Respected British costume designer — and triple Academy Award winner — Jenny Beavan was lionised for the incredible clothes she created for the 2021 film Cruella.
Such was the buzz that people said the 101 Dalmatians origin story was worth seeing for her costumes alone; and few were surprised when she carried off the Oscar for best costume design last year.
However it can be revealed that she is not involved in plans for the sequel, Cruella 2. The film once again stars Emma Stone, but is set this time in the 1980s,
Disney have started asking other costume designers if they want to take on the job, with filming due to start next year.
The apparent snub comes a year after Beavan expressed her annoyance with Disney for releasing a range of Cruella clothes without consulting or compensating her.
Jenny Beavan said earlier this year: ‘I had a bit of interplay with Disney . . . and I have kept it very, very polite. I have been really waiting to see how I can help in the most positive way’
It also follows her campaign for better pay for costume designers, which saw her wear a ‘protest’ outfit to the Oscars in March.
In an interview in June with industry bible Variety, Beavan said the first she knew about the ‘Cruella collection’ was when a friend sent her an Instagram post from fashion brand Rag & Bone, promoting the Disney-licensed range.
Beavan said it came as a shock, even though her contract with the studio meant ‘you do basically sign your life away’.
Beavan was supported by the Costume Designers Guild, which criticised ‘unfair practices’ by studios: when they generate big bucks from the creative ideas of costume designers without compensating them financially.
CDG president Salvador Perez said: ‘Costume designers help create additional revenues and deserve to be compensated.’
Respected British costume designer — and triple Academy Award winner — Jenny Beavan was lionised for the incredible clothes she created for the 2021 film Cruella. Emma Stone is pictured above as Cruella
The interview sparked discussions with executives at Disney. Beavan said earlier this year: ‘I had a bit of interplay with Disney . . . and I have kept it very, very polite. I have been really waiting to see how I can help in the most positive way.’
She was one of the most prominent supporters of the ‘Naked Without Us’ campaign, which noted that costume designers, overwhelmingly female, are paid 30 per cent less than production designers, who are mostly male.
The campaign, backed by actresses Helen Mirren and Sofia Coppola, inspired Beavan’s Oscars outfit. She had the words: ‘Naked without us’ and ‘I am woman hear me roar’ inscribed on the cuffs of her white shirt.
A spokesperson for Ms Beavan said: ‘It is too early to say at this stage if Jenny is on board for Cruella 2.’ Disney did not return requests for comment.
It can be revealed that she is not involved in plans for the sequel, Cruella 2. The film once again stars Emma Stone, but is set this time in the 1980s
Duran Duran blast from the past
Here’s a blast from the past to make you feel old: Duran Duran are celebrating their 40th anniversary this year and an art book, featuring pictures from the stage and behind the scenes of their 1984 tour — their zenith! — has been released.
This image (above) shows Nick Rhodes looking a little jaded about the whole life-on-the-road experience, as he steps out in the snow. Rhodes recalls that the nine-month tour was beset with travel issues, many caused by heavy snowfall in America. ‘I did make a note to myself: Whenever possible, it would be better to schedule future tours in the summer.’
The pictures were taken by Denis O’Regan, who had just come off David Bowie’s tour, and are featured in the book Duran Duran: Careless Memories, published by ACC Art Books.
This image (above) shows Nick Rhodes looking a little jaded about the whole life-on-the-road experience, as he steps out in the snow
Eyre of optimism as Sir Richard pulls out all the stops at 80!
Legendary director Sir Richard Eyre may turn 80 next year, but the man remains a twinkling ball of energy.
His first, totally original play — The Snail House — is in previews at the Hampstead Theatre (with Eyre himself directing); and will open on Wednesday. And tonight he flies out to Toronto for the premiere of his latest film, Allelujah, which stars his old friend Dame Judi Dench.
Given all the above, it’s fair to say the idea of retirement does not appeal. ‘I just don’t know what else I could do?’ he says.
‘I don’t think about retiring, because if I didn’t have something coming up, then I would feel rather desolate. I wrote two plays during lockdown and the other one I would like to do next year.’
Legendary director Sir Richard Eyre may turn 80 next year, but the man remains a twinkling ball of energy. He is pictured above with Dame Judi Dench
At the start of the pandemic, Eyre had two plays in the West End and one on Broadway, and was professionally on top of the world. During the enforced solitude, and with the theatres closed, he dusted off an idea for a play which he first had more 20 years ago, when filming Iris.
He was inspired to write about events unspooling in a public school dining room during a function. At the heart of the story is paediatrician Sir Neil Marriott, a government medical adviser.
Will he read the reviews? I wonder. It’s a tender point. ‘I ran the National Theatre for ten years, so every day I would get all the reviews and read about every production. You needed to know how things had been received, so that you could work out which ones would play and play; and which ones you had to take action on … and if it’s bad, then it is the only thing tattooed on your heart. I will be 80 next year and I wish I could say that I am now grown up enough not to be swayed by the reviews, to believe in myself enough not to care what people say.’
His friendship with Dame Judi was forged in the 1960s and they continue to work together, even though Dench, 87, has age-related macular degeneration, which has led to sight loss, and means she can no longer read a script.
Sir Richard said her dresser helps guide her to her mark on set, and another assistant helps her learn her lines. ‘Her process as an actress is quite secretive,’ he continues. ‘She doesn’t give a lot away and then she does it and you think: “Oh!” There is a massive amount of thought and imagination which has gone into it.’
Blanchett, 53, has won two Oscars and three Baftas and is tipped to add to that tally with Tar
Oscars buzz is gathering already around Cate Blanchett, whose all-out performance is at the centre of the film Tar.
Blanchett, 53, has won two Oscars and three Baftas and is tipped to add to that tally with Tar, in which she plays a complex orchestra conductor on the brink of downfall.
Her co-star, and screen wife, is the gorgeous German actress Nina Hoss. Blanchett says of Hoss’s casting: ‘I have been stalking Nina for ten years. It’s true. It’s unhealthy, but true. No, really.’
She added that when she first tasted international success for her acclaimed performance in the British film Elizabeth, back in 1998, her husband Andrew Upton told her: ‘Enjoy it, baby. You’ve got five years if you’re lucky.’
Adam Driver (pictured below) suffered for his art on the set of his forthcoming film, White Noise.
Driver, 38, plays middle-aged professor Jack Gladney in the picture, and had to wear a wig to make his hair look greyer and sparser than it is in real life.
‘We talked about the look, and I don’t have receding hair, so we thought we would add that,’ he revealed.
‘We also had a back-up [prosthetic] stomach to create the look . . . but in the end we didn’t need the back-up stomach. It was just my weight. So that was uncomfortable,’ he said.
Driver, 38, plays middle-aged professor Jack Gladney in the picture, and had to wear a wig to make his hair look greyer and sparser than it is in real life
Sons look back at hellraiser Harris
Richard Harris’s three sons — including the actor Jared — have participated in a documentary film about his life, The Ghost Of Richard Harris.
The film includes previously unheard recordings of Richard telling his life story to a biographer. The Irish actor says: ‘When I drank I devoured alcohol, when I did cocaine I devoured cocaine, and when I was in my amorous exploits I devoured women.’
But documentary-maker Adrian Sibley has sought to explore Harris’s life beyond the hell-raising tag, and has produced a thoughtful documentary which shows him as a poet and a successful singer, as well as the drinker and nihilist who Peter O’Toole dubbed ‘The Mixer’ because he so enjoyed an argument.
Sibley told me that Harris’s childhood experience of tuberculosis, which confined him to his room for months, may have defined him — or at the very least sparked his legendary rages.
He said: ‘After TB he created the persona — he decided to be a roaring lad. The trouble with him was that he always shot himself in the foot.
Reflection: Harris with his eldest son Damian
‘Every time he had a great success, whether it was with theatre or with music, he fell out with the people who put him there. Richard could never quite sustain a relationship, whether it was with a woman or with a friend; and the relationship with his children was also difficult.
‘They were sent away to boarding school and saw little of him, and he was capricious when they did. He was as much or more of a father figure to others — including Russell Crowe — as he was to them.’
In the film, Harris’s granddaughter recalls he was simultaneously offered the role of Gandalf in the Lord Of The Rings films and Dumbledore in Harry Potter, but chose Potter because if he’d gone for Gandalf it would have meant three years in New Zealand.
Incidentally, Sir Ian McKellen, who took up the LOTR role, was one of those Harris feuded with; and he declined to step into Dumbledore’s boots after he died in 2002. ‘Seeing as one of the last things [Harris] did publicly was say what a dreadful actor I was, it would not have been appropriate for me to take over his part,’ he said delicately.
Why V&A is enemy No1 for drugs activist
American activist Nan Goldin has the Victoria and Albert museum firmly in her sights, because of its continued association with the super-wealthy (and super-disgraced) Sackler family.
Five years ago, Goldin, a photographer, became hooked on OxyContin, an opioid sold and marketed by the Sackler-owned Purdue Pharma. Now free of the drug, she is the subject of a documentary called All The Beauty And The Bloodshed which has been making waves at the Venice Film Festival.
Asked about her future plans, Goldin, 68, said: ‘The V&A is Number One. We did a big action there — a die-in — which was beautiful and was covered by the media. The director of the V&A has kept his allegiance to the Sacklers and he’s said as much.’
OxyContin has been widely blamed for contributing to the opioid epidemic which swept America. Purdue Pharma declared bankruptcy in 2019; but pledged to pay $6 billion to OxyContin victims and their families.
American activist Nan Goldin has the Victoria and Albert museum firmly in her sights, because of its continued association with the super-wealthy (and super-disgraced) Sackler family
The V&A is the last remaining major British museum to bear the Sackler name — there is still a Sackler courtyard and a Sackler centre for arts education — after the National Gallery severed its connection back in May.
Goldin became addicted to OxyContin in 2017 and, after coming through rehab, started to investigate the story of the drug.
Finding that the Sacklers had, as she puts it, ‘washed their blood money through the halls of museums and universities around the world’, she began to campaign against them.
She concentrated on the Sacklers’ high profile philanthropic dealings with cultural institutions. ‘I wanted to shame them in their own social strata,’ she said on Saturday.
Iona Castle and Kay Cole — the patients who made Doc chuckle
The final series of Doc Martin started this week. It’s been bringing its fans quirky joy since 2004 — and the cast have been amusing themselves for nearly as long, thanks to the comically named patients who pass through the surgery.
Over the years, Dr Ellingham has ordered Iona Castle, Onnah Todd, Germain Mann and Kay Cole to ‘Come through!’.
Sadly, the receptionist’s book in which all the names are recorded has gone missing. Lead actor Martin Clunes, who plays Dr Ellingham, said: ‘I was looking for it the other day, towards the end of filming, and couldn’t find it.’
Jessica Ransom, who plays doctor’s receptionist Morwenna, believes someone may have carted if off as a souvenir. ‘It was on the reception desk, on the last day of filming, but I haven’t seen it since.’
Lead actor Martin Clunes, who plays Dr Ellingham, said: ‘I was looking for it the other day, towards the end of filming, and couldn’t find it’