HBO's Harry Potter TV series has found its Arthur Weasley, Moaning Myrtle, and Colin Creevey, with Rafe Spall cast as Ron's dad.
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Spall currently stars in Apple TV series Trying, though has also had roles in Life of Pi, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Men in Black: International, and Black Mirror.
Portrayed by Mark Williams in the original Harry Potter movies, Arthur Weasley is the good-natured patriarch of the Weasley family, and a recurring character through the Harry Potter series from the second book onwards.
It is Arthur's love of Muggle objects that ensures Harry and Ron can get to Hogwarts in an enchanted Ford Anglia, and in later stories Arthur's position in the Ministry of Magic allows Harry to hear the inner workings of the wizarding world as Voldemort ascends to power.
Other roles announced today include ghostly schoolgirl Moaning Myrtle and the photography-obsessed Colin Creevey. Both have small roles throughout the series, though first pop up in Chamber of Secrets as victims of a mysterious creature slithering around Hogwarts castle. Here, the pair will be played by newcomers Molly Hewitt-Richards and Jasper Ambrose, respectively.
Earlier this month, HBO announced a trio of other key roles for its second season of its Harry Potter adaptation, which now has actors cast for Tom Riddle (AKA the young Lord Voldemort), Dobby the house-elf and a new face for Ginny Weasley. Game of Thrones star Kit Harington will play Gilderoy Lockhart, meanwhile, filling in for Tom Hoult who dropped out due to a recent filming delay.
This month also brought our best look yet at the series' upcoming first season, including a peek at Quidditch, Professor Snape and the Sorting Hat. That's due to begin airing at Christmas this year, with the now-filming second season expected to follow in late 2027 or 2028.
Nigel Dick was a “record company guy who thought he could direct” when he boarded his plane from London to Los Angeles in 1985. But, as he writes in his new memoir, Music Video Mischief, out today (Sept. 15), from the moment he stepped off the plane, if anyone asked what he did, he was definitive: “I was a film director.”
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Luckily for Dick, Los Angeles has always been amenable to strivers, even if their journeys require some fake-it-til-you-make-it. Over the coming decades, Dick became one of the most innovative and in-demand music video directors in the world, helming blockbuster videos for Black Sabbath, Oasis, Celine Dion, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Nickelback, Cher, and R.E.M.
But the band that helped make Dick’s career was Guns N’ Roses. He directed three of the band’s videos from their landmark debut, Appetite for Destruction — “Welcome to the Jungle,” “Paradise City,” and “Sweet Child o’ Mine” — as well as their 1989 clip for “Patience.” In this excerpt from Music Video Mischief, Dick writes about his experiences working with GNR, including anecdotes about his one-on-one conversations with Axl Rose and the time Slash carjacked a trailer on set. Dick also opens up about how he admittedly “didn’t get” Guns N’ Roses when they first started working together, but came to understand them better through helping craft their distinct visual identity.
Welcome to the Jungle
In his second great rock and roll history book, Uncommon People, David Hepworth kindly credits me with creating the opening sequence of Guns n’ Roses’ first video, “Welcome to the Jungle,” in which Axl steps off the bus for the first time in Hollywood, a blade of straw in his mouth, Izzy offering him drugs and a hooker asking him if he wants to party. I would like to take full credit for coming up with this sequence, but sometimes the smartest thing a director can do when someone offers him an idea is to simply say, “Sounds good. Let’s do that!”
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I have a policy about starting a new project: keep your eyes and your ears open and figure out who on that job is wielding the most power. Keep that person on your side, and you’ll make your life a lot easier. Sometimes it’s the lead singer, sometimes it’s the record company/film company boss, sometimes it’s the actor’s agent, sometimes it’s the guitar player’s wife and sometimes it’s the lonely record company gal with an axe to grind. In Guns n’ Roses’ case, it was Alan Niven, their leather-jacketed manager. And it was Alan who’d pitched that memorable opening sequence to me, except that Alan’s style wasn’t so much about pitching as telling me what we were going to do.
“Welcome to the Jungle” was quite unlike anything I’d ever heard. I didn’t get it. To my eternal shame, I understood what made Great White tick but G n’ R were the first sign that I was no longer on the sharp end of all things musical. Great White loved the sound of Led Zeppelin and all the bands I loved. All they wanted to do was sound like Led Zeppelin — and did a passable job of just that. Guns n’ Roses were Zeppelin fans, too, and also cited the Pistols (who I liked) and Aerosmith (who I didn’t), but they wanted to take those influences and leap forward into the future. I wasn’t yet ready to take that leap with them.
I listened to “Jungle” a few times and told Alan I couldn’t or wouldn’t do the video. I was also busy doing videos with Was (Not Was) and the Japanese metal band Loudness. Knowing I had another Great White video coming, I already had enough on my plate.
Alan wouldn’t take no for an answer. It wasn’t just that he thought I was the right guy for the job, he seemed to think I was the only guy for the job. Other directors had apparently been considered but had either not passed the test or had turned the gig down flat. Whether it was true or not, he begged me to do him a favour and direct the Gunners’ first clip because, “You’re the only person I know who could handle them.”
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Alan and Axel (as I then thought his name was spelled) had come up with an idea which involved Axl stepping off a bus in Hollywood and hanging out in a motel room with the other guys and some babes. Axl would see himself on a TV screen in a shop window strapped to a chair and screaming, Clockwork Orange style, as he watched violent newsreels. All of this would be intercut with performance footage of the band playing in a large room in the Park Plaza Hotel. When I typed out the treatment for everyone to approve it barely filled one side of a page.
Videos, like most pieces of film, are frequently made without enough money to pay for the ideas that are going to make them work, so we picked an empty store across the street from our offices on La Brea as our prime location and filled the shop window with TV sets. The shop front was soon tricked out to double as Axl’s chair set and the room out back was filled with cheesy furniture to look like a motel room. A loop of lurid TV footage had been obtained from a stock house. We were ready to roll.
Axl sat in his chair and screamed his head off. I was too inexperienced, nice and, well, English to suggest he should get wild, but he didn’t need any prompting from me — he went nuclear, cutting himself badly on the wrist restraints the art department had built for his chair. I wasn’t directing Axl — he was directing himself.
Meanwhile, across the street where our motorhome was parked, nothing was happening. Slash, obviously bored, thought it would be fun to take the moho for a spin. Without warning, it lurched into life, did a screeching U-turn on a busy city street full of Mercs and Jeeps doing weekend shopping and started off up the street towards Sunset before Slash was relieved of his self-elected driving duties and the motorhome came to a halt. I saw Alan dragging Slash by his collar, barefoot, back across the road like a scolded child. It seemed that the master guitar player was getting into character and, like the wino he played in the video, had already been at the sauce.
The morning of day two found us at the Park Plaza Hotel — a location used for dozens of features and hundreds of music videos. We were preparing for the performance section of the video — what I like to call the skeleton — when Slash came bounding up, all contrite and full of smiles. He apologized profusely for taking the motorhome miles away from set the night before, up into the Hollywood Hills, before completely wrecking it in a canyon. I accepted his apology, appalled at the damage he must have caused on this second car-jacking spree. I hunted down my producer, Lisa Hollingshead, to find out what the damage had been and learned that there had been no second spree at all — apparently, the original U-turn and 100-yard dash up La Brea had seemed longer and more colourful and disastrous to Slash than it actually was. The motorhome was currently in the parking lot — shiny, new and undamaged.
I’d reminded Lisa that having alcohol on set was a no-no in California and made her promise that the band would not be able to get at the hooch while we were filming on the second day. Slash’s apology, it turned out, was not so much a plea for forgiveness as a prelude to asking that I lift the embargo and let him get at the sauce before lunchtime.
Before the crowd of extras arrived later in the afternoon, we were going to shoot close-ups of the band, which we would later intercut with the crowd shots. First in front of the camera was Axl. I’d heard him telling someone earlier that he was going to tease his hair into an enormous fright wig — something he’d obviously done before — and that after the video was shot he’d never do it again. Sure enough, he came out with the massive ’do that would later define a musical genre: hair metal. After one take — which is usually not worth the celluloid it’s printed on, as the crew and the artists find their feet — Axl mumbled something about being freaked out and disappeared back into the depths of the building. He was not seen again for another two hours. As plans go, my plan for the evening was now burning in flames. While I prayed for Axl’s return, we pressed on with close-ups of Slash, Izzy, et al.
I went home when the night was done, exhausted and confident that my time with the band would not be repeated, as we clearly had nothing in common. Climbing into my VW Golf, I saw the band disappearing into the night, followed by a horde of willing and nubile young things.
The edit was subsequently completed to everyone’s satisfaction and sent off to MTV, who promptly rejected it. Unnoticed by me (and everyone else), we’d included a piece of stock footage which very briefly, like a frame or two, panned past a Coca-Cola machine whose logo was just about recognizable. MTV didn’t condone advertising unless it was connected with large amounts of cash paid directly into their coffers. Video effects back then were in their infancy and costly, but Geffen authorized an overrun and the errant Coke machine was transformed into an anonymous red blob. The video was resubmitted and rejected again. And fixed again. And then the really bad news arrived — MTV simply didn’t want to play the video at all. Too edgy, too heavy, too real, too violent, too loud, too sexy? Who knew? They simply didn’t want anything to do with it.
With the important Christmas sales season coming up, the label pulled out the heavy guns. David Geffen: “I called my friend Tom Freston [at MTV] and said to him, ‘Just play it in the middle of the night. Don’t report it, just play it and let’s see if there’s a reaction to it.’” *
Tom Zutaut, the A&R man who signed G n’ R: “Sometimes there’s that one thing that pushes someone’s exposure … and in this case, that one thing that David did made all the difference in the world … from a band that was dead at 200,000 to a band that sold almost a hundred million.” *
And so it was agreed the video would be played once a day but only after 9:00 p.m. The hair metal craze was off to a very jumpy and problematic start.
I forgot about Guns n’ Roses and concentrated on that Was (Not Was) video I was planning. Then Alan Niven called again. Christmas had passed, “Welcome to the Jungle” was still being played and it seemed something might be happening out there in MTV land. There was going to be a second video called “Sweet Child o’ Mine.” Axl was dating Phil Everly’s daughter Erin and was rumoured to have written the song about her. This was the second G n’ R track I’d heard, and I didn’t like this one much either, though I thought the guitar solo rocked. Instead of presenting me with an idea for the video, Alan suggested I meet him for lunch at a swanky L.A. watering hole. He would bring Axl.
I’ve occasionally been asked what this musician or that celebrity is like because I’ve worked with them. My usual answer is I haven’t a clue. The beauty of the business I’ve been in all these years is all the wonderful people I’ve met and become friends with all over the world, but those people have mostly been camera folk, casting directors, producers and editors, grips and gaffers, art directors and location scouts. Going to lunch with the lead singer of a band was quite unusual.
The Axl I saw at lunch that day was a happy, funny young man. He had some ideas for “Sweet Child o’ Mine” which were quite dark. I also feared the ideas were expensive, but I nonetheless promised to write them up into a treatment. The video would open on a newspaper headline which said TOUR CANCELLED and pan down to a frame of Axl from the “Welcome to the Jungle” video — this picture would be captioned BRAIN DEAD? We’d see an ambulance racing past and then depositing Axl in a mental home wearing another white straitjacket similar to the one in “Jungle.” In a room full of male mental patients Axl would look through a window at an adjacent room full of female mental patients. Eventually, he would be transfixed by the image of Erin Everly, who would be equally transfixed on the other side of the glass.
As the lunch progressed, we mostly talked about Queen and the Electric Light Orchestra. In the end, that lunch with Axl produced an agreement between us that “Mr. Blue Sky” was a perfect pop moment and an open verdict on whether Out of the Blue would have been better as a single album.
Over the five videos I did for Guns n’ Roses, this was the only social interaction I had with anyone in the band. I’m not resentful or upset by this — this is the way my business has been. I’m part of a service industry, and my service is to provide great film. When I ask the plumber to come over to my house to fix a leaking tap I don’t expect to hang out and share my life story with him — I want him to fix my tap and then leave.
The treatment I’d written up was rejected. Alan rang me back — they simply wanted a performance video, and he had a location in mind: an old ballroom above a bank in Huntington Park. We could have the band rock out and shoot ourselves shooting the band, invite Erin and friends down and cut the whole thing together. The only problem we’d have to solve was clearing out the prodigious piles of pigeon crap we found in the building when we went to check it out.
The first attempt to shoot the video was cancelled at the last moment. When the plug is pulled just hours before work commences, the crew gets paid. I got half my fee and smiled all the way to the bank. A few weeks later, the shoot was postponed a second time: drummer Steven Adler was “ill,” and you can translate that any way you like. Once again, the crew got their cancellation fees, though I think, as I’d already pocketed a couple of thousand bucks from the first cancellation, I nobly (but foolishly) volunteered to put this delay down to experience and not submit another invoice.
Consequently, when, at the third attempt, we actually got our gear in the building I was not really optimistic that we’d roll any film — especially as Alan warned me that the band would appear on time but that Axl would arrive late and have to check out the building and see if the “vibe was right” before he’d agree to join in and take part. This was not good news. A rock band without a lead singer is no fucking use to anyone.
But I had noticed that a promising change was in the air. Firstly, someone from MTV was going to be on set with us. The young lady had specially flown in from New York and Alan had concocted a piece of simple blackmail. He wanted to put her on the dolly and have our “behind-the-scenes” film crew shoot her operating one of the cameras. If we used that footage in the video, then surely MTV would play the video, if only to show one of their own hard at work. Director of Photography Vance Burberry and his crew rolled their eyeballs, but we all understood that, though we saw ourselves as “creatives,” we were in the business of selling small round silver things, and if that’s what we had to do, we’d do it. When we’d shot “Welcome to the Jungle” I couldn’t recall seeing anyone from the label on the set, but there were lots of people from Geffen here, many of them wearing high heels and short skirts.
Suddenly a whisper went round the set. Axl had been spotted outside and was said to be climbing the stairs into the building. Everyone pretended not to notice but watched nervously as he prowled around, checking that everything was to his liking. An emissary was sent my way. Axl approved, and we were ready to shoot. Sighs of relief were audible around the building. The Assistant Directors scurried to and fro, getting everyone ready for camera.
Axl had suggested that it would be a cool idea if, just before the solo, he ripped off his leather jacket so he could really rock out in his T-shirt in the second half of the song. I concurred but asked if he could please remember to do it in every take at exactly the same point in the song. Axl said that would be no problem.
So, why now, halfway through the first take of the shoot, was Axl flailing his arm like a windmill with his jacket hurling around through space like a lasso? I yelled “Cut” at the top of my voice and everything stopped.
Axl — just like any self-respecting rock star would — had festooned his wrists with myriad bracelets, and the bracelets had got caught in the lining of the sleeve of the jacket. We figured out a solution and started over.
In the middle of take two it happened again. And take three and take four and take five. We were an hour into filming, and I hadn’t gotten a single run-through in the can. Alan wandered over and shooed away the women in their high heels. He leaned over me and whispered, “For god’s sake, get a full take now whatever happens. Axl is going to walk any minute.”
On take six we got lucky; from that moment onwards things proceeded according to plan. We’d started shooting at 4:00 p.m. and wrapped somewhere around 2:00 in the morning.
But we weren’t wrapped at all. Axl had other ideas. He was having so much fun he wanted to keep going. And so we went back to work. By 4:00 a.m. we’d completely run out of film. I pulled the plug and we all went home.
I had started regularly working with a wonderful editor named Michael Heldman, who was to become a lifelong friend. The two of us set about cutting the hours of footage into the “Sweet Child o’ Mine” video you know today. There was one problem — like most music video sets, no one was recording any audio, so when we cut in the shot of the panting dog before the music starts, we had no panting dog sound. We found a microphone, we rolled tape … and Michael started panting like a dog. We also didn’t have the sound of Slash plugging in his guitar, so I went home, cranked up my tiny practice amp and recorded the plugging-in guitar sound on my cassette four-track. Not exactly high fidelity, but no one has ever complained.
The next big issue for me was that Axl shimmied from side to side with an unusual snakelike move that struck me as effeminate and lame. It wasn’t rock and roll or tough. When Michael showed me the first cut, I instructed him to take that move out, every single shot of it. And then a woman in our office wandered into the edit bay and saw 30 seconds of the cut.
“What do you think?”
“I love those shots of Axl doing that sexy side-to-side dance of his. He’s gorgeous!”
I realized she fancied him. But, more importantly, I realized that what I hated was something that others seemed to really, really like. When she left, I turned to Michael. “All those shots of Axl shimmying from side to side — you know the ones I told you to take out? Put them back in — all of them. And see if you can find some more!”
Whether it was the shimmying, the gratuitous shot of the MTV employee pretending to operate the camera or the fact that people, a lot of people, were now buying copies of Appetite for Destruction, MTV was very enthusiastic about the video and there was no 9:00 p.m. restriction on this clip. It went into heavy rotation and was suddenly the hottest thing on the channel.
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The next G n’ R video was “Paradise City.” Alan’s plan this time was a clever one. The Gunners were touring the States opening for Aerosmith, who were also on Geffen. They had a date at Giants Stadium in New Jersey, so why don’t we go and shoot them there and “borrow” the huge Aerosmith crowd to create the impression that G n’ R were already massive enough to draw tens of thousands? Within a few months, the band would be able to draw a crowd of that size on their own, but for now it was a bit of a white lie. If we pulled it off, it would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The icing on the cake was that, immediately after the Giants Stadium show, the band were going to fly by Concorde to England to appear at the Donington Park heavy metal festival. I would get to go back to England with the band, on the Concorde no less, and shoot more footage there in front of another massive crowd.
Giants Stadium was sunny and bright. We were rolling film during soundcheck, and Slash was perched on the edge of the stage with his guitar wailing, wearing only shorts and boots.
Alan Niven sauntered over and told me that Axl would not be available to talk before they went onstage, so was there anything I needed to know before showtime?
Me: When will the band be playing “Paradise City”?
Alan: When do you want them to play it?
Me: Third song in would be perfect.
Alan: Why third?
Me: We only have four cameras. The magazines on the cameras should last through the first two songs, so if we change mags before the start of the third song, we can make sure that all cameras are fully loaded when they do “Paradise City.”
Alan: I’ll go and check with Axl.
Alan returned five minutes later, chuckling.
Alan: Axl said he doesn’t know where “Paradise City” will be in the set. All he knows at this point is that it definitely won’t be third!
Me: Seriously?
Alan: Seriously.
I rolled my eyes and went to the office at the back of the stadium, where my four monitors had been set up, and tested the talk-back system. At a live show you give each camera operator a headset and a transmitter/receiver so you can give them instructions on what you want them to shoot. Everything was working perfectly, and I paced nervously, waiting for showtime.
The cameras started rolling the minute the band appeared behind the massive stage, ready to go on. On my monitors, I saw Axl for the first time that day. He’d gone full Hollywood rock and roll in a white leather jacket and pants. Slash was wearing a Hard Rock T-shirt with a difference — instead of L.A. or New York or London, the location printed on the shirt read “Hell.” I chuckled to myself and wished the crew good luck as the band raced onstage. Down in the guts of the arena I could hear the crowd roar and the first dull thuds as Steven Adler tested his kick drum. I heard the count-off for the first tune, the band launched into their set …
… and all the monitors in front of me promptly turned to snow and static! We’d tested the video transmitters after soundcheck and everything had worked perfectly but, when that massive PA system started belting G n’ R out to a packed stadium, the soundwaves were so powerful that the transmitters couldn’t cope. Occasional images drifted in and out of the static as if the band members were in a hurricane on Mars. I tried my best to direct the cameras to shoot useful angles. I didn’t dare look around, but I sensed Alan over my shoulder boring holes in my back. I still had no idea when “Paradise City” would appear in the set. This $200,000 job was turning into a white-knuckle ride in a snowstorm; I now knew what must have been going through the Big Bopper’s mind as he and Buddy Holly took off on their final fateful flight.
And “Paradise City”? They played it third!
The months passed and Alan Niven called me again to say the band had made an EP, and we were going to make a video for “Patience.” The band had an idea that involved a recording studio setup and a collection of hotel scenes.
We shot the studio scenes at the Record Plant in Hollywood. Axl whistled his way through the tune; Slash slumped in a chair and let his hair fall over his face. I kept asking him to look up and reveal himself, but he ignored me and then was upset when he couldn’t see himself in the final edit. The hotel footage was shot at the Ambassador on Wilshire Boulevard. I’d shot the Temptations there when I first moved to L.A. The hotel had still been open then, but now it was a neglected dusty mausoleum, a memory of a bygone glamorous age. In other words, the perfect place for a film crew to go about their business and make as much noise as we wanted.
As each bandmember had his own vignette, it became clear that the vibe between them had changed. When we’d shot “Welcome to the Jungle” there was a clear impression of them as a solid social unit — five lads together against the world. But now, with some success and thousands of road miles under their belt, they were five distinct organs all pulling in different directions, no longer with the same unity of purpose. It happens with all bands eventually, but I felt it was happening particularly quickly with G n’ R.
There was a final hurrah with the band when we shot the video for “It’s So Easy,” which in the end did not show me in the best light. The idea called for Axl and Erin to be seen in various scenes involving bondage. Whips and gags were the order of the day; those moments would be intercut with live footage shot in Hollywood’s Cathouse. When I delivered the treatment to Anne-Marie Mackay, now my rep at Propaganda, she refused to allow us to be associated with it. I’d like to say that I did the right thing but, as always, I wanted to get the gig and pressed onwards despite her objections. Looking back, I believe she was right, but it says a lot about my work ethic (or not, depending on your view) that I put the blinkers on and just pressed onwards to get the job done. The scenes between Erin and Axl were shot with Axl making most of the crucial decisions on set as I was too embarrassed to really get behind the idea. Axl eventually contacted Vance, my DP, directly to shoot the footage of him and two girls making out in the car.
The live footage at the Cathouse was shot during a crazy live show in a packed club with the P.A. cranked to the max. There were no monitors for me to watch, and my directing consisted of pushing through the sweaty bodies and pointing frantically to tell the cameramen what to shoot. My abiding memory of that night is sitting on the hood of my car talking to a crew member on the street after the show and watching David Bowie leave the club alone. He gave us a brief, limp smile as he passed and then disappeared into the night.
As we were completing the edit, Slash stopped by the edit room to check it out. He arrived carrying a beer bottle as if still in the role we’d first seen him play in “Welcome to the Jungle.” After he approved the cut I walked him to the door of our office. He draped his arm around me. “Y’know Nigel, we need to go out and drink sometime.” What could I tell him but the truth? “Slash, I don’t really drink!”
As his arm slipped from around my neck and he stumbled for the door, I heard him say, “Weird!” **
We sent a cut of the video to the label, where it remained in limbo for many years before being released with the 30th anniversary edition of Appetite for Destruction.
For the next few years, a manager or label person would hire me to shoot their hair metal band and say, “Do for my lead singer what you did for Axl Rose.” And I would accept the gig, knowing in my heart that I was involved in a fool’s errand. For all their faults, the original Guns n’ Roses were a magic collection of parts that created a greater whole. And no one was ever going to match Axl, let alone be a better version of him. God knows, I certainly tried to do my best.
I get calls every few years from journalists wanting to talk about the videos I made for the band. I go on YouTube to watch them again to see if there’s anything I’ve forgotten. The final irony is that, when I watch the videos, I finally get Guns n’ Roses. I didn’t understand at the time what they were about; it seems I had to make the videos so that I and the rest of the world could see what it was that made them tick.
Slash was certainly right: Weird.
* These remarks are documented in the PBS American Masters show Inventing David Geffen.
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**I saw Slash again 30 years later when I shot some interviews for his blues project — he was charming, sober and lucid.
The Education Department is encouraging student-loan borrowers to leave the SAVE repayment plan.
Al Drago/Getty Images
Millions of student-loan borrowers have yet to leave a key repayment plan — and the first deadline is approaching.
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A Department of Education spokesperson confirmed that 1.5 million of the 7.5 million borrowers on the SAVE plan had selected a new repayment plan as of Monday morning, "allowing them to make progress toward paying down their balances and access loan discharge benefits that current SAVE borrowers are missing out on."
SAVE was a Biden-era repayment plan that offered borrowers lower monthly payments and a shorter timeline for debt relief. The Trump administration eliminated the planthis spring. Beginning July 1, servicers started notifying enrolled borrowers of their 90-day timeframe to eitherswitch to a new plan or be placed in a standard plan with the highest payments.
The 90-day deadline for the first batch of borrowers is approaching on September 29. Servicers said they expect to send notices to all SAVE borrowers by the end of 2026.
What's next for SAVE borrowers
About 80% of SAVE borrowers still haven't left the plan. Some borrowers have said they're waiting for their 90-day notices.
Other borrowers said they switched off of SAVE before receiving their notice in order to begin earning credit toward forgiveness, either through an income-driven repayment plan or Public Service Loan Forgiveness, which forgives student debt for government and nonprofit workers.
The Education Department did not comment on how quickly borrowers who do not select a new plan within their timeframe will be moved to a standard plan, or how they will be notified of the transition.
Still, borrowers who have selected new plans have reported a range of glitches and errors. Some have received incorrect billing amounts when their actual payment was higher, and a separate group received notices that their accounts were delinquent and approaching default, when that wasn't the case.
The department said it was aware of the errors and resolved them; however, they have left some borrowers confused about what they owe, making it difficult to budget for their proper payments.
An ongoing lawsuit is also seeking to stop the forced transfer of SAVE borrowers to a new plan. The law firm Public Goods Practice filed a motion in June to block the transfer, and the judge has yet to make a ruling. The department has disputed the claims within the lawsuit and recommended that borrowers select a "lawful" repayment option as soon as possible.
Have a story to share about student loans? Contact this reporter at [email protected].
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Ayelet Sheffey
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Ayelet Sheffey is a senior reporter at Business Insider covering education and student loans. She has appeared on shows including C-SPAN, CBS News, NPR, and SiriusXM to discuss her student-loan coverage, including her investigation on private student-loan lending.She graduated from American University in 2020 with a bachelor's degree in journalism. You can reach her via email at [email protected] or message her securely on Signal at asheffey.97. You can also find her on LinkedIn, and on Reddit at the username u/higheredjourno.
The still waters and intriguing depths conveyed by Chase Infiniti in The Julia Set offer proof positive that the magnetic One Battle After Another discovery has the goods to carry a movie. She also has robust support from an ensemble that includes Christopher Briney, Nina Hoss, Jason Isaacs and Gillian Anderson, an impressive assembly, especially for a first-time writer-director. Niki Byrne provides each of them with incisive characterizations and sharp dialogue, but her film fails to bring the psychological weight necessary for us to invest much in the mismatched central relationship.
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The dynamic at the heart of the movie is that of a Black woman from a family of modest means, accustomed to downplaying her formidable mathematical abilities for fear of drawing too much attention, and a white teaching assistant from wealth and privilege who recognizes and supports her talent until it outshines his. But Byrne leaves the economic and class divide mostly unexplored, instead focusing on the corrosive effects of academic competitiveness on a romance.
The Julia Set
The Bottom Line
Less than the sum of its parts.
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Special Presentations) Cast: Chase Infiniti, Christopher Briney, Nina Hoss, Carmen Ejogo, Chloe Bailey, Nico Hiraga, Liz Lin, Alex Dillard, Jason Isaacs, Gillian Anderson Director-screenwriter: Niki Byrne
1 hour 52 minutes
On a scene-by-scene basis the film is engrossing, but its conflicts lack the emotional shading to keep us invested in the characters, particularly when one of them refuses to hear the clanging alarm bells.
That would be Julia (Infiniti), who falls into a relationship with her initially charming teaching assistant Pascal (Briney, doing a 180 from his brooding romantic on The Summer I Turned Pretty) at a fictional East Coast college. He ushers her into an elite group of young mathematicians preparing for the notoriously difficult Putnam Exam under the guidance of Dr. Zatlan (Hoss), a professor whose mentorship generally tends to come in witheringly blunt dismissals. “Spectacularly unsatisfying” is how she describes the students’ work on last week’s assignments the first time Julia joins the group.
Julia grew up nearby and chose a college that allowed her to stay close to her family, especially her adoring brother Evan (Alex Dillard), who has Down syndrome. She has a warm rapport with her mother Holly (Carmen Ejogo), who endorses her daughter’s dream to go to MIT but worries that Julia obsesses over her studies to the exclusion of all else. “Please dive into the college life,” she urges her.
That is kind of what she’s doing with Pascal, which both thrills and concerns her far more man-savvy roommate Erin (Chloe Bailey, consistently delightful, albeit while stuck playing a stock bestie). Pascal’s family name, Mandelbrot, is chiseled into the façade of the school library and his father Aleksander (Jason Isaacs) is a famous math scholar and recipient of the prestigious Fields Medal. That makes Pascal a math-geek nepo baby, meaning he has a lot to prove.
Just how much becomes apparent when he invites Julia — after fast-forwarding through the I-love-you and apartment-key phase of the relationship at dizzying speed — to spend a long weekend with his parents. That devolves into a needling humiliation ritual wherein Aleksander reaffirms his superior intellect during a quietly savage chess game with his son. The location shift to the folks’ fancy pile of bricks injects a shot of prickly energy into the film as Pascal’s mother Anne (Anderson, divine) visibly flinches every time her egotistical monster of a husband walks into a room or opens his mouth.
Aleksander and Anne are fabulous characters, played to the hilt by Isaacs and Anderson. The unspoken friction between them — dating back to when she was his gifted student, before stepping aside to let him soak up all the spotlight — makes them like a less overtly hostile and more moderately boozy math-department George and Martha from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Not that Anne doesn’t toss down the red wine just to get through lunch and endure the sourness left hanging in the air by Aleksander’s supercilious idea of conversation. After eviscerating Pascal at the chess board, Aleksander sits Julia down for a chat, aware that she has read his work. His opener? “Tell me about my book.”
The poisonousness of that visit seeps into Pascal’s bloodstream. He hasn’t even started the car to leave before telling Julia he thinks they should break up, while she tells him he doesn’t have to buy into his father’s “little cult of genius.” But as it becomes evident to him that Julia is more than capable of outperforming him in the Putnam Exam, both his self-loathing and his resentment of her begin spiraling fast.
He starts popping Adderall during all-night study sessions, turning violent and abusive when he comes home to find Julia in his apartment making a surprise dinner. “You’re like this little nightmare I’ve created for myself,” he spits out contemptuously. But Julia nonetheless keeps making excuses for him and allowing him to manipulate her with textbook guilt tactics.
This is already way past the point where many will have lost patience with Julia’s continued willingness to be a punching bag and Pascal’s failure to learn anything from the hell of growing up with a father like Aleksander, instead turning into a more unhinged — and heavy-handed — chip off the old block. It’s chiefly because Infiniti is so good in a performance largely defined by Julia’s interiority that we stay with her.
The more rewarding closing-act developments come when Anne steps in to give Julia an unexpected — if slightly platitudinous — pep talk that will never come from her son or husband, or even from frosty Dr. Zatlan when she finally notice’s Julia’s extraordinary potential. The professor almost seems to share Pascal’s view that the pressure the two of them feel to strive for excellence cannot compare. “Nobody expects anything from you,” Pascal hisses at Julia in the most explicit summation of the movie’s key questions about who has the right to wear the genius crown and why should the club be so exclusionary.
This seems a valid point worth making, but The Julia Project tends to be either too emphatic or too insipid to make it effectively. In the end, we care about Julia mostly because Infiniti shows a living, breathing humanity that the unsatisfying film lacks. %!s()
Good morning! It's Tuesday, September 15, 2026, and this is The Morning Shift, your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. This is where you'll find the most important stories that are shaping the way Americans drive and get around.
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In this morning's edition, the Land Rover-Stellantis alliance will spawn a U.S.-built Defender pickup, Waymo has its sights set on Tokyo, the eldest boy of the VinFast empire is named its global chief executive and Stellantis may have a buyer for its shuttered plant in Brampton, Canada.
1st Gear: Defender pickup could be in the works with Stellantis' help
Land Rover
Land Rover and Stellantis have some big, funky plans for this tie-up, and the first vehicle they're apparently going to build together is a Defender pickup truck. It'll be built in the U.S., allowing Land Rover to avoid the 25% Chicken Tax on imported pickups, and it seems that it'll be aimed squarely at stuff like the Ineos Grenadier Quartermaster and (to a lesser extent) Jeep Gladiator.
Back in May, Land Rover and Stellantis, two companies that aren't exactly doing too hot right now, signed a memorandum of understanding to "explore opportunities to collaborate on product development" in the U.S., and it's slated to be finalized at the end of the year. From Automotive News:
The U.S.-built models would be developed with help from Stellantis, rather than JLR shifting production of its stronger-selling models to Stellantis facilities in the country, Automotive News Europe reported.
The automaker will instead go into "new segments" with Defender-branded vehicles built in collaboration with Stellantis, [JLR CFO Richard] Molyneux said.
[...]
The U.S. has taken on more importance within JLR as sales in China, once its largest market, decline.
No technical details of the deal have emerged. For example, Stellantis doesn't currently make a unibody truck. The Defender is such a unibody vehicle. It's also not clear what engines will power the Land Rover pickup. Engines imported from Europe would be subjected to tariffs.
But using an off-the-shelf Stellantis engine might not be suitable for a premium pickup.
The upcoming Defender pickup won't be the first ever sold in the U.S. market. In the 1960s and early '70s, British Leyland sold pickup versions of the Series 1 and Series II, trucks that were based on classic body-on-frame Land Rover SUVs.
It makes a hell of a lot of sense why JLR is trying to expand in the U.S. It currently imports all its vehicles here, even though we're JLR's biggest market globally. That means it is getting killed by President Trump's 10% tariffs on UK-built cars and 15% tariffs on EU-built cars.
JLR CEO PB Balaji says the goal is to eventually expand the company's U.S. business to be the size of its global business. That's a tall order, to say the least.
2nd Gear: Like all white boys, Waymo wants to go to Tokyo
creativetan/Shutterstock
Waymo is teaming up with Japanese taxi operator GO and taxi company Nihon Kotsu in order to launch Japan's first fully autonomous commercial taxi service in Tokyo sometime in 2027. The companies said that they plan to start with a small fleet of vehicles before expanding to about 100 vehicles across key neighborhoods in the city. Of course, the plan is subject to regulatory approvals and ongoing validation of Waymo's technology and operating model. From Reuters:
Once approvals are secured and the service is fully validated, it will operate without drivers and be available through both the GO and Waymo apps, the companies said in a joint statement.
"From day one, this will be an unmanned service for the public," Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana told reporters at a joint press conference in Tokyo.
"We'll grow our fleet responsibly over time, steadily operating until anyone in Tokyo can download an app and take a ride."
The announcement marks the latest step in Waymo's Japan push after the company began collecting data in Tokyo in 2025 using human-driven Jaguar I-PACE vehicles, its first public-road operations outside the United States.
The companies said the service could help address Japan's driver shortage and its broader population decline.
Waymo isn't the only company that wants a piece of Japan's robotaxi pie, either. Nissan has separately been working with British startup Wayve and Uber Technologies on developing their own robotaxis for the country.
3rd Gear: Eldest boy gets job
PJ McDonnell/Shutterstock
VinFast looked from within to find its new global chief executive, and by "within," I mean within its founder's loins, because the Vietnamese electric vehicle maker picked Chairman Pham Nhat Quan Anh, the eldest boy of company founder Pham Nhat Vuong, for the position. I wonder how he got the job. Still, it's not like it's an enviable position. He must now oversee the loss-making firm as it goes through restructuring and overseas expansion.
The 33-year-old, who was first appointed global chairman in May, will also serve as chairman and chief executive officer of VinFast Vietnam. VinFast is planning to restructure into a more asset-light company as it looks to grow in key markets like Southeast Asia and India. From Reuters:
"Pham Nhat Quan Anh will hold ultimate and comprehensive responsibility for all of VinFast's operations as the company enters a new phase of growth," the company said in a statement.
Anh will succeed his father, founder Pham Nhat Vuong, as chief executive. Vuong will continue to serve on VinFast's board.
Anh will be VinFast's fifth chief executive. Previous CEOs include former General Motors executive James DeLuca, ex-Opel chief Michael Lohscheller, and Le Thi Thu Thuy, who led the company through its Nasdaq listing.
In May, VinFast unveiled a restructuring plan that would transfer manufacturing assets worth about $530 million to a purchaser group that would also take on about $6.9 billion in debt, as the automaker seeks to reduce future capital requirements.
The complexity of the deal and the involvement of investors with ties to Vingroup and Vuong has raised concerns for some analysts and shareholders.
VinFast reported a rise of nearly 42% in first-quarter revenue but posted a wider net loss. It has received ongoing financial support from Vuong, the founder and chairman of Vingroup, Vietnam's biggest conglomerate and VinFast's parent company.
Anh is a graduate of Singapore Management University and held a number of senior roles at VinFast and other Vingroup companies before becoming chairman of VinFast Auto. He will remain as chief executive of VinMetal, a steel producer within the Vingroup conglomerate.
Further keeping things in the family, Pham Nhat Minh Hoang, Vuong's second son, and the Roman Roy of the family, was named the global chief executive officer at VinFast-linked taxi firm GSM, and Nguyen Quoc Tuan appointed global chairman. GSM is planning a Hong Kong listing in 2028, and it plans to purchase about 1 million EVs and 4 million e-scooters from VinFast between 2026 and 2030.
4th Gear: Stellantis' Brampton factory's fate coming into view
JHVEPhoto/Shutterstock
Stellantis says it has a tentative deal to sell its currently closed Brampton Assembly plant in Canada to Roshel, a weapons manufacturer. While the news might be good for the automaker, which has struggled to figure out what to do with the plant, it quickly drew criticism from the Unifor automakers union that has urged it to reopen and invest in the facility.
In a statement, Unifor said that it was at an impasse in collective bargaining negotiations with Stellantis after 10 days of talks, due in large part to the disagreement over the future of the plant. Conversely, it has already come to agreements with Ford and General Motors. From The Detroit News:
"The persistence of the company's proposal to close and sell the Brampton plant has hindered the bargaining process," the union said.
A sale would "threaten the wages, pensions and other benefits of Unifor members" who had worked at the plant before it closed and had sought to return, the union said. It added that there "is no economic substitute for automotive assembly in Canada."
The facility most recently made the Chrysler 300, Dodge Charger and Dodge Challenger sedans before production ended in late 2023. Workers and union officials had been awaiting the retooling and reopening of the plant to build a next-generation Jeep Compass last year, but that never happened as the company switched up its North American product strategy amid high U.S. tariffs on Canadian goods. Still, Unifor said it was assured by the company that Stellantis planned to invest in new programs for the plant.
Stellantis spokesperson LouAnn Gosselin confirmed Friday that the company has entered a memorandum of understanding with Roshel to take over the plant. The Canadian defense manufacturer designs and builds armored vehicles.
"Following consideration of a number of potential opportunities, Stellantis believes that Roshel represents a strong path to restoring sustainable operations at Brampton Assembly, preserving the site's strategic role in Canada's advanced manufacturing sector and helping to avoid a prolonged period of inactivity," a statement said. "For more than 100 years, Stellantis has invested in and grown with Canada, and we remain committed to supporting Canadian jobs, innovation and the long term competitiveness of the country's automotive sector."
Unifor says there won't be a tentative settlement in talks without a "suitable resolution for union members who are part of Local 1295 at the Brampton facility. A spokesperson said that unless there's a resolution, "formal contract talks between Unifor and Stellantis are paused until further notice."
Reverse: Nothing lasts forever
History.com
I'm just glad nobody really learned their lesson from the entire 2008 financial meltdown, and even more thrilled that none of the stakeholders were even held responsible in any meaningful way. Surely this will not embolden them to do something similar down the line. Surely not. Anyway, if you want to learn about Lehman Brothers' collapse, head over to History.com.
The Fuel Up
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Friends, when it comes to fuel prices, it would seem that we are both on the runaway train and tied to the tracks at the same time. As we reported yesterday, Houthi rebels successfully attacked the East-West pipeline that Saudi Arabia uses to get around the Strait of Hormuz, forcing the Saudis to shut it down and take 4% of the world's oil offline. Compounding this with everything going on in the Strait, and you get WTI Crude Oil futures and Brent Crude prices sitting at $103 and $107, respectively, at the time of publication.
Here's where national average prices stand right now, according to AAA:
AAA
What all this means is the average price of a gallon of regular gas was up another cent overnight to $4.33, according to AAA. Diesel was also up another 4 cents overnight to $6.27 — a new all-time record. I don't know when this ends, but it's not tomorrow.
On the radio: Charli xcx - Magic Metal Montana
I saw Charli xcx perform at the Barclays Center last night as a representative of the "Straight Guys Supporting Their Fiancée" contingent of the crowd, and damn, what an amazing show. Of course, I'm joking — I wanted to go just as badly as she did, because Charli rocks, and I like "Music, Fashion, Film" more than "Brat." See her if you can, because this tour is sick as hell. %!s()
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History.com
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