Eliana Willis

More stories

  • 125 Shares99 Views

    in Theater

    To Become Oscar Levant, Sean Hayes Revisited His First Role

    The version of Sean Hayes who arrived at a Midtown Manhattan rehearsal space on a Wednesday morning last month was the one everyone knows from his years as a television star on the series “Will & Grace” and as an entertainer. The effervescent Hayes tossed off a quip about the perceived snobbishness of the Hamptons. (“It’s like Shake Shack,” he said. “Anybody can go. It’s not that fancy.”) With similar ease, he sat at a piano and played a few measures of “Rhapsody in Blue.”But the Hayes who a short while later entered through the door of a set made to look like a 1950s-era TV dressing room was markedly different. His eyes were squinted and his posture was hunched. He occasionally twitched his head or shook his hands. He spoke with the defeated voice of a jowly man, sometimes dropping a one-liner (“Gee, I wonder who died,” he said, contemplating the flowers in his room) and sometimes becoming so vehement that his face turned red and a vein bulged from his neck.This is how Hayes alters himself to play Oscar Levant, the pianist and raconteur, in the new Broadway play “Good Night, Oscar,” which opens on April 24 at the Belasco Theater. Levant, who died in 1972, was as renowned for his interpretations of George Gershwin’s music and his roles in films like “An American in Paris” as he was for his dyspeptic appearances on TV game shows and talk shows, jesting ruefully about his struggles with mental health and prescription drug addiction.The play, written by Doug Wright and directed by Lisa Peterson, imagines Levant on a fateful day in 1958 when he has finagled his way out of a psychiatric hospital to be interviewed on Jack Paar’s “Tonight Show.”Beneath its Eisenhower-era period details, “Good Night, Oscar” sets out to comment on enduring ideas about the burdens of celebrity and creative genius. Whether it succeeds will depend largely on Hayes’s ability to embody the dour Levant, a sort of public neurotic who may no longer be familiar to contemporary audiences.Oscar Levant circa 1947. He’d crack wise about the fragile state of his mental health, and once said, in answering a question about what he did for exercise, “I stumble and then I fall into a coma.”FPG/Archive Photos, via Getty ImagesBut as Hayes explained, these kinds of challenges are exactly what makes the play compelling to him.“If you’re not scaring yourself as an actor, what are you doing?” he said. “If everything’s safe, then the results will show that.” With this play, he added, “I’m going to swing for the fences. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, I’m still alive, right?”Hayes, 52, was sitting in a small room at the rehearsal space. He wore a zip-up sweatshirt and playfully shook his hair, a mixture of copper and silver strands, which he has grown out so it can be styled like Levant’s wavy coif.Though he rose to fame in his Emmy Award-winning role as Jack McFarland, the irrepressible “Will & Grace” sidekick, Hayes has his own complicated history as a pianist. When people in the industry are surprised to discover his musical roots, Hayes reminds them — with mock chagrin — that he played piano when he hosted the 2010 Tony Awards. “I’m like, did you not watch the Tonys?” he said. “I thought we all watched them together.”The youngest child of a mother who raised him on her own, Hayes started receiving piano training at age 5 from a neighbor in Glen Ellyn, Ill. (When his mother asked if he wanted lessons, Hayes said he replied, “I’m not doing anything else.”)By his teens, Hayes was playing Mozart sonatas and performing in competitions. But during high school and college (and a stint as music director at a dinner theater), he could feel himself being pulled away by the allure of acting — and weighed down by the pressure of classical performance.During concerts, Hayes said he found himself thinking: “The notes are the notes. These are the notes Beethoven wrote. These are the notes Chopin wrote. These are the notes Rachmaninoff wrote. And if you miss one of those notes, everybody notices.”With acting, he said, “I released myself of that pressure — and found a new pressure of always having to deliver on good material.”Similar anxieties — though amplified — prey upon the Levant depicted in “Good Night, Oscar.” Wright, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of “I Am My Own Wife,” described his incarnation of Levant as a Jazz Age Salieri, in thrall to George Gershwin and crushed by a self-imposed perception that he never measured up to his idol.Levant’s interviews with Paar are their own little sliver of TV history — shocking to audiences in their day and still potent for their candor. Levant would crack wise to Paar about his hospitalizations, the prescriptions he was taking or abusing, and the fragile state of his mental health. In a 1963 appearance, Paar asked him what he did for exercise. Levant answered, “I stumble and then I fall into a coma.”When Levant returned to the program a few months later, the host opened the show by telling his audience that Levant was “much better now” and that he would never “use or bring somebody out on this stage who was not completely well.”During that interview, Levant said his recent behavior had been “impeccable”: “I’ve been unconscious for the past six months,” he explained. “I’ve been doing extensive research in inertia.”Hayes starred with Debra Messing, left, and Eric McCormack, center, in “Will & Grace,” playing the irrepressible Jack McFarland.THOUGH FRIENDS HAD SUGGESTED he consider playing Levant, Hayes was not especially familiar with the pianist. As it emerged in 2009 that DreamWorks was developing a possible Gershwin biopic, intended for the director Steven Spielberg, in which Levant was a minor character, Hayes said he went so far as to commission his own hair and makeup test to see if he could at least look like Levant. (The film was not produced.)As he learned more about Levant, Hayes said he began to feel an affinity for him. “The mental health issues are in my family,” Hayes said. “Addictions are in my family. I thought, maybe I can wrap my head around this thing. As an actor, that’s what we do.”After Hayes’s Tony-nominated run in the 2010 Broadway revival of “Promises, Promises,” he and the show’s executive producer, Beth Williams, began discussing a possible Levant project for the stage. They later brought in Wright, who had been the screenwriter of the Gershwin film.Wright said he, too, was fascinated by Levant, having grown up with “a really entertaining, outrageous, brilliant father who was severely bipolar and refused medication, so Oscar’s mood swings were really familiar to me.”After a lunch meeting where Hayes demonstrated how he would play Levant, Wright said, he left “more passionate about it than ever before.”Asked how he gets himself into character, Hayes told a story of himself as a novice actor, playing an elf in a Kenny Rogers Christmas stage show. As the director increasingly asked the elf-actors to take on more of the duties of stagehands, Hayes said he told her, “You know we’re not really elves — we’re just playing elves.”In similar fashion, Hayes said, “I’m not really Oscar Levant. I’m playing Oscar Levant. This is my interpretation of Oscar Levant.”Long before the play’s 2022 debut at the Goodman Theater in Chicago, Hayes said he had been working on Levant’s voice, mannerisms, tics and physical bearing. He continues to refresh himself on those elements even now, though Hayes said he is not one of those actors who remains in character outside of rehearsals and performances.Reviewing that production for the Chicago Tribune, Chris Jones wrote that Hayes “displays talents here most of his fans will have no idea he had at his disposal,” adding that he delivers “a stunner of a lead performance: moving, empathetic, deeply emotional and slightly terrifying.”The announcement last year of the play’s Broadway transfer drew a rebuke from the playwright David Adjmi, who wrote in a Facebook post that he had persuaded Hayes to take on Levant and was commissioned by Williams to write a play for the actor.When Adjmi refused to “lighten the material,” he said Williams and Hayes replaced him with Wright while using their option on Adjmi to prevent him from further developing his play.At that time, the “Good Night, Oscar” producers said Hayes and Adjmi had parted ways over “different creative visions.” Hayes, in his interview, declined to revisit the matter. “We’ve already responded to that,” he said.Wright said that he had spoken with Adjmi “to ensure that it would not be awkward if I proceeded with the project, and he couldn’t have been more generous.”“I have to now perform in front of a live audience,” Hayes said of playing the piano onstage. “But it’s different this time. Because I don’t care if I miss a note.”Luisa OpaleskyAdjmi wrote in an email that though he felt Hayes and Williams’s actions were “morally objectionable,” he told Wright that “it was not my place to tell him or any writer what job to take.” Adjmi said he later learned from his agents that Wright had taken the job.THERE REMAINS THE QUESTION of whether Hayes felt a personal connection to Levant that made him want to play him, but the actor seemed comfortable cultivating this air of ambiguity.Jason Bateman, a longtime friend of Hayes’s and a co-host of their popular SmartLess podcast, said he did not necessarily notice that Hayes was striving to play damaged dramatic figures.“If you’re asking, have I sensed a darker, more mysterious side of him, I would say no,” Bateman said. “Being able to sincerely be in a place of joy, openness and honesty already takes a great deal of emotional and spiritual intelligence.”Having made his own transition from comedies like “Arrested Development” to thrillers like “Ozark,” Bateman said it can be sufficiently satisfying for an actor “just sticking around long enough to show audiences the rest of what’s in your trick trunk.”Wright proposed an explanation rooted in a connection he felt he shared with Hayes. “We both have cultivated some pretty affable, convivial exteriors,” Wright explained. “But I think that’s a survival mechanism, being gay men in a hostile world and needing to be liked, to keep ourselves safe a lot of times. That conviviality conceals some darker waters, and that’s how he accesses Oscar.”Hayes remained coy. “In order to play the darker side of Oscar, I do tap into certain aspects and experiences of my life,” he said, “but those are between me and Oscar.”In the rehearsal studio, Hayes said he found it fitting and illuminating that, having set aside his musical career so long ago, he should choose a role that requires him to play piano in the guise of someone filled with self-doubt about his own proficiency with the instrument.“I have to now perform in front of a live audience,” he said. “But it’s different this time. Because I don’t care if I miss a note.”If Hayes makes a mistake, he can always say that he was doing it in character. “It’s organic to the material in the play,” he said. “And I’ve finally realized, nobody’s perfect.” More

  • 100 Shares99 Views

    in Television

    ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ Takes Its Final Curtsy

    In its final season, the pioneering Amazon hit wanted to go out the way it came in: fabulously, in heels and with a dizzying words-to-minutes ratio.Rachel Brosnahan during filming for the final season of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” As the hit Amazon comedy wraps up, her character finally makes good.Heather Sten for The New York TimesOn a morning in mid-October, on the set of the Amazon comedy “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” set dressers readied the grimy Midtown office of Susie Myerson, the talent manager played with a newsboy cap and signature glare by Alex Borstein. An animal wrangler oversaw a flock of pigeons outside a false window as a scenic artist painted on their droppings. In a haze of herbal cigarette smoke, the actors — Borstein, Alfie Fuller and Rachel Brosnahan — ran the scene again, again, again, until the pauses vanished and the dialogue sang.If you have seen “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” the first streaming show to win an Emmy for best comedy series (one of 20 Emmys overall), you will suspect, correctly, that the lighting was gorgeous, the costumes sumptuous, the hair and makeup luxuriant. Each pigeon gleamed. (The fake excreta looked very nice, too.) A show that has never met a situation it couldn’t prettify and frill, that’s “Mrs. Maisel.”In this scene, Midge, Brosnahan’s exuberant comedian, receives news of a long-awaited break.“Are you serious?” Midge asks once Susie fills her in.“I’m ‘Antigone’ without the laughs,” Susie replies.As always, the final season features remarkably detailed production design. “We leaned into the vibrancy of the time,” said Amy Sherman-Palladino, the show’s creator.Heather Sten for The New York TimesHeather Sten for The New York TimesHeather Sten for The New York TimesSo yes, in its final season, which premieres on Friday and is set in 1961, Midge Maisel, the only Upper West Side doyenne to work blue, finally makes good. (Just when, where and how? You’ll have to ask a pigeon.) Amy Sherman-Palladino, who created the show, and her husband, Dan Palladino, an executive producer, always imagined that it would end this way — brisk and bouncy and dressed to thrill.“Everyone knew Midge was going to be famous,” Palladino said. “This would have been a very disappointing journey for people to take if she just decides to be a housewife.”“A very funny, fabulous housewife,” his wife amended. “But that wasn’t the ride.”The ride, instead, was an ascending swirl of jewel tones and kick pleats and a chirpy soundtrack (three of those Emmys were for outstanding music supervision), a midcentury fever dream in candy coating. Underneath that coating was the story of a woman — actually two women, including Susie — triumphing in a male-dominated industry through moxie and native skill.The pilot for “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” was shot in 2016, not so long ago as the calendar goes but a lifetime in terms of streaming content. Even while making it, Sherman-Palladino and Palladino (“Gilmore Girls,” “Bunheads”) thought they might have a hit.“It was a show that was kind of popping off of our monitors while we were shooting it,” Palladino said. But a couple of decades in the business had taught him that all the popping in the world couldn’t guarantee that executives would OK it or that an audience would find it.The series tracked two women triumphing in a male-dominated industry: Midge and her manager, Susie Myerson, played by Alex Borstein. “It was exciting to see a three-dimensional female character and not just an empty sidekick,” she said.Heather Sten for The New York TimesBrosnahan, then 26 and best known for a multiepisode arc as a doomed call girl in “House of Cards,” also had doubts. After years spent, as she put it in a recent interview, “crying and dying,” she could hardly believe that the creators had trusted her to play a standup comic.“It felt daunting and impossible, petrifying and exhilarating,” she said. But she worried that a pilot about a woman who knew her way around a sweetheart neckline and a casserole dish would be perceived as too niche.“I remember finishing it and going, ‘But who’s going to watch it?’” she said.People did watch the pilot, though because Amazon keeps its viewing numbers secret, the creators have never known how many. Enough, anyway, for Amazon to give the show a two-season order, its first ever multiseason commitment. Its Prime Video service has gone through several paradigm shifts since, but year after year (and Emmy after Emmy), the company kept faith with “Mrs. Maisel.”“You would expect, at some point, someone to go, ‘Do they really need that many skirts?’” Sherman-Palladino said. “It never happened.”Heather Sten for The New York TimesHeather Sten for The New York TimesThe creators said they had been given whatever they needed to create the world of the series. “We felt a very strong sense of pride about this project that we never experienced before,” said Dan Palladino, an executive producer. Heather Sten for The New York TimesBut all skirts have to come to an end sometime. Palladino described the decision to conclude the show with its fifth season as a mutual one.“It became a mutual decision once we were told it was the last season,” his wife clarified. In these last episodes, while tying off any dangling plot strands, they wanted to give viewers a sense not only of how Midge finally breaks into the big time but also what that break ultimately means for the show’s main characters. The nine-episode final season is larded with flash-forwards, designed to show what becomes of Midge and her extended family.These time jumps lend the show a gravitas it has not always offered. “Life is a series of choices, and some of them are stupid choices and some great choices,” Sherman-Palladino explained. “Part of what those flash-forwards did for us is show the consequences of the choices that she did make.”Until now, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” has largely presented Midge’s arc as a dauntless upward climb. When her marriage shattered like so much dropped Fiestaware, she pulled herself onto a nightclub stage and she has stayed onstage ever since.Midge’s marriage ended early in the series but her former husband, Joel, played by Michael Zegen (left, with Joel Johnstone) remained a key character.Heather Sten for The New York Times“I have found her resilience inspiring and her courage to keep confronting change inspiring,” Brosnahan said. But did that resilience and that courage come at some cost? This final season, however breezy, confirms that it did.Earlier seasons have glossed over Midge’s neglect of her children. This final one strips some of that gloss away, even as it emphasizes the robust support system — an engaged father, a hypercompetent housekeeper, two sets of devoted grandparents — that the youngest Maisels enjoy.And yet, according to the creators, Midge’s success or failure as a mother wasn’t especially important. “I wasn’t setting out to do a story about a mother,” Sherman-Palladino said. “This was a story about a woman discovering her own ambition in a time when women were not supposed to have ambition.”Brosnahan echoed this. “I don’t know that it matters what kind of mom she is,” she said, noting that the go-getting men of prestige television have not been subject to the same critique. “We just didn’t have this conversation at this volume about Don Draper or even Walter White.”The show allowed many people beyond Midge to fulfill their personal ambitions. Borstein, who won two Emmys for the show, had nearly quit the business when she received the script for the pilot. She admired Susie’s toughness and also her vulnerability.Luke Kirby during filming. The final episodes will reveal both how Midge breaks into the big time and what that break ultimately means for the show’s main characters.Heather Sten for The New York TimesHeather Sten for The New York Times“It was exciting to see a three-dimensional female character and not just an empty sidekick,” she said. And she saw parallels between her own career and those of Susie and Midge.“It rang really true for me,” she said. “I’ve always had to machete my own path.”Palladino and Sherman-Palladino never had to resort to machetes. But they did describe “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” as the first project on which they had been given every resource that they needed, the chance to realize nearly every dream.“We felt a very strong sense of pride about this project that we never experienced before,” Palladino said. They are particularly delighted with the show’s exhaustive, spirited production design.“We leaned into the vibrancy of the time,” Sherman-Palladino said. “The cars were beautiful. The [expletive] toasters were gorgeous. People really did dress like that.”To walk through the production studio, even during the final weeks of the shoot, was to feel immersed in this fictional world. A bar set included custom-printed matchbooks on the hostess stand. There were coordinated dishes on kitchen shelves, signed photos and engraved awards in the offices of a late-night talk show.Reid Scott, who plays the host of that show, marveled at the level of detail. A new addition to “Mrs. Maisel,” he noticed during his first day on set that every piece of paper in every typewriter had custom letterhead.“The camera is never going to focus on what this person in the secretary pool is typing, yet they went all the way,” he said in a phone interview. “It infuses the entire production, and it makes everyone really step up.”Even stars of the show were surprised by the level of detail. “It infuses the entire production, and it makes everyone really step up,” Reid Scott said.Heather Sten for The New York TimesHeather Sten for The New York TimesHeather Sten for The New York TimesSaying goodbye to all of that letterhead wasn’t easy. The creators arranged for the final week to require the entire cast. Borstein said that there was a bet going to see who would cry first. (She lost.) There were tears in rehearsal, tears walking to rehearsal, tears at the coffee station.“Grown men crying all over the place,” Sherman-Palladino said. Brosnahan said that even on days when members of the main cast weren’t required, they would show up anyway, just to be together.The final day was especially wrenching. “We didn’t want to wrap,” said Tony Shalhoub, who won his own Emmy for playing Midge’s father, Abe Weissman. “We didn’t want to finish that last shot.”There were wrap gifts, too many. (“Because I believe in buying love,” Sherman-Palladino said.) And wrap parties. But it still hurt, though sometimes in a bittersweet way.“The end of the show, it leaves a hole in my heart,” Borstein said. “It’s difficult, but it’s also a wonderful empty space. Because I know what once filled it, and I know what I’m capable of.”Sherman-Palladino and Palladino feel that same poignancy, even as they’re working on a new show. (They might have talked more about it, but an Amazon publicist came on the line to politely dissuade them.) Mostly they feel grateful — for the cast, the crew, the skirts, the sense of shared endeavor.“Many people have lovely careers and never get to experience this kind of unity,” Sherman-Palladino said. “We’re very lucky. If we get hit by a bus right now, we’re fine.”She kidded that this was how “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” actually closes — with style, with flair and in multiple vehicular homicides.“Giant buses come out and run over everybody,” she cracked. “It’s just a blood bath.”“It’s the ending we dreamed of,” Palladino said.In the end, “this was a story about a woman discovering her own ambition in a time when women were not supposed to have ambition,” Sherman-Palladino said.Heather Sten for The New York Times More

  • 125 Shares119 Views

    in Television

    Jamila Norman From “Homegrown” on Why She Recycles Nearly Everything

    Jamila Norman — a.k.a. Farmer J from the Magnolia Network series “Homegrown” — has a simple home-décor philosophy: “I don’t like buying new stuff.”Jamila Norman has a few houseplants, for the record, all thriving, at her home in the West End neighborhood of Atlanta. But although she has room out back, there is no garden.“My friends shame me for it,” Ms. Norman said. “They shame me for it all the time.”Is she ashamed? She is not. Are those friends kidding? Let us hope.Ms. Norman, 43, a former environmental engineer for the State of Georgia, is the owner of Patchwork City Farms, a 1.2-acre spread in the middle of the city that produces organic fruit, vegetables and herbs flowers for restaurants and local farmers’ markets.She has brought her knowledge and can-do spirit to full flower as the host of the Magnolia Network series “Homegrown.” On each episode, Ms. Norman, also known as Farmer J, helps someone transform an often wild-and-woolly outdoor space into a beautiful, functional backyard farm. (The show’s third season premiered on April 1.)Ms. Norman spent her early years in Queens, New York, eventually moving with her family to Connecticut, then to Georgia. When she got to the University of Georgia, in Athens, Ga., she volunteered with a Boys and Girls Club, sometimes assisting with planting projects.When Jamila Norman is not helping families transform outdoor space into productive gardens, she plants herself at her century-old Craftsman house in Atlanta. “I was looking for an older house, high ceilings, fireplaces, all that good stuff,” she said.Dustin Chambers for The New York Times“I did not grow up gardening at all,” she said. “But while we were living in New York, we spent extended periods of time in Trinidad, where my father is from. That experience taught me to love the outdoors.”A couple of Ms. Norman’s friends at college had property out in the country, where she’d go to “have some hippie moments.”“So I had always kind of dabbled in nature,” she said. “And I’m a double earth sign.” (Specifically, Taurus sun and Taurus rising.)Astrological imperatives notwithstanding, things didn’t go beyond dabbling until 2008, a few years after Ms. Norman moved to Atlanta from Athens — a long-deferred dream — and began helping out in the garden of a church. Later, she leased land for a farm at a middle school. In 2016, she bought the allotment that became the home of Patchwork City Farms. Conveniently, it’s a five-minute drive from her house.“I knew I wanted to be in the West End,” Ms. Norman said. “I was in the neighborhood a lot when I was in high school, because they had a lot of awesome cultural festivals there.”She and her husband (they have since divorced), looked at an array of properties. One place, a Craftsman house built in the 1920s, captivated Ms. Norman while she was sieving through the internet.“I Googled it and sent a link to my Realtor and said, ‘Hey, can I see this house?” she recalled. “I fell for it online, and when I saw it in person, l was like, ‘This is my house.’”Ms. Norman “gravitates toward turquoise,” as the slipcovers on the sofas make clear. Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesJamila Norman, 43Occupation: Farmer, food activist and host of the television series “Homegrown”D. I. Why: “I was like, ‘I’m going to strip the molding all over the house.’ It took months just to do my bedroom using nontoxic stuff like the stuff that’s made from orange peels. Then I was like, ‘Let’s paint everything white.’ So much for all my ambition.”What made it so were the high ceilings and oversized windows, the three fireplaces, the crown and chair molding, and the big, open rooms — plenty of space for her three sons, now young adults. The new roof and the updated electrical and plumbing systems added to the appeal.It’s no big deal that the nails in the old oak floorboards in the living room sometimes pop up, requiring Ms. Norman to knock them back into place. She relishes the sense of history and continuity. “You can tell the house was built in stages,” she said, “because the floors in the newer parts are tongue and groove.”Ms. Norman is also decorating in stages. She has hung the panel of Kuba cloth that she bought years ago from a vendor at a street festival. Also on display are shells from Jamaica, rocks from Greece and artwork by her children and one of her sisters.But her attic bulges with the rugs and lamps and tables she has been collecting over the past decade or so and holding back until the moment is right. “I have boys, and when you have boys, you can’t do all your good things until they’re gone,” she said. “I tell them, ‘As soon as you move out, it’s going to be a new house.’”Ms. Norman makes her own soap. “We grew up as natural as possible, so I make all my own body products,” she said.Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesTo put it in horticultural terms, Ms. Norman’s philosophy of home décor tilts more toward perennials than annuals. “I don’t like buying new stuff,” she said. “I like to find stuff that’s already out there and still useful. It’s about finding value in old things. It’s a hodgepodge, but it’s cute.”An engineering drafting table that Ms. Norman found on Craigslist, for example, was repurposed as the countertop for the kitchen island. The spiral-shaped coat rack near the front door was a vintage sale find. The table, chairs and rug in the dining room were sourced at an estate sale. A friend who was moving passed down the curio cabinet. The desk cabinet sits on a desk that belonged to Ms. Norman’s former husband.Some while back, she spotted three steamer trunks sitting on a neighbor’s porch and made a successful offer. The trunks now store pieces of the quilt she is taking apart to reassemble (when she can find the time) and the essential oils she uses for the homemade skin-care and hair-care products she makes for herself and a few fortunate friends and relatives.“When people in my neighborhood see me, they say, ‘Oh, there’s the farmer girl,’” Ms. Norman said.Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesOne of the two pullout sofas in the living room came from a friend; the other was a rare store purchase. Thanks to Ms. Norman’s mother, Raabia, both were recently refreshed with turquoise slipcovers.“She said, ‘Your couches are looking raggedy. I got you something.’ She comes in and arranges things and rearranges them,” Ms. Norman said fondly.This regard for the old and well used is elemental. Ms. Norman connects it to the land that is her livelihood and her love.“It’s about tending to things,” she said. “The oak floorboards came from somebody’s forest. The bricks — they’re from the earth. It’s an extension of nature in a built environment.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. More

  • 125 Shares199 Views

    in Television

    Stephen Colbert Isn’t Fazed by the News About Clarence Thomas

    “‘Wow, I can’t believe Clarence Thomas did something inappropriate,’ said a woolly mammoth reanimated after being frozen in the Siberian permafrost,” Colbert joked.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.Red Flags on the S.S. MoneybagsClarence Thomas, the Supreme Court justice, has come under fire for accepting lavish trips and gifts from Harlan Crow, a wealthy conservative donor, without disclosing that he had done so.“‘Wow, I can’t believe Clarence Thomas did something inappropriate,’ said a woolly mammoth reanimated after being frozen in the Siberian permafrost,” Stephen Colbert joked on Monday.“Crow’s relationship with Justice Thomas was more than just a few voyages on the S.S. Moneybags. These luxury trips happened virtually every year for more than two decades, including trips around the world on Crow’s superyacht, flying on Crow’s G5 jet, and visits to Crow’s various estates, including one in the Adirondacks, which has a three-boat garage. Well, yeah, a busy family’s got to have three boats — what if the kids sleep late and miss the school yacht?” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Thomas insists that these gifts from Crow don’t count because of their personal relationship, saying, ‘We have been friends for over 25 years.’ OK, but you’ve been on the Supreme Court for 31 years. ‘Oh, it’s not a bribe — he’s my friend.’ ‘Oh, how’d you guys meet?’ ‘Oh, he was bribing me.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“He’s your close personal friend that you know everything about, so I guess it would be really embarrassing to learn that Harlan Crow has a collection of Adolf Hitler artifacts and Nazi memorabilia, including two paintings by Hitler. Ladies, take note. That is a red flag.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Crow also has a display of swastika-embossed linens. Yeah, yeah. It all comes with the Monsters of History fine dining set: You get the Nazi Napkins, the Pol Pots and Pans, and the Osama bin Ladle.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Easter Monday Edition)“At the White House this morning, the Bidens hosted the annual egg roll. Why they do this the day after Easter, I don’t know. Jesus is like, ‘I have to rise again again?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It’s a tradition going back over a century, to when children were invited to search for treats in Chester A. Arthur’s muttonchops.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Once again, this year’s theme was ‘Egg-ucation,’ although Biden also made time to address the Egg-conomy.’” — JAMES CORDEN“But this is not the first time they’ve repeated themes. You know, when Trump was president, the Easter theme was ‘Eggomaniac’ for three years in a row.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingOn the “Late Show,” Brian Cox shared some thoughts on his character, Logan Roy, after this week’s explosive episode of “Succession.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightThe comedy legend Carol Burnett will appear on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on Tuesday.Also, Check This OutMarilyn Minter at her studio pictured with “Mickalene Thomas,” 2022-23, with large enamel on metal painting at right.Thea Traff for The New York TimesAt 74, the artist Marilyn Minter’s ambitious new show includes portraits featuring women she admires, such as Gloria Steinem, Monica Lewinsky and Mickalene Thomas. More

  • 138 Shares179 Views

    in Theater

    Review: ‘White Girl in Danger’ Flips the Script on Soap Operas

    Michael R. Jackson’s wild new musical satire is packed with a thesis’ worth of insight about fate and representation.What comes to mind when you think of soap operas? Amnesia, murders, cliffhangers, catfights?Think bigger.Even judged by the standards of “All My Children” and “Dynasty,” Michael R. Jackson’s satirical soap musical “White Girl in Danger,” which opened on Monday at the Tony Kiser Theater, is a wild, raunchy, overstuffed tale.Sure, it features amnesia and the rest, and mile-a-minute jokes, but the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “A Strange Loop” has also packed the nearly three hours of “White Girl” — way too long — with a thesis’ worth of insight and argument. By the time you get to the dildo slapping and the “Hairspray” parody, followed by the anguished yet hopeful finale, you no longer know what hilarious, despairing, muddle of a planet you’re on.Surely that was the plan. “White Girl in Danger,” directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz, is simultaneously set in a fictional soap opera world called Allwhite and a metaphorical one inhabited by ideas. Allwhite is dominated, of course, by its white characters: the high-school mean girls Meagan, Maegan and Megan (abused, bulimic, druggy), their mothers (smothering, manipulative, viperish) and their boyfriends (psychotic, supportive, dissolute). Among the girls especially, privilege is assumed; it allows them to “choose their own adventures.”Their priorities are a little off, though. The most pressing issue they face as the insanely catchy title song kick-starts the action is not so much the discovery, every few minutes, of another white schoolmate’s body in the Allwhite woods. It’s the way the deaths threaten their hopes of winning an upcoming battle of the bands. Who will be left to play autoharp?The Black inhabitants of Allwhite have different problems. The Allwhite Writer (represented at first by thunderbolts and a voice-over) has consigned them to the “Blackground,” there to serve as friends, helpers and (in inexplicable historical flashbacks) enslaved people picking cotton. Mostly they are resigned to their fate; it may not be very fulfilling but, except for “Police Violence Story Time,” it’s relatively safe.Latoya Edwards, center, as Keesha Gibbs, a soap opera “Blackground” player who wants a bigger role.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThat’s not good enough for Keesha Erica Kane Gibbs (Latoya Edwards). Her ambition is to transcend the Blackground and get an Allwhite story of her own, even if it means becoming a victim or a villain: “whichever one works.”This puts Keesha in conflict with the other Black characters, especially her mother, Nell Carter Gibbs (Tarra Conner Jones), who takes a more conservative approach as she rises from cafeteria lady to nurse and beyond. Also disapproving is Keesha’s D’Angelo-like ex-boyfriend, Tarik Blackwell (Vincent Jamal Hooper), who says she’s “hooked on that assimilation crack.” More fatefully, her schemes set her on a collision course with the Allwhite Writer himself.In Jackson’s complex and cross-linked encyclopedia of ideas, Nell and Keesha stand for a multitude of distorted representations of Black women in white culture, soap operatic or otherwise. He loves those representations but also loathes them, usually in the same breath; the ambivalence is the motor of the show’s satire, which scathes and kisses.Nell is the more familiar case: She’s the “Mammy” figure from “Gone With the Wind” and the title character from “Caroline, or Change,” even though they are nothing alike. The 11 o’clock number Jackson gives her, a ringer for “I Know Where I’ve Been” from “Hairspray,” provides the same full-throated thrill (in Jones’s titanic performance) as Motormouth Maybelle’s did in the earlier show, even as Jackson punctures its uplift by recasting it as “That’s Why I Kill.”And in Keesha’s quest for “an interblacktional bleminist movement that will liberate all Blackgrounds,” Jackson needles the jargon of trauma and revolution — and the bourgeois appropriation of victimhood he suggests it represents. Yet Keesha, as portrayed by the tireless Edwards, is also the eternal spirit of Black advancement spurred by bright young women from Beneatha Younger onward. It is not, we soon learn, just the Allwhite Writer who can’t make up his mind.If that leaves the characters confusing and hard to follow, well, they can join the club. Everything about “White Girl in Danger” is confusing and hard to follow. In the manner of soap operas, but with an absurdly fast twitch rate, personalities and plots get rewritten without notice. There’s very little for the actors to act except the twitch itself, which quickly grows tiresome through no fault of their own. Since most of them play three or more roles — Liz Lark Brown as all the white mothers, Eric William Morris as all the white boyfriends — they tend to blur into archetypes when they don’t whirl into inconsequence.Yet somehow the show remains compelling. Not because of the staging, which flags and — other than Montana Levi Blanco’s parade of laugh-out-loud costumes — is visually underpowered. (Even the constantly slamming doors wobble.) From Blain-Cruz and her set designer, Adam Rigg, who in last season’s “The Skin of Our Teeth” delivered many astonishments for the eyes, that comes as a surprise. Perhaps “White Girl,” despite being a coproduction of the Vineyard and Second Stage theaters, could not, on an Off Broadway budget, afford all its ambitions.In Jackson’s complex and cross-linked encyclopedia of ideas, Nell and Keesha stand for a multitude of distorted representations of Black women.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWhat keeps your attention most of the time as you watch, and certainly when thinking about it later, is the bounty and electricity of Jackson’s ideas, which derive as much from his long history as a soap opera lover as from his complex approach to the underlying conflicts of race and gender.Those conflicts, expressed in “A Strange Loop” through the voice and thoughts of just one character, are distributed more broadly in “White Girl,” a typical sophomore play problem (it’s chaotic and exhausting) but also an opportunity. Whether the opportunity can be exploited without exacerbating the problem, we must leave for future productions to discover. Stay tuned!It was in any case an opportunity worth taking. A glance at some of the “special thanks” in small type in the program gives you a sense of the fascinating breadth of Jackson’s high-low influences: Jackie Collins, Black musicals, “Fine-Ass Oiled Up Mens,” Soap Opera Digest, “PC/un-PC/woke/anti-woke” story lines, cultural neoliberalism and childhood loneliness.You can pretty much feel them all in “White Girl,” especially when a figure whose identity I won’t spoil (but is played beautifully by James Jackson Jr., one of the “thoughts” in “A Strange Loop”) arrives near the end as a kind of deus ex mess to untangle the show’s themes. Though that proves impossible, his attempt reminds us that ambivalence of all kinds, about people and love and stories and theater, is not a failure no matter what world you live in. Nor is it a success. It’s a start.White Girl in DangerAt the Tony Kiser Theater, Manhattan; 2st.com. Running time: 2 hours 50 minutes. More

  • 125 Shares179 Views

    in Television

    ‘Perry Mason’ Season 2, Episode 6 Recap: The Smoking Gun

    Della shreds a witness in court. The prosecution shreds Perry’s credibility.Season 2, Episode 6: ‘Chapter Fourteen’I can’t remember the last time I shouted at the screen as much as I did during this episode of “Perry Mason.” I’m not kidding: I was hooting and hollering for what seemed like half the duration of this week’s installment. It didn’t work out as well as I’d hoped in the end, of course. But in the meantime? What a rush!The rush came primarily from the episode’s centerpiece scene, in which Della Street takes over the cross-examination of a prosecution witness from Perry midstream. The witness in question is Councilman Taylor, the brother of the murder victim Brooks McCutcheon’s incapacitated mistress Noreen. Della knows where Perry’s line of questioning is headed: directly to the fact that Brooks enjoyed strangling his lovers with his monogrammed belt.Della presents her proposed takeover as a way to better handle the “sensitive nature” of the subject matter. But by the end of her questioning, by which time she has wrapped the belt around her own neck in full view of the jurors, it is apparent her real motives were much less high-minded. She didn’t just want to explain to the jury that Brooks got off on choking beautiful women — she wanted to show them what a beautiful woman being strangled looks like. The resulting display is a slam dunk for the defense.And it all stems from another surprising step into the spotlight. Rather than continue to battle against Perry and his team, our crooked old friend Detective Holcomb decides to volunteer for that team instead. (To be fair, it’s either that or be forced to testify about his role in Brooks’s shady dealings and lose his job and pension.)Holcomb, as we’ve seen, can’t figure out how Brooks’s grift operated, so he turns to Perry, whose deductive mind he recognizes as superior to his own, for help. In return, he hands over Noreen’s medical file from the San Haven rest home and brings Perry to a dumping ground on the shore where McCutcheon produce can be found discarded and soaked with oil. The import of the latter is still unclear, but the info contained in the former very nearly wins Perry the case.But only very nearly. Perry isn’t the only person involved in the case with investigative aces up his sleeve. Mason may have Della and Paul and even Holcomb in his corner at this point, but the prosecutor Tommy Milligan has Perry’s old buddy Pete Strickland. In a development that literally had me booing and hissing (what can I say? I’m a vocal TV watcher), someone, almost certainly Pete, breaks into Perry’s office and discovers the murder weapon hidden in his safe. Later in court, Milligan smugly reveals the news about the gun to the judge, who orders the whole gang over to Perry’s office to witness the retrieval of the weapon firsthand. Shea Whigham’s mustachioed dissolution as Pete really shines through in these scenes; you can certainly believe this is a guy who would turn on his oldest friend if the price were right.Pete and Perry’s relationship at this point can be held up in contrast to that of Paul and his brother-in-law Mo. Paul hires Mo to help him stake out a street corner where a rich junkie implicated in the case is known to score heroin. But Mo is no experienced P.I., so his notes leave something to be desired. Paul, who ought to know better than to hold a rank amateur to his own exacting standards, goes ballistic, causing a family rift.It’s not really Mo’s lack of prowess as a private dick that’s bothering Paul. He is haunted by his role in the beating and, presumably, death of the young, small-time gangster Ozzie Jackson, whom he was forced to rough up. Indeed, Ozzie’s blood-soaked Converse All-Stars are found dangling from a telephone wire by a local kid, who in the opening scene retrieves and wears them in the dead man’s stead, causing Paul to pretty much lose his mind the instant he lays eyes on them.And if anything is going to sink this case, it’s the Mason team’s personal demons. Paul has his guilt over the Ozzie Jackson affair. Della has her budding relationship with the screenwriter Anita St. Pierre, for whom she leaves her previous girlfriend; and don’t forget that a mysterious stranger is aware of her clandestine love life.Della also has a very thinly veiled job offer from the gazillionaire Camilla Nygaard to consider. Camilla invites her over for drinks and “marihuana” and implies heavily that she is considering ditching her existing counsel for Della. Given the choice between a gifted but unpredictable sad sack like Perry and a rich and vivacious piano-virtuoso stoner like Camilla … well, it’s not going to be an easy decision, is it?Finally, Perry himself turns on his schoolteacher girlfriend, Ginny Aimes, on a dime when the gun is brought to light, assuming she is the person who ratted him out. Finally, Ginny is getting a taste of the mercurial side of Perry that isn’t quite as alluring as the Perry who slugged some jerk in the schoolyard.From start to finish, this episode is twisty, sexy, sordid fun, featuring richly realized acting from a double-digit number of lead and supporting players. This may be anecdata, I realize, but I’ve seen more and more people saying what a pleasure it is to watch this show every week. Consider me another voice in favor.From the case files:In the annals of “terrific throwaway shots from ‘Perry Mason,’” the vertiginous angle with which Perry’s fire-escape exit from his compromised apartment, broken into by parties unknown the previous week, takes the cake.I also loved how the “Perry Mason” logo appears just as the kid who retrieves Ozzie’s bloody Converses looks up at the now-empty telephone wire, wondering just what the hell happened to the shoes’ previous owner.Detective Holcomb is one of television’s finest dirtbags at the moment. I’m so happy for the actor Eric Lange, whose work I’ve been enjoying since I watched him play an eccentric drama teacher on Nickelodeon’s “Victorious” with my kids while they were growing up; more recently, he was delightfully sleazy as a Hollywood movie producer in Netflix’s gruesome horror satire “Brand New Cherry Flavor.” He’s perfect in this part, and I admit a part of me hopes that he and Perry reach some kind of permanent rapprochement and work together in the future now that Strick is out of the picture.“Paul. Paul. Put it away.” Clara’s words of wisdom to her transparently distraught husband ring out loud and clear thanks to Diarra Kilpatrick’s restrained but forceful performance. I remain hopeful that she’ll eventually be given more to do than react to the men of the house.Let’s note here that Rafael Gallardo is handling incarceration much worse than his older brother, Mateo, to the point of needlessly picking fights with guards and getting hauled off to the hole. What’s going on there, I wonder?The awkward elevator ride in which the prosecution, the defense and the judge all travel up to Perry’s office is straight out of “Mad Men.”“I just want to know if you’re all right,” Della says to District Attorney Hamilton Burger regarding his unexpected, and frankly unjustifiable, offer of a plea deal to the Gallardos. Is someone squeezing him, perhaps because of his sexuality? And is this the fate that awaits Della, given the shadowy figure who trailed her to the lesbian nightclub last week?Della on Ginny, to Perry: “Nice work. She’s tasty!” Perry to Della: “Oh my God.” Even in the 1930s, it’s awkward to hear your friends tell you how hot your girlfriend is. More

  • 113 Shares139 Views

    in Television

    Unpacking the Roy Family in That Pivotal ‘Succession’ Episode

    The Roy family has never felt more human than it has in this season’s third episode — or more alien.In her 1969 book “On Death and Dying,” the psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross described the five emotional stages of people at the end of life: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Kübler-Ross’s model has since been popularly applied to the grief process. The implication is that all of us who live, love and die are in this way the same.“Succession” appears to have done its psych homework. In the tour-de-force episode “Connor’s Wedding” — spoilers begin here — the Roy siblings learn by phone of their father Logan’s fatal collapse, while he is on a jet crossing the Atlantic, and begin racing through Kübler-Ross’s stages.One part of the show’s genius has always been its portrayal of the superwealthy Roys as both deeply human and alien. As it is in life, so it is in death. The Roys’ reactions are, broadly, familiar to anyone who’s ever gotten similar news. It’s in the particulars that this family is very different.Let’s start with denial. In one sense, Logan’s death may be the least surprising big surprise in HBO drama history. His health has always been shaky, and the show’s very title asks what or who will come after him. But when the inevitable suddenly happens, instinct still kicks in: This can’t be real.“Real,” as any viewer of “Succession” knows, is a key word for the Roy family. It’s a measure of worth, separating people who are “real” — important, worthy of concern — from those who are merely numbers on a ledger.It’s also a fraught term for characters who grew up in a, shall we say, low-trust environment. “Is this real?” Shiv (Sarah Snook) asks, with good reason, when Logan (Brian Cox) offers in Season 2 to let her take over his media empire. It’s the series’s refrain: This deal, this promise, this expression of love — can I take it to the bank?So when Roman (Kieran Culkin) manically refuses to accept the news — “What if it’s a big [expletive] test?” — yes, he is being irrational. But he is also operating by the logic of the only reality he has ever known. What isn’t a test with Logan? His last words to Roman were to order him to fire his lieutenant Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron), with whom Roman had a bond (and occasional rounds of masochistic sex chat). When Roman hesitates, Logan asks, “You are with me?”About Logan’s death, Roman keeps repeating, “We don’t know.” And the episode, written by the creator, Jesse Armstrong, and directed by Mark Mylod, cleverly puts the viewers in his position. We can see inside the plane, but we can’t see much of Logan, only the crew performing compressions on a body. Only when Shiv spills her frenzied last words into his cold ear do we finally see his face. I will admit to having wondered if Roman was right. Yes, it would be insane for Logan to fake his death. But a side effect of growing up Roy is learning to read your most intimate family moments as potential plot twists and fake-outs.Anger and bargaining, in Roy World, tend to operate as a team. There’s anger at Logan, of course. Each Roy child sputters a word salad of love and hurt and fury into the phone. But anger is also a reaction to helplessness. Kendall (Jeremy Strong) demands to have “the best airplane medicine expert in the world” brought onto the call, growing frustrated and incensed, as if he could cheat Death by demanding to speak to its manager.From the beginning of the phone call to when we cut to the corporate-response discussion aboard the plane is less than 20 minutes, and Armstrong packs a lifetime into it.Every line, every image, speaks to the moment and to decades of family trauma and relationships: Roman’s forcing himself to say that Logan was a good dad, then handing off the phone like it’s radioactive; Shiv’s becoming at once a terrified girl and a furious grown daughter; Kendall and Shiv’s holding hands as they go to break the news to their half brother, Connor (Alan Ruck), on his wedding day. (Ruck has done spectacular emotional work with comparatively little screen time, and he does it again here: “He never even liked me.”)By the time we return from the plane to the wedding yacht in New York, depression is creeping in. And acceptance — well, that too has a different meaning in this family.Logan (Brian Cox, left) as seen with Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) moments before Logan’s plane ride flies him into the Great Beyond.David Russell/HBOThe Roys live in an environment where everything is personal and nothing is entirely private. Your family is your family, but it’s also a business. Your father’s death is your father’s death — bound up with a lifetime of resentment and thwarted love — but it is also a “material event” that requires disclosure. (“Succession” is known for its clever, filthy dialogue, but it also has an ear for the bland brutality of business-speak.) Your emotions may be complicated and genuine, but their expression is inevitably tactical. As Kendall says, “What we do today will always be what we did the day our father died.”Your father is the man who loved you or hit you or molded you or disappointed you, but he is also an expensive corporate asset, an asset that has now failed. And its failure must be announced and adjusted to, even as you adjust to the fundamental reordering of the universe.The dialogue shifts seamlessly from shock to grieving to maneuvering. The firmament has shattered. God — or the devil, or both — is dead. That vacuum must be filled, and the deluge prepared for, whether you are family, staff or, like Shiv’s estranged husband, Tom (Matthew Macfadyen), an unhappy bit of both. “I have lost my protector,” he says, like a “Game of Thrones” bannerman realizing that his head may soon part company with his neck.It’s a bold and potent move for Armstrong, who has one of TV’s greatest actors in Cox, to give us none of this from Logan’s point of view. We don’t know what he was thinking at the end. We, like his children, don’t know what he felt or if he heard their last words. There is no closure, no satisfaction. He will forever be a question mark at the center of the universe.Instead, a scene from the season’s first episode amounts to his last testament. Restless and unsettled at a birthday celebration that Kendall, Roman and Shiv have chosen not to attend, Logan ends up at a diner with his body man, Colin (Scott Nicholson), whom — is it possible to pity Logan Roy? — he calls his “best pal.”To his wary companion, Logan launches into what now sounds like a deathbed monologue. “What are people?” he asks Colin, and then answers his own question: “What is a person? It has values and aims, but it operates in a market. Marriage market, job market, money market, market for ideas, et cetera.” And while he is a winner in the judgment of the market — “a hundred feet tall” where most people are “pygmies” — he doesn’t seem to feel like one.At last, he asks Colin whether he believes in the afterlife, and again, Logan supplies his own answer. “We don’t know,” he says. “We can’t know. But I’ve got my suspicions.”Those suspicions were confirmed or denied on an airplane floor thousands of feet above the Atlantic Ocean, a most appropriate choice for “Succession.” The series is about people untethered to place, who move from vehicle to vehicle, from one antiseptic luxury space to another.So this is a most fitting end for Logan Roy — to die in no country, in the expensive no-space of a corporate jet, his last moments relayed to a yacht docked off the financial district, where the market will weigh and digest his death as it does all human effort and sorrow. As Roman says, a plunging chart line on his phone indicating Waystar Royco’s share price: “There he is. That is Dad.”There is one vehicular transfer left for Logan Roy. We end the episode at Teterboro Airport, where his shrouded body is deplaned and loaded into an ambulance. Kendall looks on, taking a private, pensive moment before what comes next: The period when his father’s passing becomes a news event, and most likely, a contest.Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance belong to us all. But for a Roy, there is a sixth stage of grief: ambition. More

  • 63 Shares129 Views

    in Television

    Sherri Shepherd Skates Through Life

    The talk-show host gives shout-outs to her favorite comfort food in Harlem, New York’s tough comedy crowds and the actor she believes “got greater later.”Sherri Shepherd has a knack for making her dreams come true.The one about being a stand-up comic? Check. (Her “Two Funny Mamas” tour with Kym Whitley kicks off in May.) An actor? Check. (Remember the “Queen of Jordan” episodes on “30 Rock”?)How about her fantasy, starting when she was a kid interviewing her teddy bears, to be a talk-show host? That’s a big check with “Sherri,” her syndicated daytime hit. It premiered in September and by January had been renewed for two more seasons.“I love coming out, sitting in that chair, because I got to do it when I was on ‘The View,’” said Shepherd, 55, who co-hosted that long-running talk show from 2007 to 2014. “And I love my family on ‘The View,’ but you have to share audio space with four other women at the table. So this one I get to come out and be as silly as I want to.”In a video interview from Harlem, where she lives with her teenage son Jeffrey, Shepherd chatted about a few other things that excite her, like a loud game of spades, Sylvester Stallone in “Tulsa King” and roller-skating wherever she can. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1Katz’s DelicatessenIt’s unorganized chaos, but everything gets done. They have the best pastrami sandwiches. The sucker is about 10 feet tall so you get your money’s worth because it’s $200, practically. You will walk in and there is a crowd of people and if you’ve never been to Katz’s Deli, you’re freaking out, going, “Where am I supposed to stand?” But once they see you’re lost and have no clue about life, somebody from Staten Island will go, “What are you doing? Come on over here.”2Melba’s RestaurantMelba’s is the go-to place for comfort food — like a warm, fuzzy blanket. Ninety-nine percent of the time Melba’s there, and she’s got these big chocolate eyes and she hugs you and she comes to your table. During the summertime, you sit outside and eat, and inside you’ll have a really great R&B or jazz band. So I don’t even leave Harlem when people come to New York. I go, “Meet me uptown.”3‘Tulsa King’It is the perfect role for Sylvester Stallone. He plays this old Mafioso who’s done 25 years in prison and he gets out and the world has completely changed on him. And instead of getting this really great position because he didn’t snitch on any of the family, they send him to Tulsa, Okla. He just plays it so beautifully. I feel like it got greater later for Sly.4SpadesEven if you don’t know how to play the game, you’ve got to talk like you know. You have to be loud. You have to slap cards on the table. And you have to be a real sore loser. It’s all about betting how many wins you will get. If you don’t get close to those wins, you’ve got to literally go off on your partner. At the end of the day, you’re all friends. While you’re playing? Mmm-mmm.5New York Comedy ClubsAt Gotham’s or the Cellar, it’s people who want to hear you be funny and be truthful and be transparent. When you try to do the Hollywood stuff, it just doesn’t work. I had to follow Gina Yashere from “Bob Hearts Abishola.” She’s an amazing comic, and she was very New York-style. And I thought, “Oh please, I go up in L.A. at the Comedy Store all the time.” Well, I tell you, I bombed like crazy. I had to go back, sit down, reassess and go, “Sherri, you’ve got to get more honest.” Went up there the next night — killed it. I think New York crowds can see through all of the bull.6Roller SkatingI’m not one of those roller skaters that do all of the tricks and turning. But there’s something about going around in a rink, or if I’m at a great beach where I can roller skate, with the air hitting my face. I love that feeling of coasting. It’s very cathartic for me. Before I leave my studio, I skate around because they push everything out of the way. I’ll sneak my skates and hope they don’t have me on camera.7Gregory PorterHe’s a jazz artist, and he wears a black hat with a black scarf around his face. He used to be a football player. He is a big, hulking, over-six-foot-tall Black man, and the most beautiful gentle music comes from him. I was dating somebody who was like a thug gangster, and this was a person who you would think all he listened to is rap. But he introduced me to jazz, and it was Gregory Porter.8The Blue NoteLalah Hathaway invited me to the Blue Note, and a gentleman by the name of Robert Glasper, who just won a Grammy, was playing. And he packed it. It was just amazing to see all of these people who had an appreciation for really great music. The jazz crowd is like a comedy-club crowd. They sit back and they listen.9Oprah DailyI love that she has used her platform to continue beyond her show and still gives you tips on how to live your best life. I used to journal, and I don’t too much anymore. And Oprah said on Oprah Daily, “You really should be journaling.” So I pulled out and dusted off my journal, and I started writing some more.10Dunlevy Milbank Community CenterThis is a center in Harlem, and they are really into kids that come from a lower income and teaching them life, especially the young men. They have basketball coaches there, they have swim teachers, they have teachers for after-school tutoring. This center is very close to my heart because Jeffrey goes after school at 3 p.m. and I don’t see him till 7:30. They have a leadership class for young men that he goes to. I was a little skeptical, but they said, “We guarantee you: Let Jeffrey go here for two weeks, and he is not going to want to come home.” And that is so true. Literally at 7:30, I’m texting him, going, “Get your butt in that Uber and spend some time with your mother.” More