Elle USA - 09.2019

MUSIC

TV

MOVIES

THE

BREAKOUT:

ZARA

LARSSON

ara Larsson may be a bona fide pop star in her

home country of Sweden, but she was like all of

us when she met Beyoncé: “I cried my fucking

eyeballs out,” she says by phone from Manchester in the

midst of a spate of European shows. Like her hero, the

21-year-old is a consummate performer—at the age of

10, she won Talang, Sweden’s answer to America’s Got

Talent, and now she’s set to woo America. Her brand of

soulful pop features big, dancey beats and catchy-as-hell

choruses informed heavily by icons like Céline Dion,

Christina Aguilera, and Whitney Houston. In short,

bangers. “I go for whatever feels right in my gut,” she

says of the process of choosing songs for her second full-

length LP, out this month. “Would I have this song on

my playlist? Do I love it?” Larsson’s music may be pure

pop fun, but the brash feminist’s social media platforms

are a hotbed of outrage against antiabortion laws, rape

culture, and the mistreatment of marginalized commu-

nities (plus some full-glam selfies and hilarious memes).

“Hopefully the people who are listening to my music

will also know what I stand for,” she says. “I don’t want

to compromise myself.”—LISA BUTTERWORTH

As the United Kingdom welcomes its new Tory prime

minister, American Anglophiles can join in on the British high

drama this fall. First up, the Crawley family makes its feature-

film debut in Downton Abbey(September 20), nearly four

years after the Emmy-winning television show’s finale. With

the exception of actress Lily James, the entire principal

cast returns for a nostalgia-heavy reunion. Set in 1927, the

movie tracks the upstairs-downstairs dynamic as the titular

estate’s residents prepare for visitors from Buckingham

Palace: King George V and Queen Mary. Then, four decades

later, Netflix’s The Crown (fall 2019) ushers that couple’s

granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II, into the mid-’60s. Oscar

winner Olivia Colman (The Favourite) steps into the horse-

bit loafers of actress Claire Foy, who won an Emmy for her

two-season portrayal of the monarch. The third season picks

up where Foy left off, teasing the 1969 moon landing and the

introduction of Camilla Parker Bowles.—BK

The Royal

Treatment

Z

Name a more iconic trio

than this season’s biopic

subjects. In Judy (September

27), Renée Zellweger’s first

musical role since Chicago,

the 50-year-old actress

channels Hollywood icon

Judy Garland as she preps for

a series of sold-out London

performances in the winter of

1968, just months before she

died of a barbiturate overdose

at age 47. An entirely different

sort of icon finally gets the

feature-film treatment (if not

her face on the 20-dollar bill)

in Harriet (November 1), with

Tony winner Cynthia Erivo

depicting famed abolitionist

Harriet Tubman’s escape to

freedom and subsequent

missions to save other

enslaved men and women via

the Underground Railroad. And

just in time for Thanksgiving,

Tom Hanks dons Fred

Rogers’s signature cardigan

in the Marielle Heller–directed

A Beautiful Day in the

Neighborhood (November

22) and gets to work

transforming a cynical

journalist sent to profile him.

—LAURA SAMPEDRO