My new favourite telly show is the glorious Everything I Know About Love on BBC One, a feel-good adaptation of the best-selling Dolly Alderton book, which stars the brilliant Bel Powley. Not only does she play a Jewish girl, Birdy, but, even better, she plays a Jew who is pretty normal. Even rarer.
“As soon as I read the book, I thought, ‘if this gets made into a TV show, I want to play her,’” Bel tells me of the character based on Dolly’s real-life Jewish best friend. “I related so much to her because I’m Jewish, I’m organised and I can be a bit particular. Like Birdy’s, my mother [casting agent Janis Joffa] is your archetypal Jewish mother. But I also loved the idea of just having a normal Jewish woman depicted in the show. She isn’t defined by her ethnicity and I found that quite exciting.
“However, it did make me laugh that Birdy’s dream job is at John Lewis. My grandma was obsessed with going for lunch at the John Lewis café. I’m not sure if that’s a Jewish thing or a my-family thing, but it did make me laugh.”
Bel, who stole every scene she was in from Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon in The Morning Show, is a busy girl. Her next role is playing courageous Dutch woman Miep Gies, who hid Anne Frank’s family from the Nazis, in A Small Light for Disney+, and she’s currently making the much-hyped Masters of the Air, Steven Spielberg’s follow-up to Band of Brothers, in which she plays a British spy.
Bel Powley
Bel Powley in BBC One's Everything I Know About Love
Meanwhile, over in the US, the Jewface row rumbles on. Bradley Cooper has donned prosthetics to play Leonard Bernstein in a Netflix biopic called Maestro, also produced by Spielberg.
Jewish actor Jake Gyllenhaal has spoken about his disappointment that his own planned Bernstein biopic — which he’d been hoping to do for 20 years — was overlooked by the Bernstein estate because of Cooper’s project.
“The story and the idea of playing one of the most pre-eminent Jewish artists in America and his struggle with his identity was in my heart for some 20-odd years but sometimes these things don’t work out,” sighs Gyllenhaal.
Elsewhere, Irish Peaky Blinders actor Cillian Murphy has lost more than a stone to play Jewish physicist J Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, in a Christopher Nolan biopic about his life. And as noted in the JC last week, Christoph Waltz is playing Hollywood director Billy Wilder. I don’t think every Jewish character should needs to be played by a Jew, but wouldn’t it be nice if a few more were?
Madonna bootcamp
That doesn’t mean, however, that Jewish stars should be confined to Jewish roles. A hearty mazel tov to Julia Garner, who has landed the role of Madonna in the Queen of Pop’s self-produced biopic.
And when I say mazel, she is going to need a lot of it. Madonna is a well-known perfectionist who has already put Julia and other contenders — including British Oscar nominee Florence Pugh — through a “bootcamp”, rehearsing for up to 11 hours a day, learning to dance and sing like the star. While bootcamps aren’t unusual when preparing for a role, they are practically unheard of when it comes to simply auditioning for a part. It is, perhaps, a sign of what is to come, with Madonna reading with the auditionees, dancing with them and hearing them sing.
Julia Garner
Julia Garner has landed the role of Madonna in the Queen of Pop’s self-produced biopic (Photo: Getty Images)
Julia comes from a talented family; her Israeli mother, Tami Gingold, was a successful TV comic in her native Israel. Julia found fame in Netflix hit Ozark and as the star of the streamer’s Inventing Anna. While Julia’s acting prowess isn’t in doubt, the only time she’s sung publicly was for a few seconds, on a 2020 Jimmy Fallon interview, where she showed an unmistakeable brilliance in musical impressions of Britney Spears and Gwen Stefani.
The eagerly awaited film opens with the start of Madonna’s career as a dancer, follows her as she become a ground-breaking singer and actress, and finishes at her 1990 Blonde Ambition tour. Not only is the Vogue singer the subject of the biopic but she is also the producer, co-writer and director.
Newman love fest
This is my second showbusiness column for the JC and it’s about time we had most beautiful Jewish man who ever lived in it.
Film legend Paul Newman and his wife Joanne Woodward are the stars of an exciting new documentary series, being made by Martin Scorsese and Ethan Hawke, called The Last Movie Stars.
The project will focus on their enduring 50-year love story, which started in 1957 when the pair acted in the film The Long, Hot Summer together and lasted until Newman’s death in 2008.
Newman 2.jpg
Paul Newman (pictured in 1963)
Jews in the news
Nicholas Hytner will direct an immersive version of Guys & Dolls at the Bridge Theatre from February.
The search is on for a young actress to star as Amy Winehouse in a film about her life that has been sanctioned by her parents, Mitch and Janis.
Tickets now on sale: fresh from his Olivier Award-winning success in Cabaret, Elliot Levey will be starring in a two-hander with David Tennant in Good, a timely reimagining of CP Taylor’s play at the Harold Pinter Theatre from 6 October. The story centres on John Halder, a liberal German professor who gets swept up by Nazism and comes to justify the persecution of the Jewish people. Elliot stars as his Jewish psychoanalyst.
I spied Matt Lucas dancing at the opening night of the stupendous and strange Abba Voyage. He declared the must-see hologram extravaganza as “the greatest show on Earth”.
It’s one of the biggest hits on Amazon Prime and The Boys creator Eric Kripke says the violent superhero satire has become a place for him to “put my rage”.
He adds: “There’s a lot of things out there that are upsetting to me; it’s a satire about the world we live in.”
