Lily Collins & Matt Bomer ooze 1930s Hollywood glamour in The Last Tycoon
After the razzle dazzle of Z: The Beginning of Everything, Amazon Video are treating us to another ravishing show with The Last Tycoon. Starring Lily Collins and Matt Bomer, it's based on The Great Gatsby author F. Scott Fitzgerald's final, unfinished novel, and set in 1930s Hollywood. Streaming from July 28, here's everything you need to know about the show.
Matt Bomer plays the fabulously names Monroe Stahr, an idealistic Hollywood producer who everyone adores. He was married to a famous starlet, Minna Davis, but she died in a fire at their home. On the surface he's chipper - but he has a heart condition that can kill him any second.
Lily Collins plays Celia Brady, the teenage daughter of Monroe's boss. She has ambitions to be a film producer herself; smart and eager, she becomes Monroe's protégée. She has a huge crush on Monroe - which she doesn't try to hide - but everyone, including him, dismisses it as youthful naivety.
Kelsey 'Frasier' Grammar plays Celia's father, film mogul Pat Brady. He owns the studio that Monroe works at - but unlike him, he's more concerned with improving his struggling profits, and sleeping with as many secretaries as possible, than making 'art'.
Dominique McElligott plays Kathleen Moore, an Irish waitress who came to Hollywood from Dublin, only to be disillusioned with what she found. She immediately catches the eye of Monroe. (And if you're wondering where you've seen her before, it's the same actress who played senator's wife Hannah Conway in House of Cards.)
Mad Men's Rosemarie de Witt plays Rose Brady - Pat's wife and Celia's mother. At first, you feel sorry for her suffering her husband's philandering ways - but by the end of episode one you'll see Rose is not such a pushover after all...
There's a political dimension to the show, which depicts the influence that Nazi Germany had over Hollywood in the 1930s: as one of the biggest and most lucrative foreign markets, studios had to make films that didn't offend the fascist regime. Monroe and Celia, however, hatch a movie that highlights the tyranny of Nazi Germany - getting past the censors by transplanting the action to a fictional country.
Costume designer Janie Bryant (who did Mad Men) looked to screen sirens from the Golden Age like Greta Garbo, Vivien Leigh and Joan Crawford, for inspiration for The Last Tycoon. Please someone copy this monochrome gown.
For Monroe, and the other dapper young film execs he works with, Janie sourced vintage suits from the era. (Also - could there be an actor more perfect for this role than Matt Bomer? He is the embodiment of suave old-school Hollywood).
Lily got an education in retro beauty from the makeup team. "The shape of the lip was much rounder, so the way to apply lipstick was different, going above the edges and smoothing out different areas. The way blush went on was very different. It wasn’t about contouring; it was about flushed faces. And I love the black eyeliner with the flick—it’s so beautiful,” she told Byrdie.
