Television

He won an Emmy for his role in the TV series “Room 222” and played many characters over the years before becoming known as the hit film’s patriarch.Michael Constantine, an Emmy-winning character actor known as the genially dyspeptic school principal on the popular TV series “Room 222” and, 30 years later, as the genially dyspeptic patriarch in the hit film “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” died on Aug. 31 at his home in Reading, Pa. He was 94.His death was from natural causes, his agent, Julia Buchwald, said.Mr. Constantine, who began his career on the Broadway stage, was endowed with fierce eyebrows, a personal warmth that belied his perennial hangdog look, and the command of a babel of foreign accents. Of Greek American extraction, he was routinely cast by Hollywood to portray a welter of ethnicities.Over time, Mr. Constantine played several Jewish characters, winning an Emmy in 1970 for the role of Seymour Kaufman, who presided with grumpy humanity over Walt Whitman High School on “Room 222,” broadcast on ABC from 1969 to 1974.He also played Italians, on shows including “The Untouchables” and “Kojak”; Russians, as on the 1980s series “Airwolf”; a Gypsy in the 1996 horror film “Thinner,” adapted from Stephen King’s novel; and, on occasion, even a Greek or two.Mr. Constantine, possessed of a gravitas that often led to him being cast as lawyers or heavies, starred as the night-court judge Matthew Sirota on “Sirota’s Court,” a short-lived sitcom shown on NBC in the 1976-77 season.Michael Constantine, right, with Lloyd Hanes in the TV series Room 222, which ran from 1969 to 1974ABCHe had guest roles on scores of other shows, including “Naked City,” “Perry Mason,” “Ironside,” “Gunsmoke” and “Hey, Landlord” in the 1960s, and “Remington Steele,” “Murder, She Wrote” and “Law & Order” in the ’80s and ’90s.On film, he appeared in “The Last Mile” (1959), a prison picture starring Mickey Rooney; “The Hustler” (1961), starring Paul Newman; “If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium” (1969); “Don’t Drink the Water” (1969); and “Voyage of the Damned” (1976).Mr. Constantine became known to an even wider, younger audience as Gus Portokalos, the combustible, tradition-bound father whose daughter is engaged to a patrician white Anglo-Saxon Protestant in the 2002 comedy “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.”An immigrant who made good as the owner of a Chicago diner, Gus is an ardent amateur etymologist who can trace any word to its putative Greek origin. (“Kimono,” he concludes after pondering the matter, surely comes from “cheimónas” — Greek for winter, since, he explains in his heavily accented English: “What do you wear in the wintertime to stay warm? A robe!”)Gus is also a fervent believer in the restorative power of Windex, applied directly to the skin, to heal a panoply of ailments like rashes and boils.“He’s a man from a certain kind of background,” Mr. Constantine said of his character in a 2003 interview with The Indianapolis Star. “His saving grace is that he truly does love his daughter and want the best for her. He may not go about it in a very tactful way. So many people tell me, ‘My dad was just like that.’ And I thought, ‘And you don’t hate him?’”“My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” which also starred Lainie Kazan as Gus’s wife and Nia Vardalos and John Corbett as the young couple, was a surprise international hit. The film took in more than $360 million worldwide, becoming one of the highest-grossing romantic comedies of all time.Mr. Constantine reprised the role on television in “My Big Fat Greek Life,” a sitcom that appeared briefly on CBS in 2003, and on the big screen in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2” in 2016.The son of Theoharis Ioannides, a steelworker, and Andromache Foteadou, Mr. Constantine was born Constantine Ioannides in Reading, Pa., on May 22, 1927. (The family name is sometimes Romanized Joanides.)He settled early on an acting career, an idea reinforced after a youthful visit to a friend who was studying acting in New York.“I just knew I belonged there,” Mr. Constantine told Odyssey, an English-language magazine about Greek life, in 2011. “They could make fun of this hick from Pennsylvania, but I just belong here — this is me.”The young Mr. Constantine studied acting with Howard da Silva, supporting himself with odd jobs, among them night watchman and shooting-gallery barker. He became an understudy to Paul Muni playing the character modeled on the famed defense lawyer Clarence Darrow in “Inherit the Wind,” which opened on Broadway in 1955.In “Compulsion” — a 1957 Broadway dramatization of Meyer Levin’s novel about the Leopold and Loeb murder case — Mr. Constantine took over the role of the defense lawyer from Frank Conroy just before opening night. (Mr. Conroy withdrew after suffering a heart attack during previews.)“Michael Constantine gives an excellent performance as the prototype of Clarence Darrow,” Brooks Atkinson wrote in The New York Times. “He avoids the sentimentality that the situations might easily evoke and plays with taste, deliberation, color and intelligence.”Mr. Constantine’s other Broadway credits include Anagnos, the director of the Perkins Institute for the Blind in the original cast of “The Miracle Worker” (1959), and Dogsborough in Bertolt Brecht’s antifascist satire “Arturo Ui” (1963).Mr. Constantine’s first marriage, to the actress Julianna McCarthy, ended in divorce, as did his second, to Kathleen Christopher. His survivors include two sisters: Patricia Gordon and Chris Dobbs, his agent said. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.For all Mr. Constantine’s credits, for all his critical acclaim, it was for a single role — and for a single prop wielded in the course of that role — that he seems destined to be remembered.“I can’t tell you,” he said in a 2014 interview with his hometown paper, The Reading Eagle, “how many times I’ve autographed a Windex bottle.”Alyssa Lukpat More

Steve Burns, who had a complicated relationship with the popular children’s show he hosted for six years, addressed his viewers almost two decades after his “kind of abrupt” departure.One day in 2002, Steve Burns packed up a bulging backpack and suitcase, said farewell to a speckled blue dog and a room of cartoon furniture, and disappeared into a two-dimensional school bus.An era of the children’s television series “Blue’s Clues” was suddenly over, leaving countless young viewers bereft of a genial host who encouraged them through their TVs for six formative years.Aside from occasional appearances in spinoffs, Mr. Burns was largely absent from “Blue’s Clues.” His sudden departure became a source of intrigue and rumor as dedicated fans grew up, found one another and wondered — often online — what actually happened to him.On Tuesday, in a Twitter video posted by Nick Jr., a Nickelodeon channel for young children, Mr. Burns returned. Donning the same striped lime-green rugby shirt he used to wear, he addressed his now adult viewers in character.Speaking about his departure almost two decades ago, he said, “I realize that was kind of abrupt. I just kind of got up and went to college. And that was really challenging, by the way, but great because I got to use my mind and take a step at a time, and now I literally am doing many of the things that I wanted to do.”Then, in the positive tone that defined his character, Mr. Burns urged viewers to reflect on their own paths: “And then look at you, and look at all you have done and all you have accomplished in all that time. And it’s just — it’s just so amazing.”His reappearance struck a chord among many viewers, raising feelings of nostalgia and childhood comfort, especially juxtaposed with global crises like the coronavirus pandemic and extreme weather linked to climate change. In less than 24 hours, the video had been watched nearly 20 million times.Mr. Burns at the premiere of “Blue’s Big Musical Movie” in Los Angeles in 2000.SGranitz/WireImageMr. Burns acknowledged some of the challenges that his former viewers might have faced.“We started out with clues, and now, it’s what? Student loans and jobs and families?” he said. “And some of it has been kind of hard, you know? I know you know.”He added that he wanted to thank viewers, saying their support continued to help him. “I guess I just wanted to say, after all these years, I never forgot you. Ever,” he said.Mr. Burns, now a producer and musician, could not immediately be reached for comment. But in the years since he left the show, he has spoken about his complicated relationship with fans and the program, which he hosted in his 20s. He has said that he felt conflicted about the imaginary relationship millions of young viewers believed they had with him.“Kids thought I was their friend for real,” he said in a 2010 live performance for The Moth, a storytelling organization.“I started to think, I’m saying these wonderful things to kids, I’m saying: ‘You are so smart, and you can do anything you want to do.’ But I couldn’t help thinking, you know, is that true?” Mr. Burns continued.As “Blue’s Clues” grew in popularity, reaching more than 14 million viewers each week at one point during his tenure, Mr. Burns also began experiencing what he described as an identity crisis.“I was starting to really seriously think, as great as this is, they might have the wrong guy here, maybe this should be a teacher or a child development specialist or something,” he said.His departure from the show led to some wild speculation among fans. Mr. Burns’s Instagram handle, @steveburnsalive, appears to cheekily refute rumors of his death. He said in a HuffPost interview that as creators of the show moved on to other projects, he felt that “it was simply time to go,” and joked to Nickelodeon that he “refused to lose my hair on a kid’s TV show.”But as Mr. Burns revived his “Blue’s Clues” persona on Tuesday, many fans on social media said that his message struck just the right tone, managing to transport them back to a time of childhood innocence while acknowledging the realities of adulthood and its challenges.The video was a particularly poignant reminder of the past for Chuck Gaffney, a 37-year-old computer programmer and voice actor in Rocky Point, N.Y., who said he had been grieving the recent deaths of his younger brother and cousin. The show had been a favorite pastime for many of his seven younger siblings.“Time might have moved on but our hearts have not. Seeing messages like this — that there are people there for you — is comforting,” he said in an interview. “We ought to remember being there for each other.”Mr. Gaffney said he planned to introduce the show to his 2-year-old daughter.“Blue’s Clues” ended in 2006, but the show was rebooted in 2019 as “Blue’s Clues & You!” It is hosted by Joshua Dela Cruz, the franchise’s first Asian American host. A new season is set to air in October. More

Phil Dunster stars as the cocky soccer player Jaime Tart in the popular sitcom.Name: Phil DunsterAge: 29Hometown: Northampton, EnglandCurrently Lives: A terraced house located in the Hammersmith neighborhood of London that he shares with his girlfriend, the filmmaker Ellie Heydon, and two roommates.Claim to Fame: Mr. Dunster portrays the cocky soccer player, Jamie Tartt, on the hit Apple TV+ sitcom “Ted Lasso,” which recently received 20 Emmy nominations. But he has yet to bask in his newfound American stardom.“There hasn’t really been the same response to the show over here,” Mr. Dunster said by telephone from London. “I went into town the other day and I was jumping around and trying to be as conspicuous as possible, but nobody came over and said anything to me.”Mr. Dunster and Jason Sudeikis, right, in  “Ted Lasso.”Apple-TV+Big Break: “Drama was on my radar” as a young boy, Mr. Dunster said. At 9, he starred in his school’s production of “Olivier Twist,” and continued to perform in plays in secondary school. His budding stage talents earned him a slot at the highly selective Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in 2011.A year after graduating, ​​he played Arthur in the Bristol Old Vic production of “Pink Mist,” which earned him an Olivier Award nomination in 2016. “My coming-of-age was really learning to act,” he said.Latest Project: In the second season of “Ted Lasso,” which began at the end of July, Mr. Dunster’s character is struggling to sunder emotional walls he built as a top scorer for AFC Richmond, a fictional soccer club. “All of these people in Jamie’s life are now saying, ‘It’s OK to be scared or to be vulnerable, and to say sorry,’” he said. “In fact, it makes you a better player and member of the team.”Rosie Matheson for The New York TimesNext Thing: He is currently filming the witchy thriller “The Devil’s Hour,” an Amazon mini-series due next year. He also produced and stars in the upcoming short film “Pragma,” which he described as a “dystopian rom-com set in the near future” where there is a “steady decline in sustainable relationships.” Not that his own relationships are suffering. The movie is directed by Ms. Heydon, his girlfriend, and Jason Sudeikis, the star of “Ted Lasso,” is the executive producer.Vocational Training: Before becoming an actor, Mr. Dunster wanted to be a rugby player. But during a failed tryout for the London Irish Rugby Football Club at 15, he realized he “couldn’t hack it with the bigger boys,” he said.The training came in handy on “Ted Lasso.” “Jamie’s pout comes from a rugby player that I used to play with, who managed to make me feel very small by always sort of screwing up his face and pouting at me,” he said. More

“Meanwhile, these poor horses are like: ‘Hey, I have worms — I need that stuff. There are worms in my butt, do you understand?’” Kimmel 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.Still Horsing AroundJimmy Kimmel returned to his show on Tuesday after taking the summer off.“I leave you people alone for two months, you start taking horse worm medicine?” the host said.Kimmel offered a name for people who have taken the medicine, ivermectin, as a supposed cure for Covid-19: “pan-dimwits.” There is no evidence that the drug is effective against Covid, and the health authorities have warned that it could pose a serious danger to humans.“So you will probably still get Covid, but on the bright side, you could win the Preakness.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Poison-control centers across the country have seen a spike in calls from people taking livestock medicine to fight the coronavirus, but they won’t take the vaccine, which is crazy. It’s like if you’re a vegan and you’re like, ‘No, I don’t want a hamburger — give me that can of Alpo instead.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Worst of all, it tastes yucky. Luckily, the internet is loaded with advice on how to make it more palatable, including mixing it with jellies or eating it as a sandwich. Or throw it on your roast beef — technically, it is horsey sauce.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“In fact, it says right on the label: ‘For a horse’s [expletive].’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“One of the reasons these Sea Biscuits are opting for ivermectin is because they don’t trust ‘big pharma.’ Which is fine, I guess, except for the fact that ivermectin is made by Merck, which is the fourth-largest pharmaceutical company in the world.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Listen, if a pharmaceutical company says, ‘Please don’t take the drug we’re selling,’ you should probably listen to them. Or you could just go with a TikTok posted by a disgraced veterinarian instead.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Meanwhile, these poor horses are like, ‘Hey, I have worms — I need that stuff. There are worms in my butt, do you understand?’”— JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Worst Butt Dial Ever Edition)“And finally, I read that surgeons successfully removed a Nokia cellphone from a man’s body after he swallowed it whole. The kids were so embarrassed. They’re like, ‘Dad, please swallow an iPhone next time.’” — JIMMY FALLON“He swallowed a Nokia phone. More like Choke-ia phone.” — JAMES CORDEN“His phone got wet and he needed to put it in rice immediately, but he had eaten all of his rice.” — JAMES CORDEN“Even worse, after four days, the man still had zero notifications.” — JIMMY FALLON“That’s why I always buy the extra-long 10-foot charge cord, always. I know it’s a little bit more, but you’re happy you paid that money when you’re like, ‘Got it!’”— JAMES CORDEN“When reached for a comment, the man said he didn’t swallow it — it was just the worst butt dial ever.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingAmber Ruffin challenged Texas on its new abortion ban and made the case for a federally funded pedicure on Tuesday’s “Late Night.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightHolland Taylor (“The Chair”) will sit down with Stephen Colbert on Wednesday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutSarah Paulson, left, as Linda Tripp and Beanie Feldstein as Monica Lewinsky in “Impeachment: American Crime Story” on FX.Antony Platt/FX“American Crime Story: Impeachment” focuses less on the White House and more on the women who were involved with and affected by the scandal. More

Starting with “The Wire,” Williams explored provocative intersections of race, crime, sexuality and masculinity. But he wasn’t afraid to poke fun at his own image.Omar didn’t scare easily, and neither did Michael K. Williams.Starting with his breakout performance in “The Wire,” the actor, who was found dead on Monday at age 54, tackled characters that allowed him to explore provocative intersections of race, crime, sexuality and masculinity. But he also wasn’t afraid to poke fun at his own tough-guy image.Some of his best work is available to stream right now.‘The Wire’(2002-2008)Former President Barack Obama often said that his favorite character in “The Wire” was the drug-trade vigilante Omar Little, and he wasn’t alone. Williams made Omar one of the celebrated series’s most fascinating characters — an unaffiliated free agent who stole from the drug dealers in his community and followed a strict code. Omar had swagger as he patrolled Baltimore’s back alleys with his sawed-off shotgun, but he was no two-dimensional gangster cowboy. He could also be witty, polite and clever, and he was openly gay within a homophobic world of cops and robbers. In his performance, Williams walked a fine line between representing what society condemned and what it aspired to become. The cry of “Omar’s coming!” is both a warning and a welcome. Stream it on HBO Max.Williams’s character in “Boardwalk Empire” was inspired by aspects of his relatives.Macall B. Polay/HBO‘Boardwalk Empire’(2010-2014)“Boardwalk Empire” was lousy with historical figures — Al Capone, Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano among them. One of the most intriguing was William’s bootlegger Albert White, also known as Chalky, the conflicted unofficial leader of Atlantic City’s Black community. White was a complex character, and the role allowed Williams to demonstrate an even wider range, especially as the show increasingly focused on Chalky and provided him with a worthy foil in the form of the slick Dr. Valentin Narcisse (played by Jeffrey Wright). Williams said he assembled Chalky out of characteristics borrowed from several relatives — his father’s swagger, his godfather’s snarl and the softness, sarcasm and dangerous temper of various uncles. Whether Chalky was quietly threatening a local Ku Klux Klan leader or warning his daughter to marry a man less violent than himself, Williams radiated a rich emotional life beyond the usual limits of the mobster genre. Stream it on HBO Max.‘Community’(Season 3, 2011-2012)Williams happily satirized his own image, and a guest stint on NBC’s “Community” wasn’t the only time he made light of his signature role (see the Funny or Die video “The Wire: The Musical”). Williams made several Omar references in his guest episodes in Season 3 — “Biology 101,” “Competitive Ecology” and “Basic Lupine Urology” — and he brought a dry humor to his part as a biology professor at Greendale Community College, Dr. Marshall Kane, a role written for him by Dan Harmon. An ex-convict, Kane got his doctorate by studying in the prison library, and he was somewhat perplexed by the ways life had changed while he was inside. (Don’t get him started about Legos.) Stream it on Amazon, Hulu and Netflix.Williams (pictured with Tim Meadows) played a jazz man turned gumshoe in the mini-series spoof, “The Spoils Before Dying.” Katrina Marcinowski/IFC‘The Spoils Before Dying’(2015)Williams displayed more expert comic timing in IFC’s sequel to “The Spoils of Babylon.” Both “Spoils” mini-series were supposedly written and directed by the fictional Eric Jonrosh (Will Ferrell), who introduced each installment. But where “Babylon” was a parody of 1970s melodramatic mini-series, “Dying” was a satire of a genre that never really existed: 1950s jazz noir. Williams played Rock Banyon, a tormented jazz musician forced to turn detective when he becomes a murder suspect. Williams anchored the muddled mystery with intense gazes, a deadpan growl and occasional slapstick flourishes. He also made room for more exaggerated performances from Kate McKinnon, Michael Sheen, Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig (whose singing of “Booze and Pills” was a highlight). As it progressed, “Spoils” became less about potboiler pulp and more about artistic integrity because Williams’s character — wouldn’t you know? — had a code. Stream it on AMC+ via Amazon Prime Video.Williams portrayed a Vietnam veteran in “Hap and Leonard.”Jackson Lee Davis/SundanceTV‘Hap and Leonard'(2016-2018)James Purefoy played the aimless draft dodger (and ex-convict) Hap Collins, and Williams played the grumpy, gay Vietnam vet Leonard Pine in this languid Sundance Channel series. Based on the books by Joe R. Lansdale, it’s a noirish buddy dramedy set in Texas in the late 1980s. On the surface, Leonard — a Republican who likes country music — would seem to be a stretch for Williams. But he has said that his friends considered the role to be closest to his actual personality. And the backwoods drawl this Brooklyn native created for the character is surprisingly convincing. Stream it on Netflix.‘The Night Of’(2016)The route Williams took to get to the Yonkers set of this series was the same one he traveled to visit his then-incarcerated nephew, Dominic Dupont, at a maximum-security prison a little farther north, which inspired his portrayal. The actor’s character, the charismatic Rikers Island inmate Freddy Knight, has a nephew surrogate of sorts in Nasir Khan (Riz Ahmed), who goes by Naz, an innocent young man awaiting trial. Freddy provides Naz with jailhouse protection, at a price. Williams’s intimate performance in this series earned him a second Emmy nomination (after a nod for “Bessie” the previous year). Stream it on HBO Max.Williams starred in and executive produced the docuseries “Black Market with Michael K. Williams.”Viceland‘Black Market With Michael K. Williams’(2016)After years of playing criminals, Williams took a real-life look at how crime pays in underground economies. As the host and executive producer of this unscripted documentary series, Williams found connections between the disparate worlds of New York gamblers, New Jersey carjackers, Southern gunrunners, London shoplifters, Mexican drug dealers and South African poachers. (His own experience with crime and addiction allowed him a more sympathetic take; he wasn’t trying to be a journalist.) Five years after the show’s debut, Season 2 was finally in production — much of it already completed — when Williams died. Stream it on DirecTV, Pluto and Vice TV.‘When We Rise’(2017)Before playing father and son on “Lovecraft Country,” Williams and Jonathan Majors shared the role of the real-life gay activist Ken Jones in this ABC limited series. (Williams was the older Jones, Majors played him as a younger man.) Williams lost 35 pounds to portray Jones, a Vietnam vet who had to fight to get proper health care after contracting H.I.V. — and who also had to battle homophobia, racism and drug addiction. Williams considered this heartbreaking portrayal to be a tribute to two of his nephews, Michael Frederick Williams and Eric Williams, both of whom died of complications from AIDS. Stream it on Disney+.Williams received an Emmy nomination for “Lovecraft Country.”HBO, via Associated Press‘Lovecraft Country’(2020)After years of playing variations on a theme of Black masculinity, Williams gave one of his most haunted and nuanced performances in this pulpy, allegorical horror series. His character, the closeted patriarch Montrose Freeman, lived the life society laid out for him — to be a father, with any luck to have a son — only to realize that he had never come to terms with his sexuality. Montrose’s coming out, in a burst of childlike energy, allowed him to experience, perhaps for the first time, comfort, acceptance and love. That Williams portrays all of this with grace in a genre that isn’t traditionally a vehicle for such stories was an impressive achievement. He earned an Emmy nomination for his performance, and he has said in interviews that the part changed him for the better. Stream it on HBO Max. More

The setting is both beautiful and ugly, resplendent and run-down. Green foliage wraps around rusting mills, no longer in use; steep hills drop off to the river, like the plummeting dreams of local residents.This is the Monongahela Valley, home to the new nine-episode Showtime series “American Rust,” debuting Sept. 12. Encompassing parts of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, the Mon Valley, as locals call it, is steel country, which means it has been hit hard in recent decades. Unemployment runs rampant. So does opioid abuse.Based on Philipp Meyer’s debut novel from 2009, “American Rust” tells a story of those who call the Mon home, those who want to leave and those who can’t seem to, no matter how hard they try.“It’s like a gravitational pull,” Jeff Daniels said in a recent video call from his Michigan home. Daniels plays Del Harris, the police chief of the fictional town of Buell, which the book situates about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh in Fayette County, Pa., near the real-life towns of Belle Vernon, Fayette City and Monessen.Maura Tierney plays Grace Poe, whose romance with the local sheriff, played by Jeff Daniels, becomes very complicated when her son becomes involved in a murder.Jared Wickerham for The New York TimesChief Harris lives a complicated life. He is in love with Grace Poe (Maura Tierney), who sews at a local dress factory and lives in a trailer on the verge of foreclosure. Grace’s son, Billy (Alex Neustaedter), who chose to stay in Buell instead of accepting a Division I football scholarship, keeps getting caught up in violent crime, including a murder.You could say the chief is compromised by his circumstances and passions.He isn’t the only one. Billy’s best (and perhaps only) friend, Isaac English (David Alvarez), is also the brother of the woman who broke his heart, Lee (Julia Mayorga) — and that may be the least of their friendship’s complications. Meanwhile, Isaac and Lee have troubles of their own: Their father (Bill Camp) was nearly killed in a mill accident, and their mother committed suicide by walking into the river with pockets full or rocks, like Virginia Woolf.Lee, though married and living in New York — she is the rare character in “American Rust” who has managed to escape — finds herself drawn back to Billy nonetheless. Isaac remains trapped at home, forced to care for an angry, wheelchair-bound father who constantly belittles him.Interior scenes of “American Rust” were filmed at 31st Street Studios, in Pittsburgh, the town once known as Steel City. Today it is a regional hub for the arts and tech. Jared Wickerham for The New York TimesJared Wickerham for The New York Times“Any one of these characters could pack up their car and just leave, but they don’t,” Daniels said. “Maybe they can’t. Maybe they’ve got nowhere else to go. They’re at the bottom.”Daniels’s road to Buell began over 10 years ago when he went to see Meyer read from his novel in New York. Daniels was struck by how Meyer located the humanity of characters who don’t get a lot of cultural shine, characters he knows from having spent most of his life in Michigan.“Nobody’s famous,” Daniels said. “Nobody’s trending. These are just everyday normal people that are in every corner of every county in this country.”Meyer grew up in a blue-collar area of Baltimore in the ’80s, when he watched various industries — textile, shipyards, steel, auto — slowly decline. “Violent crime was super high,” Meyer said from his home in Austin. “But it was also clear that you had this giant population of unemployed young men, guys in their 20s and 30s who had been laid off last year or four years ago or five years ago. The American dream had failed them.”Monessen, like the fictional town of Buell, has struggled since the local steel industry collapsed.  Jared Wickerham for The New York TimesBut for his first novel, he decided Baltimore, with its many industries, was too complicated for what he had in mind. When he visited Pittsburgh, where his brother was in college, Meyer realized, “This is where I put the story.”Soon after Daniels met Meyer, the actor was knee-deep in “The Newsroom” (2012-14) and other projects. But “Rust” never left his mind. His father, Robert Lee Daniels, had been the mayor of Daniels’s hometown, Chelsea, Mich., and owned a lumber yard. Daniels recognized the characters in “American Rust.”“I know these guys,” he said. “I know what they sound like. I know how they talk. I know how they think. I know how they walk. I live around them. This is their world.”So when he found the bandwidth, he sought out two writer-producers with whom he had worked on a TV adaptation of another acclaimed book, “The Looming Tower”: Dan Futterman and Adam Rapp. (They, along with Daniels, are among the executive producers.)Futterman, the showrunner of “Rust,” recalled the question Daniels asked: “‘If you love it, would you remind me what I love about it?’”Charleroi, Pa., is held up in the novel “American Rust” as an example of a Rust Belt town that is beginning to revitalize.Jared Wickerham for The New York Times“I told him that I loved what felt to me like a central theme of the book and something that I have written about before,” Futterman said from his New York home. “Can you both love somebody and use them at the same time?”Put another way, what terrible things are we willing to do in the name of love? And what kinds of things might a police chief overlook?The apple of Chief Harris’s eye, his moral blind spot, is Tierney’s Grace, who loves the chief but also knows he can come in handy.“I don’t know if anyone’s ever loved her, and I think she’s made a lot of choices based on that,” Tierney said in a video call from New York. “That’s an interesting person to try to get inside of.”“She’s had to really make her own way, every which way,” she continued. “Then she’s got this fierce devotion to her child, who I think she’s trying to compensate for somehow, but I don’t know if that’s the smartest thing to do. She’s a flawed person who’s trying to just keep her head above water.”Before the shoot, Daniels sent Tierney an email. “I’m not a big chatter,” he wrote, “but if you want to chat, I’m happy to do that. Or if you want to just jump off the cliff, let’s do that.”She wanted to jump off the cliff. And so did he.The ArcelorMittal coke works near downtown Monessen.Jared Wickerham for The New York Times“I don’t enjoy over-talking things,” she said. “We’ve both been doing this for a really long time. So it’s really enjoyable to just show up and know that your partner in the work is going to be prepared, and we just would let it fly.”As with any adaptation, “American Rust” took some intriguing detours on the way from page to screen. Grace is now a union organizer, quite a challenge in a company town where many workers are immigrants who don’t speak English. Isaac’s personal journey has been rerouted. His and Lee’s Mexican heritage has been more fully fleshed out. The story’s central crime is now a mystery, not only to most of the town but also to the viewers.While Meyer wasn’t involved with the series, he is thrilled with the results.“I don’t know if anyone’s ever loved her, and I think she’s made a lot of choices based on that,” Tierney said of her character. “That’s an interesting person to try to get inside of.”Jared Wickerham for The New York TimesDetails add authenticity to the wall of a set in Pittsburgh designed to look like a Mon Valley bar. Jared Wickerham for The New York Times“I’m pretty overjoyed that it has made it onto the air,” he said. “When people think of the middle of the country, maybe they think of ‘Yellowstone,’ which is a fun show but more fantasy than reality. This is the story of what’s happening to about half of America that we don’t really hear that much about.”There’s a sense in “American Rust” that everyone is doing his or her best, which isn’t always good enough in a land beset by fatalism and inertia. In researching the place and the people, Daniels came to see them for what they are — and aren’t.“They’re not just a bunch of hopeless addicts,” Daniels said. “Much like the people in the series that Danny pulled out of the book, these are good people who have to make bad choices just to either survive or to hold onto their dignity.”Pittsburgh, once known as Steel City, has a population of less than half what it was at its peak in the 1950s. Still, the city has been revitalized in recent decades, having successfully diversified its economy after the steel industry collapsed. Cast and crew shot interiors at 31st Street Studios, a home for dozens of film and TV productions to date. Futterman described a city in the midst of a tech and art resurgence, with a vibrant theater scene.It’s when you travel outside of Pittsburgh that you notice what’s gone. The economic downturn has left towns like Donora, Monessen and Rankin as shells of their former selves. This is where the bulk of “American Rust” unfolds and where much of the show was shot. (As in “Mare of Easttown,” another Pennsylvania gothic drama, the Rolling Rock and ruins abound.)“This is the story of what’s happening to about half of America that we don’t really hear that much about,” said Philipp Meyer, who wrote the novel on which the series is based.Jared Wickerham for The New York Times“There are some places where the steel mills are still going, and some where they’re just gone,” Futterman said. “In the town of Buell, it’s gone. The steel mill is shut down, and you can feel the reverberations of that throughout the town, and through all the people that are affected by it in some way.”And yet, the region retains a haunting beauty.“There are these steep drop-offs down to the river and all these steel bridges,” Futterman said. “There are a lot steel mills, some semi-functional, some rusting back into the ground right on the shores of the river. It’s not like other places I’ve been.”Meyer describes the landscape with stark lyricism in the novel: “The mill itself had been like a small city, but they had closed it in 1987, partially dismantled it 10 years later; it now stood like an ancient ruin, its buildings grown over with bittersweet vine, devil’s tear thumb and tree of heaven. The footprints of deer and coyotes crisscrossed the grounds; there was only the occasional human squatter.”It can seem desolate. But for Daniels, it all boils down to the most basic human emotions.“They’re all seeking love, and they’re capable of hate,” he said. “They’re capable of everything. When they’re backed up against the wall, these people are just trying to survive, doing whatever at that point, and trying to hang onto a sense of what’s right and what’s wrong. That’s what makes it interesting to me.” More

The call came just before noon.Andrea Constand had returned to her downtown Toronto apartment after walking her dog Maddy in a nearby park, when the Montgomery County district attorney’s office rang. Stand by, she was told, a ruling on Bill Cosby’s appeal could be handed down soon by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.By this day, June 30, Constand, the woman whose account of sexual assault had led to the conviction of the man once known as America’s Dad was finding ways to move past the trauma that the trial had brought to her daily life. She had sold her apartment, was moving to the countryside north of the city and preparing to publish a memoir, “The Moment,” to detail her singular experience with Cosby and the criminal justice system.Though more than 50 women had accused Cosby of sexual misconduct, including assault, prosecutors had — for a variety of reasons — only successfully brought criminal charges in her case. And now Cosby was in prison far away, serving a three- to 10-year sentence in Pennsylvania after having been found guilty of three counts of aggravated indecent assault.He had already lost an appeal. The dust once kicked up by the trial, by the verdict, by the media attention, by the focus on her case as a breakthrough “moment” for the #MeToo era, had largely settled.About an hour later, the phone rang again.“Andrea,” said Kate Delano, the district attorney’s director of communications, “the Supreme Court has vacated his conviction.”It is perhaps an understatement to say that for Constand, and many others, the decision came as a shock. Cosby would not only be freed: The court also ruled he could not be tried again. Constand said she found it deeply unsettling that Cosby, still a man of means and influence, was out of prison, unconstrained and able to contact her and others.“I had a lump in my throat,” Constand, 48, said in a rare in-depth interview last month near her new home north of Toronto. “I really felt they were setting a predator loose and that made me sick.”Bill Cosby with his lawyers outside his home in a Philadelphia suburb after being released from prison.Mark Makela/ReutersConstand’s reaction to the court decision and her long experience with the case are detailed in the memoir, which is to be released Tuesday.Within minutes of the second call, Constand drove off, heading with her 22-year-old niece to her sister’s home outside Toronto, a trip that had been planned before the afternoon became untethered by the ruling. From the car, she spoke by phone with the two former prosecutors who had helped lead the case against Cosby, Stewart Ryan and Kristen Gibbons Feden. They explained that Cosby would no longer be officially designated as a sexually violent predator, a status that requires lifetime public registration and community notification — something that had afforded Constand special comfort.Andrea Constand said she has no regrets about pursuing the case, despite the court’s decision. “Society paid attention,” she said. Angela Lewis for The New York TimesAt her sister’s house, she watched on television as Cosby got out of a car at his home near Philadelphia, the mansion where, she had testified, Cosby assaulted her after giving her a sedative in 2004. From her sister’s back porch, she worked over the phone with her two lawyers, Bebe H. Kivitz and Dolores M. Troiani, to put out a statement expressing their disappointment.Her phone was otherwise blowing up with calls from friends and other women who had accused Cosby of sexual assault. Kevin R. Steele, the district attorney who had overseen the prosecution, had called earlier to say the decision did not take away from what she had achieved.Still she worried, she said, that other women might find it too hard to come forward now. “It was not just me,” she said, “it was the message that it would send to the rest of the world and other survivors, to say, why should I fight for justice, when it ultimately gets stripped down. It won’t matter.”The first trial in her case had ended with a hung jury. Cosby’s defense team insisted his encounter with Constand had been consensual. For the second trial, prosecutors were allowed to introduce testimony from five additional women who, like Constand, said that Cosby had drugged and sexually assaulted them.When the jury in the second trial found him guilty in 2018, many thought that, were there to be any appellate ruling, it would likely focus on whether it had been prejudicial to allow the women from other incidents to testify — evidence that prosecutors said showed a pattern of abuse.The book is being released on Tuesday.Penguin Random HouseBut the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled on different grounds, finding that the district attorney had been bound by what a predecessor had called a promise he made never to charge Cosby in the case. The predecessor said he had made the promise to persuade Cosby to testify in a subsequent civil action, which Cosby settled by paying Constand $3.38 million. During his testimony in the civil case, Cosby acknowledged giving women quaaludes as part of an effort to have sex with them, a statement that the June ruling said had been unfairly introduced at the 2018 trial.Constand does not mince her words when it comes to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. She blames it for undoing all the work she and others had done to bring Cosby to justice and for “putting him on the street.”“After a few deep breaths, I just felt this is not my problem,” she said. “Now it made me feel the shame is on the Supreme Court. It’s not on me anymore.”The Pennsylvania Supreme Court said in its decision that it was upholding an important safeguard: Cosby’s due process rights had been violated. Its ruling was meant to prevent dangerous prosecutorial overreach.Constand said that for days after the decision she fielded emails, texts and phone calls from people who were irate about the ruling. Many were from women who say they too were assaulted by Cosby and who had viewed the 2018 guilty verdict as justice for themselves. Some were now her friends. “They were devastated, they were so angry,” she said.The book, just weeks from its release date, had to be updated. A publisher’s note described the ruling and said Cosby’s conviction had been overturned “on a procedural issue.”Constand and supporters celebrated after Cosby was found guilty in April 2018.Pool photo by Mark MakelaThe statement Constand had devised with her lawyers was added as were about 400 words to describe her reaction to the court’s decision.“We cannot let moments of injustice quiet us,” she wrote. “We must speak up again and again and again — until we arrive at a moment of real change.”The case accounts for roughly two-thirds of the 240-page book. Constand takes readers inside her tussles with defense attorneys, who cast her as a disappointed lover in the first trial and a gold digger in the second. She describes the connections she felt with jurors, the long stays in hotel rooms, the stress and the sacrifices her family had to make.She got through it, she writes, with the help of her poodles, her spirituality and tattoos that give her strength. (The word “truth” is displayed across the top of her chest, a large phoenix on her back.)The book spends some time on her childhood in Canada, her years as a basketball player at the University of Arizona and playing professionally in Italy. It also delves into her relationships and coming out as gay.The memoir discusses other parts of Constand’s life, such as her success as a high school and college basketball player.Ron Bull/The Toronto Star, via Associated In the memoir, Constand describes herself as “wearied and weathered by what happened to me” and writes that Cosby had robbed a joyful young woman, the product of a nourishing family and happy childhood, of her smile. During an interview with The New York Times, she credited her faith for sustaining her and talked of starting a new chapter of her life.Constand started the book, helped by a co-writer, Meg Masters, more than a year before the court’s June decision, at the start of the pandemic lockdown, as a way to get closure.“The healer in me knew I had to dive back into everything again and really try to remember and it was really chilling for me at times,” she said. “Trauma is not wired for you to remember. It’s wired for you to forget.”During the writing, she got Covid-19 and was sick on her couch in Toronto for six weeks with “an elephant on my chest.” The experience, the encounter with her own mortality, propelled her to finish the book.“I thought it was important to write the story for other survivors who had stories, too,” she said. “I wanted to be a symbol of hope to them. That their stories matter. And their stories are important.”Despite the court’s decision, she said the years of hard work were by no means wasted. Cosby, now 84, served nearly three years in prison, she pointed out. Publicity from the case helped change attitudes. Women were encouraged to come forward. People believed them when they did. Several of the Cosby accusers helped with successful legislative efforts to extend or eliminate states’ statutes of limitations in sexual assault cases.“There were so many victories along the way,” she said. “Society paid attention.”In her memoir, Constand writes that Cosby had robbed a joyful young woman, the product of a nourishing family and happy childhood, of her smile. Angela Lewis for The New York TimesSince the court’s decision, Cosby has said he wants to re-emerge as a truly public personality, which Constand would have to contend with. He has taken to social media to proclaim the ruling a vindication of his innocence, an overstatement of the decision, which found he had not been given a fair trial, but did not exonerate him.But he still has 3.2 million Twitter followers, and the day after the decision he posted a clip of Constand talking about the night she said she was assaulted. It was paired with a statement that took issue with media reporting on his case.Constand said the posting showed a man emboldened by his new freedom who was trying to use it to damage her reputation.On the same day, she retweeted a post from her sexual abuse support foundation that said “Bill Cosby is not innocent.”But, otherwise, after a modest amount of publicity associated with her book, she said she intends to regain her privacy. She is not planning a book tour and said she wants to focus on her massage therapy business, which was hurt by the pandemic, and a nonprofit foundation she started, Hope Healing and Transformation. It provides resources for survivors of sexual assault, such as a library to help understand trauma, connections to lawyers and a platform for writing their stories. Some of the proceeds from her memoir are going to the foundation.She says it was her destiny to take on Cosby, in what was a “David and Goliath situation.”But would she do it again?Prosecutors are examining the possibility of appeal. If they won, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision to block a third trial could be overturned. And Constand said she might put herself through another trial if asked, but it would be a difficult decision and she would have to consult her family.“Yeah, I would do it all over again,” she said. “If it was to do the right thing. I would do anything, as long as it was for the right reason.”Whatever happens, she says, the fact that Cosby walked free should not change what the case achieved.“I hope it doesn’t deter anybody,” she said. “I hope people will still find their voices. I hope that they don’t look at his freedom as a reason not to come forward. Quite the contrary, I hope they feel if Andrea can do it, I can do it.” More

From co-stars of “The Wire” to musicians and authors, many took to social media on Monday to share their thoughts about the actor.Fans, actors and celebrities took to social media to share their condolences for Michael K. Williams, the actor best known for his role as Omar Little in the HBO series “The Wire,” who was found dead in his home on Monday.Mr. Williams, who was 54, starred in a number of movies and TV shows, including “Boardwalk Empire,” “Lovecraft Country” and “Bringing Out the Dead.” Many of his co-stars from “The Wire” were quick on Monday to share their thoughts about the actor.“The depth of my love for this brother, can only be matched by the depth of my pain learning of his loss,” Wendell Pierce, who starred on the show as Detective William (Bunk) Moreland, said on Twitter. “A immensely talented man with the ability to give voice to the human condition portraying the lives of those whose humanity is seldom elevated until he sings their truth.”If you don’t know, you better ask somebody. His name was Michael K. Williams. He shared with me his secret fears then stepped out into his acting with true courage, acting in the face of fear, not in the absence of it. It took me years to learn what Michael had in abundance. pic.twitter.com/BIkoPPrPzg— Wendell Pierce (@WendellPierce) September 6, 2021
In a series of posts on Twitter, Mr. Pierce described his relationship with the actor, adding that they had grown close through the show.“He shared with me his secret fears then stepped out into his acting with true courage, acting in the face of fear, not in the absence of it,” Mr. Pierce said. “It took me years to learn what Michael had in abundance.”Domenick Lombardozzi, who also starred on “The Wire,” described Mr. Williams on Twitter as kind, fair, gentle and talented.“I’ll cherish our talks and I’ll miss him tremendously,” he said. “Rest my friend.”Isiah Whitlock Jr., who also starred in “The Wire,” said on Twitter that he was “shocked and saddened” by the death of Mr. Williams.“One of the nicest brothers on the planet with the biggest heart,” he said. “An amazing actor and soul.”David Simon, the creator of the “The Wire,” initially chose not to share words about the actor, opting instead to post a portrait of Mr. Williams on Twitter.Later, Mr. Simon posted on Twitter that he was “too gutted right now to say all that ought to be said.”“Michael was a fine man and a rare talent and on our journey together he always deserved the best words,” he said. “And today those words won’t come.”HBO said on Twitter that the death of Mr. Williams is an “immeasurable loss.”“While the world knew of his immense talents, we knew Michael as a dear friend,” the network said.Ahmir Khalib Thompson, the musician known as Questlove, said on Twitter that he could not “take this pain.”“Please God No,” the musician said. “Death cannot be this normal.”The death of Mr. Williams also drew attention from others on social media, including the author Stephen King.“Horrible, sad, and unbelievable to think we’ve lost the fantastically talented Michael K. Williams at the age of 54,” the author said on Twitter.The Screen Actors Guild Awards said on Twitter that it mourned the loss of Mr. Williams.“We will always remember him and his ability to impact people’s lives through his powerful performances,” it said. More