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Jan. 29, 2021
The opening scene in “Losing Alice,” the latest Israeli television export to wow international audiences, is an homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s 1951 classic thriller “Strangers on a Train.”
It was the image of an encounter between two female characters – one, a middle-aged film director called Alice Ginor (played by Ayelet Zurer) suffering from writer’s block, and the other a young, overenthusiastic fan of her work named Sophie (Lihi Kornowski), bursting with ambition and creative energy – that lit the spark in Sigal Avin to begin her deep dive into the darker sides of the female psyche.
The show is garnering rave reviews globally since debuting on Apple TV+ last week, after first airing on Israel’s Hot cable channel last summer.
Ayelet Zurer, who portrays the title character of an erotic thriller director in the Apple TV+ show, describes her role as a phoenix, who burns everything down in order to create and rebuild.
Ayelet Zurer
The L.A.-based Israeli actress talks about what drew her to the role of a director looking for self-realization in the eight-part show and how she almost didn t play the part: she didn t want to audition over Skype.
In
Losing Alice an eight-episode Israeli series that premiered stateside this past weekend on Apple TV+ a 48-year-old film director and mother of two, Alice (played by actress Ayelet Zurer), is feeling stuck professionally. She then meets, perhaps by chance, perhaps not, a young writer, Sophie (Lihi Kornowski) on a train who is a huge fan of her work. Small world: Sophie has written a script that is being made into a film starring Alice’s husband, a famous Israeli actor (played by Gal Toren). Soon after, Alice signs on to direct the project after its initial director has mysteriously disappeared.
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Updated: Jan. 27, 2021
If you’d asked me a week ago to name the world’s most famous Amanda, I’d have struggled to come up with anyone other than “Hugginkiss” (thanks, Bart Simpson). And if you’d asked me to pick out a brilliant young American poet, I’d have found it almost as hard as naming a Fox News commentator I admire.
In a sense, the youth poet laureate’s awe-inspiring performance on the steps of the Capitol was the true cultural launch of 2021 – and a welcome and necessary reminder that, even in the darkest of times, talent still emerges when you least expect, and most need, it.
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