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      in Movies

      Valerie Mahaffey, Actress in “Northern Exposure” and “Desperate Housewives,” Dies at 71

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      She had memorable roles on TV shows like “Desperate Housewives” and “Northern Exposure,” and in the dark comedy film “French Exit.”Valerie Mahaffey, a character actress with a knack for playing eccentric women who sometimes revealed themselves to be sinister on television shows like “Desperate Housewives,” “Northern Exposure” and “Devious Maids,” died on Friday in Los Angeles. She was 71.The cause was cancer, her husband, the actor Joseph Kell, said in a statement.Ms. Mahaffey had worked steadily over the past five decades, starting out on the NBC daytime soap opera, “The Doctors,” for which she received a Daytime Emmy nomination for best supporting actress in 1980. Most recently, she appeared in the movie “The 8th Day,” a crime thriller released in March. She was also known for her guest-starring roles on well-known TV series such as “Seinfeld” and “Grey’s Anatomy.”She won an Emmy for best supporting actress in 1992 for her work as Eve, a hypochondriac, on the 1990s CBS series “Northern Exposure,” a drama set in Alaska. She was best known for playing seemingly friendly women who become villainous characters in dramas such as “Desperate Housewives,” where she appeared in nine episodes.In her “Housewives” role as Alma Hodge, she was a woman trapped in a loveless marriage who faked her own death to get back at her husband, hoping he would be blamed for her disappearance.She most recently won acclaim for her work in the 2020 dark comedy, “French Exit,” which saw her nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for her portrayal of Madame Reynard, a scene-stealing eccentric widow.In an interview in 2021 with the Gold Derby, Ms. Mahaffey discussed the role, saying: “I know how to be funny. I’ve done sitcoms. I know ba-dum-bum humor.”“Maybe it’s this point in my life,” she added, “I don’t want any artifice. And I wanted to play the truth of every moment.”She also said then that she often ended up playing characters who were “a little askew,” which she said was aligned with how people are in reality.Ms. Mahaffey was born on June 16, 1953, in Sumatra, Indonesia. Her mother, Jean, was Canadian, and her father, Lewis, was an American who worked in the oil business. Her family later moved to Nigeria before eventually settling in Austin, Texas, where she attended high school and went on to earn a bachelor of fine arts degree in 1975, from the University of Texas.The frequent moves made her family very close, she told The New York Times in a 1983 interview.“We had to leave friends behind all the time, and so we turned toward one another,” she said.In addition to her husband, Ms. Mahaffey is survived by their daughter, Alice Richards. More

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      in Movies

      Kyra Sedgwick Wants More Middle-Aged Sex Onscreen

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      The actress, currently starring in “Bad Shabbos,” on ’90s rock, Miranda July and “PBS NewsHour.”Kyra Sedgwick can relate to the Upper West Side matriarch she portrays in her latest film, “Bad Shabbos.”“I very much have all the trope attributes of Jewish motherhood,” she said. “I really want to know that you’ve eaten, and if you’re hungry I’ll make you something. I want to make sure you’re not too cold or too hot. I want to know what you had for breakfast.”“Bad Shabbos” centers on a Shabbat dinner that goes spectacularly off the rails, but Sedgwick finds the sentiments it evokes to be universal. “Like them or not, they’re your family,” she said in a video call from Austin, Texas, where she and her husband, Kevin Bacon, and their children, Travis and Sosie, are making a comedy-horror movie about a family of filmmakers.“It is not us, but it is inspired by us,” she said before elaborating on why ’90s rock, “All Fours” by Miranda July and the meditation teacher Tara Brach are among her must-haves. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.‘Liberation’ by Bess WohlBess Wohl is extraordinary. Basically it’s about this woman who’s now in her 30s trying to figure out who her mother was in the genesis of women’s lib. And she’s imagining what that was like and asking, “What did we get wrong?” I think the message of the play is: We didn’t get it wrong. The world got it wrong.Fleur de Thé Rose Bulgare by CreedI’m just heartbroken because they stopped making it. I’m not a big perfume person, but I’ve been wearing it for 20, 25 years, and all of a sudden they’re putting it in the vault. And there’s really not much to say except that I just loved it.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

    • 163 Shares86 Views

      in Theater

      How Megan Hilty, a Tony Awards Best Actress Nominee, Spends Her Show Days

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      For 20 hours a week, Megan Hilty is a self-obsessed, vindictive, fading movie star. Then she spends the rest of her time trying to make it up to everyone.Ms. Hilty, 44, known for her starring role in the NBC musical series “Smash” and her turn as Glinda in “Wicked” on Broadway, returned to the stage late last year as the aging-averse Madeline Ashton in a musical adaptation of the 1992 movie “Death Becomes Her.”She has been nominated for the best actress in a musical Tony Award for the role, which she describes as the most physically demanding one she has undertaken. “I’m not just going to work, singing and dancing, and that’s it,” she said. “It’s way more involved than it seems.”Ms. Hilty said she and her two children write notes for one another during the week because work keeps her so busy.Shuran Huang for The New York TimesBut doing so meant uprooting her family from Los Angeles. “It was a big ask,” she said. “Not only did they leave their life as they knew it; I then basically left them, because my job is all-encompassing.”Making it up to them has meant being extra intentional with family time.“Sunday nights are our family dinner night,” she said. “The phone goes off and I’m theirs.”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

    • 138 Shares112 Views

      in Movies

      Sydney Sweeney and Dr. Squatch Launch Soap Infused With Actress’s Bathwater

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      Calling the requests “weird in the best way,” the actress worked with Dr. Squatch on a soap that has a manly scent and just a touch of her actual bath water.Sydney Sweeney, the actress known for her roles in “Euphoria,” “Anyone But You” and a host of other buzzy movies and TV shows, is the face of a new bar of soap, purportedly made with a special ingredient: her own bath water. The internet may take quite some time to recover from this news.The product, “Sydney’s Bathwater Bliss,” is a collaboration with Dr. Squatch, a men’s personal care company that describes itself as using natural ingredients and “manly scents.”The actress announced the new soap on Instagram. Her caption referenced a previous advertisement she had done with Dr. Squatch, saying, “You kept asking about my bathwater after the @drsquatch ad… so we kept it.”In a news release, Ms. Sweeney said the requests for her bath water were “weird in the best way.”The limited-edition bar of soap, made with sand, pine bark extract and a “touch” of Ms. Sweeney’s real bath water, according to the company, will be go on sale June 6. Leaning in to the salacious nature of the product, an Instagram post by Dr. Squatch included a provocative description of the soap’s scent.“There’s no playbook for turning Sydney Sweeney’s actual bath water into a bar of soap, but that’s exactly why we did it,” John Ludeke, the senior vice president of global marketing for Dr. Squatch, said in the company’s news release. “We thrive on ideas that make you laugh.”The limited-edition bar of soap is made with sand, pine bark extract and a “touch” of Ms. Sweeney’s real bath water, according to Dr. Squatch.Dr. SquatchNearly as eye-catching as soap made from the slosh of one’s own bathing ritual are the reactions to it on social media. Users’ remarks have run the gamut, from extremely vulgar to celebratory. Others were simply asking, “Why?”In a Reddit thread that questioned whether Ms. Sweeney’s new product was preying on the loneliness of men, Meera Gregerson, 28, said she did not view selling a product to people as predatory.“I think that the fact that she’s been sexualized and made to be a sex icon in some ways as a celebrity — I think it’s fair for her to also want to make money off of that,” Ms. Gregerson said in a phone interview. “I don’t think it’s that different from her selling movies using her appearance as a selling point.”Multiple social media users have pointed out that Ms. Sweeney’s new product is reminiscent of a stunt from Belle Delphine, an adult content creator with a large social media following, who made headlines in 2019 for selling her own bath water.Chad Grauke, 39, who also took to Reddit to share his reaction to the soap, said he did not take issue with the product itself, but was more so curious about “what type of person is buying this stuff.”“I don’t feel it’s the lonely hermit as much as it’s the bro who thinks he has a chance,” Mr. Grauke said. More

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      in Movies

      Leonie Benesch Brings a Quiet Intensity to Her Role in ‘Late Shift’

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      From TV series to art house films, Leonie Benesch brings a quiet intensity to the screen, including her latest movie.The German actress Leonie Benesch appears in every scene of Petra Volpe’s “Late Shift,” a tense drama about a night nurse in an understaffed hospital.The film, which screens at the inaugural edition of South by Southwest London on Tuesday in its British debut, follows Benesch’s character, Floria, over the course of a single night. She rushes from bedside to bedside, bringing patients painkillers or peppermint tea and calms their nerves by trying to get hold of a doctor — or just by singing to them.To prepare for the role, Benesch said she shadowed nurses in a hospital for a week, learning to handle medical equipment and internalizing the rhythm of care work.“I wanted to understand the choreography and how do they move. How do they interact with patients? What’s the code-switching between talking to one another and talking to patients?” Benesch, 34, said in an interview. “The challenge for me,” she added, “was that a health care professional watch this and go: She could be one of us.”The actress spoke in May from a hotel bar in Cardiff, Wales, in crisp British-accented English. She was in Wales filming the political thriller “Prisoner,” the sort of large-budget international television production that dots her résumé along with smaller art house films.Benesch, right, with Christian Friedel in the 2009 film “The White Ribbon.” She landed the part of Eva, her first major film role, when she was just 17.X FilmeWe 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

    • 100 Shares72 Views

      in Television

      Nathan Fielder Calls F.A.A. ‘Dumb’ in CNN Interview

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      In a CNN interview to discuss the recent season’s focus on pilot safety, Fielder responded to a Federal Aviation Administration statement and criticized training standards.Nathan Fielder, the creator of the HBO comedy-documentary series “The Rehearsal,” extended his show’s commingling of performance and reality with a live appearance on CNN on Thursday.Fielder went on “The Situation Room With Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown” to promote the second season of “The Rehearsal” (whose finale aired on Sunday), and to raise awareness about airline pilot safety. Fielder had been closely examining safety in the season, including the communication between pilots and co-pilots, which he argued is poor and is a key factor in many plane crashes.In the finale, Fielder himself flew a Boeing 737 passenger jet with more than 100 actors on board in an attempt to simulate inter-pilot communication on real-world commercial flights.On “The Situation Room,” he fired back at criticism from the Federal Aviation Administration, which said in a statement to CNN that it “isn’t seeing the data that supports the show’s central claim that pilot communications is to blame for airline disasters.”“Well that’s dumb, they’re dumb,” Fielder said, sitting next to John Goglia, an aviation expert and former National Transportation Safety Board member who appeared as an adviser on “The Rehearsal” this season. Fielder criticized the F.A.A.’s training standards, which he said do not adequately prepare pilots and co-pilots to speak their mind if they have a concern.“The training is someone shows you a PowerPoint slide saying ‘If you are a co-pilot and the pilot does something wrong, you need to speak up about it,’” he said. “That’s all. That’s the training.”On Friday, the F.A.A. said in a statement that it “requires all airline crew members (pilots and flight attendants) and dispatchers to complete Crew Resource Management training,” which focuses on interactions among crew members.“They must complete this training before they begin working in their official positions and complete it on a recurring basis afterward,” the F.A.A. said.Over the course of six episodes, Fielder recruited several pilots to participate in elaborate role-playing scenarios that tested their ability to navigate sensitive conversations. In one episode, a pilot was encouraged to confront his girlfriend with suspicions of disloyalty while seated next to her in a mock cockpit. In another, several pilots were graded on their ability to deliver harsh feedback to contestants in a fake singing competition show.Although the scenarios are contrived and frequently involve actors, the show also regularly depicts what appear to be genuine interactions with nonactors. The fifth episode featured an awkward interview with a congressman, Steve Cohen of Tennessee, a member of the aviation subcommittee. And Goglia’s appearances are played completely straight.“It’s exploded,” Goglia said on “The Situation Room,” when asked about the public reaction to the show. “My emails exploded, my messages exploded, my grandkids were all over me — it’s unbelievable, the response.” More

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      in Movies

      How Mia Threapleton Created Her Deadpan Nun in ‘The Phoenician Scheme’

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      When Mia Threapleton learned that Wes Anderson wanted her to star in his next film, she did what any normal person would: She asked her agent to call the casting director back to make sure there had been no mistake, and then found a quiet spot on the train she was riding in, curled up and sobbed.“I couldn’t believe it,” the 24-year-old British actress said. In Anderson’s latest, “The Phoenician Scheme,” Threapleton plays Sister Liesl, a nun who is estranged from her father, the eccentric businessman Zsa-zsa (Benicio Del Toro). He wants to reconnect and make her his heir.Chic in a white sleeveless top, her long blond hair falling in loose waves around piercing blue eyes, Threapleton was preparing to head to the Cannes Film Festival, where “The Phoenician Scheme” premiered this month. The movie is by far her most prominent role to date — not that you would recognize her in it even if she were a familiar face.“It was a lot,” she said of the I-did-my-makeup-in-a-closet-and-cut-my-hair-with-garden-shears look: blunt brunette bob, garish turquoise eye shadow, bold red lip. But she trusted Anderson because she had long admired his work. She grew up with the director’s stop-motion “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” and his coming-of-age romance, “Moonrise Kingdom,” is a personal favorite.“I remember watching it and thinking, ‘I’d love to be able to do that,’ so then having this opportunity to do that was such a surreal experience,” said Threapleton, who, unlike Sister Liesl, laughs readily and occasionally breaks into a smile that plays up the likeness to her mother, the actress Kate Winslet.Threapleton as Sister Liesl in “The Phoenician Scheme.”TPS Productions/Focus FeaturesWe 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

      Willem Dafoe Returns to His Stage Roots at the Venice Theater Biennale

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      Willem Dafoe is returning to his roots. While his distinctive, chiseled features are instantly recognizable from over 150 movie roles, Dafoe, 69, actually got his start in experimental theater. In 1980, he co-founded the New York City-based company the Wooster Group, and performed with it for more than 20 years.Now, he is taking on the role of a curator. Last year, Dafoe was announced as the artistic director of the 2025 and 2026 editions of the Venice Theater Biennale, one of several festivals that began life as offshoots of the Art Biennale. (The theater event is actually an annual fixture.)And there will be familiar faces around Dafoe at this year’s edition, which opens Saturday and runs through June 16. Dafoe is paying tribute to some avant-garde theater companies that shaped him and were prominent 50 years ago at the 1975 edition of the festival, with productions from Denmark’s Odin Teatret and Thomas Richards, formerly of Workcenter Grotowski. The Wooster Group’s longtime director (and Dafoe’s ex-life partner), Elizabeth LeCompte, will receive the event’s Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.Under the tagline “Theater Is Body. Body Is Poetry,” the Theater Biennale will also welcome a mix of European directors whom Dafoe described in a recent video interview as “modern maestros” — including Romeo Castellucci, and Milo Rau — as well as emerging artists. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How did this appointment come about? Did Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, the president of the Venice Biennales, reach out personally?Yes. I knew him a little bit: He was a very good friend of a dear friend of mine. I knew he wanted to talk to me, and it was the simplest of phone calls. I was very happy to accept.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