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Tag: HBO

  • Succession’s Brian Cox Felt “a Bit Rejected” By Logan’s Death

    Succession’s Brian Cox Felt “a Bit Rejected” By Logan’s Death

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    Logan Roy may have kept everyone at arms length, but Brian Cox is unafraid to share his more sensitive side. In an interview with the BBC’s Amol Rajan, Cox revealed that he felt “a bit rejected” by Succession creator Jesse Armstrong‘s decision to kill off Logan Roy in episode 3 of the final season, a decision he felt was “ultimately too early.”  

    “I was fine with it ultimately, but I did feel a little bit rejected,” Cox told Rajan. “You know, I felt a little bit, oh, all the work I’ve done and finally I’m going to, you know, end up as an ear on a carpet of a plane.”

    Succession director Mark Mylod broke down exactly how and why Logan ended up on the airplane floor for VF’s Notes on a Scene series, sharing that he wanted the Waystar Royco magnate to have an “anti-Shakespearean” death. In the BBC interview, Cox—a storied Shakespearean actor—admitted that Logan’s death was handled “in a pretty brilliant way,” even though at the time he looked at it, “wrongly, as a form of rejection.”  

    While he may have been disappointed to leave the show so soon, Cox went to great lengths to keep Logan’s death a secret. In the interview, Cox revealed that he was initially supposed to shoot scenes as Logan at Logan’s own funeral, in order to throw paparazzi off the scent. When he was told that he was no longer required to shoot those additional scenes, Cox still showed up to the taping of Logan’s funeral scene “on [his] own volition” to misdirect the paparazzi. 

    Headed into Sunday’s series finale, Cox is still holding out hope that Armstrong has one more major plot twist up his sleeve. “I still believe this: maybe Logan isn’t dead,” Cox told Rajan. “This could be part of an elaborate ruse to find out. Well, if you think about it, from Logan’s point of view, he has to find out, how are his children going to behave when he dies, what will then happen? And the only way to do that is to fake his death and actually, at some distant point he’s observing the chaos that is following.” So don’t be surprised if Logan Roy rises from the grave in the series finale for one finale “fuck off.” 

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    Chris Murphy

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  • Who Is the Worst Person on ‘Succession’?

    Who Is the Worst Person on ‘Succession’?

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    The fourth and final season of Succession has really tugged at the heartstrings. Kendall, Roman, and Shiv process their grief over Logan’s death in intensely human ways—improvised group hugs, dramatic eulogy breakdowns. In the capable hands of actors like Jeremy Strong, Kieran Culkin, and Sarah Snook, the Roys have become sympathetic enough to almost make you forget what truly terrible people they are. Almost. 

    “He has wrought the most terrible things,” says James Cromwell’s Ewan in his scathing eulogy for Logan. As much as we enjoy watching them, the same must also be said for the rest of the Roys. Remember that time Roman and Kendall convinced an unhoused person to get Kendall’s initials tattooed on his forehead? Or when Shiv intimidated a female cruise division victim into not testifying?

    While our hearts may be full of empathy for the Roys, as we head into Sunday’s series finale, we’re first taking stock of all the awful things they’ve done—and determining, for once and for all, who among them is the very worst. For those screaming out that the answer is obviously Mencken or Matsson, we’ve opted to keep the ranking in the family and their immediate orbit, focusing only on core Succession characters who’ve appeared on the series since season one—and have had more time to rack up dastardly deeds. Without further ado, here’s the very worst that Succession has to offer. 

    10. Gerri, Frank, Karl, and the Rest of Logan’s Cronies

    Sure, working for a boss you know is up to no good is definitely a little bit evil, at best. But if anything, Logan’s core crew have mitigated the damage done by the rest of the names on this list. In the week since Logan died, Frank has been more of a supportive father figure to the Roy children than Logan ever was. Saucy Karl is spitting fire this season, but seems more concerned with getting to his Greek island than ruining anyone’s life. And Gerri should be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for putting up with Roman for so long. Sure, they’ve worked hand in hand with a greedy billionaire for multiple decades. But imagine how much worse things would be if they hadn’t been there. 

    9. Connor Roy

    Poor Connor. The eldest Roy and literal also-ran is undoubtedly the least evil of his immediate family, if only because he’s the least important. By keeping his hands out of the family business and not working for Papa Logan at Waystar Royco, Connor has avoided a lot of the craven jockeying for power that has brought out the absolute worst in his siblings. Whether Connor’s distance from Waystar was his choice or Logan’s design, it has helped him in the long run; staying out of the fray is the best way to preserve your moral compass. 

    That being said, Connor’s potential for evil was absolutely displayed in his ineffectual, ill-conceived, and ultimately unsuccessful presidential run. Arguably, the most evil thing Connor has done on the series is galvanizing his beloved Con-heads to support the white nationalist, fascist candidate Jeryd Mencken—all so that he can maybe be the ambassador to Slovenia in the new regime. But while selfish and brown-nosy, asking a million eccentric libertarians to vote for a dangerous candidate is pretty low on the list of Roy family sins. Also, Connor is a patron of the arts, serving as the primary investor in Sands, a play by his future wife, Willa. Supporting a flop playwright is one of the best things a person can do, landing Connor near the bottom of the evil list.  

    8. Marcia Roy 

    “We’re calling Kerry a taxi to the subway so she can go home to her little apartment.” Enough said.

    7. Tom Wambsgans 

    Yes, Tom has said some absolutely awful things to Shiv this season regarding their unborn child. But it’s hard to argue that she didn’t start the fire there; as the saying goes, it takes two to play “Bitey.” And other than his one major infraction against Shiv, Tom has been, well, a major simp for Shiv and Logan. During the big cruise ship scandal of season two—which saw the C-suite at Waystar Royco covering up a host of reported instances of sexual assault, abuse, and even deaths within the division—Tom was on the front line. Not only did he do Logan’s dirty work and instruct Greg to destroy incriminating documents, but Tom, after some coercion from Shiv, volunteered to be the sacrificial lamb, take the fall for the cruise scandals, and go to prison. Tom was more than ready to go down with the ship, which is more pathetic than pathological. 

    Covering up heinous acts of sexual misconduct is bad. But other than that, the most explicitly malevolent thing Tom has ever done was sell Shiv and her brothers down the river by clueing Logan into their plan to take control over the board at the end of season three. Even then that dastardly, backhanded move blew up in his face when Logan dropped dead a few months later, leaving Tom—the perennial outsider—once again without an ally. (Greg doesn’t count.) Plus, you can’t be all that evil if Karl can read you for filth. 

    6. Greg Hirsch

    Greg the egg? More like Greg the shred…der of important documents. Terrible Greg-esque joke aside, shredding incriminating cruise documents because Tom told him to definitely ranks as one of the more terrible things that Greg, Logan’s lowly great-nephew, has done. Greg definitely has an “I was just following orders” demeanor to him, from destroying the documents to firing hundreds of ATN employees on Zoom with little to no remorse. (“I look like I feel bad, but I don’t,” he memorably said.) That attitude doesn’t make Greg or his actions any less evil. 

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    Chris Murphy

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  • 9 Things We Just Learned About Sony’s Big Playstation Plans

    9 Things We Just Learned About Sony’s Big Playstation Plans

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    With the wind at their back, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan and head of PlayStation Studios Hermen Hulst recently presented the state of the PlayStation 5 ecosystem to investors and hinted at what’s coming in the near future. Among other things, the company promised new IPs, more live-service games, and a big push behind cloud gaming.

    Type S: Chiaki’s Journey II Volume 4

    While Sony’s big gaming showcase will offer specific details on new game announcements, release dates, and potential hardware refreshes, the investor presentation was a broader look at the current state of the PlayStation business and where it’s headed next. We got a pretty granular breakdown of some interesting sales data as well as cryptic teases of upcoming initiatives, like Sony’s rumored cloud gaming handheld, Q Lite [Update 5/25/2023 11:07 a.m. ET: the devices was revealed in the showcase and it’s wild looking]. Here are some of the biggest takeaways from the company’s latest business meeting.

    PS VR2 is already outselling the first virtual reality headset

    Sony’s new virtual reality headset is a comfortable but pricey bundle that requires users to already own a PS5, but initial sales numbers show it’s actually tracking ahead of the first PS VR headset. PS VR2 sold 600,000 units in its first six weeks, while the PS VR1 sold closer to 550,000. Whether that momentum will build the platform into something more than an expensive accessory for enthusiasts remains to be seen.

    Image: Sony / Kotaku

    Analysts previously called for a price cut to fuel sales, and it’s unclear if big new games will arrive without a larger install base, especially as companies like Meta lay off VR developers amid cutbacks.

    Sony plans to invest a ton in new franchises

    Since the PS5 launched, fans have been waiting to see what new IPs would grow out of the latest console generation. So far it’s been mostly sequels to series that already existed or got their start on the PS4 like God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Spider-Man. But Sony revealed that new franchises are planned. PlayStation Studios’ investment in new IP will hit 50 percent in 2025, compared to only 20 percent in 2019. However the lag in production means we might not end up seeing the results of that spending until late in the PS5’s life cycle.

    Live-service games will be over half of that spending

    Sony’s first-party single-player games have been setting the bar for story-driven blockbusters for years now, from The Last of Us to Ghost of Tsushima. It’s clear the company now wants to do the same for live-service multiplayer games as well, and will be leveraging its recent acquisition of Destiny 2 maker Bungie to achieve that.

    A PowerPoint slide shows how much players spend on microtransactions.

    Image: Sony / Kotaku

    The breakdown of total spending on content this year will be 55 percent on live-service business models vs 45 percent on “traditional” ones. The difference will be even more stark by 2025, when live-service spending will reach 60 percent of seemingly all production costs. It’s possible some of those games will still have a traditional single-player emphasis and just include cosmetic shops, like Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. Others are sure to be multiplayer-focused affairs more like Destiny 2.

    PS5 owners spend a ton on microtransactions

    Prestigious exclusives might help sell consoles, but it’s not what makes the most money once players are locked in. Sony revealed that PS5 players are spending over $100 more than PS4 players were at a similar point in the console cycle. That extra money isn’t coming from more games sold, however. It’s coming from spending on add-on content, meaning paid DLC and microtransactions.

    Full game sales actually dropped by 10 percent on the PS5, while add-on content grew by 210 percent. Although Sony collects a 30 percent commission on all in-game purchases in Fortnite, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, and Apex Legends on the platform, it would stand to make a ton more if those purchases were made inside its own first-party exclusives.

    Spider-Man sold great on PC while The Last of Us Part I is off to a slower start

    2018’s Spider-Man didn’t arrive on PC until last year. In the eight months since it hit PC, the game sold an additional 1.5 million copies on the platform. The Last of Us Part I, meanwhile, has sold 368,000 copies since it arrived on Steam in March. That’s not bad considering it’s a remaster of a decade-old game many people have already played on PS3, PS4, and PS5. But it’s not exactly God of War numbers, which sold nearly a million copies in its first two and a half months on PC.

    A PowerPoint slide shows game sales on PC.

    Image: Sony / Kotaku

    It’s not clear how much The Last of Us Part I’s rough performance and poor optimization at launch hurt its initial momentum, compared to the overall increase in sales of the game across all platforms following the success of the hit HBO adaptation. It seems like the port was in part a learning exercise for Naughty Dog, potentially as Sony eyes bringing the rest of its games to PC.

    Half of all game releases won’t just be on PS5 by 2025

    In the past Sony seemed afraid to cannibalize console sales by releasing its games on PC. Now it’s clear the company is ready to do just the opposite, porting its exclusives and investing in potential mobile spin-offs. The company plans for 50 percent of its releases in 2025 to be either PC or mobile games.

    A lot of players are paying for the more expensive PlayStation Plus subscriptions

    When Sony unveiled its overhauled PS Plus program, creating three separate tiers and folding its PlayStation Now streaming service into the priciest one, it seemed needlessly complicated. The highest tier, Premium, also didn’t seem worth the extra price in exchange for a slim selection of PlayStation Classics and cloud gaming features that are still a work-in-progress.

    A PowerPoint slide shows how many users subscribe to PS Plus Premium and Extra.

    Image: Sony / Kotaku

    It turns out a lot of people were willing to upgrade, however. Sony says 14.1 million subscribers joined the higher tiers in the first 10 months, which now represent 30 percent of all PS Plus users. And Premium actually accounts for the majority of those with 17 percent of total subscribers, while the middle-tier, Extra, only has 13 percent.

    The first PlayStation mobile game will arrive as early as 2023

    Sony said it’s currently “partnered with established teams on games,” and “bringing some of our most celebrated IP to mobile,” with the first set to release in fiscal year 2023. The company acquired mobile maker Savage Game Studios last August and Bungie has also long been rumored to be working on a mobile version of Destiny 2. According to Sony’s charts, the mobile gaming market is already bigger than console and PC gaming combined, and it only projects that gap to widen in the coming years.

    Sony’s doubling-down on cloud gaming

    In the most cryptic part of the presentation, CEO Jim Ryan said the company has “some fairly interesting and quite aggressive plans to accelerate our initiatives in the space of the cloud.” He didn’t elaborate on what those are, but made the comment in the context of mobile gaming and portability. It certainly raises eyebrows since Sony has also now revealed a cloud gaming handheld codenamed Project Q that would be a remote play accessory for the PS5.

    PS Plus also doesn’t currently support cloud gaming on smartphones either, requiring you to use a PS4, PS5, or PC. We do know that Sony has been developing a number of patents to decrease latency while streaming games, and The Verge previously reported that the company is hiring for a number of roles to build out its cloud gaming infrastructure. Cloud gaming has been at the center of the regulatory fight over Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard, and it seems like whatever the outcome of that proposed merger, Sony wants to take back some of the video game streaming market share it previously ceded to Game Pass and xCloud.

                  

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    Ethan Gach

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  • Max Draws Controversy For Lack of Specific Onscreen Credits

    Max Draws Controversy For Lack of Specific Onscreen Credits

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    HBO Max‘s shift into Max was sure to come with some growing pains, but no one expected it to happen like this. The new streaming service is finally online after a lengthy transition period. The streaming service will now be the home of Warner Bros. Discovery content, and they’ve made more than just a few changes. Now Discovery and HBO content are together in one place. But there’s something else that got lumped together … the entire creative teams behind the site’s movies and TV series.

    Previously, HBO Max would credit every creator separately. You could see who directed your feature film or the episode of the show you selected; you could also see the writers, and so on. Not anymore. Instead, Max chooses to lump them together as generic and unspecified “Creators.”

    READ MORE: Everything Streaming on Max at Launch

    That’s all problematic enough, right? Well, there’s another layer here. Grouping writers and directors together as “Creators” implicitly shows what Warner Bros. Discovery thinks of the creative team behind their products. They’re just content creators; no different from someone sitting behind a camera making reaction videos on TikTok. Never mind the highly specialized skillset they’ve built for themselves. The “Creators” are just there to make money for the studio. For TV, it’s even worse. You have to go to the “Episode Details” tab to figure out who worked on the show.

    The whole thing is also a fiasco because it further alienates audiences from the labor that went into creating the programs. It’s all about the final product, and not the 1000s of man-hours that went into creating that product. If this is a new precedent, it could engender a certain apathy towards groups like writers or directors, which have previously relied on accolades to make a name for themselves. It’s really a shady move no matter what way you slice it, especially in the midst of a writers’ strike.

    UPDATE: In a statement, Max said

    We agree that the talent behind the content on Max deserve their work to be properly recognized. We will correct the credits, which were altered due to an oversight in the technical transition from HBO Max to Max and we apologize for this mistake.

    10 Famous Movies That Led To Major Lawsuits

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    Cody Mcintosh

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  • ‘Succession’ Episode 9: What Is Logan Roy’s Legacy?

    ‘Succession’ Episode 9: What Is Logan Roy’s Legacy?

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    It’s finally time to lay Logan Roy (Brian Cox) to rest. On the penultimate episode of Succession, the Roy children band together for Logan’s funeral—a profoundly emotional affair for all involved. In a funeral befitting a king (or a tyrant), Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Shiv (Sarah Snook), and Roman (Kieran Culkin) each attempt to eulogize their late father, with varying degrees of success. On this week’s episode of Still Watching, cohost Chris Murphy and Vanity Fair correspondent Joy Press unpack Logan’s epic funeral, and the weight of his loss on the Roy children and the world.

    Before the Roy children can speak about their dearly departed dad, Logan’s brother, Ewan (James Cromwell), delivers a rogue eulogy that was not on the program. His brother, Ewan says, “decided not to try anymore,” and actively made the world a worse and meaner place with his media empire. Logan “stopped trying to be a good person. He stopped trying to care,” says Press. “Ewan is not a very likable character in the series. He’s a crank. And yet the fact that he says, ‘I tried,’ what you see is very human.”

    After Ewan’s denigration of Logan, Kendall steps up to the plate and knocks his impromptu eulogy out of the park, providing a counterpoint to Ewan’s cynical view of Logan. “Kendall says, ‘We gotta give the other side,’ and Kendall gives an equally epic eulogy, but it’s like an ode to capitalism,” says Press. “Ayn Rand could have written his speech.” The beauty of the series, Murphy notes, is that it’s difficult to poke holes in either Ewan’s or Kendall’s estimations of Logan, even though one lionizes him and the other condemns him.

    While Kendall and Ewan deliver dueling eulogies, Shiv’s remembrance of her father highlights his difficulty with women, bringing back this season’s focus on the undercurrent of misogyny in this universe. Shiv’s pregnancy may very well prevent her from becoming the American CEO of Waystar Royco, as Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård) and president-elect Jeryd Mencken (Justin Kirk) make quite clear what they believe a woman’s place should be. “[Mencken] says to Shiv, ‘Kinder, Küche, Kirche,’” Murphy says. “It’s a German slogan, and it’s translated as ‘children, kitchen, church.’”

    Despite pre-grieving, Roman is ultimately unable to channel his inner Logan Roy. He breaks down at the altar, forcing Kendall to pinch-hit. “Beneath the Proud Boy is a blubbering little sad boy,” says Murphy. The end of the episode features Roman swimming upstream against protesters who have been spurred to action by ATN’s decision to call the election for Mencken. 

    While Press refrains from making any big predictions for the series finale, Murphy predicts that Succession will end back in the boardroom with a knock-down, drag-out fight for control of Waystar Royco—with Kendall and Roman on one side, and Shiv and Matsson on the other. But in the end, none of them may emerge victorious: “I would imagine that the outside world increasingly comes in and bursts the Roys’ bubble in some profound way,” says Murphy.

    Elsewhere on the podcast, Alan Ruck drops by to discuss all things Connor Roy, from his relationship with Willa to his failed presidential campaign and the state of the Con-heads. “I think a lot of them are in the bar and will stay there probably for a while,” quips Ruck. “It’s just a bunch of disillusioned people, but it’s something like 1%. That’s kind of like a million people.”

    With one episode left in Succession, it’s still anyone’s guess who may wind up in control of Waystar Royco. Listen to the latest episode of Still Watching below—and email stillwatchingpod@gmail.com with your own questions, comments, and thoughts ahead of the series finale.

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    Chris Murphy

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  • ‘And Just Like That…’ Season 2: Everything We Know So Far

    ‘And Just Like That…’ Season 2: Everything We Know So Far

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    Carrie Bradshaw and the girls are convening around the brunch table once more for the second season of And Just Like That…, HBO Max’s Sex and the City revival. The often divisive series from executive producer Michael Patrick King reunites Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon, and Kristin Davis as three of the four fabulous friends (so long, Samantha) viewers loved and sometimes loathed in the original series and subsequent films. A first trailer for the new season, which will debut on what was formerly known as HBO Max (come May 23, it’ll be just Max), teases twists amongst the expected collision of cosmos, Manolo Blahniks, and SJP voiceovers.

    Ahead, a preview of everything that’s been revealed about the next chapter of And Just Like That…, including what—exactly—is happening with Aidan Shaw. 

    Who is in And Just Like That… season two?

    Returning for round two are Parker, Nixon, and Davis, alongside Karen Pittman as Dr. Nya Wallace, Nicole Ari Parker as Lisa Todd Wexley, Sarita Choudhury as Seema Patel, and Sara Ramírez as the oft-memed Che Diaz. Miranda’s estranged husband, Steve (David Eigenberg), is back to nurse his broken heart, perhaps with his (former, current?) fellow bar owner Aidan Shaw, played by a returning John Corbett. (More on that below.) 

    Also set to reprise their roles are Mario Cantone as sometimes Samantha surrogate Anthony, Evan Handler as Charlotte’s husband, Harry, Christopher Jackson as Lisa’s husband, Herbert, and Niall Cunningham as Miranda’s son, Brady, as well as Cathy Ang and Alexa Swinton as Charlotte’s children, Lily and Rock, respectively. Candice Bergen, who played Carrie’s ruthless Vogue editor Enid Frick in the original series, is reentering the fold as well. New guest stars include feminist activist Gloria Steinem and Sam Smith, who teased their presence on set back in February via Instagram. 

    What will And Just Like That… season two be about?

    What can viewers expect from the upcoming season? The show is doubling down on Che Diaz, no matter how you feel about them breaking up Miranda and Steve or using something called a “Woke Moment” button. “One of my burning passions about season two is Che,” show creator Michael Patrick King previously told Variety. “I want to show the dimension of Che that people didn’t see, for whatever reason—because they were blinded, out of fear or terror. I want to show more of Che rather than less of Che. Like, really.” The last we saw of Che, they were headed to California for pilot season—and Miranda was hopping on a flight to join them.

    Meanwhile, Carrie is blossoming (outlandishly large flower ensemble included) in her single era after kissing her hot podcast producer, played by Ivan Hernandez. And from the looks of the first trailer, there’s a lot more canoodling where that came from. But she may not be done with the past just yet. In addition to the return of Aidan, Parker was spotted filming scenes in her iconic Vivienne Westwood wedding gown from the first SATC film. Whether this callback is part of a dream sequence or a cry for help remains to be seen. 

    As for Charlotte, in the season one finale she had her own bat mitzvah when her child Rock’s “they mitzvah” crashed and burned. In addition to scandal involving a “MILF list” at her children’s school as seen in the first trailer, Charlotte will further be exploring her youngest child’s gender identity, Davis told reporters at a press junket attended by Vanity Fair during season one. As for her elder child Lily, the show’s “Last Supper”–esque poster suggests she and Brady could be a thing, which is certainly better than the rumored alternative should Kim Cattrall had been involved. 

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    Savannah Walsh

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  • “Succession” star Jeremy Strong – CBS News

    “Succession” star Jeremy Strong – CBS News

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    “Succession” star Jeremy Strong – CBS News


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    The actor who won an Emmy for his portrayal of the scion of a media empire family in “Succession” says his own upbringing contained none of the resentments that play out in the HBO series (now completing its fourth and final season). Jeremy Strong talks with “Sunday Morning” contributor Ben Mankiewicz about finding himself on the stage, and of – finally – letting go of Kendall Roy.

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  • 26 Can’t-Miss Summer TV Shows Coming in 2023

    26 Can’t-Miss Summer TV Shows Coming in 2023

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    God love ‘em, the Gemstones’ prayers have finally been answered. Season three of The Righteous Gemstones returns to HBO on June 18, and, in a page straight out of Succession, Jesse (Danny McBride), Judy (Edi Patterson), and Kelvin (Adam DeVine) Gemstone finally have control of the family’s televangelist church made world-famous by their father, Dr. Eli Gemstone (John Goodman). But, running a megachurch is not as easy as it seems, and, from the looks of it, the Gemstone children may not be cut out for the gig. Pray for them.  —Chris Murphy

    The Walking Dead: Dead City

    June 18 (AMC)

    The universe of The Walking Dead expands once again with this sequel series, which picks up two years after the end of The Walking Dead and finds former enemies Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and Maggie (Lauren Cohan) traveling in a postapocalyptic Manhattan. It’s the fourth spin-off from the smash-hit AMC series, which wrapped its 11th and final season in November 2022. None of the follow-up series have become as huge as the original, but AMC clearly remains very much in the zombie business. —K.R.

    Secret Invasion

    June 21 (Disney+)

    “We don’t know who’s a friend, who’s the enemy,” Samuel L. Jackson told Anthony Breznican for Vanity Fair’s first look at his upcoming Marvel series, which follows Jackson’s former S.H.I.E.L.D. director, Nick Fury, as he uncovers a conspiracy to quietly install double agents into positions of power around the world. He’s joined by Emilia Clarke as an alien radical named G’iah, Olivia Colman as a British intelligence agent who has a past with Fury, and a few familiar faces from the MCU, namely Martin Freeman (as CIA agent Everett K. Ross) and Cobie Smulders (as Fury’s steadfast ally, Maria Hill). Maybe it’s not a new Avengers movie, but Secret Invasion seems just as starry. —H.B.

    The Bear

    June 22 (FX)

    Order up. The Bear—the high-octane kitchen series that premiered on FX last summer and quickly became the network’s most-watched half-hour show of all time—serves up a new 10-episode season two on June 22. After shutting down his restaurant, The Beef, Jeremy Allen White’s chef Carmy and his kitchen crew consisting of his “cousin” Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), sous-chef Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), pastry chef Marcus (Lionel Boyce), and veteran line cook Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) are preparing to open Carmy’s new restaurant, The Bear. Along with the new restaurant, there are a few new faces, with Better Call Saul’s Bob Odenkirk and Booksmart’s Molly Gordon both joining The Bear for season two. “It’s not a reopening, it’s a rebirth,” reads the caption on a teaser trailer for The Bear’s second season. Yes, chef. —C.M.

    The Bachelorette

    June 26 (ABC)

    While many of us are still feeling the hangover of a particularly brutal season of The Bachelor, a new season for love is here with Charity Lawson, a 27-year-old Georgia native who was sent packing after hometowns by Zach Shallcross, calling the shots. She becomes only the fifth Black lead in franchise history, following in the footsteps of Matt James, Rachel Lindsay, Tayshia Adams, and Michelle Young—a welcome addition after yet another season where a contestant’s racist past was exposed. Here’s hoping that the exit of controversial longtime creator Mike Fleiss, and Lawson’s career as a child and family therapist bring fresh life to a wilting rose. —S.W.

    The Witcher season three

    June 29 (Netflix)

    Geralt (Henry Cavill) and Ciri (Freya Allan) are going into hiding as the new season of Netflix’s fantasy epic begins, a journey that promises equal parts discovery and treachery—and lands them in a position of putting everything on the line. Robbie Amell and Meng’er Zhang join the cast as an elven fighter and a human huntress, respectively. —D.C.

    And Just Like That… Season Two

    June (Max)

    Now that the death of Big and a realignment of friend groups has been taken care of, maybe the second season of Max’s Sex and the City continuation can relax and have fun. Maybe we might even get a more episodic format, with each installment centered on a particular theme—you know, like SATC used to be. Though creator Michael Patrick King and producer/star Sarah Jessica Parker have been careful to note that AJLT is not trying to directly mimic the style of their previous hit, this is a different set of shoes altogether. So, perhaps that will be the real narrative of this sophomore run of episodes: audiences learning to embrace what’s different about the series, while its creative team finds a way to make it all fit. —R.L.

    The Horror of Dolores Roach

    July 7 (Prime Video)

    From play to podcast to TV series: That’s the unlikely journey of The Horror of Dolores Roach, which began its life as a one-woman show starring Daphne Rubin-Vega, who reprised the role for the Gimlet Media podcast version. The play and podcast’s creator Aaron Mark will serve as co-showrunner for the series, which stars One Day at a Time alum Justina Machado as a woman returning to her Washington Heights neighborhood after being released from prison. As the description for the podcast went, it’s “a macabre urban legend of love, betrayal, weed, gentrification, cannibalism, and survival of the fittest.” —K.R.

    The Real Housewives of New York City

    July 16 (Bravo)

    RHONY has gotten a rebrand. After 13 seasons, Bravo has done away with original Real Housewives of New York cast members like Luann de Lesepps, Sonja Morgan, and Ramona Singer in favor of a fresh crop of ladies ready to take on the Big Apple. Bravo’s updated RHONY cast includes Sai De Silva, Ubah Hassan, Jessel Taank, Brynn Whitfield, Erin Dana Lichy, and former J.Crew president and creative director Jenna Lyons. Season 14 of Real Housewives of New York will premiere on Bravo on July 16 because, after all, there’s nothing like summer in the city. Until then, we’ll have to wait and see whether the new cast will fill the RHONY OGs’ big and fabulous shoes. —C.M.

    The Afterparty

    July 14 (Apple TV+)

    The only thing juicier than an afterparty is what mischief happens next. Even more murder is afoot in season two of this comedic whodunnit, which deliciously recounts the same crime from a different character’s perspective in each episode. The sophomore installment reunites returning cast members Tiffany Haddish, Sam Richardson, and Zoë Chao with a—ahem—murderers’ row of new performers including John Cho, Paul Walter Hauser, Anna Konkle, Ken Jeong, Poppy Liu, Zach Woods, Vivian Wu, and Elizabeth Perkins as an unlucky set of soon-to-be interrogated wedding guests. Let the theorizing begin! —S.W.

    Praise Petey

    July 21 (Freeform)

    Annie Murphy as an It girl whose glamorous life comes crashing down? Sounds a lot like Schitt’s Creek, only, this time, Murphy is voicing the animated Petey, who decides to lean into modernizing her dad’s small-town cult. From former Saturday Night Live head writer Anna Drezen, Praise Petey promises comedy for the Gen Z set. John Cho, Kiersey Clemons, and Christine Baranski also star. —N.J.

    They Cloned Tyrone

    July 21 (Netflix)

    Is it a comedy, a conspiracy thriller, a stylish sci-fi-action-mystery-Blaxploitation-throwback? Juel Taylor’s directorial debut looks like all of the above. “Blaxploitation films always represented movies that let us express ourselves, and we could just look snazzy and do cool shit,” star John Boyega recently told EW of the high-concept project. ”It didn’t matter if we knew kung fu. It just all made sense with the music, with the vibes. I’m just proud to, at least, be a part of something that pays homage to that.” Trust his costars Teyonah Parris and Jamie Foxx to nail the vibe too. —H.B.

    Minx season two

    July 21 (Starz)

    Axed from HBO Max in dramatic fashion last year, the 1970s workplace comedy has found a new life on Starz, with Ophelia Lovibond and Jake Johnson returning as Joyce and Doug, the pair of unlikely collaborators behind a feminist porn magazine. In season two, the magazine Minx has become a hit, which, for our heroes, “brings more money, fame, and temptation than either of them know how to handle,” per Starz. With the recent Party Down revival, Starz is hopefully well-positioned to promote another smart comedy and treat Minx better than its first home did. —K.R.

    Twisted Metal

    July 27 (Peacock)

    Did you spend the winter of 1995 watching your brother shoot napalm-laced ice cream cones at a souped-up Corvette driven by a ghost? If so, you too may find yourself intrigued by Peacock’s adaptation of the classic Playstation game, which casts Anthony Mackie as an everyman (he’s literally named John Doe) on a quest that, if the original is any blueprint, will mostly serve as an excuse for stylized vehicular mayhem. Yes, the clown who drives a killer ice cream truck is there too—and, this time, he’s voiced by Will Arnett. —H.B.

    Breeders season four

    July (FX)

    The fourth season of FX’s dark comedy series follows a tense finale in which Ava (Eve Prenelle) finally stood up to her father, while our weary married antiheroes Paul (Martin Freeman) and Ally (Daisy Haggard) don’t split up, exactly, but plan to move forward with a dynamic that may not be fixable, and a lot of pain in the rearview. How will they all pick up the pieces? Hopefully, the premiere lays out the road map. —D.C.

    Heartstopper season two

    August 3 (Netflix)

    Get ready for a summer of love. Netflix’s hit queer coming-of-age romance Heartstopper returns to the streaming platform on August 3. Based on the New York Times best-selling graphic novel series by Alice Oseman, Heartstopper follows Charlie (Joe Locke) a recently out teen at a British all-boys school, Nick (Kit Connor) a closeted rugby player coming to terms with his sexuality, and their budding romance. With a 100% average Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes, there’s clearly many Heartstopper fans interested in seeing what the next step is in Charlie and Nick’s romantic journey. —C.M.

    Red, White & Royal Blue

    August 11 (Prime Video)

    Speaking of Heartstopper, The Royal We meets Netflix’s hit queer romance in Matthew Lopez’s adaptation of Casey McQuiston’s Young Adult bestseller, a sweetly silly rom-com that pairs America’s First Son with the heir to the British crown. Sure, the premise is implausible, but McQuiston’s charming banter was enough to sell it in novel form. Presumably, young cuties Taylor Zakhar Pérez and Nicholas Galitzine will be able to do the same on the small screen. Plus: Uma Thurman as the first female POTUS! —H.B.

    Reservation Dogs season two

    Summer Date TBD (FX)

    At the end of season two, the titular Dogs—Indigenous teens Elora Danan (Devery Jacobs), Bear (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai), Willie Jack (Paulina Alexis), and Cheese (Lane Factor)—have made their long-awaited sojourn to California, a dream they often discussed while living on the Muscogee Nation Reservation in Oklahoma. But, while the last season ended with a sense of resolution, showrunner Sterlin Harjo has teased “some darkness coming” in season three for the group, whose bond was cemented after the tragic loss of their fifth friend just before the show’s start. —S.W.

    What We Do in the Shadows season five

    Summer Date TBD (FX)

    Renewed last year for a fifth and sixth season, the vampire comedy returns with a major vote of confidence from its network, and a major cliff-hanger to wrap up: At the end of the last season, human familiar Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) had asked to be turned into a vampire. The season ended with several other resets, like Baby Colin’s (Mark Proksch) reversion back to regular adult Colin and the end of Nadja’s (Natasia Demetriou) nightclub dream. But, for vampire characters who have been alive for hundreds of years, there’s clearly time for many more adventures. —K.R.

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    Hillary Busis, Richard Lawson, Savannah Walsh, Rebecca Ford, David Canfield, Katey Rich, Natalie Jarvey, Chris Murphy

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  • This Thriller Tells The Story Of A Nigerwife Whose Perfect Life Is Falling Apart

    This Thriller Tells The Story Of A Nigerwife Whose Perfect Life Is Falling Apart

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    Right on time for summer, Vanessa Walters’ thriller debut novel “The Nigerwife” is the perfect beach-ready read. Set in modern-day Lagos, Nigeria, we are introduced to a rarely-known world of the nigerwives — uber-wealthy ex-pat stay-at-home wives who left their home countries and former lives for Nigerian-born husbands. Now, they spend their days in glorious mansions, dripping in lavish jewels and designer clothes and seemingly not a care in the world.

    But for Nicole Oruwari, that facade of her perfect life with her handsome husband Tonye and two sons has finally come crumbling down. Then, one night, she goes missing from a boat in the affluent Ikoyi harbor. Terrified, her estranged aunt, Claudine, who raised her back in London, is determined to get to the bottom of her niece’s disappearance and bring her home — alive. But as soon as Claudine arrives, she realizes nothing is what it seems, especially regarding Nicole’s in-laws. Oscillating between the past and the present and Nicole and Auntie Claudine’s perspective, “The Nigerwife” catapults you into a world that most of us have never seen before — and will have you glued to every page.

    For Walters, who currently lives in Brooklyn, her book also served as a way to explore her own identity, not just as a Black Brit with Caribbean roots, but as a former nigerwife. Through her critical yet empathetic lens, that authenticity is brilliantly weaved throughout the book as she captures the beauty and chaos of Lagos, all while fearlessly tacking a slew of themes, including generational trauma, colorism, misogyny, the Diaspora and colonialism. It’s no wonder Amy Aniobi bought the book’s rights and is developing it into a series for HBO.

    HuffPost chatted with Walters about what inspired her to write this book, tackling the complexities of the Diaspora and her excitement to see “The Nigerwife” on the small screen.

    What inspired you to write this book?

    Like Nicole, I’m a London girl, and that’s where all my family is, but then I was plunged into a very different life in Lagos. Ultimately, over the years, I had some profound existential questions about life that I’d never had before about community, identity and marriage. I couldn’t read about these things anywhere else. I know firsthand this sense that you’re totally dependent on your husband. Therefore, this sparked questions about what marriage is, what it’s supposed to be, and growing as a person. So being a writer, this is the natural medium for talking through these things and telling the stories of the women I met over the years.

    The book cover of “The Nigerwife” by Vanessa Walters.

    I also wrote this book for the same reason I wrote my first YA book, “Rude Girls,” when I was 16 — I wanted to read about girls like me. Back then, I wrote it so my friends had something to read, but this time, I was more intentional. I wanted to articulate this experience for the wider world.

    Having been a nigerwife, what are some of the personal experiences that you and Nicole share?

    Absolutely. I was part of the nigerwife community for over seven years, and I believe there’s a universal nigerwife experience, especially around cultural isolation and lack of community. Being from London, growing up with a certain generation, we all listened to the same music and wore the same clothes. In Lagos, nobody could understand me in that way or sing the same lyrics to a song with the same joy my friends in London would. I felt that I had been forgotten. I was no longer part of the particular community I came from. That’s Nicole’s story, and it’s very poignant and important to tell. It’s not easy to articulate because it’s such a specific experience because most people don’t travel that far from their homes. But even in that, readers can still relate to this story.

    I also come from a big, complicated family like the Roberts family — definitely not as dramatic, but still one that’s been complicated by years of separation and trauma. My mother was a barrel child (a child whose parents migrated to another country to work, leaving them behind), and my great-great-grandmother was a sugar cane worker, seemingly in slavery-like conditions. How does one live and love when they have a whole life with this level of labor? So looking at my own family paved the way for these characters to come to life and for me to explore similar issues.

    I love how in your book, the city of Lagos is more than just the setting; it’s like its own character.

    Lagos is such a thrilling city — a very dramatic city. There’s also so much tension there, partly because of these huge extremes of wealth and circumstance. It reminds me of New York, but here, we shout about it from every rooftop. We’re always having conversations about struggle and trauma, which is one of the most beautiful things about living in New York. But in Lagos, these topics become taboo because of the patriarchy and the more traditional aspects of society, along with this projection of wellness and social success. Poverty becomes taboo. Hardship becomes taboo. All that helps create this tension between the outward perception and what’s really happening.

    This book also shows the dark side of marriage — one riddled with control, mistrust, infidelity and a lack of connection. What real-life advice do you want readers to take away from Nicole and Tonye’s relationship?

    Marriage is complicated, and I intentionally made Nicole a very complicated and, at times, selfish character. She has an affair with someone who clearly isn’t the love of her life, but she also wants freedom because she doesn’t always have that in her marriage.

    I didn’t want to make Tonye a textbook villain, but he makes a lot of mistakes. Yes, he’s good-looking with tons of money, but he isn’t perfect. I wanted to ask questions about what marriage is and how it can go wrong and even under the “best” of circumstances. In a place like Lagos, where there are a lot of labels on people, traditions, and boxes to fit in, how does this impact their marriage?

    We go into marriage as individuals and think we have this blueprint, but it only sometimes matches up. Marriage can be amazing and freeing, but it can also feel like being in a straightjacket. (Laughs) Whatever it is, people need to be honest with themselves. Did you make a mistake? Did you give up on yourself and your desires? Are you being respected? Please, don’t be locked into a mistake for the rest of your life because you believe marriage is everything.

    You also don’t shy away from the Diaspora wars between Americans, Brits, Caribbeans, Africans, etc. Which we know can be a little too real sometimes on Twitter. Remember the whole tea kettle fiasco? (Laughs) Why was including that important?

    It was almost easier to have these conversations in a fictional way in the book than in real life. This way, we can enjoy the exploration and find our own answers. But, I am always interested in observing people and am curious to know why we are the way that we are and how where we come from plays a role in that. It’s fascinating. I remember moving to Nigeria and having people tell me they didn’t realize they were Black until they lived abroad as teens. Before then, they never had to think of themselves that way. But it was more just that because, as a descendant of enslaved people, watching these same people dismiss racism because they didn’t understand it the same way was not an easy conversation to have. How do you know the struggles of colonialism and all the terrible things the British did in Africa and diminish it because you didn’t have the same ancestry as the Caribbean or African-American people?

    But I also found that having this understanding of race versus the Caribbean or African-American experience can impact your understanding of feminism and other issues. They’re all connected.

    Finally, the book is being developed into a drama series for HBO, thanks to “Insecure” and “Rap Sh*t” writer-director Amy Aniobi. How excited are you for this story to come to the small screen?

    It’s a dream. Actually, it’s a dream because this wasn’t even a dream I had before. And Amy is a total inspiration, boss chic. Look at “Insecure.” So many older Black women “grew up” on that show whether they’ve seen it or not; we’ve all been influenced by that show and how we see ourselves as Black women. Most importantly, that show really encouraged me to even tell this story.

    Amy is going to bring her writing and directing talent and nuance to this. Plus, she’s Nigerian, and I know she will approach it with that perspective. This is why having Black women in the room is so important. I can’t wait to see what happens next.

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  • Bridget Everett Is Moving One Step Forward

    Bridget Everett Is Moving One Step Forward

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    On the Upper West Side, where she’s lived for years in an apartment with a large terrace, Bridget Everett sits down to talk about her HBO series Somebody Somewhere, the quiet and emotional family story set in Everett’s own Kansas hometown. The neighborhood has little of the flash of the downtown cabaret scene that Everett in many ways defines, but the off-stage Everett is very different from the on-stage one.

    Somebody Somewhere, which Everett co-created, plays out like an alternate version of her life. Her character Sam is grieving the loss of her sister, like Everett did when she lost her sister Brinton in 2008. Sam has an earth shatteringly beautiful voice but is remarkably closed off. Surprisingly, Everett says she’s even more so. Her revealing, raucous cabaret acts feel safer to her than much of her real life. “I know that may seem bizarre, but with my own friends, with my own relationships, I have a really hard time sharing things, because I feel like it destabilizes me. But through the show, I’m learning that that’s not true,” she says. “There’s something that happens in the very last episode, which is a reflection on who I am. It’s about the things you do to protect yourself. I’m 50 years old, but it’ll make you feel like a kid, kind of.”

    The show has made Everett, long a star in New York’s theater scene, a figure on the national stage. Over years in the city, she gradually found herself in a new kind of cabaret scene, developing an act that is fully original in its humor and raunchiness. She’s a signature at the celebrated venue Joe’s Pub, where she performs with her band The Tender Moments and has made fans out of the likes of Patti LuPone. Somebody Somewhere is closer to home.

    Everett in season two of Somebody Somewhere.

    Sandy Morris / HBO

    In season 2, Sam is still making slow progress towards repairing her relationship with her sister, understanding her friends, and accepting that her parents are aging. Everett is herself taking some of the same steps Sam is. “I’m just a little baby girl sheep. I’ve lived alone for a very long time, me and my dog, and I’m very happy there. But Sam is being forced into life and she’s two steps up, one step back. And I’m trying to just shave a little bit of her knowledge off as we go,” she explains. “We’re pushing Sam beyond where I’m comfortable going. Because if it were up to me, Sam would always be depressing, on the couch.”

    Living life has always terrified Everett a bit and the pandemic only made things harder. “COVID’s been 10 steps back for me. I’m no different than anybody else. I’ve been trying to work through a lot of depression, just based on the isolation of it all,” she says. Singing has always given her freedom. Somebody Somewhere does, too. “Karaoke was the first time I felt really alive. Being on top of the bars, singing ‘Piece of My Heart’ with my shirt open. I felt on the edge of life, I felt awake, I felt present,” she says. “This is just another iteration of that. That’s why I have to be in the writer’s room. I have to be involved in what’s on the set. I have to be involved with every bit of it, because it has to feel like it’s me.”

    With the show, Everett has created a world with a sense of warmth that recalls her artistic community in New York. Sam’s sister Tricia is played by Mary Catherine Garrison, Everett’s friend and former roommate. Murray Hill, who plays a life of the party agricultural professor, is another longtime friend and Jeff Hiller, cast as Sam’s close friend Joel, orbited around her for years. On set in Illinois, Everett, Hiller, and Hill lived together in a home they called the Ding Dong Dorm. “It feels like family. You have a cocktail at the end of the night and talk about your day, go over your lines and then get up at 5:30 in the morning and you see each other in the kitchen,” she says. “You end up waving and just like, ‘Did you sleep okay?’ ‘Not really. Did you sleep okay?’ ‘Not really.’ ‘Okay. I’ll see you there.’ ‘All right.’”

    “Most of my friends know that I can retreat very easily. So they make calls.”

    Everett’s had a similar dynamic at home, but sometimes doesn’t realize it. “Murray used to call me every night for my check-ins. It’s interesting how isolated I have felt and feel like I am sometimes, but that’s not really the truth. I have people all around me. Most of my friends know that I can retreat very easily. So they make calls,” she says. “I try, but my default is, ‘I don’t want to bother them.’ And a lot of my friends just see past that and see through that. And that’s a large part, too, of my time living with Mary Catherine and my friend Zach, they really put in a lot of work to crack me open a little bit.”

    It was supposed to be the first season that was about grief. Then last May, as the show was in pre-production, Mike Hagerty, who featured prominently in season 1 as Everett’s father, died suddenly. “It was a lot of really quick thinking and re-imagining scripts. It came together, thank God, trying to figure out how to carry him with us, as opposed to leaving him behind.”

    A glimmer of sorrow is visible, even in the sunnier storyline and a new layer was added to the question of how a family reconfigures when a member is gone. “When somebody leaves the family, it sets it off its axis. Because in the show, Holly, and in my case, my sister Brinton, was a buffer or a safe place. When she was gone, then it’s like, where are you, in your own family? Where do you fit in?” Everett asks.

    mike hagerty and bridget everett in somebody somewhere

    Mike Hagerty and Bridget Everett in Somebody Somewhere.

    HBO

    Season 1 explores the tension between Sam, who is single, and her sister Tricia, married with a child, as they mourn their sister Holly and experience loneliness in different ways. “Just because somebody has a different kind of family unit, it doesn’t mean that the ache in their heart isn’t the same. I historically, think of things in those terms. Like when you have all that happiness, could this possibly be as hard for you as it is for me?” says Everett. “As Sam has learned some of that stuff, so has Bridget, through the show. I still think that I have it harder than anybody else. I’m just kidding!”

    Everett hopes other people can see elements of themselves, or their families, in the show. “One of the biggest takeaways, for me, is the message of the first episode: Don’t give up. It really is about taking a chance on yourself and trying to plug back into life and all the complications that that involves. I watch it and it makes me feel more hopeful that I might feel my old self, living my life,” she says.

    “Maybe nobody will watch it,” Everett says, at one point. They will.

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    Editor

    Adrienne Gaffney is an editor at ELLE who previously worked at WSJ Magazine and Vanity Fair.

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  • ‘Barry’ Star Sarah Goldberg on Sally’s Greatest Performance Yet

    ‘Barry’ Star Sarah Goldberg on Sally’s Greatest Performance Yet

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    And the best performance by an actress who is married to a murderer and pretending to be a waitress named Emily goes to…Sally Reed!

    After last Sunday’s Barry concluded by jumping ahead in time, the fifth installment of the final season, “tricky legacies,” officially catches up with the new lives of Barry (Bill Hader) and Sally (Sarah Goldberg). After escaping prison, Barry asked Sally to join him on the run. Having just unsuccessfully tried to steal a blockbuster role from her own student, a defeated Sally was immediately in.

    Eight years later, the duo are now known as Clark and Emily, living in the middle of nowhere, and raising a young son. Barry spends his days at home, watching their boy, John, and teaching him a lot about Abraham Lincoln. Sally works at a diner, where she uses the bathroom to snort Xanax with one coworker and choke another. Her miserable reality is eventually upended when she learns that Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler) has resurfaced in Los Angeles and will consult on a Barry biopic. “They’re making a movie about us,” she tells Barry. His reply? “I’m gonna have to kill Cousineau.”

    To answer some burning Sally questions, we chatted with Goldberg about finding inspiration from another HBO series, why on Earth Sally feels safe with Barry, and going full Hader by creating her own starring vehicle: SisterS, coming to IFC May 17.

    Vanity Fair: Between Barry ending and SisterS beginning, it’s surely a wild and emotional time right now.

    Sarah Goldberg: My head’s spinning, for sure. It’s been seven years since I was hired for Barry, and it feels like a full-life cycle. That job meant so much to all of us, and we’ve made friends for life, and it feels like we left the story in the right place. So there’s a collective pride in releasing it out into the world and letting it go. But then it’s also mixed with huge nostalgia and just sadness that we’re not going to be on set together, huddled in dark corners, drinking cups of tea at all hours of the day. I’m Canadian, so they’ll never get rid of me. They’ll be hearing from me daily, but we won’t be together like that again.

    I need to start with my most pressing question: Do we think that Sally actually saw Coda?

    [Laughs.] That’s such a good question; nobody’s asked me that. I do think she saw Coda. In fact, I think she really, really, really loved it. It’s funny; I improvised that line. Ellyn Jameson, who plays the Mega Girl, and I were chatting about Coda in the trailer before meeting Sian [Heder, who plays herself on Barry], and we both were like, “I could cry just thinking about it.” So I threw it in. But yeah, I think Sally has seen it, and it’s maybe one of her favorite films.

    Coming into Barry’s swan song, what excited you about Sally’s arc?

    Between the pilot and shooting the first season, we were sent four scripts to read, and then Bill called all of us for our notes. And we were shocked—like, who does that? As an actor, you don’t usually get that amount of creative license. And so all the way back then, I’d said to him, “I’d really love to push Sally into Gena Rowlands territory, A Woman Under the Influence or Opening Night. I want to go really far with this character.” And he was like, “Okay, I see that too.” He made me that promise all those years ago, and so, with the arc this season, we see a huge pivot from Sally, and I was thrilled at the challenge and chance to do something totally new. It’s pretty rare in TV that characters get to evolve the way they do on a show like Barry. 

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    Derek Lawrence

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  • ‘Succession’ Episode 7: Can Shiv and Tom Come Back From This?

    ‘Succession’ Episode 7: Can Shiv and Tom Come Back From This?

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    It’s election eve on Succession, and everyone’s on edge. In “Tailgate Party,” the seventh episode of Succession’s final season, Shiv (Sarah Snook) and Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) join forces to throw a preelection soiree at their Manhattan triplex for some of the most influential people in politics. Sparks fly—mostly between the two of them. At first it seems the formerly estranged couple have reconciled, with Tom and Shiv trading sexts during the workday. On this week’s episode of Still Watching, cohost Chris Murphy says Tom’s jokey preelection present to Shiv—a scorpion paperweight—is the worst gift he’s seen on HBO since The White Lotus season two, when Valentina gave her unrequited love, Isabella, a hideous starfish brooch.

    “I think that it was emblematic of Tom’s tragic inability to not see when he’s taken a joke too far, to not be able to read Shiv when she’s not in the mood for the big joke of their relationship,” agrees cohost Richard Lawson. “He’s never supposed to lead the attack.” 

    By nightfall, though, it’s all-out warfare between Tom and Shiv. It may be impossible for them to come back from their patio fight, particularly because Tom tells Shiv that she’d be a terrible mother. Murphy points that out as both proof that Tom still doesn’t know Shiv is pregnant and the potential point of no return for the couple. “The fact of the matter is, we have never seen a single good parent on this show,” says Lawson. “There’s no reason to think that Shiv would be a good parent.”

    Tom and Shiv were not the only couple to hash it out this episode. Kendall (Jeremy Strong) finally gets a visit from his ex-wife, Rava (Natalie Gold), who informs him that their daughter has been the victim of bullying due to his running of “a racist news organization.” Murphy notes that Kendall’s first instinct is to blame Rava for the incident, despite the fact that he hasn’t seen or spoken to his daughter once this entire season. “You’d think that given his relationship with his own father, [Kendall] would maybe want to be a better dad or more attentive, or more caring, or more involved,” says Murphy. “But no. The only lesson that he has learned from Logan’s death is that he wants to be better than Logan. He wants to be bigger than Logan.”

    On his quest to become bigger than his father, Kendall, at the tailgate party, goes head-to-head with Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård), who he discovers—courtesy of Matsson’s employee and ex-girlfriend, Ebba (Eili Harboe)—has been making up some numbers of his own. Kendall and Matsson’s resulting tête-à-tête, Lawson and Murphy agree, is akin to a middle school shoving match with no winner to be found. Skarsgård drops by the podcast to chat with VF’s Julie Miller about the episode, particularly that gold bomber jacket. “He wears a lot of sweatpants and sneakers, and then this crazy golden jacket that’s probably like a $25,000 Japanese designer jacket,” he said. “It’s a weird combination of super casual and comfortable but also ridiculously expensive and completely over the top, just because he finds it funny.”

    After some shady phone calls with Republican candidate Jeryd Mencken’s (Justin Kirk) team, Roman attempts to convince Connor (Alan Ruck) to drop out of the presidential race, offering him a series of ambassadorships in Mencken’s Cabinet—much to Willa (Justine Lupe) and Connor’s chagrin. But Roman has bigger issues to face than whether Connor wants to be the ambassador to Oman. After Roman tries to bring Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron) back into the fold, Gerri flat-out refuses, demanding hundreds of million of dollars in a severance package and threatening to release the “many, many” pictures of Roman’s penis that she has on her phone. 

    Elsewhere in this Still Watching episode, Miller chats with dream team Karl (David Rasche) and Frank (Peter Friedman), who say their characters’ relationship was forged in trauma. “[They] fought wars together,” says Rasche. “The audience doesn’t see it, but we spent all day with Logan every day. Meetings, dinners, trips. We’ve known him for 20, 30 years—a long, long time.”

    As each Roy sibling circles the drain, will any of them be left to run the company by season’s end? Listen to the latest episode of Still Watching to hear Lawson and Murphy discuss the seventh episode of the final season of Succession. For your own questions, comments, and final-season theories, please email stillwatchingpod@gmail.com.

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  • Stranger Things, Marvel Movie Halted Because Hollywood Won’t Pay Its Writers

    Stranger Things, Marvel Movie Halted Because Hollywood Won’t Pay Its Writers

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    As the writer’s strike enters its second week, the effects of not having some of most important people on set around are already starting to show: two of the biggest projects currently in production—Marvel’s Blade reboot and the fifth season of Stranger Things—have been put on ice (along with loads more movies and shows I’ll get to in a minute).

    This Wacky Magical Girl Anime Is Studio Trigger-Coded To Perfection

    What’s the strike about?

    Writers are deservedly fed up with loads of stuff, from the number of exploitative short-term contracts being offered in the age of streaming to low pay to poor residuals to the threat of machine-learning.

    You can read more here

    Posting on the official Twitter account of the Stranger Things writer’s room, the show’s creators, the Duffer brothers, wrote:

    Duffers here. Writing does not stop when filming begins. While we’re excited to start production with our amazing cast and crew, it is not possible during this strike. We hope a fair deal is reached soon so we can all get back to work. Until then — over and out. #wgastrong

    Without its writers or showrunners, production has ground to a halt. Hell yeah. Also downing tools is Marvel’s new Blade movie, which has been shut down and “will restart…production once the strike is over”.

    And those two are far from the only shows and films affected. A ton of live TV, especially late night comedy programs, have already gone dark, with The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon, Late Night With Seth Meyers, The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, and Jimmy Kimmel Live! all having stopped filming.

    And while networks and studios will be fine for a while coasting on material that had already been written and filmed, if the strike continues and that dries up, they’ll be in trouble. And even when the strike is over they’ll still be in trouble, because production backlogs and rescheduling will be an absolute nightmare.

    Of course not every project and studio is hitting the pause button. HBO’s Game of Thrones spin-off House of the Dragon will continue filming, just without its writers, while Amazon’s second season of Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power will do likewise. Disney and HBO are among companies who have also ordered writers back to work, with the latter asking them to perform “non-writing” tasks.

    The Writers Guild of America, the union calling the strike, figures that improving their member’s contracts would cost Hollywood a collective $430 million per year. There are already estimates this strike could do $2 billion worth of damage to the entertainment economy. That might seem like some easy sums, just pay these people what they’re worth, but these strikes are never about the money, they’re about control.

    Solidarity with everyone manning the picket lines, and best of luck with the coming days/weeks/months.

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    Luke Plunkett

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  • Karl Urban To Play Johnny Cage In ‘Mortal Kombat 2’

    Karl Urban To Play Johnny Cage In ‘Mortal Kombat 2’

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    The final rounds of conversation are wrapping up. If all goes well, it seems that Karl Urban will star as Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat 2. The sequel to New Line Cinema’s 2021 film is getting underway, and fans couldn’t be more excited. While the first entry in the series did stray from the conventional Mortal Kombat story, it did a very good job at setting up various classic characters, as well as introducing some new ones, like Cole Young, the hero of the movie who had never appeared in a previous Mortal Kombat game.

    Karl Urban is perhaps most famous for his portrayal of Billy Butcher in the hit Amazon series The Boys. He’s also been prominently featured in the recent Star Trek movies as the younger version of Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy. He was also the star of the much beloved Dredd reboot from 2012. Urban’s played a number of other characters, after getting his first big Hollywood role in 2002’s Ghost Ship.

    Warner Bros. Pictures

    READ MORE: Every Video Game Movie, Ranked From Worst to Best

    Johnny Cage himself is an interesting character. He’s largely based around Jean-Claude Van Damme… specifically Van Damme’s performance in 1988’s Bloodsport. While he often serves as comic relief in the games, he’s also an extremely skilled martial artist. The character is a Hollywood action star, who gets noticed as one of Earth’s greatest fighters. As a result, Raiden enlists him to defend “Earthrealm” against the forces of “Outworld” in the Mortal Kombat tournament. Johnny and his allies then take on baddies such as Goro, Shang Tsung, and eventually, the emperor of Outworld himself, Shao Kahn.

    Mortal Kombat 2 will be produced by James Wan, Todd Garner, Simon McQuoid, and E. Bennett Walsh.

    Every Video Game Movie Ever Made, Ranked From Worst to Best

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    Cody Mcintosh

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  • ‘Succession’ Episode 6: Kendall Is Cringe, But Is He Free?

    ‘Succession’ Episode 6: Kendall Is Cringe, But Is He Free?

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    Once again, Kendall (Jeremy Strong) seems to have notched an unlikely win, delivering a cringey yet ultimately effective product launch for Waystar Royco’s latest business venture: the planned community Living+. “When Kendall’s giving his speech and he’s talking about how [Living+] is gonna have discreet security, it’s like, ‘Oh, this is for rich white people who feel terrified that Black Lives Matter is gonna come get them,” notes Richard Lawson on this week’s episode of Still Watching. “But that’s what the Fox News set wants to hear.”

    While Kendall and the gleam in his eye are impressing investors, Roman (Kieran Culkin) is flailing and firing anyone who rubs him the wrong way—from Waystar Studios exec Joy (Annabeth Gish) to Geri (J. Smith Cameron). Still Watching co-host Chris Murphy posits that Geri’s warning to Roman is Shakespearean in scope, something that might foreshadow a tragic end for Roman. “[Roman] was always good at sort of squirming around daddy and courting his favor, and he would always retreat, sucking his thumb back to his lap,” agrees Lawson. “We saw that right before Logan died. And now that he doesn’t have that, he’s a baby with a gun.” 

    Elsewhere in the episode, Shiv (Sarah Snook) and Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) seem to be reconciling in their own twisted way. The episode’s director Lorene Scafaria dropped by Still Watching and let viewers in on the complicated power dynamic between the somewhat estranged couple. “Bitey was just electrifying to watch,” said Scafaria. “It’s like they’ve already kissed under the bleachers, so now they’re teenagers at a party. Of course their expression of love can’t help but have some violence in it of who can hurt the other.”

    Despite Kendall’s big win, there’s still plenty that can go wrong for the Roy family. Listen to the latest episode of Still Watching to hear Lawson and Murphy discuss the sixth episode of the final season of Succession. For your own questions, comments, and final-season theories, please email stillwatchingpod@gmail.com.

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    Chris Murphy

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  • $2,000 The Last Of Us Part II Statue Set Recreates One Of The Game’s Best Fights

    $2,000 The Last Of Us Part II Statue Set Recreates One Of The Game’s Best Fights

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    Image: Prime 1 Studio / Naughty Dog

    Whether you love it or hate it, the end of Abby’s third day in The Last of Us Part II is one of the sequel’s most memorable moments. While playing as Abby, the secret second main character of the game, the player is forced into a brutal fight with long-time protagonist Ellie in a Seattle theater. If you would like to relive this intense moment every time you look at your shelf, an incredibly expensive statue set is on its way that recreates the scene. If you’re willing to shell out a couple grand, that is.

    Oshi No Ko Is An Early Anime Of The Year Contender

    Collectible company Prime 1 Studio is releasing two statues that are sold seperately of both characters. One features Abby with swappable arm pieces holding either a handgun, hammer, or molotov cocktail (which she notably can’t use in The Last of Us Part II). The third of which you can only get if you buy the Bonus Version of the statue from the company’s website. The other statue features Ellie and has her sneaking around an archway with a shotgun on hand, but it isn’t available for pre-order at the time of this writing. Once both statues are placed next to each other, it recreates the scene of the two protagonists’ confrontation. There’s less forcing the player to choke Ellie out here, at least. The Abby half measures at about 22 inches in height, so the statues are both pretty big. Make sure you’ve got the shelf space for it before you get your hopes up.

    Prime 1 Studios

    It does look incredible, but I’m a Last of Us superfan, and I can’t even justify spending the money it would take to get the complete set. The Abby statue runs $1099 on its own, which means the Ellie one, whenever Prime 1 Studio puts it up for pre-order, will likely cost about as much. I already paid $2000 for the replica of Ellie’s guitar because a pandemic was happening and I was stuck in my house with more money than I should’ve been trusted with, and that was before I moved to one of the most expensive cities in the world. But if you’d like to buy the Abby statue alone or as prep for putting it and the Ellie statue on display alongside each other, start counting your pennies and head on over to Prime 1 Studio’s site.

    While Abby is well-known for game fans, the character has yet to debut in HBO’s adaptation of The Last of Us which aired earlier this year. However, it does look like the character will debut right on schedule during season 2. We don’t know who will play her, but the actor better be buff.

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    Kenneth Shepard

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  • Stephen Root’s Incredible Career of Comedy, Tragedy, and ‘Barry’

    Stephen Root’s Incredible Career of Comedy, Tragedy, and ‘Barry’

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    Welcome to Always Great, a new Awards Insider column in which we speak with Hollywood’s greatest undersung actors in career-spanning conversations. In this entry, Stephen Root reflects on his journey from Broadway to Hollywood—and from silly sitcoms to gritty HBO hits, including Barry and the final season of Succession. 

    HBO has plenty of star power, but on one particular Sunday night this April, the network was ruled by a single character actor. We all expected to see Stephen Root as part of the final-season debut of Barry, in which he stars as the titular antihero’s mentor turned antagonist, Fuches. But an hour before that dark comedy’s season premiere got going, Root reprised another role in another beloved series on its way out, Succession. As political donor Ron Petkus, he returned to eulogize Logan Roy (Brian Cox) in exceedingly flattering terms at the late patriarch’s wake, to the great horror of his children. They’re wildly different roles, and Root, as ever, shines in both. “To be able to do all that in one night was pretty great,” he says with a smile over Zoom. “I think that’s the best it’ll ever get—don’t you?”

    From our vantage point, it’s been pretty great for a while. This may not even be the first time Root has taken over a night of TV in such a manner. (One will have to check the TV Guide archives.) On HBO alone, of late he’s appeared in True Blood, Boardwalk Empire, The Newsroom, All the Way, Veep, and Perry Mason; within that 15-year timespan, he’s also done Fargo, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Big Bang Theory, The Good Wife, Raising Hope, Fringe, Justified, Californication, and many, many more. That’s to say nothing of the independent movie credits he’s racked up, or his beloved voice work on King of the Hill and other animated series. Root has acquired the reputation of a guy who can get just about any kind of job done; he’s proven equally adept and comfortable in the silliest of sitcoms and the gravest of dramas.

    Still, with small roles come specific types on either end of those spectrums. In Barry, for the first time, Root has gotten a chance to use everything he’s got in one package—a layered, funny-scary performance that’s netted him his first (very overdue) Emmy nomination and the sort of character arc too rarely afforded to actors of his profile. “I feel like the luckiest guy ever, at this late in my career, to be able to have something that special,” Root says. Call it the happy result of 35 years of hustle.

    Succession.

    From the Everett Collection.

    After attending college in Florida, Root came to New York in the mid-’80s with stage training, specifically Shakespeare, and an offer to do a whole bunch of plays on the road. He was known for playing the Bard’s clowns and jesters, and wound up touring for nine months with the National Shakespeare Company. After returning to New York, he nabbed back-to-back starring roles on Broadway, in So Long on Lonely Street and All My Sons; he later joined the national tour of Driving Miss Daisy opposite Julie Harris. 

    He moved to LA at the beginning of the ’90s; his mentality had shifted to the screen, to booking as many jobs as possible, given that he had a new child to take care of. In 1991 alone, he amassed eight screen credits, establishing a particular sitcom niche in series like Home Improvement and Davis Rules. “The mash-up of a sitcom, which is audience and camera—I felt comfortable in front of an audience, having done theater forever,” Root says. “I was doing so many auditions for sitcoms that I think all the casting directors around town saw me as a quirky guy. It’s a strength of mine to do quirky guys, but when you get put into that little slot for a year or two, then it becomes sedentary.”

    That familiar, complex industry bargain was highlighted most by Root’s breakout turn in NewsRadio, the critical darling that ran from 1995–1999. Root’s chummy, conspiratorial, micromanaging billionaire boss Jimmy James dominates just about every scene he’s in—despite the killer ensemble, including Phil Hartman and Maura Tierney—and cemented him as a comedy pro and a brilliant blowhard. He now cites his favorite episode as “Super Karate Monkey Death Car,” in which James boldly reads from the very poorly translated Japanese rerelease of his memoir at an author event; Root sells every note of the book’s ingenious stupidity, and many critics now regard it as one of one of the great sitcom episodes ever. But the show never had much of a chance to break out. “The NBC programmer hated us for reasons we don’t know,” Root says. “We had seven [schedule] moves in all, so it really didn’t have a chance to become a staple like a regular Thursday night NBC show would’ve been able to do.” Keep in mind, the show aired on the same network as Friends and Seinfeld, in the same years both were on the air.

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    David Canfield

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  • Matthew Rhys on Perry Mason’s Triumphant Season 2 Makeover

    Matthew Rhys on Perry Mason’s Triumphant Season 2 Makeover

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    A few adjectives to describe Matthew Rhys’s portrayal of Perry Mason, the second season of which wrapped Monday night: Sad, tired, righteous, and certainly irascible—as Assistant DA Hamilton Burger (Justin Kirk) wonders about our sour antihero in the season premiere, “Does everyone feel Mason hates them, or just his friends?” Throw each of these descriptors back at Rhys, though, and they’ll elicit a knowing giggle. “That’s my wheelhouse!” the Emmy winner says over Zoom. “It’s a state very close to my heart, that kind of melancholy sadness. I’m like, that’s how I live 24/7. It’s not a stretch to me!” 

    The big shift this year occurred as the HBO drama welcomed some heavy doses of acerbity too. “They did say, ‘In season two, we want to open up that humor in him a bit,’ which concerned me slightly,” Rhys says with a smirk. “But just to see the sarcasm that sits so easily on his shoulders—it’s how I live my life.”

    The second season of Perry Mason, which HBO initially ordered as a limited series, emerged as an unlikely watercooler smash these past few months, its comfort-TV procedural stylings enhanced by rich noir atmosphere, nuanced characterizations, and a stacked ensemble of top-shelf character actors. As a followup to 2020’s debut season, which was a hit but met with more mixed reviews, season two is sunnier—both literally, in the expansive ’30s Los Angeles locations, and in its protagonist’s new outlook. As the season begins, Mason has a bona fide law practice and a case that takes him and partner Della Street (Juliet Rylance) through the depths of conspiracy and absurdity. 

    Rhys’s utter affinity with every aspect of this character is evident both in his performance and in our conversation about the surprising success of this encore season. (Warning: Spoilers about Monday’s finale follow.) “Matthew is so incredibly funny—he’s got that inside of him,” says Michael Begler, co-showrunner of season two with Jack Amiel (The Knick). “And I feel that a show needs to breathe—if you’re just pounding it into somebody all the time, it’s exhausting.”

    The relatively upbeat season saw Perry, Della, and friends untangle the mysterious murder of Brooks McCutcheon (Tommy Dewey), an oil scion with a very bad rap around town. Our heroes wind up defending two Mexican American brothers, Rafael and Mateo Gallardo (Fabrizio Guido and Peter Mendoza), who’d irrefutably pulled the trigger on Brooks—the question is why, and who put them up to it. A chain of red herrings and conflicting motivations lead to baroness Camilla Nygaard (Hope Davis), a business rival, as the big bad. “One of the earliest photographs that I saw while doing the research was of a couple on Venice Beach with this forest of oil derricks in the background,” says Begler. “I was just so taken by that—like, holy shit, this is an oil town. Imagine the power and the wealth that’s behind that.” 

    Perry’s shady tactics are successful enough to get Camilla caught and one Gallardo brother off—and, uh, illegal enough to get himself thrown in jail for a bit, marking our final shot of the season. The mood is strangely, appropriately content; maybe even a little comic. “To get to that final image of a guy who is now probably at his best as a lawyer, and as a human being, having done right by his clients, sitting in a jail cell—we just love that irony,” says executive producer Susan Downey. “It feels so perfectly Perry Mason.” 

    This feels like the season that the show figured out exactly what that means. The initial run of episodes, developed by creators Rolin Jones and Ron Fitzgerald (neither returned for season two), nicely set the case-a-season, noir-drenched template for Perry Mason, adapted from the character originally created by author Erle Stanley Gardner (and popularized in the 1957 series). Yet it also built toward Perry’s establishment from PI to lawyer, playing like a kind of prestige origin story. Here in season two, we got to see that legal operation in full effect, from the man himself leading the new firm to the vibrant worlds of those with whom he joins forces. Della begins a passionate affair with screenwriter Anita St. Pierre (Jen Tullock), while ex-cop Paul Drake (Chris Chalk) proves himself anew as he works alongside Perry for justice. 

    But of course, Rhys’s commanding, tragicomic turn remains the grounding force here. Nobody does downbeat crime-solver better. He rides his motorbike and endlessly chases down leads. He gets into the most gloriously pathetic fistfight with Shea Whigham’s frenemy, Pete. “Shea was smoking so hard,” Rhys recalls of that season highlight. “I was like, ‘Dude, stop smoking those cigarettes.’ It was, like, 97 degrees. It was so hot. We’re smoking and we’re fighting. At the end, we both wanted to puke.” 

    Into the wee hours of the night, Perry slumps around a whole lot too. “I worked on my body language to look kind of beaten,” Rhys says. “I wanted his shoulders to be slumped a little more, his heels dragged a little more. Just an overarching sense of defeated. That physical energy only changes really when the momentum gathers.” It’s no wonder, then, that Perry finds true peace only in that jail cell, after a job well-done-enough. Or why Rhys’s work builds to an unexpectedly rousing place in the finale’s closing arguments, as Perry orates the season’s themes concerning what justice actually looks like, between the “haves and the have-nots,” as Begler puts it. “He has a very basic but intense sense of right and wrong,” says Rhys, who’s also an executive producer. “There’s an unsentimentality to him.” 

    Rhys reveals that the closing-arguments courtroom scene went through “many, many different versions.” He and the producers would watch Paul Newman in The Verdict, which Rhys calls “the best version of Mason, right there.” The actor kept pushing for something a little smaller, subtler. “It was usually me going, ‘No, less, less. He can’t deliver some kind of dramatic number at the end,’” Rhys says. “It has to be true to who he is from episode one of season one. It was a lot of holding back.” 

    That balance—of honoring how Perry Mason began while pushing it in its second season—haunted Begler as he and Amiel got to taking over showrunning duties. “It was very intimidating,” he says. “It’s an aircraft carrier—there’s so much behind it.” The production is deceptively massive. Rhys remembers coming onto the show shortly after wrapping The Americans, the beloved FX drama on which he’d often film an episode within seven days. He learned that a Perry Mason episode takes three to four times that. “I was like, What the fuck are we waiting for? What the fuck is going on?” Rhys says with a laugh. “I was like, I’d have shot two, three scenes by now. I had to slow my own brain down and kind of go, Okay, this is the pace. It’s a big show.’”

    Indeed, it’s an undertaking. You see that in the exacting cinematography and lighting, which not only recreates a period and a world, but an era of filmmaking; in Terence Blanchard’s gorgeously transporting score; in the remarkable company of actors, from Hope Davis’s imposing grandeur to Paul Raci’s ruthless tycoon; and in the range of story lines, which boldly explore racial and sexual tensions as a core part of the show’s tapestry of how intractable systems keep certain people down. The romance between Della and Anita marked a sweet, sexy highlight for viewers. “We won it in casting,” says Downey. “The minute we saw them together, we just knew it was perfect.”

    Will the renewed word of mouth be enough to secure a third season for the HBO drama? While there’s some spilling on what would come next—don’t count out a Camilla return, but expect a new case to kickstart a new season and Perry to have finished out his brief sentence—Begler has some ideas to further build out the Perry Mason LA lore. “There are so many pockets of this city that have not been explored and go against expectation,” he says. And one senses, talking to Rhys, at least, that the feeling is they’re just hitting their stride. Or maybe that he’s just having too much fun to stop. “The motorbike was fun. The horses were fun. Fighting Shea, swimming in the ocean, being on boats—it was a lot of fun. Like a Boys’ Own adventure for six months.” All thanks to Perry Mason. Who knew?

    Listen to Vanity Fair’s Little Gold Men podcast now.

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    David Canfield

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  • Homophobes Are Review Bombing Horizon Forbidden West’s DLC

    Homophobes Are Review Bombing Horizon Forbidden West’s DLC

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    Screenshot: Sony

    If you thought that gamers could be normal about two queers sharing a passionate kiss in 2023, then you would be very wrong. Horizon Forbidden West’s new story DLC, Burning Shores, contains a scene in which Aloy can choose to kiss a woman named Seyka, and it seems some PlayStation fans were not happy. Indeed, some players were so offended at being given this choice that they mass review-bombed the DLC on Metacritic. While the Metascore, which is based on critic’s reviews, currently sits at an 82, the user score is at just 3.2.

    The Week In Games: Galactic Refugees And Stone-Age Life Sims

    Burning Shores is a DLC that, for technical reasons, is only available on PlayStation 5s. It brings significant quality of life improvements such as easier looting, though it’s apparently details like the better-looking clouds that rendered it a PS5 exclusive. The update also provides players with the opportunity to have Aloy pursue a romantic relationship with someone nice, which has been a fan request for years. And I’m happy for her. Seyka seems like a nice lady, and Aloy deserves to open up to someone after running around and saving the world for two consecutive games. The main people who are mad right now are the homophobes, who seemingly can’t stand the thought of any gay content in the Horizon series at all—even if whether or not Aloy acts on her feelings is fully optional.

    The bar is on the floor, y’all. But it doesn’t stop bigots from running face-first into it. Recent players complained on Metacritic that “homosexuals” were putting forward a “dirty agenda” that “sabotaged” what could have been a beautiful story. Nearly all of the reviews with a “0” score complained that they shouldn’t be forced to see gay women exist in the world of Horizon. One player called the game “woke propaganda” for allowing Aloy to fall in love with someone she just met—as if that isn’t how human romantic attraction so often works. “[Guerilla Games] retconned the main character for LGBTQ nonsense,” bemoaned another so-called fan who seems to have completely missed that there were sparks between Aloy and Petra in Horizon Zero Dawn. “Aloy never showed signs of being a lesbian,” complained one player who seems to have played a completely different game.

    This is not the first time that a PlayStation first-party franchise was attacked for featuring openly queer characters. This February, homophobes review bombed The Last of Us on HBO because they were forced to endure the unbearable sight of queer tenderness on television. Hopefully with enough repeated exposure, gamers will come to realize that queer video game characters are here to stay. Because culture is moving on, either with or without them.

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    Sisi Jiang

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  • John Oliver Slams Budweiser For “Huge Misfire” After Dylan Mulvaney Backlash

    John Oliver Slams Budweiser For “Huge Misfire” After Dylan Mulvaney Backlash

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    John Oliver has long had a bone to pick with Budweiser. The late-night host, who previously compared the product’s taste to “The Jolly Green Giant’s ejaculate,” tore into the company on Sunday’s episode of Last Week Tonight, criticizing its response to backlash over a social media partnership with TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney. 

    In the weeks after Mulvaney posted an innocuous ad for Bud Light—a beverage Oliver described as “the beer you’d give a child to drink to teach it a lesson” and “a beer that asks the question: Are we allowed to call cat urine beer?’”—many customers “on the right absolutely lost their shit over this, because Bud Light partnered with a trans woman,” Oliver explained. “There have been calls for boycotts, and this incredibly stupid video from Kid Rock.”

    Oliver then mocked the footage, in which Rock can be seen shooting packs of purchased Bud Light with a rifle. “I don’t think there’s a more dangerous way to dispose of Bug Light other than, of course, drinking it,” Oliver quipped. “And second, not to gun shame Child Rock here, but you are 20 yards away from a target that’s bright, identifiable, and crucially stationary, and you are spraying bullets all over the place. Perhaps that is why it sure seems like you may have help there, because if you watch it slowed down, you’ll notice that three blasts that actually destroy the cases appear to be coming from the right.”

    The host then targeted the “real nastiness” behind the backlash with “moral panic around trans rights” arriving amidst anti-LBTQ laws in various states, including bans on gender-affirming care for kids. “And maddeningly, Anheuser-Busch’s response to that ugliness has been to equivocate in the face of it,” Oliver continued. “Its CEO put out a statement that said, ‘We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people. We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer.’ Which, sure. Though, again, not technically beer so much as it’s fizzy water swished around a dog’s mouth.”

    He concluded the segment by playing a recent ad for Budweiser that emphasizes the unity its product brings, which Oliver called a “huge misfire.” He added,  “When bigots are loudly announcing they don’t like your beer because they are bigots, that is an opportunity to say ‘Then our beer is not for you.’ But if you’re going to cozy up to them with platitudes, stock footage, and frankly, distractingly fuckable horses, why not at least really go for it?”

    Basically, Oliver explained: “It’s pretty annoying to be both-sidesing something that when the two sides are: ‘I am trans’ and ‘That makes me so mad, I’m going to shoot $65 worth of nonrefundable beer.’”

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    Savannah Walsh

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