Leslie Odom Jr. to reprise his Tony-winning role in 'Hamilton' this fall
NEW YORK (AP) — Leslie Odom Jr., one of the original cast members of the mega-hit Broadway musical 'Hamilton,' is coming back for another shot, a role he says 'gave me life.'
Odom, who played Aaron Burr opposite Lin-Manuel Miranda's Alexander Hamilton, will return to his Tony Award-winning role at the Richard Rodgers Theatre on Sept. 9 through Nov. 23.
'I was born on the stage of the Richard Rodgers in so many ways. It gave me life in a way," he tells The Associated Press. 'I'm really looking forward to it.'
Odom and Miranda both left the show in July 2016 after the same performance. Odom had been with 'Hamilton' since it first began performances in early 2015 off-Broadway.
'I look back on it fondly, I do,' he says. 'It was the start of so much for me. It was the start of a career that I always dreamed of. It's just the beginning. It's the genesis.'
He estimates he played Burr some 500 times, but it never got boring: 'It still had revelation for me, and it still gave me reason to look a little deeper and focus a little harder.'
When he returns, he'll be with a new company of actors and will bring to the audience his willingness to discover in the moment, something he says he learned doing 'Hamilton.'
'I want them to see something exciting and alive. And the best way for me to do that is to be open and present in that moment,' he adds.
Odom earned another Tony nomination last year for the comedy 'Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch' by Ossie Davis.
After 'Hamilton,' he was on the big screen in 'Glass Onion' with Daniel Craig and 'The Many Saints of Newark' with Alessandro Nivola, and portrayed Sam Cooke in 'One Night in Miami.'
He lent his voice to the animated series 'Central Park' and starred opposite Kate Hudson in Sia's 'Music. ' His TV credits include 'Abbott Elementary' and 'Blue's Clues & You.'
Odom, who studied at Carnegie Mellon University, became the youngest cast member in the Broadway company of 'Rent.' Before 'Hamilton,' he appeared on TV in the series 'Smash' and 'CSI: Miami,' in the film 'Red Tails' and on Broadway in 'Leap of Faith.'
During the pandemic, Disney+ broadcast a filmed version of the original Broadway cast of 'Hamilton,' who Miranda has called 'an incredible '28 Yankees of actors'.
The Broadway show won 11 Tony Awards, including best new musical, best book and best score. The cast album has been a blockbuster, and the show has toured to packed houses.
The musical charts the rise and fall of statesman Hamilton and stresses his orphan, immigrant roots — 'Immigrants. We get the job done!' is one line that gets huge applause — as well as his almost Greek tragedy of a fall, fed by ambition.
Based on a biography by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Chernow and developed during the presidency of the first Black president, the show was optimistic and ambitious, tweaking Broadway traditions but respecting them, too. Odom says he's rereading Chernow's biography to get ready.
Many in the cast alongside Odom were relatively unknown to the wider world when they hit the stage: Daveed Diggs, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Jonathan Groff, Christopher Jackson, Okieriete Onaodowan, Anthony Ramos and Phillipa Soo. Even Miranda wasn't yet a brand name.
Odom, who shoots Hamilton dead, sang on many of the musical's best songs, including ″Wait for It″ ″Dear Theodosia″ ″The Room Where It Happens″ and ″Your Obedient Servant.″
He says he often sings the songs during concerts but will have to relearn the score. 'One of the most important gifts that it gave me was this association with some recognizable tunes that people like to hear,' he says.
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San Francisco Chronicle
14 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
An AP discussion on the courts, lawyers and testimony inside the Diddy, Weinstein and Mangione cases
NEW YORK (AP) — Julie Walker, AP radio correspondent: We're here to talk about three big cases in New York. Sean "Diddy" Combs charged with sex trafficking and racketeering by the Feds. He pled not guilty. Down the street in state court, Harvey Weinstein's retrial by the Manhattan DA on rape and sex assault charges. He also pled not to guilty. And then there's Luigi Mangione. He's charged by both the state and the Feds with killing United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson and has also pled not guilty. Joining me now, two of the Associated Press reporters covering the cases and the courts, Larry Neumeister and Mike Sisak. And I'm Julie Walker. All right, let's start with Sean "Diddy" Combs, what's been going on with that trial? Larry Neumeister, AP courts reporter: They're fascinated by a celebrity on trial. And as part of that, I've been trying to figure out what was he really called around his office? Was he called Diddy? Was he call Puff Daddy? Was called he Puff? Was he, called you know, Sean Combs? A lot of the witnesses seem to have called him Puff every day at the office. So that's my first takeaway from the trial. Mike, how about you? Michael Sisak, AP law enforcement reporter: I think it's fascinating that you have Sean Combs on trial at the same time as Harvey Weinstein's retrial, because you have the arc of the #MeToo movement playing out in the entertainment industry and across different aspects of the entertainment industry. Harvey Weinstein's allegations in 2017 really kickstarted the #MeToo movement. He then had his trial in 2020. Now we're sort of on the other side of that arc where it's Sean Combs opening a window into the hip-hop industry, into the music industry, certainly the most famous, most well-known person from that aspect of entertainment, on trial, and you see the media and public attention gravitating to the Combs trial, to the Diddy trial, much more so than the Weinstein retrial, in part because of the fascination with celebrity. NEUMEISTER: And plus, I think with Weinstein, he's convicted out in LA. So, because he's already, you know, going to be in jail, even if he got exonerated at this second trial, he's still sentenced to a long time in prison. SISAK: He has a form of cancer, he has heart issues, he has all of these things that have only gotten worse, his lawyers say, since that first trial. But to your point, Larry, yes, he is convicted in Los Angeles, and the retrial in New York was caused by an appeals court overturning that 2020 conviction. WALKER: So, to sum it up for just one moment, two very different men, but at one point, very powerful, thought to be very untouchable. And I want to get back to both of them, but I want a pivot just for a minute and remind everyone that we're also talking about Luigi Mangione. SISAK: The fascinating thing about the Mangione case is that he could wind up in both courthouses. You have Diddy in the federal courthouse, you have Weinstein in the state courthouse, and Mangione faces murder charges in both the federal jurisdiction and the state jurisdiction. And initially, we thought and were told by prosecutors that the state case would proceed first. Now the state case, the maximum punishment would be life in prison. However, the Trump administration has gone ahead and filed paperwork indicating that they will seek the death penalty in the federal case, that case appears like it will now be the first one out. His next court date in the federal case is not until December. NEUMEISTER: Seeking the death penalty right off the bat adds one year to everything, and probably two to three years in the long run, because everything will get appealed to the hilt, certainly if they found the death-penalty. But the last time I saw in Manhattan them, the prosecutors seeking a death penalty, was in 2001, and it was two guys charged in an attack on two African embassies that like over 100 people. I think it's hard to win a death penalty case in Manhattan. WALKER: Now the other interesting thing is that Luigi Mangione and Sean "Diddy" Combs are in the same jail right now. SISAK: Yeah, Mangione and Combs are both at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, which is a federal jail that has been in the headlines not only because of the celebrity guests there. Sam Bankman-Fried, the cryptocurrency scammer, was also detained there, but also because that jail has a lot of problems. It's the only federal jail in New York City now. They closed the one in Manhattan where Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide. NEUMEISTER: And you know what, we've had a lot of celebrities appear in the federal courts in Manhattan. I mean, over the years, we had Martha Stewart convicted here. We had, just in the last year or two, we had Robert De Niro in the Robert De Niro civil trial. Well, one thing that's interesting about this Sean Combs trial that I don't think I've ever seen is so many witnesses that are subpoenaed to appear in the trial. We must have had a good four or five witnesses who were subpoenaed to appear. A couple of them said they definitely didn't want to testify. One of them would have pleaded the fifth, but was given immunity. So he testified. He said it was the last place he wanted to be. And what that enables is the defense to really kind of co-opt them as their witness. WALKER: You're talking about the ex-assistant. NEUMEISTER: Yes, George Kaplan, I believe is his name, and he appeared and said all these wonderful things about Sean Combs. He still sends him birthday greetings every year, although he did remark that he invited Combs to his wedding and Combs didn't even respond. So, you know, I don't know how that plays to the jury. But yeah, you know, there's so many witnesses and the defense lawyers more than I've ever seen in I think any trial I've witnessed in 33 years covering the courts, the defense lawyers keep treating a lot of these witnesses as their friendly witness. WALKER: I want to get back to the defense and his defense team, but let's talk about the jury for a minute, because a lot of people ask me about that since I have been in court with the two of you. And obviously, you know, the jury is anonymous. Eight men, four women, and then the six alternates, and it's like a slice of life from New York. NEUMEISTER: Well, there's many kinds of anonymous juries, and this is not a super anonymous jury like you have at a terrorism trial where by the end of the trial, all you know is they had numbers. It doesn't seem to be the kind of anonymity that jurors sometimes get to protect their safety or things like that. So, it's more of a milder version of an anonymous jury. But one thing I've seen with this jury that I've hardly ever seen with a jury is incredible attention to every witness. They turn in their chairs, they're pointed toward the witness, they're scribbling notes like mad. I've never seen so much as a juror yawn, although I did see Kid Cudi, he was yawning several times. SISAK: To your point, Larry, I think, you know, you talk about the anonymous jury, or at least the anonymity in that we don't know their names. These high profile cases, more and more, you're seeing judges take extra steps to protect the jury. And in the case of Sean Combs, you also had allegations of witness tampering, witness interference, leading to his arrest in September of 2024. So that could also explain why some of these witnesses are reluctant to come forward. NEUMEISTER: That's the main reason he wasn't given bail, is that they felt he was a threat to witnesses and had reached out to a couple of them. WALKER: Now, in New York, court cases are not televised. We do have sketch artists who are allowed to be in the courtroom, and then we are able to show those sketches. And we see a very different looking Diddy. His hair is completely gray, his goatee gray. He is allowed to wear his own clothes, as is Harvey Weinstein. Let's talk a little bit about what we're actually seeing that people aren't privy to. SISAK: What we've learned from this trial is that Sean Combs, according to his assistant who testified, was using Just For Men to hide gray hair and he had jet black hair up until the time he was arrested and put in jail last year. And then we also learned that hair dye is not allowed in jail. So in court, he has had this gray salt and pepper hair, goatee. He has been allowed to wear for the trial, sweaters, button down shirts, khakis and the like. It's a stark difference in look. NEUMEISTER: I'll tell you though, the guy is so involved with his defense, it's like off the charts, kind of amazing. I don't think I've ever seen this to this degree before. There was a witness, it was Kid Cudi, where at the end of his testimony, the prosecutors got him to say he believed Sean Combs was lying when he said he didn't know anything about his car when he brought it up. Kid Cudi's car was exploded in his driveway one day with a Molotov cocktail. And absolutely destroyed. And so he had a meeting with Sean Combs some weeks after that. And at the very end of the meeting, he said, brought up the car. And Sean Combs said, 'oh, what are you talking about? I don't know anything about that.' And after, as soon as that, the prosecutor finished asking the questions, got that response, then two lawyers, one on each side of Combs looked to him Combs said no, and only then did the lawyers inform the judge that there would be no more questioning. SISAK: I recall being in the courtroom earlier in the trial when some images were shown from some of the videotapes at issue here with these sex marathons that have become known in his parlance as "freak-offs." And there was a binder of some of these images, and Combs was sitting next to his lawyer and waved over, hey, I want to see those, and he's looking through them and he's holding the press, the public. We were not allowed to see these images. Their graphic images. The defendant, of course, was allowed to see them and he held them in a way that we could not see what he was looking at. And then he passed it back. And then other times he's hunched over a laptop computer looking at exhibits that are showing text messages and emails that were exchanged over the years with various people involved in the case. And then when there are breaks, we see him standing up, stretching, turning around, looking at his supporters in the gallery. His mother has been there. Some of his children have been there, some of his daughters have left the courtroom during the especially graphic testimony. But at other times, when his children are there, when his supporters are there, he's shaping his hands in the shape of a heart. He's pointing at them. He's saying, I love you. He's whispering. There was a moment when another reporter and I were sitting in the courtroom during a break and Sean Combs turns around, there's nobody in front of us and he asks us how we're doing. We say hi back to him because you're in such close proximity. We're only 10 feet apart or so. I'll pivot quickly to the Harvey Weinstein case where there's not as much of that because while Harvey Weinstein does have a contingent of supporters, it's mostly paid supporters, his publicist, his lawyers, his jury consultant. People that he will wave to and talk to and acknowledge as he's being wheeled into the courtroom. He uses a wheelchair to get in and out of court. One of the interesting things that ties the Sean Combs case and the Luigi Mangione case is one of the lawyers, Marc Agnifilo, represents both of those men. Karen Friedman Agnifilo is the lead defense attorney for Luigi Mangione. She is married to Marc Agnifilo. They are partners in the same law firm and Marc Agnifilo is ostensibly the lead attorney for Sean Combs. He is also assisting on Luigi Mangione's defense, both in the state and federal case. WALKER: In the beginning of the Combs case, the jury was shown that explosive video that the public already saw in the L.A. hotel hallway of Combs dragging Cassie and kicking her when she's on the ground and he made a public apology on his social media to her. And his lawyers have said that he's not a perfect person and he has anger issues, but he's not charged with domestic abuse. SISAK: The refrain from the defense has been that, if anything, there could have been domestic violence charges brought against Sean Combs back in 2016. Those charges would have been brought in a California court by Los Angeles police. There has not been any real discussion of an investigation in 2016 of any effort to charge Sean Combs with domestic violence at that time. So, in some sense, while it's a thread that the defense is pulling, that he's actually charged with sex trafficking and racketeering in this federal case, it almost is a bit of apples and oranges in the sense that the violence that the defenses conceding to, prosecutors allege, was part of the mechanism of the racketeer of the sex trafficking. In other words, they allege that Sean Combs used violence to keep people quiet, to people compliant. NEUMEISTER: And a lot of charges like domestic violence are all kind of things they could have brought against Sean Combs years ago. Well, there's a statute of limitations that would rule out certain charges. And certain charges just, there is no federal domestic violence charge. So when the feds go after somebody, they look for what kind of charges are federal crimes. And in this case, sex trafficking, bringing people across state lines to do illegal sex acts, or racketeering, which can involve many different things, including that 2016 tape of Cassie being beat up by Sean Combs by the Elevator Bank in that Los Angeles hotel. That, actually, is a centerpiece of the evidence against Combs in this case. WALKER: The point is that that hallway video of Diddy beating up Cassie is actually part of the case of racketeering because he's using violence to control people. NEUMEISTER: Listen, there's violence all through this, right Mike? SISAK: The Kid Cudi arc in this narrative, which is in 2011, Cassie, who's the longtime girlfriend of Sean Combs, starts dating Kid Cudi. Combs is upset about that, according to this witness, Capricorn Clark. Combs comes into her home holding a gun, kidnaps Capricorn Clark, takes her to Kid Cudi's home, where according to Clark, Combs was intent on killing Kid Codi. Now, Cudi was not there. He testified at this trial, so Combs is alleged wish of killing him did not come to fruition, it may be a bit of a crafty strategy by the defense in this case to own the things that they cannot otherwise explain away. They are owning the things the jury eventually is going to see. The video of the 2016 assault at the hotel in Los Angeles. A video, by the way, that was suppressed from public view until it aired last year on CNN. NEUMEISTER: And that is part of the racketeering charge, it's alleged that he used all of his employees and his whole security staff to cover up these things. So, when that happened in 2016 at that L.A. hotel, they paid like $100,000 to try to get the copy of the security video so it would never become public. WALKER: I think we've covered so much that I'm not sure what we have left to cover, although there probably is more. But are there any big points or big arcs that you think are worth mentioning? NEUMEISTER: In the beginning, the first week, it was all Cassie's testimony and there was so much evidence in everything and her testimony about sexual acts and such but last week it seems all about violence and threats and how he would have used his employees to cover up the crimes. SISAK: We've heard from Cassie about the freak-offs. We've heard from some of the male sex workers that were involved. And then we're seeing other pieces of evidence that prosecutors say show the depravity of these events and then also the network of people that Combs relied on to keep them secret, to keep going, but to keep them secret. WALKER: Well, I think that that about sums it up. The judge in the beginning said he wanted to be done by July 4th. SISAK: We've had people ask us, all three of us that have been in court at various times, what do you think of the prosecution's case so far? And as reporters, we don't have opinions on things, but I would urge caution whenever there's a case, let the presentation play out, get to the end of the prosecution case, but also listen to the cross-examination, listen to what the defense puts on. Often defendants will not testify on their own behalf because it can be perilous, but there are cases where it might be advantageous. NEUMEISTER: When there's celebrities involved, it's a wild card, where you really can't predict what's going to happen and how that's going to play into the jurors' minds and everything else.
Yahoo
30 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Money Is Ruining Television
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Watching Carrie Bradshaw—erstwhile sex columnist, intrepid singleton, striver—float down the majestic staircase of her new Gramercy townhouse on a recent episode of And Just Like That while wearing a transparent tulle gown, on an errand to mail a letter, is one of the most cognitively dissonant television experiences I've had recently. And Just Like That has never been a particularly imaginative show with regard to women in midlife, but there's still something fundamentally off about seeing one of the canonical female characters of our era transformed into a Gilded Age archetype, worrying about a garden renovation and choosing back-ordered fabric for a chaise. Carrie, suddenly, has many hats. She communicates with a lover via handwritten notes while she waits for his liberation from the home front in Virginia. What's happened to Carrie, truly, is money. Two decades after Sex and the City rolled to a televised close, acknowledging that its own cultural relevance was waning, its characters continue in zombified form on And Just Like That, pickled in a state of extreme privilege where nothing can touch them. The drama is lifeless, involving rehashed old storylines about beeping alarm systems and 'a woman's right to shoes' that serve mostly as a backdrop for clothes. Charlotte, in a questionable lace workout jacket, worries that her dog has been unfairly canceled. Miranda, in one of a series of patterned blouses, gets really into a Love Island–style reality show. (Remember Jules and Mimi?) Lisa wears feathers to a fundraiser for her husband's political campaign. Seema, in lingerie, nearly burns her apartment down when she falls asleep with a lit cigarette, but in the end, all she loses is an inch or so of hair. The point of the show is no longer what happens, because nothing does. The point is to set up a series of visual tableaus showcasing all the things money can buy, as though the show were an animated special issue of Vogue or Architectural Digest. What's stranger still is that a series that once celebrated women in the workplace has succumbed to financial ideals right out of Edith Wharton: The women who earned their money themselves (Miranda and Seema) somehow don't have enough of it (spoiler—they still seem to have a lot), while the ones who married money (Carrie, Charlotte, Lisa) breeze through life as an array of lunches, fundraisers, and glamping trips, with some creative work dotted into the mix for variety. The banal details of exorbitant wealth—well, it's all quite boring. [Read: We need to talk about Miranda] Lately, most of television seems stuck in the same mode. Virtually everything I've watched recently has been some variation of rich people pottering around in 'aspirational' compounds. On Sirens and The Better Sister, glossy scenes of sleek couture and property porn upstage the intrigue of the plot. On Mountainhead, tech billionaires tussle in a Utah mountain retreat featuring 21,000 square feet of customized bowling alleys and basketball courts. On Your Friends & Neighbors, a disgraced hedge-fund manager sneers at the vacuous wealth of his gated community (where houses cost seven to eight figures), but also goes to criminal lengths to maintain his own living standards rather than lower them by even a smidge. And on With Love, Meghan, the humble cooking show has gotten a Montecito-money glow-up. 'I miss TV without rich people,' the writer Emily J. Smith noted last month on Substack, observing that even supposedly normie shows such as Tina Fey's marital comedy The Four Seasons and Erin Foster's unconventional rom-com Nobody Wants This seem to be playing out in worlds where money is just not an issue for anyone. This is a new development: As Smith points out, sitcoms including Roseanne and Married … With Children have historically featured families with recognizable financial constraints, and the more recent dramedies of the 2010s were riddled with economic anxiety. Reality television, it's worth noting, has been fixated on the lifestyles of the rich and bored virtually since its inception, but as its biggest stars have grown their own fortunes exponentially, the genre has mostly stopped documenting anything other than wealth, which it fetishizes via the gaudy enclaves and private jets of Selling Sunset and Bling Empire. Serialized shows, too, no longer seem interested in considering the stakes and subtleties of most people's lives. Television is preoccupied with literary adaptations about troubled rich white women, barbed satires about absurdly wealthy people on vacation, thrillers about billionaire enclaves at the end of the world. Even our contemporary workplace series (Severance, Shrinking) play out in fictional realms where people work not for the humble paychecks that sustain their lives, but to escape the grief that might otherwise consume them. What does it mean that our predominant fictional landscapes are all so undeniably 'elevated,' to use a word cribbed from the Duchess of Sussex? And Just Like That is evidence of how hard it is for shows that take wealth for granted to have narrative stakes, and how stultifying they become as a result. But we also lose something vital when we no longer see 99 percent of American lives reflected on the small screen. Money isn't just making TV boring. It's also reshaping our collective psyche—building a shared sense of wealth as the only marker of a significant life, and rich people as the only people worthy of our gaze. We're not supposed to be able to empathize with the characters on-screen, these strutting zoo animals in $1,200 shoes and $30,000-a-night villas. But we're not being encouraged to empathize with any other kinds of characters, either—to see the full humanity and complexity of so many average people whose lives feel ever more precarious in this moment, and ever more in need of our awareness. On an episode in the final season of Sex and the City, a socialite named Lexi Featherston cracks a floor-to-ceiling window, lights a cigarette, and declares that New York is over, O-V-E-R. 'When did everybody stop smoking?' she sneers. 'When did everybody pair off?' As the hostess glares at her, she continues: 'No one's fun anymore. Whatever happened to fun? God, I'm so bored I could die.' Famous last words: Lexi, of course, promptly trips on her stiletto, falls out the absurdly dangerous glass panel, and plummets to her death. Her arc—from exalted '80s It Girl to coked-up aging party girl—was supposed to represent finality, the termination of the city's relevance as a cultural nexus. 'It's the end of an era,' Carrie says at Lexi's funeral, where Stanford is elated to have scored VIP seats next to Hugh Jackman. 'The party's officially over,' Samantha agrees. After six seasons of transforming how a generation of women dated, dressed, even drank, Sex and the City seemed to be acknowledging that its own moment had come to an end. The characters were undeniably older, no longer seeking anthropological meaning in a SoHo nightclub at 3 a.m. But the city that the show documented—and popular culture more broadly—had shifted, too: toward less spontaneity, less rebellion, and infinitely higher incomes. [Read: The ghost of a once era-defining show] The year that final season aired, 2004, is possibly when television's prurient obsession with rich people really kicked off, with the launch of shows including Desperate Housewives, Entourage, and, notably, The Apprentice. A year earlier, Fox had premiered a soapy drama called The O.C., which charted the rags–to–Range Rover adventures of a teen from Chino who ended up ensconced in the affluent coastal town of Newport Beach. Until then, it had never occurred to me that teenagers could wear Chanel or drive SUVs that cost six figures, although watching them rattle around in McMansions the size of the Met provided much of The O.C.'s visual thrill. In direct response to the show's success, MTV debuted the reality show Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County a year later, and in 2006, Bravo countered with its own voyeuristic peek into the lives of the rich and fabulous—The Real Housewives of Orange County. Documenting wealth enticingly on television is a difficult balancing act: You want to stoke enough envy that people are inspired to buy things (gratifying advertisers along the way), but not so much that you risk alienating the viewer. Reality TV pulled it off by starting small. The women on the first season of Real Housewives were well off, but not unimaginably so. They lived in high-end family homes, not sprawling temples of megawealth. Similarly, when Keeping Up With the Kardashians debuted in 2007, the family lived in a generous but chintzy bungalow, having not yet generated the billions of dollars that would later pay for their minimalist compounds in Calabasas and Hidden Hills. During the 2008 financial crisis, a critic for The New York Times wondered whether the tanking global economy might doom the prospects of shows such as The Real Housewives of Atlanta, which had just premiered, and turn them into 'a time capsule of the Bling Decade.' But the fragility of viewers' own finances, oddly, seemed to make them more eager to watch. Shows about money gratified both people's escapist impulses and the desire to critique those who didn't seem worthy of their blessings. As Jennifer O'Connell, a producer for The Real Housewives of New York City, put it to the Times a year later: 'Everyone likes to judge.' The toxic, unhappy, rich-people shows that have more recently proliferated on prestige TV—the Succession and White Lotus and Big Little Lies variation—cover their backs with cynicism. Money doesn't make you happy, they assert over and over, even though studies suggest otherwise. The documentation of extreme wealth on television with such clarifying bitterness, they imply, surely inoculates audiences from pernicious aspiration. Except it doesn't: The Four Seasons San Domenico Palace in Sicily was fully booked for a good six months following the second season of The White Lotus, despite the fictional bodies floating in the water. And a study conducted at the London School of Economics in 2018 found that a person's increased exposure to shows that regularly 'glamourize fame, luxury, and the accumulation of wealth' made them more inclined to support welfare cuts; it also noted other studies that found that the more people watched materialistic media, the more anxious and unhappy they were likely to be in their own lives. Watching shows about wealth does, however, seem to stimulate the desire to shop, which is maybe why this latest season of And Just Like That feels intended for an audience watching with a second screen in their hand—all the better to harvest the aspirational consumption the show's lifestyles might generate. Streaming services are already tapping into the reams of data they have on viewers by serving them customized ads related to the series they might be watching, and many are also experimenting with e-commerce. You could argue that And Just Like That is honoring the spirit of Sex and the City by putting fashion front and center. But the vacant dullness of the new season feels wholly of its time: This is television for the skin-deep influencer age, not the messy, pioneering drama it once was. More crucially, Carrie and company take up space that deprives us of more shows like The Pitt, one of a sparse handful of series documenting the workers trying to patch up the holes in an ever more unequal America. No one seems to have anticipated that the Max series would be such a success. As workers today are being squeezed 'for all their worth, no more chit-chatting at the water cooler, we've gotten to a point where reality for most people is quite unpleasant,' Smith writes on Substack. 'And executives are betting that we don't actually want to watch it.' The reality of the TV business also underscores why shows that sell us something—even if it's just the illusion of exceptional prosperity as a default—are easier to commission. But audiences will always be drawn to drama, and the stakes of defiantly deglamorized series such as The Bear and Slow Horses feel necessary in this moment, when the state of the future relies so much on the direction and quality of our attention. Article originally published at The Atlantic
CBS News
an hour ago
- CBS News
Mentorship programs brings the next generation to Broadway
Broadway is where dreams come true for theater lovers. Mentorship programs are working to bring young audiences, creatives and performers to the Great Bright Way. The Theater Development Fund's Wendy Wasserstein Project connects mentors to students around New York and takes kids to Broadway shows. Since its founding in 1978, some 60 mentors have brought 4,000 students to shows. This year, eight of those students are from the Young Women's Leadership School of Manhattan, a public all-girls school in Harlem. Their mentor is Tony Award-winning lyricist David Zippel. "I do open doors, because I'm so excited about live theater that I want to share that with as many people as I can," Zippel told CBS Saturday Morning. Ramona Fittipaldi, the students' math teacher, encourages participation in the program. She said she's had students be moved to tears by what they've seen on stage. Students in attendance at "Purpose" on Broadway. CBS Saturday Morning "I had a student tell me that she was so upset that the show ended, because it connected to her life so well that she just wanted more," Fittipaldi said. Recently, the students, Zippel and Fittipaldi, saw "Purpose," a play about a troubled Black family grappling with faith, legacy and identity. Afterwards, the group met to share some pizza and discuss what they'd seen. Zippel said these "pizza discussions" have led to candid talks about the students' lives. This year, "Purpose" actor Kara Young made a surprise appearance at the pizza discussion. Young is Tony-nominated for her performance. It's her fourth straight year being nominated for an acting award. She graduated from the same leadership school as the students. Mameawa Thiaw, one of the students, said she was excited to meet Young after watching her onstage. "Growing up as a young Black woman, so to see myself presented in media, especially live media, is something that I do take pride in," Thiaw said. Meanwhile, five-time Tony Award winner Susan Stroman mentors future playwrights through a writing fellowship in her name at the University of Delaware. She has brought fellows to rehearsals of "Smash," her most recent musical, and introduced them to set designers, lighting designers, and other production workers. Erin Muñoz, one of the fellows, said the exposure to the different fields further drove her Broadway dreams. "I remember we were seeing the rehearsal for Smash, and I just couldn't stop thinking how much I want to spend the rest of my life in a room like that with so many creative and talented people," Muñoz said. Stroman said she hopes this fellowship and other programs help bring more young people into the theater world. "There's nothing like being in the back of a theater of something that I've created and seeing how it moves an audience," Stroman said. "See if they're crying, if they're laughing, if they're putting their arms around one another. There's no greater feeling."
