Kristen Stewart, Steven Yeun on exploring humanity as AI robots in new film ‘Love Me’
Bleecker Street
Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun dive headfirst into a love story between a buoy and a satellite spanning billions of years after the end of human civilization in the new film Love Me.
The project, in theaters Friday, explores themes of identity, love and what it truly means to exist.
Yeun said what drew him to the project was the “real wild and earnest swing that it was.”
Stewart called the film “a cool opportunity to call into question authenticity, because we’re so obsessed with it.”
“It is like a long, big, elaborate acting exercise that kind of results in this acknowledgement of individuality being important, but also the fact that we are so linked,” Stewart continued. “Humans are … we’re all the same.”
Yeun said his satellite “wants to be defined by somebody or something” when he meets Stewart’s buoy — an event he says makes the character eventually “come to terms with the fact that he wouldn’t have ever been defined or exist in this way if it wasn’t for the other person.”
Stewart praised Yeun for being “a muscular actor” to share a scene with in such a thought-provoking film as Love Me.
“He is down,” Stewart said. “Steven’s got this, like, very serious fieriness.”
Love Me also explores one of the biggest technological jumps of recent years: the emergence of AI.
“These things are extensions of us. If anything, the thing that’s difficult … to talk about [when it come to AI] is you’re really kind of talking about a portion of yourself, of ourselves,” Yeun said, with Stewart agreeing that “they’re mirrors” of us.
“Almost like the part that you don’t want to lose control of, which is so scary,” Stewart continued. “When we’re like, ‘Who knows what it could do.’ It’s like … are you talking about yourself right now? Are you scared of the evil within? Because, me too.”
Justin Baldoni has filed a new civil lawsuit against Blake Lively, her husband, Ryan Reynolds, the couple’s publicist Leslie Sloane and Sloane’s public relations company, Vision PR, for, among other things, extortion and defamation.
Baldoni, who directed and starred in the film It Ends With Us with Lively, is accusing Lively of having “robbed” Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios LLC of control of the film, as well as destroying Baldoni’s “personal and professional reputations and livelihood.”
The suit lists Baldoni, Wayfarer and Baldoni’s publicist Jennifer Abel as plaintiffs, as well as Melissa Nathan, a crisis PR specialist hired by Wayfarer Studios, and Jamey Heath, Baldoni’s friend and podcast co-host. They are currently seeking $400 million in damages.
“Lively stole Wayfarer’s movie, hijacked Wayfarer’s premiere, destroyed Plaintiffs’ personal and professional reputations and livelihood, and aimed to drive Plaintiffs out of business entirely,” the suit reads.
The suit claims Lively pushed a “false and damaging narrative” against Baldoni that was “rife with lies and doctored ‘evidence'” in accusing him of sexual harassment on the set of It Ends with Us.
Lively first raised allegations of sexual harassment against Baldoni and accused him and his publicity team of trying to destroy her reputation in a complaint she filed in December with the California Civil Rights Department, which included numerous text messages and communications she claimed were part of a campaign to attack her public image. The New York Times was the first to report Lively’s legal complaint.
Lively then formally filed a lawsuit in New York against Baldoni and other defendants, again alleging sexual harassment.
Bryan Freedman, the attorney for Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios, denied all allegations.
Baldoni’s suit accuses Sloane of having gone “so far as to propagate malicious stories portraying Baldoni as a sexual predator” and Reynolds of using the term to describe Baldoni in a call with Baldoni’s agent. The suit claims Reynolds told Baldoni’s rep to “drop” him as a client.
Baldoni also accused Reynolds of launching into an “aggressive tirade, berating Baldoni in what Baldoni later described as a ‘traumatic’ encounter” at the couple’s home during the film’s production.
The suit claims Baldoni and the other plaintiffs were “the targets of a calculated and vitriolic smear campaign” lodged by the defendants and that Lively, leveraging her and her husband’s star power, took control of the film — including Lively having her own cut of it.
Freedman said in a statement, “This lawsuit is a legal action based on an overwhelming amount of untampered evidence detailing Blake Lively and her team’s duplicitous attempt to destroy Justin Baldoni, his team and their respective companies by disseminating grossly edited, unsubstantiated, new and doctored information to the media.”
“It is clear based on our own all out willingness to provide all complete text messages, emails, video footage and other documentary evidence that was shared between the parties in real time, that this is a battle she will not win and will certainly regret,” Freedman continued.
Freedman ended his statement by saying, “We know the truth, and now the public does too. Justin and his team have nothing to hide, documents do not lie.”
ABC News has reached out to Lively, Reynolds, Sloane and Vision PR for a comment in response to Baldoni’s suit against them, but has not yet received a response.
Baldoni’s latest action in his legal battle against Lively comes after he had filed a lawsuit against The New York Times on Dec. 31 for libel and false light invasion of privacy, after it published the story “We Can Bury Anyone” on Dec. 22, which included reporting on Lively’s complaint. That same day, Lively formally filed her lawsuit in New York against Baldoni and other defendants.
Baldoni was reportedly dropped from his talent agency after the story was published.
In his complaint against The New York Times, Baldoni accused the newspaper of relying on “cherry-picked” and altered communications, with details “stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced” to “mislead.”
In a statement to ABC News, The New York Times denied Baldoni’s accusations and said their original story was “meticulously and responsibly reported,” and that their report was “based on a review of thousands of pages of original documents, including the text messages and emails that we quote accurately and at length in the article.”
Lively’s attorney issued a statement amid the ongoing feud.
“Ms. Lively’s federal litigation before the Southern District of New York involves serious claims of sexual harassment and retaliation, backed by concrete facts. This is not a ‘feud’ arising from ‘creative differences’ or a ‘he said/she said’ situation. As alleged in Ms. Lively’s complaint, and as we will prove in litigation, Wayfarer and its associates engaged in unlawful, retaliatory astroturfing against Ms. Lively for simply trying to protect herself and others on a film set,” the statement read in part.
In recent days, both Baldoni and Lively’s attorney have issued statements on the ongoing legal feud.
When The Last of Us returns to HBO for season 2 in April, it’ll pick up five years after the events of season 1.
In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, its showrunners Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin opened up about how the second season feels different from the first, including the introduction of new a character named Abby.
Little has been said about the character, though she’s described as “a skilled soldier whose black-and-white view of the world is challenged as she seeks vengeance for those she loved” in press material from HBO. Kaitlyn Dever portrays her, and Druckmann says it’s due to her incredible talent.
“The reason we cast Kaitlyn is because she’s an incredible actor. You look at her body of work and the way she throws herself at that stuff… We value performance over anything else,” Druckmann said.
While fans of the video game may notice that Dever’s physique differs from that of Abby’s in the game — the digital character is a towering, muscled woman while Dever’s Abby closely resembles star Bella Ramsey‘s Ellie — Druckmann says that the show has different priorities than the game.
“There’s not as much violent action moment to moment,” he says. “It’s more about the drama. I’m not saying there’s no action here. It’s just, again, different priorities and how you approach it.”
Going further, Druckmann said Dever has “the spirit of the game in her.”
“For every heroic act, there’s someone who suffers on the other side who may see you reasonably as a villain,” Druckmann said. “When you look at Kaitlyn, there’s just something in her eyes where, even no matter what she’s experiencing, you connect. It was important that we found somebody that we could connect to the way we connect to Bella.”
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