‘Tis the season: ABC has revealed its slate of holiday programming.
Specials on the holiday schedule include The Wonderful World of Disney: Holiday Spectacular on Dec. 1, CMA Country Christmas on Dec. 3, and The Disney Parks Magical Christmas Day Parade on Dec. 25.
On Dec. 4, Abbott Elementary airs a one-hour holiday special starting at 8 p.m. ET, and on Dec. 5, the new season of The Great Christmas Light Fight debuts at 8 p.m. ET. There will also be holiday-themed episodes of Press Your Luck, Celebrity Family Feud and Shark Tank, as well as special airings of The Sound of Music, Home Alone and The Santa Clause.
Additional programming includes ABC News’ celebration of the 60th anniversary of Mary Poppins with The Untold Story of Mary Poppins: A Special Edition of 20/20 on Nov. 27, followed by The Wonderful World of Disney presents Mary Poppins, airing the next day.
Back in June, Sir Ian McKellen seemed to downplay a fall off a London stage during a performance of the Shakespeare adaptation Player Kings. A statement at the time said he was in good spirits and would make a speedy recovery. But now, several months later, McKellen reveals the whole thing was pretty scary.
“Apparently, I’m told by the company manager who’s holding my head as I lay on the floor, I said to her, ‘I’ve broken my neck. I’m dying,'” McKellen told ABC Audio in an interview from his home in London. “Now, I don’t remember saying that, but I must have felt it.”
He says he’s fine now, after fracturing his wrist and hurting his back, crediting the fat suit he was wearing in order to play rotund Knight John Falstaff with protecting his ribs and hips in the fall. And while physically he’s almost completely back to normal, the mental effects linger.
“I’m left with some disappointment,” McKellen confesses. “I’m ashamed that I didn’t complete — you know, my pride was bruised. How could this happen to me?” he asks with a chuckle. “And I suspect that although physically I’m healing, I wonder whether deep down there’s something mental or emotional that was jolted that needs to be attended to. And I’m attending to it by not working at the moment and resting.”
McKellen appears to be in a reflective mood as he discusses the fall, and his new film The Critic, in which he plays a prominent 1930s London theater critic named Jimmy Erskine, a once feared and respected tastemaker trying to recapture his glory days. Reviews, McKellen reveals, are a necessary evil for actors.
“We are seeking for approval. And we’re probably rather pathetic people who need that approval. We’re not confident enough of ourselves. So if you get a good review — oh, it’s an added pleasure. And if you get a bad review, it can be very hurtful,” McKellen admits.
And although he hasn’t been on the receiving end of a lot of bad reviews, the ones he has had are seared in his brain. Take for instance his turn in a Bernard Shaw revival in London’s West End when he was much younger. He starred in the play alongside a pre-Dame Judi Dench and recalls how he overheard a few fellow actors discussing his performance one night at a restaurant.
“One of them was going on and on and on about how dreadful I’d been. And I was typical of these modern young actors, using my voice in the wrong way and drawing attention to myself. And he just simply hadn’t enjoyed it.” McKellen says he laughed off the criticism, but the next night onstage it crept into his consciousness. “And as I looked into the audience talking away, I suddenly thought, ‘My God, every single person in this audience agrees with that actor that I heard last night. They all think I’m rubbish. I shouldn’t be here.’” He says he froze, forgot his lines and Dench had to rescue him.
Still, he swears if there’s a bad review out there, he’s going to read it. “I like to know. If people haven’t enjoyed the film of Cats I’d like to know about it.” 2019’s film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Broadway musical Cats was savaged by critics, probably the worst-reviewed film McKellen has ever been in. McKellen didn’t get the blame, though. His portrayal of Gus the Theater Cat was mostly praised. And he may be returning to a role that garnered him some of the most praise of his film career: the mighty wizard Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings movies.
“There are going to be a couple of more films, I think, with some of the same characters in it. And I’ve been asked to stand by,” McKellen says. “But there’s no script that I read, and no date. All I can say, as far as I’m concerned, they better be quick.”
Quick, because at 85 years old, McKellen isn’t sure how much time he has left. “I’m rather living a year at a time, rather than two or three years at a time,” he says.
Gandalf is a part of his legacy, so if he can, he’s going to go to New Zealand and put on the robes. Legacy is a theme in The Critic, as well. In his downtime, legacy and what’s next are things McKellen has been thinking about a lot. He remembers going to visit a friend in the hospital, a friend who was dying, and asking him what he was thinking about as his life neared the end.
“And he said, ‘I don’t want to miss anything.’ And that’s rather my view,” McKellen says wistfully. He wants to know what’s going to happen. “How is AI going to really take over? I mean, what is life going to be like? When is the world going to settle down? Is the world going to survive? I won’t know. I won’t know. And I suppose I won’t care because I won’t exist.”
Kris Kristofferson, the singer, songwriter and actor whose songs were among the most admired, not just in country, but music in general, has died, according to a post on his official Facebook. He was 88.
“It is with a heavy heart that we share the news our husband/father/grandfather, Kris Kristofferson, passed away peacefully on Saturday, September 28 at home,” read the message. “We’re all so blessed for our time with him. Thank you for loving him all these many years, and when you see a rainbow, know he’s smiling down at us all.”
Kristofferson’s resume was eclectic: Rhodes scholar, U.S. Army veteran, pilot, Golden Gloves boxer and award-winning actor. But it was his famous songs — including “Me and Bobby McGee,” “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” and “Help Me Make It Through the Night” — which made him a music legend.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates…
Paramount+ is once again going to the dogs with season 2 of the comedy series Colin from Accounts. All eight episodes of the new season of the hit Australian comedy are now available to stream.
The show was created by and stars husband and wife team Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall, andPatrick tells ABC Audio that he felt a little bit of pressure to recapture the magic of the first season.
“You know, people have a stake in the show, a sense of ownership of what the show should be,” he says. “But once we sat down to start writing it, it felt very much like ducks to water again. And we were able to just write stuff that thrilled us and made us laugh again.”
Every episode features at least a little bit of conflict between the couple at the center of it all, and Dyer thinks that’s what makes it interesting, noting “stuff going wrong is funny.”
Besides, she adds, “Happy is kind of boring.”
And even though the show is named after the dog who brought their characters together, Dryer says it’s not a dog show.
“This is the thing — it can get pretty doggy and madcap pretty quickly. Like, if you start to do super, super doggy storylines, suddenly we’re in, like, a family movie that comes out on Christmas Day. … We’ve got to try to not be that,” she says.
Brammall says he and his wife have an equal part in writing the show, but they’re not “hunched over one laptop trying to write a scene.”
“We’d never get anything done,” he says.
“We’d need a chiropractor, as well,” Dryer chimes in.
