Eliana Willis

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    Netflix Hit ‘Baby Reindeer’ Nabs 11 Emmy Nominations

    The surprise hit “Baby Reindeer,” a Netflix drama about a comedian and his stalker, picked up 11 Emmy nominations on Wednesday, including one for best limited series.The seven-episode show, which was viewed more than 56 million times in the four weeks after it debuted, according to data released by Netflix, follows an aspiring comedian named Donny Dunn as he is tormented by a woman named Martha, primarily through emails and voice mail messages.The series was created by the comedian Richard Gadd, who plays Dunn. It was billed as a true story based on Gadd’s experience, which led to online efforts to uncover the actual identities of the characters onscreen — and eventually embroiled the streaming service in a legal dispute.Fiona Harvey, a woman who says the Martha character was modeled after her, sued Netflix last month for defamation, claiming that the show falsely suggested that she was a convicted stalker. Netflix has said it stands by “Gadd’s right to tell his story.”Along with “Baby Reindeer,” the nominees for outstanding limited series include: “Fargo” (FX), “Lessons in Chemistry” (Apple TV+), “Ripley” (Netflix) and “True Detective: Night Country” (HBO). More

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    ‘UnPrisoned’ Review: Kerry Washington Handles Comedy, Too

    The star of “Scandal” demonstrates her range in the Hulu series about an ex-con’s daughter and her relatable traumas.Paige Alexander, the high-maintenance mom played by Kerry Washington in the Hulu dramedy “UnPrisoned,” puts her family and friends through a lot. She’s also a challenge for the show’s captioners: Rendering her continual nervous laughter, which punctuates the soundtrack like the sputtering of a rusty muffler, calls for creativity. In Season 1, (laughs), (laughter) and (laughing) were supplemented with (snickers), (snorts), (chuckles), (chuckles awkwardly) and other descriptors of uncomfortable mirth.That Paige is a marriage and family counselor and also a jittery basket case is the comic framework of “UnPrisoned,” which returned with a new season on Wednesday. The therapist needs therapy, and she gets it from everyone: her father the ex-convict; her son the anxiety-ridden gamer; her foster sister the libidinous real estate agent; and even, in Season 2, her therapist, a self-absorbed but helpful showboat played by John Stamos.Running in parallel, and neatly explaining Paige’s problems, is the dramatic framework, in which Paige and her dad try warily to reconcile after his latest stay in prison, a 17-year stretch. His repeated absences from her life are the reason she is a reflexively negative, critical and untrusting control freak who dates only unattainable men. He’s in his 60s and suddenly has to grow up; she’s in her 40s and still has to get over her daddy issues.Created by the television writer and relationship maven Tracy McMillan, “UnPrisoned,” which is based on McMillan’s life, is a better-than-average family comedy-drama, deft and ordinary in equal measure. Its quick half-hour episodes weave clever, familiar relationship humor with poignant reflections on the consequences of incarceration.The material is what it is: worthwhile, but not too far north of pleasantly watchable. “UnPrisoned” can be hard to click away from, though, because Kerry Washington is such a quietly vivid, thoroughly alive presence at its center. Whether or not you buy what the show is selling, you don’t for a second doubt the realness, the ineluctable authenticity, of Paige Alexander, even as she’s driving you crazy.Washington received plenty of attention, and two Emmy nominations, for her career-making run as Olivia Pope on ABC’s “Scandal.” But her talent and magnetism still tended to become a little lost amid the Shonda Rhimes circus, overshadowed by costumes, melodrama and take-no-prisoners attitude.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘The Bear’ Breaks the Record for Emmy Nominations for a Comedy

    “Yes, Chef” is now part of Emmy history.“The Bear” notched a record-breaking 23 Emmy nominations on Wednesday, setting a new high for the most nominations in a single year for a comedy series. The record previously belonged to “30 Rock,” which earned 22 nominations 15 years ago.“The Bear,” which was honored on Wednesday for its second season, which premiered in June 2023, scored significantly more nominations compared with its first season, when it had 13. Its principal actors — Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edebiri and Ebon Moss-Bachrach — all landed nominations. It also got nods in technical categories like sound mixing and picture editing.“The Bear,” which already won best comedy at the strike-delayed Emmys in January, will be the heavy favorite going in.The record-setting status of “The Bear,” however, will surely draw a renewed round of scrutiny of how shows get slotted into different categories at the Emmys. Going back to last year, some industry insiders gnashed their teeth at the Emmy success of “The Bear.” Should it be honored? Absolutely. But, seriously, in the comedy categories?Alan Sepinwall, a TV critic for Rolling Stone, raised the point recently, asking whether “this story of toxic workplaces, addiction and mental illness, and ruinous personal relationships was a barrel of laughs.” Given that “The Bear” beat out “30 Rock” — a beloved series that would never be mistaken for anything other than a straight-up comedy — to break the record, it could set off howls of outrage from comedy nerds.Emmy categorization controversy is nothing new, of course. The Peak TV era unleashed a torrent of dramatic comedies (try “Atlanta”), and comedic dramas (how about “Succession”?). Netflix’s “Orange Is The New Black” was nominated as a comedy one year, and as a drama the next. Long gone are the days when shows like “Cheers” and “The West Wing” had a crystal clear Emmy lane.There is one more obstacle for “The Bear.” Though Emmy voters will be weighing the series’ much-celebrated second season, they’ll start casting votes in August, on the heels of the recently released third season. The third season has a considerably lower audience score on Rotten Tomatoes compared to the first two seasons. The Daily Beast even asked earlier this month, “Why Is Everyone Saying ‘The Bear’ Is a Bad Show?”It remains an open question whether any backlash to the current season, along with is-it-actually-a-comedy industry debates, will affect its chances to win big in September.Other comedies have come close to the “30 Rock” record in recent years. “Ted Lasso” recently earned 21 nominations, one shy of tying the record. And “Saturday Night Live,” technically a sketch variety series and not a recurring comedy series as defined by Emmy rules, earned 22 nominations in 2017. More

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    Ford and Mellon Foundations Name 2024 Disability Futures Fellows

    The 20 recipients, including a Broadway composer, a Marvel video game voice actress and a three-time Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, are the initiative’s final cohort.The Ford and Andrew W. Mellon Foundations on Wednesday named the 2024 Disability Futures Fellows — the latest class of disabled writers, filmmakers, musicians and other creative artists who will receive unrestricted $50,000 awards.This year’s recipients include Gaelynn Lea, a folk artist and disability rights activist; Natasha Ofili, an actress and writer who in 2020 became one of the first Black deaf actors to portray a video game character — Hailey Cooper — in Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales; Warren Snipe, a.k.a. Wawa, a deaf rapper and actor who performed in sign language at the 2022 Super Bowl; and Kay Ulanday Barrett, a three-time Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and essayist whose work focuses on queer, transgender people of color.Lea said she almost missed an email telling her she got the award. “Because the email said, ‘We’re excited to offer you $50,000,’ it went to my spam,” Lea, 40, said in an interview. (She later received a follow-up email.)“It’s very validating that I’m doing this stuff I really care about, and now it’s being recognized,” added Lea, who won NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Contest in 2016, and composed and performed original music for a Broadway production of “Macbeth” starring Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga. Lea plans to use the award to fund the writing of a memoir to be published next year.The initiative, which is administered by United States Artists, named its inaugural class of fellows in 2020, with the goal of increasing the visibility of disabled artists and elevating their voices. (About one in four adults in the United States has a disability, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.) The second class was announced in 2022, and this is the last cohort in the program. The fellowship supports people at all stages of their careers.Elizabeth Alexander, the president of the Mellon Foundation, said in a statement that the program reflected the foundation’s support of the “work, experiences and visions of disabled artists — both in their individual practices and in the collective power they wield in the arts at large.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Ain’t Done Bad’ Review: Jakob Karr’s Dance to Orville Peck Songs

    Jakob Karr, from “So You Think You Can Dance?,” has conceived and choreographed a show set to songs by the country musician Orville Peck.The tale is familiar: A young gay man, rejected by his father, leaves home and finds love and acceptance elsewhere. But “Ain’t Done Bad” packages this story in a new form: as a 90-minute narrative dance set to recordings by the out-and-proud country musician Orville Peck.“Ain’t Done Bad” — which, unusually for dance, is getting an eight-week run at Pershing Square Signature Theater — is conceived, directed and choreographed by Jakob Karr, an impressive dancer who also stars as the son. This is Karr’s first such effort, and like many first novels, the show suggests autobiography. Mostly clear and engaging in its storytelling, it’s earnest, sometimes sexy and fundamentally sweet.We meet the son with his family. There’s the mother (Megumi Iwama), who lets him play with her makeup. There’s the brother (Ian Spring), who knocks him down in roughhousing but also picks him back up. And there’s the father (the explosive, effectively creepy Adrian Lee), who is angry and disapproving.The son also has friends (the perky Jordan Lombardi and Yusaku Komori). They draw him out into playful, line-dance flamboyance and initiate him with a sparkly-fringed denim jacket. Karr skillfully contrasts this liberating joy with the table-slapping arguments of the son’s family.Escaping into the wider world, the son discovers a gay club and experiences some steamy, ankle-on-shoulder duets. (Is it just economy or is there a psychological subtext to the double casting of Spring and Lee, brother and father, as lovers?) After intermission, the son finds someone he wants to bring home (Josh Escover, who’s good looking, great at turning and a bit of a blank).Peck’s music, with his Elvis croon drifting through a spaghetti western sonic landscape, is inherently dramatic. It supports both the story and the dancing well, supplying heartache and homoeroticism, galloping horsepower and pedal-steel romance. The choreography moves in parallel to the lyrics that don’t directly apply and underlines plenty of those that do, like “the love that you need will never be found at home.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    When Is a Stand-Up Special Like ‘The Wire’? When Ali Siddiq Is Onstage

    The comedian’s YouTube epic, “The Domino Effect,” is nervy humor, with both punches and punchlines that reflect his years in prison. In “The Domino Effect,” a genre-defying autobiographical epic on YouTube, the comic Ali Siddiq begins one part by casually asking the audience a question: “Has anyone here been duct-taped and thrown in a trunk?”Then he goes back in time to explain how he got there. This feels like the start of a prestige crime drama, and his riveting project, spanning more than six hours and four chapters and completed last month, resembles a solo version of “The Wire” more than any stand-up special. With cheerful charisma, Siddiq, 50, describes entering the drug trade as a boy, being shuttled through the justice system and spending six years behind bars. In between comic scenes and farcical act-outs, there are gun battles, a prison riot, drug deals gone wrong.Great personal storytelling relies on pacing and structure, but there’s also something to be said for living an interesting life. Siddiq has, yet he also never loses sight of the goal of getting laughs, even when he’s trapped in the trunk of his own car — where his first thought is anger at himself for sloppily putting the tire in there. This is nervy humor, violence always looming. In stand-up, you wait for the punchline. Here, it’s the punch.After many years of telling jokes, Siddiq, who lives in Houston, broke through with “The Domino Effect.” It’s the kind of eccentric, messy project that could be made only in our age of self-produced specials. In a crowded field of them, it stood out, with Part 1 racking up 13 million views. At the Beacon Theater in New York this year, the sold-out crowd stood and roared when he strolled onstage and sat down as relaxed as a suburban dad ready to settle in front of the television after a long week. This studied ordinary-guy casualness has become a trademark. He always begins shows with an offhand “Hey.” Describing the criminal world in white-collar workplace jargon is part of his humor. Siddiq doesn’t like to say he went to prison because he was a drug dealer. He prefers the term “street pharmaceutical rep.”Using corporate jargon is one way Siddiq makes comedy out of his subject matter. He deflates the romance of crime and makes it relatable. At one point, he laments: “There’s no H.R. for crack dealing”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Loved ‘Couples Therapy’? Read These 11 Books

    These stories of relationship dramas and evolving partnerships will fill the “Couples Therapy”-sized hole in your life with wisdom, schadenfreude and humor — and sometimes all of the above.It can be hard when shrinks go on summer vacation — especially in a summer when each news cycle seems to bring more upsetting developments to process. And it doesn’t help that the fourth season of the cult favorite Showtime docuseries “Couples Therapy” has just wrapped, so even affordable, vicarious therapy is off the table. Without our weekly fix of Dr. Orna Guralnik’s deep nods and cathartic sympathy crying — and with the good doctor’s own much-anticipated book still months off — what are we to do?The series, which started airing in 2019, did not seem to have the makings of a hit: real couples, sitting on a Brooklyn sofa, telling a therapist their problems. At worst, thought skeptics, it sounded voyeuristic and upsetting; at best, boring and contrived. Long before Annie and Mau were a twinkle in my eye, or I’d wept over Season 2, or I’d had wildly differing feelings about different strangers named Josh, I, too, was one of those people. “Watch it,” said a co-worker. “Nothing you thought will ever be the same.” Forty-five minutes in, I was hooked.There are many reasons “Couples Therapy” has broken through: the happy surprise of seeing our perceptions change, the age-old distraction of other peoples’ problems, the actual applicable advice, Dr. Guralnik’s glossy mane and teeny tiny braids (a major discussion point on message boards).But even if you aren’t a fan of the show, these shoulder-season reads will get you through August with wisdom, schadenfreude, dysfunction, pain and humor — and sometimes all of the above. It’s not a spoiler that most of these couples could use a session or 10.Desperate Characters, by Paula Fox (1970)Otto and Sophie Bentwood are a childless couple in their early 40s living in a rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn (they’re the gentrifiers). Life seems comfortable — until Sophie is bitten by a feral cat and their carefully ordered existence begins to crumble. There’s even a kitchen renovation in this sharply observed, humane classic of New York marriage. (Read about the book’s legacy.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Jon Stewart Razzes a ‘Daily Show’ Guest: Bill O’Reilly

    The former Fox host, a longtime foil of the show, said he knew he had “no friends here.” “Well, not just here,” Stewart replied.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.Sparring Partners“The Daily Show” was supposed to be in Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention this week, but the attempt on Donald Trump’s life changed that. “What a terrible [expletive] week,” Jon Stewart said as he opened Tuesday’s show from New York.“‘Hey Jon, come back to ‘The Daily Show,’ just for the election. It’ll be fun! You’ll do one day a week, it’ll be a laugh! What could go wrong?’” — JON STEWARTWith security at the convention enhanced, the theater where they’d planned to tape the show was locked down, Stewart explained. In security parlance, it was now in the “hard perimeter,” not the “soft perimeter.” “You really don’t want to be in the hard perimeter,” he said.While Stewart touched on the convention’s first two days in his opener, the real amusement came from his sit-down with Bill O’Reilly, the former Fox host who provided fodder for many “Daily Show” jokes in years past.The two have squared off before, and O’Reilly nodded to that history: “We are able to disagree without hating each other. Now, I truly hate him. But I don’t show it.”“I like coming on here, in front of all of your friends out here — and the audience should know, I have no friends here.” — BILL O’REILLY“Well, not just here.” — JON STEWARTO’Reilly tried to distance himself from Trump, saying that as a registered independent, he didn’t have a candidate. Then he pulled out a sheet of paper and rattled off a list of prices, mortgage rates and overdose rates that had risen during the Biden administration.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More