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      Julie Halston on Playing Bitsy von Muffling in “And Just Like That”

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      Few “And Just Like That” characters have evoked the delightful candor of Samantha Jones the way Bitsy von Muffling, played by Julie Halston, has.Julie Halston knows her socialites. The stage and screen actress ticked off names including Nan Kempner, Judith Peabody, Muffie Potter Aston and Beth Rudin DeWoody while discussing her reprisal of Bitsy von Muffling, a chirpy lady who lunches, in “And Just Like That,” the “Sex and The City” reboot.“Let’s face facts: There will always be the three-name socialite!” Ms. Halston, 68, said on a video call on July 12.Though Bitsy did not appear in “Sex and The City” until the show’s fifth season, she has intermittently been in “And Just Like That” from the very beginning. In the first episode of Season 1, Bitsy runs into Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) and Charlotte York (Kristin Davis), and asks them the question on countless minds: “Where’s Samantha?”She was referring, of course, to Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall), whose absence has loomed large over the series’ first and second seasons. Last month, Max, the streaming service that airs “And Just Like That,” confirmed Ms. Cattrall will make a brief appearance before Season 2 ends on August 24.Though several new characters have effectively replaced Samantha in “And Just Like That,” few have lately channeled her delightful candor about sex, cosmetic surgery and aging fabulously the way Bitsy has.In Season 2, after running into Carrie at a salon, Bitsy tells her about the healing power a face-lift can offer a widow, explaining that few things felt as good as spending six figures on a procedure after the death of her husband, Bobby Fine (Nathan Lane), a lounge singer widely understood to be gay.Bitsy later tries to impress a potential suitor upon Carrie by sending her a picture of his penis.“When you think about it, yeah, that’s kind of there,” Ms. Halston said of the parallel between Bitsy and Samantha, which also extends to clothes. Like Samantha, Bitsy often appears in bright colors (a hot pink jacket by Thierry Mugler) and bold prints (a kaleidoscopic Pucci top) that add to her effervescence onscreen.In an interview from her home in Brooklyn, Ms. Halston spoke to The New York Times about that picture; her relationship with Michael Patrick King, the showrunner of “And Just Like That” and a “Sex and The City” executive producer; and how the 2018 death of her husband, the radio anchor Ralph Howard, influenced her reprisal of Bitsy.The following interview has been lightly edited and condensed.In Season 2 of “And Just Like That,” Bitsy, right, talks frankly with Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) about plastic surgery and sex.MaxHow did the role of Bitsy originate?Michael Patrick King had been a big fan of me and Charles Busch and our company Theatre-in-Limbo for many years. Then in 2001, he saw me in “The Women” on Broadway with Cynthia Nixon. Michael said, “I’m going to write something for you,” and I thought “Yeah, right, OK.” I auditioned for “Sex and The City” a few times and did not get it. One part was a therapist, one was like a Marianne Williamson type — a healer, “A Course in Miracles” kind of thing. Michael kept saying, “One of these days.”A couple years later, Bitsy was born, along with Nathan Lane’s character. People were really excited about this woman who was older, who married a gay man, knowing he was gay. That didn’t matter. He adored her; she adored him. I think that really resonated with a lot of people.Like Bitsy, you lost your husband, so the conversation with Carrie about grief at the salon presumably came from something of a real place.It will be five years this August. Michael knew a lot of what I had gone through, and he’s a smart fellow. He also wanted Bitsy to be a little more than just a funny lady wearing fun clothes, skipping in and out of the girls’ lives. What she said to Carrie — “The hole never fills, but new life will grow around it” — is totally true. It is awful. And you do have to fake it sometimes.Then, a few scenes later, Bitsy sends Carrie the penis picture while Gloria Steinem is speaking. What range!I would totally do that. Bitsy is not trying to be crass and horrible. She has slept with this guy, and now, she’s passing him on to Carrie. She’s doing a mitzvah for her. “Get out in the world. You need to get laid” is what she is saying. That’s very Julie and very Bitsy. Sexual health and sexual satisfaction are what I want more women to be about. I’m telling you, there would be a lot fewer wars in the world if people were more sexually satisfied.Do you also share Bitsy’s appreciation for plastic surgery?I do Botox, which I need right now. Dr. Douglas Steinbrech is how I prep for the role. It’s funny, but it’s the truth!As someone who appeared with the original cast in “Sex and the City,” how do you feel about the news that Samantha will make an appearance in “And Just Like That?”I’m sure there were so many people wanting to know something about her story line. I’m speculating, but maybe the creators thought, “Why don’t we just address this?” I’m not being coy. I honestly know nothing. I know what everyone else knows. Nothing. More

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      In ‘Secret Invasion,’ Ben Mendelsohn Faces a Turning Point

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      In an interview, the Australian actor discusses his character’s big moment in the most recent episode and his role as ally to Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury.This article includes spoilers for the fourth episode of “Secret Invasion.”At one point while on set for the latest Marvel TV show “Secret Invasion,” Ben Mendelsohn and Samuel L. Jackson broke into song.They had both taken a break from filming to listen to some tunes, and when “Poison Ivy” by the Coasters came on they began belting out the lyrics.“I’ll get the occasional word wrong, but Sam’s all over it,” Ben Mendelsohn, 54, said in an interview last week.It’s Mendelsohn’s interactions with Jackson onscreen — their two characters squabble like decades-long lovers as they attempt to stave off World War III — that energize this latest installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.Jackson’s character, the grizzled superspy Nick Fury, has been around since before Tony Stark was Iron Man. In “Secret Invasion,” he’s back to his old pastime of saving planet Earth — this time from an invasion of shape-shifting aliens called Skrulls — but after a hiatus in space, he seems slightly off kilter, slower and less formidable.And so it is Mendelsohn’s character Talos, a Skrull general, who steps in to help — just as he’s been doing for decades, as he reminds Fury: “Your life got a hell of a lot more charmed once I came into it.” It thus feels fitting, though no less upsetting for fans, that Episode 4 ends with Talos sacrificing his life to help Fury complete one more mission.This is Mendelsohn’s third appearance in a Marvel production, after his character’s introduction in “Captain Marvel” and a brief cameo in “Spider-Man: Far From Home.” Now, the Australian actor is relishing the chance to be part of a show full of what he calls “old-fashioned Cold War thriller stuff.”Mendelsohn gained recognition in the United States for his role in the Australian crime drama film “Animal Kingdom,” and he later starred in the Netflix show “Bloodline,” which premiered in 2015. Born in Melbourne, he first got into acting by starring in school plays and memorizing every line from the movie, “Taxi Driver.”“Once I got bitten by that bug, I didn’t look back,” he said.Not long after the premiere of last week’s pivotal episode, Mendelsohn spoke about his role, his character’s relationship with Nick Fury and whether Talos is truly dead. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Mendelsohn’s character, Talos, seemingly sacrificed himself to help Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury complete one more mission.Des Willie/MarvelSo far Marvel’s TV series have taken different forms and explored a variety of issues. What are some of the key themes of this one?I think there is a lot to do with trust and secrecy. I think there’s a certain theme of mutability. You could take that on the obvious level with the whole Skrull-y thing, but I also think it’s about the mutability of where someone is in their life. When I think about the show I think about it through the Nick Fury lens. I’ve always looked at it very much as Sam’s piece. One of the real delights for me is that this relationship morphed between these two characters, which was not there from Day Zero. What I really love is how different Fury is, how different the world is post Infinity Gauntlet and what that does to loyalty. Because loyalty without stress or duress doesn’t mean anything.How has the relationship between Talos and Fury evolved, starting from “Captain Marvel”? At one point, Talos was impersonating Fury, right?Yeah that was such a genius flip from Marvel to have Fury [in “Spider-Man: Far From Home”] be Talos the entire time. Ostensibly the two characters start out as enemies. And what we come to learn is how incredibly loyal Talos is to Fury. What we learn is that Fury owes his entire je ne sais quoi to these creatures. And if you want to think about how deeply Marvel can flip stuff on its head, they’ve taken what were the surf Nazi punks of the Marvel world and turned them into the incredibly effective ally of the humans.Do you think Talos is too optimistic about the humans and the Skrull coexisting?If you keep boiling the argument down, Talos’s argument is really the only one that stands. Because if you take the Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) kind of perspective and you go for domination, there is one thing that Talos correctly surmises: You will not beat them. It’s their spot, and they have already shown that they can be incredibly effective at wiping out enormous numbers of beings. And so while you can look at what G’iah (Emilia Clarke) is going through and understand Gravik’s frustration, it’s similar to the frustrations that we’ve seen play out locally elsewhere. And you might well say, “OK, yeah that’s right. Go for it and go for it now.” But it’s reckless, destructive. And it’s immature both ideologically and in a realpolitik sense. So as idealistic as Talos may appear to be, he is really the only one with the genuine experience and genuine ability to call it. This is not a zero-sum game for humans and Skrull.Given how this episode started, with the big reveal about G’iah’s still being alive, is Talos really dead? Should we expect some kind of regeneration later on?Well to answer that would be to be an enemy of what I do. My greatest loyalty is always to the audience, and I try not to undermine that in any way, shape, or form. But I can definitely tell you Talos’s death is a turning point.Mendelsohn with Emilia Clarke in “Secret Invasion.” “The great strength of the studio is that they play what-if for real,” he said of Marvel.Des Willie/MarvelWhat has it been like to interact with Jackson both on-set and off?The best things that were brought to this relationship onscreen were brought by Sam. Sam’s the reason for the Skrull kiss at the very first time we see them together. It’s Sam who really brings the template in the train scene that allows me to react off and against them. Sam and I have been able to work together because we don’t take it too seriously. But we also try not to half-step. And the reason I look through the lens of Sam a.k.a. Nick Fury is because I come at it as a guy who watched “Jungle Fever” and just went crazy.I think a lot of fans are wondering: What’s the significance of the Skrull in the overarching narrative arc of the MCU?Ever since they’ve been introduced and utilized well, they do present an ever-present threat. Because how do you know? That’s one of the great things about “Secret Invasion.” “Civil War” also has that flavor. It’s just like, Who is who here?The great strength of the studio is that they play what-if for real; they don’t play what-if as an entertaining byline. They play it for real and keep integrating it. Once they have an event for “Secret Invasion,” you can’t un-have it.While I was watching the show there was a point where I wondered if Fury was going to change into a Skrull halfway through?Well, keep watching. Fury is more connected to the Skrull than any other human is. More

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      ‘Justified: City Primeval’ Review: Raylan Is Back

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      Timothy Olyphant returns in a sequel to the Kentucky crime drama “Justified,” and he’s still the coolest lawman in town, even if the town is now Detroit.Eight years after he walked — gingerly, warily, every joint bent at some odd angle — into the sunset on “Justified,” Timothy Olyphant returns on Tuesday in “Justified: City Primeval,” FX’s one-off, eight-episode sequel to its hit hillbilly noir. “Justified” was one of the most entertaining television shows of the last few decades largely because of Olyphant’s cagey, obliquely sexy portrayal of Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, a fantasy of a frontier lawman, simmering but sensitive, equally quick with a gun or a pithy comeback.Olyphant does not miss a single syncopated beat in “City Primeval,” which is based on the novel of the same name by Elmore Leonard, who created Givens and traced his career in a handful of books and stories. The character has left the page and become completely Olyphant’s. It’s a wonderfully economic performance, all slouch and sloe eyes, offering a moral thermometer of the fallen world through which Raylan moves via Olyphant’s sly repertoire of expressions: grin, smirk, smile, hard stare, blank bemusement.Onscreen, Raylan has aged more than eight years — he now has a teenage daughter, Willa (played by Olyphant’s daughter Vivian Olyphant), who was a baby when “Justified” ended. Caustic, character-defining references are made to his advanced years: Chasing bad guys at his age means he’s been passed over or he loves it too much; a retired cop tells him, “You remind me of me, man, when I started out. Except you’re old.” These comments create some cognitive dissonance, because Olyphant, despite some gray hair, doesn’t come off as a day older. That could be seen as a lapse in his performance, but come on. We all know what we’re here for.And it’s a good thing original Raylan is still there. Because despite the work of a number of the old “Justified” crew, including the writer-producers Dave Andron and Michael Dinner, and an accomplished new cast, “City Primeval” — though handsomely filmed, well acted and ample in its emotions and its violent action — feels, ultimately, like a simulacrum. The body looks good, but a large part of the soul is missing.In considering why, it’s hard to avoid the fact that Raylan Givens does not appear in the novel on which the mini-series is based — he’s been shoehorned into another cop’s story. (The original protagonist, played by Paul Calderón, gets a short, awkward walk-on.) He’s also been taken out of the Kentucky landscape that was essential to “Justified” and sent on a road trip to Detroit, where he’s now an unwanted outsider rather than a prodigal son.The change of scenery is fine in theory, but it doesn’t produce much. There are artful backdrops of urban decay, congruent with the rural poverty in “Justified,” and the largely Black cast of characters deals with injustices that parallel the hardships of the original show’s poor whites. But those elements feel obligatory — they come to life only here and there, usually in scenes involving Aunjanue Ellis as a lawyer whose life becomes entwined with Raylan’s.And while the plotting of “Justified” was always complicated — a slow build of coincidences, missed connections, bad decisions and murderous eruptions that provided a broad canvas for human weakness and duplicity — in “City Primeval,” the complications feel forced, and there isn’t the same satisfaction when the pieces click into place.Olyphant’s daughter Vivian plays Raylan’s daughter in the new series.Chuck Hodes/FXThe mechanisms by which Raylan and Willa end up in Detroit, and by which Raylan is pulled into the investigation of the killing of a judge, are murky and arbitrary. There’s no good reason for Raylan to be in this story beyond the demand for a sequel, and you can feel the writers straining with the effort of putting him there. Characters drift in and out, or disappear altogether (while still alive). A crew of Albanian gangsters, on hand for local color, conveniently drop out of the action just when you’re thinking, “They could wrap this all up in another 20 minutes.”All along, though, there are reasons to watch. Some simply have to do with the preservation of moods and motifs from the original series, but some are new. One of those is the father-daughter relationship: Willa feels abandoned because of Raylan’s devotion to his job, and the Olyphants nicely render the crossroads of brazen but sorrowful teenage manipulation and agonizing parental guilt. (This section of the story is oddly truncated, though, another instance of haphazard storytelling.)There are also excellent performers everywhere you look: Ellis; Vondie Curtis-Hall as a bar owner who used to be a musician; Norbert Leo Butz, Marin Ireland and Victor Williams as Detroit cops; Adelaide Clemens as the designated seductress. Boyd Holbrook of “Narcos” is smoothly menacing as the big bad: a talkative sociopath in the mold of Boyd Crowder from “Justified,” though you can’t help comparing him unfavorably with Walton Goggins, the man who played Boyd. David Cross turns in an amusing cameo as a wealthy mark. Terry Kinney is likable, as always, but not entirely convincing as an Albanian mob boss.“City Primeval” gets off to an entertaining but confusing start — the first episode is better on a second viewing — and generates enough of the “Justified” brew of eccentricity, off-kilter humor and underplayed suspense to hold interest through a few episodes, before the plot runs out of gas and the malaise sets in. Then a funny thing happens: After the Detroit story is resolved, there’s an epilogue that takes place in a world where we, and presumably the show’s creators, would much rather be. At that point, revealed as the place holder it was all along, “City Primeval” drops right out of your memory. More

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      Hollywood Strikes: Labor Day Looms as Crisis Point

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      Ongoing strikes could disrupt the entertainment industry in fundamental ways, putting the 2024 box office and the fall broadcast lineup in jeopardy.In May, when 11,500 movie and television writers went on strike, Hollywood companies like Netflix, NBCUniversal and Disney reacted with what amounted to a shrug. The walkout wasn’t great, but executives had expected it for months. They could ride it out.The angry response from Hollywood’s corporate ranks when actors went out on Friday was dramatically different. What began as an inconvenience has become a crisis.For a start, the actors’ union is much more powerful than the writers’ guild, with a membership of about 160,000 that includes world-famous celebrities studied in the art of delivering messages to captivated audiences. The film and TV scripts that studios had banked in case of a writers’ strike have been suddenly rendered inert, deprived of actors to bring them to life. Numerous big-budget movies that had been shooting had to shut down immediately, including “Twisters,” “Venom 3,” “Deadpool 3” and “Gladiator 2.”In interviews, three studio chairs who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the labor situation, said Hollywood’s content factories could sit idle for little more than a month — roughly until Labor Day — until there would be a serious impact on the release calendar for 2024, particularly for movies. A work stoppage that stretches into September could force studios to delay big projects for next year by six months, making 2024 resemble the ghost town of recent memory set off by the Covid-19 pandemic.Studios had just gotten the release schedule looking normal again, with one big movie following another. Another significant lull in offerings may be devastating for theaters. This year’s box office has already been underwhelming and, with striking actors barred from publicity efforts, films scheduled for the second half of 2023 could be affected — especially those with awards aspirations. One of the studio executives on Friday predicted it could imperil at least one of the national cinema chains.Bobbie Bagby Ford, the chief creative officer and executive vice president of B&B Theatres, a midlevel chain with more than 50 locations in 14 states, said the strikes “have impacted the industry at a difficult time.”“The duration of the ongoing strike will play a significant role in its impact on cinemas,” Ms. Bagby Ford said. “If it remains short enough to prevent an overwhelming backlog of movies, the situation can be managed.”Greg Marcus, chief executive of the Marcus Corporation — which owns the fourth-largest theater chain in the country — agreed that the strikes were unnerving but said they were less threatening to the industry than the pandemic.“Depending on the length of time, there could be a gap in a year,” Mr. Marcus said. “But it’s not like being closed for months on end, people debating the value of theatrical, and then big gaps because of production delays.”Labor Day will arrive in a heartbeat, which would seem to prompt studios to break the standstill with the actors sooner rather than later. But there’s a problem: Studio executives were genuinely surprised by the Screen Actors Guild’s reaction to their proposed terms. They felt they had made significant concessions and were stunned by the union’s rhetoric, especially since they were able to amicably negotiate a lucrative new contract in 2020.The proposed terms included increased pay, protections around the audition process and more favorable terms for pension and health contributions. They also offered that dancers receive an on-camera rate for rehearsal days.In particular, the studios — acknowledging in private conversations that they had made a mistake by largely ignoring the writers’ demands for guardrails around artificial intelligence — proposed terms for use of A.I. that their negotiators said would protect actors.But it wasn’t enough to avert a strike. Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the actors’ chief negotiator, said in an interview on Saturday that the studio’s proposal was unreasonable. The artificial intelligence terms jeopardize “the entire field of acting,” Mr. Crabtree-Ireland said, adding that studios also weren’t offering actors revenue participation in streaming.“Those are the core issues,” Mr. Crabtree-Ireland said. “And the fact that the companies won’t move on them reflects a colonial attitude toward the workers who are the entire basis of the existence of their companies.” He said actors want to begin bargaining again.The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which negotiates on behalf of the studios, disputed Mr. Crabtree-Ireland’s characterization of its members’ attitudes, citing terms of its proposal including a “groundbreaking A.I. proposal that protects actors’ digital likenesses.”An empty red carpet for Disney’s premiere of “Haunted Mansion” in Anaheim, Calif., on Saturday.Allison Dinner/EPA, via ShutterstockThe frustration on the other side of the bargaining table was evinced by comments made on Thursday by Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, who said during an interview on CNBC that workers were being “unrealistic.” Pouring gas on the fire was an article on the show business website Deadline that quoted an anonymous studio executive, who threatened to “bleed out” writers until they “start losing their apartments.” The studio alliance said the anonymous executive did not speak for its members.Though some executives see a brief stoppage as an opportunity to slash costs, a long-term shutdown has the potential to cause havoc in an entertainment industry already buffeted by the rise of streaming and struggles at the box office.“While media execs try to spin the dual strikes as a positive as production spending stops, investors are far more concerned that this will be a long strike that hurts the performance of already completed movies and TV series,” said Rich Greenfield, an analyst at the research firm LightShed Partners.If the twin strikes drag on for just one or two months, companies will probably seize on the shutdown as an opportunity to save cash that they otherwise would have been spending on preproduction — the work done before shooting starts — and bidding on scripts, said Michael Nathanson, an analyst at SVB MoffettNathanson who focuses on the media and entertainment industries. Some of those costs will be incurred later anyway, he noted.They can also take a second look at the shows and films they have in the pipeline, pruning ones that are too costly, Mr. Nathanson said. He compared a brief strike to a halftime break for a losing team that needs to draw up a new strategy.The strike also threatens lucrative, long-term deals struck by media companies during the streaming boom, when they were willing to shell out astounding sums to lure creators like Shonda Rhimes, Ryan Murphy and J.J. Abrams. Some long-term deals have force majeure clauses, which take effect on the 60th or 90th day of a strike, allowing the studios to terminate their contracts without paying a penalty. Mr. Greenfield said those clauses could theoretically let studios get expensive deals off the books, but invoking them would jeopardize relationships with top talent in the future.If actors aren’t back to work by the fall, it will hurt network television, which needs them for new shows coveted by advertisers, Mr. Nathanson said. He added that traditional media companies based in the United States are at a disadvantage compared with Netflix, the dominant streaming company, which can take advantage of its production facilities around the world.“It’s like if the United Auto Workers go on strike, and all of a sudden you see more cars from Japan and Germany on the road,” Mr. Nathanson said.Publicly, studio executives are urging Hollywood to get back to work. Mr. Iger said last week in an interview from the annual Sun Valley conference for business titans that the strike would have a “very damaging” effect on the entertainment industry.There’s little indication, however, that a deal is close.The negotiating parties have all said they want to reach a fair agreement, placing the blame for the standstill on the other side. But they all acknowledge privately that if Hollywood doesn’t thaw out in time, everyone will get frostbite.”Making nothing as a cost-saving strategy is foolish with the fall TV season rapidly approaching and advertisers and consumers expecting new programming,” said Ellen Stutzman, the chief negotiator for the Writers Guild of America. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Below Deck’ and FIFA Women’s World Cup

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      One “Below Deck” spinoff wraps up its season, as another begins on Bravo. And Fox begins coverage of the women’s soccer championship.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, July 17-23. Details and times are subject to change.MondayBELOW DECK DOWN UNDER 8 p.m. on Bravo. The peppy chief stew, Aesha Scott, and Captain Jason Chambers return to sail through Australia on a superyacht for this “Below Deck” spinoff. As anyone who is a loyal watcher of this franchise knows: obnoxious guests, drunken crew hookups and lots of tears are most certainly on the docket for this second season.TuesdayThe sailing yacht from “Below Deck Sailing Yacht.”Fred Jagueneau/BravoBELOW DECK SAILING YACHT REUNION 8 p.m. on Bravo. After multiple engine failures, one exhausting love triangle (or, really, a love pentagon) and some of the rudest guests we’ve seen, there is a lot to debrief at this reunion. Are Daisy and Colin still together? Has Gary gotten his act together? Does Captain Glenn feel bad for how he treated Daisy? Hopefully the reunion host Andy Cohen gets us all the answers we want (and need).LOVE ISLAND 9 p.m. on E! The American version of the original British dating show is back for a fifth season. Sarah Hyland is returning as host, alongside the narrator Iain Stirling, with 10 new contestants. If you are ready to embark in content overload, the show will air seven days straight for the first week. Afterward, there will be new episodes every day except Wednesdays so that viewers can follow along in real time.SOUTHERN STORYTELLERS 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Each episode of this new show uses the story of famous poets, songwriters and writers to illustrate the impact that the South has had on music, movies and literature. The screenwriters Qui Nguyen and Michael Waldron, the actor Billy Bob Thornton and the author Angie Thomas are just a few of the people you will spot on this show.WednesdayCMA FEST 8 p.m. on ABC. The 50th anniversary of the Country Music Association Festival took place in Nashville in June, and now those performances are being broadcast for anyone who missed it — or anyone who wants to relive it. The show, hosted by Dierks Bentley, Elle King and Lainey Wilson, includes performances from Luke Combs, Jason Aldean, Carly Pearce and Darius Rucker — just to name a few.Charlie Day, left, and Glenn Howerton in “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”Patrick McElhenney/FXIT’S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA 10 p.m. on FXX. The 16th season of this sitcom is wrapping up this week, but don’t worry: The show has been renewed through Season 18. (For context, this show premiered in 2005 alongside “Weeds,” “The Office,” and “How I Met Your Mother.”) This season, with only eight episodes, follows the gang getting up to their usual, slightly offensive shenanigans, with Dennis trying (and failing) to have a relaxing day at the beach in the finale.Thursday​​THE PREVIEW MURDER MYSTERY (1936) 8 p.m. on TCM. After a series of menacing notes are received on a movie set, the studio is quarantined, and executives start to suspect a murderer might be lurking. The film stars Reginald Denny, Frances Drake and Gail Patrick, and is directed by Robert Florey.FridayFIFA WOMEN’S WORLD CUP various times on Fox. The women’s soccer championship is beginning this week, and the United States Women’s National Team are competing for a chance to win their third consecutive title. Because the tournaments are taking place in Australia and New Zealand, the games will be broadcast live on Fox Sports 1 while quarterfinals, semifinals, third-place match, the Final and recaps will air on Fox.SaturdayHarrison Ford in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”Paramount PicturesINDIANA JONES MARATHON various times on Paramount. To prep for the fifth installment of the franchise, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” now in theaters, watch this marathon of the first three. Catch RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981) at 12 p.m., followed by INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM (1984) and finally, INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE (1989). Harrison Ford stars in all three as the titular character who beats a group of Nazis in finding a religious relic; searches for the sacred stones in India; and sets out to recover the Holy Grail.SundayBELLY OF THE BEAST: FEEDING FRENZY 8 p.m. on Discovery. Few things are certain in this world, but one thing we can always count on? Shark Week. Every July, Discovery showcases all things shark. This year Jason Momoa is acting as host, and each day there will be three to four programs highlighting all aspects of these scary and majestic creatures.MAYBE IT’S YOU (2023) 9 p.m. on E! In this original film, Peter (Brett Dier) and Lexa (Veronica St. Clair) fall into the classic friends-to-lovers trope. As these two best friends find themselves single at the same time, they can’t help but wonder: What if what they’ve been looking for has been right here the whole time? Filmed in Canada, this snowy movie will break you out of the summer heat, at least for a couple of hours. More

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      Tim Baltz on B.J.’s Test in ‘The Righteous Gemstones’

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      Sunday’s episode was a test for Baltz’s character, but B.J. seized the moment. Still, his victory came at a price.This interview contains spoilers for Sunday night’s episode of “The Righteous Gemstones.”The first thing to know is that the testicles were fake — in one of the shots, at least. Anyone who has seen Sunday night’s episode of the HBO televangelist family satire, “The Righteous Gemstones,” knows which shot.Near the end of the episode, the sixth of Season 3, Tim Baltz’s character, B.J., gets in a brutal brass-knuckle fight with a naked man that spills onto a suburban front lawn. Just when it seems that B.J. is out cold, his eyes fly open and he reaches, grabs, twists. The neighborhood children watch in horror.In an instant, the typically mild-mannered B.J. has victory well in hand. His nemesis, the philandering Christian rock guitarist Stephen (Stephen Schneider), drops to his knees and pays a brutal price for his affair with B.J’s. wife (Edi Patterson).It was a difficult scene to film, Baltz said last month by video from his home in Los Angeles, and not only because of the endless takes. He also did most of his own stunts — and accidentally got punched in the face several times.“There were a lot of little very quick decisions that either injured us, or barely avoided injury,” Baltz said of shooting the scene, which took all day. He added: “That’s the most intense day of work I’ve ever had.”Baltz grew up in Joliet, Ill., near Chicago, and he has the kind of boyish blond looks, deadpan delivery and cheery Midwestern affect that can make it difficult to tell whether he’s putting you on. (Given the circumstances, I believed him about the shoot.) That affect is one reason he is so convincing as B.J., a sensitive soul who lets his wife dress him in shiny pink rompers and who Rollerblades in full protective gear: It’s hard to believe that anyone could ever really be that earnest; B.J. keeps surprising you because he really is.“Despite being an atheist or a nonbeliever, he’s the most pious and religious character in the show,” Baltz said. “Which is odd,” he added, for a character who married into a family of preachers.Baltz’s character, B.J., has been a pushover for most of the series but Sunday’s brutal battle was a turning point.Jake Giles Netter/HBOB.J. also may be the most meme-worthy character in “Gemstones,” which is saying something in a show created by and starring Danny McBride. Baltz talked about the character, his outfits and the true cost of B.J.’s fight. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.First things first: How did you guys choreograph that, uh, decisive shot?That fight scene took an entire day to film. Once we got outside, we were worried about losing light, and with the camera looking up, the camera moving, I have to grab these fake testicles. I’m looking up at Stephen, who’s barely covering his own junk, and I’m like: “All right man, here we go, and we’ve got to get it right for the camera, too.”There was a stuntman involved for at least some of your parts, right?Yeah. My stunt double for the show has been a guy named T. Ryan Mooney, who looks shockingly like me. Same body type, too. To be honest, I don’t think that I’m like B.J. in real life, but I never feel more like my character than when I watch a guy who looks like me and has my body type do insane stunts, and he does it for a living. It’s kind of emasculating. But aside from B.J. getting thrown through the lattice work or when he gets dragged off the brick steps into the front yard, every shot you see, I did.Stephen seems like a champ for having done his whole part naked. What were your conversations about the scene like?He was really awesome. He was wrestling with whether he should go au naturel or use a prosthetic. It ended up being the last shoot day of the season for both of us, so there was a lot of buildup and anticipation. Stephen would come into town every few months to film stuff, and I would be like, “Let me take you out to dinner, man, because we’re going to have an intense day.” And then halfway through the season, he’s like: “I’m going to do it. I’m going to be naked. I just think there are only so many challenges in life, and I see this as a challenge.”Baltz tried to get to know his co-star Stephen Schneider ahead of time. “By the end, I considered him a dear friend, this naked guy I had to fight,” he said.HBOPresumably he had to get your consent.I mean, the intimacy coordinator definitely called several times to prep me. But for me, it was more like: “All right, this guy’s being really vulnerable with this. So every time he comes into town, we’re going to get to know each other so that we’re buddies going into this.” And honestly, it really worked. By the end, I considered him a dear friend, this naked guy I had to fight.You’ve played around with this image of the wholesome naïf a lot over the years. How much of that feels like you?I grew up playing sports — I was hypercompetitive. I really am not like [B.J.] at all. If I relate to the character in any way, it’s just the kindness and the generosity that he has, and I think a lot of people see that as being a mark in our society.When you book something, you lean into it as hard as you can whether it’s a nice character or someone creepy. But this one in particular you have to understand, Where does the unconditional love come from? And how do I keep in touch with that? This season that really gets tested for the first time, and it gets tested so much that he thinks that he has to change who he is. And the fight scene is the culmination of that.After the fight, B.J. tells Judy, “I hope you like me now.” Does he feel worse about beating up Stephen than he feels about having gotten beat up himself?I think he’s probably more hurt that he betrayed his own values. Danny always said: “When you play B.J., he’s the eyes of the audience within the show. He’s looking at the family the way we all look at the family.” I’ve carried that with me the entire time. So that moment is, “Not only did you cheat on me, but you made me betray myself.”Do you think there’s any part of standing up for himself that he takes in a positive way?I think so. It’s a fascinating evolution of the character. When I first read it, I was excited because I think it puts that card on the table for him. I think parts of our culture see something like that as a rite of passage, or something that you have to rise to the occasion to do. So in that sense, he does do it. But when he comes back, you can also look at that final line as saying, “I’m not the same anymore, so I hope you like what this has changed me into.” You can’t go back after something like that.Baltz said he his not anything like B.J. “If I relate to the character in any way, it’s just the kindness and the generosity that he has,” he said.Michael Tyrone Delaney for The New York TimesIt’s like a more complex George McFly moment.Right. The sliding-door part of that [“Back to the Future”] trilogy is you see what happens if he doesn’t throw the punch, and his life is miserable. And then if he does throw the punch, everything is saved and the family’s OK. With this, I think B.J. probably looks at it and is like, “No, that’s a doorway that I can step back and forth from as I see fit now.” The truth is, his values are, “You shouldn’t do that.” He was forced to do it, and he rose to the occasion. But if given a choice, then he probably wouldn’t.Can we talk about the outfits? There’s a flamboyant dimension to them, and I’ve always wondered what that signifies.There’s a blend of a few things. First, I think he starts as Judy’s kept man; this is her wardrobe for him, and he feels a bit out of place. And then I think he gets more comfortable with it and starts to take bigger swings. Also, if you walk down King Street in Charleston [S.C., where the series is filmed], you will see guys kind of dressed like that. Maybe not as opulent, but the color palettes — there’s a lot of pastels.A lot of salmon.Before I’d really explored Charleston and saw some of these outfits, I thought, “Whoa, this is really out there.” And then in the real world you see it, and these people aren’t making a joke of it. They’re going about their regular lives. I always say that if B.J. was a Christian holiday, he’d be Easter because of the pastels. And it’s incumbent on me to feel comfortable and live in those outfits without making them the point of the joke. More

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      Why Care About Hollywood Strikes? We’re All Background Actors.

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      Why should you care about the strikes in Hollywood? Because they are much more than a revolt of the privileged.In Hollywood, the cool kids have joined the picket line.I mean no offense, as a writer, to the screenwriters who have been on strike against film and TV studios for over two months. But writers know the score. We’re the words, not the faces. The cleverest picket sign joke is no match for the attention-focusing power of Margot Robbie or Matt Damon.SAG-AFTRA, the union representing TV and film actors, joined the writers in a walkout over how Hollywood divvies up the cash in the streaming era and how humans can thrive in the artificial-intelligence era. With that star power comes an easy cheap shot: Why should anybody care about a bunch of privileged elites whining about a dream job?But for all the focus that a few boldface names will get in this strike, I invite you to consider a term that has come up a lot in the current negotiations: “Background actors.”You probably don’t think much about background actors. You’re not meant to, hence the name. They’re the nonspeaking figures who populate the screen’s margins, making Gotham City or King’s Landing or the beaches of Normandy feel real, full and lived-in.And you might have more in common with them than you think.The lower-paid actors who make up the vast bulk of the profession are facing simple dollars-and-cents threats to their livelihoods. They’re trying to maintain their income amid the vanishing of residual payments, as streaming has shortened TV seasons and decimated the syndication model. They’re seeking guardrails against A.I. encroaching on their jobs.There’s also a particular, chilling question on the table: Who owns a performer’s face? Background actors are seeking protections and better compensation in the practice of scanning their images for digital reuse.Background actors fill out the worlds of shows like “Game of Thrones.”Macall B. Polay/HBOIn a news conference about the strike, a union negotiator said that the studios were seeking the rights to scan and use an actor’s image “for the rest of eternity” in exchange for one day’s pay. The studios argue that they are offering “groundbreaking” protections against the misuse of actors’ images, and counter that their proposal would only allow a company to use the “digital replica” on the specific project a background actor was hired for.Still, the long-term “Black Mirror” implications — the practice was the actual premise of a recent episode — are unignorable. If a digital replica of you — without your bothersome need for money and the time to lead a life — can do the job, who needs you?You could, I guess, make the argument that if someone is insignificant enough to be replaced by software, then they’re in the wrong business. But background work and small roles are precisely the routes to someday promoting your blockbuster on the red carpet. And many talented artists build entire careers around a series of small jobs. (Pamela Adlon’s series “Better Things” is a great portrait of the life of ordinary working actors.)In the end, Hollywood’s fight isn’t far removed from the threats to many of us in today’s economy. “We are all going to be in jeopardy of being replaced by machines,” Fran Drescher, the actors’ guild president, said in announcing the strike.You and I may be the protagonists of our own narratives, but in the grand scheme most of us are background players. We face the same risk — that every time a technological or cultural shift happens, companies will rewrite the terms of employment to their advantage, citing financial pressures while paying their top executives tens and hundreds of millions.Annie Murphy in a recent episode of “Black Mirror,” in which an actor’s likeness was used by unscrupulous streaming executives.Nick Wall/NetflixMaybe it’s unfair that exploitation gets more attention when it involves a union that Meryl Streep belongs to. (If the looming UPS strike materializes, it might grab the spotlight for blue-collar labor.) And there’s certainly a legitimate critique of white-collar workers who were blasé about automation until A.I. threatened their own jobs.But work is work, and some dynamics are universal. As the entertainment reporter and critic Maureen Ryan writes in “Burn It Down,” her investigation of workplace abuses throughout Hollywood, “It is not the inclination nor the habit of the most important entities in the commercial entertainment industry to value the people who make their products.”If you don’t believe Ryan, listen to the anonymous studio executive, speaking of the writers’ strike, who told the trade publication Deadline, “The endgame is to allow things to drag out until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses.”You may think of Hollywood creatives as a privileged class, but if their employers think about them like this, are you sure yours thinks any differently of you? Most of us, in Hollywood or outside it, are facing a common question: Can we have a working world in which you can survive without being a star?You may never notice background actors if they’re doing their jobs well. Yet they’re the difference between a sterile scene and a living one. They create the impression that, beyond the close focus on the beautiful leads, there is a full, complete universe, whether it’s the galaxy of the “Star Wars” franchise or the mundane reality that you and I live in.They are there to say that we, too, are out here, that we make the world a world, that we at least deserve our tiny places in the corner of the screen. More

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      In Hollywood, the Strikes Are Just Part of the Problem

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      The entertainment industry is trying to figure out the economics of streaming. It’s also facing angst over a tech-powered future and fighting to stay culturally dominant.Existential hand-wringing has always been part of Hollywood’s personality. But the crisis in which the entertainment capital now finds itself is different.Instead of one unwelcome disruption to face — the VCR boom of the 1980s, for instance — or even overlapping ones (streaming, the pandemic), the movie and television business is being buffeted on a dizzying number of fronts. And no one seems to have any solutions.On Friday, roughly 160,000 unionized actors went on strike for the first time in 43 years, saying they were fed up with exorbitant pay for entertainment moguls and worried about not receiving a fair share of the spoils of a streaming-dominated future. They joined 11,500 already striking screenwriters, who walked out in May over similar concerns, including the threat of artificial intelligence. Actors and writers had not been on strike at the same time since 1960.“The industry that we once knew — when I did ‘The Nanny’ — everybody was part of the gravy train,” Fran Drescher, the former sitcom star and the president of the actors’ union, said while announcing the walkout. “Now it’s a walled-in vacuum.”At the same time, Hollywood’s two traditional businesses, the box office and television channels, are both badly broken.This was the year when moviegoing was finally supposed to bounce back from the pandemic, which closed many theaters for months on end. At last, cinemas would reclaim a position of cultural urgency.But ticket sales in the United States and Canada for the year to date (about $4.9 billion) are down 21 percent from the same period in 2019, according to Comscore, which compiles box office data. Blips of hope, including strong sales for “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” have been blotted out by disappointing results for expensive films like “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” “Elemental,” “The Flash,” “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” and, to a lesser extent, “The Little Mermaid” and “Fast X.”The number of movie tickets sold globally may reach 7.2 billion in 2027, according to a recent report from the accounting firm PwC. Attendance totaled 7.9 billion in 2019.It’s a slowly dying business, but it’s at least better than a quickly dying one. Fewer than 50 million homes will pay for cable or satellite television by 2027, down from 64 million today and 100 million seven years ago, according to PwC. When it comes to traditional television, “the world has forever changed for the worse,” Michael Nathanson, an analyst at SVB MoffettNathanson, wrote in a note to clients on Thursday.Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount Global and WarnerBros. Discovery have relied for decades on television channels for fat profit growth. The end of that era has resulted in stock-price malaise. Disney shares have fallen 55 percent from their peak in March 2021. Paramount Global, which owns channels like MTV and CBS, has experienced an 83 percent decline over the same period.On Thursday, Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, put the sale of the company’s “noncore” channels, including ABC and FX, on the table. He called the decline in traditional television “a reality we have to come to grips with.”In other words, it’s over.The latest installment of “Mission: Impossible” is opening this week and could be a rare bright spot at the box office.Mark Abramson for The New York TimesAnd then there is streaming. For a time, Wall Street was mesmerized by the subscriber-siphoning potential of services like Disney+, Max, Hulu, Paramount+ and Peacock, so the big Hollywood companies poured money into building online viewing platforms. Netflix was conquering the world. Amazon had arrived in Hollywood determined to make inroads, as had the ultra-deep-pocketed Apple. If the older entertainment companies wanted to remain competitive — not to mention relevant — there was only one direction to run.“You now have, really in control, tech companies who haven’t a care or clue, so to speak, about the entertainment business — it’s not a pejorative, it’s just the reality,” Barry Diller, the media veteran, said by phone this past week, referring to Amazon and Apple.“For each of these companies,” he added, “their minor business, not their major business, is entertainment. And yet, because of their size and influence, their minor interests are paramount in making any decisions about the future.”A little over a year ago, Netflix reported a subscriber loss for the first time in a decade, and Wall Street’s interest swiveled. Forget subscribers. Now we care about profits — at least when it comes to the old-line companies, because their traditional businesses (box office and channels) are in trouble.To make services like Disney+, Paramount+ and Max (formerly HBO Max) profitable, their parent companies have slashed billions of dollars in costs and eliminated more than 10,000 jobs. Studio executives also put the brakes on ordering new television series last year to rein in costs.WarnerBros. Discovery has said its streaming business, anchored by Max, will be profitable in 2023. Disney has promised profitability by September 2024, while Paramount had not forecast a date, except to say peak losses will occur this year, according to Rich Greenfield, a founder of the LightShed Partners research firm.Giving in to union demands, which would threaten streaming profitability anew, is not something the companies will do without a fight.“In the short term, there will be pain,” said Tara Kole, a founding partner of JSSK, an entertainment law firm that counts Emma Stone, Adam McKay and Halle Berry as clients. “A lot of pain.”Every indication points to a long and destructive standoff. Agents who have worked in show business for 40 years said the anger surging through Hollywood exceeded anything they had ever seen.“Straight out of ‘Les Miz’” was how one longtime executive described the high-drama, us-against-them mood in a text to a reporter. Photos circulating online from this past week’s Allen & Company Sun Valley media conference, the annual “billionaires’ summer camp” attended by Hollywood’s haves, inflamed the situation.On a Paramount Pictures picket line on Friday, Ms. Drescher attacked Mr. Iger, something few people in Hollywood would dare to do without the cloak of anonymity. She criticized his pay package (his performance-based contract allows for up to $27 million annually, including stock awards, which is middle of the road for entertainment chief executives) and likened him and other Hollywood moguls to “land barons of a medieval time.”“It’s so obvious that he has no clue as to what is really happening on the ground,” she added. Mr. Iger had told CNBC on Thursday that the demands by the two unions were “just not realistic.”In the coming weeks, studios will probably cancel lucrative long-term deals with writers (and some actor-producers) by virtue of the force majeure clause in their contracts, which kick in on the 60th or 90th day of a strike, depending on how the agreements are structured. The force majeure clause states that when unforeseeable circumstances prevent someone from fulfilling a contract, the studios can cancel the deal without paying a penalty.Eventually, contracts with the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA, as the actors’ union is known, will be hammered out.The deeper business challenges will remain.Nicole Sperling More