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      Reflections on Star Quality From a Golden Age of ‘Junk TV’

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      In a new memoir, a longtime casting director revels in memories of a bygone Hollywood, matching actors with the roles that made them stars.Stop to consider the movie and TV characters that are most permanently seared into the American psyche, and their impact is rarely a function of screen time. Usually, the effect on audiences is immediate: Think Tim Curry’s first appearance in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” or Stockard Channing breezing into Rydell High alongside her fellow Pink Ladies.Whether they were memorable because of their abrasiveness (Danny DeVito in “Taxi”), their rebellious streak (Ms. Channing in “Grease”) or their ability to solve a crisis with a slice of cheesecake (the titular golden girls of “The Golden Girls”), every actor who eventually went on to make Hollywood history first had to clear the hurdle of a casting department. And for many of the biggest movies and TV shows of the last half century, Joel Thurm was a central part of those teams, handpicking the actors whose performances would resonate for decades to come.In his newly released memoir, “Sex, Drugs & Pilot Season: Confessions of a Casting Director,” Mr. Thurm, 80, details what he saw in stars like John Travolta, whom he cast in “The Boy in the Plastic Bubble.”“I knew he wasn’t Vinnie Barbarino,” Mr. Thurm said of managing to look past the actor’s biggest role to date, on the ABC sitcom “Welcome Back, Kotter.”Being able to spot the je ne sais quoi that many refer to as star quality is a skill, one that Mr. Thurm has capitalized on throughout his 35-year career.“The best example I have is when someone walks into a room and has something special that you haven’t seen in other people,” Mr. Thurm said in an interview this week. “Are they astoundingly beautiful? Are they so incredibly good-looking? They could be bad-looking! It’s individual; you can’t really explain it.”Mr. Thurm had a hand in casting some of the biggest hits of film and TV, including “The Love Boat,” “The Golden Girls,” “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and “Airplane!”Charles Sykes/Getty ImagesThat “it” factor is the common denominator among all the stars who go on to become household names, according to Mr. Thurm, who said he had seen it immediately in Farrah Fawcett when she auditioned for the role of a stewardess on “The Bob Newhart Show.” She didn’t get the part, but Mr. Thurm said he had known “there was something special about her.” He also instantly saw it in a 17-year-old John Travolta when he met him in New York.“He had a presence, and you can feel it,” Mr. Thurm said. “They had that little extra something.”At the time, Mr. Travolta was most popular for his role on “Welcome Back, Kotter,” and producers would not move ahead with “The Boy in the Plastic Bubble,” a TV movie, unless a big star signed on to the project, Mr. Thurm said. He spent a lot of time with Mr. Travolta’s manager sitting on his “back deck getting melanoma and reading scripts,” Mr. Thurm said. When the script came up, they both lobbied Mr. Travolta, who agreed to sign on. Mr. Thurm later cast Mr. Travolta in “Grease,” and the rest is Hollywood history.Mr. Thurm, who retired from a full-time casting position with NBC in 1990, hasn’t kept especially close tabs on the stars of today, but he does know enough to recognize that they tend to skew young.“They’re all 12-year-olds,” he said. “I have only seen them once they are already stars. Ariana Grande, she’s already a star.”Whether or not star quality has changed since Mr. Thurm started his career, Hollywood itself certainly has. In addition to snippets of back-room scenes detailing how some of TV’s most beloved characters came to appear on some of America’s favorite sitcoms, “Sex, Drugs & Pilot Season” is also filled with personal anecdotes that would — at minimum — raise eyebrows in a world reshaped by the #MeToo movement.It’s difficult — painful, even — to imagine a world in which Tim Curry never put on the chunky pearl necklace of Dr. Frank-N-Furter. In that sense, the most essential duty of a casting director is to save us all from what might not have been.United Archives/Getty ImagesAs a gay man living in Hollywood in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, Mr. Thurm often found himself in situations that almost certainly wouldn’t fly today — like massaging the actor Robert Reed’s back after he had to undergo several hair treatments for his role “The Boy in The Plastic Bubble.”“I started to rub his back, then I rubbed, you know, started rubbing a little lower,” Mr. Thurm said of Mr. Reed, best known for playing Mike Brady in “The Brady Bunch.” “He was just miserable on the set because he was not used to not being the center of attention.”In his memoir, Mr. Thurm also details an encounter with his teenage idol, Rock Hudson. At a party with other gay men in Hollywood, Mr. Hudson motioned to Mr. Thurm to follow him to a room upstairs.“I was so anxious and nervous that my body below the waist could not cooperate,” Mr. Thurm wrote.It was a moment he has never forgotten.“I saw every single movie that he ever did and so even to find myself at that party, I thought was amazing,” Mr. Thurm said. “This is my introduction to Hollywood.”Besides detailing his sexcapades, Mr. Thurm also takes full accountability for “the damage you may have suffered while watching David Hasselhoff,” he wrote. He initially cast Mr. Hasselhoff as Snapper Foster on “The Young and the Restless” in 1975. He later cast him in “Knight Rider” — a high-water mark in what he described as an era of “junk TV” — after a contentious standoff with producers, who originally wanted Laurence Olivier. (“Yes, David Hasselhoff and Laurence Olivier on the same list,” he wrote.)The memoir is not just about Mr. Thurm’s dealings in Hollywood but his upbringing: growing up on a kosher milk farm in East New York. Attending Hunter College in Manhattan when it was nearly an all-girls school. Hanging out in Greenwich Village in its bohemian heyday. Flunking out of college and traveling through Italy in his early 20s.“To me, it was just my experiences — you know, growth going through life and growing up,” Mr. Thurm said. “I have no regrets. Nobody died.” More

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      Claudia Cardinale Gets MoMA Tribute for Film Career

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      Ahead of a MoMA retrospective, the actress reflected on her career, which includes over 100 films and many classics of Italian cinema.On a recent afternoon in Rome, Claudia Cardinale recalled the many heartthrobs she worked with during her more than six-decade movie career, and let out a full-throated laugh.“And they also wanted to make love with me,” she said, “but I always refused.”Over the years, the fresh-faced beauty — who David Niven, her co-star in an early “Pink Panther” movie, once described as Italy’s best invention besides spaghetti — had given the cold shoulder to more than one famous screen Casanova, Cardinale said in an interview. “They tried,” she added. “I turned down seducers.”Then she laughed her mischievous laugh again.Cardinale, 84, was in Rome last month for the Italian presentation of a newly restored version of Luigi Comencini’s 1963 film “La ragazza di Bube” (“Bebo’s Girl”), about a small-town girl who stands by her man, even after he is convicted of a crime and goes to jail.“Bebo’s Girl,” which earned Cardinale her first prestigious acting award, Italy’s Nastro d’Argento for best actress, will be shown on Friday at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the first in a 23-film retrospective honoring the Tunisian-born Italian actress that runs through Feb. 21. It is one of a handful of times that the museum has presented a tribute to a living actor in its more than 90-year history.“Beautiful actresses come and go,” Joshua Siegel, a MoMA curator, said in video message shown at the Rome screening. “But they usually don’t endure over a period of some 60, 65 years.”Cardinale with Fabio Rinaudo at the opening night of “8 ½,” in Rome, in 1963. Archivio Luce CinecittàCardinale said she would not be in New York for the retrospective; she no longer travels like she used to. It tires her — she now uses a cane to get around — and she prefers to stay out of the limelight.Cardinale was in the public eye long enough, starring in more than 100 films since 1956. For many film buffs, she is best remembered for her roles in Italian cinema classics: as the young wife Ginetta in Luchino Visconti’s “Rocco and His Brothers”; as Angelica, a commoner whose vitality and beauty seduces Sicilian aristocracy in Visconti’s “The Leopard”; as the enigmatic Claudia in Federico Fellini’s “8 ½,”; or as the feisty Jill, the widow with a ranch to protect in Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in the West.”She also has boasting rights from her star turn in Werner Herzog’s “Fitzcarraldo,” a legendarily difficult movie that was shot in the Peruvian jungle and described in The New York Times as a favorite of “connoisseurs of production disasters,” and the movie and its making as “fables of daft aspiration.”Cardinale has said that “Fitzcarraldo” was the adventure of her life, but during an interview last month, she said she had no particular favorites. “My God, I’ve done some many, I don’t know which one I prefer,” she said, and laughed again. “Maybe ‘Once Upon a Time in the West,’” she said, “and then so many others.”Cardinale in “Once Upon a Time in The West.”Paramount Pictures, via Everett CollectionThe MoMA tribute, organized with Cinecittà, Italy’s national film company, includes some of Cardinale’s better known performances. But for the occasion, Cinecittà also restored three works less likely to be known to American audiences: “Bebo’s Girl,” but also Marco Ferreri’s 1972 “The Audience,” about a man’s obsession with meeting with the pope, and Pasquale Squitieri’s 1990 “Atto di Dolore,” about a widow whose son is a drug addict.Though Cardinale’s name will forever be associated with classics of Italian cinema, she spoke little Italian when she first set foot there in 1957.Cardinale was born in Tunisia in 1938, into a family of Sicilian immigrants that had settled there decades before. “I still feel a little bit Tunisian,” Cardinale told the news agency ANSA in May at a ceremony to name a street in her honor in the port town La Goulette, near Tunis.In 1957, she won the Most Beautiful Italian in Tunisia contest, which came with what turned out to be her ticket to stardom: a trip to the Venice Film Festival.Cardinale on the set of the film “Austerlitz” by Abel Gance (1960).Archivio Luce CinecittàIn “Claudia Cardinale: The Indomitable,” a book published by Cinecittà and Electa to coincide with the MoMA tribute, the author and critic Masolino D’Amico recalls being at that festival and seeing Cardinale for the first time, “splendid in all her youthfulness,” wearing an emerald green bikini and posing for the paparazzi.“She seemed to think that small shower of camera clicks was like a game,” Masolino writes. “She was not — I understand this clearly now — trying to be sexy, and maybe not even attractive. She was simply happy to be there.”In Venice, she caught the eye of Franco Cristaldi, at the time one of Italy’s most important producers, who, in Pygmalion fashion, transformed the young ingénue into an in-demand movie star. He also became her life partner, adopting her son, Patrick Cristaldi. Now 64, he was initially passed off as her brother so as not to crack her “virginal feel and glow,” or to scandalize society, Cardinale’s daughter, Claudia Squitieri said.Stardom had a price. Cristaldi demanded hard work and discipline, and in 1962 drafted a contract that oversaw every aspect of the actress’s life, professional and private. She accepted, if reluctantly: Her family depended on her, and she had a child to raise.That life ended when she met the director Pasquale Squitieri in 1973 on the set of “I guappi,” (“Blood Brothers”) and the two fell madly in love. Their careers took a hit: Cristaldi was a powerful producer in Italy whom industry people feared crossing.“Claudia Cardinale: The Indomitable,” a book published by Cinecittà and Electa to coincide with the MoMA tribute. via Puntoe VirgolaCardinale would make nine films with Squitieri, even after she moved to Paris and he remained in Rome. Never married, they eventually split, but remained close.Claudia Squitieri and Patrick Cristaldi now live with their mother in a house near Fontainebleau, France, where Cardinale has created a foundation to support two causes close to her heart: women’s rights and the environment. Cardinale has been a UNESCO good will ambassador since 2000, for campaigning work to improve the status of women and girls, and she is the honorary president of Green Cross Italy, an environment advocacy group that sponsors an award for sustainable films at the Venice Film Festival. The foundation is “something to continue her shine,” said Squitieri, who runs the organization for her mother.Cardinale said she was very close to Squitieri. “I am lucky to have this daughter, who I adore,” she said. “She looks after me; she looks after everything.”Because Cardinale won’t be in New York this week, Squitieri will do the honors. On Friday, the “Bebo’s Girl” screening will be followed by “Un Cardinale donna” (“A Woman Cardinal”), a whimsical short featuring the actress, produced for the retrospective by Manuel Maria Perrone.Speaking at the film’s Rome premiere, Perrone said that “dealing with an idol, with such a strong icon, is something extremely difficult, even fragile.”“She’s been doing this her whole life,” he said. “Being an icon is her job.”Claudia CardinaleFeb. 3 through Feb. 21, at the Museum of Modern Art; moma.org. More

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      Nonbinary “& Juliet” Performer Opts Out of Gendered Tony Awards

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      Justin David Sullivan of “& Juliet” decided to abstain from consideration and urged awards shows to “expand their reach.”A principal performer in the new Broadway musical “& Juliet” has withdrawn from consideration for the Tony Awards rather than compete in a gendered category, shining a renewed spotlight on the question of whether major awards should continue to have separate categories for men and women.The performer, Justin David Sullivan, is trans nonbinary and uses the pronouns he, she and they. In the pop-song-fueled musical, which imagines an alternative to “Romeo and Juliet” in which Juliet does not die, Sullivan plays May, one of Juliet’s best friends. May — an adolescent, like Juliet — is still figuring things out.The Tony Awards, like the Oscars and the Emmys, have separate acting categories for men and for women. The Grammy Awards eliminated many gendered categories as part of a consolidation in 2012, and the Obie Awards, which honor Off and Off Off Broadway work, have long had nongendered categories.Sullivan, whose performance has been generally well-received, was among many people who could have been nominated as a featured performer in a musical. But those categories, like all the Tony acting categories, are gendered, and by opting out of the contest altogether, Sullivan puts public pressure on the awards.“I felt I had no choice but to abstain from being considered for a nomination this season,” Sullivan said in a statement on Wednesday. “I hope that award shows across the industry will expand their reach to be able to honor and award people of all gender identities.”The Tony Awards have accepted Sullivan’s position, meaning that Sullivan will not appear on the list of Tony-eligible performers considered by nominators at the end of the season. “Per Justin David Sullivan’s request to the Tony Administration Committee, they opted to withdraw themselves from eligibility,” Tony Award Productions said in a statement.Sullivan is not the first nonbinary performer to make such a move. Asia Kate Dillon, who played Malcolm in a production of “Macbeth” last season, asked not to be considered in either the actor or actress categories. That move did not become public at the time but was confirmed by a Tony Awards spokeswoman on Wednesday.This season, there will be at least one Tony-eligible nonbinary performer: J. Harrison Ghee, who stars in the new musical “Some Like It Hot,” will be considered for possible nomination in the leading actor category, the Tony Awards administration committee said on Wednesday. The committee, which determines eligibility categories for shows and artists, was following a request from the show’s producers.Ghee, whose performance has drawn strong reviews and who is considered likely to receive a Tony nomination, plays a musician who initially identifies as male but starts dressing as a woman to escape the mob, and by the end of the show has a more fluid identity.“I’m not going to put myself on this pedestal like, ‘I need it to change today,’” Ghee told The Daily Beast in a recent interview when asked about this season’s Tony Awards categories. “I never go into things expecting to be the person that changes everything. I’m just showing up and meeting the moment.”Tony Awards administrators have quietly been talking about whether to change the gendered nature of their acting awards — awards for designers and directors are not gendered — but it is not clear if, when or how they might do so. There has long been concern that such a change would make it even harder for performers to win the industry’s top honor.“We recognize that the current acting categories are not fully inclusive, and we are currently in discussion about how to best adjust them to address this,” Tony Award Productions said in a statement. “Unfortunately, we are still in process on this and our rules do not allow us to make changes once a season has begun. We are working thoughtfully to ensure that no member of our community feels excluded on the basis of gender identity in future seasons.”The Outer Critics Circle, which grants awards for work both on and Off Broadway, said this year that it would eliminate gendered categories. Several regional theater award competitions, including the Helen Hayes Awards in Washington, the Barrymore Awards in Philadelphia and the Jeff Awards in Chicago, have eliminated gender-specific awards categories. More

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      Kerry Condon on Her ‘Banshees of Inisherin’ Oscar Nomination

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      Kerry Condon had hoped to be among her horses when last week’s Oscar nominations were announced. If she kept busy tending her farm in Seattle, she figured that no matter the outcome of the early morning announcement, the work required to care for those two animals would help ground her in normalcy. After all, what do they know about Oscar odds?“If I’d hugged them at 5 a.m., they would have been like, ‘It’s almost feed time, where’s our hay?’” she said. “They would have been having none of it!”It didn’t quite go down that way, since work conspired to keep her in Los Angeles, where the Irish actress has lived for the last decade. Still, Condon is hardly complaining: On that fateful Tuesday morning, she received her first Oscar nomination, for Martin McDonagh’s “The Banshees of Inisherin,” in which she plays the feisty but lonely Siobhan, who counsels her brother, Padraic (Colin Farrell), through a feud with his best friend (Brendan Gleeson), fends off an enamored suitor, the oddball Dominic (Barry Keoghan), and wonders if there’s more to life than what can be experienced on the cloistered island where she grew up.It’s a breakthrough role for the 40-year-old Condon, who met me for lunch in Los Angeles just days after her nomination to discuss a career full of ups and downs. “I don’t think anything has ever come easy to me, so I have the opposite of a sense of entitlement,” she said.Though Condon grew up in the country town of Tipperary, she was always keen to make her mark in Hollywood: When she was just 10, she even wrote an unanswered letter to the well-known agent Mike Ovitz, asking him to represent her. (It didn’t work, but you’ve got to admire the chutzpah.) After graduating from the equivalent of high school, Condon worked in theater and could be seen in supporting parts on dramas like “Rome,” “Luck” and “Better Caul Saul,” but the major screen role that would kick her career into a higher gear had been hard to come by until now.“I think she’s probably been better than a lot of the directors and material she’s had to work with,” said McDonagh, who cast Condon in many of his plays and conceived “Banshees” with her in mind. “I always wanted to try and write something for her that would capture how brilliant she is onstage, but in a movie.”The “Banshees” filmmaker Martin McDonagh said the actress has “probably been better than a lot of the directors and material she’s had to work with.”Ariel Fisher for The New York TimesWith her Irish accent and impish sense of humor, Condon has been a welcome presence in every awards ballroom, though all that glad-handing can take its toll, she said: “I’m extremely introverted and I live alone, so when I come back from those things, I need to be hooked up to a drip!” Still, she’s thrilled to have the recognition, excited to be nominated alongside her three castmates, and ready for whatever happens to her screen career.“If it doesn’t change, and I still have my little peaks and valleys, at least I’ll be more equipped,” Condon said. “And I’ll also know that passes as quick as the good fortune passes.”Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.How did you feel the day before the Oscar nominations were announced?Interviews With the Oscar NomineesMichelle Yeoh: The “Everything Everywhere All at Once” star, nominated for best actress, said she was “bursting with joy” but “a little sad” that previous Asian actresses hadn’t been recognized.Angela Bassett: The actress nearly missed the announcement because of troubles with her TV. She tuned in just in time to find out that she was nominated for her supporting role in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”Andrea Riseborough: The star of “To Leslie” received her first Oscar nomination thanks to a campaign by some famous friends that has since attracted controversy and scrutiny. Here is what the actress said about being nominated.Ke Huy Quan: A former childhood star, the “Everything Everywhere All at Once” actor said that the news of his best supporting actor nomination was surreal.Austin Butler: In discussing his best actor nomination, the “Elvis” star said that he wished Lisa Marie Presley, who died on Jan. 12, had been able to celebrate the moment with him.I was busy in my house and I felt occupied, but as the day went on, my body was feeling really nervous and I was like, “Damn that subconscious! It’s obviously on my mind.” But I did go on a beautiful hike by myself and I clocked the moment, thinking, “I’m actually really happy right now. So just remember that if it doesn’t work out tomorrow, I was happy today and I didn’t have it.”Did you sleep well that night?I did but I could sleep through a nuclear bomb. I’m telling you, they should study me. I was going to turn off my cellphone and have my manager give the news to me like a regular business day — I was trying to be all cool so if I didn’t get it, I could take that moment privately and get myself together. But Colin called me and was like, “Do you want to watch it together?” Then I had to debate that for three hours because I was like, “What if one of us gets it and the other one doesn’t? Do I want to experience this massive moment with other people?” At the last minute, I said, “I’ll go to your house and watch it.”And on West Coast time, that means getting up before dawn.It was the weirdest thing getting up in the dark and scurrying out the door. Honest to God, it felt like we were doing something illegal! It’s just so surreal to be at anyone’s house at 5 in the morning, sober and in your pajamas, but I’m really glad I shared it with other people because it felt nice to get hugs in that moment. Whereas if I’d have been on my own, it would have been amazing, but it also would have been like, “God, Kerry, you’re such a loner!”In a statement released that morning, you described the nomination as “a dream come true.”I don’t think there’s anything wrong with admitting that you’re ambitious. It’s not like I’m Lady Macbeth and I’m stabbing the competition. I watched the Oscars when I was a kid and it’s always been on my radar. At the same time, was my happiness dependent on this? No, I’m not that much of a superficial person.You’ve worked with Martin McDonagh several times on plays. What took him so long to write a great film role for you?I don’t know, but I never got on his case about it. I was just really happy that we had been friends for so long. If I’d say, “Oh, I’m up for this job, I’m down to the last two,” and then I wouldn’t get it — which was the story of my life for a few years — Martin was one of the very few people in my life who’d say, “You’re great, and that guy’s a terrible director.” He always kept me going with things like that, and that was enough. I remember Martin got me a lovely bracelet saying, “It’s the journey that matters in the end,” and I still have it.Condon with Colin Farrell in a scene from “Banshees.” Playing his lonely sister in the film did take its toll: “That line to Siobhan of, ‘No wonder no one likes you,’ that was starting to ring in my ears.”Searchlight PicturesHow did you feel when he offered you “Banshees”?I can’t remember because my dog died just before Covid, and the lead-up to my dog dying was a whole thing. I was very distracted, and on the horizon was this possible “Banshees” thing, but I couldn’t think beyond my dog. I paused everything. I said to my agent a year before that, “I’m not doing any jobs, I have to see this through. I don’t care what I’m missing, I have to be with her.” It was hard because I lived alone with her, and when you don’t have children, she was just everything to me.That death had such a profound effect on me that it made me go, “Why aren’t people crying all the time? Why aren’t people talking about the fact that we all just disappear?” I remember thinking it was like when you lose your virginity: You hear about sex and you’re like, “What is that?” And then you have it, and the world cracks open, and there’s no going back. That’s how it felt with grief: I was like, “Oh, this is something I am going to have to deal with throughout my life.”Is that something you were able to bring to Siobhan, who has been taking care of her brother since their parents passed away?That was my starting point. I felt that Siobhan was stuck in that grief and not able to grow and be her own person because she had to fill the mother shoes with Padraic. Grief is a lonely journey. After a while, you can’t keep going on about it, because people are like, “I don’t know what you want me to say.” It is something you have to go through alone, but Martin had to control me in that because I think it was getting too sad sometimes. He was like, “She has to see that there’s a possibility of a change and that there’s more to life. There has to be an element of hope.” So I felt like it really came at the perfect time in my life.It’s ironic that Siobhan is so hostile to her brother’s donkey, since you’re such an animal lover in real life.That was really hard for me! I was always saying to Martin, “I feel like Siobhan would be happier if she would just let the animals in the house, and if she liked animals as much as I do.” And he was like, “I don’t know if that would be enough to fulfill her life.” But I’m different. I feel like animals are enough to fulfill my life.People have really responded to the scene where Dominic confesses his crush to Siobhan. That clip has trended on Twitter several times, and you and Barry are both terrific in it.I think he’s manipulating the internet — I’m like, “Somebody’s behind this, and I bet you any money, it’s Barry!” That was the last day of the shoot and the last scene I did. I had always imagined that Dominic had done things to Siobhan over the years that really unnerved her, like maybe stolen some of her clothes off the washing line. But at the same time, she was evolved enough to be kind to him in that moment, which made her even more beautiful a character.“My goal has always been to be an actress, never to get married and have children,” Condon said. “I don’t think it’s something I should do just because I’m a woman. I’ve never followed conventions, and I’m hardly going to start now.”Ariel Fisher for The New York TimesWhy do you think Siobhan gets so angry when Dominic asks why she never married?Oh, that’s a good one, because it’s hitting a nerve. I talked about that with Martin: “Are we saying that she’s a virgin?” We both came to the decision that she hadn’t had sex with anyone, because it’s Catholic Ireland and that would have been unheard-of, but maybe somebody came from the mainland one time and there were the very startings of a romance. But she couldn’t leave with this person because she was stuck on this island, so it was shut down very quickly. So when she’s asked, “Were you never married, and were you never wild?” I think it really irked her that she never had the opportunity.Have you ever felt a loneliness like Siobhan’s?Because I was never married, does that ever bother me? No. I could be monogamous, but I don’t really care about marriage, and I don’t really know why everyone cares about it.I’m kind of ambivalent about it myself, although I’m the first person to cry at weddings.I get emotional at weddings, too, which is so stupid. Sometimes I’m like, “There she goes, my friend’s gone. Her loyalty’s to her husband now, and there goes our years.” But my goal has always been to be an actress, never to get married and have children. I don’t think it’s something I should do just because I’m a woman. I’ve never followed conventions, and I’m hardly going to start now.How did you feel when you wrapped the film?Funnily enough, I was a little bit glad because by the end of it, it was starting to take its toll. That line to Siobhan of, “No wonder no one likes you,” that was starting to ring in my ears a little bit. And I know for Colin it was taking its toll too, with all the rejection and thinking, “Am I stupid?” If you have to stay in those spaces long enough, you can’t help but have them in your thinking. I found myself coming home some evenings after a great day, and all of a sudden, I’d just be bawling for five minutes. I didn’t even know why I was crying. I just knew there was a heaviness to it, and I was ready to let it go.How did it feel once the movie returned to your life in such a grand fashion, from a Venice Film Festival premiere on to awards season?Looking back, it has been an absolute whirlwind since Venice. Everything has happened super, super fast — so fast that I’m getting nervous for the Oscars coming, since it’s going to be all over then.At least you’ve got a few weeks to savor things until it happens.But still, things end. And isn’t that sad? More

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      Leslie Odom Jr. Plans Return to Broadway in ‘Purlie Victorious’

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      Kenny Leon will direct the revival of Ossie Davis’s 1961 play, which is expected to run this summer at an unspecified Broadway theater.Leslie Odom Jr., who won a Tony Award for his breakout performance as Aaron Burr in “Hamilton,” plans to return to Broadway this summer to star in, and co-produce, a revival of a 1961 comedy about a preacher trying to acquire a church in his hometown while challenging a local segregationist.The play, “Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch,” was written by Ossie Davis, the actor and civil rights activist, who also starred in the original Broadway production alongside his wife and frequent collaborator, Ruby Dee. (The original cast also featured Alan Alda.) The play was quickly adapted into a movie, called “Gone Are the Days!,” and then into a musical, simply titled “Purlie.”The revival will be directed by Kenny Leon, who has had a lot on his plate lately: He directed this season’s Broadway runs of “Topdog/Underdog” and “Ohio State Murders,” and is directing an Off Broadway production of “King James” (about LeBron James fandom) this spring and “Hamlet” at Free Shakespeare in the Park this summer.“Purlie Victorious” is a satire of Southern stereotypes, and both Leon and Odom said they believe it will resonate with contemporary audiences. “It explores the truth in a way that we know and we can receive it,” Leon said. “To me, when I read this play, I don’t feel paralyzed, I feel joyous, and I say, ‘What can I do to make our country better?’”Odom, who gave his daughter the middle name Ruby after Ruby Dee, said he has been interested in the play for some time. “First and foremost, we want to make a kick-ass, entertaining, joyful revival production of this great play,” he said. “We want to make a seminal production of ‘Purlie Victorious,’ this thing that hasn’t been seen on Broadway for decades and that was so important to Mr. Davis.”In the years since “Hamilton,” Odom has had a thriving film and television career, with significant roles in “One Night in Miami” and “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” a guest starring role in “Abbott Elementary,” and he is now in Atlanta, filming a sequel to “The Exorcist.” Before committing to “Purlie Victorious,” which will be his first professional stage play, Odom said he test-drove the material, to reassure himself that it would still work, and that he felt comfortable in the role.“We did a small private reading just to begin the exploration, and what we found is that, absolutely, it holds up,” he said in a telephone interview. “Mr. Davis left us a road map to all the moments of magic that I’m looking for in this play, and it really is a matter of us committing this text to memory and letting it have its way with us.”The revival’s lead producer is Jeffrey Richards. The production said in a statement Wednesday that the revival would begin performances “in late summer 2023” at an unspecified Broadway theater. More

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      Academy Won’t Rescind Andrea Riseborough’s Best Actress Nomination

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      The organization investigated whether an Oscars campaign for the “To Leslie” actress Andrea Riseborough had violated rules.The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said on Tuesday that it would not rescind Andrea Riseborough’s Oscar nomination for best actress, after an investigation into whether an Oscar campaign on her behalf violated the organization’s rules.“The academy has determined the activity in question does not rise to the level that the film’s nomination should be rescinded,” Bill Kramer, the academy’s chief executive officer, said in a statement. “However, we did discover social media and outreach campaigning tactics that caused concern. These tactics are being addressed with the responsible parties directly.”The academy declined to say who the responsible parties were.Ms. Riseborough, a respected British actress, was a surprise nominee last week for her performance as a former lottery winner battling addiction in the little-seen drama “To Leslie.” The film earned just $27,000 at the box office during its initial release in October. Yet Ms. Riseborough became the talk of Hollywood when fellow actors began publicly praising her performance during the Oscar nominating season.Cate Blanchett mentioned her when accepting a Critics Choice award. Kate Winslet, during a virtual question-and-answer session with Ms. Riseborough and the film’s director, called Ms. Riseborough’s work “the greatest female performance onscreen I have ever seen in my life.”But the campaign soon drew criticism, with people questioning whether those lobbying on Ms. Riseborough’s behalf did so by calling members personally — an Oscars no-no — and hosting informal gatherings that didn’t comply with academy standards.A social media post by the veteran actress Frances Fisher raised eyebrows because it named other actresses in Oscar contention, suggesting that their nominations were secure and that people should vote for Ms. Riseborough instead. On Jan. 14, Ms. Fisher wrote that voters should select Ms. Riseborough since “Viola, Michelle, Danielle & Cate are a lock for their outstanding work.” She was referring to Viola Davis, Michelle Williams, Danielle Deadwyler and Ms. Blanchett.Ms. Davis and Ms. Deadwyler did not receive nominations. Mentioning competitors or their films directly while campaigning is forbidden.According to Mr. Kramer’s statement, the review by the academy made it “apparent that components of the regulations must be clarified to help create a better framework for respectful, inclusive and unbiased campaigning.”He added that any changes to the rules would be made after the Oscars telecast on March 12.“The academy strives to create an environment where votes are based solely on the artistic and technical merits of the eligible films and achievements,” he said. More

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      Cindy Williams’s 6 Best Moments Onscreen

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      Her comedic work in “Laverne & Shirley” was career-defining. But the actress had other chops, too. Here’s a look at some of her best work and where to see it.To most people, the actress Cindy Williams, who died on Wednesday at age 75, was synonymous with Shirley Feeney of the hit 1970s and ’80s sitcom “Laverne & Shirley,” a spinoff of “Happy Days” about two unattached women in the 1950s and ’60s. But Williams was much more than that character. She had serious dramatic chops, as evidenced in her early film work. And as a comic actor, she demonstrated a Lucille Ball-like ability to combine sweetness and slapstick.Still, Shirley was a career-defining role — a lively, sometimes demure, sometimes daring bottle-capper at Shotz Brewery, in Milwaukee. The show resurrected a vintage style of zany comedy that freed up Williams and her co-star, Penny Marshall, to act both more adult and more childish at the same time. Audiences ate it up, and the show ran for eight seasons.Of the two lead characters, Shirley was the more relatable, restrained of the two, which made her moments of cutting loose just that much more memorable: Watch her hungry and diving for food on the floor in “Guinea Pigs” (Season 2, Episode 14); going agro in “Tag Team Wrestling” (Season 3, Episode 2); drunk-crawling across the dinner table in “Shirley and the Older Man” (Season 4, Episode 24); or panicking while chained to a giant computer, in protest of the local power company, in “The Right to Light” (Season 5, Episode 17).Since much of her best work was steeped in nostalgia, it seems only fitting to look back at a few career highlights, with some tips on where to stream them.‘American Graffiti’ (1973)In this hit boys-coming-of-age movie from George Lucas that set off a wave of 1950s and ’60s nostalgia (see “Happy Days,” two years later), Cindy Williams pulled off the difficult trick of standing out in a stardom-bound cast that includes Richard Dreyfuss, Harrison Ford and Ron Howard. In it, Williams plays a high-school head cheerleader who is losing her class-president boyfriend (Howard) as he heads off to college. In one great scene, he proposes that they see other people while he’s away; in an even better one, set at a school dance, she breaks the news to him that she has always been the controlling force in their relationship. You might be tempted to follow this memorable pair into adulthood in the sequel “More American Graffiti,” but don’t bother — it’s better if they stay 17 forever. (Read the original review of “American Graffiti” here.)Rent it on Amazon, Apple, Google Play, Vudu, YouTube and other major platforms.‘The Conversation’ (1974)In her earliest roles, Williams was often cast as a best friend or ingénue — a sweet slip of a girl and not much more. But in this paranoid thriller from Francis Ford Coppola, she showed us something darker. Playing one half of a young couple being covertly recorded by Gene Hackman’s security pro Harry Caul, Williams sounds at first — on audio tape — like the embodiment of innocence. But as Harry applies filters to clean up his recordings, the carefully nuanced nature of Williams’s line readings slowly becomes clear, and we’re left wondering whether her character might be the spider in this web of deceit. (Read the original review here.)Stream it on Showtime; rent it on most major platforms.‘Happy Days’ (1975)Season 3, Episode 10: ‘A Date With Fonzie’Following her dramatic turn in “The Conversation,” Williams was tapped to join her comedy-writing partner, Penny Marshall, in what was intended to be a one-time guest appearance on this popular sitcom set in the 1950s. In the episode’s story line, Fonzie (Henry Winkler) enlists Laverne (Marshall) and Shirley (Williams) to go on a double date with him and Richie (Howard), for whom Shirley was thought to be an easy conquest. Williams had a relaxed chemistry with Howard (who played her boyfriend in “American Graffiti”), but this time, her character got to enjoy herself. The Shirley persona freed Williams up: She was funny, cute and sexy, and she had a mean right hook. Naturally, Richie — and the audience — wanted to see more of her and her bestie, which in TV-world meant a spinoff featuring the twosome was in order.Stream it on Paramount+.‘Laverne & Shirley’Season 5, Episode 25 (‘The Diner’)“Laverne & Shirley” helped fine-tune a certain type of sitcom convention — the female duo, the “hangout” comedy — but if you want to do a deep dive, stick with Seasons 1 to 5. Once Laverne and Shirley move from Milwaukee to California in Season 6, the quality declines.For one of the funniest episodes, head over to “The Diner,” where the gals (briefly) take over the diner left to Lenny (Michael McKean) by his late uncle Lazlo (renamed Dead Lazlo’s Place, where you can get a Dead Lazlo Burger). It’s got the physical comedy: Laverne cooks and Shirley serves, resorting to carrying items to tables with her mouth. It’s also got some of the best lines, especially when the customers don’t even have the decency to call Shirley by her right name. You’ll want to plead, along with Laverne, “Please don’t harass Betty, please!”Stream much of Season 1 to 5 free on Pluto; bootlegs of individual episodes are easy to find online.Season 4, Episode 3: ‘Playing the Roxy’One of the best things about Season 4 is how many Shirley-centric episodes there are. In “Playing the Roxy,” the gal pals were reading a trashy story about a stripper before Shirley hits her head; suddenly, she believes she is that stripper, the best exotic dancer in North America. If Shirley’s body is a temple, Roxy’s is an amusement park — and Williams throws herself into the role with gusto, practicing bumps and grinds against a doorframe before staging an elaborate burlesque performance. If anything signaled that Williams wasn’t content to play it safe, it was this.Season 4, Episode 7: ‘A Date With Eraserhead’Granted, some of the sitcom’s plots are outlandish and require a suspension of disbelief. But then, occasionally, some are incredibly realistic. What would your best friend do if she believed your boyfriend was cheating on you? In “A Date With Eraserhead,” Laverne confronts Shirley’s beau, Carmine (Eddie Mekka), on her friend’s behalf (“I’ll hold him, you hit him”), only to learn that the couple has “an understanding” — that’s to say, an open relationship. This episode may not have the usual comic centerpiece, but it feels more true to the relationships at the core of the series, and Williams gets to show a few sides of Shirley that we might not have suspected were there, including heartbreak, jealousy and perhaps even love. More

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      Why Gina Rodriguez Put Mumford & Sons on Her Birth Playlist

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      The actress spent her pregnancy making a new TV series, “Not Dead Yet,” and watching “WandaVision.”In the ABC sitcom “Not Dead Yet,” premiering Feb. 8, Nell Serrano is an obituary writer who, according to the subject of one of her assignments — yes, she’s visited by the dead — envies other people’s happiness.Gina Rodriguez, who is expecting her first child, spoke with us last month, saying that she’s in a different, happier place than Nell, whom she plays, but she knows things could change at any time. “I’m learning at every single turn,” she said.Previously the star of the CW television series “Jane the Virgin” and heard in the title role of the Netflix animated series “Carmen Sandiego,” Rodriguez shared some of the music on her birth playlist, as well as other things that have been helping her get by, including “WandaVision” and “Be Here Now.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. “WandaVision” I started watching the show during my pregnancy. At first I was like, what is this show? It’s a take on “I Love Lucy”? And then I saw that it’s all wrapped up in her grief. The power of human emotion and the unconscious decisions that we make when we’re in these spaces of love and longing and grief are just wild and awesome. Its portrayal of a human journey through the possibility of action based on an unconscious emotion is really interesting to me.2. Ram Dass My husband discovered Ram Dass and brought him into our relationship. I find the way he viewed the world and the journey he went on to be very helpful to me. We have, like, 14 copies of his book “Be Here Now,” because it’s our No. 1 present we give people. Every time I listen to the audiobook “Becoming Nobody,” I learn something new, and I’m reminded that I fall right back into things, such as feeling like my identity is my everything and my ego gets attached to the identity.3. Failure In my production company, we want to create a safe space for failure because it’s only in failure that you learn. And if you don’t get another chance after failure, it is such an unfortunate missed opportunity for growth. When you have a space where you can fail, you do better, you get stronger and you say, “OK, I’m not going to do it like this, I’m going to try it like this. Or that path didn’t work, let’s try this next path.”4. “The Dawn of Everything” I have always been interested in the history of humankind. It’s so interesting that every time we personify people of the past, they’re not as intelligent and not as civilized. I picked up David Graeber and David Wengrow’s “The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity” on a Barnes & Noble shopping spree. It’s riveting. It presents such an interesting perspective on the history of humanity, and it makes me think about everything just a little bit more.5. Bidet When we remodeled our home, we had a combination toilet/bidet put in our primary bedroom. It is a game changer. When we go overseas and the bidet is a separate unit, I’m like, this is fabulous. It should be like this everywhere.6. “My Brilliant Friend” After we shot “Annihilation,” Natalie Portman gave me Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels series as a wrap gift. I have read each of them multiple times. Starting with “My Brilliant Friend,” they are the most whisk-you-away, escape-into-another-person’s-world books. I love them so much. It was the best wrap gift I’ve ever gotten. And I always think about Natalie when I read them.7. Mumford & Sons I have a playlist of songs to listen to when I give birth. Several Mumford & Sons songs are on the playlist, including “Little Lion Man,” “Awake My Soul” and “I Will Wait.” They sing like they’re connected to the center of the universe. It makes me feel a sense of closeness to my ancestors, even though it’s not the kind of music my ancestors listened to. There’s just a spirituality to their music. Whether they were writing that or not, that’s what I respond to.8. Bad Bunny My fellow Puerto Rican artist is definitely the music of my ancestors. I think he is super innovative. He’s been able to introduce styles of music, such as merengue, that haven’t been popular in the United States. Bad Bunny makes me feel every nostalgia under the sun of my childhood. And I just think he’s super, super talented.9. Oregon After we started visiting friends in Bend, we fell in love with Oregon, which is now our second home. We try and spend half the year there. It’s such a beautiful state. There are so many different climates and things to see — the mountains, the coast, the woods. I saw my first owl in Oregon. I grew up in Chicago and Puerto Rico. We weren’t seeing owls.10. Oahu Hawaii feels like home. It feels like Puerto Rico. There is a oneness of Mother Nature there that feels like the center of the forest, but it’s beach, and it’s jungle, and it’s water and ocean. Oddly, you find a lot of people who vacation in Hawaii in Oregon, and vice versa. They feel like polar opposites, but they tend to draw people with the same kind of yearning for Mother Nature. More