Londoner's Diary: Cressida Bonas is a new scream queen

In today's Diary: Cressida Bonas cameos in new horror comedy | Alain de Botton calls Brexit a Freudian slip | Camilla Kerslake and Chris Robsaw are on a (snooker) break | Laurence Fox's cub steals the show 
Scream Queen: Cressida Bonas in Double Date (Image: Andrew Ogilvy)
9 October 2017

Be afraid, be very afraid... After kicking off her career on the stage and screen with a run of period roles, actress Cressida Bonas is adding an unexpected string to her bow: horror. Will she make it out alive?

This week sees the release of Double Date, a comedy-horror film from British director Benjamin Barfoot, aptly arriving in cinemas on Friday the 13th. It follows two unlucky-in-love men whose attempt at dating takes them on a bloody journey, and Bonas pops up in a cameo as Sam, an east London hipster in a band called Krabs. Tom Sturridge, actor and ex-boyfriend of Sienna Miller, plays her bandmate John.

“We looked at a lot of people for the role, but after the director talked to Cressida, we knew she had the right look and was capable of the sort of heightened silliness that the role required,” producer Matt Wilkinson tells The Londoner.

“Once we discovered she and Tom had chemistry as the ‘band’, they had a lot of fun recreating a dance track in the room, with Cressida actually playing on drums.”

It’s an interesting new direction for Bonas, ex-girlfriend of Prince Harry: her performances so far — including the film Tulip Fever, ITV’s Doctor Thorne and the play Mrs Orwell on the London fringe — have leant towards costume drama. Her role in Double Date may be brief but Wilkinson hopes to find a way to employ her again, having being impressed by her work.

Could she be a new scream queen? We hope her experience hasn’t left her too scared to pick up the phone.

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Producer Harvey Weinstein was dismissed from his position at The Weinstein Co last night after accusations of sexual harassment. Time for a cover-up?

In 2014, Judi Dench explained that she had acknowledged Weinstein’s role in making her a star in Hollywood by tattooing his name on her derrière. She showed him over lunch at the Four Seasons Hotel. “I’ve never seen a man more embarrassed and I’ve never let him forget it,” she said.

Luckily it was just temporary: she had applied it as a joke. Phew.

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Brexit? It's really all about Freud and sex

Freudian slip? Philosopher Alain de Botton (Getty Images) 

“How has an issue around the minutiae of trading rules become an issue over which people define their identities?” asks philosopher Alain de Botton in Goodbye Europe, a collection of essays written to mark our passing from the EU. “People are going into psychotherapy, with the presenting problems simply being: Brexit.” For de Botton, our love or dislike of the EU stems from unresolved Freudian issues.

It “might be a defence against a bullying father; a childhood in a town one hated; a lack of sex in adolescence,” he theorises. “We’re wrong to keep discussing the debate in the sober impersonal terms we currently employ.” Because the EU debate has been so quiet until now.

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Quote of the day

‘I do yoga, I meditate and I still want to kick somebody’

The slogan on a sign given to Hillary Clinton by a friend. “I know that feeling,” she says

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Kerslake and Robshaw toast engagement

WHO’S getting married? Find out after the break...

Saturday night saw singer Camilla Kerslake and rugby player Chris Robshaw toast their engagement with a party at Ten Trinity Square Private Club, with Robshaw taking his cue for a quick game of snooker. Well-wishers included Good Morning Britain duo Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid, and comedian Jack Whitehall.

The pair were introduced at a rugby event that Kerslake was singing at, way back in 2011, and they’ve been making sweet music together ever since. The Londoner looks forward to buying our hat.

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Tracey Emin once said there are good artists who have children: “They are called men.” At Tate Modern last week, at an In Conversation event with art critic Jonathan Jones. Emin said her fantasy “is to have a daughter who is an architect and she builds bridges”. As for the difference between male and female artists? “Men have one huge ejaculation in their career,” she said. “Women, they just keep coming and coming and coming.”

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Fox cub steals the show

Foxy: Laurence Fox in The Real Thing (Image: Edmond Terakopian)

The Fox family may be one of the country’s leading theatrical dynasties but one of its youngest members hasn’t got used to the dramatic process quite yet. Laurence Fox is starring in The Real Thing at the Rose Theatre in Kingston. Ahead of one of his shows at the weekend, he warned theatre-goers that his enthusiastic younger son Eugene was going to be in the crowd on Saturday. “Foxcub 2 is very keen to see the matinee today,” he wrote on Twitter, “so if anyone hears someone say ‘Daddy I’m hungry’ from the audience, that’s my bad...”

In fact, the five-year-old Fox managed to last through the first three scenes without incident, until things started getting steamy between Dad and his co-star Flora Spencer-Longhurst. “Hats off to Foxcub 2 who lasted until I kissed Flora in scene 4, at which point he exclaimed loudly, ‘That’s disgusting!’ and left,” Fox wrote afterwards.

A friend of The Londoner confirms that a little boy was taken out of the show for causing a disruption, but the audience found it highly amusing. Take a bow, Eugene.

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Tweet of the Day

“I believe the women”

As actresses including Ashley Judd and Rose McGowan come forward with their tales of Harvey Weinstein’s behaviour, Gemma Chan shows her solidarity

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Gift of the Day: former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has given Vladimir Putin a duvet cover depicting the two of them together for his 65th birthday. Sweet dreams.

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Macca returns to Abbey Road

Iconic recreation: Paul McCartney et al walk the Abbey Road zebra crossing in absentia

Paul McCartney and John Lennon returned to Abbey Road last week - in spirit, of course - as photographs depicting the music royalty were auctioned off at Sound & Vision, an evening of art and music raising funds for Stand Up To Cancer.

Hosted by Spandau Ballet brothers Martin and Gary Kemp, the event raised £450,000​. Hats off.

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Salma stands out next to Oscar

Salma Hayek came face to face with a giant Oscar on Friday, at a lunch at Claridge’s hosted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The award has, so far, eluded her — she was nominated in 2003 for playing Frida Kahlo — but her dress, by Susie Cave’s brand The Vampire’s Wife, was the real scene-stealer.

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