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      Treat Williams, Actor Known for ‘Hair’ and ‘Everwood,’ Dies at 71

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      The veteran actor also starred in the movie “Deep Rising.” He died after a motorcycle accident in Vermont.Treat Williams, the actor known for his roles in the movies “Hair” and “Deep Rising” and the TV show “Everwood,” has died. He was 71.Mr. Williams died on Monday after an S.U.V. crashed into his motorcycle in Dorset, Vt., the Vermont State Police said in a statement.The crash occurred in the late afternoon near the Vermont-New York State border.The Vermont State Police said that a southbound S.U.V. attempting to turn left into a parking lot drove into the path of Mr. Williams’s northbound Honda motorcycle, adding that Mr. Williams was “unable to avoid a collision and was thrown from his motorcycle.”Mr. Williams, who was wearing a helmet at the time of the accident, suffered critical injuries and was pronounced dead at a medical center in Albany, N.Y., after being airlifted there, the state police said. The 35-year-old man whose vehicle hit Mr. Williams was not hospitalized.The police said an investigation was underway. No other details were immediately available.Richard Treat Williams was born in Stamford, Conn., in 1951. “Treat” is a Welsh name that has been in his family for generations.Mr. Williams moved with his family to Rowayton, Conn., as a young child, he told Vermont Magazine in a 2021 interview. His father was a World War II veteran who later worked for the Merck pharmaceutical company. His mother owned a sailing and swimming school on Long Island Sound.“Looking back on my younger years, I had an idyllic childhood, but I didn’t initially realize how idyllic it truly was until I grew older,” he told the magazine.Mr. Williams began acting in seventh grade, he told Vermont Magazine. Later, at Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania, he quit the football team to focus on acting.Within a few years, he was on Broadway as the understudy to four of the male leads in “Grease,” including John Travolta. Then he began picking up roles in films starring James Earl Jones, Michael Caine and other A-list stars. One of his highest-profile roles was playing a hippie in the 1979 film version of “Hair,” directed by Milos Foreman.But his success wasn’t always assured. After a movie he starred in flopped in 1980 — the comedy “Why Would I Lie?” — Mr. Williams started flying planes for a company in Los Angeles.“I’d done eight films, none of which had been successful,” he told The New York Times in 1981. “I felt so out of control. I wasn’t working with people I wanted to work with. I was very frustrated.”Mr. Williams eventually came back to show business and racked up four more decades of roles in a wide variety of film and television projects.Among other highlights, he played the lead roles of a police officer-turned-informant in the 1981 film “Prince of the City” and a boat captain in the 1998 action movie “Deep Rising.”He also starred in “Everwood,” a WB television series about a New York neurosurgeon who starts a new life with his family in the mountains of Colorado after his wife dies in a car accident. The show debuted in 2002 and ran for four seasons.More recently, Mr. Williams played the impossibly single old flame of a woman who tries to sell her hometown in the 2020 Netflix musical “Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square.” He also played a retired detective in the 2022 HBO series “We Own This City.”Information about Mr. Williams’s survivors was not immediately available.Hours before he died, Mr. Williams, who lived in Manchester Center, Vt., posted a photo on Twitter that he appeared to have taken from the seat of his lawn mower.“Mowing today,” he wrote. “Wish I could bottle the scent.”Jesus Jiménez More

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      Pat Sajak, Longtime ‘Wheel of Fortune’ Host, Says He Will Retire

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      The game show host, a mainstay of American television, has starred on the program since 1981. He said he will step down in 2024.Pat Sajak, who as the host of “Wheel of Fortune” since 1981 became one of the most familiar faces on American television, announced on Monday that he will retire next year.“The time has come,” Mr. Sajak, 76, said on Twitter. “I’ve decided that our 41st season, which begins in September, will be my last.”Over the four-plus decades that Mr. Sajak has hosted the show, more than 10,000 people have auditioned for the “Wheel of Fortune,” which has drawn more than 26 million viewers per week, according to Sony Pictures Television, the studio that owns it.Suzanne Prete, executive vice president of game shows for Sony Pictures Television, said in a statement on Monday night that the studio was “incredibly grateful and proud to have had Pat as our host for all these years.”“We look forward to celebrating his outstanding career throughout the upcoming season,” Ms. Prete said.Mr. Sajak agreed to continue as a consultant for three years after his final season, Ms. Prete said.It was unclear who would take over the hosting duties after Mr. Sajak retires.Vanna White, Mr. Sajak’s longtime co-host, did not post any comment on social media on Monday night. She briefly stepped in for Mr. Sajak in 2019, when he needed an emergency surgery to fix a blocked intestine.While Ms. White filled in for Mr. Sajak, his daughter, Maggie Sajak, took over Ms. White’s puzzleboard duties. Ms. Sajak is a social correspondent for the show, posting digital content. The show, which was created by Merv Griffin in 1975, features contestants who try to guess word puzzles to compete for cash, of which more than $250 million had been awarded since it premiered, according to Sony. More

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      Book Review: ‘Wannabe,’ by Aisha Harris

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      In her essay collection “Wannabe,” Aisha Harris argues that Black critics can both appreciate, and demand more from, shifts in popular culture.WANNABE: Reckonings With the Pop Culture That Shapes Me, by Aisha HarrisBeing a Black critic in a time of exceptional art made by Black people has immense rewards and myriad risks. “Wannabe,” the debut essay collection from Aisha Harris, a co-host of NPR’s “Pop Culture Happy Hour,” is at its best when engaging with those risks and the thorny questions of her profession. In what ways does identity inform a critic’s work? And should it?Harris can laugh about the demands of endorsing positive representations of Blackness, no matter how trite (“When encountering Black art out in the wild, be on the lookout for Black Girl Magic, Black Love, Black Excellence and the direct involvement of Common and/or John Legend”). She cheekily pushes Issa Rae’s now-famous awards show proclamation — “I’m rooting for everybody Black” — to its most absurd extent: “It’s only right we take her at her literal word and support all Black artists and art, no matter how questionable, incompetent or just plain offensive they might be.” But when a podcast listener chastises Harris for finding the Will Smith movie “King Richard” middling, she roars back. “I don’t want to ‘just be happy’ about ‘King Richard,’” she insists. “I want interiority and surprise and characters who feel as though they have a reason to exist beyond retelling history.”It’s complicated, though. Harris recounts conflictedness about being disappointed by “A Wrinkle in Time,” which was directed by Ava DuVernay, whose film career was firmly on the rise. Harris, who wrote movie reviews for Slate and is a former editor at The New York Times, worried that a lukewarm piece could mean it would “be decades before another studio handed a movie of this stature to a woman of color.” Looking back, she arrived at a place that was “true to my own reactions to the movie without being scathing.”“Wannabe” is a blend of memoir and cultural analysis, framed as “reckonings with the pop culture that shapes me.” Harris flaunts a wide range of references, moving easily between decades and arenas. She makes smart use of Roger Ebert on Fellini, revisits “Key & Peele” sketches and dissects bell hooks’s analysis of the experimental film hero Stan Brakhage. The book is especially effective when its author leans on her personal experience. Harris grew up in Connecticut, in “predominantly white and suburban circles,” and she tenderly illustrates the trials of growing up “The Black Friend” in white environments.“These Black Friends,” Harris offers, “were a reminder of my isolation and the fact that I often felt as if I was a blip on the radar of the many white peers I attempted to befriend.”Harris braids her personal pain with incisive critiques of the trope and its limitations, constructing internal monologues for famous pop culture examples, like Gabrielle Union’s Katie in “She’s All That” and Lamorne Morris’s Winston in “New Girl.” She deftly connects the rise of the personal brand and the toxic cultures of online fandom (“The overpersonalization of pop culture begets acrimony and pathological obsession”); confronts her decision to not have kids through the prism of “The Brady Bunch” and Judd Apatow’s “Knocked Up”; and quotes from her own LiveJournal about a hurtful memory involving an oft-forgotten scene in Tina Fey’s “Mean Girls.”Still, for all its range, “Wannabe” contains occasions that demand more rigorous engagement. Contending with Dave Chappelle’s thorny legacy is limited to an aside: “While I recognize that present-day Dave Chappelle suffers from transphobic diarrhea of the mouth,” Harris writes, “I cannot pretend as though some of his old jokes no longer slap.” (She goes on to quote several of them.)And the recency of the pop references in “Wannabe” is both a strength and a weakness, and risks dating the book.The groundbreaking success of Disney’s “Encanto” and the multiple Oscar winner “Everything Everywhere All at Once” is likely to matter for a long time; Warner Bros. Discovery’s cancellation of the “Batgirl” film or the Harper’s letter on “Justice and Open Debate” might lose potency for the reader not engaged with the mostly-online #discourse.But enlisting movies and TV to explain the world is Harris’s expertise, arriving at “inadvertent self-formation by way of popular culture.” For readers already inclined to read culture to understand themselves, “Wannabe” is a compelling affirmation that they’re looking in the right place.Elamin Abdelmahmoud is a podcaster and the author of “Son of Elsewhere: A Memoir in Pieces,” a New York Times Notable Book in 2022.WANNABE: Reckonings With the Pop Culture That Shapes Me | By Aisha Harris | 280 pp. | HarperOne | $29.99 More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘How Do You Measure a Year?’ and ‘Project Runway’

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      HBO airs a documentary about a father and daughter. And the fashion competition show is back for its 20th season.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, June 12-18. Details and times are subject to change.MondayFrom left, Adam Devine, Aubrey Plaza, Anna Kendrick and Zac Efron in “Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates.”Gemma LaMana/Twentieth Century Fox Film CorporationMIKE AND DAVE NEED WEDDING DATES (2016) 7 p.m. on E!. If you’re looking for something goofy with a hint of escapism and a whisper of romance to start the week, this could be the movie for you. The story follows Mike and Dave (Adam Devine and Zac Efron), brothers who have been known to ruin family events with their antics. With the wedding of their sister, Jeanie (Sugar Lyn Beard), coming up, their parents tell them that they have to show up with dates. The brothers end up finding Tatiana and Alice (Aubrey Plaza and Anna Kendrick), who are trying to scam their way to a free vacation. Chaos ensues.TuesdayREAL HOUSEWIVES OF NEW JERSEY: REUNION 8 p.m. on Bravo. The ladies in New Jersey seem to have a lot to discuss this season, because the usual sit-down reunion with the Bravo producer and host Andy Cohen has been divided into three parts, with this being the final installment. Teresa Giudice, Melissa Gorga and Dolores Catania are just a few of the housewives who will be there, exposing texts and airing dirty laundry.WednesdayHOW DO YOU MEASURE A YEAR? 9 p.m. on HBO. If you were watching the musical “Rent,” that question would be answered, “In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee,” but for the filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt, he is asking the question perhaps more literally. Over the course of 17 years, Rosenblatt captured moments with his daughter, Ella, on her birthdays. From the ages of 2 to 18, Jay would sit Ella down and ask the same couple of questions — including how she would describe herself and how she would define the word “power.” The film earned an Oscar nomination this year.TEMPTATION ISLAND 9 p.m. on USA. Unlike reality dating shows like “Love Island” or “Bachelor in Paradise,” which send a bunch of singles to a beach to try to find love, this show sends already established couples to a beach in Hawaii. When they arrive, they are split up into different houses, each of which has singles who are ready to mingle. The object of the show is to see if the original couples are going to leave together or leave with someone else.Jordan Rodgers and JoJo Fletcher, the hosts of “The Big D.”Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesTHE BIG D 10 p.m. on E!. The “D” in this title refers to a not-so-fun word: divorce. JoJo Fletcher and Jordan Rodgers (of “Bachelor” franchise fame) host this reality show that brings together divorced couples who are looking for another shot at love. On the beaches of Costa Rica, the contestants can choose to try to rekindle things with their ex or find a new spark. The hosts, who are married, are also joined each episode by a relationship coach who tries to help the new couples and former couples through their new and old romances, and tries to set them up for relationship success in the future.ThursdayGUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER (1967) 8 p.m. on TCM. Katharine Houghton and Sidney Poitier star in this film about an engaged interracial couple who visit the woman’s liberal white parents, prompting her parents to confront their feelings of racism toward her Black partner. The film’s box office success had an impact on future film marketing as it related to race issues. It “is a most delightfully acted and gracefully entertaining film, fashioned much in the manner of a stage drawing-room comedy, that seems to be about something much more serious and challenging than it actually is,” Bosley Crowther wrote in his review for The New York Times.PROJECT RUNWAY 8 p.m. on Bravo. For its 20th season, this reality competition show is bringing back 14 memorable past contestants to again grind away on their sewing machines in the hopes of showing what they can bring to the world of fashion. Christian Siriano will return as a mentor, and judges for this season are Nina Garcia, Elaine Welteroth and Brandon Maxwell, with a list of celebrity guest judges lined up.FridayStacey Dash and Alicia Silverstone in “Clueless.”Paramount PicturesCLUELESS (1995) 8 p.m. on Pop TV. As IF you could miss the airing of this ’90s cult favorite. Follow Cher (Alicia Silverstone) as she navigates her crushes, tries to pass her driver’s test and schemes with her friends Dionne (Stacey Dash) and Tai (Brittany Murphy). The film, which is loosely based on “Emma” by Jane Austen, “is best enjoyed as an extended fashion show (kudos to the costume designer, Mona May) peppered with amusing one-liners, most of which Ms. Silverstone gets to deliver,” Janet Maslin wrote in her 1995 review of the film for The Times.SaturdayJOHN EARLY: NOW MORE THAN EVER 10 p.m. on HBO. The comedian John Early, probably most known for his role in “Search Party,” now has a televised special on HBO that is part stand-up comedy, part rock show. In it, he tells jokes, performs covers of songs and puts on behind-the-scenes-type skits.SundayRIDLEY: THE PEACEFUL GARDEN 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). This British police procedural stars Adrian Dunbar as the titular role — Alex Ridley, a former detective who had to take a leave of absence after losing his wife and daughter in a house fire and suffering a subsequent nervous breakdown. He comes back to the job to investigate the murder of a sheep farmer. Though the show can currently be found on BritBox, it is airing in the United States for the first time. More

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      Michael Batayeh, Comedian and ‘Breaking Bad’ Actor, Dies at 52

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      Mr. Batayeh starred in three episodes of the Emmy-winning series and performed stand-up comedy.Michael Batayeh, an actor best known for his brief role in the Emmy-winning series “Breaking Bad” and a comedian who was popular in the Arab-American community, died at his home in Ypsilanti, Mich. He was 52.His sister Ida Vergollo said he died on June 1 in his sleep after a heart attack. A coroner later found issues with his heart, she said.Mr. Batayeh appeared in “Breaking Bad” as Dennis Markowski, the steady manager of a laundromat that was a front for a meth lab. The character was killed after he showed interest in speaking to the Drug Enforcement Administration in exchange for immunity.As a comedian, Mr. Batayeh performed in major clubs in New York City and Los Angeles, as well as around the country and internationally.He also had credits on several popular television series, including “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” “The Bernie Mac Show” and “Boy Meets World.”Mr. Batayeh’s role as a cabdriver on “Everybody Loves Raymond” in 1998 signaled to his family that he had arrived as an entertainer, according to Ms. Vergollo, “because that’s when my dad first saw his last name on TV.” She said, “My dad was so proud of him and let him know that.”Michael Anthony Batayeh was born on Dec. 27, 1970, in Detroit, the seventh child of Abraham Batayeh, a Ford factory worker, and Victoria (Dababneh) Batayeh.The couple immigrated to the United States from Jordan in 1955. Michael Batayeh attended Wayne State University for three years before dropping out and moving to Los Angeles to pursue a career in the arts and start his own comedy troupe with a friend.“He was actually made to be a performer since he was very, very young,” said Ms. Vergollo, who recalled that her brother began playing the tabla, a pair of hand drums, at 5 years old and continued throughout his adult life.“My dad used to drag him up onstage at all the weddings,” she said.Mr. Batayeh is survived by his sisters Ida Vergollo, Diane Batayeh-Ricketts, MaryAnn Joseph, Madeline Sherman and Theresa Aquino. His eldest sister, Jeannie Batayeh, died from cancer in 2016.Mr. Batayeh often used his family as fodder for comedy. “He made fun of us a lot,” Ms. Vergollo said.And an affinity for accents made him popular in the Arab-American community, said Ms. Vergollo, who called him “so spot on.”At the invitation of the Jordanian royal family, his sisters said, he performed at a comedy festival in Amman, Jordan’s capital. He was also featured in a comedy special for Showtime Arabia.The family is asking for memorial contributions to an organization that provides recreation and mentoring programs for youth in southwest Detroit.“He would voice to us how important it was and how good he felt when he went back home and talked to kids or mentored people who wanted to start out,” Ms. Vergollo said. She noted that Mr. Batayeh moved back to Michigan from California permanently in 2016 when his sister Jeannie was ill, but would travel back and forth for work.“He cared about his community and wanted to give back,” she said, “and that’s the type of person he was.” More

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      How Saycon Sengbloh of ‘The Wonder Years’ Unwinds

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      The “Wonder Years” star takes care of herself with satin pillows, costume dramas and food that connects her to her Liberian roots.When Saycon Sengbloh tried out for the role of Lillian Williams, the matriarch in ABC’s reboot of “The Wonder Years,” she was also auditioning to be her boss’s mother. The showrunner, Saladin K. Patterson, had decided that if he was going to remake the beloved sitcom — this time looking at the late 1960s through the lens of a Black family in Alabama — he was going to base the show loosely on his own family, starting with his parents, Bill and Lillian.The central character in “The Wonder Years” is a teenager named Dean (Elisha Williams), but the story lines often revolve around Lillian. During the audition, conducted over Zoom, Sengbloh read a scene inspired by Patterson’s childhood in which Lillian tells Dean that the pornographic magazines he found in the basement aren’t his father’s: “Those are mine.”“When Saycon read that,” Patterson said in an interview, “she was just magic on the screen.”Sengbloh, 45, is a Tony-nominated singer, dancer and actress with years of Broadway, film and television credits, but Lillian Williams is her first starring role in a TV series. To shoot “The Wonder Years,” which returns for its second season on June 14, Sengbloh moved back to her hometown, Atlanta, where she made sure she had a fireplace, a bathtub and access to good okra. These are edited excerpts from our interview last month.1Charlotte, N.C.I left New York during the pandemic and moved to Charlotte, N.C. Everybody was like, what are you doing? But a few months later, I booked a television series in Charlotte called “Delilah.” It only had one season, but work begets work and I swear it helped me get “The Wonder Years,” which brought me back home to Atlanta. Being in Charlotte taught me that making choices that feel right will serve me. It’s also a beautiful town with beautiful people and really good barbecue.2Epsom SaltI’m a bathing beauty and an ex-Broadway showgirl, so I like to soak in the bath with Epsom salt. People associate Epsom salt with our grandmothers or our great-grandmothers. That generation knew about the benefits of magnesium. It really helps to fire your nervous system and fire your muscles.3Fine TeaWith all the singing I’ve done in my life, I’ve gotten into the habit of taking time to wake up the voice and care for the voice — and, yes, I said “the voice” in the third person. All the singers drink slippery elm tea, but I got tired of it and I got into a bunch of different teas, like Earl Grey and rooibos tea, which is really popular in South Africa.4FireplacesI am obsessed with cozy fireplace vibes. It’s part of the hygge lifestyle, the art of cozy. I’ve got a gas fireplace in my home in Atlanta. When I have it on, my dog, she knows where to be. I look at her and I say: You make me look rich.5‘Little Soul’Lately, I’ve been listening to a lot of channels on YouTube that have relaxing music accompanied by animated, calming scenes. My favorite is “Little Soul.” I have a lot of busyness going on, so I need to relax — hence the tea, the fireplace, the baths and the lo-fi music.6Le ColonialOne of my favorite restaurants is Le Colonial, which has a location in Atlanta. When you’re there, you feel like you’re on vacation because it has a beautiful view and they have banana trees and plants everywhere.7Vintage TVI love myself a good old vintage drama, honey. When I was living in New York, I probably moved to a new apartment every four or five years. I’d be in the kitchen just packing, watching “Downton Abbey,” “Dangerous Liaisons” or “Emma.”8Okra Soup, or StewMy dad was from Liberia, my mom is American, and my parents got married here in the ’70s. Okra soup is my favorite Liberian food. Like a lot of West African food that’s called soup, it’s actually more like a stew. Whenever I visit my sisters, who were born in Liberia, I try to get some okra soup. Or, here in Atlanta, there’s a spot called Bamba Cuisine that serves the Senegalese version of okra stew called soupou kandja.9Satin PillowsA lot of women have been into satin pillows in the last five or 10 years. It’s supposed to be good for your skin and good for your hair. When you turn your face at night, it feels soft and smooth, not rough.10New WorksWhen I was doing a workshop for a show called “Holler if Ya Hear Me,” Chadwick Boseman was my leading man. He didn’t end up doing the show, and we didn’t last long, but the opportunity to be in a show that’s premiering or originating — watching brilliant directors, writers and creators get a show off the ground and bring it life — is just amazing. More

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      How It Takes an Old ‘Beast Wars’ to Make a New ‘Transformers’

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      The Canadian-made computer animated series “Beast Wars: Transformers” serves as the unlikely basis for the latest film in the popular franchise.This summer’s “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” is the latest of seven films in the long-running series of live-action films based on Hasbro’s hugely popular toy franchise; the first since the critically acclaimed 2018 spinoff, “Bumblebee”; and the first mainline installment since the Michael Bay-directed “Transformers: The Last Knight” (2017). Like all of the films in the series to date, “Rise of the Beasts” is based on characters first designed in 1984 as a line of children’s action figures, much like Mattel’s Masters of the Universe or Hasbro’s own G.I. Joe. But this new chapter also pulls from an unusual source: “Beast Wars: Transformers,” a somewhat obscure Canadian television show that ran from 1996 to 1999.A scene from “Beast Wars: Transformers.”Alliance Atlantis Communications“Rise of the Beasts” takes place largely in New York in the 1990s, and follows the action-packed exploits of a race of powerful robots who live in disguise as cars and trucks, including the series hero Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen, reprising his role as voice actor from all of the previous films). This time around, Prime and his allies are joined by the Maximals, time-traveling Transformers from the distant future who turn into animals rather than vehicles: They include the rhinoceros Rhinox (David Sobolov), the falcon Airazor (Michelle Yeoh), the cheetah Cheetor (Tongayi Chirisa) and the gorilla Optimus Primal (Ron Perlman), a descendant of Prime. All of the new animal Transformers have been faithfully lifted from “Beast Wars,” which featured these characters living on a barren alien planet and doing battle with the nefarious Blackarachnia (a spider) and Scorponok (a scorpion), among other foes with similarly literal names.“Beast Wars” was produced in Vancouver, British Columbia, by the animation company Mainframe Studios, which had previously developed “ReBoot,” a pioneering computer-animated series from the ’90s, for the popular Canadian children’s entertainment network YTV. Also fully computer-animated — at a time when that technology was still in its infancy — “Beast Wars” looked a little like a starker, more rudimentary version of “Toy Story,” with colorful, bulbous character models moving simply around sparse environments. The series ran for three seasons on YTV (under the more kid-friendly title “Beasties”) and in syndication across the United States, winning a Daytime Emmy for outstanding achievement in animation in 1998 and inspiring a TV sequel, several comic books and two video games — and now, almost three decades after its debut, a feature film (sort of).Were it not for some of its characters and designs resurfacing this month in “Rise of the Beasts,” it seems likely that “Beast Wars” would have continued to recede into a lasting obsolescence, forgotten to all but the most nostalgic ’90s kids and most dedicated “Transformers” fans. And while the somewhat tangential connection to the source material may prevent the movie from kicking off a sudden torrent of interest in the Canadian series — “Rise of the Beasts” has not been especially billed as a “Beast Wars” movie, and the show has scarcely come up during press for the film — it’s still a good occasion to give the series its long-awaited due. Happily, the entire original run of “Beast Wars” was released on home video by Shout Factory in 2011 and is now available for purchase on Amazon Prime Video. More

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      ‘Jury Duty’ Becomes a Surprise Hit

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      “Jury Duty,” a unique comedy on the Amazon streaming platform Freevee, became a surprise hit thanks to word-of-mouth social media buzz.On the night of April 6, the creators of “Jury Duty,” a hybrid documentary-sitcom in which an ordinary man unwittingly participates in a staged trial among actors, came together in Culver City, Calif., for a cast and crew screening of the series.The atmosphere was muted. Early reviews had been unflattering — The Hollywood Reporter, earlier that day, had called it “a bad show for benign reasons.” And with it premiering the next day on Amazon Freevee, an ad-supported streaming platform few were familiar with, expectations for the show’s success were modest, if not outright low.“The vibe at the screening I would describe as very much like, ‘We made a show, we should be proud of that,’” Todd Schulman, an executive producer, said in a recent video interview. “I believed in what we had made. But there’s so much content out there, and this is on a platform that’s not as well-known as the other ones, so let’s be realistic about what’s going to happen.”“Then the next three weeks unfolded,” he continued. “And it felt insane.”After a slow start, “Jury Duty” rapidly found an audience, building ecstatic word-of-mouth buzz to become a bona fide social media sensation, with clips of the show racking up hundreds of millions of views on TikTok.Broader interest in the show spiked accordingly, more than doubling in the month after premiere, according to research by Parrot Analytics. (The company assesses the popularity of shows by analyzing audience demand — a combination of streaming, social media, search and other online behaviors.) Interest in “Jury Duty” remains higher now than it was during the show’s initial run, in April, suggesting that plenty of viewers are still discovering it, Parrot said.Like most streamers, Amazon declines to give viewing numbers, but it confirmed that “Jury Duty” has been Freevee’s most watched show since it premiered. Last week, seeking to capitalize and build on the popularity, Amazon released a line of “Jury Duty” merchandise as well as new versions of the episodes that include cast commentary.All of which has prompted a lot of people to ask the same question: How did this happen?“Jury Duty” feels like a minor miracle. The premise is fraught with peril: The nominal star, a contractor named Ronald Gladden, has no idea that he is in a sitcom — he had been told that some parts of the trial were being recorded as a documentary — and one of the thrilling things about watching is the constant sense that at any moment it could all implode. Ronald could have discovered the ruse; the actors playing the other jurors could have broken character or flubbed lines. But all involved managed to pull it off.Gladden, center, was the only non-actor in the series, and viewers were charmed by his agreeable demeanor.Amazon FreeveeSchulman and his team weren’t even sure that they could. When they were pitching the concept around Hollywood, they received little interest, with most networks passing on the grounds that it posed too much of a creative risk. It was ultimately Freevee and its head of originals, Lauren Anderson, who was eager to take that chance.“Usually when you say ‘They took a chance on us,’ it means they took a chance because the show could have been bad,” Schulman said. “But they could give us millions of dollars and not get a show — that’s a different scale of chance-taking.”In an interview, Anderson said that when she first heard the pitch, at the start of the pandemic, Freevee — which was known at the time as IMDb TV — hadn’t released any original content and was looking for “noisy, buzzy and unique” programming to set its slate apart. “I got the feeling that this could be really special,” she said.James Marsden was less confident. The star of “Westworld” and “Sonic the Hedgehog” has a recurring role in “Jury Duty,” playing an exaggeratedly arrogant, pretentious version of himself who is ordered to be a backup juror for the trial. While Marsden was initially intrigued by the idea, he said in a phone interview that his doubts set in once the production began.“I started thinking, ‘Oh my God, what have I gotten myself into? Can we even do this? Can we pull this off?” he said. Even if it worked, he didn’t think it would land: “I thought this would either be the end of my career or something that maybe a handful of people would see.”Even Gladden didn’t expect much to come from it once the production had wrapped. (That he was on a TV show was revealed to him in the final episode, but he had to wait months for it to make it to air.)“It was on a brand-new streaming platform that no one had ever heard of, so I didn’t really think it was going to go anywhere,” Gladden said over the phone from Los Angeles. “I truthfully didn’t think anything was going to come from it.”Leading up to the premiere, the buzz was virtually nonexistent, but there were signs the show could resonate. A trailer put out by Freevee didn’t cause much of a splash, but then one of the show’s writers, Kerry O’Neill, shared the trailer to her Twitter account with the caption, “We truman showed a man,” and the tweet blew up. The idea that someone had recreated “The Truman Show,” the Jim Carrey movie about a man unknowingly living life on TV, “really contextualized everything for people,” said Nicholas Hatton, one of the show’s executive producers. The trailer embedded in O’Neill’s tweet received 1.3 million views.While middling reviews dampened expectations, show clips put out by Freevee found an immediate foothold on TikTok. “I’m a 44-year-old man; I’m not on TikTok,” Schulman said dryly. “I couldn’t believe how many people my age or older were telling me that they heard about the show from their teenage kids. It was working its way generationally upward.”The fan TikTok videos — which Freevee had no part in creating, though it also posted clips to its own TikTok account — were like short, self-contained advertisements for the series. Users shared scenes out of context with a line or two of explanation, and it proved more than enough for people to understand the conceit and get hyped.Marsden felt the impact immediately after the first episode aired. “I started getting texts from friends and random people I hadn’t heard from in years,” he said. “What I kept hearing was, ‘You’re blowing up on TikTok.’ I didn’t even know what that meant.” The excitement spilled over into real life: “I walked out of my hotel room in New York to get a coffee and literally every other person under 30 was stopping me to talk about ‘Jury Duty.’”James Marsden, right, played an arrogant version of himself in the series. “I thought this would either be the end of my career or something that maybe a handful of people would see,” he said.Amazon FreeveeAt the same time, Gladden — who returned to contracting work after the show and had a minimal online presence — was thrust into social media stardom. “I figured that on Instagram that I might gain a few thousand followers out of it,” he said. “But when I very quickly gained over 10,000, I realized it was actually becoming a thing.”Essential to the show’s appeal, especially on TikTok, has been Gladden’s warmth and positivity as the unwitting lead. Faced over and over again with oblique ethical quandaries engineered by the writers (such as whether to take the blame for an embarrassing bathroom accident caused by Marsden) and forced to endure the bizarre behavior of his fellow “jurors,” Gladden exuded an unflappable sweetness that viewers have found touching and inspiring.Not surprisingly, the more than 200,000 Instagram followers he now has have been flooding Gladden’s inbox with positive messages. “People have been telling me things like, ‘You’ve inspired me to be a better person,’ or ‘you make me want to be nicer to people,’” he said. “It’s the best reaction I could have gotten.”Every network hopes to cultivate this kind of grass-roots furor, and modern streaming content can feel as if it is actively courting viral success (consider the “Wednesday” dance). But no one involved with “Jury Duty” intended for it to be a TikTok hit.“This show took off in a way that you can’t buy,” Anderson said. “It took on a life of its own, in the way that you want to happen for every show you make but which you just can’t predict.”That it was a happy accident hasn’t stopped others in the industry from lusting after the recipe, of course. “I’ve had people who work at other platforms call me and say, ‘OK, what’s the secret? What did Freevee do to make this go viral?’” Schulman said. “It was completely organic.”As for what it was about “Jury Duty” in particular that resonated with audiences on TikTok, Marsden has a theory. “Young people go onto YouTube or their explore feed on TikTok or Instagram, and they watch people slipping on the ice or doing a silly dance,” he said. “They want to see what’s going on out there in all its absurdity or its hilariousness or its scariness. They want to watch something real, and not fake.”The centerpiece of “Jury Duty” is a real guy, and that edge of reality, Marsden feels, is what captures the imagination of the young. “Every 20-year-old can see themselves in that position and think, ‘What if that was me?’ There’s something kind of dangerous and exciting about that.” More