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      Estelle Harris, George’s Mother on ‘Seinfeld,’ Dies at 93

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      Employing a high-powered screech, she took maternal exasperation and paranoia to comedic heights as one of the show’s most frequently recurring characters.Estelle Harris, who hyperventilated her way into the hearts of millions of “Seinfeld” fans as George’s mother, Estelle Costanza, died on Saturday in Palm Desert, Calif. She was 93.Her son Glen Harris announced the death in a statement sent by Ms. Harris’s agent.In 27 episodes — starting in 1992 during the fourth season of “Seinfeld,” around the time that the show became a pop culture sensation, and continuing until its final episode in 1998 — Ms. Harris embarrassed and harangued her son, one of the show’s four main characters, George Costanza (Jason Alexander), and his father, Frank (Jerry Stiller).During her character’s meltdowns, often in response to slights and offenses to propriety, Ms. Harris deployed a screech that had the urgency of a hyena in its death throes. When she whined about “waiting for hours,” that final word had three, maybe four moan-like syllables. The combination of stiffness and violence in her gesticulations expressed a forbidding level of psychological tension.Ms. Harris knew how to make outrage into a joke.“You don’t play comedy,” she told The Chicago Tribune in 1995. “It’s like that Jewish expression ‘crying laughter.’ All through the centuries the Jews had such terrible things happen to them that they had to laugh a little harder.”Her “Seinfeld” debut was one of the series’ most famous episodes: “The Contest.” After George’s mother catches him having a private moment with one of her issues of Glamour magazine, she falls in shock, throws out her back and enters a hospital.“I go out for a quart of milk; I come home and find my son treating his body like it was an amusement park,” Ms. Harris said. “Too bad you can’t do that for a living” — and now, with her voice rising, she used her working-class New Yorker’s accent to milk the script’s sarcasm: “You could sell out Madison Square GAAARDEN. Thousands of people could watch you. You could be a BIIIG STARRR.”That set the template for her subsequent appearances, including on other beloved episodes like “The Fusilli Jerry” (1995) and “The Rye” (1996). She began her scenes in a sane register of a volatile emotion — recrimination, self-pity, bafflement — and by the end of the sequence arrived at an outburst so intense it could only be farcical.Ms. Harris’s success in the role led to other opportunities to play the shrill and unhinged, including in the “Toy Story” movie franchise, for which she provided the voice of Mrs. Potato Head.At the height of the popularity of “Seinfeld,” Ms. Harris found herself with the kind of celebrity that drew looks on the street. Something in the emotionality with which she portrayed Estelle Costanza had prompted fond recognition in a national audience.“Black people, Asians, WASPs, Italians, Jews — they all say, ‘Oh, you’re just like my mom,’” she told The Tribune.Estelle Nussbaum was born on April 22, 1928, in the Hell’s Kitchen section of Manhattan, where her Polish-Jewish parents owned a candy store. She grew up largely in Tarentum, Pa., a coal-mining town where her parents moved to help relatives run a general store and to provide Estelle a gentler setting for her childhood.Though she faced antisemitic taunts in her small town, Estelle found an outlet in stage performances. Her father, who she said “spoke the King’s English,” insisted that she take elocution lessons from a young age.Ms. Harris in 2010 at the premiere of “Toy Story 3” in Hollywood. She provided the voice of Mrs. Potato Head in the movie.Kevin Winter/Getty ImagesShe moved back to New York in her late teens and later married Sy Harris, a salesman of window treatments. They had three children, and for a while, Ms. Harris was a homemaker.She wound her way through dinner theaters and television commercials, including a 1983 spot for Handi-Wrap: “It don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that cling: doo-wrap, doo-wrap, doo-wrap,” she sang with schmaltzy enthusiasm.After her big break on “Seinfeld,” Ms. Harris’s other major credits included the movies “Out to Sea” (1997), starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, and “My Giant” (1998), with Billy Crystal.Mr. Harris died last year. In addition to her son Glen, Ms. Harris is survived by another son, Eric; a daughter, Taryn; three grandsons; and a great-grandson.In her Tribune profile, Ms. Harris said she had complained to Larry David, the co-creator of “Seinfeld,” about her character’s constant yelling, but experience proved him right: “The more I yell, the more they laugh,” she said.Ms. Harris admitted that her personal life prepared her for the part.“I yell at my husband, but he doesn’t mind,” she said. “He’s grateful for the attention.”Tiffany May More

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      Stream These 10 Titles Before They Leave Netflix This Month

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      U.S. subscribers are losing a bunch of titles in April. Here are the best of the bunch.Oscar season is over (finally), but this month’s slate of movies leaving Netflix in the United States is full of winners and nominees past and present, as well as a handful of cult items and action epics. Toss these titles — nine movies and one favorite ’90s TV show — into your list before they’re gone. (Dates reflect the final day a title is available.)‘The Killing of a Sacred Deer’ (April 4)Although his most recent feature, the Oscar-winning “The Favourite,” was decidedly more audience friendly, the Greek writer and director Yorgos Lanthimos has carved out a niche as one of the more provocative (sometimes mercilessly so) filmmakers of his time. After his first English language film, the pitch-black comedy “The Lobster,” he reunited with Colin Farrell for this heavy slab of psychological horror about a heart surgeon whose strange friendship with a twisted teenage boy (Barry Keoghan) prompts a series of horrifying events. Lanthimos masterfully creates a feeling of creeping dread and uncomfortable uncertainty, much of it thanks to Keoghan, who harnesses a truly disturbing screen presence; like Farrell, he is in “The Batman,” and moviegoers who thought that was a bleak picture may find this one too hard to swallow.Stream it here.‘The Florida Project’ (April 5)Sean Baker is one of our most adventurous and emotionally curious filmmakers, his work dropping in on highly specific subcultures and scenes without feeling distanced or anthropological. In this 2017 comedy-drama, he settles in to “The Magic Castle,” a budget motel located near Walt Disney World, its clientele a mix of hoodwinked tourists and struggling long-timers like Halley (Bria Vinaite) and her six-year-old daughter, Moonee (Brooklynn Prince). Baker carefully situates his contrast of haves and have-nots; Disney World is only a short walk away, but the lives enjoyed by its patrons seem impossibly out of reach. Willem Dafoe picked up a well-deserved Oscar nomination for his work as the motel’s good-natured manager.Stream it here.‘Miss Sloane’ (April 18)The newly minted Oscar winner Jessica Chastain stars in this political thriller from John Madden (the “Shakespeare in Love” director, not the other one) as a tough-as-nails D.C. lobbyist who finds herself in the sights of the powerful gun lobby. Chastain made a specialty of these sturdy, sharp women who get the job done — the character is not far removed from her roles in “Zero Dark Thirty,” “A Most Violent Year,” and “Molly’s Game” — but she finds the shadings and contours that make the character unique while Jonathan Perera’s smart screenplay feels like an authentic peek at how the sausage is made in Washington.Stream it here.‘The Artist’ (April 25)Oscar loves movies about the movies, and this 2011 comedy from the writer and director Michel Hazanavicius (which won five prizes, including best picture) isn’t just a film about the industry: It is steeped in stylistic and narrative influences from throughout film history. Hazanavicius tells his story of the bumpy transition from silent to sound cinema by dramatizing that transition, recalling the inside-Hollywood angle of “Singin’ in the Rain”; the secondary story, about a fading star’s romance with a rising talent, evokes the many remakes of “A Star is Born.” Yet “The Artist” isn’t just a game of “spot the homage.” The filmmaking is clever and the performances are inspired, particularly those of the best actor winner Jean Dujardin, of the best supporting actress nominee Bérénice Bejo and of John Goodman, cast perfectly as a cigar-chomping studio head.Stream it here.‘Dawson’s Creek’: Seasons 1-6 (April 30)Fresh off the success of his script for the original “Scream,” the screenwriter Kevin Williamson got the greenlight from the nascent WB network to create this long-running drama, chronicling the lives of loves of a group of teens in the fictional hamlet of Capeside, Mass. Williamson’s winkingly self-aware style doesn’t go down quite as smoothly here as it does in the “Scream” films, but it offers its own trashy pleasures, its scripts rife with romances and hookups and unrequited crushes. And the show is now noteworthy for its keen casting eye: Katie Holmes, Joshua Jackson, James Van Der Beek and Michelle Williams make up the core ensemble, with Scott Foley, Jane Lynch, Busy Philipps and Seth Rogen among the recurring cast.Stream it here.‘Léon: The Professional’ (April 30)Natalie Portman made her film debut in this 1994 action picture from the French writer and director Luc Besson (“La Femme Nikita”), playing a young woman whose family is executed by corrupt D.E.A. agents. She talks her enigmatic neighbor (Jean Reno) into providing not only refuge but also training; he is a contract killer, and she wants revenge. Besson stages a series of spectacular set pieces, each more ingenious than the last, culminating in a barn burner in which Leon seems to take on the entire New York Police Department. Portman is already a movie star, and Reno is quietly effective — an excellent counterpoint to Gary Oldman, who chews scenery by the fistful as the most unhinged of the bad guys.Stream it here.‘Snakes on a Plane’ (April 30)This 2006 action film from David R. Ellis was one of the first films that was, in effect, rewritten by the internet. Based solely on its title and the presence of Samuel L. Jackson, the movie became something of a viral sensation before its release, prompting its filmmakers to reshoot scenes and rework the tone to mirror more closely the goofy B-movie its “fans” had come to expect. The result is a bit of a mess, particularly in its laborious first act. But once the snakes start to attack at the 30-minute mark, it’s goofy, gory fun, a spirited riff on ’70s disaster movies, with an abundance of gruesome but funny shock effects and an admirably game performance from the unflappable Jackson.Stream it here.‘Snatch’ (April 30)The director Guy Ritchie made a big splash on the indie circuit with his low-budget, high-energy crime comedy “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” in 1999; this successor was also a kind of bigger-budget remake, pursuing similar situations and aesthetics but with more resources and bigger names. Chief among the big name actors is Brad Pitt, who appears under a mop of messy hair and barks most of his dialogue in an indecipherable dialect — hinting at the character-actor work he pursued, as a sideline, as he approached middle age. “Snatch” is fast, funny and flashy; it is style over substance, sure, but what style.Stream it here.‘Stripes’ (April 30)Three years before achieving total cultural ubiquity with “Ghostbusters,” Bill Murray, Harold Ramis and the director Ivan Reitman teamed up for this uproariously funny service comedy. Murray and Ramis (who was also one of the writers) play slacker pals who, more out of boredom than patriotic duty, enlist in the U.S. Army, where they do their best to turn the disciplined, humorless environment of basic training into a nonstop party. It’s like Abbott & Costello’s “Buck Privates” crossed with “Animal House,” and it’s exactly as fun as that sounds. Warren Oates is a superb foil as their drill sergeant, while John Candy, Joe Flaherty, John Larroquette, Judge Reinhold, P.J. Soles, Dave Thomas and Sean Young turn up in memorable supporting roles.Stream it here.‘The Town’ (April 30)Ben Affleck followed the triumph of his feature directorial debut, “Gone Baby Gone,” with this taut and gripping crime picture, adapted from the Chuck Hogan novel “Prince of Thieves.” Affleck co-wrote, directed and stars as Doug MacRay, the ringleader of a group of tough Boston thieves who hatch a plot to steal millions in cash from Fenway Park — a heist complicated by shifting allegiances, a tenacious F.B.I. agent (Jon Hamm) and Doug’s blossoming romance with a potential witness (Rebecca Hall). Affleck’s sure hand with actors — Chris Cooper, Blake Lively, Pete Postlethwaite and Jeremy Renner round out the ensemble — and his firm sense of time and place give the film a confidence that more than makes up for the familiarity of its storytelling.Stream it here.Also leaving: ‘August: Osage County’ (April 26); ‘Moneyball,’ ‘The Shawshank Redemption,’ ‘Superman Returns’ (April 30). More

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      Helping Hollywood Avoid Claims of Bias Is Now a Growing Business

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      Studios are signing up consultants to help make sure their movies or shows don’t raise any cultural red flags.In the summer of 2020, not long after the murder of George Floyd spurred a racial reckoning in America, Carri Twigg’s phone kept ringing.Ms. Twigg, a founding partner of a production company named Culture House, was asked over and over again if she could take a look at a television or movie script and raise any red flags, particularly on race.Culture House, which employs mostly women of color, had traditionally specialized in documentaries. But after a few months of fielding the requests about scripts, they decided to make a business of it: They opened a new division dedicated solely to consulting work.“The frequency of the check-ins was not slowing down,” Ms. Twigg said. “It was like, oh, we need to make this a real thing that we offer consistently — and get paid for.”Though the company has been consulting for a little more than a year — for clients like Paramount Pictures, MTV and Disney — that work now accounts for 30 percent of Culture House’s revenue.Culture House is hardly alone. In recent years, entertainment executives have vowed to make a genuine commitment to diversity, but are still routinely criticized for falling short. To signal that they are taking steps to address the issue, Hollywood studios have signed contracts with numerous companies and nonprofits to help them avoid the reputational damage that comes with having a movie or an episode of a TV show face accusations of bias.“When a great idea is there and then it’s only talked about because of the social implications, that must be heartbreaking for creators who spend years on something,” Ms. Twigg said. “To get it into the world and the only thing anyone wants to talk about are the ways it came up short. So we’re trying to help make that not happen.”On Being Transgender in AmericaElite Sports: The case of the transgender swimmer Lia Thomas has stirred a debate about the nature of athleticism in women’s sports.Transgender Youth: A photographer documented the lives of transgender youth. She shared some thoughts on what she saw.Remote Work: Remote work during the pandemic offered some people an opportunity to move forward with a transition. They are now preparing to return to the office.Corporate World: What is it like to transition while working for Wall Street? A Goldman Sachs’ employee shares her experience.The consulting work runs the gamut of a production. The consulting companies sometimes are asked about casting decisions as well as marketing plans. And they may also read scripts to search for examples of bias and to scrutinize how characters are positioned in a story.“It’s not only about what characters say, it’s also about when they don’t speak,” Ms. Twigg said. “It’s like, ‘Hey, there’s not enough agency for this character, you’re using this character as an ornament, you’re going to get dinged for that.’”When a consulting firm is on retainer, it can also come with a guaranteed check every month from a studio. And it’s a revenue stream developed only recently.Michelle K. Sugihara, the executive director of Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment, a nonprofit.Tracy Nguyen for The New York Times“It really exploded in the last two years or so,” said Michelle K. Sugihara, the executive director of Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment, a nonprofit. The group, called CAPE, is on retainer to some of the biggest Hollywood studios, including Netflix, Paramount, Warner Bros., Amazon, Sony and A24.Of the 100 projects that CAPE has consulted on, Ms. Sugihara said, roughly 80 percent have come since 2020, and they “really increased” after the Atlanta spa shootings in March 2021. “That really ramped up attention on our community,” she said.Ms. Sugihara said her group could be actively involved throughout the production process. In one example, she said she told a studio that all of the actors playing the heroes in an upcoming scripted project appeared to be light-skinned East Asian people whereas the villains were portrayed by darker-skinned East Asian actors.“That’s a red flag,” she said. “And we should talk about how those images may be harmful. Sometimes it’s just things that people aren’t even conscious about until you point it out.”Ms. Sugihara would not mention the name of the project or the studio behind it. In interviews, many cited nondisclosure agreements with the studios and a reluctance to embarrass a filmmaker as reasons they could not divulge specifics.Studios such as Paramount Pictures have been hiring consulting firms like Culture House and CAPE.Alex Welsh for The New York TimesSarah Kate Ellis, the president of GLAAD, the L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy organization, said her group had been doing consulting work informally for years with the networks and studios. Finally, she decided to start charging the studios for their labor — work that she compared to “billable hours.”“Here we were consulting with all these content creators across Hollywood and not being compensated,” said Ms. Ellis, the organization’s president since 2013. “When I started at GLAAD we couldn’t pay our bills. And meanwhile here we are with the biggest studios and networks in the world, helping them tell stories that were hits. And I said this doesn’t make sense.”In 2018, she created the GLAAD Media Institute — if the networks or studios wanted any help in the future, they’d have to become a paying member of the institute.Initially, there was some pushback but the networks and studios would eventually come around. In 2018, there were zero members of the GLAAD Media Institute. By the end of 2021, that number had swelled to 58, with nearly every major studio and network in Hollywood now a paying member.Sarah Kate Ellis, the president of GLAAD, the advocacy organization, at its office in Manhattan.Nathan Bajar for The New York TimesScott Turner Schofield, who has spent some time working as a consultant for GLAAD, has also been advising networks and studios on how to accurately depict transgender people for years. But he said the work had increased so significantly in recent years that he was brought on board as an executive producer for a forthcoming horror movie produced by Blumhouse.“I’ve gone from someone who was a part-time consultant — barely eking by — to being an executive producer,” he said.Those interviewed said that it was a win-win arrangement between the consultancies and the studios.“The studios at the end of the day, they want to produce content but they want to make money,” said Rashad Robinson, the president of the advocacy organization Color of Change. “Making money can be impeded because of poor decisions and not having the right people at the table. So the studios are going to want to seek that.”He did caution, however, that simply bringing on consultants was not an adequate substitute for the structural change that many advocates want to see in Hollywood.“This doesn’t change the rules with who gets to produce content and who gets to make the final decisions of what gets on the air,” he said. “It’s fine to bring folks in from the outside but that in the end is insufficient to the fact that across the entertainment industry there is still a problem in terms of not enough Black and brown people with power in the executive ranks.”Still, the burgeoning field of cultural consultancy work may be here to stay. Ms. Twigg, who helped found Culture House with Raeshem Nijhon and Nicole Galovski, said that the volume of requests she was getting was “illustrative of how seriously it’s being taken, and how comprehensively it’s being brought into the fabric of doing business.”“From a business standpoint, it’s a way for us to capitalize on the expertise that we have gathered as people of color who have been alive in America for 30 or 40 years,” she said. More

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      ‘Star Trek: Picard’ Recap: Neither Seen Nor Heard

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      This week, “Picard” increases the stakes with unpredictable villains and ancestors with a lot to lose.Season 2, Episode 5: ‘Fly Me to the Moon’OK, kids: The word of the day in this week’s “Picard” is Ancestor.The newly discovered lineages of some very famous “Trek” figures are figuring into the plot more frequently as this season progresses, which is not too dissimilar from what happened last season. This has been a running theme of the show — an in-depth exploration of how our histories, both personal and political, shape the world we live in.The Watcher — who looks like Laris but isn’t? — reveals that Renée Picard, Jean-Luc’s ancestor, is about to take off for a seminal spaceflight — the Europa mission — which leads indirectly to the first encounter with an alien organism and the Federation as we’ve come to know it. (Is it just me or is this pretty much the plot of “Star Trek: First Contact?” If so, you’d think Picard would mention his previous experience going back in time to deal with a similar thing.) The Watcher is a Guardian of the Galaxy type, and simultaneously a Supervisor, a reference to the original series episode, “Assignment: Earth,” another classic time travel story.Something else goes unmentioned: Picard had a young nephew, René, who dies in “Star Trek: Generations.” Presumably, he was named after Renée.Picard is informed by The Watcher that she “watches” Renée but is never seen. (An alumnus of Milford Academy, it appears.) She’s also responsible for protecting the tapestry of the universe, but somehow doesn’t actually make contact with her or seemingly anyone else. (So what would you say you do here?) She creepily keeps track of Renée’s therapy sessions and it’s revealed that her therapist is Q — with a German accent! (Some Watcher we have here. So good at watching and doesn’t realize something is off with the doctor.)To be honest, it was a bit off-putting watching Picard and the crew plot out how to keep Renée’s anxiety in check so she can make the Europa flight. She really seems to be anxious to the point that it’s not safe for her to take off. So why is it assumed that Q is in the wrong to tell her she shouldn’t do it? How is Jean-Luc qualified to comment on Renée’s mental health one way or another?We meet another Soong played by Brent Spiner. Spiner is an actor with limitless range — that he plays another one of Data’s ancestors with a new twist is impressive. Here, Dr. Soong is a geneticist with a dying daughter. He’s running unmonitored, illegal genetic experiments on soldiers in an effort to save his daughter, who cannot encounter sunlight. The daughter appears to be whom Soji and Dahj were created after. This was a nice touch to bring Isa Briones back into the fold. It’s easy to imagine a world in which Data finds an ancient Soong to model his daughters after.(Side note: The Soong appears to be the father of Arik Soong, whom we meet in “Star Trek: Enterprise.” If this episode is any indication, this will begin generations of problematic genetic engineering done by Soongs.)But what’s Q’s aim? This has been a lingering question all season. Here, he seeks out this Soong to present him with a cure for his daughter. In return, he wants Soong to help him get rid of Picard. This seems like an odd approach. Even though Q’s powers appear limited, he’s still strong enough to change entire timelines. So logically, he shouldn’t need a human like Soong to achieve his aims, unless they are completely unexpected. The Watcher brings this up herself and Picard doesn’t have an answer.Here’s a thought: What if the 2024 event that changes the timeline isn’t Renée’s flight, but rather Q giving this Soong a genetic cure which didn’t previously exist?We also check in on Operation Rescue Rios, where Rios is on a detention bus primed to be rescued by Seven and Raffi. Seven remarks, “If we beam him out in front of a dozen eyewitnesses, who knows what effect teleportation might have on the 21st century?”Raffi’s aghast reaction was the same as mine: “Time travel rules?!”Time travel episodes in “Trek” always involve a character randomly moralizing about the effects on the timeline. But such concerns feel a bit out of character for the Seven we’ve come to know in “Picard.” She’s a rogue bounty hunter type. Raffi is the Starfleet officer — she’s the one who should care about the temporal prime directive, an actual Starfleet policy. (Honestly, just by transporting to the 21st century, they’ve changed the timeline. And Raffi already recklessly shot off a phaser in the last episode, so that horse has left the barn.)Ultimately, Seven presses a button on a tricorder which causes the bus holding Rios to come to a stop. Somehow, this doesn’t violate Seven’s standards for impacting the 21st century, but let’s move on. Rios is rescued, and our brief look at the inhumane immigration system has come to an end.It’s still unclear exactly what the Borg Queen’s plan is, though it seems to involve taking on Jurati as a partner, similar to what she tried to do with Data in “First Contact.” Like Q, the Queen is totally unpredictable, which means Picard is fighting a battle on multiple fronts. All we know is that she wants to resurrect the Borg as a force. The reveal at the end, that Jurati has been kind of, sort of assimilated was a solid punch to end the week.This season has spent way more time in 2024 than one might expect, which gives the show less of a science fiction feel. Even so, there is enough material and enough quality performances to keep the season compelling. More

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      Will Smith Resigns From Academy After Slapping Chris Rock at Oscars

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      The producer of the telecast said that Smith had been asked to leave after slapping Rock, and that he had urged officials not to “physically remove” him. LOS ANGELES — Will Smith, who slapped the comedian Chris Rock at the Oscars, said Friday that he was resigning from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, saying that he had “betrayed” its trust with conduct that was “shocking, painful, and inexcusable.”The sudden announcement came late Friday afternoon, days after the Academy had condemned Mr. Smith’s actions and opened an inquiry into the incident. “I have directly responded to the Academy’s disciplinary hearing notice, and I will fully accept any and all consequences for my conduct,” he said in a statement on Friday. “I deprived other nominees and winners of their opportunity to celebrate and be celebrated for their extraordinary work,” he said in the statement. “I am heartbroken.”He said that he would “accept any further consequences the board deems appropriate.”“Change takes time,” he concluded, “and I am committed to doing the work to ensure that I never again allow violence to overtake reason.”The academy said that it accepted his resignation. “We have received and accepted Mr. Will Smith’s immediate resignation from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,” David Rubin, its president, said in a statement. “We will continue to move forward with our disciplinary proceedings against Mr. Smith for violations of the Academy’s Standards of Conduct, in advance of our next scheduled board meeting on April 18.”Now that he has resigned, Mr. Smith will no longer have access to academy screenings and events. He will also not be able to vote in the Academy Awards. However, he could still be nominated for an award, since being a member is not a requirement for eligibility. Mr. Smith’s resignation came roughly 12 hours after Will Packer, the lead producer of the Oscars telecast, spoke publicly about the episode for the first time. In an interview with Good Morning America” on ABC, the network which also broadcasts the Oscars, Mr. Packer said that after Mr. Smith had been asked to leave the ceremony, he urged the Academy leadership not to “physically remove” him from the theater in the middle of the live broadcast.Mr. Packer said he had learned from his co-producer, Shayla Cowan, that there were discussions of plans to “physically remove” Mr. Smith from the venue. So he said he immediately approached academy officials and told them that he believed Mr. Rock did not want to “make a bad situation worse.”The Altercation Between Will Smith and Chris RockThe Incident: The Oscars were derailed when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock, who made a joke about Mr. Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.His Speech: Moments after the onstage altercation, Mr. Smith won the Oscar for best actor. Here’s what he said in his acceptance speech.The Aftermath: Mr. Smith, who the academy said refused to leave following the incident, apologized to Mr. Rock the next day after the academy denounced his actions.A Triumph Tempered: Mr. Smith owned Serena and Venus Williams’s story in “King Richard.” Then he stole their moment at the Oscars.What Is Alopecia?: Ms. Smith’s hair loss condition played a major role in the incident.“I was advocating what Rock wanted in that time, which was not to physically remove Will Smith at that time,” Mr. Packer said. “Because as it has now been explained to me, that was the only option at that point. It has been explained to me that there was a conversation that I was not a part of to ask him to voluntarily leave.”In the interview, Mr. Packer also said that Mr. Rock’s joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair was unscripted “free-styling.”“He didn’t tell one of the planned jokes,” he said of Mr. Rock.Someone close to Mr. Rock who asked to speak anonymously because the Academy’s inquiry into the incident is ongoing said that Mr. Rock was never asked directly if he wanted Mr. Smith removed. Had he been asked, it was not clear how Mr. Rock would have responded, the person said. Mr. Rock was only asked if he wanted to press charges, and he said that he did not, the person said.Mr. Packer said that, like many viewers at home, he had originally thought the slap might be part of an unplanned comedic bit, and that he was not entirely sure until he spoke with Mr. Rock backstage that Mr. Smith had actually hit the comedian.“I just took a punch from Muhammad Ali,” Mr. Packer recalled Mr. Rock telling him.Mr. Packer said that Mr. Smith reached out and apologized to him the morning after the Oscars. And he praised Mr. Rock for having kept his cool. “Chris was keeping his head when everyone else was losing theirs,” he said.“I’ve never felt so immediately devastated,” Mr. Packer said of the incident.Asked if, after hearing Mr. Smith’s acceptance speech, he wished that the actor had left the ceremony, Mr. Packer said that he did, noting that Mr. Smith had not used his remarks to express real contrition and apologize to Mr. Rock.“If he wasn’t going to give that speech which made it truly better, then yes, yes,” Mr. Packer said when asked if he wished Mr. Smith had left the ceremony. “Because now you don’t have the optics of somebody who committed this act, didn’t nail it in terms of a conciliatory acceptance speech in that moment, who then continued to be in the room.”Mr. Smith did not apologize to Mr. Rock until Monday evening, after the Academy had condemned his actions and initiated disciplinary proceedings against him. Mr. Packer’s comments came after days of questions about why Mr. Smith had seemed to face no repercussions for striking a presenter on live television.The academy said in a statement earlier this week that Mr. Smith had been asked to leave the awards ceremony following the slap, but had remained. Then several publications questioned that account, citing anonymous sources, and reported that Mr. Packer had suggested he stay. Shortly after the ceremony ended Sunday, the Los Angeles Police Department issued a statement saying that the person who had been slapped had “declined to file a police report.”In the interview, Mr. Packer described his recollection of law enforcement’s involvement.“They were saying, this is battery, we will go get him,” Mr. Packer said in the interview. “We’re prepared to get him right now. You can press charges. We can arrest him.”“Chris was being very dismissive of those options,” Mr. Packer continued. “He was like, ‘No, I’m fine.’ He was like, ‘No, no, no.’”Both on Sunday night and in subsequent interviews this week, the Los Angeles police have maintained that Mr. Smith’s slap qualified as misdemeanor battery under California law — and that as a misdemeanor, officers cannot take action unless the victim in the case files charges, which Mr. Rock did not do.In an interview on Thursday, Deputy Chief Blake Chow, of the Los Angeles Police Department’s West Bureau, described the department’s role in less dramatic terms. At the Oscars, police officers are primarily responsible for patrolling outside the Dolby Theater and the Academy hires a security company to handle issues inside the building, he said.On Sunday, one police captain was stationed backstage as a liaison, the deputy chief said. The police captain inside did not observe the slap himself; but he quickly became aware of it, the deputy chief added. The police captain made contact with a representative for Mr. Rock shortly after the comedian had finished presenting an award and had returned backstage with his team, Deputy Chief Chow said.The representative communicated “Chris Rock’s wishes” that he did not want to press charges or file a police report, the deputy chief said. “He didn’t want to do anything.”The police department was not asked to escort Mr. Smith out of the venue, and even if the police had been asked to do that, such a request would not have fallen within the department’s purview, the deputy chief said.Detectives followed up on Monday with Mr. Rock’s representatives to ensure that he still did not want to take action. He reaffirmed that he did not, the deputy chief said.Mr. Rock made his first public comments about the incident on Wednesday at a comedy show in Boston. “I’m still kind of processing what happened,” Mr. Rock said, while promising to discuss the episode in greater depth later. “It’ll be serious, it’ll be funny, but I’d love to — I’m going to tell some jokes.”After nominating only white actors and actresses for its awards in 2015, drawing widespread criticism, the academy did it again the next year — overlooking performances like the one Mr. Smith gave in “Concussion.” At the time, Ms. Pinkett Smith was outspoken about what many people saw as an urgent need for the academy to become more inclusive. Smith was less pointed in his criticism, but joined her in a boycott of the ceremony, drawing attention to the #OscarsSoWhite movement.Nicole Sperling More

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      The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to HBO, Hulu, Apple TV+ and More in April

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      Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to their libraries. Here are our picks for some of April’s most promising new titles.(Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)Rinko Kikuchi in “Tokyo Vice.”Eros Hoagland/HBO MaxNew to HBO Max‘Tokyo Vice’ Season 1Starts streaming: April 7This TV adaptation of the journalist Jake Adelstein’s memoir is a spiritual successor of the influential 1980s show “Miami Vice,” examining organized crime and its effect on a nation’s social order in the 1990s. Ansel Elgort plays Adelstein, who struggles to be accepted as an American working in the highly competitive Japanese newspaper business. He later gains respect when he begins investigating the Yakuza. Created by the Tony-winning playwright J.T. Rogers (best known for “Oslo”), “Tokyo Vice” explores the complexities of class and race in an era when Japanese business was booming and some of the people making money didn’t want anyone — and especially not some upstart foreigner — to look too closely at how and why.‘The Flight Attendant’ Season 2Starts streaming: April 21Although Season 1 of “The Flight Attendant” deftly — and thoroughly — adapted Chris Bohjalian’s thriller novel of the same name, the series was so well-received that it was bound to get a sequel. At the start of Season 2, the alcoholic flight attendant Cassie (played by Kaley Cuoco, also one of the show’s executive producers) has cleaned up her life after helping international law enforcement solve a murder for which she was once the prime suspect. In the new episodes, Cassie settles into her new part-time gig as a spy and gets caught up in another dangerous mystery. Much of the series’ terrific supporting casts returns, including Rosie Perez as Cassie’s friendly colleague and Zosia Mamet as her best pal.‘Barry’ Season 3Starts streaming: April 24After a three-year layoff, Bill Hader returns as the hit man and aspiring actor Barry Berkman in the dark comedy “Barry,” the series he cocreated with Alec Berg. Season 2 took chances with its story, playing up the inherent absurdity of a stoic killer getting in touch with his feelings in a drama class. Taking cues from classic modern TV crime dramas like “Breaking Bad,” Hader and Berg ratcheted up the tension as Barry ducked the mob, the law and a vengeful old associate played by Stephen Root. Season 3 will continue down that path, while also spoofing the pretensions of Hollywood wannabes, including the promising ingénue Sally (Sarah Goldberg) and the big-hearted acting coach Gene (Henry Winkler).‘We Own This City’Starts streaming: April 25The latest Baltimore-centered series from David Simon, creator of “The Wire,” is a collaboration with his frequent writing partner, the best-selling crime novelist George Pelecanos. Based on the crime reporter Justin Fenton’s nonfiction book of the same name, “We Own This City” stars Jon Bernthal as Sgt. Wayne Jenkins, who becomes involved with Baltimore’s Gun Trace Task Force, a well-meaning but ultimately corrupt organization that attempted to quell crime by tracking how gangs armed themselves. Set in the years immediately after the city’s police department came under increased scrutiny because of the death of Freddie Gray in its custody, “We Own This City” is a gritty drama about how some entrenched institutions respond to attempts at reform: by learning the new laws well enough to skirt them.Also arriving:April 4“The Invisible Pilot”April 5“Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off”April 8“A Black Lady Sketch Show” Season 3April 14“The Garcias” Season 1April 24“The Baby” Season 1April 27“The Survivor”April 28“The Way Down: God, Greed, and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin” Part 2Cynthia Erivo in “Roar.”Apple TV+New to Apple TV+‘Slow Horses’ Season 1Starts streaming: April 1Gary Oldman stars in this twisty British spy drama as Jackson Lamb, the grouchy supervisor of a ramshackle MI5 division known as Slough House, where disgraced agents are sent to do drudge work. Jack Lowden plays River Cartwright, a young operative determined to claw his way back from the bottom by doing some unauthorized investigating on a tricky case — and ends up dragging his misfit cohorts into it. Based on a Mick Herron series of mystery-thriller novels, “Slow Horses” features a terrific cast (including Olivia Cooke as Cartwright’s savvy-but-cynical colleague, Jonathan Pryce as his disappointed father and Kristin Scott Thomas as an upper-level MI5 boss) and a plot rooted equally in old-fashioned espionage stories and the modern realities of European security.‘Roar’ Season 1Starts streaming: April 15The writer-producer team of Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch — the cocreators of the TV series “GLOW” — go the anthology route with their new project “Roar,” which features lightly surreal half-hour dramas and comedies about women struggling to be seen and heard. Nicole Kidman is an executive producer, and also stars in one episode as an Australian woman taking her increasingly senile mother (Judy Davis) on a road trip, in a desperate effort to keep their family memories alive. Other episodes feature Issa Rae, as a best-selling author who travels to Hollywood and gets ignored by the people who want to adapt her book; Betty Gilpin, as a retired model whose husband (Daniel Dae Kim) puts her on a shelf as a literal trophy wife; and Merritt Wever, as a woman who falls in love with a duck.Also arriving:April 8“Pinecone & Pony” Season 1April 22“They Call Me Magic”April 29“Shining Girls”Andrew Garfield in “Under the Banner of Heaven.”Michelle Faye/FXNew to Hulu‘Under the Banner of Heaven’Starts streaming: April 28In Jon Krakauer’s controversial 2003 nonfiction book “Under the Banner of Heaven,” the author combined the true story of a heinous crime committed by a Mormon splinter group with the story of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints itself — making the argument that the line between fringe fanaticism and mainstream religion is thinner than many presume. The TV adaptation was written by the Oscar-winning “Milk” screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, who grew up Mormon (and who also worked on the HBO series “Big Love,” about polygamous families in Utah). This mini-series focuses mainly on the murders covered in Krakauer’s book, with Andrew Garfield playing the detective investigating the case.Also arriving:April 1“Love Me” Season 1“Night Raiders”“Snakehead”April 4“Madagascar: A Little Wild” Season 7April 5“The Croods: Family Tree” Season 2“Monster Family 2: Nobody’s Perfect”April 6“The Hardy Boys” Season 2April 7“Agnes”April 8“Woke” Season 2April 9“American Sicario”April 10“The Hating Game”April 14“The Kardashians” Season 1April 21“Captive Audience”April 29“Crush”Rueby Wood, center, as Nate in “Better Nate Than Ever.”David Lee/Disney+New to Disney+‘Better Nate Than Ever’Starts streaming: April 1Based on Tim Federle’s Y.A. novel, “Better Nate Than Ever” tells the story of the enthusiastic and socially awkward middle school theater kid Nate Foster (Rueby Wood), who hops a bus from Pittsburgh with his best friend Libby (Aria Brooks) to attend an open audition for a Broadway musical. Federle wrote and directed this movie adaptation, which retains two of the central ideas from his book: that it takes a winning personality and a lot of good luck to make it in show business, and that Nate won’t succeed until he is honest with himself and with his loved ones about his sexuality. Lisa Kudrow plays a pivotal role as Nate’s Aunt Heidi, whose fading dreams of stage stardom still inspire her nephew.Also arriving:April 13“Scrat Tales” Season 1April 22“The Biggest Little Farm: The Return”“Explorer: The Last Tepui”“Polar Bear”April 27“Sketchbook” Season 1New to Peacock‘Killing It’ Season 1Starts streaming: April 14The affable comic actor Craig Robinson anchors the half-hour dramedy “Killing It,” playing a particular kind of Florida Man: an unflappable dreamer named Craig, who keeps pursuing his plans to become an entrepreneur even as he stumbles repeatedly into catastrophes. Rell Battle plays Craig’s brother Isaiah, who tries to lure him into a life of crime, while Claudia O’Doherty plays Jillian, an upbeat Australian ride-share driver who presents him with a strange and uniquely Floridian business opportunity: the chance to kill giant snakes for reward money. Cocreated by the “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” writers Luke Del Tredici and Dan Goor, “Killing It” is a show about people following especially rocky paths as they chase their versions of the American Dream.Also arriving:April 20“So Dumb It’s Criminal” Season 1April 28“Smother” Season 2Christopher Walken in “The Outlaws.”James Pardon/Amazon StudiosNew to Prime Video‘The Outlaws’ Season 1Starts streaming: April 1Stephen Merchant is best known for co-writing the Ricky Gervais sitcoms “The Office” and “Extras,” but he tries something different with “The Outlaws,” a show halfway between a broad comedy and a crime drama. Merchant plays one of a handful of eclectic British citizens sentenced to community service to atone for various petty misdemeanors. As they shovel garbage in a blighted neighborhood, the members of this motley crew get to know each other, learning there’s more to their lives than their mistakes. The cast of cons also includes Christopher Walken as an aged reprobate, Darren Boyd as an uptight businessman, Eleanor Tomlinson as a celebrity influencer, Rhianne Barreto as an honors student who compulsively shoplifts, and Gamba Cole as a reluctant gangster who accidentally gets everyone into bigger trouble.Also arriving:April 8“All the Old Knives”April 15“Outer Range” Season 1April 29“Undone” Season 2 More

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      Jerrod Carmichael Comes Out in ‘Rothaniel,’ but It’s About More

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      In “Rothaniel” on HBO, the stand-up grapples with secrets that defined his upbringing, the toll silence has taken and the price he’s paying to break it.In his 2014 debut special, “Love at the Store,” the stand-up comic Jerrod Carmichael offered advice to gay people about the right time to come out of the closet. “Save it until you need it,” he said, quipping: “I would come out of the closet when a friend asked me to move.”It’s one of many of his old jokes that hit differently after “Rothaniel,” a riveting new special from Carmichael who, sitting onstage at the Blue Note Jazz Club in New York, reveals that he is gay, has been lying about it for years and wants to now tell the truth. Coming out of the closet will be the headline, especially in a stand-up scene historically rife with homophobia, but the most fascinating, charged material in this hour (premiering at 9 p.m. Friday on HBO) grapples with the roots of his silence — and the price of breaking it.Stylishly directed by Bo Burnham, who staged Carmichael’s last special, “8,” with similar idiosyncrasy, “Rothaniel” begins with a street-level shot looking up at snow falling, then follows Carmichael walking toward the club, but from so far away that you can’t make him out. As a director of specials, Burnham specializes in claustrophobic close-ups, which he employs here too, but he begins at a distance.As soon as Carmichael starts talking, you realize that he has kept us at one, too — until this reintroduction. While he has the same charming smile and supremely relaxed conversational style, he sounds different here: melancholy, earnest and poetic, direct. He’s now sitting, encouraging the crowd to talk back, speaking in an intimate tone, leveling with us and himself. Those old provocative stand-up premises only hinted at this new man, especially when they dug into family matters. “I want to talk about secrets,” he says early on here. “I felt like I was birthed into them.”This is a work about the complexity and ubiquity of secrets. It’s a word he has used before in similar ways. In his last special, he looked at a white woman in the front row who came with a Black boyfriend and said: “If his grandma were alive, you would be a secret.”Now he isn’t joking. Or he isn’t only joking. This special doesn’t feel like stand-up but it is. Carmichael is masterful at disguising punch lines in a thought so as not to interrupt its flow. The jokes are ultimately ornamental, decorating the emotional core: a story told through confessions. The initial one reveals that his first name is actually his middle name. The special’s title is a reference to his real one, a conflation of two of the names of his grandfathers. He explains in detail how much he hated the name, how he bribed yearbook editors in school to change it and got the bank to remove it from cards. It’s one of many biographical moments that illustrate how he developed the tools for the closet, how to live with things that, as he put it, “exist but don’t exist.”Much of this has to do with family history, which he has always talked about in his work but glancingly. Now he is blunt, detailing lives that also held secrets people knew but didn’t at the same time. Carmichael is alert to how pervasive they are, showing us the normal ones we don’t think much about. For example, he digs into the irony that we all are a product of our parents having sex, but none of us can stand to talk with our parents about sex.Carmichael is an incredibly poised, even chilly performer, comfortable in silences, seemingly unflappable. But what he does in this special is deconstruct this persona, reveal it as a useful mask, even an inherited one. He doesn’t just show us the roots of this façade, but also why he clung to it — and what it cost him. Some of this, like his explanation of why he smiles so much, is brutally frank. Other times it’s really funny. Being in the closet, he says, made him overcompensate: “Sometimes we’re making out,” he says about a boyfriend, “and just whisper ‘no homo’ to each other.”The heart of this show is about the painful tension between family ties and personal growth, and the most searing segments focus on his relationship with his mother. Her reaction to his sexuality, rooted in her faith, leaves him cold. The fact that he has such love for her, that he describes himself as an echo of her in some ways, makes this even more poignant. This special, which at its climax finds its star hunched in a nearly fetal posture, hits jarring notes that have never been matched in this form.It’s not just emotionally raw, but present and immediate in a way that a polished joke will never be. In one remarkable moment toward the end, he looks directly at the camera, and I physically turned away, as if it were so private that it would be impolite to watch.Art this uncomfortable tends to have rough edges, and this special does, too. But it’s artfully presented, almost to a fault. Burnham and Carmichael are such slickly skillful and assured artists that it can be hard to believe them when they get messy. Carmichael isn’t trying to tell an uplifting story so much as a real one, and “Rothaniel” does not build to a tidy resolution. It’s raw, and you might have some questions.I would recommend watching Carmichael’s lovely little 2019 documentary, “Home Videos” (also on HBO Max), shot in his hometown Winston-Salem, N.C., that features a conversation with his mother to give her some equal time. You can see the warmth between them, and his role as a needling son, asking her if she ever did cocaine or slept with a woman. When she says no, he tosses out abruptly that he hooked up with men. In a later interview, he downplayed the comment as just something he said in the moment.His mother has her story, too, though this special isn’t about that. Earlier this week, Carmichael performed at Union Hall in Brooklyn to prepare for hosting “Saturday Night Live” this weekend, an episode that will be surely dominated by bits about the Academy Awards. He joked that he was the least famous person to ever host “S.N.L.” and that all you had to do to get the gig was come out of the closet. He said he hadn’t talked to his mother in months though he once did every day.Once again, he was sitting, chatting with the crowd less than delivering a set, and seemed to be seeking something in the moment, a real experience, albeit one that could help him build a monologue. Carmichael asked the audience what he should talk about on Saturday. Someone yelled gas prices. “I’ve been rich too long,” he retorted.Another person mentioned the feud between Kanye West and Pete Davidson. Carmichael said he knew both of them through discussions about mental health and suicide. “But now,” he joked, “every time I hear about either of them I want to kill myself.”But when someone mentioned possibly doing a song, Carmichael shook his head, saying that was not in his performer’s tool kit. “I wish I was an entertainer,” he said. “My skill is I’m not afraid and I have a pocket full of matches.” More

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      Oscars Producer Did Not Want Will Smith Physically Removed After Slap

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      Will Packer, the producer of the telecast, said that Smith had been asked to leave after slapping Chris Rock, and then there were discussions of having him physically removed.Will Packer, the lead producer of the Oscars telecast that was thrown into upheaval after the actor Will Smith went onstage and slapped the comedian Chris Rock, said Friday that after Mr. Smith had been asked to leave the ceremony, he urged the Academy leadership not to “physically remove” him from the theater in the middle of the live broadcast.Mr. Packer said he had learned from his co-producer, Shayla Cowan, that there were discussions of plans to “physically remove” Mr. Smith from the venue. So he said he immediately approached academy officials and told them that he believed Mr. Rock did not want to “make a bad situation worse.”“I was advocating what Rock wanted in that time, which was not to physically remove Will Smith at that time,” Mr. Packer said. “Because as it has now been explained to me, that was the only option at that point. It has been explained to me that there was a conversation that I was not a part of to ask him to voluntarily leave.”EXCLUSIVE: #Oscars producer Will Packer tells Good Morning America about the frenetic aftermath of actor Will Smith slapping host Chris Rock live on stage on Hollywood’s biggest night. https://t.co/AeoYcGkM32 pic.twitter.com/8z35t8TPFw— Good Morning America (@GMA) April 1, 2022
      Mr. Packer gave his first interview since Sunday’s broadcast to “Good Morning America” on ABC, the network which also broadcasts the Oscars. In the interview, Mr. Packer said that Mr. Rock’s joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair was unscripted “free-styling”“He didn’t tell one of the planned jokes,” he said of Mr. Rock.Mr. Packer said that, like many viewers at home, he had originally thought the slap might be part of an unplanned comedic bit, and that he was not entirely sure until he spoke with Mr. Rock back stage that Mr. Smith had actually hit the comedian.“I just took a punch from Muhammad Ali,” Mr. Packer recalled Mr. Rock telling him.Mr. Packer said that Mr. Smith reached out and apologized to him the morning after the Oscars. And he praised Mr. Rock for having kept his cool. “Chris was keeping his head when everyone else was losing theirs,” he said.The Altercation Between Will Smith and Chris RockThe Incident: The Oscars were derailed when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock, who made a joke about Mr. Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.His Speech: Moments after the onstage altercation, Mr. Smith won the Oscar for best actor. Here’s what he said in his acceptance speech.The Aftermath: Mr. Smith, who the academy said refused to leave following the incident, apologized to Mr. Rock the next day after the academy denounced his actions.A Triumph Tempered: Mr. Smith owned Serena and Venus Williams’s story in “King Richard.” Then he stole their moment at the Oscars.What Is Alopecia?: Ms. Smith’s hair loss condition played a major role in the incident.“I’ve never felt so immediately devastated,” Mr. Packer said of the incident.Asked if, after hearing Mr. Smith’s acceptance speech, he wished that the actor had left the ceremony, Mr. Packer said that he did, noting that Mr. Smith had not used his remarks to express real contrition and apologize to Mr. Rock.“If he wasn’t going to give that speech which made it truly better, then yes, yes,” Mr. Packer said when asked if he wished Mr. Smith had left the ceremony. “Because now you don’t have the optics of somebody who committed this act, didn’t nail it in terms of a conciliatory acceptance speech in that moment, who then continued to be in the room.”Shortly after the ceremony ended Sunday, the Los Angeles Police Department issued a statement saying that the person who had been slapped had “declined to file a police report.”In the interview, Mr. Packer described his recollection of law enforcement’s involvement.“They were saying, you know, this is battery, was the word they use in that moment,” Mr. Packer said in the interview. “They said we will go get him; we are prepared. We’re prepared to get him right now. You can press charges. We can arrest him. They were laying out the options, and as they were talking, Chris was being very dismissive of those options. He was like, ‘No, I’m fine.’ He was like, ‘No, no, no.’”Both on Sunday night and in subsequent interviews this week, the Los Angeles police have maintained that Mr. Smith’s slap qualified as misdemeanor battery under California law — and that as a misdemeanor, officers cannot take action unless the victim in the case files charges, which Mr. Rock did not do.In an interview on Thursday, Deputy Chief Blake Chow, of the Los Angeles Police Department’s West Bureau, described the department’s role in less dramatic terms. At the Oscars, police officers are primarily responsible for patrolling outside the Dolby Theater and the Academy hires a security company to handle issues inside the building, he said.On Sunday, one police captain was stationed backstage as a liaison, the deputy chief said. The police captain inside did not observe the slap himself; but he quickly became aware of it, the deputy chief added. The police captain made contact with a representative for Mr. Rock shortly after the comedian had finished presenting an award and had returned backstage with his team, Deputy Chief Chow said.The representative communicated “Chris Rock’s wishes” that he did not want to press charges or file a police report, the deputy chief said. “He didn’t want to do anything.”The police department was not asked to escort Mr. Smith out of the venue, and even if the police had been asked to do that, such a request would not have fallen within the department’s purview, the deputy chief said.Detectives followed up on Monday with Mr. Rock’s representatives to ensure that he still did not want to take action. He reaffirmed that he did not, the deputy chief said.Mr. Rock made his first public comments about the incident on Wednesday at a comedy show in Boston. “I’m still kind of processing what happened,” Mr. Rock said, while promising to discuss the episode in greater depth later. “It’ll be serious, it’ll be funny, but I’d love to — I’m going to tell some jokes.”The academy said Wednesday that it had initiated disciplinary proceedings against Mr. Smith “for violations of the academy’s standards of conduct, including inappropriate physical contact, abusive or threatening behavior, and compromising the integrity of the academy.” It said that Mr. Smith would be given a chance to respond and that at its next board meeting, on April 18, it “may take any disciplinary action, which may include suspension, expulsion or other sanctions.” More