Television

This week brings Ted’s origin story, and other tales of the damage fathers can do.Season 2, Episode 10: ‘No Weddings and a Funeral’We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.Last week, “Ted Lasso” gave us a moderately interesting but extremely bizarre bottle episode that temporarily abandoned all of the existing story lines in favor of an “After Hours”-themed night out with Coach Beard.This week, the sun rises on a new day of narrative momentum.“No Weddings and a Funeral” — I won’t lie, I think my headline is a better title — is, at 46 minutes, another lengthy episode. (The last three episodes have been the longest three of the entire series.) It is also the most intense and emotionally revealing episode to date, and perhaps the best of the season.Tonally, it’s all over the map, alternating between hilarity and grief and fury. But the writing is superb and the acting even better. In particular, Jason Sudeikis (as Ted) and Hannah Waddingham (as Rebecca) are both asked to go places they haven’t gone before on the show, and both rise to the occasion more powerfully than one could have hoped.A quick aside: Unlike the “Love Actually” episode, the rom-com episode, and the “After Hours” episode, this one has no interest in toying with its source material. There are few if any clear references to “Four Weddings and a Funeral.”I watched the 1994 film again to check, and I felt about it more or less how I did when I last saw it 20-plus years ago: It’s remarkable the degree to which a bit of Richard Curtis treacle, a Pottery Barn soundtrack, and Hugh Grant’s sheepish grin can convince viewers that anything is a “romantic comedy.”Because by any reasonable interpretation, “Four Weddings and a Funeral” is a film about two amoral sexual predators circling one another while casually leaving chaos and heartbreak in their wakes. They’re like Tom and Daisy Buchanan, but substantially more promiscuous.In any case, back to the main event. There’s a lot of ground to cover here, so I’m going to try something a little different and break it down by story line.Ted and SharonCoach Lasso’s scene with Sharon is the one we’ve essentially been waiting for all season. We watched the panic attacks and increasingly manic behavior for a while. And then two episodes ago we had the big reveal: Ted’s father killed himself when Ted was 16. That was the headline. This week, we get the story.Ted, dressing to go to the funeral of Rebecca’s father, gets the shakes and is paralyzed with anxiety. (There are some who might say this is the appropriate response to his choice of getting-dressed music, “Easy Lover” by Philip Bailey and Phil Collins.) So Ted calls Sharon, who immediately comes over.Ted tells her what is essentially his origin story, the reason he always tries to have a kind word for everyone around him: On Friday the 13th of September 1991, teenage Ted came home from school to get ready for a Jason Voorhees marathon with friends. He arrived in time to hear the gunshot. He was the one who called 911, then called his mother to tell her she had to come home from work.Ted’s father had been a good dad. (The Johnny Tremain story is lovely.) But he was focused on other things — work, friends — and Ted fears he didn’t really know he was a good dad. And of course Ted thinks it’s because he didn’t tell him often enough. Perhaps if he had, things would have turned out differently.It’s an admission that subtly but meaningfully alters almost every word we’ve ever heard from Ted Lasso’s mouth. Amid all his goofy banter, the closest thing Ted has ever had to a catchphrase is “I appreciate you.” And now we know why. On some level, Ted believes that if he’d said it more often as a child, his father might still be alive.Sudeikis’s work here is among the best I’ve seen from him on the show or anywhere else: raw and heartbreaking, the precise opposite of his customary chirpy persona. This is the real “Led Tasso,” not that ridiculously contrived on-field bully. (Sarah Niles, who plays Sharon, is excellent, too. But it’s Sudeikis’s scene.)The scene ends, as it should, with a hug between Ted and Sharon. I’d grade it the third-most-significant hug of the series so far, behind Ted and Rebecca’s after her confession last season and Roy and Jamie’s back in Episode 8.Hannah Waddingham and Harriet Walter in “Ted Lasso.”Apple TV+Rebecca and DeborahLike Sudeikis, Waddingham gives her most impressive performance of the series. In the first season, she mostly played an icy schemer. This season, to my disappointment, she’s spent most of her time checking her phone, looking for love. In this episode, all the masks come off.Attending her father’s funeral, Rebecca confronts her mother, Deborah. As a teenager Rebecca, like Ted, stumbled upon something she was not meant to stumble upon. In this case, however, it was not her father’s suicide but his extramarital coupling. (And, unlike Ted’s experience with his father, Rebecca was cursed with being an eyewitness.) The next day, he acted as if nothing had happened. She has despised him, and to some degree her mother, ever since.I confess that back in Episode 6, when Harriet Walter showed up to play Deborah for a fairly halfhearted subplot, I wondered why the show had cast such a gifted actress in the role. This episode is why. Although less well known than many of her British contemporaries, Walter (that’s Dame Harriet Walter to you and me) has been a titan of stage and screen for decades.It is of course Waddingham’s scene. But Walter plays off her magnificently, giving her all the space she needs while never receding as a presence. Walter excels at this kind of quiet intensity, and was a brilliant casting choice.It’s an extraordinary scene — in some ways, more memorable than Ted’s — but I did have a couple of small questions/quibbles. In Episode 6, when Deborah “left” her husband for the umpteenth time, I simply assumed infidelity was involved. If Rebecca didn’t think that was it, what form did she believe her father’s mistreatment of her mother was taking? As “revelations” go, it seemed as though this one was already something everyone already knew or strongly suspected.Another quibble applies to the highly choreographed stretch in which the show cuts back and forth, aggressively and often midsentence, between Ted and Rebecca’s stories. As moving as those stories were, the crosscutting felt too clever by half. If anything, it blunted (if only at the margins) the power of both Sudeikis and Waddingham’s performances. But perhaps that was the point? When “Ted Lasso” pours out naked grief and fury, it prefers to do so only a few words at a time?And is there any sensible reason to imply (as the scene does) that Ted and Rebecca discovered their fathers’ actions on precisely the same day in 1991? It’s a strange and unnecessary flourish that does little but throw the viewer out of the moment — both moments, in fact.Thankfully, it would take a lot more than this to ruin two of the best scenes the show has ever had. But it still feels like a failure of nerve, a worry that the show might get too dark or emotional or heartbreaking.NateAFC Richmond’s most insecure coach has had something of a break from his story line for a few episodes now. It was way back in Episode 7 that he threatened to make kit manager Will’s life a misery.But for anyone who thinks Nate is back on track, I recommend this interview with Nick Mohammed (who plays Nate). Things will almost certainly get worse, even if there are only two episodes(!) left in the season for them to do so.And while this episode did not engage directly with Nate’s narrative path — there are, after all, only so many things you can do in 46 minutes — it did nod at it a couple of times.The first was in a discussion of the afterlife. Higgins envisions an exceptionally Higgins-y heaven in which he role-reverses with his dead cat Cindy Clawford (she passed away in Season 1), and curls up at her feet in front of a fire.Nate, perhaps inspired by the feline theme, announces that he’d like to be reincarnated as a tiger so that he could “ravage anyone who looked at me wrong.” Yes, Nate still has trouble reading the room. More important, he again conveys that he is disturbingly close to becoming Travis Bickle.The other nod to Nate is more subtle. As Ted is dressing, right before his panic attack, we see two pictures on his dresser. One is of his son, Henry, whom he misses terribly and about whom he feels enormous guilt. (Remember that he said he “hated” his own father for “quitting.”)The other photograph is one of Nate leaping into Ted’s arms after being named a coach, with the handwritten note, “Ted, Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.” It’s the reminder of a Nate we haven’t seen in a long while.Side note: On his way out of the church, Rupert stops to whisper something to Nate. I have my guesses about what this means — is Rupert buying a new football club? — but surely it means something.Rebecca and SamAnyone who read my Episode 8 recap will recall that I was not a huge fan of its closing implication that Rebecca and Sam would be jumping into bed together. Well, the very opening of this episode confirms that they did indeed jump, and have continued jumping for at least a couple of weeks.My principal concern with this story line is that it is in some ways a replay of the Dubai Air plot from Episode 3: A decision is presented as bold and daring in part because the consequences could be disastrous; and then the show completely ignores any possibility of consequences.Right or wrong, the owner of a sports franchise having a relationship with a 21-year-old player for the team would be a big scandal. Yet the show conspicuously avoids even acknowledging this.Rebecca’s stated reason for not going public is “I’m enjoying the secrecy.” But here are a couple of other things she could have said (and in real life, almost certainly would have said): “I don’t want to be dragged through the mud by the tabloids again” or “I don’t want to create huge organizational — and quite possibly legal — issues for AFC Richmond.”Likewise, none of the women to whom the relationship is revealed (Deborah, Keeley, Sassy, Nora) seem to have even a moment of “Are you sure this is a good idea?” when they learn the news.Are Rebecca and Sam charming together? Of course they are. But there seems to be more than a whiff of fan service in hooking them up without paying any heed at all to the risks involved.That said, Sam’s closing line in the closet almost makes it all worth it: “Rebecca, there’s something I should warn you of: I’m only going to get more wonderful.” Is that even possible?Keeley and Roy (and Jamie?!)Keeley and Roy’s banter before the funeral is some of the best writing in an episode brimming with good writing. The bit about her wanting to nourish a tree with her corpse and his being modestly disgusted at the thought of eating fruit from that tree is excellent dialogue, perfectly delivered.But nothing’s going to beat Roy’s response when Keeley asks him whether, if he were run over by a bus, he would prefer her to have him buried or cremated: “Go after the bus driver and make him pay for what he did to me! Avenge me, Keeley. Avenge me!” And her subsequent response about the (theoretical) bus driver swerving to avoid a child? And his response to that response about not knowing of the existence of the (theoretical) child? Shoot it straight into my veins.Unexpectedly, Keeley is rather angry at Roy for the tree-fruit jokes. But the real potential complication is unrelated.Jamie has been pretty much in the background this season. But his evolution has been quite clear. Of late, he’s been consistently kind and supportive to teammates. But the question of why has lingered.Now we know, and the show couldn’t possibly have offered a more persuasive explanation. At the funeral, Jamie confesses to Keeley that he came back to AFC Richmond in large part because he loves her. And he tells her this, like the better man he is trying to become — and whom he thanks her for recognizing he might one day become — with the appropriate good-guy apologies: I know you’re with Roy. I know you’re happy. I don’t want to complicate things. I just felt I needed to say this out loud.This was a potent scene, maybe — I know I keep saying this about various cast members — the best work Phil Dunster (who plays Jamie) has done on the show so far. I’m pleased that they haven’t overplayed his evolution. I wish Jamie well, and I hope he finds true love.But I am confident I speak for millions when I say: If Jamie breaks up Roy and Keeley, I will spend every waking moment rooting for Nate to turn into that tiger so that he can slowly tear Jamie apart, tendon by tendon. I couldn’t take a Keeley-Roy split. The world couldn’t take it. Don’t undo all the good you’ve done for the global psyche, “Ted Lasso.”The EulogyIs it cute when Deborah tells Rebecca that she plays Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” throughout the house every morning? Sure.And the bit at the end, when Deborah discovers 30-odd years late that Astley is a dorky white guy (“That’s Rick Astley?”), is fairly delightful.But to Rickroll Rebecca’s eulogy in between? Even if you leave aside the (rather obvious) fact that people at funerals — even daughters! — are not called up without warning to provide eulogies they never volunteered, everything about this scene is cringe-inducing.It’s as if the writers challenged themselves to outdo the most saccharine-yet-vaguely-creepy moments in “Love Actually.” (“The Beatles at a wedding? The Bay City Rollers at a funeral? We’ll see your bet and raise you a Rick Astley…”)Needless to say, I hated this scene. Thank goodness the rest of the episode was as great as it was.There’s a lot more to say, but I feel a recap shouldn’t take longer to read than the episode itself took to watch — especially when it was such a long episode. So let’s close things out.Odds and EndsSassy is always great, but this episode may represent her peak to date. The over-the-balcony entrance? Terrific. And who could fail to love her manic new friendship with Keeley? (I want to join that pod.) But Sassy’s best moment this week comes when she tells Rupert something that needed to be said: “I think of your death every single day. Ooh, I can’t wait.”Coach Beard’s invocation of “21 Grams” (the theoretical weight of the soul) was excellent. But Roy’s reply was better: “Whoever figured that out clearly weighed someone, murdered them, then weighed them again.”Once again Jan Maas demonstrates his complete lack of filter, telling Nate, “Another man buying you clothes is infantilizing, yes?” I would say that there is a 100 percent chance he would not have said this if Nate were a bloodthirsty tiger. But it’s Jan Maas, so … 70 percent?One more great line, referencing Sir Mix-a-Lot: “I hate big ‘buts’ and I can’t lie.” Brilliant. But to have it come out of Sam’s mouth? Absurd. There is only one person on the show — and on the Earth — who would make that pun, and his name is Ted Lasso.In addition to the many already noted, this episode contained references to Tracy Anderson workouts, Obi-Wan Kenobi and “Singin’ in the Rain.” And I think Ted’s “I wish you doctor would” reply when Sharon asks if she can sit down is a reference to Robert Wood, a physicist and pioneer in optics.Let me know what others I missed. And thanks to those who pointed out painful omissions from last week from “A Clockwork Orange,” “Fight Club” and Elvis Costello. More

“Fortunately, his lawyer has experience suing family members, since Rudy sued his cousin for divorce,” Meyers said.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.All in the FamilyOn Thursday’s “Late Night,” Seth Meyers talked about how nice it had been not having to think or care about Donald Trump lately.“It’s like when you finally get a cast removed and you get to shower without taping a plastic bag to your arm,” he said.But Trump has been back in the news for a number of reasons, including his lawsuit against The New York Times and Mary Trump, his niece, over his leaked tax records.“Imagine suing your own niece. I mean, fortunately, his lawyer has experience suing family members, since Rudy sued his cousin for divorce.” — SETH MEYERS“His lawsuit claims Mary Trump was motivated by ‘a personal vendetta and the desire to gain fame, notoriety, acclaim and a financial windfall,’ which are the same reasons he ran for president.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The real victim is the guy who lost a billion dollars while pretending to be a self-made tycoon in Pizza Hut commercials.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Trump has so many legal problems, CNN doesn’t have even time to go through them all. CNN! They’re a 24-hour news network — all they do is the news. It’s not like they hand it off at 4 p.m. to their baking show ‘The Knead With Jake Tapper,’ or their 5 p.m. dating show ‘On the Prowl With the Wolf.’” — SETH MEYERS“Kind of feels like we are in ‘The Purge’ and Donald Trump is the only one who’s allowed to break laws. Like, he can just walk around and do whatever he wants and the feds for some reason can’t touch him. At this point, Trump could park his car in front of a fire hydrant and instead of towing him, they’d just let the building burn down.” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Booster Edition)“Earlier today, the C.D.C. granted emergency authorization to Pfizer for Covid booster shots, but only for high-risk individuals and people age 65 or over. After the last 18 months, we’ve all had — we all, I think, feel 65 or older, don’t we?” — JAMES CORDEN“And to make sure only seniors get the shot, the vaccination site is a Denny’s between the hours of 3:00 and 4:15. The password is ‘I miss pay phones.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“A booster shot for older people. Now you are going to have people in Hollywood lying about their age in the opposite direction. They’ll be like, ‘I’m 29, but I can play 72!’” — JAMES CORDEN“So, yeah, I guess Covid shots are like iPhones now. You think are you all upgraded to the latest and greatest, and a few months later they have a new vaccine with an extra camera.” — TREVOR NOAHThe Bits Worth WatchingMichael Strahan and Jimmy Fallon posed as wax versions of themselves to surprise fans at Madame Tussauds on Thursday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutElisha Williams in “The Wonder Years.” A new version of the nostalgic sitcom follows a Black family in Montgomery, Ala., in 1968.Erika Doss/ABCA reboot of “The Wonder Years” puts a twist on TV’s usual take on nostalgia by following a Black family in 1968. More

An ambitious reimagining of the Isaac Asimov epic suffers from by-the-numbers sci-fi plotting.The science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke once decreed that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. At the core of “Foundation,” the Apple TV+ series based on the novels of Isaac Asimov, is a similar idea: that any sufficiently advanced math is indistinguishable from prophecy.But in this ambitious, overstuffed epic, that intriguing idea often gets lost in space. Like Trantor, the imperial capital in “Foundation” whose surface is buried beneath man-made layers, the story’s core ends up enveloped in levels upon levels of machinery.The instigating figure remains the same as in the saga that Asimov began spinning in the 1940s: Hari Seldon (Jared Harris), a “psychohistorian” who purports to be able to predict the future by number-crunching the data on mass populations. (He’s the Nate Silver of space.) When his calculations determine that the ruling empire will collapse, the bearer of bad news and his followers are exiled to a planet in the dusty cheap seats of the galaxy, where they work on a grand plan to shape mankind’s fate and shorten the coming era of chaos.At a time when “follow the science” has become a political statement, “Foundation” can play like a none-too-subtle commentary. Hari’s protégé, Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell), comes from a world whose leaders condemn scientists as heretics and refuse to acknowledge the rising of the oceans. And Harris plays the visionary with a doomed-prophet rectitude that recalls his turn as a Soviet scientist in “Chernobyl.”This echoes the Asimov books’ atom-age belief in the power of reason over superstition. But the “Foundation” showrunner David S. Goyer is also willing to depart from the source material. Asimov’s galaxy was largely a boys’ club, for instance, so “Foundation” recasts key roles with women, including Gaal — as close to a central figure as the series has, though she’s sidelined in the middle of the season — and Salvor Hardin (Leah Harvey), a leader of the Foundation’s remote colony.Elsewhere, the series adds or shuffles story elements to create the kind of baroque intrigues viewers are used to from the likes of “Game of Thrones.” The role of the emperor is expanded — to be precise, it’s tripled. In the empire’s “genetic dynasty,” Emperor Cleon (conveniently an anagram for “clone”) has been replicated for centuries in three persons: the young Brother Dawn, the middle-aged Brother Day and the elderly Brother Dusk.Every generation, the eldest member of this living Sphinx riddle is ceremonially (and lethally) retired, a fresh baby emperor is uncorked from the cloning vat, Dawn is promoted to Day and Day to Dusk. (I told you there would be math.)Jared Harris plays a “psychohistorian” who claims to be able to predict the future with complex mathematics.Helen Sloan/Apple TV+, via Associated PressLee Pace, sheathed in electric-blue gladiator armor, plays a succession of Brother Days. His matinee-villain hauteur risks ridiculousness — say, when having an underling exploded like Mr. Creosote in “Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life” — but he energizes an often stilted production.In a way, the genetic dynasty and the Foundation are two solutions to the same dilemma: How do you achieve ambitions that take longer to realize than a human life span? For Cleon, the answer is to live serially. For Hari, it’s to craft a plan that will outlive him, in part by creating a quasi-messianic myth around himself. (Dealing with mortality is also the project of religion, yet another story thread in the series.)But this is also the challenge of “Foundation” itself. Its premise and Asimov’s blueprint suggest a story that needs to unfold over centuries, shuffling cast members in and out, focusing more on larger systems of society than on individuals. Serial TV, on the other hand, relies on audiences connecting to specific characters over the long haul.The cloning device is one way to keep characters around over the ages; there are more spoilery contrivances, too. Other changes Goyer makes serve to translate Asimov’s talky novels of ideas into a pageant of explosions and special effects.For instance, much of the 10-episode first season gets bogged down in an extended terrorism and revenge story that makes Salvor into an action hero. The thriller sequences — involving an enemy straight out of the Klingon-Dothraki warrior-society school — most resemble what viewers expect from a sci-fi epic. And I found myself increasingly tuning them out the longer “Foundation” went on.The images are certainly arresting. There are spacecraft with interiors like art installations; alien worlds with beringed and bemooned skyscapes; and some sort of mysterious giant lozenge that floats near the Foundation camp like a portentous piñata, promising to burst open and spill forth plot twists and dei ex machina.But there are things you can’t digitize: a surprise, a genuine laugh, the breath of creative life. Beneath the gunplay and C.G.I., there’s a much weirder show struggling to get out, about statistics and space popes, decadent clone emperors and millennia-old robots.OK, there’s only one robot, but “Foundation” makes her count. As the undying aide to a long line of emperors, Demerzel (the name will ring a bell for hard-core Asimov fans), the Finnish actress Laura Birn gives an eccentric performance that is both disconcertingly mechanical and the most vulnerably human of the series.This and some of the odder inventions of “Foundation” reminded me stylistically of last year’s “Raised by Wolves,” the HBO Max drama of obsessive android maternal love. It was hardly the best show of 2020, but it was so committed to its passion, so willing to cut open a vein and bleed weird robot milk, that I was held rapt even by its worst moments.“Foundation” is more consistent than “Wolves,” but less magnetic because of its concessions to sci-fi expectations. It could have been better, if only, like Hari Seldon’s disciples, it had faith in the plan. More

The two discussed the ceremony’s recognition of Broadway’s reopening, but also its pandemic losses.The Tony Awards are going to be a bit different this year.Delayed by the continuing pandemic, Sunday’s in-person ceremony will recognize shows that opened — and, in many cases, closed — long ago. The official after-party is canceled. And most of the prizes will be presented on a streaming service, so the televised portion of the evening can focus on marketing Broadway.But there is a solace for theater-lovers. Two familiar faces will be at the helm of the four-hour event at Broadway’s Winter Garden Theater: Audra McDonald, who has won more competitive Tonys than any other performer, and Leslie Odom Jr., who vaulted from “Hamilton” (for which he won a Tony) to Hollywood.They have their work cut out for them. Award shows have generally fared poorly during the pandemic, and the theater community is on edge as the industry seeks to recover from a devastating shutdown.In separate interviews, McDonald and Odom said they saw their roles as helping Broadway recover — reminding America that theaters are reopening, while celebrating artists and mourning those lost during the pandemic.“I want to be a part of whatever we can do to get the word out that Broadway is back,” said McDonald, who is hosting the first two hours, starting at 7 p.m. Eastern time and streaming on Paramount Plus. During that portion, most of the awards will be bestowed.Odom outlined a similar goal for his part of the evening, a two-hour show starting at 9 p.m. Eastern that will be broadcast on CBS. Primarily, it will be a concert, but it will also feature the awards for best musical, best play and best play revival. “I hope that we can remind people of the power of live performance,” Odom said, “which is a challenging thing to do on a television, but it’s what we’re tasked to do, and it’s our best hope in this moment.”McDonald with Michael Shannon in “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune,” for which she is currently nominated for a Tony.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe two hosts are at different stages of their careers. McDonald, 51, is a six-time Tony winner who has been described as the queen of Broadway; she is the only performer to have won an award in every acting category. She is again a nominee this year, for the play “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune.” Odom, 40, wowed audiences as a charismatically ambitious Aaron Burr in “Hamilton,” then pivoted to screen work in Los Angeles and scored two Oscar nominations for “One Night in Miami.”McDonald brought up another aspect of their selection. They are both Black, which is noteworthy given that the last 11 Tony ceremonies have been hosted by white people. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had hosts of color up there,” McDonald said. “It models something, seeing two hosts of color representing theater and the Tonys.”Neither revealed any details about the evening. Will McDonald sing? “It’s post-2020,” she said. “Expect anything at all times.” And Odom? “My first words were use me up,” he said. “However I can help — if it’s a pie to the face, or singing a ‘Hamilton’ tune, whatever is of use, ask and allow me.”They pledged to honor the work done on shows staged during the truncated 2019-20 season, even as they remind viewers that Broadway has reopened. “It’s been so long that these nominees have waited, and to let them have their prom night is what I want to do,” McDonald said. “I want to make it about them and their accomplishments.”Broadway, Odom said, is “going to be OK, in time, but I don’t know how much time,” adding: “This is a tough spot we’re in, and I don’t want to be cavalier about what we’re facing. But in the end, there are young writers and performers all over the world trying to write with an urgency and a relevancy and a potency that gives theater new life and reminds us of its necessity.”Both said that they believed the traditional “in memoriam” segment of this year’s awards ceremony — the first Tonys night since June 2019 — would be especially important, with over 680,000 deaths from the pandemic so far in the United States alone.“Beyond making sure that we put on a great show for America, I also want to make sure that we get that ‘in memoriam’ section right, because we’ve lost so many, and we’ve been away for so long,” Odom said. “That’s a cloud hanging over the evening. There’s so many that we’ve lost from the theater, and we’ve lost a great deal of our audience as well.”For McDonald, those losses are personal. Among those who died of coronavirus complications was the playwright Terrence McNally, a longtime mentor, collaborator and friend. (He was a writer of three shows in which she starred: “Master Class,” “Ragtime” and “Frankie and Johnny.”) She said she is also mourning the deaths, since the last Tonys ceremony, of the actor Nick Cordero, who died after a long battle with Covid, as well as the actresses Zoe Caldwell, who died of Parkinson’s disease, and Rebecca Luker, who had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.“Among the difficult things is that we haven’t been able to mourn them properly, because we haven’t been able to have gatherings,” she said. “That’s something else the pandemic has taken away. I think it will be an emotional moment in the show to recognize the great loss we’ve all suffered.”Odom, center, in “Hamilton,” for which he earned a Tony for leading actor in a musical.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMcDonald and Odom have been concerned about racial justice in America, and said that the issue would be on their minds during the Tonys.“I’m excited about the fact that there’s so much Black work being represented on Broadway this season, and I’m hopeful that there will be more awareness and more action toward making things more diverse and equitable, and making it more of an anti-racist space,” said McDonald. Last year, she co-founded Black Theater United, which recently negotiated an agreement with industry leaders that included a pledge to end the practice of hiring all-white creative teams.“We need to make sure the Broadway we left is not the Broadway we return to,” McDonald said, “but that it is a better place.”Odom said that a team of writers has been working on how to balance the show’s tone. “We have music and dance and great writers and a slew of talent, and we want first and foremost to entertain folks,” he said. “But beyond that, the show needs to come out of the truth of where we are. We need to honor this moment that we’re in, and deal with it honestly.”Neither McDonald nor Odom saw many of the nominated shows, but they did both see “Slave Play,” Jeremy O. Harris’s daring exploration of slavery’s lingering legacy, which, with 12 Tony nominations, has the most nominations of any play in the awards’ history. McDonald said that the play “rocked me to my core.” Odom called it “a hard watch” and said, “there were parts I didn’t recognize, but the big lesson for me is when a younger person is speaking, and there is something you don’t recognize, that means it’s something for you to investigate.”Now that Broadway is reopening, Odom said, he wants to see “Pass Over,” Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu’s existential drama about two Black men trapped on a street corner. He’d also like to visit “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical” (to catch Adrienne Warren’s Tony-nominated performance); “Hamilton” (to see the new cast); and “The Lion King.”McDonald, who saw “Tina” before the pandemic hit, said that she plans to wait a few months before joining audiences on Broadway because her 4-year-old daughter is not yet eligible for a vaccine. “I’m being super-careful about where I go and what I do right now,” McDonald said. “But as soon as she is vaccinated, I will get back out there as an audience member.”As for when they will return to Broadway as performers, Odom said, “I’m on the hunt.”“I’m looking for old great plays and musicals that haven’t been revived, and I’m meeting new fantastic writers and exciting young composers when I can,” he said. “I do expect it to happen.”McDonald already has her next role lined up, although she wasn’t ready to discuss details. “I won’t get on the stage this season,” she said, “but I look forward to getting onstage next season.” More

Seven hosts dedicated their Wednesday shows to raising awareness about the urgent need to slow global warming.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.Seven late-night hosts came together for Climate Night on Wednesday, using their respective shows to raise awareness about climate change.“You can’t escape,” Jimmy Kimmel said in his monologue. “It’s basically an intervention.”A veteran late-night producer and writer, Steve Bodow, organized the event to coincide with Climate Week NYC. Kimmel made the case that climate change trumps all other important issues.“The pandemic, systemic racism, income inequality, immigration, gun violence — but here’s the thing. If we don’t address climate change, none of those issues will matter at all. The car is going off a cliff and we’re fiddling with the radio.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“How could anyone be opposed to trying to fix this? Even if you run an oil company, you and your children and their children are going to have to live on in the world. There’s no Planet B.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Wildfires, floods, landslides — which, all amazing things to hear Stevie Nicks sing about; not something you want to experience in life.” — JIMMY KIMMELSeth Meyers and James Corden worked together on a joint intro across networks. Meyers called the occasion “one night where we put aside our intense, white-hot rivalries and come together to raise awareness for the vast effects the climate is having on our lives and the things we can do to help.”On “Late Night,” Meyers argued that climate change has made everything a lot weirder.“Now it’s just normal for friends to show up to dinner in late September looking like they just ran a marathon,” Meyers said. “Pretty soon the traditional Thanksgiving feast is going to be replaced by a clothing-optional backyard barbecue. ‘It’s too hot for turkey, so we’re just doing mashed potato smoothies.’”“This is how bad climate change is getting: wildfires in the West, floods in the East, freezing cold in Texas. Billy Joel’s going to have to write an update for 2021 and call it, ‘Actually, We Did Start the Fire.’” — SETH MEYERSOn “The Late Late Show,” Corden told viewers not to worry: “We’re not going to hammer you with scary stories, like the fact that this was the hottest summer on record here in the United States, which is true.”Instead, Corden shared inspirational stories of people doing their part to combat climate change and challenged his house-band members to share their own efforts.On “Full Frontal,” Samantha Bee shined a light on what she called “the number two issue”: sewage and the failure of America’s water infrastructure.“No one wants to think about sewage, but we all need to support the water infrastructure that supports us. Because waste disposal is vital to society and sanitation is a human right — unless you’re at an outdoor music festival, in which case, it’s a distant memory.” — SAMANTHA BEEStephen Colbert pointed to the numbers in his “Late Show” monologue, including a recent survey finding that most Americans do not believe they will be personally affected by global warming.“Americans treat climate science like soccer: We know it’s out there, and it really matters to the rest of world, but no one can make us care,” Colbert said, adding, “Maybe Ted Lasso could.”“But ordinary people are doing something about climate change: They’re worrying — especially young people. A recent study asked youths 16 to 25 from around the world how they felt about climate change, and 56 percent agreed with the viewpoint that humanity is doomed. Nice try, kids, but you’re not getting out of your student loans.” — STEPHEN COLBERTOn “The Daily Show,” Trevor Noah explored how climate change affects “unexpected little things” — slowing sea turtle reproduction, dampening the human sex drive and affecting the taste of coffee, wine and beer.“A lot of weird little effects that when you add them all together ends up being basically everything,” Noah said.“You know, my one hope is this is the news that finally gets people to take drastic action. Because if anything is going to motivate people, it is going to be the end of sex.” — TREVOR NOAHJimmy Fallon, for his part, left Climate Night jokes to the other hosts. Instead, he brought Dr. Jane Goodall to “The Tonight Show,” where she discussed her call for people around the world to plant new trees. More

Before you retire that smartphone or tablet to the bottom of a drawer, there are ways to get more life out of it around the house.Upgrading your smartphone or tablet will leave you with a decision: What to do with your old device?Trading in, donating or recycling retired gear are all popular options, as is passing on a serviceable phone to a family member sharing your wireless-carrier account. But you have countless other ways to get more productive use from outdated hardware, without putting a lot of money into it.Here are just a few ideas to get more use out of your demoted device.Make a Media MachineNeed an extra television in the kitchen or home office? If you subscribe to a TV provider or streaming service, your old phone or tablet can step up. Just download your TV provider’s app (like Spectrum cable or Verizon Fios) or your separate service (Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Fubo.tv, Netflix or whatever) and log into your account. Prop up the device near an outlet so it can run on electrical power while you watch, since chances are good that the old device has a worn-out battery.Likewise, parking your old phone in a speaker cradle that also charges gives you a bookshelf sound system for music and podcasts. Or you can keep the phone connected to its charger and stream music to a nearby wireless Bluetooth speaker. Powered speaker docks can be found online starting at around $40, and a wide variety are available. Wirecutter, the product-testing and review site owned by The New York Times, has suggestions for Bluetooth speakers, general audio gear and those shopping on a budget.Old tablets can serve as dedicated e-book readers, even if you have to charge them frequently or keep them plugged in.AppleAnd even if they have to stay tethered to a charger, old tablets also make good dedicated e-book readers or digital picture frames for photo slide shows.Control Your WorldSmart home appliances, music libraries, internet-connected televisions — so many things can be controlled by apps these days, so why not convert your old phone or tablet into an all-purpose universal remote? Third-party remote apps abound, but many tech companies (Amazon, Apple, Google, LG Electronics, Roku and Samsung, to name a few) have their own programs. Just take a stroll through your app store for software that matches up with your hardware.App stores contain a mix of official apps (like the Roku software shown here) and third-party options to remotely control smart appliances and streaming TV devices.Google; RokuAnd even if you haven’t lost the tiny stick remote that came with your set-top streamer yet, the onscreen keyboard included with most apps makes it easier to type in passwords. (Apple, which used to have a stand-alone Remote app, folded the Apple TV remote software into the operating system in iOS 12, but still has an iTunes Remote app for iPhone/iPad users to control their iTunes music collections stored on Macs and PCs.)In recent versions of iOs, Apple’s Remote app for Apple TV can be found on the Control Center screen, circled at left. The app allows you to navigate Apple TV and use a keyboard for search terms and passwords.AppleGet Your Game OnDepending on the processor and battery state, dedicating your old device to the pursuit of gaming is another way to give it extra life. Wiping off all the old data to start afresh gives you more room to download and store new games.Google’s Stadia gaming paltform runs on a wide variety of phones, including older models like the Google Pixel 2 and Samsung’s Galaxy S8.GooglePlaying old games on old phones may have nostalgic appeal, and you can find many classics converted for mobile play in the app stores. And you’re not limited to stand-alone games. Subscription services like Apple Arcade and Google’s Stadia can run on many mobile devices, and you can beam your games (and other video) to the big screen if you’re using the Google Chromecast game mode or the AirPlay technology that Apple devices use to share the screen on Apple TV.Investing in a hardware add-on like Razer’s Kishi mobile controller turns your old (or new) iPhone or Android phone into a miniature game console.RazerIf tapping a touch screen has never been your idea of serious gaming, consider snapping your old phone into a special controller that brings physical buttons, the standard D-Pad and thumbsticks to the gaming experience. The Razer Kishi ($80 to $100) or Backbone One ($100) are among the options.Entertain and EducateIf you’ve decided that your child can handle a hand-me-down phone or tablet for games and educational apps, take a moment to do a little bit of setup to protect both of you. Visit the settings area and erase your personal information first.Google’s Android, left, and Apple’s iOS system software include parental control settings designed to limit a child’s screen time and app-buying power on a hand-me-down phone or tablet.Left, Google; right, AppleNext, create an account for the child and configure the parental controls for screen time, app purchases and internet access; operating systems for Amazon, Android, Apple and Samsung all include similar parental control settings.If you’re loading up an old phone or tablet for a child, check the app store for kid-friendly programs or educational offerings like the NASA mobile app.Google; NASAIf the phone still has a functional camera (and can still hold a charge for an hour or so), you can also use it to teach the fundamentals of photography. Loading up the child’s app store account with a prepaid app-store gift card can impart money-management skills. And if the device’s old battery conks out after an hour, you can teach time management. More

Mr. Garson was also known for his role as the con man Mozzie on “White Collar.”Willie Garson, the actor best known for his role as Carrie Bradshaw’s best male friend, Stanford Blatch, in “Sex and the City,” has died. He was 57.His death was confirmed on Tuesday by his son, Nathen Garson, in a post on Instagram. The cause was not immediately disclosed.In addition to his popular role in the HBO series “Sex and the City,” Mr. Garson was also known for his role as the con man Mozzie in the TV show “White Collar.”Mr. Garson is credited with appearing in 30 movies, including the 2008 film “Sex and the City” and its 2010 sequel “Sex and the City 2.”Mr. Garson was born William Paszamant on Feb. 20, 1964, in New Jersey to Muriel Paszamant and Donald M. Paszamant. At 13, he started training at the Actors Institute in New York, and he graduated in 1985 from Wesleyan University, where he majored in psychology and theater, according to the university. After graduating from Wesleyan, Mr. Garson landed guest roles on several television shows, including “Family Ties” and “Cheers.” In addition to the “Sex and the City” movies, Mr. Garson worked with the Farrelly brothers in some of their films, including “Kingpin” (1996), “There’s Something About Mary” (1998) and “Fever Pitch” (2005). He also played Lee Harvey Oswald three times, in the film “Ruby” (1992) and on the TV shows “Quantum Leap” and “MADtv.” Mr. Garson also served on the advisory board for You Gotta Believe, an organization that helps find permanent families for young people. Mr. Garson became a parent in 2010 when he adopted his son, Nathen, who was 7 at the time.“As a narcissist actor, and I was the definition, I immediately became responsible for taking care of someone else,” Mr. Garson said in an interview shared on Medium last year. “It is a really special feeling to say that. It is such an important job and makes you grow in so many different ways.”Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.As the news of Mr. Garson’s death spread on Tuesday night, actors and performers shared their memories and praise on social media. The comic actor Mario Cantone, who played Mr. Garson’s partner in “Sex and the City,” said on Twitter that he was “devastated and just overwhelmed with sadness.”“Taken away from all of us way soon,” he said. “You were a gift from the gods.”Cynthia Nixon, who played Miranda Hobbes in “Sex and the City,” said on Twitter that Mr. Garson was “endlessly funny on-screen and in real life.”“We all loved him and adored working with him,” she said. “He was a source of light, friendship and show business lore. He was a consummate professional — always.” More

In “The Many Saints of Newark,” James Gandolfini’s son takes on his father’s iconic role. But knowing his dad hardly prepared him for the work ahead.When Michael Gandolfini was filming his role in “The Many Saints of Newark,” a period crime drama that casts him as a precocious teenage troublemaker named Tony Soprano, he was having trouble sleeping and would stay up late at night, working on his scenes for the next day.Sometimes he would reflect on the motivations of his character, whose loyalty is torn between two paternal figures: his frequently absent father, a New Jersey gangster named Johnny Boy; and the film’s protagonist, a charismatic mobster named Dickie Moltisanti.In his efforts to get inside his character, Gandolfini would try to identify with Tony’s desire to please both men. He would find himself drawn back to Johnny Boy and repeat the wish to himself like a mantra.As Gandolfini recalled recently, “I was always like, ‘I want to make my dad proud. I want to make my dad proud.’”It didn’t take a psychiatrist to decipher what it all meant. “Of course that was something inside of me,” he said.Gandolfini is the son of the actor James Gandolfini, who played the menacing but undeniably engrossing Mafia boss Tony Soprano for six seasons on the revered HBO series “The Sopranos,” and who died suddenly of a heart attack at age 51 in 2013.The 22-year-old Michael has naturally inherited many of his famous father’s features. They share the same immersive eyes and smirking smiles; like his dad, Michael is soft-spoken with a salty vocabulary and admits to an occasionally argumentative temper.And when Michael — who was born four months after “The Sopranos” made its debut in 1999 and had barely watched the show before preparing for “The Many Saints of Newark” — thinks of his father, he does not conjure up Tony Soprano, the larger-than-life character. He remembers James Gandolfini, the man.He treasures good times they shared, grumbles about life lessons his father imposed, admires him as an actor and misses him the way any child would yearn for a parent taken too soon. “I truly wasn’t aware of the legacy of him,” Michael said. “My dad was just my dad.”Now as he pursues his own prospering acting career, Michael Gandolfini is consciously and irrevocably tying himself to his father with “The Many Saints of Newark”; in his most prominent film part to date, he is playing James Gandolfini’s quintessential role — one of the most talked-about and influential characters in TV history — at a younger, more innocent age.Gandolfini as a young Tony Soprano opposite Jon Bernthal as his father in “The Many Saints of Newark.”Barry Wetcher/Warner Bros.With that decision comes demands — to fulfill an audience’s expectations and to meet his father’s benchmark — that Michael anticipated. But there’s an added responsibility he didn’t consider until he started making the film.“The pressure is real,” he said. “There’s fear. But the second layer, that a lot of people don’t think about, which was actually harder, is to play Tony Soprano.” When he stepped inside the role, Gandolfini said, “not only was it the feeling of my dad — it was like, Tony Soprano is a [expletive] hard character.”On a bright morning in September, Gandolfini, wearing a stubbly beard and a denim shirt, was walking through the Tribeca neighborhood where he’d lived as a boy: past the cobblestone alley where he’d learned to ride a bike and storefronts he visited after being given his first rudimentary cellphone, programmed with his parents’ numbers, at the age of 8 or 9.Though his father and mother, Marcy, divorced when Michael was 3, James remained a continuous presence in his life. Sometimes young Michael would tag along to neighborhood bars where his father hung out with friends. But more often Michael was doing chores his dad assigned him: “Mowing lawns, cleaning my room and getting $5 for it, going to shelters to feed the homeless and I would be grumpy about it,” Michael said.Despite the fame that his father enjoyed from “The Sopranos,” Michael said he showed little interest in the series: “I remember asking my dad, maybe at 13, what the hell is this? Why do I hear about this all the time? What is this about? He’s like, ‘It’s about this mobster who goes to therapy and I don’t know, that’s about it.’”After Michael attended middle school and high school in Los Angeles, he returned here to study acting at New York University. The craft, he said, called out to him not because it had been his father’s but because he wanted to see if he could do it himself.“I was craving an answer,” he said. “How do you do that — transform like that? Am I good? Am I not good? Am I going to get up and be embarrassed? That fear is an indicator that there was something that I wanted.”At a preproduction dinner, the “Many Saints” director recalls, Gandolfini thanked everyone “for giving me a chance to say hello to my dad again and goodbye again.” Devin Oktar Yalkin for The New York TimesBut in his first semester at Tisch School of the Arts, Gandolfini said, “I did feel a target on my back.” He was insecure and lonely, unable to find a community with other students and eager to mix it up with his teachers. (“I’m a bit of an arguer,” he said with a grin. “I find it fun.”)Instead, Gandolfini transferred to N.Y.U.’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study and, within a few weeks, had booked a role on the HBO series “The Deuce.” “It was a cosmic sign of a good move,” he said.Elsewhere in the WarnerMedia empire, plans for a “Sopranos” film were starting to come together. David Chase, the creator and mastermind of the original HBO drama, said that Warner Bros. gave him no restrictions on the scope of this film. So he and his co-screenwriter, Lawrence Konner, decided to focus on the show’s 1960s and ’70s prehistory — particularly on the character of Dickie Moltisanti (father of Michael Imperioli’s character, Christopher Moltisanti), who had been referenced on the TV series but never fleshed out.“We wanted to make a gangster film, more than anything else,” Chase said. “And we wanted to have a credible, believable, realistic member of La Cosa Nostra. And right there for the taking was Dickie Moltisanti.”The prequel story also allowed the screenwriters to show Tony Soprano in boyhood before he has committed to pursuing a life of crime.“We certainly didn’t want to depict him as the schoolyard rat or punk,” Chase said. “He was up to no good, in certain cases, even as a 9-year-old. But then, what boys aren’t, except the ones you want to beat up?”But as the filmmakers looked to cast the role of the adolescent Tony, they were unsatisfied with the actors they saw. As the start of production drew nearer, Chase and his wife, Denise, happened to be having lunch with Michael Gandolfini, whom they’d known intermittently when Michael was growing up.Father and son on a Jersey Shore family vacation in 2004.Brian Ach/Getty ImagesChase said he expected a boy to sit down with them but he looked across the table “and there was an entirely grown man.”During their casting dilemma, Chase said he remembered that lunch. “I just thought, that’s going to be the guy,” he said. “That’s the guy. It has to happen.”Gandolfini was not nearly as certain that he wanted the role. He knew it would require him to immerse himself in the life of his father, whose painful absence he is constantly reminded of.“I had spent so much time thinking about my dad, the last thing I wanted to do was think about my dad,” he said.Even so, Gandolfini agreed to an audition, if only in hopes of impressing the film’s casting director, Douglas Aibel, and landing other roles with him later on.To prepare, Gandolfini studied “The Sopranos” at length for the first time. Before, he’d only caught glimpses of the pilot, but now he watched the entire 13-episode first season, by himself, knowing it would be an emotional process. “It was hard to watch my dad alone and then having no one to lean onto,” he said.As he watched his father play the character, Gandolfini realized that his unique connection as a son had taught him nothing about being Tony Soprano. “Maybe I could know how to play my dad,” he said, “but I don’t know how to play Tony. I have to create my own Tony from my life and still play the things that made him Tony.”And he was utterly fascinated with the multifaceted Tony — “a character who will cry, become angry at himself that he’s crying and then laugh at himself all in one scene,” he said.Gandolfini was determined to assimilate the physical quirks and tics that he saw in his father’s performance: Tony’s lumbering walk and hunched posture; the way he bit his lip when he smiled and clenched his fists in his therapy sessions.After a weekslong audition process, Gandolfini came away with the role and a new appreciation for his father. “He so was not Tony,” he said. “The only insight that I think I gained was deep pride in him. I’m exhausted after three months — you did that for nine years?”Gandolfini in “The Deuce,” which he booked the first year he was also studying at New York University.Paul Schiraldi/HBOOnce Gandolfini won the “Many Saints” part, he realized, “Maybe I could know how to play my dad, but I don’t know how to play Tony.”Warner Bros.Alan Taylor, the director of “The Many Saints of Newark,” said he had some wariness about having Gandolfini try the role. “I’d never really seen him act,” Taylor said. “It was not knowing if he was up to it and not knowing if was the right thing, emotionally, to ask him to do. Because it’s such explosive territory to ask a young guy to go into.”But Taylor, who directed several episodes of “The Sopranos,” said he was won over by Gandolfini’s carefully prepared audition — and by remarks that Gandolfini made to his colleagues at a dinner just before filming started.As Taylor recalled, “He stood up and said, ‘I want to thank everybody here for giving me a chance to say hello to my dad again and goodbye again.’ From that point on, I never questioned it.”In the weeks before production, Gandolfini spent time getting to know Alessandro Nivola, who plays Dickie Moltisanti, as they went to diners, talked about life and watched “Dirty Harry” together.These exercises were necessary, Nivola said, because the film is so unsentimental in how it depicts the relationship between Dickie and Tony. “We don’t talk about how much we love each other,” he said. “So that feeling had to exist without our needing to put it in words.”Nivola said that it was easy to bond with Gandolfini over the important opportunity that the movie represented for both of them.“He being at the beginning of his career and knowing that he was going to be defined so early by this role that was originally his father’s, me because I was late in my career for a break,” Nivola said. “He was incredibly humble and told me, somewhat unnervingly, that he was relying on my expertise to guide him.”What impressed him most about Gandolfini, Nivola said, “was his ability to completely remove the sentimental, personal, genetic connection that he had to his dad and the legacy of the role and approach it forensically, the way that you would any other role that you were cast in.”With a chuckle, Nivola added, “You could say that kind of compartmentalization is the quality of a psychopath, but also people who are able to perform in these kinds of situations.”Jon Bernthal, who plays Johnny Boy, said that he and Gandolfini had spoken before filming about the burden they felt to live up to James Gandolfini’s standards — one that disproportionately falls on Michael’s shoulders.“He had talked to me about this mission he had been on, to get to know his dad better,” Bernthal said. “To try to fill the shoes of Mike’s dad, it’s an impossible task for all of us but especially for him. And Mike did that the whole time, with the rigor of his work and how much he put into it.”Despite their being from different generations, the 45-year-old Bernthal said he was surprised at how easy he found it to bond with Gandolfini as a peer and a friend.“His dad was my favorite actor and I think he’s striving enormously to be the kind of artist his dad was,” Bernthal said. “Similarly, so am I. We hold each other accountable to that. It’s remarkable that I can go to this man, who’s half my age, for advice just as much as he goes to me. He’s wise beyond his years and a committed and gifted actor.”Though Gandolfini has also worked with the directors Anthony and Joe Russo (on “Cherry”) and Ari Aster (on the upcoming “Disappointment Blvd.”), he is hardly a star and has enjoyed his low profile up to this point. But whatever reception greets “The Many Saints of Newark,” he knows his inconspicuousness won’t last long after its release.“I love my anonymity,” he said. “I get recognized from time to time and it gives me definite anxiety.” He said he still had a few remaining safeguards, though: “My beard helps.”As he steps into a world beyond Tony Soprano and the shadow of his father, Gandolfini also has a personal philosophy that is neatly distilled into a tattoo on his left arm: the word “faith” underlined above the word “fear.”Gandolfini explained, “You can live your life in fear and I mostly do,” he said, rattling off the self-criticism that runs constantly through his mind: “I’m not right for this. Don’t hire me. This is a bad idea.”He continued, “Or, because it’s all hypothetical, you can live your life with some faith that it’ll work out: ‘It’s going to be good.’ ‘I am right for this.’ ‘Someone knows what they’re doing.’”Gandolfini flashed a familiar smile and said, “If it’s not up to me, why not have a positive outlook?” More