Guess what? While we were all on lockdown, Zendaya, along with John David Washington (you might know him from HBO’s “Ballers,” Spike Lee’s “BlackkKlansman” or from being Denzel Washinton’s actual son), secretly filmed a movie. Specifically, they filmed “between Jun. 17 to Jul. 2,” according to Deadline, which also noted that it might be the first feature film in Hollywood to finish production during the pandemic.
The movie, called “Malcolm and Marie,” was written and created by “Euphoria” writer Sam Levinson. No word yet on what it’s about, but the Deadline report says that it has “some echoes of Netflix’s ‘Marriage Story’ while resonating a number of social themes that the world is experiencing right now.”
How did the project come to be? Zendaya had a pretty big hand in it, apparently. “On Monday, Mar. 16, Levinson received the call from HBO that [season two of ‘Euphoria’] had to shut down. I understand that one night during quarantine, Zendaya phoned him and asked if he could write and direct a movie during the quarantine. Within six days, Levinson had cracked ‘Malcolm & Marie.’”
If you’re curious about how the cast and crew’s safety was ensured, Deadline mentioned that the show’s co-executive producer “Katia Washington spearheaded all the health and safety protocols and created the guidelines that were presented to the production’s doctors, unions, crew and cast. After consulting with the unions and with the oversight of their doctor, a plan was hammered out. The entire team would take multiple COVID tests and head up to Monterey for a two-week quarantine before filming began.
Producers Kevin Turen and Ashley Levinson (who is also married to Sam Levinson) “worked with doctors, lawyers, WGA (Writers Guild of America), DGA (Directors Guild of America) and SAG (Screen Actors Guild) to meet the requirements necessary to go into production,” too.
While on set, the cast and crew also followed strict protocols. Everyone wore facemasks during the two-week production, “no more than 12 people were on set at any given moment,” the actors were in charge of dressing and mic’ing themselves and crew members constantly sanitized the set, among other protocols. If you want to see the other safety measures that were followed in production and what the key takeaways were from that, you can check out the Deadline report.
Featured photo by Glenn Francis, www.PacificProDigital.com
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