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    Documentary Series Goes Inside Trump’s Bubble

    Advance episodes of “Art of the Surge” offer a rare behind-the-scenes look at the adulatory environment in which Mr. Trump has moved since regaining power.A few weeks after winning the election, President-elect Donald J. Trump found himself face-to-face with Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland, a rising star in the Democratic Party, as the two men made their way through the bowels of Northwest Stadium in Landover, Md., to watch the annual Army-Navy game.The governor greeted him effusively.“Mr. President, welcome back to Maryland, sir, welcome back to Maryland!” Mr. Moore said. “Great to see you, great to see you, great to have you back here.”“You’re a good-looking guy,” Mr. Trump observed.“We are very, very anxious to be able to work closely with you,” the governor added. Then he mentioned the ongoing efforts to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge outside Baltimore, which had collapsed that March.This chummy encounter was captured on camera for a documentary series called “Art of the Surge,” now streaming on Fox Nation, which provides a rare behind-the-scenes look at the adulatory environment in which Mr. Trump has moved since regaining power. The series gives a sense of how much he is enveloped by people eager to stroke his ego and get in his good graces — including some unexpected figures, according to advance episodes viewed by The New York Times.A still image from video footage of Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland greeting President-elect Donald J. Trump at the Army-Navy football game in December 2024.Art of the SurgeAt one point, inside the V.I.P. box at the football game, Brian Grazer, a top Hollywood producer, gets his photo taken with the president-elect and confides to those in the room that he cast his ballot for the Republican.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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    ‘The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ Keeps Pushing Back TV’s Fourth Wall

    Reality TV had long advised casts to pretend the cameras (and producers) weren’t there. But for the Mormon influencers of MomTok, the business of being on camera is central to the plot.The women of MomTok, the 20- and 30-something Mormon influencers who make up the cast of Hulu’s “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” built their livelihood on upsetting codes of conduct.The series’s first season was birthed in the wake of a “soft swinging” scandal involving some of its couples. A few of the cast members drink alcohol. Some abstain in keeping with the Church’s doctrine, but interpret its teachings on ketamine use more loosely.In the show’s second season, which finished airing this month, the group routinely flouted what, in eras past, had been a cardinal rule of reality TV: Don’t break the fourth wall.“It’s not a shock that I was a fan favorite,” Demi Engemann pointedly told her MomTok peers in Episode 6. The group had just learned she tried to persuade producers to kick off her co-star Jessi Ngatikaura to secure a higher contract for this season. “I feel like I’m an asset, I should fight for more.”That prompted Taylor Frankie Paul, the unofficial founder of MomTok, to push back about her own negotiations over the very show on which they were appearing.“I’m the that one that’s actually struggling because I’m open to the [expletive] world,” she said. “If anyone deserves to be paid more it’s me and I’ve never even asked for that.”

    @secretlivesonhulu The girls are fightinggg 🫣 #TheSecretLivesOfMormonWives ♬ original sound – secretlivesonhulu 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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    13 Off Broadway Shows to See in June

    Reed Birney and Lisa Emery in a two-hander, Taylor Mac in a Molière riff and Jay Ellis in a romantic drama — here’s what’s on New York stages this month.In the crowded June theater calendar, Pride fare figures prominently, but there’s a lot more out there, too. Here are some of the notable productions this month across New York City.‘Not Not Jane’s’Mara Nelson-Greenberg, whose absurdist workplace comedy “Do You Feel Anger?” was an Off Broadway wow several seasons back, fills the middle spot in this year’s Clubbed Thumb Summerworks festival with this new play in which a young woman gets funding to start a community center, but with an asterisk: It’s at her mom’s house. The reliably fascinating Susannah Perkins is part of the cast in Joan Sergay’s production. (Through June 13, Wild Project)‘Blood, Sweat, and Queers’The early life of the Czech athlete Zdenek Koubek, a women’s track and field star of the 1930s who transitioned later that same decade, is the subject of this contemporary Czech play by Tomas Dianiska, translated by Edward Einhorn and Katarina Vizina, and starring Hennessy Winkler as Zdenek. Part of the Rehearsal for Truth International Theater Festival, it is directed by Einhorn, the festival’s artistic director. (Through June 15, Bohemian National Hall)‘Lunar Eclipse’Reed Birney plays George to Lisa Emery’s Em in this Thornton Wilder-inflected new play by the Pulitzer Prize winner Donald Margulies (“Dinner With Friends”), about a long-married couple moon-gazing in a field on their Kentucky farm. Keeping each other company through the summer night, they talk over fear and regret, mortality and memory, love and encroaching decline. Kate Whoriskey directs for Second Stage. (Through June 22, Pershing Square Signature Center)‘Prosperous Fools’Arching an eyebrow at philanthropy and its insincerities, Taylor Mac’s latter-day riff on Molière’s comedy-ballet “Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme” is set at a gala for a nonprofit dance company. With Mac leading a cast that also includes Sierra Boggess and Jason O’Connell, the Tony Award winner Darko Tresnjak (“A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder”) directs the world premiere for Theater for a New Audience — the final production in the 46-year tenure of Jeffrey Horowitz, its founding artistic director. (Through June 29, Polonsky Shakespeare Center)‘The Wash’From left, Bianca Laverne Jones, Margaret Odette, Kerry Warren and Alicia Pilgrim in “The Wash” at WP Theater.Hollis KingWe 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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    Tony Awards 2025: 13 Great Songs of the Season

    Our critic listened to the cast recordings of all the nominated musicals and picked one of his favorite tracks from each.Great Broadway musicals must feature great songs, but not all the great songs are found in great musicals. That’s why I collect cast albums: There are obvious gems and hidden ones. To explore that range at the end of a generally fine and unusually eclectic Broadway season, I picked a song from every show that received a Tony Award nomination in any category. (The exception: “Pirates! The Penzance Musical,” which will record its New Orleans-inflected Gilbert and Sullivan score after the awards are doled out on CBS this Sunday.) Some of the songs are delicate, others brassy. Some jerk tears, others laughs. Some forward the show and others stop it cold. In any case, even if you never see them onstage, they all repay a deep listen.‘Up to the Stars’ from ‘Dead Outlaw’Thom Sesma crooning “Up to the Stars” as Thomas Noguchi, a.k.a. the “coroner to the stars,” in “Dead Outlaw,” the Broadway musical about a long-lived corpse.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThom Sesma as Thomas Noguchi (Audible and Yellow Sound Label)For most of its 100 minutes, “Dead Outlaw,” a death-dark comedy about a man who became a mummy, accompanies its posthumous picaresque with songs (by David Yazbek and Erik Della Penna) in a genre you might call rockabilly grunge. But near the end, the palette radically changes, when a formerly secondary character emerges as the show’s perfect avatar. He is Thomas Noguchi, the real-life Los Angeles “coroner to the stars” from 1967 to 1982. In a hilarious yet philosophical number called “Up to the Stars,” filled with sparkling, macabre lyrics, he details his most famous cases and corpses in the finger-snapping Rat Pack style of Dean Martin. As Noguchi, Thom Sesma sells what may be the best number ever about buying the farm.‘With One Look’ from ‘Sunset Boulevard’Nicole Scherzinger as Norma Desmond in Jamie Lloyd’s revival of “Sunset Boulevard.” Songs like “With One Look” evoke the drama of Desmond’s contradictions.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesNicole Scherzinger as Norma Desmond (The Other Songs)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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    Late Night Revels in Trump and Musk’s Public Feud

    Stephen Colbert indulged in schadenfreude as he described the back-and-forth as a “full-scale flame war” between “the world’s most famous besties.”Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Up in FlamesPresident Donald Trump addressed Elon Musk’s comments about his policy bill on Thursday while appearing alongside the chancellor of Germany. Trump expressed disappointment in the Tesla chief, stating that Musk was upset about the absence of a mandate for electric vehicles.Stephen Colbert described the back-and-forth as a “full-scale flame war” between “the world’s most famous besties.”“So now Donald Trump is a Tesla owner who hates Elon Musk? He’s never been more relatable.” — STEPHEN COLBERTTrump stoked the flames on social media, writing that Musk “went crazy” when he was asked to leave the White House.“Just so we’re clear, Trump thinks everything Elon did before this was not crazy?” — JIMMY FALLON“I can’t believe their relationship fell apart this fast. I mean, a week ago they were all over each other like Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Jenner at a Knicks game.” — JIMMY FALLON“But Trump didn’t stop there. He also said that the easiest way for the country to save money would be to terminate all of Elon Musk’s government contracts. Smart, now the future of space exploration rests on Katy Perry.” — JIMMY FALLON“Elon’s government contracts can’t be worth that much. Oh, it’s $6.3 billion last year? Elon, you idiot. This is why you always sign a prenup.” — MICHAEL KOSTA“Meanwhile, Elon’s, like, ‘Come on, man, don’t do this. I have 100 kids to feed.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Trump said he’s very disappointed in Elon because he has ‘helped him a lot.’ Trump was, like, ‘[imitating Trump] Just last year, I let him give me $300 million, and he didn’t even say thank you.’” — JIMMY FALLONOn X, Musk dropped what he called “the really big bomb,” alleging that the president has not released the Jeffrey Epstein files because he is named in them.“I feel bad for Donald Trump. I mean, first, he lost Jeffrey Epstein, now, Elon. He’s running out of friends.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Trump’s going to have to get one of those bumper stickers for his Tesla that says ‘I bought this before Elon told everyone I was on Epstein’s plane.’” — STEPHEN COLBERTWe 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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    2025 Tony Awards Predictions: Best New Musical, Best Leading Actress and More

    Expect wins for the musicals “Maybe Happy Ending” and “Sunset Boulevard,” but the races for best play and leading actress in a musical are too close to call.The Broadway season that just ended was the most robust since the pandemic, with record-setting grosses, a plethora of profitable plays and celebrities galore.Serious challenges remain — vanishingly few new musicals are making money — but there is a rich subject and stylistic diversity of offerings. Now, industry insiders face a lot of tough choices as they determine which shows to honor at Sunday night’s Tony Awards ceremony, which airs at 8 p.m. Eastern on CBS.Over the last few days, I asked Tony voters which productions, and which performers in leading roles, they deemed the best. After consulting with more than one quarter of the 840 voters, these are my predictions.Expect wins for “Maybe Happy Ending” …Tell people the plot summary for “Maybe Happy Ending,” and they immediately think they don’t want to see it: It’s about two lonely robots in Seoul who go on a road trip and find, well, each other. But over the last seven months, the show has steadily won over fans thanks to strong reviews and excellent word-of-mouth; it has clearly won over Tony voters too.The show has what I believe to be an overwhelming lead over its closest competitors, “Buena Vista Social Club” and “Death Becomes Her,” both of which are based on existing material. That’s one part of what’s working for “Maybe Happy Ending”: Voters over and over say they appreciate that, in an era in which Broadway is dominated by big-brand titles adapted from movies, books or popular song catalogs, this musical has both an original story and an original score.There are, of course, detractors, who find the four-performer show twee, but there are significantly more admirers, many of whom praise the way all the elements of Michael Arden’s production cohere — the performances, the direction, the story and the lavish set, with state-of-the-art automation and technology. “It’s delicate and intimate and engaging,” one voter told me, “and the scenic design came together to support the story in a very unified way.”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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    ‘And Just Like That …’ Season 3, Episode 2 Recap: Textual Relations

    Carrie’s long-distance “situationship” with Aidan becomes frustrating in ways she didn’t anticipate.Season 3, Episode 2: ‘The Rat Race’Here in the real world, it’s a common refrain from single people that dating apps are as tired as the tiramisu Seema’s date orders for her without asking. Everyone is sick of the swiping, the ghosting and the serial situationships. The virtual-first connections that seem essential to dating in 2025 have never played a major role in the “Sex and the City” franchise, mostly because the majority of this decades-spanning story has predated all that.But Carrie’s former neighbor Lisette (Katerina Tannenbaum) shows up at the beginning of Episode 2 to reflect that cultural shift, lamenting to Carrie that, as a single woman of today, she is mostly in a relationship with her phone. Turns out, throwing it across a room may be a more effective way of it helping you meet someone.Some of the characters, though, regardless of age, are no better than Lisette when it comes to phone addiction.Starting with our star, Carrie is in something of a love-hate relationship with texting Aidan. Now that Aidan has cracked the communication door ajar, Carrie feels slightly more empowered to reach out to her “boyfriend.” (I insist on putting that in quotes because while Carrie may use that word to refer to Aidan, at this point, I simply refuse.)First, Carrie drafts a long, meandering voice text to Aidan about a newly-discovered rat infestation in her garden, but she deletes it before sending. Considering Aidan’s request for no contact (or at least very limited contact), she determines it is best to leave him alone.But without any such regard for the rules he set himself, Aidan lights his no-contact contract on fire with a surprise appearance at Carrie’s Gramercy townhouse, to her delight.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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    ‘Màkari’ Is a Sun-Dappled Italian Mystery

    Set in Sicily, this sumptuous series, based on books by Gaetano Savatteri, is like a leisurely day at the beach, but with murders.Domenico Centamore, left, and Claudio Gioè, in a scene from Season 3 of “Màkari.”MHz ChoiceOne of TV’s most reliable food groups is the light mystery set in a sumptuous locale populated by eccentric townspeople. The Italian series “Màkari” (in Italian, with subtitles) is a hearty serving, with plenty of Sicilian vistas and pastas to go around. Season 1 is available on Amazon, MHz Choice and the Roku Channel; Season 2 and the recently released Season 3 are on only MHz Choice.Our hero here is Saverio (Claudio Gioè), a former government employee who slinks from Rome back to Sicily, where he hopes to find enough inspiration to write his novel. Boy, does he! Mishaps and misdeeds abound, as does town gossip. Murder, he wrote, as people divulge all kinds of secrets. They occasionally balk at Saverio’s interview requests only to be won over by his earnest curiosity — or by his persuasive flattery. A character in a novel based on little old me? Well, now that you mention it. …The show is based on a series of books by Gaetano Savatteri and comes from some of the same writers as “Detective Montalbano,” which is also set in Sicily and has a similar aesthetic. Technically, Saverio is not a detective and thus does not have a partner. Practically, he totally is, and his partner is the excitable Peppe Piccionello (Domenico Centamore), who ropes him into schemes and side gigs and frequently offers philosophical musings and sauce-making guidance. Saverio also immediately strikes up a romance with a local waitress (Ester Pantano), though his reputation as a womanizer precedes him.“Màkari” is not quite as snappy as the Caribbean-set British procedural “Death in Paradise,” but it follows in that show’s sandy footsteps. As in “Paradise,” it’s best for both the show and the viewer not to dwell too much on the loss of human life but instead to revel in those gem-blue waters and clever deductions. “Màkari” has all the requisite real estate porn and some jazzy cars, too; every rock is sun-dappled, every table set with stylish yet unfussy serving ware. Let’s brainstorm theories of the crime while bobbing romantically in the ocean, why don’t we.There’s a languid ease to everything here, a comfy absence of real tension, and even the pace of the installments is relaxed. Although there are only four per season, each is just under two hours long, which can feel leisurely, a way to unlearn one’s internal “Law & Order” clock of when suspects should be confessing. More