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      Alexander Skarsgard’s Viking Dream

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      LONDON — In Alexander Skarsgard’s telling, the idea for what eventually became his latest film, “The Northman,” has its roots on a long, slender island off the coast of Sweden called Oland, where his great-great grandfather built a wooden house a hundred years ago.“Some of my earliest memories are from walking around with my grandfather on Oland and him showing me these massive rune stones and the inscriptions,” he explained on a recent rainy Monday over lunch at a hotel tucked away in central London. “Telling tales of Vikings that sailed down the rivers, down to Constantinople.“So, in a way,” he continued, “you could say that the dream of one day making or being part of a Viking movie was born in that moment.”Wearing a gray crew-neck sweater and dark jeans, he was centuries away from the bloody, muddy berserker he plays in “The Northman,” the much-anticipated action-adventure that marks the director Robert Eggers’s leap into big-budget filmmaking.Six-four, blond and indisputably handsome, Skarsgard would seem a no-brainer to launch a Viking film, but getting this film made took awhile. Skarsgard said he spent years working with the Danish film producer Lars Knudsen trying to determine what shape the project would take. Then, in 2017, he met with Eggers, who had fallen in love with Iceland during a visit two years earlier, to talk about another project.Skarsgard and Eggers both describe that meeting as “fated,” and it eventually led Eggers, along with the Icelandic poet and author Sjon, to write “The Northman.” Eggers, who said he had $70 million to make the film, took some inspiration from the 1982 “Conan the Barbarian,” which he watched as a kid.The actor in full Viking mode in “The Northman.”Aidan Monaghan/Focus FeaturesSkarsgard’s character is a Viking prince, Amleth, bent on vengeance after his father is murdered. Skarsgard is a producer of the new film, which opens on April 22 and also features Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicole Kidman and Björk, among others.“It was a real treat as an actor to be part of the project from the genesis,” Skarsgard said. “To be part of that journey and to be able to continuously have these conversations with the screenwriters as they are shaping the story, talk about the arc of Amleth, the story, the essence of it — that was very inspiring to me.”The star, 45 and unfailingly polite, has played a Viking before. In fact, he’s played a Northman before: Eric Northman, the proudly undead, ultrasexy Viking vampire on the HBO series “True Blood.” But the title character of “The Northman” is a Viking after Skarsgard’s own heart — one faithful to the medieval lore of the Icelandic sagas, one who doesn’t question fate or faith. And one who, by design, doesn’t have a lot to say.The sagas on which the film is based are “very laconic,” he said. And the characters “don’t really speak unless absolutely necessary.”Skarsgard himself is open, with an easy smile. He’s aware of the world around him, including being up-to-date on the latest news from Ukraine and knowing that asparagus season is upon us. He gave questions his full attention, pausing to gather his thoughts before answering — and not once glancing at a cellphone.Though he grew up hearing Viking stories, Skarsgard read books and watched lectures on them to prepare for his role. He said the most interesting thing he learned was that Vikings believed each person had a female spirit guiding them.“I thought that was quite fascinating, the juxtaposition between that and the brutality you see when you first meet Amleth,” Skarsgard said. He added, “That he would have believed that there’s a female spirit inside of him that guides him, I really liked that idea.”Though he grew up hearing Viking stories, Skarsgard read books and watched lectures on them to prepare for his role.Robbie Lawrence for The New York TimesHis preparation complete, it looked as if everything was coming together on the film. Just as shooting was set to begin, the pandemic hit.“For about 48 hours we were still moving forward, but everyone was like, ‘Is this happening? Are we doing this? What’s going on?’ And then finally, they pulled the plug and said we have to break and that we’re going home.”Though Skarsgard considers New York his base, going home meant heading to his hometown, Stockholm.He holed up with his large family at his mother’s country house. He’s the oldest son of the actor Stellan Skarsgard and his first wife, My, and one of eight siblings. Three of his brothers are also actors, including Bill Skarsgard, who played Pennywise, the creeper clown in the “It” movies; another brother is a doctor who kept them apprised of developments in the Covid crisis. Skarsgard said that despite the frightening circumstances, he enjoyed getting to spend time with his family.“We cooked dinners and hung out, worked in the garden,” he said, adding that gathering the whole family can be difficult because work gets in the way. “I really enjoyed it. Then I felt almost guilty because it was a pandemic and people were dying.”Family and Sweden, where Skarsgard grew up and spent some time in the military, are important themes in his life.“We’re all a very tight group,” he said. “Everyone lives within two blocks of each other in South Stockholm and we see each other all the time when I’m home.” (He is not married but answered with a resounding “no” when asked if he was single.)He started out as a child actor but took a break beginning in his early teens before fully embracing an acting career in his 20s. He has said in the past that he didn’t like the attention acting brought him when he was young.His path to “The Northman” runs through dozens of roles in film and TV, some seemingly different sides of the same coin. He’s played an Israeli spy (“The Little Drummer Girl”) and a German man coming to terms with life after World War II (“The Aftermath”). A young Marine who helps the United States invade Iraq (“Generation Kill”) and a sadistic Army sergeant who leads young recruits astray in Afghanistan (“The Kill Team”). An abusive husband (“Big Little Lies”) and an achingly sweet stepdad who steps in to care for his neglected stepdaughter (“What Maisie Knew”).Skarsgard won several awards, including an Emmy, for his turn as an abusive husband opposite Nicole Kidman in “Big Little Lies.”HBOHe also snagged a small but pivotal role in HBO’s prestigious dramedy “Succession,” playing Lukas Matsson, a Swedish tech billionaire.Mark Mylod, an executive producer on the show who directed Skarsgard in two of the three episodes in which he appears, said the actor “was really the only choice for the character because of the intelligence of his work.”The makers of “Succession” had envisioned a character with “that kind of Elon Musk” charisma but not necessarily based on the Tesla chief executive. The Matsson character had to have the gravitas to be a genuine rival to the family behind Waystar Royco, the fictional company at the heart of “Succession,” Mylod said.“He found a way to make that character so fantastic and watchable and totally credible,” Mylod said. “With a small number of scenes, he made such an impact.” (Mylod wouldn’t say if Matsson is returning in Season 4.)Rebecca Hall, an actor who had worked with Skarsgard on “Godzilla vs. Kong,” said she had struggled to get financing for her own passion project, “Passing,” her adaptation last year of the 1929 Nella Larsen novel about the friendship between two Black women in New York, one of whom is passing as white.While working on “Kong,” Hall got up the courage to ask Skarsgard to read her script. He did and agreed to play the part of a racist husband. “I got the sense that he cares about good art being in the world and will do what he can to support that,” Hall said in an interview, adding that the character was the kind he had played well. “He’s no stranger to complicated characters who do bad things.”For Skarsgard, “there is zero strategy or plan” to his career. “The sweet spot is when I’m intrigued by the character, and I understand aspects of him and he makes me curious to learn more,” he said. “That’s superfun because then that means that I’ll probably enjoy diving in and exploring that a bit deeper.”On “The Northman,” diving in meant bulking up. He is also reunited in the film with Kidman, who played his wife in “Big Little Lies,” for which he won an Emmy, a SAG Award and a Golden Globe. This time she’s his mother.The two actors traveled with the rest of the cast to Northern Ireland, Ireland and Iceland for the grueling “Northman” shoot. Skarsgard described it as “seven months in the mud.”Eggers, an exacting and meticulous director, said that he was “not a sadist to be a sadist,” but that he was dead serious about detail and accuracy, which will come as no surprise to viewers of his earlier films, like “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse.”Skarsgard has spoken in interviews about being shackled and dragged through the muck. But Eggers said that, like him, Skarsgard wanted the best result. “When we embarked on this together, he was after nothing but perfection.”Eggers added, “Alex has sort of talked about me driving him to the edge, but there were many times that I can remember him asking for another take because he’s just as much of a perfectionist as I am.”The director acknowledged that the working conditions were difficult. “I am not trying to make things hard for us,” he explained, “but when you’re telling the story of the Viking Age in Northern Europe, you’re going to seek punishing locations, with extreme weather and terrain. And that’s just what it needs to be to tell this story.”When shooting was delayed, Skarsgard returned to Stockholm, where he enjoyed time spent with his family. “I felt almost guilty because it was a pandemic and people were dying.”Robbie Lawrence for The New York TimesWorking with such a large budget and cast were perks, Eggers said, but also meant a great deal of pressure. “If this movie doesn’t perform, that will be a problem,” he said.After all of the work, Skarsgard said, “I just want people to see the movie, that’s it,” adding, preferably on the big screen.As is pretty standard fare for a Skarsgard project, he’s naked in parts of “The Northman,” including during a fight scene in a volcano.Does he ever just say no to taking off his clothes? He said he had recently done just that at a photo shoot after being asked to take his shirt off, saying, “I think there’s enough nudity in the movie.”Skarsgard, who had spent the morning doing press by Zoom and had traveled around Europe promoting in the days before we talked, had by the end of the interview kind of slid down the banquette, resting his head against the cushion. He said he realized his films tend to be heavy. “I might have to do a comedy soon,” he said, adding that he would like to work with the satirist Armando Iannucci or the British comic actor Steve Coogan.“The Northman,” he said, “was so intense. It was the greatest experience of my career but, God, it was intense.” More

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      Frank Langella Fired From Netflix Show After Misconduct Investigation

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      The actor was removed from his leading role in the mini-series “The Fall of the House of Usher.” The production plans to reshoot the scenes in which he had appeared.The actor Frank Langella was fired from his leading role in “The Fall of the House of Usher,” a Netflix mini-series based on Edgar Allan Poe works, after a misconduct investigation.His firing was reported by Deadline. Netflix declined to comment, but a person familiar with the matter, who was granted anonymity because she was not authorized to discuss the investigation, confirmed the account on Thursday.Langella was removed from the series, which is in the middle of production, after officials determined that the actor had been involved in unacceptable conduct on set, Deadline reported. The production plans to recast Langella’s role as Roderick, the reclusive patriarch of the Usher family, and reshoot the scenes in which he had already appeared. The series also stars Carla Gugino, Mary McDonnell and Mark Hamill, among others.A spokeswoman for Langella and the show’s creator, Mike Flanagan, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Langella, 84, known for his performances both onscreen and onstage, shot to fame in the title role of the 1979 film “Dracula” after starring in a Broadway production as the count. He also played President Nixon in both the stage and screen versions of “Frost/Nixon,” earning an Oscar nomination as well as a Tony Award for best actor in a play in 2007. Recently, Langella appeared as the judge in the Netflix film “The Trial of the Chicago 7.” More

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      Japanese TV Show “Old Enough!” Features Toddlers Running Errands

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      “Old Enough!,” a Japanese show that has been on the air for decades, recently came to Netflix. It features toddlers running errands without adult supervision.TOKYO — Three-year-old Yuka steps off the curb into a crosswalk that bisects a four-lane street. “Even though the light’s green,” a narrator says in a voice-over, “she still looks out for cars!”So begins a typical scene in “Old Enough!,” a Japanese reality show that began streaming on Netflix in late March. It is new to American viewers but has been running in Japan for more than three decades.The show’s popularity in Japan is a reflection of the country’s high level of public safety, as well as a parenting culture that sees toddlers’ independence as a key marker of their development.“It’s a typical way of raising children in Japan and symbolic of our cultural approach, which can be surprising for people from other countries,” said Toshiyuki Shiomi, an expert on child development and a professor emeritus at Shiraume Gakuen University in Tokyo.Short and sweet“Old Enough!” has been running on Nippon TV, initially as part of another show, since 1991. It was inspired by “Miki’s First Errand,” a 1977 children’s book by Yoriko Tsutsui that tells the story of a mother who sends her 5-year-old daughter out to buy milk for a younger sibling.The edited “Old Enough!” episodes that appear on Netflix are short (around 15 minutes or less) and upbeat. They track toddlers as young as 2 as they attempt to run errands in public for the first time, with a studio audience laughing in the background. Safety spotters and camera crews hide offscreen, with mixed results; they often stumble into the frame.As the children navigate crosswalks and busy public places full of adults, a narrator describes their incremental progress in breathless tones, like a commentator calling a baseball game in the ninth inning. And the toddlers strike up conversations with the strangers they meet along the way.Yuka, a 3-year-old girl in the Japanese city of Akashi, goes shopping by herself on the show.Netflix/Nippon TV“Mom said, instead of her, I would go to the shops today,” 3-year-old Yuka tells a shopkeeper in the coastal city of Akashi as she buys udon noodles for a family meal.“Really?” the shopkeeper replies. “Aren’t you a clever thing?”The errands inevitably go awry. Yuka briefly forgets to buy tempura, for instance, and another 3-year-old forgets what she has been asked to do because she is too busy talking to herself. In other episodes, children drop their cargo (live fish, in one case) or refuse to leave home in the first place.When 2-year-old Ao’s father, a sushi chef, asks him to take some soy-sauce-stained chef’s whites to a nearby laundromat, he won’t budge.“I can’t do it,” Ao tells his father, standing outside the family home and holding the soiled linens in a plastic bag.Eventually, Ao’s mother cajoles him into going, partly by bribing him with a snack. “It’s painful, isn’t it?” the father says to her as the boy ambles down the road alone. “It breaks my heart.”“You’re too soft on him,” she replies.A rite of passageProfessor Shiomi said that parents in Japan tried to instill a particular kind of self-sufficiency in their children. “In Japanese culture, independence doesn’t mean arguing with others or expressing oneself,” he said. “It means adapting yourself to the group while managing daily tasks, such as cooking, doing errands and greeting others.”In Japanese schools, it is common for children to clean classrooms, he noted. And at home, parents give even young children pocket money for their expenses and expect them to help prepare meals and do other chores.In a well-known example of this culture, Princess Aiko, a member of Japan’s royal family, would walk alone to elementary school in the early 2000s. (She was always under surveillance by the Imperial Household police.)The errands that toddlers run on the show inevitably go awry.Netflix/Nippon TVIn the Tokyo area, Wagakoto, a production company, films short documentaries of toddlers running errands, for a fee that starts at about $120. Jun Niitsuma, the company’s founder, said that the service was inspired by “Old Enough!” and “Miki’s First Errand,” and that clients paid for it because they wanted a record of how independent their toddlers had become.“It’s a rite of passage” for both children and their parents, Mr. Niitsuma said. “These errands have been a very symbolic mission for decades.”Room for debateBefore Netflix acquired “Old Enough!,” it had been adapted for audiences in Britain, China, Italy, Singapore and Vietnam.“‘Old Enough!’ is a reminder that unique storytelling can break down cultural and language barriers, and connect entertainment fans globally,” said Kaata Sakamoto, the vice president for Japan content at Netflix.The show does have some critics in Japan. Their main arguments seem to be that the toddlers’ errands essentially amount to coercion, or that the show could prompt parents to put their children in harm’s way.The toddlers on the show strike up conversations with strangers they meet along the way.Netflix/Nippon TVViolent crimes are rare in Japan. Still, some academics contend that common safety metrics paint a misleading portrait of public safety. They point to recent studies by the Ministry of Justice indicating that the incidence of crime in Japan, particularly sexual crimes, tends to be higher than what residents report to local police departments.“It’s a terrible show!” said Nobuo Komiya, a criminologist at Rissho University in Tokyo who has advised municipalities across Japan on public safety.“This TV station has been airing this program for years, and it’s been so popular,” he added. “But Japan is full of danger in reality. This myth of safety is manufactured by the media.”Even supporters acknowledge that “Old Enough!” was created for an older era in which different social norms governed toddlers’ behavior.Today, there is increasing debate in Japan about whether forcing young children to do chores is good for their development, as was once widely assumed, Professor Shiomi said. And parents no longer take public safety for granted.“I myself sent my 3- or 4-year-old for an errand to a vegetable shop,” he said. “She was able to get there but couldn’t remember the way back because she didn’t have a clear image of the route. So the shop owner brought her home.”Hisako Ueno More

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      Late Night Teases Rudy Giuliani About Seized Devices

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      Prosecutors recovered 18 devices during their current investigation into Trump’s former lawyer. “Eighteen devices? Man, that’s a lot of porn,” Stephen Colbert said.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Left to His Own DevicesFederal prosecutors recovered 18 electronic devices from Rudy Giuliani during their investigation into his lobbying Ukraine for dirt on Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 election.“Eighteen devices? Man, that’s a lot of porn,” Stephen Colbert joked on Wednesday’s “Late Show.”“Always a good sign when you have three phones.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“But this week, Rudy generously offered to assist the feds in finding reasons to charge him when he helped investigators unlock several electronic devices by providing a list of possible passwords. It’s a real bad sign when you have to carry around a piece of paper with a list of possible passwords.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“He gave them a list of possible passwords to two other devices they seized, and even let investigators look inside the coffin he sleeps in during daylight hours.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I’m happy to say ‘The Late Show’ has acquired a copy of the list. There’s ‘L3akyheadjuice21,’ ‘seckswithcousin69,’ and ‘4SeasonsTotalManscaping.’” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Smile, You’re Not on Camera Edition)“And there is some good news: The Brooklyn subway shooting suspect has been arrested. That’s nice. That’s fast. The suspect’s name is Frank R. James. Authorities know this because a credit card with Mr. James’s name on it had been found at the scene of the shooting, as had a key to a van Mr. James had rented. He also left a cheek swab, a filled-out tax return and his SoulCycle emergency contact. Very generous of him.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“One of the unusual facts about this shooter is that he is 62 years old, which means technically he wasn’t on the run — he was on the mall walk.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“It’s fortunate that James left behind plenty of evidence, because none of the station’s security cameras were in full operation at the time of the shooting. Well, that’s what the M.T.A. gets for hiring the same guy who did the cameras in Jeffrey Epstein’s cell.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Really? really? Out of 10,000 cameras in the subway system the only three that weren’t working are the ones that could have helped? Really? That is a crazy stroke of bad luck if it were true.” — TREVOR NOAH“It does explain the new subway safety posters: ‘If you see something, that’s cool — we didn’t.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Let’s not get hung up on the details. The important thing is that those cameras cost New York taxpayers $800,000 each. Don’t forget that — that is all that matters.” — TREVOR NOAHThe Bits Worth WatchingLouis Virtel, a writer for “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” protested Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law on his recurring segment, “Virtel It Like it Is.”What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightThe “Flight Attendant” star Rosie Perez will appear on Thursday’s “Daily Show.”Also, Check This Out“The worst nightmare is, do you wake up one day and you’re not funny anymore?” Billy Crystal, 74, said of the anxiety that comes with being an aging comedian. “Do you wake up and you’re not relevant?”Philip Montgomery for The New York TimesBilly Crystal is returning to Broadway in “Mr. Saturday Night,” a musical version of his 1992 movie about an aging performer who won’t accept that his time in the spotlight is up. More

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      Only Gilbert Gottfried Could Be So Dirty and So Heartbreaking

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      He turned shocking jokes and “Howard Stern” appearances into something of an art form, one he practiced even when the occasion was a school fund-raiser.Some comedians unfurl yarns in the unhurried mode of a jam band, others display the taut rhythms of pop or hip-hop. Gilbert Gottfried, who came of age in a fraught New York City and died on Tuesday at 67, always felt like punk in the classic CBGB mold: nervy, artful, deceivingly intelligent, a tad unhinged, and blissfully — beautifully — obnoxious.The juiciest moments of his decades onstage crackle with impish grandeur. Some bits are renowned, especially his appearance at a Friars Club roast in the weeks after the World Trade Center attacks, where he dared crack a 9/11 joke. Greeted with boos, the comic pivoted to a standard bit known as “The Aristocrats.” It proved so dementedly randy, in his giddy telling, that it seemed to levitate the crowd, Gottfried’s potty mouth momentarily washing away the tension and grief.Other times, he brought opportune lightning bolts to dopey TV fare. In one notorious clip from “Celebrity Apprentice,” the silky host tells the comedian, “Gilbert, I’m proud of you.” Gottfried stares down his latest mark. “Thank you, mein Führer,” he responds, characteristically more concerned about landing his joke than his odds in that season’s competition.Better still is the episode of “Celebrity Wife Swap” in which Gottfried — a notorious miser — parades around town with Alan Thicke’s horror-struck wife, treating the set more like a Marx Brothers film than a reality show. At one point, his date balks at being forced to eat a gratis meal in the Friars Club kitchen. “What are you, the queen of England?” Gottfried charges.Along with his strangely endearing stand-up act, the comedian found his mightiest platform through his years as a guest on “The Howard Stern Show.” These are tapes that should be rocketed into space to alert the galaxy of the brassy attitudes that lurk in our neck of the woods — perhaps they will scare any hostile aliens away. With the simpatico host, Gottfried is Rodney Dangerfield on “Carson” or Andy Kaufman on “Letterman”; his every appearance offers a glimpse of a berserk, quick-to-boil New York of yore.Remembering Gilbert GottfriedThe gravel-voiced comedian, whose credits ranged from the family-friendly “Aladdin” to the unfettered vulgarity of “The Aristocrats,” died on April 12.Obituary: Gilbert Gottfried’s manic, loudmouthed stand-up routines mixed old-fashioned borscht-belt shtick with cringeworthy vulgarity.An Appraisal: The comedian could bring opportune lightning bolts to anything from dopey TV fare to school fund-raisers.The Dirtiest Joke Ever Told: A Times columnist recalled Mr. Gottfried’s notorious 2001 performance of “The Aristocrats” not long after 9/11.Offstage Life: The world knew the comedian for his abrasive style. But to his wife, Dara, he was a “gentle genius.”Gottfried’s perhaps most fabled minutes on the show occurred one late-’90s morning when he wasn’t even scheduled to appear. A German-accented woman called in from Los Angeles. She explained that she worked as a babysitter for the filmmaker Amy Heckerling, who had dispatched her to pick up Gottfried from the airport. (He was too cheap for a cab.) The woman furiously recounted how, during the car ride, she had informed the comedian that her parents were Holocaust survivors. Is it any surprise that Gottfried immediately began cracking Holocaust jokes? Such was his superpower.Stern got Gottfried on the line. The comic sounded as if he was still in bed — but, like a samurai who has been attacked in his sleep and leaps to battle, he gamely began peppering the poor woman with more Holocaust jokes. Eventually, horrifyingly, the comic invoked the child the caller was babysitting: “Can she sit on my lap while you tell her about the Holocaust?” he queried. Like his later “Aristocrats” recital, it is a brilliant double negative: Gottfried follows one ghastly subject with something even more distasteful. The world thus gets contorted into a joke, the punch lines batting away our deepest woes.A few years ago, I wrote about these Stern show segments for my comedy zine, The Lowbrow Reader. The essay grew from a chance encounter I had with Gottfried at the home of Professor Irwin Corey, the anarchic comedian and the other subject of the piece. Corey was deep into his 90s but, like Gottfried, emitted riotous humor in his every step. It struck me that Gottfried provided the rare connection to the fabled funny men of a much earlier era: unrestrained, uproarious and often Jewish comics who were set on gaining a laugh at the expense of all else.The Lowbrow Reader was moribund at this point — we had recently published a book anthology, neatly ending our little run. But I so yearned to write about Gottfried, Corey and Stern that I revamped the magazine and essentially assembled an issue around the essay. Most thrillingly, Gottfried consented to let us publish two of his wonderfully eccentric drawings, which brimmed with devilishly grinning ogres, Dracula, a tiny Hitler and penises.I was fully aware that nobody cared about my stupid comedy zine’s rebirth, but it was a huge deal for me. I nervously picked up the issue from the printer, then went downtown to sell some copies to a record store, only to find it closed for the night. I headed to an event lugging a backpack full of zines — never a suave look — then walked home, depressed at having unloaded precisely zero copies.It was late at night on a misty Memorial Day weekend, and the city had emptied out. At 13th and Sixth, I waited for the light to change, sharing the corner with the only other pedestrian in sight. I side-eyed the man to make sure that he was not preparing to stab me. Then, I did a double take. It was Gilbert Gottfried.He didn’t know me from Adam, but I hurriedly thrust a copy of the publication in his confused face. “Great,” he said. “I long for somebody to write a big article about me, and then when it happens it’s in … this.”We slowly walked up Sixth Avenue to our mutual Chelsea neighborhood. His famous stage bray was muted, replaced by the oddly calming cadence later familiar to listeners of “Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast,” his whipsmart showbiz series with Frank Santopadre. The roaring jokes and generous laughter remained. I like to think I can be funny enough when talking to my family and friends; walking with Gottfried, I felt like a weekend guitarist trying to jam with Hendrix.As we approached West 18th Street, a group of young women spotted the comedian and instinctively began laughing and, oddly, cheering. The comic gave a wave as he passed them. “Must be your article,” he said.Years later, my daughter enrolled in the same public elementary school as Gottfried’s two indisputably charming children, briefly overlapping with his youngest. Gottfried’s wife, Dara, was a P.T.A. hero — at her last meeting, she received a standing ovation — and she oversaw an annual comedy show to raise money for the school. Naturally, Gottfried would always perform.Although the show took place at a grown-up comedy club, the audience was essentially the crew from school: parents, some teachers, the principal. In a secular society, this can feel like one’s congregation. I had witnessed Gottfried’s club act. Surely, he would not be reciting his sex jokes for these gentle souls?Yet that would be like asking Pavarotti not to sing, or perhaps a dog not to bark. And so, Gottfried stood before his community, proudly screaming his fiercely idiosyncratic material. There were surrealist rants, crooked bits that gazed at the world in childlike wonder, and bizarre jokes that answered to their own logic. And, of course, there was riotously filthy, inconceivably revolting humor. It was all so irreverent it could break your heart. More

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      Stephen Colbert Scoffs at John Eastman’s Obsession With the Election

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      “Our ex-president isn’t allowed a do-over just because he didn’t like the result the first time. That’s how you get an Eric,” Colbert joked.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Can’t Stop, Won’t StopJohn Eastman, a former legal adviser to Donald Trump, has continued pushing to decertify the 2020 election, as recently as March.“That’s right, the election that’s been over for a year and a half, and that Biden won,” Stephen Colbert said on Tuesday. “To put that into perspective, when the election was decided, J. Lo was engaged to a different guy,” Stephen Colbert said.“Here’s what happened: About three weeks ago, Eastman took a trip to Wisconsin and urged Republican Wisconsin Assembly speaker Robin Vos to nullify the 2020 election — specifically, to start ‘reclaiming the electors’ and move forward with either having a new slate of electors seated that would declare someone else the winner, or a ‘do over. ‘A ‘do over’? Our ex-president isn’t allowed a do over just because he didn’t like the result the first time. That’s how you get an Eric.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“One problem with Eastman’s plan — all of it. He’s trying to re-litigate the 2020 election, which legal experts say is impossible. Only if you don’t believe in yourself — that’s why I’ll never throw away my Mondale ’84 signs.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Spirit of the Times Edition)“Well somehow, Spirit Halloween has inspired a movie. Strike Back Studios and Hideout Pictures are teaming up to make a Spirit Halloween film. Two companies thought this was a good idea. Maybe they figure if they go broke, they can turn their offices into Spirit Halloween stores, I don’t know.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The movie is about how, a month earlier, this movie was a Lady Foot Locker.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“I don’t get — why not a movie about the 99-cent store? Spirit Halloween isn’t even a real store — it’s a parasite that feeds off the bodies of dead stores.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingRoy Wood Jr. investigates the history of Black classical musicians for his regular “Daily Show” segment, “CP Time.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightThe comedian Jerrod Carmichael will talk with Trevor Noah about his new HBO special, “Rothaniel,” on Wednesday’s “Daily Show.”Also, Check This OutMichael Tran/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesLaurence Fishburne’s must-haves include a chef’s knife, trampolines and crystals. More

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      Stephen Colbert Laughs Off Trump’s Shilling for Dr. Oz

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      “Come on, he’s a con man. And so is Dr. Oz,” Colbert joked of the former president.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Con Men ClubOver the weekend, former President Donald Trump endorsed Dr. Mehmet Oz in the Pennsylvania Senate race.“Come on, he’s a con man. And so is Dr. Oz,” Stephen Colbert joked.“Now, I’d like to list all the scams Dr. Oz has tried to foist on his audience, but we only have an hour show.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Among the many snake oil supplements he has peddled are raspberry ketones for fat burning, lavender soap for leg cramps and strawberries for teeth whitening. None of these work, of course, but hey, there is one simple trick to make you healthier: Take two household bananas, then jam one in each ear until you can’t hear Dr. Oz anymore. You’ll be fine, or you’ll be better!” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Aw, grandpa thinks his TV friends are his real friends. [imitating Trump] ‘You know who should be attorney general? That nice lady from “Murder, She Wrote.” She solved all of the murders in Cabot Cove. Also, when are they going to make Pat Sajak secretary of transportation? He knows wheels!’” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Pumpkin Crown Father Edition)“CNN got their hands on text messages between Don Jr. and Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, on Nov. 5, 2020. D.J.T.J. sent Meadows a number of ideas of how to ‘win’ the election they lost. He said, ‘We have multiple paths. We control them all.’ Junior would have texted his dad directly, but apparently Trump didn’t add him to the family plan.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Listen, if you’re gonna text your plans to overthrow an election, at least disguise it with emojis: ‘I got an idea: ballot box, trash can, American flag, poop emoji, pumpkin, crown, father.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Junior was so confident in the plan that he was concerned that not everyone was looped in, texting, ‘This is what we need to do. Please read it and please get it to everyone that needs to see it.’ Oh, I’m pretty sure the F.B.I. has seen it.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingBen Stiller, the director of “Severance,” sat down with Trevor Noah on Monday’s “Daily Show.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightGillian Anderson will talk about playing Eleanor Roosevelt in “The First Lady” on Tuesday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”Also, Check This Out“Ava is controlled chaos,” Janelle James said of her character on “Abbott Elementary,” a mockumentary-style sitcom on ABC praised for both its humor and its poignancy.Kendall Bessent for The New York TimesJanelle James, the breakout star of “Abbott Elementary,” loves playing a hilariously terrible elementary school principal. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘The First Lady’ and ‘Abbott Elementary’

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      Viola Davis, Michelle Pfeiffer and Gillian Anderson star in a new series about first ladies in the White House. And “Abbott Elementary” airs its season finale.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, April 11-17. Details and times are subject to change.Monday2022 CMT MUSIC AWARDS 8 p.m. on CBS. The country-pop singer Kelsea Ballerini and the actor Anthony Mackie will host this year’s CMT Music Awards ceremony, which will be broadcast live from the Nashville Municipal Auditorium in Tennessee, about a 10-minute walk from the honky-tonk bars of Broadway. The singer Kane Brown has the most nominations of the night, with four. Ballerini, Mickey Guyton, Breland and Cody Johnson are also among the most-nominated acts. The lineup of performers includes Brown, Guyton with Black Pumas, Miranda Lambert, Little Big Town, Maren Morris with Ryan Hurd, and Jason Aldean with Bryan Adams.INDEPENDENT LENS: JIM ALLISON: BREAKTHROUGH (2019) 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). When James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo were awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in medicine, a statement from the Nobel committee said it all: The two researchers’ breakthrough work, which used the body’s immune system to attack cancer, amounted to “an entirely new principle for cancer therapy.” This documentary from Bill Haney (“The Price of Sugar”) is a profile of Allison, looking at the life that led him toward his groundbreaking research — in part, the loss of family members to cancer — and the challenges he faced moving his unconventional ideas forward. In his review for The New York Times, Ben Kenigsberg wrote that the documentary itself lacks the kind of innovative touch that it celebrates in its subject, but still “does a solid job of explaining the barriers — justified skepticism, professional groupthink, the high cost of long-term research — that Allison faced in proving that a new kind of treatment could work.”TuesdayQuinta Brunson in “Abbott Elementary.”Temma Hankin/ABCABBOTT ELEMENTARY 9 p.m. on ABC. The first season of Quinta Brunson’s sitcom ends on Tuesday night with an episode about a school field trip to a zoo. The show stars Brunson as a teacher in a Philadelphia public elementary school whose staff members are as passionate as they are wacky — and it has been a very big hit this season. In a recent article, The Times’s chief television critic, James Poniewozik, called it the best sitcom of the season. It’s “not a year’s supply of pencils,” he wrote. “But it is something else significant: Sustained attention for a profession that, however much lip service we pay it, usually gets lost among TV’s stable of doctors, lawyers and police.”WednesdayChristopher Rivera and Brooklynn Prince in “The Florida Project.”A24THE FLORIDA PROJECT (2017) 5:20 p.m. on Showtime Showcase. After offering an idiosyncratic, shot-on-an-iPhone slice of Los Angeles in “Tangerine” (2015), the writer-director Sean Baker crossed the country to tell a story about a trio of children who live near Disney World in a ramshackle, sherbet-colored motel called the Magic Castle. This is the setting of “The Florida Project,” a drama centered on a 6-year-old girl, Moonee (Brooklynn Prince), who has summertime adventures even as she and the adults around her grapple with the stresses and desperation of poverty. The result is a movie that “is honest about the limits of benevolence, and about the wishful thinking that can cloud our understanding of the world,” A.O. Scott said in his review for The Times. “Its final scenes,” he wrote, “are devastating, and also marvelously ambiguous, full of wonder, fury and cleareyed self-criticism.”ThursdayTHE TIME MACHINE (1960) 8 p.m. on TCM. H.G. Wells’s formative 1895 novella “The Time Machine” was one of the first books to imagine a device that would allow people to hop through time. This 1960 film adaptation starts its story in the same Victorian time period that the original book came out. Watching its protagonist (played by Rod Taylor) feels especially surreal when the viewer is in 2022.FridayA scene from “Chamber Music Society Returns.”Chamber Music Society of Lincoln CenterCHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY RETURNS 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). This two-part documentary looks at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s efforts to come back fully from a pandemic hiatus. It covers the challenges of bringing live performances back to Alice Tully Hall and the planning of a multicity tour that must allow for the uncertainty of the era. Part 1, which debuted last week, is now available to stream on PBS.org and the PBS app; Part 2 will air on Friday night.SaturdayFANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM (2016) and FANTASTIC BEASTS: THE CRIMES OF GRINDELWALD (2018) 7:55 p.m. and 10:53 p.m. on USA Network. The third movie in the “Harry Potter” spinoff series “Fantastic Beasts” — subtitled “The Secrets of Dumbledore” — hits U.S. theaters this week. These first two entries weren’t particularly well received, but for families who want to brush up on the lore, this double feature offers a refresher. And for those seeing the new movie, it offers an interesting opportunity to judge two takes on one character: The titular evil wizard in “Crimes of Grindelwald” was played by Johnny Depp, who has been replaced by Mads Mikkelsen in the new movie.SundayTHE FIRST LADY 9 p.m. on Showtime. In truth, the singular “lady” in the title of this new drama series is a little misleading: There are three of them. The show layers the stories of a trio of first ladies of the United States — Michelle Obama, Betty Ford and Eleanor Roosevelt — comparing and contrasting their experiences navigating the White House during different eras of American political life, but contending with many common expectations. It has three heavy-hitting performers in Viola Davis (as Obama), Michelle Pfeiffer (Ford) and Gillian Anderson (Roosevelt). More