Variety‘s “Actors On Actors” issue is here and it features the year’s brightest stars.
Two of those actors are Carey Mulligan, who is getting rave reviews for “Promising Young Woman”, and history-making Emmy winner Zendaya, who’s earning Oscar buzz for her latest project, “Malcolm And Marie”.
Pete Davidson and Glenn Close, Andra Day and Leslie Odom Jr., and many others are also featured in the issue.
While “Promising Young Woman” is already a huge hit, with Mulligan, 35, earning some Oscar buzz of her own, Variety wasn’t so sure of its success following last year’s premiere at Sundance. After its debut, Variety shared a “tone-deaf” review.
During her chat with Zendaya, Mulligan addressed the scathing write-up.
“I feel it’s important that criticism is constructive. I think it’s important that we are looking at the right things when it comes to work, and we’re looking at the art and we’re looking at the performance,” she explained. “And I don’t think that goes to the appearance of the actor or your personal preference for what an actor does or doesn’t look like — which it felt that that article did.”
In a contemporary interview with the New York Times , Mulligan accused Variety of claiming she wasn’t “hot enough to pull off this kind of ruse.”
“Which for me felt disappointing, because obviously, the film is tackling issues around our perceptions and our preconceived ideas about people,” she continued in the new interview. “In the broader sense, there’s an element to where we have idealized women on-screen for so long that I think we start to lose sight of what women really look like.”
The publication later released an apology to the actress.
“I was really sort of surprised and thrilled and happy to have received an apology,” Mulligan added. “I kind of found it moving, in a way — to draw a line and know that had an impact.”
Zendaya, with a new season of HBO’s “Euphoria” and “Malcolm And Marie” set to debut later this month (Jan. 29), the actress, 24, has been keeping busy. In fact, she’s set to start filming the third instalment of “Spider-Man” with Tom Holland.
“I go back to ‘Spider-Man’ in a few days… It’s our third. We still have a lot left to do, but it’s exciting, it’s fun… It’s like running from aliens and things you can’t see,” she said. “Part of that is kind of fun. A lot of what we do is escapism, but that is, too — just being able to play a teenager again and run around in this other world and just have a little bit of fun.”
Read more from the pair here.
