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      Zach Sang, the Ryan Seacrest of the Youth, Wants to Save Radio

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      The former syndication star and top-flight interviewer is rebuilding his daily show on Amazon’s new app, Amp.LOS ANGELES — One afternoon in June, Zach Sang was curled into an improvised studio nook at the top of a staircase in a warehouse in Hollywood. The setup was ramshackle — right downstairs was the fallow set for Hailey Bieber’s YouTube series “Who’s in My Bathroom?” — but Sang didn’t let the scrappy conditions get to him.The interview guest on this day was Jake Miller, a onetime frat rapper turned anodyne singer-songwriter, an affable bro with a big smile and an unbothered air. While waiting for Miller to arrive, Sang sipped on a Celsius energy drink as he waited for a Gopuff delivery of snacks. He was dressed comfortably in a gray sweater vest and a worn-in pair of Birkenstock Bostons; his fingernails were painted in a casually intricate design.Sang is a relentless optimist and a warm landing place. After Miller arrived, Sang attended to their conversation with an uncommon amount of care, from time to time gently pushing him under the cover of affection. When Miller left, Sang reset himself and began his daily live show the same way he has for years and years: “Helloooo, beautiful humannnn.”At this time last year, Sang was broadcasting to more than a million people each night via his syndicated program, “Zach Sang Show,” which aired on around 80 terrestrial radio stations across the country. But today he’s building from the ground up: In March, he began broadcasting for three hours every weekday on Amp, the still-in-beta radio app recently introduced by Amazon.“The bedrocks, the building blocks that make radio radio — companionship, friendship, music, personality, discussion — that will remain the same,” Sang said. “But the delivery method at which it gets to the people is going to change.”The method is still slightly in flux. Several times over the next three hours, while songs played between conversation breaks, Sang tested out the studio’s Alexa smart speaker to make sure it played his show when prompted — mostly yes. He selected songs to play largely on the fly, sometimes inspired by a conversation in the room. It all made for a far looser approach to pop radio, with flickers of the unpredictable energy of livestreaming.Sang’s new perch allows him to figure out a fresh path for an old format. “I want them to understand that there’s a better version of radio out there,” he said of the listeners he has not yet been able to reach. “Radio that doesn’t play the same songs every 42 minutes. There’s a version of radio out there that doesn’t shove 18 minutes of commercials an hour down your throat.”Sang is 29 but carries himself with the awe of someone younger. It is a byproduct of a career that began in his teenage years, and has never let up since, a run that has made him something like the Ryan Seacrest of young millennials. During his 10-year tenure on terrestrial radio, he became one of the most crucial interviewers of contemporary pop stars, with clips of his most intimate conversations — with Ariana Grande, Halsey, Selena Gomez, Justin Bieber, BTS and various onetime boy band and girl group members — often gaining viral traction online.Sang is an uncommonly gifted interviewer: formidably grounded, fluid, quick with responses and also keen to steer conversations toward more intriguing topics. He makes an intense (but not uncomfortable) amount of eye contact and delivers his questions not brusquely, as can be the norm for radio interviews, but with a balmy, inviting smoothness. He treats interview subjects not as famous people, but rather people who happen to be famous. Sometimes, in videos of his interviews, there are little moments of relaxation a few minutes in, when stars realize they can turn off autopilot, retreat from the hard shell of fame just a bit and ease back into their humanity.“Deeply personable, researched and funny,” said Finneas, the singer and producer and brother of Billie Eilish. He described Sang’s true peers as much more senior and established: Howard Stern. Zane Lowe, the Apple Music host.“He has an emotional connectivity with artists that I don’t think I see with anyone else right now,” said Matt Sandler, Amp’s head of business and operations, who recruited Sang to the platform.When Ed Sheeran appeared last year on the syndicated show, he concluded his time by telling Sang, “I’m sure you get this a lot, but I end up watching your guys’ interviews with other artists, like, all the time, and I really enjoy it.”Like most daily radio programs, Sang’s has a rhythm. In the past he’s had multiple co-hosts, but there’s currently just one: Dan Zolot, an executive producer who shares the title with Sang. As the show’s longtime counterbalance, Zolot injects cold splashes of reality at unexpected moments. “Awkwardness is always fascinating to watch,” Zolot said. “It brings out a little more personality.” Part of his job includes trimming down Sang’s longform interviews for various social media platforms, because Sang’s true competition now isn’t just conventional radio stars but also YouTubers and podcasters. “Alex Cooper at ‘Call Her Daddy,’ Joe Rogan, ‘Impaulsive’ — that’s who the young kids are going to when they think of radio,” Zolot said.In recent years, as radio stations have leveraged their access to musicians to grow their presence on platforms like YouTube, some of the best radio hosts have become de facto podcast interviewers. But when Sang began his career, the radio station interview was by and large a banal format, a back-scratching relic of old power structures.“He treats his audience like they’re smart, which they are and they deserve to be treated like,” Finneas said.Another way Sang deviated from the strict formatting of pop radio was by sprinkling in progressive political opinions. “To have queer voices on the air in Pensacola, Fla., and Mobile and Montgomery, Ala., I was in the most conservative places in America, right? And I won. I was a queer kid from New Jersey who shared my truth.”Sang is an uncommonly gifted interviewer. He treats interview subjects not as famous people, but rather people who happen to be famous.Maggie Shannon for The New York TimesSang also pushed back against the strict playlisting most radio stations require, programming his show a little more eccentrically and holistically: “I never colored within the lines ever. I always went against the rules. I never asked for permission, I always begged for forgiveness.”Occasionally, those decisions were met with resistance. “When you’re syndicated, you’re on 80 stations, you have 80 bosses,” Zolot said. “Those bosses have things they don’t want talked about on their air, and they’ll let you know.”Sang’s negotiations with the radio conglomerate Westwood One went to the 11th hour late last year, but they couldn’t come to terms. The transition was jarring. “Seven o’clock at night would roll around and I would just be driving around my neighborhood, not knowing what to do,” Sang said.“I’ve been going through a deep depression the last few months,” he continued. “And my friends, who are some of the most famous people in the world, send me 77 texts until I answer. The night of my last show, Joshua Bassett showed up at my studio within 40 minutes, on the night before New Year’s Eve, to be with me while I literally cried on the floor of my studio. And then after that, who was there for me was Ariana, who was on me to figure out what my next step was.”Losing his syndicated show forced him to assess whether he was in the business of radio, or the business of Zach Sang. When his contract ended, he’d already been having conversations with Amazon for a few months, and he began to see Amp as an opportunity to spread his gospel of the power of radio even more widely.The very nature of radio is changing and has been for the past two decades. First came the rise of satellite radio, which jeopardized local specificity. Same went for market consolidation. Finally, the ascension of the internet, especially as a facilitator for livestreaming and playlists, threatens — or maybe promises — to undermine the primacy of radio as a delivery system for new music. By July, Sang and his team had relocated to a more substantial studio, the one that Rick Dees, the countdown show kingpin, previously used to broadcast out of. But even though Sang knew how to operate all of the fancy equipment in the room, the entire show was run off his iPad.“The way I view a microphone at this point in my life is, when I lost the show, it’s like I lost every friend I’ve ever made,” he said, in between playing Beyoncé songs. “It’s about regaining chemistry — it takes time. People find out every day we’re not on the radio.”He referred to the Sang universe as a “friend group” — the combination of the characters with him in the studio and the listeners.After more than a decade on the air, part of that friend group are the famous people he’s become close to along the way. That day, he told his listeners about how he’d drunkenly agreed to officiate Selena Gomez’s best friend’s wedding at Gomez’s 30th birthday party, and he mentioned his friend who was playing the role of Glinda, the good witch, in the upcoming film adaptation of “Wicked.” (That would be Grande.)It is a far cry from how he was raised. Sang, who is of Italian, Irish and Scottish heritage, grew up in New Jersey — first Paterson, then Wayne — and attributes his empathy and openheartedness to a challenging upbringing. His mother was a social worker for 35 years: “I watched my mom cry. She would carry people’s burdens every day.” His parents had a yearslong, protracted divorce. Sang had trouble learning to read, endured abusive teachers in Catholic school and was bullied by other children, who identified him as different.He got his start in 2008 at age 14, with a show on the BlogTalkRadio online radio platform that he hosted from his bedroom. Soon, he moved over to Goom Radio, a French internet radio concern that was introducing an American service. He booked his own guests, emailing publicists from his BlackBerry during high school classes, leaning heavily on the teen stars of the day. “On Wednesday nights, kids would camp out in front of my studio waiting to see which artists were going to be there,” he recalled.Sang described his approach back then as “blind confidence, blind naïveté, adrenaline.” In short order, he became a go-to interview stop and developed a quick rapport with his subjects. “They would tell me while on the phone or in person that they were happy, or they’d stay longer, or they’d ignore their publicist when they tried to get wrapped up.”In school, he wasn’t terribly popular. “I had no friends,” he said, but he built something of a double life for himself: “Not having a single kid talk to me in school, but I’d go home and get to get on the phone with Mitchel Musso from ‘Hannah Montana,’ and he’d give me an hour of his time.”Sang, far right, interviewing the rapper Yung Gravy, left, along with Dan Zolot, his co-host on “Zach Sang Show.”Maggie Shannon for The New York TimesIn 2012, Sang moved to terrestrial radio and began steadily accumulating stations for his nightly program, “Zach Sang Show,” which was syndicated via Westwood One. In short order, he was interviewing some of pop’s biggest stars, deploying the same amiability that made his teen-pop conversations so engaging.Peter Gray, the head of promotion at Columbia Records, recalled that when Sang was given just a few minutes with Adele, he “just killed it, nailed it. Five minutes with him was a symphony — no fear, no trepidation, no nerves, just a beautiful nonscripted conversation.”Sang’s show was a crucial entry point into the American media market for the K-pop superstar group BTS. Eshy Gazit, who was tasked in the mid-2010s with helping to break the act in the United States, said, “There was a certain stigma at the time — that K-pop was a bunch of marionettes. The first important thing to me was to show the humanity, that each member has a story, a feeling, a personality.” BTS would return to Sang’s show several times.Sang’s interviews also populate his YouTube, Instagram and TikTok channels, and in conjunction with his production partner, OBB Media, he’s in the process of building out his own studio. In the coming weeks, “Zach Sang Show” will begin international syndication.Amp is a creator-focused app meant to allow users to set up their own radio programs, a nod to public access and internet radio and an attempt to harness the democratization of online content creation. Sang’s responsibilities include populating the app with other hosts — currently he’s working with the party promoters Emo Nite and iParty, which specializes in music from Disney Channel and Nickelodeon shows. He’s also the service’s most high-profile interviewer — something like the Zane Lowe of Amazon.Still, the platform is new, and the listener numbers modest. “It was difficult to see the numbers and know that it’s not huge at first,” Zolot said. “That kind of got to him.”By last month, though, Sang was getting comfortable being indie again. “Nobody listened to me when I was broadcasting from my bedroom — I literally was talking to myself,” he said. “So, been there, done that.”The friend group he hopes to cultivate, he realized, begins with his own “therapeutic” relationship with the microphone. Everything else good has followed from that.“Every time, without fail, I have built it and they have come,” he noted, “so this will not be any different.” More

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      in Television

      Martha Plimpton’s Favorite Things: Pamela Adlon, the Tate Modern, Abortion Rights

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      The star of Amazon Freevee’s new comedy, “Sprung,” also confesses her public radio addiction and shows off her Edward Gorey tattoo.In a perfect world, Martha Plimpton typically has three to six months before shooting to get into character.But her latest role, in “Sprung” — which reunites Plimpton with her “Raising Hope” creator, Greg Garcia — happened on the fly.About a year ago, Plimpton was at her London home cooking dinner when Garcia called to ask about her plans for the next couple of months.Why? she responded.“He said, well, could you get on a plane on Sunday, do fittings on Monday and start shooting my series on Tuesday?” she said. “And I said, yeah, absolutely, get me the ticket.”“I didn’t even have to read the script,” she added. “It was Greg, and I would follow him into a volcano.”On her flight to Pittsburgh, she dug into that script. And somewhere over the Atlantic, Barb was born: the mother of a recently released convict (Phillip Garcia) who offers two of his fellow inmates room and board — if they join her robbery crew to earn their keep. A dowager’s hump, bright red hair streaked with white and a perma-snarl completed the character. “Sprung” debuts Aug. 19 on Amazon Freevee.In a video call from London, where she lives when she’s not in Brooklyn or Los Angeles, Plimpton elaborated on 10 things she can’t live without from a list of hundreds — “I wanted to say toilet paper or, I don’t know, clementines,” she quipped. Among them: driving Highway 101; her pandemic pooches, Walter and Jimmy Jazz; and abortion rights, for which she is a famously outspoken advocate.“They can make all the laws they want,” she said of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling, “but they’re not going to stop us.”These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. “Gloria” (1980), directed by John Cassavetes “Gloria” is the first movie I remember seeing that was an action film with a woman heroine, firing a gun and running through Penn Station in heels and a fabulous silk Ungaro suit and easily the best hair in the history of Hollywood. I get goose bumps from Gena Rowlands’s power in this movie. It’s just a badass woman, kicking butt and taking names. It’s part of why I wanted and still want to be an actor, because I really [expletive] hope I get a role like that someday.2. Her Dogs During the early months of the pandemic, I thought I was going to lose my mind if I didn’t have an animal to take care of to get me out of the house. I contacted a lot of shelters and nobody had any dogs left. Then this lovely woman named Tiffany [at Animal Haven] wrote me back and said, “I just happen to have two little dogs here. I’ll bring these guys over.” I wanted to foster first, but I’m a typical foster fail because my dogs bring me enormous peace and a sense of living in the moment as much as humanly possible. They’re magical little creatures that make my heart bigger and teach me patience.3. Highway 101 It’s the route to my family home in Oregon. It’s astonishingly beautiful going from the California coast up through the redwoods and past the little motels on the side of the road and the lighthouses. And you’ve got to drive slow. You cannot go 75 miles an hour on Highway 101 or you’ll end up in the ocean. It forces you to take it all in one mile at a time.4. Tate museum membership Some of the most exciting things I’ve seen have been at the Tate Modern. Also, they have the best museum gift shop, and I’m huge on museum gift shops. The last show I saw was Lubaina Himid, who’s an extraordinary artist who works in a multitude of mediums, from sculpture to audio to site-specific stuff to these colorful, bright, beautiful paintings about life in London and colonialism, family, food.5. Public Radio I listen to NPR or WNYC easily 24 hours a day. I love the reporters. I love the name generator, where you can type in your birthday or whatever and it gives you one of those kooky names that they all have. It brings me a sense of continuity and keeps me informed because I don’t like to watch television news. I’m like one of those crazy spinster ladies who listen to the radio at night.6. The photographer Weegee My mom, for a time, was a research librarian so she had a lot of great photography books, like Robert Frank’s “The Americans.” But the one that I still have, and that I will never let go of, is her book of photographs by Weegee. I’ve been totally entranced by those photographs, completely mad for them. Photos of city life, freaks and weirdos and criminals and cons and card players and kids playing in the street. His photograph of a transsexual being carted off in a police wagon — just the look of joy on her face as she lifts her skirt to show her stocking — is one of the most extraordinary photographs I’ve ever seen.7. Edward Gorey My first and only tattoo is an Edward Gorey phrase. [Reveals the underside of her arm.] It says, “On which she flung herself over the parapet.” And then down here [shows her rib cage], there she is flinging herself over the parapet. I got that when I was 42. But Edward Gorey is an artist that I’d been looking at since I was very little — 3, 4, 5, 6. His “Gashlycrumb Tinies” book is, I suppose, the most famous. It’s all these children’s names that start with a letter from the alphabet, along with what horrible way they died.8. Abortion rights I’m angry, and I’m frustrated. I feel very strongly that a law codifying the right to abortion federally needs to be passed. I think we should pass the [Equal Rights Amendment] sooner rather than later. I think that our president has an obligation to do these things without concern necessarily for the climate in the Senate. Abortion is normal. It is a regular health procedure. I think the way we’re living now with this is sadistic and cruel, and it’s meant to silence us and to sideline us. And that’s just not going to happen.9. Pamela Adlon “Better Things” is one of the greatest shows I’ve ever seen. I have rarely seen family portrayed so brutally honestly and also with such heart and good humor. Pamela has this sort of signature move. She leans over, she grabs her knees and she just exhales. [Demonstrates the move.] And that’s something that I so relate to, even though I don’t have kids. The boring, tedious agony of being a middle-aged woman, and particularly an actress, in our culture is ripe for that kind of exploration, for that kind of truth.10. Stephen Sondheim He is easily for me the greatest composer-lyricist of the 20th century, and he was utterly fearless, seemingly, in what he was willing to do. Musical theater has died a million deaths and he always seemed to be the one to bring it back to life. There are certain things that I will never be able to listen to without collapsing in a heap of tears and chills and goose bumps. “Sweeney Todd” might be up there as my absolute favorite. “Sunday in the Park With George” is another. When he died, I had those two on repeat very, very loud in my house, listening to them over and over again. He’s just such an extraordinary capturer of what it means to be a human being and to love and to believe in art. More

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      in Television

      In ‘A League of Their Own,’ Abbi Jacobson Makes the Team

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      Abbi Jacobson really can play baseball, she insisted. Just not when the cameras are rolling. “I fully get the yips when someone is watching me,” she told me.This was on a recent weekday morning, on a shady bench with a view of the ball fields in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. Jacobson lives nearby, in an apartment she shares with her fiancée, the “For All Mankind” actress Jodi Balfour. This morning, she hadn’t come to the fields to play, which was good — the diamonds swarmed with little kids. (It was good, too, because while Jacobson can play, I can’t, though she did offer to teach me.) And honestly, she deserved to enjoy her off season.In “A League of Their Own,” arriving Aug. 12 on Amazon Prime Video, Jacobson stars as Carson Shaw, the catcher for the Rockford Peaches. Carson is an invented character, but the Peaches, a team from the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which debuted in 1943, are delightfully real. For five rainy months, on location in Pittsburgh, Jacobson, 38, had to catch, throw, hit and slide into base. Is some of this computer-generated magic? Sure, but not all. Which means that Jacobson played while plenty of people were watching. And she played well.“She’s really good,” said Will Graham, who created the series with her. “Abbi is constantly self-effacing and self-deprecating but is actually a badass.”Carson, a talented, anxious woman, becomes the team’s de facto leader. As a creator and executive producer, as well as the series’s star, Jacobson led a team, too, onscreen and off. This is work that she has been doing since her mid 20s, when she and Ilana Glazer created and eventually oversaw the giddy, unladylike comedy “Broad City.” On that show, she became a leader more or less by accident. On “A League of Their Own,” which was inspired by Penny Marshall’s 1992 film, Jacobson led from the get-go and with purpose, infusing the script with her own ideas about what leadership can look like.Jacobson plays a talented, anxious catcher who becomes her team’s leader. Her character’s story is one among many in a series that celebrates a range of women’s experience.Amazon Studios“The stories that I want to tell are about how I’m a messy person, and I’m insecure all the time,” she said. “And then what if the most insecure, unsure person is the leader? What if the messy person gets to own herself?”So is Carson’s story her story?“Kind of,” she said, squinting against the sun.Jacobson, who has described herself as an introvert masquerading as an extrovert, is approachable but also watchful, an observer before she is a participant. Even in the midst of animated conversation, she has an attitude that suggests that if you were to leave her alone with a book, or a sketch pad, or maybe her dog, Desi, that would be fine, too.Her favorite pastime: “I like to go and sit in a very populated area with like a book. Alone,” she said.On that morning, she wore a white tank top and paint-stained pants, but the stains were pre-applied and deliberate, sloppiness turned into fashion. The bag she carried was Chanel. She didn’t look a lot like a baseball player, but she did look like a woman who had become comfortable in her own skin, who had cleaned up most of her private mess and put the rest of it to professional use.“She’s a boss,” said the writer and comedian Phoebe Robinson, a friend. “And she knows herself in her core.”Jacobson grew up in a Philadelphia suburb, the youngest of two children in a Reform Jewish family. She played sports throughout her childhood — softball, basketball, travel soccer — until she gave them up for jam bands and weed.“That team mentality was very much my childhood,” she said.After art school, she moved to New York to become a dramatic actress, then veered into comedy through improv classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade. She and Glazer wanted to join a house improv team, but team after team rejected them. So they created “Broad City” instead, which ran first as a web series and then for five seasons on Comedy Central. A “Girls” without the gloss, trailing pot smoke as it went, it followed its protagonists, Abbi and Ilana, as they blazed a zigzag trail through young adulthood. The New Yorker called the show, lovingly, a “bra-mance.”For Jacobson, the show was both a professional development seminar and a form of therapy. Through writing and playing a version of herself, she emerged more confident, less anxious.“Having this receipt of her anxiety in the character allowed her to look at it and grow in a different direction,” Glazer said.Jacobson began developing “A League of Their Own” with Will Graham as “Broad City” was wrapping up.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesIn 2017, when “Broad City” had two seasons to go, Graham (“Mozart in the Jungle”) invited Jacobson to dinner. He had recently secured the rights to “A League of Their Own,” a movie he had loved as a child. He thought it could make a great series, with a few changes. The queerness of some characters — rendered in the movie through blink-and-you-miss-it subtext — ought to be more overt this time. In the film, in a scene that lasts just seconds, a Black woman returns a foul ball with force and accuracy, a nod to the league’s segregation. This, too, deserved more attention.Graham had pursued Jacobson, he said, for her integrity, her smarts, her flustered, nervy optimism. He wanted the experience of making the show to be joyful. And he wanted the stories it told — particularly the queer stories — to convey joy, too. He sensed that Jacobson, who came out in her mid 30s, could deliver.“She’s so funny, and also so emotionally honest — and so unafraid of being emotionally honest,” Graham said.As Jacobson finished the final seasons of “Broad City,” development began on the new series. She and Graham threw themselves into research, speaking to the some of the surviving women who had played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League or in the Negro leagues. They also spoke with Marshall, via phone, before her death in 2018. Marshall had focused primarily on the story of one woman: Geena Davis’s Dottie. Graham and Jacobson wanted to try to tell more stories, as many as an eight-episode season allowed.“The movie is a story about white women getting to play baseball,” Jacobson said. “That’s just not enough.”Gradually the show took form, morphing from a half-hour comedy to an hourlong dramedy. Then it found its co-stars: D’Arcy Carden as Greta, the team’s glamour girl; Roberta Colindrez as Lupe, the team’s pitcher; Chanté Adams as Max, a Black superstar in search of a team of her own. Rosie O’Donnell, a star of the original movie, signed on for an episode, playing the owner of a gay bar.Chanté Adams, left, was impressed by Jacobson’s leadership on set. “She always makes sure that everyone’s voice is heard and included,” she said.Amazon StudiosThe pilot was shot in Los Angeles, which doubled first for Chicago and then for Rockford, Ill. The coronavirus hit soon after, delaying production until last summer. Rising costs pushed the show to relocate to Pittsburgh, which is, as it happens, a rainy city, a problem for a show with so many game-day sequences. But the cast and crew handled it.“There was kind of a summer camp quality to it,” Graham said.And Jacobson, as Glazer reminded me, spent many years as a camp counselor. So a lot of that summer camp quality was owed to her. And to the incessant baseball practice she insisted on.“There was so much baseball practice, truly months of baseball practice,” Carden said. “We were a team more than we were a cast. That was Abbi. Abbi’s an ensemble person.”Adams first met Jacobson in the audition room. (As a longtime “Broad City” fan, she struggled to keep her cool.) On set, Jacobson immediately impressed her.“I don’t know how she does it,” Adams said. “But even as a leader and the star of the show, she always makes sure that everyone’s voice is heard and included.” After filming had ended, Adams said, Jacobson kept showing up for her, attending the opening night of her Broadway show.“It just melted my heart,” she said. “Abbi is the epitome of what it means to be a leader.”Jacobson doesn’t always feel that way, but she feels it more often than she used to. “Sometimes I can really own that,” she said. “And sometimes I go home, and I’m like, how am I the person? Or what’s happening here?” So she lent that same self-doubt to Carson, a leader who evolves when she acknowledges her vulnerability.“The movie is a story about white women getting to play baseball,” Jacobson said. “That’s just not enough.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesBut Carson’s narrative is only one among many in a series that celebrates a range of women’s experience: Black, white and Latina women; straight, queer and questioning women; femme women; butch women; and women in between. Many of the actors are beautiful in the ways that Hollywood prefers. Many aren’t.Yet the show insists that all of these women deserve love, friendship and fulfillment. In an email, O’Donnell observed that while the movie had focused on one woman’s story, this new version gives nearly every character a rich inner life “in a beautiful and accurate way that brings the characters’ humanity to the forefront.”Carden has known Jacobson for 15 years, since their early improv days. No one had ever seen her as a romantic lead until Jacobson dropped off a glove and a hand-drawn card (“Adorable and romantic,” Carden said) and invited her to join the team. Carden was proud to take the role and proud, too, to work with Jacobson again.“She’s changed none at all,” Carden said. “She’s always been Abbi, but the confidence is different.”Jacobson wears that confidence lightly. Glimmers of uncertainty remain. “I’m never the person that you’re like, She should lead the show,” she told me in Prospect Park.But clearly she is. When no team would have her, she made her own, and now she has made another one. After an hour and a half, she picked up her purse and her coffee cup and she walked back through the park. Like a boss. Like a coach. Like a leader. More

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      in Movies

      Abubakr Ali Gets a Boost From Whale-Watching and Eid Fashions

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      As the first Arab Muslim lead in a comic book adaptation, the Egyptian American actor lists the things guiding him as he steps into the spotlight.Growing up in Pasadena, the actor Abubakr Ali never thought he’d play many lead roles. Even after coming up through the acting program at New York University and then the Yale School of Drama — where he graduated alongside the playwright Jeremy O. Harris and “The Gilded Age” actress Louisa Jacobson, the daughter of Meryl Streep — he’d become used to a world in which an Egyptian-born Arab American like himself would be relegated to the margins.When a script for Billy Porter’s directorial debut, “Anything’s Possible,” landed on his lap, he was too busy to thoroughly read and understand his part, but submitted a self-taped audition video anyway. It was during callbacks that he realized he was up for the lead in a classic, John Hughes-style high school rom-com, which starts streaming July 22 on Amazon Prime Video. Ali stars opposite the actress Eva Reign, who is trans.“I had never in my life seen a script where someone like me, or from my background, is a lead, period,” he said on a video call from his apartment in Harlem. “Being used to this industry, I just assumed it was a random side character, because the reality is that ours are two bodies not normally seen in these roles.”He booked the gig, and two days into the film’s shoot last year got a call: He’d landed the title role in “Grendel,” an upcoming Netflix series, which will make him the first Arab Muslim lead in a comic book adaptation.After an early Saturday morning of Eid prayer and working out, the actor, 31, delved into 10 things guiding him through the suddenly watershed year.These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. Whale-watching This is the nerdiest, stupidest thing about me, but I just love water. Being around bodies of water perks me up, even if I’m just on a car ride and see one. Almost anytime I’m in Southern California, or come anywhere that has whales nearby, I’ll see if I can get on a boat to watch whales. There’s a humbling effect that you feel seeing these giant [expletive] just out in the world daily, doing their thing, moving around. It reminds you that there are things that are bigger than us, having an experience as beautiful as our own.2. Shopping for books (many of which he won’t read) I kind of browse like my immigrant mom does at Macy’s, but at the bookstore, where I just show up because I have nothing better to do. I walk around and see if the store’s employees have any recommendations, and walk away with, like, $100 worth of books, knowing full well I’m only going to read one of them. I’m very vibe-driven when it comes to picking out books. I wish I had a more sophisticated reason, but a good cover will do the job for me.3. The Rose Bowl’s Stadium Fitness program I grew up as an athlete, and my first job was teaching tennis. This was a business I knew through a family friend of mine I met while teaching and it’s a great space to just be outside, move your body and be social. It’s like Barry’s Bootcamp but chill; there’s a familial aspect that feels like home to me. There’s a 75-year-old couple I got to know through the program who become like my surrogate grandparents. It really is a space for everyone, which is beautiful.4. A picture of his family at his N.Y.U. graduation My dad passed away a few years ago, and he was probably the hardest-working and most generous person I know. Seeing this picture of my parents, sister and I reminds me to not forget where I came from. We came into this country with four of us sharing a one-bedroom for two, three years, so it always reminds me to work as hard as my dad did, and with the level of generosity that he had.5. Softness I had a professor at N.Y.U., Orlando Pabotoy, and I don’t think my career, or life, would be where they are were it not for him. He came up one day and said, “Abu, not this [clenching a fist], but this [extending the arm].” I fully recognize that it’s a privilege to be able to allow yourself to feel, but we live in such a jaded, hardened world that I like to remind myself to connect to a softness and openness.Billy [Porter] is very much an actor’s actor, and I was fortunate he trusted me with this character [in “Anything’s Possible”], and allowed me to make the stupid acting choices, to be a little dumb in the best way. The main thing I stuck to was the character’s sort-of lankiness. You don’t see that in most romantic leads, that softness.6. Sabry’s restaurant in Queens It’s this Egyptian seafood restaurant in Little Egypt, where I will very likely be going to tonight. It’s a great place, with amazing food, that reminds me of home a lot: You can order and kind of talk casually in Arabic with everyone; they’ll have a soccer game playing in the background. What I love about it is that it’s very much like Egypt, in its approach, where the waiters are chilling and you really have to tag someone down — and I say that with all the love in my heart. That’s how it is over there. You can get fire seafood and it’s unbelievably cheap. They have the fish sitting on ice, you pick the one you want, and walk out with a $40 bill. Which, for New York seafood, is wild.7. His Yale classmates There were so few of us, and I think something happened with my class where we were really keen on challenging everything around us and having conversations about how to move the industry and form forward. Every single one of them are people I will forever be grateful for, because they gave me a voice, in a way, in relation to my work. Before school, I’d always been kind of, “I’m an actor, I’m here to play a role the best way I can.” Working with them taught me to have something to say behind everything I do, to speak from where I am within my identity.8. Smuggling candy into the movies The candy you can actually stuff somewhere before going in. I’ll always get one of the more niche M & Ms, like caramel or peanut butter. I don’t mix them with the popcorn because they always get lost in there, so I’ll try to scoop them separately, but at the same time. The whole ordeal is genuinely disturbing to watch. If I ever have the money to do it, I would get one of those Coca-Cola Freestyles where you can pick a billion different options, and just go to town.9. “The Seagull” by Anton Chekhov I’ve always been a fan, but if ever I feel bad as an actor, I always look back to when we were doing a production [at Yale], and Meryl Streep was at one of the shows. She comes up to me after — I’ll never forget this — grabs my face, and goes, “Best Konstantin ever.” There’s a 99-percent chance that Meryl Streep was lying to me, or just being gracious, which I can still only be grateful for. But she once played it with Philip Seymour Hoffman in my role, and Louisa was now doing hers. So when she said that to me, I was like, “What the—.”10. Celebrating Eid I got up disastrously early, which is great; dressed nicely, which I rarely do; and went to prayer. I live in Harlem and there’s a large African Muslim population here. It was really beautiful seeing families with all the kids dressed up to the nines; just getting to see Muslims looking and dressing sexy, walking with pride on the streets. Growing up in Los Angeles, that wasn’t a thing you saw, except at prayer, so seeing that on the streets of New York is really joyful, and makes me stand two inches taller. More

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      The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to HBO, Hulu, Apple TV+ and More in July

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      Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to their libraries. Here are our picks for some of July’s most promising new titles.(Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)Chris Pratt as James Reece in “Terminal List.”Amazon PrimeNew to Amazon Prime‘The Terminal List’ Season 1Starts streaming: July 1Chris Pratt is the lead actor and an executive producer of “The Terminal List,” a military mystery based on a series of novels by Jack Carr. Pratt plays James Reece, a Navy SEAL whose team is wiped out on a mission under circumstances that look much more suspicious once Reece is back home and able to investigate — a task complicated by a brain injury that makes it hard for the soldier keep his memories straight. This star-studded drama also has Taylor Kitsch playing one of Reece’s buddies, Riley Keough as Reece’s wife, Jeanne Tripplehorn as a top-level bureaucrat and Constance Wu as a reporter who helps the hero understand that the people he had answered to might not have had his best interests at heart.‘Paper Girls’ Season 1Starts streaming: July 29In 1988, four adolescent girls are delivering newspapers in suburban Ohio when they inadvertently travel through time, and in the process get caught up in a long-running battle between bands of adventurers who disagree about who should be allowed to use the time-hopping technology.That is the premise of the writer Brian K. Vaughn and the artist Cliff Chiang’s Eisner-winning comic book series “Paper Girls” as well as its new television adaptation, which is filled with enough metaphysical mysteries, ’80s nostalgia and ray-gun blasts to keep most “Stranger Things” fans satisfied. The show is also a coming-of-age drama, concerned with the past, present and future of its young heroines, who during their journeys get a chance to confront the women they will become, and to think about whether their fates can — or should — be changed.Also arriving:July 8“Warriors on the Field”July 15“Don’t Make Me Go”“Forever Summer: Hamptons” Season 1“Love Accidentally” Season 1July 22“Anything’s Possible”New to AMC+‘Moonhaven’ Season 1Starts streaming: July 7Set 100 years in the future, this quirky science-fiction series takes viewers to a lunar colony where scientists and idealists have spent decades testing out ways to make an increasingly fragile Earth more habitable. Emma McDonald plays Bella, a skeptical pilot and part-time criminal who gets stuck in this weird utopia when she becomes a suspect in a murder. As Bella works alongside one of the colony’s law enforcement officers (Dominic Monaghan) to clear her name, she become embroiled in the political intrigue that is threatening to wreck this grand social experiment.Created by Peter Ocko (a veteran TV writer and producer who has worked on cult favorite shows like “Lodge 49” and “Pushing Daisies”), “Moonhaven” is the kind of drama meant to keep audiences wondering what will happen next and pondering the deeper theme of social interconnectedness.‘Better Call Saul’ Season 6, Part 2Starts streaming: July 11The final six episodes of this acclaimed “Breaking Bad” prequel has a lot of ground to cover, as the creators Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan connect all the pieces of the Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman story: from how he cemented his place as Albuquerque’s go-to attorney for drug kingpins to what became of him years later after he changed identities again and moved to Nebraska.The fates of some of the “Better Call Saul” characters are already sealed because of what happened on “Breaking Bad,” but the show’s fans have been nervous about others — and especially about what night happen to Jimmy’s good-hearted, keen-minded wife, Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn). Regardless of how the plot plays out, these last few chapters will offer another chance to savor one of the most artfully directed, sharply written crime dramas on TV.Also arriving:July 1“Barbarians”July 8“Last Looks”July 12“Cow”July 15“Paris, 13th District”July 22“Happening”Egerton in “Black Bird” as Jimmy Keene, a convicted drug dealer who is offered a deal to leave prison early if he can elicit a confession from another inmate.Alfonso Bresciani/Apple TV+New to Apple TV+‘Black Bird’Starts streaming: July 8Based on a memoir, “Black Bird” stars Taron Egerton as James Keene, a seemingly untouchable golden boy — a former high school football hero and policeman’s son — who gets busted for drug-dealing and weapons possession, and is sentenced to 10 years in prison. Then James gets offered a deal: transfer to a rougher facility, where he can cozy up to the suspected serial killer Larry Hall (Paul Walter Hauser), and get the man to confess to where he buried the bodies, earning himself an early release.Produced and written by the crime novelist Dennis Lehane, this mini-series features an accomplished cast (including Greg Kinnear as a dogged detective and Ray Liotta in one of his final roles as James’s dad), telling a story about the unsettling mysteries at the heart of some criminal cases, including when the truth is in conflict with the evidence.Also arriving:July 8“Duck & Goose”July 22“Best Foot Forward”“Trying” Season 3July 29“Amber Brown”“Surface”A scene from “The Wonderful Summer of Mickey Mouse.”Disney+New to Disney+‘The Wonderful Summer of Mickey Mouse’Starts streaming: July 8The arrival of a new season brings another of Disney’s quarterly Mickey Mouse anthologies — the third this year, after “The Wonderful Winter of Mickey Mouse” and “The Wonderful Spring of Mickey Mouse.” This new special alters the format a bit, telling five “Rashomon”-like interconnected stories, with Mickey and his pals each explaining how and why they left a trail of destruction while recklessly speeding toward a lakeside vacation resort. As with most of the recent Mickey Mouse cartoons, the emphasis here is on colorful visual design and inventive slapstick, delivered at a frenetic pace.Also arriving:July 1“Marvel Studios Assembled: The Making of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness”July 4“America the Beautiful”July 15“Zombies 3”July 20“Siempre Fui Yo”“Tudo Igual… Só Que Não”July 27“High School Musical: The Musical: The Series” Season 3“Light & Magic”Aida Osman, left, and KaMillion in “Rap Sh!t.”Alicia Vera/HBO Max New to HBO Max‘The Rehearsal’Starts streaming: July 15Fans of the deadpan comedian Nathan Fielder’s offbeat reality series “Nathan for You” should quickly catch onto the vibe of his new show “The Rehearsal.” The premise is similar: Fielder helps ordinary people with their ordinary problems by going to absurd lengths. In this case, he prepares his clients for potentially stressful or uncomfortable interactions with their friends and families by hiring actors and constructing detailed sets, so that these men and women can practice what they want to say. Because this is a Fielder project, there are a few twists along the way, all intended to jolt the viewer into noticing how awkward and artificial even the simplest human behavior can be.‘Rap Sh!t’ Season 1Starts streaming: July 21Issa Rae follows up her HBO dramedy “Insecure” with the more experimental “Rap Sh!t,” for which she is the head writer and creator, but not the star. Aida Osman plays Shawna, an aspiring rapper who makes ends meet by working at the front desk of a Miami hotel and doing favors — sometimes legal, sometimes not — for her friends.Much of the show is framed through the cellphones the characters use to text each other, to post on social media, to make snarky comments about their rivals and to communicate with the not-always-reliable men in their lives. Like “Insecure,” this new series is about how relationships and careers have changed in the modern era. But the women in ‘Rap Sh!t” are more desperate, feeling anxious to make something exciting happen in their lives before they get stuck in a working-class rut.Also arriving:July 1“Last Night in Soho”July 10“The Anarchists”July 11“Tuca & Bertie” Season 3July 12“The Bob’s Burgers Movie”“Edge of the Earth”July 14“FBoy Island” Season 2July 21“The Last Movie Stars”July 26“Bugs Bunny Builders” Season 1July 27“We Met in Virtual Reality”July 28“Harley Quinn” Season 3“Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin” Season 1New to Hulu‘What We Do in the Shadows’ Season 4Starts streaming: July 13In its brilliant third season, this hilarious mockumentary about a Staten Island vampire colony took some unexpected narrative turns, becoming more about the existential ennui and centuries-old regrets that threaten to tear these immortal bloodsuckers apart. Season 4 will resolve last year’s surprising cliffhangers, which saw the moody Nandor (Kayvan Novak) set to return to his Middle Eastern homeland, the debauched Laszlo (Matt Berry) staying in New York to look after the newly reincarnated form of his annoying colleague Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) and the bossy Nadja (Natasia Demetriou) heading to London to join the Supreme Vampiric Council. Much of the humor in this show is derived from the way these very different characters play off each other, so it shouldn’t be long before their paths cross again.Also arriving:July 1“Feud” Season 1“The Princess”July 2“Asking for It”July 6“Maggie” Season 1July 7“Rehearsals” Season 1“Ultrasound”July 8“Minamata”July 9“Gold”July 10“Killing Eve” Season 4July 12“The Bob’s Burgers Movie”July 13“Solar Opposites” Season 3July 14“Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons”July 18“The Cursed”July 19“Aftershock”July 21“American Horror Stories” Season 2“You Are Not My Mother”July 22“All My Friends Hate Me”July 26“Santa Evita”July 29“Hatching”“Not Okay”July 31“A Day to Die”Cristin Milioti and William Jackson Harper as a beleaguered, mystery-solving married couple in “The Resort.”PeacockNew to Peacock‘The Resort’ Season 1Starts streaming: July 28Fans of “The White Lotus” and “Only Murders in the Building” who are looking for another twisty, character-driven mystery in an upscale locale should check out this stylish dramedy, produced by Sam Esmail (“Mr. Robot”) and created by Andy Siara (the co-writer of the movie “Palm Springs”).Set at an all-inclusive Mexican beach resort, “The Resort” has Cristin Milioti and William Jackson Harper playing a married couple on the brink of breaking up who stumble upon evidence of an old crime. The series jumps between the events 15 years earlier, filling the viewers in on the details of what might have happened, and the present day, showing the bickering heroes rediscover what they love and loathe about each other while they work together to crack the case.Also arriving:July 1“The Bad Guys”July 5“Dateline: The Last Day” Season 1July 7“The Real Housewives: Ultimate Girls Trip” Season 2July 8“Trigger Point” Season 1July 11“Days of Our Lives: Beyond Salem” Season 2July 14“Hart to Heart” Season 2July 19“Love Island” Season 4 More

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      ‘Transparent’ Musical Highlights Center Theater Group Season

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      “A Transparent Musical,” with music and lyrics by Faith Soloway, will have its world premiere in May 2023 at Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.The world premiere of a stage musical adaptation of the groundbreaking Amazon series “Transparent” will highlight the 2022-23 season of Center Theater Group in Los Angeles, the company announced Thursday.The production, “A Transparent Musical,” features characters from the original series about a sexagenarian parent in a Jewish Los Angeles family who comes out as a transgender woman. The new musical comedy is billed as “a story of self-discovery, acceptance and celebration.” It will have its world premiere in May at the Mark Taper Forum.The creator of the original series, Joey Soloway, and MJ Kaufman wrote the book, with music and lyrics by Faith Soloway (who wrote for all four seasons of the television series and composed the songs for its finale). The choreography is by James Aslop (“Girls5eva”), and it will be directed by Tina Landau (“SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical”).“My sibling and I have dreamed of creating a stage musical that brings the experiences of being trans and Jewish into a mainstream, pop culture fantasia,” Joey Soloway said in a release.The original series, which was inspired by the siblings Joey and Faith Soloway’s parent’s own transition later in life, was one of the first mainstream shows to focus on transgender issues when it premiered in 2014. It won eight Emmy Awards, and The New York Times’s Alessandra Stanley praised it as “an insightful, downbeat comedy told without piety or burlesque.” It was also the first scripted series to showcase a transitioning transgender character.“A Transparent Musical” will begin performances on May 20, 2023, and open on May 31, with a limited run through June 25, 2023.Center Theater Group, a 55-year-old nonprofit theater, will present the world premiere of Larissa FastHorse’s comedy “Fake It Until You Make It” (Aug. 2-Sept. 3, 2023), about “shifters” — people who exist in a world of self-determined identity. It will also present Jane Wagner’s one-woman play “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe,” which stars Cecily Strong of “Saturday Night Live” (Sept. 21-Oct. 23); Lynn Nottage’s Tony-nominated truck-stop-set comedy “Clyde’s” (Nov. 15- Dec. 18); and a revival of Anna Deavere Smith’s “Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992” (March 8- April 9, 2023) at the Taper.The productions are part of a Center Group season that includes work exclusively by writers who identify as female, transgender or nonbinary, a majority of whom are artists of color, which took shape after the company was called out last fall for its 10-play 2021-22 season, which included only one work by a woman. More

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      ‘My Fake Boyfriend’ Review: Deepfake Dating

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      A gay man gets trapped in a web of lies after his overeager best friend concocts an artificial relationship for him on social media.The real villain of “My Fake Boyfriend,” from the director Rose Troche, is New York City dating culture. Everyone seems perpetually ready to move onto the next hottie or hookup app that grabs their attention.That’s partly why Andrew — the protagonist, played by Keiynan Lonsdale — has been tolerating Nico (Marcus Rosner), an egomaniacal soap opera star. Aiming to cut Andrew off from Nico, Jake, Andrew’s best friend (played by Dylan Sprouse), devises a fake boyfriend for him, blasting Photoshopped couple pics all over Andrew’s social media timelines. His scheme yields mischief, reckonings, and, eventually, real romance.To set expectations, it’s best to think of “My Fake Boyfriend” as two movies. There’s the gay rom-com, focused on Andrew, that Pride month viewers have presumably tuned in for, and then there’s an almost “Black Mirror”-ish comedy, centered on Jake, about a meddling techie who gets caught up in his best friend’s life. Because it’s such a complex set piece — creating and maintaining a fake person online is quite an undertaking, even in this movie, where the logistics are oddly breezy — Jake’s pixelated dreamboat takes up screen time that could be better spent on Andrew’s quest for real love.That’s not to say Jake is a complete distraction. He has some of the zaniest lines, and Sprouse is delightfully game for all of them. But once Andrew meets Rafi (played by Samer Salem, who could probably seduce a wall), it’s hard to want to watch anything else. Their chemistry is off the charts, though this film’s R rating is tragically all talk, no action.My Fake BoyfriendRated R for rowdy humor. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. Watch on Amazon. More

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      The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to HBO, Hulu, Apple TV+ and More in June

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      Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to their libraries. Here are our picks for some of June’s most promising new titles.(Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)Erin Doherty as Becky Green in “Chloe.”Luke Varley/Amazon StudiosNew to Amazon Prime‘Chloe’Starts streaming: June 24In this British psychological thriller series, Erin Doherty plays Becky Green, a clever schemer who is plagued with self-doubt and prone to daydreaming — like a cross between Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley and James Thurber’s Walter Mitty. Becky has a habit of scrolling through social media accounts, looking for high-end parties to crash, which gets her into trouble when one of her favorite influencers, Chloe Fairbourne (Poppy Gilbert), mysteriously leaves her two phone messages before being found dead. Becky uses her uncanny ability to fit in with the elites to get close to Chloe’s friends, in hopes of figuring out what really happened.Also arriving:June 3“The Boys” Season 3June 10“Fairfax” Season 2June 17“The Lake” Season 1“The Summer I Turned Pretty” Season 1From left, Joel Kim Booster, Maya Rudolph and Ron Funches in Apple TV+’s “Loot.”Colleen Hayes/Apple TV+.New to Apple TV+‘For All Mankind’ Season 3Starts streaming: June 10Though “For All Mankind” has been one of TV’s best dramas since it debuted in 2019, it has never drawn much social media buzz or awards attention. Perhaps the more overtly science fiction-oriented Season 3 will win some new fans. The show is set in an alternate history where the 1960s Cold War space race between the United States and the Soviet Union escalated instead of petering out, leading to cultural changes for both nations — some subtle, some not — in the ensuing decades. Season 3 is set in the 1990s, as the push toward the stars extends to Mars, which the Americans and the Russians are scrambling to conquer first, while their respective governments deal with multiple political crises back on Earth.‘Loot’ Season 1Starts streaming: June 24The writer-producers Alan Yang and Matt Hubbard — the team behind the smart, strange afterlife dramedy “Forever” — team up again with the actress and producer Maya Rudolph for the sitcom “Loot.” Rudolph plays Molly, a recent divorcée who has billions of dollars at her disposal and no sense of direction in her life. She decides to rededicate herself to her charitable foundation, and quickly finds that decades of living in a bubble have left her way out of touch with the kind of people her money is meant to help. Mj Rodriguez plays the foundation’s director, who needs Molly’s money but doesn’t really want her input. “Loot” is essentially an old-fashioned workplace comedy, but rooted in the uniquely modern problem of mega-rich folks who want to leave a positive legacy but aren’t accustomed to taking advice.Explore the Marvel Cinematic UniverseThe popular franchise of superhero films and TV series continues to expand.‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’: With a touch of horror, the franchise’s newest film returns to the world of the mystic arts.‘Moon Knight’: In the Disney+ mini-series, Oscar Isaac plays a caped crusader who struggles with dissociative identity disorder.‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’: In the latest installment of the “Spider-Man” series, the web slinger continues to radiate sweet, earnest decency.‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’: The superhero originated in comics filled with racist stereotypes. The movie knocked them down.Also arriving:June 3“Physical” Season 2June 10“Lovely Little Farm”June 17“Cha Cha Real Smooth”“Home” Season 2Iman Vellani will play the latest Marvel hero in “Ms. Marvel.”Marvel/DisneyNew to Disney+‘Ms. Marvel’ Season 1Starts streaming: June 8This action-comedy series introduces one of the most popular new comic book superheroes of the past decade to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Iman Vellani plays Kamala Khan, an awkward 16-year-old Pakistani American girl from Jersey City, N.J., who is a superfan of the cosmic Avenger Carol Danvers, a.k.a. Captain Marvel. When Kamala inherits a device that gives her powers of her own, she has to balance her daily life as the daughter of strict Muslim parents with the wild experiences of a superhero-in-training. Less epic in scale than other Marvel movies and TV shows, “Ms. Marvel” — like the comics it’s based on — is really a coming-of-age story, featuring a hero who often feels like a hapless outsider whenever she’s not in costume.Also arriving:June 3“Hollywood Stargirl”June 10“Beyond Infinity: Buzz and the Journey to Lightyear”June 15“Family Reboot” Season 1June 24“Rise”“Trevor: The Musical”June 29“Baymax!” Season 1Alicia Vikander as Mira in “Irma Vep.”Carole Bethuel/HBONew to HBO Max‘Irma Vep’Starts streaming: June 6The French writer-director Olivier Assayas revisits and updates the themes of his 1996 film “Irma Vep” for this new mini-series, which, like the original, is about a movie crew remaking Louis Feuillade’s classic 1915-16 serial “Les Vampires.” Alicia Vikander plays Mira, an American actress who agrees to take the lead in the picture both to stretch her talents and to escape the pressures of being a big star. When Mira unexpectedly finds herself surrounded by indecisive crew members, duplicitous castmates and a parade of ex-lovers, she copes by disappearing more and more into her character: a devious master criminal. The particular details of this “Irma Vep” are different from the old version, but once again Assayas is interested in the peculiar ecosystem of a film set, which can be baffling to outsiders but welcoming to weirdos.‘The Janes’Starts streaming: June 8This timely documentary looks back at the years just before the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision laid the groundwork for abortion rights. Directed by Tia Lessin and Emma Pildes, “The Janes” covers a Chicago-based underground network that helped women procure safe and affordable abortions in the late 1960s and early ’70s. Using archival footage and new interviews, Lessin and Pildes recall how dangerous the pre-Roe America could be for women, whose needs were often overlooked by the male-dominated medical establishment — and who could be exploited by criminals out to make a quick buck from people too desperate to complain. The film is also about the era’s growing feminist movement, which was born in part from women bonding over common experiences rarely discussed in public.Also arriving:June 9“Amsterdam” Season 1“Summer Camp Island” Season 6June 16“Father of the Bride”June 23“Menudo: Forever Young”June 26“Westworld” Season 4June 30“Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed: The Underground Rock Experience”John Lithgow in “The Old Man.”Kurt Iswarienko/FXNew to Hulu‘The Old Man’Starts streaming: June 17Based on a Thomas Perry novel, the road-trip thriller “The Old Man” stars Jeff Bridges as a former intelligence officer who has been in hiding for decades, living a relatively quiet life under the alias Dan Chase. When his past finally catches up with him, Chase goes on the run, pursued by an old associate (John Lithgow). The ex-spy’s faculties have dimmed considerably during his downtime, but he remembers enough tradecraft to keep the game going — even though he’s risking everything he holds dear just to stay alive and out of prison a little longer. “The Old Man” combines slam-bang action scenes with quieter character moments, in which grizzled warriors reflect on their successes and mistakes.‘Only Murders in the Building’ Season 2Starts streaming: June 28Last summer’s surprise streaming hit returns for a second season, with Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez reprising their roles as New York neighbors who launch a true-crime podcast in an effort to solve a shocking crime in their apartment complex — and perhaps to revitalize their moribund personal lives. Season 1 of “Only Murders in the Building” ended with the amateur detectives finding the killer, then immediately becoming the chief suspects in yet another homicide. Expect another twisty and surprising mystery in Season 2, as well as more charming interplay between the show’s three main characters, who are each emotionally needy in their own way but fundamentally good-hearted.Also arriving:June 2“The Orville: New Horizons” Season 1June 3“Fire Island”June 13“The Worst Person in the World”June 15“Love, Victor” Season 3June 17“Good Luck to You, Leo Grande”June 23“The Bear” Season 1Annette Bening and Bryan Cranston as a couple who crack the Massachusetts lottery in “Jerry and Marge Go Large.”Jake Giles Netter/Paramount+New to Paramount+‘Jerry and Marge Go Large’Starts streaming: June 17Based on a true story, the dramedy “Jerry and Marge Go Large” stars Bryan Cranston as Jerry Selbee, a retired Michigan factory worker and amateur number-cruncher who discovers a glitch in the Massachusetts lottery’s odds and puts together a consortium of his small-town friends and neighbors to buy enough tickets to maximize returns. The community’s feel-good story hits a bump when a group of Harvard students discovers the same lottery loophole and conspires to drive the Selbees out of business. Directed by David Frankel from a Brad Copeland screenplay (adapting an article by Jason Fagone), the movie features a cast of older comedians and actors, including Annette Bening as Jerry’s wife, Marge.Also arriving:June 1“South Park: The Streaming Wars”June 12“Evil” Season 3June 16“Players” Season 1Jana Schmieding and Ed Helms in “Rutherford Falls.”Ron Batzdorff/PeacockNew to Peacock‘Rutherford Falls’ Season 2Starts streaming: June 16The first season of “Rutherford Falls” delivered incisive and funny riffs on the indelible stain of colonialism, via the story of a proud New England historian named Nathan Rutherford (Ed Helms) who sells tourists a skewed version of American history in which his ancestors worked happily arm-in-arm with the native Minishonka tribe. Season 2 picks up after last year’s big twist, which saw the Minishonka casino owner Terry Thomas (Michael Greyeyes) and Nathan’s best friend Reagan Wells (Jana Schmieding) seizing control of the town and choosing to maintain its idealized take on the past in order to enrich their own community. The power dynamic between these characters has changed, but the show’s writers are still coaxing dark comedy out of the many ways they scramble to maintain lies rather than face painful truths.Also arriving:June 14“Dateline: The Last Day” More