Travel with Trudie Styler to an overlooked Italian city in new Hulu documentary ‘An Ode to Naples’
Courtesy Hulu
You’ve visited Italy on vacation, but have you been to Naples? The new Hulu documentary Posso Entrare? (Can I Come In?): An Ode to Napleswants to change that. It’s written and directed by Trudie Styler, who has an estate in Tuscany with her husband, rock star Sting. Surprisingly, she was unfamiliar with Naples until she made the film.
“We have quite a full life in Tuscany, but I’d never been to Naples,” she tells ABC Audio. “And then I started to ask questions. ‘Why haven’t you been to Naples?’ I would say to a friend. ‘Oh, well … [it’s] dirty, dangerous.'”
So when Styler was offered the chance to make a film about the city, she wanted to dispel those notions.
“For the last three years I’ve been immersing myself in that city, meeting extraordinary people who have their stories to tell, which I weave through into the documentary. And they transformed my life,” she tells ABC Audio.
Full of history, art and culture, Naples has been plagued by organized crime for years. Styler’s film highlights all of that, as well as unique programs that artists, locals and clergy have established to give young people a chance to thrive and help those hoping for a better life.
One program, the Orchestra of the Seas, teaches prisoners to make instruments from the wood of shipwrecked immigrant boats. In the film, it sets the stage, literally, for Sting to appear: He’s seen playing his song “Fragile” on one of the first prisoner-created guitars.
“It was wonderful to see how humbled [the prisoners] were to hear something that they’d made with their own hands,” Trudie says.
Ultimately, Trudie says she hopes viewers — especially Americans with Neapolitan roots — will watch the film and, she says, “do what I did: instead of buying into the stories of Naples being dirty and dangerous … they will take a day … to go and see the wonderful sights.”
Britt Lower, Zach Cherry and Adam Scott in ‘Severance,’ now streaming on Apple TV+.
(SPOILER ALERT)Episode six ofSeverance season 2 is now streaming on Apple TV+, and it offers further developments in the relationships between characters whose Innie and Outie worlds have been colliding all season.
Severance follows workers at the mysterious Lumon Industries who’ve voluntarily undergone a “severance” —while at work, they have no knowledge or memory of their non-work lives and vice versa. But this season, we’ve seen crossover between the “Innies” — the workers — and their “Outies,” i.e. who they are in the “real world.”
Zach Cherry‘s Dylan has gotten a chance to meet his Outie’s wife, who he didn’t know existed until season 1’s finale. Their relationship progresses in episode six, and Cherry tells ABC Audio it’s a “unique story.”
“There’s this almost love triangle with one guy and his wife and his Innie and his Outie,” he says. “It was also a lot of fun to learn more about Dylan on the outside world and then watch how the Innie learning about himself affects him on the inside. … It was great to get to kind of open that up this season.”
Episode six also brings developments in the “love triangle” between Adam Scott‘s Mark S. and Britt Lower‘s dual role of Helly and her Outie, Helena Eagan, daughter of Lumon’s CEO.
Lower tells ABC Audio that Helena’s unexpected behavior this season toward Mark is easier to understand when you see her with her father, as we did in season 1.
“I think a lot can be extrapolated from that relationship and how isolating Helena’s upbringing must have been,” she notes. “Being indoctrinated by this company that has almost cult-like rituals.”
“It makes a lot of sense that her Innie, her inner child, would have this kind of really alive rebellion within her,” she adds. “And that the two sides of them are now on a collision course.”
Robert De Niro, Ben Stiller, Teri Polo and Blythe Tanner are in talks to return for another movie in the Meet the Parents series, Deadline reports.
There are no plot details for the new film, which is being developed for Universal Pictures, but John Hamburg is set to write the screenplay. Hamburg wrote all three of the franchise’s films and produced Little Fockers. No director has been slated to helm it as of yet.
De Niro and Jane Rosenthal will produce the film through Tribeca Productions, as will Stiller and John Lesher through Red Hour Films.
The original Meet the Parents film was released in 2000, when it grossed more than $330 million worldwide and was the seventh-highest-grossing film globally that year.
Its sequel, Meet the Fockers, was released in 2004, while the third film in the franchise, Little Fockers, was released in 2010. As a whole, the franchise has generated over $1.13 billion.
Blake Lively is taking legal action against her It Ends with Us co-star and director, Justin Baldoni, for alleged sexual harassment during the filming of the adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling novel.
This comes months after rumors of tension behind the scenes first surfaced.
In the complaint filed with the California Civil Rights Department and obtained by ABC News, Lively claims Baldoni’s alleged behavior caused her “severe emotional distress.”
A representative for Lively said in a statement that “Blake was retaliated against because she raised concerns about sexual harassment and other inappropriate behavior that she and other members of the cast and crew experienced on the set of the film.”
The complaint further alleges that a meeting was held to address Lively’s concerns, adding that it was attended by key stakeholders in the film and Lively’s husband, Ryan Reynolds.
According to the complaint, Lively said she laid out specific demands at the meeting to ensure a safe and professional working environment, including “no more showing nude videos or images of women to Blake” and “no more discussions about sexual conquests in front of Blake and others, no further mentions of cast and crew’s genitalia, no more inquiries about Blake’s weight, and no further mention of Blake’s dead father.”
Lively claims Baldoni and his production company, Wayfarer Studios, then engaged in a “social manipulation” campaign to “destroy” Lively’s reputation, according to the complaint. The complaint includes alleged texts from Baldoni’s publicist to a Wayfarer publicist, whom the complaint alleges said Baldoni “wants to feel like [Ms. Lively] can be buried,” and “We can’t write we will destroy her.”
In a message to his publicist, according to the complaint, Baldoni allegedly wrote, “We should have a plan for IF she does the same when [the] movie comes out. Plans make me feel more at ease.”
Bryan Freedman, an attorney for Baldoni and his production company Wayfarer Studios, denied the allegations in a statement to ABC News:
“It is shameful that Ms. Lively and her representatives would make such serious and categorically false accusations against Mr. Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios and its representatives, as yet another desperate attempt to ‘fix’ her negative reputation which was garnered from her own remarks and actions during the campaign for the film; interviews and press activities that were observed publicly, in real time and unedited, which allowed for the internet to generate their own views and opinions,” Freedman said. “These claims are completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious with an intent to publicly hurt and rehash a narrative in the media.”
Freedman added, “Wayfarer Studios made the decision to proactively hire a crisis manager prior to the marketing campaign of the film, to work alongside their own representative with Jonesworks employed by Stephanie Jones, due to the multiple demands and threats made by Ms. Lively during production which included her threatening to not showing up to set, threatening to not promote the film, ultimately leading to its demise during release, if her demands were not met. It was also discovered that Ms. Lively enlisted her own representative, Leslie Sloan with Vision PR, who also represents Mr. Reynolds, to plant negative and completely fabricated and false stories with media, even prior to any marketing had commenced for the film, which was another reason why Wayfarer Studios made the decision to hire a crisis professional to commence internal scenario planning in the case they needed to address. The representatives of Wayfarer Studios still did nothing proactive nor retaliated, and only responded to incoming media inquiries to ensure balanced and factual reporting and monitored social activity. What is pointedly missing from the cherry-picked correspondence is the evidence that there were no proactive measures taken with media or otherwise; just internal scenario planning and private correspondence to strategize which is standard operating procedure with public relations professionals.”
In the film, Lively plays a woman with a traumatic upbringing who enters into a relationship that turns abusive.
Baldoni previously told Good Morning America that Lively was an integral part of the film and that he partnered on the project with a foundation dedicated to ending domestic and sexual violence.
