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      Sherri Shepherd Skates Through Life

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      The talk-show host gives shout-outs to her favorite comfort food in Harlem, New York’s tough comedy crowds and the actor she believes “got greater later.”Sherri Shepherd has a knack for making her dreams come true.The one about being a stand-up comic? Check. (Her “Two Funny Mamas” tour with Kym Whitley kicks off in May.) An actor? Check. (Remember the “Queen of Jordan” episodes on “30 Rock”?)How about her fantasy, starting when she was a kid interviewing her teddy bears, to be a talk-show host? That’s a big check with “Sherri,” her syndicated daytime hit. It premiered in September and by January had been renewed for two more seasons.“I love coming out, sitting in that chair, because I got to do it when I was on ‘The View,’” said Shepherd, 55, who co-hosted that long-running talk show from 2007 to 2014. “And I love my family on ‘The View,’ but you have to share audio space with four other women at the table. So this one I get to come out and be as silly as I want to.”In a video interview from Harlem, where she lives with her teenage son Jeffrey, Shepherd chatted about a few other things that excite her, like a loud game of spades, Sylvester Stallone in “Tulsa King” and roller-skating wherever she can. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1Katz’s DelicatessenIt’s unorganized chaos, but everything gets done. They have the best pastrami sandwiches. The sucker is about 10 feet tall so you get your money’s worth because it’s $200, practically. You will walk in and there is a crowd of people and if you’ve never been to Katz’s Deli, you’re freaking out, going, “Where am I supposed to stand?” But once they see you’re lost and have no clue about life, somebody from Staten Island will go, “What are you doing? Come on over here.”2Melba’s RestaurantMelba’s is the go-to place for comfort food — like a warm, fuzzy blanket. Ninety-nine percent of the time Melba’s there, and she’s got these big chocolate eyes and she hugs you and she comes to your table. During the summertime, you sit outside and eat, and inside you’ll have a really great R&B or jazz band. So I don’t even leave Harlem when people come to New York. I go, “Meet me uptown.”3‘Tulsa King’It is the perfect role for Sylvester Stallone. He plays this old Mafioso who’s done 25 years in prison and he gets out and the world has completely changed on him. And instead of getting this really great position because he didn’t snitch on any of the family, they send him to Tulsa, Okla. He just plays it so beautifully. I feel like it got greater later for Sly.4SpadesEven if you don’t know how to play the game, you’ve got to talk like you know. You have to be loud. You have to slap cards on the table. And you have to be a real sore loser. It’s all about betting how many wins you will get. If you don’t get close to those wins, you’ve got to literally go off on your partner. At the end of the day, you’re all friends. While you’re playing? Mmm-mmm.5New York Comedy ClubsAt Gotham’s or the Cellar, it’s people who want to hear you be funny and be truthful and be transparent. When you try to do the Hollywood stuff, it just doesn’t work. I had to follow Gina Yashere from “Bob Hearts Abishola.” She’s an amazing comic, and she was very New York-style. And I thought, “Oh please, I go up in L.A. at the Comedy Store all the time.” Well, I tell you, I bombed like crazy. I had to go back, sit down, reassess and go, “Sherri, you’ve got to get more honest.” Went up there the next night — killed it. I think New York crowds can see through all of the bull.6Roller SkatingI’m not one of those roller skaters that do all of the tricks and turning. But there’s something about going around in a rink, or if I’m at a great beach where I can roller skate, with the air hitting my face. I love that feeling of coasting. It’s very cathartic for me. Before I leave my studio, I skate around because they push everything out of the way. I’ll sneak my skates and hope they don’t have me on camera.7Gregory PorterHe’s a jazz artist, and he wears a black hat with a black scarf around his face. He used to be a football player. He is a big, hulking, over-six-foot-tall Black man, and the most beautiful gentle music comes from him. I was dating somebody who was like a thug gangster, and this was a person who you would think all he listened to is rap. But he introduced me to jazz, and it was Gregory Porter.8The Blue NoteLalah Hathaway invited me to the Blue Note, and a gentleman by the name of Robert Glasper, who just won a Grammy, was playing. And he packed it. It was just amazing to see all of these people who had an appreciation for really great music. The jazz crowd is like a comedy-club crowd. They sit back and they listen.9Oprah DailyI love that she has used her platform to continue beyond her show and still gives you tips on how to live your best life. I used to journal, and I don’t too much anymore. And Oprah said on Oprah Daily, “You really should be journaling.” So I pulled out and dusted off my journal, and I started writing some more.10Dunlevy Milbank Community CenterThis is a center in Harlem, and they are really into kids that come from a lower income and teaching them life, especially the young men. They have basketball coaches there, they have swim teachers, they have teachers for after-school tutoring. This center is very close to my heart because Jeffrey goes after school at 3 p.m. and I don’t see him till 7:30. They have a leadership class for young men that he goes to. I was a little skeptical, but they said, “We guarantee you: Let Jeffrey go here for two weeks, and he is not going to want to come home.” And that is so true. Literally at 7:30, I’m texting him, going, “Get your butt in that Uber and spend some time with your mother.” More

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      At 81, Ann-Margret Is Finally Living Her Rock ’n’ Roll Dream

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      Ann-Margret has always spoken in a voice that falls somewhere between a purr and a coo. But at her home on a recent rainy day in Los Angeles, she broke up her usual gauzy tones with deep and gutsy growls. “One, two, three o’clock rock!!!” she half-bellowed and half-yelled over a video chat, echoing the opening line from “Rock Around the Clock,” Bill Haley’s raucous 1954 smash.A few minutes later, she snarled through the opening salvo of “Splish Splash,” the highly caffeinated 1958 hit by Bobby Darin, only to follow it with the outburst, “I love rock ’n’ roll!” Her tone was far more Joan Jett than Kim McAfee, the sprightly character she played in “Bye Bye Birdie,” the movie that simultaneously made her a household name and the hottest pinup of 1963.Ann-Margret — pronounced as one name, not two — has always been rock ’n’ roll adjacent, though that’s rarely talked about today given her long and varied career as an actress and a singer of lounge classics. She co-starred with Elvis Presley in one of his most beloved films, “Viva Las Vegas,” provided a flirty foil to a character meant to affectionately send him up in “Birdie,” and had a personal relationship with him of varying description.Ann-Margret and Elvis Presley on the set of “Viva Las Vegas.” “We looked at one another and all of a sudden, I would do a pose and he’d be doing the same pose. We connected that way,” she said.Silver Screen Collection, via Getty ImagesShe also commanded a lead singing role in Ken Russell’s gaudy movie version of the Who’s rock opera “Tommy,” and earned a Grammy nomination for best new artist in 1962 after scoring a Top 20 hit with “I Just Don’t Understand,” one of the first recordings to feature a fuzz-toned guitar. Her song inspired a Beatles cover on the BBC two years later and, in 2014, the band Spoon recorded a version of her take, not the Fab Four’s.Yet, it’s only now, at the improbable age of 81, that Ann-Margret is getting the chance to assert herself as a full-on rock ’n’ roll goddess — if a winking one. On Friday she will release “Born to Be Wild,” the first album in the star’s career of 60-plus years to focus squarely on rock standards, all of which she handpicked, including Steppenwolf’s biker anthem referenced in the title and “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” which Elvis famously gyrated through in his own version.A host of legit rockers leaped at the chance to support her in this lark of a project, including the “Tommy” creator Pete Townshend, who sang and played whiplash guitar on her version of the Everly Brothers’ “Bye-Bye Love”; Steve Cropper, who added Memphis cred to “Son of a Preacher Man”; and Joe Perry, who shot stinging solos into her take on “Rock Around the Clock.” The album also features cameos from peers like Cliff Richard (82) and Pat Boone (88).“What she has done is extraordinary,” Townshend said by phone from London, adding an expletive for emphasis. “She picked up the silver thread that links her to the very genesis of rock ’n’ roll history. There’s a mischievousness to that, a light touch that’s perhaps necessary but also real.”Townshend compared receiving the invitation to play on her album to the time, in 1993, when he “was summoned to play with the Ramones. You know you won’t say no,” he added.“I feel the way I felt when I was 10 years old whenever the music plays,” Ann-Margret said.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesFrom the dining room of the Benedict Canyon home she has lived in since 1968, Ann-Margaret said she’d long harbored hopes of making a record like “Born to Be Wild.” “Deep inside I’ve wanted to do this kind of album forever,” she explained. She alluded to her outfit — a black sweater, tight leggings and leather boots that rose past the knee: “This is what I’ve been wearing since I first came to Los Angeles,” she said. “This is what I’m comfortable in.”She’s just as comfortable with language that dates from the ’50s, peppering her speech with words like “gadzooks” and “egad.” Looking youthful with her trademark auburn sweep of hair, Ann-Margret has also retained the coquettish character that first made her a star, giggling often when she speaks and never giving away more than she wants to. It was her original image, more than her music, that inspired Brian Perera, the head of Cleopatra Records, which specializes in projects of a historical nature, to propose the album to her.“When you look at vintage photos of her, she’s wearing a leather jacket and riding a motorcycle, so the thought of her doing a rock ’n’ roll record really fit,” he said in an interview.The “Born to Be Wild” album cover drives that home. It reproduces a 1967 poster created for her first Vegas show that finds her in a form-fitting jumpsuit while straddling a Triumph Tiger motorcycle. “I don’t think I can get into that jumpsuit today,” she said, and laughed. “But I can sure try!”Ann-Margret has always been rock ’n’ roll adjacent, though that’s rarely talked about today given her long and varied career as an actress and as a singer of lounge classics. Bettmann, via Getty ImagesAnn-Margret has always been hot for motorcycles. Her father and uncle rode them when she was a child in Sweden, and when she saw Marlon Brando straddle one in “The Wild One,” “that was it. I had to have one,” she said. “I didn’t know many women who rode bikes back then.”She still rides a Harley specially designed for her in lavender. It makes a perfect complement to her Cadillac, finished in her favorite shade: “Hot pink!” she exclaimed.It could be a twin to Elvis’s famously pink Caddy. The relationship between Ann-Margret and E.P., as she calls him, has been the subject of gossip for decades, but she still won’t speak about the personal aspects of it — only their creative link. “We looked at one another and all of a sudden, I would do a pose and he’d be doing the same pose. We connected that way,” she said.Her record company tried to stress the connection by having her record “Heartbreak Hotel,” but she never had much of a career as a hitmaker. It was her acting in “Carnal Knowledge” — praised in a New York Times review from 1971 — that convinced Townshend that she could really deliver in “Tommy.” While he called the major male actors in the 1975 film — Jack Nicholson and Oliver Reed — “egomaniacal, whiskey drinking lunatics,” he said that Ann-Margret was a consummate professional. She even carried off the absurdity of playing Roger Daltrey’s mother though she was just two years his senior.“I’m just happy to be alive,” Ann-Margret said. “I have the same friends I’ve had for 60 years, and I feel the way I felt when I first met them.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesOne of Ann-Margret’s most famous moments in “Tommy” involved geysers of baked beans being shot directly at her. “They came down a chute and then — pow! — it threw me about five feet back!” she said. “And it smelled!” She recalled that Russell said her character was meant to be experiencing a nervous breakdown during the scene, but to some viewers it looked more like she was having an orgasm. “That’s fine with me!” she added brightly.Townshend thinks the director, Russell, took a bit too much pleasure in having her do the scene repeatedly. “Ken loved to have a beautiful woman in his clutches covered in beans,” he said. “Let’s just do it again!”For the new album, he believes Ann-Margret made a perfect choice in having him perform with her on the Everly Brothers song. “My acoustic guitar style is loosely based on Don Everly’s,” he said.Pat Boone, who played Ann-Margret’s love interest in the 1963 musical “State Fair,” was at first taken aback by the song she chose for their duet, “Teach Me Tonight,” which he called “a love scene in a song.” “I thought, ‘What am I doing singing this?’” Boone said. “I’m 87 at that point and she’s got to be 80. I had to do it humorously.”So he ad-libbed the lines “I think we just wrote an octogenarian love song” and “I’ll have to turn up my hearing aid.” For the record, “I don’t wear hearing aids,” Boone added with a laugh.More saucy wit appears in a song Ann-Margret chose from her Vegas act, “Somebody’s in My Orchard,” which includes lines like “Somebody digs my fig trees/Somebody loves their juice.” “Oh, to see people’s faces when they finally realize what I’m singing about,” she said mischievously.Despite all the album’s humor, Paul Shaffer, who played piano on “The Great Pretender,” insists that her Vegas-style approach to music isn’t just camp. “She delivers the goods,” he said.When comparing her with young female entertainers like Taylor Swift and Demi Lovato, he added, “Aren’t they really doing Ann-Margret’s act?”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesLike all of the album’s guests, Shaffer recorded his parts separately from the star. He noted that her voice on the recording is lower and huskier than when she last cut an album, a gospel work reflecting her faith that was released 10 years ago. But Perera of Cleopatra Records believes Ann-Margret’s chestier tone works for the grinding sound of early rock. He added that “there isn’t a lot of new music coming from artists whose careers started in the ’50s and early ’60s. That makes it special.”The musicians who appear beside Ann-Margret on the album marveled over her ability, at 81, to convey a come-hither sexuality in her singing. To her, it makes an important point — that eroticism doesn’t have a cutoff date. At the same time, she made sure to deliver her sensuality with humor, and kept the tone of the music light.The only time she turned sad in our talk was when mentioning her husband, the actor Roger Smith, who served as her manager for much of their 50-year relationship and who died in 2017. Last year, she also lost her old friend and “Bye Bye Birdie” co-star Bobby Rydell, who died before he could finish a track he started for the album. Small wonder, when asked about how she feels about her upcoming 82nd birthday, she said, “I’m just happy to be alive. I have the same friends I’ve had for 60 years, and I feel the way I felt when I first met them.”Singing has the same effect: “I feel the way I felt when I was 10 years old whenever the music plays.” More

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      in Movies

      Marvel Superhero and Indigenous Actress Holds Fast to Maya Roots

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      After filming her part in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” María Mercedes Coroy returned to her “normal” life of farming and trading in a Guatemalan town at the base of a volcano.SANTA MARÍA DE JESÚS, Guatemala — For her big underwater scene in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” the Guatemalan actress María Mercedes Coroy had to hold her breath as her character, Princess Fen, gives birth in a hazy ocean world to a winged serpent son.She emerges from the watery depths as a rarity even in Marvel’s fantastical universe: a female Maya superhero.The day after filming her final scene in Los Angeles, Ms. Coroy, rather than hanging out in Hollywood, headed home to Santa María de Jesús, a Kaqchikel Maya town of about 22,000 at the base of a volcano in Guatemala. By nightfall, she was curled up in bed in her family’s bright pink cinder block house with vegetables growing in the backyard.“I felt like my bed was hugging me,” said Ms. Coroy, 28, one of nine siblings in a family of farmers and vendors.The next morning she resumed her usual life. She and her mother put on their hand-woven huipiles, or blouses, and cortes, or skirts, to catch the 5:30 bus to the small city of Escuintla to sell produce in the bustling market, a job she started after fifth grade when she had to drop out of school to help her parents.The main square of Santa María de Jesús, Guatemala, Ms. Coroy’s hometown.Daniele Volpe for The New York TimesSome days she walks two hours with a mule to the family farm to cultivate cabbage and pumpkins. In her spare time, she weaves colorful huipiles with motifs of birds and flowers on a backstrap loom.“People ask me what I do after filming,” said Ms. Coroy, who is working on her third Guatemalan movie after appearing in two in the United States. “I go back to normal.”Ms. Coroy represents a new generation of Maya actors determined to hone their craft while holding onto their customs and helping expose a legacy of discrimination against Guatemala’s Indigenous population.While she said she enjoys acting in the United States — and posing in a pink and blue huipil at the 2021 Golden Globe Awards — she is more interested in her own country’s burgeoning film industry.But whether she’s working in her homeland or Hollywood, acting can be draining, and she relies on Santa María de Jesús to recharge her.“I love my life, but filming is physically demanding,” Ms. Coroy said, relaxing on a bench in Santa María’s central park. “This is my community.”Ms. Coroy’s first role was the lead in a school play production of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”A mural depicting the actress on a wall of her hometown.Daniele Volpe for The New York TimesSanta María de Jesus has long been locally famous for its street theater, and a decade ago, the Guatemalan director Jayro Bustamante came to the town to prepare for his first feature film, “Ixcanul” (“Volcano”). He wanted to tell a story of Maya women that addressed issues like endemic poverty and inequities in education and health care, and he was determined to cast Maya actors speaking the Indigenous language of Kaqchikel.Mr. Bustamante initially put up a sign in the town’s central park: Casting Here. No one showed up. A few days later he posted: Work Here. He was overwhelmed with prospective actors.Ms. Coroy missed the audition. But a friend put her in touch with the director the next day.“He told me I was the only person who looked him in the eye,” she said. When he offered her the lead, she balked. “I had no experience. I was afraid I would ruin the movie.”But he convinced her to join the cast. For the next several months, they trained at the country’s first film academy, founded by Mr. Bustamente.“When we began filming, they were no longer amateur actors,” Mr. Bustamente said.“Ixcanul,” which won the Alfred Bauer Prize at the 65th Berlin International Film Festival, focuses on a poor family in the mountains that arranges for the daughter to marry a plantation overseer. The daughter secretly gets involved with a young man, a drunk and a dreamer, who promises to take her with him to the United States. But he leaves without her and she finds herself pregnant while still engaged to the other man.After she gives birth in a hospital, a staff member tells her that her baby has died. When the young woman finds out later that her child had lived and had possibly been sold for adoption, grief consumes her.Ms. Coroy, center, with her neighbors. Daniele Volpe for The New York Times“Quiet and fearless,” the Los Angeles-based film critic Manuel Betancourt wrote of Ms. Coroy’s understated performance, which revealed anguish behind a still face.“I mouthed the words I was feeling in my head,” Ms. Coroy said, explaining her acting method. “It was easier then because I was naturally timid. I’m much more animated now.”Her second film with Mr. Bustamante, “La Llorona,” transformed a traditional Latin American ghost story into an indictment of a fictional dictator, but one clearly reminiscent of the Guatemalan leader, Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt. Five years before his death in 2018, General Ríos Montt was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity for the systematic slaughter of Maya men, women and children in the 1980s after he took control of the country in a coup.Ms. Coroy plays Alma, a Maya housemaid whose son and daughter were among those murdered. A spectral figure in white, she haunts the dictator in his home.A casting director saw her in the two Bustamante films and picked her for the part of an Indigenous guerrilla in “Bel Canto,” an American film starring Julianne Moore. For two-and-a-half months, Ms. Coroy filmed in Mexico and the United States, the longest she had ever been away from her family. She froze in New York, she said, and didn’t like the food.The actress prefers not to discuss politics. But Mr. Bustamante said artists in Guatemala worked in an increasingly hostile climate.“You realize you’re in a country where there is a dictatorship without that name,” Mr. Bustamante wrote in an email interview. “There is a murky sort of oppression and no rights or freedom.”In “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” Ms. Coroy’s character gives birth underwater. When “Ixcanul” was released, he wrote, “there was a general rejection by the Guatemalan people of this sort of subject matter. With La Llorona, it was much more dangerous. We received anonymous threats.”“Wakanda Forever,” a global blockbuster distributed by Disney, also addresses the oppression of the Maya.Ms. Coroy’s character, Princess Fen, catches smallpox brought by the Spaniards to the Yucatán Peninsula in the 16th century. A shaman gives her a drink that allows her to live and give birth underwater. When her winged son Namor, played by the Mexican actor Tenoch Huerta, returns to the Yucatán, he sees Spaniards beating the Maya they have enslaved.In Guatemala, some Maya families encourage their children to speak only Spanish and wear Western clothing to escape ongoing rampant discrimination. But that’s not how Ms. Coroy was raised.“My parents tell me I should be proud,” said Ms. Coroy, who eventually returned to night school and finished college. “There is no way that you can hide that you’re Indigenous.”She has recently begun delving into Maya spirituality. Her grandmother was a natural healer who taught her about the curative properties or herbal teas and flowers. While she worships in a Catholic church, she also studies with an Indigenous spiritual teacher and reads the Maya creation story, the Popol Vuh.Central to Maya religion is Maximón, a trickster deity both benevolent and hedonistic. In ceremonies, adherents smoke and drink in front of his wooden figure in the hopes he will hear their entreaties. Ms. Coroy attends ceremonies without imbibing, she said.“People ask me what I do after filming,” Ms. Coroy said. “I go back to normal.”Daniele Volpe for The New York Times“I respect Maximón,” she said. “I have connected with him in dreams. He said, ‘You neither speak well of me nor poorly, so I will protect you.’”While she’s famous enough in Guatemala that people in the colonial tourist city of Antigua, a UNESCO World heritage site, approach her politely for autographs, her neighbors in Santa María avoid singling her out. Walking in the town’s park, she might as well be any other vendor.“There’s no movie star culture here,” Ms. Coroy said. “There are no paparazzi.” More

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      in Theater

      Laura Benanti Describes Performing Concert Through a Miscarriage

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      The Tony Award-winning actress said in an Instagram post that she had decided to share the news to remind people “that there is no shame in this kind of loss.”Laura Benanti, the Tony Award-winning stage and screen actress, performed a concert for about 2,000 people on a cruise ship despite being in the middle of having a miscarriage, she wrote in a post on Instagram.“If it had been our first loss, or even our second, I likely wouldn’t have been able to go on,” she wrote in the post on Wednesday. “But unfortunately, I am not a stranger to the pain and emptiness of losing a pregnancy. It is a path I have walked before, hand in hand with my husband.”Benanti, who has performed on Broadway since the late 1990s and won a Tony for a featured role in “Gypsy,” was aboard a Broadway-themed cruise coming back to New York from Bermuda, where she had planned to perform songs from musicals she had appeared in, including “The Sound of Music,” “She Loves Me” and “My Fair Lady.” She realized on Sunday that she was having the miscarriage, she wrote, but decided to go onstage the next day.Benanti has two children with her husband, Patrick Brown.“My husband and I are heartbroken but we will move through this together as we, and so many others, have done before,” she wrote in the post. “I share all of this, not to garner sympathy or attention, but to remind the many people and families who have and will suffer in this way that there is no shame in this kind of loss.” More

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      in Television

      ‘I’ve Lost a Lot of Flesh and Bone,’ Jeremy Renner Says, Recalling Snow Plow Accident

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      The actor, who sustained more than 30 broken bones when a 14,000-pound plow ran him over in January, described his arduous recovery in an interview with ABC News.The actor Jeremy Renner, who was severely injured on Jan. 1 when a heavy snow plow ran over him, said in a TV interview on Thursday night that the truck had hit him as he was trying to save his nephew, an accident that broke more than 30 of his bones and upended his life.Mr. Renner, an Oscar-nominated actor who is perhaps best known for his role as Hawkeye in the Marvel Avengers movie and TV franchise, spoke publicly at length about his frightening experience and arduous recovery for the first time in an interview with ABC News.“I’ve lost a lot of flesh and bone in this experience,” Mr. Renner told the journalist Diane Sawyer. “But I’ve been refueled and refilled with love and titanium.”In the interview, Mr. Renner appeared to still be in shock over what had occurred to him and struggled to hold back tears at times as he recalled details after the accident, like the moment he told his family from the hospital in sign language, “I’m sorry.”As he lay in the hospital, Mr. Renner, who has since been released, said he would wonder: “What’s my body look like? Am I just going to be like a spine and a brain like a science experiment?” While in critical condition, Mr. Renner said, he wrote a goodbye note to his family on his phone.The network also posted clips before the broadcast that showed different phases of his recovery, including Mr. Renner in a wheelchair doing leg exercises. A video posted on Twitter shows him in recovery doing an exercise that helps him regain the strength to walk. Another video from Jan. 5 shows Mr. Renner in the hospital, his face swollen and bruised.On Jan. 1, Mr. Renner, 52, was using his snow plow, which weighs more than 14,000 pounds, to tow his car on a snowed-in private road near his home in Reno, Nev., the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office said in a news conference. A family member had been driving the car and had gotten stuck.After they successfully towed the car, Mr. Renner got off the plow, which then began to roll, the sheriff’s office said. Mr. Renner had tried to get back into the plow’s driver’s seat to stop the rolling vehicle, but he was run over, the sheriff’s office said.In the ABC News interview, Mr. Renner said that when he made a dangerous leap to get back in the driver’s seat, the fast-moving tracks had pushed him forward — and the weight of the steel tracks had crushed him. He recalled screaming during that moment, “Not today,” using an expletive.There was no snow that could have cushioned part of the blow, he said, just icy asphalt under him and the rolling plow on top. The machine crushed his toes, legs and chest. Even one of his eyes was severely injured and bulged out of its socket.“I believe I could see my eye with my other eye,” Mr. Renner said.ABC News noted that he appeared to have skirted the wheels, the heaviest part of the plow, during the accident.Mr. Renner struggled to fully capture the extent of the pain, saying that “it felt like someone took the wind out of you” and that it had seemed as if his soul was in agony.Mr. Renner said he would put himself through the experience again because the plow had been “going right at my nephew,” who is 27 years old.The nephew, who was not injured, said in the ABC News interview that he had seen “a pool of blood” coming from his uncle’s head.The nephew tracked down a neighbor and asked for help. That neighbor called 911.In a recording of that 911 call, the neighbor can be heard saying of Mr. Renner, “He’s been crushed.”In the background of that call, Mr. Renner can be heard moaning as the man who contacted 911 says, “There’s a lot of blood over here,” and tells Mr. Renner: “Keep breathing, man, keep fighting. Hang in there, brother.”Eventually, gusty winds paused long enough to allow a helicopter to land near the site of the accident and fly Mr. Renner to a hospital.There, Mr. Renner and his family learned the full extent of his injuries: dozens of broken bones, including eight ribs, his right knee and ankle and right shoulder; a collapsed lung; and his liver pierced by a rib bone.His rib cage was rebuilt with metal. His eye socket was put back together with metallic plates. And a titanium rod and screws were placed in his leg.Doctors interviewed by ABC News said that Mr. Renner’s good physical shape and health had probably helped him survive. About 10 weeks after the accident, Mr. Renner is beginning to regain enough strength to walk with a cane.When asked in the interview if he sees the same face when looking in the mirror, Mr. Renner replied, “I see a lucky man.” More

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      in Movies

      Michaela Watkins Shares A Few Photos from Her Phone

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      Seven PhotosThe Dog Days of Michaela WatkinsThe star of “Paint” contemplates work, canines, a coyote attack and mortality while bouncing between the coasts.April 7, 2023Michaela Watkins describes herself as an actress who doesn’t know where she’s going to be next week. That’s only a small exaggeration.“Paint,” the comedy loosely based on the painter Bob Ross and co-starring Owen Wilson and Wendi McLendon-Covey, will be her fourth film to open this year. It premieres the same day as “Tiny Beautiful Things,” a Hulu mini-series in which Ms. Watkins appears with Kathryn Hahn.“There’s nobody better,” Ms. Watkins, 51, said of Ms. Hahn. “The only person better is Julia Louis-Dreyfus.” Ms. Louis-Dreyfus and Ms. Watkins shared the screen this year in the film “You Hurt My Feelings.” (And in case you’re curious, Ms. Watkins’s other two films this year are “The Young Wife” and “History of the World: Part II.”)With her work taking her away from her home in Ojai, Calif., where she lives with her husband, Fred Kramer, and their two dogs, to New York, London and beyond, Ms. Watkins makes good use of her time off. When we caught up, she was thoroughly enjoying a mini-vacation in California’s wine country. “I probably could drink my own urine and be drunk,” she said. “I’ve just had so much wine in the last 48 hours.”Be that as it may, she was fresh-faced, sober and ready to talk through seven photos she had taken during her recent travels across the East and West Coasts.These are edited excerpts from the interview.This is one of my dogs, Wuzzabear. I call her “fatty bum bum,” thanks to one of my dear British friends. She’s our puppy we got during the pandemic, and she’s not perfectly socialized because of that, but she loves attention from other dogs. She’s so thirsty on the playground, and it’s really embarrassing.I’m suspicious of people who don’t let their dogs on their beds. That’s like 80 percent of why dogs are the best: just the “schnoogles,” the cuddling, the hot breath on your face, the weight of their body on you. If, God forbid, I have a terminal disease, just put me in a bed with 1,000 dogs and just let me waste away.When I was in New York, I did what I called the “aging parents tour.” We saw my mother-in-law and we saw my father and his wife. When I was visiting my father, he gave me these Depression-era glasses. They’ve been in his cabinet as long as I can remember. This idea that he says “I’m not going to need this” is very sad.My dad is really fit. He’s 86 and he’s active. He rides his bike, he kayaks, he hikes, he plays trombone in a band, he’s learning Italian, he’s teaching literacy. He’s phenomenal. But we went for a hike in the snow and he was having trouble. It really gets to him.I stopped by my friend Ari Graynor’s. She’s a fellow actress and she bought a farmhouse in upstate New York. Her partner, Michael, is an incredible chef. He does these incredible things called “Death Over Dinner,” where they have a nice dinner and talk about death.What better place to talk about dying than while we’re with people and experiencing really incredible joy with life? And to feel sated with food and drink, while you talk about the thing that you don’t want to talk about, which is our inevitable death. I do not like small talk, I just want to roll up my sleeves and get into it.This is my friend Aya Cash — she’s a phenomenal actress. I worked with her on a movie recently called “The Young Wife,” which just debuted at South By Southwest. She’s a peer, but in this movie she played my stepdaughter, which is weird. Whatever.This is her right after she performed in “The Best We Could.” It’s a beautiful play, and what I really loved about it is that Aya really fell in love with acting again. I’m a little afraid to do theater again. It’s been so long that I’m scared, which makes me think even more I should do it. For five years after I graduated from college, I did regional theater and I always had impostor syndrome. Even though I was getting parts, I felt like I didn’t truly deserve them.My dad’s wife said to me one-time, “You were so great in this play, and boy, you used to be terrible. We were really scared.” At least she was honest.This is at the premiere of “Tiny Beautiful Things,” which is Kathryn Hahn’s new show. In the middle is Cheryl Strayed, who is my hero. Cheryl saved my life. She used to have an advice column called “Dear Sugar,” and my friend Joey Soloway turned me on to her. I was going through a breakup, the death of a friend — a really awful time. I was super depressed and worried that I’d ruined my own life. Her letters breathed life into me and got me through a really hard time. I kept saying, “I feel like I know her.” I didn’t know her, but it turns out we both lived in Portland in the ’90s around the corner from each other. I don’t really fangirl, but when I meet her, my whole personality goes out the window. I just kind of sit there and smile and laugh too hard at everything she says.Tess Morris is a writer friend of mine. She’s in New York now writing on “Only Murders in the Building.” She and I became really good friends when she came out to Ojai and there was a coyote attack on my dog. All the dogs survived, but barely. And I survived, but barely. I was in the hospital for a few days with a bone infection. Anyway, it bonded us.When we were in New York, we went to the “Succession” premiere, which is my all-time favorite show. I think it’s the greatest comedy that’s ever been. We thought we both looked pretty spiffy, so she’s taking a picture of me and I’m taking a picture of her.This just pretty much sums up L.A. It’s a city that makes no sense. Somebody just randomly thought, I’ll put this beautiful flower pot here! And somebody just smashed their garbage bins up against it. And then this fence, which is like, Keep out! You don’t belong here! And, Smile! You’re on Camera. It’s a little snapshot of Los Angeles. More

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      ‘Joyland,’ an L.G.B.T. Pakistani Film, Is Celebrated Abroad

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      Saim Sadiq’s feature “Joyland,” which includes a transgender woman’s love affair, cannot be shown in Pakistan’s Punjab Province.Over the past year, the writer-director Saim Sadiq has garnered a series of unprecedented accolades for Pakistani cinema.Last May, his debut film, “Joyland,” out Friday, became the first production from Pakistan to compete in the official selection at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the jury prize in the Un Certain Regard sidebar. It was also the first entry from the country to be shortlisted for the best international feature film Oscar. And just last month, it emerged as the first Pakistani title to win at the Film Independent Spirit Awards in the same category.The project also counts among its executive producers the Nobel Peace Prize recipient Malala Yousafzai, the Oscar-winning British Pakistani actor Riz Ahmed and the Iranian American director Ramin Bahrani.But despite this international recognition and notable support, “Joyland,” which features characters defying traditional binary gender norms, remains banned in Sadiq’s hometown of Lahore, and in the entire Punjab Province, which houses the majority of Pakistan’s cinemas and about half of the Islamic nation’s entire population.“I wanted the film to play in Pakistani theaters more than anything else,” said an impassioned Sadiq, 32, during a recent interview at the Los Angeles home of the movie’s Indian-born producer, Apoorva Charan.Sadiq and Charan met while both were studying at Columbia University. It was during their time there that Sadiq began writing “Joyland,” a coming-of-age story told as an intricate ensemble piece, as a screenwriting class assignment.When Haider starts working as a backup dancer, he must keep his new source of income, and outlet for self-expression, a secret.Oscilloscope LaboratoriesWhen Haider (Ali Junejo), a mild-mannered young man in an arranged marriage, lands a job as a backup dancer for Biba (Alina Khan), a strong-willed transgender performer, his wife, Mumtaz (Rasti Farooq), quits her job against her will to help out with the domestic tasks Haider was doing before, including caring for his brother’s children.But Haider must keep his new source of income, and outlet for self-expression, a secret, as the couple live in an extended family household under the rule of Haider’s traditional elderly father. That Haider explores his sexuality with Biba further complicates his situation.To challenge the Hollywood notion of the sole protagonist, Sadiq said he wanted to understand “the collective human experience. It was very important to make this a very collectivist film, a film which was truly an ensemble film where the effect of one person’s actions on other people were also taken into account from their perspective.”That “Joyland,” among its many themes, includes a burgeoning romance between a trans woman and a straight-identifying man caused public outcry from Pakistan’s conservative factions on social media just a few days before the film’s scheduled November local release date.The seismic controversy led to the film’s ban, even after Sadiq had diligently obtained the required permits from each of the three separate censor boards in the country: those pertinent to the provinces of Punjab and Sindh, plus the federal board that covers the rest of the territory.In order to appease them, Sadiq had already compromised the artistic integrity of his work.Clockwise from upper left, Farooq, Junejo, Sadiq and Khan in Los Angeles in March.Elizabeth WeinbergFirst, the director was asked to remove two intimate scenes that the censors unsurprisingly deemed too risqué. Sadiq had anticipated these moments would not meet their parameters, so he had shot alternate versions so that the narrative could still run coherently in the eventual Pakistani version. However, more changes were demanded.“What I wasn’t prepared for was a bunch of laughably random cuts and dialogue omissions that were asked for by the federal and Punjab censor boards, which included blurring the shot of a platonic hug between a husband and wife on a rooftop,” Sadiq said.Censorship is unfortunately a cornerstone of Pakistan’s relationship with cinema, said Ali Khan, co-author of the book “Cinema and Society: Film and Social Change in Pakistan,” in a recent video interview.In 1954, “Roohi,” directed by W.Z. Ahmed, became the first film banned in an independent Pakistan for its perceived socialist agenda. Since then, and across the multiple political transitions the nation has undergone, creative freedom has often been hindered. Only about a dozen feature films, mostly commercial fare, are produced in Pakistan each year.“There are so many stories to tell from Pakistan, but how do you do that if everything is controversial?” Ali Kahn said. “It’s really unfortunate that we are not able to support our own films because of this paranoia over how the country is being depicted.”While some Pakistani productions may have had instances of subtle, implied queerness in the past, Sadiq believes there hadn’t been a film that overtly engaged with gender and sexual diversity in Pakistan before “Joyland.”Fortunately, the international attention “Joyland” had already received abroad, as well as a flood of vocal tweets from the filmmaker and his allies denouncing the decision, exerted enough pressure that the edited iteration was allowed to be screened in the Sindh province and the territory under the federal censor board (which includes the capital city of Islamabad).But the authorities in Punjab opted to uphold the ban.Junejo and Khan in a scene from the film. The plotline around their characters’ love affair caused public outcry from Pakistan’s conservative factions on social media.Oscilloscope LaboratoriesFor Khan, a dancer turned actress who first collaborated with Sadiq on the short film “Darling,” the news that her work wouldn’t be seen in Lahore was devastating.“I needed the film to play in my city so that the people who have wronged me there for being trans could see me in a more human light,” she said, speaking in Urdu with Sadiq acting as her interpreter. “And I wanted to show my community that it is possible for a trans person to make something out of their life.”Although Pakistan passed a bill protecting the rights of transgender citizens in 2018, violence, including murder, against trans people in the country remains an alarming issue. Since the law came into existence, homicides of transgender people have increased, with 14 people killed last year, according to the Trans Murder Monitoring project.The rest of Sadiq’s cast were also aware of the significance of the story they were sharing. Junejo, for example, came on board after other actors rejected the part because of its subject matter. Even the sensitive way Haider uses his body when dancing is cause for concern in an environment where masculinity is harshly policed.“It was important that we were making it in Pakistan because its patriarchal society demands certain roles from every one of its members, men included,” Junejo said.In turn, Farooq believes that one of the most remarkable outcomes of the film’s toilsome journey in Pakistan are the conversations that both detractors as well as defenders are having about the purpose of art in general and of filmmaking in particular.“Pakistani viewers who had for long been turned into passive consumers of TV or film were all of a sudden actively talking about the role of art in their lives,” Farooq said. “It’s not the job of films to placate you. Films can talk about things that are uncomfortable.”Months after the film’s partial theatrical release, heated online discussions over “Joyland” continue, especially when anyone of note in Pakistan publicly comments on it.For his part, Sadiq holds on to the film’s hard-fought victories in the face of the restrictions.Embattled as his work might be in the place of his birth, the director finds invigorating encouragement in learning that other people, in Pakistan and elsewhere, have embraced it.“Once the film was finished, I understood I had initially done it out of selfish reasons,” he said. “But now it means something to others, and it means something to the world even if in a small way, so I need to do right by it and push for it to be seen.” More

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      Jeremy Renner Recounts Difficult Recovery After Snow Plow Accident

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      The actor told ABC News that he almost died after a 14,000-pound plow ran him over in January.The actor Jeremy Renner, who was severely injured on Jan. 1 when a heavy snow plow ran over him, said in a TV interview set to be broadcast on Thursday night that he had been trying to save his nephew when the truck hit him, breaking more than 30 bones.Mr. Renner, an Oscar-nominated actor who is perhaps best known for his role as Hawkeye in the Marvel Avengers movie and TV franchise, spoke publicly at length about his frightening experience and arduous recovery for the first time in an interview with ABC News, which will air at 10 p.m. Eastern time.“I’ve lost a lot of flesh and bone in this experience,” Mr. Renner told the journalist Diane Sawyer. “But I’ve been refueled and refilled with love and titanium.”In interview clips that were released in advance, Mr. Renner appeared to still be in shock over what had occurred to him and struggled to hold back tears at times as he recalled details after the accident, like the moment he told his family from the hospital in sign language, “I’m sorry.”As he lay in the hospital, Mr. Renner, who has since been released, said he would wonder: “What’s my body look like? Am I just going to be like a spine and a brain like a science experiment?” While in critical condition, Mr. Renner said, he wrote a goodbye note to his family on his phone.The network also posted clips before the broadcast that showed different phases of his recovery, including Mr. Renner in a wheelchair doing leg exercises. A video posted on Twitter shows him in recovery doing an exercise that helps him regain the strength to walk. Another video from Jan. 5 shows Mr. Renner in the hospital, his face swollen and bruised.On Jan. 1, Mr. Renner, 52, was using his snow plow, which weighs more than 14,000 pounds, to tow his car on a snowed-in private road near his home in Reno, Nev., the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office said in a news conference. A family member had been driving the car and had gotten stuck.After they successfully towed the car, Mr. Renner got off the plow, which then began to roll, the sheriff’s office said. Mr. Renner had tried to get back into the plow’s driver’s seat to stop the rolling vehicle, but he was run over, the sheriff’s office said.In a brief clip of the ABC News interview, Mr. Renner said he would put himself through the experience again because the plow had been “going right at my nephew,” whose age he did not share.In a recording of the 911 call made that day, a man can be heard saying of Mr. Renner, “He’s been crushed.”In the background of that call, Mr. Renner can be heard moaning as the man who contacted 911 says, “There’s a lot of blood over here,” and tells Mr. Renner: “Keep breathing man, keep fighting. Hang in there, brother.”Mr. Renner revealed the extent of his injuries in the interview: dozens of broken bones, including eight ribs, his right knee and ankle and right shoulder; a collapsed lung; and a liver pierced by a rib bone.When asked in the interview if he sees the same face when looking in the mirror, Mr. Renner replied, “I see a lucky man.” More