Subterms
Ahead of Thursday’s “Friends” special on HBO Max, here are highlights from the many times the cast members demonstrated that they were clearly not on a break.The long-awaited “Friends” reunion is almost upon us, set to land Thursday on HBO Max at around 3 a.m. Eastern. More
A Discovery reality TV competition, a Russian medical thriller and more productions could be heading to the orbital outpost in the next year.Who wants to be an astronaut?If the answer is you, there’s a reality TV show, appropriately titled “Who Wants to Be an Astronaut?,” that you ought to apply for.The Discovery Channel is seeking to cast about 10 would-be astronauts to compete during the series’s eight-episode run next year for a seat on a real-life trip to the International Space Station, followed by live coverage of the launch of the winner on a SpaceX rocket.“We’d like a diverse group of people that each have their own story, why they want to go to space, why they’re worthy of going to space, what their back story is,” said Jay Peterson, president of Boat Rocker Studios, Unscripted, one of the companies producing the show for Discovery.That person will not be the only amateur astronaut destined for the space station next year. So many tourism and entertainment efforts are preparing trips there that it could begin to look more like a soundstage for television shows and a hotel for the wealthy than an orbiting research laboratory.Many who work in the business of space believe that is a good thing, even if trips to orbit will remain out of reach of all but the wealthiest passengers in the near term.“This is a real inflection point, I think, with human spaceflight,” Phil McAlister, NASA’s director of commercial spaceflight development, said during a news conference this month announcing that the agency had signed an agreement with Axiom Space, a Houston-based company, to fly the first mission of private astronauts to the space station.“I’m very bullish on the tourism market and the tourism activity,” Mr. McAlister said. “I think more people that are going to fly, they’re going to want to do more things in space.”Although the International Space Station may stay up in orbit at least until 2028, in the future it will not be the only space station. Russian space authorities last month declared their intention to leave the I.S.S. in the coming years and build a station of their own. A Chinese orbital outpost is expected to come online in the next year or two.Even NASA is looking for what comes next, promising support for commercial alternatives. Axiom, for one, is building a commercial segment, which will first be added to the International Space Station and later serve as a core piece of an Axiom station.“By the end of the decade I believe we will have at least five, possibly 10 private stations,” said Jeffrey Manber, chief executive of NanoRacks, a company that arranges commercial use of I.S.S. and is also planning its own orbital outposts. “Some for entertainment, some for research, some for in-space manufacturing, some for preparing the way for our journey to Mars. At long last, our more pragmatic aspirations are becoming reality.”TV and film projects in orbit are attracting the greatest attention so far. In the year ahead, the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, and a Russian broadcaster, Channel One, are behind a project in the year ahead to send Yulia Peresild, an actress, and Klim Shipenko, a filmmaker, to the space station to make the movie “Challenge.” Ms. Peresild will play a surgeon sent to orbit to save the life of a Russian astronaut.The Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa expects to spend 12 days in space starting in December, and hopes eventually to circle the moon.David Mcnew/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA Soyuz rocket taking off from the Vostochny Cosmodrome outside the city of Uglegorsk, Russia, last month.Roscosmos/EPA, via ShutterstockThey will be flying on a Russian Soyuz rocket. So will a Japanese fashion entrepreneur, Yusaku Maezawa, and Yozo Hirano, a production assistant. Their 12-day trip, scheduled to launch in December, is a prelude for a more ambitious around-the-moon trip Mr. Maezawa hopes to embark on in a few years in the giant SpaceX Starship rocket currently in development. His trip to the space station is being arranged by Space Adventures, a company that arranged eight similar visits for private citizens between 2001 and 2009.There is still the possibility of Tom Cruise going to space, too.A year ago, Deadline reported that NASA was in discussions with the megamovie star on shooting an action-adventure film on the station. Since then, nothing more of Mr. Cruise’s out-of-this-world movie project has been revealed publicly.There will also be other trips to space going places other than the space station. Jared Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur, has bought an orbital trip from SpaceX, the rocket company started by Elon Musk.A bit closer to Earth, two companies, Virgin Galactic, founded by Richard Branson, and Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos, are getting closer to flying tourists on short, suborbital flights that will offer a few minutes of weightlessness.On Saturday, Virgin Galactic conducted a successful test flight of its SpaceShipTwo rocket plane. And Blue Origin has announced that its New Shepard spacecraft will have people aboard its next flight, scheduled for July 20, and it is auctioning one seat. As of Wednesday, the high bid was $2.8 million.Axiom Space, the Houston company, is central to some coming trips to the space station. Its first flight to the International Space Station, which is to launch aboard a SpaceX rocket as early as January, will carry three passengers, who are spending $55 million each for their eight days or so in orbit. Michael López-Alegría, a former NASA astronaut who is now a vice president at Axiom, will accompany them, serving as commander of the mission.Film director Klim Shipenko, left, and actor Yulia Pereslid, third from left, at the cosmonaut training center in Star City, Russia. They will attempt to make a film aboard the International Space Station in the coming year.ITAR-TASS News Agency/AlamyVirgin Galactic’s VSS Unity being released from its mothership, VMS Eve, on the way to its first spaceflight after launch from Spaceport America in New Mexico this month.Virgin Galactic, via ReutersThis month’s announcement was the first time NASA acknowledged that the Axiom mission was officially on the space station schedule.“We’re finally able to open our doors to private citizens and allow others to experience the magic of living and working in space,” said Dana Weigel, deputy manager for the space station at NASA. “The dream is really to allow everyone access to space, and this is a pretty exciting starting point here.”Producers of Discovery’s “Who Wants to Be an Astronaut” expect the winner to be on board for the second Axiom mission to the space station, which might take off six or seven months after the first one. For now, an agreement between the Discovery team and Axiom has not been finalized, and NASA has yet to choose Axiom to conduct the second private space tourism flight.The NASA-led part of the station could accommodate two private astronaut missions a year, space agency officials have said, and other companies are also interested in participating.“We are seeing a lot of interest in private astronaut missions, even outside of Axiom,” Ms. Weigel said. “At this point, the demand exceeds what we actually believe the opportunities on station will be.”Still, on Tuesday, Axiom announced two people who would be in the seats for that second mission: Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut who now works for Axiom, will be the commander, and John Shoffner, a paying passenger who made his fortune as head of a company that manufactures conduits for fiber optic cables, will serve as pilot for the mission.Dr. Whitson, who holds the record for the most cumulative time in space by a NASA astronaut — 665 days — joined Axiom as a consultant a year ago, in hopes of getting to space again and adding to her record. “Yes, most definitely,” she said. “That was the carrot.”Mr. Peterson said plans for the Discovery show grew out of discussions with Axiom early in 2020 and that it would be “a premium documentary” and less like “Survivor” or other ruthless reality television competitions.“There’s real stakes here, unlike those kinds of comparisons,” Mr. Peterson said. “We want to create an interest in somebody, so that everyone can feel like they maybe someday have the ability to do this.”The astronaut Peggy Whitson in the cupola of the International Space Station in 2016. She will chaperone a tourist to the I.S.S., as will astronaut Michael López-Alegría, who is now president of Axiom.NASA, via Associated PressMr. López-Alegría in the Quest Airlock of the I.S.S. in 2002.NASAPaul Ricci, a founder of BoomTown Content Company and also involved in the show, said the competition will be based on what astronauts and others who have worked in human spaceflight have said was needed to succeed.“If these are the qualities that astronauts need to have,” Mr. Ricci said, “then we can model challenges that test those qualities. Things like problem solving, teamwork, precision and focus, grace under pressure, handling the unexpected.”The idea of staging competitions to get to space is not new. In 1990, Toyohiro Akiyama, a Japanese television journalist, went to the Russian space station Mir. The Tokyo Broadcasting Service bought the seat on the Soyuz and Mr. Akiyama was selected from 163 candidates. A year later, Helen Sharman, an English chemist, also flew to Mir, selected from among 13,000 British applicants in a privately financed campaign.A space-based reality television show is not a new idea either. In 2000, NBC signed a deal for a show developed by Mark Burnett, who had also produced “The Apprentice” and “Survivor.” The winner of that competition would have also traveled to Mir, but NASA pressed Russia to abandon Mir and shift its focus to the International Space Station, which was in the early stages of construction.Russia relented, Mir was nudged to a watery crash in the Pacific in 2001, and the reality television show never came to fruition.As for Mr. Cruise, it is a guessing game when he and the movie director he is working with, Doug Liman, might head to the space station, and Axiom has never commented on whether it is involved in Mr. Cruise’s movie.Asked on Monday if there were any developments that could be shared, Amanda Lundberg, Mr. Cruise’s publicist, replied, “Thanks but this is not possible.” More
Most of the prizes will be announced on the Paramount+ streaming service, followed by a starry concert celebrating Broadway on CBS television.The long-delayed Tony Awards, honoring the last set of shows to open on Broadway before theaters went dark, finally have a plan: The ceremony will take place on Sept. 26, timed to bolster a pandemic-hobbled industry as shows begin to reopen.Three of the 25 competitive awards — best musical, best play and best play revival — will be presented live during a television program, broadcast on CBS, that will primarily be a starry concert of theater songs. But the bulk of the awards, honoring performers, writers, directors, choreographers and designers, will be given out just beforehand, during a ceremony that will be shown only on Paramount+, the ViacomCBS subscription streaming service.The organizers’ current expectation is that the event — awards and performances — will be live and in-person, taking place inside a Broadway theater.The three jukebox shows vying for best musical — “Jagged Little Pill,” “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” and “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical” — will each be invited to perform on the television broadcast. Many details — like which theater will be used, whether there will be a host, and who will perform — have not been determined.The two-platform structure, running a total of four hours, was arrived at during lengthy negotiations between the Broadway League and the American Theater Wing — the two organizations that present the awards — and CBS, which has broadcast the ceremony since 1978. CBS pushed to emphasize entertainment value, particularly in a year when viewership has plunged for many awards shows; the theater organizations wanted a way to honor the artistry of the abbreviated 2019-2020 season.“The ground was shifting under our feet the entire time, but our goal was to get as much celebration of the community and all the nominees as possible,” said the League’s president, Charlotte St. Martin.In a joint interview, St. Martin and the Theater Wing’s chief executive, Heather Hitchens, said they were pleased with the outcome.“Everybody wanted to create something that would celebrate the community, help sell tickets and be appealing to a national audience,” Hitchens said. “There were really good, thorough and passionate discussions about how best to achieve those three things.”They noted that it has been years since all Tony Awards categories were viewable nationally. For six years, starting in 1997, some of the awards were presented on a PBS special that would air just before the CBS broadcast, but in recent years, many of the design and writing awards have been presented off the air.“One of the things we’re proudest of is we got Paramount+ for all of our awardees, and the celebration of these awards on a major platform is a huge achievement,” Hitchens said. “That’s something we’ve wanted for years.”The broadcast segment is being described in a news release as “a live concert event, featuring superstar Broadway entertainers and Tony Award winners reuniting onstage to perform beloved classics and celebrate the joy and magic of live theater.” Asked for more detail, Hitchens said, “It’s going to be jam-packed with entertainment that is about Broadway. More to come on that.”The two-platform plan is similar to that used by the Grammy Awards, at which the majority of the prizes are announced at a preshow ceremony, followed by an entertainment-focused television broadcast. Some of the Tony Award winners named during the streaming ceremony will also be acknowledged during the TV portion.The ceremony, originally scheduled for June 7, 2020, will take place in September as part of an effort to reinforce the marketing message that Broadway is back in business — in fact, the show is being titled “The Tony Awards Present: Broadway’s Back!” Broadway’s 41 theaters have been closed since March 12, 2020; at the moment, the first show planning performances is “Hadestown,” on Sept. 2, followed by “Chicago,” “Hamilton,” “Lackawanna Blues,” “The Lion King” and “Wicked” on Sept. 14 and at least two dozen more over the fall and winter.“To have tickets on sale, to have shows announcing their openings, and to have an announcement about the Tony Awards, feels exhilarating, and hopeful,” St. Martin said.This year’s awards ceremony — formally known as the Antoinette Perry Awards — will be the 74th such event and will recognize work performed on Broadway between April 26, 2019, and Feb. 19, 2020. The Tony Awards retroactively set that eligibility deadline after determining that too few voters had seen a revival of “West Side Story” and a new musical called “Girl From the North Country” that opened in the final weeks before the pandemic arrived; those shows are expected to be eligible to compete for awards next year.The nominations for this year’s ceremony were announced last October; 15 shows managed to score a nod.The five contenders for best play are “Grand Horizons,” by Bess Wohl; “The Inheritance,” by Matthew López; “Sea Wall/A Life,” by Simon Stephens and Nick Payne; “Slave Play,” by Jeremy O. Harris; and “The Sound Inside,” by Adam Rapp.The winners have already been determined, although the results are unknown: the 778 Tony voters — producers, performers, directors, designers and others associated with the industry — were invited to cast their ballots, electronically, in early March. The results have since been safeguarded by the accounting firm Deloitte & Touche LLP.The streaming portion of the Sept. 26 Tony Awards ceremony is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. Eastern; the broadcast show, which can also be streamed live and on demand on Paramount+ and the CBS app, is scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. Eastern. As in years past, the Tony Awards show will be put together by the producers Ricky Kirshner and Glenn Weiss of White Cherry Entertainment; Weiss will be the show’s director. More
Kimmel wouldn’t let Senator Cruz call the military “woke” and “emasculated,” so the Texas Republican reminded the comedian of his loss in their 2018 basketball game.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. We’re all stuck at home at the moment, so here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Kimmel vs. Cruz, the RematchJimmy Kimmel on Tuesday rehashed the details of a new feud with Senator Ted Cruz. It began, Kimmel explained, when the Texas Republican posted a tweet in which he referred to the U.S. military as “woke” and “emasculated.”“Which I pointed out fairly, I thought, is funny coming from a guy who let Donald Trump use his testicles on the driving range,” Kimmel said. “I mean, look, he was Trump’s Theon Greyjoy,” he said in reference to the character from “Game of Thrones,” who was castrated.Cruz responded by tweeting about his winning a one-on-one basketball game with the comedian in 2018.“He’s right. It’s true. I do have to live with that forever. You have to live with being Ted Cruz forever, which is so much worse.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“After you won the game, do you remember what I did? I said, ‘Good game, thanks’ and I shook your disgusting hand. I didn’t complain that it was rigged. I didn’t ask for a recount on the referee. I didn’t start a conspiracy theory about the basketball having a microchip in it. I accepted it. I brought shame on my family and I embraced it, as I always do. And, I mean, listen, it was a terrible day. I lost a basketball game to a man who ate one of his own boogers during a presidential debate.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Biden and Putin, Together Again Edition)“Well guys, today, the White House announced that President Biden will have his first one-on-one meeting with Vladimir Putin on June 16. Yeah, it’s a nice reminder that after a year in quarantine, you’re going to have to see some people you don’t like.” — JIMMY FALLON“I can’t wait to see how these two guys try to out-macho each other during the summit. It’s like, [imitating Biden] ‘I don’t need a bathroom break, do you?’ [imitating Putin] ‘No, in fact let’s take off our shirts and have a pec-flexing contest.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Yep, this will be their first in-person meeting since Biden told Putin, ‘I don’t think you have a soul.’ It’s going to be fun when Putin tells Biden, ‘Say once more so I can use for outgoing voice mail.’” — JIMMY FALLON“They just hope it does not come down to a staring contest, because both of those guys have had a lot of Botox. Could be a long one.” — SETH MEYERS“According to the White House, Biden and Putin will discuss a full range of pressing issues from Ukraine to government hacking to whether or not they’ve guessed the killer on ‘Mare of Easttown.’” — JAMES CORDENThe Bits Worth WatchingThe singer Richard Marx surprised Stephen Colbert by stopping by “The Late Show” to confront rumors that he’s inciting violence against Senator Rand Paul.What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightAndrew Rannells, the star of “Girls5Eva,” will appear on “A Little Late With Lilly Singh.”Also, Check This OutJon Kopaloff/Getty ImagesThe newly minted action star Tig Notaro is a fan of classic rock and vintage motorcycles. More
The Ohio native, who advocated greater visibility onscreen for people with disabilities, appeared in early seasons of the NBC sitcom as Billy Merchant.Mark York, the actor best known for playing Billy Merchant on the NBC sitcom “The Office,” died last week in Dayton, Ohio. He was 55.His death was confirmed by the Montgomery County coroner’s office, which said on Tuesday that he had died in a hospital of natural causes. Mr. York’s family said in an obituary that he had died after “a brief and unexpected illness.”Mr. York appeared in four episodes of “The Office” from 2006 to 2009 as the property manager of the office park where Dunder Mifflin, the fictional paper company at the center of the series, made its home. His character, Billy Merchant, who like Mr. York was a paraplegic, was introduced in the second season when Michael Scott, the bumbling branch manager played by Steve Carell, brought him to the office for a cringe-inducing meeting on disability awareness.In the scene, Mr. York’s character gamely answers Michael’s clueless questions about his wheelchair use. But when Michael tries to equate it with burning his foot on a George Foreman grill, Billy interrupts: “You know what, Michael? Let me stop you right there … and leave.”“The letters I get about the character are great,” Mr. York told People magazine in 2010, saying one fan had written that he “shed light on how crazy office politics can be” for workers with disabilities who are just trying to do their jobs.Making wheelchair users more visible onscreen was only one of Mr. York’s goals. He also supported efforts to find a cure for spinal cord injuries, serving as the Southern California representative for SCI Research Advancement, a nonprofit foundation that works to expedite research.“He would constantly come up with ideas for us, and ultimately he came up with an idea to contact the White House,” Will Ambler, the founder of the group, said in an interview.In January 2010, Mr. York, Mr. Ambler and one of the foundation’s board members met in Washington with Kareem Dale, President Barack Obama’s special assistant for disability policy, and other government officials. Mr. York, an avid traveler, drove there from Ohio in his car, a red Dodge Magnum with hand controls that he called Roxanne and had more than 300,000 miles on it.For wheelchair users, driving is a way of regaining freedom, and Mr. York “just took it to the highest level he could,” Mr. Ambler said, adding, “He was liberated, he was free and he could go anywhere he wanted.”Although they didn’t get the changes that they proposed, the group has pressed on and Mr. York had recently suggested approaching the White House again.“He was working on it until the very end,” Mr. Ambler said.Cast members from “The Office” shared their condolences on Twitter.“He was a terrific human, a positive force and a dynamic actor,” said Rainn Wilson, who played Dwight Schrute.Marcus A. York was born on Nov. 27, 1965, in Arcanum, Ohio, and graduated from Arcanum High School. In 1988, a car accident left him disabled. The accident gave him “a new lease on life,” according to a biography on his website, and he graduated from Anderson University in Indiana with majors in psychology, sociology and social work. While he was in college, friends encouraged Mr. York to pursue modeling and acting, and he later moved to California.In addition to television commercials, Mr. York appeared in the shows “8 Simple Rules” and “CSI: NY.” He also had an uncredited role in the 2001 film “A.I. Artificial Intelligence.”According to his obituary, he had been working in recent years as an inventor and had obtained two patents.Mr. York is survived by his parents, Glenn and Becky York, and three brothers, Brian, Jeff and David. More
Series have long depicted media jobs as glitzy and aspirational. But with several such shows wrapping up as much of the news and publishing business craters, is this the end of an era?Joanna Coles published her first magazine at 11 and mailed a copy to Queen Elizabeth. She received a letter of thanks and a royal request for further issues. “It was all the encouragement I needed,” Coles said. More
“Senator Paul has been a bit of a skeptic of how bad Covid really is, which is probably why he got Covid,” Colbert said on Monday.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. We’re all stuck at home at the moment, so here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now. More
Renée Elise Goldsberry plays a delusional diva reuniting a girl group in a music biz satire executive produced by Tina Fey. It’s her midcareer moment.It could have happened in her early 20s, fresh from college, with a face like a cherub and lungs like a hurricane, when she booked an understudy role in a Broadway-bound show that never arrived. Or 10 years later, when she moved to Los Angeles and sang with a jazz ensemble. Or five years after that, back in New York for a run on “One Life to Live,” or in the decade following, spent bounding between plays and short TV stints. More
