September 12, 2022 - Page 2 of 2

Zac Efron Has No Inclination to Baywatch Physique

Music Observer Staff on September 12, 2022

Zac Efron was perhaps in the best shape of his life while filming Baywatch 2017. However, the High School Musical star said it’s not as crease-resistant as one might expect.

The actor considered his vigorous body transformation for the film – which showed off his washboard abs and huge muscles – and how his strict diet and exercise impacted his mental and physical health.

“I started to develop insomnia and fell into a pretty bad depression for a long time,” Efron revealed in an interview with Men’s Health. “Something about that experience burned me out. I had a really hard time recentering.”

Efron went on to say that his Baywatch physique was “unattainable” in real life.

“There’s just too little water in the skin. Like, it’s fake; it looks CGI’d,” he elaborated. “And that required Lasix, powerful diuretics, to achieve. So, I don’t need to do that. I much prefer to have an extra, you know, 2 to 3 percent body fat.”

Efron Has No Intention to Return to Baywatch Bod

This isn’t the first time Efron has hinted that he has no interest in getting back to his old physique anytime soon. In an episode of Hot Ones in 2020, Efron said he didn’t “ever want to be in that good shape again” after completing the movie, featuring Dwayne Johnson and Alexandra Daddario.

“Really, it’s like, it was so hard. You’re working with no wiggle-room. You’ve got water under your skin which you’re worrying about making your six-pack into a four-pack,” he revealed to host Sean Evans.

“It’s just stupid. It’s not real. I’m happy that it worked and that it got me through it. I may do it again if it was something worthwhile, but I would wait until it gets to that.”

Previously, Efron has given a word of caution to those who are interested in diving into the deep and risky waters of unattainable fitness standards.

“That’s too big. For guys, that’s unrealistic,” he told The Ellen Show in 2019. “I got very big and buff for that movie, but I don’t want people to think that’s the best way to be. Like, be your size… I don’t want to glamorize this.”

Chadwick Boseman Posthumously Wins an Emmy for ‘What If…?’

Music Observer Staff on September 12, 2022

Chadwick Boseman has stowed a post mortem Emmy Award for his last act as T’Challa.

At this weekend’s Creative Arts Emmy Awards ceremony, the Black Panther star was awarded Outstanding Voiceover Performance for his voice acting performance in Marvel’s animated series What If…?

We lost Boseman to cancer in August 2020 at the age of 43. Before his death, however, he returned as the Black Panther in What If…? to voice an alternate universe version of T’Challa.

Instead of chronicling T’Challa’s journey to becoming the Black Panther and future King of Wakanda, the series follows a world where Boseman’s hero ends up in space and eventually takes on the name Star-Lord.

Boseman’s wife, Taylor Simone Ledward, attended the Emmy Awards ceremony, saying before the crowd, “Chad would be so honored, and I’m honored on his behalf.”

“When we learned that Chad was nominated for this award, I started thinking about everything that was going on when he was recording – everything that was going on in the world and in our world and just being in such awe of his commitment and his dedication,” Ledward told the audience, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

“And what a beautifully aligned moment it really is that one of the last things he would work on would not only be revisiting a character that was so important to him and his career and to the world, but also that it be an exploration of something new, diving into a new potential future.”

Ledward further said that her husband’s award snag for What If…? was very meaningful, considering how much Boseman loved portraying T’Challa and how the series is about “finding the reason that you are here on the planet.”

“You can’t understand your purpose unless you’re willing to ask, ‘What If,’ unless you’re willing to say, ‘What if the universe is conspiring in my favor, what if it’s me?’” she elaborated.

Boseman Studied the Portrayal of T’Challa Carefully

Boseman bested co-nominees, including Moon Knight’s F. Murray Abraham, Bridgerton’s Julie Andrews, Big Mouth’s Maya Rudolph, Central Park’s Stanley Tucci, What If…?’s Jeffrey Wright, Archer’s late Jessica Walter.

What If…? head writer A.C. Bradley said in a previous interview with EW that Boseman was passionately involved in the series’ portrayal of T’Challa, providing notes on scripts and storylines.

“He cared about T’Challa so much,” Bradley said. “All the actors care about these characters, but Chadwick Boseman understood the power of Black Panther and his role as an icon.”

The Conners Exec Showrunner Unveils How D.J. Will Be Taken Off

Music Observer Staff on September 12, 2022

Image commercially licensed from Unsplash

More than a week after Michael Fishman announced his departure from The Conners, one of the executive producers of the series revealed how D.J. Conner gets his exit from the show in season 5.

Fishman portrayed D.J., the son of Roseanne (Roseanne Barr) and Dan (John Goodman), on all nine seasons of Roseanne and returned in the role for its 2018 spin-off The Conners.

However, when the show returns for another season this month, D.J. won’t be seen in Lanford and will reunite with someone special: his wife Geena (Maya Lynne Robinson), an Army lieutenant whose job is overseas.

“She was involved in the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, and she is still overseas on assignment, so he is going to be going over and spending time with his wife,” Conners executive producer Bruce Helford said in an interview with TV Line.

“It does get addressed in the first few episodes.”

The Conners Door is Open

After her first appearance on Season 1 of The Conners, Geena was written off the show through her deployment in Afghanistan when Robinson left the production to take a role on the CBS sitcom The Unicorn. Eventually, however, the actress made a brief return in the Season 3 finale.

And just like Robinson, the door for the Conners returnees seems wide open for Fishman.

“We love him,” Helford stated. “He’s part of the family. There’s certainly no one saying he will never be on the show [again]. It’s just a matter of whether storylines come up that are built for that.”

After the news of Fishman’s departure, Fishman said it had been his “honor to play D.J. Conner.”

“While I was told I would not be returning for season 6, Lanford was a valuable place to grow up, learn, and develop,” he continued.

“I was incredibly lucky to return home and demonstrate my expansion. As I venture into the world to build the future, I send tremendous love and success to everyone involved in the production.”

The Conners Season 5, which also stars Lecy Goranson, Sara Gilbert, and Laurie Metcalf, will premiere on September 21 on ABC.

Don’t Worry Darling Press Con in Venice Stops Shia LaBeouf Question

Music Observer Staff on September 12, 2022

Don’t Worry Darling launches itself to the world at the Venice Film Festival in Italy, meaning filmmaker Olivia Wilde and her cast has no choice but to face the press.

Wilde faced a few direct questions during the press conference about the controversy involving stars Florence Pugh and Shia LaBeouf that has drawn pop culture movie fans for weeks. The director came with cast members Harry Styles, Chris Pine, and Gemma Chan when a reporter queried her about LaBeouf’s previous statements involving the production.

LaBeouf was originally part of Don’t Worry Darling, a thriller film set in the 1950s, but he exited the project later.

Wilde previously stated that he departed as the actor “was not conducive to the ethos that I demand in my productions,” according to Variety.

LaBeouf repulsed these statements that implied he was fired and offered Variety with text conversations and a clip of Wilde calling Pugh “Ms. Flo” (that has been leaked since) to show evidence he quit due to lack of rehearsal time.

Reporters Rant on Don’t Worry Darling Press

The Hollywood Reporter’s Alex Ritman tried to ask Wilde a question about LaBeouf at the Venice press conference; however, the moderator interfered. They stated that Wilde had previously talked about the “tabloid gossip”: “It’s on the internet.”

“Well, I just tried to ask Olivia Wilde a question about Shia LaBeouf at the DON’T WORRY DARLING press conference, but the festival wouldn’t let me,” Ritman wrote on Twitter after the event.

Earlier, another reporter had asked Wilde about Pugh, who was interestingly absent for the conference although she has the leading role. But the latter appeared as planned on the Venice red carpet.

“The internet feeds itself,” Wilde said, per the Associated Press report. “I don’t need to contribute; I think it’s significantly well-nourished.”

She praised Pugh as “a force” and thanked her for arriving at Venice for the film’s promotion, although she had commitments with the sequel of Dune.

Timothée Chalamet, also involved in Dune 2, showed up in Venice for a short appearance. He arrived to support his film Bones and All with his Call Me By Your Name filmmaker Luca Guadagnino.

Wilde and her cast still have much time with the press as they take on the promotional tour for Don’t Worry Darling. But no one knows how they will or won’t talk about the reports of the drama behind the camera from now on.

Phoenix Reveals New Album Alpha Zulu

Music Observer Staff on September 12, 2022

Phoenix has revealed its first album over the past five years.

Alpha Zulu, the follow-up to 2017’s Ti Amo, will drop on November 4 through Loyaute/Glassnote. It is self-produced by Phoenix and recorded at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris’ Palais du Louvre.

At this moment, the band has dropped the most recent single, “Tonight,” – which features a duet with Ezra Koenig from Vampire Weekend – from Alpha Zulu.

Additionally, Phoenix has released a visual for the song, which Oscar Boyson directs.

“Tonight” is the first song from Phoenix with a guest vocalist. The music video was filmed in Tokyo and Paris, partially inside the Musée des Arts Décoratifs studio.

“We felt it would be a fantastic adventure to create something out of nothing in a museum,” band member Laurent “Branco” Brancowitz told the press regarding the space. “And so with the pandemic, we could live exactly this scene to be alone in an empty museum.”

Christian Mazzalai added: “I was a bit afraid when there was too much beauty around us that creating something could be a bit hard.

“But it was the opposite: we couldn’t stop producing music. In these first ten days, we wrote almost all of the album.”

Deck D’Arcy even stressed that “the backstage of the museum is like a mashup. It’s very pop in a way – like how we make music.”

Phoenix Cherishes a Dear Friend

Earlier this year, Phoenix has already released the title track of Alpha Zulu. In addition, they dropped the single “Identical,” which was heard in Sofia Coppola’s latest film, On the Rocks, in 2020. (Coppola and Phoenix’s Thomas Mars are married.)

Meanwhile, in 2019, the band dropped a book, Phoenix: Liberté, Égalité, Phoenix!

Alpha Zulu was mainly based on the band’s late friend and collaborator Philippe Zdar, who died in 2019.

“We lost more than ever, almost,” Christian stated of Zdar. “We had many moments where we could feel his ideas. Jeté, that’s a word he would say when you’re throwing something very fast.”