“Pep playing himself is a bit like having Robert De Niro play a football coach.”

Those are the musings of Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald, who has just spent two years charting the exploits of Pep Guardiola and Manchester City for A Beautiful Obsession and yet had barely heard of Guardiola before he was brought on board by Prime Video, Plan B, Workerbee and City Studios.

“He wears his heart on his sleeve,” said Macdonald. “He’s just so compelling to watch.”

Macdonald, whose subjects have included Whitney Houston and Bob Marley, and who won an Oscar for One Day in September, believes his lack of interest in soccer was advantageous when following one of the greatest managers of all time. The docuseries charts Guardiola’s tumultuous final two seasons after winning an English record four Premier League titles in a row and follows in a long line of Amazon sports docs about soccer teams, although this one isn’t part of the streamer’s successful All or Nothing strand.

Asking stupid questions

“There’s something quite good about asking stupid questions,” Macdonald told Deadline. “I told him I didn’t know much about football and the weird thing was that really engaged him. He was like, ‘Oh my god I’m so fed up with talking about football.’ So we talked about books, films and all sorts of other things.”

Macdonald’s disinterest in the UK’s national sport echoes that of Fisher Stevens, who directed Netflix’s smash hit Beckham documentary several years back and has also said in the past he didn’t know much about soccer when he took up the gig.

It allowed Macdonald to get under Guardiola’s skin, the Scottish director explained. “I asked why he was so interested and why the players cared so much,” added Macdonald, who spent hours observing with the legendary Spanish coach, met him five times and interviewed him three times. “We tried to make a series that was emotional and human, and saw these players go through really dramatic events. I hope the series will be enjoyed by people who aren’t football fans, but are just interested in the human drama.”

That drama came during the first few months of the period being covered in the doc as Guardiola, fresh off the back of his GOAT-like title quadruple, suddenly found results turning for the worst.

Gavin Johnson, Group Media Director at City Football Group, who oversees City Studios, said filming this period was “quite uncomfortable for people internally,” but the team was commited to keeping the cameras rolling.

“There is an acceptance at the top of the business that you have to tell deeper stories around the club and to do that you have to open yourself up,” said Johnson. “We’d had this amazing run and then we couldn’t stop losing for a short number of games and it was really really hard. Sometimes it was uncomfortable to watch but that is what makes good drama.”

Macdonald said this created “authenticity and honesty,” which contrasts with the “first wave” of popular streaming sports docs from a few years back that “were quite constructed and quite limited” in scope. “Fans see that every Saturday,” he added. “They want something more – a kind of observational, vérité documentary that is quite rare in other worlds.”

City Studios’ deep access comes from its unique position as an in-house Manchester City studio, chronicling the team all-year round.

“The team we’ve built at City haven’t shied away from any area but have done a wonderful job to build trust, catch all of the content and work within the parameters we have to work within,” said Johnson. “These are top sports individuals [we are following] who have to try and win games for Man City. But also they’re human beings and that is the essence of what Kevin Macdonald has scratched below the surface of.”

City Studios has a development deal with Sony Pictures Television for soccer content and Sony international boss Wayne Garvie has previously said he wants to find soccer’s Succession. Updating on the pact, Johnson said there are “three or four projects we are really excited about,” which lean on Garvie’s “expertise, contacts passion and knowledge,” but the world of scripted programming can be “frustratingly slow” compared with docs, he added.

“The philosophical underpinning of the series”

So what next for Guardiola?

Having won numerous titles at Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Manchester City, the 55-year-old is heading for a rare career break after turning down a job to manage the Italian national team. Macdonald said Guardiola is remarkably philosophical about the future.

“He’s coming to terms with the idea that you cannot be the best forever, but you need to understand and communicate to those around you that you have to enjoy life whether you are winning or losing,” added Macdonald. “In a way that is the philosophical underpinning of the series. This feels very authentic coming from Pep. I kept telling him he was a natural Buddhist.”

The docuseries launches August 19. It is directed by Macdonald alongside City Studios’ John De Caux and produced by Macdonald for Plan B/KM Films and Banijay UK-owned Workerbee, along with Johnson and Ged Doherty for City Studios.

Hayden Panettiere’s most notable roles might have been in Heroes, Nashville and the Scream franchise, but her performance in one small Disney movie also had quite the lasting impact on fans.

Following the news of Panettiere’s death at age 36 on Sunday, fans have flooded TikTok to pay tribute to the actress and her many beloved roles throughout her career. But her 2005 Disney movie Ice Princess, which saw her star opposite Michelle Trachtenberg (who died last year at age 39), appears to have struck a specific chord for many.

Video compilations of Trachtenberg and Panettiere’s characters, Casey Carlyle and Gen Harwood, respectively, have been circulating on social media Monday, with many fans acknowledging the film’s comforting nostalgia amid the tragedy.

“Our ice princesses are together again,” one fan wrote, while another person shared, “RIP to our ice princesses. This is the movie that inspired me to start figure skating and will always hold a special place in my heart.” Another fan also wrote in a video, “Now they will skate together on ice for eternity. RIP queens,” while one person added, “Hayden and Michelle 4ever loved and remembered by the girls who grew up watching Ice Princess.”

Ice Princess followed Casey, a brainy high school student, who gives up her path to Harvard to pursue her newfound dream of being a professional figure skater. Panettiere played Casey’s main rival-turned- supportive ally.

While it underperformed at the box office upon its release in 2005, the recent reactions from fans highlight how the film became a childhood touchstone for many older Gen Zers and younger millennials, especially women. The film’s empowering message about self-discovery and combining academics and athleticism also contributed to its impact on young girls at the time.

Both Panettiere’s and Trachtenberg’s unexpected deaths occurring at a young age and within two years of each other have come as a shock to Ice Princess fans, as they continue to remember both women on social media. “Can’t believe both of our ice princesses are gone,” another person wrote on TikTok.

Kim Cattrall, who played Tina Harwood, the pushy figure skating coach and mom in the film, also took a moment to pay tribute to Panettiere on Instagram, writing on Monday, “Rest in peace sweet Hayden. Gone far too soon.”

Of all the feedback she’s received on All Her Fault, there is one comment that sticks with creator and showrunner Megan Gallagher: “Those are two of the worst husbands I’ve ever seen on television, and neither one of them were having an affair.”

It certainly would’ve been easy (and predictable) to fuel audiences’ distaste for the spouses of Marissa Irvine (Sarah Snook) and Jenny Kaminski (Dakota Fanning), the two women at the center of the thriller who are brought together by the disappearance of the former’s son, by adding an extramarital relationship to the mix — particularly for Jenny’s husband, Richie (Thomas Cocquerel), whose sins amount to far less than Peter’s (Jake Lacy).

But, it also would’ve undercut the themes Gallagher wanted to drive home with the limited series, which explores the ways that women and mothers often shoulder the brunt of societal responsibility and therefore get the lion’s share of the blame as well.

“I don’t think that that’s the worst thing that you can do to your spouse, necessarily. I really don’t,” Gallagher said during an All Her Fault x Women in Entertainment FYC screening at The London in West Hollywood on Sunday. “The truth is, if you are Jenny Kaminsky, and you are miserable every day and asking for help every day, and the person who’s supposed to love you and be your life partner is doing everything within their power to keep you miserable, that’s so much worse, I think, than having an affair. Like, I’d rather have you sleep with your secretary than do that. It meant something to be able to get that on the screen, that look at marriage.”

It also gave Gallagher an opportunity to dig into the complexities of a woman like Jenny, someone she says “might seem like [a] pushover” but is far from it.

“She’s a people pleaser by nature. She’s very clearly depicted that way, as somebody whose strength is in being empathic and being intuitive and kind of sensing what other people need,” she explained. “And I feel like I know so many people like that, men and women both, but I think that those people often have a very steely core down there.”

Gallagher describes the scene where Jenny finally puts her foot down with Richie as the character finally “finding that moment of no.”

Jenny’s realization is fueled not only by her husband’s actions throughout the series but also by the revelations about Marissa’s missing son and the part her own husband Peter played in his disappearance. At every turn, Marissa blames herself for Milo’s disappearance, as do others, and Peter lets her bear that undue weight for most of the series without explaining his part in any of it.

Ultimately, Marissa is a devoted mom who had nothing to do with her son’s disappearance and who was fooled by her own husband. Just like with Jenny, Gallagher says she wanted to challenge expectations for the kind of woman Marissa would be.

“I purposefully wrote Marissa as an incredibly accomplished career woman who wasn’t necessarily a lovey-dovey mom,” she said. “She’s got a real edge to her, in a good way, in a way that I find relatable. I’m not a wilting flower. She’s a really strong lady.”

Marissa’s devotion to both her son and her own sense of self was an important component to get on screen, Gallagher said, adding: “It’s one thing when society blames you or the media blames you and all that kind of stuff. It’s another thing when women internalize this guilt and we take it on ourselves. To me, that’s the most heartbreaking part.”