Taylor Kitsch Is Going Gay
Today in show business news: Everyone's favorite Friday Night Lights hunk is taking on an alternative role, Daniel Radcliffe might soon be lurching around a laboratory, and Liam Neeson continues to baffle us.
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Friday Night Lights sex Panther and struggling movie star (John Carter, Battleship, Savages) Taylor Kitsch has just landed a rather out-of-character role. He's joined the cast of the HBO movie adaptation of Larry Kramer's seminal play The Normal Heart, an angry and blunt screed about the early onset of the AIDS crisis. Kitsch will play "a closeted investment banker who becomes a prominent AIDS activist." So that is different! And perhaps a little troubling. See the thing is that the movie is being directed by Ryan Murphy who is, shall we say, not so good in the directing department, if his previous film efforts Running With Scissors and Eat Pray Love are any indication. And, sadly, Kitsch may have been a perfect fit for his FNL role, but otherwise? He's maybe not so good in the acting department. So this might have been a bit of horny casting on Ryan Murphy's part, which doesn't really sound like the right strategy. Who knows, maybe they'll all pull it out in the end and the movie will do the play justice, but right now the outlook is a little grim. [Deadline]
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Speaking of grim, Daniel Radcliffe is close to signing a deal to play everyone's favorite lab assistant Igor in a new Frankenstein movie to be told from Igor's perspective. So it's sort of like Grendel if Grendel was someone's assistant. In theory this won't involve Daniel Radcliffe hunched over, bowing and scraping and saying "Yessss massssster," but you never know! It could involve that. Which would be sort of wonderful. Depressing, but wonderful. What, was Taylor Kitsch busy?? Oh, right. [Entertainment Weekly]
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The headline: "Liam Neeson To Voice Villain In Animated Comedy ‘The Nut Job’" I mean, does anything else need saying? Oh, he's going to be a raccoon. I guess that's vital information. But other than that, I think we can move on. Remember when Liam Neeson was in Schindler's List? [Deadline]
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The CW has gone down to the television graveyard in the still of the night and dug up Whose Line Is It Anyway and Daniel Radcliffe has helped them revive it. The improv show is coming back, set to appear on the network this summer with former Talk Soup host and now The Talk panelist Aisha Tyler as host. The show will feature the old American lineup of Ryan Stiles, Wayne Brady and Colin Mochrie, with a special guest each week joining them for lots of improv'd hijinks. Nothing really to say about this. The show is what it is. Kinda fun, kinda corny, kinda whatever. It's different every time, y'know. Because it's improv. And that's how improv works. [The Hollywood Reporter]
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British actress Anna Friel has been cast as what I'm guessing is the female lead on the Showtime pilot The Vatican, the one starring Kyle Chandler, Taylor Kitsch's old coach, as a cardinal in Rome. Friel will play Chandler's character's sister, described as "a sexually active, hard-partying New Yorker." Hm. So she's not a nun! The New Yorker thing throws me a bit, because I thought the show takes place in Rome? It's being filmed in Rome and it's, y'know, called The Vatican, so... I guess you're still a hard-partying New Yorker even if you're currently partying hard in Rome. As long as you've lived in New York for ten years, right? That's when it counts? Who knows. The point is, this show sounds interesting. Weird, but interesting. Will they work the Pope Quit scandal into it somehow? Seems like a golden pope-ortunity [Deadline]
CSI kajillionaire Marg Helgenberger got bored of rolling around in piles of money, so she's headed back to television. Well, maybe. She's just climbed aboard the CBS pilot Intelligence, which is the one about Josh Holloway from Lost having a computer chip in his head that "allows him to access the entire electromagnetic spectrum." So... There's a chance this thing might never make it air, is what we're saying. We all love a good computer chip in the brain story, but that whole electromagnetic spectrum thing is a bit trifling. Just the tiniest bit. Ah well. We wish them luck. [The Hollywood Reporter]
