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    Streaming Companies Are Looking to Britain for Studios to Meet Demand

    Netflix, Amazon Prime and other studios are snapping up soundstages in Britain and building more, drawn by an experienced labor pool and alluring tax incentives.LIVERPOOL, England — For two decades, the Littlewoods building in Liverpool, a long, low-slung and cavernous space built to house a betting and mail-order company in the 1930s, sat abandoned. No one wanted to take on this crumbling hulk looming on the outskirts of the city.Until Lynn Saunders. She is the driving force to make it the center of Liverpool’s first film and TV studio complex.“It’s a beast of a site,” said Ms. Saunders, the head of the Liverpool Film Office. It had been too intimidating for most prospective buyers. But amid a boom in TV and film production in Britain, Littlewoods Studios is now one of at least two dozen major plans to build or expand studio space across Britain.Streaming platforms like Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video are racing to meet insatiable demand for content and have chosen Britain as their location to make it, countering the malaise of overall investment in the nation since it voted to leave the European Union. In 2021, a record 5.6 billion pounds ($7.4 billion) was spent on film and high-end TV productions in Britain, nearly 30 percent more than the previous high in 2019, according to the British Film Institute. More than 80 percent of that money was coming ashore from American studios or other foreign productions.Lynn Saunders, the head of the Liverpool Film Office, hopes that adding studios will keep productions in town and stimulate the local economy.Francesca Jones for The New York TimesAssured that there is no imminent end to the desire for binge-worthy shows and movies, studios, property developers and local authorities are rushing to build more production space. Blackstone, the world’s largest private equity company, and Hudson Pacific Properties, the owner of Sunset Studios, which include the former homes of Columbia Pictures and Warner Bros. off Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, have said they will invest £700 million to build the first Sunset Studios facility outside Los Angeles, just north of London. With 21 soundstages, it will be larger than any of its Hollywood studios.“There is just such a massive need to produce content in markets that already have infrastructure,” said Victor Coleman, the chairman and chief executive of Hudson Pacific Properties. “And the infrastructure is not necessarily just the facilities but it’s also the talent both in front and behind the camera.”The once-abandoned Littlewoods building in Liverpool. The site is now one of about a dozen major plans to build or expand studio space across Britain.Francesca Jones for The New York TimesThe early “Star Wars” films and 10 years’ worth of Harry Potter movies helped Britain get here. Film productions were attracted by experienced labor and visual effects companies and, critically, generous tax breaks. In 2013, the incentives were extended to TV productions that cost more than £1 million per broadcast hour — so-called high-end TV series, like “The Crown” and “Game of Thrones.” In recent years, productions were offered a 25 percent cash rebate on qualifying expenditures, such as visual effects done in Britain. In the 2020-21 fiscal year, tax breaks for film, TV, video games, children’s television and animation exceeded £1.2 billion.In Britain, film gets a level of government attention that other creative industries, such as live theater, can only dream of.“I would not like to contemplate the loss of the tax incentive,” said Ben Roberts, the chief executive of the British Film Institute. Without it, Britain would become immediately uncompetitive, he added.Most of the growth in production in Britain comes from big-budget TV shows, a staple of streaming channels. Last year, 211 high-end TV productions filmed in Britain, such as “Ted Lasso” and “Good Omens,” and fewer than half of them were produced solely by British companies, according to the British Film Institute. Compared with 2019, the amount spent jumped by 85 percent to £4.1 billion.Buildings and streets in Liverpool were transformed into Gotham City for the filming of “The Batman.”Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros.St. George’s Hall in Liverpool was used in “The Batman.”Francesca Jones for The New York TimesA scene shows Batman jumping off the Liver building, in front of its clock.Francesca Jones for The New York TimesLiverpool already claims to be the second-most-filmed-in city in Britain after London. For a few weeks in late 2020, its streets became Gotham City for “The Batman,” and for years shows, including “Peaky Blinders,” have been shot there. The local authority is courting more TV shows by building four smaller studios.Property developers announced the plan for Littlewoods Studios in early 2018, but the grand ambitions were pushed off course a few months later by a fire in the building. Not wanting to miss out on the rising demand, Ms. Saunders convinced the City Council to spend £3 million building two soundstages adjacent to the site. They opened in October.And then at the end of last year, £8 million in public funding was approved for remedial work on the Littlewoods building to create two more sound stages. Ms. Saunders hopes that adding studios will keep productions in town for longer — occupying hotel rooms, ordering from restaurants and employing local people. The film office has also started investing in productions — so far to the tune of £2 million in six TV shows.Britain is already the largest production location for Netflix outside the United States and Canada. While plenty is filmed on location — such as “Bridgerton,” in Bath, and “Sex Education,” in Wales — Netflix committed to a permanent home in 2019 at the Pinewood Group’s Shepperton Studios in Surrey, just southwest of London, where “Dr. Strangelove” and “Oliver!” were made decades ago. Shepperton is now expanding, aiming to double the number of its soundstages to 31 by 2023, and Netflix plans to occupy much of that new space.“Ted Lasso” was one of 211 high-end TV productions filmed in Britain last year.Colin Hutton/Apple TV+, via Associated PressBut the descent of American streamers on British shores has brought its challenges, too. The industry is rife with stories of production crews leaving jobs for higher-paying gigs, long waits for studios and production costs that outpace inflation.Anna Mallett, Netflix’s vice president of physical production for the U.K., Europe, Middle East and Africa, resists the idea that the streamer’s voracious expansion is squeezing others out of studio space.“I do think there is enough for everyone,” she said. “There’s over six million square feet of production space coming onto the market in the next couple of years.”Amazon plans to move in next door. Last month, Prime Video agreed to lease 450,000 square feet in the new development at Shepperton Studios, including nine soundstages. The streaming service sent a ripple of excitement through Britain last year when it announced that it would film the second season of its “Lord of the Rings” series, “The Rings of Power,” in the country. It will move from New Zealand to the dismay of that country’s officials, who over two decades have offered hundreds of millions of dollars in financial incentives to the franchise.By 2023, Warner Bros. hopes to be underway with its plans to add 50 percent more soundstage space to its studios northwest of London.Warner Bros. was the first major Hollywood studio to set up a permanent location in Britain when it bought in 2010 the Leavesden studios, where it made Harry Potter.“It was a pretty huge leap for Warners to make that investment,” said Emily Stillman, the head of studio operations at Leavesden. After years of piecemeal expansion, the new development, if it gets planning approval, will be the studio’s biggest investment at the site.Away from more renowned studios surrounding London, there is hope that the production boom can bring job opportunities and investment to overlooked areas in Britain. New studios are being constructed out of an old industrial space in Dagenham, in east London, an area once synonymous with the manufacture of Ford cars in the 20th century. In Bristol, the local authority is investing £12 million to add three more soundstages to Bottle Yard Studios in an area that is economically struggling, said Laura Aviles, the head of the Bristol Film Office.A guide leading a tour of filiming areas in Liverpool, which are rapidly expanding as the industry invests in Britain.Francesca Jones for The New York Times“It’s been a struggle” to regenerate the area, she said, “and there are a lot of young people there who could be third-generation unemployed who have struggled to get into work.” The expansion will hopefully entice other businesses to the area.There is a risk that all this demand for studio space could become a blessing and a curse. Despite the skilled work force in the field, there are real concerns about whether Britain can train enough production crew and fill the associated roles to populate all this new studio space. The industry has committed millions of pounds to rapid training programs. Industry leaders hope to bring more people into the field and break the stereotype that the work — most of it freelance — is exclusively for the well off and well connected. This month, Prime Video said it would spend £10 million to fund courses in Britain focused on increasing diversity in the industry and positions in Prime Video-commissioned productions.And there is the fear that smaller independent productions by British filmmakers, who can’t as readily use debt to finance an expansion, will be left behind in this boom. Just 16 percent of the money spent on high-end TV shows in Britain last year went to solely domestic productions.The level of foreign investment “does run the risk of challenging the indigenous, independent sector in terms of its ability to retain talent, crew up, get finance, hire space, use locations,” Mr. Roberts of the British Film Institute said. “We are really alert to that not feeling like a squeeze too far.” More

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    After ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ Jesse Williams Takes the Stage

    The former “Grey’s Anatomy” star is making his Broadway debut in “Take Me Out.” For that, he said, “I needed to go into a very unknown place.”Jesse Williams will be the first tell you — certainly, he was the first to tell me — that he has no formal theater training and little practice. There’s an Edward Albee play in the hazy past and a one-act opposite Zosia Mamet. That’s pretty much it.When I met him, on a recent weekday afternoon at Spring Place, a ritzy club and co-working space in TriBeCa, he joked that he was probably the least experienced theater actor I had ever interviewed.But on April 4, the Broadway revival of Richard Greenberg’s “Take Me Out” will open at Second Stage’s Hayes Theater with Williams, a familiar TV presence from his decade-plus run on “Grey’s Anatomy.” Which means that he is learning on the job: what “upstage” means, whether to hold for a laugh, how to use his whole body in a scene and not just the torso on up, as is the norm on television.“I’m not even wearing pants in half of those scenes,” he said of his time on “Grey’s.” (I think he was kidding?)In “Take Me Out,” which is set in the mid-1990s, Williams, 40, plays Darren Lemming, a superstar baseball player who comes out as gay. It’s a play about race, class, sexuality, sport and living a life in the public eye. Williams’s Darren stands — in batter’s crouch — at the intersection of these competing themes. “I’m here to just learn and get my butt kicked,” he said, using a stronger word than “butt.”Patrick J. Adams, left, and Williams in the play, which is in previews and scheduled to open on April 4.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWilliams grew up in Chicago, the eldest child of a white mother, a potter, and a Black father, a factory worker who later became a teacher. When Williams hit junior high school, his parents, now divorced, moved the family to a majority white neighborhood in suburban Massachusetts, where he experienced casual, and less casual, racism. Baseball, which he played on school teams and with his father, remained a constant.He graduated from prep school — he had moved on to soccer and lacrosse by then — and enrolled at Temple University, double majoring in African American studies and film and media arts. School, like most things, came easy to him. He would often write his papers the night before, high on marijuana, just to see if he could get away with it. Still, he excelled.Scouted as a model, he shot some commercials during college. But he never took that too seriously. The artists in his family were visual artists, not performers. And acting didn’t seem as creative, as generative, as stimulating. In 2006, having worked as a teacher, a paralegal and a political organizer and an activist with several grassroots organizations, he decided to apply to law school. Or maybe film school. But first he reached out to his old commercial agent, a move he chalked up to a “quarter-life crisis.”Four days later, in an example of the effortlessness that has defined his professional life, he booked an episode of “Law & Order.” He appeared in a few movies and shows, including a brief arc on the teen comedy “Greek” as a character aptly nicknamed the Hotness Monster. Then, in 2009, he was hired onto the medical drama “Grey’s Anatomy,” where he spent 12 years as Jackson Avery, the dynamic, gym-ripped plastic surgeon.Here is the comment that Shonda Rhimes, who created “Grey’s,” gave about a key scene: “We felt that having a shirtless Jackson Avery would be a benefit to society.”What he lacked in formal training, he made up for in his eagerness to master the craft. “He was always watching everybody’s artistry and learning from it,” said Krista Vernoff, a “Grey’s” showrunner.His colleague Sarah Drew, who played his longtime love interest, echoed that. “There’s nobody that worked as hard as he did,” she said. “Nobody.”Ellen Pompeo, another co-star, who said that she lived to mess with him, added: “He’s handsome. Girls always like that.”Fair enough. Williams, whom I watched first in rehearsal and then a few days later across that Spring Place table, is good-looking in a way that seems almost uncanny, with a grin that could melt permafrost. In person, he projects confidence — cockiness, almost — shot through with self-scrutiny and the occasional flash of humility. Colleagues described his keen intellect, instantly legible in the quickness and charm of his conversation.“Can an actor cross the footlights? I thought, I bet he can,” the director Scott Ellis said of offering Williams the lead role in “Take Me Out” after seeing him on “Grey’s Anatomy.”Sabrina Santiago for The New York Times“Yes, he really does look like that,” Vernoff told me. “And yes, he is really smart. And really, really talented.”Which explains why, a few years ago, the director Scott Ellis offered him the role of Darren. Ellis had wanted to revive “Take Me Out,” which received the Tony Award for best play in 2003. But first he had to find a biracial leading man (Darren’s race is a crucial element of the play) of overwhelming charisma who could also pass as a Hall-of-Fame-level player. Having seen Williams on “Grey’s,” Ellis suspected that he could command a Broadway stage.“It’s always that question,” Ellis said, speaking on a rehearsal break. “Can an actor cross the footlights? I thought, I bet he can.”Williams turned Ellis down. His schedule on “Grey’s” — as an actor and occasional director — didn’t allow a Broadway run. The play itself, with its rhythmic, cerebral dialogue and its nude scene, scared him. But the offer nagged at him. And as his work on “Grey’s” began to feel, in his words, “increasingly safe, protected, insulated,” that fear became part of the appeal.“I knew that as I designed my exit, the next thing I did had to be terrifying. I needed to get out of my comfort zone, I needed to go into a very unknown place,” he said. “Take Me Out” provided it.REHEARSALS BEGAN in February 2020 and halted, as all Broadway did, that March. Williams spent the intervening months at home in Los Angeles, teaching the rudiments of baseball to his two children — he shares custody with his former wife, Aryn Drake-Lee — and intensifying his activism, particularly his support of the Black Lives Matter movement.Williams sits on the board of the Advancement Project, an advocacy group devoted to civil rights. “He is deeply committed to racial justice,” said Judith Browne Dianis, its executive director. “He’s not one of the celebs or influencers that does things for his brand purposes. It’s deep in his soul.”Williams does little for brand purposes. And he doesn’t seem to know how to phone it in. “I swing through the ball,” he said, describing his approach to each new project. He didn’t seem to register the sports metaphor.Williams spent 12 years playing the plastic surgeon Jackson Avery on the medical drama “Grey’s Anatomy.” Williams, above center, with some of his co-stars, from left: Robert Baker, Kevin McKidd, Sandra Oh and Sara Ramirez.Randy Holmes/ABCWhen rehearsals began again, almost two years later, he swung through, supplementing run-throughs with voice lessons; personal training; breath work, where he learned about the diaphragm; physical therapy, to heal several torn ligaments in his foot. (Mini golf has its dangers.)“I’m taking the preparation really seriously, because every single syllable is totally brand-new,” he said.Because he lacks training — “I’m not really an actor,” he reminded me, “I didn’t go to acting school” — he fills his characters out with lived experience. In some ways, his experiences paralleled Darren’s.For example, they share a similar focus and drive. “I win,” he said, using more sports metaphors. “I hustle hard. I jump way bigger than I am. And I figure it out.”And he relates to the frictionless way that Darren has moved through his life. The play describes Darren as “something special: A Black man who you could imagine had never suffered.” And that isn’t true of Williams personally, but it’s true enough professionally.“I’ve related to a self-awareness of ease in my life, a self-awareness that the way I look or perform, based on the standards in our society, grants me access,” he said. “I can relate to how it can lull you to sleep, ease.”He has asked himself why Darren chooses to come out as gay. Is it an act of self-determination or a kind of self-sabotage, a way to complicate that ease?Of course, those same questions also apply to a TV actor choosing to lead a Broadway play. “There’s a lot of spillage,” Williams said. “A lot of overlap.” Which means that the role is also a way for Williams to explore some of his own contradictions, like what it means to be a deep thinker admired for his body, to be a Black celebrity in majority white spaces, to live both a public life and a private one.Williams on embracing the play’s locker room nude scenes: “I’m here to do things I’ve never done before. It’ll be fine.”Sabrina Santiago for The New York TimesHe is trying to embrace those contradictions fully and candidly, which also means embracing the play’s locker room nude scenes. He was somewhat resistant at first, asking Ellis about alternatives — a towel bar, maybe? But he has since committed to it, although when he spoke, he admitted that he had yet to try it.“I’m here to do things I’ve never done before,” he said. “I have got one life, as far as I know. It’ll be fine.”But of course his life is not exactly Darren’s, particularly when it comes to sexuality. Darren is gay. And Williams, as a number of tabloids will happily tell you, is straight. While Broadway has largely decided against racial impersonation, when it comes to matters of sexuality, gender and disability conversations around which actors should play which roles remain ongoing.Ellis, who is openly gay, said that an actor’s sexuality pertains less than other factors. “Do they have empathy?” he said rhetorically. “Do I feel that they can understand what this character is going through? That’s all that matters.”That isn’t exactly all that matters to Williams, who has taken these questions to heart. “If there’s anybody in the gay community that thinks that role should be played by a gay person, they have an argument,” he said. “They absolutely have an argument.”And still, he wanted his at-bat. “I really wanted the challenge of trying to do my best at the role,” he said.For Jesse Tyler Ferguson (“Modern Family”), the openly gay actor who plays opposite Williams, that’s enough. “He’s asking very thoughtful questions in the process and doing the work that truly great actors do,” Ferguson said. “I’ve completely fallen in love with his version of Darren.”I watched a scene of that Darren — the shower scene, rehearsed clothed — on a recent weekday morning. Williams looked like a ballplayer, rubbing pain cream into his ankle, swinging a bat like he’d been born with it. He looked like a stage actor, too, communicating danger and an almost feline grace as Darren approached another character.Patrick J. Adams (“Suits”), a longtime stage actor, described how quickly Williams had adapted to the rhythms of theater. “He’s just taking it in kind of instantly, almost frustratingly, to be perfectly honest,” Adams said. “Like, How is this so easy for you?”Williams makes it look easy. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t working hard.“The last thing I want is to be the shiny rich TV guy that thinks he can just show up and do something, because that’s just absolutely not how I feel,” he said. “I’m just here to learn.” More

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    Olivia Rodrigo, BTS and Billie Eilish to Perform at Grammys

    The 64th annual awards ceremony, the second in a row to be delayed by the pandemic, will be held in Las Vegas on April 3.Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish, BTS and Lil Nas X will perform at the 64th annual Grammy Awards on April 3, the Recording Academy announced on Tuesday.They, along with the singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile and the country duo Brothers Osborne, are the first batch of performers announced for the show, which was delayed nine weeks by the pandemic and is being held in Las Vegas for the first time. Trevor Noah of “The Daily Show” is the host.The show, at the MGM Grand Arena, will be broadcast by CBS and can be streamed on Paramount+.Rodrigo and Eilish are each up for seven awards, and will compete against each other for record, album and song of the year. Rodrigo, whose debut album, “Sour,” was one of last year’s biggest hits, is also up for best new artist, raising the possibility that she could sweep the top four awards — for the first time since Eilish did so in 2020.BTS has one nomination and will perform during the ceremony.Mario Anzuoni/ReutersLil Nas X, the singer and rapper who rose to fame three years ago with the meme-ready “Old Town Road,” is up for five awards, including album of the year. Carlile was nominated in four categories, including twice for song of the year (for “Right on Time” and “A Beautiful Noise”). Brothers Osborne have two nods, and BTS one. Jon Batiste, the bandleader on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” has the most nominations, with 11.Other top nominees include Justin Bieber, Doja Cat and H.E.R. The Recording Academy, which presents the Grammys, drew controversy last year when it emerged that it had made a last-minute change, unknown to voters, that expanded its ballot from eight to 10 nominees for the four top categories. Among the beneficiaries of that change were Taylor Swift and Kanye West.This year’s show is the second to be delayed by the pandemic, and while last year’s production was well received by critics as a fresh new take on the format, its rating slipped to a low of 8.8 million, down 53 percent from the year before. In 2012, when the Grammys were held the day after Whitney Houston’s death, the show drew nearly 40 million viewers. More

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    Where Jerry Zaks Goes to Escape the ‘Pure Pleasure’ of the Theater

    The director of ‘The Music Man’ pays more attention to the furnishings onstage than to those at home. But that suits him fine.Jerry Zaks has never been much for turning an apartment into a home.He likes things clean, and he likes things comfortable. But beyond those basics, his interest kind of stalls out. An actor turned four-time Tony Award-winning director, he’s too wrapped up in second-act curtains to ponder living room curtains.“I think most of my places have looked like the dorm when I was in college, because I’ve been too busy working and getting the work done,” said Mr. Zaks, 75, who most recently shepherded the Broadway revival of “The Music Man,” starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster, and the musical adaptation of the film “Mrs. Doubtfire” (which resumes performances April 14 after a Covid-related hiatus). Among his two dozen other directing credits: “The House of Blue Leaves,” “Six Degrees of Separation,” the Steve Martin comedy “Meteor Shower” and the 2017 revival of “Hello, Dolly!”The celebrated Broadway director Jerry Zaks, whose current projects are “The Music Man” and “Mrs. Doubtfire,” lives in a two-bedroom apartment  on the Upper West Side. Photographs, ephemera and Hirschfeld caricatures, including one of himself, hang in his kitchen.Katherine Marks for The New York Times“When I’m going home,” he continued, “I’m not escaping from anything except pure pleasure, which is the theater or my rehearsal room.”Jerry Zaks, 75Occupation: DirectorMaking the scene: “I’ve never paid a lot of attention to how my apartment looks. I’ve paid more attention to the set design of my show. I love participating in the creation of the world that is going to house the show I’m doing.”Since moving to New York in 1969 after graduate school, Mr. Zaks has lived uptown and down, in hovels and in storied buildings like the El Dorado, where the apartment he shared with his wife, the actress Jill Rose, and two daughters overlooked Central Park and was big enough that he could chalk up a constitutional — he is an obsessive walker — simply by striding from one end of the space to the other.Mr. Zaks has a unique copy of “Encyclopedia of Jews in Sports.” It contains a meticulously crafted gag entry written by a friend about one Jerry Zaks, “after Tiger Woods, the most exciting amateur golfer of the 1990s…”Katherine Marks for The New York TimesBut time marches on, and with the dissolution of his marriage, Mr. Zaks did, too. He moved to one rental near the El Dorado, then another, to stay in proximity to his children, now adults. In 2008, he found a more permanent perch, in the shape of a two-bedroom co-op with prewar details, on West End Avenue.At the time, Mr. Zaks was in Los Angeles directing episodic television, and his then girlfriend had taken up the apartment search, sending him photos and descriptions of appealing prospects.“When I came back to New York, I went once and took a look, and said, ‘Let’s do it,’” recalled Mr. Zaks, who commented very favorably on a renovation by the seller that combined the kitchen and dining room into one warm, open space.That same girlfriend helped Mr. Zaks outfit the apartment. “On stage, I want to know how I get in and out of the living room. I want to know how the couch relates to the table,” he said. “But for my own apartment, I didn’t really get involved. She would show me pictures, and I would say, ‘This looks good.’”A caramel-colored leather sofa and easy chair looked good to Mr. Zaks. So did an Arts-and-Crafts sideboard, a free-standing bookcase of similar style and a rectangular wood dining table.Among his favorite possessions: a travel bar set once owned by Zero Mostel.Katherine Marks for The New York Times“Some of the earliest work on ‘Hello, Dolly!,’ ‘Meteor Shower,’ ‘The Music Man’ and ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ was done around that table,” he said. “I don’t need an office. I just need a good kitchen table.”Mr. Zaks would like to be a minimalist, but not quite yet. In a corner of the kitchen, which is painted a nice shade of coral, a tall stack of scripts and research material related to “The Music Man” and “Mrs. Doubtfire” seems to be awaiting further instructions. “I haven’t thrown them out yet because I can’t,” he said.Covering the walls are framed notes and letters of appreciation from colleagues like Neil Simon and Harold Prince (“I loved him because he was the last person in show business to call me ‘kid,’” Mr. Zaks said). There are several Al Hirschfeld caricatures, including one of Mr. Zaks in 1980, when he appeared on Broadway in the musical revue “Tintypes,” as well as ephemera like a two-page spread from the script of Thornton Wilder’s play “The Matchmaker.” (The source material for “Hello, Dolly!,” it was a gift from the administrators of the playwright’s estate when Mr. Zaks’s “Dolly” revival opened.)The cache of show posters — “my little shrine to myself” — represents Mr. Zaks both as performer (fun fact: he was a replacement Kenickie in the original production of “Grease”) and director. “This is a partial display including my greatest successes and, well, let’s put it this way: You’ve got hits and you’ve got misses,” he said. “Hits are better, but you’d be a fool not to remember the misses, because you work just as hard on them.”All pretty impressive, but nothing has quite the resonance of a photograph of a 20-something Jerry Zaks posing with his parents and Zero Mostel. Mr. Zaks was playing Motel the tailor in a tent-theater summer tour of “Fiddler on the Roof”; Mr. Mostel was reprising his Tony-winning performance as Tevye, while taking on an additional role: rumbustious mentor to his young castmate.Meet Mr. Zaks’s friends Tony, Tony, Tony, Tony and George. Katherine Marks for The New York Times“When I was a junior at Dartmouth and declared I was going to be an actor, my parents were very disappointed — a waste of an Ivy League education and all that,” Mr. Zaks said. “They were afraid for me. They were Holocaust survivors, and there was a Nazi around every corner.”But of course, they came to see their son in action, and afterward, went backstage to meet Mr. Mostel. “For 20 minutes, they spoke Yiddish to Zero, tummeling back and forth,” he recalled. “And finally my father asked, ‘Is my son going to be all right in this farkakte business?’ And Zero answered, ‘He’s going to be more than all right.’ And then we took the picture.”“That was the beginning of my parents accepting what I was committed to,” added Mr. Zaks, who counts among his favorite opening-night gifts a travel cocktail bar set that once belonged to Mr. Mostel.A while back, he was returning from a favorite neighborhood spot, Silver Moon Bakery, when he ran into a fellow co-op resident, Melissa Gooding, who was out walking her dog. “She moved in shortly after I did, but we didn’t get to know each other closely until last year,” Mr. Zaks said.He now divides his time between their two apartments. On the mantel in Ms. Gooding’s apartment are Mr. Zaks’s four Tony statuettes, along with a Mr. Abbott award, a tribute named for the legendary man of the theater, George Abbott. On a wall in the hall is a framed photo snapped by the stage doorman at the Winter Garden Theatre, home of “The Music Man”: Mr. Zaks huddling with Ms. Foster and Mr. Jackman at the end of a performance.“It’s hard to talk about without getting emotional,” he said. “This is my everything.”“The relationship I have with my actors is the most precious thing I have outside of family,” he continued, “and it’s encapsulated in this one image.”Mr. Jackman and Ms. Foster had the photo blown up as a gift for Mr. Zaks. He may not care much about décor, but he knows what makes him feel at home.For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More

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    Trevor Noah Talks Tom Brady’s Un-Retirement

    Noah joked that Brady’s leaving the N.F.L. was like Charlie Sheen’s leaving “Two and a Half Men”: “Yeah, there were still two and a half men but which men? Not men we cared about.”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.Don’t Call It a ComebackQuarterback Tom Brady retired from the N.F.L. in February, but surprised fans on Sunday when he announced he would return to play for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers next season.On Monday’s “Daily Show,” Trevor Noah joked that Brady had been going to Super Bowls for so long, “his first halftime show was a bunch of Gregorian monks chanting.”“So, yeah, it was big news when Tom Brady retired,” Noah said. “But you know what’s even bigger news than retiring? Un-retiring.”“I love it so much, because he is the most loved and the most hated athlete in the game. I love this guy. He is the main character. What’s the N.F.L. without Tom Brady, huh? Him leaving the N.F.L. is like when Charlie Sheen left ‘Two and a Half Men.’ Yeah, there were still two and a half men, but which men? Not men we cared about.” — TREVOR NOAH“So with this move, Tom Brady has officially, officially, officially confirmed himself as the greatest of all time, because you see, this move right here is what all the greatest do — they retire, and they come right back. Yeah, Michael Jordan did it. Jay-Z did it. And the greatest of all time, Jesus. Yeah, that guy retired from life for three days before he was like, ‘Nah, the game needs me.’” — TREVOR NOAH“Also some people are just not made for the retired life, especially Tom Brady. Think about it: For 22 years, he’s had men the size of little trucks trying to tackle him. That’s adrenaline. Yeah, can you imagine how boring his home life is right now. Even hiring his own commentators probably didn’t help.” — TREVOR NOAHThe Punchiest Punchlines (Un-Retiring Edition)“Tom Brady is like your friend who announces she’s quitting Instagram and then posts something three hours later.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I guess he realized that if he retired, there wouldn’t be anybody around to make sure Gronk doesn’t eat a gallon of tide pods.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“That’s right, Tom Brady is back, and once again he made history as the first person to ever move to Florida and un-retire.” — JIMMY FALLON“Brady’s retirement lasted 40 days. In other words, he pretty much gave up football for Lent.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yeah, he was only retired for six weeks. His kids were like, ‘Is it something we said?’” — JIMMY FALLON“Of course, my dear friend Tom Brady’s not just returning for the love of the game. He’s also set to make $25 million next season, which is, coincidentally, what you’d have to pay me to go to Tampa.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingThe “Succession” star Brian Cox crossed over into “Euphoria” while on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightKristen Stewart, star of the movie “Spencer,” will appear on Tuesday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”Also, Check This OutDolly Parton sought to take herself out of contention for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.Maria Alejandra Cardona/ReutersDolly Parton wishes to remove herself from nomination for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, saying she doesn’t feel she has earned the right to be inducted. More

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    in Theater

    ‘Man Cave’ Review: Things That Go Bump in the American Night

    John J. Caswell Jr.’s play is a political drama wrapped in the spooky pleasures of the horror genre.Late on a thundery monsoon evening in a well-appointed basement in Sedona, Ariz., the ghosts are restless. Or something is — thumping and scratching inside the walls of a congressman’s gated home, where Imaculada, the housekeeper, has been holding down the fort alone.When her friends Rosemary and Lupita show up unannounced, fleeing domestic danger, the noises don’t take long to creep them out.“You’re supposed to disclose your home’s paranormal status to guests upon arrival,” Rosemary chides, dryly.But this is just what she needs: a place rife with spirits that might be enlisted for vengeance on her live-in boyfriend, a police officer who has beaten her bloody yet again. On the internet she found “a little witchcraft” that she’s been wanting to try.“It’s called death walking,” she says. “Energy harnessing, engaging spirits in highly active spaces to do your bidding in exchange for eternal release from their own purgatory.”“Man Cave,” John J. Caswell Jr.’s new play at the Connelly Theater, is a political drama wrapped in the spooky pleasures of the horror genre, and it works on both levels. Its characters are Mexican American women on the economic fringes, and its concerns are theirs: work, love, heritage, survival; how to be safe, and feel at home, in their own country.Unfolding in the congressman’s man cave (designed by Adam Rigg), with its cowboy-movie posters and mounted elk head, the play is also a contemplation of what the United States was built on, what’s buried underneath — and which insistent, haunted voices it’s determined not to hear. (Lucrecia Briceno’s lighting is vital to the chilling of our spines.)Directed by Taylor Reynolds for the theater company Page 73, the show cultivates a scary mood even before it starts, thanks to Michael Costagliola’s supremely clever sound design, which thrums ominously as the audience settles in but cuts to an unnerving quiet in the opening scene. We are primed to be startled by the slightest noise, and so we are. And because the audience is expecting, even hoping, to be frightened, its attention has a tautness that’s sustained throughout the play.That’s helpful with a show that takes its time, as “Man Cave” does — sometimes to the point of bagginess — letting the friends bicker and snipe over the course of a fraught weekend. Why, Rosemary (Jacqueline Guillén) wants to know, is Imaculada “cleaning house for an overtly racist politician”? Is Imaculada (Annie Henk) right that something is trying to kill her? And where is her missing 20-something son?Why is Lupita (Claudia Acosta), Rosemary’s sober girlfriend — her tender romantic refuge from the abusive cop — suddenly drinking again? How gross is it, exactly, that Rosemary has brought a bag of the cop’s fingernail clippings for the spell she means to cast? What has drawn her to the spirit world, when that used to be her mother’s thing?Her mother, Consuelo (Socorro Santiago), an undocumented immigrant, raised Rosemary to assimilate. But when Consuelo arrives at the congressman’s house, she doesn’t need anyone to tell her its paranormal status. She has a supernatural sensitivity to the dead.“I can hear them screaming in my head,” she says.A program note explains that Caswell wrote “Man Cave” over the past five years — a time of immense social and political turmoil in the United States. If the play sometimes feels bloated, it may be from absorbing so much anger and anxiety from the air. But its shape also feels like an act of resistance to the constraints of theatrical convention.On a wall of the man cave, near the elk head, hangs a rack of vintage rifles, emblems of American cowboy culture. This isn’t Chekhov, though, and those guns never go off. They just stay in plain sight, silently menacing.Man CaveThrough April 2 at the Connelly Theater, Manhattan; page73.org. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes. More

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    in Television

    Pete Davidson to Join Next Blue Origin Space Flight

    The “Saturday Night Live” comedian will be one of six passengers to fly to the edge of space this month with Blue Origin, the rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos.The “Saturday Night Live” actor Pete Davidson will travel to the edge of space next week on the next Blue Origin spaceflight, the company said on Monday.Blue Origin, the rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos, said on Monday that it would launch its fourth flight with human passengers on March 23. Mr. Davidson will be one of six passengers on the company’s New Shepard rocket for its 20th flight.Mr. Bezos, the founder of Amazon and one of the richest people in the world, was a passenger on the company’s first flight with humans on board last July. Earlier that month, another private spaceflight company, Virgin Galactic, took its founder, Richard Branson, to the edge of space and back.Mr. Davidson, 28, joined the cast of “Saturday Night Live” in 2014. He has also appeared in movies, including the 2020 semi-autobiographical film “The King of Staten Island.” He could not immediately be reached for comment on Monday.A Blue Origin spokeswoman said Monday that Mr. Davidson would fly as “an honorary guest,” while the other five passengers were paying customers. The spokeswoman did not say how much the others had been charged to join the flight.Mr. Davidson will be the latest celebrity passenger to travel to the edge of space with Blue Origin.In October, the “Star Trek” actor William Shatner, 90, became the oldest person to travel to space and cross the Kármán line, the widely recognized boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space that is about 62 miles above the planet’s surface. Mr. Shatner shared the New Shepard rocket with three other passengers on a mission that lasted about 10 minutes.In December, Michael Strahan, the “Good Morning America” co-host, joined a Blue Origin flight with five others.The flight carrying Mr. Davidson is scheduled to lift off from Blue Origin’s launch site in West Texas at 8:30 a.m. local time on March 23.In addition to Mr. Davidson, Blue Origin said on Monday, the flight will have five other passengers: Marty Allen, Sharon and Marc Hagle, Jim Kitchen and George Nield.Mr. Allen is a former chief executive of Party America, the party-supply store. Mr. Hagle is the president and chief executive of Tricor International, a residential and commercial property development company. Ms. Hagle founded the nonprofit group SpaceKids Global. Mr. Kitchen is a professor of the practice of strategy and entrepreneurship at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Dr. Nield is the president of Commercial Space Technologies. From 2008 to 2018, he was associate administrator for commercial space transportation at the Federal Aviation Administration, the agency that regulates commercial launches like Blue Origin’s.Kenneth Chang More

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    in Television

    What’s on TV This Week: ‘Phoenix Rising’ and ‘Welcome to Flatch’

    A two-part documentary about Evan Rachel Wood’s activism around domestic violence debuts on HBO. And a new comedy series begins on Fox.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, March 14-20. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE JULIA CHILD CHALLENGE 9 p.m. on Food Network. A group of talented amateur chefs compete to recreate Julia Child dishes — and to cook up their own Child-inspired recipes — in this new reality competition series. The winner receives comprehensive courses at the French-cooking institution Le Cordon Bleu, where Child once trained.TuesdayPHOENIX RISING 9 p.m. on HBO. This new two-part documentary looks at the performer Evan Rachel Wood’s advocacy on behalf of survivors of domestic violence. The program covers Wood’s work on the Phoenix Act — a California bill passed in 2019 that lengthened the statute of limitations for domestic abuse felonies and expanded training for police officers working on domestic violence cases — and Wood’s experience of publicly stating, in early 2021, that the musician Marilyn Manson had abused her. Amy Berg (“An Open Secret”) directs.WednesdayShahadi Wright Joseph and Winston Duke in “Us.”Claudette Barius/Universal PicturesUS (2019) 4:15 p.m. on FXM. “Nope,” the latest movie from the horror auteur Jordan Peele, had its first trailer released last month, offering a look at the setting for its supernatural story: a ranch in a dry, isolated slice of California. Peele’s previous movie, “Us,” was set in a wetter, saltier part of the state: Monterey Bay, at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. In “Us,” Peele focuses on a four-person family that encounters their doppelgängers while on vacation. (The cast includes Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Evan Alex and Shahadi Wright Joseph.) The results, Manohla Dargis wrote in her review for The New York Times, are “messy, brilliant, sobering, even bleak.”OLD HENRY (2021) 6:15 p.m. on Showtime 2. Tim Blake Nelson stars as a farmer whose grizzled looks conceal a very particular set of skills in this throwback western. The plot kicks into a gallop after Nelson’s character, Henry, stumbles on a wounded man (Scott Haze) lying near a satchel of money. Henry and his son (Gavin Lewis) take the man in, inadvertently putting themselves between him and a trio of brutes. The film “makes a solid, honorable go of proving once again that the foursquare western isn’t dead,” Ben Kenigsberg wrote in his review for The Times, “though in paying homage to its forebears, it inevitably stands in their very long shadows.”ThursdaySeann William Scott in “Welcome to Flatch.”Brownie Harris/FoxWELCOME TO FLATCH 9:30 p.m. on Fox. A minister who used to be part of a Christian boy band, a lovesick newspaper editor, and a pair of cousins whose claim to fame involves bear spray and tears are among the weird characters in this new comedy series, set in a fictional Midwestern town called Flatch. Thursday night’s debut episode, which revolves around a town fair, was directed by Paul Feig (“Bridesmaids”), an executive producer of the series.FridayVIOLET (2021) 8 p.m. on Showtime. In “Violet,” her directorial debut, Justine Bateman brandishes a potpourri of cinematic tricks — voice-overs, overlaid text — to delve into the anxious psyche of a film production executive played by Olivia Munn. Munn’s character, Violet, lives in Los Angeles, but she’s often living in her head: As she goes through her routines, a trio of internal voices that Violet calls “the committee” (one of which is voiced by Justin Theroux) bears down on her. In other words, her self-consciousness comes to life. The highlight here, Jeannette Catsoulis wrote in her review for The Times, is Munn, who gives a “terrific performance,” even as the film at large “experiments with so many cinematic frills and fancies that Munn’s touching work is too often obscured.”SaturdayMichael Gandolfini, left, Alessandro Nivola in “The Many Saints of Newark.” Barry Wetcher/Warner Bros.THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK (2021) 7 p.m. on HBO. Michael Gandolfini, the son of the actor James Gandolfini, plays a younger version of his father’s most famous character in this “Sopranos” prequel. That character is, of course, Tony Soprano, the overwhelmed mob boss, father and husband whose middle-age troubles were the focus of the original show’s six seasons. This movie is an origin story that imagines a teenage Tony, and his descent into organized crime. It’s also an interesting opportunity to see a young actor grapple with his father’s legacy. “I remember asking my dad, maybe at 13, what the hell is this? Why do I hear about this all the time? What is this about?” Michael Gandolfini said in an interview with The Times last year. “He’s like, ‘It’s about this mobster who goes to therapy and I don’t know, that’s about it.’”SundayBEFORE WE DIE 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). This British remake of a Swedish series centers on a police detective (Lesley Sharp) whose partner — professional and romantic — goes missing under mysterious circumstances. The hunt for answers leads her to a Croatian organized-crime family, but is complicated by her son’s (Patrick Gibson) own work as an undercover informant.WHEN WE WERE KINGS (1996) 10:15 p.m. on TCM. Spike Lee and Norman Mailer are among the interviewees in this Oscar-winning documentary about the 1974 boxing match known as the Rumble in the Jungle, in which Muhammad Ali pulled an upset against George Foreman. The director Leon Gast spent about two decades making the film — though the way Gast once told it, Ali — a famous virtuoso of braggadocio whose self-confidence is on full, over-the-top display here — might deserve a co-directing credit. “One day,” Gast said in an interview with The Times in 1997, “Muhammad told us: ‘In the morning when I run, I come around that corner with the sun and the river behind me. Put your camera over there. It’ll be a great shot.’ He was right. It was a great shot.” More