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      Marin Hinkle of ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ Melts Chocolate

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      The television actress, who is filming the show’s fifth and final season, learned to make truffles.“It’s very smooth,” the actress Marin Hinkle said, her eyes closed in apparent bliss.This was a brisk Monday afternoon and Ms. Hinkle, 55, had taken over the kitchen of a friend’s immaculate apartment on the Upper West Side to learn how to make chocolate truffles. (Her own kitchen nearby needed repairs.)Her teacher was another friend: Ruth Kennison, the founder of the Chocolate Project. Ms. Kennison and Ms. Hinkle met in high school nearly 40 years ago, and spent a summer working at a candy store in Boston, eating bonbons on the job. After college, they both moved to Los Angeles, birthing sons a month apart.A few years ago, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” the comedy that Ms. Hinkle stars in, shot a couple of episodes in Paris. Ms. Hinkle traded in her first-class plane ticket for four coach seats and invited Ms. Kennison to join her. Their sons came, too.“I made them go to every chocolate shop in Paris,” Ms. Kennison said.Ms. Hinkle smiled. “The chocolate has never stopped,” she added.Ms. Kennison poured glasses of pink Champagne while Ms. Hinkle, elegant in a blue silk blouse, high-waisted jeans and high-heeled clogs, admired the renovated kitchen, a haven of gleaming white. Late afternoon sun filtered in through the picture window, turning the marble counters gold.Ms. Hinkle sampled different chocolate bars.Luisa Opalesky for The New York TimesGanache was rolled into little balls.Luisa Opalesky for The New York TimesMs. Kennison began the truffle lesson with a brief lecture on the biology of the cacao tree, complete with pictures and props.“Are they always hard like this?” Ms. Hinkle asked, grasping a giant, red-shaded seed pod.“Well, that’s the ceramic version,” Ms. Kennison said gently, handing her friend a real pod.Then they segued into tasting, with Ms. Kennison urging her friend to savor each region’s particular terroir.Vietnamese chocolate? Spicy.Chocolate from Madagascar? Fruity.The morsel from Fiji? So smooth.They moved onto a few, high-end bars flavored with exotic ingredients: matcha, passion fruit, bee pollen. This nudged Ms. Hinkle, who had earlier claimed to like all chocolate, toward a confession. “I am actually a milk chocolate person,” she said.Ms. Kennison accepted it. Then she handed Ms. Hinkle a branded brown apron and told her to change out of her blouse. They had truffles to make — a messy business.Ms. Hinkle returned moments later in a white T-shirt, clothing so casual that it would send Rose, the character she plays on “Maisel,” into hysterics. Rose, a professor’s wife and the mother of the title character, never appears sloppily dressed or imperfectly coifed. Her make up? A Platonic ideal.A scene from “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” with Tony Shalhoub, right.Amazon Studios“They build the costume on me like it’s liquid paint,” Ms. Hinkle said. “And it’s a cliché, but 80 to 90 percent of the work is right there.”Rose tends to flounce through every moment of her life as though giving a command performance. “That is so not me,” Ms. Hinkle said. But she loves the show and the family feeling among the cast, who have traveled together to Paris, Miami and the Catskills. The show just completed its fourth season. Ms. Hinkle has already begun filming its fifth and final one, with complicated emotions.“If Amy and Dan believe this is the right time, I’m so there to respect that,” she said of the show’s creators, Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino. “But I will cry every single day. I have to savor every second of the season.”But now, without tears, there were truffles to make. Ms. Hinkle removed her jewelry and washed her hands. Then, under Ms. Kennison’s direction, she stirred butter and cream into a pot of Ghanaian chocolate, making small vigorous motions so that the fats would emulsify and form a ganache, the filling for the truffles.The ganache would need 24 hours to set. So in a bit of kitchen wizardry, Ms. Kennison produced two bowls of premade ganache, one dark, one dark milk. Using miniature ice cream scoops, they rolled the ganache into little and not so little balls, their hands darkening with melting chocolate.Ms. Hinkle worried that her truffles looked less than perfect.Perfection wasn’t required. “There is no right or wrong,” Ms. Kennison said reassuringly. “The only thing chocolate doesn’t like is when you’re scared. Chocolate smells your fear.” Happily, the kitchen didn’t smell like fear. It smelled like chocolate.Luisa Opalesky for The New York TimesWhen the balls were rolled, Ms. Hinkle poured melted chocolate onto a marble slab to temper it, cooling and manipulating it to give it a glossy finish. Ms. Hinkle dug in, with a paint scraper and an offset spatula purchased from the local hardware store, until the slab resembled a splatter painting. Then she scraped the chocolate back into the bowl and reheated it with a hair dryer until it was ready for dipping.Spooning melted chocolate into her hand (“It feels so good,” Ms. Hinkle said) she rolled each truffle in it, with Ms. Kennison hurrying her on: “Quick, quick, quick, quick, quick!” She then handed the dipped truffles to Ms. Kennison, who rolled them in cocoa powder, sprinkles or crushed pecans. The milk ones and the dark ones jumbled together as the pile of completed truffles grew to about 50 bonbons.“It looks so pretty,” Ms. Hinkle said.Ms. Kennison urged her to try one. Ms. Hinkle plucked one from the slab and delicately bit. Bliss again. “OK,” she said. “That is crazy good.” More

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      Exploring the Diversity, and Precariousness, of French Stand-Up

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      Fanny Herrero, the creator of “Call My Agent!,” returns with a Netflix show called “Standing Up,” which follows four struggling Parisian comics.PARIS — In the opening scenes of “Standing Up,” Nezir (Younès Boucif) mines his life for stand-up material as he cycles across Paris on a food delivery shift.“I’m poor,” he says to himself, testing the sound of the words in French. “It’s not handy to be poor. I don’t recommend it.” On the way, he crosses paths with a friend, Aïssatou (Mariama Gueye), who is begging a shop owner to advertise her comedy show.“Standing Up” is the latest project from Fanny Herrero, who created the showbiz comedy “Call My Agent!” In this new show, which comes to Netflix on Friday, she again takes viewers behind the scenes to see how deals and careers are made, this time in a less prestigious corner of French cultural life: stand-up comedy.Aïssatou and Nezir head to the Drôle Comedy Club — the show’s title in French is “Drôle,” meaning “funny” — for that night’s performances. The club’s owner, Bling (Jean Siuen), has had success, but is now struggling to come up with material, as the next generation of comics come up in his own club.Over the course of six episodes, “Standing Up” explores what it takes — and means — to “make it” in comedy. Herrero conceived of the show after a dinner three years ago with the comedian Gad Elmaleh, who told her about Paris’s growing stand-up scene. On his recommendation, she went to the Paname, the city’s first stand-up comedy club. She was amazed by the diversity onstage, she said in a recent interview: People of different ethnicities and from various backgrounds — from the suburbs outside Paris, from other cities, from the countryside — were performing. “It’s the story of our country,” Herrero said.The show’s struggling stand-up comics reflect this diversity. Nezir, who is of Algerian descent, and Aïssatou, who is Black, have both been in the game for a while, and are trying to get more recognition. Bling’s real name is Étienne, a very French name he jokes his Vietnamese parents chose to help him assimilate.The show frequently addresses racism in French society, even as some of the country’s politicians and high-profile intellectuals have recently decried the spread of American “woke” ideas around identity.In one episode, the police stop Aïssatou after she has looked through large shopping bags for her sunglasses. She jokes about the incident that night, and is warned not to mention at her solo show by her white producer. In another, Nezir makes a joke about how the only Arabs well-to-do Frenchwomen encounter are Uber drivers or Saudi princes. “As an Arab in France, I’ve lived in a lot of situations as Nezir,” said Boucif, who is also a rapper and holds a master’s in environmental law from the prestigious Sorbonne University.The show’s title in French is “Drôle,” meaning “funny.”Mika Cotellon/NetflixApolline (Elsa Guedj) meets Nezir (Boucif) at the comedy club.Mika Cotellon/NetflixBling (Jean Siuen) has had success in the comedy world, but is struggling to come up with material when the show opens. Mika Cotellon/NetflixPeople of color were instrumental in establishing the French stand-up scene, which is far younger than in the United States or Britain. Between 2006 and 2015, “Jamel Comedy Club” aired on French television, hosted by Jamel Debbouze, one of the country’s top comedians. Himself of Moroccan heritage, Debbouze featured largely people of color on his show. This gave “a voice to ethnic minorities that they didn’t have on TV shows,” said the comedian Paul Taylor, who performs in a mix of English and French.Taylor said there are only four clubs in France that follow the English-speaking stand-up tradition, with a lineup of several comedians each night. Generally, solo shows are favored in France, a result of the country’s strong theatrical tradition. Besides Paname, the three other clubs only opened in the last three years: Madame Sarfati, Fridge and Barbès Comedy Club.The Drôle Comedy Club in “Standing Up” was a purpose-built set, just in case Paris went into lockdown because of the coronavirus. The actors practiced their sets at Barbès Comedy Club, which opened for clandestine nights during Paris’s second lockdown, with around 10 comedians performing for around 30 audience members. The audience didn’t know the “Standing Up” actors weren’t comics, or that they were practicing for a television show.When it came time to film the characters’s stand-up sets at Drôle, the audience was made up of nonactors, with a camera trained on the performing comedian, and another on the audience’s reactions. “There is nothing worse than fake laughs and fake reactions,” Herrero said.Well-respected French comedians — Jason Brokerss, Fanny Ruwet and Shirley Souagnon — wrote the characters’ sets. Like “Call My Agent!,” the show features cameos, in this case from other French comics, including Hakim Jemili and Panayotis Pascot, who perform snippets of sets throughout each episode. Unlike with the appearances by internationally famous actors in “Call My Agent!,” Herrero doesn’t expect the French public, let alone Netflix viewers from other countries, to recognize these performers.Netflix has had a significant impact on stand-up in France. Before the rise of streaming services, only dogged French stand-up fans dug around the internet to look for performances. Now, comedy specials hosted by the streaming service have made American comedy much more accessible in France.Boucif named Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle and Louis C.K. as comedians he liked from his research for playing Nezir. “I like stand-up when it’s subversive, when it’s not politically correct,” he said. When asked about Louis C.K.’s admitted sexual misconduct and the controversy surrounding Chappelle’s comments about transgender people, Boucif said he didn’t know about those issues.Nezir and Aïssatou (Mariama Gueye) are both trying to make it as stand-up comics.Mika Cotellon/NetflixBoucif’s response is similar to the way many French comedians approach American comedy, Taylor said. They gravitated to the same few names who got the big Netflix deals, he said, but don’t understand the surrounding context.One of the later episodes of “Standing Up” includes a translated Louis C.K. joke. Herrero, who is aware of the comic’s past sexual misconduct, said the writing staff chose him because they needed a name the French audience would know.In her career so far, Herrero has broken with French television norms. She was not only the screenwriter for “Call My Agent!” but also, following the first season, named its showrunner. Typically, French screenwriters conceive of shows, then hand their script and control to directors, she said. The role Herrero negotiated with network executives looks more like the American showrunner model, where she retained overall control.France 2, the broadcaster that aired “Call My Agent!,” hasn’t run anything like it since. “It was a miracle,” Herrero said. “Most [French studios] are doing cop shows and family comedies,” she added.“Standing Up” is unusual in the French TV landscape for being a dramedy. The show’s target audience is relatively young, and Herrero said she hopes it will help stand-up comedy continue to gain credibility in the French mainstream.“It’s because of Netflix this show can exist,” she added. More

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      The Secret Is Out on Nicola Coughlan, a ‘Bridgerton’ Star

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      A few years ago, Nicola Coughlan was working in an optician’s office in Ireland. Now, with “Bridgerton” and “Derry Girls,” she’s starring in two of the most beloved shows on Netflix.In January, right around her 35th birthday, the Irish actress Nicola Coughlan took what she called “a mega-holiday” — New York City, Austin, Hawaii, New York City again.Back in Manhattan, she played tourist: She ate at fancy restaurants, went to a taping of “Saturday Night Live” (not quite the tourist, she went to the after-party, too), and saw a Broadway show. The show was “Company,” a musical about a 35-year-old in the midst of an existential crisis, and as Coughlan left the theater, she saw a towering Times Square billboard. The billboard, an ad for the new season of the saucy Netflix costume drama “Bridgerton,” showed her own face at the center.“We walked up the street a little bit and there it was, like, huge, huge, huge,” she said. “Oh my goodness, it was massive.”Coughlan — chirpy, confiding, with the most perfect skin I have ever seen on an adult human — was speaking at the end of her trip, just before she flew back home to London. She had selected an Irish pub, Molly’s Shebeen, in Gramercy Park, and arrived a few minutes late because her car had first taken her instead to Molly Wee, a different pub near Penn Station.Molly’s seemed like a parody of an Irish pub. “I enjoy this interpretation,” she said. Coughlan is not above a bit of parody herself. She carries a leprechaun key ring and her Instagram bio reads “Small Irish Acting Person.” That afternoon she wore winter white — as a self-described “messy bastard,” this was her version of risk-taking — and a small horde of delicate gold jewelry, including a nameplate necklace. The fans at the pub, who recognized her from the widely celebrated Netflix comedy “Derry Girls,” knew her name already.Coughlan didn’t initially realize that her role on “Bridgerton” was effectively two roles: the wallflower Penelope and also the cunning Lady Whistledown.Liam Daniel/Netflix“Derry Girls” gave Coughlan — who had been working at an optician’s office in her hometown, Galway, Ireland, only a year before she was cast — her first substantial role. That role eventually led to the one in “Bridgerton,” which became one of Netflix’s most-watched series ever and returns for its second season on March 25.As a star of two of the most beloved shows on the world’s largest streaming service, Coughlan is now kind of a big deal. With a billboard to prove it.For Coughlan, the youngest daughter of an army officer father and a homemaker mother, success didn’t come overnight; it came over thousands of nights. After college, where she studied English and classics, she enrolled in a six-month foundation course at the Oxford School of Drama. She was turned down for the multiyear course. Then she followed her new best friend, the playwright Camilla Whitehill, to the Birmingham School of Acting, where she completed a one-year course. She was turned down for the multiyear one there, too.At Oxford, and then at Birmingham, Coughlan developed a gift for comedy and, because she has always looked mind-bendingly young for her age, a knack for playing children. (Yes, she moisturizes, but she showed me photos on her phone and looking mind-bendingly young is a family trait.)Afterward, she moved to London, where she took a series of retail jobs — beauty products, frozen yogurt — and tried to find work as a grown-up actor. She didn’t succeed. Petite, pert, childlike, she couldn’t attract the interest of a manager or an agent. More than once, her bank balance dropped to double digits. More than once, she had to move back home.“It was like, Oh, the dream died,” she said.But it didn’t, not quite. Whitehill remembers how Coughlan tempered each defeat with a kind of resilience. “Deep, deep down, she believed in herself,” Whitehill said on a video call. “She did have some awful — like, truly, truly awful — part-time jobs that were depressing as hell. But I never really doubted her.”Finally, Coughlan, by then nearly 30, landed a role as a posh 15-year-old girl in the 2016 two-hander “Jess and Joe Forever,” at the Orange Tree Theater in London. Her performance attracted the interest of an agent, who secured her an audition for “Derry Girls,” a comedy about a group of schoolgirls — and one boy — in Northern Ireland in the 1990s, at the periphery of the country’s sectarian conflict. The audition was rigorous: a six-month process of callbacks and chemistry reads.“It was torture,” she said. “I wanted it so badly.”Coughlan thought “the dream died” several times during her acting career, but things turned around when she hit her 30s.Elliott Verdier for The New York TimesCoughlan studied up on Northern Irish accents and she put together a whole notebook for her character, the high-achieving, high-anxiety, 16-year-old “wee lesbian” Clare. Lisa McGee, who created “Derry Girls,” remembers that notebook, which had Clare’s name in glitter on the front.“She had written loads of stuff about the character, and I thought, You’ve done more work than me on this character,” McGee said.Coughlan approached the role with a sense of both heedlessness and complete calculation, qualities she would later bring to “Bridgerton.” McGee marveled at the speed and precision of her comic timing.“I could write more jokes for Clare once I saw the way Nicola was playing her,” McGee said.Even then, Coughlan wasn’t sure that she would find another job. “I was like, Well, that’s it now. I struck gold, but it won’t happen again,” she said. She whiffed on several subsequent auditions and when the producers of “Bridgerton” contacted her agent, she didn’t hold out much hope.An assistant casting director brought her in to read for Eloise Bridgerton, the spunky, freethinking fifth-born sibling. Coughlan didn’t think that the audition had gone particularly well. But when the showrunner Chris Van Dusen saw her tape, he knew he had to cast her as Penelope Featherington, Eloise’s 17-year-old best friend.Her first substantial role came in “Derry Girls,” set in 1990s Northern Ireland.Hat Trick Productions“I called all of our other producers into the room and showed them the tape,” Van Dusen recalled. “I’m happy to say that everyone loved her as much as I did.”Told that she had the part, Coughlan tempered her enthusiasm. She had known plenty of actors who were hired onto prestige projects and then fired when the studio demanded a bigger name. “I should have been like, This is amazing,” she said. “Instead, I was like, This is fishy. I don’t know about this.” She remained tense throughout the first table read.But she wasn’t fired. And in the midst of her fittings, she finally learned, via a Reddit forum, how large her role would be and that it was effectively two roles: the wallflower Penelope — the face she presents to the world — and also the cunning Lady Whistledown, the nom de plume Penelope uses to write and publish a scandal sheet with the power to bring Regency England to its petticoated knees.She threw herself into the dual role, even as the wig and costume designers of “Bridgerton” fitted her with tight red ringlets and unflattering yellow dresses. “She really suits most colors, but they’ve managed to find the ones that really clash,” Whitehill said. (Coughlan had a more measured response to her wardrobe. “You can’t have vanity in acting,” she said.)The Lady Whistledown reveal doesn’t come until the final episode of Season 1. But from the first script, Coughlan strategized where Penelope needed to stand in order to overhear the gossip that Lady Whistledown would later publish. If you rewatch the first season, you can see her lurking in the background, watching and listening.She practiced eavesdropping in her downtime, too, a habit she now can’t break. (Earlier that day, before she’d met me, she’d gone for a manicure and learned a lot about someone else’s bathroom renovation.) “It’s amazing what people will say when they don’t think you’re listening,” she said.Season 2 of “Bridgerton” brings the same Regency glamour as in the first season, during which the show became Netflix’s most-watched series. (“Squid Game” later surpassed it.)Liam Daniel/NetflixFor Season 2, she added another role. When delivering Lady Whistledown’s copy to the printer, Penelope pretends to be an Irish maid. The character is unnamed in the script but Coughlan calls her Bridget Bridgerton and uses a strong Dublin accent. A “Drag Race” superfan, Coughlan thought of this alter ego as “Penelope’s drag character.”The show will bring further challenges in the future because eventually Penelope will play out her own love story. It comes in the fourth book of the series of novels that inspired the show, “Romancing Mister Bridgerton,” so it may or may not comprise the fourth season. (The show has already been renewed through Season 4.) But already “I feel terrified,” Coughlan said. “I’m probably more comfortable being awkward and funny, so it’s going to be a massive challenge for me. Because it’s not my comfort zone.”The attention that “Bridgerton” has brought hasn’t always been comfortable either. “Fame is a weird thing,” she said.The worst part has been the online scrutiny of her body. Many of the comments about her appearance have been positive, though some have been negative. She doesn’t find any of them helpful. “I’m like, I’m existing,” she said. “And it’s not anyone’s business.” It was the one subject she seemed less than delighted to discuss.A week after we met, she took to Instagram to ask her followers not to send her any comments on her body. “It’s really hard to take the weight of thousands of opinions on how you look being sent directly to you every day,” she wrote.Still, fame has its upsides. She appeared on “The Great British Baking Show.” (“Most definitely the best experience of my life,” she said, despite the mess she made of her swiss roll.) She became close friends with the “Queer Eye” star Jonathan Van Ness after she made a hoodie with his face on it and showed it off on social media. When she went to “Saturday Night Live,” she and Kristen Wiig hugged. Her handbag game is extremely on point. (That day at Molly’s, she had a cheeky Chanel clutch.)And she is eager to see where her career will take her. Maybe she’ll host “Saturday Night Live” one day. Maybe she’ll finally play a character of legal age.“In a weird way,” she said. “I feel like I’m just getting started.” More

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      Late Night Gapes at Biden’s Calling Putin a ‘War Criminal’

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      A Kremlin spokesman pointed the finger back at the U.S. for World War II bombings, and Trevor Noah joked, “Keep up with the times, yo!”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.New War, Who Dis?President Biden referred this week to Vladimir Putin, Russia’s leader, as a “war criminal,” and a Kremlin spokesman responded by saying the statement was unfair and hypocritical, citing the United States’ bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.Trevor Noah criticized Russia for coming “with that old [expletive].”“Seriously, Russia, you’re gonna bring up something America did in the ’40s?” Noah said. “America has committed plenty of war crimes since then. Keep up with the times, yo!”“Russia said that was unforgivable, so today Biden called him a ‘murderous dictator’ and a ‘pure thug.’ Tomorrow he’s going to call him a ‘stupidhead’ and it might get really crazy.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Just because America committed war crimes doesn’t mean you have to, as well, Vladimir Putin, OK? I mean, what if all your friends jumped off a bridge — would you do it, too? No, seriously, would you? I’m just brainstorming ways to end this whole thing. I just want to know what you would do, you know?” — TREVOR NOAHThe Punchiest Punchlines (St. Patrick’s Day Edition)“It is St. Green Vomit Day, also known as St. Patrick’s Day, also known as the day on which the world’s reddest white people wear green.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Yeah, it’s a great day to be Irish and a bad day to be an Uber driver.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yep, the parade here is the only event where Times Square Elmo feels like the chaperone.” — JIMMY FALLON“You can tell people were ready to let loose. On my way in, I heard a guy on the street ask where the bathrooms are, and another guy said, ‘It’s wherever you want it to be.’” — JIMMY FALLON“It was fun seeing everyone decked out in their St. Paddy’s Day clothes. Some people wore shirts that said, ‘Kiss me, I’m Irish. While the rest opted for the newer ‘Kiss me, rapid’s negative.’” — JIMMY FALLON“It’s funny, everything we know about St. Patrick’s Day is not true. St. Patrick was born in England, not Ireland. There are no snakes in Ireland to drive out. And that creep wearing the ‘Kiss me, I’m Irish’ T-shirt? Probably not Irish.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“In fact, the world’s first recorded St. Patrick’s Day parade took place in what is now St. Augustine, Florida, in 1601. At this parade, they drank green beer and ate green beef. They didn’t dye the beef — everything was just very moldy back then.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingOn Thursday’s “Tonight Show,” Billy Crystal joined Jimmy Fallon in impersonating celebrities in conversation through mouth cutouts on magazine covers.Also, Check This OutFrom left: Channing Tatum, Sandra Bullock and Daniel Radcliffe say they’re happy that “The Lost City” will be released in theaters but mainly are interested in entertaining audiences no matter the platform.Amy Harrity for The New York TimesSandra Bullock, Channing Tatum and Daniel Radcliffe, stars of “The Lost City,” discussed their new film and friendships, as well as some of their most iconic roles to date. More

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      The Jussie Smollett Case Is Probably Far From Over, Analysts Say

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      The Illinois appellate court that ordered Mr. Smollett’s release from jail often takes months, even years, to rule on cases, according to experts.After serving six days of a five-month sentence, Jussie Smollett walked out of Cook County Jail on Wednesday night, flanked by supporters who shepherded him into the back seat of an SUV.Whether or not Mr. Smollett is forced to return to the jail in Chicago to complete his sentence is a question that is not likely to be answered for months — and possibly years.The appellate court in Illinois, which ordered Mr. Smollett’s release, is not built for speed, and it was the anticipated delay in hearing his appeal that led the court order that Mr. Smollett should be free while it deliberates whether he was wrongly convicted of staging a fake hate crime. Several experts said proceedings of all sorts at the court typically take about a year or two years.“This court will be unable to dispose of the instant appeal before the defendant would have served his entire sentence of incarceration,” according to the court’s order, which was signed by two of three justices on the panel.Legal experts in Illinois differed on how common it is for defendants to be released on appeal when they had been ordered to serve relatively short jail sentences and their offenses were nonviolent, such as Mr. Smollett’s.“Let’s say they reverse his conviction — he just did the 150 days for nothing,” said Gal Pissetzky, a criminal defense lawyer with experience on appellate cases.The appeals process tends to drag on because of the time it takes the court to prepare voluminous transcripts from the trial and from pretrial proceedings and requests to delay proceedings.There is also typically a backlog of cases waiting to be heard. In 2020, more than 3,300 cases were pending with the First District appellate court in Illinois, where Mr. Smollett’s case was assigned.“There are a lot of cases — it’s always been that way,” said Joseph Lopez, a criminal defense attorney who has represented high-profile defendants like Drew Peterson, who was convicted of murdering his third wife. “And because he’s not in custody, they’re not going to be in a hurry to get to it.”But experts said Mr. Smollett’s case could proceed faster than normal because it is so high profile and the special prosecutor handling the case, Dan K. Webb, is from a private law firm that is better equipped than a state prosecutor’s office to focus on a specific case and make the sort of timely filings that would accelerate a decision.Dan K. Webb, the special prosecutor in the Smollett case, after the sentencing last week.Anthony Vazquez/Chicago Sun-Times, via Associated PressThe defense’s efforts to secure Mr. Smollett’s release began immediately after Judge James Linn handed down the sentence last week in a blistering takedown of the actor that accused him of potentially undermining the credibility of true hate crime victims.Though the defense asked for an immediate suspension of the sentence pending appeal, Judge Linn swiftly denied their request, citing what he characterized as the seriousness of Mr. Smollett’s offense — staging a hoax in which two men lightly assaulted him while yelling racist and homophobic slurs.“The wheels of justice turn slowly, and sometimes the hammer of justice has to fall,” Judge Linn said in the courtroom. “And it’s falling right here, right now.”Nenye Uche, Mr. Smollett’s lead lawyer, then quickly brought the matter to the higher court, the First District Appellate Court in Illinois, and Mr. Webb’s legal team argued against Mr. Smollett’s release, writing in court papers that according to the defense’s logic, every defendant who received a relatively short sentence would be released pending appeal and that the defense was taking “advantage” of Judge Linn’s lenient jail sentence.Ultimately, judges have the discretion to decide these matters on a case-by-case basis. Experts say it is common for defendants to serve their entire sentence of incarceration before their appeal is resolved, something that critics often condemn as particularly unfair if the appellate court ends up overturning the trial court’s decision.The Smollett case has already stretched on for more than three years, starting in January 2019, when Mr. Smollett reported to the police that two men had attacked him, hurled the slurs at him and placed a rope around his neck like a noose.Two brothers, Abimbola Osundairo and Olabinjo Osundairo, testified during the trial last year that Mr. Smollett had asked them to carry out the attack and instructed them in detail on how to do it. The defense argued that the brothers were lying and seeking to protect themselves from prosecution.Judge Linn said at the sentencing hearing that Mr. Smollett’s decision to maintain his innocence on the stand was an aggravating factor that led him to hand down a sentence that included jail time, more than two years of probation, a $25,000 fine and more than $120,000 of restitution for the Chicago Police Department’s investigatory efforts. The defense argued that Mr. Smollett should not be incarcerated because his offense was the kind of low-level, nonviolent felony that often results in sentences of probation or community service.The defense’s appeal will draw from many stages of the case’s long life, from its objection to the second indictment of Mr. Smollett after the state’s attorney’s office dropped the charges against him in 2019 to the way Judge Linn handled jury selection.Two key arguments the defense is expected to make are that the appointment of a special prosecutor to reassess the case was never valid and that Mr. Smollett was subjected to double jeopardy because he surrendered his $10,000 bond and performed some community service in 2019.Mr. Webb’s office has argued in the past that it was well within the court’s authority to appoint a special prosecutor and that Mr. Smollett was not subjected to double jeopardy because the original case had been dismissed.“We’re very much looking forward to having a nonpolitical discourse with them that is intellectual, that’s understanding of the laws,” Heather Widell, one of Mr. Smollett’s lawyers, said of the appellate court at a news conference on Wednesday night.Mr. Uche said at the news conference that when he told Mr. Smollett about the court’s decision to free him for now, the actor pressed his hands up against the glass separating him and his lawyer in jail, and said, “I nearly lost hope in our constitutional system.”Mr. Uche has said that decision“says a lot about what the appellate court thinks of this case,” but, in the court’s brief order, the justices made no mention of whether they had considered the merits of the appeal in making their ruling. 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      Trevor Noah: Addressing Congress, Zelensky ‘Knew His Audience’

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      Ukraine’s president must have researched American history before his speech, said Noah (who speculated about how it “could have gone very wrong”).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.Target AudiencePresident Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine addressed Congress by video link on Wednesday, pleading for more help in his country’s fight against Russia. On “The Daily Show,” Trevor Noah said that “based on his references to American history, it was clear that Zelensky knew his audience.”“Yeah, that’s right, Zelensky brought out all of America’s major moments: ‘I have a dream,’ 9/11, Mount Rushmore. You know he was on Wikipedia last night planning this out: [imitating Zelensky] ‘OK, Pearl Harbor, Boston Tea Party — should I mention Hulk Hogan sex tape, maybe?” — TREVOR NOAH“And by the way, props to him, I mean he knows way more about America than most U.S. senators know about his country. Like, can you imagine how they would sound if they had to give an inspiring speech using Ukrainian history? [imitating U.S. senator] ‘Uh, people of Ukraine, remember the vision of your founder — I want to say Daniel Ukraine?’” — TREVOR NOAH“I’m also impressed that Zelensky was able to dodge so many land mines in his research, because you realize this could have gone very wrong: [imitating Zelensky] ‘And now to 9/11, which as we all know from YouTube was inside job. I see you, Bush.’” — TREVOR NOAH“But Zelensky appealed directly to Congress. He said, ‘We need you right now.’ And Congress was like, ‘Listen, we’d love to help, but we just made daylight saving time permanent and we are wiped out, so.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Zelensky asked America to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine, which we’re reluctant to do because it could result in nuclear war. But we are willing to wear blue and yellow lapel pins at all the awards shows this month, so that’s something, right?” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Standing Ovation Edition)“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered a virtual address to Congress this morning and received a standing ovation, making him the first comedian to actually deserve one.” — SETH MEYERS“I can say with absolute certainty, that’s the warmest reception anyone has ever received on Zoom.” — SETH MEYERS“You know it is powerful when that many old people jump to their feet. There are knees in that room that were alive during the Roosevelt administration.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“He got two standing ovations, which was nice. I think he’d rather get fighter jets, but the standing ovations were good.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It was bipartisan. Republicans and Democrats stood for him, which is almost impossible. It’s like getting Kim and Kanye to agree on a day care situation — it’s very difficult.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingOn “The Late Show,” Michael Bublé and Stephen Colbert sang a Canadian sea shanty.What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightNormani will perform her new single on Thursday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This Out“I think we Americans just love lead characters we can root for,” said Feig, who worked on the American adaptation of “The Office.” “We’re too young as a country to be overly cynical yet.”Todd Midler for The New York TimesThe director Paul Feig returns to television with the small-town mockumentary-style comedy series “Welcome to Flatch.” More

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      Jussie Smollett to Be Released From Jail On Appeal, Court Orders

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      The appellate court ruled that he be released on bond pending his appeal of a judge’s sentence that he serve five months in jail.An Illinois appellate court ruled Wednesday that the actor Jussie Smollett be released from jail on bond pending his appeal of his conviction for falsely reporting that he had been the victim of a hate crime.Mr. Smollett was sentenced last week to five months in jail, but his lawyers quickly asked a panel of judges to stay the sentence while they appealed the conviction.Mr. Smollett’s lawyers had argued in court papers that the sentence should be stayed because his term would likely be finished before his appeal was completed and that being incarcerated threatened his health and safety.Nenye Uche, Mr. Smollett’s lead lawyer, said in a video posted to his client’s Instagram account, “They released him and that says a lot about what the appellate court thinks of this case.”In the six days since Mr. Smollett was taken into custody, his family has been pleading for him to be freed and urging the public to call the county to seek his release.“It’s absolutely ridiculous that he’s in there,” said Jocqui Smollett, one of Mr. Smollett’s brothers, in an Instagram video. “You should be terrified of the precedent this sets.”Prosecutors, who had argued at sentencing that Mr. Smollett’s offense warranted incarceration, wrote in court papers that by the defense’s logic, every short term of imprisonment would be stayed pending appeal.“That simply is not, and cannot be, the rule,” wrote Sean Wieber, one of the prosecutors.Two out of three of the justices on the appellate panel agreed that Mr. Smollett should be released from custody after he posts a $150,000 recognizance bond, agreeing with the defense’s argument about the short sentence and acknowledging that Mr. Smollett’s offense was nonviolent. One justice dissented.Mr. Smollett’s incarceration on Thursday started with his announcement in the courtroom as he was led to jail that he was not suicidal and that if anything happened to him, it would not have been by his own hand, a statement that appeared to put the authorities on notice. He also repeatedly declared his innocence.Judge James B. Linn granted his lawyers’ request for protective custody, and according to the Cook County Sheriff’s Office, Mr. Smollett was being kept in a private cell in the Cook County Jail with security cameras and an officer stationed at the entrance.His family had been arguing on social media that he was the target of “vicious threats” on social media and was at risk. They expressed concerns about his treatment in the jail. Jocqui Smollett said on Tuesday that his brother had been sleeping in a “restraint bed” but had recently been moved to a cell that “actually has a bed.”Mr. Smollett’s appeal is based, in part, on the idea that the actor’s recent sentence violated the legal concept of double jeopardy because he had already surrendered a $10,000 bond and performed some community service in 2019. Prosecutors have argued that those measures were voluntary and not a punishment.The case drew national attention, and Mr. Smollett was initially widely viewed as the victim who had been beaten and targeted with racial and homophobic slurs. Then the police began to question his version of events.At the trial, prosecutors told the jury that Mr. Smollett had instructed two brothers, Abimbola Osundairo and Olabinjo Osundairo, to attack him near his apartment in Chicago, where they placed a rope around his neck like a noose and yelled, “This is MAGA country.”Both brothers testified. Abimbola Osundairo, the younger of the brothers, said Mr. Smollett had asked him to “fake beat him up.”The prosecution’s evidence included video surveillance of the men meeting up for what the brothers said was the “dry run” and Instagram messages from Mr. Smollett to Abimbola Osundairo shortly before the attack in which the actor provided updates on the timing of his flight back to Chicago.The defense disputed that Mr. Smollett had planned the attack, arguing that both the messages and the footage were evidence that he had been interacting with Abimbola Osundairo because he had been providing the actor with fitness training.Mr. Smollett, 39, who in 2019 was best known for starring in the music-industry drama “Empire,” maintained his innocence during the trial.During seven hours of testimony over two days, he insisted that the attack had occurred as he described. But both prosecutors and Judge Linn had cited Mr. Smollett’s testimony as an aggravating factor that led them to pursue incarceration.Judge Linn called Mr. Smollett’s hours on the witness stand, during which he denied planning the attack, “pure perjury.”Bob Chiarito contributed reporting. More

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      Late Night Is Wowed by the Senate Actually Doing Something

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      “Various politicians have been trying to do this for years but they kept getting clock blocked,” Jimmy Kimmel said of the Sunshine Protection Act, which passed Tuesday in the Senate.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.Time Stands StillOn Tuesday, the Senate unanimously passed legislation making daylight saving time permanent.Jimmy Kimmel said in his monologue that he was “especially proud to be an American today.”“We finally agreed on something,” he said. “An idea that every sane American can get behind: that the sun shall never again set at lunchtime on Christmas Day, and may God bless us, every one.”“I have to say, this is a day that I’ve been waiting for almost my whole adult life: Something finally happened.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The United States Senate today voted across party lines to make daylight saving time permanent, meaning we may never have to change the clock on the microwave again!” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Various politicians have been trying to do this for years but they kept getting clock blocked.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“When was the last time anything got a unanimous vote in the Senate? They couldn’t even agree unanimously to condemn Asian American hate crimes. Josh Hawley was like, ‘Let’s not rush into anything.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, a Republican, was the lead sponsor of the bill. He said there’s ‘strong science’ behind it that is now showing and making people aware of the harm that clock-switching has. Well, good for you, Marco. Wait until you find out about all the other things that have strong science behind them. You’re going to be amazed. It’s going to be big for you.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Sunshine Protection Act Edition)“Today the Senate unanimously passed a bill to make daylight saving time permanent. Oh yes! I don’t think people were this happy when Pfizer announced they had a vaccine.” — JIMMY FALLON“They’re calling it the Sunshine Protection Act, which is actually my favorite Maroon 5 album.” — JAMES CORDEN“Today everyone in the Senate was like, ‘What happens now? We’ve never passed a bill before — this is weird.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Meanwhile, every wall clock said, ‘But that’s the only time you ever touch me.’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingAmber Ruffin addressed Naomi Osaka’s heckler on Tuesday’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightQuinta Brunson, the creator and star of the ABC hit comedy “Abbott Elementary,” will appear on Wednesday’s “Daily Show.”Also, Check This OutJesse Williams is playing a superstar baseball player who comes out as gay in the Broadway revival of “Take Me Out.”Sabrina Santiago for The New York TimesThe “Grey’s Anatomy” star Jesse Williams is making his Broadway debut in the revival of the baseball musical “Take Me Out.” More