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      ‘Heartstopper’ Season 2, Watched With L.G.B.T.Q. Teens

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      Three British 16-year-olds took an advance look at Season 2. There was popcorn, giggling and more than a little eye-rolling.This week, the British coming-of-age drama “Heartstopper” returned to laptop screens all over the world. Based on Alice Oseman’s webcomics, the Netflix series follows a romantic relationship between two high school students, Charlie (Joe Locke) and Nick (Kit Connor), whose friendship group includes a young trans woman, Elle (Yasmin Finney), and a lesbian couple, Tara (Corinna Brown) and Darcy (Kizzy Edgell).The first season of this fizzy, feel-good show amassed 24 million hours of views in its first week, according to Netflix, and received glowing reviews from critics. But does it really reflect reality for British L.G.B.T.Q. teenagers? “It’s probably my only comfort show,” said Sharan Sahota, 16, as she settled into an armchair on a recent afternoon to watch the first four episodes of the new season. In “Heartstopper,” Charlie is outed as gay in eighth grade; Sahota, who identifies as pansexual, was also outed at school around the same age.“It wasn’t a pleasant experience,” she said, adding that seeing a similar ordeal depicted in “Heartstopper” has helped her feel less alone. “If they can get through it, and they’re living happily, so can I,” she said.Sahota, Oscar Wittams-Nangle and Ari Przytulski, all 16, recently gathered in London for a “Heartstopper” watch party. The trio — who attend a weekly youth club run by the charity Mosaic L.G.B.T.+ Young Persons’ Trust — discussed the show’s relevance and accuracy, as well as its surprisingly chaste attitude to sex. There was popcorn, giggling and more than a little eye-rolling.The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity, and contains mild spoilers.In this season, we see Nick struggling to come out as bisexual multiple times. How relevant is coming out to your generation?ARI PRZYTULSKI I think it’s still definitely relevant. Many kids still feel like they have to come out, especially to parents. I came out to my mum twice, first I was gay, then I was like, actually I’m trans.OSCAR WITTAMS-NANGLE Coming out is definitely a pressure. But at least for me, it was always an external pressure that came from other people, rather than something I felt I needed to do for me.SHARAN SAHOTA When you’re outed, you’re just like, “I can’t do anything.” The closet is just glass after that. But when you change environments, you don’t have to come out.PRZYTULSKI I understand why they wrote Nick feeling like he needs to come out to everyone in order to actually be out. But I feel like it would be a better message to show that you don’t need to. You can just exist as an L.G.B.T. person, and just be in a relationship without having to tell everyone that you are this way.From left, Felix (Ash Self), Naomi (Bel Priestley) and Elle (Yasmin Finney) at an art school.Netflix/Samuel DoreWhat do you think “Heartstopper” is doing that other L.G.B.T. films and shows aren’t?PRZYTULSKI What I like about the show is that it doesn’t overdramatize for shock value, or just to play with your emotions. It’s about gay people, but it’s not tragic. A lot of queer films just show how sad it is. Especially in shows like “Euphoria”: It’s all about how horrible everyone is and how everything just goes badly. In “Heartstopper,” people fix stuff by talking.WITTAMS-NANGLE “Queer as Folk” was released in 1999 in Britain. I saw a few reviews draw comparisons to that. And it’s like, not really: It’s not that the reviewers didn’t understand it, but it was definitely a result of them not having this sort of show when they were growing up. There aren’t that many cultural references that they can draw on.What do you make of the lack of sex in the show?PRZYTULSKI A lot of other shows focus way more on sex when it’s not all about that: It’s also your affection toward people. That’s why so many straight people misunderstand us. It’s not about being proud of liking boys, or whoever you like, it’s about the experience of being gay in a heteronormative society.WITTAMS-NANGLE It’s good that “Heartstopper” moves away from sexuality being purely about sex. It does mean more than that to me. It’s an identity, it’s a community. I think there are some things that are sanitized, but I wouldn’t say it would be the portrayal of sexuality.Locke and Connor in Season 2 of “Heartstopper.”Netflix/Samuel DoreWhich aspects are sanitized, do you think?WITTAMS-NANGLE The Harry character is very sanitized. Most queerphobic bullies say things that are a lot worse. I’ve had worse.SAHOTA In real life there’s a whole group of them.WITTAMS-NANGLE Exactly.PRZYTULSKI Whether it’s people staring at you, or it’s people outright harassing you, it’s a constant struggle. I understand why you wouldn’t want to include that in the show, because it’s meant to be a happy show.WITTAMS-NANGLE Also, it definitely is not easy in this country to be able to get gender affirming care, especially at our age, because you need to either have money, or luck.We don’t see Elle’s transition on the show.WITTAMS-NANGLE If you can get past all the waiting lists, all the appointments go well, then maybe you’ll get it on the N.H.S. [Britain’s National Health Service]. But, otherwise, there’s no chance. I think that is a struggle that isn’t shown in any media.Does it matter that the two main characters are two cisgender white boys?PRZYTULSKI I think it does. That’s one of the things that makes it less relatable to me as a trans woman. With Nick and Charlie both being white cis boys, it’s more digestible. They’re the default, and then there’s one variable, that they’re gay, or bi.WITTAMS-NANGLE Personally, I’m fine with it not being perfect, because there is absolutely no way you can make the perfect show for something which is as varied and as individual as living life as a queer person.Do you think “Heartstopper” is aiming for realism, or is it depicting an aspirational world?SAHOTA I think it’s a mix.WITTAMS-NANGLE Aspiration is the word. A lot of people don’t have accepting parents, or don’t have an accepting peer group, don’t have friends they feel comfortable coming out to. I watch the show and I’m like, “I wish my school could’ve been like that.”PRZYTULSKI They’re kissing a lot. They really were shoving each other into the wall. They’re in the middle of school and practically making out!WITTAMS-NANGLE It was quite funny, the changing room scene where they’re like, “We shouldn’t be kissing at school. We need to be discreet.” And they’re talking really loudly. Not doing very well on the discreet thing. More

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      ‘And Just Like That …’ Season 2, Episode 8 Recap: Domestic Bliss

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      Carrie and Aidan play house. Miranda and Charlotte get back to work.Season 2, Episode 8:Who could have guessed that Che would be the hero we needed to finally ask, out loud, the burning question so many of us have had for Carrie and Aidan for the last 20 years or so?“I mean come on,” Che says to them innocently enough. “Why did this not work out the first time?”It’s a question Carrie hasn’t been able to get out of her head since that fateful Valentine’s Day dinner in last week’s episode. When this week’s kicks off, we find out Carrie and Aidan have been fully back on, spending night after night in hotels, living on $26 room service omelets.It’s not just that they’re dating again. As Carrie tells it to Miranda, she and Aidan are connected in a way now that feels beyond what they ever had. Could it be, Carrie wonders as she walks down the street — clad in some strange jammies-and-slippers get-up with a baby blankie coat to match — that some toxic attachment to Big never allowed her to truly let Aidan in. Maybe she missed out. Maybe, she tells Miranda, Big was a “big mistake.”It kind of makes sense, then, that Carrie and Aidan find themselves playing house, gaming out a life that could have been.Of course, Aidan lives in a Virginia farmhouse with his three sons and an undisclosed number of chickens, but when he’s in New York, he and Carrie essentially live together. They rent out Che’s apartment, saving Che from a string of unruly Airbnb-ers, and when Carrie and Aidan discover that Che has little to no houseware to speak of, they all but clean out a Williams Sonoma (or Crate and Barrel or wherever they are) to fill that void, looking as happy as any couple picking out items for their wedding registry.Naturally, Carrie and Aidan quickly become a “we.” It’s a little too quick for Seema, who dodges Carrie’s invitation to join her and Aidan for dinner. It’s not just jealousy that Carrie has a new boyfriend and Seema doesn’t. The real hurt she feels, as Seema confesses to Carrie over a melodramatic cigarette on Madison Avenue in the rain, is that Carrie has experienced great love — not once, but twice. The harsh truth for Seema is that she may never get that chance. And if she winds up third-wheeling in the Hamptons house she and Carrie are supposed to share this summer, that feeling is going to weigh on her a little too heavily.The Hampton plans are nixed, and Seema insists that she needs space. Carrie lets her go, even though she doesn’t want to.While Carrie and Aidan are rapidly advancing their relationship, both Miranda and Charlotte are taking off in their careers. Although Miranda is merely an intern at Human Rights Watch, she is thrilled about her new position — she’s finally free from corporate law and instead engaged in actual do-gooding. Her fellow interns, who are much younger but have been at the organization longer, are less thrilled when Miranda becomes the supervisor’s pet and is immediately selected for the coveted role of note-taker while they’re stuck slaving over citations. They quickly ice out Miranda like a couple of high school mean girls.Charlotte, on the other hand, has an entirely different, more enlightening experience with the younger set at work.Leading up to her first day at Kasabian Gallery, Charlotte finds herself obsessed with an extra few tummy pounds that simply will not do underneath her perfect new gallerina dress. She consumes nothing but bone broth all week and double bags herself in shapewear, but the “pooch,” which is nearly nonexistent, remains.Charlotte shows up to work, sucked and tucked, covering her midsection with her coat as if she were hiding a pregnancy. But when a 20-something co-worker, who is larger than Charlotte but confidently baring her midriff, swoops down the stairs and tells Charlotte her dress is fierce, Charlotte shakes off all the drama she internalized during the heroin chic era.It’s an abrupt about-face, which is kind of jarring, but as a Xennial who bore witness to Y2K’s relentless body shaming, I can attest, at least anecdotally, that Gen Z is truly an inspiration to older women everywhere in their unabashed embrace of all body sizes and their devil-may-care attitude toward which women are “allowed” to wear certain garments. Even though the crop-top queen Britney Spears ruled our youthful years, few millennial and Gen X women had the stick-slender body type at the time “required” to sport that look. Today, girls bare whatever bellies they’ve got. And as becomes clear immediately to Charlotte, that attitude is helping women of all ages to finally exhale.The best revelation of the episode, though, comes toward the end, when Carrie stops wondering about all of her past missteps and instead starts understanding them.Back in Che’s kitchen, between sips of beer, a quiet pause lingers over Che’s question: Why did things go so wrong between Carrie and Aidan? To Carrie, the answer simple.“Because I made a mistake,” Carrie says, clearly, and with conviction. But the look she gives Aidan right after says even more. Carrie isn’t referring only to the affair she had with Big, which broke up her and Aidan the first time. Nor is she talking only about the cold feet she got during their engagement, which split them up the second time — though certainly those events appear to be huge regrets.Carrie knows now that choosing Big over Aidan, at all, was a colossal blunder, and that the last couple of decades could have been far happier and more fulfilling if she had chosen a life with Aidan instead.And honestly, hallelujah. A significant portion of the fan base (me!) agrees and has never really gotten over it.Carrie and Aidan embrace, and I couldn’t help but wonder … can’t we just end the series right here?Things still taking up space in my brain:It doesn’t take a psychologist to figure out that when Carrie tells Seema she can’t have space because space between friends just leads to more space, she is talking about Samantha. Luckily, Seema doesn’t abscond to London and finds the strength to show up to the “we” dinner, with a smile to boot.If Carrie and Aidan fizzle out by the season finale, I truly don’t know if I can take it. Big got 20-some years. The Aidan stans are owed our longer arc. More

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      ‘The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart’ Review: The Right Kind of Melodrama

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      Sigourney Weaver stars in an Australian family thriller full of stormy emotions and strangely beautiful terrain.The title of the new Amazon offering “The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart,” with its echo of V.C. Andrews’s Gothic novels of family calamity, is a case of truth in advertising. The seven-episode Australian mini-series, which is based on the novel by Holly Ringland and premiered Thursday on Prime Video, is an unapologetic melodrama — a family saga in which lies and secrets proliferate beyond all reason, putting parents and children, friends and bystanders, through unnaturally intense storms of emotion.That it’s also entertaining, moving and vividly atmospheric is a pleasant surprise in a time when melodrama tends toward the banal (some variety of soap opera) or the scolding (some variety of humorless social critique). “Lost Flowers” is a reminder that when it is handled with skill, sophistication and a measure of restraint, melodrama can be as satisfying as any other style of storytelling.The story involves a complicated web of relationships centering on Thornhill, a flower farm that doubles as a refuge for troubled women, who are called “flowers.” Some of the women, though not all of them, are escaping abusive men. The farm is run by a forbidding matriarch, June (Sigourney Weaver), with the help of her Indigenous lover, Twig (Leah Purcell), and their adopted daughter, Candy (Frankie Adams).June is one pole of a story in which the keeping of shameful family secrets is the foundation of tragedy. The other pole is Alice, who is a child when we first see her (played by Alyla Browne) and knows nothing about June, her grandmother. Savage events unite them early on so that they can spend the rest of the series being drawn together and, as Alice works her way through June’s lies, torn apart again.Most of the first half of “Lost Flowers” is tied to the point of view of this young Alice, and the director and cinematographer, Glendyn Ivin and Sam Chiplin, give these episodes the seductive texture of an ominous, doom-tinged fairy tale. Using the strangely beautiful landscape of the New South Wales coast, they create an ambience that reflects Alice’s childlike, wavering apprehension of the unreasoning violence that regularly bursts into her life.They are helped immensely by Browne, who gives a terrific performance even though Alice spends several episodes mostly mute while recovering from trauma. Sadness, rebelliousness and a puckish sense of humor are there in her eyes. Though she shares the screen with Weaver and with the Australian star Asher Keddie, who plays a sympathetic but self-righteous local librarian, Browne draws you right to her.Alycia Debnam-Carey plays an older version of Alice, who after a 10-year leap forward in the story appears to be repeating harmful family patterns.Amazon StudiosMidway through, the series jumps ahead more than a decade, and Alice, now a young woman played by Alycia Debnam-Carey, finds herself in another magical setting — this time a national park where a volcanic crater provides a haven for wildflowers.The change of scenery is symbolic — away from the protection of the farm, Alice is free both to find herself and to start repeating harmful family patterns when it comes to men. And the writing, led by the series’s showrunner, Sarah Lambert, dries out a little along with the landscape. These episodes feel more like something we’ve seen before, though a bit of the earlier enchantment lingers in a plot strand involving Twig’s long road trip in search of Alice.What carries you through, finally — as you might expect — is Weaver. “Lost Flowers” doesn’t play to her traditional strengths — the taciturn, bottled-up June doesn’t provide much of a canvas for Weaver’s regal-yet-feral intelligence or her deadly sense of humor. She can get more out of sheer presence and stubborn charisma, however, than most performers do from busily acting, and in the later episodes she takes over, carrying off some wonderful moments as June slows down and opens up. Weaver’s work in series has been sparse and unpredictable; getting to spend seven episodes with her is the icing on the melodrama. More

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      Pee-wee Herman Was Exuberant. Paul Reubens Kept Things Quiet.

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      Speaking with the actor was an entirely different experience than watching him play his career-defining character.Pee-wee Herman was noisy. He was boisterous. He had a voice that would shoot up several decibels without warning, whether he was inviting his TV viewers to play a game of connect the dots or interrogating his friends about the whereabouts of his missing bicycle. The mysterious nature of his character — was he supposed to be a man, a child or a man pretending to be a child? — seemed to excuse his exuberant energy and excessive volumes, and he, in turn, gave that same permission to his audience. Like he told us on “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” his kids’ show that wasn’t really just for kids, “You all know what to do when anyone says the secret word, right?” That’s right: “Scream real loud!”Paul Reubens, who created and played Pee-wee Herman for more than 40 years, and who died on Sunday at the age of 70, was quiet. It wasn’t simply that he had a gentle manner or a decidedly un-Pee-wee-like reluctance to call attention to himself — he also had a natural speaking voice that was soft enough to be drowned out by a passing breeze. As Reubens told me when I first interviewed him in 2004, he was aware of this duality, between what his spirited alter ego promised and what he delivered in person, out of character. Fans might have expected Pee-wee levels of intensity, but face-to-face, he said, “Now I’m kind of like this. Putting people to sleep.”There was not much mystery about Reubens, which seemed to be how he wanted it. Without the gray suit and red bow tie, he was just a guy who appreciated kitschy toys, vintage children’s television shows and making people laugh. His liveliness and creativity were expressed through Pee-wee, whom he portrayed in his own media projects and in late-night interviews. Even in the minor movie roles and TV gigs he did before Pee-wee went big-time, he was still pretty much playing the Herman character.These days we intuitively understand the distinction between the public and private lives of celebrities, between what they wish us to see and what we might later learn about them. Reubens didn’t just draw a bright line between Pee-wee and Paul; he completely compartmentalized them and, for a time, had us happily believing they were distinct individuals. His beloved persona was so much his own independent entity that, in the closing credits of works like “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,” Pee-wee Herman is simply billed as “HIMSELF.”Perhaps that’s what made Reubens’s 1991 arrest for indecent exposure so jarring: Beyond its reminder that he and Herman were not the same person, there was the disconcerting possibility that the wholesome Pee-wee would be punished for his creator’s offense. In the aftermath, Reubens wondered if the character would just be obliterated, sending him back “to my total anonymous civilian life,” as he told me in an interview in 2010.At that time, Reubens was preparing to bring “The Pee-wee Herman Show” to Broadway, and he seemed less concerned with how his past scandals had affected him than how they might have tarnished the title character.“I wrecked it to some degree, you know?” he said. “It got made into something different. The shine got taken off it.”None of this appeared to matter to his fans, who shouted out their proclamations of love and loyalty — to Pee-wee Herman — while I watched him walk the streets of Manhattan in his traditional costume. A few days later, having reverted to Paul Reubens, he seemed genuinely surprised by all the affection. In a voice as soft as can be, he said the experience was “so weird and so great at the same time.”“It was odd, and it was fantastic,” he said. “Both, rolled into one.” More

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      Angus Cloud, Actor on ‘Euphoria,’ Dies at 25

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      The cause of death was not released, but his family said that he had “intensely struggled” after the recent death of his father.Angus Cloud, the actor best known for portraying Fezco, a lovable drug dealer on the HBO television show “Euphoria,” died on Monday at his family home in Oakland, Calif. He was 25.The death was confirmed by Cait Bailey, Mr. Cloud’s representative, who shared a statement from his family. The statement did not specify a cause, but said that Mr. Cloud had “intensely struggled” after the recent death of his father, Conor Hickey, whom the family buried last week.“The only comfort we have is knowing Angus is now reunited with his dad, who was his best friend,” the family said. “Angus was open about his battle with mental health and we hope that his passing can be a reminder to others that they are not alone and should not fight this on their own in silence.”We are incredibly saddened to learn of the passing of Angus Cloud. He was immensely talented and a beloved part of the HBO and Euphoria family. We extend our deepest condolences to his friends and family during this difficult time. pic.twitter.com/G92zRWkbfH— HBO (@HBO) July 31, 2023
      Mr. Cloud was born on July 10, 1998, in Oakland and attended the Oakland School for the Arts, according to a 2019 profile in The Wall Street Journal. He built sets and worked on lighting and sound for his high school’s theater department, according to the profile. But before his role on “Euphoria,” he had never performed.Mr. Cloud was discovered in 2018 by a casting agent who saw him walking along Mercer Street in Greenwich Village. Mr. Cloud was working as a waiter in Brooklyn at the time and thought that the approach was a scam, but a friend convinced him to follow through.“Before this, I didn’t have any desire to act,” he said in an interview with The New York Times last year. “I guess I was just at the right place at the right time.”On “Euphoria,” Mr. Cloud quickly became a fan favorite, convincing the show’s creator to keep his character alive beyond his planned death in Season 1, according to a casting agent. Mr. Cloud continued playing Fezco through Season 2.Survivors include his mother, Lisa Cloud Hickey and his two sisters, Molly Hickey and Fiona Hickey. More

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      Paul Reubens, Creator of Pee-wee Herman, Is Dead at 70

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      With his bow tie, short drainpipe pants and flattop hairdo, Pee-wee became enshrined in the popular imagination as a symbol of childlike whimsy.Paul Reubens, the comic actor whose bow-tied, childlike alter-ego Pee-wee Herman became an unlikely if almost uncategorizable movie and television sensation in the 1980s, died on Sunday in Los Angeles. He was 70.His death, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, was confirmed on Monday by his longtime representative, Kelly Bush Novak, who said he had “privately fought cancer for years with his trademark tenacity and wit.”“Please accept my apology for not going public with what I’ve been facing the last six years,” Mr. Reubens said in a statement released with the announcement of his death. “I have always felt a huge amount of love and respect from my friends, fans and supporters. I have loved you all so much and enjoyed making art for you.”Mr. Reubens had scores of acting credits in a career that began in the 1960s, including roles on “Murphy Brown,” “The Blacklist” and many other television series and in movies like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (1992), “Batman Returns” (1992) and “Blow” (2001).But Pee-wee, a character he created in the late 1970s as a 10-minute bit when he was a member of the Los Angeles comedy troupe the Groundlings, overshadowed all else, morphing into a bizarre and savvy cultural phenomenon, a character aimed (at least in its TV incarnation) at children but tapping into adult sensibilities and ambiguities.After being disappointed after auditioning unsuccessfully for the “Saturday Night Live” cast in 1980, Mr. Reubens set about creating “The Pee-wee Herman Show,” which was billed as a “live onstage TV pilot.” It had its premiere in early 1981 at the Groundlings Theater in Los Angeles. A national tour followed, and HBO broadcast a version of it as a comedy special in 1981.Pee-wee started turning up on late-night talk shows, especially “Late Night With David Letterman,” where the juxtaposition of the idiosyncratic Pee-wee and the laid-back, somewhat befuddled Mr. Letterman was comedy gold. “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,” a feature film directed by Tim Burton, was a hit in 1985.Then, in 1986, came “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” a children-friendly version of the world according to Pee-wee that would air on CBS for five years and carve out an enduring place in the memories of 1980s children and, often, their parents.“Pee-wee’s Playhouse” stands as one of the oddest, most audacious, most unclassifiable shows in television history. The man-boy Pee-wee and a vast collection of human and nonhuman characters — there was, for instance, Chairry, a talking armchair that gave hugs — held forth in each episode about, well, it’s hard to summarize. There was a word of the day. There were bizarre toys. In one episode, Pee-wee married a fruit salad.The show arrived in the midst of Ronald Reagan’s presidential administration and harked back to another button-down era, the one Mr. Reubens lived as a child: the 1950s.‘‘I saw it as very Norman Rockwell,” he told The New York Times in 2016, ‘‘but it was my Norman Rockwell version of the ’50s, which was more all-inclusive.”Laurence Fishburne, S. Epatha Merkerson and other actors of color were in the cast. Gilbert Lewis, who was Black, was the King of Cartoons.“Not just anybody — the king!” Mr. Reubens said. “That came out of growing up in Florida under segregation. I felt really good about that.”Paul Reubens and S. Epatha Merkerson on “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” in 1986. Several actors of color were cast on the show. John Kisch Archive/Getty ImagesThe show was a world away from standard educational TV for children — its lessons, if any, were delivered through wackiness rather than didactically, and its presentation was decidedly nonlinear.“I never set out to do a big educational show,” Mr. Reubens told Newsday in 1989. “We’re trying to expose children to as much creativity as we can muster in a half-hour, to be entertaining and to transmit some subliminal messages, like nonconformity isn’t bad.”The show had not been on long before academics and cultural critics were analyzing its appeal with weighty papers and other commentaries, but Mr. Reubens was having none of that.“I’ve been almost paranoid about dissecting it too much,” he said, “because the character always has been a kind of instinctual gut thing. I’m able to turn it on, and it just kind of flows. I do what I want and hope it connects.”The wheels of his career came off in July 1991, when he was arrested on a charge of indecent exposure in an adult movie theater in Sarasota, Fla., where he had grown up. The arrest led to a small fine, but the headlines damaged his reputation.“Pee-wee’s Playhouse” was in reruns at the time, and CBS pulled them off the air. There were no more new episodes. Mr. Reubens said later that he had been planning a hiatus from show business anyway.In any case, he took a long break from his alter-ego, but neither Mr. Reubens nor Pee-wee was done.Mr. Reubens continued to act, receiving an Emmy Award nomination for a guest appearance on “Murphy Brown” in 1995. (His character arc on that show continued for five more episodes.) He also weathered a second scandal: In 2002, he was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of possessing child pornography as a result of images found by the authorities in his collection of vintage erotica. He was sentenced to probation on a reduced charge of possessing obscene material.“The moment that I realized my name was going to be said in the same sentence as children and sex, that’s really intense,” Mr. Reubens told NBC in 2004. “That’s something I knew from that very moment, whatever happens past that point, something’s out there in the air that is really bad.”Fans in Los Angeles were remembering Mr. Reubens on Monday where his star appears on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Mario Anzuoni/ReutersThen, about 2008, some producers began suggesting that he revive the Pee-wee character and some version of the 1980s stage show. He was somewhat reluctant.“There were age-related issues to it,” Mr. Reubens told The Times in 2010, since he was by then in his 50s. “There were career-standing issues.”He waffled.“Every two months, I would change my mind,” he told The Chicago Sun Times in 2010. “And then, finally, one day I woke up and decided, ‘This is it, I’m coming back.’”The new version of “The Pee-wee Herman Show” opened at Club Nokia in Los Angeles in January 2010, featuring elements of the original stage show and characters from the TV series. It opened on Broadway that November for a limited run.“Mr. Reubens’s Silly Putty face is a little puttier, but it remains as stretchable as ever,” Charles Isherwood wrote in his review in The Times. “His Popsicle-stick posture retains its comical rigidity; the flapping arms express exasperation and excitement with no loss of tone; the bopping Pee-wee dance is still beach-ball-buoyant. And of course Pee-wee’s restless imagination and childish mood swings are as extravagant as ever.”A new movie, “Pee-wee’s Big Holiday,” followed in 2016 on Netflix, produced by Mr. Reubens and Judd Apatow. Mr. Reubens told The Times in 2010, when the film was in the early talking stages, that it was no surprise that Pee-wee had endured.“There’s never been anything from the fans other than, please do more,” he said.Paul Rubenfeld was born on Aug. 27, 1952, in Peekskill, N.Y., to Milton and Judy (Rosen) Rubenfeld. His mother was a teacher, and his father had been a pilot who, according to The Forward, helped smuggle fighter planes into Israel in 1948 during its war of independence.The family moved to Sarasota when Paul was 9. His parents ran a lamp store there. Paul had been in school and camp theatrical productions when he graduated to a bigger stage: At 11, he had a key role as the young nephew in a custody dispute in Herb Gardner’s play “A Thousand Clowns,” staged by the Sarasota Players.“The 12-year-old is played with remarkable assurance and stage-wise technique by Paul Rubenfeld, himself only 11 years old, a genuine talent discovery,” Ray Perkins wrote in a review in The Tampa Bay Times.“Young Actor Big Crowd Pleaser” read a headline in the same newspaper a few days later over a feature article about him.He appeared in several other shows with the Sarasota Players and also acted with the Asolo Theater Company (now Asolo Repertory). He spent a year at Boston University after graduating from Sarasota High School in 1970, but then went to the West Coast, studying at the California Institute of the Arts and eventually falling in with the Groundlings, working at a pizza parlor and selling brushes while he developed his comedic skills.Mr. Reubens’s first film role, uncredited, was as a wedding guest in the 1968 drama “The Brotherhood,” and he had a smattering of other roles before Pee-wee took over. The first name of his enduring character, he said, was borrowed from the tiny Pee Wee harmonica brand. The last name, Herman, was inspired by an irritating childhood acquaintance.He is survived by a sister, Abby Rubenfeld, and a brother, Luke Rubenfeld.Just months ago Mr. Reubens said he was working on a memoir and a documentary. And in an interview with The Times around that time, one of his last, he reflected on the longevity of Pee-wee, on the adjustments that were made to keep the character fresh, and on how the creative landscape had changed since Pee-wee first appeared some 40 years ago.“Today, it seems to me, it’s a lot more difficult to stand out,” he said. “You know, if you want to be weird, good luck.”Jesus Jiménez and Melena Ryzik contributed reporting. More

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      To Keep TV Shows Afloat, Some Networks Are Cutting Actors’ Pay

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      In a shrinking business, actors on some shows are being guaranteed less money, an issue that’s helping to fuel the Hollywood strike.Starring on the CBS sitcom “Bob Hearts Abishola” has been good for Bayo Akinfemi. Being a regular cast member for four years has given him financial security and made him a star in his native Nigeria, where the show is wildly popular. It even helped him branch out from acting, when producers gave him the opportunity to direct an episode.But Mr. Akinfemi and 10 of his castmates were told this year that the only way the half-hour show was going to get a fifth season was if budgets were cut. How the actors were paid was going to change.No longer would they be guaranteed pay for all 22 episodes of a season. Instead, Mr. Akinfemi and his castmates would be reclassified as recurring cast members. They would be paid the same amount per episode, but unlike regular cast members, they would be paid only for the episodes in which they appeared and would be guaranteed only five of those in a truncated 13-episode season, once the actors’ strike was over and performers returned to work. (Only Billy Gardell, who plays the white middle-aged businessman Bob, and Folake Olowofoyeku, who plays Abishola, the Nigerian nurse he loves, will remain series regulars.)“It was a bit surprising, for all of 10 seconds,” Mr. Akinfemi said in an interview before SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union, went on strike. “We are disappointed, but we also understand at the end of the day it’s a business.”For decades, actors playing supporting characters on successful network television shows have been able to renegotiate their contracts in later seasons and reap financial windfalls. But this is a new era for network TV.It’s a business that has been struggling with depressed ratings, decreased advertising revenue and fierce competition from streaming services, resulting in millions of viewers cutting their cable subscriptions. And one way networks and production companies are trying to deal with the changing economics is to ask the casts of some long-running shows to take pay cuts.“Bob Hearts Abishola” was not the only show facing budget cuts, Channing Dungey, the chairwoman and chief executive of Warner Bros. Television Studios, said. David Livingston/Getty Images“The glory days of linear television are sadly behind us,” said Channing Dungey, the chairwoman and chief executive of Warner Bros. Television Studios, the studio behind “Bob Hearts Abishola.”This new reality in network television is one of the reasons behind the Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikes. Those on strike say the economics of the streaming era have effectively reduced their pay and cut into money they get from residuals, a type of royalty. The studios say they aren’t making the kind of money they used to, meaning that they’re having to shave costs wherever they can.The sides are at a standstill. The writers haven’t spoken to the studios since going out on strike on May 2, and the actors haven’t since walking out on July 14. No negotiations are scheduled.“Blue Bloods,” a CBS drama starring Tom Selleck, is returning for its 14th season only because the entire cast agreed to a 25 percent pay cut when the strike is over. On the CW network, “Superman & Lois,” which is entering its fourth season, and “All American: Homecoming,” which is hanging on for a third season, saw their budgets cut and cast members reduced to day players or eliminated.Not even the juggernaut represented by Dick Wolf’s lineup of shows on NBC is immune. A number of the actors on shows like “Chicago P.D.” and “Chicago Fire” are being guaranteed appearances in fewer episodes for the coming season, according to two people familiar with the productions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters.“This is something that’s happening across the board,” Ms. Dungey said, adding that CBS wanted to renew “Bob Hearts Abishola” only if Warner Bros. was able to produce it for the network at a reduced cost. “There are a number of different shows, both on CBS and elsewhere, where the same kinds of considerations are coming into play.”CBS and NBC declined to comment.Word of the salary adjustments for “Bob Hearts Abishola” came out in late April, just days before SAG-AFTRA authorized its strike with a 97.9 percent vote in favor.“This is the beginning of the end for working-class actors,” the actress Ever Carradine, who has been in shows like “Commander in Chief” on ABC and Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” wrote on Twitter at the time. “I have never worked harder in my career to make less money, and I am not alone.”Today, first-time series regulars often earn anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000 an episode, depending on the budget of the show, the size of the role, and the studio or network that’s footing the bill. Commissions for agents and management are subtracted from those sums.To some, the recent reductions are an inevitable correction from the era of peak television, when studios were eager to lure talent with lucrative contracts. Some executives argue that paring back salaries will ultimately allow more shows to be made, at a more reasonable price.Network shows do not draw anywhere close to the viewer numbers they did when 20 million people were watching “Seinfeld” and “Friends” every week in the 1990s.At the end of its fourth season, “Bob Hearts Abishola” was averaging 6.9 million viewers per episode, according to Nielsen’s Live +35 metric, which measures the first 35 days of viewing on both linear and digital platforms. Hits had bigger audiences, like CBS’s “Ghosts,” which averaged 11 million viewers over 35 days, and ABC’s “Abbott Elementary,” which averaged 9.1 million.But the rise of streaming has cannibalized network television on a scale the networks weren’t prepared for, and not even scaling back on scripted offerings has been enough to stem the bleeding. “Bob Hearts Abishola” is one of four prime-time scripted comedies left on CBS.“It is hard now to get shows to Seasons 5 and beyond, but it doesn’t mean that it can’t happen,” Ms. Dungey said. “It just is less likely to happen as often as it did in the past.”Yet the new reality means actors must decide whether to remain on a show at a reduced rate but with some job security or leave to see if they can find other jobs.The management team for Kelly Jenrette, an actress on the CW’s “All American: Homecoming,” told the trade publication Deadline that she had chosen to become a recurring character rather than “opt for a return as a series regular on reduced episodic guarantees.”Ms. Jenrette declined to be interviewed because, she said, she was told that doing so would violate the actors’ union’s ban on promoting projects associated with struck companies. The CW declined to comment.For some, the pride they take in their shows is also an enticement to stay. On “Bob Hearts Abishola,” Mr. Akinfemi plays Goodwin, an employee of Bob’s compression sock company who was on his way to becoming an economics professor in Nigeria before he left the country.Fans have stopped him in the Nigerian airport, in the streets of Toronto, even at the CVS near his home in Los Angeles to marvel that whole scenes of the show are spoken in Mr. Akinfemi’s native Yoruba tongue. (He also serves as the language consultant for the sitcom.)“The idea that there could be a show like this that really showcases Nigerian culture, it’s just unfathomable,” Mr. Akinfemi said. “That we are really representing Nigerian culture as accurately as possible and in a positive light, on American television, is mind-blowing to a lot of Nigerians and Africans.”He and the 10 other cast members affected by the pay changes on “Bob Hearts Abishola” all chose to stay.“These actors are attached to good, important, groundbreaking work,” said Tash Moseley, Mr. Akinfemi’s manager. “I think they knew that the actors would come back and do it no matter what.” More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Run the Burbs’ and ‘The Trial’

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      A Canadian sitcom debuts on the CW. And a hard-to-find Orson Welles movie airs on TCM.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, July 31 — Aug. 6. Details and times are subject to change.MondayRUN THE BURBS 8:30 p.m. on the CW. Is it redundant to have a set of those cute family-member bumper stickers on the back of a blue Toyota minivan, that icon of suburban soccer-practice shuttling? Is that not a bit like sticking a “baby on board” sign to the handlebars of an infant’s carriage? Don’t tell that to the Phams, the family at the center of “Run the Burbs,” who have a set on their shiny van. A Canadian sitcom cocreated by Andrew Phung (a star of “Kim’s Convenience”) and Scott Townend, the program follows the Phams — a mother, Camille (Rakhee Morzaria), and father, Andrew (Phung), and their two children (played by Zoriah Wong and Roman Pesino) — as they navigate contemporary suburban life. The debut episode, which airs Monday, is built around preparations for a neighborhood block party.BREEDERS 10 p.m. on FX. The yin to the “Run the Burbs” yang, this dark and bold British comedy was encapsulated by a line that Paul, a father played by Martin Freeman, said to Ally (Daisy Haggard), his wife, in the very first episode: “I would die for those kids, but often I also want to kill them.” Since its debut in 2020, the show has mined humor from the least glamorous sides of family life. Major themes of its fourth and final season, which picks up five years after the previous season and is set to debut Monday night, include divorce, aging and teen pregnancy. In a 2020 interview with The New York Times, Freeman (who is also a creator of the series) explained that the show was interested in giving a frank look at less-discussed parts of parenting. “In nice sort of lefty, liberal circles,” he said, “you don’t really talk about how you want to throw your kids out of the [expletive] window.”TuesdayICONIC AMERICA: OUR SYMBOLS AND STORIES WITH DAVID RUBENSTEIN 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). This documentary series, hosted by the philanthropist David Rubenstein, has been loose with what constitutes an “iconic” part of America’s identity: Previous episodes have been dedicated to the history of both physical sites (including the Statue of Liberty and the Hollywood sign) and shared imagery (cowboys, bald eagles). Tuesday’s episode looks at the Golden Gate Bridge.WednesdayAnthony Perkins in “The Trial.”Rialto Pictures/StudioCanalTHE TRIAL (1963) 5:45 p.m. on TCM. Orson Welles once declared that “The Trial” was the best movie he’d ever made, but it has been out of print in the United States for years. A new restoration, which played in theaters around the end of 2022, is set to be released for at-home viewing by the Criterion Collection in September, but for now this TCM broadcast remains a relatively rare opportunity for U.S. audiences to see the movie easily. Adapted from a Franz Kafka novel, the film stars Anthony Perkins as Josef K., a man living in an anonymous city who is charged with a crime that is kept unclear to both him and the audience. His journey to find out more brings him across an array of oddball characters, including a legal advocate (Welles) and an artist (William Chappell), but little light is shed. TCM will show the movie alongside several other films with Perkins, including PSYCHO (1960), at 8 p.m., and FEAR STRIKES OUT (1957), at 10 p.m.ThursdayJAWS (1975) 8 p.m. on AMC. In the same way as fast cars, secret agents and creepy dolls, there’s something about sharks that makes Hollywood salivate — like a beast of prey drawn to the scent of past box-office successes. (“Meg 2: The Trench,” in theaters everywhere Aug. 4.) Few attempts at big-screen shark tales have come close to matching Steven Spielberg’s original “Jaws” movie, though — or the one-two bite of John Williams’s score.FridayOlivia Colman in “Empire of Light.”Searchlight Pictures/20th Century StudiosEMPIRE OF LIGHT (2022) 6:05 p.m. on HBO 2 and 1917 (2019) at 9 p.m. on Showtime 2. Here’s an interesting do-it-yourself double feature: A pair of collaborations between the filmmaker Sam Mendes and the cinematographer Roger Deakins. First up is “Empire of Light,” a period drama that stars Olivia Colman as the duty manager of a cinema in a British seaside town in the 1980s. As she struggles with her mental health, she develops a relationship with Stephen (Micheal Ward), a new employee. Their story is a far cry from the one told in “1917,” a WWI drama about two British soldiers (played by George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman) sent on an exceedingly treacherous mission behind enemy lines.SaturdayTHE WILD SIDES 8 p.m. on BBC America. The first entry in this new, three-part documentary series picks up during a drought in the Botswana wilderness. It introduces a slate of animals — elephants, cheetahs, leopards, jackals and baboons — whose lives are connected in some surprising ways.SundayQuincy Isaiah in “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.”Warrick Page/HBOWINNING TIME: THE RISE OF THE LAKERS DYNASTY 9 p.m. on HBO. The 1979-1980 season of the Los Angeles Lakers — and that era’s stars, including Magic Johnson (played by Quincy Isaiah) and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Solomon Hughes) — got a ritzy coat of HBO paint in the first season of this drama, which debuted last year. The plot of the new, second season, which begins Sunday, runs through the 1984 finals, when the Lakers and the Celtics landed in a rematch. In a trailer, the Lakers owner Jerry Buss (as played by John C. Reilly), sets up the rivalry as a classic underdog story: “They’re the dynasty,” he says. “We’re the flash in the pan.” More