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PEOPLE & ARTS A31
Thursday 7 April 2016
‘Girlfriend Experience’ escorts viewer through love for pay
FRAZIER MOORE a manner — buoyant, girl- “Magic Mike.”
AP Television Writer “It’s liberating taking on a
NEW YORK (AP) — It’s the ish, clad in a gauzy Valen- female role where she’s
world’s oldest profession. doing things that woman
It’s very popular with ama- tino frock but with her de- aren’t ‘supposed’ to do,”
teurs. With or without mon- Keough says.
ey changing hands, sex signer heels comfortably “And it made me think a
reigns as a transaction that lot about sex: Why there’s
stimulates no end of long- dislodged from her bare so much attention to it,
ing, curiosity and obsession. why it’s so secretive, why
No wonder “The Girlfriend feet — in stark contrast to some people think it’s bad.
Experience” should seduce I didn’t come up with a lot
viewers with this business of her performance as Chris- of answers.” That’s not sur-
companionship between prising, since the series fur-
a high-end female escort tine (escort nom de guerre: nishes few answers to the
and her satisfied clients. many questions it poses.
A dramatic series of 13 half- Chelsea), who is as poised, Meanwhile, the sex scenes
hours premiering on Starz presented their own chal-
with two episodes Sunday sleek and elliptical as this lenges.
at 8 p.m. EDT, “The Girl- “You’re not really having
friend Experience” comes sexy show. sex with the other actors
from producer Steven So- but you’re doing every-
derbergh, loosely based But as it glides through its thing else: the motions, the
on his 2009 film, and stars kissing, the being very inti-
Riley Keough as an ambi- narrative, whether in the mate. And you have to do
tious young woman who it for take after take. It gets
acknowledges she’s try- office or the bedroom, is tiring.” Even all that heavy
ing to burn the candle at breathing: “I’d get dizzy-
three ends: She’s a promis- “The Girlfriend Experience” headed,” she says with a
ing law student in Chicago laugh.
who lands a coveted in- really about sex? “I was thinking a lot about
ternship with a prestigious Christine and who she is
law firm at the same time “The show to me is about before we began shoot-
she follows a gal pal into ing,” she says.
a $2,000-an-hour sideline control,” says Soderbergh. “I don’t want to do some-
offering a “girlfriend expe- thing if I don’t understand
rience” for men of means “This is a really interesting it, because it feels like
and premium urges. fraud. But by the time we
Market value? A fair ex- venue to explore a charac- started, I had gotten to
change? a place where I was like,
“They’re paying for some- ter who is discovering that ‘OK, I think I get it.’”
body who’s giving them Soderbergh thinks she got
something they’re not get- she has power and that she it.
ting otherwise in their life,” “Riley has such a sense of
says Keough, floating a likes control. And what’s In this March 30, 2016 file photo, actress Riley Keough attends security as a performer,”
commonsense reply. the premiere of her show “The Girlfriend Experience” in New he says. “She truly seems to
In a recent interview, the also interesting is that, as York. The 13-episode series premieres Sunday at 8 p.m. EST, and behave as though there’s
26-year-old actress displays is loosely based on Steven Soderbergh’s 2009 film. not a camera there. q
often happens in life, this
Associated Press
idea of control, even in a
context that SEEMS to be
very prescribed, is still an il- “All life is transactional,” cal and emotional lives.”
says Kerrigan. “Here, we Then, with the literal flip of
lusion.” were very interested in a coin (Kerrigan won the
a woman who goes into toss), they divvied up which
And therein lurk the pres- these ready-made situa- episodes each would di-
tions to be very intimate rect.
sures on a woman who with her clients: The ques- At the core of their tale
tion is, how intimate can is Christine/Chelsea, and
(while keeping up her law- she really be? And how tackling this multifaceted
does this role collide with role was no small chal-
school grades and navi- the others in her life?” lenge for Keough.
By collaborating on the Wed to stuntman Ben
gating the gender politics scripts, line by line, Kerrigan Smith-Petersen, she is a
feels he and Seimetz coun- grandchild of Elvis Pres-
of the law firm where she terbalanced male and fe- ley and a daughter of Lisa
male points of view: “We Marie Presley and musi-
hopes to excel) is selling looked at the characters — cian Danny Keough, and
Christine and the rest — as already has an impressive
men the personal touch individuals, not as a man or list of film credits including
a woman, then tried to un- “Mad Max: Fury Road,”
while struggling to maintain derstand their psychologi- ‘’The Runaways” and
professional boundaries.
To bring the series to life,
Soderbergh paired film-
maker Lodge Kerrigan and
actress-filmmaker Amy
Seimetz (“I thought the
show would benefit from
male and female cross-
talk”), who began by jointly
writing the 13 episodes.
LeVar Burton: ‘It was
time’ to remake ‘Roots’
THOMAS ADAMSON tory, particularly after the Burton is the executive di- View of the stand of the new tv series “Roots” at the MIPTV, Inter-
Associated Press election of Barack Obama, rector of the new “Roots,” national Television Programme Market, Monday, April 4, 2016, in
PARIS (AP) — LeVar Bur- the United States’ first black which will debut on the His- Cannes, southern France.
ton was initially skeptical president. tory Channel next month.
of remaking “Roots,” the “It was time — almost 40 The all-star cast includes Associated Press
groundbreaking miniseries years had passed. It made Laurence Fishburne, Forest
that launched his career in sense. If we want to keep Whitaker, Anna Paquin and
1977. these stories alive in the Jonathan Rhys Meyers, with
But Burton, who played a cultural consciousness, we newcomer Malachi Kirby
young Kunta Kinte, over- have to reinvent them and as a young Kinte.
came those concerns after retell them,” he said. The The cast was on hand
seeing the educational val- current political climate in earlier this week at MIPTV,
ue in helping the new gen- the U.S., he said, “has trig- Cannes’ annual television
eration of Americans better gered a fear, an underlying fair, which rolled out the
relate to the plight of slaves sense of disquiet that was red carpet for the world
and African-American his- there all along.” premiere of the reboot.q
