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      First Asian American Muppet to Debut on ‘Sesame Street’

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      Whether it’s reporting on conflicts abroad and political divisions at home, or covering the latest style trends and scientific developments, Times Video journalists provide a revealing and unforgettable view of the world.Whether it’s reporting on conflicts abroad and political divisions at home, or covering the latest style trends and scientific developments, Times Video journalists provide a revealing and unforgettable view of the world. More

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      First Asian American Muppet Arrives on ‘Sesame Street’

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      Ji-Young, a guitar-playing Korean American character, will bring rock music and conversations about racism to the long-running children’s show starting on Thanksgiving Day.“Sesame Street” is welcoming its first Asian American muppet to the neighborhood. Ji-Young, a Korean American 7-year-old who loves playing her electric guitar and skateboarding, will make her debut next week.Ji-Young won’t just be sharing her love for rock music and tteokbokki, or Korean rice cakes, on the show. She will also play a role in countering anti-Asian bias and harassment at a time of heightened awareness around the issue.Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit that produces “Sesame Street,” said it created Ji-Young to support families of Asian and Pacific Islander heritage as part of its racial justice initiative, Coming Together. Sesame Workshop introduced the initiative in the summer of 2020, after the murder of George Floyd and as racism and violence targeting Asians and Asian Americans surged during the pandemic.“Sesame Street” has been on air for more than 50 years, but Ji-Young is its first Asian American muppet.The show has had human characters and guests of Asian descent, including Alan Muraoka, who is Japanese American and owns the fictional Hooper’s Store. In June, “Sesame Street” released a video called “Proud of Your Eyes,” in which Mr. Muraoka helped Analyn, a Filipino American girl, after she was teased about the shape of her eyes. Muraoka and Wes, a muppet, told Analyn that her eyes were beautiful and part of what made her who she was.Nancy Wang Yuen, a sociology professor at Biola University in La Mirada, Calif., and an expert on race and racism in Hollywood, said that when she first immigrated to the United States from Taiwan at age 5, she learned more English from “Sesame Street” than from the E.S.L. classes at her school.The show was more diverse than most children’s programming of the time, but Ms. Yuen said it was missing characters who looked like her when she was growing up in the 1980s and early 1990s.“I think having this muppet who is more culturally specific and is able to speak another language, especially in the current time of rising anti-Asian hate, is so essential to representation,” she said.Kathleen Kim, Ji-Young’s puppeteer, with the finished muppet.Zach Hyman/Sesame WorkshopJi-Young made her television debut on the “Today” show on NBC on Monday. “You know what’s really cool about ‘Sesame Street’ is that no matter what you look like, or how you play or where you come from, you belong, and that’s really cool,” Ji-Young said.She will be introduced on “Sesame Street” during a special episode on Thanksgiving Day on HBO Max and on local PBS stations. The show, “See Us Coming Together: A Sesame Street Special,” will also feature Simu Liu and Naomi Osaka.Mr. Liu, who plays the title character in “Shang-Chi and the Legend of Ten Rings,” welcomed Ji-Young to “Sesame Street” on Twitter on Monday, after The Associated Press reported on the new muppet’s debut.“I’ve had the privilege of experiencing so many incredible things over the past couple of years, but this definitely sticks out,” Mr. Liu said. “Welcome to Sesame Street, Ji-Young! I’m so glad I got to hang out with you.”In the special episode, the residents of Sesame Street celebrate Neighbor Day, a community event with food, music and games. Someone offscreen tells Ji-Young to “go back home,” and then the other residents, guest stars and friends, like Elmo, offer her support.Ji-Young’s puppeteer is Kathleen Kim, who is Korean American. “My one hope, obviously, is to actually help teach what racism is, help teach kids to be able to recognize it and then speak out against it,” Ms. Kim, 41, told The A.P. “But then my other hope for Ji-Young is that she just normalizes seeing different kinds of looking kids on TV.” More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Simple as Water’ and the American Music Awards

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      HBO airs a documentary about families affected by the civil war in Syria. And Cardi B hosts the 2021 American Music Awards on ABC.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Nov. 15-21. Details and times are subject to change.MondayHOLIDAY BAKING CHAMPIONSHIP: GINGERBREAD SHOWDOWN 9 p.m. on Food Network. There may be few culinary situations more intense than baking for blood relatives. Food Network nods at that fact with this holiday baking competition show, which kicks off Monday night by challenging its contestants to make snow globe scenes out of coconut shavings and gingerbread.TuesdaySIMPLE AS WATER (2021) 9 p.m. on HBO. The Oscar-winning documentarian Megan Mylan gives an intricate, intimate look at the effect that the civil war in Syria has had on families in this ambitious documentary. Mylan follows an array of Syrian families whose lives have been changed by the war. They include a woman and four children living in a refugee camp in Greece; a man working as a delivery driver in Pennsylvania while applying for asylum for himself and his younger brother; and a husband and wife in Masyaf, in northwest Syria.“These stories avoid triteness by lingering on the daily, unassuming routines of their characters,” Claire Shaffer wrote in her review for The New York Times. The result, Shaffer said, is a film that’s “anything but simple when it comes to its technical achievements, weaving together familiar immigrant narratives in ways that still manage to surprise and stun.”Daniel Radcliffe in “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”Warner Bros.HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE (2001) 6:30 p.m. on Syfy. This first movie in the “Harry Potter” franchise hit theaters 20 years ago this month. The movie made celebrities out of its three young stars, Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson, and defined the look of the so-called wizarding world in which the stories are set, which until that point had existed only in readers’ imaginations.In a recent interview with The Times, Radcliffe reminisced about shooting the film. He looked back on some elements, like the use of practical special effects, fondly (“one of the great things about the films early on,” he said). Memories of, say, broom riding, came with more of a wince. “It was a broomstick with a thin seat in the middle, and you didn’t have stirrups — or, if you did, they were very, very high up,” Radcliffe explained, “so you were basically leaning all your weight onto your junk when you leaned forward.”WednesdayBOOGIE NIGHTS (1997) 11 p.m. on Showtime. The filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson is set to roll out his latest movie, the 1970s coming-of-age story “Licorice Pizza,” next week. That new movie shares its setting with Anderson’s 1997 period drama, “Boogie Nights” — both are set in the San Fernando Valley in Southern California.The story in “Boogie Nights” follows a young man, Eddie (Mark Wahlberg), who gets discovered in the late ’70s by a successful pornographer (Burt Reynolds) and becomes a star. The film, Anderson’s second feature, was how many viewers first discovered Anderson. In her review for The Times, Janet Maslin wrote that Anderson’s “display of talent is as big and exuberant as skywriting.” Everything about “Boogie Nights,” she wrote, “is interestingly unexpected.”ThursdayHIGH ANXIETY (1977) 10 p.m. on TCM. Mel Brooks spoofs Hitchcock as both the director and star of this satirical mystery movie. Brooks plays an anxious psychiatrist who gets accused of murder. The doctor’s quest to clear his name lets Brooks riff on scenes from “Vertico,” “Psycho,” “Spellbound” and “The Birds,” using the same brand of disgruntled humor he employed to great effect in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974), which TCM is airing at 8 p.m.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      ‘Insecure’ Recap, Season 3 Episode 4: The Earth Moves

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      This season, Issa has undergone plenty of personal evolution, but some people still bring out her old self-doubt.Season 3 Episode 4: ‘Faulty, Okay?!’Nathan, Nathan, Nathan. There’s a lot we still don’t know about Nathan but we know that Issa likes him, or at least likes to keep him around. This week, the former and possibly future couple move past their emotional mix-up in the bedroom, from this season’s second episode, and head into new territory in more ways than one.The episode starts at the beach, where Nathan is celebrating his barbershop with his friends. When Issa shows up, with Molly and Kelli, she’s desperate to see if Nathan will be as warm with her as he was before she “cried in his mouth,” as she put it. It’s been a week and even though they have texted, the matter was not discussed.As usual, Issa gets awkward when she is insecure. Watching her talk to Nathan is like hearing nails scratch a chalkboard — it’s beyond cringey. She asks about the weather and talks out of turn. Everything comes out of her mouth except how she feels about the other night. Nathan doesn’t reciprocate her attention and seems cold, which makes Issa think he doesn’t like her anymore.We also don’t know why Issa is nervous here — as far as we knew, she was happy being single. She’s at the beach with Nathan because she wants to be, but why exactly does she want to be there? It’s as if she hasn’t thought it all through herself. Nathan also doesn’t know what she wants, and it seems the failed cuddle muddled what he thought she wanted. He says as much to his friends as they drive to the bar Sharky’s, after an earthquake and the threat of a possible tsunami broke up the beach party.Whether at the beach or the bar or at a random Jason Derulo event later, Molly and Kelli play perfect sidekicks. Kelli is hilarious and experiences a series of emotional breakthroughs — she’s stopped drinking until she becomes “enlightened,” she says. That could be a cue for Issa and Molly to do the same, but no: Molly is being hounded by two of Nathan’s friends and she likes it, and Issa is still sorting through her feelings.These include something like jealousy when, while the others are playing spades, Issa is watching what she interprets as romantic flirtation between Nathan and his friend Resha, a short, voluptuous and bombastic woman. Issa surmises that Resha and Nathan have been intimate, and that pressure forces her to be up front with him.“I just wanted to check in, are we cool?” she asks.“Nothing’s changed for me,” Nathan responds, stoically.“So, we’re still friends?” she says humorously, fishing for warmth.“Yep,” Nathan replies before pulling away.In the last couple of episodes, we have seen how Issa has grown in the year since she broke up with Lawrence. She started her own company and mended her relationship with Molly. She’s confident at work — even though her client has been taking shots at her on social media — and has been taking time for herself. Her awkwardness and insecurity around Nathan illustrates the ways in which, for all of her personal progress and evolution, she’s still the same Issa we’ve known for years.She does not know enough about Nathan to be grounded in how she feels about him. He is a butterfly she is trying to capture in a jar, and he is constantly fluttering out of her reach.All we know about him is that on occasion, he disappears in order to deal with his mental health struggles. That is the reason he ghosted Issa last time, in Season 4. In this episode, we learn more about Nathan through his cousin, Thomas. For instance, when Nathan lived with him, he would leave without warning and come back days later, in the middle of the night. Such unpredictable behavior is why Thomas ultimately wanted Nathan to stop staying with him — this revelation shocks Nathan, who had always blamed his cousin’s wife for kicking him out. (At Sharky’s, the wife suggests that Nathan likes to abandon things.) The conversation reveals that in the time before he met Issa, Nathan was frequently “manic,” as he explains later.While her friends are at a Jason Derulo party, Issa finds Nathan trying to process what he’s learned from Thomas. After a day of multiple misfires, they are finally honest with one another and the ground shakes.“I don’t want to just be friends with you,” Issa says.“I don’t want to be friends with you either,” Nathan responds.Nathan and Issa embrace and as they kiss, there is an aftershock.Issa and Nathan might be getting back together now but it feels like there is much that is not being said, by both of them. I also can’t help but worry about Issa reuniting with an ex, who became an ex for a reason.Is Issa being honest with herself? Can she hold Nathan or will he flit away like he has so many times in the past? More

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      ‘Succession’ Season 3, Episode 5: Imaginary Dead Cat Bounce

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      The problem with staking everything on one imposing figurehead is that eventually they get old and senile.Season 3, Episode 5: ‘Retired Janitors of Idaho’There was a moment in last week’s episode of “Succession” when Kendall was standing on Josh Aaronson’s patio, reminding Josh of their longtime friendship and boasting about his upcoming birthday party — acting like a big shot, in other words. Kendall had come to the meeting to show he could be the commanding, charismatic figure to lead Waystar into the future. And for a few seconds at least, he had his host’s undivided attention.Then Logan walked through the door, and Josh literally pushed Kendall aside to greet the old man. Point made: Logan is still Waystar’s star.This week’s episode is titled “Retired Janitors of Idaho.” It refers to the faction Roman fears will determine the fate of the Roy family if the Waystar shareholders get the chance to vote on the company’s leadership. Nearly all the action takes place in a luxury hotel and conference center, where the powerful people are sequestered in stew-rooms, scarfing down snacks and strategizing. The general feeling among the Roy loyalists is that Logan needs to address the assembly, calming their nerves with his star power.“Just get the body up there,” Karl says.But just as Logan broke down physically in front of Josh last week, this week his body failed him again. He has a urinary track infection; and when his assistant isn’t around to remind him to take his pills, Logan becomes disoriented. He calls Shiv “Marcia.” He asks to go the bathroom seemingly every few minutes. He does not appear to know where he is or why he is there. And he is convinced there is a dead cat under his chair.So no, there will be no Logan Roy wow factor at this shareholders’ meeting. But the Roys have an even bigger problem. Before Logan loses his wits, he gives the order that they should reject the big peacemaking deal their opponents have offered them. But did he really know what he was saying at the time, or was he already slipping? (Roman: “Can we just give him some cranberry juice and then ask him about the deal again?”)This of course is the problem with staking everything on one imposing figurehead. Leaders can flag. They age, they weaken. While the Roys are making multibillion-dollar decisions based on their patriarch’s mumbling about imaginary cats, Sandi Furness (Hope Davis) is in a suite nearby, consulting with her own father, Sandy (Larry Pine). He has chronic medical problems, too, leaving him mostly immobile and inaudible. When Sandi meets with Shiv to try to find what Gerri likes to call “a deal-space,” each of these two highly intelligent, highly capable women claim, “I just do what my dad tells me.”Instead of bringing their own fresh ideas to the family business, Sandi and Shiv are left defending the decisions their clearly diminished dads are making, even when those choices seem driven more by spite and paranoia than by sound business sense. Sandy, for one, seems motivated primarily by a desire to make a deal that robs the Roys of any of the trappings of power. First, he asks to be granted the right to veto any decision to make a Roy family member a future chief executive. Then, when he gets a begrudging “yes” to that, he comes back with a demand that the Roys give up their private jets. (Roman: “First they came for the P.J.s, and I said nothing. …”)As for Logan, even though he is under criminal investigation and in danger of losing control of everything he has built, he still refuses to believe that he is not holding all the trump cards. Any time the Sandy and Stewy side offers a concession — just to avoid the uncertainty of a vote — Logan sees it as a sign they are scared. Before he lapses into incoherence, he suggests either calling their bluff or leaking to the press that they’re wavering, to show the shareholders who is really the boss.One of those shareholders is Logan’s own brother Ewan: another old man stifling a youngster. In Ewan’s case, he is making life difficult for Greg, who has disappointed his grandfather by signing onto the Waystar joint defense agreement, throwing his lot in with the people Ewan calls, “My brother and his gang of crapulous shills.” He informs Greg that he has changed his will, giving all of his money to Greenpeace. (“Even my part?” Greg asks. “That was the first part,” Ewan replies.) Trying to shake his grandson up, he says, earnestly, “Your life is not a bagatelle,” adding: “You need to take yourself seriously, kid.” Greg nods, then later asks someone else, “Do you think it’s possible to sue a person … a grandparent, for example … in a way which is, like … in an affectionate way?”The last old man playing a major role in this story is the president of the United States — “the Raisin” — who has been feeling real pressure ever since ATN pivoted from backing him unconditionally to questioning his mental fitness. The Raisin calls the Roys, asking to speak directly to Logan, who is still indisposed. So they pass him off to Roman, who is the closest thing to “bootleg Logan.” After Roman bumbles through the small talk and is sworn at by the commander in chief, he gets the news that the president is withdrawing his re-election bid.This is not really how the Roys wanted their whole “Is the President secretly senile?” maneuver to work out. Their access to the Oval Office gives them crucial leverage in their business deals — and, they had hoped, in the Justice Department’s Brightstar investigation. They have outsmarted themselves and are losing a major asset. (Roman, with maximum irony, looks on the bright side: “It’s kind of nice to know we can puppet-master the whole American republic project.”)The outcome isn’t much better with the agreement Sandi and Shiv hurriedly hammer out: The Roys will eat the P.J.s, the Sandy and Stewy side will get four seats on the board (including one for Sandi), and Waystar will grab another seat as well (possibly for Shiv). When Logan regains his faculties, he is peeved, certain that any agreement that satisfies Sandy must be a dud. He can’t say what he would have done differently. He just knows it would have been better.But the real loser from all the frantic deal making is — as it so often seems to be — Kendall, who never gets to be in any room where a final decision is made. Early on, he boasts to Stewy that his suite is “the real annual meeting,” insisting he has back channels to everyone who matters. But Shiv ignores him when calls to offer insights and gossip, Roman screams at him when he pops by the main Roy room, and even Stewy busts his chops a little, saying, “Shouldn’t you be standing on a rainbow soapbox somewhere screaming, ‘Time’s up!’?” In danger of being left out of the day’s narrative altogether, Kendall makes a sad, desperate final showboating move, storming the stage in front of the shareholders to speak up for the Brightstar victims.In one last twist of the knife, Logan asks for a quick end-of-the-day meeting with Kendall but then ghosts him, leaving his son sitting completely alone in a tiny room. Kendall tries to call his dad, but Logan blocks his number — permanently.So just as Logan has no access to the Raisin, Kendall now has no access to Logan. And both men are about to find out whether their power has more to do with who they are or who they know.Due DiligenceKendall must still have the Beatles on the brain because when he gets a phone call from one of his kids, he answers with, “What’s goin’ on, wild honey pie?” (That call has to do with whether or not his daughter’s pet rabbit should be allowed to eat a bagel. Kendall says it is probably OK. He is wrong.)Kendall insists to Greg that he’s not mad about his cousin’s signing the joint defense agreement. But “as a pal,” he says, he feels obliged to warn Greg that “I may have to burn you.” Greg briefly wonders, “How bad will the burning be?” but then immediately says, “Even as I ask that, I can tell.”Speaking of old men outstaying their welcome, while all the back room negotiations are raging — and while Logan remains incapable of making a public appearance — Frank is left to vamp onstage for the shareholders, spouting banalities for what must’ve felt like an eternity.I confess to having a moderate obsession with what people eat (or are served and then don’t eat) in movies and TV shows. For me the most poignant moment in this episode came toward the end, as the cater-waiters disposed of all the uneaten nibbles on the various buffets. So many squandered pastries. More

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      'S.N.L.': Taylor Swift Performs and Jonathan Majors Hosts

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      The sketch show, hosted this weekend by Jonathan Majors, also featured a 10-minute performance from the musical guest Taylor Swift.Back in 2012, when the then-Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney professed his affection for Big Bird but nonetheless vowed to cut funding for PBS, “Saturday Night Live” brought in Big Bird himself to explain that he wasn’t a political creature and didn’t “want to ruffle any feathers.”Almost a decade later, after the fictional, good-natured Big Bird said in a tweet that he had received a Covid vaccine, he has drawn the ire of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who complained that the tweet was “government propaganda for your 5-year-old.”This time around, “S.N.L.” didn’t get the support of any actual Muppets, so the show created its own alternate version of “Sesame Street,” which it called “Cruz Street.”Aidy Bryant, who played Senator Cruz in the opening sketch, stood in front of what looked like a familiar brownstone and explained, “For 50 years I stood by as ‘Sesame Street’ taught our children dangerous ideas, like numbers and kindness.”She continued: “But when Big Bird told children to get vaccinated against a deadly disease, I said enough. And I created my own ‘Sesame Street,’ called ‘Cruz Street.’ It’s a gated community, where kids are safe from the woke government.”Following the show’s theme song, Bryant was joined by Cecily Strong as Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, toting what she said was an AR-15.Strong said she was “just taking a break from releasing the phone numbers of Republicans who voted for the infrastructure bill so they and their families get death threats, and I thought I’d stop by.”Bryant’s Cruz was also visited by Kyle Mooney, dressed in a makeshift Big Bird costume that probably wasn’t fabricated by Sesame Workshop. He said that in the week since he had gotten the vaccine, his feathers had fallen out (among other physical side effects he claimed to be experiencing).To help out Mooney, Bryant brought out Pete Davidson, who played the comedian and podcast host Joe Rogan. He offered his own unreliable remedies, which consisted of “zinc and ayahuasca and some horse medicine.”Other cast members played alternate versions of “Sesame Street” characters, including Alex Moffat and Mikey Day as Bert and Ernie; Chris Redd as a furry green creature called Oscar the Slouch (“Papa Joe Biden gave me so many stimmies, I decided to quit working and live in this trash can”); and Aristotle Athari as the Recount Count.And hey, for good measure, the sketch brought out Chloe Fineman as Britney Spears, newly released from her yearslong conservatorship. “Oh my God, you guys, we did it,” she said.Fake ad of the weekSpare a thought for all the men who discovered during the pandemic that they didn’t know how to form adult friendships and are now bereft of peer groups.For their support — and for the benefit of their spouses and significant others — “S.N.L.” has given us the Man Park, a dog park-like place where these well-meaning recluses can come together and share useless trivia, argue about “Rick and Morty” or communicate with one another simply by saying “Marvel” over and over.We’re not saying we’re the target audience for this particular service, but when Andrew Dismukes asked “Who’s the GOAT, Michael Jordan or Tom Brady?” and Athari answered “How about Bo Burnham?” it felt so real.Musical performance of the weekTaylor Swift got only one song on the show, but boy did she make it count: She delivered a blistering, 10-minute rendition of “All Too Well” from her newly released album of re-recordings, “Red (Taylor’s Version).”Her performance — which ran even longer than Prince’s fabled eight-minute, three-song medley from an “S.N.L.” appearance in 2014 — was accompanied by a short film that Swift directed, starring herself and the actors Sadie Sink and Dylan O’Brien. The re-emergence of “All Too Well” (a shorter version of which was originally released in 2012) has also resurfaced speculation on who the song might be about — speculation that the film seems to be reinforcing? — and we recommend that you give the song a full listen if you want to at least understand the leadoff joke on Weekend Update.Weekend Update jokes of the weekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che riffed on the indictment of Stephen Bannon, the Kyle Rittenhouse trial and, yes, Taylor Swift.Jost began:Well, guys, I think the lesson we all learned this week is, never break up with Taylor Swift. Or she will sing about you for 10 minutes on national television. At the very least, return the scarf.He continued:But in real news — I don’t really know what’s real anymore — ex-Trump adviser Steve Bannon, seen here moments after shooting out of a sewage pipe — sorry, I should use his full name, Stephen K. Bannon; the K stands for three Ks — was indicted this week for contempt of Congress. If convicted, Bannon would face up to two years in prison. Which from the looks of him, might be a life sentence.Che pivoted to Rittenhouse:Legal experts are saying that Kyle Rittenhouse crying on the stand as he described how he shot his victims will help him with the jury. Man, is there a White Tears Law School that I don’t know about? I notice that every time y’all get in trouble, you start crying, and everything just works out for you, whether you’re trying to beat a murder charge or trying to be a Supreme Court justice. [His screen displays a picture of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.] More

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      ‘I Don’t Know What a Carrie Is’: Candace Bushnell Works It Out Onstage

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      The writer maps her life in a one-woman show, “Is There Still Sex in the City?,” beginning previews this weekend at the Daryl Roth Theater.I must tell you that after a long day of rehearsal in five-inch heels and a photo shoot at which she had posed atop, bestride and semi-supine on a corner banquette, Candace Bushnell, the woman who made the cosmopolitan the most famous drink of pre-Y2K New York, slipped into a chair in the gallery of the Carlyle Hotel and ordered an unglamorous pot of Earl Grey tea. With slices of lemon to soothe her throat.Bushnell, 62, broke out in the mid ’90s as a sex and relationship columnist for The New York Observer, centering her columns on a character named Carrie Bradshaw, a chic stand-in for Bushnell herself. She collected those pieces into a spiky 1996 book, “Sex and the City,” autofiction before it was cool. HBO premiered a series adaptation two years later. It ran for six seasons. Two movies followed, as did licensed fragrances, bus tours and candy.Bushnell’s life diverged from Carrie’s. She turned her talents to fiction. Her marriage to the ballet dancer Charles Askegard, whom she nicknamed Mr. Bigger, ended in divorce. After fleeing Manhattan for the Hamptons and despairing of dating, she wrote another novel, “Is There Still Sex in the City?”I couldn’t help but wonder: Has Bushnell adapted that novel into a one-woman show? She has. In “Is There Still Sex in the City?,” which begins previews at the Daryl Roth Theater on Saturday, Bushnell makes her stage debut, tracing her life — like a fever chart plotted in tasteful pink lipstick — from her Connecticut childhood to her party girl pinnacle to marriage, divorce and beyond. Is this fiction, autofiction, memoir?Bushnell at a rehearsal for “Is There Still Sex in the City?” in Midtown Manhattan. She hired an acting coach and a voice coach, and is doing Pilates to build up her core strength for the show. Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“I’m not trying to play a character,” she told me. “But I have a feeling that maybe I am a character. Like kind of naturally.”Bushnell arrived at the Carlyle, a few blocks from her Upper East Side apartment, in a sensible gray sweater dress and a fresh pair of absolutely senseless shoes — red satin Manolo Blahniks with diamanté buckles — that she walked in with impossible ease. (A line I’d heard during the rehearsal for the show earlier that day: “Do I have a shoe obsession like Carrie Bradshaw? No. Carrie Bradshaw has a shoe obsession because of me.”) In person, she has the wide-set eyes and porcelain poise of a Meissen figurine and conversation as polished as the Carlyle’s silverware.As a child in Glastonbury, Conn., Bushnell acted sporadically, though she spent most of her free time scribbling short stories and riding her horses. When she moved to New York at 19 — “wild and full of philosophies,” she said — she flirted with acting (that’s her frisky verb), studying at HB Studio.“I didn’t think I was really very good at it, which I probably shouldn’t say,” she said.Besides, she never loved it the way that she loved writing. “I really felt like, I’ve got to be a writer, or I’m going to die,” she said. So she wrote, signing away the theatrical rights to each new book. But a few years ago, when apportioning the rights to “Is There Still Sex in the City?,” she decided to hold onto the theatrical rights for herself.She wasn’t sure what to do with them. But then she met a talent manager, Marc Johnston, at the Carlyle, which Bushnell seems to treat as a bonus living room. He had helped to create a touring show for his client, the composer and accidental reality TV star David Foster. He thought that he could do the same for her.So again she wrote, this time in monologue form, repurposing stories from her books, her life, her lecture tours. That first draft ran about 200 pages. To shape up the script, Johnston and his fellow producer, Robyn Goodman, introduced Bushnell to the director and choreographer Lorin Latarro.“I have that aspect of my personality where I’ll put in hours and hours and hours into something just to try to make it better,” she said of preparing for the role.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn June, the show had a tryout at Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, Penn. Set in a near-replica of Bushnell’s apartment, which includes her actual sofa, her actual carpet and her actual poodles, it unfurls as a chatty girl’s night.And though Bushnell is a practiced hostess, those first performances were unnerving. “It was like, Oh, God, this is really acting,” Bushnell said. Gradually the script shortened and Bushnell relaxed and improved.“She’s really miraculous,” Goodman told me in a phone interview. “She was determined to understand acting and she’s done it.”Understanding meant hiring an acting coach and a voice coach, and committing to Pilates three times a week to build up her core strength for the show. Which is to say that Bushnell takes the work of rehearsal and performance seriously — hence the afternoon Earl Grey — comparing it to the dressage drills she practiced as a girl, repeating the same small moves over and over until she gets them right.“I have that aspect of my personality where I’ll put in hours and hours and hours into something just to try to make it better,” she said.I joked that this made her seem not entirely like a Carrie. “I don’t even know what a Carrie is,” she said.HBO is busy reviving Carrie with a new series, “And Just Like That…,” which follows most of the original “Sex and the City” characters into their 50s, but Bushnell is not involved. In several places, her stage show emphasizes differences between Bushnell and Carrie, but those differences pertain to matters of men and fashion, not ideology or temperament. Carrie is flighty; Bushnell has her feet, if not her heels, firmly on the ground. While Carrie’s story ultimately became a romance, Bushnell maintains extreme ambivalence about romantic relationships.Bushnell in red satin Manolo Blahniks with diamanté buckles. “Carrie Bradshaw has a shoe obsession because of me,” she quips in her one-woman show. Celeste Sloman for The New York TimesHer feminism, which lurks at the margins of her books, emerges cogently and unashamedly in conversation. She speaks persuasively about the deforming effects of patriarchal power and the need for, as she put it, an equality of “mind, body and earning potential” — a nice surprise from a woman once known for table dancing at Da Silvano.A Page Six darling, Bushnell has rarely received much credit for her politics, her obvious intelligence, her psychological acuity. (Let’s just say that when I read her most recent book I found a few pages that described my foundered marriage so entirely that I had to text them to half a dozen friends and then lie down for a while.) And this is just ever so slightly on purpose.She recalled that as a child, angry about the inequities of gender, her father sat her down and told her that while she had ideas that people would need to hear, no one would listen if she yelled them. “So I learned very early on to coat everything in a candy-colored, sugarcoated message. Because that’s how you move society,” she said.Latarro, during a pre-rehearsal chat, agreed. “She writes feminism in a way that makes it palatable for a lot of women who have internalized misogyny and a lot of men who think everybody looks great in their sexy dresses.”The stage show, rich in quip and pop song snippet, is candy-colored, too — a chocolate martini with a sugared rim. Bushnell is recognizably herself, at least in the hour of rehearsal I saw, but buffed and glossed: a person repurposed as a fun and fabulous character. I asked her why she hadn’t attempted something sharper, more bitter. Earlier drafts had darker elements, she said. But those were cut.“The message that I’m delivering is probably risky enough as it is. I sit there and say, ‘I’m not married, I don’t have kids. And I’m grateful.’”Not that she wants to bother her audience with too many messages, which is probably why the producers have created a post-show nightspot, the Candi Bar, in the basement of the Daryl Roth.“Cosmos all night!” Johnston had enthused in a phone interview.Bushnell, as she drank her tea, put it more practically. “People just want to feel good,” she said. “And I want to give them a good time.” More

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      Prison Won’t Be a Riot for the QAnon Shaman, Jimmy Kimmel Says

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      “Prosecutors are recommending 51 months behind bars, after which, he will be remanded into the custody of ‘Dancing With the Stars,’” Kimmel joked.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.Dancing With the InsurrectionistOn Thursday night, Jimmy Kimmel joked that Jacob Chansley, “the infamous insurrectionist” known as the QAnon Shaman who took part in the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, “is probably not gonna be storming anything any time soon.”This week, prosecutors suggested that Chansley be sentenced to more than four years in prison for his role in the incursion, which would be the most severe punishment yet for a participant.“Prosecutors are recommending 51 months behind bars, after which he will be remanded into the custody of ‘Dancing With the Stars.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Weird to think the QAnon Shaman could get four years in prison when the guy who encouraged him to do it could get four more years in the White House.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“And also, can we stop calling him a shaman now? I mean, that would make half the fans at the Buffalo Bills game shamans too.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I support a four-year prison sentence for any adult wearing a costume.” — JAMES CORDEN“They’re asking for three years for the riot, and an extra year because he used to be in an improv group.” — JAMES CORDEN“He may be going to prison for years. Even worse, they’re also making a movie about all of this: ‘The Shaman-Shank Redemption.’” — JAMES CORDENThe Punchiest Punchlines (Thank You for Your Service Edition)“It is Veterans Day here in the United States, the day on which we honor the men and women who served and fought in wars to defend our country so the rest of us can fight on Facebook.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The closest most of us have come to a war zone is shopping on Black Friday at T.J. Maxx.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yup, the only people who have seen more combat than you guys are flight attendants on Southwest.” — JIMMY FALLON“I remember telling my dad that I thought a life in uniform might be right for me, so he went out and got me a job application for Pizza Hut.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingThe “Daily Show” correspondent Desi Lydic put the spotlight on female veterans throughout “hist-HER-y.”Also, Check This OutJulia Child and a fridge friend in an archival image, as seen in the documentary “Julia,” directed by Julie Cohen and Betsy West. Paul Child/Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University/Sony Pictures ClassicsA new documentary about Julia Child explores her influence on how Americans cook and eat. More