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    Hugh Jackman Is Having Fun Playing as ‘Arrogant as You Possibly Can’

    “There’s something about this show that buoys me up with an energy that I didn’t think I had,” the Tony nominee said of “The Music Man.”“It was kind of a miracle that I got into musical theater,” the actor Hugh Jackman said the other day, recalling the start of his career in 1995. “I’d just graduated, and my agent said they couldn’t find anyone to play Gaston in [the Australian production of] ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ so I went in and gave it a go. I got the part, but it was in my contract to get singing lessons once a week. I’ve very much felt like an outsider from the beginning.”Now in the running for his third Tony Award, for his portrayal of the all-American con man Harold Hill in a revival of “The Music Man,” the Australian native recounted what it’s been like to return to the stage for his first Broadway musical since 2003. (Though he hasn’t been a total stranger; he starred in “A Steady Rain” in 2009 and “The River” in 2014.) Throughout an afternoon hour at a Midtown hotel, Jackman came across as a curious performer who leads with the affirmative; his is a disarming charm sculpted out of consideration and confidence.Despite his long list of credits and accolades, Jackman, 53, seems as eager to please as he is to jump into the next adventure. He has an inquisitive mind, which I experienced firsthand when he audited a graduate film history course at Columbia University that I also attended in the spring 2020 semester. His friend Annette Insdorf taught the course, and when the pandemic shut down in-person classes, Jackman continued attending the four-hour seminars through Zoom.“I have a layman’s understanding of film. I would ask directors for five films I should see before I die, and almost all of them I’d never seen,” he said. “I asked Annette for help, and she told me to just join her course.”At the time, he was promoting the HBO film “Bad Education,” in which he played a real-life former school superintendent who pleaded guilty to stealing $2 million from his district, and beginning early “Music Man” rehearsals with his future co-star Sutton Foster.Sutton Foster as the librarian Marian Paroo and Jackman as the con man Harold Hill in “The Music Man.” Jackman said of working with Foster: “I certainly have to bring my triple-A game.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThese are edited excerpts from our conversation.You play larger-than-life scammers in both “The Music Man” and “Bad Education.” Did one role inform the other?The 2022 Tony AwardsThis year’s awards, which will be given out on June 12, are the first to recognize shows that opened following the long pandemic shutdown of Broadway’s theaters. Season in Review: Thirty-four productions braved the pandemic to open under the most onerous conditions. Game of Survival: During a time unlike any other, productions showed their resourcefulness while learning how to live with Covid. A Tony Nominee: Myles Frost is drawing ovations nightly on Broadway with his performance in “MJ,” a musical about Michael Jackson’s creative process. The Missing Category: This Covid-stalked Broadway season has made clear that a prize for best ensemble should be added, our critic writes.I’m very fascinated by the collective fascination with con men and scam artists, and there’s some crossover there with P.T. Barnum [whom he portrayed in the film “The Greatest Showman”]. I’m still not 100 percent sure where it comes from, but I think it’s deeply rooted in a very American individualist philosophy of not doing what the man tells you to do.You’ve lived in the United States for about 20 years. Do you consider yourself an American?I’m Australian. I think America’s an extraordinary place, though — there are very few places as generous of spirit.Do you think that generosity is what draws Americans to scammers?It goes back to this sense of individualism, and the ultimate expression of that is the con man, who goes against everything and flips the rules of hierarchy. Australia has got a little bit of that, but we saw during the pandemic that Australians follow the rules. There’s a collective, “We should really be doing this,” and people fall in line. And as we saw here, there’s no falling in line.So is your draw to these characters pure escapism?What I love about acting is exploring the sides of people who choose to live in a way opposite to how we were brought up, and can’t believe everyone around them is still following the rules. So it’s not escapism; it’s just fun to play something I wouldn’t allow or want myself to do in life. I’m glad everyone is not Harold Hill, but it’s great fun to play as arrogant as you possibly can for two and a half hours. Self-deprecating kind of gets boring after a while.How does the role feel six months into the show’s run?For me, this big show with a cast of 47 keeps growing. I’m in a lead role, but it doesn’t feel as exhausting as I’ve experienced [in other shows] in the past. I think it’s the way they built these old shows. I’m onstage a lot, and driving a lot of it, but it’s different: I go on at the beginning, sing the first number, and go off to have a costume change. I’m not a smoker, but it feels like a cigarette break, which I’m pretty sure is what a lot of them were doing back then.There are some days when I go in tired, but by the third scene: “Wow. I’m back.” There’s something about this show that buoys me up with an energy that I didn’t think I had. And when you’re working with Sutton —Has she taught you about stamina? She’s a star who puts in the work of a swing.She’s a marvel. I certainly have to bring my triple-A game. Asking me to tap dance alongside Sutton Foster is like asking me to play Novak Djokovic on the court. Rehearsals with her were fun, but it was kind of dispiriting to spend a year and a half working on that and then watch these kids come in and learn it in three hours.“I want them to still be kids and not lose that joy. I’m protective of them,” Jackman said of his young co-stars in the show.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesYou’d never worked with this many children onstage, let alone in a show with 21 Broadway debuts. Do you find yourself parenting them?It has become a little bit like that, particularly with the youngsters. I guess some of them see me as Wolverine [the superhero character he plays in the “X-Men” film series], so it feels a little paternal. I think, particularly for the kids in their first show, I want them to still be kids and not lose that joy. I’m protective of them.Did you feel a danger of losing your own joy during your rise?There were times when I was doing the first “X-Men,” my first big American movie, when I found it quite lonely. I was mainly from the theater, and you could feel that sense of, “Mmm, it’s a bad smell.” I don’t know exactly when things turned, but when the studio said they liked what I was doing, I could feel everyone coming to me. It made me sad. I realized film was more individual, less of an ensemble. The theater thrives on, and has to have, a feeling of ensemble, or it dies. There’s just no way to get through rehearsals, or eight shows a week, unless you have each other’s backs.Tony Awards: The Best New Musical NomineesCard 1 of 7The 2022 nominees. More

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    ‘Better Call Saul’ Season 6, Episode 7 Recap: Plan A

    Lalo goes underground, Gus gets gloomy, and Howard presents his closing argument.As the producers of “Better Call Saul” have wondered publicly about how to end the show, they have been guided, they say, by one question: What does Saul Goodman deserve?“Plan and Execution,” as this episode is called, complicates the answer. Through the first six episodes of this season, and throughout “Breaking Bad,” Saul — and his progenitor, Jimmy McGill — seemed like a relatively benign weasel, a colorful grifter who often put his talent for chicanery to constructive use. None of his professional life was purely altruistic, but when he behaved like a crook it was often in the name of fairness.Now though, the scheming of Jimmy and his wife and accomplice, Kim Wexler, have ended in the murder of a civilian, as noncombatants are called in mob movies. Howard did not “land on his feet,” as both he and Jimmy predicted during Howard’s final minutes of life. He landed on his head, with a bullet lodged in it from Lalo’s gun.If one were defending Jimmy/Saul in court over the question of his culpability in Howard’s death, there are arguments to marshal. Lalo pulled the trigger. Kim pushed the plan. The former deserves life in prison. The latter needs therapy. But given the way that this show’s sequel hems in so much of the plot, the chief matter of suspense is what becomes of Gene Takavic, the third identity of Jimmy McGill, who runs a Cinnabon in an Omaha mall in the post-“Breaking Bad” timeline.And what happens to Kim? If she survives, does she wind up with Jimmy?It was easier to root for an Omaha reunion before Operation Frame Howard ended with the words “There’s really no need to … ” and a corpse on the floor. But that might be the ultimate point of this suddenly grim chapter of “Better Call Saul.” It gave Kim a chance to demonstrate moral complexity. She’s come a long way from the strait-laced attorney we met early in this show. Nor is she any match for the guy who’s about to interrogate her and Jimmy in their home. Like many of the best characters to emerge from the mind of the creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould, she’s a mix of compassion and malignancy, sympathy and cunning.The Return of ‘Better Call Saul’The “Breaking Bad” prequel returned April 18 for its final season.A Refresher: After the show’s two-year, Covid-induced hiatus, here’s where things left off.Serious Success: Bob Odenkirk was a comedian’s comedian — until “Better Call Saul” revealed him as a peerless portrayer of broken souls.Writing the Perfect Con: We asked the show’s writers to break down a pivotal scene in the ​​transformation of Jimmy McGill into Saul Goodman.Cast Interviews: Rhea Seehorn and Tony Dalton told us how they created the complex Kim Wexler and the murderous Lalo Salamanca.If her destiny is tied to Jimmy’s, it’s safe to assume that it will be determined by how the couple handle the realization that their larky stratagems have ended in blood. Which doesn’t mean that Jimmy and Kim will cope with whatever comes next the same way. The first episode of this season is called “Wine and Roses,” a reference to the 1962 film, “Days of Wine and Roses,” about a couple, played by Lee Remick and Jack Lemmon, who are alcoholics. Lemmon’s character gets sober. Remick’s character remains in love with Lemmon’s but refuses to stop drinking, and they part. This is either foreshadowing or a fake out, but it raises the possibility that Kim will continue trending toward the wicked and Jimmy will not.Although, who knows? The reverse could be true.Regardless, R.I.P. Howard. You were much derided, mostly because of your smooth manners, good looks and old-timey shirt collars. They made you seem haughty and foppish. You were far more thoughtful than your enemies realized. If it’s any comfort, Patrick Fabian played you with an impeccable mix of confidence and vulnerability.The plot against you will not be missed. It was a ridiculous endeavor and never more so than in the middle of this episode, when Jimmy and Lenny, the aspiring actor/shopping cart wrangler, played by John Ennis, are photographed in a park, pantomiming a bribe. The point is that Lenny looks a lot like the Sandpiper mediator, Rand Casimiro (John Posey).The effort to settle the Sandpiper case and humiliate Howard had a few twists for viewers, like the realization that Howard’s private detective was a mole. But it was ultimately a Rube Goldberg contraption, fanciful to the point of absurdity and somehow effective nonetheless. About the best that can be said for this scheme is that it’s over. Plus, it seemed to have a profoundly aphrodisiacal effect on its perpetrators.By the time Lalo has secured the silencer on his gun, the amorous celebration has given way to terror. The question of what to do with Howard’s body is now Kim and Jimmy’s problem, but the more immediate issue is that Lalo wants some information. He will want to know the truth about Jimmy’s benighted $7 million trek through the desert, made possible by Mike’s sniper work and survival techniques last season. He will likely learn that it was Mike who engineered Lalo’s bail jump.What Jimmy can’t offer is details about Gus Fring, whom he presumably knows nothing about. (In “Breaking Bad,” he connects Walter White to Gus without knowing the man’s identity.) He can’t illuminate much about the superlab.And superlab is Lalo’s focus. He has returned from Germany with information tortured from Casper, who, to Your Faithful Recapper’s surprise, apparently knew the location and purpose of the excavation site where he worked. Lalo is surveilling the laundry above it from an underground lair in the city’s sewer system. Realizing that his phone call to Hector is bugged, he suggests, for the ears of Fring’s underlings, that his next move is an assault on Fring’s home. In fact, he plans to infiltrate the superlab and send images of it to Don Eladio, the head of the Mexican cartel.“Tonight, I go in, I kill all the guards and show you proof,” he says in a video message to Eladio. “Then you decide.”The possibility raised here is that the proof eventually offered will not be compelling enough to persuade Eladio to against Fring. As Lalo puts it, Fring will have his own story and defenders because he’s an “earner.” In fact, we know from “Breaking Bad” that Fring will finish his “mother of all meth labs,” as Lalo calls it. The question is whether Lalo can delay the inevitable without getting killed.Odds and EndsNothing in “Better Call Saul” is haphazard, so let’s note that the movie Jimmy and Kim are watching before Howard shows up is “Born Yesterday,” a 1950 film directed by George Cukor, about a woman, played by Judy Holliday, who falls in love with a journalist, played by William Holden, who’s been hired by her millionaire husband to educate her. We overhear a snippet of dialogue in which Holliday’s character is discussing Alexander Pope’s “Essay on Man,” a poem published early in the 18th century. One of Pope’s themes is the limits of science to grasp the true nature of humanity.Howard’s exit monologue is remarkably insightful. His guesses about what motivated the plot against him are as good as any out there, and unlike viewers, he wasn’t privy to the hotel room conversation last season when the idea was giddily conceived. “You did it for fun.” True. “You’re perfect for each other.” Yup. And so on.Fun fact: The guy playing the shopping cart wrangler and mediator look-alike is the father of Jessie Ennis, who plays Erin Brill, the law firm associate at Davis & Main. In this episode, she’s in charge of the group phone call during the mediation.The show now goes on hiatus until July 11, when the final six episodes will air. Your Faithful Recapper expects that a good portion of the remaining action will occur in the post-“Breaking Bad” era. But your recapper is faithful, which is very different from clairvoyant. So feel free to speculate about what comes next in the comments section, or about anything else you would like to share with the group.Until then, namaste. More

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    Review: In ‘Who Killed My Father,’ an Inquest and an Indictment

    Édouard Louis grew up scorned by his family for being gay. Now he sees homophobia as part of the portfolio of “humiliation by the ruling class.”It’s natural to wish harm on those who do harm. When “something heavy” falls on Eddy Bellegueule’s father at the factory where he works, leaving his back “broyé, écrasé” — “mangled, crushed” — it may seem a kind of justice. The father has, after all, left his son in approximately the same condition: mangled by homophobia and crushed by unrequited love.Or at least that’s how I felt after reading the takedowns of toxic masculinity, and of the French provincial culture that produced it, in two memoirs by the boy who grew up to be Édouard Louis. “The End of Eddy” details his harrowing childhood in Hallencourt, a village about 100 miles north of Paris, where his father fumed at his son’s femininity, his schoolmates beat and used him sexually, and even his mother used a gay slur to mock him. In “History of Violence” we learn that the capital city, for all its sophistication, offered little shelter from the same forces; after picking up a man on Christmas Eve, Louis writes, he was robbed and raped.But a third memoir, “Who Killed My Father,” implicitly asks readers, and now playgoers, to rethink who’s responsible and reassign the blame. Published in 2018, this one argues that homophobia — like racism, misogyny, transphobia and “all kinds of social and political oppression” — is not a personal failing but a cultural norm enforced by the state. Less a narrative than an indictment, it also brings the receipts.I don’t know that the one-man stage adaptation of “Who Killed My Father” that opened on Sunday at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn — a production of Berlin’s Schaubühne and Théâtre de la Ville in Paris — will ultimately persuade you, though. Directed by Thomas Ostermeier, and featuring Louis himself, it is too eager to show off its avant-garde chic to maintain the prosecutorial force of the narrowly argumentative book.That makes for a strange brew, both riveting and soporific. First comes the soporific: When we enter the theater, Louis is already at a desk, uplit by a laptop, muttering as he types what is evidently this script. On a screen behind him, English translations of the French he speaks share space with grainy, moody imagery, often depicting a ride on an endless, misty highway.At first you may fear that the entire 90-minute play will resemble that ride, and if you saw Ostermeier’s excellent production of “History of Violence,” which St. Ann’s presented in 2019, you will recognize his bag of alienation tricks. Microphones, music, videography and random movement — Louis darts from the desk to two other areas of the stage as he recites — are used not merely to break the audience of lazy theatergoing expectations but also to delay gratification so that it’s richer when it arrives.Yet there’s something to be said for those lazy expectations, including a desire for pleasure even in unpleasant things. Ostermeier gives us tiny appetizers in the form of interstitial dance breaks, when Louis, between heady sections of text, dons a wig or pulls a skirt over his pants to lip-sync the songs he loved as a boy. If “My Heart Will Go On,” “ … Baby One More Time” and Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” once enraged his parents, they now signify a kind of liberation. And Louis makes a delightful Celine Dion.His father is granted no such liberation. After the accident, his life collapsed; unable to work, and yet forced to work anyway to maintain access to welfare, his health deteriorated drastically. By 2017, when the story is set, his heart “doesn’t want to beat anymore.” He is just past 50 and even speaking exhausts him.Louis occasionally curls up in a recliner, meant to represent his absent father.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesNot that we hear him speak, of course; this being a solo act, whatever the father says is refracted through the son — and again through the surtitles, if you’re not a Francophone. Indeed, one of the play’s cagey stratagems reduces the father further, to a piece of furniture: an empty recliner with a blue-check blanket, which Louis, now 29, occasionally talks to or curls up in. This representation of the longed-for parent is sweet but also somewhat creepy: He is deliberately kept out of the play.That was true of the book as well, but narration works differently onstage than in prose. In subsuming his father’s voice, Louis eliminates him. Is he, in effect, the killer of the title?In any case, it’s a complex Oedipal complex, and the play’s navel-gazing doesn’t help. Roughing it up with real instead of stagy difficulty eventually brings it to fuller life, as when Louis switches to English to tell us a story he says is too important not to share in the audience’s primary language. Whether because I simply understood him more directly, or because he, an otherwise indifferent actor, had to work harder to deliver the text, this passage was more thrilling than any that preceded it.Notably, the passage concerns vengeance. As we hear how young Eddy revealed a secret to his father that he’d sworn to his mother to keep forever — thus causing family havoc that delighted the boy — we begin to sense the shape of a larger argument. As Louis frames it, family is the template for, and the creature of, the state, with its brutal leadership, its sycophantic enablers, its goons and its subversives. If he got back at the Bellegueules in his previous works, he proceeds in this one to get back at France.I won’t say too much about how, except that in the final section of “Who Killed My Father” Louis offers specific answers, with detailed evidence, to the title question that is not even a question. Provided with magical powers for the occasion, along with a cape and a bowl of bang snaps, he creates a shrine to the country’s evildoers — the politicians of all stripes who made policies harming the poor and unwell — and, in a kind of childish exorcism, symbolically destroys them.However weird and stunning this is as a theatrical gesture, it left me confused about the play’s underpinnings. Having convincingly explained his father’s medical predicament as a result of anti-proletarian politics — “humiliation by the ruling class,” he calls it — Louis tries to connect his father’s homophobia to the same source.Here the logic becomes murky, and by the time Louis offers a formula connecting the two — “hatred of homosexuals equals poverty” — I felt he was doing anything he could to absolve his father of personal responsibility for his prejudices. And though it’s surely a son’s right to exonerate the man who helped ruin his childhood, those of us who took Louis’s earlier books to heart may not feel as forgiving.That’s the real drama here: Louis’s struggle to rationalize, within his politics, the irrational desire to forgive. Still, “Who Killed My Father” is a strange way to do it, especially if you know (as neither the book nor the play tells you) that his father, despite the title, is alive. Just not onstage.Who Killed My FatherThrough June 5 at St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn; stannswarehouse.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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    Review: ‘Belfast Girls’ Set Sail, but This Isn’t a Pleasure Cruise

    A historical drama revisits a 19th-century scheme in which Irish girls of “good character” were encouraged to immigrate to Australia.In 1850, it took about three months to travel to Australia from Ireland. Jaki McCarrick’s heartfelt, doubtful “Belfast Girls,” at the Irish Repertory Theater, sets sail with the Inchinnan, bedding down in a windowless cabin with several characters as part of a real-life resettlement plan then known as the Earl Grey Scheme or the Famine Orphan Scheme.A plan to relieve the pressure on Irish workhouses while supplying Australia with workers (and not incidentally, wives), the scheme promised to deliver skilled young women of good moral character. In two years, over 4,000 teenage girls and young women were transported. Few of these women were skilled, some weren’t young, some weren’t orphans and some were prostitutes, which makes the claims to good character somewhat dubious, at least by 19th-century standards. But these young women were willing, with the promise of food and clothing — shifts, stockings, petticoats, two gowns — inducement enough for them to make the crossing and then to face the anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic prejudice that greeted them on arrival.McCarrick’s play, directed with sympathy and occasional silliness by Nicola Murphy, introduces us to five of these women: the tough Judith, a Belfast girl by way of Jamaica (Caroline Strange); the sly Sarah Jane (Sarah Street), a country girl; “Fat Hannah” (Mary Mallen); “Stupid Ellen” (Labhaoise Magee); and the bookish Molly (Aida Leventaki). Each has a secret, or several secrets, some more terrible than others, and in the way of plays like this, all will be revealed before the ship docks.McCarrick does some adept character development and gives the actresses plenty to work with — too much, at times. And the performers are eager, with Mallen and Magee finding moments of nuance even in smaller roles. If Strange finds less texture, she’s a forceful performer and one to keep an eye on. Still the play’s first half, with its focus on circumstance and environment, tends more toward the novelistic than the theatrical. Only in the second act do the dynamics of character and dialogue drive the story, which briefly slides toward melodrama.Like the 1970s and ’80s dramas of David Hare, Caryl Churchill and Howard Brenton, as well as McCarrick’s Irish counterpart, Brian Friel, “Belfast Girls” resembles a state of the nation play, which uses a historical moment to think through larger themes, here how a country treats its most oppressed and least enfranchised citizens.While McCarrick has clearly researched the famine that preceded and encouraged the scheme, “Belfast Girls” only rarely emerges as a convincing portrait of the mid 19th-century. The characters, with their insistence on self-determination, feel too modern, and there are a few infelicities, like the idea that “The Communist Manifesto,” first translated into English toward the end of 1850, would circulate onboard. And some of the dialogue rings anachronistic, as when Judith scolds Sarah Jane for her lack of fellow feeling.“Empathy it’s called,” Judith says. “That thing where ya break out of your own clannish mentality ta do somethin’ for someone else!”But these are momentary annoyances. The greater problem is that Murphy’s production is overly literal, hewing to realism when the script seems to suggest something more abstract. This keeps the play small and overheated, even though the cabin itself — the functional set is by Chika Shimizu and lit with economy by Michael O’Connor — doesn’t feel especially claustrophobic. Until the final moments, when the women stand on deck and contemplate their future, “Belfast Girls” never quite manages to reach out from its world into ours, which is what makes a drama like this feel essential. For a shipbound play, it only rarely raises anchor.Belfast GirlsThrough June 26 at Irish Repertory Theater, Manhattan; irishrep.org. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes. More

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    Guy Fieri, Elder Statesman of Flavortown

    MIDDLETOWN TOWNSHIP, N.J. — Guy Fieri looks as if he has prepared his whole life to be a middle-aged rock star.He has grays in the famous goatee now, a faint tan line beneath his chain necklace and a pair of hulking middle-finger rings that do not slow his incorrigible fist-bumping. He talks about the higher purpose of his “namaste” tattoo, and feigns outrage when no one recognizes his Dean Martin references. He revels, still, in conspicuous consumption, double-fisting naan and tandoori chicken during a recent television shoot here at a strip-mall Indian restaurant tucked between a nail salon and a wax center.“I want to chug the chutney!” Mr. Fieri said, daring someone to stop him. “One little bump.”It was 9:33 a.m.But somewhere on a rickety highway near the Jersey Shore that afternoon — past the Jon Bon Jovi restaurant he said he needs to come back and visit; beyond a seaside bar called the Chubby Pickle, where he congratulated himself for not making any R-rated puns, before making several — Mr. Fieri caught himself in a reflective mood.In the 15 years since he began “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” his Food Network flagship, Mr. Fieri, 54, has become perhaps the most powerful and bankable figure in food television, the éminence grise of the eminently greasy. And by dint of that show’s success — and Mr. Fieri’s runaway celebrity, and that golden porcupine of hair, and maybe that one review of his Times Square restaurant a while back — certain perceptions have attached to him through the years, perpetuating the caricature he still often seems eager to play.He would like a word about all that.“If you only hear Metallica as a heavy-metal band, then you are not hearing Metallica,” Mr. Fieri said, riding shotgun after a day of filming and charity work. “Now maybe you don’t like that style. But they’re real musicians.”Mr. Fieri’s red Camaro is a signature emblem of “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” his flagship Food Network show.Timothy O’Connell for The New York TimesFor nearly two decades, since before he mailed a reality-show audition tape to the network, Mr. Fieri has plainly believed he was a real musician, contributing worthy entries to the canon.What is striking now, long after the parody seemed to congeal, is that the wider food community stands ready to believe him.Mr. Fieri has emerged as one of the most influential food philanthropists of the Covid age, helping to raise more than $20 million for restaurant workers. He has established himself as an industry mentor among chefs who may or may not admire his cooking but recognize his gifts as a messenger, which have boosted business for the hundreds of restaurants featured on his show. He has won the blessing of the white-tablecloth set through sheer force of charisma and relentlessness, coaxing a reconsideration of how the food establishment treated him in the first place.“I don’t think he had the respect of people like me or people in the food industry,” said Traci Des Jardins, an acclaimed Bay Area chef who has become a friend. “He has earned that respect.”“An amazing individual,” said the philanthropic chef José Andrés, recalling how Mr. Fieri churned out plates of turkey for wildfire evacuees in 2018.At a recent shoot for “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” at Moo Yai Thai in Sea Bright, N.J.Timothy O’Connell for The New York Times“Whether he likes it or not,” said Andrew Zimmern, a fellow food-television veteran, “he has become an elder statesman.”In that case, Mr. Fieri said, he looks forward to the initiation ceremony.“Don’t you think there should be some kind of a cloak?” he asked, imagining luminaries fitting him for a tweed jacket with elbow pads over his tattoos. But, he added, “I guess I’m kind of becoming one of the guys now.”His point, as ever, was that people are complicated, including Guy Fieri, professional uncomplicated person. Maybe especially Guy Fieri, whose very surname (it is “fee-ED-ee,” he reminds audiences, nodding at his Italian roots) demands fussiness from a man who says things like “flavor jets, activate!” for a living.He is at once sensitive to the exaggerated persona he has embraced, challenging a reporter to name the last time his show recommended a hamburger, and acutely aware of his own ridiculousness. He calls himself semi-chunky as a matter of branding (“body by dumpling,” he said) but is actually quite trim in person, singing the praises of vegan food.The young, pregoatee Mr. Fieri showed an entrepreneurial instinct, selling pretzels from a cart in Ferndale, Calif.Courtesy of Guy FieriHe is a son of Northern California hippies, with superfans across MAGA nation and what can seem like a bespoke set of personal politics, often using his platform to tell stories celebrating immigrants while lamenting what he sees as the country’s overreliance on welfare programs.He can pass hours, by land or fishing boat, reflecting on life and family with a close friend, Rob Van Winkle, whom Mr. Fieri addresses as Ninja and most others know as Vanilla Ice.“Some of us never grow up,” said Mr. Van Winkle, who attributed Mr. Fieri’s nickname for him to his rap in the 1991 “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” sequel, adding that he has been renovating the chef’s new home in Palm Beach County, Fla., a short drive from his own. “When Guy and I are together, we’re like the oldest teenagers in town.”The tonal whiplash in Mr. Fieri’s company can be dizzying. He compares himself in one breath to Happy Gilmore, Adam Sandler’s rampaging golf star of the 1990s (“He’s a hockey player that makes money playing golf, and I’m a cook that makes money doing television”) and speaks in the next of his “fiduciary responsibility” to continue showcasing local restaurants.Rob Van Winkle, better known as Vanilla Ice, has become a close friend. Courtesy of Food NetworkHe can edge toward profundity discussing the America he sees in his travels — comparing it to an overstuffed washing machine, clanking through its burdens — before defaulting to pablum about a national shortage of hugs.He has learned that moderation has its place, he suggests, but only in moderation — a principle best expressed, perhaps inevitably, through the Tao of Lars Ulrich, the Metallica drummer.Mr. Fieri was filming at the Chubby Pickle, in Highlands, N.J., when a chef preparing pork tacos seemed to skimp on the salsa. Mr. Fieri objected.When Metallica cuts an album, he asked, doesn’t the band go heavy on the high-hat? Don’t they give the people what they want?“You get as much Lars,” Mr. Fieri said, “as Lars wants to give you.”Riding the ‘Fame Rocket’The red bowling shirt was probably a giveaway.But for the first 25 seconds of his 2005 audition reel for “The Next Food Network Star,” Mr. Fieri presented himself as a proper snob. He welcomed viewers to Sonoma County and pledged to prepare a dish “not in fusion but in con-fusion” — a Gorgonzola tofu sausage terrine over a “mildly poached” ostrich egg, with Grape-Nuts (this was wine country, after all) and pickled herring mousse.Mr. Fieri as he won “The Next Food Network Star” competition in 2006 — a victory that propelled him to fame. At right is the chef Emeril Lagasse.Courtesy of Food NetworkMr. Fieri shivered at his own faux brilliance. He clasped his hands and stared, as if waiting for his audience to agree. And then: “Ha, ha, haaa. No, seriously, folks, real food for real people. That’s the idea.”Mr. Fieri proceeded to make something he calls the jackass roll — rice, pork butt, fries and avocado — so named, he said, because a friend told him he looked like a jackass preparing it. He described his parents’ macrobiotic diet in his youth, saddling him with “enough bulgur and steamed fish to kill a kid” and leaving him no choice but to cook up alternatives.He ticked through his well-curated biography — a year studying in France; a hospitality degree from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas; a stab at his own casual restaurants back in California — with such conviction that it almost made sense watching a man lay fries and barbecue over sushi rice.Revisiting the video, what stands out is how fully formed Mr. Fieri’s public image was before a single television producer could think to meddle.His hairstylist friend gave him the bleached spikes on a lark one day, and they stuck. His buddies knew his talents for table-to-table rat-a-tat, and urged him to make a tape. The ethos was effectively airlifted to “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” shortly after he won the next-food-star competition, and has never much changed.Mr. Fieri, appearing here with Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show,” was quick to embrace mainstream celebrity.NBC Photo / Paul Drinkwater“It’s been super-hard to rip off, and I’ve tried numerous times,” said Jordan Harman, who helped develop the show in 2007 and is now at A+E Networks. “You can redo the same beats, the same kind of places, the same kind of food. But there’s a magic that he brings that is really not replicable.”Mr. Fieri took to fame quickly, hustling as though the window might be brief. He appeared at local fairs and casino shows that seemed beneath him (Mr. Harman thought), because they invited him. He autographed spatulas and bell peppers because fans asked him to. He toured the country in a flame-painted bus stocked with Pabst Blue Ribbon because what better way to travel? He wore sunglasses on the back of his head because sure, why not?Friends say Mr. Fieri expanded his empire with almost clinical resolve, tending to a portfolio that came to include books, knives, a winery, a line of tequilas and several shows. Today, his name graces dozens of restaurants across six countries and more than a few cruise ships.“This guy don’t sit down,” said Mr. Van Winkle, who traced their friendship to a chance encounter years ago at an airport Starbucks in Charlotte, N.C. “I don’t sit down a lot, too, and I look at him and go, ‘Bro, you don’t sit down.’ ”Mr. Fieri remarked in 2010 that his “fame rocket” would shoot skyward for only so long, reasoning that he must “do what I can for the program while it lasts.” (By “the program,” he meant his wife, Lori, and two sons in Santa Rosa, Calif., along with his parents and a cast of tag-along pals with names like Gorilla and Dirty P.)Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar, a 500-seat restaurant in Times Square that opened in 2012 and closed five years later.Casey Kelbaugh for The New York TimesHis Times Square restaurant, Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar, can feel in hindsight like an exercise in overextension, an assumption of manifest destiny powered by swagger and a signature Donkey Sauce.“Like, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m going to do this, and it’s just going to be another big success for me,’” said Mr. Zimmern, summarizing Mr. Fieri’s confidence. “But you need to make sure that the food is absolutely perfect.”It was not.And that blazing New York Times review in 2012 (“Guy Fieri, have you eaten at your new restaurant?”) dovetailed with an already-rolling sendup of Mr. Fieri across the culture. He was skewered on “Saturday Night Live,” preparing Thanksgiving “turducken-rab-pig-cow-cow-horse-nish-game-hen” fried in Jägermeister. His likeness became fodder for undercooked Halloween costumes nationwide.He was invited to a Manhattan roast of Anthony Bourdain, a frequent antagonist who once said that Mr. Fieri appeared “designed by committee,” and often took more incoming than the honoree.“The guy who just dropped a 500-seat deuce into Times Square,” Mr. Bourdain called him. (The restaurant closed in 2017.)Lee Brian Schrager, the founder of the South Beach Wine & Food Festival, remembered the evening as “the single most uncomfortable night of my life” — and, looking back, a snapshot of a distant time.“He went through the war,” Mr. Schrager said of Mr. Fieri. “He won.”New Context, Same ShtickSo, has he changed, or have we?Mr. Fieri appraises himself now as “a little more mellow, a little more methodical” — and maybe a little likelier to prize mentorship of the next class of television chef, including his son Hunter, over his own celebrity.Mr. Fieri, filming at the Chubby Pickle in Highlands, N.J., often shoots at several restaurants in the same day. Timothy O’Connell for The New York TimesThe moment has likewise tilted his way, at a time when there can seem to be less cultural currency in sarcastic detachment. “Can someone please explain to me what the hell Guy Fieri ever did to anyone?” the comedian Shane Torres asked, earnestly, in a 2017 routine. “As far as I can tell, all he ever did was follow his dreams.”It has helped that Mr. Fieri is well suited to the modern internet, a TikTok regular and walking meme who generates headlines that can register as Onion-ish absent close inspection.“Is Guy Fieri to blame for Dogecoin’s latest record high?” Fortune wondered last May.“Amid Ukraine-Russia war,” read a Fox News web piece in March, “Guy Fieri’s new season of ‘Tournament of Champions III’ provides comfort, unity.”Yet the likeliest explanation for his durability, for his heightened esteem among some peers, is deceptively simple.“He seeks to understand rather than be understood,” Mr. Zimmern said, “which I think is as high a compliment as I can give.”For all the tropes and totems on “Diners” — the loud shirts and little hoop earrings; the adult baby talk (“me likey wingy”); the red Camaro whose driver-side door he opens and shuts at every stop for the cameras, without necessarily hopping inside — he is, at core, hosting a travel show.Working the selfie circuit at a recent charity event for New Jersey veterans.Timothy O’Connell for The New York TimesViewers see a culinary backpacker cosplaying as the ugly American, a man always seeking, even if all roads lead to ambient comfort. The episodes blur, their locations at once distinctive and indistinguishable. California and Wyoming and Maine do not seem so far apart.“He goes to all these diners, drive-ins and dives,” said one fan, Jim McGinnis, 77, explaining the show’s appeal as Mr. Fieri administered handshakes and how-ya-doing-brothers at a charity event for New Jersey veterans. “It’s just a pleasure.”It helps that no one wrings more theater from the preordained: Mr. Fieri arrives at a chosen spot. He seems excited. He riffs, a little uncomfortably, to make the jittery proprietors more comfortable. (The stop at the Indian restaurant, Haldi Chowk in Middletown Township, N.J., included nods to “Wheel of Fortune,” “Forrest Gump” and “My Cousin Vinny,” with a brief meditation on the differences between I.T., iced tea and Ice-T for reasons that eluded the room.)Eventually, a chef has walked Mr. Fieri through the preparation of a favored dish. The host takes a bite — in this scene, it is the tandoori chicken — and shifts his weight a bit. He stands back, silent. His eyes dart mischievously, as if he has just gotten away with something. He wanders off, pretending to collect himself. The chef smiles. The big reveal only ever goes one way.“Not good, chef. Not good at all,” Mr. Fieri says, the oldest left turn in the TV judge’s manual. “Fantastic.”Rachael Ray, a friend whom Mr. Fieri cites as an influence, compared his people skills to a game of tag: You will like him. Denying as much midpursuit only wastes everyone’s time. “He just keeps chasing you,” she said.Mr. Zimmern described him as a politician, “always talking to his base,” forever the person he told them he was.Mr. Fieri tends to be a generous reviewer, typically doling out on-camera raves.Timothy O’Connell for The New York TimesAnd if Mr. Fieri has carefully avoided the public politics of some Trump-denouncing peers, a day on the road with him during filming can feel something like a campaign swing before the Iowa caucuses: an hour in each ZIP code, a quick check with an aide to make sure he knows what town he’s in, an inveterate fondness for name-dropping.“I learned this from Henry Winkler, one of my heroes …”“My buddy, Sammy Hagar, who’s my business partner …”That Mr. Fieri does not appear to have an off switch is consistent with the public record. Several friends compared him, warmly enough, to some natural disaster or another. “Hurricane Guy,” Mr. Harman said.Reminded of his 2010 line about capitalizing before his “fame rocket” crashed to earth, Mr. Fieri insisted he still viewed his celebrity horizon as finite.“There will be a time when the light doesn’t shine as bright on the golden locks,” he said. “Which is cool.”He was not entirely convincing on either score. But until that day comes, he suggested, he would keep up appearances, with one exception.“Everybody’s like, ‘You bleach your hair. Why don’t you dye your goatee?’ ” he said, rubbing at his grays. “I’m like, ‘You know what? Enough.’ ”He smirked a little, raising his head in concession to the moneymaker atop it.“This, I got stuck with,” he said. “This kind of happened.”Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Pinterest. Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice. More

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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘This Is Us’ and a Memorial Day Concert

    The series finale of “This Is Us” airs on NBC. And an annual Memorial Day concert at the Capitol Building is on PBS.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, May 23-29. Details and times are subject to change.MondayMILLION DOLLAR MERMAID (1952) 8 p.m. on TCM. Busby Berkeley choreographed this musical based on the life of Annette Kellerman, the 20th century Australian swimming star. Kellerman is played by the swimmer turned actress Esther Williams, in one of her several aquatic musical performances. TCM is showing it alongside another example, EASY TO LOVE (1953), which will air at 10 p.m.TuesdayTHIS IS US 9 p.m. on NBC. When this drama from Dan Fogelman debuted in 2016, it quickly became a hit — largely, it seemed, because it offered something friendly but high quality at a time when anger reigned. “I’m all for really dark art and dark TV and film, but there’s a point where people are craving a different kind of emotion at 8 or 9 or 10 at night,” Fogelman said in an interview with The Times in 2017. (It helped that the show had standout performers including Sterling K. Brown, Chrissy Metz, Mandy Moore and Milo Ventimiglia.) The series will end on Tuesday night with a finale that, based on the season up to this point, promises to be bittersweet.WednesdayTHE MURDER OF FRED HAMPTON (1971) 6:30 p.m. on TCM. Two years after the 21-year-old Black Panther figure and civil rights leader Fred Hampton was killed in a police raid, the Chicago filmmaker Howard Alk and the producer Mike Gray came out with this feature-length documentary. Split into two parts, the film functions as both a portrait of Hampton and an inquiry into the circumstances of his death.ThursdayTom Cruise in “Top Gun.”Paramount PicturesTOP GUN (1986) 8 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. on Paramount Network. “Top Gun: Maverick” arrives in theaters this week, but some audiences might feel like they’ve seen it already — originally intended to be released in 2019, the movie’s many delays mean that several lengthy trailers have been released to repeatedly rekindle the hype — and it’s a little hard to imagine there are scenes in the movie that haven’t already been shown. Still, it’s a natural time to revisit the original movie, which helped cement the careers of Tom Cruise, who plays a hotshot pilot at an elite naval flight school, and the director Tony Scott, whose virtuosic flight sequences are surely the real star here. When the movie was first released, the critic Walter Goodman, in his review for The New York Times, praised the aerial sequences — though he had a note about the high-tech planes that feels prescient in retrospect. “Despite the movie’s emphasis on the importance of the pilots,” he wrote, “given all the electronic wonders at their touch — such as being able to lock an enemy plane in their sights and dispatch a missile to chase and destroy it — they seem part of some cosmic technological enterprise.”FridayGREAT PERFORMANCES: KEEPING COMPANY WITH SONDHEIM 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The revival of Stephen Sondheim’s “Company” that is currently on Broadway with Katrina Lenk and Patti LuPone opened just days after Sondheim died in November at 91. This special looks at the making of the production, which had to contend with the realities and limitations imposed by the pandemic. The show is a gender-flipped take on the original musical: Its main character, a serially single New Yorker, has been subtly renamed (Bobby is now Bobbie), and is played by Lenk. That a rethought version of Sondheim’s show should open days after his death is a mark of plays and musicals’ ability to keep growing even after their creators are gone. “Theater is ephemeral,” the director Marianne Elliott said in an interview with The Times last year, “it is about the now. Even if you set it in another period, it should have something to say to the now.”ABOMINABLE (2019) 6 p.m. on FX. Most of the time, finding an unexpected creature on the roof of one’s home is a negative experience. But that is not so for Yi, the young girl voiced by Chloe Bennet in “Abominable.” The plot of this animated family-friendly adventure movie kicks off when Yi discovers a lost yeti hiding on the roof of her apartment. She and two young accomplices help reunite the creature with its family while keeping it out of the hands of evil, money-backed humans who want the yeti for financial gain. In his review for The Times, Glenn Kenny wrote that the movie is “an exceptionally watchable and amiable animated tale” — even though, he noted, the yeti character, nicknamed Everest, “looks like a not-too-distant relative of Gritty, the lovably outré mascot of the Philadelphia Flyers.”SaturdayGael García Bernal and Vicky Krieps in “Old.”Universal PicturesOLD (2021) 8 p.m. on HBO. Gael García Bernal and Vicky Krieps star in this most recent movie from M. Night Shyamalan. Adapted from a graphic novel by the French writer Pierre Oscar Lévy and the Swiss illustrator Frederik Peeters, “Old” is as much about its setting as it is about its characters: The plot centers on a family vacationing at a beautiful, supernatural beach that causes its visitors to grow old at an accelerated pace: A half-hour equals about a year of physical aging. In his review for The Times, Glenn Kenny said that Shyamalan, a master of the shocking twist, might not quite have given this movie’s interesting premise a satisfying ending. But, Kenny wrote, the director’s “fluid filmmaking style, outstanding features of which are an almost ever-mobile camera and a bag of focus tricks, serves him especially well here.”SundayA previous broadcast of a National Memorial Day Concert. This year’s edition will air on Sunday.Capitol ConcertsNATIONAL MEMORIAL DAY CONCERT 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Memorial Day is Monday, May 30. This annual concert, held beneath the United States Capitol Building, honors the holiday with appearances by service members and famous performers. This year’s lineup includes groups like the U.S. Navy Band Sea Chanters, the U.S. Army Chorus and the National Symphony Orchestra, plus the actors Gary Sinise and Jean Smart, the musician Rhiannon Giddens and more. More

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    Kenneth Welsh, Memorable as a Villain on ‘Twin Peaks,’ Dies at 80

    In a long career onstage (including Broadway), in movies and on television, he ranged across genres, from sketch comedy to science fiction.Kenneth Welsh, a prolific Canadian stage and screen actor who was best known for his portrayal of the murderous, unhinged villain Windom Earle on the hit early-1990s television series “Twin Peaks,” died on May 5 at his home in Sanford, Ontario. He was 80.His longtime agent, Pam Winter, said the cause was cancer.Mr. Welsh appeared in 10 episodes of “Twin Peaks” in its second season, playing Earle, the vengeful, maniacal adversary and former F.B.I. partner of the protagonist, Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan).The series, created by David Lynch and Mark Frost, follows Cooper as he investigates the murder of the high school student Laura Palmer in the seemingly sleepy town of Twin Peaks, Wash.Earle featured in some of the darker, more sadistic scenes and story lines in a series that was known for bending genres, mixing horror and surrealism with soapy and sometimes comic elements.In the years following its cancellation by ABC in 1991 and its cliffhanger ending, “Twin Peaks” developed a cult following and spawned a prequel film, “Fire Walk With Me” (1992) and returned for limited-series that premiered on Showtime in 2017. Welsh’s character did not appear in either project.Mr. Welsh was cast in the role after visiting the set in Washington State and meeting with Robert Engels, one of the show’s producers, and Mr. Frost.Mr. Engels “knew that I was a little eccentric, and he knew that as an actor I would go this way and that way,” Mr. Welsh said in an interview for the entertainment website 25YL, adding: “He just kind of knew that I was crazy and that I was perfect for Windom. I guess?”Mr. Welsh said it was he who successfully pitched the idea of having Earle wear different disguises as he stalked Cooper and various other characters.Mr. Welsh and Stockard Channing in the 1997 Lincoln Center production of Lillian Hellman’s “The Little Foxes” at the Vivian Beaumont Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMr. Welsh thrived playing off-kilter characters, like Larry Loomis, the Sovereign Protector of the Order of the Lynx, a dying fraternal order at the center of “Lodge 49,” a short-lived comedy-drama series seen on AMC in 2018 and 2019.But in his more than 240 movie and television roles, he ranged widely across genres, including sketch comedy (Amazon’s recent revival of “The Kids in the Hall”), science fiction (“Star Trek: Discovery” in 2020), family fare (“Eloise at the Plaza,” a 2003 Disney TV movie) and historical dramas; he played President Harry S. Truman twice, in the television movies “Hiroshima” (1995) and “Haven” (2001), and Thomas Edison in the 1998 TV movie “Edison: The Wizard of Light,” for which he received an Emmy nomination.His notable film notable roles included the vice president of the United States in Roland Emmerich’s “The Day After Tomorrow” (2004), about the onset of an ecological catastrophe, and the father of Katharine Hepburn (played by Cate Blanchett) in Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning “The Aviator” (2004).Mr. Welsh won five Canadian Screen Awards, four for his television work and one for his supporting role in the 1995 film “Margaret’s Museum,” a drama set in a coal-mining town on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. In 2003 he was named a member of the Order of Canada.Kenneth Welsh was born on March 30, 1942, in Edmonton, Alberta, to Clifford and Lillian (Sawchuk) Welsh. His father worked for the Canadian National Railway for more than 35 years, and his mother worked at a dress shop.Kenneth was the inaugural class president at Bonnie Doon Composite High School in Edmonton. He attended the University of Alberta, where he majored in drama, and then the National Theater School of Canada, graduating in 1965.He went on to rack up many credits on the stage, including, early on, in Shakespearean productions at the Stratford Festival in Ontario. Notably, he starred with Kathy Bates in the original Off Broadway production of “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair De Lune” in 1987 and was seen on Broadway in Tom Stoppard’s “The Real Thing” (1984), directed by Mike Nichols, and at Lincoln Center in a production of Lillian Hellman’s “The Little Foxes” (1997), with Glenn Close.His last stage performance was in Dylan Thomas’s “Under Milk Wood” at the Coal Mine Theater in Toronto in 2021.Drawing on his encyclopedic memory of Shakespeare’s works, Mr. Welsh was a creator, with the composer Ray Leslee, of “Stand Up Shakespeare,” a “motley musical,” as it billed itself, that opened Off Broadway in 1987. The production, also directed by Mr. Nichols, involved audience members, who would suggest Shakespeare characters, scenes or plays for Mr. Welsh to recite from memory. In the following decades he would sporadically revive “Stand Up Shakespeare” as a signature piece in various locations in the United States and Canada.Mr. Welsh, right in a 2007 episode of the science fiction series “Stargate: Atlantis” with, from left, Joe Flanigan and David Hewlett. He ranged widely across genres in his long career.Sci Fi ChannelMr. Welsh’s marriages to Corinne Farago and Donna Haley ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife, Lynne McIlvride, a visual artist, and a son, Devon, a musician, from his first marriage.In the final phase of his career, Mr. Welsh shifted his attention to independent projects and young filmmakers. His last film was “Midnight at the Paradise,” a drama directed by Vanessa Matsui, now in postproduction. Alongside Alan Hawco and Liane Balaban, he played the key supporting role of a movie critic nearing the end of his life.On set, Ms. Matsui said, Mr. Welsh captivated his colleagues.“He was always telling the cast and crew funny stories from his life, and he blew us all away with his performance and grace,” she said in an email. “I’ll never forget shooting this one scene with him and Allan Hawco, and you could hear a pin drop because the crew was just so drawn in by his performance. It was one of those special, intangible moments on set where you knew you just captured magic.” More

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    The Other Affair in ‘Conversations With Friends’

    In the Hulu adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel, a large and tasteful home becomes an object of infatuation.“I was a big fan of seeing the insides of other people’s houses, especially people who were slightly famous like Melissa,” Frances, the narrator of Sally Rooney’s “Conversations With Friends,” says early on in the novel.Homeownership is a remote concept for Frances, a millennial college student in Dublin who writes and performs spoken word poetry. She’s used to sharing a flat with a roommate and not interested in making a lot of money. But when she finds herself romantically entangled with Melissa and her husband, Nick, their tasteful material life becomes an object of infatuation.In the new Hulu series based on the book, the seaside Victorian belonging to Nick (played by Joe Alwyn) and Melissa (Jemima Kirke) doesn’t disappoint. The interior walls, made of a textured concrete-like material, are a moody gray-blue, and the space is dotted with sprays of eucalyptus, Irish-made ceramics, sheepskin throws and large, artistic light fixtures.The dining nook seems pulled from the pages of a recent Architectural Digest: a plant-filled space with weathered white brick walls and several doors made of large glass panes set in rectangular steel frames, leading to a courtyard.“Your house is very cool,” Frances (Alison Oliver) says over dinner. Bobbi, Frances’s charismatic best friend and ex (Sasha Lane), says: “I love it. You two are such grown-ups.” Buying a home remains a “symbol of being an adult,” said Dak Kopec, a professor in the school of architecture at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who specializes in environmental psychology. But millennials — saddled by student debt and slow to marry or have children — have entered the real estate market more gradually than earlier generations, and the ones now ready to buy are finding low supply and soaring prices. It’s no wonder they’ve become HGTV-devouring, Zillow-surfing daydreamers.Nick and Melissa — who likely considers herself part of the cuspy “Xennial” generation — have achieved the dream of homeownership that eludes many millennials. And the show turns their dwelling into a symbol of anxiety and aspiration.Home decorating has a way of illuminating the gulf between the life you want and the life you have, or the one that you can afford. You may find yourself staring down impossible questions about what your days will look like in two, five or 10 years.“I’ve heard so many couples fight over big rug purchases,” said Aelfie Oudghiri, the 36-year-old founder and creative director of Aelfie, a home décor brand. “It’s this defining feature of their home that’s supposed to indicate what kind of people they are and what kind of future they want to have.” She sees another kind of anxiety crop up in single people: “They don’t want to commit to something because they don’t know if their future hypothetical partner will like it.”Anna Rackard, the show’s production designer, and Sophie Phillips, the set decorator, aimed to create a version of a wealthy person’s house that wouldn’t repulse Frances.HuluFor Frances, Melissa’s home — and according to Anna Rackard, the show’s production designer, “it always felt like we were decorating for Melissa,” rather than Nick — is deeply appealing, despite her outward dismissiveness of the bourgeois lifestyle that it signifies. (Her evident embarrassment when Bobbi tells Nick and Melissa that “Frances is a communist” suggests that her dedication to this ideology isn’t terribly fixed.)Melissa’s spacious office, which Frances peers into while briefly unattended, is littered with books. To a young writer accustomed to working from her bedroom, it’s heaven.For Ms. Rackard and Sophie Phillips, the set decorator, the goal was to create a version of a wealthy person’s house that wouldn’t repulse Frances — that, instead, she’d find cool and aspirational. To make the space feel younger and less fussy, they used plywood for the kitchen doors and decorated the walls with prints and photographs, rather than paintings. Ms. Phillips and Ms. Rackard wanted a spare but slightly rock ’n’ roll look, with furniture and home goods that would make a strong statement on their own.Ms. Rackard and Ms. Phillips see Melissa as someone who is “effortlessly cool,” who has an instinctive sense of style when it comes to putting together a home. But in her considered approach to setting a table with matching colored glassware and bowllike plates, as she does for Frances and Bobbi, you could also read fastidiousness or insecurity.“Melissa is slightly intimidated by Frances, in a way, by her beauty and youth and where she is in this stage of her life, which enables her to be quite carefree,” Ms. Phillips said. “Melissa is at the stage where she’s thinking, ‘Where am I going?’ It makes her very self-conscious in her decisions, to create this ‘perfect’ environment.”According to Samuel Gosling, a psychologist who studies the relationship between people and their living spaces, one of the central functions of our home environments is as an ‘identity claim.’ “These are deliberate statements we want to make about ourselves to others, saying: ‘This is who I am,’” Dr. Gosling said. People generally feel happier when others see them as they see themselves, he said, citing research by Bill Swann, a psychology professor at the University of Texas at Austin, so much so that being seen in an overly positive light can make us feel misunderstood.This may explain why it pains Melissa so much to feel “pathetic and conventional” in Frances’s eyes, a characterization out of step with the stylish, cultured person her home reveals her to be. It would explain why some people may have mixed feelings about inviting people to homes they share with roommates or others, whose décor choices they fear might be mistaken for their own. For people in their 20s and 30s, the desire to be seen accurately through design choices may be heightened, and perhaps warped, by the desire to perform our style for the public on social media. “Our homes started to look more and more like sets,” Ms. Oudghiri said, noting that bright blocks of color, zany rugs and groovy, selfie-friendly mirrors are often used to make a statement on social media. The soft, unchallenging look known as the “millennial aesthetic,” heavily marketed as a signifier of good taste, often crops up in these spaces. Among young men, the Eames lounger has become a status symbol akin to hard-to-find street wear, telegraphing success to the outside world.Melissa’s muted house doesn’t seem to contain any terrazzo or pastel pink, but it does hit certain design trends that have received the millennial seal of approval. Rebecca Atwood, a 37-year-old artist and textile designer, identified a few: enveloping wall color (that moody gray), goods purchased from brands and makers with a story (those Irish ceramics), an indoor-outdoor feeling (the greenhouse-like dining nook). Ms. Rackard noted that the conservatory’s fashionable glass doors, while perfect for the warm weather of Los Angeles, would be uncommon in Dublin, where double-paneled windows are more suited to the climate. Such is Melissa’s commitment to style, to what people think.Ms. Oudghiri, for her part, isn’t putting too much stock in her own décor. She has been renting a furnished home in Los Angeles decorated by someone with a taste for “rococo looking” furniture.“Interiors matter, to a certain extent. But I’m not on Instagram. Nobody sees the interior of my house, except for my friends,” she said. “As long as my couch is comfortable, I’m happy.” More