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      David Jacobs, ‘Dallas’ and ‘Knots Landing’ Creator, Dies at 84

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      As the creator of “Dallas” and its spinoff “Knots Landing,” he did more than anyone to change the landscape of nighttime TV.David Jacobs, who more than anyone invented the modern prime-time soap opera when he created “Dallas,” the long-running CBS series about an amoral oil baron and his feuding family, and followed it a year later with “Knots Landing,” died on Sunday in Burbank, Calif. He was 84.His son, Aaron, said he died in a hospital from complications of a series of infections. Mr. Jacobs had also recently received a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.Mr. Jacobs had written for several television shows when, in 1977, he pitched CBS on what he called an American version of “Scenes From a Marriage,” Ingmar Bergman’s 1973 mini-series, which was later turned into a film. His story shifted the location from Sweden to a Southern California cul-de-sac with a focus on four middle-class couples.CBS showed some interest but passed, asking him to write a glitzier saga instead.“Which meant Texas to me,” Mr. Jacobs recalled in a 2008 interview with the Television Academy. Working with Michael Filerman, an executive at Lorimar Productions, he wrote a script about the wealthy Ewing family.When Mr. Filerman sent the script to CBS, he gave it the title “Dallas.”“‘Dallas?’” Mr. Jacobs recalled saying to Mr. Filerman. “‘Kennedy was killed in Dallas. I don’t want to do this in Dallas. First of all, it was oil people and Houston is the oil city. Dallas is the banking city.’ And Michael said, ‘Who knows that? Who cares? Do you want to watch a show called “Houston”? ’”The title “Dallas” stuck, and the series made its debut in 1978, becoming a megahit for CBS. It took its basic cues from the daytime soap-opera genre — long-running melodramas with core casts that were originally known for being sponsored by soap manufacturers.The cast of “Dallas” featured Larry Hagman as the oil baron, J.R. Ewing; Patrick Duffy as his brother Bobby; Barbara Bel Geddes and Jim Davis as their parents, Miss Ellie and Jock; Linda Gray as Sue Ellen, J.R.’s wife; and Victoria Principal as Pamela, Bobby’s wife.The cast of “Dallas” in a 1979 promotional photo. Front row, from left: Charlene Tilton, Jim Davis and Linda Gray. Back row, from left: Patrick Duffy, Victoria Principal, Barbara Bel Geddes and Larry Hagman. CBS Photo Archive/Getty ImagesIn a cliffhanger to end the third season, J.R. was shot. In the fourth episode of the next season, the identity of his assailant was revealed:It was his sister-in-law and mistress, Kristin Shepard (Mary Crosby). The episode generated a 53.3 Nielsen rating, a record at the time for an entertainment program. (That record would be broken in 1983 by the final episode of “M*A*S*H.”)Mr. Jacobs soon had another series in mind, about a postapocalyptic utopia. But when he pitched it to CBS, a top executive demurred, opened a desk drawer and handed Mr. Jacobs his old script about the couples in the cul-de-sac. It was “Knots Landing.”“Is there any way we can make this a ‘Dallas’ spinoff?” Mr. Jacobs recalled the executive asking.Mr. Jacobs spun off two recurring characters from “Dallas” — Gary, another Ewing brother (played by Ted Shackelford), and his wife, Valene (Joan Van Ark) — and added an ensemble of other characters. “Knots Landing” made its debut in 1979 and became another long-running hit, lasting 14 seasons.Joan Van Ark and Ted Shackelford as husband and wife in a scene from “Knots Landing,” a long-running “Dallas” spinoff also created by Mr. Jacobs. CBS via Getty ImagesDavid Arnold Jacobs was born on Aug. 12, 1939, in Baltimore. His father, Melvin, was a bookie, a cabdriver and an insurance salesman, among other things. His mother, Ruth (Levenson) Jacobs, was a homemaker.By his own account, Mr. Jacobs disliked school until he attended the Maryland Institute College of Art, from which he graduated with a degree in fine arts in about 1961. But while he had artistic talent, he said, he recognized that he wasn’t talented enough to make a living as a painter.He moved to New York City and turned to writing. Over the next dozen or so years, he said, he wrote entries for The Book of Knowledge, a children’s encyclopedia; articles about art, architecture and other subjects for various publications, including The New York Times Magazine; biographies of Beethoven and Charlie Chaplin; and short stories for magazines like Redbook and Cosmopolitan.Mr. Jacobs moved to Los Angeles after his divorce from Lynn Oliansky to stay close to their daughter, Albyn, and found work in TV.He was hired early on to rewrite scripts. One was an episode of “Delvecchio,” a 1976-77 crime drama starring Judd Hirsch as a detective studying to be a lawyer. (A producer threw the script in a garbage can.) Another, in 1976, was for “The Blue Knight,” a police procedural starring George Kennedy.Mr. Jacobs was hired as a staff writer for “The Blue Knight,” but the series was canceled soon after. It had been a Lorimar production, and the company’s Mr. Filerman gave him a deal that led to the creation of “Dallas” and “Knots Landing.”Mr. Jacobs at a TV Land Awards ceremony in 2009 in Los Angeles. His series “Knots Landing” received a 30th-anniversary award. With him, from left, were three of the show’s stars: Donna Mills, Michelle Phillips and Michele Lee.Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty ImagesThe key casting decision in “Dallas” was who would play J.R. In the academy interview, Mr. Jacobs recalled being on a conference call with the actor Robert Foxworth, who was being considered for the role.When Mr. Foxworth asked how the ruthless J.R. could be made more sympathetic, Mr. Jacobs recalled, he told him that was not going to happen. “He likes being the son of a bitch,” Mr. Jacobs said, “and he believes that you get them before they get you.”Mr. Foxworth turned down the role, but he would later be was one of the stars of “Falcon Crest,” another prime-time soap.“Dallas” ended its long run in 1991, “Knots Landing” in 1993. Mr. Jacobs was a creator, producer and executive producer of several other series through the 1990s, but none were as successful. He returned to his roots as an executive producer of “Dallas: The Early Years,” a 1986 TV movie presented as a prequel to the series; ”Knots Landing: Back to the Cul-De-Sac,” a 1997 mini-series; and “Knots Landing Reunion: Together Again,” a 2005 TV movie.A “Dallas” reboot ran from 2012 to 2014 on TNT. But Mr. Jacobs told Forbes.com that he had been excluded from any creative input into the series and later said in an interview with The Daily Beat that he had hated it.In addition to his son, Mr. Jacobs is survived by his wife, Diana (Pietrocarli) Jacobs; his daughters, Albyn Hall and Molly Jacobs; and two granddaughters.In 1981, the debut of “Dynasty” — a much more opulently staged prime-time soap starring Joan Collins, Linda Evans and John Forsythe — provided formidable competition for “Dallas.”“‘Dynasty’ was a better expression of second Reagan administration values than ‘Dallas,’” Mr. Jacobs wrote in an article for The Times in 1990, “because, while ‘Dallas’ was about the quest for money, ‘Dynasty’ was about the things that money could buy. In ‘Dallas,’ money was a tool, a way of keeping score.”He added: “During almost any other period, ‘Dynasty’ would have been regarded as more vulgar than ‘Dallas.’ In the mid-’80s, however, ‘Dynasty’ was widely viewed as the classier of the two shows.” More

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      Léa Garcia, Who Raised Black Actors’ Profile in Brazil, Dies at 90

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      Best known internationally for her breakout performance in the 1959 film “Black Orpheus,” she challenged racial stereotypes over a seven-decade career.Léa Garcia, a pioneering actress who brought new visibility and respect to Black actors in Brazil after her breakout performance in the Academy Award-winning 1959 film “Black Orpheus,” died on Aug. 15 in Gramado, a mountain resort town in southern Brazil. She was 90.Her death, of cardiac complications, was confirmed by her family on her Instagram account. At her death, in a hospital, she was in Gramado to receive a lifetime achievement award at that town’s film festival. Her son Marcelo Garcia, who was also her manager, accepted the honor in her place.Over a prolific career that began in the 1950s, Ms. Garcia amassed more than 100 credits in theater, film and television, from her early years with an experimental Black theater group to her later prominence on television productions, like the popular 1976 telenovela “Escrava Isaura” (“Isaura: Slave Girl”), based on an 1875 novel by the abolitionist writer Bernardo Guimarães; it was seen in more than 80 countries.Recounting her career in a 2022 interview with the Brazilian magazine Ela, Ms. Garcia said she felt blessed by her success. “I often say that the gods embraced me,” she said. “Things always arrived for me without me running after them.”Still, laboring to change racial perceptions in the world of film and television involved tremendous perseverance and discipline. “Much more was demanded of us,” she told Ela. “We had to arrive with the text on the tip of our tongue, always smelling good and elegant. Others could be wrong. We could not. We could play subservient characters, but we needed to show that we ourselves were not.”Léa Lucas Garcia de Aguiar was born on March 11, 1933, in Rio de Janeiro. Growing up, she was drawn to literature and aspired to be a writer. That changed one day in 1950.“I was on my way to pick up my grandmother to take her to the movies,” she recalled, “when someone came up to me and asked, ‘Would you like to work in theater?’”The voice belonged to Abdias do Nascimento, the writer, artist and Pan-Africanist activist who created Teatro Experimental do Negro (TEN), a Rio-based group that aimed to promote the appreciation of Afro-Brazilian culture. (The two would become a couple and had two children together.) Ms. Garcia made her stage debut in 1952 in Mr. Nascimento’s play “Rapsódia Negra” (“Black Rhapsody”).As the decade drew to a close, she took her career to a new level of international recognition when she was cast in the French director Marcel Camus’s “Black Orpheus,” a retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice adapted to the frenzy of Rio’s carnival and featuring music by Antônio Carlos Jobim and Luiz Bonfá. It won the Oscar for best foreign-language film in 1960.With its lush exuberance, the film was anything but classical in feel. “It really is not the two lovers that are the focus of interest in this film; it is the music, the movement, the storm of color,” Bosley Crowther wrote in a review in The New York Times.Even in her 80s, Ms. Garcia remained productive. Adriano DamasEven in a supporting role, Ms. Garcia showed an ability to beguile. “Léa Garcia,” Mr. Crowther wrote, “is especially provoking as the loose-limbed cousin of the soft Eurydice.”Among her other notable films was “Ganga Zumba,” the debut feature by Carlos Diegues, a pioneer in Brazil’s reformist Cinema Novo movement, which was made in 1963 but not released until 1972. She brought power and complexity to the character of Cipriana, the lover of the title character, who escapes a sugar plantation in the 17th century to lead Quilombo dos Palmares, a haven for other fugitives from slavery.“It’s not shameful to be a slave,” Ms. Garcia often said, according to family members. “It’s shameful to be a colonizer.”The pace of her career scarcely slowed over the years; she spent decades as a staple of Brazilian soap operas like “O Clone” (“The Clone”), “Anjo Mau” (“Evil Angel”), “Xica da Silva” and “Marina,” and was seen on other TV series as well.Even in her 80s, Ms. Garcia remained productive. She starred in the drama series “Baile de Máscaras” in 2019 and returned to the stage in 2022 in the play “A Vida Não é Justa” (“Life Is Not Fair”), in which she played three characters and explored themes of diversity, equality, justice and relationships.Complete information on her survivors was not immediately available.In the Ela interview, Ms. Garcia discussed her hopes for her great-great-granddaughter, who was 7 months old at the time. “I hope for a fair and egalitarian country that respects diversities,” she said. “That’s what I want, and much more.”Julia Vargas Jones contributed reporting from São Paulo, Brazil More

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      ‘Billions’ Season 7, Episode 3 Recap: Confidence Games

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      Mike sets a trap for a certain new U.S. attorney. At least he thinks he does.Season 7, Episode 3: ‘Winston Dick Energy’Chuck Rhoades is a man of action — most of the time. His proprietary blend of intellect and emotion is what made him the man he is today; his best friend and newly hired deputy U.S. attorney, Ira (Ben Shenkman), tells him this in so many words.But that combination has unmade Chuck several times over, and he’s not the only one who knows it. His protégé turned foe, Kate Sacker, tells her boss Mike Prince that Rhoades’s emotion is what stops him from harnessing his full intelligence, which is every bit the equal of hers or Mike’s. So when Kate and company proffer a filing for a political super PAC to back Prince’s presidential campaign — a deliberate provocation meant to keep Chuck’s operations in plain sight — Chuck does not bite.Which would be fine if Chuck were operating in a vacuum. Instead, he has an office full of lawyers champing at the bit for the opportunity to unleash their full skills on unsuspecting white-collar criminals everywhere — the kinds of cases that turned their freshly reinstated boss into a beloved man of the people. His reticence in choosing his opening salvo frustrates everyone: his right-hand man, Ira; his father, Charles Sr. (Jeffrey DeMunn); his button man, Karl; and the Southern District’s bold up-and-comer Amanda Torre (Hannah Hodson).Given his overall winning track record, Chuck’s colleagues understandably want him to aim at a target, any target, and pull the trigger. Karl, Ira, and Charles père even enlist Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (appearing as himself) for a pep talk, staged in Grant’s Tomb no less. (Watching Chuck extrapolate a whole grandiose rationale behind the location’s selection before finding out the real reason is one of the episode’s funnier and more insightful moments.)And so the writer of the episode, Mae Smith, sets up an exciting dilemma. We viewers know that Chuck’s braintrust is well-intentioned and that their admiration for Chuck as a hard charger is both genuine and, 99 times out of a hundred, well-placed. We viewers also know that this is the one-in-a-hundred case, and that if he does what has always served him best, he’ll fall right into Prince’s trap. It’s clever writing, building tension by ensuring both of Chuck’s possible choices seem wise from different angles but never revealing the correct angle to the character himself.In the end, Chuck’s perspicacity serves him well. He deliberately takes Prince’s super PAC bait but instructs Karl and Ira to keep digging. Then he selects Amanda’s case for his real first big win. He is still the emotional intellectual we know and love, but he now has the power to keep that emotion in check until needed — kind of like the Hulk in “Avengers.”Chuck isn’t the only character at a crossroads this episode. His ex-wife, Wendy, discovers that nearly all of her patients at Prince Cap are seeing a second psychiatrist on the side for “real” therapy. Unwilling to accept that what she does is mere performance coaching — and more than a little jealous that her fief has been raided — she makes an appointment to confront the interloper, Dr. Eleanor Mayer (Holland Taylor) … and winds up becoming one of the good doctor’s patients.Mayer, it happens, really has Wendy’s number. She correctly points out that performance-based therapy necessarily requires continued high performance, a goal prioritized at the expense of anything that might free her Prince Cap clients from their “hamster wheel.” She also ferrets out that this leaves Wendy feeling one of two ways: like an “errand girl,” doing her bosses’ bidding to keep the cash flowing, or “Christlike,” suffering in order to save her patients’ souls to whatever extent she can. Perhaps Mayer’s therapy will offer a way out for all of them.The third and final character in search of his lost mojo in this week’s episode is Wags. Once a legend on the Street, his association with a do-gooding politician has sunk his reputation in the eyes of his fellow creeps and killers. Like Chuck, he needs a big score, a sure thing, a way to get back on the map in spectacular, even theatrical, fashion.Then along comes Winston (Will Roland). A twerpy quant who’s been a core part of the Taylor Mason team for some time, largely in spite of himself, Winston quits the firm and immediately — like, within eight hours — goes into business for himself. The risk management software he is peddling was obviously designed on Prince Cap time and on the Prince Cap dime; if he’s allowed to sell it, the financial and reputational damage to the firm would be considerable.Acting on advice from Wendy (you can see why Dr. Mayer is concerned, no?), Wags storms into Winston’s apartment, where an attempted come-to-Jesus meeting with Taylor and Philip is already underway, and all but attacks the guy. His real purpose, though? Planting a bug on behalf of Hall (Terry Kinney), the firm’s mercenary investigator. Hall digs up not only Winston’s potential client list but also every dirty deed (and dirty Google search) the one-time hacktivist has ever committed.All of which information Wags, Taylor, Philip and Kate present to Winston in the very conference room where he is to make his final pitch to potential buyers. Unless he comes back to Prince Cap, software in tow, as a sort of indentured servant, Wags will see to it personally that Winston’s reputation and finances are left about as intact as ancient Carthage.Watching a good episode of “Billions,” which this undoubtedly is, is like watching someone expertly play a puzzle game — solving a Rubik’s cube, say, or beating a level of “Tetris.” You gaze in admiration as skilled hands slide pieces and panels from one place to the next until everything lines up exactly where it should. Chuck’s friends and enemies inadvertently guide him to the correct course of action. Wendy’s petulance puts her on the path toward a major breakthrough. Winston’s defection provides Wags with the fresh kill he requires. “Billions” makes it look easy, but if it were, everyone would be doing it.Loose changeNotably absent from this episode, barring a pointed glance or pained look here and there: Taylor, Wendy and Wags’s quest to stop their boss’s rise to power. Perhaps, chastened by Axe’s rejection last week, they’ve taken his “if you can’t beat him, join him” advice to heart, at least temporarily. (Also notably absent: Axe.)Notably present in this week’s episode: the much-missed Sarah Stiles as Bonnie. The profane Axe Cap alumna returns to her old stamping grounds to narc on Winston’s new venture, then rekindles her affair with Dollar Bill before the elevator doors close on her.Another key informant in the anti-Winston campaign: Rian, who doesn’t let her kinda-sorta sisterly affection for the little worm get in the way of nuking his dreams when Wags comes asking around.Key cameos in this episode include the author Michael Lewis as himself, hosting the “Liar’s Poker” soiree at which Wags is humiliated, and the talented character actor Michael O’Keefe as the jerk who does the humiliating. (By the way, when he and his buddies were swapping old Wags war stories, did they remind you, too, of the old Bill Brasky sketches on “Saturday Night Live”?)“What’s with you?” Wendy asks Wags. “Nothing,” he mumbles, eyes downcast, desultorily dipping a tea bag in a mug of hot water over and over. He’s been Tom Hagen’d out of the initial run at Winston by Taylor and Philip, and he’s having himself a good old-fashioned childlike sulk about it. And why not? Life is nothing to Wags if not a big NC-17-rated playground, and he’s just been knocked off the monkey bars.Without going into detail, this episode features an off-color joke about the life and death of Ivanka Trump in such gleefully bad taste that I laughed at the audacity as much as at the joke itself.Before Wags takes charge of the operation, there’s some concern in the Prince Cap inner circle about destroying Winston publicly. Mike is running for president, after all, and America is a very pro-labor environment these days. More

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      ‘And Just Like That …’ Season 2 Finale Recap: On the Verge

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      Carrie gets an unexpected phone call. Aidan has some unexpected news.Season 2, Episode 11: ‘The Last Supper Part Two: Entrée’This sophomore season of “And Just Like That …” finishes almost exactly as it started: with everyone getting laid. We have “you love me too” sex, “moving on from my ex” sex, “giving up control” sex and “I’ll love you forever but might not see you for five years” sex. But the experiences between the lovers in the season finale are deeper, more meaningful and more evolved, much like this season — and in some ways, like this whole franchise.We know this because we were all flies on the wall at “The Last Supper” — Carrie’s final hurrah in her walk-up apartment near Barneys — where, between drink clinks and olive tastings, we got some major, albeit concise, self-reflection out of every single character. As Che puts it to Lisette during some impromptu heavy chitchat, Che is transitioning “emotionally.” But it’s clear Che isn’t the only one.Carrie did, in fact, despite my doubts, sell that apartment for good to Lisette and move to a four-bedroom Gramercy Park palace, which, at least for now, will house just her and her teeny kitty, Shoe.Aidan won’t be there, as was the plan. As we learned in last week’s episode, Aidan’s almost 15-year-old son, Wyatt, is in dire straits, and Aidan believes Wyatt needs his “constant” father nearby, in Norfolk, Va., and not in New York.But he and Carrie aren’t breaking up. They are simply entering a five-year holding pattern that Aidan promises will go by in a silent snap.This is, if you’re looking at it realistically, kind of bull. Yes, Wyatt needs steady, present parents right now, but this idea that his recovery will take precisely five years, and that they couldn’t still visit each other during that time, is contrived. Still, we know already that Season 3 is a go, and Carrie and Aidan — as much as many of us are rooting for them — need to be pried apart somehow if Carrie is to keep having new romantic adventures.It isn’t public knowledge how early the “And Just Like That …” team got the greenlight for Season 3, but it’s fair to speculate that it happened well before the renewal was announced this week. The Season 2 finale doesn’t feel final at all. Instead, it feels as if each character were on the verge of becoming richer, more seasoned versions of themselves.First and foremost, Woke Charlotte is in full effect, and I couldn’t be happier for her. Who would have imagined 25 years ago that the traditionalist Charlotte would become the most vocal feminist of them all? Taking down the patriarchy in her own home, Charlotte once again speaks for women across America in telling Harry that doing a few things around the house does not mean he is doing “it all.”In fact, he is doing the “bare minimum,” she says, of what has been expected of her and pretty much every wife and mother of the modern era (in heterosexual marriages). He deserves no applause. But she does. They say not all heroes wear capes, and in this case, our hero is wearing a disheveled gallerina dress that probably smells like booze and slaying, and that’s just fine.Miranda is taking on a new mind-set as well, addressing finally her pattern of discarding past loves and instead choosing to face that pain head-on. Carrie’s dinner party, which Carrie forced Miranda to attend (a decision I disagreed with!), turns out for the best in terms of Miranda and Che, who land on being a “good train wreck” and end up on at least amicable terms.Miranda was in a relationship with Steve far longer. She was married to him, had a child with him, shared a life and home with him. With Steve, she wants more than niceties, so she goes out to Coney Island to ask for it. Steve’s demeanor lets us know she will likely get it.But even more exciting is the fact that Miranda, too, is stepping up professionally. She is rapidly ascending at Human Rights Watch, enough to be trusted with an impromptu interview on the BBC. She is, well into middle age, finally doing work that matters to her, and I, for one, can’t wait to see more of that in Season 3.Kim Cattrall briefly reprised her “Sex and the City” character in the Season 2 finale of “And Just Like That …”MaxNya’s star is rising quickly as well, with a fast and unanimous vote to elect her into the American Law Institute. She is dismayed that she doesn’t have a man to share that joy with, and it’s easy to feel dismayed in hearing Nya say such a thing. This show is supposed to be about empowerment, right? These women don’t need men around, do they? But her lament, considering she is still grieving a divorce from a longtime love, is honest, and of course wanting a partner isn’t something to apologize for. Happily for Nya, sparks fly by the end of the episode with a Michelin-star chef (Gary Dourdan) who seems, rightly, very, very into her.Lisa, having miscarried her pregnancy in the previous episode, is free from the worry that a baby will derail all that she has worked toward. But more important, she resolves to free herself from the guilt of not having wanted it. Lisa is ready for “her time,” and she is dedicated to pursuing it. (Herbert better get that vasectomy this time.) Che, too, is moving toward whatever new version of themself is yet to come. Che is in, as Lisette calls it, a “cocoon stage.”Which is probably the best way to describe Carrie as well. Her next step is the most mysterious of all. Will this next phase of her life involve Aidan, who is technically still her boyfriend? Will she write another book? Will she become editor-at-large at Enid’s Vivante? Will she take up feeding pigeons every day in Gramercy Park? We don’t know. But we do know, as Carrie tells it, that she will be trying to move forward without expectations.Admittedly, my expectations for Season 2 were relatively low. I was hoping for a more fun, less grief-stricken story, and I got that. But over the past 11 episodes, I’m pleasantly surprised to say I got a lot more. It has been rocky along the way, but I think the show has taken meaningful steps toward inclusivity, achieving richer story lines for the newer characters while also allowing the whole cast, especially its original characters, to mature appropriately.Sure, this series is a little less fancy-free than the original. But it is challenging the ways in which we dismiss women of a certain age, forcing us instead to consider that, maybe, if we let them, women can step more and more into their power with each passing year. And as Carrie would say, that’s just fabulous.Things still taking up space in my brainI think we were all hoping Samantha (Kim Cattrall) would be more than a footnote, but the rumors were that her appearance would be only a cameo, and it was. Considering the bad blood Cattrall has said exists between her and Sarah Jessica Parker, and her insistence that she wanted nothing to do with this series, it is surprising that Cattrall appeared at all. But if this is a setup for Samantha to be more formally incorporated into Season 3, I would truly be thrilled.Aidan says he has provided a sense of normalcy and constancy for his boys over the years, but frankly, I want to hear Kathy’s side of this story. She was always jaunting off to China, but wasn’t Aidan on a work trip in Abu Dhabi the last time he bumped into Carrie? Kathy was the one who had the wherewithal to ask Carrie keep their sons out of her writing. Her protective instinct is very much there. Justice for Kathy in Season 3, please. More

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      Hollywood Studios Disclose Their Offer on Day 113 of Writers Strike

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      The public disclosure of the Aug. 11 proposal was an unusual step and suggested an attempt to go around union leadership and appeal to rank-and-file members.In an apparent attempt to break a labor stalemate that has helped bring nearly all of Hollywood production to a standstill, the major entertainment studios took the unusual step on Tuesday night of publicly releasing details of their most recent proposal to the union that represents 11,500 striking television and movie writers.The studios are confronting significant decisions about whether to push the release of big-budget films like “Dune: Part Two” into the next year, and whether the network television lineup for the 2023-2024 season can be salvaged or reduced to reality shows and reruns.Shortly before the public release of the proposal, several chief executives at the major Hollywood companies, including David Zaslav, who leads Warner Bros. Discovery, and Robert A. Iger, the Disney kingpin, met with officials at the Writers Guild of America, the writers’ union, to discuss the latest proposal, according to a statement by the union’s negotiating committee. By releasing the proposal, the companies are essentially going around the guild’s negotiating committee and appealing to rank-and-file members — betting that their proposal will look good enough for members to pressure their leaders to make a deal. The writers’ union said that the studios’ offer “failed to sufficiently protect writers from the existential threats that caused us to strike in the first place.” The union described the public release of the companies’ proposal as a “bet that we will turn on each other.” The writers have been on strike for 113 days. The studios and writers resumed negotiations on Aug. 11 for the first time since early May. Since then, there has been optimism within the entertainment industry that the labor disputes might be on a path to resolution.But the public disclosure of the proposal by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of the studios, suggests that negotiations may have again reached an impasse. The studios and writers’ union had generally agreed to adhere to a media blackout while at the bargaining table, and the studio alliance has only occasionally released public statements before the guild.“We have come to the table with an offer that meets the priority concerns the writers have expressed,” Carol Lombardini, the lead negotiator for the alliance, said in a statement that accompanied the details of the latest proposal. “We are deeply committed to ending the strike and are hopeful that the Writers Guild of America will work toward the same resolution.”Hollywood has been effectively shut down since tens of thousands of Hollywood actors joined striking screenwriters on picket lines on July 14. Both the writers and actors have called this moment “existential,” arguing that the streaming era has deteriorated their working conditions as well as their compensation levels.The studios said that their latest proposal offered the “highest wage increase” to writers in more than three decades, as well as an increase in residuals (a type of royalty) that has been a major point of contention. The studios also said that they had offered “landmark protections” against artificial intelligence, and that they vowed to offer some degree of streaming viewership data to the guild, information which had previously been held under lock and key.In the statement, the studios said that they were “committed to reaching an equitable agreement to return the industry to what it does best: creating the TV shows and movies that inspire and entertain audiences worldwide.” More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘The Bachelorette’ and ‘Riverdale’

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      Charity Lawson decides among her final three men, and the long-running CW show ends.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, Aug. 21-27. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE BACHELORETTE 8 p.m. on ABC. Charity started out this season with 25 men, but now has to decide among three. After Xavier was swiftly kicked out last episode for not being able to commit, it seemed like the final decision was between the lovable tennis teacher, Joey, and the Brooklynite, Dotun — that is until Aaron B hopped on a 10-hour flight from California to Fiji to put himself back in the running. In the trailer for the finale, we hear Charity saying, “you are not supposed to say goodbye to someone that you love,” so it’s safe to assume it’s going to be a messy ending. (And in case anyone is wondering, I’m team Joey for Bachelor).TuesdayPITCH PERFECT 2 (2015) 6 p.m. on Freeform. At the start of this movie, the Barden Bellas are on top of the world after they won their first championship — but they quickly fall from grace after “Fat Amy” (Rebel Wilson) rips her pants and exposes herself while performing in front of President Barack Obama. Because of the unfortunate incident, they are suspended from the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella — unless they win another championship. Come for the cameos (including Jake Tapper, Snoop Dogg and the former president himself) and stay for the riff-offs and Hailee Steinfeld’s weirdly catchy song “Flashlight.”BOBBY’S TRIPLE THREAT 9 p.m. on Food Network. Since Bobby Flay is already busy with his cooking competition show “Beat Bobby Flay” or going to Italy with Giada De Laurentiis, for this show he is sending in his “titans,” the chefs Tiffany Derry, Michael Voltaggio and Brooke Williamson, to compete on his behalf.WednesdayNANCY DREW 8 p.m. on The CW. After four seasons, this show, based on the novels of the same name, is wrapping up. Nancy and the Drew Crew have spent their time over the years solving mysteries and keeping their own secrets hidden. Now, the show will conclude with the group trying to finish their mission to save Horseshoe Bay, and we will finally see the conclusion of Nancy and Ace’s star-crossed love story.KJ Apa as Archie, left, and Lili Reinhart as Betty in “Riverdale.”Michael Courtney/CWRIVERDALE 9 p.m. on The CW. Cults, aliens, love triangles, oh my! When this adaptation of the Archie comics came to the small screens in 2017, I don’t think anyone (cast included) expected the twists and turns its seven seasons have provided. While other seasons have featured supernatural elements, including time travel, witchcraft and psychic abilities, this final one has taken us back to the comics’ roots: It is set in the 1950s, and wraps up in modern time when Betty is 86 years old.ThursdayBEDTIME STORY (1941) 8 p.m. on TCM. In 2023, we have “Red, White and Royal Blue” and “No Hard Feelings” for romantic comedies. In 1941, they had “Bedtime Story.” After divorcing Lucius (Fredric March) and marrying William (Allyn Joslyn), Jane (Loretta Young) discovers the divorce isn’t actually finalized, and Lucius tries to stop Jane from consummating her marriage to William.FridayEd Helms and Bradley Cooper in “The Hangover.”Frank Masi/Warner Brothers PicturesTHE HANGOVER (2009) 7:30 p.m. on Bravo. Remember that time that you took your two best friends and your strange, soon-to-be brother-in-law to a bachelor party in Vegas, but you blacked out, and they spent the rest of the weekend trying to find you? Oh wait, that wasn’t real life — that was the plot of this movie. “I should say up front that ‘The Hangover,’ is often very funny,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The New York Times. “This is partly thanks to the three principal actors, Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis, who incarnate familiar masculine stereotypes in ways that manage to be moderately fresh as well as soothingly familiar.”SaturdayATTENBOROUGH BEHIND THE LENS 8 p.m. on BBC. David Attenborough is known for this work on programs including “Our Planet” and “Planet Earth.” Shot over seven years and originally aired in 2016, this documentary shows the behind-the-scenes of Attenborough working in places such as the Galápagos, Borneo and Morocco as he films some of his most well-known wildlife moments.SundayElizabeth McCafferty, left, and Rafaëlle Cohen in “The Boleyns.”Courtesy of BBC StudiosTHE BOLEYNS 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). In the 16th-century Tudor England, you can count on sex, lies and back stabbing — at least in this three-part series about the Boleyn family and Anne’s ill-fated marriage to Henry VIII. The episodes, which are entitled ”Ambition,” “Desire” and “The Fall” use archives and old letters to tell the story using the words that came from the Boleyns themselves. More

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      in Theater

      Ron Cephas Jones, Emmy Winner for ‘This Is Us,’ Dies at 66

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      After facing homelessness in his youth, he became an admired theater and television actor, playing tough and weathered but vulnerable characters.Ron Cephas Jones, an admired actor in New York theater and on several television shows, including “This Is Us,” a family drama for which he won two Emmy Awards — drawing on his troubled youth of drug addiction and temporary homelessness for inspiration — has died. He was 66.The writer and creator of “This Is Us,” Dan Fogelman, posted about Mr. Jones’s death on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. Mr. Jones’s manager, Dan Spilo, told The Associated Press that Mr. Jones died from “a longstanding pulmonary issue,” but did not specify where and when he died.Mr. Jones received a double-lung transplant in 2020, after years of living with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.Ron Cephas Jones in 2021. Though he gained fame and two Emmy Awards for his work on television, he said, “My whole life has been the stage.”Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesMr. Jones was known for playing characters who, like him, wrenched from past experiences of personal desperation a hard-won toughness and emotional vulnerability.On “This Is Us,” which ran on NBC from 2016 until last year and featured appearances from Mr. Jones in every season, he frequently made speeches. He played William “Shakespeare” Hill, a former drug addict with terminal cancer who connects at the end of his life with a son, Randall Pearson (played by Sterling K. Brown), whom he had left outside a fire station at birth.“On a series with no shortage of weepy story lines, William is a figure of singular pathos,” Reggie Ugwu wrote in a 2021 profile of Mr. Jones for The Times, adding, “But Jones’s soulful performance — the weather-beaten brow, the voice like brushed wool — confers a lived-in texture and depth.”Mr. Jones told the Hollywood news site Gold Derby in 2017, “I realized that so much of the man is inside of me, and my history.”For “This Is Us,” Mr. Jones received Emmy nominations for outstanding supporting actor in a drama series in 2017 and outstanding guest actor in a drama series in 2018, 2019 and 2020. He won the guest actor award in 2018 and 2020.His most recent star turn in the theater was in “Clyde’s,” which was written by Lynn Nottage and ran on Broadway from the fall of 2021 to the winter of 2022. It concerned a crew of ex-convicts working as sandwich makers at a truck stop. Mr. Jones played Montrellous, an elder of the group who finds a passion in his job that inspires his beleaguered colleagues.The Times called Mr. Jones “the show’s transfixing center of gravity,” capable of blending “Zen imperturbability with subtle dashes of pain and sacrifice.” He was nominated for a Tony Award for best featured actor in a play and won awards from the Drama Desk and the Drama League.In 2012, Mr. Jones played the lead in a production of Shakespeare’s “Richard III” by the Public Theater that appeared in prisons and homeless shelters in addition to the company’s base near Astor Place in Manhattan.“No character in Shakespeare is as hungry for power as Richard III,” Charles Isherwood wrote in a review for The Times. “And it’s hard to think of an actor with a naturally hungrier look than Ron Cephas Jones, the tall, beanpole-thin, snakelike actor who portrays the title character.”Mr. Isherwood said Mr. Jones made “a strikingly sinister-looking Richard” and described his depiction of Richard’s mendacity as “hypnotically persuasive.”Characterizing Mr. Jones’s place in the theater world, The Times labeled him in 2012 “a stalwart New York actor” equally comfortable playing Othello or Caliban as he was playing a serial killer in a contemporary drama set on Rikers Island.Mr. Jones, right, as Caliban in the 2010 Bridge Project production of “The Tempest” at the BAM Harvey. With him are Anthony O’Donnell, left, as Trinculo and Thomas Sadoski as Stephano.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesRon Cephas Jones was born on Jan. 8, 1957, in Paterson, N.J., where he grew up. He graduated from Ramapo College with a theater degree in 1978. In his youth, he had gone to Harlem to see jazz shows and plays, and he returned to New York after graduating to find a place in the art scene. He developed a heroin addiction that stalled his ambitions.He attempted to get clean during a series of moves and career changes — for four years, he was a bus driver in Los Angeles — but for a long time, nothing stuck. At one point he was arrested with 10 small bags of heroin and, he told The Times in 2021, he barely escaped serving a five-year prison sentence.He relapsed again and again, eventually prompting his mother to stop answering his phone calls. In the mid-1980s, he slept on a bench in Paterson’s Eastside Park. An uncle invited Mr. Jones to stay with him at his Harlem apartment. In 1986, he succeeded in sobering up. In 1990, he starred in his first play, “Don’t Explain” by Samuel B. Harps, at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.He had a daughter, Jasmine Cephas Jones, in 1989 with the jazz singer Kim Lesley. Ms. Jones also became a successful actress. In the original 2015 Broadway production of “Hamilton,” she played Peggy Schuyler, Alexander Hamilton’s sister-in-law, and Maria Reynolds, his mistress. In 2020, she won an Emmy for her role in the web series “#FreeRayshawn.” In 2021, she and Mr. Jones announced the Emmy nominations together.Mr. Jones with his daughter, Jasmine Cephas Jones, in 2021 at the series premiere of “Blindspotting,” in which she appeared.Chris Delmas/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA complete list of survivors was not immediately available.Mr. Jones smoked two packs a day for most of his life, and he kept smoking even after his emphysema diagnosis.“I was in total denial,” he told The Times in 2021. “I told myself that it would pass, or that I was just getting older. I was afraid and didn’t want to change what I wasn’t ready to change.”Other TV shows in which he made notable appearances include “Mr. Robot,” “Luke Cage” and “Lisey’s Story.” New York Times reviews of his theater work were usually enthusiastic. In 2012, Mr. Isherwood called him “commandingly grave” in John Patrick Shanley’s play “Storefront Church,” and in 2015, Laura Collins-Hughes described his performance as Prospero in “The Tempest” as “moving” and “understated.”“He moves through the world like a cool jazz man, but is also generous and a nurturer,” Ms. Nottage told The Times in 2021. “The same qualities that he brings to his acting are the qualities that he embodies in real life.”He managed to evoke that sensibility in Ms. Nottage’s play despite having recently spent two months in the hospital recovering from his lung surgery.“My whole life has been the stage,” Mr. Jones told The Times. “The idea of not performing again seemed worse to me than death.” More