The daily gossip: Actors take to picket lines on day one of strike, Ben Platt doesn't want to talk about the 'nepo baby' discourse, and more

1. Actors take to picket lines on day one of strike

It begins. After a humdinger of a speech by SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher, Hollywood actors, who are fighting for increased wages and protections against artificial intelligence, officially went on strike Friday. Josh Gad, Ginnifer Goodwin, Constance Zimmer, Jason Sudeikis, Allison Janney, and Mandy Moore were among the stars spotted on picket lines in New York and Los Angeles, joining the writers who have already been striking for several months due to similar concerns about the future of their profession. George Clooney also weighed in with a statement in support of the strike. "This is an inflection point in our industry," he said, per The Hollywood Reporter. "For our industry to survive that has to change. For actors, that journey starts now." Numerous film and TV productions have already halted filming, including Marvel's "Deadpool 3," and with actors no longer permitted to promote their projects, the "Barbie" press tour just had the most abrupt ending since "Across the Spider-Verse."

The Hollywood Reporter Variety

2. Ben Platt doesn't want to talk about the "nepo baby" discourse

Dear Rolling Stone: Next question, please. In an interview with the magazine, Ben Platt was asked about that infamous New York Magazine cover on "the year of the nepo baby," which had a photo of him on it. Platt's father, Marc Platt, is a producer whose projects include the "Dear Evan Hansen" movie that his son starred in. So Rolling Stone asked Platt for his response to being on the New York Magazine cover and his thoughts on that "whole discourse" about nepotism babies in general. Platt, though, had no interest in engaging. "We're going to skip right over that if we can," he said. Platt's publicist then intervened, urging the journalist to focus on his movie "Theater Camp." According to Rolling Stone, the publicist eventually ended the interview "at the halfway mark of what was supposed to be a 45-minute" conversation. But this may have backfired considering the headline of the piece ended up being "Don't Ask Ben Platt This One Question."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Rolling Stone

3. Disney says viral "Snow White" set photos are fake

Who's the fakest of them all? Twitter got into a tizzy on Friday over some alleged pictures from Disney's live-action "Snow White," but according to the studio, they're not even real. In an article about the "politically-correct" Disney remake starring Rachel Zegler, the Daily Mail published what it said were "Snow White" set photos taken in Bedfordshire showing that the seven dwarves "appear to be a mix of genders, ethnicities and heights." Conservatives were up in arms about it, and even Libs of TikTok picked up the story. But a Disney spokesperson told The Daily Beast that "the photos are fake and not from our production," adding that "we are currently trying to have the Daily Mail issue a correction." The Daily Mail, though, denied that the photos are fake, adding a line to the article that simply clarifies "stand-ins were used for both Rachel Zegler and Andrew Burnap in these images." Some day the truth will come.

The Daily Mail The Daily Beast

4. "Ms. Marvel" star Iman Vellani is co-writing a Ms. Marvel comic

Iman Vellani is embiggening her resume. The "Ms. Marvel" star is co-writing a new comic about Ms. Marvel, the character she plays in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, according to Entertainment Weekly. "This was way scarier than joining the MCU for me," Vellani said, noting that she has "never written anything before in my entire life." But as a comics fan, she said she "just wrote what I would want to read," and she was "given a very professional tool to write what is essentially my own fan fiction." Vellani co-wrote the comic with Sabir Pirzada, a writer on the "Ms. Marvel" show. It's called "Ms. Marvel: The New Mutant," an apparent reference to the reveal that Kamala Khan is a mutant in the "Ms. Marvel" finale. Kamala was recently killed off in the comics, but everyone knows that death in the Marvel universe is no more permanent than Scarlet Witch's accent.

Entertainment Weekly

5. Miyazaki's allegedly final movie opens in Japan with zero promotion

New Miyazaki just dropped — very, very quietly. "How Do You Live?," the latest and supposedly last film from legendary Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki, has opened in Japan under unusual circumstances, as the movie hit theaters with no promotion whatsoever. No trailer was released, nor were there any ads or even an official synopsis, so fans mainly just had a vague poster to work with. Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki previously told The Hollywood Reporter that "we wanted to do something different." As Japanese audiences got a look at the movie, GKIDS announced plans to release it in North America, though they changed the title to "The Boy and the Heron," which fans generally didn't seem to like as much as the original name. Either way, Hollywood had better hope the film performs well in Japan despite the lack of promotion, as at the rate things are going with the dual strikes, every movie may soon have to be released this way.

Reuters