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      Shannen Doherty Reveals Ravages of Breast Cancer in Candid Photos

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      The actress, 50, who has Stage 4 cancer, said she posted the photos to help raise awareness about breast cancer prevention.One picture shows the actress Shannen Doherty completely bald, a bloody cotton ball in her nose as she stares straight at the camera, looking almost confrontational.Another is more playful — Ms. Doherty, 50, is in bed wearing Cookie Monster pajamas and a Cookie Monster eye mask. She confesses to how exhausted she is, how the chemotherapy she has had to undergo for Stage 4 breast cancer has left her plagued by bloody noses.“Is it all pretty? NO but it’s truthful and my hope in sharing is that we all become more educated, more familiar with what cancer looks like,” Ms. Doherty wrote on Instagram this week.The images are unsettling to any member of Generation X who remembers her as Brenda Walsh, the feisty, polarizing teenager she played for four years on the hit 1990s show “Beverly Hills, 90210,” which brought her international fame and infamy.Ms. Doherty said she was posting the images as part of Breast Cancer Awareness Month in the hopes that they will jar people into getting mammograms and regular breast exams and help people cut through “the fear and face whatever might be in front of you.”The unvarnished photos align with the frank nature of an actress who never seemed interested in being universally liked and are likely to resonate with a public that is reconsidering how female celebrities were treated in the 1990s and early 2000s, said Kearston Wesner, an associate professor of media studies at Quinnipiac University who teaches celebrity culture.“The photos aren’t touched up,” Professor Wesner said. “They’re not presented in any way than the reality she’s going through. There is some feeling that when she is communicating with you, she is coming from an authentic place.”Ms. Doherty said she learned she had breast cancer in 2015. Since then, she said she has had a mastectomy, as well as radiation and chemotherapy treatment.The photos, which have been viewed about 280,000 times, have elicited comments of sympathy, admiration and praise on her Instagram account, which has more than 1.8 million followers.“Love you Shan,” wrote Ian Ziering, one of her former co-stars on “Beverly Hills, 90210.”“You are a force, Sister!” wrote Kelly Hu, an actress.Ms. Doherty did not often get such adulation when she was younger.In the early 1990s, Ms. Doherty, who was only 19 when she started acting on “90210,” was eviscerated by the press and many in the public who criticized her for smoking in clubs, her tumultuous love life and reports that she was difficult on set.Her character was an outspoken, headstrong and temperamental teenager who had sex with her boyfriend, fought with her friends and rebelled against her father.Brenda Walsh was “relatable in an uncomfortable way,” said Kat Spada, a host of “The Blaze,” a podcast devoted to discussing “90210.”In hindsight, the backlash from fans against the character of Brenda Walsh, and by extension Ms. Doherty, may have been a result of seeing themselves in both women, said Lizzie Leader, the other host of the podcast.“We always ask guests about their ‘90210’ journey and we ask which character they most relate to or identify with,” Ms. Leader said. “Everyone is almost always a Brenda.”But back when the show was airing, some fans became so consumed with vitriol for the character that they began calling for Ms. Doherty to be fired.They formed an “I Hate Brenda” club. MTV News dedicated a three-plus-minute segment to the sentiment, quoting people who mocked her looks and her decision to attend the Republican National Convention in 1992. One clip in the MTV segment showed a group of partygoers hitting a “Brenda piñata.”She left “Beverly Hills, 90210” in 1994, then went on to appear in the 1995 movie “Mallrats” and several television movies and shows. In 2019, she appeared in a brief reboot of the original “90210” called “BH90210.”In an interview with The New York Times in 2008, Ms. Doherty said that the bad publicity around her was often based on exaggerations or “completely false” stories.“I really could care less about it anymore,” she said in the interview. “I have nothing to apologize for. Whatever I did was my growing-up process that I needed to go through, that anybody my age goes through. And however other people may have reacted to that is their issue.”If you were a fan of Ms. Doherty, the headlines hurt, said Professor Wesner, 45, who watched Ms. Doherty grow from a child actor in “Little House on the Prairie” into roles like Heather Duke in the 1988 movie “Heathers,” and Brenda Walsh.“She meant a lot to me,” said Professor Wesner. “I myself was an outspoken girl and I’ve gotten slammed for it, too. For me, seeing someone who was also outspoken and also a ‘difficult woman’ was satisfying.”The coverage of Ms. Doherty was reflective of a time “when publications would attack, would fat shame, would ugly shame, would anorexia shame,” said Stephen Galloway, the dean of the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., and a former executive editor of The Hollywood Reporter. “There was no line between taste and vulgarity. It was anything goes.”And it severely damaged Ms. Doherty’s career, he said.Her decision to document the effects of cancer is “a great step toward redemption and meaningfulness” that could help people, said Mr. Galloway, who said he learned about a week ago that he was in the early stages of cancer.He said Ms. Doherty’s openness had made him feel more comfortable talking about his own diagnosis.“I looked at her and I thought, ‘what courage,’” Mr. Galloway said. More

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      Homer Simpson Was Made for Fashion

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      Behind the painstaking creation of the Balenciaga-Simpsons episode that took nearly a year to make.Clapping, whispering, cameras snapping, questionable music: These are the sounds of a classic fashion show. Bursts of laughter? Those are less common.Yet several were heard last Saturday night, rolling around the 19th-century Parisian theater where the great and storied house of Cristóbal Balenciaga skipped the traditional catwalk and screened a special 10-minute episode of “The Simpsons.”It was a surprise more than a year in the making, and the result of a sometimes grueling collaboration between two exacting creative entities known for their attention to detail. So far it has been viewed more than five million times on YouTube.In the episode, Homer writes to Balenciaga (“Dear Balun, Balloon, Baleen, Balenciaga-ga,” he says as he struggles to pronounce the famous fashion name) for Marge’s birthday, explaining that his wife has always wanted to own something by the brand. He asks for the cheapest item, which the Balenciaga team interprets as “just one of those American gags nobody gets” and sends him a dress that costs 19,000 euros. After wearing it briefly, Marge returns the dress with a note saying she’ll “always remember those 30 minutes of feeling just a little special.”Back in Europe, the Balenciaga artistic director Demna Gvasalia declares her note “the saddest thing I’ve ever heard, and I grew up in the Soviet Union. This is exactly the kind of woman I want to reach!” He then travels to Springfield and decides to “rescue” the “style-deprived” by inviting them to model his clothes in Paris, explaining that he wants “the world to see real people in my show.”The 10 minutes are packed with Easter eggs for die-hard fans of both “The Simpsons” and Balenciaga. A private Balenciaga jet has landing gear that looks like the brand’s famous sock sneakers; Waylon Smithers chooses a dress to wear when given his choice of outfit; Lisa at first acknowledges that walking a runway is “superficial” but then enjoys it immensely.The collaboration began in April 2020, when Mr. Gvasalia sent the “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening an email about working together.Marge in the golden ballroom dress from the summer 2020 collection.The Simpsons 20th TV AnimationMr. Gvasalia, 40, who was born in Georgia and watched the show when he was growing up, said the idea came to him during the first lockdown of 2020. He has a penchant for inserting Balenciaga into mass-market trends: Under his direction, the brand has collaborated with other American sensations, like Crocs and Fortnite.About “The Simpsons,” he said, “I always loved the tongue-in-cheek humor, the romance and the charming naïveness of it.”Al Jean, an executive producer and writer of “The Simpsons,” said that when he learned of the Balenciaga project in January, “my response was, ‘What’s Balenciaga?’” He turned to Wikipedia for answers.His first pitch to Balenciaga had a similar framing to the one they ended up going with — Marge’s birthday wish — but diverged with Mr. Gvasalia’s character deciding that the brand’s next show would be held in Springfield. When the Balenciaga plane lands there, its models aren’t allowed into the United States because they’re too thin and beautiful. Springfield’s residents become the models, their nuclear plant is the runway, and the ghost of Mr. Balenciaga makes an appearance.But Balenciaga preferred that Springfield be brought to Paris, Mr. Jean said. From there, the story was revised and tweaked — to the point that the writers joked about “Draft 52 of the Balenciaga script” — up until two days before the Paris showing.Mr. Gvasalia made specific contributions to the script, Mr. Jean said. For example, the episode ends with Homer embracing and singing “La Mer” to Marge on a post-show party boat on the Seine. But Mr. Gvasalia wanted one final joke, so he asked that Homer’s jacket be set on fire by a Frenchman smoking a cigar. Mr. Jean then suggested that Anna Wintour, who had appeared in the front row of the fashion show, try to put out the fire with expensive champagne, which Homer tries to drink instead.“She said, ‘Please don’t have me do that,’ so it became Demna,” Mr. Jean said. (Ms. Wintour otherwise approved of her likeness being used but declined to voice her character, he said.) And that earlier line about Mr. Gvasalia growing up in the Soviet Union? The “Simpsons” team had decided to cut it, but Mr. Gvasalia asked for it to be reinstated.He also asked, the day before the show, to change the color of a tear Ms. Wintour sheds while watching Marge model. The tear was too light, and it wouldn’t read onscreen unless it was a darker blue. Mr. Jean and the director David Silverman agreed.“They were definitely our match in terms of, to the last detail, making sure everything is perfect,” Mr. Jean said. “The animation crew, this is the hardest thing they’ve had to do since ‘The Simpsons Movie.’”Maggie and Lisa in Balenciaga crushed velvet jersey gowns from the spring 2021 collection.The Simpsons 20th TV AnimationBart in a Balenciaga look from winter 2020, including a Wifi vintage jersey XL T-shirt and black leather Cuissard boots.The Simpsons 20th TV AnimationMarge wearing a fictional Balenciaga dress in the “Simpsons” episode.The Simpsons 20th TV AnimationSmithers in a one-shoulder pantadress from the winter 2020 collection.The Simpsons 20th TV AnimationSherri and Terri wearing turtleneck dresses in bonded velvet from the summer 2020 collection.The Simpsons 20th TV AnimationMr. Silverman, who directed that 2007 film, said the biggest challenge was getting the “accuracy needed in the clothing,” which involved inventive post-animation effects to capture the distinct textures and movement of, for example, Marge’s runway look: a gold metallic ball gown.Balenciaga sent the “Simpsons” team 15 looks to choose from for the final show, all based on designs from the last five years. But putting them on the bodies of these universally recognizable cartoon characters wasn’t so straightforward.“It was tricky for us, capturing that balance of caricature and the integrity of the clothing,” Mr. Silverman said. “You’re translating the look of real clothing, real designs on these characters that aren’t exactly human proportions.”Mr. Silverman, who joked-but-not-really that this is how he spent his summer vacation, studied runway footage to figure out what the audience should be wearing and how the lighting should be hitting the catwalk.The script also had to capture the particular absurdity of the luxury fashion world and Balenciaga’s stature in that world — something that can’t be absorbed on Wikipedia. Mr. Jean said that in addition to the crash course in Balenciaga earlier in the year, watching the Netflix series about Halston, who was a great fan of Balenciaga, helped him understand the evergreen excessive culture of fashion.The supporting characters are also based on real people and animals, including Mr. Gvasalia’s husband, Loïk Gomez; their two dogs; the chief creative officer, Martina Tiefenthaler (who voiced herself); and workers from Balenciaga’s atelier who are finishing the collection on the plane while singing, “formidable, formidable.”Selma wearing a 3D double-breasted coat and a stretch velvet top from the winter 2018 collection.The Simpsons 20th TV AnimationPatty in a swing doudoune from Demna Gvasalia’s fall 2016 debut collection.The Simpsons 20th TV AnimationThis is one of Mr. Gvasalia’s favorite scenes in the episode, he said: “It just makes me so happy every time I watch it.”As for Mr. Gvasalia’s voice, “we had to try to talk him into playing himself, but he didn’t want to,” Mr. Jean said. He felt that was consistent with Mr. Gvasalia’s recent decision to fully obscure his face and body during public appearances, creating confusion among observers as to whether it was really him.When asked why he wanted to align Balenciaga with “The Simpsons” and whether he felt the brands had any commonalities, Mr. Gvasalia said that “it’s more personal to me.”“I did not want to align anything or make sense of anything. I just wanted to create an iconic visual story.”While the novelty of the collaboration made it feel surprising, the brands share a similar ethos. They have an appreciation for self-referentiality, breaking the rules of presentation (airing an episode with live animation; turning a red carpet into a runway show without telling anyone) and bridging the highbrow and lowbrow. Mr. Jean called Mr. Gvasalia an “excellent collaborator,” and Mr. Gvasalia described the experience as “the highest level of collaboration” and “a dream come true.”“I did not realize how complex it is to create a 10-minute-long episode, so huge respect to that,” he said.Whether the act was meant to challenge fashion’s self-seriousness or the public’s notions of luxury — to bring Balenciaga to the suburban masses or to bring the suburban masses to Balenciaga — is something he will let the critics debate.What did he want out of this? “A smile and a good dose of fun.” More

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      Cynthia Harris, the Mother on ‘Mad About You,’ Dies at 87

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      She was a familiar, sometimes meddling, presence on a hit ’90s sitcom about a pair of newlyweds. Earlier she won acclaim as Wallis Simpson, who inspired a king to abdicate.Cynthia Harris, a versatile actress who played Paul Reiser’s assertive mother in the hit 1990s sitcom “Mad About You” and won acclaim in the British TV mini-series “Edward and Mrs. Simpson,” died on Monday at her home in Manhattan. She was 87.Her death was confirmed by her nephew Dan Harris.The Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning “Mad About You” aired on NBC from 1992 to 1999 and was revived in 2019 by Spectrum Originals, a streaming site. It starred Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt as newlyweds (in the roles of Paul Buchman, a documentary filmmaker, and Jamie Stemple Buchman, a public relations specialist) who, living in Greenwich Village, must cope with both frivolous and eventful barriers to marital bliss, including Paul’s overbearing mother, Sylvia.Miss Harris’s Sylvia was a recurring character on “Mad About You” for four seasons and became a regular in 1997, often butting heads with Ms. Hunt’s Jamie but also sharing warmer moments. She reprised the role in the revival. All told, Miss Harris (who preferred that honorific) appeared in 73 episodes of the sitcom.In “Edward and Mrs. Simpson,” a seven-part dramatization broadcast in Britain in 1978 and in the United States in 1979, Miss Harris played Wallis Simpson, the twice-divorced American for whom King Edward VIII, played by Edward Fox, abdicated the British throne. For her performance she was nominated for best actress by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.She made her Broadway debut in 1963, and appeared in dozens of television shows and movies. For 21 years she was also the artistic director and a founding member of the Actors Company Theater, an off-Broadway collaboration founded in 1992 that calls itself “a company of theater artists that reveals, reclaims, and reimagines great plays of literary merit.”Miss Harris in Hyde Park, London, in 1979. She was nominated for a BAFTA award for her performance in “Edward and Mrs. Simpson,” a 1978 British TV mini-series in which she played the twice-divorced American for whom King Edward VIII abdicated the British throne.Monti Spry/Central Press and Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesCynthia Lee Harris was born on Aug. 9, 1934, in Manhattan to Saul and Deborah Harris. Her father was a haberdasher, her mother a homemaker.After graduating from Monroe High School in the Bronx in 1951, she earned a degree in theater and literature from Smith College in Massachusetts. Afterward she worked as an assistant stage manager.Miss Harris made her New York City acting debut with an improvisational group called The Premise and then acted for eight years as a resident member of The Open Theater, an avant-garde ensemble. Her first film role was as Mary Desti in “Isadora” (1968), based on the life of Isadora Duncan and starring Vanessa Redgrave. She also had roles in the movies “Reuben, Reuben” (1983) and “Three Men and a Baby” (1987), among others.Playing Wallis Simpson may have been the closest Miss Harris came to stardom, but she had no shortage of roles on television, in theater and in film.She appeared on Broadway in the Stephen Sondheim and George Furth musical “Company” in 1971 and in episodes of television shows including “Archie Bunker’s Place,” “All My Children,” “The Bob Newhart Show,” “L.A. Law,” “Three’s Company” and “Sirota’s Court.”Miss Harris was familiar to radio listeners and TV viewers in the 1970s and ’80s as “Mrs. B” in commercials for the now defunct Bradlees discount department store chain.She married the theater manager and producer Eugene V. Wolsk in 1961; they divorced in 1972. She is survived by her brother, Dr. Matthew Harris; and her partner, Nathan Silverstein. More

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      An Actress and a Sports Agent Get on the Horse

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      After they met at a North Hollywood house party, it took several years for Ashley Blaine Featherson and Darroll Jenkins to go from friendship to picturesque romance.Ashley Blaine Featherson, who plays Joelle Brooks on the Netflix series “Dear White People,” and Darroll Jenkins, a sports agent, were not immune to the anxiety inherent in a 2021 wedding. “In the midst of planning our wedding, many things have happened,” from Covid to hurricanes, said Ms. Featherson, 33 who is also a television producer and philanthropist.The two met through a mutual friend in the summer of 2010, at a house party in North Hollywood, Calif. “He kind of lit up the room,” Ms. Featherson said. “We just clicked and caught a vibe,” added Mr. Jenkins. “I knew I wanted to see her again.”Their sparks led to just friendship at first. “The romantic aspect of our relationship came about around 2011, but we didn’t officially become a couple until 2018,” said Mr. Jenkins, 34. “But once we got into a relationship,” Ms. Featherson said, “it was like we got into a relationship. We moved in together, we got a dog, and then we were engaged three years later.”Mr. Jenkins planned a trip to Santa Barbara, Calif., on Sept. 18, 2020, to pop the question. “I told her maybe we can go wine tasting or something,” he said. “I was downplaying it. I would say, ‘Let’s just enjoy being boyfriend and girlfriend,’ even though I bought the diamond a year before. I knew I was going to propose.”Ms. Featherson didn’t see it coming. “Our guide was like, ‘Hey, do you want to get off the horse and explore the beach?’ And I was like, ‘Not really,’ because I didn’t. I enjoyed being on the horse. I was reluctant to get down,” she said.When she finally did get off the horse, Mr. Jenkins suggested she look out at the beach while he took pictures of her. “When I turned around, he was on one knee proposing,” she said. “We had champagne on the beach then dinner at a nice French restaurant.”[Click here to binge read this week’s featured couples.]Stanlo PhotographyOn Sept. 5, 2021, the couple were married at Q Vineyard on Hummingbird Nest Ranch in Santa Susana, Calif. Ms. Featherson had 16 “sisters of honor” while Mr. Jenkins selected 10 “brothers of honor.” A total of 180 guests were in attendance for the outdoor affair.All attendees, vaccinated or not, were required to provide their negative Covid test results. “We had a Q.R. code where people uploaded their results. They had to take the test within 72 hours of the wedding,” Ms. Featherson said.The couple also had a wardrobe request for their guests: “We asked everyone to wear black, and our brothers and sisters of honor were in a pink, burgundy and wine color palette,” Ms. Featherson said. The bride wore a custom gown with a 10-foot-long train by Selina Howard of Vainglorious Brides, and Mr. Jenkins, a suit from Davidson Petit-Frère.The ceremony was officiated by Ms. Featherson’s friend and fellow actress, Aisha Hinds, who was also a sister of honor. After vows were exchanged, the couple simultaneously took a shot of tequila. “We love a good adult drink,” said Mr. Jenkins.For their reception, the couple changed into different outfits and hit the dance floor. Ms. Featherson, a Maryland native and graduate of Howard University in Washington, appreciated the fete’s Go-go sounds, a soulful genre of music.Mr. Jenkins, who is from Detroit, ensured that his home city’s club music was in rotation, too; the couple enlisted D.J. Mo Beatz, who kept the dance floor packed. The couple also secured the band Philly Featuring the Hour to play soul music at their reception.A proud member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, Ms. Featherson also incorporated the organization’s wedding traditions in the evening: “We were strolling, we sang the hymn and my line sisters sang the sweetheart song for Darroll,” she said.As for the event as a whole, she reflected on the “added anticipation and gratefulness” that came with getting married in a trying year, and said, “It was beautiful that so many people came together in one place to celebrate our love.”­­­­ More

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      Late Night Dives Into a New Senate Report on Trump

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      “So far, I’ve only read the title page, and it seems to be about how the former president and his allies pressured D.O.J. to overturn the 2020 election,” Stephen Colbert said on Thursday.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.Under PressureThe Senate Judiciary Committee released a new report on Thursday, titled “Subverting Justice: How the Former President and His Allies Pressured D.O.J. to Overturn the 2020 Election.”“So far, I’ve only read the title page, and it seems to be about how the former president and his allies pressured D.O.J. to overturn the 2020 election,” Stephen Colbert said on “The Late Show.”“According to a new Senate report, former President Trump directly asked the Justice Department on nine separate occasions to overturn the 2020 election. Nine? Was he in the back seat of the car? [Imitating Trump] ‘Will you overturn the election?’ ‘No!’ ‘Will you overturn the election?’ ‘No!’” — SETH MEYERS“Trump really thought he could get away with throwing out the vote. He told people at the D.O.J., ‘You guys aren’t following the internet the way I do,’ which I assume means they aren’t Googling ‘Mushroom penis normal?’ over and over again.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Fortunately, lawyers at the Department of Justice threatened to resign en masse if he replaced the attorney general, who refused to do his dirty work, with one of his cronies, who presumably would. He’s such a Karen, isn’t he? ‘Let me speak to the attorney general! He won’t? Well, does he have a supervisor? Put him on the phone!’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Of course, there was no acknowledgment of this attempted coup — and that’s what it was — from his fellow Republicans. Senator Chuck Grassley’s office this morning issued the G.O.P. version of the report, which says, and I quote: ‘Trump listened to his senior advisers and he followed their advice and recommendations,’ which is a nice way of saying he wanted to overthrow the government but the lawyers wouldn’t let him do it.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“But that’s how close we came. Trump tried every avenue he could think of: the courts, the states, the vice president, the Justice Department. He’s like the guy in gridlock traffic who keeps switching lanes, and then throws his hands up when it doesn’t work.” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Raise the Roof Edition)“We almost didn’t have a government to save, thanks to former President The Big Lie-bowski.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“As I mentioned, Congress has reached a deal to raise the debt ceiling for two months. I’ll tell you what I think: Just do what Netflix does and raise the ceiling a little bit each month so nobody notices.” — JIMMY FALLON“Woo! Raise the financial roof!” — STEPHEN COLBERT“This means America will remain solvent and free from financial calamity. Until Dec. 3.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingMadonna answered all of Jimmy Fallon’s burning questions on “The Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutJovani Furlan, photographed virtually via FaceTime, keeping in dancing shape in Joinville, in Brazil. Three New York City Ballet dancers reflect on not being able to perform during the pandemic and how it feels to return to the stage. More

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      For Sutton Foster, Crochet Is a Survival Tactic

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      Sutton Foster is finishing up a 15-week run at the Barbican as Reno Sweeney in “Anything Goes,” a role for which she won a Tony a decade ago, and she is preparing to return to Broadway later this year to co-star with Hugh Jackman in “The Music Man.”But before we got into all that, she wanted to show off a washcloth.“They didn’t have any washcloths here in the flat,” Foster said during a video interview from London last month, “so I was like, ‘Well, I’ll make some!’” She plans to give them as Christmas presents.When she isn’t performing onstage or onscreen (recently as one of the stars of the television series “Younger”), there is a decent chance that Foster is crocheting, cross-stitching, baking, drawing or gardening, hobbies she explores in her new essay collection, “Hooked: How Crafting Saved My Life,” which Grand Central will release on Tuesday.The chapters are craft-themed, but this book is not all about Mod Podge and Jo-Ann Fabrics. Foster, 46, writes about how keeping her hands busy has helped her cope with the stress and pressure of her career and the ups and downs of a life in which she didn’t always get what she needed from her family, loved ones or colleagues.“Hooked” is out on Oct. 12.“Anxiety runs in my family — in me,” she writes. “I am the daughter of an agoraphobic mother. I make a living as a performer. It’s complicated. And yet, if I’m feeling anxious or overwhelmed, I crochet, or collage, or cross-stitch. These hobbies have literally preserved my sanity through some of the darkest periods of my life.”There are light moments, like when we learn that Foster crocheted an octopus toilet-paper-roll cover as a wedding gift for her “Younger” co-star Hilary Duff. But these are balanced with heavier revelations, such as when Foster writes about the baskets she cross-stitched for her mother as a means of escaping toxic cast dynamics early in her career.She opens up about snowman-shaped holiday cookies she baked with the family of her first husband, Christian Borle, and the floral blanket she pieced together, one “granny square” at a time, when that marriage ended. She describes drawing interconnected circles with paint pens while undergoing fertility treatments, and the striped baby blanket she crocheted while waiting for her daughter’s birth mother to go into labor.Foster taught herself how to crochet when she was 19, and estimates that she has eight to 10 projects going at a time. She has a yarn dealer who shipped three boxes of Lion Brand supplies to London, then flew over to see “Anything Goes.” (You know what a big deal this is if you’ve ever been a novice in a certain kind of a yarn store, where customers tend to be sorted into varsity, junior varsity and invisible.) Sometimes Foster works from a book or consults YouTube for assistance, but she also creates her own designs.Foster said she has crafted many evenings of song, so she brought the same approach to writing her book: “You’re taking a reader on a journey, like taking an audience on a journey.”Ellie Smith for The New York TimesGrowing up in Georgia and, later, Michigan, Foster got her start, like many thespians of her generation, in a community production of “Annie.” After performing in national tours of “Grease” and “Les Misérables,” she appeared in Broadway productions of both shows, as well as “Annie” and “The Scarlet Pimpernel.” In 2002, she won her first Tony for “Thoroughly Modern Millie.”Like her perennially cheerful “Younger” character, Liza Miller, Foster was a bundle of can-do energy and enthusiasm, until our conversation turned to her mother. Then she spoke slowly, eyes closed, choosing each word painstakingly.Helen Foster’s health began to decline when Sutton and her brother, Hunter, were teenagers. She had a fraught relationship with Sutton and stopped speaking to Hunter for close to a decade; the siblings’ connection with their father suffered as a result. Since Helen Foster’s death in 2013, Sutton and Hunter have enjoyed a new chapter with the man known as Papa Bob, and “Hooked” includes his tips for growing the perfect tomato. (No. 9: “Pick the tomatoes when they’re near ripe but not quite ripe, so others can grow.”)“Crafting was the way I could tell my mother’s story that felt most authentic to me,” Foster said. “A way to weave, pun intended, all the facets of my life together in a way that felt true to me today.”In the book, she takes readers inside the squalid house in Florida where her mother spent her final years. “I flipped on the light and gasped,” she writes. “All of her windows had been blacked out with black garbage bags, secured to the walls with duct tape.” Her mother had been bedridden for months, refusing to seek medical treatment: “That explained the bedpan and pee pads on the floor next to her bed.”In “Younger,” Foster plays a 40-year-old empty-nester who lands an entry-level publishing job — and a whole new life — by pretending to be a millennial.Nicole Rivelli/CBS“It was mental illness that was never treated, never dealt with,” Hunter Foster said in a phone interview. After mentioning that he spends as much time as possible outside, he added, “I don’t allow myself to sleep past a certain time because my mom stayed in bed half the day.”His and his sister’s relationship with their mother is likely to surprise some readers, Sutton Foster said. “It’s a part of our story that people don’t know. It’s this underbelly: my mother’s illness and protecting her and being afraid of her. No one talked about it, and there’s this freedom now.”Behind her on the wall was a framed poster that said “Breathe.”Foster wrote “Hooked” with Liz Welch, who has collaborated on best sellers by Malala Yousafzai, Elaine Welteroth and Shaun King. “Sutton is a Broadway musical actress, my mother was a Broadway musical actress. Sutton’s an adoptive mother, I’m an adoptive mother. Honestly, I think we’d be friends anyway,” Welch said. “Crochet was the perfect metaphor for holding oneself together, taking all these different threads of her incredibly interesting, not-what-you’d-expect life.”Suzanne O’Neill, a vice president and executive editor at Grand Central, said: “One thing that’s very hard for people who are writing memoirs to do is to excavate their stories, and Sutton was game for it, even if there were moments that were hard. She wanted the book to be excellent. She dove into it. It was a piece of art for her, and she worked really hard to make it the book it is.”In “Hooked,” Foster recalls being 16, mesmerized as her idol, Patti LuPone, belted out “Being Alive” on TV. “There was something simultaneously terrifying and thrilling about her confidence,” she writes. Her mother, who had recently stopped driving and grocery-shopping, said, “You can do that.”Foster, center, won a Tony for her performance in “Thoroughly Modern Millie.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesShe later met LuPone, who also played Reno Sweeney in “Anything Goes,” and LuPone inspired one of Foster’s favorite collages: a colorful confection of craft paper on plywood, spelling out BADASS.“She’s a beautiful creature,” LuPone said of Foster. “She exudes a very positive light. We’re drawn to tortured souls, just to find out why they’re tortured. And we’re also drawn to the light, and the light is much more nourishing. You see somebody onstage that makes you feel better. That’s Sutton.”Foster is set to open “The Music Man” in December, playing Marian Paroo opposite Jackman as Harold Hill. But before she embarks on more soul-soothing craft projects backstage at the Winter Garden Theater, she will have time to settle into the Orange County farmhouse she moved into last spring with her husband, Ted Griffin, a screenwriter, and their 4-year-old daughter, Emily.She plans to bring at least one piece of her past into this next phase of life: a cross-stitched scene depicting baskets of various shapes and sizes that she made for her mother. For years, the piece hung in the front hallway of her parents’ house and was a stabilizing presence during difficult visits.Foster recently collected the baskets from her father’s basement. “I have them now,” she said. “They’ll go in the new house.” More

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      Seth Meyers Breaks Down Facebook’s Very Bad Week

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      “It’s the kind of week you normally post about on Facebook,” Meyers said on Wednesday night.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.Face-OffLate-night hosts continued to weigh in Wednesday night on Facebook’s horrible, no good, very bad week.“It’s the kind of week you normally post about on Facebook,” Meyers said, adding that the social media giant had it even worse than the Yankees, who lost their wild-card game Tuesday and were knocked out of the baseball playoffs.“Here’s the thing. Facebook is like a pocketknife: You can use it to peel an apple or stab a janitor at school.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Speaking of destroying America, Mark Zuckerberg is pushing back after the bombshell testimony from a whistle-blower who gave Congress insight into what her former employer is up to. Zuckerberg fired back last night with the longest Facebook post ever recorded. This post was so long, I thought my Aunt Fran wrote it.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The whistle-blower, Frances Haugen, claimed, among other things, that Facebook prioritizes angry posts — they get the most traction. Zuckerberg rejected those claims in an angry post.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Up until now, Zuckerberg has been silent about a whistle-blower revealing that Facebook has misled the public about the negative effects of its platforms on children and teens, especially young girls, and that Facebook’s mechanics further the spread of misinformation. That’s why I’m not on Facebook. I get my news from a more reliable source: pantsless guy on the subway.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Zuck actually posted a statement defending Facebook against charges that their algorithm encourages conflict, explaining, ‘I don’t know any tech company that sets out to build products that make people angry.’ Really? I do — it’s called cnn.com. Why is the video embedded in the article not about the article? If I click a link about the Albuquerque Balloon Festival, I don’t want to watch a video where Van Jones sits down with undecided voters after watching the same Humira ad twice!” — STEPHEN COLBERT“And it is, to say the least, not good that what amounts to a global public utility is controlled by one massive, secretive international conglomerate. It’s like finding out that all the drinking water in the world is controlled by some company called ‘Aqua Buds’ and it’s run by one weird little dude who created the company out of revenge because none of the cute girls at this college would give him a glass of water: ‘Oh, I’ll show them. I’ll show them all! Who’s thirsty now, Courtney?’” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Anyone Else Edition)“Well, get this — apparently New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has been telling people that he’s going to run for governor of New York next year. New Yorkers heard and were like, ‘Please, anyone else.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Then Rudy Giuliani was like, ‘What about me?’ and New York was like, ‘OK, maybe not anyone else.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Here’s the deal: de Blasio is reportedly possibly running for New York governor. There’s still a lot of unknowns: what his platform is, what his announcement date is, and what he’s smoking.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Apparently, de Blasio has been sounding out trusted former aides about their interest in working on a potential campaign. His only hope is that they don’t remember his presidential campaign, when he finished 47th behind Michael Bennet and a Roomba with googly eyes.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingTrevor Noah spoke to Monica Lewinsky about her new documentary, “15 Minutes of Shame,” on Wednesday’s “Daily Show.”What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightMadonna will pop by Thursday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutJeremy Strong, left, with Nicholas Braun, in the HBO comedy-drama “Succession.” David M. Russell/HBO“There’s a trying to Greg that’s really endearing and fun for me to play,” said Nicholas Braun, a star of “Succession,” which returns with Season 3 on Oct. 17. More

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      Adrian Lester Finally Arrives on Broadway, via Wall Street

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      A few years ago, Adrian Lester saw “The Lehman Trilogy” in London. Not only did he love it, but he was also impressed on a purely technical level. He knew how demanding it was for just three actors to portray several different characters and to carry the intricately devised epic, which follows the rise of the Lehman brothers in the 19th century, then the fall of their company in the 2008 financial crisis.“I was happy to watch it, be amazed, and walk away and go ‘phew,’” the British actor said in a recent conversation. “I thought to myself, ‘How are you doing that?’”Now he really knows, because he’s currently testing his endurance on Broadway as one of those three actors.The National Theater’s production of Stefano Massini’s play, adapted by Ben Power and directed by Sam Mendes, premiered in 2018, and had a short run at New York’s Park Avenue Armory the next year. The cast — Simon Russell Beale, Adam Godley and Ben Miles — reunited once again for a Broadway transfer in March 2020, but the pandemic put an end to it after a handful of previews.Undeterred, “The Lehman Trilogy” is back at the Nederlander Theater, with Lester stepping in for Miles (who left to play Thomas Cromwell in a stage version of Hilary Mantel’s “The Mirror and the Light”). Opening night is scheduled for Oct. 14.Small adjustments have been made to the script, Mendes said, to address the criticism that it had glossed over the Lehmans profiting from slave labor. “We wanted to acknowledge the family’s history in dealing with the slave owners of Alabama, when the three founding brothers first arrived from Germany,” Mendes said in an email.Lester with Adam Godley in “The Lehman Trilogy” at the Nederlander Theater, where it is scheduled to open Oct. 14.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThere is no editorializing, however. “We don’t cross that line of going, ‘Hey audience, this is horrible,’” Lester, 53, said. “We simply present it and allow them to make their judgment. I suppose my casting makes that process easier.”He added, “We’ve been very aware of what’s being said in the text, what we may have missed, what things need to be pulled out or put in.”With all due respect to Miles, the casting switcheroo is a special treat for New Yorkers, who have not seen Lester nearly enough over the course of his three-decade career on the stage and screen. It feels incredible that he is just now making his Broadway debut, though he has popped up on smaller local stages: as Rosalind in Cheek by Jowl’s “As You Like It” back in 1991 and 1994, as that moody Scandi prince in a Peter Brook production of “Hamlet” that transferred from London in 2001, or as the real-life 19th-century actor Ira Aldridge in “Red Velvet” (written by Lolita Chakrabarti, Lester’s wife).No matter how good those productions were, they did not turn him into a New York marquee name. Lester good-naturedly pointed out that when he is recognized here, it’s usually because of a pair of screen performances that go back 20 or so years: as a movie star dating Tracee Ellis Ross’s character in the TV series “Girlfriends” and as a presidential-campaign operative in the Mike Nichols film “Primary Colors.”It’s another story back home, where the Birmingham-born commander of the Order of the British Empire has had lauded turns as Henry V and Othello, and received an Olivier Award in 1996 for his performance as Bobby in “Company,” also directed by Mendes — because, yes, Lester can sing and dance, too.He has also done the requisite television work, spending, for example, seven seasons on the comic caper “Hustle” as Mickey Rocks, the charming leader of a merry band of con artists.That show’s creator, Tony Jordan, was looking for someone along the lines of George Clooney in “Ocean’s Eleven” to play Mickey. Those are tough designer shoes to fill, but Lester’s ability to embody nonchalant, beguiling poise turned out to a perfect fit for a smooth criminal.“Before creating the show I’d read 20 books on confidence tricks,” Jordan wrote in an email. “I should be the hardest person to con, but I know that if Adrian’s Mickey had tried to sell me shares in a recently discovered gold mine in Arizona, I’d have invested heavily.”For Lester, the part was catnip because it actually was many parts. “The reason why I stayed with this character is that every episode, he pretends to be someone else,” he said. “You knew who he was inside, but you watched him become something else in front of you. And that,” he said, snapping his fingers for emphasis, “was just gold dust for me. I loved it.”But beyond Mickey’s parade of disguises and tricks, Lester also grounded him.“Adrian brought a truth to the role,” Jordan said. “You believed him totally, and more importantly, he made you feel that he wasn’t on the screen, that he was sitting beside you. That he was your best friend.”Sitting in an impersonal conference room in between “Lehman” rehearsals, Lester was thoughtful and soft-spoken — he was barely audible above the HVAC system’s white noise. The immediate result was I leaned forward and focused. This magnetic pull translates to the stage as a mysterious kind of spell: Nicholas Hytner, who directed Lester in “Othello” and “Henry V,” wrote in an email that the actor “always seems to be nursing a secret. It’s what draws you in.”“In this industry, you’re not going to get promoted by just waiting for someone to promote you,” Lester said, “you have to promote yourself.”Kendall Bessent for The New York TimesPartly, it’s that Lester, who trained at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, has impeccable chops. But he also knows not to overuse them, which would transfer the attention from the character to the actor. “When I was in rehearsal in drama school, I would speak things in meter and then never do it again,” he said. “If you’re in front of an audience and your voice, your mannerism, your pattern of speech, your intellectual approach to the performance tells the audience that you’re acting, they will switch off. And so I’ve never wanted to do that in anything.”​​For Hytner, this translates into a great classical actor. “He is in total command of the way Shakespeare’s people think and speak,” Hytner said, “in long, perfectly weighted paragraphs that emerge as if spontaneous.”Onstage, Lester has an uncanny way to establish a connection with both his scene partners and the audience by expressing a lot with seemingly little. His Othello, for example, exuded a sense of natural authority without resorting to the usual manly signifiers of military toughness. This made the times when he upped the ante all the more impactful — the scene in which he kills Desdemona was even harder to watch than usual. (The production can be streamed on the National Theater’s website.)Lester’s creative ambitions are naturally leading him to try to wrest more autonomy in his career. He has been dabbling with directing — an episode of “Hustle” here, a couple of episodes of “Riviera” there — and he’s now preparing to step behind the camera for his first feature, with possibly a second one in the works as well.“If you want to be a part of creating these stories onstage, on television, on the film screen, it’s always a struggle,” he said. “If you want to have more of a say on how the story goes, you have to step behind the camera. In this industry, you’re not going to get promoted by just waiting for someone to promote you,” he continued, “you have to promote yourself. And the only way you do that is by saying no to the things you would have said yes to beforehand, and wait for the next thing to come. The only power you have as an actor is to say no.”In his case, it has also been to say yes to roles where his mere casting defied antiquated expectations of who can play what.“Every time I’ve played a role — every time — I’ve been hit by the same response of ‘Oh goodness, that’s interesting,’” he said, pointedly making exceptions for “Six Degrees of Separation” and “Red Velvet,” in which he portrayed Black men. “Every time I’ve played a character, a classical one especially, it’s been somewhat a departure from how people perceive that role to have been.”He paused, smiled. “I have to politely leave those people to their own thoughts.” More