WAS Elvis king of cultural appropriation? Conversation after last night’s screening of the Presley biopic turned to his source of inspiration. Presenter Clara Amfo, chairing a Q&A with members of the cast, director Baz Luhrmann, and his wife, said: “Elvis would be nothing without blackness.”
She asked Yola, who plays seminal black musician Sister Rosetta Tharpe: “What did you think when you were approached for the role? You had your lovely Australian white director… what made you think ‘yes’?” “Putting the Elvis story into the context of blackness, and laying gratitude at the feet of Black America” she replied.
It was Luhrmann’s intention to iron out the history. “I went in there to tell the story,” he told us. “Elvis was living in one of the few white houses in the black community. I just told [the stories] as they were.”
Lumley’s seat at royal table
JOANNA LUMLEY is launching her jubilee celebrations unconventionally. “Tomorrow I’m having lunch on the table where [Prince Philip] was born,” the actress, left, told a crowd at Sotheby’s Jubilee Arts Festival. “He was born on the kitchen table and smuggled out in a box... from his family home in Corfu,” she said, in conversation with royal historian Robert Hardman yesterday. “It [was] brought from Corfu, and now it’s in the City.”
Stage fight
THE Open Air Theatre hit out on Twitter yesterday, after a harsh review of its Legally Blonde production. Critic Quentin Letts called the “fuller-bodied, non-binary” cast an attempt at “political relevance” in The Sunday Times. “We expect everyone comments with respect and sensitivity, and those who decide not to will no longer be invited back,” the Regent’s Park theatre said. Letts might struggle to be let back in.
Malala’s brother ‘numb’ to notoriety
FEMALE education campaigner Malala has hit mononymous levels of fame, but her younger brother, Khushal Yousafzai, admitted that he is “numb to it now”. Speaking to us at Sea Containers Curzon for a screening of a documentary which features his father, the student said candidly “it is what it is,” of his role as a global ambassador-by-proxy. He couldn’t stay long to chat — he has an exam today.
Priscilla gives Presley film her blessing
STARS of the Elvis biopic Austin Butler, Olivia DeJonge and Yola were among the crowd at Ham Yard Hotel, Soho, for the UK screening of Baz Luhrmann’s film. But the nerves have already passed after Presley’s ex-wife, and the toughest critic, gave it her approval at Cannes Film Festival last week. “I was never more nervous than about Priscilla seeing it… and the fact [she] had such a positive reaction, I couldn’t have been happier,” Butler said yesterday. They were joined by writer Dolly Alderton and acting’s bright young things Ncuti Gatwa, and Charithra Chandran.
