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    Netflix Lures ‘Bridgerton’ Fans With Live Event: The Queen’s Ball

    LOS ANGELES — The wisteria drips from the archway while classical music plays over the loudspeakers. Powder-wigged valets present champagne to guests who gaze at Empire-waist dresses, peer into a room filled with makeup and accessories or head to a stage for a quick oil portrait (actually a digital photo with a Regency England-esque filter).This is The Queen’s Ball: A Bridgerton Experience, an immersive, Instagram-ready confection held in the ballrooms of the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles and tailor made for die-hard fans of the global Netflix hit. The 200 to 300 guests aren’t able to meet Regé-Jean Page, the breakout star of the first season of “Bridgerton,” who declined to return to the 19th-century drama. But they can bow before an actress doing her best impression of Queen Charlotte (right down to the haughty glare), learn a dance set to a string quartet version of Taylor Swift’s “Wildest Dreams,” participate in a Lady Whistledown scavenger hunt and possibly even be granted the coveted honor of being named the “diamond of the evening.”The 90-minute experience — which will open to the public on Thursday and run for at least two months before traveling to Washington, Chicago and Montreal — is Netflix’s most ambitious real-world event to date. (A similar version opened in London this month.) The streaming giant hopes it serves as a marketing tool for “Bridgerton” and appeals to the show’s primarily female fan base, which is often ignored when it comes to fan culture.Performers at the “Bridgerton” ball, which will travel to Washington, Chicago and Montreal after its Los Angeles run.Maggie Shannon for The New York TimesIt is also a bid to amplify the kind of water-cooler buzz that has been elusive for streaming shows. Since their episodes tend to be released in one batch, the week-to-week anticipation familiar to fans of traditional network television can be diluted.“This really goes towards my vision of what I’ve always wanted us to be able to do,” the “Bridgerton” creator Shonda Rhimes said in a Zoom interview from her home in New York, before bringing up two of her popular ABC dramas, “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Scandal.” “People who watched ‘Grey’s’ weren’t just watching ‘Grey’s’ on Thursday night — they were trying to find other ways to consume it. ‘Scandal’ was not a show that people watched on Thursday nights and then just didn’t talk about it the rest of the week.”In its 18th season, “Grey’s Anatomy” is still broadcast television’s No. 1 show in the critical 18-to-49-year-old demographic. “Scandal” ended in 2018 after seven seasons.“Being at Netflix allows us to take that desire for the fans and to create a thing where you’re allowing them to be part of the experience more than just on one night of the week or one hour a week,” added Ms. Rhimes, who recently renewed her lucrative Netflix deal for five more years, adding additional revenue streams like podcasts and video games.In addition to The Queen’s Ball, which costs between $49 and $99 to attend, Netflix has teamed up with Bloomingdale’s for a pop-up shop both online and at the flagship Manhattan store ($995 lilac Malone Souliers floral appliquéd pumps, anyone?). There is also a line of cosmetics from Pat McGrath, a British makeup artist whose makeup was used in the production of “Bridgerton”; a soundtrack featuring pop hits played by a string quartet; and a Netflix book club, whose March pick is “The Viscount Who Loved Me,” the second book in the series, by Julia Quinn, that serves as the show’s source material.“Bridgerton” tea for sale at the ball.Maggie Shannon for The New York TimesMakeup can be purchased, too.Maggie Shannon for The New York TimesTraditional Hollywood studios have been playing this game for a long time. For instance, the second that one of its shows or movies is a hit, Disney starts pumping out related products. But it is a relatively new strategy for Netflix. (The streamer did roll out “Squid Game” tracksuits in partnership with the South Korean brand Musinsa late last year, soon after the series took off.)Inside the World of “Bridgerton”The Netflix series, whose second season is out this March, infuses period-drama escapism with modern-day sensibilities.Sparkling Period Piece: The show is a Regency romance and society drama with unstuffy pop aesthetic, writes our television critic.The Secret Is Out: A big reveal in the first season put Nicola Coughlan at the center of the action. Here is what the star says about her new fame.Approach to Race: Departing from most period dramas, “Bridgerton” imagines a 19th-century Britain with Black royalty and aristocrats.Fashion Trends: The show has helped fuel the resurgence of period clothing, corsets included. And the costumes are only the beginning.Across the Pond: “Bridgerton,” which is filmed in Bath, is one of several productions made in Britain, drawn by the labor pool and tax incentives.In the past couple of years, Netflix has placed an emphasis on live, out-of-home experiences. First there was a Covid-conscious “Stranger Things” drive-through event in 2020, then an event where participants searched for a bank vault in a heist experience tied to the series “La Casa de Papel.” Recently, the company held a virtual reality event for Zack Snyder’s zombie film “Army of the Dead.”What does all this do for Netflix’s bottom line? The company says over one million people have attended its live events, a number it expects to increase significantly as long as Covid-19 remains on the wane.Netflix wouldn’t discuss the economics of the events, but Ted Sarandos, its co-chief executive, referred to the “Bridgerton” live experience on the company’s January earnings call as part of its efforts to create franchises out of “whole cloth.” He predicted that “fans will flock to and flood their social media feeds with” photos from The Queen’s Ball.Bela Bajaria, Netflix’s head of global TV, added in a recent interview, “I really love that we’re building these universes and doing these consumer products that are completely just so much about female fandom.”Organizers say demand for The Queen’s Ball in Los Angeles has been as manic as the early reception for “Bridgerton”: 88 percent of tickets had been bought two weeks before its opening.Michael Vorhaus, a longtime digital media consultant, said such events helped prolong interest in content that in the Netflix universe is consumed and discarded faster than a sparsely filled-out dance card.“It’s Harry Potter for adults,” he said of “Bridgerton.” “You’ve got eight books. And if the consumption numbers hold up, then presumably they will make all eight, and who knows beyond that? Every dollar they’re spending now building a community, every dollar that builds buzz for them, they’re getting paid off over eight seasons.”Jaqi Harris, left, and Sarah Durnesque, guests at the ball, reading the gossip in Lady Whistledown’s Society Papers.Maggie Shannon for The New York TimesPlus, with an audience that’s primarily women ages 18 to 45, Netflix is appealing to a group that is traditionally not courted as rabid consumers of pop culture.“It’s a very underserved fan base,” said Greg Lombardo, head of experiences at Netflix. “In this space there are not a lot of offerings out there that are really geared towards a female audience.”Indeed, it was a milestone when the cast of the first “Twilight” movie showed up at Comic-Con in 2008, introducing a new demographic to the predominantly male-skewed fan convention. “Fifty Shades of Grey” followed suit with an extensive line of merchandising. “Outlander” and “Downton Abbey” have also proved the purchasing power of a largely female fan base.“It’s not that revolutionary to suggest that women are enormous consumers of products, and when they are a fan of something, they are hard-core fans of something,” Ms Rhimes said. “I have known that for the 20-something years I’ve been doing my job. The difference here is that we are now in an era in which the people who create those universes are not strictly men.”But more often than not, big mainstream franchises are still primarily aimed toward young men, with spaces carved out for others to join, said Katherine Morrissey, a professor at Arizona State University who studies fan culture.“It seems like Netflix is very aware that the audience for ‘Bridgerton’ is not necessarily going to think of itself as a fandom in the way that we kind of stereotype fandoms,” she said. “They’re very aware that their consumers are going to be interested in similar things but are going to want them packaged in totally different ways. They’re not necessarily going to be self-identified like, ‘This is the thing I did at Comic-Con.’”The soapy, sexy romance novels seem perfect for Ms. Rhimes’s streaming ambitions. Each book focuses on a child of the Bridgerton family and the efforts to marry the child off successfully (i.e., for love) per the customs of early-19th-century England. Each features a self-contained story line — a dream for Ms. Rhimes, who has had to keep churning out plot twists for her long-running network shows. Now she can tell distinct stories, plus a spinoff season dedicated to Queen Charlotte, who was the wife of King George III and may have been England’s first Black queen, a character Ms. Rhimes has been obsessed with for years.Netflix has already greenlit Seasons 3 and 4 of “Bridgerton” and the Queen Charlotte spinoff, which will enter production shortly.“It’s an incredible gift,” said Betsy Beers, Ms. Rhimes longtime producing partner. “It really provides for an incredible fluidity of storytelling and also, economically, is very sensible on both the practical and production end.”It has also allowed for Netflix’s six-person live events team to adapt the “Bridgerton” experience for future seasons. (An anthropomorphized bumblebee makes a foreboding entrance in the new live show, something only the fans who have binged the whole second season will immediately understand.)“This really goes towards my vision of what I’ve always wanted us to be able to do,” said Shonda Rhimes, who created the Netflix hit.Maggie Shannon for The New York TimesBack at the Biltmore, once the guests have curtsied their way to an introduction to the queen and learned their dance moves, they are escorted into a larger ballroom for a dance performance between a handsome duke and a coquettish duchess. With a string quartet playing pop songs, the guests are then encouraged to join in the fun, while the queen evaluates them for their diamond potential. (With bars stationed strategically throughout the experience, Netflix realizes lowered inhibitions augment the event. Sixteen dollars gets you one of an array of cocktails, including the Whistledown & Dirty, which contains Absolut vodka, mint and San Pellegrino limonata.)From on high, over the quartet’s playing of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” bellows the voice of Lady Whistledown’s protégé, Lady Heartell, who was created for the ball: “I don’t know about all of you, but I got what I came for.”If Netflix has planned it correctly, the audience did, too. More

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    Jimmy Kimmel Ribs Republicans Over Ketanji Brown Jackson

    Kimmel said Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings could make the G.O.P.’s worst nightmare could come true: “Having this decided by two Black women whose names they can’t pronounce.”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.‘Subtle Racism Jamboree’Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings kicked off in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday.Jimmy Kimmel joked that the hearings “give a number of our Republican senators a chance to compete in one of their favorite events: the subtle racism jamboree.”“She doesn’t need any Republican votes to get confirmed because the vice president is the tiebreaker, which would be — that would be the G.O.P.’s ultimate nightmare: having this decided by two Black women whose names they can’t pronounce.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I actually think they should treat Ketanji Brown Jackson exactly like they treated Brett Kavanaugh: Interview every single person who has accused her of sexual assault. Don’t stop, even though there are none. Do not stop.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (K.B.J. Edition)“Well, guys, today confirmation hearings began for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson. The hearing process will last four days. It’s basically C-SPAN’s version of Coachella.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yep, Jackson will face days of tough questions. Brett Kavanaugh was like [imitating Kavanaugh slurring]: ‘It’ll be fine. I did it for four days after the second day, after the s — after the second day, it’s kind of a blur.’” — JIMMY FALLON“I saw that top Republican leading the hearings, Chuck Grassley, is 88 years old. Wow. When it was his turn to speak he was like, ‘Tell us who you are, and then tell me who I am.’” — JIMMY FALLON“But this is cool: I saw that Judge Jackson’s parents were at the confirmation hearing. Even crazier, so were Chuck Grassley’s.” — JIMMY FALLON“The next two days are for questions, and I think it’s going to be a huge missed opportunity if one of the judiciary committee members doesn’t start a question with ‘I’m sorry, Miss Jackson, ooh? I am for real — what is your judicial stance on federal financial oversight?’” — JAMES CORDEN, riffing on Outkast’s song, “Ms. Jackson”The Bits Worth WatchingJimmy Fallon and Questlove played a game of Charades with Leslie Mann and Mikey Day, the host of “Is It Cake?” on Monday’s “Tonight Show.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightJamie Lee Curtis will pop by Tuesday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”Also, Check This OutSharon Stone in the interrogation scene in “Basic Instinct,” which opened on March 20, 1992.Rialto PicturesThe erotic thriller “Basic Instinct” is still a hit 30 years after its highly contested premiere. More

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    ‘At the Wedding’ Review: Cocktails, Dancing and an Albatross

    A trenchant new comedy by Bryna Turner features Mary Wiseman in a comic tour-de-force as the guest most likely to make a scene.“I’m starting to think this wedding needs a villain,” says Carlo, as if the one she has semi-crashed were a murder mystery.Certainly there are plenty of suspects behaving badly, chief among them Carlo herself, a freelance snark machine with a hole in her heart and an alcohol-fueled taste for the piercing aperçu. She terrifies the children’s table with a hellish lesson about the fate of romance: “the worst pain you’ll feel in your life.” She’s also, uh-oh, the bride’s former lover — you know, the one who neglected to R.S.V.P.Though it’s not by a long shot the first time a comedy has mined the nuptials-with-an-ex-to-grind setup, Bryna Turner’s “At the Wedding,” which opened on Monday at the Claire Tow Theater, offers a fresh and trenchant take on the genre. And in Carlo, the bruised heart of the story, it offers the actor Mary Wiseman, with her curly red mop piled high like a lesbian Lucy, a brilliant showcase for her split-level comic genius.I say split-level because, with Wiseman, there’s always one thing going on verbally upstairs and another going on emotionally in the basement. Sipping from an endless succession of wedding libations at some kind of barn in Northern California, her Carlo makes like a porcupine, shooting quills in the form of quips. Was not the ceremony, she gaily asks another guest, “aggressively heterosexual”? (Her ex, Eva, has married a man.) “I almost thought they were going to start checking for her hymen right there in front of us.”The lines are funny; Turner has a boxer’s sense of the two-punch rhythm of jokes. But it’s Wiseman, who first stole the spotlight as a brilliantly dim belle in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s “An Octoroon,” who makes them hilarious by making them sad at the same time. Though focusing her ire on the wedding as a false celebration — “I’ve seen more convincing fire drills,” she says — Carlo is really gnawing at the scar of attachment itself. For those who are no good at staying in love, gift-grabs like this are worse than embarrassments; they’re torture.The sprightly, 70-minute LCT3 production, directed with wit by Jenna Worsham, gives us both of those elements right away. A gigantic, labial paper-flower chandelier hangs from the ceiling of the set, by Maruti Evans; a jaunty but ominous “Til Death” sign radiates its neon message amid Oona Curley’s string lights and lanterns. But neither the play nor the design completely endorses Carlo’s one-sided view. The eclectic playlist (sound by Fan Zhang) is exactly the kind you’d want to dance to, and the flattering costumes (by Oana Botez) are the kind you want people to dance in.It’s especially smart that Eva (Rebecca S’manga Frank) is allowed to look glorious in a truly elegant gown; she’s no comic-book bridezilla, and though we never learn exactly what happened in her relationship with Carlo, it’s evident she had good reason to end it. And if Carlo, in grief, has become an admonitory fury — Turner explicitly compares her to the Ancient Mariner in Coleridge’s poem, accosting wedding guests with her ghastly story — her legitimate beefs never completely obscure our view of the other partygoers as jumbles of kindness and monstrousness.The play is structured to reveal that contradiction in a series of well-acted, one-on-one encounters with Carlo. An undermine-y bridesmaid named Carly (Keren Lugo) tells her that “it wouldn’t be any failure if you decided to leave,” but later returns to comfort her. Eva’s sloshed mother, Maria (Carolyn McCormick), dismisses the R.S.V.P. gaffe but then dismisses Carlo herself. A guest named Eli (Will Rogers) confides that he intends to propose to his partner at the party, thus (as Carlo warns him) “emotionally hijacking” the festivities — which is apparently her job, not his. Yet he is far more complex than he at first seems.Rebecca S’manga Frank, left, plays Wiseman’s ex, but she is no comic-book bridezilla.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSo is Leigh (Han Van Sciver), an androgynous Lothario who uses they/them pronouns. Leigh’s flirtation with Carlo — suggesting they ditch the party for a romp somewhere else — at first seems innocent enough, even though Leigh’s brother is the groom. When that innocence is later brought into question, and the selfish side of sexual freedom surfaces, the play still refuses to disown Leigh completely.If Turner’s faith in her characters is not always returned — Maria, who gets only one scene, feels underwritten, and Leigh, despite Van Sciver’s foxy performance, never quite coheres — her faith in the audience is an entirely successful investment. Her jokes often have long lead times, the setup in one scene, the payoff in another. The plot, too, keeps well ahead of you, trusting you will survive in pleasurable uncertainty until its loose threads are eventually gathered. In one case, it takes almost 40 pages of script for a throwaway line spoken by the overburdened waiter (Jorge Donoso) to deliver its needle-prick of a reward.That authorial patience is part of what makes “At the Wedding” so fresh; though there are plenty of one-liners, it is not a yuk-yuk comedy foisting its laughs at you or over-signaling its intentions. (“Bull in a China Shop,” Turner’s professional playwriting debut, seen at LCT3 in 2017, was a bit more raucous and insistent.) Also revivifying is the way Turner reshapes the wedding genre for our time, inviting new characters to the party.She does this far too thoughtfully and skillfully for it to seem trendy or polemical. Rather, the broadening is central to the play’s examination of how our traditional ways of uniting people function in a world that has always been more diverse than its institutions.For “At the Wedding,” those institutions include more than just marriage, which many queer people can now choose if they want, in forms that, like Eva’s spectacular gown, are custom fit. They also include love itself, and the loss of it. For Carlo, and for all of us sometimes, love is the albatross strung around our necks, and the sad story we are cursed to tell ever after. It’s funny if it’s not you.At the WeddingThrough April 17 at the Claire Tow Theater, Manhattan; lct.org. Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes. More

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    Why TV-Inspired Vacations Are on the Rise

    TV-themed itineraries are on the rise, taking travelers on adventures with familiar shows during a time of uncertainty.With 70 percent of Americans watching more TV in 2021 than they did in 2020, binge-watching has skyrocketed during the pandemic. Now, as borders reopen, restrictions ease and travel restarts, tour advisers are fielding an increasingly popular request: immersive, TV-themed itineraries that allow travelers to live out their favorite shows’ story lines.In Britain, where all travel restrictions are now lifted, hotels in London have partnered with Netflix to offer Lady Whistledown-themed teas inspired by “Bridgerton” high society. In Yellowstone National Park, travelers are arriving in Wyoming not for a glimpse of Old Faithful, but for a chance to cosplay as John Dutton from the hit drama “Yellowstone.”And in South Korea, where vaccinated travelers can now enter without quarantine, street food vendors on Jeju Island are anticipating a run on dalgona candy, the honeycomb toffees that played a central role in “Squid Game.”“When you fall in love with a character, you can’t get it out of your mind,” said Antonina Pattiz, 30, a blogger who last year got hooked on “Outlander,” the steamy, time-traveling drama about Claire Beauchamp, a nurse transported 200 years back in history. Ms. Pattiz and her husband, William, binge-watched the Starz show together, and are now planning an “Outlander”-themed trip to Scotland in May to visit sites from the show, including Midhope Castle, which stands in as Lallybroch, the family home of another character, Jamie Fraser.Mr. Pattiz is part Scottish, Ms. Pattiz said, and their joint interest in the show kicked off a desire on his part to explore his roots. “You watch the show and you really start to connect with the characters and you just want to know more,” she said.The fifth season of “Outlander” was available in February 2020, and Starz’s 142 percent increase in new subscribers early in the pandemic has been largely attributed to a jump in locked-down viewers discovering the show. During the ensuing two-year hiatus before Season 6 recently hit screens — a period of time known by fans as “Droughtlander” — “Outlander”-related attractions in Scotland, like Glencoe, which appears in the show’s opening credits and the Palace of Holyroodhouse, saw more than 1.7 million visitors. “Outlander”-related content on Visit Scotland’s website generated more than 350,000 page views, ahead of content pegged to the filming there of Harry Potter and James Bond movies.The Pattizs, who live in New York City, will follow a 12-day self-driving sample itinerary provided by Visit Scotland, winding from Edinburgh to Fife to Glasgow as they visit castles and gardens where Claire fell in love and Jamie’s comrades died in battle. Private tour companies, including Nordic Visitor and Inverness Tours, have also unveiled customized tours.The ‘Sex and the City’ UniverseThe sprawling franchise revolutionized how women were portrayed on the screen. And the show isn’t over yet. A New Series: Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte return for another strut down the premium cable runway in “And Just Like That,” streaming on HBO. Off Broadway: Candace Bushnell, whose writing gave birth to the “Sex and the City” universe, stars in her one-woman show based on her life. In Carrie’s Footsteps: “Sex and the City” painted a seductive vision of Manhattan, inspiring many young women to move to the city. The Origins: For the show’s 20th anniversary in 2018, Bushnell shared how a collection of essays turned into a pathbreaking series.Enduring trend, new intensityScreen tourism, which encompasses not just pilgrimages to filming locations but also studio tours and visits to amusement parks like The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, is an enduring trend. Tourists flocked to Salzburg in the 1960s after the release of “The Sound of Music”; in recent decades, locations like New Zealand saw a huge bump in visits from “Lord of the Rings” fans and bus tours in New York City have offered tourists a chance to go on location of “Sex and the City” and “The Marvelous Ms. Maisel.”But in this pandemic moment, where travel has for months been synonymous with danger and tourists are navigating conflicting desires to safeguard their health while also making up for squandered time, screen tourism is taking on a new intensity, said Rachel Kazez, a Chicago-based mental health therapist. She has clients eager to travel — another major trend for 2022 is “going big” — but they are looking for ways to tamp down the anxiety that may accompany those supersized ambitions.She said her patients increasingly are saying “‘I was cooped up for a year and I just want to go nuts. Let’s do whatever fantasy we’ve been thinking about’.”“If we’ve been watching a TV show, we know everything about it, and we can go and have a totally immersive experience that’s also extremely predictable,” Ms. Kazez continued. Cyndi Lam, a pharmacist in Fairfax, Va., has longed to go to Morocco for years. But she didn’t feel confident pulling the trigger until last month, when “Inventing Anna,” the nine-episode drama about the sham heiress Anna Delvey, began streaming on Netflix.In episode six of “Inventing Anna,” the character flies to Marrakesh and stays at La Mamounia, a lavish five-star resort. Ms. Lam and her husband are now booked to stay there in September.“Everybody can kind of relate to Anna,” Ms. Lam said. “I found her character to be fascinating, and when she went to Morocco, I was like, ‘OK, we’re going to Morocco.’ It sealed the deal.”In December, Club Wyndham teamed up with Hallmark Channel to design three suites tied to the “Countdown to Christmas” holiday movie event. They sold out in seven hours.Courtesy of Club WyndhamSensing a new desire among guests to tap into the scripted universe, dozens of hotels over the past year have rolled out themed suites inspired by popular shows. Graduate Hotels has a “Stranger Things”-themed suite at its Bloomington, Ind., location, with areas designed like the living room and basement of central characters like the Byers. A blinking alphabet of Christmas lights and Eleven’s favorite Eggo waffles are included. And in December, Club Wyndham teamed up with the Hallmark Channel to design three “Countdown to Christmas”-themed suites where guests could check in and binge Christmas films. They sold out in seven hours.“It was the first time we’d done anything like this,” said Lara Richardson, chief marketing officer for Crown Media Family Networks, in an email. “One thing we hear over and over from viewers is that, as much they love our products, they want to step inside a ‘Countdown to Christmas’ movie.”Vacation homes are also going immersive. For families, Airbnb partnered with BBC to list the Heeler House, a real-world incarnation of the animated home on the beloved animated series “Bluey,” and Vrbo has 10 rental homes inspired by “Yes Day,” the 2021 Netflix film about parents who remove “no” from their vocabulary. Celebrities are jumping in, too: Issa Rae, creator and star of HBO’s “Insecure,” offered an exclusive look at her neighborhood in South Los Angeles in February with a special Airbnb listing, at a rock-bottom price of $56.Tea on TV, now in London (and Boston)“Bridgerton,” Netflix’s British period drama about family, love and savage gossip, was streamed by 82 million households in 2021. (For comparison, the finale of “Breaking Bad” in 2013 had 10.3 million viewers; more recent streaming hits, including “Tiger King” and “Maid,” had fewer than 70 million). When season two of “Bridgerton” premieres on March 25, Beaverbrook Town House, a hotel built across two Georgian townhouses in London’s Chelsea, will offer a “Bridgerton” experience that includes a day out in London and drinks in the British countryside; nearby at the Lanesborough, a Bridgerton-themed tea, cheekily dubbed “the social event of the season,” will kick off the same day. In Boston, the Fairmont Copley Plaza now has a “High Society Package” for fans with flowers and a private afternoon tea.Contiki, the group travel company for 18- to 35-year-olds, had a “Bridgerton”-themed itinerary set for September 2021 but had to scrap it when the Delta variant hit; they’ve now partnered with Amazon Prime on a Hawaiian Islands trip inspired by “I Know What You Did Last Summer” set for July.Both Netflix and Amazon Prime have brand partnership teams that handle collaborations of this nature.“As we come out of this pandemic, the desire for more immersive experiences is really stronger than ever,” said Adam Armstrong, Contiki’s chief executive. “It’s about getting under the skin of destinations, creating those Instagrammable moments that recreate stuff from films and movies. It’s really a strong focus for us.”The popularity of “Bridgerton” on Netflix was eclipsed by “Squid Game,” the high-stakes South Korean survival drama, and despite that show’s carnage, travelers are booking Squid Game vacations, too. Remote Lands, an Asia-focused travel agency, reported a 25 percent increase in interest in South Korean travel and created a Seoul guide for fans and a customized itinerary.Some travel advisers say that some clients don’t even want to explore the locations they’re traveling to. They just want to be there while they continue binge-watching.Emily Lutz, a travel adviser in Los Angeles, said that more than 20 percent of her total requests over the past few months have been for travel to Yellowstone National Park, a result of the popularity of “Yellowstone,” the western family drama starring Kevin Costner on the Paramount Network and other streaming services. And not all of her clients are interested in hiking.“I had a client who wrote me and said, ‘All we want to do is rent a lodge in the mountains, sit in front of the fireplace, and watch episodes of ‘Yellowstone’ — while we’re in Yellowstone’,” she said.52 Places for a Changed WorldThe 2022 list highlights places around the globe where travelers can be part of the solution.Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places for a Changed World for 2022. More

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    ‘Billions’ Season 6, Episode 9 Recap: Distract and Conquer

    Chuck goes from one of his biggest professional triumphs to perhaps his greatest professional setback. That was fast.Season 6, Episode 9: ‘Hindenburg’“We need Chuck dead, not wounded and angry.” Wise words, those, from Governor Bob Sweeney. He has intuited something Chuck himself failed to, when Chuck yanked the Olympic Games away from Mike Prince without delivering a killing blow. In retrospect, it was obvious that a wounded, angry Prince, for all his self-avowed graciousness in defeat, would strike back. It just wasn’t clear that his retaliation would, in fact, be a death blow.But that’s certainly what it seems to be. Sweeney and the State Senate remove Chuck Rhoades from the office of state attorney general, the result of an elaborate scheme concocted by Prince. Chuck’s do-gooding, his rabble-rousing, his speechifying — none of it avails him.And so he moves from one of his biggest professional triumphs — putting the kibosh on Prince’s Olympics — to his greatest professional setback since he was fired as the U.S. attorney for New York’s Southern District by Attorney General Jock Jeffcoat a few seasons back. If anything, this defeat is far worse because it bears a firmer will-of-the-people imprimatur and because Chuck was nominally booted over charges of corruptly pursuing personal vendettas, not simply rubbing the boss the wrong way.To be fair to Chuck, I didn’t see his downfall coming, either. Nor were we supposed to! Before learning of the attempt to oust him, Chuck spends most of the episode deeply invested in pursuing another pet project: opening privately operated but nonprofit and tax-exempt parks and other such amenities to the general public.This quest is precipitated by two ugly incidents involving brown women, the first when his lieutenant, Dave, is barred from a private club and the second when a Hispanic mother is barred from a nearby park. Chuck strong-arms the local hedge fund bigwig Steven Birch (Jerry O’Connell) into ponying up a list of residents with access to the park, then takes them to court, where he settles on a deal that gives him a bare-minimum win — the best he could count on under such dubious legal circumstances.But it was all a put-on by Prince. Stuart Legere, the bribed university official whom Chuck believed was his man on the inside; the host at the club where Dave and Legere were supposed to meet; the mother who is prevented from entering the park; the Wall Street jerk who prevents her from entering it; the lawyer representing the park’s members: All of them are on Prince’s payroll, thanks to bribes from Wags and Scooter.In doing all this, Prince is acting on the advice of Chuck’s one-time right hand, Kate Sacker. Distract him the way a bullfighter distracts a bull, she says, and he’ll become vulnerable. And sure enough, he’s so busy hashing out the details of his big win against the high and mighty that he misses the political coup occurring right under his nose.At this point, the rapid-onset defeat of its main characters is a “Billions” hallmark. It took only one or two episodes for Prince and Chuck to embroil Bobby Axelrod in the illegal cannabis business that led to his flight from the country. No sooner had Prince landed the Olympics than Chuck canceled them. And now, Prince has defeated Chuck just one episode later. No one is safe on this show, and that makes for exciting television.Chuck’s entire downfall could, perhaps, have been prevented had it not been for his decision to show up at Prince’s Olympics HQ to gloat in the form of a peace offering. Prince recognized it for what it was: rubbing the billionaire’s nose in his defeat. Chuck’s biggest enemy is himself.The episode’s B-plot centers on Taylor Mason, the one-time wunderkind of Axe Cap. When the alums Mafee and Dollar Bill pop in for a visit, they also start to woo the mild-mannered traders Tuk and Ben Kim away from the firm, no doubt hoping to recreate that old Axe Cap magic. Tuk and Ben’s manager Philip, new to the firm, is happy to let them go if it’s really time for them to move on.But Taylor feels that this will make Philip look weak. Rather than allow a rival to take a hit to his reputation, Taylor unleashes a full Samuel L. Jackson in “Pulp Fiction” verbal fusillade at Mafee and Dollar Bill, scaring them off from their attempt to pry Ben and Tuk away. Philip is retrospectively grateful for the help, though he tells Taylor he suspects Ben and Tuk aren’t the only ones pining for the good old days of Axe Cap.Taylor, who has spent the whole season wrestling with Axe’s influence, seems chastened. But no one on this show stays chastened for very long.Loose change:I’d like to give a special shout-out to the veteran character actor Kenneth Tigar as State Senator Clay Tharp, a rare Republican ally of Chuck’s who is ultimately swayed to Prince’s side. He delivers a dignified performance centered on Chuck’s sympathy for Tharp after the death of his wife, a sympathy he can no longer pay back with support.For you reference-spotters out there, this episode was full of them. Basketball? Prince compares himself to Coach Pat Riley. “The Godfather”? That’s the name Chuck bestows on Riley, while Mafee quotes, “Be my friend?,” from the film’s opening scene. The Coens? Ben Kim quotes the Dude in describing his time at Prince Cap as “strikes and gutters,” à la the Dude from “The Big Lebowski.” Wrestling? Senator Tharp tips the hat to the grappler Ken Patera.Some less frequently trod reference territory: Taylor paraphrases the entire “Say ‘what’ again” speech from “Pulp Fiction.” For the literary-minded, William Kennedy’s Albany-based cycle of novels also gets its flowers. Bob Sweeney invokes the name of the Stephen King arch-villain Randall Flagg when describing Prince’s feelings about Chuck. And a judge compares Chuck’s legal approach to the Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy in the U.K.”; the song closes out the episode, and it is maybe the series’s most jarring music cue to date.Chuck compares himself to Charles de Gaulle and his enemies to the Hindenburg disaster, but it turns out the positions should have been reversed.Karl Allard goes undercover as a groundskeeper to spy on a meeting between Prince and his mega-rich cronies, reinforcing my love of Karl Allard.The episode ends with Dave’s being named the new acting attorney general. The show seems heavily invested in this character, and I hope the investment pays off. More

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    Av Westin, Newsman Behind ABC’s ‘20/20,’ Dies at 92

    After nearly 20 years at CBS News, he went to a rival network and helped turn its answer to “60 Minutes” into a frequent Emmy Award winner.Av Westin, an influential television producer who rose from copy boy at CBS News for Edward R. Murrow in the 1940s to help make ABC’s “20/20” newsmagazine a perennial winner of Emmy Awards, died on March 12 at a hospital in Manhattan. He was 92.His wife, Ellen Rossen, said the cause was cardiac arrest.Mr. Westin had spent a year as the executive producer of ABC’s “World News Tonight” when he took over at “20/20” in 1979. Over the next seven years, the program won more than 30 news and documentary Emmy Awards, including 11 in 1981.Looking to differentiate “20/20” from the entertainment shows it competed with in prime-time, as well as from CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Mr. Westin mixed ambitious investigative reports with celebrity profiles, lifestyle features and “process pieces” about artistic endeavors like the making of a new album of standards by Linda Ronstadt.A documentarian at heart, Mr. Westin also ordered a series of features called “Moment of Crisis,” which looked back at news events like the disastrous explosion of the Challenger space shuttle and the efforts to save President Ronald Reagan’s life after he was wounded in an assassination attempt.“20/20,” which was hosted by Barbara Walters and Hugh Downs in the 1980s, had an A-list group of correspondents that included Sylvia Chase, Lynn Sherr, Geraldo Rivera, Tom Jarriel, Bob Brown and Sander Vanocur.Mr. Brown recalled that Mr. Westin gave correspondents and producers considerable leeway to cover a story as they chose.“But when the piece was screened, Av took over and was at his best,” Mr. Brown said in a phone interview. “He could break apart a story and make you see everything you’d done wrong and let you know what you had to do to fix it. He had a genius for going straight to a problem.”Mr. Westin’s time at “20/20” came to an end in February 1987, when he circulated an 18-page memo within ABC News and to its top executives at its parent company, Capital Cities/ABC, criticizing news-gathering procedures and calling the division inefficient and in need of a new focus.He said that he had been quietly asked by a Capital Cities executive to critique ABC News, whose president was Roone Arledge.“Cap Cities had essentially decided that Roone was not their guy anymore,” Mr. Westin said in an interview with the Television Academy in 2011. The executive told him that “Roone’s tenure was going to end, and I was likely to be the preferred candidate of management.”“What I wrote was accurate,” Mr. Westin added, “but obviously it was inflammatory.”The memo led Mr. Arledge to suspend him and take him off “20/20.” But the suspension did not last long, and Mr. Westin went on to work on projects like “The Blessings of Liberty,” about the U.S. Constitution at its centennial, until he left the network in 1989.It was not the first time the two men clashed. In 1985, Mr. Arledge killed a “20/20” segment about the death of Marilyn Monroe and her ties to the Kennedys, calling it “gossip-column stuff.” Mr. Westin objected, and Mr. Rivera angrily told the gossip columnist Liz Smith that he and others at “20/20” were appalled that Mr. Arledge “would overturn a respected, honorable, great newsman like Av.”Mr. Westin with the “20/20” host Hugh Downs in 1981. He recruited an A-list group of correspondents for the program.Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty ImagesAvram Robert Westin was born on July 29, 1929, in Manhattan. His father, Elliot, was a vice president of a commercial baking company. His mother, Harriet (Radin) Westin, was a homemaker. Av Westin graduated from New York University in 1949. He had begun his studies as a pre-med student, but an experience during a summer job as a copy boy at CBS in 1947 altered his direction, to English and history.“A bulletin moved that a ship was sinking off Newfoundland,” he told the Television Academy, and he promptly carried the teletype copy to an editor. “I was the only person at CBS News headquarters who knew that information,” he said. “I was the ultimate insider. That’s the epiphany.”Mr. Westin was a writer, director, reporter and producer for 18 years at CBS, during which he earned a master’s degree in Russian and East European studies at Columbia University in 1958. He won an Emmy in 1960 as a writer for the documentary “The Population Explosion,” and in 1963 created and produced “CBS Morning News” with Mike Wallace.He left CBS in 1967, spent two years as executive director of the noncommercial Public Broadcasting Laboratory and joined ABC News in 1969 as the executive producer of its evening newscast, then anchored by Frank Reynolds. It was an era when “ABC Evening News” trailed CBS and NBC’s nightly news operations in prestige, ratings and financial resources.“My target is ‘H and B,’” Mr. Westin told The Indianapolis News in 1969, referring to NBC’s co-anchors Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. “I think people are getting tired of them, and if they’re shopping around, I want them to look at us before they automatically turn to Walter” Cronkite.The broadcast journalist Ted Koppel, who was a correspondent on the evening news program, said of Mr. Westin in a phone interview, “He probably elevated the ‘ABC Evening News’ as much as anyone until Roone Arledge,” adding, “Av was a very ambitious man, who thought he should have been ABC News president.”While at ABC News, Mr. Westin ran its “Close-Up” documentary unit, for which he won a Peabody Award in 1973. He won another Peabody the next year, for producing and directing the documentary “Sadat: Action Biography,” about the Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat.He left ABC News in 1976 in a dispute with Bill Sheehan, the president of the division, but returned two years later at Mr. Arledge’s request “to get rid of” the incompatible, feuding “Evening News” anchor team of Ms. Walters and Harry Reasoner.“The day I arrived back at ABC, one of the producers who was in the Reasoner camp came up to me and said, ‘You know, she owes us 5 minutes and 25 seconds,’” Mr. Westin told the Television Academy, referring to how much more Ms. Walters had been on the air than Mr. Reasoner over the past year.After returning as the executive producer of “Evening News,” Mr. Westin collaborated with Mr. Arledge on an overhaul in 1978 that transformed the show into the faster-paced, graphics-oriented “World News Tonight,” with three anchors: Mr. Reynolds in Washington, Max Robinson in Chicago and Peter Jennings in London.A year later, Mr. Arledge moved Mr. Westin to “20/20.”After leaving ABC News, Mr. Westin was an executive at King World Productions, Time Warner and the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’s foundation.In addition to his wife, he is survived by a son, Mark. His previous marriages to Sandra Glick and Kathleen Lingo ended in divorce. He lived in Manhattan.To Mr. Westin, evening news programs, which cannot provide much depth in 22 minutes of airtime, have a clear mandate.“I believe the audience at dinner time wants to know the answers to three very important questions,” he said, explaining a rule he had at ABC News. “Is the world safe? Is my hometown and my home safe? If my wife and children are safe, what has happened in the past 24 hours to make them better off or to amuse them?” More

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    Review: In ‘What You Are Now,’ Memory Is a Dangerous Thing

    In Sam Chanse’s affecting play, a daughter tries to understand her mother, who resists any reminder of her escape from the Khmer Rouge.Trying to understand our parents’ past lives can feel like fumbling through the dark, especially for the children of immigrants. Recollections are selective, and many people have lived through things they’d rather forget. The challenge — and heartbreak — of bridging that chasm is the subject of “What You Are Now,” an affecting study of memory and migration by the playwright Sam Chanse that opened on Thursday night at the Ensemble Studio Theater in Manhattan.Pia (Pisay Pao) knows hardly anything about her mother’s experience fleeing Cambodia in 1975, amid the country’s deadly takeover by the Khmer Rouge. But the pain of her mother’s experience has shaped Pia’s life, like an imprint, she says, seared into her cells. It’s why Pia is pursuing neurological research, looking for a scientific solution to her mother’s mental suffering.Pia’s mother (Sonnie Brown) carries herself like a ghost, looking lost behind the eyes and staunchly resisting any reminders of Cambodia. She’s also held herself at arm’s length from Pia and her brother Darany (Robert Lee Leng), whom she raised on her own in small-town Massachusetts. (The height of their mother’s physical affection is a stiff-elbowed pat on the shoulder.) If Pia can’t enter or soothe her mother’s mind, she channels that desire into studying the brain.Chanse’s play shifts back and forth over a 10-year span in Pia’s study of memory and its potential for manipulation. When she speaks to her mom on the phone from the lab, their conversations are limited to the mundane, like what’s for dinner and how Pia’s career is advancing. But when Darany’s ex-girlfriend (Emma Kikue) comes around gathering testimony for a nonprofit from survivors of the Khmer Rouge, Pia’s mother refuses to open up about the past.“What You Are Now” isn’t propelled by incidents or dramatic action, but ideas about how the mind works and the gradual revelation of personal histories. Pia dates and breaks up with a co-worker (Curran Connor) with whom she cleans rat cages. Darany and his girlfriend, who is half white, smoke pot and swap stories of how they relate to their shared Cambodian heritage. Pia’s mom loses her temper when she walks in on her kids dancing to Cambodian rock.As Pia, Pao is spiky and guarded, observing and responding to her mother’s behavior with the cool remove that a scientist might keep for her subject. As her chill (and way cooler) older brother, Leng makes for a loose and grounded contrast, all street-slang and curious heart. And Brown is quietly arresting as a woman both fragile and imperious, slouched like a comma but with a will of steel.Directed by the Civilians artistic director, Steve Cosson, the smartly minimal production unfolds against a cool-gray monochrome interior, like a slate wiped clean. Frames that might display family portraits hang empty, and what could be a wall clock has no markings of time (the set design is by Riw Rakkulchon). Characters appear isolated in the dark, as they connect at a distance on the phone or retreat into their own perspectives (the lighting design is by Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew).Pia explores whether it’s possible to alter what we remember, and memory’s relationship to identity, by delving into empirical study rather than excavating and sorting through emotions. The play includes perhaps one too many descriptions of real-life experiments, which are limited in dramatic potential.But “What You Are Now” excels in unforced revelations about the human struggle to connect, and to share the messy and sometimes painful stories that make us who we are. Everything we hear and experience, and how we remember it, reshapes our brains, Pia says. It’s a scientific testament to the power of storytelling to change minds.What You Are NowThrough April 3 at the Ensemble Studio Theater, Manhattan; ensemblestudiotheatre.org. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. More

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    Marin Hinkle of ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ Melts Chocolate

    The television actress, who is filming the show’s fifth and final season, learned to make truffles.“It’s very smooth,” the actress Marin Hinkle said, her eyes closed in apparent bliss.This was a brisk Monday afternoon and Ms. Hinkle, 55, had taken over the kitchen of a friend’s immaculate apartment on the Upper West Side to learn how to make chocolate truffles. (Her own kitchen nearby needed repairs.)Her teacher was another friend: Ruth Kennison, the founder of the Chocolate Project. Ms. Kennison and Ms. Hinkle met in high school nearly 40 years ago, and spent a summer working at a candy store in Boston, eating bonbons on the job. After college, they both moved to Los Angeles, birthing sons a month apart.A few years ago, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” the comedy that Ms. Hinkle stars in, shot a couple of episodes in Paris. Ms. Hinkle traded in her first-class plane ticket for four coach seats and invited Ms. Kennison to join her. Their sons came, too.“I made them go to every chocolate shop in Paris,” Ms. Kennison said.Ms. Hinkle smiled. “The chocolate has never stopped,” she added.Ms. Kennison poured glasses of pink Champagne while Ms. Hinkle, elegant in a blue silk blouse, high-waisted jeans and high-heeled clogs, admired the renovated kitchen, a haven of gleaming white. Late afternoon sun filtered in through the picture window, turning the marble counters gold.Ms. Hinkle sampled different chocolate bars.Luisa Opalesky for The New York TimesGanache was rolled into little balls.Luisa Opalesky for The New York TimesMs. Kennison began the truffle lesson with a brief lecture on the biology of the cacao tree, complete with pictures and props.“Are they always hard like this?” Ms. Hinkle asked, grasping a giant, red-shaded seed pod.“Well, that’s the ceramic version,” Ms. Kennison said gently, handing her friend a real pod.Then they segued into tasting, with Ms. Kennison urging her friend to savor each region’s particular terroir.Vietnamese chocolate? Spicy.Chocolate from Madagascar? Fruity.The morsel from Fiji? So smooth.They moved onto a few, high-end bars flavored with exotic ingredients: matcha, passion fruit, bee pollen. This nudged Ms. Hinkle, who had earlier claimed to like all chocolate, toward a confession. “I am actually a milk chocolate person,” she said.Ms. Kennison accepted it. Then she handed Ms. Hinkle a branded brown apron and told her to change out of her blouse. They had truffles to make — a messy business.Ms. Hinkle returned moments later in a white T-shirt, clothing so casual that it would send Rose, the character she plays on “Maisel,” into hysterics. Rose, a professor’s wife and the mother of the title character, never appears sloppily dressed or imperfectly coifed. Her make up? A Platonic ideal.A scene from “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” with Tony Shalhoub, right.Amazon Studios“They build the costume on me like it’s liquid paint,” Ms. Hinkle said. “And it’s a cliché, but 80 to 90 percent of the work is right there.”Rose tends to flounce through every moment of her life as though giving a command performance. “That is so not me,” Ms. Hinkle said. But she loves the show and the family feeling among the cast, who have traveled together to Paris, Miami and the Catskills. The show just completed its fourth season. Ms. Hinkle has already begun filming its fifth and final one, with complicated emotions.“If Amy and Dan believe this is the right time, I’m so there to respect that,” she said of the show’s creators, Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino. “But I will cry every single day. I have to savor every second of the season.”But now, without tears, there were truffles to make. Ms. Hinkle removed her jewelry and washed her hands. Then, under Ms. Kennison’s direction, she stirred butter and cream into a pot of Ghanaian chocolate, making small vigorous motions so that the fats would emulsify and form a ganache, the filling for the truffles.The ganache would need 24 hours to set. So in a bit of kitchen wizardry, Ms. Kennison produced two bowls of premade ganache, one dark, one dark milk. Using miniature ice cream scoops, they rolled the ganache into little and not so little balls, their hands darkening with melting chocolate.Ms. Hinkle worried that her truffles looked less than perfect.Perfection wasn’t required. “There is no right or wrong,” Ms. Kennison said reassuringly. “The only thing chocolate doesn’t like is when you’re scared. Chocolate smells your fear.” Happily, the kitchen didn’t smell like fear. It smelled like chocolate.Luisa Opalesky for The New York TimesWhen the balls were rolled, Ms. Hinkle poured melted chocolate onto a marble slab to temper it, cooling and manipulating it to give it a glossy finish. Ms. Hinkle dug in, with a paint scraper and an offset spatula purchased from the local hardware store, until the slab resembled a splatter painting. Then she scraped the chocolate back into the bowl and reheated it with a hair dryer until it was ready for dipping.Spooning melted chocolate into her hand (“It feels so good,” Ms. Hinkle said) she rolled each truffle in it, with Ms. Kennison hurrying her on: “Quick, quick, quick, quick, quick!” She then handed the dipped truffles to Ms. Kennison, who rolled them in cocoa powder, sprinkles or crushed pecans. The milk ones and the dark ones jumbled together as the pile of completed truffles grew to about 50 bonbons.“It looks so pretty,” Ms. Hinkle said.Ms. Kennison urged her to try one. Ms. Hinkle plucked one from the slab and delicately bit. Bliss again. “OK,” she said. “That is crazy good.” More