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      John Mulaney Says His New Show Is Netflix’s Mistake

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      The comedian said Netflix “picked up this show by accident. They thought that it was a true-crime documentary because I look like a disappeared boy.”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.Live From L.A. (Again)Netflix launched its new late-night show, “Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney,” on Wednesday. In his monologue, Mulaney promised 12 episodes of a “jazzlike, unpredictable talk show.”“I’m not gonna lie — we’ve been working on this episode all day. Some crew got here as early as 9 a.m.” — JOHN MULANEY“I can’t do coke or Adderall anymore, so I’m making it your problem. Will this show get my heart rate up to the level where I feel alive? We shall see.” — JOHN MULANEYJohn Mulaney is your problem now. #EverybodysLive pic.twitter.com/xiIT2JYFlu— Netflix (@netflix) March 13, 2025

      The comedian reminded viewers that he’d had an earlier show with a similar concept: a six-episode live series called “Everybody’s in L.A.” that ended last May. While fans enjoyed its unpredictability, the show’s name was a turnoff in Netflix screen tests, he said: “It turns out that people around the country don’t like L.A.”“After the fires, I said, ‘Maybe they like us more now,’ so we tested it again, and it turns out, no. People still didn’t.” — JOHN MULANEY“Netflix actually picked up this show by accident. They thought that it was a true-crime documentary because I look like a disappeared boy.” — JOHN MULANEYMulaney also referred to his much-scrutinized personal life with his wife, the actress Olivia Munn, and their two young children before moving on to the night’s guests.“Yes, I have two children now. One was controversial; one you all seem to be cool with, so thank you so much for that.” — JOHN MULANEYThe Punchiest Punchlines (Bad Education Edition)“Trump just announced he’s firing 50 percent of the Department of Education. Even worse, Trump said, ‘Don’t worry, the other 60 percent will still have jobs.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Trump, really, he’s Thanos-ed the Department of Education.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The new secretary of education is Linda McMahon, who’s married to Vince McMahon of the W.W.E. Could you imagine getting fired by the wife of the disgraced wrestling meathead? Don’t let the folding chair hit you on the way out.” — JIMMY KIMMELWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What Is Lorazepam? The Drug From ‘The White Lotus’ Carries Real Risks

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      Prescription drugs like lorazepam — used to treat anxiety, panic attacks and sleep disorders — play a role in popular TV shows like “The White Lotus” and “The Pitt.”Victoria Ratliff, the wealthy financier’s wife on season 3 of HBO’s “The White Lotus,” has a problem: She keeps popping pills.And her drug of choice, the anti-anxiety medication lorazepam, has left her a little loopy.In the show, which follows guests vacationing at a fictional resort, Victoria pairs her medication with wine, which leads her to nod off at the dinner table. Sometimes she slurs her words.When she notices that her pill supply is mysteriously dwindling, she asks her children if they’re stealing them.“You don’t have enough lorazepam to get through one week at a wellness spa?” her daughter, Piper, asks.“The White Lotus” is not the only show to recently feature these drugs. The new Max series “The Pitt,” which takes place in an emergency department, includes a story line about a benzodiazepine called Librium.This isn’t a case of Hollywood taking dramatic liberties. Benzodiazepines such as lorazepam and chlordiazepoxide are notorious for having the potential to be highly addictive. They may also come with difficult — sometimes fatal — withdrawal symptoms.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jimmy Kimmel Slams Trump’s Skills of Shill for Tesla

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      “But why should he, when he did a big commercial for them today, absolutely free?” Kimmel said after the president brought some of Elon Musk’s cars to the White House.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.No Such Thing as Bad Publicity?Tesla’s stock has been plunging, so much so that Jimmy Kimmel thinks Elon Musk “may have to fire himself.” But Musk got a boost from President Trump, who promised to buy a Tesla and had some brought to the White House on Tuesday.“The guy has spent the entire campaign screaming about how awful electric cars are, is now buying an electric car. Of course, there’s no chance he will actually pay for this electric car. But why should he, when he did a big commercial for them today, absolutely free?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I remember the time he saved Party City by buying a kazoo — it was heroic.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I would imagine they probably don’t even have a place to charge it at the White — maybe he’ll make little Marco run on a hamster wheel.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Watching Donald Trump check out a Tesla — it was like watching a monkey with an iPad.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“He had them line up five Teslas on the White House driveway so Trump and Elon could shoot a car commercial on government property.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“He’s finally turned into the used-car salesman we all knew he was all along.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Just the idea that we all now have to dig deep to help the richest man in the world who’s down to his last $324 billion sell cars is preposterous.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Sorry Not Sorry Edition)“There’s a silver lining on the implosion of the world economy — it’s bad for Elon Musk, too.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Right now the economy is so bad, Elon Musk is thinking about laying off Donald Trump.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yesterday alone, Musk lost more than $16 billion. Wow! Wow! To put that in perspective, that’s more than some people make in a year.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Tesla stock has plummeted 50 percent since December, and there’s a good reason for that. It’s a phenomenon economists call ‘Everybody [expletive] hates that guy.’” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingSting and Shaggy pulled from their most popular lyrics to sing about the economy on Tuesday’s “The Tonight Show.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightThe “White Lotus” star Parker Posey will chat with Seth Meyers on Wednesday’s “Late Night.”Also, Check This OutIn “Long Bright River,” Amanda Seyfried plays a Philadelphia police officer who investigates the murders of vulnerable young women.David Holloway/PeacockAmanda Seyfried played against type with her new role as a Philadelphia beat cop in a new Peacock series, “Long Bright River.” More

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      Meghan Sussex? Even Meghan Markle’s Last Name Inspires Debates.

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      The Duchess of Sussex caused a stir on “With Love, Meghan” when she said Sussex was her last name. But does that break from royal tradition?In “Romeo and Juliet,” the star-crossed heroine asks: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.”People far less infatuated have wrestled with this concept for hundreds of years: How much should a name signify, and does it actually affect what or who a person is?Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, would like a word.In her new Netflix series, “With Love, Meghan,” the duchess, who is married to Prince Harry, told the actress Mindy Kaling that her last name was Sussex, correcting Ms. Kaling, who had referred to her by a more familiar name: Meghan Markle.“It’s so funny, too, that you keep saying Meghan Markle,” Meghan said in the second episode of the series, which premiered last week. “You know I’m Sussex now.”Meghan cited the importance of sharing a last name with her children.“I didn’t know how meaningful it would be to me but it just means so much to go, ‘This is our family name, our little family name,’” she said.Ms. Kaling, who initially seemed surprised, replied, “Well, now I know and I love it.”It’s understandable that Meghan, whose representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment, insists on usage of what she feels is the correct form of her name. But as with most Meghan-related news, the clip quickly made waves online as people took to social media to criticize her. Some commenters thought she was being pretentious, and others called her out for seemingly having confused her royal house with the family’s surname.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tony Hinchcliffe, the Trump Rally Comedian, Lands a Netflix Deal

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      Hinchcliffe’s set at Madison Square Garden in October drew sharp criticism after he described Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”The stand-up comedian Tony Hinchcliffe has landed a deal at Netflix months after angering people with his insults about Latinos and other minority groups at a New York rally when Donald J. Trump was running for president.The deal for three comedy specials under Hinchcliffe’s “Kill Tony” brand is part of an attempt by streaming services to appeal to Trump voters. Amazon Prime Video announced on Monday that several seasons of “The Apprentice,” the NBC reality show that bolstered Trump’s public profile in the early 2000s, would soon be available on the streaming service.Hinchcliffe’s specials will feature a mix of established comedians and surprise celebrity guests, Netflix said in a news release on Tuesday. The first special will be filmed at Comedy Mothership in Austin, Texas, and will arrive on the platform on April 7. Hinchcliffe will also receive his own stand-up special in the deal.Hinchcliffe is known for his “roast” style of comedy and his “Kill Tony” podcast, which is recorded live each week from Austin. He said in a statement that he was excited to share his show, which started with 12 audience members in 2013, with the world.“To think that I can pull a name out of a bucket and that person will be performing standup and an improvised interview on the largest streaming service in the world is both exciting and frightening,” Hinchcliffe said. “It’s the most spontaneous and improvised show that is out there and the creative freedom given to us by Netflix to keep the show in its pure form is a comedian’s dream.”Hinchcliffe was among the comedians who roasted the retired N.F.L. quarterback Tom Brady in a Netflix special last year that was viewed 13.8 million times in its first week on the streaming platform. His segment included homophobic remarks and comments about slavery.The comedian’s public profile grew even more in October after taking the stage at the Trump rally at Madison Square Garden, where he made insults and vulgar statements that leaned on offensive stereotypes about Jews, Latinos and African Americans. He received intense backlash after calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage,” drawing condemnation from celebrities like Bad Bunny, Jennifer Lopez and Lin-Manuel Miranda. More

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      ‘Adolescence’ Is a Cacophonous, Gripping Mini-Series

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      The emotionally complex new Netflix series, about a teenager accused of killing a classmate, doubles as a rich work of social critique.“Adolescence,” arriving Thursday, on Netflix, is a four-part mini-series about a 13-year-old accused of killing a classmate. So far, so Netflix. Its distinguishing features are its depressing realism and the fact that each episode is a continuous scene, which adds to the sense of panic and hurriedness.The show begins with the police storming the Miller family home to arrest the young son, Jamie (Owen Cooper), while his parents (Stephen Graham, Christine Tremarco) and sister (Amelie Pease) look on in horror and bafflement, crying and pleading. There is no break in the chaos. We stay with Jamie as he arrives at the police station, as he is fingerprinted and questioned, as the police take photos of his body while his father stands by in helpless horror.The show’s best episode, and one of the more fascinating hours of TV I’ve seen in a long time, is its third, a two-hander set seven months after the arrest. Jamie is in a juvenile detention facility, and a psychologist (Erin Doherty) is completing her independent evaluation to provide to the judge in his case. I watched this episode a few times, and it can land in different ways. Through one lens, she plays him like a piano, provoking a variety of emotional responses. Through another, she is a ship on his ocean, a witness to his tempestuousness but not its cause. The rhythm of the episode is the rhythm of Jamie’s audible breathing, and the toppled foosball table in the back corner is as upended as Jamie’s life.For better or worse, “Adolescence” evokes in the viewer the feelings of its characters: overstimulation, confusion, an increasingly powerful desire to tell everyone to sit down and be quiet for five dang seconds. Also sorrow, disbelief, a rending of the world and a surrender to never truly understanding — to not knowing, but … knowing.The performances here are superb, with varsity weeping and real sense of heft and verisimilitude. Is it a weird time to engage in recreational misery? When there’s so much free, ambient despair to go around? Yeah, probably, but “Adolescence” is not agony for agony’s sake. It uses its pain and shock as a side door into interesting questions and social critiques. It’s about a teen, but its ideas are adult.SIDE QUESTGraham, one of the creators of this series, and Doherty also star in “A Thousand Blows,” which is on Hulu. More

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      Netflix Is Gobbling Up World Literature. What Could Go Wrong?

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      The streamer keeps mounting lavish adaptations of beloved novels — and making them all feel like just more Netflix.I’m thinking of a piece of filmed entertainment. It was adapted from a famous, internationally significant novel. It was blessed with lavish budgets, accomplished directors, ambitious visual design. A premiere was announced, ads were purchased, trailers were released — and then, one day, it was dumped onto a streaming service and almost immediately forgotten.Can you guess which one I’m thinking of? It could be “Pachinko,” or “The Fall of the House of Usher,” or “The Wheel of Time,” or any number of others. This past December, Netflix released over eight hours of television adapting somewhat less than half of Gabriel García Márquez’s 1967 classic, “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” It has, in fact, been Hoovering up the rights to major novels from around the world, spending millions to transform them into prestige programming. In the last year alone, there has been a film adaptation of Juan Rulfo’s novel “Pedro Paramo” (from Mexico), a mini-series of Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa’s 1950s novel “The Leopard” (from Italy) and the first season of a version of Liu Cixin’s “The Three-Body Problem” (from China), which reportedly cost around $160 million to make.News that this was happening to “One Hundred Years of Solitude” might have shocked Márquez. He wrote for the movies and gave his blessing to multiple adaptations of his work, but the great Colombian writer never did sell the rights to “Solitude.” He thought its story, which follows the Buendia family over a century of history in the fictional city Macondo, would take 100 hours to tell properly; he also insisted it be filmed in Spanish. After his death in 2014, his widow held to these wishes; it was only in 2019, after the couple’s sons had become more involved in the estate, that Netflix acquired the rights. Márquez’s heirs would be executive producers. They negotiated for the show to be made in Colombia, and in Spanish.When the series was announced, though, Netflix sounded a more global note: “We know our members around the world love watching Spanish-language films and series,” said its vice president for Spanish-language programming. Netflix is available in more than 190 countries, and once a piece of original content enters its library — whether a Korean drama or a Latin American telenovela — it can be viewed most anywhere. The company seems to have pursued “Solitude” as an iteration of hits like “The Crown,” “Squid Game” and “Money Heist”: local productions that captivate international audiences through a combination of regional specificity and broad televisual legibility. The mini-series resembles the other things on Netflix more than it resembles anything in Márquez.The book is a natural candidate. It offers an imaginative evocation of Colombian history, rife with characters and love affairs and civil wars; it is also one of the best-known Spanish-language novels in the world, having sold some 50 million copies across nearly four dozen translations. Like “The Leopard” and “Pedro Paramo,” it has both national pedigree and international reputation, its title familiar enough to make viewers around the world pause over the Netflix tile. It is, in other words, valuable I.P. And that means it must now conform to the expectations of modern streaming: It must be adapted for frictionless international content consumption.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In ‘Long Bright River,’ Amanda Seyfried Serves and Protects

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      For Amanda Seyfried, the first day on set for “Long Bright River,” a limited series for Peacock, was awful. She stood under the lights in a mock-up of a police morgue, in her patrol cop uniform, unsure how to move or speak.“Every first day of work, I never know what the [expletive] I’m doing,” she told me later.Seyfried overprepares for most roles. She researches; she memorizes; she asks question after question. But then suddenly she’s on a soundstage somewhere, with the lights blazing and the cameras pointed at her face, and the terror rushes in. If she has an acting process, she said, “it’s all based on the fear that I’m not going to be good enough.”Seyfried, 39, was speaking on an icy February morning. We’d met for a late breakfast at a cafe on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, near where Seyfried keeps an apartment. (She and her husband, the actor Thomas Sadoski, and their two children, spend most of their time on a farm upstate.) She was in town to shoot a Paul Feig movie, “The Housemaid,” and to promote “Long Bright River,” a moody eight-episode suspense series that premieres on March 13. She had recently wrapped “Ann Lee,” a historical musical by Mona Fastvold.Over more than two decades as an actor, Amanda Seyfried has moved from comedy and romance to more complex roles. Dana Scruggs for The New York TimesDoes this sound like a lot? It was. “I think I’m falling apart,” Seyfried said as she looked at the menu. She had recently injured her back on “The Housemaid” and was taking muscle relaxants.“I’m fine now,” she said. “I mean, I’m not. I’m struggling, but I’m walking.”Seyfried has been in the business for more than two decades, and has moved, gradually, from comedy (“Mean Girls”) and romance (“Mamma Mia”) to more complex roles. Her performance as the actress Marion Davies in the Netflix film “Mank” earned her an Oscar nomination, and she won an Emmy for her portrayal of the convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes in the Hulu mini-series, “The Dropout.” With those roles and those accolades secure, she has finally been recognized as a gifted dramatic actress.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More