Latest news with #LukeMacfarlane
Globe and Mail
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Globe and Mail
Apple TV+ triples down on Seth Rogen with the hilarious second season of Platonic
It all started with a mullet. Or at least what Seth Rogen recalls when asked about the second season production of his hilarious Apple TV+ series Platonic, in which his character, a bar manager named Will, adopts the business-in-the-front-party-in-the-back hairstyle that thematically signifies the ne'er-do-well's arrested development. 'There was this gentleman who came in as a grip as we were finishing shooting The Studio, and he had this mullet and instantly my hair and makeup team, who we share across shows, knew that oh yeah, we like that,' Rogen says with his trademark chuckle. 'It was the perfect look for my character. I don't even know the guy's name, but maybe he'll see this interview and clue in.' The mullet – which Rogen is careful to emphasize was in fact a wig that was removed at the end of every shooting day ('it was a merkin situation') – is just one of the many small but significant details that make up Platonic's delightfully hilarious and eccentric vision of Los Angeles, where Will and his best friend Sylvia (Rose Byrne) endure all manner of comic misadventures. Picking up where the first season left off – with Will set to marry the CEO of a brewing empire, and Sylvia finding some level of peace with her ultra-considerate lawyer husband Charlie (Luke Macfarlane) – the second batch of Platonic episodes represents something of the platonic ideal of a streaming-era sitcom. Each 30-minute-or-so episode offers the kind of warm and straight-shooting humour that most television series these days seem allergic to. There is no hidden darkness, no trauma needing to be unearthed. Every tightly edited episode simply provides a great opportunity to hang with characters who you love, even – or perhaps especially – when they get themselves into all manner of forehead-slapping predicaments. In other words, this ain't The Bear – it's just funny for funny's sake. 'We were very clear from the beginning that it's kind of like trivial, but also in a way relatable – it's not about things that are extraordinary,' Rogen says in an interview. 'You know, divorce, midlife crises, losing your job, having kids, trying to start over. It's not life or death stakes, or like true trauma. It's more everyday stuff, and that's what's really funny about the show.' 'And it's light, it's not heavy stuff,' adds Byrne, sitting alongside her longtime collaborator (in addition to the first season of Platonic, the pair played a married couple in 2014's Neighbors and its severely underrated 2016 sequel, Neighbors: Sorority Rising). 'It's very clear about that.' As conceived by Nicholas Stoller and his wife Francesca Delbanco, Platonic has so far not earned the excitable chatter, or Emmy nominations, of Rogen's other Apple TV+ series, The Studio. Yet it is undoubtedly the more affable and even purely enjoyable of the two, its breezy pacing and note-perfect casting making it one of the more witty small-screen comedies to come along in years. Its extreme levels of comfort might not be possible, though, were it not for the close relationships that make up its behind-the-scenes team. In addition to the obvious domestic closeness shared between Stoller and Delbanco, the former has been friends with Rogen since their days on Fox's short-lived campus comedy Undeclared. That sitcom also co-starred Carla Gallo, who appears in Platonic as Cynthia's best friend, a divorced mom and aspiring podcaster named Katie (and whose adventures with Will this season will surely fulfill the dreams of all the Undeclared fan-fiction writers out there). Meanwhile, Stoller directed the whole gang – Rogen, Byrne, Gallo, plus The Studio's Ike Barinholtz – in both Neighbors films. 'I've known Nick since I was 18, which is also when I met Carla on the show. And with Rose now it's been almost 15 years, so it feels familial at this point,' Rogen says. 'I mostly just think that it's nice that we can get along and also work so well together. Our sensibilities are still the same, and none of us has done anything that has, you know, exiled us from the industry. I mean, the day is young, but those are all things that aren't lost on me.' 'I mean Nick gave me my break in comedy,' Byrne adds. 'I'd done all this dramatic, very serious stuff. I was solving cases with Glenn Close on Damages, so it was all crime, crime, crime, and I was not the first candidate to be a funny actress by any means, and he took a chance on me.' Also getting a second chance here is the Canadian actor Macfarlane, who was originally set for big-screen stardom with Stoller's 2022 comedy Bros, before that same-sex romcom ended up underwhelming at the box office. While the actor got a sizable amount of screen time in the first season of Platonic as Sylvia's put-upon husband, the character gets a big boost this time around as Charlie endures a midlife crisis that revolves around a deeply strange yet intensely funny appearance on Jeopardy! (This results in the second-best Jeopardy! sitcom moment ever filmed, following John Ratzenberger's immortal moment with Alex Trebek during a Season 8 episode of Cheers.) 'Nick is a super-busy guy and he came up to me at an event and said, 'Oh I have this super-funny thing that's going to happen to you!' But then I didn't see any scripts for a long time,' Macfarlane recalls in a separate interview. 'But the funny thing was that no one actually knew I was a huge fan of the show. So when I stepped onto the set of Jeopardy!, I was such a fan that I noticed it was a slightly new set. They update it every few months or so. And I noticed that because I do truly watch the show. All the time.' As for the opportunity to once again work with not only his onscreen wife Byrne and fellow Canadian Rogen but also Stoller, Macfarlane is, as most of the Platonic characters are, gracious to a fault. 'Nick and Francesca are so good at finding these little pieces of comedy. It's not pratfalls, it's not gross-out moments, it's just comedy that comes from observing humans every single day,' the actor says. 'The show doesn't feel loud. It's grounded in the small things. And that's where we laugh the most in our lives, isn't it?' The first two episodes of Platonic Season 2 are available to stream Aug. 6 on Apple TV+, with new episodes premiering weekly until Oct. 1.
Yahoo
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Watch: Sylvia, Will 'get screwy' in 'Platonic' Season 2
July 17 (UPI) -- Apple TV+ is previewing the sophomore season of Platonic, starring Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne as friends for over two decades. The trailer, released Thursday, shows how Will's new girlfriend impacts their platonic relationship. "Will and I always get screwy when he's in a couple," Sylvia (Byrne) tells husband Charlie (Luke Macfarlane) in the preview. "I don't wanna lose him again. If I were to replace him now, it would take 25 years for me and this new friend to catch up to where Will and I are and by then I'm practically dead and who cares?" Season 2 stars Carla Gallo, Aidy Bryant, Kyle Mooney, Beck Bennett and Milo Manheim, and will premiere with two episodes Aug. 6. "The duo tries their best to be each other's rock, but sometimes rocks break things," the official synopsis reads. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The 7 Sexiest Movies About the Amish
Here are the seven sexiest movies about the Amish. Yes, we know what you're thinking: How can anyone narrow it down to just seven? We did our best, and came up with the following. Related Headlines 13 Shameless TV Shows That Don't Care If You're Offended All 6 Joker Actors Ranked Worst to Best The 12 Funniest Comedies We've Ever Seen Try as we might, we can't find a better movie title than that of the ripped-from-the-headlines Lifetime film Amish Stud, which is drawn from the screen name that Eli Weaver (Luke Macfarlane) used to meet women in chatrooms. The film follows the wayward Eli as he plots with his mistress to murder his wife, to the horror of his conservative Amish community, which is strongly opposed to using the internet, and more specifically using the internet for online dating, and especially to using the internet for online dating that leads to the murder of one's spouse. The movie has its sexy moments before the killing. Sex Drive seems like one of those Old Hollywood classics in which they thought of the title first and built the movie around it. And what a movie. The plot concerns a young man named Ian (Josh Zuckerman) who meets a woman online (don't worry, he's not Amish, no rules are broken yet) and embarks on a long road trip to meet her. He's joined by his best friends Lance (Clark Duke) and Felicia (Amanda Crew, a perfect Cute Brunette Friend in an '80s Movie, except in a 2000s movie.) The sexy Amish stuff comes into play when the gang has car trouble, and a sarcastic Amish guy named Ezekiel (Seth Green, great as always) provides some help. Lance soon meets an Amish girl named Mary (Alice Greczyn). But here's the twist: When Lance learns that his dalliance with Mary could lead to her being shunned, Lance chooses to stay with her, and they marry. Lance sports an Amish beard at the end, strongly suggesting that he has adopted Mary's way of life. And so this sex drive turns out to be a love drive. It's not only one of the sexiest movies about the Amish, but also one of the most pro-Amish. Not content to rest on the laurels of Amish Stud, Lifetime delved back into the Amish erotic thriller subgenre with another ripped-from-the-headlines bodice ripper, Amish Affair. The film tracks the passionate barnyard trysts between Hannah (Mackenzie Cardwell) and Amish also-stud Aaron (Ryan McPartlin) after he welcomes her into his home to help with his ailing (and inconvenient) wife. Lines are crossed, questions are raised, and, as so often happens in these situations, rat poison is dispensed. This Lifetime original received a mostly positive reception, though one YouTube user commented, "OMG! We Amish are so not like this! LOL." It was probably Eli Weaver. We know, we know: Wes Craven's Deadly Blessing, as everyone remembers, isn't technically about the Amish. It's about the Hittites, a very Amish-like sect. ( notes that the film "is set in Amish Country, at a local farm, where a woman's husband is mysteriously killed by his own tractor!") But the Hittite stuff feels like a fig leaf covering up the fact that the sect is intended as an obvious stand-in for the Amish. This slasher film, which landed between the early mayhem of Craven classics like Last House on the Left and the commercial success of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, relies heavily on the appeal of its scantily clad actresses (including Sharon Stone in an early role) as they deal with an evil incubus. (Though really, is there any other kind?) There's lots of Biblical imagery, including an icky scene with a snake in a bathtub. It combines titillation and terror, in classic slasher tradition, but with some religious extremism thrown in. We can understand why the Amish probably wouldn't want to be connected with it, and its ickier aspects explain why it's only fourth on this list. Also: Stone grew up in a part of Pennsylvania not far from Amish country, which makes us like Deadly Blessing more. Though it's set in the 1920s, you can really feel the '60s swinging through The Night They Raided Minsky's, one of many films that had fun with the changing sexual mores of the year that followed the Summer of Love. Minsky's was also one of the first films to pit the plain Amish against the constant temptations of the outside world. A pure romp, the film follows Britt Eckland as Rachel Schpitendavel, a young Amish woman hoping to make it in New York City with dance numbers inspired by the Bible. Through a series of complicated events, she ends up performing her chaste numbers at a burlesque show. When her furious Amish father tries to drag her offstage, ripping her clothes, she accidentally invents a new kind of entertainment. The people involved in The Night They Raided Minsky's are A-list all the way, and include producer Norman Mailer, director William Friedkin (who would go on to direct The Exorcist), and actors Jason Robards, Elliott Gould and Denholm Elliott. The latter would go on to appear in two Indiana Jones films with a gentleman who stars in the next film on our list. A basically perfect movie, Witness is rather chaste by the standards of the sexiest movies about the Amish. Of course it wasn't the first film to juxtapose the plain lifestyle of the Amish with the sultriness of the big city, but it is one of the first to do it with respect. There's a passionate, beautifully shot makeout scene between Rachel (Kelly McGillis) and Philadelphia cop John Book (Harrison Ford) before the big fight with the English who come to invade Rachel's idyllic community to get her son, Samuel (Lucas Haas), who has witnessed a murder. The scene is as effective as it is because of the restraint leading up to it: John and Rachel's silent assignation is naturalistic, cathartic and entirely convincing. Witness follows a lot of Hollywood tropes — the fish out of water, the mismatched lovers — and yet it works completely because everyone, from Ford to McGillis to director Peter Weir, commits and tries to give the Amish depth and dignity, instead of just treating them as comic foils. But this isn't a list of the best movies about the Amish — it's a list of the sexiest movies about the Amish. Which brings us to No. 1 on our list. For our money, Kingpin is one of the funniest Farrelly brothers films, and has a proud spot on our list of '90s Comedies That Just Don't Care If You're Offended. It follows bowling burnout Roy Munson (Woody Harrelson) as he attempts to exploit Amish bowling savant Ishmael Boorg (Randy Quaid). But he must compete with Claudia (Vanessa Angel) who uses her considerable wiles to both corrupt and liberate the naive Ishmael. Some of the most memorable scenes in Kingpin come when Claudia uses the aforementioned wiles to help her boys on the bowling circuit by distracting their opponents. What makes Kingpin so satisfying is how all three main characters, despite their intense differences and flaws, ultimately uplift one another. As in many Farrelly brothers films, the tawdrier parts of life lead to wholesome outcomes. Did we miss one of your favorite sexiest movies about the Amish? Please let us know in the comments. You may also like this list of 11 Shameless Movies That Glamorize the Devil, including Bedazzled, above, which somehow manages to be one of the sexiest movies around, despite lacking any Amish. Main image: The Night They Raided Minsky's. United Artists. Related Headlines 13 Shameless TV Shows That Don't Care If You're Offended All 6 Joker Actors Ranked Worst to Best The 12 Funniest Comedies We've Ever Seen
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Two finalists selected in NOLA Public Schools Superintendent search
NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) — Two finalists have been selected in the search for a new superintendent for the New Orleans Public School System. According to NOLA Public Schools, the Orleans Parish School Board named Dr. Sharon Latten-Clark and Dr. Fateama S. Fulmore as finalists after a board meeting on March 25, which followed first-round interviews with three semifinalists. Clark approaches the selection with over 25 years of experience in public education, serving currently as the Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education district 2 representative and charter director for Sophie B. Wright High School in New Orleans. She holds a bachelor's and a master's degree from Xavier University, with her Doctorate in Educational Leadership from the University of New Orleans. Louisiana interior designer makes magic with Luke Macfarlane on new show 'Home is Where The Heart Is' Fulmore currently sits as the interim superintendent of NOLA Public schools, previously serving as the deputy superintendent. She holds over 20 years of experience in PK-12 education. Fulmore's education includes a bachelor's from Appalachian State University, a master's from Gardner Webb University, an Ed.S. from Grand Canyon University and an Ed.D. from Gwynedd Mercy University. The next steps in the selection process will occur as follows, per NOLA Public Schools officials: Tuesday, April 1, 2025 – Public engagement event with finalists at 6 p.m. at Walter L. Cohen High School Wednesday, April 2, 2025 – Special board meeting to conduct final-round interviews and election of superintendent Thursday, April 17, 2025 – Board business meeting to approve contract for new from New Orleans to Mobile starting service in Summer, 2025 Former Louisiana Senator J. Bennett Johnston dead at 92 Two finalists selected in NOLA Public Schools Superintendent search Louisiana interior designer makes magic with Luke Macfarlane on new show 'Home is Where The Heart Is' Jeff Dow named the next head coach of the Southeastern Women's Basketball program Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Yahoo
Metairie crash leaves pedestrian dead
METAIRIE, La. (WGNO) — Deputies with the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office are investigating a crash that left a pedestrian dead in Metairie. The JPSO reported that the crash happened in the 4100 block of Veterans Boulevard around 10 p.m. on March 15. New Orleans police announce sudden death of fellow officer JPSO officials said an initial investigation shows that a Toyota Sienna was driving in the center westbound lane when a 76-year-old man stepped out in front of it. The man suffered severe injuries and was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead on March 23. Dilapidated building catches fire in Mid-City: NOFD According to the JPSO, 'The driver did not show any apparent signs of impairment.' The investigation is interior designer makes magic with Luke Macfarlane on new show 'Home is Where The Heart Is' Jeff Dow named the next head coach of the Southeastern Women's Basketball program GOP rallies behind debt limit hike in Trump tax bill, speedy timeline Metairie crash leaves pedestrian dead Tulane boasts star power receivers in Pro Day 2025 Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
