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      Dwayne Johnson Finds Room to Grow in ‘Young Rock’

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyDwayne Johnson Finds Room to Grow in ‘Young Rock’The new NBC comedy, based on Johnson’s real life, chronicles him at three different ages on his journey to adulthood and stardom.From left, Dwayne Johnson at age 10, age 20 and in 2019. “Young Rock,” a new NBC sitcom, tracks three different periods in the actor’s life.Credit…via Dwayne Johnson (left, center); Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images (right) Feb. 15, 2021, 8:00 a.m. ETIt’s hard to imagine Dwayne Johnson as anything other than the gargantuan, musclebound star of the “Fast and Furious” and “Jumanji” movie franchises, TV shows like “Ballers” and the professional wrestling ring, where he first came to prominence as the Rock. But he was once a smaller — or, at least, younger — man.His history is now the basis for the new comedy “Young Rock,” which debuts Tuesday on NBC. This series checks in with Johnson at three stages of his life: as a preteen, still known by the nickname Dewey (played by Adrian Groulx); as an awkward teenager (Bradley Constant); and as a budding college football player (Uli Latukefu).“Young Rock” also features Stacey Leilua as Johnson’s real-life mother, Ata, and Joseph Lee Anderson as his famed father, the wrestling champion Rocky Johnson. Dwayne Johnson appears as himself in the series, which was created by Nahnatchka Khan and Jeff Chiang (both of “Fresh Off the Boat”).And while he’s rarely known for getting taken down, Johnson, 48, said in a recent video interview that the process of creating “Young Rock” was “so incredibly surreal” that it “knocked me on my butt.”Uli Latukefu plays Johnson as a college student.Credit…Mark Taylor/NBC“Unlike anything I’ve ever participated in, it required real specificity and an attention to detail,” he said. “And nuance, to find the comedy and make sure that some of these lessons that I learned a tough way would hopefully help audiences, too.”Johnson spoke further about mining his life stories for the material found in “Young Rock,” and how the show required him to re-evaluate himself and his father, who died in 2020. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.First of all, is there anyone in your life who still calls you Dewey?Yes, my mom calls me Dewey all the time. And unfortunately, she calls me that in public. I hated that name when I was young — hated it every time my parents would call me that in front of girls, teachers and my friends. And it stuck.How did you decide which stages of your life the series would focus on?It required a lot of hours of sitting down with Nahnatchka, just talking and sharing stories and then walking away, going back home, writing things down, meeting back again, going over more stories. Once we chopped up a lot of years, Nahnatchka and her team went back and they sifted through everything. And they came back with the concept of three timelines, at 10, 15 and 18, which were defining years of my life.Did you do anything to help resurface these old stories and generate the raw material?I poured myself a lot of tequilas and I was able to jog my memory. I would leave Nahnatchka these voice notes, after my second or third drink, and say, listen, you’re never going to believe this. But I’ll tell it to you anyway. And then we would talk the next day.Bradley Constant in “Young Rock.” Johnson said he spent time with the actors who played him “and let them know what I was like during that time.”Credit…Mark Taylor/NBCDid you want to be involved in casting the actors who play you on the show?Every single one. And I was able to spend some time with them, prior to shooting, and let them know what I was like during that time. What I thought my priorities were. The times, more important, that I fell on my ass and I had to get back up. That was surreal, in and of itself. The thing that really pulled at my cold, black heartstrings was finding the actors to play my mom, my dad and my grandmother, and spend time with them. As we’re having these conversations and they would start talking about what they knew of my mom and my grandmother and my dad [snaps fingers], within seconds I would well up.Did you ever consider a “PEN15”-style approach to the show where you’d play yourself at the different ages?We talked about everything creatively you could think of. Could I play all three characters? How could we do that? Would we pull in technology and see what we could accomplish there? One of the issues became time and trying to balance out my already very full plate of things that I had to do. One of the original pitches was that I would actually remain in the shadows — do what I would do, promotionally, but otherwise let this live on its own. Then we came back and realized, let’s have you in every episode, talking and reminiscing. This is probably a better way to do it.We see in “Young Rock” how with the wrestlers of your father’s era, their lives in the ring are glamorous and exciting, but their lives at home are more mundane, even a bit meager. Was that true to your experience growing up?Oh, yes, we are showing the truth of that generation, of the ’70s and ’80s. Those wrestling stars were adored and they were celebrated. They would wrestle in 5,000-seat arenas or in high-school gyms. And when they left, they always left in a Cadillac or a Lincoln. Always. Everyone. Wherever they would park, you would see a fleet of Caddies and Lincolns. Because that was working the gimmick. And it was important that fans saw them getting into an expensive car. But then when you go down the road, to where they lived, in many cases it was small apartments, like we did. And we would live paycheck to paycheck. I felt like there was value in showing that. This was the commitment that these men had to their business. This, in essence, put food on their table.Adrian Groulx, center, with Joseph Lee Anderson and Stacey Leilua, plays Johnson as a boy.Credit…Mark Taylor/NBCSome viewers have already had a glimpse into your awkward high-school years, courtesy of a famous photograph from that era that showed you wearing a turtleneck, a gold chain and a fanny pack. Will we learn the origin of the fanny pack in a future episode?The fanny pack will live a life, for sure. It’s very, very important. But we all went through that in high school to varying degrees. I was 14 when we left Hawaii and had to move to Nashville. And that’s where everyone thought I was an undercover cop because “21 Jump Street” was on at that time. And we left Nashville within three months and moved to Bethlehem, Pa., and I felt like who I was wasn’t good enough. I didn’t want to be Dwayne, I wanted to be Tomás. I thought that girls would think it was a cool name. They had to think that I had money, and I would steal these expensive clothes. I got arrested twice when I went to Bethlehem, for stealing — which is not in the pilot, either, but it’ll make its way in down the road.The show’s portrayal of your father is complicated because we see him first as a popular wrestler, and then later when his wrestling career is over and he’s working more quotidian jobs to make ends meet. Was it hard for you to think about him this way?When NBC said, “We’re in, let’s partner up [on ‘Young Rock’],” it was big news. I called home to my mom and dad and spoke to them both. A few days later, he passed away suddenly. But I believe that he would want that to be shown. He would want to offer that example to help other athletes transition out of their world, with maybe a little bit more grace than he did. He had a very hard time, and he had to find any job. He drove a truck, he did whatever he could do to make a buck. That’s a hard reality shift. My dad and I, we had a complicated relationship — it was very tough love. Let’s show the flaws, but when people aren’t here anymore, let’s show the good stuff, too.Has your mother seen the show yet?My mom was my “Young Rock” consigliere throughout. She felt we could showcase the tough [expletive] and the hard [expletive] because we got through it. That’s the lesson. Hopefully, people who are going through some hard [expletive], too, can see that there’s a way out. You can get on the other side of it.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Jamie Tarses, Executive in a Hollywood Rise-and-Fall Story, Dies at 56

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyJamie Tarses, Executive in a Hollywood Rise-and-Fall Story, Dies at 56She broke barriers as a woman in the TV industry and turned out hit after hit, only to see it all fizzle under a very public spotlight.Jamie Tarses in 1996. At 32 she was named president of entertainment at ABC, the first woman ever to serve as a network’s top programmer.Credit…Steve GoldsteinFeb. 1, 2021, 3:09 p.m. ETLOS ANGELES — A young, female executive arrives in the men’s locker room that was broadcast television in the 1990s and snaps a few towels of her own, working with writers to shape juggernaut comedies like “Mad About You” and “Friends.” She is so good at spotting hits that she becomes, at 32, the president of entertainment at ABC, the first woman ever to serve as a network’s top programmer.But she fizzles in epic fashion, brought down by corporate dysfunction, unvarnished sexism, self-sabotage, weaponized industry gossip and scalding news media scrutiny.Such was the show business life of Jamie Tarses, who died on Monday in Los Angeles at 56. Her death was confirmed by a family spokeswoman, who said the cause was “complications from a cardiac event.” She suffered a stroke in the fall and had spent a long period in a coma.Ms. Tarses (pronounced TAR-siss) broke a Hollywood glass ceiling in 1996, when she became president of ABC Entertainment. ABC badly needed fresh hit shows, and Ms. Tarses, who had worked at NBC, had a reputation for serving up a steady supply — especially zeitgeist-tapping sitcoms. She had shepherded the cuddly “Mad About You” and the neurotic “Frasier” to NBC’s prime-time lineup. “Friends,” which she had helped develop, was the envy of every network.“Jamie had a remarkable ability to engage writers — to understand their twisted, dark, joyful, brilliant complexity and really speak their language and help them achieve their creative goals,” said Warren Littlefield, who was NBC’s president of entertainment from 1991 to 1998. “She was highly creative herself and, of course, came from a family of writers.” (Her father, Jay Tarses, wrote for “The Carol Burnett Show” and created “The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd,” an acclaimed comedic drama, from 1987 to ’91. Her brother, the comedy writer Matt Tarses, has credits like “Scrubs” and “The Goldbergs.”)Even so, Ms. Tarses faced extreme challenges.Upstart broadcast competitors — the scrappy Fox, UPN, the WB — were siphoning young adult viewers away from the Big Three networks. So were cable channels. In 1996, about 49 percent of prime-time viewers watched ABC, CBS or NBC, down from roughly 74 percent a decade earlier, according to Nielsen data. HBO was moving into original programming with shows like “Sex and the City,” further diluting the talent pool.The Walt Disney Company had purchased ABC shortly before Ms. Tarses arrived, heightening Wall Street scrutiny and intensifying corporate politics. “ABC was a snake pit in those days,” said Jon Mandel, who ran MediaCom, a television ad-buying agency. “Some people spent more time trying to assassinate internal rivals than actually doing their jobs.”Ms. Tarses in 1997 as president of ABC Entertainment. At NBC she had served up a steady supply of hit sitcoms, including “Mad About You,”  “Frasier” and “Friends.” Credit…Kevork Djansezian/Associated PressThen came The Article.After a year at ABC, Ms. Tarses, who had alienated some colleagues by not returning calls and missing morning meetings, gave the journalist Lynn Hirschberg unfettered access for an 8,000-word cover story in The New York Times Magazine. The piece portrayed Ms. Tarses as “a nervous girl” who swung erratically between arrogance and insecurity. “Women are emotional, and Jamie is particularly emotional,” one male agent, speaking anonymously, was quoted as saying. “You think of her as a girl, and it changes how you do business with her.”The article, which pointedly discussed Ms. Tarses’s hairstyle and feminine way of sitting, helped color the rest of Ms. Tarses’s career. Once someone is typecast in Hollywood, even as an executive, getting people to see that person in a different light can be a never-ending battle.“A lot of it was pure sexism,” said Betsy Thomas, a screenwriter and friend.Even so, Ms. Tarses was criticized at times as showing poor judgment. In 1998, ABC hosted more than 100 television critics and entertainment journalists from across the United States at a promotional event in Pasadena, Calif. ABC stars were also invited, including a young Ryan Reynolds, then appearing on a sitcom called “Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place.” As the evening wore on, reporters witnessed Ms. Tarses and Mr. Reynolds go outside and become amorous.The indiscretion, which was reported on by some newspapers, contributed to a narrative that had congealed around Ms. Tarses: She was too impetuous for such a big job.Her bosses, including Robert A. Iger, then chairman of the ABC Group, had been applying patches to the situation. A veteran television executive, Stuart Bloomberg, was installed above Ms. Tarses. Then, as part of a restructuring, yet another manager, Lloyd Braun, was placed over her in what was essentially a demotion. Vicious infighting ensued, what The Wall Street Journal later deemed “a case study in dysfunctional corporate relationships.”Thomas Gibson and Jenna Elfman in 1998 in “Dharma & Greg,” a popular sitcom that Ms. Tarses developed at ABC. Credit…Jerry Fitzgerald/ABCMs. Tarses resigned in 1999. She left ABC with one popular sitcom, “Dharma & Greg,” and one comedy that was a hit with critics, Aaron Sorkin’s “Sports Night.” She also put “The Practice,” a popular legal drama from David E. Kelley, on the ABC schedule.“I just don’t want to play anymore,” she told The Los Angeles Times when she left ABC. “The work is a blast. The rest of this nonsense I don’t need.”Sara James Tarses was born in Pittsburgh on March 16, 1964 to Jay and Rachel (Newdell) Tarses. The family moved to suburban Los Angeles, where her father became a successful sitcom writer (first on “The Bob Newhart Show”).Ms. Tarses attended Williams College in Massachusetts, studying play structure and receiving a theater degree in 1985. She was a production assistant on “Saturday Night Live” in New York for a season before returning to Los Angeles in 1986 to become a casting director for Lorimar Productions. She joined NBC in 1987 in the “current” comedy programming division (shows already on the air), where she monitored scripts for shows like “Cheers” and “A Different World,” starring Lisa Bonet.Brandon Tartikoff, NBC’s much-admired entertainment chief, became her mentor. He swiftly promoted Ms. Tarses to the network’s comedy development department, where she worked on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” which turned Will Smith into a household name; the oddball “Wings,” set at a New England airport; and “Blossom,” centered on a teenage Mayim Bialik.Ms. Tarses’s departure from NBC was ugly.Michael Ovitz, the polarizing former power agent, had become Disney’s president. He began talking to Ms. Tarses about taking over ABC. But she was under contract at NBC. Gossip swirled in Hollywood that she solved the problem by claiming that she had been sexually harassed by Don Ohlmeyer, a senior NBC executive. (Mr. Ohlmeyer blamed Mr. Ovitz for the rumor and publicly called him “the Antichrist,” leading to a media frenzy.) Ms. Tarses and NBC denied the story, as did Mr. Ovitz, but it continued to hound her, making the young Ms. Tarses appear as someone “who would do anything to get ahead,” as Ms. Hirschberg wrote.When she arrived at ABC in the spring of 1996, Ms. Tarses was the second-youngest person ever to be the lead programmer of a network. (Mr. Tartikoff was 31 when he took over at NBC.) Her age, along with her status as the first woman to have that prestigious job, resulted in an unusual amount of scrutiny, often negative. Newsday, the Long Island newspaper, referred to her as “Minnie Mouse” in one article and “scarily ruthless” in another.Karey Burke, who ran ABC from 2018 to 2020 and is now president of 20th Television, a leading TV studio, said of Ms. Tarses in a statement: “She shattered stereotypes and ideas about what a female executive could achieve, and paved the way for others, at a cost to herself.”After quitting ABC in 1999, Ms. Tarses avoided the spotlight and remade herself as a producer. Several television pilots failed, but she ultimately found a few modest hits, including “My Boys,” a comedy created by Ms. Thomas and centered on a female sportswriter, and “Happy Endings,” a sitcom that dusted off the “Friends” formula.“She was a hands-on, deeply involved producer who just so totally got my voice and my sense of humor,” Ms. Thomas said. “She knew how to pull the best out of you without trying to change your writing or make it into something different.”Ms. Tarses in 2018. After quitting ABC she avoided the spotlight and remade herself as a producer. Credit…Emma Mcintyre/Getty ImagesIn addition to her brother, Matt, Ms. Tarses is survived by her partner, Paddy Aubrey, a chef and restaurateur; their two children, Wyatt and Sloane; her parents; and a sister, Mallory Tarses, a teacher and fiction writer.Even decades after she had left ABC, Ms. Tarses continued to serve as a lightning rod in Hollywood. To some, she was the victim of a misogynistic television industry. Others stubbornly viewed her as a callous climber.“She had smarts, drive, family connections, money, the mentor everyone wished they had, very good looks, absolutely everything going for her,” Mr. Mandel said. “That automatically created jealousy and resentment.”He continued: “Yes, she made mistakes. But the same could be said about any guy in Hollywood — especially then — and none of them had the added pressure of breaking a glass ceiling.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Mr. Mayor’ Review: A Political Comedy From Sitcom Royalty

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Mr. Mayor’ Review: A Political Comedy From Sitcom RoyaltyRobert Carlock, Tina Fey and Ted Danson join forces for a show about a businessman who finds himself running a city.Ted Danson, left, and Bobby Moynihan in “Mr. Mayor,” a new NBC sitcom created by Robert Carlock and Tina Fey.Credit…Mitchell Haddad/NBCJan. 6, 2021“Mr. Mayor” has good sitcom DNA: Robert Carlock and Tina Fey of “30 Rock” and “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” on the writing and producing side; Ted Danson, most recently of “The Good Place” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” onscreen. What could go wrong?Yet something did, at least on the basis of the new NBC comedy’s first two episodes, which premiere on Thursday. That’s a very small sample, but it’s what we have, and it’s a jarringly flat 42 minutes of television.No blame goes to Danson, who strides through the role of Neil Bremer, the newly elected and largely unqualified mayor of Los Angeles, with his typical aplomb. Bremer has the charismatic lunkheadedness and chummy-needy temperament Danson has brought to characters from Michael, the afterlife architect of “The Good Place,” all the way back to Sam Malone in “Cheers.”There are moments when Danson reacts to a laugh line from one of Bremer’s aides — a pair of slick, young, neurotically woke apparatchiks (Vella Lovell and Mike Cabellon) and a rumpled white guy (Bobby Moynihan of “Saturday Night Live”) who is given to outsmarting them — with a blank stare. It’s because Bremer, played by the 73-year-old Danson, doesn’t get it. But in your head you may hear Danson, along with the rest of us, asking: “Seriously? That’s the best you could come up with?”So far, the show is full of lines that are meant to be funny, in a joke-adjacent kind of way, but don’t quite hit — they have the shape of humor but not the force. Most of these are predicated on a continual but uneasy satire of the current climate of political correctness; “Mr. Mayor” takes on cancel culture as one of its main subjects, and perhaps it does it as directly as you can on prime-time network TV, but the overall effect is of writers boldly tiptoeing.It starts to feel like a receiving line: We meet the pronoun joke (“The look in his eyes — their eyes — a lot of different eyes”); the me-too joke (“If you believe in something, don’t give up, don’t take no for answer, except for with sex, that’s different”); the cleverly inverted race joke (“You need to learn how to listen, whitey.” “Whitey?” “Your hair”).Bremer himself has some Trumpian characteristics. He’s a businessman — a billboard tycoon — with a Brobdingnagian mansion and a golf habit. His chief of staff, horrified at her role in actually getting him elected, moans, “I got him that toy phone and told him he was tweeting on it.” (There’s also a dig at a blue-city politician, when Bremer commits the gaffe of rolling up his pizza slice, inviting de Blasio-style ridicule.)But Bremer isn’t soulless or venal or particularly Machiavellian, in the mode of Alec Baldwin’s TV executive on “30 Rock.” He’s more of an earnest blunderer who ran for mayor to make his daughter (Kyla Kenedy) think he was cool.And that’s not the only note of sentimentality in “Mr. Mayor” — there’s an “aww” vibe to the father-daughter relationship and to Bremer’s jousting with a political rival, a progressive hardcase played by Holly Hunter. Beneath the carapace of political humor there appears to be a pretty ordinary family-and-workplace sitcom developing here. No one in “Mr. Mayor” is as eccentric or as outsize as characters like Liz and Jack in “30 Rock” or Kimmy Schmidt, and the result — perhaps unexpectedly, perhaps not — is that no one is as sympathetic or as moving, either.Maybe it had something to do with the New York settings, or the obvious enjoyment they took in savaging the TV business in “30 Rock.” But Carlock and Fey’s earlier shows had an energy, and a storybook quality, that isn’t there yet in “Mr. Mayor.” You feel it every time a music cue doesn’t make you smile the way they did in “30 Rock.”There’s some of the old offhand joy in scenes involving Bremer’s daughter, who’s running for office at her high school. Her argument that legalizing marijuana is anti-progressive because it hurts marginalized drug-peddling communities like “the poor, surfers and DJ’s with crushing DJ-school debt” is one of the better lines, and when her proud mic drop at the end of a campaign speech results in incapacitating feedback, it’s a minor but genuinely funny touch.They’re just grace notes, but they remind us that until now, Carlock and Fey’s genius has been for making stories entirely out of grace notes.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Lilly Singh’s Week: Pixar’s ‘Soul’ and ’90s Bollywood

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyLilly Singh’s Week: Pixar’s ‘Soul’ and ’90s BollywoodThe host of “A Little Late With Lilly Singh” spends her downtime watching movies and trying to be more savvy with news sources.The comedian Lilly Singh on her personal basketball court at home in Los Angeles. Credit…Tracy Nguyen for The New York TimesJan. 5, 2021, 10:42 a.m. ETA decade ago, the comedian Lilly Singh started making videos out of her parents’ house in Scarborough, an inner suburb of Toronto. She swiftly attracted viewers with her vibrant, goofy impersonations, many to do with diasporic Punjabi family dynamics, embedded in comedic sketches.Her YouTube channel may boast nearly 15 million subscribers, but these days Singh’s bona fides come from a different space. In 2019, she was the first openly bisexual woman of color to front a late night show (“A Little Late With Lilly Singh”) as well as a first among YouTube phenoms. She’d done the impossible: made it out of the bedrooms of internet-addicted kids and into the bedrooms of their parents. But the late night format isn’t quite right for the D.I.Y. star. Season 2, which premieres Jan. 11 on NBC, leaves behind the standard couch-and-desk setup for a set in a house that will allow her to move and experiment. She released a statement about her hope to get more goofy and authentic. And she’s backed by an all-new staff, after a season that drew mixed reviews.She’s going back, in a sense. These days, she’s shooting her YouTube videos in her own house in Los Angeles. (A byproduct of making millions while being a good Punjabi kid who lives at home is you can eventually move out.) “I have gone full circle,” she said about her latest parody videos — a recent one tracks a woman on a Zoom date. “The pandemic forced me to go back to my roots of shooting by myself, editing the video, doing all the lights and sound and camera stuff that I used to do. Building the tripod on books like I used to do.”Lately Singh has been examining her priorities. At 32, she’s on the cusp of a time in adulthood that might inspire a reconsideration of quick success. The solitude perhaps enhances the moment. This year marked the longest she has gone without seeing her family. “I’m sure people can relate when I say I’ve been in a state of numbness,” she said with a laugh. “And confusion, and being lost. But I also think there has been this kind of sweet silver lining, a little bit. I learned what actually matters. Before, I was on autopilot.”On set, she has been inspired by small hacks: a face mask designed to not smudge her makeup, the know-how of an on-site Covid-19 compliance officer. “He would measure out the dimensions of the house and based on that, on the spot, would be like, ‘OK, four people could be in this room,’” she said. “That we’ve figured out what could be the safest way to do this is really impressive to me. Being like: ‘Hey, we’re not going to stop telling stories. We will somehow adapt.’”In a phone call from Studio City in Los Angeles, Singh tracked her cultural diary for a few days in late December, which included plenty of comfort watching, and Bollywood listening. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.SaturdayI turned on my TV and I saw “Wonder Woman 1984” everywhere. I’m not going to lie: I didn’t even know it was coming out. But I loved it. The first time I saw [the first] Wonder Woman in the theater, I was sitting behind a row of girls who were in tears.“The Lost World: Jurassic Park” is actually trending on Netflix, which is why I watched it, apparently with millions of other people. I love “Jurassic Park,” the entire franchise, so so much.As a person who grew up in an Indian culture, I feel like I watch “Big Mouth” because it seems so far from what I was allowed to be like as a kid. I watch it like, Oh my god, this is so bad. They’re so crude. My parents never had those talks with me, and I never learned about that stuff in school. So for me it’s just like a vicarious redoing of childhood.I really like ’80s and ’90s Bollywood. “Hum Aapke Hain Koun..!” “Pardes.” If you go really, really back — “Ishq” (1997), with Aamir Khan. Old school. I have a very long playlist that I, true story, spent three to four hours making a couple of weeks ago. I have two: Bollywood Chill and Bollywood Dance. I listen, like, if I’m in the shower, if I am cleaning my room, if I’m washing the dishes, if I’m cooking.Singh on “Big Mouth,” Netflix’s animated series about puberty: “For me it’s just like a vicarious redoing of childhood.”Credit…Tracy Nguyen for The New York TimesI deleted social media off my phone many many months ago, so I don’t have anywhere to mindlessly scroll. However, if I do have a spare second, I check out the Deadline app — probably every morning and every night. I like to know what’s going on in film and TV.SundayI decided to watch the original “Karate Kid.” Over the holidays, I also rewatched “Home Alone.” When you rewatch these older movies, it’s a whole new experience! There’s so many jokes and scenes and references that I did not understand as a child but when you rewatch them it’s so enjoyable.I haven’t watched it yet — but “Selena” just premiered on Netflix a little while ago. Of course, I knew [her] songs growing up, but I wasn’t too familiar with the Spanish ones, and I’ve just become obsessed. It’s just such feel-good, amazing music.I had no idea what Pixar’s “Soul” was about, and I was blown away. I thought it was so well executed, and visually stunning. The character was just so lovable. It could have very well been a real person that was not animated, someone I would have met on the street.A lot of the reading I’ve done over the past weekend has been related to Season 2 of my show.I have this rule for Season 2, where to the best of my ability, I do not want to talk about things or interview people or discuss projects unless I actually genuinely know them. I have no desire this season to fake knowing things or fake seeing things. I think it’s so inauthentic, and I don’t want to do it anymore. So, to the best of my ability, I’m going to try to watch every single thing I reference, which is why I started watching “The Queen’s Gambit.” I am hooked.I’m a big fan of these days of watching things without any context. I don’t like to watch trailers or anything. I just like to be thrown in, and that’s exactly what happened with this. I know nothing about chess. But I think it’s a cool story, and I think the actress is brilliant. I’m a big believer of supporting stories and projects that feature strong women.I subscribed to The Skimm. My manager right now, Kyle — he introduced me to it. I love the way it’s literally a skim of the news. You can be in the know without feeling all of the stress of the world on your shoulders.Most DaysBecause I’m not the most savvy with news sources, especially coming out of India, I’ve been following @sikhexpo a lot, which is an Instagram account. When you’re not on the ground somewhere it’s easy for misinformation to spread, and especially with things like the farmer protest, where it’s not covered by the media as thoroughly as it could be, they’ve been a great resource for me to learn what’s happening on the ground.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      How the Networks Will Fill Airtime on a Quiet New Year’s Eve

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHow the Networks Will Fill Airtime on a Quiet New Year’s EveIn a typical year, shots of raucous parties from around the world dominate news programming. This year, the networks had to get more creative.Times Square will be emptier than usual for New Year’s Eve this year, but TV networks are doing their best to fill the gaps with extra live performances and creative thinking.Credit…Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesDec. 30, 2020[Follow our New Year’s Eve live coverageWhat becomes of Times Square when you take away hundreds of thousands of cheering, shivering New Year’s Eve revelers?It may no longer be the “biggest, most exciting New Year’s Eve party on Earth.” But it may still be the night’s biggest TV production set.For this year’s pandemic New Year’s Eve, many television traditions will be scrapped, including the scenes of raucous celebrations across the world and impromptu interviews with exuberant party goers at bars and clubs, eager to say hello to their mothers and grandmothers back home.Instead, networks are doubling down on the segments that they can safely pull off. They’ve increased the number of performers and interview guests, decreased the number of crew members and brainstormed creative — and socially distant — locations to send their reporters to. (Instead of reporting from a crowd of partyers, for example, one CNN correspondent will report from a crowd of puppies, which are not known to spread the coronavirus.)So while the type of people who enjoy cramming themselves into crowds of strangers to watch the ball drop may be disappointed this year, the type that prefers to curl up and celebrate from their sofas will find their tradition largely intact.“In some respects it’s going to feel very similar to previous years,” said Meredith McGinn, an executive producer of NBC’s New Year’s Eve program, which is hosted by Carson Daly. “You will see the same confetti fly at midnight; you will see the ball drop.”But, like most things in 2020, there were some necessary adjustments.“Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” on ABC will send Ryan Seacrest roaming around a much emptier Times Square with a camera crew in tow — wearing a mask except when standing in designated areas. And CNN’s hosts, Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen, will reunite in Times Square for an evening of interviews and cheeky ad-libbing. (The hosts are close friends who have been in each other’s social “bubbles” during the pandemic.)This year, the Times Square camera crews and riggings are confined to a space between 45th and 47th Streets. It usually stretches from 41st to 59th.Credit…Carlo Allegri/ReutersIn a typical year, Cooper and Cohen invite interview guests up to their riser overlooking the crowds; this year, the network will superimpose images of the guests’ full bodies beside the hosts in a technique that they will jokingly call “teleportation.” On NBC, rather than cutting to raging parties, the network will broadcast small family gatherings from inside their homes. Even the Times Square production set is smaller: While it typically stretches from 41st Street to 59th Street; this year it is limited to a space between 45th Street and 47th Street.“We had to reinvent Times Square,” said Jeff Straus, the president of Countdown Entertainment, which co-produces the event with Times Square Alliance. He described the set up as a theater in the round, with two stages at the center. Three huge screens will provide close-ups of what’s happening onstage for the small number of guests.Emergency medical workers, frontline workers and essential workers were invited to bring their families to sit in specially designated areas in Times Square and watch the array of performances. In total, somewhere between 100 and 160 guests are expected to be present for the 11 scheduled musical acts, including a seven-minute show by Jennifer Lopez leading up to the final countdown. Those guests will be the subjects of the on-camera interviews, rather than the partyers among dense crowds of people, some of whom wait in Times Square for a dozen or more hours to ensure good spots.To pull off the broadcast, networks must follow state guidelines on pandemic television production, as well as protocols set by the various unions representing the crews and performers. They’ve devised plans for testing production staffers for Covid-19 before New Year’s Eve and for feeding production staffers without letting them get too close to one another. (NBC rented additional space in Times Square to make sure crew members could eat and maintain proper distance.)On Thursday, network employees will work from separate locations when possible. The director of “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve,” Glenn Weiss, is overseeing the broadcast from his office on 46th Street instead of in the “Good Morning America” studio at Broadway and 44th Street. And NBC cameras are stationed on the third floor of the Renaissance New York Times Square Hotel, where the network had to remove some of the hotel’s windows so that bird’s-eye-views of the event would not be hindered by glare.All of the acts at Times Square will be live, including performances by Lopez, Gloria Gaynor, Billy Porter, Cyndi Lauper and Pitbull. Many other performances will occur on stages outside of New York — including those by Brandy, Megan Thee Stallion and Miley Cyrus, all from Los Angeles, for ABC.The networks have lined up more pretaped material than usual, however. (Most have not said which of the performances were filmed in advance.)Highlights of PBS’s prerecorded New Year’s Eve programming include an opening performance of “Lady Marmalade” by Patti LaBelle.Credit…Dan Chung/Mount Vernon Ladies’ AssociationOn PBS, a New Year’s Eve program, called “United in Song,” was filmed in November at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and in September at George Washington’s Virginia estate in Mount Vernon, where about 120 audience members watched from a distance and masked violinists were separated from unmasked brass players with plexiglass. NBC is showing a new Blake Shelton music video. Spectrum News NY1 will roll a highlight reel of its reporter Dean Meminger’s flashy New Year’s Eve suits over the years.And networks are getting creative in other ways to fill the holes formerly filled by crowd shots and partyers. CNN will have one correspondent getting a tattoo, another skiing down an Oregon slope wearing a GoPro and an appearance from Carole Baskin of “Tiger King” fame.With the pandemic driving people away from bars and restaurants and toward their living rooms, executives say it’s possible that there will be more viewers than ever before. ABC, which tends to have the highest viewership on the holiday, peaked last year at about 21 million viewers, according to news reports.“I can never predict what the Nielsen gods will bring,” said Mark Bracco, an executive producer on ABC’s program, “but we’re hopeful that most Americans will be home on their couches.”In a year in which more than 338,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus, viewers may notice a tonal shift compared with the goofy — and sometimes tipsy — coverage of years past. The Champagne popping and 2021 eyeglasses will be interspersed with appreciations of health care workers and emergency medical workers, as well as reflections on the lives lost and the economic hardship.On ABC, Seacrest will interview President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his wife, Jill Biden, a rare political interview of someone other than the New York City mayor.And on PBS, an opening performance of “Lady Marmalade” by Patti LaBelle in a gleaming white suit opens the hour-and-a-half program that includes more serious notes, including a monologue from the actress Audra McDonald about trailblazing women throughout history and from the playwright and actress Anna Deavere Smith about the history of the slave cemetery at Mount Vernon as she walks through those grounds. On CNN, John Mayer is slated to perform a tribute to lives lost this year out of Los Angeles.“We’re all going to be celebrating the end of this horrific year,” said Eric Hall, the executive producer of CNN’s program, “and we’re also going to be celebrating the beginning of what looks to be a hopeful year.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More