“I really find satisfaction with looking at my calendar and figuring out what time I have certain things. But I also don’t force myself to do anything. I’m a daydreamer.” Just before quarantine started, Elle Fanning was set to fly to Budapest with her older sister, Dakota, to start shooting the World War II film The Nightingale, based on the 2015 novel by Kristin Hannah, which will mark the sisters’ first

The writer behind ‘The Favourite’ penned a bawdy, satirical and not-so-accurate tale: “We actually pride ourselves on the lack of historical accuracy,” says Fanning with a laugh. Lying atop the red velvety covers of an ornate four-poster bed in a gold-soaked set on a rainy day in London, a sickly looking Nicholas Hoult takes swigs from a bottle of water between takes. “Men love me for my parties, women and …

The star and executive producer of the bawdy historical comedy on boundaries, blood, and bare bottoms. The Character: Catherine the Great, The Great In The Great’s first episode, a pink-cheeked Catherine (Elle Fanning) pilots a flower-entwined swing and burbles to a friend about how romantic her wedding to Russian Emperor Peter III (Nicholas Hoult) will be. But after Catherine is delivered from her sleepy German village to the Russian palace,

The English actor Sebastian de Souza knows a thing or two about making an entrance. Take, for example, his first scene on Hulu’s The Great, in which Peter (Nicholas Hoult) asks—well, orders—Leo, De Souza’s character, to pull his pants down to assess his, er, talents. Leo’s role is to please and entertain Catherine the Great, played deliciously by Elle Fanning in the series that draws loosely from the life of

While promoting his Oscar-nominated work on 2018’s The Favourite, writer Tony McNamara expressed a dissatisfaction with period drama. Industry insiders were surprised, then, when his follow-up project turned out to be Hulu’s The Great, a darkly comic satire charting the rise of Catherine the Great from outsider to the longest-reigning female ruler in Russian history. Starring Elle Fanning as Catherine and Nicholas Hoult as her husband Peter, the show is

With hundreds of scripted shows on television each year, producers are increasingly leaning on existing IP and new takes on established figures to lure viewers in. This allows deeper, more unique takes on characters that may not have been explored extensively in the past. But for the performers portraying them, it brings a different challenge, as they have to carve out a space for themselves amidst the previous perception of

Elle is featured in The Hollywood Reporter’s Comedy Actress Roundtable with Tiffany Haddish, Jane Levy, Jameela Jamil, Robin Thede and Amy Sedaris. The actresses were asked to share a personal picture for the article, and Elle choose a photo taken by Max Minghella. Via

If you’re put off by stuffy biodramas of kings and queens, don’t fear the period series “The Great.” Rest assured: so is the show’s creator. “I hate period things. Everything I wrote was contemporary,” says Tony McNamara, the Australian TV veteran and Oscar-nominated screenwriter of “The Favourite.” So of course his new Hulu show is set in 1740s Russia and is about Catherine (you know, … the Great). “I read about

If history was taught the way that The Great teaches history, we might be in better shape. The Hulu series doesn’t concern itself with telling a historically accurate biography of Catherine the Great, but it gives us a captivating heroine to root for in the performance by Elle Fanning. While Fanning has grown up almost literally before our eyes, her performance as the Russian empress is bold, sexy, and cunning. At the