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Los Angeles Times
20 minutes ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Jeff Hiller of ‘Somebody Somewhere' on his surprise Emmy nomination: ‘I was truly shocked'
File Jeff Hiller's Emmy nomination — his first ever — for supporting actor in a comedy under 2025's major surprises column. His portrayal of supportive bestie Joel to Bridget Everett's Sam on 'Somebody Somewhere' indeed ranks as one of the year's best performances, but the nuanced comedy and it's eclectic cast were considered long shots against actors from 'The Bear,' 'Only Murders in the Building' and 'Abbott Elementary.' The Peabody Award winning series, which concluded this year with its third season, followed a group of outsiders — gay and straight — as they navigated friendship, faith and questions of self in a small, rural Kansas town. Like Hiller, Joel is gay and grew up heavily involved in the Christian church. When the Academy announced its list of nominees Tuesday morning, Hiller was anything but ready to hear his name called alongside Harrison Ford ('Shrinking'), Ebon Moss-Bachrach ('The Bear') and Colman Domingo ('The Four Seasons.') He spoke to The Times, in an interview edited for clarity and length, shortly after learning he was nominated. Were you poised and waiting for the announcements this morning, or were you just like, yeah, it's not going to happen? I must tell you, without any sort of posturing or false humility, this is a surprise. I mean, it's Season 3. I said to my husband, 'The Emmy noms are coming out so I guess at some point someone's going to be like, 'Somebody Somewhere' was snubbed.' I had moved on. Then I was on the phone with my sister and I was like, 'My agent keeps calling me. What is he calling me for? Did I get that recurring role on that Fox pilot?' It was so shocking. I kind of had forgotten that it was happening. I know that this sounds so fake, but I truly was shocked. And to be noticed for such a wonderfully singular show and role. There's nothing else like 'Somebody Somewhere,' or a character like Joel, on television. I know and he was a lot like me. I took this dumb acting class on how to get to be a series regular on a TV show, and this is like 15 years into my acting career. In this class they were like, they were like, 'You won't get a series regular role unless you're a lot like the character.' And I was like, 'Oh crap! Nobody writes characters like me.' Let me just say that I'm fully aware of how lucky I was that this role came to me and I'm so grateful to Bridget and co-creators Hannah [Bos] and Paul [Thureen] because you're right. There's nothing like [the show or him] out there and to get to do a fully realized character and be gay but also be in the church— it's complicated. It takes a lot of work and exposition to get across a character this nuanced. I'm so grateful that they wrote that and then I got to play it, and that they didn't cast, you know, Michael Urie. I would have cast him. Do you miss Joel? Oh yeah, I do. It's over a year ago that we shot Season 3, so I miss the crew and the gift of being able to play him. I know that all this sounds so cheesy and hack and stuff, [like other Emmy quotes] I read in articles, but I guess it was all true when they were saying it. And where are you right now? I am at gate 95 at LaGuardia Airport. I have this credit card that I pay an extremely high fee on so that I can get into the lounge, but the line is too long so I'm just waiting at the gate until 3:40 because the flight got delayed. You were just nominated for an Emmy! Don't they know who you are? They have made it very clear they do not know who I am. So what's next? I'm very excited just to be able to go to the [Emmy] party. I've never gotten to go to a party like this. I'm going to wear something really gay. It's going to be great.
Yahoo
22 minutes ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Madam Secretary' co-stars Téa Leoni and Tim Daly are now real-life spouses
Téa Leoni and Tim Daly, I now pronounce you Mr. & Mrs. "Madam Secretary." The pair of actors, who shared the screen on the CBS political drama, will now share a life together as husband and wife, making their TV romance a reality. Leoni, 59, and Daly, 69, tied the knot Sunday in a private ceremony, The Times confirmed Tuesday. Leoni and Daly began dating in the summer of 2014 and starred in "Madam Secretary" as United States Secretary of State Elizabeth McCord and her scholar husband Henry McCord. The series aired on CBS from September 2014 to December 2019. A representative for Leoni did not confirm additional details about the newlyweds' ceremony, but People reported that the actors' intimate nuptials took place in New York with only immediate family as attendees. Read more: Olivia Culpo and husband Christian McCaffrey's baby has arrived: 'Love like no other' Leoni and Daly began their romance just before the former finalized her divorce with "X Files" star David Duchovny. Leoni and Duchovny wed in 1997 after meeting on "The Tonight Show" and share two adult children, actor West Duchovny and Kyd Miller Duchovny. Before David Duchovny, Leoni was married to TV producer Neil Joseph Tardio Jr. from 1991 to 1995. Daly's marriage to Leoni marks his second: He was previously married to theater actor Amy Van Nostrand. The exes share children Sam and Emelyn. Before crossing paths on "Madam Secretary," both Leoni and Daly had established their screen careers with a variety of TV and film credits. Leoni came to the CBS series with films including "Bad Boys," "Spanglish" and "Jurassic Park III" under her belt. She also appeared in the series "The Naked Truth" and "Flying Blind." Daly's resume includes the series "Wings" and "Private Practice," and he voiced Superman in several animated projects. Read more: Jacqui Heinrich of Fox News fact-checks the story of her own engagement: 'True' In a March 2024 interview with the "Really Famous With Kara Mayer Robinson" podcast, Daly spoke to its host about finding love on "Madam Secretary." He said his views about starting a committed relationship later in his life changed once he met Leoni. "It's the deepest, most fun, most truly intimate relationship I've ever had," he said. Sign up for Screen Gab, a free newsletter about the TV and movies everyone's talking about from the L.A. Times. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
an hour ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
‘Madam Secretary' co-stars Téa Leoni and Tim Daly are now real-life spouses
Téa Leoni and Tim Daly, I now pronounce you Mr. & Mrs. 'Madam Secretary.' The pair of actors, who shared the screen on the CBS political drama, will now share a life together as husband and wife, making their TV romance a reality. Leoni, 59, and Daly, 69, tied the knot Sunday in a private ceremony, The Times confirmed Tuesday. Leoni and Daly began dating in the summer of 2014 and starred in 'Madam Secretary' as United States Secretary of State Elizabeth McCord and her scholar husband Henry McCord. The series aired on CBS from September 2014 to December 2019. A representative for Leoni did not confirm additional details about the newlyweds' ceremony, but People reported that the actors' intimate nuptials took place in New York with only immediate family as attendees. Leoni and Daly began their romance just before the former finalized her divorce with 'X Files' star David Duchovny. Leoni and Duchovny wed in 1997 after meeting on 'The Tonight Show' and share two adult children, actor West Duchovny and Kyd Miller Duchovny. Before David Duchovny, Leoni was married to TV producer Neil Joseph Tardio Jr. from 1991 to 1995. Daly's marriage to Leoni marks his second: He was previously married to theater actor Amy Van Nostrand. The exes share children Sam and Emelyn. Before crossing paths on 'Madam Secretary,' both Leoni and Daly had established their screen careers with a variety of TV and film credits. Leoni came to the CBS series with films including 'Bad Boys,' 'Spanglish' and 'Jurassic Park III' under her belt. She also appeared in the series 'The Naked Truth' and 'Flying Blind.' Daly's resume includes the series 'Wings' and 'Private Practice,' and he voiced Superman in several animated projects. In a March 2024 interview with the 'Really Famous With Kara Mayer Robinson' podcast, Daly spoke to its host about finding love on 'Madam Secretary.' He said his views about starting a committed relationship later in his life changed once he met Leoni. 'It's the deepest, most fun, most truly intimate relationship I've ever had,' he said.
Times
2 hours ago
- Politics
- Times
How British state used celebrity gag order to hide its huge blunder
The unprecedented use of a superinjunction to cover up a damning and potentially deadly military blunder has raised concerns about government use of the courts to suppress information. The draconian gagging order, the first to be obtained by the government, can be revealed after a two-year legal battle led by The Times. The injunction restricted reporting on a massive data breach in which a list of Afghans applying to sanctuary in the UK was leaked and up to 100,000 people were put at risk of being killed by the Taliban. • Revealed: Leak that risked lives of 100,000 Afghans — and £7bn cover-up Its gagging power was so wide-ranging that journalists were prevented from asking basic questions about how the leak happened, who knew what when and who should be held to account. Parliament was misled and important scrutiny of a multibillion-pound operation to handle the fallout and rescue potentially endangered Afghans was impossible. In one of the most shocking hearings, behind locked doors in courtroom 27 of the Royal Courts of Justice, lawyers discussed MoD plans to 'provide cover' for the numbers of Afghans arriving in Britain with a statement to parliament. Successive governments obtained secrecy on an extraordinary scale using a legal tool largely used only by celebrities seeking to stop reporting on their private lives. The Conservative government first sought an injunction in August 2023, which was then converted by Mr Justice Knowles to a superinjunction on September 1. • Inside Operation Rubific: 'kill list', secrecy and a rescue mission The injunction 'contra mundrum' — Latin for 'against the world', or 'defying everyone' — was originally designed to be in place for a 'time-limited' period of four months. Yet over time government lawyers, fighting for it to remain in place, admitted there was no longer an 'end date'. It was a 'wholly novel use of the remedy' that 'stifled public debate', the High Court judge Mr Justice Chamberlain warned halfway through the case in May last year as he lifted it. He said in an earlier judgment that it was 'completely shutting down accountability' and was 'corrosive of the public's trust in government', adding the superinjunction was 'likely to give rise to understandable suspicion that the court's processes are being used for the purposes of censorship'. But the Conservative government appealed against Mr Justice Chamberlain's decision to lift it before last year's general election and it was reinstated by the Court of Appeal shortly after. The MoD argued that if the superinjunction were lifted it would risk alerting the Taliban to the potential 'kill list', which they could try to get hold of, and would enable them to hunt down up to 100,000 Afghans in hiding or trying to escape the country. Sir James Eadie KC, the MoD's lawyer, said the act of telling the Afghans their data had been breached 'creates the risk of bringing the house down on everyone'. The Times and other media argued for the superinjunction to be lifted on the grounds there was a public interest in being able to hold the government to account. Decisions were being made on significant public policy matters, including on immigration, housing and the budget, while the public was kept in the dark with no democratic accountability. Those tens of thousands of Afghans who were not going to be brought to the UK as a result of the scandal also had the right to know so they could take measures to make themselves safe. Journalists were told for two years that the security risk justified unprecedented secrecy, yet the superinjunction was abandoned by the government after an independent review by a retired civil servant based on 'open source, and often anecdotal, evidence' from non-governmental organisations, think tanks, and Afghan and international activists. • Afghan data breach: John Healey apologises for 'serious error' — live It concluded that given the extent of data already available, the dataset was 'unlikely to provide considerably new or highly pertinent information to the Taliban'. It also noted that the 'glare of publicity around revelation of the data loss would clearly be likely to attract Taliban interest in obtaining it … It is possible that [the government] has inadvertently added more value to the dataset by establishing a bespoke scheme, and through the use of an unprecedented superinjunction.' The review raised serious questions about whether the injunction was justified for the duration of the time it remained in place and the risk assessment on which it was based. If that was unreliable then there would be a question of whether more than 16,000 Afghans affected by the data incident should have been brought to the UK. At a hearing on November 11, lawyers discussed an MoD plan to 'provide cover' for the unexpected numbers of Afghans arriving in Britain. 'Provide cover' was a reference to a witness statement by Natalie Moore, the head of the Afghan resettlement scheme, in which she explained a statement to parliament would not mention a secret Afghan Response Route scheme to handle the fallout of the data breach, but there would be an 'agreed narrative' that would provide context for the increased numbers. 'It is a very, very striking thing,' Mr Justice Chamberlain said. John Healey, the defence secretary, issued a written statement on December 18, the day before parliament rose for Christmas recess, saying the government intended to close 'the UK Afghan resettlement schemes', in a misleading statement that was deliberately vague and left journalists baffled. The court case is likely to reignite debate about superinjunctions, which became controversial about 15 years ago when a series were granted to protect the privacy of celebrities. Ryan Giggs, the former Manchester United footballer, became the most high-profile in 2011 when he sought a superinjunction to prevent an alleged affair being exposed. He was named by Twitter users and identified in parliament. A review of superinjunctions the same year, led by Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury, emphasised that open justice was a 'fundamental constitutional principle' and that injunctions preventing the open discussion of court proceedings should be granted only in exceptional circumstances for a short period of time. That was called into question by the granting of the Afghan superinjunction, given its two-year length and repeated arguments by members of the media that the extraordinary measure may be doing more harm than good. Never before had a superinjunction been used by a government; in this case on the grounds of risk to life. The government's superinjunction is also likely to increase scrutiny of the role of special advocates, who represent the interests of excluded parties in cases involving national security. It meant the media was effectively operating blind, because while journalists could raise questions for the advocates to ask in closed session, they could not be told the answers to them and did not know what the government was telling the judge. Tom Forster, a security-cleared KC and the special advocate in this case, warned the lack of any external and effective scrutiny meant the 'democratic process remains in the deep freeze', adding: 'There are no checks and balances in play.' In 2012 Mr Justice Chamberlain, then a human rights and public law barrister, emphasised himself how crucial it was to limit the number of cases involving special advocates as the new system was not always fair. He cited the description of their task by the late Lord Bingham, the former lord chief justice, as like 'taking blind shots at a hidden target'. • I investigated the Afghan data leak. Ministers were gambling with death There is also a history of ministers being accused of trying to use the courts to hide wrongdoing, most notably the alleged torture of suspects after the invasion of Afghanistan after the 9/11 terror attacks, amid questions of British complicity. In this Afghan case there was a deliberate decision not to inform members of the intelligence and security committee, a parliamentary body used to scrutinise government activity, despite the peers and MPs being trusted to handle the most sensitive information. Cathryn McGahey KC, representing the MoD, admitted in February last year that 'we don't have an end date'. In November the same year, when Labour was in power, Mr Justice Chamberlain asked the court: 'It really is £6 billion?' McGahey replied 'It is … yes, it's a very large amount of public money being spent without currently any information to the public.' It later emerged in the same hearing that the planned cost was £7 billion. The MoD later said the £7 billion referred to the cost for all Afghan schemes, not just those affected by the data breach. In February this year, Mr Justice Chamberlain said: 'You're going to have to say something about all of this, because you're spending £7 billion and you're letting in many thousands of people that you would have been letting in before.' Over nearly two years, more and more individuals came to find out about the superinjunction, including a law firm representing Afghans who had been affected. It was clear the superinjunction — the longest ever to be imposed, at 683 days — could no longer hold.
Times
2 hours ago
- Politics
- Times
Did the risk ever justify the secrecy in this Kafkaesque calamity?
Railing against plans for greater secrecy in courts, the human rights barrister spoke out in frustration about the Kafkaesque nature of many closed hearings. Terrorism defendants were being asked to rebut cases against them even though they were blocked from knowing the evidence on grounds of national security. It was contrary to the principles of fairness at the heart of the British legal system, and wider use of such closed procedures would 'start to erode respect for our courts', he said. This was in 2012 and Martin Chamberlain, who was protesting against the Conservatives' controversial measures to expand the number of closed courts, was not yet a High Court judge. His words were nothing short of prescient, though, when it came to the key issues he would grapple with years later while overseeing the Afghan data leak case in a secret courtroom. This time, the Kafkaesque calamity applied to journalists rather than to terrorism defendants. The press were gagged from asking crucial questions of the Ministry of Defence to understand how seriously its blunder would endanger people's lives. And, although they could ask some questions through special advocates appointed by the court, they were prevented from knowing the answers. The Times and other media challenging the superinjunction were operating — as the late head of the judiciary, Lord Bingham, had put it about closed-evidence procedures — as if 'taking blind shots at a hidden target'. A tool that was once used mostly to protect celebrities' privacy had been used to suppress official information. And although concerns about potential misuse of superinjunctions had prompted assurances in the past that they would be applied for only to cover very short periods, that approach had been abandoned under the guise of national security. • Afghan data breach: minister apologises Parliament was also blinded, prevented from examining an issue of great public importance. The result was a lack of scrutiny that shut down the ordinary mechanisms of democracy. Chamberlain acknowledged this, and emphasised his unease about it. He concluded at first that the superinjunction, a mechanism so secret that not even its existence could be reported, was necessary because of the potential risk to thousands of people and the government's need for time to safeguard them. But he resiled from that view a year ago, concerned that it was stopping those at risk from protecting themselves. He also emphasised the need for public scrutiny of a multibillion-pound evacuation programme. It is the MoD's continued insistence that a superinjunction was still necessary, an argument that succeeded at the Court of Appeal, that requires careful scrutiny. The MoD claimed for two years that the security risk to Afghans implicated in the breach justified the unprecedented gagging order, but it was able to abandon its injunction at short notice — a complete U-turn, apparently at the flourish of a pen. It now cites a risk review concluding the Taliban probably already have the information or is unlikely to target the subjects of the leak. But it gives scant explanation of why this so drastically contradicts its long-held position that there was serious risk. This raises the question: did the risk ever truly justify the secrecy? That question gives rise in turn to many uncomfortable follow-ups. What exactly prompted this extraordinary change of heart? Where is the intelligence? Did political pressure over asylum hotels, where thousands of Afghan interpreters would surely have had to be housed, play any part in the MoD's speedy abandonment of its risk argument and in the closure of the evacuation scheme? Most uncomfortable of all: as time went on, is it possible that a legal tool put in place to protect life became a mechanism to spare the government's blushes? Even now, journalists remain gagged. A new injunction blocks the reporting of key aspects of the database leak. But until all these questions are properly addressed, accountability is severely lacking and trust is at stake. As Chamberlain himself noted back in 2012, the public have confidence in the courts only when fairness and transparency is at their heart.
