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    Pat Hitchcock O’Connell, Director’s Cast Member and Daughter, Dies at 93

    She spent time on the sets of films directed by her father, Alfred Hitchcock, and acted in three of them, including “Psycho.” She later wrote a book about her mother’s role as his cinematic partner.Pat Hitchcock looks at the troubling scene unfolding before her in her father’s 1951 thriller, “Strangers on a Train”: Bruno Antony — a psychopath who has strangled the estranged wife of a man, Guy Haines, he has just met and believes would in turn kill his father — is demonstrating his murderous technique on a society matron at a party.“You don’t mind if I borrow your neck for a moment, do you?” asks the oleaginous Bruno, played by Robert Walker. He places his hands on her neck and starts to throttle her.Miss Hitchcock, playing the sister of the woman Guy wants to marry, is seen in a blurry background shot, her expression curious. But it quickly turns to horror as she watches the matron struggle for breath; she sees that Bruno is staring at her, probably because she is wearing glasses like those the murdered woman had worn.She finally freezes in shock after some other partygoers pry Bruno’s hands from the woman’s neck, and he collapses.Miss Hitchcock says nothing in the scene, but it is perhaps her most notable in a modest career that included small roles in two more of her father’s films: “Stage Fright” (1950) and “Psycho” (1960), in which her character, Caroline, is a co-worker of Marion, played by Janet Leigh.“My father wanted a contrast to Janet, someone more bubbly,” she told The Washington Post in 1984. “I barely remember the whole thing, and most people forget I’m in ‘Psycho.’ I say, ‘How can you possibly remember, after everything else that happens?’”Patricia Hitchcock O’Connell — whose connection to her famous father included writing a book about his wife and collaborator, Alma — died on Monday at her home in Thousand Oaks, Calif. She was 93.The death was confirmed by her daughter Tere Carrubba.Patricia Hitchcock was born on July 7, 1928, in London. Her mother, Alma (Reville) Hitchcock, was a film editor who played a critical role as a writer, adviser and story consultant to her husband, a relationship Mrs. Hitchcock O’Connell explored in the 2003 book “Alma Hitchcock: The Woman Behind the Man,” written with Laurent Bouzereau.Mrs. Hitchcock O’Connell explored her mother’s professional partnership with her father in a 2003 book.Miss Hitchcock visited her father’s movie sets in England and moved with her parents to the United States in 1939 after her father received an offer from the producer David O. Selznick to direct “Rebecca” (1940). The move came just after the start of World War II in Europe.“My father was devastated because his mother was in England,” Mrs. Hitchcock O’Connell told the Television Academy in a 2004 interview. “And I remember him trying to get a call through and the operators saying there are no more calls to the country because of the war.”Miss Hitchcock made her Broadway debut at 13 in John Van Druten’s 1942 comedy “Solitaire,” playing the central role of Virginia, a rich girl who befriends a hobo. She had been recommended for the role by the actress Auriol Lee, who had appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s film “Suspicion” the year before.Reviewing the play in the The New York Times, Brooks Atkinson wrote, “She plays Virginia with childish innocence and sincerity.”She had roles in two other Broadway shows, “Violet” (1944) and “The High Ground” (1951). By then, she had already been onscreen in “Stage Fright” as a school friend of Jane Wyman, who played an aspiring actress at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, which Mrs. Hitchcock O’Connell was attending at the time. She would graduate in 1950.After “Strangers on a Train,” she was seen mostly on television. She had roles in the sitcoms “My Little Margie” and “The Life of Riley” and in anthology series like “Matinee Theater,” “Playhouse 90” and “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” a series of mysteries and thrillers that featured her father’s droll onscreen introductions.“I think ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents’ really brought him to the public because they got to see him,” Mrs. Hitchcock O’Connell, who appeared in 10 episodes between 1955 and 1960, said in the Television Academy interview. “He loved it. He had the best time doing those lead-ins.”While her acting career was linked to her father, she made clear in her book that her mother had a strong cinematic partnership with him, which included screenwriting credits on “Suspicion” and “Shadow of a Doubt” (1943).“He would find a story and then take it to my mother and have her read it,” she told the BBC in 1997. “And if she thought it would make a film, he would go ahead with it and have a treatment and screenplay done.”In addition to her daughter Tere, Mrs. Hitchcock O’Connell is survived by two other daughters, Mary Stone and Katie Fiala; six grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren. Her husband, Joseph O’Connell, a sales consultant in the trucking business, died in 1994.Mrs. Hitchcock O’Connell said she wished she could have acted in more of her father’s pictures. But that wish went unfulfilled.“I would have loved it if he had believed in nepotism,” she said in the BBC interview. “But he only cast people if he thought they were absolutely right for the part. I could have told him a lot of parts I would have liked to have played, but he didn’t believe it.” More

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    ‘Like Choosing a Pope’: How Succession Got Messy at ‘Jeopardy!’

    The decades-old game show, TV comfort food for many, has been rocked by drama over who would replace the late Alex Trebek.When Ken Jennings arrived at the “Jeopardy!” studios in November for the first day of his audition to become the new host of the long-running quiz show, he found a gift waiting for him: a pair of Alex Trebek’s cuff links, along with a handwritten note from his widow, Jean.Mr. Trebek, the “Jeopardy!” galaxy’s central star, had died of pancreatic cancer three weeks before, setting off a frenzy in Hollywood: one of the greatest jobs in television was available for the first time in 37 years.For some members of the “Jeopardy!” crew, the cuff links validated their assumption that Mr. Jennings, a genial Utahn who rose to fame in 2004 after winning a record 74 consecutive games, had been Mr. Trebek’s preferred successor. (“Jeopardy!” producers had arranged for a phone call between Mr. Jennings and Mr. Trebek two days before he died.) But “Jeopardy!,” while a beloved cultural icon, is also a lucrative asset of Sony Pictures Entertainment, and in the television industry, sentiment only goes so far.“Jeopardy!,” whose first iteration began in 1964, is one of TV’s last bastions of comfort food, a place where politics don’t matter and the real world is easily digested in just-the-facts bites. Then its succession drama got messy. After a cattle call of guest hosts, including Anderson Cooper, Robin Roberts, Aaron Rodgers, LeVar Burton and even Dr. Mehmet Oz, the announcement of the winner sent fans into a tailspin. The new weekday host would be Mike Richards, the show’s obscure executive producer and the man initially charged with finding Mr. Trebek’s replacement.Mr. Richards, it seemed, did not have to look very far.Critics accused Mr. Richards of rigging the contest à la Dick Cheney, who led the vice-presidential search for George W. Bush. Old lawsuits surfaced from Mr. Richards’s previous job, at “The Price Is Right,” involving his treatment of female staff members. (He denies wrongdoing.) After Sony said the “Big Bang Theory” actress Mayim Bialik would host the show’s prime-time spinoffs, her past skepticism about vaccines recirculated. (Her team said “she is not at all an anti-vaxxer.”)Mike Richards, the show’s executive producer, was named Mr. Trebek’s weekday replacement.Carol Kaelson, via ReutersUnder the retro, feel-good surface of “Jeopardy!,” the succession battle is a story of television’s dwindling real estate in American life and the strenuous efforts to occupy one of its remaining desirable plots.“It is a little like choosing a pope,” Mr. Jennings said, in his first interview since the new hosts were announced. “If you don’t watch ‘Jeopardy!,’ you don’t understand, but people take this very seriously.”In an age of atomized audiences, “Jeopardy!” still averages 8.8 million viewers a week, according to Nielsen — not quite “NCIS” territory, but roughly comparable to a network evening newscast. Its audience skews older: Last year, about four viewers out of five were over age 55.And the job itself is, as any Hollywood agent would tell you, a pretty sweet gig.When the “Jeopardy!” cast and crew gather on the Sony Pictures stage in Culver City, Calif., they film five 30-minute shows in a single day, the equivalent of one week of syndicated television. The host works roughly two days a week, two weeks a month — and toward the end of his tenure, Mr. Trebek’s salary was estimated at $16.5 million. Sony would not disclose Mr. Richards’s compensation, but several people familiar with internal discussions said it was significantly less.There are other perks to being the face of a show that is still watched by a broad audience on local network affiliates, a rarity as the nation divides into ever-more-partisan extremes and as traditional TV is supplanted by niche streaming services.“It’s appointment television, which is rare,” said George Stephanopoulos, the ABC News anchor, who guest hosted for a week. “It’s the kind of thing you can watch with your whole family.”Plus there is the reflected glow of always having the right answers.“It’s absolutely iconic,” said Rick Rosen, the TV superagent at Endeavor. “Everybody knows the show and has played along with it. And it’s not the type of show where you’re just a genial host — there’s a perception of intelligence that goes along with it.”Unlike his rivals, Mr. Richards, 46, had a deep background in game shows. Born in Burbank, Calif., he started his career as a stand-up comedian and went on to host game shows like the mid-2000s concoction “Beauty and the Geek.” He hosted and produced numerous series on the Game Show Network before auditioning to replace Bob Barker on “The Price Is Right.” Drew Carey got the job, but Mr. Richards was brought on as executive producer; his successful 11-year tenure revived the wilting franchise into a hit.By “Jeopardy!” standards, though, he was a newcomer.He started as executive producer at both “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel of Fortune” in May 2020, replacing Harry Friedman, who oversaw both shows for 25 years. Mr. Richards overlapped with Mr. Trebek on set for only 15 shoot days before the host stepped aside, 10 days before he died.Sony said that while Mr. Richards initially led the hunt for Mr. Trebek’s replacement, he moved aside after he emerged as a candidate.But as executive producer, Mr. Richards retained a key role in selecting which appearances by each prospective host would be screened for focus groups, whose reactions weighed heavily in Sony’s decision-making, according to three people familiar with the show’s internal deliberations. The other supervising “Jeopardy!” producers were excluded from that process, the people said.Asked about Mr. Richards’s role, Sony referred to a memo from its TV chairman, Ravi Ahuja, who told staff that after the company began considering Mr. Richards as a potential host, “he was not part of” the selection process. The ultimate decision was made by Tony Vinciquerra, the chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment.As questions mounted, Mr. Richards sent a memo to “Jeopardy!” staff that was distributed by Sony’s publicists.“The choice on this is not my decision and never has been,” Mr. Richards wrote. He said the “Price Is Right” litigation — which included an allegation that he made insensitive comments to a pregnant employee — “does not reflect the reality of who I am.” (Sony said it had “spoken with Mike about the issues raised in these cases and our commitment to maintaining a workplace environment where our employees are respected and supported.”)Mayim Bialik was announced as a co-host.Carol Kaelson, via ReutersOn Thursday, Sony announced Mr. Richards and Ms. Bialik as co-hosts, although for now, only one prime-time special featuring Ms. Bialik is scheduled. “What started out with my 15-year-old repeating a rumor from Instagram that I should guest host the show has turned into one of the most exciting and surreal opportunities of my life!” Ms. Bialik said in a statement.Mr. Jennings, who remains a consulting producer at “Jeopardy!,” praised Mr. Richards’s performance. “Mike was the only person up there with any game show hosting chops, and it showed,” he said.Some fans argue that a relatively bland, little-known host was always a better outcome than a celebrity. “The game is the star, and the contestants are the stars,” said John Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary magazine and a 1987 quarterfinalist in the “Jeopardy!” Tournament of Champions. “The host should be a secondary figure.”For his part, Mr. Jennings agreed. “What was great about Alex was we didn’t know anything about him: He came into our homes every night and he hosted ‘Jeopardy!,’” Mr. Jennings said. “Today, it’s very hard to find a broadcaster whose priors and opinions you know nothing about.”Mr. Jennings, who guest hosted six weeks’ worth of shows, said he harbored no hard feelings about the outcome.“I knew ‘Jeopardy!’ was in a spot this year, and I mostly wanted them to have a smooth transition,” Mr. Jennings said. “I was not going to lobby for that job in the media, ever. I was not going to plant stories about what a promising young candidate I was. I wasn’t interested in doing any of that. I am a company man.”Marc Tracy More

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    ‘Ted Lasso’ Season 2 Episode 4 Recap: A Very Special Christmas Episode

    It’s only a matter of time before the poster-board and markers come out …Season 2, Episode 4, ‘Carol of the Bells’Houston? We have a Christmas Episode.Here I’ve been, trying to convey the relatively subtle ways in which the second season of “Ted Lasso” differs from the first. And then, four episodes in, they give away the whole game. It’s not merely that they’ve produced a Christmas episode — albeit one airing in August — it’s that it’s an episode that, back in the day, would have been billed as a “Very Special Christmas Episode”: absurdly uplifting — even for “Ted Lasso”!—seasonally sweet, devoid of tension or discord, et cetera.This was the unfair knock on the first season of “Ted Lasso”: That it was too much about just making viewers feel good (as if that were a bad thing), and was unwilling to plumb deeper — which it actually did, mostly without making a big deal about it.Our newest episode, by contrast, is not merely a holiday episode, but a meta-holiday episode: an episode about holiday movies, and about one movie very much in particular. There are red herrings scattered about — you’ve got to love the “Christmas Story” leg lamp that Keeley unveils early on and the fractional glimpses of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” But this episode is aiming at a much more specific target.Rebecca’s invitation to a Christmas party at Elton John’s may be the first obvious clue. Why, her Yuletide plans sound almost as awesome as those of a certain over-age rocker circa 2003.And then, about a third of the way in, we get the holiday calamity of Phoebe’s bad breath. “A boy at school was mean to me,” Phoebe explains, prompting perhaps the most terrifying interrogative in televisual history by her Uncle Roy: “What did he do?” (Roy’s subsequent “Where does Bernard live?” suggests a quite different, decidedly intriguing direction that the “Lasso” franchise might have taken.)Instead, we get a remarkably familiar London door-to-door mission by Roy, Keeley and Phoebe. They’re looking for oral-health assistance — this is perhaps the most American joke at the expense of Britain that “Ted Lasso” has yet allowed itself — but they might as well be Hugh Grant asking “does Natalie live here?”Yes, this is actually the “Very Special ‘Love Actually’ episode of ‘Ted Lasso.’ ” And while I have some exceptionally strong feelings about Richard Curtis’s quasi-amorous opus, I’ll keep them to myself for once. (Though I should probably note here that there is a prominent “Once” reference in the episode.)The commercially upbeat subplots that ensue fall as thick upon the ground as snow might have if it weren’t the middle of summer. Ted has his first FaceTime Christmas cut short by his son embracing the thrill of the new drone he’s acquired. But just as he begins pouring himself some sad, solo whiskey and watching an unshaven Jimmy Stewart at the end of his rope — boom! — Rebecca shows up with a sidewalk-tinsel greeting outside his window. Moments later, we get a busker singing “Last Christmas.” This is, I hope, as close as “Ted Lasso” will ever come to “Glee.”What follows is highly enjoyable television without any meaningful hint of conflict or adversity. The Higgins’s family Christmas — to which they always invite AFC Richmond’s far-from-their-families players — unexpectedly welcomes a crowd; Ted and Rebecca deliver absurdly oversized Christmas stockings to kids who sent Santa letters; and, as Roy announces to Phoebe and Keeley, “We’re going to my stupid posh neighborhood …. And if we don’t find a dentist in ten houses, you each get a thousand pounds.”And, because we all believe in Christmas miracles — or, at least in my case, Roy Kent-related miracles — they do indeed find a dentist, who has a treatment plan for Phoebe’s halitosis. Merry August 13.I would like to write “and it all ends (as it must) with some cue cards and markers.” But instead I need to write, “and it all almost ends (as it probably should have) with some cue cards and markers.”The “Love Actually” money shot is evidently not quite special enough for this Very Special Episode, so we need our occasional reminder that Hannah Waddingham, who plays Rebecca, is a musical-theater superstar, who offers a glorious street-side rendition of Darlene Love’s “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).”Did I enjoy the episode? Absolutely. Does it make me worry for the future of “Ted Lasso”? Absolutely squared.Odds and EndsRoy’s admitting that he pooped his pants to a tween whose door he’s randomly ringed was a bit of a surprise. His turning it into a learning opportunity — “Let’s both try to knock it off, shall we? If you can do it, I can do it” — makes me want to be a better human being.“God bless me, everyone” — could Jamie Tartt possibly have found a more personally apt way of channeling the Christmas spirit?I continue to love Sam’s increased screen time. And what better way could there have been for him to capture the magic of Santa for one of Higgins’s boys than to explain his “true power is not his speed but his endurance”?This week’s pop-cultural references (in addition to the many already cited) included Paw Patrol, John Holmes(!), the Helter Skelter murders, and Rachel Weisz and Daniel “Double-Oh-Heaven” Craig. More

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    Modern Love Season 2: An Interview with Mary Elizabeth Williams

    When Mary Elizabeth Williams got back together with her husband, she didn’t expect a cancer diagnosis — or for her story to inspire a television episode.In her 2014 Modern Love essay, “A Second Embrace, With Hearts and Eyes Open,” the writer Mary Elizabeth Williams tells the story of rekindling her marriage only to find out, shortly thereafter, that she had malignant melanoma. Suddenly, their future looked very different from their past.Miya Lee and I recently caught up with four writers whose essays inspired episodes in the second season of the “Modern Love” television series on Amazon Prime Video. Below is my conversation with Ms. Williams, whose episode stars Sophie Okonedo and Tobias Menzies. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.You can also read my interview with writer, actor and director Andrew Rannells (“During a Night of Casual Sex, Urgent Messages Go Unanswered”) and Miya Lee’s interviews with Katie Heaney (“Am I Gay or Straight? Maybe This Fun Quiz Will Tell Me”) and Amanda Gefter (“The Night Girl Finds a Day Boy”).Daniel Jones: Your essay was published seven years ago, and it was about events that took place years before that. Can you catch us up on where you are now with your marriage, your health and your family?Mary Elizabeth Williams: My husband and I are still together. One of our daughters is in high school and the other is in college. Like everyone else, we’re just coming out of a long period of enforced closeness in a small New York City apartment where one person is working in one space, one person is working a few feet away, someone else is doing band practice and someone else is doing college work. It was all chaotic.Over the past few years, we’ve had a lot of challenges and sorrows and difficult experiences involving our health and work and the health of loved ones. And it’s funny, because in the midst of feeling trapped over the past year, I still wake up in the morning and choose to be here with this person. Those moments of looking at someone and thinking, “Yeah, I’m here voluntarily” — maybe that’s not the sexiest thing to think about someone, but I also feel like it’s probably the most important.How does it feel to write about something so personal, even as a writer?The day I got my cancer diagnosis, I told very few people, and I even said to my husband, “I don’t think I’m going to share this because I don’t want it to change how people see me. That’s a bell I won’t be able to unring.”The next day I went to Sloan Kettering, and that night I wrote an essay called “My Cancer Diagnosis” that was published in the morning. So less than 48 hours after I got diagnosed, I published my first essay about having cancer. Clearly, I don’t know how to not talk about my life.What kind of cancer did you have?Metastatic melanoma. Melanoma is a cancer of the skin, which is very common. Metastatic melanoma is not. That’s when the cancer has moved into your organs. And the thing about melanin is you have it everywhere, so the cancer can go everywhere. When you get it, it can be rapidly fatal. Typically, at the point I got it, you had about seven months to live. My cancer had moved into my lungs and soft tissue. You could see it on my body.How was it treated?First I had surgery. That was before it had spread. I had a big circle taken off the top of my head. Then, a year later, I had a recurrence, and by then the cancer was spreading everywhere and moving really fast. That was the point when my oncologist said, “We’re recruiting for a clinical trial. You should talk to the people on the clinical trial floor.”They had just approved the first immunotherapy treatment for melanoma in over 30 years. To get accepted, I had to pass a bunch of tests; it’s really hard getting into clinical trials. It shouldn’t be. But I was fit and had a flexible schedule and met all of the requirements — you have to be sick but otherwise fit and not have done any other treatments. So I got into the trial, and I felt it working after the first treatment. I was cancer free the first time I got scans, 12 weeks later. And I’ve been cancer free for nine years.In talking about your successful experience with the clinical trial, do you worry about giving people false hope?I’m glad you brought that up. I am extremely aware that I am unusual. And I never want to give people false hope. I want them to have hope and to know there are options. But also, hope can be for different things, whether it’s in your relationship or your health, and sometimes you’re hoping for just a little more time. It’s like I always say: The mortality rate for being a human being is 100 percent. If you’re lucky, you can postpone that so you get more good stuff. And I hope you get to get more good stuff with the people you love and give them good memories and leave something better than you started it.What was the impact of publishing your essay in Modern Love?I got messages from so many people I hadn’t heard from in years, who didn’t know about the breakup, didn’t know I had been sick, didn’t know any of it, and were like, wow, you’ve really been through it. And then there was the response from readers who saw different parts of themselves — in the relationship, but particularly in the sickness, in that story of cancer. People seeing a love story of sickness that wasn’t gooey and sentimental.You and your husband never divorced; you separated. Did that make stepping back into the marriage easier?I guess if you look at it as stepping back, but I don’t. I look at it as stepping forward. That relationship ended. And what came next was different and new. For me, it was important to feel like I wasn’t going backward. This was about moving forward, about being in a different place in life and having different expectations and understanding and respect.I wanted to tell a story that was about the kind of tender and unique love you see when things are awful. Unsexy situations like when he has to go out and buy you stool softeners. That’s a unique kind of romance. I hope that for men who read it, they were able to see themselves — and see that being caring and nurturing and capable is the most loving gesture in the world.Daniel Jones is the editor of Modern Love. Mary Elizabeth Williams is the author of “A Series of Catastrophes and Miracles: A True Story of Love, Science, and Cancer” and a doctoral student of medical humanities at Drew University.Modern Love can be reached at modernlove@nytimes.com.To find previous Modern Love essays, Tiny Love Stories and podcast episodes, visit our archive.Want more from Modern Love? Watch the TV series; sign up for the newsletter; or listen to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify or Google Play. We also have swag at the NYT Store and two books, “Modern Love: True Stories of Love, Loss, and Redemption” and “Tiny Love Stories: True Tales of Love in 100 Words or Less.” More

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    Bad News for ‘Trump-Adjacent Weirdos’ Delights Seth Meyers

    Meyers enjoyed seeing Mike Lindell get word on camera that a defamation suit against him over his claims of election fraud would proceed.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.Lawsuit TV, LiveOn Wednesday, a federal judge ruled that Dominion Voting Systems could proceed with its defamation lawsuits against Mike Lindell, Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. Seth Meyers called them “Trump-adjacent weirdos” and poked fun at their election fraud conspiracy theories on Thursday’s “Late Night.”“OK, so there are only two plausible explanations for what happened here: Either a federal judge appointed by Donald Trump ruled that unfounded claims of election fraud made by three Trump allies were not exempt from defamation laws, or Hugo Chavez teamed up with China and the C.I.A. to use Italian military satellites to hack the judge’s computer and alter his opinion, which was then printed out on paper smuggled in from China covered in bamboo fibers. The only way we can know for sure is if we take the judge’s ruling to a cabin in Montana, examine it under a powerful ultraviolet light, then bury it in the backyard, wait three days and see if it rains.” — SETH MEYERSMeyers and Stephen Colbert largely focused on Lindell, the MyPillow C.E.O., whose reaction to the news was caught on camera.“Watching someone get bad news, in real time, at their own symposium is my new kink.” — SETH MEYERS“This week, he held a livestreamed cybersymposium, for which he hired a cyberexpert ‘red team’ and gave them what he said was 37 terabytes of irrefutable evidence that hackers broke into election systems using intercepted ‘packet captures.’ ‘Packet captures,’ of course, is a technical term that you might know by their street name, ‘pillow cases.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Honestly, poor cyberexperts. You go to school to get a degree in computer science, spend your whole career mastering a highly specialized skill that would be actually very helpful in today’s high-tech economy, and then a psycho pillow magnate hands you what I’m guessing is a garbage bag full of dry cleaning slips and CBS receipts and said, ‘I need you to switch who the president is.’” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Today in Rudy Edition)“Rudy has also been sued by Dominion for a billion dollars. Now he’s facing a mountain of legal fees. That mountain’s in his apartment, right next to the mountain of empty Franzia boxes.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Man, I wish I could have seen Rudy’s face when he found out. And that’s something, because I’ve wished to see Rudy’s face.” — SETH MEYERS“On top of that, Rudy’s law license in Washington was suspended, and he was suspended from practicing law in New York due to ‘demonstrably false and misleading’ statements about the election — which means he’s cut off from his previous source of income: telling lies next to a dildo shop.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingIn honor of Jimmy Fallon’s 1,500th “Tonight Show” episode, Kit Harington gave the host something he’s been waiting for — a “straight-up” rendition of Train’s “Drops of Jupiter.”Also, Check This OutLou Platt’s work as a therapist on productions like “I May Destroy You” often starts before filming even begins.Alex Ingram for The New York TimesFilm and television productions in Britain have started bringing therapists on-set to offer counseling for the cast and crew members. More

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    Jared Padalecki on the ‘Walker’ Finale and ‘Supernatural’

    In an interview, the actor and producer talks about the season finale’s big twist and the “Supernatural” prequel that took him by surprise.This interview contains spoilers for Thursday’s season finale of “Walker.”More than a year after his wife’s murder at the U.S.-Mexico border, Cordell Walker (Jared Padalecki) returned to the scene of the crime with his family and the man responsible for pulling the final trigger: Stan Morrison (Jeffrey Nordling), the longtime Walker family friend, Texas Department of Public Safety chair and recently elected district attorney.The twist was a secret that Padalecki — who serves as a star and executive producer of “Walker,” a modern-day reboot of the hit 1990s series that featured Chuck Norris as a high-kicking Texas Ranger — had been keeping since production on the show began last fall.“The big difficulty for me was having to tell white lies to my friends and family and fellow cast and crew,” Padalecki said in a recent interview. “I didn’t feel good about it, but I’m learning to put that line between friend and fellow actor.”Thursday’s season finale revealed the events leading up to the death of Emily Walker (played by Genevieve Padalecki, Jared’s real-life wife). Emily was dropping off water for migrants one night when, in a case of being at the wrong place at the wrong time, she heard a truck hit a pothole and found a group of people smuggling drugs across the border through a side road. While Cali (Katrina Begin) wounded Emily, it was Stan who, fearing the wrath of a powerful crime syndicate known as the Northside Nation, delivered the fatal blow. Stan and Cali paid off a dying man named Carlos Mendoza (Joe Perez), who agreed to confess to the crime only two days after the fact — only to be exonerated by Cordell’s sedulous search for the truth.In a phone interview from his home in Austin, Tex., Jared Padalecki spoke about the pivotal confession scene in the finale, the evolution of his Cordell Walker, the impact of his 15-year run as Sam Winchester on “Supernatural,” and the brief online fallout from his reaction to that fantasy drama’s upcoming prequel. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.What do you think motivated Cordell to force Stan to confess to his crimes in front of the entire Walker family?Season 1 saw Cordell Walker still reeling from his wife’s murder and trying to put on a happy face and professional face, but really going through a lot of turmoil behind the scenes. I think he realized that the only way he could refrain from killing Stan outright was to get him to confess. Being an attorney and the D.P.S. chair, Stan knew all the loopholes and all the ways out. Walker had to set his eyes on a goal, so what was going through my head [as an actor] at the end of [Episode] 17 and all of 18 was that I just have to get this guy to say the truth and to agree to tell the truth in public.I actually added that line on the day where I say, “Tell my family what happened.” Then, in that moment, it just occurred to me to say, “Tell Emily’s family.” [Nordling] did such a powerful job in that last scene of pulling the line between somebody who’s ashamed, but finally just ready to release the proverbial escape valve on all the pressure that’s been building up for him.How does finally uncovering the truth about his wife’s death help Cordell to move forward?He just needed to exhale, and he’s at a better place now. Now he realizes he needs to be there for his kids, for his parents, for his brother, for his work partners, and for himself. We’ll see in Season 2 that Walker has found some degree of closure.“We developed the show before the pandemic and things came to a fever pitch between our communities and our law enforcement,” Padalecki said. Rebecca Brenneman/CWHow much influence did all of the stories of families being separated at the U.S.-Mexico border have on this series?I was reading an op-ed from a law enforcement agent in Texas about how they were bound by duty and how they had to obey the law, but they just couldn’t bring themselves to put a 3-year-old in a cage. People talk all the time about how a coin has two sides. But in reality, a coin has three sides: there’s heads, tails, and the edge. So we wanted to find that edge, that gray area, and really lean into it about somebody who takes their job very seriously, who risked their life to make others’ lives safer, but also still has a deep moral code.We developed the show before the pandemic and things came to a fever pitch between our communities and our law enforcement in different parts of the country. And America doesn’t really have a big appetite right now for tall, white, straight law-enforcement agents roundhouse kicking minorities in the face — and nor did we, so that lined up. [Laughs.] We’re more interested in these stories of a parent or a human being who find themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place.How did you begin the transformation from Sam Winchester to Cordell Walker last year during the pandemic?We had already been developing “Walker,” so I was able to spend some time leaning into who this character might be. And at the time, I think [the showrunner] Anna [Fricke] and the gang had already broken five or six stories. I used that time selfishly to really try and develop Cordell Walker even further, because I knew that getting the phone call to go back to Vancouver and finish “Supernatural” would come in a snap.I did 327 episodes of that show, and that is basically 2,500 full days of filming and all the days in between of prepping and trying to figure out who Sam is, so it wasn’t difficult to get back to Sam. Frankly, knowing the last few episodes of “Supernatural,” I didn’t really want to live as Sam every day, because they were so sad. [Laughs.]Padalecki with Jensen Ackles in “Supernatural,” which ended last year after 15 seasons.Katie Yu/CW, via Associated PressDo you still find yourself grieving the end of “Supernatural”? How did that show change your life?We, the people who worked on and watched “Supernatural,” were all fortunate to have that time to prepare for a loss. And ultimately, the loss still was tragic and dramatic. But in another sense, “Supernatural” never really died. I still talk to [Jensen] Ackles, Misha [Collins], and the rest of the gang. I did “Supernatural” from age 22 to age 38, and I’ll never deny that my time and experiences on that show are certainly a part of who I am now. It’s still a part of me. I could film a scene as Sam Winchester right now because he lives in me, and I’m certain he always will.I’m sitting in my office right now, and behind me is my last-ever tape mark. The last day of shooting when we shot on that bridge, which was the last shot of the series, we had our tape marks. My dear friend [the actor and stunt man] Jason Cecchini picked up the last tape marks — my red tape mark and Jensen’s blue tape mark. He put them on a call sheet and framed them, and as we all said our goodbyes, he handed them to us. I have so many reminders. The mother of my children is somebody I met on the show in Season 4, and now we have three kids! It sounds like a cop out, but because I thought about it so much, I can’t even begin to explain how much it changed me.In June, you posted on Twitter that you were “gutted” to learn that your former co-star Jensen Ackles and his wife, Danneel, were working on a “Supernatural” prequel without your knowledge. What exactly happened that night?I hadn’t heard of it, and then he and I chatted [the next morning]. He just kind of explained: “Man, it’s not picked up yet. It’s not even written yet.” He knows and I know how much “Supernatural” means to both of us, and it wasn’t a secret he was trying to keep, necessarily. It was just something that he didn’t feel really even existed yet. But he has been like: “Hey, I’ll let you know what’s going on.”I love Jensen deeply. He’s my brother — he has been for many years, and he always will be, no matter what. He’s spent more time with me on camera than anybody probably ever will, so he knows my strengths and weaknesses more than I do, and vice versa. I respect his opinion.It was just one of those things that because it was online, and people were assuming I was part of it, I really wanted to just say: “Hey, I’m not keeping a secret from you guys. I just don’t know about this.” And I should be old enough to know better than to put something out there and expect that people will understand. It’s hard to tweet a specific tone. If you write it online, it’s like, “Oh, he doesn’t know! They’re going to kill each other! The world is ending!” And I’m like, “No, no, no.” [Laughs.] I try to avoid social media as much as possible because of that. More

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    A New Must-Have for TV and Movie Shoots: Therapists

    Working on set can be challenging. In Britain, many productions are hiring trained counselors to help casts and crew cope.LONDON — When Lou Platt talks about her increasingly in-demand TV and movie production job, she has to make one thing clear: She can’t discuss 99 percent of the work itself.Platt, 41, is a British therapist who has worked on high-profile productions like “I May Destroy You,” Michaela Coel’s TV series inspired by her own experience of sexual assault.Client confidentiality means Platt can’t say exactly what happens in her sessions, and nondisclosure agreements mean she can’t even reveal most of her productions’ names. People often misconstrue what her work is about, she said in an interview, thinking she’s there to spot — and put a stop to — story lines or scenes that might upset actors and technicians.“My role is to actually help the art take greater risks,” she said, adding that no one makes their best work if they’re stressed or anxious.Sometimes, Platt — a former actor — is involved before filming begins, helping writers turn harrowing autobiographical material into scripts. Other times, she introduces herself to the cast and crew at the start of filming, and lets them know they can call her. She’s also there for film editors who have to watch harrowing scenes over and over while finishing off a show.The presence of on-set and on-call therapists is particularly notable in British film and TV, which has been involved in an industrywide discussion about mental health since 2017, when Michael Harm, a location manager who had worked on numerous movies including the Harry Potter franchise, killed himself.The day he died, Harm sent a letter to a colleague, Sue Quinn, saying he had nowhere to turn for help with struggles at work, and urging her to change that for others in the industry.“You’re pushed, pushed, pushed and pushed to the limit, all the time,” said Quinn, also a location manager, about the experience of working on a typical set. That’s especially true, she said, when producers prioritize remaining on budget over mental health. Actors and crew work exhausting hours and many experience bullying, she added.After receiving the letter, Quinn approached a British nonprofit that supports movie and TV workers experiencing financial troubles, and asked it to develop a help line for workers experiencing issues including depression, anxiety and bullying as well as financial stress. The following year, that organization, the Film and TV Charity, started a 24-hour phone line: It received around 7,000 calls in 2020, said Valeria Bullo, a member of the charity’s mental health team.The charity also conducted a survey to assess the extent of mental health problems in the industry. Of 9,000 respondents, over half said they’d considered taking their own life.Before filming started on “I May Destroy You,” Coel and her team knew they wanted a therapist involved, the writer and actress said in an email exchange. Initially, the expectation was that Platt would just work with Coel if “shooting some of the darker scenes that reflected my own life became emotionally taxing,” Coel said. But then a producer decided to make the therapist available to everyone.“The Underground Railroad” employed a therapist on set.Atsushi Nishijima/Amazon StudiosFor “I May Destroy You,” Michaela Coel initially brought mental health support on for herself.HBO, via Associated Press“She is very clearly on the side of the person who is in need,” Coel said of Platt. She puts that person “before producers, directors and money, and television itself. And actually she may have been the only person on set able to do that,” she added.Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor, a writer and producer, said she first worked with Platt while writing a short film about her experience of seeking asylum in Britain. She found their sessions so useful that she decided to bring Platt onto the sets for several other productions she was working on, including an upbeat Christmas movie.“It should be part of how we all work, as we don’t know what anyone’s working through,” Gharoro-Akpojotor said.When TV companies came back to work last year after lockdowns across Britain lifted, casts and crew found themselves under pressure to make up for lost time, cramming a year’s work into a few months, according to Sarah McCaffrey, another therapist whose company, Solas Mind, provides counseling in the industry.These compressed timelines were “almost unsustainable,” McCaffrey said. On top of that, crew were often split up into in small “bubbles,” isolated from each other for coronavirus safety, which meant fewer social interactions. On some productions, up to 30 people had booked sessions with her company, she said.The pandemic also seems to have encouraged American companies to offer more on-set support. Last April, Netflix hired Jake Knapik, a clinical psychologist, to help develop mental health courses for its British and United States productions. Knapik said that “Covid has been the catalyst,” noting that lockdowns helped everyone realize just how debilitating loneliness and anxiety could be.Kim Whyte was on hand to offer support to the cast and crew of Amazon’s “The Underground Railroad,” whether they wanted to talk about the production or their home lives.Leslie Ryann McKellar for The New York TimesWhen Amazon was filming “The Underground Railroad,” a series about enslaved workers fleeing a cotton plantation, the therapist Kim Whyte was on set for much of the shoot. Some therapists prefer working off-site so people avoid the possible stigma of being seen receiving mental health support, but Whyte said she walked around chatting with everyone between takes: that way nobody knew when she was discussing something serious, or something trivial.When someone needed to talk something through, it was sometimes about issues raised by the show, she said. “Some of the cast and crew were disturbed by the content — just the institution of slavery,” she added. But just as often, they wanted to talk about issues they were dealing with at home, and how those were having an impact on their mood, like in any workplace.Platt said she felt therapists should also be available after productions end, in case problems emerge later. “You wouldn’t have therapy for the effect of a car crash while you’re still in hospital,” she said. Actors and writers should even have access to counseling when promoting films, she added, since journalists often ask them to relive traumatic experiences over and over again.“At the moment, all this is radical,” Platt said. But she hoped the stigma would disappear, and that soon on-set mental health support would be considered normal: She imagined a therapist’s trailer, with a line of people happy to be seen waiting outside. More

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    Seth Meyers Teases Rudy Giuliani for Joining Cameo

    “Rudy’s charging $275 per video, but if you just wait awhile, you know he’ll eventually butt-dial you for free,” the “Late Night” host joked on Wednesday.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.Rudy Makes a CameoOn Wednesday night, late-night hosts mocked Rudy Giuliani for joining Cameo, a service that allows fans to pay celebrities to send them video messages.“I guess Rudy’s last cameo went so well, he decided to give it another go,” Seth Meyers said, referring to Giuliani’s unwitting appearance last year in “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.”“You know how like six months ago, Rudy was the personal lawyer for the leader of the free world? Well, now he’s doing this.” — SARAH SILVERMAN, guest host of “Jimmy Kimmel Live”“That’s right, he went from being America’s mayor to saying, ‘Hello, this is Rudy Giuliani. I want to wish ‘Deez Nuts’ a happy retirement.’”— JIMMY FALLON“He has no idea what he’s in for. Right now, a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York is logging on to Cameo and asking Rudy to share the story of the time he went to Ukraine to dig up dirt on a political opponent to interfere in a presidential election. [imitating Giuliani] ‘This message is for Mr. DOJ. I hear you’re feeling discouraged at work. Well, let me tell you about the time my friend Don and I cooked up a scheme to extort a foreign government and got away with it. You know, it says here you want me to read you my text messages and your emails. Oh, hold on, someone’s banging at the door. Why are you yelling “police”? There’s no police in here.’”— SETH MEYERS“I mean, this guy — this guy, who is a personal lawyer to the president of the United States, and now, he’s basically panhandling in the same place you can get a ‘Happy bat mitzvah’ message from Jamie Farr.” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Giuliani’s New Gig Edition)“This may be the saddest part: It says he responds within 10 hours. His own prostate doesn’t respond that fast.” — SARAH SILVERMAN“Now, Rudy’s charging $275 per video, but if you just wait awhile, you know he’ll eventually butt-dial you for free.” — SETH MEYERS“That’s right, for the price of parking at Disneyland, you can get a message from the vampire who held a press conference next to a dildo store.” — SARAH SILVERMAN“Seems like a good investment, but can you really put a price on a future convicted felon accidentally farting on camera for your niece’s quinceañera? You can, it’s $275!” — SARAH SILVERMANThe Bits Worth WatchingStephen Colbert did his impersonation of a squirrel walking while pooping for his lucky guest Alan Alda.What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightThe Killers will perform on Thursday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”Also, Check This OutIn her new work, Ali Wong performs some truly refined vulgarity, our critic writes.Joyce Kim for The New York TimesAli Wong is back with a raunchy new stand-up set for her “Milk and Money Tour.” More