HBO Max

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Television

      After ‘Game of Thrones,’ Can TV Get Big Again?

      by

      After “Game of Thrones,” many said the blockbuster series was dead. Maybe not — but the future of TV epics may look more like the movies’ recent past.In spring 2019, as “Game of Thrones” aired its final season, the talk among TV-industry pundits was that the age of dragons was not the only era coming to an end. “Thrones,” the thinking went, might just be the last big TV series ever: That is, the last blockbuster-level behemoth that would dazzle and focus the obsession of a mass audience.I don’t know if anyone’s told you this, but a lot has changed since spring 2019.The pandemic, obviously, bolstered TV’s status as a virtual arena. “Tiger King” was a TV event, and so was “Hamilton” and “Godzilla Vs. Kong.” If theaters’ strength is to bring audiences together, TV’s is to bring audiences together, apart. And as with the shift to working from home, it’s not clear how much of this ground TV will cede back, now that we know how much it’s possible to do without leaving your couch. “Dune,” when it’s released this fall, will be partly a TV event too, via HBO Max, even though theaters have reopened.But if we focus just on the TV part of TV — that is, series made for home-and-device distribution rather than for theaters — the post-“Thrones” question remains: Can any one program, in an age of bingeing, streaming and thousands of choices, bring together a mass audience?This fall and later, several high-profile genre spectacles — from sci-fi to fantasy to dystopian fiction — are betting on yes. On Sept. 24, Apple TV+ premieres “Foundation,” based on the Isaac Asimov novels about the attempt to use “psychohistory” to shape the future of a galactic empire. Earlier this month, FX unveiled the ambitious and long-gestating “Y: The Last Man,” about an apocalypse that kills every human with a Y chromosome save for one.Later in the fall: Amazon’s “The Wheel of Time,” another long-in-the-making epic, based on the sprawling fantasy series by Robert Jordan. Next year: also from Amazon, a series based on one of the few remaining megamythologies not to get a major series adaptation, “The Lord of the Rings”; plus HBO’s “Thrones” prequel, “House of the Dragon,” about Westeros’s messiest platinum blondes, the Targaryen family.From left, Emmy D’Arcy and Matt Smith in HBO’s “Thrones” prequel, “House of the Dragon.” HBO MaxIf the age of blockbuster TV is over, the coming season has not been informed.And there is evidence that event TV is not dead, even if “events” no longer involve us all gathering around our TV sets at 9 p.m. on Sundays. Since the end of “Thrones,” we’ve seen the rise of the next generation of streaming platforms, which provided a direct pipeline from the biggest megatainment companies to the screens in your living room and in your pocket.Disney in particular has driven this change. Its engulfing of the Star Wars and Marvel franchises put two of the movies’ biggest universes into one company, and Disney+ promptly started turning them into TV. It was not long ago that the appearance of a Star Wars or superhero entertainment was a rare treat; now it’s a Wednesday. (Still to come this year: a series built around Star Wars’ Boba Fett and one about the Avengers’ Hawkeye.)The platform showed that, even in the difficult-to-quantify world of streaming, the right TV series can get a mass audience chattering. But Disney+ shows got big by aiming small. That is, they worked best when they fit their big-screen universes into packages that worked for serial TV — intimate, conversational or (relatively) quiet — rather than two hours of movie-house pyrotechnics.Amazon’s “The Wheel of Time” is based on the sprawling fantasy series by Robert Jordan. Amazon StudiosSo “WandaVision” moved a peripheral “Avengers” story line onto a series of classic-TV sets, recreating period sitcoms from half a century to tell a story of grief. (It was less effective, in fact, when it built to an action climax — that is, when it tried to be a Marvel movie.) “The Mandalorian” built on the old-time Western element already present in Star Wars to make a gunslinger-and-sidekick bromance. “Loki” portioned out the superpowered ham of Tom Hiddleston’s film performance in a playful sci-fi story that prioritized talk over effects.Of course, Disney had the advantage of making big TV from already-big intellectual property that it owned. It’s pointless by now to distinguish whether Marvel and Star Wars are movie universes that extend to TV or vice versa; the shows and films are just tributaries in a giant network of content, each promoting the other.The drawback of TV’s new blockbusters, then, may be that they’re doomed to become more like the movies’ blockbusters: dragon-like in scale, mouse-like in creative ambition, at least when it comes to anything that doesn’t involve an established brand. Efforts by other outlets to world-build original genre franchises, like HBO’s labyrinthine steampunk serial “The Nevers,” have been less successful.On the one hand, the fact that the next “The Lord of the Rings” expansion is coming to your living room rather than your local multiplex is a sign of a more TV-centric entertainment future. On the other hand, that future, at least for high-profile TV, may be more and more like the movies’ recent past: big-budget but cautious renderings of stories with built-in followings, endless revisits of corporate properties that you already like.If we’re stuck with old stories expensively retold, the hope is that they at least have something to say to a new moment. From what we know of the new season’s genre epics (most of which, at press time, critics have yet to see), it’s nothing cheerful.Alfred Enoch in “Foundation” on Apple TV+, which is based on the Isaac Asimov novels.Helen Sloan/Apple TV+If there’s a common thread to many of them, it’s world-changing catastrophe. Granted, that’s often a given in high fantasy and sci-fi, but the disasters at the core of these series — the revenge of nature, self-destruction through hubris — could speak loudly now (if you can hear them over the extreme weather alerts).Even the series that aren’t prequels are often preludes to a fall. “The Lord of the Rings” movies, for instance, arrived through an accident of timing as a kind of rallying call after the 9/11 attacks. The new series takes place thousands of years before the events of the films, in Middle-earth’s Second Age — which, if you know your Tolkien, ended with the fabled kingdom of Númenor being swallowed by the sea in a cataclysm it brought on itself.Likewise, “Foundation,” telling the story of a pending man-made disaster that cannot be stopped, only mitigated, could have a lot to say to a society that has been through and is looking ahead to [gestures at everything]. We have a doomed royal house in “Dragon”; in “Y,” a pandemic story that combines apocalyptic political intrigue with a more sex- and gender-conscious version of “The Walking Dead.”And “The Wheel of Time,” already renewed for a second season before its first has appeared, is built on a mythology that involves a repeating cycle of renewal and destruction. That theme may mirror not just an anxious world, but the rise and fall of media trends that produced this series and its peers.The epic TV event, that most elusive and awe-inspiring of fabulous beasts, may well have been pronounced dead. But that doesn’t mean it can’t rise again — even if it’s in a too-familiar form. More

    • 188 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to Amazon, HBO, Hulu and More in September

      by

      Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our favorites for September.Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of September’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)New to Amazon Prime VideoBilly Bob Thornton in “Goliath.”Greg Lewis/Amazon Prime Video‘Goliath’ Season 4Starts streaming: Sept. 24Billy Bob Thornton says goodbye to one of the best characters of his career with the fourth and final season of “Goliath,” a California legal drama inspired by film noir. Thornton has spent three seasons playing Billy McBride, a formerly high-powered and high-living lawyer who crashed hard and has since been trying to redeem himself, one seemingly unwinnable case at a time. For this last run of episodes, Billy finds himself in San Francisco, fighting his mental, physical and emotional frailties while helping a big-time law firm earn a potential billion-dollar settlement against some opioid-peddling pharmaceutical companies. Once again, an ace supporting cast (including the series regular Nina Arianda and the newcomers Bruce Dern, Jena Malone, J.K. Simmons and Elias Koteas) works magnificently to deliver a moody and complex mystery with juicy twists.Also arriving:Sept. 3“Cinderella”Sept. 10“LuLaRich”“Pretty Hard Cases”“The Voyeurs”Sept. 17“Do, Re & Mi”“Everyone’s Talking About Jamie”“The Mad Women’s Ball”New to Apple TV+Jared Harris in a scene from “Foundation.”Helen Sloan/Apple TV+‘Come From Away’Starts streaming: Sept. 10Two national tragedies — the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the COVID-19 pandemic — play a role in this recording of the Tony-winning musical “Come From Away,” shot in a Broadway theater earlier this year in front of a specially selected live audience of emergency responders, health care workers and 9/11 survivors. The show is a tuneful and impressionistic document of a true story from that day, describing the moments of kindness and connection that happened when the friendly Canadian small town of Gander, in Newfoundland, took care of over 7,000 passengers from planes diverted to its airport. Both an imaginative piece of journalism and an emotional recollection of a difficult time, “Come From Away” is a cathartic entertainment, tempering heartbreak with hope.‘Foundation’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 24One of the most influential science-fiction franchises of all time, Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” is as relevant today as it was when the original trilogy of books was written in the 1940s and ’50s. The long-in-development, flashy-looking TV version embraces the modern parallels. Jared Harris plays the brilliant mathematician Hari Seldon, who has crunched the numbers and has determined that the millennia-old galactic empire is due for an irreversible collapse in a few centuries, leading to 30,000 years of chaos. But that chaos could be reduced to a mere 1,000 years if society took immediate steps to preserve its knowledge and culture. The show’s creators, David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman, tell a story that spans multiple planets and decades but is ultimately about how ordinary human weaknesses and fears sometimes keep us from realizing our grandest ambitions.Also arriving:Sept. 17“The Morning Show” Season 2New to Disney+From left, Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman, Peyton Elizabeth Lee and Mapuana Makia in a scene from “Doogie Kamealoha, M.D.”Karen Neal/Disney‘Doogie Kamealoha, M.D.’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 8This remake of the ’90s family dramedy “Doogie Howser, M.D.” moves the action from Los Angeles to Hawaii and changes the protagonist from a teenage boy to a teenage girl (played by the Disney Channel favorite Peyton Elizabeth Lee). But the premise remains the same: What if a child genius finished college and medical school early and became a licensed doctor by age 16? Like the original, this new “Doogie” is a coming-of-age story about a precocious kid, who discovers that knowing a lot about how to fix human bodies hasn’t wholly prepared her for the more adult problems of romantic heartbreak and workplace woes.Also arriving:Sept. 1“Dug Days” Season 1Sept. 3“Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles”Sept. 22“Star Wars: Visions” Season 1New to HBO MaxOscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain in the HBO remake of the Ingmar Bergman series “Scenes From a Marriage.”Jojo Whilden/HBO‘Scenes From a Marriage’Starts streaming: Sept. 12Based on the acclaimed 1973 TV mini-series from Ingmar Bergman, “Scenes From a Marriage” stars Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac as a seemingly content upper-middle-class couple whose relationship begins to splinter when the circumstances in their lives prompt them to scrutinize what they have. Written by the playwright Amy Herzog and the writer-producer-director Hagai Levi (best-known for the original Israeli version of the show that became HBO’s “In Treatment”), this new “Scenes” follows the arc of Bergman’s original story while taking into account what has changed in the past 50 years of gender dynamics. Chastain and Isaac anchor the series, playing a husband and wife who still love and appreciate each other but who have outgrown their old expectations.Also arriving:Sept. 2“Adventure Time: Distant Lands — Wizard City”Sept. 10“Malignant”Sept. 15“A la Calle”Sept. 17“Cry Macho”Sept. 23“Ahir Shah: Dots”“Doom Patrol” Season 3Sept. 26“Nuclear Family”Sept. 30“The Way Down”New to HuluKayvan Novak as Nandor in a scene from Season 3 of “What We Do in the Shadows.”Russ Martin/FX‘What We Do in the Shadows’ Season 3Starts streaming: Sept. 3This hilarious horror mockumentary had a great run last year, with the cast and writers expanding on the show’s initial concept: a Staten Island version of the 2014 New Zealand movie about bickering vampire roommates. “What We Do in the Shadows” is still an episodic sitcom, with each chapter telling its own story. But the larger arc that started to develop in Season 2 continues in Season 3 as this band of slacker bloodsuckers and their shrewd human assistant Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) find themselves presented with new opportunities. Although the characters have richer back stories now — filled with bizarre, centuries-old grudges — this show’s primary asset is still its performances, as some very funny actors react with deadpan irritation at the paranormal craziness surrounding them.‘Y: The Last Man’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 13For over a decade, the Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra comic book series “Y: The Last Man” has been in development for a screen adaptation — first for the movies and then for TV. There’s a good reason the project’s producers have been so persistent: “Y” has an irresistibly juicy premise, depicting a society where an apocalyptic event has killed every mammal with a Y chromosome on Earth except for one. The comics are also filled with memorable characters and thrilling plot twists. This version retains both the grabby story and the fascinatingly eclectic cast — including the title hero, Yorick Brown (Ben Schnetzer). But the series’s head writer, Eliza Clark, has also updated the original’s exploration of gender roles.Also arriving:Sept. 2“Trolls: TrollsTopia” Season 4Sept. 3“The D’Amelio Show” Season 1Sept. 8“Wu-Tang: An American Saga” Season 2Sept. 10“The Killing of Two Lovers”Sept. 16“The Premise” Season 1“Riders of Justice”“Stalker”Sept. 29“Minor Premise”New to PeacockFrom left, Sumalee Montano, Ashley Zukerman and Rick Gonzalez in a scene from “Dan Brown’s the Lost Symbol.”Rafy/Peacock‘Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol’Starts streaming: Sept. 16“The Lost Symbol” is the third novel in Dan Brown’s popular series of books about Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor who specializes in symbology and classical art — and who often ends up using his know-how to help the authorities crack the secret codes underlying international conspiracies. Tom Hanks has played Langdon in the movie versions of Brown’s stories. Ashley Zukerman has taken on the role for a TV adaptation that is meant to serve as an entry point for newcomers. As with the books and the films, this version is a complicated tale of good versus evil, featuring a lot of scenes of smart folks solving ancient puzzles in dark and dangerous chambers.Also arriving:Sept. 2“A.P. Bio” Season 4 More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Television

      Rosie Perez Hates Flying, but She Soared in ‘The Flight Attendant’

      by

      The HBO Max show brought the veteran performer her first acting Emmy nomination. “To be recognized now, at my age, for something that I did just for the art of it all?” she said. “That really moves me.”Voting is underway for the 73rd Primetime Emmys, and this week we’re talking to several first-time Emmy nominees (at least for acting, in this case; Rosie Perez had been previously nominated, but as a choreographer). The awards will be presented Sept. 19 on CBS.This interview includes spoilers for “The Flight Attendant.”On Rosie Perez’s third day of production on the HBO Max series “The Flight Attendant,” she was shooting a scene in which several characters congregated in an airplane’s galley. As the director Susanna Fogel set up a shot, she asked Perez to turn toward the camera because “we can’t see your face.”“I know,” Perez replied. “I want to seem invisible.”She had a personal reason for this acting strategy. Now in her mid-50s, she understands a thing or two about the plight of menopausal women, some of whom have an acute sense of losing themselves, of their diminishing social value and relevancy. Perez recalled how difficult it was to acknowledge her own menopause onset — to come to terms with the hormonal imbalance and the way it made her feel.“I was like, ‘Why am I a nervous wreck all the time?’” she said. “‘Why do I have so much anxiety? Why am I questioning my life? What is going on?’”“It’s a strange, strange feeling,” she added.She wanted to bring those conflicted feelings to her character, Megan Briscoe, and the show’s writers and producers agreed to incorporate the idea. She told them: “I don’t ever want you to mention the fact that Megan is menopausal. I just want to play it.”This surprise acting choice provided a better rationale for her character to keep a nervous eye on her fellow flight attendant Cassie (Kaley Cuoco), a hot mess who has gotten embroiled in a mysterious conspiracy. And it set up a more sympathetic view of Megan’s own dangerous situation after a series of poor decisions leads her to accidentally commit treason.It also inspired one of the showrunners, Steve Yockey, to pen an “invisible woman” speech for Perez to deliver in the season finale, in a poignant scene that likely helped secure Perez her first Emmy nomination as an actor. (She was nominated three times as a choreographer for her work on the early ’90s sketch show “In Living Color.”)“I get choked up thinking about it now,” Perez said of the additional material she was given. “These moments don’t always come to me, as a brown woman. And when they come, you better deliver because, baby, you want to make it count.”Perez previously made the most of her moments in films like “Do the Right Thing” and “White Men Can’t Jump,” and her performance in the plane crash drama “Fearless” brought Oscar and Golden Globe nominations — an experience she now recalls with some ambivalence. She talked about it in a phone conversation from Spain, where she was shooting the upcoming Apple TV+ series “Now and Then,” and she also discussed “The Flight Attendant,” her moving monologue and her former life as a dancer and choreographer. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.You initially turned down “The Flight Attendant,” partly because you hate flying. Where did this fear come from?Two things. One, I hate traveling, and it doesn’t just pertain to flying on airplanes. I think it’s because of my childhood, traveling back and forth from the home [St. Joseph’s Catholic Home for Children in Peekskill, N.Y.] to Brooklyn to Puerto Rico, then back to Brooklyn and back to the home. I just couldn’t stand it. It gives me anxiety, which I’ve been working on with my psychiatrist. It’s getting better, slowly but surely.The second thing is that when I did “Fearless,” I was really traumatized. When we were filming in the cornfields, it felt so real and so shocking to me. The research I did on plane crashes heightened everything.You caught Covid-19 while shooting the show in Bangkok, early on in the pandemic. Did that affect your performance?It was scary being in a foreign country and getting sick to that magnitude. I remember being carted into the I.C.U. I remember telling people: “Don’t let me die in Bangkok. Please tell my husband.” Those were my initial thoughts, and then the isolation and the worry. The head of I.C.U. was telling me that I had this new unknown virus, that people were dying from it. I had been sickly as a child, but this was on a whole different level.That said, did it affect my performance? No. It affected my flying because I was even more paranoid, and I had to fly from Bangkok back to New York for “The Flight Attendant,” then to Brazil and Los Angeles for “Birds of Prey,” then to New York and Rome for more “Flight Attendant,” then to Utah for “The Last Thing He Wanted,” then to London for “Birds of Prey” press, then back to New York. I was a nervous wreck!It was comforting to have work, so I was able to just let it go and feed it back into Megan. And I was already there. By my third day of filming, I was able to tell the showrunners, “I know you think Megan is this, but I think she’s that.”What do you mean?What I could bring to Megan is how I felt turning 50, how I felt having hormonal imbalances. You question everything. If you’re not happy, if you don’t have happiness around you, you’re going to go out and buy a new car, or in Megan’s case, you’re going to start working for North Korea. [Laughs] Something is going to manifest itself.I wanted Megan to be too eager to participate. Everyone else is young, except her. My character is trying her hardest to be the person in charge, to be mature, but she wants to be Cassie, as messed up as Cassie is. I wanted Megan’s nervousness and anxiety to be conveyed through her smile, or asking, “What’s going on with Cassie?” Usually when you make suggestions like that, you get pushback, but the showrunners said OK to this idea. I was like: “Oh my god! Thank you!” Because what rational 50-year-old woman would idolize Cassie? She’s a train wreck! And that was the whole point.Is that how the “invisible woman” speech came about? Did they incorporate the idea into the script?I remember Steve Yockey going, [imitates a teasing singsong voice], “You’re going to love Episode 8.” When I got the script, I couldn’t stop crying. I remember calling Steve, sobbing, saying, “Thank you, thank you.” I didn’t ask them to write it in. They just actually listened to what I was saying and doing.That scene happened to be my last day of shooting. I was so filled with emotion, and I looked at Kaley, and she said: “Don’t do it, Perez. Don’t you cry yet! You’re going to make me cry!” We both started laughing. Then we both sat down on the bed. We didn’t discuss how we were going to do that scene. They said, “Action!” and bam! We got it on the first take. It was magic.When I get these kinds of chances as an actor, it just fills my heart with joy. I told my husband: “I’m going to work so hard on this show. I don’t even care if no one sees it.” He said, “That makes no sense.” I said: “It does, though. I did this one for myself.” If people enjoy it, that’s just icing on the cake with a cherry on top because there have been multiple times where I was never recognized for my work. To be recognized now, at my age, for something that I did just for the art of it all? That really moves me. It’s like when my husband goes, “Yeah, but you were nominated for an Emmy before,” and I go, “Yeah, but this is for acting.”You were nominated three times as a choreographer for “In Living Color.”I think I was a little before my time. Hip-hop was not new to me, or to New York, but it was new to the world. And I think that classism and racism came into play, where they downplayed my ability as a choreographer. They didn’t think it was hard work and real creativity. I had to come up with eight to 10 different routines a week. That’s insane!I was blown away by the Emmy nominations for “In Living Color.” The first time I was nominated, [the “In Living Color” creator, Keenen Ivory Wayans,] told me, “You should have won.” I said, “But I’m at the Emmys, Keenen!” He was like, “You’re the happiest loser I’ve ever known.” And I said: “We’re putting hip-hop on the map. How big is that?” To be one of the pioneers? Wow.And then because of this acting nomination, people are asking me: “You were nominated before as a choreographer? You were a dancer?” And I’m like, “Yeah, I was.” [Laughs.]Do you have conflicted feelings about the Academy Award nomination you got for supporting actress for “Fearless”? You talked recently about how the Academy never invited you back to the ceremony.I never mentioned it for years until somebody else brought it up. It’s not like I would sit there and cry about it. It was more of a feeling like, “Wow, that’s just so [expletive] up,” because it wasn’t only about me. It was about every other brown-skinned girl. When I saw my girls Viola Davis and Halle Berry win, I was screaming my head off, I was so happy for them. I just told the Academy Awards: “Well, OK, you didn’t invite me back. All right. That’s on you, honey.”I think the other part of why I wasn’t invited back is that I don’t know how to play the game. I don’t schmooze. But a lot of [awards season] is campaigning and who do you know. The silver lining of this horrible pandemic is that I don’t have to leave the house. I can do interviews, meet the other nominees and all that stuff, and I don’t have to get dressed up or do my hair! It’s such a blessing because I don’t do well in those Hollywood settings. I’m getting better, but it’s just a little overwhelming for me.Being nominated for the Oscars and the Golden Globes, I wasn’t ready. I didn’t fully appreciate what was going on. So many journalists asked me: “This is weird. This is a fluke, isn’t it, that you got nominated?” That just angered me to the point where I became numb to the whole process. My anxiety and depression took over and kind of shut down the joy of it all. Now that I’ve addressed my mental health issues, and I’ve been in therapy for so long, I’m able to embrace the joy.Someone recently asked me, “Don’t you feel like this [Emmy nomination] is like, ‘Aha! Look at me now!’” And I don’t. In the grand scheme of things, this is small potatoes compared to the hell I went through as a child. The things that people take for granted — moments of joy and happiness — are like a ticker-tape parade for me, every day. I get to do what I do. I have a wonderful home, a wonderful husband, good friends and good family members. I don’t have to worry about being poor.My husband says, “That’s so simplistic.” And I say, “But life is that simplistic.” It really is. You come from the depths of hell, and you rise up like a phoenix. I don’t want to show off; I just want to fly. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Television

      In ‘The Other Two,’ Drew Tarver and Heléne Yorke Are Almost Famous

      by

      What’s it like to be fame-adjacent? The premise of this dark HBO Max comedy was in some ways familiar territory for its two stars. That may not last.Drew Tarver’s room at the Bowery Hotel was bright. It was comfortable. It overlooked a cemetery, but not in a creepy way. When Tarver arrived, jet-lagged and rain-soaked after a late flight from Los Angeles, he found a Bowery-branded teddy bear on the bed and a bottle of red wine on the cafe table, compliments of the manager.The next morning, the actress Heléne Yorke, 36, took the elevator to his room. As Tarver hid his retainer case, Yorke read the manager’s note, which addressed him as Mr. Tarver. “Who do they think you are?” Yorke teased.Tarver, 35, is a star of the dark comedy “The Other Two,” which began its life on Comedy Central but returns for Season 2 on HBO Max, starting Thursday. He plays Cary Dubek, a gay aspiring actor. Yorke plays his sister, Brooke, a former dancer. Harassed by survival jobs, man troubles and housing crises, they lead lives of loud desperation until their much younger brother, Chase (Case Walker), becomes a tween sensation — or, as one newscaster puts it, “the next big white kid.”During the first season, Brooke and Cary ride Chase’s designer coattails, clumsily. In the second, each has achieved some success. Drew now presents a red carpet segment called “Age Net Worth Feet.” Brooke manages Chase and their mother, Pat (Molly Shannon), who has become a talk-show host.In some ways, this limited celebrity parallels Tarver’s and Yorke’s own lives. After years of appearing in niche fare, they are finally fame-adjacent. “We’re still not famous,” Yorke said. She looked out of Tarver’s window. The rooms next to his, she noticed, were nicer. They had little balconies.“Turns out my bottle of wine isn’t so great after all,” Tarver said.“Being in your late 20s, early 30s, watching other people surpass you, it’s really disorienting,” Yorke said. “It gives you this hunger and this thirst that is all-encompassing.”Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesEven as “The Other Two,” created by the former “Saturday Night Live” writers Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider, is a rapier-sharp satire of the entertainment industry, it also presents an unusually warm and functional relationship between Cary and Brooke, undergirded by a real affection that the actors seem to share. (Or maybe they’re just very good actors?)During an hourlong conversation in the lobby (Henri, the failed hurricane, had scotched a planned mini-golf outing), the two discussed the show, their poor pandemic choices and their hopes for their characters. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Who was cast first?YORKE Drew was cast before me. In true sexist fashion. Drew is also No. 1 on the call sheet, two years running, which is devastating for me as a woman.TARVER I have constantly said we need to make her No. 1. No one listens to me.YORKE Drew knew Chris from the improv and sketch comedy scene. I was not a part of that world at all. I got called back to read with Drew. They were like, “Feel free to do a little improv.” And I was sweating through my clothes.TARVER In her audition, it just felt like siblings.YORKE In showbiz, if you’re a duo, it’s not always roses. But it genuinely is for us. We just have fun all day.But who’s the better actor?TARVER HeléneYORKE [Simultaneously:] Drew. Everything Drew does is so true. This is a person who is very funny and very off the cuff but also has a deep connection to what’s important. [To Tarver:] Now is when you talk about me.TARVER She just comes in and kills it.Yorke and Tarver in a scene from Season 2, in which their characters have begun to achieve some measure of success. Greg Endries/Hbo MaxSo you always related to these characters? You never saw them as monsters?YORKE I saw myself in them. Being in your late 20s, early 30s, watching other people surpass you, it’s really disorienting. It gives you this hunger and this thirst that is all-encompassing. That’s what happens to Brooke and Cary. That’s what you watch them go through. I remember riding the subway and looking at people on commutes to real jobs, being like, they have health insurance and a full collection of pots and pans. That was so beyond me.TARVER You were riding the subway with just that one egg pan.YORKE It was all I had to make breakfast! But I have a lot of sympathy for Brooke and Cary. Anything they do that is bad or crazy is out of that hunger.In the second season, they’re tasting success. Does it change them?TARVER It’s surprising how little it does for them. They’re realizing, like: “Oh, I would have killed for this last year. But now I have it. Why didn’t that fix me? Why am I already used to it?”YORKE It’s devastating to realize that you are still who you are. Success is not a magic wand. You think, “Oh, I’ll get success and all of a sudden, I’ll be this better person who’s happier and more settled in my life.” You get it, and all of your [expletive] comes with you.TARVER The third season is just them real-time in therapy.YORKE It’s “In Treatment.”You had begun the second season when the shutdown hit. How did you spend the year off?YORKE I became a five-star chef. And I started writing. I was saying yes to new experiences. I was like, I’m going to try skiing. I learned how to ski on YouTube, and I tore my ACL two weeks before going back to this job. So, yeah: cooking and being stupid.And what were your injuries, Drew?TARVER I lost both my feet. No. My two sisters live in L.A. We all packed up and went back to Georgia. I also got on YouTube. My grandma had this old Airstream trailer, all grown over with weeds, with raccoons living in it. Me and my little brother started watching YouTube videos where people get Airstreams and restore them. It’s always like, “Hey, I’m Mike.” “And I’m Diane. And we bought an Airstream.” Then the next video is like, “We’re cleaning out the Airstream, we’re throwing everything away.” The third video is like, “We’re done with this and we’re getting a divorce.”YORKE He grew his hair out so long and a full Georgia trash beard. There are pictures, a time-lapse of him shaving it into mutton chops.TARVER I shaved it a day before we started filming. It was shocking seeing my mouth again. I wasn’t convinced it worked right. The first morning I came in, I was like: “Hey, real quick, before we get out there, does this look like me? Am I my smiling right?”YORKE We came back in real rough shape.But you won. You made it onto a show that people actually watch. Are there downsides?TARVER Sometimes it feels a little scarier. When you’re coming up, you’re just fearless with your choices because you’re just like, yes, anything. Then when you have a job, you have something to lose. Fear sets in.YORKE This thing that never goes away — and it’s so sick — is that every good thing will be the last thing. So if it comes to an end, nobody will ask me to do anything.It must be nice having a low-key kind of fame, though. People recognize you, but you don’t have to flee the paparazzi.TARVER I mean, I do that. Even if it’s just one person, I will push them over and flee.If this show has more seasons, what do you want for these characters?YORKE I hope that the situations become even fancier.TARVER I want to see them continue to struggle. But in palaces.YORKE It’s so easy to say you want them to figure it out. But I don’t want them to because I’m comforted by the fact that they don’t. It makes me feel less alone.TARVER It does feel nice to come to work and play a bumbling person. Because it’s like, OK, yeah, this feels real.YORKE We want them to always feel lost and bad. That’s what’s universal. More

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in Television

      Is Jeremy O. Harris’s Play for ‘Gossip Girl’ Real? Now It Is.

      by

      Joshua Safran’s “Gossip Girl” reboot filmed a scene from an imaginary work by the “Slave Play” playwright. Then the Public Theater commissioned it.We hear him before we see him come across the screen: Aaron howls and barks then gallops, on all fours, onto a white, wooden thrust stage, ringed on three sides by the audience. This enraged man — the son of Aaron the Moor from “Titus Andronicus” — is stark naked and covered in blood.“What? What? Have I not arrived as you assumed I would? Like a black dog, as the saying is,” he demands, panting and sniffing, shouting into the faces of the seated theatergoers.He backs away slowly. “You do know who I am, riiight?” Aaron drawls. “The inhuman dog. Unhallowed slave.”This intense scene from a play-within-a-TV-show commands viewers’ attention in Episode 3 of HBO Max’s “Gossip Girl” reboot. And it’s all courtesy of Jeremy O. Harris, the Tony-nominated playwright of “Slave Play.” Shortly after the episode dropped, though, people began to speculate on social media if the play was real or not.With a tweet, Harris recently confirmed that “The Bloody and Lamentable Tale of Aaron” is, in fact, a real play. He began writing his dream Public Theater play for “Gossip Girl” after chatting with the show’s creator, Joshua Safran (“Smash,” “Soundtrack”).The series’ showrunner, Joshua Safran, left, and Jeremy O. Harris during the taping.Karolina Wojtasik, via HBO MaxUpon seeing the play’s opening scene during the taping, Oskar Eustis, artistic director of the Public Theater — who makes a cameo as an audience member in the episode — turned to Harris and asked, “Can we commission this?” Harris said he had a contract the next day.“I was dreaming this play into existence,” Harris said in an interview. It’s a play he’s been thinking about for seven years, since he started studying “Titus Andronicus” — his favorite Shakespeare play.“Titus Andronicus,” thought to be Shakespeare’s earliest tragedy, tells the bloody tale of the downfall of Titus, a Roman general. Titus returns home from war with Tamora, Queen of the Goths, as a prisoner to the Roman emperor; her lover, Aaron the Moor, is in tow.Tamora gives birth to a child, fathered by Aaron, who then kills the nurse to keep the child’s race a secret and flees with the baby to save it from the emperor. But Lucius, Titus’s son, captures Aaron and threatens to kill the child. To save his son, Aaron confesses to a plot for revenge. Lucius, who is later proclaimed emperor, orders Aaron be buried up to his chest and left to die. The baby, however, survives.Harris’s play, then, picks up where Shakespeare left off. We meet Aaron (portrayed by Paul James in the “Gossip Girl” episode), named after his father, in his 20s. He has been raised, ironically, by Lucius Andronicus, now in his 60s. And he’s thirsty for revenge.“The thing that I think makes Aaron a complex character in literature is because he’s like, ‘I’m evil because I’m Black,’” Harris said of Shakespeare’s play. “And this time, he’s like, ‘No, I’m evil because you guys have socialized me. You have socialized rules around what Black means and what maleness means.’”When the opportunity to shoot at the Public arose, Harris knew two things: He wanted to do “Aaron.” And he wanted the director to be Machel Ross, who also directed his play “Black Exhibition” at Bushwick Starr in 2019. Lila Feinberg wrote and Jennifer Lynch directed the “Gossip Girl” episode, in which several characters grapple with what to make of the challenging work.“I loved it. But it’d be committing theatrical seppuku to transfer it,” a theater critic mutters to another at the show’s after party.The other responds: “It would close in a week, especially without a star. I just wish it wasn’t so confrontational.”In an interview, Ross said she “knew that the text was evoking a very specific sort of confrontation between audience and performer.”How could they thrust the “Gossip Girl” cast and universe into this play from the moment it begins, she wondered? Enter: a naked Paul James.“I was like, ‘All right, I’m going to have to be comfortable. I’m going to have to make other people uncomfortable, and own the stage, and be very physical,’” James said in an interview.Harris described the play to Safran, the show’s creator and showrunner, as the audience’s worst nightmare: A naked Black man covered in blood, coming up to them and asking them to touch him. It’s a confrontational idea, and one that the “Gossip Girl” character Zoya Lott — a newcomer to the world of glitz and glamour depicted in the series — can identify with.“Are you kidding me? A provocative play like ‘Aaron’ is exactly what Broadway needs after a year on pause,” Zoya (played by Whitney Peak) fires back at the naysayers. “What it doesn’t is another ‘revisal’ of — of anything. Especially one devised by white people, about white people, starring white people.“That’s why the theater was invented, right? To challenge audience members to — to think beyond their own narratives. I mean, come on, have you never read Shange? Albee? Fornés?”About that exchange, Safran said in an interview: “That’s what Zoya is wrestling with in this world with these people. Can I actually speak my mind, or do I have to fit myself into a box and just observe?”In the show, Harris sweeps into the room, playing himself. “Hey. Who are you?” he asks Zoya. “You seem very much like someone to me. Let’s find a less confrontational space and have a little talk,” he says.“Zoya is one of the only people that can look at their world and process it and call out things as they are,” Harris said. “And make a little mess along the way as she does that.”In fact, Harris will be returning as himself to the show in the second half of its first season, in Episode 10, as a fairy godfather of sorts to Zoya. As for the status of the play itself? “I think it’ll be done when it’s done,” Harris said. More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      HBO and HBO Max Subscribers Seen Reaching 73 Million in 2021

      by

      AT&T may not want HBO Max anymore, but the streaming platform is gaining traction with customers.HBO and HBO Max, home to genre-bending franchises such as “Game of Thrones” and “The Sopranos” and Hollywood blockbusters like “Wonder Woman 1984,” have added 10.7 million customers in a little over a year, with 2.8 million coming in the three months ending in June, AT&T reported on Thursday. Those figures include both HBO Max and the HBO TV channel.The company has 67.5 million subscribers to HBO and HBO Max, with 47 million in the United States. AT&T, which has struck a deal to sell its media businesses, expects HBO and HBO Max will have between 70 million and 73 million customers by the end of the year, exceeding earlier predictions.Netflix, the most popular streaming service, has 209 million subscribers, with about 66 million in the United States. It gained customers in the second quarter, but growth has considerably slowed and it lost 430,000 subscribers across the United States and Canada, a sign that cracks are beginning to show in the streamer’s long-held dominance.Speaking on the broader streaming industry, Jason Kilar, the chief executive of AT&T’s media arm, WarnerMedia, said in an interview: “The only thing I can promise you is change. There is no doubt that change is coming, and that’s appropriate because we live in a dynamic time.”WarnerMedia, which includes CNN, the Warner Bros. film and television studios and the Turner cable networks, is about to become the property of Discovery Inc., as media companies continue to gobble each other up in an effort to take on Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. The deal, which is expected to close around the middle of next year, will create the second-largest media business in the United States, behind the Walt Disney Company and ahead of Netflix and NBCUniversal.Mr. Kilar, who learned of the acquisition only weeks before it would be announced, could be out of a job after the deal closes.Both companies are prohibited from working together until the merger is approved by government regulators, including striking any employment agreements. Still, such deals often involve tacit arrangements about leadership. Mr. Kilar said that he had met socially with David Zaslav, the head of Discovery, but that he hadn’t broached the topic of his employment.“David and I have known each other for a long time,” he said, “and I think it’s fair to say there’s a lot of shared respect between the both of us.”Mr. Kilar, who took charge of the company only 15 months ago, said he did not have plans to step away. “There will be a point where I pick my head up next year where I think about this topic,” he continued. “But I certainly don’t intend to do it until 2022.”Jason Kilar, the chief executive of WarnerMedia, in Dallas last December.Allison V. Smith for The New York TimesMr. Kilar, who was the founding chief executive of Hulu, is considered within Hollywood to be a bit of an iconoclast. In 2011, he broadsided the industry with a now-famous manifesto on the future of entertainment that, to many, came across as a blistering critique of Hulu’s corporate ownership.The post panned traditional TV for running far too many commercials. Mr. Kilar also blasted cable, predicting that viewers would eventually drop expensive packages.After Mr. Kilar joined WarnerMedia, he quickly shuffled the executive ranks and cut costs in an effort to streamline the business.Then he angered Hollywood (again) by breaking with tradition and releasing the entire 2021 lineup of Warner Bros. films on HBO Max on the same day they were scheduled to appear in theaters. The move would have cost some of Hollywood’s biggest players back-end profits — the commission that top-flight producers and stars earn based on box office receipts — but the company quickly worked out deals to make sure they would be paid.Unlike Netflix, Disney+ and HBO Max and other new entrants into streaming have legacy agreements with cable distributors and Hollywood studios that prevent a more full-throated approach to making films and TV shows immediately available online.For Mr. Kilar, the move wasn’t about upsetting Hollywood, but rather was part of a larger strategy to goose HBO Max.It seems to have worked. The release of made-for-the-big-screen spectacles like “Godzilla vs. Kong” on HBO Max helped to increase the service’s customer rolls.Mr. Kilar intends to keep up that strategy through 2022. Warner Bros. will release 10 films exclusively for the streaming platform. And big-budget films like “The Batman,” a reimagining of the comic book character starring Robert Pattinson, will have relatively short windows in theaters of 45 days before they show up on HBO Max, according to Mr. Kilar.“That’s very, very different than the way the world operated in 2019,” he said. “Ultimately, I do think that as long as you’re thoughtful about it, change could be very, very good for not only the customers but also the people we get to work with.” More

    • 100 Shares109 Views

      in Television

      How Disney is Chipping Away at Netflix's Dominance

      by

      The cracks are showing in Netflix’s worldwide dominance.Netflix is still king of streaming video, but audiences are slowly shifting toward new rivals, namely the Walt Disney Company’s Disney+, according to research from Parrot Analytics.Netflix’s share of worldwide demand interest — a measure, created by Parrot, of the popularity of shows and a key barometer of how many new subscribers a streaming service is likely to attract — fell below 50 percent for the first time in the second quarter of the year.The company’s “lack of new hit original programming and the increased competition from other streamers is going to ultimately have a negative impact on subscriber growth and retention,” Parrot said in a news release before Netflix announced its quarterly earnings on Tuesday.Netflix said it had attracted 1.5 million new subscribers in the second quarter of the year, beating the low bar it had set when it told Wall Street that it anticipated adding just one million.The company said it expected to add about 3.5 million new subscribers in the third quarter, lower than the approximately 5.5 million that investors were expecting. Netflix shares fell as much as 4 percent in after-hours trading on Tuesday before bouncing back a little.The company now has 209 million subscribers, but it lost 430,000 in the United States and Canada, its most lucrative region, over the period. It now has 73.9 million subscribers in that market, with about 66 million in the United States.In a letter to shareholders, Netflix said that “Covid-related production delays in 2020 have led to a lighter first-half-of-2021 slate.” Netflix relies on creating as many different shows and films for as many different audiences as possible, and the pandemic upset that formula, forcing the shutdown of productions around the world.Traditional media players have started to consolidate, again, potentially setting off another race for talent, studio space and production resources. In May, Discovery announced that it would buy WarnerMedia from AT&T, creating the second-largest media giant, behind Disney and ahead of Netflix. Less than two weeks later, Amazon announced that it would buy Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, home to the James Bond franchise, for $8.45 billion, a price many analysts considered rich.In the earnings call after the report, Reed Hastings, Netflix’s co-chief executive, said he didn’t think it made sense for Netflix to jump into the consolidation game. He even offered his own analysis of some of the industry’s biggest deals, including Disney’s acquisition of the bulk of Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox.“Certainly Disney buying Fox helps Disney become more of a general entertainment service rather than just a kids and family,” he said. “Time Warner-Discovery — if that goes through — that helps some, but it’s not as significant, I would say, as Disney-Fox.”Mr. Hastings’s co-chief executive, Ted Sarandos, offered a sharper critique of these megadeals. “When are they one and one equals three? Or one and one equals four?” he asked. “Versus what most of them tend to be, which is one and one equals two.”Netflix has downplayed competition concerns even as newer entrants have chipped away at its long-held grip. Disney+ more than doubled its share of demand interest in the second quarter compared with a year earlier, and Amazon Prime Video, AppleTV+ and HBO Max are also gaining, according to Parrot.In its letter to shareholders, Netflix said the industry overall was “still very much in the early days” of the transition from traditional pay television to streaming.“We are confident that we have a long runway for growth,” it said. “As we improve our service, our goal is to continue to increase our share of screen time in the U.S. and around the world.”Mr. Hastings said competition would further stoke streaming across all companies.“As you get new competition in, you get validation — more reasons to get a smart TV or unlimited broadband,” he said. “So for at least the next several years, the growth story of streaming as a whole is very intact.”But Netflix hasn’t seen any impact from the “secular competition,” Mr. Hastings said, referring to Disney or HBO. “So that gives us comfort,” he added.Netflix, he said, is really competing against traditional television, and the “shakeout” won’t happen until streaming makes up the majority of viewing. He cited the latest study from Nielsen, which showed that streaming accounts for about 26 percent of television viewing in the United States, with Netflix making up about 6 percent. Disney+ is far behind at 1 percent.In other words: If Disney+ is hurting us, we haven’t seen it.The argument that Netflix has been competing with regular television and other streamers for a long time overlooks the fact that new rivals like Disney+ and AppleTV+ are much cheaper than Netflix (and subscription television). And although those services produce far fewer originals than Netflix, they appear to be getting more bang for their buck.In the second quarter, Disney+ got a big boost of demand interest from “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” a series based on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which has thoroughly dominated the box office in recent years. “Loki,” another Marvel spinoff, also helped, according to Parrot.Amazon Prime Video got a boost in the period with “Invincible,” an animated superhero series for adults. And AppleTV+ attracted new customers with three originals: “Mosquito Coast,” a drama based on the 1981 novel; “For All Mankind,” a sci-fi series; and “Mythic Quest,” a comedy series that takes place in a game developer studio.Speaking of, Netflix said this month that it planned to jump into video games. It has hired a gaming executive, Mike Verdu, formerly of Electronic Arts and Facebook, to oversee its development of new games. It’s a potentially significant move for the company, which hasn’t strayed far from its formula of television series and films.The company called gaming a “new content category” that will be a “multiyear effort” and said it would be included as part of a subscribers’ existing plans at no extra cost. Games will first appear on its mobile app, an environment that already allows for interactivity. The vast majority of Netflix’s customers watch on big-screen televisions.Gaming isn’t meant to be a stand-alone or a separate element within Netflix. “Think of it as making the core service better,” Mr. Hastings said. “Really, we’re a one-product company with a bunch of supporting elements.” More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Television

      Plane Crash Complicates HBO Max Documentary on Diet-Inspired Church

      by

      On May 29, a single-pilot jet plane crashed into a lake near Nashville, killing all seven people on board. Among them were Gwen Shamblin Lara, a weight-loss guru and the founder of the Remnant Fellowship Church of Brentwood, Tenn., and her husband, William Lara, who was known as Joe and had once portrayed Tarzan in both a television series and the movie “Tarzan in Manhattan.”The leader of a midsize congregation, Ms. Lara, 66, had for the past several years been the main subject of a documentary project that sought to get beyond the gilded veneer of the Remnant Fellowship and investigate its inner workings. Set to debut on HBO Max in the fall, the multi-episode project, “The Way Down,” details the church’s origin in Ms. Lara’s religious-based weight-loss program, the Weigh Down Workshop.The diet program brought Ms. Lara fame — through appearances on popular shows like “Larry King Live” — and fortune, thanks to best-selling books touting her strategies to lose weight. But it also made her a controversial figure, with critics saying Weigh Down focused more on unconventional theology than on healthy eating habits. The documentary examines those issues, along with allegations that the church shunned and even harassed members who wanted to leave and that it functions more as a cult than a traditional religious institution.Ms. Lara in 2011. Her church grew out of the Weigh Down Workshop, a religious-based diet program she started in 1986.Sanford Myers/The Tennessean, via ImagnAt the time of the crash, the finishing touches were being put on the series. Suddenly, the filmmakers were faced with a new set of questions. What was the extent of Mr. Lara’s flying experience (he was operating the aircraft), and were his medical records up to date? What would happen to the church now that its founder and leader was dead? (A day after the crash, the church released a statement saying Ms. Lara’s daughter and son “intend to continue the dream that Gwen Shamblin Lara had of helping people find a relationship with God.”)And what would happen in the bitter custody case, involving Mr. Lara’s daughter with his ex-wife, which formed a crucial story line in the documentary?The filmmakers also said that since the crash, they had found that more people were eager to speak to them — former congregants who said they had previously been unwilling to go against the church publicly because they still had family members who are affiliated, and relatives of those killed in the crash who were skeptical of the church and now felt compelled to share their stories.On May 29, a single-pilot jet plane crashed into a lake near Nashville, killing all seven people on board including Ms. Lara.George Walker IV/The Tennessean, via Imagn“Within 24 hours I had heard from every single source, and the first thing everyone said was ‘I don’t want to be disrespectful, but please tell me this doesn’t change anything,’” regarding the documentary, said the producer Nile Cappello, an investigative journalist who started researching Remnant Fellowship in 2018.Ms. Cappello added that for those who had already spoken out against the church, some at great personal sacrifice, what she heard most frequently was worry the documentary would be curtailed in some way, “that we have opened up these wounds for nothing.”Though archival footage of Ms. Lara preaching and making media appearances is shown in the documentary, neither she nor any representatives from Remnant Fellowship were interviewed on camera by the filmmakers.“I never thought she would give us an interview,” the series director, Marina Zenovich, said of Ms. Lara. “Never.”Remnant Fellowship did not return calls seeking comment about the series for this article.While the filmmakers scrambled to incorporate news of the crash and its aftermath into the documentary, HBO Max altered its plans too. Now, rather than release a four-part series at the end of September, the first three episodes of “The Way Down,” will become available on Sept. 30, concluding with a “To Be Continued” message. The final two episodes will debut in early 2022, giving the filmmakers time to deal with the new footage. The documentary now begins with local news coverage of the crash.Marina Zenovich directed “The Way Down,” which will conclude early next year with two episodes that can incorporate new footage.Coley Brown for The New York Times“There is a fuller story to be told,” said Lizzie Fox, senior vice president of nonfiction at HBO Max. “We just want to make sure that we can allow enough time for the story to progress and the investigation to pursue some answers and give us time to interview all the subjects. With a limited docu-series, if there’s ever a chance to have a second part, I think it’s something that people tend to get excited about.”Ms. Zenovich is a documentarian who has spent most of her career focusing on men like Roman Polanski, Lance Armstrong and Robin Williams. But the world of evangelical religion was new terrain, one she decided to embark on because of the compelling character at the story’s center.“It’s deeply upsetting,” she said. “But I decided to do it because I was fascinated by Gwen.”Ms. Lara, who trained as a dietitian, began her Weigh Down Workshop in 1986. It was a diet plan that set aside common health guidelines and instead focused on a reliance on God, urging members that in order to understand true hunger they should eat only when their stomach growled. By the mid-2000s, her advice had become very popular within religious communities, and Ms. Lara’s books sold millions of copies. She parlayed that success into Remnant Fellowship, a church she founded in 1999 with her husband at the time, David Shamblin, after splitting with the Church of Christ. The Weigh Down philosophies remained a central tenet of her new congregation.Nile Cappello, right, the producer of the documentary, started researching Remnant Fellowship in 2018.Coley Brown for The New York TimesAs ex-members describe it in the documentary, the church was less a place of worship and more an all-encompassing power that took over every aspect of their lives, from where they worked and how they dressed to whom they married. Body image and appearances were central components, and the documentary chronicles Ms. Lara’s own transformation, from a bubbly young dietitian with girl-next-door looks into a very thin, heavily made-up avatar whose hair seemed to grow in height in relation to her power.Ms. Lara’s broader popularity eventually began to wane in part because of her rejection of the Holy Trinity, views that prompted a Christian publisher to cancel her upcoming book and others to stop promoting her weight loss program.“Gwen’s whole control is using misogyny against other women,” Ms. Cappello said, adding that Ms. Lara was one of the few female religious leaders in the evangelical Christian movement but had an entirely male leadership team. Ms. Lara also demanded that her congregants adhere to traditional familial gender roles in order to maintain their standing in the church.Among the allegations raised in “The Way Down” are accusations that individuals unable to lose weight were marginalized by the church community and that members were encouraged by Remnant leadership to stop taking prescribed medication including birth control and psychiatric drugs.Now the filmmakers are scrambling to tell a more comprehensive story of the church, its founding and its impact on Brentwood.“It was never about not continuing,” said Ms. Zenovich, who is particularly compelled by the stories of those who left the church. “It’s about shifting how we were going to tell the story.” More