Stars Phone Bank for Kamala Harris - Inside the Campaign

Hey, swing state voters, pick up the damn phone already! It could be Jessica Alba calling. Or Patton Oswalt. Or any number of other stars who’ve been diligently manning phone banks for the Kamala Harris campaign the past several weeks. While there haven’t been a whole lot of celebrities turning up in political TV ads this election cycle — there’s always been some doubt about how impactful those are, anyway — Hollywood types have been finding other, more personal ways of whispering into voters’ ears. “About five weeks ago, I started Phone Banking Fridays,” says producer Jamie Patricof (Half Nelson, The Place Behind the Pines), who is now shooting a movie — Roofman, with Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst — in the swingiest of swing states, North Carolina, and corralling some of his cast and crew (and their friends) into spending a few hours every week meeting by Zoom and then canvassing voters by phone in the Tar Heel State and other up-for-grabs regions. “We did North Carolina because we’re here right now,” the producer says. “But then we did Michigan, and last week we did Pennsylvania.”

Among the 50 or so folks fromPatricof’s group calling for Kamala: Austin Powers producer Jennifer Todd, Supergirl co-creator Allie Adler, American Pie producer Chris Bender, doc maker Laura Gabbert, author Susie Arons, and actresses Rosemarie DeWitt and Bellamy Young. The Harris campaign confirms that Alba and a slew of other celebrities have been manning similar phone banks across the country. Shameless’ Emmy Rossum has been phoning around Nevada. Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Melissa Fumero, Vida’s Mishel Prada and Suits’ Gina Torres also have been placing calls. Says Patricof, who estimates his bank has placed about 15,000 calls so far, “I don’t want to wake up on Nov. 6 wishing I had done more.”

Anybody can order a cheap Beetlejuice or Ghostbuster polyester outfit on Amazon. But there aren’t a lot of places left in L.A. — or anywhere, for that matter — where you can find one-of-a-kind, hand-sewn Halloween costumes crafted from premium silks and velvets by a world-class, Disney-trained seamstress. Sadly, there’s about to be one fewer. Ursula’s, the beloved Westside costume shop that for nearly 50 years has been supplying holiday getups to Los Angeles’ trick or treaters — including famous ones like Kate Beckinsale, Jamie Lee Curtis, Steve Martin, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Michael Keaton (who once had a Batman costume for his dog made here) — is scheduled to close after Oct. 31. “The rent, the payroll, the electricity bills — we can’t afford any of it anymore,” says the store’s 90-year-old proprietor, Ursula Boschet, who began her costume-making career in the early 1970s after immigrating to the U.S. from Germany, by sewing Disney on Parade outfits. She opened her own shop in Culver City in 1976, then moved it to Santa Monica in 1994. But modern times have been brutal on her business, with online retailers stealing costumers and COVID-19 killing off the once-lucrative rental market. “Since the pandemic, nobody wants to rent anything,” she says. The only bit of good news? Boschet is emptying her 6,000-square-foot emporium by selling off everything still hanging in her back room — from Cleopatra outfits to leather heavy metal ensembles — all at bargain-basement prices not even Amazon can beat.

Bill Clinton did it. So did Dolly Parton. And now, it’s Viola Davis’ turn. The Oscar-winning actress is teaming up with super-prolific best-selling author James Patterson on a new novel, though not many details about the in-the-works book are being divulged. “I’m really excited about it,” is about all Patterson will reveal to Rambling Reporter. “It’s a very emotional novel. She’s very intense, in a good way. Very involved.” Co-authoring a tome with Patterson has become something of a status symbol among a certain A-list milieu; unsurprisingly, he’s been flooded with offers. “A lot of Hollywood people want to work with me — it comes up literally every week,” he says. Naturally, Patterson is picky about who he ends up working with. After meeting with Parton in Nashville to discuss her pitch for what would become the 2022 best-seller Run, Rose, Run, the singer won him over by quickly writing seven songs for one of the novel’s proposed characters. “I was like, ‘Wow,’ ” he recalls. Clinton didn’t have to twist Patterson’s arm too hard to get him to collaborate on 2018’s The President Is Missing. “We’ve become close over the years,” he says of the former commander in chief. As for the Davis novel, whatever it ends up being about, it’s scheduled for publication sometime in 2025 or 2026. — Alex Weprin

This story appeared in the Oct. 23 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.