The Newport Beach Film Festival turned its Sunday honors brunch into a gathering of familiar faces for readers of this site, as Mckenna Grace received the festival’s Spotlight Award and Inde Navarrette, Summer H. Howell and Joseph Zada were celebrated as part of Variety’s 10 Actors to Watch class at the Balboa Bay Resort.
The brunch, part of the festival’s 27th edition, was filmed for a PBS SoCal broadcast planned for January, in the middle of awards voting season. The four honorees joined a class headlined by Taraji P. Henson, who received the Artist of Distinction Award, and between the presentations and the marina-side photos, they spent the afternoon talking about the work that brought them there.
Howell, who plays Carrie White in Prime Video’s Carrie, was asked at the festival when a second season of the series might happen. “I don’t know. Ask Amazon,” she told CBR. “Oh, of course I [want to return]. Yeah, I would love to go back. I have heard things, but nothing’s confirmed yet, still. I hope we hear soon. I really do.” Amazon has not announced a renewal. Asked whether stars of the original 1976 film might turn up in a second season, Howell said she would welcome it: “I think that’s up to them, really. I feel like that would be really cool. I would love it.”
Grace accepted her Spotlight Award on stage during the brunch, and on the carpet she told Variety about her first day on the set of The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping. She shared that first day with Zada, her co-star, whom she had met only the night before, and the two of them went straight into filming the Cornucopia sequence with 48 young actors over three straight days. Grace called Zada an incredible actor, said the shoot felt like really being in the Hunger Games, and described the experience as a “ridiculous bonding experience” that was fun but not fun at the same time.
The carpet questions kept coming. Asked to name the actors they never miss, Grace picked Jennifer Lawrence, Florence Pugh, Austin Abrams and Cailee Spaeny. Zada went classic with his answer: “Timothée Chalamet. I love Paul Newman and Redford. I’ve been watching a lot of them recently.”
Navarrette used her Gold Derby carpet interview to praise two of her fellow honorees, Jaafar Jackson and Grace, and when she was told Grace had been fangirling over her, the admiration turned out to be mutual, with the two of them posing together and laughing through the afternoon. Her advice to young actors working their way up was to trust yourself and do the things that scare you. Her comments to Variety that same day about playing Rogue in Marvel’s X-Men film are covered in TDN’s report on Obsession coming to Netflix.
One more familiar face had his Newport moment a night earlier. KJ Apa’s Jimmy Stewart biopic Jimmy screened at the Lido Theater on Saturday night, and Apa was presented with a Spotlight Award after the screening. “I was just honored to be able to learn about who Jimmy was, and what he did for his country, what he did for his family, and all these amazing movies that have stayed with us for such a long time,” Apa told the audience during the cast conversation afterward, as MovieMaker reported. Producer and casting director Angela Sullivan recalled the cast’s first table read over Zoom, when Apa first spoke as Stewart: “Everyone actually thought we were playing a Jimmy Stewart movie, that it wasn’t him.” Max Casella, who plays Frank Capra in the film, added: “I watched the movie, and I forgot it was KJ. … He does a miraculous job and makes it look easy. I’m jealous.”
It adds up to a busy few weeks ahead for all of them. Jimmy opens in theaters on November 6, Obsession arrives on Netflix on November 17, and Sunrise on the Reaping reaches theaters on November 20, while Carrie is streaming now on Prime Video and Howell, like her fans, waits to hear what Amazon decides about a second season.