Category: Emma Bunton

Their reunion at Victoria Beckham’s 50th birthday party got everyone talking — Mel B even started teasing selling tickets for a Spice Girls tour, and bookies have been offering odds on them getting together for Glastonbury.

However, not only are the chances of a singing reunion as a five-piece nil — because Victoria simply hasn’t got the time or inclination — I can reveal that plans to mark their 30th anniversary with a documentary have also fallen apart.

After the Netflix Beckham documentary, made by David’s TV company, was such a success last year, the Spice Girls started to talk to the streamer about possibly making a similar all-access show about the group and their phenomenal success.

It was to feature lengthy interviews with all of the ‘girls’ and their families, talking about their experiences of fame and of life since their pop heyday.

The idea was to tie the documentary to the 30th anniversary of the group being founded in 1994.

However, although Victoria, Mel B, Mel C and Emma Bunton were all keen on the doc, after a number of meetings Geri Halliwell was still against the idea and they were not able to talk her round. This disagreement — certainly not the first in the group — created a little bit of frost between Ginger and the other girls.

And it may have been in Mel B’s mind when she remarked about not knowing how old Geri was because she never saw her passport. They kept their distance at the party at Oswald’s in Mayfair last weekend.

Some believe Geri wasn’t keen on the scrutiny due to the looming scandal over husband Christian Horner, whose role at F1 team Red Bull appeared to be in peril after an employee alleged he had harassed her.

Horner was cleared in March after an inquiry, but the complainant has launched an appeal against that decision.

A source said: ‘It might have been awkward for Geri to get out there and talk about Girl Power in these circumstances surrounding Christian but in truth even before it all came out she wasn’t keen on revisiting those days. She just didn’t want to go over all the fun, wild times that they had.’

No expense spared to create the wizard world of Wicked . . . in a Norfolk field!

In the streaming era, it takes a lot of clout to go big — I mean old school big — but director Jon M. Chu has pulled it off for his screen adaptation of the musical Wicked.

The story will be told over two blockbuster films, the first of which comes out this year, and Chu reveals that he went to great (and greatly expensive) lengths to create an Oz so spectacular it would cause ‘that collective gasp’ in the cinema.

He said: ‘It means the world to have something like Wicked and say: ‘We’re going to spare no expense.’ We planted nine million tulips. At first, they were like: ‘Do you really need to plant nine million tulips? Just do a row that they’re running along, and then we can CG the rest.’ No!’ He added: ‘The giant train, the 1,600-ton train, you can definitely CG that — but we built it, and it runs.

‘That’s not to say we don’t have CG. Obviously we are in partnership with some great companies that are building and extending and doing all this stuff. But it is really great to show the physical goods.’

The tulip fields in question were planted in Norfolk and much of the rest of the filming was done in Ivinghoe, Bucks.

Wicked stars Ariana Grande as Glinda, Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible and Jeff Goldblum as Oz.

A silver heart for Sheridan’s Valentine

Congratulations to Sheridan Smith who will be awarded the Variety Club Silver Heart Award 2024 for Outstanding Contribution as an Actress and Singer, on Sunday night.

The award honours her performance as Shirley Valentine and will be presented in a ceremony at the Londoner hotel. The historic awards — which named The Beatles ‘Showbusiness personalities of 1963’ — are a celebration of talent but also raise funds to change the lives of disabled and disadvantaged children in the UK.

It’s some good news for Sheridan, who lost out on an Olivier award earlier this month and also suffered the recent embarrassment of an announcement that her current show, Opening Night, is to close two months earlier than planned after poor ticket sales.

Others honoured at the event this year include James Corden, Bradley Walsh, Kate Garraway, Kelly Hoppen and Abbey Clancy and Peter Crouch. Dame Joan Collins will receive an award for her outstanding contribution to global film and television.

The chairman of Variety, Jonathan Shalit, tells me: ‘I am thrilled about the awards this year.’ The event will be hosted by Amanda Holden.

Gary Lineker is well known for his long association with a certain brand of crisps, but in reality his weakness is for the sugary stuff. Lineker, 63, says: ‘I’m terrible with chocolate — Dairy Milk and things like that. Once you start you’re doomed.’ 

The Match Of The Day host, who is single, adds that he has had to stop trying out recipes for desserts as he can’t help but eat the whole thing. 

‘I started doing a lot of desserts in lockdown and I couldn’t stop eating them. With other food, I can just cook stuff and have a little bit to try, but I had to stop — I’ve got such a sweet tooth.’

Gollum’s girl knocks ’em dead in Shardlake

Watch out for Andy Serkis’s beautiful daughter Ruby Ashbourne Serkis, 26, in the forthcoming Disney+ murder mystery series Shardlake, which launches next week and is based on the popular books by C.J. Sansom.

All of Serkis’s children with actress Lorraine Ashbourne — that’s Ruby plus Sonny and Louis — act, and all played young Hobbits in the Lord Of The Rings movies before graduating to larger roles. Serkis, of course, is best known as Gollum in the blockbusting films.

Ruby joins Arthur Hughes, who has the title role, and charismatic actor Anthony Boyle — recently in Masters Of The Air and Manhunt — as his handsome sidekick.

In real life, Belfast-born actor Boyle had a long romance with Bad Sisters actress Eve Hewson, whose father is U2’s Bono. Shardlake streams on Disney+ from May 1.

Emily Blunt played spot the family in the audience at the IMAX on Monday night, where her film The Fall Guy was screened. Blunt’s husband, John Krasinski, was there, as were her parents Joanna and Oliver, who came with her to the Oscars last month.

Co-stars Ryan Gosling and Aaron Taylor-Johnson also squinted up into the stalls and waved to their loved ones. The film is a ridiculously entertaining action-romance, based on the Colt Seavers character from the 1980s TV show starring Lee Majors.

Blunt and Gosling, pictured, play on/off lovers and judging by their giggles on Monday they definitely struck up a friendship making the film.

They have bags of chemistry on screen, too. But when someone made a reference to Gosling’s spotlight-hogging role as Ken in Barbie, Blunt said: ‘We really need to put that to bed now!’ The film is out next week.

Operation Mincemeat, the ‘little’ show about a WWII operation to fool the Nazis which started life as a fringe production, won big at the Olivier Awards. 

It took the prize for best new musical, and one of its cast, Jak Malone, was voted best actor in a supporting role. Producer Jon Thoday has revealed ambitions to take the show to Broadway and turn it into a long-running West End classic. 

Which would be quite something, given it was only booked into the Fortune Theatre for a five-month run last year.

Thoday told me: ‘We want it to be one of those must-see, long-running shows like The Play That Goes Wrong or even Les Mis.’ 

He added: ‘We have been offered a theatre on Broadway, but the problem is that while it cost about £2 million to stage it in the West End, it will cost about £14 million to go to Broadway — so you need backers.’

You wait for years for a show about art fraud — and then three come along at once. 

Succession producer Jane Tranter is developing a drama based on the life story of Orlando Whitfield as told in his book All That Glitters. 

That covers the ketamine, prostitutes and private jets story of Whitfield’s best friend Inigo Philbrick, described as the ‘Bernie Madoff of the art world’. 

He got out of a U.S. jail in February and has his own TV deal, to make a three-part documentary with the BBC. Philbrick is also negotiating with other production companies over a possible drama based on his story.

You might assume nothing beat Barbie at the box office, but you’d be wrong. In Italy, the hit of the year was C’e Ancora Domani — There’s Always Tomorrow — a black-and- white drama about a woman in 1940s Italy and her abusive marriage. 

It’s out here in cinemas this week, and there is talk that Lady Gaga has her eye on doing an English language version. She will next be seen as Harley Quinn in big-budget Batman spin-off Joker: Folie a Deux.