Hollywood Q&A

Q: I love the way Marissa dresses in “Bull,” but why does she always wear dresses that zipper up the back, all the way from the hem to the collar?

A: You make an excellent point — Marissa Morgan in “Bull” has a distinctive look, characterized by this very specific type of dress. Yet she finds enough variety in it that it never looks like a uniform or a costume.

No one from the show, which was canceled earlier this year after six seasons on CBS, has addressed the style choice, but actor Geneva Carr (“Wonder Wheel,” 2017), who plays the character, gave us a bit of a hint while raving about the show’s preferred designer for her.

“Marissa Morgan gets to wear some pretty fabulous stuff,” she said in an interview with Regard magazine. “Lots of Roland Mouret, an incredible French designer who makes cocktail dresses that are classic and yet cutting edge without being edgy. I realized that most of my clothes are French designers; they fit petite women so well.”

Carr stands five-foot-three, which is certainly shorter than average, particularly in Hollywood.

Fashion experts say that cocktail dresses with long zippers are, in fact, a smart choice for petites like her as they tend to exaggerate height. And petite women can get away with shorter hemlines, even in the workplace.

Q: Why did Judge Judy replace Petri Byrd in her new show?

A: If only the two of them would go in front of some kind of arbitrator to state their cases, we could clear it up nicely. But they aren’t doing that, so we mostly just have TV bailiff Petri Hawkins Byrd’s side of the story — and he wasn’t happy about how it went.

Judge Judith Sheindlin’s star-making show, “Judge Judy,” featured Byrd as her bailiff for its entire 25-season run. But when Sheindlin announced in a 2020 appearance on “The Ellen Degeneres Show” that she was launching a new court show on IMDbTV (now known as Freevee), Byrd was as surprised as the rest of us.

He told Entertainment Weekly he was simply never invited to be part of the new show, “Judy Justice,” and he was a little miffed.

“My assumption is if you were going on to do something else, that you were at least going to ask me if I wanted to have the opportunity to audition for the role,” he said.

Sheindlin issued a response through a spokesperson that doesn’t really plead her case, but gives a hint at a reason: “Byrd is terrific and we had a great 25-year run. This is a whole new program with a whole new cast and an exciting energy.”

Q: Is “Murderville” going to come back soon? It only got six episodes!

A: So far there’s no word on a second season for Netflix’s improvised cop comedy “Murderville,” but there seems to be a lot of confidence.

The premise of “Murderville” is to take a celebrity guest and drop them into the middle of a murder mystery show, but without giving them the script. Surrounded by actors, they have to improvise their way through and solve the mystery at the end.

ScreenRant.com’s Nic Austin said it’s “bound to get a second season” based on how frequently it was searched on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb.com) after its release — and Netflix doesn’t often release ratings info, so that’s all we have to go on right now in terms of numbers.

Venerable Hollywood magazine Variety also said series star

Will Arnett (“Arrested Development”) has an outside chance at an Emmy nomination, putting

him seventh in its list of predictions for who’ll get the nod for lead actor in a comedy series.

And “Murderville” creator Krister Johnson is already thinking of which guests he wants for the theoretical second season. He told TheWrap.com that,

while getting improv-trained comedians is always fun, he prefers getting people without that sort

of experience but who are “charismatic and playful” and willing

to commit to the weirdness.