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Kristen Wiig Weds Freaks and Geeks Scribes

BuzzSugar — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 10:35:48 PST

Hooray - Kristen Wiig is officially a Hollywood leading lady! The SNL fixture has already proven herself worthy with secondary roles in Adventureland, Whip It, and, lest we forget, her hilarious turn in Knocked Up as a jealous E! employee. Now, quite deservedly, she's getting her very own vehicle.

Wiig co-wrote and will star in the comedy, tentatively titled Bridesmaids, which centers around two friends competing to plan a friend's wedding party (sounds a bit like a sequel to Bride Wars). The best part of all: the Freaks and Geeks team of Judd Apatow and Paul Feig are reteaming for the project; Feig will direct, while Apatow is set to produce.

As a Freaks and Geeks nerd, I couldn't be happier about this reunion - and with Wiig starring, the film has serious potential to be hilarious. Thanks to her burgeoning film career, I wouldn't be surprised to see her saying sayonara to SNL. Do you think she has the chops to handle a leading role?

Freaks and Geeks Speak: Part Three

BuzzSugar — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:30:23 PST

Over the weekend, a group of Freaks and Geeks alumni - cast members Linda Cardellini, John Francis Daley, Samm Levine, Martin Starr, Busy Philipps, Dave (Gruber) Allen, and Steve Bannos and creator Paul Feig - took the stage at San Francisco's Sketchfest to share their memories of the great, underappreciated show. I was there, and this week, I'm sharing some of their best stories with you. I've already told you how the series got started and passed on some tales from the set. In today's final installment, I have trivia from the show, plus news on everyone's new projects. Here goes:

Linda Cardellini still has the green Army jacket that was practically a part of her body when she played Lindsay. "I thought about bringing it," she told the audience, "but I thought I might look like a gigantic loser."
Sarah Hagan, who played the conservative Millie, was apparently a shocking amount like her character. Cardellini recalled that in one scene, Millie was supposed to ask Lindsay if Kim "fornicates," but Hagan (who, Cardellini recalled, hadn't talked much about sex at that time) accidentally asked if she "fornicated it." That take ended up in the show.
Busy Philipps only did the show because she ran into Cardellini in the airport in LA shortly before the show was supposed to start. Philipps' agent had been against her taking the role of Kim Kelly because it was initially only a guest spot for the pilot, but Cardellini - whom she'd known in college - insisted that working together would be fun.
Samm Levine and Martin Starr were both terrible about learning their lines and would typically just cram the morning of the shoot.
Linda mastered the art of never eating food on screen; in the dinner scenes, she mostly just pushes her food around and gestures with it, which Paul Feig pointed out is "very teenage girl." She said it was all because of an early job where she didn't realize that if she ate food in one take, she'd need to eat in every take; that experience turned her off lasagna for 10 years. Philipps said it took a Freaks and Geeks scene where she ate more than a dozen donuts over the course of shooting for her to learn that lesson.

To hear my favorite story from the whole discussion and see where you can find your favorite Freaks and Geeks now, just

Selma Blair Heads to TV for NBC's Kath and Kim

BuzzSugar — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 11:30:13 PST

Selma Blair has been focusing on her film career for years, but now she's headed back to the small screen. After a long search, NBC has tapped her to play opposite Molly Shannon in the comedy Kath and Kim.

The show, based on an award-winning Australian series, focuses on the dysfunctional relationship between a mother, Kath (Shannon), and her daughter, Kim (Blair). It's been a high priority at NBC for a while: The network first picked up the pilot a year ago, and NBC entertainment co-chairman Ben Silverman was talking it up way back at last summer's TCA, but it was reportedly tough to find the right actresses for the leads. The series comes from Silverman's production company, Reveille, which also adapted The Office and Ugly Betty for US television.

This is Blair's first regular TV role since her breakout appearance as Zoe on the WB's Zoe, Duncan, Jack & Jane back in 1999. Can you see her playing Shannon's daughter? To watch part of an original Kath and Kim episode, just

Freaks and Geeks Speak: Part Two

BuzzSugar — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 09:30:40 PST

Over the weekend, a group of Freaks and Geeks alumni - cast members Linda Cardellini, John Francis Daley, Samm Levine, Martin Starr, Busy Philipps, Dave (Gruber) Allen, and Steve Bannos and creator Paul Feig - took the stage at San Francisco's Sketchfest to share their memories of the great, underappreciated show. I was there, and this week, I'm sharing some of their best stories with you. Yesterday, I told you how the series got started; today, I have tales of what it was like on set:

While it seems like the whole cast genuinely likes each other now, that wasn't always the case. "It was really too much like high school sometimes," Cardellini said, with cliques and alliances forming and disbanding.
Daley said at the time of the show, he was "14 years old and alone," and the big kids wouldn't let him hang out with them. But, he acknowledged, it probably would have been weird to have a young teenager hanging out with actors who were out of high school.
Some of the nastiest disputes on the set came between Philipps and James Franco. At the time, Philipps said, they could barely even speak to each other: "It was legendary how much we hated each other."

To hear about the biggest dispute Philipps and Franco ever had, and to see where the characters might have gone had there been a season two, just

Freaks and Geeks Speak: Part One

BuzzSugar — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 14:31:04 PST

Over the weekend, a group of Freaks and Geeks alumni - cast members Linda Cardellini, John Francis Daley, Samm Levine, Martin Starr, Busy Philipps, Dave (Gruber) Allen, and Steve Bannos and creator Paul Feig - took the stage at San Francisco's Sketchfest to share their memories of the great, underappreciated show. I was there, and over the next few days, I'm going to share some of their best stories with you. Let's get started:

Paul Feig said that when the series began, all of the writers filled out questionnaires about their own best, worst, and most memorable high school experiences. When someone came up with something truly awful, Feig said, his reaction was: "Oh, that's a terrible story! We'll use that on the show!"
Cardellini, who played geek-turned-freak Lindsay Weir, said sometimes she'd think the stories were so awful or out there, they had to be made up. "Then you would look at Paul, and you'd see the earnest look on his face and the sadness in his eyes, and you'd realize that most of this happened to Paul."
Feig said he set the show in 1980s Michigan largely because that's what he knew best, but he also had a few specific reasons for that setting: He wanted it to be set in pre-AIDS times so that people were afraid of having sex because they were afraid of sex itself; he wanted his show to be pre-cell phone because technology restricts interpersonal interactions; and he wanted to show Midwestern life because it's so common and real.

More, including Feig's inspiration for Lindsay, if you

Feig said most of the characters were based on people he knew, but Lindsay was a composite character based largely on his own journey. He had been raised in a religious household, and at the time he created Freaks and Geeks, he was turning toward atheism. "Any crisis I was going through at the moment," he said, "I put onto Lindsay."
Feig believes that if the show had premiered a couple of years later, it might still be on the air. It came on right in the middle of game show mania, and it would get pummeled by Who Wants to be a Millionaire and was replaced by NBC's attempt to revive 21. It was one of the lowest-rated shows on NBC at the time, but it was still getting 7 million viewers a week, more than some current network shows.
Some members of the cast said they realized what an unusual experience it was to work on Freaks and Geeks. John Francis Daley, on the other hand, said he thought it was the norm to do shows that good, ". . . and then I did The Geena Davis Show." Busy Philipps said she didn't realize how tough things were on normal network TV shows until she appeared on Dawson's Creek, where she was told that it didn't matter if she screwed up because they'd just cut to Katie Holmes anyway.
Feig said making the show was so touch-and-go that they approached each episode as a stand-alone independent film. The final episode that aired, "Discos and Dragons," was actually shot out of sequence, so it would always be there to close the series.

Tomorrow: cliques on the set, hopes for a second season, and a fantastic James Franco story, courtesy of Busy Philipps. Source

Bridesmaids Helps Bring Us "Out of the Dark Ages"

Annie Scudder — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:18:20 PST

Bridesmaids is getting lots of love tonight at the Critics' Choice Awards, including winning the best comedy award! The women-driven comedy was considered exceptional for winning over both critics and audiences, but director Paul Feig told PopSugar that he thinks the trend is here to stay. On tonight's red carpet, Feig pointed to the 1930s and '40s when great female movie stars had smart roles on par with their male counterparts, and said the success of Bridesmaids and the plethora of new women-driven TV suggests we're "coming out of the Dark Ages." As for a Bridesmaids sequel, costar Wendi McLendon-Covey say it could happen, "If Kristen [Wiig] and Annie [Mumolo] ever have a free moment again." See shots of the Bridesmaids crew at tonight's show.

The Bridesmaids Team Talks Male Strippers and a Potential Sequel

Lindsay Miller — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 19:04:46 PST

Several of the ladies from Bridesmaids and two of the guys behind the scenes - director Paul Feig and producer Judd Apatow - stopped by the press room after picking up their award for best comedy at tonight's Critics' Choice Awards. Kristen Wiig wasn't on hand to join her costars, but her writing partner Annie Mumolo got a moment in the spotlight as the group stopped to chat with reporters backstage. The team, which also included Maya Rudolph, Ellie Kemper, and Wendi McLendon-Covey, addressed rumors of a Bridesmaids 2 and dished on a bonding trip the women took to a male strip club. Judd kicked things off by giving one reporter a friendly ribbing when he asked if the cast ad-libbed on set.

Judd on a possible sequel: "Bridesmaids 2! Now we're getting to the meat of this. Will we ad lib on Bridesmaids 2? No. We will consider it. We'll have some meetings and see if we can afford it. Bridesmaids 2. I mean, maybe if we come up with an amazing idea . . . . Well, we're busy right now writing Caddyshack 3."

Maya on her reaction to the win: "I feel pretty fantastic. I don't think anyone behind me that's looking at my butt right now would disagree, because the truth is, this movie is indeed special. So the way people have responded to this movie was above and beyond our expectations . . . We all love each other and each others' work a lot and we all know how deserving the other person is."

Annie on the cast's visit to a male strip club: "Kristen had a say in that as well, but yeah, we just thought it would be a good place to kind of break the ice, get people loose, and it's funny, because people really did come out of their shells when the men came out and took off their clothes. There were lots of theme attires, and oil, and rubbing. There was rubbing."

Link Time - Ryan Reynolds Gets Meta on Entertainment Weekly

BuzzSugar — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 13:30:56 PDT

Check out Ryan Reynolds's self-penned EW cover story! - PopWatch
See two new Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 posters - Moviefone
Watch the new Muppets teaser spoofing Green Lantern - Zap2It
Find out which amazingly beloved reality series just earned a 20th season - AOL TV
The 15 most intense movie moments - Rotten Tomatoes
The Wolverine finally settles on director James Mangold - Vulture
Bridesmaids stars Jon Hamm and Melissa McCarthy might reteam for Paul Feig's next film - The Playlist
Shia LaBeouf is on the hunt for his next movie role - PopSugar