Aurelia Butler

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    Valerie Mahaffey, Actress in “Northern Exposure” and “Desperate Housewives,” Dies at 71

    She had memorable roles on TV shows like “Desperate Housewives” and “Northern Exposure,” and in the dark comedy film “French Exit.”Valerie Mahaffey, a character actress with a knack for playing eccentric women who sometimes revealed themselves to be sinister on television shows like “Desperate Housewives,” “Northern Exposure” and “Devious Maids,” died on Friday in Los Angeles. She was 71.The cause was cancer, her husband, the actor Joseph Kell, said in a statement.Ms. Mahaffey had worked steadily over the past five decades, starting out on the NBC daytime soap opera, “The Doctors,” for which she received a Daytime Emmy nomination for best supporting actress in 1980. Most recently, she appeared in the movie “The 8th Day,” a crime thriller released in March. She was also known for her guest-starring roles on well-known TV series such as “Seinfeld” and “Grey’s Anatomy.”She won an Emmy for best supporting actress in 1992 for her work as Eve, a hypochondriac, on the 1990s CBS series “Northern Exposure,” a drama set in Alaska. She was best known for playing seemingly friendly women who become villainous characters in dramas such as “Desperate Housewives,” where she appeared in nine episodes.In her “Housewives” role as Alma Hodge, she was a woman trapped in a loveless marriage who faked her own death to get back at her husband, hoping he would be blamed for her disappearance.She most recently won acclaim for her work in the 2020 dark comedy, “French Exit,” which saw her nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for her portrayal of Madame Reynard, a scene-stealing eccentric widow.In an interview in 2021 with the Gold Derby, Ms. Mahaffey discussed the role, saying: “I know how to be funny. I’ve done sitcoms. I know ba-dum-bum humor.”“Maybe it’s this point in my life,” she added, “I don’t want any artifice. And I wanted to play the truth of every moment.”She also said then that she often ended up playing characters who were “a little askew,” which she said was aligned with how people are in reality.Ms. Mahaffey was born on June 16, 1953, in Sumatra, Indonesia. Her mother, Jean, was Canadian, and her father, Lewis, was an American who worked in the oil business. Her family later moved to Nigeria before eventually settling in Austin, Texas, where she attended high school and went on to earn a bachelor of fine arts degree in 1975, from the University of Texas.The frequent moves made her family very close, she told The New York Times in a 1983 interview.“We had to leave friends behind all the time, and so we turned toward one another,” she said.In addition to her husband, Ms. Mahaffey is survived by their daughter, Alice Richards. More

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    Miley Cyrus Told Us to Ask Her Anything

    Miley Cyrus’s entire life has been shaped by fame. Born at the height of her father Billy Ray Cyrus’s celebrity, she spent her childhood at his sold-out country concerts. At 13, she became a star herself — and an important part of the Disney machine — as the titular lead in “Hannah Montana,” playing a regular girl by day and a pop star by night and becoming a cultural touchstone for millennial kids.By the time Cyrus left the show, she already had dozens of Billboard Hot 100 hits, but industry and tastemaker respect was harder to come by. As with many former female child stars, her transition to adulthood in the public eye was marked by controversy (twerking with Robin Thicke at the 2013 Video Music Awards) and judgment (the Parents Television Council condemned the performance), which she looks back on today with some bitterness at how she was treated.Now 33, Cyrus is one of pop’s reigning female queens, a status cemented by her first Grammy win for her 2023 megahit “Flowers.” Her ninth studio album, “Something Beautiful,” has just been released, and she says it’s her attempt to reimagine what “beautiful” means — her beloved grandmother’s death, for instance, or the emotion of rage, which she told me is beautiful because “it lets you know you’re alive.” We also spoke at length about her close relationship with her mother, Tish Cyrus-Purcell, her repaired relationship with her father and how she has learned to protect herself in a world that is still fascinated by everything she does. But we started by talking about the first time I interviewed her, when her candor and openness quite honestly freaked me out.The Grammy-winning singer on overcoming child stardom, accepting her parents and being in control.Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon | iHeart | NYT Audio AppYou know, I’ve interviewed you before. You look really familiar to me.No, we never saw each other because I was at NPR. The voice!I was a new host back then. I hadn’t done a lot of celebrity interviews, and you came on and said: “Ask me anything. Anything at all.” And I had no idea what to do with that. I just froze and thought, I don’t know what to ask Miley Cyrus if she’s saying, “Ask me anything.” Would you say something like that now? I think I would say something like that now, but maybe paying a little closer attention. But yeah, you can ask me anything. I’ve learned that I’m in control. The worst that happens is I just leave the room — say, “I’ll be right back,” and then don’t come back. More

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    How They Pulled Off That Wild ‘Mission: Impossible’ Plane Stunt

    Of the many storied stunts that Tom Cruise has performed over eight “Mission Impossible” movies — scaling the world’s tallest building in Dubai, riding a motorcycle off a Norwegian cliff, retrieving a stolen ledger from an underwater centrifuge — it seems unlikely that one of the most shock-and-awe set pieces in the series’ nearly 30-year history would involve two old-timey biplanes that look like they should have Snoopy at the controls.And yet many viewers have emerged from the newest installment of the franchise, “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning,” astonished by that scene: a 12-and-a-half-minute sequence in which Cruise’s seemingly indefatigable special agent, Ethan Hunt, hitches a ride on the undercarriage of a small brightly colored aircraft, overtakes the pilot, then leaps onto another plane midair to fistfight the film’s grinning villain (Esai Morales) — all while being bashed and batted by the elements like a human windsock.If it looks as if Cruise is genuinely getting blown sideways in the sky, it’s because he was. The actor’s well-known penchant for performing his own stunts meant that the scene was shot largely as it appears onscreen, minus the digital removal in postproduction of certain elements like safety harnesses and a secondary pilot.Most “Mission” stunts, said Christopher McQuarrie, who has directed the last four films in the series, begin with either finding or building the right vehicle for the job. In this case it was a Boeing Stearman, primarily used to train fighter pilots during World War II. Eventually, the production bought multiples: two red, two yellow — “because if you have just one plane and that plane breaks,” he explained, “the whole movie shuts down.”“The colder it gets, the faster Tom gets hypothermia on the wing,” the director Christopher McQuarrie said about the dangers of shooting the scene.Paramount PicturesAccording to the stunt coordinator and second unit director, Wade Eastwood, Cruise, 62, trained for months on the ground before the full concept took flight. “Tom’s already a very established and very proficient pilot,” Eastwood said, “but being on the wing of a plane is not something that people do. So we tied it down and put out big fans and wind machines, and we had the prop running just to see what the effects would be on the body, and it was absolutely exhausting. I mean, you’re fighting the biggest resistance band you’ve ever fought in your life.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Kyra Sedgwick Wants More Middle-Aged Sex Onscreen

    The actress, currently starring in “Bad Shabbos,” on ’90s rock, Miranda July and “PBS NewsHour.”Kyra Sedgwick can relate to the Upper West Side matriarch she portrays in her latest film, “Bad Shabbos.”“I very much have all the trope attributes of Jewish motherhood,” she said. “I really want to know that you’ve eaten, and if you’re hungry I’ll make you something. I want to make sure you’re not too cold or too hot. I want to know what you had for breakfast.”“Bad Shabbos” centers on a Shabbat dinner that goes spectacularly off the rails, but Sedgwick finds the sentiments it evokes to be universal. “Like them or not, they’re your family,” she said in a video call from Austin, Texas, where she and her husband, Kevin Bacon, and their children, Travis and Sosie, are making a comedy-horror movie about a family of filmmakers.“It is not us, but it is inspired by us,” she said before elaborating on why ’90s rock, “All Fours” by Miranda July and the meditation teacher Tara Brach are among her must-haves. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.‘Liberation’ by Bess WohlBess Wohl is extraordinary. Basically it’s about this woman who’s now in her 30s trying to figure out who her mother was in the genesis of women’s lib. And she’s imagining what that was like and asking, “What did we get wrong?” I think the message of the play is: We didn’t get it wrong. The world got it wrong.Fleur de Thé Rose Bulgare by CreedI’m just heartbroken because they stopped making it. I’m not a big perfume person, but I’ve been wearing it for 20, 25 years, and all of a sudden they’re putting it in the vault. And there’s really not much to say except that I just loved it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Smokey Robinson Faced a Sexual Assault Allegation in 2015

    No charges were filed because of what the authorities said was insufficient evidence. The singer has been accused in a lawsuit of sexually abusing four women, which he denies.A 2015 sexual assault allegation against the Motown singer Smokey Robinson was presented to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, but no charges were filed because of insufficient evidence, the office said on Friday.In a brief statement in response to inquiries from The New York Times, the district attorney’s office said that the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department had brought it the allegation in 2015. It did not provide further details, citing a criminal investigation that the sheriff’s office opened into Mr. Robinson this month.News of a previous allegation comes weeks after four anonymous women filed a lawsuit accusing Mr. Robinson of sexually abusing them repeatedly over many years while they worked for him as housekeepers.Three of the four women worked for the Robinson family in 2015, according to their court papers, but their lawyers, John Harris and Herbert Hayden, said on Friday that none of their clients made the 2015 allegation.Mr. Harris and Mr. Hayden said in a statement that the decision by the district attorney’s office to not file charges that year “underscores the significant challenges victims face when reporting incidents of sexual assault, particularly when the alleged perpetrator is a powerful and well-known figure.”Lawyers for Mr. Robinson have denied the allegations against him and filed a cross-complaint on Wednesday suing the women and their lawyers for defamation. One of those lawyers, Christopher Frost, said on Friday that he and his team were “pleased” that “the L.A. district attorney has confirmed there was no basis to file charges a decade ago.”“One unfortunate aspect of celebrity is that it is not uncommon to be the target of spurious and unsubstantiated allegations,” the statement continued.A spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s Department confirmed it had handled a 2015 allegation in the manner described by the district attorney’s office but did not provide additional details. More

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    Yasunao Tone Dead: Experimental Composer and Fluxus Artist Was 90

    A Japanese-born multimedia artist whose associates included John Cage and Yoko Ono, he pushed digital music past its breaking point.Yasunao Tone, an experimental composer and multimedia artist associated with the Fluxus movement who used manipulations of digital technology to turn digital technology against itself, including a 48-minute exercise in aural endurance made up of squawks and bleeps from a mangled compact disc, died on May 12 in Manhattan. He was 90.His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by Artists Space, a New York contemporary art nonprofit that presented a retrospective of his career in 2023.Before moving to New York City in the early 1970s, Mr. Tone, a native of Tokyo, was a founding member of Group Ongaku, a groundbreaking free-improvisation ensemble, and of Team Random, an early computer art collective.He became an influential figure in the Japanese wing of Fluxus, the loose-knit avant-garde movement that began in the early 1960s, whose members included John Cage, the experimental composer; Nam June Paik, the video art pioneer; and Yoko Ono, the conceptual artist. All of those artists influenced his work.Mr. Tone, left, performing in 1976 with Suzanne Fletcher.via the Estate of Yasunao ToneWhatever the medium, the guiding principle of Fluxus was to “promote a revolutionary flood and tide in art, promote living art, anti-art,” as its founder, the artist George Maciunas, once put it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump Says He’d ‘Look at the Facts’ of Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Case: Latest Trial Takeaways

    President Trump discussed if he would consider a pardon for Sean Combs, while in court, an ex-assistant testified about sexual abuse. Mr. Combs denies sexually assaulting anyone.As the third week of Sean Combs’s racketeering conspiracy and sex-trafficking trial came to a close on Friday, the second woman to testify that she was sexually abused by him came under close questioning by the music mogul’s lawyers. The woman, who took the stand under the pseudonym Mia, spoke about eight grueling years working for Mr. Combs in an environment characterized by sleep deprivation and violent outbursts.In the afternoon, President Trump commented on the trial, saying that although no one had asked about a potential pardon, he would be open to looking “at the facts” of the case.The music mogul has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges. His lawyers have acknowledged their client has a history of violence and a “bad temper,” but assert he is not a racketeer or sex trafficker.Here are some takeaways from the day in court.Mia faced her former boss’s lawyers.Mia testified that Mr. Combs threatened her, threw objects at her and sexually assaulted her during her years working for him. Prosecutors have accused him of subjecting her to forced labor — including sexual activity — through violence and threats of serious harm.During cross-examination, Brian Steel, a lawyer for Mr. Combs, sought to show the jury another side of Mia’s time working for the famous record producer. The defense displayed dozens of posts from her Instagram account, many of which showed her posing beside or celebrating Mr. Combs, whom she called a “mentor” and an “inspiration,” as well as marveling at her good fortune to be working for him — years after she says he first sexually assaulted her.“Why would you promote the person who has stolen your happiness in life?” Mr. Steel asked.“Those are the only people I was around, so that was my life,” Mia replied, describing her time working for Mr. Combs as a “confusing cycle of ups and downs.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Lorde’s Anthem of Transformation, and 9 More New Songs

    Hear tracks by Miley Cyrus featuring Brittany Howard, Thom Yorke, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Lorde, ‘Man of the Year’“I’ve become someone else, someone more like myself,” Lorde sings, somewhere between pride and astonishment, in “Man of the Year,” the second single from her album due in June, “Virgin.” It’s a crescendo of self-transformation, from quietly plucked cello to full-band stomp, as Lorde seizes the masculinity within herself. In the video clip, she flattens her breasts, taping them down with duct tape; she ponders, “Who’s gonna love me like this?” and then proclaims, “Now I’m broken open / Let’s hear it for the man of the year.”Miley Cyrus featuring Brittany Howard, ‘Walk of Fame’“Walk of Fame,” from “Something Beautiful,” the new Miley Cyrus album, turns the proverbial morning-after walk of shame into something prouder: “I walk the concrete like it’s a stage.” The song is mostly formulaic disco, thumping away. But the voice of Brittany Howard — adding little responses and wordless overlays, then promising “You’ll live forever”— gives it some gravity.Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, ‘Urges’Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, an dedicated electronic-pop experimenter, toys with and displaces dance-floor rhythms in “Urges,” from her coming album, “Gush.” She whisper-sings “I keep getting urges /What if I just let them move through me like this” while brittle programmed syncopations, disembodied voices and distant, tootling arpeggios materialize around her voice; even as the sounds disintegrate, the pulse is danceable.Santana and Grupo Frontera, ‘Me Retiro’Two generations of Mexican American musicians — the Texas band Grupo Frontera and the guitarist Carlos Santana — make a natural combination in “Me Retiro” (“I’m Leaving”), a song about trying to drink away a heartbreak. Santana sits in with the Grupo Frontera band and, rightly, takes over; his guitar slices through the clip-clop beat and accordion chords and compounds the sorrows that Adelaido “Payo” Solís III sings about.Obongjayar featuring Little Simz, ‘Talk Olympics’Obongjayar — Steven Umoh, a Nigerian musician based in London — has a new album, “Paradise Now,” that’s full of inventive, Pan-African electronic grooves like the zippy staccato propulsion of “Talk Olympics.” With an octave-bouncing bass line and the sounds of balafons, drums, synthesizers and sampled voices, Obongjayar and Little Simz take turns complaining about someone who’s far too chatty: “I let you speak, that was my mistake,” Little Simz notes; Obongjayar adds, in his sweetest falsetto, “Shut up! Shut up!”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More