Eliana Willis

More stories

  • 150 Shares199 Views

    in Television

    From Britney Spears to Janet Jackson, the Era of the Celebrity Reappraisal

    Credit…Illustration by The New York Times; Texture Fabrik (torn paper)Skip to contentSkip to site indexSpeaking of Britney … What About All Those Other Women?Monica Lewinsky. Janet Jackson. Lindsay Lohan. Whitney Houston. We are living in an era of reappraisals.Credit…Illustration by The New York Times; Texture Fabrik (torn paper)Supported byContinue reading the main storyMs. Bennett is an editor at large covering gender and culture. She was previously gender editor.Feb. 27, 2021Updated 10:07 a.m. ETIn 2007, Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton were apparently fueling enough of a debate among parents about children and “values” for Newsweek to publish a cover story titled “The Girls Gone Wild Effect.”The article described the ubiquitous images and stories about these women — their partying, their rehab stints, what they were or weren’t wearing — and how they could be affecting young fans.I was a junior reporter at Newsweek at the time, just a couple years out of college, around the same age as those so-called train wrecks. I wasn’t quite sure what bothered me so much about the article, but I knew I didn’t like it.Perhaps it was that the editors of the magazine at that time rarely seemed to put women on the cover, so the fact that it was these women said something. The article claimed, according to a poll, that 77 percent of Americans believed these women had “too much influence on young girls” — but weren’t these just young women? And then there was the male lens of it all, from the entertainment executives who molded them to the paparazzi who photographed them to the editors who put them on magazine covers.More than a decade later, we are once again talking about those women — this time through a modern lens. After years of fans fighting to #FreeBritney from the conservatorship over which her father presides — and now with a popular new documentary on the subject — the rise and fall (and rise again?) of Britney Spears is being viewed with fresh eyes.At the same time, a litany of other female celebrities of the ’90s and aughts are being — or perhaps ought to be — re-examined: Ms. Lohan, now out of the spotlight and living in Dubai, where for the first time in her life, she has said, she feels safe; Ms. Hilton, who in a 2020 documentary detailed emotional and physical abuse she suffered as a teenager; Janet Jackson, who was blacklisted after the 2004 Super Bowl “wardrobe malfunction” that left her breast exposed, while the man who exposed it, Justin Timberlake, went on to further fame (and was even invited back to perform at the halftime show in 2018). Brandy, the singer and “Moesha” star, has described faking her marriage for fear that being an unwed mother would threaten her career. Anna Nicole Smith, the troubled actress and model, was labeled “white trash” while she was alive and “obtrusively voluptuous” in her obituary when she was dead. And then there’s Whitney Houston, whose marital problems and battle with drug addiction were broadcast to the world in an early-2000s Bravo series.“I lived through Britney on television, and when she shaved her head, I remember thinking at the time, ‘Why is everybody acting like she’s OK? Like, how is this funny to people? How is this presented as entertainment?’” said Danyel Smith, the former editor in chief of Vibe magazine and the host of the podcast “Black Girl Songbook.”“I felt the same about Whitney,” she said. “It was astonishing to watch the amount of glee being taken in watching her fall apart.”Such reappraisals have become common over the past several years. In the midst of #MeToo and a reckoning over racial injustice, people have begun to re-examine the art, music, monuments and characters on whom cultural significance has been placed. But this current wave revolves not around individuals so much as the machine that produced them: the journalists, the photographers, and the fans — who were reading, watching, buying.“To me, the question is, what do we do when a whole culture essentially becomes the subjugator?” Monica Lewinsky said in a recent interview. “How do we unpack that, how do we move on?”‘It Was a Different Time’In his book, “The Naughty Nineties,” David Friend, an editor at Vanity Fair, described how the market for humiliation thrived in the early ’90s, a trend that can be traced, in part, to the rise of tabloid talk shows such as “The Jerry Springer Show.”Gossip magazines ruled during this time, which meant that the paparazzi did, too. They photographed under skirts, chased cars down winding roads, competing, often dozens at a time, for images that could fetch millions. But the race for the most salacious shot was never an equal-opportunity game. It was not young men who appeared in photos with their bra straps showing and their makeup smeared, or had their breasts enlarged in postproduction without their knowledge, as was the case for Ms. Spears on a 2000 cover of British GQ, according to the photographer, who recently posted about it on Instagram. While white women were scrutinized on the covers of magazines, Black artists were told, as Beyoncé was, that they’d never get covers at all — “because Black people did not sell.”“Magazines in that era were driven by damsel-in-distress narratives,” said Ramin Setoodeh, the executive editor at Variety and the author of “Ladies Who Punch.” “It was almost like a sport to watch a woman self-destruct.” This was the time before stars could talk to their fans directly, of course. There was no clapping back on Twitter, no hosting an Instagram Live to tell one’s side of the story.In a 2013 interview with David Letterman that has recently resurfaced, Ms. Lohan was grilled to the point of tears about a looming trip to rehab, for laughs. (“She’s probably deeply troubled and therefore great in bed,” Donald Trump told Howard Stern in 2004, when the actress was 18.) When Ms. Hilton’s sex tape was leaked without her consent, nobody was using the phrase “revenge porn” or talking openly about emotional pain as trauma. Terms like “accountability,” “consent,” “fat-shaming,” “mental health” — these weren’t part of the pop lexicon, said Susan Douglas, a professor of communication and media at the University of Michigan and a co-author of “Celebrity: A History of Fame.”For the celebrity press, at least, such framing would have served no useful purpose. Disaster and personal tragedy sold.As Harvey Levin, the founder of TMZ, put it in 2006: “Britney is gold. She is crack to our readers. Her life is a complete train wreck, and I thank God for her every day.”“It was a different time,” Rosie O’Donnell, who interviewed Ms. Spears on her talk show in 1999, said in a phone interview. “You’re a level-headed girl,” she told her back then, “and I hope you stay that way.”‘We’re All Collateral Damage’In recent years, there have been Hollywood reappraisals of Anita Hill, a law professor who now leads the Hollywood Commission on sexual harassment, decades after her own high-profile case was dismissed; Tonya Harding, the former Olympic figure skater whose rivalry with Nancy Kerrigan, and its violent climax, were cast against a story of childhood abuse; and Lorena Bobbitt, whose physical harm of her husband has been reframed in the context of years of domestic abuse.Some women have retold their stories themselves. Jessica Simpson published a memoir in 2020 about her time in the spotlight, including her battle with alcoholism. Christina Aguilera described the feeling of being pitted against Ms. Spears — “Britney as the good girl and me as the bad” — in a 2018 story in Cosmopolitan.But Ms. Lewinsky was perhaps the first of this era of women to reclaim her story.After being excoriated in the press for her affair with President Clinton as a 21-year-old intern, she went on to earn a master’s in social psychology. She carefully re-emerged in the public eye in 2014, with an essay and TED Talk about public shame. Now she’s producing a documentary on the subject, and how it permeates society.“We tend to forget the collective experience,” Ms. Lewinsky said by phone. “We direct this kind of vitriol and misogyny toward one woman, but it actually reverberates to all women. We’re all collateral damage, whether we’re the object or not.”These days, that view is more widely held. Abuse and discrimination are now generally seen as systemic issues, and those who endure it are lent more credibility and sympathy. Contemporary artists speak candidly about mental health; their seeking help tends to be applauded rather than ridiculed. And social media has enabled stars to take back some control (while also opening them up to further scrutiny in other ways).“The legacy media star has dimmed,” said Allison Yarrow, the author of “90s Bitch: Media, Culture, and the Failed Promise of Gender Equality. Lizzo, for instance, posts photos on Instagram that align with the body positivity her fans admire. Billie Eilish speaks frequently and frankly about mental health. FKA Twigs, when asked about her allegations of abuse against her ex, Shia LaBeouf, and why she didn’t leave, can choose not to answer: “The question should really be to the abuser, ‘Why are you holding someone hostage with abuse?’”Now, entertainment journalists who worked through the tabloid era are looking back on their coverage through a critical lens; some are expressing regret and even issuing apologies.Steven Daly, who wrote the infamous 1999 Rolling Stone cover story on Britney Spears, said that in hindsight, having a 17-year-old girl show him, a man in his 30s, around her childhood bedroom was slightly creepy.But he is more troubled by the photos that appeared alongside his piece: Britney in a bra and hot pants holding a Teletubby; Britney in a pair of white cotton underwear surrounded by her bedroom dolls; photos the pop star — rather than the photographer or editors — was often asked to defend.“These were soft-porn pictures of an underage girl,” said Mr. Daly, now 60. “If you did that nowadays, you’d be put through a wood chipper.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

  • 88 Shares159 Views

    in Television

    ‘WandaVision’ Fills In Gaps in Marvel History

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘WandaVision’ Fills In Gaps in Marvel HistoryThis week, the series drew from many other Marvel shows, movies and comics. Here’s a breakdown of some of the key references.Elizabeth Olsen, left, and Kathryn Hahn in “WandaVision.”Credit…Disney+Feb. 26, 2021, 5:52 p.m. ETGrief and personal loss fill in gaps in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Friday’s episode of “WandaVision,” the eighth of the season and, at 48 minutes long, the longest to date. Titled “Previously On,” it is the installment that most clearly ties the show’s events to other Marvel movies and TV shows, like “Avengers: Age of Ultron” and “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”At the same time, it is an origin story for the disorienting sitcom world that much of “WandaVision” has inhabited. Through a series of extended flashbacks, the tortured superheroine Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) relives the traumatizing events that led her to transform the contemporary New Jersey suburb of Westview into the Hex, a TV-addled neighborhood that she has surrounded with a mysterious energy dome and cut off from the outside world.More often than not, Wanda’s flashbacks suggest that she is consistently motivated by the death of her loved ones, especially the loss of her parents, Iryna and Olek Maximoff (Ilana Kohanchi and Daniyar) and her brother, Pietro (Evan Peters). “Previously On” also hints at what motivates Wanda’s witchy rival, Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn), whose antagonistic behavior in “WandaVision” contrasts with her cryptic but benign personality from earlier Marvel comics.Here are some of the key comic book and movie references in this week’s “WandaVision” episode. Major spoilers follow.Agatha Harkness’s Salem Witch TrialsThe episode begins by flashing back to Salem, Mass., in 1693, when Agatha was confronted and almost burned at the stake by a coven of witches. Evanora (Kate Forbes), the group’s leader and Agatha’s mother, accuses Hahn’s villainess of betraying her fellow spellcasters. This flashback parallels the beginning of Vision and the Scarlet Witch No. 3, when the aggrieved members of Salem’s Seven, Agatha’s coven, successfully burn her alive. (She had previously revealed to the Fantastic Four the location of New Salem, a secretive witch community, in Fantastic Four Annual No. 14.)Beyond that association, Agatha Harkness is otherwise distinct from how she’s depicted in the comics: She casts a spell on and destroys her mother and her fellow witches, a jarring change from the comics’ general narrative that also immediately announces this week’s focus on revisionist history.Wanda’s Parents and the Unexploded BombWanda first revisits the death of her parents, Iryna and Olek, which happens when the American military destroys their Sokovia hometown, Novi Grad, with bombs manufactured by Stark Industries. Wanda’s parents were first mentioned in “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” and in that movie she and her brother, Pietro (played in that movie by Aaron Taylor-Johnson), blame the industrialist turned superhero Tony “Iron Man” Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) for their parents’ death, which leads them to ally with the megalomaniacal robot Ultron (James Spader).Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson in “Avengers: Age of Ultron.”Credit…Jay Maidment/Walt Disney Studios Motion PicturesWanda also relives another moment that is mentioned, but not shown, in “Avengers: Age of Ultron”: During the bombing of Novi Grad, she and her brother were pinned under rubble for two days, waiting for one of Stark’s bombs to detonate. In “Previously On,” we learn that the bomb never exploded because Wanda defused it with her “chaos magic” powers. This unexploded bomb resembles the drone missile that was sent into the Hex by the superhero-regulating government agency S.W.O.R.D. (or, Sentient Weapon Observation and Response Department) in “On a Very Special Episode …,” the fifth episode of “WandaVision.”HYDRA, the Mind Stone and Loki’s ScepterAfter revisiting her childhood Novi Grad home, Wanda remembers when she, as an adult, volunteered to be a test subject for deadly experiments that were conducted by HYDRA, a Nazi-like terrorist organization that served as the main villains in most of Marvel’s recent movies as well as the “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” TV series.Wanda recalls and expands on the post-credits scene from “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” when she and Pietro were imprisoned by the HYDRA leader, Baron Wolfgang von Strucker. (Strucker’s name might ring a bell with “WandaVision” fans: There’s an ad for Strücker brand wristwatches in the show’s second episode.)In the comic book tie-in “Avengers: Age of Ultron Prelude — This Scepter’d Isle,” Strucker and his men explain how, just before the “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” post-credits scene, they gave the Maximoff twins superpowers using a magical scepter that they swiped from the Norse trickster god Loki (played in the films by Tom Hiddleston).Loki’s staff also connects Wanda with her android husband, the Vision (Paul Bettany), since the scepter’s reality-altering powers come from the same Mind Stone that Ultron used to give life to the Vision in “Avengers: Age of Ultron.” This week, Agatha suggests that the Mind Stone significantly “amplified” Wanda’s psychic powers, which would have “otherwise died on the vine.”The Snap: S.W.O.R.D. HeadquartersWhen Wanda remembers retrieving the Vision’s body from S.W.O.R.D. headquarters, TV news tickers in the lobby announce “families reunite” and “[celebrations] for the returned.” This alludes to a cataclysmic event from “Avengers: Infinity War” known as “The Snap.” That was when the philosophically inclined alien warlord Thanos (Josh Brolin) halved the world’s population simply by donning his all-powerful Infinity Gauntlet and snapping his fingers.This means Wanda took the Vision’s body some time after “Avengers: Endgame,” which was when Wanda and her teammates undid the Snap’s effects.Paul Bettany as the Vision in “Avengers: Infinity War.”Credit…Marvel/DisneyThe Vision’s Vibranium BodyDuring Wanda’s visit to S.W.O.R.D. headquarters, the S.W.O.R.D. director, Tyler Hayward (Josh Stamberg), explains that the Vision’s body must be destroyed because he is “one of the most sophisticated sentient weapons ever made.” That’s because the Vision’s body is made of Vibranium, an alien element that crash-landed in the African nation Wakanda (the main setting of “Black Panther”) during a meteor shower and was subsequently developed into an indestructible metal — it is used in some of the Marvel world’s most sophisticated and highly sought after technology and weaponry, including Captain America’s shield. Ultron created the Vision’s body in “Avengers: Age of Ultron” using Vibranium stolen by the deranged and questionably accented South African arms dealer Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis).The Snap: LagosEagle-eyed viewers will also note that Thanos’s fateful snap is subtly referenced twice this week. The first time is on a Westview mural advertising something called “Snap,” which can be seen briefly after Wanda uses her superpowers to transform the town into a sitcom fantasy. That same mural also mentions the Nigerian city Lagos, a reference to a scene from “Captain America: Civil War” when Wanda accidentally destroyed a building full of Wakandan civilians while trying to disarm a bomb.The Vision’s New LookThe real Vision comes back to life during a mid-credits scene this week, but he doesn’t look the way he used to. He was destroyed twice in “Avengers: Infinity War”: first by Wanda, who was trying to stop Thanos from taking the Vision’s Mind Stone, and then by Thanos, who later used the Infinity Gauntlet to travel back in time and steal the stone.Outside of Westview, Hayward reanimates Vision’s body using the chaos magic that rubbed off on the drone missile back in Episode 5. Comics fans might recognize the Vision’s new off-white costume from West Coast Avengers No. 45, when an international team of spies deleted the android’s old personality and redesigned him after he, under the influence of the evil supercomputer I.S.A.A.C., tried to take over the world.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

  • 100 Shares149 Views

    in Theater

    ‘First Love’ Review: Stop and Smell the Corpses

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s Pick‘First Love’ Review: Stop and Smell the CorpsesBill Camp stars in JoAnne Akalaitis’s creepy, funny streaming production of this Samuel Beckett short story.Bill Camp plays a grizzled disaster of a man in “First Love,” a Theater for a New Audience production. Credit…Peter Cook, via TFANAFeb. 26, 2021, 5:28 p.m. ETPlenty of people enjoy a stroll through a cemetery, even a picnic among the tombstones. A bit of communing with the dead or meditating on mortality: nothing amiss about that.The narrator of Samuel Beckett’s short story “First Love,” though, has other ideas about the pleasures of the graveyard — like lucking upon “a genuine interment, with real live mourners,” or having loads of spots to choose from when he feels the urge to relieve himself.This hard-core eccentric, embodied by Bill Camp, is at his most comically unsettling when he speaks of “the smell of corpses,” and takes a long, savoring sniff.“Humans are truly strange,” he observes a while later in the monologue, by which point we can hardly disagree.In JoAnne Akalaitis’s creepy, funny, dun-colored streaming production for Theater for a New Audience, this grizzled disaster of a man is the kind of weird that makes you lean in to watch.“If theaters opened up tomorrow,” Akalaitis says in a program note, “I wouldn’t do this: This piece is made for Zoom.”So Eamonn Farrell’s unadorned video design frames a small upstairs space in Camp’s house. Jennifer Tipton’s stark, shadowy lighting sands down the edges of time, while Kaye Voyce’s costume design — principally a headlamp and sweater vest — suggests an untended aloneness. (Akalaitis has collaborated on Beckett with Camp, Tipton and Voyce before.)The costume designer Kaye Voyce put Camp in a headlamp and sweater vest.Credit…Peter Cook, via TFANABeckett wrote “First Love” in 1946, the year he turned 40, though he didn’t allow its publication until the 1970s. Its nameless narrator is recollecting his mid-20s, when, shortly after his father’s death, he was summarily chucked out of the family home — a rude jolt, as he’d expected “to be left the room I had occupied in his lifetime and for food to be brought me there, as hitherto.”That reeking entitlement is perhaps his main attribute when he enters what he calls his marriage: a relationship involving initial obsession yet no love on his part.But let’s guess, shall we, that he was devastatingly good-looking then, or especially gifted at sex. Otherwise it is difficult to comprehend why the woman he variously calls Lulu or Anna ever took this tenaciously lazy creature home and waited on him there.He doesn’t have the existential weariness that we associate with Beckett characters; rather, Camp gives him a pouncing intensity. Still, his greatest exertion by far is the impulsive emptying, for his own use, of one of Lulu/Anna’s rooms — a manic scene that Camp enacts with a pile of dollhouse-size furniture.What our narrator keenly, even cruelly, wants is to be left with his thoughts. If he gets mired in them, and he will, that’s OK with him. Just as long as the world does not intrude.First LoveThrough March 1; tfana.org.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

  • 138 Shares169 Views

    in Television

    The Original ‘Real World’ Cast Reunites, Older but Still Not Polite

    A new Paramount+ series reunites the first cast of the pioneering reality show in the same loft they shared nearly 30 years ago.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesThe Original ‘Real World’ Cast Reunites, Older but Still Not Polite“The Real World Homecoming: New York” brings back the housemates from the inaugural season of the MTV series that set the standards of reality television, for better and for worse.A new Paramount+ series reunites the first cast of the pioneering reality show in the same loft they shared nearly 30 years ago.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyFeb. 26, 2021Updated 3:04 p.m. ETLate last year, Julie Gentry was in Atlanta helping her 19-year-old son, Noah, move into a house where he and four of his college classmates planned to live together while the pandemic kept them off-campus.At one point, Gentry said her son took the opportunity to tease her about the long-ago role she played in television history. “He was laughing that I was setting him up for his ‘Real World’ experience,” she said.It was only minutes later that Gentry got a text message from Bunim/Murray Productions, the company that created “The Real World” for MTV and which cast her in the debut season of that groundbreaking series. The company was inviting her to return to the same SoHo loft where she’d lived with six other aspiring artists and performers nearly 30 years ago while a camera crew recorded them for a first-of-its-kind, nonfiction soap opera.“I said that text is fake,” Gentry recalled. But as she and her former TV roommates — who have stayed in constant contact since “The Real World” premiered in May 1992 — started checking in with each other, they discovered they had all had received similar, authentic invitations. And so they all agreed to accept them.The result is “The Real World Homecoming: New York,” a new reality series that reconvenes those original seven strangers, picked once again to live in a loft and have their lives taped — not as wide-eyed teenagers and 20-somethings eager to bare their immature souls, but as parents and professionals in their 40s and 50s, with families, careers and a fuller understanding of what they exchanged decades ago for a modest amount of visibility.“Homecoming,” which begins March 4 on the new Paramount+ streaming service, allows viewers to catch up with its fully-grown alums, who take a certain pride in having made “The Real World” before the genre it helped create became ubiquitous, codified and mercenary.The 1992 cast didn’t realize they were creating a new TV genre. Clockwise from top left, Kevin Powell, Eric Nies, Andre Comeau, Heather B. Gardner, Julie Gentry, Norman Korpi and Becky Blasband.Credit…Chris CarrollHaving lived for so long in a world that “The Real World” helped to create, we can sometimes forget what an offbeat proposition it was when it was introduced and how different the media environment was that awaited it.Before the show arrived, MTV filled its airtime with low-rent coverage of youth culture and narrowly tailored blocks of music videos; the network had homegrown franchises like “Headbangers Ball,” “Club MTV” and “Yo! MTV Raps” and it played “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in constant rotation while other signature programs like “Beavis and Butt-Head” were still on the horizon.“The Real World,” created by the producers Mary-Ellis Bunim and Jonathan Murray, took its cues from the 1970s PBS documentary series “An American Family” and from scripted teen dramas of the day like “Beverly Hills, 90210.” It was part gamble and part stunt, not an attempt to spawn a generation’s worth of programming on MTV (in spinoffs and clones like “Road Rules,” “The Osbournes” and “Jersey Shore”) and across television.But the DNA of “The Real World” lives on to this day — in highly mutated form, in some cases — in reality franchises like “Big Brother,” “Real Housewives,” “The Bachelor,” “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” and countless other shows that exist to mine content from social conflict.For its original cast members, “The Real World” promised the chance to live rent-free in New York while they pursued their careers, but it bonded and branded them in ways they never expected.“No matter what, we’re connected for life by this,” said Kevin Powell, who has remained a journalist, author and activist. “No one can say they were the first — we are the first.”“Homecoming” offers its cast members the chance to look back on their misadventures and conflicts from the original show and reassess themselves for better or worse. As Gentry, an aspiring dancer from Birmingham, Ala., who became a mother of two and a community garden organizer, put it, “We’ve evolved but we haven’t really changed.”They are also hopeful that by revisiting their past debates on what were once taboo subjects for TV — sometimes heated arguments on race, sexuality and privilege in America — they can do better for themselves and set a healthier example for viewers.“Hopefully we’ve reached this level where the slings and arrows and heatedness can mature into a rational conversation and a real discourse,” said Rebecca Blasband, a singer-songwriter and recording artist who went by Becky on the original series.She continued, “Because that’s what we need in this country. We’ve become a combative society, and in that combat, we lose reason.”Norman Korpi was working as a photographer and fashion designer when he learned about “The Real World” from producers who were scouting his loft as a possible location for the series. The show appealed to him because of its intended focus on young people trying to break into creative careers and its potential to democratize TV programming.Set in the same SoHo loft, “Homecoming” offers its cast members the chance to look back on their past misadventures and reassess themselves.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York Times“It allowed you to see people who had never been shown before, to be exposed to people you’d never encountered and see their stories evolve,” he said.The show’s Black cast members felt their decision to appear on “The Real World” was especially fraught, requiring them to weigh the value of representing the communities they came from against the credibility it would cost them there.Heather B. Gardner, then an up-and-coming rapper, said she felt it was important to appear on MTV at a time when the network featured few Black people and hip-hop was widely portrayed as crude and inherently violent.But Gardner, now a Sirius XM radio host, said that many peers were skeptical of her motives at the time.“My record company didn’t understand it,” she said. “And the hip-hop world didn’t initially embrace it. It took a lot of work to earn their stamp, of me being like, ‘Yo, this was just a documentary — I didn’t quote-unquote sell out.’”The housemates attended political rallies, met NBA stars and enjoyed some good-natured hedonism on MTV’s dime.“My daughter will say things to me like, ‘What were you thinking, taking your top off in Jamaica?,’” Gentry said. “I tell her, ‘I had no idea you were ever going to exist, so I couldn’t really think about it.’”They also quickly found out what happened when people stop getting polite and found themselves in heated disagreements about their different backgrounds. In the show’s first episode, Gentry saw that Gardner carried a beeper and jokingly asked her if she sold drugs. A later episode, called “Julie Thinks Kevin Is Psycho!,” recorded an intense fight between those two roommates, where Powell declared, “Racism is everywhere,” and Gentry retorted, “Because of people like you — not people like me.”For the original cast, “The Real World” was a chance to live rent-free in New York, but it bonded them in unexpected ways.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesBut time passed and temperatures cooled. Cast members became friends outside of the show and got on group texts with each other; Gardner was even a guest at Gentry’s wedding. “The Real World” became Patient Zero in the viral spread of reality TV, running 33 seasons in its original incarnation as reality programming overtook the programming grids of MTV and countless other channels.As MTV’s parent company, ViacomCBS, prepares to relaunch its CBS All Access service as Paramount+, it sees reality TV and “The Real World Homecoming,” in particular, as a powerful lure for potential subscribers.The original “Real World” series “was the purest of the social experiments,” said Chris McCarthy, the president of MTV Entertainment Group. “People have held deep relationships with these cast members, in a way that, quite honestly, we only dream could happen today.”Noting that MTV also plans to bring a resuscitated version of “The Real World” to Paramount+, McCarthy said he expected that “Homecoming” is a series that “will bring back lapsed viewers and the next version could be something totally different for brand-new viewers.”But the thought of returning to the show in middle age is one that some cast members had to sit with. No one wanted to be seen as trying to recapture past glories: “How could we recreate something that we did at that time in our lives?” said Gardner. “Unless we stay drunk the whole time, it’s not going to work.”Nies’s participation in the new show was limited to video chats. Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesThe roommates were not encouraged, either, by the state of modern-day reality TV, some of which has a distasteful and selfish tone and has helped unleash unsustainable levels of narcissism.“There’s a very greedy aspect of the industry that’s like, ‘Whoever can behave the worst or have some sex tapes, go right to the front of the line,’” Korpi said.Blasband said that the reality genre was not solely to blame for America’s problems, but it reflected and amplified the national psyche, serving as “an expression of the subconscious of our society,” and could be used for good or ill.When “The Real World” first appeared, she said, “It was very refreshing for people to feel that they were actually connecting to something other than canned laughter.”But in the years since, she said, the reality genre has embraced “a tabloid mentality that began to bleed into news journalism — I see it on CNN or Fox News, a heightened, incendiary drama that doesn’t belong there.”Some of the roommates said they felt more compelled to participate after events like the Black Lives Matter protests of the spring and summer had reawakened them to the complex realities of racial disparities in America that they lacked the ability to articulate back in 1992.The cast members look back fondly on their “Real World” experiences.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesBut they lament what the reality TV genre, which the show pioneered, has become.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesAndre Comeau, now a rock musician living in Los Angeles, said that a torrent of videos that he had seen in recent years, capturing incidents of police violence against people of color, had been “so shocking to me, to see that on an everyday basis — I had no idea that it was so prevalent.”Comeau said he felt it was important to discuss these developments on-camera with his Black co-stars and to explain how his own stance had evolved since the original season.“At the time, I thought I was oppressed,” he said with a sardonic chuckle. “Being a young, longhaired white male living in a city, I would get pulled over on a regular basis. But that is nowhere near the level of institutional racism that happens every day.”The DNA of “The Real World” lives on in countless shows that exist to mine content from social conflict.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesNaturally, the roommates’ return to their downtown Manhattan lodgings came with some ready-made reality-TV drama. Eric Nies, the fashion model who parlayed his “Real World” fame into hosting roles on MTV programs like “The Grind,” said that he made it as far as a New York hotel room and was never actually able to set foot in the SoHo loft for “Homecoming.”Asked why, Nies said in a phone interview, “I’m not sure how much I can get into that right now.”Nies, who was able to communicate with the other housemates over a video monitor, elliptically added that the circumstances of his separation were “definitely not by my choice, but I accepted the outcome — more will be revealed in the future.” (MTV declined to comment on this.)Other cast members said that they found value in participating in “Homecoming.” Korpi, who is gay, said he wanted to revisit his experience of coming out publicly on the show and its impact on his life when the series ended.At the time he appeared on “The Real World,” Korpi said he had just ended a relationship with another man. “However, when the show aired, I was perceived by some cast and the public as bisexual, which was hurtful and a lot to bear,” he said.He added, “If you didn’t live in that time, you don’t know what it was like to come out when there’s nobody out, being gay,” he said. “People were terrified of that.”Korpi, who has been a filmmaker, a painter and an industrial designer and continues to work in his family’s bakery in Michigan, said that traditional paths in the entertainment industry were not necessarily open to him after his “Real World” season.“It wasn’t like any agent was going to touch a gay person with a 10-foot-pole,” he said. “I struggled a little bit — or a lot — and I realized I needed to make the work for myself.”Powell said he also had suffered for how “The Real World” had portrayed him.“I got stigmatized as a politically angry Black man, and that stuck with me for a long time,” he said. “It was very painful having to deal with that.”Though he did not regret the passionate feelings he had expressed on the original show, Powell said that he felt he owed it to himself to show that he could engage differently with his roommates on the new series.The cast members, wide-eyed teenagers and 20-somethings back in 1992, are now parents and professionals in their 40s and 50s.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York Times“At the time, was I very heated in a different kind of way about racism? Absolutely,” he said. “Am I different person now? You will see that when you watch the episodes.”Gentry, who had memorably sparred with Powell, said she also wished to make amends and do better this time around. “All the stuff on race, I said a lot of pretty naïve things in that first season,” she said.Powell said there was a lesson that the roommates and their viewers alike could take away from “Homecoming”: that it is possible to engage one another about our disparate perspectives and experiences as long as we do so respectfully.“We have to have uncomfortable conversations with people about things we don’t agree with,” he said. “But it has to be with love.”Shooting finished on “Homecoming” in January, and the cast members have spent the weeks since reflecting on what it meant to them. But though the reunion might seem likely to serve as a kind of bookend to their original “Real World” experiences, some were hesitant to describe it in such terms.“‘Closure’ insinuates that there was trauma or something,” Blasband said. “I have a lot of fondness for my roommates.”Gardner, who was initially reluctant to do the new show, said afterward, “I don’t regret it at all.” But not even a previous season spent living her life for public consumption was enough to prepare her for a second go-round — to have her old self reflected back to her at the same time that her current self was being held up for examination all over again.“Bruh, it’s different,” she said. “The mirror is gigantic. The mirror is Macy’s window at this point.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

  • 100 Shares139 Views

    in Television

    American Evangelicals, Israeli Settlers and a Skeptical Filmmaker

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAmerican Evangelicals, Israeli Settlers and a Skeptical FilmmakerA new documentary illuminates what the director calls an “unholy alliance” that sharply altered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during the Trump administration.Maya Zinshtein, in Tel Aviv, directed “’Til Kingdom Come.”Credit…Amit Elkayam for The New York TimesFeb. 26, 2021Updated 11:42 a.m. ETTEL AVIV — The bear hug between Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu and their governments was a partnership like no other the two countries had seen. For four years, Israel was Washington’s favorite foreign-policy arena and Jerusalem its best friend, and the brash new American approach to the Middle East dominated Israel’s national-security discourse and its politics.Far less understood was one of the key underpinnings of that relationship: the intricate symbiosis between evangelical Christians in the United States and religious Jewish settlers in the West Bank. In a new documentary, “’Til Kingdom Come,” the Israeli filmmaker Maya Zinshtein delves into this “unholy alliance,” as she calls it, showing how the settlers reap enormous political support and raise money from evangelicals, who, she argues, directly and indirectly subsidize the settlers’ steady takeover of the West Bank, which the Palestinians want for a future state. In return, evangelicals edge closer to fulfilling the prophecy many adhere to that the second coming of Christ cannot happen without the return of diaspora Jews to the Holy Land.That vision doesn’t end well for the Jews: They must accept Jesus or be massacred and condemned to hell. But the film shows Christian Zionists and right-wing Israelis agreeing to disagree about the End of Days while cooperating, and even exploiting one another, in the here and now — and making the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians more difficult to resolve.“’Til Kingdom Come” examines the ties between American evangelicals and Israeli settlers.Credit…Abraham (Abie) TroenThe film is being released in the United States on Friday, but when it was broadcast in Israel in the fall it led to a wave of guilt and soul-searching, in part for revealing how families in an impoverished Kentucky community are cajoled by their pastor into donating to an Israeli charity despite the country’s wealth, with a tech sector that routinely mints billionaires. But the film is just as likely to teach Christian and Jewish audiences in the United States a great deal about subjects they may have thought they already understood — including how American politics really work.Zinshtein, 39, a Russian-born Israeli, said she was a classic immigrant, with an outsider viewpoint and an ambition to make a mark in her adopted homeland. Here are edited excerpts from an interview with her conducted at her home in Tel Aviv and by phone.You plunged into your project beginning in mid-2017, months before President Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the first big display of the power of the relationship. What drew you in?When you live in Israel, you’ve heard about the evangelicals, but no more. People talk about “these Christians that love us.” But they don’t get what that love means. It’s this force beneath the surface, which has an agenda, and people just don’t understand it. But I want to know who is influencing my life.What did you expect to witness?It was clear that promises had been made to the evangelicals during the 2016 campaign. But no one expected things to happen so fast. I remember a meeting with one evangelical leader who’d told me, “Be patient, maybe by late 2019 or early 2020, Trump will recognize Jerusalem as the capital.” He did it three months later, and he moved the embassy six months after that. In my plan, the embassy was supposed to be the third act! I was terrified: What do I do now?What’s wrong with the agree-to-disagree collaboration between American evangelicals and Israeli settlers?We have our democracy, and the settlers are a certain percentage of the country. But they have a much bigger influence than their share of the population. And when you have this enormous political power entering our conversation, it changes the balance. Remember the number of Jews in the world, and the number of evangelicals. It’s not an equal relationship, and we are not the stronger partner.My brother’s in the reserves. He’ll get called up in the next war. And there will always be a war here — it’s when, not if. The evangelicals don’t want people to get killed, but they believe war is a sign. In whose name will we fight these wars?Plus, these people have a very specific set of beliefs that drives them. In the film, for example, you see them celebrating the ban on transgender [members of] the American military. You’re signing on with their whole agenda. You cannot take just one part.Money from Evangelical Americans flows to Israeli charities.Credit…Abraham (Abie) TroenThere’s so much attention paid in the film to Christians’ love for Israel. Do you accept that it’s really a form of love?When you start questioning that, Israelis say, “Wait a minute, Maya. Don’t we have enough people who hate us? Finally, someone loves us. Let’s just take it.” But when someone loves you just for being Jewish, there will always be someone who will hate you just for being Jewish. Someone told me, “When they say they love you, they mean they love Jesus. You are just part of the story. You are the key, and you know what happens with the key after the door is open, right? You don’t need it anymore.”Love is really just another word for support, no?But nobody asked, what did this support actually mean? It’s not “support of Israel.” It’s support of a right-wing agenda that many people here wouldn’t agree with.Evangelicals are the only significant power outside Israel that is openly supporting the settlements. No one else does. But the dangerous thing is that they’re turning that into support for Israel. Pastor John Hagee, when he started Christians United for Israel, was all about the settlements. Today you won’t find him talking about the settlements at all. Just “Israel.” The film shows a religious settler telling visiting Christians that they are bit players in a movie in which Jews are the stars.The amazing thing in this relationship is each side thinks the other one is stupid. Each side is trying to trick the other.The access you won was extraordinary. You didn’t just get an entire Kentucky church and its pastors to open up to you and your crew. You filmed inside the powerful Republican Study Committee and at a gala of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, at Mar-a-Lago.It was mind-blowing. You saw all these wealthy Christians and Jews sitting together, saw Christians give testimony about how “before I started to donate to Israel, I had a small shop in Cleveland, and today I have a huge chain of stores, just because I started to donate to Israel.” They think it helps them in their lives.Zinshtein said she made the documentary because “I want to know who is influencing my life.”Credit…Amit Elkayam for The New York TimesHow did you gain that access?The fact that we were Israelis played a crucial role, because we can’t immediately be put in a certain box. If I were a Jew from New York, I’d never have been able to make this film. American Jews are recognized as the other side. We are not. We are part of this bond. The bond is with Israel.You follow the money, showing an elderly Israeli woman who survived a terrorist attack and now gets free food and shoes. If Israel is so wealthy, why does it need foreigners’ help to feed and clothe her?It’s embarrassing. But Israel invests so much in the settlements. Christian money is filling needs created by the settlements. Maybe instead of, I don’t know, building roads in the settlements, we need to take care of our poor. It exposes a much bigger question of priorities.The donors include people in one of America’s poorest counties.I cried so badly. It’s freezing and you’re in a coat and you see kids in a house with no windows coming out with no shoes. Kids with rat bites on their legs. Some Israelis who saw the film asked if they could send money.What do you want the takeaway to be for evangelical viewers?That [Israelis are] not just a Bible, we’re people with a present and a near future. That Israelis and Palestinians want to live in peace. Just because your faith says that God said to Abraham that all this land belongs to the Jewish people — they are not going to suffer the consequences. We are the ones who’ll suffer the consequences, in real life, not just in the afterlife.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

  • 125 Shares119 Views

    in Television

    Netflix Productions Are More Diverse Than Studio Films, Study Shows

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyNetflix Productions Are More Diverse Than Studio Films, Study ShowsThe study, which the streaming giant commissioned, looked at films and TV series from 2018 and 2019.Ali Wong and Randall Park star in “Always Be My Maybe” on Netflix.Credit…NetflixFeb. 26, 2021, 9:30 a.m. ETFifty-two percent of Netflix films and series in 2018 and 2019 had girls or women in starring roles. And 35.7 percent of all Netflix leads during that span came from underrepresented groups, compared with 28 percent in the top 100 grossing theatrical films.Those findings were released on Friday by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which Netflix commissioned to look at its own U.S.-based scripted original films and series. The study analyzed 126 movies and 180 series released during 2018 and 2019.“Notably, across 19 of 22 indicators we included in this study, Netflix demonstrated improvement across films and series from 2018 to 2019,” said Stacy L. Smith, who is the head of the initiative and has been studying representation in film and television since 2005, during an online symposium the company held to discuss the survey. She said Netflix had also increased the percentage of women onscreen and working as directors, screenwriters and producers; for Black cast and crew; and for women of color in leading roles.Of the 130 directors of Netflix films in those two years, 25 percent were women in 2018 and 20.7 percent in 2019 — outpacing the feature films released theatrically by other studios over the same period.While Netflix reflects gender equality in its leading roles in television series and films, when every speaking character is evaluated, those roles did not match what the country looks like from a gender and race perspective. Only 19.9 percent of all stories met that mark. For instance, 96 percent of stories did not have any women onscreen who identify as American Indian/Native Alaskan, and 68.3 percent of the content evaluated did not include a speaking role for a Latina. That number rose to 85 percent when it came to speaking roles for Middle Eastern/North African women.Scott Stuber, Netflix’s film chief, acknowledged how crucial those kinds of small parts were to working actors.“The SAG card is everything,” he said, referring to the Screen Actors Guild membership that performers earn by having roles in various projects. “That is the beginning of the dream. We have to be very active with our filmmakers and our casting directors to fix that. That’s the next great artist. That’s the next Viola Davis.”According to the report, L.G.B.T.Q. characters at every level of film and television were marginalized, particularly transgender characters. And just 11.8 percent of L.G.B.T.Q. characters in leading roles were shown as parents.“I was shocked that we are not doing great there,” said Bela Bajaria, the head of global TV for Netflix. “I feel like we are so active in our story lines. But the lack of gay parents in our shows, that’s a clear takeaway.”According to Netflix’s chief executive Ted Sarandos, the company is committed to releasing a new report every two years through 2026.“Our hope is to create a benchmark for ourselves, and more broadly across the industry,” he wrote in a blog post that accompanied the report.The director and screenwriter Alan Yang said during the symposium that he was bullish on the future of inclusion in entertainment, especially at Netflix, which produced a series he created with Aziz Ansari, “Master of None,” and his feature film “Tigertail.”“It’s going to improve a lot if Bela and Scott buy all the shows and films I pitch them,” Mr. Yang said with a laugh.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

  • 113 Shares149 Views

    in Television

    Seth Meyers Is Excited to See Trump’s Tax Returns

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBest of Late NightSeth Meyers Is Excited to See Trump’s Tax ReturnsMeyers said it shouldn’t be hard for the Manhattan D.A. to find a crime in “the tax records of a guy who claims to be a billionaire, yet paid only $750 in federal income taxes when he was president.”“That’s right, the Manhattan district attorney’s office confirmed that it’s in possession of Trump’s tax records, as evidenced by the white smoke coming from the Statue of Liberty’s torch,” Meyers joked.Credit…NBCFeb. 26, 2021, 1:43 a.m. ETWelcome 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. We’re all stuck at home at the moment, so here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.The Return of Trump’s TaxesFormer President Donald Trump’s financial records were turned over to the Manhattan district attorney this week as part of a tax and bank-fraud investigation.“That’s right, the Manhattan district attorney’s office confirmed that it’s in possession of Trump’s tax records, as evidenced by the white smoke coming from the Statue of Liberty’s torch,” Seth Meyers joked on Thursday.“The Manhattan district attorney’s office today confirmed it is now in possession of former President Trump’s tax records and, yes, both of them.” — SETH MEYERS“I wonder how many pages of the Cheesecake Factory menu he snuck in there.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“And look, I’m no prosecutor, but it can’t be that hard to find a crime in the tax records of a guy who claims to be a billionaire, yet paid only $750 in federal income taxes when he was president.” — SETH MEYERS“You can tell that they’re Trump’s real tax returns because under total loss, he still didn’t declare the election.” — JIMMY FALLON“And yes, there are plenty of technically legal ways that the wealthy and corporations avoid taxes, which is a scandal in itself, but something tells me Trump doesn’t just limit himself to the legal stuff. I’m guessing he commits crimes the way the rest of us order apps for the tables: ‘Let’s just get — should we just get one of everything?’” — SETH MEYERS“This whole thing started with Stormy Daniels. Donald Trump is the only guy who can cheat on his wife and his taxes in the same bed.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The crazy thing is that the part about paying no taxes on millions of dollars — that isn’t what he might get busted for. That was probably legal. He could claim huge losses, pay no taxes, and still live like a billionaire. It’s what they call ‘Orange Privilege.’ It’s specific to him. And hopefully he’ll be in an orange jumpsuit very soon, too.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“But this really is big news, because after they thoroughly go through each document, Trump could be charged around the year 3000.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Dropping the Mr. Edition)“There was a major announcement from Mr. Potato Headquarters today: Hasbro is dropping the ‘bro.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Mr. Potato Head is no longer a ‘mister. ’ And not, as I originally assumed, because he finally finished his Ph.D — his potato head doctorate.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“No, it’s because Hasbro is giving the spud a gender-neutral new name: ‘Potato Head.’ But if it’s not assigned a gender, what bathroom will it use?” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Naturally, when this news hit Twitter, the world’s top idiots weighed in. Piers Morgan tweeted, ‘Who was actually offended by Mr. Potato Head being male? I want names. These woke imbeciles are destroying the world.’ Yes, they’re destroying the world. How will children grow up without a strong male potato role model? Won’t someone think of the tots?” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Even in death, they found a way to cancel Don Rickles.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Why are we still putting eyes and lips on potatoes anyway? Isn’t this what children did during the Depression?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“And by the way, Hasbro isn’t the only one dumping the ‘mister.’ From now on these popular American products will be known as ‘Salty, ‘Peanut,’ ‘Rogers,’ ‘T’ and ‘Clean.’ No word yet from ‘Magoo,’ but we’ll see.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingJames Corden took Prince Harry on a socially distanced tour of Los Angeles on Thursday’s “Late Late Show.”Also, Check This OutJulien Baker’s “Little Oblivions” is an unrelentingly reflective album.Credit…Alysse GafkjenThe queer, sober, Christian singer-songwriter Julien Baker plays every instrument on her third studio album, “Little Oblivions.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

  • 150 Shares189 Views

    in Theater

    The Birth of ‘Rent,’ Its Creator’s Death and the 25 Years Since

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Birth of ‘Rent,’ Its Creator’s Death and the 25 Years SinceWith a virtual performance marking the Broadway musical’s anniversary, original cast and creative team members talk about losing Jonathan Larson and carrying on his legacy.Jonathan Larson, left, who wrote the music, lyrics and book of “Rent,” with the play’s director, Michael Greif, in 1996.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesFeb. 25, 2021Updated 3:04 p.m. ETWhat’s 525,600 times 25?It has been 25 years — or, to use a memorable “Seasons of Love” calculation, 13.14 million minutes — since “Rent” upended Broadway’s sense of what musical theater could be. Jonathan Larson’s rock-infused reboot of “La Bohème” had already generated positive chatter during its Off Broadway rehearsals at New York Theater Workshop. But then came full-throated shouts of disbelief and anguish on Jan. 25, 1996, when, hours after the final dress rehearsal, Larson was found dead in his apartment from an aortic aneurysm. He was 35 years old.His shocking death came right before the start of previews, when a creative team typically makes changes based on audience reactions. After briefly considering whether to bring in a script doctor, the team decided instead to streamline Larson’s music and lyrics as needed.The move paid off. Within weeks, “Rent” had achieved a level of hype that would not be rivaled on Broadway until “Hamilton” almost 20 years later: earning rave reviews (The New York Times’s Ben Brantley said it “shimmers with hope for the future of the American musical”); a Pulitzer Prize for Drama; and a frantic transfer to Broadway, where it ran for 12 years and won four Tony Awards.Members of the original Broadway cast in “25 Years of Rent: Measured in Love,” which will stream on Tuesday.Credit…via New York Theater WorkshopOn Tuesday, New York Theater Workshop will use its annual fund-raising gala to commemorate the show’s silver anniversary with “25 Years of Rent: Measured in Love.” The largely prerecorded virtual performance, available to stream through March 6, will feature most of the original cast, who still communicate regularly in a group chat, along with high-profile “Rent”-heads like Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ben Platt, Billy Porter and Ali Stroker.Members of the original production’s cast and creative team discussed the stratospheric heights and ghastly lows of 1996, remembering the gifted young writer who would have been 61 years old today. Here are the lightly edited excerpts.‘We had to do it for Jonathan’NANCY KASSAK DIEKMANN, former managing director of New York Theater Workshop: Jonathan had the kind of health insurance where he could only go to the emergency room, and he had already been once. They told him it was food poisoning or something, and they sent him home. On the day of the final dress rehearsal, he wasn’t feeling well, and he called to say he was going to take a nap. I said to him, “Jon, why don’t you let me make you an appointment and pay for you to see my doctor?” I always wonder what would have happened if he had gone.JAMES C. NICOLA, artistic director of New York Theater Workshop: Everyone felt a degree of ownership and responsibility to do their absolute best on his behalf. It ceased being a job and became a calling.Anthony Rapp, left, and Adam Pascal in rehearsal at the New York Theater Workshop in 1996.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesANTHONY RAPP, who played Mark: From that last dress rehearsal until mid-July, no one missed a performance. It seemed impossible. No one could. I don’t say that to brag. I just think it showed our level of commitment. We had to do it for Jonathan.MICHAEL GREIF, director: One terrible advantage of being in your mid-30s working on “Rent” was that you had a decade of experience of loss. Jonathan’s death made him part of the community he was honoring.ADAM PASCAL, who played Roger: People are often surprised to hear this, but I only knew Jonathan for about four weeks. I was cast in December, and he died in January. I grieved the loss on behalf of his family, who we got to know afterward. But I personally miss him the way the public misses him. I miss the music that never got written.‘We did a lot of cutting’NICOLA: Four of us met the day after Jonathan died — me, Michael Greif, Tim Weil and Lynn Thomson [the dramaturge]. And one thing that came up was, “Should we bring in another composer/writer to finish the job? Is that the choice that has integrity?” But we quickly decided against it.TIM WEIL, musical supervisor: Our idea was, “Let’s do what Jonathan wanted us to do,” even if we couldn’t know exactly what that was.GREIF: We did a lot of cutting. We cut things that we felt Jonathan would agree to or even advocate cutting.RAPP: I think Jonathan was raring to go for the preview process. It would have been very discombobulating and weird for morale to have a foreigner — I mean that artistically, not xenophobically — come in at that point.DIEKMANN: Tim had to step up on the musical side, and he did. He and Michael knew what Jonathan wanted — because, God knows, he was there all the time.WEIL: I still continue to make little bitty changes for new productions, since it has always been tailored to specific performers. I think I’m the only one who has that kind of license.‘Everything was just coming at us’WILSON JERMAINE HEREDIA, who played Angel: Everything was just coming at us, and there was a part of me that was on automatic pilot. The only thing that felt safe and constant was going back on that stage every night. The most stable thing was that it was happening to all of us.DAPHNE RUBIN-VEGA, who played Mimi: Today is 12 weeks out from a partial knee replacement for me. And part of me is like, “How did I get here?” But I know exactly how I got here: by playing Mimi eight times a week.RAPP: I have weird little nagging injuries that still bother me from carrying around that video camera for two hours straight.Daphne Rubin-Vega, who played Mimi in the original cast, with Adam Pascal, who played Rodger. Credit…via New York Theater Workshop‘Representation really matters’GREIF: The idealism and openheartedness of the piece, which I was very wary of at the time and found myself guarding against, has had a profound impact on very, very young people. I’m talking 12- and 13-year-olds. And in many ways, “Rent” opened the door to the possibility of the musicals I went on to direct, musicals like “Next to Normal” and “Dear Evan Hansen.”RUBIN-VEGA: Representation really matters, and it was important for a woman who looks like me to be thrust into that ingénue role.PASCAL: It is something that I’m clearly forever connected to. And it is something that is still literally paying the rent. Do you know about Cameo? Earlier today, I did five Cameos where I sang “Rent” songs.NICOLA: I am just now able to hear these songs without any baggage or context — just hear them as musical theater songs. And I’m thinking, “These are really good songs.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More