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      Natasha Lyonne’s Success Is Driven by a Sense of Mortality

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      Natasha Lyonne has her funeral all planned out.Not just planned, really, but choreographed, produced and directed, complete with music cues and writing prompts, to calibrate the emotion just right. “Otherwise it can run long,” she explained. So Lyonne, the downtown vivant actress, writer and director, has diligently assigned her passel of famous friends “jobs that they didn’t want.”There will be a month of commemorative screenings at Film Forum and songs by Karen O of Yeah Yeah Yeahs (“I have a sworn promise that she performs; I’m very grateful”) and the “Color Purple” star Danielle Brooks, because her voice “breaks my heart.” The comedian John Mulaney will be on hand to punch up material. “I actually tasked him with writing speeches for people that wouldn’t want to get onstage,” Lyonne said, like her BFF Chloë Sevigny. “I was like: You need to give Chloë some jokes.”The plot she acquired, at the Hollywood Forever cemetery, alongside her boyfriend at the time, Fred Armisen, she has now graciously ceded to his wife, Riki Lindhome. “I probably don’t want to be buried in Los Angeles anyway, if I’m honest,” she allowed. But she’s still making him the funerary musical supervisor.That Lyonne, at 45, has thought at length about her own demise is, to anyone who knows her or her oeuvre, not surprising. All of her recent, most celebrated projects — including “Russian Doll,” the Emmy-winning Netflix series; “Poker Face,” the retro crime procedural on Peacock; and her latest role, in the Netflix drama “His Three Daughters” — find her confronting life’s end. She does it with a spectacular, bewitching buoyancy. Even in “His Three Daughters,” in which she displays an unexpected reserve (but exuberant hair) opposite Carrie Coon and Elizabeth Olsen as estranged sisters caring for their father in his last days. It’s earning her Oscar talk.As a producer, Lyonne “likes the grind and the hustle, and the hard work that comes with it,” said Amy Poehler. “That’s not always the case.”OK McCausland for The New York TimesSo, when we found ourselves in an East Village restaurant on a drizzly Friday night, ordering a dessert made of Pop Rocks and talking about death, it felt just as the universe — or New York City, same difference — intended.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Hollywood Has Enough Fake Accents. Bring Back the Weird Voices.

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      David Lynch’s voice is unmistakable — and a national treasure. The world of film deserves more like it.“Something is coming along for you to see and hear,” mewled the filmmaker David Lynch in a video posted online this past spring. The clip was a teaser for a music project, and it caught the eye via the director’s old-school cool — his shades and upswept silver locks, framed in close-up. But it was another bit of business that actually held attention: the jangle and blare of Lynch’s reedy voice.Larger-than-life screen personalities are necessarily watchable. Some also prove mysteriously listenable. Lynch is among them, a member of the small pantheon of filmmakers whose mystique is partly indebted to the textures of their speech: the gorgeous intonations of Orson Welles, the reminiscing tones of Agnès Varda, the runaway-train enthusiasm of Quentin Tarantino.Over his long career, Lynch has offered his own locomotive thrills. It begins with that unmistakable voice — what the director Mel Brooks once called his “kind of crazy Midwestern accent.” In fact, Lynch’s family moved frequently, and his childhood unfurled across a wide swath of midcentury America. Along the way, his voice settled into a faintly comic register: thin and tremulous, with a hint of helium, containing both the threat of a whine and the chirpy approachability of an archetypal 1950s suburbia.Lynch is a raconteur of some renown; he has spoken of Wookiees, decaying factories and an overfed Chihuahua who resembled “a water balloon with little legs.” He enjoys folksy turns of phrase (“Golden sunshine all along the way,” he often declared in the online weather reports he used to offer) and intriguing maxims (“A washed butt never boils”). Ideas, he argues, are pre-existing “gifts” that artists can “catch.” You can sense a similar pursuit in his interviews: At times he speaks as if he were reciting the words of a dimly heard incoming transmission, wiggling his fingers and shutting his eyes. Even his mundane remarks can take on an air of profundity, ringing persistently in the mind.And sometimes, the ears. Lynch “has to have his megaphone to make his voice sound even more nasal,” the actress Naomi Watts once said, describing his on-set carnival barking. “When he’s two feet away from you as well.” He’s liable to stretch out words like “beautiful,” imbuing them with the deep emotion of an explorer bringing home tales of briefly glimpsed miracles. His born-in-the-’40s diction makes matters even stranger: Lynch, a self-identified Eagle Scout, can be heard in one documentary repeatedly and earnestly exclaiming, “Oh my golly.”Lynch ‘has to have his megaphone to make his voice sound even more nasal.’We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jeremy Allen White, of ‘The Bear,’ Wins Emmy for Best Actor in a Comedy

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      Another Emmy? Yes, Chef.Jeremy Allen White, who plays a chef always on the verge of a nervous breakdown in the FX series “The Bear,” won the Emmy for best actor in a comedy on Sunday.In the show, White plays Carmen Berzatto, known as Carmy, a high-profile chef in New York who comes home to Chicago to take over an Italian beef sandwich shop, after his brother dies by suicide. In Season 2, which was under consideration in Sunday’s ceremony, Carmy tries to transform the spot into a Michelin-worthy destination. This was his second nomination and win for the role.“My heart is just beating right out of its chest,” White said in his acceptance speech before professing his love for his castmates.“This show has changed my life,” White said. “It has instilled a faith that change is possible. If you are able to reach out, you are really truly never actually alone.”White beat Steve Martin and Martin Short of “Only Murders in the Building,” Matt Berry of “What We Do in the Shadows,” D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai of “Reservation Dogs” and Larry David of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”“The Bear” was a heavy favorite heading into the 76th Emmy Awards, as the show made Emmy history in July when it notched 23 nominations for its second season, setting a record for most nominations for a comedy series in a single year. (The record belonged previously to “30 Rock.”) White was also widely favored.In an unusual quirk of timing, this is the second time this calendar year that White has won an Emmy for playing Carmy. For his work in Season 1, he accepted the best lead actor award in January, when the 75th Emmy Awards aired because of delays caused by the writer and actor strikes. More

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      Jean Smart Wins a Third Emmy for ‘Hacks’

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      Jean Smart has just won a third Emmy for her starring turn in the Max series “Hacks,” the gleefully sardonic half-hour sitcom set in the rarefied, ruthless world of stand-up comedy.It is her sixth Emmy overall.“It’s very humbling. It really is. I appreciate this,” Smart said in a low voice, as she accepted the trophy. Then she went in for the punchline. “Because I don’t get enough attention. I’m serious.”Smart beat out a roster of actresses including Quinta Brunson, the creator and star of “Abbott Elementary,” who won the award in the previous Emmy ceremony, in January; and Ayo Edebiri of FX’s “The Bear,” who moved into the lead actress category after winning best supporting actress in January. Also nominated were Selena Gomez, for “Only Murders in the Building,” and the former “S.N.L.” co-stars Maya Rudolph, for “Loot,” and Kristen Wiig, for “Palm Royale.”As Deborah Vance, a celebrated comedian enjoying a late-career triumph, Smart, 72, is able to play smart, sexy, callous, vulnerable and very, very funny. In this latest season, she executes a mercenary plan to achieve something typically denied to women: a host gig on a major late-night show.In May, Smart told The New York Times, “I’ve always been part way to between leading lady and a character actress.” Who could doubt her leading-lady chops now? More

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      Emmy Awards Winners: Updating List

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      The list of winners for the 76th Emmy Awards.[Follow live updates of the Emmy Awards here.]The 76th Emmy Awards is now underway at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles and is being broadcast live on ABC. The father-son duo Eugene and Dan Levy, of “Schitt’s Creek” fame, are hosting.Because of the writers’ and actors’ strikes last year, this is actually the second Emmys ceremony of 2024: The first one took place in January after it was postponed from last September.“The Bear” is up for the most awards in the comedy category, with its 23 nominations alone breaking a record for a comedy (“30 Rock” previously held the record for 15 years). Because of the eligibility period, these nominations are for Season 2 of “The Bear,” not the third season, which came out this summer. For drama, “Shogun” has the most nods.New shows including “Palm Royale” and “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” as well as the limited series “Baby Reindeer,” also have a chance to end the evening with multiple statuettes.At the Creative Arts Emmys, held last weekend, the songwriting duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul reached EGOT status after winning in the outstanding original music and lyrics category for their song “Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It?” from “Only Murders in the Building.”These are this year’s Emmy winners so far.Best Actor, ComedyJeremy Allen White in “The Bear.”FXWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Emmy Hosts Eugene and Daniel Levy Open Ceremony With Playful Jokes

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      Eugene and Dan Levy, the father-and-son acting duo best known for the sitcom “Schitt’s Creek,” opened the Emmy Awards on Sunday with playful digs at the changing television industry and its audience, calling the ceremony “broadcast TV’s biggest night for honoring movie stars on streaming services.”“The creators of ‘Shogun’ actually had their scripts translated into Japanese, rewritten and then translated back into English subtitles that you missed because you were also on your phone watching Sabrina Carpenter eat a hot wing,” joked Dan Levy, referring to one of one of the top contenders for best drama series.The Levys’ rapport is self-deprecating and inoffensive — a fitting mix for prime-time television.“I wouldn’t actually even call us hosts — we’re more like actors acting like hosts,” Dan Levy said.The actors drew their own accolades from the Television Academy as creators and stars of “Schitt’s Creek,” which earned them both acting Emmys. In 2020, Dan Levy became the first performer to collect four Emmys during a prime-time telecast — for writing, directing, best supporting actor and for best comedy.The hosts poked at one of the most nominated shows, “The Bear,” after some in the industry have questioned whether it qualifies a comedy.“In the true spirit of ‘The Bear,’ we will not make any jokes,” Eugene Levy said. More

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      ‘The Interview’: Demi Moore Is Done With the Male Gaze

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      Demi Moore’s new movie, “The Substance,” which opens Sept. 20, is a dark comedy about the horrors of getting older as a woman in Hollywood. But it’s also a literal body-horror film — the basic premise is that Moore’s character, an aging actress-turned-celebrity-fitness-instructor named Elisabeth Sparkle, takes a strange elixir (the substance) that allows her to create a younger, more perfect version of herself. And you see that creation in bloody, visceral detail. The movie kind of grossed me out, to be honest, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it afterward. And it was fascinating to see Moore, who has been open about her own struggles with her body image and has lived most of her life in the public eye, play this role.Listen to the Conversation With Demi MooreThe actress discusses how her relationship to her body and fame has changed after decades in the public eye.Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon | iHeart | NYT Audio AppI’ve been mesmerized by Moore for decades, starting in 1985 with “St. Elmo’s Fire,” when her husky voice and bold onscreen persona — in this instance, a kind of wildness that made her seem both alluring and destructive — first broke through. There was a period when it felt as if every movie Moore starred in was an event — “Ghost,” “A Few Good Men,” “G.I. Jane,” “Striptease,” “Indecent Proposal.” She eventually became the highest-paid actress in Hollywood, and also an early advocate for pay equity in the industry, long before the issue was part of the national discourse.But even though Moore was such a visible celebrity of my teenage and early adult years, I never felt I knew much about her until reading her revealing 2019 memoir, “Inside Out,” which opens at the lowest point in her life, with the end of her marriage to Ashton Kutcher and her relapse into alcoholism. Moore’s struggles started early as the child of a mentally ill, alcoholic mother. But much of the book is about the extreme lengths she went to during her prime Hollywood days to control her body through disordered eating and exercise. Now in her 60s and a grandmother, Moore tells me she has finally grown comfortable in her own skin and, with “The Substance” and this stage of her career, is hoping to upend expectations about what it means to be an aging woman in an industry that both embraced and judged her harshly. (And a note: I asked Moore how her former husband Bruce Willis, who’s living with frontotemporal dementia, is doing, and she said he’s stable and OK, all things considered.)Why did you sign on to star in a movie about a woman who’s aging in Hollywood and at war with her own body? It felt very meta watching you do this. Why it was easy for me to step in and do this is because I don’t feel I am her. This is a woman who has no family — she’s dedicated her entire life to her career, and when that’s taken, what does she have? And so, in a way, I had enough separation from her, and at the same time, a deep, internal connection to the pain that she was experiencing, the rejection that she felt. I knew it would be challenging, but potentially a really important exploration of the issue.Tell me what you understand the issue to be. That it’s not about what’s being done to us — it’s what we do to ourselves. It’s the violence we have against ourselves. The lack of love and self-acceptance, and that within the story, we have this male perspective of the idealized woman that I feel we as women have bought into. More

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      Margaret Qualley Is Getting the Hang of Being a Movie Star

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      Margaret Qualley could finally breathe again.“I’ve been working a lot,” she said over iced tea at Clark’s, a Brooklyn Heights diner near where she lives with her husband, the music producer Jack Antonoff. “I’m relishing these little lull moments.”Qualley, 29, has more than earned a break. After making a striking debut 10 years ago in the HBO series “The Leftovers,” she appeared in “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” followed by Emmy-nominated performances in “Fosse/Verdon” and the Netflix mini-series “Maid.” In the past year, she starred in “Poor Things,” “Drive-Away Dolls” and “Kinds of Kindness,” and when we met, she had just returned from shooting three back-to-back movies — Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke’s “Honey Don’t!,” John Patton Ford’s “Huntington” and Richard Linklater’s “Blue Moon.”Moviegoers will next see her in “The Substance,” a film that is somehow a departure from all of the above and one she acknowledged was uniquely challenging. Directed by Coralie Fargeat and slated for release on Sept. 20, it is a body-horror blood bath in which Demi Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, an actress who, attempting to recapture her fading youth, injects herself with a mysterious serum.“I’m just trying to move through life like water in a river,” Margaret Qualley said, “and stay agile and move around the rocks.”Thea Traff for The New York TimesThe result is Sue, played by Qualley, a younger, taller, “perfect” woman who emerges fully formed from Elisabeth’s body. The two of them must trade places every week, with the one who’s off-duty kept nourished by IV bags of potions. But soon enough, Sue develops a taste for her brand-new world and doesn’t want to be put on ice when it’s her turn to hibernate.Qualley was in Panama, shooting Claire Denis’s “Stars at Noon,” when she read the script, and was drawn to the prospect of playing a character who seemed “really far from me,” she said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More