployed by Louis Emil Ramm Seeberg. But there are plenty of sins against the rules of cinematic chastity that marked that movement, such as the ample space made for Lasse Aagaard’s affecting, low-key score that amps up the anxiety as Vibeke starts to spiral.
That said, Mengel keeps things simple in sonic terms when it really counts, letting the musicality of Dyrholm’s deep, sonorous voice ring out on its own in the big monologue scenes. She is, as ever, utterly mesmerizing but the performance is made even more powerful by the muted, expressive reactions of the rest of the cast as they look on, frozen like deer in the headlights of the car crash of pseudo-christening. Moments of levity puncture the gloom, but the final feeling is one of numbed sorrow and pity for all these kind, fallible people, just trying to do their best.
Rhea Seehorn was nervous about whether “Pluribus” would be recognized by Emmy voters Wednesday when nominations were announced. So she was jubilant when she and the surreal sci-series on Apple TV scored 18 nominations, the most for a first-year drama.
“I’m just so grateful,” the actor said in a phone interview. “People were like, ‘Why were you nervous?’ Honestly, you never actually know. I’m just so thrilled for the show, my co-stars, the production design, the editing, the writing, the music, the sound. I haven’t moved from my couch since they first announced everything because I’m still trying to call everybody on the show.”
Seehorn received a nomination for lead actress in a drama series for her portrayal of cynical Carol Sturka, a fantasy romance author who finds herself in a mystifying situation after a virus seems to have wiped out most of Earth’s population. The series was created by Vince Gilligan, who created the acclaimed series “Breaking Bad” and co-created its spinoff “Better Call Saul,” which also featured Seehorn.
The actor compared her experience of being nominated for “Pluribus” to “Better Call Saul,” which earned her two supporting actress nominations: “ ‘Better Call Saul’ was such a family that supported and cheered each other on, and I’m so grateful I have that environment again. People could not be happier for each other, and we get to celebrate the show together.”
She added, “The only part that feels different is that it’s my first nomination as a lead. It’s the process of Vince writing this for me and seeing the mountain which he wanted me to climb and going through that process. The whole thing has been its own journey, so ending up with awards and nominations, and being so well received by critics and fans is not lost on me.”
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The series has been applauded for its mix of drama, comedy and strangeness in its portrait of a woman coming to terms to what seems like an impossible dilemma.
“I love the storytelling, how much Vince and I would drill down on making this as authentic as we could in terms of an everyman who has to deal with an insane situation,” Seehorn said. “Most of us are just not heroic or leaping off the couch to go save the world. And Carol is dealing with immense grief and confusion in an utter dystopian crisis. I love the humor and the drama that comes out of us being as realistic as we can with her amidst an unrealistic event.”
Fans of “Pluribus” have been relentlessly curious since the finale in December about when the second season will launch.
“I don’t know anything about that,” Seehorn said. “I don’t have to keep secrets because I’m not great at keeping them, and I know nothing. I don’t know what I’m doing with an atom bomb in the driveway. I can’t wait to find out. The writers want to have the same quality and reward the intelligence of the fans and never phone a single thing in. So their process is their process.”
In a roundabout way, the fact that I don’t have a strong attachment to The Wizard of Oz as a film (my late mother loved it, so that memory is deeply rooted in me, but the movie itself never did much for me) contributed directly to how amusing I found Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass to be. This comedy spoofs the plot of the classic fantasy movie, though the jokes are largely about Hollywood. The humor is big and broad, with some of the jokes really landing. Others? Not so much. Still, more than enough do to warrant a recommendation.
Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass gets a lot of mileage out of sending up show business, even if the observations, while funny, are not particularly new. Besides the deluge of jokes, there’s also a lot of likably broad characters to spend time with, especially our lead. They make the 90 minutes and change spent together with them go down very easy.
Sony Pictures Classics
For Gail Daughtry (Zoey Deutch), her life as a small town hairdresser is perfect. Engaged to her high school sweetheart Tom (Michael Cassidy), she’s the picture of happiness, at least until a trip to a celebrity book signing. There, Tom meets and ends up sleeping with his “celebrity pass,” a term Gail wasn’t even really previously aware of. Feeling betrayed, Gail impulsively joins her co-worker and friend Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley) on a trip to Los Angeles. There, a psychic convinces her that the can save her marriage by sleeping with her own celebrity pass: Jon Hamm (Jon Hamm).
Journeying through Tinseltown in a manner that recalls Dorothy’s adventure in Oz, Gail and Otto won’t have to find Hamm alone. Joining forces with talent agency assistant Caleb (Ben Wang), down on his luck paparazzo Vincent (Ken Marino), and actor John Slattery (John Slattery). As they search for Hamm, some for their own purposes, they meet other celebrities, while also being hunted by a group of Italian assassins after a case of mistaken identity. Eventually, they come across Hamm, and the moment of truth is at hand.
Sony Pictures Classics
Zoey Deutch dives headfirst into a broad comedy like this, absolutely relishing the opportunity to get silly again. She’s able to make Gail a babe in the woods but also someone you laugh with, not at. It’s a wildly enjoyable turn. Deutch started out in comedies and was always a talented comedic actress, so it’s a pleasure to watch her back at it. Miles Gutierrez-Riley and Ben Wang get some very funny moments, while Ken Marino is a reliable comic presence. Jon Hamm and John Slattery are delighted to be sending up themselves, with amusing results. Supporting players here, in addition to Michael Cassidy, also include Kerri Kenney, Richard Kind, Thomas Lennon, Joe Lo Truglio, Fred Melamed, and more, plus some cameos.
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Filmmaker David Wain, again co-writing with Ken Marino, continues to make it look easy. Few can make a silly comedy like Marino and Wain, especially as they pack their flicks with extra bits that only subsequent viewings reveal. Is Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass on the same level as Wet Hot American Summer or They Came Together? No, not quite. At the same time, is this, scattershot approach and all, funnier than most other 2026 releases? You bet. Marino and Wain have a hit rate that allows some of the jokes to miss, as you only have seconds to wait before the next one, which probably will hit.
Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is very amusing, and occasionally hilarious, even if not as many jokes land as you might expect. Zoey Deutch is great in the lead role, David Wain is in his comfort zone, and the laughs come hot and heavy. If you’re a Wain fan, this new movie should be a must see.
Sony Pictures Classics
Sony Pictures Classics
