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      Tim Baltz on B.J.’s Test in ‘The Righteous Gemstones’

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      Sunday’s episode was a test for Baltz’s character, but B.J. seized the moment. Still, his victory came at a price.This interview contains spoilers for Sunday night’s episode of “The Righteous Gemstones.”The first thing to know is that the testicles were fake — in one of the shots, at least. Anyone who has seen Sunday night’s episode of the HBO televangelist family satire, “The Righteous Gemstones,” knows which shot.Near the end of the episode, the sixth of Season 3, Tim Baltz’s character, B.J., gets in a brutal brass-knuckle fight with a naked man that spills onto a suburban front lawn. Just when it seems that B.J. is out cold, his eyes fly open and he reaches, grabs, twists. The neighborhood children watch in horror.In an instant, the typically mild-mannered B.J. has victory well in hand. His nemesis, the philandering Christian rock guitarist Stephen (Stephen Schneider), drops to his knees and pays a brutal price for his affair with B.J’s. wife (Edi Patterson).It was a difficult scene to film, Baltz said last month by video from his home in Los Angeles, and not only because of the endless takes. He also did most of his own stunts — and accidentally got punched in the face several times.“There were a lot of little very quick decisions that either injured us, or barely avoided injury,” Baltz said of shooting the scene, which took all day. He added: “That’s the most intense day of work I’ve ever had.”Baltz grew up in Joliet, Ill., near Chicago, and he has the kind of boyish blond looks, deadpan delivery and cheery Midwestern affect that can make it difficult to tell whether he’s putting you on. (Given the circumstances, I believed him about the shoot.) That affect is one reason he is so convincing as B.J., a sensitive soul who lets his wife dress him in shiny pink rompers and who Rollerblades in full protective gear: It’s hard to believe that anyone could ever really be that earnest; B.J. keeps surprising you because he really is.“Despite being an atheist or a nonbeliever, he’s the most pious and religious character in the show,” Baltz said. “Which is odd,” he added, for a character who married into a family of preachers.Baltz’s character, B.J., has been a pushover for most of the series but Sunday’s brutal battle was a turning point.Jake Giles Netter/HBOB.J. also may be the most meme-worthy character in “Gemstones,” which is saying something in a show created by and starring Danny McBride. Baltz talked about the character, his outfits and the true cost of B.J.’s fight. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.First things first: How did you guys choreograph that, uh, decisive shot?That fight scene took an entire day to film. Once we got outside, we were worried about losing light, and with the camera looking up, the camera moving, I have to grab these fake testicles. I’m looking up at Stephen, who’s barely covering his own junk, and I’m like: “All right man, here we go, and we’ve got to get it right for the camera, too.”There was a stuntman involved for at least some of your parts, right?Yeah. My stunt double for the show has been a guy named T. Ryan Mooney, who looks shockingly like me. Same body type, too. To be honest, I don’t think that I’m like B.J. in real life, but I never feel more like my character than when I watch a guy who looks like me and has my body type do insane stunts, and he does it for a living. It’s kind of emasculating. But aside from B.J. getting thrown through the lattice work or when he gets dragged off the brick steps into the front yard, every shot you see, I did.Stephen seems like a champ for having done his whole part naked. What were your conversations about the scene like?He was really awesome. He was wrestling with whether he should go au naturel or use a prosthetic. It ended up being the last shoot day of the season for both of us, so there was a lot of buildup and anticipation. Stephen would come into town every few months to film stuff, and I would be like, “Let me take you out to dinner, man, because we’re going to have an intense day.” And then halfway through the season, he’s like: “I’m going to do it. I’m going to be naked. I just think there are only so many challenges in life, and I see this as a challenge.”Baltz tried to get to know his co-star Stephen Schneider ahead of time. “By the end, I considered him a dear friend, this naked guy I had to fight,” he said.HBOPresumably he had to get your consent.I mean, the intimacy coordinator definitely called several times to prep me. But for me, it was more like: “All right, this guy’s being really vulnerable with this. So every time he comes into town, we’re going to get to know each other so that we’re buddies going into this.” And honestly, it really worked. By the end, I considered him a dear friend, this naked guy I had to fight.You’ve played around with this image of the wholesome naïf a lot over the years. How much of that feels like you?I grew up playing sports — I was hypercompetitive. I really am not like [B.J.] at all. If I relate to the character in any way, it’s just the kindness and the generosity that he has, and I think a lot of people see that as being a mark in our society.When you book something, you lean into it as hard as you can whether it’s a nice character or someone creepy. But this one in particular you have to understand, Where does the unconditional love come from? And how do I keep in touch with that? This season that really gets tested for the first time, and it gets tested so much that he thinks that he has to change who he is. And the fight scene is the culmination of that.After the fight, B.J. tells Judy, “I hope you like me now.” Does he feel worse about beating up Stephen than he feels about having gotten beat up himself?I think he’s probably more hurt that he betrayed his own values. Danny always said: “When you play B.J., he’s the eyes of the audience within the show. He’s looking at the family the way we all look at the family.” I’ve carried that with me the entire time. So that moment is, “Not only did you cheat on me, but you made me betray myself.”Do you think there’s any part of standing up for himself that he takes in a positive way?I think so. It’s a fascinating evolution of the character. When I first read it, I was excited because I think it puts that card on the table for him. I think parts of our culture see something like that as a rite of passage, or something that you have to rise to the occasion to do. So in that sense, he does do it. But when he comes back, you can also look at that final line as saying, “I’m not the same anymore, so I hope you like what this has changed me into.” You can’t go back after something like that.Baltz said he his not anything like B.J. “If I relate to the character in any way, it’s just the kindness and the generosity that he has,” he said.Michael Tyrone Delaney for The New York TimesIt’s like a more complex George McFly moment.Right. The sliding-door part of that [“Back to the Future”] trilogy is you see what happens if he doesn’t throw the punch, and his life is miserable. And then if he does throw the punch, everything is saved and the family’s OK. With this, I think B.J. probably looks at it and is like, “No, that’s a doorway that I can step back and forth from as I see fit now.” The truth is, his values are, “You shouldn’t do that.” He was forced to do it, and he rose to the occasion. But if given a choice, then he probably wouldn’t.Can we talk about the outfits? There’s a flamboyant dimension to them, and I’ve always wondered what that signifies.There’s a blend of a few things. First, I think he starts as Judy’s kept man; this is her wardrobe for him, and he feels a bit out of place. And then I think he gets more comfortable with it and starts to take bigger swings. Also, if you walk down King Street in Charleston [S.C., where the series is filmed], you will see guys kind of dressed like that. Maybe not as opulent, but the color palettes — there’s a lot of pastels.A lot of salmon.Before I’d really explored Charleston and saw some of these outfits, I thought, “Whoa, this is really out there.” And then in the real world you see it, and these people aren’t making a joke of it. They’re going about their regular lives. I always say that if B.J. was a Christian holiday, he’d be Easter because of the pastels. And it’s incumbent on me to feel comfortable and live in those outfits without making them the point of the joke. More

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      Why Care About Hollywood Strikes? We’re All Background Actors.

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      Why should you care about the strikes in Hollywood? Because they are much more than a revolt of the privileged.In Hollywood, the cool kids have joined the picket line.I mean no offense, as a writer, to the screenwriters who have been on strike against film and TV studios for over two months. But writers know the score. We’re the words, not the faces. The cleverest picket sign joke is no match for the attention-focusing power of Margot Robbie or Matt Damon.SAG-AFTRA, the union representing TV and film actors, joined the writers in a walkout over how Hollywood divvies up the cash in the streaming era and how humans can thrive in the artificial-intelligence era. With that star power comes an easy cheap shot: Why should anybody care about a bunch of privileged elites whining about a dream job?But for all the focus that a few boldface names will get in this strike, I invite you to consider a term that has come up a lot in the current negotiations: “Background actors.”You probably don’t think much about background actors. You’re not meant to, hence the name. They’re the nonspeaking figures who populate the screen’s margins, making Gotham City or King’s Landing or the beaches of Normandy feel real, full and lived-in.And you might have more in common with them than you think.The lower-paid actors who make up the vast bulk of the profession are facing simple dollars-and-cents threats to their livelihoods. They’re trying to maintain their income amid the vanishing of residual payments, as streaming has shortened TV seasons and decimated the syndication model. They’re seeking guardrails against A.I. encroaching on their jobs.There’s also a particular, chilling question on the table: Who owns a performer’s face? Background actors are seeking protections and better compensation in the practice of scanning their images for digital reuse.Background actors fill out the worlds of shows like “Game of Thrones.”Macall B. Polay/HBOIn a news conference about the strike, a union negotiator said that the studios were seeking the rights to scan and use an actor’s image “for the rest of eternity” in exchange for one day’s pay. The studios argue that they are offering “groundbreaking” protections against the misuse of actors’ images, and counter that their proposal would only allow a company to use the “digital replica” on the specific project a background actor was hired for.Still, the long-term “Black Mirror” implications — the practice was the actual premise of a recent episode — are unignorable. If a digital replica of you — without your bothersome need for money and the time to lead a life — can do the job, who needs you?You could, I guess, make the argument that if someone is insignificant enough to be replaced by software, then they’re in the wrong business. But background work and small roles are precisely the routes to someday promoting your blockbuster on the red carpet. And many talented artists build entire careers around a series of small jobs. (Pamela Adlon’s series “Better Things” is a great portrait of the life of ordinary working actors.)In the end, Hollywood’s fight isn’t far removed from the threats to many of us in today’s economy. “We are all going to be in jeopardy of being replaced by machines,” Fran Drescher, the actors’ guild president, said in announcing the strike.You and I may be the protagonists of our own narratives, but in the grand scheme most of us are background players. We face the same risk — that every time a technological or cultural shift happens, companies will rewrite the terms of employment to their advantage, citing financial pressures while paying their top executives tens and hundreds of millions.Annie Murphy in a recent episode of “Black Mirror,” in which an actor’s likeness was used by unscrupulous streaming executives.Nick Wall/NetflixMaybe it’s unfair that exploitation gets more attention when it involves a union that Meryl Streep belongs to. (If the looming UPS strike materializes, it might grab the spotlight for blue-collar labor.) And there’s certainly a legitimate critique of white-collar workers who were blasé about automation until A.I. threatened their own jobs.But work is work, and some dynamics are universal. As the entertainment reporter and critic Maureen Ryan writes in “Burn It Down,” her investigation of workplace abuses throughout Hollywood, “It is not the inclination nor the habit of the most important entities in the commercial entertainment industry to value the people who make their products.”If you don’t believe Ryan, listen to the anonymous studio executive, speaking of the writers’ strike, who told the trade publication Deadline, “The endgame is to allow things to drag out until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses.”You may think of Hollywood creatives as a privileged class, but if their employers think about them like this, are you sure yours thinks any differently of you? Most of us, in Hollywood or outside it, are facing a common question: Can we have a working world in which you can survive without being a star?You may never notice background actors if they’re doing their jobs well. Yet they’re the difference between a sterile scene and a living one. They create the impression that, beyond the close focus on the beautiful leads, there is a full, complete universe, whether it’s the galaxy of the “Star Wars” franchise or the mundane reality that you and I live in.They are there to say that we, too, are out here, that we make the world a world, that we at least deserve our tiny places in the corner of the screen. More

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      In Hollywood, the Strikes Are Just Part of the Problem

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      The entertainment industry is trying to figure out the economics of streaming. It’s also facing angst over a tech-powered future and fighting to stay culturally dominant.Existential hand-wringing has always been part of Hollywood’s personality. But the crisis in which the entertainment capital now finds itself is different.Instead of one unwelcome disruption to face — the VCR boom of the 1980s, for instance — or even overlapping ones (streaming, the pandemic), the movie and television business is being buffeted on a dizzying number of fronts. And no one seems to have any solutions.On Friday, roughly 160,000 unionized actors went on strike for the first time in 43 years, saying they were fed up with exorbitant pay for entertainment moguls and worried about not receiving a fair share of the spoils of a streaming-dominated future. They joined 11,500 already striking screenwriters, who walked out in May over similar concerns, including the threat of artificial intelligence. Actors and writers had not been on strike at the same time since 1960.“The industry that we once knew — when I did ‘The Nanny’ — everybody was part of the gravy train,” Fran Drescher, the former sitcom star and the president of the actors’ union, said while announcing the walkout. “Now it’s a walled-in vacuum.”At the same time, Hollywood’s two traditional businesses, the box office and television channels, are both badly broken.This was the year when moviegoing was finally supposed to bounce back from the pandemic, which closed many theaters for months on end. At last, cinemas would reclaim a position of cultural urgency.But ticket sales in the United States and Canada for the year to date (about $4.9 billion) are down 21 percent from the same period in 2019, according to Comscore, which compiles box office data. Blips of hope, including strong sales for “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” have been blotted out by disappointing results for expensive films like “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” “Elemental,” “The Flash,” “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” and, to a lesser extent, “The Little Mermaid” and “Fast X.”The number of movie tickets sold globally may reach 7.2 billion in 2027, according to a recent report from the accounting firm PwC. Attendance totaled 7.9 billion in 2019.It’s a slowly dying business, but it’s at least better than a quickly dying one. Fewer than 50 million homes will pay for cable or satellite television by 2027, down from 64 million today and 100 million seven years ago, according to PwC. When it comes to traditional television, “the world has forever changed for the worse,” Michael Nathanson, an analyst at SVB MoffettNathanson, wrote in a note to clients on Thursday.Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount Global and WarnerBros. Discovery have relied for decades on television channels for fat profit growth. The end of that era has resulted in stock-price malaise. Disney shares have fallen 55 percent from their peak in March 2021. Paramount Global, which owns channels like MTV and CBS, has experienced an 83 percent decline over the same period.On Thursday, Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, put the sale of the company’s “noncore” channels, including ABC and FX, on the table. He called the decline in traditional television “a reality we have to come to grips with.”In other words, it’s over.The latest installment of “Mission: Impossible” is opening this week and could be a rare bright spot at the box office.Mark Abramson for The New York TimesAnd then there is streaming. For a time, Wall Street was mesmerized by the subscriber-siphoning potential of services like Disney+, Max, Hulu, Paramount+ and Peacock, so the big Hollywood companies poured money into building online viewing platforms. Netflix was conquering the world. Amazon had arrived in Hollywood determined to make inroads, as had the ultra-deep-pocketed Apple. If the older entertainment companies wanted to remain competitive — not to mention relevant — there was only one direction to run.“You now have, really in control, tech companies who haven’t a care or clue, so to speak, about the entertainment business — it’s not a pejorative, it’s just the reality,” Barry Diller, the media veteran, said by phone this past week, referring to Amazon and Apple.“For each of these companies,” he added, “their minor business, not their major business, is entertainment. And yet, because of their size and influence, their minor interests are paramount in making any decisions about the future.”A little over a year ago, Netflix reported a subscriber loss for the first time in a decade, and Wall Street’s interest swiveled. Forget subscribers. Now we care about profits — at least when it comes to the old-line companies, because their traditional businesses (box office and channels) are in trouble.To make services like Disney+, Paramount+ and Max (formerly HBO Max) profitable, their parent companies have slashed billions of dollars in costs and eliminated more than 10,000 jobs. Studio executives also put the brakes on ordering new television series last year to rein in costs.WarnerBros. Discovery has said its streaming business, anchored by Max, will be profitable in 2023. Disney has promised profitability by September 2024, while Paramount had not forecast a date, except to say peak losses will occur this year, according to Rich Greenfield, a founder of the LightShed Partners research firm.Giving in to union demands, which would threaten streaming profitability anew, is not something the companies will do without a fight.“In the short term, there will be pain,” said Tara Kole, a founding partner of JSSK, an entertainment law firm that counts Emma Stone, Adam McKay and Halle Berry as clients. “A lot of pain.”Every indication points to a long and destructive standoff. Agents who have worked in show business for 40 years said the anger surging through Hollywood exceeded anything they had ever seen.“Straight out of ‘Les Miz’” was how one longtime executive described the high-drama, us-against-them mood in a text to a reporter. Photos circulating online from this past week’s Allen & Company Sun Valley media conference, the annual “billionaires’ summer camp” attended by Hollywood’s haves, inflamed the situation.On a Paramount Pictures picket line on Friday, Ms. Drescher attacked Mr. Iger, something few people in Hollywood would dare to do without the cloak of anonymity. She criticized his pay package (his performance-based contract allows for up to $27 million annually, including stock awards, which is middle of the road for entertainment chief executives) and likened him and other Hollywood moguls to “land barons of a medieval time.”“It’s so obvious that he has no clue as to what is really happening on the ground,” she added. Mr. Iger had told CNBC on Thursday that the demands by the two unions were “just not realistic.”In the coming weeks, studios will probably cancel lucrative long-term deals with writers (and some actor-producers) by virtue of the force majeure clause in their contracts, which kick in on the 60th or 90th day of a strike, depending on how the agreements are structured. The force majeure clause states that when unforeseeable circumstances prevent someone from fulfilling a contract, the studios can cancel the deal without paying a penalty.Eventually, contracts with the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA, as the actors’ union is known, will be hammered out.The deeper business challenges will remain.Nicole Sperling More

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      Tiffany Haddish Dances to the Beat of Her Never-Ending Internal Soundtrack

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      The actress employs grapeseed oil for rough skin and an Eddie Murphy classic for rough days.This summer, Tiffany Haddish plays a marijuana-smoking cat (“The Freak Brothers”), a detective pulled out of retirement (“The Afterparty”), a psychic in a film based on a Disneyland ride (“Haunted Mansion”) and the mother of a child who broadcasts his love life to aliens (“Landscape With Invisible Hand”). For her, the mom is the most relatable.“I’ve raised my sisters and brothers,” she said in a phone interview from Los Angeles in June. “When I was married, I was raising my ex-husband’s kid. I know what it feels like.”The biggest reach was the psychic. Haddish, 43, said she’s no psychic, but she does set expectations. Every night before she goes to bed, she writes down what happened that day and what she wants to get out of the next one.“It always starts with ‘I am,’” she said. “I am going to break this man’s heart tomorrow because he’s on my last, last …”Haddish talked about the other tools — the tea, movies, music and dancing — she relies on to navigate her days. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1GardeningMy backyard is full of things like celery, lettuce, tomato, cucumbers, basil — all the things that you need to survive. I started gardening when I was a kid. As an adult, I started growing vegetables as a way to escape from the shenanigans going on in my life. Even when I was homeless, I would grow cucumbers in a cup in the car window. It was like: If I can grow these seeds, I can do anything. They would die.2DogsRight now, I have an American bulldog named Slumber and a Maltese-Yorkie mix called Sleeper. Both of them are named after things I really want to do. I used to raise pit bulls, which I think are the sweetest, most obedient, friendly, helpful dogs ever. Pit bulls are way smarter than American bulldogs.3Hibiscus and Smooth Move TeasTraveling so much, I don’t know, something about being on airplanes gives me a little backup. So, at least once a week I like to drink some Smooth Move tea mixed with hibiscus tea.4‘Boomerang’It’s my go-to movie when I’m sad. It makes me laugh every single time, and it brings me joy. I turned over a Blockbuster Video back in the day ’cause they didn’t have it. I knocked over two racks on my way out. That’s when I decided to buy the movie. But I bought it at a different store. I had to leave that Blockbuster.5Alkaline Spring WaterIt’s my favorite water to drink. I don’t know what kind of island this is I’m on, so I definitely want some fresh alkaline spring water. I don’t want to drink purified water — I might as well just drink out the back of the toilet. I want to drink water from streams, springs, from the Earth.6Grapeseed OilI use it for everything. I use it to fry foods. Sometimes I put it on my elbows and knees. It makes all that crumpled-up skin nice and soft. Sometimes I put it all over my body. Grape seeds are really good for you. That’s why I’m so mad they took all the seeds out of grapes. You need them seeds. How you going to be fruitful? They’re trying to kill us, man.7Taylor SwiftIt’s funny because when she first came out, I was like, I don’t know about this. It’s kind of corny. Then they played those songs over and over on the radio, and the next thing you know, you’re like, yeah, jumping around and dancing. I can get with Taylor Swift. I have a good time with Taylor Swift’s music, reflecting on past things, past relationships.8DancingIt’s necessary. I try to dance every day. It keeps you young. Eating my food, I’m dancing. Trying on clothes, I’m dancing. There’s a soundtrack always going in my head.9WashclothsI like a good washcloth. I know a lot of people out here, they use soap and water and that’s it. Well, I beg to differ. You need something to remove the dead skin and the dirt. And even if you run out of soap, if you have a washcloth, you can always clean. When I go somewhere and they don’t have no washcloths, I’ll be feeling like people are dirty.10‘Heal Your Body’I’ve read the Louise Hay book “Heal Your Body” at least four or five times. I’ve been sick a few times. We all been sick here and there. The book has helped me to talk to my body and learn what’s affecting me, why I’m acting the way I am and why I got sick. It was very helpful to me. More

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      Striking Actors Join Writers on Picket Lines in LA and NYC

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      In Los Angeles and New York, actors and screenwriters braved the heat to admonish the major studios and demand a new deal.It was 10 a.m., adoring union members had already more or less mobbed their president, Fran Drescher, and the crowd was growing by the minute.Outside Netflix offices in Hollywood, a festive, buoyant mood had taken over the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Van Ness Avenue. It was a workers’ strike, to be sure. But as smiling protesters eagerly joined in chants and high-fived their picket signs, it felt a little like a summer Friday street party. One with a few famous guests.“We’re told that we should just be so grateful to get to do what we love to do — but not being compensated, not being protected while they are profiting off of our work,” said Amanda Crew from HBO’s “Silicon Valley,” who walked the picket line with Dustin Milligan from “Schitt’s Creek.”“That’s the myth of the actor: You’re doing art so you should just be so grateful because you’re living your dream. Why? Do we do that to doctors? We bring so much joy to people by entertaining them,” Crew added.It was the first of what could be many days of marching for actors, who picketed at locations across the country. They chanted, “Actors and writers unite!” as they marched along a short block in Times Square where Paramount conducts business; they passed out bottles of cold water and cans of La Croix outside 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Midtown Manhattan; and they bounced their picket signs to the sounds of Jay-Z’s “Dirt Off Your Shoulder” as it blared from a speaker in Hollywood.A day earlier, the Hollywood actors’ union, known as SAG-AFTRA, approved a strike for the first time in 43 years, joining forces with writers, who walked out in May.“There’s a renewed sense of excitement and solidarity,” said Alicia Carroll, a strike captain for the Writers Guild of America. “Writers have been out here for upwards of 70 days. It’s been a while and it’s hot. People are tired. So this is a confidence boost that we’re not alone in the industry in terms of issues.”The actors Bill Irwin and Susan Sarandon picketed in New York on Friday.Andres Kudacki for The New York TimesThe actors and writers have been unable to agree to new contracts with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents major studios and streamers. Pay is a central issue, but the negotiations around compensation have been complicated by the emergence of streaming services and the rise of artificial intelligence.Actors, including Ms. Drescher, the president of their union, have cast the moment as an inflection point, arguing that the entire business model for the $134 billion American movie and television business has changed. They say their new contract needs to account for those changes with various guardrails and protections, including increased residual payments (a type of royalty) from streaming services. They are also worried about how A.I. could be used to replicate their work: scripts in the case of writers and digital replicas of their likenesses for actors.Hollywood companies have insisted that they worked in good faith to reach a reasonable deal at what has also been a difficult time for an industry that has been upended by streaming and is still dealing with the lingering effects of the pandemic.“The union has regrettably chosen a path that will lead to financial hardship for countless thousands of people who depend on the industry,” the studio alliance said in a statement after SAG-AFTRA announced the strike.On Friday, writers said they were heartened to be joined on the picket lines by actors, many of whom have been marching with them for months in the black-and-yellow T-shirts that have become something of a uniform. It is the first time since 1960 that actors and screenwriters have been on strike at the same time.WGA leaders have shared picket line advice: Bring plenty of sunscreen and set a timer to reapply, watch out for traffic. But some actors were already veterans.The actor Greg Germann being interviewed at Netflix’s office in Los Angeles on Friday.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York Times“I have not been to a picket without SAG-AFTRA members there. Sometimes they have even outnumbered us here in the east,” said Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, a vice president of the Writers Guild of America, East. “They have been our stalwart supporters and comrades, and we intend to reciprocate.”“Suddenly,” she added, “the sleeping giant has awakened.”Indeed, some of the union’s most prominent members took to the streets Friday and drew notice as the afternoon wore on. Jason Sudeikis showed up at 30 Rock; Susan Sarandon went to the Flatiron neighborhood, where picketers targeted Warner Bros. Discovery; and Sean Astin marched outside the Netflix offices in Los Angeles.“Our careers have been turned into gig work,” Mr. Astin said over a chorus of frenetic honks of support from passing cars. “It’s not just that we’re not going to take it anymore — we actually can’t take it anymore.”An animated Ms. Drescher had arrived at the same location earlier in the day and was met with an exuberant crowd that wrapped itself around her.“This strike and this negotiation is going to impact everybody, and if we don’t take control of this situation from these greedy megalomaniacs, we are all going to be in threat of losing our livelihoods,” Ms. Drescher said.“I’m not really here for me as much as the 99.9 percent of the membership who are working people who are just trying to make a living to put food on the table, pay rent and get their kids off to school,” she added. “They are the ones that are being squeezed out of their livelihood, and it’s just pathetic.”Shara Ashley Zeiger, an actor, brought her 2-year-old, Lily, to the picket in front of NBC’s offices in New York. A sign protruded from her daughter’s stroller. Lily played with her food — and a tambourine.“The effects of this deal directly affect my daughter and my family,” Ms. Zeiger said.She added: “I had had a role on a project that was on a streamer, and their deal was they didn’t have to pay me residuals for two years. And it was in the middle of the pandemic.”Thousands of miles west in Los Angeles, Evan Shafran, an actor who had taken it upon himself to put together an hourslong playlist for the strike, wondered whether he might eventually need to apply for Medi-Cal, the state’s medical assistance program. He was able to string together enough work to pay for health insurance this year, but he could not be sure how things would pan out in the future.And last week, Mr. Shafran said, his car was stolen. But he took an Uber from his home in the San Fernando Valley to the Netflix offices anyway.“I spent $100 to come protest today even though I’m out of work,” he said. “I need to be out here.” More

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      Different Sides of Bill Walton and Wilt Chamberlain in New Series

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      New documentaries explore the star-crossed careers and delicate spirits of Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Walton, two of basketball’s greatest.Pity the poor 7-footer.That’s the message of two new documentary series about storied basketball players: “The Luckiest Guy in the World,” about Bill Walton (available in the “30 for 30” hub at ESPN Plus), and “Goliath,” about Wilt Chamberlain (premiering Friday at Paramount+ and Sunday on Showtime).Serious and thorough, “Luckiest Guy” and “Goliath” are positioned to draft on the success of an earlier basketball biography, ESPN’s popular Michael Jordan series, “The Last Dance.” But while they are also portraits of men with supreme physical gifts, they are less focused on their subjects’ on-court exploits and more determined to get inside the players’ heads. The sportswriter Jackie MacMullan delivers what could be a thesis statement for both in “Goliath”: “I’ve found that big men are much more sensitive than we realize.”Chamberlain, who died of heart failure in 1999, and Walton both have well-defined personas, which they participated in creating. Each series spends a lot of its time picking apart the received wisdom about its subject while also indulging, for the sake of dramatic impact and storytelling shorthand, the very stereotypes it wants to deconstruct: Chamberlain the unstoppable, insatiable giant; Walton the goofy, fragile flower child.The four-episode “Luckiest Guy” was directed by the accomplished documentarian Steve James, always to be remembered for “Hoop Dreams,” and was made with the full cooperation of Walton, 70, who revisits old haunts and sits down for an entertaining round table with Portland Trail Blazers teammates like Lionel Hollins and Dave Twardzik. It’s engagingly introspective and personal, in part because James pushes back against Walton’s incessant recitation of the title phrase. How can Walton call himself the luckiest guy in the world, James asks from behind the camera, when his career was utterly ravaged by injuries that eventually crippled him and drove him to consider suicide?That, broadly speaking, is the idea that haunts both documentaries. The conundrum of Walton’s and Chamberlain’s careers is that they were marked by success — college and professional championships, statistical domination (in Chamberlain’s case), reputations for unmatched athletic skills — and defined by disappointment. Neither won as often or as easily as he should have, in Walton’s case because of injury and in Chamberlain’s because of the dominance during the 1960s of the rival Boston Celtics and their center, Bill Russell, enshrined in sports mythology as the hard-working Everyman to Chamberlain’s sex-and-statistics-obsessed egotist.“Goliath,” directed by Rob Ford and Christopher Dillon, is a more workmanlike and conventional project than “Luckiest Guy.” But across three episodes it makes a persuasive case for Chamberlain as a generous, sensitive soul who was both blessed and constrained by his stature and his extraordinary all-around athletic ability.It does its sports-documentary duty, laying out Chamberlain’s triumphs and more frequent setbacks on the court. But it is more interested in the trails he blazed as a Black cultural figure and self-determining professional athlete, and it favors writers, pundits and scholars over basketball players in its interviews. (The scarcity of images from Chamberlain’s younger days in the 1940s and ’50s is compensated for with shadow-puppet scenes reminiscent of the work of Kara Walker.)Watching the series side by side, the differences between the two men are less interesting than the sense of commonality that emerges. Both were self-conscious stutterers who learned to endure, and perform under, the most intense scrutiny. Chamberlain may have been more flamboyant, but Walton, in “Luckiest Guy,” is just as conscious of his affect — there’s an ostentatiousness, and no small amount of ego, in the way he performs modesty. (James also challenges Walton’s lifelong, generally debunked claim to be only 6 feet 11 inches tall.)The veteran sports fan might see another commonality: As good as they are, neither “The Luckiest Guy in the World” nor “Goliath” is as exciting to watch as “The Last Dance.” This is a bit of a conundrum, because both Chamberlain and Walton are, quite arguably, more complex, interesting and moving figures than Michael Jordan. But Michael Jordan is a nearly unparalleled winner. And while winning isn’t the only thing, it is, for better or worse, the most compelling thing about the subject of a sports documentary. More

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      in Movies

      Fran Drescher Takes Center Stage as the Actors’ Union Leader

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      Fran Drescher, who became a household name for her role on a 1990s sitcom, is now president of the union going on strike.The stage was different, and so was the tone. But the voice was unmistakable.Fran Drescher, the owner of a distinctly nasal, Queens-inflected accent, made her name in Hollywood for her starring role in the sitcom “The Nanny.” On Thursday, she appeared before dozens of cameras as the president of the actors’ union that voted unanimously earlier in the day to go on strike, delivering a fiery argument depicting the stakes of the decision.“The eyes of the world and particularly the eyes of labor are upon us,” Ms. Drescher said. “What happens to us is important. What’s happening to us is happening across all fields of labor.”She shook her fists in indignation. “I am shocked by the way the people that we have been in business with are treating us!” she continued. “It is disgusting. Shame on them!”Ms. Drescher is the latest in a long line of familiar faces — Ronald Reagan, Patty Duke and Charlton Heston among them — to run SAG-AFTRA, the union that represents tens of thousands of screen actors. But it amounts to a surprising plot twist in her long career.As the Thursday news conference made clear, she is now a leading face of a resurgent labor movement nationally. How she handles it in the coming weeks, and possibly, months could help determine the fate of 160,000 actors.The actors’ strike, which will go into effect on Friday, marks a crisis point for Hollywood, which has already been rocked in recent years by the pandemic and sweeping technological shifts with the rise of streaming and the steady decline of cable television and box office returns. Hollywood writers have been on strike for months, and with actors now joining them — the first time since 1960 that both are on strike at the same time — the industry will essentially grind to a halt.Ms. Drescher, 65, has spent decades acting in Hollywood, both in television and film. Since her starring role on “The Nanny” in the 1990s, by far her most prominent role, she has appeared sporadically in television and feature films. She most recently starred in a short-lived sitcom for NBC called “Indebted,” which lasted 12 episodes before it was canceled in 2020.She has long expressed concerns about corporate greed, captioning photos with slogans like “STOP CAPITALIST GREED NOW.” It was enough for New York Magazine to put a headline on a 2017 blog post, “Your New Favorite Anti-Capitalist Icon Is Fran Drescher.”A few years later, in 2021, Ms. Drescher won election to the guild presidency in a deeply contested race versus the actor Matthew Modine. They represented different factions: Ms. Drescher for the establishment Unite for Strength Party, and Mr. Modine for an upstart group, Membership First.The race become so bitter that Mr. Modine accused Ms. Drescher of spreading falsehoods about him and reportedly said, “I’m ashamed of Fran Drescher, I’m disappointed. But she’ll be judged by the people in the world after she’s gone, or by whatever God she worships.”Unlike the screenwriters, who have gone on strike many times over the decades and historically been unified, actors have been known more for their intramural squabbling. Hollywood had been bracing for a writers strike since the beginning of the year — but few senior executives and producers were prepared for the actors to have the resolve to go through with it.When Ms. Drescher came into power she vowed to bring the union together and to bring an end to the “dysfunctional division in this union.”When the actors agreed to a strike authorization, it was with 97.9 percent of the vote — a stunning figure that even eclipsed the writers’ significant strike authorization. Last month, Membership First, the opposition party, endorsed Ms. Drescher’s re-election bid.Ms. Drescher on a picket line with members of the writers’ union in Los Angeles in May.Chris Pizzello/Associated PressStill, some of her public statements and actions in recent weeks have confounded many actors.In late June, days before the actors’ contract was set to expire, Ms. Drescher and the union’s lead negotiator, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, released a video that struck many viewers as surprisingly upbeat given the high stakes of the negotiations.“I just want to assure you that we are having extremely productive negotiations that are laser-focused on all the crucial issues that you told us are most important to you,” she said, wearing a military jacket. “We are standing strong, and we’re going to achieve a seminal deal!”Just days later, more than 1,000 actors, including Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lawrence, signed a letter expressing concerns to union leadership that they were not taking into account their willingness to strike. “We hope that, on our behalf, you will meet that moment and not miss it,” the letter said.Ms. Drescher — curiously, given her position — added her signature to the letter.On Monday, days before the actors’ contract was set to expire, Ms. Drescher drew attention on another front: She was attending a couture Dolce & Gabbana fashion show in Puglia, Italy, where she posed for photos with Kim Kardashian. To her 362 million Instagram followers, Ms. Kardashian said of Ms. Drescher: “To my fashion icon! Always on my mood board! I seriously love this woman!”On Monday, Kim Kardashian posted this photo with Ms. Drescher at the Dolce & Gabbana fashion show in Puglia, Italy.Kim Kardashian, via InstagramThe backlash was quick and swift. The “General Hospital” actress Nancy Lee Grahn questioned if the photo was a joke. “I’m hoping this is not true. It can’t be. No one could be this stupid,” she wrote on Twitter.In a statement, a spokeswoman for the actors’ union said that Ms. Drescher was working as a “brand ambassador” for Dolce and Gabbana, and that the commitment was “fully known to the negotiating committee.” Mr. Crabtree-Ireland called criticism of Ms. Drescher’s appearance at the fashion show “outrageous” and “despicable.”Ms. Drescher addressed the issue at the news conference on Thursday. “It was absolute work,” she said, adding that she continued to communicate with negotiators from abroad. “I was in hair and makeup three hours a day, walking in heels on cobblestones. Doing things like that, which is work. Not fun.”While Mr. Crabtree-Ireland spoke at the news conference from a teleprompter, Ms. Drescher spoke off the cuff.“Wake up and smell the coffee,” she said of the studios. “We demand respect! You cannot exist without us!”“They stand on the wrong side of history at this very moment,” she continued, pointing her finger forcefully toward the camera banks. “We stand in solidarity in unprecedented unity. Our union, our sister unions, and the unions around the world, are standing by us.” More

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      in Television

      Why Are Hollywood Actors Striking? Here’s What to Know

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      Here’s why Hollywood is facing its first industrywide shutdown in more than 60 years, and what it could mean for your favorite shows.The union representing more than 150,000 television and movie actors announced Thursday that it would go on strike at midnight, joining screenwriters who walked out in May and creating Hollywood’s first industrywide shutdown in 63 years.Here is what you need to know.Why are the actors and writers striking?Pay is often at the center of work stoppages, and that is the case here. But the rise of streaming and the challenges created by the pandemic have stressed the studios, many of which are facing financial challenges, as well as actors and writers, who are seeking better pay and new protections in a rapidly changing workplace.Both actors and screenwriters have demanded increased residual payments (a type of royalty) from streaming services. Streaming series typically have far fewer episodes than television series typically did. And it used to be that if a television series was a hit, actors and writers could count on a long stream of regular residual checks; streaming has changed the system in a way that they say has hurt them. Both groups also want aggressive guardrails around the use of artificial intelligence to preserve jobs.A-list actors last month signed a letter to guild leadership saying they were ready to strike and calling this moment “an unprecedented inflection point in our industry.”What is the position of the Hollywood studios?The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents major studios and streamers, has said it offered “historic pay and residual increases” as well as higher caps on pension and health contributions. They also say their offer includes audition protections, a “groundbreaking” proposal on artificial intelligence and other benefits that address the union’s concerns.The Hollywood studios have also stressed that all the industry upheaval has not been easy for them, either. As moviegoers have been slow to return to cinemas and home viewers have moved from cable and network television to streaming entertainment, many studios have watched their share prices plummet and their profit margins shrink. Some companies have resorted to layoffs or pulled the plug on projects — or both.What will happen to my TV shows and movies?It will take a while for filmgoers to notice a change, since most of the movies scheduled for release this year have already been shot. But TV viewers are already seeing the strike’s effects, and if it drags on, popular shows could see their next seasons delayed.Late-night shows are already airing reruns because of the writers’ strike, and the vast majority of TV and film productions have already shut down or paused production. Big name shows like “Yellowjackets,” “Severance” and “Stranger Things” halted work after the writers’ strike began; it is not yet clear if their upcoming seasons will be delayed.Disney announced several changes to its theatrical release calendar in June, amid the writers’ strike.Now, the actors’ strike will add even greater upheaval.During the first two weeks of July, no scripted TV permits were issued in Los Angeles County, according to FilmLA, which tracks production activity. Film and TV shows that have completed shooting and are already in postproduction can likely stay on schedule, because the work remaining does not typically involve writers or actors.Participating in either film or television production with any of the studios is now off the table, with few exceptions. And that means that within a few months — beginning with the fall lineup — viewers will begin to notice broader changes to their TV diet.The ABC fall schedule, for instance, will debut with nightly lineups that include “Celebrity Wheel of Fortune,” “Dancing With the Stars” and “Judge Steve Harvey” as well as repeats of “Abbott Elementary. The Fox broadcast network’s fall lineup includes unscripted series like “Celebrity Name That Tune,” “The Masked Singer” and “Kitchen Nightmares.”How long could this all drag on?If only we knew.Writers have been walking the picket lines now for more than 70 days, and their union, the Writers Guild of America, has yet to return to bargaining with the studios.The last time the writers and actors went on strike at the same time was in 1960, when Ronald Reagan was president of the Screen Actors Guild.Screenwriters have walked out several times, sometimes for long periods: Their 2007 strike lasted 100 days. The actors last staged a major walkout in 1980; it lasted more than three months.What about the promotion of current shows and films?In the near term, officials have said there will be no promotion of current projects, either online or in person. Do not expect to hear Ryan Gosling touting “Barbie” again anytime soon. A ban on promotion could be very bad news for San Diego’s Comic-Con, upcoming film festivals in places like Venice and Toronto, and scheduled movie premieres like the “Oppenheimer” premiere planned for Monday in New York.The 75th Emmy Awards, which announced its nominations yesterday, may now be in peril. Organizers have already had discussions about postponing the Sept. 18 ceremony, likely by months.Nicole Sperling More