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      ‘Snoop’ Pearson and Ed Burns Reunite 16 Years After ‘The Wire’

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      The actress known for stealing scenes in “The Wire” is teaming with series co-creator Ed Burns to turn her life story into a TV show.Felicia “Snoop” Pearson is running a few minutes late to a joint interview alongside her writing partner Ed Burns, so Burns fills the time with a helpful story about one of the few other instances of her truancy.More than two decades ago, the actor Michael K. Williams had asked Pearson to accompany him onto the set of “The Wire” after she brazenly introduced herself to him at a Baltimore nightclub.Burns, who with David Simon cocreated the landmark show that explored institutional failures, admired her distinct tattoos and gravelly Baltimore drawl. Williams and some of the actors vouched for Pearson as an authentic resource who would give the show additional credibility.Burns had a spot on the show for her, he promised, if she limited any illicit activity and showed up the next week.The day Pearson was to appear on camera, Burns said, he received a frantic phone call. “I didn’t know the car was stolen,” Pearson hurriedly began.Through some deciphering, Burns discovered that Pearson had visited New York with friends for Pride Week. During the journey, they noticed a cop car’s flashing lights and pulled over. The driver of the car had no idea the vehicle he had purchased was stolen. Police searched Pearson, discovered a pocketknife and took her into custody. She did not make call time.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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      Shane Gillis Finally Appears on ‘Saturday Night Live’

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      The comic was fired from the show in 2019 before ever appearing on it, history he barely mentioned when he hosted on Saturday. “Please, don’t Google that,” he said in his monologue.Finally given the opportunity to take the stage at NBC’s Studio 8H, the comedian Shane Gillis did not say much about how he’d been fired as a cast member from “Saturday Night Live” before appearing in a single episode.Instead, Gillis, who has since gone on to become a popular standup and podcaster, delivered an opening monologue that perhaps suggested both he and “S.N.L.” were both better off for having followed separate trajectories.Gillis, who has performed in standup specials like “Beautiful Dogs” on Netflix and is a co-host of “Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast,” was announced to be an “S.N.L.” cast member in September 2019. Just days later, “S.N.L.” reversed course and dropped him from its lineup, following criticism of resurfaced podcast segments in which Gillis used a slur to describe Chinese people and performed a caricature accent, and used a homophobic slur to refer to the filmmaker Judd Apatow and the comedian Chris Gethard, as well as the presidential candidates Andrew Yang and Senator Bernie Sanders.At the time, “S.N.L.” said in a statement that the language Gillis had used “is offensive, hurtful and unacceptable.” Gillis himself wrote in a social media post that he was “a comedian who pushes boundaries” adding that in comedy, “you’re going to find a lot of bad misses.”Returning to “S.N.L.” nearly five years later as a guest host, Gillis did not take a scorched-earth approach in his monologue, like when Norm Macdonald appeared as a host in 1999 after he’d been fired from the show. (“I haven’t gotten funnier,” Macdonald said at the time. “The show has gotten really bad.”)“Yeah, I’m here,” Gillis began. “Most of you probably have no idea who I am. I was actually — I was fired from this show a while ago. But if, you know, don’t look that up, please, if you don’t know who I am. Please, don’t Google that. It’s fine. Don’t even worry about it.”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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      ‘The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live’: What to Know

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      The new “Walking Dead” spinoff, premiering Sunday on AMC and AMC+, builds on more than a decade of back story. We’re here to help.The new six-part mini-series “The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live,” the latest installment in the sprawling “Walking Dead” universe, premieres Sunday on AMC and AMC+. It finds Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira reprising their longtime roles as Rick Grimes and Michonne, the weathered survivors of a postapocalyptic wasteland populated by flesh-devouring zombies.Rick, the former sheriff turned heroic leader, and Michonne, the katana-wielding warrior with a heart of gold, were two of the show’s longest-tenured and most beloved characters. When they paired off late in the show’s run, it added a warm central love story to somewhat offset the show’s litany of bloodshed and gore — until Rick left the series in Season 9 and Michonne in Season 10.“The Ones Who Live” picks their story up where it left off in the original series, revealing what happened to the couple after they exited the show. But it also involves other characters, settings and organizations that have either appeared or been mentioned in “The Walking Dead” and its spinoffs, including the dystopian city the Civic Republic, its high-tech military the C.R.M., and the slippery villain Jadis, played by Pollyanna McIntosh. There’s also 12 years and 11 seasons of back story to keep in mind — and a ton of lore, including flash-forward child births and complex double-crosses.If any of that sounds only vaguely familiar — or if you, like millions of viewers, stopped watching “The Walking Dead” some time before it wrapped its 11th and final season in November 2022 — you might need a bit of a refresher to keep up with “The Ones Who Live,” which dives into its propulsive story without many flashbacks or expository monologues to bring viewers up to speed. (For their part, Lincoln and Gurira have said that they didn’t keep up with the whole series either, so you’re in good company.) Here’s everything you’ll need to know before the series kicks off on Sunday.What happened to Rick?After it was announced that Lincoln would be leaving “The Walking Dead” sometime during its ninth season, many fans assumed Rick would be killed off as many other characters had been before. Lincoln’s final episode, “What Comes After,” certainly set up that expectation, placing Rick in seemingly insurmountable jeopardy, gravely wounded and surrounded by a horde of walkers. As they close in on him, he has visions of friends and family he’s lost over the years, including Shane (Jon Bernthal), Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green) and his first wife, Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies), driving home the impression that these are Rick’s final moments on earth.Instead, Rick is saved at the last moment by Jadis, his antagonist and sometime-ally, who whisks him to safety in a mysterious helicopter with cryptic promises that things will be OK. (Using a radio to communicate with the pilot, she refers to “As” and “Bs,” insisting that Rick is an A, which is sure to figure into “The Ones Who Live.”) Badly banged up, he is placed on a stretcher and given an intravenous drip, and he drifts off to sleep as Jadis consoles him. It’s the last time we see Rick until the final minutes of the series finale, when we catch a glimpse of his life six years later under the iron rule of the heavily militarized city the Civic Republic, still dreaming of reuniting with his family.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 to Watch the 2024 SAG Awards: Date, Time and Streaming

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      The awards, which are streaming live on Netflix for the first time, will offer a preview of some key Oscars races. Barbra Streisand will be on hand, too.Cord-cutters rejoice: Normally, watching an awards show involves subscribing to a live TV service (or remembering which of your email addresses you haven’t already used for a free trial).But on Saturday, for the first time, Netflix will be streaming the annual Screen Actors Guild Awards, potentially bringing them to a much wider audience.The 15 awards, which are voted on by actors and other performers who belong to the SAG-AFTRA union, honor the best film and television performances from the past year. They can be a bellwether for the Oscars, happening this year on March 10. (Since 1996, 83 of the 112 stars and films that won Oscars for best picture or acting first won a SAG Award.)This year’s ceremony is shaping up to be a “Barbenheimer” rematch: The two summer blockbusters — “Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s biopic about the physicist known as the father of the atomic bomb, and “Barbie,” Greta Gerwig’s unique spin on the Mattel doll — each picked up a pack-leading four nominations and will be competing for the guild’s top prize, best ensemble.There’s also intrigue in the best film actress race: Lily Gladstone, who plays an Osage woman married to a white man involved in a murderous conspiracy in “Killers of the Flower Moon,” has blazed a trail through awards season, taking home honors from the Golden Globes, the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics Circle. But Emma Stone, who plays a grown woman with the mind of a child in the “Frankenstein”-inspired black comedy “Poor Things,” came out on top at the BAFTAs and the Critics Choice Awards (and won her own Globe in the musical or comedy category).Now, on Saturday night, we’ll get our strongest indication yet as to which way academy voters are leaning. We’ll also get an appearance from Barbra Streisand. Here’s how to watch.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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      Shane Gillis to Host ‘S.N.L.’ After Being Dropped in 2019. Here’s What He’s Done Since.

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      The comedian was abruptly fired in 2019, just after being named to the cast, when offensive comments he’d made surfaced. Now a rising stand-up star, he is set to appear on the show this weekend.When the comedian Shane Gillis was dropped from “Saturday Night Live” in 2019 just days after the announcement that he’d been added to the Season 45 cast, he lost one of the most sought-after jobs in comedy. Immediately after his addition to the cast, multiple instances surfaced of him using language that the show called “offensive, hurtful and unacceptable” in a statement addressing his ouster.Among the inflammatory language he’d used, on his podcast and on others, was a slur to refer to Chinese people, along with a caricature accent, and a homophobic slur, which he used to describe the filmmaker Judd Apatow and the comedian Chris Gethard as well as the Democratic presidential candidates Andrew Yang and Senator Bernie Sanders (the latter two prefaced with the word “Jew”). “Fat, ugly idiots promoting hate, that’s what this is,” he said, ribbing himself and those with whom he was talking.Gillis could have become a pariah. Instead, on Saturday, he’ll make his debut on NBC’s storied Studio 8H stage, as a host.Since his firing, Gillis’s star has quickly ascended: His debut special, released on YouTube in 2021, has amassed about 24 million views; and his podcast with Matt McCusker, “Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast,” on which some of the problematic statements were made, has the most subscribers of any podcast on Patreon with more than 80,000 paying listeners, tens of thousands more than the next highest. He has also been touring rigorously, performing on comedy stages across the United States and the world.He reached new heights in September with the release of Netflix’s “Beautiful Dogs,” which had a lengthy run on the streamer’s Top 10 most popular shows list. In that special, he walked the line between satirizing conservatives and playing to them, according to The New York Times’s comedy critic, Jason Zinoman, who described its opening bit as “dumb and smart, cocky and self-mocking, homophobic but relentlessly self-aware.”“Don’t be surprised if he becomes an arena act,” Zinoman added.A few weeks ago, Bud Light announced that it was partnering with Gillis. “Welcome to the team,” the brand posted on Instagram along with a photo of the comedian. Bud Light has been scrambling to contain the fallout, which included plummeting sales, from last year’s right-wing backlash to Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender influencer, promoting the beer on Instagram.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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      ‘Shogun’ Remake: This Time, the White Man Is Only One of the Stars

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      A 1980 adaptation of the best-selling novel cast it as the tale of a white hero in an exotic Japan. A new version tells a more kaleidoscopic story.Gina Balian, a television executive who had worked on the hit series “Game of Thrones” for HBO, had just left to help FX start a new limited series division when an agent sent her a nearly 1,200-page novel.It was “Shogun,” James Clavell’s 1975 best-selling chronicle of a hardened English sailor who lands in Japan at the dawn of the 17th century looking for riches and ends up adopting the ways of the samurai. Balian’s first reaction was that she had already seen this book on television — back in 1980, when NBC had turned the novel into a mini-series that earned the network its highest Nielsen ratings to date.Most of what she remembered about the first adaptation was Richard Chamberlain — its white, male star. But as she started reading, she discovered the novel had a much more kaleidoscopic point of view, devoting considerable pages to getting inside the heads of the Japanese characters.“I thought that there was a story to be told that was much wider and deeper,” said Balian, who is co-president of FX Entertainment. It didn’t hurt that something about it also reminded her of “Game of Thrones,” in terms of the “richness of so many characters’ lives.”It took 11 years, two different teams of showrunners and a major relocation to bring “Shogun” back to the screen. The 10-part series debuts on Hulu on Feb. 27 with the first two episodes, followed by new ones weekly, and will premiere on Disney+ outside of the United States and Latin America.Both Hollywood and Western audiences largely have moved beyond viewing the world as a playground where (mostly) white protagonists prove their mettle in exotic lands. Shows and films like “Squid Game” and “Parasite” have shown that audiences can handle Asian characters speaking their own languages.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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      Netflix’s ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ Can’t Match the Original

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      Netflix’s latest attempt to capture the magic of a beloved animated series has some strong performances but falls well short of the original.Nickelodeon’s 2005 series “Avatar: The Last Airbender” was a sprawling odyssey that combined intricate world-building, meticulous references to Asian and Native cultures, lively humor and sharply plotted drama, all animated in a charming, anime-inspired style. It was an unqualified success, attracting millions of viewers and heaps of critical praise. The series introduced a world so rich, complete and full of its own histories and myths and traditions that it never needed a follow-up.But we know that’s not how things work.In 2010 there was the famously whitewashed live-action film “The Last Airbender,” which was, deservedly, met with a ferocious torrent of fan-fury. The sequel series, “Avatar: The Legend of Korra,” was more in touch with the original, but still unnecessary. And the same can be said for Netflix’s “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” the streamer’s latest big money, live-action adaptation that proves just how difficult it is to capture the magic of a beloved original.Like the original series, Netflix’s “Avatar: The Last Airbender” also takes place in a fictional Eastern world of four nations: Air Nomads, Water Tribe, Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation. In this world a select group of people from each nation are “benders,” able to manipulate their element. For a century the Fire Nation has waged a winning war against the others — during which time the only hope for peace, the avatar, the sole master of all four elements, disappeared. When two Water Tribe siblings, Katara (Kiawentiio) and Sokka (Ian Ousley), discover the prodigal avatar, a 12-year-old Air Nomad named Aang (Gordon Cormier), the three embark on a journey to complete Aang’s training so they can save the world from the threat of the Fire Nation.This “Avatar” attempts to condense several story lines, many of which are spread out across dozens of episodes in the robust sprawl of the original, into a tight eight episodes. Some of the economies the adaptation uses in fusing certain narratives — making new connections and throughlines among stories that were originally set in different locales, for example — are neatly done. And thanks to the involvement of the creators, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, each subplot, even when moved or modified, remains faithful, if not exactly in detail then absolutely in spirit, to that of its animated counterpart. The show is also full of carefully placed Easter eggs from the original. Something as minor as a background character’s passing mention of the Avatar encountering some “canyon crawlers” in an episode will immediately clue fans in to the dangerous beasts Team Avatar faced in Episode 11 of the Nickelodeon version.But “Avatar” also tries so desperately to rework its stories that the pacing often suffers; adventures become a bit too convoluted, and there’s so much stacked action that it’s easy to lose track of the stakes and sense of urgency in any one plotline.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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      What to Watch This Weekend: A Dysfunctional Family Dramedy

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      “Moonshine,” a Canadian series about a family selling drugs and hospitality in Nova Scotia, is overstuffed but exciting.Jennifer Finnigan, far left, in a scene from “Moonshine.”Michael Tompkins/Entertainment OneAh, the recurring fantasy of moving to vacation. I mean, someone lives at the shore, someone makes the lobster rolls, someone owns the family estate that doubles as a resort. Why not you? “Moonshine,” a Canadian dramedy available on the CW’s website, has enough dysfunction and wild behavior to largely disabuse one of this dream … but enough Canadian charm that it still holds a certain appeal.“Moonshine” follows the Finley-Cullen clan, mostly artsy-earthy types except for Lidia (Jennifer Finnigan), the big-city sister who returns home to the family’s Nova Scotia compound when her aunt dies. Her parents and some of her siblings run the Moonshine, a shabby but endearing collection of beachy cottages and various outbuildings, but only to the degree that hippies ever really “run” anything. So when the aunt’s will makes Lidia the primary owner, she decides to make a go of it, bringing her sullen teenagers and ditching her crummy husband. Haphazard management of the hotel turns out to be the least of her troubles, though. The Finley-Cullens also dabble in drug-dealing, scandalous secrets, shady police behavior, substance abuse and generation-spanning rivalries. “This is how the war starts,” one sister says, not joking.In more doleful hands, this becomes “Ozark.” Here, though, it’s closer to “Gilmore Girls,” “Schitt’s Creek” or “Northern Exposure,” a festival of small-town oddballs with the characters’ pain buffeted by warmth. Oh sure, tempers run high and criminal activity abounds. But it all unfolds in a fun, beachy way rather than as part of an anguished plumbing of the darkness within.“Moonshine” can feel a little overstuffed, as if all the squabbling siblings had each lobbied to get a fair amount of story for themselves — and their offspring and their plus-ones. OK, OK, fine: Everyone’s invited to the plot! The snappy dialogue sometimes feels too forced and cutesy, and there’s a fine, occasionally crossed line between quirk and contrivance. This too-muchness is an asset, though, when group arguments crest into chaos, which they often do.Three seasons of the show have aired in Canada; two seasons are available to stream in the United States. Season 1 aired on the CW last summer, which might give the incorrect impression that “Moonshine” is hokey or aggressively wholesome. It is not. If you’re between major shows and want something bright and exciting, watch this. More