Nicole Kidman and much of ‘The Perfect Couple’ cast had a text “mutiny” over opening dance number

The Bear star Jeremy Allen White is set to play Bruce Springsteen in the upcoming movie Deliver Me From Nowhere, and The Boss has shared his thoughts on the actor’s singing voice.

Springsteen appeared on the latest episode of The Graham Norton Show, where he talked about the film. According to People, he said, “It’s a lovely cast and I am involved a little.”

The Boss also acknowledged that portraying him on the big screen could be a challenge for White.

“This is not easy to do because you can’t do an imitation, you have to do a personal interpretation,” he said. “It’s difficult but he is a great actor and sings pretty good.”

White previously revealed in an interview with GQ that he’d be doing his own singing in the film.

“I’m really lucky that there’s sort of a team of folks now in place to help young actors portray rock stars,” he said. “I’ve got a really talented group of people helping me train vocally, musically, to get ready for this thing.”

Deliver Me From Nowhere, directed by Scott Cooper, follows Springsteen’s efforts to make his 1982 solo album Nebraska. The film is based on Warren Zanes‘ book Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska.

In related news … After rumors circulated in May that Succession star Jeremy Strong was in talks to play Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau in the film, the actor has now confirmed his participation.

“It just always spoke to me, there’s a melancholy to it,” he told NME of Nebraska. “I am doing [Deliver Me From Nowhere] but I’d always felt that way about that album. There’s a narrative to it that comes from a very deep place in him and you can feel that.”

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Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga‘s new movie, Joker: Folie à Deux, earned a lot of “Applause” at the Venice Film Festival on Sept. 4, but the reviews are another story.

Variety reports that after the movie’s world premiere, the audience gave director Todd Phillips‘ sequel, starring Phoenix as Arthur Fleck/Joker and Gaga as Harley Quinn, an 11-minute standing ovation. But over at RottenTomatoes.com, about half the reviews are “rotten.”

The Hollywood Reporter‘s critic David Rooney called Gaga a “compelling live-wire presence,” but complained that the overall movie is “often dour.”

He adds, “Phillips and co-writer Scott Silver in the first Joker had the sturdy bones of not one but two Martin Scorsese films, Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, on which to hang their story and set their tone,” but the sequel, “is built on more of a conceit than a solid story foundation.”

Vanity Fair‘s reviewer Richard Lawson described the movie as “startlingly dull” and “a pointless procedural that seems to disdain its audience,” while the BBC’s Nicholas Barber called it a “dreary, underwhelming, unnecessary slog,” but noted that it was a “welcome opportunity to hear Gaga belting out some of the most romantic standards in the American Songbook.”

However, The Wrap‘s William Bibbiani called it “impressively odd,” and although he dinged the film — “even the title screams ‘film student trying too hard'” — the critic hailed the performances of Phoenix and Gaga, concluding of the sequel, “It’s genuinely a little daring, genuinely a little challenging, and genuinely a little genuine.”

Empire magazine’s John Nugent called the film “a genuinely original narrative.” Deadline‘s Pete Hammond praised it as a “brilliant musical return to a world of madness,” adding, “With song, dance, comedy, darkness, animation, drama, violence and more, this is a musical — if it even is a musical — like no other.”

We’ll see which camp the audience agrees with when Joker: Folie à Deux opens in theaters on Oct. 4.

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Kathy Bates is set to play the titular character in CBS’ upcoming Matlock reboot, and that may be the last we see of her.

The 76-year-old actress told The New York Times in a recent interview that she’s looking to retire after the series ends, saying, “This is my last dance.”

Adds Bates, “It becomes my life. Sometimes I get jealous of having this talent, because I can’t hold it back, and I just want my life.”

However, Matlock, a reworking of the legal drama that ran from 1986 to 1995 and starred the late Andy Griffith, was too tempting for her to turn down.

“Everything I’ve prayed for, worked for, clawed my way up for, I am suddenly able to be asked to use all of it,” Bates noted. “It’s exhausting.”

Matlock, also starring Beau Bridges, Jason Ritter, Skye P. Marshall, David Del Rio and Leah Lewis, premieres Sept. 22 on CBS.

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