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      in Television

      Bob Odenkirk Is Out for Revenge in ‘Nobody’

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      The influential comedian and “Better Call Saul” star isn’t kidding about his bid for action-movie stardom, training rigorously for his new thriller.On “Better Call Saul,” Bob Odenkirk has walked a careful line between wry comedy and soul-baring drama. Over five seasons, he has played the unscrupulous lawyer Jimmy McGill on his downward path to becoming the venal Saul Goodman, the character he introduced on “Breaking Bad.”The role is a professional plot twist that continues to delight Odenkirk as well as his longtime fans who first got to know him as a writer and performer of absurdist comedy sketches on “Saturday Night Live,” “The Ben Stiller Show” and “Mr. Show With Bob and David.”Now the 58-year-old actor is looking to make another change in his trajectory, one that’s equally, if not more, surprising: starring in the action thriller “Nobody.”The film, which Universal will release on Friday in theaters and April 16 on-demand, casts Odenkirk as Hutch Mansell, a seemingly nondescript suburban husband and father who is shaken by a break-in at his home, an incident that drives him to violent revenge and a reckoning with his own past.Amid flying fists, broken bones, car chases and explosions, “Nobody” has the requisite level of humor you’d expect to find in an action movie. But the film, which is directed by Ilya Naishuller (“Hardcore Henry”) and written by Derek Kolstad (“John Wick”), is not a comedy or a parody.As Odenkirk explained in a video interview in February: “It was intended as a genre movie — pure, unapologetic, unironic. Hopefully we take it to such an extreme that it becomes nothing but a cinematic explosion of fury and elemental rage.”Beyond his sincere efforts to see if audiences will embrace him in this role — one that required months of fitness training and fight choreography — Odenkirk is also using “Nobody” as a constructive outlet to work through his own real-life experiences as a break-in victim.Speaking from his home in Los Angeles, Odenkirk talked about the making of “Nobody” and how his comedic chops come in handy when it’s time to plan a fight scene. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.Odenkirk opposite Alain Moussi in a fight scene that takes place almost entirely in a bus.Universal PicturesWas it as enjoyable to play an action hero as we all imagine it to be?I wasn’t sure if it would be satisfying or just a weird challenge that made no sense to me when I was finally allowed to execute it. I wasn’t sure if I’d be there on set thinking, “This is way off-base — this is not satisfying in any way.” It was really satisfying and really fun.Was it the next logical step for you after “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul”?It’s not easy to figure out what connects this to everything else in my career, and I’m not sure I can make it easy for you. When I first approached it, my brain said, “Maybe I could do an action movie.” I’m in good shape; I could maybe learn if I had time. And I think I have the components for an action lead in this “Better Call Saul” character that I play. He’s earnest. He’s indefatigable. He finds a way around everything. He’s always shifting his approach to try to get over the latest wrinkle or issue in front of him. The only thing he doesn’t do is fight.You were inspired to make this movie, in part, by some very frightening personal experiences. Are you comfortable discussing this?[His voice softens.] I can only talk about it a little. My family has had two break-ins here in L.A., and the first one was particularly traumatic. The residual feelings of frustration and anger are real and stayed with me. They were something I thought I could build this character out of. I know that violence doesn’t solve anything. But believe me, you have a desire to hurt someone who hurts your family.In the movie, your character is shamed for not trying to subdue his home invaders. Did a police officer actually say something like that to you?“That’s not what I would have done.” Yes — implying that they would have done something violent or confrontational. My immediate thought was, “Everybody be cool, get this person out of the house, we’re all OK.”It’s not really true; we weren’t all OK. And the violation that happened, the damage from that — honestly, there’s parts of it I can’t talk about. I would just say it resonates through our lives. That sense of being victimized by something you can do nothing about and in no way push back against. It really stayed with me, and it still does. But I did enjoy acting out my rage in this movie. It’s all phony baloney but super fun.Odenkirk said of his turn to action hero: “I wasn’t sure if I’d be there on set, thinking, ‘This is way off-base — this is not satisfying in any way.’ It was really satisfying and really fun.”Ryan Lowry for The New York TimesWhen did you start taking concrete steps to get this made as a movie?It was after the second season of “Better Call Saul” [which aired in 2016]. My brother-in-law sent me a screengrab of a “Better Call Saul” ad on a TV in China. I had already been to Europe twice and met a lot of fans of “Better Call Saul” there. I thought, “I wonder if I could do a movie that could play around the world.”Did you expect you might meet some resistance to the idea?Oh, I thought people would say no, right away. I went to one of my managers and I told him my logic, and he said, “I think you might be right.” He started asking around, and he got the same response. People were like, that makes sense.Was your comedy career in any way a roadblock to this goal?If you know “Mr. Show,” it’s really hard to make that leap. But the fact is, most people don’t know it at all. They only know Saul Goodman and Jimmy McGill.You played some memorably explosive characters in your “Mr. Show” tenure, if that helps.I can go from zero to 80 on the rage scale, and I did it a lot for comedy’s sake. And it’s something my father did, only it wasn’t funny when he did it. I would say I inherited it. But you’ve got to watch out when you have that skill. Too often it’s misinterpreted.Before this, were you an action-movie fan?I actually liked Charles Bronson movies and all the “Dirty Harry” movies. My favorite is “Police Story” with Jackie Chan. If this movie works, which is to say people like it and it engenders good will, I would love to do a movie that’s more on that tonal scale of comic action. As much as I hope my friends and fans from the comedy world will enjoy what I did here, if I don’t please people who like action films, then I didn’t really do what I set out to do. I felt like I had to go all the way in that direction.The star in what has become his signature role, Jimmy McGill, a.k.a. Saul Goodman, in “Better Call Saul.”Greg Lewis/AMC and Sony Pictures TelevisionWhen did you have to start your physical training for the role?February 2017. I do cardio; that’s all I did before this. And I had never hurt my back, my knees. Everything’s good enough, it works. It stressed me to drive to the training facility — an hour and 10 minutes, some days more — in L.A. traffic, and think, “You’re training for a movie that’s never going to happen, what is wrong with you? What kind of midlife crisis are you going through?” But I also thought, “If the movie doesn’t happen, well, I’ll be in shape. And I’ll have learned something about my body.”Were your comedy skills helpful as you and your colleagues planned the action set pieces?Let me tell you what I contributed to the bus fight [a scene in which Odenkirk’s character faces off against a gang of roughnecks on a public bus]. We always wanted it to be big and brutal — to shake the audience up and make them go, yeah, we’re doing it. I said, “He has to hurt himself.” The first thing he does is miss and hit his head. I also said, “I want to get thrown out of the bus and come back in.” By the way, there’s so many moments in this that you could transpose to normal dad life by dialing down the intensity level.What happens if “Nobody” is successful enough that these kinds of action movies become the next chapter of your career?I shouldn’t worry about that. Because I’m in show business. If they come to me with 10 more action movies, I could say, “No, thank you,” to all of them. That’s up to me. Tomorrow I’m pitching an animated comedy show with my friend [and “Mr. Show” collaborator] Dino Stamatopoulos. I have a lot of say in that. I’m older, I’ve done a lot. I know that I’m never happy staying in one place anyway. I’m not too worried about getting cornered.Is it fair to say you’re taking some delight in the bafflement of all this?Part of me wants there to be two Bob Odenkirks. Just so I can have a gravestone with two opposite sides. “He brought the pain,” on one side. “My God, he was funny,” on the other. Has anyone ever done that? A grave with two different things? One side says, “Beloved husband, cherished father.” The other side says, “Despised ex-husband, resented father.”As we’re speaking, you’re about to start work on the last season of “Better Call Saul.” Is the finality of it all starting to dawn on you?Not yet. I have so much to do, I can’t think like that. I have to save that for somewhere down the line. There’s just too much work ahead of me.We don’t know how it all ends for Saul Goodman, but we know the road thus far has taken him to a low-profile gig at Cinnabon. Have you made any unannounced stops to Cinnabon lately, just to see what happens?I have not, but I know what goes into a Cinnabon. My trainer for the action movies would not be OK with me enjoying a Cinnabon. But they are good. Enjoy your Cinnabons, folks, while you can. Someday they’re going to want you to do an action movie and have you eat avocados and eggs for the rest of your life. More

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      in Movies

      Her Film on Sex Assault Depicts Her Own and Fuels a #MeToo Moment

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      Danijela Stajnfeld included her account of being assaulted in a film that has led to contentious debate in Serbia and prompted other women to come forward to say they were sexually abused.Her face graced billboards in Belgrade. She appeared regularly in Serbian movies, magazines and television shows. Trained at the prestigious Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade, Danijela Stajnfeld had, by the age of 26 in 2011, won two major theater prizes and was a permanent member with the esteemed Belgrade Drama Theater.The following year, she abruptly and mysteriously dropped from public view. It wasn’t until last summer that she publicly revealed why.In her documentary, “Hold Me Right,” about victims and perpetrators of sexual assault, Stajnfeld said that she too had been sexually assaulted eight years earlier by a powerful Serbian man, which had prompted her move to the United States.When the film premiered last year at the Sarajevo Film Festival, Stajnfeld said she was nervous but could not imagine its causing waves. “I thought no one remembered me, I didn’t keep in touch with anyone in Serbia,” she said in an interview.The media firestorm that erupted within days of the premiere proved her wrong.The film “Hold Me Right” presents possible reactions, some constructive, some not, to sexual assault.   Hold Me RightStajnfeld’s face was suddenly all over the Serbian press again. Television and online commentators praised her for speaking out or savaged her for not disclosing the man’s name.She said she did not identify the man because she wanted the film to focus on survivors and healing, rather than singling out a perpetrator. But the country’s tabloids speculated wildly about his identity. Reporters approached Stajnfeld’s unsuspecting parents in their small village. Critics questioned her motives. “Sick!” read one headline. “Actress made up the rape to advertise her film.”Even for someone who had grown up in Serbia, where sexism and male chauvinism are deeply entrenched, the blowback was stunning, Stajnfeld said. While the country has taken steps to advance the cause of women’s rights in recent years — in 2013 it ratified a human rights convention addressing gender-based violence — in Serbia, as in the surrounding region, sexual harassment and assaults are still only rarely reported, and victim shaming abounds.“After opening up, it was so liberating; I thought the narrative was in my hands,” Stajnfeld said. “But it caused even more unsafety and ridiculous dehumanization.”But in recent months, spurred partly by the film, the mood in some quarters has changed. In January, several other Serbian actresses came out publicly with allegations that they had been raped, and a MeToo-like movement roared to life in this region where the culture of calling out abusers had yet to gain a foothold.Using the hashtag #NisiSama, which means “You are not alone,” and on the Facebook page Nisam Trazila, or “I didn’t ask for it,” which has 40,000 followers, supporters urged that victims of sexual harassment be believed and perpetrators be held to account.“We have followed what was happening around the globe with the #MeToo movement, but I think we needed authentic voices of women from this region in order to have this kind of reaction,” Sanja Pavlovic, of the Autonomous Women’s Center in Belgrade, said in an email.Last week Stajnfeld, who lives in New York, flew to Serbia, met with the police and prosecutors and identified the man who she said assaulted her as Branislav Lecic.Branislav Lecic, a celebrated Serbian actor, has denied that he ever had a sexual encounter with Stajnfeld. Darko Vojinovic/Associated PressHer disclosure refueled the media blitz, in part because Lecic, 65, is a famed figure in Serbia, not only a prominent actor but also a professor and former minister of culture. Only weeks ago, he had spoken out against sexual assault.“When a woman says no, that’s the end of it. I don’t understand that someone can’t control their urges,” he told one Serbian newspaper.Stajnfeld says that statement, in part, was what compelled her to publicly name him.Lecic has denied any sexual contact with Stajnfeld, with whom he acted in a play, “Daily Command,” at the time in 2012 when she says the assault occurred.“I have never had sexual contact with her. Everything else would be a lie!” Lecic wrote in a WhatsApp message.But Stajnfeld provided prosecutors and members of the media with an audio recording of her confronting him in a Belgrade restaurant in December 2016, in which he acknowledges that she said no to his advances. Excerpts of the audio, distilled from a longer tape, with the man’s voice disguised, are included in the film.In the recording, she says several times that she wishes he had respected the fact that she had objected to his actions, but she does not go into detail about what then transpired.“Back then I felt jeopardized. Can you understand that?” Stajnfeld says on the tape.“I can understand that, but it’s a big mistake, because my expression of tenderness indeed means my respect,” Lecic replied, saying it was an achievement “that you triggered my attention and feeling.”Stajnfeld and Lecic in a scene from the play “Daily Command.”Belgrade Drama TheaterLecic said what happened ought to “feel like an honor, not to put you in jeopardy.” “Who do you think I am?” he continued. “As if I don’t respect who I am.”In the recording, Lecic also pushed back on Stajnfeld’s assertion that if she says no, she means no. “It doesn’t work like that,” he said, later adding, “Life is unpredictable, like a game.”In recent days, Lecic, communicating over WhatsApp, said that he and Stajnfeld met at the restaurant to discuss a potential collaboration, and that the audio provided by Stajnfeld was incomplete: A longer version, he said, would reveal the broader context, that they were merely improvising dialogue, and that she was possibly claiming he assaulted her to gain publicity for her film.“Maybe she was expecting something more, maybe it’s because nothing happened that she wants revenge, and maybe she wants to build her story through me,” he wrote. “Bad marketing is also marketing.”But Stajnfeld provided a 77-minute audio file that she says represents nearly all of their roughly 90-minute conversation: The tape cut off, she said, when her phone battery died. Parts of their conversation are inaudible, and drowned out by background noise. Still, there is no indication they were rehearsing dialogue. Though the voices are muffled at times and the banter often seems friendly, Stajnfeld’s voice gets sterner as she describes how hurt she was by his actions. Lecic responds in a way that suggests he believed that what happened was consensual.When they began rehearsing the play, Stajnfeld said she viewed Lecic as a mentor and a friend, until he began propositioning her to have sex. Then, one day, in his dressing room, she said he abruptly shoved his hand up her dress. Stajnfeld said she pulled away and fled, stunned, but opted not to tell the director because she was worried she wouldn’t be believed, and that it could hurt her career. Lecic denied any sexual encounter took place.At the time, she said in an interview, she had already approached Lecic, who she viewed as an influential political figure, for a reference letter to apply for an American work visa. She said she was looking for opportunities in the United States, but never intended to abandon her Serbian career.She said Lecic first insisted they walk in a park nearby. Then, she said, on what she assumed was a lift home, he drove in the wrong direction, frightening her, and telling her he was taking her to see a beautiful view of Belgrade.An image from the film “Hold Me Right” that depicts how sharing stories of sexual assault and receiving support are vital to healing. Hold Me RightWhen they arrived at a house on a hill in the city’s outskirts, she said Lecic undressed her and sexually assaulted her, despite the fact that she was crying and repeatedly said no.“In that moment, I was so tortured,” she continued. “He was asking me to do stuff for him. I wanted to do anything for this torture to stop. I couldn’t move my arms, my mouth, I couldn’t stop crying,” she said.Franz Stefan Gady, who used to date Stajnfeld and was living in Stockholm at the time, said within days she had provided him with an account of having been sexually assaulted by the “older guy” in the play.Stajnfeld said she told police and prosecutors last week the same details of her encounters with Lecic in the dressing room and at the house. But she had not gone to the authorities at the time, she said, because she feared her story would be leaked to the press and her career ruined. Instead, she booked a ticket to the United States where, in New York, she began to unravel. She had panic attacks and later considered suicide, but with the help of therapy and victim support groups, she became determined to overcome the trauma. She began interviewing and filming survivors, and what started as a 10-minute short ended up growing, over the course of three-and-a-half years, into her first feature-length film as a director.Stajnfeld said she never intended to insert her own story into her film, but after seeing the rough cut, she knew she had to include her experience too.“For the sake of justice, for the sake of my healing, for the sake of other victims in the region, I’m speaking out now,” she said in the interview with The Times.The film is scheduled to screen at the Martovski film festival in Belgrade later this spring, she said, followed by a U.S. release.After the premiere of Stajnfeld’s film last summer, media commentators said she should be ashamed, that she had slept with a man to get a role, that she should name him or else be prosecuted, that she dishonored women who had really been raped, and that she looked too happy in a recent televised interview to have been a victim.“The public opinion took a tabloid approach, hungry for blood, public humiliation, shame and guilt,” said Snezana Dakic, a Serbian television presenter. “And that is exactly opposite from how this problem should be treated.”Whatever personal catharsis the film represents, more people are seeing Stajnfeld’s film as a spark for the groundswell of support for sexual assault victims underway in Serbia and the surrounding Balkan region.“Danijela’s case gave wings to other women, actresses, to talk about what happened to them,” said Dragana Grncarski, a former model and public figure. “Coming out in the open, they prevent things like that from happening to other women.”Indira K. Skoric provided translations. More

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      in Theater

      ‘Why Are We Stuck?’ Stage Actors Challenge Their Union Over Safety

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      A dust-up in Dallas and a 2,500-person petition signal that many performers believe their representatives are keeping them from getting work.The play was announced: “Tiny Beautiful Things,” an improbably moving stage adaptation of a wildly popular advice column. Four actors were chosen: members of a company that had worked together for years. And the producer, Dallas Theater Center, had developed a 45-page plan to keep the actors safe, in part by filming and streaming their work, with no live audience.But after weeks of back and forth, Actors’ Equity, the national labor union, introduced what the theater saw as a new wrinkle. The cast would have to take 80-minute breaks every 80 minutes to make up for what the union viewed as inadequate air filtration in the rehearsal and performance halls.The theater’s leaders gave up. Early this month, just five days before rehearsals were to begin, they canceled the project, at least for now.That would have been the end of that, one of scores of abandoned theater projects during this pandemic, but for one unexpected development. The cast, furious that their own union, which represents actors and stage managers, was making it impossible for them to do the show, spoke up. One of them took to social media to express his anger. And, when he did so, actors from around the country chimed in.“The reason I spoke out is that something is deeply wrong with our union,” said the actor, Blake Hackler. “When every other industry has adapted to keep going, why are we stuck here?”Now the 51,000-member union, which for the last year has barred almost all stage work in the United States, is in the cross hairs, under fire from some of its own members as it tries to navigate a path that keeps them safe and helps them earn a living.Quietly simmering frustrations erupted publicly last week, when more than 2,500 union members signed a letter, circulated by a Broadway performer and signed by Tony winners and Tony nominees, plaintively asking, “When are we going to talk about the details of getting back to work?”The union’s leadership, while proud of its performance during the pandemic, is acknowledging the concerns.“I don’t mind people being frustrated — I’m frustrated too,” said the union’s president, Kate Shindle, an actress who, like most of her members, has been unemployed for the last year.But Shindle defended the union’s intensive focus on health. “How many people on ventilators would be OK? How many people with lifelong, career-ending lung damage would be OK?” she said. “To me, the answer is zero.”Health and safety signs posted on the door outside Dallas Theater Center.Cooper Neill for The New York Times“There is no conceivable reason our union would want to keep our members from working if working is safe,” Shindle added. “At the end of the day, it’s the virus that’s the problem.”And the virus is still obviously a problem: Just this past weekend, the Park Avenue Armory in New York was forced to postpone its first live show with a paying audience in more than a year, a new dance piece by the famed choreographer Bill T. Jones, when three members of the company tested positive for the coronavirus. And 54,000 new cases of the virus are still emerging each day in the United States.But with film and television production underway, vaccine distribution speeding up, and gathering places from schools to restaurants to sports arenas opening, many performers and producers say the union has been too slow to adapt.“What appeared to be a well-intentioned initiative to keep their membership safe has turned into a unilateral, nonresponsive and opaque process which has expanded its jurisdiction far beyond any reasonable bounds,” said David A. Cecsarini, the producing artistic director of Next Act Theater in Milwaukee.Citing air conditioning system requirements that, he said, “are more stringent than those of hospitals,” he said the union “continues to move the goal posts of safety protocol, requiring more radical standards with each edition of its guidelines.”Cecsarini is among a number of theater leaders, particularly from small and mid-sized theaters outside New York, who throughout the pandemic have had difficulty working with Equity. And, after a year in which many were afraid to voice their concerns publicly, they are now speaking up.“From the beginning I’ve been pretty disappointed in Equity’s ability to pivot with the rest of the industry,” said Ethan Paulini, who is the producing artistic director of Weathervane Theater in Whitefield, N.H.., and the associate director of Out of the Box Theatrics in New York.After protracted negotiations, Ethan Paulini, the producing artistic director of Weathervane Theater in Whitefield, N.H., got the OK from Actors’ Equity to present a show there last summer.Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist for The New York TimesPaulini, an Equity member for 18 years, has seen the union from many vantage points. His theater in New Hampshire last summer was the first to get pandemic permission for an indoor production of a multiperformer musical, and his New York company is now streaming a production of “The Last Five Years.”Pulling any of it off has been a struggle, he said. For example, his New York production was only approved the day after rehearsals were to begin. He also objected to the union’s prohibition against the use of public transportation by actors, which, he said, was not realistic in New York.“Equity was just so slow,” he said, “and even at times very obstructionist.”David Ellenstein, the artistic director of North Coast Repertory Theater in Solana Beach, Calif., said that his theater had made streaming work during the pandemic under contracts first with SAG-AFTRA, the television and film actors’ union, and then with Equity. When Equity assumed jurisdiction, “the demands were above and beyond what SAG-AFTRA asked us to do,” he said.Ellenstein, who has been an Equity member for four decades, said he is hopeful that relations may be improving, but that some of the union’s safety requirements are “over the top.” Like what? “Having to have special air purifiers in apartments where actors are staying by themselves,” he said, “and the implication that people working with the theater should not associate with anyone else while they’re working on the play. I don’t know of any other business doing that.”Actors have become unusually wiling to speak up, worried that their union is lagging.Davon Williams, an actor in New York, said the union is facing an “uprising” in part because its efforts stand in contrast to what’s happened with other entertainment industry unions. “People are antsy,” he said. “When you look to your left and your right at our sister unions, these people are working.”The union points out that television and film studios generally have more money than theater companies, which allows them to afford a higher level of testing and other safety provisions. And, they say, television and film productions are often more contained than stage productions — there is no live audience present, for one thing.The union said in a recent Medium post that over the course of the pandemic it has permitted more than 120 live shows — although it appears that only 22 theaters have been allowed to present these shows to live audiences; the union also says it has approved agreements for digital productions that have been used 700 times.Among them: the Alliance in Atlanta, which staged an outdoor production of “A Christmas Carol” with actors performing in individual shipping containers.“I am well aware that my colleagues and our colleague theaters are having real challenges,” said the Alliance’s artistic director, Susan V. Booth. “I also know that we were able to put a show up, and because of the rigor that the union and we provided, we were able to do so safely.”Elsewhere, actors say they are worried that the difficulty with negotiations could endanger theaters, especially outside New York.“I know for sure theaters are putting proposals out there and not getting responses,” said Kurt Boehm, an actor in Washington. “To me our producers and our theaters are not our enemies, they’re our friends, and if they don’t survive there’s no union to be had.”Several actors said that, by refusing to OK theater productions with detailed safety protocols, the union is forcing them to take jobs that are even more dangerous. Boehm is working as a salesman at a Williams-Sonoma store; Kristine Reese, an actress who moved from New York to Atlanta during the pandemic, is teaching.“They say they don’t want anyone to get sick doing a musical, but because I can’t do a very high-protocol musical, I have to do another job, and those jobs are way riskier than doing a show would be,” Reese said.The union has agreed to schedule a national town hall in response to the recent upset; the petition-signers, led by Timothy Hughes of “Hadestown,” are asking that they be allowed to moderate the virtual conversation.In a joint interview, Shindle, the union president, and Mary McColl, the executive director, said they would strive to be clearer about what the union is doing. But they also said that until actors and stage managers are vaccinated, vigilance is warranted.“The vaccine is the thing that is going to get us back on our feet,” McColl said, “and back on the stage.”At Dallas Theater Center, where “Tiny Beautiful Things” fell apart, the two sides don’t even agree on what went wrong; the actors say the union refused to approve the show, while the union says the theater withdrew its request for approval. (Kevin Moriarty, the theater’s artistic director, declined to comment.)Unlike most stage performers, the Dallas actors still receive a salary as members of a company. But the cancellation still stings.“This whole experience has been frustrating and disappointing,” said Tiffany Solano, who was slated to be in the cast.Now the venue is offering patrons a 40-minute outdoor walk inspired by fairy tales. It was devised by the acting company but features no live performers.Michael Paulson reported from New York and Katy Lemieux reported from Dallas. More

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      in Theater

      Theater Actors Step Up Push for Union to Allow Them to Work

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      Nearly 2,000 performers have petitioned Actors’ Equity for guidelines that will speed up a return to the stage.As states around the nation move toward reopening, theater actors and stage managers are protesting what they see as their union’s slow pace toward helping them get back to work.Nearly 2,000 members of Actors’ Equity have signed a petition that asks the simple question, “When are we going to talk about the details of getting back to work?”The petition was spearheaded by Timothy Hughes, who, in an art-meets-reality echo, is a member of the workers’ chorus in “Hadestown.”“We feel unheard, we feel left out, and we feel way farther behind than any other industry when it comes to putting in place practical protocols that would get us back to work,” Hughes said in an interview.Among the signatories are the Tony Award winners Stephanie J. Block, Rachel Bay Jones, Karen Olivo and Ali Stroker, and numerous Tony nominees, among them Aaron Tveit, Eva Noblezada, Rob McClure, Ato Blankson-Wood, Robyn Hurder, Emily Skinner, Brandon Uranowitz and Max von Essen.The signers’ goals are basic: they are asking for a meeting with their own union officials, which seems likely to happen soon. “We are hopeful that the issue of realistic and detailed protocols to return to work can be prioritized so that funds can return to our union,” the letter says.But the letter, which was delivered to Equity on Tuesday and is being updated daily with more signatures, reflects longstanding frustration, both by some union members and some producers, over working with Equity through the course of the pandemic.Since the deadly coronavirus outbreak began, the union has barred its members from working on any productions in the country unless they have safety plans it has OK’d. Equity lists on its website 22 theaters where it has approved productions, but that’s a tiny fraction of the theaters in America, and some producers have said they’ve found the union nonresponsive or obstructionist.Frustration appears to be growing in part because Equity members have for months been seeing actors in film and television, who are represented by a different union, SAG-AFTRA, returning to work. Hughes said that a recent set of revisions to the union’s safety protocols, which have been updated regularly throughout the pandemic, was troubling because it included requirements, like private transportation for actors to theaters, that seemed prohibitively expensive.Equity, which represents about 51,000 actors and stage managers, did not immediately offer a comment, but on Monday the union’s president, Kate Shindle, and executive director, Mary McColl, wrote to members acknowledging that the landscape is shifting.“We are proud that our safety protocols have kept workers safe, but we also know that what we have done so far during the pandemic is not enough to bring us back to where we were,” they wrote. “When enough vaccine is available for everyone, a fully vaccinated company will have less risk, which will mean streamlined safety protocols and a faster return to work.” More

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      in Television

      Nicola Pagett, ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ Actress, Dies at 75

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      She preferred the stage, but she won praise for her work on television as the rebellious and thoroughly spoiled Elizabeth Bellamy, and later as Anna Karenina.Nicola Pagett, the actress who played the rebellious and thoroughly spoiled Elizabeth Bellamy on the beloved British television series “Upstairs, Downstairs” and the title role in an acclaimed BBC version of “Anna Karenina,” died on March 3 at a hospice center in suburban London. She was 75.The cause was a brain tumor, her daughter, Eve Swannell, said.Ms. Pagett was 26 when she was cast in the original “Upstairs, Downstairs” (1971-76), the prestigious, multi-award-winning British drama set in a spacious Belgravia townhouse during the first three decades of the 20th century. The Bellamys, Richard and Lady Marjorie, live there with their two grown children and about a half dozen servants, as the world of London aristocracy changes around them.In the first season, Elizabeth comes home from school in Germany, a changed girl-woman of 17. She reads Goethe, talks politics incessantly, refuses an arranged marriage with a rich Scotsman, walks out on her debutante ball, rejects her parents’ conservatism and entertains ill-mannered socialist poets in the morning room.Then she marries a charming poet (played by Ian Ogilvy) who shares her progressive social attitudes but not her physical desires. In Season 2, inconveniently pregnant by his publisher (from an assignation the husband had arranged), she goes home to her parents. She gives birth to a daughter, goes to jail with fellow suffragists, has an affair with an Armenian financier and tries running a hat shop before sailing away to New York, leaving others in the household to deal with England’s experience of World War I, the Spanish flu and the stock market crash.“Nothing more could have happened to me anyway,” she told The Washington Post years later about her decision to leave the show. “I could see the writers saying, ‘What the hell do we do with her now?’”Ms. Pagett remained busy onscreen, most notably in “Anna Karenina” (1977), a lush 10-part, eight-hour BBC production of Leo Tolstoy’s novel. Her performance as the doomed, adulterous title character earned glowing reviews.Ms. Pagett in the 10-part BBC adaptation of Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” (1977). She received glowing reviews for her performance as the doomed, adulterous title character.AlamyAnd she had a thriving London theater career for decades. She toured with “The Contessa” (1965), starring Vivien Leigh. She appeared with Alec Guinness in “A Voyage Round My Father” (1971). In 1974, she tackled the work of three great playwrights (Shakespeare, Chekhov and Ibsen) at once during a special Greenwich Theater season. She was Ophelia in “Hamlet,” Masha in “The Seagull” and Regina in “Ghosts.”A favorite of the playwright Harold Pinter, she played Helen when he directed Jean Giraudoux’s “The Trojan War Will Not Take Place” (1983). In a 1985 revival of Pinter’s “Old Times,” she was the center of an emotional triangle in which her husband and her long-ago roommate compete to prove their love. She was part of the original London cast of his “Party Time” (1991), about a cocktail-hour gathering of fashionable narcissists, chatting about island vacations and past love affairs while a violent conflict rages outside.In 1995, while playing a psychiatrist’s purposeful wife in Joe Orton’s black comedy “What the Butler Saw,” she had a breakdown. Doctors said she had manic depression, more often referred to now as bipolar disorder.During this period, Ms. Pagett wrote love letters to Alastair Campbell, the press secretary of Prime Minister Tony Blair, with whom she had become obsessed after watching him on television. With the help of the drug lithium and more than one stay in a psychiatric hospital, she largely recovered, but she soon retired from acting.She had gone “completely noisettes,” she wrote in “Diamonds Behind My Eyes” (1997), a memoir about her psychiatric crisis, but asked not to be described as mentally ill. “It gets right up my nose.”Nicola Mary Paget Scott was born on June 15, 1945, in Cairo, to British parents who had met in Egypt. Harold Scott was a Shell Oil executive, and Barbara (Black) Scott was stationed there with the Women’s Royal Naval Service.Nicola spent her childhood abroad. When she was 8 or so, she played Snow White at her convent school in Yokohama, Japan, and decided to make acting her career.At 17, she entered the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art for a two-year program, then appeared in repertory productions and changed her name (including adding a “T” to Paget). She made her London stage debut in “The Boston Summer” in 1968.By then Ms. Pagett had already begun her screen career, mostly by making guest appearances on British television series. In the film “Anne of the Thousand Days” (1969), she was Princess Mary, the teenage daughter of Catherine of Aragon and Henry VIII. In “There’s a Girl in My Soup” (1970), she was a radiant young bride ravished by a lecherous TV host (Peter Sellers) during her wedding reception.She later appeared in “Frankenstein: The True Story” (1973), a television movie whose co-writer was Christopher Isherwood. She played a socialite in “Scoop” (1987), based on Evelyn Waugh’s novel; a mother-of-the-bride who fancies the father-of-the-groom in the series “A Bit of a Do” (1989); and a second-rate Liverpool stage actress in the film “An Awfully Big Adventure” (1989).Ms. Pagett in her final screen role, in the British mini-series “Up Rising” (2000).ITV/ShutterstockHer final screen role was in “Up Rising” (2000), a mini-series about a retired couple in a village of oddballs.Ms. Pagett married the actor turned writer Graham Swannell in 1975. He was the co-author of her memoir, but they divorced after its publication.In addition to her daughter, a film and television production manager, Ms. Pagett is survived by a sister, Angela. Like many actors, Ms. Pagett preferred theater to film, especially after the movie “Oliver’s Story” (1978), the largely forgotten “Love Story” sequel, in which she played Ryan O’Neal’s shy furniture-designer blind date. Many of her scenes were cut.Yes, a live theater audience’s immediate reaction was great. But also, as The Telegraph quoted her as saying: “Onstage for two hours, I’m my own mistress. I can’t be cut or stopped or changed — or lost.”Besides, Ms. Pagett had learned what really mattered. As she told The Independent in 1992, her original ambition was “to open in the West End and have men with cloaks take me out to dinner.” But she soon discovered a bigger thrill.“I like looking into the eyes of someone whose work I respect,” she said, “and seeing them look back as if to say, ‘I think you can do it, too.’” More

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      Alex Newell Finds Inspiration in Whitney Houston, Billy Porter and ‘Dreamgirls’

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      The “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist” star talked about the performers he recognizes himself in, coming full circle with Mariah Carey and his signature banana pudding.It’s the line repeated every awards season — that it’s an honor just to be nominated.But Alex Newell sounded pretty convincing last month as he discussed his Critics Choice nomination for “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist,” which returns to NBC on March 28.“I was like a toddler seeing Christmas for the very first time,” he said of his best supporting actor recognition for Mo, the self-embracing, gender nonconforming building manager whose serious pipes reverberate through Zoey’s apartment wall. And sometimes in her head.“When you’re in front of the camera, you don’t get instant gratification like you do on a stage, where you can control how the audience feels,” Newell, 28, said. “You just have to hope that what you’re doing is brilliant and resonates and makes somebody feel something.”Alas, Newell didn’t win. But he has been making people feel a sweeping range of emotions since his performance on the reality competition show “The Glee Project” led to a guest spot that morphed into a recurring role (and for a season, a main cast credit) on “Glee” as Wade/Unique Adams, a transgender teen.But by his early 20s, Newell had determined that life in Hollywood “was going to be just about my appearance,” he said. So he moved to New York in search of greater acceptance and not long after raised the roof in his Broadway debut as Asaka in the revival of “Once on This Island.” Jesse Green, the chief theater critic of The New York Times, proclaimed him “ferocious.”Newell has since found a support system among his idols — some of whom, like Billy Porter and Tituss Burgess, grace his list of cultural essentials, which he elaborated on in a call from Vancouver, where “Zoey’s” is shot. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. Whitney Houston She was my all-time icon. She is the voice of a generation and those to come after her. She is a hot topic right now in my friend group with how we idealized the Fairy Godmother [in “Cinderella”] for so long. Her take on that role with such beauty and grace and vocal prowess was just wonderful. Even having that behind-the-scenes moment of her nurturing a talent like Brandy, when she was so young, was just everything that I strive to be for the generation coming after me as well.2. “The Preacher’s Wife” That movie was such a staple in my household — with my mom and my dad and I watching for as long as I can remember — every holiday season. Seeing the Black church in such a palpable way, and the hardships of keeping a small church open in tough times. Also, my love of gospel and the Georgia Mass Choir that Whitney was singing with was amazing. I remember listening to them every Sunday with my dad as he was driving the church van. I lost him when I was six, and that heart of the memory is still topical with who I am.3. “Dreamgirls” I am talking about the good old Broadway version with Jennifer Holliday, Loretta Devine, Sheryl Lee Ralph and Cleavant Derricks. I first discovered that musical right around the time that they were announcing the movie, and it really shaped who I am today. We all know the Supremes story that the musical is loosely based on. But when I read the synopsis and listened to the music, Effie White rang true to who I am. You see this beautiful Black woman who was passed over because she was not as thin or as commercial as her friend who she grew up with. And I’ve gotten passed over for a lot of things because I’m not as thin or not as commercial. I’ve had people tell me that I was too big to play a role. I’ve been cut out of scenes in musicals because I didn’t fit the costume plot. And it does take a toll on you. You do get very angry and jaded and spiteful because you see all of your own self-worth, but nobody else is seeing it. And then you feel that everybody’s turning on you. It’s one of those things that I watched in Effie — how you have to jump over the mental hurdle of that and find solace in yourself and the beauty in life.4. Family Cookouts I loved family cookouts because it was when I got to see everybody for a good amount of time. To see family and to have so much food and laughter and love and joy around, even if it were just for one day — even the drama of it all — was always something fun to do to reset the year.5. “The Watsons Go to Birmingham — 1963” by Christopher Paul Curtis I remember reading the book as a kid and just being so intrigued by it. My mother is from Birmingham, and she was a child around the time that the book took place. In reality, she was at a church down the street from the church that was bombed on that Sunday. And to think that that could have been her church, or that I personally couldn’t have been here had anything happened to her, is something that as an adult rings so much truer.6. “Charmbracelet” by Mariah Carey The first album that I bought with my own money. Don’t ask me why it was that one, but I played that CD until I lost it. I think my mother took the CD and broke it. I still hold in the back of my mind that I sang Mariah Carey to Mariah Carey. I sang “Hero.” I don’t tell people because I hated the performance. But my mother has a picture of me and Mariah Carey after with her with this big smile and me being me. It was the whole full-circle moment.7. Banana Pudding It’s this random connection that me and my mom have. Any time there’s a function where food will be made, banana pudding is what people ask both of us to make. I remember my mother making banana pudding from actual scratch in the kitchen, and I’d be like, “I don’t have the time to sit here and stir the pot for 20, 30 minutes while it’s on the stove.” If I told anybody I wouldn’t be famous anymore, but mine is the same exact recipe.8. Billy Porter and 9. Tituss Burgess I remember when I heard Billy Porter’s voice eons ago when Billy was in “Grease” as Teen Angel, singing “Beauty School Dropout.” And I was first introduced to Tituss Burgess when he was doing “The Little Mermaid” on Broadway as Sebastian. The first time that you see someone that sounds like you and reminds you so much of who you are, you obsess and fawn over them and you learn how they sing and how they perform and how they act. And when you meet them and they’re all that you could have wanted and still human at the end of the day — and they lift you up and praise you — I say, “Thank you.” It’s just this mutual respect. I appreciate and adore both of them so much. They keep me wanting to strive for more daily.10. Nell Carter My mother cultured me a lot by putting me in front of the television and letting me watch all of these old shows that she grew up with, countless hours of PBS performances. And I remember the replay of “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” which I had seen at my local theater a couple of years prior. Seeing this plus-size woman being phenomenally talented at singing and how light on her feet she was and her acting beats and the chops that she had. And how she could hold an entire audience in the palm of her hand with such confidence and control. And how she was just so self-aware of her body and who she was. The love that you could see that she had for herself was amazing. More

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      Yaphet Kotto, James Bond Villain and ‘Alien’ Star, Dies at 81

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyYaphet Kotto, Bond Villain and ‘Alien’ Star, Dies at 81The actor, who descended from Cameroonian royalty, was known for his roles in movies like “Midnight Run” and the TV show “Homicide: Life on the Street.”Sigourney Weaver and Yaphet Kotto in “Alien.”Credit…20th Century Fox, via Associated PressMarch 16, 2021, 4:47 a.m. ETYaphet Kotto, an imposing actor who descended from African royalty and was known for playing tough characters in a roster of films like “Alien” and “Midnight Run,” died on Monday near Manila in the Philippines. He was 81.His death was confirmed on Tuesday by his agent, Ryan Goldhar. His wife, Thessa Sinahon, announced it in a Facebook post. No other details were immediately available.Mr. Kotto, who said he came from Cameroonian royalty on his father’s side, began studying acting at 16 at the Actors Mobile Theater Studio, according to Variety, and by 19 he had made his professional theater debut in “Othello.”He often played police officers, criminals and other hardened personalities onscreen. He received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for his portrayal of President Idi Amin, the murderous Ugandan strongman, in the 1976 television movie “Raid on Entebbe.”He also starred as a police lieutenant in the 1990s-era TV hit “Homicide: Life on the Street,” an ex-convict in the 1978 film “Blue Collar” and a prison guard in “Brubaker,” a 1980 movie about a prison farm also starring Robert Redford.Mr. Kotto as Lt. Al Giardello in “Homicide: Life on the Street.”Credit…James Sorensen/NBCUniversal, via Getty ImagesHe even played a pair of Bond villains in the 1973 film “Live and Let Die”: both a corrupt Caribbean dictator and that character’s alter ago, a drug trafficker named Mr. Big.In 1993, Mr. Kotto, who stood 6-foot-3, told The Baltimore Sun that such roles presented a distorted image of what he was really like.“I want to try to play a much more sensitive man. A family man,” he told the newspaper. “There is an aspect of Black people’s lives that is not running or jumping.”Yaphet Frederick Kotto was born on Nov. 15, 1939, in Harlem and grew up in the Bronx. His father was Cameroonian royalty, The Baltimore Sun reported. His mother was of Panamanian and West Indian descent. The couple separated when Mr. Kotto was a child, and he was raised by his maternal grandparents.Mr. Kotto in the 1973 James Bond film “Live and Let Die.”Credit…MGM/UA Entertainment Mr. Kotto married three times; he and Ms. Sinahon, who is from the Philippines, wed in Baltimore in 1998.Mr. Kotto had six children. Information on his survivors was not immediately available.One of Mr. Kotto’s first parts was a supporting role in the 1964 film “Nothing but a Man,” about a Black couple who face discrimination in the Deep South. He would go on to have more than 90 other acting credits, in film, in television and on Broadway.Notably, he played Parker, an engineer tasked with repairing a spaceship in “Alien,” the 1979 blockbuster from Ridley Scott.In the 1988 action-comedy “Midnight Run,” co-starring Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin, he played the F.B.I. agent Alonzo Mosely, whose stolen ID becomes fodder for a running joke. And in “The Running Man,” a dystopian 1987 thriller set in what was then the near future (2019), Mr. Kotto played a resistance fighter alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in a fascist version of America.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More