Television

Last week, ViacomCBS announced that its mini-series based on “A Higher Loyalty,” the best-selling book by the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey that angered President Trump, would be broadcast after the election.That came as a disappointment to the director, who had been working toward an air date before November, according to an email he sent to cast members on Monday.It also came as bad news to Mr. Comey. “I don’t understand why CBS would sit on a movie about important current events, and I hope the American people get the chance to see it soon,” Mr. Comey said in a statement.CBS Television Studios announced the adaptation of Mr. Comey’s book last fall without specifying a release date. Last week it announced that the mini-series would makes its debut on ViacomCBS’s Showtime cable network in late November.Since the director of the mini-series, Billy Ray, sent his email on Monday, ViacomCBS appears to be reconsidering its scheduling decision. “We will be announcing several changes to our schedule, and ‘The Comey Rule’ is most likely moving to air before the election,” a Showtime spokeswoman said in an email on Tuesday.The two-part, four-hour program, “The Comey Rule,” was adapted by Mr. Ray, the screenwriter of “Shattered Glass,” “Captain Phillips” and “Richard Jewell.” It stars Jeff Daniels as Mr. Comey, who served as the F.B.I. director from 2013 until the president abruptly fired him in May 2017. Mr. Trump is played by Brendan Gleeson, a Dublin-born actor perhaps best known for his portrayal of Alastor (Mad-Eye) Moody in the Harry Potter movies.In his email to cast members, which was reviewed by The New York Times, Mr. Ray expressed disappointment in the decision to broadcast “The Comey Rule” after the election.“We all were hoping to get this story in front of the American people months before the coming election,” he wrote. “And that was a reasonable expectation considering that we’d been given a mandate by the network to do whatever was necessary to deliver by May 15.“But at some point in March or April, that mandate changed,” Mr. Ray continued. “Word started drifting back to me that a decision about our airdate had been made at the very highest levels of Viacom: all talk of our airing before the election was suddenly a ‘non-starter.’” He added that ViacomCBS had refused to allow the filmmakers to take “The Comey Rule” to another network.In a brief interview on Tuesday, Mr. Ray addressed the company’s decision to make the mini-series available weeks after Election Day, Nov. 3. “I don’t see how it could have been economically motivated,” he said. “They never told me why.”“A Higher Loyalty” was an instant blockbuster upon its publication in April 2018, selling 600,000 copies in all formats its first week. In its pages Mr. Comey likens Mr. Trump to a crime boss and calls him “unethical, and untethered to truth.” Mr. Trump attacked the book and its author, calling him an “untruthful slime ball” in a tweet.At the time of his firing three years ago, Mr. Comey was the top official leading a criminal investigation into whether Mr. Trump’s advisers had colluded with the Russian government to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.Simon & Schuster, a publishing house owned by ViacomCBS, released Mr. Comey’s book; it is also the publisher of “The Room Where It Happened,” a memoir by Mr. Trump’s former national security head John Bolton that came out on Tuesday. In March, ViacomCBS put Simon & Schuster up for sale.CBS was among the hundreds of organizations and people that have been the target of attacks by Mr. Trump during his term in office. In a 2018 tweet, the president included CBS reporters among the “fakers” who have “done so much dishonest reporting that they should only be allowed to get awards for fiction!”Previous attempts by Hollywood to build shows around political figures have not gone according to plan. In 2013, NBC scrapped a mini-series that would have starred Diane Lane as Hillary Clinton before it was shot. More recently, the third season of Ryan Murphy’s FX series “American Crime Story: Impeachment” — with a focus on former President Bill Clinton, and with Monica Lewinsky as a producer — was scheduled to make its debut on Sept. 27. FX ended up postponing the release until after the election, citing Mr. Murphy’s busy schedule.In his email to the cast of “The Comey Rule,” Mr. Ray wrote that he was puzzled by ViacomCBS’s decision to wait until after the election.“Why?” he wrote. “I don’t know. The health of a media company depends on attracting audiences — and our movie, aired in August of an election year, would have been very big news. Can you imagine the billboards? Comey Vs. Trump! A cast loaded with Emmy winners! Yet here we are. I am deeply sorry that I didn’t win this one.” More

After weeks of criticism, the ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel addressed his past use of blackface in comedy sketches, saying on Tuesday that he apologized “to those who were genuinely hurt or offended by the makeup I wore or the words I spoke.”Kimmel, the host of “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” had previously used blackface to play celebrities like Karl Malone and Oprah Winfrey on “The Man Show,” a Comedy Central series he starred in from 1999 to 2003.Kimmel said in a statement that his impersonation of Malone had started when he was a radio host for KROQ in Los Angeles in the mid-1990s. When he brought that impersonation to TV, Kimmel said, “We hired makeup artists to make me look as much like Karl Malone as possible. I never considered that this might be seen as anything other than an imitation of a fellow human being, one that had no more to do with Karl’s skin color than it did his bulging muscles and bald head.”Kimmel, who did not use the word “blackface” in his statement, said that as he looked back on his previous comedy sketches, many of them had become “embarrassing, and it is frustrating that these thoughtless moments have become a weapon used by some to diminish my criticisms of social and other injustices.”He added in the statement, “I believe that I have evolved and matured over the last 20-plus years, and I hope that is evident to anyone who watches my show. I know that this will not be the last I hear of this and that it will be used again to try to quiet me.”Kimmel made his remarks following several weeks of sustained criticism on social media that he and other entertainers have faced for using blackface in their work.On June 1, Jimmy Fallon, the host of “The Tonight Show” on NBC, apologized on his program for a “Saturday Night Live” sketch from 2000 in which he had appeared in blackface to impersonate Chris Rock.Tina Fey, the creator of the NBC comedy “30 Rock,” said that she and her co-showrunner, Robert Carlock, had asked for several episodes of that show to be pulled from streaming services because they depict characters in blackface. Fey said in a statement, “As we strive to do the work and do better in regards to race in America, we believe that these episodes featuring actors in race-changing makeup are best taken out of circulation. I understand now that ‘intent’ is not a free pass for white people to use these images.”Episodes of other comedy shows like “Little Britain” and “The Mighty Boosh” have also been pulled from streaming services amid concerns about blackface.Kimmel, who is slated to host the Emmy Awards in September, announced last week that he would be taking a vacation from “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and would have guest hosts fill in for him throughout the summer. He said in his statement on Tuesday that this vacation had been planned “for more than a year and includes the next two summers off as well,” adding that he would return to the show in September. More

Pennsylvania’s highest court on Tuesday said it agreed to hear part of Bill Cosby’s appeal of his 2018 sexual assault conviction.In December, a panel of three appellate judges unanimously rejected his appeal to the lower Superior Court, upholding his 2018 conviction in the drugging and sexual assault of Andrea Constand at his home outside Philadelphia in 2004.But in January, his lawyers petitioned the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court to review that decision, highlighting several issues where they said the panel had erred in supporting the trial judge’s decision.The state’s Supreme Court does not necessarily have to take up an appeal, and its justices typically grant few of them. It rejected some of the issues Mr. Cosby’s lawyer raised, but it said it would review the trial judge’s decision to allow testimony from five other accusers — women who, like Ms. Constand, said Mr. Cosby had drugged and sexually assaulted them.The decision means Mr. Cosby’s lawyers will now have another opportunity to challenge a verdict that represented one of the most high-profile convictions of the #MeToo era.In particular, it gives them the chance to fight the decision to include the testimony from the so-called “prior bad acts” witnesses, which many experts considered to be one of the most significant moments of the criminal trial.In Pennsylvania and many other states, testimony concerning prior alleged crimes is allowed if, among other conditions, it demonstrates a signature pattern of abuse. Such testimony by other accusers played a role in the Harvey Weinstein case, where their testimony was sought to demonstrate a pattern of predatory behavior by Mr. Weinstein. Mr. Cosby’s lawyers, however, argue that he was denied a fair trial because the allegations by the other women were too remote in time and too dissimilar to the case for which he was being tried.The court will review whether the jury should have heard testimony about Mr. Cosby’s use of quaaludes as part of his efforts to have sex with other women, including his own testimony in a separate civil case. And it said it would also review the judge’s decision to allow the trial to go ahead even after a former district attorney had given what the district attorney said was a binding assurance that Mr. Cosby would not be charged in the case. The Superior Court panel said that a district attorney did not have the authority to make such a promise.Mr. Cosby, 82, is serving a three- to 10-year sentence at SCI Phoenix, a maximum-security facility outside Philadelphia.Ms. Constand reacted to the Supreme Court’s decision, saying it was right that the five other women were heard.“While everyone deserves for their cries and appeals to be heard, even convicted criminals, if anyone’s cries matter most right now, it’s the women who have lifted their voices and selflessly put themselves in harm’s way, such as the prior bad act witnesses in my case,” she said in an emailed statement.In a separate statement, Mr. Cosby’s spokesman said, “We’re extremely thankful to the State Supreme Court of Pennsylvania for agreeing to review Mr. Cosby’s appeal.”The Montgomery County District Attorney’s office said, “We look forward to briefing and arguing these issues and remain confident in the Trial Court and Superior Court’s previous decisions.” More