Our last issue of the 2025 cycle is now out in the world, which means it’s time for this editor to switch from binge-watching TV at home to seeing movies in one of L.A.’s many frigid screening rooms. (Not a bad way to get through the dog days of summer, honestly.)
But before I return you to the newsletter’s regularly scheduled programming, here’s a look at some highlights from our Aug. 19 issue. Catch you in November when we open the first Envelope of Oscar season!
Digital cover story: Michelle Williams
(JSquared Photography / For the Times)
As heavy as its subject matter may be, “Dying for Sex” is the only series this season that actually left me doubled over in laughter.
My reaction stemmed from a moment early on in FX’s limited series where Molly, the kinky cancer patient at the core of the story, stumbles into a ransomware trap online. As played with slapstick brilliance by Michelle Williams, she leaps out of her laptop camera’s sight line as though it had metamorphosed into a dangerous animal — a scenario that only gets funnier when she’s joined on the floor by her friend and caretaker, Nikki (Jenny Slate).
As Williams, Emmy-nominated for lead actress in a limited series or TV movie, tells contributor Lorena O’Neil in this week’s digital cover story, those who suggest she’s only interested in serious fare are mistaken. “Dying” in particular required a sense of humor, Williams reveals: “My best friend recently lost another of her best friends to cancer, and she would tell me about the conversations they would have cheek to cheek lying in a hospital bed and how in those moments they found the thing to point at and laugh about, so [the series] felt very true to me.”
TV’s watercooler woman
Carrie Coon in “The White Lotus.”
(HBO)
Anytime I’ve seen complaints on social media about this summer’s “TV tumbleweeds,” I have thought to myself: “They must not be watching ‘The Gilded Age.’”
HBO’s delicious portrait of conniving old- and new-money New Yorkers in the late 19th century has ripened over three seasons into a reliably entertaining (if politically suspect) melodrama, thanks in no small part to Carrie Coon’s unabashedly ambitious society wife, Bertha Russell. Her cunning machinations, which this season included foisting a British duke on her reluctant daughter, have helped turn the series into a hit. Which also makes Coon responsible for not one but two watercooler successes in 2025 alone.
In her recent interview with contributor Gregory Ellwood, the (too modest) actor credits “White Lotus” co-stars Michelle Monaghan and Leslie Bibb for her character’s final-episode monologue becoming a viral sensation this spring. (It also likely clinched her Emmy nomination for supporting actress in a drama.) But having followed Coon since Season 1, Episode 6, of “The Leftovers,” I’m comfortable saying she probably played some part in earning those big moments. You don’t capture buzz on two shows in a row by pure chance.
Words to live by
Genevieve O’Reilly as Mon Mothma in “Andor.”
(Lucasfilm Ltd.)
The stirring speech Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) delivers to the Galactic Senate in “Andor” isn’t just the culmination of the series’ long-gestating political plotline, the moment at which the senator throws in her lot once and for all with the Rebellion — at grave risk to her life.
It is also, thanks to the careful work of Emmy-nominated writer Dan Gilroy, a memorable piece of oration in its own right, drawing on real-life examples such as Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill and Mahatma Gandhi to give a major turning point in the “Star Wars” universe genuine historical weight.
Gilroy joined me via Zoom recently to annotate the speech, from its unassuming opening line to its pointed use of the word “genocide.”
Emmy nominations arrived Tuesday morning, and if you made the list, it’s a “White Lotus” Full Moon Party vibe, full of celebratory cheers, toasts with your beverage of choice (it’s still early, maybe some of that Thai Red Bull?) and techno music playing loud enough to have Interpol banging on your door.
And if you didn’t hear your name called, well, you’re feeling like poor Pornchai watching Belinda sail away into the sunset. Or maybe you’re like Saxon, compartmentalizing the whole thing, pretending it never happened. We feel you.
With Emmy submissions down this year, there aren’t as many slots available to salute all the worthy work, leading to some sad omissions — which, for the sake of alliteration and search engine optimization, we’ll call “snubs.” There were also some surprises, some worthy, some about as welcome as one of those poison piña coladas Jason Isaacs blended up in the “White Lotus” finale.
SURPRISE: The all-encompassing love for “The White Lotus”
Yes, as you could tell from my intro, the third season of Mike White’s deep dive into miserable white people and fabulous brand collaborations gave us much to discuss, even if discourse was often centered on complaining about the show’s slow pace and dearth of plot. I don’t begrudge some recognition for a series that dominated the pop culture landscape for its two-month run, but nominating seven of its regular cast members reveals a lack of imagination among voters. Pity the poor ensemble member not nominated. I’m not even going to name them and put that FOMO out into the universe.
SNUB: Any actor from “The Pitt” who wasn’t nominated
Conversely, just one nomination for the supporting crew at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center — for Katherine LaNasa as charge nurse Dana Evans — is an act of voter negligence. I get it. There were a lot of interns and residents and nurses working that 15-hour shift. And just about every one of them was a more fully realized character than anyone on “The White Lotus.” Maybe voters had a hard time focusing their attention with so many choices. I’ll console myself with the knowledge that it’ll win the Screen Actors Guild drama ensemble award next year.
SURPRISE: “Paradise” (drama series)
The dystopian drama that asked the question, “Would you want to be trapped in an underground bunker with the likes of these people?” I can’t think of anything more frightening and enough Emmy voters agreed.
SNUB: “The Four Seasons” (comedy series)
You kind of hated these wealthy, entitled boneheads, and not in ways that were intended or even fun.
SURPRISE: Colman Domingo “The Four Seasons” (comedy supporting actor)
Because even if the show is mediocre, it’s impossible to ignore Domingo in any season.
SNUB: Natasha Lyonne, “Poker Face” (comedy actress) To quote Lyonne’s human lie-detector Charlie Cale, that’s “bulls—.”
SNUB: “The Rehearsal” (comedy series)
How could a show about airline safety produce more laugh-out-loud moments than any other comedy series this year? How could a show so funny, insightful and, yes, occasionally terrifying not be nominated for comedy series? (Also, and not completely unrelated: How could it take this long for the TSA to let us keep our shoes on?)
SNUB: Selena Gomez, “Only Murders in the Building” (comedy actress)
Gomez earned her first Emmy acting nomination last year, but with the category trimmed to five nominees from six, something had to give. Detractors fault her flat, monotone delivery, though if you’re acting opposite Martin Short and Steve Martin, you need to find your own lane. Arguably, Gomez has. Look for that debate to continue next year when the show returns for a fifth season.
SNUB: Kate Hudson, “Running Point” (comedy actress)
Somebody, somewhere voted for Everett, so tender and vulnerable and utterly charming on this now-ended HBO series, one that seems destined for a long life of cult appreciation along the lines of “Enlightened,” created by (yes) Mike White.
SURPRISE: Kristen Bell, “Nobody Wants This” (comedy actress)
Not a surprise that’s she’s nominated — everyone watched this show in one sitting. But a surprise that this is her first nomination ever. Well-earned, even if I’m not convinced Adam Brody’s rabbi would throw everything away for her character.
SNUB: Steve Martin, “Only Murders in the Building” (comedy actor)
How do you nominate Martin Short and not Steve Martin? Big always wins over subtle. You have to wonder if voters forgot, or didn’t watch, the show’s last season — it has been awhile — which had Martin carrying the plot’s emotional weight as his character grieved the loss of longtime stunt double and friend, Sazz (played by Jane Lynch).
If her star turn in Lena Dunham’s “Too Much” had dropped during the voting window, Stalter might have secured her first Emmy nomination. Or maybe not. (Dunham is polarizing.) At any rate, Stalter might have two shots next year, provided “Hacks” premieres its next (and last) season in time.
SNUB: Meryl Streep, “Only Murders in the Building” (comedy supporting actress)
Only a “snub” because it’s Streep and she’s nominated for everything.
SNUB: “Your Friends and Neighbors” (limited series)
As the Jon Hamm series went along, it felt more like a Patek Philippe ad than any kind of comment on the empty lives of the wealthy. (Are there not any rich people out there leading fulfilling lives?) By the end of its run, we were checking our watches, and voters didn’t give it the time of day. (Sorry.)
SNUB: “Disclaimer” (limited series)
What a disappointment. Alfonso Cuarón’s highly anticipated seven-chapter psychological thriller premiered at the Venice Film Festival last August, screening four episodes over two nights. It then went to Telluride, Toronto and London. It was an event … until people saw it and were left baffled. How could the filmmaker behind “Children of Men,” “Gravity” and “Y tu mamá también” make something so dull that few people could to finish it?
SNUB: Renée Zellweger, “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” (limited series/movie actress)
When “Love Island” defines romantic-comedy for a lot of people, she didn’t stand a chance.
The Emmys’ limited series/TV movie acting categories have come to represent some of the best and most-talked-about shows on television, and this year’s crop of contenders is no exception.
The seven actors who joined the 2025 Envelope Roundtable were Javier Bardem, who plays father, victim and alleged molester Jose Menendez in Netflix’s “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story”; Renée Zellweger, who reprises her role as the British romantic heroine in “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy”; Stephen Graham, who co-created and stars in “Adolescence” as the father of a teenage boy who commits a heinous murder; Jenny Slate, who plays the best friend of a terminally ill woman in FX’s “Dying for Sex”; Brian Tyree Henry, who portrays a man posing as a federal agent in order to rip off drug dealers in Apple TV+’s “Dope Thief”; Elizabeth Banks, who takes on the role of an estranged sibling and recovering alcoholic in Prime Video’s “The Better Sister”; and Sacha Baron Cohen, who appears as the deceived husband of a successful filmmaker in Apple TV+’s “Disclaimer.”
The Times’ news and culture critic Lorraine Ali spoke to the group about the emotional fallout of a heavy scene, the art of defying expectations and more. Read highlights from their conversation below and watch video of the roundtable above.
The 2025 Limited Series / TV Movie Roundtable: Elizabeth Banks, left, Sacha Baron Cohen, Jenny Slate, Javier Bardem, Brian Tyree Henry, Renée Zellweger and Stephen Graham.
Many of you move between drama and comedy. People often think, “Drama’s very serious and difficult, comedy’s light and easy.” Is that true?
Banks: I think the degree of difficulty with comedy is much higher. It’s really hard to sustainably make people laugh over time, whereas [with] drama, everyone relates to loss and pining for love that’s unrequited. Not everybody has great timing or is funny or gets satire.
Henry: There’s something fun about how closely intertwined they are. In my series, I’m playing a heroin addict running for my life, and I have this codependency with this friend … There’s a scene where I’ve been looking for him, and I’m high out of my mind, and I find him in my attic, and all he’s talking about is how he has to take a s—. And I’m like, “But they’re trying to kill us.” You just see him wincing and going through all these [groans]. It is so funny, but at the same time, you’re just terrified for both. There’s always humor somewhere in the drama.
Banks: There’s a reason why the theater [symbol] is a happy face/sad face. They’re very intertwined.
Renée Zellweger of “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy.”
Renée, with Bridget Jones — how has she changed over the last 25 years and where is she now with “Mad About the Boy”?
Zellweger: Nobody’s the same from one moment to the next, one chapter to the next and certainly not from one year to the next. It’s been a really interesting sort of experiment to revisit a character in the different phases of her life.
What I’m really grateful for is that the timing runs in parallel to the sort of experiences that you have in your early 20s, 30s and so on. With each iteration, I don’t have to pretend that I’m less than I am, because I don’t want to be the character that I was, or played, when she was 29, 35. I don’t want to do that, and I certainly don’t want to do that now.
So it was really nice to meet her again in this place of what she’s experiencing in the moment, which is bereavement and the loss of her great love, and being a mom, and trying to be responsible, and reevaluating what she values, and how she comports herself, and what’s important and all of that, because, of course, I relate to that in this moment.
There’s a certain level of sociopathy.
— Brian Tyree Henry, “Dope Thief,” on the lengths actors will go to get the shot
Stephen, “Adolescence” follows a family dealing with the fallout of their 13-year-old son being accused of a brutal murder. You direct and star in the series. What was it like being immersed in such heavy subject matter? Did it come home with you?
Graham: We did that first episode, the end of it was quite heavy and quite emotional. When we said, “Cut,” all of us older actors and the crew were very emotional. There were hugs and a bit of applause.
And then everyone would be like, “Where’s Owen?” [Cooper, the teenage actor who plays Graham’s character’s son]. “Is Owen OK? Is he with his child psychologist?” No, Owen’s upstairs playing swing ball with his tutor. It was like OK, that’s the way to do this — not to take myself too seriously when we say, “Cut,” but when I am there, immerse myself in it.
Let’s be honest, we can all be slightly self-obsessed. My missus, she’s the best for me because I’d phone her and say, “I had a really tough day. I had to cry all day. My wife’s died of cancer, and it was a really tough one.” She goes, “The dog s— all over the living room. I had to go shopping and the f— bag split when I got to Tesco. There was a flat tire. They’ve let the kids out of school early because there’s been a flood. And you’ve had a hard day pretending to be sad?”
Bardem: I totally agree with what Stephen says. You have a life with your family and your children that you have to really pay attention to. This is a job, and you just do the job as good as you can with your own limitations. You put everything into it when they say, “Action,” and when you’re out, you just leave it behind. Otherwise, it’s too much.
Certain scenes, certain moments stay with you because we work with what we are. But I think it doesn’t make you a better actor to really stay in character, as they say, for 24 hours. That doesn’t work for me. It actually makes me feel very confused if I do that.
On the show “Monsters” I tried to protect Cooper [Koch] and Nicholas [Alexander Chavez], the actors who play the children, because they were carrying the heavy weight on the show every day. I was trying to make them feel protected and loved and accompanied by us, the adults, and let them know that we are there for them and that this is fiction. Because they were going really deep into it, and they did an amazing job.
Elizabeth Banks of “The Better Sister.”
Elizabeth, in “The Better Sister,” you portray Nicky, a sister estranged from her sibling who’s been through quite a bit of her own trauma.
Banks: I play a drunk who’s lost her child and her husband, basically, to her little sister, played by Jessica Biel. She is grappling with trauma from her childhood, which she’s trying not to bring forward. She’s been working [with] Alcoholics Anonymous, an incredible program, to get through her stuff. But she’s also a fish out of water when she visits her sister, who [lives in a] very rarefied New York, literary, fancy rich world. My character basically lives in a trailer park in Ohio. There’s a lot going on. And there’s a murder mystery.
I loved the complication … but it brought up all of those things for me. I do think you absolutely leave most of that [heaviness] on set. You are mining it all for the character work, so you’ve got to find it, but I don’t need to then infect my own children with it.
Sacha Baron Cohen of “Disclaimer.”
Sacha, you have played and created these really gregarious characters like Ali G or Borat. Your character in “Disclaimer,” he’s not a character you created, but he is very understated. Was that a challenge?
Cohen: It took me a long time to work out who the character was. I said to [director] Alfonso [Cuarón], “I don’t understand why this guy goes on that journey from where we see him in Act 1.” For me it was, how do you make this person unique?
We worked a lot through the specificity of what words he uses and what he actually says to explain and give hints for me as an actor. A lot of that was Alfonso Cuarón saying, “Take it down.” And there was a lot of rewriting and loads of drafts before I even understood how this guy reacts to the news and information that he believes about his wife.
Jenny Slate of “Dying for Sex.”
Jenny, “Dying for Sex” is based on a true story about two friends. One has terminal cancer, and the other — your character — supports her right up until the end. Talk about what it was like to play that role in a series that alternates between biting humor and deep grief.
Slate: Michelle Williams, who does a brilliant job in this show, her energy is extending outward and [her character] is trying to experiment before she does the greatest experiment of all, which is to cross over into the other side. My character is really out there, not out there willy-nilly, but she will yell at people if they are being rude, wasteful or if she feels it’s unjust. [And she’s] going from blasting to taking all that energy and making it this tight laser, and pointing it right into care, and knowing more about herself at the end.
I am a peppy person, and I felt so excited to have the job that a lot of my day started with calming myself down. I’m at work with Michelle Williams and Sissy Spacek and Liz Meriwether and Shannon Murphy and being, like, “Siri, set a meditation timer for 10 minutes,” and making myself do alternate nostril breathing [exercises].
Brian Tyree Henry of “Dope Thief.”
Brian, many people came to know you from your role as Paper Boi in “Atlanta.” The series was groundbreaking and like nothing else on television. What was it like moving out of that world and onto other projects?
Henry: People really thought that I was this rapper that they pulled off the street from Atlanta. To me, that’s the greatest compliment … When I did “Bullet Train,” I was shocked at how many people thought I was British. I was like, “Oh, right. Now I’ve twisted your mind this way.” I was [the voice of] Megatron at one point, and now I’ve twisted your mind that way. My path in is always going to be stretching people’s imaginations, because they get so attached to characters that I’ve played that they really believe that I’m that person.
People feel like they have an ownership of who you are. I love the challenge of having to force the imaginations of the viewers and myself to see me in a departure [from] what they saw me [as] previously. Because I realize that when I walk in a room, before I even open my mouth, there’s 90 different things that are put on me or taken away from me because of how I look and how I carry myself.
Javier Bardem of “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.”
Javier, since doing the series are you now frequently asked about your own opinions on the Menendez case? The brothers claim their father molested them, and that is in part what led to them murdering their parents.
Bardem: I don’t think anybody knows. That’s the point. That was the great thing about playing that character, is you have to play it in a way that it’s not obvious that he did those things that he was accused of, because nobody knows, but at the same time you have to make people believe that he was capable.
I did say to Ryan [Murphy] that I can’t do a scene with a kid. Because in the beginning, they do drafts, and there were certain moments where I said, “I can’t. It’s not needed.” The only moment that I had a hard time was when [Jose] has to face [his] young kid. It was only a moment where Jose was mean to him. That’s not in my nature.
Henry: I discovered, while doing my series, “My body doesn’t know this isn’t real.” There’s an episode where I’m shot in the leg, and I’m bleeding out and I’m on all this different morphine and drugs and all this stuff, and I’m literally lying on this ground, take after take, having to mime this. To go through the delusion of this pain … in the middle of the takes, it was just so crazy. I would literally look at the crew and say, “Somebody hug me! Somebody!”
Stephen, that scene where you confront the boys in the parking lot with the bike, I was just like, “Oh, my God, how many times did he have to do that?” This kid gets in your face, and I was like, “Punch the kid!” My heart went out to you, man, not just as the character but as you being in there.
Graham: Because we did it all in one take, we had that unique quality. You’re using the best of two mediums. You’ve got that beauty and that spontaneity and that reality of the theater, and then you have the naturalism and the truth that we have with film and television. So by the time I get to that final bit, we’ve been through all those emotions. When I open the door and go into [Jamie’s] room, everything’s shaken. But it’s not you. It’s an out-of-body experience and just comes from somewhere else.
Bardem: Listen, we don’t do brain surgery, but let’s give ourselves some credit. We are generous in what we do because we are putting our bodies into an experience. We are doing this for something bigger than us, and that is the story that we’re telling.
What have been some of the more challenging or difficult moments for you, either in your career or your recent series?
Zellweger: Trying not to do what you’re feeling in the moment sometimes, because it’s not appropriate to what you’re telling. That happens in most shows, most things that you do. I think everybody experiences it where you’re bringing something from home and it doesn’t belong on the set. It’s impossible to leave it behind when you walk in because it’s bigger than you are in that moment.
Banks: I would say that the thing that I worked on the most for “The Better Sister” was [understanding] sobriety. I’m not sober. I love a bubbly rosé. So it really did bring up how much I think about drinking and how social it is and what that ritual is for me, and how this character is thinking about it every day and deciding every day to stay sober or not. I am also a huge fan of AA and sobriety programs. I think they’re incredible tools for everybody who works those programs. I was grateful for the access to all of that as I was making the series. But that’s what you get to do in TV. You get to explore episode by episode. You get to play out a lot more than just three acts.
Stephen Graham of “Adolescence.”
Stephen, about the continuous single shot. It seems like it’s an incredibly difficult and complex way to shoot a series. Why do it?
Graham: It’s exceptionally difficult, I’m not going to lie. It’s like a swan glides across the water beautifully, but the legs are going rapidly underneath. A lot of it is done in preparation. We spend a whole week learning the script, and then the second week is just with the camera crew and the rest of the crew. It’s a choreography that you work out, getting an idea of where they want the camera to go, and the opportunity to embody the space ourselves.
Cohen: That reminds me of a bit of doing the undercover movies that I do because you have one take. … I did a scene where I’m wearing a bulletproof vest. There were a lot of the people in the audience who’d gone to this rally, a lot of them had machine guns. We knew they were going to get angry, but you’ve got to do the scene. You’ve got one time to get the scene right. But you also go, “OK, those guys have got guns. They’re trying to storm the stage. I haven’t quite finished the scene. When do I leave?” But you’ve got to get the scene. I could get shot, but that’s not important.
Henry: There’s a certain level of sociopathy.
Slate: I feel like I’m never on my mark, and it was always a very kind camera operator being like, “Hey, Jenny, you weren’t in the shot shoulder-wise.” I feel like such an idiot. Part of it is working through lifelong, longstanding feelings of “I’m a fool and my foolishness is going to make people incredibly angry with me.” And then really still wanting to participate and having no real certainty that I’m going to be able to do anything but just make all of my fears real. Part of the thing that I love about performance is I just want to experience the version of myself that does not collapse into useless fragments when I face the thing that scares me the most. I do that, and then I feel the appetite for performance again.
Do you see yourself in roles when you’re watching other people’s films or TV show?
Graham: At the end of the day, we’re all big fans of acting. That’s why we do it. Because when we were young, we were inspired by people on the screen, or we were inspired by places where we could put ourselves and lose our imaginations.
We have a lot of t— in this industry. But I think if we fight hard enough, we can come through. Do you know what I mean? It’s people that are here for the right reasons. It’s a collective. Acting is not a game of golf. It’s a team. It’s in front and it’s behind the camera. I think it’s important that we nourish that.
Henry: And remember that none of us are t—.
Bardem: What is a t—? I may be one of them and I don’t know it.
