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      in Television

      ‘Call Her Alex,’ Plus 7 Things on TV this Week

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      The series about the podcast host Alex Cooper airs, alongside a slew of new documentaries.Between streaming and cable, there is a seemingly endless variety of things to watch. Here is a selection of TV shows and specials that are airing or streaming this week, June 9-15. Details and times are subject to change.Day in the life of a podcaster.In October 2018, a new podcast hit the charts: “Call Her Daddy,” hosted by Alex Cooper and Sofia Franklyn, and produced by Barstool Sports. Since then, Cooper and the podcast have weathered a very public co-host breakup and a battle for the podcast’s I.P. — and it’s gotten a $60 million Spotify deal. This and more will be examined in the new documentary series “Call Her Alex.” The two-part series originally premiered at Tribeca Film Festival last week. Cameras also followed Cooper as she prepared for her podcast tour and reminisced on her childhood, which started her on her current trajectory. Streaming Tuesday on Hulu.A series of unfortunate events.On March 20, 2013, a flight was set to depart the Dominican Republic, headed to St. Tropez. On board was 700 kilograms of cocaine stored in 26 suitcases, four French nationals who claimed it wasn’t theirs and they didn’t know who it belonged to. The French documentary series “Cocaine Air” tries to unravel the strange story and figure out how it got on the plane. Streaming Wednesday on Netflix.A picture of the OceanGate Titan Submersible.OceanGate Expedition via ReutersIn June 2023, the world seemingly held it’s breath when news that a submersible, called Titan and owned by OceanGate, imploded on its way down to explore the wreckage of the Titanic. The five people onboard, including OceanGate’s founder and chief executive, Stockton Rush, died in the wreck, after a trip that lasted an hour and 33 minutes. The implosion has been attributed to a faulty design and inadequate testing. The new documentary feature “Titan: The OceanGate Disaster” explores what went wrong. Streaming Wednesday on Netflix.Heather Rovet, a Toronto real estate broker, has a perfect relationship with her boyfriend, Jace — until she finds out that she is actually dating Jason Porter, a felon with a history of romantic schemes. And suddenly, Heather is now in a horror film. The true crime documentary “Romcon: Who the F**k is Jason Porter” tells how it all went down. Streaming Thursday on Prime Video.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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      Tonys 2025 Takeaways: ‘Maybe Happy Ending’ Wins 6 Awards

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      Broadway rewarded adventurous newcomers including Sarah Snook (“The Picture of Dorian Gray”), Nicole Scherzinger (“Sunset Boulevard”) and Cole Escola (“Oh, Mary!”).“Maybe Happy Ending,” a stirring Broadway musical about two discarded robots who go on a road trip and forge a relationship, won the coveted Tony for best new musical on Sunday night, capping a remarkable journey for a show that faced long odds but won over both critics and fans.The triumph of a show with a puzzling title and tough-to-explain themes was a vote of confidence in originality by an industry often dominated by big-brand intellectual property and big-name Hollywood stars.The musical’s prize capped a night in which Broadway rewarded adventurous newcomers: Sarah Snook, the “Succession” star who played 26 roles in a technologically complicated adaptation of “The Picture of Dorian Gray”; Nicole Scherzinger, the former Pussycat Doll who, barefoot and bloodied, delivered a scorching performance in a revival of “Sunset Boulevard”; and Cole Escola, an alt-cabaret performer who imagined Mary Todd Lincoln as an alcoholic who longs to be a chanteuse and turned that zany idea into the hit play “Oh, Mary!”The awards were spread out among a diverse array of shows. “Maybe Happy Ending,” set in a futuristic Korea, won a night-leading six awards, and “Buena Vista Social Club,” a musical set in Cuba, finished with four competitive prizes.Natalie Venetia Belcon performed a song from “Buena Vista Social Club” before winning a Tony for best featured actress in a musical.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe awards show took place as Broadway seems finally to be rebounding after a damaging pandemic shutdown. The season that just ended was the highest grossing on record when the figures are not adjusted for inflation. But attendance remains slightly below prepandemic levels and very few musicals are achieving profitability. The season’s success was attributable in large part to three starry plays whose runs are now ending: “Good Night, and Good Luck,” “Othello” and “Glengarry Glen Ross.”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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      in Theater

      Here’s what to expect at tonight’s ceremony.

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      The Tony Awards are Broadway’s biggest night, when the latest plays and musicals are introduced to a television audience of several million, any of whom might turn into a theater lover, a ticket buyer, or even an artist (so many Broadway performers and producers have stories about watching the Tony Awards as children). Here’s what to expect:The ceremony is being hosted by Cynthia Erivo, who won a Tony Award in 2016 for her breakout performance in a revival of “The Color Purple” and was nominated this year for an Oscar for playing Elphaba in the “Wicked” film adaptation. In the years since winning the Tony, Erivo, a 38-year-old British actress, has focused on movies, television and music — she has just released her second studio album and the second “Wicked” film comes out Nov. 21.After the Tony Awards, she’ll be returning to the stage. In August she’s playing Jesus in a one-weekend run of “Jesus Christ Superstar” at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, and then early next year she’ll star in a one-woman version of “Dracula” in London’s West End.Who will be performing?Much of the excitement is likely to focus on a 10th anniversary performance by the entire original cast of “Hamilton,” which is Broadway’s last huge hit. The number is expected to be a medley of the show’s best-known songs.All five shows nominated for best new musical will perform songs from their shows: “Buena Vista Social Club,” about a group of Cuban musicians; “Dead Outlaw,” about a bandit and his outlandish afterlife; “Death Becomes Her,” about two women whose quest for eternal youth has comical consequences; “Maybe Happy Ending,” about a relationship between two involuntarily retired robots; and “Operation Mincemeat,” about a bizarre British counterintelligence operation.The four shows nominated for best musical revival are also performing, including “Floyd Collins,” about a trapped cave explorer; “Gypsy,” about a stripper’s stage mother; “Pirates!” about a lovelorn buccaneer; and “Sunset Boulevard,” about a faded film star.There will also be performances by two other new musicals: “Just in Time,” about the singer Bobby Darin, and “Real Women Have Curves,” which explores immigrant experiences through the eyes of a young woman.Sara Bareilles will join Erivo to perform during the In Memoriam segment, and the choir Broadway Inspirational Voices will join Erivo for the opening number.Who is presenting?There will be lots of household names introducing shows and presenting awards. Among them: Oprah Winfrey, Samuel L. Jackson, Keanu Reeves, Adam Lambert, Michelle Williams, Bryan Cranston, Ben Stiller, Jean Smart, Lea Michele, Danielle Brooks, Lea Salonga and Sarah Paulson. Lin-Manuel Miranda is expected to present the award for best musical.Who will win?The most-nominated shows are the musicals “Buena Vista Social Club,” “Death Becomes Her” and “Maybe Happy Ending,” each with 10 nods. The prizes are likely to be quite spread out, but “Maybe Happy Ending,” “Sunset Boulevard” and the play “Oh, Mary!” seem certain to get some love from voters.Many celebrities performed on Broadway this season, but several of them were not nominated for Tony Awards, and others are not likely to win. One star favored to go home with a statuette: Sarah Snook, best known for HBO’s “Succession,” is expected to win a Tony Award for playing every character in a stage adaptation of “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” More

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      in Music

      Why Beyoncé and BET Keep Calling Jesse Collins

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      There’s a memorable scene in Beyoncé’s “Homecoming” documentary about her headlining performance at Coachella in 2018, when she asks a production crew member for a 30-foot-wide camera track. He tells her it doesn’t exist. She then proves him wrong.The Emmy-winning television producer Jesse Collins remembers that moment well, so when the pop superstar called on him to produce her Christmas Day N.F.L. halftime extravaganza “Beyoncé Bowl” for Netflix, he was ready to meet her demands.“Hell no, I will never tell her something doesn’t exist unless it really doesn’t exist,” he said recently with a laugh, “because she’ll Google it and she keeps up with technology. If it can’t happen, I am 1,000 percent certain it can’t happen.”Collins, 54, has worked closely with Beyoncé on awards show performances, including her raucous rendition of “Freedom” at the 2016 BET Awards, when she danced and kicked in a shallow pool of water.“The water was one of the most complicated things that I’ve ever done on any award show,” Collins recalled in a video interview from his office in Burbank, Calif., in a comfy black hoodie as the sun beamed behind him. “Most people try to get away from water,” he said, but an executive had promised it. “When you start the conversation with, ‘This was promised to Beyoncé,’ everybody’s like, ‘We’re going to make this happen.’”Making things happen is Collins’s specialty, and it’s why heavyweights like Oprah Winfrey and Jay-Z have recruited him for their projects.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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      An ‘S.N.L.’ Secret Weapon Retires After 50 Years

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      Stephen DeMaria has overseen the building of “Saturday Night Live” scenery since the show began. At 87, he finally hung up his hammer.The Stiegelbauer workshop, where Stephen DeMaria coordinated the construction of sets for “Saturday Night Live,” is in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, miles from 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Geographically, and in the minds of “S.N.L.” fans, DeMaria’s name was always far removed from the prestige and glamour of the show that has defined American comedy since 1975. But while most viewers have never heard of him, he has spent 50 years setting the scenes for the show’s most memorable moments.And now he is done. DeMaria, known as “Demo” in the shop, retired after the 50th season finale, May 17. The day before, the white-haired, 87-year-old carpenter was leaning over his drafting table, inspecting blueprints and fiddling with the No. 2 pencil usually found behind his ear. For DeMaria and his crew, the show had already begun.Stiegelbauer Associates Inc. is a cross between a shop class and a late-night museum: A Rainbow Room marquee hangs above a workbench; a leftover airplane set sits plastic-wrapped; photos of past sets installed in the show’s Studio 8H are framed on every wall.During show weeks, sets are assembled all over the shop by an eclectic crew of craftspeople, many of whom have worked on “S.N.L.” for decades. As the foreman, DeMaria coordinates the teams assigned to build the sets designed at 30 Rock. Then he oversees the construction, moseying through the shop and kicking up sawdust with his cane as he checks in at the workstations.The cane was the result of an injury he suffered at an end-of-season celebration last year: After a night of tearing up the dance floor, he fell off a curb and broke his hip.“The best time of my life is the ‘S.N.L.’ parties,” he said. “I’ll be on the dance floor when I get there, and I won’t leave until 5 in the morning.” His favorite, he said, was the 2012 end-of-season party, after an episode hosted by Mick Jagger. “He was dancing all over the studio, so I got involved,” DeMaria recalled. “I was dancing with Mick Jagger!”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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      Documentary Series Goes Inside Trump’s Bubble

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      Advance episodes of “Art of the Surge” offer a rare behind-the-scenes look at the adulatory environment in which Mr. Trump has moved since regaining power.A few weeks after winning the election, President-elect Donald J. Trump found himself face-to-face with Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland, a rising star in the Democratic Party, as the two men made their way through the bowels of Northwest Stadium in Landover, Md., to watch the annual Army-Navy game.The governor greeted him effusively.“Mr. President, welcome back to Maryland, sir, welcome back to Maryland!” Mr. Moore said. “Great to see you, great to see you, great to have you back here.”“You’re a good-looking guy,” Mr. Trump observed.“We are very, very anxious to be able to work closely with you,” the governor added. Then he mentioned the ongoing efforts to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge outside Baltimore, which had collapsed that March.This chummy encounter was captured on camera for a documentary series called “Art of the Surge,” now streaming on Fox Nation, which provides a rare behind-the-scenes look at the adulatory environment in which Mr. Trump has moved since regaining power. The series gives a sense of how much he is enveloped by people eager to stroke his ego and get in his good graces — including some unexpected figures, according to advance episodes viewed by The New York Times.A still image from video footage of Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland greeting President-elect Donald J. Trump at the Army-Navy football game in December 2024.Art of the SurgeAt one point, inside the V.I.P. box at the football game, Brian Grazer, a top Hollywood producer, gets his photo taken with the president-elect and confides to those in the room that he cast his ballot for the Republican.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 Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ Keeps Pushing Back TV’s Fourth Wall

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      Reality TV had long advised casts to pretend the cameras (and producers) weren’t there. But for the Mormon influencers of MomTok, the business of being on camera is central to the plot.The women of MomTok, the 20- and 30-something Mormon influencers who make up the cast of Hulu’s “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” built their livelihood on upsetting codes of conduct.The series’s first season was birthed in the wake of a “soft swinging” scandal involving some of its couples. A few of the cast members drink alcohol. Some abstain in keeping with the Church’s doctrine, but interpret its teachings on ketamine use more loosely.In the show’s second season, which finished airing this month, the group routinely flouted what, in eras past, had been a cardinal rule of reality TV: Don’t break the fourth wall.“It’s not a shock that I was a fan favorite,” Demi Engemann pointedly told her MomTok peers in Episode 6. The group had just learned she tried to persuade producers to kick off her co-star Jessi Ngatikaura to secure a higher contract for this season. “I feel like I’m an asset, I should fight for more.”That prompted Taylor Frankie Paul, the unofficial founder of MomTok, to push back about her own negotiations over the very show on which they were appearing.“I’m the that one that’s actually struggling because I’m open to the [expletive] world,” she said. “If anyone deserves to be paid more it’s me and I’ve never even asked for that.”

      @secretlivesonhulu The girls are fightinggg 🫣 #TheSecretLivesOfMormonWives ♬ original sound – secretlivesonhulu 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 Revels in Trump and Musk’s Public Feud

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      Stephen Colbert indulged in schadenfreude as he described the back-and-forth as a “full-scale flame war” between “the world’s most famous besties.”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.Up in FlamesPresident Donald Trump addressed Elon Musk’s comments about his policy bill on Thursday while appearing alongside the chancellor of Germany. Trump expressed disappointment in the Tesla chief, stating that Musk was upset about the absence of a mandate for electric vehicles.Stephen Colbert described the back-and-forth as a “full-scale flame war” between “the world’s most famous besties.”“So now Donald Trump is a Tesla owner who hates Elon Musk? He’s never been more relatable.” — STEPHEN COLBERTTrump stoked the flames on social media, writing that Musk “went crazy” when he was asked to leave the White House.“Just so we’re clear, Trump thinks everything Elon did before this was not crazy?” — JIMMY FALLON“I can’t believe their relationship fell apart this fast. I mean, a week ago they were all over each other like Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Jenner at a Knicks game.” — JIMMY FALLON“But Trump didn’t stop there. He also said that the easiest way for the country to save money would be to terminate all of Elon Musk’s government contracts. Smart, now the future of space exploration rests on Katy Perry.” — JIMMY FALLON“Elon’s government contracts can’t be worth that much. Oh, it’s $6.3 billion last year? Elon, you idiot. This is why you always sign a prenup.” — MICHAEL KOSTA“Meanwhile, Elon’s, like, ‘Come on, man, don’t do this. I have 100 kids to feed.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Trump said he’s very disappointed in Elon because he has ‘helped him a lot.’ Trump was, like, ‘[imitating Trump] Just last year, I let him give me $300 million, and he didn’t even say thank you.’” — JIMMY FALLONOn X, Musk dropped what he called “the really big bomb,” alleging that the president has not released the Jeffrey Epstein files because he is named in them.“I feel bad for Donald Trump. I mean, first, he lost Jeffrey Epstein, now, Elon. He’s running out of friends.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Trump’s going to have to get one of those bumper stickers for his Tesla that says ‘I bought this before Elon told everyone I was on Epstein’s plane.’” — STEPHEN COLBERTWe 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