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      Netflix Lures ‘Bridgerton’ Fans With Live Event: The Queen’s Ball

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      LOS ANGELES — The wisteria drips from the archway while classical music plays over the loudspeakers. Powder-wigged valets present champagne to guests who gaze at Empire-waist dresses, peer into a room filled with makeup and accessories or head to a stage for a quick oil portrait (actually a digital photo with a Regency England-esque filter).This is The Queen’s Ball: A Bridgerton Experience, an immersive, Instagram-ready confection held in the ballrooms of the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles and tailor made for die-hard fans of the global Netflix hit. The 200 to 300 guests aren’t able to meet Regé-Jean Page, the breakout star of the first season of “Bridgerton,” who declined to return to the 19th-century drama. But they can bow before an actress doing her best impression of Queen Charlotte (right down to the haughty glare), learn a dance set to a string quartet version of Taylor Swift’s “Wildest Dreams,” participate in a Lady Whistledown scavenger hunt and possibly even be granted the coveted honor of being named the “diamond of the evening.”The 90-minute experience — which will open to the public on Thursday and run for at least two months before traveling to Washington, Chicago and Montreal — is Netflix’s most ambitious real-world event to date. (A similar version opened in London this month.) The streaming giant hopes it serves as a marketing tool for “Bridgerton” and appeals to the show’s primarily female fan base, which is often ignored when it comes to fan culture.Performers at the “Bridgerton” ball, which will travel to Washington, Chicago and Montreal after its Los Angeles run.Maggie Shannon for The New York TimesIt is also a bid to amplify the kind of water-cooler buzz that has been elusive for streaming shows. Since their episodes tend to be released in one batch, the week-to-week anticipation familiar to fans of traditional network television can be diluted.“This really goes towards my vision of what I’ve always wanted us to be able to do,” the “Bridgerton” creator Shonda Rhimes said in a Zoom interview from her home in New York, before bringing up two of her popular ABC dramas, “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Scandal.” “People who watched ‘Grey’s’ weren’t just watching ‘Grey’s’ on Thursday night — they were trying to find other ways to consume it. ‘Scandal’ was not a show that people watched on Thursday nights and then just didn’t talk about it the rest of the week.”In its 18th season, “Grey’s Anatomy” is still broadcast television’s No. 1 show in the critical 18-to-49-year-old demographic. “Scandal” ended in 2018 after seven seasons.“Being at Netflix allows us to take that desire for the fans and to create a thing where you’re allowing them to be part of the experience more than just on one night of the week or one hour a week,” added Ms. Rhimes, who recently renewed her lucrative Netflix deal for five more years, adding additional revenue streams like podcasts and video games.In addition to The Queen’s Ball, which costs between $49 and $99 to attend, Netflix has teamed up with Bloomingdale’s for a pop-up shop both online and at the flagship Manhattan store ($995 lilac Malone Souliers floral appliquéd pumps, anyone?). There is also a line of cosmetics from Pat McGrath, a British makeup artist whose makeup was used in the production of “Bridgerton”; a soundtrack featuring pop hits played by a string quartet; and a Netflix book club, whose March pick is “The Viscount Who Loved Me,” the second book in the series, by Julia Quinn, that serves as the show’s source material.“Bridgerton” tea for sale at the ball.Maggie Shannon for The New York TimesMakeup can be purchased, too.Maggie Shannon for The New York TimesTraditional Hollywood studios have been playing this game for a long time. For instance, the second that one of its shows or movies is a hit, Disney starts pumping out related products. But it is a relatively new strategy for Netflix. (The streamer did roll out “Squid Game” tracksuits in partnership with the South Korean brand Musinsa late last year, soon after the series took off.)Inside the World of “Bridgerton”The Netflix series, whose second season is out this March, infuses period-drama escapism with modern-day sensibilities.Sparkling Period Piece: The show is a Regency romance and society drama with unstuffy pop aesthetic, writes our television critic.The Secret Is Out: A big reveal in the first season put Nicola Coughlan at the center of the action. Here is what the star says about her new fame.Approach to Race: Departing from most period dramas, “Bridgerton” imagines a 19th-century Britain with Black royalty and aristocrats.Fashion Trends: The show has helped fuel the resurgence of period clothing, corsets included. And the costumes are only the beginning.Across the Pond: “Bridgerton,” which is filmed in Bath, is one of several productions made in Britain, drawn by the labor pool and tax incentives.In the past couple of years, Netflix has placed an emphasis on live, out-of-home experiences. First there was a Covid-conscious “Stranger Things” drive-through event in 2020, then an event where participants searched for a bank vault in a heist experience tied to the series “La Casa de Papel.” Recently, the company held a virtual reality event for Zack Snyder’s zombie film “Army of the Dead.”What does all this do for Netflix’s bottom line? The company says over one million people have attended its live events, a number it expects to increase significantly as long as Covid-19 remains on the wane.Netflix wouldn’t discuss the economics of the events, but Ted Sarandos, its co-chief executive, referred to the “Bridgerton” live experience on the company’s January earnings call as part of its efforts to create franchises out of “whole cloth.” He predicted that “fans will flock to and flood their social media feeds with” photos from The Queen’s Ball.Bela Bajaria, Netflix’s head of global TV, added in a recent interview, “I really love that we’re building these universes and doing these consumer products that are completely just so much about female fandom.”Organizers say demand for The Queen’s Ball in Los Angeles has been as manic as the early reception for “Bridgerton”: 88 percent of tickets had been bought two weeks before its opening.Michael Vorhaus, a longtime digital media consultant, said such events helped prolong interest in content that in the Netflix universe is consumed and discarded faster than a sparsely filled-out dance card.“It’s Harry Potter for adults,” he said of “Bridgerton.” “You’ve got eight books. And if the consumption numbers hold up, then presumably they will make all eight, and who knows beyond that? Every dollar they’re spending now building a community, every dollar that builds buzz for them, they’re getting paid off over eight seasons.”Jaqi Harris, left, and Sarah Durnesque, guests at the ball, reading the gossip in Lady Whistledown’s Society Papers.Maggie Shannon for The New York TimesPlus, with an audience that’s primarily women ages 18 to 45, Netflix is appealing to a group that is traditionally not courted as rabid consumers of pop culture.“It’s a very underserved fan base,” said Greg Lombardo, head of experiences at Netflix. “In this space there are not a lot of offerings out there that are really geared towards a female audience.”Indeed, it was a milestone when the cast of the first “Twilight” movie showed up at Comic-Con in 2008, introducing a new demographic to the predominantly male-skewed fan convention. “Fifty Shades of Grey” followed suit with an extensive line of merchandising. “Outlander” and “Downton Abbey” have also proved the purchasing power of a largely female fan base.“It’s not that revolutionary to suggest that women are enormous consumers of products, and when they are a fan of something, they are hard-core fans of something,” Ms Rhimes said. “I have known that for the 20-something years I’ve been doing my job. The difference here is that we are now in an era in which the people who create those universes are not strictly men.”But more often than not, big mainstream franchises are still primarily aimed toward young men, with spaces carved out for others to join, said Katherine Morrissey, a professor at Arizona State University who studies fan culture.“It seems like Netflix is very aware that the audience for ‘Bridgerton’ is not necessarily going to think of itself as a fandom in the way that we kind of stereotype fandoms,” she said. “They’re very aware that their consumers are going to be interested in similar things but are going to want them packaged in totally different ways. They’re not necessarily going to be self-identified like, ‘This is the thing I did at Comic-Con.’”The soapy, sexy romance novels seem perfect for Ms. Rhimes’s streaming ambitions. Each book focuses on a child of the Bridgerton family and the efforts to marry the child off successfully (i.e., for love) per the customs of early-19th-century England. Each features a self-contained story line — a dream for Ms. Rhimes, who has had to keep churning out plot twists for her long-running network shows. Now she can tell distinct stories, plus a spinoff season dedicated to Queen Charlotte, who was the wife of King George III and may have been England’s first Black queen, a character Ms. Rhimes has been obsessed with for years.Netflix has already greenlit Seasons 3 and 4 of “Bridgerton” and the Queen Charlotte spinoff, which will enter production shortly.“It’s an incredible gift,” said Betsy Beers, Ms. Rhimes longtime producing partner. “It really provides for an incredible fluidity of storytelling and also, economically, is very sensible on both the practical and production end.”It has also allowed for Netflix’s six-person live events team to adapt the “Bridgerton” experience for future seasons. (An anthropomorphized bumblebee makes a foreboding entrance in the new live show, something only the fans who have binged the whole second season will immediately understand.)“This really goes towards my vision of what I’ve always wanted us to be able to do,” said Shonda Rhimes, who created the Netflix hit.Maggie Shannon for The New York TimesBack at the Biltmore, once the guests have curtsied their way to an introduction to the queen and learned their dance moves, they are escorted into a larger ballroom for a dance performance between a handsome duke and a coquettish duchess. With a string quartet playing pop songs, the guests are then encouraged to join in the fun, while the queen evaluates them for their diamond potential. (With bars stationed strategically throughout the experience, Netflix realizes lowered inhibitions augment the event. Sixteen dollars gets you one of an array of cocktails, including the Whistledown & Dirty, which contains Absolut vodka, mint and San Pellegrino limonata.)From on high, over the quartet’s playing of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” bellows the voice of Lady Whistledown’s protégé, Lady Heartell, who was created for the ball: “I don’t know about all of you, but I got what I came for.”If Netflix has planned it correctly, the audience did, too. More

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      Jimmy Kimmel Ribs Republicans Over Ketanji Brown Jackson

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      Kimmel said Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings could make the G.O.P.’s worst nightmare could come true: “Having this decided by two Black women whose names they can’t pronounce.”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.‘Subtle Racism Jamboree’Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings kicked off in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday.Jimmy Kimmel joked that the hearings “give a number of our Republican senators a chance to compete in one of their favorite events: the subtle racism jamboree.”“She doesn’t need any Republican votes to get confirmed because the vice president is the tiebreaker, which would be — that would be the G.O.P.’s ultimate nightmare: having this decided by two Black women whose names they can’t pronounce.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I actually think they should treat Ketanji Brown Jackson exactly like they treated Brett Kavanaugh: Interview every single person who has accused her of sexual assault. Don’t stop, even though there are none. Do not stop.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (K.B.J. Edition)“Well, guys, today confirmation hearings began for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson. The hearing process will last four days. It’s basically C-SPAN’s version of Coachella.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yep, Jackson will face days of tough questions. Brett Kavanaugh was like [imitating Kavanaugh slurring]: ‘It’ll be fine. I did it for four days after the second day, after the s — after the second day, it’s kind of a blur.’” — JIMMY FALLON“I saw that top Republican leading the hearings, Chuck Grassley, is 88 years old. Wow. When it was his turn to speak he was like, ‘Tell us who you are, and then tell me who I am.’” — JIMMY FALLON“But this is cool: I saw that Judge Jackson’s parents were at the confirmation hearing. Even crazier, so were Chuck Grassley’s.” — JIMMY FALLON“The next two days are for questions, and I think it’s going to be a huge missed opportunity if one of the judiciary committee members doesn’t start a question with ‘I’m sorry, Miss Jackson, ooh? I am for real — what is your judicial stance on federal financial oversight?’” — JAMES CORDEN, riffing on Outkast’s song, “Ms. Jackson”The Bits Worth WatchingJimmy Fallon and Questlove played a game of Charades with Leslie Mann and Mikey Day, the host of “Is It Cake?” on Monday’s “Tonight Show.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightJamie Lee Curtis will pop by Tuesday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”Also, Check This OutSharon Stone in the interrogation scene in “Basic Instinct,” which opened on March 20, 1992.Rialto PicturesThe erotic thriller “Basic Instinct” is still a hit 30 years after its highly contested premiere. More

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      Why TV-Inspired Vacations Are on the Rise

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      TV-themed itineraries are on the rise, taking travelers on adventures with familiar shows during a time of uncertainty.With 70 percent of Americans watching more TV in 2021 than they did in 2020, binge-watching has skyrocketed during the pandemic. Now, as borders reopen, restrictions ease and travel restarts, tour advisers are fielding an increasingly popular request: immersive, TV-themed itineraries that allow travelers to live out their favorite shows’ story lines.In Britain, where all travel restrictions are now lifted, hotels in London have partnered with Netflix to offer Lady Whistledown-themed teas inspired by “Bridgerton” high society. In Yellowstone National Park, travelers are arriving in Wyoming not for a glimpse of Old Faithful, but for a chance to cosplay as John Dutton from the hit drama “Yellowstone.”And in South Korea, where vaccinated travelers can now enter without quarantine, street food vendors on Jeju Island are anticipating a run on dalgona candy, the honeycomb toffees that played a central role in “Squid Game.”“When you fall in love with a character, you can’t get it out of your mind,” said Antonina Pattiz, 30, a blogger who last year got hooked on “Outlander,” the steamy, time-traveling drama about Claire Beauchamp, a nurse transported 200 years back in history. Ms. Pattiz and her husband, William, binge-watched the Starz show together, and are now planning an “Outlander”-themed trip to Scotland in May to visit sites from the show, including Midhope Castle, which stands in as Lallybroch, the family home of another character, Jamie Fraser.Mr. Pattiz is part Scottish, Ms. Pattiz said, and their joint interest in the show kicked off a desire on his part to explore his roots. “You watch the show and you really start to connect with the characters and you just want to know more,” she said.The fifth season of “Outlander” was available in February 2020, and Starz’s 142 percent increase in new subscribers early in the pandemic has been largely attributed to a jump in locked-down viewers discovering the show. During the ensuing two-year hiatus before Season 6 recently hit screens — a period of time known by fans as “Droughtlander” — “Outlander”-related attractions in Scotland, like Glencoe, which appears in the show’s opening credits and the Palace of Holyroodhouse, saw more than 1.7 million visitors. “Outlander”-related content on Visit Scotland’s website generated more than 350,000 page views, ahead of content pegged to the filming there of Harry Potter and James Bond movies.The Pattizs, who live in New York City, will follow a 12-day self-driving sample itinerary provided by Visit Scotland, winding from Edinburgh to Fife to Glasgow as they visit castles and gardens where Claire fell in love and Jamie’s comrades died in battle. Private tour companies, including Nordic Visitor and Inverness Tours, have also unveiled customized tours.The ‘Sex and the City’ UniverseThe sprawling franchise revolutionized how women were portrayed on the screen. And the show isn’t over yet. A New Series: Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte return for another strut down the premium cable runway in “And Just Like That,” streaming on HBO. Off Broadway: Candace Bushnell, whose writing gave birth to the “Sex and the City” universe, stars in her one-woman show based on her life. In Carrie’s Footsteps: “Sex and the City” painted a seductive vision of Manhattan, inspiring many young women to move to the city. The Origins: For the show’s 20th anniversary in 2018, Bushnell shared how a collection of essays turned into a pathbreaking series.Enduring trend, new intensityScreen tourism, which encompasses not just pilgrimages to filming locations but also studio tours and visits to amusement parks like The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, is an enduring trend. Tourists flocked to Salzburg in the 1960s after the release of “The Sound of Music”; in recent decades, locations like New Zealand saw a huge bump in visits from “Lord of the Rings” fans and bus tours in New York City have offered tourists a chance to go on location of “Sex and the City” and “The Marvelous Ms. Maisel.”But in this pandemic moment, where travel has for months been synonymous with danger and tourists are navigating conflicting desires to safeguard their health while also making up for squandered time, screen tourism is taking on a new intensity, said Rachel Kazez, a Chicago-based mental health therapist. She has clients eager to travel — another major trend for 2022 is “going big” — but they are looking for ways to tamp down the anxiety that may accompany those supersized ambitions.She said her patients increasingly are saying “‘I was cooped up for a year and I just want to go nuts. Let’s do whatever fantasy we’ve been thinking about’.”“If we’ve been watching a TV show, we know everything about it, and we can go and have a totally immersive experience that’s also extremely predictable,” Ms. Kazez continued. Cyndi Lam, a pharmacist in Fairfax, Va., has longed to go to Morocco for years. But she didn’t feel confident pulling the trigger until last month, when “Inventing Anna,” the nine-episode drama about the sham heiress Anna Delvey, began streaming on Netflix.In episode six of “Inventing Anna,” the character flies to Marrakesh and stays at La Mamounia, a lavish five-star resort. Ms. Lam and her husband are now booked to stay there in September.“Everybody can kind of relate to Anna,” Ms. Lam said. “I found her character to be fascinating, and when she went to Morocco, I was like, ‘OK, we’re going to Morocco.’ It sealed the deal.”In December, Club Wyndham teamed up with Hallmark Channel to design three suites tied to the “Countdown to Christmas” holiday movie event. They sold out in seven hours.Courtesy of Club WyndhamSensing a new desire among guests to tap into the scripted universe, dozens of hotels over the past year have rolled out themed suites inspired by popular shows. Graduate Hotels has a “Stranger Things”-themed suite at its Bloomington, Ind., location, with areas designed like the living room and basement of central characters like the Byers. A blinking alphabet of Christmas lights and Eleven’s favorite Eggo waffles are included. And in December, Club Wyndham teamed up with the Hallmark Channel to design three “Countdown to Christmas”-themed suites where guests could check in and binge Christmas films. They sold out in seven hours.“It was the first time we’d done anything like this,” said Lara Richardson, chief marketing officer for Crown Media Family Networks, in an email. “One thing we hear over and over from viewers is that, as much they love our products, they want to step inside a ‘Countdown to Christmas’ movie.”Vacation homes are also going immersive. For families, Airbnb partnered with BBC to list the Heeler House, a real-world incarnation of the animated home on the beloved animated series “Bluey,” and Vrbo has 10 rental homes inspired by “Yes Day,” the 2021 Netflix film about parents who remove “no” from their vocabulary. Celebrities are jumping in, too: Issa Rae, creator and star of HBO’s “Insecure,” offered an exclusive look at her neighborhood in South Los Angeles in February with a special Airbnb listing, at a rock-bottom price of $56.Tea on TV, now in London (and Boston)“Bridgerton,” Netflix’s British period drama about family, love and savage gossip, was streamed by 82 million households in 2021. (For comparison, the finale of “Breaking Bad” in 2013 had 10.3 million viewers; more recent streaming hits, including “Tiger King” and “Maid,” had fewer than 70 million). When season two of “Bridgerton” premieres on March 25, Beaverbrook Town House, a hotel built across two Georgian townhouses in London’s Chelsea, will offer a “Bridgerton” experience that includes a day out in London and drinks in the British countryside; nearby at the Lanesborough, a Bridgerton-themed tea, cheekily dubbed “the social event of the season,” will kick off the same day. In Boston, the Fairmont Copley Plaza now has a “High Society Package” for fans with flowers and a private afternoon tea.Contiki, the group travel company for 18- to 35-year-olds, had a “Bridgerton”-themed itinerary set for September 2021 but had to scrap it when the Delta variant hit; they’ve now partnered with Amazon Prime on a Hawaiian Islands trip inspired by “I Know What You Did Last Summer” set for July.Both Netflix and Amazon Prime have brand partnership teams that handle collaborations of this nature.“As we come out of this pandemic, the desire for more immersive experiences is really stronger than ever,” said Adam Armstrong, Contiki’s chief executive. “It’s about getting under the skin of destinations, creating those Instagrammable moments that recreate stuff from films and movies. It’s really a strong focus for us.”The popularity of “Bridgerton” on Netflix was eclipsed by “Squid Game,” the high-stakes South Korean survival drama, and despite that show’s carnage, travelers are booking Squid Game vacations, too. Remote Lands, an Asia-focused travel agency, reported a 25 percent increase in interest in South Korean travel and created a Seoul guide for fans and a customized itinerary.Some travel advisers say that some clients don’t even want to explore the locations they’re traveling to. They just want to be there while they continue binge-watching.Emily Lutz, a travel adviser in Los Angeles, said that more than 20 percent of her total requests over the past few months have been for travel to Yellowstone National Park, a result of the popularity of “Yellowstone,” the western family drama starring Kevin Costner on the Paramount Network and other streaming services. And not all of her clients are interested in hiking.“I had a client who wrote me and said, ‘All we want to do is rent a lodge in the mountains, sit in front of the fireplace, and watch episodes of ‘Yellowstone’ — while we’re in Yellowstone’,” she said.52 Places for a Changed WorldThe 2022 list highlights places around the globe where travelers can be part of the solution.Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places for a Changed World for 2022. More

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      ‘Billions’ Season 6, Episode 9 Recap: Distract and Conquer

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      Chuck goes from one of his biggest professional triumphs to perhaps his greatest professional setback. That was fast.Season 6, Episode 9: ‘Hindenburg’“We need Chuck dead, not wounded and angry.” Wise words, those, from Governor Bob Sweeney. He has intuited something Chuck himself failed to, when Chuck yanked the Olympic Games away from Mike Prince without delivering a killing blow. In retrospect, it was obvious that a wounded, angry Prince, for all his self-avowed graciousness in defeat, would strike back. It just wasn’t clear that his retaliation would, in fact, be a death blow.But that’s certainly what it seems to be. Sweeney and the State Senate remove Chuck Rhoades from the office of state attorney general, the result of an elaborate scheme concocted by Prince. Chuck’s do-gooding, his rabble-rousing, his speechifying — none of it avails him.And so he moves from one of his biggest professional triumphs — putting the kibosh on Prince’s Olympics — to his greatest professional setback since he was fired as the U.S. attorney for New York’s Southern District by Attorney General Jock Jeffcoat a few seasons back. If anything, this defeat is far worse because it bears a firmer will-of-the-people imprimatur and because Chuck was nominally booted over charges of corruptly pursuing personal vendettas, not simply rubbing the boss the wrong way.To be fair to Chuck, I didn’t see his downfall coming, either. Nor were we supposed to! Before learning of the attempt to oust him, Chuck spends most of the episode deeply invested in pursuing another pet project: opening privately operated but nonprofit and tax-exempt parks and other such amenities to the general public.This quest is precipitated by two ugly incidents involving brown women, the first when his lieutenant, Dave, is barred from a private club and the second when a Hispanic mother is barred from a nearby park. Chuck strong-arms the local hedge fund bigwig Steven Birch (Jerry O’Connell) into ponying up a list of residents with access to the park, then takes them to court, where he settles on a deal that gives him a bare-minimum win — the best he could count on under such dubious legal circumstances.But it was all a put-on by Prince. Stuart Legere, the bribed university official whom Chuck believed was his man on the inside; the host at the club where Dave and Legere were supposed to meet; the mother who is prevented from entering the park; the Wall Street jerk who prevents her from entering it; the lawyer representing the park’s members: All of them are on Prince’s payroll, thanks to bribes from Wags and Scooter.In doing all this, Prince is acting on the advice of Chuck’s one-time right hand, Kate Sacker. Distract him the way a bullfighter distracts a bull, she says, and he’ll become vulnerable. And sure enough, he’s so busy hashing out the details of his big win against the high and mighty that he misses the political coup occurring right under his nose.At this point, the rapid-onset defeat of its main characters is a “Billions” hallmark. It took only one or two episodes for Prince and Chuck to embroil Bobby Axelrod in the illegal cannabis business that led to his flight from the country. No sooner had Prince landed the Olympics than Chuck canceled them. And now, Prince has defeated Chuck just one episode later. No one is safe on this show, and that makes for exciting television.Chuck’s entire downfall could, perhaps, have been prevented had it not been for his decision to show up at Prince’s Olympics HQ to gloat in the form of a peace offering. Prince recognized it for what it was: rubbing the billionaire’s nose in his defeat. Chuck’s biggest enemy is himself.The episode’s B-plot centers on Taylor Mason, the one-time wunderkind of Axe Cap. When the alums Mafee and Dollar Bill pop in for a visit, they also start to woo the mild-mannered traders Tuk and Ben Kim away from the firm, no doubt hoping to recreate that old Axe Cap magic. Tuk and Ben’s manager Philip, new to the firm, is happy to let them go if it’s really time for them to move on.But Taylor feels that this will make Philip look weak. Rather than allow a rival to take a hit to his reputation, Taylor unleashes a full Samuel L. Jackson in “Pulp Fiction” verbal fusillade at Mafee and Dollar Bill, scaring them off from their attempt to pry Ben and Tuk away. Philip is retrospectively grateful for the help, though he tells Taylor he suspects Ben and Tuk aren’t the only ones pining for the good old days of Axe Cap.Taylor, who has spent the whole season wrestling with Axe’s influence, seems chastened. But no one on this show stays chastened for very long.Loose change:I’d like to give a special shout-out to the veteran character actor Kenneth Tigar as State Senator Clay Tharp, a rare Republican ally of Chuck’s who is ultimately swayed to Prince’s side. He delivers a dignified performance centered on Chuck’s sympathy for Tharp after the death of his wife, a sympathy he can no longer pay back with support.For you reference-spotters out there, this episode was full of them. Basketball? Prince compares himself to Coach Pat Riley. “The Godfather”? That’s the name Chuck bestows on Riley, while Mafee quotes, “Be my friend?,” from the film’s opening scene. The Coens? Ben Kim quotes the Dude in describing his time at Prince Cap as “strikes and gutters,” à la the Dude from “The Big Lebowski.” Wrestling? Senator Tharp tips the hat to the grappler Ken Patera.Some less frequently trod reference territory: Taylor paraphrases the entire “Say ‘what’ again” speech from “Pulp Fiction.” For the literary-minded, William Kennedy’s Albany-based cycle of novels also gets its flowers. Bob Sweeney invokes the name of the Stephen King arch-villain Randall Flagg when describing Prince’s feelings about Chuck. And a judge compares Chuck’s legal approach to the Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy in the U.K.”; the song closes out the episode, and it is maybe the series’s most jarring music cue to date.Chuck compares himself to Charles de Gaulle and his enemies to the Hindenburg disaster, but it turns out the positions should have been reversed.Karl Allard goes undercover as a groundskeeper to spy on a meeting between Prince and his mega-rich cronies, reinforcing my love of Karl Allard.The episode ends with Dave’s being named the new acting attorney general. The show seems heavily invested in this character, and I hope the investment pays off. More

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      Av Westin, Newsman Behind ABC’s ‘20/20,’ Dies at 92

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      After nearly 20 years at CBS News, he went to a rival network and helped turn its answer to “60 Minutes” into a frequent Emmy Award winner.Av Westin, an influential television producer who rose from copy boy at CBS News for Edward R. Murrow in the 1940s to help make ABC’s “20/20” newsmagazine a perennial winner of Emmy Awards, died on March 12 at a hospital in Manhattan. He was 92.His wife, Ellen Rossen, said the cause was cardiac arrest.Mr. Westin had spent a year as the executive producer of ABC’s “World News Tonight” when he took over at “20/20” in 1979. Over the next seven years, the program won more than 30 news and documentary Emmy Awards, including 11 in 1981.Looking to differentiate “20/20” from the entertainment shows it competed with in prime-time, as well as from CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Mr. Westin mixed ambitious investigative reports with celebrity profiles, lifestyle features and “process pieces” about artistic endeavors like the making of a new album of standards by Linda Ronstadt.A documentarian at heart, Mr. Westin also ordered a series of features called “Moment of Crisis,” which looked back at news events like the disastrous explosion of the Challenger space shuttle and the efforts to save President Ronald Reagan’s life after he was wounded in an assassination attempt.“20/20,” which was hosted by Barbara Walters and Hugh Downs in the 1980s, had an A-list group of correspondents that included Sylvia Chase, Lynn Sherr, Geraldo Rivera, Tom Jarriel, Bob Brown and Sander Vanocur.Mr. Brown recalled that Mr. Westin gave correspondents and producers considerable leeway to cover a story as they chose.“But when the piece was screened, Av took over and was at his best,” Mr. Brown said in a phone interview. “He could break apart a story and make you see everything you’d done wrong and let you know what you had to do to fix it. He had a genius for going straight to a problem.”Mr. Westin’s time at “20/20” came to an end in February 1987, when he circulated an 18-page memo within ABC News and to its top executives at its parent company, Capital Cities/ABC, criticizing news-gathering procedures and calling the division inefficient and in need of a new focus.He said that he had been quietly asked by a Capital Cities executive to critique ABC News, whose president was Roone Arledge.“Cap Cities had essentially decided that Roone was not their guy anymore,” Mr. Westin said in an interview with the Television Academy in 2011. The executive told him that “Roone’s tenure was going to end, and I was likely to be the preferred candidate of management.”“What I wrote was accurate,” Mr. Westin added, “but obviously it was inflammatory.”The memo led Mr. Arledge to suspend him and take him off “20/20.” But the suspension did not last long, and Mr. Westin went on to work on projects like “The Blessings of Liberty,” about the U.S. Constitution at its centennial, until he left the network in 1989.It was not the first time the two men clashed. In 1985, Mr. Arledge killed a “20/20” segment about the death of Marilyn Monroe and her ties to the Kennedys, calling it “gossip-column stuff.” Mr. Westin objected, and Mr. Rivera angrily told the gossip columnist Liz Smith that he and others at “20/20” were appalled that Mr. Arledge “would overturn a respected, honorable, great newsman like Av.”Mr. Westin with the “20/20” host Hugh Downs in 1981. He recruited an A-list group of correspondents for the program.Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty ImagesAvram Robert Westin was born on July 29, 1929, in Manhattan. His father, Elliot, was a vice president of a commercial baking company. His mother, Harriet (Radin) Westin, was a homemaker. Av Westin graduated from New York University in 1949. He had begun his studies as a pre-med student, but an experience during a summer job as a copy boy at CBS in 1947 altered his direction, to English and history.“A bulletin moved that a ship was sinking off Newfoundland,” he told the Television Academy, and he promptly carried the teletype copy to an editor. “I was the only person at CBS News headquarters who knew that information,” he said. “I was the ultimate insider. That’s the epiphany.”Mr. Westin was a writer, director, reporter and producer for 18 years at CBS, during which he earned a master’s degree in Russian and East European studies at Columbia University in 1958. He won an Emmy in 1960 as a writer for the documentary “The Population Explosion,” and in 1963 created and produced “CBS Morning News” with Mike Wallace.He left CBS in 1967, spent two years as executive director of the noncommercial Public Broadcasting Laboratory and joined ABC News in 1969 as the executive producer of its evening newscast, then anchored by Frank Reynolds. It was an era when “ABC Evening News” trailed CBS and NBC’s nightly news operations in prestige, ratings and financial resources.“My target is ‘H and B,’” Mr. Westin told The Indianapolis News in 1969, referring to NBC’s co-anchors Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. “I think people are getting tired of them, and if they’re shopping around, I want them to look at us before they automatically turn to Walter” Cronkite.The broadcast journalist Ted Koppel, who was a correspondent on the evening news program, said of Mr. Westin in a phone interview, “He probably elevated the ‘ABC Evening News’ as much as anyone until Roone Arledge,” adding, “Av was a very ambitious man, who thought he should have been ABC News president.”While at ABC News, Mr. Westin ran its “Close-Up” documentary unit, for which he won a Peabody Award in 1973. He won another Peabody the next year, for producing and directing the documentary “Sadat: Action Biography,” about the Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat.He left ABC News in 1976 in a dispute with Bill Sheehan, the president of the division, but returned two years later at Mr. Arledge’s request “to get rid of” the incompatible, feuding “Evening News” anchor team of Ms. Walters and Harry Reasoner.“The day I arrived back at ABC, one of the producers who was in the Reasoner camp came up to me and said, ‘You know, she owes us 5 minutes and 25 seconds,’” Mr. Westin told the Television Academy, referring to how much more Ms. Walters had been on the air than Mr. Reasoner over the past year.After returning as the executive producer of “Evening News,” Mr. Westin collaborated with Mr. Arledge on an overhaul in 1978 that transformed the show into the faster-paced, graphics-oriented “World News Tonight,” with three anchors: Mr. Reynolds in Washington, Max Robinson in Chicago and Peter Jennings in London.A year later, Mr. Arledge moved Mr. Westin to “20/20.”After leaving ABC News, Mr. Westin was an executive at King World Productions, Time Warner and the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’s foundation.In addition to his wife, he is survived by a son, Mark. His previous marriages to Sandra Glick and Kathleen Lingo ended in divorce. He lived in Manhattan.To Mr. Westin, evening news programs, which cannot provide much depth in 22 minutes of airtime, have a clear mandate.“I believe the audience at dinner time wants to know the answers to three very important questions,” he said, explaining a rule he had at ABC News. “Is the world safe? Is my hometown and my home safe? If my wife and children are safe, what has happened in the past 24 hours to make them better off or to amuse them?” More

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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