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      Bowen Yang Thinks This Artist Nails What It’s Like Living in New York

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      The “S.N.L.” comedian talked about his Audible series “Hot White Heist” and solitude — a state of being he senses in Edward Hopper’s paintings.Bowen Yang had just played an overcompensating straight guy opposite Sydney Sweeney on “Saturday Night Live.” But in a video call from his Brooklyn apartment, he was all about “Hot White Heist,” his queer action-comedy audio series on Audible.Last season, he was the voice of the fortune teller Judy Fink, who with his squad of misfits went after a government sperm bank.In Season 2, Judy and his coalition are living in bliss on their private island, Lesbos 2. That is, until a true-crime podcaster comes nosing around. Series veterans including Cynthia Nixon, Jane Lynch, Cheyenne Jackson and Tony Kushner are joined by Raúl Esparza, Sara Ramirez, Ian McKellen and Trixie Mattel.“It revolves around these really poignant themes about community and the smallest unit of queerness being two people,” said Yang, who also hosts the pop-culture podcast “Las Culturistas” with Matt Rogers.Then Yang unfurled a must-have list centered on life as a unit of one. “I feel like a lonely person who always has a consistent desire to reach out,” he said.These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1PopeyeIt’s a Japanese magazine “for city boys.” I can’t read a single character of Japanese, but I just do it for the visuals. It’s like eating a warm stew while I’m flipping through it. Every page is so beautifully laid out.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How a Reality TV Show Turned the U.F.C. From Pariah to Juggernaut

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      The Ultimate Fighting Championship, whose 300th numbered pay-per-view fight card is this weekend, was once effectively banned on television because of its violence.Twenty years ago, the Ultimate Fighting Championship was on life support. Broadcasters scoffed at the idea of televising half-naked men pummeling each other inside a caged octagon, engaged in a sport where broken bones and dislodged teeth were common. Venues closed their doors and advertisers their wallets.The extreme violence meant there was no way to monetize the mixed martial arts promotion, Kevin Kay, who was then an executive at Spike TV, explained to the U.F.C.’s owners and its president, Dana White, in a 2004 meeting.“I really like it but I don’t see how I’m going to get Budweiser to put their logo on the mat when there’s blood on it,” Kay recalled saying.This weekend, T-Mobile Arena on the Las Vegas Strip will host U.F.C. 300, a pay-per-view milestone for a sport that was once effectively banned from television. And it has television to thank for its longevity.After being spurned by networks large and small, the U.F.C. leadership devised a last-ditch plan to become profitable: a reality TV show in which 16 athletes would live together in a Las Vegas house, training and fighting one another with a six-figure contract on the line.If it did not work, the U.F.C. would crater.But the first season of “The Ultimate Fighter,” which aired on Spike TV in 2005, succeeded in humanizing the athletes as actual people instead of mindless punching bags. Viewers appreciated the behind-the-scenes looks at training regimens and cutting weight.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Richard Leibner, Agent for Top Broadcast Journalists, Dies at 85

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      His negotiations led to Dan Rather’s elevation from “60 Minutes” to anchor of the “CBS Evening News” and sent Diane Sawyer from “60 Minutes” to ABC.Richard Leibner, a powerful agent whose firm brokered contracts for many of the biggest names in television news, including Dan Rather, Diane Sawyer, Anderson Cooper, Ed Bradley, Morley Safer and Steve Kroft, died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 85.His son Jonathan said the cause was kidney cancer.Mr. Leibner’s firm, N.S. Bienstock — named for one of its founders, Nathan Bienstock — represented hundreds of anchors, reporters, producers and others in network and local television news.The negotiation that grabbed the biggest headlines was for Mr. Rather, then one of the star correspondents of the CBS News program “60 Minutes.”Between late 1979 and early 1980, Mr. Leibner (pronounced LEEB-ner) parlayed interest in Mr. Rather as the evening anchor from all three network news divisions: ABC News, whose president, Roone Arledge, was trying to raise his third-place division’s profile; NBC News, where the evening anchor John Chancellor was hoping to change to a commentary role; and CBS News, where Walter Cronkite had been the evening anchor since 1962.“The Rather situation was tough and sensitive because CBS News knew something had to happen after Cronkite,” Mr. Leibner told Manhattan, inc. magazine in 1986. “Cronkite had told them, contrary to what anybody had ever inferred, that he wanted off. He was tired of it.”Mr. Leibner surprised Mr. Rather by telling him that he thought it was possible to get him as much as $6 million over five years. In the end, CBS agreed to pay him what has been variously reported as $2.2 million a year and $8 million over five years. He succeeded Mr. Cronkite on the “CBS Evening News” in early 1981.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How the O.J. Simpson Trial Changed What Comics Could Roast

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      Norm Macdonald and Jay Leno made the double homicides such a constant topic that refraining from jokes the way David Letterman did was noticeable.The weekend after a jury found O.J. Simpson not guilty of murder, the comedian Norm Macdonald opened Weekend Update on “Saturday Night Live” at his desk next to a photo of the defendant. “Well, it is finally official,” he said. “Murder is legal in the state of California.”The 1995 trial of Simpson, who died Wednesday at 76, didn’t just dominate and revolutionize the media. It also became an unlikely staple of comedy. The details of the killings of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald L. Goldman were daily fodder for punchlines on talk shows, sitcoms and stand-up stages. And Macdonald cemented his status as one of the finest comedians of his generation thanks to a fixation on what turned into one of the largest comedy genres of the 1990s: the O.J. joke.In his 1996 breakthrough special, “Bring the Pain,” Chris Rock’s button-pushing analysis of the dynamics of the O.J. Simpson case helped change the course of his career. He argued that fame is what saved Simpson. “If O.J. drove a bus, he wouldn’t even be O.J.,” he said. “He’d be Orenthal, the bus-driving murderer.”The O.J. joke was so pervasive in the 1990s that not telling one could make you stand out. In the week after Simpson’s arrest, Howard Stern went on “Late Show With David Letterman” during the most heated era of the late-night wars and asked the host why he was avoiding the subject. “I’ll tell you my problem with the situation,” Letterman responded. “Double homicides don’t crack me up the way they used to.”Letterman eventually did tell some jokes about the trial, including a Top 10 list of things that will get you kicked off the jury (No. 1: “Keep frisking yourself.”). But his caution was in sharp contrast to Jay Leno, who went all in on O.J. jokes on the “Tonight Show.” A study that tracked his monologues revealed that Leno told more punchlines about Simpson than about any other celebrity, edging out Michael Jackson and Martha Stewart. In one running bit, he imagined the trial judge, Lance Ito, and the lead prosecutor, Marcia Clark, as members of a Broadway chorus line. In an even more perversely glib parody, Leno recast the murder trial as a sitcom using the theme song from “Gilligan’s Island” and portraying Simpson as the lovable title character. Was this sketch turning real-life tragedy into diverting entertainment or parodying it? Watching it now makes the difference seem pointless.Moments like Simpson trying on the gloves at trial became fodder for Jay Leno, Macdonald and other comics. Vince Bucci/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      This ‘Sympathizer’ Star Wasn’t Sure He Was Right for the Job

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      Hoa Xuande had only one Hollywood credit when he was chosen to lead this starry HBO adaptation of a prize-winning novel. He needed all the encouragement he could get.Some three months into shooting “The Sympathizer,” Robert Downey Jr. sat Hoa Xuande down. He had something to show him.“I remember Rob walking in — he had this cheeky grin,” Xuande recalled on a recent afternoon in Los Angeles. A teaser trailer for the HBO series, an adaptation of Viet Than Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, had just been cut. Downey, who is the show’s executive producer and plays multiple roles in it, saw definitive proof of a star-making turn in “The Sympathizer.” He wanted Xuande, the star in question, to see it too.“There’s only one time that I’ve had this experience before, and it’s when I saw the teaser that we brought to Comic-Con for ‘Iron Man,’” Downey said. Seeing himself onscreen in the Iron Man suit was what finally convinced Downey that he had done justice to a daunting role.“And because I’d had that experience,” he said, “I knew that he needed it.”In many ways, Xuande (pronounced Shawn-day) did. A 36-year old Vietnamese Australian actor who had one Hollywood credit to his name, he still wasn’t sure he was the right choice to lead a series with such an impressive pedigree: an HBO adaptation of an acclaimed novel, produced by the Oscar-winning art-house studio A24, directed by the revered Korean auteur Park Chan-wook and co-starring a screen legend in Downey. He needed all the encouragement he could get.“I made him watch it six times,” Downey said.Based on the novel of the same name, “The Sympathizer” stars Xuande as a double agent and Robert Downey Jr., right, in multiple roles.Hopper Stone/HBOSeeing himself in the trailer had finally quieted his doubts, Xuande said, over lunch at a Venice restaurant. He had flown in from his home base in Sydney hours earlier and had barely settled into Downey’s spare live-work space, where Xuande sometimes stays.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Late Night Comedians Mock Trump’s Trial-Delaying Efforts

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      “You know what they say: If at first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth or tenth you don’t succeed, cry, cry again,” Jimmy Kimmel said.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Hush Money MondayFormer President Donald Trump’s first criminal trial starts on Monday, despite several failed efforts to have it delayed.“His only move left is to have sex with everyone in the court and pay them $130,000 to keep their mouth shut,” Jimmy Kimmel said on Thursday.“You know what they say: If at first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth or tenth you don’t succeed, cry, cry again.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Trump has tried everything. He even requested a delay so he could mourn the loss of O.J.” — JIMMY FALLONOn “Late Night,” Seth Meyers pointed out that Trump had spent $100 million — or $230,000 a day — on legal bills for his combined court cases.“First of all, it’s very funny that you have to pay all the lawyers for all your criminal trials through something called Save America. Save America from what, you?” — SETH MEYERS“Also, $230,000 a day — for comparison’s sake — you can buy a pristine 1967 Chevy Corvette with original transmission and teal-blue interior for roughly the same price, which is perfect because that’s Joe Biden’s favorite car.” — SETH MEYERS“Biden should pull that thing up in front of the courthouse every day: ‘[imitating Biden] Hey, Donny, what’d you spend your $230K on?’ Every day that Trump drops that much money on lawyers you should have to hear Joe Biden say the words ‘Vroom vroom.’” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (R.I.P. O.J. Edition)“As most of you probably know, the big story was that O.J. Simpson went to hell today.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It’s rare that a celebrity as famous as O.J. doesn’t get an outpouring of love after news of his death, but it makes sense.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Guys, as I mentioned, the big news today is O.J. Simpson died. As we speak, someone is trying to write the most impossible eulogy of all time.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingJordan Klepper joined Michael Kosta, the guest host, for “Men Talk About Abortion” on Thursday’s “The Daily Show.”Also, Check This OutDonielle Hansley Jr. and Simone Joy Jones in “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead.”2024 Fence 2021 Films LLCWade Allain-Marcus’s reboot of the cult hit “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” keeps the plot from the 1991 original. More

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      How Hertz Turned O.J. Simpson Into the ‘Superstar in Rent‐a‐Car’

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      The famous ad campaign paid dividends for both the company and its pitchman, who died on Wednesday.Executives at the rental car company Hertz knew what they wanted to project to potential business travelers in the 1970s: speed, reliability and efficiency.They quickly realized that one man radiated all of those qualities. So they made the football player O.J. Simpson, who died on Wednesday at the age of 76, the first Black star of a national television advertising campaign.“They had a slogan — the Superstar in Rent‐a‐Car — and I was the current reigning superstar as far as the competition was concerned,” Simpson told The New York Times in 1976.The campaign would pay dividends for both the company and its pitchman, who in early Hertz ads was shown racing through an airport terminal and leaping over rope barriers, clutching a briefcase instead of cradling a football. In some of Simpson’s later ads, average Janes and Joes cheered him on as he ran, yelling, “Go, O.J., Go!”At that time, decades before Simpson was acquitted of killing his former wife and her friend, he was known for dazzling on the field for the University of Southern California and the Buffalo Bills. His athleticism and speed made Simpson the perfect choice for the Hertz commercials that widened his stardom beyond the gridiron, offering him up as a suave, smiling promoter known to football fans and businessmen alike.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Before He Was Infamous, O.J. Simpson’s Acting Helped Make Him Famous

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      Simpson began acting while still a football star, appearing in titles as varied as “Roots,” “The Towering Inferno” and the “Naked Gun” films.Before O.J. Simpson became synonymous with the sensational murder trial that riveted the nation in the mid-1990s, he was a football star turned Hollywood fixture who played roles as varied as an astronaut, a comic detective and a fake priest.His acting career began while he was still a star running back. As Simpson, who died on Wednesday, told it, he was waiting out the best deal he could get in the N.F.L. when producers reached out to him asking if he could act. “Sure, I can try to act,” he replied.He scored bit parts in a medical series and a western, but the allure of an onscreen career didn’t grab him until his first major film, “The Klansman” (1974), in which he appeared alongside Richard Burton and Lee Marvin, playing a man seeking to avenge his friend’s death at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan.Simpson told Johnny Carson in an interview in 1979 on “The Tonight Show” that during the production, the actors were casually chatting about food when Elizabeth Taylor said the best chili she’d had was at a restaurant called Chasen’s in West Hollywood.Simpson with Richard Burton in “The Klansman.”Moviestore Collection Ltd, via Alamy“Somebody made a call, and in an hour and a half they had a private jet bring a pot of chili from Chasen’s to Oroville, Calif.,” Simpson said in the interview. “Two hours later we’re eating chili and I’m saying, ‘I like this life.’”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More