British heartthrob Tom Hiddleston is in the United States of America to promote his new movie I Saw the Light, and as part of the Hank Williams biopic’s publicity campaign, he swung by the Fox 32 news station in Chicago to deliver the weather report. “There’s a huge storm front coming in, and all that means is Chris Hemsworth has taken his hammer and smashed it on the surface of the sky and it’s going to rain a hell of a lot,” Hiddleston joked, referring to Hemsworth’s character from the Thor movies. Hiddleston plays Thor’s twisted brother Loki, and he has become popular enough for demands for a movie of his own.
Despite good notices for his performance, I Saw The Light itself has run into turbulent weather. Marc Abraham’s biopic of American country singer Hank Williams, who died in 1953 at the age of 29 after a string of hit songs, has been criticised for casting an Englishman in the lead role. Reviews have also lambasted the movie’s lack of insight and its inability to capture the reasons for Williams’s appeal.
Hiddleston sang Williams’s songs in the film with the help of country singer Rodney Crowell, and he came in for a scolding from the legend’s grandson, Hank Williams III, who is also a singer.
After ticking off Hiddleston in a Facebook post with the words, “Here is how you do it Tom, You got no moan or soul in your voice,” Hank Williams III posted his own version of his grandfather’s ‘Move It On Over’.
Despite the strafing, Hiddleston remains a critical darling for his performances in the British television show The Night Manager and Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise, an adaptation of the JG Ballard dystopian novel of the same name. Hiddleston will next be seen in the 2017 release Kong: Skull Island and will reprise Loki in Thor: Ragnarok, also scheduled to come out in 2017.
It pays to be a villain, as is evident from the advertising campaign for the luxury car Jaguar, whose theme is “Good to be Bad.”