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    ‘Feud: Capote vs. the Swans’ Review: Cold Blooded

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    In FX’s series about Truman Capote’s downfall, there’s nothing waiting at the rainbow’s end.“Feud: Capote vs. the Swans,” which premieres Wednesday on FX (streaming on Hulu), is something that its protagonist could not abide: a bore.The second season of the anthology series “Feud” stretches the story of Truman Capote’s falling out with the “swans” of New York society across eight episodes and more than seven hours. Much of the action takes place between the publication of the thinly fictionalized story “La Côte Basque, 1965” in November 1975 — in which Capote spills the tea about the misbehavior of many of his rich acquaintances — and the death in July 1978 of Babe Paley, one of the socialites who dropped him after the piece came out. Flashbacks touch on his grim childhood, his ascent to fame in the 1960s with the revolutionary “In Cold Blood” and his happy days as a dinner-party darling; other scenes cover his late 1970s to early 1980s spiral into alcoholism and addiction, leading to his death of liver disease in 1984.This could be the framework for gossipy, sexy, stylish, tragic entertainment, but that does not appear to be what the show’s creators — who include the writer Jon Robin Baitz; Gus Van Sant, who directed six episodes; and the executive producer Ryan Murphy — had in mind. They have gone instead for chilly, moralistic and cautionary. “Capote vs. the Swans” feels as forbidding and vindictive as the society wives who pass judgment on Capote.An element in that affect is the fashionably fractured approach the show takes to its storytelling. The action jumps back and forth relentlessly in time. One result is that it can take a few beats, even when there are titles with the years, to figure out whether what we are seeing is happening before or after the pivotal publication of “La Côte Basque, 1965.”Another, more important result is that the themes the show puts forth — the discrimination and condescension Capote faces as a gay man, even from those who champion him; the rigid patriarchy that oppresses the swans despite (or because of) their social standing; and the rapid changes in the culture that perplex all of them — are not elaborated on in a dramatic way. Ideas don’t develop — they agglomerate in a repetitive, undifferentiated jumble, and the power they might have drains away. The show is peculiarly lacking in dramatic tension (though not in melodramatic flourishes); it’s eight episodes of Capote circling the drain, bobbing higher or lower depending on the time frame.Chloë Sevigny as C.Z. Guest, one of the socialites Capote betrayed with his 1975 story in Esquire.FXWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      The Women of ‘Feud: Capote vs. the Swans’ Are Birds of a Feather

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      Famous women play the famous women in Ryan Murphy’s new period drama. In a group interview, they discuss the series and the burdens of public life.The first season of Ryan Murphy’s “Feud” aired in 2017. A juicy survey of the bitter rivalry between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, the co-stars of “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?,” the show earned 18 Emmy nominations, winning two. A second season, based on Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s troubled marriage, was developed then scrapped, mostly because Murphy felt that he could never outdo “The Crown.” Another iteration, centered on William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal, also fell apart. Murphy and his producers toyed with a half dozen other ideas, though never for very long.“It’s very easy to do a show where people are just nasty to each other,” Murphy said in a an interview earlier this month. “But feuds are never about hate. They’re about love.”Then Murphy read “Capote’s Women,” by Laurence Leamer, a gossipy, trenchant study of the novelist Truman Capote and the society women he befriended and later betrayed. Murphy had long been fascinated by Capote. He was equally entranced by the women Capote referred to as his Swans, self-created creatures whom he admired for their style, wealth and savoir faire. Their gift, as Capote wrote in his late collection “Portraits and Observations,” was to offer “the imaginary portrait precisely projected.”Tom Hollander plays Capote, whose betrayal of Babe Paley (Watts) was perhaps the most cutting.FX“It was a full-time job,” Moore said of the roles performed by the real-life women she and her co-stars play in “Feud.” “There were no casual sweatpants.”FXLeamer’s tale had luxury, treachery, artistry and spite. It had love, too, “the very fragile, wonderful relationships that exist many times between gay men and straight women,” Murphy said. With a script by Jon Robin Baitz and direction by Gus Van Sant, the story became “Feud: Capote vs. The Swans,” an eight-episode series that premieres on FX on Wednesday. (Episodes will stream on Hulu the day after they air.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Marquee Writers Push for Negotiations, but Their Clout May Not Matter

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      Some showrunners, eager for progress in the Hollywood strike, want the Writers Guild of America to meet with studios. How much sway they still have is in question.With the Hollywood writers’ strike stretching into its fifth month and the financial toll on people across the entertainment industry becoming increasingly grim, A-list showrunners have grown impatient.Some have called union leaders to ask pointed questions about the stalled talks. Why can’t you get in a negotiating room with studio representatives and not come out until you have a deal? Isn’t it time to bring in mediators? Others have pushed for a sit-down to hear their union’s strategy for resolving the strike. Union officials are scheduled to meet with Kenya Barris (“black-ish”), Noah Hawley (“Fargo”), Dan Fogelman (“This Is Us”) and other restless showrunners in the coming days. Whether marquee writers have enough juice to help end the dispute — as they did during the 2007-8 screenwriters’ strike — is an open question, however. The power dynamic has changed inside the union since then, longtime Hollywood observers say, and showrunners no longer hold the same sway.“You’ve seen a weakening of showrunner influence and a resurrection of rank-and-file writer influence,” said Stephen Galloway, the dean of Chapman University’s film school.The Writers Guild of America, which represents more than 11,000 television and film writers, and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains for studios, have not held talks for three weeks. Last month, studios sweetened their offer — and then, in an unusual move, publicly disclosed the details, hoping rank-and-file guild members would be satisfied and pressure their leaders to make a deal.“This was the companies’ plan from the beginning — not to bargain, but to jam us,” guild leaders said shortly afterward. “It is their only strategy — to bet that we will turn on each other.”Union leaders have since insisted that the onus is on studios to keep improving their offer. The studios have rejected that demand, but it is a position supported by many Writers Guild members, including numerous showrunners. On Tuesday in Los Angeles, writers like Alexi Hawley (“The Rookie”) and Scott Gimple (“The Walking Dead”) helped stage a well-attended “showrunner solidarity day” picket at Fox Studios.“I don’t think anybody is really second-guessing and looking for ways to cause some disruption in the leadership of the guild,” Steve Levitan, whose credits include “Just Shoot Me!” and “Modern Family,” told a reporter for an entertainment trade publication at the event. “We’re just always trying to see if there are any ways anybody can help.”Behind the scenes, however, frustration among elite Writers Guild members has been mounting.Ryan Murphy, the writer-producer behind television hits like “American Horror Story” and “9-1-1,” recently had a heated conversation about the strike with Chris Keyser, a senior Writers Guild official, according to two people close to Mr. Murphy, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe a private discussion. Mr. Murphy set up a financial assistance fund for idled workers on his shows and committed $500,000 as a starting amount. Within days, he had $10 million in requests, the people said.Tyler Perry was among the show creators planning to meet with guild leaders.A spokesman for the Writers Guild declined to comment.At 135 days, the strike is one of the longest in the history of the Writers Guild. (The longest was 153 days in 1988.) The union has called this moment “existential,” arguing that the streaming era has deteriorated its members’ working conditions and compensation levels. Studios have defended their proposal as offering the highest wage increase to writers in more than three decades, while also offering “landmark protections” against artificial intelligence.Studios have also signaled a willingness to negotiate with the guild on the sticky matter of staffing minimums in television writers’ rooms. (The studio alliance declined to comment for this article.)In July, tens of thousands of actors represented by SAG-AFTRA joined writers on picket lines, the first time both unions have been on strike at the same time since the 1960s.The result has been a near-complete shutdown in Hollywood production. Writers and actors have lost income, of course. But the collateral damage is also mounting, with crew members and support staff beginning to feel a severe financial squeeze. Hollywood workers have taken $45 million in hardship withdrawals from the Motion Picture Industry Pension Plan since Sept. 1, according to a document compiled by plan administrators that was viewed by The New York Times. Workers have been allowed to pull $20,000 each from their retirement funds for the time being.Showrunners like Mr. Murphy and Mr. Fogelman employ thousands of crew members across their productions, putting them in the position of being besieged by people who ask when they can get back to work and having no answers.Conventional wisdom in Hollywood held that the strikes would be resolved by Labor Day. Now time is running out to salvage the year, given the time it takes to reassemble casts and crews, a complex process complicated by the coming holidays. Preproduction (before cameras roll) for new shows can take up to 12 weeks, with movies taking roughly 16 weeks. Even if the Writers Guild and studios can come to an agreement in the coming weeks, studios need to engage with the actors’ union, and no talks in that dispute have been scheduled, either.Showrunners have gotten more involved as studios have suspended first-look deals worth millions of dollars. Last week, Warner Bros. suspended deals with J.J. Abrams, Mindy Kaling, Greg Berlanti and Bill Lawrence.Yet despite the real implications that this strike is having on all ranks of the business, no guild member wants to be seen as agitating against the union’s leadership. Prominent showrunners are concerned about having their names in public and are instead trying to push things forward without looking like elites who aren’t in alignment with guild leaders. The appearance of dissension in the ranks scuttled a meeting this week between showrunners and Writers Guild officials, with both groups subsequently bickering over who canceled on whom.As the 100-day writers’ strike in 2007 wore on, a group of showrunners pushed union leadership to settle with the studios. But several entertainment executives said showrunners were more of a power center within the Writers Guild 15 years ago. For one thing, there were just a few dozen of them.In recent years, as the showrunner pool has expanded to hundreds, some Hollywood observers have argued that their influence within the union has waned. The limits of their power were on display four years ago in a failed attempt to wield influence to end another Hollywood stalemate.In 2019, Writers Guild leaders told thousands of screenwriters to fire their talent agents over what they described as significant conflicts of interest. As months passed, with the agency standoff showing no signs of resolution, some marquee writers went public with objections over the union’s strategy. They said the dispute with the agencies was a worthy one, but they objected to a seeming lack of urgency in returning to negotiating.One of the opposing writers, Phyllis Nagy, who was nominated for an Oscar in 2016 for her “Carol” screenplay, ran for president of the Writers Guild’s West Coast branch. She was vying to unseat David Goodman (“Family Guy”), who was standing for re-election. A who’s who of showrunners and writers — including Mr. Murphy, Mr. Berlanti, Shonda Rhimes and Ava DuVernay — endorsed Ms. Nagy.But Mr. Goodman won re-election with a strong majority. He is currently a chair of the Writers Guild’s committee squaring off against studios for a new contract.In the fight with agencies, the Writers Guild held firm for nearly two years. Many people in Hollywood have credited that lengthy dispute — ostensibly won by the Writers Guild — as galvanizing union leaders in the current standoff with studios. More

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      Producer Ryan Murphy Is Expected to Move to Disney

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      Mr. Murphy, the force behind hits like “American Horror Story” and “The Watcher,” is coming to the end of his $300 million Netflix deal.Ryan Murphy, the television megaproducer behind hits like “American Horror Story” and “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” is poised to move his operation to the Walt Disney Company, five years after he stunned Hollywood by decamping to Netflix for a $300 million deal.The contract talks with Disney are not finished, according to three people briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private negotiations. No deal is expected to be completed until after the screenwriters’ strike in Hollywood is resolved, one of the people said. (Unionized film and television writers have been on strike since May 1.)But the talks between Mr. Murphy and Disney are advanced, the people said. Mr. Murphy’s contract with Netflix expires at the end of the month. Renewal talks with Netflix never got off the ground.Representatives for Mr. Murphy, Disney and Netflix either declined to comment or did not return calls. Bloomberg reported Mr. Murphy’s likely move to Disney earlier on Tuesday.A deal with Disney would formally reunite Mr. Murphy with executives he worked closely with for more than a decade. Disney owns the FX cable channel, which is home to his “American Horror Story” franchise, which started in 2011. (The series also runs on Hulu, which Disney controls.) ABC, the Disney-owned broadcast network, recently bought the rights to “9-1-1,” a drama that Mr. Murphy created for Fox in 2018.When Mr. Murphy signed his Netflix deal, in February 2018, it was just six months after another star producer, Shonda Rhimes, had signed her own nine-figure contract with the streaming company. The back-to-back signings were an emphatic statement by Netflix that it was in the business of paying any price for big-name writers. In the process, it set off a Hollywood arms race (which, amid broader concerns about the streaming business and the writers’ strike, has mostly cooled off).Mr. Murphy’s tenure at Netflix got off to a bumpy start. Misfires included “The Politician” and “Hollywood.” It was not until last September that Mr. Murphy served up bona fide hits in “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” and “The Watcher.” Both series are among the 10 most-watched Netflix originals ever, according to the streaming service.Mr. Murphy, who continued making shows for Disney even though he was under contract with Netflix — new seasons of “9-1-1” and “American Crime Story” continued apace — would likewise continue to make shows for Netflix after a move to Disney. The next edition of “Monster” will focus on Erik and Lyle Menéndez, the brothers serving life sentences for killing their wealthy parents in 1989, and “The Watcher” has been renewed for another season. More

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      Jeffrey Dahmer Series on Netflix Revisits a Painful Past

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      A Netflix series about the infamous Milwaukee serial killer aims to tell the gruesome story through the experience of his victims. Those who remember them say that attempt failed.For years, Eric Wynn was the only Black drag queen at Club 219 in Milwaukee. He performed as Erica Stevens, singing Whitney Houston, Grace Jones and Tina Turner for adoring fans, eventually earning the title of Miss Gay Wisconsin in 1986 and 1987.“I had this group of Black kids who came in because they were represented,” Wynn, now 58, said of his time at the club in the late 1980s and early ’90s. “I saw them and let them know I saw them, because they finally had representation onstage.”Among them were Eddie Smith, who was known as “the Sheikh” because he often wore a head scarf, and Anthony Hughes, who was deaf. Hughes was “my absolute favorite fan” and blushed when Wynn winked at him from stage. In return, Hughes taught him the ABCs of sign language.Eric Wynn performing as Grace Jones at Club 219.Eric Wynn“He would sit there laughing at me when I was trying to learn sign language with my big, old fake nails on,” Wynn recalled, laughing.But then, Wynn said, the group of young Black men began to thin out.“They were there and then all of the sudden there were less of them,” he said.Smith and Hughes were two of the 17 young men Jeffrey Dahmer killed, dismembered and cannibalized in a serial murder spree that largely targeted the gay community in Milwaukee between 1978 and 1991. Dahmer was a frequent customer at Club 219. He was sentenced to 15 consecutive life terms in prison but was killed in prison in 1994.A performance at Club 219.Wisconsin L.G.B.T.Q. ProjectThe view of the stage inside of Club 219.Wisconsin L.G.B.T.Q. ProjectExterior of the former location of Club 219.Wisconsin L.G.B.T.Q. ProjectDahmer’s life has the been the subject of several documentaries and books, but none have received the attention or criticism showered on Netflix’s “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” which dramatizes the killing spree in a 10-part series created by Ryan Murphy. It stars Evan Peters as Dahmer and Niecy Nash as a neighbor who repeatedly tried to warn the police, and aims to explore Dahmer’s gruesome tale through the stories of his victims.For many critics, that attempt failed immediately when Netflix labeled the series under its L.G.B.T.Q. vertical when it premiered last month. The label was removed after pushback on Twitter. Wynn and families of the victims questioned the need to dramatize and humanize a serial killer at all.“It couldn’t be more wrong, more ill timed, and it’s a media grab,” Wynn said, adding that he was “disappointed” in Murphy. “I thought he was better than that.”Murphy, who rose to fame with the high school comedy show “Glee,” has explored true crime before. His mini-series “American Crime Story” tackled the assassination of Gianni Versace, the O.J. Simpson trial and President Bill Clinton’s impeachment. But it was Murphy’s pivot from “The Normal Heart,” based on a play written by the AIDS activist Larry Kramer, and “Pose,” about New York City’s 1980s ballroom scene, to “Monster” that stopped Wynn in his tracks.Evan Peters as Jeffrey Dahmer inside of the reimagined Club 219.NetflixOf “Pose,” Wynn said, “I was so impressed, we finally had representation that we were involved in.” He added, “It was such a great homage to all of us. And then he turns around and does this, somebody who is actually attacking the Black gay community.”Instead of focusing on the victims, Wynn said, “Monster” focuses on Dahmer. The Netflix label of an L.G.B.T.Q. film and the timing right before Halloween did not help either, Wynn said.Netflix did not return a request for comment.In an essay for Insider, Rita Isbell, whose brother Errol Lindsey was murdered by Dahmer, described watching a portrayal of her victim’s statement at Dahmer’s trial in the Netflix series and “reliving it all over again.”“It brought back all the emotions I was feeling back then,” she wrote. “I was never contacted about the show. I feel like Netflix should’ve asked if we mind or how we felt about making it. They didn’t ask me anything. They just did it.”Eric Perry, who said he was a relative of the Isbells, wrote that the series was “retraumatizing over and over again, and for what?”Scott Gunkel, 62, worked at Club 219 as a bartender when Dahmer was a customer. Gunkel watched the first two episodes of “Monster” but could not continue. He said he and his friends “don’t want to relive it.”“The first ones really didn’t have any context of the victims, I was taken aback,” he said of the episodes, adding that the bar scenes did not accurately portray the racial mix of the city’s gay bars at the time. It was largely white, not Black, as the show depicts.Gunkel also remembered Hughes, the deaf man, who he said would come into the bar and wait for it to to get busy. Hughes was one of the few victims to receive a full episode dedicated to his story.“He’d get there early and have a couple sodas and write me notes to keep the conversation going,” Gunkel recalled. “He disappeared, and I didn’t think much of it at the time.”Tony Hughes used to frequent Club 219.Rodney Burford as Tony Hughes in “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.”Friends and family embrace Shirley Hughes, center, mother of Tony Hughes, after the verdict.Richard Wood -USA TODAY NETWORKThat’s in part because the Dahmer years also coincided with the AIDS epidemic. There are opaque references to the crisis in the Netflix show, including hesitation by the police to help the victims and a bath house scene in which condom use is discussed. But Gunkel said customers vanishing was not uncommon.“We had this saying in the bars — if somebody was not there anymore, either he had AIDS or he got married,” Gunkel recalled.The AIDS epidemic combined with the transient lifestyle of many gay men in Milwaukee and “institutional homophobia and racism targeting the community” provided a perfect cover for Dahmer, said Michail Takach, a curator for the Wisconsin L.G.B.T.Q. History Project. Takach was 18 when Dahmer was arrested.“People were always looking for something new and people always disappeared,” Takach, now 50, said. “This was different, because it just got worse and worse.”Missing person posters climbed “like a tree in Club 219 until they reached the ceiling,” he said.The lot in Milwaukee where Jeffrey Dahmer’s apartment building stood before it was razed in 1992.Ebony Cox / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORKThe show has brought back those memories, Takach said, and has also surfaced people claiming to be associated with the Dahmer years who were not.“This is the invisible cost of the Dahmer resurgence,” he said, “this dreadful mythology, this unexplainable need to attach to someone else’s horror.”Nathaniel Brennan, an adjunct professor of cinema studies at New York University who is teaching a course on true crime this semester, said that it “is by nature an exploitative genre.”Even with the best intentions, he said, “the victims become the pawn or a game or a symbol.”Contemporary true crime often falls victim to an unresolvable tension, Brennan said. “We can’t tolerate forgetting it, but the representation of it will never be perfect,” he said. “That balance has become more apparent in the past 25 years.”Criminals are often portrayed with tragic backgrounds, he said. “There’s an idea that if society had done more, it could have been avoided.”Much of “Monster” is dedicated to Dahmer’s origins, including a suggestion that a hernia operation at the age of 4 or his mother’s postpartum mental health issues may have impacted his mental development.Wynn, who lives in San Francisco now, said he did not plan to watch the series and said Murphy owed an apology to the families of the victims and the city of Milwaukee. “That’s a scar on the city,” he said.A community vigil for the victims of Jeffrey Dahmer in 1991.Tom Lynn-USA TODAY NETWORK Before the series premiered, he had not spoken about the Dahmer years in a long time. But he still thinks about Hughes regularly when he practices his sign language.“I did it this morning,” he said. “I still do it so I don’t forget.”Sheelagh McNeill More

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      Lea Michele to Star in ‘Funny Girl’ After Beanie Feldstein’s Departure

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      The former “Glee” star will share the stage with Tovah Feldshuh, who will replace Jane Lynch as Fanny Brice’s mother, starting Sept. 6.The actress Lea Michele will take over as Fanny Brice in the Broadway revival of “Funny Girl” in early September, the show said Monday, after Beanie Feldstein’s abrupt announcement that she would be leaving the role earlier than expected.Feldstein wrote in an Instagram post on Sunday night that her “dream” run as Brice, a spunky stage performer who shoots to stardom with the Ziegfeld Follies, would end on July 31, instead of the previously announced date of Sept. 25. Without elaborating, Feldstein, whose performance in the role received tepid reviews, wrote that she would leave the musical early because the production had “decided to take the show in a different direction.”The show quickly signaled that it had her successor waiting in the wings, and on Monday, it was announced that Michele — who starred in the original Broadway production of “Spring Awakening” and is best known for her central role on the television show “Glee” — would be debuting in the role on Sept. 6.Until then, the actress Julie Benko, who has been playing Brice as Feldstein’s understudy, will step in. Under a new arrangement, Benko will continue to perform in the role once a week, on Thursdays, after Michele takes over.In an Instagram post after the news was announced, Michele wrote: “A dream come true is an understatement. I’m so incredibly honored to join this amazing cast and production and return to the stage playing Fanny Brice on Broadway.”The show also announced that the actress Tovah Feldshuh, who starred in the original Broadway production of “Yentl,” will be taking over the role of Brice’s doting mother, who is currently being played by Jane Lynch. The show had previously announced that Lynch would be leaving after Sept. 25, but the new announcement moved her departure a few weeks earlier. That timetable means that Michele and Lynch, who were co-stars on “Glee,” will not be performing together.Tovah Feldshuh will replace Jane Lynch in the role of Brice’s doting mother in “Funny Girl.”Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesAfter Barbra Streisand originated the role of Brice in the original 1964 production, the show evaded a Broadway revival for decades, partly because comparisons with Streisand’s star-making performance seemed hard to escape.It has been no secret that Michele — who opened each chapter of her 2014 memoir, “Brunette Ambition,” with a Streisand or Brice quote — had interest in the role. A central plotline of her character on “Glee,” a cutthroat captain of the high school glee club on which the show is based, involves playing Brice, giving Michele the chance to perform songs like “People” and “I’m the Greatest Star” during the series.The “Glee” co-creator Ryan Murphy had gotten the rights to “Funny Girl,” thinking that Michele’s character would audition for the role on the TV series and then, perhaps, Michele would star in the show in real life. In a 2017 appearance on Andy Cohen’s talk show, Michele said they had been considering collaborating on a Broadway production after the end of “Glee,” but it felt too soon because she had just performed many of the songs on the TV show.“But I feel really ready to do it now,” she said on the show, “so maybe we can do it soon.”That dream did not come to fruition — until now.Michele was 8 years old when she made her Broadway debut as Young Cosette in “Les Misérables,” but spent more than a decade focused primarily on television. Michele sang at last month’s Tony Awards during a reunion performance with other original cast members of “Spring Awakening.”In 2020 the meal-kit company HelloFresh terminated its partnership with Michele after a former “Glee” castmate, Samantha Marie Ware, who is Black, tweeted that Michele had been responsible for “traumatic microaggressions” toward her. Michele released an apologetic statement on Instagram saying she did not recall making a specific comment that Ware wrote about, but adding that she had been reflecting on her past behavior. “Whether it was my privileged position and perspective that caused me to be perceived as insensitive or inappropriate at times or whether it was just my immaturity and me just being unnecessarily difficult, I apologize for my behavior and for any pain which I have caused,” she wrote.The current production of “Funny Girl,” which opened in April at the August Wilson Theater, has had strong ticket sales, grossing an average of about $1.2 million each week during the 14 full weeks since it started performances. The show’s only nomination at last month’s Tony Awards was for Jared Grimes’s role as Brice’s friend, Eddie Ryan, a tap-dance extraordinaire who aids Brice’s rise in show business.Grimes will continue in his role, as will Ramin Karimloo, who plays Brice’s suave love interest, Nick Arnstein. More

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      Why 'American Crime Story: Impeachment' Won't Stream Until Next Year

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      There was a lot of advance hype for the FX series “American Crime Story: Impeachment.” But it won’t be available on any major streaming platform for another 10 months, and that’s a problem in 2021.It was one of the most dramatic episodes of the season. Monica Lewinsky, the heroine of “American Crime Story: Impeachment,” strikes an immunity deal with federal prosecutors, and President Bill Clinton admits to having had an affair to a grand jury and the nation as a whole. The episode also brought Hillary Clinton, portrayed by Edie Falco, to center stage for the first time.The only thing missing was a big viewing audience.“American Crime Story: Impeachment,” a series that attracted lots of media coverage before its September premiere, airs on the FX cable network Tuesdays at 10 p.m. Last week’s episode ranked 15th in the ratings for cable shows that day, tied with ESPN’s “Around the Horn” and MTV’s “Teen Mom.”Produced by Ryan Murphy, “American Crime Story: Impeachment” has a lot going for it, including an A-list cast (Clive Owen, Sarah Paulson, Beanie Feldstein, Ms. Falco) and the sumptuous production touches that Mr. Murphy’s fans have come to expect of his shows.Edie Falco as Hillary Clinton on the FX show “American Crime Story: Impeachment.” An A-list cast has not meant big ratings.Kurt Iswarienko/FX The last two seasons of the anthology series, which tackles a new subject each time out, won Emmys for best limited series. And although Variety criticized the current installment as an “overwrought rehash,” the reviews overall were “generally favorable,” according to the website Metacritic.So why hasn’t the show landed with viewers in a big way? Why isn’t it a regular part of Twitter’s top trending topics? The answer lies in the fact that “American Crime Story: Impeachment” is not available on any major streaming platform and won’t be for another 10 months.The same was true for the initial rollouts of the previous seasons. But millions of viewers have cut the cord since then, ditching cable for some combination of Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, AppleTV+ and other services.Fans of “American Crime Story: Impeachment” who miss an episode can still stream it, but only if they are armed with their cable-subscription user names and passwords. And in 2021, a show that’s not easy to stream risks becoming almost invisible.The reason for its absence from the big streamers has to do with a deal worked out in 2016 by FX’s parent at the time, 21st Century Fox. For an undisclosed sum, the company sold the streaming rights to all editions of “American Crime Story” to Netflix. Both sides agreed that the series would be available exclusively on FX for roughly a year. From then on, Netflix would make it available to its subscribers.The deal seemed reasonable to 21st Century Fox in 2016. Back then, cable was still a robust business, and viewers were still in the habit of watching a program at a certain time on a certain night of the week.The first season of “American Crime Story,” about the O.J. Simpson case, premiered early in 2016 and was a big hit, although it was not available on any major streaming platform. At the time, video-on-demand technology was still emerging, and Netflix had 80 million subscribers, meaning it had less of a reach than FX, which was then available in 92 million households.“The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story” with Cuba Gooding, Jr. as O.J. Simpson, came out in 2016, when FX had reached more households than Netflix.Ray Mickshaw/FXThe pandemic accelerated the trend of viewers dropping cable subscriptions in favor of the watch-when-you-want experience of streaming. Netflix now has 213 million subscribers, and FX is available in 76 million homes.Viewers accustomed to the largely commercial-free experience of streaming would have had a flashback to the days of traditional TV while watching the most recent episode of “American Crime Story: Impeachment” on Tuesday night. The roughly 80-minute show included five commercial breaks that took up 18 minutes and 25 seconds. A sixth commercial break, three minutes long, came between the final scene and the preview of the next week’s episode.Scripted cable shows are still very much a part of the cultural conversation — as long as they’re streaming. All of HBO’s scripted shows, a lineup that includes “Succession,” “White Lotus” and “Mare of Easttown,” appear weekly on the HBO channel itself while also streaming on HBO Max. HBO said that digital viewing for the third season premiere of “Succession” was “up 214 percent from last season’s premiere,” which came out in 2019.FX sends most of its new series to a streaming portal, FX on Hulu, which like FX itself, is now owned by the Walt Disney Company. Because of the 2016 deal, “American Crime Story: Impeachment” is not among the shows that go to Hulu.Before the show’s premiere, John Landgraf, FX’s chairman, conceded that the world had changed substantially in the years since the Netflix deal, telling The Hollywood Reporter he could “not remember the last time that there was a really water-cooler show that was scripted on a linear cable channel.”“I just don’t know whether the pipes are still there to galvanize people’s attention,” he continued. “But we’re going to find out.”Mr. Landgraf and FX declined to comment for this article.Despite the lack of buzz, “American Crime Story: Impeachment” still gets weekly write-ups in Vanity Fair and Vulture. The series also has the eighth highest ratings of any scripted show on cable this year. The 2016 installment, about O.J. Simpson, ranked fifth, and the 2018 version, centered on the murder of the fashion mogul Gianni Versace, was also eighth.The audience figures tell a different story, though. “American Crime Story: Impeachment” draws an average audience of 571,000 viewers among adults under the age of 50, according to Nielsen’s delayed viewing data. “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” had more than double that audience, with 1.2 million, and the O.J. Simpson season had an average of 3.9 million viewers.By the time of “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story,” with Edgar Ramirez as Gianni Versace, left, and Penelope Cruz as Donatella Versace, cable was losing viewers to streaming.Ray Mickshaw/FX, via Associated PressIn 2016, the No. 1 rated scripted cable series, AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” averaged 11.3 million viewers among adults under the age of 50, according to Nielsen’s delayed viewing data. By 2018, “The Walking Dead” viewership average had fallen to 5.3 million. This year its adult audience average is 1.3 million — and it still ranks No. 1.Why did 21st Century Fox executives think so highly of the arrangement they had struck with Netflix deal five years ago? At the time, Mr. Landgraf called it a “phenomenal deal from a financial standpoint.” James Murdoch, then 21st Century Fox’s chief executive, said it was “a great deal for the company and for shareholders.”Never mind that many television executives, even then, were already concerned that the sales of their back libraries to Netflix might backfire. The more Netflix had to offer its subscribers, the easier it was for it to attract new subscribers. That, in turn, enabled it to spend billions on original series and big-time talent.In 2018, Netflix signed one of the most successful producers in cable — Mr. Murphy — to a contract worth $300 million. Under the deal’s terms, he was allowed to keep making the series he had already started at FX and Fox. After that, his new shows would belong to Netflix.FX will broadcast the ninth episode of “American Crime Story: Impeachment” on Tuesday and the season finale Nov. 9. More

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      ‘Impeachment’ Focuses on the Women Behind Clinton’s Scandals

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      Ryan Murphy’s anthology series “American Crime Story” debuted in 2016 with “The People v. O.J. Simpson.” A second installment, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” arrived two years later. In these initial series, which won 16 Emmy Awards between them, the crimes at issue were obvious: the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman; the killing of Versace.In “Impeachment: American Crime Story,” which premieres Sept. 7 on FX, the offenses are more ambiguous.Set in the 1990s, the 10-episode series revisits the miasma of scandal and innuendo that shrouded the Clinton White House: Paula Jones’s sexual harassment lawsuit against President Bill Clinton; Clinton’s sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky; Lewinsky’s friendship with Linda Tripp; and the tangle of lies, half-truths and illicit recordings that were ultimately detailed in the Starr Report, the infamous and lurid document prepared by the independent counsel Kenneth Starr. The report led the House of Representatives, in 1998, to impeach President Clinton on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. The Senate, declining to remove him from office, found him not guilty.But those high crimes and misdemeanors didn’t especially interest the creators of “Impeachment.”Tina Thorpe/FX“To me, the crime is that Monica, Linda and Paula had no control over how they were perceived,” said Sarah Burgess, an executive producer who wrote most of the episodes. Burgess, a playwright, studied the media coverage of these women: the late-night punch lines, the drive-time banter, the scathing opinion columns. “It was unbelievable, the hate,” she said.Burgess was speaking on a recent Monday afternoon from the gleaming reading room in the cellar of the Whitby Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. Murphy joined her, alongside the executive producers Brad Simpson and Alexis Martin Woodall and four of the actresses in the series: Annaleigh Ashford (Jones), Edie Falco (Hillary Clinton) Beanie Feldstein (Lewinsky) and Sarah Paulson (Tripp). Lewinsky, a producer on “Impeachment,” was not present. (No one else involved in the administration or its scandals worked on the show. Tripp died in 2020.)The series delves into the lives of Lewinsky, Tripp and Jones — and, to a lesser extent, Hillary Clinton. Its aim is not necessarily rehabilitative, but the creators and actors wanted to understand the ambitions, fears and desires that motivated these women.“We all know what happened,” Murphy said. “But we don’t know how it happened.”In a round-table interview, the cast and creatives discussed how the Clinton era’s swirl of partisan politics and fungible notions of truth resonates today, as well as why these scandals still captivate us, how the media came for these women and whether we would treat them any better now.“I just hope when people watch this, they still feel implicated,” Simpson said. “We’re not that distant from it — this is a piece of history, but we are still living it.”These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Monica Lewinsky, seen here hugging President Clinton in 1996, Beanie FeldsteinAPTV, via Associated PressWhat do you remember about living through these scandals?ANNALEIGH ASHFORD I remember this era from a late-night comedy perspective. It was really dark and really chauvinistic, terrible to the women involved, so grossly sexual and inappropriate. And it was funny. We all clapped.RYAN MURPHY Monica and Linda and Paula — I remember just feeling that their lives were taken away from them. I felt very sympathetic, because I was picked on in high school, I guess. Just seeing them attacked and constantly made fun of — it was a national sport — I felt bad for them. And I continue to feel bad for them. When I ran into Monica at a party, we had announced that we were doing this. She came up, and I said, “I want you to be a part of this.”Why does this story still fascinate us?SARAH BURGESS The Starr Report is a part of that; it’s still shocking how explicit it is. And then Monica, I can’t think of someone else who has had that seething hatred that she experienced, that delight in taking her apart.BRAD SIMPSON The Clintons haven’t left us. We all remember the moment where Donald Trump brought the women who made accusations against Bill Clinton to the debates. It still haunts the culture.ALEXIS MARTIN WOODALL But the end of the day, it’s still a conversation about the women. Even in 2021, we’re still talking about Monica and Linda and Hillary. Bill’s not really part of that conversation.“I think more people would come to Monica’s defense today,” said Ryan Murphy, bottom left, with, clockwise, Sarah Burgess, Brad Simpson and Alexis Martin Woodall.Celeste Sloman for The New York TimesIn some ways, the impeachment trial prefigured today’s partisan politics. The left argued that Bill Clinton was the victim of a vast right-wing conspiracy. The right held that they had a duty to investigate a fundamentally dishonest leader. How does the series grapple with these two opposing narratives?MURPHY We present both points of view. That’s the interesting thing about the show, it lives in a gray world.SIMPSON Both things can be true. What we’re interested in, really, is flawed individuals intersecting with these systems of power, especially these systems of male power.Recently we seem to be re-examining the ways we treated women at the center of scandals in the ’90s and ’00s — Tonya Harding, Britney Spears. Is the series participating in that reassessment?BURGESS Yes, of course. I think about that a lot. There was no constituency for Monica. There was no one on her side. There was a faint heartbeat of, like, three feminists, somewhere. To watch Beanie play her and walk in her shoes and hopefully put us in a point of view to understand how young she was, I hope that does reorient how people think about her. But do you think it would be any different now?MURPHY If you look at the Britney Spears case, I think more people would come to Monica’s defense today.SARAH PAULSON I think there would be more defenders. But there would be an equal measure coming down on her. We have so many platforms from which to do that now.MARTIN WOODALL People I know, closely, when I talk about the show, they still make jokes. And I’m like, “Hey, stop it with the jokes.”“I really care about her as a character and as a person,” Beanie Feldstein said of Monica Lewinsky.Celeste Sloman for The New York Times“I’m not trying to humanize her,” Sarah Paulson said of playing Linda Tripp.Celeste Sloman for The New York Times“How did this woman make sense of any of this?” Edie Falco said about Hillary Clinton.Celeste Sloman for The New York Times“There’s a real childlike quality,” Annaleigh Ashford said of playing Paula Jones.Celeste Sloman for The New York TimesClinton’s popularity soared. Lewinsky became a punchline. Why did we hate this woman so much?ASHFORD Some of it has to do with how uncomfortable people are with sex. People can’t handle not making a joke about it.PAULSON I wonder if it’s what we’re unwilling to look at in ourselves, in terms of this hatred toward Monica. I would have gone into that back room [Bill Clinton’s Oval Office study, where he and Lewinsky engaged in sexual activity], without question.MURPHY I would have done it, too.PAULSON It’s just the whole patriarchal story of accepting his desire, and it being celebrated and understood. And she’s really punished for giving in to her own desire. There is something about vilifying that when it comes from a woman.BEANIE FELDSTEIN To Monica’s credit, even in the Barbara Walters interview, she doesn’t shy away. She doesn’t apologize. She just states the fact. She holds her ground in saying it was mutual. Now we obviously see there was a deep imbalance of power and a very nuanced situation. But why should she be shamed for that, when he, the President of the United States, was never shamed for that? I’m getting a little emotional because I love her so much — I really care about her as a character and as a person. I think it’s just devastating. And it doesn’t get less devastating the more we talk about it. I hope that the show undoes some of the pain.We don’t see the sex that the Starr Report details. We do see the famous thong reveal —SIMPSON That thong moment [when Lewinsky lifted her jacket so that President Clinton could see the waistband of her underwear] wasn’t in the original script. Monica asked for us to put it in.BURGESS She said, “Everyone knows I did this. And I know you’re trying to protect me, but it needs to be in the show.”But why don’t you show the sex?MURPHY The behavior that led to the act was more important than the act. We spent a lot of time asking these questions, and also asking Monica, “What do you think and what do you want?”What did she want? What was her involvement in the show?MURPHY We would go through every page of a script. Sometimes she would have a lot of comments, sometimes nothing. I found the process fascinating and necessary. She never wanted the easy choice. She always wanted it more complicated, more nuanced.The Starr Report led the House of Representatives to impeach President Clinton, here in 1998 with Hillary Clinton, but the Senate found him not guilty.Win McNamee/ReutersWhat did you want to make clear about her relationship with Bill Clinton?FELDSTEIN Monica, at that moment, was a bundle of contradictions. She was naïve yet savvy, sensual yet innocent. That’s been the wonderful struggle, playing both sides. Like any 22-year-old, she thought she knew the world. She had to learn the world. This was her learning.SIMPSON The Hillary point of view is complicated, too.BURGESS It was and still is. There’s a mystery at the center of that story, which is what happens when [Bill and Hillary Clinton] are alone together in a room. There’s no Tripp tape for that.EDIE FALCO It is something that everybody I know has wondered about: What the hell was that like, when she found out? How did this woman make sense of any of this? There was nothing she could do that was right — her glasses, her last name, the way she talked.You’re playing women whom viewers think they know. How important was it to perfect their speech, gait, gestures?FELDSTEIN Her emotionality mattered to me more than her physicality or her voice. I just tried to focus on how she was feeling and what was motivating her, and really tune out everything else. But it’s one thing to play a real human being, and it’s another thing to play a real human being whom you text and call. I want her to watch it and feel validated.FALCO Hillary is a woman who has been imitated on late-night talk shows and on “Saturday Night Live” by pretty much every cast member. So that was troubling to me. I was not interested in being another interpretation. And over the years, she changed a lot — her accent, the way she walked, the way she presented herself — as she evolved as a person in public life. I thought, this whole story is about getting at who this woman is. So for me, it was more about an inner life.PAULSON I worked with a movement teacher, who was with me every day, to try to create a different physical shape than I have, in terms of my posture. It was helpful to look in the mirror and not see myself. I still consider what [Tripp] did to be beyond morally questionable. I’m not trying to humanize her; I’m just trying to be her in the situation and in the circumstances. I connect to a certain kind of internal rage that she has that I have a really easy time dipping into.FELDSTEIN I call it the Tripp dip.ASHFORD For Paula, it’s always about trying to please her husband, trying to please somebody else. It’s part of why she talks so high; it’s part of why she makes herself so small. There’s a real childlike quality. I also worked with a movement coach.MURPHY I want a movement coach.You had so much archival material to draw from — the recordings, the congressional records, the media response. The Starr Report alone runs to more than 112,000 words. How did you decide what to include?BURGESS It’s character first. In the ’90s, Linda and Monica were afterthoughts in the ways this was perceived and reported. They were these idiots who talked about Macy’s on the phone. It was the lawyers and the men who mattered.SIMPSON The way this story has traditionally been told is the story of these great powerful men facing off: Bill Clinton versus Ken Starr, Newt Gingrich versus Bill Clinton. Then off to the side are these nutty women. We decided, from the beginning, we’re going to start with these women.FELDSTEIN These characters, in different ways, have never been given full humanity. What the show does, it prioritizes the humanity over the plot. More

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      Billy Porter Believes That ‘Pose’ Blazed a Lasting Trail

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      The star was nominated again for his role as Pray Tell, M.C. of New York’s legendary drag balls, one of nine nominations the show received on Tuesday.In 2019, Billy Porter cemented his place in history as the first openly gay Black man to be nominated for — and then the first to win — a lead acting award at the Primetime Emmys. More