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      Robert Macbeth, Founder of Harlem’s New Lafayette Theater, Dies at 89

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      He created a vibrant space for actors and playwrights that became a seedbed for the emerging Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and ’70s.Robert Macbeth, a rising Black actor in the New York theater scene, was sitting in a Greenwich Village bar in September 1963, getting a drink before going onstage for an Off Broadway improv show. The evening news played in the background.“I happened to look up and there was a flash, and the flash was about the four little girls getting killed in Birmingham,” he said in a 1967 interview, recalling the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. “And there I was, sitting in a Village bar, with a Scotch in my hand.”He went onstage that night, and, rather than following the show’s loose routine, he began shouting, walking up and down the aisles, getting in the faces of the mostly white crowd.“I must have scared the audience half to death,” he recalled in the interview. But rather than absorb his message, they seemed to take it as entertainment: “They loved it, but that wasn’t the idea.”Mr. Macbeth, distraught over his inability to convey his anger and sadness, stopped acting after that night in 1963 and, in his words, went into “exile” from the stage. He worked in a bookstore, taught acting classes and tried to process the violent changes rippling through Black America in the 1960s.Slowly, an idea took form: Black actors and playwrights could never be fully effective in white-dominated spaces. They needed their own. So, in 1967, he gathered together a troupe of more than 30 actors and artists to open the New Lafayette Theater in Harlem.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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      Interview: Timothée Chalamet and Denis Villeneuve on the ‘Dune’ Films

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      The director Denis Villeneuve and the actor Timothée Chalamet bound into the room talking at, and over, each other in rapid French. Villeneuve is from Quebec; Chalamet was born in New York City but has dual American and French citizenship. Together, they’re a dynamic tag team dressed near-identically in head-to-toe black, although Chalamet’s shiny leather layers have more swagger. The topic of the day is galactic genocide and dubious messiahs, central themes in “Dune: Part Two,” the second installment of their cerebral space epic based on the 1965 novel by Frank Herbert. Yet, the pair are prone to giggle fits.“We didn’t see each other since a while, so it’s like a holiday,” Villeneuve, 56, said apologetically, switching to English. When coffee arrives at the room at the Four Seasons hotel in Los Angeles, the two clink mugs. “That’s our spice,” he chuckled, referring to the psychedelic substance found only on the movie’s planet Arrakis.In “Dune,” spice is the most valuable resource in the universe. Herbert conceived of it as a glittering dust with the power to expand minds, fuel interstellar travel and incite bloody battles over its distribution. Combine the brain-melting effects of peyote, the geopolitical strife over oil and the violence of Prohibition-era bootlegging. Multiply that by the number of stars in the sky and you get the idea.The previous “Dune,” released in 2021, won six Academy Awards. It climaxed with Chalamet’s sheltered scion, Paul Atreides, abducted from his family’s spice-mining compound and left to die in the scorching Arrakis desert, patrolled by fanged sandworms the size of the Empire State Building. To survive “Part Two,” Paul’s mother, Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), encourages the Fremen, a tribe of desert-dwellers, to believe that her son is their long-awaited savior. The danger is that Paul might be swayed to believe it, too, even as the hallucinogenic spice peppers him with visions of a jihad waged in his name.Heavy stuff. Not that it’s weighing down their mood. As Chalamet, 28, grinned, he said, “The great irony of working with a master like Denis is it’s not some pompous experience.” The two spoke further about the next potential sequel, the impossible quest for onscreen perfection and those infamous “Dune” popcorn buckets. Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.Scenes may look simple, the director said, but he took pains “to make sure that we have the right rock at the right color at the right time of the day.”Warner Bros.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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      Danielle Brooks Has an Oscar Nomination. So Why Is She in Mourning?

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      Was it an interview or an unburdening? As she wiped away tears, Danielle Brooks confessed she couldn’t tell the difference.“New York Times therapy session, you got me going!” she said, chuckling as she cried.It was Valentine’s Day, and we had met on a video call to discuss the 34-year-old actress’s first Oscar nomination, for playing the indomitable Sofia in Blitz Bazawule’s big-screen musical, “The Color Purple.” Though she had been too busy filming the “Minecraft” movie in New Zealand to fly to that week’s Oscar nominees luncheon in Beverly Hills, Brooks said she had spent the last few days wrapping her head around the kind of company she now kept.“It’s been really emotional,” the supporting actress contender said. “There are five African Americans nominated in actor categories this year and only two Black women, and to be one of them means a lot to me.”This is also the culmination of a long arc that Brooks has experienced alongside “The Color Purple”: As a teenager, she was so blown away by the Broadway musical that it inspired her to pursue acting; later, after shooting to fame as Taystee on the Netflix series “Orange Is the New Black,” she won the role of Sofia in the 2015 stage revival of “The Color Purple.”Tony-nominated for that turn, Brooks nevertheless auditioned for six months to play the same part in Bazawule’s film. She’s proud of everything she was able to bring to her robust performance, which finds Sofia singing the anthemic “Hell No!” before going through the emotional wringer, imprisoned for refusing to be a white woman’s maid.“It really did deplete me — physically, mentally, spiritually,” Brooks said. “I was drained at the end of doing this part.”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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      ‘Becoming King’ Review: An Actor Marches On

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      This documentary about Ava DuVernay’s 2014 Martin Luther King drama “Selma” plays more like a David Oyelowo tribute than a proper look at the difficulties of making the film.“Becoming King,” a documentary on Paramount+, traces the actor David Oyelowo’s journey to playing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Ava DuVernay’s 2014 drama “Selma.”Directed by Jessica Oyelowo (the actor’s wife), it’s a lackluster, dutiful affair that plays more like a hagiographic appreciation of David Oyelowo than a tribute to the making of “Selma.” In part, the documentary seems like a reaction to Oyelowo’s Oscars snub the following year in the best actor category, though it does a lousy job at making its case.The first part of the film digs into Oyelowo’s origins: first, as a child who grew up poor in Lagos, Nigeria; and then, as a theater prodigy who took on leading roles in London’s Royal Shakespeare Company. The next step was Hollywood, where Oyelowo established himself with parts in films that, when strung together, create a history of civil rights in America: Think “Lincoln,” “Red Tails” and “The Help.”Throughout, the director weaves what appears to be home-video footage from the nearly seven-year process it took to make “Selma.” Around these snippets, which show David at home, taking work calls, or verbalizing his anxieties about playing the civil rights leader, we hear from talking heads like Oprah Winfrey (a producer on the film), Lee Daniels (who was at one point signed on to direct) and DuVernay.Nothing they say is particularly interesting; they shower the expected compliments on Oyelowo and, otherwise, offer little else beyond their own symbolic power. These are Black entertainers, coming together to make a rare high-profile Hollywood feature about Dr. King, but the documentary only rehashes these facts without truly exploring what made “Selma” such a risky project to mount. Aside from a brief segment with the actor’s dialect coach, we never really get a sense of Oyelowo’s process, either — or the challenges he faced portraying an icon who was also a flesh-and-bones human with imperfections and ambiguities. “Becoming King” exhibits the kind of self-importance that ultimately diminishes the subject, be it Dr. King or Oyelowo.Becoming KingNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 6 minutes. Watch on Paramount+. More

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      Juliette Binoche on Working With Benoît Magimel in “The Taste of Things.”

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      The star of “The Taste of Things” explains why working with her former romantic partner Benoît Magimel was freeing, and weighs in on an Oscar controversy.Some actors come to embody a national cinema through an alchemical combination of demeanor and film choices. You might say that Clint Eastwood is the quintessential American icon, for example, or that Hugh Grant is the embodiment of a certain kind of Britishness.When it comes to France, one of the country’s archetypal stars is Juliette Binoche, whose understated elegance and cryptic smile have graced art-house and popular movies alike since her domestic breakthrough playing an ingénue actress in “Rendez-Vous” (1985), followed by worldwide fame a decade later with the romantic drama “The English Patient” (1996), for which she earned an Academy Award.Now Binoche has two projects arriving at the same time in the United States: Tran Anh Hung’s “The Taste of Things,” in which she plays a self-effacing 19th-century cook, and the Apple TV+ series “The New Look,” in which she portrays Coco Chanel — meaning Binoche essentially carries the flags of food and fashion, the most visible signifiers of French culture abroad.During a recent interview in New York, the actress looked amused when asked about being a national symbol. “I’m fine taking on that role,” she said, laughing. “What’s important is what people feel, because the audience relates to something that is unsaid, something beyond ideas. Of course, the theme is food in ‘The Taste of Things,’ ” she continued, “but it’s also love and creating together” (Which, come to think of it, is also associated with the French.)Adding seasoning to the pot-au-feu, the movie paired Binoche with her former romantic partner Benoît Magimel. Although they broke up two decades ago, the actors’ intimacy seemed to return onscreen, like muscle memory.Tran recalled that Magimel went rogue while shooting the complex finale. When Binoche’s character, Eugénie, asked whether she was his cook or his wife, Magimel’s gourmand was meant to say, “You are my cook,” to acknowledge her mastery. Except that the actor added “… and my wife.”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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      Cold Plunges and Cuddling With Cats: Photographing the ‘Great Performers’

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      What do celebrities do in their downtime? A new project by The New York Times Magazine captures the awards season’s buzziest actors in their element.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.The photographer James Nachtwey showed up at Bradley Cooper’s farmhouse in Pennsylvania one freezing morning in January, armed with a coat and a camera.“Let’s take a walk,” an affable Mr. Cooper suggested, leading Mr. Nachtwey through his 33-acre property until they arrived at an ice-crusted stream.After sharing that he practiced mindfulness by taking cold plunges — immersing himself in freezing water for minutes at a time — Mr. Cooper proceeded to strip down to his black briefs and dive in, flipping over onto his back and closing his eyes.“I thought I’d have 30 seconds to take the picture,” Mr. Nachtwey said in a recent phone conversation from his home in New Hampshire. “But he stayed in for at least 10 minutes.”The resulting photo of Mr. Cooper, which appears on the cover of this month’s Great Performers issue of The New York Times Magazine, is one of 12 portraits of this award season’s buzziest actors. Mr. Nachtwey captured the images over a three-week period in January in Los Angeles, New York, Pennsylvania and Atlanta.Among them: Mark Ruffalo training his own camera on street pigeons, Paul Giamatti curled up on a couch with cats at his favorite used bookstore and Emma Stone wandering through steamy Manhattan streets.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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      How ‘Madame Web’ Actress Isabela Merced Keeps Herself Off Her Phone

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      The “Madame Web” actress unwinds with the help of Sudoku, Legos and the occasional psychology video on YouTube.There is busy, and then there is Isabela Merced.On an afternoon last month in Los Angeles, the actress — who had just returned from Vancouver, where she was learning to ride horses for a role in Season 2 of HBO’s postapocalyptic survival drama “The Last of Us” — was preparing to meet Vice President Kamala Harris that night, while also doing this interview and, as an alarm that went off in the middle of the phone call revealed, laundry.“It’s a work in progress: I know how to get on the horse and not panic, and that’s about it,” said Merced, 22, who made her Broadway debut in “Evita” when she was 10 and is now known for her roles in “Transformers: The Last Knight” and “Dora and the Lost City of Gold.”“The Last of Us” is one of half a dozen film and TV projects she has lined up for the next few years, among them “Madame Web,” the newly released Spider-Man spinoff in which she plays Anya Corazon, better known as Spider-Girl in the Marvel Comics.Also on her film slate: the lead role in the long-awaited adaptation of John Green’s young adult novel “Turtles All the Way Down”; a starring role in “Alien: Romulus” (due out in August); and Hawkgirl in “Superman: Legacy.”How does she balance it all?“I’m going to have to practice meditation a little bit more than I have,” she said.In a conversation from her family’s home, where she lives with her mother and her younger brother, Merced shared how sound baths keep her centered, the secret to her mother’s “unmatched” chicken estofado, and why she always has Legos on hand. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.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