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      What We Learned From ‘Harry & Meghan,’ Part Two

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      The second collection of episodes of the couple’s Netflix docuseries landed on Thursday. It dives deep into mental health and royal drama.LONDON — The second and final installment of “Harry and Meghan,” the highly anticipated Netflix docuseries, was released on Thursday, capping a week in which the couple’s personal lives were once again catapulted into the spotlight.The first three episodes of the series, released last week, dove into the makings of the couple’s relationship, their ongoing battle with the news media, the details of Meghan’s challenging family connections and more. Three more episodes were released Thursday.Love them, hate them or simply can’t live without them, people tuned in. The first set of episodes earned a staggering 81.5 million viewing hours, the most of any documentary in a premiere week, Netflix said on Tuesday. More than 28 million households had seen a part of the first collection of episodes in the first four days, the streaming platform added.Episode four picks up at Harry and Meghan’s wedding in May 2018 and quickly tackles a number of matters, including Meghan’s connection to Queen Elizabeth II, the barrage of negative headlines she faced and her mental health challenges.If you don’t have time to watch, or if you enjoy spoilers, here are the main takeaways from the latest episodes.The wedding was a family affair, although it was an international spectacle.The fourth episode kicked off by reliving the couple’s star-studded wedding in May 2018. Although thousands of people were on the street hoping to catch a glimpse of the couple, and perhaps billions more were watching on television, the couple described it as a family affair, with numerous personal touches that seemed to make all the difference.Harry chose the song (Handel’s “Eternal Source of Light Divine”) that Meghan walked down the aisle to. “It was so beautiful,” she said. It was also revealed that Charles, Harry’s father, who was the Prince of Wales at the time and is now king, helped choose the orchestra for the ceremony.More on the British Royal FamilyBoston Visit: Prince William and Princess Catherine of Wales recently made a whirlwind visit to Boston. Swaths of the city were unimpressed.Aide Resigns: A Buckingham Palace staff member quit after a British-born Black guest said the aide pressed her on where she was from.‘The Crown’: Months ago, the new season of the Netflix drama was shaping up as another public-relations headache for Prince Charles. But then he became king.Training Nannies: Where did the royals find Prince George’s nanny? At Norland College, where students learn how to shield strollers from paparazzi and fend off potential kidnappers.Because Megan’s father, Thomas Markle, did not attend the ceremony, she asked Charles to walk her down the aisle. “Harry’s dad is very charming,” Meghan said. “I said to him like, ‘I’ve lost my dad in this.’ So him as my father-in-law was really important to me.”Meghan’s connection to the queen seemed to be strong, normal even.The episode dwells on Meghan’s first official royal engagement with the queen, about a month after the wedding. She and the queen took the royal train to Cheshire, England.“I treated her as my husband’s grandma,” Meghan said, remembering her private time with the queen. “When we got into the car in between engagements, she had a blanket,” Meghan said, and that the queen placed the blanket also over her knees. “I recognize and respect and see that you’re the queen, but in this moment I’m so grateful that there’s a grandmother figure, cause that feels like family,” Meghan said.The constant and negative tabloid headlines had a dramatic effect on Meghan.The fourth episode also underscored the mental health challenges and suicidal thoughts Meghan had, in part because of negative headlines shortly after they wed and during much of her pregnancy.“All of this will stop if I’m not here and that was the scariest thing about it — it was such clear thinking,” Meghan said.Doria Ragland, Meghan’s mother, recalled an emotional conversation in which Meghan expressed suicidal thoughts. “That’s not an easy one for a mom to hear,” she said, wiping away tears. “And I can’t protect her. H can’t protect her.”Harry said he was devastated by the toll the negative press coverage took on his wife and said he didn’t deal with it well.“I had been trained to worry more about what are people going to think,” Harry said. “And looking back at it now, I hate myself for it. What she needed from me was so much more than I was able to give.”The couple’s war with the media reaches a fever pitch.The fifth episode begins with the couple’s continued war with the news media and efforts to dodge paparazzi photographers while spending Christmas 2019 away from the royal family.The headlines about Meghan appeared to be incessant, pushing the couple to a breaking point. “I realized that I wasn’t just being thrown to the wolves,” Meghan said. “I was being fed to the wolves.”The couple described creating a plan that they hoped would bring them both safety and peace of mind. “The toll was visible, the emotional toll that it was having on both of us, but especially my wife,” Harry said. “We’re going to have to change this for our own sake.”They described plans to relocate to New Zealand or South Africa before they ultimately settled on Canada. They later moved to California.Harry said his grandmother, the queen, was aware that he and Meghan were having difficulties with their public roles and made plans to discuss it in early January 2020 when he returned briefly to Britain. However, that plan was thwarted, they said.“I remember looking at H and going, my gosh, this is when a family and family business are in direct conflict because they’re blocking you from seeing the queen, but really what they’re doing is blocking a grandson from seeing his grandmother,” Meghan said.Strained family ties take center stage.In a family meeting to discuss the couple’s decision to reduce their roles as working members of the royal family, Harry said he was presented with several options but quickly realized no agreement would be reached.“It was terrifying to have my brother scream and shout at me, and my father say things that simply weren’t true and my grandmother quietly sit there and sort of take it all in,” Harry said.Harry described that meeting as hard and said that it finished without a solid action plan.“The saddest part of it was this wedge created between myself and my brother so that he’s now on the institution side,” Harry said, acknowledging Prince William’s perspective.The couple announced in January 2020 that they were stepping back from their royal duties. The decision sent shock waves around the world and drew headlines that seemed to blame Meghan for the split.“How predictable that the woman is to be blamed for the decision of a couple. In fact it was my decision,” Harry said.The queen later said she was “supportive” of the couple’s decision.This story is being updated. Check back for more. More

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      in Television

      ‘The Crown’ Could Have Damaged Charles. Becoming King Has Helped.

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      The latest season of the Netflix drama depicts Charles’s contentious divorce from Diana, but in Britain, several prominent figures and the news media have rallied behind him.LONDON — Six months ago, the new season of “The Crown” was shaping up as another public-relations headache for Prince Charles. The timeline of the popular historical drama had reached the 1990s, which meant that it was going to dissect the collapse of his marriage to Diana, Princess of Wales, an unwelcome exhumation of the most painful, mortifying chapter of his adult life.Some advising the prince were pondering how to counter the narrative, according to people with knowledge of the workings of Buckingham Palace, worried that it could tarnish the reputation of a man who, in recent years, had come to be known less for his peccadilloes than for his embrace of worthy causes such as climate change.Yet now, as Season 5 of the Netflix series has unspooled, it is clear that “The Crown” has dealt Charles at worst a glancing blow. In a few cases, it has even cast him in a positive light — celebrating, for example, his philanthropy, in an episode that ended with a charmingly awkward Charles (played by Dominic West) break dancing at an event for his charity, the Prince’s Trust.What changed, of course, is that two months before the new season arrived, Prince Charles became King Charles III.His ascension transformed the star-crossed heir into a dignified sovereign and Britain’s head of state. London’s tabloid papers, which once dined out on every morsel of Charles’s messy personal life, now have little appetite for embarrassing the sitting monarch. On the contrary, most prefer to focus on how gracefully the new king has succeeded his revered mother, Queen Elizabeth II.King Charles III standing vigil with the coffin of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, in London in September. He has been praised in the British news media for his handling of the transfer of power.Pool photo by Dominic LipinskiThen, too, there is the show’s unapologetic mixing of fact and fiction, which drew sporadic complaints when it dealt with events of the more distant past, but has reached a kind of critical mass when it comes to depicting the well-worn saga of Charles and Diana’s marriage.Their story was extravagantly covered at the time and is vividly remembered by millions of people, especially in Britain. Some of those actually involved in the events have voiced their outrage at the artistic license taken by the show’s creator, Peter Morgan, calling the most recent season a “barrel-load of nonsense” and “complete and utter rubbish.” Those critics — among them two former prime ministers, John Major and Tony Blair; a famous actress, Judi Dench; and one of Charles’s biographers, Jonathan Dimbleby (who called the show “nonsense on stilts”) — inoculated the king against some of the damage he might otherwise have suffered. Rather than keeping the spotlight on the tawdry events themselves, the critics shifted the focus to how “The Crown” had embellished them.“It is definitely the case that this series of ‘The Crown’ has come in for greater backlash than any previous series, particularly for its factual inaccuracies and the treatment of the current monarch,” said Ed Owens, a historian who has written about the interplay between the monarchy and the media.The Return of ‘The Crown’The hit drama’s fifth season premiered on Netflix on Nov. 9.The Royals and TV: The royal family’s experiences with sitting for television interviews have been fraught. The latest season of “The Crown” explores that rocky relationship.Meeting the Al-Fayeds: The new season includes portrayals of the Egyptian businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed, his son Dodi and his personal valet — who had all connections with the royal family.Republicanism on the Rise: Since “The Crown” debuted in 2016, there has been a steady increase in support for abolishing Britain’s monarchy. Has the show contributed to that change?Casting Choices: In a conversation with The Times, the casting director Robert Sterne told us how the drama has turned into a clearinghouse for some of Britain’s biggest stars.For the king, the chorus of outside detractors made it easier for him to ignore the series, according to the people with ties to Buckingham Palace, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with royal protocol. That is how the royal family handled the show’s previous four seasons. The king’s communications secretary did not respond to a query about how the palace viewed the latest season.Whether the palace had a role in orchestrating the critiques is harder to establish. There are plenty of back-channel conversations — whether between palace officials and prominent outsiders or between aides to the king and royal correspondents and their editors.The season’s characters include the former prime ministers Tony Blair (Bertie Carvel), left, and John Major (Jonny Lee Miller), both of whom have criticized the show’s accuracy.Keith Bernstein/Netflix“It will doubtless have been clear to allies of the crown, including former prime ministers, that there was some discontent and anxiety about the new season of ‘The Crown’ before it first aired,” Owens said..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.Learn more about our process.But public figures like Major also had an incentive to protect themselves. “The Crown” depicts him and Charles holding a private meeting in which a frustrated prince lobbies the prime minister for help in pushing the queen to abdicate because she is superannuated and poses a threat to the monarchy’s survival. Such a meeting would have raised constitutional issues, and Major says it never happened.“They’re not doing the palace’s work for it,” said Dickie Arbiter, who served as a spokesman for the queen from 1988 to 2000. “They are being besmirched and they are defending themselves.”But Arbiter said that the palace should steer clear of litigating the facts itself. “You start getting into ‘he said, she said,’” he noted. “You just give it oxygen.” British viewers, he added, would recognize the factual discrepancies without a warning.“The only difficulty is with the global audience, who will believe the royal family are like that,” Arbiter added. “It’s your lot on the other side of the Atlantic that believe every word of it.”Just in case there is any residual confusion at home, British papers, including the Daily Telegraph and the London Evening Standard, have published detailed fact-checking pieces. Some scenes, like the furtive tête-à-tête between Charles and Major, have been comprehensively debunked.In one scene in “The Crown,” a charmingly awkward Charles break dances at an event for his charity, the Prince’s Trust.NetflixOthers, like the underhanded tactics used by a BBC correspondent, Martin Bashir, to persuade Diana to give him an interview, were judged to be mostly accurate, if somewhat amped up for dramatic effect. Still others, like Charles’s attempt at break dancing, did happen, if not when the series said they did.Beyond the specific facts, some people with ties to the palace argue that “The Crown” is so obviously tilted against Charles that it is easy to dismiss. As evidence, they cite the unequal treatment of two particularly cringe-worthy 1990s scandals, named “Tampongate” and “Squidgygate” by the British news media.The series, they said, dwells on the prince’s extramarital affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles, most luridly in an episode about an overheard phone call between Charles and Camilla in which he tells her he wishes he could “live inside your trousers,” perhaps by being reincarnated as a tampon.But it ignores a similar episode involving Diana, then still married, and her close friend, James Gilbey, in which their intimate phone conversation was surreptitiously picked up and published in The Sun newspaper. In it, Gilbey called her by an instantly notorious nickname, Squidgy.To some who have worked in the palace, the season’s most glaring discrepancy involves not Charles, but the queen. Morgan, who wrote the current season, doctored her celebrated speech in November 1992, when she described that year as her “annus horribilis.” Even in a speech suffused with regret, the queen made no mention of the “errors of the past,” as Imelda Staunton does, in her portrayal of Elizabeth.Morgan, who declined a request for an interview, has never denied taking license with the facts in “The Crown.” Netflix describes the series as “fictionalized drama inspired by true events,” though it has resisted calls to put a disclaimer on each episode. Some critics have joked that if Morgan were serious about accuracy, he would not have cast a handsome actor, like West, in the role of Charles.But it’s not clear, even if the series were meticulously accurate, that the British news media would be in the mood to re-air the dirty laundry of a man who is Britain’s first new monarch since 1952. Charles has been widely praised for his performance since taking the throne, including when trouble brewed at the palace this past week.That trouble was set off by a royal aide when she repeatedly asked a Black woman born in Britain, who had been invited to a reception at Buckingham Palace, “Where are you from?” The reception guest, Ngozi Fulani, posted about the encounter on Twitter, and within hours, the royal aide, Susan Hussey, who had served as a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth, resigned with “profound apologies for the hurt caused.”As it happens, Hussey appears briefly as a character in “The Crown,” encouraging her husband, Marmaduke, then the chairman of the BBC, to ask the broadcaster to produce a laudatory program on the queen to cheer her up. (The BBC’s director general at the time, John Birt, instead greenlighted the infamous Bashir interview with Diana).Royal experts said that the palace’s swift reaction, and blunt condemnation, of Fulani’s treatment showed that Charles was intent on demonstrating that he would not tolerate any perception of racist behavior in the royal household. It averted what could have been another cycle of punishing headlines for the monarchy.According to Geordie Greig, a former editor of Tatler magazine and of The Daily Mail, “The only conversations about the king are, ‘Isn’t he doing a great job?’” More

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      in Music

      How Stormzy Crafted His Latest Album, ‘This Is What I Mean’

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      The British rapper was inspired by a variety of artists, including his sister, in making his third album.LONDON — Early in 2020, Stormzy thought he knew what kind of album he wanted to make. He wanted it to be “proper hard,” the British rapper said in a recent video interview.But then the pandemic hit, and “This Is What I Mean,” Stormzy’s recently released third album, ended up being made in a period of stillness when there was nothing to do except “chill, look after my dogs and make an album, and hear my thoughts and listen to God,” he said.Making the record from this space was a change of pace for Stormzy, 29, born Michael Ebenezer Kwadjo Omari Owuo Jr. He is now Britain’s highest profile rapper, and has built an ever-growing portfolio of initiatives for Black Britons and other people of color.Musically, he’s credited with being instrumental in Britain’s revival of grime music, and he was the first solo Black British artist to headline Glastonbury Festival.But when it came to making “This Is What I Mean,” “I didn’t have my cape on, ” he said. “I was just Mike, just navigating life.” The pandemic meant he had psychic distance from his public persona, and physical distance from the trappings of fame; the resulting album takes the introspection present on his previous projects and digs deeper.On the video call, Stormzy discussed some of the artists that influenced his making the record. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.‘Marcy Me’ by Jay-ZRozette Rago for The New York Times“Marcy Me,” from Jay-Z’s 2017 album “4:44,” exemplifies what Stormzy respects most about the New York rapper: his seemingly effortless delivery of effortful penmanship.“That takes dedication to your craft, and that takes studying your craft,” Stormzy said, “where you are now able to come out and rap at the highest level, and make it look like you just rolled out of bed.”A line could be drawn between “4:44,” which is, in part, a sonic confessional, and “This is What I Mean,” which is also an exercise in vulnerability. “I feel like with any great art that you consume, I think that it consciously or subconsciously inspires you,” Stormzy said, adding that seeing Jay-Z be so vulnerable “made me feel like, OK, that’s what we’re doing.”‘All of the Lights’ by Kanye WestThe influence of Ye, the scandal-prone artist formerly known as Kanye West, is “unashamedly” present on the titular song on “This Is What I Mean,” Stormzy said.That track takes cues from “All of the Lights,” off West’s 2010 album “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.” One of Stormzy’s favorite songs by West, “All of the Lights” is ambitious and baroque, loaded with short interludes from other artists. Stormzy thinks of the song as a painting, and the musicians, producers and instrumentalists the artist’s tools.“This Is What I Mean” is a similar exercise in ambition. “I’ve made that song with three different producers; I’ve got, like, five or six of my favorite artists on it and we were just painting,” Stormzy said.Beyoncé’s Live PerformancesLarry Busacca/Getty ImagesStormzy has a rule: If someone discredits Beyoncé’s artistry, “I don’t trust them.”His performances are often high energy, and feature theatrical moments. At the 2018 Brit Awards, he performed under a rain machine as rows of balaclava-clad men sat behind him, reminiscent of Da Vinci’s “Last Supper.” (Similar imagery was also invoked on the cover of his debut record “Gang Signs and Prayer.”)“There’s no one who has inspired my live show like Beyoncé,” he said. After watching her 2018 Coachella performance ahead of his own headline performance at Wireless Festival, he called his creative director to say they needed to start over.“When people see my Glasto, they see my tour, I’m like, yeah, that’s me trying to be a fraction of Beyoncé’s live show,” he said.Rachael AnsonReferences to Rachael Anson, Stormzy’s older sister, are littered across his discography. A D.J., Anson has hosted a show on a female-led online radio station and crafted mixes for the likes of Apple Music.Growing up in South London, Anson not only encouraged his ambitions, but also lent a practical ear when he was starting out. “The only thing that used to irk her about my raps was my flow,” he said. “My sister is the queen of vibes, she is so at one with music.”Her opinion continues to loom large for him: “Even now when I write, I’m like, aah, Rachael’s going to hear that” and she’s going to love it, Stormzy said.Frank OceanVisionhaus#GP/Corbis, via Getty ImagesIn Stormzy’s opinion, the singer Frank Ocean is the “most gifted songwriter of my generation.”Stormzy is a rapper who often sings, and said he has taken cues from the way Ocean’s music shows that “melody doesn’t need to be complicated to be beautiful.”“He hits pockets of melody that are really sweet to my spirit,” Stormzy said. “I’ve learned that from him, I can use my voice — whatever remit I live in with my vocal ability — to find these sweet pockets of melody.” This is especially clear on two songs on his new album, “Firebabe” and “Holy Spirit,” which Stormzy sings throughout.‘Growing Over Life’ by Wretch 32Stormzy is equally likely to rap over a drill beat, spit on a gospel song or croon over a piano: “Excellent rap is not always rooted in the energy and the gangster,” he said. He shares this proclivity with one of his musical heroes, the British rapper Wretch 32, born Jermaine Sinclaire Scott.Wretch’s refusal to be bound by any of the thematic or sonic restraints that are often found in M.C. culture has informed Stormzy’s approach to music. This is especially true of Wretch’s 2016 album, “Growing Over Life,” which engages with the personal and political treatment of Black people in Britain.Listening to the record, “I just used to be so blown away,” Stormzy said. “The best rapper in our country is rapping over these beautiful melodies, these beautiful pieces of music.”Wretch’s influence can be heard on the track “Please,” from “This Is What I Mean.” Backed by a piano, Stormzy is candid about his relationship with his father: “Please Lord give me the strength to forgive my dad / For he is flawed and so am I.” More

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      in Movies

      Leslie Phillips, Comic Actor Who Sorted Wizards, Dies at 98

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      He made a name for himself in British satires, then late in his career reached a different audience as the voice of the Sorting Hat in the Harry Potter movies.Leslie Phillips, a British actor who in a career that began before World War II played numerous comic roles, then reached new generations of filmgoers when he provided the voice of the Sorting Hat in the Harry Potter films, died on Monday at his home in London. He was 98.His agent, Jonathan Lloyd, confirmed the death.Mr. Phillips began acting as a teenager, supporting his family after his father died in his 40s. His fledgling career was interrupted by military service at the end of World War II, but in the mid-1940s he resumed it, although at first mostly in “the murkiest, rat-infested old playhouses and music halls in the North of England,” as he put it in his autobiography, “Hello” (2006).He eventually began to have success on radio, most notably on the long-running comedy show “The Navy Lark,” and he went from bit roles in films and on television to larger ones. He drew good notices for his performance in the Gene Kelly film “Les Girls” in 1957.Mr. Phillips, right, drew good reviews for his performance in the 1957 movie “Les Girls” with, from left, Jacques Bergerac and Gene Kelly.via Everett CollectionWhen he returned to England from Hollywood after that film, he told The Daily Telegraph in 2010, “I had a whole load of scripts to choose from.”“I went against my agent and said I’d do ‘Carry On Nurse,’” he added — an early entry in what became a series of popular, quickly made film comedies that over the next decades satirized the military, the medical profession, British history and even the soft-core “Emmanuelle” movies.Mr. Phillips also appeared in “Carry On Teacher” (1959) and “Carry On Constable” (1960), but he wasn’t really part of the ensemble of actors who were the core of those movies. Years later, though, in 2010, he was the presenter for “Carry On Forever!,” a BBC Radio 2 look back at the franchise.He turned up in another satirical film series, in “Doctor in Love,” in 1960 and “Doctor in Trouble” in 1970. By 1978, The Evening Post of Reading could say that Mr. Phillips “has been one of Britain’s best known and loved actors for more than 40 years,” and his career was barely half over.He worked regularly in British television after that, including recurring roles on “Chancer,” “The House of Windsor” and other series in the 1990s. He continued to appear in film comedies but also turned up in dramas, including “Out of Africa” (1985) and “The Jackal” (1997).Mr. Phillips worked on the stage as well, and though he was known for comedic catchphrases — his distinctive delivery of “Well, hello!” and “Ding dong!” were famous from the movies — he sometimes felt compelled to point out that he had a wider range.“I’ve done all the classics,” he said in the 2010 interview. “I’ve been to Stratford.”He certainly put serious actorly thought into what may have been the performance experienced by more filmgoers than any of his others: his voice work as the Sorting Hat, the all-knowing headwear that sorted new students at the Hogwarts wizarding school into their houses in the Harry Potter films, which began in 2001 with “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” directed by Chris Columbus.“I worked only with the director and was given a great deal of time to get the voice right,” he told the NewsQuest Media Group in 2002. “It is quite a moment in the movie, it was a very important role to get right.”He reprised the role in several of the sequels.Leslie Samuel Phillips was born on April 20, 1924, in the Tottenham area of London to Fred and Cecilia Phillips.“I grew up surrounded by illness,” he told The Daily Mail of London in 1999, and his father, who worked for the gas board, died when Leslie was young. His mother, hoping the boy could generate some income, sent him to a stage school, and by age 14 he was going on national tours.“Always people in the cast became my uncles and aunts,” he said. “I learned a lot. They encouraged me to read and taught me all the things I hadn’t done at home or school. It was as much an education as a job.”After the war he married Penelope Bartley, an actress, and they had four children before divorcing in 1965. She later died in a fire. His second wife, Angela Scoular, also an actress, died by suicide in 2011. His survivors include his third wife, Zara Carr.In the mid-1980s Mr. Phillips’s 92-year-old mother was left seriously injured in a mugging; he said the attackers had beat her unconscious because she wouldn’t give up her handbag, which contained some family mementos. She died after several months in the hospital.“It was the biggest tragedy of my life,” he told The Daily Mail in 1993. “Horrific. I used to go into hospital to visit her and then go walking round the streets, looking for a boy wearing the yellow sweatshirt she’d described to the police.”If his personal life was full of dark episodes, his career continued to give him satisfaction.“I seem to have a very overall appeal,” he said in 2002, the year after he had been in both the first Harry Potter movie and “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider,” another movie aimed at a youthful audience. “I get the most wonderful letters from elderly people who follow my career, and then I get an enormous amount of letters from young people.” More

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      in Music

      When Technology Makes Music More Accessible

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      In Britain and Ireland, a series of recent projects show the rich possibilities when disability and neurodiversity are considered in the creative process.LONDON — As the audience at Cafe OTO, a venue here, settled down to hear Neil Luck introduce his ambitious new piece, “Whatever Weighs You Down,” bemused smiles flickered across many faces.The evening’s performances had already featured an intriguing selection of musical technologies, including sensor gloves, text-to-speech software and recordings of bird song processed by artificial intelligence.So when Luck launched into a low-tech étude, raucously inflating a balloon while gasping into a microphone, audience members couldn’t help but laugh.A dark humor punctuated “Whatever Weighs You Down,” a bizarre, violent 40-minute work for piano, video, electronics and sensor gloves. It was the centerpiece of an evening that presented works made with Cyborg Soloists, a multiyear, 1.4 million-pound ($1.6 million) project, led by the pianist and composer Zubin Kanga, to advance interdisciplinary music-making through new interactions with technology.“Whatever Weighs You Down” is one of several experimental works that recently premiered in Britain and Ireland that show the rich musical possibilities when disability and neurodiversity are incorporated into the creative process. These works also point to newly developed technologies as both malleable tools for expressing diverse perspectives in experimental music, and as potentially enabling greater accessibility to composition, which traditionally has been a rarefied and exclusive world.In recent years, increasing attention has been paid, particularly in Britain, to making classical music more accessible. This includes the widespread adoption of what are called relaxed performances in concert halls — where audiences are allowed to make noise — and the creation of professional ensembles for disabled musicians, such as BSO Resound, part of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, and the Paraorchestra, which is based in Bristol, England.For “Whatever Weighs You Down,” Luck worked closely with the Deaf performance artist Chisato Minamimura, who in the piece appeared on a video screen and used sign language to retell her own dreams about falling, one of the main themes of Luck’s work.More About on Deaf CultureUpending Perceptions: The poetic art of Christine Sun Kim, who was born deaf, challenges viewers to reconsider how they hear and perceive the world. Language in Evolution: Ubiquitous video technology and social media have given deaf people a new way to communicate. They’re using it to transform American Sign Language. Seeking Representation: Though deafness is gaining visibility onscreen, deaf people who rely on hearing devices say their experiences remain mostly untold. Name Signs: Name signs are the equivalent of a first name in some sign languages. We asked a few people to share the story behind theirs.In “Whatever Weighs You Down,” Minamimura wanted to express a deaf perspective on sound and music. “I have hearing loss, but I can feel things — I can feel sounds,” she said in a recent video interview via an interpreter. Workshops to develop the piece involved Minamimura responding to vibrations wherever she could find them: pressing her full body against the lid of the piano, feeling the underside of the soundboard and even biting the strings of certain instruments.As the performance of “Whatever Weighs You Down” drew to a close, it reached a striking semi-synthesis. Onscreen, Minamimura’s gestures mirrored Kanga’s onstage hand movements. Both performers provided a kind of accompaniment for each other, experienced in entirely different ways by audience members, depending on their relationship to sound.“Traditionally, music is just heard in an auditory sense,” Minamimura said, “but, of course, we can see someone playing a piano or playing a flute. For me, technology means incorporating a film, visuals, or a general feeling of something else; we’re adding more sensory experiences for an audience.”Chisato Minamimura’s 2019 piece “Scored in Silence” was created with the aim of giving deaf individuals a comparable experience to hearing individuals.Mark PickthallZubin Kanga leads Cyborg Soloists, a multiyear, 1.4 million-pound project to advance interdisciplinary music-making through new interactions with technology.Kalpesh Lathigra for The New York TimesCreating music that incorporates multisensory experience is just one of the areas Cyborg Soloists explores. The project, supported by the government-funded U.K. Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship, also involves new types of visual interactions, including virtual reality, the creation of new digital instruments and the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning.The next frontier for Kanga, he said, is finding a way to translate brain activity from electroencephalogram caps into sound. And in Ireland, a recent installation explores a similar process.The visual artist Owen Boss described the first time he heard the sonic reproduction of a brain mid-seizure as “an absolutely extraordinary moment,” describing “a very low-end bass sound, kind of rhythmic, it just emerges in these sweeping, intense bass noises that whoosh in and whoosh out.”The sound files were created by Mark Cunningham, a professor of neurophysiology of epilepsy at Trinity College Dublin, who analyzed slivers of removed brain tissue that had been put through a process that simulated a seizure. He translated the analysis into binary code, and then into sound. Inspired by those deeply jarring reverberations and his family’s own experience, Boss then began piecing together an installation, “The Wernicke’s Area,” which is named after the part of the brain involved in understanding speech. The installation is showing at the Irish Museum of Modern Art.In 2014, Boss’s wife, Debbie Boss, had surgery to remove a brain tumor. The procedure was successful — the tumor was removed from her brain’s Wernicke’s area — but there were some side effects: The former soprano developed epilepsy and also now finds communication challenging.The violist Stephen Upshaw and the mezzo-soprano Rosie Middleton took performance directions for “The Wernicke’s Area” from diaries Debbie Boss kept about her seizures.Pat RedmondWith his wife’s permission, Boss and the composer Emily Howard created what he calls “a portrait of Debbie,” a multimedia work including details from the diaries she kept of her seizures, images of her brain, warped snippets of her favorite Handel aria and a variety of electroacoustic music drawn from data produced by artificially induced brain seizures.For all involved, the first performance of “The Wernicke’s Area” was an extremely moving experience, particularly for the Boss family. Debbie Boss became emotional “watching people do what she couldn’t do anymore,” her husband said. Yet, because she wasn’t directly involved in shaping the work, there’s a slight distance to “The Wernicke’s Area.”Lived experience plays a large role in the work of the composer Megan Steinberg, which places neurodiverse and disabled practitioners in all aspects of the creative process.Steinberg’s “Outlier II,” created with the Distractfold ensemble and the artists Elle Chante and Luke Moore, explores, in musical form, how artificial intelligence, or A.I., can exclude disabled people by working off a generalized understanding of human experience. “Outlier II” involves an A.I.-generated melody that generalizes over time, gradually losing nuance before being disrupted by a series of chance-based improvisations.Steinberg considered accessibility from the start of the creative process, and produced scores that were tailored to each performer’s needs.“That’s so rare in arts environments,” said Chante, a vocalist with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a condition affecting her joints. “Normally, it’s like, ‘Oh, we’ve got this thing, and we want it to be accessible.’ Here, it’s, ‘We want to be accessible, and here’s this piece we’re trying to create.’ And that made a giant difference.”A graphic score created for Megan Steinberg’s “Outlier II.”via Megan SteinbergProjects like these also produce music that is more representative of the breadth of human experience, according to Cat McGill, the head of program development at Drake Music, an arts charity focused on music, disability and technology. These projects “force us to challenge our thinking around disability and neurodiversity,” she wrote in an email interview.“If we approach a situation with the assumption that each individual has a unique contribution to make, rather than feeling like we need to fix them,” McGill added, “we embrace the differences as a natural part of humanity.” More

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      Robbie Coltrane, the Beloved Hagrid in ‘Harry Potter’ Films, Dies at 72

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      The veteran Scottish actor and comedian also played a gambling-addicted psychologist in the 1990s crime series “Cracker.”Robbie Coltrane, the veteran Scottish actor who played the beloved half-giant Rubeus Hagrid in the “Harry Potter” films and starred in the cult British crime series “Cracker,” died on Friday in Larbert, Scotland. He was 72.His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by Belinda Wright, his British agent. Ms. Wright said that Mr. Coltrane’s family had not disclosed a cause, but that he had been “unwell for some time.”Mr. Coltrane veered from the comic to the gritty in a 40-year career in film and television, with turns as an antihero detective in “Cracker” (1993-96), a K.G.B. agent turned ally to James Bond and a gangster who disguises himself as a nun after betraying his fellow criminals in “Nuns on the Run” (1990).But those roles did little to prepare Mr. Coltrane to play Hagrid, a fan favorite from the “Harry Potter” books whose transition to the big screen would face the sky-high expectations of millions of young readers.Mr. Coltrane successfully embodied the 8-foot-6 half-giant. He appeared in all eight “Harry Potter” films, infusing the franchise with warmth even as he towered over the young witches and wizards at the center of the series who were embroiled in a fight against evil.The first film, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” opened in November 2001 and went on to gross more than $1 billion worldwide, building on the already fervent global fan base of J.K. Rowling’s book series.Ms. Wright, Mr. Coltrane’s agent of 40 years, said the role was the reason he received a “stream of fan letters every week for over 20 years.”Fiercely protective of his privacy, Mr. Coltrane gave few interviews and could be hard-edged with reporters. But he said he had to cast that gruffness aside when he was embraced by a legion of young “Harry Potter” fans.“Kids come up to you and they go, ‘Would you like to sign my book?’ with those big doe-eyes,” he told The Guardian in 2012. “And it’s a serious responsibility.”Mr. Coltrane was born Anthony Robert McMillan on March 30, 1950, in Rutherglen, Scotland, outside Glasgow. His father, Ian Baxter McMillan, was a doctor; his mother, Jean Ross Howie, was a teacher.He grew up on the outskirts of Glasgow and enrolled in Glasgow School of Art, where he studied drawing and painting but struggled to capture his ideas on canvas.“I wanted to paint like the painters who really moved me, who made me want to weep about humanity,” he told The Herald, a Scottish newspaper, in 2014. “Titian. Rembrandt. But I looked at my diploma show and felt a terrible disappointment when I realized all the things that were in my head were not on the canvas.”As the prospect of a future as a painter dimmed, he was encouraged by a drama teacher who told him that he had acting talent after he appeared in a staging of Harold Pinter’s one-act play “The Dumb Waiter,” The Herald reported.After adopting his stage name as a tribute to the great jazz saxophonist John Coltrane, Mr. Coltrane found steadier footing when he moved to London. He worked as a stand-up comedian and actor, picking up theater roles and small parts in television and film productions.He attracted critical acclaim as Dr. Edward Fitzgerald, known as Fitz, the chain-smoking criminal psychologist in the hit series “Cracker,” whose alcohol addiction echoed Mr. Coltrane’s own issues with drinking. The role earned him the BAFTA award for best TV actor in 1994, 1995 and 1996.A turn as Valentin Zukovsky, a former K.G.B. agent turned Russian mafia kingpin, in the James Bond films “GoldenEye” (1995) and “The World is Not Enough” (1999) exposed Mr. Coltrane to a broader audience, particularly in the United States.There was nothing, however, that could compete with the global fame he found after he was cast as Rubeus Hagrid in the “Harry Potter” series. With his bushy beard and growling voice, Mr. Coltrane brought the beloved character to life. Mr. Coltrane, center, as Rubeus Hagrid in “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” (2009), with Jim Broadbent, left, as Professor Horace Slughorn, and Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter.Alex Bailey/Warner Brothers PicturesThe young actors who grew up on the sets of the “Harry Potter” films fondly remembered Mr. Coltrane as someone they could count on to lift their spirits with a joke or a word of encouragement.Daniel Radcliffe, who played Harry Potter, said on Friday that Mr. Coltrane “used to keep us laughing constantly as kids.”“I’ve especially fond memories of him keeping our spirits up on ‘Prisoner of Azkaban,’” Mr. Radcliffe said in a statement, “when we were all hiding from the torrential rain for hours in Hagrid’s hut and he was telling stories and cracking jokes to keep morale up.” James Phelps, who played Fred Weasley in the series, wrote on Twitter that when he was 14 years old and nervous on his first day on the set, Mr. Coltrane came over and said, “Enjoy it, you’ll be great.”Mr. Coltrane is survived by his children, Spencer and Alice, and a sister, Annie Rae. In the HBO Max retrospective “Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts,” which premiered on Jan. 1, Mr. Coltrane reflected on the role that introduced him to a new generation of fans.“The legacy of the movies is that my children’s generation will show them to their children,” he said. “So you could be watching it in 50 years’ time, easy. I’ll not be here, sadly, but Hagrid will, yes.” More