Television

Subterms

    Latest story

    125 Shares19 Views

    Hollywood Turns to Actors’ Strike After Writers Agree to Deal

    by

    The studios and the actors’ union haven’t spoken for more than two months, but a deal is needed before the entertainment industry can fully return.Hollywood’s actors are back in the spotlight.With screenwriters reaching a tentative agreement with the major entertainment studios on a new labor deal on Sunday night, one big obstacle stands in the way of the film and TV industry roaring back to life: ending the strike with tens of thousands of actors.The two sides have not spoken in more than two months, and no talks are scheduled.Leaders of SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union, have indicated a willingness to negotiate, but the studios made a strategic decision in early August to focus on reaching a détente with the writers first. A big reason was the rhetoric of Fran Drescher, the president of the actors’ union, who made one fiery speech after another following the strike, including one in which she denounced studio executives as “land barons of a medieval time.”“Eventually, the people break down the gates of Versailles,” Ms. Drescher said after the actors’ strike was called in July. “And then it’s over. We’re at that moment right now.”Ms. Drescher has been less vocal in recent weeks, however. Only a resolution with the actors will determine when tens of thousands of workers — including camera operators, makeup artists, prop makers, set dressers, lighting technicians, hairstylists, cinematographers — return to work.The actors’ union offered congratulations to the Writers Guild of America, which represents more than 11,000 screenwriters, in a statement on Sunday night, adding that it was eager to review the tentative agreement with the studios. Still, it said it remained “committed to achieving the necessary terms for our members.”With a tentative deal in hand, the Writers Guild suspended picketing. But protests by actors will begin again on Tuesday, after a break for Yom Kippur on Monday. “We need everyone on the line Tuesday-Friday,” the actress Frances Fisher, a member of the SAG-AFTRA negotiating committee, said on Sunday on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “Show us your #Solidarity!”Dozens of Writers Guild members vowed to support the actors. “I know there’s a huge sign of relief reverberating through the town right now, but it’s not over for any of us until SAG-AFTRA gets their deal,” Amy Berg, a Writers Guild strike captain, wrote on X.Their support will go only so far, however. Writers Guild negotiators were unsuccessful in receiving the contractual right to honor other unions’ picket lines; writers will be required to return to work, perhaps before a ratification vote is final.It has been 74 days since the actors’ union and representatives of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of the studios, have talked. That will probably soon change given the high stakes of salvaging the 2024 theatrical box office, which will be in considerable jeopardy should Hollywood not be able to restart production within the next month. The TV production window for the remainder of the year is also closing, given the coming holidays.Restarting talks with the actors’ union is a bit more complicated than it sounds. For a start, SAG-AFTRA officials will need time to scrutinize the deal points achieved by the Writers Guild; those wins and compromises will inform a new bargaining strategy for the actors. Also, talks between studios and writers restarted only after leaders on both sides spent time back-channeling about the thorniest issues and seeing if there was a willingness to negotiate. Studios are likely to try the same strategy with the actors.The soonest that negotiations between actors and the studios could restart is next week, according to a person directly involved in the process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the strike.Neither SAG-AFTRA nor the studio alliance commented on Monday.“There’s tremendous pressure on both sides to get this done,” said Bobby Schwartz, a partner at Quinn Emanuel and a longtime entertainment lawyer who has represented several of the major studios. “The deal that the Writers Guild and the studios struck economically could have been worked out in May, June. It didn’t need to go this long. I think the membership of SAG-AFTRA is going to say we’ve been out of work for months, we want to go back to work, we don’t want to be the ones that are keeping everybody else on the sidelines.”The dual strikes by the writers and the actors — the first time that has happened since 1960 — have effectively shut down TV and film production for months. The fallout has been significant, both inside and outside the industry. California’s economy alone has lost more than $5 billion, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom.Warner Bros. Discovery said this month that the impact from the labor disputes would reduce its adjusted earnings for the year by $300 million to $500 million. Additionally, share prices for other major media companies like Disney and Paramount have taken a hit in recent months.The industry took a meaningful step toward stabilization on Sunday night, though, with the tentative deal between the writers and studios all but ending a 146-day strike.The deal still needs to be approved by union leadership and ratified by rank-and-file screenwriters. “I’m waiting impatiently to see what the exact language is around A.I.,” said Joseph Vinciguerra, a Writers Guild member and a professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.The approval vote by union leadership is expected on Tuesday.Though the fine print of the terms has not been released, the agreement has much of what the writers had demanded, including increases in compensation for streaming content, concessions from studios on minimum staffing for television shows and guarantees that artificial intelligence technology will not encroach on writers’ credits and compensation.“We can say, with great pride, that this deal is exceptional — with meaningful gains and protections for writers in every sector of the membership,” the Writers Guild’s negotiating committee said in an email to members.On Monday, President Biden released a statement applauding the deal, saying it would “allow writers to return to the important work of telling the stories of our nation, our world — and of all of us.”The prospective writers’ deal should provide a blueprint for the actors, since many of their demands are similar.Union leaders for the actors said their compensation levels, as well as their working conditions, were worsened by the rise of streaming. Like screenwriters, actors have been terrified by the prospects of artificial intelligence. They are worried that it could be used to create digital replicas of their likenesses — or that performances could be digitally altered — without payment or approval, and are seeking significant guardrails to protect against that.The actors, however, have had several demands that the studios balked at, including a revenue-sharing agreement for successful streaming shows. The actors have also asked for significant wage increases, including an 11 percent raise in the first year of a new contract. The studios last proposed a 5 percent raise.Though the entertainment industry had been bracing for a work stoppage by the writers going back to the beginning of the year, the actors’ uncharacteristic resolve this past summer caught studio executives off guard.The actors last went on strike in 1980. By comparison, the writers previously walked out in 2007 for 100 days.The first worrying sign came in June when more than 60,000 actors authorized a walkout with 98 percent of the vote — a margin that even eclipsed the writers’ strike authorization. Then, as bargaining began, the studios saw the actors’ list of demands. Union leaders handed over a list that totaled 48 pages, nearly triple the size of their asks during the last contract negotiations in 2020.While bargaining was going on, more than 1,000 actors, including Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence and Ben Stiller, signed a letter to guild leadership saying that “we are prepared to strike.” The union called for a strike a little more than two weeks later. More

    More stories

    • 163 Shares12 Views

      in Television

      David McCallum, Actor in ‘NCIS’ and ‘The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,’ Dies at 90

      by

      An experienced character actor, he found fame in the 1960s as the enigmatic Illya Kuryakin, and again in the 2000s as an eccentric medical examiner on “N.C.I.S.”David McCallum, the Scottish-born actor who became a surprise sensation as the enigmatic Russian spy Illya Kuryakin on “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” in the 1960s and found television stardom again almost 40 years later on the hit series “N.C.I.S.,” died on Monday in New York. He was 90.“N.C.I.S.” announced his death in a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. The announcement did not include any further information.Trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, Mr. McCallum was an experienced character actor who could use an accent or an odd piece of clothing to give depth to a role. He played a wide range of parts across theater, film and television, from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in Central Park in 2000 to the voice of Professor Paradox on the animated television series “Ben 10: Ultimate Alien,” a decade later.He was hired in 1964 to play Illya Kuryakin, the Russian-accented sidekick of Robert Vaughn’s Napoleon Solo, on “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,” a tongue-in-cheek series about secret agents working for the fictional United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. His part was meant to be small; he had just four lines in the first episode. He suggested that Illya be made more interesting by having him be closemouthed about his personal life (“Nobody knows what Illya Kuryakin does when he goes home at night,” he told one interviewer) and somewhat antagonistic to Solo.The writers began to build up his character, and he became a fixture of the series and a two-time Emmy Award nominee. Somewhat to his annoyance, he also became a sex symbol.With his mysterious air, his Beatle haircut and his trademark black turtleneck, Mr. McCallum was a magnet for teenage fans. Sent on a publicity junket for the show to Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge in 1965, he was mobbed by screaming female students and had to be rescued by police officers.“McCallum’s motorcades are now, by order of the police chiefs of the cities he visits, forbidden to stop anywhere along the line of drive,” The New York Times reported in a 1965 profile. “If the entourage slowed, there would be carnage in the streets.”“The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” ended in 1968, and Mr. McCallum retreated happily to lower-profile roles. He continued to work steadily, mostly in B-movies and in supporting parts on television. He also played the title role in the short-lived series “The Invisible Man” (1975-76) and Emperor Joseph II in a revival of “Amadeus” on Broadway in 1999.But everywhere he went, he said, the Russian secret agent stalked him. “It’s been 30 years, but I can’t escape him,” he told The Times in 1998. “Illya Kuryakin is there 24 hours a day.”In 2003, the Russian shadow finally met his match in the bow-tied, bespectacled and eccentric medical examiner Donald Mallard, better known as Ducky, on the hit CBS crime series “N.C.I.S.” He remained with the show, which consistently ranked in the Nielsen Top 10, for two decades. He was still a member of the cast at his death.Mr. McCallum as the eccentric medical examiner Donald Mallard, known as Ducky, on the CBS crime series “N.C.I.S,” a role he played for 20 years.Monty Brinton/CBSIn interviews, Mr. McCallum said that besides Julius Caesar, Dr. Mallard was his favorite role, in part because it taught him so much about forensics. He studied with pathologists in Los Angeles and even sat in on autopsies, learning enough that the show’s writers would ask him for technical advice.David Keith McCallum Jr. was born on Sept. 19, 1933, into a musical family in Glasgow. His father was the first violinist for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London; his mother, Dorothy Dorman, was a cellist. He would later tell interviewers that his Scotch Presbyterian upbringing had left him emotionally circumscribed.“We Scots, we tend to be awfully tight inside,” he told TV Guide in 1965. “It has hurt me as an actor to be so — so naturally restricted.”Expected to follow in the family footsteps and pursue a career in music, he enrolled in the Royal Academy of Music to study oboe. But he found himself drawn to acting and switched to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. (He never completely lost interest in music, however; at the height of his “U.N.C.L.E.” fame, Capitol Records released several albums under his name, on which he conducted instrumental renditions of pop hits.)Mr. McCallum was drafted into the British military in 1951 and served two years, including 10 months in what is now Ghana as a small-arms expert. Not long after his discharge, he signed with the Rank Organization, a British production company, and began acting both in movies and on television.He met Jill Ireland, already a rising actress in Britain, when they were both cast in the Rank production “Robbery Under Arms” in 1957. He proposed seven days after they met, and they married that spring. In 1961, when he was cast as Judas Iscariot in “The Greatest Story Ever Told” (the movie would not be completed and released until 1965), the couple moved to Los Angeles.They appeared to flourish. They had three children. She became a busy TV actress and made several guest appearances on “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,” playing three different characters.But the strain of Mr. McCallum’s stardom took a toll on their marriage, and she left him for the actor Charles Bronson, whom she had met when Mr. McCallum and Mr. Bronson were both filming “The Great Escape” (1963). Less than a year after their divorce in 1967, Mr. McCallum married Katherine Carpenter, a model.She survives him. Further information about his survivors was not immediately available. Mr. McCallum and his wife lived in Manhattan. The Associated Press said that CBS said he died at a Manhattan hospital but did not explain why he had been hospitalized.When “N.C.I.S.” made Mr. McCallum a television star for the second time, he found fame much less oppressive than he had the first time. “In New York now I leave 15 minutes — because I walk everywhere in New York — between appointments because I am going to be stopped on the street to talk about N.C.I.S. for at least 15 minutes,” he told BBC Radio in a 2009 interview.“I love it,” he said, when asked if he ever grew tired of that kind of attention. “I’ve never got fed up with anything in my whole life.” More

    • 138 Shares24 Views

      in Television

      What’s on TV This Week: ‘The Golden Bachelor’ and ‘The Irrational’

      by

      A spinoff of the popular dating show joins the ABC franchise. And NBC premieres a new crime procedural show.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Sept. 25-Oct. 1. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE VOICE 8 p.m. on NBC. Niall Horan, John Legend and Gwen Stefani are welcoming another a new judge to join them in their red swivel chairs: the country-music star Reba McEntire. Per usual, the season will begin with blind auditions.BELOW DECK MEDITERRANEAN 9 p.m. on Bravo. You all thought I was done talking about the Below Deck franchise? Nope! Captain Sandy Yawn will be back at the helm of this show and also a new boat. Some familiar cast returns (including the deckhand Luka Brunton, who was on TV screens just last week as the crew said goodbye to each other on “Below Deck Down Under.”) and we’ll also get to know a new bosun, chef and a stew. If you want to make the show more enjoyable, take a drink every time Sandy micromanages or mentions the infamous slide.Jesse L. Martin plays the professor Alec Mercer on “The Irrational.”Sergei Bachlakov/NBCTHE IRRATIONAL 10 p.m. on NBC. Apparently 2023 is the year that cable TV is bringing back the art of the crime procedural a la “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” or “Criminal Minds.” This new series follows the behavioral science professor Alec Mercer (Jesse L. Martin) as he uses his expertise on psychology and body language to solve high-stakes crimes.TuesdayDANCING WITH THE STARS 8 p.m. on ABC. Though this is the 32nd season of this show, things are feeling new: There is a new host (Julianne Hough joins Alfonso Ribeiro), a new pro dancer (Rylee Arnold) and, of course, new celebrity contestants. This season is a little trickier than others because of the ongoing Hollywood strikes. A writer on staff is a member of the Writers Guild of America, for instance, and many of the contestants are members of SAG-AFTRA union, which represents TV and movie actors. Though it makes things a little more complicated, “DWTS” also continued amid the 2007-8 writers’ strike.SAVIOR COMPLEX 9 p.m. on HBO. In 2010, Renee Bach, an evangelical missionary from the United States, went to Uganda to set up a charity hospital. She was 20 years old and didn’t have a medical degree. In five years, Bach said that her hospital took in 940 children — and 105 of them died. In 2020, she settled a lawsuit after two mothers of children who had died in her care sued. This three-part documentary examines the lead-up and the aftermath.WednesdaySURVIVOR 8 p.m. on CBS. This season’s castaways are headed to Fiji and are going to be divided up into three tribes of six people. The man we all know and love, Jeff Probst, will be back to host as the season gets underway with a new 90-minute episode.ThursdayTHE GOLDEN BACHELOR 8 p.m. on ABC. The host, Jesse Palmer, is working overtime to get his check this month with two new “Bachelor” franchise shows premiering back to back. First up, we have the new series with the 72-year-old bachelor from Indiana, Gerry Turner, and the women vying for his heart. Since Instagram and influencing isn’t as much the rage with Boomers and Gen Xers, we will hopefully have less of the “here for the right reasons” conversations. Although, my grandfather loved scrolling TikTok, so who really knows?Rachel Recchia and Jesse Palmer on “Bachelor in Paradise.”ABC/Craig SjodinBACHELOR IN PARADISE 9 p.m. on ABC. Jesse Palmer travels to Mexico for the new season of “Paradise.” We know the drill by now: singles who have previously been on “The Bachelor” or “The Bachelorette” head down to Puerto Vallarta with the hope of another chance at love.FridayTHE NEW YORK TIMES PRESENTS: HOW TO FIX A PAGEANT 10 p.m. on FX. The third season of this stand-alone documentary series begins with a look into the world of pageants. Crystle Stewart, a beauty pageant titleholder, became the president of the Miss USA organization in 2020. Three years later, she left the role. This episode features an interview with Stewart after her departure.SaturdayLeonardo DiCaprio in “The Wolf of Wall Street.”Mary Cybulski/Paramount PicturesTHE WOLF OF WALL STREET (2013) 9:30 p.m. on IFC. Jordan Belfort, a corrupt stock trader played by Leonardo DiCaprio, becomes simultaneously lauded and reviled onscreen in this movie about greed directed by Martin Scorsese. What makes the movie “a vital and troubling document of the present is not so much Jordan’s business plan — he tells us repeatedly that it’s too complicated and boring to explain — as his approach to life,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times.SundayFAMILY GUY 9:30 p.m. on Fox. This beloved and long-running adult cartoon is back for its 22nd season and things are starting out with … an accidental baby? Meg agrees to be a surrogate, but when the couple never comes to pick up their baby, the Griffins must welcome another family member. More

    • 125 Shares28 Views

      in Television

      On ‘Golden Bachelor,’ Looking for Love and a Pickleball Partner

      by

      The latest “Bachelor” spinoff stars singles who are 60 and older, a largely ignored demographic in the ever-growing world of dating shows.Drivers in Los Angeles heading north on La Cienega Boulevard these days might notice a bronzed gentleman smiling down at them from billboards poised on either side of the street.He is Gerry Turner, an Indiana retiree who used to work in the food distribution industry. But as one of the billboards explains, those were not the qualifications that led to his becoming the star of the newest “Bachelor” spinoff.“He’s hot. He’s sexy. He’s 72.”The appraisal was taken from a recent headline about Turner, who as the first “Golden Bachelor” is the center of a new spin on the franchise that features singles 60 and older.“This is certainly the first time in a ‘Bachelor’ campaign that we used a quote from AARP in our billboards,” said Shannon Ryan, who oversees the show’s marketing.That “The Bachelor” is trying a slight variation on a tested formula is no revelation. The show’s myriad spinoffs have included “The Bachelorette,” “Bachelor in Paradise,” “The Bachelor” in Canada, “The Bachelor” in wintry weather, “The Bachelor” with a cash prize, and “The Bachelor” featuring people who work in the music industry.But in all of those variations on the theme, most of the eligible singles have been young, fresh-faced 20- or 30-somethings looking to marry for the first time. In “The Golden Bachelor,” which premieres on Thursday, the nearly two dozen women vying for Turner’s attention are between 60 and 75 and include divorcées, widows, mothers and grandmothers.Sitting in the show’s Mediterranean-style mansion in Agoura Hills, Calif., last month, a few hours before an evening of filming began, Bennett Graebner, one of the showrunners, recalled the new cast’s giddy introduction to the lavish home, with its infinity pool and Jacuzzis that look out onto the tree-dotted hills.At first, he said, the contestants’ reactions were similar to the ones he has seen over his 15 years as a producer for “The Bachelor.”“They ran around and looked at their bedrooms and yelled off the balcony, and we said, ‘OK, this feels like “The Bachelor,”’” Graebner said. “And they came down to the kitchen and had mimosas and they were doing toasts, and we said, ‘OK, this feels like “The Bachelor.”’”“And then,” he went on, “one woman said, ‘Let’s toast to Social Security!’”He hadn’t heard that one before.With “The Golden Bachelor,” ABC is recognizing that a core segment of its audience — the network’s median viewer age is 64 — has thus far been largely ignored in the ever-growing array of dating shows. (The median age drops to 42 for ABC shows streaming on Hulu.)In recent years, some programs have experimented with older participants, though not on this level and not with much success.In Netflix’s “Dating Around,” Leonard, a 70-year-old private investigator, became a fan favorite.NetflixIn “Dating Around,” Netflix’s first original dating series, which had its debut the year before “Love Is Blind” became a global phenomenon, the fan favorite was Leonard, a 70-year-old private investigator. On his dinner dates, he reminisced about doing LSD in his younger years and danced the Lindy Hop with one woman on the sidewalk.Last year, executive producers behind the popular dating show “Love Island” introduced a new show called “My Mom, Your Dad” on HBO Max, in which college-age adults watched their parents dating each other from a secret viewing room. The show didn’t last long, but an adaptation in Britain called “My Mum, Your Dad” just had its finale.And then there’s “MILF Manor” on TLC, in which eight mothers in their 40s, 50s and 60s found themselves at a Mexican hotel in a dating pool that consisted of their adult sons.Howard Lee, the president of TLC, said that “MILF Manor” intrigued the network because of its age bracket, which stuck out from the deluge of dating show pitches he gets featuring people in their 20s and 30s.“For the first time, this was a series that didn’t go in that direction,” he said. “MILF Manor” had a viral moment on social media — partly driven by its similarity to a “30 Rock” gag — but it is not yet clear whether it will get a second season.With “The Golden Bachelor,” in which the participants are as young as 60, the idea is getting its tryout in an altogether different league. After more than two decades, “The Bachelor” franchise remains a reality juggernaut, and “The Golden Bachelor” will be one of ABC’s biggest releases this fall, in part because of the network’s narrowed list of offerings during the Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikes.If “The Golden Bachelor” succeeds, expect more opportunities to arise for senior singles to look for love on television.The showrunners said a broader cultural shift toward embracing, rather than hiding, aging helped pave the way for this show.“Martha Stewart is on the cover of Sports Illustrated at 80 or so years old,” said Jason Ehrlich, one of three “Golden Bachelor” showrunners. “John Stamos was posting photos of himself in the shower nude for his 60th birthday. There seems to be a moment where there’s an appetite for this.”“Bachelor” producers have been talking about a show like this for about a decade. Their efforts to make it a reality started in earnest in 2019, and they began circulating ads to recruit “seniors looking for love” in 2020. But Covid-19 put the idea on hold. (“This is not the show to make in the middle of a pandemic,” Graebner said.)In “My Mom, Your Dad,” college-age adults watched from a secret viewing room as their parents go on dates with one another.MaxWhen the producers returned to the concept earlier this year, they rediscovered Turner’s audition tape. In it he explains that he is ready to find another partner after losing his wife of 43 years, whom he met in high school, to a sudden infection.In an interview, Turner, a father and grandfather, said he is “very, very grateful, not just for myself but for people my age, that this show has been developed and it has come to reality.”The women of “The Golden Bachelor” brought into the mansion a certain self-assured humor that comes with age, the show’s producers said. For example, the cast debated for days whether it was Susan’s meatballs or Edith’s guacamole that gave the house gas. And in Thursday’s premiere episode, when one of the women steps out of the limousine and greets Turner she opens with one thing they both have in common: hearing aids.The women’s fun facts include that Christina’s first concert was the Beatles in 1964 and that Kathy is “OBSESSED” with Christmas. Several of the participants, including Turner, share an enthusiasm for pickleball. And some of the women also have long careers behind them; Marina, 60, has three master’s degrees.“When we cast for the other shows, some of the younger kids come to us and they have a feeling that they need to present a version of themselves that we want to see,” said Claire Freeland, the third “Golden Bachelor” showrunner. “These women were just themselves from the jump.”When dating shows have included older people in the past, it has often been as a kind of gimmick. The original “Dating Game,” which premiered in 1965, once brought on Kathryn Minner, an actress who was known for playing the “little old lady” characters on TV, movies and, most famously, in an ad campaign for Dodge vehicles.“The Bachelor” has always been fond of puns and stunts, and the golden edition is likely to have plenty of age-related bits. In the mansion, there is a supply of Werther’s Originals — just like in your grandmother’s living room — and the show’s promo introducing the female contestants includes footage of a woman cleaning her glasses and another slipping on pantyhose, to the tune of “Believe” by Cher.But the producers have tried to let the age-related humor be driven by the participants themselves.“We’re never laughing at them, but we are certainly laughing with them,” Ehrlich said. He said he studied the sitcom “The Golden Girls” to find interesting conversation topics to pull out if things get dull.The showrunners insist that this is not just a show for the older viewers of “The Bachelor,” about 43 percent of whom are 55 and older, according to a 2020 YouGov poll.They think “The Golden Bachelor” has the potential to bring generations together to watch a more-wholesome version of the franchise. They also hope that a different kind of cast can entice lapsed “Bachelor” fans back into the fold and bring in new audiences who might have turned their noses up at the brand before now.The ads, for example, won’t have the typical reality show snippets of screaming-and-crying dramatics, opting instead for more uplifting messaging, said Ryan, the president of marketing for Disney Entertainment Television, which includes ABC.Even Eileen Zurbriggen, a feminist social psychologist who has argued in her research that dating TV shows like “The Bachelor” are actively harming young viewers’ capacity to start healthy relationships, in part by strengthening the perception of dating as a kind of game, said she saw potential for the show to work against gender clichés.“It is refreshing, in a culture that is still so youth obsessed, to see older women presented as interested in sex and still sexually desirable,” Zurbriggen said.April Jayne, who appeared on the dating show “MILF Manor,” said a cultural shift around aging has allowed her to embrace being 61 in her career rather than hide it.TLCApril Jayne, an actress, singer and fitness trainer who was one of the contestants on “MILF Manor,” said she spent much of her acting career hiding her age. Now at 61, she is seeing more work opportunities than ever before since her reality TV appearance.“Once you hit middle age, it does not mean you’re washed up,” Jayne said, though she noted that the 40-year age gap between her and the young man she was dating on the show was perhaps a bit too large.By the way, she added, if ABC happens to be casting for a “Golden Bachelorette,” she is interested and available.Callie Holtermann contributed reporting. More

    • 150 Shares71 Views

      in Television

      Lying in Comedy Isn’t Always Wrong, but Hasan Minhaj Crossed a Line

      by

      The stand-up’s penchant for making up stories goes beyond embellishment. When real people and real stakes are involved, a different standard applies.When I first heard that The New Yorker had published an exposé on the veracity of the stand-up comedy of Hasan Minhaj, I rolled my eyes.We’re fact-checking jokes now? Come on. Comedy is an art, not an op-ed. And honesty has always struck me as the most overrated virtue in comedy. But Clare Malone’s reporting in the piece is scrupulous and fair, if a little prosecutorial in its focus. It presents more questions than answers and should inspire some rethinking of the muddy relationship between comedy and truth.Digging into his last two specials, Malone reveals Hasan Minhaj as a comic who leans on fictions to make real-world arguments, putting himself closer to the center of news stories to make him seem more brave or wronged or in danger. To take one example, Minhaj says in “The King’s Jester” (2022) that after the government passed the Patriot Act in the wake of Sept. 11, an undercover F.B.I. informant named Brother Eric had infiltrated his childhood mosque and had dinner at his house. Minhaj recalls how he sniffed him out and, in a prank, asked about getting a pilot’s license, which led to a police officer throwing him against a car.The New Yorker found that there was such a man working in counterterrorism but that Minhaj never met him. Minhaj defended his fabrications as fibs in service to “emotional truth.” For someone in the running to be the next host of “The Daily Show,” that term sounds a little too much like Kellyanne Conway’s euphemism “alternative facts.”Amid plenty of critics online, Whoopi Goldberg was one of the few major figures who spoke up for Minhaj, saying on “The View” that embellishing in the name of a larger truth is what comics do. But here is where some more context would be helpful.Stand-up comedy was never expected to be factually accurate. Rodney Dangerfield, to be clear, got respect. In the setups for early jokes, Richard Pryor lied about having a Puerto Rican mother and living in a Jewish tenement. An old-school observational comic like Jerry Seinfeld has said all his comedy is made up, even his opinions.But in the past few decades, with the rise of “The Daily Show,” which has blurred lines between comedy and the news, as well as the proliferation of confessional solo shows that depend on dramatic revelations that dovetail nicely with jokes, the form has evolved and so have audiences’ assumptions. And they vary wildly depending on the artist.In Sebastian Maniscalco’s last special, “Is It Me?,” he told a story poking fun at a kid in his child’s class who identifies as a lion. Asked by The Daily Beast, he said that this wasn’t true, but that he used it because it puts “a mirror on society” — another kind of emotional truth. Minhaj’s inventions were part of the same tradition, one that deserves new scrutiny.Minhaj in “The King’s Jester.” Comics from Richard Pryor to Jerry Seinfeld to Sebastian Maniscalco have all invented details for their acts.Clifton Prescod/NetflixIt’s also important to point out that many current comics think seriously about their fictions, setting their own code. “I am quite strict about telling the truth,” Daniel Kitson once told me. “I am interested in engaging emotionally and I don’t want to be duplicitous.”In an interview with Taylor Tomlinson this year, she told me she cut a joke about being single after she started dating someone because even that minor white lie made her uncomfortable. Many other comics, like Kate Berlant, build unreliability into their acts. Others lie so overtly that it sets expectations. What’s tricky is that there is no one industry standard.The reality is that some comics have more leeway toying with the truth than others. All artists teach their audience how to view them, by the way they tell jokes, their style, the level of absurdity. What makes Hasan Minhaj such a troubling example is that his style, onstage and often off in interviews, suggested we should believe him.Minhaj is known for using visual aids the way a journalist would. He mixes clips of television news and photos from his life with a general tone of sincerity. The nature of his deceptions were peculiar. He didn’t invent stuff to make himself funnier. He did it to raise the stakes in the easiest, most self-regarding way possible. Lying in comedy isn’t necessarily wrong. But how you lie matters. Minhaj has told a story about his prom date reneging on the day of the dance because her parents didn’t want her seen in photos with a “brown boy.” He now admits to some untruths in this story, but not all, and left her perspective out. (The woman has said she and her family faced online threats for years.) This genre of fiction is a shortcut to sympathy, an unearned tug at the heartstrings. It’s not a capital crime, but it’s an unnecessary and risky one.Lies involving real people should add a new sense of obligation. The problem with only considering the standard of emotional truth is that it can blind you to the impact on the actual world outside your emotions. You could say that the emotional truth behind the Patriot Act was that the terrorism of Sept. 11 required extreme tactics to feel safe, but that doesn’t make the legislation right. The truth is usually more complex than the way you feel about it.Watching “The King’s Jester” now hits differently. In some ways, it’s more interesting than the first time I saw it, when it seemed mawkish. Some jokes, like his desperation for social media clout, seem like clues. And others come across as the work of a guilty conscience, like the moment when Minhaj faces the audience and says: “Everything here is built on trust.”This is the truth. Every comic has an unspoken pact with the audience. The one Seinfeld has is different from Minhaj’s, and part of the reason has nothing to do with their intentions. Whether or not critics like me think authenticity is important, it does matter to the audience. So does honesty. And comics understand that. It’s no accident that many of the political comedians working today, especially on television, employ researchers from traditional news sources. Getting facts right matters, especially when the comedy is about grave social issues.That’s not just because a comic’s credibility can take a hit. When stories told about racism, religious profiling or transgender identity are exposed as inventions, that can lead to doubt about the experiences of real people.Minhaj subbing in as a host on “The Daily Show.” Every comic has an unspoken pact with the audience.Matt Wilson/Comedy Central’s The Daily ShowWhen the storyteller Mike Daisey, making an argument about factory conditions in China, said he visited a sweatshop even though he hadn’t, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party used the resulting scandal to try to discredit all reporting by Western media. This kind of argument has only become more common. Look at Russell Brand’s defense against accusations of rape and grooming: He tried to discredit his accusers by saying you can’t trust the mainstream media.One of the most notable aspects of the Minhaj story is the lack of nuance in his response, the complete confidence he projects. It’s striking that he seemingly has no concerns about possibly deceiving some of his audience. His special is about his wife challenging him to take responsibility for how his words can negatively affect his family. One wonders if there will be any more introspection.In the summer, Minhaj interviewed President Barack Obama and began by bringing up his annual best-of lists, skeptically asking if he really consumes all of those books, albums and movies. When Obama said he did, Minhaj pushed back: “No, you didn’t.”Later on his podcast “Working It Out,” Mike Birbiglia asked Minhaj how he could be so bold with the ex-president. Minhaj said his question for Obama was “innocuous.” That seems like naïveté masquerading as savvy.If Obama admitted to lying about even something that inconsequential, it would be a global story. We live in a world where people have long peddled conspiracies about him and would jump on any deception as evidence of some broader scandal. There’s a temptation to respond to the onslaught of lies by thinking that the only way to fight back is to lie some more. But that has it wrong. To quote Minhaj, everything is built on trust.That trust operates differently for politicians and journalists than for artists, but it matters for us all. Treat it carelessly and the price can be steep. More

    • 138 Shares79 Views

      in Television

      Don’t Stop Believin’? Considering a TV Golden Age, 10 Years Later

      by

      “Difficult Men,” Brett Martin’s book about the prestige TV boom, has been rereleased in a 10th-anniversary edition. In an interview, he reflects on how TV has changed since he wrote it.Tony Soprano, Don Draper and Omar Little glower from the cover of “Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution,” Brett Martin’s canon-codifying 2013 book about the prestige TV boom of the 2000s. But as difficult and revolutionary as those fictional antiheroes were, the title just as well describes their brilliant, gnomic, sometimes cruel creators, like David Chase (“The Sopranos”), David Simon (“The Wire”) and Matthew Weiner (“Mad Men”).“Difficult Men,” whose 10th-anniversary edition was published in paperback this summer, is a history of the remarkable moment, starting nearly 25 years ago, when business imperatives and risk-taking executives empowered ornery writers with network experience and chips on their shoulders to create era-defining, artistically lasting programs.One of the book’s through lines was that these shows tended to revolve around men who resembled the way their creators saw themselves: as mavericks taking arms against bureaucratic inertia. It’s a theme that Martin, a New Orleans-based journalist, said he might de-emphasize today in favor of delving into the depth and richness of the characters.“The artistic triumph the original shows allowed,” Martin said earlier this month, “was to create all these real human stories and specific, idiosyncratic characters — which is more important than the easy antihero formulation.”The past decade has seen a societal reckoning with misconduct in the culture industries, including television. Some of the showrunner behavior Martin chronicled in his book — icing out disfavored writers, halting entire productions for petty personal whims, throwing tantrums — looks different now.In a new preface for the anniversary edition, Martin says that were he writing “Difficult Men” now, he would focus more on “the knotty question of how the same men who provided, in many ways, the most astute critiques of toxic male power that mainstream culture had ever seen could nevertheless end up confirming and recapitulating precisely the same dynamics in their own workplaces.”A 10th anniversary edition of “Difficult Men” was released this summer.Even in 2013, Martin held up counterexamples like the showrunners Alan Ball (“Six Feet Under”) and Vince Gilligan (“Breaking Bad”), who ran artistically successful programs while being, by all accounts, nice guys and good bosses.In other respects, 2013 turned out to be a convenient year for a book about this Golden Age of television. It was the year “Breaking Bad” ended and James Gandolfini, the “Sopranos” star, died. And it was the year that “House of Cards,” the first original series commissioned by Netflix, debuted. In a phone interview, Martin discussed why the shows he wrote about still hold up and how the emergence of streaming has affected prestige TV. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Was there one show that provoked you to write the book?It was “The Sopranos,” in both an abstract and a literal sense. I had been hired to write the official coffee table companion during the final season. I maybe outstayed my welcome, treated it like a real reporting job, was there for quite a long time and got a chance to peek behind the scenes. It was a revelation to me: the size of the operation, the ambition, the way people talked about their work — the sense of something very big being made. The number of times I had to explain what a showrunner was back then is, in and of itself, an indicator of what an alien world that was.It’s such a funny term.It just occurs to me what kind of a technical term “showrunner” is, how unromantic. It really is something that, like, the Teamsters would come up with. It’s so literal and so nonartistic: You keep things running. The term betrays the kind of factory mentality that applied to television at the time.Did you think of yourself as establishing a canon?It was very obvious what at least three of the four main shows that I was going to write about were, and most of the peripheral ones as well. In my original proposal, the fourth show was, actually, “Rescue Me” — which is a show whose first few seasons had been perhaps unfairly forgotten but felt very much in keeping with these other shows. It felt extremely daring in being one of the first shows where 9/11 was being treated in a fully rounded way. My first editor pushed me to include “Battlestar Galactica,” but it just really wasn’t my bag. And then “Breaking Bad” asserted itself as the book was being written and became very obviously the ending place. There were the other HBO shows, and “The Shield” was an important step as well, but there weren’t many examples I left out.Have any of the shows in the book not stood up as much as you expected?Quite the opposite: The shows you think might have been dated have proven riveting in ways they maybe weren’t even when they were on. The America of Tony Soprano, the America of Walter White and very much the America of “The Wire” has proved itself to be the dominant America in the past 20 years. “The Sopranos” became this huge pandemic rewatch, and I think it’s because it’s so recognizable: The themes — the rot at the center of America, the grift of American life, the anxiety Tony Soprano has — are all super familiar to us now.Younger generations have adopted “The Sopranos”; it appears in countless memes.It’s great entertainment. It had to be: It had to resemble entertaining network television in many ways. It was still operating as a Trojan horse. It had to be funny and human, and it had to be consumable because the high-art part, the ambition part, was something nobody was looking for.How did the men you wrote about respond to your book?I never heard a word from any of them except for Vince Gilligan, who wrote me a beautiful blurb on the back of the new edition. Not surprisingly, because the book ends making the point that one doesn’t have to be that difficult to create these wonderful shows.Few would be interested in defending some of the behavior you document. But does the fact that it happened during the creation of these really great series make any of it easier to accept?It’s hard for me to see how a lack of empathy for people who work for you is a necessary part of the creative process. I do think people’s feelings could get hurt in a very intense workplace, and I don’t think every hurt feeling is avoidable. But I do think one can maintain a basic level of decency — let alone avoid using your power destructively — and still create quality work. I believe it because I’ve seen the shows that prove it, and because I’m optimistic.There are women characters and characters of color in these shows, but the protagonists and the creators behind them are all white men. Does that taint the legacy of that era?It wasn’t a huge surprise that white men writing about white men dominated the first phase of this new world. But the door had been opened. “Orange Is the New Black” came out something like three weeks after my book. “Transparent” was soon after as well. What came after delivered on the promise, which is that all these other kinds of stories were going to be able to be told, and all these other kinds of voices were going to be empowered. “Atlanta” and “Reservation Dogs” are other deliveries on that promise.What effect did the rise of streaming platforms, with their hundreds of millions of subscribers, have on Hollywood’s appetite for ambitious TV?When the book was published, it was more important [to the producers of these early prestige series] to stand out and find the right kinds of viewers than to have the most. It made sense that that attitude moved from subscription cable to basic — in my book, it’s HBO to FX and AMC — and streaming seemed it would be another step in that. But it does seem as though every piece that I identified as being crucial to the invention of this new TV is now a flashpoint in the writers’ strike: shorter seasons, writer-producers, writers’ rooms. And it’s depressing. With all the stuff that looked great, the streamers saw there were opportunities for cost savings.Are there ways streaming made TV better for viewers?Oh, my God. Look how much work we got! So much that I can’t keep up — that I feel a constant sense of anxiety about missing things. Look how many new voices we got. That’s been the trade-off. More

    • 150 Shares74 Views

      in Television

      What’s on TV This Week: ‘American Horror Story’ and Global Citizens Festival

      by

      Kim Kardashian takes on an acting role in this anthology series. Lauryn Hill and others are set to perform at the annual festival.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Sept. 18-24. Details and times are subject to change.MondayACADEMY OF COUNTRY MUSIC HONORS 8 p.m. on Fox. Grab your cowboy boots, fiddle and Tennessee whiskey because things are getting a little country on Fox this week. The awards were hosted by Carly Pearce and held live from Ryman Auditorium in Nashville in August. Now, that show is being is available for everyone to watch. Lady A, Keith Urban and many more performed as Mary Chapin Carpenter, Tim McGraw, Chris Stapleton received honors.João Franco, left, and Harry Van Vliet on “Below Deck: Down Under.”Mark Rogers/BravoBELOW DECK: DOWN UNDER 8 p.m. on Bravo. Though this is only the second season of this “Below Deck” spinoff, it might become one of the most unforgettable. Midway through the season the boatswain Luke Jones and the second steward Laura Bileskalne were fired because, in separate incidents, each got into the bed of another crew member who didn’t or couldn’t consent, all while cameras were rolling. Captain Jason Chambers, the chief stew Aesha Scott and producers have been praised by some for their quick handling of the situation. Others criticized the series for the lack of a trigger warning.TuesdayBECOMING FRIDA KAHLO: THE MAKING AND BREAKING 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The Mexican painter Frida Kahlo is known for lots of things: her arresting self portraits, her multiple marriages to the artist Diego Rivera and her medical struggles, just to name a few. This three-part documentary series focuses on the personal and political events that shaped her into the artist she became.ROCK THE BELLS 11 p.m. on MTV. Right on the heels of the hip-hop medley at the VMAs last week, MTV is airing a special as another celebration of 50 years of hip-hop. With footage taken from the Rock the Bells Festival on Aug. 5 in Forest Hills Stadium in Queens, N.Y., this one-hour special features performances by Queen Latifah, LL Cool J, Run-D.M.C., Salt-N-Pepa and many more.WednesdayAMERICAN HORROR STORY: DELICATE 10 p.m. on FX. Kim Kardashian is a queen of the small screen, but this time she isn’t arguing with her sisters or hanging out with her kids. In one of her few acting gigs — best to forget “Disaster Movie,” but I will give her props for “PAW Patrol: The Movie” — she is playing an actress past her prime opposite Emma Roberts and Matt Czuchry, a couple who are trying to conceive. The story is based on the novel “Delicate Condition” by Danielle Valentine.ThursdayALL STAR SHORE 9 p.m. on MTV. If I knew that Vinny Guadagnino (of “Jersey Shore” fame) headed to Colombia to be on the second season of this reality show, maybe I would have planned my vacation this year a little differently. The premise: 12 reality stars go head-to-head in your favorite party games to try to win $150,000. The cherry on top for me? Vinny’s “Jersey Shore” co-star Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi narrates.From left: Alex Denny, Adario Mercadante, Eric Andre, Gabourey Sidibe and Johnny Knoxville on “The Prank Panel.”ABC/Christopher WillardTHE PRANK PANEL 9 p.m. on ABC. As a self-proclaimed prankster (much to the dismay of my loved ones), I could learn a thing or two from this show. Johnny Knoxville, Eric André and Gabourey Sidibe act as “pranxperts,” who help people with the planning and execution of their pranks on their friends, families or co-workers. The first season is wrapping up this week.FridayDEADLOCKED: HOW AMERICA SHAPED THE SUPREME COURT 8 p.m. on Showtime. Each of the four episodes in this documentary series focuses on a Supreme Court case that shaped the American political landscape in the U.S., starting with Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 ruling that made racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional.SaturdaySam Jay in her special “Salute Me or Shoot Me.”via HBOSAM JAY: SALUTE ME OR SHOOT ME 10 p.m. on HBO. Sam Jay, the former “Saturday Night Live” writer and co-creator/star of “Pause,” is using her comedy special to talk about the stress of long-term relationships, examine the inner workings of society and of course bring the laughs.SundayGLOBAL CITIZENS FESTIVAL 2023 4 p.m. on ABC. Broadcasting live from Central Park in New York City, this annual festival is back with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Anitta, Sofia Carson and Lauryn Hill performing to call for an end to extreme poverty. Bill Nye, Carmelo Anthony, Rachel Brosnahan, Sophia Bush and many other celebrities will also be in attendance.REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955) 10:30 p.m. on TCM. In his most famous role, and one of the most well-known coming-of-age stories, James Dean plays a troubled teenager whose clean slate in a new town is quickly tainted after he starts crushing on the girl with a violent boyfriend. A drag race ensues. More

    • 113 Shares46 Views

      in Television

      Drew Barrymore Pauses Show’s Return Until End of Strike

      by

      Taping began on her talk show last week, but at the 11th hour Barrymore changed course, and at least two other daytime programs followed.After an onslaught of criticism over her decision to return her show to the air while Hollywood is on strike, Drew Barrymore reversed herself on Sunday and at least two other shows did the same.Barrymore announced her change of course in an Instagram post, just a day before her talk show was to begin broadcasting. Taping resumed last Monday for the daytime program.After the announcement, “The Jennifer Hudson Show,” which is produced by Warner Bros., and the CBS show “The Talk,” rolled back previously announced plans to start broadcasting new episodes on Monday. CBS said in a statement on Sunday regarding “The Talk,” that it would pause its season premiere and “evaluate plans for a new launch date.”The return of production for Barrymore’s show attracted picketers from the striking writers’ and actors’ unions, and on Friday, she defended her decision in an emotional Instagram video, saying, “This is bigger than me.”CBS Media Ventures, which produces “The Drew Barrymore Show,” echoed her resolution at that point, saying more than 150 jobs would be affected. The company noted that she would be using a fully ad-libbed format, without anyone replacing the production’s three striking writers.But on Friday night, she deleted the video, and on Sunday morning released a statement changing course. The syndicated program was to begin airing new episodes on Monday.“I have listened to everyone, and I am making the decision to pause the show’s premiere until the strike is over,” the statement said. “I have no words to express my deepest apologies to anyone I have hurt and, of course, to our incredible team who works on the show and has made it what it is today. We really tried to find our way forward. And I truly hope for a resolution for the entire industry very soon.”In a statement on Sunday, CBS Media said it supported her latest decision and understood “how complex and difficult this process has been for her.”Although Barrymore was not the only daytime talk show host to announce a return during the strikes, she has received the most criticism, perhaps in part because in May she decided to bow out of hosting the MTV Movie and TV Awards in solidarity with Writers Guild of America members.The daytime juggernaut “The View,” for example, has been airing new episodes filmed without its unionized writers.Bill Maher announced last week that his weekly show on HBO would be returning, defending his decision in a social media post, saying, “I’m not prepared to lose an entire year and see so many below-the-line people suffer so much.”Members of the Writers Guild have been on strike since May, and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists began its strike in July.Barrymore herself is a member of SAG-AFTRA, but as a host she is covered by a separate agreement called the Network Code, making it technically permissible for her to present the show during the strike.Late-night shows have the same option, but thus far, many network hosts have decided not to take it. Instead, five of the big-name hosts — Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers and John Oliver — have started a podcast together, with proceeds going toward supporting their staffs.Returning amid the strikes may look even less appealing to other hosts after Barrymore’s ordeal. A day after her show resumed production, the National Book Foundation dropped her as the host of the National Books Awards.Her social media pages were filled with people urging her to walk back her decision to resume production, advice she heeded in less than a week. More

    • 100 Shares55 Views

      in Television

      Russell Brand Denies Accusations of ‘Egregious’ Sexual Assaults

      by

      Three British media outlets published an investigation in which four women accused him of sexual assault in a series of incidents between 2006 and 2013.The comedian Russell Brand denied “serious criminal allegations” against him in a video he posted shortly before three British news organizations published an investigation Saturday in which four women accused him of sexual assault.The investigation was a collaboration by The Sunday Times and The Times of London newspapers, and Channel 4 Dispatches, a television program that broadcast a documentary about the allegations on Saturday. They reported that the women had accused him of sexual assault in a series of incidents between 2006 and 2013.Mr. Brand, an actor and former TV host who has more recently built a significant following on his YouTube channel, where he often opines on wellness and interviews prominent conservative figures, released a short video on social media on Friday in which he said he had received notes from media organizations listing “a litany of extremely egregious and aggressive attacks.”“Amidst this litany of astonishing, rather baroque attacks are some very serious allegations that I absolutely refute,” Mr. Brand said in the video, going on to say that while he has spoken previously about a “time of promiscuity” in his life, the encounters during that time were “always consensual.”His literary agency, Tavistock Wood, announced this weekend that it had cut ties with him, saying in a statement that it believed it had been “horribly misled” by him when he denied an allegation in 2020.The allegations were published as the comedian, 48, was on a short stand-up tour. At a show in northwest London on Saturday night, he opened the evening with an oblique reference to the accusations.“I’ve got a lot of things to talk to you about,” he said, according to news media reports. “There are obviously some things that I absolutely cannot talk about and I appreciate that you will understand.”In the investigation, one woman accused Mr. Brand of raping her against a wall in his Los Angeles home in 2012. The news organizations said that the woman had provided medical records confirming that she had been treated at a rape crisis center. Another woman accused him of forcing her to perform oral sex on him when she was 16, despite her pushing him away.In his video, Mr. Brand did not address the specifics of the accusations by the four women, three of whom were not identified in the reports. He said there were “witnesses whose evidence directly contradicts the narratives” that had been put forward to him by the news organizations, but according to the article, a lawyer for Mr. Brand did not respond to an inquiry about providing such evidence. A legal representative The New York Times contacted on Sunday did not respond to a request for comment on the specific allegations in the investigation.Known for raunchy, boundary-pushing humor that has gotten him in trouble at times, Mr. Brand’s fame grew in Britain in the 2000s with a one-man show about his heroin addiction, and then as a BBC radio and Channel 4 reality television host. He broke into American pop culture with a prominent role in the rom-com “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” in 2008 and a remake of “Arthur” in 2011, and was briefly married to the pop star Katy Perry.The investigation reported on Saturday also included complaints about Brand’s workplace behavior, including from unnamed production workers from Channel 4. They said that Brand would ask staff members to approach female audience members so he could arrange to meet them after filming, according to the reports.Channel 4 and BBC have said in statements that they are investigating allegations against Brand from the periods when he worked at their companies.The Metropolitan Police in London released a statement in response to the article saying that the department had been in touch with the journalists behind the story, and it encouraged any victims of sexual assault to report it to them.Brand did not address the workplace complaints in his video.Mr. Brand’s commentary on his YouTube channel, which has 6.6 million followers, tends to revolve around health, spirituality, so-called woke culture and free speech, and his guests have included Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Tucker Carlson and the conservative commentator Candace Owens. In his video on Friday, he accused the “mainstream media” of launching what he called a “coordinated attack” against him. Elon Musk responded to Mr. Brand’s post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, writing: “Of course. They don’t like competition.”Mr. Brand has spoken about and written extensively about battling addictions to drugs, alcohol and sex, writing in his memoir that he was treated for a sex addiction in 2005.Alex Marshall More