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    Seth Meyers Mocks Trump for Claiming George Bush Took Documents, Too

    “And that is why to this day, if you’re in Texas, you can stop by H.W.’s Wok and Bowl and Top-Secret Document Warehouse,” Meyers 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.‘H.W.’s Wok and Bowl and Top-Secret Document Warehouse’Over the weekend, former President Donald Trump was in Nevada and Arizona, where he appeared at rallies in support of the Republican candidates Joe Lombardo, Kari Lake and Blake Masters.“And yet even though Trump is theoretically supposed to be there to campaign for other candidates, he always without exception makes it about himself,” Seth Meyers said. “He’s like the best man at a wedding who gives a drunken toast about how awesome he is.”While in Arizona, Trump claimed that other former presidents had removed classified documents from the White House, saying that the first President George Bush “took millions of documents to a former bowling alley and a former Chinese restaurant.”“He didn’t take the classified documents by accident — he took them on purpose because he thinks they belong to him, and when you’re proving a crime, criminal intent is key. I know that because I watch a show called ‘Law & Order: Criminal Intent’ — it’s right there in the title. There was never a ‘Law & Order’ spinoff called ‘Law & Order: Oops, My Bad.’” — SETH MEYERS“He just kept repeating it, and none of that excuses intentionally stealing and leaving classified documents laying around your golf course.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“And that is why to this day, if you’re in Texas, you can stop by H.W.’s Wok and Bowl and Top-Secret Document Warehouse.” — SETH MEYERS“I demand an investigation because, is it just me, or does a combination bowling alley/Chinese restaurant sound incredible?” — JAMES CORDEN“I think I see what Trump is going for here, though, I do. Does he think that fortune cookies are secret documents?” — JAMES CORDEN“To be safe, Bush also hid some in a laser tag-slash-kebab house, and a trampoline park-slash-rib shack.” — JAMES CORDENThe Punchiest Punchlines (First Edition)“Well guys, if you watch MSNBC, I want to say, ‘Happy Indigenous Peoples’ Day.’ And if you watch Fox News, I want to say, ‘Happy Columbus Day.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Not only is it Columbus Day, it’s also Indigenous Peoples’ Day, which is what it should be, probably. But we have to pick one or the other, right? This is like saying it’s Arbor Day and Chain Saw Day — it can’t be both.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“That’s right, 530 years ago Columbus went on a trip and never made it to his intended destination. Today we call that flying Southwest Airlines.” — JIMMY FALLON“I think it’s probably the most controversial federal holiday of all of them, Columbus Day. Here’s how you know Columbus Day isn’t so hot anymore — there’s no Google doodle for it.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The guy had one job — get to India. He missed it by 9,000 miles, but rather than admit he was wrong and not in India, he just started calling everyone Indians, which is so willfully ignorant. If he were alive today, he could probably run the Republican Party. If you’re being honest with yourself, Columbus is basically what would have happened if Donald Trump had been born in the 1400s and his dad gave him a boat, OK?” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingRachel Maddow talked about her new political history podcast, “Ultra,” on Monday’s “Tonight Show.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightJamie Lee Curtis will talk about the latest installment of the “Halloween” franchise, “Halloween Ends,” on Tuesday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”Also, Check This OutWendell Pierce as Willy Loman in “Death of a Salesman” at the Hudson Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAn all-Black cast led by Wendell Pierce and Sharon D. Clarke stars in a powerful revival of “Death of a Salesman” at the Hudson Theater. More

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    ‘House of the Dragon’: Paddy Considine Won’t Watch Sunday’s Episode

    “I’m sure somebody will show me a photograph,” he said, about his character’s big moment on Sunday night. The actor discussed the inspiration and meaning for King Viserys’s decline.This interview includes spoilers for Sunday’s episode of “House of the Dragon.”The Iron Throne can be a cruel and uncomfortable seat. In the world of George R.R. Martin’s books, it is thought to have a mind of its own, rejecting those unfit to rule with well-placed nicks.In “Game of Thrones,” this seat made from the blades of vanquished rivals was intimidating to behold, but it was not much of a threat to life or limb. “House of the Dragon” hews closer to Martin’s vision and adds a new twist — the cuts that Viserys (Paddy Considine) suffers not only refuse to heal, but infect him with a particularly nasty strain of leprosy. His reign eats him alive.“I always viewed the throne as a cursed property,” Considine said on Monday morning. “It’s made of the swords that people died on, and it has this strange power about it.”By Sunday night’s episode, the eighth of the season, Viserys no longer looks like a proud Targaryen king — he more closely resembles the Phantom of the Opera (with that metal mask obscuring half his face) or the Crypt Keeper (with those gaping holes beneath it). (The startling effect was created with a blend of prosthetic makeup, visual effects and a body double.) Viserys lives a half-life under the influence of the pain-dulling (and mind-clouding) Westerosi morphine called milk of the poppy. Until, that is, he skips the meds for one last visit to the royal court, to defend the rights of his daughter and named heir, Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy), and to attend a family supper, where he urges the relatives to set aside their grievances.Considine gives a grave and poignant performance as Viserys. Because of the show’s out-of-order shooting schedule, the actor’s earliest scenes required him to depict some of the later stages of Viserys’s deterioration first — a physical transformation that was a closely guarded secret on set. (Security guards followed him around with view-blocking umbrellas.)With his onscreen visage revealed to all but himself, Considine discussed the show’s latest revelations in a phone conversation from London on Monday. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Return to Westeros in ‘House of the Dragon’HBO’s long-awaited “Game of Thrones” prequel series is here.The New Littlefinger?: Larys Strong, a shadowy character, burns bright as a major player in the show. Here’s his back story.The Sea Snake: Lord Corlys Velaryon, one of the most powerful people in the Seven Kingdoms, is a fearless sailor. Steve Toussaint, the actor who plays him, does better on land.A Rogue Prince: Daemon Targaryen, portrayed by Matt Smith, is an agent of chaos. But “he’s got a strange moral compass of his own,” the actor said.A Violent Birth Scene: Was the gory C-section in the show’s premiere the representation of a grim historical reality, an urgent political statement or a worn cultural cliché?Have you seen your death episode yet?No, I haven’t, and I’m not sure if I ever will. I haven’t seen anything beyond Episode 2, really. Some people don’t like to watch themselves, and I’m one of those people. It’s debilitating. I tend to just stay away. I’m sure somebody will show me a photograph.At what point did you figure out what the king’s stages of deterioration would look like?Very early on, you’re still forming the character, and I knew it was going to come to an end with some kind of transformation, so you’re always looking for references for that. I happened to be watching a documentary about one of my favorite artists, Richard Hambleton [a Canadian conceptual artist who died in 2017], and watching his physical decline through cancer, addiction and scoliosis. I said to Miguel Sapochnik [an executive producer, and a showrunner for the first season], “This would be a good idea for where Viserys ends up.” So I had somewhere in my head that I could map where I was going to get to.Considine in “House of the Dragon” on Sunday. The king made a final appearance on the throne.Ollie Upton/HBOThe extremity — Viserys looking so emaciated, how it’s so cancerous, this thing, that it eats into his face — that decision was made more than halfway into the shoot. So it went probably more extreme than I had originally imagined it would go.I watched my dad die of cancer, and it was a very rapid demise. So it certainly made sense to me, and I think it was pretty shocking and effective. It becomes a physical manifestation of all the infighting and skulduggery, really. The mystery is why so many people crave the Iron Throne. It’s not something Viserys craved; he just had a sense of duty. He knows the weight of being king, the weight of the responsibility, and the toll it can take.From the minute of his wife’s funeral, I think Viserys starts to die. It’s a slow death. Nowhere in the story does Viserys ask the maesters to cure him, to stop this thing from eating him alive. I think he accepts it as part of the guilt of the decision he makes to put his wife through a terrible, horrible procedure. It’s like people who surrender to illness. When they offer suggestions to cure him, he doesn’t bother with it. He lets it consume him. He surrenders. That was my thing for him, anyway.In some ways, he let the leeches into his life — the maesters, the Hightowers. After this last moment in the throne room, do you wonder if Viserys made a mistake not giving the position of hand of the king to his brother Daemon instead?Absolutely not! [Laughs.] Daemon was a liability. It never would have worked. Viserys knew Daemon couldn’t sit in Small Council meetings for 12 hours straight. He doesn’t have the temperament. Even at the end, there aren’t words in that relationship. Daemon helps him up there, and he puts the crown on his head, and that said everything that he’s never said, without uttering a word. But that guy could never have been able to be Viserys’s hand.Shouldn’t he at least have told Daemon or others about the prophecy?No way, not at that time. That’s something that we struggled with. There was a scene that was deleted after Aemma (Sian Brooke) died, where Viserys meets with Daemon and he tries to hint at this idea of prophecies and what the gods mean to him. He was trying to get some idea where Daemon’s at with his beliefs, but the tone of the scene was never quite right. There’s no way that Daemon would even connect to that — he’d laugh Viserys out of the room. He’s not into dreamers or things like that.On his deathbed, Viserys mistakes Alicent (Olivia Cooke) for Rhaenyra, and reaffirms the prophecy to her. When she leaves, he seems to think he’s speaking to someone else.The only suggestion [in the script] is that he doesn’t quite know who he’s talking to. I always had an idea in my head, whether it was useful to the story or not, that the last thing Viserys sees before he dies is the person who comes to collect him from this mortal life. When he dies, he sees Aemma, and he says, “My love.”I just kind of improvised that line, and reached out a little bit, because this to me is a tragic love story, in many ways. But I kept that private; I never actually disclosed that in the end. I just thought, “If they use it, they use it,” and I hear it’s made the cut, so I’m really grateful, because it ends that story quite beautifully. The narrative I had in my mind was that he never really gets over Aemma, that he’s devastated for the rest of his life.Considine behind the scenes of “House of the Dragon” with Milly Alcock, who played the younger version of Rhaenyra, and Miguel Sapochnik, a showrunner.Ollie Upton/HBODo you think Viserys’s feelings about Aemma affected how he treated his progeny with Alicent? Because he’s barely involved with them.He gives up on them. He’s so protective of Rhaenyra, and he’s no fool — he knows that her [first three sons] are not Laenor Velaryon’s children. He’s just at a certain point in his life, with his new family, that he doesn’t take much of an interest in his other children. And the kids even sussed that out, you know, the actors playing the kids. They said they thought I hated them! I was like, “Where have you had that from? I don’t hate you.” They meant Viserys, not Paddy.I certainly didn’t hate them, but I just had no time for them. That happens in families, doesn’t it? He’s there, but not there. Rhaenyra, she’s the link to Aemma, and as far as he’s concerned, she’s his only child.Alicent appears to misinterpret Viserys’s deathbed talk of prophecy, taking his reference to Aegon I to refer to their son Aegon II (now played by Tom Glynn-Carney), which could lead her to reassert his claim to the throne. What did you think of that moment, and what that prophesy amounts to, 200 years down the line?The fact that Alicent misinterprets it is horrific. What comes next would horrify Viserys. I mean, we have this knowledge of where this goes and the fact that [the prophecy] did come true. But the fact that it’s misunderstood is an absolute disaster. Viserys would be turning in his grave.In behind-the-scenes footage on HBO Max, you were dancing in the throne room, twirling your dragon cane. You said you were “serving Targaryen realness.”I love “Drag Race.” There was something about dressing up in these flamboyant costumes that brought out my inner drag, having that lovely blonde hair. I never got to dress in anything like that before, and it might never happen again. So you’ve got to enjoy it, haven’t you?If a later season of “House of the Dragon” were to do flashbacks to this period, would you consider coming back to play Viserys?I love him so much. I think he’s my favorite character I’ve ever played. But I would struggle with that. His story has been told. He made his impact. He was the peaceful king that everybody thought was a bore, and he brought some love and compassion to the show. I don’t know what more you could do with that. So I think this is the end. More

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    Robert Kalfin, Founder of an Adventurous Theater, Dies at 89

    For two decades, his Chelsea Theater Center was on the cutting edge with productions that could be challenging, baffling or, sometimes, Broadway bound.Robert Kalfin, the driving force behind the Chelsea Theater Center, which for two decades beginning in 1965 presented adventurous plays that were sometimes too innovative for the theatergoing public and sometimes successful enough that they transferred to Broadway, died on Sept. 20 at a hospice center in Quiogue, a hamlet in Southampton, N.Y. He was 89.Philip Himberg, a longtime friend, said the cause was acute myeloid leukemia.Mr. Kalfin directed countless plays in a career that began in his mid-20s and continued into his 80s. In 1965, he started the nonprofit Chelsea Theater Center and became its founding artistic director, with David Long as managing director and George Bari as production manager.They set up shop in St. Peter’s Church in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, though a strip dance in one of its early offerings got the group tossed out of that church and forced it to move to another. Those were two of several locations it would use over the years, only some of which were in Chelsea.Mr. Kalfin thought the commercial theaters of the day were limited and unimaginative, and he strove to broaden the theatrical landscape.“The mission statement, which I came up with, which was very useful, was ‘We will do whatever nobody else is doing and what we think people ought to see,’” he said in an interview in 2014 for the Primary Stages Off-Broadway Oral History Project. “That gave me great leeway.”The Chelsea achieved particular prominence once it moved to the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1968. Its productions there were attention-getting, to say the least. A 1969 staging of “Slave Ship,” written by Amiri Baraka (who was then known as LeRoi Jones) and directed by Gilbert Moses, took on racism, leaving Clive Barnes of The New York Times rattled.“The play is set in the hold of a ship and the conscience of a nation,” Mr. Barnes wrote in his review.“The play ends with the symbolic destruction of white America,” he added. “Whitey is got — Black Panther banners are unfurled. This scared and horrified me. I am whitey.”In 1971, The Times wrote an article about Mr. Kalfin’s troupe that carried the headline “America’s Most Exciting New Theater?” Its productions for the rest of that decade cemented its stature as one of the scene’s leading innovators.In 1973, the Chelsea revived the Leonard Bernstein operetta “Candide,” which had failed on Broadway in the 1950s, and gave it a new book, by Hugh Wheeler. Harold Prince directed, and the result was a smash in Brooklyn that became the group’s first transfer to Broadway, where it ran for almost two years.Another great success was “Strider,” Mark Rozovsky’s play with music based on a Tolstoy story about a piebald horse that is tormented because of its appearance. Mr. Kalfin first saw it in Leningrad, and in 1979 he staged an English-language version at the Westside Theater on West 43rd Street. It drew a strong review from Mel Gussow in The Times.“We are transported by the ingenuousness and the originality of the show,” he wrote. “Looking closely, we even notice a grittiness that might have been appreciated by Brecht and Weill. The play works on two levels, as a kind of Tolstoyan ‘Black Beauty’ — downbeat but finally inspirational — and as a valid commentary on the injustices of civilization.”That show, directed by Mr. Kalfin and Lynne Gannaway, transferred to Broadway and ran there for six months.By then Mr. Kalfin was seeing a change in theater audiences, one that his company had helped bring about.“There’s a whole new generation of theatergoers, and they have become elitist in a very positive way,” he told The Times that November as “Strider” was beginning its Broadway run. “I think they’re bored to death with television, and they’re more demanding of theater now because they’re so hungry for nourishment.”A scene from the Chelsea Theater Center’s production of Amiri Baraka’s “Slave Ship” in 1969. The play’s ending, the Times critic Clive Barnes wrote, “scared and horrified me.”Deidi von Schaewen, via BAM Hamm ArchivesRobert Zangwill Kalfin was born on April 22, 1933, in the Bronx. His father, Alfred, was a real estate developer, and his mother, Hilda Shulman Kalfin, was a teacher.His childhood memories were of being taken not to the theater but to the Metropolitan Opera, where he and his parents generally ended up in the cheap seats, high up and off to the side.“My father would hold onto the back of my pants while I leaned over trying to see center stage,” he said in the oral history.He studied music at the High School of Music & Art in Manhattan (now the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School for Music & Art and Performing Arts). As a theater major at Alfred University in central New York, he became part of an ambitious department that was staging Bertolt Brecht and other European writers and experimenting with unusual settings — he was in a production of “Androcles and the Lion” that was staged in a gymnasium transformed to look like a Roman arena.He earned his master’s degree in 1957 at the Yale School of Drama and settled into odd jobs in New York, working for a time in the shipping department at WOR-TV and as a production assistant on a children’s television show in Newark, N.J., that starred a chimpanzee.He directed his first Off Broadway production, “The Golem,” in 1959, at St. Mark’s Playhouse. His other early efforts included “The Good Soldier Schweik” in 1963, which didn’t go well — a producer interfered so intrusively that Mr. Kalfin withdrew before opening night and sought unsuccessfully to stop the production from opening. When it did, William Glover of The Associated Press called it “one of the season’s worst plays.”Mr. Kalfin, right, with Michael David, left, the executive director of the Chelsea Theater Center, and Burl Hash, the production director, in 1973.Manuel Guevaza Jr.At the Chelsea, Mr. Kalfin sometimes left audiences and critics scratching their heads. That was the case with a 1970 musical called “Tarot,” which he staged in Brooklyn. As the credits read, it was conceived by The Rubber Duck and directed jointly by “Mr. Duck” (as The Times called him, tongue in cheek) and Mr. Kalfin.Mr. Barnes hated it. “Pretentiousness is rioting at the Brooklyn Academy of Music,” his review began. Yet the Chelsea was respected enough by then that even in that pan, Mr. Barnes felt compelled to note that the group was facing one of its frequent financial crises at the time, and that “it simply must not be allowed to die.”The group did peter out in the mid-1980s, swamped with debt. Before it did, its other notable successes included “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy,” based on an Isaac Bashevis Singer story of a Jewish girl who passes as a boy; Mr. Kalfin had it adapted for the stage by Leah Napolin and directed it. It opened in Brooklyn in December 1974.It was a tough road to opening night. Mr. Kalfin clashed with Tovah Feldshuh, who played the title character, and withstood complaints from Orthodox Jewish leaders; he also had to strike a deal with Barbra Streisand, who owned the rights to the Singer story, which she would turn into a film in 1983. But the play moved to Broadway, where it ran for 223 performances.Mr. Bari, Mr. Kalfin’s life partner, died in 2013. Mr. Kalfin, who had lived in East Hampton, N.Y., leaves no immediate survivors.After the Chelsea gave up the ghost, Mr. Kalfin continued to direct in New York and in regional houses; he was still working until recently. One of his post-Chelsea projects in New York was directing a Yiddish version of “Yentl” produced by the Folksbiene Yiddish Theater in 2002. Eleanor Reissa played the title role.“Even though he’d directed maybe a hundred shows, every time was like the first,” Ms. Reissa, who had worked with Mr. Kalfin on other shows as well, said by email. “Wide eyed and wide hearted always, infectious joyfulness.” More

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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘38 at the Garden’ and a ‘Twilight Saga’ Marathon

    HBO airs a documentary about Jeremy Lin’s winning streak with the New York Knicks. And all five vampire/werewolf romance movies play back to back.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Oct. 10 — 16. Details and times are subject to change.MondayALL AMERICAN 8 p.m. on The CW. Based loosely on the life of the NFL linebacker Spencer Paysinger (who acts as a consulting producer), this show is back is for a fifth season. In the spring, we saw Spencer (Daniel Ezra) and the rest of his group graduate high school and start making steps toward their future. Though it isn’t even Halloween yet, this episode will catapult us into the holiday mood — Spencer, JJ (Hunter Clowdus) and Asher (Cody Christian) throw a Christmas party try to impress a girl.Zach Woods, left, and Hugh Laurie in “Avenue 5.”HBOAVENUE 5 10 p.m. on HBO. The year is 2060, ocean cruises are out and space cruises are in — that is the premise of this show, entering its second season and starring Hugh Laurie, Josh Gad and Zach Woods. “Despite the scabrous behavior of the crew and the (largely caricatured and dull) consternation of the passengers, there’s an incipient earnestness to ‘Avenue 5,’” Mike Hale wrote in his review for The New York Times. “It feels as if we may start to see unexpected grace and resourcefulness and pluck, rather than unrelieved cynicism and self-dealing.”MY TRUE CRIME STORY 11 p.m. on VH1. Each episode of this docu-series, narrated by the rapper Remy Ma, people reveal their involvement in theft, drug dealing, sex work and how they moved past these episodes and found success in their respective fields. The series also touches on how inequalities in the criminal justice system (including mandatory surcharges) can trap people.TuesdayDrake Rodger and Meg Donnelly in “The Winchesters.”Matt Miller/The CWTHE WINCHESTERS 8 p.m. on The CW. After 15 seasons of “Supernatural,” fans know Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles) pretty well — but do they know anything about his family? Skipping between the present and the past, this new spinoff series follows the story of how Dean’s parents, John Winchester (played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan in the original series and by Drake Rodger here) and Mary Campbell (played by Samantha Smith in the original series and Meg Donnelly here) met.Wednesday38 AT THE GARDEN 8 p.m. on HBO. Jeremy Lin, the former New York Knicks basketball player, known for his seven-game winning streak and “Linsanity,” is the focus of HBO’s new documentary. More specifically, the special brings viewers back to Feb. 10, 2012, when Lin scored 38 points against the Los Angeles Lakers at Madison Square Garden. Hasan Minhaj, Iman Shumpert, Jenny Yang, Lisa Ling and Lin himself all appear to comment on the phenomenon of “Linsanity” and the cultural impact for the Asian American community.LOVE AT FIRST LIE 9:30 p.m. on MTV. The landscape for reality competition dating shows is already pretty jammed packed: We have “Are You the One?,” “Love Island” and “Too Hot to Handle,” to name a few. MTV is jumping in with another — about uncovering who is in a real relationship and who is faking it. Each time a liar is called out during a “truth ceremony,” $25,000 is added to the cash prize.ThursdayWINTER HOUSE 9 p.m. on Bravo. “Winter House” is to Bravo what “The Avengers” is to the Marvel cinematic universe — you see reality stars doing their own thing on their respective shows (“Summer House” and “Southern Charm”), then come together in a house in Vermont. Most of the cast from the original season will be returning for the second installment, with Bravo icons Tom Sandoval and Tom Schwartz set to make appearances as well.FridayCMT ARTISTS OF THE YEAR 9 p.m. on CMT. This annual show celebrates the biggest names in country music: Lainey Wilson is taking home breakout artist of the year, and Alan Jackson is being honored with the lifetime-achievement award. Carly Pearce, Cody Johnson, Kane Brown, Luke Combs and Walker Hayes have all been given the honor of artist of the year. The live show will feature performances and surprise presenters.FIXER UPPER: THE CASTLE 9 p.m. on HBO. Chip and Joanna Gaines are working their renovation magic on a much bigger project this time — a hundred-year-old castle in Waco, Texas. Over eight episodes, they are going to transform the castle while keeping in mind the features that make it accurate to the time period.REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955) 10:15 p.m. on TCM. This film, about a teenager who moves to a new town and causes trouble, is one of James Dean’s most iconic roles. Sal Mineo and Natalie Wood also star as his new friend and the girl he falls for. “Convincing or not in motivations, this tale of tempestuous kids and their weird ways of conducting their social relations is tense with explosive incidents,” Bosley Crowther wrote in his review for The Times.SaturdayRobert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart in “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2.”Andrew Cooper/Summit Entertainment“THE TWILIGHT SAGA” MARATHON from 1 p.m. on MTV. If you have roughly ten hours to spare, and are in the mood for romance, vampires, werewolves, high school drama and a creepy CGI baby, you are in luck. MTV will be airing, back to back, all five films (“Twilight,” “New Moon,” “Eclipse,” “Breaking Dawn Part 1” and “Breaking Dawn Part 2”). Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner star in this young-adult book series turned film franchise.SundayMISS SCARLET AND THE DUKE 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). This mystery series, which stars Kate Phillips as the first female detective in Victorian London, is back for a second season. Stuart Martin stars as her co-worker, love interest and childhood friend. Together, they take on the perplexing cases and try to uncover the truth. More

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    Review: ‘Death of a Salesman’ on Broadway Makes the Lomans New Again

    Wendell Pierce and Sharon D Clarke star in a powerful revival of Arthur Miller’s drama, led by a Black cast.A deeply original work that is also deeply influential may yet in time be trite. What once opened eyes comes to seem preloaded behind them, as if part of the general human inheritance.Such has been the ironic trajectory of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman.” When it premiered on Broadway in 1949, with its depiction of the false hopes of capitalism and the family dysfunction left in its wake, there were fathers for whom “the doctor had to be called because they couldn’t stop crying,” the director Mike Nichols, who saw it then, said. “It was like an explosion.”As “Salesman” spread into the culture with astonishing speed, it helped introduce the seismic re-evaluations of the ensuing decades. But now that we take those shocks to be self-evident, the job of making the play feel as new as it once did is a difficult one for those who would revive it. “Willy Loman” has long since become shorthand for the “low man” in the pecking order. And everyone for whom it was required high school reading already knows the story: how a washed-up salesman’s delusions about American success destroy not just his own life but also those of his wife, Linda, and their sons, Happy and Biff.Short of stunt casting or radical resetting, directors must therefore dig either deeper or wider. Nichols’s 2012 Broadway production, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Linda Emond as Willy and Linda, went deeper, examining the work with microscopic precision and even replicating Jo Mielziner’s original set design and Alex North’s music. The result was a very powerful mounting, and I use the word advisedly: It sometimes seemed like an exhibit.From left, Khris Davis as Biff Loman, McKinley Belcher III as Happy Loman and Sharon D Clarke as Linda Loman.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe latest Broadway revival, which opened on Sunday at the Hudson Theater, goes wider, a notably rich and mostly successful approach. For the first time in a major New York production, the Lomans are played by Black actors. Wendell Pierce, as Willy, is wrenching as he flails and fails to avoid his fate instead of slumping into it from the start. And Sharon D Clarke, as Linda, is so paradoxically shattering in her stoicism that she turns what is usually portrayed as unshakable loyalty into a kind of heedless comorbidity.Miranda Cromwell’s revival, based on one she directed in London with Marianne Elliott in 2019, does more than give us Black Lomans — including Khris Davis as Biff and McKinley Belcher III as Happy. It also, crucially, puts them in a largely white world. Willy’s employer (Blake DeLong), his neighbor (Delaney Williams) and his mistress (Lynn Hawley) are thus more than foils in the usual sense; like Willy, you can never untangle the personal, economic and now racial threads of their behavior. And even if they aren’t bigots, they electrify moments — a card game with the neighbor, a negotiation with the “boss” — in which Willy’s paranoia seems at the same time both fantastical and well founded.It’s even more astonishing that the production achieves this effect with only a few minor alterations to the dialogue. (The college that Biff, a would-be football star, hopes to attend is now U.C.L.A., instead of the University of Virginia, where the first Black student was not admitted until 1950 — and even then, only after a lawsuit.) Likewise, though the play’s web of urban imagery, much written about in A.P. English essays, is duly honored in Anna Fleischle’s skeletal set design, it gets new life when seen in the light of the redistricting and gentrification that squeezed many people like the Lomans out of their homes.It’s therefore central to the effectiveness of the casting that it’s not colorblind. Neither the Black nor the white actors ignore race; they mine it, bringing their characters to fully specific and vivid life. Willy’s mistress has an ear-bending working-class white Boston accent. The oddly formal patois (“Nobody dast blame this man”) of the good-hearted neighbor Charley marks him as a clear outsider. (Williams is excellent in the part.) And Biff and Happy’s take on trash-talking, no less than Linda’s maternal don’t-cross-me commandments — “Attention must be finally paid!” — awakens lines you’ve heard innumerable times, asserting their implacable realness.André De Shields, in a terrifying performance, plays the ghost of Willy’s older brother, Ben.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThat awakening reaches a theatrical climax in André De Shields’s terrifying performance as the ghost of Willy’s older brother, Ben. Though dressed like Liberace in a white suit and crystal-studded shoes — the costumes are by Fleischle and Sarita Fellows — he makes every utterance sound like an elaborate curse. When he warns Biff not to “fight fair with a stranger, boy. You’ll never get out of the jungle that way,” he puts such a troubling spin on the words “boy” and “jungle” that you feel you should duck.But what works to ground and intensify the performances does not always work for the production overall. Cromwell’s use of expressionistic devices like silhouettes and frozen poses to suggest Willy’s fragmenting consciousness seems obvious and unmoored, an intrusion of acquired Polaroid memories. And though the wistful music by Femi Temowo — including a beautiful spiritual-like setting of “When the Trumpets Sound” — sets the mood for the impending tragedy, it confuses the tone when used for comic effect, or worse, solace. There is no solace in “Salesman.”In general, the balance of light and dark in this very dark play does not yet feel natural. Biff and Happy, in Willy’s memory, are not just boyish, but clichés of boyishness; aiming to solve this textual problem by underlining it, Cromwell’s direction makes it worse. On the other hand, Willy himself is often so unrelievedly monstrous that you sometimes can’t see past it to the monstrosity of American business that Miller means to indict.Yet nothing can stop the engine of the final scenes, sparking and huffing and pushing the play into great drama. As the lies that bind at last come undone, we see each of the trapped family members liberated to choose life or death or a combination thereof. (The play’s last words, after all, are “We’re free.”) They have nothing left to sell. If you believe, as Nichols said in 2012, that “now everyone in America is a salesman,” you may even feel a shiver of recognition. Made new and unfamiliar once again in this production, the Lomans look like all of us.Death of a SalesmanThrough Jan. 15 at the Hudson Theater, Manhattan; salesmanonbroadway.com. Running time: 3 hours 10 minutes. More

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    SNL Taps Into Anxiety About Biden and Takes on the Try Guys

    “Saturday Night Live” dispensed with a week’s worth of headlines in a game show parody. Another sketch reckoned with the ongoing drama of the Try Guys.It was a week with way too much news, so rather than try to contend with it in a customary opening sketch leaning on celebrity impressions, “Saturday Night Live” — looking to build on the momentum of last week’s offbeat season premiere — began with a game show.As he explained the premise of “So You Think You Won’t Snap,” Bowen Yang addressed the camera directly: “Hello, America,” he said. “Have you noticed everyone around you is angry and crazy? People are flipping out at Target. Stabbing is back. And the only thing that can cheer us up is watching a sexy show about Jeffrey Dahmer. We are living on the edge, and tonight I’m here to push us over.”The challenge he posed to the players was to simply listen to him read news headlines and keep their cool. The first contestant, a music professor and self-described “white yoga teacher” (Heidi Gardner), was given a glass of wine as Yang recounted recent events including the war in Ukraine, the bridge explosion in the Crimean Peninsula and President Biden’s sobering remarks on nuclear Armageddon. Those did not faze her, but when he played a video clip of Biden awkwardly evaluating his own mental focus on “60 Minutes,” — “Oh, it’s focused” — Gardner snapped and chugged the wine.Another contestant played by Chloe Fineman was told she could strike a Frontier Airlines flight attendant (Sarah Sherman) standing nearby when the headlines got too real. Unmoved by news about the difficulties facing Herschel Walker’s Senate campaign or a survey of children who dream of being influencers, Fineman lost it when she was played a trailer highlighting Chris Pratt’s voice in the “Super Mario Bros.” movie. “He’s supposed to be Italian!” she shouted.Kenan Thompson lasted as long as it took Yang to say “This week, Elon Musk—— ” before he trashed the table in front of him. And when Devon Walker was shown a photograph of Ye (formerly Kanye West) wearing a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt, he put a hot iron to his ear.Concluding the segment, Yang announced, “When we come back, we’ll show an 80-year-old man an episode of ‘Euphoria.’”Unexpectedly Game Host of the WeekSimply by giving the host’s role to Brendan Gleeson, the veteran character actor (“In Bruges,” “Paddington 2”), “S.N.L.” signaled that it was going to make unusual use of its principal celebrity guest.Gleeson (who got an early taste of “S.N.L.” virality with a promo that passed him off as a rebellious skateboarder) admitted in his monologue that he wasn’t much of a joke-teller. But he played the mandolin, tolerated a couple of cameos from Colin Farrell and slid right into a “Please Don’t Destroy” video about a 67-year-old man passing himself off as a high-school senior. Gleeson also played an unlikely CNN correspondent in the sketch that forced us to finally learn who the Try Guys are.New Cast Members of the Week“S.N.L.” continued to waste no time introducing its four new featured performers, spotlighting all of them in this filmed segment that, initially, seemed to be about the advice they’re receiving and the lessons they’re learning in their first weeks on the job.Walker, Michael Longfellow and Marcello Hernández relayed the tips that Lorne Michaels and other “S.N.L.” veterans had shared with them: Mainly, don’t try to do too much or put pressure on yourself to get a sketch on the air.Molly Kearney, however, received a different kind of counsel: “On Day 1,” Kearney recalled, “Lorne pulled me into his office and said, ‘Molly, there’s only one reason you’re here. I need you to kill Vladimir Putin.’ He hands me this gun and says, ‘Don’t worry, the serial numbers have been scratched off. They’ll never trace it back to us.’ I’m like, us?”Weekend Update Jokes of the WeekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che riffed on some recent stumbling blocks that Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate have encountered.Jost began:The midterms are only a month away, and is it just me or are some candidates trying to lose? Let’s start in Pennsylvania with Dr. Oz, seen here telling the audience how many minutes he’s lived in Pennsylvania. [The screen shows a photo of Dr. Oz holding up his hand with all five fingers extended.] A review of scientific studies published by Dr. Oz revealed that his experiments killed over 300 dogs. But eventually he got the recipe right. [The screen shows the package for a product called “Dr. Oz’s Organic Meatballs.”] Dr. Oz has refused to comment on the report that his research killed over 300 dogs, though it’s possible he couldn’t hear the question over the wood-chipper. [The screen shows an image of Oz about to insert a dog into said garden tool.] But don’t worry, Dr. Oz won everybody back last night when he gave a speech in front of Hitler’s car. Worse, he then got into the car and backed over a dog.Che continued:Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker denied reports that he paid for a girlfriend’s abortion, saying, “I send money to a lot of people.” Before adding, “You know, for abortions.” After news broke that Walker paid for his ex-girlfriend’s abortion, he raised more than $500,000. Because dollars are the only thing Walker is willing to raise.Disney Princess of the WeekA coming live-action remake of “The Little Mermaid,” starring Halle Bailey as Ariel, has been a source of inspiration for Black girls who want to see someone like themselves in a lead role, as well as a target for online trolls. But when Ego Nwodim came to the Weekend Update desk in the guise of this character, she explained she didn’t want to be anyone’s hero, and gave evidence for why she probably shouldn’t be.First, she explained to Jost that he did not have to call her “Black Ariel”: “You can just call me Ariel,” she said. “I don’t call you ‘white Colin’ … to your face.” She went on to say she supported Sea World and the Iraq War, was responsible for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and wasn’t very smart: “I’ll deadass bite a worm on a hook,” she said. “Gets me every damn time.” More

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    What to Know About Kevin Spacey’s Civil Trial: Anthony Rapp Takes the Stand

    In a lawsuit, Mr. Rapp said Mr. Spacey made a sexual advance when Mr. Rapp was 14. Mr. Spacey is accused of battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress.Five years ago, as the #MeToo movement saw a growing number of high-profile men face accusations of sexual misconduct, a claim against Kevin Spacey emerged while he was starring in the Netflix show “House of Cards.”In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Anthony Rapp, best known for his role in the musical “Rent,” alleged that in 1986, when he was 14, Mr. Spacey picked him up, placed him on a bed and lay down on top of him, making a “sexual advance.”Mr. Rapp told the publication that the encounter occurred around the time both actors were in Broadway shows and that Mr. Spacey, then 26, invited him to a gathering at his Manhattan apartment. Mr. Rapp told BuzzFeed he was able to “squirm” away and leave.Mr. Spacey has denied the allegation.In 2020, Mr. Rapp sued Mr. Spacey, accusing him of assault, battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress. A judge dismissed the assault claim, but on Thursday, lawyers delivered their opening statements about the other claims before a 12-person jury in Federal District Court in Manhattan. Testimony began on Friday, with Mr. Rapp detailing his account of what happened in 1986.Mr. Spacey, who faces criminal sexual assault charges in Britain in a separate case, has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than a dozen men. This is the first time one of those claims has reached a trial.After Mr. Rapp’s public accusation, TV and film producers quickly dropped Mr. Spacey from projects. His character was written out of “House of Cards,” and he was ultimately ordered to pay the studio $31 million for breach of contract. Mr. Rapp currently stars in the TV show “Star Trek: Discovery.”Mr. Spacey, now 63, initially released a statement saying he did not recall the encounter that Mr. Rapp, now 50, had described, saying, “But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior.” In court papers submitted following the lawsuit, Mr. Spacey has vehemently denied that the incident ever occurred.Anthony Rapp said Mr. Spacey made a “sexual advance” when Mr. Rapp was 14.Slaven Vlasic/Getty ImagesWhat is Mr. Rapp’s side telling the jury?Mr. Rapp took the stand on Friday and walked the court through the details of his account. He said that in 1986, when he was 14, he attended a party at Mr. Spacey’s apartment in Manhattan and, realizing he didn’t know any other guests, went into a bedroom and watched television on the edge of the bed. Eventually, Mr. Spacey appeared in the doorway, seeming intoxicated, and approached him, Mr. Rapp testified.Mr. Rapp said Mr. Spacey then picked him up, describing it like a groom carrying a bride over a threshold, and lay down on top of him, putting his weight on his body and pressing his groin into the side of Mr. Rapp’s hip.“I knew something was really wrong now,” Mr. Rapp said, recalling feeling frozen in place.Managing to wriggle out from under Mr. Spacey, Mr. Rapp testified, he went inside a nearby bathroom and shut the door before making his way to leave the apartment.As Mr. Rapp was leaving, he said, Mr. Spacey leaned into the doorway and said, “Are you sure you want to leave?” — the first words Mr. Spacey said to Mr. Rapp during the encounter, he said.Mr. Rapp’s lawyers have argued that this account constitutes battery and that Mr. Rapp suffered severe emotional distress, including depression and anxiety. Battery is legally defined as “the unjustified touching of another person, without that person’s consent, with the intent to cause a bodily contact that a reasonably prudent person would find offensive.” Mr. Rapp testified that it didn’t occur to him at the time to go to the police.The plaintiff’s side has also presented accounts Mr. Rapp gave to others in the years after the incident he described. In opening statements, a lawyer for Mr. Rapp, Peter J. Saghir, also homed in on Mr. Spacey’s statement after the BuzzFeed article, noting that he did not strongly deny Mr. Rapp’s account until his lawsuit was filed.How is Mr. Spacey’s side defending the actor?A lawyer for Mr. Spacey, Jennifer L. Keller, described Mr. Spacey’s initial statement concerning the allegations as the product of a “panic” among his managers and advisers, who advised him to take a certain tone to avoid the “social media mob.”Behind the scenes, Ms. Keller said in court, Mr. Spacey was saying he had no memory of what Mr. Rapp described. In court papers, Mr. Spacey’s lawyers said that he had flatly denied Mr. Rapp’s account, and that although he had recalled meeting Mr. Rapp on a few occasions, those interactions were “peripheral and limited.” When seeking to dismiss the case, Mr. Spacey’s lawyers emphasized in court papers that “by plaintiff’s own admission, there was no groping, no kissing, no undressing, no reaching under clothes, and no sexualized statements or innuendo.”Ms. Keller accused Mr. Rapp of making the allegations to benefit his own career and attract public attention. “It’s not a true story, but he did tell it a lot,” she said, acknowledging that there were people who would recall Mr. Rapp’s telling them about Mr. Spacey in the following years.Ms. Keller alleged that Mr. Rapp had fabricated the story by borrowing details from “Precious Sons,” the Broadway play he was in that year. She said that in the play a character drunkenly mistakes his son, played by Mr. Rapp, for his wife, picking him up and lying on top of him in a way that mirrors Mr. Rapp’s allegations.Mr. Spacey’s team has also focused on his apartment at the time, presenting a floor plan that did not align with details in Mr. Rapp’s account.Who has testified?Mr. Rapp’s lawyers have asserted that Mr. Rapp was not the only victim of sexual misconduct by Mr. Spacey, and Judge Lewis A. Kaplan allowed another accuser to testify.On Friday, that accuser, Andy Holtzman, 68, took the stand. He said that in 1981, Mr. Spacey groped his genitals and rubbed his groin on Mr. Holtzman, who was at the time working in an office at New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theater. Mr. Holtzman testified that Mr. Spacey, who was in a production at the theater company around that time, entered his office and, after Mr. Holtzman got off a phone call, walked up to him, grabbed his groin and pushed him into his desk. Mr. Holtzman, who shared his account on Facebook in 2017, said that after he screamed his objections, Mr. Spacey angrily left the room.In a deposition, Mr. Spacey denied Mr. Holtzman’s allegations, saying he did not recall any dealings with him. A lawyer for Mr. Spacey, Chase Scolnick, challenged Mr. Holtzman’s account in cross-examination, questioning how he would have recognized Mr. Spacey, who was not well known at the time, and why he did not tell superiors at work.Two other witnesses testified that Mr. Rapp told them about his encounter with Mr. Spacey in the mid-1990s.Christopher Denny, 65, who works in the theater industry, testified that Mr. Rapp, whom he described as a friend, told him about an encounter with Mr. Spacey in the mid-1990s. Sean Snow, a friend of Mr. Rapp’s, testified by video deposition that Mr. Rapp also told him the same story.Mr. Scolnick pointed out in his questioning of the witnesses that they did not have any firsthand knowledge of the incident.Who else is expected to testify?Mr. Spacey’s lawyers have indicated that one of their key witnesses may be John Barrowman, an actor known for his role in the TV show “Doctor Who.” He was an acquaintance of Mr. Rapp when they were teenagers and visited him in New York in 1986 to see “Precious Sons.” Mr. Barrowman and Mr. Rapp met Mr. Spacey backstage at a play, Mr. Spacey’s lawyers said, asserting that Mr. Barrowman’s account of events that year do not align with Mr. Rapp’s.Mr. Spacey’s lawyers have indicated that they may call Adam Vary, the BuzzFeed journalist who wrote the initial article.Why is Mr. Rapp able to bring this claim now?Because Mr. Rapp’s claims extend beyond the statute of limitations, he is relying on a law called the Child Victims Act, which New York State passed in 2019. It included a “look-back window” — a limited period of time in which people who say they were sexually abused as children could sue.The plaintiff and the defense dispute whether the law applies in this case.Mr. Spacey’s lawyers assert that based on the legislation, a plaintiff can revive claims only if they constitute a “sexual offense” that violates penal law, and they argue that Mr. Rapp’s allegations do not meet that threshold. Mr. Rapp’s lawyers have said that sexual contact, under the law, can include touching over the clothing or forcefully holding the victim, as their client alleges. What has become of other legal claims against Mr. Spacey?Mr. Rapp originally sued with an anonymous plaintiff, who alleged that he was a teenager when Mr. Spacey sexually assaulted him while working as an acting coach in the 1980s. Judge Kaplan ruled that the plaintiff would have to identify himself publicly if he wanted to continue on to trial, which he declined to do.In another case, in 2019, prosecutors in Massachusetts dropped a sexual assault charge after the accuser was warned that he could be charged with a felony if he had deleted phone evidence. The man, who had accused Mr. Spacey of fondling him at a Nantucket restaurant when he was 18, refused to continue his testimony.Later that year, a separate lawsuit in California that had accused Mr. Spacey of sexually assaulting a massage therapist was dropped after the plaintiff died.In Britain, Mr. Spacey is facing four charges of sexual assault as well as one of causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent. He pleaded not guilty, and a trial is expected to start next summer. More

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    LaTanya Richardson Jackson on Directing ‘The Piano Lesson’ (and Her Husband)

    As she makes her Broadway directorial debut, she said her “vision is about seeing a deeper way into” what August Wilson intended with his Pulitzer Prize-winning play.LaTanya Richardson Jackson believes in ghosts. Better put: She believed her parents, and grandparents, when they talked about being frequently visited by people who were invisible to the human eye. Such a childhood has not only opened her up to having similar experiences but also made her uniquely qualified to bring one of August Wilson’s most haunting plays, “The Piano Lesson,” back to Broadway this fall.It first premiered there in 1990, and this Broadway revival — the show’s first — will star Danielle Brooks and John David Washington. The play, initially produced in 1987 at Yale Repertory Theater, is the fourth in Wilson’s 10-play series known as “The Pittsburgh Cycle,” which explores a full century of African American life in Pennsylvania’s Steel City.Jackson saw that original production, in part, because she was an actress and lifelong admirer of Wilson’s work. (She later starred in a Tony-nominated revival of Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” in 2009 and made her directorial debut with his “Two Trains Running” at True Colors Theater Company in Atlanta in 2013.) But she was also there to support her husband, Samuel L. Jackson, who was playing the lead character, Boy Willie. He’s also starring in the revival, but as Boy Willie’s uncle Doaker.From left: Samuel L. Jackson, Danielle Brooks and Ray Fisher in “The Piano Lesson” at the Ethel Barrymore Theater, where it is scheduled to open Oct. 13.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSet in 1936, “The Piano Lesson,” for which Wilson also won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1990, follows two siblings, Boy Willie (Washington) and Berniece (Brooks), as they debate the fate of their family heirloom, a piano upon which the faces of their great-grandmother and her son are carved. Boy Willie wants to sell the piano and buy the property their enslaved ancestors worked on in the South. Berniece wants to keep it, understanding that the piano itself offers them another connection and liberation from their oppressive past. In contrast, Doaker sees the piano as haunted both by Boy Charles, his dead older brother and Boy Willie and Berniece’s father; and the ghost of the white slave owner, Sutter.On Broadway, Jackson, 72, is best known for portraying Lena Younger in a 2014 revival of “A Raisin in the Sun,” and, more recently, as Calpurnia, in the substantially expanded role of Atticus Finch’s sagacious and reserved housekeeper in Aaron Sorkin’s 2019 adaptation of “To Kill A Mockingbird.” But, within African American drama, in regional theaters and on television shows such as “Grey’s Anatomy,” Jackson has long been a familiar face.“The star thing,” she told me. “You have to have a mind-set for that. And I just was never willing to do that.”What she has been doing is giving life to complex Black female protagonists on the stage and screen, and now working to unlock the deeper elements of Wilson’s women. Wilson once said he wanted to create a female character in “The Piano Lesson,” which “was as large as Troy was in Fences.” But, in the end, Wilson had to admit that his interests in the themes of self-worth, tradition, and tracing the history of the piano for 135 years took over the plot so much that his female character was “not as large as I intended.”Knowing that, Richardson said she paid homage to Wilson the best way she knew how: by making visible the many worlds, obvious and hidden, his play offers us. She added that her early encounters with the play, as well as Wilson and his other works, empowered her to take those risks here in her Broadway directorial debut.In a recent video interview, Jackson talked about navigating the gender politics of Wilson’s plays, what working with Samuel L. Jackson and John David Washington has been like and how she discovered that directing was really her first love. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.You’re the first woman to direct an August Wilson play on Broadway. How has your perspective as a Black woman impacted your approach to his material?August was such a man’s man. When I directed “Two Trains Running” for Kenny Leon’s True Colors company in Atlanta, I told him [Leon], “As a woman, I look at things differently, and what might appear to you as minutiae, I find to be an important point.”I remember telling Pauletta [Washington], who played Risa, “Every time one of those men mention a woman who has died or was killed, you drop something in the kitchen and make a big, loud noise so that they have to stop and think about what they just said.” We can’t just have a conversation about women being cut or stabbed to death like that’s just a regular part of life. Our presence should not be something that’s taken for granted. Our presence is important.In “The Piano Lesson,” Berniece, like Risa, is the only woman in the cast.Yes, Berniece is surrounded by all of this testosterone. I saw the first production of this play at Yale, and I remember asking August after, “Where are all the women? Where are all the parts for women?” And he said, “Well, you know, Joe Turner has women.” I said, “But we’re always singular.” Then, he told me, “I’ll write about them when I really know what I’m saying.”My mentor, Douglas Turner Ward, told me: “Great playwrights don’t always know what they’re writing or what they have written. They attempt to do something, and if it’s great, the spirits visit them, and they just write. It’s a director’s job to see what they have actually written, whether or not it was their intention or not. Usually, with great writers, it’s bigger than what they intend.” And I find that to be so true of August.You embrace the otherworldliness of this story. Why was that important to you?Oct. 2 was the anniversary of August’s transition, so I’ve been thinking about him and his widow, Constanza Romero, and how to approach this story spiritually. I’m telling everybody, “This is a ghost story.” I believe there are other worlds where things are occurring, even if we don’t see them. To manifest that in the play, I felt that every member in that house was fighting their own ghosts. But Sutter [the white slave owner] represents the ghost of racism and the cruel manner we have had to navigate life in this country. August metaphorically shows that this ghost was an albatross around our necks. But I wanted to visually manifest it so that there was no question that we were attempting to exorcise it.Like any good ghost story, the house also seems haunted.I told myself that I had to find a designer who could build a house that was not raggedy but was really broken. August was a genius. In this play, he gave us these two-sided Janus figures. Not just between Boy Willie and Berniece, but [the brothers] Wining Boy and Doaker Charles, and the family and Lymon [Boy Willie’s friend]. And he did so because he believed that our people deserve to be recorded and documented in a classical way. That’s why we call him our Shakespeare.So, when I told our gifted set designer, Beowulf [Boritt], that house had to be split open, he was intrigued. Then when I said, “And the house has no walls.” He said, “I’m going down that rabbit hole with you.” Listen, we don’t change August’s words. That’s sacrosanct. That’s not what this vision is about. This vision is about seeing a deeper way into what he has given us.Mostly known for her work as an actress, Jackson says directing is her true passion: “I wish I were younger. But this is all I want to do now.”George Etheredge for The New York TimesThe piano is so meaningful to this family, and its symbolism is heightened by its physical beauty. Is there a story behind its design?Other versions of the play always have these pianos with these beautifully carved fresco plaques on them. But, Sam and I — you know I am married to Sam Jackson, right? — well, back in our house in Los Angeles, we have a Tree of Life statue made by the Makonde sculptors from East Africa. They start with a piece of ebony and then pass it among the community members to carve until it is all done. So, I wanted the piano to look like a Makonde statue and Mama’s face had to be the most prominent, and then the little boy Charles. And you know how they made that happen? A 3-D printer.Speaking of Samuel L. Jackson, he starred as Boy Willie in the original production. Now, he is playing the role of one of the uncles, Doaker Charles. What was it like for you to direct him?Sam and I are used to working together and being around each other 24/7. But I realized in this particular context, he doesn’t like to take a note. I had heard that about him before, but I just thought, “Oh, he just doesn’t like to take notes from people he feels don’t know what they’re talking about.” I didn’t think I’d even have to tell him, “That’s the note, brother.” And when I did, he said, “Well, I think I would know how that goes.” And I said, “I’m just bringing it to your attention that it didn’t go the way I would like it to go.”The way that I operate is that there are no stars in the room. We are an ensemble, and we are moving together or not at all. But, it was a true gift that this project came to me with Sam and John David already attached to it.This is John David Washington’s first play. You’ve also known him for a long time, did anything surprise you about his performance?Denzel and Pauletta Washington have been very generous with their children with me, and I love all their children. They, like our daughter, Zoe, are all worker bees. So to watch John David’s career and be able to help develop it is beyond a responsibility. It’s like being given something from God that says, “OK, you take care of and nurture this.” And to him, I said, “We got this. Just trust me. Your instrument is built soundly. We are going to give you the notes, and all you have to do is play them.” And he has exceeded my wildest imagination.This brings us back to Berniece. There are the words on the page, and then what you bring to her character.Or what Danielle [Brooks] brings. I’ve only been trying to guide Danielle toward who I think Berniece is. I’ve seen different renditions of this character, and she is always so angry, almost too angry. And I know she’s frustrated because she lost Crawford, the love of her life, and blames Boy Willie. But there are times that the anger covers up that hurt. So, I’ve told her, “Sometimes I just want to see the hurt because it allows me into you in a different way.” This is a family that loves each other, so she has to have a heart for him, too.Do you want to continue directing?Since I was in sixth grade, I knew that this was something inside of me, and God only knows who or what I could have been or done by now if I had just followed that track. I wish I were younger. But this is all I want to do now. More