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      Ariana DeBose to Host This Year’s Tony Awards Ceremony

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      The nominees are to be announced on Monday, and the awards ceremony is to take place on June 12.Ariana DeBose will host this year’s Tony Awards.The Broadway League and the American Theater Wing, the two organizations that present the awards, announced the choice on Wednesday. The Tony Awards, which honor plays and musicals staged on Broadway, will take place on June 12.DeBose, 31, in March won the Academy Award for best supporting actress for her performance as Anita in last year’s Steven Spielberg-directed film adaptation of “West Side Story.”She has appeared in six Broadway shows, including “Hamilton” (in a dance number, she portrayed the bullet that killed the title character). She was nominated for a Tony Award in 2018 for her work in “Summer: The Donna Summer Musical” (she played “Disco Donna,” representing one of three stages of the singer’s career).The Tony Awards will be DeBose’s second high-profile hosting gig this year; in January she hosted “Saturday Night Live.”This year’s Tony Awards ceremony will take place at Radio City Music Hall, and is scheduled to last four hours. DeBose will host the three-hour televised segment, broadcast on CBS from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern; that segment, which is likely to be dominated by performances, will be preceded by a one-hour segment, streamed on Paramount+, at which many of the awards are likely to be announced. The streaming portion will have a different host who has not yet been named.The nominations for this year’s Tony Awards are to be announced on Monday. More

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      A Gay Icon From Reality TV’s Early Years Makes a Hesitant Return

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      Danny Roberts, a star of “The Real World” on MTV, brought a sense of possibility to the pop culture landscape during a fraught time for gay representation.GRAFTON, Vt. — When you cross into Vermont from New York, the road opens up and the Green Mountains emerge. Make it to Grafton (population: 645), and your cell service largely evaporates. This was where, on a recent day, Danny Roberts was standing in the doorway of the tiny cabin in the woods where he lives with his 6-year-old daughter. His eyes are crinkly now; his sandy hair seems uncertain of its next move. He has grown out a beard.His daughter was out for the day, Mr. Roberts said. His mother, who was visiting for the week, was watching her.“It’s kind of the elephant in the room with my family,” he said. “We don’t talk about the reality TV thing.”When he first put himself out there, in the ninth season of “The Real World,” he was young and a bit naïve. Now, at 44, he’s doing it again, for reasons he can only half-explain.The phrase “reality TV” was just becoming part of the everyday lexicon when he found himself jammed into a house in New Orleans with six other young people who — with the help of a few narrative contrivances — were taking their first stumbles into adulthood.When he and his fellow players left “The Real World” for the real world, the stumbling continued, and Mr. Roberts learned that the TV version of himself had become a shadow that traveled with him. Danny Roberts meant something to people.Mr. Roberts, left, and the cast of “The Real World: New Orleans” at the People’s Choice Awards in 2001.Ron Galella Collection, via Getty ImageIf you’re not a member of the microgeneration able to bust out the chorus to the Spice Girls hit “Wannabe” from memory, there’s a good chance you have no idea who Mr. Roberts is. But for a swath of gay elder millennials whose formative years unfolded to an MTV soundtrack, his reappearance as a cast member on a streaming return to “The Real World” on Paramount+ is likely to spark that old zig-a-zig-ah.In 2000, Mr. Roberts was something new in pop culture: a gay sex symbol zapped into the basement rec rooms of teenagers who had never encountered such a creature. Gay people, at the time, were becoming more visible on TV — thanks, in large part, to earlier installments of “The Real World” — but none had the wholesomeness and confident sexuality that Mr. Roberts, then 22, exuded with every flash of his Mona Lisa-meets-Backstreet Boy smile.The project of L.G.B.T.Q. visibility was going through an awkward phase in that time. Ellen DeGeneres’s coming out in 1997 created a sense that things were changing. But her sitcom, “Ellen,” was canceled one season after her revelation.“Will & Grace,” another sitcom, broke some ground by chronicling the relationship between a gay man and his straight friend, but discerning viewers couldn’t help but notice that it had about as much bite as “I Love Lucy.” In 2000, “Survivor,” then in its first season, delivered an openly gay (and, often, openly nude) antihero in Richard Hatch, who schemed his way to million-dollar victory. But he was a rather dark, Machiavellian figure.“The Real World” had featured L.G.B.T.Q. people since its 1992 debut — most notably Pedro Zamora, a young activist from the third season, who died of AIDS-related illness a day after the finale — but Mr. Zamora’s impact was complicated by deep sadness.Mr. Roberts, born and raised in small-town Rockmart, Ga., was something different from his TV predecessors. Rather than playing a jester, villain or de-eroticized Ken doll, he was chill, joyful in his identity, and he seemed to glow with an unapologetic sex appeal.“It’s kind of the elephant in the room with my family,” Mr. Roberts said. “We don’t talk about the reality TV thing.”Adrianna Newell for The New York TimesYes, he was sex on a stick (with a soul patch). And for gay adolescents in a time before social media, who relied on television for glimpses of fellow travelers, the sight of him bopping around the “Real World” digs in his black boxer briefs was both an awakening and an indication of new possibilities.Unlike Mr. Zamora, Mr. Roberts was, at the outset, not particularly motivated by activism. His boyfriend during the filming of “The Real World: New Orleans,” an Army officer named Paul Dill, appeared on the show using only his first name, and his face was hidden to conceal his identity. These were the days of “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” the Bill Clinton-era policy that allowed L.G.B.T.Q. people to serve in the military under the condition that they stayed in the closet, and Mr. Dill could have lost his job if he had been revealed.The couple took the risk of going before MTV’s cameras not in protest of the policy, but because they couldn’t bear to be apart. Mr. Dill’s blurred-out face in his several appearances became an enduring symbol of the injustice of “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” as well as the liminal space gay people occupied.“I really didn’t know what ‘Don’t Ask, don’t tell’ was,” Mr. Roberts said. “I didn’t know the ramifications. We really should have at least changed his name.”The decision would have consequences. After baring himself to the cameras, Mr. Roberts returned to everyday life only to be forced back into a new kind of closet as he tried to continue the relationship.“Every day, we lived with fear,” he recalled. “Of his career being destroyed. Of being dishonorably discharged. And I had my own fear. He was stationed in North Carolina, so we’re in the South, and every kid out there knew who I was.”“You know, Matthew Shepard was just a couple of years before this,” he continued, referring to the gay college student who was kidnapped and murdered in Wyoming in 1998. “You keep repeating in your head: I’m going to get gay-bashed in the parking lot just trying to get my groceries.”Mr. Roberts, right, with fellow cast members on a recent episode of “The Real World Homecoming: New Orleans.”Paramount+After breaking up with Mr. Dill in 2006, Mr. Roberts settled into a life that seemed to mirror the increasing ordinariness of gay men in America. He became a recruiter in the tech industry. He married, adopted his daughter and divorced. (“I don’t recommend marriage,” he said.) In 2018, he announced that he had been living with H.I.V. since 2011. He moved to Vermont.Then, like an old flame, “The Real World” came calling. Mr. Roberts said he found it difficult to resist the paycheck and the chance at closure. “It was a nostalgia thing,” he said. “It’s returning to the scene of the crime.”This time around, he’s more mindful of the way his presence on TV can create change. “For me, personally, all the progress that L.G.B.T.Q. people have made in the last 20 feels very tenuous now,” he said. “This is a chance to remind people about what things were like then, and that we don’t want to go back there.”The new show, “The Real World Homecoming: New Orleans,” doesn’t entirely abandon the reality TV conventions it helped pioneer. In one episode, a drunk cast member tumbles out of an S.U.V. and face-plants on the sidewalk.But as the seven old housemates return to their New Orleans haunts, they carry with them the baggage of middle age. Mr. Dill makes an appearance in a poignant scene on the show’s third episode, coming face to face with Mr. Roberts for the first time since 2006. His face is now fully visible.After making his name in reality TV, Mr. Roberts worked as a recruiter and moved to a small town in Vermont.Adrianna Newell for The New York TimesAs Mr. Roberts strolled the grounds of his rural property on a gray spring day, the easy charisma of his younger self was in evidence. Since 2020, he has been seeing a farmer who lives one town over. (They met on the dating app Scruff.) “He had no clue I’d been on TV,” he said. “I don’t think he grew up with cable.”This time around, there’s nothing to hide. But some habits die hard: Mr. Roberts declined to share the farmer’s name.And while he has mixed feelings about the path that “The Real World” led him down, the experience was as important to him as it was to his fans all those years ago.“I think a lot of people who are marginal, especially who are gay, especially from that time, you felt invisible,” he said. “It’s this deep hole of emptiness. Doing that show was the most exciting, beautiful part of my life at that point. I got my first taste of what confirmation feels like.” More

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      Stephen Colbert Reacts to the Supreme Court Leak

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      “Congratulations, ladies, your decisions are being made by four dudes and a woman who thinks ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ is a rom-com,” Colbert said.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.Roe NoLate-night hosts reacted to the news of the Supreme Court leak on Tuesday, lambasting the court’s still-unofficial majority decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.“Congratulations, ladies, your decisions are being made by four dudes and a woman who thinks ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ is a rom-com,” Stephen Colbert said.“Personally, I got suspicious when Neil Gorsuch stopped wearing his ‘pussy hat’.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“That’s right, it looks like the Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade. Apparently, they decided masks aren’t mandatory, but Mother’s Day is.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yeah, that means all across the country, women in places like South Dakota or Missouri or even Texas will have the exact same abortion rights as women in Afghanistan under the Taliban. Yeah, and just think about that: We just evacuated people out of Afghanistan, and now we’re going to have to evacuate them out of Tennessee?” — TREVOR NOAH“Most people thought the freedom to choose was just how America was. No one ever thought the G.O.P. could roll it back by playing a reverse Uno card.” — TREVOR NOAH“For perspective, consider this: It wasn’t until the year after Roe v. Wade that women in America got the legal right to have a credit card without a man. Think about that. Yeah. And I think we would all agree it would be a little weird if the court was suddenly like, ‘Look, if the founders wanted women to have credit cards, they would have said so. They would have.’” — TREVOR NOAHThe Punchiest Punchlines (The Leak Edition)“Today, Chief Justice John Roberts condemned the leak and announced that there will be an investigation into how it got out. Americans are like, ‘Uh, the leak is not our main concern.’” — JIMMY FALLON“The conservative majority on the court has a fundamental right to choose when they want to release a decision into the world. Imagine having some random person violate your privacy and make that choice for you. Who would do such a thing?” — TREVOR NOAH“This leak is a clear violation of the court’s right to privacy. How dare someone make this decision for them.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“It’s crazy how conservatives always manage to make themselves the victim in any situation. I mean, they have just accomplished this thing that they’ve been working toward for 50 years, and their first reaction is ‘It’s so unfair what’s happening to us!’ I’m sorry, what, you wanted your ruling to be a big surprise and now someone ruined it?” — TREVOR NOAHThe Bits Worth WatchingThe “Late Night” writers Amber Ruffin and Jenny Hagel reacted to the Supreme Court news with concerns about Democrats’ getting anything done.What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightSheryl Crow will talk about her new Showtime documentary, “Sheryl,” on Wednesday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutEmma Galbraith as Angie Chen in “Inbetween Girl.”UtopiaMei Makino’s “Inbetween Girl” is a coming-of-age drama following an artsy, biracial high school student grappling with the guilt of sleeping with another girl’s boyfriend. More

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      Seth Meyers: Trump ‘Can’t Be Bothered’ to Endorse Republicans Correctly

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      “You have to grovel and debase yourself to earn the endorsement of a guy who can’t even remember your name,” Meyers said.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.Ringing EndorsementFormer President Donald Trump mistakenly endorsed “J.D. Mandel” for Senate in Ohio at a rally on Sunday, conflating his intended Republican choice, J.D. Vance, with Vance’s opponent, Josh Mandel.“This guy can’t even be bothered to remember the names of the people he’s endorsing. He went from ‘J.P.’ to ‘J.D. Mandel.’ If he kept talking, he would have endorsed J.K. Rowling,” Seth Meyers said.“This is how much you have to forfeit your dignity to succeed in today’s Republican Party. You have to grovel and debase yourself to earn the endorsement of a guy who can’t even remember your name.” — SETH MEYERS“That’s bad enough, but then he said, ‘J.D. Mandel will win or my name isn’t Donald Vance.’” — SETH MEYERS“[Imitating Donald Trump] ‘Great guy. J.P. Morgan is great. Can’t say enough about J.C. Penney — I don’t think you can. We love you, J. Lo, we love you.’” — JIMMY FALLON“I’m not sure if it’s a ringing endorsement when you’re like, ‘I fully support what’s his face — he’s the best.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Trump said even the best leaders make mistakes sometimes, like our great President Abra-george Lincoln-ton.” — JIMMY FALLON“You could see even the crowd was looking like, ‘Ah, man!’ They look like parents watching their kid bombing in a spelling bee.” — TREVOR NOAH“I feel bad for J.D. Vance because now he’s gonna have to change his name to J.P.J.D. Mandel. Yeah, ’cuz if you’re a Republican, Trump is never wrong. At the G.O.P. Starbucks, whatever name Trump calls, that’s you: ‘J.J.J. — J.D.J.P Mandel? Yeah, that’s me. I’ll take it.’” — TREVOR NOAHThe Punchiest Punchlines (Things Are Looking Slightly Up Edition)“According to a new poll, President Biden’s approval rating has increased slightly over the last two months, and now the White House is scrambling like hell to figure out what he did: [Imitating White House staffer] ‘Did he change his hair? Different mask? What tie was he wearing?’” — SETH MEYERS“That’s right, President Biden’s approval rating has increased to 42 percent. He now ranks slightly above leaf blowers.” — SETH MEYERS“Biden was like, ‘Thank God, inflation finally got to me.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Even Biden was surprised by the results. He triple-checked it like an at-home Covid test. He was like: ‘This can’t be right. This can’t be right. Honey, look at this — is this right?’” — JIMMY FALLON“I’m not even sure what caused the spike, really. Apparently a lot of Americans thought, ‘I like how he handled Easter.’” — JIMMY FALLON“It’s great news for Biden, although it’s hard to celebrate when your approval rating skyrockets and it’s still only 42 percent.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingThe creator and star of Showtime’s “Ziwe,” the mononymic Ziwe, sat down with Trevor Noah on Monday’s “Daily Show.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightThe “Euphoria” breakout Sydney Sweeney will appear on Tuesday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutOscar Isaac has split his career between intimate dramas and mega-franchises. His latest, Marvel’s “Moon Knight,” wraps up on Wednesday.Erik Tanner for The New York TimesOscar Isaac has found satisfaction playing an unconventional Marvel superhero in “Moon Knight.” More

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      ‘Better Call Saul’ Season 6, Episode 4 Recap: The Wicked Flee

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      Gus sweats life in red-alert mode while Jimmy goes on a joyride.Season 6, Episode 4: ‘Hit and Run’Gus Fring is getting nervous.We get a de facto tour of his psyche in this week’s episode, by way of the elaborate surveillance system designed to spot Lalo Salamanca, the man Gus tried to kill, before Lalo can kill him. It’s a no-expense-spared operation. Seven cameras are pointed at Gus’s house; someone keeps an eye on nearby cars when he drives; a hired gun is working the fryolator at the Los Pollos Hermanos where Gus has an office; and two guys are trailing Kim, in case Lalo goes looking for her first.Also, he’s wearing a bullet proof vest and has a firearm strapped to his ankle. This guy is expecting the worst.“Two weeks and we haven’t had a tickle,” says Mike, toward the episode’s end.Nonsense, says Gus, in so many words. He’s in a game where your instincts get to fail you only once, and he will not be swayed from his conviction that Lalo is alive. As viewers, we know that he’s right, but we’re in the dark about everything else Lalo-related. He hasn’t been seen for the last two episodes, and spotting Tony Dalton’s name in the opening credits doesn’t count. The effect is to put the audience in the same mind space as Gus. We, too, know that Lao is on his way. Exactly when is a total mystery.If he arrives. When last seen, the suavest member of the Salamanca clan — not a competitive category, true — was on the hunt for proof that Gus was behind the failed, very bloody home invasion of Casa Lalo. He isn’t going to show that proof to Gus, of course. He’s going to show it to the cartel. Which may mean Gus will face a whole organization with many reasonably capable assailants in its employ.Thing is, we know that Gus is going to live, and that frames a conundrum for “Better Call Saul” writers this season. Given that Gus is a lead character in “Breaking Bad” and Lalo is not — OK, he’s mentioned once by Saul in that series, which does leave some narrative wiggle room — Gus’s survival, at least through the end of this series, is assured. Which is to say that the degree of difficulty faced by Vince Gilligan, Peter Gould and every other writer on this show is very high. They are betting that when a tale is told well enough, it is suspenseful even if the ultimate outcome appears to be known.The Return of ‘Better Call Saul’The “Breaking Bad” prequel returned April 18 for its final season.A Refresher: After the show’s two-year, Covid-induced hiatus, here’s where things left off.Serious Success: Bob Odenkirk was a comedian’s comedian — until “Better Call Saul” revealed him as a peerless portrayer of broken souls.Writing the Perfect Con: We asked the show’s writers to break down a pivotal scene in the ​​transformation of Jimmy McGill into Saul Goodman.Cast Interviews: Rhea Seehorn and Tony Dalton told us how they created the complex Kim Wexler and the murderous Lalo Salamanca.The success of this season thus resides not so much in what is going to happen, but how. And already there is plenty of intrigue. Your Faithful Recapper is riveted by Mr. and Mrs. Ryman, as they are identified in the credits, Gus’s bicycle-happy, hand-signal proficient next-door neighbors, played by real-life couple Kirk and Joni Bovill. There is a hidden tunnel between their homes, and the Ryman’s kitchen and living rooms are occupied by Gus’s underlings, some armed, others manning a video-screen installation. The Rymans appear to live in their basement, where they do jigsaw puzzles when not getting out for a ride.Who are these people? Until now, the number of noncombatants aware of Gus’s double life is, let’s see … uh, zero? At least at this point in the story. So, we have to assume the Rymans are on the payroll. But one of Gus’s video watchers refers to Mrs. Ryman as “ma’am” when he asks for some iced tea, suggesting he doesn’t know her well. And the Rymans seem intimately familiar with the local homeowners association, implying that they are longtime and authentic members of the community.What’s certain is that when Gus moved into 1213 Jefferson St., he purchased the house beside him, presumably a just-in-case measure that is now coming in handy.While Gus frets, Jimmy and Kim continue Operation Cockamamie, which in this episode involves briefly absconding with Howard’s Jaguar while he’s seeing his shrink. (The man has marital problems, we learn.) The plan involves a pantomime with the ever-amenable Wendy S. (Julia Minesci), whom “Breaking Bad” fans will remember as the meth head and prostitute who helped Jesse with a nutty scheme of his own. (She was supposed to deliver poisoned burgers to some especially wicked street-level dealers Jesse wanted dead in Season 3.)This time, Wendy pretends to get bounced out of Howard’s car, making it appear to a slack-jawed Clifford Main, who is the sole audience for this spectacle, that Howard is consorting with, and mistreating, a hooker.Like previous parts of this campaign to frame Howard, this one works without flaw, thus clearly foreshadowing that the entire plan will ultimately fail. There’s a jarring tonal shift in these scenes, as though “Better Call Saul” decided it can’t all be tense violins and deadly tangos and must switch occasionally to tubas and the cancan. This is certainly lighter fare than the anxieties of a man who fears imminent demise. But when Jimmy gets a spray tan, whitened teeth and a wig to pull off his Howard impersonation, the show seems a little goofy.In the courthouse, Jimmy is a pariah because of his success in springing Lalo. As reviled as he has become by security guards, clerks and prosecutors is exactly how sought after has become by criminals. So, welcome back Spooge! (David Ury) Looking far healthier and more lucid than he will be as a meth addict and stickup man in episodes of “Breaking Bad,” Spooge is blissfully unaware that in the not-too-distant future his drug-addled partner is going to crush his head with an A.T.M. For now, he has legal problems with an unidentified buddy, and Jimmy has become so popular that he is soon thrown out of his office at the nail salon.This leads to the episode’s last scene, in which Jimmy shows his new work space to Kim. It has a toilet in the middle of the room and not much else. As viewers know, this modest, odorous corner of an unpopular strip mall is about to get a spectacularly garish, patriotically themed renovation.Odds and EndsFor Your Faithful Recapper, the scene between Mike and Kim was the highlight of this episode, which was directed very deftly by Rhea Seehorn, her first time directing an episode. Mike is surely flattering Kim with his “made of sterner stuff” line. More likely, he is speaking to her instead of Jimmy because Kim noticed that she is being tailed and had the nerve to confront her tailers. It’s entirely possible — actually, it seems pretty likely — that Jimmy is being followed, too, and simply hasn’t noticed. Perhaps Mike decided to have a quiet word with Kim so that he could continue to keep two men hovering close by.Vintage Gus Fring perfectionism: He wants the bodyguard assigned to the kitchen at Los Pollos Hermanos fired because he is “not up to Pollos standards.”The opening song, “Best Things in Life” by the Dreamliners, is the perfect background music for that bike ride.And some questions for the hive mind, to be answered in the comments section:What’s with the tomato-red house? It seems unlikely that we linger on that peculiar building for no reason.Jimmy seems positively eager to admit to new clients that he helped Lalo, who in court went by the name Jorge de Guzman, something Jimmy refused to acknowledge to prosecutors. In this episode, when Deputy District Attorney Bill Oakley (Peter Diseth) accuses Jimmy of moral turpitude — “You scammed the judge. And for what? To get a murdering cartel psychopath back out on the street” — Saul says simply, “Prove it.” Well, isn’t proof unnecessary once you confess to half the criminals in Albuquerque?Oh, and one more: Who. Moves. Cones? More

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      David Birney, Who Starred in TV’s ‘Bridget Loves Bernie,’ Dies at 83

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      The sitcom, about an interfaith marriage, drew criticism from Jewish groups and was canceled after one season. He fared better onstage than in television.David Birney, a classically trained theater actor who found success on the stage, including on Broadway, but who was best known for his role in “Bridget Loves Bernie” — a short-lived sitcom about an interfaith marriage in which he starred opposite his future wife, Meredith Baxter — died on Friday at his home in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 83.The cause was Alzheimer’s disease, said Michele Roberge, who said she was his life partner.Mr. Birney had been in a handful of television series and movies when he was cast in 1972 as Bernie Steinberg, a Jewish taxicab driver and struggling writer. Ms. Baxter played Bridget Fitzgerald, a schoolteacher from a wealthy Roman Catholic family.“This is not a message show,” Mr. Birney, who was Irish American, said during an interview with The Kansas City Star before the series’s debut. “It’s not even an idea show.”CBS gave it a plum time slot between “All in the Family” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” on Saturday night; it consistently finished among the top 10 programs in prime time and was the highest rated new series of the 1972-73 season.But it attracted criticism from a broad spectrum of Jewish groups, which objected chiefly to its treatment of intermarriage between Jews and Christians as a positive outcome and complained that it used Jewish stereotypes. CBS publicly played down the criticism but, without an explanation, canceled “Bridget Loves Bernie” after 24 episodes.“One segment of the protesters is truly concerned about the dilution of their faith,” Mr. Birney told The Daily News several months after the cancellation. “But intermarriage is on the rise, nevertheless. The threat doesn’t come from a harmless show such as ours, but from within.”Mr. Birney and Ms. Baxter married in 1974.In 1976, Mr. Birney received acclaim for playing John Quincy Adams in the public television production of “The Adams Chronicles.” Later that year, he was hired to play Frank Serpico, the corruption-fighting New York City detective, in an NBC series adapted from the Sidney Lumet movie “Serpico” (1973), which had earned Al Pacino an Oscar nomination for best actor.Mr. Birney was cast in the role on the strength of his work playing an officer in two episodes of “Police Story,” another NBC series. But “Serpico” was canceled after less than a full season. Mr. Birney and Meredith Baxter in an episode of “Bridget Loves Bernie,” a short-lived CBS sitcom about an interfaith marriage. Jewish groups were critical of it. CBS via Getty ImagesDavid Edwin Birney was born on April 23, 1939, in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Cleveland. His father, Edwin, was an F.B.I. agent, and his mother, Jeanne (McGee) Birney, was a homemaker and later a real estate agent.After earning a bachelor’s degree in English from Dartmouth College in 1961, Mr. Birney turned down a scholarship from Stanford Law School and instead chose to study theater arts at the University of California, Los Angeles. He received a master’s degree a year later. In the Army, he was part of a program called the Showmobile, which entertained at military bases in the United States.Mr. Birney’s theater career began in earnest in 1965, when he won the Barter Theater Award, enabling him to spend a season acting in shows at the prestigious Barter Theater in Abingdon, Va. He moved on to the Hartford Stage Company in Connecticut, and in 1967 he played Antipholus of Syracuse in a New York Shakespeare Festival production of “A Comedy of Errors.”Mr. Birney made his Broadway debut two years later in Molière’s “The Miser.” And in 1971 he starred in a Broadway production of J.M. Synge’s “The Playboy of the Western World” at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center. Mr. Birney played Christy Mahon, who enters an Irish pub in the early 1900s telling a story about killing his father.“Mr. Birney had a cock sparrow arrogance,” Clive Barnes wrote in his review in The New York Times, “that mixture of both confidence and certainty that seemed perfectly right.”At the opening of “Playboy,” the Clancy Boys, a popular Irish singing group that Mr. Birney had befriended at a Manhattan bar, sat in the front row.“They had their Irish sweaters on,” Ms. Roberge said in a phone interview, “and their arms crossed as if to say, Come on, show us what you’ve got.”Over the rest of his theatrical career, Mr. Birney played a wide variety of roles, including Antonio Salieri, as a replacement, in Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus” on Broadway; Benedick in “Much Ado About Nothing” at the McCarter Theater in Princeton, N.J.; Hamlet at the PCPA Theaterfest in Santa Maria, Calif.; and James Tyrone Jr. in Eugene O’Neill’s “A Moon for the Misbegotten” at the Miniature Theater of Chester, Mass.He also adapted some of Mark Twain’s short stories into a play, “The Diaries of Adam and Eve,” which he often performed and directed. In 1989, he starred in one of the productions, with Ms. Baxter, for American Playhouse on PBS.The couple divorced that year. In 2011, she wrote in her book, “Untied: A Memoir of Family, Fame and Floundering,” that Mr. Birney had been abusive during their marriage. He denied her accusation, calling it an “appalling abuse of the truth.”One of Mr. Birney’s biggest successes on television was a starring role as a doctor in the first season of the medical dramedy “St. Elsewhere.” But as the second season approached, he left the series because of his commitment on Broadway to “Amadeus.”He continued to work in television through 2007, when he was a guest on the police procedural “Without a Trace.”In addition to Ms. Roberge, Mr. Birney is survived by his children with Ms. Baxter, his daughters Kate and Mollie Birney and a son, Peter Baxter; a stepdaughter, Eva Bush, and a stepson, Ted Bush, Ms. Baxter’s children from a previous marriage; two grandchildren; and his brothers, Glenn and Gregory. Another marriage, to Mary Concannon, also ended in divorce. More

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      In ‘I Love That for You,’ Vanessa Bayer Sells Out

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      The “Saturday Night Live” veteran’s new sitcom draws on her experience of childhood cancer and her obsession with home shopping TV.Listen to This ArticleTo hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.According to Vanessa Bayer, being diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia as a 15-year-old wasn’t all bad.It got her out of gym class. The attendance lady at her high school never marked her as tardy. She told a boy she didn’t like that she couldn’t be his date for the homecoming dance because she had chemo that weekend. (She didn’t). Her father talked his way out of a speeding ticket by using her illness as an excuse, a tactic he referred to as “dropping the L-bomb.”Bayer survived the L-bomb. The experience didn’t change her, she said, but it did intensify characteristics that were already inherent — determination, resilience, a borderline delusional sense of optimism. Who receives a diagnosis of cancer and accentuates the positive? Bayer does.“I was always a person who loved attention,” Bayer said chirpily. “This allowed me to get so much attention.”Bayer is getting attention now. On Sunday, Showtime will premiere the first episode of “I Love That for You” (the Showtime app will have it on Friday), a sitcom that draws on Bayer’s pediatric cancer and her longtime obsession with home shopping shows. She stars as Joanna Gold, a sheltered young woman and leukemia survivor who auditions to become the newest host on the Special Value Network. Nearly fired after her disastrous first hour on camera, she saves her job by telling her colleagues that her cancer has returned. (It hasn’t.)Bayer’s character pretends to have cancer in order to keep her job at a home shopping network.Tony Rivetti Jr./ShowtimePlaying Joanna isn’t cathartic for Bayer — she doesn’t seem to need catharsis — but it does offer her a chance to work through her past, this time with even more jokes. “It’s really nice to be able to have some distance from that time and to be able to laugh at it even more,” she said.Bayer grew up in a Reform Jewish family in the suburbs of Cleveland. A star student and a cross-country runner, she decided that she wouldn’t let her illness mess with her G.P.A., even when teachers told her she could coast.“It lit this fire under me,” she said. “It was important to me that everybody saw me as someone who wasn’t weak.”Diagnosed in the spring of her freshman year, she spent time in the hospital, then in outpatient treatment, completing chemotherapy just before her senior year. She graduated on time. As prom queen.She first performed comedy as a member of Bloomers, an all-female troupe at the University of Pennsylvania. After graduation, she moved to Chicago and studied and performed at various improv theaters, which eventually led to a spot on “Saturday Night Live” in 2010. There she created characters such as Jacob the Bar Mitzvah Boy and Dawn Lazarus, an anxious meteorologist. But long before she got paid for it, Bayer had relied on jokes as a coping mechanism.“I had to use humor to make everyone, including myself, feel OK,” she said, speaking of her time in treatment. Here comes that optimism again: “I also think it made me funnier.”She was speaking, from a bench on the fringes of Central Park, on a recent Friday afternoon. The temperature had climbed to nearly 70 degrees, but Bayer, who had just flown in on a red-eye from Los Angeles, was bundled against the spring in a belted coat, a knit beanie and Rag & Bone fleece sneakers. She had a green juice in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. A medical-grade mask had left a red mark high on each cheek.Even sleep-deprived and apparently very cold, Bayer radiated positivity. She smiled approvingly at the gamboling dogs, the sweating men, the woman who had arrived for a constitutional in high heels and full makeup. “Nothing like New York birds!” she said, when a flock of pigeons flew over, Hitchcock close. In high school she was voted Most Likely to Succeed. Most Likely to Bake a Mean Casserole would have tracked, too — even sitting in the middle of Manhattan, she emanated Midwestern normalcy and niceness.Over seven years on “Saturday Night Live,” Bayer (with Michael Che) was a dependable utility player with many memorable appearances on Weekend Update.Dana Edelson/NBC“She almost doesn’t seem like an actress,” said Molly Shannon, an “S.N.L.” veteran who now co-stars opposite Bayer as SVN’s superstar host. “She’s very steady and calm and grounded.”The comedian Aidy Bryant, who worked with Bayer in Chicago before they both found their way to “S.N.L.,” noted that Bayer has a way of turning that mildness into a strike force. When it comes to comedy, Bryant said, “She is a quiet, smiling assassin.”“Vanessa has a real reserved, polite, wonderfully Midwestern energy,” she added. “Then she hits with a punchline or a funny reaction or her truly incredible smile, which she can weaponize as a force of pain.”On “S.N.L.,” Bayer became a dependable utility player, often infusing characters (football widow, early career Jennifer Aniston) with a manic intensity — eyes overbright, speech a tick too fast. Taran Killam, another “S.N.L.” co-star, noted how calm the offscreen Bayer seemed, a composure he attributed to her history.“It must have given her incredible perspective,” he said. “‘S.N.L.’ is a very passionate job, a dream job. It feels like it matters more than anything in the world. She would always be the first one to say: ‘Who cares? No big deal. So they didn’t like the sketch? Move on.’”“S.N.L.” has a famously punishing schedule. But Jeremy Beiler, a former “S.N.L.” writer who joined around the same time Bayer did, noted how she met the stresses of the job with buoyancy.“She only looks in one direction,” he said. “It’s only forward.”In 2017, after seven seasons on “S.N.L.,” Bayer moved on. Another comedian might have worried about what would come next. Unsurprisingly, Bayer stayed positive. “My attitude is just that stuff kind of works out,” she said. And it did work out, more or less, with guest spots, voice work, supporting roles in a few movies.“I had to use humor to make everyone, including myself, feel OK,” Bayer said, speaking of her time in cancer treatment as a teen. “I also think it made me funnier.”Sabrina Santiago for The New York TimesAs she was leaving “S.N.L.,” her management team asked her about dream projects, and her mind somehow flashed on home shopping TV. She had watched the channels often as a child: The peek into adult life fascinated her, and she loved the elegance of the hosts and the ways in which they would spin seemingly extemporaneous stories in their attempts to entice buyers.She described the hosts’ particular rhythms and vocabulary as “the first foreign language I ever learned,” and the network most likely provided her first taste of improv, too. (In college, when it came time to write her first sketch, she wrote one set in the world of home shopping, in which the host was selling cardboard with a hole in it. It killed.)A few months later, over brunch, Beiler mentioned that he had, by coincidence, begun a series pilot set in the world of home shopping. They began to collaborate, even arranging a field trip to QVC’s headquarters in West Chester, Pa., where they met with two hosts, Jane Treacy and Mary Beth Roe, whom Bayer had idolized as a child, and also managed to score some free soft pretzels. (Everyone I spoke to mentioned Bayer’s enthusiasm for snacks, and most of them mentioned her gift for scamming her way into free ones.) In the gift shop, they bought matching QVC mugs.Back at work, with Jessi Klein as showrunner, they began to build out a back story for Bayer’s character, Joanna, that would give her stakes and drive. They decided to borrow from Bayer’s own story, particularly her diagnosis and treatment and the way that those years of chemo and radiation stunted her emotional growth for a while.“I didn’t understand dating at all,” she said. “It was just playing catch up. Even out of college and into my 20s, I always was trying to fake being an adult.” In an hour’s conversation, this was the closest she ever came to acknowledging that pediatric cancer hadn’t been entirely a walk in the park.Bayer didn’t mind lending Joanna her medical chart — she has never been shy about her diagnosis. As a teen she used it to win her family a trip to Hawaii courtesy of the Make-A-Wish Foundation. (She had thought about asking to meet Jared Leto, but she eventually decided she would prefer to meet him as a peer. Years later, she did.) Colleagues at “S.N.L.” have heard her introduce leukemia into the conversation just to get free ice cream, which jibes with advice she offered during our interview: If you are sick, use it to get whatever you can.Bryant said, “She always takes the things that are hard and makes them something that she can use to empower herself or use to her advantage.”Gradually, Joanna took shape, a woman more guarded than Bayer and more stunted, with her same love of snacks and her same gift for antic improvisation but none of her obvious success. A woman who lies about having cancer shouldn’t be a woman you root for, but Bayer has a way of communicating a kind of desperate brightness that makes terrible things seem less terrible, just because she does them with such enthusiasm.What the camera recognizes is what Shannon, who also survived a major childhood trauma (her mother, youngest sister and a cousin were killed in a car accident), identified as a shared joy and determination to wring the utmost out of life.“We don’t take it for granted,” Shannon said. “We feel so lucky that we’re alive. For real.”There are many stories about illness. (Admittedly, there are fewer of them set in the world of home shopping.) But this is one — with its snacks and its sunniness and its heroine’s determination to exploit her fake diagnosis for all she can — that seemingly only Bayer can tell.“I always wanted to do something about when I was sick,” she said contentedly, as the gentle chaos of Central Park swirled around her. “Specifically, the fun I had.”Audio produced by More

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      ‘Star Trek: Picard’ Recap: A Chateau of Convenience

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      In the penultimate episode of this season, anything the crew needs from the plot to move forward, it gets.Season 2, Episode 9: ‘Hide and Seek’The most interesting revelation in this week’s “Picard” comes in a throwaway line from Seven, in which she tells Raffi that she tried to join Starfleet after Voyager returned from the Delta Quadrant. That Captain Janeway — or possibly Admiral, depending on the timing of her promotion that we saw in “Star Trek: Nemesis” — went to bat for her. Starfleet said no, because of her Borg background.This is the first concrete hint about Seven’s immediate post-Voyager ambitions. It was a remarkable decision by Starfleet, given that Seven accomplished more on Voyager than many Starfleet officers ever did. She saved lives — Starfleet lives, but it wasn’t good enough to be seen as anything more than a former Borg drone. It shows that bigotry is still alive and well within the Federation. It also established why Seven became a Fenris Ranger. (Compare this to Picard and the crew’s handling of Hugh, the former Borg drone, whom we are reintroduced to in last season of “Picard.”)It also ran counter to previous Starfleet policy: Remember that Picard himself was once a Borg drone. The Enterprise crew rescued him and Picard got his command back, like, the next day. (And why was Icheb — who was also part of the Voyager crew — allowed to join Starfleet then?)Aside from that, this episode was — to put it charitably — disjointed.If there’s been a consistent trend in how the “Trek” universe has handled the Borg, it’s that their pursuit of perfection is consistently undermined by their rank incompetence — something Jurati brings up in the episode’s bizarre climax. The episode starts with an army of Borg drones, led by the Borg Queen, trying to take over La Sirena. Should be easy: After all, the Borg Queen alone can take over an entire computer system.But it’s not easy, because it appears that the Queen assimilated stormtroopers who can’t shoot straight rather than professional mercenaries. And The Watcher procures very futuristic weapons to aid the crew in their fight.With every deus ex machina, an angel grows its wings — and there are many wings coming out of “Picard.” How did The Watcher get those weapons? From where? Why have they never come up before? Also, wasn’t her whole thing to stay out of events? Suddenly, the Watcher can beam Rios away after being shot? And then later, Rios is able to beam back because he has a screwdriver? And then when Soong tries to use Rios’s gun, it has a DNA lock on it? And it explodes if it’s being held too long?Probably best not to ponder any of the above too deeply and just keep moving.So when the Borg Queen is finally close to taking over the ship’s computer — something that shouldn’t have been difficult for her to do — Jurati tries to moralize her.“Why haven’t you killed me?” Jurati asks the Queen, asking a question that every audience member has asked by now. In the meantime, Jurati puts something called a “fractal lock” on the computer. How? When? Without the Queen noticing? Ah, nevermind. And wait, Jurati didn’t remember the key? And she left it with a holographic Elnor?Like the Queen, we’re all confused by what is going on. (I did enjoy several of the Queen’s drones trying to shoot a gun at a hologram, because IT’S A HOLOGRAM.) Later, when Raffi reunites with Hologram Elnor, he says that he shared Real Elnor’s last thoughts.“I share the recollection of Elnor’s final breath — enough to know that his last thoughts of you were not of blame but of love,” the hologram says. Why would Hologram Elnor know that? He was presumably created before Real Elnor died.Seven’s comes up with the brilliant plan of beaming the drones off board and into a wall in Chateau Picard. Given The Watcher’s beaming capability, how was this not the first thing they thought of? I feel like I’m asking a lot of questions.The peak of the episode comes when the Queen stabs Seven, and then her life is saved because Jurati trash-talks the Queen by saying the Borg consistently stink at achieving their aims across several timelines. Good point. In one of the most baffling plot points in “Trek” history — and I’m pretty sure I’ve written this about previous “Picard” plot lines — Jurati says the better way for them to do things is by asking species’ permissions to be assimilated.“What if we take this ship and build a better Borg? A real collective based not on assimilation but on salvation?” Jurati says to the Queen.Is salvation different than assimilation? And there is no reason for the Queen to accept this proposal. She has all the leverage! The Borg’s brand is that resistance is futile. and they can’t be negotiated with. Now they change everything they are because of one conversation with Jurati?Odds and EndsRios decides to show Teresa and Ricardo a glimpse of the future — when he didn’t have to — and then leaves them behind in the 21st century. Surely it will have some future effect on the timeline for the two of them to have this much knowledge about futuristic technology.The action sequences were a lot of fun in this episode. They were made less effective by the distracting plotting.The revelation about Picard’s mother was notable, but felt cheapened because it was used mostly as a device to help Picard and The Watcher escape a homicidal Soong. More