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      Bruce Campbell on ‘Hysteria!’ and Why the Satanic Panic Never Ended

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      The Peacock horror comedy finds timeliness in a dark chapter of American history. “Satan was always an existential threat,” the actor said.In 1981, Bruce Campbell knocked horror fandom’s socks off as Ash Williams, the iron-jawed demon fighter in “The Evil Dead,” Sam Raimi’s outré and now-beloved film about friends who battle unholy hell at a cabin in the woods. It was, it seems fair to say, a defining role.Now at 66, after decades of swashbuckling, bone-crunching roles in cult horror films and on TV, Campbell’s life seems a bit more Mayberry. He is a grandfather who still uses AOL Mail. Later this month, he’ll host what he called a “casino-ween” party at an Elks Lodge in Ashland, Ore., the mountain town where he lives with his wife, Ida. His taste in music, he said, is “way more Lawrence Welk than you might imagine.”In some ways, his role in the Peacock series “Hysteria!,” which debuted on Friday, reflects something of this kinder, gentler new reality. As the aw-shucks police chief Dandridge, his domain is a sleepy Michigan suburb in the 1980s, a place where boring is beautiful. But this is Bruce Campbell, so of course the peace is shattered as local holy rollers blame a high school heavy metal band for inviting Satan to their town and unleashing a series of deathly evil deeds. But the devil rarely needs an invitation.“Hysteria!” is a supernatural horror-comedy, but it takes its cue from a very real and unfunny chapter in American history: the so-called satanic panic, when a flood of unwarranted accusations about cults committing ritualistic child abuse swept the country. That abuse was abetted, according to many leaders on the religious right, by satanic messaging in popular culture.Campbell stars in “Hysteria!” as the humble police chief of a town consumed by fears about Satan.PeacockBut for a series set in the ’80s, “Hysteria!” is in some ways timely. It is the latest of several popular treatments of the satanic panic in recent years — including the documentary “Satan Wants You,” the novel “Rainbow Black” and the most recent season of “Stranger Things” — as culture wars, new technologies and misinformation have helped incite a fresh wave of conspiracy theories and conservative book bans.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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      Late Night Recaps Harris’s Time on Fox News and Trump’s on Univision

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      “Yes, both Kamala and Trump went into ‘the lion’s den’ this week — although they only got Trump there by telling him it was the name of a strip club,” Desi Lydic said on “The Daily Show.”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.Lions, Foxes and BaiersVice President Kamala Harris appeared on Fox News on Wednesday, where she was interrupted several times during an interview with Bret Baier, the network’s chief political anchor. On the same day, former President Donald Trump held a Univision town hall, where, as Desi Lydic joked on Thursday’s “Daily Show,” he “faced down his biggest fear: Hispanic people.”“Yes, both Kamala and Trump went into ‘the lion’s den’ this week — although they only got Trump there by telling him it was the name of a strip club.” — DESI LYDIC“I’d like to point out that there is no difference between his nervous swaying to Spanish and his dancing to ‘Ave Maria.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Now Kamala’s ‘lion’s den’ was Fox News, so I guess it was a Fox den, where she sat down with Bret Baier — so maybe it was a Baier’s den.” — DESI LYDIC“I want to be clear about this: I believe that journalists should always ask the toughest questions of presidential candidates, and Bret Baier certainly plays a convincing journalist on Fox News.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Come on, Bret, you invited her on to speak with you. This is an interview with the vice president, not sex with your wife — you have to let the woman finish.” — DESI LYDICThe Punchiest Punchlines (Winning? Edition)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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      Sex, Horses and Stately Homes: Bringing a Naughty British Romance to TV

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      Walking into Jilly Cooper’s house in the English countryside is like stepping inside one of her novels.The living room walls are covered in pictures or bookshelves, and the surfaces by ceramic cats, dogs and horses. Pictures of loved ones (family) and notables (royal family) are scattered throughout the room. The windows look over a landscape of rolling hills.It was from this 14th-century home, and on a manual typewriter, that Cooper, 87, wrote the “Rutshire Chronicles,” an 11-book series of romance novels featuring the handsome and troubled horse-riding hero Rupert Campbell-Black. The novels sold 12 million copies in Britain, where they shaped a generation readers’ ideas about romance, sex and the upper classes in the ’80s and ’90s.Known as “the queen of the bonkbuster” — an amalgam of “blockbuster” and “bonking,” a very English way of referring to you-know-what — Cooper’s name is synonymous in Britain with juicy romance and well-heeled naughtiness. In the United States, it has less resonance.Disney+ and Hulu are hoping to change that with the premiere, on Friday, of “Rivals,” an eight-part series based on Cooper’s 1988 novel of the same title from the “Rutshire Chronicles.”“I’m knocked out, because I love this book so much,” Cooper said in a recent interview. “I think it’s my favorite one.” Seeing it turned into a series, she said, was a “great treat,” especially at her age. “Eighty-seven is so old,” she said. “What’s 87 in dog years?”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 Women-Centered Town Hall

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      “This was the first time Groper Cleveland has been around this many women since they started padlocking the doors at Miss Teen USA,” Kimmel said on Wednesday.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.Father FigureOn Tuesday, former President Donald Trump held a town hall in front of what Jimmy Kimmel called “a handpicked audience of Trump-loving women in Georgia.”“This was the first time Groper Cleveland has been around this many women since they started padlocking the doors at Miss Teen USA.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“In the first part, the women asked questions, and in the second part, Trump went through and rated them physically from 1 to 10.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“One lucky lady was named Miss Fox News Town Hall ’24, so congratulations.” — JIMMY KIMMELAt one point during the town hall, Trump proclaimed himself “the father of I.V.F.”“Now he’s claiming to be the father of I.V.F. — which has been happening since 1978. This guy won’t even admit to being the father of Eric.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“He’s the father of I.V.F. Maybe that’s short for Ivanka, I don’t know.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Y.M.C.A. Edition)“You should not vote for someone because they dance to ‘Y.M.C.A.’ But also, I’m not sure you’d call this dancing.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Those are some bad moves, baby. If this president thing doesn’t work out, he ought to think about being a contestant on ‘Swaying With the Stars’ or ‘So You Think You Can Tilt.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“But no matter how gay his music is, young, straight white men love Donald Trump. They see him as a ‘macho, macho’ man, if you will.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“He eats red meat, he pretends to follow U.F.C., he’s into crypto and sneakers and NFTs. He’s a dude, a bro and a boss all rolled into one.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingOn Wednesday’s “Late Show,” Stanley Tucci fessed up to fabricating his childhood confessions.What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightThe “Grotesquerie” star Niecy Nash-Betts will appear on Thursday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”Also, Check This OutElizabeth Berkley in the 1995 movie “Showgirls.”Murray Close/United ArtistsA new French stage play based on “Showgirls” speaks to the 1995 film’s enduring allure. More

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      ‘Sweet Bobby’ on Netflix Tells the Catfishing Nightmare of Kirat Assi

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      A new Netflix documentary tells a sinister tale of a decade-long online romance scam, and the devastation that followed.It started with a Facebook friend request from a man named Bobby.Kirat Assi, a 29-year-old radio host, didn’t usually allow strangers into her private Facebook life. But she’d heard of Bobby, who came from a highly regarded family in their Sikh community in West London. In fact, Ms. Assi’s cousin had dated Bobby’s younger brother, and she’d chatted with him online.So Ms. Assi accepted. It was 2010 after all, and there was still a general sense of optimism about social media. On Facebook, existing friends were coming together and new ones were readily made. It was a seemingly harmless place, full of funny wall posts, photo albums and an endless amount of pokes.For Ms. Assi, now 43, that friend request was the start of what proved to be a decade-long catfishing scheme that is the subject of “Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare,” a documentary that began streaming on Netflix on Wednesday.True crime and catfishing have been popular subjects for documentaries and podcasts in recent years, but in an interview ahead of the release of “Sweet Bobby,” Ms. Assi said that the often frivolous portrayal of catfishing can dilute the very real, long-lasting devastation these scammers inflict. She prefers to use the term “online entrapment.”“People need to know how bad it gets,” she said, noting neither the documentary nor the podcast that preceded it explained the full extent of the abuse she suffered at the hands of Bobby, as it was deemed too triggering to include.For six years, Ms. Assi and Bobby chatted online as friends. Then, Bobby got divorced and confessed his love to Ms. Assi shortly after. They dated for three years — chatting, texting, sending intimate voice mail messages and falling asleep on overnight Skype calls. Bobby said he had a stroke, and Ms. Assi cared for him from afar.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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      ‘The Apprentice’ Gets a Young Trump Ready for His Close-Up

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      Beyond its story of Donald Trump’s early years in business, “The Apprentice” traces his origins as a media celebrity.“The Apprentice” is a movie about the early adult life of Donald J. Trump, but it ends with his birth.In the film’s final scene, Mr. Trump (Sebastian Stan) is meeting with Tony Schwartz (Eoin Duffy), the writer with whom he will collaborate on “The Art of the Deal.” Mr. Trump, as the film makes clear, was a known quantity before then. But with the best-selling book, a celebrity was born.The book, published in 1987, vaulted him from regional tabloid name to pop-culture phenomenon, portrayed in skits on “Saturday Night Live,” playing himself in sitcom and movie cameos, becoming an all-purpose media symbol of ostentatious wealth. The book helped make him a TV star — Mark Burnett, the producer of the reality-TV show “The Apprentice,” was a fan — and that stardom helped make him president.All that, however, comes after the events of the movie “The Apprentice.” Directed by Ali Abbasi, the film focuses on how the young Mr. Trump was molded by two father figures. His actual father, Fred Trump (Martin Donovan), instilled the belief that a man’s highest aspiration is to be a “killer.” His moral father, the lawyer, fixer and onetime Joseph McCarthy henchman Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), taught him that life is a constant fight with three rules: Attack, attack, attack; deny, deny, deny; and never admit defeat.But it is also about how a local real estate developer’s son evolved into the media-bestriding character we know. Cohn, whose life as a closeted gay man was famously captured in Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America,” kept a busy social calendar and believed in the value of information and social capital, of knowing people and being seen.To that end, the Mr. Cohn of the movie gives his young disciple a directive more consequential than any tips on beating housing discrimination lawsuits: “Keep your name in the papers.” The young Mr. Trump, not yet the media hound who lives for the camera lights, requires some teaching. In a memorable scene, he takes a phone call in Mr. Cohn’s car for an early newspaper profile, with Mr. Cohn coaching, correcting, almost puppeteering him.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 Bashes Trump’s Bizarre Town Hall

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      Kimmel joked on Tuesday that Trump “just said ‘To hell with it’ and started asking his tech guys to play songs off his iPad.”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.Dance Hall CrashersOn Monday, former President Donald Trump took only five questions from the audience at a town hall in Pennsylvania. He spent the last 39 minutes onstage swaying to music.Jimmy Kimmel joked on Tuesday that Trump “just said ‘To hell with it’ and started asking his tech guys to play songs off his iPad.”“Why remain onstage for 39 minutes? Just pretend it was one of Don Jr.’s piano recitals and leave. Go home!” — JIMMY KIMMEL“He played music and kind of did that baby toddler jumping dance that he does for a full 39 minutes. He just stood there swaying like a manatee tangled in seaweed.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I want you to imagine a world in which Kamala Harris stood there at a rally and said nothing, just danced around for almost 40 minutes. Fox News would have — they would have blocked out a full week to cover it.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Let the Record Show Edition)“Watching an elderly man sway to Vatican elevator music for 40 minutes might make you wonder, ‘Is he OK?’ And you wouldn’t be the only one, because yesterday more than 230 doctors and health care providers called on Trump to release his medical records. Do you know how hard it is to get 230 doctors to agree on anything?” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Trump took the time to fire back at the doctors with this lie, [imitating Trump] ‘I’ve put out more medical exams than any other president in history, and aced two cognitive exams.’ First of all, no, you haven’t. Second of all, just because you were healthy in the past doesn’t mean you’re still healthy now. ‘Oh, am I prediabetic? I don’t know — why don’t you ask this urine sample from January of 1996?’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“This guy, he wasn’t healthy enough to be in the military during the draft, but 60 years later, he’s the healthiest man alive. He’s perfect.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth Watching“Shrinking” star Jason Segal discussed working with co-star Harrison Ford on Tuesday’s “Late Show.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightAustralian pop duo Royel Otis will make their American late night debut on Kimmel’s show Wednesday.Also, Check This OutMiami Beach officials wanted to highlight where Desi Arnaz launched his career, with a historical marker at the site of the nightclub where he popularized the conga.Martina Tuaty for The New York TimesA new historical marker in Miami Beach honors the nightclub where Desi Arnaz launched his musical career. More

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      Desi Arnaz Historical Marker Celebrates the ‘I Love Lucy’ Star in Miami Beach

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      A new historical marker in Miami Beach pays tribute to his younger years, before Hollywood, when as a Cuban émigré he performed at a nightclub.Years before he played the charming and devoted husband Ricky Ricardo on the sitcom “I Love Lucy” and became a bandleader who belted out “Babalú” before audiences, Desi Arnaz was a teenage Cuban immigrant who struggled to learn English in Florida.He attended a Catholic school in Miami Beach, picking up the guitar and the conga drum. And he was eventually hired as a bandleader at a nightclub where he popularized the conga.Nearly 90 years after that first big break, Miami Beach honored him on Tuesday with a historical marker that was placed near where the nightclub stood. The marker pays tribute to his younger years in the city and celebrates him for paving the way for generations of Latino entertainers.“He was not only a pioneer for Cubans that were coming to the United States but he was a pioneer for the arts in Miami Beach,” said Alex Fernandez, a member of the Miami Beach Commission, the city’s legislative body.Desi, ‘an American Original’Desi Arnaz during a publicity tour to Lucille Ball’s hometown in Jamestown, N.Y., in 1956.Charlotte BrooksThe new marker is at Collins Park outside the Miami City Ballet. It is near the site of the former Park Avenue Restaurant that hosted performances and came to be remembered as the Park Avenue nightclub. The memorial joins an artsy Miami Beach district that includes the Bass Museum of Art and a library.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