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12 hours ago
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Why Pulitzer Winner ‘Purpose' Had Its Tony-Nominated Cast ‘Sh—ing Bricks'
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' family drama 'Purpose' is already one of the big winners of the Broadway awards season: The play won the Pulitzer Prize for drama and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award in the same week, and it's also up for the Tony Award for best play with five of the six performers in its cast nominated for acting from Variety Why Bob Odenkirk Has Wanted to Do 'Glengarry Glen Ross' for Decades How 'Real Women Have Curves' Took the Fast Track to Broadway LaTanya Richardson Jackson, LaChanze and Khaila Wilcoxon Named Black Women on Broadway Awards Honorees (EXCLUSIVE) But for a while there, it was a real nail-biter as to whether there would even be a completed play for its cast to perform. Three of the show's Tony-nominated actors — LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Glenn Davis and Jon Michael Hill — share the backstory on the latest episode of 'Stagecraft,' Variety's theater podcast. 'It's gone into Steppenwolf lore now,' says Davis, who is also the co-artistic director of the Steppenwolf Theater, the Chicago institution where 'Purpose' premiered. Jacobs-Jenkins didn't turn in a completed draft of the play until the night before the first preview. 'I don't know if we can curse on here, but we were all shitting bricks!' Davis cracks. He continues, 'But I'll never forget this moment: We were waiting for the play, waiting, waiting, and we're all on stage during our final day of tech. We're starting previews the next day, and Branden delivers the play. We all read it onstage, and everyone starts crying. And I didn't know if everyone started crying because the end of the play was so beautiful, or because we finally got the play that we can do the next night for audiences!' 'How about both?' chimes in Richardson Jackson. On Broadway, Davis and Hill are reprising roles they originated in Chicago, playing siblings in a prominent Black family at a time of generational transition and high tension. Richardson Jackson, who joined the show for its Broadway run (along with Tony winner Kara Young, also new to the cast), stars at the family's formidable matriarch. Even on Broadway, rewrites came fast and furious. Hill, whose character acts as the story's narrator, recalls what it was like learning new material on the fly: 'You get out there in front of people and you're doing these monologues, and you're running, you're running, and then you're like: 'Oh, there's something new coming up. Am I going to remember what it is in the moment?' That is one of the more exhilarating and terrifying experiences I've had on the stage.' For her part, Richardson Jackson — who directed the 2022 Broadway revival of 'The Piano Lesson' —was not looking for an acting job. 'I absolutely was not,' she says. 'I told myself if I was going to really concentrate on directing, I had to stop being seduced by acting. And stop bugging all of my director friends by trying to tell them what to do when they were directing a play!' But when she read the complete draft of 'Purpose,' she quickly changed her mind. 'I said: I got to get up and get over to that play in New York!' she remembers. 'Because if there's any way for me to do this—if they are bold enough to do this play—I want to be a part of it.' The Broadway production is set to run through July 6, but Richardson Jackson thinks she might not be done with 'Purpose' quite yet. 'I'm looking to take this play to London,' she reveals, adding with a laugh: 'You got that, Glenn?' To hear the entire conversation, listen at the link above or download and subscribe to 'Stagecraft' on podcast platforms, including , and the . Best of Variety 'Harry Potter' TV Show Cast Guide: Who's Who in Hogwarts? Emmy Predictions: Apple, Netflix Lead the Pack as FYC Events Roll On Including 2,100+ Waiting List for HBO Max's Hit Series 'The Pitt' Emmy Predictions: Guest Acting (Comedy, Drama) - Scene-Stealers, Sleeper Hits and One Lucky Charm With Beau Bridges
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12 hours ago
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Patti LuPone Says Audra McDonald Is ‘Not a Friend' After a Falling Out Years Ago, Stares in Silence When Asked About McDonald's ‘Gypsy' Revival
Patti LuPone is not one to mince words, which is why her latest profile in The New Yorker is stirring up buzz among Broadway fans for the revelation that she is no longer friends with fellow stage icon Audra McDonald. 'She's not a friend,' LuPone said when McDonald's name was brought up by interviewer Michael Schulman. McDonald is a Tony nominee this year for playing Rose in 'Gypsy,' a role that previously won LuPone a Tony. LuPone revealed to The New Yorker that she had a falling out with McDonald some years ago, although she declined to go into further detail. The revelation came to be after Schulman brought up a scandal that LuPone found herself in last fall while on Broadway opposite Mia Farrow in 'The Roommate.' The play shared a wall with the Alicia Keys musical 'Hell's Kitchen,' loud noises from which could be heard next door. LuPone filed a noise complaint to Robert Wankel, the head of the Shubert Organization, and sent flowers to the cast and crew of 'Hell's Kitchen' when the noise problem was fixed. But she was later criticized by some of the musical's cast members. More from Variety Pharrell Williams and Audra McDonald on Putting Dandyism on Display at the Met Gala: 'It's About Time' Jake Gyllenhaal and Audra McDonald on Playing Broadway Villains, Stage Fright and Cellphones Disrupting Broadway Shows: 'I Snapped!' George Clooney and Patti LuPone Get Honest About Broadway Pay, Surviving the Trump Era and Elon Musk: 'Isn't He Destroying the Government?' Kecia Lewis, whose role in 'Hell's Kitchen' won her the Tony for best featured actress in a musical, posted a video on Instagram slamming LuPone's behavior as 'bullying' and 'racially microaggressive.' Lewis added that LuPone was 'rooted in privilege' and called out LuPone for labeling 'a Black show loud.' McDonald liked Lewis' video. 'Exactly,' LuPone told The New Yorker. 'And I thought, 'You should know better.' That's typical of Audra. She's not a friend.' When Schulman then asked LuPone for her thoughts on McDonald's production of 'Gypsy,' LuPone stared back at him 'in silence for fifteen seconds' and proceeded to look out the window and say: 'What a beautiful day.' As noted by People magazine, LuPone and McDonald's history of working together in the past includes the 2007 Los Angeles Opera's production of 'Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny' and the New York Philharmonic's 2000 concert version of 'Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,' in which LuPone played Mrs. Lovett and McDonald starred as the Beggar Woman. Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Emmy Predictions: Talk/Scripted Variety Series - The Variety Categories Are Still a Mess; Netflix, Dropout, and 'Hot Ones' Stir Up Buzz Oscars Predictions 2026: 'Sinners' Becomes Early Contender Ahead of Cannes Film Festival
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12 hours ago
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Why Bob Odenkirk Has Wanted to Do ‘Glengarry Glen Ross' for Decades
Bob Odenkirk ('Better Call Saul') earned a Tony nomination for his Broadway debut in the hit revival of 'Glengarry Glen Ross.' But almost 30 years ago, if he'd gotten his way, he would have starred in a very different production of David Mamet's celebrated from Variety 'Nobody 2' Trailer: Bob Odenkirk Kills Thugs With Whack-A-Mole Mallet, Boat Anchor and More in 'John Wick'-Style Action Sequel 'Glengarry Glen Ross,' Starring Kieran Culkin, Bob Odenkirk and Bill Burr, Recoups $7.5 Million Investment on Broadway Where to Buy Tickets For Broadway's Biggest Tony Nominees: 'Oh, Mary,' 'Stranger Things,' 'English' and More 'Back around '97-'98, I wrote to David Mamet and asked him if I could do an all-comedy cast of 'Glengarry Glen Ross' with Fred Willard as Shelley Levine,' Odenkirk recalled on the new episode of 'Stagecraft,' Variety's theater podcast. 'I would be Ricky Roma, and David Cross and other people would be in it too. And I said: 'Is it okay if we change it so that instead of selling land, the characters are selling pots and pans?' He never wrote back.' Odenkirk has wanted to do the show ever since. When asked why, he replied, 'I can't help but think about my roots. My dad, who was not a friend of mine, he would take me and my brother to his office occasionally, until I was about seven or eight years old. And we would go to lunch with him and his friends and they'd get drunk. They were all drunks. They all destroyed their businesses, ended up divorced. Most of them had car accidents. My dad would take us to lunch, and those guys were the guys in 'Glengarry.'' He continued, 'So I don't know, something about the play. You say, 'Well, I thought you didn't like your father. You want to get close to him or whatever?' I don't know, I guess I want to play those guys. I hung out with them occasionally, and I want to be one of those fuckers for a little while and live in their world. Live in their shoes. They're very short-sighted people, and immature. But you know, so are most of us.' Odenkirk got his start in sketch comedy, which is considerably looser and more improvisatory than the word-perfect clockwork of performing in a Mamet play. His approach to 'Glengarry' ended up being an extension of how he worked on 'Breaking Bad' and 'Better Call Saul.' 'For 'Breaking Bad,' when I first got the script, I almost started marking up that first script, like: 'Well, what if you said it this way? What if you shorten this?' Like I'd been doing my whole life in comedy. And then I immediately thought, 'You know what? I don't think a real actor does that.' I think a real actor goes: These are the words. What character do they describe, as scripted? Who is this guy if he talks like this, if he uses these phrases, if he repeats himself, if he backtracks? Who does that tell me he is?' Also in the new episode of 'Stagecraft,' Odenkirk expounded on the honor of being a Tony nominee — 'to be invited in and embraced and given a nod here by this Broadway community, a community that you can see really knows each other, is pretty special' — and revealed why he was intimidated to tackle his first Broadway project. 'The truth is, this was very intimidating and I told myself it wasn't,' he said. 'I told myself this is no big deal. It's just a stage. I've been on a million stages. But it was another level by a lot, and I didn't prepare for it, anxiety-wise.' But, he added, he's grown to love it. 'The audiences at a Broadway show come with the best fucking energy, and you get to work from that. It's the best. So now I'm looking at other plays.' To hear the entire conversation, listen at the link above or download and subscribe to 'Stagecraft' on podcast platforms, including , and the . Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Emmy Predictions: Talk/Scripted Variety Series - The Variety Categories Are Still a Mess; Netflix, Dropout, and 'Hot Ones' Stir Up Buzz Oscars Predictions 2026: 'Sinners' Becomes Early Contender Ahead of Cannes Film Festival
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12 hours ago
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Michelle Williams on Returning to Broadway With ‘Death Becomes Her,' Her Tony Snub and Beyoncé's Backstage Visit
Michelle Williams may not be a Tony nominee this year, but in her estimation, she still has plenty to celebrate. The former member of Destiny's Child is back on Broadway for the first time in seven years, originating the role of the mysterious mystic Viola Van Horne in Universal's new adaptation of the campy, macabre 1992 movie comedy 'Death Becomes Her.' Earlier this month, 'Death Becomes Her' racked up ten Tony nominations, tying with 'Maybe Happy Ending' and 'Buena Vista Social Club' for the most nominated show of the year. More from Variety Michelle Williams Says It Was 'Horrible' Living With Ryan Gosling During 'Blue Valentine' Production and Doing 'Improvisations' as a Struggling Couple: 'We Need to Burn It Down' Broadway's New Tony Icons: How Cole Escola, Sadie Sink and Fina Strazza Define the Theater Awards Race 'Death Becomes Her' Costume Designer Paul Tazewell Leaned Into Old Theater Magic for Helen's Hole-in-the-Stomach Moment and Other Iconic Looks From the Original Film Williams' name wasn't one of the ones called that morning. 'It stung a little bit,' she admitted over lunch not long after the nominations announcement on May 2. 'But I was like: Girl, you're back on Broadway after you didn't think you ever would be. Who's the winner? I'm still the winner! That fixed me.' In the years since Destiny's Child disbanded, Williams has carved out a career as a solo artist with a string of gospel hits under her belt. She's also become something of a stage regular, following up her 2003 Broadway debut in 'Aida' with stints in 'Chicago' on Broadway and in the West End, 'The Color Purple' in Chicago, 'Jesus Christ Superstar' on tour, and more. In 2018, Williams stepped into the Tony-winning Broadway revival of 'Once On This Island' — and just two weeks later was forced to exit the show, on doctor's orders, to receive treatment for depression. She was certain the experience would have repercussions on her stage career. 'I thought I was a liability,' she said. 'I thought I would never be welcomed back into the theater community.' Since then she's become a prominent advocate for mental health issues, a regular public speaker on the topic and the author of the 2021 memoir 'Checking In: How Getting Real About Depression Saved My Life — and Can Save Yours.' With 'Death Becomes Her,' she's now originating a role in a new musical for the first time — and returning to Broadway after worrying that door had closed for good. 'I don't take it lightly, or for granted,' she said. So she's enjoying every minute of it, bonding with her cast and welcoming guests backstage including Isabella Rossellini, who played the movie's version of Viola, and Michelle Williams, the Emmy-winning actress who shares the same name. The two had never met, and their ebullient first encounter after a performance in April drew attention online. ('It was a such a joy,' Williams recalled.) Around the time when 'Death Becomes Her' opened in November, the other former members of Destiny's Child, Beyoncé and Kelly Rowland, turned out to applaud Williams in the show. 'I just adore them,' Williams said. 'They make me grow. I love them as the wives and mothers, the artists and the friends that they are.' The performer said she's also relishing the chance to play a haughty, devious character, and has pushed herself to stop trying to be liked onstage. 'I'm the opposite of Viola — unless you lie to me! — and at first I didn't want people to think badly of me,' Williams admitted. 'I'm the nice one! I'm the gospel artist! But now I'm trying to take advantage of getting to be Viola.' She's also formulating her own backstory for why the immortal Viola wants to tempt people into living forever, consequences be damned. 'I know why I'd live forever,' Williams said with a laugh. 'It's because I'm nosy. I want to know everything and see everybody's evolution.' With Broadway and her activities in the mental health space taking up most of her time at the moment, she's not sure when she'll be releasing new music. Her last album, 'Journey to Freedom,' came out in 2014. 'I'm working with someone to possibly do an EP or something,' she said. 'I don't want to do it an album — I don't think. You say that and then before you know it, you have 12 songs. We will see. I've just been enjoying using my gifts in other ways to impact people.' She added with a laugh, 'But sometimes a hit song is a nice thing to have every now and then.' Best of Variety 'Harry Potter' TV Show Cast Guide: Who's Who in Hogwarts? Emmy Predictions: Apple, Netflix Lead the Pack as FYC Events Roll On Including 2,100+ Waiting List for HBO Max's Hit Series 'The Pitt' Emmy Predictions: Guest Acting (Comedy, Drama) - Scene-Stealers, Sleeper Hits and One Lucky Charm With Beau Bridges
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12 hours ago
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Lena Waithe and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins on How Pulitzer Winner ‘Purpose' is in Dialogue With ‘A Raisin in the Sun'
The Emmy-winning writer-actor Lena Waithe ('The Chi,' 'Master of None') recently sat down with the playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins to discuss his Pulitzer Prize-winning new play, 'Purpose,' now up for six Tony Awards including best play. Waithe was interested in talking through all the ways that Jacobs-Jenkins' drama about a Black family in Chicago can be seen as a work in conversation with Lorraine Hansberry's landmark 1959 play 'A Raisin in the Sun.' The duo bonded over their shared reverence for Hansberry and picked apart the themes and ideas in 'Raisin' that are refracted through a contemporary lens in 'Purpose.' LENA WAITHE: The night of the Met Gala, I was home and watching the carpet and feeling such positivity, and I did something that I do every year: I revisited 'A Raisin in the Sun' — the film, but I also have the text of the play as well. The film really moves me in a lot of different ways. I had the honor of being at the opening night of 'Purpose,' and it was such a phenomenal evening. I couldn't help but feel the conversation that was happening between 'A Raisin in the Sun' and 'Purpose.' More from Variety Original 'Hamilton' Cast to Reunite for Tony Awards Performance Why Pulitzer Winner 'Purpose' Had Its Tony-Nominated Cast 'Sh-ing Bricks' Michelle Williams on Returning to Broadway With 'Death Becomes Her,' Her Tony Snub and Beyoncé's Backstage Visit As a person who has studied Miss Hansberry, who has obsessed over Miss Hansberry, I think that oftentimes we, as younger-generation artists, are descendants of these writers. What was really fascinating to me was the fact that both these plays, 'Purpose' and 'A Raisin in the Sun,' take place in a home. We never leave the house. It's also a Black family inside of a house. BRANDEN JACOBS-JENKINS: And they're both Chicago families. LW: Exactly! What I also love about 'Purpose' is the conversations that are happening between these different generations that are having a difficult time understanding each other. And there's an idea, with Black families in particular, about how we're being perceived. What will our family name say about us? Watching 'A Raisin in the Sun' again, I learned something new. I realized that the play is not just about a Black family being brave enough to move into a neighborhood and to integrate into white America. But rather, it's about Walter Lee becoming a man, and realizing that you can't put a price on dignity. You can't put a price on your family's worth. And in your play that's happening as well. The adult sons in this family are trying to understand who they're supposed to be. I say all this to ask: What does it mean to you, Brandon, to be a man? BJJ: That's just a daily question. It's one of the questions that's at stake in every generation. What are you choosing to inherit or not inherit? No one teaches you how to be anything but the people in your life. My father passed away at the beginning of this year, right before we started rehearsals. He was actually the same age as the patriarch in my play, Solomon Jasper. That was not something that was intentional, but I could feel that I was, in a quiet way, trying to talk through things with him, through the play and with the play. My father also had other kids. I have all these half-siblings in the world. When I talked to him about it, he said to me, 'You know, everybody I knew had an outside family or outside kids, and part of it was that none of us thought we were going to live past the age of 55.' He was witnessing these evolutions and social progress over the course of his life, and suddenly having to renegotiate his relationship to what he thought his future would look like. When you live like that you are making it up as you go. You don't have an idea of how to be an older man. I think about how blessed I am to have these models who've lived that long, who've survived a lot of political and social violence. I don't even know how to answer that question of what being man means to me, because I feel like I'm still receiving new models in real time. There's just so much at stake and its feels like it's particularly tricky. Black masculine life is tricky. LW: One of the things I was thinking about when I left 'Purpose' was the patriarch, and asking myself who taught him what it meant to be a man. BJJ: This is the generation where Walter Sr., the patriarch in 'Raisin' who has passed on, could have lived, right? The implication is that in that time period, when 'Raisin' was written, that man worked himself to death. Worked himself to death to become this bag of money. And Solomon is the generation after that. He was given access to a different sort of agency and political movement. He could make a living for himself in a way that Walter couldn't. Thinking about 'Raisin,' another thing I love about that play is the women and how those three female characters are a triangulation of three kinds of femininity in that era. In some ways I've also repeated that with 'Purpose.' LW: In your play, Kara Young's character, Aziza, is very close to the daughter, Beneatha, in 'Raisin.' Yes, Aziza is queer… but Beneatha is definitely exploring some shit! BJJ: There's a radicality to her. I hate when people do this to writers, but I think Lorraine sees herself in Beneatha, and in some ways Kara's character, her biography most closely hews to mine. No one is shaped more by history than women, honestly, and at least if you look at every decade of the 20th century, there's a different kind of lady for each decade, and 'Raisin' is just so incredible at capturing this pivotal moment in the culture. LW: One thing that really stood out to me when I was thinking about the three women in 'Purpose' is that Claudine, the matriarch, is very much in dialogue with 'A Raisin in the Sun' and with the matriarch in that play, Lena Younger. They are both there to uphold the husband — for Lena it's upholding her late husband's memory and inheritance. They are each responsible for their husband's legacy. I'm thinking specifically of Black women here, but it could be said of women in general: It is a woman's job to uphold the male while he becomes himself, to help him become himself. And there is no one there to do the same for women. Something I think that's really stunning and beautiful about 'Purpose' is Aziza, a queer woman, is brought into the frame in a way that it's not in 'A Raisin in the Sun,' even though we know now that Lorraine Hansberry was a queer women. Her queerness was not able to be brought into the frame, not at that time. BJJ: If you look at Lorraine's notebooks, she really struggled with that identity. She didn't have the tools to be free in that way. LW: That's why I think 'Purpose' is bringing us into a new generation, bringing us into the future. When Kara's character walks into the door, it's almost you giving Lorraine's ghost, that part of her, permission to come onto the stage. Aziza, and I say this about myself too, we do not live under the male gaze. There's a freedom. BJJ: What doesn't go directly questioned in 'Raisin' is Mama Younger's devotion. Her whole perception of herself, as an extension of loving this man, is to take care of this family. That was her whole purpose in life. That's real. That's a real person in the world, and they have a whole philosophy that backs that up. And I was interested in putting that on stage. For me, the three women in 'Purpose,' they're all different iterations of, or riffs on, or responses to that idea of: Stand by your man. There's Claudine, and then there's also Morgan, who is married to Claudine's son and going to jail for something he did. Morgan's whole thing is: Why did I stand by this man? Because now I'm literally going to jail and nobody's throwing me a party. And then Aziza, who's going to have a baby on her own, she's like: I'm gonna do this by myself. LW: I love that Aziza and Nazareth, the family's younger son, ride off together. They end up getting the same car to exit this house, which, in my opinion, is also a metaphor for a different time in our history and our culture. I was also thinking about how it takes more than just men to uphold the patriarchy. Women often have a hand in it as well. One thing I picked up on is that you don't really see the grandchildren in 'Purpose.' In 'A Raisin in the Sun' we see Walter Lee's son and we know that he is the future of this family, and we see how Lena treats him and how she wants to take care of him and help raise him. But in 'Purpose,' with the grandchildren, you're aware of them, but they're invisible. Morgan is keeping these kids away from the family. Even though we don't see them in this play, I am thinking about those sons. BJJ: They're like little princes locked in a tower. I'm always interested in gesturing towards the ways that families wind up shaping themselves inadvertently. Where do these branches start to break off? What creates the moments of renegotiating the lines of the family? A lot of the energy of this play is about these two mothers, Claudine and Morgan, who are very different, but who I also think of, honestly, as the same person who just happen to be born in the exact wrong times to be able to see each other. But they're who makes the story of the family. They're deciding: Well, this can't be part of my kids' life. To me, that's the reality of how families are negotiated, now especially. LW: I want to ask about secrets within the family. I think what resonated with me about your work is the fact that oftentimes Black families are really good at keeping secrets, and I'm curious about what that means to you, and how that clearly erodes everything in the home. BJJ: I've said that this play is attached to my play 'Appropriate,' which was on Broadway last year. 'Appropriate' and 'Purpose' are both family secret plays. For me, ultimately, it's about how shame is toxic. If there's one thing I want people to take back into their lives, it is this idea that shame is the worst thing you can encourage and introduce into your family. Because what really motivates that secret-keeping is individual shame. The best thing you could do for the generations rising up in your family is to be transparent, and think of family as the place where you can be your fullest self. Black families and Black folks in general, our emotional range and our affect is so policed — in pop culture, privately, socially. And so you do have these families that are deep in fear of somehow being in reality with each other, because they think that's going to make them lesser-than, rather than celebrating the fact that everyone's present together, that love can happen in spite of these things. That's the moral, guys. Shame should have no place in the family. Every psychologist will tell you that. Never shame your children. That's how you build monsters. LW: One thing I've thought about since seeing the play, and it's haunted me a little bit, is about male sexuality, and particularly Black male sexuality. You've depicted that with the youngest son, Nazareth. BJJ: There's so much more to conversations about sexuality and desire. We all live with desire, and it's so complicated, and yet our representation is always on a binary. I wish there was more nuanced wrestling with it. That's why I love Tennessee Williams. All that work was about: We don't even know what we're talking about when we talk about desire, yet it is the thing we all live with and wrestle with. LW: My last question is about family and the idea of it. I've come to find that I'm not a believer in blood. The people that I'm closest to are not my blood relatives, and the people I feel the most distance from are actually related to me. You write so beautifully about different kinds of families, and how those family dynamics operate. And you are one of the patriarchs of your own family. So I wanted to ask you: What is your definition of family? BJJ: For me, family is about relationships and people. It's about love and a commitment to love, in spite of everything. And I think it's about respect. Ultimately the reason families fall apart is that people lose that respect for each other. They stop seeing the humanity and they project their own traumas and psycho-battles onto each other. Life is hard enough, and family gives you the unit to get through it. It's supposed to be a place of sanity. Ideally. Often it's not. I'm gonna make a huge sweeping statement: I teach a lot, and I see kids showing up where I'm like: Oh, you don't have to find your family. There's culture-changing stuff where there are parents on TV now talking about how much they love their kids. That was not what I had growing up at all. LW: Me, either. I mean, you saw the Thanksgiving episode. BJJ: Families and found families are necessary, especially to get through social moments that are antagonistic to your being. Family is the people who show up and who keep showing up. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Best of Variety What's Coming to Netflix in June 2025 New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Emmy Predictions: Sci-Fi Surges, FYC Crunch Pressure, and Comedy Category Shakeups Across 94 Races
