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      Bruce MacVittie, Ubiquitous Character Actor, Dies at 65

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      A co-founder of the Naked Angels troupe in New York, he was a familiar face in Off Broadway theater, in movies and on TV, often playing tough guys with tormented souls.Bruce MacVittie, one of New York City’s quintessential character actors, who made his Broadway debut in David Mamet’s “American Buffalo” opposite Al Pacino in 1983 and was a mainstay on Off Broadway stages for over 40 years, as well as a familiar face on television and in film, died on May 7 in Manhattan. He was 65.His wife, Carol Ochs, confirmed the death, in a hospital, but said the cause had not been determined.Mr. MacVittie excelled at playing tough guys with tormented souls, revealing a tenderness at the heart of his characterizations. His casting type was low-life and street-smart, but he himself ran in rarefied acting circles. In the mid-1980s, he helped found Naked Angels, a troupe of young film and theater hipsters (including Matthew Broderick and Marisa Tomei) who immediately dazzled New York with the celebrity wattage and social conscience of their theatrical endeavors.“Naked Angels was the club that was too cool to let me in,” the actress Edie Falco recalled in an interview. “I was just hanging around on the fringes, dying to get my foot in the door, but Bruce was already in. Bruce and I traveled through our actor travails together. We were young together and got less young together.”Mr. MacVittie in the thriller “Killer Among Us” (2021), one of his numerous film roles.Vertical EntertainmentMr. MacVittie’s career began in 1980 at Ensemble Studio Theater in Manhattan with a lead in Edward Allan Baker’s “What’s So Beautiful About a Sunset Over Prairie Avenue?”In 1988, after bit parts on the series “Barney Miller” and “Miami Vice,” he got his first big television job, partnering with Stanley Tucci in “The Street,” a vérité slice of blue-collar cop life set in the Newark Police Department. Claiming to be “the first television series shot entirely in New Jersey,” the show churned out 40 episodes in 40 days but lasted only a season. Still, it cast a stylistic shadow over future TV crime dramas.“Bruce’s background was working class, like me,” said Frances McDormand, another longtime friend. “There was something about celebrating this in our work that was important to both of us. Bruce had a pride about where he’d come from that he carried with him and was even cocky about. It was very charismatic.”Bruce James MacVittie was born in Providence, R.I., on Oct. 14, 1956. His father, John James MacVittie, was a worker at the Narragansett Electric Company; his mother Olive (Castergine) MacVittie, was a homemaker.Bruce grew up in Cranston, R.I., where he began to act in high school, and went on to graduate from Boston University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. He moved to New York in 1979. Four years later, after understudying for the role of Bobby in the Pacino revival of “American Buffalo,” Mr. MacVittie took over the part on Broadway and ultimately performed it on a national tour and in the West End of London.“Bruce carried this currency, especially for young actors then, like me, that he’d worked onstage with Pacino,” recalled the actor Bobby Cannavale. “The fact that he’d elevated to that role as a ‘cover’ made it even more heroic.”In 2011, after over 75 film and television appearances, including 11 different roles on various “Law and Order” franchises, guest spots on “The Sopranos,” “Sex in the City” and “Homicide,” innumerable theatrical roles, like his acclaimed performance as a displaced Cuban immigrant in Eduardo Machado’s “Havana is Waiting,” 10 seasons at the Eugene O’Neill Center Playwrights Conference in Connecticut and an equal number of summers at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts, Mr. MacVittie set aside his acting career to train as a nurse. He received a Bachelor of Science degree from Hunter College in Manhattan in 2013.In addition to his wife, he is survived by his daughter, Sophia Oliva Ochs MacVittie. His first marriage ended in divorce. He lived in Manhattan.Mr. MacVittie returned to acting in his last years, including in a featured role on Ava DuVernay’s lauded Netflix series, “The Way They See Us.” He confined his nursing activities to the palliative care of friends in need.“I loved Bruce MacVittie,” Mr. Pacino said in an interview. “His performances were always glistening and crackling; a heart and a joy to watch. He was the embodiment of the struggling actor in New York City, and he made it work. We will miss him.” More

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      ‘Which Way to the Stage’ Review: Theater Buddies, With Claws Out

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      In her new comedy, Ana Nogueira spins zippy fun out of a fairly conventional story about a friendship strained by resentment.If you have ever fantasized about casting your favorite musical or ranked the actresses who have played Mrs. Lovett, chances are you will be familiar with Jeff and Judy. You might even be them.We first meet the two besties by the stage door of the Richard Rodgers Theater. They are waiting, Playbills at the ready, for Idina Menzel — this is 2015, when Menzel was still headlining “If/Then” and stars occasionally met with fans after a performance (an activity now curtailed by the Covid-19 pandemic).Judy (Sas Goldberg) and Jeff (Max Jenkins) are arguing over the respective merits of Bernadette Peters and Patti LuPone in “Gypsy,” and Ana Nogueira’s “Which Way to the Stage,” at MCC Theater, is off, its needle already close to the red zone. At least Jeff and Judy agree on one thing: either of those two stars is better than the one they refer to simply as “Imelda” (Staunton, unless Marcos also appeared in “Gypsy”). “Like a caricature of a caricature of a performance by my mother in the Temple Beth Israel talent show,” Judy says.You might have sussed out by now that Judy is straight and Jeff is gay, and both have a way with quips.Admittedly this is a fairly conventional setup, but Nogueira spins zippy fun out of it, the theater references are on point, and the director, Mike Donahue, imparts a nice screwball-comedy pace. Then come the variations on the theme.Michelle Veintimilla, from far left, Evan Todd and Sas Goldberg at a drag performance by Max Jenkins’s character, Jeff.Richard Termine for The New York TimesThe first is that, somewhat predictably, Judy and Jeff are actors themselves — though she makes a living as a real estate agent while he is a Crunch instructor with a drag gig on the side.We also gradually realize that their friendship is heavy with barely contained resentment. Jeff lectures Judy when she uses a slur for gay men, only to casually drop demeaning words for women. After she takes off during his drag tribute to Menzel, a wounded Jeff demands to know what she thought of his act. It is obvious the last thing he wants is an honest opinion, but he pressures Judy anyway.“Which Way to the Stage” is about the performances people put on for themselves, their friends, family and potential loved ones, as well as the identities they hide behind. (Nogueira has experience both as a writer and an actor, with acting credits on such shows as “The Vampire Diaries” and the Starz series “Hightown.”)This tension between who we are, who we think we are and the personas we project is especially fraught for actors, and it weighs heavily on Jeff and Judy. (Goldberg, a standout in “Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow” and “Significant Other,” excels at suggesting hurt underneath sarcasm.) The veiled animosity between the two is brought to a head when they meet the handsome Mark (Evan Todd), who has the easygoing, insouciant charm of a born star — or at least someone who can live off his acting.Under its avalanche of knowing jokes, “Which Way to the Stage” has serious matters on its mind, including the undercurrent of homophobia and misogyny that can suffuse the relationship between straight women and gay men. Nogueira’s writing is at its best when she lets anger bubble to the surface, but like Jeff and Judy with theater, it seems as if she can’t quite decide whether her play is, at heart, about love or cynicism.“Which Way to the Stage” builds up to a conflagration that is the equivalent of an 11 o’clock number. But like many musicals, the show doesn’t know what to do with itself afterward, so it ends big with a move that feels like a Hail Mary pass. The attempt is fun to watch, but it also comes up short.Which Way to the StageThrough May 22 at MCC Theater, Manhattan; mcctheater.org. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. More

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      How Elizabeth Olsen Came Into Her Powers

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      The actress started as an indie darling and never expected to become a Marvel linchpin as Wanda Maximoff. But she’s now so invested in the role, she’s open to a solo film.Elizabeth Olsen is used to waiting in the wings. When she was an acting student at New York University, she landed an understudy role in the Broadway play “Impressionism,” starring Jeremy Irons. The show ran for 56 performances. Olsen didn’t take the stage a single time.That sort of lost opportunity could mess with an actress’s mind, but Olsen was never in any hurry to seize the spotlight. Years later, when she was cast as the reality-bending witch Wanda Maximoff in “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” her character was more of an ancillary Avenger than the main event, and in three subsequent Marvel films — each with a more overstuffed ensemble of superheroes than the last — Olsen never rose higher than 10th billing.But a funny thing happened after biding all of that time: “WandaVision,” a sitcom spoof about Wanda and her android husband, became an unexpected phenomenon when it made its debut early last year on Disney+. This month, “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” which counts Olsen as its co-lead and pits her troubled witch against Benedict Cumberbatch’s goateed sorcerer, has proved even more major. The movie collected $185 million in its first three days of release, ranking 11th among the biggest domestic opening weekends of all time.For Olsen, who initially made her mark in independent films, this is the equivalent of turning a comic-book page to find yourself the subject of a massive splash panel. During a video call last week, I asked how it felt to come to the fore as a blockbuster leading lady.“I’m totally mortified!” she said. “I won’t watch it.”Hours after we spoke, Olsen would walk the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” but she planned to flee the theater as soon as the movie began. “This is pressure I’m feeling for the first time,” she explained. “I have a lot of anxiety with ‘Doctor Strange’ coming out because I’ve never really had to lead a commercial film by myself.”Olsen wanted to act since she was a child, but she was willing to wait after watching the experience of her sisters Mary-Kate and Ashley.Rosie Marks for The New York TimesShe coughed, unwrapping a foil package: “Sorry, I have a lozenge.”Olsen, 33, is casual and friendly, exuding a California glow so powerful that you would hardly know she had been sick for days. “It’s just annoying,” she said, swigging water from a Mason jar. “I think my body really wants to chill out.” She embarked on this global press tour the day after wrapping a seven-and-a-half-month shoot for the HBO limited series “Love and Death,” the sort of packed schedule that also required her to film “WandaVision” and “Doctor Strange” back to back.Because her “Doctor Strange” director, Sam Raimi, had not yet watched all of “WandaVision” when shooting began, it fell to Olsen to thread the tricky line through the two projects. In the Disney+ series, Wanda is so bereft after the death of her true love, Vision (Paul Bettany), that she invents an elaborate sitcom reality where he’s still alive, then adds two kids to complete the illusion. But in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” she takes a much harder turn: Corrupted by a demonic book of spells, Wanda breaks bad and throttles a cast of good guys while on a multiverse-spanning trip to find her children.Olsen “is scary not because of her destructive powers or her diabolical ambitions, but because she is so sad,” our critic A.O. Scott wrote. And if you still feel sympathetic to Wanda as she makes mincemeat of our heroes, it’s because of Olsen’s efforts to ground the character in something that feels specific and intimate. When Wanda issues a deadly threat, Olsen lets her voice go soft, and her eyes fill with tears and regret: There’s a real person in there. (Though other actresses in the supervillain realm tilt toward camp, Olsen understands that when you’re hovering in midair and wearing a red tiara, things are already arch enough.)But six Marvel projects in, is this the kind of big-screen career she expected? Not exactly.“It took me away from the physical ability to do certain jobs that I thought were more aligned with the things I enjoyed as an audience member,” Olsen said. “And this is me being the most honest.”Olsen in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.” She had fullfilled her contractual obligations to Marvel in 2018 with “Avengers: Infinity War,” and “the power to choose to continue was important to me.”Marvel StudiosOLSEN HAD KNOWN she wanted to act since she was a child, but she also knew she didn’t want to act as a child. Any curiosity she might have had about fame was quieted by growing up alongside her sisters Mary-Kate and Ashley, who were cast in “Full House” before they were even a year old. The life-warping scrutiny of stardom could wait.Anyway, she felt far more comfortable in a group. Olsen played high school volleyball and sparked to the team’s camaraderie: Everyone could have their solo moment, but they had to work together to succeed. Even in college, when she started to audition for movies, she was in no rush to leave the theatrical ensemble she had come through school with.But film acting isn’t always as egalitarian. In 2011, Olsen stormed the Sundance Film Festival with a pair of star vehicles: “Silent House,” a single-take thriller that keeps its lens trained on her for 87 minutes, and “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” which cast her as an ex-cult member struggling to move on. That one-two punch led people to dub her the “it girl” of Park City, but as movers and shakers queued up in the snow to meet her, Olsen didn’t trust a thing they said.“It really felt like everyone was speaking through both sides of their mouth,” she said. “I was like, ‘This is a bubble.’ It felt like I was literally in a snow globe.”She came out of that experience knowing just two things: She didn’t want to be typecast as the crying indie girl, but she didn’t want to be thrust right into big-budget movies, either. “That looked scary to me, that kind of pressure,” she said.Still, sometimes it’s nice to be invited to the party. A few years into her acting career, after a streak of low-key indies, she asked her agent why she was never in the running for higher-profile movies. The reply: “People don’t think that you want to do them.”Did she? That’s a question Olsen had to ask herself then — and still does, from time to time. She decided she needed to put herself out there more, and signed on to a 2014 remake of “Godzilla,” reasoning that at least it was directed by Gareth Edwards, who until then had been an independent filmmaker.And then came the role of Wanda, and with her, entrée into Hollywood’s biggest franchise. As Olsen mulled Marvel’s offer to star in “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” she listed the pros: It would defy her indie typecasting. She’d once again be part of an ensemble, albeit a superpowered one. And her “Godzilla” co-star Aaron Taylor-Johnson was willing to come aboard as Wanda’s brother, Pietro, ensuring she wouldn’t go it alone. They signed on to “Ultron” as a pair.But Pietro was killed off at the end of that film, and as a shaken Wanda continued on through the Marvel Cinematic Universe, wondering if she really fit in, Olsen pondered the same question. Because of her Marvel commitments, she had to turn down a starring role in the Yorgos Lanthimos dark comedy “The Lobster,” and it didn’t take a multiverse for Olsen to imagine how that film would have propelled her down an entirely different path as an actress.“I started to feel frustrated,” she said. “I had this job security but I was losing these pieces that I felt were more part of my being. And the further I got away from that, the less I became considered for it.” “WandaVision” wasn’t expected to be a major Disney+ series. Consequently, Olsen said, “there was no pressure, no fear. It was a really healthy experience.”Rosie Marks for The New York TimesHer initial contract with Marvel covered two starring roles and a cameo, though Marvel movies are so mammoth that the studio could have deemed the five weeks Olsen spent filming “Captain America: Civil War” a brief appearance. And while her rising profile helped get indie films like “Wind River” and “Ingrid Goes West” financed, she still wondered whether Wanda’s spell-casting was worth it in the end. Had she become typecast in a totally different way? And was it all building to something that mattered?Wanda was killed off at the end of “Avengers: Infinity War,” satisfying Olsen’s three-film contract. “The power to choose to continue was important to me,” she said. And around the time the Marvel Studios head, Kevin Feige, brought Olsen in to discuss a resurrection for “Avengers: Endgame,” he pitched “WandaVision” to her. At first, she wondered if it was a demotion: TV, really? But the more she wrapped her head around it, the more she realized it was her wildest screen opportunity yet.“The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” was supposed to be Marvel’s first Disney+ series, an old-fashioned, down-the-middle action show in which the superheroes punch evildoers in every hourlong episode. “WandaVision,” by contrast, was a half-hour sitcom parody; the most significant fights of the show were marital squabbles, leavened by an eerie laugh track.“We thought what we were doing was so weird and didn’t know if we had an audience for it, so there was a freedom to it,” Olsen said. “There was no pressure, no fear. It was a really healthy experience.”But after the pandemic pushed Marvel to rejigger the order of its Disney+ series, “WandaVision” went first and became the unlikely standard-bearer. The show spawned countless memes, crashed the streaming service multiple times, and earned 23 Emmy nominations, including a best actress nod for Olsen.More important, “WandaVision” helped her fall in love with Wanda — a character she had played for years — for the very first time. The show offered a dizzying array of variations on the role — some sitcom-sparkly, others modern and morose — and the first episode, shot in front of a live audience, required all of Olsen’s theatrical training to succeed. She wasn’t sure it would resonate with a wider audience until friends sent her video clips of a Minneapolis brunch where drag queens had dressed as all of Wanda’s alter egos. “If you make it to that stage,” Olsen said with a laugh, “then you actually are part of culture.”Olsen admitted to feeling anxiety about “Doctor Strange”: “I’ve never really had to lead a commercial film by myself.”Rosie Marks for The New York TimesWith Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow out of the picture, Olsen is now the Marvel actress with the most hours clocked. Does she feel reinvigorated enough, after “WandaVision” and “Doctor Strange,” that she’d be willing to star in a solo film about her character?“I think I would,” she said. “But it really needs to be a good story. I think these films are best when it’s not about creating content, but about having a very strong point of view — not because you need to have a three-picture plan.”Now that she feels more comfortable in her signature role and in her own skin, Olsen wants to be more deliberate in her choice of roles and what she does with them. But she also told me a story from her understudy days about Jeremy Irons, who didn’t fully learn his lines until opening night of “Impressionism”; even through previews, he would muck around in front of the audience, exit the stage to peruse his pages, then come back on to muck some more. Maybe acting wasn’t something you trapped, pinned down and obsessively studied, Olsen realized then. Maybe you could embrace it as a fluid thing with an unknown destination.Olsen knows now that a Hollywood career can take turns that you never could have predicted, so you might as well enjoy where it goes. Over the weekend, she popped up on “Saturday Night Live” to support her co-star Benedict Cumberbatch; she played herself in the sketch, while the show’s Chloe Fineman played Olsen’s understudy. Sometimes, things happen to come full circle like that. Sometimes, it even feels like magic. More

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      The Tony nominations are being announced right now.

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      As the theater industry continues its attempt to rebound after its lengthy pandemic shutdown, the industry this morning began its effort to celebrate the best work on Broadway by announcing a new set of Tony nominees.The first nods, to designers, are being followed by nominations for performers and shows.The nominations are being announced, on YouTube, by the actors Adrienne Warren and Joshua Henry.We have an updating list of all the nominees here.There are 34 eligible shows, all but one of which opened after theaters reopened. (The exception: “Girl From the North Country,” a musical that opened just before the shutdown.)The shows were all hoping to win nods in some of this year’s 26 competitive categories. Producers hope that nominations will lead not only to awards, but also to a bump in the box office, which has not recovered to prepandemic levels. And for artists, a nomination or a win can lead to more job opportunities and higher salaries.The nominees were chosen by a group of 29 nominators who saw all eligible shows and voted last Friday. Next, the 650 Tony voters have until June 10 to cast their ballots, and the Tony Awards will be announced on June 12. More

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      Ric Parnell, Real Drummer in a Famous Fake Band, Dies at 70

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      The central characters in the mockumentary “This Is Spinal Tap” were comic actors, but Mr. Parnell was an actual professional musician.Ric Parnell, a real drummer best known for playing in a fake band, the one chronicled in Rob Reiner’s fabled 1984 mockumentary, “This Is Spinal Tap,” died on May 1 in Missoula, Mont., where he had lived for some two decades. He was 70.His partner, McKenzie Sweeney, confirmed the death. She said a blood clot in his lungs led to organ failure.Mr. Parnell had been in several bands, including the British prog-rock outfit Atomic Rooster, when he auditioned for “This Is Spinal Tap,” a deadpan sendup of rock clichés, and got the role of the drummer, Mick Shrimpton. The central band members, though, weren’t primarily musicians, though they had musical ability; they were comic actors — Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer. Mr. Reiner played the role of Marty DiBergi, a documentarian recording what turns out to be a disastrous tour by Spinal Tap, a heavy metal band that is past its prime and poorly managed.Mr. McKean said Mr. Parnell fit in seamlessly.“He looked perfect, all hair and cheekbones, but he also got the joke and knew to play the reality without comment,” he said by email. “And he was a great drummer in the tradition of his hero, John Bonham” — the drummer for Led Zeppelin.“Onstage,” Mr. McKean added, “he was the best kind of monster; offstage, a very nice, very funny guy.”Mr. Parnell had only a few lines in the movie, but he was pivotal to one of its funniest gags: Drummers for the band had a habit of dying in bizarre and unpleasant ways. In one scene, he lounges in a bathtub while Marty DiBergi asks him if he’s bothered by that history.“It did kind of freak me out a bit, but it can’t always happen,” Mick says, and Marty agrees, telling him, “The law of averages says you will survive.”The law of averages, alas, was wrong — near the end of the film, Mick spontaneously combusts onstage. When the film developed such a cult following that the fake band went on tour in the early 1990s, playing actual shows, that necessitated a tweaking of Mr. Parnell’s persona — he was now Rick Shrimpton, the twin brother of the deceased Mick.Life almost imitated art in mid-1992, when Mr. Parnell fell down some stairs while hurrying to a sound check as the band was rehearsing in Los Angeles. He injured an ankle.“Despite the odds of meeting with death by remaining with Spinal Tap,” a publicist for the band said at the time, “he’s looking forward to continuing the tour.”That “Return of Spinal Tap” tour eventually took the group to the Royal Albert Hall in London, a pinch-me moment for the British-born Mr. Parnell as he waited to go on alongside Mr. Shearer.“I remember during ‘The Return of Spinal Tap’ standing backstage with Harry and hearing the Albert Hall crowd just chanting, ‘Tap!’ ‘Tap!’ ‘Tap!’ ‘Tap!,’” Mr. Parnell told The Missoula Independent in 2006. “I turned to Harry and I said, ‘Come on, now. We’re a joke! Don’t they know that?’ It was just amazing how quite massive it all became.”The members of Spinal Tap, from left: Christopher Guest, Mr. Parnell, David Kaff, Harry Shearer and Michael McKean.Aaron Rapoport/Corbis/Getty ImagesAbout two decades ago, Mr. Parnell settled into a much quieter sort of life in Missoula, where for a time he had a radio show called “Spontaneous Combustion” on KDTR-FM, on which he told stories and indulged his eclectic musical tastes. For one show he played only artists who were alumni of Antelope Valley High School in California, among them Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart.“I get to play what I want, do whatever I want — all as long as I don’t swear,” he told The Independent. “That’s the only hard part.”Richard John Parnell was born on Aug. 13, 1951, in London to Jack and Monique (Bonneau) Parnell. His father was a composer, conductor and drummer, and he said that drumming came naturally from a young age.“I got it from my dad,” he told The Missoulian in 2007. “I could sit down at the drum kit and play a beat straight away.”Lessons, he said, were not his thing; he learned by playing in groups.“Over the years, I’ve built up a technique,” he told the newspaper. “I get drummers saying, ‘How did you do that?’ I say, ‘I have no idea. I’m just hitting.’ I wouldn’t know a paradiddle from a flam-doodlehead.”His father, who worked as musical director or in other capacities on numerous television shows, sometimes added to his education by taking him to the set. He recalled sitting at the feet of Jimi Hendrix when he performed on the singer Dusty Springfield’s British TV series in 1968.Mr. Parnell’s own career was starting about the same time. He recalled touring with Engelbert Humperdinck as a teenager. He joined Atomic Rooster in 1970, and then came a stint with an Italian group, Ibis. In 1977 he moved to the United States with a band called Nova, which settled in Boulder, Colo.He played numerous studio sessions over the years and can be heard on records by Beck, Toni Basil and others. For a time he toured with the R&B saxophonist Joe Houston. They would stop every year for a few shows in Missoula before heading into Canada to tour there. But, as Mr. Parnell often told the story, one year the group didn’t have the right paperwork to cross the border and had to extend its stay in Missoula.“I basically got stuck here and then didn’t want to leave,” he told The Independent. “I’d always liked this place — it’s like Boulder in the 1970s, when I first came to the states. I became a Missoulian instantly.”Mr. Parnell was married and divorced four times. In addition to Ms. Sweeney, he is survived by two brothers, Will and Marc, and two stepsisters, Emma Parnell and Sarah Currie.Over the last two decades he could often be found playing with one group or another at local spots in Missoula. In 2004, a writer for The Missoulian asked if he, as an accomplished musician, ever got tired of being recognized only for his joke band.“No, not really,” he said. “Really it’s quite nice to be a part of such a legendary thing.” More

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      in Television

      Greta Lee Is Still a Pool Shark

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      The actress, who stars in “Russian Doll,” visits her favorite Koreatown haunts.“I like to find the most impossible shot and then get really disappointed when it doesn’t happen,” the actress Greta Lee said, leaning over a billiards table in the Koreatown section of Manhattan. “I don’t know what that says about me.”She aimed at a solid red ball, which obediently dropped into a center pocket. Ms. Lee allowed herself a brief celebration: “Mommy’s still got it, OK?”This was on a recent Wednesday evening, just before the premiere of the second season of the Netflix drama “Russian Doll,” in which Ms. Lee, 39, stars as Maxine, a best friend of Natasha Lyonne’s time-trapped Nadia. A standout of the first season (people approach her on the street, parroting Maxine’s tag line, “Sweet birthday baybeeee”), Ms. Lee returns with a deeper performance, in delirious outfits and statement eyeliner.She is also a star of the Apple TV+ drama “The Morning Show, in which she plays Stella Bak, a tech genius and network president who favors Balenciaga and vintage Chanel.For this outing, she had dressed down — wide-legged pants and diaphanous blouse, worn under a daffodil duster, with a Prada fanny pack to match — and had taken a car to this block of West 32nd Street where she and her husband, the comedy writer Russ Armstrong, had passed a lot of hazy evenings in their 20s. The couple, who relocated to Los Angeles during the pandemic, have two sons, 3 and 5, so the nights are hazy for different reasons.Ms. Lee began the night at the Korean grocery H Mart. In her 20s, as a California transplant making her Broadway debut, she had prowled its aisles for delicacies that reminded her of home. On this night, she filled her cart with an orange drink, an Asian pear drink, a sponge cake.“This is where you cross the threshold with your white friends who say they love Korean food and then you serve them this,” she said, pointing to some fried anchovies. Then she went in search of strawberry Pocky and dried squid.With Natasha Lyonne in a scene from Season 2 of “Russian Doll.”NetflixMr. Armstrong, who had been catching up on work, met her in the snack aisle, just as she was reaching for a bag of sweet corn chips. “We have an industrial supply of these at home,” he said approvingly.Groceries paid for, they made their way down the block to Woorijip, a popular cafe that serves premade Korean comfort foods. “Any time of night, it could give you everything you needed,” Mr. Armstrong said nostalgically.The cafe had made a few improvements since they last frequented it. “I have mixed feelings about this,” Ms. Lee said. “Because it’s so much nicer than it used to be.”They loaded a tray with Korean sushi, an omelet, a kimchi stew. “This stew tastes exactly the same,” Mr. Armstrong said. “It’s 5 percent saltier than it should be, which is exactly how I like it.”Ms. Lee dipped a spoon in. “Oh yeah,” she said. “There’s so much MSG. Just how our grandmothers intended.”Fortified, they headed to Space Billiards, a 12th floor pool hall hung with orange lanterns. They tried to order Korean beers, but they were sold out, so they settled at a table with a Heineken and a Budweiser. Ms. Lee tested out a cue. She said that she hadn’t played in a while.“Mommy’s still got it, OK?” said Ms. Lee, who played a lot of billards when she was growing up in Los Angeles. Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesShe played a lot as a Los Angeles teenager, mostly in Koreatown pool halls, trying to impress Koreatown boys. As a student at Harvard-Westlake, a prestigious secondary school, she learned code switching early on, wearing poofy dresses to her white friends’ sweet 16 birthday parties and giant cargo pants to the pool halls after.That ability to inhabit different roles has served her career well, in supporting roles in shows such as “Inside Amy Schumer,” “High Maintenance” and “Girls.” She has a particular talent for satirizing privilege and entitlement.As an oddball character actress, she has rarely played roles that felt true to her own experience, she said. That will change with “Past Lives,” a romantic drama due later this year, in which Ms. Lee plays a first-generation immigrant who reconnects with a childhood sweetheart. She is also developing the essay collection “Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning” for series television. She plans to star in it.“I’m not hiding,” she said of her work on “Past Lives.” “And that is really scary for me, because maybe I’ve been hiding a part of myself behind these characters. And I don’t know if people are going to be receptive to this version of me.”For now, Ms. Lee had a different role to play: pool shark. She is a devotee of Jeanette Lee, the Korean American professional pool player. “I’m going to act like I know what I’m doing,” she said.Feasting on Korean comfort food with her husband, Russ Armstrong, at Woorijip.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesMr. Armstrong broke. Ms. Lee sunk a ball. They traded shots back and forth, her long red nails gripping the cue. “With your nails and the full outfit it’s an intimidation thing,” Mr. Armstrong said.But her performance was not so threatening. “I’m trying to make all of those K-Town boys proud,” Ms. Lee said as she lined up a shot. She missed. “Never do anything to try to impress someone else,” she said.She undershot. Then she overshot. “I was so good at geometry,” she said. “What happened to me?”It look her a few rounds of 8-ball, but she seemed to hit her stride. “No more messing around, let’s do this,” she said, aiming for the corner pocket. She soon cleared the table as Mr. Armstrong, who had several balls remaining, looked on approvingly.“I didn’t think I was going to win,” Ms. Lee said.“I knew you were going to win,” Mr. Armstrong said, congratulating her. “I always bet on you.” More

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      Frank Langella Blames ‘Cancel Culture’ After Firing From Netflix Show

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      The actor said his dismissal from “The Fall of the House of Usher” followed a love scene in which the actress playing his wife accused him of touching her leg.Frank Langella, who was fired in April from his leading role in a Netflix mini-series after a misconduct investigation, said on Thursday that his dismissal followed a love scene in which the actress playing his wife accused him of touching her leg — an action not in the script.“She then turned and walked off the set, followed by the director and the intimacy coordinator,” Langella wrote in a column for Deadline, about a March 25 incident on the set of “The Fall of the House of Usher.” The series is based on works by Edgar Allan Poe and created by Mike Flanagan.“I attempted to follow, but was asked to ‘give her some space.’ I waited for approximately one hour, and was then told she was not returning to set and we were wrapped,” Langella wrote.Langella said he and the actress were both clothed during the scene. During the ensuing investigation, he said, someone in human resources told him that the intimacy coordinator had suggested where the actors should place their hands during the scene. Langella called the instructions “absurd,” he said.“It was a love scene on camera,” Langella said. “Legislating the placement of hands, to my mind, is ludicrous. It undermines instinct and spontaneity.” Referring to the human resources employee, Langella wrote, “Toward the end of our conversation, she suggested that I not contact the young lady, the intimacy coordinator, or anyone else in the company. ‘We don’t want to risk retaliation,’ she said.”Netflix did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday evening.Langella said that he had been “canceled,” and that the harm to him has been “incalculable,” including losing a thrilling part, facing a stretch of unemployment and suffering a tarnished reputation. These indignities, he said, are “the real definition of unacceptable behavior.”“Cancel culture is the antithesis of democracy,” he said. “It inhibits conversation and debate. It limits our ability to listen, mediate, and exchange opposing views. Most tragically, it annihilates moral judgment. This is not fair. This is not just. This is not American.”The production plans to recast Langella’s role as Roderick, the reclusive patriarch of the Usher family, and reshoot the scenes in which he had already appeared. The series also stars Carla Gugino, Mary McDonnell and Mark Hamill, among others.Langella, 84, known for his performances both onscreen and onstage, shot to fame in the title role of the 1979 film “Dracula” after starring in a Broadway production as the count. He also played President Richard M. Nixon in both the stage and screen versions of “Frost/Nixon,” earning an Oscar nomination as well as a Tony Award for best actor in a play in 2007. Recently, Langella appeared as the judge in the Netflix film “The Trial of the Chicago 7.” More