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      Stephen Colbert Sums Up Biden’s Meeting with China’s President: ‘He Said, Xi Said’

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      Colbert said President Biden and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, had a lot to catch up on: “trade tensions, global flash points, who got hot over the summer.”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.‘He Said, Xi Said’President Biden met with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in San Francisco on Wednesday.Stephen Colbert pointed out that the two leaders last met a year ago, so they would “have so much to talk about: trade tensions, global flash points, who got hot over the summer. Spoiler alert: neither of them!”“Now, before the meeting, both sides tried to play it cool, and set expectations low. In fact, both countries said that whatever happened, both Biden and Xi would not put out a joint statement after the meeting. So it’s just going to be a case of ‘He said, Xi said.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Ahead of their meeting, Biden said, ‘We’re not trying to decouple from China. What we’re trying to do is change the relationship for the better.” In other words, for those of you who don’t follow international affairs, we’re Chris Martin and China is Gwyneth Paltrow and we’re just trying to raise a TikTok kid together, you know?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“China has a good reason to want to talk to America, and it’s cash. For the past few years, China’s economy has been struggling, with anemic consumer spending and high youth unemployment. It’s gotten so bad that second-graders can’t get a job at the iPhone factory.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Things are shaky right now between the U.S. and China. This is the diplomatic version of a married couple dropping the kids at the in-laws to spend the night at a hotel, see if they can get things back on track. And I think these guys have known each other for a long time. President Xi is just happy to meet a president who doesn’t call his country ‘Gyna.’” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Congressional Fight Club Edition)“Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy denied claims yesterday that he elbowed Republican Congressman Tim Burchett in the back and added ‘If I would hit somebody, they would know I hit them.’ I assume ’cause his fist would bruise.” — SETH MEYERS“[imitating Kevin McCarthy] If I hit him, he’d be on the ground. Then I’d kick him, and I’d take his bike, and his Pokemon cards, and his girlfriend would be my girlfriend, and then people would like me.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Listen, I know what it’s like to want to fight a co-worker. But don’t do that at work — you wait for them in the parking lot like a responsible adult!” — LESLIE JONES, guest host of “The Daily Show”The Bits Worth WatchingThe director Taika Waititi played a game with Jimmy Fallon inspired by his new film “Next Goal Wins” on Wednesday’s “Tonight Show.”What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightComedian Maria Bamford will discuss her new memoir, “Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult” on Thursday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutIn “Scene Partners,” Eric Berryman is among the nimble supporting cast and Dianne Wiest is a pleasure to watch as she makes her character’s innocence and bloodthirstiness equally believable, equally fresh, our critic writes. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn the new play “Scene Partners,” Dianne Wiest stars as a 75-year-old woman who sets out to be a star. More

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      ‘Scott Pilgrim Takes Off’ Reunites the Movie Cast, Now in Anime Form

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      “Scott Pilgrim Takes Off” revives the bassist who battles his romantic rivals. In an interview, the creators discuss the next chapter, for Netflix.Let’s get ready to rumble … again! Friday brings the premiere of “Scott Pilgrim Takes Off,” an anime series based on the comic book about a young, lollygagging amateur bass player battling seven of his new love’s exes.It is the second major screen adaptation of the six-volume “Scott Pilgrim” series of graphic novels by Bryan Lee O’Malley, which were published from 2004-10. A live-action film by Edgar Wright titled “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” (2010), was a critical favorite, and the eight-episode anime reunites most of the movie cast including Michael Cera as Scott; Mary Elizabeth Winstead as his girlfriend, Ramona Flowers; Kieran Culkin as Scott’s pal Wallace Wells; and Chris Evans and Brandon Routh as two of the former flames.“Scott Pilgrim Takes Off” was written and developed by O’Malley and the writer-director BenDavid Grabinski (“Happily”), a longtime friend. It is produced by Netflix, Universal Content Productions and Science Saru, a Japanese animation studio. At a panel about the show at New York Comic Con last month, the creators said scheduling a cast of actors who have gotten much more famous since the film was one of the most difficult aspects of making the series.“You end up with this weird game of Tetris trying to get everybody,” Grabinski told the audience.From left, Kieran Culkin, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Michael Cera in “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.” They all signed on to voice the new series.Universal PicturesEven for those who have read the comic, seen the film or played the video game version, the anime will hold surprises. (There was a robust list of topics and guest voice actors that reporters were asked not to spoil.) O’Malley and Grabinski came to the New York Times offices last month to discuss the new series, reuniting the movie cast and what comes next for Scott Pilgrim. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How did the anime come about?BENDAVID GRABINSKI Bryan found out that Netflix and Science Saru were interested. We went to dinner to talk about the pros and cons of doing a straight adaptation.BRYAN LEE O’MALLEY This was like a year after they asked. So I was a little reticent because I didn’t have a great idea. But then BenDavid had a series of great ideas at this dinner. He’s a traditional Hollywood screenwriter who will just walk into a room and make up a bunch of stuff.Were there specific characters you knew you wanted to focus on in this version?GRABINSKI I wanted to spend as much time as I could with the ensemble. The main appeal of the show to me was to dig deeper with the exes, with Scott’s friends, with Ramona.O’MALLEY People always ask, “What’s your one regret?” I wish I could have done more with the evil exes, partly because I didn’t fully understand them. The first thing I think of when I think of anime is villain scenes. That was my first way in, and then BenDavid blew the doors off after that.The idea for the show began with Netflix and the Japanese anime studio Science Saru. which jointly approached O’Malley about the concept.NetflixWhat’s new about the series?GRABINSKI We will say that there are some big twists and turns that no other adaptation of this story has done yet. The great thing about making this show and having Bryan sitting five feet away is I have the guy who can veto things and say, “I never would have written that joke,” or “I don’t think that guy would do that.” As much as I would like to feel like every single thing in there is my idea, there’s an equal amount of ideas that I pitched where Bryan would politely text me back and say, “That’s not ‘Scott Pilgrim.’”O’MALLEY And sometimes less politely.GRABINSKI Yeah, I’m just trying to be nice about it. That’s the benefit of knowing each other for so long: You can be a little bit more blunt. This would not have worked if we didn’t know each other very well, because we’re both incredibly opinionated people. We just had a rule from the beginning that nothing could go on the show that either of us hated.O’MALLEY You want it to be unpredictable, but the surprises have to be satisfying. That’s the goal every single time.Were there conflicts?GRABINSKI Our episodes are very different, as the audience will see once they watch it. We never want it to feel stale, but it does need to feel consistent.O’MALLEY We both love episodic TV, so we wanted to embrace that.GRABINSKI I didn’t want to have something like, “Oh, it’s a four-hour movie that’s split into chunks.” We wanted the episodes to feel like episodes, but the season is one story with a beginning, middle and end.What was it like getting the film cast back together?O’MALLEY They’ve all blown up.GRABINSKI I have to give thanks to Edgar Wright. One, he put together one of the best ensemble casts of all time. And two, they all loved the experience so much that we benefited from that. After we started making the show, he reached out to the cast. He sent them the scripts and they immediately all said yes. We can’t take credit for the returning cast members. Guest stars, yes.O’MALLEY I had some involvement casting back then. He showed me every casting tape. So it’s really cool to have seen all those people flower so much and to get a chance for them to come back and revisit that work with their newfound maturity. The same way I feel about it, looking back and revisiting and finding new shading, the way we were finding it in the writing, they found in the acting. There’s a profound feeling to it and I love that.The creators said the series diverges from previous “Scott Pilgrim” stories in multiple ways.NetflixIs it the art that makes it an anime? Or is it more about the sensibility?O’MALLEY For me it’s just because we’re working with Science Saru: They are an anime studio. There’s a certain method of production and we had to slot ourselves into that. We’re not telling them what to do, other than giving them scripts. They are very autonomous.GRABINSKI Our feedback is about emotion or plot points. We wanted it to feel specific to their sensibilities. A lot of the time it became like a feedback loop where we would rewrite our scripts to match the things they were doing.O’MALLEY Abel Góngora is the director, so we wanted to give him all the autonomy. Each episode is storyboarded by different artists. They’re all Japanese artists, other than him.GRABINSKI The music and the cast, we’re extremely involved with.O’MALLEY That was the one aspect we wanted to control, because it’s so crucial to the tone of “Scott Pilgrim” to get that music correct.Are any of the characters more fun to write than the others?GRABINSKI I love Lucas Lee [played by Chris Evans] just because I’m pretty obsessive about action movies. There’s a tone to that character that is so fun to me. But honestly, the great thing is that they’re all so different. I’ve worked with Brandon Routh a lot and I knew he could be really funny, and we got him to do a bunch of stuff that I think is unexpected and very silly, and he embraced it.O’MALLEY It’s like each of the exes has their own genre, and it lets you mix it up.GRABINSKI That was the thing that was most exciting to me: pairing up characters who had never been seen together. What if they fought or what if they became best friends?O’MALLEY But not making it feel like fan fiction. Really bringing weight to it.GRABINSKI The difficult thing is trying to make sure it all feels like an organic part of the story. As much as we think, “Oh it would be really fun to have these two characters fight,” we can’t do that unless there’s a real reason that they want to fight that comes from the story.“The main appeal of the show to me was to dig deeper with the exes, with Scott’s friends, with Ramona,” Grabinski said.NetflixWhat’s next? Will there be a Season 2?GRABINSKI I can’t think about anything beyond this. I’m glad that we told a story that has an ending for all the thematic things that we’re exploring. So if TV stopped existing on Nov. 18th, I’d feel really proud of what we did.O’MALLEY We wanted to be satisfied with what we get if we never get more. I don’t love it when a show feels like a setup for Season 2. We just wanted to have a complete dramatic and comedic arc to everything.How long did the entire production process take?GRABINSKI It was a few years to go from the beginning of doing outlines to the finish.O’MALLEY But it was also fast. We started writing in January 2022. We met Science Saru in June 2022. We were seeing episodes by spring of this year. We were pretty much done recording the voices before the strike started. So it was like 18 months. Saru is very fast, which is part of the appeal of this whole process. That’s what they pitched me: “We’ll do a season a year!” It took a little longer than that, but it’s pretty magical to get something this beautiful this quickly.Will you revisit “Scott Pilgrim” in comic book form?O’MALLEY Even if I was super inspired, I wouldn’t have time for it right now. But I think it’s definitely possible. And we’ve talked about other episodes. If those never got to fruition as TV, then I would definitely consider doing a comic and co-writing with BenDavid.GRABINSKI I hope that someone, someday, does a manga adaptation of the show.O’MALLEY If someone in Japan would want to do their own adaptation without any input from us, that would be really cool. More

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      ‘Scott Pilgrim’ Is Back, Now in Anime Form

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      “Scott Pilgrim Takes Off” revives the bassist who battles his romantic rivals. In an interview, the creators discuss the next chapter, for Netflix.Let’s get ready to rumble … again! Friday brings the premiere of “Scott Pilgrim Takes Off,” an anime series based on the comic book about a young, lollygagging amateur bass player battling seven of his new love’s exes.It is the second major screen adaptation of the six-volume “Scott Pilgrim” series of graphic novels by Bryan Lee O’Malley, which were published from 2004-10. A live-action film by Edgar Wright titled “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” (2010), was a critical favorite, and the eight-episode anime reunites most of the movie cast including Michael Cera as Scott; Mary Elizabeth Winstead as his girlfriend, Ramona Flowers; Kieran Culkin as Scott’s pal Wallace Wells; and Chris Evans and Brandon Routh as two of the former flames.“Scott Pilgrim Takes Off” was written and developed by O’Malley and the writer-director BenDavid Grabinski (“Happily”), a longtime friend. It is produced by Netflix, Universal Content Productions and Science Saru, a Japanese animation studio. At a panel about the show at New York Comic Con last month, the creators said scheduling a cast of actors who have gotten much more famous since the film was one of the most difficult aspects of making the series.“You end up with this weird game of Tetris trying to get everybody,” Grabinski told the audience.From left, Kieran Culkin, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Michael Cera in “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.” They all signed on to voice the new series.Universal PicturesEven for those who have read the comic, seen the film or played the video game version, the anime will hold surprises. (There was a robust list of topics and guest voice actors that reporters were asked not to spoil.) O’Malley and Grabinski came to the New York Times offices last month to discuss the new series, reuniting the movie cast and what comes next for Scott Pilgrim. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How did the anime come about?BENDAVID GRABINSKI Bryan found out that Netflix and Science Saru were interested. We went to dinner to talk about the pros and cons of doing a straight adaptation.BRYAN LEE O’MALLEY This was like a year after they asked. So I was a little reticent because I didn’t have a great idea. But then BenDavid had a series of great ideas at this dinner. He’s a traditional Hollywood screenwriter who will just walk into a room and make up a bunch of stuff.Were there specific characters you knew you wanted to focus on in this version?GRABINSKI I wanted to spend as much time as I could with the ensemble. The main appeal of the show to me was to dig deeper with the exes, with Scott’s friends, with Ramona.O’MALLEY People always ask, “What’s your one regret?” I wish I could have done more with the evil exes, partly because I didn’t fully understand them. The first thing I think of when I think of anime is villain scenes. That was my first way in, and then BenDavid blew the doors off after that.The idea for the show began with Netflix and the Japanese anime studio Science Saru. which jointly approached O’Malley about the concept.NetflixWhat’s new about the series?GRABINSKI We will say that there are some big twists and turns that no other adaptation of this story has done yet. The great thing about making this show and having Bryan sitting five feet away is I have the guy who can veto things and say, “I never would have written that joke,” or “I don’t think that guy would do that.” As much as I would like to feel like every single thing in there is my idea, there’s an equal amount of ideas that I pitched where Bryan would politely text me back and say, “That’s not ‘Scott Pilgrim.’”O’MALLEY And sometimes less politely.GRABINSKI Yeah, I’m just trying to be nice about it. That’s the benefit of knowing each other for so long: You can be a little bit more blunt. This would not have worked if we didn’t know each other very well, because we’re both incredibly opinionated people. We just had a rule from the beginning that nothing could go on the show that either of us hated.O’MALLEY You want it to be unpredictable, but the surprises have to be satisfying. That’s the goal every single time.Were there conflicts?GRABINSKI Our episodes are very different, as the audience will see once they watch it. We never want it to feel stale, but it does need to feel consistent.O’MALLEY We both love episodic TV, so we wanted to embrace that.GRABINSKI I didn’t want to have something like, “Oh, it’s a four-hour movie that’s split into chunks.” We wanted the episodes to feel like episodes, but the season is one story with a beginning, middle and end.What was it like getting the film cast back together?O’MALLEY They’ve all blown up.GRABINSKI I have to give thanks to Edgar Wright. One, he put together one of the best ensemble casts of all time. And two, they all loved the experience so much that we benefited from that. After we started making the show, he reached out to the cast. He sent them the scripts and they immediately all said yes. We can’t take credit for the returning cast members. Guest stars, yes.O’MALLEY I had some involvement casting back then. He showed me every casting tape. So it’s really cool to have seen all those people flower so much and to get a chance for them to come back and revisit that work with their newfound maturity. The same way I feel about it, looking back and revisiting and finding new shading, the way we were finding it in the writing, they found in the acting. There’s a profound feeling to it and I love that.The creators said the series diverges from previous “Scott Pilgrim” stories in multiple ways.NetflixIs it the art that makes it an anime? Or is it more about the sensibility?O’MALLEY For me it’s just because we’re working with Science Saru: They are an anime studio. There’s a certain method of production and we had to slot ourselves into that. We’re not telling them what to do, other than giving them scripts. They are very autonomous.GRABINSKI Our feedback is about emotion or plot points. We wanted it to feel specific to their sensibilities. A lot of the time it became like a feedback loop where we would rewrite our scripts to match the things they were doing.O’MALLEY Abel Góngora is the director, so we wanted to give him all the autonomy. Each episode is storyboarded by different artists. They’re all Japanese artists, other than him.GRABINSKI The music and the cast, we’re extremely involved with.O’MALLEY That was the one aspect we wanted to control, because it’s so crucial to the tone of “Scott Pilgrim” to get that music correct.Are any of the characters more fun to write than the others?GRABINSKI I love Lucas Lee [played by Chris Evans] just because I’m pretty obsessive about action movies. There’s a tone to that character that is so fun to me. But honestly, the great thing is that they’re all so different. I’ve worked with Brandon Routh a lot and I knew he could be really funny, and we got him to do a bunch of stuff that I think is unexpected and very silly, and he embraced it.O’MALLEY It’s like each of the exes has their own genre, and it lets you mix it up.GRABINSKI That was the thing that was most exciting to me: pairing up characters who had never been seen together. What if they fought or what if they became best friends?O’MALLEY But not making it feel like fan fiction. Really bringing weight to it.GRABINSKI The difficult thing is trying to make sure it all feels like an organic part of the story. As much as we think, “Oh it would be really fun to have these two characters fight,” we can’t do that unless there’s a real reason that they want to fight that comes from the story.“The main appeal of the show to me was to dig deeper with the exes, with Scott’s friends, with Ramona,” Grabinski said.NetflixWhat’s next? Will there be a Season 2?GRABINSKI I can’t think about anything beyond this. I’m glad that we told a story that has an ending for all the thematic things that we’re exploring. So if TV stopped existing on Nov. 18th, I’d feel really proud of what we did.O’MALLEY We wanted to be satisfied with what we get if we never get more. I don’t love it when a show feels like a setup for Season 2. We just wanted to have a complete dramatic and comedic arc to everything.How long did the entire production process take?GRABINSKI It was a few years to go from the beginning of doing outlines to the finish.O’MALLEY But it was also fast. We started writing in January 2022. We met Science Saru in June 2022. We were seeing episodes by spring of this year. We were pretty much done recording the voices before the strike started. So it was like 18 months. Saru is very fast, which is part of the appeal of this whole process. That’s what they pitched me: “We’ll do a season a year!” It took a little longer than that, but it’s pretty magical to get something this beautiful this quickly.Will you revisit “Scott Pilgrim” in comic book form?O’MALLEY Even if I was super inspired, I wouldn’t have time for it right now. But I think it’s definitely possible. And we’ve talked about other episodes. If those never got to fruition as TV, then I would definitely consider doing a comic and co-writing with BenDavid.GRABINSKI I hope that someone, someday, does a manga adaptation of the show.O’MALLEY If someone in Japan would want to do their own adaptation without any input from us, that would be really cool. More

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      Jimmy Kimmel Calls Tumultuous Senate Hearing ‘U.F.C.-SPAN’

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      Late night hosts couldn’t resist joking about Senator Markwayne Mullin challenging the Teamsters leader Sean M. O’Brien to a brawl.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.‘U.F.C.-SPAN’Senator Markwayne Mullin, Republican of Oklahoma, challenged Sean M. O’Brien, the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, to a physical fight during a Senate committee hearing on Tuesday.Jimmy Kimmel joked that the hearing had turned into “U.F.C.-SPAN all of a sudden.” Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont and the chairman of the panel, had to step in and demand the two behave like U.S. lawmakers.“Grandpa Bernie is about to turn this car around, and then nobody is going to Six Flags.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“That isn’t the first time Bernie Sanders was forced to play the role of peacemaker. You know, when he was originally elected to the Senate, he tried to convince Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton to hug it out, and that didn’t work, either. That didn’t end well at all.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“[imitating Bernie Sanders] Zip it, Bunson Honeydew! Sit down, or I will come over there and redistribute the top 10 percent of my fist to 99 percent of your face! I will split your lip like pea soup! Don’t make me take off my mittens!” — STEPHEN COLBERT“I knew this dude was trouble from the moment I heard his name, Markwayne, all one word. His parents — his parents didn’t even love him enough to pick one single name for him. They just shoved two names together and called it a day.” — LESLIE JONES, guest host of “The Daily Show”“‘Calm down, Markwayne,’ isn’t some [expletive] I want to hear on C-SPAN — it’s what you hear when you watch an episode of ‘Cops.’” — LESLIE JONES“If there’s going to be a fight, I’d like to warn that senator: You look pretty big, but, historically, people who take on the Teamsters end up with season tickets to Giants Stadium … underneath the end zone.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Season’s Greetings Edition)“Ahead of Thanksgiving, the T.S.A. just announced that they’re predicting the busiest holiday travel season ever. Yeah, and this was a classy move — Southwest cut right to the chase and canceled all their flights.” — JIMMY FALLON“More than 30 million Americans are expected to travel by plane over the holiday, and every one of them is in your boarding group.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Apparently, the airport is going to be so busy that LaGuardia might even buy a second gray bin.” — JIMMY FALLON“And if the government shuts down next week — which it looks like it won’t — thousands of T.S.A. employees and air traffic controllers would be forced to work without pay. Just the people you want disgruntled, right? The ones telling you which way to point the plane you’re in.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingViola Davis discussed her new role in “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” on the “Tonight Show” on Tuesday.What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightThe actress Julianne Moore of “May December” will appear on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”Also, Check This Out“I just like messing with instruments, and I gravitated mostly toward wind,” André 3000 said in a statement about his new album.Kai ReganAndré 3000, the artist best known as one-half of Outkast, will release “New Blue Sun” on Friday. It is a surprise solo album of ambient woodwind compositions. More

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      Recap: Timothée Chalamet Hosts ‘Saturday Night Live’

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      Timothée Chalamet hosted an episode that presented former President Trump as an aggrieved forerunner. The musical guest was boygenius.Come on, you didn’t really think that “Saturday Night Live” would begin this weekend with a parody of the third Republican presidential debate, did you?OK, let’s indulge this little fantasy for a moment and pretend that this broadcast — hosted by Timothée Chalamet and featuring the musical guest boygenius — might actually open on a sketch featuring the candidates who aren’t Donald J. Trump, impersonated by the “S.N.L.” cast including Heidi Gardner as Nikki Haley, John Higgins as Ron DeSantis and Ego Nwodim as Vivek Ramaswamy.Well, not long after Gardner and Nwodim reenacted a testy exchange between Haley and Ramaswamy and Devon Walker (as Tim Scott) began to rhapsodize about his girlfriend, the entire sketch was frozen and the lights were dimmed on the debate stage.Enter James Austin Johnson, in his recurring role as Trump: “How adorable,” he said, mocking the other candidates. “They actually think they’ve got a chance. Sad in some ways, but in other ways, funny. Can you believe it, folks? Ninety-one indictments, four trials. And I’m still the best choice. They’re all stuck behind me and there’s nothing they can do about it. Just like in real life.”Johnson went on to mock the low poll ratings of his Republican rivals: “One percent, very low,” he said, indicating Walker. “Lower than, frankly, milk. Apparently there’s a milk lower than 1 percent. People are calling it skim, we’ve never had it, we don’t drink it.”And he offered a satirical meta-commentary on Higgins, the actor playing DeSantis. “Poor Ron DeSantis,” Johnson said. “Even ‘S.N.L.’ doesn’t think he has a chance. If they did, it’d be like Paul Rudd or something in there, right?”But mostly, he talked about himself: “Isn’t it sad, folks?” Johnson said. “None of them can beat Joe Biden. The worst president since, frankly, me.” Why hasn’t Trump appeared at the debates? As Johnson explained it: “I’m very, very busy. I’m going from trial to trial. I’m basically doing ‘House Hunters’ but with courtrooms.”Johnson complained about the fact that he was being put on trial at all: “They’re saying I committed fraud,” he said. “Not true, OK? Not true. I’ve committed a lot of things. Adultery, treason, a lot of fraud, perhaps.”But on the witness stand, Johnson said he was on his best behavior: “The judge asks, ‘Did you approve these financial reports?’” he explained. “And I very respectfully say, ‘You’re a dumb-ass. This is a sham. When I’m president again, I’ll have you executed.’”Bringing the debate and the sketch to a conclusion, Johnson said, “I’ll pick one of these lucky five to be my VP, or in many ways, I will not at all. Maybe in my third term.”Opening monologue of the weekChalamet, who was hosting “S.N.L.” for the second time, expressed relief that a deal had been reached between the actors of the SAG-AFTRA union and the Hollywood entertainment studios, ending a monthslong strike and allowing him to flog upcoming projects like his film “Wonka.”Picking up a cane, Chalamet began to poke fun at the self-promotional opportunities that he could now indulge, singing a song set to “Pure Imagination” from the original “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” Its lyrics ran, in part:“If you want to view a three-and-a-half hour filmGo see ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’Or just wait for Part 2 of ‘Dune’Just make sure before to use the bathroom …”In the latter part of the monologue, Chalamet and Marcello Hernández performed a bawdy tribute to their status as baby-faces — presumably, the material they had prepared in case the strike wasn’t resolved by this weekend.Not-phoned-in performance of the weekA round-table segment paying satirical homage to the 50th anniversary of hip-hop may not be the most revolutionary idea for a comedy sketch, though it provides a great showcase for cast members like James Austin Johnson and Punkie Johnson to show off their impressions of people like Rick Rubin and Mary J. Blige.But what makes this memorable is Chalamet’s delightfully committed performance as a fictional (if frightfully successful) young rapper with the stage name of SmokeCheddaThaAssGetta, who knows nothing about the history of his chosen genre and has no business being on the panel. There’s also the sight of Chalamet being spanked by Kenan Thompson (playing Cornel West), the soon-to-be viral GIF from which the whole sketch, one assumes, was reverse engineered.Impersonation showcase of the weekYes, there was already the sketch about the Republican debate and the hip-hop round table. But for good measure, why not throw in one more segment that lets Chloe Fineman and the “S.N.L.” cast show off their talents for pretending to be other famous people?That is the duty fulfilled by this short film in which the best-selling memoirist Britney Spears (Fineman) reveals that, before choosing Michelle Williams to read the audiobook of “The Woman in Me,” she had tried out other readers as well. Feel free to admire the sheer versatility of Fineman (who also plays Chalamet, Julia Fox and Natasha Lyonne in the sketch); the levels of inside baseball (Sarah Sherman and Michael Longfellow as the “S.N.L.” alums John Mulaney and Bill Hader); or the weirdness of James Austin Johnson as Werner Herzog.Weekend Update jokes of the weekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che continued to riff on the Republican debate, the F.B.I. investigation into Mayor Eric Adams of New York and President Biden’s re-election efforts.Jost began:The third Republican debate was held this week, and Vivek Ramaswamy started by saying that the GOP had become “a party of losers.” Weirdly, “a party of losers” was also how NBC advertised the debate. Ramaswamy then criticized Nikki Haley’s daughter for having a TikTok account. He also stressed that it’s not important how he knows her daughter has a TikTok account. Then Nikki Haley responded to the attack by saying, “Leave my daughter out of your voice,” which was pulled directly from the Japanese subtitles of the Will Smith slap.Che continued:Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign got a major boost after Iowa governor Kim Reynolds endorsed him. Also giving DeSantis a lift: his leather hooker boots. The F.B.I. has launched a corruption investigation into New York mayor Eric Adams by seizing two of his cellphones. One named “work phone” and the other named “shorties and shady stuff.”Jost resumed:After new polls showed Donald Trump leading Joe Biden, Democratic strategists are calling Biden’s re-election campaign a five-alarm fire. Which is scary for Biden, because in a fire, you have to use the stairs. More

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      Steve Carell to Make Broadway Debut as Uncle Vanya Next Spring

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      The production, a new translation by Heidi Schreck, will also star Alison Pill, William Jackson Harper, Alfred Molina and Anika Noni Rose.Steve Carell, the screen actor best known for his breakout role as a blundering boss in the NBC comedy “The Office,” will make his Broadway debut in a revival of the Chekhov classic “Uncle Vanya.”Carell will lead a cast of television, film and stage veterans in the production, which is to begin performances April 2 and to open April 24 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, a Broadway house at the nonprofit Lincoln Center Theater.“Uncle Vanya” is a dark Russian drama, first performed in 1899, about a rural family whose dreary but stable routine is disrupted when the property’s long-absent owner, a retired professor, comes to visit with his new, and much younger, wife. The play has been staged and adapted many times — this will be the 11th production on Broadway — and this iteration will be based on a new translation by Heidi Schreck, whose previous Broadway venture, an autobiographical show called “What the Constitution Means to Me,” is expected to be the most-staged play at U.S. theaters this season (not counting those by Shakespeare and Dickens).Carell, who played a regional manager in “The Office,” will also play a manager in “Uncle Vanya.” His character is the country estate’s long-suffering administrator (and the brother of the professor’s first wife); he oversees the property with a niece, Sonya, who will be played by Alison Pill, who last appeared on Broadway in a revival of “Three Tall Women” and was a Tony Award nominee for “The Lieutenant of Inishmore.” They will be joined by William Jackson Harper, an alumnus of the NBC comedy “The Good Place” who this year wowed Off Broadway audiences with his starring role in “Primary Trust”; he will play Astrov, the local doctor.Alfred Molina (a three-time Tony nominee, for “Red,” “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Art”) will play the professor, while Anika Noni Rose (a Tony winner for “Caroline, or Change”) will play the professor’s wife. Jayne Houdyshell (a Tony winner for “The Humans”) will play Vanya’s mother, and Mia Katigbak (an Obie winner for “Awake and Sing!”) will portray a household nurse.“Uncle Vanya” is being directed by Lila Neugebauer, who is also directing a Broadway production of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s play “Appropriate,” which is scheduled to open next month. More

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      In ‘Danny and the Deep Blue Sea,’ Aubrey Plaza Steps in the Ring

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      The actress makes her stage debut alongside Christopher Abbott in an Off Broadway revival of John Patrick Shanley’s compact and combative play.Nursing beers and munching on pretzels, Danny and Roberta are sitting at neighboring tables in a Bronx bar as Hall & Oates’s slinky hit “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do)” booms out of the jukebox. “Where do you dare me/To draw the line?/You’ve got the body/Now you want my soul,” the song goes, as if laying out a playbook for the complicated courtship that they are about to enact.These two hopeless loners are the only people in the bar in this Off Broadway revival of John Patrick Shanley’s “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea,” at the Lucille Lortel Theater. Though modest in scale, the show is one of the fall’s hottest thanks to its stars, Aubrey Plaza and Christopher Abbott. Plaza, who is making her stage debut, has seen her screen career shift to a higher gear in the past few years, with acclaimed performances in the film “Emily the Criminal” and Season 2 of “The White Lotus.”It’s easy to see why she and Abbott (an in-demand actor since making a name as the boyfriend of Allison Williams’s character on “Girls”) decided to do Shanley’s compact piece. Since its premiere, in 1984, the play has become a favorite of actors looking for audition monologues or mettle-testing exercises. Shanley’s writing sometimes devolves into hard-boiled mannerisms, but it also has a sharp pugnaciousness. As the story progresses, cracks appear in the barrage of hostilities, as the characters reveal flashes of circumspect vulnerability. Similarly, Abbott and Plaza’s performances move beyond histrionics and gain confidence as their characters start letting themselves feel.When Danny and Roberta finally strike up a conversation, it immediately reveals their combustible approaches to life itself. She is a 31-year-old divorced mother who is unhappily living with her parents. He is 29, and informs Roberta that he plans to kill himself when he turns 30. (He puts it in blunter terms; most of the play’s best lines are laced with profanity.)As quickly as their push-pull attraction is made clear, we realize that the characters’ default attack mode is a manifestation of their pain and self-loathing: Danny doesn’t know how to express himself without resorting to violence (we learn he recently beat up a man and left him for dead); Roberta is haunted by a traumatic episode that has filled her with soul-sapping guilt. The big question, then, is whether they will stop snarling long enough to realize solace is possible.Abbott and Plaza are more at ease with their roles and with each other as their characters try to navigate the possibility of trust and emotional intimacy, our critic writes.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThis early Shanley work feels like a matrix of some of the playwright’s themes: Guilt is also at the heart of his Pulitzer Prize-winning “Doubt: A Parable” (a 2004 play that is being revived on Broadway in February), and a romance between two prickly people is central to his screenplay for the 1987 film “Moonstruck.”“Danny and the Deep Blue Sea” also bears quite a few markers of a certain kind of gritty theater from the 1970s and ’80s, centering as it does on bruised working-class characters whose lives are permeated with brutality. The New York Times review of the original production, which starred John Turturro and June Stein, mentions that as Danny, Turturro skillfully elicited laughs from the audience. Mores concerning depictions of and reactions to abuse have considerably shifted since then, and levity is mostly absent from Jeff Ward’s production, aside from some isolated line readings.Tonally, the show struggles most to nail the first scene, which is nearly always at top volume. The characters can’t decide if they will throttle or embrace each other. We get it, but we still have to buy their picking the second option, and Abbott and Plaza don’t click enough at that point to entirely sell that scenario.Fortunately their performances deepen in parallel with the accord between Roberta and Danny. Fittingly for a play subtitled “An Apache Dance,” after a type of belle epoque ruffians, the production’s turning point is a wordless danced transition: they push and pull, fight their attraction and give in to it. They end up in her room, where they have sex. (The movement direction is by Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber; Scott Pask designed the appropriately dingy set.)As Roberta and Danny gingerly try to navigate the possibility of trust and emotional intimacy, the actors are more at ease with their roles and with each other. It is a testament to their skill that they are better at listening than at yelling.Yes, Danny’s final turnaround stretches credibility close to its breaking point, and the way he finally pierces Roberta’s abscess of shame and fury is rather over the top — not to mention the idea that a physical remedy would shock a psychic wound into healing. But by then Abbott and Plaza have made us care enough for these two misfits that we are ready to believe that maybe, just maybe, they can get a break.Danny and the Deep Blue SeaThrough Jan. 7 at the Lucille Lortel Theater, Manhattan; dannyandthedeepbluesea.com. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. More

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      Late Night Isn’t Sad to See the Presidential Hopeful Tim Scott Go

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      Jimmy Fallon joked that the Republican senator’s decision to suspend his presidential campaign “has really shaken up the race for fifth place.”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.Not-So-Great ScottRepublican presidential hopeful Tim Scott dropped out of the race on Sunday.On Monday, Jimmy Fallon joked that “everyone responded by saying, ‘That’s too bad’ and, ‘Who is that again?’”“If you don’t know who Tim Scott is, it’s why he decided to suspend his campaign for president.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“But the announcement has really shaken up the race for fifth place.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yeah, he knew it was the right decision when absolutely no one tried to talk him out of it.” — JIMMY FALLON“Not everybody in the news is going to be living happily ever after, because we just learned that South Carolina Senator Tim Scott has dropped out of the 2024 presidential race — which means [audience groans] I know, which means I can now confirm Tim Scott was in the 2024 presidential race.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“South Carolina Senator Tim Scott announced that he has suspended his presidential campaign in a Fox News interview yesterday, and said he thinks the voters are telling him, ‘Not now, Tim.’ And I think he made the right call because half of them said, ‘Not now, Jim.’” — SETH MEYERS“‘Not now’ is an interesting way to describe a total loss. It’s like saying, ‘Doctor, how was the surgery? Is my husband alive?’ ‘Uh, not now. Not now, but he has high hopes for 2028.’” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Karma Edition)“On Saturday night, Travis Kelce went to Taylor Swift’s concert in Argentina, and during Taylor’s performance of ‘Karma,’ she changed the words of the song to say, ‘Karma is the guy on the Chiefs coming straight home to me.’ Yeah, she changed it to be about a guy on the Chiefs. Meanwhile, the Chiefs’ punter Tommy Townsend was like, ‘Oh, my God, is Taylor singing about me?’” — JIMMY FALLON“Actually, it’s a little embarrassing. She got that one wrong. ‘Karma’ is not the guy on the Chiefs; Kelce is the guy on the Chiefs. Here’s a tip, Taylor. Their names are on the back of the shirts.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“I mean, she is on tour around the world and still makes it to his games on Sundays. He’s in the middle of a football season and he’s flying to Buenos Aires. They’re making it very hard for every other couple that’s in a long-distance relationship right now: ‘Oh, you can’t make it to my mom’s house for Thanksgiving this year? Travis flew to Singapore for Taylor!’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“And then after the show, she comes offstage, and he’s there. She runs, jumped into his arms, and then he ran her back 57 yards for a touchdown. It was incredible.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingStephen Colbert dreamed himself into a “The Way We Were” scenario with his special guest Barbra Streisand on Monday’s “Late Show.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightThe NBC political correspondent Steve Kornacki will sit down with the “Daily Show” guest host Leslie Jones on Tuesday.Also, Check This OutElizabeth Debicki as Diana, the Princess of Wales, in Season 6 of “The Crown.” The first four episodes focus on the run-up to, and aftermath of, Diana’s death.Daniel Escale/NetflixThe first four episodes in the final season of Netflix’s royal drama, “The Crown,” explore the lead-up to and fallout from the 1997 car accident that killed Princess Diana. More