Celebrity News

CELEBRITY NEWS

Amy Schumer

NATE BLOOM COLUMNIST

SCHUMER’S NEW SERIES, WEWORK FIASCO, NEW SIT-COM

Life & Beth is a limited series that will begin streaming on Hulu March 18. All 10 episodes will be released then. This comedy/drama stars Amy Schumer, 40, as Beth. Schumer also wrote and directed the series.

The advance publicity doesn’t reveal that much. Here’s the gist of what it says. Beth is seemingly doing fine. She makes a good living as a wine distributor. She’s in a longterm relationship with a good guy. Then a sudden incident forces Beth to deal with her past. Through flashbacks to her teens, Beth learns a lot about herself. She gradually gets on the path of becoming the person she really wants to be.

Advance info about the supporting cast is limited to their characters’ names. “High in the credits” is Michael Cera, who almost always plays nice guys. I bet he plays Beth’s nice boyfriend. You might remember Cera playing the nice Jewish boyfriend of the title character in the hit film Juno (2007).

Veteran actor Michael Rapaport, 51, is “high up” in the credits, like Cera. You know Rapaport, even if you can’t place him immediately. He’s a burly red-haired guy with a strong NY accent who has been in a lot of movies and TV shows. He was a series regular on Boston Public.

WeCrashed is a feature film that chronicles the rise and fall of WeWork, an office-sharing company. It premieres on Apple + TV March 18. WeWork was founded in 2010. It was financed by a Korean bank that invested so much money in the company that it couldn’t just walk away. So, when things went sour in 2019, it paid company founder Adam Neumann, 42, $1.7 billion to go away. It put in others to run the company, which still limps along.

On paper, Neumann and his wife, Rebekah Neumann, 44, were a model Jewish couple. They are the good-looking parents of five and are practicing Jews. Adam was born in Israel and had a fine, long career in the Israeli navy. But, WeWork, while not quite a scam, was shamelessly over-hyped by the Neumanns.

Lee Eisenberg, 44, co-wrote the film. Here’s my kvetch: as usual, nonJews play a “very Jewish” couple — Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway play the Neumanns.

Welcome to Flatch is a Fox sit-com that premieres March 17 (9:30 p.m.). Capsule plot: A documentary company stumbles on a small Midwestern town with many eccentric residents. Aya Cash, 39 (You’re the Worst and Boys) co-stars as Cheryl Peterson, a documentary maker. Cash’s father is Jewish, and she was raised Jewish. She’s married to Josh Alexander, a (Jewish) writer.

In my last column, I wrote about Pieces of Her, an eight-episode series that is now streaming on Netflix. The series has got great reviews and big viewing numbers. Vague advance publicity led me to misdescribe the role that Jessica Barden, 29, plays. She plays Jane, the name the lead character, Laura, had as a child and young woman. Barden appears in tiny flashbacks until the fifth episode, when long flashbacks of Jane begin to appear. One bit of advice: stay with this series to the end. You may be frustrated that you don’t know who the “good and the bad guys” are until late in the series. It’s worth the wait.

GREG2600 VIA WIKIPEDIA

Michael Rapaport

BEHIND THE VELVET ROPE TV, CC BY 3.0

Aya Cash

BY MINGLE MEDIA TV