The year was already a debacle for the Los Angeles Fire Department and Mayor Karen Bass, with multiple stumbles before and after the epic January blaze that obliterated Pacific Palisades, so it was hard to imagine that things could get worse in the closing days of 2025.
But they have.
A blistering Times investigation found that the Fire Department cleaned up its after-action report, downplaying missteps.
In other words, there was a blatant attempt to mislead the public.
And Bass representatives said they requested that her comments in the final minutes of a video interview — in which she admitted that “both sides botched it” in the Eaton and Palisades fires — be edited out because she thought the interview had ended.
Please.
Together, these developments will echo through the coming mayoral election, in which Bass will be called out repeatedly over one of the greatest disasters in L.A. history. We’re a long way from knowing whether she can survive and win a second term, but Austin Beutner and any other legitimate contenders are being handed gifts that will keep on giving.
In the case of the altered report, kudos to Times reporters Alene Tchekmedyian and Paul Pringle, who have been trying all year to keep the LAFD honest, which is no easy task.
In the latest bombshell dropped by the two reporters, they dug up seven drafts of the department’s self-analysis, or after-action report, and found that it had been altered multiple times to soften damning conclusions.
Language saying LAFD did not fully pre-deploy all crews and engines, despite the forecast of extreme conditions, was removed.
Language saying some crews waited more than an hour for their assignments during the fire was removed.
A section on “failures” became a section on “primary challenges.”
A reference to a violation of national guidelines on how to avoid firefighter injury and death was removed.
The central role of the earlier Lachman fire, allegedly started by an arsonist, was also sanitized. A reference to that unchecked brushfire, which later sparked the inferno, was deleted from one draft, then restored in the final version. But only in a brief reference.
Even before the smoke cleared on Jan. 7, I had one former LAFD official telling me he was certain the earlier fire had not been properly extinguished. Crews should have been sitting on it, but as The Times has reported, that didn’t happen.
What we now know with absolute clarity is that the LAFD cannot be trusted to honestly and thoroughly investigate itself. And yet after having fired one chief, Bass asked the current chief to do an investigation.
Sue Pascoe, who lost her home in the fire and is among the thousands who don’t yet know whether they can afford to rebuild because their insurance — if they had any — doesn’t cover the cost of new construction. Pascoe, editor of the local publication Circling the News, had this reaction to the latest expose:
“To kill 12 people, let almost 7,000 homes/businesses burn, and to destroy belongings, memorabilia and memories stored in the homes — someone needs to be held accountable.”
But who will that be?
Although the altered after-action report seems designed to have minimized blame for the LAFD, if not the mayor, the Bass administration said it wasn’t involved.
“We did not red-line, review every page or review every draft of the report,” a spokesperson told the Times. “We did not discuss the Lachman Fire because it was not part of the report.”
Genethia Hudley Hayes, president of the Board of Fire Commissioners, told The Times she noticed only small differences between the final report and an earlier report she had seen.
“I was completely OK with it,” she said, adding that the final report “did not in any way obfuscate anything.”
Well I’m not OK with it, and I suspect a lot of people who lost everything in the fire feel the same way. As I’ve said before, the conditions were horrific, and there’s little doubt that firefighters did their best. But the evidence is mounting that the department’s brass blew it, or, to borrow a phrase from Bass, “botched it.”
As The Times’ David Zahniser reported, Bass said her “botched” comment came in a casual context after the podcast had ended. She also said she has made similar comments about the emergency response on numerous occasions.
She has made some critical comments, and as I mentioned, she replaced the fire chief. But the preparation and response were indeed botched. So why did her office want that portion of the interview deleted?
Let’s not forget, while we’re on the subject of botching things, that Bass left the country in the days before the fire despite warnings of catastrophic conditions. And while there’s been some progress in the recovery, her claim that things are moving at “lightning speed” overlooks the fact that thousands of burned out properties haven’t seen a hammer or a hardhat.
On her watch, we’ve seen multiple misses.
On the blunderous hiring and quick departure of a rebuilding czar. On the bungled hiring of a management team whose role was not entirely clear. On a failed tax relief plan for fire victims. On the still-undelievered promise of some building fee waivers.
In one of the latest twists on the after-action report, Tchekmedyian and Pringle report that the LAFD author was upset about revisions made without his involvement.
What a mess, and the story is likely to smolder into the new year.
If only the Lachman fire had been as watered down as the after-action report.
Welcome to Screen Gab, the newsletter for everyone who wants to spend some time revisiting Rob Reiner’s indelible mark on pop culture.
For many of us, it was already that time of year when we pop in our DVD of “When Harry Met Sally…” or figure out which streaming service has it in its library (or digitally rent it, if none do), and passively recite every quotable moment until Harry’s breathless declaration of love on New Year’s Eve necessitated our full performance. It was a comfort watch in the best sense because of how joyous and hopeful it left so many of us, even cynics, feeling. This year, as the tradition now becomes layered with sadness following the tragic deaths of Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, there’s at least comfort in knowing all the Hollywood magic he brought to life (whether he was directing, or starring in a production) that was full of humanity, humor and heart, and accompanied us at different stages of our lives, can continue to do so. Members of our film team took a look at some of Reiner’s best films, many of which can be streamed. And TV critic Robert Lloyd reminded us of Reiner’s contributions to television, particularly through shows like “All in the Family” and “New Girl” (“Lettuce, tomato, lettuce, meat, meat, meat, cheese, lettuce” — iykyk).
But if it’s all too soon, we get it. Maybe our other streaming recommendations can provide an escape — one is a TV drama about a disillusioned Broadway director returning home to his amateur community theater, and the other is a mystery thriller with an unlikely duo teaming up to investigate the case of a missing girl.
Also in this week’s Screen Gab, “Emily in Paris” actor Samuel Arnold stops by Guest Spot to tell us about the behind-the-scenes adventures of the show’s Italian-set fifth season.
ICYMI
Must-read stories you might have missed
Julianne Hough near the Dolby Theatre at the 97th Academy Awards earlier this year. The Oscars are moving to YouTube, sending shock waves through Hollywood.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
What the Oscars moving to YouTube means for broadcast TV: The Academy Awards will stream on YouTube beginning in 2029, ending a more than five-decade run on broadcast television and marking the show’s biggest distribution shift in its history.
Recommendations from the film and TV experts at The Times
Harry McNaughton as Charlie Summers, a disillusioned Broadway director returning home to his amateur community theatre in “Happiness.”
(Andi Crown Photography / PBS)
“Happiness” (PBS app, pbs.org)
What could be better, at this festive time of year, or any other time, than a backstage musical comedy set in an amateur theatrical company in New Zealand’s fifth-largest city? Harry McNaughton plays Charlie Summers, whose Broadway dream dies when he’s fired as the director of a “Cats” revival and, losing his work visa, returns home to New Zealand for what he hopes will be only a couple of days. Naturally, it turns out otherwise, with Charlie drawn reluctantly into the production of a new musical, “The Trojan Horse,” at the Pizazz theater, run by his mother (Rebecca Gibney) and stocked with a original twists on classic characters: a dictatorial director, the always-cast leading lady, a talented ingénue, a buff electrician with a great voice and the shy high school music teacher who wrote it, making themselves and their desires quickly felt. (There’s a feminist thrust to the plot.) The songs are tuneful and witty, the performances fun, the atmosphere charged but charming. Presented in six 20-minute episodes as part of “Masterpiece Theater.” — Robert Lloyd
Emma Thompson as private investigator Zoë Boehm and Ruth Wilson as art conservationist Sarah Trafford in “Down Cemetery Road.”
(Matt Towers / Apple TV)
“Down Cemetery Road” (Apple TV)
Nothing says the holidays like a gripping crime drama where everyone’s a suspect! Apple TV’s smart and unvarnished British series follows Zoë Boehm (Emma Thompson), a private investigator who hasn’t the time or bandwidth for social niceties, shows of emotion or combing her hair. She’s thrown together with homemaker and art restorer Sarah Tucker (Ruth Wilson), a passive suburbanite who likes 4 Non Blondes.
Their sparring personalities create the undeniable chemistry that’s at the heart of this eight-part series, while the drama’s unexpected turn of events and fast pacing make it hard to hit pause. The two women are connected when a deadly residential explosion rocks Sarah’s neighborhood. A woman was killed, but her young daughter, who made it out alive, has mysteriously disappeared. The quest to find the girl pulls the odd-couple investigators into a complex and dangerous cover up by the Ministry of Defense, and they discover the explosion was in fact an orchestrated assassination.
Morwenna Banks’ adaptation of Mick Herron’s debut novel of the same name, “Down Cemetery Road” also features the PTSD-plagued Downey (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett), the villainous Amos (Fehinti Balogun), bumbling agent Hamza Malik (Adeel Akhtar) and his sociopathic boss, C (Darren Boyd). But it’s Thompson’s gruff character who gets the best lines, such as the one she says to a potential client: “I don’t drink Prosecco and I don’t bond emotionally.” The show has already been renewed for a second season. — Lorraine Ali
Guest spot
A weekly chat with actors, writers, directors and more about what they’re working on — and what they’re watching
Samuel Arnold as Julien in Season 5 of “Emily in Paris.”
(Netflix)
Every office needs a deliciously snarky employee who is too fabulous to work, but still manages to grace the room with their presence to boost the vibe. In “Emily in Paris,” that person is Julien. The quippy, sharply dressed and gossip-loving character, played by Samuel Arnold, has been a bright spot in the series over its run. Initially the guy who liked to remind Emily she was une ringarde American, he’s softened his stance on his fish-out-of-water colleague. But as the Agence Grateau luxury marketing team ventures to Italy this season, which is now streaming, his side eye shifts focus to a new co-worker. Over email, Arnold shared what it was like shooting outside their usual setting and the animated series he returns to over and over. — Yvonne Villarreal
The Grateau team spent time in Italy this season. Some filming took place in Rome and Venice. What’s a memory or experience that stands out from filming there? Did any place there become a go-to spot for you when you weren’t shooting?
Rome was incredible, both on and off screen. One moment that really stands out is when Ashley Park and her choreographer, Carlye Tamaren, taught us one of Ashley’s dance routines. Everyone did so well — and Bruno Gouery was absolutely hilarious. When we weren’t filming, one of our favorite meeting spots was the rooftop at the Minerva Hotel. It’s stunning. In Venice, we would all gather in Bruno Gouery’s room and play a pirate dice game that Lucien Laviscount introduced us to. The city itself felt like a dream.
The series revolves around Emily and her fish-out-of-water experience of building a new life in Paris. How would this series look if it were titled “Julien in Paris”? Five seasons in, what would a slice of his life look like if you could pitch it to Darren Star?
If the show were called “Julien in Paris,” it probably wouldn’t be very exciting — Julien is a Parisian. He has Paris on lock. I like to think he sees himself as the prince of the city. Now, Julien in New York City — opening his own marketing firm there — that’s a different story. I can already feel the drama.
Julien is very discerning and could spot the games Genevieve was playing. How do you think he handled her, and the position he was in, knowing this secret could damage Emily and Mindy’s friendship?
I think Julien handled it pretty well. It’s not a great position to be in. When one friend hurts another, the right thing to do is to encourage the person at fault to do the right thing. And when someone like Genevieve — played by the absolutely lovely Thalia Besson — tries to stir up trouble, Julien definitely knows how to deal with that in the best possible way.
With all the love triangles (and squares), who would you, Samuel, pick for Emily — Gabriel or Marcello? And for Mindy — Nicolas or Alfie?
I don’t think I should be picking men for those women. What I can say is that they should follow their hearts and embrace whatever comes with that. Honestly, we should all try to do the same.
What have you watched recently that you’re recommending to everyone you know?
I recently watched “Safe House” [Netflix], with Lucien Laviscount as a badass action hero. The casting is great, the ending really catches you off guard, and Lucien does his own stunts — which makes it even more impressive.
What’s your go-to comfort watch — the movie or TV show you always come back to?
“Rick and Morty” [Hulu]. It never gets old. It’s funny, packed with pop-culture references — which I love — and the voice acting is just incredible.
The holidays have arrived once again. You know, that annual festival of goodwill, compulsory spending and the dawning realization that Santa and Satan are anagrams.
Even in the best of years, Americans stagger through this season feeling financially woozy. This year, however, the picture is bleaker. And a growing number of Americans are feeling Grinchy.
Unemployment is at a four-year high, with Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, declaring, “The U.S. economy is in a hiring recession.” And a new PBS News/NPR/Marist poll finds that 70% of Americans say “the cost of living in the area where they live is not very affordable or not affordable at all.”
Is help on the way? Not likely. Affordable Care Act subsidies are expiring, and — despite efforts to force a vote in the House — it’s highly likely that nothing will be done about this before the end of the year. This translates to ballooning health insurance bills for millions of Americans. I will be among those hit with a higher monthly premium, which gives me standing to complain.
President Trump, meanwhile, remains firmly committed to policies that will exacerbate the rising cost of getting by. Trump’s tariffs — unless blocked by the Supreme Court — will continue to raise prices. And when it comes to his immigration crackdown, Trump is apparently unmoved by the tiresome fact that when you “disappear” workers, prices tend to go up.
Taken together, the Trump agenda amounts to an ambitious effort to raise the cost of living without the benefit of improved living standards. But if your money comes from crypto or Wall Street investments, you’re doing better than ever!
For the rest of us, the only good news is this: Unlike every other Trump scandal, most voters actually seem to care about what’s happening to their pocketbooks.
Politico recently found that erstwhile Trump voters backed Democrats in the 2025 governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia for the simple reason that things cost too much.
And Axios reports on a North Carolina focus group in which “11 of the 14 participants, all of whom backed Trump last November, said they now disapprove of his job performance. And 12 of the 14 say they’re more worried about the economy now than they were in January.”
Apparently, inflation is the ultimate reality check — which is horrible news for Republicans.
Trump’s great talent has always been the audacity to employ a “fake it ‘till you make it” con act to project just enough certainty to persuade the rest of us.
His latest (attempted) Jedi mind trick involves claiming prices are “coming down tremendously,” which is not supported by data or the lived experience of anyone who shops.
Trump may dismiss the affordability crisis as a “hoax” and a “con job,” but voters persist in believing the grocery scanner.
In response, Trump has taken to warning us that falling prices could cause “deflation,” which he now says is even worse than inflation. He’s not wrong about the economic theory, but it hardly seems worth worrying about given that prices are not falling.
Apparently, economic subtlety is something you acquire only after winning the White House.
Naturally, Trump wants to blame Joe Biden, the guy who staggered out of office 11 months ago. And yes, pandemic disruptions and massive stimulus spending helped fuel inflation. But voters elected Trump to fix the problem, which he promised to do “on Day One.”
Lacking tangible results, Trump is reverting to what has always worked for him: the assumption that — if he confidently repeats it enough times — his version of reality will triumph over math.
The difficulty now is that positive thinking doesn’t swipe at the register.
You can lie about the size of your inauguration crowd — no normal person can measure it and nobody cares. But you cannot tell people standing in line at the grocery store that prices are falling when they are actively handing over more money.
Pretending everything is fine goes over even worse when a billionaire president throws Gatsby-themed parties, renovates the Lincoln Bedroom and builds a huge new ballroom at the White House. The optics are horrible, and there’s no doubt they are helping fuel the political backlash.
But the main problem is the main problem.
At the end of the day, the one thing voters really care about is their pocketbooks. No amount of spin or “manifesting” an alternate reality will change that.
Therapy often gets mined for comedy but we don’t often see comedy treated as sincere therapy. “Is This Thing On?” from director and co-writer Bradley Cooper, makes the case that glum dad Alex (Will Arnett), new to Splitsville after he and his wife of 20 years, Tess (Laura Dern), mutually agree to separate, may have figured out an ideal coping mechanism by signing up for open mic night.
Not that we see this by-day finance guy reject professional help in favor of some untapped passion. (Vamping for five minutes in front of strangers negates the cover charge.) But in bringing his marital woes to the stage and getting some chuckles, Alex believes he’s hit upon something: a talking cure that comes with a fresh identity, new friends, an acceptable level of risk and a way out of unhappiness.
It’s such a frisky, alluring idea for a character study — meeting failure with the potential for more failure (and night after night to boot) — that when the movie proves to actually be about whether the marriage can be saved, instead of the granular, temperamental world of stand-up newbies, it almost feels like a bait and switch. Fortunately, the divorce saga is interesting too, featuring Dern at her best, and is plenty intelligent about the nuances of couples who have built something solid (stable lives, nice 10-year-old twin boys, etc.) at the same time they’ve grown apart. “Is This Thing On?” is that rarity: a perfectly worthy dramedy that sometimes feels off because it’s trying to cram two good movies into one.
The confidence comes from Cooper, who, after only two films in the director’s chair (“A Star Is Born,”“Maestro”), has shown himself to be not only a powerful chronicler of artistic lives but especially couples in the showbiz sphere. This time, he tantalizes us with the milieu of nightclub self-expression and a group of regular amateurs Alex gets comfortable hanging with. But over two hours Cooper makes it clear he’s simply followed his protagonist into a safe space of encouragement (featuring Amy Sedaris as a helpful veteran comic), not necessarily a complex world of personality types to be navigated. It’s codified by Cooper’s visual approach, a handheld intimacy reminiscent of European movies, in which Matthew Libatique’s camera rarely strays from tight shots of Arnett’s face, looking for change — circling it, centering it, trailing it when Alex is on the move.
Though Alex is earnest if a tad hacky with his relationship jokes, Arnett (credited as a co-screenwriter with Mark Chappell, from a story they created with John Bishop) captures a fizzy, awkward energy of midlife discovery. Invariably, the movie is unconcerned with whether Alex might be any good as a stand-up because soon it’s about how this new pep in his step registers with Tess, who’s struggling with her own sense of personal fulfillment as a former volleyball legend turned mom and how it affects their on-the-brink married friends, Christine (Andra Day) and Balls (Cooper, hilarious as a spacy actor). Christine Ebersole and Ciarán Hinds, as Alex’s parents, humorously weigh in too on what long-term togetherness entails.
After a narrative coincidence that’s entertainingly handled, “Is This Thing On?” aims to be a more serious-minded, less rom-com-ish “It’s Complicated,” with Tess and Alex seeing if there’s a new way for them to acknowledge where they went astray. The actors sell it, especially when Dern is unafraid to mix revitalized pleasure with pushing for answers. But the stand-up storyline, so promising, is dropped and it feels like a missed opportunity. Still, the highs and lows of marriage aren’t merely a punch line in “Is This Thing On?” — and that’s good.
‘Is This Thing On?’
Rated: R, for language throughout, sexual references and some drug use
CBS News is moving forward with a series of town hall and debate telecasts with a major advertiser backing them, the first major initiative under editor-in-chief Bari Weiss.
The news division announced Thursday it will have a series of one hour single issue programs under the title “Things That Matter” done in collaboration with the digital platform the Free Press.
CBS News parent Paramount acquired the Free Press which was co-founded by Weiss, in September.
Bank of America will be a major sponsor of the series.
The town hall participants include Vice President JD Vance, who will discuss the state of the country and the future of the Republican Party, OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman on artificial intelligence and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore on the future of the Democratic Party.
The debate subjects include “Should Gen Z Believe in the American Dream?,” “Does America Need God? and “Has Feminism Failed Women?” The debaters include journalist Liz Plank, New York Times opinion writer Ross Douthat, and Isabel Brown, a representative for the right-wing organization Turning Point USA.
No dates have been set, but the programs will air in the current 2025-26 TV season which ends in May.
CBS tested the town hall format Saturday with a telecast that featured Weiss sitting down with Erika Kirk, the widow of slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. The program taped in front of an invited audience and averaged 1.9 million viewers according to Nielsen data, on par with what CBS entertainment programming has delivered in the 8 p.m. hour in the current TV season.
The town hall format where a news subject takes questions from audience members has long been a staple of cable news channels. Broadcast networks have typically only used it with presidential candidates.
“Things That Matter” is less of a play for ratings than a symbol of the new vision for CBS News under Weiss.
“We believe that the vast majority of Americans crave honest conversation and civil, passionate debate,” Weiss said in a statement. “This series is for them. In a moment in which people believe that truth is whatever they are served on their social media feed, we can think of nothing more important than insisting that the only way to get to the truth is by speaking to one another.”
Weiss hosted the town hall with Kirk. CBS News has not announced the on-air talent for the “Things That Matter” series.
Weiss was recruited by Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison to pull the news division towards the political center where he believes most of the country stands.
The Free Press gained popularity for its criticism of DEI, so-called woke policies, and strong support of Israel. The site is often described as “heterodox” and has been critical of numerous actions of the Trump administration. But its biggest fans tend to be in the business community who disdain high taxes and big government.
In the latest episode of The Envelope video podcast,Oscar Isaac opens up about the connection he forged with director Guillermo del Toro for “Frankenstein” and Wunmi Mosaku reflects on the way her own heritage informed her work in “Sinners.”
Kelvin Washington: Hello, everyone, and welcome to a new episode of The Envelope. Kelvin Washington here, and you know who we have: We have Yvonne Villarreal, we have Mark Olsen, and you as well, so thank you for being here. Happy holidays to the both of you. First off, the green memo [gestures to Villarreal].
Mark Olsen: I feel like you guys have left me off the group text again.
Washington: We did.
Olsen: I’m not getting these messages.
Washington: By the way, tomorrow will be Christmas trees — but we’ll talk about that later. Don’t worry about that. Quickly, Christmas list. One thing you’re looking for.
Villarreal: A break. …. Sorry, I answered before you even finished.
Washington: You know our bosses and producers are looking at us right now. You deserve one. Mark, you?
Olsen: That sounds good, sure.
Washington: All right, that was it, thank you for watching this episode of … All right, let’s get into it. Yvonne, you had a chance to speak with Oscar Isaac, who’s taking on the role, of course, as Frankenstein in Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of this classic. Tell me a little bit more.
Villarreal: He plays the brilliant but egotistical scientist Victor Frankenstein, who creates life with this monstrous experiment, and the result is the Creature, played by Jacob Elordi. It was really nice speaking with Oscar about some of the themes that the film explores, the father-son dynamic and breaking cycles of generational trauma. And he was talking a lot about where he pulled from, the conversations he had with Guillermo about what they wanted to delve into. And it was really fun also hearing him talk about the rock star inspiration, for his take on Victor. So it was fun.
Washington: All right, we’re looking forward to that. We’ll get there in just a moment. Mark, I swing to you. You had a chance to speak with Wunmi Mosaku, who in my mind was the kind of the breakout star of Ryan Coogler’s vampire thriller “Sinners.” I want to hear more about what you had to talk about.
Olsen: Exactly. I mean, this has been such a breakout role for her. Obviously, the film was a huge hit when it came out earlier in a year. And she, you know, she’s been acting for years now. I think a lot of people know her for when she was on “Lovecraft Country,” another sort of horror-themed story. Here she plays Annie, the former partner of Smoke, one of the two characters by Michael B. Jordan in the film. And just on a practical level, it was great to hear her talk about working with Michael, where he’s playing these two parts and the way he made it seem so effortless to shift back and forth between them. But then also on an emotional level, you know, she was born in Nigeria, raised in England, lives here in Los Angeles, and yet she just forged such a deep personal and emotional connection to this character from 1930s Mississippi. And so to hear her talk about that, there was just something really wonderful in the conversation. It was really terrific.
Washington: This happens all the time, as you all know, that moments like this, scenes like those in the movie, like she’s gonna become someone that’s, “Hey, you know what? We need to look into her more.” So I’m happy for her to have that breakout moment. All right, without further ado, here’s Yvonne and Oscar.
Oscar Isaac in “Frankenstein.”
(Ken Woroner / Netflix)
Villarreal: Oscar, thanks so much for being here.
Isaac: Very happy to be here.
Villarreal: I have to say, driving down the 110, I came across buses with your face wrapped around them.
Isaac: I’m so sorry.
Villarreal: It was a pleasant sight in L.A. I know you encounter a level of this with each project, but this does feel a little bit different. How you’re feeling in this moment with “Frankenstein”? How do you take stock of the small moments in this big production?
Isaac: There aren’t too many small moments with this, to be honest. Everything’s very big-sized. In a way, it’s the most I’ve really done to support a movie. I’d say even more than “Star Wars” to a certain extent, because it straddles so many things. It’s a big fun popcorn movie. It’s also an intense emotional drama. It’s a platform release, a few theaters then the streaming platform itself. So there’s been a lot of things to do for that. And it can be tiring, but the thing is when it’s in service of Guillermo [del Toro, the director] and his vision and it’s his love letter to cinema, it’s the story he’s always wanted to tell — that’s an energizing thing. Being able to do it with him. And with Jacob [Elordi] and Mia [Goth].
Villarreal: Have you come across a bus with your face on it yet?
Isaac: Maybe not a bus. I’ve seen billboards. I’ve seen bus stops, but the actual moving thing itself, no, I haven’t yet.
Villarreal: I know Guillermo has said that he has long seen you as the person to play this role of Victor, even before there was a screenplay. What do you remember about that lunch you had with him? What did he say that he saw in you for this?
Isaac: I wish I could really go back and like just parse it all out. We just immediately started speaking as friends, as fellow Latinos, as immigrants trying to navigate our way through this industry, as both having very intense relationships with our fathers and the way that’s changed over time, both becoming fathers and wanting to not necessarily follow in some of the same footsteps, but also recognizing what an incredible source of of life our fathers have been. But all the pain that came from that, and forgiveness. We talked about those things without any relation to a movie in my mind. It wasn’t until after that where he started talking about this project and he said, “I think you need to play Victor Frankenstein.”
Villarreal: I feel like Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” is so steeped in the culture because the creature, the monster, is such a part of pop culture. When did you first encounter the book? Did you have to read it in high school?
Isaac: I encountered it a little later. It was shortly after high school. I wanted to have a read because it’s such a famous, legendary, iconic book. I enjoyed it, but it didn’t really hit so hard for me. When I left that that meeting, Guillermo gave me Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and the Tao Te Ching. He’s like, “Read these two books.” Going back to the book again, reading it, really hearing her voice, really hearing her voice in all of the characters — I thought that was very interesting, that everybody kind of sounds a little bit like her. And I love that Guillermo took that idea and did the same thing with his movie. He made it very autobiographical.
Villarreal: For “The Card Counter,” you also had to read a book about the way that we store trauma. Did you find yourself returning to that at any point?
Isaac: “The Body Keeps Score.” That’s right. Incredible book. I did, very much. Also, parts therapy. This idea that we’re all these different parts and different voices and we’re not any one thing. And gestalt therapy, this idea of, like, being able to hold that child-self of you that’s broken. For me, that was a very big one in thinking of the Creature. The Creature is a reconstruction of Victor’s broken child that has to chase him down to forgive him — to make him look at him, face him and forgive him.
Villarreal: Did you find that you wanted to understand both Victor and the Creature?
Isaac: Guillermo and I spoke very explicitly about the idea that they’re one and the same. That there are two halves of one full person. And that actually was really helpful in the playing of it, particularly in that one scene when the Creature comes back and demands a companion. That scene in particular was played on my part as if that’s his voice, his inner child, his addict, that darkness within him that he’s trying to suppress.
Villarreal: How did you both discuss Victor in terms of, is he a reliable narrator telling the story?
Isaac: We spoke that he’s very much an unreliable narrator. It is his remembrance. It’s a memory play. Did Elizabeth really look like his mom? Probably not, but that’s how he remembers it. That’s who he saw. And the sets are these massive archetypal Jungian visions that feel very much like they’re part of his inner conscious, his subconscious, and not so much objective reality.
Villarreal: I want to talk about the the look and vibe of Victor. I know that you’ve talked before about looking to some rock icons for inspiration, whether it’s Prince or David Bowie. I think Guillermo mentioned Mick Jagger at one point. How did you both arrive at that and what were the videos or the performances that you locked in on?
Isaac: That first meeting that we had, it wasn’t so much like he saw me and he’s like, “You’re my Victor.” It’s a conversation. And out of that conversation, inspiration starts to happen. That is what ultimately led for this thing to happening between us. And that conversation just keeps going. As he writes it, he has a few ideas, I look at a few scenes, I see where he’s going with it, we start talking about it more. He starts talking about the way he wants Victor to occupy space, especially in his memory, that he remembers himself like conducting a concert, like a rock star, like holding court and having this punk rock, iconoclastic energy. He’s like Mick Jagger. And suddenly “like Mick Jagger” becomes, “well, like a rock star.” Well, how does he move? What is it about Mick Jagger? What is it about these other musicians, these artists that that’s the form of expression to think about? Not so much the scientist or the mad scientist, but the passionate artist. Then those ideas mix with the incredible genius Kate Hawley, who does these costumes, who also is bringing in all of her ideas of punk rock in London in the ’60s and Jimi Hendrix and those bell-bottoms and those hats that have a bit of a Gothic-Romantic thing going for it. Then these little boots. And then suddenly I see these boots and I see this hat, but for me that looks more like prints to me. All these things are just conversations and pieces and things being put together that create a character. It is this amazing collaboration that happens, this collage that gives the impression of a character, and that’s really special.
Villarreal: You’re working opposite Jacob Elordi, and I think a lot of people come in with preconceived notions about maybe who he is as an actor based on his past work. He’s such a revelation in this film in terms of the work and prep that he did to get here. First, talk to me about seeing him as the Creature for the first time, but also what he was like as a scene partner.
Isaac: We only met briefly in Guillermo’s office at one point, and he seemed like a nice young fella. He had his little 35mm camera, was taking a lot of analog pictures, which was cool. And the first scene we shot was the last scene of the movie. That was the first time I saw him in the full getup. So he walked in and immediately I was really moved by how graceful he was. I remember him coming in, like, fingers first; his hands were like animals, like [a] sea anemone. There’s just like incredible movements that were happening and I found it really lonely and heartbreaking. I thought it was an amazing coincidental, if you believe in those, opportunity that that was the first scene that we were going to get to do together — the last scene, the time when these characters finally actually see each other for the first time. He was amazing and then so graceful and gentle and very emotionally available.
In between takes, I’d see this big lumbering monster taking photos with his little camera, which was incredible. What was incredible about that too is that he was loose. He was just taking everything in. And that’s a very hard thing to do in those high-pressured situations. People can kind of get, like, tunnel vision and narrow in and try just to do the thing that they want to do, but he was [operating from] open awareness, which is a place that we all hope to start from as artists.
Villarreal: Did you both have an idea of, “Do we need to approach this a certain way to be true to these characters, with the friction or tension that they have, or can we turn that off in between takes?”
Isaac: There was no need to do any of that. That would have been just extra work, more like an ego idea. It was very free on set, and that’s Guillermo; that comes from the top down. He’s ebullient, he’s joyous, he’s loud, he’s inclusive of everything. So there’s no secrets. If he likes something, everybody knows it. If he doesn’t like something, everybody knows it. Whatever he’s working on, everybody knows it. And so it feels like a team. There wasn’t really space for this kind of sheltering away or trying to manufacture some kind of dynamic.
Villarreal: Did your view or perspective on Victor shift over the course of making this film? As a son and as a father, how did you see him in the beginning and how did it change by the end?
Isaac: It’s funny because I have a lot of friends that have kids that have texted me saying, “Wow, man, that made me feel really guilty watching you do that,” because we can all think of those moments where we lose our patience and we yell or we get angry at these very innocent beings that didn’t ask to be here and yet they’re being forced to conform to these rules. And the idea that what we think is right trumps everything and that our children are just extensions of ourselves, accessories, things to be judged in relation to us, as either prideful or shameful. That horrible cycle that happens and those patterns that we fall into. So that became more and more evident, especially in those scenes with Jacob as the Creature, with the shaving and the washing and the being tired and all things that were additions from Guillermo that are not in the book. Because in the book, Victor leaves right away. But this is more of like a slow retreat from the responsibilities of bringing somebody into the world.
Villarreal: I want to unpack that more, because it’s been interesting to see the discourse online of people very much relating to this element of Guillermo’s take, the themes of generational pain and a father’s desire for redemption. Obviously, Victor is physically and emotionally abused by his father, and we see how the cycle repeats itself with the Creature. This idea of breaking generational trauma, like you said, it’s something that we try to be mindful of in how we work every day. Did you find yourself unpacking some of those emotions in the process, or is it just something that you’re sort of reflecting on now that it’s over?
Isaac: We spoke about those things at that first meeting, so that was actually like the touchstone of the whole thing. That’s what kept everything grounded. It’s a very heightened performance. It’s not naturalistic. It’s meant to be quite expressive. It also brings in modalities and forms of telenovelas and and Mexican melodrama. We watch those things very carefully to bring some of those elements out in this kind of fever dream that is this film. But we were only able to do those kinds of things knowing at the core it is about this generational trauma and this idea of what we inherit from our fathers or from our parents. And as much as we try to run away from them, we get blinded often by our own constructions of ourselves and our own egos and our own desires and are blind to repeating these exact same things again. And especially as artists — I can definitely relate to the idea of “Well, if I can just figure out this one thing, this character, this piece, if I can find the breakthrough here, then everything will make sense. Everything will be worth it, all the limbs that I’ve cut off, all the villages I’ve burned. The trail of debt I’ve left behind me will will mean something if I can figure this thing out.” Then you get to the other side of that and that’s not the answer. We very much were conscious of that.
Villarreal: I guess I ask because the interview I was referencing before, your interview with Terry Gross, which was around the time of “The Card Counter,” I was so struck by you talking about your [father and] upbringing in an evangelical household and this feeling like doom was around the corner. And I was so struck by how you talked about that. And you talked about your home in Florida being demolished by the hurricane. In my rewatch of “Frankenstein,” being focused on you and your character in particular, I was thinking about how much of that was playing in your head, especially in the scene where the place is burning down. Like, do you go directly to those kind of moments? How was it playing in your head?
Isaac: I don’t necessarily try to summon that specific moment. I think part of the preparation is reading and feeling; as I read through the script and as I think about it, where I connect with it emotionally. And sometimes if something feels far away, I do have to be like, “OK, well, how do I bridge the gap to this thing? How can I relate to it? Oh, well, I guess, yeah, I had to deal with this in my life. And how did I respond to it? Well, how would Victor respond to it? How would I respond to it if I had Victor’s circumstances?” That is some of the fun of meditating on the piece and thinking about what all the possibilities are. But with this, I didn’t find myself, like, literally reaching to stories in my past. I just allowed that to be available.
I did a bit with the last scene, thinking about, “When was the last time I was at a deathbed with a loved one?” And what was that like and what do I remember physically of that, what was the energy and what was the tone of that and how is it appropriate with this and how is it different? You use whatever’s available, and sometimes just the other person across from you is enough and sometimes you need to kind of summon it from the ancestors or from wherever to get through that performance ritual.
Villarreal: When you’re channeling those intense emotions, is it, like, hard to keep them under control sometimes for the good of the scene?
Isaac: Well, actually, that happened with this last scene. I’d spent a a day getting into that mode and summoning, and we did the scene and it was quite volatile sometimes. A lot of the emotions would come through and Guillermo would say, “OK, let’s do another one, but maybe tamp that down a little bit.” It’s like, “OK, let’s try that again.” We did it a bunch of different ways. And funny enough, even though it was a great day and everyone was happy, we ended up coming back and reshooting it. And it was done last minute. I didn’t have time to do all of this preparation, and we just went and that’s actually what ended up being in the movie. Because I wasn’t expending any energy trying to reach for something. It just was more reactive and it was a bit more sober and less an idea. It’s that balance sometimes between wanting to get to something, explore something, but also letting it go and allowing something to emerge that is not willed.
Villarreal: I want to talk more about the collaboration with Guillermo. What does that look like in practice? What is a note from him like? I saw another interview where you mostly spoke in Spanish with each other. How did that allow you to understand what he’s after more easily?
Isaac: That first meeting we only spoke in Spanish. So it set the tone. And my Spanish is good, but it’s like maybe seventh-grade vocabulary.
Villarreal: I feel a kinship.
Isaac: I would speak in Spanish to my mom. That was the person that I would only speak in Spanish to. And then when she passed eight years ago, I kind of lost that. I have my aunts and I talk to them, but it kind of starts to go away. So to suddenly have Guillermo show up, and that was the way that we really first interfaced. And with him, even though he could hear me sometimes, doing it in Spanglish or trying to get to it, he just was committed. It’s like, we speak in Spanish. He didn’t have to say it. That’s just what it is. It just created this real, almost, like, subconscious intimacy because it’s the mother tongue. That is the first thing that I heard. Even though when I learned to speak, it was in the United States, it was both always at the same time, then the English took over. But it just hits something different to have to communicate, to have to try to find a way to express myself in Spanish to Guillermo, talking about really difficult things. What would be great about it is it forced me to be simple and just, like, get to the f— point, and not like all this intellectual stuff around all these definitions and acting terms and all this. That was a really special thing.
Villarreal: We’ve talked a little bit about we’re working through, for lack of a better term, some daddy issues during the making of this. I know that “Hamlet” is such a seminal text in both your personal life and in your career. And obviously, this is a film that has parallels. With the passing of your mom, and working on this, especially with that last scene, how did you feel your mother while working on this project?
Isaac: Wow, that’s a very kind question. So, so, so much. She would have loved this movie. The last movie we saw actually was “The Handmaiden.” Super erotic too. I was like, “Mom, we’re sorry; close your eyes, Mom.” But it was so beautiful and kind of dark and opulent — she loved that stuff. She was always incredibly, incredibly present. Even the Elizabeth character — my mom had red hair as well. And this is in Mary Shelley’s text about the feminine and the masculine and those warring kind of energies. And for Victor, ironically, really tapping into more of the feminine energy with him in some ways. What he does is obviously — the penetrating nature, is a masculine thing, but at the same time, that freedom and the liquidity of that femininity was very important too. That last scene, it was interesting. That first time we did the scene, there was a lot of my mom there. Then when I had to let it go and I had to just respond, suddenly dad showed up. And that was really wild. There’s a bit of that warring energy with Victor all the time, and that was really surprising.
Villarreal: There was also the the detail that people really picked up on, which was the drinking of the milk. How did that inform you as you played Victor?
Isaac: Once his mom dies, he gets stunted. He never grows from that point on. His body grows. What he’s doing, his intellect grows, but emotionally, he stays that little boy that’s been hit in the face by his dad and rejected. And rejected by his mom because she died. It’s not rational, but that’s what it is. He’s orphaned. That’s also why mom feels so present. He’s just always looking for her. He’s always looking for her everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. The milk is just looking for her. It’s just comfort. La lechita. It’s also very funny because it’s so simple too. He likes playing with the saint-sinner thing, this guy that paints himself as the victim. He’s not a drug addict. The only thing he does is milk. And milk’s good for you, right? He starts off as Jesus Christ and ends up as Charles Manson. That’s what that milk does.
Villarreal: Do you have a sense — especially with a little bit of hindsight now, though I know you’re still in the whirlwind of it — what the character of Victor has done for you?
Isaac: What was surprising is that he is a sadist, but in like the Marquis de Sade kind of way. That wasn’t something that I thought about, but as it progressed, what was surprising to me was the pleasure that the character was giving me. For someone that is so dark and has such capacity for cruelty, the fact that he just felt so good, it was so free and so energized and kind of joyful. And I asked Guillermo at one point, I was like, “Maybe something’s wrong here? Because, like, shouldn’t it be a little darker and heavier?” He’s like, “The movie tells you what it needs.” You listen to the movie, and this is somebody that doesn’t have any doubts. And that feels pretty good to not have any doubts, until he crashes. He wakes up from this dream, this fever dream of no consequences. There’s no consequences, nothing matters, the rule of nature is dominance and cruelty, and actually pain is the same as pleasure. And the more perfect the crime, which is against something that’s virtuous and innocent, the more perfect an act that is, philosophically, nihilistically. So that is pure freedom. Pure freedom and pure pleasure, it’s like f— it. To play somebody like that, and to allow myself to be blind to the feeling of consequence and to just shoot like a rocket, that was incredibly freeing and pleasurable. Then suddenly to stop back and look back and be like, “Oh, what an awful thing. What awful things he did. He couldn’t see what he was doing.” But in the moment, that was unexpected.
Villarreal: We talked about the intensity of filming that last scene. What was the scene where you just felt so free and happy or excited?
Isaac: Creating the creature. Creating the creature was just like the rain coming down, the running up and down the stairs in the little high-heeled boots, the screaming at Christoph Waltz, you know, and his body flying down and him being like, “f— it, gotta throw him in the freezer, gotta keep this thing moving.” That energy, you know, climbing up the tower, putting the spear up there. He’s like a Gothic hero, a Gothic superhero. That kind of mutability within the character — it’s kinda like what I was saying about the artist. It’s like, “This I know; I know how to do this, and if I can do this, everything will make sense.” So that moment of just purely going for that thing, that was a really exciting moment. And also in that set, in Tamara [Deverell’s] incredible set, with Dan [Laustsen’s] lighting and Guillermo sitting there in the corner like this little crazy Mexican Buddha, just wanting more, more, more, that was electrifying. Pardon the pun.
Villarreal: I’ve wondered what it’s like walking into one of his creations, those sets. I can’t imagine. It feels like you’re in a dream.
Isaac: You do, and what’s the most incredible thing is that he’s surrounded himself with people for the last 30 years that are like an extension of himself. Through a process of elimination, he’s gotten these people that are just as passionate, just as detailed, and have ownership of the movie. The set decorator, the painter, the greens person that puts the moss in is like, “Do you see where I put the moss right there? You see the moss right there?” That kind of artisanal passion over it. So you walk in, sure, it’s inspiring for the imagination, but it’s also inspiring as a crafts person to be like, “OK, how do I bring the same amount of detail and passion and love for it?”
Villarreal: I’m asking this teasingly, but what’s the worst thing about Guillermo as a director? Is it that he wants so many takes, or is it that he just thinks you can do anything?
Isaac: I was gonna say what was challenging was to have somebody quilting the movie as we were shooting it. So that you would do a take and sometimes it would go straight into the edit and he could show you it in the movie itself. And as an actor, that could be tough because you’re like, “Oh, I’m not ready to see that yet.” But he was making it as it goes because the camera was always moving, so he needed to see that it was always connecting to the next thing. I had never experienced that before. For instance, that last scene, we did it, the next day he came in, and it was all edited with some temp score on it and I saw it, I was like, “Oh no, I don’t think that’s… “ But in that case, it was good that I saw it and had that reaction because we got to have another go at it. But it is dealing with like, “How much do I want to see? How self-conscious am I?” But it’s his openness. He’s not afraid.
Villarreal: Was he open with Jacob having his dog Layla on set?
Isaac: Yeah. That’s the thing. He was just free. He was really free. He’s like, “Whatever you need, man. Whatever anybody needs, that’s it.” He would embrace everything. Every mistake, he’d embrace.
Villarreal: Before we wrap things up, we’ve talked about swirling in this space of loss and renewal. In addition to tapping into that with “Frankenstein,” your wife, who’s a filmmaker, Elvira Lind, has this documentary, “King Hamlet,” where she documented a very transformative period in your life as you dealt with the loss of your mother, but also the birth of your child, while working on a staging of “Hamlet.” How has it been to sort of live in this space and have these parallel moments between these two projects?
Isaac: In a way, it’s like the father and the mother of these projects here. And the strange synchronicity of when they’re coming out at the same time, it’s kind of a beautiful thing, because “Frankenstein” is this massive thing, it’s very expressive, it has a lot of people, so much energy behind it. Having to do that and then flying to New York and showing a small group of people this tiny little movie made by just a handful of people, mostly my wife, this incredible documentary filmmaker, but made by her again by hand about this really small, quiet time of a play that we did that maybe a few thousand people saw, there is something quite grounding about that. It also feels generous because it’s about something that she’s made. But also it’s about showing a little peek for anybody, but also for artists as well, at what it costs sometimes and what it takes and how this particular family dealt with all this happening and the desire and the need to process it and create something out of it.
Wunmi Mosaku in “Sinners.”
(Warner Bros. Pictures)
Mark Olsen: “Sinners” obviously opened earlier in the year, and it’s really just hung in there. It’s a movie people are still talking about. What does it mean to you that the movie has already had such an enduring life?
Wunmi Mosaku: Oh, it means so much to me. I feel like you take a job because you believe in it and you trust the filmmakers and you’re excited, and then you get on set and you do your best and then all of a sudden you remember that it’s going to be out there and people are going to judge it and they might not like it and they may not like you and they might not respond to it. And we would turn to each other sometimes and be like, “Do you think they’re going to feel how we feel about this? I really hope so.” Because we really felt like it was so special. And so seeing the reaction has been so affirming and pretty magical because it’s not always the case that it translates the same as how it feels for you, that the audience feels that too.
Olsen: And what do you think it is that audiences are responding to? Mosaku: I think Ryan Coogler, his way of creating art is always based in truth and connection and honoring the people on the screen and the people that they represent in and around his life. And so I feel like people are responding to the fact that it feels truthful. Even though it’s got horror aspects and a musical aspect, it really just has heart and depth and it’s about community, it’s about freedom, it’s about the price of freedom. It’s about so many things that affect people every day. Capitalism, selling out, cultural appropriation. It’s deep and it’s layered, and it’s all rooted in truth.
Olsen: And now when you say that as you were shooting the movie, it felt special to all of you — can you describe that for me? What do you think you were feeling as you were shooting the movie?
Mosaku: I felt a deep connection to my ancestry, to my purpose, to how what I do today will reverberate in the future. My lineage, my child’s future. I just felt the film links the past to the present. It links West African traditional spirituality and it connects it to hip-hop and blues and all these different types of dance and culture. It feels kind of sprawling and encompassing of the Black diaspora experience. And it makes you feel connected to everyone in the diaspora. I felt really awakened to my position in that web of creativity. And artists like Ryan, who have this visionary, revolutionary way of creating, they just kind of feel like guiding lights, diamonds, in this web of us. It feels like, “Oh wow, he really is this jewel to be cherished, and I’m connected to that now.” So it was very multilayered, the connection I felt.
Olsen: That does sound like more than just a typical day at work. Mosaku: There was nothing typical about it. It felt like, vibrationally, it changed all of us.
Olsen: As I understand it, when you auditioned for the film, you were given this seven-page scene that introduces your character of Annie. It’s you and Michael B. Jordan’s character of Smoke, and from that scene you thought the film was a romantic drama. What did you make of it when you found out what the movie was really about?
Mosaku: Ryan explained the movie to me in and around the scene, and my mind was blown because it made complete sense, but it came completely out of left field for me. I had the themes that we see in the movie of the evolution of blues to modern-day music and ancestors and future ancestors, they weren’t quite there when he was explaining it to me, but it was there in the spirit of what he was explaining to me. So I knew it was epic and that there was depth, but then there was also vampires. I can’t explain how he explained it, but I felt the weight of all of the themes and messages, and it seemed to work with the idea of vampires coming in and taking blood. It was a surprise, but it made sense. I was completely hooked and in from the first scene, but his description, I was like, “This is genius.”
Olsen: I like the idea that you were still able to process your story in the movie, Annie’s story, as that of a romance. Even with everything else that’s happening in the film, there still is that story at the core of it. Mosaku: Because he only works with truth. Even in a fantastical world of vampires and spirits, he still works within the truth of relationships and character dynamics, and so their love is the community, the love and the bond between all of the characters, that is the heart of the movie. Sammie’s desire to leave the plantation and see the world, that’s the heart of the movie. These two people who love each other dearly and are insatiable for each other but can’t be together because of racism and the color of their skin, that heartbreak is the heart of the movie. A woman who just wants to sing and is young and is married to this old church type — that line I think is cut from the movie, but Jayme [Lawson]’s character says he’s older, church type — and she just wants to be completely free on the stage. That she gets to explore and to have this thrilling night in the community in the juke joint, I mean that’s the heart of the movie too. These relationships are the beating heart.
Olsen: But there’s something I’ve heard you talk about, that Annie relates to the character that most of us know as Smoke, as both Smoke and Elijah, his given name. Can you untangle that for me? It’s really compelling to think that she is relating to both sides of his personality. Mosaku: Well, everybody has a representative, right? Like, this is my representative. And then there’s Wunmi at home without the glam, the truth. So yes, she met Smoke. She fell in love with Smoke, but she knew Elijah. In Yoruba, we have your given name and then you get given an Oriki name, and the Oriki name is a pet name that your grandmother or your mom would call you and when they call you by that name, when you hear someone speak your Oriki name, you can’t say no. It’s like, “That person knows me like no one else, and they’ve used this name for a purpose.” So almost like Elijah is his Oriki name because everyone knows him as Smoke. He has his defenses up, he has his heart guarded, Smoke’s been through war, Smoke’s been through the gangster stuff in Chicago, but Elijah lost his daughter. So when she calls him by his name that’s like calling his Oriki. Olsen: You’ve spoken as well about how much you feel you’ve learned about yourself in playing this role, that it changed you. How so? Mosaku: I mean, even the fact that I can talk about Oriki names. I didn’t have an Oriki name. I didn’t understand the meaning of the Oriki name until I really just kind of immersed myself more in my culture that I feel like I had no choice in not being a part of. I came to England when I was 1½, and you try and assimilate, you try and fit in. And that is at the expense and the tax of your birth culture. And that’s something people don’t really pay attention to, what’s lost in order to feel safe in another culture. Researching Annie, I had to look back at where I’m from, because she’s a hoodoo priestess and hoodoo is a derivative of Ifa, and Ifa is the traditional Yoruba religion. That is where my people come from. That is part of my survival, that’s why I’m here. Their knowledge, their belief systems, that is why I’m here. And so having to research that just opened up a whole treasure trove of truth for me and inquiry and self-reflection and self-love and admiration of all the people that came before, the difficult decisions my parents made, and then the difficult decisions I’ve had to make in navigating being an immigrant in another country.
Olsen: What does it meant to you to connect with that part of yourself?
Mosaku: I’m unable to put it into words. It’s changed me profoundly. It’s changed my relationship to the world, my culture, my home. I feel inspired in so many different ways to reconnect, feel connected. I’ve been doing Yoruba lessons for five years, and only in the last year has it really stuck. And I think the sticking is because of the exploration, the real exploration, not just an intellectual “trying to learn a language.” It’s unlocked something emotionally in me. The language is sticking.
Olsen: “Sinners” is rooted so specifically in the world of the Jim Crow South here in America. Was that still something that you could relate to? Were there aspects of the story that still felt familiar to you?
Mosaku: Yeah, I can relate to being Black in America, I can relate to being Black in a different culture. But there’s a lot of research that has to be done. A lot of people in the cast were pulling upon the people that they knew in their history and their ancestry, whether it was Ryan and his uncle James who inspired the movie or Miss Ruth [E. Carter, costume designer, who] said my dress, the velvet dress was inspired by a picture of her grandma in a velvet dress on the stairs with her grandfather. They have different things they can pull on that are really from the time and the people. I do research in a different way, because I don’t have that same history to pull from, but I have an admiration and a love of the African American culture. My daughter’s African American. So I feel I have a respect and a duty to do my research, not just for my character work but for my family. I can relate to aspects, but I don’t have that shared cellular memory that the rest of the cast do.
Olsen: So what did you draw on for research? Mosaku: I spoke to hoodoo priestesses and that was really my main research, was kind of the faith, because that is who she is. That’s her foundation. And that’s her power. So that was my main research. Obviously, researching the era, Prohibition, Jim Crow South, the Great Migration. For me it’s about respect and honoring as truthfully as I can, if someone has trusted me with this role. And also I’ve said no to roles that I don’t think should be played by Black Brits or Nigerians. I’ve said no to roles that I think should be specifically for African Americans. There’s something about Annie that feels really close to me and really important to me, and I think she’s like a bridge, and I do think of myself sometimes in that way, of in the middle. I’m someone who was born in Nigeria but was never raised there, someone who was raised on a land that has never felt like my own, and then someone who’s come here and has, not inherited, but I have a daughter with this inherited history. And so I have a responsibility for her to understand all three aspects, and then I’m sure there are more aspects of her history that I am yet to figure out what they are. It’s my responsibility to understand that and guide her with it.
Olsen: When you’re shooting these kind of stories or dealing with sort of heavy topics, do you have anything that you like to do at the end of the day to pull yourself out of it?
Mosaku: I talk to my husband and I spend time with my daughter. I speak to my family. I go home.
Olsen: And I don’t think I’m spoiling anything, but I want to be sure to ask you about your last moments in “Sinners.” It’s deeply moving. You reappear in the film as a vision to Smoke. You’re nursing your infant daughter. Can you talk to me about that moment in the film and what it means to you?
Mosaku: It’s purity. He drops his representative, he drops Smoke. He has to drop Smoke in order to join us. The initial cost of this never-ending life as a vampire, it sounds like there’s a glamour to it, there’s a capitalism to it. Stack and Mary are still young and beautiful but there is such a great cost. They never get to see the sun, they never get to hold their loved ones again. And actually they’re not truly free. Whereas Smoke and Annie have chosen true freedom that fully incorporates everything that they love truly. It’s not money, it’s not eternal life, it’s not eternal darkness. They are basking in the sun with their ancestors and it’s purity, it’s love, it’s freedom.
Olsen: I have to ask you about the musical number where sort of the past and the future sort of collapse in on themselves. What did that read like in the script? And what was it like to be on set that day?
Mosaku: It read very much like it felt when you watched it. I had read a version without the future and past ancestors, where it was just about the two brothers and their women and reconnecting and it was beautiful. I loved it. And then before the read-through, we got given another draft, and it had the ancestors and the roof going on fire, and I threw the script down and I ran into my living room and was like to my husband, “Oh, my God, oh, my God, it’s amazing, it’s amazing. I think this is the most amazing thing I’ve ever read. I think it’s the most amazing thing that’s ever going to happen onscreen.” That’s how it felt. And on the day filming it, it very much felt magical. Sammie and Delta Slim have this scene where Delta talks to him about his gift and where it comes from. It comes from the homeland, it comes from your ancestors, it comes from home, Africa. And it’s such a powerful gift and to really guard it with all he has. Then Miles [Caton], who plays Sammie, is talking to the the older guy, Papa Toto, who plays his past ancestor. Who has the little guitar behind him, I don’t know what it’s called, like the original guitar. And he’s behind him in the scene, and then I kind of wander over to them, and Papa Toto basically does the exact same speech, never having read the script, to Miles about his gift and where it comes from and like how he should cherish it and keep it protected. That’s what they’re both talking about, protecting their gifts. And I was just like, “Oh, my gosh, this is magical. He doesn’t even know that this is the scene in the script.” It was a really special day.
Olsen: I’m going to ask this as politely as I can, but I found “Sinners” to be a much bawdier movie, it’s a much more sensual and sexy movie, than I expected. I’m curious how you found those scenes in the script and in particular what it was like for you shooting your scene with Michael.
Mosaku: It explores so many different emotions and feelings. It feels palpable, it feels tangible, it feels like it’s pulsing. It also feels kind of inevitable. Again, it just felt true, and it wasn’t difficult because we created such a safe space for everyone, and there’s no nudity in it, and it just feels really sensual and safe.
Olsen: What was it like shooting scenes with Michael where he’s playing both Stack and Smoke? I would imagine just him having to switch out for the scenes, how did that impact the rhythm and the momentum for the rest of you? Mosaku: It was pretty easy for us, honestly. We didn’t have to do anything. Michael had a stand-in, Percy Bell, and both would learn both twins’ lines, and then Michael would shoot as Stack, and Percy would do Smoke, and we would lock this, we would rehearse it, rehearse it, rehearse it, and then shoot it, shoot it, shoot it, find the one we liked and lock it. So then, if this is Percy and this is Stack, what they would do is he would go get changed, be Smoke, and we would kind of mime the scene. It was really harder for Mike, I don’t know how he did it. We would kind of mime the scene. They would play the scene back so he was responding to us in the real time of the scene that they had chosen. That was it. That was the only scene that we were going with. And then he would trace Percy’s steps and physique to make sure he wouldn’t step on Stack or whatever. So it was very easy for us. Like, we just had to play the scene. And I honestly don’t know how Mike did it. I have no idea how he did it.
Olsen: What has the response to the movie been like for you professionally? Do you find that you’ve gotten some offers? Are you finding yourself in rooms that maybe you wouldn’t have been in before? Mosaku: Everyone has been so complimentary and lovely about the movie. I think work has come from it, and I was in a room at the Governors Awards with Tom Cruise and Debbie Allen and Phylicia Rashad. I was like, “Well, this is new.” Me, Jayme [Lawson], Hailee [Steinfeld] got awarded one of the Elle Women in Hollywood awards yesterday, which was again really surreal, like, “Oh, hey, Jennifer Aniston. Hey, Rose Byrne. Hey, everyone. Hi, we’re in this room with you. Cool.” So a lot of really lovely things have come of it. Very grateful.
Olsen: And what does it mean to you that it’s for this movie in particular? Mosaku: This is the movie that just keeps on giving. I loved it from the first time I read those seven pages and I have grown as a person, as an actor, as a mom, as a wife. And now I’m experiencing this, which is really lovely, really nice. Olsen: You also have an upcoming role in “The Social Reckoning,” Aaron Sorkin’s sequel to “The Social Network.” Is there anything you can tell us about your role in the movie? Mosaku: I have no idea what I’m allowed to say about it. I’ve not been prepped on press for that yet, so I’m sorry. Olsen: You shot your part? Mosaku: I’ve shot a lot.
The singer of the band lights up a cigarette and smoke drifts into the theater. Ditto for the pungent aroma of marijuana when a few band members share a joint. “Stereophonic,” which is playing at the Hollywood Pantages through Jan. 2, isn’t biographical, but it sure feels close.
The authenticity springs in part from the quality of the songs being recorded by the fictional band on stage, which were written by Will Butler, a multi-instrumentalist and former member of the Grammy Award-winning band Arcade Fire.
“Stereophonic,” which holds the record for the most Tony nominations of all time for a play, unfolds over the course of a single year as a rock band on the cusp of megastardom struggles to record its second album as the first reaches No. 1 on the charts. While the pressure to produce a hit builds, the band falls apart. For proof of the formula’s resilience, look no further than the success of VH1’s “Behind the Music” series, which plumbed the depths of dozens of rock ’n’ roll train wrecks.
“We really tried to just make something real,” Butler said during an interview in the small, cluttered green room at Amoeba Music before he joined the cast of the show for a brief in-store performance. “This is three hours of what it’s like to make a record.”
Is it ever. There is something inherently combustible about being in a band. (Full disclosure: I played in a semi-popular indie band for a decade, which imploded with huge amounts of drama right on cue. I know at least a dozen other groups that have unraveled in similar fashion.) Despite, or rather because of, Arcade Fire’s massive popularity, Butler knows the crash-and-burn nature of being in a band. He joined Arcade Fire after one of its original members quit in the middle of an encore following a fight with the lead singer — Butler’s older brother, Win Butler.
Will Butler left Arcade Fire at the end of 2021, saying at the time that the decision came about organically. “There was no acute reason beyond that I’ve changed — and the band has changed — over the last almost 20 years. Time for new things,” he wrote on social media.
Will Butler performs at Amoeba Music with Claire DeJean and the stars of the Broadway tour of “Stereophonic,” which follows the rise of a struggling 1970s rock band.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
“Stereophonic” was one of those new things, and Butler has brought his understanding of volatile band dynamics to bear in his work on the show, as well as his thoughts on the fragile, ephemeral nature of recording in a studio.
“There’s a little booth, and you go into the booth and you lose your mind,” Butler said of the experience of laying down a track. “And you exit the booth and you’re just a boring human.”
The boring — and boorish — parts of that humanity are on display in “Stereophonic,” where there is more control room conflict than actual music making. This also feels true to form. Romances blossom and bottom out in spectacular fashion. Drugs are consumed in copious amounts — particularly cocaine. This is 1976, after all. The long-suffering recording engineer reaches his breaking point after becoming totally fed up with the band’s self-absorbed, self-destructive behavior.
Human beings weren’t meant to create art in this particular kind of pressure cooker. Until they do. There is a moment in the making of every great song when each musician becomes part of the whole during the act of recording, and the band’s genius is temporarily realized. The song can’t be made by any one member — it can only come from the spontaneous transcendence of the group.
This moment happens in “Stereophonic” after a truly frustrating number of stops and starts, when the group plays a song so beautifully that the theater erupts in effusive applause. This is why the band stays together despite its constant feuding — and why the audience has come.
“We really tried to just make something real,” Will Butler said of “Stereophonic.” “This is three hours of what it’s like to make a record.”
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
“The music in this show has to crack open the world because it’s so much talking and it’s so much sitting around,” Butler said. “And then when they play music, you have to instantly realize why they’re together.”
Butler first met playwright David Adjmi and heard his idea for the show in 2014. Butler was intrigued, but had to wait for the script before he could work on the music in earnest. The songs needed to fit into the script like puzzle pieces, Butler said. Sometimes he needed to write a whole song and other times he needed to focus on composing the first 30 seconds of a song — which would be heard on repeat.
“And then we cast it, and now the music exists in a different way,” Butler said, noting that the music changes with every new cast. A cast — like a band — has its own particular strengths and weaknesses. No rhythm section is ever the same. You know John Bonham’s tom fills when you hear them, just as you can immediately recognize the sound of Ringo Starr’s hi-hats.
None of the actors in the national tour cast of “Stereophonic” — except for the drummer — are trained musicians.
(Julieta Cervantes)
The whole process of constructing “Stereophonic” as a play is very meta — with Butler producing the band that is in turn producing itself onstage in the studio. During the course of the show, one of the songs is actually recorded live and played back from the control room. It is slightly different each time, in ways both meaningful and incidental. Just like in real life.
The in-store performance at Amoeba, however, is wildly different from what happens onstage at the Pantages. The cast members are not — with the exception of the drummer — trained musicians, and stripped of the confidence that comes with costumes and a set, they appear somewhat vulnerable in the process.
This is in stark contrast to Butler, who displays all the verve and conviction of a bona fide rock star. The cast will do the same across the street later that night. For the moment, however, Butler is showing them just how it’s done.
Rob Reiner was a movie director who began as an actor who wanted to direct movies. The bridge between these careers was “This Is Spinal Tap” in 1984, his first proper film, in which he also acted. His original inclination, based on the music documentaries he had studied, had been not to appear onscreen, but he decided there was practical value in greeting the audience with a face familiar from eight seasons of “All in the Family” as Archie Bunker’s left-wing son-in-law, Michael “Meathead” Stivic.
Reiner’s television career began at 21, partnered with Steve Martin, writing for “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.” As an actor, his early years were characterized by the small parts and guest shots that describe the early career of many performers we come to know well. He played multiple characters on episodes of “That Girl” and “Gomer Pyle, USMC,” a delivery boy on “Batman,” and appeared on “The Andy Griffith Show” and “Room 222.” His last such role, in 1971, the same year “All in the Family” premiered, was on “The Partridge Family” as a tender-hearted, poetry-writing, tattooed biker who becomes attached to Susan Dey‘s character and somewhat improbably takes her to a school dance. It’s a performance that prefigures the tenderness and humanity that would become a signature of his work as a writer, director and performer — and, seemingly, a person.
On “All in the Family,” in his jeans and work shirt, with a drooping mustache that seemed to accentuate a note of sadness, Reiner largely played the straight man, an irritant to Carroll O’Connor’s Archie Bunker, teeing up the issue-oriented dialectic. Once in a while he’d be given a broad comic meal to chew, as when wife Gloria (Sally Struthers) goes into labor while they’re out for dinner, and he accelerates into classic expectant-father sitcom panic. But minus the “Meathead” material, “All in the Family” is as much a social drama as it is a comedy, with Mike and Gloria struggling with money, living with her parents, new parenthood, and a relationship that blows hot and cold until it finally blows out for good. He’s not a Comic Creation, like Archie or Edith with their malaprops and mispronunciations, or even Gloria, but his importance to the storytelling was certified by two supporting actor Emmys.
Rob Reiner, Sally Struthers, Caroll O’Connor and Jean Stapleton in a scene from Norman Lear’s television series “All in the Family.”
(Bettmann Archive via Getty Image)
What Reiner carried from “Family” into his later appearances was a sort of bigness. He could seem loud — and loudness is something Norman Lear’s shows reveled in — even when he’s speaking quietly. Physically he occupied a lot of space, more as time went on, and beginning perhaps with “Spinal Tap,” in which he played director Marty DiBergi, he transformed tonally into a sort of gentle Jewish Buddha. In the 2020 miniseries “Hollywood,” Ryan Murphy’s alternate history of the 1930s picture business, the studio head he plays is not the desk-banger of cliche, but he is a man with an appetite. (“Get me some brisket and some of those cheesy potatoes and a lemon meringue pie,” he tells a commissary waiter — against doctor’s orders, having just emerged from a heart attack-induced coma. “One meal’s not going to kill me.”) He’s the boss, but, in a scene as lovely as it is historically unlikely, he allows his wife (Patti LuPone), who has been running things during his absence, to also be the boss.
Reiner left “All in the Family” in 1978, after its eighth season to explore life outside Michael Stivic. (In 1976, while still starring on “Family,” he tested those waters, appearing on an episode of “The Rockford Files” as a narcissistic third-rate football player.) “Free Country,” which he co-created with frequent writing partner Phil Mishkin, about a family of Lithuanian immigrants in the early 1900s, aired five episodes that summer. The same year, ABC broadcast the Reiner-Mishkin-penned TV movie “More Than Friends” (available on Apple TV) in which Reiner co-starred with then-wife Penny Marshall. Directed by James Burrows, whose dance card would fill up with “Taxi,” “Cheers” and “3rd Rock From the Sun,” it’s in some respects a dry run for Reiner’s “When Harry Met Sally…,” tracking a not-quite-romantic but ultimately destined relationship across time.
Future Spinal Tap lead singer Michael McKean appears there as a protest singer, while the 1982 CBS TV movie “Million Dollar Infield,” written again with Mishkin, features Reiner alongside future Spinal Tap lead guitarist Christopher Guest and bassist Harry Shearer; it’s a story of baseball, families and therapy. Co-star Bruno Kirby the year before had co-written and starred in Reiner’s directorial debut, “Tommy Rispoli: A Man and His Music,” a short film that aired on the long-gone subscription service On TV as part of the “Likely Stories” anthology. Kirby’s character, a Frank Sinatra-loving limo driver (driving Reiner as himself), found its way into “This Is Spinal Tap,” though here he is the center of a Reineresque love story.
After “Spinal Tap,” as Reiner’s directing career went from strength to strength, he continued to act in other people’s pictures (“Sleepless in Seattle,” “Primary Colors,” “Bullets Over Broadway” and “The Wolf of Wall Street,” to name but a few) and some of his his own, up to this year’s “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues.” On television, he mostly played himself, which is to say versions of himself, on shows including “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and, of all things, “Hannah Montana,” with a few notable exceptions.
Rob Reiner and Jamie Lee Curtis play the divorced parents of Jess (Zooey Deschanel) in Fox’s “New Girl.”
(Ray Mickshaw / Fox)
The most notable of these, to my mind, is “New Girl,” in which Reiner appeared in 10 episodes threaded through five of the series’ seven seasons, as Bob Day, the father of Zooey Deschanel’s Jess. Jamie Lee Curtis, married to Guest in the real world, played his ex-wife, Joan, with Kaitlin Olson as his new, much younger partner, Ashley, who had been in high school with Jess. He’s positively delightful here, whether being overprotective of Deschanel or suffering her ministrations, dancing around Curtis, or fencing with Jake Johnson’s Nick. Improvisational rhythms characterize his performance, whether he’s sticking to the script or not. Most recently, he recurred in the fourth season of “The Bear,” which has also featured Curtis, mentoring sandwich genius Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson); their scenes feel very much like what taking a meeting with Reiner might be like.
Coincidentally, I have had Reiner in my ear over the past couple of weeks, listening to the audiobook version of “A Fine Line: Between Stupid and Clever,” which he narrates with contributions from McKean, Shearer and Guest. A story of friendship and creativity and ridiculousness, all around a wonderful thing that grew bigger over the years, Reiner’s happy reading throws this tragedy into sharper relief. I have a DVD on the way, though I don’t know when I’ll be up to watching it. I only know I will.
“Saturday Night Live” hosts typically make their mark on the show, either by boosting the sketches they’re in with charm and good timing, or making a lesser kind of mark by awkwardly revealing why they aren’t right for live sketch comedy.
So what are we supposed to make of British actor Josh O’Connor, who hosted “SNL” for the first time and left almost no impression at all?
O’Connor, known for playing Prince Charles in “The Crown” and for performances in “Challengers” and the new Netflix movie, “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” seemed game enough, but throughout most of the show, he had little opportunity to do much more than blend into sketches centered around characters he was not playing.
He played supporting parts including the Tin Man in a revamped “Wizard of Oz” sketch involving the male characters deciding they actually want a “big old thang” instead of their original wishes, a fellow student in a sketch about a 12-year-old college prodigy (Bowen Yang), Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in a Christmas characters piece that was a take on Variety’s “Actors on Actors,” and an awkward brunch attendee.
Only in a few sketches, including a “Dating Game” parody featuring Ashley Padilla as a rowdy 84-year-old contestant, a hospital sketch in which he played a bad intern, and one in which O’Connor and Ben Sherman played sensitive male strippers at a bachelorette party did he have lead roles. And they weren’t particularly memorable characters or portrayals. Only when he kissed fellow cast members at the end of sketches (Yang and Sherman) did things seem to liven up.
In fact, it felt more like a spotlight episode for Yang — who played the Wizard; the fast-talking, high-attitude Doctor Please in the hospital sketch; and the 12-year-old college student — and for musical guest Lily Allen. Allen’s scathing performances of “Sleepwalking” and “Madeline” from her new breakup-with-David Harbour album were high drama. The latter song featured a big surprise: actor Dakota Johnson spoke from behind a scrim as the titular character and then appeared next to Allen when the song ended. Another Allen song, “West End Girl,” was the subject of an entire brunch sketch in which cast members sang about their feelings to the tune of the music. Allen showed up as herself, but filling in as a waitress at their table.
It’s hard to say if the material just misfired for O’Connor or if he’s just an awkward fit for “SNL,” but unfortunately what stood out in the episode had little to do with him.
In addition to the sketches, this “SNL” episode included a Christmas-themed “Brad and His Dad” animated short.
Ready for another President Trump-centered cold open? Sorry, you got one anyway. James Austin Johnson once again aced his impression of Trump with a stream-of-conscious ramble for reporters aboard Air Force One that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt (Ashley Padilla) attributed to exhaustion. “I took an Ambien and an Adderall, let’s see which one wins,” said Trump before inappropriately fixating on Leavitt’s lips and denying that affordability is a problem. “Economy is very strong,” he said, “from the billionaires all the way down to the poor millionaires.” Trump addressed attacks on Venezuelan ships, saying, “We’re doing pirate now, argh,” and promising that attacks would move from the sea to the air, leading to a visual joke of Santa Claus and his reindeer on radar being shot out of the sky.
O’Connor’s monologue focused on two things those unfamiliar with his acting should know about him: that he has a reputation as a “soft boy,” someone who embroiders, scrapbooks and gardens like an “average 65-year-old woman.” The other is that he resembles chef Linguini from the Pixar film “Ratatouille,” and though a rumor that he wanted to play the character in a live-action version was unfounded, he would very much like to play that character. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “I would kill as Linguini.”
Best sketch of the night: You ate how many nuggets this year?
Even though it’s already well-trod meme material (including an almost identical comic strip’s premise), “SNL” was still able to squeeze some juice from Spotify’s Wrapped, a year-in-review feature, which returned for another round earlier in the week. Uber Eats has a year-in-review, too, and you absolutely don’t want your significant other to see what fast food you’ve ordered and whether you’re in the top 1% of nugget eaters. If your Uber Eats age is “52 and Fat,” it may not be knowledge you wish to have. The mock commercial does a great job balancing the shame we feel about the awful foods we eat with the amount of data we could learn about those habits, if only anyone ever wanted to see that.
Also good: These kind male strippers give the best empathy hugs
A bachelorette party at a cozy cabin is interrupted by two hired male strippers, Augie and Remington (Sherman and O’Connor), who ask for consent before entering and are soon removing their cardigans to reveal another layer of cardigan. The men dance to an emo version of “Pony” before revealing that one of them has a Zohran (Mamdani) tattoo on his stomach. They give lap dances, but one of them gets overstimulated and cries. “I was just thinking about the Supreme Court,” he moans. Not the most original sketch idea, but the specific details of the characters and Padilla’s smitten reactions as the bachelorette saved the sketch from overstaying its welcome.
‘Weekend Update’ winner: Superheroes, Santa and your boss all want you to behave
Jane Wickline did a nice job with a surprisingly violent original song about stopping the biggest threat facing the world: not AI, but the grown-up child actors from “Stranger Things.” But it was Marcello Hernández who got big laughs recounting what Christmas is like for his Cuban family. It includes dealing with new boyfriends of family members pretending to be who they aren’t. “You don’t like the food, Kyle, you like having sex with my cousin!” Hernández wandered a bit, straying to talk about “Home Alone” and uncles who give unsolicited sex advice, but the heart of the segment was impressions of his father calling to encourage his son as different characters including Santa Claus, Spider-Man and his boss, Lorne Michaels.
Perhaps Vanderbilt can return to the rotation to help the Lakers’ defensive woes while guard Austin Reaves is out for approximately a week because of a mild left calf strain.
And perhaps Vanderbilt and the Lakers can get some immediate results for shoring up their defensive shortcomings when they face the Suns in Phoenix on Sunday afternoon.
The 6-foot-8 Vanderbilt is hopeful that his opportunity will come against the Suns and he turns that into a positive for the Lakers.
“Oh, yeah, I’m pretty eager,” he said after practice Saturday. “I mean, obviously, I think a lot of the stuff we lack, I think I can help provide on that end.”
In the last 10 games, Vanderbilt had only a three-minute stint against the Philadelphia 76ers because Jake LaRavia took a shot to the face that loosened a tooth.
The return of LeBron James and Vanderbilt’s offensive deficiencies left him out of the rotation. During much of that time the Lakers were winning, which meant Vanderbilt spent time on the bench.
In 15 games, Vanderbilt is three for 10 (26.6%) from three-point range. He was asked how he has been handling things.
“Good,” Vanderbilt said. “Controlling what I can control. Keep showing up to work, doing my part, supporting the team.”
Vanderbilt was asked if coach JJ Redick or any assistants have spoken to him about his role.
“Kind of here and there, I guess,” Vanderbilt said.
Vanderbilt was seen after practice Saturday working with an assistant coach on his shooting, just like he did after practice Friday and like he has done while not playing.
Redick said Reaves, who played against the San Antonio Spurs on Wednesday night, wasn’t sure when the calf became an issue, and “we’re obviously gonna be cautious with it.”
“It’s a mild strain, Grade 1, and he’ll be out for a week,” Redick said, adding, “I would venture to say every player is a little bit different, but players now are becoming more cautious — to use that word again — more cautious when they get those diagnosis with the calf. Everything looks clean. It’s not in the deep part.”
The Lakers have looked at the last 10 games during the film sessions as a barometer for their defensive problems. But in reality, the Lakers have not been very good on defense all season while producing a 17-7 record because of their stellar offense.
“It’s been a trending thing even when we was winning, so I think like you said, the defense still wasn’t there, but we was just outscoring everybody,” Vanderbilt said. “So, I think obviously during the loss, it’s an appropriate time to address certain things just so it won’t keep lingering and get worse.”
The Lakers are 18th in the NBA in points given up (116.8), 22nd in opponents’ field-goal percentage (48.1%) and 27th in opponents’ three-point shooting (38.2%).
They will face a Suns team that defeated them Dec. 1 at Crypto.com Arena. The Lakers were unable to stop Collin Gillesipie, who had 28 points and was eight for 14 from three-point range, and Dillon Brooks, who had 33 points.
It hasn’t gotten better in the ensuing days. The Spurs loss was the Lakers’ third in the last five games.
“Nobody likes to go watch film after you get your ass kicked,” guard Marcus Smart said. “It’s tough because the film never lies. And it exposed us a lot, which we already knew. We were just winning a lot of games. So it was mitigated that way, but it was straight to it: We have to be able to guard.
“The scouting report against us is we’re not guarding people. And if we want to be great in this league and do what we’re trying to do, you have to be able to guard, especially in the West. These guys are no joke, and they’re coming. And especially [if] you got the Lakers across your jersey. They’re definitely coming with everything they have. So you can’t be expecting any surprises. And that’s what it was. It wasn’t no sugarcoating anything. It was, ‘This is what we got to do.’ We’ve been asked. Let’s fix it.”
TV legend Bryan Fuller, known for his cult classics “Pushing Daisies” and “Hannibal,” just earned an Independent Spirit Award nomination for first feature. It’s somehow a surprise that the well-known creator just directed his first movie, after spending almost three decades working in television on series like “Dead Like Me” and “American Gods.” Now he turns to the world of indie film, reuniting with actor Mads Mikkelsen, his Hannibal Lecter, on the dark fairy tale “Dust Bunny.”
Fuller has a thing for idioms, extending them to their most extreme ends (e.g., “pushing daisies”), and so in “Dust Bunny,” he imagines what those bits of fluff could be if our nightmares came to life. He also posits an outlandish notion: What if a kid hired an assassin to kill the monster under her bed?
Aurora (Sophie Sloan) is an imaginative young girl who hears things that roar and scream in the night. The dust bunny under her bed is a ravenous, monstrous thing. When her parents go missing, she’s convinced they’ve been eaten by the monster bunny, and seeks out the services of an “intriguing neighbor” (Mikkelsen, that’s how he’s credited) whom she has seen vanquishing dragons in the alley outside. With a fee that she purloins from a church collection plate, she implores him for help and he agrees, as he learns more about this young girl’s challenging childhood.
At first, “Dust Bunny” feels a little light, the story skittering across its densely designed surface, with very little dialogue in the first half. But it grows and grows, more bits and pieces accumulating as Fuller reveals this strange, heightened world. We meet Intriguing Neighbor’s handler, Laverne (Sigourney Weaver), revealing the larger Wickian world of killers that he inhabits.Weaver chomps through her scenes like the monster bunny chomps through the floorboards — literally, as she consumes charcuterie, dumplings and “suckling pig tea sandwiches” with gusto. Some monsters grin at us from across the table.
The film is essentially “Leon: The Professional” meets “Amélie” (one of Fuller’s favorite films), but with his distinct wit and flair. That style also means that “Dust Bunny” is quite fussy and mannered and if you don’t buy in on the film’s arch humor and stylized world, you’re liable to bounce right off of it. As Fuller opens the world up, revealing a sly FBI agent (Sheila Atim) and more baddies (David Dastmalchian, Rebecca Henderson), the plot becomes more intriguing beyond its unwieldy childhood-trauma metaphor, but there’s also not quite enough embroidered on this tapestry. It feels shallow, not fleshed out.
Fuller demonstrates a strong command over his visual domain but the pat allegory he presents about the monsters with whom we have to learn to live feels a bit muddled. Sloan and Mikkelsen are terrific together, but you feel that there is much more they could have sunk their teeth into here, and perhaps the limits of the tale reveal the limits of the budget, carefully wallpapered over with opulent production design — explosions of patterns and color crafted by Jeremy Reed, captured with shadowy but lush cinematography by Nicole Hirsch Whitaker.
It’s a first feature that feels like one — a bit of a surprise from someone so experienced. But the project has Fuller’s signature style, even if it doesn’t add up to much more than a neat kiddie-centric hard-R genre exercise.
Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.
At the start of the winter, the assumption was that top free-agent closer Edwin Díaz would fall out of the Dodgers’ preferred price range.
Knowing they needed bullpen help, however, the Dodgers decided to reach out with interest anyway.
What followed will go down as one of the most surprising outcomes of this MLB offseason. And, for the Dodgers, their latest in a string of big-name, star-player acquisitions.
Even though the Dodgers initially had doubts about their chances of landing Díaz — especially on the kind of relatively shorter-term deal they were seeking in their hunt for relief help — circumstances changed, Díaz’s market evolved, and they went from dark horse to front-runner.
On Friday, it all culminated in a Dodger Stadium news conference, the once-unexpected union between the two-time defending champions and three-time All-Star right-hander being made official as Díaz’s three-year, $69-million contract was finalized.
“It wasn’t easy,” Díaz said of his free agent process, which ended with him leaving the New York Mets after a decorated seven-year stint. “I spent seven years in New York. They treated me really good. They treated me great. But I chose the Dodgers because they are a winning organization. I’m looking to win, and I think they have everything to win. So picking the Dodgers was pretty easy.”
That didn’t mean it came as any less of a surprise.
Early on this winter, the Dodgers signaled a hesitancy to hand out another long-term contract to a reliever, after watching Tanner Scott struggle in the first season of the four-year, $72-million deal he signed last winter.
And though they gradually grew more open to the idea, giving serious consideration to Devin Williams before he signed a three-year, $51-million deal with the Mets two weeks ago, the thought of landing Díaz seemed far-fetched.
After all, the 31-year-old was widely expected to receive a four- or five-year deal, having already opted out of the remaining two seasons on his record-breaking five-year, $102-million contract with the Mets to become a free agent this winter. Also, since he had turned down a qualifying offer from the Mets at the start of the offseason, the Dodgers knew they’d lose two draft picks (their second- and fifth-highest selections) to sign him.
“We checked in from the get-go,” general manager Brandon Gomes said. But, he acknowledged, “the opportunity to add somebody of this caliber to what’s already a really talented bullpen was something that we weren’t sure was going to be able to actually come to fruition.”
Turned out, a few factors were working in the Dodgers’ favor.
First, the Mets weren’t willing to give Díaz a longer-term deal, either. Instead, in the wake of the Williams signing, they were reportedly offering only three years for a similar salary as the Dodgers. Not coincidentally, it was only entering last week’s winter meetings — mere days after Williams’ Dec. 3 agreement with the Mets — that Gomes said talks started to intensify.
“Having those conversations and making sure you’re in there and [letting him know], ‘Hey, we’re really valuing you, and if things make sense on your end, great, we’re here’ — that was the biggest thing,” Gomes said. “Making sure you’re exploring all avenues, because you don’t know how things are gonna play out.”
Another benefit for the Dodgers: They had advocates close to Díaz vouching for the organization.
The Dodgers’ new star closer, Edwin Díaz, speaks at his introductory news conference on Friday at Dodger Stadium.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Díaz said he received rave reviews about the club from both his brother Alexis (who spent most of last year with the Dodgers, after they acquired him from Cincinnati following an early-season demotion to the minors) and his Team Puerto Rico teammate Kiké Hernández (a longtime Dodgers fan favorite who is currently a free agent).
“They treat every single player the same,” Díaz said of the message he received. “That’s really nice, [especially] knowing they have a lot of great players, future Hall of Fame players. … That’s really good. That’s how a winning clubhouse is.”
Ultimately, it all led up to a rather swift signing process on Tuesday morning, one in which the Dodgers gave Díaz the highest average annual salary for a reliever in MLB history ($23 million per year) but kept the terms to three years and were able to defer more than $13 million of the total guarantee.
“I think once Devin came off the board, it was like, ‘OK, let’s continue to explore the different options,’” Gomes said. “Obviously having no idea what conversations had gone on up to that point between Edwin and other clubs, it was more about: ‘Hey, we’re here if there’s something that makes sense. And we would love to have you join our group.’ And fortunately enough, everybody’s interests were aligned on that.
“That’s why you shouldn’t play the game of assumptions, and just do the due diligence on the front end,” Gomes added. “Sometimes things work out, sometimes they don’t. But having those conversations and making sure you’re doing the work that’s needed to really understand the situation is important, especially when you see situations like this play out.”
Now, the Dodgers will put their faith in Díaz to play a leading role in their quest for a World Series three-peat.
He will be the club’s designated closer — a role they have been hesitant to bestow upon any one reliever since the departure of Kenley Jansen (the only MLB reliever with more saves than Díaz since his debut in 2016).
“For us, we have a high bar. To name someone the closer, you have to be one of the best. You have to be elite and dominant at what you do,” president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said.
The team’s expectation is that Díaz’s presence will elevate the rest of the bullpen, too, giving a more defined late-game structure to a relief corps that ranks just 21st in the majors in ERA last season.
“It allows Doc and our coaching staff to kind of put guys into spots leading up to that,” Gomes said, “knowing that it doesn’t really matter who’s in the ninth, that we’re gonna like the matchup.”
Perhaps the biggest news from Friday’s introduction: Díaz still plans to enter games to his iconic walk-out song, “Narco” by Timmy Trumpet — which Gomes described as “probably the most electric walkout song in the game.”
“I can’t wait, the first game of the season, coming in the ninth with Timmy Trumpet and getting the W for the Dodgers,” Díaz said.
A few weeks ago, that scene felt like an unlikely vision.
But now, anytime the sounds of trumpets echo around Chavez Ravine in the summers to come, they will serve as a reminder of the team’s latest free-agent coup — one more unexpected than almost all the rest.
An exciting Sunday for Aparna Nancherla is a Sunday without much excitement. “My cortisol runs high without anything happening, so I’m trying to get it down,” she says.
Eliminating stress was part of the reason the comedian moved back to Los Angeles in 2023, after over a decade in New York City, where she wrote for “Late Night With Seth Meyers” and “Totally Biased With W. Kamau Bell,” appeared in TV series like “Search Party” and burnished her stand-up comedy career.
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.
“I’m a little bit of a hermit, and just wanted some more trees and a little more space,” Nancherla says.
Nancherla’s book of essays, “Unreliable Narrator: Me, Myself and Impostor Syndrome” was also released in 2023. In it, she examined her emotionally fraught relationship with stand-up. After a break, she recently brought her understated approach back to the form and her new special, “Hopeful Potato,” is available on the comedy streaming service Dropout starting Dec. 15.
She likes to spend her Sundays mostly engaging in familiar routines, though she’ll pursue a little bit of discovery around town.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
10 a.m.: Late riser
I would like to be someone who wakes up around 7 to 8 a.m., but I am waking up probably in the 9 to 10 a.m. vicinity. I would wake earlier, but I think in a past life I was a two-toed sloth or something because I’m nocturnal and I move very slowly. It takes me a lot of time to ease into a different state of being — sleep to wake, wake to sleep. Pretty much any transition I’m bad with.
Being a stand-up doesn’t help. A lot of my job is oriented toward night, but even before comedy, something about the night called to me. It’s not necessarily the healthiest behavior, but thus far I haven’t been able to change my ways.
10:15 a.m.: Morning rituals
I’m someone who falls into doing rituals for a while, almost obsessively, until I replace them with different ones. Lately my ritual is as soon as I get up and brush my teeth and wash my face, I will put on a song and dance to it and do some stretching. I tend toward depression and anxiety, so dancing is an easy way to immediately get your endorphins and it doesn’t feel like as much of a demand as going for a jog.
It’s literally three minutes of a song and then I will try to meditate. My mom recommended doing 20 minutes of meditation, but I feel like 10 is where I’m landing. My attention span is so bad lately that it really is just me closing my eyes and composing emails that I’ll forget to send rather than attuning to some higher power.
11 a.m.: Chasing waterfalls
I’m lucky in that I live near three botanic gardens, so I really have my pick, but I got a membership to the Arboretum because I like that they have peacocks.
They also have a giant waterfall. I’m trying to form a walk where I will eventually end up there. They have a few really nice spots where you can chill out near the waterfall, so I’m probably just sitting, maybe journaling, kind of enjoying the ambience.
I don’t know if there’s a word for someone who’s in love with waterfalls, but I really like them. Apparently there is among [the cable channel] TLC’s vast array of offerings, a program where people are in love with inanimate objects, like cars and bridges, and they want a romantic, sexual relationship with these things. I just want to say that that’s not how I approach a waterfall, but I do deeply care for them as a friend.
1 p.m.: Aspiring regular
I really like Lemon Poppy Kitchen in Glassell Park. Every time I’ve been there, I’ve seen the same people, so I don’t know how many times it takes for you to become a regular, but I guess I’m an aspiring regular there. They have a scramble I really like. It’s not too crazy, it’s a Cali scramble. They also have some Eastern European-y things. They have some kind of polenta dish with eggs. It has a little bit of sauerkraut. I like what they’re doing with their brunch direction.
3 p.m.: Reading is fundamental
I’m a big books person. There are so many independent bookstores I want to mention. I really like North Figueroa Bookshop in Highland Park. They feature a bunch of independent presses.
I love Sierra Madre. It’s such a walkable neighborhood. They have a bookstore called Fables and Fancies. They have a tree inside — who doesn’t like that?
There’s also one called DYM Books & Boba in North Pasadena. The owner, Desiree [Sayarath], is so sweet. It’s not a huge bookshop, but they feature a lot of authors of color and queer authors. Then it’s got a full coffee menu, and you can add boba to pretty much anything. They have gulab jamun-flavored matcha, which I have never seen anywhere else. Gulab jamun is this Indian dessert. It’s like a rose water and cardamom flavor.
4 p.m.: Gifts for the unknown
I would love to go to a craft fair. There’s one in Pasadena called the Jackalope Art Fair that’s there periodically. I already buy things that I maybe don’t need, but I do like a craft fair because you’re making eye contact with the creator as you’re buying their thing and it feels like you’re getting extra dopamine from that.
The worst thing is that I’m like, “This will be a great gift for someone later.” I have bags of gifts for people, and I don’t know who these people are, but someday they’re going to be getting a bag of buttons.
6 p.m.: Feeding schedule
At 6, I have to feed my cats. They’re very strict about their mealtime. They eat at 6 and 6. My partner feeds them at 6 in the morning, but I feed them at 6 p.m.
They’re sisters. They’re 5 years old. They’re pretty demanding in general. They’re pretty vocal about what they want and when they need it.
6:30 p.m.: Fitness to fight depression
Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of workouts at home. I’ll do a kickboxing thing or yoga Pilates. I tried to get into the gym and, I don’t know, something about the gym environment really bums me out.
I’m not like a Peloton girlie. I’m joining some of your more avant-garde platforms. I don’t think they think of themselves as avant-garde, but there’s this platform of African dance called Kukuwa these women in Africa started and I love their workouts. Then there’s free stuff. There’s Move With Nicole, which is a Pilates account on YouTube that I do a lot. I’m looking for your smaller businesses.
As I’ve gotten older, my mental health has plummeted for various reasons. I feel like exercise is one of the only things that helps regulate it to some extent, which I hate saying because when you say you’re depressed, people are like, “Just go for a walk.” And it’s not like the walk cures depression, but it does help to get some vitamin D or just be like, “Oh yeah, I have these muscles, I should probably sometimes use them.”
7 p.m.: A new dish
I don’t mind a dinner in, but I feel like given the chance, it’s always nice to eat at the restaurant. I discovered this vegan place in Highland Park that does vegan sushi that’s pretty new called Tane Vegan Izakaya. I’ve also been meaning to check out this vegetarian place in Echo Park called Men & Beasts that I keep hearing about.
I like trying a new place, but then once it works for me, I’m probably hitting that up a bunch of times. If a restaurant clicks where the food is great, the service is great, the atmosphere is great, then I’m happy to support them as much as possible.
9 p.m.: Puttering toward bed (eventually)
I’ll come home and watch something. I’m trying to scroll less on my phone, so maybe I’ll watch “The Great British Bake Off” or something that’s not too taxing on the brain.
I usually make myself a big cup of ginger tea at night because my stomach has been more temperamental as I’ve gotten older, but what usually happens is I make the big cup of tea and then I forget about it, and it kind of watches me while I scroll on my phone.
Every day, I want to be in bed by 12:30, and then it ends up being 2 a.m. and I cannot account for how that happened. I think I’m just a serial putterer, in that I putter around and I don’t know what I’m doing a lot of the time.
Have you ever wondered what movie might draw praise from Jacob Elordi and Benicio Del Toro for its cinematic reverie?
When you gather six actors from some of this year’s most acclaimed films, a thoughtful discussion about their roles and the craft is to be expected. But in kicking off The Envelope’s 2025 Oscar Actors Roundtable, the talent reminded us that they’re movie fans like the rest of us, picking the films they wish they could experience again for the first time.
“I’d like to watch ‘The Dark Knight’ again in the exact same circumstance that I watched it,” Elordi said, referring to Christopher Nolan’s dark retelling of Batman’s battle with the Joker. “I was 11 and I was with my dad. I’d been told by my mother that I wasn’t allowed to see it because there’s a horrific sequence with a pencil and a magic trick. My dad — when my mum was away — took me to the cinema to see it. I remember the first time I saw Heath [Ledger, as the Joker] onscreen and really feeling just totally moved by something.”
Then Del Toro chimed in with his pick, “Papillon,” Franklin Schaffner’s 1973 prison film starring Dustin Hoffman and Steve McQueen: “I saw it when I was a kid. We got in late in the movie, and it was a scene where they’re trying to get a gator. And they’re running around the crocodile. I’ve always really enjoyed that film.”
“And you really see Steve McQueen do more in that movie than ever before,” Elordi says. “When he starts going mad in that cell.”
Jesse Plemons is more sheepish when coughing up his selection.
“Everyone’s listing serious movies. The movie that popped into my head was ‘Nacho Libre.’ In life, some things just give you simple pleasures that aren’t necessarily elevated or high art. But that movie makes me very happy, guys.”
There was no judgment. An atmosphere of friendly sharing and mutual understanding was felt throughout the conversation, which brought together Elordi, who portrays the misunderstood and abused Creature in Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein”; Plemons, in his turn as Teddy, a conspiracy theorist who is convinced that aliens live among us in “Bugonia”; Benicio Del Toro, who plays Sergio St. Carlos, a karate sensei and revolutionary immigration activist in “One Battle After Another”; Will Arnett, who stars as Alex Novak, a middle-age suburbanite whose crumbling marriage inspires him to try stand-up comedy in “Is This Thing On?”; Wagner Moura, who portrays Marcelo Alves, a teacher trying to escape the Brazilian dictatorship in “The Secret Agent”; and Stellan Skarsgård, who plays Gustav Borg, a veteran film director and absentee father who decides to make a movie about his family in “Sentimental Value.” Read on for excerpts from our discussion.
These roles take you to intense places — emotionally, physically, mentally. But what’s the furthest you’ve gone to book a role because you really felt like it was something you were meant to play?
Moura: “Narcos” was a crazy adventure for me because I was cast to play that part that had nothing to do with me. I was a skinny Brazilian guy who didn’t speak Spanish at all. So I had to go through a very intense thing. I had to learn a language in order to play a character. That was crazy. That was the the furthest I’ve [gone] to play a part.
Plemons: Those early weeks are a lot of fun, right? The beginning. It’s like Christmas every day.
Moura: The beginning is always like, “What am I doing?” And you go to bed and go like, “Jesus Christ, this is … There’s no way I can pull this off.” At the same time, I remember going to bed and thinking, “Have I done everything I could?” And then I was like, “Yeah, go to bed. Sleep.”
Arnett: Did you ever think about quitting, about not doing it?
Moura: No. I had to go ahead and do it. That director trusted me, and he was like, “You can do it.” I didn’t want to disappoint him.
Have you gotten to that point, Will? Wanting to quit something because it felt like too much?
Arnett: All the time. Doing [“Is This Thing On?”], I felt like I was at the bottom of a mountain. Every day, I thought, “There’s no way I can do it.” I would come home and just think, “That was probably the worst day that anybody’s ever filmed a scene,” then just have to let it go.
With “Is This Thing On?,” you did a stand-up act in front of people, and they were tourists. Some of them didn’t know who you were. And you bombed a few times, right? Place me in that moment, and what does that do for your performance.
Arnett: I had them introduce me by my character name. So the people who did know who I was, we were saying that [they] thought I was probably having a midlife crisis or something, which I was, but for different reasons. I’d never done stand-up before, so going up and doing this in front of people and bombing was super vulnerable. There’s nowhere to hide, and you can’t just walk off. There was one time where I’d done a set at the Comedy Cellar, in the main room, and it was great. And went around the corner, like five minutes later, onto a different stage, with the same material, and it was dead silent. And the only person laughing was Bradley. I could see him laughing, and [I was] thinking, “Can I just walk off stage right now?” That was ego-stripping. It becomes kind of absurd. You end up kind of laughing at yourself, at the absurdity of it. It’s not out-of-body, but you separate yourself from the words as they’re coming out.
Stellan, “Sentimental Value” is, in some ways, about how the choices a parent makes in the service of their job or their art shape the lives of your children. How did it make you reflect on the choices you’ve made in your career and the impact it had on your family?
Skarsgård: I thought it had nothing to do with me. This was a good escape. But my second son, he called me and said, “You recognize yourself?” And I went, “Uh, no.” And of course I don’t recognize myself because he’s a different kind of man. He’s an old-fashioned man in a sense, a 20th century man. And I’m a 21st. [Laughs.] But it reminded me — since I stopped at the Royal Dramatic Theatre [in] 1989, I spent four months a year in front of the camera and eight months a year changing diapers and wiping asses. I don’t think I’ve been away a lot, but it made me think about, “Have you been present?” Not really. I have eight kids, which means there are eight different personalities, and some kids need a lot of attention and some don’t. You’re imperfect, but I’m sort of settled with that. My kids have to settle with it too. They’re not perfect either.
We often hear from the women who are mothers, how they balance their work with their careers. Many of you are fathers. How have you learned to navigate it?
Moura: For me, it’s the most difficult thing ever. I was thinking the other day, “What are the things that really define me as a human being?” Being a father is the strongest one, but being an artist is almost there. It’s hard because with our job, we have to travel a lot, and you’re not always able to bring your kids with you. They have school, and they have their own lives and their own things. I kind of think this is sort of an impossible perfect balance. But like Stellan said, it is what it is. And when I’m with them, I try to be with them. But being aware that, of course, there will be parts of their lives that I won’t be able to be there for them and sort of accept that.
Arnett: It’s funny, I’ve been traveling a lot doing this stuff. I’ve been back for a couple of days, but I’ve been busy. I’ve been going out all day, doing work and doing these things, and my 15-year-old said to me — I checked in on him. He’s doing his homework. I said, “How are you doing?” He said, “Good,” and he said, “I miss you.” And I was in the same place with him. I don’t even know if this is appropriate for this forum, but it really struck me. Him saying that stayed with me all day. And I woke up thinking about [that] this morning, and even this [round table], and saying, “Hey, we’re gonna have dinner tonight.” I had those moments of thinking, “Am I that guy?” Now I’m saying, “Let’s have dinner after … I gotta go do this thing.” It weighs on you. It is the most difficult balance.
Del Toro: I’ve tried to include my daughter in the process sometimes, you know? Sit her down, bounce lines with her, go see the movie when I’m done with the movie. Make her part of it too.
Jacob, so often when you’re talking to an actor, at least on my end, there’s curiosity about the research process and what you’ve had to learn to prepare for a role. But in playing the Creature in “Frankenstein,” this amalgamation of parts, your character’s really in a process of discovery. Did you have to unlearn things? How did you approach that?
Elordi: The nature of the character actually gives you an excuse to be absolutely free because he’s sort of the first man, in a lot of ways. You can really draw from everything and anything, like a smell or light, because he hasn’t felt the sun on his face. But there’s so many things that you can go back on and reconsider. A lot of the process was just closing the world off for the time of filming — not eating a cheeseburger when I wanted to eat a cheeseburger or just little stuff that made me feel Other. But strangely enough, because he’s made of so many different parts, and you get to go from being born to finding consciousness to the death of consciousness at the end, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. You can’t really miss because everything is happening to him all the time. It’s interesting because you say you want to ask someone about the process, but the process is so f— boring.
Plemons: You studied some form of Japanese dance or movement?
Elordi: Guillermo had this idea to study Butoh. It’s a movement thing, like you’re in drama school again where [the instructor]’s like, “Imagine fire in your fingertips and a hurricane in your lungs, and your foot is a steam train.” And then you walk around the room for 40 minutes … I remember being in drama school, and I had to carry a stick that was called my Intellikey for two hours. It was a piece of bamboo. And move around the room as if that stick was a part of my soul or something. Something completely f— absurd. It was a similar process to that, but it was actually helpful because I had something to apply it to that was sort of physically not so human.
Do any of you have a thing that really helped you find your way into a character? Jesse, I feel like you have gone to some dark places.
Plemons: I guess the most curious is I do dream work. There are symbols and whatnot that you are gifted with that may not make sense on a conscious level, or they may. That’s something that’s hard to talk about. Anything that makes me feel like I’m just following my curiosity and I’m not working; I’m just following some trail that I don’t necessarily know where it’s leading — it’s hard to describe because the way I like to work is where anything goes.
Elordi: You kind of know when you get onto that thing too. When a dot does connect. Something happens, then, all of a sudden, you’re six hours down this little road on this sound that you heard in a song or something like that. You also know when it’s not working. But to be conscious about it can mess it up as well, if you’re like, “I’m gonna do this kind of thing and this. And this is gonna go to this voice.”
Does the work need to feel hard in order for you to feel like you’re challenging yourself?
Skarsgård: No. [I need] to not be afraid and not to be blocked; I need to feel safe. And I need [for] everybody on the set, they want me to be good, and I feel it. Then I can be free. I’m with you [Jesse], you have to be in a state where anything is possible. I don’t do backstories for my characters, ever, because it reduces the possibilities. Then you have to follow the backstory — so he couldn’t do that. You, as an actor, say to the director, “No, my character wouldn’t do that.” “How do you know?” Your character might be more interesting than you are.
Plemons: And this thing doesn’t exist yet, this moment —
Moura: There’s no better thing than being in a scene with another actor, and you look at the other guy or the other actors, and you go, like, “This can go anywhere.” Because these other guys, or this other actor, she’s ready to do whatever, to take this wherever. This is the thing that really moves me in a scene. It’s really hard when you work with an actor or with a director that sticks with the thing that they want the scene to be, that thing they thought at home, that they prepared for, and you can’t really move into that space.
Benicio, you really know how to make a character memorable and leave a lasting impression. With Sensei Sergio and what we see onscreen, what were you working with on the page and how much came from you in collaboration with Paul [Thomas Anderson, the film’s director]?
Del Toro: I just asked questions. Paul wants to hear what the actors have to say. I just bombard him with questions. Paul was very flexible … He’s very quick, and if he likes something, he would jump on it. My character was introduced by killing someone in my dojo. So, I asked him, “OK, so I killed this guy in the dojo … I’m not gonna drive Leo anywhere. I have to get rid of the body. And we’re gonna have to clean the dojo or set it on fire. And why am I doing that?” So, from there, it evolved into, like, “We’re not killing anybody.” I approach it a little bit like that — common sense. Logic. But every character is different and every story is different, and every director is different. I’ve been in movies where you just have to find yourself in there. And those are challenging, and they make you better.
“The Secret Agent” really explores how brutal a dictatorship can be on regular people. Wagner, your character Marcelo is not trying to overthrow the government. He’s just a man who’s trying to stick with his values. Tell me about portraying a person in that situation.
Moura: The dictatorship in Brazil was from ’64 to ’85. I was born in ’76, so the echoes of the dictatorship were still there. I remember my parents speaking like [mimics whispering] because they didn’t want people to hear what were they talking about. It’s important that Brazilian cinema is going back there to look at that big scar in our country. I directed a film [2019’s “Marighella”] about a freedom fighter, a guy who wanted to overthrow the government. But this one is different. Like you said, it’s just someone who’s trying to stick with the values that he has. And I think that this is a reality in many different parts of the world, where just the fact that you are who you are makes your life difficult or puts your life in danger, just by the color of your skin or your sexual orientation. You see the dictatorship and and what a dictatorship can do, but not in a obvious way.
Do any of you read reviews?
Skarsgård: Yes, sometimes. I prefer to read the good ones.
Has there been a bad review that propelled you or motivated you or helped you?
Skarsgård: Once I read a theater review that was really bad and that pointed out a grave mistake I made in the show, so I corrected it afterwards. But otherwise —
Elordi: You took the advice?
Skarsgård: Yeah.
Arnett: I did this show for Netflix like 10 years ago, and this guy wrote this review, and I’m embarrassed to say I wrote a point-for-point rebuttal email. I sent it as a draft to Mark Chappell, my partner, and he said, “Oh, hold on. Don’t send it. I’m gonna come over. Let’s talk for a minute.” And I didn’t send it.
Plemons: I’ve got one journalist — I am not gonna say their name — but …
Arnett: Who’s got it out for you?
Plemons: In a way that wasn’t even that intense, but said it [a performance of mine] was “misguided” — which, is just like, “What?” And then I started reading more of his reviews, and everything’s “misguided” to this guy. It’s like, “What do you mean?” So, I’m trying to be less misguided.
Can I jump in with a question for anyone? Talking about that balance between preparation — in certain cases, it’s necessary — then your experience where you rethink all of that. Given the fact that we’re not machines, that on any given day there are a number of variables that influence your mood and influence your mind and influence your ability to relax and do the scene, I’ve thought a lot about that ideal baseline place of being fully relaxed and in your [element]. I wish acting teachers had told me that when I was younger, that that’s like over half of the battle. I’m curious if you have any —
Top row, from left to right: Will Arnett, Wagner Moura and Jesse Plemons. Bottom row, from left to right: Benicio Del Toro, Jacob Elordi and Stellan Skarsgård.
Skarsgård: Tips?
Plemons: No, routines or [an] approach, anything you do to get yourself into a place where you feel like you can leave the preparation and [just be].
Skarsgård: The preparation can serve that purpose. You feel that you’re doing something because it’s a f— strange business, what we’re doing. You don’t know what it is, really, but you feel that, “OK, I’ve done this preparation. I’ve done three months of baking because I’m [playing] a baker.” You feel that you’re prepared, so you feel safer. But, personally, I make sure that the set is safe. I’m first on set. I come in early and, while they’re setting up, I’m gonna see what they’re doing. I’m making sure that I know what all the sound guys, the prop guys, what they’re doing at the same time. So, I feel a part of the unit. That’s my way of feeling safe.
Plemons: Yeah, I find that too. Any time you try and block anything out, you’re missing it. I know that’s sort of a cliche, but the times when I’ve felt maybe the best, I wasn’t blacked out. I was aware of everything.
Elordi: Key to the whole thing is you practice.
Plemons: Yeah, I was looking at the DP I had.
Elordi: That’s when I feel, like, the most comfortable, is when you feel like you are in a dialogue with the operator and the lighting guard and your director, and you’re all in the scene working towards [the same thing]. It’s not like, “Everyone, shut the f— up now. I need complete silence.” Complete silences are unnerving to me on a set. It’s like you’re all trying to reach this point for cut, and then you’ve got that piece of the thing. That makes me feel comfortable when it’s technical and not actually getting lost in this thing of like, “I need complete silence. My body needs to be supple and ready.”
The press has often labeled Mon Laferte a “femme fatale” — a seductive woman who inflicts distress upon her love interests.
Nearly two decades into her singing career, the Chilean singer-songwriter has learned to embrace the old-fashioned trope of the wizened seductress in “Femme Fatale,” her ninth studio album, which she released in October.
“I came to the conclusion that there’s a perception of me as a woman who is really liberated — that’s why it’s dangerous. [She’s] a person who is sure of herself and that generates a lot of insecurity in other people,” said Laferte in a Zoom call, just after she attended the 2025 Fashion Awards with designer Willy Chavarria in London. (“I went to Camden and took a photo next to [Amy Winehouse’s] statue,” she noted, citing inspiration in the late R&B star.)
Laferte reckons with her dangerous womanhood on “Femme Fatale:” a compilation of jazzy, cabaret pop ballads, elevated by the roaring theatrical vocals she made famous in such past hits as “Tu Falta de Querer” and “Mi Buen Amor.” Prior to releasing the album, Laferte notably starred as Sally Bowles in a Mexico City production of the famous American musical “Cabaret.” It was a crash course on theater — which heavily influenced Laferte’s now most penetrating record to date.
Each song in “Femme Fatale” feels like a descent into a speakeasy. It tells stories of loves past — which at times feel nauseating for the 42-year-old singer, born Norma Monserrat Bustamante Laferte in Viña del Mar, Chile.
Among them is “Otra Noche de Llorar,” in which she mourns an unrequited love; then there’s “El Gran Señor,” in which she scorns a cowardly abuser of women. The record climaxes with “1:30,” a briskly improvised tune, in which Laferte balances stories of abuse, self-pleasuring and fake orgasms with historical themes — like the global industrial revolution, as well as Pinochet’s Caravan of Death in 1973.
“The song is really political and everything is my own story,” said Laferte, who admits that even she finds her song difficult to listen to. “The last part is the hardest — where I talk about a conquest — to the point where I can’t listen to that song. It’s really uncomfortable. It’s hard to talk about something so shamelessly.”
“Femme Fatale” is a deeply personal journey that leads to Laferte making peace with her past. The record concludes with the lively orchestral number “Vida Normal,” in which she grapples with the revelation that she’s turning into her mother — especially after giving birth to her first child in 2022 with husband Joel Orta, guitarist for Mexican band Celofán.
“It was a really honest way of saying that, after everything, I just want a normal life,” said the five-time Latin Grammy winner.
But before the Chilean femme fatale can settle into a vida normal, she will first embark on the 2026 Femme Fatale tour, which includes dates in Latin America and later the United States. Laferte’s first stop will be in her hometown of Viña del Mar for the International Song Festival. “It’s like returning home,” she said.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Mon Laferte is a five-time Latin Grammy winner.
(Mayra Ortiz)
You were just in London for the Fashion Awards with Willy Chavarria, who was nominated for designer of the year. How was that experience? I came as a guest of Willy’s. We had dinner and saw a lot of super fashionable people, many artists with their super cool looks. Fashion has always been interesting to me ever since I was a little girl, outside of singing, dancing and playing the guitar. I liked to draw women and their outfits, dresses, things like that… Perhaps that’s where my dreams began to be a designer. Aesthetically in my last album, “Autopoiética,” it was all baroque — I was a bit like Marie Antoinette, I wore large dresses in my shows. This time in “Femme Fatale,” [the style is] bohemian, with sequins and makeup running.
“Femme Fatale” is intense and sexy. Why did you decide to go with that phrase for the album title? ”Femme fatale has a bit of a negative weight to it. You think of a scornful woman that always brings misfortune and does evil things. And it’s a name that the press has given me: La Femme Fatale Chilena.
And I liked it. I like this title because I like to play with the concepts of a dangerous woman. I like that it’s dramatic, because I like music that is theatrical and dark. It doesn’t mean that I am that woman who is secure and free — I have been in various moments in my life, not all the time. But I like that people label me in that way.
How would you describe the musical style? I wanted to take [the album] into the world of jazz so that it could sound nocturnal, so it could sound melancholic. In the last couple of years I’ve been listening to a lot of jazz, so why not make an album that I like to listen to? When I was a little girl, I listened to jazz in my home because of my mom, but I felt like it was boring. Later when I was in my teens I was like: “This is elevator music.”
But as I kept growing, I got rid of that prejudice. When I began to listen to jazz without any judgment, I began to find poetry and a lot of madness as well. I think it’s the improvisation aspect; you have to be very daring to enter the void, because your improv is coming and it’s to the death. That’s something that I’m passionate about. I think it’s demented and poetic at the same time.
This fall you were in a production of the musical “Cabaret” in Mexico City. How was that experience and did it inspire your music for “Femme Fatale”? Yes! I feel like they complemented each other. I feel that my role as Sally Bowles in the theater fed that universe of “Femme Fatale.” There’s a song in the album, “Vida Normal,” that is a song that could go in a musical and that was the intention. My experience with theater was wonderful and I had a lot of fun and learned a lot in the intensive process.
I wanted to talk about the song, “Vida Normal.” You hint at becoming more like your mother and living a normal life, which feels a bit at odds with the “Femme Fatale” theme. Was that intentional? Totally. Because the first song, “Femme Fatale,” describes me up to the present: I always bring chaos, I always destroy what I love, I’m an expert in self-sabotage. But I have been letting those things go with time, thankfully. With the songs in “Femme Fatale” I went deeper into my past, in order to kill that persona.
[“Vida Normal”] is really honest and represents me in the present. I look in the mirror and I don’t recognize myself when I’m barefaced or before getting in the shower — my body changed, especially after motherhood. It’s true that I see my mother’s face and it’s hard to recognize that. I’m getting old. I’m at that age where I don’t recognize myself as either young, or old, in my 40s. It appeared beautiful to close that album that way. It was a really honest way of saying that after everything, I just want a normal life.
One song that caught my attention was the jazz song “1:30.” You talk about fantasies that women don’t often talk about. What was the thought process behind this song? I think those have been the hardest lyrics I’ve ever written. I touch on a lot of microtopics — masturbation, fake orgasms — I think many of us have gone through that. I talk about abuse, sexual abuse, the Caravan of Death that occurred during the dictatorship of Pinochet in Chile. The song is really political and everything is my own story. The last part is the hardest, where I talk about a conquest, to the point where I can’t listen to that song. It’s really uncomfortable. It’s hard to talk about something so shamelessly.
I talked with my musicians and told them that I wanted this to be fast, almost desperate, almost like the bass being the protagonist so that it gives you a sense of urgency, like [we’re] fleeing in a way. We played together like 8 times and I liked that take.
The album also features Natalia Lafourcade and Silvana Estrada on “My One and Only Love.” What was it like to work with these different voices that are often compared to each other? As all three of us sang, I realized that we are so different, each our own universe. I guess we relate to being singer-songwriters but we are distinct universes. I think that [comparison] has to do with us being women; there’s so many male-led bands that one can say are similar too.
We’re all good friends. I’ve known Natalia for many years now and we love each other and they’re all talented women. All three voices sound very beautiful together and I love harmonizing. It was precious to sing together in a song that I find to be the most beautiful in the album. It’s sweet and honest. It talks about the difficulties between partners — and it describes me and my husband. At the end of the day we love each other and continue to be present.
For Bass and LAFD, there’s no watering down how bad 2025 has been
The year was already a debacle for the Los Angeles Fire Department and Mayor Karen Bass, with multiple stumbles before and after the epic January blaze that obliterated Pacific Palisades, so it was hard to imagine that things could get worse in the closing days of 2025.
But they have.
A blistering Times investigation found that the Fire Department cleaned up its after-action report, downplaying missteps.
In other words, there was a blatant attempt to mislead the public.
And Bass representatives said they requested that her comments in the final minutes of a video interview — in which she admitted that “both sides botched it” in the Eaton and Palisades fires — be edited out because she thought the interview had ended.
Please.
Together, these developments will echo through the coming mayoral election, in which Bass will be called out repeatedly over one of the greatest disasters in L.A. history. We’re a long way from knowing whether she can survive and win a second term, but Austin Beutner and any other legitimate contenders are being handed gifts that will keep on giving.
In the case of the altered report, kudos to Times reporters Alene Tchekmedyian and Paul Pringle, who have been trying all year to keep the LAFD honest, which is no easy task.
In the latest bombshell dropped by the two reporters, they dug up seven drafts of the department’s self-analysis, or after-action report, and found that it had been altered multiple times to soften damning conclusions.
Language saying LAFD did not fully pre-deploy all crews and engines, despite the forecast of extreme conditions, was removed.
Language saying some crews waited more than an hour for their assignments during the fire was removed.
A section on “failures” became a section on “primary challenges.”
A reference to a violation of national guidelines on how to avoid firefighter injury and death was removed.
The central role of the earlier Lachman fire, allegedly started by an arsonist, was also sanitized. A reference to that unchecked brushfire, which later sparked the inferno, was deleted from one draft, then restored in the final version. But only in a brief reference.
Even before the smoke cleared on Jan. 7, I had one former LAFD official telling me he was certain the earlier fire had not been properly extinguished. Crews should have been sitting on it, but as The Times has reported, that didn’t happen.
What we now know with absolute clarity is that the LAFD cannot be trusted to honestly and thoroughly investigate itself. And yet after having fired one chief, Bass asked the current chief to do an investigation.
Sue Pascoe, who lost her home in the fire and is among the thousands who don’t yet know whether they can afford to rebuild because their insurance — if they had any — doesn’t cover the cost of new construction. Pascoe, editor of the local publication Circling the News, had this reaction to the latest expose:
“To kill 12 people, let almost 7,000 homes/businesses burn, and to destroy belongings, memorabilia and memories stored in the homes — someone needs to be held accountable.”
But who will that be?
Although the altered after-action report seems designed to have minimized blame for the LAFD, if not the mayor, the Bass administration said it wasn’t involved.
“We did not red-line, review every page or review every draft of the report,” a spokesperson told the Times. “We did not discuss the Lachman Fire because it was not part of the report.”
Genethia Hudley Hayes, president of the Board of Fire Commissioners, told The Times she noticed only small differences between the final report and an earlier report she had seen.
“I was completely OK with it,” she said, adding that the final report “did not in any way obfuscate anything.”
Well I’m not OK with it, and I suspect a lot of people who lost everything in the fire feel the same way. As I’ve said before, the conditions were horrific, and there’s little doubt that firefighters did their best. But the evidence is mounting that the department’s brass blew it, or, to borrow a phrase from Bass, “botched it.”
As The Times’ David Zahniser reported, Bass said her “botched” comment came in a casual context after the podcast had ended. She also said she has made similar comments about the emergency response on numerous occasions.
She has made some critical comments, and as I mentioned, she replaced the fire chief. But the preparation and response were indeed botched. So why did her office want that portion of the interview deleted?
Let’s not forget, while we’re on the subject of botching things, that Bass left the country in the days before the fire despite warnings of catastrophic conditions. And while there’s been some progress in the recovery, her claim that things are moving at “lightning speed” overlooks the fact that thousands of burned out properties haven’t seen a hammer or a hardhat.
On her watch, we’ve seen multiple misses.
On the blunderous hiring and quick departure of a rebuilding czar. On the bungled hiring of a management team whose role was not entirely clear. On a failed tax relief plan for fire victims. On the still-undelievered promise of some building fee waivers.
In one of the latest twists on the after-action report, Tchekmedyian and Pringle report that the LAFD author was upset about revisions made without his involvement.
What a mess, and the story is likely to smolder into the new year.
If only the Lachman fire had been as watered down as the after-action report.
steve.lopez@latimes.com
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Remembering Rob Reiner, ‘Emily in Paris’ returns for Season 5
Welcome to Screen Gab, the newsletter for everyone who wants to spend some time revisiting Rob Reiner’s indelible mark on pop culture.
For many of us, it was already that time of year when we pop in our DVD of “When Harry Met Sally…” or figure out which streaming service has it in its library (or digitally rent it, if none do), and passively recite every quotable moment until Harry’s breathless declaration of love on New Year’s Eve necessitated our full performance. It was a comfort watch in the best sense because of how joyous and hopeful it left so many of us, even cynics, feeling. This year, as the tradition now becomes layered with sadness following the tragic deaths of Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, there’s at least comfort in knowing all the Hollywood magic he brought to life (whether he was directing, or starring in a production) that was full of humanity, humor and heart, and accompanied us at different stages of our lives, can continue to do so. Members of our film team took a look at some of Reiner’s best films, many of which can be streamed. And TV critic Robert Lloyd reminded us of Reiner’s contributions to television, particularly through shows like “All in the Family” and “New Girl” (“Lettuce, tomato, lettuce, meat, meat, meat, cheese, lettuce” — iykyk).
But if it’s all too soon, we get it. Maybe our other streaming recommendations can provide an escape — one is a TV drama about a disillusioned Broadway director returning home to his amateur community theater, and the other is a mystery thriller with an unlikely duo teaming up to investigate the case of a missing girl.
Also in this week’s Screen Gab, “Emily in Paris” actor Samuel Arnold stops by Guest Spot to tell us about the behind-the-scenes adventures of the show’s Italian-set fifth season.
ICYMI
Must-read stories you might have missed
Julianne Hough near the Dolby Theatre at the 97th Academy Awards earlier this year. The Oscars are moving to YouTube, sending shock waves through Hollywood.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
What the Oscars moving to YouTube means for broadcast TV: The Academy Awards will stream on YouTube beginning in 2029, ending a more than five-decade run on broadcast television and marking the show’s biggest distribution shift in its history.
How do Lifetime and Hallmark keep Christmas movies fresh? Pickleball and the NFL: For the two cable networks, tapping into niches, hobbies and sports teams allows them to invite new audiences in, while keeping loyal viewers satisfied with a break in formula.
Diversity and representation of women on streaming TV series in sharp decline, UCLA study shows: The latest edition of the Hollywood Diversity Report released Tuesday determined that the top shows in 2024 were less culturally diverse than the previous year.
Hollywood was built on movie stardom. AI is changing the rules: Synthetic performers are forcing Hollywood to rethink how fame works and who gets to claim it. Even as the technology races ahead, legal concerns are mounting.
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Recommendations from the film and TV experts at The Times
Harry McNaughton as Charlie Summers, a disillusioned Broadway director returning home to his amateur community theatre in “Happiness.”
(Andi Crown Photography / PBS)
“Happiness” (PBS app, pbs.org)
What could be better, at this festive time of year, or any other time, than a backstage musical comedy set in an amateur theatrical company in New Zealand’s fifth-largest city? Harry McNaughton plays Charlie Summers, whose Broadway dream dies when he’s fired as the director of a “Cats” revival and, losing his work visa, returns home to New Zealand for what he hopes will be only a couple of days. Naturally, it turns out otherwise, with Charlie drawn reluctantly into the production of a new musical, “The Trojan Horse,” at the Pizazz theater, run by his mother (Rebecca Gibney) and stocked with a original twists on classic characters: a dictatorial director, the always-cast leading lady, a talented ingénue, a buff electrician with a great voice and the shy high school music teacher who wrote it, making themselves and their desires quickly felt. (There’s a feminist thrust to the plot.) The songs are tuneful and witty, the performances fun, the atmosphere charged but charming. Presented in six 20-minute episodes as part of “Masterpiece Theater.” — Robert Lloyd
Emma Thompson as private investigator Zoë Boehm and Ruth Wilson as art conservationist Sarah Trafford in “Down Cemetery Road.”
(Matt Towers / Apple TV)
“Down Cemetery Road” (Apple TV)
Nothing says the holidays like a gripping crime drama where everyone’s a suspect! Apple TV’s smart and unvarnished British series follows Zoë Boehm (Emma Thompson), a private investigator who hasn’t the time or bandwidth for social niceties, shows of emotion or combing her hair. She’s thrown together with homemaker and art restorer Sarah Tucker (Ruth Wilson), a passive suburbanite who likes 4 Non Blondes.
Their sparring personalities create the undeniable chemistry that’s at the heart of this eight-part series, while the drama’s unexpected turn of events and fast pacing make it hard to hit pause. The two women are connected when a deadly residential explosion rocks Sarah’s neighborhood. A woman was killed, but her young daughter, who made it out alive, has mysteriously disappeared. The quest to find the girl pulls the odd-couple investigators into a complex and dangerous cover up by the Ministry of Defense, and they discover the explosion was in fact an orchestrated assassination.
Morwenna Banks’ adaptation of Mick Herron’s debut novel of the same name, “Down Cemetery Road” also features the PTSD-plagued Downey (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett), the villainous Amos (Fehinti Balogun), bumbling agent Hamza Malik (Adeel Akhtar) and his sociopathic boss, C (Darren Boyd). But it’s Thompson’s gruff character who gets the best lines, such as the one she says to a potential client: “I don’t drink Prosecco and I don’t bond emotionally.” The show has already been renewed for a second season. — Lorraine Ali
Guest spot
A weekly chat with actors, writers, directors and more about what they’re working on — and what they’re watching
Samuel Arnold as Julien in Season 5 of “Emily in Paris.”
(Netflix)
Every office needs a deliciously snarky employee who is too fabulous to work, but still manages to grace the room with their presence to boost the vibe. In “Emily in Paris,” that person is Julien. The quippy, sharply dressed and gossip-loving character, played by Samuel Arnold, has been a bright spot in the series over its run. Initially the guy who liked to remind Emily she was une ringarde American, he’s softened his stance on his fish-out-of-water colleague. But as the Agence Grateau luxury marketing team ventures to Italy this season, which is now streaming, his side eye shifts focus to a new co-worker. Over email, Arnold shared what it was like shooting outside their usual setting and the animated series he returns to over and over. — Yvonne Villarreal
The Grateau team spent time in Italy this season. Some filming took place in Rome and Venice. What’s a memory or experience that stands out from filming there? Did any place there become a go-to spot for you when you weren’t shooting?
Rome was incredible, both on and off screen. One moment that really stands out is when Ashley Park and her choreographer, Carlye Tamaren, taught us one of Ashley’s dance routines. Everyone did so well — and Bruno Gouery was absolutely hilarious. When we weren’t filming, one of our favorite meeting spots was the rooftop at the Minerva Hotel. It’s stunning. In Venice, we would all gather in Bruno Gouery’s room and play a pirate dice game that Lucien Laviscount introduced us to. The city itself felt like a dream.
The series revolves around Emily and her fish-out-of-water experience of building a new life in Paris. How would this series look if it were titled “Julien in Paris”? Five seasons in, what would a slice of his life look like if you could pitch it to Darren Star?
If the show were called “Julien in Paris,” it probably wouldn’t be very exciting — Julien is a Parisian. He has Paris on lock. I like to think he sees himself as the prince of the city. Now, Julien in New York City — opening his own marketing firm there — that’s a different story. I can already feel the drama.
Julien is very discerning and could spot the games Genevieve was playing. How do you think he handled her, and the position he was in, knowing this secret could damage Emily and Mindy’s friendship?
I think Julien handled it pretty well. It’s not a great position to be in. When one friend hurts another, the right thing to do is to encourage the person at fault to do the right thing. And when someone like Genevieve — played by the absolutely lovely Thalia Besson — tries to stir up trouble, Julien definitely knows how to deal with that in the best possible way.
With all the love triangles (and squares), who would you, Samuel, pick for Emily — Gabriel or Marcello? And for Mindy — Nicolas or Alfie?
I don’t think I should be picking men for those women. What I can say is that they should follow their hearts and embrace whatever comes with that. Honestly, we should all try to do the same.
What have you watched recently that you’re recommending to everyone you know?
I recently watched “Safe House” [Netflix], with Lucien Laviscount as a badass action hero. The casting is great, the ending really catches you off guard, and Lucien does his own stunts — which makes it even more impressive.
What’s your go-to comfort watch — the movie or TV show you always come back to?
“Rick and Morty” [Hulu]. It never gets old. It’s funny, packed with pop-culture references — which I love — and the voice acting is just incredible.
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Contributor: Who can afford Trump’s economy? Americans are feeling Grinchy
The holidays have arrived once again. You know, that annual festival of goodwill, compulsory spending and the dawning realization that Santa and Satan are anagrams.
Even in the best of years, Americans stagger through this season feeling financially woozy. This year, however, the picture is bleaker. And a growing number of Americans are feeling Grinchy.
Unemployment is at a four-year high, with Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, declaring, “The U.S. economy is in a hiring recession.” And a new PBS News/NPR/Marist poll finds that 70% of Americans say “the cost of living in the area where they live is not very affordable or not affordable at all.”
Is help on the way? Not likely. Affordable Care Act subsidies are expiring, and — despite efforts to force a vote in the House — it’s highly likely that nothing will be done about this before the end of the year. This translates to ballooning health insurance bills for millions of Americans. I will be among those hit with a higher monthly premium, which gives me standing to complain.
President Trump, meanwhile, remains firmly committed to policies that will exacerbate the rising cost of getting by. Trump’s tariffs — unless blocked by the Supreme Court — will continue to raise prices. And when it comes to his immigration crackdown, Trump is apparently unmoved by the tiresome fact that when you “disappear” workers, prices tend to go up.
Taken together, the Trump agenda amounts to an ambitious effort to raise the cost of living without the benefit of improved living standards. But if your money comes from crypto or Wall Street investments, you’re doing better than ever!
For the rest of us, the only good news is this: Unlike every other Trump scandal, most voters actually seem to care about what’s happening to their pocketbooks.
Politico recently found that erstwhile Trump voters backed Democrats in the 2025 governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia for the simple reason that things cost too much.
And Axios reports on a North Carolina focus group in which “11 of the 14 participants, all of whom backed Trump last November, said they now disapprove of his job performance. And 12 of the 14 say they’re more worried about the economy now than they were in January.”
Apparently, inflation is the ultimate reality check — which is horrible news for Republicans.
Trump’s great talent has always been the audacity to employ a “fake it ‘till you make it” con act to project just enough certainty to persuade the rest of us.
His latest (attempted) Jedi mind trick involves claiming prices are “coming down tremendously,” which is not supported by data or the lived experience of anyone who shops.
He also says inflation is “essentially gone,” which is true only if you define “gone” as “slowed its increase.”
Trump may dismiss the affordability crisis as a “hoax” and a “con job,” but voters persist in believing the grocery scanner.
In response, Trump has taken to warning us that falling prices could cause “deflation,” which he now says is even worse than inflation. He’s not wrong about the economic theory, but it hardly seems worth worrying about given that prices are not falling.
Apparently, economic subtlety is something you acquire only after winning the White House.
Naturally, Trump wants to blame Joe Biden, the guy who staggered out of office 11 months ago. And yes, pandemic disruptions and massive stimulus spending helped fuel inflation. But voters elected Trump to fix the problem, which he promised to do “on Day One.”
Lacking tangible results, Trump is reverting to what has always worked for him: the assumption that — if he confidently repeats it enough times — his version of reality will triumph over math.
The difficulty now is that positive thinking doesn’t swipe at the register.
You can lie about the size of your inauguration crowd — no normal person can measure it and nobody cares. But you cannot tell people standing in line at the grocery store that prices are falling when they are actively handing over more money.
Pretending everything is fine goes over even worse when a billionaire president throws Gatsby-themed parties, renovates the Lincoln Bedroom and builds a huge new ballroom at the White House. The optics are horrible, and there’s no doubt they are helping fuel the political backlash.
But the main problem is the main problem.
At the end of the day, the one thing voters really care about is their pocketbooks. No amount of spin or “manifesting” an alternate reality will change that.
Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”
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‘Is This Thing On?’ review: Arnett, Dern in a dramedy about self-reinvention
Therapy often gets mined for comedy but we don’t often see comedy treated as sincere therapy. “Is This Thing On?” from director and co-writer Bradley Cooper, makes the case that glum dad Alex (Will Arnett), new to Splitsville after he and his wife of 20 years, Tess (Laura Dern), mutually agree to separate, may have figured out an ideal coping mechanism by signing up for open mic night.
Not that we see this by-day finance guy reject professional help in favor of some untapped passion. (Vamping for five minutes in front of strangers negates the cover charge.) But in bringing his marital woes to the stage and getting some chuckles, Alex believes he’s hit upon something: a talking cure that comes with a fresh identity, new friends, an acceptable level of risk and a way out of unhappiness.
It’s such a frisky, alluring idea for a character study — meeting failure with the potential for more failure (and night after night to boot) — that when the movie proves to actually be about whether the marriage can be saved, instead of the granular, temperamental world of stand-up newbies, it almost feels like a bait and switch. Fortunately, the divorce saga is interesting too, featuring Dern at her best, and is plenty intelligent about the nuances of couples who have built something solid (stable lives, nice 10-year-old twin boys, etc.) at the same time they’ve grown apart. “Is This Thing On?” is that rarity: a perfectly worthy dramedy that sometimes feels off because it’s trying to cram two good movies into one.
The confidence comes from Cooper, who, after only two films in the director’s chair (“A Star Is Born,” “Maestro”), has shown himself to be not only a powerful chronicler of artistic lives but especially couples in the showbiz sphere. This time, he tantalizes us with the milieu of nightclub self-expression and a group of regular amateurs Alex gets comfortable hanging with. But over two hours Cooper makes it clear he’s simply followed his protagonist into a safe space of encouragement (featuring Amy Sedaris as a helpful veteran comic), not necessarily a complex world of personality types to be navigated. It’s codified by Cooper’s visual approach, a handheld intimacy reminiscent of European movies, in which Matthew Libatique’s camera rarely strays from tight shots of Arnett’s face, looking for change — circling it, centering it, trailing it when Alex is on the move.
Though Alex is earnest if a tad hacky with his relationship jokes, Arnett (credited as a co-screenwriter with Mark Chappell, from a story they created with John Bishop) captures a fizzy, awkward energy of midlife discovery. Invariably, the movie is unconcerned with whether Alex might be any good as a stand-up because soon it’s about how this new pep in his step registers with Tess, who’s struggling with her own sense of personal fulfillment as a former volleyball legend turned mom and how it affects their on-the-brink married friends, Christine (Andra Day) and Balls (Cooper, hilarious as a spacy actor). Christine Ebersole and Ciarán Hinds, as Alex’s parents, humorously weigh in too on what long-term togetherness entails.
After a narrative coincidence that’s entertainingly handled, “Is This Thing On?” aims to be a more serious-minded, less rom-com-ish “It’s Complicated,” with Tess and Alex seeing if there’s a new way for them to acknowledge where they went astray. The actors sell it, especially when Dern is unafraid to mix revitalized pleasure with pushing for answers. But the stand-up storyline, so promising, is dropped and it feels like a missed opportunity. Still, the highs and lows of marriage aren’t merely a punch line in “Is This Thing On?” — and that’s good.
‘Is This Thing On?’
Rated: R, for language throughout, sexual references and some drug use
Running time: 2 hours, 4 minutes
Playing: In limited release Friday, Dec. 19
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CBS News commits to more town hall and debate telecasts with a major sponsor
CBS News is moving forward with a series of town hall and debate telecasts with a major advertiser backing them, the first major initiative under editor-in-chief Bari Weiss.
The news division announced Thursday it will have a series of one hour single issue programs under the title “Things That Matter” done in collaboration with the digital platform the Free Press.
CBS News parent Paramount acquired the Free Press which was co-founded by Weiss, in September.
Bank of America will be a major sponsor of the series.
The town hall participants include Vice President JD Vance, who will discuss the state of the country and the future of the Republican Party, OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman on artificial intelligence and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore on the future of the Democratic Party.
The debate subjects include “Should Gen Z Believe in the American Dream?,” “Does America Need God? and “Has Feminism Failed Women?” The debaters include journalist Liz Plank, New York Times opinion writer Ross Douthat, and Isabel Brown, a representative for the right-wing organization Turning Point USA.
No dates have been set, but the programs will air in the current 2025-26 TV season which ends in May.
CBS tested the town hall format Saturday with a telecast that featured Weiss sitting down with Erika Kirk, the widow of slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. The program taped in front of an invited audience and averaged 1.9 million viewers according to Nielsen data, on par with what CBS entertainment programming has delivered in the 8 p.m. hour in the current TV season.
The town hall format where a news subject takes questions from audience members has long been a staple of cable news channels. Broadcast networks have typically only used it with presidential candidates.
“Things That Matter” is less of a play for ratings than a symbol of the new vision for CBS News under Weiss.
“We believe that the vast majority of Americans crave honest conversation and civil, passionate debate,” Weiss said in a statement. “This series is for them. In a moment in which people believe that truth is whatever they are served on their social media feed, we can think of nothing more important than insisting that the only way to get to the truth is by speaking to one another.”
Weiss hosted the town hall with Kirk. CBS News has not announced the on-air talent for the “Things That Matter” series.
Weiss was recruited by Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison to pull the news division towards the political center where he believes most of the country stands.
The Free Press gained popularity for its criticism of DEI, so-called woke policies, and strong support of Israel. The site is often described as “heterodox” and has been critical of numerous actions of the Trump administration. But its biggest fans tend to be in the business community who disdain high taxes and big government.
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‘Frankenstein’: Oscar Isaac on working with Jacob Elordi, Guillermo del Toro
In the latest episode of The Envelope video podcast, Oscar Isaac opens up about the connection he forged with director Guillermo del Toro for “Frankenstein” and Wunmi Mosaku reflects on the way her own heritage informed her work in “Sinners.”
Kelvin Washington: Hello, everyone, and welcome to a new episode of The Envelope. Kelvin Washington here, and you know who we have: We have Yvonne Villarreal, we have Mark Olsen, and you as well, so thank you for being here. Happy holidays to the both of you. First off, the green memo [gestures to Villarreal].
Mark Olsen: I feel like you guys have left me off the group text again.
Washington: We did.
Olsen: I’m not getting these messages.
Washington: By the way, tomorrow will be Christmas trees — but we’ll talk about that later. Don’t worry about that. Quickly, Christmas list. One thing you’re looking for.
Villarreal: A break. …. Sorry, I answered before you even finished.
Washington: You know our bosses and producers are looking at us right now. You deserve one. Mark, you?
Olsen: That sounds good, sure.
Washington: All right, that was it, thank you for watching this episode of … All right, let’s get into it. Yvonne, you had a chance to speak with Oscar Isaac, who’s taking on the role, of course, as Frankenstein in Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of this classic. Tell me a little bit more.
Villarreal: He plays the brilliant but egotistical scientist Victor Frankenstein, who creates life with this monstrous experiment, and the result is the Creature, played by Jacob Elordi. It was really nice speaking with Oscar about some of the themes that the film explores, the father-son dynamic and breaking cycles of generational trauma. And he was talking a lot about where he pulled from, the conversations he had with Guillermo about what they wanted to delve into. And it was really fun also hearing him talk about the rock star inspiration, for his take on Victor. So it was fun.
Washington: All right, we’re looking forward to that. We’ll get there in just a moment. Mark, I swing to you. You had a chance to speak with Wunmi Mosaku, who in my mind was the kind of the breakout star of Ryan Coogler’s vampire thriller “Sinners.” I want to hear more about what you had to talk about.
Olsen: Exactly. I mean, this has been such a breakout role for her. Obviously, the film was a huge hit when it came out earlier in a year. And she, you know, she’s been acting for years now. I think a lot of people know her for when she was on “Lovecraft Country,” another sort of horror-themed story. Here she plays Annie, the former partner of Smoke, one of the two characters by Michael B. Jordan in the film. And just on a practical level, it was great to hear her talk about working with Michael, where he’s playing these two parts and the way he made it seem so effortless to shift back and forth between them. But then also on an emotional level, you know, she was born in Nigeria, raised in England, lives here in Los Angeles, and yet she just forged such a deep personal and emotional connection to this character from 1930s Mississippi. And so to hear her talk about that, there was just something really wonderful in the conversation. It was really terrific.
Washington: This happens all the time, as you all know, that moments like this, scenes like those in the movie, like she’s gonna become someone that’s, “Hey, you know what? We need to look into her more.” So I’m happy for her to have that breakout moment. All right, without further ado, here’s Yvonne and Oscar.
Oscar Isaac in “Frankenstein.”
(Ken Woroner / Netflix)
Villarreal: Oscar, thanks so much for being here.
Isaac: Very happy to be here.
Villarreal: I have to say, driving down the 110, I came across buses with your face wrapped around them.
Isaac: I’m so sorry.
Villarreal: It was a pleasant sight in L.A. I know you encounter a level of this with each project, but this does feel a little bit different. How you’re feeling in this moment with “Frankenstein”? How do you take stock of the small moments in this big production?
Isaac: There aren’t too many small moments with this, to be honest. Everything’s very big-sized. In a way, it’s the most I’ve really done to support a movie. I’d say even more than “Star Wars” to a certain extent, because it straddles so many things. It’s a big fun popcorn movie. It’s also an intense emotional drama. It’s a platform release, a few theaters then the streaming platform itself. So there’s been a lot of things to do for that. And it can be tiring, but the thing is when it’s in service of Guillermo [del Toro, the director] and his vision and it’s his love letter to cinema, it’s the story he’s always wanted to tell — that’s an energizing thing. Being able to do it with him. And with Jacob [Elordi] and Mia [Goth].
Villarreal: Have you come across a bus with your face on it yet?
Isaac: Maybe not a bus. I’ve seen billboards. I’ve seen bus stops, but the actual moving thing itself, no, I haven’t yet.
Villarreal: I know Guillermo has said that he has long seen you as the person to play this role of Victor, even before there was a screenplay. What do you remember about that lunch you had with him? What did he say that he saw in you for this?
Isaac: I wish I could really go back and like just parse it all out. We just immediately started speaking as friends, as fellow Latinos, as immigrants trying to navigate our way through this industry, as both having very intense relationships with our fathers and the way that’s changed over time, both becoming fathers and wanting to not necessarily follow in some of the same footsteps, but also recognizing what an incredible source of of life our fathers have been. But all the pain that came from that, and forgiveness. We talked about those things without any relation to a movie in my mind. It wasn’t until after that where he started talking about this project and he said, “I think you need to play Victor Frankenstein.”
Villarreal: I feel like Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” is so steeped in the culture because the creature, the monster, is such a part of pop culture. When did you first encounter the book? Did you have to read it in high school?
Isaac: I encountered it a little later. It was shortly after high school. I wanted to have a read because it’s such a famous, legendary, iconic book. I enjoyed it, but it didn’t really hit so hard for me. When I left that that meeting, Guillermo gave me Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and the Tao Te Ching. He’s like, “Read these two books.” Going back to the book again, reading it, really hearing her voice, really hearing her voice in all of the characters — I thought that was very interesting, that everybody kind of sounds a little bit like her. And I love that Guillermo took that idea and did the same thing with his movie. He made it very autobiographical.
Villarreal: For “The Card Counter,” you also had to read a book about the way that we store trauma. Did you find yourself returning to that at any point?
Isaac: “The Body Keeps Score.” That’s right. Incredible book. I did, very much. Also, parts therapy. This idea that we’re all these different parts and different voices and we’re not any one thing. And gestalt therapy, this idea of, like, being able to hold that child-self of you that’s broken. For me, that was a very big one in thinking of the Creature. The Creature is a reconstruction of Victor’s broken child that has to chase him down to forgive him — to make him look at him, face him and forgive him.
Villarreal: Did you find that you wanted to understand both Victor and the Creature?
Isaac: Guillermo and I spoke very explicitly about the idea that they’re one and the same. That there are two halves of one full person. And that actually was really helpful in the playing of it, particularly in that one scene when the Creature comes back and demands a companion. That scene in particular was played on my part as if that’s his voice, his inner child, his addict, that darkness within him that he’s trying to suppress.
Villarreal: How did you both discuss Victor in terms of, is he a reliable narrator telling the story?
Isaac: We spoke that he’s very much an unreliable narrator. It is his remembrance. It’s a memory play. Did Elizabeth really look like his mom? Probably not, but that’s how he remembers it. That’s who he saw. And the sets are these massive archetypal Jungian visions that feel very much like they’re part of his inner conscious, his subconscious, and not so much objective reality.
Villarreal: I want to talk about the the look and vibe of Victor. I know that you’ve talked before about looking to some rock icons for inspiration, whether it’s Prince or David Bowie. I think Guillermo mentioned Mick Jagger at one point. How did you both arrive at that and what were the videos or the performances that you locked in on?
Isaac: That first meeting that we had, it wasn’t so much like he saw me and he’s like, “You’re my Victor.” It’s a conversation. And out of that conversation, inspiration starts to happen. That is what ultimately led for this thing to happening between us. And that conversation just keeps going. As he writes it, he has a few ideas, I look at a few scenes, I see where he’s going with it, we start talking about it more. He starts talking about the way he wants Victor to occupy space, especially in his memory, that he remembers himself like conducting a concert, like a rock star, like holding court and having this punk rock, iconoclastic energy. He’s like Mick Jagger. And suddenly “like Mick Jagger” becomes, “well, like a rock star.” Well, how does he move? What is it about Mick Jagger? What is it about these other musicians, these artists that that’s the form of expression to think about? Not so much the scientist or the mad scientist, but the passionate artist. Then those ideas mix with the incredible genius Kate Hawley, who does these costumes, who also is bringing in all of her ideas of punk rock in London in the ’60s and Jimi Hendrix and those bell-bottoms and those hats that have a bit of a Gothic-Romantic thing going for it. Then these little boots. And then suddenly I see these boots and I see this hat, but for me that looks more like prints to me. All these things are just conversations and pieces and things being put together that create a character. It is this amazing collaboration that happens, this collage that gives the impression of a character, and that’s really special.
Villarreal: You’re working opposite Jacob Elordi, and I think a lot of people come in with preconceived notions about maybe who he is as an actor based on his past work. He’s such a revelation in this film in terms of the work and prep that he did to get here. First, talk to me about seeing him as the Creature for the first time, but also what he was like as a scene partner.
Isaac: We only met briefly in Guillermo’s office at one point, and he seemed like a nice young fella. He had his little 35mm camera, was taking a lot of analog pictures, which was cool. And the first scene we shot was the last scene of the movie. That was the first time I saw him in the full getup. So he walked in and immediately I was really moved by how graceful he was. I remember him coming in, like, fingers first; his hands were like animals, like [a] sea anemone. There’s just like incredible movements that were happening and I found it really lonely and heartbreaking. I thought it was an amazing coincidental, if you believe in those, opportunity that that was the first scene that we were going to get to do together — the last scene, the time when these characters finally actually see each other for the first time. He was amazing and then so graceful and gentle and very emotionally available.
In between takes, I’d see this big lumbering monster taking photos with his little camera, which was incredible. What was incredible about that too is that he was loose. He was just taking everything in. And that’s a very hard thing to do in those high-pressured situations. People can kind of get, like, tunnel vision and narrow in and try just to do the thing that they want to do, but he was [operating from] open awareness, which is a place that we all hope to start from as artists.
Villarreal: Did you both have an idea of, “Do we need to approach this a certain way to be true to these characters, with the friction or tension that they have, or can we turn that off in between takes?”
Isaac: There was no need to do any of that. That would have been just extra work, more like an ego idea. It was very free on set, and that’s Guillermo; that comes from the top down. He’s ebullient, he’s joyous, he’s loud, he’s inclusive of everything. So there’s no secrets. If he likes something, everybody knows it. If he doesn’t like something, everybody knows it. Whatever he’s working on, everybody knows it. And so it feels like a team. There wasn’t really space for this kind of sheltering away or trying to manufacture some kind of dynamic.
Villarreal: Did your view or perspective on Victor shift over the course of making this film? As a son and as a father, how did you see him in the beginning and how did it change by the end?
Isaac: It’s funny because I have a lot of friends that have kids that have texted me saying, “Wow, man, that made me feel really guilty watching you do that,” because we can all think of those moments where we lose our patience and we yell or we get angry at these very innocent beings that didn’t ask to be here and yet they’re being forced to conform to these rules. And the idea that what we think is right trumps everything and that our children are just extensions of ourselves, accessories, things to be judged in relation to us, as either prideful or shameful. That horrible cycle that happens and those patterns that we fall into. So that became more and more evident, especially in those scenes with Jacob as the Creature, with the shaving and the washing and the being tired and all things that were additions from Guillermo that are not in the book. Because in the book, Victor leaves right away. But this is more of like a slow retreat from the responsibilities of bringing somebody into the world.
Villarreal: I want to unpack that more, because it’s been interesting to see the discourse online of people very much relating to this element of Guillermo’s take, the themes of generational pain and a father’s desire for redemption. Obviously, Victor is physically and emotionally abused by his father, and we see how the cycle repeats itself with the Creature. This idea of breaking generational trauma, like you said, it’s something that we try to be mindful of in how we work every day. Did you find yourself unpacking some of those emotions in the process, or is it just something that you’re sort of reflecting on now that it’s over?
Isaac: We spoke about those things at that first meeting, so that was actually like the touchstone of the whole thing. That’s what kept everything grounded. It’s a very heightened performance. It’s not naturalistic. It’s meant to be quite expressive. It also brings in modalities and forms of telenovelas and and Mexican melodrama. We watch those things very carefully to bring some of those elements out in this kind of fever dream that is this film. But we were only able to do those kinds of things knowing at the core it is about this generational trauma and this idea of what we inherit from our fathers or from our parents. And as much as we try to run away from them, we get blinded often by our own constructions of ourselves and our own egos and our own desires and are blind to repeating these exact same things again. And especially as artists — I can definitely relate to the idea of “Well, if I can just figure out this one thing, this character, this piece, if I can find the breakthrough here, then everything will make sense. Everything will be worth it, all the limbs that I’ve cut off, all the villages I’ve burned. The trail of debt I’ve left behind me will will mean something if I can figure this thing out.” Then you get to the other side of that and that’s not the answer. We very much were conscious of that.
Villarreal: I guess I ask because the interview I was referencing before, your interview with Terry Gross, which was around the time of “The Card Counter,” I was so struck by you talking about your [father and] upbringing in an evangelical household and this feeling like doom was around the corner. And I was so struck by how you talked about that. And you talked about your home in Florida being demolished by the hurricane. In my rewatch of “Frankenstein,” being focused on you and your character in particular, I was thinking about how much of that was playing in your head, especially in the scene where the place is burning down. Like, do you go directly to those kind of moments? How was it playing in your head?
Isaac: I don’t necessarily try to summon that specific moment. I think part of the preparation is reading and feeling; as I read through the script and as I think about it, where I connect with it emotionally. And sometimes if something feels far away, I do have to be like, “OK, well, how do I bridge the gap to this thing? How can I relate to it? Oh, well, I guess, yeah, I had to deal with this in my life. And how did I respond to it? Well, how would Victor respond to it? How would I respond to it if I had Victor’s circumstances?” That is some of the fun of meditating on the piece and thinking about what all the possibilities are. But with this, I didn’t find myself, like, literally reaching to stories in my past. I just allowed that to be available.
I did a bit with the last scene, thinking about, “When was the last time I was at a deathbed with a loved one?” And what was that like and what do I remember physically of that, what was the energy and what was the tone of that and how is it appropriate with this and how is it different? You use whatever’s available, and sometimes just the other person across from you is enough and sometimes you need to kind of summon it from the ancestors or from wherever to get through that performance ritual.
Villarreal: When you’re channeling those intense emotions, is it, like, hard to keep them under control sometimes for the good of the scene?
Isaac: Well, actually, that happened with this last scene. I’d spent a a day getting into that mode and summoning, and we did the scene and it was quite volatile sometimes. A lot of the emotions would come through and Guillermo would say, “OK, let’s do another one, but maybe tamp that down a little bit.” It’s like, “OK, let’s try that again.” We did it a bunch of different ways. And funny enough, even though it was a great day and everyone was happy, we ended up coming back and reshooting it. And it was done last minute. I didn’t have time to do all of this preparation, and we just went and that’s actually what ended up being in the movie. Because I wasn’t expending any energy trying to reach for something. It just was more reactive and it was a bit more sober and less an idea. It’s that balance sometimes between wanting to get to something, explore something, but also letting it go and allowing something to emerge that is not willed.
Villarreal: I want to talk more about the collaboration with Guillermo. What does that look like in practice? What is a note from him like? I saw another interview where you mostly spoke in Spanish with each other. How did that allow you to understand what he’s after more easily?
Isaac: That first meeting we only spoke in Spanish. So it set the tone. And my Spanish is good, but it’s like maybe seventh-grade vocabulary.
Villarreal: I feel a kinship.
Isaac: I would speak in Spanish to my mom. That was the person that I would only speak in Spanish to. And then when she passed eight years ago, I kind of lost that. I have my aunts and I talk to them, but it kind of starts to go away. So to suddenly have Guillermo show up, and that was the way that we really first interfaced. And with him, even though he could hear me sometimes, doing it in Spanglish or trying to get to it, he just was committed. It’s like, we speak in Spanish. He didn’t have to say it. That’s just what it is. It just created this real, almost, like, subconscious intimacy because it’s the mother tongue. That is the first thing that I heard. Even though when I learned to speak, it was in the United States, it was both always at the same time, then the English took over. But it just hits something different to have to communicate, to have to try to find a way to express myself in Spanish to Guillermo, talking about really difficult things. What would be great about it is it forced me to be simple and just, like, get to the f— point, and not like all this intellectual stuff around all these definitions and acting terms and all this. That was a really special thing.
Villarreal: We’ve talked a little bit about we’re working through, for lack of a better term, some daddy issues during the making of this. I know that “Hamlet” is such a seminal text in both your personal life and in your career. And obviously, this is a film that has parallels. With the passing of your mom, and working on this, especially with that last scene, how did you feel your mother while working on this project?
Isaac: Wow, that’s a very kind question. So, so, so much. She would have loved this movie. The last movie we saw actually was “The Handmaiden.” Super erotic too. I was like, “Mom, we’re sorry; close your eyes, Mom.” But it was so beautiful and kind of dark and opulent — she loved that stuff. She was always incredibly, incredibly present. Even the Elizabeth character — my mom had red hair as well. And this is in Mary Shelley’s text about the feminine and the masculine and those warring kind of energies. And for Victor, ironically, really tapping into more of the feminine energy with him in some ways. What he does is obviously — the penetrating nature, is a masculine thing, but at the same time, that freedom and the liquidity of that femininity was very important too. That last scene, it was interesting. That first time we did the scene, there was a lot of my mom there. Then when I had to let it go and I had to just respond, suddenly dad showed up. And that was really wild. There’s a bit of that warring energy with Victor all the time, and that was really surprising.
Villarreal: There was also the the detail that people really picked up on, which was the drinking of the milk. How did that inform you as you played Victor?
Isaac: Once his mom dies, he gets stunted. He never grows from that point on. His body grows. What he’s doing, his intellect grows, but emotionally, he stays that little boy that’s been hit in the face by his dad and rejected. And rejected by his mom because she died. It’s not rational, but that’s what it is. He’s orphaned. That’s also why mom feels so present. He’s just always looking for her. He’s always looking for her everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. The milk is just looking for her. It’s just comfort. La lechita. It’s also very funny because it’s so simple too. He likes playing with the saint-sinner thing, this guy that paints himself as the victim. He’s not a drug addict. The only thing he does is milk. And milk’s good for you, right? He starts off as Jesus Christ and ends up as Charles Manson. That’s what that milk does.
Villarreal: Do you have a sense — especially with a little bit of hindsight now, though I know you’re still in the whirlwind of it — what the character of Victor has done for you?
Isaac: What was surprising is that he is a sadist, but in like the Marquis de Sade kind of way. That wasn’t something that I thought about, but as it progressed, what was surprising to me was the pleasure that the character was giving me. For someone that is so dark and has such capacity for cruelty, the fact that he just felt so good, it was so free and so energized and kind of joyful. And I asked Guillermo at one point, I was like, “Maybe something’s wrong here? Because, like, shouldn’t it be a little darker and heavier?” He’s like, “The movie tells you what it needs.” You listen to the movie, and this is somebody that doesn’t have any doubts. And that feels pretty good to not have any doubts, until he crashes. He wakes up from this dream, this fever dream of no consequences. There’s no consequences, nothing matters, the rule of nature is dominance and cruelty, and actually pain is the same as pleasure. And the more perfect the crime, which is against something that’s virtuous and innocent, the more perfect an act that is, philosophically, nihilistically. So that is pure freedom. Pure freedom and pure pleasure, it’s like f— it. To play somebody like that, and to allow myself to be blind to the feeling of consequence and to just shoot like a rocket, that was incredibly freeing and pleasurable. Then suddenly to stop back and look back and be like, “Oh, what an awful thing. What awful things he did. He couldn’t see what he was doing.” But in the moment, that was unexpected.
Villarreal: We talked about the intensity of filming that last scene. What was the scene where you just felt so free and happy or excited?
Isaac: Creating the creature. Creating the creature was just like the rain coming down, the running up and down the stairs in the little high-heeled boots, the screaming at Christoph Waltz, you know, and his body flying down and him being like, “f— it, gotta throw him in the freezer, gotta keep this thing moving.” That energy, you know, climbing up the tower, putting the spear up there. He’s like a Gothic hero, a Gothic superhero. That kind of mutability within the character — it’s kinda like what I was saying about the artist. It’s like, “This I know; I know how to do this, and if I can do this, everything will make sense.” So that moment of just purely going for that thing, that was a really exciting moment. And also in that set, in Tamara [Deverell’s] incredible set, with Dan [Laustsen’s] lighting and Guillermo sitting there in the corner like this little crazy Mexican Buddha, just wanting more, more, more, that was electrifying. Pardon the pun.
Villarreal: I’ve wondered what it’s like walking into one of his creations, those sets. I can’t imagine. It feels like you’re in a dream.
Isaac: You do, and what’s the most incredible thing is that he’s surrounded himself with people for the last 30 years that are like an extension of himself. Through a process of elimination, he’s gotten these people that are just as passionate, just as detailed, and have ownership of the movie. The set decorator, the painter, the greens person that puts the moss in is like, “Do you see where I put the moss right there? You see the moss right there?” That kind of artisanal passion over it. So you walk in, sure, it’s inspiring for the imagination, but it’s also inspiring as a crafts person to be like, “OK, how do I bring the same amount of detail and passion and love for it?”
Villarreal: I’m asking this teasingly, but what’s the worst thing about Guillermo as a director? Is it that he wants so many takes, or is it that he just thinks you can do anything?
Isaac: I was gonna say what was challenging was to have somebody quilting the movie as we were shooting it. So that you would do a take and sometimes it would go straight into the edit and he could show you it in the movie itself. And as an actor, that could be tough because you’re like, “Oh, I’m not ready to see that yet.” But he was making it as it goes because the camera was always moving, so he needed to see that it was always connecting to the next thing. I had never experienced that before. For instance, that last scene, we did it, the next day he came in, and it was all edited with some temp score on it and I saw it, I was like, “Oh no, I don’t think that’s… “ But in that case, it was good that I saw it and had that reaction because we got to have another go at it. But it is dealing with like, “How much do I want to see? How self-conscious am I?” But it’s his openness. He’s not afraid.
Villarreal: Was he open with Jacob having his dog Layla on set?
Isaac: Yeah. That’s the thing. He was just free. He was really free. He’s like, “Whatever you need, man. Whatever anybody needs, that’s it.” He would embrace everything. Every mistake, he’d embrace.
Villarreal: Before we wrap things up, we’ve talked about swirling in this space of loss and renewal. In addition to tapping into that with “Frankenstein,” your wife, who’s a filmmaker, Elvira Lind, has this documentary, “King Hamlet,” where she documented a very transformative period in your life as you dealt with the loss of your mother, but also the birth of your child, while working on a staging of “Hamlet.” How has it been to sort of live in this space and have these parallel moments between these two projects?
Isaac: In a way, it’s like the father and the mother of these projects here. And the strange synchronicity of when they’re coming out at the same time, it’s kind of a beautiful thing, because “Frankenstein” is this massive thing, it’s very expressive, it has a lot of people, so much energy behind it. Having to do that and then flying to New York and showing a small group of people this tiny little movie made by just a handful of people, mostly my wife, this incredible documentary filmmaker, but made by her again by hand about this really small, quiet time of a play that we did that maybe a few thousand people saw, there is something quite grounding about that. It also feels generous because it’s about something that she’s made. But also it’s about showing a little peek for anybody, but also for artists as well, at what it costs sometimes and what it takes and how this particular family dealt with all this happening and the desire and the need to process it and create something out of it.
Wunmi Mosaku in “Sinners.”
(Warner Bros. Pictures)
Mark Olsen: “Sinners” obviously opened earlier in the year, and it’s really just hung in there. It’s a movie people are still talking about. What does it mean to you that the movie has already had such an enduring life?
Wunmi Mosaku: Oh, it means so much to me. I feel like you take a job because you believe in it and you trust the filmmakers and you’re excited, and then you get on set and you do your best and then all of a sudden you remember that it’s going to be out there and people are going to judge it and they might not like it and they may not like you and they might not respond to it. And we would turn to each other sometimes and be like, “Do you think they’re going to feel how we feel about this? I really hope so.” Because we really felt like it was so special. And so seeing the reaction has been so affirming and pretty magical because it’s not always the case that it translates the same as how it feels for you, that the audience feels that too.
Olsen: And what do you think it is that audiences are responding to? Mosaku: I think Ryan Coogler, his way of creating art is always based in truth and connection and honoring the people on the screen and the people that they represent in and around his life. And so I feel like people are responding to the fact that it feels truthful. Even though it’s got horror aspects and a musical aspect, it really just has heart and depth and it’s about community, it’s about freedom, it’s about the price of freedom. It’s about so many things that affect people every day. Capitalism, selling out, cultural appropriation. It’s deep and it’s layered, and it’s all rooted in truth.
Olsen: And now when you say that as you were shooting the movie, it felt special to all of you — can you describe that for me? What do you think you were feeling as you were shooting the movie?
Mosaku: I felt a deep connection to my ancestry, to my purpose, to how what I do today will reverberate in the future. My lineage, my child’s future. I just felt the film links the past to the present. It links West African traditional spirituality and it connects it to hip-hop and blues and all these different types of dance and culture. It feels kind of sprawling and encompassing of the Black diaspora experience. And it makes you feel connected to everyone in the diaspora. I felt really awakened to my position in that web of creativity. And artists like Ryan, who have this visionary, revolutionary way of creating, they just kind of feel like guiding lights, diamonds, in this web of us. It feels like, “Oh wow, he really is this jewel to be cherished, and I’m connected to that now.” So it was very multilayered, the connection I felt.
Olsen: That does sound like more than just a typical day at work. Mosaku: There was nothing typical about it. It felt like, vibrationally, it changed all of us.
Olsen: As I understand it, when you auditioned for the film, you were given this seven-page scene that introduces your character of Annie. It’s you and Michael B. Jordan’s character of Smoke, and from that scene you thought the film was a romantic drama. What did you make of it when you found out what the movie was really about?
Mosaku: Ryan explained the movie to me in and around the scene, and my mind was blown because it made complete sense, but it came completely out of left field for me. I had the themes that we see in the movie of the evolution of blues to modern-day music and ancestors and future ancestors, they weren’t quite there when he was explaining it to me, but it was there in the spirit of what he was explaining to me. So I knew it was epic and that there was depth, but then there was also vampires. I can’t explain how he explained it, but I felt the weight of all of the themes and messages, and it seemed to work with the idea of vampires coming in and taking blood. It was a surprise, but it made sense. I was completely hooked and in from the first scene, but his description, I was like, “This is genius.”
Olsen: I like the idea that you were still able to process your story in the movie, Annie’s story, as that of a romance. Even with everything else that’s happening in the film, there still is that story at the core of it. Mosaku: Because he only works with truth. Even in a fantastical world of vampires and spirits, he still works within the truth of relationships and character dynamics, and so their love is the community, the love and the bond between all of the characters, that is the heart of the movie. Sammie’s desire to leave the plantation and see the world, that’s the heart of the movie. These two people who love each other dearly and are insatiable for each other but can’t be together because of racism and the color of their skin, that heartbreak is the heart of the movie. A woman who just wants to sing and is young and is married to this old church type — that line I think is cut from the movie, but Jayme [Lawson]’s character says he’s older, church type — and she just wants to be completely free on the stage. That she gets to explore and to have this thrilling night in the community in the juke joint, I mean that’s the heart of the movie too. These relationships are the beating heart.
Olsen: But there’s something I’ve heard you talk about, that Annie relates to the character that most of us know as Smoke, as both Smoke and Elijah, his given name. Can you untangle that for me? It’s really compelling to think that she is relating to both sides of his personality. Mosaku: Well, everybody has a representative, right? Like, this is my representative. And then there’s Wunmi at home without the glam, the truth. So yes, she met Smoke. She fell in love with Smoke, but she knew Elijah. In Yoruba, we have your given name and then you get given an Oriki name, and the Oriki name is a pet name that your grandmother or your mom would call you and when they call you by that name, when you hear someone speak your Oriki name, you can’t say no. It’s like, “That person knows me like no one else, and they’ve used this name for a purpose.” So almost like Elijah is his Oriki name because everyone knows him as Smoke. He has his defenses up, he has his heart guarded, Smoke’s been through war, Smoke’s been through the gangster stuff in Chicago, but Elijah lost his daughter. So when she calls him by his name that’s like calling his Oriki. Olsen: You’ve spoken as well about how much you feel you’ve learned about yourself in playing this role, that it changed you. How so? Mosaku: I mean, even the fact that I can talk about Oriki names. I didn’t have an Oriki name. I didn’t understand the meaning of the Oriki name until I really just kind of immersed myself more in my culture that I feel like I had no choice in not being a part of. I came to England when I was 1½, and you try and assimilate, you try and fit in. And that is at the expense and the tax of your birth culture. And that’s something people don’t really pay attention to, what’s lost in order to feel safe in another culture. Researching Annie, I had to look back at where I’m from, because she’s a hoodoo priestess and hoodoo is a derivative of Ifa, and Ifa is the traditional Yoruba religion. That is where my people come from. That is part of my survival, that’s why I’m here. Their knowledge, their belief systems, that is why I’m here. And so having to research that just opened up a whole treasure trove of truth for me and inquiry and self-reflection and self-love and admiration of all the people that came before, the difficult decisions my parents made, and then the difficult decisions I’ve had to make in navigating being an immigrant in another country.
Olsen: What does it meant to you to connect with that part of yourself?
Mosaku: I’m unable to put it into words. It’s changed me profoundly. It’s changed my relationship to the world, my culture, my home. I feel inspired in so many different ways to reconnect, feel connected. I’ve been doing Yoruba lessons for five years, and only in the last year has it really stuck. And I think the sticking is because of the exploration, the real exploration, not just an intellectual “trying to learn a language.” It’s unlocked something emotionally in me. The language is sticking.
Olsen: “Sinners” is rooted so specifically in the world of the Jim Crow South here in America. Was that still something that you could relate to? Were there aspects of the story that still felt familiar to you?
Mosaku: Yeah, I can relate to being Black in America, I can relate to being Black in a different culture. But there’s a lot of research that has to be done. A lot of people in the cast were pulling upon the people that they knew in their history and their ancestry, whether it was Ryan and his uncle James who inspired the movie or Miss Ruth [E. Carter, costume designer, who] said my dress, the velvet dress was inspired by a picture of her grandma in a velvet dress on the stairs with her grandfather. They have different things they can pull on that are really from the time and the people. I do research in a different way, because I don’t have that same history to pull from, but I have an admiration and a love of the African American culture. My daughter’s African American. So I feel I have a respect and a duty to do my research, not just for my character work but for my family. I can relate to aspects, but I don’t have that shared cellular memory that the rest of the cast do.
Olsen: So what did you draw on for research? Mosaku: I spoke to hoodoo priestesses and that was really my main research, was kind of the faith, because that is who she is. That’s her foundation. And that’s her power. So that was my main research. Obviously, researching the era, Prohibition, Jim Crow South, the Great Migration. For me it’s about respect and honoring as truthfully as I can, if someone has trusted me with this role. And also I’ve said no to roles that I don’t think should be played by Black Brits or Nigerians. I’ve said no to roles that I think should be specifically for African Americans. There’s something about Annie that feels really close to me and really important to me, and I think she’s like a bridge, and I do think of myself sometimes in that way, of in the middle. I’m someone who was born in Nigeria but was never raised there, someone who was raised on a land that has never felt like my own, and then someone who’s come here and has, not inherited, but I have a daughter with this inherited history. And so I have a responsibility for her to understand all three aspects, and then I’m sure there are more aspects of her history that I am yet to figure out what they are. It’s my responsibility to understand that and guide her with it.
Olsen: When you’re shooting these kind of stories or dealing with sort of heavy topics, do you have anything that you like to do at the end of the day to pull yourself out of it?
Mosaku: I talk to my husband and I spend time with my daughter. I speak to my family. I go home.
Olsen: And I don’t think I’m spoiling anything, but I want to be sure to ask you about your last moments in “Sinners.” It’s deeply moving. You reappear in the film as a vision to Smoke. You’re nursing your infant daughter. Can you talk to me about that moment in the film and what it means to you?
Mosaku: It’s purity. He drops his representative, he drops Smoke. He has to drop Smoke in order to join us. The initial cost of this never-ending life as a vampire, it sounds like there’s a glamour to it, there’s a capitalism to it. Stack and Mary are still young and beautiful but there is such a great cost. They never get to see the sun, they never get to hold their loved ones again. And actually they’re not truly free. Whereas Smoke and Annie have chosen true freedom that fully incorporates everything that they love truly. It’s not money, it’s not eternal life, it’s not eternal darkness. They are basking in the sun with their ancestors and it’s purity, it’s love, it’s freedom.
Olsen: I have to ask you about the musical number where sort of the past and the future sort of collapse in on themselves. What did that read like in the script? And what was it like to be on set that day?
Mosaku: It read very much like it felt when you watched it. I had read a version without the future and past ancestors, where it was just about the two brothers and their women and reconnecting and it was beautiful. I loved it. And then before the read-through, we got given another draft, and it had the ancestors and the roof going on fire, and I threw the script down and I ran into my living room and was like to my husband, “Oh, my God, oh, my God, it’s amazing, it’s amazing. I think this is the most amazing thing I’ve ever read. I think it’s the most amazing thing that’s ever going to happen onscreen.” That’s how it felt. And on the day filming it, it very much felt magical. Sammie and Delta Slim have this scene where Delta talks to him about his gift and where it comes from. It comes from the homeland, it comes from your ancestors, it comes from home, Africa. And it’s such a powerful gift and to really guard it with all he has. Then Miles [Caton], who plays Sammie, is talking to the the older guy, Papa Toto, who plays his past ancestor. Who has the little guitar behind him, I don’t know what it’s called, like the original guitar. And he’s behind him in the scene, and then I kind of wander over to them, and Papa Toto basically does the exact same speech, never having read the script, to Miles about his gift and where it comes from and like how he should cherish it and keep it protected. That’s what they’re both talking about, protecting their gifts. And I was just like, “Oh, my gosh, this is magical. He doesn’t even know that this is the scene in the script.” It was a really special day.
Olsen: I’m going to ask this as politely as I can, but I found “Sinners” to be a much bawdier movie, it’s a much more sensual and sexy movie, than I expected. I’m curious how you found those scenes in the script and in particular what it was like for you shooting your scene with Michael.
Mosaku: It explores so many different emotions and feelings. It feels palpable, it feels tangible, it feels like it’s pulsing. It also feels kind of inevitable. Again, it just felt true, and it wasn’t difficult because we created such a safe space for everyone, and there’s no nudity in it, and it just feels really sensual and safe.
Olsen: What was it like shooting scenes with Michael where he’s playing both Stack and Smoke? I would imagine just him having to switch out for the scenes, how did that impact the rhythm and the momentum for the rest of you? Mosaku: It was pretty easy for us, honestly. We didn’t have to do anything. Michael had a stand-in, Percy Bell, and both would learn both twins’ lines, and then Michael would shoot as Stack, and Percy would do Smoke, and we would lock this, we would rehearse it, rehearse it, rehearse it, and then shoot it, shoot it, shoot it, find the one we liked and lock it. So then, if this is Percy and this is Stack, what they would do is he would go get changed, be Smoke, and we would kind of mime the scene. It was really harder for Mike, I don’t know how he did it. We would kind of mime the scene. They would play the scene back so he was responding to us in the real time of the scene that they had chosen. That was it. That was the only scene that we were going with. And then he would trace Percy’s steps and physique to make sure he wouldn’t step on Stack or whatever. So it was very easy for us. Like, we just had to play the scene. And I honestly don’t know how Mike did it. I have no idea how he did it.
Olsen: What has the response to the movie been like for you professionally? Do you find that you’ve gotten some offers? Are you finding yourself in rooms that maybe you wouldn’t have been in before? Mosaku: Everyone has been so complimentary and lovely about the movie. I think work has come from it, and I was in a room at the Governors Awards with Tom Cruise and Debbie Allen and Phylicia Rashad. I was like, “Well, this is new.” Me, Jayme [Lawson], Hailee [Steinfeld] got awarded one of the Elle Women in Hollywood awards yesterday, which was again really surreal, like, “Oh, hey, Jennifer Aniston. Hey, Rose Byrne. Hey, everyone. Hi, we’re in this room with you. Cool.” So a lot of really lovely things have come of it. Very grateful.
Olsen: And what does it mean to you that it’s for this movie in particular? Mosaku: This is the movie that just keeps on giving. I loved it from the first time I read those seven pages and I have grown as a person, as an actor, as a mom, as a wife. And now I’m experiencing this, which is really lovely, really nice. Olsen: You also have an upcoming role in “The Social Reckoning,” Aaron Sorkin’s sequel to “The Social Network.” Is there anything you can tell us about your role in the movie? Mosaku: I have no idea what I’m allowed to say about it. I’ve not been prepped on press for that yet, so I’m sorry. Olsen: You shot your part? Mosaku: I’ve shot a lot.
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Arcade Fire’s Will Butler knows about volatile bands. Cue ‘Stereophonic’
The singer of the band lights up a cigarette and smoke drifts into the theater. Ditto for the pungent aroma of marijuana when a few band members share a joint. “Stereophonic,” which is playing at the Hollywood Pantages through Jan. 2, isn’t biographical, but it sure feels close.
The authenticity springs in part from the quality of the songs being recorded by the fictional band on stage, which were written by Will Butler, a multi-instrumentalist and former member of the Grammy Award-winning band Arcade Fire.
“Stereophonic,” which holds the record for the most Tony nominations of all time for a play, unfolds over the course of a single year as a rock band on the cusp of megastardom struggles to record its second album as the first reaches No. 1 on the charts. While the pressure to produce a hit builds, the band falls apart. For proof of the formula’s resilience, look no further than the success of VH1’s “Behind the Music” series, which plumbed the depths of dozens of rock ’n’ roll train wrecks.
“We really tried to just make something real,” Butler said during an interview in the small, cluttered green room at Amoeba Music before he joined the cast of the show for a brief in-store performance. “This is three hours of what it’s like to make a record.”
Is it ever. There is something inherently combustible about being in a band. (Full disclosure: I played in a semi-popular indie band for a decade, which imploded with huge amounts of drama right on cue. I know at least a dozen other groups that have unraveled in similar fashion.) Despite, or rather because of, Arcade Fire’s massive popularity, Butler knows the crash-and-burn nature of being in a band. He joined Arcade Fire after one of its original members quit in the middle of an encore following a fight with the lead singer — Butler’s older brother, Win Butler.
Will Butler left Arcade Fire at the end of 2021, saying at the time that the decision came about organically. “There was no acute reason beyond that I’ve changed — and the band has changed — over the last almost 20 years. Time for new things,” he wrote on social media.
Will Butler performs at Amoeba Music with Claire DeJean and the stars of the Broadway tour of “Stereophonic,” which follows the rise of a struggling 1970s rock band.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
“Stereophonic” was one of those new things, and Butler has brought his understanding of volatile band dynamics to bear in his work on the show, as well as his thoughts on the fragile, ephemeral nature of recording in a studio.
“There’s a little booth, and you go into the booth and you lose your mind,” Butler said of the experience of laying down a track. “And you exit the booth and you’re just a boring human.”
The boring — and boorish — parts of that humanity are on display in “Stereophonic,” where there is more control room conflict than actual music making. This also feels true to form. Romances blossom and bottom out in spectacular fashion. Drugs are consumed in copious amounts — particularly cocaine. This is 1976, after all. The long-suffering recording engineer reaches his breaking point after becoming totally fed up with the band’s self-absorbed, self-destructive behavior.
Human beings weren’t meant to create art in this particular kind of pressure cooker. Until they do. There is a moment in the making of every great song when each musician becomes part of the whole during the act of recording, and the band’s genius is temporarily realized. The song can’t be made by any one member — it can only come from the spontaneous transcendence of the group.
This moment happens in “Stereophonic” after a truly frustrating number of stops and starts, when the group plays a song so beautifully that the theater erupts in effusive applause. This is why the band stays together despite its constant feuding — and why the audience has come.
“We really tried to just make something real,” Will Butler said of “Stereophonic.” “This is three hours of what it’s like to make a record.”
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
“The music in this show has to crack open the world because it’s so much talking and it’s so much sitting around,” Butler said. “And then when they play music, you have to instantly realize why they’re together.”
Butler first met playwright David Adjmi and heard his idea for the show in 2014. Butler was intrigued, but had to wait for the script before he could work on the music in earnest. The songs needed to fit into the script like puzzle pieces, Butler said. Sometimes he needed to write a whole song and other times he needed to focus on composing the first 30 seconds of a song — which would be heard on repeat.
“And then we cast it, and now the music exists in a different way,” Butler said, noting that the music changes with every new cast. A cast — like a band — has its own particular strengths and weaknesses. No rhythm section is ever the same. You know John Bonham’s tom fills when you hear them, just as you can immediately recognize the sound of Ringo Starr’s hi-hats.
None of the actors in the national tour cast of “Stereophonic” — except for the drummer — are trained musicians.
(Julieta Cervantes)
The whole process of constructing “Stereophonic” as a play is very meta — with Butler producing the band that is in turn producing itself onstage in the studio. During the course of the show, one of the songs is actually recorded live and played back from the control room. It is slightly different each time, in ways both meaningful and incidental. Just like in real life.
The in-store performance at Amoeba, however, is wildly different from what happens onstage at the Pantages. The cast members are not — with the exception of the drummer — trained musicians, and stripped of the confidence that comes with costumes and a set, they appear somewhat vulnerable in the process.
This is in stark contrast to Butler, who displays all the verve and conviction of a bona fide rock star. The cast will do the same across the street later that night. For the moment, however, Butler is showing them just how it’s done.
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Rob Reiner’s humanity was a signature of his work on TV and film
Rob Reiner was a movie director who began as an actor who wanted to direct movies. The bridge between these careers was “This Is Spinal Tap” in 1984, his first proper film, in which he also acted. His original inclination, based on the music documentaries he had studied, had been not to appear onscreen, but he decided there was practical value in greeting the audience with a face familiar from eight seasons of “All in the Family” as Archie Bunker’s left-wing son-in-law, Michael “Meathead” Stivic.
Reiner’s television career began at 21, partnered with Steve Martin, writing for “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.” As an actor, his early years were characterized by the small parts and guest shots that describe the early career of many performers we come to know well. He played multiple characters on episodes of “That Girl” and “Gomer Pyle, USMC,” a delivery boy on “Batman,” and appeared on “The Andy Griffith Show” and “Room 222.” His last such role, in 1971, the same year “All in the Family” premiered, was on “The Partridge Family” as a tender-hearted, poetry-writing, tattooed biker who becomes attached to Susan Dey‘s character and somewhat improbably takes her to a school dance. It’s a performance that prefigures the tenderness and humanity that would become a signature of his work as a writer, director and performer — and, seemingly, a person.
On “All in the Family,” in his jeans and work shirt, with a drooping mustache that seemed to accentuate a note of sadness, Reiner largely played the straight man, an irritant to Carroll O’Connor’s Archie Bunker, teeing up the issue-oriented dialectic. Once in a while he’d be given a broad comic meal to chew, as when wife Gloria (Sally Struthers) goes into labor while they’re out for dinner, and he accelerates into classic expectant-father sitcom panic. But minus the “Meathead” material, “All in the Family” is as much a social drama as it is a comedy, with Mike and Gloria struggling with money, living with her parents, new parenthood, and a relationship that blows hot and cold until it finally blows out for good. He’s not a Comic Creation, like Archie or Edith with their malaprops and mispronunciations, or even Gloria, but his importance to the storytelling was certified by two supporting actor Emmys.
Rob Reiner, Sally Struthers, Caroll O’Connor and Jean Stapleton in a scene from Norman Lear’s television series “All in the Family.”
(Bettmann Archive via Getty Image)
What Reiner carried from “Family” into his later appearances was a sort of bigness. He could seem loud — and loudness is something Norman Lear’s shows reveled in — even when he’s speaking quietly. Physically he occupied a lot of space, more as time went on, and beginning perhaps with “Spinal Tap,” in which he played director Marty DiBergi, he transformed tonally into a sort of gentle Jewish Buddha. In the 2020 miniseries “Hollywood,” Ryan Murphy’s alternate history of the 1930s picture business, the studio head he plays is not the desk-banger of cliche, but he is a man with an appetite. (“Get me some brisket and some of those cheesy potatoes and a lemon meringue pie,” he tells a commissary waiter — against doctor’s orders, having just emerged from a heart attack-induced coma. “One meal’s not going to kill me.”) He’s the boss, but, in a scene as lovely as it is historically unlikely, he allows his wife (Patti LuPone), who has been running things during his absence, to also be the boss.
Reiner left “All in the Family” in 1978, after its eighth season to explore life outside Michael Stivic. (In 1976, while still starring on “Family,” he tested those waters, appearing on an episode of “The Rockford Files” as a narcissistic third-rate football player.) “Free Country,” which he co-created with frequent writing partner Phil Mishkin, about a family of Lithuanian immigrants in the early 1900s, aired five episodes that summer. The same year, ABC broadcast the Reiner-Mishkin-penned TV movie “More Than Friends” (available on Apple TV) in which Reiner co-starred with then-wife Penny Marshall. Directed by James Burrows, whose dance card would fill up with “Taxi,” “Cheers” and “3rd Rock From the Sun,” it’s in some respects a dry run for Reiner’s “When Harry Met Sally…,” tracking a not-quite-romantic but ultimately destined relationship across time.
Future Spinal Tap lead singer Michael McKean appears there as a protest singer, while the 1982 CBS TV movie “Million Dollar Infield,” written again with Mishkin, features Reiner alongside future Spinal Tap lead guitarist Christopher Guest and bassist Harry Shearer; it’s a story of baseball, families and therapy. Co-star Bruno Kirby the year before had co-written and starred in Reiner’s directorial debut, “Tommy Rispoli: A Man and His Music,” a short film that aired on the long-gone subscription service On TV as part of the “Likely Stories” anthology. Kirby’s character, a Frank Sinatra-loving limo driver (driving Reiner as himself), found its way into “This Is Spinal Tap,” though here he is the center of a Reineresque love story.
After “Spinal Tap,” as Reiner’s directing career went from strength to strength, he continued to act in other people’s pictures (“Sleepless in Seattle,” “Primary Colors,” “Bullets Over Broadway” and “The Wolf of Wall Street,” to name but a few) and some of his his own, up to this year’s “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues.” On television, he mostly played himself, which is to say versions of himself, on shows including “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and, of all things, “Hannah Montana,” with a few notable exceptions.
Rob Reiner and Jamie Lee Curtis play the divorced parents of Jess (Zooey Deschanel) in Fox’s “New Girl.”
(Ray Mickshaw / Fox)
The most notable of these, to my mind, is “New Girl,” in which Reiner appeared in 10 episodes threaded through five of the series’ seven seasons, as Bob Day, the father of Zooey Deschanel’s Jess. Jamie Lee Curtis, married to Guest in the real world, played his ex-wife, Joan, with Kaitlin Olson as his new, much younger partner, Ashley, who had been in high school with Jess. He’s positively delightful here, whether being overprotective of Deschanel or suffering her ministrations, dancing around Curtis, or fencing with Jake Johnson’s Nick. Improvisational rhythms characterize his performance, whether he’s sticking to the script or not. Most recently, he recurred in the fourth season of “The Bear,” which has also featured Curtis, mentoring sandwich genius Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson); their scenes feel very much like what taking a meeting with Reiner might be like.
Coincidentally, I have had Reiner in my ear over the past couple of weeks, listening to the audiobook version of “A Fine Line: Between Stupid and Clever,” which he narrates with contributions from McKean, Shearer and Guest. A story of friendship and creativity and ridiculousness, all around a wonderful thing that grew bigger over the years, Reiner’s happy reading throws this tragedy into sharper relief. I have a DVD on the way, though I don’t know when I’ll be up to watching it. I only know I will.
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‘SNL’ recap: Josh O’Connor plays a stripper, Lily Allen’s ‘Madeline’ surprise
“Saturday Night Live” hosts typically make their mark on the show, either by boosting the sketches they’re in with charm and good timing, or making a lesser kind of mark by awkwardly revealing why they aren’t right for live sketch comedy.
So what are we supposed to make of British actor Josh O’Connor, who hosted “SNL” for the first time and left almost no impression at all?
O’Connor, known for playing Prince Charles in “The Crown” and for performances in “Challengers” and the new Netflix movie, “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” seemed game enough, but throughout most of the show, he had little opportunity to do much more than blend into sketches centered around characters he was not playing.
He played supporting parts including the Tin Man in a revamped “Wizard of Oz” sketch involving the male characters deciding they actually want a “big old thang” instead of their original wishes, a fellow student in a sketch about a 12-year-old college prodigy (Bowen Yang), Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in a Christmas characters piece that was a take on Variety’s “Actors on Actors,” and an awkward brunch attendee.
Only in a few sketches, including a “Dating Game” parody featuring Ashley Padilla as a rowdy 84-year-old contestant, a hospital sketch in which he played a bad intern, and one in which O’Connor and Ben Sherman played sensitive male strippers at a bachelorette party did he have lead roles. And they weren’t particularly memorable characters or portrayals. Only when he kissed fellow cast members at the end of sketches (Yang and Sherman) did things seem to liven up.
In fact, it felt more like a spotlight episode for Yang — who played the Wizard; the fast-talking, high-attitude Doctor Please in the hospital sketch; and the 12-year-old college student — and for musical guest Lily Allen. Allen’s scathing performances of “Sleepwalking” and “Madeline” from her new breakup-with-David Harbour album were high drama. The latter song featured a big surprise: actor Dakota Johnson spoke from behind a scrim as the titular character and then appeared next to Allen when the song ended. Another Allen song, “West End Girl,” was the subject of an entire brunch sketch in which cast members sang about their feelings to the tune of the music. Allen showed up as herself, but filling in as a waitress at their table.
It’s hard to say if the material just misfired for O’Connor or if he’s just an awkward fit for “SNL,” but unfortunately what stood out in the episode had little to do with him.
In addition to the sketches, this “SNL” episode included a Christmas-themed “Brad and His Dad” animated short.
Ready for another President Trump-centered cold open? Sorry, you got one anyway. James Austin Johnson once again aced his impression of Trump with a stream-of-conscious ramble for reporters aboard Air Force One that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt (Ashley Padilla) attributed to exhaustion. “I took an Ambien and an Adderall, let’s see which one wins,” said Trump before inappropriately fixating on Leavitt’s lips and denying that affordability is a problem. “Economy is very strong,” he said, “from the billionaires all the way down to the poor millionaires.” Trump addressed attacks on Venezuelan ships, saying, “We’re doing pirate now, argh,” and promising that attacks would move from the sea to the air, leading to a visual joke of Santa Claus and his reindeer on radar being shot out of the sky.
O’Connor’s monologue focused on two things those unfamiliar with his acting should know about him: that he has a reputation as a “soft boy,” someone who embroiders, scrapbooks and gardens like an “average 65-year-old woman.” The other is that he resembles chef Linguini from the Pixar film “Ratatouille,” and though a rumor that he wanted to play the character in a live-action version was unfounded, he would very much like to play that character. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “I would kill as Linguini.”
Best sketch of the night: You ate how many nuggets this year?
Even though it’s already well-trod meme material (including an almost identical comic strip’s premise), “SNL” was still able to squeeze some juice from Spotify’s Wrapped, a year-in-review feature, which returned for another round earlier in the week. Uber Eats has a year-in-review, too, and you absolutely don’t want your significant other to see what fast food you’ve ordered and whether you’re in the top 1% of nugget eaters. If your Uber Eats age is “52 and Fat,” it may not be knowledge you wish to have. The mock commercial does a great job balancing the shame we feel about the awful foods we eat with the amount of data we could learn about those habits, if only anyone ever wanted to see that.
Also good: These kind male strippers give the best empathy hugs
A bachelorette party at a cozy cabin is interrupted by two hired male strippers, Augie and Remington (Sherman and O’Connor), who ask for consent before entering and are soon removing their cardigans to reveal another layer of cardigan. The men dance to an emo version of “Pony” before revealing that one of them has a Zohran (Mamdani) tattoo on his stomach. They give lap dances, but one of them gets overstimulated and cries. “I was just thinking about the Supreme Court,” he moans. Not the most original sketch idea, but the specific details of the characters and Padilla’s smitten reactions as the bachelorette saved the sketch from overstaying its welcome.
‘Weekend Update’ winner: Superheroes, Santa and your boss all want you to behave
Jane Wickline did a nice job with a surprisingly violent original song about stopping the biggest threat facing the world: not AI, but the grown-up child actors from “Stranger Things.” But it was Marcello Hernández who got big laughs recounting what Christmas is like for his Cuban family. It includes dealing with new boyfriends of family members pretending to be who they aren’t. “You don’t like the food, Kyle, you like having sex with my cousin!” Hernández wandered a bit, straying to talk about “Home Alone” and uncles who give unsolicited sex advice, but the heart of the segment was impressions of his father calling to encourage his son as different characters including Santa Claus, Spider-Man and his boss, Lorne Michaels.
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Jarred Vanderbilt hoping for an opportunity to help Lakers on defense
Perhaps Jarred Vanderbilt and his ability to defend can help the Lakers and their reeling defense.
Perhaps Vanderbilt can return to the rotation to help the Lakers’ defensive woes while guard Austin Reaves is out for approximately a week because of a mild left calf strain.
And perhaps Vanderbilt and the Lakers can get some immediate results for shoring up their defensive shortcomings when they face the Suns in Phoenix on Sunday afternoon.
The 6-foot-8 Vanderbilt is hopeful that his opportunity will come against the Suns and he turns that into a positive for the Lakers.
“Oh, yeah, I’m pretty eager,” he said after practice Saturday. “I mean, obviously, I think a lot of the stuff we lack, I think I can help provide on that end.”
In the last 10 games, Vanderbilt had only a three-minute stint against the Philadelphia 76ers because Jake LaRavia took a shot to the face that loosened a tooth.
The return of LeBron James and Vanderbilt’s offensive deficiencies left him out of the rotation. During much of that time the Lakers were winning, which meant Vanderbilt spent time on the bench.
In 15 games, Vanderbilt is three for 10 (26.6%) from three-point range. He was asked how he has been handling things.
“Good,” Vanderbilt said. “Controlling what I can control. Keep showing up to work, doing my part, supporting the team.”
Vanderbilt was asked if coach JJ Redick or any assistants have spoken to him about his role.
“Kind of here and there, I guess,” Vanderbilt said.
Vanderbilt was seen after practice Saturday working with an assistant coach on his shooting, just like he did after practice Friday and like he has done while not playing.
Redick said Reaves, who played against the San Antonio Spurs on Wednesday night, wasn’t sure when the calf became an issue, and “we’re obviously gonna be cautious with it.”
“It’s a mild strain, Grade 1, and he’ll be out for a week,” Redick said, adding, “I would venture to say every player is a little bit different, but players now are becoming more cautious — to use that word again — more cautious when they get those diagnosis with the calf. Everything looks clean. It’s not in the deep part.”
The Lakers have looked at the last 10 games during the film sessions as a barometer for their defensive problems. But in reality, the Lakers have not been very good on defense all season while producing a 17-7 record because of their stellar offense.
“It’s been a trending thing even when we was winning, so I think like you said, the defense still wasn’t there, but we was just outscoring everybody,” Vanderbilt said. “So, I think obviously during the loss, it’s an appropriate time to address certain things just so it won’t keep lingering and get worse.”
The Lakers are 18th in the NBA in points given up (116.8), 22nd in opponents’ field-goal percentage (48.1%) and 27th in opponents’ three-point shooting (38.2%).
They will face a Suns team that defeated them Dec. 1 at Crypto.com Arena. The Lakers were unable to stop Collin Gillesipie, who had 28 points and was eight for 14 from three-point range, and Dillon Brooks, who had 33 points.
It hasn’t gotten better in the ensuing days. The Spurs loss was the Lakers’ third in the last five games.
“Nobody likes to go watch film after you get your ass kicked,” guard Marcus Smart said. “It’s tough because the film never lies. And it exposed us a lot, which we already knew. We were just winning a lot of games. So it was mitigated that way, but it was straight to it: We have to be able to guard.
“The scouting report against us is we’re not guarding people. And if we want to be great in this league and do what we’re trying to do, you have to be able to guard, especially in the West. These guys are no joke, and they’re coming. And especially [if] you got the Lakers across your jersey. They’re definitely coming with everything they have. So you can’t be expecting any surprises. And that’s what it was. It wasn’t no sugarcoating anything. It was, ‘This is what we got to do.’ We’ve been asked. Let’s fix it.”
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‘Dust Bunny’ review: Mads Mikkelsen plays a helpful killer in a dark fantasy
TV legend Bryan Fuller, known for his cult classics “Pushing Daisies” and “Hannibal,” just earned an Independent Spirit Award nomination for first feature. It’s somehow a surprise that the well-known creator just directed his first movie, after spending almost three decades working in television on series like “Dead Like Me” and “American Gods.” Now he turns to the world of indie film, reuniting with actor Mads Mikkelsen, his Hannibal Lecter, on the dark fairy tale “Dust Bunny.”
Fuller has a thing for idioms, extending them to their most extreme ends (e.g., “pushing daisies”), and so in “Dust Bunny,” he imagines what those bits of fluff could be if our nightmares came to life. He also posits an outlandish notion: What if a kid hired an assassin to kill the monster under her bed?
Aurora (Sophie Sloan) is an imaginative young girl who hears things that roar and scream in the night. The dust bunny under her bed is a ravenous, monstrous thing. When her parents go missing, she’s convinced they’ve been eaten by the monster bunny, and seeks out the services of an “intriguing neighbor” (Mikkelsen, that’s how he’s credited) whom she has seen vanquishing dragons in the alley outside. With a fee that she purloins from a church collection plate, she implores him for help and he agrees, as he learns more about this young girl’s challenging childhood.
At first, “Dust Bunny” feels a little light, the story skittering across its densely designed surface, with very little dialogue in the first half. But it grows and grows, more bits and pieces accumulating as Fuller reveals this strange, heightened world. We meet Intriguing Neighbor’s handler, Laverne (Sigourney Weaver), revealing the larger Wickian world of killers that he inhabits.Weaver chomps through her scenes like the monster bunny chomps through the floorboards — literally, as she consumes charcuterie, dumplings and “suckling pig tea sandwiches” with gusto. Some monsters grin at us from across the table.
The film is essentially “Leon: The Professional” meets “Amélie” (one of Fuller’s favorite films), but with his distinct wit and flair. That style also means that “Dust Bunny” is quite fussy and mannered and if you don’t buy in on the film’s arch humor and stylized world, you’re liable to bounce right off of it. As Fuller opens the world up, revealing a sly FBI agent (Sheila Atim) and more baddies (David Dastmalchian, Rebecca Henderson), the plot becomes more intriguing beyond its unwieldy childhood-trauma metaphor, but there’s also not quite enough embroidered on this tapestry. It feels shallow, not fleshed out.
Fuller demonstrates a strong command over his visual domain but the pat allegory he presents about the monsters with whom we have to learn to live feels a bit muddled. Sloan and Mikkelsen are terrific together, but you feel that there is much more they could have sunk their teeth into here, and perhaps the limits of the tale reveal the limits of the budget, carefully wallpapered over with opulent production design — explosions of patterns and color crafted by Jeremy Reed, captured with shadowy but lush cinematography by Nicole Hirsch Whitaker.
It’s a first feature that feels like one — a bit of a surprise from someone so experienced. But the project has Fuller’s signature style, even if it doesn’t add up to much more than a neat kiddie-centric hard-R genre exercise.
Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.
‘Dust Bunny’
Rated: R, for some violence
Running time: 1 hour, 46 minutes
Playing: In wide release Friday, Dec. 12
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How Dodgers landed Edwin Díaz — and finally found a bona fide closer
At the start of the winter, the assumption was that top free-agent closer Edwin Díaz would fall out of the Dodgers’ preferred price range.
Knowing they needed bullpen help, however, the Dodgers decided to reach out with interest anyway.
What followed will go down as one of the most surprising outcomes of this MLB offseason. And, for the Dodgers, their latest in a string of big-name, star-player acquisitions.
Even though the Dodgers initially had doubts about their chances of landing Díaz — especially on the kind of relatively shorter-term deal they were seeking in their hunt for relief help — circumstances changed, Díaz’s market evolved, and they went from dark horse to front-runner.
On Friday, it all culminated in a Dodger Stadium news conference, the once-unexpected union between the two-time defending champions and three-time All-Star right-hander being made official as Díaz’s three-year, $69-million contract was finalized.
“It wasn’t easy,” Díaz said of his free agent process, which ended with him leaving the New York Mets after a decorated seven-year stint. “I spent seven years in New York. They treated me really good. They treated me great. But I chose the Dodgers because they are a winning organization. I’m looking to win, and I think they have everything to win. So picking the Dodgers was pretty easy.”
That didn’t mean it came as any less of a surprise.
Early on this winter, the Dodgers signaled a hesitancy to hand out another long-term contract to a reliever, after watching Tanner Scott struggle in the first season of the four-year, $72-million deal he signed last winter.
And though they gradually grew more open to the idea, giving serious consideration to Devin Williams before he signed a three-year, $51-million deal with the Mets two weeks ago, the thought of landing Díaz seemed far-fetched.
After all, the 31-year-old was widely expected to receive a four- or five-year deal, having already opted out of the remaining two seasons on his record-breaking five-year, $102-million contract with the Mets to become a free agent this winter. Also, since he had turned down a qualifying offer from the Mets at the start of the offseason, the Dodgers knew they’d lose two draft picks (their second- and fifth-highest selections) to sign him.
“We checked in from the get-go,” general manager Brandon Gomes said. But, he acknowledged, “the opportunity to add somebody of this caliber to what’s already a really talented bullpen was something that we weren’t sure was going to be able to actually come to fruition.”
Turned out, a few factors were working in the Dodgers’ favor.
First, the Mets weren’t willing to give Díaz a longer-term deal, either. Instead, in the wake of the Williams signing, they were reportedly offering only three years for a similar salary as the Dodgers. Not coincidentally, it was only entering last week’s winter meetings — mere days after Williams’ Dec. 3 agreement with the Mets — that Gomes said talks started to intensify.
“Having those conversations and making sure you’re in there and [letting him know], ‘Hey, we’re really valuing you, and if things make sense on your end, great, we’re here’ — that was the biggest thing,” Gomes said. “Making sure you’re exploring all avenues, because you don’t know how things are gonna play out.”
Another benefit for the Dodgers: They had advocates close to Díaz vouching for the organization.
The Dodgers’ new star closer, Edwin Díaz, speaks at his introductory news conference on Friday at Dodger Stadium.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Díaz said he received rave reviews about the club from both his brother Alexis (who spent most of last year with the Dodgers, after they acquired him from Cincinnati following an early-season demotion to the minors) and his Team Puerto Rico teammate Kiké Hernández (a longtime Dodgers fan favorite who is currently a free agent).
“They treat every single player the same,” Díaz said of the message he received. “That’s really nice, [especially] knowing they have a lot of great players, future Hall of Fame players. … That’s really good. That’s how a winning clubhouse is.”
Ultimately, it all led up to a rather swift signing process on Tuesday morning, one in which the Dodgers gave Díaz the highest average annual salary for a reliever in MLB history ($23 million per year) but kept the terms to three years and were able to defer more than $13 million of the total guarantee.
“I think once Devin came off the board, it was like, ‘OK, let’s continue to explore the different options,’” Gomes said. “Obviously having no idea what conversations had gone on up to that point between Edwin and other clubs, it was more about: ‘Hey, we’re here if there’s something that makes sense. And we would love to have you join our group.’ And fortunately enough, everybody’s interests were aligned on that.
“That’s why you shouldn’t play the game of assumptions, and just do the due diligence on the front end,” Gomes added. “Sometimes things work out, sometimes they don’t. But having those conversations and making sure you’re doing the work that’s needed to really understand the situation is important, especially when you see situations like this play out.”
Now, the Dodgers will put their faith in Díaz to play a leading role in their quest for a World Series three-peat.
He will be the club’s designated closer — a role they have been hesitant to bestow upon any one reliever since the departure of Kenley Jansen (the only MLB reliever with more saves than Díaz since his debut in 2016).
“For us, we have a high bar. To name someone the closer, you have to be one of the best. You have to be elite and dominant at what you do,” president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said.
The team’s expectation is that Díaz’s presence will elevate the rest of the bullpen, too, giving a more defined late-game structure to a relief corps that ranks just 21st in the majors in ERA last season.
“It allows Doc and our coaching staff to kind of put guys into spots leading up to that,” Gomes said, “knowing that it doesn’t really matter who’s in the ninth, that we’re gonna like the matchup.”
Perhaps the biggest news from Friday’s introduction: Díaz still plans to enter games to his iconic walk-out song, “Narco” by Timmy Trumpet — which Gomes described as “probably the most electric walkout song in the game.”
“I can’t wait, the first game of the season, coming in the ninth with Timmy Trumpet and getting the W for the Dodgers,” Díaz said.
A few weeks ago, that scene felt like an unlikely vision.
But now, anytime the sounds of trumpets echo around Chavez Ravine in the summers to come, they will serve as a reminder of the team’s latest free-agent coup — one more unexpected than almost all the rest.
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How to have the best Sunday in L.A., according to Aparna Nancherla
An exciting Sunday for Aparna Nancherla is a Sunday without much excitement. “My cortisol runs high without anything happening, so I’m trying to get it down,” she says.
Eliminating stress was part of the reason the comedian moved back to Los Angeles in 2023, after over a decade in New York City, where she wrote for “Late Night With Seth Meyers” and “Totally Biased With W. Kamau Bell,” appeared in TV series like “Search Party” and burnished her stand-up comedy career.
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.
“I’m a little bit of a hermit, and just wanted some more trees and a little more space,” Nancherla says.
Nancherla’s book of essays, “Unreliable Narrator: Me, Myself and Impostor Syndrome” was also released in 2023. In it, she examined her emotionally fraught relationship with stand-up. After a break, she recently brought her understated approach back to the form and her new special, “Hopeful Potato,” is available on the comedy streaming service Dropout starting Dec. 15.
She likes to spend her Sundays mostly engaging in familiar routines, though she’ll pursue a little bit of discovery around town.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
10 a.m.: Late riser
I would like to be someone who wakes up around 7 to 8 a.m., but I am waking up probably in the 9 to 10 a.m. vicinity. I would wake earlier, but I think in a past life I was a two-toed sloth or something because I’m nocturnal and I move very slowly. It takes me a lot of time to ease into a different state of being — sleep to wake, wake to sleep. Pretty much any transition I’m bad with.
Being a stand-up doesn’t help. A lot of my job is oriented toward night, but even before comedy, something about the night called to me. It’s not necessarily the healthiest behavior, but thus far I haven’t been able to change my ways.
10:15 a.m.: Morning rituals
I’m someone who falls into doing rituals for a while, almost obsessively, until I replace them with different ones. Lately my ritual is as soon as I get up and brush my teeth and wash my face, I will put on a song and dance to it and do some stretching. I tend toward depression and anxiety, so dancing is an easy way to immediately get your endorphins and it doesn’t feel like as much of a demand as going for a jog.
It’s literally three minutes of a song and then I will try to meditate. My mom recommended doing 20 minutes of meditation, but I feel like 10 is where I’m landing. My attention span is so bad lately that it really is just me closing my eyes and composing emails that I’ll forget to send rather than attuning to some higher power.
11 a.m.: Chasing waterfalls
I’m lucky in that I live near three botanic gardens, so I really have my pick, but I got a membership to the Arboretum because I like that they have peacocks.
They also have a giant waterfall. I’m trying to form a walk where I will eventually end up there. They have a few really nice spots where you can chill out near the waterfall, so I’m probably just sitting, maybe journaling, kind of enjoying the ambience.
I don’t know if there’s a word for someone who’s in love with waterfalls, but I really like them. Apparently there is among [the cable channel] TLC’s vast array of offerings, a program where people are in love with inanimate objects, like cars and bridges, and they want a romantic, sexual relationship with these things. I just want to say that that’s not how I approach a waterfall, but I do deeply care for them as a friend.
1 p.m.: Aspiring regular
I really like Lemon Poppy Kitchen in Glassell Park. Every time I’ve been there, I’ve seen the same people, so I don’t know how many times it takes for you to become a regular, but I guess I’m an aspiring regular there. They have a scramble I really like. It’s not too crazy, it’s a Cali scramble. They also have some Eastern European-y things. They have some kind of polenta dish with eggs. It has a little bit of sauerkraut. I like what they’re doing with their brunch direction.
3 p.m.: Reading is fundamental
I’m a big books person. There are so many independent bookstores I want to mention. I really like North Figueroa Bookshop in Highland Park. They feature a bunch of independent presses.
I love Sierra Madre. It’s such a walkable neighborhood. They have a bookstore called Fables and Fancies. They have a tree inside — who doesn’t like that?
There’s also one called DYM Books & Boba in North Pasadena. The owner, Desiree [Sayarath], is so sweet. It’s not a huge bookshop, but they feature a lot of authors of color and queer authors. Then it’s got a full coffee menu, and you can add boba to pretty much anything. They have gulab jamun-flavored matcha, which I have never seen anywhere else. Gulab jamun is this Indian dessert. It’s like a rose water and cardamom flavor.
4 p.m.: Gifts for the unknown
I would love to go to a craft fair. There’s one in Pasadena called the Jackalope Art Fair that’s there periodically. I already buy things that I maybe don’t need, but I do like a craft fair because you’re making eye contact with the creator as you’re buying their thing and it feels like you’re getting extra dopamine from that.
The worst thing is that I’m like, “This will be a great gift for someone later.” I have bags of gifts for people, and I don’t know who these people are, but someday they’re going to be getting a bag of buttons.
6 p.m.: Feeding schedule
At 6, I have to feed my cats. They’re very strict about their mealtime. They eat at 6 and 6. My partner feeds them at 6 in the morning, but I feed them at 6 p.m.
They’re sisters. They’re 5 years old. They’re pretty demanding in general. They’re pretty vocal about what they want and when they need it.
6:30 p.m.: Fitness to fight depression
Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of workouts at home. I’ll do a kickboxing thing or yoga Pilates. I tried to get into the gym and, I don’t know, something about the gym environment really bums me out.
I’m not like a Peloton girlie. I’m joining some of your more avant-garde platforms. I don’t think they think of themselves as avant-garde, but there’s this platform of African dance called Kukuwa these women in Africa started and I love their workouts. Then there’s free stuff. There’s Move With Nicole, which is a Pilates account on YouTube that I do a lot. I’m looking for your smaller businesses.
As I’ve gotten older, my mental health has plummeted for various reasons. I feel like exercise is one of the only things that helps regulate it to some extent, which I hate saying because when you say you’re depressed, people are like, “Just go for a walk.” And it’s not like the walk cures depression, but it does help to get some vitamin D or just be like, “Oh yeah, I have these muscles, I should probably sometimes use them.”
7 p.m.: A new dish
I don’t mind a dinner in, but I feel like given the chance, it’s always nice to eat at the restaurant. I discovered this vegan place in Highland Park that does vegan sushi that’s pretty new called Tane Vegan Izakaya. I’ve also been meaning to check out this vegetarian place in Echo Park called Men & Beasts that I keep hearing about.
I like trying a new place, but then once it works for me, I’m probably hitting that up a bunch of times. If a restaurant clicks where the food is great, the service is great, the atmosphere is great, then I’m happy to support them as much as possible.
9 p.m.: Puttering toward bed (eventually)
I’ll come home and watch something. I’m trying to scroll less on my phone, so maybe I’ll watch “The Great British Bake Off” or something that’s not too taxing on the brain.
I usually make myself a big cup of ginger tea at night because my stomach has been more temperamental as I’ve gotten older, but what usually happens is I make the big cup of tea and then I forget about it, and it kind of watches me while I scroll on my phone.
Every day, I want to be in bed by 12:30, and then it ends up being 2 a.m. and I cannot account for how that happened. I think I’m just a serial putterer, in that I putter around and I don’t know what I’m doing a lot of the time.
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Oscars: Jacob Elordi, Jesse Plemons and more join Actors Roundtable
Have you ever wondered what movie might draw praise from Jacob Elordi and Benicio Del Toro for its cinematic reverie?
When you gather six actors from some of this year’s most acclaimed films, a thoughtful discussion about their roles and the craft is to be expected. But in kicking off The Envelope’s 2025 Oscar Actors Roundtable, the talent reminded us that they’re movie fans like the rest of us, picking the films they wish they could experience again for the first time.
“I’d like to watch ‘The Dark Knight’ again in the exact same circumstance that I watched it,” Elordi said, referring to Christopher Nolan’s dark retelling of Batman’s battle with the Joker. “I was 11 and I was with my dad. I’d been told by my mother that I wasn’t allowed to see it because there’s a horrific sequence with a pencil and a magic trick. My dad — when my mum was away — took me to the cinema to see it. I remember the first time I saw Heath [Ledger, as the Joker] onscreen and really feeling just totally moved by something.”
Then Del Toro chimed in with his pick, “Papillon,” Franklin Schaffner’s 1973 prison film starring Dustin Hoffman and Steve McQueen: “I saw it when I was a kid. We got in late in the movie, and it was a scene where they’re trying to get a gator. And they’re running around the crocodile. I’ve always really enjoyed that film.”
“And you really see Steve McQueen do more in that movie than ever before,” Elordi says. “When he starts going mad in that cell.”
Jesse Plemons is more sheepish when coughing up his selection.
“Everyone’s listing serious movies. The movie that popped into my head was ‘Nacho Libre.’ In life, some things just give you simple pleasures that aren’t necessarily elevated or high art. But that movie makes me very happy, guys.”
There was no judgment. An atmosphere of friendly sharing and mutual understanding was felt throughout the conversation, which brought together Elordi, who portrays the misunderstood and abused Creature in Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein”; Plemons, in his turn as Teddy, a conspiracy theorist who is convinced that aliens live among us in “Bugonia”; Benicio Del Toro, who plays Sergio St. Carlos, a karate sensei and revolutionary immigration activist in “One Battle After Another”; Will Arnett, who stars as Alex Novak, a middle-age suburbanite whose crumbling marriage inspires him to try stand-up comedy in “Is This Thing On?”; Wagner Moura, who portrays Marcelo Alves, a teacher trying to escape the Brazilian dictatorship in “The Secret Agent”; and Stellan Skarsgård, who plays Gustav Borg, a veteran film director and absentee father who decides to make a movie about his family in “Sentimental Value.” Read on for excerpts from our discussion.
These roles take you to intense places — emotionally, physically, mentally. But what’s the furthest you’ve gone to book a role because you really felt like it was something you were meant to play?
Moura: “Narcos” was a crazy adventure for me because I was cast to play that part that had nothing to do with me. I was a skinny Brazilian guy who didn’t speak Spanish at all. So I had to go through a very intense thing. I had to learn a language in order to play a character. That was crazy. That was the the furthest I’ve [gone] to play a part.
Plemons: Those early weeks are a lot of fun, right? The beginning. It’s like Christmas every day.
Moura: The beginning is always like, “What am I doing?” And you go to bed and go like, “Jesus Christ, this is … There’s no way I can pull this off.” At the same time, I remember going to bed and thinking, “Have I done everything I could?” And then I was like, “Yeah, go to bed. Sleep.”
Arnett: Did you ever think about quitting, about not doing it?
Moura: No. I had to go ahead and do it. That director trusted me, and he was like, “You can do it.” I didn’t want to disappoint him.
Have you gotten to that point, Will? Wanting to quit something because it felt like too much?
Arnett: All the time. Doing [“Is This Thing On?”], I felt like I was at the bottom of a mountain. Every day, I thought, “There’s no way I can do it.” I would come home and just think, “That was probably the worst day that anybody’s ever filmed a scene,” then just have to let it go.
With “Is This Thing On?,” you did a stand-up act in front of people, and they were tourists. Some of them didn’t know who you were. And you bombed a few times, right? Place me in that moment, and what does that do for your performance.
Arnett: I had them introduce me by my character name. So the people who did know who I was, we were saying that [they] thought I was probably having a midlife crisis or something, which I was, but for different reasons. I’d never done stand-up before, so going up and doing this in front of people and bombing was super vulnerable. There’s nowhere to hide, and you can’t just walk off. There was one time where I’d done a set at the Comedy Cellar, in the main room, and it was great. And went around the corner, like five minutes later, onto a different stage, with the same material, and it was dead silent. And the only person laughing was Bradley. I could see him laughing, and [I was] thinking, “Can I just walk off stage right now?” That was ego-stripping. It becomes kind of absurd. You end up kind of laughing at yourself, at the absurdity of it. It’s not out-of-body, but you separate yourself from the words as they’re coming out.
Stellan, “Sentimental Value” is, in some ways, about how the choices a parent makes in the service of their job or their art shape the lives of your children. How did it make you reflect on the choices you’ve made in your career and the impact it had on your family?
Skarsgård: I thought it had nothing to do with me. This was a good escape. But my second son, he called me and said, “You recognize yourself?” And I went, “Uh, no.” And of course I don’t recognize myself because he’s a different kind of man. He’s an old-fashioned man in a sense, a 20th century man. And I’m a 21st. [Laughs.] But it reminded me — since I stopped at the Royal Dramatic Theatre [in] 1989, I spent four months a year in front of the camera and eight months a year changing diapers and wiping asses. I don’t think I’ve been away a lot, but it made me think about, “Have you been present?” Not really. I have eight kids, which means there are eight different personalities, and some kids need a lot of attention and some don’t. You’re imperfect, but I’m sort of settled with that. My kids have to settle with it too. They’re not perfect either.
We often hear from the women who are mothers, how they balance their work with their careers. Many of you are fathers. How have you learned to navigate it?
Moura: For me, it’s the most difficult thing ever. I was thinking the other day, “What are the things that really define me as a human being?” Being a father is the strongest one, but being an artist is almost there. It’s hard because with our job, we have to travel a lot, and you’re not always able to bring your kids with you. They have school, and they have their own lives and their own things. I kind of think this is sort of an impossible perfect balance. But like Stellan said, it is what it is. And when I’m with them, I try to be with them. But being aware that, of course, there will be parts of their lives that I won’t be able to be there for them and sort of accept that.
Arnett: It’s funny, I’ve been traveling a lot doing this stuff. I’ve been back for a couple of days, but I’ve been busy. I’ve been going out all day, doing work and doing these things, and my 15-year-old said to me — I checked in on him. He’s doing his homework. I said, “How are you doing?” He said, “Good,” and he said, “I miss you.” And I was in the same place with him. I don’t even know if this is appropriate for this forum, but it really struck me. Him saying that stayed with me all day. And I woke up thinking about [that] this morning, and even this [round table], and saying, “Hey, we’re gonna have dinner tonight.” I had those moments of thinking, “Am I that guy?” Now I’m saying, “Let’s have dinner after … I gotta go do this thing.” It weighs on you. It is the most difficult balance.
Del Toro: I’ve tried to include my daughter in the process sometimes, you know? Sit her down, bounce lines with her, go see the movie when I’m done with the movie. Make her part of it too.
Jacob, so often when you’re talking to an actor, at least on my end, there’s curiosity about the research process and what you’ve had to learn to prepare for a role. But in playing the Creature in “Frankenstein,” this amalgamation of parts, your character’s really in a process of discovery. Did you have to unlearn things? How did you approach that?
Elordi: The nature of the character actually gives you an excuse to be absolutely free because he’s sort of the first man, in a lot of ways. You can really draw from everything and anything, like a smell or light, because he hasn’t felt the sun on his face. But there’s so many things that you can go back on and reconsider. A lot of the process was just closing the world off for the time of filming — not eating a cheeseburger when I wanted to eat a cheeseburger or just little stuff that made me feel Other. But strangely enough, because he’s made of so many different parts, and you get to go from being born to finding consciousness to the death of consciousness at the end, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. You can’t really miss because everything is happening to him all the time. It’s interesting because you say you want to ask someone about the process, but the process is so f— boring.
Plemons: You studied some form of Japanese dance or movement?
Elordi: Guillermo had this idea to study Butoh. It’s a movement thing, like you’re in drama school again where [the instructor]’s like, “Imagine fire in your fingertips and a hurricane in your lungs, and your foot is a steam train.” And then you walk around the room for 40 minutes … I remember being in drama school, and I had to carry a stick that was called my Intellikey for two hours. It was a piece of bamboo. And move around the room as if that stick was a part of my soul or something. Something completely f— absurd. It was a similar process to that, but it was actually helpful because I had something to apply it to that was sort of physically not so human.
Do any of you have a thing that really helped you find your way into a character? Jesse, I feel like you have gone to some dark places.
Plemons: I guess the most curious is I do dream work. There are symbols and whatnot that you are gifted with that may not make sense on a conscious level, or they may. That’s something that’s hard to talk about. Anything that makes me feel like I’m just following my curiosity and I’m not working; I’m just following some trail that I don’t necessarily know where it’s leading — it’s hard to describe because the way I like to work is where anything goes.
Elordi: You kind of know when you get onto that thing too. When a dot does connect. Something happens, then, all of a sudden, you’re six hours down this little road on this sound that you heard in a song or something like that. You also know when it’s not working. But to be conscious about it can mess it up as well, if you’re like, “I’m gonna do this kind of thing and this. And this is gonna go to this voice.”
Does the work need to feel hard in order for you to feel like you’re challenging yourself?
Skarsgård: No. [I need] to not be afraid and not to be blocked; I need to feel safe. And I need [for] everybody on the set, they want me to be good, and I feel it. Then I can be free. I’m with you [Jesse], you have to be in a state where anything is possible. I don’t do backstories for my characters, ever, because it reduces the possibilities. Then you have to follow the backstory — so he couldn’t do that. You, as an actor, say to the director, “No, my character wouldn’t do that.” “How do you know?” Your character might be more interesting than you are.
Plemons: And this thing doesn’t exist yet, this moment —
Moura: There’s no better thing than being in a scene with another actor, and you look at the other guy or the other actors, and you go, like, “This can go anywhere.” Because these other guys, or this other actor, she’s ready to do whatever, to take this wherever. This is the thing that really moves me in a scene. It’s really hard when you work with an actor or with a director that sticks with the thing that they want the scene to be, that thing they thought at home, that they prepared for, and you can’t really move into that space.
Benicio, you really know how to make a character memorable and leave a lasting impression. With Sensei Sergio and what we see onscreen, what were you working with on the page and how much came from you in collaboration with Paul [Thomas Anderson, the film’s director]?
Del Toro: I just asked questions. Paul wants to hear what the actors have to say. I just bombard him with questions. Paul was very flexible … He’s very quick, and if he likes something, he would jump on it. My character was introduced by killing someone in my dojo. So, I asked him, “OK, so I killed this guy in the dojo … I’m not gonna drive Leo anywhere. I have to get rid of the body. And we’re gonna have to clean the dojo or set it on fire. And why am I doing that?” So, from there, it evolved into, like, “We’re not killing anybody.” I approach it a little bit like that — common sense. Logic. But every character is different and every story is different, and every director is different. I’ve been in movies where you just have to find yourself in there. And those are challenging, and they make you better.
“The Secret Agent” really explores how brutal a dictatorship can be on regular people. Wagner, your character Marcelo is not trying to overthrow the government. He’s just a man who’s trying to stick with his values. Tell me about portraying a person in that situation.
Moura: The dictatorship in Brazil was from ’64 to ’85. I was born in ’76, so the echoes of the dictatorship were still there. I remember my parents speaking like [mimics whispering] because they didn’t want people to hear what were they talking about. It’s important that Brazilian cinema is going back there to look at that big scar in our country. I directed a film [2019’s “Marighella”] about a freedom fighter, a guy who wanted to overthrow the government. But this one is different. Like you said, it’s just someone who’s trying to stick with the values that he has. And I think that this is a reality in many different parts of the world, where just the fact that you are who you are makes your life difficult or puts your life in danger, just by the color of your skin or your sexual orientation. You see the dictatorship and and what a dictatorship can do, but not in a obvious way.
Do any of you read reviews?
Skarsgård: Yes, sometimes. I prefer to read the good ones.
Has there been a bad review that propelled you or motivated you or helped you?
Skarsgård: Once I read a theater review that was really bad and that pointed out a grave mistake I made in the show, so I corrected it afterwards. But otherwise —
Elordi: You took the advice?
Skarsgård: Yeah.
Arnett: I did this show for Netflix like 10 years ago, and this guy wrote this review, and I’m embarrassed to say I wrote a point-for-point rebuttal email. I sent it as a draft to Mark Chappell, my partner, and he said, “Oh, hold on. Don’t send it. I’m gonna come over. Let’s talk for a minute.” And I didn’t send it.
Plemons: I’ve got one journalist — I am not gonna say their name — but …
Arnett: Who’s got it out for you?
Plemons: In a way that wasn’t even that intense, but said it [a performance of mine] was “misguided” — which, is just like, “What?” And then I started reading more of his reviews, and everything’s “misguided” to this guy. It’s like, “What do you mean?” So, I’m trying to be less misguided.
Can I jump in with a question for anyone? Talking about that balance between preparation — in certain cases, it’s necessary — then your experience where you rethink all of that. Given the fact that we’re not machines, that on any given day there are a number of variables that influence your mood and influence your mind and influence your ability to relax and do the scene, I’ve thought a lot about that ideal baseline place of being fully relaxed and in your [element]. I wish acting teachers had told me that when I was younger, that that’s like over half of the battle. I’m curious if you have any —
Top row, from left to right: Will Arnett, Wagner Moura and Jesse Plemons. Bottom row, from left to right: Benicio Del Toro, Jacob Elordi and Stellan Skarsgård.
Skarsgård: Tips?
Plemons: No, routines or [an] approach, anything you do to get yourself into a place where you feel like you can leave the preparation and [just be].
Skarsgård: The preparation can serve that purpose. You feel that you’re doing something because it’s a f— strange business, what we’re doing. You don’t know what it is, really, but you feel that, “OK, I’ve done this preparation. I’ve done three months of baking because I’m [playing] a baker.” You feel that you’re prepared, so you feel safer. But, personally, I make sure that the set is safe. I’m first on set. I come in early and, while they’re setting up, I’m gonna see what they’re doing. I’m making sure that I know what all the sound guys, the prop guys, what they’re doing at the same time. So, I feel a part of the unit. That’s my way of feeling safe.
Plemons: Yeah, I find that too. Any time you try and block anything out, you’re missing it. I know that’s sort of a cliche, but the times when I’ve felt maybe the best, I wasn’t blacked out. I was aware of everything.
Elordi: Key to the whole thing is you practice.
Plemons: Yeah, I was looking at the DP I had.
Elordi: That’s when I feel, like, the most comfortable, is when you feel like you are in a dialogue with the operator and the lighting guard and your director, and you’re all in the scene working towards [the same thing]. It’s not like, “Everyone, shut the f— up now. I need complete silence.” Complete silences are unnerving to me on a set. It’s like you’re all trying to reach this point for cut, and then you’ve got that piece of the thing. That makes me feel comfortable when it’s technical and not actually getting lost in this thing of like, “I need complete silence. My body needs to be supple and ready.”
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Mon Laferte on her edgy ‘Femme Fatale’ LP: ‘I went into my past to kill that persona.’
The press has often labeled Mon Laferte a “femme fatale” — a seductive woman who inflicts distress upon her love interests.
Nearly two decades into her singing career, the Chilean singer-songwriter has learned to embrace the old-fashioned trope of the wizened seductress in “Femme Fatale,” her ninth studio album, which she released in October.
“I came to the conclusion that there’s a perception of me as a woman who is really liberated — that’s why it’s dangerous. [She’s] a person who is sure of herself and that generates a lot of insecurity in other people,” said Laferte in a Zoom call, just after she attended the 2025 Fashion Awards with designer Willy Chavarria in London. (“I went to Camden and took a photo next to [Amy Winehouse’s] statue,” she noted, citing inspiration in the late R&B star.)
Laferte reckons with her dangerous womanhood on “Femme Fatale:” a compilation of jazzy, cabaret pop ballads, elevated by the roaring theatrical vocals she made famous in such past hits as “Tu Falta de Querer” and “Mi Buen Amor.” Prior to releasing the album, Laferte notably starred as Sally Bowles in a Mexico City production of the famous American musical “Cabaret.” It was a crash course on theater — which heavily influenced Laferte’s now most penetrating record to date.
Each song in “Femme Fatale” feels like a descent into a speakeasy. It tells stories of loves past — which at times feel nauseating for the 42-year-old singer, born Norma Monserrat Bustamante Laferte in Viña del Mar, Chile.
Among them is “Otra Noche de Llorar,” in which she mourns an unrequited love; then there’s “El Gran Señor,” in which she scorns a cowardly abuser of women. The record climaxes with “1:30,” a briskly improvised tune, in which Laferte balances stories of abuse, self-pleasuring and fake orgasms with historical themes — like the global industrial revolution, as well as Pinochet’s Caravan of Death in 1973.
“The song is really political and everything is my own story,” said Laferte, who admits that even she finds her song difficult to listen to. “The last part is the hardest — where I talk about a conquest — to the point where I can’t listen to that song. It’s really uncomfortable. It’s hard to talk about something so shamelessly.”
“Femme Fatale” is a deeply personal journey that leads to Laferte making peace with her past. The record concludes with the lively orchestral number “Vida Normal,” in which she grapples with the revelation that she’s turning into her mother — especially after giving birth to her first child in 2022 with husband Joel Orta, guitarist for Mexican band Celofán.
“It was a really honest way of saying that, after everything, I just want a normal life,” said the five-time Latin Grammy winner.
But before the Chilean femme fatale can settle into a vida normal, she will first embark on the 2026 Femme Fatale tour, which includes dates in Latin America and later the United States. Laferte’s first stop will be in her hometown of Viña del Mar for the International Song Festival. “It’s like returning home,” she said.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Mon Laferte is a five-time Latin Grammy winner.
(Mayra Ortiz)
You were just in London for the Fashion Awards with Willy Chavarria, who was nominated for designer of the year. How was that experience?
I came as a guest of Willy’s. We had dinner and saw a lot of super fashionable people, many artists with their super cool looks. Fashion has always been interesting to me ever since I was a little girl, outside of singing, dancing and playing the guitar. I liked to draw women and their outfits, dresses, things like that… Perhaps that’s where my dreams began to be a designer. Aesthetically in my last album, “Autopoiética,” it was all baroque — I was a bit like Marie Antoinette, I wore large dresses in my shows. This time in “Femme Fatale,” [the style is] bohemian, with sequins and makeup running.
“Femme Fatale” is intense and sexy. Why did you decide to go with that phrase for the album title?
”Femme fatale has a bit of a negative weight to it. You think of a scornful woman that always brings misfortune and does evil things. And it’s a name that the press has given me: La Femme Fatale Chilena.
And I liked it. I like this title because I like to play with the concepts of a dangerous woman. I like that it’s dramatic, because I like music that is theatrical and dark. It doesn’t mean that I am that woman who is secure and free — I have been in various moments in my life, not all the time. But I like that people label me in that way.
How would you describe the musical style?
I wanted to take [the album] into the world of jazz so that it could sound nocturnal, so it could sound melancholic. In the last couple of years I’ve been listening to a lot of jazz, so why not make an album that I like to listen to? When I was a little girl, I listened to jazz in my home because of my mom, but I felt like it was boring. Later when I was in my teens I was like: “This is elevator music.”
But as I kept growing, I got rid of that prejudice. When I began to listen to jazz without any judgment, I began to find poetry and a lot of madness as well. I think it’s the improvisation aspect; you have to be very daring to enter the void, because your improv is coming and it’s to the death. That’s something that I’m passionate about. I think it’s demented and poetic at the same time.
This fall you were in a production of the musical “Cabaret” in Mexico City. How was that experience and did it inspire your music for “Femme Fatale”?
Yes! I feel like they complemented each other. I feel that my role as Sally Bowles in the theater fed that universe of “Femme Fatale.” There’s a song in the album, “Vida Normal,” that is a song that could go in a musical and that was the intention. My experience with theater was wonderful and I had a lot of fun and learned a lot in the intensive process.
I wanted to talk about the song, “Vida Normal.” You hint at becoming more like your mother and living a normal life, which feels a bit at odds with the “Femme Fatale” theme. Was that intentional?
Totally. Because the first song, “Femme Fatale,” describes me up to the present: I always bring chaos, I always destroy what I love, I’m an expert in self-sabotage. But I have been letting those things go with time, thankfully. With the songs in “Femme Fatale” I went deeper into my past, in order to kill that persona.
[“Vida Normal”] is really honest and represents me in the present. I look in the mirror and I don’t recognize myself when I’m barefaced or before getting in the shower — my body changed, especially after motherhood. It’s true that I see my mother’s face and it’s hard to recognize that. I’m getting old. I’m at that age where I don’t recognize myself as either young, or old, in my 40s. It appeared beautiful to close that album that way. It was a really honest way of saying that after everything, I just want a normal life.
One song that caught my attention was the jazz song “1:30.” You talk about fantasies that women don’t often talk about. What was the thought process behind this song?
I think those have been the hardest lyrics I’ve ever written. I touch on a lot of microtopics — masturbation, fake orgasms — I think many of us have gone through that. I talk about abuse, sexual abuse, the Caravan of Death that occurred during the dictatorship of Pinochet in Chile. The song is really political and everything is my own story. The last part is the hardest, where I talk about a conquest, to the point where I can’t listen to that song. It’s really uncomfortable. It’s hard to talk about something so shamelessly.
I talked with my musicians and told them that I wanted this to be fast, almost desperate, almost like the bass being the protagonist so that it gives you a sense of urgency, like [we’re] fleeing in a way. We played together like 8 times and I liked that take.
The album also features Natalia Lafourcade and Silvana Estrada on “My One and Only Love.” What was it like to work with these different voices that are often compared to each other?
As all three of us sang, I realized that we are so different, each our own universe. I guess we relate to being singer-songwriters but we are distinct universes. I think that [comparison] has to do with us being women; there’s so many male-led bands that one can say are similar too.
We’re all good friends. I’ve known Natalia for many years now and we love each other and they’re all talented women. All three voices sound very beautiful together and I love harmonizing. It was precious to sing together in a song that I find to be the most beautiful in the album. It’s sweet and honest. It talks about the difficulties between partners — and it describes me and my husband. At the end of the day we love each other and continue to be present.
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