What happens to ‘Emancipation’ after the slap?

I’ve been listening to Christine McVie for the past 24 hours and holding her friend Stevie Nicks’ handwritten tribute close to my heart. And, yes, after reading that beautiful note, putting Haim’s “Hallelujah” on a loop.

I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times, host of the Envelope’s Friday newsletter and the guy still looking through last Sunday’s Times in a futile search for Parade magazine. How will I know if a person can actually die by exhaustion without being able to Ask Marilyn???

After the slap, can Will Smith’s ‘Emancipation’ earn Oscar love?

When Will Smith took the stage Wednesday night at Westwood’s Village Theatre to introduce his new slavery thriller “Emancipation,” the nearly full house cheered and took out their phones to capture the moment. The actor had just finished striding the premiere’s red carpet, flashing his thousand-megawatt smile for photographers alongside his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, and their three children, Trey, Jaden and Willow.

“So far, so good,” Smith said, responding to a question about how it felt returning to the spotlight eight months after he struck presenter Chris Rock on the Dolby Theatre stage at the Oscars.

In other words, the premiere of “Emancipation,” which opens in select theaters Friday before arriving Dec. 9 on Apple TV+, appeared to largely be business as usual. Smith, the film’s star and producer, hit his marks to extol the story of an enslaved man escaping to reunite with his wife and children after Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. At the film’s premiere, the friendly audience cheered mostly on cue.

Beneath the surface, however, the rollout of “Emancipation” has strayed well outside the standard awards-season playbook, as the film’s backers delicately attempt to shift the narrative away from Smith’s shocking, profanity-laced Oscar-night meltdown. Now, like the film’s beaten but determined hero, “Emancipation” will undertake a perilous journey of its own as Apple Original Films mounts an awards campaign amid lingering mixed feelings within the industry about Smith’s actions and the motion picture academy’s response.

My colleague Josh Rottenberg and I delved into how Oscar voters are thinking about Smith’s new movie, which will have to overcome mixed reviews and lingering resentments to earn a spot in the best picture field.

Will Smith and Ben Foster in “Emancipation.”

(Quantrell Colbert / Apple)

Forget international feature ... ‘RRR’ aims for best picture

S.S. Rajamouli and I are up in the projection booth at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica. It’s the Friday night before Thanksgiving and Rajamouli’s beloved action epic “RRR” is playing to a raucous, sold-out house. We’d been looking for a quiet place to talk, but if you’ve seen the movie, you know that “quiet” and “RRR” are contradictory in every possible sense.

The movie’s almost over and we can hear the audience roaring their approval during a climactic battle sequence. Rajamouli has seen “RRR” with an audience dozens of times, but he never tires of hearing them respond to what he’s put on screen.

“There’s another big cheer coming,” he tells me, smiling. “Coming ... wait for it ...” He holds up his hand, like a symphony conductor. When it arrives, Rajamouli bursts out laughing.

There’s one moment to come though that will take Rajamouli by surprise. We make our way down to the lobby where he sees his son, S.S. Karthikeya, a line producer on “RRR.” He gives him a warm embrace. The end credits are rolling, the final celebration sequence is unfolding, people are dancing in the aisles — and one exuberant fan is up on the stage — and when the song finishes and Rajamouli makes his way toward the front, the audience begins to chant, “SSR, SSR, SSR!”

“I was supposed to introduce you,” says Beyond Fest co-founder Christian Parkes, who would lead a Q&A with Rajamouli, “but you need no introduction. There are filmmakers. There are auteurs. And then there’s SSR.”

The next night, I run into Rajamouli and Karthikeya at the bar at the Governors Awards, the annual honorary Oscars ceremony. “SSR!” I say, laughing. “Is that a thing at screenings now?” Karthikeya doubles over, and Rajamouli shakes his head. “First time,” he answers, smiling. “First time.” (“RRR” is his 12th feature.)

But perhaps not the last as Rajamouli and the awards team for “RRR” (short for “Rise, Roar, Revolt”) try to turn a longshot dream into a reality and land the movie a best picture Oscar nomination. Does it have a chance? Yes, I’m telling you there’s a chance.

“RRR” director S.S. Rajamouli.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Michelle Yeoh laughs at 60: ‘Yes! I’m finally cool!’

Michelle Yeoh was having a flashback, not of the acid variety, but it was pretty intense all the same.

She was seated in the middle of the Paramount Theatre in Austin in March for the South by Southwest premiere of her movie “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” nerves frayed, worried how people would react to her performance — or should we say “performances,” since Yeoh plays half a dozen different characters in the movie. Would the audience laugh in the right spots? Would they find her funny?

And, sitting there, waiting, Yeoh thought back to the midnight premiere of her first headlining movie, Corey Yuen’s 1985 Hong Kong action classic “Yes, Madam!,” where she was perched in the balcony tier, first row, constantly peeking over the railing to see how the hardcore moviegoers seated below her, the ones given to sharing their feelings very vocally, would react. She was bracing herself for the boos and instead was ecstatic when the audience erupted into cheers.

“Forty years, man!” Yeoh says, letting out a big laugh, thinking about how long she’s been making movies — and worrying about what people think when she tries something that’s outside her comfort zone.

Considering “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” in which she plays Evelyn, a stressed-out laundromat owner trying to save an imperiled multiverse and heal a frayed relationship with her daughter, Yeoh calls it a role she’s been rehearsing to play all her life. And as it was the first time she has been allowed to be goofy on screen — a quality that comes quite naturally to her in real life, she says — she didn’t know if audiences would buy into the act.

“When I was at that premiere and I heard that first laugh, I was like, ‘Omigod, omigod, omigod, they actually think I’m funny,’” says Yeoh, who, in conversation, is quite the cutup, if only for the sound effects with which she punctuates her thoughts. Perhaps the only thing better than Michelle Yeoh performing martial arts in movies like “Wing Chun,” “The Heroic Trio” and, of course, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” is hearing Michelle Yeoh describe her moves in those movies with pow-pow-pow punctuations.

I sat down with Yeoh not long ago on the rooftop of a Beverly Hills hotel and, even over the sirens of ambulances going to nearby Cedars-Sinai, she expressed herself loud and clear. She has long been a favorite, and I think you’ll see why when you read our conversation.

Michelle Yeoh, star of “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”

(Jessica Chou / For The Times)