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    ‘Scott Pilgrim Takes Off’ Reunites the Movie Cast, Now in Anime Form

    “Scott Pilgrim Takes Off” revives the bassist who battles his romantic rivals. In an interview, the creators discuss the next chapter, for Netflix.Let’s get ready to rumble … again! Friday brings the premiere of “Scott Pilgrim Takes Off,” an anime series based on the comic book about a young, lollygagging amateur bass player battling seven of his new love’s exes.It is the second major screen adaptation of the six-volume “Scott Pilgrim” series of graphic novels by Bryan Lee O’Malley, which were published from 2004-10. A live-action film by Edgar Wright titled “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” (2010), was a critical favorite, and the eight-episode anime reunites most of the movie cast including Michael Cera as Scott; Mary Elizabeth Winstead as his girlfriend, Ramona Flowers; Kieran Culkin as Scott’s pal Wallace Wells; and Chris Evans and Brandon Routh as two of the former flames.“Scott Pilgrim Takes Off” was written and developed by O’Malley and the writer-director BenDavid Grabinski (“Happily”), a longtime friend. It is produced by Netflix, Universal Content Productions and Science Saru, a Japanese animation studio. At a panel about the show at New York Comic Con last month, the creators said scheduling a cast of actors who have gotten much more famous since the film was one of the most difficult aspects of making the series.“You end up with this weird game of Tetris trying to get everybody,” Grabinski told the audience.From left, Kieran Culkin, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Michael Cera in “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.” They all signed on to voice the new series.Universal PicturesEven for those who have read the comic, seen the film or played the video game version, the anime will hold surprises. (There was a robust list of topics and guest voice actors that reporters were asked not to spoil.) O’Malley and Grabinski came to the New York Times offices last month to discuss the new series, reuniting the movie cast and what comes next for Scott Pilgrim. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How did the anime come about?BENDAVID GRABINSKI Bryan found out that Netflix and Science Saru were interested. We went to dinner to talk about the pros and cons of doing a straight adaptation.BRYAN LEE O’MALLEY This was like a year after they asked. So I was a little reticent because I didn’t have a great idea. But then BenDavid had a series of great ideas at this dinner. He’s a traditional Hollywood screenwriter who will just walk into a room and make up a bunch of stuff.Were there specific characters you knew you wanted to focus on in this version?GRABINSKI I wanted to spend as much time as I could with the ensemble. The main appeal of the show to me was to dig deeper with the exes, with Scott’s friends, with Ramona.O’MALLEY People always ask, “What’s your one regret?” I wish I could have done more with the evil exes, partly because I didn’t fully understand them. The first thing I think of when I think of anime is villain scenes. That was my first way in, and then BenDavid blew the doors off after that.The idea for the show began with Netflix and the Japanese anime studio Science Saru. which jointly approached O’Malley about the concept.NetflixWhat’s new about the series?GRABINSKI We will say that there are some big twists and turns that no other adaptation of this story has done yet. The great thing about making this show and having Bryan sitting five feet away is I have the guy who can veto things and say, “I never would have written that joke,” or “I don’t think that guy would do that.” As much as I would like to feel like every single thing in there is my idea, there’s an equal amount of ideas that I pitched where Bryan would politely text me back and say, “That’s not ‘Scott Pilgrim.’”O’MALLEY And sometimes less politely.GRABINSKI Yeah, I’m just trying to be nice about it. That’s the benefit of knowing each other for so long: You can be a little bit more blunt. This would not have worked if we didn’t know each other very well, because we’re both incredibly opinionated people. We just had a rule from the beginning that nothing could go on the show that either of us hated.O’MALLEY You want it to be unpredictable, but the surprises have to be satisfying. That’s the goal every single time.Were there conflicts?GRABINSKI Our episodes are very different, as the audience will see once they watch it. We never want it to feel stale, but it does need to feel consistent.O’MALLEY We both love episodic TV, so we wanted to embrace that.GRABINSKI I didn’t want to have something like, “Oh, it’s a four-hour movie that’s split into chunks.” We wanted the episodes to feel like episodes, but the season is one story with a beginning, middle and end.What was it like getting the film cast back together?O’MALLEY They’ve all blown up.GRABINSKI I have to give thanks to Edgar Wright. One, he put together one of the best ensemble casts of all time. And two, they all loved the experience so much that we benefited from that. After we started making the show, he reached out to the cast. He sent them the scripts and they immediately all said yes. We can’t take credit for the returning cast members. Guest stars, yes.O’MALLEY I had some involvement casting back then. He showed me every casting tape. So it’s really cool to have seen all those people flower so much and to get a chance for them to come back and revisit that work with their newfound maturity. The same way I feel about it, looking back and revisiting and finding new shading, the way we were finding it in the writing, they found in the acting. There’s a profound feeling to it and I love that.The creators said the series diverges from previous “Scott Pilgrim” stories in multiple ways.NetflixIs it the art that makes it an anime? Or is it more about the sensibility?O’MALLEY For me it’s just because we’re working with Science Saru: They are an anime studio. There’s a certain method of production and we had to slot ourselves into that. We’re not telling them what to do, other than giving them scripts. They are very autonomous.GRABINSKI Our feedback is about emotion or plot points. We wanted it to feel specific to their sensibilities. A lot of the time it became like a feedback loop where we would rewrite our scripts to match the things they were doing.O’MALLEY Abel Góngora is the director, so we wanted to give him all the autonomy. Each episode is storyboarded by different artists. They’re all Japanese artists, other than him.GRABINSKI The music and the cast, we’re extremely involved with.O’MALLEY That was the one aspect we wanted to control, because it’s so crucial to the tone of “Scott Pilgrim” to get that music correct.Are any of the characters more fun to write than the others?GRABINSKI I love Lucas Lee [played by Chris Evans] just because I’m pretty obsessive about action movies. There’s a tone to that character that is so fun to me. But honestly, the great thing is that they’re all so different. I’ve worked with Brandon Routh a lot and I knew he could be really funny, and we got him to do a bunch of stuff that I think is unexpected and very silly, and he embraced it.O’MALLEY It’s like each of the exes has their own genre, and it lets you mix it up.GRABINSKI That was the thing that was most exciting to me: pairing up characters who had never been seen together. What if they fought or what if they became best friends?O’MALLEY But not making it feel like fan fiction. Really bringing weight to it.GRABINSKI The difficult thing is trying to make sure it all feels like an organic part of the story. As much as we think, “Oh it would be really fun to have these two characters fight,” we can’t do that unless there’s a real reason that they want to fight that comes from the story.“The main appeal of the show to me was to dig deeper with the exes, with Scott’s friends, with Ramona,” Grabinski said.NetflixWhat’s next? Will there be a Season 2?GRABINSKI I can’t think about anything beyond this. I’m glad that we told a story that has an ending for all the thematic things that we’re exploring. So if TV stopped existing on Nov. 18th, I’d feel really proud of what we did.O’MALLEY We wanted to be satisfied with what we get if we never get more. I don’t love it when a show feels like a setup for Season 2. We just wanted to have a complete dramatic and comedic arc to everything.How long did the entire production process take?GRABINSKI It was a few years to go from the beginning of doing outlines to the finish.O’MALLEY But it was also fast. We started writing in January 2022. We met Science Saru in June 2022. We were seeing episodes by spring of this year. We were pretty much done recording the voices before the strike started. So it was like 18 months. Saru is very fast, which is part of the appeal of this whole process. That’s what they pitched me: “We’ll do a season a year!” It took a little longer than that, but it’s pretty magical to get something this beautiful this quickly.Will you revisit “Scott Pilgrim” in comic book form?O’MALLEY Even if I was super inspired, I wouldn’t have time for it right now. But I think it’s definitely possible. And we’ve talked about other episodes. If those never got to fruition as TV, then I would definitely consider doing a comic and co-writing with BenDavid.GRABINSKI I hope that someone, someday, does a manga adaptation of the show.O’MALLEY If someone in Japan would want to do their own adaptation without any input from us, that would be really cool. More

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    ‘Scott Pilgrim’ Is Back, Now in Anime Form

    “Scott Pilgrim Takes Off” revives the bassist who battles his romantic rivals. In an interview, the creators discuss the next chapter, for Netflix.Let’s get ready to rumble … again! Friday brings the premiere of “Scott Pilgrim Takes Off,” an anime series based on the comic book about a young, lollygagging amateur bass player battling seven of his new love’s exes.It is the second major screen adaptation of the six-volume “Scott Pilgrim” series of graphic novels by Bryan Lee O’Malley, which were published from 2004-10. A live-action film by Edgar Wright titled “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” (2010), was a critical favorite, and the eight-episode anime reunites most of the movie cast including Michael Cera as Scott; Mary Elizabeth Winstead as his girlfriend, Ramona Flowers; Kieran Culkin as Scott’s pal Wallace Wells; and Chris Evans and Brandon Routh as two of the former flames.“Scott Pilgrim Takes Off” was written and developed by O’Malley and the writer-director BenDavid Grabinski (“Happily”), a longtime friend. It is produced by Netflix, Universal Content Productions and Science Saru, a Japanese animation studio. At a panel about the show at New York Comic Con last month, the creators said scheduling a cast of actors who have gotten much more famous since the film was one of the most difficult aspects of making the series.“You end up with this weird game of Tetris trying to get everybody,” Grabinski told the audience.From left, Kieran Culkin, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Michael Cera in “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.” They all signed on to voice the new series.Universal PicturesEven for those who have read the comic, seen the film or played the video game version, the anime will hold surprises. (There was a robust list of topics and guest voice actors that reporters were asked not to spoil.) O’Malley and Grabinski came to the New York Times offices last month to discuss the new series, reuniting the movie cast and what comes next for Scott Pilgrim. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How did the anime come about?BENDAVID GRABINSKI Bryan found out that Netflix and Science Saru were interested. We went to dinner to talk about the pros and cons of doing a straight adaptation.BRYAN LEE O’MALLEY This was like a year after they asked. So I was a little reticent because I didn’t have a great idea. But then BenDavid had a series of great ideas at this dinner. He’s a traditional Hollywood screenwriter who will just walk into a room and make up a bunch of stuff.Were there specific characters you knew you wanted to focus on in this version?GRABINSKI I wanted to spend as much time as I could with the ensemble. The main appeal of the show to me was to dig deeper with the exes, with Scott’s friends, with Ramona.O’MALLEY People always ask, “What’s your one regret?” I wish I could have done more with the evil exes, partly because I didn’t fully understand them. The first thing I think of when I think of anime is villain scenes. That was my first way in, and then BenDavid blew the doors off after that.The idea for the show began with Netflix and the Japanese anime studio Science Saru. which jointly approached O’Malley about the concept.NetflixWhat’s new about the series?GRABINSKI We will say that there are some big twists and turns that no other adaptation of this story has done yet. The great thing about making this show and having Bryan sitting five feet away is I have the guy who can veto things and say, “I never would have written that joke,” or “I don’t think that guy would do that.” As much as I would like to feel like every single thing in there is my idea, there’s an equal amount of ideas that I pitched where Bryan would politely text me back and say, “That’s not ‘Scott Pilgrim.’”O’MALLEY And sometimes less politely.GRABINSKI Yeah, I’m just trying to be nice about it. That’s the benefit of knowing each other for so long: You can be a little bit more blunt. This would not have worked if we didn’t know each other very well, because we’re both incredibly opinionated people. We just had a rule from the beginning that nothing could go on the show that either of us hated.O’MALLEY You want it to be unpredictable, but the surprises have to be satisfying. That’s the goal every single time.Were there conflicts?GRABINSKI Our episodes are very different, as the audience will see once they watch it. We never want it to feel stale, but it does need to feel consistent.O’MALLEY We both love episodic TV, so we wanted to embrace that.GRABINSKI I didn’t want to have something like, “Oh, it’s a four-hour movie that’s split into chunks.” We wanted the episodes to feel like episodes, but the season is one story with a beginning, middle and end.What was it like getting the film cast back together?O’MALLEY They’ve all blown up.GRABINSKI I have to give thanks to Edgar Wright. One, he put together one of the best ensemble casts of all time. And two, they all loved the experience so much that we benefited from that. After we started making the show, he reached out to the cast. He sent them the scripts and they immediately all said yes. We can’t take credit for the returning cast members. Guest stars, yes.O’MALLEY I had some involvement casting back then. He showed me every casting tape. So it’s really cool to have seen all those people flower so much and to get a chance for them to come back and revisit that work with their newfound maturity. The same way I feel about it, looking back and revisiting and finding new shading, the way we were finding it in the writing, they found in the acting. There’s a profound feeling to it and I love that.The creators said the series diverges from previous “Scott Pilgrim” stories in multiple ways.NetflixIs it the art that makes it an anime? Or is it more about the sensibility?O’MALLEY For me it’s just because we’re working with Science Saru: They are an anime studio. There’s a certain method of production and we had to slot ourselves into that. We’re not telling them what to do, other than giving them scripts. They are very autonomous.GRABINSKI Our feedback is about emotion or plot points. We wanted it to feel specific to their sensibilities. A lot of the time it became like a feedback loop where we would rewrite our scripts to match the things they were doing.O’MALLEY Abel Góngora is the director, so we wanted to give him all the autonomy. Each episode is storyboarded by different artists. They’re all Japanese artists, other than him.GRABINSKI The music and the cast, we’re extremely involved with.O’MALLEY That was the one aspect we wanted to control, because it’s so crucial to the tone of “Scott Pilgrim” to get that music correct.Are any of the characters more fun to write than the others?GRABINSKI I love Lucas Lee [played by Chris Evans] just because I’m pretty obsessive about action movies. There’s a tone to that character that is so fun to me. But honestly, the great thing is that they’re all so different. I’ve worked with Brandon Routh a lot and I knew he could be really funny, and we got him to do a bunch of stuff that I think is unexpected and very silly, and he embraced it.O’MALLEY It’s like each of the exes has their own genre, and it lets you mix it up.GRABINSKI That was the thing that was most exciting to me: pairing up characters who had never been seen together. What if they fought or what if they became best friends?O’MALLEY But not making it feel like fan fiction. Really bringing weight to it.GRABINSKI The difficult thing is trying to make sure it all feels like an organic part of the story. As much as we think, “Oh it would be really fun to have these two characters fight,” we can’t do that unless there’s a real reason that they want to fight that comes from the story.“The main appeal of the show to me was to dig deeper with the exes, with Scott’s friends, with Ramona,” Grabinski said.NetflixWhat’s next? Will there be a Season 2?GRABINSKI I can’t think about anything beyond this. I’m glad that we told a story that has an ending for all the thematic things that we’re exploring. So if TV stopped existing on Nov. 18th, I’d feel really proud of what we did.O’MALLEY We wanted to be satisfied with what we get if we never get more. I don’t love it when a show feels like a setup for Season 2. We just wanted to have a complete dramatic and comedic arc to everything.How long did the entire production process take?GRABINSKI It was a few years to go from the beginning of doing outlines to the finish.O’MALLEY But it was also fast. We started writing in January 2022. We met Science Saru in June 2022. We were seeing episodes by spring of this year. We were pretty much done recording the voices before the strike started. So it was like 18 months. Saru is very fast, which is part of the appeal of this whole process. That’s what they pitched me: “We’ll do a season a year!” It took a little longer than that, but it’s pretty magical to get something this beautiful this quickly.Will you revisit “Scott Pilgrim” in comic book form?O’MALLEY Even if I was super inspired, I wouldn’t have time for it right now. But I think it’s definitely possible. And we’ve talked about other episodes. If those never got to fruition as TV, then I would definitely consider doing a comic and co-writing with BenDavid.GRABINSKI I hope that someone, someday, does a manga adaptation of the show.O’MALLEY If someone in Japan would want to do their own adaptation without any input from us, that would be really cool. More

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    Jimmy Kimmel Calls Tumultuous Senate Hearing ‘U.F.C.-SPAN’

    Late night hosts couldn’t resist joking about Senator Markwayne Mullin challenging the Teamsters leader Sean M. O’Brien to a brawl.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.‘U.F.C.-SPAN’Senator Markwayne Mullin, Republican of Oklahoma, challenged Sean M. O’Brien, the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, to a physical fight during a Senate committee hearing on Tuesday.Jimmy Kimmel joked that the hearing had turned into “U.F.C.-SPAN all of a sudden.” Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont and the chairman of the panel, had to step in and demand the two behave like U.S. lawmakers.“Grandpa Bernie is about to turn this car around, and then nobody is going to Six Flags.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“That isn’t the first time Bernie Sanders was forced to play the role of peacemaker. You know, when he was originally elected to the Senate, he tried to convince Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton to hug it out, and that didn’t work, either. That didn’t end well at all.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“[imitating Bernie Sanders] Zip it, Bunson Honeydew! Sit down, or I will come over there and redistribute the top 10 percent of my fist to 99 percent of your face! I will split your lip like pea soup! Don’t make me take off my mittens!” — STEPHEN COLBERT“I knew this dude was trouble from the moment I heard his name, Markwayne, all one word. His parents — his parents didn’t even love him enough to pick one single name for him. They just shoved two names together and called it a day.” — LESLIE JONES, guest host of “The Daily Show”“‘Calm down, Markwayne,’ isn’t some [expletive] I want to hear on C-SPAN — it’s what you hear when you watch an episode of ‘Cops.’” — LESLIE JONES“If there’s going to be a fight, I’d like to warn that senator: You look pretty big, but, historically, people who take on the Teamsters end up with season tickets to Giants Stadium … underneath the end zone.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Season’s Greetings Edition)“Ahead of Thanksgiving, the T.S.A. just announced that they’re predicting the busiest holiday travel season ever. Yeah, and this was a classy move — Southwest cut right to the chase and canceled all their flights.” — JIMMY FALLON“More than 30 million Americans are expected to travel by plane over the holiday, and every one of them is in your boarding group.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Apparently, the airport is going to be so busy that LaGuardia might even buy a second gray bin.” — JIMMY FALLON“And if the government shuts down next week — which it looks like it won’t — thousands of T.S.A. employees and air traffic controllers would be forced to work without pay. Just the people you want disgruntled, right? The ones telling you which way to point the plane you’re in.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingViola Davis discussed her new role in “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” on the “Tonight Show” on Tuesday.What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightThe actress Julianne Moore of “May December” will appear on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”Also, Check This Out“I just like messing with instruments, and I gravitated mostly toward wind,” André 3000 said in a statement about his new album.Kai ReganAndré 3000, the artist best known as one-half of Outkast, will release “New Blue Sun” on Friday. It is a surprise solo album of ambient woodwind compositions. More

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    in Theater

    ‘Waiting for Godot’ Review: Old Friends Falling in and Out of Sync

    Michael Shannon and Paul Sparks star in Arin Arbus’s pandemic-delayed production at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center.Samuel Beckett left as little as possible to chance when he wrote “Waiting for Godot,” a play that, 70 years after its first production, usually looks substantially the same: the country road, the withered tree, the battered boots arranged at the top of Act II with “heels together, toes splayed.” In his stage directions, Beckett spent 195 words choreographing some horseplay involving hats.Live performance itself, then, would be the wild card. And so it proved on Saturday night at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Brooklyn, where Michael Shannon is starring as Estragon (a.k.a. Gogo) opposite Paul Sparks as Vladimir (a.k.a. Didi). The two actors are old friends playing old friends, yet through the whole first act there wasn’t the faintest glint of chemistry between them.It was deadening to the production, and baffling for anyone who has admired Shannon’s and Sparks’s work separately or together, onstage or onscreen; I, for one, treasure the memory of them in Craig Wright’s “Lady” Off Broadway 15 years ago. Here their performances sprang into three dimensions only with the arrival, shortly before intermission, of a Boy (a lovely Toussaint Francois Battiste), who brings a message from Godot.I have no idea whether I caught the show on an off night, or if after merely a week of previews the production was still somewhat underbaked. But the inertness of Act I gave way to a high-energy Act II — rather denting the idea that one day in the nearly featureless void of Didi and Gogo’s existence is practically indistinguishable from another, but thank goodness anyway.From then on, Shannon and Sparks were in sync as scruffy, aimless, quarreling clowns who fail anew, by each fresh sunset, the test of being human. Buffeted by love and loathing, Didi and Gogo prefer to do their languishing together.“We always find something, eh Didi,” Gogo says, “to give us the impression we exist?”Arin Arbus’s pandemic-delayed production for Theater for a New Audience lacks a discernible interpretation that we can grab onto, or that can grab onto us. But it does make striking use of the space, with a paved, two-lane road (by Riccardo Hernández) running downhill from the middle of the upstage wall to the back of the auditorium. The double yellow line in the center of the road — denoting a no-passing zone — could also be decoded as a no-dying zone. From the first moments of the play to the last, Didi and Gogo speak of ending their lives, but their passing is not to be.Under merciless sunlight (by Christopher Akerlind), Shannon is a crabbed and shambling Gogo, fidgety and peckish, bedeviled by ill-fitting boots. (Costumes are by Susan Hilferty.) Though Shannon does a bit of comic tumbling on the road, he also sometimes barely has to move to land a laugh, his remarkable gestural efficiency combining with a marvelous dryness of tone.Sparks, meanwhile, brings buoyancy to Didi’s roughness, and a palpable, if bizarro, human center. Inspecting the amnesiac Gogo’s legs for proof of an attack the day before, Didi is ebullient when he finds it: “There’s the wound! Beginning to fester!”A chunk of a scene in Act II, involving Didi, Gogo and their only passers-by — the vicious Pozzo (Ajay Naidu) and the man he has enslaved, Lucky (a vivid Jeff Biehl) — would get bigger laughs if the blocking allowed more than half the house a view of the actors’ faces. A sightline worry throughout the performance is the road itself, whose incline puts some audience members at an awkward angle to the action.This “Godot” comes at a time so fraught that real-world resonances ambush us in the most unexpected shows, so it’s odd that that doesn’t happen here, or didn’t to me. Yet in some ways we are all Didi and Gogo, victims and onlookers — perpetrators, too — in the barbarism of the world.Weary of brutal cycles that keep repeating, they despair of their ability to alter the course.“I can’t go on like this,” Gogo says.And Didi tells him: “That’s what you think.”Waiting for GodotThrough Dec. 3 at Theater for a New Audience, Manhattan; tfana.org. Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes. More

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    In Texas, a Fight Over Gender and School Theater Takes an Unexpected Turn

    After a high school production of “Oklahoma!” was halted in conservative Sherman, Texas, something unusual happened: The school board sided with transgender students.A school district in the conservative town of Sherman, Texas, made national headlines last week when it put a stop to a high school production of the musical “Oklahoma!” after a transgender student was cast in a lead role.The district’s administrators decided, and communicated to parents, that the school would cast only students “born as females in female roles and students born as males in male roles.” Not only did several transgender and nonbinary students lose their parts, but so, too, did cisgender girls cast in male roles. Publicly, the district said the problem was the profane and sexual content of the 1943 musical.At one point, the theater teacher, who objected to the decision, was escorted out of the school by the principal. The set, a sturdy mock-up of a settler’s house that took students two months to build, was demolished.But then something even more unusual happened in Sherman, a rural college town that has been rapidly drawn into the expanding orbit of Dallas to its south. The school district reversed course. In a late-night vote on Monday, the school board voted unanimously to restore the original casting. The decision rebuked efforts to bring the fight over transgender participation in student activities into the world of theater, which has long provided a haven for gay, lesbian and transgender students, and it reflected just how deeply the controversy had unsettled the town.The district’s restriction had been exceptional. Fights have erupted over the kinds of plays students can present, but few if any school districts appear to have attempted to restrict gender roles in theater. And while legislatures across the country, including in Texas, have adopted laws restricting transgender students’ participation in sports, no such legislation has been introduced to restrict theater roles, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.Community members attend a school board meeting at the Sherman Independent School District on Monday night.Desiree Rios for The New York TimesThe board’s vote came after students and outraged parents began organizing. In recent days, the district’s administrators, seeking a compromise, offered to recast the students in a version of the musical meant for middle schoolers or younger that omitted solos and included roles as cattle and birds. Students balked.After the vote, the school board announced a special meeting for Friday to open an investigation and to consider taking action against the district superintendent, Tyson Bennett, who oversaw the district’s handling of “Oklahoma!,” including “possible administrative leave.”Suddenly, improbably, the students had won.“I’m beyond excited and everyone cried tears of joy,” Max Hightower, the transgender senior whose casting in a lead role triggered the ensuing events, said in a text message on Tuesday. He and other theater students were at a costume shop on Tuesday, a class trip that had been meant as a consolation after the disappointment of losing their production. Instead, it turned into a celebration. “I’m getting new Oklahoma costumes!!” he said.Before the school board vote Monday night, high schoolers and their parents had gathered at the district’s offices along with theater actors and transgender students from nearby Austin College. Local residents came to talk about decades of past productions at Sherman High School of “Oklahoma!,” which tells the story of an Oklahoma Territory farm girl and her courtship by two rival suitors. Many scoffed at the district’s objections to the musical, which school officials complained included “mature adult themes.”Sherman High made national headlines last week when it put a stop to a high school production of the musical “Oklahoma!” after a transgender student was cast in a lead role.Desiree Rios for The New York Times“‘Oklahoma!’ is generally regarded as one of the safest shows you could possibly pick to perform,” said Kirk Everist, a theater professor at Austin College who was among those who came to speak. “It’s almost a stereotype at this point.”Every seat in the room was filled, almost entirely with supporters of the production. Some lined the walls while others who were turned away waited outside. Of the 65 people who signed up to speak, only a handful voiced support for the district’s restrictions.The outpouring came as a shock, even to longtime Sherman residents.“What you’re seeing today is history,” said Valerie Fox, 41, a local L.G.B.T.Q. advocate and the parent of a queer high schooler. Ms. Fox said she was taken aback by the scene of dozens of transgender people and their supporters holding signs and flags outside the district offices. “This is one of the biggest things we’ve seen in Sherman.”The town, a short drive from Dallas, has been a place where many conservatives have gone to escape the city. Some were supportive of the superintendent’s initial decision to restrict the musical.“Adult content doesn’t belong in high school; they’re still kids,” Renée Snow, 62, said earlier on Monday as she sat with her friend on a bench outside the county courthouse. “It’s about education. It’s not about lifestyle.”Her friend, Lyn Williams, 69, agreed. “It doesn’t seem like anyone is willing to stand up for anything anymore,” she said.At a local shoe store, no one needed to be reminded of the details of the controversy. One shopper, shaking a pair of insoles, said that she believed that God made people either male or female, and that the issue was a simple as that.“I’m beyond excited and everyone cried tears of joy,” Max Hightower, the transgender senior at the high school whose casting in a lead role triggered the ensuing events, said in a text message on Tuesday. Desiree Rios for The New York TimesInside the courthouse, Bruce Dawsey, the top executive for Grayson County, described a rural community coming to terms with its evolution into a place where urban development is altering the landscape. Not far away, more than a half-dozen cranes could be seen towering over a new high-tech facility for Texas Instruments. The high school, with more than 2,200 students, opened on a sprawling new campus in 2021, its grass still uniform, its newly planted trees still struggling to provide shade. With all the growth, the school is already too small.“The majority is Republican, and it’s conservative Republican,” Mr. Dawsey said. “But not so ultraconservative that it’s not welcoming.”Still, some in and around Sherman have chafed at the changes. When Beto O’Rourke, a Democratic candidate for governor, campaigned through the county last year, he was met with aggressive protesters who confronted him over gun rights, some carrying assault-style rifles. A few wore T-shirts suggesting opposition to liberal urban governance: “Don’t Dallas My Grayson County.”But the controversy over “Oklahoma!” came as a surprise. The musical had been selected and approved last school year, casting was completed in August and more than 60 students in the cast and crew — as well as dozens of dancers — had been preparing for months. Performances were scheduled for early December.Max, 17, had been cast in a minor role. But then, in late October, one of the leads was cut from the production, and Max got the part, the biggest he had ever had. He was elated.Days later, his father, Phillip Hightower, got a call from the high school principal, who told him that Max could not have the part because, under a new policy, no students could play roles that differed from their sex at birth. “He was not rude or disrespectful, but he was very curt and to the point,” Mr. Hightower recalled.Phillip Hightower got a call from the high school principal who told him that Max could not have the part because, under a new policy, no students could play roles that differed from their sex at birth.Desiree Rios for The New York TimesThe district later denied having such a policy. But the principal also left messages for other parents whose children were losing their roles, one of which was shared with The New York Times.“This is Scott Johnston, principal at Sherman High School,” a man’s voice said on the recording. “Moving forward, the Sherman theater department will cast students born as females in female roles and students born as males in male roles.”The message diverged from the rules for high school theater competitions in Texas, which allow for students to be cast in roles regardless of gender.The district did not make Mr. Johnston or the superintendent, Mr. Bennett, available for an interview.In his previous role as an assistant superintendent, Mr. Bennett had objected to the content of a theater production by Sherman High School, according to the former choir director, Anna Clarkson. She recalled Mr. Bennett asking her to change a lesbian character into a straight character in the school’s production of “Legally Blonde” in 2015, and to cut a song entitled “Gay or European?”At the school board meeting on Monday, theater students from the high school described how things had become worse for gay and transgender students at school since the production was halted. Slurs. Taunts. Arguments in the halls.“People are following me around calling me girl-boy,” said Max.Kayla Brooks and her wife, Liz Banks, arrived at the meeting bracing for a tough night. Their daughter Ellis had lost a part playing a male character, and they had been actively working with other parents to oppose the changes.Max Hightower, 17, had originally been cast in a minor part in the musical, but was promoted in October to a leading role, the biggest he had ever had.Desiree Rios for The New York Times“We were both nervous, because we live in Sherman,” said Ms. Banks. Then they saw the large, supportive crowd outside. “We began weeping in the car,” Ms. Brooks said.The school board sat mostly stone-faced as dozens of people testified in support of the theater students, sharing personal histories. A transgender student at Austin College said he had not before come out publicly. Sherman residents lamented the way the school district’s position had made the town look.“I just want this town to be what it can be and not be a laughingstock for the entire nation,” one woman, Rebecca Gebhard, told the board.After nearly three hours, the board went behind closed doors. The crowds left. Few expected a significant decision was imminent.Then, after 10 p.m., the board took their seats again and introduced a motion for a vote: Since there was no official policy on gender for casting, the original version of the musical should be reinstated. All seven board members voted in favor, including one who had, months before, protested against a gay pride event.“We want to apologize to our students, parents, our community regarding the circumstances that they’ve had to go through,” the board president, Brad Morgan, said afterward.Sitting in their living room on Tuesday morning, Ms. Banks and Ms. Brooks recalled how their daughter delivered them the news. “She just said, ‘We won,’” Ms. Brooks said. “She was beaming, smiling ear to ear.” The musical would be performed in January.The couple decided, for the first time, to hang a pride flag in the window of their home. For now, they felt a little more confident in their neighbors than they had a day before.Alain Delaquérière More

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    in Television

    Recap: Timothée Chalamet Hosts ‘Saturday Night Live’

    Timothée Chalamet hosted an episode that presented former President Trump as an aggrieved forerunner. The musical guest was boygenius.Come on, you didn’t really think that “Saturday Night Live” would begin this weekend with a parody of the third Republican presidential debate, did you?OK, let’s indulge this little fantasy for a moment and pretend that this broadcast — hosted by Timothée Chalamet and featuring the musical guest boygenius — might actually open on a sketch featuring the candidates who aren’t Donald J. Trump, impersonated by the “S.N.L.” cast including Heidi Gardner as Nikki Haley, John Higgins as Ron DeSantis and Ego Nwodim as Vivek Ramaswamy.Well, not long after Gardner and Nwodim reenacted a testy exchange between Haley and Ramaswamy and Devon Walker (as Tim Scott) began to rhapsodize about his girlfriend, the entire sketch was frozen and the lights were dimmed on the debate stage.Enter James Austin Johnson, in his recurring role as Trump: “How adorable,” he said, mocking the other candidates. “They actually think they’ve got a chance. Sad in some ways, but in other ways, funny. Can you believe it, folks? Ninety-one indictments, four trials. And I’m still the best choice. They’re all stuck behind me and there’s nothing they can do about it. Just like in real life.”Johnson went on to mock the low poll ratings of his Republican rivals: “One percent, very low,” he said, indicating Walker. “Lower than, frankly, milk. Apparently there’s a milk lower than 1 percent. People are calling it skim, we’ve never had it, we don’t drink it.”And he offered a satirical meta-commentary on Higgins, the actor playing DeSantis. “Poor Ron DeSantis,” Johnson said. “Even ‘S.N.L.’ doesn’t think he has a chance. If they did, it’d be like Paul Rudd or something in there, right?”But mostly, he talked about himself: “Isn’t it sad, folks?” Johnson said. “None of them can beat Joe Biden. The worst president since, frankly, me.” Why hasn’t Trump appeared at the debates? As Johnson explained it: “I’m very, very busy. I’m going from trial to trial. I’m basically doing ‘House Hunters’ but with courtrooms.”Johnson complained about the fact that he was being put on trial at all: “They’re saying I committed fraud,” he said. “Not true, OK? Not true. I’ve committed a lot of things. Adultery, treason, a lot of fraud, perhaps.”But on the witness stand, Johnson said he was on his best behavior: “The judge asks, ‘Did you approve these financial reports?’” he explained. “And I very respectfully say, ‘You’re a dumb-ass. This is a sham. When I’m president again, I’ll have you executed.’”Bringing the debate and the sketch to a conclusion, Johnson said, “I’ll pick one of these lucky five to be my VP, or in many ways, I will not at all. Maybe in my third term.”Opening monologue of the weekChalamet, who was hosting “S.N.L.” for the second time, expressed relief that a deal had been reached between the actors of the SAG-AFTRA union and the Hollywood entertainment studios, ending a monthslong strike and allowing him to flog upcoming projects like his film “Wonka.”Picking up a cane, Chalamet began to poke fun at the self-promotional opportunities that he could now indulge, singing a song set to “Pure Imagination” from the original “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” Its lyrics ran, in part:“If you want to view a three-and-a-half hour filmGo see ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’Or just wait for Part 2 of ‘Dune’Just make sure before to use the bathroom …”In the latter part of the monologue, Chalamet and Marcello Hernández performed a bawdy tribute to their status as baby-faces — presumably, the material they had prepared in case the strike wasn’t resolved by this weekend.Not-phoned-in performance of the weekA round-table segment paying satirical homage to the 50th anniversary of hip-hop may not be the most revolutionary idea for a comedy sketch, though it provides a great showcase for cast members like James Austin Johnson and Punkie Johnson to show off their impressions of people like Rick Rubin and Mary J. Blige.But what makes this memorable is Chalamet’s delightfully committed performance as a fictional (if frightfully successful) young rapper with the stage name of SmokeCheddaThaAssGetta, who knows nothing about the history of his chosen genre and has no business being on the panel. There’s also the sight of Chalamet being spanked by Kenan Thompson (playing Cornel West), the soon-to-be viral GIF from which the whole sketch, one assumes, was reverse engineered.Impersonation showcase of the weekYes, there was already the sketch about the Republican debate and the hip-hop round table. But for good measure, why not throw in one more segment that lets Chloe Fineman and the “S.N.L.” cast show off their talents for pretending to be other famous people?That is the duty fulfilled by this short film in which the best-selling memoirist Britney Spears (Fineman) reveals that, before choosing Michelle Williams to read the audiobook of “The Woman in Me,” she had tried out other readers as well. Feel free to admire the sheer versatility of Fineman (who also plays Chalamet, Julia Fox and Natasha Lyonne in the sketch); the levels of inside baseball (Sarah Sherman and Michael Longfellow as the “S.N.L.” alums John Mulaney and Bill Hader); or the weirdness of James Austin Johnson as Werner Herzog.Weekend Update jokes of the weekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che continued to riff on the Republican debate, the F.B.I. investigation into Mayor Eric Adams of New York and President Biden’s re-election efforts.Jost began:The third Republican debate was held this week, and Vivek Ramaswamy started by saying that the GOP had become “a party of losers.” Weirdly, “a party of losers” was also how NBC advertised the debate. Ramaswamy then criticized Nikki Haley’s daughter for having a TikTok account. He also stressed that it’s not important how he knows her daughter has a TikTok account. Then Nikki Haley responded to the attack by saying, “Leave my daughter out of your voice,” which was pulled directly from the Japanese subtitles of the Will Smith slap.Che continued:Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign got a major boost after Iowa governor Kim Reynolds endorsed him. Also giving DeSantis a lift: his leather hooker boots. The F.B.I. has launched a corruption investigation into New York mayor Eric Adams by seizing two of his cellphones. One named “work phone” and the other named “shorties and shady stuff.”Jost resumed:After new polls showed Donald Trump leading Joe Biden, Democratic strategists are calling Biden’s re-election campaign a five-alarm fire. Which is scary for Biden, because in a fire, you have to use the stairs. More

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    in Theater

    A Parkland Father Stages the Unthinkable: Losing a Son in a School Shooting

    Manuel Oliver has a one-man show about the life and death of his son, Joaquin, who was killed in the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.Manuel Oliver had arrived at the point of his one-man show where it was time to re-enact the murder of his son, Joaquin, who was one of 17 people killed in a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., in 2018.He donned a paper mask of the face of Joaquin, who was a 17-year-old senior when he was killed. He grabbed a hammer and turned to a life-size portrait of Joaquin and methodically banged it four times — once for each bullet that had struck him — creating a jagged hole. Then Oliver crumpled to the ground, as if lifeless.The searing re-enactment of the shooting was part of “Guac: The One Man Show,” a show about Joaquin that Oliver has been performing around the nation, and that he brought this month to the Theater Row Studio Theater in Manhattan. About 50 people watched as Oliver opened the play with a question: “When you lose a son, what do you do?”In the show “Guac,” Oliver paints on a life-size portrait of Joaquin.Ron DonofrioFor Oliver, part of the answer came in the form of 90 minutes in which he tried to sketch the life of Joaquin: a Venezuelan American boy who was known to his friends as Guac and who loved bacon, buttery popcorn, Guns N’ Roses and the Miami Heat. It was a haunting portrait of a life, and of the abruptness with which it was cut short on Valentine’s Day of 2018 — the moment, as Oliver put it, “that cuts your life in two.”“It makes me feel very connected to my son,” Oliver, 55, said in an interview last week before his latest performance. “I’m a father. I’m Joaquin’s dad. Fathers, that’s what we do. We sit around the table, and we talk about our kids. I want to feel that I also have that right. How am I using that right? Through theater.”“Guac,” which was co-written by Oliver and James Clements and directed by Michael Cotey, is co-produced by ENOUGH! Plays to End Gun Violence and ChangeTheRef, an anti-gun violence advocacy group founded by Oliver and his wife, Patricia.Since Joaquin was killed Oliver, a painter, has used art and activism to push for stronger gun regulation. He created a mural about the demand for change that went viral online, unfurled a picture of his son atop a 150-foot-high crane near the White House, traveled to the sites of other school shootings around the country in a retrofitted school bus and filed a claim against the U.S. government in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.A few years ago Oliver, who had never acted before, came up with the idea of creating a play after realizing that theater could be an effective way to raise awareness about gun violence.“When you’re working in these areas of activism and looking for justice, you do have the chance to go to rallies and talk to people and they give you five to 10 minutes,” he said. “They may or may not be paying attention. There’s always another speaker after you. So I thought what if I have a full 100 percent attention for an hour about Joaquin’s life? How do I make that happen?”Oliver, center, with his wife, Patricia, and David Hogg, a Parkland survivor, at the March for Our Lives protest against gun violence in Washington in 2022. Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe first performance was in July 2019 at the Los Angeles headquarters of Toms Shoes, a company that was sympathetic to Oliver’s cause, and he later performed it in New York, Orlando, New Orleans, Dallas and other cities until the pandemic brought the tour to a halt. His first post-pandemic performance was in Chicago this summer, and he returned to New York on Nov. 3 and Nov. 11 as part of the United Solo Theater Festival. He hopes to perform it again in New York in 2024, and to bring the show to Europe.The play began with special memories Oliver shared about Joaquin, which he called “magic moments”: He spoke about going to a rock concert together, or about the time a 7-year-old Joaquin accidentally wore his sister’s pants to school.The audience included several people who have survived a mass shooting or who are activists for stricter gun laws. Diego Pfeiffer, who attended the Saturday performance, is a 23-year-old actor who survived the Parkland shooting. He called the show a form of “loving suffering” for Oliver.After the moment when he took a hammer to his son’s portrait, Oliver painted on it. On Saturday, with “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd playing, Oliver painted dark blue wings over Joaquin’s shoulders and drew a message in black on his son’s white shirt: “I wish I was here.”“Hope evolves,” Oliver said in the show, tears in his eyes, recalling the frantic moments he and his wife searched for their son, calling repeatedly with no answer. “I was hoping that you left the phone behind. I was hoping that you dropped the phone. I was hoping you were injured but not that bad. And I ended up hoping that it was not painful but fast.” More

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    Steve Carell to Make Broadway Debut as Uncle Vanya Next Spring

    The production, a new translation by Heidi Schreck, will also star Alison Pill, William Jackson Harper, Alfred Molina and Anika Noni Rose.Steve Carell, the screen actor best known for his breakout role as a blundering boss in the NBC comedy “The Office,” will make his Broadway debut in a revival of the Chekhov classic “Uncle Vanya.”Carell will lead a cast of television, film and stage veterans in the production, which is to begin performances April 2 and to open April 24 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, a Broadway house at the nonprofit Lincoln Center Theater.“Uncle Vanya” is a dark Russian drama, first performed in 1899, about a rural family whose dreary but stable routine is disrupted when the property’s long-absent owner, a retired professor, comes to visit with his new, and much younger, wife. The play has been staged and adapted many times — this will be the 11th production on Broadway — and this iteration will be based on a new translation by Heidi Schreck, whose previous Broadway venture, an autobiographical show called “What the Constitution Means to Me,” is expected to be the most-staged play at U.S. theaters this season (not counting those by Shakespeare and Dickens).Carell, who played a regional manager in “The Office,” will also play a manager in “Uncle Vanya.” His character is the country estate’s long-suffering administrator (and the brother of the professor’s first wife); he oversees the property with a niece, Sonya, who will be played by Alison Pill, who last appeared on Broadway in a revival of “Three Tall Women” and was a Tony Award nominee for “The Lieutenant of Inishmore.” They will be joined by William Jackson Harper, an alumnus of the NBC comedy “The Good Place” who this year wowed Off Broadway audiences with his starring role in “Primary Trust”; he will play Astrov, the local doctor.Alfred Molina (a three-time Tony nominee, for “Red,” “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Art”) will play the professor, while Anika Noni Rose (a Tony winner for “Caroline, or Change”) will play the professor’s wife. Jayne Houdyshell (a Tony winner for “The Humans”) will play Vanya’s mother, and Mia Katigbak (an Obie winner for “Awake and Sing!”) will portray a household nurse.“Uncle Vanya” is being directed by Lila Neugebauer, who is also directing a Broadway production of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s play “Appropriate,” which is scheduled to open next month. More