love letter

For the first time in seven years, Lily Allen is back with a new album. It’s intimate, raw and autofictional.

Last week, the “Smile” singer shared a 14-track breakup record, “West End Girl.” Amid her split with “Stranger Things” actor David Harbour, Allen provides an in-depth look into a broken relationship where the line between being open and being unfaithful is thin, where dating apps are on the table and where heartbreak seems inevitable.

The album, which was written in 10 days last December, begins with Allen’s move to New York. The singer relocated to the East Coast in 2020 with her two daughters and then-husband, following the couple’s whirlwind wedding in Las Vegas. When Allen started dating Harbour in 2019, she had just finalized her divorce from Sam Cooper, with whom she shares her children.

On “West End Girl’s” opening track, she sings about receiving an offer to be in a West End production in London. In 2021, Allen made her debut in the supernatural play “2:22 — A Ghost Story.” From that moment on, tensions and distance only continued to build between the pair. Toward the end of the title track, Allen includes her end of a call where her partner is seemingly asking to open up the marriage.

As the pop melodies continue to ebb and flow, Allen reveals accusations of infidelity, the complications of being in an open marriage and mentions a pseudonym for a mistress on a track named “Madeline.” She doesn’t stray away from details, especially when it comes to finding boxes of sex toys, love letters from other women and calling her partner a “sex addict” on “P— Palace.”

By the end of the record, she makes it clear that the relationship is irreparable. The pair announced their separation last February after four years of marriage. Since the project’s release last Friday, critics have been quick to fawn over Allen’s return to music and Allen has been sure to let the press know the album is not fully based in fact.

In an interview with The Times, the U.K.’s oldest national daily newspaper, she says, “I don’t think I could say it’s all true — I have artistic license. … But yes, there are definitely things I experienced within my relationship that have ended up on this album.”

She similarly told Perfect Magazine that the work can be considered “autofiction” and that an “alter ego” is singing. When sitting down with British Vogue, she clarified that the album is inspired by what went on in the relationship between, but “that’s not to say that it’s all gospel,”

Harbour has yet to directly speak out about their relationship and has strayed away from the public eye, disabling comments on his Instagram page.

In an interview with GQ in April, he said, “There’s no use in that form of engaging [with tabloid news] because it’s all based on hysterical hyperbole.”

The highly anticipated final season of Netflix’s “Stranger Things,” where Harbour plays the role of police chief Jim Hopper, will be released Nov. 27.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Bad Bunny fans drowned out memories of Hurricane Maria in one booming voice on the anniversary of the devastating storm.

Saturday was a concert for Puerto Ricans by Puerto Ricans to remind the world about the power of la isla del encanto — the island of enchantment.

“We’re not going to quit. The entire world is watching!” Bad Bunny thundered into his microphone as he looked into a camera streaming his last show in Puerto Rico this year to viewers around the world, concluding a historic 30-concert residency in the U.S. territory.

The crowd roared as thousands watching via Amazon Music, Prime Video and Twitch joined them, marking the first time Bad Bunny was streamed across the globe.

The residency was more than just a series of concerts. Saturday marked the end of an extended love letter that Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio sang to his homeland. He tapped into what it means to be Puerto Rican, to delight in the island’s beauty, to defend its land and fight for its people.

“This is for you,” Bad Bunny said from the rooftop of a famed Puerto Rican house installed at the concert venue as he raised his glass and the crowd raised their glasses in return.

‘We are still here’

Saturday marked the eighth anniversary of Hurricane Maria, which slammed into Puerto Rico as a Category 4 storm on Sept. 20, 2017.

An estimated 2,975 people died in the sweltering aftermath of the storm that crippled the island’s electric grid, leaving some communities without power for up to a year. Anger and frustration over the pace of reconstruction continues to simmer as chronic power outages persist.

In a report issued Sept. 11, the U.S. Office of Inspector General found that 92% of approved and obligated projects related to Puerto Rico’s crumbling grid were incomplete and that $3.7 billion of available funds had not been obligated.

“Over seven years after Hurricane Maria, FEMA does not know when Puerto Rico’s electrical grid will be completely rebuilt. The grid remains unstable, inadequate, and vulnerable to interruptions,” the report stated.

On Saturday, the number of estimated deaths was printed on the backs of T-shirts and written on Puerto Rican flags that the crowd waved.

“We are still emotional and carry the trauma of having gone through a horrible thing,” said Marta Amaral, 61, who attended Saturday’s concert. “Beyond the sadness and remembering the negativity of having gone through a traumatic event, this is a celebration that we are still here, standing.”

A surprise guest

At every concert this summer, Bad Bunny invited new celebrities — among them LeBron James, Penélope Cruz, Darren Aronofsky, DJ Khaled and Kylian Mbappé — and sang with different musicians, including Rubén Blades, Residente, Gilberto Santa Rosa, Rai Nao and Jorge Drexler.

But Saturday, the noise from the crowd hit new levels as Bad Bunny rapped with Puerto Rico heavyweights Ñengo Flow, Jowell y Randy, Dei V and Arcángel and De la Ghetto. Thousands of fans flexed their knees in unison to thumping rap and reggaetón.

Then, the crowd gasped in disbelief as Marc Anthony appeared on stage after Bad Bunny pleaded with his fans to join him because he was going to sing a song he hadn’t sung in public in some 20 years.

“Yo te quiero, Puerto Rico!” the crowd cried as the two singers embraced at the end of the iconic “Preciosa,” whose lyrics say, “I love you, Puerto Rico.”

‘An emotional night’

Thousands gathered outside the concert venue Saturday hours before the concert, with Puerto Rico’s national flower, the flor de maga, tucked behind their ears and the traditional straw hat known as a pava set at a jaunty angle on their heads.

But not all were celebrating.

Darlene Mercado milled around, asking strangers if they knew of anyone with tickets she could buy for herself and her daughter, who had flown in from New Jersey.

They were around number 122,000 in a virtual waiting line to buy tickets for Saturday’s sold-out concert and weren’t able to get any after waiting eight hours online.

“This is not only the anniversary of the hurricane, but it’s also the anniversary of me no longer having cancer and it’s my birthday. We wanted to celebrate everything with a bang,” Mercado said.

Saturday’s concert was open only to residents of Puerto Rico, as were the first nine concerts of Bad Bunny’s residency, but the others were open to fans around the world.

Overall, the concerts attracted roughly half a million people, generating an estimated $733 million for Puerto Rico, according to a study by Gaither International.

Most foreign visitors came from the Dominican Republic, Colombia and Spain, with an average stay of nearly nine nights, the study found. Overall, about 70% of concertgoers were female, with an average age of 33, according to the study.

Among those attending was Shamira Oquendo. “It’s going to be an emotional night,” the 25-year-old said, noting that Hurricane Maria was her first hurricane. “It was very sad. A lot of people around me lost their things.”

‘Yo soy boricua!’

Puerto Rico’s party with Bad Bunny ended early Sunday, but the superstar who recently clinched 12 Latin Grammy nominations will go on a worldwide tour in December, with concerts planned in Costa Rica, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, Spain, France and Sweden. Notably, he is skipping the mainland U.S., citing concerns over the federal government’s immigration arrests.

On Saturday, Bad Bunny thanked his fans for their love.

“I’m going to miss you a lot. I’m going to miss this energy,” he said as he urged the crowd to embrace love no matter the situation.

At that moment, friends and family in the crowd began to hug one another, some with tears in their eyes.

After more than three hours of singing with Bad Bunny, fans were not quite ready to let go. As the crowd filed down the stairs and into the night, one man yelled, “Yo soy boricua!” and the crowd responded, “Pa’ que tú lo sepas!”

It’s a traditional cry-and-response yell that lets people around them know they’re Puerto Rican and proud of it.

Coto writes for the Associated Press.

Sterlin Harjo perfected the “art of the hang” with the co-creation of his first television series, “Reservation Dogs.” The FX drama followed a group of Indigenous teens living on a fictional Oklahoma reservation, turning their everyday routine into high art — and is one of the best television shows of the 2020s.

Now, Harjo, 45, is tackling another type of genre: crime. His forthcoming series “The Lowdown,” premiering Sept. 23 with two episodes on FX, follows self-proclaimed “truthstorian” Lee Raybon (Ethan Hawke) on a mission to unearth buried truths about Tulsa’s problematic history while exposing present-day corruption. He’s a disheveled figure who drives around town in a tattered van and lives above the rare bookstore that he also happens to own. But when his latest exposé for a local publication calls into question a prominent Tulsa family, his investigation takes him on a dangerous road from the city’s seedy underbelly to its highest corridors of power.

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“‘Rez Dogs’ was my love letter to rural Oklahoma and where I grew up. ‘The Lowdown’ is my love letter to Tulsa, where I currently live,” says Harjo, who produces, writes and directs on the new series. “You see the beauty and the darkness. You see everything.”

The eight-episode drama, best described as Tulsa noir, also stars Oklahoma expats Tim Blake Nelson, Jeanne Tripplehorn and Tracy Letts as well as Keith David. Appearances by “Rez Dog” alumni include Kaniehtiio Horn (a.k.a. the Deer Lady).

Harjo, who is a citizen of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma and is of Muscogee descent, spoke with The Times about his love for Oklahoma, the challenges of following a celebrated show like “Reservation Dogs” and how “The Lowdown” is loosely based on his own experience working with a guerrilla journalist.

“Rez Dogs” was such an exceptional series that garnered critical acclaim across all four seasons. With “The Lowdown,” was it hard to not compete with that previous success?

I didn’t think about it. My experience in this industry has been people telling me that whatever the thing is that I want to make can’t be made, and me thinking, I’m going to make it anyway, then forging ahead. Then it finds an audience, and people enjoy it. I had pitched “Rez Dogs” a few different times, and it was always soft pitches because I was nervous of being laughed out of the room. No one was interested. But having the confidence of my friend [“Rez Dogs” co-creator and writer] Taika Waititi and FX … they were open to the way that we told the story. I think they were kind of blown away. So they made it. They never said no. But I’ve had many ‘no’s and many eye rolls.

Ethan Hawke stars in “The Lowdown” as Lee Raybon, a self-proclaimed “truthstorian” and owner of a rare bookshop. He’s based on Tulsa journalist Lee Roy Chapman.

(Shane Brown / FX)

Hawke plays Lee Raybon in “The Lowdown,” a figure who is obsessed with getting to the bottom of things, to the point where he neglects many other aspects of his life. What inspired the creation of that character?

The story is fictional, but the character was inspired by someone I worked with named Lee Roy Chapman at This Land Press magazine. He was very much a soldier for truth and I would ride shotgun and make these videos about the underground, unknown histories of Tulsa. The series was called “Tulsa Public Secrets.” We were this startup, full of piss and vinegar, trying to tell the truth and write about our community and make documentaries about our community. It was about a pent-up need for truth in this city. That push to tell the truth and find truth and tell our story and create a narrative around us. It gave us and the city an identity, something to hold on to.

“The Lowdown” unfolds at a really brisk pace, yet it also has the kick-back vibe of “Rez Dogs.”

There’s the art of the hang, where the genre is people hanging out. Look at “Rez Dogs” or “Dazed and Confused.” There’s an art to hanging and being with characters, and it feels OK to just sit there with them. I think “The Lowdown” has a good balance of that, where you could just hang with [Raybon] on his block. But there’s also this unfolding story so things never get boring.

Did the making of “The Lowdown” and “Rez Dogs” overlap?

No, but it was toward the end of “Rez Dogs” that I dusted a script off that was like 10 years old. It was a feature [film], but I thought I would love to do a crime show, so I just made it into an hourlong pilot, and it became “The Lowdown.”

Sterlin Harjo says his new series was originally a script for a feature film: “I thought I would love to do a crime show, so I just made it into an hour-long pilot, and it became ‘The Lowdown.’”

(Guerin Blask / For The Times)

Ethan Hawke starred in the last season of “Rez Dogs.” Is that how you two connected?

I had a mutual friend who introduced us because Ethan had written a graphic novel about the Apache Wars and Geronimo. It was originally a script that he couldn’t get made in Hollywood because it was told from the Native side of things. Out of frustration, he made it into a graphic novel. I read it and was interested in adapting it for a show. I met up with Ethan, and I pitched my idea of the adaptation and he loved it. We spoke the same language. So we started writing together and our friendship came out of that. And then “Rez Dogs” came out, and he wrote me to say that he really loved it. He said, “If you ever have anything for me …” Of course I’ll write something [for him]! So he became Elora’s dad.

“The Lowdown” was shot on location in Tulsa and you used much of the same crew from “Rez Dogs.” But I also hear your own family was involved, as well as some “Rez Dogs” alums.

The crew and I know how to work together at this point. It’s like a big family. And my [actual] family was there. My brother was doing locations. My kids came on set. We’re shooting on some of my land. My dad was hired to brush-hog it. My mom’s an extra. There’s a couple of “Rez Dogs” cameos. You’ll see Willie Jack [Paulina Alexis] in the opening. Graham Greene’s in it. But I don’t know how much I’m supposed to say yet. I better not say …

You started out as an indie filmmaker. Can you talk a little about that journey to series TV?

I’ve always felt like an outsider. I’m a small-town Native kid from rural Oklahoma. I never felt like I had a foot in this industry. I was an independent filmmaker forever. I sometimes felt like everything was against me, like there’s no money, and I was in Tulsa, Oklahoma, so it felt like the industry at large didn’t care about the work I was doing.

Before “Rez Dogs,” I never worked in TV and I never worked for anyone else doing films. I only had the education I got with the Sundance Directors Lab, which is the most freedom any filmmaker is ever going to have. Then I was lucky enough to make films that were so low-budget. It meant the stakes weren’t high because no one saw them. So if they hated them, I wasn’t destroyed.

Your films and previous series were rooted in Indigenous viewpoints and experiences. Those cultures have been so misrepresented across all aspects of American entertainment. What gave you the confidence to keep pitching those stories?

I attribute that to not having anything to lose. “Rez Dogs” came at this time when I thought I was going to have to move on. I was at the end of my career road, where I was about to start a nonprofit or find the next chapter of what to do. I had been the freelance filmmaker for a long time and it just got hard to pay bills. With “Rez Dogs,” it was like, I could try to play it safe right now or I could swing for the fences. I had seen opportunities come and go, but I have this shot and this one at-bat. I need to just go for it. Luckily, FX is a place that allowed me to do that. And I did it. Luckily, I’d been making independent films for years and figured out my voice, so it wasn’t hard to ground “Rez Dogs” in my voice.

“With ‘Rez Dogs,’ it was like, I could try to play it safe right now or I could swing for the fences,” Sterlin Harjo says. “I had seen opportunities come and go, but I have this shot and this one at-bat.”

(Guerin Blask / For The Times)

Were there outside influences that also helped you get there?

“Atlanta” and “Louie.” Those cracked my mind open to what TV could be and allowed me in. Because to tell an Indigenous story about a community, I had to go to different places. If I was just focused on the kids [in “Rez Dogs”], it would be one thing and that’s it. I needed to expand. And so [it was] taking some of what “Atlanta” did but having this relay, like passing the baton off to different segments of the [Indigenous] community. I was also inspired by “The Wire.”

And “Rez Dogs” was a story that I always wanted to tell. Taika [who is of Maori descent] and I would end up talking about how similar they were from both of our homes, and if you could just kind of capture what it felt like to hear your aunts and uncles telling stories and lying and exaggerating and talking about mythology and superstitions. If you could capture all that, as Indigenous people, that’s what we wanted and craved.

The key to that was making it about this community, but it was a bit of a Trojan horse. It’s about these teenagers that are dealing with life and that’s a subject that everyone knows. So you start with that, and then expand out once you have people on your side.

The motto you mentioned — “Nothing to lose” — can you still use it now that you’ve had some success, and if so, why does it still work for you?

I think it has to do with people close to me dying when I was young. It’s a big community, a big family, and I was always at a funeral. I’ve been a pallbearer like 15 times or something. It gave me the sense that you can’t be afraid to put stuff out there. I’ve always had a way of diving off a cliff. It’s like, if everything fails after this, I’m OK with it. If everything dries up, that’s cool. At least I gave it a shot. This is going to sound hippie-dippie, but I think the energy that it takes to dive off a cliff and just go for it is an act in itself that creates energy. Something good will come out of it. So as long as you’re moving forward, something comes out of it.

For Thieb Delaporte-Richard, the Parisian cafe within walking distance of his home in Santa Monica was the best spot for an early-morning chat.

While standing in line, the aroma of baking croissants wafted, and the buzzing of espresso machines reverberated off the skeletal remains of an old church that now houses the café.

“This kind of feels like home, to be honest, and I think that’s the reason I like this place,” Delaporte-Richard said of both the cafe and Santa Monica.

Born in Strasbourg, France, Delaporte-Richard spent much of his childhood bouncing around — from eastern France to Paris to French Guiana in South America — never living in one place for more than a few years and never quite sure how to answer when asked which place he truly called home.

“Every city, everywhere, you can see the sunset. But here, it’s so unique — with no clouds and those colors,” French artist Thieb Delaporte-Richard says. “For some reason, it feels like I only see those colors here.”

(Los Angeles World Cup 2026 host committee)

He eventually returned to Paris to attend Gobelins design school. While there, he had the opportunity to travel to the U.S. for a three-month internship in Santa Monica — his first taste of the beachside city, where he says he “had this vision of Hollywood, palm trees, the sunset,” and wanted to have the “California experience.”

A decade later, Delaporte-Richard, 30, wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. Every day, he’s still drawn to the Santa Monica Pier, Pacific Coast Highway, the Santa Monica Mountains and the iconic seaside sunsets.

“Every city, everywhere, you can see the sunset,” he said. “But here, it’s so unique — with no clouds and those colors. For some reason, it feels like I only see those colors here. The way it bounces — it’s so red at the bottom, then you see hues of orange, purple and then blue, nothing to hide it. That makes it so unique.”

In a year’s time, when teams and fans arrive in Los Angeles for the 2026 World Cup — with Los Angeles set to host opening stage matches and quarterfinals at SoFi Stadium — Delaporte-Richard’s interpretation of that sunset will blanket Southern California. From walls to billboards to screens, the striking visual will serve as the focal point of the official L.A. poster for the tournament.

Delaporte-Richard’s pièce de résistance.

Like many in L.A. County, Delaporte-Richard is a transplant drawn to the area in pursuit of a dream. For him, that dream is art, and the region city welcomed him. His L.A.-centric poster stands as a love letter to the place he adores.

“My story is L.A.,” Delaporte-Richard said. “Moving here, I realized how much deeper it is — how L.A. is also all of the stories that people told me. That really changed my vision and made me realize it’s much more than what I thought. When I moved here, it was just supposed to be for a short time. And I realized, well, I love this place.”

Delaporte-Richard didn’t want his poster to be just a checklist of landmarks or symbols — his initial instinct was to include every aspect of the city. But once he scrapped that idea, he focused on subtlety: a careful balance between representation and cliché, aiming to capture an authentic L.A. feel.

He settled on the concept of a silhouetted footballer mid-strike — a composite inspired by countless goal-scoring moments, including one by his childhood hero, Ronaldinho — launching a left-footed shot against the setting sun over the downtown skyline. The city’s signature palm trees stand tall, while Easter eggs like the sweeping searchlights of a Hollywood premiere reveal themselves on a second glance. The player’s outline remains ambiguous enough to let viewers imagine their favorite star in the scene.

“A lot of people reached out to tell me, ‘Oh, it truly captures the spirit of L.A.,’” Delaporte-Richard said. “There is nothing more meaningful to me than people who’ve lived here their entire lives, for generations, telling me it feels like home. A poster like that is not just a marketing visual. To me, it’s a piece of culture. It becomes part of the history.”

The chance to showcase his art, however, nearly slipped away. Delaporte-Richard learned about the contest close to the submission deadline. Pressed for time, he put together a storyboard in a few hours in his apartment. During the next few days, he feverishly sketched and digitally painted the piece. By the end of the week, he finished the project and submitted it with just two hours to spare.

“I knew I wouldn’t have much time,” Delaporte-Richard said, shuffling through his black notebook filled with original sketches and concept art explaining his goal of capturing the energy and motion soccer brings. “I searched for an idea that would work and created that connection between soccer and Los Angeles.”

When Delaporte-Richard hit send on his submission, he wasn’t sure what to expect. At first, all he received was an automated message thanking him and highlighting that more than 900 people had entered the poster contest.

Then came the waiting game. In December, he was notified that he was one of 16 finalists whose work was getting evaluated by five Los Angeles County experts in public art and cultural exhibitions. Several months later, Jason Krutzsch of the Los Angeles Sports and Entertainment Commission reached out with a message.

“I received an email that said, ‘Congratulations, your poster has been selected,’” Delaporte-Richard said. “I had to send an email just asking, ‘Is it for real? Is it literal? You’re not joking?’ And he was like, ‘I’m dead serious.’”

It took a phone call for it to finally hit Delaporte-Richard — he won. It was a big moment he shared with his wife, who moved to California with him from France, and with friends and family back home in Paris.

For the first time, the soft-spoken, introverted Delaporte-Richard found himself in the spotlight, with his first major project now available for the world to purchase — unfamiliar territory for him. Initially, the poster’s release left him anxious, unsure of how people would react.

Would they love it? Would they hate it? The weight felt heavier because of how deeply personal the project was.

Delaporte-Richard’s decision to enter the contest comes from a lifelong love of soccer that began in his youth in France, where he first learned to kick a ball. To him, Brazilian legends Ronaldo and Ronaldinho, Argentine star Lionel Messi and French hero Zinedine Zidane were magicians devoted to their craft, inspiring Delaporte-Richard to follow his path.

When he was 16, his first designs were soccer banners and photoshopped graphics. A chance to celebrate soccer sparked his love of art.

Having never been to a World Cup, Delaporte-Richard says it is an honor to now have his work be part of the games. He plans to attend matches at SoFi Stadium, the venue he passed through a months ago when his artwork was first put on display by the L.A. World Cup host committee.

“If you ask the person who’s got into design, creating football banners, about doing the World Cup poster, 15 years later, I would not believe it,” Delaporte-Richard said. “I wouldn’t believe it at all. So this experience in L.A. and in the U.S. made it a reality.”