The BFI London Film Festival isn’t the only big event attracting big and famous names to the British capital this week. Case in point: The Albies, the fifth annual awards ceremony organized by The Clooney Foundation for Justice, held Friday evening at London’s Museum of Natural History. Amal and George Clooney, in their roles as co-founders of The Clooney Foundation for Justice, Brad Pitt, Laura Dern, Emma Thompson, Felicity Jones, Joel Edgerton, Josh Hartnett, Rivals star Alex Hassell, Anna Wintour, Donatella Versace, Bianca Jagger, Emily Ratajkowski, Hannah Waddingham and many more brought star power to the event. And everyone was dressed to the nines.

They were joined by representatives of sponsors, such as Brad Smith, vice chair and president at Microsoft, and makeup artist and beauty entrepreneur Charlotte Tilbury, as well as talk show host Graham Norton, actors Isla Fisher, Ncuti Gatwa, Marisa Abela, Katherine Waterston, Richard Kind, Myha’la and Hugh Bonneville, musicians Vic Mensa and Jackson Browne, as well as Melinda French Gates.

Clooney told THR about why justice deserves a spotlight: “It feels like it’s in short supply, doesn’t it? It’s hard when you look around, and you see such large-scale pieces of injustice, and we, at times, start to think of it as the new normal. And it’s good to be here with people who remind us that there’s nothing normal about people not being treated fairly. There’s nothing normal about people not having their rights. And these are people that we’re honoring tonight who put their lives on the line to do that.”

The honorees’ names may not be household names, the star acknowledged. “You’ll recognize the names of the people who are introducing them,” he offered. “And each one of those people that you recognize would be thrilled to have that light shining less on them and more on the people doing things to make the world better.”

Clooney also shared a brief update on Ocean’s 14 with THR. “I think we’ll shoot a lot in London, a lot in the U.K., some in France,” he said. “I think we start in about 11 months. It’s a ways off, but the older we get, the funnier it is. We start falling down a lot.”

Waddingham told THR about The Albies: “It’s the most important night of the year in terms of the people who have a fortunate platform to give something back, and George and Amal do that in spades. The biggest point for me in terms of justice for others is those of us who find ourselves in a fortunate position helping those who face the injustices of the world, and they cannot fight for themselves.” She added: “George and Amal find them and fight for them. The stories that you hear in there are really breathtaking.”

Could her fans see her co-starring in a film or series with Clooney any time soon? “Oh, I don’t know,” she said before adding with a nod in the direction of Clooney. “Ask him!”

This year’s Albie honorees are Kyrgyz journalists Bolot Temirov and Makhabat Tazhibek Kyzy, Malawian girls’ rights advocate and shelter founder Vanessa Mwangala, U.S. wartime photojournalist Lynsey Addario, as well as Congolese human rights organization Justice Plus and Microsoft’s Smith in his role of human rights advocate.

The annual Albies ceremony looks to shine an international spotlight on “courageous individuals and organizations who have dedicated their lives to the pursuit of justice, often at great personal risk.” The award is named after the legendary Justice Albie Sachs, “a hero of the anti-apartheid movement who survived imprisonment, exile and an assassination attempt in the fight for equality in South Africa,” the organization says. “Inspired by his legacy, George and Amal Clooney created the Albies to ensure that the people doing the hardest work to promote justice – often far from the spotlight – are seen, heard and protected.”

Fisher lauded the couple that brought a big crowd together on Friday. “What George and Amal do is just unbelievable. They are using their platform to stand up for what they believe in, which is just a very courageous and critical thing, particularly right now,” she told THR. “And it’s not just about raising awareness. They actually make people accountable, and that’s the really important piece.”

Ahead of his performance at Friday’s event, Mensa told THR: “I’m excited to perform tonight and grateful to George Clooney and Amal for bringing me out. I am in admiration of the sacrifices that they have made.”

And he shared insight about his performance: “I’m performing a song called ‘We Could Be Free’ that I did at the March for Our Lives [in 2018 for gun control] that they also organized.” Concluded Mensa: “Although some of the specific details that I mention in the song have shifted and the focus may be elsewhere in the world, the sentiment is exactly the same. Many of the challenges that humanity faces have always been [around].”

EXCLUSIVE: V Studios, the Vietnamese production arm of Korean exhibitor CJ CGV, has closed multiple deals on supernatural fantasy Red Woman, including sales to NewGates Corporation for Japan and Mockingbird Pictures for the US and Canada.

The film, which is V Studios’ first fully in-house produced feature, has also gone to Infinity Entertainment for Australia & New Zealand; NK Contents for South Korea; and Westec Media for Cambodia.

V Studios, which was previously known as V Pictures and launched here at Busan two years ago, also handles international sales for a slate of films it has invested in, as well as third-party titles. Since launch, the company has handled films including horror hits Ma Da: The Drowning Spirit, The Corpse and The Corpse 2.

Starring Minh Hang, Red Woman reimagines a figure from Vietnamese folk history, the eponymous and elusive ‘Red Woman’, a character that has primarily existed through Vietnamese oral culture and collective memory.

Directed by Jack Carry On, the film is fully produced by V Studios with Tam Tuong on board as executive producer.

The film marks Minh Hang’s return to cinema after a three-year hiatus, following previous theatrical titles including Sweet Trap and Sister Sister 2. She also starred in Naked Truth (2022), which was streamed in Southeast Asia by Netflix. The cast also includes Rima Thanh Vy (Furies), Nhat Kim Anh (The Musician At The Dragon Citadel), Khuong Le (Meet Me At The Eclipse), Phat La and Dai Nghia.

Theatrical release in Vietnam is scheduled for November 27, 2026, followed by an international rollout.

V Studios said: “For generations, Vietnamese children have grown up hearing warnings about ‘Red Woman’ – a mysterious woman said to take children away if they wandered too far or disobeyed their parents. Yet unlike many established figures in Asian mythology, Red Woman has no definitive appearance, mythology or widely accepted origin story. That absence gives the filmmakers an unusual opportunity: to transform a familiar cultural fear into an entirely original cinematic mythology.

“At the heart of Red Woman is a deceptively universal proposition: What would you be willing to sacrifice to get the one thing you desire most? When people reach the deepest point of desperation, resentment or longing, Red Woman appears. Possessing seemingly limitless powers, she offers them the one wish they have always wanted fulfilled. But every miracle carries a price.”

Vietnamese genre cinema has recently been on a roll with a string of hits including Crimson Snout (Quy Cau), Ma Da: The Drowning and The Sisters (Cam) demonstrating local audiences’ appetite for stories drawing on folk beliefs and culturally specific supernatural imagery. Many of these titles are now securing theatrical distribution across Southeast Asia and international markets.

SPOILERS: This post contains details about the Season 1 finale of Prime Video‘s Carrie

As Mike Flanagan‘s Carrie puts a modern update on the Stephen King classic, Kate Siegel‘s mysterious role represents a major twist.

Playing Adelaide, the guardian of a group of young women with the TK gene, the actress explained she was able to “make her whoever I wanted” while working with husband and frequent collaborator Flanagan on the series, all episodes streaming on Prime Video.

“She represents this framing device that’s never been fully realized in any of the other adaptations, which is Stephen King pointing to the fact that this is a bigger story,” said Siegel of the character. “Clearly this is something he’s interested in, the TK gene and just the concept of the Shine kind of harmonizes throughout all of his stories. And so, getting to portray that was very exciting for me.”

After narrating several episodes with a history of women who possessed the TK gene, which gives Carrie her telekinetic abilities, Adelaide is revealed as the person interviewing the survivors of the prom night fire. Ultimately, she kills Carrie’s mom Margaret (Samantha Sloyan) before going after Carrie and her mysterious new friend Emaline (Thalia Dudek).

With the unanswered questions around Adelaide’s motives, some have compared her to a Professor X of the Stephen King onscreen universe while awaiting answers in a potential Season 2.

Noting that she’s “a huge X-Men fan,” Siegel explains there’s a lot more to Adelaide. “Professor X always seems very grounded and in control of himself, and we’ve only seen Adelaide in this one situation, and so I’m excited to show people more of what’s actually going on with her,” she teased.

Siegel added, “The thing I would tell people to ask themselves is, who is Adelaide telling these stories to? Who is she filming this for? So, there are questions there. Who are the other girls in the room, and who sent those other girls to the prom, and why? There’s a lot of questions that Adelaide represents right now, more than just her seemingly calm demeanor when interviewing these people of Chamberlain.”

Carrie marks Siegel’s latest collaboration with Flanagan, having starred in his films Oculus (2013), Hush (2016), Gerald’s Game (2017) and The Life of Chuck (2024), as well as his shows The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass and The Fall of the House of Usher.

Next up, Siegel appears in Flanagan’s highly-anticipated The Exorcist: Martyrs, premiering March 12, 2027, a movie she says makes his 2019 horror Doctor Sleep “look like a Disney cartoon.”

Siegel praises Flanagan for having “never made me feel embarrassed about all the different sides of my personality, including my female rage and my female violence,” a dynamic that fuels their ongoing collaboration.

Meanwhile, having stepped behind the camera to direct the Carrie episode “Social Studies”, Siegel is preparing to take on her feature directorial debut Method, a horror-thriller passion project that she says is “close to my heart,” which she’s also producing through her newly launched Legitimate Pictures banner.

“I’m very much looking forward to exploring the future side of directing in a more long-form story than an episode of TV or a short film,” said Siegel. “I think I have a lot to say about this particular story of Method, and I hope it sees the light of day.”

Read on about Kate Siegel’s roles in Carrie, The Exorcist: Martyrs and The Last Temptation of Becky, as well as what’s next.

DEADLINE: I did a high school book report on Carrie, and I always loved the framing device of the interviews in the book, so I really appreciated that twist with Adelaide.

KATE SIEGEL: Well, what I loved about Adelaide is exactly what you pointed out, is she represents this framing device that’s never been fully realized in any of the other adaptations, which is Stephen King pointing to the fact that this is a bigger story, and he goes back and examines that idea multiple times in his career through The Shop and The Institute. You see it quite a bit. He talks about breakers. Clearly this is something he’s interested in, the TK gene and just the concept of the Shine kind of harmonizes throughout all of his stories. And so, getting to portray that was very exciting for me. And since there was eight episodes, there’s no real explanation about Adelaide, so I could make her whoever I wanted. All I had to do was deliver what was on the page.

DEADLINE: Well, I’m very intrigued by her as a character. She kind of seems like this Professor X for the Stephen King universe.

SIEGEL: It’s funny, people say that, and I’m a huge X-Men fan, and I always wanted to be a Jean Grey. My understanding of Adelaide actually takes her further away from that than you would think. … Professor X always seems very grounded and in control of himself, and we’ve only seen Adelaide in this one situation, and so I’m excited to show people more of what’s actually going on with her.

DEADLINE: Yeah, that’s what I was gonna ask, can you tease any of that, because like It seems like she might be a safe person for these young, psychics with like the TK gene—

SIEGEL: [delightfully maniacal laughter]

DEADLINE: But then she does kill Margaret in the end. So, I’m very curious to see how that will play out.

SIEGEL: Well, honestly, I don’t want to tease yet. I’ll be happy to give you that information when I have the go-ahead. But the thing I would tell people to ask themselves is, who is Adelaide telling these stories to? Who is she filming this for? So, there are questions there. Who are the other girls in the room, and who sent those other girls to the prom, and why? There’s a lot of questions that Adelaide represents right now, more than just her seemingly calm demeanor when interviewing these people of Chamberlain.

DEADLINE: Yeah, and I’m excited to find out the answers to all those questions as well. So, I really hope we get a Season 2.

SIEGEL: As of right now, there is nothing. I know nothing about nothing, so the story is fully committed for Season 1. I confirm nothing.

DEADLINE: I understand. I also know that you directed an episode. What was it like stepping behind the camera for this one?

SIEGEL: Oh, it was such a joy. I mean, I had done a handful of 20-minute shorts before that, and when I got this opportunity, I dove in with all of my Type-A planning and overachieving and really wanting to succeed. And that kind of instinct can be detrimental to an actor if you’re trying too hard. If you’re too prepared as a director, you can never be too prepared. You can start shot-listing a year in advance, and still, buyers will come up on the day that you have to put out. So, I didn’t find myself having to shut off parts of my brain that I normally do when I’m trying to work from instinct and listening in the moment, in an actor space.

DEADLINE: Speaking of directing, I know you’re also making your feature directorial debut with Method. Can you tell me anything about that?

SIEGEL: Oh gosh, Method is a story close to my heart. I have been in development with Method for a while, and I’m close to getting news that I can share. To be honest, I was coached on this yesterday because there’s so much I want to say, but I’m not allowed to reveal now, especially because I’m working with, Di Novi Pictures and Margaret French Isaac, and they’ve been incredible, and they are really championing this project, and our studio partner.

DEADLINE: Understandable.

SIEGEL: But I’m very much looking forward to exploring the future side of directing in a more long-form story than an episode of TV or a short film. I think I have a lot to say about this particular story of Method, and I hope it sees the light of day.

DEADLINE: Yeah, I’m excited to see it as well. Are you allowed to tell me if this one is horror?

SIEGEL: Yes, this one is definitely in the horror-thriller space.

DEADLINE: Love it. What’s it been like launching Legitimate Pictures with this female-driven mission?

SIEGEL: I love Launching Pictures because I’m getting lots of incoming calls from female creatives and female executives, and anybody who is an ally in that female-identifying space who are looking for a place to put their stories. And getting to hear these stories and read these stories and all the scripts I receive are so unlike what I see on TV right now. They’re so unlike what I’m watching, and there’s just a wealth of stories that are dying to be told. What I find the hardest is narrowing it down to the stories that I can champion at this time. … It’s amazing because it’s such a personal and intimate thing to do, screenwriting and so when I receive these like one-pagers or the outline or the script, it’s so individualistic, you feel like you’re looking at someone’s diary. The ones I respond to are always the ones that are the most authentic and revealing with a strong point of view, and that’s not saying they’re all autobiographical, but just that you learn so much about a person by the story that they want to tell.

DEADLINE: Absolutely. And speaking of platforming female voices, I saw an interview with Mike where he was talking about Carrie being a very femino-centric story and how he relied on the female writers and the women in the cast and the crew to help guide that voice. Can you tell me about collaborating in that way with him?

SIEGEL: Well, one of the things I love about Mike as a showrunner is that he’s curious, and so he didn’t approach the women in his writer’s room or those of us who were directing or even his cast being like, “Well, come into my world and tell me what you know.” It was just very much with an open mind and listening and watching and observing. He is an extremely supportive spouse, and he and I have been collaborating for our entire relationship, and I’ve never met a man who is more curious about the female experience from a place of pride and respect. And so it’s not like, “Oh, that’s so hard. Oh, being a woman, it must be rough.” It’s like, “Wow, look at all of this.” He often says he’s married to 1,000 women because I’m not your run-of-the-mill trad wife, and he’s never made me feel embarrassed about all the different sides of my personality, including my female rage and my female violence. And I think the joy that he gets from women’s expression in all forms shows in his hiring practices and shows in the show.

DEADLINE: Can you tell me anything about The Exorcist: Martyrs?

SIEGEL: I can tell you that without a doubt, it’s the scariest thing that Mike has ever made. Notoriously, when I was watching screenings of Doctor Sleep, I only watched the baseball boy scene once, and I normally watch Mike’s stuff hundreds of times with him, but after seeing it once, I walked out of the theater every time. And The Exorcist makes that look like a Disney cartoon. I was just sitting there going, “Jesus Christ!” But it’s so good. He was a fan of the original movie and of The Exorcist III, and so when this opportunity came around, he knocked it out of the park.

DEADLINE: Yeah, I’ve seen a lot of people pointing out like the Exorcist III inspirations and are really excited about that. So, I’m excited to see that as well. But also, I just saw the trailer for The Last Temptation of Becky, and I’m equally as excited about that.

SIEGEL: Becky was so fun. I got to step into one of my life’s goals of being like the grouchy police chief, Agent Kate Montana. They’re like, “You’re a loose cannon, Becky!” It was an absolute joy all the way through. I get to do one of those iconic scenes where I go through a table of weapons and I’m like, “You think this is a pen? It’s a knife. You think this is a knife? It’s actually a gun.”

DEADLINE: That sounds so much fun. I love those movies.

SIEGEL: Once again, highlighting feminine rage. I think Lulu Wilson is a dream to work with and just kicks the pants off of every single one of the installments of Becky.

DEADLINE: Also, I hate that it’s become so controversial to say that Nazis are bad, so I love that part of the movies as well.

SIEGEL: Yeah, I don’t know when it became a hot take that Nazis are evil. Jesus, help us all.

DEADLINE: Was there anything else you wanted to add about your upcoming projects?

SIEGEL: I want to say that it has been such a joy to see the support that I get from executives, being a female director in the genre space, having Di Novi Pictures come on and having my executives at Amazon be willing to go into this development on a story that is so female-centric and really highlights multiple parts of the female experience. It’s nice to feel that shift in the industry towards female-centric stories. And look, it’s not perfect. It’s never gonna be perfect. Progress isn’t perfect, but I am pleasantly surprised at every turn.