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      in Television

      Ashley Park Wants to Laugh (or Cry) With You at the Theater

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      TV shows like “Emily in Paris” and “Beef” are raising her profile, but she’s still a fan of “the magic of a live audience.”Ashley Park has heard the criticism of “Emily in Paris.” The costumes can be garish. (Bucket hats? In the office?!) The characters can be cartoonish. The biggest worry for Emily, the protagonist, is often whether to cut trauma bangs or what outré dress to wear next.“Just relax. We want the show to be fun,” Park, who plays Mindy Chen, Emily’s best friend and an aspiring singer, said in a phone call from her home in Los Angeles. “You can fold your laundry to it. It’s a really easy watch.”In Season 4 of the Netflix comedy series, whose first five episodes begin streaming on Aug. 15, the action moves temporarily to Italy, on a Roman holiday. Another change: For the first time, viewers of the show will get to see winter in Paris.“I don’t think anyone enjoyed that — Paris winter is hard — but the fashion is to die for,” said Park, 33, who previously split her time between New York and California.That move reflects the fact that Park, who earned a Tony nomination as Gretchen Wieners in the Broadway musical “Mean Girls,” has increasingly found herself in demand as a television and film actress.“When John Hoffman, the showrunner of ‘Only Murders in the Building,’ calls you and says, ‘Hey, I would love for you to play this part; you do a duet with Meryl Streep,’ there’s literally zero percent, if not negative percent, hesitation,” said Park, who appeared in Season 3 of the series.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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      in Movies

      ‘Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes’ and the Moment Star Worship Curdled

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      The documentary blends audio interviews with footage from her life to provide a revealing look not so much at the actress, but at celebrity culture.This summer, thanks mostly to the rise of Glen Powell, I’ve been in a lot of discussions about the state of movie stardom. The jury’s still out on whether we have “real” movie stars today, but it’s clear that the process of becoming a celebrity is different now from what it used to be. Social media and the popularity of small-screen entertainment have changed the game.That question of stardom permeates “Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes” (premiering Saturday on HBO and Max), an intriguing documentary about one of Hollywood’s most famous actresses, mostly in her own words. In the 1960s, Taylor gave interviews to the prolific journalist Richard Meryman, who died in 2015. Meryman, who had been known for his interviews with celebrities, was researching a book. Recently, more than 40 hours of tapes containing Taylor’s interviews were found in his archive.That audio, in which Taylor is reflective and candid, is the backbone for this documentary. The director Nanette Burstein takes a smart approach to the material, layering the conversation — along with audio from a handful of older interviews with Taylor and some of her friends — on top of archival footage from her life. Taylor became a familiar screen presence while still very young, with her first screen role, in “There’s One Born Every Minute,” hitting theaters when she was 10, in 1942. Soon after, she starred in “Lassie Come Home” and “National Velvet” and turned into a figure of fascination for the audiences. Thus the cameras followed her everywhere.For the Taylor enthusiast, the film is unlikely to reveal much new information. But that’s not really the point. The movie covers each of her eight marriages and many of her projects, but Taylor’s narration focuses largely on her feelings at the time. Because we’re often seeing footage of her public appearances as she talks about her interior life, the result is almost like a behind-the-scenes track, a fresh disclosure of the disjunction between what we think we know about stars — who they are, how they feel — and what’s actually going on inside.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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      in Theater

      Adam Driver Is to Star Off Broadway as a Country-Western Singer

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      The actor will return to the stage this fall in a revival of Kenneth Lonergan’s “Hold On to Me Darling.”Adam Driver, a Broadway alumnus and prolific film and television actor best known for “Girls” and “Star Wars,” will return to the stage this fall to portray a narcissistic country-western singer in a limited-run Off Broadway comedy.The play, “Hold On to Me Darling,” was written by Kenneth Lonergan, an accomplished playwright (“The Waverly Gallery”), screenwriter and film director. (He won an Oscar for the “Manchester by the Sea” screenplay.)In “Hold On to Me Darling,” the main character decides to move home to Tennessee after his mother dies. The collision of a big star and a small town fuel the comedy of the play, which was first staged in 2016 at Atlantic Theater Company, an Off Broadway nonprofit.The new production, a commercial endeavor, is to begin previews Sept. 24 and open Oct. 16 at the Lucille Lortel Theater in the West Village. The run is scheduled to last just 13 weeks, although sometimes limited-run plays are extended.The production will be directed by Neil Pepe, who also directed the 2016 version. Pepe is the Atlantic’s artistic director.The producers of this fall’s run are Seaview, Sue Wagner, and John Johnson, who were among the producers of “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea,” which starred Aubrey Plaza and Christopher Abbott and had a run at the Lortel that began last fall. That show’s success helped draw the attention of producers to commercial Off Broadway, a sector of the theater business that had atrophied over time, but is now attracting more interest because the producing costs are far lower than on Broadway.Driver, 40, is no stranger to the stage. A graduate of Juilliard’s acting program, he has appeared on Broadway three times, most recently starring in a 2019 revival of “Burn This,” and he has also performed in several previous Off Broadway productions.Ben Brantley, then the Times’s chief theater critic, named “Hold On to Me Darling” among the best shows of 2016, and praised the play as “a tragicomic commentary on a culture ruled by the religion of fame.” More

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      in Television

      Arrest Warrant Issued for ‘Power Rangers’ Actor Hector David Rivera

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      Mr. Rivera, whose stage name is Hector David Jr., was charged with battery in Idaho after a video showed him pushing an older man who used a walker, the police said.An arrest warrant was issued on Wednesday for an actor who appeared for years as the Green Ranger in “Power Rangers” films and television shows, after a video showed him pushing a man in his 60s who used a walker, the police in Idaho said.The actor, Hector David Rivera, 35, was charged with misdemeanor battery in Idaho after video surfaced on Friday showing him in a dispute with the older man, said Carmen Boeger, a spokeswoman for the Nampa Police Department. Nampa is a city west of Boise with over 100,000 people.The video, captured on Friday on a bystander’s dashboard camera, begins with a dispute over a parking spot between a man wearing a New England Patriots jersey and another who is using a walker. It ends with the first man shoving the other one to the ground before climbing into a black truck. He later drove away, the department said.The 14-second video has no audio and does not show the full interaction. But the truck appears to be parked in a space for people with disabilities, and Ms. Boeger said that the dispute began over a parking spot.Video released by the Nampa Police Department in Nampa, Idaho, showed Hector David Rivera, an actor in the “Power Rangers” franchise, pushing an older man to the ground in a parking lot.Nampa Police DepartmentThe Nampa police identified Mr. Rivera by posting the video on the department’s social media pages and asking the public for assistance, Ms. Boeger said. An arrest warrant was issued on Wednesday, and the victim’s name was not released.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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      in Movies

      Robert Downey Jr. to Return to Marvel as Dr. Doom

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      The actor announced his return to Marvel’s superhero movie franchise five years after ending his long run as Iron Man.Robert Downey Jr. is going from superhero to supervillain.The actor, who entertained audiences as Iron Man for more than a decade in several Hollywood blockbusters, is returning to the Marvel cinematic universe as the villain Victor von Doom in two upcoming movies.“New mask, same task,” Downey announced at a Comic-Con event in San Diego on Saturday, after he unveiled the character’s signature silver mask and green cloak to the roar of a cheering crowd.“What can I tell you?” he said. “I like playing complicated characters.”Downey is set to appear as the character, simply known as Dr. Doom, in “Avengers: Doomsday,” which is expected to be released in May 2026, and “Avengers: Secret Wars” a year later.Downey, 59, has been a prolific actor since the 1980s, portraying characters both serious and comedic.He received Academy Award nominations for his portrayal of the actor Charlie Chaplin in the 1992 film “Chaplin,” and for his role in the 2008 war comedy “Tropic Thunder.”After multiple probation violations stemming from an arrest on drug and weapons charges, he was sentenced to prison in 1999 and overcame a long battle with substance abuse.This year, he won the Academy Award for best supporting actor for his role in “Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s film about the making of the atomic bomb during World War II. Downey played the titular character’s political rival, Lewis Strauss.But audiences best know him for helping to start an era of blockbuster superhero movies that began in 2008 with the first “Iron Man” movie.He played the charismatic genius-inventor-billionaire-arms dealer Tony Stark, who becomes Iron Man and eventually leads a team of heroes, the Avengers, who protect the world against dark forces.He played the character in sequels and spinoffs including “Iron Man 2,” “Captain America: Civil War” and “Spider-Man: Homecoming.” He last appeared as Iron Man in the 2019 film, “Avengers: Endgame,” in which the character was killed off.And now Downey is going back to the popular superhero realm with Dr. Doom, a megalomaniacal villainous tycoon from the Marvel comic book series “Fantastic Four,” which was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1961.In the series, Dr. Doom wore a threatening silver mask to hide his scarred face.The character was previously played by Julian McMahon in the 2005 film “Fantastic Four” and in the 2007 sequel “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.” A reboot in 2015 featured the actor Toby Kebbell as Dr. Doom.The casting news comes as Marvel Studios, which has been trying to reverse recent box office misses, brought back two of its most popular characters, Deadpool and Wolverine, with the movie “Deadpool & Wolverine.”The movie was expected to sell roughly $205 million in tickets in the United States and Canada over the weekend, box office analysts said on Saturday. More

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      in Television

      Lisa Kudrow Brings Her Daffy Charm to ‘Time Bandits’

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      The actress dialed up the zaniness in the TV reboot of a Terry Gilliam fantasy classic, created by the team behind “What We Do in the Shadows.”Lisa Kudrow doesn’t particularly like to travel. Raised and based in Los Angeles, she mostly hasn’t had to. Even the quintessential New York sitcom “Friends” was shot in Burbank.“I like L.A.,” she said in a video call from her home there. “I guess vacations are nice, but I feel like I live in a vacation spot so, where am I going? I can watch a video.”But when the filmmaker Taika Waititi sent her a message on Instagram asking if she would come to New Zealand to star in a series-length adaptation of the 1981 Terry Gilliam movie “Time Bandits,” she said yes. It was a six-month commitment, but in one of the few places on Earth Kudrow had always wanted to visit.And, as she said with a laugh, “No one’s putting me in a Hobbit movie.”Fair enough, though there are bigger departures from Middle-earth than “Time Bandits,” a 10-part adventure-fantasy based on a movie about time traveling dwarfs. The series, which debuted Wednesday on Apple TV+, puts a new spin on the beloved film — an ambitious task, given the movie’s bona fides and cult status. The original was written by Gilliam and his fellow Monty Python player Michael Palin, and it starred the likes of John Cleese, Sean Connery, Shelley Duvall and Ian Holm.The new version, created by Waititi and his frequent collaborators Jemaine Clement and Iain Morris, stars Kudrow as the makeshift leader of the bandits, Penelope, who is perturbed by the arrival of a new member, a history-obsessed boy named Kevin (Kal-El Tuck) who accidentally joins them after a portal opens up in his bedroom. Kudrow leads an ensemble cast; Waititi plays the ostensibly benevolent Supreme Being, from whom the bandits have stolen a map of the time portals, and Clement plays Pure Evil, who can’t even say his cosmic nemesis’ name without gagging.From left, Tadhg Murphy, Roger Jean Nsengiyumva, Kudrow, Kal-El Tuck, Kiera Thompson and Rune Temte in “Time Bandits”; Kudrow plays the leader of the titular ragtag crew. Apple TV+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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      in Movies

      Sympathy for the Diva: Why We Love ‘Difficult’ Stars

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      A new Faye Dunaway documentary wants to turn us from gossips into cheerleaders.Before Faye Dunaway makes her big entrance, you hear her snap from off camera: “We need to shoot. I’m here now. Come on!” When we meet her inside her apartment, she’s using a piece of paper to fan herself with a petulance that’s reminiscent of Queen Charlotte from “Bridgerton.” This is the feisty opening to the HBO documentary “Faye,” and it doesn’t do much to dispel decades of rumors painting Dunaway as a temperamental diva. Difficult, erratic, vain, narcissistic: These descriptors have etched themselves into the reputations of many famous women, and they have also been countered in all sorts of media. Much like Barbra Streisand’s memoir, “My Name Is Barbra,” or the 2018 Grace Jones documentary, “Bloodlight and Bami,” one clear purpose of “Faye” is rebuttal: to let Dunaway reconstruct the narrative.Like many in my generation, I first saw Dunaway in “Mommie Dearest,” the 1981 film — either a disaster or a masterpiece, depending on whom you ask and their tolerance for camp — in which she played another supposed she-devil: Joan Crawford, whom the movie depicts as an abusive mother and a fame-hungry prima donna. Unlike Roger Ebert, who called it “one of the most depressing films in a long time,” I was transfixed by “Mommie Dearest.” I couldn’t get enough of Dunaway’s shellacked eyebrows, the murderous rose-garden scene, the “no more wire hangers” theatrics. There’s an entire age cohort whose sense of Dunaway is all scrambled up in this role. Instead of meeting her via classics like “Bonnie and Clyde,” “Chinatown” and “Network,” we met her as Crawford, berating everyone in her path. As Dunaway says in a 1984 interview clip shown in the new documentary, “There’s an inevitable tendency of people who both work in the industry and the audience to associate, to think you’re like the parts you play.”If you’re not up on the reputation that Dunaway now has to dispute, a quick scroll through Reddit threads about her should get you up to speed. There are first-person accounts, too, many of which appear in HBO’s documentary. In one clip, Johnny Carson asks Bette Davis — rumored to be a bit of a harpy herself — to name the most difficult person she ever worked with; Davis, looking prim in a white bucket hat, shoots back, “One million dollars, Faye Dunaway,” to great laughter. In a clip that’s not shown in the documentary, Brenda Vaccaro, who worked alongside Dunaway in the 1984 movie “Supergirl,” says that Dunaway “would terrify people” — though she also calls her a “brilliant actress” and adds that “you can see the struggle.”“Faye” uses a mix of straight-to-camera interviews, family photos, archival footage and plenty of film clips to humanize little Dorothy Faye, a girl from Bascom, Fla., who quickly achieved Hollywood-icon status. It also dwells on that “struggle” part and enlists talking heads to spring to Dunaway’s defense. We learn about her alcohol dependency and her late-in-life diagnosis of bipolar disorder, both of which Dunaway finally sought treatment for after years of unexplained mood swings, depression and erratic behavior. Sharon Stone, Dunaway’s chum and mentee, talks about the intense pressure on actresses to be thin and says that Dunaway has only ever been kind and generous to her. She becomes fiercely protective when the subject of “Mommie Dearest” comes up: “Everybody wants to make fun of her for ‘Mommie Dearest,’ but you tell me how you play that part,” she says. “The joke is on the director, the joke is not on the artist.”At each stage, we the audience have our own parts to play: fans, bullies, executioners, cheerleaders, allies.Mickey Rourke — whose own reputation isn’t exactly untarnished — starred in “Barfly” with Dunaway. He was, he says, “in awe of her and kind of a little intimidated.” He attempts to soften Dunaway’s image, but that task becomes complicated when people like Howard Koch come along to share their experiences. Koch was first assistant director on the set of “Chinatown.” In his first phone call to Dunaway, he says, she guessed that he was a Sagittarius, then informed him that this astrological offense meant they would never get along. He then dishes about Dunaway’s demanding that Blistex be applied to her lips before every take. Jack Nicholson, we learn, had a loving nickname for her on the set: “Dread.”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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      in Theater

      In ‘Pre-Existing Condition,’ a Character Isn’t Defined by Abuse, or One Actress

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      Stars like Edie Falco and Deirdre O’Connell bring a communal quality to Marin Ireland’s play about the aftermath of domestic violence.Most actors will tell you that when they take on a role, they want to own it. If it’s a classic or a play based on a movie, they like to say that they avoid watching earlier performances so they can go in free of preconceptions.The women taking turns playing A, the central character in Marin Ireland’s new play “Pre-Existing Condition,” went for a communal quality. “When you’re seeing a person perform, it has the DNA of all the other people because we’ve watched each other,” the director and actress Maria Dizzia said.Tavi Gevinson, who starts her stint as A on July 23, said, “I think it definitely helps eliminate this illusion that there is some ideal performance that you’re trying to unlock and do an imitation of — it’s something that you’re co-creating with the piece every night.”The show, whose run at the Connelly Theater Upstairs was just extended through Aug. 17, is structured as a series of brief vignettes involving A, who has endured domestic violence. In addition to Dizzia and Gevinson, the past, present and upcoming actresses playing A include Tatiana Maslany, Julia Chan, Deirdre O’Connell and Edie Falco, who recently joined the cast.In the aftermath of the breakup with the man who hit her, A is seen interacting with different people in her life: her mother, the leaders of a support group, a lawyer, prospective dates, friends — all played by Greg Keller, Sarah Steele and Dael Orlandersmith, who appear at every show.Greg Keller and Julia Chan in the play, which has been in development for about 12 years. Emilio MadridWe 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