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      Stephen Colbert Is OK With Kicking Rudy Giuliani While He’s Down

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      Colbert chided Giuliani after two former Georgia election workers won a $148 million judgment against him, then sued him again a few days later.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.Kick Him While He’s DownTwo former Georgia election workers who were awarded $148 million after being defamed by Rudolph W. Giuliani sued him again on Monday after he continued to attack them.“Now, normally, I’d say don’t kick a man while he’s down, but in Rudy’s case, go for it,” Stephen Colbert said. “It’s much easier when he’s down there — he’s closer to your feet.”“After this enormous punishment for the damage he caused by lying continually about these two innocent women, I’m sure he’s learned his lesson — and he continues to repeat his false allegations the poll watchers interfered in the 2020 election. He’s done it outside the courthouse, on Newsmax, and on Steve Bannon’s podcast. He says it everywhere he goes. He even said it to his current roommates, two sea gulls on South Street Seaport.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The two Georgia election workers who won a $148 million verdict on Friday against Rudy Giuliani filed another lawsuit yesterday after Giuliani continued making false statements about them. Only Rudy could lose a $148 million lawsuit and say, ‘OK, double or nothing!’” — SETH MEYERS“Obviously, he needs money fast. I recommend he drill for oil in his skull.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (You Make Me Feel So Young Edition)“According to a new report, President Biden frequently tells aides and friends in private conversations that he feels ‘so much younger’ than his age. And I’m sure he does, but it doesn’t inspire a ton of confidence when you walk around going ‘Man, I feel 73!’” — SETH MEYERS“Yes, his campaign staff is worried when he overextends himself by working long hours or riding a bike or nodding too hard, excessive blinking.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Well, good for you, sir! You don’t look one day over — let’s change the subject. What were we talking about? I don’t remember.’” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingBradley Cooper could barely get through a story about his 30th high school reunion while laughing with Jimmy Fallon on Tuesday’s “Tonight Show.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightNicki Minaj will promote her new album, “Pink Friday 2,” on Wednesday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutA reading party in Brooklyn. Lila Barth for The New York TimesReading Rhythms isn’t a book club — it’s a reading party held regularly in parks, bars, and on rooftops. More

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      ‘Fargo’ Season 5, Episode 6 Recap: Deadbeats and Broken Dreams

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      This episode reflects that this season is about women carving out a place for themselves in a world where the best men are dim and the worst are abusive.Season 5, Episode 6: ‘The Tender Trap’To the many reversals of Coen character types in this season of “Fargo” — Dot as a lethally capable Jean Lundegaard from the movie, Roy as a malevolent Ed Tom Bell from “No Country for Old Men” — let’s add one more: Lars Olmstead, the layabout husband of Indira Olmstead, this season’s indebted, nonpregnant spin on Frances McDormand’s Marge Gunderson. Marge’s husband, Norm, has a dream, too. He paints a mallard for a competition to get on the 20-cent stamp. He loses to his friend, but gets on the three-cent stamp, which Marge celebrates in the film’s touching denouement.But unlike with Lars, Norm’s ambitions are a not a drag on his wife. On the contrary, he makes her eggs and gives the prowler a jump. They enjoy a lunchtime fricassee together. In the end, snuggled under a blanket against the howling cold of the rural Midwest, they look forward to their first child. If anything, it is Marge who experiences a bit of wanderlust when she leaves for the Twin Cities to investigate the case and puts on makeup to meet with an old classmate for drinks. Ol’ reliable Norm will always be there to support her, but perhaps Brainerd, Minn., and its brown-gray buffet casseroles aren’t enough for a sheriff of her impeccable instincts.Indira is too good for Lars; that much is clear. When he comes stumbling inside from another night sleeping in his garage of broken dreams, he rages at Indira for not supporting him like a proper wife. The scene isn’t remotely persuasive, because there has never been any suggestion of why these two were ever wedded in the first place. He is trying to bring about a traditional marriage where, based on all available evidence, one has never existed. He runs up debt as a jobless nincompoop who imagined himself first as a rock drummer and then as a PGA Tour pro, and she takes double-shifts at the police station to work down their debt and to supply her man-child with Frosted Flakes. His gall in this moment is unmitigated, and it is also unbelievable.Yet the crude engineering of this scene does feed into a larger theme of the episode and the series itself, which has become about united women carving out a place for themselves in a world where the best men are dim and the worst are thoughtless and abusive. Indira’s fight with her husband, who somehow expects her to exchange recipes like the other wives at the country club, serves as a catalyst for her to reconsider her position on Dot. Given what Indira has been able to piece together, Dot is no longer the cop-tasing miscreant in the back of her cruiser but an abuse victim who is scraping and clawing to maintain the happiness she went through hell to achieve. That’s a woman worth fighting for.Lorraine doesn’t come around to Indira’s line of thinking naturally, which is what makes her the most intriguing character on the show. Her instinct is to support guys like Roy Tillman, because she considers herself tough and unapologetic and tends to think of society in terms of winners and losers, many of whom owe her company money. When Indira slides a thick file detailing Dot/Nadine’s documented abuse by Roy, Lorraine pushes it away. “People who claim to be victims are the downfall of this country,” she says. In her mind, Dot is still the impostor who has married her only son.Yet Roy, for all his swaggering power plays, has made it easier for Lorraine to change her mind. He only knows one way to deal with women and that’s to assert his power over them, by his authority or by the back of his hand. There might have been an angle he could have taken to get Lorraine to help him get his ex-wife back and solve her own daughter-in-law problems in the process. But her distaste for Roy and her meeting with Indira have started to alter her thinking about Dot, who isn’t the type of “victim” she lives to harass with onerous consolidation deals or threats of litigation.In the framing scenes at the Tender Trap, the strip club that gives this episode its title, one small detail stands out. When Roy confronts Vivian Duggar, the mustachioed banker “with a girl’s name” who’s selling his business to Lorraine, he brings up the fact that he’s violating a dancer’s restraining order against him. The irony is pretty rich, given what we know about Roy’s treatment of women, but it brings these men into dramatic alignment. When Lorraine uses her power in the end to ruin Vivian’s life, it serves as a coming attraction for things to come. She’s still coming around to the idea of “victims” being legitimate, but she lives to flex.Jon Hamm, left, and Sam Spruell in “Fargo.”Michelle Faye/FX3-Cent StampsWith Scotty left alone with Lars all day, the only thing she has to eat are crackers at lunch. In Lars’s defense, it appears that adding milk to sugar cereal is the limit of his domestic skills.This season of “Fargo” has been violent like the others, but even a bullet to the wrong captive’s head has nothing on the shock of Roy slapping his current wife for nipping his ear during a haircut. Her terrified acceptance of his abuse is just as startling and makes you think about how Dot/Nadine’s life with him must have been.Roy’s decision to “pay the boogeyman” — Munch — doesn’t seem like it will solve much of anything. Gator seems to know that, but taunting an unkillable hit man isn’t such a great idea, either.“When he was a boy, my son wanted to be a ballerina. I told him the male of the species is called a ballerino, but he couldn’t be swayed.” Wayne’s father never goes anywhere without his vodka gimlets, it would appear.That’s a lovely piece of acting by Richa Moorjani as Indira when Wayne asks her, “Have you seen my wife? She was supposed to visit me today.” Dot and Wayne’s marriage may be a legal fraud that’s falling apart, but her eyes pool with envy over their partnership.“When a man digs a grave, he has to fill it. Otherwise, it’s just a hole.” It sounds a little like Noah Hawley wants to tackle a serialized version of “A Fistful of Dollars” next.Does Indira agree to work for Lorraine? She seems disinclined by nature to trade the sturdiness of applying the law to doing security detail for a rich woman she can’t trust, but $192,000 is a lot of debt. More

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      Amazon to Bring Warhammer 40,000 to the Screen, With Henry Cavill

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      Games Workshop announced this week that the popular tabletop game will come to television and film in a deal with Amazon Studios.There’s big news this week for tiny warriors.Games Workshop, the company behind Warhammer 40,000, the wildly popular tabletop game with miniature figurines, announced on Monday that it had reached a deal with Amazon Studios to bring the game to life on television and film screens.The actor Henry Cavill, known for his roles in the “Superman” franchise and as the title character on Netflix’s fantasy series “The Witcher,” is set to appear on the show and be its executive producer.The two companies had signed an agreement last year to create television programs and movies based on the Warhammer franchise, and will now move forward bringing the game’s universe to life.“All we can tell you right now is that an elite band of screenwriters, each with their own particular passion for Warhammer, is being assembled,” Games Workshop said in a statement on their website.Warhammer 40,000 was released in 1987, and in the decades since has enchanted players as they take command of small but mighty warriors for “supremacy in the grim darkness of the far future,” according to the game’s core rule book.Two or more players place their hand-painted plastic models onto terrain set in the 41st millennium — the rule book recommends a dining table or a floor — and send them into battle among aliens and supernatural creatures.Henry Cavill, who plays Geralt of Rivia in the Netflix series “The Witcher,” will be executive producer of the new Amazon Studios project.Katalin Vermes/NetflixThe game has developed a significant fan base and detailed lore throughout the years, becoming Games Workshop’s most popular product. Hundreds of novels have expanded on the Warhammer universe and mythology. It also has video game spinoffs.Much of the passion for the game, though, comes before the battle begins. Games Workshop doesn’t sell ready-to-play models for Warhammer 40,000. Instead, players purchase parts to construct, and paint in details themselves for a personal touch.Cavill is himself a fan of the game.In 2021, the actor, who has been known to construct his own personal computers, discussed his Warhammer hobby on “The Graham Norton Show.”“You have to paint them,” Cavill said. “There’s the painting-modeling side of the hobby, and then there’s the gaming side of the hobby.”The game found a new legion of fans during the pandemic, including other actors and musicians ready to battle Cavill in the fictional dystopia.Studios have been taking notice of the trend, and capitalizing on growing interest with shows like the HBO Max series “The Last of Us,” which raked in bigger audiences than some of the network’s flagship shows.Amazon Studios has bet on fantasy franchises already, with “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” a prequel to the J.R.R. Tolkien novels. In 2021, the studio released “The Wheel of Time,” based on the book series by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson.No details were given about anticipated release dates or the types of projects planned for the Warhammer franchise. Games Workshop said that it could be some time before the tiny warriors stand tall on a movie screen.“TV and Film production is a mammoth undertaking,” the company said. “It’s not unusual for projects to take two to three years from this point before something arrives onscreen. Still, things are now properly rolling.” More

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      Seth Meyers: Rudy Giuliani Has Really, Really Messed Up This Time

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      The “Late Night” host ribbed Giuliani for being so far in debt that he’ll go bankrupt paying the $148 million he now owes two Georgia election workers.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.Morally BankruptLast Friday, a jury ordered Rudy Giuliani to pay $148 million to two former Georgia election workers he was found guilty of defaming after the 2020 election.“Well, after marrying his cousin, giving a press conference at a landscaping company and almost masturbating in the Borat movie, Rudy Giuliani has finally slipped up,” Seth Meyers joked on Monday.“Instead of $48 million, they ordered him to pay $148 million. They basically took the maximum and put a one in front of it, which, if you ask me, is the funniest possible choice. They took one look at Rudy and said, ‘There’s no way he can afford to pay $48 million. So [expletive] it, let’s add another hundo.’” — SETH MEYERS“That’s right, a jury in Washington, D.C., last week ordered Rudy Giuliani to pay nearly $150 million in the defamation case brought against him by two Georgia election workers. OK, but he for sure doesn’t have that much money. You might as well order a dog to drive you to the airport. A lot of stress for the dog, but you’re not getting to the airport.” — SETH MEYERS“No one’s sure how much of this judgment Rudy will actually be able to pay because his net worth is unknown, although a financial statement acquired during discovery listed his personal assets as two empty Franzia boxes and a paper bag labeled ‘Backup teeth?’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“He defaulted on a phone bill. He bounced a check for his neck removal surgery. He owes $1 million in unpaid parking tickets for parking his car inside the living room of his apartment. He missed a credit card payment for a locksmith he hired to get into his house, which he had locked himself out of, and then a second locksmith he hired to get him out of his house he had locked himself into. He also owes Blockbuster multiple copies of the film ‘Rudy’ after returning the ones he rented with himself edited into the footage.” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Playing the Hits Edition)“It is Dec. 18, and it’s beginning to look a lot like fascism, thanks to Donald Trump.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“This weekend in New Hampshire, former president Trump delivered an hour-and-a-half-long speech where he bashed immigrants, defended Jan. 6 rioters, and called Kim Jong Un ‘very nice.’ So he’s just playing the hits, you know what I’m saying? That’s how you do it. [imitating Trump] I’m not going to waste any of your time with the new stuff — here’s some classics. The surprise song tonight is ‘Wall.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Trump does the same material so much, people start yelling requests. They’re, like, ‘Do Inject Bleach!’”— JIMMY FALLON“Trump even points the mic to the crowd during some of the singalong parts. He’s like, ‘When I say witch hunt, you say rigged!’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingJimmy Fallon challenged two musicians from the audience to write original songs based on the made-up song titles “Texting With My Mittens On” and “North Pole Dancing.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightRufus and Martha Wainwright will perform a holiday-themed song by the singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens on Tuesday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This Out“I love that feeling of taking over a space,” said Carrie Coon, who plays an ambitious new-money matriarch in “The Gilded Age.” “It’s a really satisfying and rare feeling as a woman to have that.”Amy Harrity for The New York Times“The Gilded Age” star Carrie Coon has become a fan favorite as the ambitious wife of a railway tycoon on HBO’s historical drama. More

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      ‘Lawmen: Bass Reeves’ Review: A Frontier Injustice

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      David Oyelowo gives an unimpeachable performance, but Taylor Sheridan still hasn’t met a western that he can’t turn into an overheated melodrama.What we know, or have decided to accept, about the life of the deputy U.S. marshal Bass Reeves has more of the flavor of carnival legend than of scholarship. The Paramount+ series “Lawmen: Bass Reeves,” which concluded on Sunday, was based not on history books or biographies but on novels. The most prominent telling of his story so far was a dramatization of a dramatization.That kind of haziness leaves room for invention, and the tales that have settled around Reeves — a former slave credited with 3,000 arrests; a crack shot said to have killed 14 men in the line of duty — could be the basis for a new take on classic western action and adventure. The tales also suggest that the career Reeves carved out for himself, and the extreme success he found, would at least occasionally have caused him some excitement and joy. That is not where “Lawmen: Bass Reeves” ended up.David Oyelowo gave an unimpeachable performance as Reeves, focused and intense and emotionally true. And the show’s creator, Chad Feehan, and his directors, Christina Alexandra Voros and Damian Marcano, put onscreen a notably handsome and visually credible evocation of the American West in the 1870s. The show had texture — it gave a tactile pleasure throughout its eight episodes.But as it went along, it became less of a treat to watch and more of a chore. Its story of heroism against all odds had gun battles and frontier romance, but we were almost never allowed to simply enjoy them. And poor David Oyelowo appeared to be having less fun than anyone.It was to the show’s credit that it didn’t try to make Reeves a six-gun superman — he operated with guile and caution, letting other people’s carelessness and hotheadedness work for him, and he grimaced and cowered when under fire. But the show’s one-note insistence on his beleaguered nobility, even as his composure faded and his trigger finger got too itchy, was so continual and unmodulated that it flattened the character and drained the story of humor.Reeves’s arc in the early episodes, as he emerged from slavery, tried his hand at farming and then was recruited into the marshals’ service by a sympathetic judge (played by Donald Sutherland), had an urgent, realistic snap to it. But once he put on the badge, the show slowed and got down to its real business, which wasn’t dramatizing the exploits of an exceptional lawman under grueling circumstances.Lauren E. Banks as Jennie Reeves and Demi Singleton as her daughter Sally. The best moments in “Lawmen” were its domestic scenes.Emerson Miller/Paramount+The latter half of the season was, instead, about putting Reeves through a crisis of conscience over his enforcement of laws enacted and administered by the same white men who had once enslaved him. (The more interesting choice dramatically, and probably the one better supported by the historical record, would have been for him not to care.) And having established its seriousness, the show went big, inventing as its embodiment of racist evil an ex-Confederate Texas Ranger (played by Barry Pepper) who used Black prisoners as slave labor and, just to drive home his odiousness, quoted French Enlightenment drama.That “Lawmen” would undergo a mytho-melodramatic implosion is perhaps not surprising. It is in the purview of the executive producer Taylor Sheridan, who has shown a bent for gaseous mythologizing in westerns like “Yellowstone” and “1883.” And Feehan has a history with shows that privileged macho poetics over straightforward action, like “Ray Donovan,” “Banshee” and “Rectify.”The best moments in “Lawmen” were its domestic scenes, which ran in counterpoint to the alternately depressive and histrionic story of Reeves’s work. Reeves’s wife, Jennie, and his oldest daughter, Sally, who kept the farm running in his absence, were played with warmth and great feeling by Lauren E. Banks and Demi Singleton; as impressive as Oyelowo was, it was always a relief when the action shifted to the farm.And racism and racial oppression in the post-Reconstruction era were treated more cogently and dramatically in those scenes as well. The awakening of the pragmatic Jennie to the larger issues championed by her sister Esme (Joaquina Kalukango) was subtle and touching; by contrast, the closing scene of Reeves leading a column of Black prisoners to freedom bordered on camp.Sheridan’s track record as a producer has ticked up lately, with “Tulsa King” and “Special Ops: Lioness” and even the early episodes of “Lawmen.” But when he makes westerns, modern or historical, he always seems to be caught between two conflicting impulses. One is to make anti-westerns like those of the 1960s and ’70s, in which the clichés of the genre are exposed and debunked; the other is to make deluxe versions of the classically sentimental western, in which those same clichés are renewed and celebrated. There’s another choice, of course, which would be just to make a good western. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: Holiday Films and the iHeartRadio Jingle Ball

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      The star-studded concert comes to small screens. “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” “The Polar Express” and “A Christmas Carol” air on various networks.With 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, Dec. 18-24. Details and times are subject to change.MondayA CHRISTMAS CAROL (1938) 6:45 p.m. on TCM. There are 16 film and TV adaptations (and counting!) of Charles Dickens’s 1843 novella, but this is one of the first. Staring Reginald Owen as Ebenezer Scrooge, this film tells the story pretty much as we all know it: Scrooge hates Christmas and mistreats his employees, including Bob Cratchit (Gene Lockhart), until a series of ghostly visitors show him the error of his ways and a vision of the future.TuesdayTaylor Momsen and Jim Carrey in “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”Ron Batzdorff, Universal PicturesHOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS (2000) 8:20 p.m. on Freeform. This live-action version of Dr. Seuss’s 1957 children’s book might be the most popular, with Jim Carrey donning a full-body green fur suit and a strange accent. As the people of Whoville are preparing for their favorite holiday, Christmas, the Grinch comes down from his lair on Mount Crumpit with a plan to sabotage it all — until he comes face to face with the sweet and endearing Cindy Lou Who. And (spoiler!) by the end, the Grinch’s heart grows three sizes.WednesdayTHE POLAR EXPRESS (2004) 10 p.m. on AMC. As a child, I was terrified of this movie’s premise: a train pulling up outside of my house to take me who-knows-where. But by the end, I was charmed by the Christmas spirit just like everyone else. The children ride the magical train to the North Pole so that the little skeptical protagonist, Billy, can be proved wrong — Santa Claus actually is real!ThursdayIHEARTRADIO JINGLE BALL 2023 8 p.m. on ABC. The 2023 Jingle Ball show has been touring the U.S. since the beginning of December, but if you’d rather cozy up on the couch to watch instead of filing into an arena, you’re in luck. This broadcast will feature performances by Olivia Rodrigo, Usher, Nicki Minaj, SZA, Niall Horan and many more. I’m most excited to see Sabrina Carpenter perform her Christmas version of “Nonsense.”Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie in “Barbie.”Warner Bros. PicturesBARBIE (2023) 9 p.m. on HBO. After a blockbuster summer at the box office, Greta Gerwig’s film has finally landed on the small screen. The movie follows Barbie (Margot Robbie) as she leaves Barbie Land and has the unfortunate realization that, outside, misogyny is alive and well; Ken (Ryan Gosling) obviously thrives. “It’s amusing when Barbie points out a billboard filled with women, mistaking them for the Supreme Court because that’s what the court looks like in Barbie Land, just with more pink,” Manohla Dargis wrote in her review for The New York Times. “However politically sharp, the gag is an unpleasant reminder of all the profoundly unfunny ways in which this world, with its visible and invisible hands, tries to control women, putting them into little boxes,” she added. For that reason, I can’t help but tear up every time I hear the movie’s anthem by Billie Eilish: “What Was I Made For?”DICK VAN DYKE 98 YEARS OF MAGIC 9 p.m. on CBS. Dick Van Dyke is celebrating his 98th birthday with a two-hour special featuring guests who include Zachary Levi and Rita Ora as well as archival footage from “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” “Mary Poppins” and “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”FridayCary Grant and Deborah Kerr in “An Affair to Remember.”20th Century Fox/PhotofestAN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER (1957) 10 p.m. on TCM. Before there was “Sleepless in Seattle,” there was this classic: Nickie Ferrante (Cary Grant) and Terry McKay (Deborah Kerr) meet on a trans-Atlantic ocean liner and strike up a friendship and maybe something more — but since they are both with other people, they decide to set a time, six months off, to meet at the Empire State Building. But when the day comes Terry doesn’t show up.SaturdayEXTENDED FAMILY 8 p.m. on NBC. There’s a new sitcom in town, and this one focuses on the peaks and pits of managing family life after divorce. Abigail Spencer and Jon Cryer play Julia and Jim, a former couple who agree that the day they divorced was the best day of their lives, but they find that co-parenting with an ex can be complicated. Episodes will air weekly in January.SundayCHRISTMAS EVE MASS 11:30 p.m. on NBC. Pope Francis leads the traditional annual service from St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. More

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      Carrie Coon Likes to ‘Play the Baddie’ in ‘The Gilded Age’

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      Playing a new-money upstart in “The Gilded Age,” the actor isn’t afraid to go big. “You can’t take it too seriously,” she said. “You can’t take yourself too seriously.”Carrie Coon remembers vividly the first time she walked onto the Long Island set of the HBO series “The Gilded Age” and into the regal foyer of the mansion she occupies as Bertha Russell, wife of the railway tycoon George Russell (Morgan Spector).“I thought, ‘Oh, oh, oh, I have to fill this,’” she recalled.Delectably, Coon has. In Season 2 of the series, a rococo drama set in 1880s New York City, Bertha takes her fight to join Manhattan’s elite to the opera. She sponsors the nascent Metropolitan Opera as an alternative to the Academy of Music, which won’t accept her new money. Whether in intimate scenes or grand ones, Coon (“The Leftovers,” “Fargo”), as Bertha, gives a full-bodied, deep-voiced performance. A foyer? That’s nothing. This is a woman who can fill the Met.On an afternoon in late November, a few weeks before the “Gilded Age” finale aired, Coon joined a Zoom call in a white bathrobe and satiny makeup. She was attending the Met herself that night, along with many of her castmates. (In an unusually elegant publicity stunt, they would occupy a box at “Tannhauser.”)Although the show’s cast doesn’t lack for acting talent, Coon has become a fan favorite. This is probably because Bertha seems to enjoy herself so much, embracing each of the script’s melodramatic turns. Whether interfering in the relationships of her children, Larry (Harry Richardson) and Gladys (Taissa Farmiga), or tangling with her former lady’s maid (Kelley Curran), now a rival, Bertha seems to savor each squabble and brawl. So does Coon.“I love that feeling of taking over a space,” she said. “It’s a really satisfying and rare feeling as a woman to have that.”As the wife of a railway tycoon, Coon’s character, Bertha Russell, whose parents were potato farmers has to fight hard for recognition and access among New York’s social elite.Barbara Nitke/HBOIn between bites of a lunchtime sandwich, Coon discussed ambition, big choices and why no one recognizes her offscreen, even now. These are edited excerpts from the conversation. Mild Season 2 spoilers follow.Who is Bertha and what drives her?If Bertha had been of another time, Bertha would have been a C.E.O., an executive, a senator. She’s an ambitious woman in a time where there was no place for ambitious women besides the social sphere. The heart of Bertha is her interest in her children. Her son is fine — her son is a white man with lots of money. Her daughter, however, does need to be protected.Yet Bertha often sacrifices her children’s happiness in favor of the family’s social standing.Her myopia is really frustrating because what we see in the Russell’s marriage is that Bertha has, in fact, married for love and respect and ambition. But Bertha understands very well the obstacles for women, even women of a certain class. We’re not even touching on what’s going on for women of color and immigrants who are all working in this capitalist system that will crush them. Bertha is wrong about what she’s doing. But when it comes to our children, we do have these blind spots. It is ultimately about love and protection. She just goes about it without any nuance.Are there any limits to her ambition?I don’t think so. Limits are imposed on her externally. I don’t feel that she intrinsically has a sense of limits. Her cause is meritocratic in a way. She believes that you can and should be able to earn your place.You seem to move through the world more humbly. Is it freeing to play someone so different from you?It’s fun to play the baddie. It’s fun to traffic in your own capacity for ruthlessness. You are correct in assuming that’s not the way I move through the world. And yet in order to have any longevity in a business as ruthless as ours can be, for women in particular, you really have to have some of that gumption. Anybody who’s still in it, even if they don’t admit it, they have ambition at the root. But it’s terrific fun. In my life I’ve played a lot of really hapless moms — frenzied and lost and grasping. Grasping at this level is a much more delightful way to be at work.From left, Harry Richardson, Taissa Farmiga, Coon and Morgan Spector in a scene from Season 2, in which Bertha helps bring the New York Metropolitan Opera into being.Barbara Nitke/HBODoes Bertha know that she’s a villain?She’s not a villain. She helps build the Met! She believes that doors should be open to her. What makes anyone else better than she is? She comes from potato farmers, and here she is. Why wouldn’t you open the door to someone who’s worked that hard? That’s how I feel about people who pick up their children and carry them across rivers and deserts from Central America to get here. Those are the kind of people you want here. Those are resilient, astonishing people who will do anything for their loved ones.Your voice is pitched higher than Bertha’s. How did you find the particular pitch and rhythm of it?Certainly the rhythm came out of the writing. And then, in Season 1, when I come in and say, “Oh, what an interesting moment for me to arrive,” somehow my voice was just lower that day. I was like, Oh, there she is. It’s fun to be working down there. I never get recognized on the street; I don’t even get recognized by my crew when I’m out of my wig. Even my castmates at a party a couple of weeks ago didn’t recognize me. But people recognize the voice, though very rarely.And then her gait, her gestures. How did you find those?These costumes shape you in such a particular way. Women were supposed to glide, to be smooth. You weren’t supposed to see movement. But Bertha is an upstart and I felt that her hips should be involved. I don’t know how conscious that choice was. When you’re asked to walk into that foyer in a hat and a cashmere coat, you just have to sashay.In this season the show has leaned further into melodrama. How does it feel to play those big theatrical scenes?Terrifying, but wonderful. It just feels like you’re doing Eugene O’Neill all the time. But oh, gosh, we really do have fun. That’s the key to it: You can’t take it too seriously. You can’t take yourself too seriously. I’m not afraid of big choices, and I’m not afraid of people not liking Bertha, just like I’m not afraid, now that I’m 42, of anybody not liking me. So I try to have fun. There was one take when Bertha first saw Turner (Curran’s character) that was so hilariously broad. I staggered; I grabbed Morgan’s arm; I fell a little bit. As soon as the take was over, we howled because it was a hat on a hat on a hat on a hat.Walking in that first day, we had no idea what we were doing. We didn’t know how big it was going to be. We didn’t know how much space there was. But as we were shooting, we were like, OK, I think we can handle a little more size. In Season 2, some of the exposition is out of the way, we’ve got the characters introduced. Now we get to have a little more fun.This season focuses largely on the real-life battle between the Academy of Music and the nascent Metropolitan Opera. What is it a proxy war for?We always draw a parallel with the moment when the Kardashians were invited to the Met Ball. The world of celebrity and what money can afford you, it’s really emblematic of that. The opera also represents the struggle in this country, this feeling of people resisting inevitable change and holding on very tightly to an older way of life.Bertha ends the season in triumph. Could she have ended in any other way?I don’t think so. The show is exploring a very particular time, an extraordinary time of industry and change and growth. We know already that the moneyed people won, the new people won. Where they weren’t invited, they built something new from the ground up. So her rise is really inevitable. She’s an inexorable force. There’s nothing that will stop her. More

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      Disney Is a Language. Do We Still Speak It?

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      President Dwight D. Eisenhower once praised Walt Disney for his “genius as a creator of folklore.” When Disney died in 1966, the line made it into his obituary, evidence of its accuracy. Folklore, defined broadly, is an oral tradition that stretches across generations. It tells people who they are, how they got here and how they should live in the future. The company Disney created appointed itself keeper of these traditions for Americans, spinning up fresh tales and (more often) deftly repackaging old ones to appeal to a new century.It started with Mickey Mouse, but as his company turns 100, Disney’s legacy — advanced in hundreds of films and shorts and shows, mass-produced tie-in merchandise, marvelous technical advancements, gargantuan theme parks around the world — was the production of a modern shared language, a set of reference points instantly recognizable to almost everyone, and an encouragement to dream out loud about a utopian future. Walt Disney was a man who gazed backward and forward: speaking at the opening of Disneyland in 1955, he proclaimed: “Here age relives fond memories of the past, and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future.” But what happens when that promise is broken and the reference points are siloed? When his company struggles at the box office like a regular studio and faces cultural headwinds like any artist?Walt Disney at the opening of Disneyland, extolling the hope of a brighter tomorrow.USC Libraries/Corbis, via Getty ImagesDisney told stories of folk heroes (Davy Crockett, Paul Bunyan), princes and princesses, and even, occasionally, a mouse, all while leading the pack on ever-shifting technologies. (He was, among other things, the first major movie producer to make a TV show.) A sense of optimism ruled Disney’s ethos, built on homemade mythologies. The lessons of his stories were simple, uplifting and distinctly American: believe in yourself, believe in your dreams, don’t let anyone make you feel bad for being you, be your own hero and, most of all, don’t be afraid to wish upon a star. Fairy tales and legends are often disquieting, but once cast in a Disney light they became soft and sweet, their darker and less comforting lessons re-engineered to fit the Disney ideal. It was a distinctly postwar vision of the world.And we ate it up, and we exported it, and we wanted to be part of it, too. “One of the most astounding exhibitions of popular devotion came in the wake of Mr. Disney’s films about Davy Crockett,” Disney’s obituary explained, referring to a live-action 1950s shows about the frontiersman. “In a matter of months, youngsters all over the country who would balk at wearing a hat in winter were adorned in coonskin caps in midsummer.”The coonskin caps were a harbinger of things to come. Halloween would be dominated by princesses and mermaids. Bedsheets and pajamas would be printed with lions and mopey donkeys. Adults would plan weddings at a magical kingdom in Florida. Audiences around the world would join in the legends. Once-closed countries like China would eventually open their doors, leading the company — aware that success in this new market meant fast-tracking children’s introduction to Mickey, Ariel and Buzz Lightyear — to open English-language schools using their characters and stories as the teaching tools. History would show that Eisenhower was onto something when he referred to Disney as a creator, not just a reteller, of folklore.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More