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    Samantha Bee Blasts Supreme Court for Allowing the Texas Abortion Ban

    The “Full Frontal” host wasn’t happy about the state’s law, which outlaws abortion after six weeks, or the high court’s decision not to block it.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.Taking Issue With TexasSamantha Bee lashed out on Wednesday at the Supreme Court’s conservative majority, after the court refused to block a law that has effectively ended legal abortion in Texas.The Texas law effectively outlaws abortion after six weeks of pregnancy — earlier than many women realize they are pregnant.“Technically, you’re six weeks pregnant just two weeks after you miss a period — which is a [beep] nightmare, because periods can be irregular for all kinds of reasons. I skipped a period when I started this job and at the 2018 People’s Choice Awards when Willem Dafoe looked at me too hard. (That was before he became Willem Dafriend.)” — SAMANTHA BEEBee quoted from Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s ardent dissent, in which the justice said her colleagues had refused “to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law” and instead “opted to bury their heads in the sand.”“Damn, I haven’t seen heard a Supreme Court justice speak that passionately about a case since Sandra Day O’Connor’s decision on Kramer v. Kramer. She chose ‘Seinfeld’ Kramer! She said the laughter he brings is almost unconstitutional.” — SAMANTHA BEEReacting to a tweet from Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota suggesting that her state might emulate the Texas law, Bee paused on Noem’s mention of South Dakota’s official “unborn child advocate.” Then the host put up a picture (rather unflattering) of Mark Miller, the man who holds that position, and delivered a few blows that were aimed at his face but still felt below the belt.“It’s weird that he’s pro-life because with a face like that, I would want to be dead.” — SAMANTHA BEE“You can’t be pro-birth if you look like you broke out of a cloning pod before you finished.” — SAMANTHA BEE“We need to fight this oppressive law, and all the others that come after it, because no person should be forced to give birth — or look into this man’s face. I just missed my period again.” — SAMANTHA BEEHaving Fun With Virus FrustrationOn “The Tonight Show,” when Jimmy Fallon touched on President Biden’s attempts to control the coronavirus pandemic, his jokes were tinged with cynicism.“Tomorrow, President Biden is giving a major speech on the next phase of his pandemic response. Americans said they can’t wait to hear the speech, and then crowded into a bar for tomorrow’s N.F.L. kickoff.” — JIMMY FALLON“Biden will lay out a six-pronged strategy. And apparently one prong is building a border wall between the U.S. and Florida.” — JIMMY FALLONJimmy Kimmel sounded like he was equally fed up with antimaskers.“Maybe they should have a separate airline for people who won’t wear a mask: JetFlu.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Delta Air Lines Edition)“A 4-year-old girl named Scarlett just climbed her 48th mountain peak. That’s great, but she doesn’t have Instagram, so did it really happen?” — JIMMY FALLON“The C.E.O. of the airline Delta has revealed he’s still refusing to call it the Delta variant. That’s important, I can totally understand that, because being associated with a communicable disease is not great for business. That’s why stores no longer carry the tasty Syphilis Jam. You remember their motto: ‘Nothing spreads like Syphilis!’” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingSeth Meyers offered his own criticisms of the Supreme Court’s decision on the Texas abortion law.Will exposure therapy help Guillermo overcome a lifelong fear of snakes?What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightOn “The Late Show” on Thursday, Sarah Paulson will talk about playing Linda Tripp on the new FX series “Impeachment: American Crime Story,” and the country singer Kacey Musgraves will perform a song from her new album, “Star-Crossed.”Also, Check This OutLindsey Buckingham’s self-titled solo album, his first since being ousted from Fleetwood Mac in 2018, is due this month.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesLindsey Buckingham is once again an ex-member of Fleetwood Mac, after his long-simmering tensions with Stevie Nicks bubbled over (not for the first time). He has a new solo album out. More

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    Michael Constantine, Dad in ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding,’ Dies at 94

    He won an Emmy for his role in the TV series “Room 222” and played many characters over the years before becoming known as the hit film’s patriarch.Michael Constantine, an Emmy-winning character actor known as the genially dyspeptic school principal on the popular TV series “Room 222” and, 30 years later, as the genially dyspeptic patriarch in the hit film “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” died on Aug. 31 at his home in Reading, Pa. He was 94.His death was from natural causes, his agent, Julia Buchwald, said.Mr. Constantine, who began his career on the Broadway stage, was endowed with fierce eyebrows, a personal warmth that belied his perennial hangdog look, and the command of a babel of foreign accents. Of Greek American extraction, he was routinely cast by Hollywood to portray a welter of ethnicities.Over time, Mr. Constantine played several Jewish characters, winning an Emmy in 1970 for the role of Seymour Kaufman, who presided with grumpy humanity over Walt Whitman High School on “Room 222,” broadcast on ABC from 1969 to 1974.He also played Italians, on shows including “The Untouchables” and “Kojak”; Russians, as on the 1980s series “Airwolf”; a Gypsy in the 1996 horror film “Thinner,” adapted from Stephen King’s novel; and, on occasion, even a Greek or two.Mr. Constantine, possessed of a gravitas that often led to him being cast as lawyers or heavies, starred as the night-court judge Matthew Sirota on “Sirota’s Court,” a short-lived sitcom shown on NBC in the 1976-77 season.Michael Constantine, right, with Lloyd Hanes in the TV series Room 222, which ran from 1969 to 1974ABCHe had guest roles on scores of other shows, including “Naked City,” “Perry Mason,” “Ironside,” “Gunsmoke” and “Hey, Landlord” in the 1960s, and “Remington Steele,” “Murder, She Wrote” and “Law & Order” in the ’80s and ’90s.On film, he appeared in “The Last Mile” (1959), a prison picture starring Mickey Rooney; “The Hustler” (1961), starring Paul Newman; “If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium” (1969); “Don’t Drink the Water” (1969); and “Voyage of the Damned” (1976).Mr. Constantine became known to an even wider, younger audience as Gus Portokalos, the combustible, tradition-bound father whose daughter is engaged to a patrician white Anglo-Saxon Protestant in the 2002 comedy “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.”An immigrant who made good as the owner of a Chicago diner, Gus is an ardent amateur etymologist who can trace any word to its putative Greek origin. (“Kimono,” he concludes after pondering the matter, surely comes from “cheimónas” — Greek for winter, since, he explains in his heavily accented English: “What do you wear in the wintertime to stay warm? A robe!”)Gus is also a fervent believer in the restorative power of Windex, applied directly to the skin, to heal a panoply of ailments like rashes and boils.“He’s a man from a certain kind of background,” Mr. Constantine said of his character in a 2003 interview with The Indianapolis Star. “His saving grace is that he truly does love his daughter and want the best for her. He may not go about it in a very tactful way. So many people tell me, ‘My dad was just like that.’ And I thought, ‘And you don’t hate him?’”“My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” which also starred Lainie Kazan as Gus’s wife and Nia Vardalos and John Corbett as the young couple, was a surprise international hit. The film took in more than $360 million worldwide, becoming one of the highest-grossing romantic comedies of all time.Mr. Constantine reprised the role on television in “My Big Fat Greek Life,” a sitcom that appeared briefly on CBS in 2003, and on the big screen in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2” in 2016.The son of Theoharis Ioannides, a steelworker, and Andromache Foteadou, Mr. Constantine was born Constantine Ioannides in Reading, Pa., on May 22, 1927. (The family name is sometimes Romanized Joanides.)He settled early on an acting career, an idea reinforced after a youthful visit to a friend who was studying acting in New York.“I just knew I belonged there,” Mr. Constantine told Odyssey, an English-language magazine about Greek life, in 2011. “They could make fun of this hick from Pennsylvania, but I just belong here — this is me.”The young Mr. Constantine studied acting with Howard da Silva, supporting himself with odd jobs, among them night watchman and shooting-gallery barker. He became an understudy to Paul Muni playing the character modeled on the famed defense lawyer Clarence Darrow in “Inherit the Wind,” which opened on Broadway in 1955.In “Compulsion” — a 1957 Broadway dramatization of Meyer Levin’s novel about the Leopold and Loeb murder case — Mr. Constantine took over the role of the defense lawyer from Frank Conroy just before opening night. (Mr. Conroy withdrew after suffering a heart attack during previews.)“Michael Constantine gives an excellent performance as the prototype of Clarence Darrow,” Brooks Atkinson wrote in The New York Times. “He avoids the sentimentality that the situations might easily evoke and plays with taste, deliberation, color and intelligence.”Mr. Constantine’s other Broadway credits include Anagnos, the director of the Perkins Institute for the Blind in the original cast of “The Miracle Worker” (1959), and Dogsborough in Bertolt Brecht’s antifascist satire “Arturo Ui” (1963).Mr. Constantine’s first marriage, to the actress Julianna McCarthy, ended in divorce, as did his second, to Kathleen Christopher. His survivors include two sisters: Patricia Gordon and Chris Dobbs, his agent said. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.For all Mr. Constantine’s credits, for all his critical acclaim, it was for a single role — and for a single prop wielded in the course of that role — that he seems destined to be remembered.“I can’t tell you,” he said in a 2014 interview with his hometown paper, The Reading Eagle, “how many times I’ve autographed a Windex bottle.”Alyssa Lukpat More

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    First Host of ‘Blue’s Clues’ Returns, Striking a Chord With Grown-Ups

    Steve Burns, who had a complicated relationship with the popular children’s show he hosted for six years, addressed his viewers almost two decades after his “kind of abrupt” departure.One day in 2002, Steve Burns packed up a bulging backpack and suitcase, said farewell to a speckled blue dog and a room of cartoon furniture, and disappeared into a two-dimensional school bus.An era of the children’s television series “Blue’s Clues” was suddenly over, leaving countless young viewers bereft of a genial host who encouraged them through their TVs for six formative years.Aside from occasional appearances in spinoffs, Mr. Burns was largely absent from “Blue’s Clues.” His sudden departure became a source of intrigue and rumor as dedicated fans grew up, found one another and wondered — often online — what actually happened to him.On Tuesday, in a Twitter video posted by Nick Jr., a Nickelodeon channel for young children, Mr. Burns returned. Donning the same striped lime-green rugby shirt he used to wear, he addressed his now adult viewers in character.Speaking about his departure almost two decades ago, he said, “I realize that was kind of abrupt. I just kind of got up and went to college. And that was really challenging, by the way, but great because I got to use my mind and take a step at a time, and now I literally am doing many of the things that I wanted to do.”Then, in the positive tone that defined his character, Mr. Burns urged viewers to reflect on their own paths: “And then look at you, and look at all you have done and all you have accomplished in all that time. And it’s just — it’s just so amazing.”His reappearance struck a chord among many viewers, raising feelings of nostalgia and childhood comfort, especially juxtaposed with global crises like the coronavirus pandemic and extreme weather linked to climate change. In less than 24 hours, the video had been watched nearly 20 million times.Mr. Burns at the premiere of “Blue’s Big Musical Movie” in Los Angeles in 2000.SGranitz/WireImageMr. Burns acknowledged some of the challenges that his former viewers might have faced.“We started out with clues, and now, it’s what? Student loans and jobs and families?” he said. “And some of it has been kind of hard, you know? I know you know.”He added that he wanted to thank viewers, saying their support continued to help him. “I guess I just wanted to say, after all these years, I never forgot you. Ever,” he said.Mr. Burns, now a producer and musician, could not immediately be reached for comment. But in the years since he left the show, he has spoken about his complicated relationship with fans and the program, which he hosted in his 20s. He has said that he felt conflicted about the imaginary relationship millions of young viewers believed they had with him.“Kids thought I was their friend for real,” he said in a 2010 live performance for The Moth, a storytelling organization.“I started to think, I’m saying these wonderful things to kids, I’m saying: ‘You are so smart, and you can do anything you want to do.’ But I couldn’t help thinking, you know, is that true?” Mr. Burns continued.As “Blue’s Clues” grew in popularity, reaching more than 14 million viewers each week at one point during his tenure, Mr. Burns also began experiencing what he described as an identity crisis.“I was starting to really seriously think, as great as this is, they might have the wrong guy here, maybe this should be a teacher or a child development specialist or something,” he said.His departure from the show led to some wild speculation among fans. Mr. Burns’s Instagram handle, @steveburnsalive, appears to cheekily refute rumors of his death. He said in a HuffPost interview that as creators of the show moved on to other projects, he felt that “it was simply time to go,” and joked to Nickelodeon that he “refused to lose my hair on a kid’s TV show.”But as Mr. Burns revived his “Blue’s Clues” persona on Tuesday, many fans on social media said that his message struck just the right tone, managing to transport them back to a time of childhood innocence while acknowledging the realities of adulthood and its challenges.The video was a particularly poignant reminder of the past for Chuck Gaffney, a 37-year-old computer programmer and voice actor in Rocky Point, N.Y., who said he had been grieving the recent deaths of his younger brother and cousin. The show had been a favorite pastime for many of his seven younger siblings.“Time might have moved on but our hearts have not. Seeing messages like this — that there are people there for you — is comforting,” he said in an interview. “We ought to remember being there for each other.”Mr. Gaffney said he planned to introduce the show to his 2-year-old daughter.“Blue’s Clues” ended in 2006, but the show was rebooted in 2019 as “Blue’s Clues & You!” It is hosted by Joshua Dela Cruz, the franchise’s first Asian American host. A new season is set to air in October. More

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    Review: In ‘Return the Moon,’ Theater Between Phases

    While insubstantial, this immersive online performance gathers people virtually until they can get together more safely in person.A quirk of astronomy: The phases of the moon appear the same no matter where you stand on Earth. If it’s gibbous in Greenland, it’s gibbous in Argentina; a crescent is a crescent from New Zealand to Uzbekistan. As I write this, a new moon approaches, and all over the world stars shine brighter now. Over the past year and a half, there have been fewer opportunities to watch the same thing at the same time in person, so what a miracle that if any of us were to stand outside, we might, for a moment, see the same bright thing.“Return the Moon,” an immersive online performance from Third Rail Projects, also tries to offer community in the midst of isolation. Though insubstantial — it’s a dandelion of a show — the piece speaks to this liminal moment that seems as though it might soon disappear as theaters reopen. It explores how we sustain ourselves, and one another, when the power goes out.A fairy tale, an act of collective creation and, as Third Rail describes it, “an offering, for dark nights,” “Return the Moon” begins in the most mundane place imaginable: a Zoom waiting room. After a brisk introduction, viewers are sorted into four breakout rooms. Mine was led, warmly and nimbly, by Tara O’Con. We adjusted our lighting, and were told to look out any available window — windows as far away from me as Baltimore and Toronto — and type what we could see into the chat. Then, with our cameras off and our names elided, we were asked to type in our fears and desires.“What we are doing tonight is attempting to make something together,” O’Con said, “to share something together.”Then comes the tale, a thin allegory about what happens to a village when the moon disappears. What’s richer is a subsequent dance, presented in four separate windows to a soundtrack of tinkling piano. Because a laptop camera works better in close-up, these are dances for fingers, hands, heads, an eyeball, a cup. The evening concludes with blessings and a tribute, based on those earlier chat responses; on the night I attended, we collectively gave thanks for, among other things, dolls, gay bars, bus terminals at night and being invited to play Street Fighter 2.Because this is a generous piece, the performance doesn’t quite end there. Online, an audio file arrives a few days later. And offline, a slim envelope lands in your mailbox, with a gift inside and instructions for how to make your own offering.The creators — O’Con, along with Alberto Denis, Kristin Dwyer, Joshua Gonzales, Sean Hagerty, Justin Lynch, Zach Morris, Marissa Nielsen-Pincus and Edward Rice — seem to have learned from earlier online experiments. The piece is short, not much more than an hour, and while it depends on enough audience participation to keep viewers engaged, that participation is comfortable, with anonymity guaranteed. And who doesn’t love a gift in the mail? Yet while “Return the Moon” is purpose-built for a remote audience on Zoom, it also has the feeling of a place-holder: a way of gathering apart until we can more safely gather together.Third Rail’s long-running, immersive “Then She Fell” was an early pandemic casualty. “Return the Moon” is in every way a slighter piece, but it is a gentle one, made with kindness and care. And it provides the useful reminder, necessary as theaters struggle to regroup and reopen, that even a sliver of moon can cast a light.Return the MoonThrough Sept. 30; thirdrailprojects.com. Running time: 1 hour 15 minutes. More

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    Meathead of ‘Ted Lasso’ Wanted to Play Rugby

    Phil Dunster stars as the cocky soccer player Jaime Tart in the popular sitcom.Name: Phil DunsterAge: 29Hometown: Northampton, EnglandCurrently Lives: A terraced house located in the Hammersmith neighborhood of London that he shares with his girlfriend, the filmmaker Ellie Heydon, and two roommates.Claim to Fame: Mr. Dunster portrays the cocky soccer player, Jamie Tartt, on the hit Apple TV+ sitcom “Ted Lasso,” which recently received 20 Emmy nominations. But he has yet to bask in his newfound American stardom.“There hasn’t really been the same response to the show over here,” Mr. Dunster said by telephone from London. “I went into town the other day and I was jumping around and trying to be as conspicuous as possible, but nobody came over and said anything to me.”Mr. Dunster and Jason Sudeikis, right, in  “Ted Lasso.”Apple-TV+Big Break: “Drama was on my radar” as a young boy, Mr. Dunster said. At 9, he starred in his school’s production of “Olivier Twist,” and continued to perform in plays in secondary school. His budding stage talents earned him a slot at the highly selective Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in 2011.A year after graduating, ​​he played Arthur in the Bristol Old Vic production of “Pink Mist,” which earned him an Olivier Award nomination in 2016. “My coming-of-age was really learning to act,” he said.Latest Project: In the second season of “Ted Lasso,” which began at the end of July, Mr. Dunster’s character is struggling to sunder emotional walls he built as a top scorer for AFC Richmond, a fictional soccer club. “All of these people in Jamie’s life are now saying, ‘It’s OK to be scared or to be vulnerable, and to say sorry,’” he said. “In fact, it makes you a better player and member of the team.”Rosie Matheson for The New York TimesNext Thing: He is currently filming the witchy thriller “The Devil’s Hour,” an Amazon mini-series due next year. He also produced and stars in the upcoming short film “Pragma,” which he described as a “dystopian rom-com set in the near future” where there is a “steady decline in sustainable relationships.” Not that his own relationships are suffering. The movie is directed by Ms. Heydon, his girlfriend, and Jason Sudeikis, the star of “Ted Lasso,” is the executive producer.Vocational Training: Before becoming an actor, Mr. Dunster wanted to be a rugby player. But during a failed tryout for the London Irish Rugby Football Club at 15, he realized he “couldn’t hack it with the bigger boys,” he said.The training came in handy on “Ted Lasso.” “Jamie’s pout comes from a rugby player that I used to play with, who managed to make me feel very small by always sort of screwing up his face and pouting at me,” he said. More

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    Jimmy Kimmel Skewers ‘Pan-dimwits’ Taking Horse Dewormer

    “Meanwhile, these poor horses are like: ‘Hey, I have worms — I need that stuff. There are worms in my butt, do you understand?’” Kimmel said.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.Still Horsing AroundJimmy Kimmel returned to his show on Tuesday after taking the summer off.“I leave you people alone for two months, you start taking horse worm medicine?” the host said.Kimmel offered a name for people who have taken the medicine, ivermectin, as a supposed cure for Covid-19: “pan-dimwits.” There is no evidence that the drug is effective against Covid, and the health authorities have warned that it could pose a serious danger to humans.“So you will probably still get Covid, but on the bright side, you could win the Preakness.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Poison-control centers across the country have seen a spike in calls from people taking livestock medicine to fight the coronavirus, but they won’t take the vaccine, which is crazy. It’s like if you’re a vegan and you’re like, ‘No, I don’t want a hamburger — give me that can of Alpo instead.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Worst of all, it tastes yucky. Luckily, the internet is loaded with advice on how to make it more palatable, including mixing it with jellies or eating it as a sandwich. Or throw it on your roast beef — technically, it is horsey sauce.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“In fact, it says right on the label: ‘For a horse’s [expletive].’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“One of the reasons these Sea Biscuits are opting for ivermectin is because they don’t trust ‘big pharma.’ Which is fine, I guess, except for the fact that ivermectin is made by Merck, which is the fourth-largest pharmaceutical company in the world.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Listen, if a pharmaceutical company says, ‘Please don’t take the drug we’re selling,’ you should probably listen to them. Or you could just go with a TikTok posted by a disgraced veterinarian instead.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Meanwhile, these poor horses are like, ‘Hey, I have worms — I need that stuff. There are worms in my butt, do you understand?’”— JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Worst Butt Dial Ever Edition)“And finally, I read that surgeons successfully removed a Nokia cellphone from a man’s body after he swallowed it whole. The kids were so embarrassed. They’re like, ‘Dad, please swallow an iPhone next time.’” — JIMMY FALLON“He swallowed a Nokia phone. More like Choke-ia phone.” — JAMES CORDEN“His phone got wet and he needed to put it in rice immediately, but he had eaten all of his rice.” — JAMES CORDEN“Even worse, after four days, the man still had zero notifications.” — JIMMY FALLON“That’s why I always buy the extra-long 10-foot charge cord, always. I know it’s a little bit more, but you’re happy you paid that money when you’re like, ‘Got it!’”— JAMES CORDEN“When reached for a comment, the man said he didn’t swallow it — it was just the worst butt dial ever.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingAmber Ruffin challenged Texas on its new abortion ban and made the case for a federally funded pedicure on Tuesday’s “Late Night.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightHolland Taylor (“The Chair”) will sit down with Stephen Colbert on Wednesday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutSarah Paulson, left, as Linda Tripp and Beanie Feldstein as Monica Lewinsky in “Impeachment: American Crime Story” on FX.Antony Platt/FX“American Crime Story: Impeachment” focuses less on the White House and more on the women who were involved with and affected by the scandal. More

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    Where to Stream Michael K. Williams's Best TV Performances

    Starting with “The Wire,” Williams explored provocative intersections of race, crime, sexuality and masculinity. But he wasn’t afraid to poke fun at his own image.Omar didn’t scare easily, and neither did Michael K. Williams.Starting with his breakout performance in “The Wire,” the actor, who was found dead on Monday at age 54, tackled characters that allowed him to explore provocative intersections of race, crime, sexuality and masculinity. But he also wasn’t afraid to poke fun at his own tough-guy image.Some of his best work is available to stream right now.‘The Wire’(2002-2008)Former President Barack Obama often said that his favorite character in “The Wire” was the drug-trade vigilante Omar Little, and he wasn’t alone. Williams made Omar one of the celebrated series’s most fascinating characters — an unaffiliated free agent who stole from the drug dealers in his community and followed a strict code. Omar had swagger as he patrolled Baltimore’s back alleys with his sawed-off shotgun, but he was no two-dimensional gangster cowboy. He could also be witty, polite and clever, and he was openly gay within a homophobic world of cops and robbers. In his performance, Williams walked a fine line between representing what society condemned and what it aspired to become. The cry of “Omar’s coming!” is both a warning and a welcome. Stream it on HBO Max.Williams’s character in “Boardwalk Empire” was inspired by aspects of his relatives.Macall B. Polay/HBO‘Boardwalk Empire’(2010-2014)“Boardwalk Empire” was lousy with historical figures — Al Capone, Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano among them. One of the most intriguing was William’s bootlegger Albert White, also known as Chalky, the conflicted unofficial leader of Atlantic City’s Black community. White was a complex character, and the role allowed Williams to demonstrate an even wider range, especially as the show increasingly focused on Chalky and provided him with a worthy foil in the form of the slick Dr. Valentin Narcisse (played by Jeffrey Wright). Williams said he assembled Chalky out of characteristics borrowed from several relatives — his father’s swagger, his godfather’s snarl and the softness, sarcasm and dangerous temper of various uncles. Whether Chalky was quietly threatening a local Ku Klux Klan leader or warning his daughter to marry a man less violent than himself, Williams radiated a rich emotional life beyond the usual limits of the mobster genre. Stream it on HBO Max.‘Community’(Season 3, 2011-2012)Williams happily satirized his own image, and a guest stint on NBC’s “Community” wasn’t the only time he made light of his signature role (see the Funny or Die video “The Wire: The Musical”). Williams made several Omar references in his guest episodes in Season 3 — “Biology 101,” “Competitive Ecology” and “Basic Lupine Urology” — and he brought a dry humor to his part as a biology professor at Greendale Community College, Dr. Marshall Kane, a role written for him by Dan Harmon. An ex-convict, Kane got his doctorate by studying in the prison library, and he was somewhat perplexed by the ways life had changed while he was inside. (Don’t get him started about Legos.) Stream it on Amazon, Hulu and Netflix.Williams (pictured with Tim Meadows) played a jazz man turned gumshoe in the mini-series spoof, “The Spoils Before Dying.” Katrina Marcinowski/IFC‘The Spoils Before Dying’(2015)Williams displayed more expert comic timing in IFC’s sequel to “The Spoils of Babylon.” Both “Spoils” mini-series were supposedly written and directed by the fictional Eric Jonrosh (Will Ferrell), who introduced each installment. But where “Babylon” was a parody of 1970s melodramatic mini-series, “Dying” was a satire of a genre that never really existed: 1950s jazz noir. Williams played Rock Banyon, a tormented jazz musician forced to turn detective when he becomes a murder suspect. Williams anchored the muddled mystery with intense gazes, a deadpan growl and occasional slapstick flourishes. He also made room for more exaggerated performances from Kate McKinnon, Michael Sheen, Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig (whose singing of “Booze and Pills” was a highlight). As it progressed, “Spoils” became less about potboiler pulp and more about artistic integrity because Williams’s character — wouldn’t you know? — had a code. Stream it on AMC+ via Amazon Prime Video.Williams portrayed a Vietnam veteran in “Hap and Leonard.”Jackson Lee Davis/SundanceTV‘Hap and Leonard'(2016-2018)James Purefoy played the aimless draft dodger (and ex-convict) Hap Collins, and Williams played the grumpy, gay Vietnam vet Leonard Pine in this languid Sundance Channel series. Based on the books by Joe R. Lansdale, it’s a noirish buddy dramedy set in Texas in the late 1980s. On the surface, Leonard — a Republican who likes country music — would seem to be a stretch for Williams. But he has said that his friends considered the role to be closest to his actual personality. And the backwoods drawl this Brooklyn native created for the character is surprisingly convincing. Stream it on Netflix.‘The Night Of’(2016)The route Williams took to get to the Yonkers set of this series was the same one he traveled to visit his then-incarcerated nephew, Dominic Dupont, at a maximum-security prison a little farther north, which inspired his portrayal. The actor’s character, the charismatic Rikers Island inmate Freddy Knight, has a nephew surrogate of sorts in Nasir Khan (Riz Ahmed), who goes by Naz, an innocent young man awaiting trial. Freddy provides Naz with jailhouse protection, at a price. Williams’s intimate performance in this series earned him a second Emmy nomination (after a nod for “Bessie” the previous year). Stream it on HBO Max.Williams starred in and executive produced the docuseries “Black Market with Michael K. Williams.”Viceland‘Black Market With Michael K. Williams’(2016)After years of playing criminals, Williams took a real-life look at how crime pays in underground economies. As the host and executive producer of this unscripted documentary series, Williams found connections between the disparate worlds of New York gamblers, New Jersey carjackers, Southern gunrunners, London shoplifters, Mexican drug dealers and South African poachers. (His own experience with crime and addiction allowed him a more sympathetic take; he wasn’t trying to be a journalist.) Five years after the show’s debut, Season 2 was finally in production — much of it already completed — when Williams died. Stream it on DirecTV, Pluto and Vice TV.‘When We Rise’(2017)Before playing father and son on “Lovecraft Country,” Williams and Jonathan Majors shared the role of the real-life gay activist Ken Jones in this ABC limited series. (Williams was the older Jones, Majors played him as a younger man.) Williams lost 35 pounds to portray Jones, a Vietnam vet who had to fight to get proper health care after contracting H.I.V. — and who also had to battle homophobia, racism and drug addiction. Williams considered this heartbreaking portrayal to be a tribute to two of his nephews, Michael Frederick Williams and Eric Williams, both of whom died of complications from AIDS. Stream it on Disney+.Williams received an Emmy nomination for “Lovecraft Country.”HBO, via Associated Press‘Lovecraft Country’(2020)After years of playing variations on a theme of Black masculinity, Williams gave one of his most haunted and nuanced performances in this pulpy, allegorical horror series. His character, the closeted patriarch Montrose Freeman, lived the life society laid out for him — to be a father, with any luck to have a son — only to realize that he had never come to terms with his sexuality. Montrose’s coming out, in a burst of childlike energy, allowed him to experience, perhaps for the first time, comfort, acceptance and love. That Williams portrays all of this with grace in a genre that isn’t traditionally a vehicle for such stories was an impressive achievement. He earned an Emmy nomination for his performance, and he has said in interviews that the part changed him for the better. Stream it on HBO Max. More

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    Musicals Return to Broadway With ‘Waitress’ and ‘Hadestown’

    The song-and-dance shows that are Broadway’s bread and butter began a staggered return to the stage Thursday. For audiences, vaccinations and masks were mandatory.Sara Bareilles stepped onto the stage of the Ethel Barrymore Theater a few minutes after 7 p.m. Thursday, a white apron over her blue uniform, as a looped recording of her voice began to intone pie ingredients. “Sugar. Sugar. Sugar, butter. Sugar, butter. Sugar, butter, flour.” And then, with a single note from a keyboard, a high piano chord and a whoosh from a cymbal, she launched into a song about baking.One hour later and one block north, André De Shields slowly walked across the stage of the Walter Kerr Theater in a silver suit with iridescent silver boots, and, after a long arresting pause, asked the cast, and then the audience, and then the trombonist, a short question: “Aight?” The actors assented; the audience applauded, and the trombonist, Brian Drye, began to vamp.And just like that, Broadway musicals are back on Broadway.Well, to be more precise, two musicals are back on Broadway: “Waitress,” about a gifted baker in an abusive marriage, and “Hadestown,” a contemporary retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth.With a note from a keyboard, a piano chord and the whoosh of a cymbal, “Waitress” brought musical theater back to Broadway. Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesEven on this first night, there was a reminder of the challenges involved: An actress in “Waitress,” who had been fully vaccinated, tested positive for the coronavirus, and couldn’t perform. The rest of the cast was tested, the actress who tested positive was replaced by an understudy, and the show went on.The return of musical theater — the financial backbone of Broadway — marks another milestone as the theater business, and the theater community, seek to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, which forced all 41 Broadway theaters to close on March 12, 2020. On Sept. 14, four of the industry’s tentpole shows — “The Lion King,” “Wicked,” “Hamilton” and “Chicago” — will reopen, with many more musicals planning to start or restart performances throughout the fall.Audiences were extremely enthusiastic after months away. Both of the reopening musicals sold out on Thursday. At “Waitress,” there was even a standing ovation for a recorded preshow announcement reminding people to keep their masks on.“We want everything to come back,” said Valerie Tuarez, 21, who said she had fallen in love with “Waitress” through the cast recording and was now seeing it for the first time.Some “Hadestown” fans arrived with the show’s signature red flower. Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesAt “Hadestown,” Joey Casali, 18, was wearing the show’s signature bloom — a red ranunculus — behind his right ear. He said he had seen the show five times before the pandemic and was ready for his long-delayed sixth visit. But he was also mindful of the bigger picture.“This signifies Broadway coming back,” he said. “All eyes are on New York tonight.”Among those celebrating the “Waitress” reopening was Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, who had worked to secure aid to help live entertainment businesses and cultural organizations recover from the pandemic. He told the cast before the show that the theater industry was not only beloved, but essential.“Without Broadway,” he said, “New York would never come back economically.” More