Watch Mindy Kaling Shake Up The World’s Whitest Writer’s Room In The Trailer For ‘Late Night’
It stars Emma Thompson as a nightmare talk-show host.
Hell isn’t other people in the first trailer for Late Night, a new comedy from Mindy Kaling — it’s one specific person, namely Emma Thompson’s mean and vindictive talk show host Katherine Newbury.
The film, which debuted at Sundance to glowing reviews, follows Kaling as Molly, a young comedy writer who finds herself hired by an ailing talk show, ovesreen by the quick-to-fire Newbury.
Newbury, who is the true comedic focus of the new trailer, is a kind of demented riff on The Devil Wears Prada‘s Miranda Priestly. The only question is: which contemporary American talk show host is her awful behaviour modelled on? (Our money is on the allegedly insufferable Jay Leno.)
Anyway, watch the trailer, and then we’ll talk about it.
So yeah, this thing looks like it has the makings of a four-quadrant hit. After all, it’s from the studio that brought us The Big Sick, a similarly hyped dramedy that managed to overcome its independent beginnings to become an Oscar-nominated smash.
There’s also the nice nods to topicality — rather than shy away from issues of diversity and onscreen representation, looks like Late Night is going to tackle them head on. Which will be a pleasant change, to be honest, give modern Hollywood’s queasiness when it comes to saying something actually insightful about what can be done to loosen the Caucasian strangehold on the culture.
“LATE NIGHT” was one of the very best movies I saw at SUNDANCE last month! It’s gonna be a BIG HIT when it opens this June, and EMMA THOMPSON should be NOMINATED for her amazing lead performance — WATCH the BRAND-SPANKING NEW TRAILER right HERE: https://t.co/N8hXBidVsA pic.twitter.com/0bEdybAx7d
— Scott Mantz (@MovieMantz) March 7, 2019
Oh, and then there’s Kaling herself, who has long been gearing up for a project like this: one that shows off both her beloved comedy chops, and her clear skill when it comes to straight drama. She wrote the thing — chances are, she gave herself a choice role in it, so longtime fans should get bloody excited.
Late Night opens in American cinemas on June 7. There’s no word on an Australia release date yet, but given that it’s being distributed by Amazon and that Aussie company Transmission have exclusive Amazon rights, looks like there’s a good chance we’ll get a cinematic run too.