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      in Television

      Tributes to Michael K. Williams, Actor Who Gave ‘Voice to the Human Condition’

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      From co-stars of “The Wire” to musicians and authors, many took to social media on Monday to share their thoughts about the actor.Fans, actors and celebrities took to social media to share their condolences for Michael K. Williams, the actor best known for his role as Omar Little in the HBO series “The Wire,” who was found dead in his home on Monday.Mr. Williams, who was 54, starred in a number of movies and TV shows, including “Boardwalk Empire,” “Lovecraft Country” and “Bringing Out the Dead.” Many of his co-stars from “The Wire” were quick on Monday to share their thoughts about the actor.“The depth of my love for this brother, can only be matched by the depth of my pain learning of his loss,” Wendell Pierce, who starred on the show as Detective William (Bunk) Moreland, said on Twitter. “A immensely talented man with the ability to give voice to the human condition portraying the lives of those whose humanity is seldom elevated until he sings their truth.”If you don’t know, you better ask somebody. His name was Michael K. Williams. He shared with me his secret fears then stepped out into his acting with true courage, acting in the face of fear, not in the absence of it. It took me years to learn what Michael had in abundance. pic.twitter.com/BIkoPPrPzg— Wendell Pierce (@WendellPierce) September 6, 2021
      In a series of posts on Twitter, Mr. Pierce described his relationship with the actor, adding that they had grown close through the show.“He shared with me his secret fears then stepped out into his acting with true courage, acting in the face of fear, not in the absence of it,” Mr. Pierce said. “It took me years to learn what Michael had in abundance.”Domenick Lombardozzi, who also starred on “The Wire,” described Mr. Williams on Twitter as kind, fair, gentle and talented.“I’ll cherish our talks and I’ll miss him tremendously,” he said. “Rest my friend.”Isiah Whitlock Jr., who also starred in “The Wire,” said on Twitter that he was “shocked and saddened” by the death of Mr. Williams.“One of the nicest brothers on the planet with the biggest heart,” he said. “An amazing actor and soul.”David Simon, the creator of the “The Wire,” initially chose not to share words about the actor, opting instead to post a portrait of Mr. Williams on Twitter.Later, Mr. Simon posted on Twitter that he was “too gutted right now to say all that ought to be said.”“Michael was a fine man and a rare talent and on our journey together he always deserved the best words,” he said. “And today those words won’t come.”HBO said on Twitter that the death of Mr. Williams is an “immeasurable loss.”“While the world knew of his immense talents, we knew Michael as a dear friend,” the network said.Ahmir Khalib Thompson, the musician known as Questlove, said on Twitter that he could not “take this pain.”“Please God No,” the musician said. “Death cannot be this normal.”The death of Mr. Williams also drew attention from others on social media, including the author Stephen King.“Horrible, sad, and unbelievable to think we’ve lost the fantastically talented Michael K. Williams at the age of 54,” the author said on Twitter.The Screen Actors Guild Awards said on Twitter that it mourned the loss of Mr. Williams.“We will always remember him and his ability to impact people’s lives through his powerful performances,” it said. More

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      in Movies

      Jean-Paul Belmondo, Magnetic Star of the French New Wave, Dies at 88

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      He was compared to Marlon Brando and James Dean for his acclaimed portrayals of tough, alienated characters, most memorably in Godard’s “Breathless.”Jean-Paul Belmondo, the rugged actor whose disdainful eyes, boxer’s nose, sensual lips and cynical outlook made him the idolized personification of youthful alienation in the French New Wave, most notably in his classic performance as an existential killer in Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless,” died on Monday at his home in Paris. He was 88.His death was confirmed by the office of his lawyer, Michel Godest. No cause was given.Like Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando and James Dean — three American actors to whom he was frequently compared — Mr. Belmondo established his reputation playing tough, unsentimental, even antisocial characters who were cut adrift from bourgeois society. Later, as one of France’s leading stars, he took more crowd-pleasing roles, but without entirely surrendering his magnetic brashness.Like Bogart, Mr. Belmondo brought craggy features and sometimes seething anger to the screen, a realistic counterpoint to more conventionally handsome romantic stars. Like Dean, he became one of the most widely imitated pop culture figures of his era. And like Brando, he was often dismissive of pretentiousness and self-importance among filmmakers.“No actor since James Dean has inspired quite such intense identification,” Eugene Archer wrote in The New York Times in 1965. “Dean evoked the rebellious adolescent impulse, as fierce as it was gratuitous, a violent outgrowth of the frustrations of the modern world. Belmondo is a later manifestation of youthful rejection — and more disturbing. His disengagement from a society his parents made is total. He accepts corruption with a cynical smile, not even bothering to struggle. He is out entirely for himself, to get whatever he can, while he can. The Belmondo type is capable of anything.”His leading role in “À bout de souffle” — released in the United States in 1961 as “Breathless” — was instantly recognized as trendsetting; subsequent imitators only cemented its importance. Mr. Belmondo’s mop of unruly hair, the way he peered at the world through a twisting web of cigarette smoke, and the way he obsessively massaged his thick, feminine lips with his thumb were so vivid and evocative that they quickly became global signposts of rebellion.Mr. Belmondo in “Breathless.” His on-screen mannerisms became global signposts of rebellion.Films-Around-The -WorldMr. Belmondo was 28 and Mr. Godard was 26 when “Breathless” was being made. The film was based on an idea by François Truffaut, another icon of the nouvelle vague, and began shooting in Paris without a script. Mr. Godard used a hand-held camera — except in the street scenes, when he would sometimes mount the camera on a borrowed wheelchair — and let everyone improvise. The resulting film was rough and ill-shaped, but it had a sense of emotional honesty and verisimilitude that made it electric. Many mainstream critics seemed unsure what to make of it.Bosley Crowther wrote in The Times: “It goes at its unattractive subject in an eccentric photographed style that sharply conveys the nervous tempo and the emotional erraticalness of the story it tells. And through the American actress, Jean Seberg, and a hypnotically ugly new young man by the name of Jean-Paul Belmondo, it projects two downright fearsome characters.”Many critics found Mr. Belmondo’s amoral antihero a little too strong. But others found in the role a raw truthfulness and a thematic boldness at odds with the bulk of what was coming out of Hollywood studios.Restless and a Little BoredMr. Belmondo followed up “Breathless” with a series of celebrated turns for other New Wave directors and was soon widely seen as the movement’s leading interpreter — although in later years he told interviewers that some of the most intellectually ambitious efforts he had been involved in had bored him.When he starred as a steelworker opposite Jeanne Moreau in Peter Brooks’ “Moderato Cantabile” (1960), he said the script, by the French novelist Marguerite Duras, was too intellectual for his taste. He frequently expressed ambivalence about working for esoteric directors like Mr. Brooks, Alain Resnais and Michelangelo Antonioni.In other roles Mr. Belmondo was a Hungarian who gets romantically involved with a Provençal family in Claude Chabrol’s “À double tour” (1959) and a young country priest in “Leon Morin, Priest” (1962). He also helped his co-star, Sophia Loren, win an Academy Award in Vittorio De Sica’s “Two Women” (1961), a drama set during World War II in which he played a young Communist intellectual in mountainous central Italy.By the mid ’60s, though, he was chafing at playing the young antihero in film after film.“Lots of times, I’d be out with a chick and some kid would want to give me a bad time,” Mr. Belmondo told an interviewer. “I used to fight it out with them. It’s the same now. Everyone wants to say he’s flattened Belmondo.”The turning point for him came in Philippe De Broca’s “That Man From Rio,” a 1964 over-the-top spy thriller that played like a parody of James Bond. Audiences loved it, and they loved Mr. Belmondo in it. More important, Mr. Belmondo loved doing it. Although some critics who revered the more difficult work of the French New Wave derided Mr. Belmondo as a sell out, he told interviewers that this film remained his favorite.Mr. Belmondo in “That Man From Rio” (1964), an over-the-top spy thriller. It was a turning point for the actor, who had begun chafing at being typecast as a young antihero.Cohen Media GroupLater in his career Mr. Belmondo professed an unpretentious modesty, shrugging off his success, but at his box-office height in the 1960s, he was anything but modest. In an interview with the film critic Rex Reed in 1966, he all but sneered at American fans who were lining up to see his movies.“I do not blame them,” he said, puffing on a cigar and stretching out his long legs underneath a table at Harry’s Bar in Venice. “I am worth standing in line to see.”By this time there were rumors that despite having been married since 1955 to Elodie Constantin, a former ballerina, Mr. Belmondo was involved with other women. When Mr. Reed asked him about this, he shrugged that off, too.“Listen, I am only 32 years old,” he said. “I’m not dead. And please remember, I am French. I am happily married this year, but next year? Who knows?”A year later the marriage had ended in divorce. Mr. Belmondo had three children with Ms. Constantin. The eldest, Patricia, died in a fire in 1994, but their younger daughter, Florence, and a son, Paul, survive him.The divorce was rumored to have resulted from a romance by Mr. Belmondo with one of his co-stars, Ursula Andress. He and Ms. Andress did have a long-term public relationship after the divorce. He was later romantically involved with another actress, Laura Antonelli. But not until 2002, when he was 70 years old, did he marry again, to 24-year-old Nathalie Tardivel. That marriage ended in divorce six years later. They had a daughter, Stella, who also survives him.A Left Bank BoyhoodJean-Paul Belmondo was born on April 9, 1933, in the middle-class Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. His family moved to the city’s Left Bank when he was a boy, and he grew up in the neighborhoods around Montparnasse and Saint-Germain-des-Prés. His father, Paul Belmondo, who was born in Algiers to a family of Italian origin, was a highly regarded sculptor. He later told interviewers that his son had been a tempestuous boy who had gotten into frequent scraps and did poorly in school.The boy’s mother, Madeline Rainaud-Richard, pushed him to do better, but he resisted, Mr. Belmondo later recalled. Finally, he dropped out of school altogether as a teenager. At 16, he became an enthusiastic amateur boxer (although his famous smashed nose came not from an organized bout but from a playground dust-up), giving it up only when he turned to acting.“I stopped when the face I saw in the mirror began to change,” he said.For several years, until he was 20, his parents paid for acting lessons at a private conservatory. After a six-month military tour in Algeria, he returned to Paris in 1953 and was accepted into the Conservatoire National d’Art Dramatique, where he studied for three years. The school, a conservative one, didn’t know what to do with the insolent young man who sauntered onto the stage in a Molière play with his hands in his pockets.When, at his graduation, in 1956, Mr. Belmondo was awarded only an honorable mention by his teachers, the other students hoisted him on their shoulders and carried him from the theater as he flashed an obscene gesture at the judges.Mr. Belmondo and Catherine Deneuve in François Truffaut’s 1969 movie “Mississippi Mermaid.” Film DeskFor all his flamboyance and occasional fistfights, Mr. Belmondo was said to be a consummate professional on the set. Although in later years he continued to work now and then with the great directors of the New Wave — most notably with Truffaut in “Mississippi Mermaid” (1969) — most of his energies went into mainstream favorites. Many of his films after the mid-1960s were made by his own production company.More and more Mr. Belmondo became known for popular adventures, usually comic thrillers. And he became famous for elaborate stunts in which he took great pride in performing himself. He hung from skyscrapers, leapt across speeding trains, drove cars off hillsides. Co-stars said he seemed all but fearless. While shooting one scene in South America, he was warned that a river, into which he was about to plunge for a scene, was filled with poisonous snakes and piranha. Mr. Belmondo grabbed a chunk of corned beef and slung it into the murky water. When nothing happened, he jumped in and filmed the scene.He said he had decided, “What the hell, if they’re not going to chew on that, they’re not going to eat me.”Finally, an injury during the filming of “Hold-Up” in 1985, when he was 52, forced him to leave the stunts to the stunt men.Hollywood Was Not for HimThroughout, the Belmondo cult endured, though more in France than around the world. His French fans knew him by his nickname, Bebel (pronounced bay-BELL).No matter the scene, no matter the co-stars, whatever mayhem was breaking out onscreen, Mr. Belmondo was always able to affect a calm, cool remove, as though he was more amused than aroused by the activity swirling around him. He brought a touch of comedy to his action roles and a hint of danger to his comic roles; one could well imagine him playing the reluctant, wisecracking hero in American action series of the 1980s like “Die Hard.”Mr. Belmondo never made the transition to Hollywood, largely because he didn’t want to. “Why complicate my life?” he said. “I am too stupid to learn the language and it would only be a disaster.”Mr. Belmondo in 2007. By choice he never made the transition to Hollywood. Joel Saget/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn 1989 he was awarded the Cesar Award for best actor, the French equivalent of the Oscar, for his performance in Claude Lelouch’s “Itineraire d’un enfant gate,” playing a middle-aged industrialist who fakes his death and then sails the world.By this time he had slowed his frenetic pace, making only nine movies in the 1980s, compared to 41 in 1960s and 16 in the 1970s. He cut back even more in the ’90s, when he made only six films, but this was due in part to a belated career shift. Mr. Belmondo had not appeared in a live production since 1959 when he returned to the theater in 1987. Particularly well-regarded was his sold-out run as “Cyrano de Bergerac” in Paris in 1990.A stroke in 2001, however, forced him to stop working. Not until eight years later was be back before the cameras, shooting “Un homme et son chien” (“A Man and His Dog).” Released in 2009, it tells the story of an older gentleman who, accompanied by his loyal dog, suddenly finds himself without a home.Late in life, when he was a little thicker and much grayer, Mr. Belmondo liked to affect some of the self-effacing modesty that was noticeably absent when he was at his peak in the 1960s.When an interviewers asked him to explain his enduring popularity, especially with women, Mr. Belmondo responded with his usual casual shrug.“Hell, everyone knows that an ugly guy with a good line gets the chicks,” he said.Aurelien Breeden contributed reporting. More

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      in Television

      Adam Chanler-Berat of 'Gossip Girl,' an In-Demand Millennial Voice

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      Joseph Moncure March’s “The Wild Party” (1928)Adam Chanler-Berat reads the prescient narrative poem that inspired T Magazine’s 2021 Fall Men’s issue cover story. Due to the era in which it was written, some of the language may be offensive.“I think I’m sort of exaggerating what the author meant, but there’s a bit in there that talks about gossip as an evolutionary tool to bind people together.” The actor Adam Chanler-Berat is paraphrasing the Israeli author Yuval Noah Harari’s best-selling book “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” (2011) on a bench near the entrance of Greenpoint’s Transmitter Park, a few blocks from the Brooklyn apartment he shares with his boyfriend, the actor Kyle Beltran. “In the days of cave people,” he explains, “gossip was ‘that person’s going to steal your food.’ It was useful!”It’s natural for the subject to be on the 34-year-old’s mind because he’s just finished shooting the debut season of HBO Max’s “Gossip Girl” reboot, the first six episodes of which premiered this summer, with the rest airing in November. In line with the show’s secrets, which are disseminated via smartphones and social media, he found out about his casting when the creator, Joshua Safran, sent him a photo of his headshot on the wall of the writers’ room, along with an offer to star as a nerdy computer science teacher who helps revive the online rumor mill depicted on the original show. Though Chanler-Berat is an established stage actor, this is his first major screen role — a winking take on millennials who’ve been dethroned by a younger generation that now rules the internet they once claimed as their own. Not having auditioned, the invitation came as a surprise to the self-described “theater dweeb,” who first broke out in 2008 as the only “Next to Normal” cast member to have stayed throughout the musical’s entire original Off Broadway and Broadway runs. Since then, he has been repeatedly enlisted to help develop and refine new productions, a shrewd choice for creators looking to tap into the alchemy of intellect and emotional intuition evident in both his work and conversation.From left: Megan Ferguson, Tavi Gevinson and Chanler-Berat in the 2021 reboot of “Gossip Girl.”Karolina Wojtasik/HBO MaxAs he sees it, his “attitude has always been, ‘How do I come in and not mess things up, or get in anyone’s way?’” Lately, that has meant relaxing into being on camera, his fear of rocking the boat beginning to vanish, thanks in part to the pool of Broadway talent the series has hired. He was relieved to discover, for instance, that the 25-year-old Tavi Gevinson — with whom he had also been rehearsing for an upcoming revival of Stephen Sondheim’s “Assassins” two weeks before lockdown — would be his main scene partner on the series. The writer-actress, now his close friend, says on the phone a week later that she’s grown to become “deliriously excited” when seeing his name come up on her phone, announcing an incoming voice message, Chanler-Berat’s preferred method of communication, a fact that makes sense given his distinct cadence and tone, which call to mind both old-school elocution and the over-expressive giddiness of a lifelong theater kid. “They’re long, rambling and eloquent,” Gevinson says of the missives, “and he’ll end them with ‘But I don’t know what I’m talking about, bye!’”Gossip keeps finding its way into his conversation — “voice messages are so versatile: better than a text, more convenient than a phone call and you can delete them when you want,” he says — but there’s no point in reading any mischief into this choice; it’s more a genuine curiosity on his part about social behaviors and the impulse to communicate. (“Connecting with people is hard and scary, and there are so many ways people try to do that. Gossip, true or not, gives you a sense of connection to the person with whom you’re sharing information.”)Jennifer Damiano (left) and Chanler-Berat in the musical “Next to Normal” at New York’s Second Stage Theater in 2008.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesChanler-Berat (top) with Carson Elrod (left) and David Rossmer (right) in the play “Peter and the Starchatcher” at New York’s Brooks Atkinson Theater in 2012.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThis awareness of self and others, apparent in the way his eyes track the dogs mingling around him, is perhaps what led to his being cast — perfectly and, once again, without an audition — as the lead in a 2016 Boston production of Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park With George.” The starring dual roles of Georges Seurat and his fictional great-grandson George are all about apprehension toward and disconnection from one’s work, one’s peers, one’s loved ones, one’s obsessions. Chanler-Berat, who was 30 at the time, didn’t think he’d “cracked” Sondheim (“I don’t think anyone ever has”) but believes he did what he was supposed to: “There are parts of the characters that feel like an arrested development, like angsty teens, and I think that’s what speaks to nerdy theater people about that show.” The richness of the writer-composer’s work, he says, suggests a continuum that invites performers to continually reflect on their own evolving relationship to the material. “It feels like it was somehow written for you,” he says. “Not for you to play, but for you to experience and hear. Months later, you still realize things you can’t imagine not having done in the performance.”He doesn’t remember the first time he heard “Move On,” the musical’s transcendent ode to making peace with life’s outcomes, but it still reminds him of his late aunt Shirley Shulman, a scenic painter for New Jersey’s Bergen County Players who got him into theater at a young age, dressing him up for small performances for their family around the holidays. Later, as when he was a “socially awkward lost kitten” in middle school (he grew up in Bardonia, N.Y.), she encouraged him to gravitate toward theater people, where he eventually found a community. Despite his crisp, potent singing voice, he still experiences bouts of stage fright, but he says he is “exposure therapy-ing” his way out of it: “The more musicals I do, the more I’m like, ‘Well, I guess my voice generally shows up.’”Chanler-Berat (left) and Phillipa Soo in a 2017 performance of the musical “Amélie” at the Walter Kerr Theater in New York.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIt’s difficult to take his modesty seriously, given that he has originated an impressive number of roles in offbeat-but-popular Broadway musicals like “Next to Normal” (2009), “Peter and the Starcatcher” (2012) and “Amélie” (2017). Each role required — and, because of his eyes’ sincerity, received — a barefaced candor not often seen in leading men. When he reunites with Gevinson for “Assassins” at New York’s Classic Stage Company in November, it will be John Doyle’s final Sondheim revival before stepping down as C.S.C.’s artistic director, following a long streak of quintessential, stripped-down revivals. Chanler-Berat will play the would-be Reagan killer John Hinckley Jr., which will require him to draw from what Gevinson describes as his ability to be “very present, while embodying someone who has a lot going on inside.” The role seems ideal for this phase of his career and his life, marrying his character actor versatility with the parasocial themes that are as prevalent on “Gossip Girl” as they are among the musical’s presidential stalkers.Before the pandemic, Chanler-Berat’s schedule was set to involve the strenuous double duty of rehearsing and performing the psychologically demanding musical while spending long hours shooting on the “Gossip Girl” set. Subconsciously quoting the midcentury American actress Ethel Merman, who once said an eight-show-a-week musical requires living “like a [expletive] nun,” he says that such asceticism, combined with 4:30 a.m. wake-up calls — as mandated by the series’ hair and makeup sessions, protracted by Covid-19 safety protocols — would have presented an arduous reality. He trails off when thinking of this possibility, internalizing an exacting (but conquerable) challenge that would demand his inner perfectionist to simultaneously pour his all into two vastly different projects. Then he checks himself: “But that’s also the dream, are you kidding me?” More

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      in Movies

      Ed Asner, Emmy-Winning Star of ‘Lou Grant’ and ‘Up,’ Dies at 91

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      Best known as the gruff newsman he first played on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” he was also a busy character actor and a political activist.Ed Asner, the burly character actor who won seven Emmy Awards — five of them for playing the same character, the gruff but lovable newsman Lou Grant, introduced on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” — and later starred in film hits like “Up” and “Elf” — died on Sunday at his home in Tarzana, Calif. He was 91.His death was confirmed by his family via Twitter. No cause was specified.Mr. Asner also served as president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1981 to 1985 and was active in political causes both within and beyond the entertainment industry. The issues he supported over the years included unionism (in particular the air traffic controllers’ strike of 1981) and animal rights; those he protested against included the American military presence in El Salvador.Mr. Asner was 40 when he was approached for the role of Lou Grant, the irascible but idealistic head of the fictional WJM television newsroom in Minneapolis and the boss of Ms. Moore’s Mary Richards. His place in television comedy history was secured when, during the first episode, he told Ms. Moore, an eager young job seeker, “You’ve got spunk,” then paused and added, “I hate spunk.”“The Mary Tyler Moore Show” ran on CBS from 1970 to 1977, and Mr. Asner was nominated for the Emmy for best supporting actor in a comedy series every year. He won in 1971, 1972 and 1975. He went on to win twice for best lead actor, in 1978 and 1980, for the spinoff “Lou Grant,” making him the first performer to have received Emmys for playing the same character in both a comedy and a drama series.“Lou Grant” (1977-82) itself was an unusual case, a drama series developed around a sitcom character. In the show, Mr. Grant returned to his first love, editing a big-city newspaper, and the scripts tackled serious issues that included, in the first season alone, domestic abuse, gang rivalries, neo-Nazi groups, nursing-home scandals and cults.In between playing Lou Grant, Mr. Asner also won Emmys for his appearances in the 1976 mini-series “Rich Man, Poor Man,” as Nick Nolte’s bitter immigrant father, and the groundbreaking, lavishly lauded 1977 mini-series “Roots,” in which he played a slave-ship captain with scruples. He also won five Golden Globes, one for “Rich Man, Poor Man” and two each for the two series in which he played Lou Grant.In more recent years he had been seen in guest roles on television series like “The Good Wife,” “The Middle,” “Grace and Frankie,” “Hot in Cleveland” and “Cobra Kai,” and as recurring characters on “The Practice” and “ER.” In television movies, he played the billionaire Warren Buffett (in “Too Big to Fail,” 2011) and Pope John XXIII (in a 2002 movie by that name).Edward David Asner was born on Nov. 15, 1929, in Kansas City, Mo., and grew up in Kansas City, Kan. He was the youngest of five children of Orthodox Jewish immigrants, Morris David Asner, a junkyard owner from Poland, and Lizzie (Seliger) Asner, from Russia.As a boy, Mr. Asner became interested in dramatics and worked on a school radio program. After high school he was accepted at the University of Chicago, but dropped out after a year and a half to work at odd jobs — taxi driver, encyclopedia salesman, metal finisher at an auto plant — while he tried to build an acting career..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-m80ywj header{margin-bottom:5px;}.css-m80ywj header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:0;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-m80ywj header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}.css-1gp0zvr{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;margin-bottom:25px;}In 1951 he was drafted into the Army and sent to France. Mustered out in 1953, he returned to Chicago to work with the Playwrights Theater Club and the Compass Players, a precursor of the Second City comedy troupe. But he soon moved to New York, where he found work onstage (a small part in “The Threepenny Opera” at the Theater de Lys in Greenwich Village and a short-lived Broadway play, “Face of a Hero,” starring Jack Lemmon) and in a handful of television shows.Moving to California in 1961, he found the acting jobs more lucrative, and was cast in a short-lived CBS political drama, “Slattery’s People,” starring Richard Crenna. He made a point of largely avoiding comedy — out of fear, he said in a 2002 appearance at Vanderbilt University, and because “in those days you got discovered by doing the drama shows as a guest star.” But he agreed to audition for “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” because, as he said in an Archive of American Television interview, Lou Grant “was the best character I’d ever been asked to do” in either television or film.Mr. Asner as Lou Grant with Mary Tyler Moore in a scene from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” He won three Emmys for his portrayal on the show, and two more when the character moved to his own dramatic series.CBSLou was a hard-drinking, straight-shooting, short-tempered journalist who had tender emotions but did not plan to show them; a strong aura of professional and personal integrity; a fear that he had outlived his era; and “a great common core of honor,” as Mr. Asner told Robert S. Alley and Irby B. Brown, the authors of “Love Is All Around: The Making of ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show.’”In the post-Lou Grant era, Mr. Asner worked on both screen and stage. He returned to Broadway in 1989 to play the pugnacious Harry Brock opposite Madeline Kahn in a revival of “Born Yesterday.” His last Broadway play was “Grace” (2012), a tale of gospel-themed motels and murder, in which he played an exterminator.He provided the voice of the lead character in the Oscar-winning animated movie “Up” (2009), about an elderly widower who flies to South America by attaching roughly a zillion colorful balloons to his house. Manohla Dargis’s review in The New York Times, which praised Mr. Asner and the supporting characters — including a portly stowaway scout and several talking dogs — called it “filmmaking at its purest.”Mr. Asner also played a levelheaded Santa Claus in the Will Ferrell comedy “Elf” (2003), about a tall human raised by North Pole elves, which has become a Christmas-season classic. (It was Santa’s fault, really; the human baby crawled into his giant bag of gifts one busy Christmas Eve.) The Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert called the film “one of those rare Christmas comedies that has a heart, a brain and a wicked sense of humor.”He was a former F.B.I. man in Oliver Stone’s 1991 film “JFK,” he did voice work for several animated series and he starred briefly in several more prime-time series. They included “Off the Rack” (1984), as Eileen Brennan’s business partner; “The Trials of Rosie O’Neill” (1991), with Sharon Gless; “Thunder Alley” (1994), a sitcom in which he played a retired stock car racer; and “Center of the Universe” (2004), as John Goodman’s intrusive father.Mr. Asner continued working late in life, appearing on “The Good Wife” in 2015 with Julianna Margulies.Jeff Neumann/CBS One of his last film appearances was as a New York psychologist in “The Garden Left Behind” (2019), a drama about a young Mexican transgender woman that won a SXSW Film Festival audience award. That year he also appeared on several television series, including five episodes of “Dead to Me,” a Netflix drama about grief.Mr. Asner married Nancy Sykes in 1959, and they had three children. They divorced in 1988. Ten years later he married Cindy Gilmore, a producer; they separated in 2007 but did not divorce until 2015. He is survived by two daughters, Liza and Katie Asner; two sons, Charles and Matthew, and 10 grandchildren.In a 1999 interview, Mr. Asner looked back fondly on his long-running series. “To me, the best performances come from those milieus where you create the family,” he said. “Of bolstering each other, of love for each other’s work, of trying to help each other, of trying to get the best out of each other. And I believe it pays off.”Jack Kadden contributed reporting. More

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      How ‘Candyman’ Star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II Became the Next Big Name

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      The actor’s career has surged thanks to projects like “Aquaman” and “Watchmen.” He’s even become a Warner Bros. favorite. Now on the brink of movie stardom, he’s ready to steer.“What time is it?” Yahya Abdul-Mateen II wondered. “I don’t know. I’ve been in this room …” He trailed off. “It could be any time of day right now.”The bright lights and white backdrop of his windowless room conjured a void from which Abdul-Mateen had been videoconferencing for hours. He was doing remote press for “Candyman,” a new spin on the 1992 horror film with the 35-year-old actor playing Anthony, a painter mesmerized by the urban legend of a hook-handed killer. It’s said that Candyman can be summoned by speaking his name five times into a mirror, but as Anthony goes searching for the killer, he begins to see his own haunted face staring back.Though the film is set in Chicago, Abdul-Mateen was beamed to me from London, where he has spent the last few months shooting a sequel to “Aquaman” (he plays the villainous Black Manta). It was a rare day off from the superhero film, carved out so he could spend time promoting another hopeful franchise-starter. Was Abdul-Mateen tired from working so much? Sure, he told me as he shrugged off his black leather jacket. But he was also used to it.“People tell me, ‘Keep it going, man. If it’s hot, ride the wave,’” he said.Abdul-Mateen has been caught up in a significant swell since 2015, when he graduated from drama school at Yale and promptly booked a showy part as a nightclub owner in the Netflix series “The Get Down.” That role served as a signal flare to Hollywood casting directors: Here was a brand-new, 6-foot-3 hunk with formal training, screen charisma and eyes that can lock onto his scene partner like high beams.Men like that don’t come in droves these days, and Abdul-Mateen found himself entering a seller’s market: After “The Get Down” was canceled, he promptly began nabbing roles in high-profile projects like “Aquaman,” “The Greatest Showman” and “Black Mirror.” Last fall, he won an Emmy for the HBO limited series “Watchmen,” in which he played Doctor Manhattan, a blue, frequently nude superhero inhabiting the body of a Black man; months after that win, he made a strong impression as the Black Panther activist Bobby Seale in Aaron Sorkin’s “The Trial of the Chicago 7.”Abdul-Mateen’s rise has become the sort of thing that everyone wants to get in on, and Warner Bros. is particularly enamored with the actor. In addition to the “Aquaman” sequel, Abdul-Mateen will be seen in December starring opposite Keanu Reeves in the studio’s “The Matrix Resurrections,” and next summer, he films “Furiosa,” the highly anticipated “Mad Max: Fury Road” prequel from the director George Miller.Abdul-Mateen as Black Manta in “Aquaman.” He’s shooting the sequel now.Jasin Boland/Warner BrosThat is the sort of keys-to-the-kingdom access that Warner Bros. has historically reserved for a handful of stars like Clint Eastwood and Ben Affleck, and Abdul-Mateen doesn’t take the studio’s investment for granted. Still, he has recently discovered a brand-new superpower, something he never dared to employ on his path up the summit: saying no.What has he been turning down lately? “Jobs, appearances, meetings, people,” he said. “It’s like ‘no’ is one of my favorite words.” He mulled it over some more: “Sometimes you’ve got to get to zero in order to get back to one, two, three and beyond. You get so far down the line, it’s like, ‘Wait, where did zero go? Where’s the ground?’”Over the past six years, in addition to earning all those jobs, “I’ve been learning life,” he said. “I’ve been learning bills and debt and burying family members — life and death, heartbreak, location, relocation. And having success coincide with all of those things is interesting, because I’m also missing the birth of babies and weddings and things like that.”Sure, it’s great to become a movie star, especially at a time when new ones have proved so difficult to mint. “But I’m also learning that you have to protect yourself,” Abdul-Mateen said. “You have to have balance with all of this.” He scratched his head and put it more bluntly: “Sometimes it’s like, ‘Look, man, I want to get off the wave and create my own.’”THE YOUNGEST OF six children, Abdul-Mateen was born in New Orleans and initially lived in the city’s Magnolia Projects, where the kids would all play outside and the families took care of each other. “A sense of community was such a strong thread throughout my entire life that now sometimes it’s a bit strange to be out doing this by myself,” he said.His family moved around often, and Abdul-Mateen treated it like an adventure even though it meant he went to 13 different schools before he became a teenager. In each new class, whenever the teacher introduced him as Yahya, the other students would burst out laughing at his unusual name. But within a week, he’d have worked to win them all over, a pattern that taught him adaptability.“A sense of community was such a strong thread throughout my entire life that now sometimes it’s a bit strange to be out doing this by myself,” he said.Danny Kasirye for The New York TimesThat came in handy when Abdul-Mateen took an acting class at University of California, Berkeley, where he had gone to study architecture. He found playing different characters to be so much fun that after a short-lived stint as a city planner, he pursued a major swerve and applied to drama school at Yale.Was he good at acting back then? Well, he was good at commanding attention, and that’s not nothing. But a turning point came during Abdul-Mateen’s first year at Yale, when he found himself stymied by the Stephen Adly Guirgis play “The ___________ With the Hat.” He couldn’t understand why his character would brush off a girlfriend’s infidelity, and he stayed up all night until he finally cracked the man’s motivation: Because he loved her, he was able to tell himself a lie.“That’s when I knew that there was something else behind this that I wanted to figure out,” he said. “If I was going to be successful, I couldn’t just think like myself — I had to learn to be empathetic and understanding of other people’s perspectives and lives and outlooks. It would make me a better person, but it would also make me a better actor.”According to his “Candyman” director, Nia DaCosta, that empathy is key to Abdul-Mateen’s appeal. “He is incredibly skilled at imbuing each character he plays with specificity, humanity and a lived-in individuality,” said DaCosta, who praised “his ability to draw you into the life of a character as though he were a new friend or a stranger at a bar you’re dying to get to know.”That’s part of what made “Candyman” such a natural fit for Abdul-Mateen’s first major leading role: The movie is strewn with details that conjure something from his own lived experience. When Anthony is up all night painting, caught in the grip of an artistic revelation, it’s the sort of mania Abdul-Mateen knew from trying to crack Guirgis’s play. And when Anthony looks down and finds his hands smeared in black paint, Abdul-Mateen might have recalled his construction-worker father, whose hands were often covered in grease and motor oil.Abdul-Mateen in his first major leading role, in “Candyman” opposite Vanessa Williams.Universal PicturesThe first “Candyman” grounded its story in Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing project, a place that has been long-gentrified by the time DaCosta’s film picks up the tale. That, too, hit home for Abdul-Mateen, whose work as a city planner in the highly gentrified Bay Area gave him even more perspective on the projects he grew up in.“One of the first things that I did when I went to Chicago was to go to Cabrini-Green and put on that community planner hat,” he said. “And for a place that has a history of being as Black as that neighborhood was, that was not what I found. One has to wonder what happened to all of those families, all of those spirits? For every household, there’s a story, but when there’s no one there anymore to tell those stories, then that’s a tragedy.”With the clout he’s beginning to accrue, Abdul-Mateen wants to make sure those stories are told right. He also knows that if he can bring even more of himself to bear on these movies, he can start steering the wave instead of surfing it.Maybe it will help, too, once he feels he has a world to return to. Abdul-Mateen has spent the last few hectic years without a home of his own; even when he secured the keys to a New York apartment in January, he left the next day to film a new movie in Los Angeles. “This has been a very isolating experience,” he said. “I don’t want to do that anymore. I don’t have to do that anymore.”In the future, he plans to take more cues from his “Aquaman” co-star Jason Momoa, who keeps his family and close friends around him on set: “It helps him to stay true to who he is, because he’s not always the one having to speak up and support his own values all the time.” Abdul-Mateen hopes that will help the movies he makes feel more like himself, more like the homes he grew up in, more like the community that raised him in New Orleans.In the meantime, he’ll bring that feeling with him. When I asked Abdul-Mateen if he could name the most New Orleans thing about him, he grinned and spread his legs wide.“The way I take up space,” he said. “Somebody from New Orleans, they sit with their legs from east to west, they’re going to gesture big.” He waved his hands, then looked into the camera and fixed me with those high beams. “I don’t necessarily do that in my everyday life. But when I decide to take up space, nobody can take it from me.” More

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      Micki Grant: ‘I Wanted to Open Eyes’

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      The composer and lyricist, who died at 92, was a trailblazer in virtually every field she touched.Theater in Manhattan was bristling with Black voices in the early 1970s, but these tended to be heard in smaller spaces like the New Federal Theater, the Negro Ensemble Company and the Urban Arts Corps. Micki Grant’s “Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope” spent time in such theaters before winding its way to Broadway in 1972, making it the first time a woman had written the book, music and lyrics to a Broadway musical.The result — four Tony Award nominations, a run of more than two years — was a testament to Grant, a trailblazer in virtually every field she touched. She died on Aug. 21 at 92. But the success of the show also stemmed in part from its image of Black America, one that Grant created through a blend of conviction and calculation.Just as “Hair” channeled the era’s countercultural passions into a package that (most) staid Broadway theatergoers could handle — Joe Papp, who squired that show to Broadway from his brand-new Public Theater in 1968, described it as “marvelous for middle-aged people” — “Don’t Bother Me” took a cleareyed but rarely confrontational stance at race relations. At one point, the cast members raised clenched fists, which then turned to peace signs.“I wanted to open eyes but not turn them away,” Grant told me in a 2018 interview about the work, which she described as a conscious divergence from more incendiary pieces by such Black playwrights as Ed Bullins and Amiri Baraka. “I wanted to come at it with a soft fist.” (Grant had just come home from the hospital when we met, but was still energetic enough to shave more than a decade off her stated age at the time without raising any suspicions.)And so the show discussed slavery and slumlords but also Flip Wilson and Archie Bunker, resulting in what the New York Times theater critic Clive Barnes described as “a mixture of a block party and a revival meeting.”As it happens, Grant was in a rare position to call the shots on these decisions. She had spent several years as a contract performer on a soap opera — one of the first Black actors to do so — playing an attorney, Peggy Nolan, on “Another World.” (She also starred in “Don’t Bother Me.”) She would go on to find success writing advertising jingles, winning a Clio award along the way.In 2018, Grant and Savion Glover, the choreographer and director, led a table reading of “Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope” at New York City Center.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesBut the advertising and soap opera industries aren’t exactly known for cultivating auteurist voices. Theater gave Grant a chance to write every syllable and every note of “Don’t Bother Me,” which earned her half of the show’s four Tony nominations. (Her frequent collaborator Vinnette Justine Carroll, who became the first Black woman to direct on Broadway, was also nominated.)It came up blank at the 1973 Tony Awards — “A Little Night Music” and “Pippin” also opened that season — but “Don’t Bother Me” showcased a musical voice equally comfortable with calypso, spoken-word, soul, funk, jazz, and even what could be described as proto-hip-hop. Not to mention gospel, which came to the forefront in “Your Arms Too Short to Box With God,” and other subsequent shows that Grant wrote or co-wrote.Dabblings in Black musical idioms were nothing new for Broadway, of course: Cole Porter never met an Afro-Caribbean rhythm he couldn’t use, while Frank Loesser all but trademarked the still common use of a gospel-style roof-raiser to get the crowd agitated near the end of a show. But Grant’s wide range of repurposings was of an altogether different nature, because it drew so heavily from her own background.This versatility turned her into a go-to lyricist for pre-existing melodies by Eubie Blake (“Eubie!”) but also Harold Arlen (“Sweet & Hot”) and Jacques Brel (“Jacques Brel Blues”), and it also earned her a spot on the all-star writing team of 1978’s “Working” alongside James Taylor, Stephen Schwartz and Mary Rodgers. When I spent long college afternoons listening to published Broadway scores, one particularly fast passage in her “Working” song “Lovin’ Al” had me hitting rewind on the library’s cassette player for a solid half-hour.Grant, a former national chairwoman of the Actors Equity union’s Equal Opportunity Employment Committee, viewed as her biggest professional disappointment “Phillis,” a 1986 musical about the pioneering Black poet Phillis Wheatley. In a recent interview for American Theatre magazine, published after her death, she blamed the white director for the show’s failure, saying he had no knowledge of or sensitivity to the subject matter.But Grant bounced back from this, as she had done from the many other setbacks along the way in becoming her own sort of pioneer. “There’s so little time for hatred,” Grant sang almost 50 years ago in the show that earned her a place in history. Her hand was equally capable of clenching tight and relaxing into a peace sign. The fist was soft, but it held considerable force. More

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      Broadway Power Brokers Pledge Diversity Changes as Theaters Reopen

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      To address Black artists’ concerns, the pact calls for forgoing all-white creative teams, renaming theaters for Black artists and establishing diversity rules for the Tonys.Fifteen months after the George Floyd protests called renewed attention to racism in many areas of society, some of the most powerful players on Broadway have signed a pact pledging to strengthen the industry’s diversity practices as theaters reopen following the lengthy shutdown prompted by the coronavirus pandemic.The agreement commits Broadway and its touring productions not only to the types of diversity training and mentorship programs that have become common in many industries, but also to a variety of sector-specific changes: the industry is pledging to forgo all-white creative teams, hire “racial sensitivity coaches” for some shows, rename theaters for Black artists and establish diversity rules for the Tony Awards.The document, called “A New Deal for Broadway,” was developed under the auspices of Black Theater United, one of several organizations established last year as an outgrowth of the anger Black theater artists felt over the police killings of Floyd in Minnesota and Breonna Taylor in Kentucky. Black Theater United’s founding members include some of the most celebrated performers working in the American theater, including Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Billy Porter, Wendell Pierce, Norm Lewis and LaChanze.The signatories include the owners and operators of all 41 Broadway theaters — commercial and nonprofit — as well as the Broadway League, which is a trade organization representing producers, and Actors’ Equity Association, which is a labor union representing actors and stage mangers. Their pledges are not legally enforceable, but they agreed to “hold ourselves and each other accountable for implementing these commitments.”The document was negotiated at a series of virtual meetings that began while theaters were closed because of the pandemic; the changes are being announced as two Broadway shows have begun performances this summer, with 15 more planning to start, or restart, in September.“We convened all of the power players in our industry — the unions, the theater owners, producers and creatives — and had conversations about changing habits, structures and creating accountability,” said the director Schele Williams. “We knew that before our theaters robustly started opening in the fall, everyone deserved to know who they were in the space, and how they would be treated, and that’s something none of us have known in our careers.”One of the key changes being called for is that creative teams — which include directors, writers, composers, choreographers and designers — should be diverse. A section signed by directors and writers vows to “never assemble an all-white creative team on a production again, regardless of the subject matter of the show,” while a section signed by producers says, “We will make best efforts to ensure true racial diversity on all future productions.”The meetings, which started in March, were funded by the Ford Foundation and facilitated by Kenji Yoshino, director of the Center for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at New York University School of Law. “Everyone came in ready to make change,” the producer David Stone said.Among the changes that will be most visible to the general public: The three big commercial landlords on Broadway — the Shubert, Nederlander and Jujamcyn organizations — each pledged that at least one theater they operate would be named for a Black artist. Jujamcyn already operates the August Wilson Theater, the only Broadway house named for a Black artist.“This is a movement that is going to make change, and we’re happy to be part of it,” said Robert E. Wankel, chairman and chief executive of the Shubert Organization..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}The document’s signatories are committing to changes that would affect many aspects of the theater business, from casting to hair care. But Broadway is a highly unionized work force, and the only labor unions that signed the agreement are those representing actors, stage managers, makeup artists and hairstylists.That leaves some conspicuous gaps — there is pervasive concern about low levels of diversity among Broadway stagehands, musicians and design teams, for example — and the leadership of Black Theater United said that although the group has endorsements from individuals working in those areas, it will continue to work to win more organizational support for the document.The actor NaTasha Yvette Williams said that she expected more groups to embrace the calls for change. “It’s only a matter of time before they come around,” she said.The director Kenny Leon acknowledged frustration that his own union, the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, was not a signatory. “I am disappointed that my directing union hasn’t signed on yet,” he said. “But as a Black member of that union, I’m going to keep fighting for that.”The executive director of the union, Laura Penn, said the organization was “deeply committed to the principles” of the agreement, but opted not to sign because much of it is “beyond the scope of the union’s purview.”Jeanine Tesori, a composer, said she is hopeful that the variety of professions represented in a show’s music department will jointly commit to creating more opportunity in what can be a tough area to break into. “We have to invite newcomers in,” she said.The signatories pledged to create a new, mandatory, industrywide training program for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, Accessibility and Belonging. And, with an eye toward further diversifying the industry, they also committed to “mentoring and sponsoring Black talent in our respective fields on an ongoing basis.”“Everybody has a Black Lives Matter statement out,” said the actress Allyson Tucker. “The words are no longer enough. What is the action?”Among the other commitments: remove “biased or stereotypical language” from casting notices; insist on diversity riders prioritizing inclusivity as part of director and author contracts; search more widely for music contractors, who are the gatekeepers to orchestra staffing; and abolish unpaid internships. “Internships had a reputation of being for people who could afford to not be paid any money,” said the actor Darius de Haas.The signatories also commit to “sensitivity” steps for shows dealing with race. “For shows that raise racial sensitivities, we will appoint a racial sensitivity coach whose role is akin to an intimacy coach,” the document says. And separately, it says, “While acknowledging that creatives can write about any subject that captures their interest or imagination, we will, when writing scripts that raise identity issues (such as race), make best efforts to commission sensitivity reads during the drafting process to assist in flagging issues and providing suggestions for improvement. Playwrights and/or those individuals or entities with contractual approval rights will retain creative control to accept or reject the sensitivity reader’s recommendations.”“We have to tell difficult stories,” Schele Williams said. “But we also must take great care.”The document does not detail what kinds of diversity rules the group is seeking for the Tony Awards. But the actor Vanessa Williams said the document’s call for diversity “requirements for Tony Award eligibility” was inspired by new rules for the Academy Awards that will require films to meet specified inclusion standards to qualify for a best picture nomination. More

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      Ynairaly Simo Reps the Bronx (and Tweenage Zest) in ‘Vivo’

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      The 14-year-old Dominican American actress makes her big screen debut in the animated musical on Netflix, with songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda.Every time Ynairaly Simo’s mother asks her what she wants to eat at home, Simo tells her the same thing: moro de guandules con bistec, or rice with pigeon peas and steak.But if they’re dining out? It’s got to be the mofongo — a Puerto Rican dish made with fried plantains — from a shop two blocks away from where Simo lives with her family in the West Bronx.The rich food culture in Fordham Heights is a piece of what makes their life so full there.“We are proud to live in the Bronx, and we are proud that we are Latinos,” Ynairaly’s mother, Ydamys Simo, said in an interview. “And we always encourage that to her: Always be proud of who you are. And never change the essence that makes you you.”Ynairaly (pronounced ya-NAH-ruh-ly) Simo, 14, is the voice of Gabi, an energetic and eccentric preteen, in the animated musical “Vivo” on Netflix. Though Ynairaly was born and raised in New York, both sides of her family are Dominican.“I’m very glad to be playing Gabi and be Dominican,” Simo said in a video interview, in front of a canary yellow wall in her mother’s room. “Because girls my age — or younger — can be like, ‘Oh my gosh, she’s Dominican! And she’s an actress? I could be an actress. I’m Dominican.’”Simo felt a similar spark when she saw Zoe Saldaña as Gamora in Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy.” She instantly loved the green warrior character, and looked up who played her.When she realized Saldaña played Gamora — and that the actress was Dominican — it hit her: She could be in a Marvel movie someday, too.Four years later, Simo and Saldaña would end up working together. Saldaña plays Rosa, Gabi’s mother, in “Vivo.” Since their recording sessions took place separately, the two have never met, but Simo still hopes to meet her idol.“I’m very glad to be playing Gabi and be Dominican,” Simo said.Josefina Santos for The New York Times“Vivo” is Simo’s first major role — although she’s been acting for years — and she worked alongside a cast of “icons,” as she put it, including Saldaña.Lin-Manuel Miranda voices the titular Vivo, a singer-musician kinkajou; the Buena Vista Social Club legend Juan de Marcos plays Andrés, Vivo’s owner; and Gloria Estefan plays Marta, Andrés’s old musical partner and unrequited love.Because of the nature of voice performance, Miranda was the only cast member Simo met in person. She was more than familiar with his work — she had, in fact, auditioned for a role in the film version of “In the Heights” — and was eager to collaborate with him.Miranda spent one-on-one time with Simo in the recording studio, helping her pin down high notes in her head voice and low notes in her chest voice. (Simo attends the Celia Cruz Bronx High School of Music, where she learned she is naturally an alto.)The actress sings on five songs on the movie’s soundtrack, including “My Own Drum” — an earworm rap about being true to yourself — and its remix with the Grammy winner Missy Elliott. Miranda, known for his signature rapid-fire rapping, guided Simo along her first time in the genre.“He taught me: Get a deep breath,” Simo said. “And then learn the words, spit them out and make sure to say them, pronounce them very sharply.”Onscreen, “My Own Drum” unfolds in Gabi’s tween tornado of a bedroom (her backpack is full of slime) in Key West, Fla. It features, in the words of the director Kirk DeMicco, “almost like a Busta Rhymes, fisheye lens, fun-house scene,” intended to shake Vivo out of his comfort zone. Here, the role fit the actress.“There was this exuberant unpolished-ness to her that she just had, and this moxie that you can’t even act,” DeMicco said in an interview. “The way she delivered her lines” and “the little improvs that she did, the way she filled things in, the texture was just her.”Simo’s father, Joseph Simo, is a big fan of the scene, the song and the soundtrack. It’s his “No. 1 pick” whenever he’s at work, he said: He flips on the soundtrack and listens straight through from beginning to end.“One of the things that she always wanted to do is inspire kids: Latinos — and all the kids that are into acting and into music — to follow their dreams,” Joseph said in an interview. “And I told her the other day, ‘You see, your dreams are coming true.’”Simo’s parents are, of course, her biggest fans: Two weeks into August, they had already watched the movie 16 times. (The film began streaming on Aug. 6.) They’re not planning on stopping anytime soon.Ynairaly, center, with her parents, Ydamys and Joseph Simo.Josefina Santos for The New York TimesThey have supported their daughter’s career in the arts since it began. At age 3, Simo started modeling. At 5, she started acting — doing smaller gigs, like commercials. “Vivo” was her first singing role (although since its premiere, she’s performed the national anthem for the Brooklyn Cyclones, the Gotham Girls and the New York Liberty).But the road here was by no means easy. In July 2019, while “Vivo” was in production, Ynairaly underwent an almost 10-hour surgery to correct advanced scoliosis. Twenty screws and two metal plates later, doctors told her parents she might not be able to “move the way a normal child could” — at least for a while.The day after the surgery, the physical therapist asked her to take a couple of steps, one step at a time, her father said. She walked 20. That same summer, she learned how to swim. She danced. A month after the surgery, she convinced the doctors to let her go back to Los Angeles to record.Her family called her “Ynairaly la guerrera,” or Ynairaly the warrior. “Because that’s who she is,” her mother said. “She’s really determined.” More