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      Jovan Adepo and Thundercat on Jazz, Superheroes and Ego Death

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      Two creative people in two different fields in one wide-ranging conversation. This time: the “Watchmen” actor and the musician.The anime-loving singer and jazz-trained bassist known as Thundercat occupies such a specific place in popular music, it’s easy to forget how ubiquitous he is: Apart from his own funk- and jazz-inflected R&B releases, the 38-year-old artist (born Stephen Bruner in Los Angeles) has collaborated over the years with everyone from Erykah Badu to Kendrick Lamar to the California crossover thrash band Suicidal Tendencies.The 34-year-old actor Jovan Adepo, born in England but raised mostly in Maryland, is also approaching his own left-of-mainstream breakout: He first gained notice in the 2016 film version of August Wilson’s “Fences” (1986), acting opposite Viola Davis and Denzel Washington, the latter of whom directed the movie and became something of a mentor. After appearing in HBO’s “Watchmen” in 2019 as the masked vigilante Hooded Justice, Adepo will next be seen in the director Damien Chazelle’s “Babylon” (out Christmas Day), in which he plays the fictional jazz trumpeter Sidney Palmer in a historical epic set in 1920s Hollywood, as it transitioned from silent films to talkies.Having just played a trumpeter — he first tried his hand at the instrument in middle school — Adepo’s been thinking a lot about musicians he admires, and Thundercat topped the list: Both have tattoos honoring the goofy 1980s cartoon that inspired the latter’s mononym, and they also have overlapping interests in jazz, superheroes and the power of faith in making art, all of which informed a conversation in October at a studio in Los Angeles, in the middle of the city they also share.Jovan Adepo: Thundercat, we’ve actually met before — we have a mutual friend, and you were playing in England and I came to see you, but we missed the set because my friend and I stopped for food.Thundercat: You can’t ever let him live that down.J.A.: We stayed and watched the rest of the show: The Red Hot Chili Peppers were performing, and then I had a couple of drinks and was like, “I may never meet this dude, so I’m going to say what’s up.” My dad told me, “Be cool about it. You’re a grown man. Shake his hand.” That’s exactly what I hope I did, but I was mad awkward.T.: I remember it, it’s cool. You should always say something, always give the person their flowers while they’re alive. But I’ve definitely been cussed out a couple of times for trying to say hi: once with Drake’s security team — nobody has put hands on me like that other than my dad.T Magazine: Does being in the business and knowing how it works make it harder to form close relationships with other artists?T.: You attract what you are, but Los Angeles is the epitome of turned-on-its-head: Whatever you thought, it can change at the drop of a hat. You can go from being poor to the richest man in the world. Your life can end within five minutes of you touching a substance. You meet a lot of fake people — a lot of people who can’t wait to project and let you know who they think they are. But when the real ones come around, it’s timeless.Adepo as Sidney Palmer in “Babylon” (2022), directed by Damien Chazelle.Scott Garfield/Paramount PicturesT Magazine: Jovan, when did you start following Thundercat’s work?J.A.: I first got introduced to his music in college — I was obsessed. And then I got this tattoo [inspired by the 1985-89 “ThunderCats” cartoon] in 2020. Mine was a gift from a tattoo artist in Los Angeles after my Emmy nomination [for “Watchmen”].I grew up with music: My dad was big on jazz, and that’s partly why I wanted this part in “Babylon.” One of my favorite songs is John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman’s “Lush Life” (1963). It’s incredibly depressing, but a beautiful song. I have it on vinyl, and that’s played in my house all the time.T Magazine: Thundercat, you were in a jazz band in high school. What’s your relationship to the genre now?T.: For me, it’s about composing and writing. The act of improvisation, it’s built into my DNA. That’s the only way I can describe it. Jazz can be a shade or hue of something — and it’s important to always express the jazz in the music, because that’s not only our history [as Black people and Americans] but it also represents the want for something different, the stab in different directions.But it’s always in relation to what’s going on in pop culture at the time. Everyone loves what Kendrick did [with 2015’s “To Pimp a Butterfly,” to which Thundercat contributed]. That’s one of the highest points of jazz music, but it always takes something new to remind people what jazz is.T Magazine: It goes back to the fundamentals. Jovan, how did you develop yours with acting?J.A.: I was playing football in college, but I was trash. If you ever have a dream of going pro, you’re sometimes the last to realize if that’s not an attainable goal. I was also doing church plays, and there was a lady who came up to me and said, “You’re so good. You should get into acting. I have a sister in Los Angeles who’s doing her thing.” Fast-forward, I decide I want to come out to L.A. just to write screenplays, and her sister was Viola Davis. That’s how I met her, in 2013, and she told me, “You need to study everything. You didn’t go to Juilliard. So you need to go to every acting class. And if there’s anything that you can do better, make a living doing that.”My first job was “The Leftovers” [from 2015-17]. That was with no résumé, but the creator of the show, Damon Lindelof, saw my audition and was like, “That guy.” He took me out of Inglewood, working at Sunglass Hut.T.: Being a musician is also its own terror — there was never a point in my life where I wasn’t one, but there were a couple of summers that I worked at the comic store.J.A.: Being discovered doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a collection of small happenings. When I met with Viola and her husband [Julius Tennon], it wasn’t like, “We’re gonna put you in our next gig.” It was like, Get to work. And maybe we’ll run into each other in line.T.: In the great words of Floyd Mayweather: “Hard work.”J.A.: Heart first.T.: For me, I look at my albums more like snapshots or photos of where I am. I don’t like talking about this, but I spent many years as an alcoholic. There were different degrees, but it was very cloudy for me for a long time. Even with the album “Drunk” (2017), there came a moment where I had to be honest with myself about what that was. It served a purpose. If I was still dealing with those things, I would probably be dead.T Magazine: How do you get around your ego when first collaborating with folks like Washington and Lamar, and still make great art?J.A.: My ego was nonexistent.T.: Ego death is a real thing.J.A.: It behooves you to come in with your palms open and be able to learn. And that’s served me well. I’ve always been good at confiding in older actors, and I just like hanging around older people better. They make fun of you: Denzel called me “peanut head.”T.: I toured with Erykah Badu for many years, recording on the [2000s “New Amerykah”] albums. Once, we were in prayer before going onstage. And she had this moment where she was like [to the rest of the band], “I don’t know if any of y’all knew, Thundercat is an artist. I just want you to understand he’s different.” She used to put me right up front with her and we would dance. That woman changed my life. She showed me what it means to be an artist.T Magazine: You both have a deep fondness for comics. There’s an argument that, in a more secular world, superheroes act as our gods. Do you think of them like that?J.A.: That’s a hard question to answer —T.: Superheroes have attributes that are otherworldly for sure. Art is meant to inspire, and you’ve got different generations when it comes to comics: “Superman” was [originally] important [in the 1930s] because it made kids’ minds wander. A lot of times — even when you read things like the Bible — you hear these stories, but you’re wanting to touch and feel them. Comics create a tangibility.This is not me saying God is or isn’t real. I grew up Christian. You get different versions and different iterations, but those connections create respect at a young age. It stays with you.J.A.: That’s also my upbringing. My mom was a missionary in our church, and my dad is a deacon. They would always call when I was going in for little roles and I’d say, “I don’t know why I’m an actor, I’m not that great,” to which they responded, “When was the last time you prayed?” That question makes you feel awkward, like, you know you’re gonna lie. But then they’re always like, “I’m praying for you, a lot of hands are praying for you.” You gotta have something like that to keep you centered.T.: Oh, yeah. This world will kill you.T Magazine: How do you define success?J.A.: It’s funny because I feel like a lot of actors, when they get questions like that, say that they do this solely for the art. But if that were the consensus for all actors, we could just do monologues in our basement, you know? I want people to see me.T.: It’s multifaceted.J.A.: You want to be able to vibe with your music, but then you also want to be able to feed your family and see the fruits of your labor. But I think, for me, it just starts with wanting to be remembered.This interview has been edited and condensed.Grooming: Simone at Exclusive Artists Management. Photo assistant: Jerald Flowers More

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      in Theater

      Douglas McGrath, Playwright, Filmmaker and Actor, Is Dead at 64

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      His one-man Off Broadway show, “Everything’s Fine,” directed by John Lithgow, had opened just weeks ago.Douglas McGrath, a playwright, screenwriter, director and actor who was nominated for an Oscar, an Emmy and a Tony Award, and whose one-man Off Broadway show, “Everything’s Fine,” opened just weeks ago, died on Thursday at his office in Manhattan. He was 64.His death was announced by the show’s producers, Daryl Roth, Tom Werner and John Lithgow. Their representative said the cause was a heart attack.Mr. Lithgow also directed the show, a childhood recollection of Mr. McGrath’s about a middle-school teacher in Texas who gave him an inappropriate amount of attention.“He was a dream to direct,” Mr. Lithgow said on Friday. “None of us had ever worked with someone who was so happy, proud and grateful to be performing his own writing.”Mr. McGrath in his one-man play “Everything’s Fine,” which opened Off Broadway last month to good reviews.Jeremy DanielMr. McGrath had a wide-ranging if under-the-radar career in television, film and theater. In the 1980-81 season, just out of Princeton and still in his early 20s, he was a writer for “Saturday Night Live.” Over the next decade he wrote humor pieces for The New Republic, The New York Times and other publications.By the 1990s he was making inroads in Hollywood. He wrote the screenplay for the 1993 remake of the 1950 romantic comedy “Born Yesterday,” and the next year he and Woody Allen collaborated on the script for Mr. Allen’s “Bullets Over Broadway.” The two shared an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay.In 1996 he adapted the Jane Austen novel “Emma” for the big screen and also directed the film, which starred Gwyneth Paltrow. In 2000 he and Peter Askin shared directing and screenwriting duties on the comedy “Company Man,” in which he also starred, as a schoolteacher who stumbles into a career as a C.I.A. officer.That movie drew some unflattering reviews. But his next, “Nicholas Nickleby” (2002), an adaptation of the Dickens story that he both wrote and directed, was well received. In The Times, A.O. Scott said that Mr. McGrath’s adaptation was rendered “with a scholar’s ear and a showman’s flair.”“The director has produced a colorful, affecting collage of Dickensian moods and motifs,” Mr. Scott wrote, “a movie that elicits an overwhelming desire to plunge into 900 pages of 19th-century prose.”Mr. McGrath, center, on the set of his film “Nicholas Nickleby” (2002), with the cast members Barry Humphries, left, and Alan Cumming.United Artists, via AlamyIn addition to his screenwriting and directing credits (which also included “Infamous,” a 2006 film starring Toby Jones as Truman Capote), Mr. McGrath occasionally took small acting roles in other people’s projects, including several of Mr. Allen’s films. In 2016 he directed “Becoming Mike Nichols,” an HBO documentary about the film director, on which he was also an executive producer. He shared an Emmy nomination with the other producers for outstanding documentary or nonfiction special.Throughout, he continued to work in the theater. In 1996 he wrote and starred in “Political Animal,” a one-man comedy that played at the McGinn/Cazale Theater in Manhattan, in which he played a right-wing presidential candidate.“Beyond the stand-up parody,” Ben Brantley wrote in his review in The Times, “the larger point of ‘Political Animal’ is that it takes a hollow, desperate man to run for president these days.”In 2012 his play “Checkers” — the title refers to a famous 1952 speech by Richard M. Nixon — was seen at the Vineyard Theater in Manhattan, with Anthony LaPaglia as Nixon and Kathryn Erbe as his wife, Pat.Then came Broadway: Mr. McGrath wrote the book for “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical,” which opened in January 2014 and ran for more than five years. His book was nominated for a Tony Award.Last month Mr. Lithgow told The Daily News of New York that Mr. McGrath had sent him “Everything’s Fine” unsolicited, and that he had no intention of directing a play until he read the piece.“It was so play-able,” he said, “I could simply imagine an audience being completely captivated by it.”The show opened in mid-October to good reviews.“It is impossible to overstate Doug’s pure likability,” Mr. Lithgow said on Friday. “In his solo show, he told a long story about his 14th year, and it worked so well because he had retained so much of his sense of boyish discovery.”Ms. Roth, another of the show’s producers, said that Mr. McGrath had been thoroughly enjoying the way audiences were reacting as he unspooled the tale.“The wonderful response from the audience was cathartic, meaningful and joyful to him,” she said by email. “He often told me he was in his ‘happy place’ onstage telling his story.”Mr. McGrath on the set of “Infamous,” his 2006 film about Truman Capote.Van Redin/Warner Independent, via Kobal, via ShutterstockDouglas Geoffrey McGrath was born on Feb. 2, 1958, in Midland, Texas. His father, Raynsford, was an independent oil producer, and his mother, Beatrice (Burchenal) McGrath, worked at Harper’s Bazaar before her marriage.“People often ask me what growing up in West Texas was like,” Mr. McGrath said in “Everything’s Fine.” “I think this sums it up: It’s very hot, it’s very dusty, and it’s very, very windy. It’s like growing up inside a blow dryer full of dirt.”He graduated from Princeton in 1980.“Planning my future,” he wrote in a 2001 essay in The Times, “I had a very clear idea of what I wanted to do, but a very blurry one of how to do it. I knew I wanted to write and perform in my own films in the manner of my idol, Woody Allen. But when I went, that once, to the Career Counseling Center and faced the bulletin board, none of the cards said, ‘Needed: writer-actor-director for major feature, no experience required, must be willing to earn high salary.’”Yet when a friend told him “S.N.L.” was hiring writers, he sent in some sketches and landed an $850-a-week job.“It seemed too good to be true,” he wrote. “It was. My year, 1980, was viewed then and still as the worst year in the show’s history, which is no small achievement when you think of some of the other years.”In a 2016 interview, Mr. McGrath said his disappointment with the way his screenplay for “Born Yesterday” was handled changed the direction of his career.“I remember thinking, well, if I don’t want to spend the rest of my life doing this, meaning watching someone else muck up what I did, there’s only one way around that,” he said. “I have to become a director.”Mr. McGrath, who lived in Manhattan, married Jane Read Martin in 1995. She survives him, as do a son, Henry; a sister, Mary McGrath Abrams; and a brother, Alexander. More

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      in Movies

      Douglas McGrath, Playwright, Filmmaker and Actor, Dies at 64

      by

      His one-man Off Broadway show, “Everything’s Fine,” directed by John Lithgow, had opened just weeks ago.Douglas McGrath, a playwright, screenwriter, director and actor who was nominated for an Oscar, an Emmy and a Tony Award, and whose one-man Off Broadway show, “Everything’s Fine,” opened just weeks ago, died on Thursday at his office in Manhattan. He was 64.His death was announced by the show’s producers, Daryl Roth, Tom Werner and John Lithgow. Their representative said the cause was a heart attack.Mr. Lithgow also directed the show, a childhood recollection of Mr. McGrath’s about a middle-school teacher in Texas who gave him an inappropriate amount of attention.“He was a dream to direct,” Mr. Lithgow said on Friday. “None of us had ever worked with someone who was so happy, proud and grateful to be performing his own writing.”Mr. McGrath in his one-man play “Everything’s Fine,” which opened Off Broadway last month to good reviews.Jeremy DanielMr. McGrath had a wide-ranging if under-the-radar career in television, film and theater. In the 1980-81 season, just out of Princeton and still in his early 20s, he was a writer for “Saturday Night Live.” Over the next decade he wrote humor pieces for The New Republic, The New York Times and other publications.By the 1990s he was making inroads in Hollywood. He wrote the screenplay for the 1993 remake of the 1950 romantic comedy “Born Yesterday,” and the next year he and Woody Allen collaborated on the script for Mr. Allen’s “Bullets Over Broadway.” The two shared an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay.In 1996 he adapted the Jane Austen novel “Emma” for the big screen and also directed the film, which starred Gwyneth Paltrow. In 2000 he and Peter Askin shared directing and screenwriting duties on the comedy “Company Man,” in which he also starred, as a schoolteacher who stumbles into a career as a C.I.A. officer.That movie drew some unflattering reviews. But his next, “Nicholas Nickleby” (2002), an adaptation of the Dickens story that he both wrote and directed, was well received. In The Times, A.O. Scott said that Mr. McGrath’s adaptation was rendered “with a scholar’s ear and a showman’s flair.”“The director has produced a colorful, affecting collage of Dickensian moods and motifs,” Mr. Scott wrote, “a movie that elicits an overwhelming desire to plunge into 900 pages of 19th-century prose.”Mr. McGrath, center, on the set of his film “Nicholas Nickleby” (2002), with the cast members Barry Humphries, left, and Alan Cumming.United Artists, via AlamyIn addition to his screenwriting and directing credits (which also included “Infamous,” a 2006 film starring Toby Jones as Truman Capote), Mr. McGrath occasionally took small acting roles in other people’s projects, including several of Mr. Allen’s films. In 2016 he directed “Becoming Mike Nichols,” an HBO documentary about the film director, on which he was also an executive producer. He shared an Emmy nomination with the other producers for outstanding documentary or nonfiction special.Throughout, he continued to work in the theater. In 1996 he wrote and starred in “Political Animal,” a one-man comedy that played at the McGinn/Cazale Theater in Manhattan, in which he played a right-wing presidential candidate.“Beyond the stand-up parody,” Ben Brantley wrote in his review in The Times, “the larger point of ‘Political Animal’ is that it takes a hollow, desperate man to run for president these days.”In 2012 his play “Checkers” — the title refers to a famous 1952 speech by Richard M. Nixon — was seen at the Vineyard Theater in Manhattan, with Anthony LaPaglia as Nixon and Kathryn Erbe as his wife, Pat.Then came Broadway: Mr. McGrath wrote the book for “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical,” which opened in January 2014 and ran for more than five years. His book was nominated for a Tony Award.Last month Mr. Lithgow told The Daily News of New York that Mr. McGrath had sent him “Everything’s Fine” unsolicited, and that he had no intention of directing a play until he read the piece.“It was so play-able,” he said, “I could simply imagine an audience being completely captivated by it.”The show opened in mid-October to good reviews.“It is impossible to overstate Doug’s pure likability,” Mr. Lithgow said on Friday. “In his solo show, he told a long story about his 14th year, and it worked so well because he had retained so much of his sense of boyish discovery.”Ms. Roth, another of the show’s producers, said that Mr. McGrath had been thoroughly enjoying the way audiences were reacting as he unspooled the tale.“The wonderful response from the audience was cathartic, meaningful and joyful to him,” she said by email. “He often told me he was in his ‘happy place’ onstage telling his story.”Mr. McGrath on the set of “Infamous,” his 2006 film about Truman Capote.Van Redin/Warner Independent, via Kobal, via ShutterstockDouglas Geoffrey McGrath was born on Feb. 2, 1958, in Midland, Texas. His father, Raynsford, was an independent oil producer, and his mother, Beatrice (Burchenal) McGrath, worked at Harper’s Bazaar before her marriage.“People often ask me what growing up in West Texas was like,” Mr. McGrath said in “Everything’s Fine.” “I think this sums it up: It’s very hot, it’s very dusty, and it’s very, very windy. It’s like growing up inside a blow dryer full of dirt.”He graduated from Princeton in 1980.“Planning my future,” he wrote in a 2001 essay in The Times, “I had a very clear idea of what I wanted to do, but a very blurry one of how to do it. I knew I wanted to write and perform in my own films in the manner of my idol, Woody Allen. But when I went, that once, to the Career Counseling Center and faced the bulletin board, none of the cards said, ‘Needed: writer-actor-director for major feature, no experience required, must be willing to earn high salary.’”Yet when a friend told him “S.N.L.” was hiring writers, he sent in some sketches and landed an $850-a-week job.“It seemed too good to be true,” he wrote. “It was. My year, 1980, was viewed then and still as the worst year in the show’s history, which is no small achievement when you think of some of the other years.”In a 2016 interview, Mr. McGrath said his disappointment with the way his screenplay for “Born Yesterday” was handled changed the direction of his career.“I remember thinking, well, if I don’t want to spend the rest of my life doing this, meaning watching someone else muck up what I did, there’s only one way around that,” he said. “I have to become a director.”Mr. McGrath, who lived in Manhattan, married Jane Reed Martin in 1995. She survives him, as do a son, Henry; a sister, Mary McGrath Abrams; and a brother, Alexander. More

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      in Television

      What to Know About the Danny Masterson Rape Trial

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      The “That ’70s Show” actor has been charged with raping three women in the early 2000s. Two of the women have said the Church of Scientology discouraged them from reporting the assaults to the police.The actor Danny Masterson, known for his roles in the sitcom “That ’70s Show” and the Netflix comedy “The Ranch,” before he was fired in 2017 amid sexual assault allegations, has been on trial in Los Angeles on charges that he raped three women at his home in the Hollywood Hills in the early 2000s.Masterson, 46, has pleaded not guilty to three counts of forcible rape. Opening arguments began on Oct. 18, and the trial is expected to last four weeks. Masterson could face 45 years to life in prison if convicted.What are the allegations?According to a trial brief filed by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, Masterson raped a woman, identified only as Jen B., in April 2003 after she went to his house to pick up keys and he gave her a red vodka drink. About 20 or 30 minutes later, she felt “very disoriented,” the brief states.According to the brief, Masterson raped her after she regained consciousness on his bed. She reached for his hair to try to pull him off and tried to push a pillow into his face, it states. When Masterson heard a man yelling in the house, he pulled a gun from his night stand and told her not to move or “say anything,” adding expletives, the document states.The trial brief says that Masterson raped a second woman, identified only as Christina B., who had been in a relationship with him and had lived with him for six years.In November 2001, the document says, she awoke to Masterson “having sex with her” and told him to stop. “I fought back,” she said, according to the document. “I tried pushing him off me and saying, ‘No, I don’t want to have sex with you.’” She also pulled his hair, and he hit her, the document states.In December 2001, she had one or two glasses of wine at a restaurant with Masterson and woke up naked in her bed the next morning, feeling that it hurt to sit down or go to the bathroom, the brief states. She said she went downstairs and confronted Masterson, and he acknowledged having sex with her while she was unconscious, the document states.The brief says that Masterson raped a third woman, identified only as N. Trout, who occasionally saw him at parties and gatherings and, like him, was in the Celebrity Centre branch of Scientology.Sometime between October and December of 2003, she went to his house, where he handed her a glass of wine and told her to take off her clothes and get in his hot tub, where “everything started becoming blank,” the brief states. He assaulted her in the shower and on a bed, the document states. She told him, “No, I don’t want to do this,” according to the document.How is the Church of Scientology involved?The trial has involved accusations by two of the women that the Church of Scientology, to which they and Masterson belonged, discouraged them from reporting the rapes to law enforcement.After seeking the church’s permission, verbally and in writing, to report the rape, Jen B. received a written response from the church’s international chief justice that cited a 1965 policy letter regarding “suppressive acts,” the brief states.To her, the response signaled that if she were to report a fellow Scientologist to the police, “I would be declared a suppressive person, and I would be out of my family and friends and everything I have,” the brief states. Still, she reported the rape to law enforcement in June 2004, the document states.The woman identified as Christina B. said that when she reported the rape to the church’s “ethics officer” or “master at arms,” the officer told her, “You can’t rape someone that you’re in a relationship with” and “Don’t say that word again,” the document states.The officer showed her “policies and things in the Ethics Book about high crimes in Scientology.” One of them was “reporting another Scientologist to law enforcement,” she said, according to the brief.She understood that, if she went to the police, “the church would have ultimately destroyed” her and declared her a “suppressive person,” the document states.The woman identified as N. Trout told her mother and best friend about the rape, but not the church, the brief states.“If you have a legal situation with another member of the church, you may not handle it externally from the church, and it’s very explicit,” she said, according to the brief. She added that she “felt sufficiently intimidated by the repercussions.”What does the church say?The church has strongly denied that it pressures victims. It has accused prosecutors of injecting Scientology into the trial and misrepresenting its doctrines and beliefs “to stir up passion and prejudice in the uninformed,” it said in an emailed statement on Oct. 21.“The church does not discourage anyone from reporting any alleged crime nor tell anyone not to report any alleged criminal conduct,” it said in the statement. “The church has no policy prohibiting or discouraging members from reporting criminal conduct of Scientologists, or of anyone, to law enforcement. Quite the opposite. Church policy explicitly demands Scientologists abide by all laws of the land.” What does Masterson say?A lawyer representing Masterson said in a statement in 2020 that the actor was innocent and that Masterson and his wife were in “complete shock” that the “nearly 20-year-old allegations” had resulted in charges. “The people who know Mr. Masterson know his character and know the allegations to be false,” the lawyer, Tom Mesereau, said.Philip Cohen, who is representing Masterson in the trial, has sought to limit discussion of Scientology in court, telling the judge last month that it would unfairly bias the jury and force the defense to fight a “war on two fronts,” The Los Angeles Times reported.But the judge, Charlaine F. Olmedo of California Superior Court in Los Angeles County, found that Scientology was relevant to the case, and that the women could testify about their belief that church policy discouraged them from reporting the accusations to law enforcement, The Times reported. More

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      in Theater

      ‘Mood’ Is a Genre-Bending Show About Social Media and Sex Work

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      “Mood,” a BBC America series created by Nicôle Lecky, blends music, comedy and gritty realism to explore the opportunities and risks for young women online.LONDON — A few years ago, Nicôle Lecky was shown a website that attempted to expose the personal details of women on Instagram because of their involvement in sex work. Lecky’s reaction was “instinctive,” she said in a recent interview, adding that it was one of those things that, as a writer, “you just feel compelled to write about.”She briefly thought about the dramatic potential of looking at who built the site, Lecky said, but her mind quickly turned to the subjects of their disdain — the women themselves. “That’s whose story I really want to engage with,” she noted.In a flurry, Lecky, now 32, wrote the first draft of “Superhoe,” an 85-minute one-woman show that she performed at the Royal Court Theater in London in 2019. That story has made its way onscreen with “Mood,” a sleek six-episode series that premieres Sunday on BBC America.Lecky plays the 25-year-old Sasha, brokenhearted and struggling, both financially and psychologically. She is soon drawn into the orbit of Carly (Lara Peake), a seemingly archetypal influencer, clad in athleisure and flush with cash, before falling into the dopamine loop of social media and, ultimately, sex work — first through videos on DailyFans, the show’s version of OnlyFans, and eventually through escorting.Carly (Lara Peake), left, invites Sasha (Nicôle Lecky) into her apparently glamorous world.Natalie Seery/BBC StudiosThrough Sasha’s trajectory, Lecky — who, as well as writing and executive producing the show, also helped create music for it — explores the gray area between empowerment and exploitation. As part of the production process, she spoke to women about their experiences of sex work, which produced complex feelings in her, she said.“If you are financially secure, and you’re happy and healthy, and you want to go and be a sex worker, go for it,” Lecky said, before underlining that some of the women she had spoken to wanted a different life. “I talk a lot about choice and if you have the choice,” she added. “And if you don’t, I think you should be able to live in a world where you don’t have to make money solely from having sex.”F., a 29-year-old who works in the sex industry, was among those who spoke to Lecky. She requested to be identified only by her first initial to protect her privacy. In a phone interview, she said that she appreciated the show’s depiction of “elements of the good and bad” of the industry, while showing that sex work attracted a variety of people. “You’ve got some of the girls that are lawyers and have fantastic professions,” F. said. “Everyone does this.”“A lot of people don’t understand or don’t want to understand why girls do it,” she added.Sex work is a central tenet of the show, but so too is a study of how that industry intersects with race and class. Sasha is often fetishized — her alias is “Lexi Caramel,” the “Caramel” a racialized addition by Carly. While on a job, another Black escort warns Sasha that they have to play by different rules than their white counterparts, adding that Sasha needs to be careful not to end up “damaged or dead.”Again and again, Sasha is shown operating in a world that ends up hardening her. Lecky likens Sasha to “someone you might see at a bus stop screaming on the phone and you think, ‘Oh my God, they’re a handful,’ but you don’t know their story.”“Sasha, to me, was very much based on the girls I went to school with,” she added.Lecky in a London studio last month. As well as writing and executive producing “Mood,” she also helped create music for the show.Ellie Smith for The New York TimesLecky grew up in East London, the daughter of a mental-health nurse and an electrician who formerly worked as a D.J. She loved performing and attended weekend acting classes, she said, and that led to small acting roles and writing jobs as a teenager.She also enjoyed history and politics, she added, and had aspirations to work for the United Nations. She enrolled in a multidisciplinary course at King’s College London to study global conflict, but found it tough to balance her university obligations with her auditions. A producer then suggested that she go to drama school, something that she said she had not considered before. She left college and headed to the Mountview Academy of Theater Arts in London.After graduating, she took jobs as a restaurant hostess and, at one point, retrained in event management, all while continuing to cut her teeth in TV writers’ rooms, onscreen and with places on writer-training initiatives. Those experiences, she said, made her realize that she needed to keep writing, and “Superhoe” came out of that desire to create.Lisa Walters, a producer on “Mood,” recalled being sent “Superhoe” when she was working at Channel 4, one of Britain’s public broadcasters. “I’d read lots of scripts in my role, and it’s always really exciting when you pick one up and you just feel instantly drawn to it,” she said. “Nicôle does have a sort of unapologetic style in her writing where it’s very raw, very real, and it’s authentic.”“Mood,” so called because Sasha expresses her mood, or vibe, through song throughout the show, is also unusual in being a mix of drama, musical and comedy. In one moment, viewers are taken into the depths of gritty realism; in the next, glimpses of Sasha’s internal world emerge through songs and surreal transformations to the world around her, like a family home suddenly turning into a jazz lounge.Lecky has performed songs from the show on radio in Britain. The soundtrack is available to stream.Natalie Seery/BBC StudiosDespite this singular feel, the similarity between Lecky’s rise and that of other female British writers has drawn comparisons. When “Mood” premiered this year in Britain, the news media cited Michaela Coel and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who also rose to prominence with buzzy one-woman plays, as reference points.Lecky, however, said that she tried to be “blinkered” and to stay focused on her own career. Coel and Waller-Bridge have been supportive, but “I just think everyone’s in their own lane,” she said.In attracting the BBC to adapt “Superhoe” for the screen, it helped that the play had already enjoyed success. As Fiona Campbell, a commissioner at the broadcaster, acknowledged: “We knew it was a very fresh, very well received” piece.Walters, the producer, said that the BBC had “wholeheartedly put their trust in Nicôle in order to realize her vision. They believed in what she had to say.” Walters added that it was “huge” for the broadcaster to allow a new talent to realize her vision exactly how she wanted it to be.Praise for Lecky’s drive is common among those she’s worked with. “Her work ethic is like none I’ve ever seen,” Walters noted. “She worked very, very hard and didn’t leave anything to chance.”“I talk a lot about choice and if you have the choice,” Lecky said. “And if you don’t, I think you should be able to live in a world where you don’t have to make money solely from having sex.”Ellie Smith for The New York TimesLecky frames her ambition as one of contours rather than specifics. “I don’t know if I know exactly where I want to go, but maybe I know where I don’t want to go,” she said.In the spirit of Sasha, she added: “I kind of do think that if you grow up without very much, you get very used to being like, ‘Well, I’ll just do it.’ You kind of make things work.” More

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      In ‘Dangerous Liaisons,’ Alice Englert and Nicholas Denton Play the Game

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      In a decadent new Starz drama, the two actors play young versions of literature’s most poisoned and poisonous power couple.It could never work between them, Alice Englert insisted on a recent afternoon, lounging in a corner banquette at Ladurée, a French spot in Lower Manhattan. In a relationship this toxic, she said, they would have no choice but to ruin each other, slowly or all at once.Nicholas Denton, sitting beside her, draped an arm around her shoulders. “That’s the game of it,” he said, grinning.The game is power. The field is pre-revolutionary France. And the contestants are the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, arguably literature’s most poisoned and poisonous power couple. Or not quite. Not yet. In “Dangerous Liaisons,” a decadent drama that debuts on Starz on Sunday, Englert and Denton play much younger versions of the characters introduced by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos in the epistolary 1782 novel.In the book, these characters are aristocrats, with decades of conniving and debauchery underneath their wigs and powder, who conspire to corrupt a chaste woman. In the show, they are barely out of puberty, seducers in their youth. Even before its premiere, the series has already been renewed.The couple — lovers who treat each other with anything but love — have fascinated readers and audiences for two centuries and counting, popping up in plays, operas, ballets, radio plays and movies, including the 1988 Stephen Frears film, starring Glenn Close and John Malkovich. All of which makes reinventing them a very tall order. The height of the wigs alone!But Englert and Denton were willing to try. “We’re both quite rough and tumble,” Denton said. “We’re willing to get on the floor in this garb and try and really knock this out and go to hell for it.”A television version of “Dangerous Liaisons” has been in development for nearly a decade, under the partial auspices of Colin Callender, a distinguished producer. Christopher Hampton, who wrote the screenplay for Frears’s film and the stage adaptation that is often revived on Broadway, was attached at one point. Then he wasn’t. When the writer Harriet Warner came on, she went looking for a fresh way into the material and she found it in one of the novel’s letters, which seemed to imply that the Marquise hadn’t been born into nobility, that she had clawed her way into it. She shared that insight with Callender.“The interesting thing was, how did these characters become who they were?” Callender explained in a recent interview.Warner began to devise some answers. Earlier younger riffs on “Les Liaisons Dangereuses,” like “Cruel Intentions” (1999) and a recent French film adaptation, moved the story into modern high schools. But Warner decided to keep to the period of the novel, more or less, while aging the Marquise down into Camille, a sex worker, and Valmont into Pascal, a mapmaker exiled from the aristocracy. First they go to bed. And then they go to war.The series found a fresh way into the story through one of the letters in the epistolary novel, which seemed to imply that the Marquise hadn’t been born into nobility.Dusan Martincek/StarzWith that decision made and scripts written, casting could begin. The producers saw about 200 actors for each role. Denton (“The Glitch”), 30, an Australian actor, went through at least a half-dozen auditions and tests, beginning early in 2020. At times, in quarantine, his sister had to read the steamier scenes with him. “Disgusting,” he said. “Bless her soul.”Englert (“Top of the Lake,” “Ratched”), 28, also from Australia and the daughter of the filmmaker Jane Campion, put herself on tape later, toward the end of 2020. With the pandemic in full swing, the two of them couldn’t meet for a chemistry read. (Though Denton had met with other actresses, a plexiglass barrier between them.) So they had their joint audition in separate hotel rooms on Zoom, trying to steam up their relative screens.“It was so funny,” Englert said.Apparently it was more than just funny. “It was better than you could have imagined,” Warner said during a recent phone call. “You just knew they were going to elevate each other and escalate the drama and yet keep all this wonderful raw energy of the fact that they are still kind of unsullied by the industry.”Denton and Englert met in person a few months later, in the spring of 2021, on set in Prague. Englert had just emerged from hair and makeup with a temporary wig balanced precariously on her head. (“I was dreaming that I looked like a flat-chested version of Dolly Parton,” she said.) Wary of Covid-19 protocols, they patted each other on their respective shoulders. A few days later, they were rolling around the rehearsal room floor together. A few days after that, they were filming one of Pascal and Camille’s incendiary fights.“I actually cried at the end of that day,” Englert said, as they started in on fresh coffees to combat jet lag, “just from knowing that we were going to go on such an odyssey.” The constricting costumes — “they just hurt sometimes,” Englert said — may have moved her to tears, too.They were dressed more comfortably that afternoon, if still in the louche spirit of the series. Englert’s pink silk dress was rumpled; Denton’s shirt was unbuttoned well below the sternum. They had an ease with each other — an air of comfort and kindness rather than sexual tension. If six months in and out of love and war and some very silly white foundation can’t make you friends, probably nothing can.Denton, snuggled up to Englert in the banquette, praised the ferocity with which she attacked their scenes. “You have an effortlessness, but also an intensity,” he said. “Which is a very beautiful contrast.”Englert said that she had trusted Denton almost immediately. There was a moment, at the beginning of the shoot, when she had tried to present herself to him in the best possible light, when she tried to hold onto some vanity.“Then that absolutely died,” she said. “And it was so beautiful to let it rot with you so quickly.”“You have an effortlessness, but also an intensity,” Denton said to Englert. “Which is a very beautiful contrast.”Sabrina Santiago for The New York TimesWith vanity flown, they could gleefully recounted receiving vitamin B shots — “in our bums!” Denton said — to make it through the shoot. They did, however, demur from telling what both referred to ominously as “the fart story.”The sex scenes could have made for more mortifying stories. But the actors worked closely with the show’s intimacy coordinator, Ita O’Brien, to make them feel safe and liberating. “It was actually a really good bonding thing,” Denton said. And with sex out of the way — lots of it, especially in the first episode — they could navigate the riskier contours of Camille and Pascal’s relationship.“What’s always appealed to me about ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ is that the fantasy of the love is shattered,” Englert said. She was speaking to the novel. Though it’s true of the show, too. “It’s in pieces from the beginning,” she continued.Denton saw it just the same. “It’s so refreshing to watch something that doesn’t get glossed over,” he said, “that doesn’t become a glossy Disney version of what love is. Because I don’t think that’s what love is. Love is elusive, dangerous, corrupt.”The goal of the series was to keep the period details as accurate as possible while ensuring that the emotional atmosphere felt urgent and contemporary. Otherwise it might read as just another polite costume drama, however luxe the costumes. You had to see the real people underneath the corsetry.For Denton and Englert, that meant bringing their own hearts to the roles. It also meant a lot of pretending, because they harbor a shared belief that perhaps they aren’t quite as sexy or as lethal as their characters.“We’re betas pretending to be alphas,” Denton said.Englert agreed. “We’re exceedingly embarrassed all the time,” she said. “But it’s how we go. We enjoy it.”Englert had eaten all the passion fruit macarons, but Denton smiled at his friend anyway. “Alice always says, ‘We’re just Aussies in cossies,’” he said. More

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      John David Washington Gets an Education in ‘The Piano Lesson’

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      The actor adds to his body of knowledge with a starry production of the August Wilson play and a once-in-a-lifetime moment with Robert De Niro on “Amsterdam.”You cannot show up more prepared than John David Washington, cannot outmaneuver him and cannot get ahead of him. If you think you have arrived on time for your lunch appointment with him, you will find he has already been waiting for you — he has, in fact, been sitting quietly at a table at Bubby’s for 15 minutes, in his perennially prompt, unapologetically eager manner. And now he is not just ready to eat; he is practically vibrating in his chair so he can tear through a bowl of matzo ball soup and get back to the Ethel Barrymore Theater, where he has been performing in “The Piano Lesson.”Washington is by no means a novice actor. At 38, he has already starred in films like Spike Lee’s true-crime drama “BlacKkKlansman” and Christopher Nolan’s mind-bending, time-twisting adventure “Tenet.”But he is a newcomer to the Broadway stage, and in “The Piano Lesson,” he is making his debut with a demanding and poignant August Wilson play, in a high-profile production featuring the husband-and-wife team of Samuel L. Jackson (who co-stars in it) and LaTanya Richardson Jackson (who directed it).Despite his lack of theater experience, Washington has drawn raves for his performance. In her review, the New York Times critic Maya Phillips wrote, “Washington, in a revelatory stage debut, is a blaze of energy lighting every scene he’s in.”To navigate a text and a discipline that are unfamiliar to him, Washington is approaching the task like a humble rookie, ready to receive the education that it might provide — along with any bumps or bruises that might come with it.Asked why he wanted to perform in “The Piano Lesson,” Washington said: “I did it for selfish reasons. This was like going back to school. This is a master class. I want to learn. I want to get beat up.”He added, “If I can survive, I’m going to be such a better actor than I was before I started this.”Washington with Samuel L. Jackson onstage. Jackson, a longtime family friend, said that when the young man decided to act, “we all told him, ‘You can’t just step up in there and think it’s going to happen.’”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesOn a Tuesday in October before the play had opened, Washington was bracing himself for the rehearsal later that afternoon. “We’re going in for notes and preparing to get slaughtered,” he said.If his language is full of vivid, brutal metaphors, it might be because Washington is a former football player — a relentless running back for the Morehouse College Maroon Tigers and later for the St. Louis Rams, as well as teams in the now-defunct N.F.L. Europe and U.F.L.He is also, of course, a son of Denzel Washington, the decorated actor and filmmaker. John David, who lives in New York, has spent a lifetime observing his father’s performances, whether as a child seeing him in “Richard III” at Shakespeare in the Park or as a grown man watching him in the Broadway production of “Fences,” the Wilson play that his father later starred in and directed for the screen.When Denzel Washington learned that John David was getting ready for the eight-shows-a-week rigor of Broadway, he heartily encouraged the proposition. “He said, ‘It’s a full-contact sport, John David,’” the younger Washington recalled.But when John David decided that he wanted to pursue acting, after a torn Achilles’ tendon halted his sports career, it was impressed upon him that he’d achieve success only through hard work and not by trading on his last name.Jackson, a longtime friend of the Washington family, said that he was one of several people who talked to the young man about the challenging path that awaited him. “We all told him, you can’t just step up in there and think it’s going to happen,” Jackson recalled. “You’ve got to go to class, you’ve got to put in the work. Being the dedicated athlete that he was, he attacked it in the same way that he attacked that, and he got all he could out of it.”Washington made his breakthrough on the HBO comedy series “Ballers” (2015-19), playing a hotheaded N.F.L. star. Another crucial opportunity came when Lee chose him to star as the police detective Ron Stallworth in “BlacKkKlansman,” released in 2018.As Washington saw it, Lee took a significant chance in elevating him from supporting roles to a lead player: “Spike was like, ‘You’re not a running back — you’re a quarterback. You need to call the offense and run the plays,’” Washington said.In 2020, he starred in “Tenet,” a complex thriller about characters who can move forward and backward in time. Despite Nolan’s pedigree, the film’s opening was repeatedly delayed by the pandemic and it was ultimately released at a time when audiences were hardly ready to return to theaters en masse.Washington’s father gave him advice about acting: “He said, ‘It’s a full-contact sport, John David.’” Tess Ayano for The New York TimesTwo years later, Washington has tried to remain sanguine about his “Tenet” experience. “I believe in God — I’m a heavy believer, so it was the way it was supposed to be,” he said. “But it really hurt that we couldn’t give it its proper rollout and world tour.”Even so, Washington said he was grateful for the trust Nolan had placed in him and for the chance to help execute Nolan’s intricate vision. “As taxing as it was, it damn near broke me, but I’d do it again and again,” Washington said.He was given another prominent big-screen position this fall when he starred alongside Christian Bale and Margot Robbie in “Amsterdam,” the antic period caper from the filmmaker David O. Russell.Bale found Washington soft-spoken and studious during rehearsals, but said his co-star suddenly came alive when they filmed a sequence in which their characters fled a murder scene.“I kept laughing because he was clearly enjoying showing me that no matter how fast I ran, he could always run faster,” Bale said. “I kept zigging and zagging, running circles up and down the street, and he wouldn’t ever let me get in front of him.”Bale added, “He’s quietly competitive, but I don’t think he likes that to be seen much.”“Amsterdam” was a critical and commercial flop, none of which mattered to Washington, who came away with one of his most treasured memories as an actor.“There was a take I did that was very emotional,” he said, “and afterwards, Robert De Niro came over and hugged me and kissed me on the cheek and he said, ‘Good job, son.’ I will never forget that. I can die now.”“The Piano Lesson,” for which Wilson won the second of his two Pulitzer Prizes, is part of the playwright’s Pittsburgh Cycle. There, in 1936, the domestic life of Berniece (Danielle Brooks) and her uncle Doaker (Jackson) is interrupted by the return of Berniece’s talkative and charismatic brother, Boy Willie (Washington), who has recently left prison.While Berniece treasures the family’s piano, which carries a tragic history and is decorated with carvings of relatives who had been enslaved, Boy Willie has other plans for it, believing he can buy his way to legitimacy with the money earned from selling it.Washington said that to him the play conveyed “the overwhelming feeling of American society’s proprietary entitlement over its history.” With a chuckle, he added that it told a relatable story about “every family gathering, how there’s always that one cousin or family who shows up and it’s like, oh, here we go.”Washington said that he started learning his lines for “The Piano Lesson” when he was in Indonesia earlier this year, filming “True Love,” a science fiction film written and directed by Gareth Edwards (“Godzilla,” “Rogue One”).In rehearsals this fall, Washington said that LaTanya Richardson Jackson advocated the utmost fidelity to Wilson’s text. “She always talks about how we’re here to amplify his words,” Washington said. “Don’t put too much sauce on there. Let the words charge all of your decision.”With Christian Bale and Margot Robbie in “Amsterdam.” Bale said Washington is “quietly competitive, but I don’t think he likes that to be seen much.”20th Century StudiosHe has endured a certain amount of affectionate hazing from his more seasoned co-stars. Washington recounted the time when Samuel L. Jackson and Michael Potts called him out for eating banana chips in rehearsal: “Sam was like,” — he uttered a Jackson-esque word that cannot be printed here — “Boy Willie don’t eat no banana chips. That’s the young generation. He eats pork rinds.”Washington said he had the quickness to retort, “No, see, Boy Willie’s ahead of his time.”The play holds a special value for Jackson, who played Boy Willie in its original 1987 production at Yale Repertory Theater. He said, however, that he did not feel particularly territorial about seeing the role passed onto Washington.“You can’t possess things that way,” he said. “And LaTanya told me not to talk to him about Boy Willie anyway — she didn’t want me putting my ideas in his head.”In their work on the play, Jackson said he had already seen Washington grow as an actor. “John David’s really quite introverted,” he explained. “The only time he puts himself out there is when he has an opportunity to inhabit another character and be someone that’s not him.”What “The Piano Lesson” has given Washington, Jackson said, is a confidence that he can take into future film or TV projects — the self-assurance of knowing “when you’re on a soundstage or on a set, and nobody’s laughing or applauding for you, how you feel about what you just did. You don’t have to go to the monitor to prove to yourself that you did it. You’ll know, OK, that felt right.”These are big-picture, existential questions that Washington may contemplate after “The Piano Lesson” ends. For now, he is content to grapple with the day-to-day demands of putting on the play and the pleasures of losing himself in a character who feels diametrically opposed to who he really is.As he recalled, “There’s a line where Sam says to me, ‘Will you just be quiet?’ There was a night I almost cracked up the way he said it, because I felt like he really meant it.”Washington seemed genuinely delighted by the notion that he could be so talkative it would annoy someone else. “I must have really been rolling that night,” he said. “I don’t do that in my real life.” More

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      ‘Selena Gomez: My Mind and Me’ Review: An Honest Portrait of Stardom

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      Sincere and soul-baring, the documentary, directed by Alek Keshishian, captures Gomez’s challenges with mental illness, lupus and fame.“My Mind & Me,” a new documentary about Selena Gomez, doesn’t feel like a publicity device. Sincere and soul-baring, the film captures Gomez’s challenges with mental illness, lupus and fame. Watching it is like eavesdropping on a 95-minute therapy session with the artist.It opens with Gomez out of sorts. “I have to stop living like this,” she says, as we jump from 2019 back to 2016. Backstage at one of her concerts, she cries, yearning to shed her child-star image and stand on her own as a solo artist. She fears she’s a disappointment.The documentary doesn’t show her forgetting her past as much as confronting it. A road trip to Grand Prairie, Texas, where she reunites with old neighbors and visits her childhood home, is a turning point for Gomez. In contrast is a scene where she’s answering interviewers whose flippant questions leave her feeling, she says, like “a product.” She craves genuine connection, something fame hasn’t yet afforded her.As a subject, Gomez is in the trustworthy hands of the veteran director Alek Keshishian. In 1991, he worked the same kind of magic on Madonna for “Truth or Dare.” Capturing an artist’s fearlessness, as he does in both films, isn’t just up to him, of course; like Madonna, Gomez is boldly unguarded. But “My Mind & Me” also looks outward, framing struggle as the human condition. An honest portrait study of stardom and mental illness, the film offers a hopeful catharsis: How, when we reveal our hardest truths, we can heal together.Selena Gomez: My Mind and MeRated R for language. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. Watch on Apple TV+. More