Anna Chlumsky, Marry Me and This Is Going To Hurt

The Independent’s entertainment newsletter [View in browser]( [The Independent]( February 12, 2022 [The Independent]( Written by Alexandra Pollard The IndyArts Newsletter Hello and welcome back to the Indy Arts Newsletter. [Marry Me]( – the Jennifer Lopez romcom that I was hoping might reinvigorate the long-neglected genre – is finally out in cinemas. [If Adam White's three-star review is anything to go by](, I might have to keep waiting for that. But I will still be buying a ticket. If you're a JLo fan, by the way, [check out Roisin O'Connor's piece]( on how the multi-hyphenate conquered music, romcoms and love in the spotlight. Jennifer Lopez is looking to revive the romcom genre with her new film 'Marry Me' (Getty/Shutterstock/The Independent) Meanwhile, having finally caught up with Succession (I know), [I've been watching This Is Going To Hurt this week](. The new BBC adaptation of Adam Kay's best-selling memoir about life as a gay doctor on the obstetrics and gynaecology ward – or "brats and twats", as Ben Whishaw's Adam wryly tells the camera – is both horribly stressful and brilliant. [I second Ed Cumming's five-star review.]( [The Saturday Interview – Anna Chlumsky]( [Oscars image]( Anna Chlumsky: ‘There is a patriarchal fear of women who can think for themselves, and make their own decisions’ (Tina Turnbow) This week’s Saturday Interview is with Anna Chlumsky. The Emmy-nominated star of Veep and Inventing Anna actor talked to Ed Cumming about the trauma of becoming a child star at 11 in My Girl, her thoughts on ‘creepy’ Marilyn Manson, and why she thinks ‘fake heiress’ Anna Sorokin would have been treated differently if she were a man... [Oscars image]( Chlumsky says she was 'in the mood to play a journalist' for the new Netflix series 'Inventing Anna' (Netflix) Read an extract from our Saturday Interview below… In 1991, when [Anna Chlumsky]( was 11, she was cast in My Girl opposite the boy wonder Macaulay Culkin. Culkin had broken out defending a break-in in Home Alone the year before. In My Girl, they played childhood friends in 1970s Pennsylvania, and Chlumsky more than matched her co-star for glowing charm. Audiences flocked to it. Chlumsky’s world exploded. After a normal childhood in Chicago, she was instantly famous, the centre of her family and the main breadwinner for her mother, whom she employed as her manager. For all the wealth and opportunity it brought, the experience was traumatic, she says, over Zoom from her home in New York. “I was lucky because I didn’t have any other huge traumas at the time. I’m the baseline of [child stardom] going relatively well. Yet it was only as an adult that I discovered any sense of reliability or security. When I was a child those did not exist, because I was for sale.” “There’s a huge societal blind spot about young people in the public eye,” she adds. “It’s not just actors and people in the public eye but athletes, musicians, even now these online personalities. Children don’t have agency. That’s one of the things they’re meant to be learning. So when you suddenly put professional, financial, adult and public – often sexualised – pressures on them, you not only open them up to a world that is commoditising and objectifying them. You’re also setting them back from their ability to develop. So when they are faced with [adult life], the tools aren’t there.” [Read the full interview here]( What to binge this week [Oscars image]( Erin Doherty plays stalker Becky in ‘Chloe’ (BBC) [Chloe]( The Crown's Erin Doherty brings a wonderfully barmy intensity to the role of Becky Green, a young woman who infiltrates the life of an influencer who recently died, in this superlative and indefinable thriller. "It seems – seems – to be a story about a very strange woman," wrote our critic Sean O'Grady in his five-star review, "someone who is part-[stalker](, part-Munchausen’s syndrome sufferer, part-fantasist, part-succubus, and entirely terrifying. An 'interesting' central character, then. You really do fear for those who come into contact with any of her various identities…" Out and about Anna Karenina – The Crucible Theatre, Sheffield A bold new production of Tolstoy’s epic masterpiece about desire, duty and defiance opens Sheffield Theatres’ 50th Anniversary Season. The cast includes Isis Davis playing Dolly, Nick Fletcher playing Karenin, and Solomon Israel playing Stiva. Buy tickets [here]( The Glad Game – Hampstead Theatre When Phoebe Frances Brown arrives on stage at the Hampstead Theatre, she isn’t hiding anything. Brown was diagnosed in 2018 with incurable brain cancer and as she greets the audience, she admits that she’s probably going to cry – and reassures us it’s OK if we cry too. [A Number – The Old Vic]( Caryl Churchill’s 2002 play, directed in this new production by Lyndsey Turner, reads like a proto-Black Mirror. Written in the wake of Dolly the sheep, it is about a son (Paapa Essiedu) who discovers that he has been cloned from the firstborn of his father (Lennie James) and that he may be one of up to 20 clones, thanks to a feckless doctor. Buy tickets [here]( Essential reading [Oscars 2022 to feature a different host for every hour]( [Oscars 2022 to feature a different host for every hour]( [Coventry: Welcome to the UK’s city of culture, where diversity is taking centre stage]( [Coventry: Welcome to the UK’s city of culture, where diversity is taking centre stage]( [Seth Rogen doesn’t get why movie people care so much about Oscar viewership]( [Seth Rogen doesn’t get why movie people care so much about Oscar viewership]( 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). 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