Julia Roberts was at the premiere of her Amazon series Homecoming last night holding hands with co-star, and Canadian, Stephan James. As Kathleen posted earlier this month, Stephan James is about to break out. Homecoming premieres on November 2 and then, later in the month, Barry Jenkins’s If Beale Street Could Talk, the follow-up to his Oscar-winning Moonlight, will be released and it too is an Oscar contender. Sarah reviewed it at TIFF and it’s a devastatingly gorgeous piece of filmmaking. If Jack and Ally broke your heart, be prepared to be destroyed by Fonny and Tish.
Here are Stephan (pronounced Steff-AWN) and Julia having a moment on his IG story:
You know what Julia’s like when she’s fond of someone. She becomes like a crusader/protector/publicist/cheerleader. There is never a question when Julia is friends with someone that SHE is their BEST friend. Clearly she’s fond of Stephan. Julia Roberts is now his big sister. And she’s the kind of big sister who goes in hard with the support. Will Julia be out there caping for Beale Street and Stephan? He has an outside, outside shot at an Oscar nomination for his performance. It’s a loooongshot. But you’ll recall, she campaigned for Moonlight due to her friendship with Brad Pitt. And she might be on the Oscar campaign circuit herself with her performance in Ben is Back.
Ben is Back comes out in December. Lucas Hedges plays Ben, an addict who comes home from rehab and it’s a raw and candid portrayal of the effects of addiction and the opioid epidemic, how all of it is destroying families and communities. Julia is the best she’s been in a long, long, LONG time in this film. She is so f-cking good, her performance almost wrecked me. It is, in my opinion, a leading performance. As in the Best Actress category. However, we see this all the time – Oscar category shenanigans. The Best Actress category seems pretty stacked this year so I wonder if they’ll move Julia over to supporting; if they keep her in the Best Actress category, she’s up against Glenn Close, Olivia Colman, Melissa McCarthy, and Lady Gaga who all seem like locks at this point, and in a tight race for that fifth spot.
Speaking of Lady Gaga, as Duana mentioned in last week’s episode of Show Your Work, before we go on to talk about how much I thought Jake Gyllenhaal hated me, there was so much of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman in A Star is Born. The song, Pretty Woman is literally in the movie, and there’s that breakfast scene, with Gaga in the bathrobe and her leg hitched up which reminded us both of Vivian’s breakfast at the hotel. And of course thematically the whole Pygmalion vibe. During a recent interview with Access Hollywood, Julia was asked about Lady Gaga – specifically the suit that Gaga wore to the ELLE Women in Hollywood event last week.
Because, of course, Julia also wore a suit once, very famously. It was 1990. It was the Golden Globes! She won a Golden Globe in that suit!
