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      Kirstie Alley, Emmy-Winning ‘Cheers’ Actress, Dies at 71

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      She also starred in the NBC sitcom “Veronica’s Closet,” which aired from 1997 to 2000.Kirstie Alley, the actress whose breakout role as the career-minded Rebecca Howe in the sitcom “Cheers” catapulted her career and earned her an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe, died on Monday. She was 71.The cause was cancer, according to a statement from her family on Twitter.Ms. Alley quickly won over millions of viewers while playing Rebecca in “Cheers,” the timeless NBC show that ran for 11 seasons in the 1980s and ’90s. She had stepped in to replace Shelley Long in the ensemble cast in 1987, at the height of the series’ popularity, and remained through the final season.Critics noted how Ms. Alley had brought a refreshing new dynamic to the character, with scripts giving her a more fun arc that helped create a “denser joke machine,” as one writer noted. At times, Rebecca, who managed the bar in the show, appeared to be a hapless and gold-digging mess. In other moments, Ms. Alley portrayed Rebecca with a faux-bravado, and with an attitude of indifference to others romantic advances.Her character gradually evolved from being a corporate-pleasing manager to a full-fledged, genial member of the gang who was perky yet perpetually disappointed.In an interview with “Entertainment Tonight” in 2019, Ms. Alley looked back on her “Cheers” years as a somewhat chaotic time, with all kinds of misbehavior being the norm on a set that included co-stars like Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson.“We never paid attention, we were always in trouble,” she said. “We never showed up on time.”Kirstie Alley with Ted Danson, left, and Woody Harrelson in “Cheers.”Photo by Kim Gottlieb Walker/NBCU via Getty ImagesIn addition to her 1991 Emmy for outstanding lead actress in a comedy series for “Cheers,” Ms. Alley also won the 1994 Emmy for lead actress in a mini-series for the title role in “David’s Mother,” a drama about a mother who raises her autistic son alone.Ms. Alley, who acted regularly for about four decades, also starred in the NBC sitcom “Veronica’s Closet,” which ran from 1997 to 2000. Her character was the successful head of a lingerie company.Marta Kauffman, a creator and an executive producer of “Veronica’s Closet,” said of Ms. Alley in 1997: “She is crazy most of the time, and I mean that in the best sense of the word.”Ms. Alley was born on Jan. 12, 1951, in Wichita, Kan., where she was raised in a Roman Catholic family. She was particularly close with her grandfather, a lumber-company owner.She attended Kansas State University but dropped out to become an interior decorator. Around that time, she developed an addiction to cocaine.She eventually moved to Los Angeles and enrolled in Narconon, a rehabilitation program affiliated with the Church of Scientology.When asked by Barbara Walters in 1992 why she had joined a religion with a problematic past, Ms. Alley said that she had “not come across anything” negative.“It answered a lot of questions for me,” Ms. Alley said in 1997 of the church. “I was a pretty able person. I wasn’t looking for something like that. But I wanted to get rid of the barriers keeping me from what I wanted, to be an actress. It’s just part of my life.”While living in Los Angeles, Ms. Alley began to take an interest in acting. In 1982, she made her film debut in “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” playing a half-Vulcan, half-Romulan lieutenant with pointy ears.In 1989, she starred alongside John Travolta in the film “Look Who’s Talking,” a comedy in which a baby’s thoughts are narrated by Bruce Willis. Vincent Canby, who reviewed the movie in The Times, wrote that “cute” was the “operative word” for a movie that starred “some good actors doing material that is not super.”In 2005, Ms. Alley shifted her attention to a mock-reality show about her weight. She said at the time that the show, “Fat Actress,” drew from her experience as a woman in Hollywood who did not meet the industry’s stereotypically slim beauty standards. Another show, “Kirstie Alley’s Big Life,” also focused on Ms. Alley’s weight-loss journey.Ms. Alley was married to Bob Alley, and the two eventually divorced. A later marriage to Parker Stevenson also ended in divorce.She is survived by her two children, True and Lillie Parker. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.Ms. Alley told The New York Times in 1997 that she had sought out TV series throughout her career in order to have a normal schedule and be closer to her family.“It’s the best life style,” Ms. Alley said. More

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      Gary Oldman Found James Dean and His Wife at a Gallery

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      The Oscar-winning star of “Slow Horses” on Apple TV+ likes comedians in dramas, makes photos the hard way and is still discovering the Beatles.The actor Gary Oldman knows a few things about playing spies.He picked up the first of his three Oscar nominations for his portrayal of George Smiley, the agent at the heart of the 2011 movie “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” which was adapted from John le Carré’s thriller by the same name. (He won in 2018, for “The Darkest Hour.”)In the Apple TV+ series “Slow Horses,” based on Mick Herron’s “Slough House” novels, Oldman is a similarly unglamorous spy, one of several dealing with divorce, alcoholism, gambling problems and other misfortunes. As Oldman said in a phone interview last month, they are far from “that rather sort of glossy world of Jason Bourne and James Bond.”There is certainly no gloss to Oldman’s character, Jackson Lamb, a perpetually rumpled and frequently drunk MI5 agent who oversees spies tucked away for being embarrassing or otherwise undesirable. But Oldman has decided to spend more time with him than with any other character in his more than 40-year career.“He publicly humiliates. He’s provocative. He’s deliberately confrontational. He’s all of those things,” he said. “And yet, he has an incredible sort of moral compass, and he’s very loyal, and I think that is sort of, if you like, redeeming.”Season 2 of “Slow Horses” premiered Friday, while the third season is in production. (A fourth has been ordered.) Oldman talked about the books he’s giving for Christmas, the music he makes on his iPhone and the plays he performs on Zoom. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. Richard Miller I collect photographs. Once, I was looking for a print of a photograph of James Dean on a break during the shooting of “Giant,” sitting on a sofa, reading a Look magazine with Elizabeth Taylor on the cover. Next to him on the sofa is Elizabeth Taylor, with her head on his arm, asleep. I went over to the Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles to see if they had a print. I described it but said I didn’t know who it was by. A voice behind me said, “Oh, that’s Richard Miller.” I turned around and met the gallery’s director, Gisele Schmidt, who is now my wife.2. “The Dumb Waiter” I’ve had a chance to work with a wonderful actor and a lovely man lately called Arliss Howard. We recently got onto Zoom and read “The Dumb Waiter,” a one-act play by Harold Pinter about a pair of hit men. We did it for ourselves — you know, just keeping your hand in the game. I don’t know if it’ll go anywhere. Maybe Arliss and I will do it one of these days.3. iPhone Music Recordings Again, purely for the hell of it, a friend in Canada and I have been recording songs by David Bowie, who was a very good friend of mine. We send tracks back and forth to each other by email and text. I’ll put down, say, the piano track, and he’ll put guitar on it. You’ll be amazed what you can do with an iPhone. When you hear these tracks put together, you would think they were recorded live in a studio with a band.4. London’s National Portrait Gallery The National Portrait Gallery, the Imperial War Museums, the National Gallery — these are all places that are part of growing up in England. They’ve always been there. Always been accessible. Every time I go back to the National Portrait Gallery, I see new things.5. The Beatles A friend of mine, the painter George Blacklock, always says that if you could look at a painting and get it all in five minutes, then it wouldn’t be worth painting it. They reveal new things to you over time. I feel that way about the Beatles. My God, the artistry. I am constantly in awe and total admiration for what they achieved.6. John le Carré John le Carré had an eye for detail that I think is quite remarkable. “Tinker, Tailor,” for me, is the jewel in the crown of his writing. But I liked one of his next George Smiley novels, “Smiley’s People,” very much. We were going to do it. It never happened, for a variety of reasons, but I would’ve loved to have revisited George again.7. Stella Adler The other day, I was talking to Saskia Reeves — who plays Catherine Standish on “Slow Horses” — about the many methods and techniques of acting. She’s sort of from the Stanislavski school, as many of us are, and she was talking about Uta Hagen and, I think, Sanford Meisner, but she was sort of unfamiliar with the great actor and teacher Stella Adler. So I think the book “Stella Adler on Ibsen, Strindberg and Chekhov” will be in Saskia’s Christmas stocking.8. Comedic Actors Working on Dramas I loved “The Patient” with Steve Carell and happen to think he’s a really wonderful dramatic actor. I also liked “Severance.” I was shocked to see that some episodes were directed by Ben Stiller. I knew he’d directed before, but it was really quite masterful. Sometimes we go: “Oh my God, this person can be funny and be dramatic!” And yet, for years, the wonderful Jack Lemmon bounced between the two.9. Family Christmas This year, we’re having Christmas at the house, and it’s our first big, big, big Christmas. We have 14 for Christmas Day and five dogs. So, it’s going to be a houseful. We’re going to try and coax my son Charlie into making his carbonara.10. Wet-Plate Photography I started learning about the wet-plate photography process when I was writing a script about the 19th-century photographer Eadweard Muybridge. I made one good plate and thought, “I’ve been searching all my life for this — why haven’t I discovered it earlier?” I find it incredibly satisfying, and it takes me away from my main job. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘His Dark Materials’ and the People’s Choice Awards

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      The third and final season of “His Dark Materials” begins on HBO. And the 2022 People’s Choice Awards air on NBC.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, Dec. 5 -11. Details and times are subject to change.MondayHIS DARK MATERIALS 9 p.m. on HBO. Following the trilogy structure of the Philip Pullman novels on which it is based, the fantasy series “His Dark Materials” is slated to end after its new, third season, which debuts on Monday. The first season introduced Lyra Belacqua (Dafne Keen), a runaway living in an authoritarian fantasy world who is pulled into a quest that involves multiple realities. The second season ended on the brink of a war. Reviewing the first season for The New York Times, James Poniewozik wrote that the show conjures a spectacle without losing sight of the weightier ideas of the source material. It “has a more rebellious, questioning outlook — adolescent, in a good way — than some other fantasy sagas,” he wrote. “Where the Harry Potter series and ‘The Lord of the Rings’ presumed that the ruling institutions were essentially good, if vulnerable to corruption, ‘His Dark Materials’ suggests that its theocracy is rotten all the way up.”TuesdayKenan Thompson at the 2021 People’s Choice Awards. He will return to host this year’s show.Alberto Rodriquez/E! Entertainment/NBCPEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARDS 9 p.m. on NBC. Kenan Thompson returns for a second consecutive year to host the People’s Choice Awards. The show casts a large net, handing out prizes in movies, TV, music and general pop-culture categories. It’s a looser affair than the Oscars, Grammys or Emmys: “Social celebrity of 2022” is one honor here, and nominees for the top movies category include “Jurassic World Dominion,” which you’re probably unlikely to find in the running for best picture at the Academy Awards.CASABLANCA (1942) 10:15 p.m. on TCM. The perennial best-of-list classic “Casablanca” premiered in New York on Nov. 26, 1942, but decades later, its story of wartime love and displacement still has plenty to say. New Yorkers can pair an 80th-anniversary viewing with a trip to the Neue Galerie in Manhattan, where a showcase of memorabilia spotlights the Central European exiles who made the movie.WednesdayTITANIC (1997) 8 p.m. on Paramount Network. James Cameron is set to return to theaters next week with the sci-fi sequel “Avatar: The Way of Water.” For a refresher on Cameron’s special ability to create a spectacle, revisit his “Titanic,” with Kate Winslet (who is also in “Avatar: The Way of Water”) and Leonardo DiCaprio.ThursdayFrom left, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Saoirse Ronan and Eliza Scanlen in “Little Women.”Wilson Webb/Columbia PicturesLITTLE WOMEN (2019) 3 p.m. on FXM. Greta Gerwig adapted Louisa May Alcott’s 19th-century novel “Little Women” for a new generation with this film version, in which Gerwig moves between the four March Sisters — played here by Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Saoirse Ronan and Eliza Scanlen — as adults and as younger versions of themselves, creating something of a before and after coming-of-age story. In his review for The Times, A.O. Scott said that this adaptation can appeal to both fans of Alcott’s book and newcomers. “Without resorting to self-conscious anachronism or fussy antiquarianism,” Scott wrote, “Gerwig has fashioned a story that feels at once entirely true to its 19th-century origins and utterly modern.”OCEAN’S ELEVEN (2001) 5:15 p.m. on TNT. When the director Steven Soderbergh released this blockbuster heist movie remake in 2001, the review in The Times by the critic Elvis Mitchell referred to the film’s cast as “a Who’s Who of People magazine’s Sexiest Men Alive.” George Clooney and Brad Pitt were in it. Matt Damon, Don Cheadle and Andy Garcia, too. And of course, don’t forget Carl Reiner. These days, “Ocean’s Eleven,” which places a group of thieves in a Las Vegas casino-robbing plot, makes for a taut 2000s time capsule. TNT will show it on Thursday in a marathon alongside its contemporary sequels — though the more interesting pairing might involve watching this version with the 1960 original, which has Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin in its cast, and airs Friday on TCM at 3:45 p.m.CMA COUNTRY CHRISTMAS 9 p.m. on ABC. The country-pop singer-songwriter Carly Pearce will host the 13th edition of this annual Christmastime special. The lineup of performers includes Maren Morris, the War and Treaty, Molly Tuttle and Steven Curtis Chapman.FridayELLA WISHES YOU A SWINGING CHRISTMAS WITH VANESSA WILLIAMS 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The singer Vanessa Williams and the American Pops Orchestra pay tribute to Ella Fitzgerald and her classic album of jazzy Christmas music in this hourlong special. The program originally aired in 2020, the 60th anniversary of the album, but, like the album it celebrates, it has evergreen appeal as a seasonal treat.SaturdayFrom left, Christian Bale, John David Washington, and Margot Robbie in “Amsterdam.”20th Century StudiosAMSTERDAM (2022) 7:45 p.m. on HBO. Christian Bale, Margot Robbie and John David Washington play three friends pulled into an over-the-top murder conspiracy in 1930s Europe in this crackpot mystery from David O. Russell (“American Hustle”). The plot kicks off with a dead man, and an autopsy that leaves questions unanswered. What follows is “a handsome period romp,” Manohla Dargis wrote in her review for The Times, “a 1930s screwball pastiche filled with mugging performers who charm and seduce as they run around chasing down a mystery, playing detective, tripping over their feet and navigating an international conspiracy that is best enjoyed if you don’t pay it too much attention.”SundayNATIONAL CHRISTMAS TREE LIGHTING: CELEBRATING 100 YEARS 8 p.m. on CBS. The annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Washington dates back to the presidency of Calvin Coolidge. The 2022 ceremony, which took place Nov. 30 and will be broadcast on Sunday, two weeks before the holiday, includes performances by LL Cool J, Shania Twain, Yolanda Adams, Ariana DeBose, the United States Marine Band and more.MASTER OF GLASS: THE ART OF DALE CHIHULY 9 p.m. on Smithsonian Channel. With colorful, dizzying glass works often installed far outside the walls of museums, the artist Dale Chihuly, 81, has for decades been one of the most recognizable artists of his generation. His life has also included well-documented physical and mental struggles. This program looks at Chihuly’s career. More

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      Bob McGrath, Longtime ‘Sesame Street’ Star, Dies at 90

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      He was an original cast member who, for nearly half a century, played a sweater-clad and easygoing music teacher who dispensed advice.Bob McGrath, who played the sweater-clad neighborhood music teacher and general advice-giver on “Sesame Street” for almost half a century, died at his home in New Jersey on Sunday morning. He was 90.Mr. McGrath’s daughter Cathlin McGrath confirmed his death by email on Sunday. She said Mr. McGrath died from complications after a stroke. She said that the night before Mr. McGrath passed, his family had decorated his room for Christmas, and sung and danced around him. “We just knew that he wanted to go the way he lived.”Mr. McGrath wasn’t particularly interested when an old Phi Gamma Delta fraternity brother stopped him one night to tell him about his new project, a children’s show on public television. But then he had never heard of Jim Henson, the puppeteer, and he had never seen a Muppet. After his first meeting and a look at some of the animation, he knew this show would be different.“Sesame Street” had its premiere in November 1969, with Mr. McGrath and other cast members gathered around an urban brownstone stoop, in front of the building’s dark green doors, beside its omnipresent collection of metal garbage cans. His character, conveniently and coincidentally named Bob, was reliably smiling, easygoing and polite, whether he was singing about “People in Your Neighborhood” (the butcher, the baker, the lifeguard), discussing everyday concerns with young humans and Muppets, or taking a day trip to Grouchytown with Oscar the Grouch.Viewers were outraged when Mr. McGrath and two other longtime cast members — Emilio Delgado, who played Luis, and Roscoe Orman, who played Gordon — were fired in 2016. When HBO took over the broadcasting rights to “Sesame Street,” their contracts were not renewed.But Mr. McGrath took the news graciously, expressing gratitude for 47 years of “working with phenomenal people” and for a whole career beyond “Sesame Street” of doing family concerts with major symphony orchestras.“I’m really very happy to stay home with my wife and children a little bit more,” he said at Florida Supercon, an annual comic book and pop culture convention, later in 2016. “I’d be so greedy if I wanted five minutes more.”Robert Emmett McGrath was born on June 13, 1932, in Ottawa, Ill., about 80 miles southwest of Chicago. He was the youngest of five children of Edmund Thomas McGrath, a farmer, and Flora Agnes (Halligan) McGrath.Robert’s mother, who sang and played the piano, recognized his talent by the time he was 5. He was soon entering and winning competitions in Chicago and appearing on radio. He did musical plays and studied privately but, as a practical matter, intended to study engineering.But he was invited to attend a music camp outside Chicago the summer after his high school graduation. Teachers there encouraged him to change his plans, and he “did an about-face,” he remembered in a 2004 video interview for the Television Academy Foundation.He majored in voice at the University of Michigan, graduating in 1954. He spent the next two years in the Army, mostly in Stuttgart, Germany, where he worked with the Seventh Army Symphony. Then he went to New York, where he received a master’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music.He took a job with St. David’s, a private boys’ school in Manhattan. Freelance singing assignments, obtained through a vocal contractor, paid the bills until 1961, when “Sing Along With Mitch” came along. He was one of 25 male singers who appeared every week on that show, on NBC, performing traditional favorites like “Home on the Range,” “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” and “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.”As St. Patrick’s Day approached, the program’s host and producer, Mitch Miller, asked Mr. McGrath if he knew the song “Mother Machree.” He was so impressed with Mr. McGrath’s rendition and his light lyric tenor — he had been singing the sentimental Irish American number since he was a little boy — that he doubled his salary and made him the show’s featured male soloist.After “Sing Along With Mitch” ended in 1964, the cast played Las Vegas and did a 30-stop tour in Japan. That led to an unusual chapter in Mr. McGrath’s career: teenage idol.Schoolgirls chanted his name at concerts and organized fan clubs. Their demand brought him back to Japan nine times over the next three years, and he recorded nine albums there, singing in both English and Japanese. His repertoire included Japanese folk ballads on which he was accompanied by a shakuhachi, or bamboo flute. Back home, he amused American television viewers by singing “Danny Boy” in Japanese.When “Sesame Street” began, it led to a very different collection of albums for Mr. McGrath, with names like “Sing Along With Bob” and “Songs and Games for Toddlers.”He also learned American Sign Language, which he used regularly on camera with Linda Bove, a cast member who was born deaf.Asked about important memories of his years on the series, Mr. McGrath often named the 1983 episode devoted to children’s, adults’ and Muppets’ reactions to the death of Will Lee, who had played Mr. Hooper on the show for 13 years. Another favorite was the holiday special “Christmas Eve on Sesame Street” (1978), particularly the Bert and Ernie segment inspired by the O. Henry story “The Gift of the Magi.”In 1958, Mr. McGrath married Ann Logan Sperry, a preschool teacher whom he met on his first day in New York City. They had five children. He is survived by Ms. McGrath, who is 89, and their five children, Liam McGrath, Robert McGrath, Alison McGrath Osder, Lily McGrath and Cathlin McGrath, as well as eight grandchildren. He is also survived by an elder sister, Eileen Strobel.“It’s a very different kind of fame,” Mr. McGrath reflected in the Television Academy interview about his association with “Sesame Street.”He recalled a little boy in a store who came up to him and took his hand. At first he thought he had been mistaken for the child’s father. When he realized that the boy seemed to think they knew each other, Mr. McGrath asked, “Do you know my name?” “Bob.” “Do you know where I live?” “Sesame Street.” “Do you know any of my other friends on Sesame Street?”“Yep,” the boy answered and promptly gave an example: “Oh, the number 7.”Livia Albeck-Ripka More

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      A Previvor’s Tale

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      A television writer deals with too much plot.A storyteller wants to know the future. That’s our job, after all: to map out the plot. We must keep a bird’s-eye view of the whole saga in mind — beginning, middle and end — while we make our way through each individual moment.This narrator’s drive to predict the future has always been so compulsive in me that it’s manifested in daily actions ranging from the practical (to-do lists, calendars) to the goofy (astrology, tarot). What happens next, I ask the cards, yearning for certainty, for control over my own story.Before I got married, all I did was wonder if I would ever get married. And soon after my wedding (a firm conclusion to that question), I visited a gynecologist, hoping to tackle the next big plot point. I was 35, a professional screenwriter, and I had always wanted children.Your Questions About Menopause, AnsweredCard 1 of 6What are perimenopause and menopause? More

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      Brad William Henke, N.F.L. Player Who Turned to Acting, Dies at 56

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      A defensive lineman who played for the Denver Broncos, he later appeared in “Orange Is the New Black,” “Dexter” and “Lost.”Brad William Henke, a former N.F.L. player who later turned to acting and became known for his role as a prison guard on “Orange Is the New Black,” died on Tuesday. He was 56.His death was confirmed by his manager, Matt DelPiano, who said Mr. Henke died in his sleep but did not specify the location. He also did not cite a cause, but in May 2021 Mr. Henke posted on Instagram that he had a 90 percent blockage in an artery, and the next month he said he had received two stents in his heart.Mr. Henke played many roles in film and television across a 25-year career, but he was probably best known for his appearance on more than two dozen episodes of the Netflix series “Orange Is the New Black” from 2016 to 2018. His character, Desi Piscatella, a gay corrections officer at the penitentiary where the show was set, was an integral part of the drama in its fourth and fifth seasons, and in 2017 he shared in the cast’s Screen Actors Guild Award for outstanding performance by an ensemble in a comedy series.Although “Orange” could be considered Mr. Henke’s breakout role, it was far from his first. His acting career began in 1996 with the film “Mr. Wrong,” which starred Ellen DeGeneres, Bill Pullman and Joan Cusack. Among the dozens of television shows on which he was seen were “ER,” “Judging Amy,” “Dexter,” “October Road” and “Lost.” His movies included the original “Space Jam.”Mr. Henke was born on April 10, 1966, in Columbus, Neb., and raised in Littleton, Colo. He played football for the University of Arizona in the late 1980s. A 6-foot-3, 275-pound defensive lineman, he was drafted by the New York Giants in 1989 as but was cut, he told The Tucson Citizen in 1998, He went on to play for the Denver Broncos and was on the team when it lost the 1990 Super Bowl to the San Francisco 49ers.His football career ended in the early 1990s after several injuries, and he held a number of jobs, including assistant football coach at a community college in California. An unexpected encounter with Rod Martin, formerly of the Oakland Raiders, set him on a new path.“Rod mentioned there was a need for actors to play football players for commercials, so I tried out for it and got one for Pizza Hut,” Mr. Henke told The Citizen. “While I was there, a guy invited me to attend an acting class. I went and it hit me that this is what I wanted to do.”The depth and types of roles Mr. Henke landed progressed with each credit. In a 2021 interview with CGMagazine, Mr. Henke said that at the start of his career he was learning the business and was taking jobs to earn money, but that things changed. “Lately, I’ve just tried to do it for the love of it,” he said. “Just cause I love creating the characters — figuring out how they talk, how they stand, all the physical things and all the emotional things.”Mr. Henke told the website Tell-Tale TV in 2020 that his role as Tom Cullen on the mini-series “The Stand,” the most recent adaptation of Stephen King’s novel of the same title, which starred Whoopi Goldberg and Alexander Skarsgard, was challenging yet rewarding.“It was the best experience I’ve had in acting so far in my whole career,” he said. “I haven’t had very many opportunities in my career where I have been offered this job three months before it starts. So many times, it’s just right before it starts. So I had so much more time to work on it and prepare and just think about it, dream about it.”Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.Jesus Jiménez More

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      ‘The Crown’ Could Have Damaged Charles. Becoming King Has Helped.

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      The latest season of the Netflix drama depicts Charles’s contentious divorce from Diana, but in Britain, several prominent figures and the news media have rallied behind him.LONDON — Six months ago, the new season of “The Crown” was shaping up as another public-relations headache for Prince Charles. The timeline of the popular historical drama had reached the 1990s, which meant that it was going to dissect the collapse of his marriage to Diana, Princess of Wales, an unwelcome exhumation of the most painful, mortifying chapter of his adult life.Some advising the prince were pondering how to counter the narrative, according to people with knowledge of the workings of Buckingham Palace, worried that it could tarnish the reputation of a man who, in recent years, had come to be known less for his peccadilloes than for his embrace of worthy causes such as climate change.Yet now, as Season 5 of the Netflix series has unspooled, it is clear that “The Crown” has dealt Charles at worst a glancing blow. In a few cases, it has even cast him in a positive light — celebrating, for example, his philanthropy, in an episode that ended with a charmingly awkward Charles (played by Dominic West) break dancing at an event for his charity, the Prince’s Trust.What changed, of course, is that two months before the new season arrived, Prince Charles became King Charles III.His ascension transformed the star-crossed heir into a dignified sovereign and Britain’s head of state. London’s tabloid papers, which once dined out on every morsel of Charles’s messy personal life, now have little appetite for embarrassing the sitting monarch. On the contrary, most prefer to focus on how gracefully the new king has succeeded his revered mother, Queen Elizabeth II.King Charles III standing vigil with the coffin of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, in London in September. He has been praised in the British news media for his handling of the transfer of power.Pool photo by Dominic LipinskiThen, too, there is the show’s unapologetic mixing of fact and fiction, which drew sporadic complaints when it dealt with events of the more distant past, but has reached a kind of critical mass when it comes to depicting the well-worn saga of Charles and Diana’s marriage.Their story was extravagantly covered at the time and is vividly remembered by millions of people, especially in Britain. Some of those actually involved in the events have voiced their outrage at the artistic license taken by the show’s creator, Peter Morgan, calling the most recent season a “barrel-load of nonsense” and “complete and utter rubbish.” Those critics — among them two former prime ministers, John Major and Tony Blair; a famous actress, Judi Dench; and one of Charles’s biographers, Jonathan Dimbleby (who called the show “nonsense on stilts”) — inoculated the king against some of the damage he might otherwise have suffered. Rather than keeping the spotlight on the tawdry events themselves, the critics shifted the focus to how “The Crown” had embellished them.“It is definitely the case that this series of ‘The Crown’ has come in for greater backlash than any previous series, particularly for its factual inaccuracies and the treatment of the current monarch,” said Ed Owens, a historian who has written about the interplay between the monarchy and the media.The Return of ‘The Crown’The hit drama’s fifth season premiered on Netflix on Nov. 9.The Royals and TV: The royal family’s experiences with sitting for television interviews have been fraught. The latest season of “The Crown” explores that rocky relationship.Meeting the Al-Fayeds: The new season includes portrayals of the Egyptian businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed, his son Dodi and his personal valet — who had all connections with the royal family.Republicanism on the Rise: Since “The Crown” debuted in 2016, there has been a steady increase in support for abolishing Britain’s monarchy. Has the show contributed to that change?Casting Choices: In a conversation with The Times, the casting director Robert Sterne told us how the drama has turned into a clearinghouse for some of Britain’s biggest stars.For the king, the chorus of outside detractors made it easier for him to ignore the series, according to the people with ties to Buckingham Palace, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with royal protocol. That is how the royal family handled the show’s previous four seasons. The king’s communications secretary did not respond to a query about how the palace viewed the latest season.Whether the palace had a role in orchestrating the critiques is harder to establish. There are plenty of back-channel conversations — whether between palace officials and prominent outsiders or between aides to the king and royal correspondents and their editors.The season’s characters include the former prime ministers Tony Blair (Bertie Carvel), left, and John Major (Jonny Lee Miller), both of whom have criticized the show’s accuracy.Keith Bernstein/Netflix“It will doubtless have been clear to allies of the crown, including former prime ministers, that there was some discontent and anxiety about the new season of ‘The Crown’ before it first aired,” Owens said..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.Learn more about our process.But public figures like Major also had an incentive to protect themselves. “The Crown” depicts him and Charles holding a private meeting in which a frustrated prince lobbies the prime minister for help in pushing the queen to abdicate because she is superannuated and poses a threat to the monarchy’s survival. Such a meeting would have raised constitutional issues, and Major says it never happened.“They’re not doing the palace’s work for it,” said Dickie Arbiter, who served as a spokesman for the queen from 1988 to 2000. “They are being besmirched and they are defending themselves.”But Arbiter said that the palace should steer clear of litigating the facts itself. “You start getting into ‘he said, she said,’” he noted. “You just give it oxygen.” British viewers, he added, would recognize the factual discrepancies without a warning.“The only difficulty is with the global audience, who will believe the royal family are like that,” Arbiter added. “It’s your lot on the other side of the Atlantic that believe every word of it.”Just in case there is any residual confusion at home, British papers, including the Daily Telegraph and the London Evening Standard, have published detailed fact-checking pieces. Some scenes, like the furtive tête-à-tête between Charles and Major, have been comprehensively debunked.In one scene in “The Crown,” a charmingly awkward Charles break dances at an event for his charity, the Prince’s Trust.NetflixOthers, like the underhanded tactics used by a BBC correspondent, Martin Bashir, to persuade Diana to give him an interview, were judged to be mostly accurate, if somewhat amped up for dramatic effect. Still others, like Charles’s attempt at break dancing, did happen, if not when the series said they did.Beyond the specific facts, some people with ties to the palace argue that “The Crown” is so obviously tilted against Charles that it is easy to dismiss. As evidence, they cite the unequal treatment of two particularly cringe-worthy 1990s scandals, named “Tampongate” and “Squidgygate” by the British news media.The series, they said, dwells on the prince’s extramarital affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles, most luridly in an episode about an overheard phone call between Charles and Camilla in which he tells her he wishes he could “live inside your trousers,” perhaps by being reincarnated as a tampon.But it ignores a similar episode involving Diana, then still married, and her close friend, James Gilbey, in which their intimate phone conversation was surreptitiously picked up and published in The Sun newspaper. In it, Gilbey called her by an instantly notorious nickname, Squidgy.To some who have worked in the palace, the season’s most glaring discrepancy involves not Charles, but the queen. Morgan, who wrote the current season, doctored her celebrated speech in November 1992, when she described that year as her “annus horribilis.” Even in a speech suffused with regret, the queen made no mention of the “errors of the past,” as Imelda Staunton does, in her portrayal of Elizabeth.Morgan, who declined a request for an interview, has never denied taking license with the facts in “The Crown.” Netflix describes the series as “fictionalized drama inspired by true events,” though it has resisted calls to put a disclaimer on each episode. Some critics have joked that if Morgan were serious about accuracy, he would not have cast a handsome actor, like West, in the role of Charles.But it’s not clear, even if the series were meticulously accurate, that the British news media would be in the mood to re-air the dirty laundry of a man who is Britain’s first new monarch since 1952. Charles has been widely praised for his performance since taking the throne, including when trouble brewed at the palace this past week.That trouble was set off by a royal aide when she repeatedly asked a Black woman born in Britain, who had been invited to a reception at Buckingham Palace, “Where are you from?” The reception guest, Ngozi Fulani, posted about the encounter on Twitter, and within hours, the royal aide, Susan Hussey, who had served as a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth, resigned with “profound apologies for the hurt caused.”As it happens, Hussey appears briefly as a character in “The Crown,” encouraging her husband, Marmaduke, then the chairman of the BBC, to ask the broadcaster to produce a laudatory program on the queen to cheer her up. (The BBC’s director general at the time, John Birt, instead greenlighted the infamous Bashir interview with Diana).Royal experts said that the palace’s swift reaction, and blunt condemnation, of Fulani’s treatment showed that Charles was intent on demonstrating that he would not tolerate any perception of racist behavior in the royal household. It averted what could have been another cycle of punishing headlines for the monarchy.According to Geordie Greig, a former editor of Tatler magazine and of The Daily Mail, “The only conversations about the king are, ‘Isn’t he doing a great job?’” More

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      Stephen Colbert Asks Santa to Put Mike Lindell in Charge of the G.O.P.

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      “Dear Santa, I have been a very good boy this year,” Colbert said to his Christmas Wish Cam about the MyPillow C.E.O.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.All I Want For ChristmasEarlier this week, Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow, announced his campaign to become chair of the Republican National Committee.“Sorry, I just need a moment,” Stephen Colbert said on Thursday night, turning to his Christmas Wish Cam.“Dear Santa, I have been a very good boy this year. I just want one thing for Christmas: Please put the screamy mustache man in charge of the Republican Party.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“But despite Lindell’s MAGA loyalty, the former president has not yet publicly supported his bid. Wow. he hasn’t said anything supportive? But Lindell’s been like a son to — oh, yeah. All right. That makes sense.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“But I’m a bit worried here, because an R.N.C. election pitting Lindell against incumbent Ronna McDaniel could tear the party apart between MyPillow MAGA crazies and traditional conservatives, which is why I propose a compromise candidate, someone right down the middle: Pillow. He’s got everything the Republicans want — he’s white, and he’s square.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Early Bird Special Edition)“Today, President Biden hosted French President Emmanuel Macron for the first White House state dinner in more than three years. Yep, the French like to eat late, so Biden was like, ‘Got it, 4:30 it is.’” — JIMMY FALLON“The Bidens hosted the French president and his wife for the first official state dinner. Biden does state dinners a little differently than former presidents — they happen at 4 o’clock, and then everybody goes to bed.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“A state dinner at the White House. I wonder if they serve French food or, as Macron calls it, food.” — JAMES CORDEN“This is a landmark event between the United States and France. They’ve finally started negotiations to get Emily out of Paris.” — JAMES CORDENThe Bits Worth WatchingThe “Jimmy Kimmel Live” special correspondent Jake Byrd riled up fans at a recent Herschel Walker rally in Georgia before speaking with the Senate candidate himself.Also, Check This OutEmma Corrin and Jack O’Connell star in the latest version of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover.”NetflixThe new Netflix adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” stays faithful to the novel. More