Seven Demons on Eleventh Avenue, Catherine Zeta-Jones at Comic Con
The Oscar winner swaps red carpets for a convention stage, brings her own Welsh accent, and teaches Al Roker how to walk like Morticia
Catherine Zeta-Jones has an Oscar, a Tony and a long history of red carpets. This week she tried something new. She was booked for the Main Stage at New York Comic Con on Friday afternoon to talk about a woman who has to take down a squad of assassins before they kill her.
It is her first Comic Con. She talked about getting ready for it on the third hour of TODAY on Thursday. The convention is in its twentieth year at the Javits Center on the far west side, and it runs through Sunday.
The panel is part of an AMC+ spotlight, and Kill Jackie, her new revenge thriller, opens it. The panel schedule published by TV Insider had it on the Main Stage from 3:30 to 4 p.m. on Friday, October 9, and the official convention schedule lists the AMC+ block as starting at 3:30. She was scheduled to appear with Tom Butterworth, the showrunner, writer and executive producer, and executive producer Peter Lawson, with Perri Nemiroff of Collider moderating. The listing promised sneak peeks at episodes still to come.
Jackie Price, Retired
The series arrived on AMC+ in the United States on October 2, Variety reported, with all eight episodes out at once on Prime Video in the United Kingdom and several other countries. It is based on The Price You Pay, a novel by Nick Harkaway written under the name Aidan Truhen.
Zeta-Jones plays Jackie Price, a former international drug smuggler who has gone straight as an art dealer. The quiet life does not last. She learns that the Seven Demons, a crew of the world's most frightening hitmen, have been hired to kill her. Her answer is to hunt them first, one by one. The supporting cast includes Ron Perlman, Sidse Babett Knudsen and Bill Paterson.
On TODAY, as BroadwayWorld reported, she described the role as crude, a little messy and quite open to violence. She did her own fight scenes. The show was shot in Wales, in her hometown. She was born and raised in Swansea.
She did her own fight scenes. The show was shot in Wales, in her hometown.
Her Own Voice
The detail she seemed happiest about was the accent. On TODAY she called it liberating to use her own Welsh voice on screen for the first time. For an actor who spent the late nineties and the two thousands as a Hollywood leading lady, that is a long wait to sound like yourself at work.
She made the same point about the accent on The Graham Norton Show, BroadwayWorld noted, and went further there, walking the audience through an ear-biting scene from the series. It is not, in other words, a gentle show. The official synopsis, quoted by Variety, warns that Jackie's own demons turn out to be scarier than the killers on her trail.
She also took a moment to coach Al Roker on the Morticia Addams walk. That is a nod to her turn as Morticia in Wednesday, which the Comic Con schedule lists right next to Chicago in her credits. For a Comic Con crowd, that may be the bigger draw. For a New York crowd, it is a reminder that she has history here.
Her New York credentials are on Broadway. Her debut there came in the 2009 revival of Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music, where she played an aging actress and won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical. Her Oscar came earlier, for Velma Kelly in the film of Chicago. Both are glamour roles. Jackie Price is not.
The Book at Home
The TODAY visit had one more headline. Her husband, Michael Douglas, has a new memoir, titled One Helluva Ride. BroadwayWorld reported that she admitted she has not read it yet, and she suggested readers brace themselves.
A Comic Con crowd tends to want stunts, sneak peeks and a little mayhem, and Jackie Price has plenty of all three.
Friday at the Javits is crowded with film and television. Another panel that afternoon, for the survival thriller Whalefall, was set for the Empire Stage at the same hour, according to Laughing Place. Nobody can be in two rooms at once, which is part of the fun and most of the stress of the weekend.
If the name Velma Kelly sends you straight to Broadway, our story on the Chicago reunion at thirty is the companion piece. And the TODAY conversation is the best preview of the voice behind Jackie Price.
