I got a little behind on the gallery so this is mainly TIFF and Sadie’s new modeling campaigns.












Fresh off strong notices for Darren Aronofsky’s Venice Film Festival drama The Whale, Stranger Things star Sadie Sink has been tapped to star with Eric Bana (Munich) and Sylvia Hoeks (Blade Runner 2049) in thriller Berlin Nobody, which got underway in the German capital today.
Rising German actor Jonas Dassler — who got his breakthrough as a 1970s murderer in Fatih Akin’s Berlin title The Golden Glove — and Sophie Rois (Tom Tykwer’s Drei and Der Architekt) have also joined the cast of Jordan Scott’s movie about American ex-pat and social psychologist Ben Monroe (Bana) who relocates to Berlin to further his research on the epidemic of cult mentality. While he immerses himself in German cultism, his rebellious teenage daughter, Mazzy (Sink), becomes entwined with a mysterious and enigmatic local boy (Dassler). The film is inspired by Nicholas Hogg’s 2015 novel Tokyo.
Produced by Scott Free’s Ridley Scott and Michael Pruss alongside Augenschein’s Jonas Katzenstein and Maximilian Leo, and Georgina Pope, the movie is executive-produced by Augenschein’s Jonathan Saubach. Rebecca Feuer is overseeing the project on behalf of Scott Free.
Protagonist Pictures and Augenschein Sales are jointly handling worldwide sales. Pic is backed by Logical Pictures, Medienboard Berlin Brandenburg and the DFFF.
The project, which we first announced earlier this year, is the second film under the sales partnership between Augenschein and Protagonist, the first being survival thriller The Dive.
Fast-rising Sink is best known for Stranger Things, The Glass Castle, Fear Street 2, and series American Odyssey.
Scott writes and directs Berlin Nobody. She previously directed Cracks, her feature directorial debut, starring Eva Green and Juno Temple that was released by IFC. She has also directed commercials for Audi, Nike, Hugo Boss, Armani Jeans and Nespresso. Kiernan Shipka was previously attached to co-star but is no longer aboard.
This weekend Sadie traveled to Venice Film Festival to promote her movie, The Whale. Today, she attended the photocall and premiere for the movie and I have added hundreds of pictures to the gallery. Enjoy!
Darren Aronofsky loves reclaiming the broken, the damaged, the forgotten. Take his magnum opus, 2008’s “The Wrestler,” the story of an aging WWE entertainer who gives it all for one more shot at glory. While 2005’s “Sin City” had already brought star Mickey Rourke back into the Hollywood fold, here his return was concreted, completed, the talk of the town, and etched onto shining plaques. The same was true, to a lesser degree, of Natalie Portman in “Black Swan,” and even Russell Crowe in “Noah.”
Enter Brendan Fraser in “The Whale,” with a performance that will be broadly acclaimed as transformative — more an observation, really, than a measure of praise, for all of the accolades are duly deserved. Despite arriving when nearly everyone on Twitter is firmly on board for the Brendanaissance, here’s a movie predisposed to conjure a whirlpool of a bad faith discourse: it will be called cruel, it will be called exploitative, it will be decried as vituperative. But to evoke any of these adjectives would be to critically miss the point. Sure, “The Whale” is conventionally shot, a chamber piece as dryly theatrical as 2016’s “Fences,” and so very hit-and-miss with its technical vocabulary as to find itself open to a swiss-cheese of attack points. But what it boasts in abundance — in this riveting study of a deeply broken man, suffocated by nine years of self-immolation — is a rare and deep compassion, elevated by Fraser’s starring turn.
Charlie (Fraser), a morbidly obese English teacher, lives alone in an Idaho apartment. Mostly immobile, and reliant on friend and hardy hospital nurse Liz (Hong Chau, achingly credible) for his basic daily needs, his time is running out: for starters, his blood pressure is through the roof, and he would have died of a heart attack in the film’s opening five minutes if not for the fortunate intervention of door-to-door New Life cult missionary Thomas (Ty Simpkins, a discount Paul Dano). To everyone’s chagrin, the latter takes that as a sign of cosmic divination: God clearly wanted him there to save this pathetic, broken man, and he circles Charlie’s apartment like a bible-bashing vulture for the remainder of the picture, desperate for purpose like a bashed puppy chasing cars. Be it the desire of the almighty or not, Charlie doesn’t want a savior: whether he’s offering himself as a moral sacrifice or he simply wants his terrible pain to end, he resigns himself to death.
Inviting he may be of his inevitable end, but Charle’s not without unfinished business. Enter our third major player, Sadie Sink’s Ellie — Charlie’s sixteen-year-old daughter, abandoned nine years prior in the name of his love for another man, who has been rendered capricious and aimless in the wake of his abandonment. Charlie invites her to the apartment for the first time in the near-decade since they last saw each other, and she’s acidic and callous, bombarding her father with barbs like they’re going out of fashion. This is how pain manifests: thousands of punches lying in waiting for so many days and months, and Charlie offers himself as a punching bag. The overarching, awful tone of “The Whale” shares as much DNA with Kenneth Lonergan’s “Manchester by the Sea” as anything else, in its depiction of an endless web of trauma and regret, blame coursing under old, festering scabs aching to be ripped open, right up until they are.
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The actor talks Max’s future on the final season, and why her character and Elaine Benes have more in common than you might think.
After so many Stranger Things episodes centered on Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), Max (Sadie Sink) finally got to take center stage in season 4. Reeling from the loss of her brother, the flame-haired skater retreats from her friends and cuts things off with her boyfriend, Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin). Her only companion is a Walkman—which has the cassette tape containing Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill.” She listens to the song so much that even though she’s kept her friends at bay, they know it’s the one song that could save her life—and, they hope, theirs. (Viewers have also been listening to it on repeat, to the point where, 37 years after its release, it hit No. 1 on the Billboard Global 200 chart several times following the Netflix series’ season 4 premiere.)
Stranger Things—which, as the costumes make clear, takes place in the ’80s—isn’t the only way Sink gets her nostalgia fix. The 20-year-old actor has also been revisiting Seinfeld. Here, she makes the case for her similarity to Max and reflects on her character’s past, present, and future.
What was your reaction to the news that the Duffer Brothers [who cocreated Stranger Things] originally planned for the season to end with Max dying?
I didn’t know until someone told me about the interviews. They never really tell us what’s going to happen until we get the scripts, and when I got the script for episode 9, it said that Max dies but that she sort of comes back. It’s uncertain, but she’s not fully dead. I didn’t know the plan was to completely kill me off, which definitely would’ve been a very impactful ending. They’ve been saying in interviews that Max’s state at the end of season 4 is intentional, crucial, and calculated in terms of how it’s going to come to play in season 5—I guess. I know nothing.
What did you think was going to happen to Max before you read the script?
Season 4 was a wild journey for her. I definitely knew nothing good would happen, but I was not expecting this—this was a crazy, crazy end. I thought either she was going to succeed in a really epic way, or it would be her downfall, and I guess we landed somewhere in the middle.
You had to pause filming the season for more than half a year during lockdown. How much did Max stick with you during that break?
I definitely needed that time because of the state Max is in in season 4. That sense of isolation she feels is something we could all relate to coming out of quarantine, so having a lot of time by myself was good. By the time we returned to season 4, we were all really hungry to get back to work, so there was this determination and excitement on set. It wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be to get back into the groove of filming after such a long break.
Thanks to “Stranger Things,” Sink spent most of her teen years in the spotlight. But underneath all the glitz and glam, she’s just your average 20-year-old who prefers baggy jeans to ball gowns.
Don’t get Sadie Sink started on High School Musical. “You just say the word and I can sing all the lyrics of ‘I Want It All’ from the third movie,” she laughs, describing her love of the iconic Disney Channel franchise and the characters Ryan and Sharpay Evans, played by Lucas Grabeel and Ashley Tisdale. “They are NOT the villains!” she passionately declares, only half joking. (For the uninitiated, she’s referring to the first film, in which the Evans siblings try to prevent Vanessa Hudgens’s Gabriella Montez and Zac Efron’s Troy Bolton from auditioning for the school musical.) “Sharpay put in the work! Where is the respect for seniority? But I could talk about this for hours.”
In fact, we’re only five minutes into our video chat, but here we are, already gossiping, grinning and giggling like two girls at a slumber party. She’s even dressed for one, wearing a relaxed striped shirt with a messy bun and barely-there makeup as she sits cross-legged on a chair in an L.A. hotel room. And maybe it’s her young age of 20, or maybe it’s because I’ve caught Sink in a lull after a whirlwind of press for season four of Stranger Things, but our conversation feels more intimate than most. This, I soon discover, is rare for the usually guarded actor.
Growing up in Brenham, Tex., Sadie Sink and her four siblings — three brothers and one sister — weren’t allowed to watch many movies, but one that they were able to enjoy was High School Musical (hence the obsession). “It really had a huge impact on me and started me and my brother Mitchell on our musical journey,” she shares. Case in point: The Sink siblings would make up their own choreography to various songs from the film and (in her words) force their family to watch them perform it. With two such fervent musical fans in the house, their parents enrolled both Sink and her brother in local singing, acting and dancing classes, which led them to get roles at a regional theatre in Houston. “My mom drove us to all these things — not in the hope of our ever going to Broadway or anything like that but because they were activities we loved doing.”
As luck would have it, that’s exactly what happened next. Sink was playing the titular role in a local production of Annie when she learned that Broadway was looking for its own red-headed protagonist. After submitting an audition tape, Sink was initially cast as an understudy, but a few months later, she became the star. She was 11 years old at the time. By 12, she was starring in The Audience (written by The Crown’s Peter Morgan) alongside Helen Mirren. “That’s when my relationship with acting changed,” notes Sink. “Working with some of the greatest minds in the industry taught me about what acting really is, and that’s when I decided this was what I wanted to do.”
With that in mind, Sadie Sink began a natural transition from stage to screen. After moving to New Jersey with her family, she landed a few guest spots on TV series like The Americans and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. But it wasn’t until she auditioned for season two of Stranger Things that her world completely changed. Although the casting directors were initially hesitant about Sink’s “old” age (she was 14 at the time!), she wouldn’t take no for an answer. “I just begged and pleaded with them to give me more material so I could show them something fresh,” she explains, describing how “right” the part of Max felt to her. The producers relented and called her in for a chemistry read with now co-stars Gaten Matarazzo and Caleb McLaughlin. The next day, she found out she’d got the part.
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“Stranger Things” Season 4 garnered 13 Primetime Emmy nominations on Tuesday, including outstanding drama series.
But the Netflix sci-fi series received no acting nods for any of its stars, a shock to those who believed that, at the very least, Sadie Sink was a shoo-in among the 22 “Stranger Things” cast members submitted for noms. This marks the second time that the show has been shut out of all Emmy acting categories, with the previous being no acting nominations given for “Stranger Things” Season 3.
Sink and Millie Bobby Brown were sent in under the supporting actress in a drama series category for their work on “Stranger Things 4,” but those eight noms instead went to Patricia Arquette (“Severance”), Julia Garner (“Ozark”), Jung Ho-yeon (“Squid Game”), Christina Ricci (“Yellowjackets”), Rhea Seehorn (“Better Call Saul”), J. Smith-Cameron (“Succession”), Sarah Snook (“Succession”) and Sydney Sweeney (“Euphoria”).
Winona Ryder was submitted in lead actress in a drama, but lost out to Jodie Comer (“Killing Eve”), Laura Linney (“Ozark”), Melanie Lynskey (“Yellowjackets”), Sandra Oh (“Killing Eve”), Reese Witherspoon (“The Morning Show”) and Zendaya (“Euphoria”).
Along with top drama series, “Stranger Things” received nominations for production design for a narrative period or fantasy program (one hour or more); casting for a drama series; single-camera picture editing for a drama series; period and/or character hairstyling; period and/or character makeup (non-prosthetic); prosthetic makeup; music supervision; sound editing for a comedy or drama series (one hour); sound mixing for a comedy or drama series (one hour); special visual effects in a season or a movie; stunt coordination for a drama series, limited or anthology series or movie; and stunt performance.
Those 13 Emmy nominations are for the first seven episodes, aka Volume 1, of the Duffer brothers-created series’ penultimate season. Episodes 8 and 9 of “Stranger Things 4,” which make up Volume 2, were not released until after the submission cut-off, so Volume 2 of “Stranger Things 4” will compete in next year’s Emmy race.
For Season 3, the Netflix sci-fi show got eight nominations, the least in the history of “Stranger Things” and five more than the previous “Stranger Things” season tally. To date, “Stranger Things” boasts a total of 51 Emmy nominations and seven wins across its first four season.
“Stranger Things” Season 4 stars Ryder as Joyce Byers, David Harbour as Jim Hopper, Brown as Eleven, Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler, Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson, Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair, Noah Schnapp as Will Byers, Sadie Sink as Max Mayfield, Natalia Dyer as Nancy Wheeler, Charlie Heaton as Jonathan Byers, Joe Keery as Steve Harrington, Maya Hawke as Robin Buckley, Priah Ferguson as Erica Sinclair, Brett Gelman as Murray, Cara Buono as Karen Wheeler, with Matthew Modine as Dr. Brenner and Paul Reiser as Dr. Owens.
Additional cast members for “Stranger Things 4” include Jamie Campbell Bower as Vecna, Joseph Quinn as Eddie Munson and Eduardo Franco as Argyle, among others.
When she’s not gracing the couture runways, befriending actor Woody Harrelson, or starring in the hit Netflix show Stranger Things, Sadie Sink spends her spare time doing nothing.
Well, not nothing. The 20-year-old reads (correction: is trying to read more). She plays with her five-month-old puppy. And, like many late adolescents, she peruses TikTok. During a recent scroll, Sink figured she’d fallen into some niche algorithmic vortex. Despite persistent swiping, clip after clip was soundtracked by the same song: “Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God),” a 1985 British pop ballad that arms Sink’s character, Max Mayfield, against the supernatural.
It had to be a coincidence. Although there are many accounts that exist claiming to be Sink—some with tens of thousands of fans—the star’s legitimate profile is anonymous (in Zoomer slang: a “finsta”). TikTok couldn’t know it was really her behind the screen. Within the same week, the Kate Bush track would hit number one on iTunes—40 years after its release—thanks to the show.
“I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve had to listen to ‘Running Up That Hill,’” says Sink. “I knew the show had a giant fanbase, but I didn’t know how big until I was in it.”
The resurrection of “Running Up That Hill” has parallels to Sink’s ascension to stardom. As if portraying one of the most beloved characters on Netflix’s most-watched English-language series wasn’t enough, the Sink-led Stranger Things episode “Dear Billy” will make Emmy history if it wins in all seven categories it’s been submitted for. Winona Ryder identified Sink as the next Meryl Streep. Then, of course, there are her leagues of fans (an eye-watering 20 million on Instagram alone) obsessively ingesting any scrap of content she provides—from press appearances to behind-the-scenes insight.
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Sadie Sink is having a big week thanks to her moving performance as Max in Stranger Things (and her character’s dramatic ending in season 4, of course). But before she was Maxine Mayfield, Sadie played another iconic redhead: the titular Annie on Broadway. And fans are digging up old clips and playbills as proof.
Sadie took on the starring role in Annie in 2013, belting out songs like “You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile” and “It’s the Hard Knock Life” when she was just 11 years old. Here’s Sadie with the cast of Annie that year:
Luckily, there are also videos from her performances, which are currently making the rounds on TikTok. In one, Sadie embodies Annie’s lovable charm with a rendition of “Tomorrow,” and in another, you can see her at various points in the production.