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      Kathryn Kates, Actress of ‘Seinfeld’ Babka Fame, Dies at 73

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      She had a long screen career but may be best remembered as the counterwoman who tells Jerry and Elaine the bad news that her bakery was out of chocolate babkas.Kathryn Kates, who appeared as a counterwoman in two memorable scenes from “Seinfeld” involving baked goods in short supply — chocolate babkas and marble rye bread — and racked up numerous screen credits over nearly 50 years, died on Jan. 22 at her brother’s home in Lake Worth, Fla. She was 73.The cause was lung cancer, the brother, Josh Kates, said.Ms. Kates, who lived in Manhattan, had roles in dozens of television shows and movies, including the recent series “Shades of Blue” on NBC, “Friends From College” on Netflix and “The Good Fight” on CBS.She appeared in five episodes of “Law and Order” — a fixture on the résumé of most New York working actors — as Judge Marlene Simmons. She also had a recurring role in Netflix’s “Orange Is the New Black,” as the mother of Jason Biggs’s character, Larry Bloom. And she was cast as Angie DeCarlo, an Italian beauty shop owner, in “The Many Saints of Newark” (2021), the prequel movie to “The Sopranos.”But it was in two episodes of “Seinfeld” (1990-1998) that she made an indelible mark.Sporting a yellow apron and a New York attitude, Ms. Kates appeared in Season Five’s “The Dinner Party” as the bakery clerk who announces to Jerry and Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) that the store’s last treasured chocolate babka had been sold just ahead of them. Offered a cinnamon babka instead, Elaine calls it a “lesser” babka, to which Jerry objects, intoning, “Cinnamon takes a back seat to no babka.”The scene includes a memorable coughing fit by Ms. Kates’s character next to a wall of baked goods and her closing lines to a loitering Jerry and Elaine: “Can I get you anything else? How about a nice box of ‘scram’?”The episode also features Jerry’s exaltation of another New York bakery mainstay, the black and white cookie, as something of a model for better race relations. “Look to the cookie!” he declares.In an interview last year with “This Podcast Is Making Me Thirsty,” a podcast about “Seinfeld,” Ms. Kates recalled getting the part for which people would recognize her on Manhattan streets for decades.The whole writing staff, including Mr. Seinfeld and the show’s co-creator, Larry David, watched as she read her lines and delivered her cough in an audition. She had earlier auditioned for other small parts on “Seinfeld,” but the brassy counterwoman was her lucky break.Two seasons later, Ms. Kates, again in her yellow apron, reprised the role in the episode “The Rye.” This time she tells a crestfallen Jerry that the bakery’s last loaf of marble rye has been sold, complicating a plot to restore George into the good graces of his future in-laws.Ms. Kates devoted much of her time to running The Colony Theater in Burbank, Calif., of which she was a founding member. There, she and the actress Barbara Beckley were co-general managers from 1975 to 1981. She appeared in numerous Colony productions.“Kathy was New York through and through,” Ms Beckley said. “She did some wonderful roles with us.” But she added: “She was not a leading lady. She was much more of a young character actress, and not a Hollywood type at all.”Kathryn Jane Kates was born Jan. 29, 1948, in Queens. Her father, Louis Kates, was an electronics engineer. Her mother, Sylvia (Fagan) Kates, was an actress who, under the stage name Madelyn Cates, appeared on television in the hospital drama “St. Elsewhere” and the series “Fame” and played the eccentric concierge confronting Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) and Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder) in the 1967 film version of “The Producers.”Ms. Kates grew up in Great Neck, N.Y., on Long Island, and graduated from Great Neck North Senior High. She studied acting at New York University.After graduating in 1971, she moved to Los Angeles in 1974 and focused on theater. Her early television credits included appearances on the legal drama “Matlock” in 1991 and other cameo roles in “Rachel Gunn, R.N.” and “Hudson Street.”In 1993, she married Joseph Pershes, an executive at a video distribution company. They divorced in 2006. In addition to her brother, she is survived by a sister, Mallory Kates.When asked in the podcast interview about appearing on “Seinfeld,” Ms. Kates responded that she was always grateful to have work. “I have loved every job I’ve ever had,” she said.And as for her babka preference? She favored chocolate. More

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      The 5 Best Actors Who Have Played Hercule Poirot

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      Agatha Christie’s Belgian sleuth has inspired many interpretations, none exactly true to her novels, including Kenneth Branagh’s approach in “Death on the Nile.”Hercule Poirot is one of those literary heroes, like James Bond or Sherlock Holmes, whose image blazes brightly in the popular imagination. From his debut in Agatha Christie’s 1920 novel, “The Mysterious Affair at Styles,” through his final appearance in “Curtain,” published in 1975, the Belgian detective cut a simple, distinctive figure: a “quaint, dandified little man,” as Christie wrote, “hardly more than 5 foot 4 inches,” with a head “exactly the shape of an egg,” a “pink-tipped nose” and, in what is probably the most famous instance of facial hair in the history of English literature, an enormous, “upward-curled mustache” — which Christie later boasted was no less than the finest one in England.Christie wrote more than 80 novels and short stories about Poirot, and nearly all of them have been adapted for film and television. Many actors have stepped into the role over the years, each trying to give it his own spin, much as a stage actor might take a fresh crack at King Lear. Tony Randall, in Frank Tashlin’s 1965 mystery-comedy “The Alphabet Murders,” played it for laughs, exaggerating Poirot’s exotic pomposity with farcical zeal. By contrast, Alfred Molina, in a made-for-TV version of “Murder on the Orient Express” from 2001, brought a subtler, more muted touch, softening the character’s sometimes cartoonish extravagance. Hugh Laurie once even donned the iconic ’stache for a cameo in “Spice World,” letting Baby Spice (Emma Bunton) get away with murder.But of the dozens of takes on Poirot over the last century or so, only a handful have truly endured, leaving a permanent mark on the character. These are the interpretations that come to mind when most people think of Hercule Poirot, and in their own way, each of these versions seems to some extent definitive. As Kenneth Branagh’s “Death on the Nile” arrives in cinemas, we look back at the most famous and esteemed versions.1931-34Austin TrevorAustin Trevor in a scene from “Lord Edgware Dies” (1934).Real Art ProductionsAs he was young, tall and (unforgivably) clean-shaven, the dashing leading man Austin Trevor was a conspicuous — some might say egregious — departure from the source material. He starred in three adaptations of Poirot’s adventures between 1931 and 1934, of which only the last, “Lord Edgware Dies,” survives today (available on YouTube). Trevor’s portrayal, while pleasant in its own right, differed enough from Christie’s description that the magazine Picturegoer Weekly ran an editorial lambasting it, under the headline “Bad Casting.” The most flagrant change is to the world-famous Belgian’s nationality: This Poirot has been inexplicably made a Parisian.“Lord Edgware Dies,” based on a Christie novel known as “Thirteen at Dinner” in the United States, concerns a wealthy American actress and socialite (Jane Carr) who commissions Poirot to secure her divorce from her obstinate husband, Lord Edgware (C. V. France). Edgware soon agrees, then turns up dead; Poirot, intrigued, investigates the murder. Detective films were popular in the early 1930s, and Trevor’s Poirot feels indebted to other charming, debonair sleuths of the era, in particular those played by William Powell in films like “The Thin Man” and “The Kennel Murder Case.” In all, it’s an adequate if unfaithful rendition, but it’s a relief that Christie’s creation was later realized with more fidelity.1974Albert FinneyAlbert Finney, false nose and all, in “Murder on the Orient Express.”United Artists/AlamyAmong other virtues, Albert Finney’s portrayal in Sidney Lumet’s “Murder on the Orient Express” (available to stream on Paramount+) is a major feat of makeup and prosthetics: a full-face getup encompassing wrinkles, jowls and false nose, designed to make the trim, 38-year-old Finney look the part of the world-weary Poirot in portly middle age. Lumet’s adaptation of one of Christie’s most celebrated books is a New Hollywood love letter to the Golden Age, with Finney leading an ensemble that includes such luminaries as Ingrid Bergman and Lauren Bacall. A rail-bound chamber drama structured around long, loquacious interrogation scenes, it’s an acting showcase of the classical variety. (Incidentally, this is the only Poirot performance to be nominated for an Oscar.)Finney’s Poirot is curt and flinty, his clipped accent gruff and gravel-throated. While he embodies many of the qualities characteristic of Christie’s original — cunning, headstrong, fastidious about his appearance — he is more serious and vehement, and scrutinizes the evidence grimly, with great intensity, like a predator carefully circling his prey. The film’s climax is explosive, with Finney rattling off his conclusions about the case in a frenzied fever pitch.1978-88Peter UstinovPeter Ustinov in “Death on the Nile” in 1978, the first of his Poirot outings.AlamyThe English actor Peter Ustinov appeared as Poirot a half-dozen times, beginning with the magnificent “Death on the Nile” in 1978 (streaming on the Criterion Channel). This Poirot is playful, boyish, even a bit whimsical; Ustinov imbues him with a light, teasing air, finding a latent amusement in even the most diabolical matters. Fans who prefer Ustinov in the role tend to respond to his immense warmth: He has a grandfatherly manner that makes him instantly likable, which also cleverly belies his brilliance and perspicacity. You sort of expect Finney’s Poirot to get to the bottom of things, but with Ustinov, the sudden penetrating deductions feel like more of a surprise.Ustinov took to the part so naturally that he continued to play Poirot onscreen for 10 more years. “Death on the Nile” was followed in 1982 by “Evil Under the Sun,” co-starring James Mason and based on the novel of the same name, and then several made-for-television films, including “Dead Man’s Folly” and “Murder in Three Acts.” Curiously, the TV movies did away with the period setting of the previous features, transplanting Ustinov’s Poirot from the 1930s to the present day — a poor fit that finds Poirot visiting such incongruous locales as the set of a prime-time talk show.1989-2013David SuchetDavid Suchet in his series’ take on “Murder on the Orient Express.”ITV for Masterpiece“You’re Poirot?” a woman asks, aghast, in the opening minutes of the pilot episode of “Agatha Christie’s Poirot,” the ITV series about the detective. “You’re not a bit how I thought you’d be.” David Suchet, the star, shrugs: C’est moi. Ironically, for most viewers, Suchet is not just like Poirot, he’s synonymous with him. The actor played him on television for nearly 25 years, appearing in 70 episodes, ultimately covering Christie’s entire Poirot corpus, concluding with “Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case” in 2013. Each episode is like a self-contained movie, telling a complete story and often running to feature length.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      Stephen Colbert Sets the Mood for Valentine’s Day With His Viewers

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      “Hey, don’t mind me, I’ll just be over here doing my thang — a long monologue,” Colbert joked.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Bringing Sexy BackLate night celebrated Valentine’s Day by pointing to a new study reporting that Americans are having less sex than ever.Stephen Colbert said that his viewers were surely having a great holiday, joking, “It’s almost midnight and you’re doing the sexiest thing there is: You’re watching TV.”“I hope you’re having a sensual Valentine’s Day, which, if you’re watching this, you’re probably not.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“So, how’s it going out there? Looks like you’re having a great night. Just know I’m rooting for both of you — wait a second, all three of you.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Hey, don’t mind me, I’ll just be over here doing my thang — a long monologue. And maybe later, if we’re lucky, some Toyota commercials. And I’ve got 400 people in this room with me who just like to watch.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“And I’m happy to help, because America could use a little help in the seduction department right now. Because according to new research, Americans are at a 30-year low for sex. And again, no judgment: Whatever doesn’t float your boat. I’m not going to kink-shame the jigsaw puzzle/Breathe Right Strip/lights out by 9 p.m. lifestyle.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The study says there are a number of possible reasons for it, including fewer people getting married, an aging population. But let’s be honest: We all know what the real reason is — unlimited porn. The same reason people at the Olive Garden are eating more breadsticks — it’s unlimited.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I think it’s weird having Valentine’s the day after the Super Bowl. I was out past midnight last night flipping SUVs and setting mattresses on fire, now I’m supposed to be romantic? I don’t know, I’m all charged up!” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (The Day After Edition)“Yesterday, as I hope you know, was Super Bowl Sunday, also known as — a.k.a. ‘Cryptocurrency Awareness Day.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It’s all crypto now. Even the halftime show, bloods versus the cryptos.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It was crypto and Peacock all day long. There were more ads for Peacock than there are living peacocks on the planet earth.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Dr. Dre, 50 Cent, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Anderson .Paak, and — it was supposed to be Mary J. Blige, but Snoop Dogg smoked all the j’s, so it was just Mary Blige.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“But it really was quite a game. The big hits, the long draws, and that was just Snoop right before the halftime show.” — JAMES CORDEN“This is a headline in The New York Post today: ‘Snoop Dogg smokes weed right before star-studded Super Bowl halftime show.’ Yeah, no kidding. He smokes weed right before everything.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“For Snoop, that’s a performance-enhancing drug.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Two legends of hardcore gangsta rap, or as the kids today call them: Martha Stewart’s friend and the headphones guy.” — STEPHEN COLBERT, on Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre“I was so excited and nervous my palms were sweaty, knees weak, arms were heavy. There was vomit on my sweater already, mom’s spaghetti.” — JAMES CORDENThe Bits Worth WatchingTrevor Noah dedicated Monday night’s “The Daily Show” to a conversation with musician India.Arie about Joe Rogan, unconscious racism and why she took her music off Spotify.What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightJohn Oliver will sit down with Stephen Colbert on Tuesday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutIvan Reitman in 2011. Matt Sayles/Associated PressFilmmaker Ivan Reitman, best known for “Ghostbusters,” “National Lampoon’s Animal House,” and “Stripes,” died on Saturday. More

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      Isabel Torres, Actress Known for ‘Veneno’ on HBO Max, Dies at 52

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      Ms. Torres was one of three transgender performers to play Cristina Ortiz Rodríguez, a beloved Spanish television personality, in the eight-part streaming series.Isabel Torres, the Spanish actress best known for playing the transgender singer and television personality Cristina Ortiz Rodríguez in the HBO Max series “Veneno,” died on Friday. She was 52.Ms. Torres’s family confirmed her death in a statement on her official Instagram account. The statement did not specify a cause or say where she died.In recent years, Ms. Torres had documented her treatments for lung cancer on Instagram. In November, she shared a video in which she said she had been told she had only about two months to live.“Let’s see if I get over it,” she said. “And if not,” she added, “what are we going to do? Life is like that.” She said the video would be her last, though she continued to post photographs for several weeks.Ms. Torres had acted sporadically since the mid-1990s before she found her largest audience in 2020 in “Veneno,” as one of three transgender performers who portrayed Ms. Rodríguez, a transgender singer and television personality. In the show, Ms. Rodríguez, who was known as “La Veneno” (“The Poison”), rises to fame after being interviewed by a television journalist in a park in Madrid where she had been working as a prostitute. She becomes a fixture on Spanish television and the most prominent transgender person in the country before her death in 2016 at 52.“Veneno” is based on the book “Listen! Not a Whore, Not a Saint: The Memories of La Veneno” by the journalist Valeria Vegas. Created and directed by Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, the series debuted on the Spanish streaming platform Atresplayer Premium in 2020 and was then picked up by HBO Max.Ms. Torres was the oldest of the three actors who played Ms. Rodríguez in the eight-part series. In one Instagram post, Ms. Torres said it was the role of a lifetime, adding that she had gained weight to transform herself for it.For her performance, she won an Ondas Award for best actress in a television series.Ms. Torres was born on July 14, 1969, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, in the Canary Islands, according to imdb.com.In 1996, she became the first Canarian woman to have her gender legally changed on her identification, according to the Spanish news outlet Las Provincias.In 2005, she became the first transgender woman to be a candidate for the title of Las Palmas Carnival Queen, Las Provincias reported. Last year, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria honored her as its “favorite daughter.”Information about her survivors was not immediately available.In an interview with The Advocate last year, Ms. Torres said that she was surprised to discover how much she had in common with Ms. Rodríguez when she was cast in “Veneno,” and that she had seized on those similarities to shape her performance.“I think in it there was a lot of me, and in her there was a lot of all of us,” she said. “I never thought we would have a lot of similarities, and at the end, after seeing the character, learning her story, and learning to love her through her wounds, I understood that we share a lot in common.” More

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      In Chinese Version of ‘Friends,’ Ross’s Lesbian Ex-Wife Goes Missing

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      The popular show has become the latest target of China’s censorship campaign. The awkward cuts have not been missed by fans of the show in the country.HONG KONG — The wildly popular sitcom “Friends” is back on China’s best-known streaming services, but with some big changes to the script.In the latest Chinese version, when Ross tells his parents he has split from his wife, he doesn’t explain the reason: She is a lesbian living with another woman, is now pregnant and plans to raise the baby with her partner. Instead, the scene simply cuts to his parents’ stunned faces, and the plotline ends there.There are other, more subtle changes to the show, too.Joey’s suggestion of a trip to a strip club is translated in Chinese subtitles as “going out to have fun.” When Paul the Wine Guy tells Monica, “I haven’t been able to, uh, perform sexually,” the subtitle says that he has been in “low spirits.” A lament by Rachel that she is more “turned on” by a gravy boat than her fiancé is translated as Rachel being more “happy to see” tableware.The changes have prompted biting commentary on social media from the show’s many Chinese superfans, who mocked the prudishness of censors and said the alterations reinforced gender stereotypes.“Friends” is the latest example of foreign entertainment being rewritten in China, as the country embraces more traditional gender roles under its leader, Xi Jinping. Officials have gone so far as to ban portrayals of effeminate men on television.Even before the regulations went into effect in September, Chinese censors had already been hard at work. In the Chinese version of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” the Queen biopic, a crucial scene in which Freddie Mercury, the band’s lead singer, tells his fiancée that he is gay was removed.The Communist Party wields enormous power over the entertainment business, bending it to produce the narratives it wants to promote. In January, censors changed the end of the movie “Fight Club,” replacing a scene in which a series of buildings were destroyed with a message saying the effort had been thwarted by police, although the original version was soon restored after a massive outcry. That move came after a much anticipated “Friends” reunion episode last year was missing cameos from Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and BTS when it aired in China because those celebrities had at some point offended the country’s leaders.“Friends” is hugely popular in China, where at one point many major cities had look-alikes of Central Perk, the cafe that was a gathering point for the show’s characters. Viewers in China had been able watch the show in an uncensored format over the past decade, but fans of the show are now limited to an officially edited version that is streamed on multiple platforms.Superfans have been quick to point out omissions or changes in censored episodes and debated the reasons for the cuts.The hashtag #FriendsDeleted was viewed more than 54 million times on the Chinese social media site Weibo over the weekend, according to a CNN report. By Monday, it had been removed.“Mostly they don’t want the women in their own country to be awakened,” one person wrote on Chinese social media. “They don’t want them to know women can love women. Otherwise who will help the men to carry on the family line.”Another commentator pointed out that the writers of “Friends” helped to normalize the L.G.B.T.Q. community with the episode. “And this is something that ‘Friends’ managed to do in 1994,” they wrote, questioning why homosexuality was being censored in China decades later.Only the first season of “Friends” was made available through online streaming platforms in China earlier this month, and many viewers in the country were already joking about what other scenes would be removed as future episodes become available.One person wondered how the censors would handle the season in which Phoebe becomes a surrogate mother to her brother. Another quipped that they were willing to bet the equivalent of $15 that the episode in which Monica, Chandler and Rachel discuss seven parts of a woman’s body for pleasure would be deleted.“I bet 100 yuan,” the person wrote on Weibo, the Chinese social media platform. “That ‘Seven Seven Seven’ is absolutely deleted.”Cao Li More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘The Eyes of Tammy Faye’ and ‘We Need to Talk About Cosby’

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      Jessica Chastain’s newly Oscar-nominated performance as Tammy Faye Bakker airs on HBO. And W. Kamau Bell’s docuseries about Bill Cosby wraps up on Showtime.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Feb. 14-20. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE (2021) 6:48 p.m. on HBO. Jessica Chastain was nominated for an Oscar last week for her performance as the TV evangelist Tammy Faye Bakker in this biopic. It’s a juicy role: Bakker (who was later known as Tammy Faye Messner, after marrying Roe Messner in 1993) became famous in the 1970s and ’80s for the Christian broadcasting empire she built with her first husband, Jim Bakker, which came to a crashing, highly publicized end fueled by sex and fraud. Directed by Michael Showalter (“The Big Sick”), the film follows Bakker from her childhood in Minnesota through her time at a Bible college where she met Jim (played by Andrew Garfield), and on to their eventual falls from grace. It’s a role that Chastain had long pursued. “She never really did anything halfway,” Chastain said of Bakker in an interview with The New York Times last year. “She didn’t have an ounce of being cool or being aloof about her. So I just felt like I couldn’t dip my toe in or be cool and aloof in the performance. I had to jump in the most wild, extreme way. Because that’s how she lived every moment.”A scene from “Bulletproof.”Emily Topper/Grasshopper FilmINDEPENDENT LENS: BULLETPROOF (2021) 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The reality of active-shooter fears in American schools takes on a surreal quality in this documentary. The film looks at measures being taken by some schools — educators training at shooting ranges, classrooms outfitted with security camera systems and armored doors — with a detached but meticulously shot fly-on-the-wall style. “The accomplishment of the director Todd Chandler,” Teo Bugbee wrote in a review for The Times, “is that he continues to find settings that demonstrate this same eerie divide between the desire for security, and the extreme measures being taken by schools to achieve impregnability.”TuesdayICAHN: THE RESTLESS BILLIONAIRE (2022) 9 p.m. on HBO. In this documentary, Carl C. Icahn, the billionaire investor and erstwhile Trump administration adviser, describes himself as a product of the financial system. “I made this money because the system is so bad,” Icahn says, “not because I’m a genius.” Directed by Bruce David Klein, the film looks at Icahn’s career in the context of national economic issues. It includes commentary from financial figures and journalists, including the Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin.WednesdayBrad Pitt in “Ad Astra.”Francois Duhamel/20th Century FoxAD ASTRA (2019) 7:35 and 9:55 p.m. on FXM. How would you handle being told, in a top-secret meeting with United States defense bigwigs, that your long-lost dad may be alive? Chances are you’d betray more emotion than Brad Pitt’s Maj. Roy McBride, an at-first inscrutable astronaut who is sent to the stars to find his famous spaceman father (played by Tommy Lee Jones) in this somber space movie from the filmmaker James Gray. Gray uses the spectacle of the stars and the isolation of extraterrestrial travel to explore the mind inside the space helmet and a complicated, only superficially space-related father-son relationship. It’s a movie that “tends to work best in isolated scenes rather than in the aggregate,” Manohla Dargis said in her review for The Times. But, Dargis wrote, Pitt’s “soulful, nuanced performance — which becomes incrementally more externalized and visible, as if McBride were shedding a false face — holds the film together even when it starts to fray.”ThursdayTHE GAME PLAN 7 p.m. on TNT. Shaquille O’Neal is the host of this new reality series, in which O’Neal and other celebrities — including the retired W.N.B.A. star Lisa Leslie and the rappers Quavo, Killer Mike and Big Boi — meet Atlanta-based entrepreneurs. This is no “Shark Tank,” though: The focus of this warm series is on helping each of the businesses succeed, with O’Neal and company offering advice and encouragement.FridayPAINTING WITH JOHN 11 p.m. on HBO. The artist and musician John Lurie’s surrealist, quasi-painting show returns for a second season on Friday night. The first season was a perhaps unlikely success last year: Slow-burning and effortlessly bizarre, it found Lurie ruminating on his own life — and the creative life more broadly — from his Caribbean island home. That will continue in the second season, along with some painting. Probably.SaturdayIN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT (1967) 8 p.m. on TCM. When Sidney Poitier died last month, at 94, the Times critic Wesley Morris joined “The Daily” to discuss Poitier’s legacy as a transformational figure in American cinema and America at large. One moment that Morris pointed to is in this Mississippi mystery. Poitier plays a police detective, Virgil Tibbs, who has been enlisted to help a small-town sheriff (played by Rod Steiger) solve a murder. The pair visit a local cotton magnate, Endicott (Larry Gates), who is powerful enough to be known by only his last name. When Tibbs insinuates that Endicott is a suspect in the murder investigation, Endicott slaps Tibbs. Tibbs slaps back, and Poitier breaks ground: That slap, Morris said, “is a reversal for everything that had happened to a Black person previously in the movies.” Revisit it on Saturday night in a double feature with an earlier Poitier movie, THE DEFIANT ONES (1958), which TCM will air at 10 p.m.SundayThe actor Doug E. Doug in “We Need to Talk About Cosby.”ShowtimeWE NEED TO TALK ABOUT COSBY 10 p.m. on Showtime. “There are two runaway forces of oppression in America,” the comic W. Kamau Bell said in an interview with The Times. “One, how we treat nonwhite people. The other is how we have treated women through the history of this country. And if you look at Bill Cosby’s career, you can see things he did that makes this better and makes this worse.” Bell makes a nuanced attempt to explore both of those sides of Cosby in this documentary series, which looks at Cosby’s life and legacy. Sunday night’s episode is the fourth and final installment, but don’t expect a tidy ending: Something that makes the series uncommonly effective, the Times’s TV critic James Poniewozik wrote recently, is that it “holds Cosby’s achievements and his wrongs close, and it recognizes that there may be unresolvable dissonance between the two.” More

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      ‘Billions’ Season 6, Episode 4 Recap: Hungry Like the Wolf

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      Prince makes Kate an offer she can refuse. It’s just really hard to.Season 6, Episode 4: ‘Burn Rate’Six hundred dollars for coffee with Kate Sacker; $46,863 for Wendy Rhoades’s wardrobe; $162,500 for a night at a Covid-free bordello with Wags; $300 million for Mike Prince’s new yacht, plus an extra $300 million to neutralize its carbon footprint. We’ve said before in this space that the credo of the pro wrestler Ted DiBiase (a.k.a. the Million Dollar Man), “Everybody’s got a price,” holds sway in the world of “Billions.” Never before has the show made it quite this literal.In one of the boldest stylistic choices ever made by the show — you could argue the boldest, and I wouldn’t object — this week’s episode of “Billions” repeatedly freezes the action and superimposes graphics that show you the cost of all the name brands, grand plans and illegal indulgences enjoyed by Michael Prince and his employees. Did you know that a private hog roast with the restaurateur Rodney Scott costs $25,000? That a batch of quaaludes and a courier to deliver them runs you $8,400? That multiple characters’ personal wardrobes and grooming routines on a given day cost more than this country’s yearly per capita income? You sure do now!It doesn’t stop there. By the episode’s end, as Prince gazes at his work force from the balcony, running totals of all the money they’re generating float above their heads, like stats for characters in a video game. Then, in a breach of the fourth wall, all of the main Prince Cap players pause for a group portrait, gazing right into the camera as lists of luxuries and those luxuries’ price tags float behind them. It’s enough to make you want to take up arms with Chuck Rhoades the next time he whips out a bullhorn or a pitchfork.It’s a dazzling device, courtesy of the episode’s director, Chloe Domont, and the writers Lio Sigerson, Brian Koppelman and David Levien. (Koppelman and Levien created the show with the New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin.) It makes the show’s subtext literally its text.And given the behavior the show’s protagonists in this episode, it couldn’t be more pointed. Take Chuck Rhoades. He’s still out to scupper Prince’s drive to make New York City the home of the 2028 Olympic Games, by any means necessary. This week, that meant almost immediately abandoning the man-of-the-people schtick he had adopted and warning the city’s big telecommunications companies that Prince plans to provide the city with free Wi-Fi in perpetuity as part of his Olympic bid — wi-fi surreptitiously siphoned from those companies’ unused signals. Big Telecom puts the kibosh on this plan toot sweet.You might think Prince would get his back up about this, but no, not really. Rather than jeopardize his Olympic bid with a big battle, he gets in bed with the telecom firms, settling on two weeks’ worth of free Wi-Fi for the city, during the Games only.This infuriates Taylor Mason, who pushed Prince toward the Wi-Fi plan from the start. In addition, connecting the Big Apple was supposed to be just part one of the plan, which would have also seen the firm set up free wi-fi across sub-Saharan Africa. Taylor compares the meager offering Prince comes up with to a free tote bag; “People love free tote bags!” he replies.But his overall message to Taylor is far more direct. “I’m independently wealthy,” he says. “You’re not; you’re kind of rich. Which is great, but if you want to change the world, nine digits ain’t going to do it.” With that, he sparks a new ambition inside the brain of Mase Carb’s brilliant founder. No longer will Taylor settle for the $100 million fortune once seen as the threshold for effecting positive change in the world. Now, it has to be a billion. (Minimum, we’re guessing. Billions are like Pringles: Once you pop, you can’t stop.)As for Chuck, things go poorly indeed. He is gently rebuffed when he seeks an alliance with New York’s governor, Bob Sweeney (Matt Servitto). “I know I’ve got to take a flume ride with one of you two lunatics on this,” Sweeney says amusingly, but for now he’s simply relishing his newfound power over two of the state’s biggest players.Meanwhile, Prince begins courting Chuck’s right-hand woman, Kate Sacker, asking her to quit her job and become the New York Games’ lead counsel, after which he’ll line up support for her congressional run. When she dutifully informs Chuck of this overture, he tells her to wait before declining and puts his best friend, Ira (Ben Shenkman), into play, asking him to pitch himself to Prince for the position instead.For a minute, it looks as if Prince were considering the idea — who better to neutralize Chuck than his own best friend, right? Wags and Scooter, Prince’s chief minions, are aghast that the bossman is even giving the idea the time of day.But he isn’t. It’s all a ploy to get Chuck to take his eyes off the real target, Kate. Tired of being told to wait for her moment in the sun by her mentor, she decides she is no longer in the father-figure business and joins Prince Cap, not as Prince’s protégé but as his peer, with all the perks that entails. Chuck is bitterly disappointed, but having continuously put Kate’s political aspirations on the back burner in favor of his own, he has no one to blame but himself. (Well, himself and Prince’s bottomless purse.)There’s a tremendous sense of loss as Kate rides away in her expensive chauffeured vehicle. She has always been ambitious, but she also seemed incorruptible, at least insofar as she had a clear picture in her mind of how to achieve her goals, and this picture never involved defecting to the other side. It’s a bummer to see her give in.But it’s also thrilling. What will a steel-trap mind like Kate’s be capable of doing with limitless funds at its disposal? She instantly makes Prince Cap a more formidable force than it already was. So when we see her in that group portrait, her fortune increasing by the second, it’s both sad and exciting to say that she fits right in.Loose changeThe climactic sequence in which we see everyone’s personal price tag is accompanied by a killer needle drop, Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf.” Not only does this describe the voraciousness of everyone involved, it’s also a funny callback to a line from earlier in the episode, when Chuck describes the clang of an intimate part of the governor’s anatomy as being “loud as the cymbal crashes in ‘Hungry Like the Wolf.’” They are indeed pretty loud!In an amusing side plot, Wags and Scooter must work together to woo (read: bribe) the committee responsible for selecting the Olympics’ host city. Unfortunately for Wags, this conflicts with his and his fiancée Chelsea’s attempts to conceive a child. So he preserves his bad-boy reputation by paying a sex worker to loudly fake their encounter, coaching her to give it a big ending as he sneaks out the bordello window.The committee folks are also treated to an intimate club performance by both Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi, an attempt by Chuck to mess with Prince’s plans by involving New Jersey in the bid. Neither man makes a cameo, though the University of Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari pops up early to give Prince Cap a pep talk.It seems worth noting that Rian, Mase Carb’s star employee, is against the free-Wi-Fi plan in both New York and Africa from the jump. She just can’t see how the numbers make sense, and she isn’t convinced by Taylor’s or Prince’s moral reasons for the expenditure.Also worth noting: Once she takes the job with Prince, Kate starts wearing her hair down. I’m sure there’s a metaphor in there somewhere. More

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      The Kanye West Documentary 'Jeen-yuhs' Finally Hits Netflix

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      The new three-part film “Jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy” has been in the works since the early 2000s. In an interview, the directing duo Coodie & Chike discuss its long journey to Netflix.“Jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy,” Netflix’s three-part documentary about the rise of Kanye West, does not dwell, or seek to correct the record, on the most well-known of the rapper’s celebrity blowups. George W. Bush, Taylor Swift, Donald Trump and Kim Kardashian hardly factor. There has never been a shortage of West analyzing his own travails, after all.Instead, relying on casual footage chronicling the lead-up to and immediate aftermath of West’s 2004 debut album, “The College Dropout,” the four-hour-plus film lingers on quieter, pre-fame moments: chats with his mother, Donda, about the difference between confidence and arrogance; the desperation of trying to play his demo CD for disinterested peers; a more respected artist being disgusted by West’s orthodontics retainer.Behind the camera throughout was Clarence Simmons, a stand-up comedian-turned-director known as Coodie, who along with his creative partner, Chike Ozah, has been compiling video of West for more than 20 years. But that wasn’t always the plan.Originally conceived as a “Hoop Dreams”-style feature, the documentary was supposed to end in the early 2000s, with West — who is now legally known by his old nickname, Ye — winning his first Grammy Award. But as West developed from a nerdy Chicago beatmaker for Jay-Z to a polarizing, era-defining artist across music, fashion and more, he grew apart from Coodie, an old neighborhood friend, and changed his mind about the project, leaving hundreds of hours of tape in limbo.Following some false starts and brief reconciliations, the directing duo Coodie & Chike, as they are credited, finally found traction — and more time with West — in recent years, amid another uptick in controversy. West’s mental health struggles, disastrous 2020 presidential run and recent album named for his late mother all get some airtime in the third episode.Yet the core of “Jeen-Yuhs” remains the vérité depiction of West’s chrysalis years, with Coodie filling in the gaps in time by telling his own story of personal metamorphosis and creative ambition. “This is not the definitive story of Kanye West, this is the story told through the most unique perspective,” said Ian Orefice, the president of Time Studios, which co-produced the project.Ahead of its first-episode premiere on Wednesday, Coodie and Chike discussed the long-gestating documentary, the ups and downs of living alongside mega-fame and West’s last-minute demands for final cut of the film. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Chike Ozah, left, and Clarence Simmons, known as Coodie, collected early footage of West’s rise — and then had to wait.Rafael Rios for The New York TimesThe film begins with the premise that you always knew Kanye would make it big. What first convinced you that he was going to be a star?COODIE It started with his production. But then I would just keep running into Kanye, and I remember he was performing with his group, the Go Getters. He just commanded the stage. I was like, “This is the dude! The producer — he’s the one.” Then I saw how he loved the camera. He was loving the camera. He wanted to rap for anybody, and it was just like he was performing for a thousand people, but it’s just one person and he’s rapping to them.What was Kanye’s original reason for not putting a film out back then? In the footage, he’s so excited to tell people you’re making a documentary.COODIE He said, “Man, I don’t want nobody to see my real self.” He said, “I’m acting right now.” It was too intimate. But I feel like the reason why he was loving me filming him at the beginning was just because I was that dude, really. I was popular in Chicago — cool, funny.CHIKE You brought value to his brand in Chicago instantly, just by deciding to have him on Channel Zero [Coodie’s original hip-hop show on public access television].COODIE The greatest ambition was for him to win a Grammy, and I wanted to follow him to see it. But it’s definitely, definitely a blessing that it didn’t come out, because I didn’t know what I was doing at all.What was it like to watch the rest of his rise from more of a distance?COODIE I was so proud ​​to see him accomplishing all the things he was accomplishing. But then I felt left out, too. Like when he went to Oprah, I’m like, “I want to meet Oprah!”CHIKE It’s not all peachy and clean. I think that’s the case with anybody that’s on the rise to stardom like this. Coodie and I definitely felt what it’s like when outsiders come in and start jockeying for position. We had that Bryan Barber and Outkast vibe for a minute — like we’ll rise together and do all these music videos. But as he got bigger, more people started coming into the fold and you just get pushed out. Luckily, Coodie and I had a relationship and a bond together and we were able to find creativity elsewhere.At that point, did you believe the project to be dead or did you always assume you would return to it eventually?COODIE I felt like we would come back to it someday. I used to look at all the mini-DVs, and the bigger he got, I knew how much more valuable my footage would be: One day in God’s time, this is going to happen.He sat us at the table at Kris Jenner’s house, right before “Pablo” [the “Life of Pablo” album in 2016], he was like, “Man, you know, I get misunderstood a lot.” He asked us to be his voice. We thought it was time for the documentary to come out, for people to see the real Kanye. He was working with Scooter Braun at the time and we were at HBO with it. Then all of a sudden, they had other plans for Kanye. We were right there and it just went to nothing.It felt, to me, that Kanye was crying out for help at that moment. Right after, he went on the Saint Pablo tour and that’s when he had the breakdown — he calls it the “breakthrough.” I was really, really worried. I thought we were supposed to help him and we weren’t able to because of the powers around him. Not only did I feel worried, I was extremely mad about it.“I did ask Kanye, ‘Did you watch the film?’” Coodie said. “And he said that’s not his process.”NetflixOn a practical level, how did you keep all those tapes safe?COODIE I really didn’t even. You’d just see it in a duffle bag, shoe boxes.CHIKE But it’s like bricks of gold in there.COODIE It’s in storage now, though!When did you know that you finally had his full buy-in?COODIE When I showed him the sizzle. He called me out of nowhere and said he was working on an album about his mom and he wanted to use some of my footage. He asked for my blessing and I said, “Oh, for sure, but I need your blessing for something. I’ll fly wherever you’re at.” His security called me like, “Can you come to D.R. tomorrow morning?” When I finally showed him the sizzle, he was like, “We’ve got to put this out tomorrow.”There’s a moment in the footage from the Dominican Republic when he goes off on what some might call a classic Kanye rant and you cut the camera. Why?COODIE I felt like I needed to pay attention. I’ve never filmed him like that. When I film him, there’s a certain way that he is with me — he’s himself. At that moment, he was not himself. When you’re taking medication, you’re not supposed to have alcohol. I knew Kanye wasn’t supposed to drink. It just so happened he had a drink in his hand. I wasn’t going to interrupt this business meeting to say something, but I kind of wanted to. It seemed like right after that drink, something happened. I said, “Forget this camera — this is my brother right here.”Once the film was in motion, how involved did he want to be and how involved did you want him to be?COODIE He said, “Let’s me and you do it,” and I told him, “You have to trust me on this.” Meaning no creative control. I said, “It would not be authentic if you have it.” He got all of that. And that was it.Then you get to the 1-yard line, 20-plus years later, and he drops a bomb on Instagram about wanting final cut.COODIE I almost fainted [laughs]. It was on my birthday — Jan. 18. He didn’t post that then, but I’m getting text messages. I’m like, “What? We finished!”On his birthday [in June], I went to L.A. with the rough cuts of the film to show him. I said the only way you can watch this film is with everybody who was there at the beginning who loves you. So we was getting a house, I had everybody ready to go — we’re going to laugh, cry, embrace Ye. But he wound up going to the South of France and it didn’t happen. Then my birthday, I get that text — next thing I know, I look up and here comes everybody with the cake. “Happy birthday to you!”Did he ask again about getting into the editing room?COODIE Nah, his process is to have people look at it, so we showed them the film. I did ask Kanye, “Did you watch the film?” And he said that’s not his process.The movies that we’ve done, nobody had final cut. We did Martin Luther King — the family didn’t have final cut. We did Muhammad Ali — they didn’t. Stephon Marbury didn’t see his documentary until aired it at Tribeca. Our intent is pure and that’s really all that matters.Do you have favorite stuff from the cutting room floor that you just couldn’t squeeze in there, no matter how much you wanted to?CHIKE There’s a scene when Kanye goes back to Chicago to perform at a tribute to people who were lost in the E2 tragedy [a stampede at a Chicago nightclub]. When he gets there, he ends up having to settle up a beef with another rapper. He almost gets a bottle cracked over his head — it gets real ugly. It could’ve gone somewhere worse. And Kanye’s not even that type of artist! But he still can’t escape the street mentality. And it deals with a beat that Jay-Z ended up with that helped propel Kanye’s career.COODIE It was “Never Change” on “The Blueprint.” He sold Jay-Z the track that he sold to [the Chicago rapper] Payroll as well. Payroll wrote the hook — “out hustling, same clothes for days.” Kanye let Payroll know he was about to sell it, but he also did Payroll’s hook. Kanye took care of Payroll after that, but Payroll was like, hold on … He said, “Kanye you’ve got to give me more.” I’m telling them like, nah! But for them to crush the beef was good, too.Kanye is back in the tabloids these days because of his divorce. When you see this celebrity hurricane side of his life, do you worry for him?COODIE I used to worry, but I know that God has his back. He almost died in a car accident a couple of times — he had a car accident in Chicago even before he moved to New York, flipped his truck over. A couple other incidents that I’ve seen — God is really looking out for him, for whatever reason. When I see this now, I’m like, it’s going to pass like everything else did. More