Welcome to this week’s “Just for Variety.”
Addison Rae, whose social media fan base already has 123.2 million followers, is making her acting debut in the upcoming remake of 1990s rom-com “She’s All That”— but she insists she’s not taking her big-screen endeavor for granted. The TikTok star worked with an acting coach ahead of shooting the movie, which has been renamed “He’s All That” because of the gender swaps of the main characters. “I was taking [acting] classes probably seven days a week before the film started and [spending] like hours and hours a day doing script analysis,” she told me at the MTV Movie & TV Awards. “I definitely made sure to take it seriously.” In the film Rae plays a popular high schooler who befriends a nerd (“Cobra Kai” star Tanner Buchanan) to give him a makeover for the prom. “I’m a little nervous but I did my very best and that’s all I can do,” Rae says. Buchanan says of Rae’s work, “She did fantastic.” In the original, Freddie Prinze Jr. played the big man on campus who accepts a bet from his buddies to try and transform a dorky art student (Rachel Leigh Cooke) into the prom queen. “Everyone who is a fan of the original are going to love and anybody not familiar with the original are going to love it as well,” Buchanan said. Rae added, “It’s definitely modernized in the best way.” “He’s All That” drops Aug. 27 on Netflix.
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Emma Stone, who won a Golden Globe for “La La Land,” hasn’t been keeping up on the recent HFPA implosion — for good reason. “I’ve completely done a news blockage for the past eight weeks of my life because I’ve been going through some personal stuff,” the “Cruella” star tells me with a smile, alluding to reports she gave birth two months ago to her and husband Dave McCary’s first child. “I was just learning about this yesterday, so I don’t feel fully equipped to weigh in yet, but any institution that needs changing when a lot of people are calling for change … I think is never a bad thing. It’s only a positive thing.” “Cruella” co-star Emma Thompson, who has two Globes, declined to comment on the future of the organization. “I have no idea,” she says. “I’ve not been party to their conversations.”
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Congrats to Conrad Woolfe. After nine years at Telsey + Co. — where he worked on “Mary Poppins Returns” and “Miss Sloane” and television’s “Love, Victor,” “One Day at a Time” and “The Walking Dead: World Beyond” — he’s gone out on his own to launch Conrad Woolfe Casting. His current project is Netflix’s musical film adaptation of the book series “The Witch Boy.” “Casting and representation are so intertwined,” Woolfe tells me. “Integrity in the form of color- and identity-conscious casting is at the center of my new venture across all media formats and genres. Now was the time to take the next step in creating a company with these concepts at its core.”
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EXCLUSIVE: Outfest launches “The OutFronts,” a celebration of queer television featuring 18 panels streaming across five days of programming starting June 8. Participants include “It’s a Sin” creator Russell T. Davies, Angelica Ross of “Pose,” “RuPaul’s Drag Race” stars and “Equal” actors Cheyenne Jackson, Alexandra Grey and Jai Rodriguez. Panels will also feature the stars and creatives behind “Clarice,” “David Makes Man,” “Everything’s Gonna Be Okay,” “Genera+ion,” “The L Word: Generation Q,” “Love, Victor,” “Motherland: Fort Salem,” “Noah’s Arc,” “Rurangi,” “Special,” “Star Trek: Discovery,” “The Wilds” and “Veneno.”
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Padma Lakshmi is blasting Indian officials for their handling of the country’s pandemic crisis. “I think that the government really screwed up,” the “Top Chef” and “Taste the Nation” host tells me while promoting Stella Artois’ partnership with the James Beard Foundation’s Open for Good restaurant relief initiative. “I think international aid organizations have to go there, and it has to work like a military plan, but for that you need a government that’s not arrogant. … India managed to control it early on, but I think they just got too cocky.”
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Sebastian Stan may play a tough guy in “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” but that doesn’t mean he isn’t prone to some embarrassing injuries. On this week’s “Just for Variety” podcast, the actor reveals that he endured a lot of pain while shooting the Marvel series after suffering a broken pinky toe when he walked into a wall going back to bed after a late-night pee. “In between the takes and we had to do the set-ups, I would run upstairs and two people would help me out of this boot and I would just take my foot and put it in a bucket of ice.” You can listen to the full interview on “Just for Variety” at Apple Podcasts or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.
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