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    • 163 Shares109 Views

      in Movies

      Ramy Youssef on His New Special, ‘More Feelings,’ and the Push to Represent

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      In the week after he appeared as a presenter at the Oscars, the comic Ramy Youssef, a creator and director of the Hulu series “Ramy” and Emma Stone’s co-star in “Poor Things,” was taking meetings in Hollywood on what’s known as a water-bottle tour — “except without the water bottle,” he said. He is fasting for Ramadan.Youssef, who will turn 33 this month, has been a rapidly rising star since the 2019 debut of “Ramy,” a semi-autobiographical award-winning show in which he plays the son of Egyptian immigrants in suburban New Jersey — as he is in real life — struggling to define himself amid the sometimes conflicting pull of Muslim faith and young adult, Tinder-era life. When Youssef won a Golden Globe for best actor in a comedy in 2020, he accepted the trophy by saying, “Allahu akbar. This is thanks to God — and Hulu.”Now his ascent is even sharper. He is following his surprising turn in the Oscar-winning “Poor Things” — as a thoughtful scientist and cast-aside love — with a standup special, his second for HBO. The program, “More Feelings,” due Saturday, mines personal territory, religious and cultural stereotypes, and his budding friendship with Taylor Swift (a pal of Stone’s), who went to see his set. He will also host “Saturday Night Live” on March 30.Those are only a few of the many projects he has going, he said in a video interview from Los Angeles, before he taped “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” He and his buddies “always joke that we make TV like immigrants,” he said. “We’re always working. We’re not going to outsource too much. We’re just figuring out how to do what we can, small budgets. So that’s my expectation for my career. I’ll just, you know, figure that out.”Youssef’s HBO special, “More Feelings,” will premiere on Saturday; the following week, he’ll host “Saturday Night Live.”HBOBut he is also mulling the advice he got from Yorgos Lanthimos, the “Poor Things” director, to get out of TV and start making movies. Then again, an invitation to direct an episode of “The Bear” led Youssef to Copenhagen and a daylong stint staging at the fabled restaurant Noma. “It’s such a hard table to get,” he said. “I felt bad for whoever had waited a year to eat there and then I made their plate.” (The episode garnered him a nomination for a Directors Guild of America Award.) A fourth season of “Ramy,” delayed by the Hollywood strikes, will happen, he promised. “The question is, when?”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Television

      Taylor Tomlinson Is the Perfect Late-Night Host for The TikTok Era

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      ‘After Midnight’ is not a conventional late-night show with monologue, desk and A-list guests. But that may be a good thing.If you picture a modern late-night show, you’ll probably envision a heavy, glossy desk next to an armchair or a couch, with an artificial city vista twinkling behind them. A man, most likely a white man, dressed in a dark suit. Maybe a button-down with the sleeves casually rolled up, if that man’s name is Seth Meyers.“After Midnight,” a CBS late-night show that debuted in mid-January, is altogether different. Based on Comedy Central’s “@Midnight With Chris Hardwick,” “After Midnight” pits three celebrity panelists against one another in a series of games about the latest oddities of the internet. Its host, the 30-year-old stand-up comedian Taylor Tomlinson, described it as “the smartest comedy show about the dumbest things on the internet.” Indeed, “After Midnight” looks like the screen-addicted grandchild of “Jeopardy!,” with colorful pixelated designs floating behind the contestants’ lecterns. On Tomlinson’s right, like a glowing idol, is a gigantic phone-shaped screen that displays the videos and social-media posts that serve as fodder for the show’s jokes.The first episode of “After Midnight” elicited confusion and disappointment from some fans, who thought Tomlinson would be hosting a more traditional entertainment talk show, with an opening monologue and celebrity guests. She had, after all, taken over the time slot vacated by “The Late Late Show With James Corden,” which followed that format and ended last year. At least one commenter wondered if Tomlinson had been hoodwinked by the higher-ups at CBS. In a later episode, she explained that she had not been duped: “You think I want to ask Daniel Day-Lewis about preparing for his role as an 1800s Polish butcher? No! I want to make him do #fartsongs.” Still, “After Midnight” added a winking “Talk Show Portion,” in which the host asks each panelist silly questions, simultaneously trolling the trolls and poking fun at the promotional nature of the late-night celebrity interview. A question posed to the comedian Riki Lindhome is a breezy non sequitur, not selling anything: “Riki, did you ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?”Tomlinson has emerged as one of her generation’s leading comedians; her third special, “Have It All,” was the sixth-most-watched English-language TV show on Netflix the week of its Feb. 13 debut. She’s known for her preparation and precision, with an affinity for crowd work that translates well into riffing with the contestants on her show. Tomlinson brings an easy confidence to “After Midnight,” and at its best, it feels like hanging out with a group of very funny friends. The internet is dumb and the joke parade is fun, but there is something heavier riding on “After Midnight.” That is, of course, the well-documented fact that Tomlinson is the lone woman headlining a late-night network show, a form historically dominated by men. Although a number of women have won a late-night slot in recent years, only a couple of their shows have lasted more than a few seasons. After a while, news coverage of their appointments tends to have a “Groundhog Day” effect. The title of “only woman in late night” sure has been applied to a lot of people.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 88 Shares169 Views

      in Television

      Playing a British Rogue, With Added Firepower

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      Daniel Ings has built a career playing charming, posh men. His latest role is a chaotic aristocrat in Guy Ritchie’s series “The Gentlemen.”In the first episode of Guy Ritchie’s new Netflix series “The Gentlemen,” a British aristocrat is forced to dress up in a chicken suit and dance on camera at the pleasure of a gangster to whom he owes money. He flaps his arms wildly, thrusts his head forward and crows at the top of his voice, as tears stream down his face.The man in the costume is Daniel Ings, an actor whose face people might recognize more than his name. He is best known for playing Luke, a lovable womanizer on the sitcom “Lovesick,” but he has also appeared in many other television roles that fit a certain archetype: the charming, posh British man, who is a bit of a cad.In “The Crown,” he played a roguish friend of Prince Philip; he was the unreliable father of Dr. Jean Milburn’s baby on “Sex Education” and the resentful husband on Lucy Prebble’s “I Hate Suzie.”“I probably should show some range at some point,” Ings, 38, joked in a recent interview at a London hotel. But he enjoyed playing “the cheeky chappy,” he said, as well as the challenge of transforming characters who, on paper, seem quite unlikable into endearing onscreen presences. When Ings reads a script that frames his prospective role as a villain, he said, he thinks, “I bet I can find something childlike, something fun in there.”To play Freddy in “The Gentlemen,” Ings brought this approach to what might be his most reprehensible character yet. The arrogant, drug-addled eldest son of a duke, Freddy is passed over in his father’s will in favor of his younger brother, Eddie (Theo James), who discovers organized criminals running an enormous weed farm underneath the family estate.Ings as Freddy Horniman, wearing a chicken suit, in “The Gentlemen.”Christopher Rafael/NetflixFreddy is passed over in his father’s will in favor of his younger brother, who discovers that organized criminals are running an enormous weed farm under the family’s estate.NetflixWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Theater

      Review: For ‘Jack Tucker,’ Failure Is the Only Option

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      Zach Zucker delivers a raucously funny portrait of a catastrophically dim stand-up comic at SoHo Playhouse.In one of his most quotable lyrics, Bob Dylan sang about a woman who knows “there’s no success like failure/ And that failure’s no success at all.” She clearly never saw the comedy of Jack Tucker.With sweaty insecurity, Tucker steps on his punchlines and clanks the setups. His tech malfunctions. When he sketches the familiar hourglass shape in the air to draw attention to a woman’s figure, he ends up looking like a chicken. His crowd work ends in despair. On the rare occasion when he lands a joke, he celebrates by having a co-worker take a photo, but something always destroys the shot.As played by Zach Zucker, in a raucously funny portrait of a catastrophically dim stand-up comic, Tucker fails in bunches, in quantity and quality, flopping so fast you might miss some errors. Just when you think he can’t stumble again, he does. And it’s a triumph.Not since “The Play That Goes Wrong” have I seen mistakes this meticulous. Zucker, who trained with the French guru Philippe Gaulier, doesn’t just pratfall and malaprop. He finds new ways to get laughs from spilled beer, a series of variations on a splash that lead to a drunkenly fun call back.“Jack Tucker: Comedy’s Standup Hour,” written by Zucker and directed with a firm attention to detail by Jonny Woolley, is the latest solo show to emerge out of the burgeoning scene that features comics like Natalie Palamides, Courtney Pauroso, Alexandra Tatarsky and Bill O’Neill. (O’Neill’s acclaimed Edinburgh Fringe show “The Amazing Banana Brothers” is onstage at SoHo Playhouse tonight and Wednesday.) As the host of Stamptown, a bicoastal showcase for many of these artists, Zucker has been at the center of this movement. It’s a younger generation than the new vaudevillians like Bill Irwin and David Shiner, but this group has the same inventiveness, ambition and dedication to breathing new life into old shtick. But their work is more visceral and topical. (If anyone’s moonlighting at Cirque du Soleil, I’d be surprised.)Clowns and stand-ups tend to operate in different circles, so this show could be seen as a shot from one camp to the other. And in the voice of Tucker, Zucker does float countless hack stand-up premises — some swaggering, others oblivious, like “I guess men and women are different after all.” As satire, this show is toothless. It’s far too stylized to mount a stinging critique, and its one-disaster-after-another structure risks becoming repetitious. But the surprises are in the form, not the content.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Television

      Wanted: Writers for Awards Show Jokes. Must Be Skilled at Diplomacy

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      Hosts who have to entertain insiders at the ceremony and outsiders watching at home. Presenters who change their minds. No wonder the bits are awkward.In the middle of struggling through the opening monologue of the Golden Globes in January, the comic Jo Koy did something unusual, if not unprecedented, for the host of a major awards show: He blamed the writers.“I wrote some of these — and they’re the ones you’re laughing at,” he said of his jokes, prompting writers across the country to grind their teeth.Koy, who later apologized, endured some light mockery a week after the show, when his ex-girlfriend Chelsea Handler followed up a successful joke in her monologue at the Critics Choice Awards by saying, “Thank you for laughing at that. My writers wrote it.”If something positive came from this episode, it’s that a spotlight was put on a corner of the showbiz work force that tends to remain in the shadows: the joke writers for awards shows like the Oscars on Sunday.“It’s a small fraternity, and they always remained anonymous,” said Bruce Vilanch, the best known of this breed, who said his acclaim for the job, which included starring in the 1999 documentary “Get Bruce!,” had spurred resentment among his predecessors. “They were not personalities in their own way. They never talked about this stuff. I think there was almost a code.”Chelsea Handler made sure to acknowledge her writers when she hosted the Critics Choice Awards.Kevin Winter/Getty Images For Critics ChoiceWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      Disgraced but Embraced: Pop Culture Pariahs Are Making Big Comebacks

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      Shane Gillis hosted “S.N.L.,” the show that rebuffed him. Ye topped the Billboard chart after making antisemitic remarks. Has the mainstream given up on banishing bad actors?Last weekend, the comedian Shane Gillis hosted “Saturday Night Live,” five years after he was fired from the show before ever appearing on it, when old podcast appearances in which he’d used slurs were brought to light. During his opening monologue, Gillis showed how he had evolved since then, which is to say, only slightly. In a tame bit about his parents, he fondly recalled spending time with his mother when he was younger, noting sweetly, “Every little boy is just their mom’s gay best friend.”For the past two weeks, Ye — formerly Kanye West — has sat at the top of the Billboard albums chart with “Vultures 1,” his collaborative album with the singer Ty Dolla Sign. In late 2022, Ye began a public stream of antisemitic invective that, for a while, effectively imploded his career, leading to the dissolution of his partnerships with Adidas and the Gap. He seemed, for a time, persona non grata. But he, too, has returned to something approaching old form, with a single, “Carnival,” that went to No. 3 on the Hot 100, and a series of arena listening sessions that have been the hallmark of his album rollouts in recent years.Ye debuted his latest album, a collaboration with Ty Dolla Sign, at a series of arena listening events.The New York TimesCancellation was always an incomplete concept, more a way of talking about artists with contentious and offensive personal histories than an actual fact of the marketplace. Except in the most extreme cases, moral failure has never been an automatic disqualifier when it comes to artistic work.What changed in the years since the beginning of the #MeToo movement is the presumption that strong enough discursive pushback might indeed lead to actual banishment. That proved to be true in the wake of #MeToo, in which powerful men like Charlie Rose, Bryan Singer and Matt Lauer were effectively cast out of public life after allegations of sexual misconduct. (And it should be noted: Most of those facing banishment, or the threat thereof, have been men. Roseanne Barr is perhaps the most high-profile woman to meet that fate, following racist and antisemitic public statements.)The sense that bad actors could be weeded out at the root was satisfying liberal fantasy, though. What’s happened instead is the emergence of a class of artists across disciplines — call them the disgraced — who have found ways to thrive despite pockets of public pushback. Their success suggests several possibilities about cultural consumption: Audiences that don’t care about an artist’s indiscretions can be more sizable than the ones that do; those who publicly agitate on these matters might be privately relenting; or that perhaps some audiences may have a tolerance — or maybe even an appetite — for offense.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 75 Shares169 Views

      in Television

      With Richard Lewis, Kvetching Was Charismatic

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      The comedian gave his Jewish neurotic persona a nervy cool even as he threw his whole body into his comedy.In the 1980s, Jewish characters were scarce on television. There were broadcasters (Howard Cosell) and the occasional talk show host (Joan Rivers), but no Jews leading a cast on prime time. Then in the final year of the decade, that changed, and a glut of anxious men arrived, kvetching, quipping and dating shiksas.Jackie Mason had his own sitcom, short-lived; Jerry Seinfeld had his, a classic. Then the following year, Rob Morrow played a Jewish doctor fish-out-of-watering in Alaska on “Northern Exposure.” But to my young Jewish eyes, none of them was as charismatic as Richard Lewis on the sitcom “Anything but Love.”Constantly grappling with a thick mane of hair, he played a smart Chicago journalist who charmed his love interest, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, whose royal status back then was derived from being pursued by an only slightly more relentless man in “Halloween.” Whereas Michael Myers paced calmly in a silly jumpsuit, Lewis bellyached in moody black outfits. For those who know him as the cranky friend of Larry David on “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” it may be a surprise that Richard Lewis, who died at 76 this week, cut a seductive figure: clever, cool, darkly morose.“Anything but Love” didn’t have the inspired absurdity or cutting wit of “Seinfeld,” and it began with the most sentimental theme song in the history of television. (Second place: “Family Ties.”) But Lewis brought a nervy energy that pushed against the saccharine instincts of network sitcoms. If he seemed like a new kind of Jewish neurotic comic, he built this persona in comedy clubs. His stand-up was full of stories about his love life that somehow managed to be self-deprecating and glamorous. He once told David Letterman, “The woman I’m with now insisted on having intercourse only with a raven on her shoulder.”William Knoedelseder’s book “I’m Dying Up Here,” about stand-up in the 1970s, presents Lewis as the Lothario of the scene, dating stars like Debra Winger and once picking up a Danish baroness at the Improv in Manhattan with this line: “I’ll take you out for a tuna fish sandwich anywhere in the city.” It worked.Lewis belonged to a class of young stand-ups, like Seinfeld and Bill Maher, who were influenced by the acerbic Everyman persona of Robert Klein. But Lewis eventually developed a frenetic, jazzy style that also owed something to chaos agents like Mel Brooks and Robin Williams. His jokes were delivered with rollicking energy, making misery a full-body exercise, slumping, pacing and, most of all, gesticulating. His comedy had choreography, a visual language of pointing, air-sawing and face clasps. To say he talked with his hands seems insufficient. His whole body never shut up.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More