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      What Is an EGOT? A Detailed History of Its Origins and Winners.

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      Many people were introduced to the idea of an EGOT — winning an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony — through “30 Rock.” But it’s an actor from the 1980s who deserves the credit.Common would be the first to admit that he has an EGO — that is, an Emmy Award, a Grammy Award and an Oscar — making him just a Tony Award shy from securing the coveted EGOT, the achievement of winning all four major entertainment awards.Eighteen other people have done so, and the “Frozen” songwriter Robert Lopez is the only person to do it twice. The most recent addition was the actress Viola Davis, who earned a Grammy in February for the audiobook of her memoir, making her one of six women to have an EGOT.Now Common has a shot at joining this rather uncommon club. The Tony nominations will be announced on Tuesday, and he is eligible in the featured actor in a play category after making his Broadway debut in “Between Riverside and Crazy.”But where did the EGOT acronym come from, and what does it really take to earn the accolade?Why did we start talking about EGOTs?Many people who first heard of an EGOT assume it originated on the hit NBC sitcom “30 Rock,” which began airing in 2006. But it turns out the term dates back to 1984, when only three people had achieved EGOT-hood: the composer Richard Rodgers and the actresses Helen Hayes and Rita Moreno.It’s actually Philip Michael Thomas, Don Johnson’s partner on the police drama “Miami Vice,” who deserves the naming credit. The accomplishment was previously known as a “grand slam,” a term used for similar achievements in golf and tennis.Thomas has told reporters that his dream was to win an Emmy for his work on “Miami Vice,” a Grammy for his record albums, an Oscar for a play he wanted to adapt as a film, and a Tony for some musicals he had written.Thomas, who later claimed the acronym also stood for his career mantra — “Energy, Growth, Opportunity and Talent” — even wore a medallion with “EGOT” engraved on it. But he was never nominated for any of the awards he dreamed of winning.How did EGOT enter the popular lexicon?Despite Thomas’s efforts, it took a couple of decades before “EGOT” became a thing. Then Kay Cannon, a writer and producer on “30 Rock,” decided to incorporate the rare feat into a satirical story line that began in 2009. “You’d hear this red carpet commentary,” Cannon told The New York Times recently, “that they were one award away from EGOT-ing.”At the time, even some luminaries didn’t know about the distinction. The comedian Whoopi Goldberg first learned she had achieved EGOT status when she guest-starred on one of the four “30 Rock” episodes in which the character Tracy Jordan, played by Tracy Morgan, bought Thomas’s necklace and started strategizing to achieve his own EGOT. (“A good goal for a talented crazy person,” he says in the show.)“I watched ‘30 Rock’ and loved the concept,” Lopez said. “One doesn’t really ever think of themselves as a candidate for achieving something so ridiculous, but I realized that maybe I could do it one day.” Lopez got his wish in 2014, winning an Oscar for the song “Let It Go” from the Disney animated hit “Frozen.”The composer Andrew Lloyd Webber was more old school. “I wasn’t thinking, ‘If I get this Emmy, I’d be an EGOT,’” Lloyd Webber said about achieving the feat in 2018 for “Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert.” The lyricist Tim Rice and the singer John Legend, who played the title role, reached EGOT status at the same time.“It hadn’t really crossed my mind,” Lloyd Webber said. “I’m much more conscious of it now.”So, what is the best strategy for winning an EGOT?The not-so-quiet secret is that when you’re close to an EGOT, it is possible to game the system.Lloyd Webber said he was recently asked by a fellow artist — someone famous, he won’t say who — how to add a Tony to an awards collection that already included a Grammy and an Emmy. “I said, ‘Well, one way you could do that is become a producer, put some money into a few shows,’” he said. “Every show seems to have 20 producers these days.”That strategy worked for the singer and actress Jennifer Hudson, who achieved an EGOT in 2022 with her Tony win as a producer of “A Strange Loop.”Lloyd Webber thinks getting an Oscar is the most difficult. A Grammy is the easiest, he said, simply because there are more available categories: “You could be the best banjo player in Latin America.”And if Davis’s clinching Grammy win — in the best audio book, narration and storytelling category — revealed anything, it’s that nonmusical methods can be just as effective. “Do a comedy album or narrate your own audio book,” Cannon said. “Write a book, narrate that and then adapt it to the stage.”After considering her own track record (“I’m 0-for-4 right now”), Cannon said she thought her best bet could be a Broadway adaptation of “Pitch Perfect,” the 2012 musical comedy film that she co-wrote.Does it help to have an EGOT as your goal?Probably not. The renowned composer Alan Menken had already won 11 Grammys, eight Oscars and one Tony when his representatives realized he just needed an Emmy to complete the EGOT. “To be honest, it wasn’t something that was really on my wish list until it was brought up, and brought up, and brought up,” he said. “But you can’t will something like that into existence.”So about six years ago, Menken wrote a song about wanting to achieve an EGOT, soliciting assistance from comedy writers like Judd Apatow. The idea was that it would start off sounding sincere, and then would get more and more desperate with each section. Ultimately, he discarded the song (“It wasn’t any good, I can promise you”) and instead secured an Emmy for the animated series “Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure.”What is the value of an EGOT?An EGOT is a flattering distinction that ultimately means nothing, said Menken, who described it as a “random assortment of honors.”“Just do what you do, as well as you can, and don’t think about it,” he added. “If you get awards, great.”There is no organizing body that awards EGOTs, and no ceremony at which a trophy is handed out. But there are hazy areas of eligibility, such as lifetime achievement awards. There are also EGOT enhancements, like the PEGOT, for either a Peabody Award or a Pulitzer Prize. Some say the G should instead represent a Golden Globe, or that the EGOT should become an EGGOT.Menken is proud of the fact that he also has a REGOT — the four traditional awards, plus a Razzie, also known as a Golden Raspberry Award. The ignoble prize was for worst original song from the film “Newsies,” the same project for which he won a Tony. “The Razzie puts everything in perspective, frankly,” he said.At least with the Razzies, there is a ceremony and a physical award. Cannon thinks there should be a similar ceremony for EGOTs, if only a mock version. After all, even “Saturday Night Live” commemorates the occasion when someone hosts the show for a fifth time. “You become a member of the Five-Timers Club, they give you a jacket.”Who’s not throwing away their shot?Over the years, artists have become more comfortable expressing their EGOT dreams. In a segment for the 2015 BET Hip Hop Awards, the composer and actor Lin-Manuel Miranda rattled off his scorecard: “Got a Grammy, got a Tony, got an Emmy,” he rapped, adding, “Somebody show me the way to the Oscars.”Miranda’s dream could come true next awards season: He has written new songs for the live-action “The Little Mermaid” movie, which will be released in late May.Menken, Miranda’s collaborator on the three new “Little Mermaid” songs, mused about whether he should take his name off them to give Miranda a better shot. “I have eight Oscars,” he said. “They’re probably going to go, ‘Alan, man, no.’ So I feel guilty.”Lopez agreed that Manuel deserves it, but he’s also rooting for someone else: Kristen Anderson-Lopez, his collaborator and wife. She just needs a Tony to secure the EGOT. An added benefit, he said, is that it would bring “more peace to my household.”Wait, so who exactly is in the EGOT club?These are the 18 people who have won EGOTs, along with the year and award that secured the achievement:Mel Brooks (2001, Tony)Viola Davis (2023, Grammy)John Gielgud (1991, Emmy)Whoopi Goldberg (2002, Tony)Marvin Hamlisch (1995, Emmy)Helen Hayes (1977, Grammy)Audrey Hepburn (1994, Grammy)Jennifer Hudson (2022, Tony)John Legend (2018, Emmy)Andrew Lloyd Webber (2018, Emmy)Robert Lopez (2014, Oscar)Alan Menken (2020, Emmy)Rita Moreno (1977, Emmy)Mike Nichols (2001, Emmy)Tim Rice (2018, Emmy)Richard Rodgers (1962, Emmy)Scott Rudin (2012, Grammy)Jonathan Tunick (1997, Tony) More

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      In ‘A Small Light,’ an Ordinary Woman Helps Anne Frank’s Family

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      A new series on Disney+ and Hulu tells the story of Miep Gies, a secretary who helped Anne Frank and others hide in Amsterdam during World War II.Two days after the Gestapo’s 1944 raid on the annex where Anne Frank and others were hiding, Miep Gies, a seemingly ordinary secretary, and her colleague walked into the hiding place and encountered a chaotic scene left behind by the Nazis.Years later, Gies described what she saw that day as a mess of books, newspapers and other everyday items. “And then we started searching. For what, I don’t know, but we were looking for something,” she said in a 1958 interview. Among the items, she found a red plaid diary. Gies grabbed it and put it in a drawer in her office.She had just saved one of the Holocaust’s most famous accounts: Anne Frank’s diary.On the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam, the building that housed Otto Frank’s office is now the Anne Frank House, a museum that tells Anne’s story.Peter Dejong/Associated PressIn the show, Anne Frank is played by Billie Boullet as an angsty girl chafing against the restrictions of German occupation. Dusan Martincek/National Geographic for DisneyThat moment, and much more about Gies’s life and heroism, is at the center of “A Small Light,” a new eight-part series that tells the story of Gies (Bel Powley), her husband, Jan (Joe Cole), and their involvement in Dutch resistance efforts during World War II. The show premieres Monday on National Geographic, and comes to Disney+ and Hulu the following day.Work on “A Small Light” began six years ago, after its showrunners Joan Rater and Tony Phelan, a married couple who used to be producers and screenwriters for “Grey’s Anatomy,” visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Walking around the museum and listening to tour guides, they learned that many people don’t really know the story of the Frank family anymore, let alone the story of the people who helped them, Rater and Phelan said in a recent video interview.Since then, they said, the moral question at the heart of Gies’s story — whether to do the right thing, the wrong thing or nothing at all — has only become more important, given how war, nationalism and antisemitism have once again been spreading across Europe.“When we started this project,” Phelan said, “it certainly didn’t feel as relevant as it feels now.”While the show opens with Gies, who wasn’t Jewish, trying to dodge a Nazi checkpoint, the first episode quickly takes the viewer back to 1934, when Gies was single and living with her adopted Dutch family. She finds employment with Otto Frank (Liev Schreiber) — a stern, fellow German-speaking immigrant — and meets her future husband, a social worker. Much of the first episode follows Gies living life as a modern young woman, meeting friends and going out dancing.Rater and Phelan wanted to give the show a contemporary feel by focusing “A Small Light” not just around war, but also around ordinary people’s ordinary lives being suddenly interrupted.The show’s creators wanted to give the episodes a contemporary feel by focusing not just on war, but also on ordinary people’s ordinary lives being suddenly interrupted.Dusan Martincek/National Geographic for Disney“Period pieces for me sometimes feel a bit sepia-toned, and that makes you feel distanced from them,” Powley said. But “A Small Light” didn’t feel that way. “It didn’t feel like I was wearing a costume,” she added.“These people, they had washing machines and toasters. They were living in a modern world and they couldn’t believe, in this modern world that they were living, that these things could happen,” Rater said.While the story of Anne Frank and what happened to her is well known, Gies — who died in 2010 at 100 — largely stayed out of the limelight. She published a memoir, “Anne Frank Remembered,” in 1987 and was involved with the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, but much of her story stayed private.“When we started digging, we started putting together these pieces that I don’t know that anybody had ever put together before,” Phelan said. In the course of their research, with the help of a local researcher in the Netherlands, Rater and Phelan discovered that Gies and her husband also helped people hide in their own home, including two nurses.In the show, we see nurses help save babies from being killed by the Nazis, and instead sending them to live in the Dutch countryside. One memorable scene shows how nurses swapped babies for dolls, telling Jewish mothers to lose the dolls on their way to concentration camps.Miep and Jan Gies, pictured in 1957, hid people from the Nazis in their own home, as well as in Miep’s office.Sueddeutsche Zeitung, via AlamyIn the show, Jan is played by Joe Cole, and Miep by Bel Powley.Dusan Martincek/National Geographic for Disney“It is such a fascinating, heartbreaking, hard to believe story at times,” Cole, who plays Gies’s husband, said in a video interview.When in 1942, Otto Frank asked Gies to help hide him, his daughters, Anne and Margot, and his wife, Edith, in an annex at their office, Gies didn’t hesitate before saying yes.“She had no idea what she was saying yes to,” Rater said. “And then she had to keep saying yes for two years.”This was until a warm day in August 1944 when Nazis raided the office and found the eight people — the Frank family and four others — hiding in the annex.“A Small Light” was shot in the Netherlands — in Amsterdam and Harlem — and in Prague.Dusan Martincek/National Geographic for DisneyIn “A Small Light,” Gies’s decision to help despite the dangers and disruption this posed to her life (she kept the secret, brought food and books and more), her unwavering spirit and her reluctance to be seen as a hero makes the viewer ask: What would I have done in that situation? The show’s title is taken from a quote by Gies: “Even a regular secretary, a housewife or a teenager can turn on a small light in a dark room.”The show “is about your personal dynamics that are interrupted by the war,” said Schreiber who recently spent time in Ukraine raising money for humanitarian aid. “That’s part of what I saw in Ukraine. These people’s lives have been interrupted and they try to continue.”“A Small Light” was shot in the Netherlands — in Amsterdam and Harlem — and Prague, where the interior scenes were filmed in a three-story replica of Otto Frank’s Amsterdam office, where the annex was hidden behind a bookcase. (The original building, on the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam, is now the Anne Frank House.)While “A Small Light” has moments of levity and snippets of life’s mundanity despite the war raging outside, the episodes gradually become more intense, leading up to the inevitable betrayal that doomed all the people in the annex except for Otto Frank, Anne’s father.For Powley, the show never felt like a period piece. “It didn’t feel like I was wearing a costume,” she said.Dusan Martincek/National Geographic for DisneySchreiber, who is Jewish, said he was often asked to play roles in Holocaust films. “I hate the narrative that we went like lambs to the slaughter,” which is common in such movies, he said.“But this felt different,” he added. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘A Small Light’ and the Met Gala

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      A new series about the woman who hid Anne Frank and her family premieres on National Geographic, and E! streams “the party of the year.”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, May 1-7. Details and times are subject to change.MondayE! LIVE FROM THE RED CARPET: MET GALA 2023 6 p.m. on E! Officially known as the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute benefit (unofficially as the party of the year) and attended by some of the biggest names in the media and art world, the Met Gala is a black-tie event that raises money for the fashion wing of the museum. This year’s themed exhibition is “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty,” a homage to the longtime luxury brand designer who helped shape the modern fashion world. (Mr. Lagerfield died in 2019). Regina King, Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds and Lin-Manuel Miranda are the event’s co-chairs this year.A SMALL LIGHT 9 p.m. on LIFETIME, NGC and NAT GEO WILD. This limited series tells the story of Miep Gies (Bel Powley), a Dutch woman who was the secretary to Otto Frank (Liev Schreiber), the father of Anne Frank (Billie Boullet), during World War II. Premiering on what would have been Gies’s 114th birthday with two back-to-back episodes, the series follows Gies and her husband whose lives changed when they agreed to help hide the Frank family — and four other individuals — over the course of two years.TuesdayJohn Pingayak, right, and his grandson Sonna Boy in “Life Below Zero: First Alaskans.”Tyler Colgan/National GeographicLIFE BELOW ZERO: FIRST ALASKANS 8 p.m. on NGC. This unscripted series, a spinoff of the Emmy Award-winning series “Life Below Zero,” follows Indigenous Alaskans as they survive and thrive in one of the most remote landscapes on Earth. In the show’s second season, the cast stays true to the traditions passed down from generations of Alaska Natives while adapting to 21st-century technology and advancements.COUPLES RETREAT 9 p.m. on MTV. Celebrity couples head to Las Vegas for the third season of this MTV reality series, in which they will challenge their relationships with the help of some unconventional experts. The couples, who range from R&B legends to “Real Housewives of Atlanta” alums, break out of their comfort zones in a series of adrenaline-fueled activities like zip-lining, cattle herding and wilderness training.1000% ME: GROWING UP MIXED 9 p.m. on HBO. The Emmy Award-winning producer and comedian W. Kamau Bell explores the joys and challenges of growing up mixed-race in this hourlong compilation of interviews with multiracial children in the Bay Area. Topics like casual racism, microaggressions and the pressure to pick a side are all fair game, as is a chipper rundown of the interviewees’ favorite animals and weekend hobbies.WednesdayTommy Lee Jones, right, and Garret Dillahunt in “No Country for Old Men.”Richard Foreman/Miramax FilmsNO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007) 10:17 p.m. on MAX. Joel and Ethan Coen “combine virtuosic dexterity with mischievous high spirits” in their film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel of the same name, writes A.O. Scott in his review for The New York Times. This neo-western thriller, which won the Oscar for best picture, follows three men entangled in a drug deal gone awry in 1980 West Texas. Javier Bardem plays Anton Chigurh, a “deadpan sociopath with a funny haircut.” Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) is a jaded sheriff, trailing the detritus Chigurh leaves behind. Both are following Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), “the human center of the film, the guy you root for.” Scott promises you will be “jangled, stunned,” and “completely and ecstatically absorbed.”ThursdayVictor McLaglen, left, and Cary Grant in “Gunga Din.”Academy of Motion Picture Arts and SciencesGUNGA DIN (1939) 3:30 p.m. on TCM. “All movies should be like the first twenty-five and the last thirty minutes of ‘Gunga Din,’” wrote Benjamin Crisler in his review for The Times. This classic adventure film, which pulls elements from Rudyard Kipling’s 1890 poem by the same name, follows three British sergeants in colonial India (Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) who fight a murderous cult, with the titular Gunga Din (Sam Jaffe) as their guide. The film was deemed culturally significant by the Library of Congress in 1999 and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.FridayRhiannon Giddens, right, and Francesco Turrisi in “The Articulate Hour.”Tom Contarino/The Ariculate FoundationTHE ARTICULATE HOUR 9 p.m. on PBS. This three-part mini-series features the journalist Jim Cotter in conversation with poets, musicians, neuroscientists and historians on a variety of topics. The first episode delves into the concept of human memory, while the second explores our contrasting needs for community and solitude.SaturdayChol Soo Lee, center, surrounded by TV news crews in “Free Chol Soo Lee.”Grant DinFREE CHOL SOO LEE 8 p.m. on PBS. For Asian American and Pacific Islander heritage month, PBS’s Emmy Award-winning anthology series, “Independent Lens,” presents a documentary about Chol Soo Lee, a Korean immigrant who was wrongfully convicted of murder in 1973. Though he is ultimately exonerated, this “isn’t an uplifting movie,” wrote Ben Kenigsberg in his review for The Times, as the documentary follows Lee on his troubled post-prison journey. “Just because Lee was innocent doesn’t mean he was perfect,” Kenigsberg writes.SundayMTV MOVIE & TV AWARDS 8 p.m. on MTV. The actress Drew Barrymore will host this year’s awards show, where a number of film and television stars will be recognized for their work — among them Jennifer Coolidge (“The White Lotus”), the 2023 winner of the Comedic Genius Award, which will be presented to her at the event.THE 2010s 9 p.m. on CNN. This seven-part series, from Emmy Award-winning executive producers Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman and Mark Herzog, examines the last decade influenced by Instagram, the former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, marriage equality and the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements, before culminating with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. More

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      ‘Succession’ Season 4, Episode 6: Cool New Rule

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      This week, Kendall, Roman and Shiv are on a mission to impress the grown-ups watching them in what amounts to their public debut as the stewards of Logan’s legacy.Season 4, Episode 6: ‘Living+’The “Succession” world tour stops in Los Angeles this week, where the Waystar power-players are gathering at their Hollywood studio for Investor Day. The plan is to show off a line of state-of-the-art retirement communities called “Living+,” which Logan signed off on before he died. But secretly, Kendall and Roman are hoping their pitch will bump the stock price up so high before the GoJo acquisition that Lukas Matsson backs out of the deal.Less secretly, the brothers plus Shiv are on a mission to impress the grown-ups watching them, in what amounts to their public debut as the stewards of Logan’s legacy — which they each, in their own inadequate way, try to uphold.Let’s start with Shiv, and her ongoing covert communication with Matsson. Last week I speculated that the two of them may have them had conversations in Norway we were not privy to, about his negotiations with the Roy boys. This latest episode begins with a rejection of that theory, as Shiv and Matsson meet on her private jet and he surprises her with his description of how the meeting on the mountaintop went. Throughout the day she will keeps him posted on how things are going with Living+ — a Waystar initiative he plans to kill as soon as he takes over.Matsson’s words are still ringing in Shiv’s ears when she reaches Los Angeles and hears her brothers tell the Waystar executives that Matsson melted down at that last meeting — and that maybe they should think twice about recommending a deal to the board with “a person of this character.” Shiv knows they are lying to tank the deal, and that they are cutting her out of their play. Roman, genuinely sorry after she calls them out, asks her, “Can we do the huggy thing?” But she does not seem to be in a forgiving mood.As for Roman, he is struggling with the interpersonal part of being in charge. Because he has favors to bestow and firing power, he thinks everyone he deals with at Waystar should just take his money and do as he asks. But at a meeting with a studio executive, he first suffers through her offer of condolences — “Refused!” he jokes — and then groans when she complains about ATN’s far-right lean. Roman’s initial response is to troll, by making a snide comment about the “incredibly evolved, ruthlessly segregated” community of Los Angeles. Then he decides it would be easier just to terminate her.When Gerri finds out what Roman did, she tries to play the mentor again, warning that he is “a weak monarch in a dangerous interregnum” and noting, “You cannot win against the money.” He snaps back, saying she is being disrespectful and adding, “I need you to believe that I am as good as my dad.” She replies, “Say it or believe it?” So he fires her too. (“Shall we get started on the paperwork? Do you want to do it yourself or do you want me to get someone a bit sharper?”)Knowing he overstepped, Roman turns to Kendall, hoping his brother will play the Good Cop and clean up the Bad Cop’s mess. But Kendall is excited about them putting their own stamp on Waystar, and thinks these two firings may impress the markets. (“Some are saying these Young Turks might just have what it takes to turn things around,” he says, imagining what the business pundits might write.) Distraught, Roman excuses himself from the Investor Day pitch, figuring a solo Kendall will flame out and then the adults will finally step in and fix everything.It’s a reasonable assumption too, because Kendall is in full Icarus mode throughout this episode. There are few things more entertaining in “Succession” than Kendall in a boss groove, tossing out big ideas and buzzy business jargon at a rapid clip. While Shiv is the kind of boss who hates making decisions and makes fun of everyone else’s ideas, and Roman is the kind of boss who hates interacting with anybody who is not saying “yes sir,” Kendall is a hands-on boss, urging his team to be as excited as he is about taking huge swings.On this day, Kendall is trying to pump up the market potential of Living+, dubbing it a “price-rocket.” Talking rings around the Waystar accountant Pete (John Quilty), Kendall tries to get him to work some mojo with the spreadsheets, to see what would happen if they just, y’know, plugged in bigger numbers. (“Numbers aren’t just numbers, they’re numbers,” Pete sputters.) The gambit results in a prospectus promising such a high rate of return that Kendall, in a moment of clarity, chuckles, “It’s enough to make you lose your faith in capitalism.” He is then brought back down to earth by Frank, who threatens to blow the whistle if Kendall asks him to support a fraud.Frank’s complaint comes on the heels of Kendall’s dumbest setback of the day. Eager to get his Hollywood studio to make some magic on his behalf, Kendall asks for a scale replica of a Living+ house, with clouds rolling overhead. (He saw something like that in Berlin once, he explains.) In the episode’s funniest moment, Kendall arrives at the auditorium to see a slapped-together, half-finished house and “clouds” that are essentially a rapidly dissipating mist. The look of disappointment on his face is a work of actorly art from Jeremy Strong, who has a gift for playing those moments when Kendall’s over-the-top enthusiasm suddenly craters.Strong is even better in Kendall’s make-or-break speech for the investors. This is a tricky thing to perform, because the presentation has to be both corny enough to make the people who know Kendall wince in embarrassment, yet credible enough that a general audience could buy him as someone who knows what he is doing. The cringe moments are sprinkled throughout, like in the way Kendall repeats the phrase “big, big shoes” multiple times and in his tacky interaction with a video-screen showing his father, taken from a video Logan made to promote Living+. (Kendall also makes the dubious decision to have a sound effects engineer manipulate the video so that Logan says Living+ will “double the earnings” of the cruise business.)Yet at no point in the speech does Kendall lose control. He makes self-deprecating jokes. He builds a persuasive case for how personally enriching a Living+ facility could be. In touting the potential for this new business to extend its customers’ lives, he muses, “Would I take an extra year with my dad?” and says he absolutely would. (Shameless? Sure. But effective.) Even when he gets asked about a cruel tweet posted by Matsson during the presentation, Kendall is flustered for just a couple of seconds before saying, “I’m not gonna fave it.” The crowd laughs. The markets are kind. Matsson deletes the tweet. A stunned Shiv and Roman seethe.Look, this is “Succession,” so there is no reason to believe that Kendall’s triumph will be long-lived. Still, throughout the series, one of the recurring visual motifs for this character has been water: Kendall sinking morosely into a bathtub; Kendall falling face down into a pool; and so on. So it is telling that at the end of this episode, Kendall plunges into the ocean and emerges floating face up. On this day at least, he swims.Due diligencePity the poor director who had to ask Logan Roy to make his lines in a Living+ promotional video “a touch more upbeat.”So what is Living+, exactly? According to Logan’s video, it is an attempt to “bring the cruise ship experience to dry land” with exclusive Waystar content piped into a home with state-of-the-art security. Or, as Shiv describes it to Matsson, “Prison camps for grannies.”Does anyone give worse Waystar presentations than Tom? After Kendall leaves the stage, Tom steps into the spotlight and looks like a wild-eyed maniac, pointing into different parts of crowd and shouting, “You are an ATN citizen!”Because Roman bailed on the presentation, Kendall gets his sound-manipulation guy to make a video of Logan calling Roman pathetic and clueless (among other things). Roman, a masochist, plays the video over and over, forcing himself to take the same kind of punishment he used to get from his father.Shiv and Tom resume their weird flirtation/foreplay this week, which includes playing “bitey,” a game that involves biting each other on the arm until one person stops. (Shiv, after losing: “Tom Wambsgans! Finally made me feel something.”) Later they have sex, after which Tom takes accountability for betraying her by admitting he partly married her for her money. “If you think that’s shallow, why don’t you throw out all your stuff for love?” he says, with a bitter undertone and a sickeningly sweet smile. These two are made for each other. More

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      Writers, Seeking Pay Change for the Streaming Era, Prepare to Strike

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      In the 16 years since the entertainment industry’s last strike, sweeping technological change has upended the television and movie business.When the most recent Hollywood strike took place — 16 years ago — the internet had not yet transformed the television and movie businesses. Broadcast networks still commanded colossal audiences, and cable channels were still growing. The superhero boom had begun for movie studios, and DVDs generated $16 billion in annual sales.Since then, galloping technological change has upended Hollywood in ways that few could have imagined. Traditional television is on viewership life support. Movie studios, stung by poor ticket sales for dramas and comedies, have retreated almost entirely to franchise spectacles. The DVD business is over; Netflix will ship its last little silver discs on Sept. 29.It’s a streaming world now. The pandemic sped up the shift.What has not changed much? The formulas that studios use to pay television and movie creators, setting the stage for another strike. “Writer compensation needs to evolve for a streaming-first world,” said Rich Greenfield, a founder of the LightShed Partners research firm.Absent an unlikely last-minute resolution with studios, more than 11,000 unionized screenwriters could head to picket lines in Los Angeles and New York as soon as Tuesday, an action that, depending on its duration, would bring Hollywood’s creative assembly lines to a gradual halt. Writers Guild of America leaders have called this an “existential” moment, contending that compensation has stagnated despite the proliferation of content in the streaming era — to the degree that even writers with substantial experience are having a hard time getting ahead and, sometimes, paying their bills.“Writers at every level and in every genre, whether it’s features or TV, we’re all being devalued and financially taken advantage of by the studios,” said Danny Tolli, a writer whose credits include “Roswell, New Mexico” and the Shondaland show “The Catch.”“These studios are making billions in profits, and they are spending billions on content — content that we create with our blood, sweat and tears,” Mr. Tolli continued. “But there are times when I still have to worry about how I’m going to pay my mortgage. How I’m going to provide for my family. I have considered Uber to supplement my income.”Studio chiefs have largely maintained public silence, leaving communication to the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on their behalf. In statements, the organization has said its goal was a “mutually beneficial deal,” which was “only possible if the guild is committed to turning its focus to serious bargaining” and “searching for reasonable compromises.”Privately, numerous studio and streaming service executives portrayed writers as histrionic and out of touch. You can’t make a living as a TV writer? By what standard? The business has changed; get used to it.By some measures, a major strike in Hollywood is long overdue. Since the 1940s, with a couple of exceptions, strikes have shaken the entertainment industry almost like clockwork — every seven or eight years — usually aligning with upheaval in the fast-changing business. The dawn of television. The rise of cable networks.“These things gotta happen every five years or so, 10 years,” Clemenza, the weathered Corleone capo explains in “The Godfather,” one of Hollywood’s most storied creations, as the film’s gangster families “go to the mattresses” against one another. “Helps to get rid of the bad blood.”Writers in Hollywood have long complained that studios treat them like second-class citizens.Dick Strobel/Associated PressFor generations, ever since the end of the silent film era, Hollywood writers have complained that studios treat them as second-class citizens — that their artistic contributions are underappreciated (and undercompensated), especially compared with those of actors and directors.Among Hollywood workers, screenwriters have walked out the most often (six times) and were responsible for the entertainment industry’s most recent strike in 2007. It was a precarious economic time — the Great Recession was underway — but “new media” was on the horizon. Apple had started to sell iPods that could play video. Disney was offering $2 downloads for episodes of “Lost.” Hulu was in the start-up stages.The existing contract between studios and the Writers Guild of America, which expires at 12:01 a.m. Pacific time on Tuesday, sets minimum weekly pay for certain television writer-producers at $7,412. (Agents for experienced writers can negotiate that up.) One problem, according to the guild, involves the number of weeks writers work in the streaming era.Because of streaming, the network norms of 22, 24 or even 26 episodes per season have mostly disappeared. Most streaming series are eight to 12 episodes long. As a result, the median writer-producer works nearly 40 weeks on a network show, according to guild data, but only 24 weeks on a streaming show, making it difficult to earn a stable paycheck.Residuals have also been undercut by streaming. Before streaming, writers could receive residual payments whenever a show was resold — into syndication, for overseas airing, on DVD. But global streaming services like Netflix and Amazon have cut off those distribution arms.Instead, streaming services pay a fixed residual. Writers say there is no way to know whether those fees are fair because services hide viewership data. A new contract, guild leaders have said, must include a formula for paying residuals based on views.Guild leaders contend that it would cost studios a collective $600 million a year to give them everything they want. The companies, however, are under pressure from Wall Street to cut costs. And gains for one group of entertainment workers would almost certainly need to be extended to others: Contracts with the Directors Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union, expire on June 30.Hollywood companies say they simply cannot afford widespread raises. Loaded with $45 billion in debt, Disney laid off thousands of employees in recent days, part of a campaign to eliminate 7,000 jobs by the end of June. Disney+ remains unprofitable, although the company has vowed to change that by next year. Disney is Hollywood’s largest supplier of union-covered TV dramas and comedies (890 episodes for the 2021-22 season).Warner Bros. Discovery, which has roughly $47 billion in debt, has already cut thousands of jobs as part of a $4 billion pullback. NBCUniversal is also tightening its belt as it contends with cable cord-cutting and a troublesome advertising market.These companies remain highly profitable. But they have not been delivering the kind of steady profit growth that Wall Street rewards.The last time the writers had a chance to negotiate a contract, the pandemic prompted a speedy agreement.Annie Tritt for The New York TimesScreenwriters come into these talks with notable swagger. In 2019, when film and TV writers fired their agents in a campaign over what they saw as conflicts of interest, many agency leaders figured that the guild would eventually fracture. That never happened: After a 22-month standoff, the big agencies effectively gave writers what they wanted.For screenwriters, there is also pent-up demand for raises, made worse by climbing inflation. When writers last had the opportunity to negotiate a contract, the pandemic was shutting down Hollywood, and so the two sides came to a speedy agreement — “essentially kicking the can down the road” in the words of Mr. Greenfield. In the negotiation cycle before that, writers focused more on shoring up their generous health plan.And writers have been incensed by mixed messaging from companies on their financial health.“NBCUniversal is performing extremely well operationally and financially,” Brian Roberts, the chief executive of Comcast, which owns NBCUniversal, wrote to employees last week, when the division’s top executive was ousted.Netflix’s co-chief executive, Ted Sarandos, received a pay package worth $50.3 million in 2022, up 32 percent from 2021, Netflix disclosed last week.“Lots of people are still getting very rich off of Hollywood product — just not the creators of that product,” said Matt Ember, a screenwriter whose credits include “Get Smart,” “The War With Grandpa” and the animated “Home.”The upshot: The situation might get worse before it gets better.“Every industry goes through course corrections,” said Laura Lewis, the founder of Rebelle Media, an entertainment production and financing company. “Maybe this is an opportunity to adjust the models for the next phase of the entertainment business.”“The question,” she continued, “is how much pain will we have to endure to get there.”John Koblin More

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      Stream These 6 Titles Before They Leave Netflix in May

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      A couple of comedies, a couple of coming-of-age tales and more are leaving for U.S. subscribers next month. Catch them while you can.This month’s mix of titles leaving Netflix in the United States include two coming-of-age comedy dramas, a twisty thriller throwback, a wrenching Holocaust documentary and two uproarious comedies (one of them smuggled into an animated family film). Give them a stream before they’re gone. (Dates reflect the last day a title is available.)‘Side Effects’ (May 16)The director Steven Soderbergh is always a little bit ahead of the curve, and back in 2013, years before the current vogue of nostalgia for the erotic thrillers of the ’80s and ’90s, he assembled this steamy, twisty story of sexual deception and left-field double-crosses. (It was the early 2010s, so there is also a healthy dose of villainy for the health-care and pharmaceutical industries.) The final film before his short-lived retirement, it had Soderbergh reuniting with several of his previous stars, including Jude Law (“Contagion”), Catherine Zeta-Jones (“Traffic”) and Channing Tatum (“Magic Mike”), who are joined by Rooney Mara in a femme fatale turn that is alternately sensuous and scary.Stream it here.‘The Last Days’ (May 18)The first film released by the Shoah Foundation, and executive produced by no less a major name than Steven Spielberg, “The Last Days” won the Academy Award for best documentary feature of 1998. It tells the story of a grim and lesser-known chapter of the Holocaust: how German troops invaded Hungary in March of 1944, long after it was clear that World War II was lost, and proceeded to murder hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews anyway. This chronicle of pure evil is told by the director James Moll as a story of survival and perseverance, focusing on five survivors of the Holocaust and the inspirational ways they spent their spared lives.Stream it here.‘Edge of Seventeen’ (May 31)One of several gay-themed coming-of-age comedy-dramas of the late 1990s, this earnest and truthful tale from the director David Moreton and the screenwriter Todd Stephens has become something of a classic in the queer canon, and for good reason. Set in Stephens’s hometown, Sandusky, Ohio, circa 1984, it beautifully captures a moment when both explicit and coded gay content was becoming part of the mainstream, and when its sensitive teen protagonist, Eric (Chris Stafford), was finding out that his romantic ideals were not quite reflected by his Midwestern, mid-80s reality. Moreton’s direction deftly approaches its rom-com conventions with uncommon candor.Stream it here.‘Galaxy Quest’ (May 31)This wry and witty cult comedy from the director Dean Parisot mixes two wonderful comic ideas well. It is, first and foremost, a winking satire of not only “Star Trek” but also the entire (and, at the time of its 1999 release, comparatively nascent) fan-catering “geek” culture, focusing on a short-lived “Trek”-style television show that has become an obsession object for a generation of super fans. And it is also a swashbuckling comic adventure of its own, playfully borrowing the “Three Amigos” model of fictional characters mistaken for real heroes, as the cast of the sci-fi show is drafted to prevent a real alien invasion. Sigourney Weaver is having a blast, Tim Allen invokes the bloated ego of his Shatner-esque star with ease and Alan Rickman steals the show as the classically trained Shakespearean thespian saddled with the show’s Spock role.Stream it here.‘My Girl’ (May 31)Every generation has its own story about the movie that unexpectedly reduced them to a weeping mess. And if their parents were ripped to shreds by “Old Yeller,” most ’90s kids can tell you their own sob story about heading to the multiplex for what looked like Macaulay Culkin’s charming follow-up to “Home Alone,” only to find … well, not that. Let it suffice to say that the future fast-talking, foul-mouthed “Veep” co-star Anna Chlumsky (the film’s actual star; Culkin’s was a minor supporting role) is charismatic and sympathetic as a young woman going through one of those summers where everything changes, while Dan Aykroyd and Jamie Lee Curtis provide both warmth and comic relief as the grown-ups in her life.Stream it here.‘Rango’ (May 31)The Disney juggernaut (and, to a lesser extent, the Illumination Entertainment invasion) has become so pervasive in family entertainment that it’s easy to miss kid-friendly entertainment that appears without that imprimatur. But this 2011 adventure from Nickelodeon Movies and Paramount Pictures is a delight, offering as much entertainment for parents as for kids — or perhaps more, as the screenwriter is the “Gladiator” scribe, John Logan, and his clearest inspiration is the decidedly adult ’70s classic “Chinatown.” Gore Verbinski directs his “Pirates of the Caribbean” leading man, Johnny Depp, in the title role of a lost chameleon who becomes sheriff of a small animal town in the desert; the similarly adult-friendly supporting cast includes Ned Beatty, Isla Fisher, Timothy Olyphant, Bill Nighy, Harry Dean Stanton and Ray Winstone.Stream it here. More

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      In Nida Manzoor’s World, Martial Arts and Jane Austen Belong in the Same Movie

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      The writer-director set out to make “a joyful film about South Asian Muslim women” that didn’t revolve around trauma. The result is “Polite Society.”“Polite Society” is an action caper filled with martial arts battles and secret lairs. It’s a romance in which two smart, impossibly attractive people fall in love. It’s a Jane Austen-esque comedy of marriage in which a teenager meddles in her older sister’s love life while their parents look on in dismay.It’s also a movie with a lavish, Bollywood-inspired musical number, because why settle on a single genre when you can cram in as many as possible?Yet this new British film does not feel tonally inconsistent or stylistically scattered; rather, form imaginatively fits function.“It’s about women dealing with norms and expectations and rules, and wanting to push them,” the writer-director Nida Manzoor explained in a video conversation from Bristol, England. “When they’re breaking them, I’ve got to break genres as well. So it all felt like it was working together, not just me being insane.” She laughed. “Maybe a bit of me being insane.”Reviewing “Polite Society” for The New York Times, Amy Nicholson called it a delight that signals the arrival of Manzoor as “a promising new thing: a first-time filmmaker impatient to evolve cultural representation from the last few years of self-conscious vitamins into crowd-pleasing candy.”Kansara, left, and Ritu Arya as South Asian Muslim sisters in Britain. Parisa Taghizadeh/Focus FeaturesIn the film, Ria, the youngest in a British Pakistani family, attends high school while training hard to fulfill her dream of becoming a stuntwoman. (She idolizes Eunice Huthart, a real-life Liverpudlian with extensive experience as a Hollywood stunt double.) And so the actress portraying her, Priya Kansara, had to get with the program — fast.“I have no prior martial arts experience or anything like that,” Kansara said in a video chat. “I was cast around six, seven weeks before we started the shoot, so that’s the time I had to learn as many of the stunts and the fight choreography. It was intense because there was so much to get through. And Ria is just a crazy kid; she doesn’t really stop.”The plot moves at a fast clip peppered with a lot of action, which is nearly always layered with rambunctious comedy. When Ria, who usually has no time for “girlie” accouterments, is forced to endure a wax, the scene is shot like a dramatic interrogation in an early James Bond movie — “but with this kind of villain Auntie character,” Manzoor said, referring to Ria’s nemesis, played by Nimra Bucha.The film is often cathartic in the way it lets girls and women do — with contagious glee — things we have seen men do onscreen for decades. When Ria and her sister, the art-school dropout Lena (Ritu Arya), go out for burgers, they wolf them down with memorable gusto.“Nida came up to us, like, ‘Just go for it, eat like you haven’t eaten in hours and you cannot wait to get into it,’ ” Kansara said. “Me and Ritu took the note literally and we went for it. After that take, Nida came back up to us and was like, ‘OK, maybe not that much.’ ”“Polite Society” lets Kansara, left, and Arya do things onscreen the way men have for decades.Samuel EngelkingFor Arya (best known as Lila Pitts in the Netflix series “The Umbrella Academy”), being encouraged to chomp was a refreshing change from what she usually sees in movies or on television. “I love watching people eat, but onscreen they are often sort of playing around with their food because of the amount of takes they have to do,” she said in a joint chat with Kansara. “Which is why it’s satisfying when you see people actually eating. I love that scene for that reason.”Arya was familiar with Manzoor’s sensibility because they had worked together before, most notably on the 14-minute comedy “Lady Parts,” which Manzoor made for Channel 4 in 2018 and in which Arya played the lead singer of the short film’s titular punk band, a raucous quartet of Muslim women. (Because of scheduling conflicts, the part was recast when the short became the series “We Are Lady Parts,” which streams on Peacock in the United States; Manzoor is currently writing Season 2.)Manzoor started writing “Polite Society” around 10 years ago but kept running into obstacles as she tried to get the project off the ground. Very early on, before such suggestions became less acceptable to make, potential financiers would ask if she could make the central family a white one. Others would have preferred something a little bit less action and more art house. Later, the emphasis on comedy became a problem: Couldn’t there be some weighty issues like, say, an arranged marriage?Manzoor did not budge. “It was like, ‘It’s a joyful film about South Asian Muslim women,’ ” she said. “So much of the reason I’m a filmmaker is because I want to not have our stories only be about trauma.”Giving “Polite Society” emotional ballast is the bond between Ria and Lena, which was inspired by the one between Manzoor and her own sister, Sanya, who is a year older. (Their brother, Shez, worked on the soundtrack.) After collaborating with Arya on “Lady Parts,” Manzoor felt she was a natural fit for the role of Lena. “She has the quality of my oldest sister,” Manzoor said, “that natural, inherent sort of alternative brown girl, which is quite rare, actually, in actors. It’s kind of mercurial and wild and vulnerable at the same time.”Even a brutal brawl between Ria and Lena, at a low point in their relationship, was inspired by real life. “I used to fight with her — we used to do martial arts together,” Manzoor said of Sanya. “I have this memory of when we were in a martial arts class and our instructor always wanted us to fight when we did sparring.” She laughed. “It was kind of creepy.”Asked why she was so keen to put women being active and physical at the heart of her film, Manzoor dug back into her past again.“I used to love sports, and doing martial arts and dancing,” she said. “And then around 12, 13 years old, your body changes and you become objectified. I felt so alienated from my body, so ashamed of it. I realized I’m drawn to genres that allow women to be in possession of their bodies: playing an instrument, being onstage. That was something I lost when I was a teenager, that physicality,” she added. “In my art, I’m always trying to show women have it or regain it or find it.” More

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      Late Night Hosts Fight Over the Best Bits on the Final ‘Late Late Show’

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      Jimmy Kimmel suggested that after leaving late night, James Corden should “stick to corporate gigs, podcasts, maybe ‘The Masked Singer.’”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.Eight Years of ‘Late Late’James Corden signed off Thursday after eight years as the host of “The Late Late Show.” He followed a prime-time send-off special with one last show in his usual late-night slot, with his parents teary-eyed in the audience and with Harry Styles and Will Ferrell as guests.For one final time, it’s #SpillYourGuts with Will Ferrell and @Harry_Styles! pic.twitter.com/xb3Sokl2Dc— The Late Late Show with James Corden (@latelateshow) April 28, 2023
      “This is it, gang, this is it. It’s the final ‘Late Late Show’ in the history of CBS,” Corden said at the top of the show. “I’m telling you tonight, finally, we are determined to get it right this time.”Corden thanked viewers by name for tuning in (“Dan, Stephanie, William — that’s it, really.”) and received a special video send-off from President Biden. “That is amazing, although there was a minute in the middle when I was watching that, where in those photos I go, ‘Wait, have I died?’” Corden said.But it was a visit from his fellow late-night hosts that was the last “Late Late Show” bit worth watching.“First things first, you can’t look like you’re enjoying retirement too much.” — SETH MEYERS”You’re going to grow a beard — a huge one. One that says, ‘God spoke to me from a bush.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“And don’t get any big ideas — stick to corporate gigs, podcasts, maybe ‘The Masked Singer.’” — JIMMY KIMMELThe hosts simultaneously fought for what comedy bit they wanted now that Corden was going off air and, despite chiding Corden for singing and dancing too much on his show, they answered in unison: “Carpool Karaoke.”The Punchiest Punchlines (Tucker Tok Edition)“After being fired from Fox News on Monday, Tucker Carlson posted a video last night to Twitter and said, ‘Where can you still find Americans saying true things?’ Well, hell, you’ve already tried Fox News and Twitter. I’m out of ideas. I don’t know — maybe Wall Street?” — SETH MEYERS“Nothing says, ‘I landed on my feet’ like ranting in a decommissioned sauna.” — JIMMY FALLON“Wow, good for Tucker. Even though he’s isolated in a remote cabin somewhere, he’s still getting his message out, just like the Unabomber.” — DESI LYDIC, guest host of “The Daily Show”“Although it is funny how he said, ‘When you step outside the noise, people are actually pretty nice.’ Buddy, you are the noise. Your entire show was you being mean to people — trans people, immigrants, women, lady M&Ms. Tucker complaining about people being mean is like Guy Fieri complaining about how there are no salad shows.” — DESI LYDIC“Yep, Tucker criticized the current state of debate on television, then said, ‘And that’s why I chose to be fired.’” — JIMMY FALLON“He’s been fired by Fox, CNN, MSNBC and PBS. That’s like the EGOT of cable news.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingThe actor and talk show host Drew Barrymore popped by the “Tonight Show” for “Ew!,” with Jimmy Fallon and the singer-songwriter Charlie Puth.Also, Check This OutGeorgia O’Keeffe’s “Evening Star No. III” from the new exhibition “To See Takes Time.” Georgia O’Keeffe Museum/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; via Museum of Modern ArtA new Georgia O’Keeffe show at the Museum of Modern Art spans more than four decades, featuring 120 works on paper and eight paintings. More