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      Jack Willis, TV Producer and Empathetic Filmmaker, Dies at 87

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      A survivor of a crippling accident, his documentaries and news coverage for public television focused on poverty, race and other social issues.Jack Willis, a journalist and television executive who won several Emmys and a Polk Award for his innovative films and news and documentary programming during the embryonic years of cable and public broadcasting, died on Feb. 9 in Zurich. He was 87.He underwent assisted suicide at a clinic there, his wife, Mary Pleshette Willis, said. He lived in Manhattan.When he was in his late 30s, Mr. Willis broke his neck in a body surfing accident that temporarily left him a quadriplegic before he miraculously recovered, his wife said, inspiring a television movie. But after a half century, the injuries were taking their toll. Six years ago, he broke his hip and began using a wheelchair, she said.From 1971 to 1973, Mr. Willis was director of programming and production for WNET, the public television station in New York, where he introduced innovative local news coverage as executive producer of “The 51st State,” a program that took its name from the zany 1969 mayoral campaign of the author Norman Mailer, who proposed that New York City secede from New York State.The program, which won an Emmy Award, focused on communities rather than the more traditional fare of the nightly local news.Patrick Watson, center, the anchor of the WNET program “The 51st State,” moderated a discussion of racial tensions in New York City in 1971. Mr. Willis was the program’s executive producer. WNET records, Special Collections, University of Maryland Libraries“He pioneered in-depth local coverage of New York’s outer boroughs on WNET, focusing on long-ignored and disenfranchised minorities and immigrants, often letting them speak for themselves,” said Stephen B. Shepard, former editor in chief of Business Week and founding dean of the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. “For Jack, it was always about the people affected by government decisions.”Mr. Willis was an executive producer of another Emmy-winning series, “The Great American Dream Machine,” a weekly 90-minute program on PBS. The television critic John J. O’Connor of The New York Times, writing in 1971, said the program had been conceived as “a free‐form program that could offer the viewer worthwhile bits and pieces of humor, controversy, entertainment, investigative reporting, opinion, documentary and theatrical sketches.”“It has been called a hodgepodge of the brilliant and the trite,” he added, but concluded that it was “one of the most exciting and imaginative segments of television to come along this season.”Looking back, Mr. Willis himself told The Times in 2020: “It was a great time in public television. If you thought it, you could do it.”Marshall Efron, left, and Andy Rooney, two of the stars of the PBS program “The Great American Dream Machine,” in 1972. Mr. Willis was its executive producer. WNETIn 1963, he directed his first documentary, “The Streets of Greenwood,” a 20-minute film about a voter-registration drive in the Mississippi Delta. Collaborating with two friends, Phil Wardenburg and John Reavis, Mr. Willis shot it with a camera he had borrowed from the folk singer Pete Seeger, whose concert in a cotton field was featured in the film.In 1979, Mr. Willis shared the George Polk Award for best documentary with Saul Landau for “Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang.” The film focused on the journalist Paul Jacobs’s investigation of radiation hazards from atomic testing in Nevada in the 1950s and ’60s and the federal government’s efforts to suppress information on its threat to public health.Two other films he produced — “Lay My Burden Down” (1966), about the plight of tenant farmers in rural Alabama, and “Every Seventh Child” (1967), questioning tax subsidies and other government benefits for Catholic education — were shown at the New York Film Festival.Mr. Willis wrote, directed and produced “Appalachia: Rich Land Poor People” (1968), which exposed grinding poverty largely caused, the film argued, by corporate greed, racism and ineffective local government.Mr. Willis’s commitment to civil rights was reflected in his enduring friendship with the singer Harry Belafonte, an activist in the movement, who described Mr. Willis in an email as “a soul brother” whose “intellect and humor, combined with his courageousness, make him one of the most precious people I have ever known.”“For those on the political left,” Mr. Belafonte added, “he was living proof of the proverb, ‘You can cage the singer but not the song.’”Jack Lawrence Willis was born on June 20, 1934, in Milwaukee to Louis Willis, a manufacturer of women’s shoes, and Libbie (Feingold) Willis, a homemaker. The family moved to California when he was 9.He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1956 from the University of California, Los Angeles, where he also played shortstop on the varsity baseball team. He liked to recall that he was recruited by a Boston Red Sox minor-league team.Mr. Willis dropped out of U.C.L.A. School of Law to serve in the Army for two years, then graduated in 1962 and moved to New York, where he hoped to connect with a job teaching in Africa or the Middle East.While waiting for a job abroad that never materialized, he worked briefly in television for Allen Funt’s “Candid Camera” and David Susskind’s “Open End.”He ran a movie production company in California, then was hired as vice president for programming and production at CBS Cable, a short-lived but well-received performing arts channel.From 1990 to 1997, Mr. Willis was president of KTCA, the public television station in Minneapolis-St. Paul, then returned to New York, where, working for George Soros’s Open Society Institute, he developed a media program. In 1999, he was a founder of Link TV, a nonprofit satellite TV network. He retired in 2011.Jack Willis in an undated photo. via Mary WillisIn addition to his wife, he is survived by their two daughters, Sarah Willis and Kate Willis Ladell; three grandchildren; and his brother, Richard.Mr. Willis and his wife wrote a book, “… But There Are Always Miracles” (1974), about his body-surfing accident in 1969 off Southampton, N.Y. They had been planning to marry when a crashing wave broke his neck and left him paralyzed from the chest down. He was told he would never walk again.After two operations and six months of inpatient rehabilitation, he walked out of Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine in Manhattan. The couple married a year later.His story was adapted into a TV film, “Some Kind of Miracle” (1979), with a screenplay by the couple. They wrote and produced other films together.Shortly before he died, Ms. Willis said, her husband told her that the accident had “taught me to put everything in perspective — including the fear of failure.” He admitted to no regrets, she said, “except,” she quoted him as saying, “for taking that wave and turning down the Boston Red Sox.” More

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      ‘American Song Contest’ Puts a Stateside Spin on Eurovision

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      Stars vs. hopefuls. State vs. state. Eurovision fans will recognize the format of NBC’s new original song competition. For everyone else, here’s a primer.Hosted by Kelly Clarkson and Snoop Dogg, the eight-week reality competition “American Song Contest,” scheduled to premiere Monday on NBC, is totally new.Its format, however, will be familiar to millions of people across the Atlantic: The show emulates the Eurovision Song Contest, in which countries duke it out in a singing battle for pop supremacy. Eurovision catapulted ABBA’s career in 1974, and the most recent winner, the Italian glam-rock band Maneskin, has gone on to achieve global fame, appearing in January as the musical guest on “Saturday Night Live.”ABBA’s victory in the Eurovision Song Contest of 1974 catapulted the group into international stardom. Robert Dear/Associated PressThe American version will largely follow the Eurovision template, including the live broadcasts. “We are very literal,” the executive producer Ben Silverman, who helped translate “The Office” into American and pursued the Eurovision rights for years, said last week by phone.Fine, but that does not help NBC viewers much since Americans are largely unaware of Eurovision’s intricacies. The headline? “American Song Contest” is not “American Idol” or “The Voice.” It is, in many ways, more layered than those shows — and more combustible: a state-vs.-state, stars-vs.-hopefuls showdown in which group and solo artists compete for the title of Best Original Song.So those are the basics. But in this time of Red State/Blue State polarization, can America handle Jewel (Alaska) squaring off against Michael Bolton (Connecticut)? Sisqó (Maryland) against … Jake’O (Wisconsin)? Let’s dive into the fun stuff.Where are the contestants from?With 56 entries encompassing 50 states plus five territories and the District of Columbia, “American Song Contest” has even more contestants than Eurovision, whose 2022 edition, in May, will feature 40 countries ranging from tiny San Marino (pop. around 34,000) to the much larger Germany (83 million). The scope is similar here: Sabyu, from the Northern Mariana Islands (pop. 47,000), will rub elbows with Sweet Taboo, representing California (nearly 40 million people).Whereas each European country independently selects its entry, the American show’s team relied on a network of music-industry insiders. “We went through the professional community to spread the news; we spent a lot of time having conversations, making sure people really understood what this was,” the executive producer and showrunner Audrey Morrissey (a veteran of “The Voice”) said by phone. “We had a big submission process that lasted for months, with several rounds of review.”Will I know any of the songs?No, because they have to be new. Contestants don’t have to write their own material, though — this is not a singer-songwriter contest.A key criterion is that the songs cannot be longer than 2 minutes 45 seconds, which is shorter than Eurovision’s three minutes. “It’s right to the point, pow!” said Christer Björkman, one of four Swedish Eurovision experts brought in as executive producers and a former Eurovision competitor, from 1992. “The contestants really need to nail it from the beginning with energy and everything.”Wait, what are Jewel and Michael Bolton doing there?“All those people wanted to be on the show,” Silverman said of the American celebrities. “They wanted to represent their state. And they earned it with their songs,” he added, pointing out that it will be fun to watch famous people go head-to-head with up-and-comers like the Brooklyn singer-songwriter Enisa, who represents New York. Once again this is true to the Eurovision format.The singer-songwriter Jewel will represent her home state of Alaska.Duane Prokop/Getty Images Michael Bolton will represent Connecticut.Phillip Faraone/Getty ImagesCelebrities and hopefuls alike must have a strong connection to their state or territory. Bolton, for example, was born and has spent most of his life in Connecticut; Jewel grew up in famously tough conditions in Alaska. And if Oklahoma is represented by a K-pop singer, AleXa, well, that’s because she is from there.“It is different to say, ‘I’m not here to get a record contract or become a star — I’m here to represent my home and I’m proud to do that,’” said Anders Lenhoff, another member of the Swedish special-ops executive producing team, in a joint video interview with Björkman. “We see it in Eurovision all the time but there are no shows like that in the U.S.”How does the elimination process work?The first five episodes, referred to as “qualifiers,” introduce 11 of the songs per show (one busy week will have 12). Through those early rounds, the 56 entries will be progressively winnowed down to 22, which are then split into two semifinals of 11 each. Another vote sends five performers from each semi to the grand finale, on May 9.Viewers will be invited to vote, and the results will be balanced against the votes of a 56-person jury representing all the participating constituencies. Jurors are not permitted to vote for their own states or territories.Do bigger states have an advantage?“The great thing about this format,” Morrissey said, “which we remained faithful to from Eurovision, is that there is no advantage for an artist and a song coming from a more populous state.” Eliminations are made based on a complex points system in which, according to NBC, “every state and territory votes with equal power, regardless of population.”Anyway, as Morrissey noted, “There might be more people voting that know people from Texas than they do Guam, but they haven’t heard that song from Guam yet — it might steal their hearts.”In addition to the 50 states, the District of Columbia and five U.S. territories have also put forth competitors, including Jason J., who represents Guam.NBCThe history of Eurovision (where, admittedly, the voting rules have changed many times over the years) tends to confirm that the votes seem relatively fair: Ireland has won the contest a record seven times whereas France, with roughly 13 times Ireland’s population, has only five.Which is to say: Don’t yet rule out Wyoming.Will there be outlandish contestants?Eurovision is famous for some, er, eccentric entries — this year’s competition will include such numbers as “Give That Wolf a Banana” and “Eat Your Salad,” which live up to their titles. It is natural to wonder whether “American Song Contest” will honor that tradition as well. “We have the diversity of America and the diversity of American music represented,” Silverman said. “One person’s cliché is another person’s truth. Some of them are self-aware, some of them aren’t.”We’ll take that as a yes. More

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      Exploring the Diversity, and Precariousness, of French Stand-Up

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      Fanny Herrero, the creator of “Call My Agent!,” returns with a Netflix show called “Standing Up,” which follows four struggling Parisian comics.PARIS — In the opening scenes of “Standing Up,” Nezir (Younès Boucif) mines his life for stand-up material as he cycles across Paris on a food delivery shift.“I’m poor,” he says to himself, testing the sound of the words in French. “It’s not handy to be poor. I don’t recommend it.” On the way, he crosses paths with a friend, Aïssatou (Mariama Gueye), who is begging a shop owner to advertise her comedy show.“Standing Up” is the latest project from Fanny Herrero, who created the showbiz comedy “Call My Agent!” In this new show, which comes to Netflix on Friday, she again takes viewers behind the scenes to see how deals and careers are made, this time in a less prestigious corner of French cultural life: stand-up comedy.Aïssatou and Nezir head to the Drôle Comedy Club — the show’s title in French is “Drôle,” meaning “funny” — for that night’s performances. The club’s owner, Bling (Jean Siuen), has had success, but is now struggling to come up with material, as the next generation of comics come up in his own club.Over the course of six episodes, “Standing Up” explores what it takes — and means — to “make it” in comedy. Herrero conceived of the show after a dinner three years ago with the comedian Gad Elmaleh, who told her about Paris’s growing stand-up scene. On his recommendation, she went to the Paname, the city’s first stand-up comedy club. She was amazed by the diversity onstage, she said in a recent interview: People of different ethnicities and from various backgrounds — from the suburbs outside Paris, from other cities, from the countryside — were performing. “It’s the story of our country,” Herrero said.The show’s struggling stand-up comics reflect this diversity. Nezir, who is of Algerian descent, and Aïssatou, who is Black, have both been in the game for a while, and are trying to get more recognition. Bling’s real name is Étienne, a very French name he jokes his Vietnamese parents chose to help him assimilate.The show frequently addresses racism in French society, even as some of the country’s politicians and high-profile intellectuals have recently decried the spread of American “woke” ideas around identity.In one episode, the police stop Aïssatou after she has looked through large shopping bags for her sunglasses. She jokes about the incident that night, and is warned not to mention at her solo show by her white producer. In another, Nezir makes a joke about how the only Arabs well-to-do Frenchwomen encounter are Uber drivers or Saudi princes. “As an Arab in France, I’ve lived in a lot of situations as Nezir,” said Boucif, who is also a rapper and holds a master’s in environmental law from the prestigious Sorbonne University.The show’s title in French is “Drôle,” meaning “funny.”Mika Cotellon/NetflixApolline (Elsa Guedj) meets Nezir (Boucif) at the comedy club.Mika Cotellon/NetflixBling (Jean Siuen) has had success in the comedy world, but is struggling to come up with material when the show opens. Mika Cotellon/NetflixPeople of color were instrumental in establishing the French stand-up scene, which is far younger than in the United States or Britain. Between 2006 and 2015, “Jamel Comedy Club” aired on French television, hosted by Jamel Debbouze, one of the country’s top comedians. Himself of Moroccan heritage, Debbouze featured largely people of color on his show. This gave “a voice to ethnic minorities that they didn’t have on TV shows,” said the comedian Paul Taylor, who performs in a mix of English and French.Taylor said there are only four clubs in France that follow the English-speaking stand-up tradition, with a lineup of several comedians each night. Generally, solo shows are favored in France, a result of the country’s strong theatrical tradition. Besides Paname, the three other clubs only opened in the last three years: Madame Sarfati, Fridge and Barbès Comedy Club.The Drôle Comedy Club in “Standing Up” was a purpose-built set, just in case Paris went into lockdown because of the coronavirus. The actors practiced their sets at Barbès Comedy Club, which opened for clandestine nights during Paris’s second lockdown, with around 10 comedians performing for around 30 audience members. The audience didn’t know the “Standing Up” actors weren’t comics, or that they were practicing for a television show.When it came time to film the characters’s stand-up sets at Drôle, the audience was made up of nonactors, with a camera trained on the performing comedian, and another on the audience’s reactions. “There is nothing worse than fake laughs and fake reactions,” Herrero said.Well-respected French comedians — Jason Brokerss, Fanny Ruwet and Shirley Souagnon — wrote the characters’ sets. Like “Call My Agent!,” the show features cameos, in this case from other French comics, including Hakim Jemili and Panayotis Pascot, who perform snippets of sets throughout each episode. Unlike with the appearances by internationally famous actors in “Call My Agent!,” Herrero doesn’t expect the French public, let alone Netflix viewers from other countries, to recognize these performers.Netflix has had a significant impact on stand-up in France. Before the rise of streaming services, only dogged French stand-up fans dug around the internet to look for performances. Now, comedy specials hosted by the streaming service have made American comedy much more accessible in France.Boucif named Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle and Louis C.K. as comedians he liked from his research for playing Nezir. “I like stand-up when it’s subversive, when it’s not politically correct,” he said. When asked about Louis C.K.’s admitted sexual misconduct and the controversy surrounding Chappelle’s comments about transgender people, Boucif said he didn’t know about those issues.Nezir and Aïssatou (Mariama Gueye) are both trying to make it as stand-up comics.Mika Cotellon/NetflixBoucif’s response is similar to the way many French comedians approach American comedy, Taylor said. They gravitated to the same few names who got the big Netflix deals, he said, but don’t understand the surrounding context.One of the later episodes of “Standing Up” includes a translated Louis C.K. joke. Herrero, who is aware of the comic’s past sexual misconduct, said the writing staff chose him because they needed a name the French audience would know.In her career so far, Herrero has broken with French television norms. She was not only the screenwriter for “Call My Agent!” but also, following the first season, named its showrunner. Typically, French screenwriters conceive of shows, then hand their script and control to directors, she said. The role Herrero negotiated with network executives looks more like the American showrunner model, where she retained overall control.France 2, the broadcaster that aired “Call My Agent!,” hasn’t run anything like it since. “It was a miracle,” Herrero said. “Most [French studios] are doing cop shows and family comedies,” she added.“Standing Up” is unusual in the French TV landscape for being a dramedy. The show’s target audience is relatively young, and Herrero said she hopes it will help stand-up comedy continue to gain credibility in the French mainstream.“It’s because of Netflix this show can exist,” she added. More

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      The Secret Is Out on Nicola Coughlan, a ‘Bridgerton’ Star

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      A few years ago, Nicola Coughlan was working in an optician’s office in Ireland. Now, with “Bridgerton” and “Derry Girls,” she’s starring in two of the most beloved shows on Netflix.In January, right around her 35th birthday, the Irish actress Nicola Coughlan took what she called “a mega-holiday” — New York City, Austin, Hawaii, New York City again.Back in Manhattan, she played tourist: She ate at fancy restaurants, went to a taping of “Saturday Night Live” (not quite the tourist, she went to the after-party, too), and saw a Broadway show. The show was “Company,” a musical about a 35-year-old in the midst of an existential crisis, and as Coughlan left the theater, she saw a towering Times Square billboard. The billboard, an ad for the new season of the saucy Netflix costume drama “Bridgerton,” showed her own face at the center.“We walked up the street a little bit and there it was, like, huge, huge, huge,” she said. “Oh my goodness, it was massive.”Coughlan — chirpy, confiding, with the most perfect skin I have ever seen on an adult human — was speaking at the end of her trip, just before she flew back home to London. She had selected an Irish pub, Molly’s Shebeen, in Gramercy Park, and arrived a few minutes late because her car had first taken her instead to Molly Wee, a different pub near Penn Station.Molly’s seemed like a parody of an Irish pub. “I enjoy this interpretation,” she said. Coughlan is not above a bit of parody herself. She carries a leprechaun key ring and her Instagram bio reads “Small Irish Acting Person.” That afternoon she wore winter white — as a self-described “messy bastard,” this was her version of risk-taking — and a small horde of delicate gold jewelry, including a nameplate necklace. The fans at the pub, who recognized her from the widely celebrated Netflix comedy “Derry Girls,” knew her name already.Coughlan didn’t initially realize that her role on “Bridgerton” was effectively two roles: the wallflower Penelope and also the cunning Lady Whistledown.Liam Daniel/Netflix“Derry Girls” gave Coughlan — who had been working at an optician’s office in her hometown, Galway, Ireland, only a year before she was cast — her first substantial role. That role eventually led to the one in “Bridgerton,” which became one of Netflix’s most-watched series ever and returns for its second season on March 25.As a star of two of the most beloved shows on the world’s largest streaming service, Coughlan is now kind of a big deal. With a billboard to prove it.For Coughlan, the youngest daughter of an army officer father and a homemaker mother, success didn’t come overnight; it came over thousands of nights. After college, where she studied English and classics, she enrolled in a six-month foundation course at the Oxford School of Drama. She was turned down for the multiyear course. Then she followed her new best friend, the playwright Camilla Whitehill, to the Birmingham School of Acting, where she completed a one-year course. She was turned down for the multiyear one there, too.At Oxford, and then at Birmingham, Coughlan developed a gift for comedy and, because she has always looked mind-bendingly young for her age, a knack for playing children. (Yes, she moisturizes, but she showed me photos on her phone and looking mind-bendingly young is a family trait.)Afterward, she moved to London, where she took a series of retail jobs — beauty products, frozen yogurt — and tried to find work as a grown-up actor. She didn’t succeed. Petite, pert, childlike, she couldn’t attract the interest of a manager or an agent. More than once, her bank balance dropped to double digits. More than once, she had to move back home.“It was like, Oh, the dream died,” she said.But it didn’t, not quite. Whitehill remembers how Coughlan tempered each defeat with a kind of resilience. “Deep, deep down, she believed in herself,” Whitehill said on a video call. “She did have some awful — like, truly, truly awful — part-time jobs that were depressing as hell. But I never really doubted her.”Finally, Coughlan, by then nearly 30, landed a role as a posh 15-year-old girl in the 2016 two-hander “Jess and Joe Forever,” at the Orange Tree Theater in London. Her performance attracted the interest of an agent, who secured her an audition for “Derry Girls,” a comedy about a group of schoolgirls — and one boy — in Northern Ireland in the 1990s, at the periphery of the country’s sectarian conflict. The audition was rigorous: a six-month process of callbacks and chemistry reads.“It was torture,” she said. “I wanted it so badly.”Coughlan thought “the dream died” several times during her acting career, but things turned around when she hit her 30s.Elliott Verdier for The New York TimesCoughlan studied up on Northern Irish accents and she put together a whole notebook for her character, the high-achieving, high-anxiety, 16-year-old “wee lesbian” Clare. Lisa McGee, who created “Derry Girls,” remembers that notebook, which had Clare’s name in glitter on the front.“She had written loads of stuff about the character, and I thought, You’ve done more work than me on this character,” McGee said.Coughlan approached the role with a sense of both heedlessness and complete calculation, qualities she would later bring to “Bridgerton.” McGee marveled at the speed and precision of her comic timing.“I could write more jokes for Clare once I saw the way Nicola was playing her,” McGee said.Even then, Coughlan wasn’t sure that she would find another job. “I was like, Well, that’s it now. I struck gold, but it won’t happen again,” she said. She whiffed on several subsequent auditions and when the producers of “Bridgerton” contacted her agent, she didn’t hold out much hope.An assistant casting director brought her in to read for Eloise Bridgerton, the spunky, freethinking fifth-born sibling. Coughlan didn’t think that the audition had gone particularly well. But when the showrunner Chris Van Dusen saw her tape, he knew he had to cast her as Penelope Featherington, Eloise’s 17-year-old best friend.Her first substantial role came in “Derry Girls,” set in 1990s Northern Ireland.Hat Trick Productions“I called all of our other producers into the room and showed them the tape,” Van Dusen recalled. “I’m happy to say that everyone loved her as much as I did.”Told that she had the part, Coughlan tempered her enthusiasm. She had known plenty of actors who were hired onto prestige projects and then fired when the studio demanded a bigger name. “I should have been like, This is amazing,” she said. “Instead, I was like, This is fishy. I don’t know about this.” She remained tense throughout the first table read.But she wasn’t fired. And in the midst of her fittings, she finally learned, via a Reddit forum, how large her role would be and that it was effectively two roles: the wallflower Penelope — the face she presents to the world — and also the cunning Lady Whistledown, the nom de plume Penelope uses to write and publish a scandal sheet with the power to bring Regency England to its petticoated knees.She threw herself into the dual role, even as the wig and costume designers of “Bridgerton” fitted her with tight red ringlets and unflattering yellow dresses. “She really suits most colors, but they’ve managed to find the ones that really clash,” Whitehill said. (Coughlan had a more measured response to her wardrobe. “You can’t have vanity in acting,” she said.)The Lady Whistledown reveal doesn’t come until the final episode of Season 1. But from the first script, Coughlan strategized where Penelope needed to stand in order to overhear the gossip that Lady Whistledown would later publish. If you rewatch the first season, you can see her lurking in the background, watching and listening.She practiced eavesdropping in her downtime, too, a habit she now can’t break. (Earlier that day, before she’d met me, she’d gone for a manicure and learned a lot about someone else’s bathroom renovation.) “It’s amazing what people will say when they don’t think you’re listening,” she said.Season 2 of “Bridgerton” brings the same Regency glamour as in the first season, during which the show became Netflix’s most-watched series. (“Squid Game” later surpassed it.)Liam Daniel/NetflixFor Season 2, she added another role. When delivering Lady Whistledown’s copy to the printer, Penelope pretends to be an Irish maid. The character is unnamed in the script but Coughlan calls her Bridget Bridgerton and uses a strong Dublin accent. A “Drag Race” superfan, Coughlan thought of this alter ego as “Penelope’s drag character.”The show will bring further challenges in the future because eventually Penelope will play out her own love story. It comes in the fourth book of the series of novels that inspired the show, “Romancing Mister Bridgerton,” so it may or may not comprise the fourth season. (The show has already been renewed through Season 4.) But already “I feel terrified,” Coughlan said. “I’m probably more comfortable being awkward and funny, so it’s going to be a massive challenge for me. Because it’s not my comfort zone.”The attention that “Bridgerton” has brought hasn’t always been comfortable either. “Fame is a weird thing,” she said.The worst part has been the online scrutiny of her body. Many of the comments about her appearance have been positive, though some have been negative. She doesn’t find any of them helpful. “I’m like, I’m existing,” she said. “And it’s not anyone’s business.” It was the one subject she seemed less than delighted to discuss.A week after we met, she took to Instagram to ask her followers not to send her any comments on her body. “It’s really hard to take the weight of thousands of opinions on how you look being sent directly to you every day,” she wrote.Still, fame has its upsides. She appeared on “The Great British Baking Show.” (“Most definitely the best experience of my life,” she said, despite the mess she made of her swiss roll.) She became close friends with the “Queer Eye” star Jonathan Van Ness after she made a hoodie with his face on it and showed it off on social media. When she went to “Saturday Night Live,” she and Kristen Wiig hugged. Her handbag game is extremely on point. (That day at Molly’s, she had a cheeky Chanel clutch.)And she is eager to see where her career will take her. Maybe she’ll host “Saturday Night Live” one day. Maybe she’ll finally play a character of legal age.“In a weird way,” she said. “I feel like I’m just getting started.” More

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      Late Night Gapes at Biden’s Calling Putin a ‘War Criminal’

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      A Kremlin spokesman pointed the finger back at the U.S. for World War II bombings, and Trevor Noah joked, “Keep up with the times, yo!”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.New War, Who Dis?President Biden referred this week to Vladimir Putin, Russia’s leader, as a “war criminal,” and a Kremlin spokesman responded by saying the statement was unfair and hypocritical, citing the United States’ bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.Trevor Noah criticized Russia for coming “with that old [expletive].”“Seriously, Russia, you’re gonna bring up something America did in the ’40s?” Noah said. “America has committed plenty of war crimes since then. Keep up with the times, yo!”“Russia said that was unforgivable, so today Biden called him a ‘murderous dictator’ and a ‘pure thug.’ Tomorrow he’s going to call him a ‘stupidhead’ and it might get really crazy.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Just because America committed war crimes doesn’t mean you have to, as well, Vladimir Putin, OK? I mean, what if all your friends jumped off a bridge — would you do it, too? No, seriously, would you? I’m just brainstorming ways to end this whole thing. I just want to know what you would do, you know?” — TREVOR NOAHThe Punchiest Punchlines (St. Patrick’s Day Edition)“It is St. Green Vomit Day, also known as St. Patrick’s Day, also known as the day on which the world’s reddest white people wear green.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Yeah, it’s a great day to be Irish and a bad day to be an Uber driver.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yep, the parade here is the only event where Times Square Elmo feels like the chaperone.” — JIMMY FALLON“You can tell people were ready to let loose. On my way in, I heard a guy on the street ask where the bathrooms are, and another guy said, ‘It’s wherever you want it to be.’” — JIMMY FALLON“It was fun seeing everyone decked out in their St. Paddy’s Day clothes. Some people wore shirts that said, ‘Kiss me, I’m Irish. While the rest opted for the newer ‘Kiss me, rapid’s negative.’” — JIMMY FALLON“It’s funny, everything we know about St. Patrick’s Day is not true. St. Patrick was born in England, not Ireland. There are no snakes in Ireland to drive out. And that creep wearing the ‘Kiss me, I’m Irish’ T-shirt? Probably not Irish.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“In fact, the world’s first recorded St. Patrick’s Day parade took place in what is now St. Augustine, Florida, in 1601. At this parade, they drank green beer and ate green beef. They didn’t dye the beef — everything was just very moldy back then.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingOn Thursday’s “Tonight Show,” Billy Crystal joined Jimmy Fallon in impersonating celebrities in conversation through mouth cutouts on magazine covers.Also, Check This OutFrom left: Channing Tatum, Sandra Bullock and Daniel Radcliffe say they’re happy that “The Lost City” will be released in theaters but mainly are interested in entertaining audiences no matter the platform.Amy Harrity for The New York TimesSandra Bullock, Channing Tatum and Daniel Radcliffe, stars of “The Lost City,” discussed their new film and friendships, as well as some of their most iconic roles to date. More

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      Trevor Noah: Addressing Congress, Zelensky ‘Knew His Audience’

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      Ukraine’s president must have researched American history before his speech, said Noah (who speculated about how it “could have gone very wrong”).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.Target AudiencePresident Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine addressed Congress by video link on Wednesday, pleading for more help in his country’s fight against Russia. On “The Daily Show,” Trevor Noah said that “based on his references to American history, it was clear that Zelensky knew his audience.”“Yeah, that’s right, Zelensky brought out all of America’s major moments: ‘I have a dream,’ 9/11, Mount Rushmore. You know he was on Wikipedia last night planning this out: [imitating Zelensky] ‘OK, Pearl Harbor, Boston Tea Party — should I mention Hulk Hogan sex tape, maybe?” — TREVOR NOAH“And by the way, props to him, I mean he knows way more about America than most U.S. senators know about his country. Like, can you imagine how they would sound if they had to give an inspiring speech using Ukrainian history? [imitating U.S. senator] ‘Uh, people of Ukraine, remember the vision of your founder — I want to say Daniel Ukraine?’” — TREVOR NOAH“I’m also impressed that Zelensky was able to dodge so many land mines in his research, because you realize this could have gone very wrong: [imitating Zelensky] ‘And now to 9/11, which as we all know from YouTube was inside job. I see you, Bush.’” — TREVOR NOAH“But Zelensky appealed directly to Congress. He said, ‘We need you right now.’ And Congress was like, ‘Listen, we’d love to help, but we just made daylight saving time permanent and we are wiped out, so.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Zelensky asked America to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine, which we’re reluctant to do because it could result in nuclear war. But we are willing to wear blue and yellow lapel pins at all the awards shows this month, so that’s something, right?” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Standing Ovation Edition)“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered a virtual address to Congress this morning and received a standing ovation, making him the first comedian to actually deserve one.” — SETH MEYERS“I can say with absolute certainty, that’s the warmest reception anyone has ever received on Zoom.” — SETH MEYERS“You know it is powerful when that many old people jump to their feet. There are knees in that room that were alive during the Roosevelt administration.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“He got two standing ovations, which was nice. I think he’d rather get fighter jets, but the standing ovations were good.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It was bipartisan. Republicans and Democrats stood for him, which is almost impossible. It’s like getting Kim and Kanye to agree on a day care situation — it’s very difficult.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingOn “The Late Show,” Michael Bublé and Stephen Colbert sang a Canadian sea shanty.What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightNormani will perform her new single on Thursday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This Out“I think we Americans just love lead characters we can root for,” said Feig, who worked on the American adaptation of “The Office.” “We’re too young as a country to be overly cynical yet.”Todd Midler for The New York TimesThe director Paul Feig returns to television with the small-town mockumentary-style comedy series “Welcome to Flatch.” More

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      Late Night Is Wowed by the Senate Actually Doing Something

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      “Various politicians have been trying to do this for years but they kept getting clock blocked,” Jimmy Kimmel said of the Sunshine Protection Act, which passed Tuesday in the Senate.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.Time Stands StillOn Tuesday, the Senate unanimously passed legislation making daylight saving time permanent.Jimmy Kimmel said in his monologue that he was “especially proud to be an American today.”“We finally agreed on something,” he said. “An idea that every sane American can get behind: that the sun shall never again set at lunchtime on Christmas Day, and may God bless us, every one.”“I have to say, this is a day that I’ve been waiting for almost my whole adult life: Something finally happened.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The United States Senate today voted across party lines to make daylight saving time permanent, meaning we may never have to change the clock on the microwave again!” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Various politicians have been trying to do this for years but they kept getting clock blocked.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“When was the last time anything got a unanimous vote in the Senate? They couldn’t even agree unanimously to condemn Asian American hate crimes. Josh Hawley was like, ‘Let’s not rush into anything.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, a Republican, was the lead sponsor of the bill. He said there’s ‘strong science’ behind it that is now showing and making people aware of the harm that clock-switching has. Well, good for you, Marco. Wait until you find out about all the other things that have strong science behind them. You’re going to be amazed. It’s going to be big for you.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Sunshine Protection Act Edition)“Today the Senate unanimously passed a bill to make daylight saving time permanent. Oh yes! I don’t think people were this happy when Pfizer announced they had a vaccine.” — JIMMY FALLON“They’re calling it the Sunshine Protection Act, which is actually my favorite Maroon 5 album.” — JAMES CORDEN“Today everyone in the Senate was like, ‘What happens now? We’ve never passed a bill before — this is weird.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Meanwhile, every wall clock said, ‘But that’s the only time you ever touch me.’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingAmber Ruffin addressed Naomi Osaka’s heckler on Tuesday’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightQuinta Brunson, the creator and star of the ABC hit comedy “Abbott Elementary,” will appear on Wednesday’s “Daily Show.”Also, Check This OutJesse Williams is playing a superstar baseball player who comes out as gay in the Broadway revival of “Take Me Out.”Sabrina Santiago for The New York TimesThe “Grey’s Anatomy” star Jesse Williams is making his Broadway debut in the revival of the baseball musical “Take Me Out.” More

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      Streaming Companies Are Looking to Britain for Studios to Meet Demand

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      Netflix, Amazon Prime and other studios are snapping up soundstages in Britain and building more, drawn by an experienced labor pool and alluring tax incentives.LIVERPOOL, England — For two decades, the Littlewoods building in Liverpool, a long, low-slung and cavernous space built to house a betting and mail-order company in the 1930s, sat abandoned. No one wanted to take on this crumbling hulk looming on the outskirts of the city.Until Lynn Saunders. She is the driving force to make it the center of Liverpool’s first film and TV studio complex.“It’s a beast of a site,” said Ms. Saunders, the head of the Liverpool Film Office. It had been too intimidating for most prospective buyers. But amid a boom in TV and film production in Britain, Littlewoods Studios is now one of at least two dozen major plans to build or expand studio space across Britain.Streaming platforms like Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video are racing to meet insatiable demand for content and have chosen Britain as their location to make it, countering the malaise of overall investment in the nation since it voted to leave the European Union. In 2021, a record 5.6 billion pounds ($7.4 billion) was spent on film and high-end TV productions in Britain, nearly 30 percent more than the previous high in 2019, according to the British Film Institute. More than 80 percent of that money was coming ashore from American studios or other foreign productions.Lynn Saunders, the head of the Liverpool Film Office, hopes that adding studios will keep productions in town and stimulate the local economy.Francesca Jones for The New York TimesAssured that there is no imminent end to the desire for binge-worthy shows and movies, studios, property developers and local authorities are rushing to build more production space. Blackstone, the world’s largest private equity company, and Hudson Pacific Properties, the owner of Sunset Studios, which include the former homes of Columbia Pictures and Warner Bros. off Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, have said they will invest £700 million to build the first Sunset Studios facility outside Los Angeles, just north of London. With 21 soundstages, it will be larger than any of its Hollywood studios.“There is just such a massive need to produce content in markets that already have infrastructure,” said Victor Coleman, the chairman and chief executive of Hudson Pacific Properties. “And the infrastructure is not necessarily just the facilities but it’s also the talent both in front and behind the camera.”The once-abandoned Littlewoods building in Liverpool. The site is now one of about a dozen major plans to build or expand studio space across Britain.Francesca Jones for The New York TimesThe early “Star Wars” films and 10 years’ worth of Harry Potter movies helped Britain get here. Film productions were attracted by experienced labor and visual effects companies and, critically, generous tax breaks. In 2013, the incentives were extended to TV productions that cost more than £1 million per broadcast hour — so-called high-end TV series, like “The Crown” and “Game of Thrones.” In recent years, productions were offered a 25 percent cash rebate on qualifying expenditures, such as visual effects done in Britain. In the 2020-21 fiscal year, tax breaks for film, TV, video games, children’s television and animation exceeded £1.2 billion.In Britain, film gets a level of government attention that other creative industries, such as live theater, can only dream of.“I would not like to contemplate the loss of the tax incentive,” said Ben Roberts, the chief executive of the British Film Institute. Without it, Britain would become immediately uncompetitive, he added.Most of the growth in production in Britain comes from big-budget TV shows, a staple of streaming channels. Last year, 211 high-end TV productions filmed in Britain, such as “Ted Lasso” and “Good Omens,” and fewer than half of them were produced solely by British companies, according to the British Film Institute. Compared with 2019, the amount spent jumped by 85 percent to £4.1 billion.Buildings and streets in Liverpool were transformed into Gotham City for the filming of “The Batman.”Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros.St. George’s Hall in Liverpool was used in “The Batman.”Francesca Jones for The New York TimesA scene shows Batman jumping off the Liver building, in front of its clock.Francesca Jones for The New York TimesLiverpool already claims to be the second-most-filmed-in city in Britain after London. For a few weeks in late 2020, its streets became Gotham City for “The Batman,” and for years shows, including “Peaky Blinders,” have been shot there. The local authority is courting more TV shows by building four smaller studios.Property developers announced the plan for Littlewoods Studios in early 2018, but the grand ambitions were pushed off course a few months later by a fire in the building. Not wanting to miss out on the rising demand, Ms. Saunders convinced the City Council to spend £3 million building two soundstages adjacent to the site. They opened in October.And then at the end of last year, £8 million in public funding was approved for remedial work on the Littlewoods building to create two more sound stages. Ms. Saunders hopes that adding studios will keep productions in town for longer — occupying hotel rooms, ordering from restaurants and employing local people. The film office has also started investing in productions — so far to the tune of £2 million in six TV shows.Britain is already the largest production location for Netflix outside the United States and Canada. While plenty is filmed on location — such as “Bridgerton,” in Bath, and “Sex Education,” in Wales — Netflix committed to a permanent home in 2019 at the Pinewood Group’s Shepperton Studios in Surrey, just southwest of London, where “Dr. Strangelove” and “Oliver!” were made decades ago. Shepperton is now expanding, aiming to double the number of its soundstages to 31 by 2023, and Netflix plans to occupy much of that new space.“Ted Lasso” was one of 211 high-end TV productions filmed in Britain last year.Colin Hutton/Apple TV+, via Associated PressBut the descent of American streamers on British shores has brought its challenges, too. The industry is rife with stories of production crews leaving jobs for higher-paying gigs, long waits for studios and production costs that outpace inflation.Anna Mallett, Netflix’s vice president of physical production for the U.K., Europe, Middle East and Africa, resists the idea that the streamer’s voracious expansion is squeezing others out of studio space.“I do think there is enough for everyone,” she said. “There’s over six million square feet of production space coming onto the market in the next couple of years.”Amazon plans to move in next door. Last month, Prime Video agreed to lease 450,000 square feet in the new development at Shepperton Studios, including nine soundstages. The streaming service sent a ripple of excitement through Britain last year when it announced that it would film the second season of its “Lord of the Rings” series, “The Rings of Power,” in the country. It will move from New Zealand to the dismay of that country’s officials, who over two decades have offered hundreds of millions of dollars in financial incentives to the franchise.By 2023, Warner Bros. hopes to be underway with its plans to add 50 percent more soundstage space to its studios northwest of London.Warner Bros. was the first major Hollywood studio to set up a permanent location in Britain when it bought in 2010 the Leavesden studios, where it made Harry Potter.“It was a pretty huge leap for Warners to make that investment,” said Emily Stillman, the head of studio operations at Leavesden. After years of piecemeal expansion, the new development, if it gets planning approval, will be the studio’s biggest investment at the site.Away from more renowned studios surrounding London, there is hope that the production boom can bring job opportunities and investment to overlooked areas in Britain. New studios are being constructed out of an old industrial space in Dagenham, in east London, an area once synonymous with the manufacture of Ford cars in the 20th century. In Bristol, the local authority is investing £12 million to add three more soundstages to Bottle Yard Studios in an area that is economically struggling, said Laura Aviles, the head of the Bristol Film Office.A guide leading a tour of filiming areas in Liverpool, which are rapidly expanding as the industry invests in Britain.Francesca Jones for The New York Times“It’s been a struggle” to regenerate the area, she said, “and there are a lot of young people there who could be third-generation unemployed who have struggled to get into work.” The expansion will hopefully entice other businesses to the area.There is a risk that all this demand for studio space could become a blessing and a curse. Despite the skilled work force in the field, there are real concerns about whether Britain can train enough production crew and fill the associated roles to populate all this new studio space. The industry has committed millions of pounds to rapid training programs. Industry leaders hope to bring more people into the field and break the stereotype that the work — most of it freelance — is exclusively for the well off and well connected. This month, Prime Video said it would spend £10 million to fund courses in Britain focused on increasing diversity in the industry and positions in Prime Video-commissioned productions.And there is the fear that smaller independent productions by British filmmakers, who can’t as readily use debt to finance an expansion, will be left behind in this boom. Just 16 percent of the money spent on high-end TV shows in Britain last year went to solely domestic productions.The level of foreign investment “does run the risk of challenging the indigenous, independent sector in terms of its ability to retain talent, crew up, get finance, hire space, use locations,” Mr. Roberts of the British Film Institute said. “We are really alert to that not feeling like a squeeze too far.” More