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      in Television

      Nickelodeon and Disney Stars Find a Second Act on Podcasts

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      The cast of the Nickelodeon series “Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide” are among the stars of 2000s teen sitcoms who are using podcasts to connect with their Gen Z and millennial fan bases.For three years starting when he was just 12 years old, Devon Werkheiser dispensed advice for bearing the indignities of middle school as the title character in the Nickelodeon series “Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide.” Two decades later, he said, people still recognize him as Ned Bigby.“There was a time when I wanted to transcend ‘Ned’s,’” Werkheiser said, “but maybe it’s the answer in getting me where I want to go.”Now 33, he’s made peace with his past and is still giving tips to his peers, only he is using a more modern medium. In “Ned’s Declassified Podcast Survival Guide,” he and his former “Ned’s” castmates Lindsey Shaw and Daniel Curtis Lee dish about the show, which aired from 2004 to 2007, and open up about past personal and career struggles.The three are among a cohort of former stars, many from Nickelodeon and Disney Channel shows from the 2000s, who have started podcasts as a way of connecting with a nostalgic Gen Z and millennial fan base. In doing so, they are embracing roles that they played as children and teenagers — characters that some had spent years trying to move beyond, with mixed success.“Part of the truth is, if any of our careers were maybe further along, maybe we wouldn’t be doing podcasts,” Werkheiser said in an interview. “There are comments that speak to that as if we don’t know.”Since the “Ned’s” podcast debuted in February 2023, several exchanges have caused a stir among its 717,000 TikTok followers. Shaw, who played Moze on the show, spoke about her past struggles with substance abuse. Werkheiser gave an emotional account of his time on the set of the troubled Alec Baldwin western “Rust.” And he and Shaw punctured the innocent image of their old show with an awkward exchange about their fumbling offscreen sexual encounters.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      Radu Jude Brings TikTok’s Chaos to the Movies

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      Radu Jude’s films are messy mash-ups of art, literature, advertising and social media, with some dirty jokes thrown in.Halfway through a recent Zoom interview with Radu Jude, the acclaimed Romanian director of “Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World,” he offered a glimpse into his creative process. He pulled out one of the books he’s reading, an illustrated tome about commedia dell’arte. Then he shared his screen to reveal a collection of texts and images — Van Gogh still lifes, Giacometti sculptures, Japanese haikus — saved in folders on his computer. Jude stopped scrolling at a picture he took of a sign posted on an apartment building entrance.“It says ‘Please have oral sex so as not to disturb the other tenants,’” Jude explained, translating from the Romanian with a grin on his face.The autodidact Jude is not above a dirty joke. His work melds tragedy and farce, drawing promiscuously from art, literature, street ads and social media to fuel his brazen visions of Romanian history and contemporary life.Jude’s previous film, the Golden Bear-winner “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn,” starts out with the making of a humorously sloppy sex tape and concludes with a witch trial against one of the tape’s participants. His latest, “Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World,” arrives in U.S. theaters on Friday.The black comedy follows Angela (Ilinca Manolache), a film production assistant who spends most of her 16-hour workdays in her car, shuttling clients and equipment around Bucharest, Romania’s capital. One of Angela’s gigs entails interviewing former factory employees who were injured on the clock for a chance to feature in a corporate safety video. Scenes from the present-day, shot in black-and-white, are interwoven with colorful clips of another woman named Angela: a taxi driver in the 1980s also chained to a thankless job that involves navigating the streets of Bucharest.Ilinca Manolache as Angela, a film production assistant who spends most of her 16-hour workdays in her car, in “Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World.”4 Proof FilmWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      Popcast (Deluxe): Is TikTok Done? 4 Crises Holding the App Back

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTubeThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on:What made TikTok so addictive and effective in the pastThe introduction of TikTok Shop and the commercialization of the For You PageTikTok’s golden era: Charli D’Amelio, Addison Rae, the Hype HouseRecent TikTok bright spots: Pookie & JettInnovations in TikTok narrative formatsDurational content on TikTokTikTok’s decreasing reliance on the music industry and its cold war with Universal Music GroupThrowback TikTok songs of the week from ppcocaine feat. NextYoungin and Gucci ManeSnack of the weekConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      in Music

      After UMG Pulls Its Music, TikTok Users Encounter Silence

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      Content creators say they are considering the merits of Instagram and YouTube after a licensing battle led TikTok to pull songs by artists with Universal Music Group.When TikTok users open the app these days, they encounter a platform stripped of music by many of their favorite artists. Dancers bob and sway without a beat drop. People lip-sync to silence.Because of a licensing rift between the platform and Universal Music Group, which releases music by Playboi Carti, Taylor Swift, Drake, Ariana Grande and others, TikTok confirmed on Thursday that it had deleted music by Universal artists from its library and muted previously published videos that used those songs.Music from artists affiliated with Sony and Warner remains available on TikTok. But that did not stop some users from declaring they were departing to a rival platform, Instagram Reels, while others have made fun of Universal’s absence by dancing to songs in the public domain. The dominant feeling is frustration: What was the point of TikTok without one’s favorite melodies?“A lot of trends that have gone viral are of people who have millions of views on a single video because of an audio,” said Myah Elliott, 22, who pointed out that the TikTok logo looks like a musical note. “It’s going to be muted. That’s a scary thought.”For more than two years, 21-year-old Evan Cronin posted videos on the first of each month that show him going through a morning routine, garnering millions of views. Around midnight on Thursday, he published the latest in the series to the beat of Playboi Carti’s “Sky.”This time, there were barely any interactions from viewers.“It was essentially a dead post,” Cronin said.After TikTok removed Universal’s music, those who use the app to listen to their favorite songs or discover new artists expressed disappointment. Others publicly shared concern about the detrimental effect on emerging Universal artists who rely on TikTok for publicity.Shawn Desman, a Canadian artist, explained to his followers why his videos had been muted and bemoaned that he no longer had the ability to share his music through TikTok.“It is such an important tool for us to promote ourselves, our music, our creations,” Desman said in the video. “It’s just really crazy to me that now we’re not going to be able to use our music.”The sudden silencing of Universal’s music catalog also left TikTok’s content creators worried and exasperated. John Casterline, who has 3.5 million TikTok followers, said that at least 10 percent of his videos had been muted, resulting in a steep drop-off in views. He has contemplated pivoting to YouTube.“The minute TikTok mutes a video, they’re obviously not going to push it out to the ‘For You’ page,” said Casterline, 20, referencing the app’s algorithm-based recommendation feed. “Everything completely halts. So it’s definitely made my account take a massive hit.” More

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      in Music

      Is TikTok Over?

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      The app once offered seemingly endless chances to be charmed by music, dances, personalities and products. But in only a few short years, its promise of kismet is evaporating.How much time do I spend on TikTok? I can tell you which chiropractor is demonstrating their technique without even seeing their face. I know which fashion content creator is partial to Rei Kawakubo, and who has a preposterous Carol Christian Poell collection. I know which New York City microinfluencers go on vacation together, and which creators are building a modest following joking about the music of a small scene of rappers who make Playboi Carti sound like Kendrick Lamar.Through endless hours of scrolling — an hour a day, at least, for several years now — I’ve been accumulating hyperniche expertise predicated on my interests, conscious and subconscious. The result has been a gathering of online characters that, at this point, shape my cultural consumption far more than any celebrity or news source.This is what TikTok intends to do, tapping into pure id, drilling down on what you know and what you might want to know in hopes that you never leave the app’s forever scroll. Of all the social media platforms, it holds the greatest promise of kismet. It’s the one that has seemed most in tune with individual taste and most capable of shaping emerging monoculture.But increasingly in recent months, scrolling the feed has come to resemble fumbling in the junk drawer: navigating a collection of abandoned desires, who-put-that-here fluff and things that take up awkward space in a way that blocks access to what you’re actually looking for.This has happened before, of course — the moment when Twitter turned from good-faith salon to sinister outrage derby, or when Instagram, and its army of influencers, learned to homogenize joy and beauty. (Some apps, like the TikTok precursor Vine, were shuttered before ever becoming truly tiresome.) Similarly, the malaise that has begun to suffuse TikTok feels systemic, market-driven and also potentially existential, suggesting the end of a flourishing era and the precipice of a wasteland period.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      in Music

      Universal Music Group Threatens to Remove Music From TikTok

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      The company has been renegotiating the contract that licenses its vast catalog of songs to the social media platform. The agreement expires on Wednesday.Universal Music Group, the world’s largest music company, said it would revoke the licenses for its vast catalog of songs from TikTok after its current contract expires on Wednesday if the two companies could not reach a new deal addressing Universal’s concerns over artist compensation, artificial intelligence and other issues.In an open letter posted late Tuesday, Universal accused TikTok of responding to its requests with “indifference, and then with intimidation,” creating a public squabble in the remaining hours of the two companies’ existing contract. If the talks fail, TikTok users would be unable to use music by Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, U2, Bad Bunny and thousands of other artists in their videos.TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, is one of the world’s most popular and fastest-growing social media platforms, with more than a billion users, and its influence on youth culture around the world is unmatched. The company says it is used by more than 150 million Americans. For a majority of TikTok users, music is an integral part of the experience, with songs — often comically sped up — playing over the short clips that fill users’ feeds.In its public letter, Universal said that during negotiations it asked TikTok to address its concerns over three issues: compensation for artists and songwriters, online safety for TikTok’s users and “protecting human artists from the harmful effects of A.I.” Universal accused TikTok of allowing the platform to be “flooded” with songs created by artificial intelligence, which Universal said dilutes royalties for real, human artists and amounts to “sponsoring artist replacement by A.I.”In response, TikTok accused Universal of putting “their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters.”“Despite Universal’s false narrative and rhetoric, the fact is they have chosen to walk away from the powerful support of a platform with well over a billion users that serves as a free promotional and discovery vehicle for their talent,” TikTok said in a statement.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

    • 88 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      A ‘Polar Express’ Character Comes to Life

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      Nia Wilkerson has spent years hearing that she looks like the girl from “The Polar Express.” On TikTok, she’s leaning into it.“Oh my God! You’re the girl from ‘The Polar Express,’” a tourist yelled at Nia Wilkerson.Dressed in a pink nightgown, Ms. Wilkerson was dancing in front of the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center in Midtown Manhattan for a TikTok video.Over the course of the next two hours on Monday afternoon, dozens more people stopped and stared. Many of them filmed her from afar or asked to take selfies with her.“Wait, are you really the girl from the movie?” a passer-by asked.The answer to that question is no. Ms. Wilkerson, a senior at St. John’s University in Queens, was 3 years old in 2004, when “The Polar Express” was released.The movie, a box office hit directed by Robert Zemeckis that was based on a children’s book by Chris Van Allsburg, has long drawn criticism because of its brand of motion-capture animation, which gives its characters an eerie, zombified look.Hero Girl in a scene from “The Polar Express,” a 2004 movie made with motion-capture animation that has been criticized for the odd look of its characters.Ms. Wilkerson, 22, said that ever since she was an elementary school student in Woodbridge, Va., people had been telling her she looks like Hero Girl, a character in the film who is also known as Holly. Later, a high school crush pointed out the resemblance.“That was heartbreaking,” she joked.Since then, Ms. Wilkerson, who stands five foot tall, has come to embrace her digital doppelgänger. This is the fourth holiday season she has spent making TikTok videos in the guise of Hero Girl. Each year, her popularity has grown. She now has nearly a 250,000 followers.

      @niasporin ♬ original sound – $ Ms. Wilkerson said she got the idea after seeing another woman on TikTok cosplaying as the character. “But she didn’t really look like her,” she said.In “The Polar Express,” Holly wears pigtails and a patterned pink nightgown. Ms. Wilkerson goes with a variation on the look for her TikToks.“It’s a seasonal gig,” she said, adding that she was recently swarmed by people in Elmo costumes while making a video in Times Square.Ms. Wilkerson posed with her fans in Rockefeller Center.Scott Rossi for The New York TimesAccompanying her on Monday were several of her St. John’s classmates, who acted as her unpaid film crew. “My friendship is my payment,” Ms. Wilkerson joked, adding she had bought the group food at the campus dining hall during the weeks of filming.She used to suffer from social anxiety, she said, but her TikTok alter ego has helped her overcome it. “No one in New York cares,” she said. “I would never do this anywhere else.”Ms. Wilkerson, who is studying television and film at St. John’s, has found ways to profit from her 15 minutes of seasonal fame. She participates in TikTok’s creator fund, a program that the company uses to pays certain people who make videos for the platform, she said. Musicians have reached out to her about making videos, she added. Her rate is about $250 per video, she said. Outside of the holiday season, she makes videos on other topics, but her views drop off precipitously.While most of the feedback has been positive, Ms. Wilkerson said she no longer read the replies to her videos, after having seen too many racist comments. Still, there have been upsides to her social media fame, like a recent collaboration with @jerseyyjoe, a popular TikTok creator known for his dance moves who sometimes makes videos dressed as Hero Boy from “The Polar Express.”

      @jerseyyjoe The duo you never expected 🤣🚊🔥 ( DC: ME ) #jerseyclub #jerseyyjoe #jersey #trend #viral #fyp ♬ the polar express jersey club – Ali Beats After an afternoon of shooting, Ms. Wilkerson and her friends discussed their upcoming final exams while waiting for an F train on a subway station platform. Ms. Wilkerson mentioned an earlier subway video, during which she had accidentally kicked a passenger.After boarding a rush-hour train car, they wriggled into formation to film another TikTok. One of Ms. Wilkerson’s friends, Amanda Gopie, 20, pointed at a sign that read: “Don’t be someone’s subway story. Courtesy counts.”“That’s you,” Ms. Gopie said, to laughs from the others in the group.As the F train rolled toward Queens, Ms. Wilkerson and her friends recorded themselves singing “When Christmas Comes to Town,” a song from “The Polar Express.”“The best time of the year, when everyone comes home,” Ms. Wilkerson began.As her friends joined in to form a shaky chorus, a few riders perked their heads up in recognition. One told the singers to work on their pitch. The group decided they’d try another take. More

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      in Television

      Who’s That Wonderful Girl? How “Nanalan’” Found New Success on TikTok

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      She’s Mona, the puppet heroine of “Nanalan’,” an old Canadian children’s show that has found a new audience on TikTok.“Nanalan’” hasn’t been on TV in years, but it’s the hottest show on TikTok.A Canadian children’s program that made its debut in 1999, it has had a resurgence in recent weeks, thanks to its growing popularity on the social media platform, where it has been watched millions of times.A big part of the show’s appeal lies in its fiendishly catchy songs. One of them includes the lines: “Who’s that wonderful girl? Could she be any cuter?”The girl in question is Mona, a little green puppet with pigtails sticking out from both sides of her head. No, she could not be any cuter.The “who’s that wonderful girl?” earworm comes from a scene in which Mona enters a room dressed as a princess. Her grandmother, Nana, is singing the song while accompanying herself on organ. Nana’s dog, Russell, then appears in the garb of a royal courtier.The clip took off in mid-October, after a TikTok user posted it with the caption “When the clothes you ordered arrive and you treat the family to a fashion show.” The video has been viewed over 9.5 million times.

      @nanalanofficial Thewhole video can be viewed on Nanalan Official yu Tube #whosethatwonderfulgirl #wonderfulgirl #nanalan #princess #barbie ♬ original sound – nanalan’ official “Nanalan’” joined TikTok, YouTube and other social media platforms this year. But it didn’t make much of an impression until the video of Mona in her princess regalia began circulating, said Jamie Shannon, who created the show with Jason Hopley. The pair started making “Nanalan’” shorts in 1999, and the series ended up airing on CBC, Nickelodeon and PBS for Kids.In addition to reposting old content, Mr. Shannon, 51, has started making new videos with the “Nanalan’” puppets for social media. He discussed the show’s newfound audience and weighed in on why nostalgia reigns supreme online. The conversation has been edited and condensed.How did you get into the puppet business?I was traveling in Europe, I think it was 1990, and Jim Henson passed away. He was such a big part of my childhood. And I was like, “Well, that’s exactly what I want to do.” I was already kind of a puppet maker and an actor. So I kind of combined it all.For many people online, this is their introduction to your show. What should they know?It’s wild. Fifty-two percent of our audience on TikTok is American. “Nanalan’” is short for Nana Land, which is what I called my nana’s backyard. It’s about a little girl in that backyard. Mom drops Mona off at her nana’s everyday and goes to work, just like a lot of people’s situations. We were so lucky to do it without scripts, improvised.When did the show end?In 1999, we made the original set of three-minute shorts. We did that again in, I think, 2000. In 2003, we made a bunch of half-hour episodes, and that was it.Jason Hopley, left, and Jamie Shannon, the creators of “Nanalan’,” film a scene featuring the puppets Nana and Mona.via Jamie ShannonUntil social media discovered “Nanalan’.”We had a huge viral breakout in 2016 as well. Somebody did this hilarious thing. In one of the three-minute episodes, Mona’s describing the garden to Russell: “There’s a cooshie and a peepo.” Someone put the words up on the screen, just the silly words and then it went crazy on Tumblr. It became one of these things where people were like, “Try not to laugh.”Sorry — a peepo?A pea pod. I’m trying to imitate a kid imitating what a parent told them, but they don’t quite remember the word.Why do you think TikTok has embraced Mona?The world is so, so difficult and scary right now, and the show’s very comforting. Everything looks soft. There’s no special effects. It heralds to what I think people want to see, which is just something that’s real and authentic in the, you know, fake, fake, fake world. Everything’s A.I., and people don’t know what’s real.

      @nanalanofficial Replying to @Brooke backyard dance party #nanalan #dance #puppets #deli #delidancechallenge ♬ original sound – BREANNA🩷 Mona recently joined Cameo, a platform that allows celebrities to send video messages to fans for a fee. What’s that like?I was trying to join Cameo so long ago, and I guess they weren’t accepting puppets. It’s great, I love it. It’s like four or five videos a day. Touching stuff, too. People say, “Grandma died, can you …?” So I do a lot of pep talks. More