Priscilla Pointer, Dallas Vet and Mother of Amy Irving, Dead at 100
Veteran actress Priscilla Pointer, best known for playing Dallas' Rebecca Barnes Wentworth, the mother of Victoria Principal's character, died Monday. She was 100.
Pointer was the real-life mother of actress Amy Irving. The pair appeared together in more than a half-dozen movies, including the 1976 horror classic Carrie.
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Irving shared on Instagram that Pointer 'died peacefully in her sleep… hopefully to run off with her two adoring husbands and her many dogs.'
Pointer recurred on Dallas from Seasons 4-6, appearing in a total of 44 episodes of the iconic '80s primetime soap
'My favorite TV mama and a wonderful woman passed away today,' Principal shared on Instagram. 'My sincere condolences to Amy Irving and all of Priscilla's family. Always a special place in my heart.'
Additional TV credits for Pointer included guest stints on The Rockford Files, L.A. Law, The A-Team, Judging Amy and Cold Case.
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2 hours 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. 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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. 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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
Boston Globe
4 hours ago
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2025 Tony Awards: How to watch, who's performing, and everything else you need to know
The 2025 Tony Awards will take over Radio City Music Hall in New York City on Sunday, June 8, with the main ceremony set to kick off at 8 p.m. How can I watch the 2025 Tony Awards? The Tonys will broadcast live on Sunday night starting at 8 p.m. on CBS. Paramount+ with Showtime subscribers can also stream the awards live, while subscribers of other Paramount+ plans can watch the Tonys the next day on-demand via the streaming service. Prior to the main ceremony, 'The Tony Awards: Act One,' a live pre-show, will stream on the free Pluto TV platform starting at 6:40 p.m. 'Act One,' hosted by first-time Tony nominee Darren Criss ('Maybe Happy Ending') and Tony- and Grammy-winning star Renée Elise Goldsberry ('Hamilton'), will include the presentation of the night's first round of Tony winners. Cynthia Erivo, the 2025 Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year, during her roast at Farkus Hall in Cambridge on Feb. 5. Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff Advertisement Who's hosting the show? The main ceremony on CBS will be hosted for the first time by Tony-, Emmy-, and Grammy-winning actress Cynthia Erivo, a three-time Oscar nominee and star of the film adaptation of the 'Wicked' stage musical. Meanwhile, fellow former Tony winner Brian Stokes Mitchell will serve as the show's announcer. Who's performing at the 2025 Tonys? Expect a packed night of performances headlined by a special reunion of the original cast of 'Hamilton,' which shattered records at the 2016 Tonys, winning 11 awards, including best musical. In honor of the production's 10th anniversary, stars including Lin-Manuel Miranda, Leslie Odom, Jr., Daveed Diggs, Ariana DeBose, and more will perform on Sunday night. Advertisement The evening will also feature performances by cast members from several 2025 Tony-nominated shows, including best musical nominees 'Buena Vista Social Club,' 'Dead Outlaw,' 'Death Becomes Her,' 'Maybe Happy Ending,' and 'Operation Mincemeat: A New Musical'; best revival of musical nominees 'Floyd Collins,' 'Gypsy,' 'Pirates! The Penzance Musical,' and 'Sunset Blvd'; musical 'Just In Time,' which earned six nominations; as well as 'Real Women Have Curves,' which scored two nominations. George Clooney in "Good Night, and Good Luck." EMILIO MADRID Who's presenting on Sunday? A ton of big names will take the stage to present at the Tonys this weekend, including Oprah, Keanu Reeves, Katie Holmes, Jesse Eisenberg, Samuel L. Jackson, Michelle Williams, Ben Stiller, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Bryan Cranston. Additional presenters include Boston-born star Allison Janney, Adam Lambert, Kelli O'Hara, Charli D'Amelio, Aaron Tveit, Alex Winter, Sara Bareilles, Lea Salonga, Jean Smart, Ariana DeBose, Kristin Chenoweth, Carrie Preston, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Sarah Paulson, Danielle Brooks, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Rachel Bay Jones, and Lea Michele. What productions and stars are nominated? Even before the show starts, Broadway legend Audra McDonald has already made history, earning her 11th career Tony nomination. She's up for best actress in a musical for 'Gypsy' (she already holds the record for most Tony wins by a performer with six). Squaring off against McDonald in the category are Megan Hilty ('Death Becomes Her'), Mass. native Jasmine Amy Rogers ('BOOP! The Musical'), Nicole Scherzinger ('Sunset Blvd.'), and Meanwhile, Hollywood superstar George Clooney hopes to pick up his first Tony after scoring his first-ever nomination for Advertisement Matt Juul can be reached at
Yahoo
4 hours ago
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I Work At ‘Dateline.' Here's The 1 Question I Get Asked The Most — And My Answer Might Surprise You.
When I tell people I'm a writer at 'Dateline NBC,' I get a variety of reactions. Often I hear, 'Cool! What's Lester Holt really like?' Or 'Do you think that husband really disconnected his wife's oxygen tank while they were scuba diving on their honeymoon or was it just a bizarre accident?' However, sometimes I detect a look of mild horror, the kind I imagine trauma surgeons and cops get. It's a look that says, Wow, you spend every day immersed in all that darkness. Isn't it depressing? Actually ... no. When I first started at 'Dateline,' the show followed a different format. We covered consumer issues, did investigations and profiles (one was of a young and sunny Taylor Swift, no less), and offered plenty of human interest stories. But times change and so does the audience. True crime is where our audience went and we met it there with, I like to think, an arsenal of journalistic talents: expert storytelling that captures victims, families and killers in all their human, complicated glory; the highest standards of fairness; and maybe just as important as anything else, true respect for the lives that are taken and the loved ones left behind. Still, I admit the subject matter is dark. Nearly every episode involves a murder, or at least a disappearance. We do some powerful stories about the wrongfully convicted, but those people are usually convicted of killing someone. Death almost always figures into what happened in one way or another. I work on the 'open' of the show: the minute and a half at the top that highlights the most dramatic parts of the story. It includes things like: how many hearts the victim touched, how shocking the crime was, and how depraved the killer's actions were. In short, it's made up of the saddest, starkest, most potent stuff. Like my colleagues in this strange, very particular universe, I have developed an eye for small moments that reveal deep emotion, whether it's anger or grief. And I've written the words 'a chilling discovery,' 'a savage assault,' and 'a bizarre twist' more times than I care to count. So, yes … dark. And, of course, heartbreakingly sad. But depressing? No. Many of our greatest and most popular writers — including Stephen King, Gillian Flynn, Edgar Allen Poe and Agatha Christie, to name just a few — wrestle almost exclusively with sinister themes, like violence and murder. People don't tend to think of their work as 'depressing.' Spine-tingling? Yes. As well as engaging. Thought-provoking. I would argue one of the reasons great writers engage with this material is that the stakes in a murder mystery are so high. A human life is taken. In Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel 'The Hours,' Virginia Woolf says, 'Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more. It's contrast.' But dark stories offer a flip side as well: the possibility for redemption, hope and understanding. This is such a fundamental paradigm that it resonates even with children. Studies show that fairy tales, many of which are scary, help children process difficult emotions like fear, envy and loneliness. This reassures children that they are not alone and that they're 'normal.' Fairy tales give children a safe place to explore these feelings and can teach them how to express and deal with them in an effective, constructive way. For grown-up readers, different kinds of mysteries may offer different kinds of sustenance. In an astute essay for Time magazine, award-winning novelist Tana French argues these stories mostly fall into one of two camps. The first, like those written by Christie, are about restoring order and seeing justice meted out. Her offerings are tidy, self-contained, feature a satisfying resolution — and go perfectly with a cup of tea. 'In a world that can often be chaotic and reasonless, we need these stories,' French writes. Others, which French dubs 'wild mysteries,' ask us to engage with deeper questions about human nature. 'What are we capable of? How much of who we are is determined by choice, by circumstance, or by nature?' French asks. 'The questions stay unanswered because they're unanswerable.' I like to think 'Dateline' gives viewers a bit of both kinds of stories. By the end of the hour, you will (almost always) know who committed the crime. You will know how. You will usually know why. But we take on the deeper, thornier questions, too, like how well do we ever really know another person — even one we're married to? Can a person simply snap? And, in an increasingly complicated world, what constitutes justice? I know some people say that shows like 'Dateline' serve up the trauma and pain of real people for the entertainment of our viewers. But the show's producers tell me that the victims' loved ones say talking about the case provides a kind of balm. They refer to their experience working with 'Dateline' as cathartic and say it leaves them feeling 'lighter.' They feel like someone 'important' is really listening to them and they trust that we will take their story seriously and tell it correctly. It can be a truly transformative experience for them. One producer also told me that 'Dateline' creates 'an important historical record of serious crime. Something that people can always look back on to see what really happened, told by the people it happened to.' In these times of rampant mis- and disinformation, this is no small thing. I believe our stories also resonate with viewers because, though the terrible people are truly terrible, the heroes we feature really are heroic — whether it's the detective who picks up the ice cold case and keeps digging until she finds the truth or the prosecutor who refuses to give up on the impossible-to-prove case or the sister whose hands grow raw from putting up 'missing' posters. These people's resilience struck me in an especially personal way several years ago. Though I'm fortunate to never have experienced violent crime, my mother died when I was a child. One otherwise-unremarkable day, I realized that I was older than she was when she passed. I thought I'd made my peace with her death years earlier, but on that day I was suddenly acutely aware of just how little time she'd been given on this planet. I was stewing in the sour juice of helplessness, bitterness and sadness when I started working on my next 'Dateline' story. As I began to go through the interview tapes to find the best soundbites, I found myself appreciating the friends and family members of the victim in a way I never had before. They had confronted the most terrible thing life could throw at them and somehow kept going in surprising, inspiring ways. The same is true of the loved ones in most of our 'Dateline' stories. Some of these people have actually helped solve cases. Others have found inventive ways to help other families going through similar trauma. But no matter what they've experienced, there's one thing they all share: Despite any apprehension about becoming public people — which in this day and age can be unpleasant or even dangerous — they went on national TV to make sure we knew who their murdered cousin, aunt or friend was. They spoke up to keep their memories alive. Their unbelievable strength has moved and healed me. I now carry some of their words around with me, like an aspirin for a headache, or a railing when I feel wobbly. I work on a program that some have called 'The Murder Show.' They're not wrong, but maybe toiling in a dark world makes the light more visible. Maybe it's only because of sadness that we even know and understand joy. Maybe it's injustice that allows us to appreciate justice. As Virginia Woolf might say, it's contrast. Lorna Graham is the author of 'Where You Once Belonged' and 'The Ghost of Greenwich Village,' and is a writer at 'Dateline NBC.' She has written numerous documentaries, including 'Auschwitz,' produced by Steven Spielberg and narrated by Meryl Streep, which competed at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival. Across numerous films, PSAs, and speeches, she's written for Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, Tom Hanks, Harrison Ford, and Morgan Freeman. She graduated from Barnard College and lives in Greenwich Village. Do you have a compelling personal story you'd like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we're looking for here and send us a pitch at pitch@ My Experiences On 'Sex And The City' Left Me Reeling. A Recent Run-In With One Of Its Stars Left Me In Shock. I Was One Of The Most Famous Pop Stars In The World. No One Knew The Secret Pain I Hid. A Guy I Once Dated Is Now Famous, And It's As Weird As You'd Imagine
