Gillian Anderson Is Developing New Role Based on a Historical Figure, Actor-Producer Tells Canneseries Audience

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle EditorMichelle Pfeiffer didn’t know much about Betty Ford before she signed on to play her in the new Showtime anthology series “The First Lady.”“I really only knew about, of course, the Betty Ford Center, which is I think what she’s the most famous for,” Pfeiffer told me at the show’s premiere on Thursday at the DGA building in Los Angeles. “And I knew that she came out and was open and transparent about her own issues with substance abuse and alcoholism, which was very, very taboo at the time.

The stars of The First Lady are hitting the red carpet!

A former “American Idol” contestant is out with a new song.

Kenedi Anderson may have just left American Idol after being noted as a surefire standout, but she appears to not be going anywhere from music. Just days after speaking about about leaving the show for “necessary” reasons, the teen shared a TikTok on Wednesday debuting a new song and the lyrics are … perhaps a little telling.

Ariana DeBose has landed a very exciting new role!

Three iconic actresses are playing three iconic women of history.

Gillian Anderson recalled the first time she met Bill Clinton and was charmed by the former president.

Gillian Anderson is looking back at the time she met Bill Clinton.

upcoming series, “The First Lady” — but she met a certain president way back when. The 53-year-old recalled meeting former President Bill Clinton back on his campaign trail in 1992 during a chat on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Tuesday evening. “The Crown” alum found herself attending a luncheon with the prez-to-be, now 75, 30 years ago. Anderson remembered being so awestruck by Clinton, that she wanted him to phone her afterwards.“He did the most miraculous thing in the world, he shakes your hand, then he grabs your elbow and at the same time he holds your arm further up,” she told host Kimmel, 54. The “X-Files” actress went on, “[It was a] slightly intimate little thing.

Caroline Framke Chief TV CriticAs Chicago lawyer Michelle Obama becomes First Lady Michelle Obama in Showtime’s newest drama, her predecessor Laura Bush offers some words of advice and comfort. “You may think you have nothing in common with the First Ladies before you,” Laura tells her, “[but] trust me when I say we all felt that way.” Here, Laura Bush acts as both some benign voice of reason (an odd choice) and also as a mouthpiece for “The First Lady” writ large (odder), which tackles the stories of three First Ladies who share little beyond the fact of living in the White House (oddest, by a mile).There’s Michelle, played by Viola Davis with Obama’s familiar cadence (if also some very exaggerated stenciled half-moon eyebrows).

Mark Wahlberg says gaining weight "took a toll" on him. The Hollywood actor had to pile on the pounds for his role in 'Father Stu' and he admits having to gain 30 pounds was very difficult for him, and he ate 11,000 calories a day to ensure he could put the weight on. He said: "I put on 30 pounds and went from being a guy who was in fighting shape to a guy who was wheelchair-bound, suffering from a rare muscular degenerative disease.

If Showtime’s new series “The First Lady” is to be believed, being the president’s wife is one of the most thankless and frustrating jobs on the planet. First ladies have given up their own ambitions, livelihoods, friends, and personalities, all in service of their presidential husbands.

EXCLUSIVE: BBC Studios has optioned the Eve Stranger comic book series and is developing into a TV show.

Gillian Anderson may have lost her usual composure as she searched for words on stage in Cannes on Friday to express what she felt about being given Variety’s 2022 Icon Award.Taking to the stage at the opening ceremony of French TV festival Canneseries to pick up the award, the star – soon to be seen in Showtime’s “The First Lady,” where she plays Eleanor Roosevelt – accepted Variety’s 2022 Icon Award with a mixture of elation and humility. Sporting an elegant multicoloured leather dress, she’d been greeted when walking to the stage by an enormous, heartfelt roar of applause from the packed main auditorium at Cannes’ legendary Palais des Festivals, also site of the Cannes Festival.  “I Googled what ‘icon’ actually meant to see how I identified with being given this award,” she said hesitantly, beginning her speech.“What I can certainly say is that I have played a lot of iconic women in my very long career. Women who have come through barriers and decades to stand above the rest in dramas and in our hearts,” Anderson said. And she listed just a few:: Dana Scully, Miss Havisham, Margo Channing, Blanche DuBois, Marilyn Monroe, Lucille Ball, Margaret Thatcher, Eleanor Roosevelt and David Bowie.

Emily Longeretta Gillian Anderson knows that “The X-Files” fans would love to see more of FBI agent Dana Scully. That doesn’t mean she’s interested in taking it on again.When she joined the original Fox series, which aired from 1993 to 2002, she was excited to take on the obscure role that was different from “pretty much everything else on television at the time,” says Anderson, who’s receiving Variety‘s Icon Award at CannesSeries.“I don’t think it was as clear-cut in my mind as being, ‘Oh, this is a feminist character,’” she told Variety‘s Manori Ravindran.

Manori Ravindran International EditorFew people can say their comfort zone is in playing strong women, but for Gillian Anderson, it ’s become something of a personal brand.The American-British actor, who was once best-known for her skeptical FBI agent Dana Scully in Fox’s long-running sci-fi hit “The X-Files,” has gone on to play detective Stella Gibson in “The Fall,” notorious British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in “The Crown” and sex therapist Jean Milburn in “Sex Education.” (And you wouldn’t want to cross any of them.)Anderson — who will receive the Variety Icon Award in a ceremony at CannesSeries on April 1 — will next be seen portraying the rarely dramatized Eleanor Roosevelt, opposite Viola Davis’ Michelle Obama and Michelle Pfeiffer’s Betty Ford, in Showtime’s drama “The First Lady.” But portraying no-nonsense women didn’t begin as a conscious choice for Anderson. In 1993, she recognized a “stark difference” between the Dana Scully role and “pretty much everything else on television at the time,” though, at age 24, she wouldn’t have labelled Scully as the feminist icon she’d come to represent.“I don’t think it was as clear-cut in my mind as being, ‘Oh, this is a feminist character,’” she says.

EXCLUSIVE: Time Studios has entered a shopping agreement with Niki Russ Federman and Josh Russ Tupper, fourth-generation members of the Russ family who now own its iconic New York culinary brand Russ & Daughters, to develop a scripted series examining its history and the family behind it.

It’s undeniable, Andrew Garfield is having a serious moment. Coming off an Oscar nomination for “tick, tick…BOOM!” and his appearance in “Spider-Man: No Way Home”— a part so beloved people are demanding that the actor get to finish out his ‘Spider-Man’ trilogy and or join Sony’s Spiderverse—Garfield feels like he’s bigger than ever these days.