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    When TV Becomes a Window Into Women’s Rage

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    Over the last few years, TV has offered portraits of female rage that are striking within a culture that still prefers women to carry their anger calmly and silently.In art, the image of the enraged woman often represents an ugly, almost talismanic evil: In Adolphe-William Bouguereau’s 1862 painting “Orestes Pursued by the Furies,” the women sneer, brandishing weapons at Orestes. In Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Judith Slaying Holofernes,” Judith furrows her brow, half of her face cloaked in shadow, and clutches a fistful of Holofernes’s hair as she plunges a sword into his neck. And Caravaggio’s Medusa, a wronged woman transformed into a monster, is just a severed head, and yet her face is animated with fury, mouth open in a scream, brows creased.Over the last few years, TV has offered similar portraits of female rage — striking scenes within a culture that still mostly prefers women either to carry their anger calmly and silently or to express it within a misogynistic framing (the manic or hysterical woman).It’s empowering to watch a woman rage indelicately, like the recent divorcée Rachel Fleishman, played by Claire Danes, in the FX series “Fleishman Is in Trouble.” During a therapy treatment in the penultimate episode, Rachel lets loose a sharp, achy howl that overtakes her whole body. It takes several attempts for her to fully release this deep-seated scream. The first few are abbreviated and strained but then she seems to unload everything, her mouth opened wide, her face contracting so hard it takes on an all around rosy hue. Who said rage couldn’t be beautiful?In fact, it’s an asset to Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany), a.k.a. She-Hulk, who got her own slice-of-life action court drama on Disney+ last year. Her hero-training journey is truncated because she takes to being the hulk much easier than did her cousin Bruce Banner, the original Hulk.“I’m great at controlling my anger; I do it all the time,” Jennifer tells Bruce in the first episode. “When I’m catcalled in the street, when incompetent men explain my own area of expertise to me. I do it pretty much every day because if I don’t, I will get called emotional or difficult or might just literally get murdered.”The series isn’t about her tempering her rage but rather about living with a manifestation of the power her rage has given her: She-Hulk is strong and intelligent, a celebrity and a popular right-swipe on the dating apps.The same is true for Retsuko, the star of the popular animated Netflix series “Aggretsuko,” about a 25-year-old red panda who hates her job, where she is taken advantage of and disrespected by many of her colleagues. She handles the stress and frustration by doing karaoke — death metal karaoke, specifically.The show’s glossy 2D sticker-style artwork, full of heavy lines, loud graphics, straightforward color and bare-bones animation style, recalls other, explicitly kid-targeted brands from Sanrio, like Hello Kitty. Retsuko appears like a critical counterpoint to Hello Kitty, an icon of femininity and softness who famously has no mouth. She’s a blank slate, emotionless, while Retsuko comes alive through her anger, which physically transforms her, her claws bared, her facial fur changing into a Gene Simmons-esque death-metal mask pattern.Feminine rage can be deliciously performative, as with Retsuko’s throaty growl in the karaoke room or with the rap delivered by Ashley (Jasmine Cephas Jones), a hotel concierge in the Starz series “Blindspotting,” as she trashes a detestable couple’s room.Women who show rage in domestic spaces, like Ali Wong’s character Amy in the hilarious and bruising Netflix series “Beef,” disrupt the stereotype of women who are permitted to rage only in relationship to their roles as caretakers. Amy’s anger, even when warranted, is destructive, and everything in her life crumbles because of it, including her relationship with her family.Well-worn characters like the mother who does whatever it takes to save her children or the faithful wife who gets roped into crime to save or avenge her husband are more digestible, women granted the appearance of being multidimensional and emotionally complex when they are just following a formula.But even when female characters are developed outside of these reductive tropes, often the writing eventually flattens and diminishes them again. Take, for example, the rich emotional complexity that the Disney+ series “WandaVision” uncovered within Wanda Maximoff, which was absent from her next Marvel assignment. In the series, Wanda is caught in a sitcom-style delusion spurred by her anger, sorrow and grief. But in the film “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” she is reduced to fury and nothing else, as fierce maternal protectiveness transforms her into a killing machine. Her personhood is no longer relevant because being an angry mother has become her whole character.In other examples of women raging in a domestic space, there is sometimes comical collateral damage. In Season 1 of “Dead to Me,” Jen, a widowed mother with an attitude problem, takes out her rage about her mother-in-law by punching the cake she got for Jen’s late husband’s memorial. In “Mad Men,” Betty Draper, a 1960s housewife caught in a marriage of spite and deception, stands in her yard in her peach nightgown, holding a rifle pointed toward the sky. With every flex of a manicured pink-nail-polished finger, she shoots at birds as a horrified neighbor looks on, calling to her in horror; she keeps shooting as a cigarette dangles from her mouth.A woman’s rage can be heroic — whether you’re a hulk or Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter), bashing in walls at an anger management class. It can be a barometer of what’s gone horrendously wrong in a world that has taken women for granted. Think the irate faces of Elisabeth Moss as Offred in the misogynistic dystopia of “The Handmaid’s Tale”; or the rage of the ill-fated soccer players in “Yellowjackets”; or the magically endowed young women in “The Power,” who sometimes use their abilities for self-defense or revenge.A woman can rage over privilege, as does Renata Klein (Laura Dern), the reputation- and money-obsessed mom in “Big Little Lies,” or over violent passion, as does Dre (Dominique Fishback), the killer stan of “Swarm.” In many cases, rage may be a last resort, a way for a woman to finally get what she desperately desires — catharsis, vengeance, justice, peace. Whether or not that satisfaction lasts, however, is a very different story.These scenes and storylines are not about the anger itself but rather what has led a woman to speak, to act, to defend herself and others, to have the autonomy to express an unpalatable emotion. To be unattractive and merciless. Because sometimes, in order to change her world — for good or for bad — all a woman needs to do is open her mouth and let out a vicious, unbridled scream.Image credits: “Fleishman Is in Trouble” (FX); “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law” (Marvel Studios/Disney+); “Aggretsuko” (Netflix); “The Handmaid’s Tale” (Hulu); “Yellowjackets” (Showtime); “Yellowjackets” (Showtime); “Medusa,” 1597 (Caravaggio, Ufizzi Gallery, Florence); “Yellowjackets” (Showtime); “Beef” (Netflix); “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” (Marvel Studios); “Jessica Jones” (Netflix); “Blindspotting” (Starz); “Dead to Me” (Netflix); “The Power” (Amazon Prime Video); “Swarm” (Amazon Prime Video); “Big Little Lies” (HBO); “Mad Men” (AMC). More

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      Alexander Skarsgard’s Viking Dream

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      LONDON — In Alexander Skarsgard’s telling, the idea for what eventually became his latest film, “The Northman,” has its roots on a long, slender island off the coast of Sweden called Oland, where his great-great grandfather built a wooden house a hundred years ago.“Some of my earliest memories are from walking around with my grandfather on Oland and him showing me these massive rune stones and the inscriptions,” he explained on a recent rainy Monday over lunch at a hotel tucked away in central London. “Telling tales of Vikings that sailed down the rivers, down to Constantinople.“So, in a way,” he continued, “you could say that the dream of one day making or being part of a Viking movie was born in that moment.”Wearing a gray crew-neck sweater and dark jeans, he was centuries away from the bloody, muddy berserker he plays in “The Northman,” the much-anticipated action-adventure that marks the director Robert Eggers’s leap into big-budget filmmaking.Six-four, blond and indisputably handsome, Skarsgard would seem a no-brainer to launch a Viking film, but getting this film made took awhile. Skarsgard said he spent years working with the Danish film producer Lars Knudsen trying to determine what shape the project would take. Then, in 2017, he met with Eggers, who had fallen in love with Iceland during a visit two years earlier, to talk about another project.Skarsgard and Eggers both describe that meeting as “fated,” and it eventually led Eggers, along with the Icelandic poet and author Sjon, to write “The Northman.” Eggers, who said he had $70 million to make the film, took some inspiration from the 1982 “Conan the Barbarian,” which he watched as a kid.The actor in full Viking mode in “The Northman.”Aidan Monaghan/Focus FeaturesSkarsgard’s character is a Viking prince, Amleth, bent on vengeance after his father is murdered. Skarsgard is a producer of the new film, which opens on April 22 and also features Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicole Kidman and Björk, among others.“It was a real treat as an actor to be part of the project from the genesis,” Skarsgard said. “To be part of that journey and to be able to continuously have these conversations with the screenwriters as they are shaping the story, talk about the arc of Amleth, the story, the essence of it — that was very inspiring to me.”The star, 45 and unfailingly polite, has played a Viking before. In fact, he’s played a Northman before: Eric Northman, the proudly undead, ultrasexy Viking vampire on the HBO series “True Blood.” But the title character of “The Northman” is a Viking after Skarsgard’s own heart — one faithful to the medieval lore of the Icelandic sagas, one who doesn’t question fate or faith. And one who, by design, doesn’t have a lot to say.The sagas on which the film is based are “very laconic,” he said. And the characters “don’t really speak unless absolutely necessary.”Skarsgard himself is open, with an easy smile. He’s aware of the world around him, including being up-to-date on the latest news from Ukraine and knowing that asparagus season is upon us. He gave questions his full attention, pausing to gather his thoughts before answering — and not once glancing at a cellphone.Though he grew up hearing Viking stories, Skarsgard read books and watched lectures on them to prepare for his role. He said the most interesting thing he learned was that Vikings believed each person had a female spirit guiding them.“I thought that was quite fascinating, the juxtaposition between that and the brutality you see when you first meet Amleth,” Skarsgard said. He added, “That he would have believed that there’s a female spirit inside of him that guides him, I really liked that idea.”Though he grew up hearing Viking stories, Skarsgard read books and watched lectures on them to prepare for his role.Robbie Lawrence for The New York TimesHis preparation complete, it looked as if everything was coming together on the film. Just as shooting was set to begin, the pandemic hit.“For about 48 hours we were still moving forward, but everyone was like, ‘Is this happening? Are we doing this? What’s going on?’ And then finally, they pulled the plug and said we have to break and that we’re going home.”Though Skarsgard considers New York his base, going home meant heading to his hometown, Stockholm.He holed up with his large family at his mother’s country house. He’s the oldest son of the actor Stellan Skarsgard and his first wife, My, and one of eight siblings. Three of his brothers are also actors, including Bill Skarsgard, who played Pennywise, the creeper clown in the “It” movies; another brother is a doctor who kept them apprised of developments in the Covid crisis. Skarsgard said that despite the frightening circumstances, he enjoyed getting to spend time with his family.“We cooked dinners and hung out, worked in the garden,” he said, adding that gathering the whole family can be difficult because work gets in the way. “I really enjoyed it. Then I felt almost guilty because it was a pandemic and people were dying.”Family and Sweden, where Skarsgard grew up and spent some time in the military, are important themes in his life.“We’re all a very tight group,” he said. “Everyone lives within two blocks of each other in South Stockholm and we see each other all the time when I’m home.” (He is not married but answered with a resounding “no” when asked if he was single.)He started out as a child actor but took a break beginning in his early teens before fully embracing an acting career in his 20s. He has said in the past that he didn’t like the attention acting brought him when he was young.His path to “The Northman” runs through dozens of roles in film and TV, some seemingly different sides of the same coin. He’s played an Israeli spy (“The Little Drummer Girl”) and a German man coming to terms with life after World War II (“The Aftermath”). A young Marine who helps the United States invade Iraq (“Generation Kill”) and a sadistic Army sergeant who leads young recruits astray in Afghanistan (“The Kill Team”). An abusive husband (“Big Little Lies”) and an achingly sweet stepdad who steps in to care for his neglected stepdaughter (“What Maisie Knew”).Skarsgard won several awards, including an Emmy, for his turn as an abusive husband opposite Nicole Kidman in “Big Little Lies.”HBOHe also snagged a small but pivotal role in HBO’s prestigious dramedy “Succession,” playing Lukas Matsson, a Swedish tech billionaire.Mark Mylod, an executive producer on the show who directed Skarsgard in two of the three episodes in which he appears, said the actor “was really the only choice for the character because of the intelligence of his work.”The makers of “Succession” had envisioned a character with “that kind of Elon Musk” charisma but not necessarily based on the Tesla chief executive. The Matsson character had to have the gravitas to be a genuine rival to the family behind Waystar Royco, the fictional company at the heart of “Succession,” Mylod said.“He found a way to make that character so fantastic and watchable and totally credible,” Mylod said. “With a small number of scenes, he made such an impact.” (Mylod wouldn’t say if Matsson is returning in Season 4.)Rebecca Hall, an actor who had worked with Skarsgard on “Godzilla vs. Kong,” said she had struggled to get financing for her own passion project, “Passing,” her adaptation last year of the 1929 Nella Larsen novel about the friendship between two Black women in New York, one of whom is passing as white.While working on “Kong,” Hall got up the courage to ask Skarsgard to read her script. He did and agreed to play the part of a racist husband. “I got the sense that he cares about good art being in the world and will do what he can to support that,” Hall said in an interview, adding that the character was the kind he had played well. “He’s no stranger to complicated characters who do bad things.”For Skarsgard, “there is zero strategy or plan” to his career. “The sweet spot is when I’m intrigued by the character, and I understand aspects of him and he makes me curious to learn more,” he said. “That’s superfun because then that means that I’ll probably enjoy diving in and exploring that a bit deeper.”On “The Northman,” diving in meant bulking up. He is also reunited in the film with Kidman, who played his wife in “Big Little Lies,” for which he won an Emmy, a SAG Award and a Golden Globe. This time she’s his mother.The two actors traveled with the rest of the cast to Northern Ireland, Ireland and Iceland for the grueling “Northman” shoot. Skarsgard described it as “seven months in the mud.”Eggers, an exacting and meticulous director, said that he was “not a sadist to be a sadist,” but that he was dead serious about detail and accuracy, which will come as no surprise to viewers of his earlier films, like “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse.”Skarsgard has spoken in interviews about being shackled and dragged through the muck. But Eggers said that, like him, Skarsgard wanted the best result. “When we embarked on this together, he was after nothing but perfection.”Eggers added, “Alex has sort of talked about me driving him to the edge, but there were many times that I can remember him asking for another take because he’s just as much of a perfectionist as I am.”The director acknowledged that the working conditions were difficult. “I am not trying to make things hard for us,” he explained, “but when you’re telling the story of the Viking Age in Northern Europe, you’re going to seek punishing locations, with extreme weather and terrain. And that’s just what it needs to be to tell this story.”When shooting was delayed, Skarsgard returned to Stockholm, where he enjoyed time spent with his family. “I felt almost guilty because it was a pandemic and people were dying.”Robbie Lawrence for The New York TimesWorking with such a large budget and cast were perks, Eggers said, but also meant a great deal of pressure. “If this movie doesn’t perform, that will be a problem,” he said.After all of the work, Skarsgard said, “I just want people to see the movie, that’s it,” adding, preferably on the big screen.As is pretty standard fare for a Skarsgard project, he’s naked in parts of “The Northman,” including during a fight scene in a volcano.Does he ever just say no to taking off his clothes? He said he had recently done just that at a photo shoot after being asked to take his shirt off, saying, “I think there’s enough nudity in the movie.”Skarsgard, who had spent the morning doing press by Zoom and had traveled around Europe promoting in the days before we talked, had by the end of the interview kind of slid down the banquette, resting his head against the cushion. He said he realized his films tend to be heavy. “I might have to do a comedy soon,” he said, adding that he would like to work with the satirist Armando Iannucci or the British comic actor Steve Coogan.“The Northman,” he said, “was so intense. It was the greatest experience of my career but, God, it was intense.” More

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      A Hollywood Producer and a Master of Adaptation

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      Freedom, Maine, population 722, is about as far away from Hollywood as you can get. So when Erin French, who runs the uber-popular Lost Kitchen there, had boldface names flocking to her virtual doorstep looking to buy the film rights to her best-selling memoir, she approached them with a lot of trepidation and a bit of awe.“It was intense,” Ms. French said of the experience of selling her personal story of food, addiction and abuse, told in the 2021 book “Finding Freedom: A Cook’s Story; Remaking a Life From Scratch.” “Here you are, sitting in the middle of nowhere, a girl who felt like she had grown up a nobody, and then all of a sudden you’re having Zoom calls with Blake Lively. It was definitely a wild time.”In addition to Ms. Lively, Ms. French and her husband, Michael Dutton, met with others like MGM and Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment. In the end, Ms. French and Mr. Dutton sold the rights to Bruna Papandrea and her four-year-old company, Made Up Stories. The couple said they were won over by Ms. Papandrea’s passion for the project, her clear vision of how to turn it into a movie and her track record for finding the right talent for projects.“We’re heading into what’s referred to as ‘Shark Territory,’ getting into this whole world of Hollywood-ness,” said Ms. French, “and we felt like Bruna’s a fighter and Bruna was going to always protect us and keep pushing forward.”Erin French, center, sold the rights to her book to Ms. Papandrea, who she felt had a clear vision of how to turn her story into a movie.Stacey Cramp for The New York TimesFor decades, Ms. Papandrea, 50, toiled in the entertainment business shadows of more famous collaborators, most notably Reese Witherspoon. Together, they produced hit adaptations like “Wild,” “Big Little Lies” and “Gone Girl.”With Made Up Stories, though, Ms. Papandrea has stepped firmly into the spotlight. Her latest series, “Nine Perfect Strangers,” which stars Nicole Kidman and Melissa McCarthy and concludes Wednesday, is Hulu’s most-watched original series, according to the streaming service, beating the audience numbers for acclaimed shows like “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “The Act.” Like “Big Little Lies,” it was adapted from a book by Liane Moriarty.The show’s success, according to those involved, is proof of Ms. Papandrea’s tenacity. “She’s hard to say no to,” said Craig Erwich, president of Hulu Originals and ABC EntertainmentShut down in Los Angeles by the pandemic, Ms. Papandrea and her team quickly shifted the entire production to Byron Bay in New South Wales, Australia. Ms. Papandrea persuaded the brand-new Soma meditation retreat to open its doors to the production before opening to the public.“I was like, listen, I made a show called ‘Big Little Lies,’ I’m telling you it just makes your property more, it brings it a lot of attention,” she said with her clipped Australian accent.Sitting outside at a beach cafe in Santa Monica, Calif., last month, Ms. Papandrea spoke with a machine gun cadence, dropping words at the ends of sentences as she toggled between topics. It’s a pace mirroring the frenetic schedule she’s managing as she prepares some seven productions for five streaming platforms — all movies or television shows centered on complicated female protagonists.In the next year alone she will debut one movie and two television shows for Netflix, including the long-gestating adaptation of the best-selling novel “Luckiest Girl Alive”; a series for Spectrum Originals and BET on women’s college basketball; an anthology series for Apple TV+ titled “Roar”; an Amazon original series starring Sigourney Weaver; and a romantic comedy series for Peacock that stars Josh Gad and Isla Fisher.Melissa McCarthy stars in “Nine Perfect Strangers,” a series on Hulu by Made Up Stories.Vince Valitutti/Hulu, via Associated PressIt is a sign of how Ms. Papandrea, known for her penchant for finishing novels in one sitting, is uniquely suited for a moment in the entertainment industry when the number of major companies able to buy content is shrinking but the need for compelling shows that will draw audiences continues to grow.“I’m watching it all curiously because it doesn’t matter what network you run or what streaming platform you head, you have to have curators, you have to have people who have taste,” she said. “The hardest thing in the world is to find something someone wants to make, and that’s my skill.”Ms. Papandrea teamed with Ms. Witherspoon for three years, shepherding projects like “Gone Girl” and “Big Little Lies” to the screen and racking up accolades along the way, including best actress Oscar nominations for both Ms. Witherspoon (“Wild”) and Rosamund Pike (“Gone Girl”). The two went their separate ways in 2017. Ms. Witherspoon formed Hello Sunshine, which was just sold to a new company backed by the investment firm Blackstone Group for $900 million.Ms. Papandrea took the company’s two former employees and with her husband, Steve Hutensky, started Made Up Stories. The company now has 12 employees and offices in Australia and Los Angeles.She attributes the split to the two women wanting different things and having “slightly different tastes.”“Ultimately, she built a big company and I built a big company,” she said with a chuckle.Ms. Witherspoon declined to comment for this article.To finance her new operation, Ms. Papandrea sold a passive minority stake in her business to Endeavor Content, the production arm of the entertainment and sports conglomerate Endeavor. The companies also formed a joint venture — renewable every calendar year — that allows both to serve as co-studios on all Made Up Stories television projects and some Made Up Stories films. The two share the economic risk of their entire TV development slate, but Endeavor does not pay for Ms. Papandrea’s overhead costs. She and Mr. Hutensky maintain independence over all creative decisions.Ms. Papandrea, with Reese Witherspoon, produced hit adaptations like “Big Little Lies,” seen here with some of the cast.Christopher Polk/Getty Images for the Critics’ Choice Awards“I just love being independent. I love it,” she said. “This path has given us the freedom and resources to compete in the marketplace for top material and writers, to bet on up-and-coming creators, to find the right path for each project and to choose the best homes for distribution among the many platforms.”Made Up Stories is one of many companies with a partnership with Endeavor Content.“We are platform agnostic, so we can sell her shows and our shows and other people’s shows to any platform,” said Graham Taylor, a co-president of Endeavor Content. “We’ve kind of built a United Artists 100 years later that we supply shows to every outlet.”The job of a producer has never been easily defined. There are those who take on the title simply because they contributed some money along the way. Others, like Ms. Papandrea, work tirelessly from book option all the way to postproduction and marketing to ensure that the promises they made at the beginning of what is an often long and tortuous process will still be met at the end.“It’s a problem. Producing credits are passed out like lollipops,” said David E. Kelley, the prolific writer and producer, who has worked with Ms. Papandrea on five projects including “Nine Perfect Strangers.” “What we just did in ‘Nine Perfect,’ for example, that’s kind of a miracle. Bruna had to blaze so much trail with the government just to get people into the country in order to shoot. It’s hard work, and it’s a lot of work.”Ms. Papandrea works tirelessly from book option all the way to postproduction and marketing.Phillip Faraone/Getty Images For Stella ArtoisMs. Papandrea, the third of four children, was raised by a single mother in a housing commission flat in the working-class neighborhood of Elizabeth, South Australia. She dropped out of college twice: once after starting a commerce law degree at Melbourne University and later bailing on an arts degree at Adelaide University.She tried her hand at acting. That didn’t stick.She then got a job working as the assistant to the Australian cinematographer Dion Beebe, an opportunity that led her first to being a producer of commercials and then films. Her big break, she said, came when she started working for the directors Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack.The job took her to London and then to Los Angeles, where she learned the art of adaptation from two of the best in the business.According to Ms. Papandrea, Mr. Minghella hired her because she was smart and she made him laugh. He taught her how to treat creative people with respect and to never work with anyone she didn’t want to have a meal with.She held on to those early lessons and has vowed to pay it forward by hiring only young talent with no Hollywood connections.“When we hire people now, we make sure they’ve had no access to the business. We won’t hire someone off a desk,” she said. “We try and find people who have come up with no experience, because how else do you break those people in?”Jessica Knoll was one such author. Ms. Papandrea worked with her to turn her novel “Luckiest Girl Alive” into a feature film. The two first came together seven years ago, just after “Wild” was made. But executive shuffles, changing tastes and other challenges kept the film in development for years. All the while, Ms. Papandrea stuck with Ms. Knoll as the film’s only writer — a feat in modern-day Hollywood.“She was just so fierce in terms of how much she championed writers and how much she protected them and their stories,” said Ms. Knoll, who had never written a screenplay before adapting her own and recalls Ms. Papandrea giving her Mr. Minghella’s memoir “Minghella on Minghella” and coaching her through the process.“I want to be in business with her forever. The room is a brighter room when Bruna Papandrea is in it.” More