Recasting 2024: "The Room Next Door"

Not unlike with my last post on Women Talking, when it was first announced in late 2023 that Pedro Almodóvar was going to direct his English feature-length debut with The Room Next Door, I wondered if there might be a role for Meryl. Based on the novel entitled What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez, my understanding was that it was about two women friends over fifty who share some kind of secret. We knew that Almodóvar and Meryl had previously planned to work together on Julieta many years before, so it didn't seem out of this world to wonder if maybe they'd finally get to connect. Well, that didn't last long, as shortly after, Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore were cast as the two friends. 

I would recast Meryl in the role of Swinton's character, Martha, who's battling terminal cancer and doesn't want to endure the gradual pain and decline of the illness. She reconnects with an old author friend (Moore), Ingrid, with whom she used to work at a magazine. Martha asks Ingrid to stay with her at a rented house, and to be there when she takes a euthanasia pill. Ingrid hesitatingly agrees. The two get reacquainted, and Martha shares the background of her relationship with her estranged daughter, Michelle, whose father was a Vietnam war vet with PTSD who later remarried but died trying to save non-existent people from a house fire. Ingrid eventually finds Martha dead on the patio, and she has to defend herself against a religious policeman who suspects Ingrid knew/participated in Martha's taking of her own life, which is illegal. John Turturro plays a writer friend of Ingrid's (who happened to be a former lover to both Ingird and Martha), and he helps her with finding a lawyer who can help deal with the aftermath of Martha's death. Ingrid calls Michelle, and the two stay at the house together. The end. 

Almodóvar definitely has a distinct style in his directing and choice of cinematography. The movie is very colorful, the dialogue is a bit melodramatic (but it works), and the characters and scenes always feel like they might be in a dream. This is not unlike my experience in watching Julieta, and if Meryl had originally been interested in doing that film, and had been familiar with Almodóvar's work, I imagine she would've expected it. It's also a great character to unpack. Yes, we've seen her suffer with cancer in One True Thing, and a bit in August: Osage County. And there's a bit of that in this movie. But this character is sort of taking the bully by the horns in controlling the exact moment of when it all ends. I've mentioned a couple of times I think in this latest bout of recasting posts how Meryl is drawn to difficult things. Tackling a situation where a character has decided to euthanize herself, and the tricky scenario it would create when considering asking someone to be there with you, and seeing that play out...it's good stuff.

   

I couldn't find a great clip of Swinton, but that was gives you a sense of the movie's tone. Almodóvar has the movie set in New York City and upstate New York, but to me, the film looks very European. Not surprising that some of the scenes were shot in Madrid. I remember seeing an interview with Moore and Swinton where one of them said that the film is Pedro's vision of what upstate New York looks and/or feels like. 

The question comes to mind of whether or not Meryl would be too old for this movie. I argue no. Swinton and Moore are both about ten years younger than her, but we also know that Meryl can easily play someone even today who's believable to be in her early to mid 60s. Just look at The Devil Wears Prada 2. She looks incredible and youthful in how she moves. I don't think she'd have any issue portraying Martha here. I do, however, think that pairing her with someone closer to her own age would be better, as the pair are meant to be contemporaries as far as I can tell, and they're known to have shared the same lover in Turturro's character. Just feels more like they should be similar ages. I wonder if Michelle Pfeiffer would've been a good option for Ingrid. Still has that kind of sophisticated polish with which Moore imbues Ingrid, but Pfeiffer just feels a bit more of Meryl's generation to me, and it would be amazing if they worked together!

The Room Next Door received relatively strong reviews, and won the Golden Lion Award at the Venice International Film Festival. It holds a score of 81% on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 70 on Metacritic. Swinton was often singled out as best in show, and she earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Drama. 

Recasting 2023 (supporting): "Women Talking"

When it was announced that there was going to be a feature film adaptation of Miriam Toews's novel, Women Talking, I got a little excited in anticipation of a possible role for Meryl. I hadn't actually read the book yet, but I was and am a huge fan of Toews's novel, All My Puny Sorrows, so I quickly got my hands on a copy of Women Talking. Alas, Meryl was not involved in the picture, which was brilliantly directed (and written) by Sarah Polley (Away from Her). But I nonetheless clocked it as a great option for my supporting recasting project. 

First off, I've bumped this movie from 2022 to 2023 in order to have included Everything Everywhere All at Once for my official 2022 pick. I'm not sure if all the same actors would've been available to shoot it a year later, but I'm not letting that get in the way. 

The premise of the story is based on a real-life event where Mennonite women in a remote colony in Bolivia were being gassed and raped by the men in the community. The book/movie bring this to North America. And although I don't recall if we get an actual location named in either, the setting could be anywhere in the Midwest, Northeast U.S., or southern Canada, as far as I can tell. Most of the movie depicts the women (elders of the colony, their children, and their children's children), discussing and debating what to do about the rapes. It may seem like an obvious answer about what to do (get the f out), but the beauty of the story is that in this community, such questions come with a host of complications. They ultimately decide to take a vote, with one of three options to select: stay and fight, leave, and do nothing. After the vote is a tie between staying/fighting and leaving, the debate ensues. The following clip showcases the recasted role of Agata Friesen, exquisitely portrayed by the great Judith Ivey. 

I just feel that this is the kind of material that Meryl would eat up. Being that the culture, while contemporary, is so far removed from what most movie-goers have ever lived, it's hard for us to not immediately jump to a conclusion that simply remove the women from the space of the men. While that ultimately is the decision the women in this story make, they battle with reaching such a decision. There are questions of their Christian faith, loyalty, fear out of leaving the only home they've ever known and venturing into a big wide world so unlike their existence that might as well be Timbuktu. And all this not mentioning the emotional, physical and spiritual trauma most of them are experiencing in the aftermath of being violated by rape, and in some cases, incestuous instances of it. 

It's a powerhouse cast, with Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Rooney Mara, Frances McDormand, and Ben Whishaw (pretty much the only man in the cast with much screen time, portraying the sensitive August, invited to join the meetings to take written account of them).  While not an exhilarating film, it's beautifully shot and exceptionally acted, and, like I suspect Meryl would've liked, it's a thinker. Those/these types of movies get me excited to watch and discuss them. It made no money of course, but I can't imagine it was the type of movie that producers thought people would flock to. Regardless, I'm glad it got made. 

The film did very well with critics, with a 90% score on Rotten Tomatoes and 77 on Metacritic. It made it into the cut for a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars, and Polley won for her adapted screenplay. Well done, as it's a very wordy film, the kind that seems more like it had been based off of a play instead of a novel. The cast earned several ensemble nominations from critics groups (including SAG). And while Jessie Buckely received the most supporting actress notices, I think Judith Ivey's performance was excellent, and did earn her a nomination for an AARP Movies for Grownups Award and a win from the Vancouver Film Critics Circle for Best Supporting Actress in a Canadian Film.

Happy 77th, Meryl!

Meryl turns 77 today. It's interesting to me that I started this blog following a string of major successes in her late 50s, carrying into her Oscar-winning performance of The Iron Lady, which she filmed when she was 61. For the most part, she's carried on with wonderful performances and roles. And despite a bit of a dry spell the last few years, we Streepers have been lucky to see the astonishing global reach of the The Devil Wears Prada 2, and a handful of (hopefully) fun and interesting projects in the pipeline. 

Here's hoping she's having a great day and that she remains happy and healthy. Salut! 

"The Devil Wears Prada" surpasses $1 billion as a franchise

In its seventh week in theaters, The Devil Wears Prada 2 has now racked up $676 million worldwide. This total, combined with the original form 2006, brings the franchise's global box office above $1 billion. Not too shabby for two movies released twenty years apart and whose audience is primarily made up of women. 

Prada 2 will continue to make money. I'm thrilled it's doing well in theaters. It can only bolster any possibility of Meryl's projects getting greenlit and distributed. She's a bankable star well into her 70s. I'm not sure we've seen a woman in the history of cinema do this well for this long, particularly when we consider both Meryl's critics' adulation and box-office clout, the latter of which she didn't really have a ton of until Prada 1. Her movies were often received well by critics (and her performances especially), but they rarely made a lot of money. 

Now let's hope we can continue to get projects that combine both great strories/characters with an audience interested in seeing them!

Recasting 2023: "Nyad"

Way back in 2015, I posted about whether or not Meryl might star in a script from that year's Hollywood Black List. The overwhelming candidate was Robert Specland's script about marathon swimmer Diana Nyad, fittingly titled, Nyad. I'll say up front that at the time, Meryl would've been a perfect age to portray Nyad, who, in the story is in her early 60s. Fast forward to 2023, and Annette Bening eventually stars in the  movie, with a new script by Julie Cox, based on Nyad's 2015 memoir, Find a Way. 

I had been fortunate enough to read Specland's script, and I found it wonderful. To be honest, I don't remember a ton of differences between his and Cox's, but I think the latter puts more focus on the relationship between Nyad and her longtime friend and former coach, Bonnie Stoll. I even suggested at the time that Jodie Foster would be a good fit to direct or even star as Stoll, the latter of which she did (the actual directors were Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, in their narrative directorial debuts). I can remember having understood that Meryl swam for exercise, and that although it seemed a bit of a stretch for her to want to do something so physically demanding, the challenge itself would've been an exciting prospect. 

Nyad grew up as a competitive and decorated swimmer. In her twenties, she attempted to become the first person to swim from Cuba to Key West and failed. Not until she was in her early 60s did she set out to try again, and on the fourth try, she made it. Quick note: her swim has not been ratified by the World Open Water Swimming Association due to various discrepancies with documenting the swim. But my guess is that she did it. And she was the first to do it not inside a shark cage, which, when used, can apparently increase your speed. 

The movie itself tracks Nyad's preparation and attempts at the swim. She corrals her friend and formerly brief love interest, Bonnie Stoll to help coach and train her. Tons of things go wrong along the way. But the story is kind of like Titanic, where even though you know what's going to happen, if the movie is good enough, you wonder if you might just be wrong. Bening succeeds at characterizing the passion and drive Nyad had to have to even consider such a daunting feat. We learn that much of the drive behind her efforts is related to abuse she suffered at the hands of her former coach, and one has to wonder if her completing the swim is sort of like Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs, where Hannibal Lecter identifies that Clarice wants to save a young woman from being murdered in an attempt to silence the screams of a lamb she was unable to save as a child, the same way Diana can overcome her traumas by putting her mind to and accomplishing the seemingly insurmountable achievement. 

I have to admit that Bening's performance, while very good, doesn't really remind me of Nyad herself. I've seen a handful of interviews with Nyad, and I just don't see much resemblance. Maybe she wasn't going for a super close characterization, more of capturing of her spirit or a more general idea of her. Not that I desire actors to completely mimic real people they're playing, but I enjoy (particularly if I'm familiar with the person), getting fooled a little that it's really that person on the screen. Meryl, of course, is exceptional at that, and I suspect that she would've taken pains to match Nyad's distinct style of speech. Nyad's father was Greek-Egyptian as well, and I've heard her do a great impression of him with his accent. She also speaks Spanish in the film, which I believe Nyad speaks fluently. 

A quick note on age: re-watching the film, Bening and Foster definitely just feel younger. They are younger than Mery, of course, but the tone of the film would probably have been a bit different if Meryl had been in the role. She's definitely played people over ten years younger than her on paper (Streep would've been 72 when filming (Nyad was 64 when she completed her Cuba-Florida swim). Totally doable. But the biggest difference I think there would've needed to is recasting Bonnie as well. I've often thought that Sigourney Weaver would've been great in the role, and she would likely seem much more of a realistic contemporary to Streep's Nyad, which I think is important for the story. Foster could've stayed attached as director, though! 

The film did pretty well with critics, standing at 85% on Rotten Tomatoes and a respectable 63 score on Metacritic. It was a Netflix film, so although it debuted at Telluride and had a short run in theaters, it pretty much didn't make any box office money. Bening and Foster both earned Academy Award nominations for their performances, in lead and supporting, respectively. 

"Useful Idiots" a no-go

Thank you to Anonymous for sharing this info. 

In an interview with Spanish-language newspaper, El País, late last month, Sigourney Weaver was specifically asked about Useful Idiots and whether or not she was indeed going to make the film with Meryl. Her response:

Unfortunately, it's not going to happen. But hopefully we'll have another chance. 

I take that to mean that specifically, Useful Idiots is not going to happen (at least not with the two of them), but that she hopes she'll have another/different chance to work with Meryl. 

At least we know now. The movie, set to be directed by Joseph Cedar, was apparently set for filming this past winter. That time came and went without anything happening. Hard to know why for sure. This is not a new situation with Meryl (or any actor, for that matter). Projects are announced, directors are attached, maybe even a co-star or two are mentioned as being "in-talks" or are actually signed. And then nothing. Knowing that it was rumored to film in Canada starting in March, and that Martin Short's daughter passed away in February, maybe Meryl simply dropped out to be able to spend time with him. That seems reasonable and plausible. Maybe the financing just never fully got together, but for some reason I kind of doubt that, knowing the way Weaver had been quoted last fall about them doing the movie in early 2026. 

Oh well. I'm optimistic about The Corrections getting underway in the fall. It'll be exciting to get some casting news hopefully soon. No idea on whether or not the Joni Mitchell biopic will move forward. In theory, I imagine Meryl could squeeze that in from August through October, but I feel we would've heard more of that by now. Cameron Crowe had been quoted last fall that he planned to film it in 2026. As I often say, time will tell. That project I think would still be viable if they waited until 2027 to film. 

Season 6 of "Only Murders in the Building" adds seven to cast

Multiple sources are reporting that Hulu's Only Murders in the Building has added seven new guest stars to it's upcoming sixth season. I'll let everyone click on the link if they want to read all the names, but the only two I recognized were Jennifer Saunders and Simone Ashley. I'm a big fan of Absolutely Fabulous, so the prospect of having Saunders in something alongside Meryl is thrilling. We of course have no idea if the two will share any scenes, but one can hope. 

The show is currently filming in the U.K. Streep has of course been spotted with her beau, Martin Short, in London, and while there's no guarantee Meryl is part of the new season, it stands to reason that her character Loretta makes at least an appearance or two. 

Ashley was recently seen as Miranda Priestly's assistant in The Devil Wears Prada 2, which, by the way has earned nearly $664 million at the worldwide box office. 

No official word on when we'll get to see season 6, but my guess is it'll be around October. 

Jennifer Saunders