By Sandy Cohen, Entertainment Writer
SAN DIEGO, Calif. (AP) --Actress Evan Rachel Wood says working on "Westworld" changed her life.
She says the series about a futuristic park manned by robot hosts where humans can live out their fantasies has inspired existential questions about her own life. She also says the powerful character she plays has empowered her off-screen as well.
"It's so fulfilling," she said Saturday at a Comic-Con panel for the HBO show. "Because especially as women, and I don't know if this is true for men too, but a lot of times you feel as if your wings have been clipped and you're not being represented the way that you want to. And this was like just like somebody had given me (expletive) condor wings and I got to take off and fly."
Wood appeared alongside showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy and her fellow cast members for a presentation inside the San Diego Convention Center's largest exhibition hall. Other cast members at the panel included Jeffrey Wright, Ed Harris, James Marsden, Tessa Thompson and Thandie Newton.
Newton said she's been inspired and empowered by her role on the show, which recently received 22 Emmy nominations.
"I'm so into the existential stuff on the show," she said. "In moment of chaos, when you think you know nothing, that's when gifts come. I just think that's incredibly profound."
Though her character is an android prostitute, she gradually becomes more self-aware.
Nolan and Joy said they parsed out their scripts incrementally during the first season so the actors wouldn't know too much about the story line or their characters' trajectories.
Joy said her work on the show's second season has been inspired by the poetry of William Blake. Nolan added that he's been inspired by video games, including "Grand Theft Auto" and "Red Dead Redemption."
The second season of "Westworld" is set to debut next year.
Top Olympic sponsor Panasonic is ending its contract with the IOC
TOKYO (AP)--Olympic sponsor Panasonic is terminating its contract with the IOC at the end of the year, the company said in a statement Tuesday. Panasonic is one of 15 companies that are so-called TOP sponsors for the International Olympic Committee. It's not known the value of the Panasonic sponsorship, but sponsors contribute more than $2 billion in a four-year cycle to the IOC. In a statement, Panasonic said it became an IOC sponsor in 1987 and expanded to the Paralympics in 2014. It did not make clear why it was changing course and said only that is was related to continual "reviews how sponsorship should evolve." Two other Japanese companies are also among the IOC's 15 leading sponsors. Toyota, which for several months has been reportedly ready to end its contract, was contacted Tuesday by The Associated Press but offered no new information. "Toyota has been supporting the Olympic and Paralympic movements since 2015 and continues to do so," Toyota said in a statement. "No announcement to suggest otherwise has been made by Toyota." Japanese sponsors seem to have turned away from the Olympics, likely related to the one-year delay in holding the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The COVID-19 delay reduced sponsors' visibility with no fans allowed to attend competition venues, ran up the costs, and unearthed myriad corruption scandals around the Games. Tiremaker Bridgestone told AP "nothing has been decided." Toyota had a contact valued at $835 million — reported to be the IOC's largest when it was announced in 2015. It included four Olympics beginning with the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Games in South Korea and ran through the just-completed Paris Olympics and Paralympics. Reports in Japan suggest Toyota may keep its Paralympic Olympic sponsorship. The... Read More