Alex Godfrey
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mrgodfrey.bsky.social
Alex Godfrey
@mrgodfrey.bsky.social
Features Editor at Empire magazine.
BSME Best Feature Writer 2023 / shortlisted 2024 & 2025.
Shortlisted for PPA Best Writer 2025.
Previously: words for Guardian / GQ / Esquire / Telegraph / Sunday Times Culture / Wired

https://linktr.ee/MrGodfrey
Pinned
When my dad was dying in hospital, and apparently not bothered about it in the slightest, he told me I should write about it. I scoffed at the time. I didn't want to write about that. But after mulling over it for an age, I've just had a week off work, and got it all out there. Allllll of it.
The Last Days Of Harry Godfrey
Documenting my dad's death. Because he told me to.
alexgodfrey.substack.com
Next week's issue is a whopper. 12-page cover story on Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, an incredible coup by @nickdesemlyen.bsky.social, many months in the making. Trojan-horsing some excellence onto the newsstands. And that's just the start of the huge 2026 preview we put together. You're welcome.
The journey begins…

Christopher Nolan’s #TheOdyssey is revealed on Empire’s world-exclusive cover – the first look and first word on an epic like no other. On sale Thursday 20th November.

Read more: www.empireonline.com/movies/news/...
November 13, 2025 at 5:26 PM
Reposted by Alex Godfrey
🚨NEW PODCAST SPECIAL🚨

Daniel Day-Lewis and Sean Bean talk Anemone with Empire’s Alex Godfrey — and director Ronan Day-Lewis joins separately to discuss taking on the project as his directorial debut.

Listen here: open.spotify.com/episode/5aX4...
November 11, 2025 at 10:44 PM
My kinda journalism.
Is Mike Wazowski Jewish or Polish?
A deep inquiry into a pressing question
sproutstack.substack.com
November 10, 2025 at 8:26 PM
Extremely engrossing read on the felling of the Sycamore Gap tree, by Andrew Hankinson in The Observer. Some of it reads like folk horror. Some like The Banshees Of Inisherin.

share.google/8Hs2oskTXc5I...
November 9, 2025 at 11:38 AM
Reposted by Alex Godfrey
Six people died from tampered Tylenol and the company pulled 30 million bottles off the market. ChatGPT is accused of urging seven people towards suicide, and OpenAI just assures us they’re still working out the kinks. Billions in investment, zero accountability.
OpenAI faces 7 lawsuits claiming ChatGPT drove people to suicide, delusions
OpenAI is facing seven lawsuits claiming ChatGPT drove people to suicide and harmful delusions even when they had no prior mental health issues.
apnews.com
November 8, 2025 at 2:46 PM
Volcano breaks silence
November 5, 2025 at 2:12 PM
When my dad was dying in hospital, and apparently not bothered about it in the slightest, he told me I should write about it. I scoffed at the time. I didn't want to write about that. But after mulling over it for an age, I've just had a week off work, and got it all out there. Allllll of it.
The Last Days Of Harry Godfrey
Documenting my dad's death. Because he told me to.
alexgodfrey.substack.com
October 26, 2025 at 8:49 AM
Hadn't seen this Elephant Man bts before. Lynch and crew shooting Michael Elphick. Cinema!
October 24, 2025 at 3:47 PM
Reposted by Alex Godfrey
October 21, 2025 at 6:47 PM
One of my favourite things is actors on set in full make-up having a cheeky drink or smoke.
October 21, 2025 at 6:03 PM
I LOVED Pillion, a most unexpected and unpredictable film, a singular, eye-opening BDSM comedy-drama. The ever-perceptive @christinalefou.bsky.social interviewed director Harry Lighton and his actors (Alexander Skarsgård & Harry Melling) for a glorious 6 pages in Empire. Stoked to have it in there.
EXCLUSIVE 🚲

BDSM romance Pillion is “a funny and touching and weird love story”, says Alexander Skarsgård.

“[The sex scenes] are dramatically quite interesting,” he tells Empire. “There’s lust, but also jealousy and confusion and pain.”

Read more: www.empireonline.com/movies/news/...
October 21, 2025 at 3:45 PM
This feature - reuniting Michael J Fox and Christopher Lloyd to talk 40 years of Back To The Future - has been in the works for a while. I knew @ollyrichards.bsky.social would ace it. It's a delightful, poignant, funny conversation. The chemistry is real.
In print only. New issue in shops on Thurs.
October 21, 2025 at 1:19 PM
Reposted by Alex Godfrey
Do you like scary movies? With animals in? Have resurrected some prints. Signed, A3 and available from Fiveways Arts and Crafts, Brighton. Online here:

fivewaysartsandcrafts.com/search?q=nad...
October 18, 2025 at 12:56 PM
Just heard someone singing Blood, Sweat & Tears' 'Spinning Wheel' and remembered Nicolas Cage telling me how much David Lynch hated that song.
October 18, 2025 at 12:04 PM
This is a regular vexation for me. Frantically trying to figure out how and where to push buttons so that closing credits keep going while the tiny countdown mercilessly rushes to an end, it's hell.
yo Apple, if you’re gonna pay to license “Sympathy for the Devil” or “Chest Fever” don’t automatically cut to the next episode while it’s still playing
October 18, 2025 at 6:52 AM
Reposted by Alex Godfrey
It all ends here

Eleven and the heroes of Hawkins are back to face the darkness on Empire’s world-exclusive #StrangerThings5 cover – going inside the apocalyptic final act and beyond with the Duffers and their cast.

On sale Thurs 23 October.

READ MORE: www.empireonline.com/tv/news/stra...
October 16, 2025 at 3:01 PM
I Swear is in UK and Irish cinemas today. It's an emotional workout - sweet, sad, funny, upsetting and, ultimately, as uplifting as cinema gets, I reckon. John Davidson is an inspiration, and Robert Aramayo does him justice: it's a gobsmacking performance, in a hugely compassionate film. Go see it.
October 10, 2025 at 9:28 AM
Reposted by Alex Godfrey
On sale next week - tickets to my hour-long BFI lesson on the crime genre. Join me for a whirlwind trip from Yakuza to mafioso, Michael Mann to Jean-Pierre Melville:

whatson.bfi.org.uk/lff/Online/d...
Lights, Camera, Genre! Crime | BFI London Film Festival 2025
Dive into crime’s shadowy worlds, exploring gripping stories, high-stakes drama, and gritty visual styles that define this suspenseful, thrilling genre.
whatson.bfi.org.uk
September 26, 2025 at 1:17 PM
Please stop doing this! I know there are contractual reasons etc for name placements on posters but this is maddening. Unless it's a body-swap movie. Which it isn't. It hurts my eyes.
September 23, 2025 at 3:03 PM
Lil' blurb on my big interview with Daniel Day-Lewis and Ronan Day-Lewis. I had an incredible morning with them in New York the other week, discussing filmmaking, family, fatherhood, acting, writing, the whole damn lot. Eight pages of it in the new issue of Empire, on sale this Thursday.
Daniel Day-Lewis on how Anemone rekindled his acting career: ‘I’m not going to shy away from it’
As he returns to acting in his son Ronan Day-Lewis' Anemone, Daniel Day-Lewis exclusively tells Empire about his comeback. Read more.
www.empireonline.com
September 22, 2025 at 4:31 PM
One ep of Alien: Earth to go and every time a beastie pops up I think of HR Giger, and how none of this exists without him. A gazillion films and TV shows over nearly 50 years, and arguably none of it would have hit - or endured - were it not for his art. An incredible legacy for such perverse work.
September 20, 2025 at 8:29 AM
I like how much Nine Inch Nails' Tron Ares soundtrack pays tribute to Wendy Carlos. This one is basically A Clockwork Orange:
Nine Inch Nails - Building Better Worlds (Official Visualizer)
YouTube video by NineInchNailsVEVO
www.youtube.com
September 19, 2025 at 9:24 AM
Five stars from me for One Battle After Another, because they wouldn't let me give it ten. An exhilarating, shit-kicking, rollicking piece of cinema. Seen it twice, love it to death. My two cents/700 words:
One Battle After Another review: Paul Thomas Anderson has made a stone-cold instant classic
Leonardo DiCaprio is a former revolutionary in Paul Thomas Anderson's American epic. Read the Empire review.
www.empireonline.com
September 17, 2025 at 4:04 PM
Reposted by Alex Godfrey
Six lesser-seen Robert Redford films you need to watch this week.

Empire writers pick their favourite gems – from Sneakers and The Hot Rock, to The Old Man & The Gun.

Read the list: www.empireonline.com/movies/featu...
September 17, 2025 at 12:31 PM
Absolutely beautiful, beautiful, BEAUTIFUL piece on Robert Redford here by the one and only @christinalefou.bsky.social. I loved every line of this.
Robert Redford was Hollywood's fairytale prince of cinema – his loss feels deeply personal
Christina Newland pays tribute to the late, great Hollywood star, whose films brought comfort through decades of cinema. Read more at Empire.
www.empireonline.com
September 17, 2025 at 3:12 PM