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    John Mulaney Says His New Show Is Netflix’s Mistake

    The comedian said Netflix “picked up this show by accident. They thought that it was a true-crime documentary because I look like a disappeared boy.”Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Live From L.A. (Again)Netflix launched its new late-night show, “Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney,” on Wednesday. In his monologue, Mulaney promised 12 episodes of a “jazzlike, unpredictable talk show.”“I’m not gonna lie — we’ve been working on this episode all day. Some crew got here as early as 9 a.m.” — JOHN MULANEY“I can’t do coke or Adderall anymore, so I’m making it your problem. Will this show get my heart rate up to the level where I feel alive? We shall see.” — JOHN MULANEYJohn Mulaney is your problem now. #EverybodysLive pic.twitter.com/xiIT2JYFlu— Netflix (@netflix) March 13, 2025

    The comedian reminded viewers that he’d had an earlier show with a similar concept: a six-episode live series called “Everybody’s in L.A.” that ended last May. While fans enjoyed its unpredictability, the show’s name was a turnoff in Netflix screen tests, he said: “It turns out that people around the country don’t like L.A.”“After the fires, I said, ‘Maybe they like us more now,’ so we tested it again, and it turns out, no. People still didn’t.” — JOHN MULANEY“Netflix actually picked up this show by accident. They thought that it was a true-crime documentary because I look like a disappeared boy.” — JOHN MULANEYMulaney also referred to his much-scrutinized personal life with his wife, the actress Olivia Munn, and their two young children before moving on to the night’s guests.“Yes, I have two children now. One was controversial; one you all seem to be cool with, so thank you so much for that.” — JOHN MULANEYThe Punchiest Punchlines (Bad Education Edition)“Trump just announced he’s firing 50 percent of the Department of Education. Even worse, Trump said, ‘Don’t worry, the other 60 percent will still have jobs.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Trump, really, he’s Thanos-ed the Department of Education.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The new secretary of education is Linda McMahon, who’s married to Vince McMahon of the W.W.E. Could you imagine getting fired by the wife of the disgraced wrestling meathead? Don’t let the folding chair hit you on the way out.” — JIMMY KIMMELWe 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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    What Is Lorazepam? The Drug From ‘The White Lotus’ Carries Real Risks

    Prescription drugs like lorazepam — used to treat anxiety, panic attacks and sleep disorders — play a role in popular TV shows like “The White Lotus” and “The Pitt.”Victoria Ratliff, the wealthy financier’s wife on season 3 of HBO’s “The White Lotus,” has a problem: She keeps popping pills.And her drug of choice, the anti-anxiety medication lorazepam, has left her a little loopy.In the show, which follows guests vacationing at a fictional resort, Victoria pairs her medication with wine, which leads her to nod off at the dinner table. Sometimes she slurs her words.When she notices that her pill supply is mysteriously dwindling, she asks her children if they’re stealing them.“You don’t have enough lorazepam to get through one week at a wellness spa?” her daughter, Piper, asks.“The White Lotus” is not the only show to recently feature these drugs. The new Max series “The Pitt,” which takes place in an emergency department, includes a story line about a benzodiazepine called Librium.This isn’t a case of Hollywood taking dramatic liberties. Benzodiazepines such as lorazepam and chlordiazepoxide are notorious for having the potential to be highly addictive. They may also come with difficult — sometimes fatal — withdrawal symptoms.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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    5 Years After Covid Closed the Theaters, Audiences Are Returning

    Broadway is almost back, and pop music tours and sports events are booming. But Hollywood, museums and other cultural sectors have yet to bounce back.It was five years ago today — March 12, 2020 — that the widening coronavirus pandemic forced Broadway to go dark, museums to shut their doors, concert halls and opera houses to go silent and stadiums and arenas to remain empty.At the time, they hoped to reopen in a month. It took many a year and a half.Since live performances resumed, the recovery has been uneven, but there are signs that audiences are finally coming back. Here’s a snapshot of where things stand:Broadway is 95 percent back.It’s been a slow road back for Broadway, but the industry is finally nearing its prepandemic levels. Attendance so far this season is at about 95 percent of what it was at the same point in the 2018-2019 season, its last full season before the pandemic, when it was setting records.“Oh, Mary!” has been a surprise hit this season, reminding the industry that shows can work without known I.P. or famous stars. “Wicked” is defying gravity thanks to the renewed interest brought by the film adaptation. For the first time since 2018, all 41 Broadway theaters have had shows in them this season. And there are more shows than usual regularly grossing more than $1 million a week.The crowds have returned to Broadway, and to the Times Square area. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut — and this is a big but — profitability is down. That’s because the costs of producing on Broadway keep rising, so even reasonably strong ticket sales are not enough.Beyond Times Square, the picture is decidedly mixed. Touring Broadway shows have been selling quite strongly. But nonprofit theaters, both Off Broadway and in cities across the country, are struggling. Having burned through the government assistance that came at the height of the pandemic, many regional theaters are now reporting budget deficits and are programming fewer shows and attracting smaller audiences than they did previously.— More

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    Jimmy Kimmel Slams Trump’s Skills of Shill for Tesla

    “But why should he, when he did a big commercial for them today, absolutely free?” Kimmel said after the president brought some of Elon Musk’s cars to the White House.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.No Such Thing as Bad Publicity?Tesla’s stock has been plunging, so much so that Jimmy Kimmel thinks Elon Musk “may have to fire himself.” But Musk got a boost from President Trump, who promised to buy a Tesla and had some brought to the White House on Tuesday.“The guy has spent the entire campaign screaming about how awful electric cars are, is now buying an electric car. Of course, there’s no chance he will actually pay for this electric car. But why should he, when he did a big commercial for them today, absolutely free?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I remember the time he saved Party City by buying a kazoo — it was heroic.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I would imagine they probably don’t even have a place to charge it at the White — maybe he’ll make little Marco run on a hamster wheel.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Watching Donald Trump check out a Tesla — it was like watching a monkey with an iPad.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“He had them line up five Teslas on the White House driveway so Trump and Elon could shoot a car commercial on government property.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“He’s finally turned into the used-car salesman we all knew he was all along.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Just the idea that we all now have to dig deep to help the richest man in the world who’s down to his last $324 billion sell cars is preposterous.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Sorry Not Sorry Edition)“There’s a silver lining on the implosion of the world economy — it’s bad for Elon Musk, too.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Right now the economy is so bad, Elon Musk is thinking about laying off Donald Trump.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yesterday alone, Musk lost more than $16 billion. Wow! Wow! To put that in perspective, that’s more than some people make in a year.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Tesla stock has plummeted 50 percent since December, and there’s a good reason for that. It’s a phenomenon economists call ‘Everybody [expletive] hates that guy.’” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingSting and Shaggy pulled from their most popular lyrics to sing about the economy on Tuesday’s “The Tonight Show.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightThe “White Lotus” star Parker Posey will chat with Seth Meyers on Wednesday’s “Late Night.”Also, Check This OutIn “Long Bright River,” Amanda Seyfried plays a Philadelphia police officer who investigates the murders of vulnerable young women.David Holloway/PeacockAmanda Seyfried played against type with her new role as a Philadelphia beat cop in a new Peacock series, “Long Bright River.” More

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    A Ferocious Paul Mescal Stars in a Brutal ‘Streetcar’

    Desire comes a distant second to violence in a Brooklyn revival of the Tennessee Williams classic.“The sky that shows around the dim white building is a peculiarly tender blue, almost a turquoise, which invests the scene with a kind of lyricism and gracefully attenuates the atmosphere of decay.”Not bloody likely.Those stage directions from Tennessee Williams’s published script for “A Streetcar Named Desire” may amount to a mission statement and an artist’s credo but, 78 years after the play’s debut, they are no longer marching orders.At any rate, no one follows them. The New Orleans neighborhood in which Williams set the action — called Elysian Fields, no less — has for decades been radically reimagined: as a shoe box, a hangar, a manga, a loo. In his New York Times review, Ben Brantley called that last one, directed by Ivo van Hove, “A Bathtub Named Desire.”Now Rebecca Frecknall, whose Broadway production of “Cabaret” is no one’s idea of subtle, takes up the cudgel. In the revival of “Streetcar” that opened Tuesday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, a transfer from London starring the ferocious Paul Mescal, she literalizes the idea of brutal relocation. You will not find a tender blue sky or even a white building, let alone any lyricism, on Madeleine Girling’s square, wood-plank set. Elevated on concrete blocks, in the gritty dark of the Harvey Theater, she makes the world of Stanley and Stella Kowalski — and of their frail interloper, Blanche DuBois — look like a boxing ring.There is some justice in that: Stanley is, after all, Williams’s half-despised, half-beloved icon of a brute. He enters the first scene bearing a package of bloody meat, which he throws at Stella to cook — a gesture she finds briefly annoying but that also turns her on. No less than her husband, she looks forward to making what he calls “noise in the night” and getting “the colored lights going.” That’s his kind of lyricism. And when Blanche, Stella’s impoverished older sister, arrives in desperation for an indefinite stay, we see its flip side as he sets out to destroy her because he can.In Anjana Vasan’s excellent performance as Stella, our critic writes, we sense her love for her sister, even more than the usual weak-tea toleration.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe 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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    Meghan Sussex? Even Meghan Markle’s Last Name Inspires Debates.

    The Duchess of Sussex caused a stir on “With Love, Meghan” when she said Sussex was her last name. But does that break from royal tradition?In “Romeo and Juliet,” the star-crossed heroine asks: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.”People far less infatuated have wrestled with this concept for hundreds of years: How much should a name signify, and does it actually affect what or who a person is?Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, would like a word.In her new Netflix series, “With Love, Meghan,” the duchess, who is married to Prince Harry, told the actress Mindy Kaling that her last name was Sussex, correcting Ms. Kaling, who had referred to her by a more familiar name: Meghan Markle.“It’s so funny, too, that you keep saying Meghan Markle,” Meghan said in the second episode of the series, which premiered last week. “You know I’m Sussex now.”Meghan cited the importance of sharing a last name with her children.“I didn’t know how meaningful it would be to me but it just means so much to go, ‘This is our family name, our little family name,’” she said.Ms. Kaling, who initially seemed surprised, replied, “Well, now I know and I love it.”It’s understandable that Meghan, whose representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment, insists on usage of what she feels is the correct form of her name. But as with most Meghan-related news, the clip quickly made waves online as people took to social media to criticize her. Some commenters thought she was being pretentious, and others called her out for seemingly having confused her royal house with the family’s surname.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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    In ‘The Great Privation,’ Fending Off the Body Snatchers

    Nia Akilah Robinson’s new play, for Soho Rep, digs into an ugly historical practice.In the middle of the night in autumn 1832, a mother and her teenage daughter stand guard beside a freshly filled grave. They are not certain they need to be there, but Missy Freeman, the newly widowed mother, suspects the rumors are true: that body snatchers, also known as resurrectionists, have been digging up Black corpses and stealing them away.When a young white man appears in the darkness, Missy knows he has come to disinter her husband, Moses, dead of cholera and laid to rest only that afternoon. With impeccable composure, she tells the grave robber, who is a medical student, that they are there to pray. He backs off, menacingly.“Be sure to not get caught by the police,” he says. “Ladies shouldn’t be out so late.”In Nia Akilah Robinson’s new play, “The Great Privation (How to flip ten cents into a dollar),” Missy (Crystal Lucas-Perry) and her daughter, 16-year-old Charity (Clarissa Vickerie), will not be deterred from keeping vigil while Moses’s body decomposes.As Charity says: “We must make it to three days with Daddy untouched. Then the bad men won’t return.”Directed by Evren Odcikin for Soho Rep, “The Great Privation” rummages around in the tainted soil of the United States and pulls up some shameful old skeletons for inspection. From the start, though, a defiant light radiates through this tale, and comedy shares space with disquietude. Warm, dexterous central performances from Lucas-Perry and Vickerie (a graduate student at Juilliard making her Off Broadway debut) have a lot to do with that.Informed by the history of Black bodies being used without consent in medical research, the play takes place on the same plot of land two centuries apart. In the 1800s, it is the burial ground at the African Baptist Church in Philadelphia, not far from Jefferson Medical College. In our time, it is a sleep-away summer camp where Minnie Chillous (Lucas-Perry), née Freeman, and her daughter, Charity (Vickerie), happen to be working as counselors alongside the amusingly dramatic John (Miles G. Jackson) and their strait-laced supervisor, Cuffee (Holiday).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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    Tony Hinchcliffe, the Trump Rally Comedian, Lands a Netflix Deal

    Hinchcliffe’s set at Madison Square Garden in October drew sharp criticism after he described Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”The stand-up comedian Tony Hinchcliffe has landed a deal at Netflix months after angering people with his insults about Latinos and other minority groups at a New York rally when Donald J. Trump was running for president.The deal for three comedy specials under Hinchcliffe’s “Kill Tony” brand is part of an attempt by streaming services to appeal to Trump voters. Amazon Prime Video announced on Monday that several seasons of “The Apprentice,” the NBC reality show that bolstered Trump’s public profile in the early 2000s, would soon be available on the streaming service.Hinchcliffe’s specials will feature a mix of established comedians and surprise celebrity guests, Netflix said in a news release on Tuesday. The first special will be filmed at Comedy Mothership in Austin, Texas, and will arrive on the platform on April 7. Hinchcliffe will also receive his own stand-up special in the deal.Hinchcliffe is known for his “roast” style of comedy and his “Kill Tony” podcast, which is recorded live each week from Austin. He said in a statement that he was excited to share his show, which started with 12 audience members in 2013, with the world.“To think that I can pull a name out of a bucket and that person will be performing standup and an improvised interview on the largest streaming service in the world is both exciting and frightening,” Hinchcliffe said. “It’s the most spontaneous and improvised show that is out there and the creative freedom given to us by Netflix to keep the show in its pure form is a comedian’s dream.”Hinchcliffe was among the comedians who roasted the retired N.F.L. quarterback Tom Brady in a Netflix special last year that was viewed 13.8 million times in its first week on the streaming platform. His segment included homophobic remarks and comments about slavery.The comedian’s public profile grew even more in October after taking the stage at the Trump rally at Madison Square Garden, where he made insults and vulgar statements that leaned on offensive stereotypes about Jews, Latinos and African Americans. He received intense backlash after calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage,” drawing condemnation from celebrities like Bad Bunny, Jennifer Lopez and Lin-Manuel Miranda. More