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    ‘Sugar’ Actress Kirby on the Only Album She Really Needs

    She co-starred in the Apple TV+ show with Colin Farrell after appearing in “Killing Eve” and “Barry.” Now when she does a red carpet, she knows to go with Doc Martens.When Kirby accepted the role of Ruby — a Bondish M-meets-Q foil to a Los Angeles private detective played by Colin Farrell — in the Apple TV+ series “Sugar,” she found herself among kindred spirits.“All of us sort of bounce,” she said about the ability of her co-stars Farrell and Amy Ryan to move seamlessly between drama and comedy. “As an actor, you are always looking to engage your audience and excite them, but at the same time, you want to feel excited by the material yourself. For me, it comes from the richness of being able to dip my toe in many worlds.”Kirby’s own bouncing has taken her to TV shows like “Killing Eve,” “Barry” and “The Sandman.” She stars as a commercial cleaner in her latest film project, “We Strangers,” an observation on assimilation, code switching and belonging in Gary, Ind.“That is sort of my pride and joy, I think the best piece of work I’ve done,” she said.In a video call from Los Angeles, Kirby (who last year dropped her surnames Howell-Baptiste) explained why Doc Martens, a Starbucks cup and Solange’s “A Seat at the Table” made her list of cultural necessities. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1D.I.Y. Massage Therapy With Lacrosse BallsMy new best friend. The lacrosse ball is basically a Thai massage that you can take around with you everywhere. Super easy, but it’s fantastic. I just roll it around on my back or my foot. It’s instant pain relief.2Fly by Jing SaucesThey’re these incredible Chinese sauces by this chef called Jing. You can put them on everything and anything — from boiled eggs to ramen noodles. I buy these sprouted peanuts from the farmers’ market. And then I just chop up some shallots, do some black sesame seed and mix the Fly by Jing sauce in. It is truly a winner.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Doctor Who’ Episode 5 Recap: Bursting the Bubble

    The Doctor saves a rich wannabe vlogger from being eaten by a giant slug, but a final twist leaves him reeling.Season 1, Episode 5: ‘Dot and Bubble’We’ve passed the midway point in this season of “Doctor Who,” and the show’s ambition shows no sign of subsiding. After playing with themes of religion and politics, it’s artificial intelligence, already touched on in the earlier episode “Boom,” that’s the topic du jour in “Dot and Bubble.”With its slick visuals and clear anti-technology viewpoint, Episode 5 has echoes of “Black Mirror,” Charlie Brooker’s dystopian TV anthology — as this season’s showrunner, Russell T Davies, who also wrote the episode, noted in a recent interview.But whereas Brooker can use each episode of “Black Mirror” to focus on a different aspect of contemporary technology, Davies has just 43 minutes to explore its overarching morality in “Dot and Bubble.”It makes for a slightly overstuffed episode — critiquing and parodying capitalism, YouTube and celebrity worship — that is saved, in part, by a genuinely unexpected twist in the final act.As with the previous episode, “73 Yards,” the Doctor doesn’t feature all that heavily in “Dot and Bubble” and the action feels less consequential to the season’s overall arc. Instead, the focus is on Lindy Pepper-Bean (Callie Cooke), a blonde-haired, blue-eyed wannabe vlogger with a penchant for pastels.Lindy’s life revolves around a two-part technology: Dot, a tiny robotic pearl that hovers in front of her, and Bubble, a virtual sphere of colorful screens beamed around her head. Within the Bubble, the perpetually peppy Lindy is in constant conversation with her friends; she chats away with the cadence — and vocal fry — of a family-friendly YouTuber, and they coo back.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Jac Venza, Who Delivered Culture to Public Television, Dies at 97

    By making entertainment as well as education part of its mission, he gave the world “Great Performances” and other enduring programs. Jac Venza, a shoemaker’s son who almost single-handedly delivered to the proverbial “vast wasteland” that was American television in the 1960s and ’70s an oasis of cultural programming, including “Great Performances” and “Live From Lincoln Center,” died on Tuesday at his home in Lyme, Conn. He was 97. His death was confirmed by his spouse, Daniel D. Routhier.Mr. Venza never attended college. As an actor, he pronounced himself “dreadful.” As an aspiring artist, he began his career in Chicago by designing scenery for the Goodman Theater and window displays for the Mandel Brothers department store. But while still in his 30s, he began playing a vital role in bringing art to public television.He was working as a television producer when he was asked to collaborate with other TV innovators assembled by the Ford Foundation in the early 1960s to transform a limited service that generated no original programming into National Educational Television, the forerunner of the Public Broadcasting Service.While his fellow producers and other media experts were mulling how best to educate the viewing public through a nonprofit network, Mr. Venza recalled, he volunteered, “Why don’t we entertain them, too?”In the 1960s and ’70s, he introduced “NET Playhouse,” “Theater in America,” “Live From Lincoln Center,” “Great Performances” and, at the suggestion of the National Endowment for the Arts, “Dance in America.” He also imported popular BBC productions like “Brideshead Revisited.”He collaborated with choreographers like George Balanchine and Martha Graham, composers like Leonard Bernstein and playwrights like Tennessee Williams. Dustin Hoffman had his first starring role on television in a 1966 NET production of Ronald Ribman’s play “The Journey of the Fifth Horse.” A decade later, Meryl Streep appeared onscreen for the first time in the William Gillette play “Secret Service” on “Great Performances.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    On Live TV, a Historic Verdict Felt Both Enormous and Small

    Donald Trump’s convictions made for a stunning moment of history, followed by hours of politics talk.Through most of the milestones of Donald J. Trump’s public life, he has managed to be in the center of the camera’s eye: Hosting 14 seasons of “The Apprentice”; running for and winning the presidency; firing up a crowd before the assault on the Capitol of Jan. 6, 2021; presumptively winning the Republican nomination for a second term.But on Thursday, as he became the first former president to be convicted of multiple felonies, he was offstage.Because video cameras were not allowed in the Manhattan courtroom where Mr. Trump was tried, this breathtaking turn in American history, like the entire run of the trial, was read to us by TV anchors, as if off a Teletype machine.When word broke that the jury had reached a verdict in the hush-money case late Thursday afternoon, the networks broke into coverage. And waited. There was that special, spring-loaded tension of the media apparatus readying to deliver big news after days of vamping.“Count 1 is guilty,” Jake Tapper declared on CNN, letting the last word land, then reading out the next 33 individually for several minutes. On NBC, Laura Jarrett read at a brisk clip as the numbers raced upward in the “GUILTY” column of the network’s scoreboard-like graphic. ABC conveyed the scope of the convictions with a crowded graphic that listed each count with “GUILTY” in a red rectangle, like a departures board at an airport.Americans have become used to seeing dramatic verdicts as they land in the courtroom, hearing from the jury and court officers, watching the defendants’ reactions. This time, it was up to the on-screen graphics to capture the moment.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Carl Radke of “Summer House” on His Broken Engagement and Sobriety

    From getting sober, grieving the loss of his brother and calling off his engagement, Radke has let viewers in on the most intimate moments of his life.The first time Carl Radke appeared on television screens was during an episode of “Vanderpump Rules” that was actually a backdoor pilot for a new Bravo show, “Summer House.”In the episode, Radke is 29, working in New York City and drinking copiously on the weekends in a Hamptons share house with his friends Kyle Cooke, Lindsay Hubbard and a few others.The spinoff became a Bravo phenomenon all its own, one that has now spanned eight seasons, with Radke one of the few constants as the cast around him changed. Viewers have seen his tumultuous 30s play out onscreen: He has been in messy relationships, confronted his drinking and gotten sober, mourned the death of his brother and, in the Season 8 finale, called off his engagement.Over coffee in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where at 6 feet 5 inches tall Radke was certainly the tallest person in the room, he imagined his life if it hadn’t been spent in front of cameras for the past several years. “I feel like I would probably be married and have a family, but living a very, like, a lower key life,” he said, before going through some of the moments that have defined his time on “Summer House” so far.Radke and Cooke in the early days of “Summer House.” Eugene Gologursky/BravoThe early seasons: drinking, drinking, more drinkingThough many Bravo reality shows involved quite a bit of drinking (look no further than early seasons of “Vanderpump Rules”), Radke, Cooke and Hubbard were known to make others look like lightweights.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Carl Radke of ‘Summer House’ on His Broken Engagement and Sobriety

    From getting sober, grieving the loss of his brother and calling off his engagement, Radke has let viewers in on the most intimate moments of his life.The first time Carl Radke appeared on television screens was during an episode of “Vanderpump Rules” that was actually a backdoor pilot for a new Bravo show, “Summer House.”In the episode, Radke is 29, working in New York City and drinking copiously on the weekends in a Hamptons share house with his friends Kyle Cooke, Lindsay Hubbard and a few others.The spinoff became a Bravo phenomenon all its own, one that has now spanned eight seasons, with Radke one of the few constants as the cast around him changed. Viewers have seen his tumultuous 30s play out onscreen: He has been in messy relationships, confronted his drinking and gotten sober, mourned the death of his brother and, in the Season 8 finale, called off his engagement.Over coffee in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where at 6 feet 5 inches tall Radke was certainly the tallest person in the room, he imagined his life if it hadn’t been spent in front of cameras for the past several years. “I feel like I would probably be married and have a family, but living a very, like, a lower key life,” he said, before going through some of the moments that have defined his time on “Summer House” so far.Radke and Cooke in the early days of “Summer House.” Eugene Gologursky/BravoThe early seasons: drinking, drinking, more drinkingThough many Bravo reality shows involved quite a bit of drinking (look no further than early seasons of “Vanderpump Rules”), Radke, Cooke and Hubbard were known to make others look like lightweights.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    When the Stage Harnesses the Power of the Movies

    Adaptations of films will be a factor at the Tonys this year. Surprisingly the best of these shows are not always the most faithful.A passing glance at this year’s Tony nominations might trick a glancer into thinking the wrong artistic medium has crept onto the list. Among the nominees are “The Notebook,” “The Outsiders” and “Days of Wine and Roses,” based on three movies: a 2004 Nicholas Sparks romance, a 1983 coming-of-age crime drama directed by Francis Ford Coppola and a 1962 Blake Edwards melodrama about alcoholism. (They were, in turn, based on best-selling novels and a TV play.)It’s not that movie adaptations are uncommon in theater — a number of mega-budget shows have been driven by silver-screen nostalgia, whether it’s “Back to the Future” and “Aladdin” or that stalwart of the Broadway economy, “The Lion King.” Splashy musicals, in particular, often come from recognizable cinematic sources: There’s “Mean Girls,” “Moulin Rouge,” “Kinky Boots” and many more. Not all of them are hits, as “American Psycho,” “Almost Famous” and “New York, New York” prove.Given how much theater relies on visitors buying tickets to an experience they know they’ll enjoy, it makes sense. Though there’s plenty of artistry on display in these productions, blockbuster adaptations can feel, to financiers, like slam dunks, safer bets than original material. The same nostalgia that drives sequels and reboots in cinema is at play: We know audiences like it, so let’s give them some more.But intellectual property that’s bankable isn’t everything, and increasingly, interesting theater comes from movie sources hailing from left field. “Teeth,” for instance, a musical by Michael R. Jackson and Anna K. Jacobs, made a bloody, buzzy Off Broadway splash this winter at Playwrights Horizons; it’s based on a 2008 indie horror classic about a young woman with vagina dentata. Over at St. Ann’s in Brooklyn, Tobias Menzies starred in “The Hunt,” adapted by David Farr from Thomas Vinterberg’s 2013 Norwegian thriller.“Teeth” made a splash Off Broadway this year, even though the source material wasn’t widely known.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesJess Weixler starred in the 2008 indie horror movie on which the show is based. LionsgateWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Hacks’ Showrunners Explain that Final Twist

    In an interview, Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs and Jen Statsky discussed the Season 3 finale and if the anything-for-a-laugh ethos is worth it. (Short answer: Yes.)This interview includes spoilers for the season finale of “Hacks.”“Hacks,” the Max comedy about a famous (and somewhat infamous) Boomer comedian and her nervy Gen Z writer, has always stayed on the sunny side of realism. But in the penultimate episode of Season 3, the show moved into pure fantasy: A major network gave its late-night show to a woman, Jean Smart’s Deborah Vance.If that was the culminating event of the season, the finale, titled “Bulletproof,” landed a few more punchlines. After offering Hannah Einbinder’s Ava the head writer slot, Deborah, acting out of fear, walked that offer back. “I cannot give them any excuse,” she said of her network bosses. “This show has to be bulletproof. It has to work. I’ve lost way too much for it not to.”“And you’re OK with losing me, too?” Ava asks.Ava doesn’t stay lost for long. She wriggles back into the writers’ room by blackmailing Deborah over her brief liaison with Tony Goldwyn’s head of network. Which should make for great comedy in the show’s fourth season, announced earlier this week. Because in the world of “Hacks,” hurt people hurt people, and then they write a killer routine about it. “Hacks” insists you can only crack jokes if the world has cracked you first.So can a person with decent values and good boundaries still be funny?“We do our best,” Lucia Aniello, one of the showrunners said during a recent video call.Aniello was joined in the Zoom window by Paul W. Downs, her husband and a fellow showrunner. (They announced their marriage while collecting an Emmy in 2021 for best directing in a comedy series.) Downs also stars as Jimmy, Ava and Deborah’s put-upon manager. In another window was Jen Statsky, the third showrunner. Aniello and Statsky met in a sketch comedy group in 2009; Downs and Aniello met at an improv class that same year. Which is to say that their passion for comedy, with or without trauma, runs long and deep.In an hourlong conversation, they discussed ambition, addiction and whether the anything-for-a-laugh ethos is worth it. (Short answer: Yes.) These are edited excerpts from the conversation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More