Eliana Willis

Last week, ViacomCBS announced that its mini-series based on “A Higher Loyalty,” the best-selling book by the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey that angered President Trump, would be broadcast after the election.That came as a disappointment to the director, who had been working toward an air date before November, according to an email he sent to cast members on Monday.It also came as bad news to Mr. Comey. “I don’t understand why CBS would sit on a movie about important current events, and I hope the American people get the chance to see it soon,” Mr. Comey said in a statement.CBS Television Studios announced the adaptation of Mr. Comey’s book last fall without specifying a release date. Last week it announced that the mini-series would makes its debut on ViacomCBS’s Showtime cable network in late November.Since the director of the mini-series, Billy Ray, sent his email on Monday, ViacomCBS appears to be reconsidering its scheduling decision. “We will be announcing several changes to our schedule, and ‘The Comey Rule’ is most likely moving to air before the election,” a Showtime spokeswoman said in an email on Tuesday.The two-part, four-hour program, “The Comey Rule,” was adapted by Mr. Ray, the screenwriter of “Shattered Glass,” “Captain Phillips” and “Richard Jewell.” It stars Jeff Daniels as Mr. Comey, who served as the F.B.I. director from 2013 until the president abruptly fired him in May 2017. Mr. Trump is played by Brendan Gleeson, a Dublin-born actor perhaps best known for his portrayal of Alastor (Mad-Eye) Moody in the Harry Potter movies.In his email to cast members, which was reviewed by The New York Times, Mr. Ray expressed disappointment in the decision to broadcast “The Comey Rule” after the election.“We all were hoping to get this story in front of the American people months before the coming election,” he wrote. “And that was a reasonable expectation considering that we’d been given a mandate by the network to do whatever was necessary to deliver by May 15.“But at some point in March or April, that mandate changed,” Mr. Ray continued. “Word started drifting back to me that a decision about our airdate had been made at the very highest levels of Viacom: all talk of our airing before the election was suddenly a ‘non-starter.’” He added that ViacomCBS had refused to allow the filmmakers to take “The Comey Rule” to another network.In a brief interview on Tuesday, Mr. Ray addressed the company’s decision to make the mini-series available weeks after Election Day, Nov. 3. “I don’t see how it could have been economically motivated,” he said. “They never told me why.”“A Higher Loyalty” was an instant blockbuster upon its publication in April 2018, selling 600,000 copies in all formats its first week. In its pages Mr. Comey likens Mr. Trump to a crime boss and calls him “unethical, and untethered to truth.” Mr. Trump attacked the book and its author, calling him an “untruthful slime ball” in a tweet.At the time of his firing three years ago, Mr. Comey was the top official leading a criminal investigation into whether Mr. Trump’s advisers had colluded with the Russian government to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.Simon & Schuster, a publishing house owned by ViacomCBS, released Mr. Comey’s book; it is also the publisher of “The Room Where It Happened,” a memoir by Mr. Trump’s former national security head John Bolton that came out on Tuesday. In March, ViacomCBS put Simon & Schuster up for sale.CBS was among the hundreds of organizations and people that have been the target of attacks by Mr. Trump during his term in office. In a 2018 tweet, the president included CBS reporters among the “fakers” who have “done so much dishonest reporting that they should only be allowed to get awards for fiction!”Previous attempts by Hollywood to build shows around political figures have not gone according to plan. In 2013, NBC scrapped a mini-series that would have starred Diane Lane as Hillary Clinton before it was shot. More recently, the third season of Ryan Murphy’s FX series “American Crime Story: Impeachment” — with a focus on former President Bill Clinton, and with Monica Lewinsky as a producer — was scheduled to make its debut on Sept. 27. FX ended up postponing the release until after the election, citing Mr. Murphy’s busy schedule.In his email to the cast of “The Comey Rule,” Mr. Ray wrote that he was puzzled by ViacomCBS’s decision to wait until after the election.“Why?” he wrote. “I don’t know. The health of a media company depends on attracting audiences — and our movie, aired in August of an election year, would have been very big news. Can you imagine the billboards? Comey Vs. Trump! A cast loaded with Emmy winners! Yet here we are. I am deeply sorry that I didn’t win this one.” More

After weeks of criticism, the ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel addressed his past use of blackface in comedy sketches, saying on Tuesday that he apologized “to those who were genuinely hurt or offended by the makeup I wore or the words I spoke.”Kimmel, the host of “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” had previously used blackface to play celebrities like Karl Malone and Oprah Winfrey on “The Man Show,” a Comedy Central series he starred in from 1999 to 2003.Kimmel said in a statement that his impersonation of Malone had started when he was a radio host for KROQ in Los Angeles in the mid-1990s. When he brought that impersonation to TV, Kimmel said, “We hired makeup artists to make me look as much like Karl Malone as possible. I never considered that this might be seen as anything other than an imitation of a fellow human being, one that had no more to do with Karl’s skin color than it did his bulging muscles and bald head.”Kimmel, who did not use the word “blackface” in his statement, said that as he looked back on his previous comedy sketches, many of them had become “embarrassing, and it is frustrating that these thoughtless moments have become a weapon used by some to diminish my criticisms of social and other injustices.”He added in the statement, “I believe that I have evolved and matured over the last 20-plus years, and I hope that is evident to anyone who watches my show. I know that this will not be the last I hear of this and that it will be used again to try to quiet me.”Kimmel made his remarks following several weeks of sustained criticism on social media that he and other entertainers have faced for using blackface in their work.On June 1, Jimmy Fallon, the host of “The Tonight Show” on NBC, apologized on his program for a “Saturday Night Live” sketch from 2000 in which he had appeared in blackface to impersonate Chris Rock.Tina Fey, the creator of the NBC comedy “30 Rock,” said that she and her co-showrunner, Robert Carlock, had asked for several episodes of that show to be pulled from streaming services because they depict characters in blackface. Fey said in a statement, “As we strive to do the work and do better in regards to race in America, we believe that these episodes featuring actors in race-changing makeup are best taken out of circulation. I understand now that ‘intent’ is not a free pass for white people to use these images.”Episodes of other comedy shows like “Little Britain” and “The Mighty Boosh” have also been pulled from streaming services amid concerns about blackface.Kimmel, who is slated to host the Emmy Awards in September, announced last week that he would be taking a vacation from “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and would have guest hosts fill in for him throughout the summer. He said in his statement on Tuesday that this vacation had been planned “for more than a year and includes the next two summers off as well,” adding that he would return to the show in September. More

Pennsylvania’s highest court on Tuesday said it agreed to hear part of Bill Cosby’s appeal of his 2018 sexual assault conviction.In December, a panel of three appellate judges unanimously rejected his appeal to the lower Superior Court, upholding his 2018 conviction in the drugging and sexual assault of Andrea Constand at his home outside Philadelphia in 2004.But in January, his lawyers petitioned the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court to review that decision, highlighting several issues where they said the panel had erred in supporting the trial judge’s decision.The state’s Supreme Court does not necessarily have to take up an appeal, and its justices typically grant few of them. It rejected some of the issues Mr. Cosby’s lawyer raised, but it said it would review the trial judge’s decision to allow testimony from five other accusers — women who, like Ms. Constand, said Mr. Cosby had drugged and sexually assaulted them.The decision means Mr. Cosby’s lawyers will now have another opportunity to challenge a verdict that represented one of the most high-profile convictions of the #MeToo era.In particular, it gives them the chance to fight the decision to include the testimony from the so-called “prior bad acts” witnesses, which many experts considered to be one of the most significant moments of the criminal trial.In Pennsylvania and many other states, testimony concerning prior alleged crimes is allowed if, among other conditions, it demonstrates a signature pattern of abuse. Such testimony by other accusers played a role in the Harvey Weinstein case, where their testimony was sought to demonstrate a pattern of predatory behavior by Mr. Weinstein. Mr. Cosby’s lawyers, however, argue that he was denied a fair trial because the allegations by the other women were too remote in time and too dissimilar to the case for which he was being tried.The court will review whether the jury should have heard testimony about Mr. Cosby’s use of quaaludes as part of his efforts to have sex with other women, including his own testimony in a separate civil case. And it said it would also review the judge’s decision to allow the trial to go ahead even after a former district attorney had given what the district attorney said was a binding assurance that Mr. Cosby would not be charged in the case. The Superior Court panel said that a district attorney did not have the authority to make such a promise.Mr. Cosby, 82, is serving a three- to 10-year sentence at SCI Phoenix, a maximum-security facility outside Philadelphia.Ms. Constand reacted to the Supreme Court’s decision, saying it was right that the five other women were heard.“While everyone deserves for their cries and appeals to be heard, even convicted criminals, if anyone’s cries matter most right now, it’s the women who have lifted their voices and selflessly put themselves in harm’s way, such as the prior bad act witnesses in my case,” she said in an emailed statement.In a separate statement, Mr. Cosby’s spokesman said, “We’re extremely thankful to the State Supreme Court of Pennsylvania for agreeing to review Mr. Cosby’s appeal.”The Montgomery County District Attorney’s office said, “We look forward to briefing and arguing these issues and remain confident in the Trial Court and Superior Court’s previous decisions.” More

LOS ANGELES — The 2021 Golden Globes will take place on Feb. 28, a date that the Oscars abandoned last week in an effort to salvage its 93rd installment in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the small group of journalists that hands out the Globes, had not previously announced a date for the 78th ceremony. The Globes have taken place in January since 1973, in part because the press association likes to set the pace for the Academy Awards race — or at least try. The February slot will allow the Globes to maintain that position. The Oscars were rescheduled for April 25, with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences emphasizing that it selected that date by consulting with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.The press association, which collaborates with Dick Clark Productions and NBC to put on the televised Globes ceremony, gave no explanation for its selection. It also did not say how the February date would affect film and television series eligibility, which normally adheres to the calendar year. The window for best picture consideration at the coming Academy Awards was extended to Feb. 28 from Dec. 31 to make up for the closing of theaters between March and June because of the pandemic.As previously announced, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler will host the 2021 Globes, which the press association said on Monday would continue to be “Hollywood’s party of the year.” It will take place as usual at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. Ms. Fey and Ms. Poehler last hosted the freewheeling show in 2015.The Globes attract a television audience of roughly 18 million.In another awards-show postponement, the Critics’ Choice Association said on Monday that its 26th annual ceremony will take place on March 7 with Taye Diggs as the host. The Critics’ Choice Awards show, broadcast by the CW, typically takes place in January. More

Season 1, Episode 1: ‘Chapter One’The protagonist of more than 80 novels by Erle Stanley Gardner, the star of radio plays and TV movies and a long-running series starring Raymond Burr, the subject of a pretty good Ozzy Osbourne song: Perry Mason has seen many incarnations since his 1933 creation.But the prestige-television version of the character for HBO, played by Matthew Rhys and brought to you by the co-creators and co-writers Rolin Jones and Ron Fitzgerald, is not your father’s Perry Mason. Or your grandfather’s or great-grandfather’s, for that matter. As seen in the premiere episode of the new “Perry Mason,” he’s not even a criminal defense lawyer yet. He’s closer to the “criminal” end of that descriptor than the “lawyer” one, in fact.As played by Rhys, the gifted co-star of FX’s grim, great spy thriller “The Americans,” Perry is what you might call a hard-luck case. A veteran of World War I (World War II lies eight years in the future) who lives on his family’s decrepit dairy farm, he has a 9-year-old son he doesn’t see and an ex-wife who can’t stand him. He ekes out a living as a private investigator, tailing a Fatty Arbuckle-type actor on behalf of a movie studio hoping to catch him in a morals-clause violation — then landing himself in hot water when he tries to charge the studio more money after catching an up-and-coming starlet in the act as well.Mason’s inner circle includes his jovial partner, Pete Strickland (Shea Whigham); E.B. Jonathan (John Lithgow), an attorney who hooks him up with jobs; Della Street (Juliet Rylance), Jonathan’s legal secretary; and Lupe (Veronica Falcón), a pilot with whom he has extremely enthusiastic sex … when she isn’t busy trying to buy his farm in order to make room for the airstrip from which she operates.It’s through E.B. that Perry lands the case that kick-starts the episode, in gruesome fashion. In a sequence directed with sinister verve by the HBO mainstay Tim Van Patten (“The Sopranos,” “Boardwalk Empire,” “Game of Thrones,” you name it), the parents of baby Charlie Dodson race to rescue their son from kidnappers who’ve placed him on the Angels Flight railway, promising to free him in exchange for an exorbitant ransom. When his mom and dad retrieve him, they discover, to their horror, that he is already dead, and that his eyes have been sewn open. (Yeah, we’re a long way from Raymond Burr.)Perry and company come to the case by way of the wealthy lumber magnate Herman Baggerly (Robert Patrick), a member of the parents’ church, led by a charismatic figure called Sister Alice. As he investigates, Mason runs afoul of the Los Angeles Police Department detectives assigned to the case.“I don’t trust the Los Angeles Police Department to do the job that’s needed,” Baggerly says. In today’s climate, that line packs a punch — even before we see one of those detectives execute the cabal of kidnappers, with whom it’s clear he was in cahoots, in cold blood.Corruption, torture, murder, full-frontal nudity, foul mouths, a dead baby: “Perry Mason” boasts the full complement of HBO’s genre-revisionist techniques. But Rhys is the glue holding it all together. I can’t recall the last time I saw a lead performance this embodied, for lack of a better word; Rhys’s every glance, expression and gesture seems made of weariness the way Abraham Lincoln’s cabin was made out of logs. Credit must also go to the costume department, led by Emma Potter, who dress him exclusively in clothes that look as if they were pulled out of the hamper into which they were tossed three days earlier. When we discover that Mason bribes the mortician in order to steal clothes worn by people who have died in them, Yeah, that sounds about right is the only appropriate response.And Rhys’s performance as Perry isn’t just empty, woe-is-me sad-sackery. Perhaps it’s his alluded-to experiences in the Great War bleeding through, but he comes across like a man who is the way he is because the awfulness of the world really, really gets to him. (“Worst thing you’ve ever seen,” the mortician tells him about the dead baby. “What do you know what I’ve seen?” comes the reply.) When Perry examines the baby’s mutilated corpse, delicately extracting a thread used to stitch the infant’s eyes open, the camera lingers on his face as he chokes back horror and sorrow. A slight tremor of the lower lip is the only physical catharsis his body allows him.It’s that shot, more than anything else, that sold me on this version of the character and his journey through Los Angeles’s 1930s underbelly. Any show that kills a child owes it to its audience to take that killing seriously; this sounds like a truism, but such killings can provide cheap pathos and shock value in unscrupulous hands. Despite its Hollywood glitz and Perry’s Murphy’s Law antics, “Perry Mason” is, at first blush, a show that understands the gravity of what it has chosen to present to both its protagonist and its audience.It’s also a show that provides the viewer with some unalloyed pleasures. I, personally, am a sucker for the lilt of Lithgow’s voice, and I’ll watch Whigham act in just about anything. Van Patten directs the episode with verve, eschewing the more staid tones of typical prestige fare.Similarly, the jazzy score by Terence Blanchard stands in stark relief against both the symphonic approach and the burbly synths that have become the industry standard. “Perry Mason” doesn’t really look or sound or feel like anything else on television right now. That’s a case I’m willing to take.From the case files:“Everybody’s up to something. Everybody’s got an angle, hiding something. And everybody is guilty.” This drunken rant by Perry, delivered to his love interest Lupe, sure sounds like a mission statement for the show to me.Gayle Rankin does excellent work as Emily Dodson, the slain baby’s mother. Her scene with Mason, in which she IDs him as a veteran from the way he holds his cigarette — instinctively shielding the ember with his hand to avoid being seen in the dark —and ruefully remarks on his son’s age, is appropriately painful to watch.When the opening title appears above a street scene, Perry walks right through the letters, as if the show can’t wait to get underway. It’s a subtle trick, but it adds a sense of urgency. More