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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Great Performances’ and ‘In the Heights’

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      PBS’s “Great Performances” debuts a Halloween-themed episode. And “In the Heights” airs on HBO.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, Oct. 25-31. Details and times are subject to change.MondayPOV: THINGS WE DARE NOT DO 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). A teenager pushes against gender expectations in a small village in western Mexico in this documentary from the filmmaker Bruno Santamaría. The film follows a young Ñoño, who begins exploring femininity, leading to difficult conversations with conservative family members, and challenges from others in the community.TuesdayTHE LAST O.G. 10 p.m. on TBS. In the Season 3 finale of this comedy series, Tray (Tracy Morgan) was the victim of a violent attack. In Season 4, which will debut with a pair of new episodes on Tuesday night, Tray returns to his Brooklyn community determined to better his life. This season will be the first without Morgan’s original co-star, Tiffany Haddish. It’s something of a mirror of the series’s first episodes: The show started with Tray returning home after 15 years of incarceration.WednesdayPOLTERGEIST (1982) 7 p.m. on AMC. Channels have spent the month of October airing an array of spooky movies. Take advantage of the final week with a double feature of horror classics: “Poltergeist,” about a suburban family plagued by ghosts, and THE EXORCIST (1973), about a possessed child, which airs on AMC at 9:30 p.m.ThursdayFrom left, Bill Murray, Chloë Sevigny and Adam Driver in “The Dead Don’t Die.” Abbot Genser/Focus FeaturesTHE DEAD DON’T DIE (2018) 5:30 p.m. on FX. The undead take their flesh with coffee and chardonnay in “The Dead Don’t Die,” Jim Jarmusch’s zombie comedy. Bill Murray, Adam Driver and Chloë Sevigny star as members of a small-town police department. In this world, a climate change driven apocalypse is set in motion by “polar fracking,” which disrupts the earth’s rhythms and causes the dead to awaken. There are familiar faces among the living and undead alike: Jarmusch assembled an unusually recognizable ensemble that includes Tilda Swinton, Selena Gomez, RZA, Steve Buscemi and Iggy Pop. “This is an end-of-the-world party with an appealing guest list and inviting, eccentric décor,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times. “The consumption of human flesh just keeps it interesting,” Scott added, “and the crepuscular light — shot by the ghoulishly gifted cinematographer Frederick Elmes — gives it a bewitching, Halloween ambience.” In this apocalypse, even the beheading of a ghoul manages to feel coolly understated.WALKER 8 p.m. on the CW. Cordell Walker, the fictional Texas Ranger played by Chuck Norris in the 1990s show “Walker, Texas Ranger,” supplements his badge, cowboy hat and belt buckle with a smartphone in a saddle brown leather case in this modern-day reboot. The Season 1 finale saw this new version of Walker (played by Jared Padalecki) revisit the site of his wife’s murder along the U.S.-Mexico border, and gave a shocking revelation about who killed her. The second season debuts on Thursday night. In an interview with The New York Times in August, Padalecki hinted at what the show’s second season might have in store for his character. “Now he realizes he needs to be there for his kids, for his parents, for his brother, for his work partners, and for himself,” Padalecki said. “We’ll see in Season 2 that Walker has found some degree of closure.”FridayGREAT PERFORMANCES: NOW HEAR THIS 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The violinist and conductor​​ Scott Yoo brings a group of musicians to a historic manor home in the Berkshires to record works by Beethoven in this latest entry of PBS’s “Great Performances” series. But like any Halloween-weekend program worth its candy corn, this one has some spooky twists: The group performs a seasonally-appropriate piece in Beethoven’s Op. 70, No. 1, the so-called Ghost Trio, and the episode also brings in dramatized fictional conversations between Beethoven and Sigmund Freud. (Apparently nothing is scarier than confronting one’s inner demons.)SaturdayMelissa Barrera and Anthony Ramos in “In the Heights.”Macall Polay/Warner Bros.IN THE HEIGHTS (2021) 8 p.m. on HBO. Since this movie adaptation of the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical “In the Heights” debuted in July, Miranda’s best-known work, “Hamilton,” has returned to Broadway. For those who enjoy the comforts of a sofa, “In the Heights” can bring a taste of Broadway-scale spectacle to your living room. Directed by Jon M. Chu (“Crazy Rich Asians”), this lavish movie musical stars Anthony Ramos as Usnavi, a New Yorker who runs a bodega in Washington Heights. Usnavi dreams of returning to the Dominican Republic, where he lived as a child. He sings about the pursuit of that dream, and his neighborhood harmonizes with him. Though the musical opened on Broadway in 2008, the film version feels “as permanent as the girders of the George Washington Bridge,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times. “It’s a piece of mainstream American entertainment in the best sense — an assertion of impatience and faith, a celebration of communal ties and individual gumption, a testimony to the power of art to turn struggles into the stuff of dreams.”SundayDOCTOR WHO 8 p.m. on BBC America. Jodie Whittaker will return for her third and final season as the protagonist of this long running British sci-fi show on Sunday night. The new season will kick off with a Halloween-themed episode, and is also set to be the final one for the show’s current lead writer, Chris Chibnall. He has taken on a new challenge for the occasion: This season will tell a single story in six episodes. More

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      ‘Insecure’ Season 5, Episode 1 Recap: No Time to Be Insecure

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      The characters of “Insecure” set off to close out their final season with intention.During the first episode of the final season of HBO’s “Insecure,” we meet “Throwback Issa,” the college-aged version of Issa staring back at her in the bathroom mirror.This time, Issa doesn’t rap to her reflection. Instead, they catch up and she looks at her younger self endearingly. “I forgot how cute I looked with twists,” Issa says to her reflection. And the younger version of herself is struck by who she’s become. “Issa?! Is that me?” she asks.After they spend a minute admiring their teeth, they awkwardly cut one another off, as if they are both thinking and doing the same thing. In this tango you can tell that while Issa does not look like she used to — now she has a more auburn hair color and doesn’t wear braces — she is very much the girl she used to be, in essence.“Throwback Issa” was the most literal reflection upon the past in an episode set at Issa and her L.A. crew’s 10-year-reunion at Stanford, their old stamping ground. The crew looks as good as ever. Kelli and Tiffany in Gucci? Yes. (Tiffany only wore pink and green the entire episode). Issa and Molly in classed up Stanford sweaters? An aesthetic I can subscribe to.It was a weekend that involved plenty of time traveling. We saw college Issa admiring but also being slightly disappointed in current Issa. Later, on an alumni panel, current Issa worries about future Issa’s time to do the things that she wants to do. Molly finds herself thinking back about her younger, more bullish self. Kelli flies too far into a future where she no longer exists, and doesn’t like her legacy. The characters are looking back to see how far they’ve come and learn where they want to go.The episode also picked up the pieces of the more recent past. Last season, we left Issa in an entanglement with Lawrence, who had recently found out that his ex, Condola, was pregnant. At the time, Issa was considering moving to San Francisco with Lawrence, who had just found a job there. The pregnancy was a brick thrown through the window of their relationship.Issa and Molly’s relationship, the one viewers tune in for, was on thin ice and the heaviness of their love lives threatened to fracture it. Their dreamy hangout scenes were gone — now there was only awkwardness.This week there was movement on each of these fronts. Issa and Molly are in agreement on what they want: to move forward, to grow past the obstacles in front of them. They are done trying things on, they know more about who they aren’t and what they don’t want in their lives. “I know you’re a big-time lawyer now,” reflection Issa says. “No, I never really wanted to be a lawyer,” current day Issa responded, with a certainty that escaped her younger self.During the panel, Issa is joined onstage by a filmmaker, a start-up founder and the advertising art director at Coca-Cola, all alumni. Issa was invited as an entrepreneur and founder of “The Blocc” — we don’t know much about the company (and it’s not clear if she does either) but I love this for her.When the moderator asks the panelists when they found stability in their life, Issa doesn’t have an answer. She is honest with her audience and tells them that she’s unsure and that she may be wasting her time, but she’s also talking to herself. It’s as if by hearing herself talk about her latest endeavor, she comes to understand the risks associated with it in a way she hadn’t before.Throughout the episode, Issa is so focused on her future and past that she is incapable of being present. Whenever she is asked what the name of her company stands for, she stammers, unable to remember. She may have her own company now, but she is still managing apartments and driving a Lyft. This all appears hard for Issa to reconcile but I get the impression that she eventually will. This isn’t “Game of Thrones.”Back in the quad, Molly, three-months after her break up with Andrew, is trying to be a good friend to Issa because that’s what Molly needs from her. After the struggles of last season, Molly now seems ready to triage the friendship, softly asking Issa, “Are we going to be OK?”Molly also seems to be caught in a flashback on campus. While on a walk with Issa she remembers the confidence that she used to have. “Freshman year, we thought we had it all figured out.” The fire that used to define her, her tenacity and ambition, is absent. But I doubt that it’s gone forever.Kelli, on the other hand, is believed to be dead by the organizers of the reunion — she was marked as deceased in the program and even appeared in an in-memoriam video. (“Stanky Legg” by the GS Boyz plays in tribute when her face appears.)At first, she thinks it might be good for her to “go off the grid,” but then something else sets in. When she realizes that she is only remembered for her allergy to kale and solid stanky leg, it stops being fun for her. Kelli’s modus operandi has generally been to go with the flow, but maybe it’s time to swim upstream.When the girls are on their way to Reggae Gold, an old haunt in Oakland, Kelli is not as amped as the other girls. She is obviously disturbed and interrupts a singalong to The-Dream’s “I Luv Your Girl,” an on-the-way-to-the-club ritual, to let them know why she isn’t feeling the party vibes. She is quickly dismissed. Maybe playing pretend dead hit too close to home for her.The next morning at a diner, they give Kelli an appropriate in-memoriam tribute. When they leave, Molly and Issa walk past three young giggly girls, one carrying a poster that read “take action.” The girls apologize for bumping into them. Issa looks back at them as if they seemed familiar, it was like seeing their younger selves walk right past them. As those girls fade behind them, Issa and Molly tell one another they want to move forward.Then Issa proceeds to do so. When she flies home, Lawrence is waiting for her at LAX in a black hoodie, looking sorry and feeling sorry. (Yes, I’m still mad at Lawrence for getting Condola pregnant while trying to mend things with Issa.)What is different about Lawrence’s pitifulness is that Issa is no longer willing to take part in it. She breaks up with him and he immediately understands. The breakup was quiet — no arguments or shock, just an understanding between two adults. It was a more mature and cleaner breakup than their traumatic first one.Time is running out for “Insecure” and perhaps also, the premiere seemed to suggest, for maybes and half-steps as the characters consider the direction of their lives, beyond young adulthood. There’s not much time left to be insecure. More

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      ‘Succession’ Recap, Season 3, Episode 2: ‘Judasing’

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      Kendall makes his pitch. Even with his siblings, he sounds like a guest on “Power Lunch.”Season 3, Episode 2: ‘Mass in Time of War’There’s a mad genius to the way Kendall Roy uses language. Here’s a guy who essentially learned to communicate by listening to cable TV panelists, leadership conference speakers and the macho bluster of his venture capitalist college bros. Now, in an ever-intensifying national spotlight, Ken is tossing around jargon with a frenzied, improvisational flair, like a jazz singer scatting in double-time.In this week’s episode, “Mass in Time of War,” he drops words like “epiphenomenal” and phrases like “let’s clean-slate this” and “detoxify our brand and we can go supersonic.” Even when his siblings ask how he’s doing, Ken answers with a studied earnestness, like a guest on “Power Lunch.” (“Certain amount of regret, but y’know … pretty cleansed.”)“Mass in Time of War” feels more like the second part of last week’s installment than it does a typical “Succession” episode. The Roys don’t travel anywhere special or gather for any major event; they’re just continuing in the same crisis mode they were in when the season began. Logan is still in Sarajevo, fretting over his inability to get any of his progeny on the phone. And the kids? Well, they actually do get together someplace unusual: the bedroom of Kendall’s daughter, Sophie. (Roman, feigning shock after Ken calls his siblings to her room: “He remembered his kid’s name.”)Once Roman, Siobhan and (surprisingly) Connor are huddled up, Kendall makes his pitch, with buzzwords flying around the room. His argument is a mix of the self-righteous and the pragmatic. On the one hand, he tries to hold himself up as the family’s noble truth-teller, finally calling for an end to decades of privileged, exploitative, chauvinist “vibes” at Waystar. He applies the most pressure to Shiv, getting under her skin by saying he’s doing what she failed to do as the Roy’s “token woman wonk woke snowflake.” “Right now, I’m the real you,” he needles.But Kendall also makes a persuasive case that the only way for the Roy children to save Waystar and to hold onto to any kind of sociopolitical clout is to oust Logan, who is weak enough right now that a unified front from his sons and daughter could finish him.Indeed, we see signs of Logan struggling throughout this episode. Last week, he was ordering his team to retain three “white shoe” law firms and to get a bunch of the other top attorneys tied up with conflicts of interest. This week, Logan has trouble getting anyone from his family to check in — with the exception of his wife, Marcia (Hiam Abbass), who comes back in part because she hates his kids and would love to help destroy Ken.And then there’s this: On their own, the younger Roys appear to be flailing. Although Siobhan pretends to keep her husband in the loop, he has to hear from Greg that she has sneaked away to Kendall’s ex’s apartment. She unconvincingly reminds Tom that she loves him — and he responds in kind, adding, “Good to know we don’t have an unbalanced love portfolio” — but she hesitates to tell him anything about who’s in line to become Waystar’s new “King Potato.” And when she finally does return to Logan, he promises to give her a fancy corporate title of “president” that can mean “whatever you want it to mean” … which, in Logan-speak, means it’ll probably be meaningless.Even more pathetically, Roman gets a similar runaround from Gerri. When he shows up at her new Waystar chief executive office, cracking his usual bad-boy jokes about how she chained herself “to a fire hydrant that spews out cultural insensitivity and sperms,” she quickly hustles him right back out the door. She offers him vague assurances that she plans to start working him into the quarterly earning calls “as a signal,” though it seems fairly obvious that the newly empowered Gerri is in no hurry to cede anything to Roman, of all people.Kendall certainly sounds sure of himself. But as we’re reminded in a couple of key scenes while he is away from his siblings, he is still beholden to Waystar’s insurgent board members, Stewy (Arian Moayed) and Sandy, who poke at him by sending a model of a Trojan horse to his wife’s apartment. And as Ken is urgently trying to chart a bold course for Waystar’s future, his lawyer is trying to get him to focus on the Brightstar scandal and his potential legal liabilities.As for Connor … well, he’s Connor. He seems to answer Kendall’s request for a meeting in part because he is happy to be included and in part because Logan made him fly home on a disappointing international flight with “a selection of heavily refrigerated cheeses.” Why did Ken want Connor to be a part of this? It may be because he’s less interested in securing Waystar’s legacy than he is in humiliating his father in their big game by taking all of his pieces of the board.Still, there are two problems with Kendall’s “we’re all in this together” plan. For one, he still thinks it makes the most sense for him to be the one sitting at the head of the table after the coup, and neither Siobhan nor Roman agree. Two, they’re all terrified of Logan — who rattles them when he sends a box of doughnuts to their “secret” meeting. “I don’t think he ever fails or ever will,” Roman admits.One by one, the siblings file out, each taking an insult from Ken with them. First Connor is out (“You’re irrelevant”), then Roman (“You’re a moron”) and then Shiv, who is told she has gotten this far only because “girls count double now” … thus revealing just how committed Kendall really is to “changing the cultural climate.”Yet during all of this running around behind other people’s backs — “Judasing,” as Kendall calls it — the person who may ultimately hold the key to everyone’s future is absent. Greg, who confesses to Ken his wariness, saying “I’m kind of too young to be in congress so much,” rejects Waystar’s chosen lawyer and takes advice from his moralizing grandfather, Ewan Roy (James Cromwell), a man who considers Ken to be “a self-regarding popinjay.” They end up in the office of an old left-wing lawyer (played by Peter Riegert), who tells Greg that his two priorities will be his client’s well-being and to “expose the structural contradictions of capitalism as reified in the architecture of corporate America.”In a way, this is exactly what Kendall wants to do. That is, if he actually believes all the words that keep tumbling, endlessly, out of his mouth.Due DiligenceLogan is insistent on having familiar faces around him and all but demands that his inner circle bring Marcia back into the fold. As Hugo eventually explains to her, “We would love to get back, visually, to the Logan we all know.” Marcia’s lawyer, though, lets Hugo know this will be a costly return — albeit less expensive or embarrassing than a divorce and a corporate board breakup.Perhaps in reaction to his humiliating phone call with Logan last week, Roman goes full brat in this episode, making inappropriate comments to Gerri (“How are your daughters? You got pictures?”) and responding to Kendall’s request that he not touch anything in Sophie’s room by immediately putting his hands near various objects on her dresser.Something about Roman’s presence brings out the brat in Shiv, too. As Kendall pontificates about how Waystar is “a declining empire inside of a declining empire,” she interjects with, “Unsubscribe.” Then she hits Roman where he lives, suggesting that he can’t keep preening around like a stud unless he’s willing to, y’know, consummate. (When he storms out, Shiv shrugs. “It’s not my fault he has a sex thing.”)File this away for later: Marcia reminds Logan that he has damaging dirt on Kendall. He waves off that advice, saying, “You drop some bombs, you get burnt too.” But if Logan starts to lose, badly? It could be time for the nuclear option. More

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      How ‘Maya and the Three,’ ‘Encanto’ and ‘Vivo’ Animate Latinidad

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      A warrior princess, an enchanted family and a kinkajou musician are changing how Latino stories are told — at least in animation.Take “The Lord of the Rings,” but make it Mesoamerican. Pepper the plot with pop culture references, and you have “Maya and the Three.”Originally envisioned by the creator Jorge R. Gutiérrez as a film trilogy, “Maya and the Three” began to take shape in 2018 when Netflix executives asked him to pitch an idea that he loved but didn’t think he could get made anywhere else.“What came out of my mouth was: ‘I want to make three movies in a row about a Mesoamerican warrior princess who’s going to save the world,’” Gutiérrez said. Now reimagined as a nine-episode animated mini-series, the result arrived Friday on Netflix, with a vocal cast studded with Latino stars, including Zoe Saldaña (Maya), Diego Luna (Zatz, prince of bats), Gael García Bernal (the Jaguar Brothers), Stephanie Beatriz (Chimi) and Rita Moreno (Ah Puch).As singular as it sounds, “Maya and the Three” is part of a recent trend that also includes the films “Vivo,” which came out in August, and “Encanto,” slated for release next month. All are animated stories by Latinos and about Latinos. All highlight the importance of women and girls to their communities and aim to counter Hollywood’s history of attempting to create unrealistically flawless characters of color (when it has created them at all).And all three aim to dazzle and charm viewers with their narratives and aesthetics while also honoring distinct cultures and creating more complex portrayals of Latinos — in part, by reveling in their characters’ imperfections.“When you’re only representing one film with one Hispanic character, that character has to be everything for everyone,” said Rebecca Perez, an “Encanto” animator. “And that’s not fair, because no one’s perfect. We all bring our broken pieces and our perfect pieces.”When it came to creating the heroes of “Maya and the Three,” Gutiérrez, who also directed the series, received similar advice from his wife, the animator and illustrator Sandra Equihua. (Gutiérrez grew up in Mexico City, while Equihua is from Tijuana.) Equihua designed the show’s lead female characters and served as a creative consultant.“Early on, as a male writer, I go: ‘I’ve never had a female protagonist. I’ve got to make sure she’s perfect,’” Gutiérrez said in a joint video interview with Equihua, both of whom were in Los Angeles. “And she literally went: ‘What are you doing? You’re Mary Sue-ing this thing. You are making her flat as a character because she has no flaws — all the male characters are so flawed, they’re way more interesting.’”Equihua had reminded Gutiérrez that he loved folk art because of its imperfections, and she pressed him to treat his protagonist the same way. So at times, Maya falters: She does bad things for good reasons.As a society, “we’re realizing that there’s more layers than being the naysayer, the crybaby, Miss Perfect,” Equihua said. “There’s more layers to us as girls, as women, and we wanted to make sure that Maya was as human as possible.”Part of that humanity is purely physical. Equihua designed Maya to look almost vase-like: She has broad hips, a stout build and strong legs. (She is, after all, a warrior princess.) The illustrator tries to base her characters on what Latinas really look like.“Not all of us have the thighs and the hips and everything, but a lot of us do,” Equihua said. “And it’s good to celebrate it and see that there’s diversity in shapes, and not all of us have long, long, long legs and thin, thin, thin, thin tiny waists. And it’s just glorious to see that she could run around and be powerful.”Rather than have a traditional quinceañera on her 15th birthday, Maya embarks on a quest outlined by an ancient prophecy. Alongside three great warriors, she must battle the gods to save her family, her friends and herself.“One of the themes in ‘Maya’ is the sacrifice that Latinas have to make: for their families to go on, for the countries to go on, for the culture to go on,” Gutiérrez said. “They’re the pillars that hold up the continent, and a lot of times it’s a thankless endeavor.”In “Encanto,” Mirabel, center, voiced by Stephanie Beatriz, lives in an enchanted Colombian town with her family.Disney/Disney, via Associated Press“Encanto,” a Disney film coming to theaters on Nov. 24, tells the story of the Madrigal family, which lives in an enchanted town in the mountains of Colombia. The family matriarch, Abuela (María Cecilia Botero), first arrived there after fleeing violence, losing her husband along the way.The enchantment, bestowed upon Abuela to protect her from harm, has given a magical gift to each child in the family — except Mirabel. But when she realizes that the enchantment itself is in danger, Mirabel sets out to save her family.Perez, one of the film’s animators, said that her Cuban grandparents came to the United States in very much the same fashion, packing their bags and giving up everything they knew. “I made very conscious choices to be present in every meeting, and be authentically me,” Perez said in a video interview from Burbank, Calif. “Even if it meant being a little uncomfortable — both me being uncomfortable, and the person I’m talking to, whether it be a director or producer, and expressing my point of view.“Always respectful, but the only way you’re going to get to a great place is to go through the bumps. Then you’re going to have honest conversations.”Perhaps without realizing it, Perez mirrored the experience of Mirabel Madrigal, the film’s bespectacled protagonist. In “Encanto,” conflict is resolved only through open, honest conversation between Mirabel and Abuela, bridging generational gaps amid a cloud of golden butterflies. The rest of the Madrigal family runs the gamut of body types, skin tones, hair colors, accents and magical powers.Like “Encanto,” the Netflix film “Vivo” includes details that the average viewer might miss. Someone who is part of the relevant culture, however, will instantly pick them up. In “Encanto,” Mirabel gestures to a present for her younger cousin by pointing with her lips, a classic Colombian gesture. In “Vivo,” a Dominican American mother drives a car with a bumper sticker: the Dominican flag inside an outline of the country.Carlos Romero, a story artist on “Vivo” of Dominican and Panamanian descent, loved the bumper sticker — he saw it everywhere growing up in the Bronx.“It’s all about absorbing all of that and making sure we’re doing right by their culture,” he said. It was also important, he added, to make sure that “people from those different countries can watch this and feel pride, too — and feel like, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s exactly someone I know,’ or, ‘That’s exactly what I’d say.’”“Vivo” is centered on a Domincan American tween (voiced by Ynairaly Simo) and a musical kinkajou (Lin-Manuel Miranda). SPAI/Netflix“Vivo” follows the unlikely adventures of a kinkajou named Vivo (Lin-Manuel Miranda), a musician from Cuba, and a girl named Gabi (Ynairaly Simo), an energetic Dominican American tween. When the two run away from home to deliver a long-lost love letter, Gabi’s mother, Rosa (Saldaña), becomes worried. Then she becomes upset.There was a lot of worry on set, Romero said, surrounding Rosa’s emotions. Was she too angry, especially for a Dominican American woman onscreen? Romero understood the desire to avoid stereotypes, he said, but he thought the portrayal was realistic: Any mother would furiously scour the city for her lost child.“We need to show them as dimensional characters that experience fear; they experience worry and anxiety for their kid, pride when they do good,” Romero said. “You shouldn’t be afraid of touching all the emotions because Latinos are dimensional people that should be portrayed realistically onscreen.”“And the more of them we get,” he added, “the less we have to worry about presenting them perfectly in our films.” More

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      Dorothy Steel, Whose Big-Screen Career Had a Late Start, Dies at 95

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      She was cast in “Black Panther” at 90, not long after she began acting professionally. “As soon as we saw her,” the movie’s casting director said, “we wanted her.”Dorothy Steel was 90 and had been acting professionally for little more than a year when her agent asked her, in late 2016, if she wanted to audition for a role in “Black Panther,” the Marvel Studios film set in the fantastical African nation of Wakanda.She was uncertain. So she said no.“I said, ‘There is no way I’m going to be in no comic strip at my age,’” she recalled telling her agent, Cindy Butler, when she appeared on Steve Harvey’s television show in 2018. “But she’s very persistent. I have to give her credit. She said, ‘Miss Dorothy, you can do this.’”She relented after getting an extra push from her grandson, Niles Wardell.“She was on the fence about it,” Mr. Wardell said in a phone interview, “and when she brought it to my attention, I said: ‘Grandma, you always talk about stepping out on faith and doing the things you love. This is your opportunity.’”He added, “She wasn’t so much concerned that it was a comic-strip movie, but that the role was too big for her.”Before she auditioned, Ms. Steel studied videos of Nelson Mandela on YouTube to help her develop a credible accent. She then auditioned on video for the role of a tribe leader, reading lines from the script. Ms. Butler emailed the video to Sarah Finn, the film’s casting director, who quickly agreed to hire her.“We found her late in the process,” Ms. Finn said by phone. “She was extraordinary. As soon as we saw her, we wanted her. She had an incredible spirit, warmth, humor and intelligence. We were thrilled to cast her.”She was in a few scenes but said only one line, to T’Challa, the king of Wakanda and the movie’s title character, played by Chadwick Boseman: “Wakanda does not need a warrior right now. We need a king.”Ms. Steel died on Oct. 14 in a hospital in Detroit at 95. She had completed most of her filming for the “Black Panther” sequel, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” when she got sick. She was flown home by Marvel to Detroit, where she had been living for the last year.Her grandson, her only immediate survivor, confirmed the death.Dorothy May Steel was born on Feb. 23, 1926, in Flint, Mich. She worked for many years as a senior revenue officer for the Internal Revenue Service in Detroit. Her marriage to Warren Wardell ended with his death.After retiring in 1984, she lived for 20 years in the Caribbean, on St. Croix, before moving to Atlanta to be near her grandson and her son, Scott, who died in 2018.Ms. Steel began acting in her 80s in the annual plays staged at the Frank Bailey Senior Center in Riverdale, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta. She had never acted before “and wanted to try something new to see if she could do it,” said Elaine Jackson, the former manager of the center, who wrote the plays, including one in which Ms. Steel played a teenager.Ms. Butler said that while Ms. Steel was playing the voice of God in one of the plays, Greg Alan Williams, an actor and drama teacher, happened to be there and was impressed enough to offer her free lessons. Another student, a client of Ms. Butler’s, suggested that Ms. Steel sign with Ms. Butler.“So she came in one day and I said, ‘Spend a day with me,’” Ms. Butler said. “After that meeting I had to sign her. She was going to work.”Within weeks, Ms. Butler had found work for Ms. Steel. It was her presence, Ms. Butler said, that brought her jobs.“When she spoke, she spoke with authority,” she said. “Her voice was strong. And at her age she was memorizing lines without a problem.”Ms. Steel’s credits also include “Merry Christmas, Baby” (2016), a television movie; “Daisy Winters” (2017), a feature film; and four episodes of the prime-time soap opera “Saints & Sinners” in 2016, as well as a commercial for the South Carolina Lottery and a public service announcement for the DeKalb County Board of Health.Acting provided her with a “protective cubicle,” Ms. Steel told The Washington Post in 2018. “You’re protected from the world,” she said. “And that’s the first time in my life I felt absolutely secure.”On the set of “Black Panther,” she recalled, she became a grandmotherly presence to the cast, and each day she would get a hug and kiss from Mr. Boseman, who died in 2020.“We were one big melting pot of Black people, and we knew we were doing something special that had never been done before,” Ms. Steel told WSB-TV in Atlanta in 2018. “You know?” More

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      Brandon Lee and Other Deaths on Set

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      Accidents on sets have resulted in numerous deaths and injuries over the years, some bringing about lawsuits or changes in safety guidelines.Behind the magic of movies and television are actors and props, crew members, stunt performers and a sometimes dangerous set of circumstances for the people filming scenes.On Thursday, the potential danger on some sets made news around the world, after the actor Alec Baldwin discharged a gun that was used as a prop on the set of a western in New Mexico, killing the film’s director of photography and wounding the movie’s director.The authorities said the shooting took place in the middle of a scene that was either being rehearsed or filmed. Many other details of what happened remained unclear on Friday.Accidents on movie and television sets, like stuntmen and stuntwomen being injured during action sequences or actors getting killed when props malfunction, have occurred with some regularity over the last several decades. There have been at least 194 serious television- and film-set accidents in the United States from 1990 to 2014, and at least 43 deaths, according to The Associated Press.Here’s a partial list of set accidents from recent history.‘Twilight Zone: The Movie’The actor Vic Morrow on the set of the ABC series “Combat!”Moviestore Collection Ltd / Alamy Stock PhotoA helicopter crash on the Los Angeles set of the “Twilight Zone” movie killed the actor Vic Morrow and two child actors, Renee Shinn Chen and My-ca Dinh Lee, in July 1982.The tail rotor of the helicopter was hit by debris from explosives detonated in a scene depicting the Vietnam War. The main rotor of the helicopter struck and killed Mr. Morrow and the children as the aircraft pitched into a river on the set.The film’s director, John Landis, was charged with involuntary manslaughter in connection with the deaths, as were with four other members of the film crew, including the helicopter pilot. After a trial that lasted nearly a year and nine days of deliberation by a jury, all five were acquitted in May 1987. In the aftermath of the accident, the Directors Guild of America created a safety committee to put in place safety guidelines.‘Cover Up’Jon-Erik Hexum in “Cover Up,” a CBS detective action television series, in 1984.CBS, via Getty ImagesThe actor Jon-Erik Hexum accidentally shot himself in the head while playing Russian roulette on the set of the television series “Cover Up” in October 1984.Mr. Hexum, 26, had loaded three empty cartridges and two gunpowder-filled blanks into a high-powered handgun before firing the gun, according to a detective on the case.Mr. Hexum sustained a fractured skull and underwent five hours of surgery. He died several days later. The police ruled the shooting an accident.‘The Crow’Brandon Lee in “The Crow.”Allstar Picture Library Ltd. / Alamy Stock PhotoBrandon Lee, an actor and the son of the martial-arts star Bruce Lee, died in March 1993 during the filming of “The Crow,” after being shot at with a gun that was supposed to fire blank cartridges.The tip of a .44-caliber bullet had become lodged in the gun’s barrel in filming a close-up scene, and dislodged when a blank cartridge was fired. The bullet pierced Mr. Lee’s abdomen, damaging several organs and lodging in his spine.Mr. Lee, 28, was the star of the film, about a rock musician who is killed by a street gang and then comes back to life with supernatural powers.An executive producer of the movie said at the time that when a blank is fired, a piece of soft wadding normally comes out of the gun, but in this instance, a metallic projectile came out. A police investigation into the shooting found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing and no charges were filed.‘Midnight Rider’Richard and Elizabeth Jones at a memorial for their daughter, Sarah Jones, who was killed in 2014 by a train while shooting the film “Midnight Rider.”David Mcnew/Getty ImagesSarah Jones, a camera assistant, died on the set of the independent film “Midnight Rider,” about the musician Gregg Allman, in Georgia in February 2014. Ms. Jones was killed while helping prepare a shot that involved placing a bed across the tracks of a CSX railroad line.After two trains passed, crew members on the film believed they would have a safe interval to get the shot, part of a planned dream sequence. But a third train appeared, moving at high speed through the set, killing Ms. Jones and injuring others.Later that year, the family of Ms. Jones reached a settlement with 11 defendants in a lawsuit over her death. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed. In 2015, the film’s director, Randall Miller, pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and served a year in jail. He was also sentenced to 10 years of probation.‘Resident Evil: The Final Chapter’Olivia Jackson, a stuntwoman for the actor Milla Jovovich, was severely injured while filming a sequence for “Resident Evil: The Final Chapter” in South Africa in September 2015. While riding a motorcycle, Ms. Jackson collided with a piece of camera equipment, according to Deadline.The accident nearly killed Ms. Jackson, leaving her with multiple injuries including disfigurement, several nerves torn out of her spinal cord and a partly amputated left arm.In April 2020, the High Court in South Africa ruled in favor of Ms. Jackson and against a company involved in the movie.Two months after Ms. Jackson was injured, another crew member, Ricardo Cornelius, died after a Humvee slid off a rotating platform and crushed him against a wall, Deadline reported.‘The Walking Dead’A scene from “The Walking Dead” featuring, from left, Andrew Lincoln, Danai Gurira and Melissa Ponzio.Gene Page/AMC , via Associated PressJohn Bernecker, a stuntman for AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” died in July 2017 after falling on a balcony set in Georgia.Mr. Bernecker, who had been an active stuntman since at least 2009 and had appeared in films such as “Get Out” and “The Fate of the Furious,” died of blunt-force trauma, a coroner said. Production of the show’s eighth season was temporarily shut down after the accident.Mr. Bernecker’s family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit in early 2018 against AMC Networks, the production company Stalwart Films and other parties in Georgia, claiming they had failed to make the show with appropriate safety measures. The suit claimed that some fall protection was in place but that airbags and spotters were not used, and that the padding did not fully cover the area below the fall. Mr. Bernecker landed on his head or shoulder area.In December 2019, a jury found AMC Networks not to be negligent but awarded more than $8 million in civil damages. The Georgia Court of Appeals overturned the decision in March 2021.‘Deadpool 2’A woman was killed while attempting a stunt on a motorcycle on the set of “Deadpool 2” in Vancouver, British Columbia, in August 2017. The woman, Joi Harris, was acting in her first film as a stuntwoman, according to Deadline.Ms. Harris, 40, had worked as a motorcycle racer before joining the crew of the film, and was serving as a stunt double for the actor Zazie Beetz. More

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      Grace Van Patten, a Breakout Star of ‘Nine Perfect Strangers’

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      The young actress made her television debut at 8 on “The Sopranos.”Name: Grace Van PattenAge: 24Hometown: ManhattanCurrently Lives: In an apartment with her family in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn.Claim to Fame: Ms. Van Patten is known for supporting roles in “The Meyerowitz Stories” and “Nine Perfect Strangers,” along with starring roles in several indie films, including “Under the Silver Lake” and “Good Posture.”In 2017, she also performed off-Broadway in “The Whirligig.” “I’m dying to do another play as soon as it’s back up and safe,” she said. “I find it to be one of the most terrifying things, but also the most fulfilling and challenging.”Big Break: Ms. Van Patten made her television debut when she was 8, in episodes of “The Sopranos” directed by her father, Timothy Van Patten. She has always loved acting, but didn’t pursue it seriously until after graduating from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School in 2014. Her breakthrough role came in 2017, when she played Adam Sandler’s daughter in Noah Baumbach’s film “The Meyerowitz Stories,” alongside Ben Stiller, Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson.Latest Project: Ms. Van Patten played a grieving college student in “Nine Perfect Strangers,” the Netflix mini-series based on the Liane Moriarty novel and starring Nicole Kidman as a witchy Russian wellness guru.“Whether you want better skin or want to lose weight or want to be less sad, we all want that instant fix,” Ms. Van Patten said. “But if you actually want things to change, it takes a lot of work.” She also starred in the fantasy drama film “Mayday,” which was released in September.“I love it here,” said Grace van Patten about New York City. “It’ll always be home.”MEGHAN MARIN for The New York TimesNext Thing: Ms. Van Patten will star in her first TV series, “Tell Me Lies,” a coming-of-age drama on Hulu adapted from a novel by Carola Lovering. “I’ve never been attached to something this early on, so it’s new for me,” she said.The story line, which follows a tumultuous relationship over a decade, reminds her of “Blue Valentine,” one of her favorite films, and “Normal People,” another Hulu series. “‘Normal People’ did such a good job showing the stillness of relationships and the vulnerability and sadness,” she said. “This is like raging ‘Normal People.’”Wanderlust: Ms. Van Patten wants to move out of her parents’ home but isn’t ready to commit to Los Angeles. “I’ve been all over the place for the past few years and I’m definitely craving a place of my own, but I just don’t know where yet,” she said. Her father will be in London next year, so she plans to spend time there. But she knows she’ll return to New York eventually: “I love it here, it’ll always be home.” More

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      Trevor Noah Predicts Trump Will Post Dares on Truth Social

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      Noah did an impression of Trump posting on his new social media site: “OK, I shared my truth, now I dare you to hang Mike Pence.”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.Truth or DareDonald Trump’s new social media app, Truth Social, was the talk of late night on Thursday. Trevor Noah touched on the site’s terms of service requirements for the “truths” users can post.“And, also, you know what this means: If Trump is posting ‘truths,’ knowing him, eventually he’s going to start posting ‘dares.’ ‘OK, I shared my truth, now I dare you to hang Mike Pence,’” Noah joked while doing a Trump impression.“In a press release, Trump explained the need for his new social network: ‘We live in a world where the Taliban has a presence on Twitter, yet your favorite American president has been silenced.’ I don’t think Trump’s making the point that he thinks he is in that. All he’s telling us is that he’s more offensive than the Taliban.” — JAMES CORDEN“The site was briefly accessible to the public last night, and was immediately overrun by trolls, including one who started a fake account under the former president’s name that posted a photo of a pig defecating on its own scrotum. Are they sure that was a fake account? Because it feels on brand.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Yo, this man is a legend. He creates a free speech website, and immediately was like, ‘OK, here’s what you can’t say.’ It’s like if the first rule of Fight Club was, ‘Hey, hey, hey, no fighting! No fighting! No fighting! We work [expletive] out here.” — TREVOR NOAH“At the same time, though, you know this is going to backfire, because half of the fun of being on social media is talking [expletive] about the platform.” — TREVOR NOAH“How is Trump of all people going to make a rule about disparaging comments? I mean, this man roasts people so much, he has to do it at auctioneer speed.” — TREVOR NOAHThe Punchiest Punchlines (Truth and Consequences Edition)“The man who told over 30,000 lies in office has started something called Truth. He’s also launched a new makeup line called Human Skin.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“It’s the perfect site for any person who ever wondered, ‘What if Twitter was only the bad parts?’” — JAMES CORDEN“The former president also announced that he is setting up his own streaming service. Well, his — his second streaming service.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“According to the press release, they’ll proudly broadcast ‘nonwoke entertainment programming.’ That’s right, nonwoke! If you can stay awake, your money back.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“It’s going to feature the former president’s favorites like ‘Who Wants to Spank a Millionaire?” ‘The Unmasked Singer,” and ‘Only Fascists in the Building.’” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingOn Thursday’s “Late Late Show,” James Corden explained how he was able to procure Celine Dion’s chewed gum as a gift for Adele.Also, Check This OutIllustrations by Ross MacDonaldClassic crime novels by the likes of Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy Sayers, and Dashiell Hammett still hold up today. More