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      Desi Lydic Digs Into the Sordid Claims Against Matt Gaetz

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      “Your future attorney general, everyone,” Desi Lydic said on “The Daily Show.” “It’s always the people you most expect.”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.‘That Alone Should Be Disqualifying’The lawyer representing two women who testified that former Representative Matt Gaetz paid them for sex described his clients’ testimony with multiple news outlets on Monday. The lawyer, Joel Leppard, said the women said that Gaetz paid money for their services via Venmo and that they traveled with him numerous times, including to New York, where he took them to see “Pretty Woman” on Broadway.“Your future attorney general, everyone,” Desi Lydic said Tuesday on “The Daily Show.” “It’s always the people you most expect.”“And they said he paid for sex with Venmo? Has this guy ever heard of cash? Come on. At the bare minimum, an attorney general should know how to cover up his own crimes.” — DESI LYDIC“The fact that Matt Gaetz was stupid enough to pay for sex with Venmo — that alone should be disqualifying.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“That is crazy. Taking a woman you pay for sex to see ‘Pretty Woman’ is like taking a giraffe to the zoo.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It’s a little on the nose, wasn’t it? I guess ‘High School Musical’ was sold out?” — DESI LYDIC“The worst part is that he apparently took them to watch him on Fox News. God, I hope they charged him extra for that.” — DESI LYDIC“If Trump can’t get his nominees confirmed through the Senate, his team is considering recess appointments. Recess is where Congress temporarily suspends its proceedings — also where Matt Gaetz finds his girlfriends.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (King of the Road Edition)“Trump also just nominated Fox News contributor Sean Duffy to serve as secretary of transportation. Yep. If you’re Irish Catholic like me, you know at least 20 guys named Sean Duffy.” — JIMMY FALLON“Up till now, I have been critical of Trump’s appointees, but I fully support Duffy. First of all, he has real-world experience — in that he was in the cast of MTV’s ‘The Real World: Boston’ in 1997.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Now, the Debbie Downers out there claim Duffy’s not qualified for this job just because he has little to no experience in the transportation field. Oh, really? Have you forgotten that Mr. Duffy also served a full term on ‘Road Rules: All Stars’?” — STEPHEN COLBERT“He hired the guy from ‘Road Rules’ to be secretary of transportation, because of course he did — the word ‘road’ is right in there.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“That is one of his least embarrassing picks. Maybe he’ll pick one of the ‘Teen Moms’ to be secretary of labor.” — JIMMY KIMMELWe 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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      ‘Interior Chinatown’ Puts Stereotypes in the Spotlight

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      Adapted by Charles Yu from his own novel, this series about a man stuck inside a cop show satirizes Hollywood’s penchant for pigeonholing Asian actors.One of Jimmy O. Yang’s first TV roles was Asian Teenager No. 2, in a 2013 episode of “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”“The part was for someone who could speak Cantonese; I think that’s why I got it,” he said in a recent interview. He remembers the constant competition back then among Asian actors for roles with one or two lines, “an episode of something shooting in Chinatown,” he said, “or a part in the background at a community college.”Such work might sound like small potatoes. But in an industry that has historically struggled to put Asian actors and characters in the foreground, every rung of the ladder counts.Now Yang, who was born in Hong Kong and came to the United States when he was 13, is at the center of a limited series that turns the struggle into mind-swirling metafiction. “Interior Chinatown,” adapted by the showrunner Charles Yu from his own 2020 novel, is a TV series based on a book about a life unfolding inside a TV series.“The elevator pitch is that it’s ‘Law & Order’ meets ‘The Truman Show,’” Yu said. “It starts as a straightforward mystery and gets into something weirder, a metaphysical mystery hopefully.”“Interior Chinatown,” premiering with all 10 episodes Tuesday on Hulu, is also an affectionate sendup of the police procedural, and a sly piece of media criticism about Asian stereotypes in entertainment.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 Did ‘Dancing With the Stars’ Become a Gen Z Hit? TikTok, Of Course.

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      After almost 20 years on air, the reality competition series made changes that brought a surge of younger viewers.The world has changed around “Dancing With the Stars” since the competition series became a hit after its 2005 premiere. Though producers have periodically experimented with casting, canned hosts and tweaked the elimination process, the heart of the show — pairs of professional dancers and celebrities performing weekly and facing elimination based on scores from judges and fan votes — has remained intact.That formula meant “D.W.T.S.” had an audience with a median age of 63.5 in 2022. But in the past two seasons — after almost 20 years and 500 episodes — the show has grabbed hold of Gen Z viewers through its canny use of TikTok, casting of younger dance pros and the chance virality of “wow moments” from routines.“We’ve kind of hit this tipping point where now we feed TikTok, TikTok feeds back to us,” said Conrad Green, the showrunner.Ahead of the Season 33 semifinals, Green and two of the show’s professional dancers, Rylee Arnold, 19, and Witney Carson, 31, explained their parts in making “Dancing With the Stars” a hit with Gen Z.Charli D’Amelio was an influencer contestant for the streaming era.In 2022, Disney execs removed “Dancing With the Stars” from network TV, making it available only via the Disney+ streaming app, a move aimed at drawing older viewers to the service, which predominantly catered to children from the ages 2 to 17.

      @officialdwts The countdown to #DisneyNight is on! Join us in ONE HOUR – 8/7c on ABC and Disney+. 🐭✨ #DWTS ♬ original sound – Dancing with the Stars #DWTS 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 Is Appalled by Trump’s Mile-High McDonald’s Feast

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      The president-elect dined on his plane with some associates — including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who hates fast food. Jimmy Kimmel called it a “subservience test.”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.Not-So-Happy MealOver the weekend, President-elect Donald Trump shared a photo from his private plane, showing him eating McDonald’s with Elon Musk, Donald Trump Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Speaker Mike Johnson peeked into the frame.“Only Donald Trump would force his new health czar to eat McDonald’s,” Jimmy Kimmel said, referring to Kennedy. “That’s what he does, these are subservience tests.” “This is like the Last Supper, but everyone is Judas.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I love that they essentially hazed R.F.K. Jr., who rails against processed food and has called fast food poison, by not only making him eat McDonald’s but forcing him to take a picture while doing it.” — SETH MEYERS“You can tell it’s McDonald’s, because that is a grimace.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Look at R.F.K. Jr. He’s holding that McDonald’s the way you hold a bag of weed you found in your kid’s room.” — SETH MEYERS“That is the most powerful assemblage of junk food since the Yalta Conference party sub.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Look, I know Trump has been accused and found guilty of many crimes, but certainly none worse than ‘brings Filet-O-Fish on a plane.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT‘There’s No Monopoly on Stupid’On “Real Time,” Bill Maher chided Democrats for losing touch with the average American, saying the party had become “a ‘Portlandia’ sketch.”“Maybe take the clothespins off your noses and actually converse with the other half of the country. Stop screaming at people to get with the program and instead make a program worth getting with.” — BILL MAHER“You love to speak truth to power, and we always should, but you have completely lost the ability to speak truth to [expletive].” — BILL MAHER“You just lost a crazy contest to an actual crazy person.” — BILL MAHER“Even the one concession I’ve heard a few people on the losing side offer — that liberals should stop saying that Trump voters are stupid — comes with a kind of unspoken parentheses: ‘We know they are stupid, just don’t say it.’ Yeah, I got bad news for you: They don’t have a monopoly on stupid.” — BILL MAHERGreg Gutfeld had similar thoughts about the Democrats on Monday.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 Sex Lives of College Girls,’ Plus 7 Things to Watch on TV this Week

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      Catch up with the group from Essex College, go behind the scenes of Ridley Scott’s new movie and get your Bravo fill.Things in college are heating up.Before Reneé Rapp toured sold-out shows or performed songs from her new album on “Saturday Night Live,” she played Leighton Murray, a mean-girl-turned-softy in “The Sex Lives of College Girls.” The show is returning this week for its third season, but Rapp will be absent from most of it — she renegotiated her contract from a series regular to a guest star. It will continue to follow the roommates Kimberly (Pauline Chalamet), Bela (Amrit Kaur) and Whitney (Alyah Chanelle Scott), who left things on rocky footing at the end of the last season. Available to stream at 9 p.m. on Thursday on Max.From left, Sara Silva, Sarah Catherine Hook and Zac Burgess in “Cruel Intentions.”Jasper Savage/Prime VideoThe 1999 film “Cruel Intentions,” about a stepsibling duo who set their sights on the same girl as a power play, is now getting a modern television reboot. In this show, it is the Vice President’s daughter the stepsiblings are after, and instead of a prep school, it takes place at a college where a hazing scandal moves the plot along. Fitting for “Gossip Girl” rewatch season (a.k.a. fall), this show gives the same high-society cutthroat vibes. Streaming on Thursday on Prime Video.A blast of Bravo.There’s a whiff of designer purchases, mansions and good old fashion screaming in the air — and that can only mean one thing: “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” is back on our small screens. Kyle Richards, Dorit Kemsley and the other housewives navigate their friendships with each other but also deal with marital issues and work drama. Tuesday at 8 p.m. on Bravo.Bravo’s longest-running franchise, “The Real Housewives of Orange County,” is wrapping up its three-part reunion this week. And the women have not been holding back — calling for certain castmates to be fired, accusing each other of “throwing venom” and generally squabbling. Thursday at 9 p.m. on Bravo.Though “Housewives” is Bravo’s bread and butter, I also love the network’s stand-alone shows (I am looking at you “Summer House” and “Below Deck.”) This one, “Married to Medicine,” follows women in Atlanta who are either doctors themselves or married to doctors. This season is back with a few new faces, as Dr. Jacqueline Walters takes on the role of mediator. Sunday at 9 p.m. on Bravo.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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      ‘Dune: Prophecy’ Season 1 Premiere Recap: Sick Burn

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      The first installment of HBO’s “Dune” prequel series suggests there is a “burning truth” very few are capable of seeing. It may be too hot to handle.Season 1, Episode 1: ‘The Hidden Hand’“Humanity’s greatest weapon is the lie,” says Reverend Mother Tula Harkonnen of the Sisterhood (Olivia Williams). “Human beings rely on lies to survive. We lie to our enemies, we lie to our friends, we lie to ourselves. Lying is among the most sophisticated tasks a brain can perform.”The acolytes under Tula’s tutelage in this first episode of “Dune: Prophecy,” the new prequel series developed by Diane Ademu-John and Alison Schapker, are learning to lie more effectively in order to better control the people they supposedly serve. As recipes for political success go, it’s hard to argue with the results.As related in a lengthy flashback at the beginning of Episode 1, the Sisterhood’s story begins over 10,000 years before the birth of the messianic Paul Atreides, the antihero of the “Dune” films, played by Timothée Chalamet. Humans have won a hard-fought victory in a universe-wide war against the “thinking machines” they built, overthrowing their robotic would-be masters. Known in the source novels as the Butlerian Jihad, this successful struggle against artificial intelligence birthed heroes and villains among its human participants. (The source novel for the movies, “Dune,” was written by Frank Herbert; this series is based on both “Dune” and “Sisterhood of Dune,” a prequel novel by Herbert’s son Brian and Kevin J. Anderson.)Here, as we learn in a voice-over by Emily Watson, is where the great rivalry between House Atreides and House Harkonnen, the warring families at the heart of the “Dune” saga, began. According to the commonly accepted history, an Atreides led the fight while a Harkonnen slunk away from it. That act of cowardice led the triumphant emperor to banish the Harkonnens to a remote and desolate world.But not all the Harkonnens — notably Tula and her fierce older sister, Valya (Watson) — accepted that version of history, or exile. As the exposition continues, we watch Tula and Valya (played as young women by Emma Canning and Jessica Barden) leave home to join an organization of women founded by the legendary war hero Raquella Berto-Anirul (Cathy Tyson). The group is called simply the Sisterhood — known later as the Bene Gesserit, a name familiar to fans of the “Dune” books and movies. Through intense mental and physical training, Raquella and her acolytes hope to harness powers that will enable them to guide the rulers of the various great houses.At this early stage, the Sisterhood’s primary power is “truthsaying,” an inerrant ability to detect lies that makes them invaluable to any emperor or aristocrat who can convince the increasingly powerful organization to send such a human polygraph their way.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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      On ‘S.N.L.,’ a Peaceful Transition to Trump’s Cabinet of Curiosities

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      Sarah Sherman plays Matt Gaetz as well as the widow of P’Nut, the conservative darling of the rodent world, while Charli XCX and pals serenade a mom-to-be.An amicable White House transition meeting between President Biden and President-elect Donald J. Trump provided the template for the opening sketch of this weekend’s “Saturday Night Live,” and it also gave “S.N.L.” another opportunity to rearrange its musical chairs of who’s playing whom in the Trump administration, with new roles for Sarah Sherman (as Matt Gaetz) and Alec Baldwin (as Robert F. Kennedy Jr.).Dana Carvey, the “S.N.L.” alum who has lately been impersonating Biden on the show, returned to play the part, promising a “respectful conversation” with Trump, played by James Austin Johnson.“Yeah, get a load of me,” Johnson said. “Instead of being rude and crazy like usual, I’m doing quiet and serene. Which, in many ways, is a lot scarier.”After shooing away the reporters who were covering their meeting, Johnson said forlornly to Carvey that he was not looking forward to returning to the White House. “So many of the carpets are stinky and sticky at the same time,” he explained. “Sort of like being at a Regal Cinemas. Now I have to live here for the next four years. Possibly longer.”Carvey responded that he had many wonderful memories of his time there: “Dr. Jill hosting foreign leaders,” he said. “My dog attacking every single one. I brought my party together so much they teamed up and kicked me out. Wait a minute — maybe I hate it here, too.”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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      Paramount Takes Promotional Stunt to New Level for ‘Gladiator II’

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      The studio plans to air the same 60-second trailer on 4,000 TV, radio and digital channels on Monday.For a snapshot of what movie marketers think it now takes to get the public’s attention — even for a sequel to a popular movie — consider the astounding stunt that Paramount Pictures has planned for “Gladiator II.”On Monday at 9 p.m. Eastern, Paramount will debut a final 60-second trailer for the film on more than 4,000 television networks, digital platforms, local stations, Spanish-language outlets and radio stations simultaneously.Based on average audience totals for a Monday evening, the trailer could reach roughly 300 million potential customers, according to Marc Weinstock, Paramount’s president of worldwide marketing and distribution. “We aimed to create a big moment to match the scope and grandeur of Ridley Scott’s epic film,” Mr. Weinstock said.The promotional tactic is known as a roadblock, and marketers have used them for decades. But the number of channels is typically much smaller. In what was described by Variety magazine in 2009 as the largest roadblock ever, Sony Pictures Entertainment simultaneously aired ads for the disaster movie “2012” on 450 television networks.Mr. Weinstock would not say how much Paramount is spending on Monday’s stunt. According to a “Gladiator II” producer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid conflict with the studio, the airtime was relatively inexpensive to purchase — about $2 million in total, with a spot during “Monday Night Football” as the most expensive. Wavemaker, a media agency, helped Paramount coordinate the effort.Marketing a movie used to require little more than buying ads on NBC on a Thursday night when millions tuned in to watch shows like “ER” and “Friends.” With the intense fracturing of the media landscape, however, studios have been forced to conjure up ever more provocative ways to grab attention. A single premiere? How quaint. Paramount staged “Gladiator II” red carpets in Australia, Japan, Ireland, France, Denmark and Britain in recent weeks. On Monday, a premiere in Los Angeles will involve the construction of a faux coliseum on Hollywood Boulevard.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