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On Nov. 26, 1983, six men robbed a warehouse serving London’s Heathrow Airport. Hoping to find £1 million worth of foreign currency, they found instead 6,800 gold bars, worth £26 million in 1983 money — a record-setting robbery at the time — under the temporary supervision of Brink’s-Mat. (A union of the American security firm and a British transport outfit.) This event has been transmuted into “The Gold,” an involving British drama premiering here Sunday on PBS.

The robbery itself takes up little screen time; the question on the criminal side becomes how to turn three tons of gold into cash, and for the police, one of recovering the loot and bringing the villains to justice. The cops and the criminals overlap here and there, a point screenwriter Neil Forsyth does not want you to miss, and is a particular bee in the bonnet of upright Detective Chief Superintendent Brian Boyce (Hugh Bonneville), self-contained but always ready to speak his mind. (He is also “infuriated” by what people get wrong about jazz, which he likens to police work.)

Recruited by Boyce to a special task force are detectives Tony Brightwell (Emun Elliott), historical, and Nicki Jennings (a charismatic Charlotte Spencer), invented, who are good company for the viewer and generally for each other, though as people who spend long hours sitting together in cars waiting for something to happen, they have their moments of friction, played for humor. As a created character, Jennings — who, as a woman, has to outline the many steps and hard work it took to achieve her position — offers an opportunity for emotional elaboration, notably in scenes (affectionate, prickly) with her father, Billy (Danny Webb), “by a country mile the worst villain in England,” his criminal career sidelined by ill health.

Though one of the actual robbers, Micky McAvoy (Adam Nagaitis), gets a good deal of attention, the bulk of the series involves three criminals subsequently processing the gold and laundering the money. Kenneth Noye (Jack Lowden) is “a fence with protection,” owing to his friendship with police officers through membership in the Masons. (When Boyce brings Jennings and Brightwell onto his team, he sets the rules as “no overtime, no drinking at lunchtime, no freemasonry.”) John Palmer (Tom Cullen), a dyslexic dealer in gold and jewelry, has a handy portable smelter in his yard. And the invented Edwyn Cooper (Dominic Cooper), an up-from-the-streets solicitor with posh airs and a rich wife whose snooty parents treat him with barely disguised disdain, finds himself working for “a group of businessmen who have a lot of money that needs to be made respectable,” in the words of liaison Gordon Parry (Sean Harris, sinister).

Stretched over six episodes, it’s not a speedy telling, and, in fact, a second series covering a long tail of aftermath has already aired in the U.K. Apart from some surveillance, tailing suspects, one fatal encounter and an occasional chase, there’s little in the way of capital-A Action, mostly just a lot of talk — inquisitive, instructive, threatening, discursive, domestic or speechifying. Though the production is naturalistic — in a way that ties it to an earlier, golden era of British productions — the dialogue can sound highly composed. Characters are given little monologues, often to explain how they became the person they are, that play as the sort of thing that might occur late in the last act of a stage drama: Jennings found the sirens outside her window comforting, which led her to police work, “so that kids like me will be safe”; Boyce had a life-changing moment involving a pair of red leather shoes while fighting in the so-called Cypriot Emergency. Some dialogue might have been lifted whole from a 1930s gangster film. Critiques of British class structure and bad actors within the police department are raised high enough to be impossible to miss.

There are a lot of moving parts in “The Gold,” represented in sometimes brief alternating scenes, and it may take a while, among the crooks, at least, to get a handle on things, to sort out where you are, who’s who, who’s married to whom, and what part each plays in the caper. Though Noye is arrogant enough to root against, Forsyth wants to show, as much as each character allows, the just-folks elements of his bad guys, psychologically relatable sorts who have, from early experience, a lack of opportunity, or a certain kind of genius, decided that the path to freedom is best paved with other people’s money. (“If it wasn’t for people trying trying to break out of the lives they’ve been given,” observes Boyce of his country’s social stratification, the police would be out of a job.) This may be soft-pedaling matters somewhat — to read the historical accounts might give you a different picture — but as drama it pays dividends.

As a period piece, it doesn’t oversell the era. There are old cars, of course, and more mustaches than we are currently accustomed to. But apart from the pop songs that run over the end credits, nothing screams These Are the ’80s. (Compare, for example, the “Life on Mars” sequel, “Ashes to Ashes.”) It’s more a question of what isn’t there. The detectives have a computer, but only Brightwell has an idea of what it’s for or how to use it. No cellphones, but there are walkie-talkies. A tracking device, apparently the only one in all of British law enforcement, has to be imported from Belfast (and sneakily at that). There is a refreshing absence of guns — none of those Kevlar-clad teams going in with pistols raised. (Just truncheons.) And the remodeling of East London into a gentrified glass forest, a minor plot point, has only just begun.

It’s like a vacation from now, and who can’t use one of those?

Tony Shalhoub is loath to compare his upcoming CNN series, “Breaking Bread,” to the travel food shows hosted by his frequent collaborator Stanley Tucci, who directed him in the gourmand classic “Big Night.”

“I don’t consider myself a foodie,” Shalhoub says in a video interview. “He is the ultimate foodie, amazing chef. He really knows what he’s talking about and I don’t know anything.”

But Shalhoub, best known these days as one of the stars of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” makes up for his lack of knowledge with utter enthusiasm. As host and executive producer of “Breaking Bread,” premiering Sunday at 9 p.m. Pacific, he traipses the globe trying different breads and bread-related products while uncovering stories of how these staples relate to migration, labor and his own family history. In fact, the legacy of Shalhoub’s father, who settled in Wisconsin after leaving Lebanon, is present in multiple episodes. The elder Shalhoub’s love of the stuff served as one of the inspirations for the whole enterprise.

“We were eating most often bakery bread rather than just commercial store-bought packaged bread, and he really had a great appreciation for it and wanted to model that for us,” Shalhoub says.

Still, Shalhoub’s goals go beyond food porn. Days before the premiere, Shalhoub spoke about why he sees “Breaking Bread” as being about something bigger. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

How did doing a food show even come to you?

Well, I was so enamored of Stanley [Tucci’s] show.

I was going to ask if Stanley had something to do with it.

We never really talked about it a lot, but I’ve been inspired by Stanley for so many things. But even prior to his travel food show [“Searching for Italy”], a nephew of mine [Michael Matzdorff], when I lived in Los Angeles, came to me and he was making bread at the time. This was way before the pandemic, when that became the thing to do. We got into talking about bread, and I was so impressed by what he was doing in his own kitchen, and he just casually mentioned, “Wouldn’t it be cool to explore bread making all over the globe?” We got a pitch together. It didn’t really get a lot of traction then, and this was a couple decades ago, but the idea stayed with me. I mentioned it to another friend who’s a producer on the show, Tamara Weiss, and she just kind of had this great idea to reformat it, and I guess the timing was right.

Was this your nephew that appears in the Tokyo episode or a different nephew?

This is an older nephew than that. I have many nephews and many nieces and they’re all geniuses. But there’s another leg to this too, aside from my fascination with bread and bread around the world. I’ve been acting for so many years and felt very fortunate with all of the breaks that I’ve gotten. But I’ve been starting to feel a little bit like I wanted to reconnect to the world again, in some way. When you are working and your experiences are mostly coming through scripted, mostly fictional stuff, after a while, there’s that possibility that you start to feel a little disconnected from actual life and the world. That also was one of the main drivers here. I wanted to meet new people, travel to new places or even familiar places, but with a different point of view. In a lot of ways, it’s been eye-opening. The food component aside, I’ve found it’s been really good for me. You get out of your own head and out of your own sphere, and you’re reminded that there’s so much else going on out there.

How did you choose where you were going to go? So many of the places have a personal connection for you: You said you wanted to start in Lebanon, where your father is from, but the political situation didn’t allow for it so you went to Brazil, where there is a large Lebanese population. You spend time in New York, where you live, and Wisconsin, where you are from.

We initially had a list of about 12 different locations, and some of those were locations that I just thought, “Boy, it would really be fun to travel there.” When we got into it with CNN, you know, especially for the first season, they wanted for me to have a personal connection to each of these locations. We gave them a list of about 10 places, and they chose six. So obviously New York, because this is now my second time living here in the city, and I love it. I consider it my home and where so much of my career has taken place. I think Marseille, because even though I traveled to France several times, is a place where my father, when he was immigrating from Lebanon over a hundred years ago, as many immigrants did, had to stop in Marseille in the process. We’ve always been curious about that part of his journey because we knew about his departure from Beirut, and we knew about his arrival in Ellis Island, but we didn’t know about the middle part of his journey. So we were able to explore that and get some more new information about that.

Members of your family also show up, including your daughter Josie Adams and another nephew. Why did you want to involve them?

Whenever there’s a discussion about bread or about food in general, it mostly stems from or grows out of my childhood, growing up, my parents, my other older relatives, and I guess that’s the closest connection for me. It has been such a part of what connects us all.

Tony Shalhoub with his daughter Josie Adams and pastry chef Pierre Ragot in the Marseille episode of “Breaking Bread.”

(CNN Original Series)

How did your relationship to bread, clearly something you love, change over the course of making the show?

The main takeaway was that the show, for me, really became more about the people that I met than the product itself. There were familiar things, some of them done in a kind of innovative and new way and other things that I had not experienced before or tasted before, but [it was] really more about the people and their devotion to that work and the reasons that they become so obsessed and so devoted to that kind of work. For me, the show really becomes about those stories and those histories, whether it’s a family history or a story about immigration or a story of a war-torn country. To be really frank about it, bread is really more the vehicle that brings us into these other discussions.

I want to say this in a very tactful way, but the risk of doing this kind of show is that there is a point, I believe, of diminishing returns when we talk about food. This is my fear. It was like, will someone stand up and say, “Stop it.” There’s so many important things that are going on that deserve our focus and our attention, but because we’re talking about food, it’s inevitable because we have to have it every day. It sustains us, and that’s all fine and good, but I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I want bread to be that thing that sparks other conversations.

In the Marseille episode, you uncover part of your father’s story, discovering details of his trip to America in the municipal archives. What was that experience like?

It was quite moving and also doing it with my daughter and having those discussions with my daughter. She didn’t know my father because he passed away before she was born. But I don’t think I would’ve had the opportunity or the access to uncover these things had I not been doing this show at this time in that city. It would’ve just gone undiscovered and unknown.

Obviously, you’ve eaten on screen before, that’s part of an actor’s job, but did you think about how you were going to react to what you try?

I didn’t really think about it or plan it. I wanted to figure out ways to avoid or sidestep stock reactions. “God, that’s delicious.” Of course, that’s what everyone says when they’re eating something exciting and new. But I was really trying to stay open and rather than using words, a lot of times I just felt I let it go into my body and my body kind of did the work.

There’s a moment when you almost do a little dance.

Because some of this stuff just transcends words.

Was there something you tried that truly surprised you?

Certainly, I think given the amount of pastry I consume and have consumed in my lifetime, I thought that Mary O’s Irish Soda Bread scones were kind of a revelation. I’ve made scones. I’ve had scones. I love them, but this was revelatory. In Brazil they couldn’t grow wheat for a time, and before they were importing it, they were relying on cassava flour everywhere. They make a cheese bread. They were making it out of cassava flour, which is delicious, not heavy, and no gluten and all of that, and with cheese. Somehow miraculously, you’re eating these things and you’re never feeling full or bloated.

When Jenny Lewis was born, her parents were part of Loves Way, a musical lounge act in Las Vegas. After they split up when she was 3 years old, she moved with her mom, her older sister and their babysitter (a female Elvis impersonator from Memphis, Tenn.) to the San Fernando Valley.

In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.

Lewis remained in the Valley for most of her life, with some sojurns to the Eastside of L.A., Nashville and New York. Now she’s firmly back in the Valley, except, of course, when she’s on tour.

Lewis is a former child actor (you may remember her from “Troop Beverly Hills” and “The Wizard”), but has spent her adulthood as a celebrated musician who has released five solo albums, including 2023’s “Joy’All.”

She recently reunited with her bandmates in Rilo Kiley, the indie rock group that captured millennial hearts in the early 2000s. They are currently touring the United States and will play two local shows at the Greek Theatre on Oct. 14 and 18. Calling from a hotel in Nashville, she details what she likes to do on Sundays when she’s back in L.A.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

8:36 a.m.: Caffeinate, let the dog sleep in
I tend to wake up almost every day at 8:36. When I look at the clock, nine times out of 10, it’s 8:36.

I have a cockapoo, Bobby Rhubarb, she’s 4 1/2, so my life kind of revolves around her. I actually wake up earlier than Bobby, who tends to loaf about in bed until 11 a.m. She gets her zoomies around midnight because she was raised on the road. The first year of her life, three months of it was spent opening for Harry Styles and living on a tour bus. She’s on tour schedule perpetually.

So I get up — I’m very quiet so as to not disturb her — and then I’ll make coffee. I love Canyon Coffee. It’s a single-origin organic roaster based in L.A., run by this really cute couple.

9:30 a.m.: Love to clean, clean to love
Sunday is my clean-the-house day. I’m a bit of a neat freak, and now that I live on my own, I can indulge my tendencies. It’s also really good exercise. I’m typically working out a couple days a week, but cleaning is an active thing to do and it’s very loving when you are lucky enough to own a home. You don’t really get to know a house until you get on your hands and knees and clean the floor.

11 a.m.: Open-hearted flea market-ing
The first Sunday of the month is the Pasadena City College Flea, second Sunday is the Rose Bowl, third is Long Beach and fourth is Topanga. I prefer the first and the fourth Sundays. I like the smaller fleas, and there are a couple of vendors that go to both PCC and Topanga that have amazing stuff. I have relationships with them where they’ll be like, “Oh, I pulled this with you in mind.”

Flea market vendors tell the history of where you are. These people are experts on old chimayos and Navajo blankets and Midcentury Modern furniture. If you stick around, you learn a lot about stuff that you never thought you needed to know about.

For me, the nature of thrifting and flea market-ing is based on an open heart and a generous spirit. I’m always donating and going through my closet and putting it back into the thrifting community. When I offload a bunch of stuff rather than sell it, I feel like I will be lucky at the flea market.

You can’t really go with any expectations; that’s not really how it works. I’ve been looking for the perfect fake leopard-skin coat for 20 years. I actually have a new song that has that as one of the lyrics. Maybe one day I’ll find it.

2:30 p.m.: Chinese food cravings
If this is a Pasadena day, it’s an opportunity to get Chinese food, which I crave on Sundays. I’ll sometimes go to Woon. It’s really close to where a lot of things burned down [in the Eaton fire], so it’s pretty cool to go there and support that spot.

It can be a little jammed on Sundays, so sometimes I’ll go to the Glendale Galleria — also jammed, but in a different way — and Din Tai Fung.

I always park on the top deck. You get a little sunshine. If you need to smoke a little doob, you can do that, or not. And you just walk right over the bridge into JCPenney, which I love walking through.

Din Tai Fung, there’s a hack if you’re by yourself, or if you’re two people: You can sit at the bar and not wait an hour. I’m gluten-free. Normally you would get dumplings, which look amazing and I want to eat them, but I can’t eat them. I’ll get the beef broth soup — it’s unbelievable — and some vegs. Depending on the day, sometimes they tell you the glass noodles are gluten-free and sometimes they tell you they’re not, so I wouldn’t recommend that to anyone who is celiac.

3:30 p.m.: Mall massage break
Out in the middle of the mall, near the Uniqlo, there’s the best 30-minute chair massage. It’s just incredible. And I’m a big mall massage aficionado.

I prefer it to a bougie massage. I would rather do a Thai-style massage where you have your clothes on or Chinese acupressure. Typically mall kiosks are Chinese acupressure. It is the best massage for what I’m looking for, which is something very strong and therapeutic.

I don’t need to go to the spa, especially when I’m on the road. Oftentimes, the bus will be at a Radisson on a day off and there’s a mall across the highway. I’ll always look for the massage at the mall, and it sets me straight.

I’ve written so many songs while getting a massage in the mall, because there’s always ambient music that you can’t totally make out. There’s something about that and the sound of people — it’s a very freeing frequency for me to write lyrics.

5 p.m.: Dinner provisions
I’m heading back to Mint Chip, which is the name of my house, to see Bobby. On Sundays, depending on what I had for lunch, we will do either burger night or grass-fed filet mignon night.

I’ll stop at Gelson’s, and they’ve got two grass-fed fillets that are relatively reasonable. I’ll get a baked potato or mashed potatoes, a salad, pick up a bottle of natural wine and then go home and make dinner for myself and Bobby.

I like things well-done, which no one likes to hear, but it’s the reality. If you’re my guest or my dog and you like things a little bit more rare, I’m happy to make it your way for you.

I’ve become a really good cook and I make a great martini. I make the Mint Chip Martini. I call it a maximalist martini because it’s extra dirty, olives and a twist. It disguises the alcohol. I just look at the vermouth — I don’t put it in the martini; I glance at it, and that’s enough vermouth.

I couldn’t do anything before the pandemic, so I really cherish that time of learning how to take care of myself.

8 p.m.: Cult classics
I have a projector set up in my living room that projects onto a white wall. I’ve been really into this app called Night Flight [Plus]. “Night Flight” was a cult late-night TV series [it originally ran on the USA Network from 1981 to 1988]. They played a lot of music videos, punk and heavy metal docs. Now they have this awesome streaming app, so you can watch these old episodes. Right now, there’s a movie called “Kin-Dza-Dza!” from 1986. I love that Soviet stuff. Music from that era is so weird and cool.

10 p.m.: Bedtime with crime
I’ll take Bobby out before bed and then we will go into the master bedroom. I will typically listen to an audiobook or a podcast and then it’s off to sleep.

I am a true crime enthusiast, so I’ve listened to all of them. As of late, I really enjoyed “Crooked City.” Also, “Up and Vanished: In the Midnight Sun” is great. I really like Payne Lindsey and all of his shows. There’s another great one called “Dead and Gone,” which is the crimes that happened in the surrounding areas of Grateful Dead shows. It’s like the full Grateful Dead history. I love the Dead, but I learned a lot about the Dead listening to that, and I was really just listening for the crime.

I’m considering a career shift into forensics. I mean, not really, but I’ve been to CrimeCon; I want to go to CrimeCamp. I’m obsessed. And again, this happened during the pandemic because there was never space for me to truly indulge my hobbies. I’m educating myself.

SAN JOSE — Matt Mahan didn’t set out to be a scold and pain in Gavin Newsom’s backside.

He doesn’t mean to sound like a wrathful Republican when he criticizes one-party rule in Sacramento. Or a disgruntled independent when he assails a Democratic establishment that’s become, as he sees it, “a club of insiders who take care of each other” and mostly go along to get along.

Maybe because that’s “my diagnosis of it,” said the 42-year-old San José mayor, “I have tried very consciously to not fall into that trap of just wanting to be liked.”

He is, Mahan insists, a Democrat to his core, his roots sunk deep in the loamy soil of working-class Watsonville, where, over the mountains and light years from Silicon Valley, he grew up the son of a mail carrier and a high school teacher.

That makes his candor all the more bracing, and refreshing, at a time when Democrats are struggling nationally to regain their footing and find a meaningful way forward.

“We have become so caught up in our own rhetoric of helping the little guy that we’ve stopped actually checking to make sure that we are doing that,” Mahan said over lunch at a cantina downtown.

Results, he said, are what matter. Not good intentions.

And certainly not the performative pugilism that some, including the hyper-online Newsom, pass off as leadership. “A sugar high,” Mahan called it.

“I think a lot of Democrats are frustrated and feel powerless, and so that rhetoric has this cathartic effect,” he said. “But I don’t know that it actually, over time, moves us toward success, and I mean not just success in society, but even political success, because ultimately, if you’re not offering solutions, I think you can have a hard time getting to a majority position.”

Mahan comes by his outsider status naturally.

In high school, he rode the bus four hours a day — from Watsonville to San José and back again — to attend a college prep academy on a work-study scholarship. (“My golden ticket,” he called it.) He worked on the grounds crew to help pay his way, and continued on to Harvard, where his dorm mates included Mark Zuckerberg. (The two hung out in college and still talk occasionally.)

After a year in Bolivia, helping family farmers, and a stint teaching middle school, Mahan co-founded a social media company that focused on civic engagement and raising money for nonprofits. He was elected to the San José City Council in 2020. Even before his first term was completed, Mahan launched an upstart bid for mayor.

The front-runner was a member of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, a former San José vice mayor and longtime civic leader. Waging a nothing-to-lose campaign — “we had no endorsements, we had much less money” — Mahan knocked on thousands of doors. He asked voters what they had on their minds.

It turned out to be rudimentary stuff. Potholes. Public safety. A sense they were paying a whole lot of taxes and getting very little in return.

The experience impressed two things upon Mahan: a need for accountability and the importance of voters’ lived experience, as opposed to vague promises, abstract notions and politically fashionable statements.

“I think ultimately political success and policy success comes from offering better ideas and demonstrating impact,” Mahan said, sounding very much like the technocrat he calls himself.

Mahan won the mayor’s race — narrowly, in a major upset — and was reelected two years later in a November 2024 landslide. (The year Mahan was elected, San José voted to shift its mayoral contest to correspond with presidential balloting, which cut his first term in half.)

Soon enough, Mahan found himself at odds with some major Democratic constituencies, including powerful labor unions, which pushed back over wages and a return-to-office policy, and homeless advocates who bristled at Mahan’s focus on short-term housing and threat to arrest homeless people who refused multiple offers of shelter.

“Homelessness can’t be a choice,” Mahan said at a spring news conference announcing the move.

His heresies don’t end there.

Mahan broke with many Democrats by vigorously supporting Proposition 36, the 2024 anti-crime measure that stiffened penalties for repeated theft and crimes involving fentanyl. Despite opposition from Newsom and most of the state’s Democratic leadership, it passed with nearly 70% support; Mahan has since criticized Newsom and the Democratic-run Legislature for stinting on funds needed for implementation.

But his most conspicuous breach involves the governor’s Trumpy transformation into a social media troll.

While the mockery and memes may feel good as snickering payback and certainly stoke the Democratic base — boosting Newsom’s presidential hopes — Mahan suggested they are ultimately counterproductive.

“If we don’t have a politics of solutions and making people’s lives better, I just don’t know where we end up,” he said, as his enchiladas sat cooling before him. “It’s politics practiced in bad faith, where we just … tell people things that test well because they sound nice, and then we just blame the other side for being evil, incompetent, corrupt. … It’s just a race to the bottom.”

He took particular issue with Newsom’s taunting reaction after Bed Bath & Beyond recently announced it won’t open or operate new stores in California.

It wasn’t “a reasoned argument,” Mahan wrote in a scathing opinion piece in the San Francisco Standard. The tart headline: “How about less time breaking the internet and more time fixing California?”

“‘Breaking the internet’ doesn’t solve real-world problems — quite the opposite,” Mahan wrote. “More often than not, it’s just political theater that serves to excuse inaction and ineffective policies.”

He elaborated over lunch.

“You have an employer who’s pointing out real issues that everybody else who’s watching thinks are real issues. Talking about business climate, cost of doing business, public safety issues, retail theft, untreated addiction and mental illness,” Mahan said.

“When we start turning on constituents because we don’t agree with their ideology, or attacking Trump is more important than actually solving problems or listening to the criticism … I think we’re heading down a dangerous road.”

Inevitably, there’s the question: To what end all this poking of thumbs in his fellow Democrats’ eyes?

Mahan has drawn wide notice, in particular from the more pragmatic wing of the party. His back-to-basics approach has yielded some measurable success. A recent study called San José the safest major city in the country and, while the overall homeless population grew slightly, there’s been progress moving people off the streets into city shelters.

He considered plunging into the race for governor, but the timing wasn’t right. Mahan has two small children and a wife who’s flourishing in her career as an educator. Besides, Mahan said, he’s quite content being mayor of California’s third-most populous city.

“I have a wonderful marriage,” Mahan said. “I have two wonderful kids. I loved working in the private sector. I’ve got a lot of great friends. I’m doing this because I genuinely want to make our city better, and I love the job. But it’s not who I am, and I can separate myself from the job.”

That grounding and perspective, so different from those politicians oozing ambition from every pore, may be Mahan’s best commendation for higher office.

If and when.

LeBron James did not participate in the Lakers’ first day of training camp Tuesday because of “nerve irritation in the glute.”

James’ teammates Marcus Smart, Gabe Vincent and Adou Thiero were “under either return to play protocols or modified protocols” during the team’s first sessions.

James is entering his NBA-record 23rd season and the goal is to ramp him up to be ready for the regular-season opener Oct. 21 against the Golden State Warriors at Crypto.com Arena.

“Yeah, I think it’s probably a little bit longer of a ramp-up leading into opening night for him just obviously in Year 23, it’s uncharted territory here,” Lakers coach JJ Redick said. “So, I felt, and in talking with performance and in talking with Mike (Mancias, James’ personal trainer) and LeBron, like probably did too much last year in camp, which was great for me as a first-year head coach to get buy-in from him.

“But it’ll be a slower process with him leading into the first game. He’s obviously got 22 years so far of wear and tear on the body and he’s dealing with a little bit of nerve irritation in the glute. So, we’re just playing the long game with LeBron.”

Redick said Vincent was “just modified” and the hope is that he’ll play in the preseason game Friday against the Phoenix Suns in Palm Desert.

“He should be good to go live by the end of the week and we expect him to be able to play Friday,” Redick said. “And that’s just, again, the management of, as we did last year as well.”

Smart could be seen shooting after practice, but the Lakers are taking it slow with him as well.

“Marcus, he’s dealing with a little bit of Achilles’ tendinopathy,” Redick said. “He’s been in a slow ramp-up. He was a modified participant, nothing live today. He’s expected to be fine by the end of the week.”

Thiero said Monday that he still has some “swelling” in his left knee that kept him out playing in the summer league in Las Vegas and has slowed his time on the court since then.

Redick said Thiero was running, cutting and jumping with coaches, but that they will take it slow with him.

“It’s really about playing the long game with him,” Redick said. “We look at this year as a developmental year and there’s no reason for us to push his body and create a long-term problem. His knee is in a really good spot. We just want to be really careful.”

Redick said, “that’s the goal,” when asked if James will be ready to play in the season opener.

James, 40, has played 71,104 minutes over his career, including the playoffs.

“You’ll hear me use this a lot: it is unchartered territory,” Redick said. “I don’t think there’s a proven way to handle someone who has this much mileage, this many minutes, been asked to do so many things on both ends of the court. We asked a lot of him last year, we asked a lot of him to start the year in camp, so it’s just working as a partnership and trying to figure it out.”

Even with James not practicing, Austin Reaves said it won’t be a problem for the three leaders to find ways to make it smooth for their teammates.

Along with James and Luka Doncic, Reaves is viewed as one of the Lakers’ stars and he says James always is engaged even when he doesn’t practice.

“Yeah, just communication,” Reaves said. “To have good dialogue back and forth, what everybody likes, what we can do to be successful. With him being one of the highest IQ guys to ever play the game, I think it’s not that hard to piece it in even if he’s not out there right now, He sees the game just as good as anybody that has ever played the game. So, like I said, it’s having conversations, dialogue back and forth what we feel like we can do to help our team be successful is going to be, I think, key.”

CHRISTIAN HORNER has been warned that a Formula One return with Aston Martin would “not work”.

Horner, 51, was handed a whopping £80million payout for leaving Red Bull Racing after he was sacked as team principal in July and replaced by Laurent Mekies.

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But the ex-F1 chief, formerly the longest-serving team boss in the paddock with 20 years of service which yielded 14 drivers and constructors titles, is already plotting a way back into the sport after it was revealed he was “missing” it.

Horner’s payout was less than the £110m he could have had for the full duration of his deal which had run to 2030.

But SunSport understands taking the lower offer means he is free to return to F1 as early as spring 2026.

A number of teams have been linked to Horner, including Haas, Alpine, Ferrari and Aston Martin, as he looks to also buy into a team as a co-owner.

The latter of these teams recruited Horner’s former Red Bull ally, Adrian Newey, after 19 years working together at the Milton Keynes-based team.

Design chief Newey, 66, is said to be getting “very little sleep” in his new role as Managing Technical Partner at Aston since starting on March 1 this year.

However, former Haas boss and Drive to Survive fan favourite Guenther Steiner has claimed reuniting the pair at the team’s Silverstone base would not work.

Steiner, 60, told Lottoland: “In the last year the problem between Adrian and Christian was one of the reasons why Adrian left Red Bull.

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“So, bringing Christian back, I don’t think that would work at the moment.”

He continued: “I don’t think Aston Martin need Christian right now.

“I think there was a lot of unhappiness internally, and something had to change.

“The change was Christian leaving, and they are just trying to go back to their glory days now.

“With Red Bull, we could see it during the last one-and-a-half years where every race weekend there was drama, and that has gone away.

“I think Aston Martin with the people they have in place are very well set to show what they can do under the new regulations.”

Steiner also joked he had “sent my bank details and asked him to send me some of the money” when speaking about Horner’s mega payout.

Red Bull have enjoyed an upturn in form with Max Verstappen winning the last two races in Italy and Azerbaijan.

With the Singapore Grand Prix this weekend, the flying Dutchman is looking to add the track to his list of wins for the first time in his career.

If Verstappen, who turned 28 today, wins the street race he will have won a race at every circuit on the 2025 calendar across his F1 career.

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PARADISE, Calif. — When Jen Goodlin visited Paradise six months after the 2018 Camp fire, she thought she was saying goodbye.

A town native, Goodlin was living in Colorado with her husband and four children. She wanted to witness the devastation that wiped out 10,700 homes, including the small white cottage where she grew up, and turned the dense forest of her youth into a bleak landscape. But once she arrived, she was surprised at her reaction. She could envision so much more than the burned trees and abandoned businesses around her.

Here, she saw, her family could live on a big piece of land as they’d always wanted. Her husband thought she was crazy, but they ran the numbers, bought a 1.2-acre vacant lot and put a trailer on the property. A few years later, they moved into a new, four-bedroom house.

“It took the fire to bring me home,” said Goodlin, 43, who now runs a local wildfire recovery nonprofit.

Jen Goodlin, executive director of the Rebuild Paradise Foundation, in Paradise, Calif., in June 2024.

(Nic Coury / Associated Press)

Young families like Goodlin’s are coming to Paradise, shifting the town’s demographics away from the retirees who once lived there. Attracted by cheap land — lots cost less than a mid-range car— newcomers can build a larger home on larger parcels for less than buying a house in Chico, a city of 100,000 people 15 miles away.

Though Paradise’s current population is less than half of what it was, the local Little League already has more kids than before the fire.

Nearly a decade of megafire in California has brought profound changes to recovering communities. Paradise has become younger. Some rebuilt areas have become wealthier. Renters and people on fixed incomes have found themselves pushed to more urban locales. Both devastated neighborhoods and fire survivors face an unpredictable future that, given the recent intensity of wildfires in California, many more areas will have to face.

Reminders of fire are inescapable in Paradise, from the roadside signposts that designate evacuation routes to the alarm that blares at noon on the 15th of every month, a test of the system that will tell everyone if they need to flee once again. At the same time, the activity in the town belies the desolation implied by building data that show only 30% of destroyed homes have been replaced. Dog walkers and parents with small children play in refurbished parks. At lunchtime, construction workers in reflective vests gather around taco trucks.

A deer treks over an empty lot as homes continue to be built throughout Paradise years after the Camp fire.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Local boosters tout that for every year after the fire, Paradise has been one of the fastest-growing communities in California. Another half-dozen homes are being rebuilt each month, according to a Times data analysis.

But as shown in Paradise, the statistics tell only part of the story. The Times found that of the nearly 22,500 homes lost in the Camp fire and California’s four other most destructive wildfires from 2017 to 2020, just 8,400, or 38%, have been rebuilt.

Given the time that has already passed, it’s unlikely that some places — the forests below the northern Sierra Nevada, parts of the Santa Monica Mountains, pieces of old Shasta County mining towns — ever will have the same number of homes as before. In Paradise, it’s essentially guaranteed. Many returning homeowners purchased their neighbors’ burned out lots to build a larger house or simply expand the size of their property.

Instead of simply repopulating these areas, there has been a subtle shift toward living in more urban communities, especially for renters or homeowners who couldn’t afford to rebuild. In Butte County, disaster relief dollars from both the Camp fire and North Complex fire, which destroyed 1,500 homes in even more rural areas two years later, have been funneled toward affordable housing projects largely in Chico and smaller nearby cities untouched by the blazes. Not one such development has been proposed in the North Complex burn scar.

The rationale is straightforward: More people can be housed more safely and sustainably in cities than in mountainous, fire-prone tracts with little public infrastructure. The urban developments also provide access to grocery stores, public transit and other amenities that give them a higher chance of winning state financing competitions and being completed.

Local officials welcome the investments but feel uneasy about what’s happening. Katie Simmons, deputy chief administrative officer overseeing recovery efforts for Butte County, said many rural fire survivors don’t want to move to the city. She called the new developments “displacement housing” that doesn’t address the needs of those in remote areas who continue to “flounder in disaster-caused homelessness.”

As time wears on, fewer and fewer people find themselves in positions to return, sometimes despite extraordinary efforts to allow them to do so.

Palm trees rising over the vacant lot in November 2020 where Journey’s End Trailer Park once stood in Santa Rosa.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

In Santa Rosa, the 2017 Tubbs fire wiped out Journey’s End, a 162-space mobile home park next to a hospital and the 101 Freeway. A partnership between the landowner, the city and for- and nonprofit developers led to plans for more than 400 apartments on the site, including full replacement of 162 units for low-income seniors.

But it wasn’t until summer 2023 that the first apartments opened. Journey’s End residents, so long as they qualified under the age and income restrictions, could return if they wanted.

Few did. About three dozen expressed interest, 12 initially moved in, six of whom remain.

A lot of her former neighbors from the mobile home park died waiting, said Pat Crisco, 75, one of the Journey’s End residents who came back. Others didn’t want to live in apartments. More had settled elsewhere and didn’t want to uproot themselves again, she said.

Pat Crisco is a former resident of the Journey’s End mobile home park that burned in the Tubbs fire. Crisco is now living in the affordable housing apartment development that was built on the site.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

The stray cats Crisco used to feed at Journey’s End are gone and when the hot wind blows outside her apartment building she gets the “heebie jeebies.” But she feels great about her decision to return. The location is close to the bus, her doctors and grocery stores.

“This is brand spanking new,” Crisco said. “And everything is very convenient.”

Research shows that communities that rebuild more fully tend to end up wealthier than they used to be. Homeowners who come back are the ones able to afford to navigate the process, and brand-new houses in established areas attract outsiders.

Before the Tubbs fire, Santa Rosa’s Coffey Park subdivision was middle-class, with its tract homes routinely going for around $500,000. Nearly all the 1,300 houses lost have been rebuilt. Residents were astounded recently when they began selling at more than $1 million.

Jeff Okrepkie, 46, a Coffey Park renter who used his insurance payout as a down payment for a new home on his old street, said it’s undeniable that the neighborhood is more upscale now, with amenities hard to find elsewhere.

“This is the cliche, Americana, suburban single-family-detached homes,” Okrepkie said. “It’s 1980s-style lots, 1980s-style streets with 2020s-style houses.”

Jeff Okrepkie outside his rebuilt home, second from left, in the Coffey Park neighborhood of Santa Rosa.

(Eric Risberg / Associated Press)

What’s happening in Paradise and Santa Rosa provide continually evolving answers to weighty questions: When has a community recovered? And what does recovery even mean?

In 2019, Paradise received a $270-million settlement from Pacific Gas & Electric, whose power lines caused the Camp fire. The town is using the money to backfill lost tax revenue. But it won’t last forever.

That’s why local leaders are pushing for a new sewer system as part of an expanded town center to attract restaurants and business that would make more young families want to live there. The lack of one limited the commercial district in the past.

For Paradise officials, recovery is when the community can sustain itself once again.

“It looks like it’s going to serve us for 25 years,” said Colette Curtis, the town’s recovery and economic development director, of the PG&E settlement.

Some residents of communities reshaped by fire have found themselves both drawn and repelled by the place they call home.

Roger and Lindy Brown lived in Paradise with their daughter before the fire and their home burned. Their daughter went to Chico State, and Roger and Lindy moved to Oregon. Roger and Lindy moved back to a rebuilt home near their old one a couple of years ago.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Roger and Lindy Brown had lived in Paradise for 12 years when the Camp fire struck. After the blaze, the Browns rented an apartment in Chico so their daughter could finish her last year at Paradise High School, which held classes in a mall and then a warehouse in Chico.

Roger, 60, worked in heating and air conditioning and had to return to the town often. He couldn’t take seeing the burned-out trees, cars and homes. The couple took their insurance money and moved to a small town in Oregon. From a distance, the upkeep on their vacant lot proved to be too much so they sold that too.

But Paradise pulled at them, especially Lindy, 66. Their daughter never left, attending Chico State, where she recently graduated. Some of their friends had rebuilt. To her, Oregon felt lonely. Paradise, she said, was their community.

Tom and Diane Boatright built back their home in the second-fastest time after the Camp fire using a modular homebuilding company.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Last year, Roger and Lindy bought a house in Paradise, a newly built, blue, two-bedroom with a white picket fence. The home had all they wanted. Solar power. A large lot. Apple, cherry and peach trees in the back. And they were overwhelmed with the thought of starting from scratch.

They’ve kept a Little Free Library on their lawn stocked with books. In the spring, they traded their extra peaches for eggs from their neighbor’s chickens.

On a recent weekday afternoon, Roger and Lindy stood in their frontyard admiring the finishing touches on their only major construction project. They were replacing some of the landscaping with gravel, a decision that made their home more fire-resistant and cut their insurance costs in half.

Roger still felt unsure about returning. Before the fire, he would go to breakfast with the town’s classic car club every Saturday. The 1971 Chevy Nova Roger had restored was lost in the blaze and the car club was no more.

“It’s never going to be the Paradise it was,” Roger said to Lindy.

His wife turned to him. “It doesn’t have to be,” she said.

Its campus and enrollment are tiny, but Marymount High is a giant in the world of high school volleyball and this year’s squad looks to have the talent to compete for a championship.

The Sailors took first place out of 64 teams at the prestigious Durango Fall Classic in Las Vegas, taking down rival Sierra Canyon, 21-25, 25-15, 25-12, in the final on Sept. 20. Senior hitter and Washington commit Sammy Destler was named the tournament’s most valuable player.

Marymount did not drop a set en route to the Hawaiian Island Labor Day Classic title in Hilo in late August. Last weekend in Phoenix, the Sailors advanced to the championship match of the Platinum Division at the Nike Tournament of Champions Southwest, falling to reigning Southern Section Division 1 champion Mater Dei. The two programs could meet again in the CIF playoffs in November.

For those keeping score, that makes three finals and two titles at three tournaments in three different states over four weeks against the best competition in the nation — just the way head coach Cari Klein likes it.

Marymount High volleyball players, from left to right, Makenna Barnes, Sammy Destler and Elle Vandeweghe clap hands during a match.

(Steve Galluzzo / For The Times)

“Winning Durango was huge … and very fun,” said Klein, who reached the 700-win plateau early this season, her 28th at the all-girls Catholic school with 350 students across the street from UCLA. “These last two years we’ve gotten better the second day. Then playing TOC right after is a tough turnaround. It’s a lot of travel and a lot of volleyball.”

Three Sailors joined Destler on the all-tournament team in Durango: senior setter Olivia Penske (committed to Georgetown), junior hitter Makenna Barnes (an early Northwestern commit who has pounded a team-best 217 kills) and junior middle/opposite hitter and Stanford beach commit Katelyn Oerlemans, who leads the team with 63 blocks.

The roster also features senior middle blocker and Southern Methodist commit Elle Vandeweghe, senior middle blocker Frankie Jones (Brown), senior outside hitter Presley Jones (Amherst), senior libero Declan Eastman (Rice) and senior opposite hitter Grace Jamison (Lafayette).

Marymount lost to Mater Dei in one of the best finals in tournament history (28-26 in the third set) at Durango one year ago.

Girls’ volleyball coach Cari Klein has racked up more than 700 wins during her 28 seasons at Marymount High.

(Steve Galluzzo / For The Times)

“People don’t realize how few students we have or how academically-oriented it is,” Klein said. “Our girls have their books out in between every game. They’re studying on buses, on trains, in hallways … any chance they get to do schoolwork.”

Having played the sport herself (she was a state MVP at Irvine High in 1988 then an All-West Coast Conference hitter at Pepperdine), Klein demands a lot of her players, but she also tries to make the daily routine fun, worth getting up at the crack of dawn. Her motto is a hard practice makes an easy game.

Destler, who started playing for Klein’s Sunshine Volleyball Club when she was 8, takes that message to heart. After Marymount was dealt its first loss at Redondo Union on Sept 2, she stated: “We have practice at 5:45 a.m. tomorrow and I have to like it.”

The Sailors (29-3) are off to their best start since the 2021 team that finished 35-0, winning 92 of 100 sets in the process, and earned Klein PrepVolleyball.com national high school coach of the year honors.

Of the 20 players on varsity, eight are seniors and nine are juniors.

“This team is similar to the 2021 team,” Klein said. “What’s different is that those seniors four years ago were so hungry because they lost their junior year to COVID-19.”

Marymount’s longest drought between section finals appearances in Klein’s tenure is five seasons (2013 to 2017), so the team is about due. She also wants to add another player of the year to those she has already mentored — Haley Jorgensborg (2001); Stesha Selsky (2002 and 2003); Kelly Irvin (2005); Lauren Greskovics-Fuller (2011); and Elia Rubin (2021).

“There are nine or 10 teams in our section that could really give us a match,” said Klein, who has steered the Sailors to 10 Southern Section titles (including a record six in a row from 2001 to 2006), eight regional crowns and seven state championships since taking over the program in 1998. “Huntington Beach, Los Alamitos, Sierra Canyon, Newport Harbor, Santa Margarita, Redondo, Mira Costa, Harvard-Westlake, Mater Dei — all very hard to beat. And if you get to the next level, there are four San Diego schools that are really strong too. CIF is stacked.”

In addition to the postseason success, Marymount has won 24 league titles under Klein. To add to that total, it must beat Sierra Canyon, which defeated the Sailors three times last season. The first of the schools’ two Mission League meetings is Monday night in Chatsworth.

In one regard, a section title in 2025 would be sweeter than the others for Klein because she lost her home in the Palisades fire in January, as did some of her players. She has been living in Playa del Rey with her husband, former Palisades High quarterback Perry Klein.

“We’ve all had to deal with it already, but a lot of girls in the program have been affected and the younger club players as well,” she said. “It’s a pretty emotional year for Marymount.”

USC women’s basketball star JuJu Watkins will miss the upcoming college basketball season as she recovers from the serious knee injury she sustained during the NCAA tournament in March.

Watkins said in an announcement on social media that she planned to take the 2025-26 season to “fully focus on continuing to recover so I can come back to the game I love.”

“The last few months have been filled with a lot of healing, rest and reflection,” Watkins said in a statement. “Recovering from this injury hasn’t been easy, and I want to say thank you — your love, support and kind words have truly lifted me up during one of the most challenging times in my life.”

Watkins was in the midst of a stellar sophomore season when her knee buckled on a breakaway during the second round of the NCAA tournament. The injury proved to be a devastating blow to USC’s title hopes, as the Trojans eventually lost in the Elite Eight to Connecticut.

There was a glimmer of hope that Watkins might be able to return for a potential postseason run in March 2026, a full year after her injury. Two orthopedic surgeons told The Times at the time that she’d require upwards of 12 months to recover.

“There’s going to be a lot of differences from person to person in that recovery process,” said Dr. Gabriella Ode, an orthopedic surgeon who serves as the team physician for the New York Liberty. “There’s nothing wrong even with a 12-month recovery. I want to be very explicit about that. There are many people who it takes 12 months.”

Any speculation that Watkins might return sooner than that ended Sunday, more than a month before the start of the women’s college basketball season.

USC coach Lindsay Gottlieb said in a statement that the program would “fully support her decision to focus on recovery this season.”

“While we will certainly miss her impact on the court, she continues to play a vital role in our program as a leader and teammate. The strength and maturity she has shown through this process is a reflection of who she is.”

Her impact won’t be easily replaced. But the arrival of another top prospect, Jazzy Davidson, should help fill some of the void.

“No one is filling JuJu’s shoes,” Gottlieb said earlier this month. “Those are unique shoes. But the fact that Jazzy can step into our program and already just make a really unique and incredible impression on everybody is pretty wild. She’s really, really good.”

In two seasons at USC, Watkins has been nothing short of a phenomenon, both on and off the court.

A Compton native, Watkins arrived at USC in 2023 intent on helping build the program back up, and within one season had helped turn the Trojans into national title contenders. As a sophomore, she won the Wooden Award, the Naismith Trophy, Big Ten Player of the Year and became the first USC player ever named the Associated Press player of the year. She also powered USC to a Big Ten title in its first season in the conference, all while becoming the fastest Trojan ever to 1,000 career points, a mark that she surpassed early in her sophomore year.

Upon her return as a senior, Watkins technically would still have two years of eligibility remaining. But the Trojan superstar is almost certain to declare for the WNBA draft when she’s first eligible in 2027.

As USC enters a critical stretch of its conference slate, it’s unclear if it’ll have its star wideout or starting left tackle ready to play.

Junior wideout Ja’Kobi Lane did return to practice on Tuesday after sitting out last Saturday’s win over Michigan State with an upper body injury he suffered the week before. But junior offensive tackle Elijah Paige was not seen entering or leaving USC’s practice field.

USC coach Lincoln Riley declined to provide an update on Lane or Paige on Tuesday and instead referred reporters to the Big Ten’s availability report, which is released two hours before kickoff every Saturday.

Without Lane, who is averaging almost 27 yards per catch this season, USC was forced to count on senior Jaden Richardson, who had just one catch coming into last Saturday’s game. He doubled that output against Michigan State and would presumably play a similar role if Lane is unable to play.

“He’s really created his own value here,” Riley said of Richardson. “He can play any of the receiver positions in our offense. Just does a lot of things well.”

Lane came out for early warm-ups last Saturday in shorts and a sweatshirt and appeared as if he’d try to play. But when the team returned in full pads, Lane came out of the tunnel several minutes later in street clothes.

It’s not clear how close Lane was to playing then or how seriously USC was actually considering the possibility. After the game, Riley described his injury as only “inconclusive.”

USC has a bye next week after its trip to Illinois.

“[It] was a little bit unexpected,” Riley said of Lane’s injury. “I don’t think it’ll be super long, but at the same time, I can’t sit here today and say for sure he’s going to play next week or in the coming weeks.”

Paige left Saturday’s game early in the second quarter and never returned, causing a chain reaction down USC’s offensive line. Paige was replaced by Justin Tauanuu, who shifted from left to right tackle. Tobias Raymond then moved from left guard to right tackle, while Micah Banuelos took over at left guard.

“These guys take a lot of reps at different positions throughout the week and really have throughout camp,” Riley said. “Some of the position flex we’ve built up at that position really paid off.”

Illinois is dealing with its own injury issues, but on defense. In a blowout loss to Indiana last week, Illinois was without most of its starting secondary. This Saturday, it definitely won’t have All-Big Ten cornerback Xavier Scott, who’s out for the season, and it could also be without a starting safety who is in concussion protocol. Two other key cornerbacks have yet to practice, but Illinois coach Bret Bielema expressed hope that they’d be cleared by midweek.

Even without its top red zone receiver and its steadiest offensive linemen, USC’s offense didn’t show many signs of slowing down last Saturday. It still piled up 517 yards of offense.

As Dodgers players packed in for Clayton Kershaw’s retirement news conference last Thursday, Freddie Freeman waved the Kershaw family to a row of seats at the front of the room.

He wanted Kershaw’s wife, Ellen, and their four kids in front of the pitcher right when he sat down at the dais at Dodger Stadium.

How else, Freeman joked, could they get the future Hall of Famer to cry?

Turned out, in a 14-minute address announcing his retirement from baseball at the end of this season, Kershaw did get choked up from behind the mic. But, it happened first when he addressed his teammates. They, he told him, were who he was going to miss most.

“The hardest one is the teammates, so I’m not even going to look at you guys in the eye,” Kershaw said, his eyes quickly turning red. “Just you guys sitting in this room, you mean so much to me. We have so much fun. I’m going to miss it.”

“The game in and of itself, I’m going to miss a lot, but I’ll be OK without that,” he later added. “I think the hard part is the feeling after a win, celebrating with you guys. That’s pretty special.”

Days later, that message continues to reverberate.

For the Dodgers, it served as a reminder and a reset.

Ever since early July, the team had lived in a world blanketed by frustration and wracked with repeated misery. Many players were hurt or uncharacteristically slumping. The team as a whole endured an extended sub-.500 skid. Behind inconsistent offense and unreliable bullpen pitching, a big division lead dwindled. Visions of 120-win grandeur were meekly dashed.

Amid that slump, the club’s focus drifted. From team production to individual mechanics. From collective urgency to internal dissatisfaction.

“Everyone on this team has been so busy this year trying to perfect their craft,” third baseman Max Muncy said, “that sometimes we forget about that moment of just hanging out and enjoying what we’re going through. “

Or, as Kershaw put it after his final regular-season Dodger Stadium start on Friday, “the collective effort to do something hard together.”

“All that stuff is just so impactful, so meaningful,” Kershaw explained.

And if it had gone missing during the depths of mostly difficult summer months, Kershaw’s retirement has thrust it back to the forefront.

“I do think it helps reset,” Muncy said. “Over the course of seven, eight months, you see each other every day and sometimes you take that a little bit for granted … It’s not something that anyone forgot. But sometimes you need a refresher. I think that was a good moment for it.”

Don’t mistake this as a “Win one for Kersh!” attitude. The Dodgers insisted they needed no extra motivation to defend their title, even after what’s been a turbulent repeat campaign.

Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw announces he will retire at the end of the season during a news conference at Dodger Stadium.

But, both players and coaches have noted recently, their efforts this year have sometimes felt misplaced. The togetherness they lauded during last year’s championship march hadn’t always been replicated. A pall was cast over much of the second half.

“When you’re not winning games, it’s not fun,” veteran infielder Miguel Rojas said earlier this month. “But at the end of the day, we gotta put all that aside. … We have to come here and enjoy ourselves around the clubhouse, regardless of the situation.”

The Dodgers did that and more this past weekend, when a celebration of Kershaw — which included nearly team-wide attendance at his Thursday news conference, several on-field ovations Friday, and Kershaw’s address to Dodger Stadium on Sunday — was accompanied by three wins out of four against the San Francisco Giants.

“Watching him get choked up when he started talking about the teammates — it was just a crazy feeling in that room,” pitcher Tyler Glasnow recounted from Thursday’s announcement.

Added Muncy: “You hear when he talks about the stuff he’s gonna miss the most, the stuff that he enjoys the most: It’s being a part of the team. It’s being with the guys. It’s being in the clubhouse.

“To hear a guy like him just reinforce that, I think it’s a good message for a lot of people to hear.”

In Muncy’s estimation, the Dodgers have “seen a reflection of that out on the field” of late, having moved to the verge of a division title (their magic number entering play Monday was three with a 10-4 record over the last two weeks.

“There’s been more of an effort to try and enjoy the moments,” Muncy said. “Make sure we’re still getting our work in, but try to enjoy the moments.”

The Dodgers made a similar transformation last October, when they used their first-round bye week to build the kind of cohesion they had lacked in previous postseason failures — one the team credited constantly in its eventual run to the World Series.

Kershaw’s retirement might’ve provided a similar spark, highlighting the significance of such intangible dynamics while lifting the gloom that had clouded the team’s last two months.

“There’s obviously been a lot of things to point [to this season], as far as adversities, which all teams go through,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “But I think that as we’ve gotten to the other side of it … guys have stuck together and they’ve come out of it stronger, which a lot of the times, that’s what adversity does.”

More adversity, of course, figures to lie ahead.

The Dodgers ended the weekend on a sour note, with Blake Treinen suffering the latest bullpen implosion in a 3-1 loss on Sunday. They’ll still enter the playoffs in a somewhat unsettled place, needing to navigate around a struggling relief corps and overcome a hand injury to catcher Will Smith.

It means, like last year, their path through October is unlikely to be smooth.

That, after a second half full of frustrations, they’ll have to lean on a culture Kershaw emphasized, and praised, repeatedly over the weekend.

“To have a group of guys in it together, and kind of understanding that and being together, being able to have a ton of fun all the time, is really important,” Kershaw said. “The older I’ve gotten, the more important [I’ve realized] it is. Like, you can’t just go through your day every day and go through the emotions. You just can’t. It’s too hard, too long to do that.”

“You gotta have Miggy doing the mic on the bus. You gotta have Kiké. You gotta have all these guys that are able to keep us having fun and energized every single day. That’s what this group is, and it’s been a blast.”

Welcome Times of Troy readers, to a special middle-of-the-night edition of this newsletter. It’s now just before 3 a.m. as I sit at my dining room table, cursing the greed of the TV executives who conceived of the 8 p.m. kickoff as a concept in the first place. My utmost respect goes to the diehards outside of the Pacific time zone who went the distance in USC’s 45-31 win over Michigan State. May your body clocks recover better than mine surely will.

Until about 1:30 a.m. Eastern time, early Sunday morning, it looked like USC might roll to another resounding victory. The Trojans were up 31-10, a few minutes into the third quarter. They’d piled up twice as many yards as Michigan State.

“We were dominating the football game,” coach Lincoln Riley said.

USC’s defense had forced one three-and-out to open the half, and it was on its way to another quick stop when, on a fourth down, linebacker Ta’Mere Robinson came flying around the edge and clipped Michigan State’s punter as he booted a kick.

Faced with a 4th-and-2 after the penalty, the Spartans decided to go for it. Quarterback Aidan Chiles was flushed from the pocket, and his pass fell incomplete … but another flag was thrown. USC inexplicably had 12 players on the field.

The back-to-back penalties, while troubling, weren’t totally back-breaking at the time. USC was still well in control, with a three-score lead intact. But what happened from there would hint at a larger issue, one that USC will have to iron out in a hurry with the hardest stretch of its schedule looming.

Twice, in the next eight plays, it seemed USC forced Michigan State into a decisive 3rd-and-long, only for a penalty flag to wipe away the stop.

The penalties would kick the door open for Michigan State. And in less than 10 minutes, they’d cut the USC lead to just a single score.

It wasn’t so much the season-high 10 penalties that was most concerning, but rather the lack of discipline on defense that inspired those mistakes. (Though, ranking 129th in the nation in penalty yards per game certainly isn’t great.) Of the defense’s eight penalty calls, there were two illegal substitution flags, an unsportsmanlike conduct and an illegal hands to the face call for the fifth time in three weeks.

Riley said after that he doesn’t want to discourage his defense from playing aggressive. But those aren’t penalties of aggression. They’re self-inflicted wounds. And if USC’s defense continues to make them a habit, they will eventually pay for it.

“We definitely thought we’d be better from that standpoint,” defensive tackle Devan Thompkins said. “Going forward, playing these Big Ten games, we have to reduce those penalties for sure.”

There are plenty of reasons for Riley to be encouraged by the progress of USC’s defense. The pass rush is actually disruptive. The run defense is giving up just three yards per carry.

The problems on that side of the ball are no longer about the quality of players. Linebacker Eric Gentry, in the midst of an All-American season, ranks first in the Big Ten in tackles for loss, third in sacks and fifth in tackles. The defensive line is so deep that five-star freshman Jahkeem Stewart played just 17 snaps on Saturday, despite dominating almost every one of them.

Which is what makes the discipline breakdowns so disappointing. USC, for the first time in Riley’s tenure, has the talent to compete on defense. The question now, as the Trojans enter their toughest stretch of the season, is whether that will be enough.

Huge shoes to fill

When Lindsay Gottlieb set out to rebuild USC’s roster in the spring, she knew there was no way to make up for their most important loss from last season.

“No one is filling JuJu’s shoes,” she said. “Those are unique shoes.”

Watkins tore her anterior cruciate ligament in March. She’s “doing great”, according to Gottlieb. “But there’s still no timeline for her return. If she comes back at all this season, I can’t imagine it would be until late in the calendar. Her absence from the lineup is no less than a gaping void.”

But when losing a generational superstar, it sure helps to have another No. 1 prospect in the pipeline.

Enter freshman Jazzy Davidson.

“The fact that Jazzy can step into our program and already just make a really unique and incredible impression on everybody is pretty wild,” Gottlieb said. “She’s really, really good. I’ll start with that. She’s next-level good.”

“Her impact on the basketball court just comes in a lot of different ways. She glides. She’s very fluid. She can score it. She can pass it. She impacts the game defensively. She comes in ready in a way that’s very unique for someone her age. So we’re super excited. We know that we’ve got something special with her.”

We know much less about what to expect from the new-look Trojans frontcourt, which lost a WNBA All-Star in Kiki Iriafen and an entrenched team leader in Rayah Marshall. Replacing their production means counting on transfers Yakiya Milton and Dayana Mendes, Lithuanian import Gerda Raulusaityte or returners Vivian Iwuchukwu and Lauren Williams to fill the void.

“We knew that size and the frontcourt was going to be important,” Gottlieb said. “I don’t think any of us said we have to find one person to get us 18 and 10 like Kiki. As a group, we need production in different ways.”

Ja’Kobi Lane makes a catch in front of Purdue defensive back Hudauri Hines.

(Michael Conroy / Associated Press)

—Ja’Kobi Lane’s absence couldn’t come at a worse time. Riley said that the unspecified ailment became an issue unexpectedly in the middle of last week, but that Lane sustained the injury sometime during the Trojans win over Purdue. Lane didn’t have a catch in the fourth quarter of that game. Riley didn’t offer much more information than that and even called the injury “inconclusive”. But he left the door open for Lane to miss more games. If he’s saying that already, I’d expect that’s a serious possibility. USC’s next opponent, Illinois, just lost six of its top seven defensive backs, so maybe it won’t be so much of a problem next week. But against Michigan, in a critical game at the Coliseum, USC could really use its top red zone target.

—USC lost its left tackle for more than half the game yesterday. The offensive line still held up well. Elijah Paige isn’t expected to be out long term, according to Riley, but the fact that USC only allowed three pressures all game in spite of his injury is a good sign. Michigan State doesn’t have a fearsome pass rush exactly, but that’s a strong performance against any Power Four opponent. Tobias Raymond, who played at both guard and tackle Saturday, continues to live up to Riley’s rave reviews from the offseason. I also thought right tackle Justin Tauanuu looked good switching between the right and left sides after Paige went out.

—New point guard Jordan Marsh is receiving rave reviews in preseason. USC knew that Marsh could step in as a scoring threat, after he averaged almost 19 per game at North Carolina Asheville last season. But the transfer guard looks like more of an all-around impact player than anyone anticipated. “He’s hands down one of the fastest guards I’ve ever played with,” said forward Ezra Ausar. He’s also a deceptively feisty defender for as small as he is. The question now is how well Marsh can orchestrate the offense. Could he allow for Rodney Rice to play some on the perimeter? Regardless, early indications continue to be Marsh will play a key role in USC’s rotation.

—Remember when Trojan fans wanted Luke Fickell to take over as head coach? Well, I’m sure Wisconsin would happily trade places now. The Badgers were blown out at home this week by Maryland, and fans chanted for Fickell to be fired. It’s an important reminder that coaches don’t always fit in new situations in the way we expect them to. It’s only getting worse from here for Wisconsin, with Michigan, Ohio State, Oregon, Illinois and Indiana all upcoming.

In case you missed it

With Makai Lemon slicing and scoring, USC defeats Michigan State to remain unbeaten

D’Anton Lynn says he hasn’t been contacted by UCLA, and his focus is on USC’s defense

How Bishop Fitzgerald’s roots as a quarterback helped him become a prolific USC safety

What I’m watching this week

Cary Christopher as Alex in “Weapons.”

(Warner Bros. Pictures)

We are closing in on spooky season, which is the one time of year my wife will agree to watch a scary movie with me. The selection process for that single horror flick every year is usually extensive. But this year, it was an easy choice.

“Weapons” is one of the most talked-about horror movies in recent memory, and I’ve spent the last several months somehow dodging spoilers at every turn. What I do know: A classroom full of kids mysteriously disappears in the middle of the night one night, leaving a community to reckon with who or what is behind it all.

Until next time …

That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at [email protected], and follow me on X at @Ryan_Kartje. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

It was a long, wet afternoon in West Lafayette, but USC emerged unscathed from Big Ten country with its first conference road win in hand and a pick-six for its massive, 360-pound nose tackle. What more could you really ask for from a trip to Purdue?

After marching up and down the field for two weeks and beating up on its first two opponents by an average margin of 50 points, USC was finally tested by a real, genuine football team on Saturday. And while it wasn’t perfect, it was certainly important, considering what awaits the Trojans during the next six weeks.

Welcome back to the Times of Troy newsletter, where we do still have some reasons for concern as the conference competition ratchets up. The secondary, aside from two Bishop Fitzgerald picks, gave Purdue’s receivers too much space and gifted them too many busted coverages. The run game didn’t always find room and the passing attack wasn’t always consistent.

But just closing out a close game on the road in the fourth quarter was a critical step for USC this season. The manner in which it shut the door on Purdue was especially encouraging, given how similar circumstances were handled a season ago.

USC had just two fourth-quarter drives, which it turned into just three total points. On paper, without context, they might look entirely unremarkable. The Trojans averaged just 5.95 yards per play through that stretch, nearly a yard lower than they managed during the full game.

But those two drives, from a situational perspective, were precisely what USC needed in that moment.

And that’s a credit to USC coach Lincoln Riley, whose late-game management left a lot to be desired last season. On Saturday, he showed a much better grasp of how to close out a Big Ten game away from home.

Through three quarters, USC’s run game was mostly stymied, with just 91 yards in 25 carries. Still, Riley kept with it. Knowing he needed to keep the clock running, the Trojans’ coach kept his team grounded for the majority of the fourth quarter. Out of 19 plays in that final quarter, USC ran the ball 15 times.

USC racked up 87 rushing yards during those two drives — almost double its previous output — but more important, it chewed away almost 11 minutes of clock. Eventually, Purdue just ran out of time to mount a comeback.

“We knew how much time we had to chew,” senior tight end Lake McRee said. “We did what we needed to do to get the job done.”

It hadn’t always seemed so simple to USC and its coach. Last season, quarterback Miller Moss was asked to throw the ball at least 50 times in three of USC’s four road losses, all of which the Trojans led in the fourth quarter.

With that in mind, USC set out to make late-game management more of a focal point. So at practice, Riley would run the team through its “Trojan Period,” in which they’d run a sequence of plays focused on late-game situational awareness.

Most of the time, McRee said, that just meant grinding away with the run.

We saw the benefit of that work in West Lafayette. It wasn’t perfect — for instance, USC went 0 for 3 on third down — but Saturday felt, to me at least, like a sign that the Trojans and their coach may have learned the right lessons from last season and perhaps put their fourth-quarter woes in the rearview mirror.

USC defensive tackle Floyd Boucard sacks Purdue quarterback Ryan Browne in West Lafayette, Ind., on Saturday.

(Michael Conroy / Associated Press)

— USC’s pass rush progress feels legit. After its third consecutive game with four or more sacks, I think we can safely say that USC is much-improved in this area. USC not only had five sacks Saturday, but pressured Purdue quarterback Ryan Browne 31 times on 39 dropbacks, according to PFF. That’s an absurd mark. The Trojans actually lead the nation in sacks with 14 through three weeks, much of which they were able to collect without blitzing. Before this season, USC had just two games total with four or more sacks during the Riley era, both in 2023. That rate probably isn’t sustainable. But D’Anton Lynn finally has a collection of talent to rush the passer, and the results look a lot more like UCLA in 2023, when Lynn’s Bruins defense finished in the top-10 in sacks nationally, than USC in 2024.

— Penalties are becoming a real problem. Riley made clear that USC needed to cut down on discipline penalties after it drew eight penalties a week ago. But the Trojans ended up drawing their most penalties of the season Saturday (nine) and the most penalty yards of Riley’s tenure (103). They had two sideline interference calls, a roughing the passer call and a personal foul on a punt. “We know we’ve gotta do better,” Riley said.

— USC’s corner rotation narrowed, as promised. And Marcelles Williams was the main beneficiary. It wasn’t clear who would get the start opposite of DeCarlos Nicholson, and after an iffy showing from the cornerback room, there’s no guarantee that Williams will remain in the role. But Williams beat Braylon Conley, DJ Harvey and Chasen Johnson for the start Saturday, and he finished tied for second on the team in tackles (five). Williams played 45 snaps, while Harvey played 22, Johnson played 21 and Conley played 10. The problem is none of them were really up to par in coverage.

— It’s not often that USC finds itself in a weather delay. The last time was in 2012, when USC beat Syracuse at the Meadowlands in New Jersey. But before that, USC hadn’t had a football game affected by weather since 1990, when officials called the game with 2:36 left, handing a win to USC over Ohio State. The Buckeyes were … umm … not happy about it at the time.

In case you missed it

USC exorcises its Big Ten road demons by beating Purdue to remain unbeaten

USC’s Three Things to Watch Against Purdue

USC hopes more leg room pays off: 3 key questions Trojans must answer vs. Purdue

‘I know what I can be.’ How USC tailback Waymond Jordan went from anonymous to a star

What I’m watching this week

Mark Ruffalo and Alison Oliver hold up guns as they search a street on the HBO show “Task.”

(Peter Kramer / HBO)

I was a huge fan of “Mare of Easttown” when it debuted in 2021, so I was thrilled to hear the creator, Brad Inglesby, was returning to HBO with a new crime drama. Fortunately, I can report that “Task” appears to be everything you’d want it to be if you’re looking for a fitting follow-up to one of the best shows of the past five years.

The show follows the intertwining stories of an alcoholic FBI agent played by Mark Ruffalo and a masked robber played by Tom Pelphrey. The aesthetic is dark and dour. And yet, the show is a beautiful piece of filmmaking, and I’m enjoying every minute of it so far.

Until next time …

That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at [email protected], and follow me on X at @Ryan_Kartje. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

The crew had just poured a concrete foundation on a vacant lot in Altadena when I pulled up the other day. Two workers were loading equipment onto trucks and a third was hosing the fresh cement that will sit under a new house.

I asked how things were going, and if there were any problems finding enough workers because of ongoing immigration raids.

“Oh, yeah,” said one worker, shaking his head. “Everybody’s worried.”

The other said that when fresh concrete is poured on a job this big, you need a crew of 10 or more, but that’s been hard to come by.

“We’re still working,” he said. “But as you can see, it’s just going very slowly.”

Eight months after thousands of homes were destroyed by wildfires, Altadena is still a ways off from any major rebuilding, and so is Pacific Palisades. But immigration raids have hammered the California economy, including the construction industry. And the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling this week that green-lights racial profiling has raised new fears that “deportations will deplete the construction workforce,” as the UCLA Anderson Forecast warned us in March.

There was already a labor shortage in the construction industry, in which 25% to 40% of workers are immigrants, by various estimates. As deportations slow construction, and tariffs and trade wars make supplies scarcer and more expensive, the housing shortage becomes an even deeper crisis.

And it’s not just deportations that matter, but the threat of them, says Jerry Nickelsburg, senior economist at the Anderson Forecast. If undocumented people are afraid to show up to install drywall, Nickelsburg told me, it “means you finish homes much more slowly, and that means fewer people are employed.”

Now look, I’m no economist, but it seems to me that after President Trump promised the entire country we were headed for a “golden age” of American prosperity, it might not have been in his best interest to stifle the state with the largest economy in the nation.

Especially when many national economic indicators aren’t exactly rosy, when we have not seen the promised decrease in the price of groceries and consumer goods, and when the labor statistics were so embarrassing he fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and replaced her with another one, only to see more grim jobs numbers a month later.

I had just one economics class in college, but I don’t recall a section on the value of deporting construction workers, car washers, elder-care workers, housekeepers, nannies, gardeners and other people whose only crime — unlike the violent offenders we were allegedly going to round up — is a desire to show up for work.

Now here, let me give you my email address. It’s [email protected].

And why am I telling you that?

Because I know from experience that some of you are frothing, foaming and itching to reach out and tell me that illegal means illegal.

So go ahead and email me if you must, but here’s my response:

We’ve been living a lie for decades.

People come across the border because we want them to. We all but beg them to. And by we, I mean any number of industries — many of them led by conservatives and by Trump supporters — including agribusiness, and hospitality, and construction, and healthcare.

Why do you think so many employers avoid using the federal E-Verify system to weed out undocumented workers? Because they don’t want to admit that many of their employees are undocumented.

In Texas, Republican lawmakers can’t stop demonizing immigrants, and they can’t stop introducing bills by the dozens to mandate wider use of E-Verify. But the most recent one, like all the ones before it, just died.

Why?

Because the tough talk is a lie and there’s no longer any shame in hypocrisy. It’s a climate of corruption in which no one has the integrity to admit what’s clear — that the Texas economy is propped up in part by an undocumented workforce.

At least in California, six Republican lawmakers all but begged Trump in June to ease up on the raids, which were affecting business on farms and construction sites and in restaurants and hotels. Please do some honest work on immigration reform instead, they pleaded, so we can fill our labor needs in a more practical and humane way.

Makes sense, but politically, it doesn’t play as well as TV ads recruiting ICE commandos to storm the streets and arrest tamale vendors, even as the barbarians who ransacked the Capitol and beat up cops enjoy their time as presidentially pardoned patriots.

Small businesses, restaurants and mom and pops are being particularly hard hit, says Maria Salinas, chief executive of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. Those who survived the pandemic were then kneecapped again by the raids.

With the Supreme Court ruling, Salinas told me, “I think there’s a lot of fear that this is going to come back harder than before.”

From a broader economic perspective, the mass deportations make no sense, especially when it’s clear that the vast majority of people targeted are not the violent criminals Trump keeps talking about.

Giovanni Peri, director of the UC Davis Global Migration Center, noted that we’re in the midst of a demographic transformation, much like that of Japan, which is dealing with the challenges of an aging population and restrictive immigration policies.

“We’ll lose almost a million working-age Americans every year in the next decade just because of aging,” Peri told me. “We will have a very large elderly population and that will demand a lot of services in … home healthcare [and other industries], but there will be fewer and fewer workers to do these types of jobs.”

Dowell Myers, a USC demographer, has been studying these trends for years.

“The numbers are simple and easy to read,” Myers said. Each year, the worker-to-retiree ratio decreases, and it will continue to do so. This means we’re headed for a critical shortage of working people who pay into Social Security and Medicare even as the number of retirees balloons.

If we truly wanted to stop immigration, Myers said, we should “send all ICE workers to the border. But if you take people who have been here 10 and 20 years and uproot them, there’s an extreme social cost and also an economic cost.”

At the Pasadena Home Depot, where day laborers still gather despite the risk of raids, three men held out hope for work. Two of them told me they have legal status. “But there’s very little work,” said Gavino Dominguez.

The third one, who said he’s undocumented, left to circle the parking lot and offer his services to contractors.

Umberto Andrade, a general contractor, was loading concrete and other supplies into his truck. He told me he lost one fearful employee for a week, and another for two weeks. They came back because they’re desperate and need to pay their bills.

“The housing shortage in California was already terrible before the fires, and now it’s 10 times worse,” said real estate agent Brock Harris, who represents a developer whose Altadena rebuilding project was temporarily slowed after a visit from ICE agents in June.

With building permits beginning to flow, Harris said, “for these guys to slow down or shut down job sites is more than infuriating. You’re going to see fewer people willing to start a project.”

Most people on a job site have legal status, Harris said, “but if shovels never hit the ground, the costs are being borne by everybody, and it’s slowing the rebuilding of L.A.”

Lots of bumps on the road to the golden age of prosperity.

[email protected]

You might not think of John C. Reilly as a romantic — he’s best known for starring in comedies like “Step Brothers” and “Talladega Nights” — but these days, the actor is leaning into that side of himself.

His new vaudeville show, “Mister Romantic,” came from a moment of deep reflection.

In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.

“Three years ago, I was looking around the world thinking, ‘Man, it’s getting really divisive out there,’” he says. There’s a lot of strife among people. What can I do? And I thought, ‘Well, you can sing and dance, tell people you love them,’ and that’s how ‘Mister Romantic’ was born.”

With a quartet of musicians behind him, Reilly takes the stage as Mister Romantic, his alter ego who has no memory of the past. All he knows is that he must perform — and if he’s lucky, he’ll find someone to fall in love with him by the end of the night. The stage performance, which makes a stop at L.A.’s Palace Theatre on Oct. 10, follows the release of Reilly’s debut “Mister Romantic” album, a collection of love ballads he gathered and reinterpreted over the years. The result is part crooner, part cabaret — with clear nods to Frank Sinatra and Old Hollywood romances.

“We’re taking this message of empathy and love out to the world and having a lot of fun at the same time,” he says.

Reilly used to live near Pasadena, but after losing his home in the L.A. fires, now resides “all over.” With his children grown and most likely “doing their own Sunday things,” his ideal Sunday is spent with his wife and other important people in his life.

“Sunday is kind of like this safe space,” Reilly says. “It’s a chance to just check in with someone who might need a little company.”

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

7 a.m.: The joy of pajamas
I want to encourage everyone to get into pajamas. I’m a big fan of pajamas. I like the traditional kind with stripes. You know, like the old dad pajamas from the 1950s. So you’ll see me in my pajamas if you come to my house on Sunday morning.

I usually wake up about 7 o’clock, but it takes me about an hour and a half to even get anything going — I’m a very slow riser.

8:30 a.m.: Pick up pastries in Pasadena
I usually like to hit a bakery early on because it’s a fun thing to have on a Sunday morning — some fun bakery items. There’s this bakery I love in Pasadena called Seed Bakery that has all the hits. It’s this amazing couple, just the two of them — they make all the amazing French stuff that you’re familiar with and killer ham-and-cheese croissants.

One thing that my grandfather used to do when I was a kid: Sunday would be the day he would come over with stuff from the bakery. If you want to be like the most fun uncle out there, you can also just go to a friend’s house with baked goods.

11 a.m.: Take a hike at TreePeople
There’s this great place called TreePeople that I love that is up at the top of Coldwater Canyon. It’s a famous conservancy started by this kid in the ’70s — he was a teenager who was concerned about pollution, and he heard that trees and plants can help take pollution out of the air.

It’s one of the great hikes of L.A. It has these paths that kind of crisscross back and forth. It’s very peaceful.

It has this mission of not just preserving the trails but also teaching people about ecology and why trees are important. We definitely need some trees after all this fire that we’ve had in L.A. Trees are a really important part of the city.

2:30 p.m.: Afternoon at Moonlight Rollerway
I love the Moonlight Rollerway, an amazing roller rink in Glendale. I’m a longtime patron of the place. I’ve filmed in there a couple different times. We shot some of “Winning Time” in there.

It’s like a throwback kind of roller-skating rink. It reminds me of the places I used to go when I was, like, 11 or 12 years old, in the late ’70s in Chicago — and it really looks exactly like that. I don’t think they changed the concession stand since the ’70s.

I really love roller skating. During COVID, we started this gang called the Rebel Skate Rolling Club, and we would just go to parking lots, like the Target parking lot at 11 p.m. Everyone would descend with matching jackets and go roller skating.

Moonlight Rollerway is always there. It’s always air-conditioned. It has beautiful wooden floors, so if you fall, it’s not the end of the world. I’m a big fan of it because you don’t drink. There is no alcohol served there. It’s good clean fun, is the way I would describe it. You can have a hot dog at the concession stand.

There’s something really cool and energizing about roller skating — it’s the closest thing to flying that you’re gonna come across without sprouting wings.

5 p.m.: Bike to dinner
Me and my wife love to get on our bikes while it’s still light out, and ride our bikes to a fun restaurant near us and have a nice meal, maybe a couple glasses of wine, and then you’re riding back on your bike in the dark. It’s so fun — it feels like an adventure.

There are a lot of cool restaurants all along Mission Street in Pasadena — that was adjacent to where we lived, and it was easy to bike there.

8 p.m.: Catch a show at Largo or the Elysian
There are two places that I have a really strong connection to that are theaters in L.A. One is Largo at the Coronet, where you can see so many amazing comedians, but I love going there for the music. I can’t tell you how many nights of extraordinary experiences I’ve had at Largo.

The other theater I love is the Elysian Theater on the Eastside in Silver Lake on Riverside. It’s gonna sound crazy for people that are not aware that there is a clown scene going on in L.A., but there’s a huge clown scene going on in L.A. There are a lot of people in the clown scene that work out of the Elysian Theater. But if you’re into alternative comedy or queer stuff, or just voices that you are not going to hear at, like, the Comedy Store, then the Elysian is a really great hub for you.

It’s a nonprofit. It’s a place that encourages alternative voices. It feels really intimate when you’re there. I’ve done my show “Mister Romantic” there a bunch of times.

10:30 p.m.: Yoga as a nightcap
I like to do a little yoga before bed. People think of yoga as, like, starting the day with yoga, but actually stretching out before you go to bed is really good, because then you let go of the tension and stuff you’ve been holding from the day and can sleep better — so I recommend a nightcap of yoga. I usually go to bed around midnight.

Nearly two decades after the fact, Anna Wintour is finally giving her review of “The Devil Wears Prada,” the 2006 Anne Hathaway comedy built around the onetime Vogue editor in chief’s notorious style of leadership.

And although Wintour is more than fashionably late, she’s showing up in time for the sequel.

The film “had a lot of humor to it, it had a lot of wit, it had Meryl Streep,” Wintour said recently on the New Yorker Radio Hour. “[The cast] were all amazing. And in the end, I thought it was a fair shot.”

The famed editor, who stepped down from the Vogue gig this summer, said she went into the premiere of the original film wearing Prada but not knowing what the movie was about. Wintour said people in the fashion industry had expressed concerns about the Miranda Priestly character, worrying she would be played as a caricature of Wintour. But those fears were unfounded.

“First of all, it was Meryl Streep, [who is] fantastic.”

“The Devil Wears Prada” is based on the 2003 bestselling novel of the same name by Lauren Weisberger, who worked as a personal assistant to Wintour. The film follows a writer played by Hathaway who gets a job at a fashion magazine managed by a highly demanding boss, played by Streep.

The actor who played the no-nonsense editor in chief earned an Academy Award nomination for her performance.

Wintour announced in June that she would step down as editor in chief of the magazine after 37 years at the helm. She will continue to oversee Condé Nast, the global media company that publishes Vogue among other publications including the New Yorker, GQ, Vanity Fair and Wired.

“The Devil Wears Prada 2” is in production with a release date set for May 2026. Streep, Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci will all reprise their roles; Adrian Grenier, who played Hathaway’s boyfriend in the original film, will not appear. New cast members include Kenneth Branagh, Justin Theroux and Lucy Liu.

We are now two weeks into the college football season, and here at the Times of Troy newsletter, we can confidently say that … we’re not really sure what to think of USC’s football team. The Trojans are an emphatic 2-0, having outscored their first two opponents by a combined margin of 99 points. They put up more yards against Georgia Southern (755) than they had in a game since at least 1972, when statistical records were first available.

(History lesson: That was still well off the program record of 978 yards, set almost exactly 100 years ago, when USC pummeled Pomona College 80-0 at the start of the 1925 season.)

And yet, for all the fireworks, I still have most of the same questions that I did before the season. Has Jayden Maiava taken a leap? Will the offensive line hold up? Is the defensive line better? Has the pass rush improved? All are trending in a positive direction at this point, but we still can’t answer any definitively. Not after two wins over completely overmatched opponents.

But for all my skepticism, I feel certain about one thing from the last two weeks, no matter how small the sample size: USC’s clearest path to the Playoff this season is through its backfield.

Through two games, USC leads the nation in yards per carry (8.6). It ranks second in the country in rushing touchdowns (10) and ninth in 20-plus yards runs (six), while exactly one in every three rush attempts by USC this season has gone for a first down.

None of those insane statistics are sustainable, of course. But Lincoln Riley told us that this was “the most talented backfield” of his tenure at USC, and so far, regardless of the competition, it seems clear that’s the case. What we don’t know for sure yet is how Riley will deploy his backfield through the Big Ten gauntlet that awaits at the end of this month.

He certainly shouldn’t need much more convincing that Waymond Jordan is capable of carrying USC’s offense. The junior college transfer’s ability to elude tacklers and change directions on a dime is truly unlike any back Riley has had at USC.

Early in the third quarter on Saturday, Jordan burst from the backfield like he was shot out of a cannon, stutter-stepped just enough to shake off two defenders, then turned on the jets. What might have otherwise been a seven- or eight-yard gain, instead became a 36-yard score.

Jordan isn’t alone in his explosiveness. Senior Eli Sanders is just as capable of breaking off a big play, like he did in Week 1, when he caught a screen pass and took it 78 yards to the house, sprinting at one point at a speed of 21 mph. Jordan served as more of a bell cow against Georgia Southern, but he still had three plays of his own of 10-plus yards.

Together, they appear to be a perfect duo in Riley’s offense. So will he let them lead the way?

Riley’s history might suggest otherwise. He has irritated fans for his reluctance to lean on the run, and rightfully so. You could make the case better clock management could have flipped a few of the one-score losses USC suffered a year ago.

This season, that could be even more important. The more Maiava throws the ball, the more likely he is to make the sort of big mistakes that could swing the game.

It happened more than once last season with Miller Moss. In three of USC’s six losses, Moss threw the ball 50 times. Enough that even Riley recognized that he should have run the ball more.

That can’t happen this season. Not with all that USC now has to work with in its backfield. And not with a season of experience in the Big Ten under Riley’s belt.

Riley has seen what it takes to make it through a Big Ten slate. Now it’s time to apply what he’s learned …

… and run the damn ball.

Tyran Stokes celebrates after a slam dunk earlier this year while playing for Sherman Oaks Notre Dame.

( Steve Galluzzo / For The Times)

—Micah Banuelos got the start at right guard over Alani Noa. Banuelos was in the thick of the competition to start at one of the guard spots, so this is less of a surprise on his end. But Noa being bumped after one week could be an interesting development. When Riley was asked about it, he only said that it was an “inside-the-walls decision”. Could this be Banuelos being the guy going forward? I didn’t think either really separated from the other at the position.

—Jahkeem Stewart lined up all over the defensive line in his first game action. The five-star freshman only played in a dozen football games at the high school level — and hadn’t played one in a while before Saturday. So Riley expected some rust. But even in his first game back, USC didn’t hold back on moving him around. Stewart played pretty much every position on the defensive line, including nose tackle. He played 23 snaps, fifth-most among USC linemen, and tallied two tackles. “He’s a really talented guy that I think is going to really impact our defense positively this year and in the future,” Riley said.

—A one-time transfer portal window is imminent. But there’s no perfect option. The NCAA Football Oversight Committee voted last week to get rid of the spring window, and while the change hasn’t been formally adopted, it’s heading in that direction. I agree with Riley that it’s ultimately progress. But if the 10-day window opens on Jan. 2, as Yahoo’s Ross Dellenger reported, that means coaches in the final four of the College Football Playoff will have to contend with players hopping into the portal mid-playoff run. Opening after the Playoff, meanwhile, might mean missing the beginning of an academic semester. “I don’t know that there’s a right answer,” Riley said. “You’re going to give up something either way.”

—The No. 1 basketball recruit in the country just visited USC. Sherman Oaks Notre Dame star forward Tyran Stokes took his official visit with Eric Musselman and Co. over the weekend. Stokes has already visited Kentucky, Kansas and Louisville, but USC is still in the thick of the race. He’s not the only top prospect who’s visited with the Trojans recently, either. Bellflower St. John Bosco stars Christian Collins (eighth overall) and Tajh Ariza (14th) had official visits at USC the weekend before Stokes. There’s no denying USC’s hustle on the recruiting trail during an absolutely critical year for recruiting in L.A. Now they just need to close with one of these top recruits.

—Tennessee and Penn State both just signed massive apparel deals to switch from Nike to adidas. Could USC follow? USC’s previous long-term deal with Nike is up next year, and the school is looking into all of its options. When Mike Bohn was athletic director, he complained to me multiple times about how bad USC’s current deal was with Nike. That’s not to say USC is looking to leave. But you can count on the size of the next deal making a much bigger difference, and adidas has shown a willingness to take big swings. For what it’s worth, in 2018, current USC athletic director Jennifer Cohen negotiated an identical switch, signing a huge apparel deal to flip Washington from Nike to adidas.

Big Ten travel tip

The most critical thing to know when traveling to Indiana from Los Angeles is that there are no direct flights into Indianapolis. So you can catch me flying into Chicago for each of the Trojans’ next three road trips.

But when it comes to fueling up before USC’s Big Ten opener in West Lafayette, Ind., next weekend, I’ll be checking out Triple XXX Family Restaurant. Once you get over the confounding/awesome name, it looks like just the sort of Midwestern diner that shouldn’t be missed. I’m a sucker for a diner burger. Especially when it’s named after a famous alum.

In case you missed it

Hernández: Is USC’s offense really that good? The Trojans’ numbers impress, but some questions loom

Clay Helton returns to USC at peace after being fired by Trojans

George Raveling, former USC basketball coach and Naismith Hall of Famer, dies at 88

What I’m watching this week

Domhnall Gleeson as Ned in “The Paper.”

(Aaron Epstein / Peacock)

I was skeptical when I heard that NBC was making a spinoff of “The Office” based on a Midwestern newspaper. I didn’t want it to sour my deep adoration for the original. But given the fact that it fits my algorithm to a frighteningly precise degree, of course I was going to give “The Paper” a shot.

And predictably, the plight of the newspaper — let alone one set 45 minutes from my hometown — was enough to get me hooked. It’s not a perfect show yet by any means, but neither was “The Office” when it first started. What I do know is Domnhall Gleeson is a joy, and there’s a kernel of something that could work here. I’ll subscribe.

Until next time …

That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at [email protected], and follow me on X at @Ryan_Kartje. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

TORONTO — Welcome to a special daily edition of the Envelope at TIFF, a newsletter collecting the latest developments out of Canada’s annual film showcase. Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

Our photo gallery’s latest includes Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Richard Linklater and more.

But click through for our video interviews, including Mark Olsen’s sit-down with Sydney Sweeney and the crew of her boxing movie “Christy,” which required a total transformation.

Sydney Sweeney in “Christy,” a portrait of boxing champ Christy Martin, having its world premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.

(Allie Fredericks / TIFF)

Here’s a taste of their exchange:

Sydney, people are already really talking about the physical transformation you make in the movie, the training that you did. What was it about the role that made it seem like you wanted to make that kind of commitment?

Sydney Sweeney: I mean, I couldn’t let Christy down, and I also love transforming for characters. That’s the whole reason of being an actor, is to be something different from yourself and to challenge ourselves.

So I had like two months of training. I built gyms in my house and I had a boxing trainer, I had a weight trainer, I had a nutritionist and would work out and train every single day.

And it was amazing. I loved it. Being able to completely lose yourself for somebody else and then have that person there next to your side. It was transformative.

Katy O’Brian, co-star: It was exhausting watching her do it.

Ben Foster, co-star: And in tribute to Syd, we’d shoot a 12-hour day that was dense, we’ll say, that would be a gentle word. She would then go train and choreograph the fights that she would do back-to-back after, one after another.

Sweeney: I’d be put in the middle of a ring and I’d have like nine girls and they would just drill me with all the different fights, one after the other for like two hours after we would wrap.

Because I really wanted the choreography to match the exact fights that she had in real life. So we would watch all the footage from her fights and memorize all the combinations and then implement those into the fight.

So everything you see were her actual fights. And so I’d wrap, I would do that for two hours, and then I would weight train.

David, there is something very unflinching about the movie. Why was it that you wanted to tell Christy’s story in a way that wasn’t afraid to explore these really dark and disturbing moments in her life?

David Michôd, director: In a way, the dark and disturbing was what made me want to make the movie. I had a clear sense that in this really wild and colorful story of a ’90s boxing pioneer was actually, underneath, it was a very important story to tell about how these coercive control relationships function.

And trying to wrap my brain around what keeps them functioning over, in this case, 20 years. And I knew that where Christy’s story went, it was harrowing.

And what the challenge for me then as a filmmaker was just to go, how do I do this being very conscious of not wanting to step into a world of representations of violence against women and all that kind of stuff, but not shying away from the horror that is very much there and is very palpable.

I could see a big sprawling movie that would start almost as a kind of conventional underdog pioneering sports movie and then morph into something that was deeply moving and important.

Sydney, Ben, what was it like for the two of you performing some of those darker scenes in the film and how did you keep some sense of humanity between the two of you?

Sweeney: There were so many conversations around a lot of those moments, and both Ben and I, we don’t like to rehearse and we kind of just want to feel it. And I think we both became very connected to who we were portraying and —

Foster: Listening.

Sweeney: We just listened

Foster: And Dave created a space where we could do that. And we would block it, we did a lot of talk privately, and then we would come in and jam and nudge. But the truth is Dave is quality control and would fine-tune moments.

The day’s buzziest premieres

‘EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert’

Elvis Presley performing live, as seen in Baz Luhrmann’s archival concert movie “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert.”

(TIFF)

How deep did Baz Lurhmann go researching his 2022 movie “Elvis”? Forty stories. That’s the depth of the Kansas salt mine where Warner Bros. had stored 59 hours of unseen recordings from Elvis Presley’s seven-year stint in Las Vegas.

Lurhmann studied it for his Oscar-nominated biopic, which mourned Presley as an artist in a cage and wondered who the curious, music-loving boy from Tupelo might have become if Col. Parker had let him, say, visit an ashram with the Beatles.

This time, the “Moulin Rouge!” director has said that he wants to use found footage to “let Elvis sing and tell his story” — as in, Lurhmann’s own spectacular sensibilities will cede center stage to Presley himself, who can still wow a crowd even during a late-career moment when his own fans feared he had more jumpsuits than ambition.

I’ll definitely be at the premiere to pay my respects to the King. — Amy Nicholson

‘Hamnet’

Jessie Buckley, center, in director Chloé Zhao’s “Hamnet.”

(Agata Grzybowska / Focus Features)

You’re going to be hearing a lot of Oscar buzz in the coming months about various movies, along with people insisting that — seriously — this is the one you need to see. “Hamnet” is, far and away, that film, for three specific reasons.

First, Paul Mescal has now done three masterful turns, between this, “Aftersun” and “All of Us Strangers” confirming what a truly special talent he is. Mescal and the “Hamnet” crew came through our TIFF studio.

Clockwise from right: Paul Mescal, Noah Jupe, Jacobi Jupe, director Chloé Zhao, Jessie Buckley and Emily Watson, photographed in the Los Angeles Times Studios at RBC House during the Toronto International Film Festival.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Second, I needed director Chloé Zhao to rebound after the mess that was “Eternals” to the confidence she displayed on “Nomadland” — and she’s done exactly that. Read our Telluride interview with her.

Finally, Jessie Buckley has uncorked one of the year’s most impressive turns: a grief-stricken plunge that elevates her to the level of Casey Affleck in “Manchester by the Sea.” Do not be surprised if, like Affleck, she goes all the way. — Joshua Rothkopf

Williard (Bill) Christine Jr., a multiple award-winning journalist who spent 23 years covering horse racing for the Los Angeles Times, died on Monday (Aug. 25) after being diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia three years ago. He died at his home in Hermosa Beach, with family by his side. He was 87.

While Christine was known in Southern California as the Times’ voice of horse racing, it was really just the end of a storied career that saw him at seven different newspapers over 42 years that also contained a stopover in racing pubic relations.

Former Los Angeles Times reporter Bill Christine.

(Christine family)

He was the author of three books, one on Roberto Clemente, another on jockey Bill Hartack and one on a pair of songwriters. After leaving newspapers, he liked to investigate and write about true crime, especially in his hometown of East St. Louis.

Christine won Eclipse Awards for outstanding writing about horse racing, in 1984 and 2004. In 2000, he was given Walter Haight Award for career excellence in turf writing. He won the David F. Woods Memorial Award in 1991 and 1992 for his coverage of the Preakness Stakes.

He was also president of the National Turf Writers and Broadcasters, a group that also includes public relations people, from 1990 to 1992.

“Bill was an old school journalist,” said Mike Willman the former longtime media relations executive at Santa Anita. “He kept copious notes and was a contrarian by nature. He was fair and extremely knowledgeable.

“He really enjoyed being around the people in racing. You could take issue with something he wrote and then debate it and there was never any animus. I really respected him for that.”

Even after he retired, Christine would write emails to friends and colleagues recounting people and events from his career in racing and baseball.

Born in Illinois, he attended Southern Illinois Carbondale where he graduated in 1963 and wrote for the college newspaper. His first job out of college was at the East St. Louis Journal, where he covered baseball among other sports. After two years he moved to the Baltimore News American, followed by the Louisville Times, Pittsburgh Press, Chicago Daily News and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where he was briefly the sports editor.

It was then that he switched to public relations taking the top media job at Commodore Downs in Pennsylvania, followed by four years as the assistant to the executive vice president at the National Thoroughbred Racing Assn.

The Times rarely hires people from the public relations side, but then sports editor Bill Dwyre decided to take a chance.

“Bill Christine was my first hire as sports editor of The Times, and being the first, it was a big deal not only for me, but for people watching me and trying to figure out what I was thinking and how I would cover each sport,” said Dwyre, who later went on to cover horse racing for The Times.

Former Los Angeles Times reporter Bill Christine receives an Eclipse Award honoring his horse racing reporting.

(Christine family)

“It was 1981. I interviewed some of the best national turf writers, including Maryjean Wall, Jennie Rees and Jack Mann, as well as Christine. I knew Bill better than the others because I had been his roommate at API (American Press Institute). … I liked that Bill was a great story-teller and that his newspaper experience went beyond just turf writing — he had covered lots of baseball on deadline and had also been the sports editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

“When he came to The Times, Santa Anita and Hollywood Park and Del Mar were booming and he worked tirelessly to give the sport the coverage it deserved.”

Bob Mieszerski, who has reported and handicapped horse racing in Southern California for many years and worked alongside Christine after Mieszerski came to the Times and added a full page of racing daily, echoed Dwyre’s sentiment about his abilities and presence.

“He was very welcoming to me when I joined the Times and I always appreciated that,” Mieszerski said. “He was a great storyteller and I Ioved hearing him recall anecdotes about different people — both in and out of racing — that he encountered.”

Dan Smith, the retired marketing and media head at Del Mar, remembers Christine for his very distinctive laugh.

“It was like ghee, ghee, ghee,” Smith said struggling to duplicate the sound. “It was very distinctive and very unique.

“He was also a big movie buff. He and his wife went to a lot of movies. And we loved to discuss movies. He followed all of that very closely.”

Christine was known for his strong opinions, which sometimes put him at odds with the people he covered.

Christine’s most notable feud was with Wayne Lukas, who didn’t speak to the reporter for several years after something Christine wrote.

“He wasn’t reluctant to discuss his opinions, which a lot of people didn’t agree with, but that was OK,” Smith said.

Dwyre, who would often change beats every year, once offered Christine the Dodgers job, arguably the best job in the department, because Christine had been complaining about needing something new. But in the end, Christine decided he would rather cover racing.

“He really knew his baseball and had a Hall of Fame ballot,” Willman remembers. “You might have your own opinion and if it disagreed with Bill’s, he had all the ammunition to show you why he was right.”

Even if Christine’s daily coverage was often buried on a page deep in the section, surrounded by handicapping and small-type results, Christine would rise to the occasion and give you a well crafted non-obvious story.

“I remember often doing critiques for my staff, especially those who had put out the previous morning’s paper,” Dwyre said. “I would hold up the sports section and ask which story that was in the section should have been on the front page and wasn’t. Invariably, it was a Christine horse racing story.”

The press box at Del Mar, named in honor of Dan Smith, has a wall where the pictures of deceased turf writers go.

“I guess his picture will go on the wall soon,” Smith said. “We’ve still got a few spots left and hope we don’t fill them anytime soon.”

Christine is survived by his wife of 43 years, Pat, and two twin daughters, Laura and Leslie, his first wife, Dianne, and stepson Chris.

Christine asked that his body be donated to USC for medical research. After the cremains are returned, there will be a small celebration of life.