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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘Katrina Babies’ and the MTV Video Music Awards

    HBO airs its documentary on the youth affected by the 2005 hurricane and MTV hosts its annual award show.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, Aug. 22-28. Details and times are subject to change.MondayKEVIN CAN F**K HIMSELF 9 p.m. on AMC. This show, returning for its second season this week, is two shows in one — it follows Allison McRoberts (Annie Murphy) who puts up with her husband, Kevin (Eric Petersen), who is an immature, unhelpful archetype of a man like those in many other sitcoms. The scenes of them together are set to the classic sitcom laugh track and upbeat music. But when Allison is away from her husband, she enters a whole different show, in which she plots to murder Kevin. The series “will make us see the horror in what we’ve been trained to see as harmless, even if it has to smack us upside the head,” James Poniewozik wrote about the show’s first season. “It may be as subtle as a blow to the skull, but it’s an inventive meta-critique of TV.”TuesdayCINDERELLA: THE REUNION, A SPECIAL EDITION OF 20/20 8 p.m. on ABC. Twenty-five years ago, ABC aired a remake of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Cinderella” — and this week ABC is hosting a reunion. The movie starred Brandy as Cinderella. Other cast members included Whitney Houston as the Fairy Godmother, Jason Alexander as Lionel and Whoopi Goldberg as Queen Constantina. “The matter-of-fact racial casting works so smoothly that it becomes one of the show’s happiest effects,” Caryn James wrote in her 1997 review. “The entire kingdom is blissfully multiethnic, with a Black queen in Ms. Goldberg, a white king in Victor Garber and the Philippine-born Paolo Montalban as their son.” The reunion special will feature cast interviews and behind-the-scenes footage of Houston, who died in 2012.From left: Kandyse McClure, Jessica Sutton, Ashley Nicole Williams and Praneet Akilla in “Motherland: Fort Salem.”Freeform/Justine YeungMOTHERLAND: FORT SALEM 10 p.m. on Freeform. This series is finishing up its third and final season this week. The show is initially set 300 years after the Salem Witch Trials, as women are on the front lines protecting the country. Raelle Collar (Taylor Hickson), Tally Craven (Jessica Sutton), and Abigail Bellweather (Ashley Nicole Williams) are all witches who enroll in the army and use their supernatural gifts against threats to national security. The series finale promises a culminating battle between the Unit (this group of witches) and the Camarilla (an ancient organizations of witch hunters).WednesdayMYSTERIES DECODED 8 p.m. The CW. For the last two seasons, Jennifer Marshall, a U.S. Navy veteran turned private investigator, has explored the unexplained. Episodes this season have included her looking into accounts of the Lake Champlain monster, the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles, the so-called “Conjuring” house in Rhode Island, and more. Finishing up its second season, this week’s episode is focusing on Phoenix Lights, a 1997 U.F.O. event that remains a mystery.KATRINA BABIES 9 p.m. on HBO. Edward Buckles Jr. has an intimate perspective on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina — he was 13 when it happened. He spent the next seven years talking to his peers and documenting the lives of children whose lives and communities were uprooted amid the devastation for this documentary, which features archival footage, first-person accounts, home videos and animation.ThursdayTHE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL (1952) 6 p.m. on TCM. This film, directed by Vincente Minnelli, follows the movie producer Jonathan Shields (Kirk Douglas) as he uses those around him to become more successful. Those in his path include an actress (Lana Turner), a director (Barry Sullivan) and a screenwriter (Dick Powell). The film won five of the six Academy Awards it was nominated for. “Through all of this gory demonstration of the miserable innards of a man, the doctors are also displaying the innards of Hollywood,” the critic Bosley Crowther wrote in his review for the Times.FridayChanning Tatum, left, and Jonah Hill, in “22 Jump Street.”Glen Wilson/Columbia Pictures22 JUMP STREET 8 p.m. on FX. In “21 Jump Street,” Jenko (Channing Tatum) and Schmidt (Jonah Hill) went undercover at a high school — and in this sequel, the stakes are much higher: They are undercover at college, and they are trying to find the supplier of a new synthetic drug. This leads the duo to fraternity parties, slam poetry nights and to events at spring break. “As in the first movie, the guiding comic principle here remains the appearance of ironic detachment followed by an assertion of sincerity that’s as appealing as it is disingenuous,” Manohla Dargis wrote in her review for the Times. “It’s a destabilizing strategy that allows the filmmakers to have their cake and scarf it too.”SaturdayNASCAR CUP SERIES: DAYTONA 7 p.m. on NBC. On Saturday, the NASCAR Cup Series continues its 2022 season at the Daytona International Speedway. The race, which is 160 laps — or 400 miles — will feature drivers who qualified at a race the night before. The Cup Series kicked off in late June and will continue until mid-September.SundayFrom left: Elizabeth McCafferty and Rafaëlle Cohen in “The Boleyns.”BBCTHE BOLEYNS: A SCANDALOUS FAMILY 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). This three-part series, which originally aired in 2021 on BBC in Britain, is coming to the United States via PBS. This fictionalized version of the Boleyn family, which included Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII and the mother of Queen Elizabeth I, focuses on a young Anne, played by Rafaëlle Cohen, and her siblings Mary Boleyn (Elizabeth McCafferty) and George Boleyn (Sam Retford), as well as her father, Thomas Boleyn (Max Dowler). The show uses narration from academics along with the actors recreating certain scenes.MTV VIDEO MUSIC AWARDS 8 p.m. on MTV. The awards are back this year and broadcasting live from the Prudential Center in Newark on Sunday night. LL Cool J, Nicki Minaj and Jack Harlow are set to M.C. the show — and Minaj will receive the Video Vanguard Award as well as perform live. Other performers include Blackpink, Lizzo, Jack Harlow, Maneskin, J Balvin, Marshmello and Khalid, Panic! at the Disco and Kane Brown. Kendrick Lamar, Lil Nas X and Jack Harlow, who are up for seven awards, are tied for the highest number of nominations. More

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    Live Performance Is Back. But Audiences Have Been Slow to Return.

    Attendance lagged in the comeback season, as the challenges posed by the coronavirus persisted. Presenters hope it was just a blip.Patti LuPone, Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig came back to Broadway. The Norwegian diva-in-the-making Lise Davidsen brought her penetrating voice to the Metropolitan Opera. Dancers filled stages, symphonies reverberated in concert halls and international theater companies returned to American stages.The resumption of live performance after the long pandemic shutdown brought plenty to cheer about over the past year. But far fewer people are showing up to join those cheers than presenters had hoped.Around New York, and across the country, audiences remain well below prepandemic levels. From regional theaters to Broadway, and from local orchestras to grand opera houses, performing arts organizations are reporting persistent — and worrisome — drops in attendance.Fewer than half as many people saw a Broadway show during the season that recently ended than did so during the last full season before the coronavirus pandemic. The Met Opera saw its paid attendance fall to 61 percent of capacity, down from 75 percent before the pandemic. Many regional theaters say ticket sales are down significantly.“There was a greater magnetic force of people’s couches than I, as a producer, anticipated,” said Jeremy Blocker, the managing director at New York Theater Workshop, the Off Broadway theater that developed “Rent” and “Hadestown.” “People got used to not going places during the pandemic, and we’re going to struggle with that for a few years.”Many presenters anticipate that the softer box office will extend into the upcoming season and perhaps beyond. And some fear that the virus is accelerating long-term trends that have troubled arts organizations for years, including softer ticket sales for many classical music events, the decline of the subscription model for selling tickets at many performing arts organizations, and the increasing tendency among consumers to purchase tickets at the last minute.A few institutions are already making adjustments for the new season: The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra has cut 10 concerts, after seeing its average attendance fall to 40 percent of capacity last season, down from 62 percent in 2018-19.Many Broadway shows have struggled to match prepandemic salesPercent change in weekly gross sales in 2021 and 2022, compared with the same week in 2019 More

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    George R.R. Martin Is Finally Getting the Show He Wanted

    “House of the Dragon,” the “Game of Thrones” author’s preferred spinoff, premieres on Sunday night. “It had everything that I thought we needed for a successful successor show,” he said.In the five years that HBO programming executives have been carefully considering a worthy successor to “Game of Thrones,” there was one idea that George R.R. Martin kept pushing: his rise-and-fall tale of the dragon-riding Targaryen family, set nearly 200 years before the events of “Game of Thrones.”There was some reluctance within HBO’s ranks about creating a series that, like the original, was about a battle for the Iron Throne. A pair of writers assigned to work on the Targaryen concept came and went, but Martin would not give it up. Then, after HBO shot — and canceled — a separate “Thrones” prequel pilot, Martin’s persistence prevailed. “House of the Dragon” was ordered straight to series in late 2019. Martin is the creator of the show along with Ryan Condal.“House of the Dragon,” the first “Thrones” spinoff series, premieres on Sunday night, and the stakes are high for HBO. A hit could prove the viability of the Thrones Cinematic Universe. A middling performance (or worse) will prompt broader questions about whether millions of viewers are craving more “Thrones” series.In a conversation late last month, Martin, the man who over the past three decades meticulously constructed the “Thrones” universe in his various books, discussed why he felt strongly about this idea; his ambitions for future spinoffs; and how his work-in-progress books will diverge from the controversial ending of “Game of Thrones,” the TV series.These are edited excerpts from our conversation.Two writers worked on the development of your Targaryen story and it didn’t go anywhere. What made you keep pushing for it?I did not want to drop it. There was a lot of material already written on it, and it had everything that I thought we needed for a successful successor show. It had all of the intrigue around the Iron Throne. It had the great houses contending. It had dragons — a lot of dragons — and battles and betrayals.“House of the Dragon” has thematic overlaps with “Game of Thrones” — family rivalry, the battle for the throne. In what ways is it different?“Game of Thrones” and my book version of it, “A Song of Ice and Fire,” is, in some ways, a classic high fantasy in the mode of Tolkien and many, many writers who followed. Now, yes, it is true that in a sense, I’m deconstructing those tropes, those myths, the things that were hallmarks. But I’m also following them to some extent. “House of the Dragon” is more like historical fiction with some dragons thrown in. It’s like a Shakespearean tragedy.The conclusion of “Game of Thrones” disappointed many fans, but “my ending will be very different,” Martin said.HBOIt’s been just over three years since “Game of Thrones” ended in a way that disappointed many fans. What did you make of the ending?One of the things in the later seasons of the show was, How many seasons was it going to be? And [the “Game of Thrones” creators David Benioff and Dan Weiss] for years were saying they wanted to wrap it up in seven seasons. Well, seven became eight because the eighth season is really the second half of the seventh season — it’s kind of one long season.But I never felt that seven or eight seasons was enough. I campaigned for 10 seasons, and we could have gone to 12. There’s enough material — and there certainly will be enough material once I finish these last two books — to sustain 12 seasons.But I lost that battle, and we went with eight. I think one of the big complaints about those last seasons is not only what happened — although there are complaints about that — but also that it happened too suddenly, and it was not set up. And if we had 10 seasons or 12 seasons, I think that would have worked better.Considering the backlash, what’s your level of concern, for the new show, that people are either going to be too fatigued to return to the “Thrones” universe, or will relish in bringing the knives out, no matter what?I do see comments online from people, and sometimes they email me directly. I’m also concerned about a similar thing with my book. As you know, “The Winds of Winter” is very, very late — the last book was 11 years ago, and people are very angry about that. But how many people?“House of the Dragon” and any other spinoffs that are coming, and “The Winds of Winter” when it comes, are going to face some immediate backlash, and some resistance from people who don’t even want to give it a chance.Let’s say “House of the Dragon” is a hit. What would be your ideal ambition here? An entire fleet of “Thrones” TV series?Well, we are developing a number of other spinoffs. There’s the Jon Snow sequel show, and the rest are all prequels. There’s “Ten Thousand Ships” about Nymeria — that’s like a thousand years before and about how the Rhoynar came to Dorne. That’s an “Odyssey”-like epic. There’s the nine voyages of Corlys Velaryon, the Sea Snake. That would take us to places in the world that we’ve never seen.We have some animated shows going, one of which was set in Yi Ti, which is basically the fantasy version of Imperial China or the Far East. We got a terrific script on that. Obviously, not all these shows we’re developing are going to make it to air, but I hope that several of them do.Rhys Ifans and Emily Carey in “House of the Dragon,” which involves an earlier battle for the Iron Throne.Ollie Upton/HBOIs there a model you admire? Something like Marvel?I do like what Marvel is doing because I like the variety of the shows. Another model that I think was interesting was the old “Mary Tyler Moore Show.” That show generated a number of spinoffs: There was “Rhoda,” about her friend. Phyllis got her own show. And the one that really excited me was “Lou Grant.” They took this character from a sitcom and they made him the hero of a serious journalism show. That’s pretty amazing to take a character who is a comic foil and make him the center of a serious show. I’d like to see a range in our shows.Before “House of the Dragon” was given a green light, HBO shot an entire pilot for a show that takes place 1,000 years before the events of “Game of Thrones.” It was eventually canceled. What went wrong with it?Well, I have not seen the pilot. For whatever reason they won’t show it to me, so I don’t know. It was, in some ways, more challenging because on that one, they’re really, really going back into the past. The Long Night is mentioned in my books here and there, but it’s an ancient event that people tell stories about — it’s like the Garden of Eden or a biblical flood. I remember when we were first developing it, I said, “You’re going back so far — if you decided to do a ‘Sopranos’ prequel, then you would be talking about the Etruscans, the ancestors of Tony Soprano. You might be talking about cave men.”Tell me about your level of involvement in “House of the Dragon” versus your level of involvement with “Game of Thrones,” the original series.I am a lot more involved in “House of the Dragon” than I was in the later seasons of “Game of Thrones.” Now, mind you, I was very involved in the early seasons of “Game of Thrones.” Seasons 1 through 4, I mean, not only did I write a script, but especially like Seasons 1 or 2, I was giving a verdict on all the castings. I was reading the scripts. I was talking to Dan and David. I visited the set. But as the years went by, that involvement became less and less.Will your upcoming books diverge from “Thrones,” the TV series?A lot of this story comes to me as I write it. I always knew once the show got beyond my books — which honestly I did not anticipate — they would start going in directions that the books are not going to go in. Now, as I’m writing the books and I’m making more and more progress and it’s getting longer, ideas are coming to me and characters are taking me in directions that are even further from where the show went.So I think what you’re going to find is, when “Winds of Winter” and then, hopefully, “Dream of Spring” come out, that my ending will be very different. And there will be some similarities, some big moments that I told David and Dan about many years ago, when they visited me in Santa Fe. But we only had like two, three days there, so I didn’t tell them everything. And even some of the things I told them are changing as I do the writing. So they will be different. And then it’ll be up to the readers and the viewers to decide which one they like better, and argue about it.When will the books be done?No comment. No comment. No comment. I get in trouble every time I do that. I mean, going back like 10 years, I said, “Oh, I should be done next year.” And then it’s not done next year. And then: “George lied to us.” I’m no good at predicting these things. And some of it depends on how many other interruptions there are and all that. I’m in a pretty good place now, so I’m optimistic. But I’m not going to make any predictions. More

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    HBO Max Pulls Nearly 200 ‘Sesame Street’ Episodes

    HBO Max took down classic episodes of “Sesame Street” as it prepares to combine with Discovery+. The move came as a surprise to fans, who worried about what it signals.Nearly 200 episodes of “Sesame Street” have been pulled from HBO Max, the streaming platform that has been purging films and television shows in recent weeks as it prepares to combine with another streaming service, Discovery+.Fans of “Sesame Street” were surprised on Friday to see that hundreds of episodes, most from the first 40 years of the show, had been removed from HBO Max.It is the latest shift at HBO Max following the merger of its former parent company, WarnerMedia, with Discovery Inc. in April. Together, the companies formed Warner Bros. Discovery, which is aiming to find $3 billion in savings in an effort to reduce its $55 billion in debt.This week, about 70 HBO Max staff members were laid off as a part of the reorganization, and HBO Max announced that 36 titles were being pulled from the platform. The pulled programming included the animated series “Infinity Train” and “The Not-Too-Late Show With Elmo,” a “Sesame Street” spinoff.David Zaslav, the company’s chief executive, also told investors this month that the company plans to offer a single paid subscription streaming service, bringing together content from HBO Max and Discovery+.It was not clear what that means for the future of “Sesame Street” on HBO Max.As of Friday, HBO Max had cut the number of “Sesame Street” episodes it provides to 456 from 650, Variety reported. Some spinoff series survived the cull, including seven seasons of “My Sesame Street Friends,” and “The Magical Wand Chase” special, featuring Elmo and Abby Cadabby, a pink fairy-in-training who joined “Sesame Street” in 2006.Every episode of “Sesame Street” from Seasons 39, which aired in 2008, through 52, the latest season, is still available on HBO Max. The newest season, 53, will air on HBO Max in the fall.The only episodes available from before season 39 are from seasons one, five and seven, including a fan favorite in which all of the characters gather for a singalong in Bert and Ernie’s bathroom.Some of the most notable episodes HBO Max once streamed are no longer available, including an episode that aired in 1983 and featured Big Bird confronting death, following the death of the actor who played Mr. Hooper, Will Lee.HBO said in a statement that the streaming platform was “committed to continuing to bring ‘Sesame Street’ into families’ homes.”“‘Sesame Street’ is and has always been an important part of television culture and a crown jewel of our preschool offering,” the statement said.Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit group behind “Sesame Street,” struck a five-year deal with HBO in April 2015 to give the premium cable network the first run of new episodes. The episodes would then air free nine months later on PBS, where the show had aired for 45 years.In 2019, Sesame Workshop made a similar deal with HBO Max, which started in May 2020. Both deals also gave HBO Max access to the enormous back library of “Sesame Street,” though it has never made all of the episodes available at the same time.Some episodes of the show are available on PBS and the Sesame Street YouTube account.Sesame Workshop did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.Joe Hennes, editor in chief of ToughPigs, a website for fans of “Sesame Street,” the Muppets and other Jim Henson creations, said the “Sesame Street” episodes still available on HBO Max were a “random assortment.”“The culturally important episodes, or the episodes that maybe a more casual fan would say, ‘I’d like to see that again,’ that stuff is what’s missing,” Mr. Hennes said.Mr. Hennes, who worked in the creative department of Sesame Workshop from 2012 to 2021, said that he was concerned that the episode removal could signal a fading relationship between HBO Max and Sesame Workshop.Sesame Workshop expanded its offerings and increased its production values with the influx of funding from the premium cable network. If HBO Max reduced its financial support or ended the relationship, Mr. Hennes said it could limit the nonprofit’s production and outreach work.“In a perfect world, HBO Max would want to invest more in ‘Sesame Street’ and really make it the flagship that it could be for the streaming network,” Mr. Hennes said. “So it’s a little baffling that they would decide to go backward on that and say we’re going to do less of this and not really capitalize on their own investment in the franchise.”After HBO Max’s decision to remove episodes became public, the official Twitter account for “Sesame Street” seemed to address the change.“Your friends on Sesame Street will always be here when you need them,” it said. “Visit the neighborhood any day of the week with full episodes on our YouTube channel.” More

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    Natasha Rothwell Used to Be Paid in Beer

    Voting is underway for the 74th Primetime Emmys, and this week we’re talking to several acting nominees. The awards will be presented on Sept. 12 on NBC.Natasha Rothwell used to be paid in beer at the Upright Citizens Brigade.During three-minute skits, she would impersonate an agitated therapist or a heckling dog watcher in the brigade’s blacked-out, basement theater in Manhattan’s Chelsea district. It was a raucous, feet-first entry to performing — and provided plenty to drink — for early career comedians looking for a glimmer of recognition or even Hollywood stardom.Now a decade later, instead of booze, she has received an Emmy nomination for her supporting role as an overworked and underappreciated spa manager in the HBO series “The White Lotus.”Rothwell’s first Emmy nod for acting is a pivotal moment for someone who had her beginnings on the New York improv stage and has since transitioned into directorial and acting roles with Netflix and HBO. To her, the nomination validates the hard work she has done to help give a voice to people of color who are often expected to keep hidden in the background.In “The White Lotus,” Rothwell, 41, plays Belinda, who works in the titular resort’s wellness center tending an endless parade of entitled guests, among them Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge), who has traveled to Hawaii to scatter her mother’s ashes. To Tanya, Belinda is a miracle-worker, and she offers to fund a wellness business of Belinda’s own. But by the time Belinda creates a business plan, Tanya’s interest has wilted, and in the final episode she hushes Belinda with a wad of cash.“These characters aren’t glaringly problematic,” she said. “I mean for people of color our lenses are tuned and we know that it’s clearly problematic. But it’s not your MAGA-hat wearing Karen walking through, throwing privilege around.”“It’s the nuance of the privilege” as it was portrayed, she added, “that really provoked people.”The quiet storm churning in Belinda, Rothwell said, reflects the experience of service industry professionals who feel powerless in their position. (Rothwell herself took family photos at JCPenney and worked the drive-through window at McDonald’s before landing the big gigs.) She credits the writer and director Mike White for imbuing her character with tenderness and depth without making Belinda’s struggle the focal point.“She just wasn’t a prop in other people’s story; she had a drive and a desire,” Rothwell said. “He really highlighted the real experience of Black people in customer service where we can’t say what we think when we think it. We don’t have that luxury.”At U.C.B., Rothwell poured her heart into every character she played, something her manager, Edna Cowan, recognized immediately. In their first meeting, at Cowan’s apartment, Rothwell expressed her desire to break into the entertainment industry, which began their partnership of more than a decade.“I feel like I have matches in one hand and dry sticks in the other,” Rothwell recalled having said to Cowan. “And I just need someone to help me make fire.”More on the 74th Emmy AwardsThe 2022 edition of the Emmys, which celebrate excellence in television, will take place on Sept. 12 in Los Angeles.‘The White Lotus’: Natasha Rothwell’s nomination for her portrayal of an underappreciated spa manager is a pivotal moment for the actress, whose career began on the improv stage.‘Pam & Tommy’: After her Emmy-nominated role in the Hulu mini-series, Lily James has a new appreciation for the many complications of being Pamela Anderson.‘Severance’: Christopher Walken and John Turturro, both nominated for best supporting actor in a drama, drew upon their years of friendship in the techno-thriller.‘Dopesick’: Kaitlyn Dever is up for her first Emmy for her role as a young woman with an opioid addiction in the mini-series. She sought to approach the role with the utmost sensitivity.Cowan was among the first people Rothwell called after the Emmy nomination. Rothwell peeled from her bedsheets around 9:30 a.m., lurched for her phone — as she normally does — and watched as celebratory alerts overwhelmed her screen. She had made a calendar reminder on her phone to congratulate Coolidge, who was heavily favored for a nomination, but she had not anticipated receiving one of her own.She thought she was still dreaming.“I had to catch my breath,” Rothwell said. “It was pretty special.”As Rothwell wiped tears from her eyes, the two shrieked from excitement, scaring Rothwell’s salt-and-pepper goldendoodle, Lloyd Dobler, a reference to John Cusack’s character in “Say Anything.” Rothwell reminded Cowan of the analogy she had made in their first conversation.“We made fire, we made fire,” Rothwell recalled saying.Cowan, in a recent video interview, put it this way: “I think it’s the culmination of many years of consistently good work.”Natasha Rothwell, left, with Jennifer Coolidge; both received Emmy nominations for their roles in “The White Lotus.”Mario Perez/HBOBorn in Wichita, Kan., Rothwell grew up as an Air Force brat, living in bases around the world, from Florida to Turkey. (She attended two elementary schools, two middle schools and two high schools.) She was thankful for being exposed to a variety of cultures, she said, but not all of her memories were good — such as being called the N-word for the first time, at her high school in Fort Walton Beach, Fla.“We’re not in Kansas anymore,” she remembered thinking. “Literally.”Such experiences motivated her to better understand human behavior. She joined an improv troupe at her second high school, in Maryland, which helped liberate her from obsessive, intrusive thoughts, and went on to study theater at University of Maryland. Her dream was to become a Broadway actor, and she felt discouraged after graduation when she kept landing mostly comedy roles.On the advice of one of her former professors, she decided to embrace her talent for comedy.“I’m so grateful that I stopped trying to resist my natural sort of inclination and was able to apply my dramatic skill set to comedy, which I think makes it hit harder,” she said.After “Saturday Night Live” was criticized in 2013 for not having a Black female cast member, the artistic director at U.C.B. informed Rothwell of special auditions; “S.N.L.” hired her as a writer in 2014 but she left after a single season, feeling undervalued.But things picked up quickly after that. In 2016, she was featured in the short-lived but critically admired Netflix comedy series “The Characters,” and later that year she began a full-series run as the protective and fiercely loyal friend Kelli Prenny in HBO’s “Insecure.” (She was also a supervising producer and writer of “Insecure,” sharing its Emmy nomination for best comedy in 2020, and directed an episode of the final season, her directorial debut.)As she helped develop her “Insecure” character, Rothwell asked herself: What would it be like to be in the world and not once doubt your worth or your value? She hoped Kelli’s unapologetic truth would allow Black, plus-sized viewers to feel seen, she said. Kelli was a character she had needed to see herself.“When I would walk through the airport of Philly, when I would be visiting my family, they’d be like, ‘Yes, Kelli, I see you!’ and it was just this love for her that made me protective of her,” she said.Although the role wasn’t official, she kept on her writer’s cap during the production of “White Lotus,” too. She remembered pulling White aside at one point and saying, “You know, we don’t talk the way we talk around y’all,” referring to the different ways people speak at work compared with in their personal lives.White was receptive to working the idea into the show, she said. In Episode 3, viewers see Belinda relax as she talks to her son about Tanya’s wellness center proposal, capturing one of the character’s few relieving moments.Given Rothwell’s reputation in comedy, people are often surprised, she said, when she takes on more serious roles. But she has tried not to let herself become limited to one genre, inspired, she said, by the versatility of performers like Robin Williams and Lily Tomlin. And she is still motivated by her early love for drama.“The comedy I write and am drawn to produce, direct and consume has both levity and gravity,” she said. “They necessitate each other.” More

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    ‘Bad Sisters’ Review: The Family That Kills Together (Maybe)

    Sharon Horgan headlines a twisty, comic take on the avenging-women thriller for Apple TV+.A despicable male is found dead, and the prime suspects are a group of women who wanted to protect one of their number from his constant oppression. The killer or killers are eventually revealed; a lot of driving is done up and down a picturesque coastline. It’s the “Big Little Lies” scenario, but “Bad Sisters,” premiering Friday on Apple TV+, adds something new and refreshing to the formula: a sense of humor.The Irish writer and performer Sharon Horgan, who created “Bad Sisters” with Dave Finkel and Brett Baer, has been behind some of the most caustically funny shows on British television this century, like “Pulling” (raucous female friendship) and “Catastrophe” (the chaos of marriage). Earlier this year, she branched out, recasting “The Shining” as a family sitcom in “Shining Vale” on Starz.“Shining Vale” and “Bad Sisters” don’t send up the horror and avenging-women-thriller genres; they employ humor, strategically and affectionately, to give the genres new life. The 10 hourlong episodes of “Bad Sisters” (based on a Belgian series, “Clan”) tell a serious story about the damage that ripples outward from one angry and devious man, but Horgan and her collaborators use the structures of comedy to maintain energy and keep up our interest, and they mostly avoid the tendencies toward moralism and melodrama that this sort of narrative often lapses into.The villain of “Bad Sisters” is John Paul Williams (Claes Bang), who works in the finance department of a Dublin architecture firm. We first see him in his coffin at his wake, which is where we’re introduced to the five sisters of the title: Grace, his long-suffering wife (Anne-Marie Duff), and his in-laws Eva (Horgan), Ursula (Eva Birthistle), Bibi (Sarah Greene) and Becka (Eve Hewson).The circumstances of John Paul’s death are kept from us until late in the series, but we know that it has been ruled an accident because Tom (Brian Gleeson) and Matt (Daryl McCormack), a pair of slightly feckless half brothers who own a small and failing insurance agency, have set out to prove otherwise. If they can show that it was murder, they won’t have to pay off on the life-insurance policy that Grace holds.Their stumbling but bullheaded progress — they’re like low-rent cousins of Edward G. Robinson in “Double Indemnity” — is one of the show’s clever comic storytelling devices. The investigation they carry out is remarkably effective, largely because no one gives much thought to talking with them, and the audience is always a step or two ahead in putting together the facts they’re uncovering.Tom and Matt unwittingly guide us through the larger story, in which continual flashbacks illustrate John Paul’s awfulness and the increasingly dire steps the sisters take in response. Each sister proves to have her own reason to want him dead, which complicates the narrative and fills out the 10 episodes. The most baroque of these subplots involves the loss of one of Bibi’s eyes, which requires Greene to wear a pirate-like eye patch that’s a neat visual joke in its own right.The trickiness and delayed revelations mean that “Bad Sisters” is a forest of spoilers, about which it can perhaps safely be said that the sisters-in-law find themselves willing to contemplate murder and that John Paul proves, through a series of misadventures that are grisly in nature and slapstick in form, to be comically indestructible, right up until he isn’t.Beyond the smart construction and tart dialogue, especially in the episodes (four of 10) written or co-written by Horgan, “Bad Sisters” succeeds because the five lead actresses convince us that they’re a family unit, sometimes for worse but mostly for better. The characters are types — strong and overprotective Eva, angry Bibi, flighty but sensible Becka — but the performers make them distinctive and make us feel their fierce devotion to one another.Particularly good is Duff in the difficult, thankless role of Grace, who sticks with John Paul despite being gaslighted, debased and controlled; it would be easy to write her off and disengage from the show, but Duff keeps us with her, showing the layers of insecurity, fear and honest devotion that make sense of the character.The real key to the show, though, is the performance by Bang, who pulls off an even more impressive feat with John Paul, expertly portraying his ghastliness while also rendering him as absolutely human and never for a moment descending into caricature. John Paul’s sociopathy is, with a few exceptions, a matter of conversational malevolence and tactical maneuvering rather than physical violence, and Bang executes his attacks with the self-satisfied joy of a childish virtuoso; instead of playing up monstrousness or soullessness, he puts a twinkle in John Paul’s eye and a hint of uncertainty beneath his bravado, and you can’t take your own eyes off him. More

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    in Television

    ‘House of the Dragon’ Will Revisit Westeros, Not Reinvent It

    Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik, the showrunners of the “Game of Thrones” prequel, discuss its fealty to the original and the new politics of brothel scenes.A few years ago, Miguel Sapochnik thought he was done with “Game of Thrones.”“I’m unfortunately caught on tape on the very last day of shooting,” he recalled recently, “surrounded by burning Westeros and hundreds of people covered in blood, saying, ‘This was great; I hope I never come back again.’”And yet, here we are and here he is. On Sunday, the franchise returns to HBO with “House of the Dragon,” a prequel series set nearly 200 years before the original. Westeros isn’t burning, but there is plenty of blood, among other clear reminders that viewers are back in the deeply TV-MA world of HBO’s biggest-ever hit.So is Sapochnik. A director of many of the most spectacular “Thrones” installments, he is a showrunner on “Dragon” and directed several episodes, including Sunday’s series premiere. The other showrunner is Ryan Condal (“Colony”), who created the series with George R.R. Martin, the literary mastermind of the “Thrones” universe.Of the various proposals for “Thrones” spinoffs discussed and developed, “Dragon,” based on Martin’s prequel novel, “Fire & Blood,” was in many ways the safest choice, with obvious parallels with the original. (A pilot was shot for an earlier spinoff that was ultimately spiked by HBO and WarnerMedia, then the network’s corporate owner.)The series involves an earlier war for the Iron Throne waged largely among members of the ruling Targaryen dynasty, the ancestors of the dragon queen Daenerys Targaryen, played by Emilia Clarke in “Thrones.” The core cast includes Paddy Considine as King Viserys, the ruler of Westeros; Matt Smith as his tempestuous brother; Emma D’Arcy as the king’s headstrong daughter; and Olivia Cooke as a courtier at the center of things.The stakes are undeniable: As a test of viewers’ appetite for more Westeros stories, “Dragon” will perhaps determine whether “Thrones” can emerge as another lucrative pop-culture universe à la Marvel. (Several other “Thrones” shows are in development.)A few weeks ago, in a video interview shortly before the series’s world premiere in Los Angeles, Condal and Sapochnik broke down the new series, brothel scenes and domesticated dragons. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Why was this part of the “Game of Thrones” history the best basis for the first follow-up series?MIGUEL SAPOCHNIK The decision was kind of made for us: George really wanted to tell this story. Of all the stories that were kind of bandied around, it’s the closest one to the original show in tone. It deals with the Targaryens and their dynasty, so it’s accessible in that respect. It has more dragons in it. People will say they don’t like dragons and they’re not watching it for the dragons, but they do like the dragons, they help.RYAN CONDAL This one had the most resonance with the original series, when we see Daenerys after the fall of the empire. She’s running around the East relying on the kindness of strangers, or perhaps the greed of strangers who want to put her on the throne to enrich themselves. Her memory, the stories that she’s been told of the Targaryen height, the shining city on the hill — that’s this story.Matt Smith plays Prince Daemon, one of several Targaryens with their eyes on the Iron Throne.Ollie Upton/HBO creditIn what specific ways did you want to reflect the original series?SAPOCHNIK We wanted to replicate its success. That was first.Smart.SAPOCHNIK No, I mean, we need to be so lucky. We specifically set out to start the show as “Game of Thrones” and not to try and deviate. It seems very important that if you’re going to evolve beyond “Game of Thrones,” first you have to pay respect to it. Also it worked, so why try to reinvent it? But to just replicate the original show would be a big disservice to the story because we have what is effectively a soap-opera kind of quality to it. The perspective is the thing that’s different, in that it’s a female perspective.CONDAL There’s 172 years of history that happened between these two series. Much had to be the same because it’s still “Game of Thrones,” it’s still the same universe. But things also have to be different to communicate this massive passage of time. So those were the opposing forces that we were always weighing.What were some of the things that you didn’t want to replicate?SAPOCHNIK It’s a radically different world from what it was 10 years ago. Certainly our industry has changed and shifted substantially: The #MeToo movement came in, and then there was cancel culture, there was Black Lives Matter. Then Covid just slapped everything down.We have to reflect the changes in the world before us — not because somebody told us to, but because we actually feel like there’s a point. We’ve done that in front of and behind the camera. It’s actually really hard. Like, trying to find experienced female B camera operators — it’s a very specific thing you’re looking for, and they don’t get the opportunity, so they don’t get the experience. So you have to take on less-experienced people. Because otherwise we’re never going to break through this glass ceiling that we have.What about onscreen? For example, there’s a big brothel scene in the premiere, which is synonymous with “Thrones,” but that show also received plenty of criticism for its handling and overuse of sex and nudity. Was that a tricky balance to strike?SAPOCHNIK The problem in doing a brothel scene like they used to in “Game of Thrones” is what we would do is hire adult entertainment actors. Because that was the best way of getting people who understood what they were doing and there was no issue surrounding nudity and intimacy with other people, and then you would pair them up and film it. With the advent of intimacy coordinators and Covid, that’s no longer possible. So suddenly that simple brothel scene is far more complicated, and as a result, at some point you start going, “Well, why are we doing this?”Why did you decide to do it?CONDAL I mean, that scene is right out of the book. I don’t think we ever got that granular about the original show. It was more caring for the tone, the voice, the look and feel. We took the approach of this is a much more decadent period in time — it’s after a long period of peace, so people are wearing their wealth, they’re dressing in their house colors. That was more of the spirit we brought.This series is more immediately fantastical, with soaring dragons from the earliest moments. Do you worry about alienating the fantasy-ambivalent people who watched “Thrones” for its grittier aspects?SAPOCHNIK I would argue that we are standing on the shoulders of the previous show, which got people to see dragons as being part of this world. We had White Walkers, direwolves, giants, ice spiders, all that stuff. As this show progresses, the only bit of fantasy are the dragons and prophecy — and the dragons are kind of domesticated, they’ve got saddles. If anything, it’s probably more grounded.CONDAL If you can accept the dragons.SAPOCHNIK Yeah, exactly. Making those dragons feel real, especially in those opening scenes, is paramount. If you can’t crack that then you’re in trouble, because what you want people to do is say, “Oh, cool, they can do dragons,” and then move on.Are you nervous about the shadow that the conflicted reception to the end of “Thrones” will cast over your show?SAPOCHNIK Why would we be?CONDAL I don’t think so. It was such a generational event — people had a lot of expectation for where that series was going to end and what it was going to be. I think it was a grieving process for a lot of fans who had spent a decade with that particular story line. I think a lot of them struggled with having to say goodbye, and the response indicated how wide and strong that fan base is.Frankly, I think that grieving process probably led them to want to re-enter Westeros, even if they’re coming in sort of unsure: “Am I going to fall in love again only to get hurt when everybody’s dead and has to go away?” But we have an extraordinary gift because we have a pre-existing fan base, which did not exist when the show originally launched in 2011. That is certainly a responsibility, but I’d rather have it than not have it.SAPOCHNIK I went back and rewatched the whole show from start to finish, and you can see the setup for Dany’s turn early on. So that wasn’t surprising. I found it quite hard, when we were making it, that we had this weird epilogue happy ending.It wasn’t just the fans that were struggling with ending it. The people making it were struggling. It was their livelihood for a long time, and then suddenly they were coming to an end. Everyone hates endings. More

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    in Theater

    In Two London Plays, Being Black Means Looking From the Outside In

    Black characters in “Mad House” and “The Southbury Child” endure microaggressions and aspersions. The familiar scenarios hit home for our critic.LONDON — It was my second time here, and I kept trying to remember if I had felt as conspicuous during my first visit. I could count the number of other Black women I spotted during my five days here: the hotel receptionist with the French braid, whom I spoke with when I stopped in to ask to use the bathroom, the long-haired woman at my own hotel’s front desk, the woman talking rapidly into her cellphone outside a Starbucks, the two women (clearly tourists) with matching backpacks near the British Museum, and the young woman with the short, relaxed hair, who was clutching a shopping bag as she walked briskly down the street. That list isn’t comprehensive. But it’s not far off.So when the eyes of a white person linger on me, as they did numerous times during this trip, my imagination tricks me into thinking every glance is a rebuke — whether because of my obvious Americanness; or because of my race, my tattoos or my pink hair. I don’t know how to sit with my discomfort in these moments, and I inevitably ask myself: How much of an outsider am I?Such thoughts often cross my mind when I go to the theater — whether in New York, London or elsewhere — and sit among the predominantly white audience, watching the mostly white actors onstage. In choosing which London shows to squeeze into my short work trip, I gravitated to two brand-new family dramas, “Mad House” and “The Southbury Child,” with big-name stars and stories about white families.As these weren’t the domains of Tina Turner or Sister Deloris Van Cartier or Noma Dumezweni’s Nora Helmer, I didn’t expect to see any Black women on either stage. But I was wrong; in both “Mad House” and “The Southbury Child,” a Black woman — the lone Black person in each show — is not only a part of the play, but she also serves as an outsider who witnesses and comments on the chaos, enduring microaggressions and outright aspersions before making her escape.In “Mad House,” written by Theresa Rebeck (“Bernhardt/Hamlet”) and directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel, David Harbour (“Stranger Things”) plays a man named Michael who is watching over his dying father, Daniel (played by Bill Pullman) in rural Pennsylvania. But the father’s illness isn’t enough to stop the man’s unending stream of vitriol and abuse.It’s just the two of them now, since Michael’s beloved mother died, because of — according to his father — Michael’s yearlong stay at a mental hospital, which broke her heart. Rounding out the living members of this broken nuclear family are Michael’s brother, Nedward, a Manhattan stockbroker who pops up after a prolonged absence to take charge of Daniel’s assets, and his sister, Pam, a vicious manipulator who shows up halfway through the play to exacerbate the situation.Into all this mess enters Lillian, a Caribbean hospice nurse hired to help make Daniel comfortable during his final days. She maintains her professionalism despite Daniel’s crass come-ons, objectifying of her body, offensive comments about trans people (she’s so muscular she might be a man, he declares) and racist attitude (he repeatedly insists that he paid for her, like a slave). She’s spoken down to and bossed around by Ned and especially by Pam, who insists Lillian is unqualified. After Lillian shares a letter with Michael that she’s discovered among Daniel’s papers, the extent of his family’s lies come to light.Because I’ve seen so many plays in which the entrance of a Black character signals the beginning of a string of awful clichés and tropes, I am now leery when I see a lone Black person appear among a cast of white characters. When Akiya Henry, the actress playing Lillian, initially appeared in the first act, walking into Daniel and Michael’s kitchen, I felt this same foreboding.Originally from St. Vincent and the Grenadines, as the family members announce several times, Lillian is an outsider, and she’s a helper — quite literally, of course, since she’s a nurse. Armed with sharp retorts and a sassy, well-timed sucking of her teeth, Lillian punctuates the absurdity of the circumstances and brings the outside world into the confines of this unstable family home so the audience doesn’t get too claustrophobic. She is also the main inciting force that moves the story forward and cracks open the family dynamic. She’s not so transparent an archetype that her tale is left to the imagination, though: She gets a tragic, grief-filled back story, but only so the play can relate Michael’s emotional baggage through Lillian. She’s the mirror held up to Michael’s inner life.Racheal Ofori as the adopted daughter of a white family in Stephen Beresford’s “The Southbury Child” at the Bridge Theater.Manuel HarlanIn one of the other West End plays I saw, Stephen Beresford’s “The Southbury Child,” directed by Nicholas Hytner, the token Black woman is even more aware of her status as an interloper, and the script struggles to give the character dimension.Here, Alex Jennings (“The Crown”) plays a philandering vicar and alcoholic who becomes the town pariah after refusing to allow balloons at a young girl’s funeral. The Black actress Racheal Ofori plays his adult daughter Naomi, who materializes like the prodigal adopted daughter. Appearing in fitted tops and mini skirts after nightlong partying, Naomi is, well, the black sheep in more ways than the most obvious racial one. Unlike her religious father, she is what she calls a “militant atheist”; she lacks the same underlying bitterness of her mother and outshines her hardworking but overlooked elder sister.Naomi plays no role in the odd central drama about balloons but saunters onto the stage every once in a while, in her club clothes or pajamas, taking in the drama and mocking and jesting at her family and her status as the sole person of color. Like Lillian in “Mad House,” Naomi serves as the wise fool.Hers is one of several side stories in this intriguing yet overpacked play: Feeling alienated as a Black woman in a white family, she seeks out her birth mother in the hope that doing so will help her find her true self. In the meantime, her character is the snarky observer who then complains about being tokenized by her community. In one instance, she sneers as she describes the self-congratulatory white moms who proudly set up play dates between their daughters and the town’s Black girl.The similarities in the way the characters’ arcs end in each play are intriguing: For both Naomi and Lillian, the departures are abrupt. It’s as if neither stage has a place for these Black women beyond their roles as outside observers and truth-tellers. Once they’ve played their parts, they are seemingly given an out; finally spared from having to see the mess through to the end. But the exits of these Black women also seem like a validation that they don’t actually belong there. That they are exceptional.And, in a sense, they are — both Henry and Ofori make their characters compelling, so much so that sometimes they steal the spotlight. Not for long, though — never for long. Despite the strong Black female leads you can catch on some stages, too many productions still embrace a very narrow role for their Black women, who can nurture, drop snide remarks and reveal truths the other characters fail to see — so long as they know their place as visitors in the narrative. More