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    ‘S.N.L.’: Toasting Moms and Toasted Trump Appointees

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    Cecily Strong returns as Jeanine Pirro, Walt Goggins shows off his clogging, and a dope new pope appears in the 50th season’s penultimate episode.If you’re going to celebrate the election of a new pope, you might as well have some sacramental wine, too.Cecily Strong returned to “Saturday Night Live” in a guest appearance to reprise her role as the Fox News personality Jeanine Pirro — and to douse Colin Jost, her former Weekend Update desk mate, in alcohol. Alcohol that emanated directly from her own mouth.How the opening sketch of this weekend’s “S.N.L.” broadcast (which was hosted by Walton Goggins and featured the musical guest Arcade Fire) arrived at this place will take a moment to explain.The sketch began with what looked like a traditional Mother’s Day tribute, with the cast members Kenan Thompson, Bowen Yang and Marcello Hernández singing an affectionate serenade to their real-life moms, who joined them onstage.But no: This was just a setup for James Austin Johnson to enter the scene as President Trump, holding forth in free-association style on the past week’s news.“There’s a new pope from Chicago,” Johnson said, noting the Roman Catholic Church’s selection of Robert Francis Prevost, who took the name Pope Leo XIV.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

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      Walton Goggins on the Song in His ‘White Lotus’ Character’s Head

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      The actor, also seen in “The Righteous Gemstones” and the new movie “The Uninvited,” on dirt biking, his father’s clothing advice and the music that makes him think of Rick Hatchett.These days it seems as if Walton Goggins is everywhere.He’s Rick Hatchett, consumed with avenging his father’s murder, in “The White Lotus.” Baby Billy Freeman, shilling in the name of God, in “The Righteous Gemstones.” The nose-less bounty hunter, known as the Ghoul, in “Fallout.”But Goggins didn’t initially make the cut for “The Uninvited,” a film written and directed by his wife, Nadia Conners, about an older woman who shows up at the home of an actress and her agent husband just as their big Hollywood party has started.Conners originally envisioned “The Uninvited” as a play and staged readings in Los Angeles, New York and London. “I wasn’t invited to be Sammy in any of them,” Goggins said of the husband character.Then Conners turned her script into a screenplay. “I texted her from the plane when I finished it — crying emojis, crying emojis, crying emojis,” Goggins recalled. “And I said, you’ve really cracked this for yourself.” The role was his.In a video call from Los Angeles, Goggins — who lives in New York in the Hudson Valley — talked about shaking off the work day, never washing raw denim and joyriding with his son, Augustus. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Drinking Wine by the FireplaceThis fireplace is a hundred years old and the centerpiece of this living room that has hosted Edna St. Vincent Millay, Walt Disney, Babe Ruth and even members of the House of Windsor. I end every night in the same spot, sitting on the same stool, with a bottle of wine created by Arianna Occhipinti that we found when we were vacationing in Sicily.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

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      Why Wasn’t Anyone Traumatized in the ‘White Lotus’ Finale?

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      After a violent climax to the third season of the hit HBO show, everyone seems A-OK. Was it a Hollywood ending, or a natural trauma response?This article contains spoilers for the finale of the third season of “The White Lotus.” Unless you’re an employee or a guest at a White Lotus resort, in which case it appears that it is impossible for your day to be truly spoiled.“The White Lotus” is a show about vacation. It deals with the dos and don’ts of vacationing: Do go out to party! (Do not engage in incestuous relations while partying.) Do sample the local cuisine! (Unless the fruit is poisonous, in which case please do not give it to your family.)And it is a show about murders.And apparently, based on Sunday’s season finale, no one is traumatized by them. Hours after a mass shooting takes place at the pristine White Lotus resort in Thailand, characters who have just witnessed intense tragedy hop on a boat and seem to sail happily into the sunset, or simply show up for work as if nothing happened.“Only in Hollywood,” Tracey Musarra Marchese, a professor at Syracuse University who specializes in trauma, said with a chuckle.But some of the characters’ reactions, which raised questions about their plausibility and prompted admiration for one character’s athletic sprint, might be completely normal in the face of trauma, experts say.“Sometimes what happens is in the moment because your system — physically, mentally, emotionally — you’ve been so overwhelmed that you might dissociate,” Marchese said.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

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      ‘The Uninvited’ Review: A Surprise Guest at the Garden Party

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      Hollywood types get skewered in this comedy of manners, starring Walton Goggins, Pedro Pascal and Elizabeth Reaser.The not-quite-comedy of manners “The Uninvited” begins with Rose (Elizabeth Reaser) fretting about her age in her walk-in closet. She and her husband Sammy (Walton Goggins), a talent agent plotting a big move, are about to throw a garden party, for which they are desperate to look successful.But really they’re just desperate. Or as desperate as affluent people can be while also being completely self-absorbed.The showbiz strivers of “The Uninvited,” written and directed by Nadia Conners, seem to have been created for the express purpose of being mocked. This is one of those self-hating Hollywood pictures. What’s new is its title hook.The uninvited guest is a confused older woman named Helen, played with painstaking expertise by Lois Smith, who shows up at the gate of Rose and Sammy’s house believing that it’s her home. Sammy just wants her gone — you get the feeling he might just toss her in the canyon if he could carry her that far — while Rose finds her better angels stirring up some compassion for her vulnerable guest.Of course Smith’s Helen is a fount of senior wisdom, telling one of her juniors, “You’re so angry — it will be the death of you.” About a half-hour in, Lucien (Pedro Pascal), a megastar and past romantic interest of Rose’s, shows up. His presence complicates matters and takes the focus off Helen, making this picture a very soft and indefinite satire.The UninvitedRated R for language, themes, sexual references. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Walton Goggins Knows ‘The White Lotus’ Had to End This Way

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      “I realized that there was really no other conclusion,” the actor said in an interview on Monday about the season finale.This interview includes spoilers for the season finale of “The White Lotus.”A man with a name like Rick Hatchett was unlikely to die in his bed.He didn’t. In the Season 3 finale of “The White Lotus,” Rick, played by Walton Goggins, gunned down Jim Hollinger (Scott Glenn), whom Rick had long believed to be his father’s killer. (A posthumous twist: He was actually Rick’s father.) Then Rick was shot, in the back, by the gentle but ambitious security guard Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong). Most tragic: Rick’s sunshiny girlfriend, Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood), was mortally wounded in the crossfire. With her dying in his arms, Rick fell into the hotel’s lily pond. In that moment, Goggins believes, Rick finds peace.“For me, it was being released from pain,” he said.On the morning after the finale, Goggins, a celebrated character actor currently also starring in “The Righteous Gemstones” and “Fallout,” discussed fate, love and why the story would have turned out differently if he and Rick could have somehow had a few beers together. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Did you feel that this ending was inevitable? Was Rick always meant to die?Yeah, I do believe that. I didn’t see it coming when I read the scripts. But after I read them and absorbed them, I realized that there was really no other conclusion. It couldn’t have ended any other way.In the previous episode, he stopped himself from killing Jim. In the finale, he can’t resist. Why?His life has been defined by this single event [Jim’s murder of his father, which turns out to be a false story his mother told]. He has allowed this event to become his life story. Who is he without this villain in his life? Because without it, he would have to take responsibility for the decisions that he’s made and for not moving past it. Being face-to-face with his tormentor allowed him to express this deep feeling — all he needed in that moment was for this person to bear witness to his pain. That surprised Rick as much as anyone else. Reading it the first time, I thought that he was going to pull the trigger. When he didn’t, I was in tears about that and overjoyed for this revelation and this moment of peace.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

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      No Diamonds Here, but These Gemstones Still Shine

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      For all the repellent narcissism of its members, the family of HBO’s “The Righteous Gemstones” has been a deeply humanizing example of evangelical Christian faith.An early scene in the coming season of HBO’s “The Righteous Gemstones” showcases the newest product in a long and somewhat troubled line of consumer goods from the fictional first family of televangelism.These “luxury” enclosures, called Prayer Pods, offer sanctuary from the din and prying eyes of public spaces, starting at $1 a minute. “A tiny little, eensy, teensy, weensy bit of Christ when you need him the most,” says Jesse Gemstone, the oldest of the three Gemstone children.But sales of the pod tank when word gets out that nonbelievers are using them to meet less virtuous, self-gratifying needs. On Reddit, people start calling them “squirt yurts.”The Prayer Pod is a signature plot device from the mind of Danny McBride, the “Gemstones” creator, who also stars as Jesse, a sometimes lovable blowhard and a legend in his own mind. Like his brother and sister, with whom he constantly bickers over control of the Gemstone empire, Jesse has been handed immense wealth and privilege but somehow thinks he deserves more.Since the show debuted in the summer of 2019, McBride has developed Jesse and the sprawling Gemstone brood into some of the most outrageous satirical characters on television. On Sunday, the story arc of the Gemstones bends toward its conclusion with the premiere of the fourth and final season and a plot twist introducing Bradley Cooper as the newest relative.From left, Kelton DuMont, Skyler Gisondo and Gavin Munn as the children of Amber and Jesse Gemstone (Cassidy Freeman and Danny McBride) in “The Righteous Gemstones.”Connie Chornuk/HBOWe 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

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      New Season of ‘The White Lotus’ Brings a Tourism Boom in Thailand

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      Crowds of visitors descended on Maui and Sicily after the HBO show’s first two seasons. Is the tropical resort island of Koh Samui ready for Season 3?When the third season of the hit HBO series “The White Lotus” debuts on Sunday, viewers will be transported to the tropical island of Koh Samui, Thailand. And if previous seasons are any indication, many of them will soon be booking vacations there, too.The show, which takes place at a different fictional White Lotus luxury resort each season, centers on a group of wealthy tourists, their interpersonal dramas and the inevitable tension with staff and locals, all against a backdrop of paradise skewed.Members of the “White Lotus” cast this season include Lalisa Manobal, right, who performs as Lisa with the K-pop group Blackpink.Fabio Lovino/HBO, via Associated PressThe travel industry has been anticipating the new season almost as much as fans have. Partly thanks to the so-called “White Lotus” effect, Koh Samui and Thailand have already emerged as top destinations. Koh Samui was one of the New York Times 52 Places to Go in 2025, and Thailand was Travel+Leisure’s 2025 destination of the year.With a wave of tourists set to wash ashore, the roughly 68,000 residents of Koh Samui are about to get a lot more familiar with the “White Lotus” effect.On the pristine white sand of Chaweng Beach one recent evening, Tey, 46, a local carpenter who declined to give his last name, said he didn’t really know much about the series. But then came a flash of recognition.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

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      ‘Fallout’ Finds the Fun in an Apocalyptic Hellscape

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      TV’s latest big-ticket video game adaptation, from the creators of “Westworld,” takes a satirical, self-aware approach to the End Times.The scream was just right — bloodcurdling, if also very funny — and the practical effects crew had finally found the proper volume and trajectory of the water cannon. The idea was to film what might happen if you ripped a man from the throat of a mutant salamander, exploding its guts like a giant water balloon.All that remained was to decide what color of bile to slather on the actor (Johnny Pemberton) and on the salamander’s many teeth, which nuclear radiation had transformed into rows of humanlike fingers.Based on observations made during a visit to the Brooklyn set of “Fallout” in early 2023, Amazon had spared no expense to make the show, the latest genre-bending series from Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, the creators of “Westworld.” So it was no surprise when Nolan, on set to direct that chilly afternoon, was presented with not one but some half-dozen buckets of bile to choose from, in a variety of revolting hues. He settled on a pukey pinkish yellow.“This is the closest thing to comedy that I’ve worked on,” he said later by phone. With writing credits on films like “Memento,” “The Dark Knight” and “The Prestige,” Nolan has tended to skew dark. Comically exploding monster guts — this was new territory.“It’s a lot of fun,” he said.A fun apocalypse? Amid all the doom and gloom of most sci-fi spectacles and social media feeds? Yes, please.“Fallout” premieres Wednesday on Prime Video, and at first it may sound familiar to viewers of a certain postapocalyptic HBO hit from last year, “The Last of Us.” Imagine: a sprawling, expensive adaptation of a beloved videogame franchise that features an unlikely duo — a nihilistic old gunslinger with a tortured past and a tough young woman whose mission overlaps with his. Together, they travel a lawless America plagued by criminals, fanatics, killer mutants and trigger-happy survivors.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