Gwendoline Christie watched Top of the Lake four times before she finally summoned the courage to email the director, Jane Campion, pleading to be cast in the sequel. But first, she ran a draft past a friend: “If you read this and think I sound like an idiot, I won’t send it to Jane and we’ll never speak of it again,” she said.

The fact that I’ve come to meet Christie and her co-stars on the show’s Bondi beach set is proof that the email was sent, and that Campion liked what she read. The director remembers Christie describing herself as an unusual actress “because I’m very tall”. It was precisely what Campion was looking for: “Somebody who’s a real challenge, almost too tall, too big, to be a woman. I like to play with those stereotypes of what a woman should be or shouldn’t be.”

The Game of Thrones star was immediately cast as Miranda Hilmarson, the eager new sidekick for Elisabeth Moss’s detective senior-constable Robin Griffin. Christie wasn’t the only big name to ask to be involved. Nicole Kidman visited Campion and Gerard Lee, who co-wrote both seasons, in 2015 with a similar request, and was undeterred even when offered a small role. This stellar acting trio – Kidman, Moss and Christie – goes a long way to explaining the excitement brewing about the series’s second instalment.

Top of the Lake: China Girl sees Griffin swap the bucolic New Zealand town of the first season for Australia’s rocky eastern coastline and sleazy inner-city in a tale of Asian sex-slavery, and communication breakdowns between mothers and children.

Cristina Marcos✔@cimarcos
.@MaxineWaters currently on the House floor with this screen shot of Trump mocking a disabled reporter.
11:01 AM - Jul 27, 2017

Late one night in October 2015, North Dakota prisons chief Leann Bertsch met Karianne Jackson, one of her deputies, for a drink in a hotel bar in Oslo, Norway. They had just spent an exhausting day touring Halden, the maximum-security facility Time has dubbed “the world’s most humane prison,” yet neither of them could sleep.

Halden is situated in a remote forest of birch, pine, and spruce with an understory of blueberry shrubs. The prison is surrounded by a single wall. It has no barbed wire, guard towers, or electric fences. Prisoners stay in private rooms with en suite bathrooms and can cook for themselves in kitchens equipped with stainless-steel flatware and porcelain dishes. Guards and inmates mingle freely, eating and playing games and sports together. Violence is rare and assaults on guards are unheard of. Solitary confinement is almost never used.

By this point, Bertsch had been in charge of North Dakota’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, which includes four adult prisons and one juvenile facility, for more than a decade, and Jackson had spent seven years as director of correctional practices. They’d left Bismarck feeling pretty good about their system, which prided itself on its humane practices and commitment to rehabilitation. But now, sitting in the glassed-in bar of the Radisson hotel with its view of the Oslo fjord, Bertsch began to cry. “We’re hurting people,” she said.


North Dakota prison officials Leann Bertsch, left, and Karianne Jackson aim to trim the long list of rules that get inmates into trouble “into something more like the Ten Commandments.” Andy Richter

It is worth noting that Leann Bertsch is no pushover. With her ivory skin, flaxen hair, and chiseled cheekbones, she comes across as stoic and cool. She grew up on a farm in the eastern part of the state and served 21 years in the National Guard (retiring as a major) and eight years as a state prosecutor. She has run the prisons in this deep-red state under three Republican governors, and she moonlights as president of the Association of State Correctional Admin­istrators. “No one who has met Leann or seen her in action would consider her a softie,” says John Wetzel, the association’s vice president and Pennsylvania’s secretary of corrections. “I would describe her as ballsy. Corrections has historically been a really misogynistic field, so when you see a woman in charge of a corrections system, and in charge of one of the more influential organizations in corrections, you know she’s got to be strong.”

But in Oslo that evening, Bertsch was uncharacteristically emotional. “It was definitely one of those moments where you’re rethinking everything,” she recalls. “I had always thought that we run a good system. We’re decent. We don’t abuse people. We run safe facilities with good programs. It was just like, ‘How did we think it was okay to put human beings in cagelike settings?'”

In her first public appearance in Colorado since leaving the White House, former first lady Michelle Obama had a message for women: Seize your power and don’t let go.

Sitting for an armchair conversation in front of 8,500 people, Obama was relaxed, personable and playful but still serious as she talked on a range of topics around education for girls, health and nutrition and female empowerment — all things she worked on as first lady — at the Women’s Foundation of Colorado’s 30th anniversary Tuesday night at the Pepsi Center.

The crowd was a mix of young and old and predominately women. The event’s popularity forced organizers to open up more seats. Obama was greeted by an extended standing ovation and a few calls of “we love you.”

WFCO President and CEO Lauren Casteel commented that Obama broke a glass ceiling by becoming the first black first lady. She then asked which of the falling glass shards cut the deepest.

“The shards that cut me the deepest were the ones that intended to cut,” she said, referencing being called an ape and people talking about her bottom. “Knowing that after eight years of working really hard for this country, there are still people who won’t see me for what I am because of my skin color.”

She said she can’t pretend like it doesn’t hurt because that lets those who do the hurting off the hook.

“Women, we endure those cuts in so many ways that we don’t even notice we’re cut,” she said. “We are living with small tiny cuts, and we are bleeding every single day. And we’re still getting up.”

But Obama said women should own their scars. Referring to failure, she said those wounds hurt deeply but they heal with time. If women own their scars, they can encourage younger girls who are getting their first cuts.

Plenty of studies have shown that girls begin to feel excluded from STEM fields at a young age. From the overwhelmingly male portrayals in film and television to the gender-based marketing of STE-related toys, girls grow up subconsciously hearing that science and technology is not a place they inherently belong. To combat that idea and to shrink the gender gap in these fields, we have to reach girls early and make sure they see the same inclusion, the same access to opportunities as young boys.

The Girl Scouts of the USA announced today that they’re introducing 23 new badges in the areas of science, technology, engineering, and math, as well as the outdoors. I have to say, I’m pretty jealous of anyone who gets to be a Girl Scout today. Check out some of these new badges:



The new badges are meant to address “the lack of exposure many girls have to STEM,” and they’re being introduced into all levels of the organization, even as early as the Daisies, the group for girls in Kindergarten and 1st grade.

To create them, the Girl Scouts have paired with other organizations like GoldieBlox, Code.org, SciStarter, and the Society of Women Engineers.

Movies don't choose Detroit anymore for their red-carpet premieres. "Detroit" is a rare exception to the rule.

Tonight's event at the Fox Theatre for the new film from Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow is the real deal, not a Midwest premiere or a casual preview screening.

It's an official world premiere with a starry guest list that includes Bigelow, Oscar-winning screenwriter Mark Boal, John Boyega ("Star Wars: The Force Awakens)," Anthony Mackie ("Captain America: The Winter Soldier" ), Jason Mitchell ("Straight Outta Compton" ) and many other emerging actors. The intense drama is based on the real-life 1967 killing of three African-American teenagers.

"Detroit" opens in limited release Friday and nationwide in 2,000-plus theaters Aug. 4, but an invitation-only crowd will get to see the film tonight, along with the red carpet arrival of the film's big names. A mix of local and national media is expected to cover the glamorous red-carpet arrivals beforehand.