Welcome to this week’s “Just for PvNew.”
“And Just Like That …” will not only look like “Sex and the City” for a new generation, with Nicole Ari Parker, Sara Ramírez, Sarita Choudhury and Karen Pittman joining the cast, but the HBO Max reboot will also tackle issues around race. “I’m excited to be a part of something that’s different for them,” Parker tells me. “We can talk about the elephant in the room that there were no fully fleshed-out characters of color, but now here’s the four of us. We’re real people, and they’ve been great to work with, and some of our [storylines] deal with race and deal with real experiences. It’s New York City!”
The series, of course, will bring back some of its signature sexiness as well. “We’re grown-ass women, so we know how to keep it sexy,” Parker says, smiling. “It’s piping hot.”
Jennifer Hudson hasn’t returned to Broadway since making her debut in the 2015 revival of “The Color Purple,” but JHud is itching for more. “I don’t know what that project will be, but I do want to see me back on Broadway,” the “Respect” star tells me. “It just has to be the right project, and I want to be involved in more ways than just being on the stage. I want to produce.”
How about directing? “Maybe,” she says. “I want to expand myself and approach it from many angles.”
…
EXCLUSIVE: I’ve got the scoop on this year’s InStyle Awards honorees. They are Simone Biles, Melissa McCarthy, stylists Jason Boden and Samantha McMillen, designers Michael Kors and Anifa Mvuemba, makeup artist Nina Park, hairstylist Lona Vigi and U.S. Rep. Katie Porter. Presenters at the Nov. 15 event at the Getty Center will include Zoë Kravitz, Elle Fanning, Reese Witherspoon, Kate Hudson and Christian Louboutin. “AtInStyle, we celebrate the brilliant, creative and yes, stylish voices who drive the culture forward,” InStyle editor-in-chief Laura Brown tells me. “We couldn’t be more excited that the InStyle Awards will return—bigger, better and with the infamous [photo-op] elevator! — in November.”
…
Get to know Saniyya Sidney! Not only is the 14-year-old actor earning awards buzz for her performance as Venus Williams in “King Richard” (she was recently honored as one of PvNew‘s 10 Actors to Watch), but she is one beautiful, gracious and humble young woman. When I met her recently for the first time at Elle’s Women in Hollywood dinner, she recalled her first day on the set of “King Richard” with Will Smith, who stars as Venus and Serena Williams’ dad and coach, Richard. “We were singing and laughing and rapping ‘Summertime,’” Sidney says. “I was like, ‘What is going on right now? Oh, my gosh. This is actually happening!’ It was fun, and he was just so down-to-earth.”
