Latest news with #Enlightened
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Michaela Watkins Loves HR Representatives (And Not Just Because She Plays One on 'Hacks') (Exclusive)
This season, Hacks introduced us to HR representative Stacey, played by Michaela Watkins. At first glance, Stacey might be poised to be the voice of reason and someone who could lead Deborah (Jean Smart) and Ava (Hannah Einbiner) to reconciliation. And while the comedians appear to be back on the same page at this point in this season, one has to wonder just how much of that progress is thanks to their well-meaning but delightfully awkward chaperone. Watkins is no stranger to comedies, having appeared on shows like The New Adventures of Old Christine, Search Party and Enlightened, and she thrives her ability to oscillate between grounded sincerity and offbeat humor. 🎬 SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox 🎬 Watkins sat down with Parade for an exclusive interview to discuss her role on the Emmy Award–winning series. She reflected on Stacey's peculiar presence, the balance between improvisation and sharp scripting, and the comedians, both past and present, who continue to shape her comedic voice. Related: Grace Leeder: Let's talk aboutStacey. I feel like when we first meet her, she seems like she's going to be the normal person in the room. But she is odd. I wonder is she odd or is she just odd in particular situation she's found herself in, chaperoning Deborah and Ava? Michaela Watkins: I think that when Stacey is with other Stacey's, she's not that odd. I think she is particularly odd when she is with them. That said, I think Stacey is odd. She's a bit out there. I wouldn't be friends with her! So when Stacey is with other Stacey's, she's totally fine. But with these two - they're cool, they're savvy, they're smart. They're 20 steps ahead of Stacey. I think that she is over her head with these two. It's sort of "Bring Your Annoying Aunt to Work Day." I've seen a lot of HR people who Stacey reminds me of. Did you do HR homework for this type of role? For any series that you're on, there's usually a sexual harassment seminar that they have for the cast and crew. Over the course of five to ten years, you've been in enough of them. I always love them. I find them very interesting because, in some ways, as our culture progresses (or as we are regressing right now in America), the goalposts move a little. I think it's important to bring everyone up to speed, which is a great thing. I always feel like I take away something. The people who lead it understand that it's full of cynical actors and so they are very funny and entertaining. It's sort of like if you get a traffic violation and have to go take traffic school with a stand-up comedian. They always seem like you could see yourself hanging out with them. I'm always like, "that was a nice person!" Stacey feels more corporate. She doesn't feel cool for cool actors. She feels like all the cool ones were taken and they were left with Stacey, who was doing seminars for Merck or grocery store corporations or something. The writing on is so sharp. Do you mostly work with the script that was given? Is there a lot of improv on set? The writing is so sharp and so funny that you don't have to tinker much. I think the trio (Paul Downs, LuciaAniello and JenStatsky) like to hire people where if they do go rogue, it's not going to be a waste of anyone's time. So, when Megan Statler goes off on her things, they must use so much of it. Same with Paul, because he's also a writer. They're not so precious that they don't want you to do anything else, and yet they're very specific about getting some of their lines out there. It's a very fun little dance. They want you to competently show up and do the script and they leave room for Jesus. If you have inspiration that comes in, they're not going to fight you on that. I love how is a celebration of different generations of female comedians. Do you have a comedian you look up to from a previous generation? They had CarolBurnett on the show and she is timeless. I do feel like if she hit the boards now, we would be hailing her as a comedic genius as much as we did then. She has always been in her own little orb of hilarity and timelessness. She's just very unique in every way. I think it surpasses the time space continuum. Related: And how about a comedian from a younger generation? I keep bringing up Megan Statler in these interviews. I came across her online, and I thought she was a legitimate weird person and then I realized, "Oh, she is having me on right now". She's not that lady. This is a comedian I had never seen before. I think that she has a fresh, hilarious sensibility of comedy that I just love. John Early, too. I do feel like they could both be from any time. They have good, old fashioned senses of humor. They're not reliant on things like being the most blue or the most salacious or sardonic. It's just that you can feel like when they go off and do their thing, it's amazing. Kate Berlant, too. Her one woman show is art. It's the people whose comedy is real art and you're not being manipulated by them. You're looking at the world through their point of view and it's a hilarious one. I do also want to say that when I was looking through your filmography for this interview, it clicked just how many things I love that you've been in. and ! You saw Suze? Yeah! It felt like nobody knows Suze. I am Canadian. Oh, you are? Okay, yeah. I felt like nobody found Suze! Did you like it? Yeah, I loved it. It's so sweet! Oh amazing. Well, thank you for saying that.
Boston Globe
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Mike White to return to ‘Survivor' for its 50th season
White first appeared on 'Survivor' in 2018, during the show's 37th season, and lasted on the island for 39 days, finishing in second place. Although 'The White Lotus' wouldn't premiere until three years later (White has said the show, an acerbic anthology series set at an exotic hotel chain, was partly inspired by his observations while on 'Survivor'), he was already a well-regarded filmmaker, having written the film 'School of Rock' and created the HBO series 'Enlightened.' Advertisement Conceived of and filmed during the COVID pandemic, 'The White Lotus' became a breakout hit for HBO and catapulted White to a new level of fame. He won Emmy Awards for both writing and directing in the limited series or anthology categories for the show's first season. The finale of the third season -- which aired this spring and starred Parker Posey, Carrie Coon and Walton Goggins -- was watched by more than 6 million viewers. Before 'Survivor,' White competed on 'The Amazing Race' with his father in 2009 and again in 2011. In a 2021 interview with The New Yorker, he attributed his love of reality television to its ability to distill real human behavior and conflict. 'For me, as a writer of drama, I aspire to do what reality television already does,' he said. 'To create characters that are surprising and dimensional and do weird' stuff and 'capture your attention.' Advertisement The landmark 50th season of 'Survivor,' which is scheduled to air in 2026, will feature several returning cast members, including a Season 1 contestant, Jenna Lewis-Dougherty, and five-time competitors Cirie Fields and Ozzy Lusth. Filming is scheduled to take place this summer. This article originally appeared in .
Yahoo
10-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Nihilism at the White Lotus
LET ME START OFF BY SAYING something positive: In the past, I have adored Mike White's body of work. I consider Freaks and Geeks, Enlightened, Year of the Dog, Chuck and Buck, as well as the first two seasons of The White Lotus to be subtle, edgy, funny, nuanced, and thought-provoking. But as the credits rolled on the finale of The White Lotus's third season (streaming on Max), I said out loud to my TV screen, 'Are you f-ing kidding me?' I am legitimately confused—to the point of anger—by this entire season. I'm left to conclude that this series may have jumped the monkey. So many monkeys, so little meaning. They are in almost every cutaway, lurking, watching behind the scenes on the hotel grounds, occasionally howling. I get it: I felt the same way watching this group of insufferable people interact with each other for eight episodes. Do the monkeys represent humans' base animal instincts that we pretend don't exist and try to conceal with education and material success? Do they stand for the menace lurking underneath the surface of this luxurious Thai hotel? Or are they just there so that Rick Hatchett (Walton Goggins) can tell his girlfriend Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) after he confronts the person he thinks ruined his life, 'I finally have the monkey off my back'—a season-long pun in the making? Who knows? To me they seem more like another animal: a red herring. A red herring in a sea full of red herrings that just swim in circles. For being a whodunit, season three of The White Lotus is almost devoid of action. Every other scene has a main character staring deeply into the middle distance as portentous kettle drums and discordant background music swell to make sure the audience knows these characters are battling with difficult life choices. Unlike the haunting soundtracks in seasons one and two, season three's is melodramatic and unearned, more appropriate for an episode of Survivor (a reality show in which Mike White participated) than a season of prestige television. And when there is dialogue, it's irritatingly obvious and expositional. 'We are soulmates, we are tied together forever,' Chelsea says over and over to Rick. 'I'm going to help you get your joy back, even if it kills me,' she says at another point. Guess how that will turn out for them in the end! Timothy (Jason Isaacs), the paterfamilias of the noxious Ratliff family, exclaims to the hotel manager straight off the boat, '[My daughter] is a religious studies major, so she's writing her thesis—what's your thesis on, Piper?—well, it's on Buddhism, and there's a monk and a monastery near here, anyway, she wants to interview him, so we made a family road trip of it.' Okay, thanks for laying all that out for us so neatly. Get 30 day free trial All The White Lotus's actors are exceptional, but they are taken for granted. It's infuriating to have Parker Posey, Walton Goggins, Carrie Coon, Jason Isaacs, Leslie Bibb, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Sam Rockwell, and freakin' Scott Glenn as your cast, and then not deliver to them the script they royally deserve. While these luminaries give it their all and are uniformly great, their acting chops alone can't save this season. The plot and dialogue need to help them do the heavy lifting, and they just don't. The show is repetitive, sloppy, and unformed. Eight episodes could have been compressed into four, and the cliffhangers are almost nonexistent. Posey, Coons, Schwarzenegger, and Rockwell squeeze every ounce of humor from their roles, but they are up against a wall. Isaacs, Goggins, Tayme Thapthimthong, and Jon Gries spend most of their time on camera moping (again, not their fault). And Christian Friedel, the marvelous actor who gave such a harrowing performance as Rudolf Höss in The Zone of Interest, is utterly wasted as Fabian, the general manager of the Thai resort. His big conflict seems to be his nervousness about performing for the guests at the hotel. And . . . then he does. The stakes couldn't be lower. WHAT IS THE MESSAGE Mike White wants to tell about this particular hotel in this particular place? I honestly don't know. What happens here could happen anywhere, and Thailand seems beside the point. In previous seasons, the locale was an implicit and explicit part of the story. The first season took place in Hawaii, where we felt the culture clash between native Hawaiians and the rich American tourists who disrespect their culture and use the island to suit their own pleasures. Sicily was the setting for season two, where the luxury of Taormina is a paper-thin veneer of civility over the seductive and perhaps sinister nature of that capricious island. The rich Americans vacationing there are seduced and abandoned, duped and unsettled by Sicilians, who take advantage of their guests' naïveté and arrogance. And they reject the American notion of reconnecting with the mother country as a sort of reverse colonialism. But aside from sumptuous shots of nature and the endless monkey cutaways, season three neglects Thailand's allure and traditions. Rather than lush, mysterious, and spiritual, its setting feels claustrophobic. We rarely leave the grounds of the hotel. And when the characters do, what they experience of Thai culture is generic. The Thai actors themselves seem like placeholders instead of fully realized individuals. As the audience, we have no idea how the staff feels about their guests. Join now Fabian tells Rick and Chelsea that the wellness program at the White Lotus is 'the best in the world,' and then aside from some therapy, massage, and yoga sessions, that idea goes by the wayside. What could have been a compelling examination of the wellness industry—its hopes and hypocrisies, the virtues and vices of its denizens—becomes another missed opportunity. Yes, we do get a brief glimpse of life in a Thai monastery, but the dialectical tension between spirituality and materialism is handled like a freshman 101 class in Buddhism. From the creator of Enlightenment, the lack of spiritual depth is one of the most mysterious and annoying aspects of this season of The White Lotus. And this season's nihilism is the other big frustration. I appreciate Mike White's dark humor, irony, and even cynicism, and I never expect neat, happy endings from him—but I do expect complexity, compassion, and humanity. Season three's casual cruelty caught me off guard. Carrie Coon's character is put through the emotional wringer and is made to apologize and vaguely grovel to her two frenemies who treated her quite badly. Timothy almost poisons his entire family, yet one scene later he is on the departing boat, composed and recovered. Gaitok, the thoughtful, virtuous security guard goes against his gentle nature and chooses violence to advance in his career, thereby winning the hand of the superficial girl he pines for. Belinda (Natasha Rothwell), whose pain we felt viscerally in season one when Tanya dropped her as a business partner in the wellness practice they planned together, does the exact same thing to her Thai lover in season three, except he just accepts it with a warm smile as she leaves to go back to Hawaii, a new multimillionaire. We believed Belinda to have a spiritual and moral core, but psych! By Belinda taking Greg/Gary's $5 million in hush money, Mike White apparently proves us wrong. Yes, there are some very funny and cogent moments this season (as a Tar Heel, I certainly do appreciate all the explicit Duke hatred), but Mike White ultimately plays us for fools and suckers, and to me, this feels reductive and cheap for such a talented creator. He kind of dares us to loathe almost everyone, which I suppose is bold in its way, but I find it to be more contrary than clever in its execution. Few of the characters have significant emotional journeys, and we as an audience discover very little about them. It's fitting that the song playing over the closing credits is Billy Preston's 'Nothing From Nothing (Leaves Nothing).' As an admirer, I just expect more from Mike White than a sour taste left in my mouth. Send this article to that one friend who couldn't stop talking about 'White Lotus': Share
The Independent
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
The White Lotus finale was a violent end to a bad season
So The White Lotus 's divisive third season went out with a bang. Then another one. And then a few dozen more. If the show's first two years treated their end-of-season deaths as cosmic jokes, methods to wipe the grin off a delusional hotel manager's face, or to have Jennifer Coolidge plunge into the depths of the ocean, this closer presented death as pure tragedy: no one in their right mind wants to see the wonderful Aimee Lou Wood, with her giant, hopeful eyes and toothy radiance, bleeding to death with a bullet hole in her chest. But I suppose it's appropriate for a season that everyone – even those who, like The Independent 's Nick Hilton, praised it as yet another 'exceptional' batch of episodes – can surely agree was The White Lotus at its most un-fun. This was, after all, an often unpleasant eight episodes of television. At its best, it has brimmed with a sticky, slightly suffocating unease, its characters complex, strange and fascinatingly loathsome. At its worst, it has felt like being stuck in a traffic jam on the hottest day of the year. It remains unclear whether the show's sole writer and director, Mike White, intended for this season to be quite so narratively repetitive, with his players cycling through the same conversations for episodes on end. Perhaps that was the (agonising) point? But there's been enough suggestions in recent weeks of a fraught production – with confirmation of cast fallouts and creative clashes – that I'm convinced this season went a bit awry behind the scenes. Why hire Zone of Interest 's Christian Friedel or the South Korean pop star Lisa and give them so little to do? How is it that Patrick Schwarzenegger's manosphere pin-up was such a significant part of the early season, yet he has his two subplots peter out abruptly here? And considering how important Rick and Chelsea proved to be to the show's final moments, why keep them separated for so much of this year's run? Certainly, a documentary about the making of season three would be more juicy than much of what was served up to us on a week-by-week basis. Frustratingly, after eight long episodes, there was a sense here of the season's themes finally converging. White has been writing about man's search for spiritual meaning since his brilliant yet short-lived Laura Dern dramedy Enlightened in 2011, and I'm curious if he now believes it's largely doomed. Based on the evidence, he may think it's a waste of time. Piper's quest for religious salvation proves entirely vapid, as she confesses to her parents that she actually adores her riches and wants to head home with them rather than stay in Thailand. Rick tries desperately to avoid violence in his second interaction with the man he believed killed his father (and who, in a howler of a Darth Vader twist, turned out to actually be his father), but to no avail – it's Rick, we learn, who initiated the shootout teased in the season's opening scene. Chelsea, meanwhile, convinces herself that Rick is her soulmate, but where does that get her? She's caught in the crossfire of the shooting and dies in her lover's arms. Gaitok gets the girl and the professional respect he's always wanted, but only after shooting Rick dead to prove himself. Was it really worth it? Carrie Coon's spectacular monologue towards the end of the episode suggests it's probably safer to abandon all of this faith malarkey entirely: she tells Jaclyn and Kate that she's never found happiness or purpose in work, or love, or motherhood, but that 'time gives her meaning', that simply existing is on some level enough. It certainly comes off as the least stressful solution to life's ills. It also made for a strong resolution to the women's plot. There was no fatal blow-up, no pledge by each party to go their separate ways. They leave the island a trio, most likely forever entwined as passive-aggressive nightmares who, whether it's healthy or not, desperately need one another. The credibility of their ending, though, only exposed the strain of the Ratliff plot. Can we now admit that this set of characters has been a misfire from day one? Their personalities haven't given way to interesting social critique, the brothers' incestuous entanglement felt oddly timid despite appearances that it could go further, and the circumstances of Timothy's financial fraud were always so vague that absolutely everything he's done in the aftermath has strained believability. Here we see him attempting to murder his wife, daughter and eldest son via poisoned pina coladas, and it's so sloppily executed that it feels as if White tossed it together in a rush. Everything remotely interesting about the Ratliffs – from their impending poverty to the ramifications of the brothers' night together – is mostly left to be dealt with off-camera. What a phenomenal failure this storyline has been. But perhaps there's a bigger problem at hand here. White used to say that the 'who ends up dead?' mystery of each White Lotus season was more of a trojan horse plot than an element he felt any real fondness for – something designed to lure in viewers who otherwise wouldn't watch a satirical character study. But season three seemed more driven by its own mystery than ever before, with too many death fakeouts, too many possible murderers, and more Chekhov's guns than the show knew what to do with. And it's ended up making people talk about The White Lotus as if it's Lost or Severance, or some other puzzle-box series riddled with easter eggs and clues that require our solving. Some of these deep dives make sense, notably the discourse over the significance of the books our characters are reading. Others, including attempts to find hidden messages in the show's opening credit sequence, have been ludicrous. The White Lotus does leave trails of breadcrumbs here and there – Chelsea, who's survived a snake bite and an armed robbery and warned that bad luck comes in threes, had more or less been foreshadowing her own demise for weeks – but it's not the entirety of the show, and I wish that White didn't feel the need to lean into it so often. It feels significant that the most compelling moments this season have been rooted in complex human behaviour – of a kind that made The White Lotus so addictive in the first place – rather than outlandish contrivance. Think of the subtle sniping between Laurie, Jaclyn and Kate at the dinner table, or Sam Rockwell's show-stopping monologue three weeks ago. None of the violence in this gunfire-riddled finale, for instance, packed quite as big a punch as Belinda's cool dismissal of poor, naive Pornchai once she found the $5m deposited in her bank account by Gary. 'Can't I just be rich for five f****** minutes?' she asks her son when talk turns to future plans. It's an obvious mirror image to Belinda's own dismissal by Jennifer Coolidge's Tanya in the show's first season, and what a ruthless plot twist to see one of the show's only truly virtuous characters corrupted with such speed… When The White Lotus returns – rumours are that it'll be set in a colder, potentially Scandi climate – it should, for its own sake, go back to basics. White is a master when it comes to interpersonal dynamics and writing about our propensity for cruelty, arrogance and self-involvement. But after these draining eight episodes, he should avoid the mystery trap and stop there.
The Independent
07-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
The White Lotus season 3 finale was a violent end to a bad season
So The White Lotus 's divisive third season went out with a bang. Then another one. And then a few dozen more. If the show's first two years treated their end-of-season deaths as cosmic jokes, methods to wipe the grin off a delusional hotel manager's face, or to have Jennifer Coolidge plunge into the depths of the ocean, this closer presented death as pure tragedy: no one in their right mind wants to see the wonderful Aimee Lou Wood, with her giant, hopeful eyes and toothy radiance, bleeding to death with a bullet hole in her chest. But I suppose it's appropriate for a season that everyone – even those who, like The Independent 's Nick Hilton, praised it as yet another 'exceptional' batch of episodes – can surely agree was The White Lotus at its most un-fun. This was, after all, an often unpleasant eight episodes of television. At its best it has brimmed with a sticky, slightly suffocating unease, its characters complex, strange and fascinatingly loathsome. At its worst it has felt like being stuck in a traffic jam on the hottest day of the year. It remains unclear whether the show's sole writer and director Mike White intended for this season to be quite so narratively repetitive, with his players cycling through the same conversations for episodes on end. Perhaps that was the (agonising) point? But there's been enough suggestion in recent weeks of a fraught production – with confirmation of cast fallouts and creative clashes – that I'm convinced this season went a bit awry behind the scenes. Why hire Zone of Interest 's Christian Friedel or the pop star Lisa and give them so little to do? How is it that Patrick Schwarzenegger's manosphere pin-up was such a significant part of the early season, yet he has his two subplots peter out abruptly here? And considering how important Rick and Chelsea proved to be to the show's final moments, why keep them separated for so much of this year's run? Certainly, a documentary about the making of season three would be more juicy than much of what was served up to us on a week-by-week basis. Frustratingly, after eight long episodes, there was a sense here of the season's themes finally converging. White has been writing about man's search for spiritual meaning since his brilliant yet short-lived Laura Dern dramedy Enlightened in 2011, and I'm curious if he now believes it's largely doomed. Based on the evidence, he may think it's a waste of time. Piper's quest for religious salvation proves entirely vapid, as she confesses to her parents that she actually adores her riches and wants to head home with them rather than stay in Thailand. Rick tries desperately to avoid violence in his second interaction with the man he believed killed his father (and who, in a howler of a Darth Vader twist, turned out to actually be his father), but to no avail – it's Rick, we learn, who initiated the shootout teased in the season's opening scene. Chelsea, meanwhile, convinces herself that Rick is her soulmate, but where does that get her? She's caught in the crossfire of the shooting, and dies in her lover's arms. Gaitok gets the girl and the professional respect he's always wanted, but only after shooting Rick dead to prove himself. Was it really worth it? Carrie Coon's spectacular monologue towards the end of the episode suggests it's probably safer to abandon all of this faith malarkey entirely: she tells Jaclyn and Kate that she's never found happiness or purpose in work, or love, or motherhood, but that 'time gives her meaning', that simply existing is on some level enough. It certainly comes off as the least stressful solution to life's ills. It also made for a strong resolution to the womens' plot. There was no fatal blow-up, no pledge by each party to go their separate ways. They leave the island a trio, most likely forever entwined as passive-aggressive nightmares who, whether it's healthy or not, desperately need one another. The credibility of their ending, though, only exposed the strain of the Ratliff plot. Can we now admit that this set of characters has been a misfire from day one? Their personalities haven't given way to interesting social critique, the brothers' incestuous entanglement felt oddly timid despite appearances that it could go further, and the circumstances of Timothy's financial fraud were always so vague that absolutely everything he's done in the aftermath has strained believability. Here we see him attempting to murder his wife, daughter and eldest son via poisoned pina coladas, and it's so sloppily executed that it feels as if White tossed it together in a rush. Everything remotely interesting about the Ratliffs – from their impending poverty to the ramifications of the brothers' night together – is mostly left to be dealt with off-camera. What a phenomenal failure this storyline has been. But perhaps there's a bigger problem at hand here. White used to say that the 'who ends up dead?' mystery of each White Lotus season was more of a trojan horse plot than an element he felt any real fondness for – something designed to lure in viewers who otherwise wouldn't watch a satirical character study. But season three seemed more driven by its own mystery than ever before, with too many death fakeouts, too many possible murderers, and more Chekhov's guns than the show knew what to do with. And it's ended up making people talk about The White Lotus as if it's Lost or Severance, or some other puzzle-box series riddled with Easter eggs and clues that require our solving. Some of these deep dives make sense, notably the discourse over the significance of the books our characters are reading. Others, including attempts to find hidden messages in the show's opening credit sequence, have been ludicrous. The White Lotus does leave trails of breadcrumbs here and there – Chelsea, who's survived a snake bite and an armed robbery and warned that bad luck comes in threes, had more or less been foreshadowing her own demise for weeks – but it's not the entirety of the show, and I wish that White didn't feel the need to lean into it so often. It feels significant that the most compelling moments this season have been rooted in complex human behaviour – of a kind that made The White Lotus so addictive in the first place – rather than outlandish contrivance. Think of the subtle sniping between Laurie, Jaclyn and Kate at the dinner table, or Sam Rockwell's show-stopping monologue three weeks ago. None of the violence in this gunfire-riddled finale, for instance, packed quite as big a punch as Belinda's cool dismissal of poor, naive Pornchai once she found the $5m deposited in her bank account by Gary. 'Can't I just be rich for five f****** minutes?' she asks her son when talk turns to future plans. It's an obvious mirror image to Belinda's own dismissal by Jennifer Coolidge's Tanya in the show's first season, and what a ruthless plot twist to see one of the show's only truly virtuous characters corrupted with such speed… When The White Lotus returns – rumours are that it'll be set in a colder, potentially Scandi climate – it should, for its own sake, go back to basics. White is a master when it comes to interpersonal dynamics and writing about our propensity for cruelty, arrogance and self-involvement. But after these draining eight episodes, he should avoid the mystery trap and stop there.
