20 Questions On Deadline Podcast: ‘The Bear’s Jamie Lee Curtis Reveals ‘Kay Scarpetta’ Details, She’ll Be A Grandma In ‘Freaky Friday 2’ And Why ‘Borderlands’ Was “A Girl Power Trip”
My guest this week on 20 Questions on Deadline is Jamie Lee Curtis.
Freshly Emmy-nominated for her guest star turn in Season 2 of The Bear, Curtis dropped into the Deadline studio on a break during shooting Freaky Friday 2.
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On the podcast, she reminisced about making the first Freaky Friday 21 years ago, with a then-15-year-old Lindsay Lohan, and teased a little of what might happen in this sequel, admitting her role has evolved somewhat since last time. When I mention that Lohan has suggested her character might have a child this time around, Curtis said, “Well, that makes me a grandma, right? If Lindsay has a child that makes me a grandma!”
Curtis—who says she called Disney CEO Bob Iger herself to ask that this sequel be made—also hinted that the body swapping is especially fun this time around. In the previous film, mother and daughter (Curtis and Lohan) swapped bodies. This time, with Chad Michael Murray returning as the boyfriend character Jake, will he be involved in a swap? “That would be a movie,” Curtis said. “That would be a different sequel. No, I don’t swap with Jake. I’ll let everybody know that I’m not playing Jake. I can’t really say much. We’re right in the fat of it right now.”
It was also just exclusively reported by Deadline that Jordan E. Cooper has joined the Nisha Ganatra-directed Disney film as the character Jett.
We won’t see Freaky Friday 2 until next year, but in just over a week, Curtis’ much-awaited film Borderlands opens in theaters. Adapted from the video game and directed by Eli Roth, the film was shot in Budapest during Covid. After the recording of this podcast, Curtis chatted a little about that experience on set.
“The best thing that happened was I met Cate Blanchett. I went to Budapest because Cate Blanchett was going to be in the movie, honestly… I left my family for three months in the middle of Covid and went to Budapest. I became friends with Cate, and so it really became a kind of girls’ [club]. Ariana Greenblatt and Gina Gershon joined in. There was a group of us that were like the girls versus the dudes, because Kevin Hart, lovely guy, but he’s a dude, and Florian Munteanu and all the rest of the dudes and Eli Roth. So it just became like a girl power trip for me.”
For now, though, Curtis is enjoying being able to talk about The Bear and her character of Donna Berzatto, the alcoholic and unstable mother to the restauranteur siblings at the center of the show. Curtis, who also reprised the role for Season 3, says she had a kind of premonition she would play Donna when she first saw Season 1 of The Bear and that the role has been incredibly meaningful to her and to fans of the show: “The reactions from people—people starting to weep and talk about their families. They knew Donna. They were raised by Donna. They’re in a family of Donnas… There’s a combination of mental illness. There’s a combination of what often happens with mentally ill people is that they find drugs and alcohol as their bridge to reality, and so someone who’s unstable and then an addict and trying to maintain as a parent is something I think many of us can relate to.”
Next up, Curtis is set to shoot Kay Scarpetta—a TV series for Amazon she’s starring in and producing alongside Nicole Kidman, based on the bestselling Patricia Cornwell books about a medical examiner. Curtis will play Scarpetta’s sister Dorothy.
“It is edging its way to be a fully formed show that we are heading to shoot in October in Nashville,” Curtis said. “We are about to start to create and bring it for you for next year. Nicole is going to play Scarpetta, and it’s taken a long time to bring Scarpetta to a screen. And there is no one better than Nicole Kidman to bring Kay Scarpetta to life, and I’m really excited about it.”
Asked if there will be food porn, since Scarpetta is known for her love of cooking, Curtis said, “My guess is there will be some trauma porn. I think there will be some food porn. There will be blood. There will be blood, and copious amounts of it.”
Also in this episode of the podcast, Curtis chats about her experience making The Last Showgirl in Vegas with Gia Coppola directing and Pamela Anderson starring as the titular showgirl. The film is set to premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in September.
“It was made for nothing. Under $2 million in 17 days, and it was fantastic,” Curtis said. “I play [the showgirl’s] best friend, an ex-showgirl, ex-stripper, ex-cocktail waitress. She’s in her 60s, she’s an ex- everything. And she might have a gambling problem and maybe drinks too much. Her name is Annette. She’s fantastic.”
And we get to reminiscing over her career, her secret texting code she developed with Lohan, her love of True Detective: Night Country and her delight over her friendship with its star Jodie Foster, who of course led the original Freaky Friday film in 1976: “It’s just been beautiful to be able to become very close friends at this age.”
To hear the full interview with Jamie Lee Curtis, click above, or listen and subscribe on Spotify, iHeart or Apple podcasts.
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