Lashana Lynch, Hamlet and why everyone is watching Squid Game

The Independent’s entertainment newsletter [View in browser]( [The Independent]( October 09, 2021 [The Independent]( Written by Alexandra Pollard The IndyArts Newsletter Hello and welcome back to this week’s IndyArts newsletter. Everyone's talking about Squid Game this week. The South Korean drama has been a surprise hit for Netflix, and my colleague Louis Chilton [thinks it's exposed just how mediocre most shows on the streaming platform are](. "Time was when [Netflix]( would have killed for a hit like [Squid Game](. The South Korean survival drama – about an elaborate contest pitting desperate debtors against one another in a series of deadly children’s games – has cut through the cluttered TV landscape like a machete. Back in late September, nine days after its release, Netflix boss Ted Sarandos claimed there was a “very good chance” Squid Game would become the streaming service’s most watched series ever. Since then, it has remained stubbornly fixed to the top of the charts in its native Korea, in the UK, and around the world. Once it gets its hooks – or should that be tentacles? – in you, there’s simply no letting go." [Drag Race]( Squid Game is the first Korean-language series to be No 1 on Netflix's global charts Meanwhile, [Adam White spoke to Barbara Hershey, star of Beaches and Black Swan,](about being drawn to the dark side, how a teenage incident with a seagull got ‘sensationalised’ by the press, and ageing: “I always say that I’m not afraid of ageing – I’m afraid of other people’s reaction to my ageing," she told him. "I’ve witnessed nursing homes and how they treat people, and how we treat older people. If we treat them like children, they start acting like children. Our society isn’t very kind to people as they get older.” [The Saturday Interview – Lashana Lynch]( [Oscars image]( Lynch took on the vaunted 007 moniker in the newly released No Time to Die This week’s Saturday Interview is with Lashana Lynch, the star of the recently released No Time to Die speaks with Annabel Nugent about taking on the prestigious 007 moniker, the importance of her Jamaican heritage and her arresting role in debbie tucker green’s searing new film eye for eye. [Oscars image]( Lynch reprises her role from 2018's critically acclaimed play ear for eye by debbie tucker green Read an extract from our Saturday Interview below… In ear for eye by debbie tucker green, the Bafta-winning playwright of lower-case initials and capital letter ambitions, Lynch stars as a college student opposite Demetri Gorsitsas’s grossly patronising white male professor. It’s a role she has played before. In the 2018 stage production, Lynch was part of an (almost) all-Black cast performing vignettes about police racism in the US and the UK. It was momentous. And it remains so now in its film adaptation by the BFI and BBC. Not just for its contents but for its timing. ear for eye was shot in 2020, the year that saw a worldwide Black Lives Matter movement. Indeed, the ideas raised, in which Lynch’s character is verbally railroaded by an older white man who belittles, interrupts and gaslights her at every turn, feel like vital viewing. But Lynch is careful not to overhype the achievement. “Of course, I celebrate it,” she concedes. “But I refuse to be elated about one project with an all-Black cast. That’s not good enough for me or for my career.” “The world is so used to giving Black people the scraps,” she says. “Saying congratulations, you’ve got your one and now we can move on. Most studios I’ve met with, most theatres I’ve sat in and worked in, have had their one Black play, their one Black film or their one Black lead and they feel really happy with themselves. And they shouldn’t and we should tell them they shouldn’t.” Change won’t be made with just “one a year”. Although I can’t confirm it, the actor’s eye-roll is almost audible. [Read the full interview here]( What to binge this week [Oscars image]( Kirstin Dunst stars in On Becoming A God in Central Florida [On Becoming A God In Central Florida]( It looks like Kirsten Dunst might finally be getting the recognition she's always deserved, thanks to her extraordinary in Jane Campion's forthcoming film The Power of the Dog. She's excellent, too, in On Becoming A God In Central Florida, as a Nineties water-park employee who becomes embroiled in a pyramid scheme to make some desperately needed cash after her husband is eaten by a crocodile. Think Breaking Bad, but a little bit sillier. Out and about [Hamlet, Young Vic]( Though our theatre critic Ava Wong Davies was not hugely impressed with this production, she was impressed by Cush Jumbo's take on Hamlet: "smart, lean and cool, occasionally whipped into feverish excitement, haunted by his task to kill his uncle, and with flashes of blackly comic timing". Buy tickets [here](. [The Mirror and the Light, Gielgud Theatre]( In his five-star review, Paul Taylor wrote: "The Mirror and the Light dramatises – supremely well – the concluding volume in [Hilary Mantel](’s award-winning trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, the son of a Putney blacksmith who rose to be the fixer-in-chief at the court of King Henry VIII". Buy tickets [here](. [The Last 5 Years, Garrick Theatre]( I saw this production of Jason Robert Brown's brilliant, underrated musical at the Southwark Playhouse last year, and enjoyed it immensely. It's now on in the West End for a limited time – I thoroughly recommend it. More information [here](. Essential reading [Editor’s letter: Space – the film industry’s final frontier]( [Editor’s letter: Space – the film industry’s final frontier]( [Durham, Bradford and Cornwall on UK 2025 City of Culture longlist]( [Durham, Bradford and Cornwall on UK 2025 City of Culture longlist]( [35 best movies to stream from Raiders of the Lost Ark to City of God]( [35 best movies to stream from Raiders of the Lost Ark to City of God]( If you can spare a minute we’d love your [feedback]( on our newsletters. [The Independent]( Join the conversation or follow us [Facebook]( [Twitter]( Please do not reply directly to this email You are currently registered to receive The Independent's entertainment newsletter. Add us to your safe list of senders. If you do not want to receive The Independent's entertainment newsletter, please [unsubscribe](list_name=IND_Culture_Newsletter_CDP). If you no longer wish to receive any newsletters or promotional emails from The Independent, you can unsubscribe [here](. 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