12/08/2025

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Malaysian Paper

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Nostalgic laughs S TEPPING into the body of a British teenage girl trying to hide her emotional pain was tricky for actor Jamie Lee Curtis, who reprised her role from the movie Freaky Friday , along with Lindsay Lohan, for the sequel Freakier Friday . o Freakier Friday goes bolder with body swaps

While navigating a new blended family, Tess and Anna experience an even bigger body swap spell that threatens to tear the future of the family apart. While Freaky Friday had one body swap, Freakier Friday takes things to the next level when Anna swaps with her daughter and Tess swaps with her soon-to-be granddaughter. Things were so confusing during the script table readings that Curtis made everyone wear hats to help them remember with whom their body had been swapped. “As soon as the switch happened, we put on hats that had the new name so that you could understand,” Curtis said. However, she noted that later when it was the ensemble of women and girls working on-camera together with less “cooks in the kitchen”, things felt less complicated. As a mum in real life and in the film, Lohan found compassion for her character’s parenting journey. “It was refreshing to play Anna and show her off in a different light, where she is not grumpy and yelling at her mum, and where she can be “I have always been very protective of the character. I just want to make sure that we are always doing her justice. It is the most we have ever seen her on screen so there is a lot of room and opportunity to maybe go off track. “Fortunately, we have a really great creative team. I am doing my best to be on it, but you also have people such as Tim, who are monitoring,” said Ortega. The second season sees Wednesday returning to Nevermore Academy as a celebrated hero, much to her dismay. She investigates new supernatural mysteries, while

“We laboured to make sure that we came up with tics and behaviours and words that would help you know that we have switched into each other,” Curtis said, referring to the body switch Tess has with her future step-granddaughter named Lily, played by Sophia Hammons. Disney’s Freakier Friday , in cinemas now, continues the story of a dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship that was introduced by Curtis and Lohan in the 2003 movie. The 2003 comedy film became a cult classic for American millennials, embedded in popular culture. Twenty-two years after Tess and her daughter Anna Coleman, played by Lohan, had their bodies swapped, Anna now has a daughter and a British soon-to-be stepdaughter. ACTRESS Jenna Ortega and the creators of the hit Netflix series Wednesday are hoping to surpass expectations as the show returns to screens after almost three years. The dark fantasy series’ first season, which premiered in November 2022, ranks as Netflix’s most popular English-language show of all time, with more than 252 million views in the first 91 days of release. As well as reprising the titular role, Ortega, 22, took on executive producer duties for the new season. Filmmaker Tim Burton also returns as one of the directors and executive producers.

Curtis, who plays Tess in the film, attends its premiere in Los Angeles.

Lohan said. Lohan said it was special to have Curtis’ guidance on how to balance real-life mum duties with acting work while they filmed the movie. – Reuters

struggling, trying to manage her daughter and being a mum. “Now, bringing that to the role was exciting for me, because it is a role I have never played before. I was able to take things from home and daily life moments and put them to Anna,”

See also page 25

Wednesday returns with family, female-focused season two

dealing with glitches in her psychic powers. Wednesday also faces another nuisance – family. Her little brother Pugsley starts his studies at Nevermore and their parents are a frequent presence on campus. Bringing the Addams Family to the academy allowed co-creators and showrunners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar to expand the storylines of the characters introduced in the first season and explore mother-daughter dynamics. “We thought, would that not be, for Wednesday, the ultimate thorn in her side if Morticia (her mother) came to school,”

said Millar. Catherine Zeta-Jones, who plays Morticia, promised fast-paced scenes between the two. “It is a dance and a play of emotions,” Zeta-Jones said. The season’s focus on female relationships stood out as one of its stronger points for Ortega. “We are so oftentimes taught to compete against one another and there is always some sort of comparing game that people are going to enforce on you. What I love about the women I am working with and the characters, every woman in this show wants to see the other succeed. I think that is really important for young people to see today,” Ortega said. The sophomore season also introduces new characters, including Steve Buscemi’s Nevermore principal Barry Dort and the Addams family matriarch Grandmama Hester Frump, played by Joanna Lumley. Pop star Lady Gaga makes a guest star appearance as a teacher in Part Two. Wednesday has already been renewed for a third season, with Gough and Millar in the writers’ room “cooking that up” and ready to go beyond. “We have goalposts for other things. There could be spinoffs, there could be other iterations of the show. It is such a big world. We are excited to explore it as much as we can,” Millar said. Wednesday season two will be released in two four-episode instalments, with Part One having dropped on Aug 6 and Part Two out on Sept 3. – Reuters

Burton returns as one of the series’ directors and executive producers.

Ortega says she has always been very protective of her character Wednesday. – ALL PICS FROM REUTERS