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      ‘House of the Dragon’: Steve Toussaint on Playing Lord Corlys

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      One of the most powerful people in Westeros made his reputation as a fearless sailor. The actor who plays him does better on land.This interview includes spoilers for the first two episodes of “House of the Dragon.”Legendary explorer, naval commander, lord of a noble house that has long earned its living from the sea: Corlys Velaryon, a.k.a. the Sea Snake, is a boat guy, through and through. Steve Toussaint, the British actor who plays him on “House of the Dragon,” is not.“It’s a weird thing,” he said, laughing. “The last couple of times I’ve been on a boat, I suddenly started getting seasick. I’ve never had that in my life, but just recently it started happening.”Whatever Toussaint’s shortcomings as a sailor, Lord Corlys’s prowess on the sea is so formidable that even the dragon-riding scions of the ruling monarchy, House Targaryen, must show him deference. In the show’s second episode, he even rage-quits the Small Council led by King Viserys (Paddy Considine) — he’s one of the few people in the Seven Kingdoms who can turn his back on the ruling monarch and live to tell the tale.Corlys’s in-world untouchability makes for a salutary counterpoint to the racist reactions Toussaint has faced in some quarters. The actor, who is Black, portrays a character of direct descent from the fallen empire of Valyria who is assumed to be white in the source material by George R.R. Martin, the book “Fire & Blood.” In the world of the show, created by Martin with Ryan Condal, Corlys’s power and prowess are presented unapologetically, without caveat.“I guess some people live in a different world,” Toussaint said of the controversy. “I’m very lucky that I have friends who are of all persuasions. I’ve got Caucasian friends, East Asian friends, South Asian friends, Black friends. That’s my world, and I want to be in programs that reflect that world.”In a phone conversation last week, Toussaint spoke from London about the forces that drive Corlys and knowing which rules to follow and which ones to break. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.Corlys has a cool factor that even some of the most charismatic characters lack. He just seems comfortable in his own skin in a way that many others aren’t.That’s one of the things I like about Corlys. Of the people he’s around, he’s the guy who went out and made his fortune by himself, with his own bare hands, as he says late in the episode. That gives him a sense of self. It’s one of the things that’s key to who he is.Funny enough, when I had the initial meeting with Ryan and Miguel, the co-showrunners, all we talked about, really, was fatherhood and his feelings about his family. He’s got this desire to cement the Velaryon name in history. He feels the slights to his wife [Princess Rhaenys, played by Eve Best], the fact that she was passed over [for the Iron Throne], more than she does.And when he’s realized he can’t get her back on the throne, the next thing for him is get the family as close to power as possible, i.e. marry off the kids in some way or other.Return to Westeros in ‘House of the Dragon’HBO’s long-awaited “Game of Thrones” prequel series is here.The Sea Snake: Lord Corlys Velaryon, one of the most powerful people in the Seven Kingdoms, is a fearless sailor. Steve Toussaint, the actor who plays him, does better on land.A Rogue Prince: Daemon Targaryen, portrayed by Matt Smith, is an agent of chaos. But “he’s got a strange moral compass of his own,” the actor said.A Violent Birth Scene: Was the gory C-section in the show’s premiere the representation of a grim historical reality, an urgent political statement or a worn cultural cliché?The King’s Hand: Otto Hightower is a major player in the prequel. Here is what to know about the character and the history of House Hightower.How does Corlys feel about going through with this ritual of having his 12-year-old daughter, Laena [Nova Fouellis-Mosé], court the king? Does he have second thoughts about this system at all?The thing about Corlys is he is a stickler for the rules. Despite the fact that he felt that his wife is the more capable person to be on the throne as opposed to Viserys, that is what [the Great Council] chose. He thinks they made a mistake, but: “These are the rules that I’ve been given. This is how we have decided power dynamics work in that world. OK, well in that case, I will do this.”So in Episode 1, when Otto Hightower [Rhys Ifans] says to Viserys, “We’ve got to talk about your succession,” it is Corlys, despite the fact that he wants his wife to be on the throne, who says: “No, no, we have an heir. It’s Daemon [the king’s younger brother, played by Matt Smith].” Now, it may not be to everyone’s liking, but that’s what the rules are. When there is a dispute about [the king’s daughter] Rhaenyra’s position, he again is like, “Well, her father chose her, and so we have to go with that.”I think he’s like, “I don’t like these rules, but these are the rules. What can I do to thrive in them?”Corlys and his wife, Lady Rhaenys (Toussaint and Eve Best), offered their 12-year-old daughter to King Viserys (Paddy Considine, left) in hopes of cementing an alliance with the throne.Ollie Upton/HBOIt’s not just that Corlys built his family’s fortune — he did so by making nine legendary voyages to distant lands, putting himself in great danger. Is that in the back of your mind as you play him?Yes. I remember saying to Ryan at one point, “It would be great to have some sort of write-up so that I’ve got a memory of them,” basically. Ryan was good enough to come back with a whole dossier of stuff, because Ryan is a supergeek. [Laughs.] It’s a huge part of Corlys’s very being, what he did.It’s interesting that you said he put himself in great danger. I don’t know if, at the time, he would have thought of it that way. He just had an adventurous spirit. He wanted to get out there and see what was beyond the known world at that time. Certainly when I was in my teens and early 20s, there was no fear — I was going to live forever.Obviously, being an older man and sitting around these people who like to talk so cavalierly about war, there’s a part of him that’s like, “No, I’ve seen it, you haven’t. If you’d seen it, you wouldn’t be talking this way.”The thing about battle is you either succeed or you don’t — there’s no gray area. He likes that. He’d like it if life were like that, generally. That’s one of the reasons he’s not always entirely comfortable in the Small Council with diplomacy and so forth. “If something is right, it’s right. Let’s just do it.”Did that make it difficult to play those Small Council scenes?In terms of the character, the resentment that Corlys has for what he considers these privileged people helps me a lot. In fact, there were some points where Ryan would have to rein me in and go: “If you spoke to the king like that, you’d have your head cut off. You’ve gone too far.” It would be more difficult for someone like — and I didn’t have this discussion with them, so I don’t know — Paddy or maybe Gavin Spokes [who plays the Small Council member Lord Lyonel Strong], whose characters have to be mindful of not upsetting people and trying to keep the balance. I never felt that way with my character.There is a side to him that is, as far as he’s concerned, above the rules. Also, he knows just how valuable he is for the realm, because he controls the majority of the navy. So he knows he’s got a little bit more leeway.You’ve talked about the racist backlash that you initially faced from some segments of the fandom when you were cast. Has that improved?There are still trickles coming through, but generally, it’s been great. The overwhelming majority of people have been very welcoming and supportive.Some people have gone out of their way to find my timeline so they can explain to me that “It’s all about the books” and so forth. My view is this: There are shows on TV that I don’t like — I just don’t watch them. There are actors that I don’t find interesting — I just never feel the need to broadcast I don’t like them. There are some people who don’t like my appearance and don’t think someone like me should be playing that particular role because when they read the book, they saw it a different way. All of that is natural. My objection is to people who have racially abused me.For some reason, the responses that I’ve been getting recently seem to have overlooked that, as if I’m just going, “You don’t like me, and therefore you’re racist.” That’s not what I’m saying. I don’t know what people’s motivations are. But I do know the motivations of somebody who calls me the n-word. I know what that means.Were you a “Game of Thrones” guy before you got this part?Yes, I was. It had been going for about three or four seasons before I actually watched it because fantasy is not really my genre. I was staying with a friend in L.A., and he said to me, “Have you seen this ‘Game of Thrones’?” And I was like: “No. It’s got dragons, why the hell would I watch that?” [Laughs.] He said, “Just watch one episode.” And it was so much more gritty and, for want of a better word, realistic than I was expecting. I was hooked. More

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      in Television

      Ashes of Nichelle Nichols, Lieutenant Uhura From “Star Trek,” to Be Launched Into Deep Space

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      The ashes of Ms. Nichols, who played Lieutenant Uhura on “Star Trek,” will be on a Vulcan rocket to be launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., later this year.The ashes of Nichelle Nichols, who played Lieutenant Uhura in the original “Star Trek” television series and died in July, will be launched into space later this year.Celestis, a private spaceflight company that works with NASA, will carry her ashes on a rocket set to travel between 150 million and 300 million kilometers into space beyond the Earth-moon system and the James Webb telescope.Ms. Nichols, one of the first Black women to have a leading role on a network television series, died at age 89 from heart failure.As Lieutenant Uhura, the communications officer on the starship U.S.S. Enterprise, Ms. Nichols was not only a pioneering actor, but she was also credited with inspiring women and people of color to join NASA.The United Launch Alliance Vulcan rocket is set to carry more than 200 capsules containing ashes, messages of greetings and DNA samples when it launches later this year from Cape Canaveral, Fla., into deep space.Ms. Nichols’s son, Kyle Johnson, is providing a DNA sample to join his mother on the space journey. “My only regret is that I cannot share this eternal tribute standing beside my mother at the launch,” Mr. Johnson said in a statement.Celestis said the rocket would launch into space and send a lunar lander toward the moon. It would then enter a stable orbit around the sun with the Celestis Memorial Spaceflight payload. At the end of the rocket’s powered burn and coast phase, the flight will become the Enterprise Station, which was named in tribute to “Star Trek.”Some of the ashes of other “Star Trek” figures, and fans, will also be onboard the spaceflight.They include Gene Roddenberry, the creator of “Star Trek,” and his wife, Majel Barrett Roddenberry, who played Nurse Chapel in the original series; James Doohan, who played Montgomery Scott, the chief engineer of the U.S.S. Enterprise; and Douglas Trumbull, who created visual effects for “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” as well as “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Blade Runner.”Mr. Roddenberry’s ashes have been sent to space several times before, including in 1997 on the first Celestis spaceflight to carry ashes. The cremated remains of Timothy Leary, the LSD advocate, were also onboard that journey.For the Celestis spaceflight this year, the company is collecting tributes to Ms. Nichols from the public to be digitized and included in the flight.After Ms. Nichols appeared on the original “Star Trek” series, which aired from 1966 to 1969, she began a decades-long association with NASA.Starting in 1977, she helped promote the space agency and helped its efforts to recruit people from underrepresented backgrounds. NASA has credited her with inspiring thousands of women and people from minority groups to apply to the agency, including the first American woman in space, Sally Ride, and Charles Bolden, the NASA administrator from 2009 to 2017.Mae Jemison, who became the first woman of color to go to space in 1992, often said Ms. Nichols’s performance on “Star Trek” inspired her interest in the cosmos.After Ms. Nichols’s death, the NASA administrator, Bill Nelson, said in a statement that her “advocacy transcended television and transformed NASA.”“Nichelle’s mission is NASA’s mission,” he said. “Today, as we work to send the first woman and first person of color to the moon under Artemis, NASA is guided by the legacy of Nichelle Nichols.” More

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      in Music

      California Bill Could Restrict the Use of Rap Lyrics in Court

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      The bill, which applies more broadly to other forms of creative expression, has unanimously passed the Senate and Assembly and could become law by the end of September.A California bill that would restrict the use of rap lyrics and other creative works as evidence in criminal proceedings has unanimously passed both the State Senate and Assembly, and could soon be signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom.The bill, introduced in February by Assemblyman Reginald Jones-Sawyer, a Democrat who represents South Los Angeles, comes amid national attention on the practice following the indictment of the Atlanta rappers Young Thug and Gunna on gang-related charges. Prosecutors have drawn on the men’s lyrics in making their case.The California measure, however, would apply more broadly to any creative works, including other types of music, poetry, film, dance, performance art, visual art and novels.“What you write could ultimately be used against you, and that could inhibit creative expression,” Mr. Jones-Sawyer said Wednesday in an interview. He noted that the bill ultimately boiled down to a question of First Amendment rights.“This is America,” he said. “You should be able to have that creativity.”Mr. Newsom has until Sep. 30 to sign the bill into law. If he neither signs nor vetoes the bill by that date, the measure would automatically become law. The law would then go into effect on Jan. 1, 2023, Mr. Jones-Sawyer said.When asked whether Mr. Newsom planned to sign the bill, his office said that it could not comment on pending legislation. “As will all measures that reach the governor’s desk, it will be evaluated on its merits,” it said.Though the bill’s genesis is in preventing rap stars’ lyrics from being weaponized against them, the measure loosely defines “creative expression” to include “forms, sounds, words, movements, or symbols.”It would require a court to evaluate whether such works can be included as evidence by weighing their “probative value” in the case against the “substantial danger of undue prejudice” that might result from including them. The court should consider the possibility that such works could be treated as “evidence of the defendant’s propensity for violence or criminal disposition, as well as the possibility that the evidence will inject racial bias into the proceedings,” the bill says.“People were going to jail merely because of their appearance,” Mr. Jones-Sawyer said. “We weren’t trying to get people off the hook. We’re just making sure that biases, especially racial biases toward African Americans, weren’t used against them in a court of law.”The bill would require that decisions about the evidence be made pretrial, out of the presence of a jury. For decades, prosecutors have used rappers’ lyrics against them even as their music has become mainstream, with critics and fans arguing that the artists should be given the same freedom to explore violence in their work as were musicians like Johnny Cash (did he really shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die?) or authors like Bret Easton Ellis, who wrote “American Psycho.”In other cases, though lyrics were not used as evidence, they were discussed in front of the jury, which “poisoned the well” by allowing bias to enter the court, according to Mr. Jones-Sawyer’s office. It also noted that while country music has a subgenre known as the “murder ballad,” it is only the lyrics of rap artists that have been singled out.Charis E. Kubrin, a professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California, Irvine, who has extensively researched the use of rap lyrics in criminal proceedings, said that the way prosecutors have used defendant-authored lyrics in court was unique to rap.The practice, she said, essentially treated the lyrics as “nothing more than autobiographical accounts — denying rap the status of art.” The California bill is significant, Dr. Kubrin said, because it would require judges to consider whether the lyrics would inject racial bias into proceedings. “This is bigger than rap,” she said.Among the first notable times the tactic was used was against the rapper Snoop Dogg at his 1996 murder trial, when prosecutors cited lyrics from “Murder Was the Case.” The rapper, whose real name is Calvin Broadus, was acquitted.Snoop Dogg entering a Los Angeles court in 1996, where a prosecutor cited his lyrics during a murder trial. He was acquitted.Mark J. Terrill/Associated PressMost recently, the charges against Young Thug and Gunna have called national attention to the tactic. Both men, who have said they are innocent, were identified as members of a criminal street gang, some of whom were charged with violent crimes including murder and attempted armed robbery.Young Thug, whose real name is Jeffery Williams, co-wrote the Grammy-winning “This is America” with Childish Gambino and is one of the most influential artists to emerge from Atlanta’s hip-hop scene.In November, two New York lawmakers introduced a similar bill that would prevent lyrics from being used as evidence in criminal cases unless there was a “factual nexus between the creative expression and the facts of the case.” It passed the Senate in May.In July, U.S. Representatives Hank Johnson of Georgia and Jamaal Bowman of New York, both Democrats, introduced federal legislation, the Restoring Artistic Protection Act, which they said would protect artists from “the wrongful use of their lyrics against them.”The California bill is supported by several other music organizations and activist groups, including the Black Music Action Coalition California, the Public Defenders Association and Smart Justice California, which advocates criminal justice reform.In a statement of support from June, the Black Music Action Coalition, an advocacy organization that battles systemic racism in the music business, said that prosecutors almost exclusively weaponized rappers’ lyrics against men of color.“Creative expression should not be used as evidence of bad character,” the organization said, maintaining that the claim that themes expressed in art were an indication of the likelihood that a person was violent or dishonest was “simply false.”Harvey Mason Jr., the chief executive of the Recording Academy, which runs the Grammy Awards, said that the bill was intended to protect not only rappers, but also artists across all genres of music, and other forms of creativity.“It’s bigger than any one individual case,” Mr. Mason said. “In no way, at no time, do I feel that someone’s art should be used against them.” More

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      in Movies

      ‘Katrina Babies’ Review: Hearing From Survivors

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      Edward Buckles Jr.’s intimate documentary sheds light on the experiences of Black children when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans.Who gets to use the notion of “resilience”? Survivors? Mental health professionals? People who want to celebrate it but also move on from whatever required that fortitude in the first place?The director Edward Buckles Jr. makes a telling point of these tensions in his first film, the revealing documentary “Katrina Babies,” which features Black people who were children —— some toddlers, others in their early teens — in 2005, when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. “Since the storm, it seems like everybody just moved on,” Buckles Jr. says. “In America, especially during disasters, Black children are not even a thought.”The director, who is also credited as a writer, knows the subject from his own experience. When he was 13, he and his family evacuated the city before the storm arrived and the levees broke.“Katrina Babies” is deeply personal and thoughtfully political. The filmmaker recounts the pleasures of cousinhood and family before the hurricane. He and his subjects also tussle with the economic and racial inequities that were exposed and exacerbated by the disaster.Buckles Jr.’s cousins — whom he celebrates with evocative mixed-media animation (by Antoni Sendra) and, later, with compassionate interviews — did not get out at the time. And when they did leave, they did not return. So, if you detect in Buckles Jr. a layer of survivor’s guilt, you might be right.But “Katrina Babies” is also the intimate undertaking of a native son creating a space to heal. If the grief (and relief) expressed in the interviews is any measure, Buckles Jr. knows how to listen to people whose experiences may be harrowingly similar but are not identical to his own. He pulls off this dance of self-awareness and empathy with impressive humility.Katrina BabiesNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 19 minutes. Watch on HBO platforms. More

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      in Theater

      In Two London Plays, Being Black Means Looking From the Outside In

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      Black characters in “Mad House” and “The Southbury Child” endure microaggressions and aspersions. The familiar scenarios hit home for our critic.LONDON — It was my second time here, and I kept trying to remember if I had felt as conspicuous during my first visit. I could count the number of other Black women I spotted during my five days here: the hotel receptionist with the French braid, whom I spoke with when I stopped in to ask to use the bathroom, the long-haired woman at my own hotel’s front desk, the woman talking rapidly into her cellphone outside a Starbucks, the two women (clearly tourists) with matching backpacks near the British Museum, and the young woman with the short, relaxed hair, who was clutching a shopping bag as she walked briskly down the street. That list isn’t comprehensive. But it’s not far off.So when the eyes of a white person linger on me, as they did numerous times during this trip, my imagination tricks me into thinking every glance is a rebuke — whether because of my obvious Americanness; or because of my race, my tattoos or my pink hair. I don’t know how to sit with my discomfort in these moments, and I inevitably ask myself: How much of an outsider am I?Such thoughts often cross my mind when I go to the theater — whether in New York, London or elsewhere — and sit among the predominantly white audience, watching the mostly white actors onstage. In choosing which London shows to squeeze into my short work trip, I gravitated to two brand-new family dramas, “Mad House” and “The Southbury Child,” with big-name stars and stories about white families.As these weren’t the domains of Tina Turner or Sister Deloris Van Cartier or Noma Dumezweni’s Nora Helmer, I didn’t expect to see any Black women on either stage. But I was wrong; in both “Mad House” and “The Southbury Child,” a Black woman — the lone Black person in each show — is not only a part of the play, but she also serves as an outsider who witnesses and comments on the chaos, enduring microaggressions and outright aspersions before making her escape.In “Mad House,” written by Theresa Rebeck (“Bernhardt/Hamlet”) and directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel, David Harbour (“Stranger Things”) plays a man named Michael who is watching over his dying father, Daniel (played by Bill Pullman) in rural Pennsylvania. But the father’s illness isn’t enough to stop the man’s unending stream of vitriol and abuse.It’s just the two of them now, since Michael’s beloved mother died, because of — according to his father — Michael’s yearlong stay at a mental hospital, which broke her heart. Rounding out the living members of this broken nuclear family are Michael’s brother, Nedward, a Manhattan stockbroker who pops up after a prolonged absence to take charge of Daniel’s assets, and his sister, Pam, a vicious manipulator who shows up halfway through the play to exacerbate the situation.Into all this mess enters Lillian, a Caribbean hospice nurse hired to help make Daniel comfortable during his final days. She maintains her professionalism despite Daniel’s crass come-ons, objectifying of her body, offensive comments about trans people (she’s so muscular she might be a man, he declares) and racist attitude (he repeatedly insists that he paid for her, like a slave). She’s spoken down to and bossed around by Ned and especially by Pam, who insists Lillian is unqualified. After Lillian shares a letter with Michael that she’s discovered among Daniel’s papers, the extent of his family’s lies come to light.Because I’ve seen so many plays in which the entrance of a Black character signals the beginning of a string of awful clichés and tropes, I am now leery when I see a lone Black person appear among a cast of white characters. When Akiya Henry, the actress playing Lillian, initially appeared in the first act, walking into Daniel and Michael’s kitchen, I felt this same foreboding.Originally from St. Vincent and the Grenadines, as the family members announce several times, Lillian is an outsider, and she’s a helper — quite literally, of course, since she’s a nurse. Armed with sharp retorts and a sassy, well-timed sucking of her teeth, Lillian punctuates the absurdity of the circumstances and brings the outside world into the confines of this unstable family home so the audience doesn’t get too claustrophobic. She is also the main inciting force that moves the story forward and cracks open the family dynamic. She’s not so transparent an archetype that her tale is left to the imagination, though: She gets a tragic, grief-filled back story, but only so the play can relate Michael’s emotional baggage through Lillian. She’s the mirror held up to Michael’s inner life.Racheal Ofori as the adopted daughter of a white family in Stephen Beresford’s “The Southbury Child” at the Bridge Theater.Manuel HarlanIn one of the other West End plays I saw, Stephen Beresford’s “The Southbury Child,” directed by Nicholas Hytner, the token Black woman is even more aware of her status as an interloper, and the script struggles to give the character dimension.Here, Alex Jennings (“The Crown”) plays a philandering vicar and alcoholic who becomes the town pariah after refusing to allow balloons at a young girl’s funeral. The Black actress Racheal Ofori plays his adult daughter Naomi, who materializes like the prodigal adopted daughter. Appearing in fitted tops and mini skirts after nightlong partying, Naomi is, well, the black sheep in more ways than the most obvious racial one. Unlike her religious father, she is what she calls a “militant atheist”; she lacks the same underlying bitterness of her mother and outshines her hardworking but overlooked elder sister.Naomi plays no role in the odd central drama about balloons but saunters onto the stage every once in a while, in her club clothes or pajamas, taking in the drama and mocking and jesting at her family and her status as the sole person of color. Like Lillian in “Mad House,” Naomi serves as the wise fool.Hers is one of several side stories in this intriguing yet overpacked play: Feeling alienated as a Black woman in a white family, she seeks out her birth mother in the hope that doing so will help her find her true self. In the meantime, her character is the snarky observer who then complains about being tokenized by her community. In one instance, she sneers as she describes the self-congratulatory white moms who proudly set up play dates between their daughters and the town’s Black girl.The similarities in the way the characters’ arcs end in each play are intriguing: For both Naomi and Lillian, the departures are abrupt. It’s as if neither stage has a place for these Black women beyond their roles as outside observers and truth-tellers. Once they’ve played their parts, they are seemingly given an out; finally spared from having to see the mess through to the end. But the exits of these Black women also seem like a validation that they don’t actually belong there. That they are exceptional.And, in a sense, they are — both Henry and Ofori make their characters compelling, so much so that sometimes they steal the spotlight. Not for long, though — never for long. Despite the strong Black female leads you can catch on some stages, too many productions still embrace a very narrow role for their Black women, who can nurture, drop snide remarks and reveal truths the other characters fail to see — so long as they know their place as visitors in the narrative. More

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      in Theater

      Denzel Washington Honors August Wilson’s Legacy at House Opening

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      After fund-raising and restoration efforts, the childhood home of the playwright will offer artist residencies and other programming.PITTSBURGH — On Saturday, crowds gathered outside August Wilson’s childhood home in the historic Hill District here to celebrate the grand opening of the August Wilson House. After a yearslong fund-raising and restoration effort, the house where the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright spent the first 13 years of his life will now be open to the public with the goal of extending Wilson’s legacy and advancing Black arts in culture.Wilson, who died in 2005, is perhaps best known for his series of 10 plays called the American Century Cycle, which detail the various experiences of Black Americans throughout the 20th century. Nine of these plays are set in this city’s Hill District — a bastion of Black history, arts and culture — and one, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” is set in Chicago.The restoration effort was a long time coming. Wilson’s nephew, Paul Ellis Jr., began the project after his uncle’s death. The abandoned house had been left to sit in a state of disrepair. Although it became a spot of cultural pilgrimage for Wilson’s fans after his death, those pilgrims saw only decay once they arrived.With the help of various Pittsburgh foundations and other benefactors — among them, the two-time Academy Award-winning actor Denzel Washington — the house is now a home for those who will follow in Wilson’s footsteps.The August Wilson House is not a museum. Instead, the restored space is a community center that will offer artist residencies, gathering spaces, fellowships and other programming for up-and-coming artists and scholars. There is also an outdoor stage behind the home, which is currently showcasing the Pittsburgh Playwrights Theater Company’s production of Wilson’s play “Jitney” through Sept. 18.The playwright spent the first 13 years of his life in the house in Pittsburgh’s Hill District neighborhood, the setting for many of his plays.Jeff Swensen for The New York TimesAccording to Sam Reiman, a trustee of the Richard King Mellon Foundation here and a board member of the August Wilson African American Cultural Center, the space will be “the birthplace of August Wilson’s successors.”Along with Reiman, Saturday’s ceremony featured a star-studded lineup of speakers, including Washington, who helped raise millions toward the home’s restoration. Washington also starred in, produced and directed the 2016 film adaptation of “Fences,” one of Wilson’s Pittsburgh-based plays, that filmed throughout the Hill District. He also produced the 2020 film adaptation of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.”Washington praised those in attendance for their support of Wilson and his legacy.“I want to thank the community,” Washington said, because Wilson “is yours, and you are his. You just share him with the rest of us.”Wilson’s widow, Constanza Romero Wilson, who designed the costumes for many of Wilson’s later plays, also spoke at the event.“This is sacred ground,” she said of the house, located at 1727 Bedford Avenue. It “commemorates our generation’s hero — August Wilson. August Wilson House belongs to the Hill, to Black Americans, and because his stories are American stories of triumph under oppression, it belongs to all of us Americans.”Washington thanked the community for its support. “You just share him with the rest of us,” he said.Jeff Swensen for The New York TimesAlso in attendance were local leaders, including Ed Gainey, Pittsburgh’s first Black mayor, and Daniel Lavelle, a city councilman.The commencement speaker for Gainey’s college graduation in 1994 was none other than August Wilson, whose name the mayor admitted to never hearing before that day. He called his mother, he said, and she told him everything about the playwright.“There’s not a child in this city who should not know who August Wilson is. Not a child,” Gainey said. “And today speaks volumes to how far we’ve come in recognizing African American history in this city and celebrating the heroes that came before us.”He added, “Today is August Wilson’s Day.”It was a sentiment echoed by Lavelle, who had one note for Gainey’s speech.“Not only should every kid in our city know who August Wilson is,” he said, “but every person in this country should know who August Wilson is.”Lavelle also read a City of Pittsburgh proclamation declaring Aug. 13, 2022, Paul Ellis Jr. Day, honoring his work to preserve Wilson’s home.“People actually told me that my vision was too big,” Ellis explained, adding that when he spoke about what he wanted his uncle’s house to become, people looked at him as if he was a child proudly declaring he’d someday be president.“But as Nelson Mandela said, ‘It always seems impossible until it’s done.’” More

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      in Movies

      Roger E. Mosley, Actor Best Known for ‘Magnum, P.I.,’ Dies at 83

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      He played Leadbelly and Sonny Liston on the big screen. But his most high-profile role was a rugged, wry Vietnam War veteran opposite Tom Selleck on TV.Roger E. Mosley, whose knack for playing a tough guy with a mischievous streak earned him accolades playing an action-ready helicopter pilot on the hit 1980s television series “Magnum, P.I.,” as well as real-life figures like Sonny Liston and Leadbelly on the big screen, died on Sunday in Los Angeles. He was 83.He died after sustaining injuries from a car accident in Lynwood, Calif., last month that left him paralyzed from the shoulders down, his daughter Ch-a Mosley announced on Facebook.Mr. Mosley, who grew up in a public-housing project in the Watts section of Los Angeles, appeared on dozens of television shows over four decades, starting with 1970s staples like “Cannon” and “Sanford and Son.” He also appeared in the mini-series “Roots: The Next Generations” in 1979.Aspiring to a career in film, he made early appearances in so-called blaxploitation films of the early 1970s like “Hit Man” and “The Mack.” He also appeared in “Terminal Island,” a 1973 grindhouse film that also starred Tom Selleck, who would later recommend him for “Magnum, P.I.”A strapping 6 feet 2 inches tall, Mr. Mosley was often cast as a bruiser. But his natural warmth and humor brought a depth to even the most macho parts, including the title role in “Leadbelly,” a 1976 movie about the brawling early-20th-century folk and blues pioneer Huddie Ledbetter, which Roger Ebert called “one of the best biographies of a musician I’ve ever seen.”“Leadbelly” offered Black audiences “the kind of film they’re hungry for,” Mr. Mosley was quoted as saying in a 1976 article in People magazine. “Not a Super Fly character but the story of a man who actually lived.”The next year, he earned critical praise playing Sonny Liston, the heavyweight boxing champion famously dethroned in 1964 by Muhammad Ali (then known as Cassius Clay), in the 1977 film “The Greatest,” which starred Ali as himself.While Mr. Mosley’s career continued to build momentum during that decade, it was “Magnum, P.I.,” the popular CBS crime drama that ran from 1980 to 1988, that brought him mass recognition.His character, Theodore Calvin, known as T.C., was a rugged yet wry Vietnam War veteran helicopter pilot who was continually rescuing Thomas Magnum, Tom Selleck’s Hawaiian-shirt-wearing, Ferrari-driving private investigator character, when he landed in danger in the jungles or on the beaches of Maui, where he lived in a guesthouse on a lavish estate. (According to the Internet Movie Database, Mr. Mosley was a certified helicopter pilot but was not allowed to do his own stunts on the show.)The part was originally written for a white actor, Gerald McRaney, The Hollywood Reporter wrote in its obituary for Mr. Mosley, but the producers reached out to Mr. Mosley to bring diversity to the cast.Although Mr. Mosley reportedly had little interest in the role at first because his sights were on work in feature films, he later said he was proud that he helped break stereotypes as one of television’s first Black action stars.Mr. Mosley with Dana Manno in the 1976 film “Leadbelly,” in which he played the folk and blues pioneer Huddie Ledbetter. Roger Ebert called it “one of the best biographies of a musician I’ve ever seen.” Museum of Modern Art“I’m a good actor, but I’m a Black man; there’s a lot of pride in that,” Mr. Mosley told “Entertainment Tonight” in 1985. He always aimed to set a good example for Black youth; for example, he refused to let his “Magnum” character drink or smoke.The show’s diversity, he said, was a factor in its success. “We have myself for Black people, we have John for the Europeans, we have Magnum for the ladies,” he said. (John Hillerman played Higgins, the estate’s stuffy English caretaker — although Mr. Hillerman was actually American.) “We have a little bit of everything for everyone.”When CBS rebooted “Magnum” in 2018, with Jay Hernandez as Magnum and Stephen Hill as T.C., Mr. Mosley appeared in two episodes as a barber.Roger Earl Mosley was born on Dec. 18, 1938, in Los Angeles, the eldest of three children raised by his mother, Eloise, a school cafeteria worker, and his stepfather, Luther Harris, who ran a tire shop in Watts supplying eighteen-wheelers, his son Brandonn Mosley said. (His mother later changed her first name to Sjuan, pronounced “swan.”)In addition to his daughter Ch-a and his son Brandonn, Mr. Mosley’s survivors include his wife, Antoinette, and another son, Trace Lankford. Another daughter, Reni Mosley, died in 2019. His first marriage, to Saundra J. Locke in 1960, ended in divorce.Mr. Mosley was a standout wrestler at Jordan High School in Watts, but after graduation he decided to try acting and took a drama class at the Mafundi Institute, an arts education center in the area. One day, a visiting director from Universal Pictures lectured the class on the self-discipline needed to make it in the field.“I know actors who had to eat ketchup sandwiches,” Mr. Mosley recalled him saying in 1976.Mr. Mosley fired back: “You have the audacity to tell us to eat ketchup sandwiches for our art. I know people who are eating ketchup sandwiches to survive. We need somebody to give us a break.”“Young man,” the director said, “I want to see you at the studio next Wednesday.” More

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      At the BlackStar Film Festival, a Revelatory Understanding of Cinema

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      Specializing in work by Black, brown and Indigenous directors, the annual Philadelphia event showcases experimental work from around the world.Don’t call it the Black Sundance.Though it was dubbed that by Ebony magazine, the BlackStar Film Festival, now in its 11th year, is a cultural institution all its own. Sharing a similar focus on independent cinema with its Park City counterpart, BlackStar — kicking off on Wednesday in Philadelphia with a slate of 77 features and shorts from all over the world — partly distinguishes itself from other festivals with its emphasis on work made exclusively by “Black, brown and Indigenous artists.” But as a regular of the festival, I’ve always been struck by its ambitious bridging of cultural specificity, social justice and the avant-garde, making it an exciting, expansive and revelatory cinematic experience.Founded by Maori Karmael Holmes in 2012, it was conceived as a one-off event to showcase Black films that hadn’t been screened in the Philadelphia area. “I had just moved back from Los Angeles and felt like there was a gap in Philly for these particular works,” Holmes told me. “And I started collecting films that hadn’t been shown in the area that had been made in 2011 or 2012, and very quickly had a list of 30 films, so I pivoted to making this a film festival.”Holmes, who now serves as artistic director and chief executive of BlackStar Projects, the organization behind the festival, explained, “It was just meant to be this one-time celebration.” But more than 1,500 people showed up, and after the festival was mentioned by Ebony as well as the director Ava DuVernay, in a New York Times interview, “suddenly, we had outsized attention, and people asked, ‘When’s the next one?’”The gathering quickly earned a reputation as the go-to festival for emerging and established Black experimental filmmakers. Terence Nance, perhaps more than any other director, knows this. The creator of the genre-bending TV series “Random Acts of Flyness,” his features and shorts have been shown at the festival every year since its start.“I would say BlackStar has been foundational for me,” Nance told me. “Before the pandemic, it was that yearly summer touch point in Philly for those of us interested in the project of Black cinema to get together, kick it and watch things that are pursuing a Black cinema language, ethos and way of being. That just doesn’t exist anywhere else and on this scale.”A scene from “Vortex,” the new short by Rikki Wright and Terence Nance.via BlackStar ProjectsBut it is also an opportunity to share new works and receive critical feedback, making it a rare space for filmmakers of color, especially those pushing the boundaries of their form. An experimental short by Nance and the director Rikki Wright, titled “Vortex,” will have its debut at the festival this year. “People will tell you your film was amazing but also what did not work,” Nance explained. “There, I think that it is possible to enter those conversations safely, or maybe an even better word is with love. I think that’s how communities refine and stick to each other.”The festival, named for the Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey’s international shipping line, offers audiences unique access to deeply political and highly experimental films from all over the African diaspora. “Something that I’m really proud of is the global outlook that BlackStar has,” the festival’s director, Nehad Khader, said. “We’re interested in Black American stories, but we’re also really interested in Black stories from the continent and the Caribbean, Latin America and Canada.” And though the festival has always featured filmmakers of color (Khader is a Palestinian American director herself), their inclusion is now an explicit part of the selection process. (The organization received 1,200 submissions this year alone.)“BlackStar started with a focus on Black cinema and then expanded into brown and Indigenous cinema as well,” Khader noted. “Now we don’t just have Black stories from Asia and the Arab world, but also Indigenous stories from Australia and Peru. This comes from an ethos that we are the global majority. We think about ourselves in this way.”This year’s program includes films that are both socially relevant and fantastic, futuristic and familial.Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s “Lingui, the Sacred Bonds,” for instance, is a tender, intimate Chadian drama about a single mother, Amina (Achouackh Abakar Souleymane), and her struggle to help her 15-year-old daughter, Maria (Rihane Khalil Alio), get a safe abortion in a country where it is illegal. While the film speaks to a larger battle over reproductive rights, it is also a warm, tightly woven narrative that transports us to the outskirts of Chad’s capital, N’Djamena, and shows us the vibrancy and vulnerability of female life in this majority Muslim country. “Haroun has a gift for distilling volumes of meaning in his direct, lucid, balanced visuals,” Manohla Dargis wrote in her review in February, “which he uses to complement and illuminate the minimalist, naturalistic dialogue.”Thelonious Monk as seen in “Rewind & Play,” from Alain Gomis.via BlackStar ProjectsIn many ways, the documentary “Rewind & Play” by the French filmmaker Alain Gomis seems like it would be all dialogue. That’s because of its premise: In 1969, the great bebop pianist Thelonious Monk was interviewed for hours under the hot lights at a Paris television studio by a fellow musician, Henri Renaud. But rather than reproduce the false sense of camaraderie that Renaud strove for, Gomis blends the original footage with outtakes from the archives to both expand our appreciation of Monk’s genius as well as critique how the white Renaud (and thus mass media) sought to shape and create stereotypical representations of the Black avant-garde. Gomis reveals how Monk’s silence (the one time he shares his opinion, Renaud tells the producer, “I think it’s best if we erase it”) functioned as a strategy to circumvent Renaud’s racialized gaze and assert Monk’s agency and artistry beyond it.Experimentation dominates “One Take Grace,” the documentary debut from the South African actor and director Lindiwe Matshikiza. The film is the outgrowth of a decade-long collaboration with a 58-year-old Black South African domestic worker, Mothiba Grace Bapela. Following Bapela’s daily labor, uncovering her past trauma, and exploring her aspirations to be an actor herself, the film uses different lenses, including a fisheye, to reveal the rituals and rules that govern Bapela’s life. The result: a dynamic, curious and insightful portrait of a charismatic figure who might ordinarily be overlooked. Similar themes of visibility and gender inform the “Locomote” shorts program, which includes the trans activist Elle Moxley’s political coming-of-age story, “Black Beauty,” and Simone Leigh and Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich’s experimental “Conspiracy,” set in Leigh’s studio on the eve of her landmark exhibition in the United States Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale.“One Take Grace” is the result of a collaboration between the director Lindiwe Matshikiza and a South African domestic worker, Mothiba Grace Bapela.via BlackStar ProjectsSuch diversity in geography, genre and narrative style is one of the main reasons the Nigerian British filmmaker Jenn Nkiru, best known for directing Beyoncé’s Grammy Award-winning video “Brown Skin Girl,” routinely makes the pilgrimage to BlackStar. Another is the sense of community it fosters, rendering it more of what she calls “a big, beautiful family reunion.” She said, “Even though it’s a festival, there’s such a level of concern for people’s work and welfare, and that’s very indicative to me of what I imagine Black filmmaking is.”This will be the festival premiere of her “Out / Side of Time,” a short about a fictional Black family in the 19th-century community of Seneca Village in New York City. Originally commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art for “Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room,” it stands out for its format as a five-channel black-and-white video playing on what looks like a 1950s television set. At BlackStar, Nkiru’s nonlinear, intergenerational story will be part of a larger conversation about form, temporality and the visual language of contemporary Black cinema.“I find that BlackStar is very experimental in what it showcases and what it celebrates,” she said, adding later, that’s “important because it serves as a reminder of the potentiality of Black cinema and of what we can do, not just in our art making but also in our nation-building as well.”The BlackStar Film Festival runs Wednesday through Sunday in Philadelphia. For more information, go to blackstarfest.org. More