''We Are All Canadians'' Says Helen Mirren

The legendary actress is in Toronto for TIFF, where she received a TIFF Tribute award.

Helen Mirren attends Netflix's “The Thursday Murder Club” New York Screening at The Plaza Hotel on August 14, 2025 in New York City

Billy Eff is the Content Director for Rolling Stone Canada. An award-winning journalist and columnist, he has previously contributed to outlets including VICE and Urbania. A passionate advocate for underground music and a musician himself, he has conducted several hundred interviews with artists and industry professionals across a wide range of styles and genres over the past 15 years. He is based in Montréal, Québec.

The ongoing trade war between the United States and Canada has seeped into culture. With the Toronto International Film Festival well under way, more and more stars are using their time onstage and on the red carpet to decry Donald Trump's tariffs, comments, and his recent renaming of Lake Ontario to 'Lake America'.

British legend Dame Helen Mirren was among them. The iconic actress is in Toronto, where she received a TIFF Tribute award last night. Speaking to Radio-Canada, she expressed support to Canadians, adding that she feels like she's one of us. ''I want to defend all of Canada, French and English,'' she said. ''I wanted to print t-shirts before I came here that said 'We Are All Canadians', because I believe it's important that everyone supports Canada in this particular moment.''

She also took time in her speech to honour two pioneering women who inspired her, Dolly Parton and Gloria Steinem. “I was remembering what was allowed of women as I came into the professional world, when I was 13 or 14. You couldn't buy a house on your own if you're a woman. You couldn't have a credit card on your own if you were a woman.[...] And then came along two incredible farm girls. Do you know who they were? Dolly Parton and Gloria Steinem. It is so hard to change culture, but these two women did it in their very different ways. They did it with humor, with tenacity and with huge intelligence. So I thank them both, and I dedicate this fabulous groundbreaking award to them.”

Helen Mirren will be back on our screens as Maeve Harrigan in the second season of crime drama series MobLand, which premieres September 18.

The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has officially started, as some of the movie world's biggest stars descend upon the city's red carpets amid some strained relationships between Canada and the United States. Obviously, on the opening night of the festival, Trump was at the center of the conversation, specifically for his renaming of Lake Ontario to Lake America.

At Thursday night’s world premiere of Sian Heder’s Being Heumann, TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey, programmer Anita Lee and Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow each took pointed aim at U.S. President Donald Trump’s controversial attempt to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America.” Bailey drew the first laugh during his opening-night remarks at Roy Thomson Hall, referring to the body of water bordering Toronto by its longstanding Canadian name. The comment was met with sustained applause and laughter from the festival crowd.

Introducing Being Heumann, which was filmed in Toronto and tells the story of disability-rights activist Judy Heumann, Chow praised the film’s message about collective action and persistence.

“It shows us that when people come together and stay tenacious, they can move mountains — even against the might of the U.S. government,” she said, declaring that Toronto’s waterfront “will always be Lake Ontario.”

Trump’s renaming effort is part of a broader series of moves affecting how U.S. government agencies refer to geographic landmarks. While some major technology platforms have adopted “Lake America” for U.S. users, Canadians continue to see “Lake Ontario.”

Former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau is launching a new production company with his longtime chief of staff, Katie Telford, and is expected to make the announcement at the Toronto International Film Festival today, according to reports from The Canadian Press.

Called Hope & Hard Work, the company will develop scripted and unscripted projects, some already underway. Trudeau and Telford are attached as executive producers on two of the first projects. Perry Chafe’s Closer by Sea, a Newfoundland-set coming-of-age novel, will get its own film adaptation, as will Uzma Jalaluddin’s murder mystery Detective Aunty. Both novels were best-sellers in Canada.

It’s a big career change for Trudeau, who resigned as prime minister in January 2025 after nearly a decade in office. Since leaving politics, the former school teacher has moved into the global speaking circuit, including an appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos where he discussed the growing importance of soft power, including the influence of culture and entertainment.

In the past year, his relationship with pop star Katy Perry has also kept him in the orbit of the global entertainment business, while his eldest son Xavier Trudeau is pursuing his own career as a musician.

Alec Baldwin in 'The Trial of Alec Baldwin.'

“When they told me she died, I was in shock,” Alec Baldwin says in the new trailer for the upcoming documentary, The Trial of Alec Baldwin. The film covers the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, whom Baldwin was accused of shooting accidentally in 2021 when a live bullet somehow wound up in what was supposed to be a prop gun during the making of the movie, Rust. Baldwin contended he never pulled the trigger. The clip shows the immediate aftermath of the shooting, as Baldwin and others brace for oncoming paparazzi. The film opens in select theaters in October before wide screenings begin Oct. 16.

The trailer also looks at Baldwin’s tetchy relationship with the tabloid press, looking back at past scuffles he had with paparazzi and the intense scrutiny on him following the shooting. “I want to be acquitted so I can just walk out the door and everyone just leave me alone,” he says in the trailer.

It also alleges that local authorities were looking to leverage an indictment of Baldwin for political gain. With what seems like unprecedented access to the actor, one scene supposedly shows the moment Baldwin found out he’d been indicted in a phone call. And in another scene, he posits, “They’d definitely put me in jail if they could.”

“If you said to me, ‘Hike up Mt. Everest, and she’ll come back,’ I’d be packed and ready to go,” Baldwin says in the clip. “Whatever I could do … but there’s nothing I could do.”

Filmmaker Rory Kennedy, who received an Oscar nomination in 2015 for the documentary Last Days in Vietnam, directed the picture. The preview shows the film touching on the trial of the Rust set’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, as well as the peculiarities of Baldwin’s trial, such as prosecutor Kari Morrissey taking the stand at her own trial. “How the hell did I end up in this vortex?” Baldwin asks in the trailer. Baldwin’s manslaughter case was ultimately dismissed.

‘South Park’ creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone

South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone shared an official apology for the delays around their forthcoming film collaboration with Kendrick Lamar. The musical, titled Whitney Springs, was originally announced in 2022.

“We take full responsibility for the schedule delay of this movie,” Parker and Stone said in a statement to The Ankler. “We apologize to our partners at pgLang and Paramount, and we appreciate their patience. South Park and life’s circumstances have gotten in the way, but we still believe in the project.”

Whitney Springs was written by Vernon Chatman, a longtime South Park writer, and set for release at Paramount. Lamar was originally announced as a producer on the film alongside Parker, Stone, and Dave Free. According to The Ankler, it features original and previously-unreleased music by Lamar.

The film was scheduled to premiere in 2025. At CinemaCon 2024, then-Paramount Pictures CEO Brian Robbins called it “one of the funniest and most original scripts we’ve ever read” and said that the film would be going into production that summer. Lamar was spotted filming in California later that year.

After apparently being filmed, Whitney Springs was pushed to 2026 prior to the closure of the Paramount-Skydance merger. The film was taken off the schedule completely last November.

The initial announcement described Whitney Springs as a film about the past and present coming to a head “when a young Black man who is interning as a slave re-enactor at a living history museum discovers that his white girlfriend’s ancestors once owned his.” The Ankler describes film as following the Black slave re-enactor as he clashes with the racist mayor of a Midwestern town, played by Parker.

Lamar previously collaborated with Stone and Parker on his 2022 music video for “The Heart Part 5.” The video, directed by Dave Free, features Lamar morphing into various digitally produced celebrity “deep fakes,” from Kanye West to Will Smith to the late Nipsey Hussle.

Parker and Stone will debut South Park Season 29 on Sept. 16. The duo recently announced they were changing the same of the show in a dig at Donald Trump. “Inspired by the bravery and patriotism of Apple and Google, we are changing the name of South Park to South America,” the pair shared in a statement. “We especially want to thank our parent company Paramount — a Skydance Capitulation.”

Saturday Night Live will kick off its 52nd season with New York Knicks point guard and NBA Finals MVP Jalen Brunson and as many Katseye members are available on Sept. 26.

NBC has unveiled the first four weeks of shows for the upcoming season, which will also find musical guest Turnstile paired with host Dakota Johnson on Oct. 3; Rosalía paired with Shane Gillis on Oct. 10; and Gracie Abrams paired with Obsession star Inde Navarrette on Oct. 31.

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Katseye and Turnstile will make their SNL debut on their respective episodes, while Abrams will return for the first time since making her debut in December 2024. Rosalía last appeared as a musical guest on the series in March 2022, just before the release of her acclaimed third album, Motomami.

On the host side, Johnson and Gillis will both notch their third time leading the night, while Brunson and Navarrette will take the stage for the first time.

Season 52 will see the departure of longtime Saturday Night Live cast member Chloe Fineman, who leave the series after seven seasons. “It’s really hard to leave SNL but it does feel like the right time. I’m going to miss it a lot,” Fineman said earlier this year. “But the people who work there are my family and that place is my home, and I know I’ll never be too far away.”

The writers room has also lost Martin Herlihy, a member of the sketch comedy trio Please Don’t Destroy, who leaves the show after five seasons. Any new additions to the SNL crew have not yet been announced.