A “Blossom” reboot is well past the ideas stage. Mayim Bialik, who starred in the titular role of the 1990s sitcom, tells me series creator Don Reo has written a pilot for its return. “The show was supposed to be ‘Catcher in the Rye’ about a girl, which was unusual. And we’d like to do a reboot that’s unusual. We’d like to do a single cam,” Bialik says. “All of the cast is on board.”
However, it sounds like it’ll take more time to get things going than they were hoping. “It’s a set of conversations with Disney because there’s a lot of red tape and there’s a lot of complexity,” Bialik explains. “It’s complicated.”
Bialik revealed in an Instagram post this month that the reboot is in the works after talking about it during an appearance she and Reo made at Rhode Island’s Bryant University.
“Tony Thomas, who was our original EP, is on board. Paul Witt passed away, but we believe that Paul has been with us this whole time,” Bialik tells me. “My schedule has not been even open enough to think about it, but Don and I are finally ready to have more of a meaningful plan around it. And people ask me all the time about it. You know, we were an unusual show about a girl at that time. There were no network shows about girls. Everyone was like, ‘No one will watch that.’ And here we are.”
Bialik also weighed in on the announcement that Chuck Lorre is developing a new “Big Bang Theory” spinoff for HBO Max, which will become Max in May. “I was completely surprised,” she says. “My kids are like, ‘Mama, do you know anything about this?’ I promise, I don’t.”
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Just when you thought “The Boys” couldn’t push the envelope any further, star Antony Starr is teasing that Season 4 of the hit — and very bonkers — superhero series “somehow gets weirder and weirder and weirder.”
I caught up with the actor, who plays Homelander on the Amazon Prime Video show, at the L.A. premiere of his war drama “Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant.” “There has to be a ceiling, but we can’t seem to find it,” he says.
Starr can’t reveal spoilers about the season, but did recall shooting one scene: “I was looking at the person I was opposite, and I said, ‘What are we doing? I can’t believe this! I could have done anything else with my life, but here I am doing this?’ It was truly the most bizarre thing I’ve ever done.”
Season 4 filming wrapped this month, but a premiere date has not been announced.
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Chloé Zhao’s upcoming “Dracula” movie, which she is writing and directing, will be rooted in science. “We’re talking about immortality,” the Oscar-winning director tells me. “It’s one of the greatest topics of science.” Zhao’s research and preparation includes consulting with Jennifer A. Doudna, a biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020. “She discovered the technology for genome editing,” Zhao explains. “We want to examine immortality in a more present-day way because everyone wants to live forever.” Doudna is just one of the many scientists whom Zhao has gotten to know in the past few years. “Every Friday — it started during the pandemic — I spend two or three hours with someone from some field of science,” she says. “I think it’s so important because they get you to look at the world from a different perspective.”
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Trixie Mattel would love to see more outposts of her Palm Springs-located The Trixie Motel. “We’ve talked about doing one in Nashville and now that all this [anti-LGBTQ] legislation has come out, now I want three in Nashville,” the drag superstar tells me.
George Clooney is known for being one of the friendliest guys in Hollywood — and also for his work commitment. So much so that you won’t find him on his phone while filming. Chris Diamantopoulos appears in Clooney’s next directorial effort, “The Boys in the Boat,” a drama about the U.S. men’s rowing team at the 1936 Summer Olympics.
“That guy shows up on set without a phone and ready to get the work done,” Diamantopoulos, who plays sports reporter Royal Brougham, tells me. “I never saw him once with a phone. He’s talking to the actors, talking to the extras, the crew. He’s just so happy to be there. Prepared and not extraneous with his shots. I’d show up thinking, ‘Oh god, this scene? We’re going to have to do it this way and that way and then another way.’ But he’d just be like, ‘OK, I got a oner.’ He just knows what he needs.”
While Diamantopoulos, who can been seen in Peacock’s “Mrs. Davis,” received a “nice jacket and a bag” as a wrap present, he said his real wrap present was “six months of being with Clooney on set and listening to his Hollywood stories.”
