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Tag: still watching

  • The Diplomat’s Creator Knows What Happens After That Wild Ending

    The Diplomat’s Creator Knows What Happens After That Wild Ending

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    What a time for Netflix’s hit political thriller to return. Days before the election, season two of Netflix’s The Diplomat starring Keri Russell as Kate Wyler, a U.S. ambassador to the U.K. caught in the midst of a political crisis, hit the streaming platform. [Spoilers ahead]. By the end of the six-episode second season, Kate learns that the mastermind behind the maritime bombing that and set off the events of the series was neither Russia nor the U.K. Prime Minister, but U.S. Vice President Grace Penn, played on the series by Oscar and Emmy winner Allison Janney. Talk about an October surprise.

    On a new episode of Still Watching, hosts Hillary Busis and Chris Murphy chat with creator and executive producer of The Diplomat Debora Cahn about how they engineered that shocker of an ending for season two, in which president William Rayburn (Michael McKean) drops dead after finding out Penn’s machinations—making nefarious Grace Penn the new President of the United States.

    “I like to come into the season with a plan, but then throw it in the garbage as soon as possible,” Cahn said—“if one of the writers has a better idea, and often they do.”

    Cahn and her writing team considered the implications of crafting a storyline that ended with an elder president dropping dead while in office—a plot twist that may have felt a bit too close to home just a few months ago. “We thought that that was going to sort of send the wrong message right before the election,” she said. Luckily for The Diplomat, U.S. politics took a different turn. “We did not anticipate this particular plot twist that happened in the real world,” said Cahn, with Kamala Harris becoming the Democratic nominee for president.

    There are other real world political corollaries baked into The Diplomat as well. Hillary Clinton, Cahn said, has been on her mind “from the very beginning of the series,” and Janney told Vanity Fair that she partially based her character on the former Secretary of State. “It’s Hillary Clinton, but it’s also Samantha Power and Susan Rice,” says Cahn. “And certainly Kamala Harris, who was, when I was first developing the series, just being chosen as Biden’s running mate. There’s a lot about the Kate VP plot that came from the selection of Kamala Harris.”

    As for where season three will take Kate and Grace Penn, Cahn has some ideas, but notes that the direction sort of depends on how things shake out with next week’s presidential election. “I don’t know what country we’re going to be living in a week from now,” she says. “So we try to leave ourselves a little bit open for the possibility of continuing to have a conversation with the world that we’re in.”

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    Chris Murphy

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  • Marisa Abela and Harry Lawtey on Industry’s Devastating Season 3 Finale: “It’s Kind of Tragic”

    Marisa Abela and Harry Lawtey on Industry’s Devastating Season 3 Finale: “It’s Kind of Tragic”

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    When the creators of Industry wrote the show’s third season, they didn’t know whether HBO would greenlight more episodes—so they made sure to throw everything they had into it. By the end of Industry’s season three finale, the stakes for the show’s beautiful fuckups—and for the bank itself—are fairly existential.

    Yasmin (Marisa Abela) lands in the deepest water by the end of season three, literally and figuratively. While dealing with the scandalous aftermath of her father’s drowning, she finds herself locked in a love triangle between her lovelorn friend, Robert (Harry Lawtey), and Sir Henry Muck (Kit Harington), a man with enough money and power to both protect her from the world and provide her with life’s not-so-little luxuries. “Robert really does make Yasmin feel very safe in a way that definitely the other men in her life don’t,” Abela tells Still Watching. “He really sees her and loves her, whereas Henry or her father or Eric—I don’t think she feels that they really see her.”

    On the latest episode of Still Watching, both Abela and Lawtey stopped by to talk about their onscreen chemistry and their offscreen friendship. (Listen or read below.)

    Vanity Fair: Your characters both had a very emotionally intense season. When you read the season three scripts, were there any moments or revelations that surprised you?

    Harry Lawtey: Yeah, it’s par for the course now with this show. Every page is a bit of a surprise, to be honest. But I agree. In this [season] especially, a lot of the arcs and journeys of these characters are very much reaching boiling point. That’s certainly the case for Robert. I remember saying to Mickey [Down] and Konrad [Kay] a while back that he’s someone who’s been wanting to cry for about five years now, and hasn’t felt able to show his feelings in that way. It feels like once the dam is broken, you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. It’s all on show now.

    Marisa Abela: This was the first year that I felt it was really necessary to have a sit-down about what had happened, what was going to happen, where everything was heading. And that was very different to play, holding knowledge that was hers and no one else’s. And also, the relationship between Robert and Yasmin this season—it was the first time that it really, really mattered whether or not Yasmin knew what she wanted, and knew what she was getting into.

    Your characters have been circling each other through the whole series, and Robert has been pining for Yasmin since the beginning. How do you see their relationship at this point?

    Lawtey: The relationship has so much more substance and integrity than it did at the beginning. Robert’s attraction to Yasmin was always socioeconomically informed. He found the idea of a relationship with her aspirational…. They’re at a stage now, at the end of this season, where I think there’s very genuine love there. It doesn’t mean they can necessarily express themselves and share how they feel, but they know what’s going on. In the last two episodes, part of their journey is to try to get rid of all the nonsense.

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  • ‘American Sports Story’: Josh Rivera on the Anxiety and Ache Behind Aaron Hernandez

    ‘American Sports Story’: Josh Rivera on the Anxiety and Ache Behind Aaron Hernandez

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    Ryan Murphy is back with a new anthology series that explores the inner workings of one of America’s most hallowed institutions via a tragic and true story. In the inaugural season of American Sports Story, Murphy dives into the rise and fall of Aaron Hernandez, the New England Patriots star who battled inner demons and was accused of multiple murders; he was convicted of one of them, the 2013 murder of Odin Lloyd.

    On a new episode of Still Watching, hosts Hillary Busis, Richard Lawson, and Chris Murphy unpack the first two episodes of American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez and chat with Josh Rivera, who portrays Hernandez, about getting into professional-athlete shape—and how making the series changed his feelings about football.

    In his review of American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez, Lawson calls the new series “a worthwhile examination of a murderer’s motivations” and praises Rivera’s performance. “It is, in many ways, the role of a lifetime, an opportunity to explore extremes of the human experience that Rivera seizes with controlled gusto,” writes Lawson. In conversation with Busis, Rivera, who was part of the first national tour of Hamilton and starred in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story remake, reveals that he actually played high school football, though he ditched it as his passion for musical theater grew.

    “I thought about it really seriously for a little while,” he says in regard to sticking with football. “It’s just a monumental time commitment that made it really difficult to do anything else, and at that time I was starting to get really into singing and performing. I had performed in front of an audience for the first time, like, my sophomore year of high school…. It was something I started to pursue a little bit more seriously, and it just conflicted with football a little bit.”

    Getting back into shape was easier said than done for Rivera. He had just three months to transform his body into that of a star NFL tight end after booking the role. “It was just like, you just gotta get as big as you can by April,” he says. With the help of a personal trainer, he was able to pack on the pounds. “I was 185 pounds, and I gained about 30 pounds, which was crazy,” Rivera continues. “I didn’t know that that was naturally possible. It was, like, five days a week in the gym, and I was just eating as much as I could possibly eat.”

    Even more arduous than the physical toll was the mental toll of playing someone as notorious as Hernandez. Rivera shares that he had anxiety about taking on the part and found the task at hand “very daunting in the beginning.”

    “I’m very motivated by not making a fool of myself,” Rivera says. “I don’t consider myself, like, a controversial person. I don’t want anybody to be offended or feel insulted in any way…. I want it to be truthful, and ultimately my job is to take all the information that I’m given and the resources that are available and paint a picture with that.”

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    Chris Murphy

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  • Who Won the ‘House of the Dragon’ Season 2 Finale?

    Who Won the ‘House of the Dragon’ Season 2 Finale?

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    The queens have come up with their very own gambit. On the finale of House of the Dragon season two, “The Queen That Ever Was,” Team Black and Team Green assemble their armies as Dowager Queen Alicent (Olivia Cooke) and Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy) meet once again in secret. During their fateful encounter, Alicent makes an offer Rhaenyra can’t refuse—but it comes at a significant price for the dowager queen.

    Before Alicent and Rhaenyra’s clandestine meet-up, both queens were gearing up for the great war to (finally) begin. After receiving a raven from Ser Simon (Simon Russell Beale) questioning Daemon’s fidelity, Rhaenyra flew to Harrenhal to see herself whether Daemon was loyal. Thankfully, Alice Rivers (Gayle Rankin) granted Daemon (Matt Smith) a vision of the future—including white walkers, war, and even the mother of dragons Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clark)—that inspired him to pledge his loyalty to Rhaenyra and cast his dreams of taking the iron throne aside.

    As Daemon and his army prepare to fight for Team Black, Team Green receives a new crop of soldiers courtesy of Tyland Lannister (Jefferson Hall) and his mud wrestling prowess. Tyland has convinced the Triarchy to pledge their men to King Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) and Team Green, but only if he wins over Lohar (Abigail Thorne), the fighters’ eccentric leader. After an epic mud wrestling battle, Lohar pledges all of their men to Team Green and, as a bonus, is so taken with Tyland that they ask him for another favor: “I want you to fuck my wives,” says Lohar.

    While Tyland is asked to sire children, Alicent is asked to sacrifice one of hers. In an echo of their secret meeting in episode three, Alicent travels to Dragonstone to plead with Rhaenyra to stop the brewing war. Alicent tells Rhaenyra that she no longer wants her family to rule Westeros, and offers Rhaenyra the opportunity to come to King’s Landing and take the Iron Throne without any bloodshed or battle. Rhaenyra points out that if she were to take the throne, she’d be forced to publicly depose and murder King Aegon II—Alicent’s eldest son. In a devastating moment, Alicent is forced to make a decision: will she sacrifice her son for the good of the realm? By the end of their exchange, it seems Alicent has agreed to Rhaenyra’s terms, and she leaves Dragonstone with the knowledge that she sentenced Aegon to death.

    What Alicent doesn’t know is that the crippled Aegon is no longer in King’s Landing. After being humiliated by Rhaenyra’s new, lowborn dragon riders, an embarrassed Prince Regent Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) takes out his rage on innocent citizens, burning down the entire village of Sharp Point with his dragon Vhagar. The regent prince’s warpath inspires Larys (Matthew Needham) to tell Aegon that it’s time to flee the Red Keep. “The prince regent is going to killl you,” Larys tells a bedridden and miserable Aegon. And with that, the unlikely duo set off to escape King’s Landing across the narrow seas.

    The end of season two provides more questions than answers. Which army has the upper hand, Team Black or Team Green? What will Rhaenyra and Alicent do if they come to King’s Landing and find that Aegon has absconded? Will Rhaenyra’s new dragon riders stay loyal to her? We won’t know until the next season of the already-renewed House of the Dragon returns to HBO.

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    Chris Murphy

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  • House of the Dragon’s Army of Bastards Takes Flight

    House of the Dragon’s Army of Bastards Takes Flight

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    When we have that shot underwater of Olivia’s beautiful red hair moving into the camera, I wanted everyone to say she’s gone. And then she moves and she opens her eyes. And then there’s this magical thing that happens where you see what she’s seeing and she sees the bird in the sky and you’re like, she’s free as a bird.

    This episode introduced viewers to a brand new character in Oscar Tully (Archie Barnes). He makes a really big splash and puts Daemon (Matt Smith) on the defensive. Can you talk a little bit about that scene?

    Archie, what a young, special talent. It’s so hard to find these young actors that can really own a space. We needed an actor that was going to be Like, how can you stand up to Matt Smith? I remember when Archie and I first started talking about the scene, he was like, “I’m so nervous. How would I ever take control of all of these houses? I’m so young. How would Daemon respect me?” We started talking about the layers of that. “Well, why are you the head of house? How do you think you were raised?”

    If you are growing up in the house Tully, and you are a child of the lord you’re going to work in the room where your masters run the Riverlands. You’re going to have actually been in the room since you were a a little boy.

    You know every one of those river lords better than anyone else in that Godawood. You’ve spent time with every one of them. You’ve heard them barter sheep, barter money, you’ve negotiated fights from the side of that table. So you’re not coming in to meet Daemon cold. You’re coming in to meet Damon as an intelligent, experienced, young leader.

    I got to hand it to Archie, because that’s the homework he did. When he showed up on the day, it was awesome during the rehearsal to see Matt kind of, like, chuckle a little bit. You can kind of see it in his performance. He has this, like, “you’re way more than I thought.” [Oscar] earns the respect of Damon Targaryen and that’s really special.

    What should we come away from this episode thinking going into the finale?

    Coming off of that final shot with Rhaenyra and her army of nuclear weapons, the Queen has more dragons than have ever been held there. I think what we’re worried about is, is Daemon aligned or not? He’s got a big army that just joined his forces. Is that army for the Queen Rhaenyra? Is it for, the King Daemon Targaryen? Or is it for someone else? What’s going to happen there?

    I think Aemond is set up in such a way that he’s lost faith in his small council, and he feels like he needs to take matters into his own hands, and we don’t know how far Aemond is willing to go. And what’s Alicent going to do now that she’s been baptized? She’s heading right back to that Dowager’s suite. What’s her plan? Is she going to do something to stop the war on her end? And what’s her approach in diplomacy?

    When we come out of episode seven, we basically have a loaded gun. That was the concept that Ryan [Kondall] and Sara [Hess] has talked about constantly. The tee up for the finale of this season has to be about all the guns that are pointed at each other in a standoff. We have to feel like the stakes are as high as they can get, and at any second, those guns are going to go off and it’s going to be messy. I’m hoping that we feel really nervous at the end of this episode.

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    Chris Murphy

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  • House of the Dragon’s Tom Glynn-Carney Thinks King Aegon Is a “Tragic Case”

    House of the Dragon’s Tom Glynn-Carney Thinks King Aegon Is a “Tragic Case”

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    What was your experience like shooting the big dragon fight scene?

    Cool, man. It’s kind of a little boy’s dream. It’s just something that you think of when you’re a child as being the coolest thing in the world. And it really was. They basically build a screen around you so you know where to look: what’s expected, what’s coming at you, what’s leaving you. Your entire perspective is quite clear. And then amongst that, you’re clad in all this armor that has been expertly crafted by some amazing workmanship. But then again, you’re crouched over this big saddle, strapped in, feeling like you can’t move. That crane has really got a lot of work to do to make it look like you’re moving.

    At the beginning of the season, Aegon says that Aemond is his closest confidant, and by episode four, Aemond has basically tried to kill him. Where do they stand now? And what’s your relationship with Ewan Mitchell, who plays Aemond?

    Oh, Aegon and Aemond’s relationship is very different to Tom and Ewan’s relationship. Let’s put that out there [laughs].

    Look, that is sibling rivalry on a very intense scale, isn’t it? It’s the flip of the switch that can happen when somebody feels pushed out or somebody feels like there’s been injustice. I always felt like Aemond saw himself being in that position of power and dealing with it better than Aegon would deal with it. But then again, his birth certificate states otherwise. It was bound to happen at some point, wasn’t it?

    Was there a particular scene that you felt extra challenged by or invigorated by?

    He’s never in the same frame of mind twice in one day. He’s all over the place. Keeping up with his erratic mood swings was the hard part, and was this thing that I was having to stay really focused on. There wasn’t particularly one scene that I thought, Oh God, not this one, because all of them are challenging in different ways. Even the ones where he’s still and more focused are difficult, because you’ve got that sort of inner Aegon rhythm that is rapid. It’s very different to mine. It’s maintaining that, but still keeping the tension of the scene. I relished the opportunity to play someone with such range and creative potential from an acting point of view.

    Olivia Cooke, who plays Alicent, has noted that you two are not very far apart in age at all, and yet are playing mother and son. How did you guys work together to create that filial dynamic?

    Every scene that I’ve had with Olivia, there is never a moment that isn’t filled. Everything is just so complex and deeply entrenched in her. She means everything she says. It’s a rare skill to have. As an actor, she has that in truckloads. It’s a gift to be able to work with her, to play her son.

    Yeah, [it’s] hilarious. She’s only a year older than me. I think we manage it because we get on so well. We’re pals as well, you know. I love Olivia to bits. Trust her wholeheartedly. We have a laugh. We don’t take it too seriously. We have common ground on that. But then in the moments where the work is happening, it’s all we care about. We care immensely. It’s one of those things where in the downtime, after we wrap, we can go for a drink. We can have a laugh. We connect on a personal level as well as a professional level. I think that’s what sort of breeds a healthy and believable performance thing relationship-wise.

    There’s an amusing scene where Aegon is sitting around with the lads and talking about what his sobriquet should be. Should he be “Aegon the Brave,” “Aegon the Whatever,” etc. What do you think he should be called?

    Aegon Toast, probably.

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    Chris Murphy

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  • House of the Dragon’s Eve Best on “Letting Go” of Rhaenys

    House of the Dragon’s Eve Best on “Letting Go” of Rhaenys

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    This story contains spoilers for House of the Dragon season two episode four.

    The queen that never was is now officially the queen that never will be. On the fourth episode of House of the Dragon, “The Red Dragon and the Gold,” Princess Rhaenys met her untimely demise during an epic battle between Team Black and Team Green that may have also taken the life of King Aegon. Halfway through the second season of House of the Dragon, Still Watching hosts Hillary Busis, Richard Lawson, and Chris Murphy take stock of the show’s mounting death toll and chat with Eve Best, a.k.a. Rhaenys herself, about saying goodbye to the selfless princess.

    Before the battle at Rook’s Rest, things are already looking shaky for Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy) and Team Black. Her uncle-husband Daemon (Matt Smith) continues having visions of slaying young Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock) during his stay at Harrenhal—an estate which, according to Harrenhal’s substitute maester and probable witch Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin), is haunted. Meanwhile, Rhaenyra’s council is in disarray in her absence as she returns from her unsuccessful trip to convince Dowager Queen Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) to stop the fighting before it goes any further.

    Things are slightly less chaotic for Team Green as Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) continues to conquer castles in his quest to secure King Aegon’s spot on the Iron Throne. But back in King’s Landing, Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) feels his his grip on his council slipping and shifting to his younger brother Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) as Alicent surreptitiously attempts to get rid of an out-of-wedlock pregnancy.

    Everything comes to a head at the small but crucial castle Rook’s Rest, an unexpected diversion devised by Ser Criston and Aemond. As the battle plays out, Rhaenys and her dragon, Maelys, do some serious damage to Aegon’s army, but wind up being no match for Aemond and Aegon—who turns up unexpectedly—and their dragons. After a ferocious effort, Rhaenys falls off Maelys as they both plummet from the sky to their deaths—but not without making their mark. King Aegon and his dragon are both down for the count at the episode’s end, throwing the future of the Iron Throne back up for grabs.

    Although Rhaenys’s arc on House of the Dragon has come to an end, for veteran British actress Eve Best, the journey is never really over. “I don’t really feel she’s gone. I never feel that,” Best says while appearing on Still Watching. “I’ve been killed so many different ways in the past with different characters. I’ve been burned, stabbed, bitten by a snake. But I’ve never fallen off a dragon.”

    Before that great fall, Rhaenys meets Alyn (Abubakar Salim), the shipman who saved her husband Lord Corlys (Steve Toussaint) from death at sea—and who very well might be Corlys illegitimate child and a potential heir to Driftmark. “She’s so heartbroken about it,” says Best of Lord Corlys’s potential indiscretion. “That betrayal and that infidelity. But it remains in a slightly ambiguous place. It’s not spelled out. It feels like by the end her only real ally is her dragon, Maelys.”

    Filming that epic final battle scene with Maelys was a strenuous two-week process that she underwent only at the very end of shooting season two. “It was quite intense physically, because it is all CGI,” says Best. “It’s electronic, moving. It’s like the size of a small cottage, really. You’re strapped on what feels like the roof of this small house, and then it starts moving around.” Riding the mechanical dragon, Best said, was “phenomenally uncomfortable,” but nevertheless she persisted. “I kept asking for more cushions because I felt like I just needed more padding on my bum,” she says.

    Rhaenys’s death scene was actually the last scene shot of the season. “I was feeling quite emotional and a bit like, ‘Oh god, this is going to be weird and intense,’ but I’ve just got to get on and hope that it goes okay,” says the actor, recalling that final day. “In the morning, Ryan [Condal] got all the crew together, and there was a major lovely speech and a farewell thing. It sort of made it all worse because I was feeling even more emotional, even more pressure.”

    Despite the discomfort and the pressure, Best was able to nail the final moments when Rhaenys falls off Maelys. “I don’t think she’s thinking. It’s a letting go of all thought,” says Best of the princess’s state of mind at that moment. “It’s a moment of peace. The movement was a physical release. It was literal letting go of the dragon. And it’s an emotional and spiritual release. A total let go for somebody who has been holding everything and everyone. To let go of all of that, and to surrender is such a relief.”

    How will Team Black react to the news of Rhaenys’s death? Did Aegon survive his fall? We’re now halfway through House of the Dragon season two, and the Iron Throne has never felt more up for grabs. Stay tuned and send an email to Still Watching at our new email address stillwatching@vanityfair.com with all your thoughts and theories about who will emerge victorious on House of the Dragon season two.

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    Chris Murphy

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  • Here for the Drama: Still Watching’s Favorite Bravo Moments

    Here for the Drama: Still Watching’s Favorite Bravo Moments

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    As a wise woman once said, don’t be tardy for the party. On April 15, Bravo opened the vault, so to speak, and has made many long-gone reality series like The Rachel Zoe Project and NYC Prep available to stream on Peacock. On a special episode of Still Watching, hosts Hillary Busis, Richard Lawson, and Chris Murphy dive back into the depths of Bravo and share their favorite vintage Bravo moments as they consider the past, present, and future of the reality TV juggernaut.

    Lawson opted for a classic moment from Top Chef—season one, episode seven, to be specific—when chef Dave Martin turned to fellow contestant Tiffani Faison following the franchise’s first installment of Restaurant Wars to deliver the immortal line, “I’m not your bitch, bitch.” Noting Top Chef’s almost two decades on air, Lawson remarked at how much and how has little has changed on the network. “It’s funny to look back,” he said. “Top Chef, which is now so distinct from the Housewives, back in the day did have these pretty ugly moments that people really relished.”

    Busis opted for a stand-out moment from another popular Bravo competition series, Project Runway: when Santino Rice did a pitch-perfect Tim Gunn impersonation, demanding to know “What happened to Andre?” She touched upon the star-making factor Bravo had, even back in the old days. “By season two, Tim Gunn has kind of become this personality in his own right,” Busis noted. “He was plucked from mainstream obscurity, and then [Bravo] turned this humble teacher into a giant star.”

    Murphy opted for a classic Housewives moment, singling out Kim Zolciak’s first single “Tardy for the Party” from The Real Housewives of Atlanta. Name-checking other Bravo songstresses including Countess Luann, Candiace Dillard Bassett, and Erika Jayne, Murphy remarked on how Zolciak unwittingly created a subarchetype of the Housewife. “I do think we need to pay our respects and listen to it, and think about that phenomenon,” he said.

    Have a favorite Bravo moment that wasn’t covered on the podcast? Send an email to Still Watching at stillwatchingpod@gmail.com, and stay on the lookout for new episodes as the podcast tackles the Real Housewives of the Regency era, Netflix’s Bridgerton, in the coming weeks.

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    Chris Murphy

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  • Andrew Scott Thinks Tom Ripley’s Sexuality Is Murky

    Andrew Scott Thinks Tom Ripley’s Sexuality Is Murky

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    As a lover of the 1999 film The Talented Mr. Ripley, Andrew Scott had a few questions before agreeing to star in Oscar winner Steve Zaillian‘s macabre mini-series based on Patricia Highsmith’s classic novel. “One of my first questions was, ‘Why do this?’” Scott recalled while appearing as a guest on Still Watching.  Thankfully, Zaillian was prepared for Scott’s query.

    “Zaillian was very clear about the kind of vision that he had for this version of the story,” Scott said. That’s not to say that Zaillian had all the answers from the jump. “He didn’t immediately say that he wanted to do it in black and white, but that sort of emerged. He mentioned aging up the characters—I’m older than the actors who played the character before in previous iterations of this story. You gotta bring your your own stuff to it or else it’s pretty pointless to me.”

    What they brought became the moody period piece Ripley, which has remained on Netflix’s top ten list since it premiered April 4. In Scott’s capable hands, Tom Ripley, memorably portrayed by Matt Damon in Anthony Minghella’s 1999 film, becomes a colder and more calculating con artist, willing to do whatever it takes to get away with the murder of dilettante Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn) and evade capture in Italy.  

    “I think what’s fascinating and enduring about this character is that he’s sort of like water,” Scott says of the elusive Tom. “There’s a fluidity to him that we can’t quite put our finger on. For that reason, he holds a sort of power over us.”

    Below, Scott chats with Still Watching about the murkiness within Tom, doing Ripley drag, and pulling off those complicated murder sequences. 

    In Ripley, I really felt the striver in Tom: the class consciousness, his desire to enter a new station in life. How much were you thinking about politics and class?

    Andrew Scott: For me, the story is so much about somebody who hasn’t been given access to the beautiful things in life, even though he’s deeply talented. We say he’s a con artist, but he’s nevertheless an artist. We see him at work and how unobserved he is and how dismissed he is by society. The only way he has to survive is by defrauding people, by turning to crime. That’s not obviously an excuse for him, but, you know, you look for ways to advocate for the character. And then he’s submerged into this society where people who have half the talent that he has are given access to all the beautiful things in the world. They could call themselves artists—they have everything at their disposal—and a sort of rage begins to emerge within him. 

    There is a notion of class and morality, and also about sexuality as well. I think there’s a kind of murkiness to Tom’s sexuality, whether it’s envy or lust or love or obsession. Something about the “Dickiness” of Dickie gets him obsessed in some way, and he wants what he has. 

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    Chris Murphy

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  • Andrea Riseborough Wanted The Regime’s Agnes to Represent the People

    Andrea Riseborough Wanted The Regime’s Agnes to Represent the People

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    The Christmas carp may have escaped the palace, but Agnes was not so lucky. On the penultimate episode of The Regime, “All Ye Faithful,” Andrea Riseborough’s steadfast right-hand woman met her untimely demise, shot to death in the palace during a violet uprising. Riseborough dropped by the Still Watching podcast to chat about Agnes’s unceremonious end in episode five and workshopping Agnes’s backstory with costar Kate Winslet.  

    “Poor Agnes,” said Riseborough on the podcast. “It’s so horrible, the faceless fallout of war.” Riseborough had a simple explanation as to why Agnes stuck around Chancellor Elena’s corrupt regime as long as she did, despite being presented with multiple opportunities to flee the country: “I think Agnes probably wouldn’t have continued to be complicit working in the palace had her son [Oskar] not been suddenly found in great favor by Elena,” said Riseborough. “That just complicated Agnes’s whole situation to the point where she found herself co-parenting with a dictator, which is trying at the best of times. She’s trapped, essentially.”

    The To Leslie star dove deeper into the complicated relationship between Agnes and Chancellor Elena, revealing that she and Winslet began talking about their dynamic while shooting their film Lee—before even arriving to The Regime set. “Kate and I discussed the idea that perhaps Elena had, because of her own insecurities, requested Agnes to keep her hair short,” Riseborough shared. “As our own private backstory, [Elena] stripped her of what was perhaps a former identity.” Like any good actor, Riseborough also came up with a backstory to explain Agnes’s life before the palace. Initially, there was an idea that perhaps Agnes had run the palace before Chancellor Elena came to power, but Riseborough had another idea in mind.

    “I suggested to Will [Tracy] that perhaps Agnes should be working class,” she said. “[Agnes] should represent in some way the proletariat—the people outside whose decisions are being made for them by some very disconnected people inside of this horrible regime.” 

    Has Chancellor Elena’s regime officially fallen? Will both Elena and Zubak survive the coup? And what will happen to Agnes’s son, Oskar? We’re just one episode away from finding out who will wind up on top of The Regime. As always, send any questions, comments, or thoughts about the series to Still Watching at stillwatchingpod@gmail.com.

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    Chris Murphy

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  • Hugh Grant Had Never Died On Camera Before ‘The Regime’

    Hugh Grant Had Never Died On Camera Before ‘The Regime’

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    Edward Keplinger, we hardly knew ye. On the fourth episode of The Regime, “Midnight Feast,” Hugh Grant finally appears as the former chancellor, who resides in a prison underneath the palace. Yet Grant’s stay on The Regime was surprisingly short-lived.  After befriending newly imprisoned Herbert Zuback (Matthias Schoenaerts), the Butcher murders Keplinger in a fit of rage—getting back into Chancellor Elena’s good graces as she continues to lose her grip on her country. Grant stops by a new episode of Still Watching to discuss his short but impactful stint on The Regime, reuniting with Kate Winslet after almost three decades, and dying on camera for the first time.  

    It surprised even Grant when he realized that over the course of his four-decade career, he’d never perished on camera before The Regime. “I had no idea how to do it,” Grant told Still Watching hosts Hillary Busis and Chris Murphy. Though the scene is gripping, the famously curmudgeonly actor was less convinced by his own performance. “I said, Stephen [Frears, the show’s director], I think I’m going to be shit. He said, ‘No, no, it’s wonderful.’ But I think it was shit, because I’ve noticed they put in an extra shot of someone’s hand. And it’s not even mine.”

    Hand-double or no, Grant had a pleasant time shooting The Regime, particularly reuniting with Winslet 29 years after they costarred in Sense and Sensibility. “She had done Heavenly Creatures, but she was new enough for Ang Lee to say things to her,” Grant said. “He’s a lovely man, as you may know. But partly because of the language barrier, he came across as quite blunt. He said to Kate at the end of her first week, ‘You will get better.’” Grant also recalled Lee giving some tough constructive criticism to himself and costar Emma Thompson. “He also said to me and Emma Thompson after our first scene, ‘Very boring.’ So, he was quite blunt.” 

    Grant imagined that Keplinger and Elena had a complicated past together, perhaps even actual love lost between the two. “I always had as a back story that he’d probably had an affair with Elena years ago, at university or something, but that maybe he hasn’t been a great success in bed,” says Grant. “I think that Keplinger might be a bit lapsang souchong between the sheets, and was a bit jealous of Zubak, who probably isn’t.”  

    As for whether Keplinger was a better chancellor than Elena, Grant remains unconvinced. “I think he was stale buns,” said Grant. “I think he’d had his go at chancellor and there was probably about five minutes when the people thought he was the bee’s knees. And then I think they thought, ‘Uh, he’s a bit of a wanker, really. He’s not really one of us. He’s university educated and part of the liberal elite.’” The actor doesn’t necessarily disagree with this assessment either. “He’s a bit snobby and he kind of despises the uneducated, especially when they go populist and, and, you know, vote for an Elena or some bullshitter like that.” 

    Are Elena and Zuback officially back on? Has Chancellor Elena fully lost control of her regime? Only two episodes remain in this season of The Regime. As always, send any questions, comments, or thoughts about the series to Still Watching at stillwatchingpod@gmail.com.

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    Chris Murphy

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  • Guillaume Gallienne Loved Living With Kate Winslet During ‘The Regime’

    Guillaume Gallienne Loved Living With Kate Winslet During ‘The Regime’

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    Oh, how The Foundling has fallen. In the third episode of The Regime, “The Heroes’ Banquet,” Matthias Schoenaerts’s Corporal Zubak is banished from the palace after an intense and violent confrontation with Kate Winslet’s Chancellor Elena. On a new episode of Still Watching, hosts Hillary Busis, Richard Lawson, and Chris Murphy dissect Elena’s sudden change of heart, and how it may shape Zubak’s future. Plus, Guillaume Gallienne drops by the podcast to discuss playing first gentleman Nicky. 

    Zubak starts the episode riding high as Elena’s right-hand man, convincing her to eat dirt and employ sweeping land reform in the state we’re still calling Genovia. However, Zubak turns on Elena after she reveals that she and her cabinet have been “skimming off the top” of the country, stealing billions from her citizens and storing the money in an offshore bank account called the Belize Fund. But Elena has bigger things to worry about then Zubak, as an impulsive decision to annex the Faban Corridor may have landed her in international hot water, without any allies.

    Although Zubak has seemingly driven a wedge between Elena and her husband, Nicky, Regime star Guillaume Gallienne still believes in their relationship.  “I’m sure that there is love,” says Gallienne regarding Nicky’s relationship with Elena. “There must have been passion at first, because he left everything, his wife, his kid. He left everything.” And despite being cast out of his marital bed, Gallienne believes Nicky still has a certain sway over Elena that no one else has—not even Zubak. “He’s got one advantage that the others don’t have—he’s not scared of her,” he says. “That is a very important thing. He can actually speak the truth to her.”

    While Nicky may be able speak truth to the chancellor, the power dynamics of their relationship are set in stone. “He’s a bit of a masochist,” Gallienne says. “I think he quite likes to be dominated by her. He likes to be her rug.” Gallienne’s offscreen relationship with Winslet was much less fraught. “The first scene we had was in the car, and we laughed so much,” Gallienne says. “We were laughing so much in this car, that Stephen [Frears] came to us and went, ‘Calm down, kids.’” 

    They apparently had such a great time that Winslet invited Gallienne to stay with her during the shoot. “She very quickly said, ‘I’m living in this house during the shooting. Don’t go to the hotel, come to the house,” Gallienne recalls. “And so we lived together for quite a long time during the shooting.… We got along very, very well. She’s so honest and very clever, and she’s very courageous.”

    Will Nicky and Elena make it to the end of The Regime still happily wed? Is this the last we’ll seen of Corporal Zubak? Has Elena unwittingly kicked off a civil war in Genovia by annexing the Faban Corridor? We’re halfway through The Regime, and it’s still anyone’s guess as to who will end up in charge by the series’ end. As always, send any questions, comments, or thoughts about the series to Still Watching at stillwatchingpod@gmail.com.

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    Chris Murphy

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  • True Detective’s Issa López on Her Inspiration for ‘Night Country’ and What Season 5 Might Bring

    True Detective’s Issa López on Her Inspiration for ‘Night Country’ and What Season 5 Might Bring

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    Although True Detective: Night Country has come to an end, there will be more to come — HBO announced on Thursday that they have renewed the series for a fifth season, with showrunner Issa López returning as part of a new overall exclusive deal with HBO and Max. Lopez said in the statement announcing the news, “From conception to release, Night Country has been the most beautiful collaboration and adventure of my entire creative life. HBO trusted my vision all the way, and the idea of bringing to life a new incarnation of True Detective with Casey, Francesca and the whole team is a dream come true. I can’t wait to go again.”

    When López went deep with hosts Hillary Busis and Chris Murphy for a special bonus episode of Still Watching, the news wasn’t official yet. But she still had plenty to say about the inspiration for the series, her favorite fan theories, and the ideas she already has for season 5. 

    López revealed that she took inspiration from antiquity and an infamous figure from the more recent past when figuring out who the various murderers would be for her installment of True Detective. “I’m very, very fond of Greek tragedy,” she said.  “The undoing of the hero is always ambition and sometimes generosity. The tragic mistake is more interesting when it comes from an ambition to do good. I conceived this around the deepest end of the pandemic. I remember that I was watching [an] Elizabeth Holmes documentary, and interestingly, they had a philosopher as one of the talking heads, which I had never seen in a true crime thing. The guy was saying, ‘It’s kind of a disease—the feeling that you have a mission to do good.’ When you have a mission for the greater good, nothing will stop you from doing horrible things.”

    And thus López came up with the Tsalal research scientists, wholly dedicated to their research that they believed had the potential to change the world for good, but are simultaneously responsible for the murder of Annie K. “I knew that justice had to come to them,” she said of the scientists. “In my initial three pages that I always write to myself, I knew exactly who had done it.” Enter the indigenous female community of Ennis, Alaska, who avenged Annie K’s death by leaving the Tsalal scientists in the frozen tundra. “The fact is we don’t pay attention to certain people, and that’s exactly what the series is about,” López said. She name checks the receptionist at the mine, the woman that washes the dishes at the police station, the woman that cleans at the hospital—women who appear throughout the series but many would never have expected to be involved with the central mystery. “That’s exactly the cardinal sin that hopefully the audience will make… all of these women that we don’t pay attention to, as happens with the victims of these crimes, are the ones that had enough and decide to change the story.”

    Although López constructed an airtight narrative to explain the murders of Annie K and the Tsalal scientists, she quite enjoyed the various fan theories that emerged as the season progressed. “What I find super entertaining is the obsession that people are developing with the color blue,” she said. “There’s a lot of blue in the art and the photography style that [director of photography] Florian Holtmeister went for and what [production designer] Daniel Taylor, the production designer did comes together pretty blue. It makes sense because the first season was very yellow and very ochre and there was a yellow king in it, and this is very blue.” While the color yellow ended up playing an important part of the first season, the color blue was not, in fact, an easter egg in Night Country. “The crab factory is called The Blue King,” López says. “There is nothing beyond that.”

    Another color—or fruit, rather—had a bit more significance in the story. “I love the idea of the orange,” López said. “The orange comes from a scene that I wrote in one of the earlier passes of Drafts where Navarro was sent to do a super pedestrian thing in the middle of all of this. Because of ice in the roads, a truck of oranges had toppled and there were oranges all over the road. [Navarro] was super bored, picked up an orange. She throws the orange into the darkness, gets a call, and then the orange comes back. Then the orange started to move into the story.” The significance  of the oranges was slightly influenced by The Godfather and Navarro’s supernatural connection with the deceased. “I did think of The Godfather because it is the announcement of death coming to us,” she says. “At the very end in episode six, [Navarro] says, ‘My mother loved oranges.’ So it does feel that she’s sending them back as part of her call of her visitation of ‘Don’t forget who’s on this side.’

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    Chris Murphy

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  • ‘True Detective: Night Country,’ Episode 5: Death in Ennis

    ‘True Detective: Night Country,’ Episode 5: Death in Ennis

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    Some big questions were grimly answered in part five of True Detective: Night Country, with a conspiracy’s web at least partially unveiled. It turns out that mean old sad-sack Hank Prior (John Hawkes) has indeed been a bad guy all along and has now paid for his sins. Though creator Issa Lopez was careful to give Hank some moral shading; even at his violent end, he was perhaps more cornered animal than vengeful sociopath. 

    On this week’s episode of Still Watching, hosts Hillary Busis, Richard Lawson, and Chris Murphy discuss the penultimate installment of this snowbound season of True Detective, looking toward the endgame and wondering how all of these various plot threads can possibly be sewn up. The Hank of it all does at least narrow the playing field some: The mining company is involved somehow, and one local perpetrator has been identified. But many other mysteries remain. There is also, suddenly, the matter of our intrepid heroes—Danvers (Jodie Foster), Navarro (Kali Reis), and Hank’s son Peter (Finn Bennett)—needing to cover up a death. (Was it a murder? No, not precisely.) A new element of suspense has been added, nicely ratcheting up the stakes for a grand finale. 

    But first, we must bid adieu to Hank. He may not be missed, but Hawkes’s nuanced performance certainly will be. A journeyman actor who has wowed on screens big (Winter’s Bone, The Sessions) and small (Deadwood), Hawkes typically brings both an intensity and a gentleness to his work, a duality that helped make Hank such a complicated character. 

    He wasn’t always so multifaceted, though. “Issa’s an incredible writer, but I felt like Hank was pretty one-dimensional,” Hawkes tells Still Watching of when he first read the script. “I thought that we could serve the story a lot more by bringing more notes to him, more levels, more layers. To not just be kind of a one-note male chauvinist pig, but to find a kind of humanity in this, a more complex human being.”

    That’s a tricky task—Hank is definitely a chauvinist, and a murderer by the end of part five. But Hawkes and Lopez worked together to give the character a backstory that might help explain why Hank is the way that he is. “That’s something I always do in great detail,” Hawkes says. “I’m an over-preparer who likes to know too much and then try to forget everything when the curtain goes up or the director says action.” 

    Lopez was so invested in the process of creating the backstory that sometimes those details made their way into her scripts. “I realized quickly that I had to be careful what I said, because I was just kind of throwing out ideas and then she’d send me a draft and some of those ideas were in there,” Hawkes tells Still Watching. “Which is really cool.”

    All of this character work was, of course, leading to Hank’s tragic demise, a desperate man going to extreme lengths to maintain some footing in the world. To the point of delusion, perhaps. “I think Hank fools himself a lot,” Hawkes says. “With Alina, his fiancée that doesn’t exist. With a relationship with his son that doesn’t really exist.” Of Hank’s terrible final decisions, Hawkes says, “I think Hank had to see some way that it would all work out in the end. If he could just get Otis and get him out of there…” 

    By the end of the episode, the jig was finally up for Hank, but at least, he got one moment of grace before we went. Part five includes a melancholy scene in which Hank sings a lonely song to himself, one written by Hawkes. The music Hawkes wrote was originally meant to be only instrumental, used as part of the show’s score. But that all changed when Lopez saw Hawkes playing a gig on his time off from filming.

    “I had a gig playing music in Reykjavík,” he tells us. “And Issa came. Afterwards she said, ‘well, you gotta sing. You gotta write some words.’ And I can’t say argue, because Issa and I—and I’m sure the other actors would concur—she’s just an incredible person to work with. It wasn’t real arguing. But it was good-natured bickering for a few weeks with me saying, ‘Well, it’s going to become performative suddenly, it’s going to be a guy in his living room performing.’ I’d always just seen it as a score piece, but eventually, I came around. So I wrote words and a melody, kind of at the last minute. And that was that. I’m glad I did.”

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    Richard Lawson

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  • ‘True Detective: Night Country,’ Episode 4: The Worst Christmas Ever

    ‘True Detective: Night Country,’ Episode 4: The Worst Christmas Ever

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    Talk about a blue Christmas. In “Part Four” of True Detective: Night Country, the residents of Ennis, Alaska have the worst Christmas ever, as Danvers loses “the corpsicle” to Anchorage, Hank gets stood up by his Russian girlfriend, and Navarro loses her last remaining family member. Still Watching hosts Hillary Busis, Richard Lawson, and Chris Murphy unpack everything from the arrival of Otis Heiss to Rose’s Christmas feast for one. Plus, Kali Reis drops by the podcast to chat about taking on the role of Evangeline Navarro. 

    Of all the many terrible surprises this episode, Hank  (John Hawkes) getting stood up by his mail-order bride after sending her money was the least shocking. Despite still believing that Hank is somehow involved in the season’s murder plot, Murphy couldn’t help but feel bad for the officer, who waited on the tarmac with a teddy bear in hand, only to find that his would-be girlfriend was a no-show. “I did feel really bad for Hank with him getting ghosted,” said Murphy. “Everyone in this town’s getting ghosted in one way or another,” quipped Lawson. 

    Hank is, of course, not the only denizen of Ennis to suffer a loss. After Danvers (Jodie Foster) discovers Navarro’s sister Julia (Aka Niviâna) in the middle of an episode, Navarro and Julia agree that it’s time for her to check into Ennis’s mental health facility, the Lighthouse. Although Julia checks in willingly, she quickly decides to leave, sneaking out, stripping naked, and walking into the icy ocean to her death. The loss of Julia is devastating, but not necessarily surprising given the way she was positioned in the series. “We didn’t see things going well for Julia, and unfortunately we were actually more correct than I thought we were gonna be,” said Lawson. Busis agreed, calling Julia “a Beth March ticking time bomb from the beginning… A sister that was having apocalyptic visions—you know she doesn’t get to episode six,” she added. “That’s not how it works.” 

    While Navarro may have had the worst Christmas Eve of anyone in Ennis, Danvers didn’t have a particularly cheery one either. Her stepdaughter Leah (Isabella LaBlanc) has deserted her after their blowup last episode, and a lonely Danvers is hitting the bottle as well as the case. Her obsession with Annie K. and the scientists’ murders leads her to force Peter (Finn Bennett) to work despite the holiday, creating an even bigger rift between Peter and his wife Kayla (Anna Lambe). Still, Danvers isn’t completely alone on Christmas Eve—because, as Murphy points out, she “got zooted and drove on over to her other boyfriend’s house.” There, with Elf paused on the television, we learn how Danvers ended up in Ennis, Alaska: She was transferred there by Ted (Christopher Eccleston) after a tragic accident that led to the death of her son, Holden.

    One person who seems to be having a not-terrible Christmas is Rose (Fiona Shaw), who has prepared a sumptuous feast seemingly for one when Navarro knocks on her door. “She had a cheese plate,” noted Lawson. “Presumably that’s before the entrées.” Rose is able to dispense both wisdom and care to a grieving Navarro, who is afraid that she’s beginning to experience her now deceased sister Julia’s apocalyptic visions. 

    The episode ends with Navarro and Danvers searching for Raymond Clark, after discovering that Annie K.’s pink parka has been spotted in the town’s oil refractory. While Clark is nowhere to be found, they do find the pink parka on Otis Heiss, a scientist who suffered the same injuries as the Tsalal folks and apparently has been living in the oil refractory for years. “I do feel like as much as Otis’s arrival feels a bit convenient, I think that that is going to be the sort of the center thing around which a lot of things converge,” says Lawson. “We now have introduced the premise that is suggested by the show’s title, and we’re coming close to the place where Annie K. died—presumably the place where Clark currently still is.”

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    Chris Murphy

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  • ‘True Detective: Night Country,’ Episode 3: What Really Happened in the Wheeler Case?

    ‘True Detective: Night Country,’ Episode 3: What Really Happened in the Wheeler Case?

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    In Ennis, Alaska, they certainly see dead people. In “Part Three” of True Detective: Night Country, the plot thickens as we learn more about why things are slightly icy between Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Navarro (Kali Reis). Below, Still Watching hosts Hillary Busis, Richard Lawson, and Chris Murphy try to piece together the many mysteries of Ennis, Alaska, from spiral symbols to reappearing oranges. Plus, they chat with Isabella LeBlanc, who shares how she brought Leah Danvers to life.

    With Raymond Clark still officially at large, Hank Prior (John Hawkes) enlists a team of men whom Danvers less than affectionately calls his “hillbillies” to find the scientist. Hank may have more information about the disappearance of Annie K then he’s letting on, as it’s revealed that he got a call about Raymond and Annie before her death but kept the information to himself. Murphy believes that Hank is “hiding something” about Annie K’s death to protect the miners. “It’s becoming clear that it’s white people versus indigenous people in terms of the mine—who wants it and who doesn’t. Obviously, Hank’s on the miner’s side,” he says. 

    While Hank and his hillbillies are searching for the Tsalal scientists, Navarro is dealing with issues both professional and personal. She gets a call that her sister, Julia, is having another episode, and checks her into the town’s mental hospital, The Lighthouse, against her will.  At the end of the episode, Navarro visits one of the surviving scientists, Lund, at the hospital, and he rises from his bed to deliver an ominous message. Could Navarro be the next person to succumb to her family’s hereditary mental illness? ”This is a town where people see ghosts, maybe because they’re crazy from the darkness. But that moment, that is pure Exorcist, Emily Rose kind of thing,” says Lawson. “If Navarro is hallucinating that, she has worse problems than I thought.”

    While the episode ends on a pretty grim note, it’s not all horror. The opening features a flashback of Annie K and a group of indigenous women helping a fellow native woman give birth, and is refreshing in its non-traumatic depiction of childbirth. “All of the birth scenes that we’ve seen on prestige TV in the past two years especially have been dramatic, and traumatic, and horrible, and scarring,” says Busis—prompting Murphy to name check Prime Video’s Dead Ringers, FX’s Fleischman Is in Trouble, and HBO’s House of the Dragons as examples. 

    “I was so thrilled to see a scene like that where it’s intense, but then the baby is fine and the woman is also fine,” continues Busis. “There’s been this overcorrection because for too long, we skated past the nasty parts of womanhood and the female body. So now we’re gonna lean way hard in the other direction. We’re gonna show how awful it is all the time.” Night Country, though, goes against that grain.

    The birth scene is also important because it showcases Annie K’s importance to her community, making her loss all the more painful and Navarro’s urge to avenge her that much stronger. “This was a really great way to meet Annie K in her element,” says Lawson. “We’d heard about her as being this kind of antagonizer, a troublemaker. To have her doing this work behind literal closed doors that is so vital, I think, really establishes her as someone who was trying to do good in a place that seems very allergic to good.”

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    Chris Murphy

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  • 'True Detective: Night Country,' Episode 2: All Aboard the F–k Trailer

    'True Detective: Night Country,' Episode 2: All Aboard the F–k Trailer

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    Where in the world is Raymond Clark? On the second episode of True Detective: Night Country, detectives Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) discover that the scientists at Tsalal Research Center may not have been as isolated as they thought, as the murdered Annie K. and the missing Raymond Clark’s relationship comes to light. In this week’s edition of Still Watching, hosts Hillary Busis, Richard Lawson, and Chris Murphy unpack Annie and Raymond’s “fuck trailer” as well as the the many other mysteries of Ennis, Alaska. Plus, Murphy chats with Christopher Eccleston about playing the police chief who might bogart the case, and baring it all in a sex scene with Foster.

    After some quick thinking by Danvers, the “corpsicle” has been moved to the town’s ice hockey rink as they await forensics. As the frozen Tsalal scientists thaw, it’s clear that showrunner Issa Lopez is unafraid to lean into horror with True Detective: Night Country, going so far as to have black sludge pour out of a frozen scientist’s mouth. “If we had any doubt that this was leaning on horror tropes this season, they were quickly gone after this moment,” says Lawson. “It’s terrifying.” To make matters even more terrifying, once “the corpsicle” has thawed, it’s clear that scientist Raymond Clark is missing from the group and remains at large.

    While no one knows Clark’s whereabouts, Danvers and Navarro do discover something very important to Clark: the love hut where he’d retreat with Annie K. Although we were led to believe the scientists were completely removed from the townspeople of Ennis, Danvers and Navarro discover by way of a local hairdresser that the scientists did, in fact, interact with the townspeople—and some, like Raymond and Annie K developed quite a fondness for one another. Their secret relationship mostly played out in a trailer Clark owned on the outskirts of town—“his fuck trailer,” as Lawson eloquently put it—which happened to be covered in the spiral symbol that Finn Bennett warned the Still Watching hosts to keep an eye on last week. To make matters creepier, both Annie and Clark have matching tattoos of the spiral as well.

    “Not to be the season one police, but we should note that this spiral also has a history in the franchise,” notes Busis. “It’s the symbol of the pedophile cult.”

    Clark and Annie are not the only couple to have a secret love connection this episode. Christopher Eccleston makes his first appearance on the series as chief Ted Corsaro, Danvers’s former boss—who is responsible for her transfer from Fairbanks to Ennis, and wants to transfer “the corpsicle” case to his unit. But after Danvers pays a visit to Ted’s hotel room, it’s quickly clear that there’s more to their relationship than boss and employee.

    “The relationship has gone on for a good few years, so there’s obviously some deep feelings there,” says Eccleston. “Danvers tells herself she’s there purely for the sex. And only Jodie would know the answer to that, but I suspect that he’s in love with her. I think he’s in love with her, and I think he covers it.”

    Eccleston says that he had no trouble baring his backside for his sex scene with Foster, particularly because he and Foster were on the same page. “Fortunately for me, Jodie and myself are exactly the same generation,” says Eccleston. “We came up doing sex scenes before #MeToo, before the advent of intimacy coaches—we’d gone the same route, albeit in different genders. So, we were very versed in how to behave towards another actor.”  

    According to Eccleston, a happy accident also helped ease the tension of filming the scene. “It was very funny. The first day I met Jodie and Issa in person, we were discussing the sex scene, we were discussing the relationship, and I leant on a rehearsal table and it smashed in two and I fell on my back which made Issa and Jodie hysterical with laughter,” he says. “Then me and Jodie lay down in the debris of this smashed table and to be honest that that did the job for us. That gave us the shorthand because we realized we had exactly the same sense of humor and same approach–You know, take the work seriously, but don’t take yourself seriously at all which really helps in a sex scene.”

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    Chris Murphy

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  • Parker Posey, Leslie Bibb, and More Confirmed for ‘The White Lotus’ Season 3

    Parker Posey, Leslie Bibb, and More Confirmed for ‘The White Lotus’ Season 3

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    A slew of actors have booked their tickets to Thailand. HBO has confirmed that Leslie Bibb, Dom Hetrakul, Jason Isaacs, Michelle Monaghan, Tayme Thapthimthong, and Parker Posey will be checking into the White Lotus for season three of the Emmy-winning anthology series from Mike White. They join previously announced returning cast member Natasha Rothwell, who will reprise her role as spa manager Belinda Lindsey for the Thailand-set third season. Production on season three of The White Lotus is set to begin in and around Koh Samui, Phuket, and Bangkok in February.

    As per usual, the cast is a mix of well-known faces and lesser-known actors. An indie darling, Posey’s starred in such films as Party Girl, Best in Show, and, most recently, Beau Is Afraid. Bibb is no stranger to franchises, having starred in Iron Man, as is Isaacs, who appeared in the Harry Potter franchise. Monaghan returns to her old HBO stomping rounds after starring in the first season of True Detective. Hetrakul has starred in Bangkok Dangerous, while Thapthimthong is a relative newcomer. 

    Rumors have been swirling about casting for the third installment, so much so that White’s friend and School of Rock collaborator Jack Black had to shoot down talk that he’d be checking into The White Lotus as well. “I’ll deny because that’s easy to tell the truth,” he recently told Vanity Fair. “I have to throw ice water on that sweet, sweet theory.” 

    While Black may not be making his way to Thailand, these newly announced names will be booking longer trips than usual: the third season of The White Lotus will be “supersized,” as White recently told Entertainment Weekly. White promised that the show’s next chapter will be “longer, bigger, [and] crazier” than the previous two seasons, which took place in Hawaii and Italy, respectively. “I don’t know what people will think, but I am super excited, so at least for my own barometer, that’s a good thing…I’m super excited about the content of the season.” At the Wonka premiere, Rothwell told Vanity Fair that the show made her “gasp out loud a minimum of five times, and this was just me reading the scripts.”

    The Emmy-nominated second season of The White Lotus focused on sexual power dynamics and starred Aubrey Plaza, Meghann Fahy, and Theo James, among others. It also saw the demise of Emmy winner Jennifer Coolidge’s fan-favorite character, Tanya McQuoid-Hunt, at the hands of some “evil gays.” After the season two finale, White told Vanity Fair that he was interested in exploring “something that’s a little more celestial” for the third season. “We are going to scout in Asia and look at countries there,” he told Vanity Fair. “My instinct is that maybe it has something to do with spirituality. Eastern versus Western religion, or Western people in an Eastern culture.”

    So, will Posey and Bibb play feuding yoga moms on a retreat searching for inner peace? We’ll likely have to wait until 2025 to see. 

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    Chris Murphy

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  • ‘And Just Like That’: Michael Patrick King Knows When the Audience Turned on Che Diaz

    ‘And Just Like That’: Michael Patrick King Knows When the Audience Turned on Che Diaz

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    Then because of the circumstances we knew, it had to be very limited and had to be a phone call because of time and schedules and and desires. That I just thought, okay, she couldn’t get there ’cause of the fog and she gets to do one thing—which is such a small piece—Annabel Bronstein. And that’s the one that came into my mind. I was like, if you know this show, this is, this is ground zero, Samantha. It’s fabulous. It’s ridiculous. It’s refusing to back down to a lie. So I wanted to touch one moment. And say, remember? She’s still Samantha from Sex and the City, even though she’s on and just like that. And that’s why we fueled in the Sex and the City theme under it. There’s something about Carrie and Samantha. They’re spectacularly together.

    Speaking of a couple that might not be spectacular together, we sort of saw the dissolution of Che and Miranda in a real way. This season we really saw different sides of Che. They became fleshed out in some positive and negative ways. so can you talk a little bit about Che’s arc and the ending of Miranda and Che?

    I think the trick with season one of And Just Like That was the math equation. You’ve known Miranda 20 years, and you’ve known Naya 20 minutes. You’ve known Carrie 20 years. You’ve known Seema 20 minutes. The volume of investment was so stacked against the new characters just because who are they? Why, why aren’t they talking to the people that I know?

    So when you bring in a character like Che, who was by design was supposed to be cocky—people are like, ‘I don’t like Che.’ And I go, ‘You don’t like standups.’ That’s it. Any person who stands on stage and says, ‘I’m the art’ is gonna be off-putting in real life. And, you know, they have to be dynamic. They have to be sexual because that was what we wanted to do with Miranda, was awaken that part of herself by this giant Niagara Falls of being pulled to this darker personality for what she’s used to. I mean, put Che against Steve and it’s like dark versus light, you know?

    That’s what was troubling and exciting about the first season. People made a snap judgment about Che based on their cockiness, their arrogance, and I think ,quite frankly, their sexuality. I think it was all fine until Che fingered Miranda in the kitchen, while Carrie was peeing in the Snapple bottle.

    That was an iconic moment.

    First of all, what I love about it is you’ve never seen that anywhere. That combo plate you’ve never seen anywhere?

    Not since either.

    As I look at it, I think that freaked the audience out so much that they went into some sort of seatbelt mode with the first season. Like, what’s gonna happen next if that happened? They were terrified. Che was great the first couple of episodes. And then once the finger happened and the marriage split, Che became a villain. I also think what’s interesting about Che is whenever a character is new—not seen before—it’s like ‘What? No.’ 

    People reject things they don’t know or understand or haven’t seen.

    One of my, my battle cries for this season was et them to see more of Che. Write more sides. So you had a whole evolutionary chart of Che from insecure in LA to cocky again buying an apartment. [laughs]. You guys with the Hudson Yards shame… it really made me laugh. It really made me laugh because I made sure it was Hudson Yards because of what that represented, which is new money, garbage, no soul. 

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    Chris Murphy

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  • ‘And Just Like That…’ Prepares for Its Last Supper

    ‘And Just Like That…’ Prepares for Its Last Supper

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    Did Carrie and Aidan finally hit a bump in the road? With one episode of And Just Like That… season two left, their relationship looks precarious as a family emergency wrenches Aidan away from New York—just as they were planning to embark on their new life together.

    On this week’s Still Watching, hosts Hillary Busis, Richard Lawson, and Chris Murphy unpack the 10th episode of And Just Like That… season two, “The Last Supper: Part One: Appetizer”—which sees Charlotte assert her independence, Che make jokes at Miranda’s expense, and Carrie prepare for a Michelin-star dinner party to say goodbye to her old apartment. Carrie and Aidan seem as happy as ever at the beginning of the episode, traipsing around Coney Island visiting Steve’s new clam shop and planning to move into their great big apartment. “Seeing Aidan and Steve back together really did feel like the old Sex and the City,” says Murphy.

    But their idyl is broken by a phone call from Aidan’s ex-wife, Kathy (Rosemarie DeWitt), who tells Aidan that their son Wyatt has gotten into an accident. A devastated Aidan travels back to Norfolk, leaving Carrie feeling worried for the first time in their rekindling relationship. Still Watching’s hosts agree that with one episode left in the season, And Just Like That… may end with Carrie and Aidan not together, or at the very least, agreeing to slow down their relationship. “I can definitely see them winding up to a conclusion that’s like, ‘Not right now, but maybe someday our time will be right,’” Busis says. 

    Aidan may not be the only person skipping Carrie’s last supper. After Nya calls Miranda out for cutting her exes out of her life, Miranda decides to attend one of Che’s infamous comedy concerts with Carrie and Aidan. Once there, though, Miranda finds that she’s the butt of all of Che’s new jokes—leading to a screaming argument between the two exes. All three hosts agreed that Che’s jokes went over the line, though a few have sympathy for Che’s perspective. “I thought the salient line was Che saying to Toby, ‘I’m so sick of having to explain myself,’” says Lawson. 

    After her argument with Che, Miranda tries to bow out of the dinner party, prompting Carrie to give her some tough love to keep her from canceling. “I loved that moment from Carrie, because it felt like vintage Carrie Bradshaw being a terrible friend,” says Busis. “‘Listen, Miranda: I know your ex just talked really intimately about your terrible breakup, and talked about how shitty you are, and your ex-husband is coming too. But guess what? It’s my day. So you’re gonna be there.’”

    Elsewhere, Charlotte is killing it at her new job, to the dismay of her family, while Seema accidentally says “I love you” to her new beau. Lisa Todd Wexley shares her misgivings about having another child with her husband, only to wake up in the middle of the night to find she’s apparently having a miscarriage. That storyline, at least, rang a bit hollow. “What was the purpose of the pregnancy scare,” wonders Busis, “if it just means that now her life is going to go back exactly the way it was before?”

    After having a debate with his new lover, Giuseppe, about who’s the top and who’s the bottom, Anthony finally gets closure when Carrie tells him that Stanford has moved to Japan permanently to become a monk. Loose ends are being tied up in ways that prompt Still Watching to wonder whether we are approaching the end of the series rather than the season. The hosts also discuss how Kim Cattrall’s grand return as Samantha Jones may figure into the final episode. Murphy has one idea: “Maybe we can get a shot of Samantha sitting in the empty chair at dinner…. It’s not out of the realm of the possibility for Samantha to pop up and be there at the table.”

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    Chris Murphy

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