Marsai Martin, best known for playing Diane Johnson in Black-ish, has set a Guinness World Record for being the youngest person to be an Executive Producer for her 2019 film Little, which starred Martin herself as well as Regina Hall and Issa Rae. Martin is currently 16, but at the time the film was released on April 12, 2019, she was only 14 years and 241 days old.
Little is a comedy in the same vein as the Penny Marshall-directed, Tom Hanks-led 1988 film Big—only instead of becoming an adult, Little’s main character Jordan Sanders reverts from a high-powered boss lady back into her middle-school-aged self (played by Martin). Unsurprisingly, hijinks ensue—helped along by Rae as Sander’s assistant April. When talking to Jezebel in 2019, Martin explained that Big was her mom’s favorite movie growing up, and after watching it, she wanted to find a way to tell a similar story with an all-Black cast.
Martin reportedly pitched the idea for Little to Black-ish producer Kenya Barris when she was only 10, and even at that age she was serious about her dreams—after her agent wasn’t supportive of her goals, Martin and her parents fired her agent.
In a video shared by the Guinness World Records Instagram page, Martin says “I never could’ve imagined [being] a part of something like this. And I was like ‘Man, if I could hold a world record, that would be so dope.’ And now look!”
It really is so dope. [Just Jared]
Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown posted a video on her Instagram Story on Monday sharing her story of an invasive interaction with a fan who filmed her without her consent. The sixteen-year-old actress, who has almost 40 million followers on Instagram, said that the fan came up to her while she was Christmas shopping with her and made her feel “uncomfortable and disrespected.”
“She said, ‘Can I take a video of you?’ I said, ‘Um, no,’” Brown, 16, said on her Instagram stories, according to E! News. “But why would anyone want to be taken a video of? Of me? It’s not like of the both of us.”
“I don’t need to justify it to anyone. If I don’t want to be taken a video of, I don’t have to be,” she added.
But as Millie and her mom were preparing to leave the store, the fan started recording her anyway.
“And I said, ‘I’m a human being. Like, what more can I ask from you?’ She said, ‘So, I can’t take a video of a human being?’ And I said, ‘No, not when I said no.’
“It just makes me upset when people try to push the boundary. I wish people were more respectful.”
It’s inappropriate for fans to feel so entitled to every moment of their famous faves’ lives under any circumstances, but it’s especially unacceptable to cross those boundaries with a child. Even though Millie Bobby Brown has become known internationally for her role as Eleven in the popular Netflix series, she’s still just a 16-year-old kid who deserves to have her boundaries respected by everyone—especially the people who claim to support her and her work. What if instead of invading Millie’s personal space with their smartphone, that “fan” had watched any of the several seasons of Stranger Things she’s starred in, or tuned in to her recent movie Enola Holmes? You know, situations where she has actually consented to being on camera. [Page Six]
- A royal catering assistant has pled guilty to stealing a number of valuables from Buckingham Palace. This could also be the premise of a potentially intriguing heist film. Hint hint, Hollywood! [Us Weekly]
- Elliot Page’s wife Emma Portner posted on Instagram, saying she is “so proud” of her partner after he came out as trans on Tuesday. [Page Six]
- Keke Palmer took to Instagram to share that after years of struggling with acne, she was recently diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome. [Instagram]