Entertainment

In the mystery 'Eric,' desperation and decline manifest into a life-size monster puppet

Published

1 month ago

May 26, 2024

In the mystery 'Eric,' desperation and decline manifest into a life-size monster puppet

The most idiosyncratic and striking moment on TV this summer? It could be Benedict Cumberbatch as a father running through the streets of New York in a giant, fuzzy blue monster puppet getup amid a desperate attempt to reconnect with his son.

It may sound like some sweet magical adventure, but that’s not the style of British screenwriter Abi Morgan, who created “Eric” for Netflix. She isn’t afraid to tackle big subjects and her body of work — including “Shame” (2011), which tackles sex addiction; “Suffragette” (2015), about women’s suffrage in the U.K.; and TV dramas “The Hour” and “The Split” — often leaves viewers emotionally strung out in its intense examination of human behavior, internal battles and broken systems. And “Eric” is just as visceral.

Set in 1980s New York City, the initial episode of the limited series finds Cumberbatch’s Vincent Anderson, a puppeteer and creator of a “Sesame Street”-esque children’s show “Good Day Sunshine,” exasperated by work demands and his floundering marriage to Cassie (Gaby Hoffmann). The couple’s troubles intensify when their 9-year old son, Edgar (Ivan Howe), goes missing on his walk to school. Torn up by guilt, Vincent is convinced if he turns his son’s drawing of a blue monster, Eric, into a life-size puppet on TV, Edgar will come home. And tasked with investigating the boy’s disappearance is Michael Ledroit (McKinley Belcher III), a Black and queer detective whose closeted identity becomes an obstacle at work as he pursues the case.

Eric, the life-size monster puppet, and Benedict Cumberbatch as Vincent.

(Netflix)

Morgan started with a simple idea: Can we live in a world where a kid can walk to school and come home safely? In exploring that question, the series weaves a lot of issues that plagued the city at the time: rising crime rates, a forgotten underclass, the AIDS epidemic, endemic racism, as well as government mismanagement and corruption.

“There were parallel themes that just became very apparent to me,” Morgan said during a press day with the cast in Los Angeles. “We’re looking at a world where the parents become children and the children become parents in some ways. And the notion of what is a family beyond the nuclear family of the Andersons? There’s a wider family of our city. Who looks after us in the city? Can we trust those parents — be that government, local council or our police force? And when those systems break down and expose themselves, where do we find our new boundaries of trust?”

A group of people posing for a photograph.

Morgan sees the show as a way for audiences to ask themselves those questions through Vincent’s journey. And the city’s many issues presented in the series, inspired by Morgan’s time spent in New York in the ‘80s, added another dimension to the inciting mystery. “There was this dark underbelly. It hadn’t had that cleanup,” she said. “There was something very particular about the ‘80s — it was a melting pot and a point of change, a point of shifting sands, filled with fear and hope, and moments of great freedom and moments of really pushing down that freedom. It felt like a really rich fabric and tapestry in which to set ‘Eric.’”

With no shortage of real and existential horror lurking outside, Morgan knew from the beginning she wanted to bridge the story with a space that provided safety and comfort. Influenced by her own childhood spent backstage with her theater director father, observing how sets were created and the way costumes came to life, she saw “Good Day Sunshine” as a contrast to the city’s roughness and a way to dig deeper into how Vincent, who begins the series already on shaky ground before his mental health declines further, copes with his reality.

“He’s trying to re-create his childhood and idealizing something that was less than ideal,” Cumberbatch said. “His mental health crisis was brushed under the carpet with pharmaceuticals and very cold, cut-off, loveless parenting … he’s invested so much of himself in that show from a need that was never satisfied in his childhood.”

Morgan added that “Good Day Sunshine” is a world that Vincent can control, unlike his own, and that the puppets give life to his voices as he struggles with his mental health and alcoholism. It’s also a way to signal the value of pursuing a creative life, which stands in contrast to that of his estranged parents, particularly his father, a wealthy developer.

Puppets and puppeteers on the set of children's show.

”That creativity is a way to liberate, heal, manage and help understand ourselves,” Morgan said. “Vincent’s desire to create a world of good, is probably one of the healthier things he has done.”

As a show within the show, “Good Day Sunshine” features an assortment of puppet characters — a mix of animals, inanimate objects and people — including one operated and voiced by Vincent, putting Cumberbatch’s chameleon voice work into practice (his eclectic credits include the dragon Smaug in “The Hobbit” trilogy and the Grinch in the eponymous 2018 animated film). Before he goes missing, Edgar observes his father at work from the sidelines and, later, watches as Vincent becomes agitated with notes from network bosses, demanding that the show broaden its appeal to get viewership numbers up, with a new puppet as a possible solution. On the subway ride home, Edgar suggests his idea for the puppet, Eric, to little fanfare from his dad.

Morgan credits series director Lucy Forbes with being a key architect behind the 7-foot monster puppet, which took roughly four weeks to perfect. Eric is a manifestation and an amalgamation of details in Edgar’s mind — a tail that mimics his cat and fur that matches the chevron of his grandmother’s mink. Vincent becomes convinced that bringing Eric to life could help bring Edgar back, and as he begins to mold the puppet from foam, Vincent also begins to hallucinate Eric, a manifestation of his inner voice, into existence in his quest to find the boy.

Cumberbatch felt the exploration of the imagined other — a device done before, including in films like “Harvey” (1950) and “Ted” — in the larger context of the story was intriguing. And bringing depth to the surreal is familiar territory for the actor, who has done green screen and motion-capture acting and understands the commitment required to make it believable. Still, as Cumberbatch tells it, acting opposite puppeteer Olly Taylor in a plush, furry costume as his character Vincent was falling apart was a surprisingly grounded experience.

“I’d often do line runs with Olly, who’s a really brilliant actor and incredibly capable puppeteer,” he said. “I tried the [Eric] voice out, I’d often read lines and sometimes not; he just got it and the rhythm was the only way it could be for Eric in that moment. It was all about trying to remind ourselves what the purpose of Eric was in relation to [Vincent’s] state of mind. At one point, I tried on the [puppet] headgear and I cried. I just had this wave of empathy for Olly and the performance he had to give in that contraption. It’s a miraculous skill.”

A couple at a table with microphones looking at a crowd of reporters.

The puppet element helped soften some of the script elements for Hoffmann. As a mother of two children, the actor said she was initially hesitant about the heavy subject matter, but grew eager about its singular dynamic and the way the series explores the various breakdowns of systems, small and large. The series first captures the unraveling of a social institution — marriage — as Vincent and Cassie veer in opposite directions, and examines how their behavior negatively affects the parent-child dynamic.

“Vincent and Cassie are two very different people who are dealing with the world in two very different ways,” she said. “But I think that Cassie hasn’t been active in an honest way, on behalf of her son, for a while now — and on behalf of herself. I think that she knew that she needed to leave the marriage, and that it wasn’t a healthy environment for [Edgar]. As we come to find out, she has secrets and is in some denial. She’s not as deeply in it, and she’s not as avoidant and terrified of her emotions as Vincent is, or distracting herself with as many substances, but the disappearance… she definitely feels a sense of responsibility.”

When Morgan started to incorporate Ledroit into the story, she was determined not to make him a secondary character. She wanted Ledroit to go on his own journey, informed by his identity, and coming up against all the institutions — the precinct where he works or the gay nightclubs he used to visit — that are making him question his identity similar to Vincent. Playing a Black queer detective who is challenging the norm in the ‘80s, Belcher understood that sense of duty and purpose.

“In a story like this, it would be very easy for him to just turn into a cop that comes to work and deal with the information and solving the case. But it’s really exciting as a Black queer man, to show up with all the baggage that Ledroit would be carrying in the ‘80s, to wrestle with stuff, but to leave him in a place of action that is going to be the change.”

A man in a shirt and blazer stands in a nightclub.

Belcher also acknowledged that though the Black community isn’t a monolith, they have a complicated relationship with law enforcement. He sees his character as an instrument of change within the institution.

“I think over the course of the six episodes, that’s a place he lands on: Oh, this is what’s required for us to do what we’re really here for. And it means I must call out injustice; it means I must be intolerant of corner cutting; it means I have to own who I am and stand firmly in that and stand up as a man and say ‘no,‘” he said.

The various threads in the series take some time to come together, making for a premise that can take some finesse in distilling. But that’s what the team behind the series hopes sets it apart.

“You felt held by an imagination that contained worlds within the worlds of the story,” Cumberbatch said. “It felt fresh and new — trying to explain it to people was interesting. I’ve never really heard of anything quite like this before.”

It’s why all these months later, cozy on a sofa with Hoffmann, Cumberbatch can’t help but chuckle wistfully while recalling a moment in the series that had him, as Vincent, wearing the fuzzy Eric costume and running through the streets.

“Running and running and running and running,” Cumberbatch said. “It’s the knife-edge thing with this drama; it is very f— funny, but also weirdly heroic and desperately sad and poignant.”

Movie Reviews

All the Long Nights: meditative return by Small, Slow But Steady director

Published

2 hours ago

June 26, 2024

Press Room

All the Long Nights: meditative return by Small, Slow But Steady director

3/5 stars

The fate of the universe does not always need to hang in the balance to create compelling drama. Sometimes, something as simple as garnering a better understanding of a colleague can prove sufficient, as is the case in Sho Miyake’s new drama.

Adapted from Maiko Seo’s novel of the same name, All the Long Nights follows two young people whose prospects in the adult world have been cut short by disorders that affect their everyday experience.

Misa (Mone Kamishiraishi) suffers from extreme premenstrual syndrome, which triggers mood swings so violent that she was forced to quit her previous office job.

Meanwhile, Takatoshi (Hokuto Matsumura) is hobbled by debilitating panic attacks, which have had a similarly negative impact on his professional aspirations.

These two lonely souls meet when Misa moves back home to be close to her ailing mother (Ryo), and gets an administrative job at a small company that distributes science equipment for children.

Initially, Misa and Takatoshi have little in common, their eccentricities and peccadillos even causing a degree of tension and irritation between them.

But when Misa discovers that Takatoshi takes the same herbal medication as she does, it sparks a growing understanding and empathy between the two of them, which only grows when they team up to collaborate on a planetarium project.

Hokuto Matsumura as Takatoshi (left) and Mone Kamishiraishi as Misa in a still from All the Long Nights.

Miyake’s film conjures an affectionate portrayal of sleepy suburbia, exemplified by the low-stakes challenges of small-business office culture that unfolds at a gentle, unhurried pace, as one has come to expect from Japanese dramas of this ilk.

Where this film differs from many of its contemporaries, however, is in the absence of such archetypal clichés as romance or illness. Misa and Takatoshi’s relationship remains defiantly platonic throughout, with neither party ever threatening to overstep their boundaries or behave inappropriately.

Instead of a story about finding a kindred spirit with whom to explore the boundless expanse of the universe, All the Long Nights is a tale of curiosity and understanding.

Both characters strive to learn more about their colleague’s physiological disorder to better inform themselves, but also so that they might become a more valuable and empathetic friend to the other.

The performances are understated but also effective, unburdened by the need to resort to histrionics to advance the narrative.

Undeniably, Misa and Takatoshi come to depend upon one another as a crutch for coming to terms with their own issues, but Miyake’s proposal that this connection need go no further is as honest and refreshing as they come.

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Entertainment

'A Family Affair' is a rom-com 'dream scenario' for Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron and Joey King

Published

3 hours ago

June 26, 2024

Press Room

'A Family Affair' is a rom-com 'dream scenario' for Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron and Joey King

Nicole Kidman was yearning to make a romantic comedy.

The Oscar winner wanted to shift course after playing a tragically depressed housewife in the miniseries “Expats” on Prime Video. She wanted to have a good time. She wanted Hollywood, for once, to send a rom-com script her way.

When she received the screenplay for “A Family Affair,” Kidman leapt at the opportunity to shed her dramatic persona and take on lighter material. In the Netflix film, premiering Friday, she channels Brooke Harwood, a widowed mom and award-winning memoirist with writer’s block. Brooke’s 24-year-old daughter, Zara (Joey King), still lives at home while working her thankless day job as an overworked personal assistant to Chris Cole (Zac Efron), a vain and insecure movie star who threatens to fire her over the slightest mistakes.

One afternoon, Brooke unexpectedly encounters Chris, who’s 16 years her junior, and the physical attraction is instantaneous. It eventually blooms into real love, angering Zara; she worries that Chris will break Brooke’s heart just as he has with past exes. But Brooke is not just any woman. She’s got wisdom that comes with age, and Chris’ global fame as the star of a superhero franchise means nothing to her. Instead, she sees the playful, loving man within him. And he truly values her, body and soul, and gives her something to write about again. (Is it getting hot in here?)

In “A Family Affair,” Zac Efron plays Chris Cole, a movie star who falls for Nicole Kidman’s Brooke Harwood, the mother of his assistant.

(Tina Rowden/Netflix)

Kidman, 57, and Efron, 36, previously played lovers in 2012’s “The Paperboy,” a gritty melodrama that has an extremely different ending. They were eager to reunite, this time in a joke-filled romance where the stakes are less life-and-death and more existential. The age-old question — What am I doing with my life? — reverberates throughout the film.

The Times recently spoke with Kidman, Efron and King to discuss the joys and taboos of filming a rom-com that pairs an older woman and younger man — a dynamic that continues to stoke public interest, and sometimes contempt. Kidman, as usual, was up for the challenge, and Efron found that irresistible. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

I watch a lot of romantic comedies, and this one stands out as a happy marriage of casting and writing. How did Carrie Solomon’s screenplay get into your hands?

Kidman: It was just one of those things where it was sent to me and I read it and I went, “Yeah, I have to do something that is fun and funny and completely different.” Because I’d been through “Expats” — you know, the trajectory of my career has always led me more towards drama. I was like, “Please, I’m begging to have some fun and to be considered for some sort of romantic comedy at some point.” So, this came to me, and I was like, “Yes, please, please, please.” Because I never get offered them. I never get considered.

Efron: I think there was something specific about the characters that I felt there was a natural inroad to them. I could understand Chris on some levels and what he was going through, and that was just exciting to think about playing that for me. Then, of course, at that point Nicole was involved — and I dream of working with Nicole — and Joey was also in talks for It. That was just a dream scenario for a rom-com.

Kidman: Joey is so funny. It was that kind of thing [where] you’re going, “OK, great. There’s this young girl who can come in and just nail it.”

Efron: Initially the script was called — can I say that?

King: Yeah, say it. We’re [with] the L.A. Times.

Kidman: It had a different title.

Efron: It had a different title, which made it really exciting to read. It was called “Motherf—.” As soon as you get that script — when it says that on the front — you can’t help but want to read it.

Nicole and Joey, yours is not a typical mother-daughter story. At times, the roles reverse, and Zara occupies the position of overprotective parent — in this case wanting to keep Brooke away from Chris. How did it feel to channel that?

King: One of the most truthful and realistic parts about this, which I really love, is that particular moment when a child, no matter how old they are, realizes that their parent is a person, not just their parent. [Zara] needs to learn to grow up a bit, and Brooke’s trying to teach her and help her make her own decisions. Zara wants to be an adult but [is] still stuck in this child role. I think they both really see each other for the first time in terms of, “You’re not just my parent. You’re a real woman who has womanly desires and I need to grow up. I’m not just a kid.” That transition is really, deeply uncomfortable for them and they have a lot of tension and they’re fighting, and Chris is caught in the middle of that tension.

Kidman: There’s an enormous amount of love, too. They like hanging out together. … We watch TV together, we eat together, we watch shows together. There’s that sort of gap that I have that I’ve now filled with her, so at some point I have to let her go.

Zara standing in the kitchen looking at her mom who is seated.

Zac, you pull a Tom Hanks in “You’ve Got Mail.” You take a guy with villain qualities and make him worth rooting for. How did you connect with Chris?

Efron: I can relate to Chris in a number of ways, but it was fun to … dive into different emotions and things that [make me] feel for him. He’s struggling. He’s not handling it the best. … I think he’s honestly trying his best and it’s just hard. He’s taking it out probably in a way he doesn’t mean to be, but it’s very abrasive toward his assistant. [Then] he meets Brooke, who he doesn’t have to really pretend to be anything but himself around.

Nicole and Zac, you both starred in “The Paperboy.” Zac’s character was hopelessly in love with Nicole’s, who in turn was hopelessly in love with a convicted felon (John Cusack). How was it reuniting 12 years later — for a rom-com?

Efron: The tone of [“The Paperboy”] is very different, but I think the building blocks of our characters were there for [“A Family Affair”], and that was kind of an unrequited love. We didn’t really get to take it the whole way and this really felt like we could draw a lot from that experience and take it to a whole new level. And it was easy. It felt really natural.

Kidman: We’re very easy with each other. I mean, part of the thing was going, ”If you’re doing this, I’ll do it [with you].” We wanted to do it together. I know how funny he is and he’s also just brave. Actually, with the comedy and stuff, he was like, “OK, let’s try this. We’ll try that.” It was just “anything goes.” … I just wanted to be able to be with a group of people who weren’t going to take everything so seriously. That allowed us [to] just play. Because a lot of it is play.

The scene when Zara discovers Chris and Brooke in bed, then hits her head in horror, is a brilliant bit of physical comedy. How many takes did that require?

Kidman [motioning toward King]: The perfectionist here kept asking to do it again and again and again.

King: When I’m doing anything that has any kind of stunt work in it, I like to watch [the] playback to see if I’m selling it enough. The head bump looked fake for the first three or four takes, so I probably did six or seven or eight.

Kidman: More than that. Maybe 20, 15? She’s like, “I’ll do it again!” We’re like, “Don’t hurt yourself.”

King: The two of them were so funny and supportive. They were getting such a kick out of it. They were off camera and they stayed to watch me.

Efron: It was so entertaining, we had to stay. Like, you were doing it 100%. There were no sound effects for you hitting your head. … It was some serious Jim Carrey vibes.

Kidman: Lucille Ball.

A man sitting at a dining table holds the hand of a woman seated next to him.

Like “The Idea of You,” “A Family Affair” is a lighthearted romance pairing an older woman and a younger man, a trope that society still treats with suspicion. Why are stories like this important to tell?

Kidman: I mean, I can only say I’m glad the whole landscape is changing, and it shouldn’t be an anomaly. … We’ve had an abundance of older men and younger women, but we haven’t had the abundance of older women with younger men. And why not? … [“A Family Affair”] was written by [Solomon], who went in and [said], “This is what I want to tell. This is the story I want to tell.” Now we’re going to start to see the effects of the work that has been done for the last five, 10 years where we’re still trying to change the storytelling landscape and put women in places of power so they can tell these stories — whether they be comedies, whether they be dramas, whether they be thrillers, whatever they are. We just haven’t had the equivalent that we’ve had with the male gaze.

Efron: We want more of it. We need more of it.

Kidman: And we’re lucky to have guys like Zac who will go, “Yeah, I’m up for it. Let’s go.”

Efron: Yeah, it works out great for me. I’m like —

King: “Yes!”

Filmmakers have told me that they have a hard time persuading actors to star in romantic comedies. Why is that often the case?

King: I think maybe some people don’t do [them] because they’re afraid of not being taken seriously as a serious actor. … People who are able to [act in] very different genres, I think it’s actually the biggest flex that you can have in terms of showing the range that you have. Look at Zac. He was training for “Iron Claw” while making “A Family Affair.” … What a flex.

Efron: It’s important. You really want to, I think, be able to at least try everything.

King: Comedy’s fun! Comedy’s fun and comedy’s hard. Comedy’s really hard.

Can comedy be harder than drama?

King: It can be.

Kidman: It depends who’s at the helm. It depends on the chemistry.

Efron: If you can bring it to a place where it’s real, it kind of feels oddly similar to a drama.

Kidman: They always say it’s such a fine [line], especially when you’re doing a drama, you can move very, very quickly into satire or comedy. … In that sense, it’s almost like with drama: You’ve got to go, “No, no, stay here in the present moment.” Because if we start to ridicule it, it can move into that place very quickly and then it’s hard to move back.

King: It’s hard, and it’s easier when you have a creative team that’s supportive and the actors you’re working with are super-nonjudgmental. We’re all sitting there while each of us takes these crazy swings in terms of improv and risky swings. Some of them don’t work, but I don’t feel embarrassed. … It’s still a difficult thing to get right sometimes, but you don’t feel like there’s any limitations on what you can do when you’ve got really great people to work with.

A woman stands near a grocery counter with a shopping basket, looking at a man.

In the film, it’s revealed that Chris has not shopped at a grocery store since becoming mega-famous. Can any of you relate?

King: No, I can’t. I go to the grocery store all the time.

Kidman: I have teenage girls. We go to the grocery store because everybody wants something different.

King [to Kidman]: Do you find it hard to go to the grocery store, though? Just because everyone knows who you are?

Kidman: No. I put a cap on … and I hold my head high, and we go in there.

King: I love the grocery store.

Kidman: I have to say it’s kind of fun and relaxing.

King: Some people find the grocery store very anxiety-inducing, but I actually find it really lovely. I think it’s so fun, especially because usually I’m going to make something that I’m excited to make.

Chris asks Zara to buy him strawberry-flavored Oreos. Zac, what’s your go-to snack?

Kidman [to Efron]: You’re a great snacker because [you’re] very healthy.

Efron: I’ve been eating super-clean lately.

King: I got him these protein Pop-Tarts as part of his wrap gift.

Efron: It was the sweetest thing I’d had in months and it was so good. … I think I had them all in one sitting.

Movie Reviews

Movie review: “The Watchers”

Published

9 hours ago

June 26, 2024

Press Room

“The Watchers” is a horror/thriller movie that is Isha Night Shyamalan’s directorial debut, released in 2024. It is based on the book The Watchers by A.M. Shine. There is a hint of fantastical elements throughout the movie and lore that would have made for a great overall story, but unfortunately,…