Merritt Wever and Toni Collette are starring in the new Netflix true crime drama Unbelievable, but Wever admitted to being rather starstruck by her Oscar-nominated costar behind the scenes. “Working with her was a very big draw for me,” Wever said of Collette. “It was a very huge honor. Did not disappoint.” Collette said she’s been blessed in her career, but feels humbled that many fans still approach her and tell her how they relate so closely to her characters. “I get a lot of, ‘You’re terrible, Muriel’ and ‘I see dead people,’” Collette said, referencing iconic lines from Muriel’s Wedding (1994) and The Sixth Sense (1999). Wever then admitted she, too, couldn’t resist quoting the Muriel’s Wedding line to Collette when they met on set. “I did that to your face. It was terrible,” said Wever. “No, it wasn’t,” Collette said. “She was immediately mortified!” Wever recounted how she could barely get her words out as she spoke to Collette, to the point that her costar was concerned she was having a brain aneurism. “I was like, ‘You’re terrible, Muriel,’” she said. Wever said she couldn’t resist the opportunity to say the line to Collette in person. “To not a small group of people that’s a big deal – to get to Muriel the actual Muriel, and I got to Muriel Muriel,” she said, “and I hold it in my heart.” “I had to text someone right afterwards,” Wever added. “I was so nervous that she was going to think I was a freak.” Watch the full interview with Toni Collette and Merritt Wever here:

What a banner week it has been for Toni Collette: The promotion for both “Knives Out” in Toronto and “Unbelievable” in New York – and, in case you’ve missed it, the official announcement that she will indeed star in Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming “Nightmare Alley”). This week’s Monday and Tuesday were blocked for all kinds of appearances to promote Friday’s premiere of “Unbelievable” on Netflix. A first visit was paid to Build Series in New York City, with Toni, Kaitlyn Dever, Merritt Wever, Danielle Macdonald and executive producers Susannah Grant, Lisa Cholodenko and Sarah Timberman in attendance. The full interview can be watched below (and in the video archive) while screencaptures have been added to the photo gallery.

Lots and lots of additional video clips from the 44th Toronto International Film Festvial’s premiere and subsequent promotion of Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out” have been added to the archives, including some fantastic new pictures and clips. Let’s start with the videos:

The film’s extensive cast split up in half for interviews with Entertainment Weekly, The Wrap, The Hollywood Reporter and Variety Studio. Toni was part of the interview group consisting of Rian Johnson, Chris Evans, Ana de Armis and Christopher Plummer – and received universal praise from her colleagues. Chris Evans called her performance in “Hereditary” the best of the last decade and director Johnson praised Collette as one of the best actresses on the globe. So you’ll see a lot of flattered reactions in the videos. Next up are photoshoots that were taken from the cast by various news outlets, including most of those mentioned above. For a complete list of additions, check the update boxes above and below.

Also from Entertainment Weekly, here’s a nice bit from the Toronto promotion of “Knives Out”. Toni Collette was robbed of an Oscar nomination for Hereditary. This is a fact, but we suppose you need some sort of proof beyond her tour de force performance as an unhinged mother who maybe wants to throw her son out a window in the horror hit. So, don’t believe us. Believe Chris Evans, the moral compass of America held together by chiseled abs of steel. When asked to recommend a movie everyone should see from the past decade, the retired Captain America actor immediately turned to the woman sitting next to him on the couch in EW and People’s TIFF video suite. “Can we say Hereditary?” he said, nodding to his Knives Out costar. “I’m not joking,” Evans continued. “I really do feel like the horror genre is one of those genres that’s been undermined. Most horror [movies], everyone’s like, ‘What’s that sound? I have to explore it.’ I want to see a movie where someone is scared to the bone because they heard that, not to explore it for the sake of the engine of the plot.” Hereditary, the first feature film from Midsommar director Ari Aster, starred Collette as Annie, who along with her family quickly begins to unravel after the death of her mother, as increasingly strange occurrences befall them. Speaking directly to Collette, he said, “Hereditary had a few of those scenes where you did things that I wish I saw in horror movies where you were losing your s—.” Evans shouting “I’m giving you the decade nod!” is the #HereditaryContent “Film Twitter” needs right now.

Entertainment Weekly has graced Netflix’ “Unbelievable” with a B+ rating for its Friday premiere: Unbelievable’s Detective Grace Rasmussen (Toni Collette) is mad. She and fellow Detective Karen Duvall (Merritt Wever) have been investigating a serial rapist for months, and progress is painfully slow. When FBI agent Billy Taggart (Scott Lawrence) seems to downplay a potential lead, Grace explodes. “No one is looking at this data about violence against women! I mean, what if men were raped at the rate women are?” she asks Karen. “What if Taggart were afraid that someone was going to f— him in the ass when he’s walking home from the grocery store at night?… Where is his outrage?” Based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning ProPublica article and created by Oscar-nominated writer Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovich), Unbelievable is a sturdy true-crime drama, but where it excels is as an examination of the gap between the male and female experience. When a teenager named Marie (Booksmart’s Kaitlyn Dever) reports being raped in her Lynnwood, Washington, apartment, it doesn’t take long for police — and even Marie’s former foster mother Judith (Elizabeth Marvel) — to start doubting her story. After all, what’s more likely — that a masked man methodically terrorized Marie at knifepoint, or that the troubled teen, who had been known to act out, made it all up for attention? The action then jumps forward three years to Colorado, where Detective Rasmussen and Duvall are investigating two separate but very similar rapes. When Grace and Karen talk to the survivors – who each live alone and say their attacker took pictures of them and made them shower after the assault – they listen. When a victim feels guilty for blocking out details of her attack, Grace and Karen say things like, “Please don’t apologize for doing what you needed to do to feel safe.” They understand in a way that their male colleagues, quite frankly, cannot. The complete review can be read over at Entertainment Weekly.

This week in August 20 years ago, a small independent horror film called “The Sixth Sense” became one of the biggest hits of the year, a classic masterpiece for cinema, and also the trajectory to create and maintain this website for the last 15 years. I feel incredibly old thinking that I was one of the many moviegoers 20 years ago, sitting in the audience and being stunned by the film’s twist ending. But even more so, I was stunned by Toni Collette. I had seen her for the very first time just mere weeks earlier when “Muriel’s Wedding” was shown on tv, and was delighted by her performance. So when the opening credits for “The Sixth Sense” rolled in the cinema, I thought, “I know that Toni Collette”. When the end credits rolled and the packed theatre was stunned by the film’s ending, I was (probably the only one) stunned where the heck Toni Collette was. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea that the young woman playing Muriel was supposed to be the same actress playing the mother on the verge of a breakdown in “The Sixth Sense”. It was a total immersion into character, and I was hooked. Toni received an Academy Award nomination for her performance, which was a surprise back then because she hadn’t been nominated for any precedent awards – something I had hoped would repeat with “Hereditary” – but with or without awards glory (“The Sixth Sense” was nominated for 5 Academy Awards but went home empty-handed), the film stood the test of time and is a highlight in the CV of everyone involved.

For the film’s 20th anniversary, many outlets are writing about the film, reflecting on its impact and talking to its makers. Among the most insightful is Variety’s look back, in which director M. Night Shyamalan remembers Toni’s audition for the film and being hesitant to show it to Disney:

I had seen “Muriel’s Wedding” and Toni came in and her head was shaved, and I forget if it was for fun or if it was for a movie. She did such a beautiful job. I didn’t want to show the video to the studio for fear that they would be concerned with her appearance, and I said “I want to cast the woman from ‘Muriel’s Wedding’” and then Bruce backed me and said “Oh, I love ‘Muriel’s Wedding,’” so we kind of got it without the studio seeing the audition, and I was so lucky. Toni is actually wearing a wig throughout all of “The Sixth Sense,” and I think it’s a wig from “Velvet Goldmine.” We didn’t even have the wig! (M. Night Shyamalan, Variety, August 02, 2019)

Below is a list o annivery articles, to which I will add any articles that will be published over the course of the next week.