In a 2022 interview for Variety, actor, writer, and director Christopher Guest said, “When I met (Jennifer Coolidge), I knew there was something going on that was special. And I was right, fortunately.” He praised her ability to command attention without commanding the dialogue. “This person stands out. Everyone else to me is invisible. You want to see her.”

We have seen her on our television and theater screens since the early 90s. And 2023 may have been her best year yet.

So, what happened to Jennifer Coolidge, the self-deprecating eccentric humorist and sometimes sex symbol, who owns over 100 credits in television and film? To know that, we must do what we always do: start at the beginning where the beginning began.

Jennifer Coolidge was born in Boston, Massachusetts on August 28, 1961. She says she always looked old for her age, so she was able to buy a case of beer when she was 11 with her neighbor’s wig. Coolidge once went on vacation and dated two guys who knew each other. She told them she had an identical twin and went out with both. These sound like stories from one of the many sitcoms she’s been featured in.

She grew up wanting to be a singer and grew to idolize Meryl Streep while earning her bachelor’s degree in theatre from Emerson College. Jennifer wasn’t considered funny by her family growing up, so she long expected to pursue a life of dramatic acting. Luckily for us, she found her calling in comedy, starting with improv groups in New York and LA. She made her television debut in 1993 on Seinfeld in a guest role as Jerry’s masseuse girlfriend. She would go on to guest spots on Fraiser, Friends, and Sex and the City and a recurring role on Joey.

Coolidge first graced the silver screen in 1995’s Not of This Earth. She worked steadily before truly entering the public consciousness for her role as Stifler’s Mom in 1999’s American Pie, a role she would reprise in 2001’s American Pie 2, 2003’s American Wedding, and 2012’s American Reunion. Her other prominent role from around this time was that of Paulette, from 2001’s Legally Blonde and 2003’s Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde.

She began working with frequent collaborator Christopher Guest with 2000’s Best in Show. They would also work together on 2003’s A Mighty Wind, 2006’s For Your Consideration and 2016’s Mascots. Guest is known for enabling his actors to improvise dialogue, so this teaming up allowed Coolidge to tap into her improv background and stretch her comedy chops.

Jennifer Coolidge played a supporting role in the television sitcom Two Broke Girls, which ran from 2012 to 2017. Depending on your perspective, she may have been the only good thing about that show, but it maintained great ratings and solid reviews throughout its run.

After the show’s run, Coolidge, by her own standards, briefly stepped out of the limelight. It’s arguable if she ever left, as there are no real gaps in her prolific resume, but as many of you know, the truth doesn’t always affect how we feel. Coolidge herself, referring to this time, told Vogue in 2021, “I feel like that self-centered misery can be really hard to climb out of sometimes. You can meet someone doing even worse than you, but you can barely see it because you’re clouded in your own dark cloak or whatever.”

Coolidge told a Sydney crowd in 2023, “I want everyone to know all my depressing stories. Because I think it will help people. I do feel like I am a good story. I had a very hard time functioning for many years, because I just didn’t think I had a shot in hell.” In an industry with a history of ageism, especially toward women, Jennifer Coolidge experienced maybe the best years of her storied career in 2022 and 2023. She was an Entertainment Weekly “Entertainer of the Year,” alongside her back-to-back Emmys.

At the long-delayed 2023 Primetime Emmy Awards on January 15, 2024, Jennifer Coolidge is presented with her second Emmy in a row for The White Lotus. She beat out 4 of her White Lotus co-stars for the award. I don’t know if that speaks to the brilliance of The White Lotus or the shortage of shows of competitive quality. Her acceptance speech plays on her speech from the year before, where the orchestra played her off the stage for running on a bit too long.

In her acceptance speech, Coolidge thanks White Lotus showrunner Mike White (yeah, Ned Schneebly) for his part in her career resurgence. But are thanks also owed to pop princess Ariana Grande? Ariana Grande’s impression of Coolidge on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon went viral 5. It sparked a friendship between the two stars, culminating in Coolidge being featured in Grande’s music video for Thank You, Next in 2018 and a joint interview for the Entertainment Weekly feature in 2022.

Jennifer Coolidge’s White Lotus role may end up being the one she’s most fondly remembered for, but she’s not stopping anytime soon. She comes off as newly content and confident. Legally, Blonde 3 is in pre-production as of early 2024, and she continues to be one of the hardest-working actors in Hollywood. Coolidge is a lot of things to a lot of people. “Stifler’s Mom”, “Paulette”, “Tanya”, one of the best comedic character actors of our time, the second best “wow” in Hollywood. So nobody should give a fuck about what the fuck happened to Jennifer Coolidge cuz she’s doing just fine… better than ever, actually.

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Fourteen years have gone by since director Vincenzo Natali’s sci-fi horror film Splice (watch it HERE) reached theatres – and now Fangoria has broken the news that Splice is finally getting the novelization treatment! This novelization has been written by  Claire Donner, “New York City and online branch director of the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies, who has written essays for Severin Films’ releases of Michele Soavi’s Dellamorte Dellamore, The Sect, and The Church“, and is coming our way from Encyclopocalypse Publications, the company that’s also behind such novelizations as Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Redneck Zombies, Re-Animator, Wishmaster, Fright Night, and more.

Scripted by Natali, Antoinette Terry Bryant, and Doug Taylor, Splice had the following synopsis: Genetic engineers Clive Nicoli and Elsa Kast hope to achieve fame by splicing animal DNA to create hybrids for medical use at the company N.E.R.D. (Nucleic Exchange Research and Development). Their work has yielded Fred and Ginger, two large vermiform creatures intended as mates for each other.

The film stars Adrien Brody, Sarah Polley, Delphine Chanéac, and David Hewlett.

Donner had this to say about the novelization: “I did not add anything new to the course of events in Splice, but the film provides so much room to explore psychology and memory that I’d like to think the novelization will feel fresh and provocative for fans. Vincenzo flatters his audience by never saying too much, allowing for some amount of collaboration between the viewer’s imagination and the nuanced performances of the cast. My challenge was to engage with the story’s tantalizing mysteries without totally violating them; in a lot of ways, Splice is about privacy and the emotional boundaries that its characters cannot or will not cross. Some of what I have fleshed out was derived from unfilmed scenes in a preliminary version of the script, but this was really in the service of creating convincing inner worlds for the characters. It would be too easy to say that Clive and Elsa are driven by hubris, or a craving for knowledge that undermines their own humanity. All the stock motivations of a Frankenstein story are joined here by something more profoundly personal. For example, the film makes insinuations about Elsa’s childhood, which she is apparently unable to discuss even with her beloved partner, that are just as disturbing as any of the proper horror elements. It was really important for me to delve into this, to get to the heart of what kind of person she is, to hopefully complement the complex screen depiction of this individual.“

More from Donner can be found at the Fangoria link. Her work on the novelization met with Natali’s approval, as he tweeted, “Claire Donner has written a deeply psychological and perverse novelization of Splice. I loved it.”

Copies of the Splice novelization are available for pre-order through the Encyclopocalypse Publications website. The release date is August 20th. Will you be picking up a copy? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

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Matthew Vaughn has shown his affinity for the retro spy genre, as evident in Kingsman and even X-Men: First Class. He has also been able to collaborate with some of the most interesting names in his past films. In Kingsman: The Golden Circle, Vaughn was able to get Elton John to appear in the film and even partake in some of the action. His upcoming Argylle looks to be just as outrageous as his Kingsman movies, with the over-the-top visual flare.

Argylle is set to have a single from its soundtrack with Boy George, Ariana DeBose and Nile Rodgers. And now, courtesy of Universal, you can catch the new music video for the song, “Electric Energy.” The retro-sounding tune has the vibe of pop songs of the past. One can even say it might be disco. Plus, the fun of it all is that the cast of the film makes an appearance in the video as they sing and dance along with the music artists. Even the cat gets into the tune and lip-syncs along. Although, one curious absence in the video is Dua Lipa, who comes from the music world.

Vaughn’s association with pop music acts has him having to set the record straight on rumors that Taylor Swift will make the surprise appearance as the mysterious author, Elly Conway, that the trailer teases. Vaughn has told Rolling Stone, “I’m not a big internet guy, and it was actually my daughter who came up to me — this is the power of celebrity and the internet — and said, ‘You never told me Taylor wrote the book!’ And I’m looking at her going, ‘What are you talking about Taylor Swift wrote the book? She didn’t write the book!’ And I was laughing because I was like, ‘It’s not true! She didn’t write the book!’ But my daughter was convinced of it.” 

Additionally, Vaughn has plans to make this film a franchise and continue the story with two films, “Book one is about: how did Argylle become a spy? That will be the next film. And then Argylle 2 is – I don’t want to give it all away, but there’s the young Argylle, and that becomes Henry, because Henry loves the idea of doing a proper Argylle movie as well.”

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PLOT: A cantor (Jason Schwartzman), grieving his wife’s loss a year earlier, strikes up an unlikely friendship with an elderly bat mitzvah student (Carol Kane). 

REVIEW: Between the Temples is a rather quirky, offbeat comedy. The latest from indie director Nathan Silver, it marks his most accessible, mainstream work to date, although the romantic pairing at the movie’s heart is rather unusual. Indeed, the film has heavy shades of Hal Ashby’s Harold and Maude, although the romantic pairing of Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane (28-year age difference) isn’t as eye-brow-raising as it was in that film.

Granted, the romantic aspect of the movie is underplayed for the most part, with their romance ultimately being a chaste one. The two leads play two lost souls who find each other at a difficult time in their lives. Schwartzman’s Ben is a cantor who’s been unable to sing ever since the death of his wife, who was an alcoholic but sexually exciting novelist who would leave him provocative voicemails. Now living with his two mothers (a terrific Dolly de Leon and Caroline Aaron), he’s reverted to a delayed adolescence, allowing his doting mothers to do everything for him. At the same time, he whines and drinks (he’s such a man-child he drinks chocolate-flavored mudslides).

He’s shaken out of his stupor when he encounters his old music teacher, Carol Kane’s Carla, who is now widowed and seeks to rediscover Judaism following the death of her atheist husband. While she’s initially overbearing and eccentric, Ben finds himself won over by her big heart as the two prep for her ceremony.

Schwartzman and Kane are both unconventional, neurotic performers, and their oddball chemistry makes the premise work relatively well. Both embrace the madcap nature of Silver’s unusual comedy, playing heightened versions of the characters they’d usually play. With him whiny and petulant, Schwartzman’s role could have been difficult to swallow, even if his two mothers, especially Dolly de Leon’s Judith, are intensely overbearing as they try to set him up with a new girl.

Madeline Weinstein plays his competing love interest here, with her the heartbroken daughter of Ben’s Rabbi (played by an amusing Robert Smigel). Compared to Kane’s Carla, Weinstein’s Gabby is young and sexually exciting, and in a fun twist, the actress also plays Ben’s late wife in photographs. In essence, the film shows Ben being torn between his past and present, eventually revealing that his relationship with his late wife, while exciting, was also somewhat destructive. Despite their age difference, the movie clearly wants us to think Carla is a better match for Ben.

It’ll be interesting to see if Between the Temples manages to crossover following its well-received Sundance premiere. It’s polished enough that a big distributor could pick it up, but it’s also so quirky that it likely will appeal to a more niche audience than the average Sundance crowd-pleaser. Whatever the case, it’s well worth seeing when it eventually comes out, especially if you have a Jewish background. It is amusingly satirical about the politics of being a temple member, even one as enlightened as the one depicted here. 

Sundance

GOOD

7

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JoBlo.com recently launched a new weekly documentary series called 80s Horror Memories, where each year of the 1980s has five episodes dedicated to it. Looking back at 1980, we discussed Maniac, Dressed to Kill, Alligator, Friday the 13th, The Shining, Prom Night, and The Fog. The second five episodes were a journey through 1981, covering The Funhouse, The Burning, Friday the 13th Part 2, My Bloody Valentine, Halloween II, The Evil Dead, The Howling, and An American Werewolf in London, as well as the careers of horror hosts Elvira and Joe Bob Briggs. The next five were, of course, all about movies that came out in 1982: Conan the Barbarian, The Thing, Halloween III: Season of the Witch, and Poltergeist, with an examination of the short-lived 3-D boom along the way. For 1983, we talked about a trio of Stephen King adaptations, Jaws 3-D, Sleepaway Camp, the rise of TV horror anthologies, and Psycho II. For 1984, we covered the creation of the PG-13 rating, The Terminator, Gremlins, Ghostbusters, and A Nightmare on Elm Street. Our trip through 1985 included Teen Wolf, Re-Animator, A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge Friday the 13th: A New Beginning, Fright Night, Lifeforce, Day of the Dead, and The Return of the Living Dead. For 1986, we covered David Cronenberg’s The Fly, the horror comedies that were released during the year (including Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2), Aliens, the connection between horror movies and heavy metal, and David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. Now we’ve reached 1987, and we got our journey through this year started with Clive Barker’s Hellraiser. In today’s episode, we’re looking at an iconic ’80s film that’s not quite a horror movie, even though it features some horrific moments: RoboCop! You can hear all about it in the video embedded above.

New episodes of 80s Horror Memories are released through the YouTube channel JoBlo Horror Originals every Friday. 

Here’s the info on 80s Horror Memories: It’s been over 40 years since the decade that shaped the horror movie industry began and having lived through most of those years personally, we at JoBlo/Arrow in the Head have decided to create a 10-part documentary series in which not only cover every nook and cranny of the biggest horror themes from 1980 to 1989 but also what was happening in the world at the time. Join us as we walk down Horror Memory Lane!

And here’s the info on this particular episode: Paul Verhoeven’s brutal, classic satire on society is possibly the most influential movie of the 1980s, but are we correct in saying it could easily pass as a horror movie, all things considered? Or is it simply an amazing example of visceral science fiction filmmaking? Well, get that 6000 SUX on order and stock up on baby food as we look back on everyone’s favorite 80s law enforcer, RoboCop!

This episode of 80s Horror Memories was written by Adam Walton, narrated by Tyler Nichols, edited by Adam Walton, produced by Berge Garabedian and John Fallon, co-produced by Mike Conway, and executive produced by Berge Garabedian. The score was provided by Shawn Knippelberg. Special Guests: Doug Jones (The Shape of Water) and Patrick Lussier (Drive Angry).

Let us know what you thought of this episode, plus share some of your own ’80s horror memories by leaving a comment!

Two of the previous episodes of 80s Horror Memories can be seen below. To see more of our shows, head over to the JoBlo Horror Originals channel – and subscribe while you’re at it!

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One of South Korea’s biggest hits of last year is set to hit stateside. Concrete Utopia is a film that gained acclaim and was a massive hit at the Korean box office in 2023 with an earning of $28.0 million from 3.85 million admissions when the film opened on August 9 of last year. The film was also a Korean Oscar contender. Variety’s review of the film stated, “[Concrete Utopia] places its characters in a desperate, scary, do-or-die situation and then refuses to tell the audience what to think about them. It’s a fractious, blood-soaked drama about the will to survive that feels like Earthquake crossed with Lord of the Flies.” 

Variety is now reporting that Concrete Utopia has secured a U.S. streaming release on a platform called Rakuten Viki, a service that specializes in Asian content. The streaming platform has licensed exclusive rights to the film in the U.S. and Canada and will begin streaming it to North American audiences from Friday. The film, which stars Lee Byung-hun (Squid Game, I Saw the Devil, the G.I Joe franchise), Park Seo-jun (Parasite, What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim), and Park Bo-young (Strong Girl Bong-soon, Doom at Your Service).

According to Variety, the movie is “based on the second part of webtoon Cheerful Outcast by Kim Soong-nyung. Concrete Utopia portrays Seoul as devastated by a powerful earthquake which has left the Hwanggoong Apartment complex as the only building still standing. Lee’s character Young-Tak temporarily leads the residents of the apartment complex, but as the crisis unfolds, moral values are tested.”

After the film debuted highly in Korea, it would also screen at a number of film festivals, including the Toronto International Film Festival, Sitges International Film Festival and Fantastic Fest. Jaehee Hong, SVP of content at Rakuten Viki, remarks, “As the appetite for Asian entertainment continues to grow with U.S. audiences, this is a significant moment for Rakuten Viki as we look to raise the bar in offering the latest and most buzzworthy titles to fans.”

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Everyone agrees that white lies can be harmless. Sometimes, we tell them to keep a person’s feelings from getting hurt or to prevent ourselves from getting into too much trouble. However, white lies are slippery, especially if you’ve been telling the same one for years. White lies can evolve to become one of the biggest mistakes you’ll ever make. In the end, it’s best not to tell them. In Peter Farrelly‘s (Green Book, Dumb and Dumber) Ricky Stanicky trailer, three friends invent a friend who conveniently pulls them away from their lives whenever they need a break from reality. Unfortunately, their lie is getting called out, and they need someone to become the person they’ve been lying about for years.

Amazon MGM Studios debuted the Ricky Stanicky trailer on Friday, a Rated-R laugh-out-loud comedy premiering globally on Prime Video on March 7, 2024. The upcoming comedy stars John Cena (Peacemaker, Fast X), Zac Effron (The Iron Claw, Baywatch), Jermaine Fowler (The Blackening, Coming 2 America), Andrew Santino (Beef, Me Time), and William H. Macy (Shameless, Fargo), among others. Jeff Bushell, Brian Jarvis, James Lee Freeman, Peter Farrelly, Pete Jones, and Mike Cerrone wrote the screenplay.

Here’s the official synopsis for Ricky Stanicky from Amazon MGM Studios:

When three childhood best friends pull a prank gone wrong, they invent the imaginary Ricky Stanicky to get them out of trouble! Twenty years after creating this ‘friend,’ Dean, JT, and Wes (Zac Efron, Andrew Santino, and Jermaine Fowler) still use the nonexistent Ricky as a handy alibi for their immature behavior. When their spouses and partners get suspicious and demand to finally meet the fabled Mr. Stanicky, the guilty trio decide to hire washed-up actor and raunchy celebrity impersonator “Rock Hard” Rod (John Cena) to bring him to life. But when Rod takes his role of a lifetime too far, they begin to wish they’d never invented Ricky in the first place. From director Peter Farrelly and featuring additional cast members, including William H. Macy, Lex Scott Davis, and Anja Savcic.

Have you ever told a lie so bold you needed to invent a person to cover your ass? How much trouble do you think these friends will face when their loved ones discover Ricky Stanicky is a fraud? In the comments below, let us know what you think about the Ricky Stanicky trailer.

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It was reported earlier that Steven Yeun was set to make his debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the Thunderbolts film. Unfortunately, scheduling issues that cropped up due to last year’s dual strikes in Hollywood would now prevent Yeun from participating in filming. The actor felt remorse for the dilemma and wanted to make it clear that he hopes to join the MCU in the future, “I wanna do a Marvel movie. I have some ideas.” Yeun would also apologize to the fans for holding up the production, “It took a lot of drafts on email to make sure that I conveyed the sincerity of how sorry I was to have to back out.” Deadline is now reporting that Top Gun: Maverick‘s Lewis Pullman is now in talks with Marvel Studios to be Yeun’s replacement. Pullman, the son of Independence Day star Bill Pullman, can currently be seen with Brie Larson in Apple’s Lessons in Chemistry. His past credits would also include Bad Times at the El Royale and the TV series Outer Range. Pullman is reportedly the top choice for Yeun’s now-unoccupied role, which has yet to be announced. However, it was reportedly a significant part of the film.

Pullman would be joining another star child with Wyatt Russell, son of Kurt, who will be reprising his role, John Walker, from the MCU Disney+ series Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Russell had recently updated fans that the movie is set to start production in the spring and would convey his excitement for the project in the face of the recent output of projects from the brand, “I have confidence it’s gonna be good. I know everybody is sort of on this Marvel train right now of things not going so well…It’s not a straightforward Marvel movie as you’ve seen in the past.”

Thunderbolts has still compiled an impressive cast as sort of an anti-Avengers team-up film, with Sebastian Stan (Bucky Barnes), Hannah John-Kamen (Ghost), Florence Pugh (Yelena Belova), David Harbour (Red Guardian), and Olga Kurylenko (Taskmaster) reprising their roles from past MCU entries.

Directed by Jake Schreier and written by Eric Pearson and Lee Sung Jin, Thunderbolts is part of Phase Six of the Marvel Cinematic Universe – although it had intended to be part of the in-progress Phase Five but missed that due to the aforementioned strikes. It has a current release date of July 25th, 2025, two months after The Fantastic Four hits theaters.

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PLOT: Four interconnected tales follow a teenager in love (Jack Champion), two female rappers trying to make it (Normani and Dominique Thorne), a world-weary debt mob enforcer (Pedro Pascal ) and a basketball legend (Jay Ellis) looking for vengeance in 1987 Oakland.

REVIEW: Directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (Half Nelson) make a triumphant return to Sundance with one of the festival’s most energetic offerings in years. Mixing a Tarantino-style crime tale with high-octane action, Boden and Fleck use the bag of tricks they earned working for the MCU (Captain Marvel) to deliver an unexpected smash. Freaky Tales is the kind of movie Sundance would have shown in its nineties heyday, with it likely the only film playing this year that ends in a kung-fu-heavy bloodbath. I loved every second of it.

Freaky Tales mostly takes place over a single night in Oakland; it uses a few things that were happening in the area back then, such as the Golden State Warriors facing off with the Lakers and the rise of rapper Too Short as a jumping-off point. Yet, the film goes way, way other there pretty quickly, with the stylized chapters escalating in style until an ending that plays like Kill Bill mixed with Scanners.

The film mainly revolves around each of the leads having violent encounters with Oakland Skinheads. Each chapter seems influenced by a different classic from the era the movie is set in. The first chapter plays like a mix of The Karate Kid and The Warriors. In it, a good-natured teen (Jack Champion) with a monster crush on a girl (Ji-Young Yoo) into the punk scene becomes a hero as he joins them in an ultra-violent brawl with Neo-Nazis. These skinheads are working for a more dangerous crew headed by a crooked cop (Ben Mendelsohn) who also has the lead of our third story, Pedro Pascal’s Clint, under his thumb. Before getting to the more violent second half of the film, Freaky Tales detours into Krush Groove territory, following two female battle rappers as they try to make it in the club scene. It’s a good-natured little aside before the movie dives right into a violent, carnage-filled second half, with Pascal’s storyline similar to James Caan’s in Thief, while the finale has heavy shades of The Last Dragon thrown in.

While the nature of the film makes it inevitably uneven, for the most part, Fleck and Boden keep the pace propulsive. Even the slower second story about battle rap is entertaining, with singer Normani and Ironheart’s Riri WIlliams herself, Dominique Thorne, delivering winning performances.

However, the first, third and fourth stories are the ones that get your adrenaline pumping, with the first story shot in a way that makes it feel like you’re watching a VHS copy of a coming-of-age 80s classic. Jack Champion, who broke out in Avatar: The Way of Water, is a thoroughly likeable lead, with his chemistry with the pretty Ji-Young Yoo on point, as the two debate the ending of The Lost Boys and “Blue Velvet” people before their climactic brawl.

One of the movie’s most significant selling points will undoubtedly be Pedro Pascal, cast perfectly as the world-weary enforcer, eager to leave the business behind to raise a family. Boasting an extended cameo by an A-lister whose Oakland roots are heavily referenced in the film, this segment plays like a classic crime tale, with it and the fourth story really two halves of a longer whole. Of everyone, Pascal has the most significant role as a tragedy sends him into a suicidal confrontation with Mendelsohn’s ultra-evil Nazi mastermind, only for the film to take a wild turn in the last segment. In it, Jay Ellis from Top Gun: Maverick emerges as a full-blown action star, playing a real-life basketball player named Sleepy Floyd who, in this film’s demented take on reality, also runs a quasi-cult where he teaches teens to harness their psychic power to fight evil. Does it sound a little random? It is, but Boden and Fleck do such a good job elevating the violence and frenetic pace that it really works when Freaky Tales takes a detour into full-blown kung-fu-tinged Scanners territory. 

Indeed, Freaky Tales works very well as a genre movie and could be a hit for whatever distributor picks it up. Pascal’s rising fame and the fact that it boasts a ton of well-designed action (and a terrific soundtrack that includes everything from Metallica to Public Image Limited)  makes it seem natural for the big screen. I loved every second of it. 

Sundance

GREAT

8

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As Lando Calrissian told his old buddy Han Solo, he had no choice but to betray him. And now Billy Dee Williams – who first played Lando in The Empire Strikes Back – is doubling down. But he may have no choice himself, as he says he would constantly get harassed by Star Wars fans over the double-cross.

In a new interview with the Dagobah Dispatch podcast, Billy Dee Williams said, “I got [“You betrayed Han Solo!”] for a lotta years, so finally I said, ‘Look, think about the whole situation. You’re up against a pretty formidable character, Darth Vader, and then there’s Boba Fett, and these people were invading my space, and I had to bargain with them. To bargain to prevent at least the complete demise of Han Solo and his friends. But I had to hold on to my whole situation.’” Williams added that Lando’s tactic didn’t result in any deaths and so, “I think that was a clear implication that I was trying to figure something out, or Lando was trying to figure something out…primarily to hold on to his own situation, without the complete demise of his friends.” So please, leave Billy Dee Williams alone…or at least buy him a Colt 45!

Lando Calrissian – and thus, Billy Dee Williams – made the Star Wars sh*t list with that move, but the character’s arc, against-the-wall situation, and surprising depth (for a supporting character, at least) has redeemed both Lando and his portrayer in most fans’ eyes. He was also a welcome addition to The Rise of Skywalker, assisting Rey and company in their fight in his first time stepping into the role (physically; he voiced Lando numerous times) since 1983’s Return of the Jedi.

Star Wars has gone all-in on Lando Calrissian, even outside of Billy Dee Williams, with the character being taken over by Donald Glover for Solo, in which we see him lose his beloved Millennium Falcon to Han. Glover will again play Lando for a feature film, originally planned to be a series.

What do you think of Billy Dee Williams’ take on Lando Calrissian’s betrayal? Do you want more Lando on the screen? Give us your thoughts below!

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