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    Jimmy Kimmel Has Questions About the Biden Impeachment Inquiry

    Even Republicans don’t seem to know what it’s about, hosts said. “You can’t impeach someone for falling asleep during ‘Wheel of Fortune,’” said Jimmy Kimmel.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.‘You Always Remember Your First’House Republicans voted to formally open an impeachment inquiry into President Biden on Wednesday.“They managed to get the votes they needed for this, even though no one seems to know exactly what they would be impeaching him for,” Jimmy Kimmel said.“They have presented no evidence of any wrongdoing by Joe Biden. You can’t impeach someone for falling asleep during ‘Wheel of Fortune.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“This headline tells you all you need to know about the Republican Party right now: ‘House Set to Approve Biden Impeachment Inquiry as It Hunts for an Offense.’ In other words, they don’t have a crime, but they do have an investigation. It’s like an episode of ‘CSI,’ but if there was no ‘C,’ just ‘SI.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Guys, guys, come on. That’s kind of step one!” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Today, House Republicans held a vote on opening a formal inquiry into President Biden’s impeachment. Yep, when he heard, former President Trump said, ‘That’s nice. You always remember your first.’” — JIMMY FALLON“The whole thing is ridiculous. If you want to derail Biden, you don’t give him an impeachment — you give him a microphone.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Happy Birthday, Taylor Edition)“And then we have Time’s Person of the Year, who is celebrating a birthday today. Taylor Swift turned 34 today. And what an absolutely terrifying situation for Travis Kelce. I mean, getting your new girlfriend the right gift on the first birthday together is always a challenge. It’s even harder when there’s an army of 12-year-old girls ready to kill you if you screw it up.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“He’s under a lot of pressure. He knows if he blows it, she’ll just give herself another gift and call it ‘Taylor’s Version.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Man, if you think your job is hard, try being the waiter who has to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Taylor Swift.” — JIMMY FALLON“I heard that Taylor celebrated her birthday with close friends here in New York City. I mean, that’s impossible, or else I would have been invited.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingJimmy Fallon and the pop star Meghan Trainor premiered their new holiday bop, “Wrap Me Up,” on Wednesday’s “Tonight Show.”What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightGreta Gerwig, the writer and director of “Barbie,” will appear on Thursday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutWu-Tang Clan performing in New York in August.Bennett Raglin/Getty ImagesThe hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan will launch a Las Vegas residency on Super Bowl weekend. More

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    Andre Braugher: Captain Holt on ‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’ and More Defining Roles

    The versatile actor was most known for vastly different portrayals of TV cops, but also shone in roles across film and stage.Andre Braugher, an Emmy-winning actor who, for over 30 years, adapted his no-nonsense, unflappable persona to great success across genres on television, in film and onstage, died at 61 years old on Monday night after a brief illness. Most famous for his roles as police officers — early in his career in the procedural “Homicide: Life on the Street” and later in the sitcom “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” — Braugher fell in love with acting while attending Stanford University, where he first performed in a student production of “Hamlet.” He went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts from Juilliard School. “When I graduated from school, I felt like I had the tiger by the tail; I could do almost anything,” Braugher told Variety in 2020.Here’s a look back at some of the moments that would go on to define Braugher’s career.1988“Glory”Braugher made his film debut in “Glory” in 1998.TriStar Pictures, via Getty ImagesBraugher’s father was reluctant to support his acting career — Braugher remembered him saying, “Show me Black actors who are earning a living. What the hell are you going to do, juggle and travel the country?” — but landing a supporting role in “Glory” was a crucial early breakthrough. He played the studious, timid union Corporal Thomas Searles in the Civil War drama alongside Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman.1990Making His Mark in TheaterBraugher won an Obie for his turn as “Henry V” in 1996.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe 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?  More

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    With ‘The Gilded Age,’ Louisa Jacobson Cuts Her Own Path

    Exposed to the complexities of fame at a young age, she sought paths outside of acting in early adulthood. Now she is the lead of a prestige HBO drama.This article contains spoilers for Season 2 of “The Gilded Age.”“I’m sorry I’m late,” the actress Louisa Jacobson said, a little breathless, as she entered a vintage clothing boutique, in Manhattan’s East Village earlier this month. “It’s been such a crazy day.” It was a weekday afternoon, and traffic from her home in Brooklyn had been bad. The smells of the damp autumn day clung to her coat as she swept through the door, face lightly flush from the chill and manic hustle outside.She eyed a vanilla-bean-and-cedar candle and rifled through a rack of long blazers.“I like to buy pre-owned or vintage because it’s better for the planet and my wallet,” she said, adding that “I buy all my jeans here.” On the day we met, those jeans were medium-wash and boot-cut, matched with black boots and a black leather trench coat over a brown leather vest and a white button-down blouse for an overall steampunk vibe — a sartorial hint, maybe, at the Victorian fashion of the HBO drama “The Gilded Age,” if not quite the studied sensibilities of her character in the series, Marian Brook.Marian’s wardrobe, by contrast, consists entirely of long, bustled dresses and ribcage-crushing corsets. In the high society of 1880s New York, even plucky, forward-thinking heroines were expected to lace up tight for potential suitors.“Ouch,” Jacobson simply said.And yet Marian’s big decision in Episode 6 was perhaps even more constraining. Earlier in the show’s ongoing second season, her story took a dramatic turn as she went toe to toe with her formidable old-money aunt Agnes (Christine Baranski) and became a confidante of her other aunt, Ada (Cynthia Nixon). Marian also had to manage a suitor of dubious appeal, the handsome, if dull, widower Dashiell Montgomery (David Furr). Then suddenly, he proposed.“Can you imagine jumping into being the leading lady on ‘The Gilded Age’?” asked Christine Baranski, left (with Jacobson), in a scene from the series. “What a daunting task.”Barbara Nitke/HBOBowing to the conventions of her day, Marian accepted, in defiance of her own instincts. Fans, in turn, have questions — and consternation — heading into the season finale on Sunday. (“Uh-oh, “The Gilded Age’s” Marian Has Me Screaming at My TV Again,” reads one recent headline.)“There’s a lot of financial pressure on the union,” Jacobson said, referring to the engagement. “But,” she added, “she would be settling. Dashiell doesn’t take her career as a teacher or an artist seriously, and he’s like, ‘Well you can stop all of that once we’re married.’ She doesn’t vibe with that.”Jacobson, 32, has faced her own pressures — not least as the youngest daughter of perhaps Hollywood’s most celebrated screen actress, Meryl Streep. (She uses Jacobson, her middle name, as her professional surname.) And her star is ascending fast. When she was tapped to lead “The Gilded Age,” in 2019, it was her first television role. The drama was created by Julian Fellowes (“Downton Abbey”), a writer whom she had long admired.Then there was the cast, stacked with theater royalty including Baranski, Nathan Lane, Audra McDonald, Donna Murphy and Cynthia Nixon. Jacobson had only just graduated from drama school.“Can you imagine jumping into being the leading lady on ‘The Gilded Age’?” Baranski, a two-time Tony Award winner, said in a recent phone conversation. “What a daunting task.”Judging by her success thus far, Jacobson has remained mostly undaunted. But whatever advantages have come with her upbringing, it also showed her at a young age the pitfalls of fame and favor, enough that she spent much of her early adulthood pursuing other paths. Now that she is committed to acting — and if her stage name and hustle are any indication — she seems determined to build a career on her own terms and merits as much as possible.If Jacobson ultimately found the creative life irresistible, she came by it honestly: Her father, Don Gummer, is a sculptor; her two older sisters, Mamie and Grace Gummer, are also actors; and her older brother, Henry Wolfe, is a musician. The family lived in Salisbury, Conn., a small town near the Berkshires, until she was 9, when they moved to New York. She often performed spontaneously with her siblings at home.“I think I always knew that I wanted to act,” Jacobson said as we walked from the vintage store to a nearby flower shop on an afternoon of errands. She lifted her coat over her head as the rain picked up. “But I didn’t always know that I wanted to be an actor.”Jacobson, right, with Alison Dillulio, an old friend and the director of Chapter NY, a Manhattan art gallery. Before them is the drawing “City” (2023), by Christopher Culver.Sabrina Santiago for The New York TimesShe acted throughout middle school and high school, but when it came time for college, she opted to study psychology at Vassar, in upstate New York. She wanted to become a therapist, which she viewed as a more practical career path.“Because of the way I grew up, there are parts of the business that I know are difficult,” she added. “And growing up with fame in my household, it provided us with a lot of privileges, but it also came with a lot of anxiety.”But the pull of acting didn’t relent, and she continued to do student theater. After graduation, she worked a retail job selling handbags in New York for about a year, dabbled in modeling and worked as an account coordinator at an advertising agency. She continued to rush to auditions on her lunch breaks.Finally, that pull was too strong to resist: She applied for the master’s program in acting at Yale, the same school her mother had graduated from around 40 years earlier.“I knew that if I just went into it without studying it, I would feel, I already feel, in some ways like I don’t deserve —”She trailed off.“I wanted to make sure I knew what I was doing,” she said, “and that I had a tool kit of professionalism that I was walking into the room with.”Months after graduating in 2019, she booked her big break, as Marian in “The Gilded Age.” For Fellowes, who created the series, the combination of Jacobson’s “charm and strong personality” immediately stood out.“I knew I wanted Marian Brook to be someone who seemed quite the perfect young woman from that period — mild, demure, rather easy to deal with,” Fellowes said in a recent phone conversation from London. “But, as the story unfurled, it would become clearer and clearer that she had, in fact, got an extremely strong will of her own.”Initially, Jacobson said, the learning curve was steep: She was intimidated by the veteran talent around her, Baranski in particular.“I’m the one who gave her a really hard time,” Baranski acknowledged. “I tend to stay in character between shots, and I think it was quite terrifying. I felt bad because I thought, ‘Oh, does she really think this is me?’”Also, Jacobson’s corset was too tight.“I finally said, ‘Can you breathe in that?’” Baranski said. “And she said, ‘No, I go home and I’m wracked in pain, and I’m having trouble sitting and I’m having trouble speaking.’“And I said, ‘Are you kidding? You loosen that corset.’” (Midway through the first season, Baranski said, she did.)At first, Jacobson said, she was also becoming trapped in her own head, overthinking things. That’s when Nixon, a veteran actress and director, stepped in with some advice.“Drama school really does a number on people,” she said in a recent phone conversation. “It takes a while to get that out of your system.”“So it was mostly like, ‘Try to stop worrying about getting there,’” she added, “‘and know that you’re there already.’”Jacobson has ambitions to do more theater and to direct, regardless of medium. “I just want to be happy and fulfilled,” she said. Sabrina Santiago for The New York TimesJacobson readily acknowledges that her upbringing has been “totally privileged in a lot of ways,” yet she still has to audition for every role, she said. At 5-foot-7, with dark brown hair (her character’s blond tresses are a wig) and her mother’s stunning cheekbones, she cuts a striking figure even on the streets of New York, but she is generally able to walk them unrecognized. During auditions, she wonders whether casting directors know whose daughter she is, but she tries to keep those thoughts in the back of her mind.“I try to stay focused on the work,” she said.Our final stop that afternoon was a Christopher Culver exhibition at a TriBeCa gallery, Chapter NY, directed by a childhood friend, Alison Dillulio, whom she has known since the fifth grade. As we examined the charcoal and pastel drawings, talk naturally turned to her sculptor father.“I got my love of art from my dad,” she said. “He would set up a still life on our kitchen table and we’d each draw it.”“Though,” she added, “His were always better than mine.”As pedigrees go, having such celebrated parents seems rather intimidating, but like her character Marian, Jacobson balances her ambitions with an independent spirit. She wants to do more stage work. (She recently acted with all three of her siblings for the first time in a reading of Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” at the Williamstown Theater Festival.) She also aims to direct, in whatever medium. (This summer she was the assistant director of a play by Maia Novi, “Invasive Species,” at the Tank, in Midtown.)But Jacobson also wants to follow another piece of Baranski’s advice: Live in the moment.“That’s always been the goal,” she said, after hugging Dillulio goodbye. The rain was pouring down, and she opened the door to the Uber that would whisk her back to Brooklyn.“I just want to be happy and fulfilled.” More

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    Michael Blakemore, a Single-Season Double Tony Winner for Directing, Dies at 95

    Acclaimed in Britain, he had the unique distinction of winning awards for best musical and best play in 2000, for his Broadway revival of “Kiss Me, Kate” and “Copenhagen.”Michael Blakemore, an acclaimed stage director in Britain and the only one in Broadway history to win Tony Awards for both best play and best musical in the same season, died on Sunday. He was 95.His death was announced by his agents on Tuesday. It did not say where he died.Mr. Blakemore was nominated seven times for Tonys, notably for his productions of Peter Nichols’s “A Day in the Death of Joe Egg” in 1968 and Michael Frayn’s “Noises Off” in 1983.But it was the flair and care he brought to a revival of “Kiss Me, Kate,” the Cole Porter show about a troupe of players presenting a musical version of Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew,” and to a later Frayn play, “Copenhagen,” that won him the unique double of best direction of a musical and best direction of a play in 2000. (“Kiss Me, Kate” garnered five Tonys altogether, including for best revival of a musical and for best actor in a musical, given to Brian Stokes Mitchell.)Mr. Blakemore was born in Sydney, Australia, but built his career in Britain, first as an actor and later as one of Laurence Olivier’s associate directors at the National Theater in London.A scene from Mr. Blakemore’s 2009 Broadway production of Noël Coward’s comedy “Blithe Spirit.” From left were Deborah Rush, Rupert Everett, Angela Lansbury, Jayne Atkinson and Simon Jones.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThere, he staged some highly successful productions: “The National Health,” Mr. Nichols’s sardonic portrayal of British hospitals, and revivals of “The Front Page,” Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s satire of newspaper journalism, and Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” in which he directed Olivier.It had been widely thought that Mr. Blakemore would succeed Olivier, who stepped down as the National’s artistic director in 1973. Instead, the theater appointed Peter Hall, who had directed Mr. Blakemore in Stratford-upon-Avon during his acting years and with whom he had an intense rivalry. Their relationship soured, and Mr. Blakemore resigned in 1976.But he went on to prosper as a freelance director. He staged Mr. Nichols’s “Privates on Parade,” a burlesque musical comedy set in post-World War II Malaysia, for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and he began a long association with Mr. Frayn in 1980 when he directed his drama “Make and Break,” about a businessman who loses his soul.Then came Mr. Frayn’s “Noises Off,” an inventive farce about second-rate provincial stage actors performing a slapstick sex farce of their own. It transferred from London to Broadway in 1983 and ran for 553 performances there.“‘Noises Off’ couldn’t have arrived in New York a moment too soon,” Frank Rich wrote in The New York Times. The show, he said, was “as cleverly conceived and adroitly performed a farce as Broadway has seen in an age.”It was a triumph that, Mr. Blakemore later said, left him feeling that he had at long last ended “the bad dream the National had become.”Mr. Blakemore in London in 1983 during a production of Michael Frayn’s farce “Noises Off,” which transferred to Broadway that year.Peter Kevin Solness/Fairfax Media, via Getty ImagesMichael Howell Blakemore was born on June 18, 1928, in Sydney to Conrad Howell Blakemore, an eminent eye surgeon, and Una Mary (Litchfield) Blakemore. He said he was a descendant of John Quincy Adams through his American grandmother, who supported Michael’s artistic leanings while his father discouraged them. In the first of two memoirs, “Arguments With England” (2004), Mr. Blakemore described his father as an “unpredictable adversary” who disliked “scruffy bohemians and longhaired intellectuals.”Mr. Blakemore survived what he remembered as the “martinet discipline” of a boarding school, but not a course of study in medicine that his father had persuaded him to take at the University of Sydney. “I solved the problem of how not to be a doctor by failing all my third-year examinations,” he said.He was more fascinated with theater and film, especially American movies of the 1930s and ’40s, but it was seeing Olivier as Richard III in Sydney that inspired him to go to London to become an actor. He achieved that ambition thanks to another touring British actor, Robert Morley, who befriended the stage-struck Mr. Blakemore, employed him as his publicist and arranged for him to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1950.After graduating in 1952, Mr. Blakemore was cast in a series of regional repertory productions. Before long he was touring Europe as a Roman captain in Shakespeare’s “Titus Andronicus,” a revival starring Oliver and staged by the British director Peter Brook, who became an inspiration to Mr. Blakemore. Mr. Brook, he wrote, “had that concentration, in which empathy and detachment are somehow combined, that I was beginning to recognize as the mark of the good director.”By 1959 he was in Stratford performing more Shakespeare — as the First Lord in “All’s Well That Ends Well,” in small parts in an Olivier-led “Coriolanus,” and alongside Charles Laughton in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” directed by the fast-rising Mr. Hall.A scene in 2000 from Mr. Blakemore’s Tony-winning Broadway production of Mr. Frayne’s drama “Copenhagen.” Michael Cumpsty, center, played the physicist Werner Heisenberg; Philip Bosco played his fellow physicist Niels Bohr; and Blair Brown, left, played Bohr’s wife, Margrethe.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMr. Blakemore had a difficult relationship from the start with Mr. Hall, who he felt had an overly intellectual approach to directing. He also vied with Mr. Hall for the affections of a company member, Vanessa Redgrave: “Vanessa’s lover was my enemy,” he later wrote. “I would gladly have killed him.” He found himself unwanted when Mr. Hall began to transform Stratford’s summer repertory into the Royal Shakespeare Company.But by then Mr. Blakemore was determined to become a director, and after playing major roles in the Open Air Theater in London’s Regents Park, he was asked to perform and direct at the prestigious Citizens Theater in Glasgow. It was there that he had his first major success, in 1967, with “Joe Egg,” a darkly comic tale of parents coping with a severely disabled child. Mr. Blakemore had helped his friend Mr. Nichols rework the script, which had been rejected elsewhere. The play transferred to London and then to Broadway (with Albert Finney and Zena Walker) to great acclaim.Olivier invited Mr. Blakemore to the National in 1969, and he was appointed an associate director in 1971. When Mr. Hall arrived in 1973, he retained Mr. Blakemore in his position, but trouble soon followed.In his second memoir, “Stage Blood” (2013), Mr. Blakemore gave his version of a conflict that peaked at Mr. Hall’s London apartment, after he had presented a paper to his National colleagues accusing Mr. Hall of failing to consult with his subordinates and taking too much paid work outside the National. He failed to win his colleagues’ support, however, and, after telling Mr. Hall that he was “an extremely greedy man,” Mr. Blakemore resigned. (He later published, in the newspaper The Observer, what he called “The Claudius Diaries,” a satire that cast Olivier as the murdered king in “Hamlet” and Mr. Hall as his killer.)Mr. Blakemore accepting one of the two Tony Awards he won in 2000. He defined directing as “the imposition of harmony on a gathering of divergent talents.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMr. Blakemore was back at the National in 1997 and 2003 (Mr. Hall had stepped down in 1988), staging “Copenhagen” (which opened on Broadway in 2000) and “Democracy” (which transferred in 2004), productions that demonstrated his ability to bring clarity to extremely complex works. “Copenhagen” is centered on a discursive, argumentative conversation that the physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg had in 1941, in part about the building of an atomic bomb. “Democracy” centers on the West German chancellor Willy Brandt and an East German spy who falls in love with him.Wrestling with complexity was a strength that Mr. Blakemore also brought to “City of Angels,” an intricate Broadway musical with music by Cy Coleman, book by Larry Gelbart and lyrics by David Zippel, in 1989, earning a Tony nomination for his direction.Known for his calmness in the rehearsal room and, in his words, for “getting my way without anyone particularly noticing,” Mr. Blakemore defined directing as “the imposition of harmony on a gathering of divergent talents.”It was an ideal he strove to attain, usually successfully, in other Broadway productions, including the Coleman musical “The Life” in 1997, a belated world premiere for Mark Twain’s “Is He Dead?” in 2007 and, in 2009, a revival of Noël Coward’s “Blithe Spirit,” with Angela Lansbury at her funniest as the eccentric medium Madame Arcati.Mr. Blakemore was married twice: in 1960 to Shirley Bush, with whom he had a son, and, after their divorce in 1986, to Tanya McCallin, with whom he had two daughters. He and Ms. McCallin later separated, according to the news release that announced Mr. Blakemore’s death. He is survived by Ms. McCallin; his children, Conrad, Beatrice and Clemmie; and three grandchildren.Alex Marshall More

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    Andre Braugher, ‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’ and ‘Homicide’ Actor, Dies at 61

    Mr. Braugher was best known for playing stoic police officers in the two acclaimed television series. He died on Monday after a brief illness, his publicist said.Andre Braugher, an Emmy Award-winning actor best known for playing stoic police officers on the television shows “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” and “Homicide: Life on the Street,” died on Monday. He was 61.His death was confirmed on Tuesday by his longtime publicist Jennifer Allen. She said that Mr. Braugher, who lived in New Jersey, had died after a brief illness. She did not elaborate.Mr. Braugher had a breakout role as an intense cop on “Homicide,” a 1990s Baltimore crime show that chronicled the frustrations of policing a city beset with murders. He spent the last years of his life playing another serious police officer in “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” but in a very different register: The series was a sitcom, and he played his role as a police commander for laughs. He also earned plaudits for his portrayal of an openly gay cop who didn’t play to stereotypes.In between, he showed his range by playing parts as diverse as Shakespeare’s Henry V, a car salesman named Owen Thoreau Jr. and an executive editor of The New York Times grappling with the investigative reporting that would kick off the #MeToo era.“I’ve worked with a lot of wonderful actors,” the former Baltimore Sun journalist David Simon, who wrote the book that “Homicide” was based on years before he created the seminal crime drama “The Wire,” said in a post on social media. “I’ll never work with one better.”Mr. Braugher as Detective Frank Pembleton, right, and James Earl Jones in an episode of “Homicide.”Michael Ginsbury/NBCU Photo Bank, via Getty ImagesAndre Keith Braugher was born in Chicago on July 1, 1962, and grew up on the city’s West Side. His mother, Sally Braugher, worked for the United States Postal Service. His father, Floyd Braugher, was a heavy-equipment operator for the state of Illinois.“We lived in a ghetto,” he told The New York Times in 2014. “I could have pretended I was hard or tough and not a square. I wound up not getting in trouble. I don’t consider myself to be especially wise, but I will say that it’s pretty clear that some people want to get out and some people don’t. I wanted out.”Mr. Braugher attended St. Ignatius College Prep, a prestigious, Jesuit Catholic high school in Chicago, and later earned a scholarship to Stanford University. His father, who wanted his son to be an engineer, was furious when he gravitated to acting instead.“Show me Black actors who are earning a living,” his father told him at the time. “What the hell are you going to do, juggle and travel the country?”After graduating from Stanford with a major in math, Mr. Braugher earned a Masters of Fine Arts from the Juilliard School.One of his first professional acting roles was in “Glory,” an Oscar-winning 1989 film about Black soldiers fighting for the Union during the American Civil War. Its star-studded cast included Matthew Broderick, Morgan Freeman and Denzel Washington.“I’d rather not work than do a part I’m ashamed of,” Mr. Braugher told The Times that year. “I can tell you now that my mother will be proud of me when she sees me in this role.”Mr. Braugher, far left, next to Denzel Washington, in “Glory.” It was one of his first professional acting roles.Everett Collection, via Alamy Mr. Braugher, who insisted on living in New Jersey even though he often worked in California, would go on to star in many other films. Among the highlights were “Get on the Bus” (1996), about a group of Black men traveling to Washington for the Million Man March, and “City of Angels” (1998), about an angel (Nicolas Cage) who falls in love with a doctor (Meg Ryan).One of Mr. Braugher’s last film projects was “She Said” (2022), a drama about New York Times reporters’ efforts to document sexual abuse by the film mogul Harvey Weinstein. Mr. Braugher played Dean Baquet, the newspaper’s executive editor at the time.He also performed Shakespearean roles at the New York Shakespeare Festival and other venues. In 2014, he told The Times that he was saving the play “Pericles, Prince of Tyre,” for later in life.“I’ve never read it because I’d like to see one Shakespeare play that I don’t know what happens,” he said.Ms. Allen said that Mr. Braugher is survived by his wife, the actress Ami Brabson; his sons Michael, Isaiah and John Wesley; his brother, Charles Jennings; and his mother. His father died in 2011.His most recent project, “The Residence,” a miniseries about a murder in the White House, had been scheduled to resume shooting in January after shutting down because of the Writers Guild of America strike, the entertainment site Deadline reported.As Capt. Raymond Holt in “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.”FOX Image Collection, via Getty ImagesMr. Braugher was best known for his acting on acclaimed television series, which included the lead role of an unorthodox physician on the ABC drama “Gideon’s Crossing” (2000-2001) and the car salesman Owen Thoreau Jr. on the TNT series “Men of a Certain Age” (2009-2011). He also starred in the sixth and final season of the Paramount+ legal drama “The Good Fight” (2017-2022).On “Homicide,” a police procedural that ran from 1993 to 1998, Mr. Braugher played Frank Pembleton, a Baltimore homicide detective. It was a breakout role that earned him an Emmy Award in 1998, along with two Television Critics Association Awards in 1997 and 1998 for best actor in a drama series.In 2006, he won an Emmy for outstanding performance by a lead actor in a miniseries for his starring role as a gang leader in “Thief,” an FX miniseries about crime in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.And on “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” a comedy show that aired from 2013 to 2021, Mr. Braugher played Capt. Raymond Holt, a comically stern precinct commander. He received four Emmy nominations and won two Critics Choice Awards for best supporting actor in a comedy series.After the first few episodes of “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” aired, he told The New York Times that he saw parallels between that show and “Homicide.”“I don’t want to go way out on a limb about this, you know what I’m saying, and be challenged about it,” he said. “But I think they’re both workplace comedies. In essence it’s taken 20 years to come full circle, but I think they’re in the same place.”Rebecca Carballo More

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    The End of Rudy Giuliani? Kal Penn Is Fine With That.

    Giuliani’s lawyer told the jury in his defamation trial that awarding $43 million in damages would mean “the end of him.” Penn called that “a best-case scenario.”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.The End of Rudy GiulianiThis week saw the start of Rudy Giuliani’s defamation trial, with two Georgia election workers having sued him for $43 million in damages. In opening statements on Monday, Giuliani’s lawyer argued that owing such an amount would “be the end of him.”“The end of Rudy Giuliani? Oh, no, that sounds … awesome!” the “Daily Show” guest host Kal Penn said on Tuesday.“The end of Rudy Giuliani is, like, a best-case scenario. Why is Rudy’s lawyer threatening the jury with a good time?” — KAL PENN“The damages they award could be very damaging for Rudy. The plaintiffs are seeking up to $43 million, and Rudy doesn’t have that kind of cash. He can’t even afford full-length pants.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The election staffers that Giuliani spread these lies about are two Black women, one named Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss, and because of what he said about them, they went through absolute hell. According to their lawyer, they were flooded with accusations of treason and threats laden with expletives and racial slurs. They were forced into hiding, and on at least one occasion, Giuliani directed Trump supporters to Freeman’s home. Now, luckily, Rudy’s always too drunk to give good directions.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Look, I might feel more sympathy for Rudy if during his defamation trial, he wasn’t outside the courthouse doing more defamation. Like, does he get that every time you do a crime, it’s, like, its own thing? This guy is committing defamation like he’s got the unlimited plan — your crimes don’t roll over to next month, Rudy.” — KAL PENNThe Punchiest Punchlines (Can You Spot Me? Edition)“Today, President Biden hosted Ukrainian President Zelensky at the White House. When he asked for money and support, Zelensky said, ‘Sorry, Joe, I got my own problem.’” — JIMMY FALLON“It got a little awkward. Apparently, for a minute, Biden forgot who he was meeting with and offered to zero out Zelensky’s student loan balance.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Zelensky met with all 100 U.S. senators today to ask for additional funding, more humanitarian aid, and to show Ted Cruz how to grow a beard.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“At this point, the U.S. hasn’t agreed to give Ukraine any more funding. Then Zelensky saw the White House’s 98 Christmas trees and was like, ‘Yeah, I can tell money’s tight.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingSean Hayes popped by “Jimmy Kimmel Live” to deliver a message from the Gay Nutcracker, who is riling up some conservatives this holiday season.What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightDanielle Brooks will sit down with Seth Meyers to discuss her Golden Globe-nominated performance in “The Color Purple” on Wednesday’s “Late Night.”Also, Check This Out“The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show” stars two of America’s most famous drag queens.Santiago Felipe“The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show,” a live production stopping by New York City and starring the “RuPaul’s Drag Race” alums Jinkx Monsoon and BenDeLaCreme, features dancing candy canes, glittery gowns and songs about seasonal trauma. More

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    ‘Fargo’ Season 5, Episode 5 Recap: Tiger Moms

    Dot proves once again that she can’t be caged. She and Lorraine may have more in common than they think.Season 5, Episode 5: ‘The Tiger’Although her accent as Lorraine Lyon suggests Amy Archer, the fast-talking journalist who likes to tout her bona fides (“I’ll bet my Pulitzer on it!”) in Joel and Ethan Coens’s “The Hudsucker Proxy,” Jennifer Jason Leigh is projecting power as a kind of entitled boredom. She doesn’t merely walk into a room. She makes an entrance, like royalty. And when her commands are not heeded, she either calmly asks for the heads of those who defy her or she goes for the throat herself. She doesn’t raise her voice. She is steady, calculating and vaguely put out.There are two tigers, Lorraine and Dot, in this week’s drum-tight episode, even though a voice-over narrator, who speaks of tigers in a nature-doc parody throughout the show, seems to be referring only to Dot. And while that narration says nothing about a sisterhood between tigers, this episode engineers an unexpected alignment between the two, who have been at odds, to put it mildly. The opening sequence, which shows Lorraine deep in thought in her office, is a helpful little recap of where their relationship stands: She seems to recognize that Dot is formidable, a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” and genuinely committed to her son.But perhaps she is more ally than adversary.Two connected scenes appear to redirect Lorraine’s perspective on the situation. The first takes place at a lunch meeting between two bank executives who had been negotiating with her lawyer, Danish Graves, on a deal to sell to her company. (The numbers being “pretty sweet” nods to the sale Jerry Lundegaard tries to arrange in “Fargo” the movie.) Lorraine wants to expand her Redemption Services from the debt business to the credit business, because “everyone loves a lender, not so much the repo man.” But she quickly realizes that her counterparts across the table have no interest in dealing with a woman, so she leaves them with new numbers that are not sweet at all.Later, she gets a visit from Roy Tillman, who she suspects has come to shake her down for money to let the Dot situation go. When Roy surprises her with a demand to get Dot back as his biblical property, Lorraine’s mood shifts exactly as it did with the bank executives. His claim to have felt relief when Dot resurfaced gets a skeptical “uh huh” from Lorraine that’s a fine example of how well Leigh plays the tiger, with a laconic half-interest that masks a deadly ferocity.“Listen, slick,” she tells Roy, “nothing would make me happier than to put that woman in a box marked ‘return to sender,’” but she bristles at his retrograde demands. She and Dot may be at odds, but they’re aligned in fighting men who wish to own them.Based on what we know about Lorraine, she wouldn’t necessarily be unfriendly to a guy like Roy, a “constitutional sheriff” who stumps for limited government and probably has his own holiday pictures of the family posing with assault rifles. You would almost mistake her for a progressive in the way she sizes him up as a libertarian who abhors taxes and the social safety net, even though she operates a predatory business that surely benefits from weakened oversight. By the same token, she wouldn’t necessarily be unkind to the shady bankers in the earlier scene if they had negotiated with her in good faith. She just won’t be disrespected. Or underestimated.None of this is to say that Lorraine feels a sudden warmth toward her daughter-in-law. But at this point, Dot needs all the help she can get. She spends most of this gripping hour on the run after Lorraine and Danish claim power of attorney over her and have her committed to a psychiatric ward. By sticking Dot in a different wing at the same hospital where Wayne is recovering from “a serious electrical event,” the show engineers a tense set piece in which Dot pauses mid-escape to protect her husband from being kidnapped. It’s a sign of Roy’s respect for her cunning that he has abandoned a third attempt to capture her and decides to go after her family instead.This leads to yet another unlikely allegiance between women, as Dot turns to Olmstead for help protecting Scotty, who stands to be another target for Roy’s henchmen. Dot gambles wisely that Olmstead’s feelings on this case haven’t yet settled, despite her being the deputy who initially picked her up for tasing one of her colleagues. These are two women who have known imperfect marriages, after all, as Olmstead is reminded in the steady thumping of shanked golf shots that must pulse in her head like a migraine. As the Marge Gunderson of this season, Olmstead has sound instincts and a sympathetic nature that makes her persuadable.Lingering over all these developments is a big question that “Fargo” seems content in putting off for as long as possible: Who is Dot, anyway? Or, more to the point, who is Lorraine? How did this reedy housewife from suburban Minnesota acquire a certain set of skills like Liam Neeson in the “Taken” movies? For now, it’s helpful for Dot to have powerful women like Lorraine and Olmstead in her corner. But tigers are inscrutable, too.3 Cent StampsCutting to the wounded orderlies after Dot promises to maim them is a funny touch, but even better is when Juno Temple lets out a Minnesotan “shoot” once she has been strapped to the gurney.A fine mic drop moment from Lorraine, who likens Roy’s desire for “freedom with no responsibility” to his wanting to be a baby, though again, she would probably pull the lever for him at the ballot box.Wayne’s bathroom talk (“I just went. Poop came out.”) suggests the path to neurological health remains long for him.Lorraine implores Olmstead to look for Dot with the line, “Are you going to look for her, or are you going to sit drinking coffee in the one house in the state where I know that girl ain’t at?” Coen-heads will recognize that line from the great Trey Wilson in “Raising Arizona.”Dot drives away in a car with DLR plates. Another “Fargo” classic. More

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    in Theater

    Britain’s Friendliest Bear to Hit the Stage in ‘Paddington: The Musical’

    The star of a long-running book series and two films will hit the stage in a show currently being developed in Britain, producers said.Paddington, the well-traveled bear known for his floppy red hat and love for orange marmalade sandwiches, is taking on yet another venture in 2025: the theater.A stage musical about the friendly bear is in development and is set to open in Britain in 2025, the show’s producers announced on Tuesday. It will be adapted from the book series that made him famous, as well as the two live-action films, “Paddington” and “Paddington 2.”The working title is “Paddington: The Musical,” and it “is currently undergoing a period of development and workshops,” according to a news release.Paddington was first introduced in a book series by Michael Bond that follows the good-natured bear who emigrates from Peru to England and is taken in by the Brown family. Paddington is sweet, curious and prone to mishaps.The first book in the series, “A Bear Called Paddington,” was published in October 1958. More than 35 million copies of Paddington books have been sold worldwide.The live-action feature films, with Ben Whishaw as the voice of Paddington, premiered in Britain in 2014 and 2017. The first film depicts Paddington’s arrival in London and the early stages of his relationship with the Brown family. In the second film, Paddington attempts to get his Aunt Lucy a gift and ends up in prison, where, eventually, there is music, cake and dancing.A third film, “Paddington in Peru,” is set to be released in Britain on Nov. 8, 2024. Its U.S. release date is Jan. 17, 2025.The stage show’s music and lyrics will be written by Tom Fletcher, a founding member of the popular British band McFly and a well-known children’s author. The musical’s book will be by Jessica Swale, whose play “Nell Gwynn” won an Olivier Award for best new comedy in 2016.The musical’s director will be Luke Sheppard, who has worked on “Just for One Day,” “What’s New Pussycat?” and “Rent.”The musical is being produced by Sonia Friedman Productions, Studiocanal and Eliza Lumley Productions on behalf of Universal Music UK. The producers did not provide details on the plot and said the cast would be announced later.“The magic of Paddington is that, through his wide-eyed innocence, he sees the very best in humanity,” Ms. Friedman and Ms. Lumley said in a joint statement, “reminding us that love and kindness can triumph if we open our hearts and minds to one another.” More