Month: September 2021

In the tumultuous year and a half since Sex Education season 2 hit screens in January 2020, you’d be forgiven for forgetting just how tumultuous things had already become at Moordale Secondary. Last time we saw our favorite hormone-addled Brits, Jean (Gillian Anderson) had learned she was pregnant with Jakob’s (Mikael Persbrandt) baby. Otis (Asa Butterfield) left a confession of love on Maeve’s (Emma Mackey) voicemail, only for Maeve’s neighbor, Isaac (George Robinson), to delete it. Adam (Connor Swindells) declared his feelings for Eric (Ncuti Gatwa)—on stage, no less. Maeve called social services on her mother. Oh, and Moordale itself was still floundering in the wake of its sex scandal, which ultimately labeled the beleaguered institution as the “Sex School” and saw Jean and Mr. Groff (Alistair Petrie) fired. Season 3 picks up as a new term begins, and with it comes an unfamiliar awkwardness amongst the students.

Off-screen, however, Butterfield said filming was as effortless as ever. “We’ve been doing this now for three seasons, so I find I can now slip into the world of Otis quite easily and it feels very natural,” the actor told ELLE in an interview. “I think one of the reasons [the show has] done so well is because everyone just enjoys themselves. As actors, having the freedom to play with the words and experiment and be a bit goofy—these are the magic moments, which you wouldn’t be able to write into a script. And I think that really elevates the show.”

If you’re hoping for more of those magic moments between Butterfield and Gatwa, you’re in luck; that friendship isn’t going anywhere. But the introduction of a new headmistress could shake up the rest of the relationships at Moordale. Here’s what we know about the new season so far.

When will season 3 come out?

The third chapter is set for release on Sept. 17, 2021. All eight episodes of the Netflix hit will drop at once.

Who’s in the cast?

All the recurring cast members from seasons 1 and 2 are set to return, including Butterfield, Gatwa, and Mackey. But several new faces will also join, including Jemima Kirke as Hope Haddon, a seemingly “cool” new leader at Moordale who soon reveals herself to be bizarrely controlling as she attempts to get the school “back on track.”

Jason Isaacs (Harry Potter, The OA) joins as Peter Groff, Mr. Groff’s “more successful and not very modest older brother,” per Deadline. Recording artist and performer Dua Saleh will play Cal, a nonbinary student, in their first credited television role, and Indra Ové (Resident Evil) will play Anna, Elsie’s foster mother.

Sam Taylor/Netflix

Sam Taylor/Netflix

There will also be a deeper focus on Eric’s heritage this season, Gatwa told ELLE. “This season, I really enjoyed [Eric] exploring his heritage and his parents’ culture a lot,” he said. “I find those things very powerful because I just feel like, when we talk about representation and inclusion and all of those things—it’s always really powerful to be like, ‘I’m on a Netflix set. This is a Netflix set, this is going to go out to the world. I’m on a Netflix set, and everybody here’s Black.’”

Is there a trailer?

On July 19, Netflix released a full-length trailer parodying an advertisement for Moordale. In the clip, our favorite students read off of cards provided by the new headmistress, who makes it clear she’s not there to be anyone’s friend.

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And on September 7, the streaming giant finally released a full-length trailer, hinting at several memorable moments to come: “shame signs”; stuffy school uniforms; “backwards” PSAs; and, of course, plenty of sexual tension between Otis and Maeve. Watch the full clip below.

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Fresh off Zendaya’s three jaw-dropping Venice Film Festival looks, stylist Law Roach made red carpet magic happen again with Anya Taylor-Joy’s appearance at the festival. The 25-year-old actress attended the premiere for her upcoming film Last Night in Soho, channeling vintage Barbie in a Dior Haute Couture pink satin silk dress with a matching embroidered beret and shoes from the fashion house. She accessorized with Tiffany & Co. jewelry.

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Taylor-Joy wore an orange mini dress with matching sandals in Venice today:

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And a pink print Rodarte dress with Giuseppe Zanotti shoes and Tiffany & Co. jewelry when arriving at the festival yesterday:

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Taylor-Joy opened up to ELLE earlier this year about how she almost quit acting at one point, but her friend, fellow actress Mia Goth, encouraged her to keep going.

“She was the first actress close to my age that I met, and we had a very cool conversation where I was like, ‘I love you,’ and she said, ‘I love you.’ And I said, ‘I’m always going to have your back.’ And she was like, ‘I’m always going to have your back,’” Tayl0r-Joy recalled. “It was like, ‘Okay, cool. Let’s progress in this very wild industry, knowing that we’re going to take care of each other.’”

Right before shooting Emma, Taylor-Joy recalled a conversation she had with Goth that really helped her keep going. “I had been working back to back—just before Emma, I’d done two projects at the same time, and I was going through some emotional relationship stuff. So at the beginning of 2019, I was just really broken and frightened of everything, and Mia and I were driving back from rehearsal. I turned to her and said, ‘I think I’m going to quit acting. I don’t think I can do this.’ And I’ve never seen Mia look so worried in my life. She was like, ‘But…that’s what you do. You can’t not…what are you talking about?’ I was like, ‘I think I need to back out now and just let it be and try to take care of my heart.’ And she was like, ‘No, that would be really bad. You can’t not have the thing that is your oxygen.’ I’m really glad she said that.”

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New York Fashion Week may be just days away, but Dakota Johnson set the fashion standard high in Venice for red carpet style this September. The actress attended the Venice Film Festival’s premiere of her film The Lost Daughter last night, wearing a sheer, silver jewel-adorned Gucci gown. She wore her brown hair down with her signature blunt bangs.

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Stefania D’AlessandroGetty Images

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Johnson wore a black Gucci blazer, slacks, and bandeau during a photo call for The Lost Daughter earlier Friday in Venice.

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Johnson spoke to Gold Derby in February about how she feels watching her work, especially when there are sizable gaps between when her movies are filmed and released.

“It’s so hard for me to be objective and it’s so hard for me to even watch the movies that I’m in and because so much times passes from when you make the film and it comes out, I’m like a completely different person and I have an entirely different life,” she said. “It all feels like a retrospective and I’m sure that I felt completely differently making the movie than I do when I actually start to talk about it.”

Johnson also spoke about creating her own production company, TeaTime Pictures, a year and a half ago and what pushed her to do it. “I really love creating a safe space—a hub for creativity,” she started. “I’ve found that sometimes in this industry, you’re up against people who run shows or studios or sets in a really antiquated way and their mindset about working environments or any kind of inequality or disparity—it just doesn’t work for me and I want to work with great people, I want to make great things and I want to have a really good time and I want everyone to be on the same team and that’s not always the case on movie sets.”

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Beyoncé celebrates her milestone 40th birthday today, and Harper’s Bazaar celebrated Bey’s big day and their September cover star by getting a multitude of celebs, from Oprah and First Lady Jill Biden to Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift, to send their well wishes to Beyoncé. Swift’s tribute was particularly striking and marks a very rare public appearance from the singer who has otherwise kept a very low profile this summer. Watch it below.

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Swift said in the video, “Happy birthday, Beyonce. It’s Taylor. The fact that you have paved the road that every female artist is walking down now, then the fact that you’ve done so with such kindness and such grace, I—just, to say I admire you is like, there’s just not a word for it.”

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Other stars have shared Bey tribute on their Instagrams:

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Swift last shared a special Beyoncé moment she had in March, following the Grammys. Beyoncé sent Swift flowers to celebrate Swift’s Album of the Year win. “Woke up to flowers from the queen of grace & greatness @beyonce and suddenly it’s the best Friday EVER,” Swift wrote on her Instagram Stories. “Thank you B and congratulations on your epic achievement Sunday night!!” (Beyoncé became the most awarded female artist ever at this year’s Grammys with 28 lifetime wins.)

Beyoncé’s note to Swift read, “Congratulations on your Grammy. It was great seeing you Sunday night. Thank you for always being so supportive. Sending love to you and your family. B”

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Bey opened up to Harper’s Bazaar about her hopes for this new decade of her life. “My wish is for my 40s to be fun and full of freedom. I want to feel the same freedom I feel on stage every day of my life. I want to explore aspects of myself I haven’t had time to discover and to enjoy my husband and my children. I want to travel without working. I want this next decade to be about celebration, joy, and giving and receiving love. I want to give all the love I have to the people who love me back.”

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Zendaya graced the Venice Film Festival with her presence for the Dune premiere yesterday, and the actress and her stylist Law Roach brought three show-stopping looks to the Italian event. Zendaya arrived in a Valentino Couture dress with a high leg slit (her first but not last). She wore her hair down in curls.

Getty Images

Getty Images

Getty Images

Getty Images

Zendaya’s big moment came at the red carpet premiere of Dune, where the actress wore a leather Balmain gown with another thigh-high leg slit. She accessorized with a 93-carat emerald serpentine necklace from Bulgari.

Getty Images

Getty Images

Getty Images

Getty Images

There was a bonus third look that Roach shared on his social media: a white cutout dress by Dion Lee with two leg slits. “The dress y’all didn’t see….. @dionlee,” Roach captioned the video of Zendaya strutting in it.

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Zendaya opened up to Empire magazine about how she spent just four days working on Dune for her role as Chani. “My part is very, very small in this movie and that’s why I’m so excited to see it, to see what everyone’s been up to,” she said. “[Dune director Denis Villeneuve and I] had a little discussion about who Chani is and the strength she possesses. She’s a fighter, that’s what her people are. I only really had a few days with her, so I kind of scratched the surface but it was so much fun figuring her out. What does she walk like, what does she talk like? This is her planet, so how does she navigate this world? It was so fun.”

“I was only there for four days and I did not want to leave!” she continued when asked about working with Villeneuve. “Denis understands what he wants from us but he’s also very collaborative, allowing me to have my take on the character as well. I don’t want to jinx anything but I can’t wait to explore her more. I hope I get to learn more from Denis. I love to learn from people who are great at their job.”

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Regé-Jean Page, the heartthrob of Bridgerton, is taken. A source confirmed to Entertainment Tonight in February that the actor is dating copywriter and part-time soccer player Emily Brown. On September 1, Brown and Page attended the GQ Men of the Year awards together in London. They were photographed by paparazzi holding hands.

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Reports of the two first dating emerged in mid-February 2021 after The Daily Mail ran photos of the two hugging on the sidewalk in North London. The Mail reports that this is a long-term relationship and that the two bought a house together in February of 2020.

In the photo, Page wore a teal scarf and black coat while Brown wore a dark-green knit hat and navy blue coat. The two were photographed embracing before Page was seen getting into a chauffeur-driven car, reportedly to go to New York City, where he is hosting SNL on February 20.

Following his turn in Bridgerton, we know plenty about Page. He grew up in Zimbabwe and identified as a “musical, loud, bouncing-around-the-house” kid. He had childhood dreams of being an explorer.

“That was my first idea of what would be a really great thing to do in the world: to discover unknown things and pick around in them and see what you could bring back home to go, ‘Look! The world is bigger than you thought it was,'” he said in an interview with Netflix’s Queue & A. “Then I discovered that would involve facing entirely too many very large spiders.”

Page also appeared in Sylvie’s Love (2020) and has a musical duo called TUNYA with his brother, Tose. Page is a man of many interests and talents, so it would make sense that Brown is similar.

All that said, who is Emily Brown, the partner of Netflix’s favorite leading man? Not much is out there, although the Daily Mail managed to get some details.

Brown has no public social media currently

Brown has seemingly made moves to keep her life private following photographs of her and Page coming out. Brown has no Instagram or Twitter that is public right now. Her LinkedIn, which Daily Mail cited in its story about her, appears to have been taken down.

She’s reportedly a freelance copywriter

JustJared and the Daily Mail report that Brown, 30, does commissioned copy-writing work for companies including Nike, Converse, and Uber. The Mail cited Brown’s no-longer-available LinkedIn. Entertainment Tonight confirmed that Brown is a copywriter and soccer player but its source did not share much more about her career.

And is said to be linked to charity Football Beyond Borders

The Daily Mail reports that Brown plays part-time for FBB, a charity organization that uses soccer to educate and enrich the lives of young people. The outlet ran photographs of her wearing a Dulwich Hamlet Football Club hat, which suggests that she supports the soccer team in East Dulwich, South London.

She reportedly went to Manchester University

Brown was interviewed by student newspaper The Tab while studying at Manchester University between 2009 and 2012, according to the Daily Mail. When asked if she misbehaved, the outlet reports she replied: “I managed to sneak a giant vase, about 75 centimeters [30 inches] tall, from a club without anyone noticing, even though there were flowers poking out of it. I also decided I wanted curtains for my room so I stole a blind. And a guy from the band Faithless gave me a load of weed once when I was in Ibiza…”

She and Page are still going strong and attending events together in September 2021.

While the two have kept their relationship largely private, Page and Brown signaled publicly things are still going strong between them when they were photographed attending the GQ Men of the Year Awards in London on September 1. Brown wore an open black blazer with lingerie and black slacks, while Page wore an emerald suit. They held hands in front of the cameras.

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“Shut up, and be grateful,” or so goes the general refrain lobbed at Charli and Dixie D’Amelio, the Connecticut-born sisters whose combined TikTok empire has amassed more than 177 million followers in the past two years. Charli, 17, and Dixie, 20, are part of a group of superstars relatively new to the pop culture milieu. They’re global influencers, like all modern celebrities, but their influence is relegated chiefly to video clips on social media, and the fans who love them skew heavily Gen Z. Unlike the Kardashians—to whom they’re lazily compared—the D’Amelios had no famous family members in the years leading up to their explosive popularity. They are, accidentally and conditionally, self-created.

The sisters are known for exactly one thing—in Charli’s case, easily replicated dances, or in Dixie’s, a particular brand of sultry pop—as well as all things, as chronicled on their respective profiles: where they live, what they eat, how they bond (or clash with) family members, why they break up with their boyfriends, when they spend their money, how they address their not infrequent cancellations. They’re expected to bear it all, all the time, and deal with the consequences as a result.

On the flip side, they’re living the dream. So what’s there to complain about?

That’s the question I want to address when I’m invited to meet the family in Manhattan, in the days leading up to the release of The D’Amelio Show, their new docuseries on Hulu. The normal D’Amelio stomping grounds are Los Angeles, where they reside in an aggressively modern mansion after decamping from the East Coast in the wake of the daughters’ exponential rise. In New York, in a rustic conference room overlooking Central Park and 6th Avenue, each family member is dressed in a coordinating color palette: Charli in a black mock-neck shirt with matching skirt, Dixie in patterned black and white, mom Heidi in a sleek onyx dress, and dad Marc in a grey suit. They’re polite but occupied, Dixie picking at her neon acrylics while Charli chats up the PR team who lounge about tapping on laptops and sipping from insulated water bottles.

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Why do a docuseries? Not to create a Keeping Up With the Kardashians competitor, that’s for sure. The D’Amelios say the series was, instead, an attempt to break out of the box they’ve been forced into. Charli tells me, “It’s important that we show the inside of our lives and what it’s really like, not us smiling in front of the camera and acting like everything’s perfect all the time. That’s not reality, but that’s what people want to see from us. That’s not real. I feel like once we found the crew that would be ready to portray the truth that’s what made it so interesting.”

The truth has been a tricky concept ever since Charli shot to TikTok stardom in 2019, her innocent dance videos suddenly raking in millions of views (and criticism, both legitimate and not.) “This happened as an accident, and now I just have to be okay with everyone saying anything,” Charli explains in the eight-episode show. Dixie joined the roar soon after, as did their parents, but neither sibling initially sought the adoration—or the heat—they juggle now. TikTok was always supposed to be fun.

What The D’Amelio Show documents is just how little fun it’s turned out to be. There are times when watching the series feels like watching a breakdown in slow motion. It’s jarring to see the girls cycle through extremes: In one episode, Charli’s collapsing into tears after a commenter implies she should commit suicide, and in the next she’s enjoying a private backyard hibachi dinner with her ex-boyfriend Chase Hudson in attendance, dressed as a haute Willy Wonka and sporting a cane. Dixie enjoys the skyscraping views of her LA apartment and bougie beachside dates with her beau, Noah Beck, just as frequently as she struggles through multiple bouts of alarming depression. These women are young, impossibly so, and yet equipped with a burden and responsibility they’re always supposed to register as blessing.

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“I just feel like it gets more difficult every day,” Charli says in one of the later episodes. “I am responsible for everyone around me. Every person who works for my family (D’Amelio Family Enterprises) puts pressure on me. If I wanted to quit, well, now they don’t have a job.” This level of honesty is when The D’Amelio Show is at its best; when it veers from cutesy graphics and sound effects, it can be downright cutting.

In person, Charli is much more practiced with her responses, soft-spoken but measured. She does not self-identify as a celebrity, despite her following. “I feel like we have a lot of times where we’re just sitting at home doing nothing,” she tells me. “So it’s different than how you would think of a celebrity. But I think it’s somewhat of a confidence thing. People telling you constantly, ‘You’re not a celebrity. You don’t deserve this. You don’t deserve that.’ So we also convinced ourselves like, ‘Oh yeah, we don’t deserve any of this.’”

It’s perhaps easy to scoff at the sisters, who can certainly come across petty, shallow, or insensitive, but it’s equally easy to forget that neither is even 21 yet, forced into the limelight as they’re only just discovering their personalities and boundaries. They are now required to spin something substantial from the attention thrust upon them, despite having little clue what “substance” entails. What do we, as a society, do with the D’Amelios? The better question—and one that The D’Amelio Show tries to probe—is, what do the D’Amelios do with themselves?

The D’Amelio Show can’t answer that inquiry because the D’Amelios are on step one of the journey, trying to keep their boat adrift while mapping out where they want to sail. When asked if they feel they’ve made something “meaningful” with the series, which repeatedly emphasizes the importance of mental health, the girls both nod, but remain ready to defend against “haters” saying it’s not enough. Says Dixie, “We’ve done little things here and there, but I definitely have not done everything I want to do with really talking about mental health.”

Then there’s the burden of parenting a child living the warp-speed cliche of internet fame. “I constantly check with everybody and myself: ‘Are we happier today than we were before we started this?’” Marc tells me. “And right now I think we are. Overall it has ups and downs, but we realize how lucky we are, how blessed we are, and what an incredible ride this is. I want them to enjoy it.”

Hulu

There’s a repeated emphasis throughout our conversation—and throughout The D’Amelio Show—on how “lucky” the D’Amelios are, and it’s true: They have seemingly infinite resources. They have Valentino sending Dixie samples and Nickelodeon slathering Charli with slime. They have a clothing line with Hollister. Dixie’s singles seem poised to offer her a real singing career. J.Lo wrote Charli a tribute for the Time100 Next 2021 List (“I dance on the internet. I shouldn’t be on that list,” Charli says.) But there are real consequences to this life on top: In one particularly crushing scene in the Hulu series, Charli realizes she no longer loves to dance the way she once did; it has become another form of commodifying her identity.

“We never told anyone that we were perfect,” Charli tells me.

“People just expect it,” Dixie adds.

The D’Amelio Show is straightforward, occasionally funny, rarely exciting, and not altogether successful in its “slice of life” approach. It severely lacks in Kardashian-esque staged family drama, but it accomplishes one thing KUWTK arguably never has: forcing the audience to see the reality behind social media-fueled fame. Perhaps the most insightful nugget The D’Amelio Show has to offer comes not from a D’Amelio but from one of their friends, fellow TikToker Quen Blackwell. She tells Charli: “Social media is an outlet for people who don’t know how to navigate life in the real world, so they escape to the internet, and now that the internet is such a huge part of life there’s no real escape.” The D’Amelios have realized this truth: Escaping the screen—and the box it puts them in—is almost impossible. Now, they’re fighting like hell to make their new reality worth it. “The endgame is to be happy,” Charli says. “That’s really it.”

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