Susan Saint James, the TV star who shared the screen with Rock Hudson as his on-screen wife in “McMillan & Wife” and co-led the heartfelt, blended family comedy “Kate & Allie” with Jane Curtin, has died.
The Los Angeles native died Monday after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, according to People, which first reported the actor’s death. She was 80.
Saint James’ family remembered the actor for her warm personality and kindness, writing in a statement shared with the magazine, “Every person she met became the most important person in the room at that moment, from a fellow board member to the clerk at the shoe store, who usually walked away knowing her entire life story.”
Her acting career spanned almost six decades — she broke out as Peggy Maxwell in NBC series “The Name of the Game” — from the mid-1960s to the 2020s across TV and film, but audiences know the actor best for starring as Hudson’s detective wife in “McMillan & Wife.” The NBC series, which aired from 1971 to 1977, centered on San Francisco police commissioner Stuart “Mac” McMillan and wife Sally McMillan as they solve a variety of crimes. Saint James earned four Emmy nominations for her work.
She pivoted to film and TV movies after the series ended, garnering roles in “Love at First Bite,” “The Kid from Nowhere,” and “Don’t Cry, It’s Only Thunder.”
After nearly a decade away from the TV series scene, Saint James returned in CBS’ unconventional sitcom, “Kate & Allie.” She starred as Kate McArdle, one of the series’ titular divorcées who decide to raise their children under the same roof. Saint James’ Kate was the modern and no-nonsense counterpart to Curtin’s old-fashioned, sweet Allie. The series aired from 1984 to 1989 and earned Saint James two additional Emmy nominations.
When the stars and creative team of “Kate & Allie” reunited amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, Saint James reflected on how the show was representative of a same-sex household and how mothers raising their own children related to the show’s material. She and her co-stars also said they knew at the time that the series was something special.
“It wasn’t like we went back and said, ‘You don’t know what you got ‘till it’s gone.’ It was just fun,” she said.
Saint James mostly stayed away from Hollywood in the decades following “Kate & Allie,” save for brief appearances in series including “Law & Order: SVU,” “Suits” and “Upload.” She notably found herself in the spotlight again in the early 2000s, but for family tragedy.
Her son Edward “Teddy” Ebersol died at age 14 in a 2004 Colorado plane crash that also claimed the lives of two other people. Teddy Ebersol, whom Saint James shared with husband and former NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol, was aboard a chartered Canadair CL-601 Challenger jet with his father and older brother, Charles, on Nov. 28, 2004, when it crashed during takeoff in light snow and freezing temperatures from the airport near Montrose, Colo. The pilot and a flight attendant were also killed in the crash. Dick and Charlie sustained injuries in the crash, and a copilot was critically injured.
“Here’s the bad part … I’ve never touched his clothes, I’ve never been able to move his things,” Saint James told Oprah in a 2006 interview. She continued to speak publicly about her grief in the following years.
“The thing that could move me on was that I could embrace Teddy finally in a way that was, ‘he’s my kid,’” she said during a 2009 panel on grief. “They can take his body, but I own that boy and I love that boy.”
Beyond her screen work and family tragedy, Saint James was also known for her longtime advocacy in the sports world. Saint James supported the mission of the Special Olympics since an early iteration of the games in California in 1972. The first Special Olympics was held in Chicago in 1968.
In a statement published Tuesday, Special Olympics said Saint James “believed deeply in the power of inclusion” and she served as a board member and a campaign co-chair for Special Olympics Connecticut. Her advocacy included founding the annual Susan Saint James poker tournament fundraiser. The organization’s Susan Saint James Leadership Award honors individuals who “embody her remarkable spirit of leadership, generosity, and dedication to our mission,” the post said.
“Thank you, Susan, for being an extraordinary champion of our athletes,” Special Olympics added in its statement. “Your legacy will live on through the lives you touched and the inclusive future you helped build.”
The actor, born Aug. 14, 1946 and raised in Rockford, Ill., received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2008 and partially attributed her success in the industry to her connection with Special Olympics. Former California first lady Maria Shriver, daughter of Special Olympics founder Eunice Kennedy Shriver, attended the ceremony.
During that ceremony, Saint James said she managed to achieve her dream of becoming a Hollywood movie star “through the good works of a lot of wonderful people that created a loving and home-like environment for me all those years.”
“But the thing that really contributed to my success and happiness with my career was coupling it up with the work that I did with the Special Olympics,” she said, adding, “you can guess that being associated with them turned out to be getting to know some pretty amazing people since I’m now really cozy with the first lady of the state of California.”
Saint James was married three times, first to scriptwriter Richard Neubert from 1967 to 1968, according to People. She remarried in 1971 to makeup artist-turned manager Thomas Lucas. They share two children — daughter Sunshine and son Harmony — and divorced in 1977.
Saint James remarried to then-NBC executive Dick Ebersol after they met in 1981 when she hosted “Saturday Night Live.” They welcomed children Charles, William and Edward (Teddy.)
Noah Adams, a longtime host of NPR news program “All Things Considered” and a journalist known for his gentle voice and genuine curiosity, has died. He was 84.
Adams died Oct. 16 at his home in Yellow Springs, Ohio, according to NPR. The cause was complications of a benign brain tumor removed eight years ago, his wife and longtime NPR news producer Neenah Ellis told the New York Times.
A host of the weekday edition of “All Things Considered” for 18 years, Adams helped cover major news events and produced segments from his travels around the country, talking to everyday people, often in small rural towns.
“He never liked talking to people who he knew had preprogrammed things to say,” Melissa Block, a former “All Things Considered” host who’d previously worked as a producer for Adams, said in NPR’s segment announcing his death. “He wanted people who were genuinely speaking from their heart and with conviction and sincerity.”
Born on Sept. 15, 1942, in Ashland, Ky., Adams joined NPR in the mid-1970s after working various jobs including as a DJ and in construction in and around his hometown. A college dropout, Adams was inspired to start working in public radio after encountering “All Things Considered” as a listener.
He was introduced to the program by a colleague shortly after it debuted in 1971. He told The Times in 2002 that he remembered thinking, “That sounds conversational, that they intend for me to be listening, that I’m smart enough to be listening,” when he first heard the show.
After working at the University of Kentucky’s public radio station, he applied for a job at NPR. He was hired as a production assistant on “All Things Considered” in 1975 before becoming a weekend co-host for the show in 1978. He moved to the weekday show in 1982.
Susan Stamberg, Adams’ “All Things Considered” co-host from 1982 to 1987 who died last year, described him as “the most genuine, uncontrived voice in broadcasting” in the foreword of his 1992 book about his work on the program.
“The conviction shines through the words he writes, and the quiet and very powerful way in which he speaks,” she wrote, according to Current. “He is a quiet, careful man, a craftsman in his work, his seriousness softened by a twinkle in his eye, an occasional goofy grin, and the daffodils he’ll bring into the studio on an especially tense or stuffy day.”
Adams mentioned the camaraderie with his colleagues and one-on-one interviews as among the things he would miss when he left his job as host of “All Things Considered” for a second and final time in 2002.
These interviews, which often turned into “a conversation that’s so quiet and so slow,” were the “kind of conversation [that] cannot be accomplished on anything but radio,” he told The Times.
Among Adams’ signature audio work is the 1981 radio documentary “Father Cares: The Last of Jonestown,” as well as a series of interviews with Tom DeBaggio, a man living with Alzheimer’s disease, and an interview with Betsy Walter, an 8-year-old girl whose parents had gotten divorced. Adams wrote a number of books, including “Piano Lessons: Music, Love, and True Adventures,” which chronicled Adams’ quest to learn how to play the piano in his 50s, and “The Flyers: In Search of Wilbur and Orville Wright.”
“He has a writer’s eye, and I think you hear that when he’s on the air,” Robert Siegel, Adams’ “All Things Considered” co-host, said in 2002. “And he takes sound very seriously. When you combine writing with sound, you can create extraordinary radio.”
For anyone who has watched Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s documentary about former Theranos CEO (and convicted felon) Elizabeth Holmes and her partner Billy Evans in the past week, every new think piece, funny meme, discussion thread or video parody about the film has been something to revel in. I’ve personally spent several hours messaging or speaking to friends and colleagues over the phone about the documentary, and it seems like a lot of people similarly can’t stop obsessing about it.
The film has sparked renewed interest not only in Holmes, but also in works previously released about her, including “Bad Blood,” written by John Carreyrou, the journalist who exposed Holmes and Theranos’ fraudulent practices, and Alex Gibney’s 2019 documentary “The Inventor,” which senior writer Greg Braxton rewatched and analyzed in the context of the new documentary. Also notable has been the resurgence of Hulu’s “The Dropout,” the 2022 limited series created by Liz Meriwether (“Furious”) that stars Amanda Seyfried — Variety reported this week that the series has seen a jump in viewership over the past month. And of course, there’s been lots of interest in Fielder; we’ve put together a guide to his work if you’re looking to understand him and his style.
But with all the attention on Holmes, Times culture critic Mary McNamara raises an important question: Why are we still so fascinated by Holmes, despite her track record as a con artist and fraudster? There are many answers to the question, but there’s no denying the public’s renewed fascination with Holmes, and now Evans as well.
However, if you prefer to think about lighter relationships that are less perplexing, NBC’s latest sitcom will do the job and remind you of what it’s like to be immediately swept off your feet. “Newlyweds,” starring Téa Leoni, Tim Daly and Jamie Lee Curtis arrives on NBC today. Curtis, who co-created the series, stopped by Guest Spot to talk about what inspired it and the recent changes behind the scenes.
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Also in this week’s Screen Gab, our writers recommend a documentary about a saga surrounding one of the greatest hip-hop groups of all time and a cult-classic horror film that’s perfect for spooky season. — Maira Garcia
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Recommendations from the film and TV experts at The Times
Tarik Azzougarh, left, and the RZA in Netflix’s “The Disciple.”
(Netflix)
“The Disciple: A Wu-Tang Fable” (Netflix)
In 2015, the only copy of the Wu-Tang Clan’s “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” sold at auction for $2 million. The buyer was revealed to be hedge fund and pharma dirtbag Martin Shkreli, who infamously raised the price of an antiparasitic drug by 5,000% overnight and later went to prison for securities fraud. Joanna Natasegara‘s enchanting documentary “The Disciple” explores the long run-up to this Guinness Book of World Records event, and its aftermath, through the surprising, touching, funny and sometimes sad story of the album’s co-producer, Tarik Azzougarh, a.k.a. Cilvaringz. A Dutch Moroccan superfan whose freestyling and persistence earned him a place in the group’s auxiliary, it was Cilvaringz who first proposed the idea and brought it to fruition with Wu-Tang main man RZA — both a culmination and the beginning of an end. The film raises questions of art and ownership, friendship and business, creativity and capitalism, asking the questions who is music for, and what is it for. — Robert Lloyd
‘Highway to Hell’ (Tubi, Prime Video)
This is the perfect spooky-season flick to pop on when you don’t mind interruptions from trick-or-treaters or your buddy who treats movie night like an audition for “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” Directed by Ate de Jong (“Drop Dead Fred”), this 1992 comedy-horror cult classic stars Chad Lowe and Kristy Swanson as an eloping couple who take the wrong shortcut and wind up in Hades — basically, an even worse version of the drive to Vegas — where a young Ben Stiller works the roadside diner and Gilbert Gottfried plays Hitler. Every shot has a snort-worthy gag: a stop-motion Cerberus, a casino-bar called Hoffa’s, a cop whose handcuffs are literally a pair of severed hands. A flop at the time, “Highway to Hell’s” breakneck mix of smart and stupid was applauded by former L.A. Times film critic Kevin Thomas as “the Greek legend of Orpheus, revved up ‘Mad Max’-style.” Screenwriter Brian Helgeland would eventually win an Oscar for “L.A. Confidential.” Somehow, I never hear him brag about this goofy delight. He should. — Amy Nicholson
Guest spot
A weekly chat with actors, writers, directors and more about what they’re working on — and what they’re watching
Jamie Lee Curtis as Claudia in “Newlyweds,” a sitcom she co-created and executive produces.
(Nicole Weingart / NBC)
Jaime Lee Curtis has been in showbiz for a very long time. And when she sets her mind to something, like returning to a sitcom, she’s going to make it happen.
“It’ll be 50 years next January that I have been a professional actress,” she says over a video call earlier this week. “It’ll be 50 years that I’ve been driving on the lot at Universal.”
Over the course of her long career, Curtis, 67, has developed a lengthy résumé in film and television, winning numerous accolades along the way, including an Oscar and an Emmy (she’s been nominated for a Grammy too — there’s still time for an EGOT). But she longed to return to a sitcom ever since wrapping her lead role on ABC’s “Anything but Love,” a series that premiered in 1989 and ran for four seasons.
While she’s had guest appearances and some recurring roles on sitcoms over the years, including on shows like “New Girl” and “The Drew Carey Show,” NBC’s “Newlyweds” was an idea she had gestated for years, and now it’s set to arrive as part of the network’s Friday prime-time lineup. The actor, who executive produces “Newlyweds” and has a recurring role, took some time to discuss how she came up with the idea for the show, her co-creator’s firing and the political thriller series she’s watching with her spouse, filmmaker Christopher Guest. — M.G.
Jamie, you co-created this series and it’s loosely based on your relationship with your husband, Christoper Guest. Tell me how it came about and how you wanted to tell that story in this show.
It was April 25, 2019. I was in New York City … I was in a car being driven by a man in his 60s in a suit with gray hair on his temples. We were chatting, as one does in the back of a car, and I asked him if he was married, and he said he was divorced. I said, “Do you have kids?” And he said, “No.” And I said, “Well, that’s the blessing that you know you’re not dealing with divorce and children, which I’ve dealt with a lot.” And he then said, “But my new wife.” In that second, I went, “Oh, my new wife.” That’s a sitcom about people in their 60s hooking up, similar to the way my husband and I met, which was we met and married very quickly. And in fact, we would have gotten married had we gone out on our first date. We have said we would have gone and gotten married that night. So the idea popped in my head: What happens if two people in their 60s get married on a whim, and decide to just throw caution to the wind and go for it? What happens to the families and the friends and their own lives and the very routinized lives that they had led leading up to that moment? I knew it was a sitcom.
It wasn’t until years later I was put together with Gail Lerner, and we — during COVID actually — started working on the idea. But much of what’s in that script was kind of what happened to me and my husband … it’s something that’s been around for a while, and I’m just really excited finally that it has turned into this version, “Newlyweds” starring Tim and Téa.
Let’s talk about Tim and Téa. They’re the newlyweds, but they’re also married in real life. What was it like playing off their dynamic and vice versa?
When the pilot got picked up, … it was what they call “cast-contingent,” which means they like the idea, but they want to make sure that the right person gets in … so they wanted us to find Jeanie first, and it was a very short list of actresses they would bank a show on. Téa, luckily, was one of those actresses and had been looking for something on the lighter side. … and it so happens she’s married to a guy IRL who happens to have a lot of experience in the comedy space on TV shows, and all of a sudden we were like, oh, wouldn’t that make a kind of fantastic bit of pairing.
What do you think we’re going to learn about Claudia? She seems so liberated, but we’ve only seen the surface. She’s got a soft spot for Jeanie and even James.
I think you’re gonna see, in fact, that she becomes not just a foil but a friend. I feel like her acceptance of Jeanie … we’re going to mine it for its comedy. I mean, I think at the end of the day, she will always shake things up because that’s just her nature. We get to meet Claudia’s mother. I can’t tell you because we haven’t announced it yet, who plays my mother. I can tell you that she’s over 90.
You’re going to have me Googling.
We get to see a little bit of the oak tree and the acorn. We definitely get the snarky oak tree and the snarky acorn.
Well, you can imagine it was a bummer. You know, network television has a whole series of requirements, way beyond … my little creative ideas. It has to do with management of scripts and the amount of early drafts of things, and it’s required within a network structure. And to run a show on television, and to consistently run a show, is a different animal than just the creativity that it takes to think of a show or to develop a show. That’s why Bruce has stepped in very quickly because Bruce has proven over and over again that he’s a guy who can make 100 episodes of a show with a much bigger worldview.
It was beautiful that Gail said the very things she said because we all felt that way too. It was joyous, fun, but there were a lot of things that were way beyond my understanding. What I’ve come to learn, I’m 67, is that creativity is a continuum. That it is not rigid and binary. That I had an idea that then Gail took and built on that idea, and now Bruce has come in and taken Gail’s idea … and is building out another version of the show.
Bruce Helford was the second in charge at the TV show “Anything but Love” when I did it back in the day, so I’ve known him.
So y’all are back together.
The only other time I was ever on a sitcom was “The Drew Carey Show” when Bruce Helford wrote me a part of this crazy hairdresser who … goes on a date with Drew Carey and ends up doing bungee jumping with him on the date. It’s a funny continuum for me to be back with Bruce, who weirdly enough was the actual first person I called when I had the idea [for “Newlyweds”]. I called Bruce because I knew him as a showrunner for sitcoms. We talked about it very briefly, and then he went off to something else. I went off to something else, and it kind of fell apart. So it’s slightly weird to me, and beautiful in that way that the person I actually called when I had the idea is now the one running the show.
It’s a full–circle moment.
Completely full-circle moment.
Has Christopher seen the show? What does he think?
I will say this: Christopher Guest is not a sitcom fan. You know, my husband is a very specific person and makes very specific, very funny movies and television shows. [Sitcoms are] not the thing that he is drawn to. But he genuinely understands that I’ve wanted to do a sitcom for a long time.
Because it’s spooky season right now, and you’re one of the OG scream queens, I have to ask you: Do you watch anything in that vein?
So I’m boring because the truth is, I don’t like scary things. I don’t like scary movies. I have zero interest in scary movies, and I think if someone ended up doing some analysis of me as a human once I’m dead, they would understand that actually my natural fear of scary things is what, in fact, made me such a good actress in them, and I don’t pretend to like them. I like the fans of [scary movies] because there’s a passionate group of people that love them. But I don’t have to love the movies, I just have to love what I do.
Is there anything else you’re watching right now?
My husband and I just started watching the [fourth] season of “The Diplomat” [Netflix], which the writing is so great. Last night we watched an episode written … by Peter Noah, who was the guy who took over “Anything but Love” … and was the showrunner. This episode last night [Episode 4, “Pagliacci”] was what Chris and I watched, and I wrote to Peter last night to say, “Bravo, bravo! Oh, the writing is so gripping.” Of course the writing leads the performances, which lead the filmmaker. It’s always the writing.
Dodger Stadium was eerily quiet on Wednesday, as a light rain fell over the already-yellowing grass. A crow perched on an empty seat. Scattered lights flickered in mostly-dark hallways.
Before the World Series had begun, the stadium was closed down for the season, hosting just one last event before officially wrapping up the 2026 slate.
In the interview room, tucked away at the entrance to the clubhouse, president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman and general manager Brandon Gomes took their seats at the podium for their end-of-season press conference.
There was the usual end-of-season checklist. Are you expecting any changes to the coaching staff or front office? “I expect status quo,” Friedman said. Is Shohei Ohtani going to undergo offseason surgery? “That’s not on the table,” Friedman said.
“I welcome it,” Friedman said of such claims. “For us, and we’ve talked about this a lot, even after successes and we winning a World Series and then winning back to back, everything we do is for our fans. And there’s a lot of noise around us in general. We don’t really pay much attention to it. It’s a partnership we feel with our fans, and so people saying that we’re done and we’re on the downside of this run — it’s just more noise to us because everything for us is about the motivation we have to have a parade in the streets of Los Angeles next November.”
Friedman also didn’t seem to anticipate any trickle down from Walter’s outside ventures — Walter’s insurance companies are under federal investigation and face several lawsuits — affecting the Dodgers’ offseason budget.
“It’s been business as usual for us,” Friedman said. “We talked to Mark after we lost, and he was obviously really disappointed. But so much of his focus was on, ‘OK, what can we do? What are our plans? What are our thoughts for the off season?’ And our brains weren’t quite there yet, but so much of his focus was how do we put ourselves in the best position to win in ‘27?”
How will the Dodgers go about picking themselves up from their NLCS exit?
The Dodgers’ 2026 season wasn’t exactly a failure. They won 100 games in the regular season and lost in the playoffs to the only team that won more than that — the Brewers. But the Dodgers, with their star power and payroll, aren’t in the business of accepting moral victories.
Though plenty went wrong in the postseason, from Ohtani’s struggles following hisinjured list stint, to stalwart Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s surprising short start in Game 2 of the NLCS, the overarching theme in the Dodgers’ four straight losses to the Brewers was a lack of offensive execution, especially with runners in scoring position.
“Obviously throughout the latter part of the year, it was stuff we were talking about and trying to put our finger on,” Friedman said of the offense. “And in a lot of ways, it’s a little bit of a game of whack-a-mole, where it can be one thing for some period of time, and then it’s something else, and then it’s something else. Sometimes it’s noise, and sometimes it’s real. And what’s important for us is to be able to sift out the noise and isolate what’s real and what things we can improve upon. We’ll spend a lot of time really focusing on that in the off season.”
Asked if the age of the lineup could be a contributing factor, Friedman pointed to the strong finishes of some of the more veteran players on the roster.
“I don’t think it’s as easy as to paint it with that broad of a stroke,” he said.
Friedman, in an effort to continue to extend the Dodgers’ run of success, has kept in mind the cliff that successful veteran teams can fall off of, if the roster isn’t properly backfilled.
“This isn’t something that we just woke up and were like, ‘Oh wow, the age of our position player group,’” Friedman said. “We knew what things were going to look like in ‘26, ‘27, but also how talented these guys are, the way they prepare. And so much of our long-term contract bats are betting on the human — betting on the person, betting on the work ethic, betting on them doing everything they can to keep themselves in the best position to have success. But when you couple the core talent that we have at the major league level with the position-player strengths that we have in our farm system, that’s what makes us excited, is the art of how to onboard some of these young, talented minor league players.”
The Dodgers had the No. 1 ranked farm system as of mid-August, according to MLB Pipeline. But many of those prospects, including the three outfielders who the Dodgers’ Top 3 (Josue De Paula, Eduardo Quintero and Mike Sirota), are blocked by veteran players.
“For us, it’s just about having as many many talented players as we can, and things tend to sort themselves out,” Friedman said.
This offseason, the Dodgers will also have to figure out what to do about their soon-to-be free agents, a group headlined by left-hander Tarik Skubal. The two-time Cy Young winner was not only the best pitcher available on the trade market when the Dodgers acquired him from the Tigers at the trade deadline, but he’s in line to be the best pitcher available this offseason as well.
“It’s not easy for a guy to get traded in the middle of a season to come to a new city, new clubhouse,” Friedman said. “You have set routines, and you have to make those adjustments. It’s not easy. The way he was able to seamlessly transition, not just in terms of on the field, but in the clubhouse, I can’t say enough good things about the impact that he made in such a short period of time.
“We have a tremendous amount of respect for him on and off the field. … He’s put himself in this position to go out and be a free agent. And for us, it’s, continue to talk to [his agent, Scott Boras]. But he and his family have to make a choice over where they want to spend the next X number of years, and obviously we wish him nothing but the best.”
When asked about negotiations, however, Friedman spoke generally, saying the Dodgers were still “wrapping [their] arms around” their offseason strategy.
The impending lockout, which is expected to go into effect on Dec. 1 as soon as the current CBA expires, and uncertainty over changes in the next CBA, will certainly affect the free agent and trade markets this offseason. And though MLB navigated a lockout just five years ago, the owners’ push for a salary cap has many around the industry bracing for a longer work stoppage and murkier landscape on the other side.
“I never have any feel for how a market’s going to play out,” Friedman said. “We’ve kidded ourselves in the past that, like, ‘Hey, we think this is going to happen,’ and it just takes on its own life form. So for us, it’s just about being as prepared as we possibly can be, and pouncing on opportunities.”
Eric Dangerfield is surrounded by senior citizens.
After a packed set at Riot Fest the previous weekend, the 25-year-old lead singer and rhythm guitarist of the Paradox welcomed the quiet of his boomer-dominated neighborhood.
“I’m a suburban dude,” he said, smiling from his home in metro Atlanta, his cropped two-toned dreads bobbing as he spoke.
The Paradox spent much of the summer on the festival circuit, powering through a growing discography of pop-punk gems, so Dangerfield and the three other band members are taking a brief breather before their Proceed With Caution Tour starts this month — their first as headliners.
It’s peaceful. That is, “Except when the boys come over,” he adds.
On a late morning in September, the boys are here and accounted for: patching in to a video call, minutes apart, from their homes, also in suburban ATL. Dangerfield, born with the perfect stage name, has ideas that flow faster than he can seem to get them out. Then there’s Donald Bryant on bass. Yin to Dangerfield’s yang, with a quiet, commanding presence.
Percy “PC3” Crews has been playing drums since he was 3, and his vicious skills on the drum kit contrast with a cheery, relaxed demeanor. Finally, there’s Christopher Bernard, a.k.a. Xelan — the lead guitarist and Dangerfield’s vocal complement.
Dangerfield likens the four to musical superheroes from a Marvel series. But not so much the “Earth’s mightiest heroes” variety.
On their first headlining tour, the band brings its new EP, “Proceed With Caution,” to Los Angeles while claiming space in a historically white genre and weaving social commentary into its pop-punk sound.
(Shorefire Media)
“I’m like Mister Fantastic and Donald’s my Invisible Woman. Xelan’s the Thing, and Percy is John Storm,” he says of his partners in musical mischief. “If I’m ugly, just say that,” quips Xelan, the band’s oldest member at 30. “Yeah. Because you’re strong, bro,” reassures Eric.
By this time, the interview has devolved into fun-loving chaos.
They finish each other’s sentences and switch up their Google Meet backgrounds, cracking up as an awkward graduation portrait pops up. At some point, Bernard decides to give a bedroom tour, showing off his collection of Blink-182 and Fall Out Boy posters.
A photo of him with Travis Barker hangs next to a framed Billboard plaque on a nightstand. Barker was featured on the Paradox’s 2025 single “Bender” and performed with the group at Vans Warped Tour the same year.
The Billboard plaque commemorates the band’s song “Get the Message” from its debut EP, “NSFW,” reaching No. 1 on the Alternative Airplay chart in January — a great achievement for any rock artist — but the Paradox also happens to be the first all-Black band to do so.
The success, although rapid, didn’t come from nowhere. All of the members have been working toward music in some form for years.
Dangerfield had a deal with a small label where he was originally making a go of it as a pop and R&B soloist. He also put out his music online. Looking for something different, he remembered his passing interest in pop-punk from his days growing up in Palm Coast, Fla. It was the “Fat Lip” video by Sum 41 that sealed the deal.
Yearning to be in a band, he started working with Bernard, whom he met online and shared his passion for the genre. Bryant was Dangerfield’s childhood friend from Palm Coast who had also moved to Atlanta, while Crews had been a fixture on the local music scene. And the name? It came from Dangerfield’s love of quantum physics.
Shortly after the group officially formed in June 2024, Dangerfield’s then-girlfriend — now wife and band “momager” Lexi Dangerfield — opened Instagram and TikTok accounts filming and posting their homey videos. The band’s song “Kaitlyn” and some covers blew up. The artists’ perspective, filtered through a Gen Z lens, struck a multigenerational nerve.
Attention came so quickly that Dangerfield felt the need to defend against online detractors who were convinced the group was an industry plant.
From there, the fairy-tale plot thickened. Billie Joe Armstrong followed Dangerfield on Instagram, and the two struck up a friendship that led to the Paradox opening for Green Day on the Atlanta stop of its Saviors Tour. But this was, of course, after Jack White’s people called — who the group ended up opening for at Basement East in Nashville.
Things haven’t slowed down in the two years since, with opportunities coming fast and furious. In the spring of last year, the band signed a deal with Hundred Days Records, a subsidiary of Virgin Music Group, and teamed up with producers Mike Pepe and Robopop to work on “NSFW.”
“Bender,” the group’s collaboration with Barker, and “Do Me Like That” are featured on Madden NFL 27 and NBA 2K26 video game soundtracks. Last month, the musicians streamed a concert from Twitch superstar Kai Cenat’s house. And now, instead of opening for their idols, they are inviting them up on stage as guests. For their second Warped Tour in Long Beach, that meant Deryck Whibley of Sum 41 and Logan Henderson from Big Time Rush.
The embrace from established musicians has definitely helped the band navigate its rise. In a moment of doubt, Crews said Good Charlotte’s Joel Madden, in particular, came through with sage advice.
“He asked me a question: ‘How does it feel being where we were?’ And I was like, ‘It feels like a dream.’ It felt like I was gonna wake up on my desk sophomore year with drool on my f— table. And I was telling him that, and he was like, ‘You know, it may feel that way, but it is real … It’s real, and it’s you … you belong in these rooms.’”
The irony of being embraced in a mostly white subgenre of punk rock while Black American culture formed its foundation is not lost on the group. Had the band come about during one of Dangerfield’s favorite eras of music, the ’50s and ’60s — there would likely have been rooms in which they weren’t welcomed.
While the band members understand the impact their visibility has — especially for non-white kids who grew up in the suburbs as they did: skating, riding BMX, building Legos, watching anime, dreaming of a life onstage — it does require some balance. “They’re not asking Taking Back Sunday this stuff,” Dangerfield acknowledged when asked if they might tire of the representation mantle. “Or Blink, but … We are a minority in this space and in this country, and I think that you know the stuff that comes with being Black should definitely be talked about. I think those conversations are important.”
He said as much in August, when the group made its Tiny Desk debut in celebration of NPR’s Black Music Month. “Now, like they said, we made history,” he said, leaning into the mic after the first song. “And the Paradox is in the business of bringing rock ’n’ roll back to the originators.”
A glance at the comment section under the video makes clear the group’s authenticity resonates with those who haven’t felt seen or heard in certain spaces.
“I’m a black girl from the suburbs of Metro ATL,” wrote @rainjojo. “And I’m glad to see representation of people who are like me indulging in punk rock. I got into this genre from childhood shows like “16,” “Stoked”, and other early 2000 to 2010 shows, and I remember being bullied for being whitewashed. Please keep making more music like this.”
The tour is named after “Proceed With Caution,” the band’s sophomore EP released on Oct. 2. Across six tracks, it continues in the same vein as “NSFW,” with sharp melodies and a dash of humor thrown in. But on “That’s Not Fair,” the group wades deeper into social commentary. It was also the most difficult to record, cut raw with no click track.
“We were just trying to think of things that were not fair, [from] small and trivial like losing your keys to, I don’t know, using it as a bridge to talk about larger issues and things like that,” Dangerfield says of the song. “I think a big thing for me personally, it’s not political … is kind of the fact that everything is getting so expensive. The price of everything is rising so rapidly, and the salaries that people are being paid are not really growing to match that.”
The Paradox perform at The Moroccan Lounge on Thursday, Oct. 22.
(Hunter Lyon)
“And it’s like, we got very lucky, but the thing is, most people don’t,” he continued. “If you’re gonna sacrifice all your time, slaving away working for big corporations and stuff like that, you should at least be able to, you know, buy a candy bar or something.”
So far, the musicians aren’t taking anything for granted and are trying to enjoy the in-between moments.
Dangerfield and his wife took their daughter on a Disney cruise for her second birthday — she’s spent much of her young life traveling with the band.
With some of his publishing money, Bernard indulged his love of vintage Japanese fashion and has a 2000s-era Tuscan house on his vision board. Crews stays healthy, listens to lots of Snarky Puppy, and looks forward to the relaxed cannabis laws of L.A. when the tour stops at the Moroccan Lounge on Oct. 22 and 23. If time allows, he might even have time to surf in Malibu.
Bryant, who counts Mike Dirnt, Mark Hoppus and James Jamerson among his biggest influences, balances a dream of seeing his band play for thousands with looking forward to a life lived like his older brother: a chiropractor with a nice family.
But some dreams will have to wait as the band goes back to making music, hopefully with lasting impact. The members want to become household names, “like Nirvana,” with music people will play for hundreds of years. Why not?
Anything is possible when you are a fantastic foursome.
It’s the third afternoon in another string of sweltering days in Los Angeles. A recent Friday offers no salvation for the weekend ahead besides sitting in front of a fan or turning up the air conditioning.
Thankfully, standing inside the climate-controlled walls of the Line hotel’s lobby and behind a cup of joe from its Alfred Coffee, there’s a smidgen of comfort.
The bell to the ground floor elevator rings and out steps a tall figure, wearing an all-black ensemble. His shorts hang just below his knees, his hair is a bit messy and his boots climb up his calf.
Grian Chatten looks remarkably cool for someone who’s just rolled out of bed, even more so for someone who has a performance at Hollywood Forever Cemetery later that night. He’s the leading man behind Fontaines D.C., a Dublin-born rock quintet that’s become one of the most exciting acts to grace a stage today.
And how couldn’t they be?
Their 2019 debut, “Dogrel,” was met with critical acclaim, a masterful album with references to James Joyce and a teeming garage-style production. Fast-forward five years later and their fourth effort, “Romance,” became their first to chart in the United States, reaching No. 97 on the Billboard 200.
Nowadays, they’re kicking up dust again with the release of “Dopamine Chamber,” which came out last Friday via XL Recordings. Its a continuation of the precedent they’ve set in terms of lyrical and sonic quality, but simultaneously is far more melancholic and synthesized than their previous work.
“Dopamine Chamber” is the band’s fifth release, following the success of “Romance” back in 2024.
(Ewen Spencer)
However, its rollout was rocky as the debut music video “Marianne” was criticized for its use of artificial intelligence. When the psychedelic, entrancing recording first hit YouTube, it listed a credit for AI “artists” in its description, sounding alarms among the band’s loyal fan base.
After all, it was widely viewed as contradictory of the group, which has been vehemently outspoken on various contemporary issues, including what the U.N. Human Rights Council has officially concluded to be genocide in Gaza.
We sat down with Chatten to discuss the new album, as well as some of the backlash the band has recently faced.
Tell me about this album title. Is it a literal happiness chamber?
It was me [who came up with it] because it originated as a line in a song, and the song never made it onto the album. We kept the pairing of words “dopamine chamber.”
I wanted to make it a bit more literary. Turns out that the dopamine chamber … it’s where they put rats to test different chemicals or in order to check their dopamine levels. We found that out after.
So it’s fake happiness.
It’s almost like nonconsensual happiness. I mean, if that exists.
Do you ever feel like that in life? Like you’re like forced to be happy with everything bleak that’s going on?
I think we force ourselves to feel a certain happiness every now and then, just so we can compartmentalize things and go about our day. I think that’s a survival mechanism, anyway. But to lose that is dangerous.
This album is a lot more synthesized than your previous work. “Six Short Morning” and “Mimesis” definitely stand out there.
It made sense, thematically. I felt that those textures signaled … I hate using the word “dystopian,” but the dystopian future. I wanted the album to feel more like an advanced version of “Romance,” where the body of the record had become more bionic. There’s a reason that there are so many strings and cinematic stuff, that’s the organic world that I wanted to draw on — people like Mina, the ‘60s singer from Italy.
The acoustic sounds are, of course, still present.
They’re supposed to be kind of like fighting for space, a little bit.
One track that stuck out to me was “Happy for You,” because of it’s insincere flattery. Who or what do you have in mind when you write songs like that?
It’s a bit like [R.E.M.’s] “Shiny Happy People,” it’s a similar function. That song is a jealousy of other people’s happiness or well-adjustedness.
I noticed those internal struggles show up a lot on this album. On “One Man,” are you singing about feeling the weight of many?
I think that’s more about the general existential feeling of helplessness in the face of things that are happening in the world. I’ve got a really good friend called Nikolaj Schultz, do you know him?
No idea.
He’s a sociologist and philosopher, and he writes mostly about the environment, the Anthropocene, and he’s written a couple of books with the French philosopher Bruno Latour, who passed away [in 2022]. He’s someone who’s strapped to their bed and feels away the world from morning to night.
That was a profound influence on “Romance” and on this album. So I think “One Man” pertains to that, maybe even to him.
It seems like you are heavily inspired by literature, more so than other artists would be by just general music and listening.
I think in literature, I can understand sometimes what the point is in what they’re writing. For example, this Schultz book “Land Sickness,” the style of it is to render the audience sensitive to this issue just by the osmosis of showing how much it affects you. Like, my mom got me into music by showing me how much it affected her.
How did the feature with Rosalía come about for “Where Is Gone?”
Well, this is our first feature. Carlos [O’Connell], our guitarist, grew up in Spain and had been listening to her first couple of records. Then we got into “Motomami” together and it became a fixture to listen to it backstage before our shows. When “Lux” came out, we were all quite obsessed with it.
We were four days out from mixing or from mastering the album, and Carlos rang me. He was like, “I think we’d be mistaken to not just send Rosalía something and see if she’d be interested.”
We sent her four tracks. We sent her “Where Is Gone?,” “One Man,” “Tongue,” and I can’t remember what the other one was. She got back within 48 hours with a full vocal of “Where Is Gone?”
You weren’t in the studio together?
She was on tour. She was in Miami at the time.
What happened with “Marianne?” There was a moment where it was credited to AI “artists.” Then it was corrected to be effects artists.
I woke up at like 5:30 a.m. the day after the video came out, and I saw an article that said there was AI used in the video, and I called our management, and I was like, “What the f—, is this true?” and it turned out that there was some AI used in like the workflow or the postproduction.
So all those main scenes and main effects and stuff were VFX and prosthetics, like the cheeks and everything. Over 110 people worked on the thing. It was a real huge human effort. But then somewhere in the process, someone from the VFX team I guess used some kind of AI in the workflow. And none of us were told about it. Apparently, not even our label or our management were told about it and it was a real shock.
Yeah, it seemed like you guys didn’t know.
Of course. I mean, we’re gonna have it written into our contracts going forward that like it can’t be in our music videos. You know what I mean? I don’t condone it.
I think a lot of people were shocked just because you guys are so active in contemporary issues, which AI certainly is.
It’s so f— ironic. No, very contradictory. The themes of the f— album as well. I was hoping to talk about how I felt about AI in interviews at some point anyway, and then this kind of pulled the rug from under that conversation a little bit.
It just f— sucked.
Well, how do you feel about AI?
I think it’s f— terrifying. I was watching a Robin Williams scene from “Dead Poets Society” when he talks about poetry, literature. These are the things that we stay alive for, and well, that’s exactly what AI threatens to rob from the human race.
I’ve seen those articles about those guys who are leaving AI companies because they said that the human race is going to be dead within 10 years. AI is literally rendering our souls obsolete and I think that is true death.
A lot of people say, “It’s here, we have to deal with it.”
We should just shut it off.
It always ends here. Every conversation [about AI] just ends grim. This is like every conversation with my dad over the last three years about it. It makes it tough to be alive, doesn’t it?
The 67-year-old sportscaster didn’t actually injure himself demonstrating the so-called “Peanut” punch with CBS broadcast booth partner J.J. Watt — who is 37 and a three-time former NFL defensive player of the year — during the Buffalo Bills-Las Vegas Raiders game on Sunday.
He seems to feel foolish though.
“I learned a lesson,” Nantz said Tuesday on ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee Show.” “You got J.J. Watt cradling the ball like this. What am I — I’m going to like knock it out of his hands? Come on, the thing was vacuum sealed into his chest.”
Named after retired cornerback Charles “Peanut” Tillman, the “Peanut punch” has become an effective method for defensive players to cause fumbles. While showing viewers how offensive players should hold the football to counter the maneuver , Watt encouraged Nantz to “give that a good punch.”
“Really?” Nantz asked.
“Hard as you got, brother,” Watt replied.
So Nantz delivered a solid blow to the ball, which didn’t budge in Watt’s arms.
“I did kind of go aggressively here after this ball because J.J. encouraged me to do so,” Nantz told McAfee while watching a clip of the incident.
Back on the broadcast, Nantz immediately winced and grabbed his hand.
“I did not think you were going to go that hard,” Watt laughed. “That was so much harder than I thought you were going to go.”
Nantz clearly was in discomfort, but he chuckled about it as well.
“My wrist is broken,” he told his booth partner. “Like I’m going to knock it out of your hands.”
“Get Jim some ice,” Watt joked as they were going to commercial.
After halftime, Nantz could be seen in the booth with his hand wrapped. That led some people to believe he had seriously injured himself.
“I heard from people you can’t believe,” Nantz told McAfee. “[Bills quarterback] Josh Allen texted me an hour after the game and said, ‘Did you just break your hand? I hear you broke your hand.’ I heard from a former president of the United States, reached out and wanted to know if my hand was broken.”
McAfee and company speculated that the former president was Barack Obama, but Nantz did not reveal his identity.
After the game, Watt joked on X: “CBS Injury Report Week 7 — Jim Nantz: Questionable (Wrist/Hand).”
The NFL joined in the good-natured fun, posting the clip on Instagram and writing, “the peanut punch isn’t for everybody,” along with a laughing emoji.
While Nantz admitted his hand and wrist “did hurt for a while,” he told McAfee that any reports beyond that were “greatly exaggerated.”
“It did sting, I’m not going to kid you,” Nantz said. “But I gave it my best, and as soon as I did it, I regretted it because I felt like everything had been compressed. And I did think I was going to wake up Monday with this thing about triple the size, but I’m fine. I’m not going to be on the injury report this week. I’m going to be good to go. No broken bones.”
Two things can be true: The Dodgers’ season ended prematurely and, for Shohei Ohtani, the offseason couldn’t come soon enough.
Thursday’s elimination — a no-doubt-about-it sweep at the hands of the Milwaukee Brewers, who vanquished the Dodgers in the same fashion Ohtani and Co. had summarily eliminated them last season — was apparently the only way to get the two-way superstar out of the lineup.
Now he can get some much-needed rest and recovery, a reality check and, possibly, some surgical procedures to repair the knee and biceps injuries that plagued him this season.
Ohtani didn’t rule anything out in his postgame scrum, several rows deep, in front of his locker after the Dodgers’ 6-4 defeat in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series.
“Hard to tell at this point,” the 32-year-old Ohtani said in Japanese, via interpreter Will Ireton. “It’s something that’s going to be analyzed, discussed over the offseason, and see if that’s a viable thing to do.”
Hopefully, for the Dodgers’ sake and for baseball’s, Ohtani and his team will see their way to a reasonable load management plan. Hopefully they’ll find a viable injury management strategy.
Especially if he continues to pitch, as Ohtani said he plans to: “Yes, definitely, and looking forward to having a better season.”
Hopefully this bumpy season — his first as a Dodger to end short of the championship following the 2024 and 2025 title runs — will make Ohtani better. Wiser. More willing to listen to his body and to communicate what it’s telling him with the ball club that relies on him so much.
“I’ll always trust Shohei,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “He’s the best player on the planet, and he’s not completely healthy. But I just give him a lot of respect for not running from it, still wanting to participate, still wanting to play when he’s not 100%.”
But hopefully when Ohtani’s knee barks next time, he won’t pitch through it. Hopefully when his right arm tightens up, he’ll step out of the box. Even — or especially — if it takes longer than a 15-day IL stint to make him right.
Hopefully he’s learned that irrespective of a sense of duty or pride or a selfish streak, the cold-hitting fact is that a compromised version of Ohtani leaves the Dodgers’ whole team — a $400 million investment — compromised, as it was this postseason.
“I don’t really want to take it for granted for the opportunity to be able to play with these guys,” Ohtani said. “But honestly, I think I’m just very disappointed.”
In eight playoff games against the Atlanta Braves and Brewers, Ohtani hit .192 (five for 26). He struck out 10 times. He didn’t get an extra-base hit or drive in a run until Thursday, in the season finale, which reminded us of Ohtani’s power — he walloped his first home run since Aug. 18, a three-run missile in the second inning that traveled 428 feet — and his pain.
Roberts looked, for a moment, like a genius for continuing to keep Ohtani in the lineup — and to pencil him in as the Dodgers’ leadoff hitter after batting him sixth on Wednesday.
For that one shining moment.
Shohei Ohtani celebrates after hitting a three-run home run in the second inning of the Dodgers’ 6-4 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers in Game 4 of the NLCS on Thursday night at Dodger Stadium.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
But Ohtani also struck out three times Thursday — made to look foolish in a much-too-familiar way.
The Dodgers needed a healthy Ohtani to deal with a young, hungry ballclub like the Brewers.
To have a chance against a team that was, as Dodgers utility man Kiké Hernández said, “almost playing perfect baseball,” they needed him dialed in and not tinkering, not staying late searching.
They need the version of him that delivered the perfect game a year ago, his three-home-run, 10-strikeout masterpiece that sent Milwaukee home in Game 4 of the NLCS.
“Ohtani is arguably the best player in the world,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said.
“He’s proven that to us. He had the greatest game I’ve ever seen played by an individual player last year against us.”
The Dodgers need that guy striking fear into opponents. Not him striking out, or getting stranded helplessly on base.
Shohei Ohtani tosses his bat after hitting a three-run home run against the Milwaukee Brewers during the Dodgers’ 6-4 loss in Game 4 of the NLCS on Thursday at Dodger Stadium.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
And they got a glimpse of that guy Thursday with that second-inning home run, a shot that had him throwing his arms up and screaming toward his dugout, as emotive as we’ve seen him, relieved and exulting after giving the Dodgers a 4-0 lead — and a fleeting expectation that they’d play a Game 5 on Friday.
“It was a lot of pent-up anger, frustration,” Roberts said. “It was the best ball he hit in probably two, three months, and it was a big hit.”
“It was like,” Max Muncy said, “that’s the swing we’ve been waiting for.”
Now we all wait for baseball to return — and then to learn what this season taught Ohtani, one of the most unique athletes in the history of the game.
“Not quite satisfied with how things shaped up on the pitching side at the end of the year,” Ohtani said. “… I haven’t been able to really come to grips in terms of what I’ve learned overall. It’s something that I’m going to kind of go back to the drawing board in terms of treatment, training program, and see what I can come up with for next season.”
Nathan Fielder would rather you not read this article. At least not until you’ve seen his new movie.
He has a point.
Now in theaters, “You Can See Everything,” the nearly three-hour documentary Fielder co-directed with filmmaker Lance Oppenheim about convicted Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, is full of head-spinning twists and turns best left unspoiled, and the filmmakers have gone to extreme lengths to keep them that way. At its secret premiere at the Telluride Film Festival last month, audience members were required to lock their phones in pouches and warned that security guards with night-vision goggles would be watching for anyone trying to record the screening. Afterward, Fielder pleaded with the crowd to keep the film’s biggest surprises to themselves.
Holmes was convicted in 2022 of defrauding investors in her failed blood-testing company and sentenced to more than 11 years in federal prison. Fielder and Oppenheim began filming her and longtime partner Billy Evans, an MIT graduate and heir to a family-owned San Diego hotel business, shortly before she reported to prison in 2023, gaining extraordinary access to the couple and their two young children.
Holmes and Evans welcomed the cameras, hoping they would help vindicate her. But the closer Fielder and Oppenheim got to the couple, the harder it became to distinguish candor from calculated performance. Fielder, whose series “Nathan for You” and “The Rehearsal” put real people through elaborate, often uncomfortable experiments, began to wonder whether the tables had been turned.
“I really am struggling to this day to understand exactly what I experienced in this,” Fielder admitted during a post-screening Q&A at Telluride. “I don’t quite know what I went through.” He said he hoped audiences might help him make sense of the “glitchy feeling” it left in his head.
Having seen the film twice, we’re not entirely sure we can help him.
In deference to Fielder’s wishes, this is your last chance to turn back: Major spoilers follow. For those still with us, here are 10 of the film’s strangest moments — by no means the only ones — along with a few clues from Fielder himself about how they came to be.
Evans takes ’radical transparency’ too far
Evans has a theory about why the world sees his partner as a monster: Nobody really knows her. “In the absence of knowing somebody, it’s really easy to make them feel other and scary,” he tells the filmmakers. His proposed solution is “radical transparency” — a familiar Silicon Valley mantra with an ironic resonance given Theranos’ notorious culture of secrecy. The filmmakers are allowed virtually unlimited access to the family’s life, with Fielder even invited to move into their rented house in Del Mar, near San Diego. In one scene, Evans stands completely naked in the shower, brushing his teeth with the bathroom door wide open and the cameras rolling, as Fielder stands awkwardly nearby. At Telluride, Fielder, who had initially planned to stay behind the scenes, admitted he was still perplexed by the couple’s openness. “I’m a weird guy — why do they want me there?” he said. “That messed with my head a little bit.”
Fielder observes Holmes and her family in a scene from the documentary “You Can See Everything”
(A24)
Theranos, the sequel
A federal fraud conviction apparently hasn’t ended Holmes’ ambitions to revolutionize medical testing. Before heading to prison, she and Evans begin laying plans for a new venture involving lasers and artificial intelligence that Evans describes as “2.0” — a chance, he says, “to put the band back together and do it all again.” Holmes declares, “From wherever I am, I’m going to continue to work inventing, even if it’s inventing from a cage.”
Holmes claims she’s never told a lie
For someone convicted of defrauding investors, Holmes has a remarkably uncomplicated view of her own honesty. Asked by Fielder whether she’s ever told a lie in her life, she replies, “I don’t think so.” Pressed — surely she’s pretended to be sick to get out of a party? — she concedes she has, explaining that she thought he meant the criminal case against her. In a scene that became the centerpiece of the film’s teaser trailer, Holmes fixes Fielder with an unwavering stare. “Why would I deceive you?” she asks. “There’s no reason for me to do that.” When Fielder asks whether she’s being real with him, she doesn’t miss a beat: “I’m always being real.”
The Theranos device gets a second look
Holmes hauls out of storage the infamous Theranos device, the machine that helped bring down her company. “So this is the famous scam device,” Fielder says. “It is not a scam device,” Holmes replies. When she insists the machine can perform any medical test, Fielder finds himself drawn into an absurd debate over the meaning of the word “can.” Did she mean it could actually perform those tests, or that it theoretically would once the necessary chemistry had been developed? The man who has made a career out of baffling other people seems genuinely baffled himself, reduced to explaining the word “can” to the founder of Theranos.
Holmes and Evans enter federal court in 2022.
(Nic Coury / Associated Press)
Elizabeth Holmes meets Abbott and Costello
Still trying to make his point, Fielder turns to Abbott and Costello. He plays Holmes the classic “Who’s on First?” comedy routine — two people hopelessly talking past each other. Holmes watches politely and says she finds it funny. But she seems to have missed the central joke: The first baseman’s name is actually Who. “I didn’t pick it up,” she admits. Fielder’s attempts to explain the joke and why he showed it to her get him nowhere. Evans, watching the exchange, regards his wife’s difficulty following the joke as further evidence that her mind simply works differently from everyone else’s.
Fielder gives Holmes an escape kit
On the morning Holmes is due to report to prison, Fielder arrives with a parting gag gift: hair dye and glasses, in case she’d prefer to disguise herself and flee the country. Fielder is famous for excruciatingly awkward deadpan comedy, but Holmes’ parents are there, the family is preparing for an emotional goodbye and he seems to realize almost immediately that he has misjudged the situation. “I didn’t know your parents would be here,” he says, assuring everyone that it’s “just kind of like a joke.” The more he tries to explain himself, the more uncomfortable things become. “Maybe not appropriate for the moment,” he concedes.
Amanda Seyfried becomes a surprise co-star
Seyfried won an Emmy for playing Holmes in Hulu’s “The Dropout,” which Holmes had avoided watching for fear it would be too emotionally disturbing. Fielder persuades Holmes to watch it for the first time, on a laptop in the couple’s bed. She soon breaks down in tears and asks him to turn it off. Later, Fielder visits Seyfried at her apartment and shows her footage of Holmes watching her performance. So we watch Seyfried watch Holmes watch Seyfried playing Holmes as Fielder watches her. And things only get weirder from there.
At Telluride, Fielder said the filmmakers initially doubted Seyfried would want to participate. But after a brief phone call, she invited them over and agreed to be filmed. Neither side knew where things would lead. “It just actually evolved in that organic way, which was really exciting,” Fielder said.
Seyfried as Holmes in a scene from Hulu’s “The Dropout.”
( Beth Dubber / Hulu)
Seyfried plays detective
Seyfried soon finds herself reenacting Holmes’ conversations with Fielder as he tries to make sense of their encounters. She becomes so invested that she joins Fielder on a visit to Evans’ home, hoping she might get him to open up in ways Fielder can’t. “I feel like an undercover cop right now,” she says, clearly getting a rush. There, after meeting the couple’s children, she unexpectedly winds up on a prison phone call with Holmes herself. With only two minutes for the family to talk, Seyfried suddenly seems mortified to be intruding. “I’m so sorry — I don’t want to ruin your two minutes with your beautiful family,” she says. Fielder, naturally, has a camera running.
Evans takes control of the narrative
With Holmes behind bars, Evans seems determined to manage her public image himself. Armed with power of attorney, he takes over her verified X account, posting messages in her name, some of which sound nothing like the carefully controlled Holmes, including one telling another user to “f— off.” “There’s just so much trust that most things I don’t really consult her on,” Evans says at one point. “I know what she’d want.”
Evans’ attempts to steer the documentary itself begin even before Holmes reports to prison. In a meeting later reenacted in the film, after Holmes leaves the room, he raises the subject of money with Fielder, Oppenheim and executives from A24, the studio behind the film, demanding a share of the profits. Fielder says A24 reluctantly agreed, leaving him worried that the integrity of the project may have been compromised. When Holmes later insists she has no financial interest in the film, Fielder is taken aback. Either she’s “fully sincere,” he tells Seyfried, or “she honestly might be the most manipulative person that’s ever lived.” (The film notes at the end that Evans later changed his mind and decided not to accept payment.)
On Oct. 5, Holmes’ X account promoted the documentary with a tantalizing warning: “I really don’t think you are ready for this doc.” Whether that was Holmes speaking or Evans speaking for her is anyone’s guess.
Seyfried confronts Evans
Things turn ugly during that same visit to Evans’ home. A conversation about conjugal visits and Evans’ sex life gives way to a heated argument over his use of Holmes’ X account. Evans brings up the social media backlash Seyfried faced for criticizing Charlie Kirk after his shooting death, then attacks her portrayal of his partner in “The Dropout.” Soon he’s threatening vengeance against people he believes have wronged Holmes. “I’m going to ruin their lives,” he declares. Asked whose lives he means, Evans replies, “F—ing everyone. I’ve got vengeance in my heart.”
Later, away from Evans, Seyfried offers her own assessment: “He is bat— crazy.”
As the nation hurtles toward a pivotal and divisive midterm election, it’s fair to wonder if people on opposite sides of the political spectrum will ever be able to again live peacefully as neighbors, to talk, and especially listen, to each other.
It’s a question co-directors Robert May and Barry Levinson and producer Jason Sosnoff set out to answer in the aftermath of the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. It led to their five-part docuseries, “Bucks County, USA,” now on streaming on PBS.org and the PBS app, that unfolds across four years in a suburban Pennsylvania county being ripped apart by vicious school board battles poisoned by partisan personal conflicts. (The finale streams Sunday, and the full docuseries will air Oct. 29 on SoCal PBS.)
“We don’t pay enough attention to one another,” Levinson says. “We just say, ‘I’ve formed my position and I’m locked into it’ and we don’t share enough interaction where we can discuss things. Democracy requires interactions, and if we cannot find a way to find common ground, that’s my big worry.”
The series shows how Paul Martino spent a fortune supporting Republican candidates who supported reopening schools quickly after the height of the pandemic but then, more contentiously, turned their attention to the culture wars. They focused on what was being taught in the classrooms and stocked on the shelves in the school libraries, leaving teachers feeling attacked and Black families and LGBTQ+ students alienated and ostracized.
“It’s unexpected how something like that can accelerate into such a contentious situation,” Levinson says, “where well-educated people in a wonderful community can’t figure things out.”
May says national polarization is poisoning the atmosphere locally. “It became a life-or-death battle in the name of their kids, but they both felt their children would be mercilessly mistreated if they didn’t do something to save them from the other side.”
An aerial view of Bucks County, Pa., the community at the center of Robert May and Barry Levinson’s docuseries.
(SenArt Films & Baltimore Pictures)
The filmmakers followed the heated battles as people in the divided community resorted to screaming and name-calling. It frequently plays like a fun house nightmare version of “Our Town.” That’s true even of their version of the play’s Stage Manager. Two teenagers, Evi Casey and Vanessa Martino, Paul’s daughter, guide us through each episode. While the girls are best friends, Evi’s liberal mother and Vanessa’s conservative father view each other as hostile opposition.
“I think the series does a good job of showing the political division and how it affects the kids,” says Casey.
The series opens with a school choir singing “What a Wonderful World” underneath a collection of residents telling us how they’ve been berated: “I’ve been called a pedophile.” “I’ve been called a Nazi.” “I’ve been called anti-American.” “I’ve been called a dyke and a groomer.”
But the series then gets to know people in depth, allowing for far more nuance than the contentious school board meetings.
“My hope was that people can take the time to at least have a deeper conversation with somebody who they think is doing harm to their community and try and understand it better, “ Sosnoff adds. “It starts with microchanges where somebody reconsiders the way they might harm somebody else.”
Katherine “Kitty” Good Semisch, a retired Bucks County teacher and a key figure in the documentary, says the series is perfectly timed for the midterms because of its efforts to humanize everyone. “Dehumanization and demonization lead to the worst outcomes, and this kicks out from under anybody the lazy position that the people on the other side aren’t human,” she says. “Everyone is just trying to find something that works for their community.”
Sosnoff originally approached Levinson with the idea of a project that would humanize both sides, but his original idea was to bring people together at a summer camp with a facilitator so they could get to know each other better. “Barry wisely said, ‘That’s more of a sociological experiment where you’re playing God,’” Sosnoff recalls. “He said, ‘Let’s focus on a seemingly idyllic small town, like in “Our Town,” and examine what happened and why.’”
They chose Bucks County, a purple county in a purple state. “It’s not a place of extremists but people were really inflamed,” Sosnoff says, noting that some people were reluctant to speak on camera. “The climate of fear was very much alive. It was a community in trauma.”
There are brawls over policy that lead to lawsuits, but the main drama is the 2023 school board election, where the Democrats hoped to reverse the Republicans’ 6-3 majority.
While May says he is offended by “people that don’t care about other people or their right to exist,” especially when it comes to LGBTQ+ rights, he emphasized that he resisted taking sides in the documentary. “When we don’t see people as human, that’s when you lose a society.”
Indeed, Sosnoff says that while it’s bad when people are marginalized and victimized by discrimination from those in power, they’d still edit episodes to keep everything balanced, occasionally saying, “We need to give conservative characters more screen time and understand their positions.” (He also says they grew to like everyone involved.)
At the center of the drama depicted in “Bucks County, USA” is a school board election and a community grappling with political division.
(SenArt Films & Baltimore Pictures)
May says he knows some viewers will be furious with this approach, but he hopes that if they watch all five episodes, they’ll get a full picture. “You can’t just see parts of it. You need to see in order,” May says. “People reveal who they are over the five episodes. There’s an extraordinary amount of nuance, but if somebody’s saying something stupid, we have that too.”
(And don’t mistake May’s efforts at evenhandedness for a lack of passion — the day after a 30-minute joint interview with Levinson, he called me back and talked, largely uninterrupted, mostly about bias and perceptions.)
Amazingly, most people interviewed from both sides in the community support the final version.
At the center of the action are Vanessa’s mother, Aarati Martino, who ran for school board as a Republican, and Paul, who poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into school board elections.
“Overall, I am pleased,” Paul Martino says now. “There’s some things I think don’t portray the facts exactly quite right, but they recorded 500 hours and you’re not going to love everything that’s on the screen. Everybody is represented in this film.”
Martino, who never really owns the impact of him using his fortune to try to elect cultural conservatives, says he’s been “unfairly attacked” and has become “a convenient boogeyman in some of the scenes. But I’m actually not even upset about that piece of the puzzle.” (What he feels is lacking is that in 2021 he says 30% of the 300 candidates he funded around the state were Democrats.)
And Donte King, whose family endures racism both subtle and blatant, praises the filmmakers’ attempts to humanize people with contrasting viewpoints, saying he was pleased with getting to tell his story. “It allows people to connect with you,” he says. “We might have different ideologies, but we’re more alike than we are unalike, so maybe somebody who votes blue will identify with someone who votes red and vice versa.”
The closest thing to a hero in the series may be Semisch, a liberal, who shows civic courage in her efforts to build bridges, meeting one-on-one with Vonna DeArmond, a conservative elementary school teacher, and organizing events like an ice cream social and a candle-making evening. (Martino also posted an online peace offering, saying he’d buy anyone from the other side drinks; Semisch was the only one to take him up on it, but several people interviewed, including May, say Martino’s unbending personality may explain the lack of response.)
Semisch wishes that May had fact-checked some of the misleading claims by the right, but she praises the series’ subtlety. “I understand people’s frustration, but they’re leaving it to the audience to sort out who’s making sense,” she says. “My side was advocating for more books in the library and for better training for teachers to navigate difficult topics. As you watch, it seems to me that the people on the other side aren’t making as much sense.”
Near the end of the series, there’s one sweet moment of coming together between Evi’s and Vanessa’s mothers and another moment of seemingly genuine outreach by one of the town’s conservatives to King. But there’s also plenty of acrimony and recrimination in the aftermath of the school board election and one final confrontation between King and Paul Martino at a roundtable that leaves little doubt that tensions are still simmering.
Still, May says, “I remain hopeful and optimistic because I’ve seen the humanity in all of them. I think things are better there now than when we started.”
Semisch, with DeArmond, will lead discussions about the series in Bucks County and May hopes others will follow suit around the country. He and Levinson hope that by strengthening local communities, it can eventually lead to stronger national bonds. “Maybe people can learn from them. Maybe this series is literally the beginning of a change.”
Sosnoff is a bit more measured in his final assessment, quoting a participant as saying, “We haven’t buried the hatchet yet, but it’s been put away in the closet,” he says. “I’ll take that as progress.”
Chargers offensive coordinator Mike McDaniel didn’t shy away from discussing his job security Thursday amid a frustrating 0-5 start to the season.
“I feel like it’s core to my job to always feel that way,” McDaniel said when asked if he’s coaching for his job. “I need to do the very best I possibly can, all the time, because [of] the players, the organization, the fans.
“So, that’s second nature. … I think it’s disrespectful to all those that choose to invest in our game and our team to not look at things that way. The second you get comfortable in this league, it’s a wrap; it’s too good. I will be doing my very best, because from an integrity standpoint, I think it’s really insulting to do anything else. And that won’t change.”
McDaniel says his determination is unwavering. His place in the Chargers’ organization, however, might not be if things don’t change soon.
The Chargers, who rank 10th in total yards allowed per game on defense (311.6), enter Sunday’s road game against the undefeated Kansas City Chiefs averaging just 16.8 points per game, the third-lowest mark in the NFL above just the also-winless Miami Dolphins (14.0) and Tennessee Titans (11.6). Quarterback Justin Herbert ranks 22nd in passing (937 passing yards) and is last in the NFL in total quarterback rating (26.6).
Injuries have played a significant role in the Chargers’ offensive struggles. Eight offensive players either didn’t practice or were limited in practice because of injuries on Wednesday. Four rookies started on the offensive line in Sunday’s loss to the Denver Broncos and wide receivers Ladd McConkey, Quentin Johnston and Brenen Thompson, didn’t play.
McDaniel insists that he’s been giving the franchise all he has.
“I would be so embarrassed if I told you, ‘Well, now I’m going to try harder,’” McDaniel said. “Like, what? What have you been doing? I’m confident in the players that we have. The improvement that I see before the results generally lead to good things. But talk is cheap. We got to do.”
The Dodgers have two pitchers who have won multiple Cy Young Awards in Blake Snell and Tarik Skubal. Another starter, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, is the reigning World Series most valuable player.
None of them will be on the mound Thursday when the season will be on the line. Instead, manager Dave Roberts will put the ball — and his team’s future — in the massive right hand of Tyler Glasnow, who will have no margin for error.
“It’s win or go home,” Skubal said. “Our backs are against the wall.”
That’s not how Andrew Friedman, the Dodgers’ president of baseball operations, saw things playing out when he traded three prospects to Detroit for Skubal in August. Or when he spent $182 million to sign Snell before last season. Or when he committed $325 million to sign Yamamoto the season before that.
And while that may not be the way the Dodgers wanted things to play out, they say they like their chances — for one night, at least.
“Everybody in the team is very confident in his ability and the stuff that’s coming out of his hand and doing his job,” Skubal said of Glasnow.
“I feel great about Glas,” utility man Kiké Hernández added. “He’s got some of the best stuff in the game. I feel like our pitchers have given us a chance every day to win a game, and we just haven’t hit. So we just got to hit.”
Glasnow started the season as the No. 3 starter, but before the Dodgers had gotten six weeks into their schedule, he was on the injured list because of lower back spasms. He spent most of the season there, pitching more innings in minor-league rehab starts than he did for the Dodgers between May and September.
He returned to make six starts down the stretch, striking out 49 in 34-1/3 innings to finish the season 5-2 with a 3.53 earned-run average in 13 starts, then held Atlanta to one hit over 4-2/3 innings in the deciding game of the division series.
“He’s fresh,” Roberts said of Glasnow. “He’s got a lot of arm talent. He’s got experience certainly in the postseason. We’ve got a lot of guys behind him” in the bullpen.
“I think he’s going to pitch well.”
The Dodgers’ season is depending on that. Glasnow, however, is just approaching it as another start.
“When I was younger maybe I’d feel it and get excited, and I’m like, ‘Oh, I can throw 105 if I try hard,’” he said. “Now it’s more about trying to settle in and go back to as close of a normal feeling as possible, not trying to chase it and be any different or any more or any less. Just try to stay with it and what I’ve done all week, my preparation, how I feel on the mound, and just keep it consistent.”
Glasnow, 33, has pitched in 17 postseason games for Tampa Bay and the Dodgers, going 2-6 with a 4.27 ERA. Only Snell, among Dodgers starters, has more playoff appearances. But Glasnow hasn’t won a playoff game since the 2020 division series when he was pitching for the Rays.
If he can give the Dodgers a boost Thursday, however, if he can extend their season just one more day, it could give the team new life.
Only one team has come back from a three-game deficit to win a best-of-seven League Championship Series and that was the 2004 Boston Red Sox team Roberts played for — a team that also gave the ball to its fourth-best starting pitcher with its season on the line.
On the afternoon of Game 4, with the New York Yankees looking to beat Derek Lowe and sweep the Sox, Boston’s Kevin Millar stepped on the field at Fenway Park and issued a warning.
Dave Roberts of Boston steals second past Derek Jeter of the Yankees in the ninth inning of Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS. Roberts and the Red Sox became the only team to come back from down 3-0 to win an LCS.
(Jed Jacobsohn / Getty Images)
“Don’t let us win tonight,” he shouted. “If we win today, we’ve got Pedro [Martínez] coming back and then [Curt] Schilling will pitch Game 6 and anything can happen in a Game 7.”
The series played out exactly as Millar predicted. And if Glasnow can rescue the Dodgers, they would have their three high-paid aces — Skubal, Yamamoto and Snell — lined up for the next three elimination games.
But none of that matters if they lose Thursday.
“We just need to win tomorrow’s game,” Skubal said.
LAS VEGAS — The plan for the Lakers had been to turn their fourth preseason game into a dress rehearsal for the upcoming season.
But that was not the case.
The Lakers did get the preseason debut of center Walker Kessler on Tuesday night, a good sign for them to see their biggest acquisition of the summer play.
But on the flip side, Luka Doncic didn’t play in the Lakers’ 101-89 loss to the Golden State Warriors at T-Mobile Arena because he was resting.
“He’s not injured, just getting the night off,” Lakers coach JJ Redick said.
So, it was left up to Kessler, Austin Reaves and the rest of the available Lakers to sort things out. And Reaves and Kessler were on point.
In just his second preseason game, Reaves was doing what is expected of him, scoring 28 points on 10-for-18 shooting, including four for seven on three-pointers, with seven assists and four rebounds. But forced to handle the ball more with Doncic out, Reaves also had seven turnovers.
Kessler started and had 11 points, nine rebounds, one blocked shot and one steal in 16 minutes.
For the Lakers, it was good to see Kessler on the court. They gave up a lot to acquire him in a trade with the Utah Jazz — two unprotected first-round picks and two pick swaps and then signing him to a four-year, $130-million contract.
Kessler played in only five games last season while recovering from a torn labrum in his left shoulder.
He missed the first three Lakers’ preseason games because of a left pinky injury.
Kessler yearned to play again.
“Yeah, I mean it was a lot of fun being out there again,” he said. “It’s been so long. Before the game I was actually pretty nervous, to be honest. But, getting out there and just playing with the guys, it was a blast. I can’t really, you know speak to … I think I have a certain presence on the floor, but I think my teammates around me did a great job of playing defense on the perimeter. I think we shared the ball really well tonight. Just how it was, especially in the first half. It was a lot of fun.”
He began his night with a defensive rebound, which allowed the Lakers to set up their offense early in the first quarter.
Kessler then cut to the basket, took a pass from Reaves and scored on a layup, his first points of the preseason.
His second basket was a left-handed layup early in the second quarter. Shortly after, Kessler blocked a shot by Warriors center Charles Bassey from behind, a display of his defensive presence.
Another good sign, less than a minute later, was when Kessler got an offensive rebound and bounded back up for a dunk.
When the Warriors went to their small-ball lineup in the first quarter, it meant the 7-foot-2 Kessler would be tested on defense, because his man was 6-2 Gary Payton II. It meant Kessler was forced to play defense on the perimeter and not down low where the Lakers prefer him.
Still, Kessler held his own.
Lakers forward Arthur Kaluma drives the ball against Warriors forward Yaxel Lendeborg during the first half Tuesday.
(David Becker / AP)
While he was out and unable to play, Kessler learned a few things about himself.
“Yeah, I think what I missed most was competing,” Kessler said. “Quite frankly, competing to win, and I think as far as making me a better basketball player, I just think it has made me long to go try to win every game and win every night. So returning, I think it makes me a little better basketball player.”
The Lakers lost to the Warriors for the second time this preseason. Their other two games were victories over the Sacramento Kings. They play one more preseason game, Friday night against the Denver Nuggets at Crypto.com Arena, and then open the season against the Warriors at home on Oct. 21.
Before the game, Redick said the plan was for the Lakers to “continue to work on us.”
“We have kind of circled this game, not as a full dress rehearsal, just in terms of our scout presentation, but we gave the guys a sample of that this morning and at shoot-ariund,” Redick said. “Not as much game-planning necessarily, but just kind of the sequencing of how we present prior to a game. We’ll do the same thing pregame with a brief personnel tape. We just want to get better. I mean, that’s the biggest thing. We want to get healthy, we want to get better, we want to continue to build our fitness and cardio level and find a rhythm. And it’s been a little disjointed with having some guys out.”
Redick said rookie Cameron Carr, guard Collin Sexton (lower leg) and forwards Ziaire Williams (right foot contusion) and Adou Thiero (undisclosed) “are still day to day” with their injuries.
It has been five years since Michael Che’s last stand-up special. Of course, he has a good excuse, being busy much of the year co-writing and performing “Weekend Update” on “Saturday Night Live,” and he also wrote and starred in two series of his acclaimed sketch comedy show, “That Damn Michael Che.”
But he feels more like himself on the stage, he said in a recent interview. “I really miss stand-up when I’m not doing it because I can really let loose on stage and say all the words I want,” he says.
In his new Netflix hour, with the pointed title, “Michael Che: Shot in Minnesota,” he wastes no time in getting into it, opening with a series of jokes saying a lot of words about Charlie Kirk’s murder: He believes that it happened because “straight white conservative Christian men are being silenced.”
He clearly loves poking at people’s sensitive spots. His favorite joke, he says onstage, is, “Men want anal sex the way women want a sensitive man. It just sounds nice… until you see them crying.”
He talks about race (“I don’t care what color you are — if you’re rich, you’re white”) and goes after President Trump and people who try to police language, but he also talks up how much fun he had at a Pride parade and about growing up poor, with his mother cleaning houses to help make ends meet. In our interview done via Zoom (without a camera on) while he was stuck in traffic on the way to 30 Rockefeller Center and then in an elevator and then in the SNL offices, he discussed it all.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Did anyone in your family shape your humor and your storytelling?
My family has a different kind of humor. It’s a little meaner, if I’m being honest with you.
I’d like to see Thanksgiving at your house.
A lot of people would. It’s kind of crazy.
But the one person was my grandfather who was a pastor. He knew how to hold court and tell a story and he was a funny guy. He could be silly or absurd or dry. So maybe there’s a lot of him in what I do. But he did it week after week with different material.
Speaking of week after week, which is closer to your real self, the “Weekend Update” persona or your stand-up persona?
The stand-up is the most me; “Update” is a job and it’s a character. On stage you get to hear more nuances — on “Weekend Update” it’s a short segment, and I’m splitting time with Colin and guests. There are more needs being met than just mine. I say that respectfully, but there are things we have to touch on that I wouldn’t in my personal work and there are things other people write so it’s never all me.
I can listen, I can build, I can take you on a journey, I can make you think this is a bad joke, but it’s actually a good joke. I can make you think it’s a dirty joke, but it’s a clean joke.
I miss doing stand-up full time, but maybe that’s only because I don’t do it full time. But maybe if I did it full time, I’d miss doing it part time. Getting this hour together for the special, Lorne [Michaels, SNL’s iconic boss] was nice enough to let me go on the road even during show weeks, and he didn’t ask as much of me this past season. He was really kind, and I really appreciate it.
Colin Jost, left, and Michael Che on “Weekend Update” on “Saturday Night Live” on Saturday, March 11, 2023. Che has been doing “Weekend Update” for 12 years, as has Jost.
(Will Heath / NBC)
Your stand-up persona is definitely more thoughtful and open-minded than your “Weekend Update” one. Are you conscious of revealing yourself onstage or just thinking about what’s funny?
They tell you in the criminal world that the longer you talk to the police the more chances there are you’re going to reveal something. And I feel like it’s true for comedy, too. A lot of the stuff that I do is just thoughts that we haven’t said out loud and explored yet. I start with the thought, and if I can get a joke, a one liner out of the thought, that’s then I start to explore it onstage. I only write one line because I can’t write in a vacuum. I need to be able to listen to see what an audience gives me; otherwise, I only know how it makes me feel.
You open this special with that riff on Charlie Kirk’s murder. Your audience is not filled with Turning Point members, but people still may be hesitant to laugh. Are you starting there to challenge yourself or challenge your audience, or is it just because you think it’s funny?
I think all three of those things can be true. Those jokes are funny, but it is hard to laugh at. That’s the sort of feat I seek to pull off, to make people laugh about things that they’re not necessarily expecting to hear without being gross and gratuitous. I did those jokes on Shane Gillis’ show and his audience reacted favorably.
None of this is to make any kind of larger point other than I want you to laugh at the things that horrify you. It’s just horrifying on the surface so people think you can’t make a joke about it. People are afraid of the attempt. And I say, “Well, what about this one?” I do like that.
Then you move on to the R-word and the N-word. Are you simply pushing buttons for laughs or pushing people to think about their own biases and preconceptions about language and their political sensibilities?
I don’t want to let words dictate my next emotions. I want you to put the responsibility of self-control on yourself. People are going to say nasty things literally just to get a rise out of you, and it’s up to you to decide how you’re going to handle that. Also, I’m trying to be consistent. If I start with jokes about Charlie Kirk, but then somebody wants to call me the N-word, I can’t say, “Well, that’s crossing the line.” Right now there ain’t no more lines. We’re in a culture war and bombs are going to fly. So let’s see who’s got the stomach for it.
When you refer to a guy buying you drinks in a bar as “visibly gay,” the audience gets uncomfortably quiet in a way. How do you feel when they hush over a line like that?
With a lot of these jokes it’s like dribbling a football, you just don’t know where it’s going to land. But I like putting people on their heels and being a Black comic of my generation, they expect the joke to go one way because they’ve heard the jokes that come from others so they’re apprehensive. I expect them to be apprehensive and then talk them through it. When the joke lands differently with a punchline they’re not expecting, they’re pleasantly surprised.
Actor Chad Lowe returned to Instagram on Thursday for the first time following the Sept. 29 death of his 13-year-old daughter Fiona.
The actor shared a spiritual message from author and psychologist Gerry Hussey through Instagram Stories.
“When you ask yourself the deeper, bigger questions,” Hussey said on Olivia Hunt’s podcast “On Healing” after being asked about God, “and you move beyond the human existence — as through meditation or something — as you experience transcendental experience, [you find] we are connected to everything that is.
“And there’s nothing there, but peace and love,” he continued. “When we die. Where do we go? We return to a state of peace and love.”
Fiona’s manner of death was ruled a suicide by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner in a report released Oct. 2. She died in a hospital.
“We are deeply heartbroken by the loss of our beloved Fiona,” Lowe, the Emmy-winning star of “Life Goes On,” and his family said in a Sept. 29 statement announcing Fiona’s death.
Fiona was the second of Lowe and his wife Kim Painter’s three daughters. The couple also shares Mabel, 17, and Nixie, 10.
Mabel shared an emotional post about her sister on Oct. 3.
“I love you so much fiona,” Mabel wrote in a post containing photos of the sisters. “i wish your short time here was easier and i hope your mind is at ease now. I will honor you forever and keep your memory alive. I love you, i hope you knew just how much.”
Lowe is the brother of “St. Elmo’s Fire” actor Rob Lowe, whose youngest son paid tribute to his late cousin after her death. He posted Emily Dickinson’s poem “Hope Is the Thing With Feathers,” according to an Oct. 5 Page Six report.
“HOPE is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all,” John Owen Lowe shared in an Instagram Stories post. “And sweetest in the gale is heard; and sore must be the storm that could abash the little bird that kept so many warm.”
Chad and Rob’s father, Chuck, shared a photo of his granddaughter on Instagram after her death was announced, per People, with the caption, “Rest in peace sweet Fiona.”
Twenty-one years into its run, “Dancing With the Stars” is one of the hottest and buzziest shows on TV right now.
ABC’s competition series kicked off its 35th season in September, scoring its biggest premiere ratings since 2020. Fueling a lot of that viewership power are Gen Z and millennial viewers, attracted by a cast loaded with social media influencers, reality TV stars and nostalgic favorites. And a certain 55-year-old late-night sidekick has emerged as a social media hit with his lovable underdog journey: Guillermo Rodriguez.
Best known as the former parking lot security guard-turned-sidekick on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” who was discovered after he was caught sleeping in the car of the show’s announcer, Rodriguez regularly steals the spotlight on the late-night talk show with his humorous, humble interactions in comedy bits and as a red-carpet correspondent. Now, he’s expanding his profile as a celebrity contestant on “Dancing With the Stars,” paired with dance pro Witney Carson.
Rodriguez says he’s been asked to join the show before, but he passed because of a busy schedule and his insecurity as a dancer — “I’m not a dancer,” he tells me. “I dance when we have Thanksgiving, Christmas, but it’s for two seconds, four seconds. Not a minute and a half!”
He praises Carson, who is competing while pregnant, for her patience and encouragement in his journey.
“Oh, my God, Witney is a great partner,” he says. “She’s telling me, ‘Listen, just follow me. Follow the steps. Remember, do not look at the floor; look up. And just be yourself. If I want to ask you to be a diva, you be a diva. I don’t want you to laugh.’ She’s been fantastic. She’s helping me a lot. She tells me, ‘The audience know that you’re not a professional dancer, and that you’re trying hard and everything. Just enjoy because this only happens once in a lifetime.’” Read more from my conversation with Rodriguez in Guest Spot.
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Also in this week’s Screen Gab, our writers recommend a miniseries about a mysterious sea creature terrorizing a small coastal town and a pair of psychological horror dramas exploring female rage. And just a quick PSA — not funded by taxpayers, I promise — before I wrap up: “Felicity” is now streaming on Netflix. If you want to get (re)acquainted with collegiate angst, the art of making “hey” pack the same power as a Keats poem or experience Keri Russell’s controversial haircut moment, give it a whirl. As a superfan who returned to it often when it was on Hulu, it’s my duty to warn you to proceed with caution when it comes to Season 4. — Yvonne Villarreal.
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Recommendations from the film and TV experts at The Times
Josh Hartnett as Calvin and Mackenzie Davis as Fonda in Netflix’s “Below.”
(Netflix)
“Below” (Netflix)
A first-rate sea monster miniseries, set in a small fishing village in Newfoundland, where the natives add an “s” to some verbs (“anyway you slices it,” “I gets it”), making them sound a little like Popeye. Creator Jesse McKeown drops enough “Jaws” references to let you know he’s aware of the similarities, but “Below,” which goes some crazy places in its latter half, is very much its own aquatic whirligig. Josh Hartnett plays fisherman Calvin Penney, attempting to harvest blue ice for vodka in the face of declining stocks, but finding his haul smelling strangely of ammonia. Mackenzie Davis is marine researcher Fonda Howander (year’s best name), who has an idea about that. (Global warming, your real-world villain.) The series, in which I detect a quality of Canadian naturalism, uses its special effects budget sparingly, and I would say, wisely; when something extraordinary happens, it doubly registers. But the series’ strength is in its evocative background and nicely drawn characters, going about their messy human business, as the town debates whether to let the government transplant them to somewhere less remote while Calvin tries to get his adult kids on his page. — Robert Lloyd
Summer H. Howell as the titular teenager in Prime Video’s “Carrie.”
(Robert Falconer / Prime Video)
“Carrie” (Prime Video) and “Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story” (Netflix)
Killer women usher in the Halloween season with these two new horror series. The TV adaptation of Stephen King’s novel loosely follows the 1976 big-screen classic starring Sissy Spacek, but reimagines the bloody prom queen Carrie (Summer H. Howell) in today’s world, replete with cyberbullies and smartphones. The limited series from horror master Mike Flanagan (“The House on Haunted Hill,” “Midnight Mass”) pits the terror of the modern world — school shootings, conspiracy-theory fanaticism — against a naive girl’s deadly telekinetic powers for a smart and powerful reimagining of the chilling classic. “The Lizzie Borden Story” is the fourth season of the “Monster” anthology series from Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, and it stars Ella Beatty as the titular character. With the help of an enviable cast (Sarah Paulson, Vicky Krieps), it dramatizes the events before, during and after the 1892 ax murders of Borden’s father and stepmother, and jumps timelines to connect Borden’s story with that of another violent female killer who shocked the country a century later. Does it take historical liberties? Absolutely, and it makes for a thrilling new take on a notorious chapter in American crime. — Lorraine Ali
Guest spot
A weekly chat with actors, writers, directors and more about what they’re working on — and what they’re watching
Witney Carson and Guillermo Rodriguez perform during Mariah Carey night on “Dancing With the Stars.”
(Eric McCandless / Disney)
When Guillermo Rodriguez signed up to compete on “Dancing With the Stars,” he came in with no dance background and the least nimble body, but he had experience in how to win over fans as the scene-stealing sidekick on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Now, Rodriguez has danced the cha-cha, paso doble, foxtrot and samba before millions of people — captivating audiences with assisted knee walks, floor drops and a bare-chested message for the world. He may be the lowest-scoring star on the leaderboard each week, but the 55-year-old knows how to hold an audience and, with professional partner Witney Carson, has managed to stay alive in the competition. After channeling his inner diva for Mariah Carey night on the show (cheekily performing to “Obsessed”) and making it past this week’s elimination round, Rodriguez spoke to us about how he’s feeling at this stage in the competition. — Y.V.
How is the diva life treating you?
Oh, my God, Yvonne, it’s hard work. Being a diva is not easy.
What body part is hurting you today?
You know what — my legs. My legs and my back hurt bad. If you’re in the 20s and 30s, it’s OK, but when you’re like in the 50s, it’s hard. In the 20s and 30s, you have all the energy and also your body is young.
When you get home from rehearsals or after performance night, what’s your routine? Are you doing a bath soak? Are you elevating your feet?
I actually I get in the pool, I get in the hot tub. But someone was telling me I gotta get a massage and I gotta get a cold plunge because that’s gonna help the body. Also, you know what is helping me. I haven’t [had a] drink in two months, and I feel good. I have a shot, I have a drink, so it can relax me and everything. But with “Dancing,” I cannot have a drink because I don’t wanna forget the steps.
You’ve said that you’re doing the show because you want to dance with your wife. How’s that going? Have you been showing her any moves at home?
I have a little bit. And she said, “Well, wait, this is it?” I go, “No, this is only the beginning [steps]. I still got to show [you] more. She goes, “Oh, now I understand why you’re so tired.” And I go, “Yeah, we have to rehearse and everything, and you gotta smile at the camera, you gotta watch your steps, you gotta move your hips and everything.” And I tell her, “When I move to the left, I hear a noise like [mimics creaking noises], ‘Oh, oh, my body is clicking!’ I move left to the left — my knee is making noise!’” But I’m having a lot of fun. It’s great.
How has this experienced changed you so far? How do you feel when you’re out there performing?
It changed me in that I get nervous and it’s hard, but when I go over there [onstage], I like it. I enjoy. You get like a minute and 12 or 40 [seconds], depending on the music. But I’m happy. I get to push myself.
I get out there and [I think], I gotta give my best. And I feel so good because a lot of the audience, they like it a lot. They go crazy and everything, and that makes me feel so good. You know what — I might not be the best dancer, but I’m trying my best, and the people see it. But who knows what’s gonna happen. I might go home next week.
Witney Carson and Guillermo Rodriguez perform the paso doble on “Dancing With the Stars.”
(Christopher Willard / Disney)
We’ve seen you in the bottom a few times. This week, you were there again. What was going through your head this week as you waited for the names to be called?
I feel very nervous. I said, “Oh, my God, this is it. We going home.” I told Witney [before the show], “Witney, I think this is it. I think we’re going home.” She said, “Well, listen, if we’re going home, we did a good job. You told me that you wanna pass the first week, and you already passed the first week, so you don’t have nothing else to lose.” But I feel very nervous. And then when they say, “The couple going home is Ciara [Miller] and Brandon [Armstrong],” I was like, “Oh, my God.” It was hard. And the dance was hard too. Samba is a fast dance. We didn’t have too much time to rehearse because we were going to New York back and forth.
The fandom for “Dancing With the Stars” goes hard. What has surprised you about the fan response?
A lot of the fans are voting for us. I want to say thank you to all the fans. They‘re keeping us alive. They’re voting a lot. They’re making it happen and everything. I was so surprised. [This week,] Carrie Ann [Inaba] give us bad comments, and the audience started booing. I was like, “Wow, this is so amazing! The audience is on our side.” They want us to keep going. And I told Witney, “Witney, we gotta keep going.” We dance for the people. If we make it past next week, it will be great. If we go home, we did it and that’s it.
On the other side of that, there can be some negative talk too, some frustrated fans who think other contestants should still be there. How do you deal with that? Or when the beefs get stirred up on social media? Are you paying attention to that?
I don’t know. The first week I was listening to the comments and everything, but now I don’t listen. I just go have fun. Everybody has different opinions. You cannot please everybody. So I just go have fun, enjoy, and that’s it. If they like it, [or] they don’t like it. Some people say, “Oh, he’s too old. He’s out of shape.” I say, “You know what? Come and dance yourself. It’s not easy.” Every week I try to do better and better.
How do you think Jimmy Kimmel would do in the competition?
Oh — you want me to be honest? He doesn’t dance. And he told me that. He told me, “You know me, that I’m not good.” And I go, “Yeah, I know you’re not good. You’re like a rock.” I told him, “Jimmy. I think when it’s time and they say, ‘Dancing the cha-cha-cha, here’s Jimmy Kimmel,’” I said, “I’m gonna come right away before you start and I’m gonna spray WD-40 so you can move good.”
Is there a song you really want to dance to if you had the opportunity to pick it?
Oh, I would like to dance to one that goes [begins singing “You’re the Best” by Joe “Bean” Esposito, which is featured in the “Karate Kid” soundtrack]: “You’re the best. You’re the best around. No one’s ever gonna keep you down. You’re the best.” I’m like, oh, my God, I would love to dance that one.
I know you’re super busy with all the rehearsals, but is there a show that you are enjoying right now,one that helps you unwind?
Oh yeah, there’s a show that I’m watching right now. It’s called “The Studio” with Seth Rogen. I cannot wait for the new season. I love the show. Seth Rogen is doing a great job. Bryan Cranston too, and Ike Barinholtz. Oh, my God, everyone in the cast is so funny.
We have to get you on that show, Guillermo. You can play yourself.
Yeah, I want to. I want to be in that show. Hopefully, it happens soon.
Melanie Marx bought Angel City season tickets before the team was a team. It had no players, no coach and no uniform. It was more a concept than a reality and Marx bought in.
“I’ve always had pride for this team.” she said. “This was the first team from the NWSL that I’ve been able to say that I’m a supporter for.”
Yet supporting Angel City, she says, has been as exhausting as it has been exciting. Once the most valuable women’s professional sports team in history, Angel City has had one winning season and made just one playoff appearance in its first four seasons.
Attendance declined more than 22%, high-profile players such as Alyssa Thompson, Christen Press, Ali Riley and Madison Hammond have either been transferred away, retired or been allowed to leave and the team hasn’t re-signed popular captain Sarah Gorden for next season. At the same time, it has gone through five coaches and three general managers/sporting directors in less than five years.
Angel City defender Gisele Thompson celebrates with teammates after scoring a goal.
(Lindsey Wasson / Associated Press)
That’s not exactly what Marx signed up for.
“I’m upset as a fan, of course, and I’m upset as a season-ticket holder,” she said. “But I’m also upset as a fan of these players and someone who’s been invested in this league of almost 10 years.”
“What keeps myself and others coming back week to week is because of the players themselves,” she added. “Because the results on the pitch haven’t always matched the ambitions of the supporters.”
During the past three months, that support has finally been rewarded. Following Sunday’s draw with first-place Gotham FC, the reigning NWSL champion, Angel City (12-8-7) heads into the league’s two-week international break riding a seven-game unbeaten streak and is in sixth place in the 16-team table, in position for another playoff berth.
The team has lost just twice in 16 games under interim coach Leif Gunnar Smerud. Its 12 victories with three games to play is already a franchise record for a single season, as are its 45 goals. After posting a substantial negative goal differential in its first four seasons, Angel City’s plus-16 mark this year in best in the league.
And in the current international break, the team had a record nine players called up to various national teams. It’s one of the most dramatic turnarounds in NWSL history, one that may have saved at least a portion of the team’s most loyal fan base.
“My renewal for next year just recently came up and I was on a bit of knife’s edge deciding whether I want to go ahead,” said Michael Jaeger, an attorney who has had multiple Angel City season tickets in section 133 since the first season. “There have been consistent problems throughout.
“I really want the team to succeed. Given the recent successes, I did go ahead and re-up for next year because I’m feeling optimistic.”
Optimistic but not necessarily confident.
“I am not feeling like ‘OK, this is what I’ve been waiting for. The team’s really turned a corner,’” Jaeger said. “That to me would be success on the field, plus a decision about Sarah Gorden, plus [a] permanent head coach who we know is at least going to have one or more seasons to have things play out.
“So I don’t think we’re there yet. I like the current trend but because not a lot has necessarily changed about the front office, I’m not ready to say ‘OK, we’re fully on the right track.’”
Angel City has only itself to blame for that lack of trust. When the team launched with a massive ownership group that included Hollywood A-listers, former U.S. women’s national team stars and sports luminaries including Serena Williams and Billie Jean King, it promised to ignite a revolution in women’s sports.
Angel City FC fans chant during a match against the San Diego Wave at BMO Stadium on May 9.
(Luiza Moraes / Getty Images)
“We’re not just building a soccer club. We want to build an organization that has impact,” said Julie Uhrman, one of its team’s three founding owners.
And while Angel City has done real, meaningful work in the community, providing millions of meals to the hungry, funneling millions of dollars into community programs and taking a courageous stand against ICE raids across Southern California, as a soccer team it hasn’t delivered on its promises.
The loyal fans blame the front office, which has waived nearly six dozens players and five managers, including interim coaches, through its revolving doors since the first season. Mark Parsons, who won six trophies as manager with the Portland Thorns, was hired 20 months ago to stabilize things but his highly touted global search for a coach ended with Alexander Straus spending just a year with the club — going 7-15-5 in parts of two seasons — while Parsons unsettled the roster by making more than 40 transactions.
“There’s just a lack of trust in the front office frankly,” said Nadia Johnson, who attended games every season but didn’t buy season tickets until this year. “We’re still doing these chaotic things, which is really frustrating as a fan.”
And the chaos may not be ending anytime soon. Despite his success, Smerud has not publicly been guaranteed anything beyond this season; officially, the team is still searching for a new manager.
Gorden, the captain and anchor of the defense, is out of contract at the end of the season as is veteran Claire Emslie. Meanwhile Sydney Leroux, 36, who has played one minute the past two seasons as she deals with mental health issues, is signed through 2027.
At the same time, Parsons has built the league’s youngest roster around players whose performances are bigger than their names. Goalkeeper Angelina Anderson, 25, is third in the league with nine clean sheets and 12 wins. Brazilian Maiara Niehues, 22, already has a franchise-record nine goals while Evelyn Shores, 21, has tied the single-season record with seven assists and defender Gisele Thompson, Alyssa’s sister, leads all outfield players with 2,420 minutes.
“I am excited about how diverse our team is and really how they’ve grown,” season ticket-holder Johnson said. “It’s playoff crunch time and so it’s always exciting, especially when your team is in it. So I’m excited to see where they go.”
But after four seasons of mediocrity and worse, however, she’s learned to keep her fingers crossed.
“I’m not confident if we get a rough patch next year what decisions will be made in terms of trying to repair that,” she said. “So yeah, that’s where I’m at.”
Josh Hartnett and Charlie Heaton know how to brood.
The actors both found fame in their early 20s playing characters prone to pining and sulking: Hartnett became a heartthrob in the late ’90s and early 2000s with mellow roles in films including “The Virgin Suicides,” “Pearl Harbor” and “Black Hawk Down.” Heaton, meanwhile, spent most of the last decade embodying the introverted Jonathan Byers on “Stranger Things.”
But now, the duo are wearing their hearts on their sleeves in “Below,” a six-episode Netflix miniseries now streaming, in which they play a father and son living in a misty Newfoundland fishing village that is increasingly terrorized by something mysterious in the iceberg-filled waters.
As Calvin and Wade Penney in “Below,” the actors are passionate and emotional. They get into animated family arguments and gleefully celebrate when things (occasionally) go their way.
“It’s all on the page,” Hartnett said. “All I had to do was show up and feel those things toward Charlie.”
Filmed on location in Newfoundland, Canada, “Below” is the latest unexpected project for Hartnett, 48, who has been cultivating a career renaissance in recent years with roles in “Black Mirror,” “Oppenheimer,” “Trap” and this month’s “Verity.”
Charlie Heaton as Wade, left, and Josh Hartnett as Calvin in Netflix’s “Below.”
(Netflix)
Heaton, 32, has likewise been diversifying his post- “Stranger Things” portfolio. He played an ill-fated financial journalist in the fourth season of “Industry” and will next star in a “Peaky Blinders” sequel series.
“I like trying to surprise people, and maybe surprise myself too,” Heaton said.
When they convened for a joint video interview in late September, Heaton had recently returned to his London home from a music video shoot. Hartnett had just finished putting his four children (with wife, the actor Tamsin Egerton) to bed at their countryside home in Hampshire, England. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
What attracted you both to this project?
Hartnett: I was in “Black Mirror” a couple of years ago, and Jessica Rhoades, who produced “Black Mirror,” sent me the [“Below”] script probably about two months before production was supposed to start. I loved the script but I had some questions, so I had to speak to [creator] Jesse [McKeown] and a couple of the other EPs, just to get the lay of the land. After that conversation, I was like, this sounds really fresh and nuanced and organic.
Heaton: It seemed to have so much warmth and mystery. I do remember having a conversation with my agent because, obviously, I’d come off “Stranger Things,” and there was a little concern of, “Is it too similar?” But Wade is such a fun character. I’m from a working-class fishing town [Bridlington, England]. He’s also working class. Everyone knows somebody like Wade.
Hartnett: Willow Kean, who plays my sister, his aunt, saw Charlie on set when he first arrived. He was in his outfit and smoking a cigarette, and she was like, “I think somebody’s on set who shouldn’t be” — because he looked like a local. He fully embodied the mood of this character immediately.
How did the two of you meet? Had you crossed paths in the industry before?
Hartnett: We hadn’t. We met on Zoom. We did a bunch of stuff with the full cast, and it was more to learn the accent than anything else. Once we started to get into the accent work together, just shooting the s— online, it was great.
Heaton: We wanted the family to all sound like they were from the same place. But the accent is so hard to hear in the beginning. So, we were all getting it wrong together.
Heaton and Hartnett hadn’t crossed paths before being cast in “Below,” but they created a rapport by trying to learn the show’s Newfoundland accent together.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
What was the biggest obstacle with the Newfoundland accent?
Heaton: I’ve done a fair amount of accents, but it’s hard to understand the rules of this one. It’s like, well, that word’s Irish, that word’s kind of American. It took me a while to be able to hear it. We had Ali [Alison Kelly], who was our voice coach, and a lot of the extras that we had on set also were local artists, so you could really lean on them.
Hartnett: Everybody was so welcoming. The most difficult part for me was hearing the rhythm of it. So, I listened to this thing called “The Broadcast,” which used to be called “The Fisheries Broadcast.” It’s a radio show that’s been on since 1951. Every day they’re talking to someone about something that’s happening on the island, so you’re getting all these different versions of the accent, but you’re also getting an overall perspective of how people speak in Newfoundland. It was really revealing.
How familiar were you with Newfoundland before doing “Below”?
Hartnett: I knew very little. I knew the “Come From Away” story about all the people stranded in Gander after 9/11. I knew that it was where Leif Erikson landed a long time ago. I knew that it was the closest place in North America to Europe, so when people would do transatlantic flights up until relatively recently, they would stop in Newfoundland. I knew there were puffins.
Heaton: I’m going to be very honest. I hadn’t even ever heard of it. But I learned a lot. We were there for a long time, and Newfoundlanders are extremely proud of their history and their culture, and they love talking.
What was it like shooting on location and out in nature?
Heaton: It was powerful and beautiful. Where we shot, Snook’s Arm, was this bay called Brigus South. You’d come down in the morning, and just that sheer amount of nature every day I found really moving.
Hartnett: One of the first days we were there, they took me out on a whale-watching tour. I was like, “Oh, cool. That sounds touristy but fun.” It was a spiritual experience. I’ve never been anywhere where I felt so small and insignificant next to another animal. These humpback whales, they’re right underneath these tiny little boats, and if they wanted to, they could just flick their tail, and you’d be off in the sea. I had never experienced nature in the sea the way that I experienced it there.
You play father and son, but you’re not that far apart in age.
Hartnett: Fifteen-and-a-half years! I did the math.
Heaton and Hartnett play father and son in “Below,” but in reality they’re just shy of 16 years apart.(Netflix)
How did you develop your onscreen dynamic?
Hartnett: Charlie was so in character as Wade, it was very easy to feel a real sense of protectiveness and an incredible amount of love.
Heaton: What I really admired about working with Josh [is] he is such a leader. You really care, and you’re so generous with everyone, and I got to see your family, and I got to see how you are as a dad. So, those projections weren’t that difficult to come up with in my head, honestly. It’s cool that I get to be your son.
Hartnett: So sweet, man. Thank you.
Charlie, do you remember any of Josh’s past work that stood out to you?
Hartnett: [Pretends to cover his camera] I’m just going to turn this off.
Heaton: One of my favorite films for a while was “Lucky Number Slevin.” When I was younger, I used to watch that quite a lot. I might rewatch that, Josh. It’s been a while.
Hartnett: Well, tell me if it holds up.
Josh, were you familiar with Charlie’s work?
Hartnett: I was a big fan of “Stranger Things,” and I saw “Industry.” Then, when he came on the first Zoom as Wade and was so already intact as a character, I was like, “He’s a star, man. This guy’s a star.”
Charlie Heaton as Jonathan Byers in “Stranger Things.” Hartnett says he was a fan of his work.
(Netflix)
You both found fame in your early 20s, but at very different points in the industry. What are your memories of first realizing, “Oh, people know who I am offscreen and something has shifted?”
Heaton: I remember the exact moment. I was shooting a movie in a small town in Asturias in the north of Spain. “Stranger Things” had been out for only a couple of days. I was in this little town, and a family came up to me that could barely speak English, but they recognized me. Then, I walked down the street a little further and another kid came running up to me.
The show blew up overnight, and before you knew it, you’re going to the Emmys and the BAFTAs with all these people who you have admired. I think we all felt impostor syndrome. Like, what am I doing on a carpet where Bryan Cranston and Helen Mirren are? If I think back to it now, it’s very overwhelming. I don’t really know if I processed how that changed so fast and how you are expected to know how to deal with it.
Hartnett: It was a long time ago for me. There was no social media, obviously, but we did have a pretty intense paparazzi problem. So, the initial success of films like “The Faculty,” “Halloween: H20” and “The Virgin Suicides” was a nice level of, like, people knew who I was and I was able to get more work, but there wasn’t a crush of paparazzi waiting outside the hotel.
When “Pearl Harbor” came out, that changed. I was in Morocco shooting “Black Hawk Down,” and I had to come back to do press for “Pearl Harbor.” Suddenly, that’s when I couldn’t go anywhere. That was an odd thing to encounter because I was 22, and I was not ready for it. Right after I finished “Black Hawk Down,” I decided to get back to Minnesota, where I grew up … There’s no paparazzi in Minnesota. That’s where I stayed for about two years.
Heaton: Those seismic changes are such a strange thing to go through. I always felt like, I haven’t changed but everyone else around me has changed — and that’s a weird thing to get used to. But there are great opportunities and great things that come out of it.
Hartnett: One hundred percent. My life is so much better now than it probably would have been had all that not happened.
Josh, you’ve said that you felt celebrity culture was “vacuous” and that you didn’t want to do things like “Cribs” or “Punk’d.” Did you feel like you were being pushed to fit a certain mold as a teen heartthrob?
Hartnett: That stuff wasn’t for me. Being a young celebrity, you’re always going to be pushed toward the cusp of insanity, the stuff that people are going to look back on and cringe not too far into the future. I was lucky enough to avoid that side of it.
In our business, it’s about surviving your 20s to get to the place where you have the respect of the people on set that you’re working with, and they allow you the leeway to create characters the way that you want to create them.
Charlie, how are you approaching your post-“Stranger Things” career?
Heaton: After wrapping the final season, I wanted to do “Industry,” which felt extremely different to me. I got to use my own accent. It’s a much more adult show than I’ve ever been in. And playing a man was important. I’d been playing a perpetually 21-year-old for like 10 years. I keep getting older. [Jonathan] stays the same. He gets further away from me. But I just want to do things that hopefully allow me to show range.
Country western star Wynonna Judd is confirming that she and her sister, Emmy Award-nominated actor Ashley Judd, do not have a relationship.
She spoke with People ahead of the release of her 10th solo studio album, “The Hard Truth,” which drops Friday, and revealed that the rift between the sisters is still there after years of on and off disharmony.
Wynonna told the outlet that Ashley hadn’t heard the album, as the sisters are not “connected.”
“We’re taking a break, which all families can relate to,” she said. “She’s doing her thing, and I’m doing mine.”
In April 2022, Wynonna and Ashley’s mother, Naomi Judd, died by suicide at 76 after a lifelong battle with depression. Naomi and Wynonna made up the Grammy-winning duo the Judds.
At the time, the sisters released a statement together, writing, “Today we sisters experienced a tragedy. We lost our beautiful mother to the disease of mental illness. … We are shattered. We are navigating profound grief and know that as we loved her, she was loved by her public. We are in unknown territory.”
The following month, the two appeared at the annual Medallion Ceremony, where the Judds were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, and the sisters spoke on behalf of their mother.
“While this is so much about the Judds as a duo, I want to take a moment to recognize my sister, a GOAT,” Ashley said at the ceremony. “Do you know what that means? I don’t think she knows I’m calling her the greatest of all time. She lives on a farm. She’s being a little literal.”
Ashley told the crowd that growing up as the younger sister of Wynonna, she got to “bask in this voice that was around the house, and I’ve always been so proud of the music and so proud of you. … So I know that we’re talking a lot about Mom tonight, as we should be. Our beautiful mother, and I want you to know that you also are being inducted to the Hall of Fame tonight. And newspapers don’t get much right these days, but when the Los Angeles Times said you were Elvis-like, they got it right. And I love you, and I’m proud of you. And Mom is proud of you, and she always was.”
By October 2022, rumors were flying that the sisters were fighting over their mother’s will, a claim that Wynonna shot down while speaking with People.
“Someone told me while I was at Ashley’s house, ‘Hey, did you know that they’re saying this about you?’ I went, ‘Huh? I’m fighting with Ashley?’” Wynonna said. “Fighting over what? I have such a great life. Ashley has a great life. Why would we be fighting over the will?”
This wasn’t the first time a feud was reported between the two. Back in January 2015, Wynonna gave a teary-eyed account of the disconnect during an appearance on AXS TV’s “The Big Interview With Dan Rather.”
“The only thing I have in common with my sister is a father missing and a mother that’s both of ours. She and I are very different. We don’t communicate, nor do we spend time together, and that’s a long history of being apart,” Wynonna told Rather.
Wynonna said that she and Ashley were dysfunctional, didn’t agree on anything and developed separate lives, but she cared for her younger sister growing up.
“I raised Ashley, so I think there’s a lot of work we still have to do about where do we find the ‘sister’ in all of this,” she said. “She called me sister mommy, and I really had a hard time with that, because I was like, I don’t want to be your mommy. I want to be your sister.”
After 72 particularly miserable hours for his football program, Lincoln Riley took his place behind a lectern Tuesday and tried to assure that things at USC weren’t as bad as they looked.
“There’s a lot of things to be proud of in this football program right now,” Riley assured. “Those that really look into it and look at what’s happening here will see that and understand that. There’s people on the outside that just don’t.”
But the optics at USC, since Saturday’s 41-27 home loss to Oregon, certainly couldn’t have been much worse for Riley. Because it wasn’t just that his Trojans lost a critical game to a bitter rival, one framed for weeks — months, even — as a must-win. Or that in its wake, Ducks coach Dan Lanning had savaged him or his program multiple times.
It was what happened in the midst of that loss, as well as the reactions after, that only made matters much worse for USC.
The days since have prompted questions across the country about Riley’s future at USC, where he’s midway through his fifth season as coach. One person familiar with the situation but not authorized to speak publicly on the matter told The Times that “all options are on the table” with Riley after the loss and the events of last weekend.
The chain of regrettable decisions began the moment Trojan linebacker Desman Stephens lowered his shoulder into the helmet of sliding Oregon quarterback Dante Moore in the second quarter Saturday evening. Moore’s head slammed hard into the ground, and he laid motionless for several minutes surrounded by medical personnel, until he was lifted onto a backboard and loaded into an ambulance that had driven onto the field.
The whole unsettling scene was made far worse by Stephens’ reaction in the immediate aftermath of the hit. After jawing with Oregon players, the junior linebacker was seen taunting the Oregon sideline and celebrating on his way back to USC’s side of the field. He continued high-fiving teammates while the Ducks surrounded their quarterback, who was diagnosed with a concussion but no other serious injuries.
The next morning, both Stephens and his coach said in a statement that his actions were “unacceptable,” “inexcusable” and “completely inappropriate.” But after the game, Riley first said he didn’t see Stephens celebrate the hit. And when Riley was asked why Stephens was allowed to stay on the sideline for the second half, the coach responded, incredulously, “‘cause he’s on our football team.” He wished Moore well, but said nothing further about Stephens or his vicious hit.
“It’s an easy answer,” said Petros Papadakis, a local radio host and former USC captain. “I understand you can’t have eyes everywhere as a head coach. But even if you didn’t see it, by the end of the game you know most of college football has turned against you in the last hour.
“The story didn’t go away because Lincoln didn’t get in front of it.”
It was clear that night, among USC’s leadership, that the immediate response wasn’t adequate enough. So the next morning, athletic director Jen Cohen met with Riley to discuss a suspension for Stephens. They settled on one game.
On Tuesday, Riley took a different tone. He said he was “disappointed with how [Stephens] handled it” and that he “needs to have more awareness.”
Riley also asked for understanding from those who have been critical of Stephens, whom he described as “a young person who made a mistake.”
“Consider if that was your son,” he said, “how would you want it handled?”
But three days later, the college football world was still litigating Stephens’ hit. The story was still alive, in part, due to a short documentary from the game, published by Oregon on Tuesday morning. In it was a clip that would unexpectedly make things even worse at USC.
The clip is of USC’s radio booth, where Pete Arbogast has been the Trojans’ play-by-play guy for the past quarter century. From his perch in the Coliseum press box, Arbogast is painting the scene of the play when Moore was injured. Except, in this case, listeners heard a different account of his slide and Stephens’ hit than what happened on the field.
“He did not try to slide feet first!” Arbogast said in the moment.
Arbogast went on to say that Moore “ducked into that hit. I did not see him put his feet out first. I saw him dive forward.”
When confronted with the replay moments later, Arbogast stood by what he said, claiming that Moore’s slide was “more of a knee-first slide.” Even Arbogast’s radio partner — former Trojan defensive tackle Shaun Cody — raised his eyebrows at the suggestion.
Both Arbogast and the university declined to comment on the situation when reached by The Times.
Papadakis, who previously worked on the broadcast with Arbogast, called it “a bad look,” but explained that Arbogast was “usually defending USC or trying to spin something positive.”
That job was left to Riley and his players on Tuesday. Though, some were more convincing than others.
“This is a time of adversity, the best time to come together as one,” left tackle Elijah Paige said.
“Times like these you tend to see teams fall apart,” quarterback Jayden Maiava added, “but this team is such a tight team and we’re all bought into each other.”
Riley, meanwhile, pointed for the second day in a row to a stretch early in Saturday’s fourth quarter against Oregon, when the Coliseum had reached a fevered pitch and momentum seemed to be swinging in the Trojans’ favor.
Except, it never did. USC allowed two fourth-quarter touchdowns after that. Riley still tried to find the silver lining.
“We didn’t get run out of the stadium,” Riley said. “There’s a lot of good on that tape. You don’t have a chance to win a game like that if you don’t do some things pretty well.”
It’s about moving on, or attempting to, after the franchise endured a nightmare offseason.
“My entire summer’s been basketball,” guard Darius Garland nonchalantly said during media day at Intuit Dome. “My main thing is to come in here and win games. So, that’s my main focus.”
The Clippers’ offseason was engulfed by the NBA’s salary-cap circumvention investigation into the team’s endorsement deals with Kawhi Leonard. The NBA fined the Clippers $30 million, stripped them of five first-round picks, dealt suspensions to owner Steve Ballmer and president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank — and the Clippers ultimately traded Leonard, who was fined merely $700,000, back to Toronto.
Garland represented his teammates in prioritizing hoops.
But for Trent Redden, the Clippers’ interim president of basketball operations, things weren’t that simple. The admittedly nervous executive started Monday’s news conferences by apologizing to the Clippers’ faithful for the aftermath of the Leonard situation.
“Our fans deserve to hear from us before this, and for that we’re sorry,” Redden said. “We’ve been listening to the thoughts, the concerns, and feeling the emotions of our fan base. They mean everything to us. … We hope to fulfill our promises to them, to build their trust and move forward through this time.
“This franchise often has done its best work with its back against the wall … We hope to represent our fans the same way we always have in dark times, by coming out fighting.”
Fighting is all the new-look Clippers can do as they enter the 2026-27 season.
Leonard is back north of the border. Other stars, such as Paul George, James Harden and the recently retired Russell Westbrook, are distant memories in L.A. For the first time in years, the Clippers aren’t entering a season with championship aspirations.
“It’s been difficult,” said Ty Lue, who enters his seventh season as the Clippers’ coach. “But I give our players a lot of credit … the leadership is great [and] the morale is great, even in these tough situations. That’s good to see, when you have your players coming in every day, giving everything they have; a lot of teams don’t have that.”
The Clippers’ league-record streak of 15 consecutive winning seasons is in jeopardy. Nonetheless, the team will still feature plenty of intrigue roster-wise, with a mix of youngsters “doing TikToks” and “old heads” trying to keep up, as Garland described it.
“I think we can surprise a lot of people,” he said.
Garland himself, 26, enters his first full season in L.A. as the team’s go-to scorer. A two-time All-Star, he’s primed to lead a promising backcourt alongside 19-year-old rookie Keaton Wagler, the Clippers’ No. 5 pick in the 2026 draft.
Wagler is one of the team’s promising young players, alongside fellow rookie Baba Miller, Kobe Sanders and the rehabbing Jordan Miller and Yanic Konan Niederhauser.
“I’m just going to do my best to stay mentally focused,” Wagler said when asked about the pressure of being the team’s first top-five pick since Blake Griffin in 2009. “Not worry about all the outside noise.”
The Clippers return key role players like Derrick Jones Jr., Kris Dunn, Bradley Beal and Brook Lopez, and sport new ones like Max Strus and Gradey Dick via trades.
However, the team’s ceiling will rest on the influence of new forwards Brandon Ingram and Rui Hachimura. Hachimura is coming off a strong playoff run and four-year stint with the Lakers.
“One thing about here … everybody talks about how they take really good care of their players,” Hachimura said of signing a two-year, $28-million contract with the Clippers this offseason.
Ingram, the centerpiece of the Leonard trade, is a solid three-level scorer and will shoulder much of the offensive load alongside Garland — when healthy.
Redden shockingly shared that Ingram is recovering from a partially torn Achilles tendon in addition to heel surgery.
“I had been dealing with some pain throughout the year with the Raptors, especially coming down crunch time with the Raptors,” Ingram said. “I didn’t quite know what it was. Near the end of the season, we figured out what it was, and surgery was the best thing to do.”
The 29-year-old Ingram, though, should make a full recovery and claims his best days are still ahead of him.
He feels the same way about his new Clippers team.
“I know [there are] little to no expectations for us this year,” Ingram said. “We have enough in the building to compete. This is what we love to do. So, we’ll go out and compete every single night, learn, go on to the next game and get better and better.”
