Role Call: It’s Our Party and We’ll Sing If We Want To!

by · June 20, 2015

Do you have a headache from taking your OWLs? Why not grab some pumpkin juice and take a break with us as we discover the next roles and projects the Harry Potter cast will be involved with? In this edition, Nymphadora sings, Lucius is up to his old tricks, and Tom Riddle actually runs from inferi rather than controlling them!

Jason Isaacs (Lucius Malfoy) is taking on yet another bad guy role. Recently announced by the Hollywood Reporter, Jason will play the director of a wellness center in the Swiss Alps opposite Dane DeHaan in the thriller A Cure for Wellness. According to the article, the film tells “the story of an employee (DeHaan) who is sent to rescue his boss from a European “wellness spa.” He soon realizes he’s trapped and discovers that the facility has a more sinister purpose than just serving the health needs of its patients.” Jason’s character is described as “an aristocratic man who has dark designs on a patient.” Production begins this month in Europe.

Next month, Natalia Tena (Nymphadora Tonks) and her band, Molotov Jukebox, will play at the Underneath the Stars Festival at Canon Hall Farm. Festival director Joe Rusby is excited to have the band play, stating:

It’s great to be able to attract stars like Natalia and the sensational Molotov Jukebox to our festival. They have a unique and irresistible tropical, gypsy, dance flavour which never fails to get people moving and shaking. They’ve been wowing audiences across Europe and South America and have a loyal fan base which has nicknamed their style as ‘Gyp-step’.

You can purchase tickets to see Molotov Jukebox when they play the festival on July 26 by visiting the festival’s website.

Earlier this month, a trailer was released for Suffragette, starring Helena Bonham Carter (Bellatrix Lestrange) and Brendan Gleeson (Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody). The film is slated to open in New York and Los Angeles on October 23 and then expand to other cities on October 30. You can view the moving trailer here:

 

 

Fear the Walking Dead, the spin-off to the hit American series The Walking Dead on AMC, is coming to television soon! The first crumbs of character information were recently made available as well as a promo video featuring Frank Dillane (teenage Tom Riddle, Half-Blood Prince). So what do we know about Frank’s character, Nick? So far, it has been revealed that Nick is “a parent’s worst nightmare.” In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, creator Robert Kirkman gave us some insight into Nick and his sister Alicia, saying:

He has flunked out of college, had a lot of trouble, got mixed up in some bad elements, and is definitely the problem child. And it’s exacerbated for him to be next to this perfect sister who seemingly doesn’t have anything going on in her life that is negative. But that’s not really the case, that’s just his perception. So you have these two siblings that are very much at odds with each other. They love each other because they are brother and sister, but to a certain extent it’s almost like they are each other’s worst enemies because one is screwing things up while she’s trying to achieve things and get on to the college, and the other one is seeing her as this reminder of everything that he can’t be. So it’s an interesting dynamic.

As for the promo video? Take a look at the thirty-second clip showing Nick’s escape from an unknown attacker below:

 

 

We’ve seen the photos of Emma Thompson (Professor Sybil Trelawney) in the directorial debut from actor Robert Carlyle, but thanks to a press release, we now have a trailer for The Legend of Barney Thomson! Emma is so great at immersing herself in her characters and this film is no exception. The film made its debut this week at the Edinburgh International Film Festival and will open in UK theaters on July 24. Take a peek at the trailer and press release below:

 

 

Legend of Barney Thomson Press Release

THE WORLD PREMIERE OPENING NIGHT

EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2015

The directorial debut feature from Robert Carlyle

Starring Robert Carlyle, Emma Thompson, Ray Winstone, Tom Courtenay, Ashley Jensen, Martin Compston WORLD PREMIERE TONIGHT 17 JUNE 2015

UK THEATRICAL RELEASE ON 24 JULY 2015

The World Premiere of Robert Carlyle’s directorial debut feature, THE LEGEND OF BARNEY THOMSON will take place tonight 17 June as Opening Night of EIFF 2015 at the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh. Cast in attendance will include Robert Carlyle, Ray Winstone, Ashley Jensen, Tom Courtenay, James Cosmo, Martin Compston, Kevin Guthrie, Stephen McCole, Samuel Robertson and Brian Pettifer. The UK theatrical release by Icon Film Distribution will follow in UK and Ireland on 24 July.

In addition to directing the film, Carlyle plays the titular antihero Barney, alongside a standout supporting cast including Emma Thompson, in one of the most transformative roles of her career, Ray Winstone, Tom Courtenay, Ashley Jensen and Martin Compston. Adapted from a highly successful, darkly comic crime novel series, THE LEGEND OF BARNEY THOMSON is a gutsy, macabre and hilarious crime thriller, with a pitch-perfect performance from Carlyle as the archetypal underdog.

THE LEGEND OF BARNEY THOMSON tells the tale of Barney (Carlyle), a hapless barber, devoid of charm and 'patter' as his fellow barbering brethren mockingly remind him. Barney's mediocre, mundane life of plotting for a way up is about to be transformed, following a typically incompetent fit of pique, when he inadvertently stumbles into serial murder, and with it headlong into the trail of a grotesque series of killings gripping Glasgow. As he makes ham-fisted attempts to cover his tracks, he finds himself on the run from the bearish Detective Inspector Holdall (Winstone) and a testosterone-driven local Police task force at each others throats over the ongoing crimes. With his sanity threatening to unravel, Barney fatefully turns to his domineering, emasculating mother, the formidable Glaswegian 'good-time girl', Cemolina (Thompson). There's no turning back now and the path that lies ahead for Barney may yet be littered with more murderous consequences than he could have ever anticipated. BAFTA winning actor Robert Carlyle is known for pushing the boundaries of character, while as a theatre director he has won multiple awards for his reinvention of time-honoured stories including Macbeth. Born in Glasgow and a graduate of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Carlyle’s first film role was in Ken Loach’s Riff-Raff in 1991.

Memorable roles followed including the psychopathic Begbie in Trainspotting and Gaz, the leader of a group of male amateur strippers, in The Full Monty, which earned Carlyle multiple awards including the BAFTA for Best Actor in 1997. Further film credits include Carla’s Song and Face alongside Ray Winstone (both roles won him the Evening Standard Award for Best Actor); the James Bond film The World is Not Enough, Anglela’s Ashes, The Beach, Once Upon a Time in the Midlands, 28 Weeks Later and Summer for which he received the Best Actor Award at the EIFF.

For the past few years, Carlyle has been working for ABC Television as Rumpelstiltskin in its smash hit series Once Upon A Time. Having previously directed for the stage with his company Rain Dog, THE LEGEND OF BARNEY THOMSON marks Carlyle’s feature film directorial debut. For the role of Barney’s larger-than-life mother Cemolina, Carlyle was convinced only one British actress could truly do the imposing character justice – two-time Academy Award winning Emma Thompson (Howards End, Sense & Sensibility). Transformed and aged by twenty years with prosthetics, Thompson gives a truly memorable and entertaining performance as Cemolina. To play Barney’s nemesis, Detective Inspector Holdall, Caryle turned to his friend and actor Ray Winstone (Sexy Beast, The Proposition), and in the role of Chief Inspector McManaman, one of Carlyle’s acting heroes - Academy Award nominee and BAFTA winner, Sir Tom Courtenay (45 Years, The Dresser).

Completing the cast is a pantheon of esteemed Scottish talent including Ashley Jensen (Extras, Ugly Betty), Martin Compston (Filth, Sweet Sixteen), James Cosmo (Game of Thrones, Braveheart), Kevin Guthrie (Sunset Song), Brian Pettifer (Amadeus) and Stephen McCole (Rushmore). The final character in the film is Glasgow itself. THE LEGEND OF BARNEY THOMSON was filmed in locations across the city including the Barrowlands Ballroom, the working dog track Shawfield’s, the Red Road tower block and the main location of Bridgeton Cross in the East End, where a cast of real life characters welcomed Carlyle home, and created an authenticity to Barney Thomson’s world in the only city where this story could be told.

Domhnall Gleeson (Bill Weasley) will be featured on the cover of Interview magazine, one of three covers for the new issue. The actor sat down with his Unbroken director, Angelina Jolie, where he talked about his role in the new Star Wars film and the unique spelling of his name.

I think for my parents it was like ‘A Boy Named Sue,’ the Johnny Cash song. A guy named Sue tries to track down his father to take it out on his father for naming him Sue. And his father says, ‘Look, I knew I wasn’t going to be around. So I gave you the name so that you would grow up strong enough to take the hits and fight back.’ So I like to believe that’s why my parents gave me this stupid name.

In regards to determining if he would take the role in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Domhnall tells Jolie that he had a panic attack before accepting the role of the General.

I met with J.J. [Abrams] and said, ‘I’m not OK with signing up for something when I haven’t read the script. I just feel weird about it. And so they let me read the script, which is really important to me. But then I had to make a decision that night whether I was going to be at the table-read the next day, which meant signing the deal. So that night I did have a panic attack. I called them up and I was like, ‘What have I done? I like my privacy.’

Yesterday, we also got our first peek of Domhnall in his new Star Wars role, as the site Making Star Wars released a screen cap of one of Domhnall’s scenes, which you can see below:

Domhnall also revealed the first bit of information regarding his new film The Revenant with director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. He describes working with Inarritu on the film as well as plot details:

Yes, that was insane. Alejandro [González Iñárritu] told us at the beginning, ‘I want you to be in pain.’ Everyone held up a glass of wine. We thought we were going to cheer the journey ahead of us. And Alejandro started by saying, ‘I want you all to be in pain.’ So then it was, ‘Oh, cheers?’ Like, a cheers with a question mark is never a good way to start a film. And he just put us through the sh*t. But it looks beautiful, and that ended up being a beautiful experience.

It’s based on a true story. Hugh Glass, who is played by Leo DiCaprio … Leo’s playing a fur trapper in the 1820s who was attacked by a bear and they had to choose whether to leave him behind – he was almost dead – or bring him with them. So two stayed behind to look after him, but then they buried him alive basically. But then he crawled across this huge portion of the country to get revenge on them. It’s kind of crazy.

As we all eagerly await the release of Emma Watson‘s (Hermione Granger) and David Thewlis‘s (Professor Remus Lupin) new film, Regression, the teaser trailer for David’s new film adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth has just been released! David plays Duncan, Macbeth’s cousin and the man Macbeth murders in order to seize control of the kingdom. The film does not yet have a US release date but is set to open in the UK this October. Take a look below!

 

 

Finally, we have some updates on the last season of Downton Abbey, starring Dame Maggie Smith (Professor Minerva McGonagall), including why she’s so happy that the series is ending. The actress told Yours magazine that while she enjoyed her time on the show, she was relieved to be rid of the costume.

It’s not riotously funny to be in corsets and a wig. We have had a great time making the show — the cast are enchanting and all the young [actors] are really lovely, so it was all very enjoyable on that level. . .We’re really an ensemble, and that’s a wonderful thing to be part of. [T]o tell you the truth, the corsets are agony. God knows how they lived in the days when they had to wear them all the time.

Creator Julian Fellowes spoke with media outlets about the final season, stating that the theme of the final shows would focus partly on Smith’s character, the Dowager Countess, and that there will be no cliff hanger. Fellowes intends to wrap up the series without leaving questions for the audience as to what ultimately happened to their favorite characters. He also admitted that while they are currently filming, the final episode has not yet been written.

Executive Producer Gareth Neame also talks to Gold Derby regarding the final season and the “privilege” of working with Smith, calling her a muse for Fellowes and that her performance in the series is a “delicious interpretation of Julian’s writing”. You can view the entire interview below:

 

 

That wraps up this week’s Casting News – don’t forget to let us know what you think about the latest roles and what you think our Harry Potter cast should take on next! We love hearing from you! Now, back to your OWLs, everyone. We expect lots of Exceeds Expectations scores from you!

 

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