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      Will Smith’s ‘Emancipation’: What Will Apple Do?

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      The Civil War drama “Emancipation” finished filming early this year. Now, Apple faces a quandary on what to do with the movie.Apple has a Will Smith problem.Mr. Smith is the star of “Emancipation,” a film set during the Civil War era that Apple envisioned as a surefire Oscar contender when it wrapped filming earlier this year. But that was before Mr. Smith strode onto the stage at the Academy Awards in March and slapped the comedian Chris Rock, who had made a joke about Mr. Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.Mr. Smith, who also won best actor that night, has since surrendered his membership in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and has been banned from attending any Academy-related events, including the Oscar telecast, for the next decade.Now Apple finds itself left with a $120 million unreleased awards-style movie featuring a star no longer welcome at the biggest award show of them all, and a big question: Can the film, even if it succeeds artistically, overcome the baggage that now accompanies Mr. Smith?The sensitivity of the situation is apparent. According to three people involved with the film who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the company’s planning, there have been discussions inside Apple to release “Emancipation” by the end of the year, which would make it eligible for awards consideration. Variety reported in May, however, that the film’s release would be pushed into 2023.When asked for this article how and when it planned to release “Emancipation,” Apple declined to comment on that or anything else about the film.The Race to Rule Streaming TVCable Cowboy: The media mogul John Malone opened up about the streaming wars, the fast-changing news business and the future of his own career.Warner Bros. Discovery: The recently formed media colossus announced plans for a free streaming service and a paid subscription streaming service combining HBO Max and Discovery+.Turmoil at Netflix: Despite a loss of subscribers, job cuts and a steep stock drop, the streaming giant has said it is staying the course.Live Sports: Apple and Amazon are eager to expand their streaming audiences. They increasingly see live sports as a way to do it.e.There is no easy answer. Should the company postpone a film based on an important historical subject because its leading man is too toxic? Or does Apple release the movie and watch the outcome unfold? Audiences could be turned off by Mr. Smith’s presence, perhaps taking some gloss off the well-polished Apple brand. Or they could respond positively to the film, prompting an Oscar campaign, which could then upset members of the academy. And the question of how to publicize “Emancipation” will bring scrutiny to a film marketing unit that has already drawn grumbles of dissatisfaction in Hollywood for skimpy ad spends and disjointed communication — and parted ways with its head of video marketing this month.“If they shelve the movie, does that tarnish Apple’s reputation? If they release it, does it tarnish their reputation?” asked Stephen Galloway, the dean of Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts and the former executive editor of The Hollywood Reporter. “Hollywood likes a win-win situation. This one is lose-lose.”“Emancipation,” directed by Antoine Fuqua (“Training Day”) and with a script by William Collage, is based on the true story of a slave who escaped to the North and joined the Union army to fight against his former captors. Shot outside New Orleans and troubled by delays caused by hurricanes and Covid-19, the movie is about a man known as “Whipped Peter,” whose scarred back was photographed and became a rallying cry for abolition during the Civil War. It finished filming about a month before the 2022 Oscar telecast in March.“Emancipation” was already generating 2023 awards buzz, but plans for the film’s release were thrown into question when Mr. Smith rushed the stage and slapped Mr. Rock. Later in the show, Mr. Smith won the best actor award for his work in “King Richard.”Though Mr. Smith can still be nominated for his work, the reaction to the slap means the Oscar chances for “Emancipation” have dimmed exponentially..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.Learn more about our process.Indeed, there are some in the film industry who believe that releasing “Emancipation” along with other Oscar contenders this year will only anger academy voters who were embarrassed by Mr. Smith’s actions.Bill Kramer, the newly installed chief executive of the film academy, said on a recent call with reporters that next year’s show will not dwell on the slap, even in joke form. “We want to move forward and to have an Oscars that celebrates cinema,” he said. “That’s our focus right now.”The presence of “Emancipation” would make that difficult. Stephen Gilula, the former co-chief executive of Fox Searchlight, the studio behind such Oscar winners as “12 Years a Slave” and “Slumdog Millionaire,” said releasing the film in the awards corridor between now and the end of the year, would put undue pressure on the movie and make the slap the center of the conversation.“Regardless of the quality of the movie, all of the press, all the reviewers, all of the feature writers, all the awards prognosticators are going to be looking at it and talking about the slap,” Mr. Gilula said in an interview. “There’s a very high risk that the film will not get judged on its pure merit. It puts it into a very untenable context.”To some, the film may be too good to keep quiet. Apple set up a general audience test screening of “Emancipation” in Chicago earlier this year, according to three people with knowledge of the event who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not permitted to discuss it publicly. They said it generated an overwhelmingly positive reaction, specifically for Mr. Smith’s performance, which one of the people called “volcanic.” Audience members, during the after-screening feedback, said they were not turned off by Mr. Smith’s recent public behavior.Mr. Smith largely disappeared from public view following the Oscars. But in July, he released a video on his YouTube channel in which he said he was “deeply remorseful” for his behavior and apologized directly to Mr. Rock and his family.The public mea culpa, which lasted a little more than five minutes and consisted of Mr. Smith sitting in a chair and speaking to the camera, had been viewed more than 3.8 million times since it was posted on July 29. Yet it is unclear whether it has improved the public’s perception of him. Mr. Smith’s Q score, a metric that measures celebrities’ appeal in the United States, plummeted after the Oscars. Before the slap, Mr. Smith consistently ranked among the top five celebrities in the country, alongside Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington, according to data provided to Variety. When his appeal was measured again in July, (before he released his video apology) it dropped to a 24 from a 39, what Henry Schafer, executive vice president of the Q Scores Company, called a “precipitous decline.”Apple has delayed films before. In 2019, the company pushed back the release of one of its first feature films, “The Banker,” starring Anthony Mackie and Samuel L. Jackson, after a daughter of one of the men whose life served as a basis of the film raised allegations of sexual abuse involving her family. The film was ultimately released in March 2020 after Apple said it reviewed “the information available to us, including the filmmakers’ research.”Many in Hollywood are drawn to Apple for its willingness to spend handsomely to acquire prominent projects connected with established talent. But the company has also been criticized for its unwillingness to spend much to market those same projects. Two people who have worked with the company, and who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss dealings with Apple, said it usually created just one trailer for a film — a frustrating approach for those who are accustomed to the traditional Hollywood way of producing multiple trailers aimed at different audiences. Apple prefers to rely on its Apple TV+ app and in-store marketing to attract audiences.Yet those familiar with Apple’s thinking believe that even if it chooses to release “Emancipation” this year, it will not feature the film in its retail outlets like it did for “CODA,” which in March became the first movie from a streaming service to win best picture. That achievement, of course, was overshadowed by the controversy involving Mr. Smith. More

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      in Television

      41 TV Shows to Watch This Fall

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      Noteworthy premieres include new seasons of buzzy hits (“Abbott Elementary,” “The Handmaid’s Tale”), reboots and revivals (“Quantum Leap,” “Willow”) and more.The fall television season got off to an early start this year with the arrival of the dueling franchise extensions and hopeful blockbusters, “House of the Dragon” on HBO and “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” on Amazon Prime Video. But TV’s vast landscape offers a lot more than expensively produced, effects-laden fantasy. From the relatable delights of “Abbott Elementary” to the highly specific hilarity of “Documentary Now!,” here are some noteworthy fall premieres, arranged in chronological order.All dates are subject to change.THE SERPENT QUEEN The story of Catherine de’ Medici, the 16th-century queen of France, in a satirical, talking-to-the-camera 21st-century telling, with Samantha Morton and Liv Hill as Catherine and a large cast, including Charles Dance, Colm Meaney and Ludivine Sagnier, as the clerics and aristocrats who underestimate her at their peril. Starz, Sept. 11.THE JENNIFER HUDSON SHOW The success of daytime talk-show hosts is notoriously hard to predict, and whether Hudson will have the right skill set and personality for the role is about to be seen. But she immediately becomes the most talented singer and actress in the field, for what that’s worth. Syndicated, Sept. 12.THE HANDMAID’S TALE This bleak allegory and nonlinear-TV pioneer — the first streaming show to win an Emmy for outstanding drama series — soldiers into its fifth season, with June (Elisabeth Moss) quickly coming down from the cathartic high of Season 4’s bloody conclusion. Hulu, Sept. 14.Elisabeth Moss in “The Handmaid’s Tale,” returning for its fifth season on Sept. 14.HuluATLANTA After a third season, ending in May, that was quietly received — and that dropped more than half of the show’s previous broadcast audience — Donald Glover’s prickly comedy quickly returns for a fourth and final go-round. FX, Sept. 15.THE U.S. AND THE HOLOCAUST Ken Burns, directing with Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein, devotes six hours to an uncomfortable chapter of American history with an alarmingly familiar backdrop of racism and xenophobia. PBS, Sept. 18.QUANTUM LEAP Raymond Lee (the sympathetic diner owner in “Kevin Can F**k Himself”) plays a new time-jumping do-gooder in this reboot of the early-90s sci-fi series. The Quantum Leap project is restarted and the original hero, Sam Beckett, is still missing, so a Scott Bakula guest appearance seems pretty much preordained. NBC, Sept. 19.PARIS POLICE 1900 In the spirit of “Babylon Berlin,” this period policier sets standard crime drama against a vivid historical backdrop: the Dreyfus affair, organized and violent antisemitism, the rise of the pioneering lawyer Jeanne Chauvin (Eugenie Derouand) and the sometimes deadly career of the Parisian courtesan Marguerite Steinheil (Evelyne Brochu). MHz Choice, Sept. 20.REBOOT Steven Levitan, who grabbed the network-sitcom brass ring with “Just Shoot Me!” and “Modern Family,” indulges in some gentle self-parody. Judy Greer, Keegan-Michael Key and Johnny Knoxville play the cast of a hacky early-aughts family comedy who reunite for a new version written by a young woman (Rachel Bloom of “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”) who is strangely obsessed with the original show. Hulu, Sept. 20.ABBOTT ELEMENTARY Quinta Brunson’s sitcom about struggling teachers at a Philadelphia elementary school, a breakout hit in the spring and an Emmy nominee for best comedy series, embarks on its second season. ABC, Sept. 21.Lisa Ann Walter, left, and Sheryl Lee Ralph in “Abbott Elementary,” returning for its second season on Sept. 21, on ABC.Scott Everett White/ABCANDOR Tony Gilroy has more on his résumé than a writing credit for “Rogue One,” and it looks as if his new “Star Wars” series might incorporate some of the real-world grit he displayed a feel for in the Bourne movies. That would be a good thing, though don’t tell it to your friend with the lightsaber collection. Disney+, Sept. 21.REASONABLE DOUBT Kerry Washington is an executive producer and a director of this legal melodrama created by Raamla Mohamed, who was a writer and producer on Washington’s breakthrough series, “Scandal.” Emayatzy Corinealdi plays a high-rent, high-stress Los Angeles lawyer whose conscience begins to bite her in the first scripted series from Disney’s Onyx Collective brand for creators of color. Hulu, Sept. 27.THE DARK HEART Gustav Möller, director of the Swedish film “The Guilty” (remade in America starring Jake Gyllenhaal), oversaw this five-part thriller inspired by real events. A woman who manages a civilian search team for missing persons takes on the case of a landowner and lumber baron who alienated a lot of people, including his ambitious daughter, before he disappeared. Topic, Sept. 29.SO HELP ME TODD A quirky-funny mystery series — in the long lineage of “Monk” — starring Marcia Gay Harden as a Type-A lawyer and Skylar Astin as her son, who’s better at investigating than he is at adulting. CBS, Sept. 29.Marcia Gay Harden stars in “So Help Me Todd,” premiering Sept. 29 on CBS.Michael Courtney/CBSANNE RICE’S INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE AMC takes its first step toward an Anne Rice universe, under the aegis of the veteran producer Mark Johnson (“Better Call Saul”). Jacob Anderson, the eunuch warrior Grey Worm in “Game of Thrones,” plays Louis, the Brad Pitt role from the movie version; Sam Reid steps in for Tom Cruise as Lestat; and the newcomer Bailey Bass, soon to be seen in several “Avatar” sequels, replaces Kirsten Dunst as the child vampire, Claudia. AMC, Oct. 2.EAST NEW YORK William Finkelstein, a creator of this cop drama, spent the 1990s and early 2000s writing and producing for a good roster of shows: “L.A. Law,” “Murder One,” “Brooklyn South,” “Law & Order” and “NYPD Blue.” On the other hand, he also created “Cop Rock” with Steven Bochco. Amanda Warren (the mayor in “The Leftovers”) plays a new precinct boss in the Brooklyn neighborhood of the title, heading a cast that includes Jimmy Smits, Richard Kind and Ruben Santiago-Hudson. CBS, Oct. 2.THE WALKING DEAD There was a time — and it was only six years ago — when “The Walking Dead” was drawing more than 12 million viewers an episode and the death of a major character was Monday morning news. Now more important as intellectual property than as weekly storytelling, the original series shuffles to the finish line with its final eight episodes. AMC, Oct. 2.Norman Reedus in AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” returning for its final season on Oct. 2.Jace Downs/AMCMAKING BLACK AMERICA: THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE Henry Louis Gates Jr. explores the codes, networks and private societies that Black Americans have created “behind the veil” of the color line in a four-part documentary series. PBS, Oct. 4.ALASKA DAILY Tom McCarthy, who made one of the best newspaper dramas of our time in the film “Spotlight,” created this series about an abrasive reporter (Hilary Swank) who gets canceled in New York and takes a job in Anchorage, lured by a story about the deaths of Indigenous women. The presence of Jeff Perry as her new boss probably isn’t the only thing that will remind you of the shows of the ABC stalwart Shonda Rhimes. ABC, Oct. 6.A FRIEND OF THE FAMILY Anna Paquin and Colin Hanks star in this true-crime mini-series as the parents of the actress Jan Broberg, who was kidnapped when she was 12 and again when she was 14 by the same family friend (played by Jake Lacy). The bizarre story has also been told in the 2017 feature documentary “Abducted in Plain Sight.” Peacock, Oct. 6.Jake Lacy and Anna Paquin in the Peacock mini-series “A Friend of the Family.”PeacockPENNYWORTH: THE ORIGIN OF BATMAN’S BUTLER This stylish “Batman” prequel series, about the former special-forces soldier who will one day be Bruce Wayne’s butler (as the show’s awkward new title makes clear), leaves Epix for a platform closer to its DC Comics roots. Season 3 also mostly leaves behind the alt-history British civil war that occupied the first two installments, jumping ahead five years and introducing superheroes. HBO Max, Oct. 6.LET THE RIGHT ONE IN John Ajvide Lindqvist’s ultra-bleak 2004 novel about a child vampire keeps circulating through the culture: It has inspired films, plays, a comic book and a TV pilot, with Thomas Kretschmann, that wasn’t picked up. Now the story makes it to TV with Demián Bichir as the father of the girl vampire (Madison Taylor Baez) who’s forever 12. Showtime, online Oct. 7, cable Oct. 9.THE MIDNIGHT CLUB The latest from Mike Flanagan, whose atmospheric horror series (“The Haunting of Hill House,” “Midnight Mass”) have won a following on Netflix. Heather Langenkamp plays the doctor at a hospice where the patients like to tell one another scary stories. Netflix, Oct. 7.BECOMING FREDERICK DOUGLASS The documentarian Stanley Nelson (“Attica,” “Freedom Riders”) fills in some important chapters in his epic yet quotidian history of Black life in America with this film and with “Harriet Tubman: Visions of Freedom” (Oct. 4), both directed by Nelson and Nicole London. PBS, Oct. 11.CHAINSAW MAN Anticipation is running high in the anime world for the MAPPA animation studio’s adaptation of “Chainsaw Man,” a dark-comic, body-horror manga about a young devil hunter with a deadly appendage. Crunchyroll, Oct. 11.SHERWOOD The cast of this BBC mystery series is a lengthy British-TV who’s who: David Morrissey, Lesley Manville, Claire Rushbrook, Philip Jackson, Joanne Froggatt, Terence Maynard, Kevin Doyle, Robert Glenister, Clare Holman, Lorraine Ashbourne, Adeel Akhtar, Pip Torrens and Mark Addy, among others. Morrissey is the detective investigating a bow-and-arrow murder in Robin Hood’s old Nottinghamshire haunts that brings up hatreds from a 1980s miners’ strike. BritBox, Oct. 11.THE WINCHESTERS Jensen Ackles returns to the “Supernatural” universe, reassuming his role as the monster hunter Dean Winchester in this prequel series. This time Dean, in a supporting role, is tracking down the real story of the younger days of his mother and father (Meg Donnelly and Drake Rodger), which sounds like a good strategy for avoiding pesky continuity questions. CW, Oct. 11Drake Rodger and Meg Donnelly in “The Winchesters,” premiering Oct. 11 on the CW.Matt Miller/CWDOCUMENTARY NOW! One of TV’s greatest pleasures returns after a more than three-year hiatus. The fourth season, hosted, as always, by Dame Helen Mirren, will include sendups of “My Octopus Teacher,” “The September Issue,” “When We Were Kings” and Werner Herzog’s “Burden of Dreams.” IFC, Oct. 19.FROM SCRATCH Zoe Saldana stars in a mini-series that crosses cultures — a Black American woman falls in love with a Sicilian chef during her Wanderjahr in Italy — and genres, mixing picturesque Euroromance and sorrowful survivor’s tale. Netflix, Oct. 21.THE PERIPHERAL Scott B. Smith, who wrote the screenplay (based on his own novel) of the excellent 1998 thriller “A Simple Plan,” is the creator and showrunner of this series based on a dystopian, alternate-futures mystery by William Gibson; Chloë Grace Moretz stars; and Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan are among the executive producers. That’s an awful lot of bleak-noir experience. Amazon Prime Video, Oct. 21.GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S CABINET OF CURIOSITIES Del Toro takes on the Alfred Hitchcock role, playing master of ceremonies for an eight-episode horror anthology. (A previous title included the words “Guillermo del Toro Presents.”) The first season’s directors include Jennifer Kent (“The Babadook”), Catherine Hardwicke (“Twilight”) and Ana Lily Amirpour (“A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night”). Netflix, Oct. 25.SHERMAN’S SHOWCASE Diallo Riddle and Bashir Salahuddin’s consistently clever, stealthily sophisticated, unabashedly nostalgic sendup of old-school variety shows finally returns for a second season. IFC, Oct. 26.Bashir Salahuddin, foreground, in “Sherman’s Showcase,” returning for its second season on Oct. 26, on IFC.Michael Moriatis/IFCTRUE CRIME STORY: INDEFENSIBLE Back for a second season, the comedian Jena Friedman applies the adversarial techniques of topical late-night humor to the true-crime genre, in 20-minute episodes that are less investigations — the facts of the cases are generally pretty plain, at least in Friedman’s eyes — than expressions of darkly comic outrage. SundanceTV, Oct. 27.BIG MOUTH Since Nick Kroll broke the third-dimensional wall in the Season 5 finale and had a heart-to-heart with his animated character, Nick Birch, will any of his castmates get to follow suit in the sixth season of this raunchy paean to puberty? The real-life John Mulaney would probably have some interesting things to say to his animated counterpart, randy Andy Glouberman. Netflix, Oct. 28.MANIFEST A hit in reruns on Netflix after being canceled by NBC, this paranormal mystery-melodrama gets a fourth and final season at its streaming home. Netflix, Nov. 4.DANGEROUS LIAISONS This new adaptation of the Choderlos de Laclos novel was announced nearly a decade ago, with Christopher Hampton, who had already based a play and a film on the novel, attached as writer once again. Hampton didn’t remain as the writer — he gets an executive producer credit — but the mini-series has arrived billed as the “origin story” of the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont. Apparently they weren’t always jaded monsters. Starz, Nov. 6.MOOD Like Phoebe Waller-Bridge (“Fleabag”) and Michaela Coel (“Chewing Gum”) before her, Nicole Lecky turns a hit one-woman play into a buzzy British TV series. She plays Sasha, a broke and unemployed young Londoner who finds herself in the potentially lucrative and liberating — and also potentially exploitative and dangerous — world of the influencer economy. BBC America, Nov. 6.Nicole Lecky in “Mood,” premiering Nov. 6 on BBC America.Natalie Seery/BBC Studios, via Bonafide FilmsTULSA KING On the same night that Tyler Sheridan’s flagship show, “Yellowstone,” begins its fifth season, his portfolio of manly genre dramas grows with the addition of this mash-up of gangster story and neo-western. It’s also Sheridan’s latest action-hero reclamation project: Sylvester Stallone stars as a Mafia capo sent to oversee operations in the foreign territory of Tulsa, Okla. Paramount+, Nov. 13.LIMITLESS WITH CHRIS HEMSWORTH Deploying the charm he brings to his depiction of the Norse god Thor for Marvel, Hemsworth headlines a wellness-and-longevity documentary series for Marvel’s corporate parent, Disney. (The sound of his unadulterated Australian accent makes him even more charming, if that’s possible.) Subjects like how to deal with stress and the value of fasting are addressed with superheroic energy. Disney+, Nov. 16.WELCOME TO CHIPPENDALES Robert Siegel, fresh off “Pam & Tommy,” and Jenni Konner of “Girls” are the showrunners of a mini-series starring Kumail Nanjiani as Steve Banerjee, the unlikely and eventually ill-fated founder of a male-stripping colossus. Hulu, Nov. 22.WILLOW Ron Howard’s 1988 fantasy film “Willow” is not the first piece of intellectual property anyone would have predicted for a reboot, but when George Lucas is involved — he received “story by” credit on the film — anything can happen. Lucasfilm and Howard’s Imagine Entertainment are producing this sequel series; Warwick Davis, now 52, returns as the title character. Maybe Willow will be a more consistent spell caster than he was as a teenager. Disney+, Nov. 30.Warwick Davis in “Willow,” premiering Nov. 30 on Disney+.Lucasfilm/Disney+THE ADVENTURES OF SAUL BELLOW Asaf Galay’s documentary, an “American Masters” offering, recruits wives, children and innocent bystanders to talk about being the real-life sources of Bellow’s books. Meanwhile, fellow novelists and critics like Charles Johnson, Salman Rushdie, Stanley Crouch and, in what may have been his last interview, a captivating Philip Roth certify or question Bellow’s place in the American pantheon. PBS, Dec. 12.And if all that isn’t enough for you, these new and returning shows are also coming this fall (new shows in bold):Sept. 11: “Monarch,” Fox; Sept. 12: “War of the Worlds,” Epix; Sept. 13: “The Come Up,” Freeform; Sept. 15: “La Otra Mirada,” PBS; “Vampire Academy,” Peacock; “The Light in the Hall,” Sundance Now; Sept. 16: “Los Espookys,” HBO; Sept. 18: “60 Minutes,” CBS; “SEAL Team,” Paramount+; Sept. 19: “Bob Hearts Abishola,” “NCIS,” “NCIS: Hawai’i,” “The Neighborhood,” CBS; “9-1-1,” “The Cleaning Lady,” Fox; Sept. 20: “FBI,” “FBI: International,” “FBI: Most Wanted,” CBS; “The Resident,” Fox; “New Amsterdam,” NBC; Sept. 21: “The Conners,” “The Goldbergs,” “Home Economics,” “Big Sky,” ABC; “Survivor,” “The Amazing Race,” CBS; “Chicago Fire,” “Chicago Med,” “Chicago P.D.,” NBC; Sept. 22: “The Kardashians,” Hulu; “Law & Order,” “Law & Order: Organized Crime,” “Law & Order: SVU,” NBC; “Thai Cave Rescue,” Netflix; Sept. 23: “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace,” HBO Max; Sept. 24: “Finding Happy,” Bounce; Sept. 25: “The Rookie,” ABC; “The Simpsons,” “The Great North,” “Bob’s Burgers,” “Family Guy,” Fox; “Van der Valk,” PBS; Sept. 27: “The Rookie: Feds,” ABC; “La Brea,” NBC; “Mighty Ducks: Game Changers,” Disney+; Sept. 28: “The D’Amelio Show,” Hulu; Sept. 29: “Young Sheldon,” “Ghosts,” “CSI: Vegas,” CBS; “Welcome to Flatch,” “Call Me Kat,” Fox; “Dragons Rescue Riders: Heroes of the Sky,” Peacock; Sept. 30: “Ramy,” Hulu; Oct. 2: “The Equalizer,” CBS: “Family Law,” “The Coroner,” CW: Oct. 3: “The Good Doctor,” ABC: Oct. 5: “Kung Fu,” CW: “Reginald the Vampire,” Syfy; “Chucky,” Syfy/USA; Oct. 6: “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Station 19,” ABC; “Walker, Independence,” “Walker” CW; Oct. 7: “The Problem With Jon Stewart,” Apple TV+; “Fire Country,” “Blue Bloods,” “SWAT,” CBS; Oct. 9: “NCIS: Los Angeles,” CBS; “Secrets of the Dead,” PBS; Oct. 10: “All American,” “All American: Homecoming,” CW; Oct. 11: “Professionals,” CW; Oct. 14: “Shantaram,” Apple TV+; Oct. 16: “Magpie Murders,” “Miss Scarlet and the Duke,” PBS; Oct. 20: “One of Us Is Lying,” Peacock; Oct. 21: “Acapulco,” Apple TV+; Oct. 26: “Mysterious Benedict Society” Disney+; Nov. 3: “Blockbuster,” Netflix; “The Capture,” Peacock; “The Suspect,” Sundance Now; “Kold x Windy,” WE; Nov. 4: “Lopez vs. Lopez,” “Young Rock,” NBC; Nov. 9: “Zootopia+,” Disney+; Nov. 10: “The Calling,” Peacock; Nov. 11: “The English,” Amazon Prime Video; Nov. 13: “Yellowstone,” Paramount; Nov. 18: “The L Word: Generation Q,” Showtime; “Planet Sex With Clara Delevingne,” Hulu; Nov. 23: “Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin,” Peacock; Nov. 30: “Irreverent,” Peacock; Dec. 1: “Wicked City,” “Hush,” AllBlk; Dec. 22: “The Best Man: The Final Chapters,” Peacock. More

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      in Movies

      September 2022: What’s New on Amazon, Hulu, Apple TV+ and More

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      Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of September’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.)Morfydd Clark and Benjamin Walker, center, in “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.”Amazon StudiosNew to Amazon Prime‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 1When J.R.R. Tolkien died, the author of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” left behind thousands of pages of partial stories and detailed notes, which collectively expanded on the history of his fictional Middle Earth and its surrounding lands, across many cycles of war and peace. The expensive Prime Video series “The Rings of Power” — which could cost around a billion dollars by the time its planned five-season run ends — draws on some of those stray Tolkien tales as the inspiration for an epic saga set thousands of years before “The Hobbit,” at a time when the world’s different races formed wary alliances in an effort to thwart the dark power of Sauron. The show maintains the bright look and sense of wonder that made Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” movies so popular, though the large cast and varied settings also recall “Game of Thrones.”Also arriving:Sept. 9“Flight/Risk”Sept. 16“Goodnight Mommy”Sept. 21“Prisma”Sept. 23“September Mornings”Sept. 30“Jungle” Season 1“My Best Friend’s Exorcism”Maddie, voiced by Katie Chang, and David, voiced by Daniel Dae Kim, in the animated series “Pantheon.”Titmouse Inc/AMCNew to AMC+‘Pantheon’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 1The acclaimed Chinese American science fiction and fantasy author Ken Liu is known for stories that consider ordinary human lives and relationships in the context of pulpy scenarios that are not too far removed from reality. The animated series “Pantheon” combines multiple Liu short stories into one interconnected drama. At the show’s center is a troubled teen named Maddie (voiced by Katie Chang) who receives advice on the internet from someone who may be her late father (Daniel Dad Kim) living on in the cloud as an “uploaded intelligence.” Her situation swells into a broader crisis, keyed to the potential dangers of a future where people’s lives feel “realer” online than in physical reality.Also arriving:Sept. 2“Rubikon”Sept. 9“There Are No Saints”Sept. 16“Official Competition”Sept. 23“Section 8”Sept. 30“Sissy”Sidney Poitier as seen in the documentary “Sidney.”Apple TV+New to Apple TV+‘Sidney’Starts streaming: Sept. 23The actor Sidney Poitier, who died earlier this year at 94, set a standard of excellence that placed him among the all-time greats. The documentary “Sidney” (directed by Reginald Hudlin for Oprah Winfrey’s production company Harpo) covers Poitier’s life from his childhood in the Bahamas through his rapid rise in the theater and then in Hollywood at a time when the opportunities for Black actors were slim. The film features an impressive slate of A-list actors and directors — plus one of the final interviews with the man himself — all explaining how Poitier’s influence as an artist and as a Civil Rights pioneer continues to endure.Also arriving:Sept. 9“Central Park” Season 3“Gutsy”Sept. 30“The Greatest Beer Run Ever”Diego Luna as the title character in the new Stars Wars series “Andor.”Disney+New to Disney+‘Cars on the Road’Starts streaming: Sept. 8The “Cars” crew is among the most popular of Pixar’s creations, inspiring three feature films, a spinoff franchise (“Planes”) and countless toys, games and theme park attractions. The new series “Cars on the Road” sends the champion racer Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson) and his tow-truck buddy Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) on a trip across the country, parceled out across nine short episodes that more or less add up to an hourlong “Cars” mini-movie. Unlike the grander big-screen adventures, these little eight-minute morsels are comic vignettes, set in a variety of locations and always rooted in the unlikely bond between these two mismatched pals.‘Andor’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 21The latest addition to the “Star Wars” TV universe is a prequel to a prequel, filling in the backstory of one of the major characters from the 2016 movie “Rogue One” — and, in the process, fleshing out more of the pre-“A New Hope” saga of the Rebel Alliance’s rise as a legitimate challenge to the dominance of the Galactic Empire. Diego Luna reprises his role as Cassian Andor, a cynical crook with a tragic past, who is persuaded to use his talents for deception and thievery to aid the Rebel cause. The 12-episode first season will be followed later by an already in-the-works 12-episode second season, which will take “Andor” all the way up to to the part of the “Star Wars” timeline where “Rogue One” begins.Also arriving:Sept. 8“Epic Adventures with Bertie Gregory” Season 1“Growing Up” Season 1“Pinocchio”“Remembering”“Tierra Incognita”Sept. 16“Mija”Sept. 19“Dancing with the Stars” Season 31Sept. 21“Super/Natural” Season 1Sept. 28“The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers” Season 2Sept. 30“Hocus Pocus 2”From left, Fred Armisen, Ana Fabrega, Julio Torres, Bernardo Velasco and Cassandra Ciangherotti in the second season of “Los Espookys.”HBONew to HBO Max‘Los Espookys’ Season 2Starts streaming: Sept. 16For their unclassifiable “Los Espookys,” the creators Julio Torres, Ana Fabrega and Fred Armisen have brought a gently surreal comic sensibility to the weird adventures of a horror-loving theater troupe in a fictional Latin American country. Torres and Fabrega play two members of the troupe, Andrés and Tati, who alongside their visionary leader Renaldo (Bernardo Velasco) and their more pragmatic partner Úrsula (Cassandra Ciangherotti) hire themselves out to people looking for someone to provide realistic haunted house effects. Season 1 introduced this eccentric crew and featured subplots with Renaldo’s Uncle Tico (Armisen), a valet parking attendant who lives in Hollywood. It’s hard to predict what’s in store for Season 2, given that the first run featured such a unique mix of supernatural fantasy and low-key hangout comedy.Also arriving:Sept. 17“Secret Origin of the Batwheels”Sept. 21“Escape from Kabul”Sept. 22“The Hype” Season 2Sept. 28“Hostages”Rachel Bloom, left, and Krista Marie Yu in Hulu’s show-within-a-show comedy “Reboot.”Michael Desmond/HuluNew to Hulu‘Reboot’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 20This inside-Hollywood farce pokes fun at the modern phenomenon of streaming services and TV networks reviving classic shows. “Reboot” is about a neurotic writer (Rachel Bloom) who sells Hulu an edgy update of a long-cancelled family sitcom, but then discovers that the original showrunner (Paul Reiser) still has the rights to make new episodes. The show-within-the-show’s cast members — Keegan-Michael Key, Judy Greer and Johnny Knoxville — encourage the old guard and the new to work together to bring some heat back to their own flagging careers. The veteran TV writer Steven Levitan (“Modern Family”) created “Reboot,” drawing on his own years in the complicated business of making “comfort” comedies that are equal parts funny and true.‘Ramy’ Season 3Starts streaming: Sept. 28In Season 2 of the comedian Ramy Youssef’s semi-autobiographical dramedy, his title character tried hard to straighten out his life by recommitting himself to his Muslim faith and even pursuing a traditional marriage. Then all of Ramy’s plans fell apart, leaving him with a choice at the end of the finale: to stay on the righteous path he had been on, or to backslide. The belated Season 3 will pick up that larger story, about one man’s attempts to balance his interest in religious traditions with the pleasures of a secular American life. “Ramy” will also continue to spend time with the character’s eclectic batch of friends and family members, who face traumas and hangups of their own.Also arriving:Sept. 1“The Mighty Ones” Season 3Sept. 7“Grid” Season 1“Tell Me Lies”Sept. 8“Wedding Season” Season 1“The Zone: Survival Mission” Season 1Sept. 14“The Handmaid’s Tale” Season 5Sept. 16“Atlanta” Season 4Sept. 19“Best in Dough” Season 1Sept. 22“The Kardashians” Season 2Sept. 26“A Chiara”“Chefs vs. Wild” Season 1Sept. 27“Reasonable Doubt” Season 1Sept. 28“The D’Amelio Show” Season 2New to Paramount+‘The Good Fight’ Season 6Starts streaming: Sept. 8The sixth and final season of one of TV’s best dramas adds Andre Braugher and John Slattery to its ace cast, as part of the aftermath to a Season 5 finale which saw the venerable attorney Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski) step away from her partnership with Liz Reddick (Audra McDonald) in their progressive Chicago law firm. Braugher plays the firm’s charismatic new partner, while Slattery plays Diane’s doctor, helping her adjust to whatever comes next. “The Good Fight” — a spinoff of the long-running legal drama “The Good Wife” — has been through multiple on-screen and behind-the-scenes upheavals since its 2017 debut, but what has remained consistent is the head writers Michelle and Robert King’s sharp-witted approach to ripped-from-the-headlines political stories, which playfully examine how the American justice system is trying to hold the line against the tumult of our crazy times.Also arriving:Sept. 3“Taylor Hawkins Tribute Concert”Sept. 7“Ink Master” Season 14Sept. 23“On the Come Up”New to Peacock‘Last Light’Starts streaming: Sept. 8Though based on a 2007 Alex Scarrow novel, the thriller miniseries “Last Light” is very much of the moment, with its story of a society thrown into chaos by a sudden drop in the oil supply. Matthew Fox plays Andy Yeats, a brilliant chemical engineer who gets summoned to a key Middle Eastern petroleum reserve to investigate a potentially catastrophic problem. Joanne Froggatt plays his wife Elena, who is in Paris helping their young son through an experimental eye operation, while their college-aged daughter Laura (Alyth Ross) is home in London raising awareness about climate change. When the long-feared fuel crisis hits, the family has to race across the world to reunite, dodging street-riots and a cabal of powerful people who don’t want Andy to make public what he knows.Also arriving:Sept. 2“Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.”Sept. 14“Hell of a Cruise”Sept. 15“’Til Jail Do Us Part” Season 1“Vampire Academy” Season 1Sept. 21“Meet Cute”“Shadowland”Sept. 28“Sex, Lies and the College Cult” More

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      Jane Krakowski Cherishes ‘Chorus Line’ Merch and Old Tonys Tapings

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      The “Schmigadoon!” actress explains the things that keep her in a Broadway state of mind: her Vespa, Lizzo’s music and French Fries.The actress Jane Krakowski is proud that “Schmigadoon!,” the Apple TV+ musical comedy series she stars in, gave people a dose of theatricality when it premiered during Broadway’s lockdown in 2021, even with an unusual production period Covid restrictions.“It was such a labor of love,” she said on a recent Zoom call. “I didn’t even meet anybody in the cast until I showed up on set, and we were in shields and masks.”With shooting for season two wrapped, the Tony Award-winning New Jersey native is focused on preparing to perform at The Town Hall in Manhattan next week, a cabaret act music-directed and hosted by Seth Rudetsky that was delayed from its original January date by the Omicron wave.Rudetsky, a longtime friend with whom she does regular game nights, will interview her and accompany her on songs from her storied career. (She teased a medley inspired by the series “30 Rock,” in which her role as Jenna Maroney earned her four Emmy nominations and made her a meme icon.)Krakowski’s eagerness to be back onstage radiates off her, and she says she has seen nearly every production from the most recent season. Having seen her “She Loves Me” co-star Gavin Creel in “Into the Woods” at New York City Center (twice), she says she’s excited to revisit the production’s Broadway transfer at the St. James Theater, where he now stars with Joshua Henry.“I heard they’re amazing together,” she said. “Because I know and love Gavin — he dragged me across the stage in a split for almost a year — I’m glad he’s having fun and being brilliant in this show.”Squeezing in some final vacation time on Long Island before rehearsals and her son’s return from sleep-away camp, Krakowski admits to falling down musical theater rabbit holes on YouTube, and loving Henry’s singing videos on social media. The tight-knit industry bonds she’s created, and vintage theater merch round out a list of things she credits with keeping her in a Broadway state of mind.These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. A Sweatshirt From the Original Production of “A Chorus Line” Right when Covid was sort of easing up, I decided to go clean out a storage unit I’d had for over 15 years. One of the things I found was a sweatshirt I bought from the original “A Chorus Line”: Blue with white letters, the entire cast in their poses. It’s from when I was approximately 11 years old and a young, hopeful performer coming in to see every Broadway show. When I was a teenager, everyone would say how many times they had seen “Star Wars.” Yeah, that was “A Chorus Line” for me. I saw it nine times.2. Single-Number Performances on the Tonys Broadcast Did you notice that these past Tony Awards? I was like, “Wait a minute, a lot of shows did single-number performances.” When I was growing up, I would watch the Tonys as if it was the Super Bowl, dreaming of being in this business. They only did one-song performances, and I used to VCR them and practice the numbers in my living room from start to finish. I’d do my best Patti LuPone in “Evita.” Then for a long time it became mashups, best-ofs — like two-minute commercials for the shows’ best numbers. So it was interesting that they went back to what I was used to seeing in my childhood, when it inspired me. And I’m thinking now kids at home can learn a whole piece, because it’s really hard to memorize a remix.3. French Fries as Health Food I got Covid while filming in Ireland and was really sick. French Fries were the one thing I could eat while I was in bed. And they’re amazing in Ireland, natch; you’d think they would be. And now fries represent health to me, since it was how I got back on my feet during Covid. Now I seem to be ordering them almost every day, and I’ve been traveling a lot for work, so I’ve been able to try fries all over. Australian ones are very good, by the way. I don’t know what they’re frying them in, but they’re amazing.4. Joshua Henry’s Videos He’s someone I like to follow whenever he’s onstage because I think he’s massively talented. I found his videos a few months ago, before he went into “Into the Woods,” and this new side of him — these videos have just been killing me. Not only is he displaying his incredible voice, but his masterful musicality. The last one was really special: It was Adele mixed with “Children Will Listen” [from “Woods”] with Sara Bareilles, Phillipa Soo and Patina Miller backstage at the show.5. Broadway’s Return The first show I went back to see was “Springsteen on Broadway.” When I walked into the theater — and I’m a sucker for this — you could see the bare bones of the Broadway house, with the brick wall and the ropes hanging in the back, and you could see into the wings where the crew is tirelessly doing their work. It felt incredibly emotional. It started me off on a great celebration of trying to see as much as I can on Broadway and be so thankful that it’s back, because it really is part of the lifeblood of New York, and part of the heartbeat of the city.6. Lizzo I can’t get enough of Lizzo right now. I just watched her Hot Ones episode, and it’s gold. You need to watch it. To quote my friend Titus Burgess, “It gave me life!” She gives us everything we want, including nails that match her whole onesie. She’s an incredibly trained musician and entertaining performer. And [her song] “About Damn Time” is what I would consider the song of the summer. I find it kind of amazing how many times I can say, “It’s bad bitch o’clock, it’s thick thirty,” within a night.7. Riding her Vespa I first got one when I was doing “Guys and Dolls” in the West End because I wanted to always be above ground; I wanted to experience everything about London while I was there. That’s when my love began, and then I brought it back to the United States and was driving it to every performance of “Damn Yankees” and all over the city. Then I drove it to my three-month pregnancy appointment, and my gynecologist said to me, “What’s that on your arm?” It was my helmet. She’s like, “What are you doing? You’re 41, this is already a risky pregnancy.” So I put it away. But during Covid, I finally brought it back out. I am absolutely loving being back freewheeling on my Vespa all over the city.8. Her Dance Warm-up I started taking dance lessons from Michael Owens, around the time I was like 15, and I loved him. But he moved to Los Angeles in my early 20s, and I sort of lost contact with him. Then, when I was filming “Ally McBeal” out there around 2003, Billy Porter took me to Michael’s class, and I was able to make a video of that class’s dance warm-up. I could barely walk for three days, but he got me back into my absolute love of taking dance classes. And it’s still the warm-up I use.9. New York Public Library for the Performing Arts There is not a performance that I’ve ever worked on without going there to do research. It’s an incredible resource to have, even if I’m considering doing a part, to just know and have a history of what’s been done prior. It’s an incredible tracking of Broadway history. Now, there are a lot more of these shows filmed for movie theaters, but there’s really a very small record of Broadway live performances — which is what makes it exciting, that connection between performer and audience on each particular night. But I hope they’ll keep it going because so many shows don’t get the opportunity to get on Netflix for people to see.10. Showing Up for Each Other When Broadway started reopening, I was asked to do a live concert for the Roundabout Theater Company’s gala in Central Park. I remember asking Tina Fey to introduce me, and Titus to sing with me, and when I saw them there that night, I got this overwhelming feeling of thankfulness for the friends I have, and that they show up. More

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      How Sharon Horgan Shaped a Monstrous Brother-in-Law

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      John Paul, the compelling villain of Horgan’s new show “Bad Sisters,” was inspired by the TV tradition of “dangerous sexy men,” priests and a former president.“Bad Sisters,” now streaming on Apple TV+, opens with the funeral of John Paul Williams. The show’s ten hourlong episodes unfurl how he died, and whether his four sisters-in-law had a hand in that death.We soon discover that John Paul had long emotionally abused his wife and terrorized her sisters. The show — created by Sharon Horgan, Dave Finkel and Brett Baer — tells “a serious story about the damage that ripples outward from one angry and devious man,” Mike Hale wrote in his review for The New York Times.But, like Horgan’s previous show “Catastrophe,” “Bad Sisters” is also darkly funny. It’s adapted from the Belgian show “Clan,” which aired as “The Out-Laws” on British television in 2016. Horgan found the setup of four sisters trying (and failing) to kill their brother-in-law “inherently comical,” she said in a recent video interview, and she also related to the sisters’ strong ties, describing her own four siblings as having her back “no matter what.”Horgan — who also stars as the eldest sister, Eva — changed several aspects of the Belgian original: She cut the slapstick humor, brought down the collateral death count, fleshed out the sisters’ back stories and moved the story to Ireland.She also adapted the character of John Paul, played by Claes Bang, in several ways. To shape him into a fascinatingly horrible — and familiar — villain, Horgan drew on varied references from other TV shows, the Roman Catholic church and contemporary politics.Jean-Claude, from ‘Clan’Dirk Roofthooft plays the horrible brother-in-law in “Clan.”Caviar FilmsIn “Clan,” the dead brother-in-law is Jean-Claude Delcorps, played by Dirk Roofthooft. Horgan kept the sisters’ nickname for their brother-in-law: It’s “The Prick,” in “Bad Sisters” and “De Kloot” in “Clan,” which have the same connotation, though the Flemish version translates as “a testicle.” She did, however, change the character’s appearance, and thus, the way he navigates the world. In the original, Jean-Claude was “a bit of a gargoyle,” she said, but Bang’s John Paul is debonair and pays a lot of attention to his appearance — he’s what Horgan called “an attractive abuser.”John Paul is vain and arrogant, but outside of his own home, he’s often embarrassed or dismissed: In one episode we see him furiously trying, and failing, to keep up with his hiking group; throughout the series, he panders to his boss for a promotion while his co-workers talk about how vile he is.“I don’t know if it’s Shakespearean,” Horgan said, “but the idiot provides relief. I like that he was someone who was incredibly in control and dangerous, but at times, was also an ineffectual person.”A Scandinavian ColdnessHorgan always knew John Paul wouldn’t be fully Irish, she said, which creates immediate distance between him and the sisters. “You can’t really slot in, if it’s not your nationality,” she said of Irish culture.She specifically wanted the brother-in-law to be from Scandinavia, she said, so she could integrate the “sort of coldness and a sort of warmness at the same time” associated with that region into the character. Horgan said she wanted “Bad Sisters” to also nod to the gritty crime dramas countries like Denmark and Sweden are known for producing.Before all the episodes were written, she had cast Bang, a Danish actor, as John Paul. They discussed how to approach the character, and Bang wanted to lean into the character’s coldness, Horgan said.It proved difficult to find a Danish actress to play John Paul’s mother, Minna, and Horgan cast the Swedish actress Nina Norén in the role. Bang can also speak Swedish, and so John Paul became Swedish. Minna has a straightforwardness about her, reflected in the clean lines and classically Scandinavian design of her home, and how she delivers revelations about John Paul’s childhood.The Roman Catholic ChurchHorgan also made John Paul a strident Roman Catholic, who gives his daughter a pin of a 10-week-old fetus’ feet, the international anti-abortion symbol, before her confirmation.Growing up in Ireland, the Catholic Church played a large part in Horgan’s life, she said, adding that, historically, people in the church had sometimes performed evil acts under the guise of morality. In recent years, Catholic priests’ widespread child sexual abuse has been revealed in Ireland, as in the United States. In the twentieth century, orders of Catholic nuns in Ireland effectively incarcerated women and forced them to perform unpaid labor, in the Magdalene Laundries.“The church was more important than the individual,” Horgan said of both these atrocities. “The cover-up was more important than the victim.”She applied this conception of morality to John Paul, who sees himself as a soldier against sin, however hypocritical that may be. In Episode 3, he tricks one of the sisters, who’s having an affair, into sending him an intimate picture, which he then holds as leverage. What the sister is doing is wrong, Horgan said, but John Paul never questions his frequent porn watching or his refusal to have “an emotional relationship with his wife.”The ‘Dangerous Sexy Man’Alexander Skarsgard in “Big Little Lies.”HBOHorgan also drew on the TV tradition of “dangerous sexy men,” she said. In the HBO show “Big Little Lies,” Perry (played by Alexander Skarsgard) physically abuses his wife, is disliked by her friends and is eventually killed. He was “very attractive on the outside but also had a sexual danger,” Horgan said, which she also recognized in Don Draper from “Mad Men,” whose toxic version of masculinity Horgan called a “romanticization of control.”Horgan made John Paul frightening, like these characters, but also ineffectual. “I like the idea of him being, to a certain extent, a street angel and a house devil,” Horgan said. “These men get away with what they get away with because it’s often happening behind closed doors — they’re not walking around with signs on their head exuding danger. It’s always a shock, isn’t it?”Humanized MonstersIn “The Handmaid’s Tale,” Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd) is evil, but also has moments of humanity.Sophie Giraud/HuluHorgan was also inspired by the characters of Aunt Lydia from “The Handmaid’s Tale” and Cersei Lannister from “Game of Thrones,” she said, in terms of how they command power, and how the temperature changes whenever they walk into a scene. Both “Handmaid’s Tale” and “Game of Thrones” also create moments in which the viewer is encouraged to empathize with Lydia or Cersei. “It makes a character more unnerving,” Horgan said. “You see these occasional moments of humanity, so you’ll forgive them — it’s how abusers operate.”With John Paul, his presence in a scene instantly introduces danger for the sisters, but we also see him cherish his daughter. “It’s not just a straight-up monster that you have to get away from; it’s far more subtle than that,” Horgan said.The Republican Party“I can’t say Trump was an influence,” Horgan said, “but he was so prevalent” when she was making the show. Former President Donald J. Trump “can appear less dangerous because he’s a clown and so weak and so vain,” she said, adding those qualities felt similar to John Paul’s. She also drew parallels between the brother-in-law and the British prime minister Boris Johnson, whom she said “gets away with so much by playing the buffoon.”John Paul systematically tries to take down others around him, based on what he judges to be wrong, while engaging in suspicious behavior of his own: lying to his boss, blackmailing his sister-in-law, falsely accusing a neighbor he dislikes of being a pedophile.In recent years, Horgan said, she has seen this kind of righteousness in the wider Republican Party. “There are other members of the G.O.P. who would seem a lot more frightening,” she said, “the ones who are clearly trying to restrict women’s freedom while, at the same time, having morally dubious behavior.” More

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      ‘Five Days at Memorial’ Tells the Harrowing Story of a Deadly Choice

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      A new scripted series on Apple TV+ dramatizes the crisis faced by a New Orleans hospital after Hurricane Katrina, as the waters and the death toll rose.It was tense and sweaty on the set of “Five Days at Memorial,” the new Apple TV+ limited series about systemic and personal failure at a New Orleans hospital in the days after Hurricane Katrina. The cast, emotionally invested and physically drained, was wiped out.It was time to play some Mafia.The freewheeling, ice-breaking role-playing game, which also goes by the name Werewolf, is a favorite of Cornelius Smith Jr., who plays the distraught Dr. Bryant King in “Memorial.” He brings it out whenever bonding is in order, and to hear the “Memorial” cast tell it, they would have wilted if they hadn’t come together when the cameras stopped rolling.“It was really extraordinary because here we were telling this story that is not all smiles — it’s a very deep story, a very troubling story, a very heavy story,” Smith said in a video interview from Washington, D.C., where he was playing Frederick Douglass in the musical “American Prophet.” “So it was nice to be able to counter that with a very joyous relationship and spending quality time with castmates and really developing a bond off-camera.”The eight-episode “Five Days at Memorial,” premiering Friday, can indeed be tough sledding. Based on the 2013 book by Sheri Fink, which was adapted from her Pulitzer-winning investigative article for ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine, it tells the story of Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans, where 45 bodies were found in Katrina’s aftermath, in September 2005. (Sold in 2006, the hospital is now Ochsner Baptist Medical Center).“We didn’t want to dictate how people should feel about this story,” said Carlton Cuse (left, with Jessica B. Hill and Cornelius Smith Jr.), a creator of the series. “We didn’t want to take a side.”Sophie Giraud/Apple TV+The hospital had been flooded, its power and generators knocked out. Chaos reigned. Several health providers on the scene raised concerns that patients had been given lethal injections during the evacuation process.Both book and series depict the Memorial crisis as a series of impossible decisions, made by flawed individuals under unimaginable pressure, and complete systemic breakdown. In this sense, it’s a microcosm of Katrina, which had a death toll of more than 1,800 people.In a video interview, Fink, who was also a producer on the series, pointed out that the hospital had a 101-page bioterrorism plan. This was, after all, the post-9/11 era. But there was no emergency plan in place for evacuating over water.“I really hope that people watch the series and engage in thinking hard about the consequences of a failure to invest in preparedness for rare, but potentially catastrophic and very foreseeable circumstances,” Fink said in a video call. “A hurricane and a flood in New Orleans were very foreseeable.”Indeed, the levels of failure involved in the Memorial disaster, and Katrina in general, were staggering.“When you have this kind of systemic failure, it’s also a mechanical failure,” said John Ridley, who created the series with Carlton Cuse (“Lost,” “Bates Motel”). “It’s an electronic failure. And it’s a human failure. You’ve got to look at how humans interact in the systems we build.”In the hurricane’s immediate aftermath, hospital administrators did the equivalent of a victory lap and heaved a sigh of relief. Meanwhile, the levees, which had begun failing almost immediately, got progressively worse. Then the severe floods came. (Readers unfamiliar with what happened next may want to stop reading now.)The show depicts several Memorial staff members, including Dr. Anna Pou (played by Vera Farmiga), making plans to provide “comfort” for patients who they have determined would be difficult to evacuate, in the form of injections. Someone, you keep thinking, has to pay for this. But nobody does. (Pou, along with the nurses Cheri Landry and Lori Budo, played by Sharron Matthews and Sarah Allen, were later arrested on multiple counts of principal to second-degree murder but were never indicted by a grand jury.)“There was incompetence on every level of leadership,” Farmiga said of the failures at Memorial Medical Center. But she also defended her character’s commitment to help.Russ Martin/Apple TV+Viewers are likely to feel outrage at some of the events depicted. The series creators, however, argue that thirsting for revenge is pointless. To them, it was an impossible situation, with no clear-cut villains.“We didn’t want to dictate how people should feel about this story — we didn’t want to take a side,” Cuse said in a video interview. “I’m curious to see where people come out about all of this and what kinds of different opinions people have about how things went down.”One character who definitely has an opinion is King. He takes a look around and determines that something is rotten at Memorial. He seethes at the idea of lethal injections.He is also among a handful of Black doctors at the hospital — and the only one on duty during the crisis. He can see that most of the people affected by the breakdown are Black, as are most of the people seeking help who are turned away. King is acutely aware of this, even as it unfolds.“I like to say race is another character in the series,” Smith said. “It’s there whether you want to acknowledge it or not. It plays a role in how we all perceive things in life.”“They’re in New Orleans,” he added. “It’s a predominantly African American community. And what he experiences is clearly, to him, outlined by race. That’s what he’s seeing.”Farmiga acknowledged that human failure was rampant. “There was incompetence on every level of leadership,” she said in a video call. But she also defended Pou’s commitment to help. The surgeon reported for hurricane duty despite being told that other doctors could look after her patients.“She was motivated by humanitarian aid,” Farmiga said. “She chose to face those intolerable conditions. That takes an extraordinary amount of courage.”Much of the series was shot in an enormous, custom-made water tank, just outside Toronto, as a way to recreate the flooding at the hospital. Sophie Giraud/Apple TV+“Five Days at Memorial” was initially optioned to be a movie by the producer Scott Rudin, and then by the producer Ryan Murphy, who planned to use it for his “American Crime Story” anthology series. When Murphy scrapped those plans, Cuse came calling, won Fink over and approached Ridley to be his partner.Fink liked the idea of making “Memorial” into a limited series, with the time and commitment to present a detailed and balanced adaptation.“It just seemed like a great way to tell this story, because if it were done in a movie, there wouldn’t be enough time to bring out all of the nuance,” she said. “It is a long and detailed book, a work of journalism that took many years.” (Fink, who was a staff reporter at ProPublica when her article was published, is now a domestic correspondent for The New York Times.)Cuse is well aware of the parallels to a more recent health crisis. He remembers his partner, Ridley, reminding him of the adage that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. And so “Five Days of Memorial” went into production amid the global health crisis of Covid-19, a crisis for which many argue the United States was ill prepared.“Instead of the question of who’s going to get on a helicopter to evacuate, we’re dealing with who gets a respirator or who gets a vaccine or who gets a monoclonal antibody,” Cuse said.Some of “Memorial” was shot in New Orleans, but much of it was shot in a custom-made, four-million-gallon water tank just outside Toronto. Cast and crew had to quarantine upon entering Canada from the United States because of the pandemic. It was a stressful process, and a prelude to a stressful shoot.They knew, however, that unlike the characters they portrayed, they would return to their ordered lives when their work was done — that they were ultimately playing make believe. And they knew they needed to get it right.“I felt an enormous sense of responsibility to the people of New Orleans, to the survivors,” Farmiga said. “It’s their heartache. It’s their trauma. It’s their story.” More

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      in Movies

      After Pixar Ouster, John Lasseter Returns With Apple and ‘Luck’

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      John Lasseter was toppled five years ago by allegations about his workplace behavior. He’s back with an animated film and a studio that could be Pixar 2.0.LOS ANGELES — The most Pixar movie of the summer is not from Pixar. It’s from Apple TV+ and the lightning-rod filmmaker-executive who turned Pixar into a superpower: John Lasseter.Five years ago, Mr. Lasseter was toppled by allegations about his behavior in the workplace. Almost overnight, his many accomplishments — building Pixar from scratch, forging the megawatt “Toy Story” and “Cars” franchises, reviving a moribund Walt Disney Animation, delivering “Frozen,” winning Oscars — became a footnote.After employees complained about unwanted hugging by Mr. Lasseter, Disney investigated and found that some subordinates occasionally felt him to be a tyrant. He was forced to resign as Disney-Pixar’s animation chief, apologizing for “missteps” that made staff members feel “disrespected or uncomfortable.”Mr. Lasseter, 65, is now on the verge of professional redemption. His first animated feature since he left Disney-Pixar will arrive on Apple’s subscription streaming service on Friday. Called “Luck,” the $140 million movie follows an unlucky young woman who discovers a secret world where magical creatures make good luck (the Department of Right Place, Right Time) and bad luck (a pet waste research and design lab dedicated to “tracked it in the house”). Things go terribly wrong, resulting in a comedic adventure involving an unusual dragon, bunnies in hazmat suits, leprechaun millennials and an overweight German unicorn in a too-tight tracksuit.Apple, perhaps the only company that safeguards its brand more zealously than Disney, has been using Mr. Lasseter as a prominent part of its marketing campaign for “Luck.” Ads for the film, which Peggy Holmes directed and Mr. Lasseter produced, describe it as coming “from the creative visionary behind TOY STORY and CARS.”“Luck” arrives on Apple TV+ on Friday.Apple TV+Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, shared a look at the film in March at the company’s latest product showcase event. “Luck” is just the beginning of Apple’s bet on Mr. Lasseter and Skydance Media, an independent studio that — contentiously — hired him in 2019 as animation chief. (Skydance hired lawyers to scrutinize the allegations against Mr. Lasseter and privately concluded there was nothing egregious.) Skydance has a deal to supply Apple TV+ with multiple animated films and at least one animated series by 2024.Pariah? Not at Apple.“It feels like part of me has come home,” Mr. Lasseter said in a phone interview, noting that Steve Jobs, Apple’s co-founder, helped build Pixar before selling it to Disney in 2006. “I really like what Apple TV+ is doing. It’s about quality, not quantity. And their marketing is just spectacular. It’s the best I’ve ever seen in all the movies I’ve made.”Mr. Lasseter’s return to full-length filmmaking comes at an awkward time for Disney-Pixar, which appears to be a little lost without him, having misfired badly in June with a “Toy Story” prequel. “Lightyear,” about Buzz Lightyear before he became a toy, seemed to forget what made the character so beloved. The movie, which cost an estimated $300 million to make and market worldwide, has taken in about $220 million, which is even worse than it sounds for Disney’s bottom line because theaters keep at least 40 percent of ticket sales. “Lightyear” is the second-worst-performing title in Pixar’s history, ranking only above “Onward,” which came out in March 2020 at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.Mr. Lasseter declined to comment on “Lightyear,” which arrives on Disney+ on Wednesday. He also declined to discuss his departure from Disney.The Race to Rule Streaming TVTurmoil at Netflix: Despite a loss of subscribers, job cuts and a steep stock drop, the streaming giant has said it is staying the course.An Expensive Gamble: Netflix hopes “The Gray Man” — its new $200 million action movie — can be the start of a blockbuster franchise that attracts much-needed subscribers.Live Sports: Apple and Amazon are eager to expand their streaming audiences. They increasingly see live sports as a way to do it.End of an Era?: The golden age of streaming might be over, and we probably won’t like what happens next, our tech columnist writes.More than 50 people have followed Mr. Lasseter to Skydance from Disney and Pixar, including Ms. Holmes (“Secret of the Wings”), whom he hired to direct “Luck.” The screenplay for “Luck” is credited to Kiel Murray, whose Pixar and Disney writing credits include “Cars” and “Raya and the Last Dragon.” Mr. Lasseter and Ms. Holmes hired at least five more Disney-Pixar veterans for senior “Luck” crew jobs, including the animation director Yuriko Senoo (“Tangled”) and the production designer Fred Warter (“A Bug’s Life”).John Ratzenberger, known as Pixar’s “good luck charm” because he has voiced so many characters over the decades, pops up in “Luck” as Rootie, the Land of Bad Luck’s unofficial mayor.The upshot: With its glistening animation, attention to detail, story twists and emotional ending, “Luck” has all the hallmarks of a Pixar release. (Reviews will arrive on Wednesday.) Some people who have seen the film have commented on similarities between “Luck” and the 2001 Pixar classic, “Monsters, Inc.” Both films involve elaborate secret worlds that are accidentally disrupted by humans.“I want to take the audience to a world that is so interesting and beautiful and clever that people love being in it,” Mr. Lasseter said. “You want the audience to want to book a week’s vacation to the place where the movie just took place.”It remains true, however, that Mr. Lasseter continues to be a polarizing figure in Hollywood. Ashlyn Anstee, a director at Cartoon Network, told The Hollywood Reporter last week that she was unhappy that Skydance was “letting a so-called creative genius continue to take up positions and space in an industry that could begin to be filled with different people.”Emma Thompson has not changed her public position on Mr. Lasseter since backing out of a role in “Luck” in 2019. She had been cast by the film’s first director and quit when Mr. Lasseter joined Skydance.“It feels very odd to me that you and your company would consider hiring someone with Mr. Lasseter’s pattern of misconduct,” Ms. Thompson wrote in a letter to David Ellison, Skydance’s chief executive. (Her character, a human, no longer exists in the radically reworked film.)Ms. Holmes, the “Luck” director, said she had no qualms about joining Mr. Lasseter at Skydance.“It has been a very, very positive experience, and John has been a great mentor,” she said.Holly Edwards, the president of Skydance Animation, a division of Skydance Media, echoed Ms. Holmes. “John has been incredible,” she said. “I’m proud that we’re creating an environment where people know they have a voice and know they are being heard.” Ms. Edwards previously spent nearly two decades at DreamWorks Animation.Some of Mr. Lasseter’s creative tactics have not changed. One is a willingness to radically overhaul projects while they are on the assembly line — including removing a director, something that can cause hurt feelings and fan blowback. He believes that such decisions, while difficult, are sometimes crucial to a quality outcome.Peggy Holmes, the director of “Luck,” said she had no reservations about working with Mr. Lasseter.Michael Tran/FilmMagic“Luck,” for instance, was already in the works when Mr. Lasseter arrived at Skydance. Alessandro Carloni (“Kung Fu Panda 3”) had been hired to direct the film, which then involved a battle between human agents of good luck and bad luck.“As soon as I heard the concept, I actually was kind of jealous,” Mr. Lasseter said. “It’s a subject that every single person in the world has a relationship with, and that is very rare in a basic concept of a movie.”But he ultimately threw out almost everything and started over. The primary cast now includes Jane Fonda, who voices a pink dragon who can sniff out bad luck, and Whoopi Goldberg, who plays a droll leprechaun taskmaster. Flula Borg (“Pitch Perfect 2”) voices the overweight, bipedal unicorn, who is a major scene stealer.“Sometimes you have to take a building down to its foundation and, frankly, in this case, down to its lot,” Mr. Lasseter said.Mr. Lasseter did not invent the concept of doing real-world research to inform animated stories and artwork, but he is known for pushing far beyond what is typically done. For “Luck,” he had researchers dig into what constitutes good luck and bad luck in myriad cultures; the filmmaking team also researched the foster care system, which informed part of the story. (The lead character grows up in foster care and is repeatedly passed over for adoption.)As at Pixar and at Disney, Mr. Lasseter set up a “story trust” council at Skydance in which a group of elite directors and writers candidly and repeatedly critique one another’s work. The Skydance Animation version will soon include Brad Bird, a longtime Pixar force (“The Incredibles,” “Ratatouille”) who recently joined Mr. Lasseter’s operation to develop an original animated film called “Ray Gunn.”Ms. Holmes said Mr. Lasseter was a nurturing creative force, not a tyrannical one.“John will give you notes on sequences,” she said. “He will suggest dialogue. He will comment on color or timing or effects. He’ll pitch story ideas. He’ll draw something — ‘Oh, maybe it could look like this.’“And then it’s up to you and your team to execute against those notes. Or not. Sometimes we came back to John and said the note didn’t work — and this is why — or we decided we didn’t need to address it.”Ms. Holmes added: “When the answer is no, he’s really OK with it. He’s really OK with it.” More

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      in Television

      Adam Scott on His First Emmy Nomination for ‘Severance’

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      Scott earned first Emmy nomination on Tuesday, for best actor in drama for “Severance.”To stay afloat and avoid disappointment, Adam Scott said he doesn’t anticipate big nominations. It’s a healthier state of mind, he said, and he’s become accustomed to not hearing his name called.“I did not think I was going to be nominated,” he said. “I was just trying to focus on everyone else and take a walk and put it out of my head.”After learning he received an Emmy nomination for best actor in the Apple TV+ drama “Severance,” Scott said it was an honor to be named next to actors like Brian Cox, nominated for “Succession,” and Jason Bateman, nominated for “Ozark.”“Severance,” which is also nominated for best drama, presents an eerie picture of workplace culture in which employees of an enigmatic, vaguely sinister corporation named Lumon Industries undergo a surgical procedure that severs their work memories from their personal memories, in an effort to keep company secrets confidential. Scott plays Mark Scout, who after losing his wife, Gemma (played by Dichen Lachman), in a car accident, substitutes monotonous shifts pocketing numbers into digital boxes at Lumon for proper healing.In a phone interview on Tuesday, Scott discussed the show’s cliffhanger ending and how he used a personal loss to build his character. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.Where were you when you first heard of the nomination?I was in the middle of walking the dogs when I got the phone call and was surprised and just couldn’t be more flattered and honored. It was really a unique feeling, to say the least.Why do you think the show was so successful?It’s a good question because when we were making it, we, if not daily, very often would stop and look at each other and just be like, “This is really [expletive] weird. Is anyone going to connect with it?” We didn’t know, and then we would just kind of shrug our shoulders and put our heads down and keep going.What were the most challenging scenes for you to film?I was going through a grieving process, because my mom had died before I went out to New York. I walked into that apartment and realized I wasn’t done grieving at all, because my family kind of cushioned me from this at home. And that’s what love is for in a lot of ways, is to help you through a process like that, and we were locked down in Los Angeles so I was able to kind of make it through. But then I got to New York six months later, closed the door and I was by myself and I realized immediately I was not done absorbing this loss. The show was right there, and so I processed my grief through the show.What does “Severance” hope to teach about how to cope with grief?For outtie Mark, that’s what the season was about: grief, and how is he going to handle it? And is he going to handle it? Or is he going to continue pushing it away? And I was asking myself the same question. So, I decided to deal with it, but deal with it along with Mark.There’s a scene where I’m on the side of the road where my wife had a car accident in the show, and we just happened to shoot that scene on the one-year anniversary of my mom passing away. It was just a sheer coincidence. But I was kind of carrying it around with me all day and trying not to kind of zero in on it. It really, again, helped me with my grieving process.What does the show aim to tell viewers about how to manage what happens at work and what happens at home, particularly amid a pandemic when many people have had to work remotely?Work is something that you do to achieve one thing or another. A job is a place where you go, if you can define it like that, and I think people started re-evaluating their relationship with those things. I think we all found out that home and your life, and your life at work, they all started to blend into sort of one thing.How did the cast and the director Ben Stiller compose the last moments of the season finale?The moment where I call Mrs. Selvig “Ms. Cobel” accidentally — while we were shooting, I remember saying to Patricia [Arquette] and Ben, “OK if we have them, if they care at this point in the final episode, if we’ve laid the bread crumbs properly, this moment is going to be so fun and so huge.”But that’s a delicate process, getting to the point where that actually has impact. It’s not easy to put it all together so that actually happens. It could just as easily be a shrug if you’re not invested in the characters or the story or whatever. So, hearing that people threw things at their television or got up and walked out of the room or just screamed at the end of Episode 9 is delightful. We really had no idea if anyone would care. More