Eliana Willis

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    As ‘Sex and the City’ Ages, Some Find the Cosmo Glass Half-Empty

    As the show became more widely available on Netflix, younger viewers have watched it with a critical eye. But its longtime millennial and Gen X fans can’t quit.Most weeks, hundreds of people board a “Sex and the City” themed bus in Manhattan that takes them to the show’s most recognizable sites: Carrie Bradshaw’s apartment, her favorite brunch spot, a sex shop in the West Village. The tour usually ends with — what else? — a Cosmopolitan.“It never gets old,” said Georgette Blau, the owner of On Location Tours. It’s a three-and-a-half-hour entry into an aspirational world many of the riders had been watching for decades, she said.Twenty years since the series finale of “Sex and the City” aired, a new generation of television watchers has grown into adulthood. After all of the episodes were released on Netflix this month, media watchers wondered how the show — and Carrie’s behavior — might hold up for Gen Z.Would they be able to handle the occasional raunchiness of the show, the sometimes toxic relationships? Were the references outdated? “Can Gen Z Even Handle Sex and the City?” Vanity Fair asked. (For its part, Gen Z seems to vacillate between being uninterested and lightly appalled about what they consider to be a period piece.)The show had a very different effect on its longtime fans, many of them a generation or two older. When it aired, “Sex and the City” changed the conversation around how women dated, developed friendships and moved about the world in their 30s and 40s.Even if some of the show’s character arcs aged poorly, many of its original fans still relate to Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda, no matter how unrealistic it may have been to live on the Upper East Side with a walk-in closet full of Manolo Blahniks on the salary of a weekly newspaper columnist.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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    Review: In ‘Symphony of Rats’ Revival, a Darkness Goes Underexplored

    The Wooster Group’s staging of Richard Foreman’s play operates like a delightful love letter from one giant of experimental theater to another.A president losing grip with reality. Warnings of environmental disaster and apocalypse. An early reference to the Covid vaccine.The Wooster Group’s revival of the deliriously trippy “Symphony of Rats,” a Richard Foreman play from 1988 that originally starred Kate Valk, who directs this production along with Elizabeth LeCompte, invites dark topical readings. It’s an election year, after all.So why does this production feel so sweet and escapist?For one thing, the vaudevillian madness onstage — which juxtaposes twee songs with violent video, highbrow with Hollywood, the mundane with the alien — does not build on its political subject matter. It’s only the surface of a far weirder, digressive production whose obsession is not with the real world but what is underneath. The President (a suitably intense Ari Fliakos) does not stand in for any specific politician, and can come off as an ordinary figure overwhelmed by events. In one of the show’s many dreamy lines, he says, “I seemed to have returned from a profound experience of elsewhereness.”This is what it felt like to return from a new play by Richard Foreman, who stopped making new shows a decade ago. And for the theater fans who mourn his loss from the cultural landscape, this Wooster Group show operates like a delightful love letter, from one giant of experimental theater to another.Foreman didn’t break traditional rules of narrative or character so much as invent his own. His surreal shows existed in their own meticulously realized world, whose distinctive designs were bisected by wires that turned the stage into a web. The mood was somehow both menacing and playful, its meaning ineffable and the overall effect entirely singular. Asked in a 2020 interview if he would ever make new work, he balked and then said exactly what you would want the éminence grise of the avant-garde to say: “We are living in decadent times, surrounded by nothing but trash.”“Symphony” has hints of such flamboyant gloom. The President is presented as a puppet (even his bowel movements are performed with assistance), and the stage is filled with rodents — some small (look out for creepy props), others the size of the wonderful actor Jim Fletcher, whose sharp nails and dramatic flair project an otherworldly deadpan.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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    Bowen Yang Thinks This Artist Nails What It’s Like Living in New York

    The “S.N.L.” comedian talked about his Audible series “Hot White Heist” and solitude — a state of being he senses in Edward Hopper’s paintings.Bowen Yang had just played an overcompensating straight guy opposite Sydney Sweeney on “Saturday Night Live.” But in a video call from his Brooklyn apartment, he was all about “Hot White Heist,” his queer action-comedy audio series on Audible.Last season, he was the voice of the fortune teller Judy Fink, who with his squad of misfits went after a government sperm bank.In Season 2, Judy and his coalition are living in bliss on their private island, Lesbos 2. That is, until a true-crime podcaster comes nosing around. Series veterans including Cynthia Nixon, Jane Lynch, Cheyenne Jackson and Tony Kushner are joined by Raúl Esparza, Sara Ramirez, Ian McKellen and Trixie Mattel.“It revolves around these really poignant themes about community and the smallest unit of queerness being two people,” said Yang, who also hosts the pop-culture podcast “Las Culturistas” with Matt Rogers.Then Yang unfurled a must-have list centered on life as a unit of one. “I feel like a lonely person who always has a consistent desire to reach out,” he said.These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1PopeyeIt’s a Japanese magazine “for city boys.” I can’t read a single character of Japanese, but I just do it for the visuals. It’s like eating a warm stew while I’m flipping through it. Every page is so beautifully laid out.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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    How a Reality TV Show Turned the U.F.C. From Pariah to Juggernaut

    The Ultimate Fighting Championship, whose 300th numbered pay-per-view fight card is this weekend, was once effectively banned on television because of its violence.Twenty years ago, the Ultimate Fighting Championship was on life support. Broadcasters scoffed at the idea of televising half-naked men pummeling each other inside a caged octagon, engaged in a sport where broken bones and dislodged teeth were common. Venues closed their doors and advertisers their wallets.The extreme violence meant there was no way to monetize the mixed martial arts promotion, Kevin Kay, who was then an executive at Spike TV, explained to the U.F.C.’s owners and its president, Dana White, in a 2004 meeting.“I really like it but I don’t see how I’m going to get Budweiser to put their logo on the mat when there’s blood on it,” Kay recalled saying.This weekend, T-Mobile Arena on the Las Vegas Strip will host U.F.C. 300, a pay-per-view milestone for a sport that was once effectively banned from television. And it has television to thank for its longevity.After being spurned by networks large and small, the U.F.C. leadership devised a last-ditch plan to become profitable: a reality TV show in which 16 athletes would live together in a Las Vegas house, training and fighting one another with a six-figure contract on the line.If it did not work, the U.F.C. would crater.But the first season of “The Ultimate Fighter,” which aired on Spike TV in 2005, succeeded in humanizing the athletes as actual people instead of mindless punching bags. Viewers appreciated the behind-the-scenes looks at training regimens and cutting weight.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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    Richard Leibner, Agent for Top Broadcast Journalists, Dies at 85

    His negotiations led to Dan Rather’s elevation from “60 Minutes” to anchor of the “CBS Evening News” and sent Diane Sawyer from “60 Minutes” to ABC.Richard Leibner, a powerful agent whose firm brokered contracts for many of the biggest names in television news, including Dan Rather, Diane Sawyer, Anderson Cooper, Ed Bradley, Morley Safer and Steve Kroft, died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 85.His son Jonathan said the cause was kidney cancer.Mr. Leibner’s firm, N.S. Bienstock — named for one of its founders, Nathan Bienstock — represented hundreds of anchors, reporters, producers and others in network and local television news.The negotiation that grabbed the biggest headlines was for Mr. Rather, then one of the star correspondents of the CBS News program “60 Minutes.”Between late 1979 and early 1980, Mr. Leibner (pronounced LEEB-ner) parlayed interest in Mr. Rather as the evening anchor from all three network news divisions: ABC News, whose president, Roone Arledge, was trying to raise his third-place division’s profile; NBC News, where the evening anchor John Chancellor was hoping to change to a commentary role; and CBS News, where Walter Cronkite had been the evening anchor since 1962.“The Rather situation was tough and sensitive because CBS News knew something had to happen after Cronkite,” Mr. Leibner told Manhattan, inc. magazine in 1986. “Cronkite had told them, contrary to what anybody had ever inferred, that he wanted off. He was tired of it.”Mr. Leibner surprised Mr. Rather by telling him that he thought it was possible to get him as much as $6 million over five years. In the end, CBS agreed to pay him what has been variously reported as $2.2 million a year and $8 million over five years. He succeeded Mr. Cronkite on the “CBS Evening News” in early 1981.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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    ‘Golden Bachelor’ Couple Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist Announce Divorce

    The “Golden Bachelor” couple, Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist, said they are getting a divorce, just three months after getting hitched.Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist were the first couple to meet and marry on “The Golden Bachelor,” ABC’s spinoff of “The Bachelor” featuring cast members 60 and older.On Friday, the newlyweds announced that they will also be the spinoff’s first couple to divorce.They made the announcement in a joint appearance on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “Theresa and I have had a number of heart-to-heart conversations, and we’ve looked closely at our situation, our living situation, and we’ve come to the conclusion mutually that it’s probably time for us to dissolve our marriage,” Mr. Turner, 72, said.The anchor Juju Chang replied in shock. “Three months after getting married?” she said. “I mean, what the heck, guys?” she asked later in the interview.Explaining their decision, Mr. Turner said both were dedicated to their families — each has children from previous marriages, as well as grandchildren — and that it made the most sense for them to live separately. Ms. Nist, 70, added that they had looked at homes near family members in South Carolina and New Jersey but that they had been unable to reach a conclusion.The couple, through a representative, declined to be interviewed for this article.The franchise had positioned the pair as evidence that invigorating love stories can unfold later in life. Before marrying Ms. Nist, Mr. Turner, a retiree from Indiana, was married for 43 years to his high school sweetheart, Toni. She died in 2017 after a brief illness.“People my age still fall in love,” Mr. Turner told The New York Times after he was announced as the series lead of the first “Golden Bachelor” season. “People my age still have hope, and they still have vigorous lives.”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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    ‘Player Kings’ Review: Ian McKellen’s Juicy Assignment as Falstaff

    In Robert Icke’s adaptation of Parts 1 and 2 of “Henry IV,” the veteran stage actor’s performance belies his age.There are two shows for the price of one at “Player Kings,” in which the director Robert Icke has combined both of Shakespeare’s “Henry IV” history plays into a self-contained whole.The production offers a compressed version of the royal accession story that, in this version, runs nearly four hours. It is an opportunity to experience Ian McKellen’s unbridled love of performance. At 84, the production’s leading man possesses an energy and vigor that belie his years.“Player Kings” — which runs at the Noël Coward Theater through June 22, before touring England — is the latest in a wave of recent high-profile Shakespeare productions in London. Uniquely among the other great British theater actors of his generation, McKellen still returns year after year to the stage, recently tackling Lear for a second time and playing an octogenarian Hamlet.Perhaps inevitably, there’s a feeling of the star vehicle to this production. In the “sweet creature of bombast” that is this play’s John Falstaff, McKellen has an especially juicy assignment — an outsized character whose appetite for life matches the actor’s own gusto. We’re told that the ample Falstaff hasn’t seen his own knees in years, and when he sits, it looks as if he may never stand up. His mouth, however, seems always in motion, as if chewing food for constant fuel.He’s also a necessary soul mate to the carousing, drug-using Prince Hal (the excellent Toheeb Jimoh, an Emmy nominee for “Ted Lasso”), whose coming-of-age story — becoming, as he puts it, “more myself” — connects these two “Henry IV” plays. But the roustabout Hal’s dawning maturity costs him the companion he once held dear.Clare Perkins as Mistress Quickly and Toheeb Jimoh as Prince Hal.Manuel HarlanWe 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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    This ‘Sympathizer’ Star Wasn’t Sure He Was Right for the Job

    Hoa Xuande had only one Hollywood credit when he was chosen to lead this starry HBO adaptation of a prize-winning novel. He needed all the encouragement he could get.Some three months into shooting “The Sympathizer,” Robert Downey Jr. sat Hoa Xuande down. He had something to show him.“I remember Rob walking in — he had this cheeky grin,” Xuande recalled on a recent afternoon in Los Angeles. A teaser trailer for the HBO series, an adaptation of Viet Than Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, had just been cut. Downey, who is the show’s executive producer and plays multiple roles in it, saw definitive proof of a star-making turn in “The Sympathizer.” He wanted Xuande, the star in question, to see it too.“There’s only one time that I’ve had this experience before, and it’s when I saw the teaser that we brought to Comic-Con for ‘Iron Man,’” Downey said. Seeing himself onscreen in the Iron Man suit was what finally convinced Downey that he had done justice to a daunting role.“And because I’d had that experience,” he said, “I knew that he needed it.”In many ways, Xuande (pronounced Shawn-day) did. A 36-year old Vietnamese Australian actor who had one Hollywood credit to his name, he still wasn’t sure he was the right choice to lead a series with such an impressive pedigree: an HBO adaptation of an acclaimed novel, produced by the Oscar-winning art-house studio A24, directed by the revered Korean auteur Park Chan-wook and co-starring a screen legend in Downey. He needed all the encouragement he could get.“I made him watch it six times,” Downey said.Based on the novel of the same name, “The Sympathizer” stars Xuande as a double agent and Robert Downey Jr., right, in multiple roles.Hopper Stone/HBOSeeing himself in the trailer had finally quieted his doubts, Xuande said, over lunch at a Venice restaurant. He had flown in from his home base in Sydney hours earlier and had barely settled into Downey’s spare live-work space, where Xuande sometimes stays.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