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      Bill Zehme, Author With a Knack for Humanizing the Famous, Dies at 64

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      A prolific biographer, he charmed his way into access to, and insights about, Frank Sinatra, Hugh Hefner, Johnny Carson and many others.Bill Zehme, whose biographies and magazine profiles humanized the celebrities he described as “intimate strangers” — the “shy, succinct” Johnny Carson; the “blank” Warren Beatty; Frank Sinatra, whose “battle cry” was “fun with everything, and I mean fun!” — died on Sunday in Chicago. He was 64.His partner, Jennifer Engstrom, said the cause was colorectal cancer.Mr. Zehme’s biography of Mr. Sinatra, “The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin’” (1997), was a best seller. He also shared the author credit on best-selling memoirs by Regis Philbin (“I’m Only One Man!” in 1995 and “Who Wants to Be Me?” in 2000) and Jay Leno (“Leading With My Chin” in 1996).His other books included “Intimate Strangers: Comic Profiles and Indiscretions of the Very Famous” (2002), “Lost in the Funhouse: The Life and Mind of Andy Kaufman” (1999) and “Hef’s Little Black Book” (2004), a stream-of-consciousness collaboration with Hugh M. Hefner, the founder and publisher of Playboy magazine.Mr. Zehme’s biography of Frank Sinatra, published in 1997, was a best seller, and he and Mr. Sinatra remained close.Mr. Zehme (pronounced ZAY-mee) conducted what is widely believed to have been the last major interview with Johnny Carson, whom he called “the great American Sphinx” and whom the CBS anchor Walter Cronkite called “the most durable performer in the whole history of television” when Mr. Carson retired in 1992 after some 4,500 episodes of “The Tonight Show.”Mr. Zehme’s “Carson the Magnificent: An Intimate Portrait” was published in 2007, but he never completed the full-fledged biography he had planned.The Chicago-born Mr. Zehme was often said to have cultivated recalcitrant sources with his Midwestern charm. His portraits were not hagiography, but neither were they tell-alls, and he remained close to some of the subjects he interviewed, including Mr. Sinatra and Mr. Hefner.“Bill didn’t dig around for dirt or comb through the proverbial closet hunting for skeletons,” David Hirshey, a former deputy editor of Esquire magazine, said by email. “What interested him was more subtle than that. Zehme looked for the quirks in behavior and speech that revealed a person’s character, and he had an uncanny ability to put his subjects at ease with a mixture of gentle playfulness and genuine empathy.”That’s why,” Mr. Hirshey continued, “Sharon Stone covered by nothing but a sheet allowed Bill to interview her while lying side by side as they enjoyed a couples massage.”Mr. Carson, Mr. Zehme wrote in an essay for PBS in conjunction with an “American Masters” documentary on him, “rose to reign iconic as the smooth midnight sentinel king whose political japes and cultural enthusiasms mightily swayed popular taste at whim or wink.” That wink, Mr. Zehme noted, transmitted “surefire stardom to aspiring personalities, especially comedians, and privileged co-conspiracy to regular viewers who became his spontaneous partners in sly mockery.”Andy Kaufman, Mr. Zehme wrote, was “a pioneering practitioner of various cultural trends long before they ever became trends.”Delacorte PressOf Mr. Beatty, Mr. Zehme wrote: “He speaks slowly, fearfully, cautiously, editing every syllable, slicing off personal color and spontaneous wit, steering away from opinion, introspection, humanness. He is mostly evasive. His pauses are elephantine. Broadway musicals could be mounted during his pauses. He works at this. Ultimately, he renders himself blank.“In ‘Dick Tracy,’ he battles a mysterious foe called the Blank. In life, he is the Blank doing battle with himself. It is a fascinating showdown, exhilarating to behold. To interview Warren Beatty is to want to kill him.”Mr. Zehme provided tips from Mr. Sinatra about what men should never do in the presence of a woman (yawn) and about the finer points of his haberdashery: “He wore only snap-brim Cavanaughs — fine felts and porous palmettos — and these were his crowns, cocked askew, as defiant as he was.”“Mr. Sinatra’s gauge for when a hat looked just right,” Mr. Zehme wrote, was “when no one laughs.”He described the unorthodox and at times controversial comedian Andy Kaufman as “the pre-eminent put-on artist of his generation” and “a pioneering practitioner of various cultural trends long before they ever became trends.”William Christian Zehme was born on Oct. 28, 1958, the grandson of a Danish immigrant. His parents, Robert and Suzanne (Clemensen) Zehme, owned a flower shop in Flossmoor, a village south of Chicago and not far from South Holland, where Bill was raised.Mr. Zehme in 2017. “Bill didn’t dig around for dirt or comb through the proverbial closet hunting for skeletons,” a colleague said. “What interested him was more subtle than that.”Loyola University Chicago School of CommunicationHe graduated from Loyola University in Chicago in 1980 with a degree in journalism.One of his first books was “The Rolling Stone Book of Comedy” (1991). In 2004, he won a National Magazine Award for his profile of the newspaper columnist Bob Greene.In addition to Ms. Engstrom, Mr. Zehme is survived by Lucy Reeves, a daughter from his marriage to Tina Zimmel, which ended in divorce; and a sister, Betsy Archer.Mr. Zehme bridled at being identified as a celebrity biographer, although most of the people he profiled had been famous long before he wrote about them. They had not, however, seemed as familiar as next-door neighbors until Mr. Zehme wrote about them.“The celebrity profile is the bastard stepchild of journalism, and I’m embarrassed sometimes to be associated with it,” he told Chicago magazine in 1996.“The truth is, I have never written about a celebrity,” Mr. Zehme wrote in “Intimate Strangers.” “I have always written about humans, replete with human traits and foibles and issues, who also happen to be famous.” More

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      In ‘Unstable,’ the Sins of the Father Are Comedy Gold

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      LOS ANGELES — John Owen Lowe was 11 or 12 when he first realized that his father wasn’t quite like the other dads. So what was it like to grow up with a father this famous, this problematically handsome?“How about ‘unbelievably’ handsome?” John Owen’s father, Rob Lowe, 59, interjected from the other end of a sofa in a Netflix conference room in early March. His son grimaced.The short answer: Not great, especially for a kid with social anxiety. “I remember thinking, I didn’t ask for all this extra attention,” John Owen Lowe, 27, said. “But the truth is, nobody wants to hear you complain about that.”A few years ago, he found an alternative to complaining. He began to troll his father on social media, dinging him for each humblebrag. “The subtle art of taking a selfie in front of ur Emmy nominations,” an early comment on one of Rob’s thirst traps read. Others include “Maybe skip chest day for awhile” and “Plz god no.”The elder Lowe took the mockery in stride. Eventually he helped to give it a new platform. He had tried to dissuade both of his children — an older son, Matthew, is now a venture capitalist — from pursuing careers in the entertainment industry. But after John Owen graduated from Stanford, with a degree in science technology, he announced that he wanted to write and act. While writing on “9-1-1: Lone Star,” the Fox emergency responder drama starring his dad, he began to suspect that their barbed dynamic was actually pretty funny. So funny that it just might undergird a show of its own. The elder Lowe immediately signed on as a creator and executive producer.That half-hour comedy, “Unstable,” created with Victor Fresco (“Better Off Ted,” “Santa Clarita Diet”), debuts on Netflix on Thursday. Rob stars as Ellis Dragon, a volatile biotech guru grieving his wife’s death, with John Owen as Jackson, the son brought into his company to steady him. The show exaggerates their personal relationship for comic effect — in reality Rob is more self-aware and John Owen is less mean. But according to both men, it doesn’t exaggerate all that much. And it may have improved that relationship, if only up to a point.In the Netflix series “Unstable,” Rob Lowe plays a grieving biotech guru whose son is brought into the company to help steady him.John P. Fleenor/Netflix“Unstable,” both Lowes say, exaggerates the dynamics of their personal relationship for comic effect, but not all that much. Netflix“I have learned to treat him with some level of respect that feels earned,” John Owen said. “But then they call ‘cut’ and he’s like, ‘If you wear your hair like that, people aren’t going to take you seriously.’ And I’m like, ‘Now it’s time for you to get lost.’”In that small conference room, with John Owen in a baggy dotted suit and Rob in a tight, white T-shirt that set off his ridiculously blue eyes, the two men discussed family, trauma and the idea that despite its billionaire, high-tech trappings, “Unstable” is mostly just a story of a child deeply embarrassed by his parent.“The secret weapon of the show is how relatable it is,” Rob said.These are edited excerpts from the conversation.John Owen, when did you realize that your father was famous?JOHN OWEN LOWE It isn’t something you’re born knowing. But there is a time where you go, ‘Oh wait, my existence isn’t like everybody else’s.’ Probably around fifth or sixth grade, I remember looking back and re-evaluating certain things. Like, oh, it’s not a normal experience to get nervous to walk a red carpet with your dad when you’re 8 years old.When you were growing up, did he behave differently in public?JOHN OWEN There’s not that big of a difference. There’s just not.ROB LOWE I came into acceptance of living a public life really, really early, because I’ve seen two types of people: They either come to terms with it and embrace it or they don’t. The don’t crowd is not for me. My heroes are the people who wear it well.JOHN OWEN There’s a certain type of celebrity who’s like, “Just treat me like a normal person.” And I’m like, “But you’re not! You aren’t a normal person. Your life is the furthest thing from normal.” So don’t give me this spiel, because it’s fake. Rob, on the occasional night that he’s feeling it, he’ll say, “Let’s go giraffe.” And we’ll go to a place where he might be seen.Giraffe?ROB Because you can’t walk a giraffe down the street without people pointing.John Owen, when did you start making fun of your father in public?JOHN OWEN I’ve made fun of him my whole life. It’s our love language. He made it really easy for me to do it publicly when he started to become more present on social media — that was when I found it impossible to not chime in. Like when you took a non-ironic workout selfie in front of your Emmy nominations, I had to say something.ROB First of all. I will never, ever, ever——JOHN OWEN ——win an Emmy.ROB ——take an ironic workout photo. You just wait. You get north of 50, there’s no more irony left.JOHN OWEN I don’t think you know what irony means.“I’ve made fun of him my whole life,” John Owen said of his father. “It’s our love language.” Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesDoes his social media persona actually embarrass you? Or do you just enjoy trolling him?JOHN OWEN It’s not a bit. This is very real. He’s very, very embarrassing.Is it funny to you, Rob, or does it hurt?ROB I love it. You have to understand, one of the highlights of my life was my Comedy Central roast.JOHN OWEN He’s a really good sport. I will give him credit there. I’ve said some cutting stuff to you before, for sure.ROB The more cutting, the more I like it.How did “Unstable” come about?JOHN OWEN I was writing on “Lone Star.” The proximity to my dad was driving me insane, the idea of never escaping his shadow. I had a weekly phone call with my manager and agent where they basically served as de facto therapists. I would say, “I’m going crazy. I’ll never separate from him. Is this my destiny?” They would laugh at my pain, but I thought to myself, Maybe there’s something interesting here, like, this might be a show. Then we got Victor Fresco involved, who really helped us structure it.So you made a Netflix show as therapy?JOHN OWEN It’s wildly cathartic for me. For sure. First of all, I get to make fun of him on a public platform. But it’s sweet and rewarding, honestly, to act with him.How close are both of you to your characters?JOHN OWEN Pretty close.ROB Pretty close.JOHN OWEN Ellis is like 90 percent Rob, truly. I do believe that.ROB It’s definitely my worldview and essence, on steroids.What are some of the other inspirations for Ellis?JOHN OWEN Elon Musk. Because he’s an insane person and keeps failing upward.ROB The other was the Zappos founder [Tony Hsieh], who was obsessed with fire and eventually died in a fire. It was just the notion of these brilliant, amazing geniuses, who always have to keep pushing and testing and searching.“Watching Johnny do the hours was amazing,” Rob said. “He’s like a hothouse flower. He’s like, ‘I’m so tired.’ I’m like, ‘Bro, you’re in the prime of your life.’”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesWhat has it been like working together so closely?JOHN OWEN We do have a seamless work flow. I’ve worked with him in different facets before this, but this is the most hands-on we’ve ever been. I’ve never shared carrying a show with him.ROB Watching Johnny do the hours was amazing. He’s like a hothouse flower. He’s like, “I’m so tired.” I’m like, “Bro, you’re in the prime of your life.”JOHN OWEN I learned a lot from him on “Unstable.” How somebody in that position carries himself, when so many people are counting on you to deliver day in and day out. I was impressed. That’s as much of a compliment as I’m going to give you right now.And what was acting opposite him like? Because this man, he’s a brick wall of charisma — it’s a little shattering.JOHN OWEN He does have a lot have charisma. In a scene, if people aren’t bringing it, he’ll suck attention into himself. He’s a black hole of energy and positivity. I use that. There’s two ways to match an actor doing something like that: One is to try and meet them where they are; the other is to just let them go. And that’s really what Jackson’s doing, because that’s what I do in real life around him. Even in the writing, I’ve helped craft set pieces that are built for him to be the spectacle.Has it given you anything new to troll him with?JOHN OWEN Where do I even begin? He may have had to read a line off a cue card. I have that cue card in my car. I’m keeping it.And what has it given you, Rob?ROB I get to do what is probably one of the last great network hits [“9-1-1: Lone Star”], then I get to do this and fulfill my goofy, nerdy comedy side. It’s the dream. It’s literally the dream.JOHN OWEN It’s Rob’s world. We’re all just living in it.John Owen called working on “Unstable” with his father “wildly cathartic.” “First of all, I get to make fun of him on a public platform,” he said. “But it’s sweet and rewarding.”Chantal Anderson for The New York Times More

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      Late Night Recaps Donald Trump’s Waco Rally

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      Hosts raised their eyebrows over the former president’s choice of venue, near the Texas compound where the Branch Davidian cult met with disaster 30 years ago.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.‘If I Did It’Donald Trump held a rally in Waco, Texas, on Saturday, near the site where dozens of members of a religious cult died by fire as federal agents besieged their compound 30 years ago. During his speech, the ex-president addressed the investigation into his alleged payment of hush money to a porn star.“That wouldn’t be the one!” Trump said of the porn star, Stormy Daniels, quickly adding, “There is no one. We have a great first lady.”“Yes, her name is Jill Biden,” Jimmy Kimmel said on Monday.“But, just to be clear, he didn’t do it, he wouldn’t do it, but if he had done it, he wouldn’t have done it with her.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I love that Trump’s running for office and from the law at the same time.” — JOHN LEGUIZAMO, guest host of “The Daily Show”“Trump chose Waco because it’s a powerful metaphor for his campaign: He’s going down in flames, and he’s taking his cult followers with him.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Former President Trump held a rally on Saturday in Waco, Texas, near the site of the Branch Davidian cult’s compound. Or, as it’s now known: campaign headquarters.” — SETH MEYERS“Former President Trump held a campaign rally on Saturday in Waco, Texas, making him the first cult leader ever to escape that city alive.” — SETH MEYERS“Yep, you could tell Trump was nervous about getting arrested, because he gave his speech with one foot in Mexico.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Final Four Edition)“The teams in this year’s Final Four are Miami, Florida Atlantic, UConn and San Diego State. Really? The only way your bracket’s got those four teams is if you filled it out this morning.” — JIMMY FALLON“This Final Four was on nobody’s bracket.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“In a strange turn of events, I found myself rooting for this imaginary school on Saturday. I was all in on Gonzaga because, they’re, really, they’re the ultimate Cinderella story, in that, like Cinderella, they’re also fictional characters who do not exist.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I’ll be honest, I think two of those teams might just be online universities.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingLil Nas X joined James Corden for “Carpool Karaoke” on Monday’s “Late Late Show.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightThe singer-songwriter and actress Mary J. Blige will appear on Tuesday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutLana Del Rey’s new album is “as sprawling, hypnotic and incorrigibly American as an interstate highway,” our critic says.Neil KrugLana Del Ray’s ninth album, “Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd,” asks big, earnest questions and isn’t afraid to get messy. More

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      ‘Perry Mason’ Season 2, Episode 4 Recap: More Than Meets the Eye

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      Perry, Paul and Della aren’t the only people searching for answers about Brooks McCutcheon.Season 2, Episode 4: ‘Chapter Twelve’Life, like a murder case, has its ups and downs. First, the down: Perry, Paul and Della have learned that the brothers Mateo and Rafael Gallardo have been lying and did indeed murder Brooks McCutcheon. Now, the up: Perry, Paul and Della all hooked up. Call it a glass-half-full situation.First, let’s focus on the amorous success of our three heroes. Della scores with her screenwriter inamorata, Anita, at Anita’s retreat in Palm Springs. Paul and his wife, Clara, carve out a little alone time during a rare 40-minute stretch when they’re alone in their crowded house. (Her sultry dance to Louis Armstrong proves persuasive.) And Perry seems downright stunned to discover the fetching schoolteacher Miss Aimes at his door during the small hours.Miss Aimes’s visit caps off the miserable days during which Perry learned of the Gallardos’ guilt, which stretch into a long night during which he briefly takes Lydell McCutcheon’s prize racehorse out for a joyride as retaliation for the negative headlines McCutcheon’s pals have been planting about him in the press. (No one does pointlessly petty like Perry.) It all culminates when Perry shows up at school to pick up his son and winds up socking another parent for calling him “Maggot Mason,” per the nickname generated by the radio firebrand “Fighting” Frank Finnerty (John DiMaggio).Is it reasonable to assume that decking that dude is part of what attracts Miss Aimes to Perry? I’ve never known an educator to respond to an outburst of violence on school grounds by thinking, “Ooh, that guy’s a catch!” Perhaps it’s Perry’s willingness to stick up for himself, and by extension his clients — guilty or not, they’re the victims of vituperative racism among the city’s chattering class — that revs her engine. Either way, we officially have ourselves another new love interest for one of our legal eagles.I wonder if there might be another on the way, too. As part of her research into Brooks McCutcheon’s stadium scheme, Della pays another visit to Camilla Nygaard. A true Renaissance woman, Camilla teaches piano and researches nutrition when she isn’t overseeing her oil empire. Most important, she encourages Della to be direct about her frustration with Perry’s moodiness and about her ambition to have her name on the firm’s front door.Sure, Nygaard may just be providing inspiration as a powerful woman — or, in a more sinister possibility, attempting to throw Della off the scent of her own potential involvement in Brooks’s murder. But considering Della’s already established wandering eye, I don’t think we can completely rule out the possibility of another affair.Getting back to business, Paul is the linchpin figure this week. (Like Juliet Rylance, Chris Chalk has an intense screen presence during his solo sequences that more than compensates for the absence of the title character.) Paul has every confidence that his conclusions about the murder weapon were correct and that the Gallardos used it, just as they later confessed to Perry and Della from jail. But that’s just it: Their confession lines up exactly with what the prosecutors Hamilton Burger and Thomas Milligan say took place. How often does that happen? Paul was a cop long enough to learn that the official story is rarely the correct one.So he does some more digging, bribing the gun dealer who provided the weapon to the Gallardos into admitting that they rented the piece every day for target practice. Where would they get that kind of money, Paul wonders? And is it a coincidence that Brooks’s murder required the skills of an expert marksman?The final scene hints at an answer. Using one of Rafael’s prison drawings as a guide, Mateo’s wife, Sofia, retrieves a huge cache of cash from beneath a nearby car. And since Perry is, ahem, busy at that moment, I’ll provide you a theory of my own about it: The Gallardos were paid to assassinate Brooks in such a way as to make it look like a mugging gone wrong.By whom, though? Was it his disapproving father? A business competitor like Camilla? A rival in the semi-legal casino business? Could it have to do with his violent sexual proclivities, which it seems left Noreen Lawson — the sister of the city councilman in charge of the ward where Brooks’s stadium was to be erected — in her mentally diminished state?Perry, Paul and Della aren’t the only people searching for answers about Brooks, by the way. His employee turned successor aboard the casino boat, Detective Holcomb, is on the hunt for how the guy managed to procure free food. More precisely, he is eager to know how Brooks and his business partners were making money off the operation, since he isn’t seeing a dime. Stumbling upon the man whom Brooks’s father, Lydell, maimed in the previous episode, he learns that Brooks was accepting huge shipments of produce from offshore vessels on a regular basis — from the McCutcheon shipping fleet, no less.Why bring in fruits and veggies in such an expensive manner when California is overflowing with them? Was daddy dearest aware his son was skimming from the family operation? Or, as I suspect, was there a lot more aboard those ships than just potatoes?From the case files:The show’s director of photography, Darran Tiernan, and the director Jessica Lowrey sure know how to light a scene. The huge blue-white stadium lights that illuminate Perry’s devil-may-care ride on that racehorse, the golden sun that illuminates Della and Anita as they kiss and undress, even the familiar flicker of a movie-theater newsreel taken in by Perry (and the sex worker he pays double to leave him alone) — gorgeous stuff from start to finish.“He seems a bit broken,” Camilla says of Perry, nailing it. In fact, it seems she is going to assess his character even more accurately when she says, “It can be a bit difficult to be in the trenches.” But after a pregnant pause, she adds, “with someone like that,” indicating that she was speaking metaphorically instead of speaking about his experience during the Great War. That remains his hero-slash-villain origin story, as far as I’m concerned.The deer-in-the-headlights look Miss Aimes wears when Perry asks her if she wants to come in is priceless. It truly is as if neither of them has any idea what her answer to that question could possibly be — until she answers it by coming in.At the start of the episode, it’s unclear whether Paul will hand over the murder weapon to Perry. Then, it seems as if they and Della might cover it up together. Then it seems as if Perry might quit the case rather than defend guilty men. In all three cases, idealism and illegality go hand in glove. More

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      ‘Succession’ Season 4 Premiere Recap: Many Happy Returns

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      The Roy family is back for a fourth and final season, and everyone came out swinging. Let the humiliations begin.Season 4, Episode 1: ‘The Munsters’Have you ever noticed that “Succession” is a show about deal-makers in which hardly any deals are ever completed? Every major acquisition or transfer of power always seems to be 48 hours away. Everyone always needs to iron out a few more details, get a few more stragglers from the board into the fold, toss in a few more sweeteners for the major shareholders, et cetera. How many times over the course of this series have the principals actually signed on the dotted line?I can think of one: when Siobhan Roy (Sarah Snook) married Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen). And even then, Shiv blew up the deal on the couple’s wedding night by telling Tom she wanted an open marriage. Given a choice between no wife and barely a wife, Tom chose to stay in the mix, hoping Shiv might one day wake up and realize she had already found her true companion. But the string of humiliations over the past few years has not been easy for Tom. As Season 4 begins, the two are on the brink of divorce.Yet even when it comes to dissolving a contract, these two cannot quite finish what they started.Tom and Shiv are at the center of both halves of this lively and highly entertaining premiere of the show’s fourth and final season. After betraying his wife and allying with Logan Roy (Brian Cox), Tom is starting to realize that his father-in-law perhaps values him mainly as a way to keep tabs on his rebellious kids. Tom even broaches the subject of a Shiv-free future, asking (after a hilariously rambling prologue), “What would happen were a marriage such as mine, and even, in fact, mine, were to falter to the point of failure?”Logan’s typically cryptic reply: “If we’re good, we’re good.”The Tom half of this episode takes place in New York, at Logan’s birthday party, which for the guest of honor is a miserable occasion. (We know this night is going to be a bummer when Nicholas Britell’s typically mournful string cadence plays as Logan mingles.) He gets so fed up with all the cheerful “Munsters” scarfing up his food that he ducks out with his bodyguard and “best pal” Colin (Scott Nicholson), escaping to a diner where he grimly ruminates on how, if you really think about it, people are just economic units, and how once we die, our place in the market dies with us. “I think this is it,” he mutters. “Realistically.”What eventually rouses Logan on this deeply depressing evening is what is happening across the country in Los Angeles, where Shiv, Kendall (Jeremy Strong) and Roman (Kieran Culkin) are plotting revenge for the vicious way Logan blocked their recent coup attempt. These “new-gen Roys” are planning to launch “a high visibility, execution-dependent disrupter news brand” called The Hundred, with insights provided by the 100 top thinkers in all the major fields usually covered by the media — business, tech, food, politics and the like.This all sounds great to Shiv — really, it does, she over-insists — until she gets a tip from Tom that in addition to Waystar’s impending megadeal with GoJo, Logan wants to land a big fish he has been salivating over for years: the left-leaning, Roy-hating Pierce Global Media, which Nan Pierce (Cherry Jones) is desperate to sell. Sure, The Hundred had potential investors lining up outside Roman’s fancy hillside house. Nevertheless, Shiv, Kendall and Roman still jet up to Nan’s palatial estate and vineyard, where they become the ones who have to line up and wait.Shiv wants primarily to be taken seriously so that Nan will stop thinking of the Roy kids as “fake fruit for display purposes only.” The younger Roys know that they can offer Nan assurances about preserving the P.G.M. brand that Logan would never honor (despite Tom’s promise to the Pierces of “a little tummy-tickle on culture”). And they are pretty sure they can line up the financing after their dad’s GoJo deal goes through and they cash out of Waystar, netting about $2 to $3 billion. The real question is: Do they want this?Kendall clearly does, because he is driven by a hunger to beat Logan. Shiv wants to do something big, which is probably not The Hundred. (I mean … it is The Hundred, not The Billions.) Roman, though, is skittish about going another round with their dad, having just been soundly whipped.Roman eventually falls into line, and with as much fake enthusiasm as he can muster, gets ready to “talk to an old lady about newspapers.” But Nan is tricky. She insists there is no way to back out of her tentative deal with Logan and groans that she is tired of hearing about numbers, while sneakily steering her new suitors toward an offer well beyond the $7 billion Waystar was planning to spend. The kids settle on $10 billion, which turns out to be a “definitive,” conversation-ending bid.Earlier, Logan’s children had gotten a call from his friend, assistant and adviser Kerry (Zoe Winters). (Who is also possibly his lover and the future mother of his child? Logan’s love life is another deal that never quite seems to close.) She suggested that maybe they could ring him up and wish him a happy birthday. Instead, Logan’s party ends with him demanding Tom call Shiv so he can growl at “the rats,” hissing, “Congratulations on saying the biggest number.”This brings us back to Shiv and Tom. They end their busy day by meeting awkwardly in their New York apartment, where Shiv has popped by to pick up some outfits Tom thought she did not want. (“I don’t want to be restricted to my favorites,” she says, a tossed-off remark that says a lot about Shiv’s whole vibe.) They bicker a bit about how Tom and Cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun) have been tomcatting around, calling themselves “the Disgusting Brothers.” She suggests they “move on” from this marriage, to which he offers a Logan-esque, “uh-huh.”Then they collapse next to each other on the bed and hold hands. They are not going to talk things out. They are not going to reconcile. They are not going to have sex. But neither of them wants to leave, so they are going to stay in the same space together a little while longer. Whatever is going to happen with them, they will figure it out tomorrow — or maybe never.Due DiligenceCousin Greg comes in hot in the season premiere, bringing an un-vetted rando named Bridget (Francesca Root-Dodson) to his uncle’s birthday party. Bridget is “a firecracker” and “crunchy peanut butter,” who at one point sneaks off with him and has “a bit of a rummage” in his pants. She also posts pics from the party on social media, asks Logan for a selfie and carries what Tom describes as a “ludicrously capacious bag” that one would slide across the floor after a bank job. So when Colin indicates that he needs to eject her, Greg does not stop him. (“I don’t want to see what happens in Guantánamo,” he says. “Do your ways, and God be willing.”)Connor Roy (Alan Ruck) is in a funk all episode because he has been told he needs to spend another $100 million on his presidential campaign just to maintain his current 1 percent in the polls. So he asks his fiancée, Willa (Justine Lupe), if she would let him drum up some free publicity by having their wedding underneath the Statue of Liberty with “a brass band” and “bum fights.” (Y’know, hoopla and razzmatazz.)You may be thinking, “What about The Hundred?” This promising start-up may have just stopped, but we will always treasure the many ways its founders tried to define it. It is “like a private members club but for everyone.” It is “an indispensable bespoke information hub” with “high-calorie info-snacks.” It “has the ethos of a nonprofit but the path to crazy margins.” (Tag yourself! I’m “Substack meets Masterclass meets the Economist meets The New Yorker.”)Always remember: Logan is not being horrible. He is being fun. More

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      How the ‘Yellowjackets’ ‘Weirdos’ Fell in Love and Wrote a Hit Show

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      The married creators of “Yellowjackets” always had big screenwriting dreams. Their idea about witchy teen cannibals struck the right alchemy.Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson share a marriage, a house in Los Angeles and a hit TV series that they created together. But not a computer screen, at least not when it comes to doing interviews.“We learned pretty early that one screen is not quite enough to contain us, gesture-wise,” said Nickerson, stationed in the living room. True enough, the creators of “Yellowjackets,” the second season of which began streaming on Friday (and airs Sunday on Showtime), both like to talk with their hands as they discuss the dark, witty psychological horror thriller that gave them their breakthrough after years of working in writers’ rooms for shows like “Narcos” and “Dispatches From Elsewhere.”They also like to share ideas, batting possibilities and pitches back and forth, exploring ideas that might have a chance of rising above the din. “One of those conversations just started around the idea of a girls’ soccer team being lost in the woods,” Lyle said from an upstairs room. Not a meditation on the hell of high school, or the futility of trying to outrun one’s past. This is Rule No. 1 in the Lyle-Nickerson book: Character and situation come first, laying the seedbed for themes and big ideas.“It’s not like we immediately started having conversations around trauma or female friendship,” Nickerson said. “We just started talking about characters and everything grew from there. At least that’s my story.”“I think that’s right,” Lyle confirmed from her post.Whatever the origin, the results have resonated. Showtime has already ordered a third season of “Yellowjackets” and signed the couple to an overall deal. Online discussions overflow with speculation about what might happen next or, sometimes, what the heck is going on now. The surviving members of that New Jersey high school soccer team — whose plane crashes en route to nationals in 1996 and who resort to doing very bad things to survive — have developed an ardent fan base.That those bad things appear to have involved some measure of witchcraft and, as the Season 2 premiere confirmed, cannibalism, is part of the appeal. Their creators, themselves native New Jerseyans who met in 2005 and shared a dream of screenwriting, are just happy they found an idea that stuck.“We’re constantly pitching things at each other, and I feel like 80 percent of the time the other person will go, ‘Huh,’” Lyle said. “And then 20 percent of the time or less, it’s like, ‘Ooh, save that one.’”“Yellowjackets,” it seems safe to say, was an “Ooh.”“I used to spend all day just living in fear of the night because that’s when my imagination was going to run wild,” Nickerson said.Ryan Pfluger for The New York TimesLyle, 43, and Nickerson, 44, met at a party given by a mutual friend in Jersey City. The theme was “beer Christmas”: Revelers drink beer from cans and then hang the cans from the Christmas tree. (The festivities continue: The friend now lives in Long Beach, Calif.; Lyle and Nickerson’s production company is called Beer Christmas.)They had heard about each other from other mutual friends, but Nickerson was usually busy helping his father with the family fast-food stand on the Jersey Shore, serving up burgers, hot dogs and sweet sausage sandwiches. “I was free labor all summer long,” he said.They were both outsiders of sorts. Lyle was a horror movie fiend; in eighth grade she was in a band that played Liz Phair and Sebadoh covers. (“Yellowjackets” boasts a killer ’90s indie-rock soundtrack.) Nickerson was a bit of a loner. “I never really found a thing or a group-level identity or a place to feel like I fit,” he said. “By the end of high school, I was just ready to get out of there.”After they finally met, realized they had shared aspirations, and fell in love, they did the natural thing: moved to Los Angeles with a suitcase full of spec scripts for various TV comedies, including “30 Rock,” “My Name Is Earl” and “The Office.” None were made. They wrote a one-hour pilot inspired by one of their favorite shows, “Veronica Mars.” Finally, their agents told them to write an original pilot and make it as weird as they wanted.In response, they wrote a high school murder mystery. It didn’t get picked up, but it helped them find their voice and generated that elusive commodity: industry buzz. Soon they were writing for the CW vampire series “The Originals,” and then the Netflix cartel drama “Narcos.” They were on their way.That they broke through with a witchy story involving cannibalism makes some sense. Lyle, who has an arm tattoo of a palm-reading chart (both are into tarot cards), recalled trying to convince a video-store clerk to rent her the cult horror favorite “Dr. Giggles.” She was 11. Nickerson was too freaked out by horror to give it a chance until he was older. His own mind was terror enough.“I used to spend all day just living in fear of the night because that’s when my imagination was going to run wild,” he said.Shauna (Sophie Nélisse, center, with Courtney Eaton, left, and Jasmin Savoy Brown) gets the cannibalism started in the Season 2 premiere by snacking on her dead friend’s frozen ear.Kailey Schwerman/ShowtimeMelanie Lynskey, who plays the adult Shauna, praised Lyle and Nickerson’s complementary qualities. “They’re such a good team,” she said.Kimberley French/ShowtimeThere’s enough fear to go around in “Yellowjackets,” which, for all its sensational qualities, explores truths that resonate more broadly. As they developed the idea, the creators took long walks though Griffith Park in Los Angeles, talking about the characters and what they mean to one another. Deeper themes emerged.“A lot of the thematics really just grew out of trying to put these people in scenarios together and looking at their relationships,” Lyle said. “It just became quickly apparent that it would be really complicated, in hopefully a great way.”Complication, of course, comes standard in high school relationships, even those that don’t involve witchcraft or cannibalism. Tawny Cypress, who plays the adult version of Taissa, a survivor who grows up to become a state senator, described the story as universal. Her character experiences a frightening form of dissociative identity disorder, and winds up sacrificing the family dog in a cultish ritual. But less extreme versions of life can still be terrifying.“High school sucked for everybody,” Cypress said in a video call. “Nobody came out unscathed, and we carry that around with us still. These girls had a much bigger experience, but we all are stuck with things that formed us back then.”Karyn Kusama, an executive producer on the series and an accomplished film director (“Girlfight,” “Destroyer”), was even more specific.“This idea of girls feeling they need to destroy each other in order to survive felt very emotionally familiar to me,” she said in a video call. “I just thought it was an interesting thing to explore in real terms, and then allow the metaphor to be quite powerful and clean while the narrative event is extremely messy.”Season 1 hinted at the most extreme expression of that metaphor, a taboo subject that never really came to fruition: cannibalism. The pilot all but promised it, to the point that viewers might have fairly wondered: Who will be eaten? When? By whom? And is there hot sauce?“I don’t think people will be disappointed this season,” Lyle said in reference to the cannibalism teased by the first season of “Yellowjackets.” The Season 2 premiere has already begun to deliver. Ryan Pfluger for The New York TimesNickerson sounded a little sheepish about what he called the first season’s “lack of cannibalism.” But he swore they weren’t teasing. (They have since confirmed in interviews that the girls would eventually get their fill, and the Season 2 premiere gets things started when Shauna, played as a teen by Sophie Nélisse, makes a frozen snack of her dead best friend’s ear.)“It wasn’t that we set out to be like, ‘Well, there will be no cannibalism in the first season,’” he said. “It was more that it didn’t feel like we had gotten the characters to a place where that would feel organic. We wanted viewers to be with them as much as possible to make this seem like not a salacious choice, but the only choice.”Lyle added: “I don’t think people will be disappointed this season.”Lyle and Nickerson didn’t quite finish each other’s sentences when we spoke. But they came pretty close, glossing and elaborating on a point here, gently correcting there. It’s not all fun and games when they work at home, but they appear to complement each other in productive ways.Melanie Lynskey, who earned an Emmy nomination for her performance as Adult Shauna, said she saw a definite pattern in the couple’s creative relationship.“Ashley’s so funny and so quick and kind of gathers her thoughts in a very businesslike way,” she said by phone. “And Bart is more emotional; he takes a minute to get to the thing. But along the way, there are all these great stop-offs, and they’re such a good team.”Cypress, a fellow New Jerseyan, was more succinct about the couple: “I [expletive] love those weirdos.” More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Riverdale’ and ‘Royal Crackers’

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      Riverdale returns for a seventh season on the CW, and a new animated comedy series comes to Adult Swim.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, March 27- April 2. Details and times are subject to change.MondayJosh Lucas and Reese Witherspoon in “Sweet Home Alabama.”Peter Iovino/Touchstone PicturesSWEET HOME ALABAMA (2002) 7:30 p.m. on Freeform. In this romantic comedy, Melanie Smooter (Reese Witherspoon) is a fashion designer in New York who lies her way into the perfect life. With a great career and a high-profile boyfriend (Patrick Dempsey), she finally feels like she belongs. That is until her boyfriend proposes and Melanie remembers the husband (Josh Lucas) she left behind seven years ago in their country town in Alabama. In order to keep her facade going, Melanie hatches a plan to sneak back home and get an official divorce. However, things don’t go as planned when her husband refuses to sign the papers. “The film did beautifully nail the warring affections so many of us transplanted Southerners feel in New York City,” Elizabeth Schatz wrote in a column for The New York Times.TuesdayRENOVATION 911 9 p.m. on HGTV. Set in Minneapolis, the series premiering this week follows two emergency restoration experts, the sisters Lindsey Uselding and Kirsten Meehan, over eight episodes, as they rescue homes that have been damaged by fires, floods, storms and other catastrophes.WednesdayRIVERDALE 9 p.m. on The CW. After the town was saved from disaster in Season 6, Jughead (Cole Sprouse) is left reeling when he finds himself transported to the 1950s in the show’s seventh and final season. With his friends seeming to have no memory of their real lives, Jughead must find his way back to the present day to save them while navigating a repressive, conformist world.ThursdayKEEPING UP WITH THE JONESES (2016) 7:35 p.m. on FXM. The Gaffneys live a predictable life until the Joneses move in next door. Intrigued by their new neighbors’ flawless looks and worldly personalities, Jeff Gaffney (Zach Galifianakis) and his wife, Karen (Isla Fisher), befriend the couple. But the Gaffneys soon discover that Tim (Jon Hamm) and Natalie Jones (Gal Gadot) are government spies, after they find themselves entangled in one of their missions.FridaySamuel L. Jackson, left, and Alexander Skarsgard in “The Legend of Tarzan.”Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros.THE LEGEND OF TARZAN (2016) 8 p.m. on AMC. After living mostly in the jungles of Congo, Tarzan (Alexander Skarsgard) has finally acclimated to life in London after moving there to be with his wife, Jane Porter (Margot Robbie). But their lives are disrupted when Tarzan is asked by King Leopold of Belgium to make a trip to Africa. Tarzan agrees only after a friend persuades him that King Leopold might be enslaving the people of Congo. After arriving, Tarzan and Jane are attacked by mercenaries paid off by Captain Leon Rom (Christoph Waltz). Rom had struck a deal with the leader of a Congo tribe (Djimon Hounsou), who agreed to give mineral rocks needed by the king in exchange for Tarzan. “There’s something touching about ‘The Legend of Tarzan,’” Manohla Dargis wrote in her review for The Times, “which as it struggles to offer old Hollywood-style adventure without old Hollywood-style racism, suggests that perhaps other fantasies are possible — you just need some thought and Mr. Jackson.”THE GREAT AMERICAN JOKE OFF 9:30 p.m. on The CW. This new comedy series, hosted by Dulcé Sloan, centers on the art of telling a good joke. Each episode goes through several rounds of telling as many quick gags as possible in accordance with specific categories. Each round will have a winner, decided by Sloan.PSYCHO (1960) 10 p.m. TCM. Based on the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch, this thriller follows Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), a secretary who steals a large sum of money from her employer and runs away to California to be with her lover, Sam (John Gavin). On the run and hiding from the police, Marion grows tired and finds herself at the Bates Motel. When she’s never heard from again, Marion’s sister, Lila (Vera Miles), and Sam team up to look for her.SaturdayJae Head, far left, Quinton Aaron and Sandra Bullock in “The Blind Side.”Ralph Nelson/Warner Brothers PicturesTHE BLIND SIDE (2009) 8 p.m. on CMTV. Based on the true story of Michael Oher, a former offensive tackle for the Baltimore Ravens, the film follows Oher’s (Quinton Aaron) life as a homeless teen drifting in and out of the school system before Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock) and her husband, Sean (Tim McGraw), take him into their home. Leigh Anne soon recognizes Michael’s football abilities and helps him hone his skills while also giving him love and comfort. “The film’s makers had created a deeply earnest picture aimed less at tastemakers than at people in the middle: sports fans, families, churchgoers and do-gooders,” Michael Cieply wrote in his review for The Times.IMITATION OF LIFE (1959) 10 p.m. on TMC. Adapted from the 1933 novel by Fannie Hurst, this movie tells the story of Lora Meredith (Lana Turner), a white single mother and struggling actress who has Broadway aspirations; and Annie Johnson (Juanita Moore), a homeless, widowed Black mother. The two women are on Coney Island when they find their daughters playing together. Lora soon hires her new friend as a caretaker for her daughter while she pursues her dreams. The movie shows how the two women face difficulties with motherhood and confront race and identity. “This tale of two single mothers, one Black and the other white — and of maternal love, exploitation and crossing the color line — is a magnificent social symptom,” J. Hoberman wrote in his review for The Times.SundayROYAL CRACKERS 11 p.m. on ADULT SWIM. This animated comedy series follows two brothers: Stebe, the loving, responsible father and husband; and Theo Jr., a middle-aged bachelor trying to relive his glory days. Together they live in their comatose father’s house, counting down the days until he dies and they inherit his cracker company empire. Unbeknownst to either of them, the empire is crumbling, and the brothers, along with their family, must put their differences aside to try to save the company. More

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      The Key to Gerri on ‘Succession’? ‘Inside She’s a Nervous Wreck’

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      For decades the New York theater world paid homage to J. Smith-Cameron, a veteran stage actress who has often been compared to Carole Lombard for her precise timing and comic verve. When she wasn’t doing Molière or Shakespeare, she was impressing critics and her fellow actors with her performances in plays by Paul Rudnick, John Patrick Shanley and Beth Henley.Now her hard-won local fame has been eclipsed by her breakout role on “Succession,” the HBO drama about a venal Murdoch-like family locked in a “King Lear”-like power struggle. As Gerri Kellman, the long-suffering general counsel and consigliere to Logan Roy, the vicious, vacillating patriarch played by Brian Cox, Ms. Smith-Cameron has turned an ancillary player into a surprisingly complex character. It’s a grown-up role for a grown-up woman.Gerri’s cool gaze, raised eyebrows and clipped interjections, along with her shrewd analyses of corporate shenanigans, have made her an avatar of female power for women of all ages, especially young professionals who find that attaining success in their fields may require them to tiptoe around monstrous male egos. As a result, Ms. Smith-Cameron has gone from a darling of the stage to social media star, with memes galore and Twitter accounts dedicated to Gerri’s every eye roll.“Characters like hers are often written as these barracuda businesswomen or hard-boiled lady detectives, people who are impenetrable or invincible,” Ms. Smith-Cameron said. “What I like about Gerri is she’s very powerful, but inside she’s a nervous wreck. She’s not impervious to things. That’s why I think she strikes a note. There’s a vulnerability to her and a jittery, thinking-on-her-feet quality. She’s not just coming in and blasting people.”On a brisk March afternoon, Ms. Smith-Cameron, who goes by “J.,” settled in with a cup of coffee onto a squashy blue velvet sofa in her living room. Brownie, a grizzled and wary 12-year-old terrier mix, was napping, fitfully, among the pillows, occasionally rousing herself to bark at a guest.For the last eight years, Ms. Smith-Cameron and her husband, Kenneth Lonergan, the playwright, screenwriter and director, have rented this cozy, two-story apartment in a Federal-style townhouse in downtown Manhattan from the actor Matthew Broderick. Mr. Broderick and Mr. Lonergan have been pals since high school, and they and Ms. Smith-Cameron have worked together, on and off, for decades.Ms. Smith-Cameron with Mr. Broderick in a 1999 production of Emlyn Williams’s “Night Must Fall” at the Lyceum Theater in New York.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“It’s been thrilling to watch J. cross over from a fixture on the New York stage into the collective consciousness,” Mr. Broderick said in a phone interview. “She’s so smart and her humor is so slyly funny. She doesn’t miss a joke.”There are a few Broderick touches in the apartment, notably paintings by Mr. Broderick’s mother, Patricia. “This one is called something like, ‘No matter how old or sick they are, no one likes to look a wreck,’” Ms. Smith-Cameron said, pointing out a piece above the fireplace, an expressionist image of a stately woman in disarray. “Isn’t it great? It’s so thought through.”Gerri has been good to the Smith-Cameron-Lonergan household.“She’s been supporting us for the last six years,” said Mr. Lonergan, who is known for the films “Manchester by the Sea” and “You Can Count On Me.” “No qualms with her whatsoever. Whatever she needs to get done it’s fine with me.”He mused about what, if anything, the character has in common with his wife.“J. has pointed out that Gerri is very anxious,” he said. “J. is sometimes anxious but not in a maneuvering way — she just gets anxious and overwhelmed. Her wheels are always turning. When you hug her, she’s very nicely hugging you back, but you get the sense she’s thinking of other things.”“I’m sorry,” Ms. Smith-Cameron said.It was Ms. Smith-Cameron’s rapport with Kieran Culkin, who plays Roman, the youngest, sassiest Roy, that inspired a “Succession” subplot that completely unhinged the internet. Gerri and Roman were in a jousting and affectionate mentor-mentee relationship as she took him under her wing. But the show’s writers, noting the actors’ off-camera banter, pushed the relationship further. (Off the set, the prankish Mr. Culkin teases Ms. Smith-Cameron as relentlessly as Roman does Gerri. This summer, during a cast dinner, she said, she was so exasperated with him she threw a drink in his face.)Ms. Smith-Cameron, with Kieran Culkin, in a scene from Season 3 of “Succession.” She went off script to call his character a “little slime puppy” in one episode.HBOMidway through the second season, Roman’s Gerri-baiting and his off-color jokes, and Gerri’s snappy retorts, had morphed into a queasy dominatrix-submissive scenario. During a phone call with Roman, Gerri realizes, to her horror, that her tart insults are turning the conversation into phone sex, at least on his end. Ms. Smith-Cameron found herself improvising, which was how the phrase “little slime puppy,” a put-down she coined on the spot, entered the popular lexicon. Or at least the vernacular of “Succession” fanatics.By the end of Season 3, things had gone completely off the rails. Roman tried to text Gerri a close-up of his anatomy, only to misfire, sending the photo to his father. For the first time in her career, Gerri found herself in a vulnerable position. That precariousness, and her response to it, will define her path in the show’s fourth and final season, which has its first episode Sunday.“Gerri is in a restless, insecure place through the whole season, but also, I feel, getting wise to her heft,” Ms. Smith-Cameron said. “I always felt like there was something kind of on the boil with her. I can say that it’s the first time in her career that she’s not felt on solid ground — and she’s angry about it. She’s angry with both Roman and Logan. She’s of an age and has accrued money and could easily retire, but she’s not the type. She’s a workaholic and I think she feels like she’s in her prime. People are always asking me, ‘Why does she take it?’ I think it’s thrilling for her, it’s a high, like surfing in a dangerous sea.“I don’t know that I could be Gerri in real life, and yet acting is very insecure,” she continued. “You have to go out and kill for food every time.”Ms. Smith-Cameron started acting in plays in New York in the 1980s. “I wasn’t trying to be on a big hit show,” she said.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesMs. Smith-Cameron, 65, was born Jean Isabel Smith in Louisville, Ky., the youngest of three children, and grew up in Greenville, S.C. Her father was an architect and engineer; her mother worked at Head Start and as an assistant librarian. Ms. Smith-Cameron studied at the Florida State University School of Theater in Tallahassee but dropped out, because she was working so much in regional theater and small films.She changed her name in stages: First to J. Smith, because Jeannie, as she was known, seemed too flimsy for an actor. She then exchanged Smith for Cameron, a family name, for additional heft. The hyphenate Smith-Cameron came a bit later, and by accident, after a director printed her name on a film poster that way.In the early 80s, Ms. Smith-Cameron moved to Manhattan and has worked to growing acclaim ever since. In the 1997 Off Broadway production of Douglas Carter Beane’s “As Bees in Honey Drown,” she played an irresistible con artist, delivering a manic mash-up of Auntie Mame and Holly Golightly in a role that won her an Obie. Ben Brantley called her performance “deliriously pleasurable” in his review for The New York Times.“In my 60s, to have this attention, it’s just weird,” she said. “It’s not like I didn’t have notice before, but I always did these off-the-beaten track things. I wasn’t trying to be on a big hit show.”Ms. Smith-Cameron has long been a booster of independent film. You can see her right now in “The Year Between,” by Alex Heller, a comedic drama based on the filmmaker’s own experience with bipolar disorder, which caused her to drop out of college and move back home with her parents. Ms. Smith-Cameron plays the tart Midwestern mother, and Steve Buscemi is her kindly husband. It’s not the first time they have been married onscreen. “He’s so great,” she said of Mr. Buscemi. “We both love to champion independent movies because they’re not built on the premise of making money. They’re exhausting, you have to work really hard fast, but when it fits, it’s a joy.”The actress in an ensemble scene from the 2022 film “The Year Between.”Gravitas Ventures“J. lifts people up,” said Zoe Winters, another fine stage actor scooped up by the “Succession” team who plays Kerry, Logan Roy’s immaculate assistant. “I’ll get texts from her that say, ‘You’re quite something. You’re dazzling.’ She has an endless capacity for that. Ultimately, I think what she’s always trying to do is make people feel good and make really good art.”Ms. Smith-Cameron and Mr. Lonergan met cute, as she put it, while working on a series of one-act plays in the mid-90s. She said she found him appealingly grumpy and quietly hilarious.As she recalled, “I was like, ‘Why have I never met this actor? He’s of an age, he’s really good, he’s really smart! Is he gay? Is he married?’ I began to do a little research.”She learned he was a playwright, acting in another’s scene, who had also written what she thought was the best play of the program. When they collided one night on the stairs of the theater, she complimented his work, comparing it to a William Inge play. When he looked blank, she challenged him, saying, “Don’t you know who William Inge is?”“I had been married and divorced in my 20s,” she said, “and I was going through a chilly spell. I didn’t think I’d fall in love or get married or have kids. So I was a little bitter and a little saucy. But I had never been this brazen.”The couple married in 2000; their daughter, Nellie, is 21.Ms. Cameron-Smith and Mr. Lonergan at the Season 4 premiere of “Succession” at Lincoln Center this month.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times“There’s something conspiratorial about J., as if she can’t wait to let the world in on the most delicious secret,” said Mr. Rudnick, who cast her in his 1994 Off Broadway comedy, “The Naked Truth.”“She was helplessly, magnetically funny,” Mr. Rudnick continued. “I kept making this one speech longer, just so I could watch J. perform it. She developed a brilliant set of almost balletic gestures, which she informed me were called ‘puppet hands.’ And over the course of an especially long rehearsal, we developed a system where if J. performed her monologue flawlessly, I’d give her a chocolate chip cookie. She of course ended up with an entire bag of Chips Ahoy!”Frank Rich, the former New York Times theater critic and an executive producer of “Succession,” said he had taken delight in Ms. Smith-Cameron’s stage work for years. Even though she has often been known for playing more flamboyant characters, he is not surprised by the nuanced quality she has brought to her character.“For Gerri, J. found this astringent comic tone that suggests she’s in on the joke of working for these entitled jerks who think they know what they’re doing but often have no idea,” he said. “She’s their corporate babysitter even as she has to be subordinate to them. There’s a tragicomedy to her situation, and J. is an actor who can deliver on that.”Ms. Smith-Cameron at home.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesMr. Lonergan, who had been puttering in the kitchen, wandered back into the living room, still mulling over the question of whether his wife has anything in common with the Waystar Royco general counsel.“The other thing I was going to say is, J. doesn’t take full command of things but they kind of go the way she wants them to go, sooner or later,” he said. “She’s very strong-willed. At first I would have said there wasn’t any similarity between J. and Gerri, but they both have their eyes on the main point. Both are extremely observant and notice shifts in what’s going on around them. They’re both interested in substance, and neither of them needs to be the center of attention in a room — and nobody is smarter than either of them in a room.”Ms. Smith-Cameron was beaming. “Thank you,” she said. More