What is Casting Couch? Today it’s mostly concerned with the comings and goings of British actors, but we also let Lea Seydoux slip in there because she’s wonderful.
So far the only things we know about Brad Bird’s super-secretive upcoming film, Tomorrowland, are that George Clooney is going to be starring as a character who may or may not be Walt Disney and, though the film is said to be in the vein of Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, it may or may not have something to do with aliens. That’s not a lot to go on. But now we at least know that the film’s story is going to involve a villain of some sort, because Heat Vision is reporting that Hugh Laurie is currently in negotiations to join this film as the bad guy. So, what do you imagine that means? Is Laurie playing an alien? A rival theme park owner? Are any of the things we think we know about this movie actually correct at all?
Tuppence Middleton
The Wachowskis‘ upcoming sci-fi epic, Jupiter Ascending, just got a whole lot more British. Variety reports that Tuppence Middleton, the Bones actress with the most delightfully haughty-sounding name in the business, is the latest to join folks like Channing Tatum, Mila Kunis, and Eddie Redmayne in the film’s cast. If you’re not a regular watcher of Bones, then you might not know who Middleton is yet, but chances are you’re about to, because she’s got about a million projects in the works. You’ll be able to see her in Iain Softley’s Trap For Cinderella, Danny Boyle’s Trance, and co-starring alongside Aaron Paul in A Long Way Down before Jupiter Ascending ever gets the chance to hit theaters.
Ruth Wilson
A Walk Among the Tombstones, the new detective movie starring Liam Neeson, has gone about poaching all of the most promising names off of British television. Just yesterday we learned that Downton Abbey actor Dan Stevens had joined the film, and today Variety has a report that the creepy resident redhead from the BBC’s Luther, Ruth Wilson, has also scored an undisclosed role. Now all it needs is to land one of the former Dr. Whos, or maybe snag someone from Sherlock, and it will have hit for the entire British television cycle. Maybe the guys from Monty Python can play the NYPD cops down at the precinct that Neeson’s character used to work at? Mr. Bean can be the bad guy!
Lea Seydoux
Finally, we hop across the channel for some casting news regarding Bertrand Bonello’s Yves Saint Laurent biopic, the appropriately-titled Yves Saint Laurent. Midnight in Paris and Ghost Protocol actress Lea Seydoux is the latest to join the film, and Variety says that she’ll be playing jewelry designer Loulou de la Falaise, a close personal friend of Saint Laurent’s who is said to have inspired the legendary designer’s see-through blouses. Seydoux joins Gaspar Ulliel, who’s in the title role, and Jérémie Renier, who’s playing Saint Laurent’s lover, Pierre Berg. All of this, of course, begs the question, is Loulou de la Falaise a more French-sounding name than Tuppence Middleton is a British-sounding name? Debate it out in the comments.