It is, nonetheless, a very big chair: Stuber oversees the Netflix film slate and when he joined early in 2017, he had to fix a glaring problem.
While the company was winning acclaim for its original series, customers were still complaining about the quality of its film offering and Hollywood was sniffy.
Fast forward to 2021 and Netflix has had mega-hits including Bird Box and has released a Martin Scorsese film, The Irishman, that rival studio heads admit they couldn’t get made, and won more Oscars (seven) at the Academy Awards in April than any other distributor.
Stuber is in town for the London Film Festival, which ends tonight. It began with the premiere of The Harder They Fall, a western starring Idris Elba, which marked the first time a Netflix title had opened the event.
He has retained a Tiggerish enthusiasm for film that stems from his childhood in the San Fernando Valley, on the wrong side of the hill in Los Angeles.
“[Hollywood] was as foreign to me as it would be a kid from Liverpool,” he says. “So [doing this job], I feel like I’m 13.”
While at university in Arizona, he would go and buy the magazine The Hollywood Reporter and write asking for work to all the companies making films and television shows. He never received a reply.
Then, at an LA barbecue, while he was complaining that he would never break into the industry, a sister of a friend told him that film studios had HR departments.
He put on his only suit, and went in to see them all.
He was eventually hired as an assistant in the publicity department at Universal.
Here he met Lew Wasserman, the legendary movie mogul. Stuber’s job was to deliver him newspaper clippings every morning by 8am. "If there was a bad paper jam, it was very stressful."
They never spoke — Stuber was too intimidated — until one day Wasserman asked him a question. “He had a big, bellowy voice and he said: ‘Hey son! What do you want to be when you grow up?’” Stuber says he instinctively replied, “You.”
He says his aim is to create a place where creators know they are supported. “You can bring something like The Irishman or Roma and we’ll treat it like an Avengers movie, because those are our superhero movies. The big great art is what we can do.”
So has the anti-Netflix snobbery faded away then? Stuber nods: “That attitude has shifted.”
What are his ambitions now? He aims very high: “I’d love to bring Daniel Day-Lewis out of retirement.”
At Harewood House, in West Yorkshire, two men sat down for a difficult conversation.
“My great-great-great-great-grandparents were slaves on your family’s plantation,” the actor David Harewood told David Lascelles, the 8th Earl of Harewood. thetimes.co.uk/article/david-…
“This is a fine house and beautiful grounds. But it was built on the proceeds of slavery. Do you feel any guilt or shame about that?” Harewood asked Lascelles.
“No, not in a personal way,” Lascelles replied. “I don’t feel that feeling guilty for something you have no involvement with is a helpful emotion.”
Voting is now open for the Sunday Times Sportswomen of the Year awards (in association with Sky Sports). Head to sportswomenoftheyear.co.uk to cast your votes. #SWOTY
Today we can also reveal this year's shortlists for each award. First up: the Young Sportswoman of the Year. 🏆
Bimini Bon Boulash doesn’t like labels. “Non-binary is a new term, but the idea has been around for a long time,” the 28-year-old drag queen says.
“David Bowie was non-conforming to gender standards, and people like Prince and Grace Jones were very fluid with their gender identity. I often wonder if people who get so flared up about it ever listen to those artists.”
"Some people, when they get to a certain age, like to refer to a diary to recall day-to-day events from the past, but I have no such notebooks. What I do have is my songs — hundreds of them — which serve much the same purpose."
I Lost My Little Girl
Written in 1956, released in 1991
"You wouldn’t have to be Sigmund Freud to recognise that the song is a very direct response to the death of my mother. I wrote this song later that same year. I was 14 at the time."
#WorldAtFive 🌎: They first appear as great black smears on the horizon. As they move closer, they black out the sun and the land goes dark.
Then to the growing rhythm of millions of beating wings, they drop lower and lower, devouring all in their path. thetimes.co.uk/article/un-usi…
Patrick Mutugi, a farmer in Meru, eastern Kenya, watched in horror as the worst locust plague to hit the Horn of Africa for more than 70 years invaded his land.
Terrified villagers, fearing that the insects would enter their homes, tried to chase them away, to no avail.
“They ran around singing, shouting, even throwing stones to try and frighten them off,” he said.
“When the swarm descends, the air is so think with them you can barely see. They carpet the ground.” The crops are stripped bare. The locusts move on.
A mood killer in this interview is The Mail on Sunday, writes @joshglancy, which has just printed a story about Collins supposedly having an affair with the patrician Tory MP Alan Clark that is “an absolute, 100% lie”.
The offending anecdote is taken from documentary maker Michael Cockerell’s new memoir.
Collins was “appalled” by the story and is trying to put her lawyer on it. “I’ve never heard of this Cockerell chap,” she says dismissively.