JUST FOR VARIETY
Chanel may not be throwing its annual pre-oscar dinner with Charles Finch this week, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be celebrating the Academy Awards. I can exclusively reveal that about 150 VIPS will not only receive a Chanel gift box on April 24 filled with goodies to toast the Oscars, but the fashion house will also make a donation to The Actors Fund. The gift includes a link to a video featuring images of past dinners, along with the message, “We can’t be together this year, but we can take this moment to fete film + fashion as we bring our pre-oscar eve to you. Until next year …”
As Warner Bros. awaits the April 23 release of the much anticipated “Mortal Kombat,” it sounds like the studio is hopeful the film will mark the rebirth of the franchise. Joe Taslim (1), who plays the villainous Sub-zero, tells me that he’s signed on for four more installments if the series moves forward. “If this one’s successful, maybe we do more,” Taslim says on this week’s episode of the “Just for Variety” podcast.
Attention, Anna Kendrick (2): Did you know that your “Stowaway” co-star Shamier Anderson (3) was a big “Twilight” fan? “I was a Twi-hard,” recalls Anderson, who plays an unexpected passenger on a mission to Mars in the new Netflix space thriller. “I’m from Toronto, and they used to have these things called ‘Live at Much.’ They’re like our ‘TRL,’ and Robert Pattinson and everybody came downtown, and I went and stood in the crowd, and I was screaming.” Anderson says he never told Kendrick about his Twi-past. “But now not only does Anna know,” he says, laughing again, “but the world knows too!”
Congrats to Variety’s Clayton Davis and Elizabeth Wagmeister, who will be working overtime Sunday when they join ABC’S “Oscars Countdown Live.”
Karla Souza (4) insists that her character in ABC’S “Home Economics” — an attorneyturned-stay-at-home mom married to a novelist (Topher Grace) — be portrayed as an authentic Latina person. “It wasn’t written that way, and it wasn’t presented that way,” the former “How to Get Away With Murder” star tells me. “Even the wardrobe is [now] Latin-owned companies and brands. Kat Orindgreff, who is the costume designer, is amazing at shipping stuff from Mexico. It was 100% artisan clothing from Latin-owned companies. That was a very important thing for me to include her heritage and her roots.”
It wasn’t until recently that Michael Greyeyes (5) saw a TV comedy in which Native and Indigenous characters and storylines were central to the show. “Until I saw the pilot cut together, I hadn’t seen it,” the actor tells me. The pilot he’s referring to is for “Rutherford Falls.” Michael Schur’s new series, premiering April 22 on Peacock, centers on the relationship between a small upstate New York town and the members of a neighboring Native American reservation. Ed Helms stars as Nathan Rutherford, a local who wants to preserve the town’s history. Greyeyes plays Terry, the boss of the casino at the tribe’s cultural center where Rutherford’s best friend (Jana Schmieding) works. “What [co-creator] Sierra Teller Ornelas and Mike and Ed have done is they’ve elevated Indigenous joy in a TV show, and that’s history.”