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3 0 T H

A N N I V E R S A R Y

I S S U E

THE

West WING Vote GETS OUT THE

MARTIN SHEEN

and the cast REUNITE to help B O O ST TURNOUT in the

M O S T I M P O R TA N T ELECTION EVER

B R A D L E Y W H I T F O R D, RI C H AR D SC H I F F, JA N E L M O LO N E Y, CRE ATOR A ARON SORKIN, DULÃ&#x2030; HILL , ROB LOWE, A N D A L L I SO N JAN N E Y

Contents ON THE COVER: WHITFORD’S GROOMING: SAMANTHA BATES/DEW BEAUTY AGENCY; SCHIFF’S GROOMING: NICOLE SANCHEZ; MOLONEY’S STYLING: NEGAR ALI KLINE/THE ONLY AGENCY; HAIR: CLAYTON HAWKINS/A-FRAME AGENCY; MAKEUP: LAUREN CANBY/AFRAME AGENCY; DRESS: AKRIS; EARRINGS: GRAZIELA; RING: MELINDA MARIE; SORKIN’S GROOMING: LOUISE MOON; HILL’S STYLING: JASON BOLDEN/JSN STUDIO; GROOMING: JACKI BROWN; MAKEUP: GENO FREEMAN; SUIT, SHIRT, TIE: KENNETH COLE; LOWE’S STYLING: ANNIE PSALTIRAS/THE WALL GROUP; GROOMING: DANIEL ERDMAN; SUIT: PAUL SMITH; SHIRT: ZEGNA; JANNEY’S STYLING: TARA SWENNEN/THE WALL GROUP; HAIR: JILL CROSBY; MAKEUP: SERGIO LOPEZ-RIVERA/CLOUTIER REMIX; TOP: KATE SPADE; PANTS: LELA ROSE; EARRINGS: GRAZIELA GEMS; SET DESIGN: ANTHONY A. ALTOMARE

SEPTEMBER 2020 → 30TH ANNIVERSARY IS SUE

→

TOGETHER FROM A DISTANCE

To reunite the West Wing cast as safely as possible, EW teamed with esteemed photographer Art Streiber to create the cover and inside photos. Each cast member was shot individually and later composited together in postproduction by Angie Hayes. The shoot required masks, temperature checks, and reconfigured studio spaces to maximize distance between the few people on set. We were particularly cautious with national treasure Martin Sheen, 80— artist Tim O’Brien was hired to paint the former president, and we caught up with him on Zoom. Hail to the chief!

THE WEST WING ASSEMBLES! The cast and creator of NBC’s beloved political drama look back at the show’s unforgettable impact on their lives—and look ahead with aims to increase voter turnout for Election Day 2020.

32 EW TURNS 30 It’s a legen—wait for it—dary celebration! EW remembers the most iconic characters and moments from the past 30 years in pop culture.

64 THE NEW GOLDEN AGE OF BLACK HORROR With Antebellum, Bad Hair, and Candyman debuting this fall, Black filmmakers revitalize the horror genre. BY CHANCELLOR AGARD

ON THE COVER Bradley Whitford, Richard Schiff, Janel Moloney, Aaron Sorkin, Dulé Hill, Rob Lowe, and Allison Janney photographed exclusively for EW by Art Streiber on July 23 and 24, 2020, in Los Angeles

3-6-1-6-6-7-5-1-3

2 SOUND BITES

4 E D I TO R ’ S N OT E

I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y T I M O ’ B R I E N

8 T H E M U ST L I ST

70 R E V I E WS

EW ● COM

112 T H E B U L L S E Y E

S E PT E M B E R 2 0 2 0

THE SHARPEST LINES FROM 30 YEARS OF INTERVIEWS

Sound Bites .” ERG

ICEB

K. PID S TU

SA N L IE V

“SELF-LOVE ISN’T BEING DELUSIONAL.... I DON’T GO, ‘DO I LOOK LIKE THIS MODEL OR THIS ACTRESS?’ I HAVE TO HOLD MYSELF TO MY OWN STANDARDS. SO AM I THE LIZZO THAT I LOOKED LIKE LAST YEAR WHEN I WAS ON MY JUICE CLEANSE AND WORKING OUT SIX TIMES A WEEK WITH MY TRAINER? NO. BUT AM I A BAD BITCH? YES.” LE AH GREENBL AT T’S PICK: Lizzo, speaking facts

“ LET ME GUESS —YOU WENT,

“I C A

N’T BE

@ D E R E K J L AW R E N C E

KRISTEN BALDWIN’S PICK: 11-year-old Kayla, celebrating her birthday with a Titanic-themed party at a burial site for 121 of the ship’s passengers

‘OH F---, HERE WE GO AGAIN.’ ”

“ I was so nervous, I remember I broke the ice by joking about the horny summers at this theater camp we had both been to when we were kids.”

DEREK L AWRENCE’S PICK: Liam Neeson, predicting the reaction to the plot of his latest action film

SEIJA RANKIN’S PICK: Kathryn Hahn, recalling her first meeting with Kate Hudson for How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days

“Facebook really owes me billions of dollars. But whatever.” DARREN FRANICH’S PICK: Vin Diesel, speeding to the most Facebook followers of any actor

“I’M SURE THEY’LL MAKE BRIDESMAIDS AT A CERTAIN POINT, BUT I DON’T KNOW HOW THE DIARRHEA SCENE IS GOING TO PLAY ON BROADWAY.” MAUREEN LEE LENKER’S PICK: Maya Rudolph, discussing the hit comedy’s chances of being turned into a musical

“RIGHT NOW? WHAT TIME IS IT, 3:30 P.M. ON A SATURDAY? I’D SAY MONA-LISA IS ON MDMA GETTING HER A--HOLE WAXED, AND JEAN-RALPHIO HASN’T WOKEN UP YET. OR JEAN-RALPHIO IS ON MDMA GETTING HIS A--HOLE WAXED, AND MONA-LISA HASN’T WOKEN UP YET. TAKE YOUR PICK.” JES SICA DER SCHOWITZ’S PICK: Parks and Recreation alum Jenny Slate, speculating what Mona-Lisa and Jean-Ralphio Saperstein are up to

Regis Philbin (1931–2020) Regis Philbin, who died July 24, once told EW, “I always wanted to be a TV talker.” And for almost three decades, he was the nation’s warm, refreshing cup of coffee each morning, before then also becoming the face of prime time as host of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. When he wasn’t handing out checks, he became a winner himself, setting the Guinness World Record for the most hours on U.S. television.

“The audience doesn’t want to know how wonderful your life is. What’s going to keep them tuned in is the other side of life—the aggravations, the slights, the family stuff. Sometimes you really gotta suck it up and tell the most embarrassing things.” —Philbin, explaining to EW in 1992 why he shared a graphic story and visual about his kidney stones

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TITANIC: MERIE WEISMILLER WALLACE/PARAMOUNT; FURIOUS 7: SCOTT GARFIELD/UNIVERSAL PICTURES; BRIDESMAIDS: MARK SELIGER; LIVE WITH REGIS AND KELLY: DISNEY/ABC DOMESTIC TELEVISION

E IT

B Y → D E R E K L AW R E N C E

Editor’s Note BY → JD HEYMAN

@JDHEYMAN

Past Editors’ Highs (and Lows)

HENRY GOLDBLATT

MATT BEAN

JESS CAGLE

YOU’RE WELCOME FOR

Talking Bill Murray out of his hotel room with the help of Al Roker and Sigourney Weaver for the Ghostbusters reunion.

Robert Trachtenberg’s shot of Melissa McCarthy as Queen Elizabeth holding a corgi made the world a better place.

I’m not going to apologize for the Outlander covers, but someone probably should have taken away my license to pun when I wrote “For Your Ayes Only.”

I’M SORRY ABOUT

Who needs a TV guide? We have the internet! I killed What to Watch using this logic, and I’m not sure the letters have stopped yet.

All the Twilight covers, each one part of a quixotic quest to boost newsstand sales during the digital revolution.

Our reunions, like My Best Friend’s Wedding, required the secrecy of an MI6 mission. I’M SORRY ABOUT

Now We Are 30... And as Wicked as Ever RICK TETZELI

JIM SEYMORE

JEFF JARVIS

EDITORS LOVE ANNIVERSARIES. WE’LL L ATCH ONTO THE

YOU’RE WELCOME FOR

ﬂimsiest excuse for a story. But surely even hard-hearts among you will allow that hitting the Big Three-0 is a thing. Back at EW’s hatching, the Golden Girls were a ratings supernova, a movie promoting streetwalking as a viable path to happiness made Julia Roberts a star, and Wilson Phillips were urging us to hold on for one more day. Besides fashion sense, what have we learned since k.d. lang gave the side-eye on cover No. 1? That life can be rough, but jolly in good company. Facing the future nowadays may give your innards a twist. Know we’ll face it by your side, with lashings of wit and the steely squint of a more woke Eastwood. How could we not distract you for 30 more years? You’re awfully good company.

Stephen King’s column. He had deeply felt cultural and political views that he expressed clearly and unpretentiously.

Boosting Seinfeld, which we considered the best TV comedy of the 1990s, early and often.

Publishing the first issue of EW after six years of convincing Time Inc. that entertainment choices were exploding.

I’M SORRY ABOUT

Killing Seinfeld. Jerry Seinfeld told me that he decided to end the series after a negative EW article. Who knew EW was Seinfeld kryptonite?

SEPTEMBER 2020

EW ● COM

F O L LOW U S O N :

@ Enter t ainmentWeekly

SORRY, NOT SORRY

Time’s top editors accused us of using a “computerized, unreadable postmodern font.” It was Caslon, created in 1722.

How the West Was Won Can’t get enough of President Bartlet and crew? Pick up EW’s Ultimate Guide to The West Wing, filled with behind-the-scenes photos, our picks for 10 essential episodes to watch, and more. Available Sept. 11 wherever magazines are sold.

@ Enter t ainmentWeekly

@EW

@ E WSnaps

PHOTOGRAPH BY BEAU GREALY; KING: AMY GUIP/CORBIS

JD HEYMAN

FIND THE EDITORS!

We’ve tucked our former editors throughout the 30th-anniversary section—along with a nugget of seriously weird trivia about each one. Find all six and you get…a fleeting sense of satisfaction.

Every single cover we did featuring Paris Hilton or any other “reality TV” pretender. We had to cover it, but it bored me silly then and still does.

I’M SORRY ABOUT

EW Staff EDITOR IN CHIEF

JD Heyman

PUBLISHER

“Blackout” Britney Spears (2007) Proving that if Britney can get through 2007, we can get through 2020.

Mike Fisher

DEPUT Y EDITOR & CRE AT IVE DIRECTOR Tim Leong DIGITAL DIRECTOR Shana Naomi Krochmal

SALES

DIRECTOR OF EDITORIAL OPERATIONS Alexandra Brez

DI R ECTO R Cora Howey AC C O UNT MANAGER S Kevin Blechman (East), Melissa Gursey (West),

EDITORIAL DEPUT Y EDITOR, DIGITAL Rebecca Detken

Andrea Pabst (Midwest), Alex Shumway (East), Liz Smyth (East), Remy Telesco (East), Christina Tom (West), J.T. Wilde (East) SAL E S A S S I STAN TS Kim Gary, Erica Goldstick

EXEC UTIVE EDITOR AT L ARGE Dalton Ross

DIRECTOR, DIRECT RESP ONSE MEDIA

EXEC UTIVE EDITOR S Clarissa Cruz, Sarah Rodman

EDITOR S AT L ARGE

James Hibberd, Lynette Rice

GO OD TO BE BAD

Who is the best TV antihero of the past 30 years? EW staff did, indeed, tread lightly when choosing between these small-screen baddies.

BU SINES S DEVELOPMENT Lisa Ayala

SENIOR EDITOR S Alicia Dennis (Crime),

Gerrad Hall (TV), Jillian Sederholm (News Director), Alex Suskind (Music) SPECIAL PROJECTS EDITOR Brittany Kaplan CR ITIC S Kristen Baldwin (Head Writer, New York), Darren Franich, Leah Greenblatt SENIOR WRITER S Clark Collis, Samantha Highfill, Dan Snierson (Head Writer, Los Angeles) SENIOR DIGITAL NEWS EDITOR S

The Globe Sessions Sheryl Crow (1998) The perfect companion for celebration, sadness, and points between.

29%

SVP, EXPERIENTIAL , MARKETING & COMMUNICATION EXEC UTIVE DIRECTOR S Jenny Ryan, Ilyse Wittenberg VP Kerri Kivlan

“Say my name.”

DI R ECTO R Jennifer Lingle A S S O C I AT E D I R ECTO R S Christina Cordero, Taylor Messiter MANAGER S Rebecca Gibson, Shannon McHugh, Will Prigge

DIGITAL ART DIRECTOR Carlos Quintero SENIOR DESIGNER S Billy Pennant, Marianna Perez-Santalla EVENT MARKETING Cara Gorman Moreno (Vice President);

Christy Kamimura, Ai-Linh Nguyen (Directors); Kelsey Pennell, Jessica Sopher (Senior Managers); Cierra Cuellar (Manager) DIGITAL SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, DIGITAL Will Lee

AS S O CIATE ART DIRECTOR S

P H OTO DI RECTO R Michelle Stark A S S O C I AT E P H OTO D I R ECTO R Ben Trivett PHOTO EDITOR S Lauren Morgan, Alison Wild AS SISTANT PHOTO EDITOR Ava Selbach

EDITORIAL OPERATIONS EDITORIAL MANAGER Carolyn Cutrone AS SISTANT EDITORIAL MANAGER Meg Smitherman COPY CHIEF Dan Morrissey SENIOR REP O RT ER Lacey Vorrasi-Banis REP ORTER Sabrina Ford PRODUCTION SENIOR PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Kate Remaly P R O D U CT I O N D I R ECTO R Jen Thomson

VIDEO SENIOR VIDEO PRODUCER Kristen Harding VIDEO PRODUCER Ethan Bellows AS S O CIATE VIDEO PRODUCER Tara Reid VIDEO EDITOR Sam Gordon

Jurassic Park (1993) Because 27 years later we apparently still haven’t learned not to open things too soon.

SOCIAL MEDIA S O CIAL MEDIA DIRECTOR Chanelle Berlin Johnson

FINANCE EXEC UTIVE VICE PRESIDENT Michael Riggs DI R ECTO R S Diane Meyer, Kerry Winn A S S O C I AT E D I R ECTO R Sian Strydom

CONSUMER MARKETING & REVENUE BRAND STRATEGY Laurie Krzywdzinski (Director), Katie Sammon (Senior Manager) MEREDITH NATIONAL MEDIA GROUP MEREDITH MAGA ZINES PRESIDENT Doug Olson (met his wife at an AC/DC concert) CONSUMER PRODUCTS PRESIDENT Tom Witschi PRESIDENT CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER Catherine Levene CHIEF MARKETING & DATA OFFICER Alysia Borsa CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER Michael Brownstein MARKETING & INTEGRATED COMMUNICATIONS Nancy Weber

MILLENNIAL S! THEY’RE JUST LIKE US

EW was born in 1990. So were these celebs.

Iggy Azalea

Chris Colfer

Liam Hemsworth

Sarah Hyland

Jennifer Lawrence

Machine Gun Kelly

Rita Ora

Dev Patel

Margot Robbie

Soulja Boy

Kristen Stewart

Sza

Lucas Till

Emma Watson

The Weeknd

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENTS CONSUMER REVENUE Andy Wilson C O R P O RAT E SAL E S Brian Kightlinger DIRECT MEDIA Patti Follo RESE ARCH S OLUTIONS Britta Cleveland ST RAT EG I C S O U R C I N G , N E WS STA N D, P R O D U CT I O N Chuck Howell DIGITAL SALES Marla Newman P R O D U CT & T EC H N O LO GY Justin Law (refuses to acknowledge

existence of Matrix sequels)

S O CIAL MEDIA EDITOR S Malcom-Aime Musoni,

VICE PRESIDENTS

Alamin Yohannes (named pet fish after the original Power Rangers)

FINANCE Chris Susil BUSINES S PL ANNING & ANALYSIS Rob Silverstone

COMMUNICATIONS

CONSUMER MARKETING Steve Crowe

EXEC UTIVE PUBLIC REL ATIONS DIRECTOR Claudia DiRomualdo

BRAND LICENSING Toye Cody, Sondra Newkirk C O R P O RAT E C O M M U N I CAT I O N

EDITORIAL EVENTS & MARKETING AS S O CIATE DIRECTOR, EVENTS Christy Kamimura (former crush: Dean Cain; current crush: Grant Gustin) SENIOR MANAGER, EVENTS Kelsey Pennell MANAGER, EVENTS Cierra Cuellar EVENTS AS SISTANT Brianna Castaneda

Villanelle

Andrew Resnick, John Reynolds, Hong Tan, Ying Zhang AC C O UNT MANAGER S Jenna Cilmi (East), Jenny Liu (West)

Stringer Bell

TEC H NO LO GY Ed Benjamin, Viktoriya Eremeeva, Joseph Freeman,

Don Draper

DESIGN Erik Frick, Tiffany Jessup, Ryan Schroeder

Tony Soprano

VP/GENERAL MANAGER, ENTERTAINMENT Alicia Cervini

DEPUT Y DESIGN DIRECTOR Chuck Kerr

PHOTOGRAPHY

12%

DIRECTOR, CRE AT IVE DEVELOPMENT Barbara Bennett Sanderson

DESIGN DIRECTOR Jennie Chang

Memento (2000) You literally don’t have to wait for Tenet to watch Nolan go backward.

14%

AS S O CIATE MANAGER S Lila Camillos, Carly Lubsen, Claire O’Halloran

D I R ECTO R O F P R O D U CT Jennifer Tisdel

Erica Bonkowski, Anne Latini

18%

SENIOR MANAGER Claudia Treacy

DESIGN

SENIOR ART DIRECTOR Faith Stafford

27%

Susan Parkes-Cirignano

Walter White

Jessica Derschowitz, Oliver Gettell STAFF EDITOR S David Canfield (Movies), Seija Rankin (Books), Sydney Bucksbaum, Mike Miller STAFF WRITER S Chancellor Agard, Devan Coggan (repeatedly reread The Hobbit until she could write in Dwarvish runes) C O R R E S P O N D EN T Ruth Kinane AS S O CIATE EDITOR Derek Lawrence AS SISTANT EDITOR Mary Sollosi DIGITAL WRITER S Rosy Cordero, Christian Holub, Lauren Huff, Marcus Jones, Maureen Lee Lenker, Nick Romano EDITORIAL AS SISTANTS Joseph Nolfi, Omar Sanchez

MARKETING & PROMOTION

Jill Davison

MEREDITH CORPORATION PRESIDENT & CHIEF EXEC UTIVE OFFICER Tom Harty CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER Jason Frierott CHIEF DEVELOPMENT OFFICER John Zieser CHIEF STRATEGY OFFICER Daphne Kwon PRESIDENT, MEREDITH LO CAL MEDIA GROUP Patrick McCreery

CONTRIBUTORS WRITER S Marc Bernardin, Jaxx Blum, Tyler Coates, Lynn Harris, A.J. Jacobs

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SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, HUMAN RES O URCES Dina Nathanson EXEC UTIVE CHAIRMAN Stephen M. Lacy VICE CHAIRMAN Mell Meredith Frazier

For syndication requests or international licensing requests or reprint and reuse permission, email syndication@meredith.com

BREAKING BAD: FRANK OCKENFELS/AMC; AZALEA: ETHAN MILLER/GETTY IMAGES; COLFER: SLAVEN VLASIC/GETTY IMAGES; HEMSWORTH: PHILLIP FARAONE/WIREIMAGE; HYLAND: TODD WILLIAMSON/E! ENTERTAINMENT/NBCU PHOTO BANK/GETTY IMAGES; LAWRENCE: PASCAL LE SEGRETAIN/GETTY IMAGES/DIOR; KELLY: ANGELA WEISS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; ORA: TAYLOR HILL/GETTY IMAGES; PATEL: MIKE MARSLAND/WIREIMAGE; ROBBIE: RAYMOND HALL/GC IMAGES; BOY: PARAS GRIFFIN/GETTY IMAGES FOR BET; STEWART: AXELLE/BAUER-GRIFFIN/FILMMAGIC; SZA: DAVID CROTTY/PATRICK MCMULLAN/GETTY IMAGES; TILL: PRESLEY ANN/GETTY IMAGES/3RD BASE; WATSON: ANGELA WEISS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; WEEKND: JEAN BAPTISTE LACROIX/GETTY IMAGES

We asked the staff: What is your favorite movie, album, or book from the past 30 years?

Trademarks owned by Société des Produits Nestlé S.A., Vevey, Switzerland.

T H E TO P 10 T H I N G S W E L OV E T H I S M O N T H

Must List EDITED BY LY N E T T E R I C E @ LY N E T T E R I C E

I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y M E R C E D E S D E B E L L A R D

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1 ENOLA HOLMES MOVIES

MERCEDES DEBELLARD - FOLIO ART

I T ’ S N OT E L E M E N TA R Y, D E A R WAT -

son, in Enola Holmes. Netflix’s adaptation of Nancy Springer’s YA detective series (premiering Sept. 23) takes sleuthing to AP levels—with none other than Millie Bobby Brown (Stranger Things) playing Sherlock Holmes’ spirited teenage sister. Enola shares the family talent for the art of deduction, with an affection for word games and flowers. While her big brothers Sherlock (Henry Cavill) and Mycroft (Sam Claflin) have famed adventures in London, Enola enjoys an idyllic— if unconventional—upbringing in the English countryside, where her free-thinking mother, Eudoria (Helena Bonham Carter), schools her in all disciplines except how to become a proper Victorian lady. When Eudoria mysteriously disappears and Mycroft insists on sending his untamed sister to finishing school, Enola runs away to the city to find her mother—and her destiny. “That’s when we really begin the coming-of-age story,” says Brown, starring at last in a Netflix offering

that allows her to speak in her native English accent. “Who is she, who is Enola Holmes, what does she stand for, what does she believe in? She was so confident, and yet she can be so innocent and really not knowing of her future, which is like every teenager at this time in their life.” She lacks street smarts, but Enola finds her way in the Big Smoke by putting her mother’s unorthodox lessons—which include the martial arts—to good use. To prepare for ﬁght scenes in alleyways and a London teahouse, Brown trained for nearly two months, both in and out of her cumbersome period costume. “I was preparing my body to breathe and to move in the corset,” she says. “It’s hard navigating the

choreography that you’ve learned so well in your trainers and your leggings and then putting an underskirt on, a skirt over that, a corset, then you have your petticoat, then you have your long socks, then you have your heels…” Brown’s sister first brought Springer’s novels to her attention, and “the story grabbed me and took me on an adventure the moment I opened the book.” Inspired by the material and determined to see the project all the way through, Brown picked up her first producing credit on the Harry Bradbeer-directed film. “I knew I wanted to do this. I knew I wanted to creatively take part. I feel like this is my baby.” Carrying a whole feature in the title role marks another first for the 16-year-old star. “On Stranger Things, with, like, 20 to 30 cast members, everyone gets their limelight,” says Brown, who filmed Enola last summer after wrapping her third season of playing Eleven. “So walking onto the set and feeling genuinely empowered and feeling like I’d been given this platform was such an amazing opportunity, especially as a young girl.” It’s the kind of chance that would never be afforded to her 19th-century counterpart, brilliant though she is. “We bring a certain sense of positivity and humor to it, but at the end of the day, [the film] is centered around equality,” she says. That message will likely resonate with her young, rabid Stranger fan base. “What they call [Enola] in the film is a ‘wild child,’ but really, she’s just fighting for her rights,” says Brown. “The film is really based upon these pretty traditional men—and these wild women.” —MARY SOLLO SI

THIS, TO ME, IS AN AMAZING TIME TO SPREAD A MESSAGE LIKE THIS, AND ULTIMATELY, THIS HAS BEEN MY FAVORITE THING THAT I’VE EVER DONE IN MY LIFE.” ENOLA HOLMES’ MILLIE BOBBY BROWN

EW ● COM

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ARE HERE.

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RAISED BY W O LV E S * TV

AFTER POPPING OUT SIX KIDS,

FROM THE CREATOR OF

AND THE BESTSELLING AUTHORS OF

have been buried for a while and now they show themselves again. But her setting has changed. She’s a mother now. And in that way I think that she’s just trying to navigate what’s right and wrong for her family like so many families in real life. Are you a villain if you’re just trying to survive? That’s an exciting question.” While casting the lead for his out-there story, Scott was enchanted by how Collin possessed all the attributes to play a perfect android. “I hope she doesn’t hate me for that!” he says, laughing. “[Mother] is kind of a form of perfection, both intellectually and physically, and is very gentle at first. But then we find out other things about her, as she becomes more intimidating.” Collin adds that the arid film setting in South Africa, combined with her costume, made it easy to play the role. “I love how big a part the suit plays in the show,” she says. “It’s almost like a character itself.”

*This popular title was also used for a 2011 song, a 2013 sitcom, and a 2014 movie. (Cue howling.)

RAISED BY WOLVES: HBO MAX

AVAILABLE NOW IN HARDCOVER, EBOOK, AND AUDIO

young mothers rarely run about in skintight bodysuits looking like ethereal moon goddesses. But on HBO Max’s new sci-fi drama from Ridley Scott (Sept. 3), “Mother” is no ordinary baby-maker. Dutch newcomer Amanda Collin plays an android that immaculately conceives a brood of infants on a mysterious, uninhabited planet. Her sole support system is “Father” (British actor Abubakar Salim), another spandex-wearing humanoid with exquisite blue eyes and a flash of empathy that seems to be lacking in his female counterpart. So when a colony of humans—one of whom is played by Vikings star Travis Fimmel—shows up to threaten their belief system and remote settlement, Mother kills (and in a most explosive way) to keep her clan safe. “I don’t think Mother sees herself as a villain,” explains Collin. “I think she discovers powers or feelings that

№ THE MUST LIST

3 TO N Y H AW K ’ S P R O S KAT E R 1 & 2

GAMES

To quote Charli XCX, the gaming world just wants “to go back, back to 1999.” That’s the year Tony Hawk went from skateboarding star to videogame icon with his namesake Pro Skater— a game that let players impersonate celebrity boarders and pop virtual ollies to a thrashing soundtrack that included the Dead Kennedys and Primus. On

№

PEN15

Sept. 4, the creative team who

revived Crash Bandicoot—another ized versions of the beloved game’s first two installments. These updated Pro Skater outings have everything a Dogtown devotee would want, including an avatar lineup that features some of the sport’s biggest names, such as Nyjah Huston, Leticia Bufoni, and, of course, Hawk. That, plus a high-def virtual playground, will make you feel like a real shredder. —NICK

ROMANO

SPOT THE FAKE SKATEBOARDING TERMS, FELLOW KIDS! 1. Dog piss 2. Twist topper 3. 360 slip-and-slant 4. Barley grind 5. Ollie North

A N S W E R S 1. Real 2. Fake 3. Fake 4. Real 5. Real

TONY HAWK’S PRO SKATER: ACTIVISION PUBLISHING INC.; PEN 15: LARA SOLANKI/HULU; BIG MOUTH: NETFLIX; EIGHTH GRADE: JOSH ETHAN JOHNSON/A24

’90s favorite—will release modernT H E R E ’ S A S E Q U E N C E in the new season of Hulu’s Pen15 that summons everything hilarious, and painfully nostalgic, about the seventh-grade dram-com. The year is still 2000, so Maya (Maya Erskine) and Anna (Anna Konkle) are watching Are You Afraid of the Dark? when Anna’s parents start arguing. The best friends eavesdrop until someone says “divorce.” Then they run into the woods, escaping from grown-up problems. Pen15 (Sept. 18) evokes the terrors and wonders of Y2K childhood. Co-creators Erskine and Konkle are actual ’90s kids playing their younger selves with a gawky radiance that’s outrageous yet intimate. The preteen ensemble is great too, especially Ashlee Grubbs as a vaguely demonic new friend, Maura. The seven episodes in season 2’s first half blend period-piece speciﬁcity with surrealism; look forward to seven more in 2021. —DARREN FRANICH

EW ● COM

MORE MIDDLESCHOOL MISERY The best pop culture about the worst years of your life

Big Mouth 2017–present This zits-and-all Netflix comedy features a group of kids battling literally monstrous hormones.

Eighth Grade 2018 Kayla (Elsie Fisher) braves pool parties and panic attacks during her last week of middle school.

The Wonder Years 1988–1993 Kevin (Fred Savage) deals with junior high during the Brady Bunch era—Nam, with polyester.

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THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME MOVIES

T H E LY I N G L I F E O F A D U LT S B y Elena Fer rante

BOOKS

In the world of Elena Ferrante, girls righteously destroy their childhood selves to become women, rebelling against traditions they no longer trust. Lying Life is another incinerating coming-of-age tale from the enigmatic author, following young Giovanna through nihilistic ’90s puberty. As her well-off parents split up, she’s drawn into complex fam-

The Devil All the Time

films that I’ve seen are

we shot out of the city

ily intrigue involving her

(debuting Sept. 16

very raw. I guess it was

quite a lot in rural parts

vengefully passionate

on Netflix) stars Tom

the challenge of doing

of the state. I like to

long-lost aunt. Fans of My

Holland and tracks

a different accent,

work on films where a

Brilliant Friend will rec-

a luckless family dealing

playing the rural kid, a

location can be as big

ognize the class conflict,

with illness, murder,

period film, a new direc-

a character as you are

generational vendettas,

and religious mania in

tor. Everything ticked

in the film, and Alabama

and brainy bad romance,

rural Ohio during the

the boxes for me.

definitely served that

while there’s a specific

purpose and brought

grunge-era nastiness in

decades following World War II. The Spider-Man

Your character, Arvin

this really rural, visceral

Giovanna’s “yearning to

franchise star explains

Russell, is a really

vibe to the process.

feel heroically vile.” Soon

why the film from Simon

tormented soul.

Killer director Antonio

How did you get into

Your Spider-Man:

Lying Life proves Ferrante

Campos—which costars

that headspace?

Far From Home costar

is one of the most

Robert Pattinson, Sebas-

Arvin Russell has had a

Jake Gyllenhaal is a

intriguing novelists of

tian Stan, Bill Skarsgård,

very troubled upbringing.

producer on the film.

our time. —DARREN

and Mia Wasikowska,

He is an angry kid. I’m so

Who got who involved?

among others—got his

lucky and my life is so

Funny story. When

creative senses tingling.

amazing. I couldn’t be a

Jake and I were working

happier person. Torment

together on Spidey 2

isn’t something I’ve suf-

he was asking me what

fered from. I’m an actor

I was going to do next

and I did my job. [Laughs]

and I [told him about]

I don’t really know how to answer that question!

this movie. He was like, “Wait a minute, I’m producing that movie!”

What attracted you to The Devil All the Time?

The film shot in Alabama.

And I was like, “Well, I’m

I was really eager to

What was that like?

in that movie!” I guess

work with Antonio

It was interesting. We

someone had messed

because his previous

were in Birmingham and

up. —CL ARK

S E PT E M B E R 2 0 2 0 EW ● COM

COLLIS

FRANICH

Q+A TOM HOLL AND

to be a Netflix series,

Family Organizer

№

THE MASKED SINGER TV

No reality show defines the current

out of my mouth”—has thus far

moment better than Fox’s The

kept him behind the mic at Singer.

Masked Singer—an extravaganza

The controversy seems unlikely to

featuring random celebs flaunting

derail the razzle-dazzle, which will

their pipes disguised by what might

resume in September. Last season,

be called superdeluxe PPE. The rest

Lil Wayne, Rob Gronkowski, and Real

of Hollywood may struggle to make

Housewives of Atlanta star Kandi

TV in the age of COVID-19, but at

Burruss battled it out dressed

Singer, it’s wacky masks on, curtain

as a robot, a tiger, and something

up. Earlier this summer, host Nick

called a “Night Angel” (that would be

Cannon got caught making anti-

Burruss, who won). This time out,

Semitic comments on his podcast,

executive producer Craig Plestis

which got him canned from his

promises “more bizarre, bigger, cra-

ViacomCBS show Wild ’N Out, but his

zier” costumes, hiding a whole new

mea culpa—“I extend my deepest

crew of “incredible talents.” Don’t

and most sincere apologies to my

expect Plestis to spoil your fun, but

Jewish sisters and brothers for the

he says, “America will be wowed by

hurtful and divisive words that came

who we have.” —JILLIAN

SEDERHOLM

HERE’S OUR MASKED SINGER SUPERGROUP

Season 1 Lion

Season 2 Rottweiler

Season 2 Thingamajig

Season 3 Kangaroo

Season 3 Turtle

Rumer Willis

Chris Daughtry

Victor Oladipo

Jordyn Woods

Jesse McCartney

№

8 9

PIRANESI

TESLA

THE FLAMING LIPS

B y S us an na C la r ke

Amer ic a n He ad

BOOKS

MUSIC

MOVIES

Ignore those silly teensgetting-stoned-for-thefirst-time song titles (“Mother I’ve Taken LSD,” “You n Me Sellin’ Weed,” “When We Die When We’re High”) and you’ll discover how great the Lips’ 21st studio album is—an enchanting 13-track mix of spacey psychedelic rock and melancholy acoustic numbers that hearken back to the

Piranesi has a problem:

band’s career-best

He’s been living alone

record, 1999’s The Soft

in a house for so long

Bulletin. Pairing tales

that he’s lost track of

of romance (“My Religion

time. Sound familiar? At

Is You”), death (“Mother

DON’T WORRY, THIS ISN’T A BIOPIC ABOUT ELON MUSK.

least our hero’s shelter

Please Don’t Be Sad”), and

comes with loads of

drug busts (“Flowers of

distractions—it’s an

Neptune 6”) with enough

infinite labyrinth filled

reverb to make you feel

with bizarre statues and

like you’re floating in

its own cosmic ocean.

a zero-gravity chamber,

The only regular visitor

American Head is an

is a mysterious figure

album about mourning the

called The Other, who

past while daydreaming

gives the protagonist a

about the future. Keep

name—Piranesi was

an ear out for country star

an 18th-century Italian

Kacey Musgraves, who

artist who etched

sings backup on three

imaginary prisons—and

cuts and fits perfectly

assigns him scientific

into the band’s quirky

chores. Beneath this

footprint. —ALE X

This colorful indie (out Aug. 21) from writer-director Michael Almereyda is actually about the loopy innovator who inspired the name of Musk’s car company. In the late 1800s, Nikola Tesla (Ethan Hawke) worked for Thomas Edison (Kyle MacLachlan) before becoming his biggest rival in the quest to develop commercial electricity. “We tried to find the people behind the names,” says MacLachlan, who describes Edison as a “ruthless” competitor. “Often we want our heroes to be perfect, and these were not perfect men.” Narrated with a contemporary spin by Eve Hewson, who plays the daughter of J.P. Morgan (an investor in Tesla’s work), the ﬁlm chronicles Tesla’s uphill battle to provide worldwide wireless energy. “The characters recognized their differences, but they really needed each other in this particular time,” says MacLachlan. “One without the other is not the same world. They represent the yin and yang of man.” Things get especially messy when the increasingly eccentric Tesla imagines an ice cream fight between the renowned ﬁgures. In real life, Tesla had a mental breakdown and wound up caring for pigeons in New York City parks. “People’s expectations are that they’re going to learn the deep, dark secrets of these two men,” says MacLachlan. “That’s not going to happen. But you will understand them a little bit more.” —DEREK L AWRENCE

odd arrangement, more mysteries loom. Piranesi isn’t a sprawling work of fantasy like Clarke’s beloved first novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, but this tightly written tale possesses the same beguiling magic. —CHRISTIAN

HOLUB

S E PT E M B E R 2 0 2 0 EW ● COM

SUSKIND

TESLA: SEAN PRICE WILLIAMS/IFC FILMS

The title character of

THE MUST LIST

MY MUST LIST

N ATA S H A R O T H W E L L She ﬁrst won our hearts as the uproarious Kelli on HBO’s Emmy-nominated Insecure, and as a writer on the show, she delivered one of this season’s most buzzed-about episodes, “Lowkey Happy.” The 39-year-old Kansas native is keeping the streak alive with appearances on the also nominated A Black Lady Sketch Show and in the upcoming Wonder Woman 1984. Here’s a sampling of pop culture she loves.

ROTHWELL: ROZETTE RAGO; I MAY DESTROY YOU: HBO MAX; MASKS: GETTY IMAGES; WHEN HARRY MET SALLY: CASTLE ROCK/NELSON/COLUMBIA/KOBAL/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK; HAMILTON: JOAN MARCUS

I MAY DESTROY YOU HBO I’m not a jealous person, but this show turns me into the Hulk. [Michaela Coel] is incredible. Her acting, her writing, her vulnerability— and her skin?! Come on.

MUSIC

ELLA AND LOUIS

1956

Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong

I was that annoying girl in college who used Napster to do deep dives on Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Louis Armstrong, and the essential E’s: Etta, Eartha, and Ella. I’ve rediscovered my love of jazz lately, and I’ve found it to be straight-up medicinal with everything going on. Ella and Louis, take the wheel!

S TA G E

HAMILTON 2015 It might seem like I’m throwing away my shot, but I really want to say no to this question. I love Broadway too much to pick a favorite show. I’m sure my answer doesn’t leave you satisfied, but I’m helpless. If I picked just one, I’d constantly ask myself, what’d I miss? And I don’t want to doubt myself nonstop.

BOOKS

WOW, NO THANK YOU

2020

By Samantha Irby

If Samantha Irby did a coffeetable book explaining doodles she made whilst on the commode, I’d buy 12— keep two, and gift 10. She is perfection. Know. Her.

BONUS

FACE MASKS The pandemic has necessitated the use of masks to prevent the spread of infection, which has given idiots a unique opportunity to self-identify. These folks are basically shouting, “Hey! I’m dumb and selfish! Stay away from me!” So, shoutout to masks. They keep us safe and tell the truth.

MOVIES

WHEN HARRY MET SALLY… 1989 When it comes to rom-coms, it doesn’t get better than this. On the surface it’s a story about timing, but it’s much more than that. It dares to celebrate the all-too-common painfully circuitous route to finding love. You end up not only rooting for Harry and Sally to get together, you end up rooting for love.

—A S TOLD TO SARAH RODMAN

EW ● COM

S E PT E M B E R 2 0 2 0 1 9

CONTENTS

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY 1990 2020 30TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

THE WEST WING WANTS YOU...TO VOTE

THE EW ALL- STARS

MY FIRST TIME IN EW

FIND & GEEK

30 PERFECT PUNCHLINESâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;AND THE STORIES BEHIND THEM

30 YEARS OF ESSENTIAL ALBUMS

EXTRA CREDITS: EW IN POP CULTURE

REMEMBER THE TITANS

21 09

2020

WEST WING

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ART STREIBER

THE

THE CAST AND CREATOR OF NBC’S BELOVED POLITICAL DRAMA JOIN FORCES CHANGED THEIR LIVES AND FOUND A NEW GENERATION OF FANS— AND WHY

YOU...

DULÃ&#x2030; HILL, BRADLEY WHITFORD, JANEL MOLONEY, ALLISON JANNEY, AARON SORKIN, JOSHUA MALINA, RICHARD SCHIFF, MARLEE MATLIN, ROB LOWE, AND MARY M C CORMACK PHOTOGRAPHED EXCLUSIVELY FOR EW BY ART STREIBER ON JULY 23, 24, AND 25, 2020, IN LOS ANGELES

TO GET OUT THE VOTE THIS CRUCIAL ELECTION YEAR. HOW THE SHOW IT MATTERS MORE THAN EVER.

WANTS

V O T E

W E E K LY

“DECISIONS ARE MADE BY THOSE WHO SHOW UP.” So says President Jed Bartlet (Martin Sheen) in season 1 of The West Wing. Two decades after the show brought the White House home for millions, those words have a painful prescience. America in 2020 is fragile, fearful, fractious. Little wonder that for many, standing up to be counted no longer feels like civic duty—but an actual life-or-death issue. So there can be no better time for West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin and his cast to reconvene. Not merely to swap old stories, but to urge Americans of all perspectives to participate in democracy. Sorkin’s brainchild was a different kind of network drama. It focused not on cops or doctors, but on political operatives, and somehow managed to be both highly rated and greatly acclaimed— winning four consecutive Emmys for Outstanding Drama Series during its 1999–2006 run. It also took risks. For starters, the series identified its president’s political party. Conservatives called the drama “The Left Wing,” but the show depicted an array of sympathetic Republican characters. And it may be no cause for celebration, but the issues it tackled—racism, immigration, voting rights, corruption, gender politics, and more—are still the subjects of rancorous debate. Still, big-P Politics aren’t what made the show special. Even for

viewers not ideologically in tune with the liberal Bartlet administration, the series depicted something that seems fantastically remote today—a flawed but admirable president working alongside government officials who liked one another, who shared a sense of public purpose, trying (and often failing) to make an unwieldy republic work. Perhaps that’s why so many old fans and new viewers are watching (the show’s now streaming on Netflix) during this volatile chapter for America. The West Wing is timely once again— making it a fitting cover for our 30th anniversary. Despite the disruptions of a pandemic, EW gathered some of the show’s stars at a sprawling virtual Wing-ding, where they reminisced about the old days and discussed current life events. Sorkin, executive producer/director Thomas Schlamme, Sheen, Dulé Hill (Charlie Young), Allison Janney (C.J. Cregg), Janel Moloney (Donna Moss), Richard Schiff (Toby Ziegler), Bradley Whitford (Josh Lyman), Marlee Matlin (Joey Lucas), and Mary McCormack (Kate Harper) convened on a lively Zoom call. There was laughter, a few tears, and a surprise cameo from Hill’s adorable baby son, Levi. We also caught up with Rob Lowe (Sam Seaborn) and Joshua Malina

(Will Bailey) in person at our (socially distanced) cover shoot. Not only that, we tracked down some of our favorite recurring characters (see sidebar on page 30), including Emmy winner and eventual series regular Stockard Channing, a.k.a. First Lady Dr. Abigail Bartlet. On the following pages you’ll hear from a whopping 17 Wing-ers. And yes, completists, we know that’s barely scratching the surface when it comes to the depth of the show’s bench. Zooming was fun, but the group had a higher purpose: to promote an upcoming West Wing special to beneﬁt When We All Vote, Michelle Obama’s nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to ensuring that everyone is registered to vote. The special is set to air this fall. “This is the ﬁrst time we’ve done this in 20 years,” Sorkin explains, noting cast members and producers have supported individual causes. “Never before have we gathered the cast onto [the show] logo in front of [W.G.] Snuffy Walden’s [theme] music and done something as The West Wing.... I don’t think anybody would argue that right now, if you have any capital at all, spend it.” Turn the page for anecdotes about favorite scenes, tributes to departed castmates, thoughts on the show’s impact, and more. So, “What’s next?” Voting, that’s what. Let’s all show up. — J D H E Y M A N

Jim S eymore • Managing Editor, 1990–2002 → Hated the words manse, icon, and survivor, and banned them from EW during his tenure

(PHOTOSHOOT) WHITFORD’S GROOMING: SAMANTHA BATES/DEW BEAUTY AGENCY; SCHIFF’S GROOMING: NICOLE SANCHEZ; MOLONEY, MATLIN AND MCCORMICK’S STYLING: NEGAR ALI KLINE/THE ONLY AGENCY; MALONEY’S HAIR: CLAYTON HAWKINS/A-FRAME AGENCY; MAKEUP: LAUREN CANBY/A-FRAME AGENCY; DRESS: AKRIS; SHOES: STUART WEITZMAN; EARRINGS: GRAZIELA; RING: MELINDA MARIE; MATLIN’S HAIR, MAKEUP: BRETT FREEDMAN/CELESTINE AGENCY; DRESS: BRUNELLO CUCINELLI; SHOES: ANDREA WAZEN; EARRINGS, RING: MELINDA MARIE; MCCORMICK’S CLOTHING: TOP, TOTE: SAINT LAURENT; PANTS: BROCK COLLECTION; SHOES: STUART WEITZMAN; SORKIN’S GROOMING: LOUISE MOON; HILL’S STYLING: JASON BOLDEN/JSN STUDIO; GROOMING: JACKI BROWN; MAKEUP: GENO FREEMAN; SUIT, SHIRT, TIE, SHOES: KENNETH COLE; LOWE’S STYLING: ANNIE PSALTIRAS/THE WALL GROUP; GROOMING: DANIEL ERDMAN; SUIT, SHOES: PAUL SMITH; SHIRT: ZEGNA; JANNEY’S STYLING: TARA SWENNEN/THE WALL GROUP; HAIR: JILL CROSBY; MAKEUP: SERGIO LOPEZ-RIVERA/CLOUTIER REMIX; TOP: KATE SPADE; PANTS: LELA ROSE; EARRINGS: GRAZIELA GEMS; SHOES: J.CREW; SET DESIGN: ANTHONY A. ALTOMARE; ALL EIC PORTRAIT ILLUSTRATIONS BY CAMERON K. LEWIS

E N T E R TA I N M E N T 09 2020

1. ALLISON JANNEY

2. AARON SORKIN

3. DULÃ&#x2030; HILL

4. ROB LOWE

ORIGIN STORIES The whole idea behind The West Wing was that in pop culture, our elected officials are portrayed either as Machiavellian or dolts. So I wanted to create this very unusual workplace: the White House where the people who work there were as competent as the doctors and nurses on a hospital show or the detectives on a cop show or the lawyers on a lawyer show. And they were going to lose as much as they were going to win. And they were going to slip on banana peels from time to time, but we were going to be certain of two things: One, they’re hyperconfident; and two, they wake up every morning thinking about how to do something better. ROB LOWE It almost makes you laugh to think that you weren’t allowed to do political shows on television. They never worked. Now, of course, there’s Scandal and House of Cards and Veep and every show takes place in the Defense Department or something, AARON SORKIN

WHY VIEWERS ARE EMBRACING IT AGAIN I think what they’re loving is spending time with these characters, but the other thing that they’re loving is simply the sight and sound of competence and people with souls. T H O M A S S C H L A M M E I absolutely think a show like The West Wing could be done again, a show filled with optimism and hope and competency and intelligence. The hardest thing would be chasing history right now. Imagine if we were in the middle of our show now and the pandemic hit, George Floyd and Black Lives Matter. [But] I agree with Aaron—it’s about the cast.... That’s the reason people keep coming back to it—the love and

SORKIN

COMMON KNOWLEDGE?

the family that they connected with. ALLISON JANNEY People are gravitating towards it now for the first time, for the second time, the third time, the fourth time. I get so many text messages saying, “I’m binging The West Wing again.”

THOSE FAMED “WALKAND-TALK” MOMENTS JA N EL M O LO N E Y The walking-andtalking scenes are the easiest scenes to do, because you don’t have to act. All you have to do is say [your lines]

1. “We knew that we had just the very best ingredients set out on the kitchen counter,” says Sorkin of his awardwinning cast. “But we could not anticipate the chemistry.” 2. The POTUS (Sheen) and his right-hand man, Charlie (Hill). 3. “That was extraordinary for all of us,” says Schlamme of the cast-favorite episode featuring Yo-Yo Ma.

Test your Wing-related trivia. Can you guess how these things are connected?

BELLAMY YOUNG

JEFF PERRY

LIZA WEIL

JOSHUA MALINA

and not run into the cameraman and it’s just like you’re brilliant. B RA D L E Y W H I T F O R D Tommy would understand [we were] going to blow the first couple of takes, What was awful is if a director came in and started to micromanage the walk-andtalk, because the Zen would just get sucked out of you and you’d be walking like a llama. So, for directors out there, if you’re doing a big walk-and-talk, just stage it and then let the actors do it. J O S H UA M A L I N A The secret to the walk-and-talk is that the cameraperson is doing the hard lifting. The actors have to stay roughly in frame and go where we’ve been blocked, but it’s the man or woman who’s walking backwards and keeping you all in frame who’s pulling most of the weight.

FAVORITE SCENES Dulé and I and Richard in the Butterball turkey episode.

MARTIN SHEEN

NBC

ANSWER KEY: Actors who appeared on The West Wing and went on to appear on ABC’s Scandal

SHEEN AND HILL: NBCU PHOTO BANK/GETTY IMAGES; SHEEN AND MA: PHOTOFEST; WHITFORD AND MOLONEY, SPENCER AND SHEEN: EVERETT COLLECTION (2)

19 9 0 F U N FACT →

Bradley Whit ford and John Spencer both appeared in the movie Presumed Innocent

“IT WASN’T A SALUTE TO AN IDEOLOGICAL P O S I T I O N . I T WA S A LOV E L E T T E R TO WESTERN DEMOCRACY. ” —AARON SORKIN ON THE ESSENCE OF THE WEST WING

Bartlet is on the line, pretending that he is a serious customer trying to get a recipe for Thanksgiving. That was one of the most fun things I’ve ever done in my life in front of a camera. JAN N E Y That walk-and-talk [in the episode “Five Votes Down”] was the most amazing acting experience. To be part of that, really, you feel like you were part of a team. R I C H A R D S C H I F F “Drought Conditions,” that was a tough episode. It was a very difficult acting job, and it was a painful one. And there was a

couple of scenes with Allison, with whom anyone else it would have been that much harder to accomplish. I was always grateful that Allison, we had that connection. MOLONEY Brad and I were doing this scene and I wanted to take another crack at it and I knew I could do just a little bit better. Brad saw that in my eyes and he said, “Do you want another one?” [And] it was one of those magical takes. Brad helped me get it. DULÉ HILL The scene with Martin in [the episode] “Shibboleth” where he

4. Donna (Moloney) has a handle on Josh (Whitford). 5. “Every time I had an opportunity to act with him, it upped my game and taught me something,” says Hill of working with the late John Spencer (left).

gave me the knife. That still, to this day, warms my heart because I feel like it really cemented the relationship between Charlie and Bartlet as a father-and-son-type relationship. MARLEE MATLIN One of the sweetest moments I ever had was between Joey and Josh at the airport when she had to share that the president has MS. And I lifted his chin with my hand and we said so much with so little, with just eye contact and touch. WHITFORD One of the moments I’m most proud of: the timing with Janel

1. JANEL MOLONEY

2. RICHARD SCHIFF

3. BRADLEY WHITFORD

4. MARLEE MATLIN

E N T E R TA I N M E N T 09 2020

of the cold coffee coming out of my mouth—that made me very happy.

and that’s it. [Joosten died in 2012, following a battle with lung cancer.]

FRIENDS AND FAMILY

CHANGING AMERICA

My [daughter] Margaret, who’s 15 now, I was pregnant with her when I joined The West Wing, and she was born and I came back to work seven days later and everyone held her. I held a rosary that Martin gave me when I gave birth to her. And then I came back and it was such a family. And I still consider them my family. We’re still all in touch all the time. And we’re activists together and we help each other, we’re at funerals and weddings and baby showers. S ORKIN I said to our casting director, “We need someone like John Spencer.” The casting director said, “What about John Spencer?” “We’re never going to get John Spencer.” We got John Spencer. He was beloved by the entire cast, off camera and on. WHITFORD If I ever had a mentor, it was John. He was an actor’s actor. Acting literally saved his life, and just being able to work with him meant the world to me. [Spencer, who played Chief of Staff Leo McGarry, died of a heart attack in 2005.] H I L L [Kathryn Joosten, who played Bartlet’s secretary Mrs. Landingham,] was a wonderful soul. I would tapdance any- and everywhere on the set—on the soundstage, in my trailer, in Allison’s trailer, in Martin’s trailer. There was only one place that I was not allowed to dance, and that was in Mrs. Landingham’s office. She was insistent. She loved my dancing. I could dance in the Portico. I could dance in the Oval Office. I could dance in the Roosevelt Room. I just could not dance in Mrs. Landingham’s office. I would start and she would just peer [over] her glasses

M AT L I N

M A RY M C C O R M AC K

All the years before West Wing, I would always play deaf victims or sympathetic characters, or talked about being deaf and the sign language and it got so old. But when this show came into my life, I thought, Wait a minute, how is he going to write this? Joey Lucas is a pollster. In the history of television, there’s never been a deaf pollster. And he just happened to make her deaf and he was willing to think outside the box. And that’s what I loved about that character. For the [rest of my time on the show]there was never a discussion in the script why my character was deaf, why she did what she did. It was just who she was. W H I T F O R D The last time I was in D.C., an exhausted young guy who was clearly a Hill staffer came up to me and said, “I just want you to know that you’re the reason I went into politics,” and I said, “Oh, that’s really sweet. I appreciate that.” And he said, “Actually, I’m exhausted, I’m broke, and I don’t think I’m ever going to kiss Mary-Louise Parker.” And I said, “I don’t think that’s going to happen.” It’s very easy to be cynical about politics. And what I’m proudest of is that the show is not cynical about public service. It’s very dangerous to be cynical about politics and public service because politics isn’t just another genre. Politics is the way we create our moral vision, and we cannot afford to be cynical about it. So I hope we’ve inspired people to go into politics with the understanding that it is an honorable, urgent exercise that requires all of their moral capacity and talents.

COMMON KNOWLEDGE?

JOSHUA MALINA

MATTHEW PERRY

FELICITY HUFFMAN

JOHN GALLAGHER JR.

A PRESIDENTIAL SHEEN Filmmakers clearly see something commanding in Martin Sheen. He’s played quite a few politicians and presidents over the course of his Emmy-winning, nearly 60-year career, including JFK and RFK. But the 80-year-old Ohio native knows that President Josiah Bartlet holds a special place in his fans’ hearts. It does in his as well. “It’s the most satisfying thing I’ve ever done in my acting career. I always think of it with gratitude and humility. I’m often asked would I have done it if the president had been a Republican. I responded even today to that question the way I did 20 years ago and said, ‘If Aaron Sorkin wrote him, I would play it.’ Because the chief part of the character that I responded to and I think is projected in almost every episode is a level of humanity, a level of compassion, a great sense of curiosity and selfeffacement.” —A S TOLD TO JD HEYMAN

BRADLEY WHITFORD

ANSWER KEY: All actors who have appeared on The West Wing and also worked with Aaron Sorkin on another show

MICHAEL KOVAC/GETTY IMAGES FOR AFI

W E E K LY

WING MEN WOMEN AND

BY SARAH RODMAN AND SYDNEY BUCKSBAUM

STOCKARD CHANNING

JOHN AMOS

EMILY PROCTER

FIRST LADY DR. ABIGAIL BARTLET

CHAIRMAN OF THE JOINT CHIEFS OF S TA F F A D M I R A L P E R C Y F I T Z WA L L AC E

DEPUTY WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL A I N S L E Y H AY E S

“Never met him before in my life,” says Channing, 76, of her TV husband. On her first day, she recalls, “Marty was outside sneaking a cigarette, wearing a white tie and tails, I’ll never forget. I went up and introduced myself. ‘I know we’ve never met, but I think we’ve been married for about 25 years.’ And they said, ‘Okay, we need you on set.’ That was it. It just worked.” The actress was nominated for six Emmys and won one for her fizzy face-offs with Sheen and the rest of the cast. “The marriage of the actors, directors, and writing was at such a high level, and nobody was phoning anything in. Everything was just premium. It was a joy to be part of it.”

The adored actor (Good Times, Roots, The Mary Tyler Moore Show) loved being part of the show, and one of the best perks of his West Wing tenure was meeting former secretary of state Colin Powell. “When I went into his office, his secretary came up and said, ‘You know, Mr. Powell is a big fan of yours, he enjoys the program very much,’ ” recalls Amos, 80. “And that was gratifying to know. But when I walked into his office, he said, ‘Let me call up my wife. She’s not going to believe who’s here.’ I was just taken aback. I didn’t believe I could have that much impact on somebody of his stature.”

Getting busted for attempting gymnastics in the Oval Office still makes Procter (CSI: Miami, White Collar), 51, laugh to this day. “I have a picture of it somewhere,” she says. “I said, ‘It would be hilarious to do cartwheels in here, and I’m going to do a split on the desk after.’ I did the cartwheel, and then I started to climb up on the desk, and I don’t even remember who it was but they were like, ‘How dare you?! This is the Oval Office!’ And I was like, ‘Well, not really. It’s a set.’ But they did not think that the splits should be done atop the desk.”

ANNA DEAVERE SMITH N AT I O N A L S E C U R I T Y ADVISOR N A N C Y M C N A L LY

The acclaimed playwright-actress, who had appeared in Sorkin’s film The American President, was in the midst of finishing up work on one of her own projects and almost turned down the role. Her then publicist, the late Stephen Rivers, intervened. “He was like, ‘You’re out of your mind, you have to go!’ He was like a terrier,” she recalls with a laugh. At the time, there was talk that if George W. Bush became president, Condoleezza Rice would be part of his Cabinet. “I knew Condi from Stanford, where I had been a professor,” says Smith, 70. “So my joke is, I’m actually the first African-American woman National Security Advisor.”

Jef f Jar vis • Managing Editor, 1990 → Appeared in an episode of Moonlighting as a bribe-accepting TV critic

MARY-LOUISE PARKER FIRST LADY’S CHIEF OF S TA F F / C A M P A I G N C O N S U LTA N T / D I R E C T O R O F L E G I S L AT I V E A F F A I R S AMY GARDNER

Her stint on the show earned Parker (Weeds, Proof, Angels in America) an Emmy nomination, but it’s actually her character’s feminist legacy that stands out all these years later. “I think she’s most effective when she’s cheerfully annihilating someone,” Parker, 56, says. “Young girls, especially a few women who went into politics, have said some really complimentary and moving things to me just about how [Amy] had her own kind of sexuality but she could still be tough, and she was very clear without apologizing for herself. It was really about the work that she did that made that character important, not who she was involved with.”

CHANNING: WALTER MCBRIDE/WIREIMAGE; AMOS: JIM SPELLMAN/WIREIMAGE; PROCTER: MIKE WINDLE/GETTY IMAGES FOR P.S. ARTS; SMITH: NOAM GALAI/GETTY IMAGES FOR THE AMERICAN THEATRE WING; PARKER: BRUCE GLIKAS/WIREIMAGE

On a show that brimmed over with more than 100 recurring and guest characters, picking favorites is an impossible task. The casting agents for the series did a remarkable job of matching role to player to keep the fictional Bartlet administration both humming and in entertaining conflict. We checked in with a few folks who had nothing but fondess for their time walking, talking, sparring, and laughing on the NBC drama.

1. MARY McCORMACK

2. JOSHUA MALINA

JANNEY She is my favorite character I’ve ever played because she’s someone that I aspire to. I wish I could be C.J. People come up to me all the time and say they changed their majors in college, they went into public service because of C.J., and I get it. She’s a wonderful character, she’s not afraid to speak truth to power. She’s a woman in a traditionally male-populated arena in the White House and she was given the president’s ear. And it’s a great role to champion women. She’s such an amazing character. She’s the one I most want to be like and who I’m most not like.

It just taught a lot of people a lot of stuff about how the government works. And I would not exclude myself from that group as a fan of the show prior to being on it. And then once I was involved in it, there was always something or some issue that I would learn more about or dig deeper into because of the series. I’ve had so many people say, “Because of The West Wing, I studied poli-sci and now I’m writing speeches,” or “I’m a community activist.” I always say, “Thank you and all credit to Aaron,” because he’s the one who really deserves it. But it is very satisfying to

MALINA

COMMON KNOWLEDGE?

MY SO-CALLED LIFE

THIRTYSOMETHING

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS

have been part of something that has affected so many people in such a positive way.

THE WEST WING’S MESSAGE IN 2020 L O W E One of the reasons why The West Wing resonated so much for me on a personal level was—maybe it’s corny—I really believe in all things that are truisms about our country. If you’re not going to vote, then you don’t have a dog in the fight and you shouldn’t complain. Empowering people to vote, making it easier for people to vote, is a total no-brainer. I’ve been working on it for many years and it feels like it becomes more important with each passing election cycle. M A L I N A We know there are places in the world where people do not have a voice. And so I think if you have one, you must use it. —ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY LYNETTE RICE

ANSWER KEY: Theme music scored by W.G. Snuf f y Walden, who also scored the West Wing theme

19 9 0 F U N FACT →

Regina King filmed the final episode of her first-ever Hollywood gig: the NBC sitcom 227

MY FIRST TIME

LAVERNE COX

HOLLAND TAYLOR

CHUCK LORRE

ISSUE #1368

ISSUE #1 24/1 25

ISSUE #91 1

JUNE 19, 2015

JUNE 26, 1992

DEC. 15, 20 0 6

“I was on the cover of EW dressed as the Statue of Liberty, which was kind of iconic,” Cox says of the 2015 Pride Issue. “Almost every Fourth of July I post that picture. It’s up on my wall in my home. It’s just genuinely beautiful.” Featuring a transgender woman on a magazine cover in this way was meaningful for LGBTQ representation, but it also gave Cox, 48, personal satisfaction. “I was the black sheep of the family. My aunts, uncles, and cousins said horrible things about me.” When the cover came out, that all changed. “[One of those] same relatives reached out to me on Facebook: ‘You’re so beautiful!’ Wanting something. Sorry, nope. You said all those things about me, I feel no guilt about ghosting.” She laughs. “That’s the least magnanimous answer I’ve given in an interview— ever.” —SYDNEY BUCKSBAUM

“It was like being made a saint,” Taylor says of being selected as EW’s “Cool TV Actress” in a 1992 “What Is Cool?” feature. The actress was given the moniker for her portrayal of Margaret Powers, the haughty wife of a racist senator on the short-lived Norman Lear NBC comedy The Powers That Be. She fondly remembers the accompanying shoot she did with photographer Jeffery Newbury at the Hotel Bel-Air bar, which was her favorite hangout spot at the time. “It was very dramatic and glamorous, and unlike the way I would normally be photographed,” says Taylor, 77. “It was a 1930s look. He took classic shots of me: the chin in the hand and holding a cigarette. I have some of them still, and I gifted people some of them because they were so striking.”

“At the time, I was embarrassed,” the Two and a Half Men creator, 67, admits of our 2006 feature. The story examined Lorre’s sitcom empire; EW called him “the angriest man in television” on account of, among other things, his anger toward this very publication for not reviewing his shows particularly favorably. “I’m not saying it wasn’t true. I have character flaws, which I think most of us do,” he says. “You don’t want to necessarily see them in the headlines. That being said, I probably had it coming. Anger is a mask for fear. I was trying to the best of my ability to do something that was worthwhile in comedy. When I felt that goal was being threatened, I probably didn’t handle it well. There is a learning curve in being a human being. I had to go through that period. What doesn’t kill us makes us bitter.” —LYNE T TE RICE

—MAUREEN LEE LENKER

“THERE WAS ANOTHER MAGAZINE THAT ALSO WANTED ME TO BE ON THE COVER THE SAME WEEK AS EW, BUT I HAD TO CHOOSE. IT WASN’T THAT HARD. ” — L AV E R N E C OX

E N T E R TA I N M E N T 09 2020

W E E K LY

E W C H A N G E D T H E S E S TA R S ’ LIVES—NOW THEY’RE ON EVERYONE’S MUST LIST

SAM HEUGHAN

LESLIE ODOM JR.

REGINA KING

ISSUE #1434

ISSUE #1465

ISSUE #718

O C T. 7 , 2 0 1 6

M AY 1 2 , 2 0 1 7

J U LY 1 1 , 2 0 0 3

“The excitement of knowing we had a cover for EW was definitely something we always looked forward to,” the Outlander star, 40, says of the Starz show’s 11 covers so far. “EW has been with us throughout this whole journey. All the covers reflect the content of the seasons.” (And before any of them, he got a Breaking Big feature in 2014.) Heughan’s favorite? Has to be his first-ever solo: “The second [Outlander] one, which was ‘Great Scot’ from the Culloden battlefield. It’s different from the others, which were a lot more lush. EW also supplies some of the best, cheesiest headlines to go with the covers, though I don’t know how many times you can make a pun on kilt.” [Editor’s note: Turn to page 4 for the person responsible for many of those.] —LR

Before he taught us all to wait for it as Aaron Burr (sir), Odom lived by the mantra that TV success would open the door to his Broadway dreams. “As a young entertainer, it was a real marker of success,” he says of EW’s role in his career goals. “You bang the drum for what’s happening, so I would know I made it if I was a part of [that].” That moment, surely, arrived when he found himself in the magazine. In 2017, within the span of a few months, he appeared in EW as part of a feature on what Hamilton’s breakout stars were up to next, and on his first EW cover alongside the cast of Kenneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express. “When I was 21 and looking at covers of Entertainment Weekly and dreaming about what the project might be that would get me there, I really didn’t imagine that it would be something so meaningful,” Odom, now 39, says of Hamilton’s impact on his career. “I thought I was going to make shows on The WB or UPN. I had no idea that something that started Off Broadway in New York could get me there. Do the project that keeps you up at night, because you never know where it might lead you. It could lead you all the way to the cover of EW.” —MLL

Her Emmy-nominated performance as Angela Abar/Sister Night on HBO’s stunning Watchmen finally landed the actress-director the cover earlier this year. (“That photo shoot was just so much fun,” she reflects. “You know some people will frame their covers or put them on the coffee table? I don’t really do that, but that EW cover is on my little table when you first walk into my foyer.”) Back in 2003, while promoting Legally Blonde 2, King predicted that in five years she’d be “in Spain speaking Spanish.” Alas, she has yet to roll her r’s in Barcelona. “It totally brought me back to the moment and where I was at that time,” she says of seeing the magazine piece again. “It’s just funny that that was 17 years ago, and a little disappointing that I have not made it to Spain.” Given that she’s been busy winning an Oscar and three Emmys, we think King, now 49, should cut herself some slack. “It was just a wonderful reminder that I have to go back and look at my bucket list, and when we are on the other side of this, I must be in Seville. I pray it’s not another 17 years before that happens.” —SARAH RODMAN

Henr y Goldblat t • Editor-in-Chief, 2015–2019 → Had a cameo on How I Met Your Mother

W E E K LY E N T E R TA I N M E N T 09 2020 P.

30 PERFECT PUNCHLINES 30 PERFECT PUNCHLINES 30 PERFECT PUNCHLINES 30 PERFECT PUNCHLINES 30 PERFECT PUNCHLINES 30 PERFECT PUNCHLINES 30 PERFECT PUNCHLINES 30 PERFECT PUNCHLINES 30 PERFECT PUNCHLINES 30 PERFECT PUNCHLINES 30 PERFECT PUNCHLINES 30 PERFECT PUNCHLINES 30 PERFECT PUNCHLINES 30 PERFECT PUNCHLINES 30 PERFECT PUNCHLINES 30 PERFECT PUNCHLINES 30 PERFECT PUNCHLINES 30 PERFECT PUNCHLINES 30 PERFECT PUNCHLINES 30 PERFECT PUNCHLINES 30 PERFECT PUNCHLINES 30 PERFECT PUNCHLINESâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; AND 30 PERFECT PUNCHLINES THE 30 PERFECT PUNCHLINES STORIES 30 PERFECT PUNCHLINES BEHIND 30 PERFECT PUNCHLINES THEM 30 PERFECT PUNCHLINES 30 PERFECT PUNCHLINES 30 PERFECT PUNCHLINES

FROM ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS TO VEEP, WE DECONSTRUCT CLASSIC TV COMEDY QUOTES FROM THE PAST 30 YEARS. I L L U S T R AT I O N S B Y K A G A N M C L E O D

S I N C E 1 9 9 0 , T H E J O K E H A S B E E N O N U S — O R AT

least on our minds. Whether it’s in our office hallways or on Slack, we at EW love to exchange favorite lines from our favorite comedies, bartering with each other for bigger laughs. On the following pages, we look back at the past three decades through the punchlines that defined them. When EW launched in 1990, sitcoms were on the cusp of a revolution, ushering in an era of comedy that was more meta, more neurotic, more pop-culture-obsessed, more mockumentacular…if that were a word. To narrow down

this list, we had to set some parameters: We looked at half-hour comedies that defined the ’90s and beyond (we love you, Cheers and The Golden Girls, but you were ’80s trailblazers); no dramedies, sketch comedies, or late-night talk shows; and all of the jokes had to work on the page with little context. This isn’t a list of the 30 funniest lines—that’s an argument for another day—but rather 30 (okay, 31) glorious punchlines that we can’t stop talking about, complete with tales from the creators, writers, and stars who brought these laughs to life.

“SHE WAS SO ANALLY RETENTIVE SHE COULDN’T SIT DOWN FOR FEAR OF SUCKING UP THE FURNITURE.” — PAT S Y ( J OA N N A LU M L E Y ) O N A B S O L U T E LY FA B U L O U S ( B B C O N E , 1 9 9 4 ) Patsy Stone calls herself an “ex–Bond Girl” (she wasn’t, unless you count Bond-inspired adult films), but when it comes to hurling masterful insults, she definitely has a license to kill. — K B

“I WAS ONCE WITH A GUY THE SIZE OF THOSE LITTLE MINIATURE GOLF PENCILS. I COULDN’T TELL IF HE WAS TRYING TO F--- ME OR ERASE ME.” — M I R A N D A ( CY N T H I A N I XO N ) O N S E X A N D T H E C I T Y (HBO, 1998) Great punchlines are “divinely inspired when they’re right,” says exec producer Michael Patrick King. “And they sometimes don’t even make sense!” (Golf pencils don’t have erasers.) This blistering zinger he wrote for Miranda caused an internal debate among HBO execs. “One person thought it was the funniest thing,” recalls King, “and another was like, ‘I don’t get it.’ ” It was settled once cameras rolled. “The sound guy dropped the boom, he laughed so hard,” says King. “That’s validation.” — K R I S T E N B A L D W I N

“TO ALCOHOL! THE CAU S E O F — AND SOLUTION TO —A L L O F LIFE’S PROBLEMS.” —HOMER SIMPSON ON THE SIMP SONS (FOX , 1997)

“ THIS IS BIGGER THAN THE MOON LANDING.” “ONE GIANT STEP FOR MAN-ON-MANKIND. ”

Will and Jack’s excitement over a TV milestone showcased the sitcom’s spicy syntax while co-opting another stellar cultural first. “That worked on a meta level,” notes cocreator David Kohan. “The show is making the kiss that it’s talking about.” Rather than on the show within the show, the smooch (which NBC was nervous about) happened on W&G, when Will planted one on Jack outside Today. Says co-creator Max Mutchnick: “This was how we got away with it.” —GERRAD HALL

B E ST C R I S I S - M A N AG EM EN T T EC H N I Q U E →

move it to the end. Recalls Meyer: “It had that reverberating, encompassing quality you look for in a closing line—a walk-off homer that sends the fans home happy.” The reclusive Swartzwelder politely declined to comment, but Scully can’t say enough. “When anyone asks, ‘What’s your favorite Simpsons joke?’ it should be a hard choice. But your mind instantly goes to that line. We’d love to say we’ve beaten it, but we haven’t.” The bar, like our glasses, remains forever raised. —DAN SNIERSON WILL & GRACE: NBCU PHOTO BANK/NBCUNIVERSAL VIA GETTY IMAGES

↖ J A C K (S E A N H AY E S ) A N D W I L L ↗ (ERIC M C CORMACK), A N T I C I PAT I N G N E T W O R K T V ’ S F I R ST G AY K I S S , O N W I L L & G R A C E ( 2 0 0 0 )

Our not S-M-R-T patriarch occasionally utters statements of surprising depth, and this episode-capping toast (to the town, to the audience) proved transcendent. “It’s simultaneously hilarious and a sad truth while being incredibly relatable to all,” says writer-producer Mike Scully. While the show’s scribes saluted this brilliant koan from John Swartzwelder, “what amazed us the most was it was kind of buried in the middle of the script,” recalls Scully, who lobbied with writer-producer George Meyer to

“ I ’ M T E L L I N G YO U, M O LOTOV C O C KTA I L S WO R K . A N Y T I M E I H A D A P R O B L E M A N D I T H R E W A

E N T E R TA I N M E N T 09 2020

W E E K LY

“IT’S GONNA BE LEGEN– WAIT FOR IT, AND I HOPE YOU’RE NOT LACTOSEINTOLERANT ’CAUSE THE SECOND HALF OF THAT WORD IS–DARY!”

“ IF 20 PEOPLE SAID THEY LIKED ME, I’M TELLING YOU, I WOU LD B E TH I N KING 17 OF THEM ARE LY ING, T WO OF THEM HAVE SE VERE EMOTIONAL PROBLEMS, AND ONE OF THEM’S PROBABLY CONFUSING ME W ITH LARRY KING.” — L A R R Y S A N D E R S ( G A R RY S H A N D L I N G ) O N T H E L A R R Y S A N D E R S S H O W ( H B O , 1 9 9 2 ) In the wake of attempts to make Larry more “likable,” our host admits the truth with this neuroses-in-neon punchline that explains the episode (and much of the series): He’s never going to like himself. “It’s a good lesson about the TV business—you are who you are,” says Sanders writerproducer Paul Simms. “Both Larry and Garry were people who hung on to that self-critical impulse because they felt it gave them the edge that they needed.” — C H R I ST I A N H O LU B

— B A R N E Y ( N E I L PAT R I C K H A R R I S ) O N H O W I M E T YO U R M O T H E R ( C B S , 2 0 0 5 ) Showrunners Craig Thomas and Carter Bays are still envious that the episode’s writers, Phil Lord and Chris Miller, brainstormed this “intricate” quote. Lord created Barney’s catchphrase “legendary,” and Miller couldn’t resist his love of lactose-intolerant jokes. “It makes us a little gassy. I’m not saying who,” he cracks. But Thomas and Bays would get the last laugh, literally: They added “the second half of that word is…” to make the gag even more “tortured.” —SYDNEY BUCKSBAUM

“Is it just me, or is Drake’s entire career a response to that episode of Degrassi when he was in the wheelchair and couldn’t get it up?” — J O E L L E ( A S H L E Y B L A I N E F E AT H E R S O N ) O N D E A R W H I T E P E O P L E ( N E T F L I X , 2 0 1 7 )

THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW: DARRYL ESTRINE

When Sad Sam (Logan Browning) asks Joelle to make her laugh, this hip-hop hypothesis about the child actor–turned–Drizzy delivers. “This joke belongs to [writer-producer] Jack Moore,” says creator/episode writer Justin Simien. “Joelle and Sam dissect pop culture with the same profundity they dissect systemic racism.” The original joke sounded too made-for-TV, and Simien thought it needed specificity. “This was a time when Jack’s obsession with Degrassi and the room’s obsession with Drake really came in handy!” —SARAH RODMAN

“It’s NOT that common, it DOESN’T happen to every guy, and it IS a big deal! ” — R A C H E L ( J E N N I F E R A N I STO N ) O N F R I E N D S ( N B C , 1 9 9 7 ) “We were on a break!” may be the most famous line in the Ross/Rachel saga, but Ms. Green had the best burn. This hollow-point bullet of emasculation began with exec producer Greg Malins. “It was the only time I’d ever written down my [joke] before I pitched,” he says. “I remember thinking, ‘If I don’t pitch this exactly right, it’s not gonna get in.’ ” Other writers jumped in, and exec producer Adam Chase added the “it IS a big deal” kicker. He recalls: “I remember yelling at each other in the room as the characters.” —KB

M O LOTOV C O C KTA I L , B O O M ! I H A D A D I F F E R E N T P R O B L E M ! ” — J A S O N ( M A N N Y J AC I N TO ) O N T H E G O O D P L A C E ( N B C , 2 0 1 8 )

E N T E R TA I N M E N T 09 2020

“ JEFF, I THINK YOU SHOULD PL AY THE ROLE OF MY FATHE R.” “ I DON’T WANNA BE YOUR FATHER.” “ THAT’S PER FECT. YOU ALRE ADY KNOW YOUR LINES.” ↖ A B E D ( DA N N Y P U D I ) A N D J E F F ( J O E L M C H A L E ) ↗ O N C O M M U N I T Y ( N B C , 2 0 0 9 ) An impeccable alchemy of irony and darkness yielded this very good bad-dad joke. On one side, there’s the disaffected filmmaker Abed, who is processing the sadness of being alienated from his father, and then there’s the more neurotypical Jeff, who remains as emotionally oblivious as ever. “For smart people,” says creator Dan Harmon, “it gives them a comedic piece of medicine because it gives them permission to feel deeper pain and compartmentalization.” —CHANCELLOR AGARD

— R A I N B O W J O H N S O N ( T R AC E E E L L I S R O S S ) O N B L A C K - I S H ( A B C , 2 0 14 ) What does it mean to be Black? It’s a question creator Kenya Barris has been deconstructing since the show’s pilot, when Dre (Anthony Anderson) teased his wife, Dr. Rainbow Johnson, about her “omni-colored complexion”—and she delivered this characterdefining clapback. “It establishes the relationship between Dre and Bow, and also sets up what black-ish is going to be exploring,” says Ross. The original punchline pointed to Bow’s hair and fiscal responsibility, but the latter part “was too cumbersome, and the joke wasn’t landing,” she adds. (A bit where Dre tricks Bow into admitting she hadn’t seen Roots was also excised.) The on-set rewrite sent a clear message. “ ‘You can joke, Dre, but I’m still getting up every day and having to do my hair and having trouble slipping on jeans,’ ” says Barris. “It speaks to two things that have challenged us, fetishized us, ostracized us. And it speaks to them with a sense of pride.” —MARCUS JONES

B E ST P R AY E R J O K E →

“I don’t make the rules, ma’am. I just think them up and write them down.” — C A RT M A N O N S O U T H PA R K (COMEDY CENTRAL , 2011) Armed with his usual casual fascism, Eric Cartman dropped this succinct summation of his fourthgrade authoritarian will while running a business exploiting drugaddicted children. It’s perhaps not the show’s funniest line, but as co-creator Trey Parker notes, “You could never print those.” Parker points out that the nine-year-old joke is, worrisomely, more topical than ever. “That particular line applies to so many things these days,” he says. “The president could have said that.” —JAMES HIBBERD

“There ain’t no party like a Liz Lemon party ’cause a Liz Lemon party is mandatory.” —LIZ LEMON (TINA FEY) ON 30 ROCK (NBC, 2010) The struggle between fun and fun-policing is real for Fey’s workaholic showrunner. (That’s one party we’d be honored to be forced to attend.) —DEVAN CO GGAN

PUDI: JUSTIN LUBIN/NBC; MCHALE: ADAM TAYLOR/NBC; 30 ROCK: ALI GOLDSTEIN/NBC/NBCU PHOTO BANK

‟IF I’M NOT REALLY BLACK, COULD SOMEONE PLEASE TELL MY HAIR AND MY ASS?”

W E E K LY

“ M AY H E H AV E T H E W E A LT H O F M AYO R B LO O M B E R G , T H E P E R S O N A L I T Y O F J O N ST E WA R T, T H E FAC E O F M I C H A E L

“ I’M NOT INTERESTED IN CARING ABOUT PEOPLE. I ONCE WORKED WITH A GUY FOR THREE YEARS AND NEVER LEARNED HIS NAME. BEST FRIEND I EVER HAD. WE STILL NEVER TALK SOMETIMES.” — R O N S WA N S O N ( N I C K O F F E R M A N ) O N PA R K S A N D R E C R E AT I O N ( N B C , 2 0 1 1 ) And that’s how original social distancer Ron Swanson stated his hands-off policy vis-à-vis interpersonal affairs. “Norm [Hiscock, who wrote the episode] concocted a very delightful backstory—Ron worked with a guy for years and never learned his name—which I thought was so funny,” recalls co-creator Mike Schur. “That’s the thing Ron’s proud of.” Schur then added that quasi-paradoxical punchline. “It’s a good collection of words and plays on a phrase people have heard,” he says. “But it is a little playful for Ron. He’s being wry when he says that, and he’s not often very wry.” In Offerman’s mouth, the joke became legendary. “Nick pauses the exact right amount of time before saying, ‘We still never talk sometimes,’ ” says Schur. “The corner of his mouth turns up by, like, four degrees into a tiny smile. He has such command over his face. He’s his own marionette—and he operates himself perfectly at all times.” —DAN SNIERSON

“Your butt is the bomb. There will be no survivors.” — A M Y ( M E L I S S A F U M E R O ) , T O J A K E ( A N D Y S A M B E R G ) , O N B R O O K LY N N I N E - N I N E ( F O X , 2 0 1 8 ) In an emotionally charged season finale, Amy gave fellow detective Jake a bomb wedding gift during their nuptials, unexpectedly referencing his juvenile compliment to her earlier. The writers considered having Jake revisit his joke in his vows, but one scribe suggested that Amy should use his line of levity to level him after delivering her heartfelt vows. Still, it needed another gear, which led to that mic-dropping twist. “The thing Jake found touching was not only that Amy was doing his joke,” says exec producer/episode co-writer Luke Del Tredici, “but she had cranked it up a little bit.” No survivors, but the laughs live on. —D S

“DON’T GASLIGHT ME.” “GASLIGHTING DOESN’T EXIST. YOU MADE IT UP B ECAUS E YOU’RE F---ING CRAZY.”

BROOKLYN NINE-NINE: FOX

← FEMALE ANCHOR AND MALE ANCHOR → ON RICK AND MORTY ( A D U LT S W I M , 2 0 1 9 )

This local-news banter gone very wrong serves as a Rorschach test of the viewer’s assumptions. “Anybody could misinterpret that joke in either direction,” says co-creator Dan Harmon, whose sci-fi animated comedy manages to defy gravity as it hovers over sensitive subjects. “The objective is to make everybody laugh, without watering it down, and not weaponize the humor,” Harmon says. “But what I was really going for there is that both of these people are losing their minds.” —JH

“IF MARY TYLER MOORE MARRIED AND DIVORCED STEVEN TYLER, THEN MARRIED AND DIVORCED MICHAEL MOORE, AND GOT INTO A THREE-WAY LESBIAN MARRIAGE WITH DEMI MOORE AND MANDY MOORE, WOULD SHE GO BY THE NAME MARY TYLER MOORE TYLER MOORE MOORE MOORE?” — M A X ( A DA M PA L LY ) O N H A P P Y E N D I N G S ( A B C , 2 0 1 2 ) This winky wordplay—a Happy Endings specialty—may be the most mathematically absurd joke on the list. Just as impressive, it was crafted by rookie staffers. Writer-producer Matthew Libman says one scribe pitched the “Mary Tyler Moore Tyler Moore” rhythm and others jacked it up to the Max. The line killed when Libman’s team performed it for the senior writers. “If it can make a bunch of experienced comedy veterans laugh at two in the morning,” he says, “it’s a good joke.” — R AC H E L YA N G

FA S S B E N D E R … T H E P E N I S O F M I C H A E L FA S S B E N D E R . ” — M I N D Y ( M I N D Y K A L I N G ) O N T H E M I N D Y P R O J E C T ( F O X , 2 0 1 2 )

“I want this wing of the museum to be dedicated to great fathers. My father, Joe Jackson, Marvin Gaye Sr., Tiger Woods’ father, Serena Williams’ father, the father that drops off Emilio Estevez in The Breakfast Club.” — T E D D Y P E R K I N S ( D O N A L D G LOV E R ? D I S C U S S ) O N AT L A N TA ( F X , 2 0 1 8 ) Everything you need to know about the former child musician is expressed in this dark, absurd declaration of daddy issues. —CHANCELLOR AGARD

“ SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!” — F RY O N F U T U R A M A ( C O M E D Y C E N T R A L , 2 0 1 0 ) This priceless meme sprang from Fry’s irrational exuberance for an eyePhone, which defeated the clerk’s attempt to disclose its many downsides. “This joke is about Apple fanatics, but it also says something deeper about humans,” opines showrunner David X. Cohen. “We want what we want. If facts get in the way, we absolutely do not want to hear them.” Explains episode writer Patric M. Verrone: “It’s human nature to express a form of gratitude through anger and recrimination.” —DAN SNIERS ON

“ You know the message you’re sending out to the world with these sweatpants? You’re telling the world, ‘I give up! I can’t compete in normal society. I’m miserable, so I might as well be comfortable.’ ” — J E R R Y ( J E R RY S E I N F E L D ) , T O G E O R G E ( J A S O N A L E X A N D E R ) , ON SEINFELD (NBC, 1993) The search for Seinfeld’s punchline par excellence was so hard we almost gave up. Then we revisited Jerry’s dressing-down of dresseddown George. “My friend Bob Shaw used to walk around in sweatpants all the time, and I thought it would be funny to give that to a character,” explains co-creator/episode writer Larry David, who collaborated with Seinfeld on the joke (with Seinfeld adding the “I give up!” line). Says David: “Things can’t be going well in a person’s life if they’re wearing sweatpants outside their house.” —D S

“I’m the cool dad. That’s my thang. I’m hip. LOL: laugh out loud. OMG: Oh my God. WTF: — P H I L D U N P H Y ( T Y B U R R E L L ) O N M O D E R N FA M I LY ( A B C , 2 0 0 9 ) What better way to introduce viewers to the verbal pratfalls of self-proclaimed “cool dad” Phil Dunphy than a line where he artlessly mangles the text abbreviation WTF as “Why the face?” But his quintessential bit wasn’t penned by series creators Christopher Lloyd and Steven Levitan, who wrote that first episode. “A very, very funny actor

A W E S O M E A L L I T E R AT I O N →

came in to read for the part, but he adlibbed a change to the line,” shares Lloyd. No, it wasn’t Burrell—who threw in that “thang” and ultimately Philled the role—but rather…Alan Tudyk. The Firefly alum had scored an audition for the part of Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson), but he was more interested in playing Phil. Fun, awkward

fact: After casting Burrell, Lloyd called Tudyk to ask for permission to use his improvisation, which was graciously granted. “Every funny part of this speech was contributed by people other than the people who were given credit for this script,” quips Lloyd. Eleven years later, Tudyk is still flattered that Lloyd and Levitan chose his line. “As an

“ T H E F O U R R ’ S , M Y F R I E N D : R E D U C E , R E U S E , R ECYC L E , R I H A N N A ! ” — I L A N A ( I L A N A G L A Z E R ) O N

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“I AM SO HAPPY THAT I BROUGHT YOU INTO THIS WORLD TO LAUGH AT ME. BECAUSE OF YOUR GIANT HEADS, I PEE WHEN I COUGH.”

VEEP: COLLEEN HAYES/HBO; ONE DAY AT A TIME: MICHAEL YARISH/NETFLIX; LIVING SINGLE: ©WARNER BROS./EVERETT COLLECTION (2)

—LYDIA (RITA MORENO), ON THE JOYS OF MOTHERHOOD, O N O N E D AY AT A T I M E ( N E T F L I X , 2 0 1 9 )

“THAT’S LIKE TRYING TO USE A CROISSANT AS A F---ING DILDO. LET ME BE MORE CLEAR. IT DOESN’T DO THE JOB, AND IT MAKES A F---ING MESS!” – S E L I N A M E Y E R ( J U L I A LO U I S - D R E Y F U S ) O N V E E P ( H B O , 2 0 1 2 ) Vice President Selina Meyer delivered plenty of withering insults during (and at) her administration, and this season 1 classic proudly blends profanity and pastry. “It’s incredibly vulgar, it’s incredibly literal, and it’s very powerfully female,” says Louis-Dreyfus, proclaiming it her favorite. Writer-producer Simon Blackwell penned the first sentence (which echoes Malcolm Tucker’s “marzipan dildo” crack from Veep creator Armando Iannucci’s British series The Thick of It). During rehearsal, the always-workshopping Veep team loved the line so much that they decided to knead the metaphor to greater perfection. “It was Julia who said, ‘I’m sure there’s more,’ ” recalls Iannucci. “[She said], ‘It doesn’t do the job,’ and somebody else pitched in: ‘It makes a f---ing mess.’ We all laughed, and then we broke for coffee and croissants.” Louis-Dreyfus adds, “It’s such a flaky pastry! I really thought clarifying it and gilding the lily, shall we say, might help the imagery even more.” Bless this mess. —DEVAN CO GGAN

I surf the web. I text. Why the face?” actor, there’s not a lot of affirmation surrounding jobs you don’t get,” says Tudyk, “so this is a standout.” How did he conjure up that phrase? “I share that with the character of Phil,” he answers. “I don’t know what any of those things mean, so as far as I’m concerned, WTF could be ‘Why the face?’ ” —L ACEY VORRA SI-BANIS

B R OA D C I TY ( C O M E DY C E N T R A L , 2 01 5 )

When Lydia needed some “Cuban guilt” to use against her kids Penelope (Justina Machado) and Tito (Danny Pino), exec producer Gloria Calderón Kellett looked no further than her own journey to motherhood. “I had my first child, I was in labor for 20 hours, which caused my lady parts to stretch out,” she explains helpfully. The result? A trickle of pee every time Calderón Kellett coughs—and Lydia’s precision-guided missile of passive-aggression. —RO SY CORDERO

“I WILL HAVE YOU KNOW THAT MY GRE AT-GREAT-GRANDFATHER, ELIJAH BARKER, INVENTED A DEVICE THAT HELPED TO USHER IN THE MODERN AGE. I GIVE TO YOU THE SIPPING STRAW, BE T TER K N OW N A S E L I JA H’ S HOL LOW DRINKING DOWEL.” ‟SO WHAT YOU’RE SAYING IS, YOUR FAMILY HAS SUCKED FOR GENERATIONS.”

↖ K Y L E ( T.C . C A R S O N ) A N D M A X ↗ (ERIKA ALEXANDER) ON LIVING SINGLE (FOX, 1995) In the grand pantheon of Max/Kyle snipes that made this family-of-friends series zing, this comeback is the chef’s kiss of cutdowns. “My husband and I are Max and Kyle,” says creator Yvette Lee Bowser. The writers settled on the straw because, in a pre-Google world, there was no easily detectable inventor. Another writer hit pay dirt with the perfectly fussy “drinking dowel” bit, and then Bowser unveiled the wowser: “You try to go high, Max is going to cut you low.” —SARAH RODMAN

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“I’LL BE IN THE HOSPITAL BAR.” “UH, YOU KNOW THERE ISN’T A HOSPITAL BAR, MOTHER.” “ WELL, THIS IS WHY PEOPLE HATE HOSPITALS.” ←LUCILLE (JESSICA WA LT E R ) A N D M I C H A E L → ( JA S O N B AT E M A N ) O N ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT (FOX, 2003)

Colder than the ice in her vodka, the scolding, withholding matriarch delivers a deceptively deep double-shot. “[Exec producer] Jim Vallely’s pitch not only sums up Lucille but points out something incredibly obvious I’ve never heard anyone articulate: There are no bars in hospitals,” says creator Mitchell Hurwitz. “Upon closer examination, it’s not obvious why. Are we worried the patients will drink? They have far more effective narcotics at their disposal. The doctors? They’re the ones who give out the drugs. Who are we worried about exactly?” —DAN SNIERSON

— M I C H A E L S C O T T ( ST E V E C A R E L L ) O N T H E O F F I C E ( N B C , 2 0 0 5 ) After a tepid response to season 1, the Office team made Michael “more pathetic and less jerky,” says Gene Stupnitsky, who co-wrote this episode with Lee Eisenberg. The duo hoped to elicit sympathy with Michael’s explanation of his misguided management style. Says Eisenberg: “He’s emotionally greedy and intellectually unsophisticated.” The joke thrives on the use of “Easy,” Stupnitsky believes: “There’s an assumed cleverness, like he found a loophole.” —DEREK L AWRENCE

“At least I’ve got my health. And if you haven’t got your health—if you’ve got one leg, at least I haven’t got two legs missing. And if you have lost both legs and both arms, just go, ‘At least I’m not dead!’ I’d rather be dead in that situation, to be honest. I’m not saying people like that should be…you know, put down. I’m saying that, in my life, I’d rather not live without arms and legs because…I’m just getting into yoga, for one thing.” — D AV I D B R E N T ( R I C KY G E RVA I S ) O N T H E O F F I C E ( B B C T W O , 2 0 0 2 )

— B E R N I E M A C ( BERNIE MAC) O N T H E B E R N I E M A C S H O W ( F OX , 2 0 0 3 ) “Anytime the kids have an interest that’s going to be mildly inconvenient for Bernie, he shuts it down,” explains exec producer Steve Tompkins, who penned this befuddled reaction to Jordan’s (Jeremy Suarez) newfound love of magic. Though the joke exemplifies fictional Bernie’s selfishness, Tompkins has one regret: “Bernie wouldn’t have said ‘squash’! I look at it now and it hurts my ear,” he says. “But it’s a funny word. And if you know comedy, you end on the funny word.” —KRISTEN BALDWIN

Based on his own experiences attending training workshops, Ricky Gervais believes David Brent’s failed (and wildly inappropriate) attempt at being a motivational guru is “a microcosm of what the character and show was about.” The writer-star worked with a “bare-bones” script and riffed the rest, including his killer adlibbed needle hand gesture as Brent says “put down.” As for the yoga kicker? “I like when people try to give reasons for karma and kindness, and it all comes back to themselves.” —DL

WALTER: F. SCOTT SCHAFER/NETFLIX; BATEMAN: SMALLZ AND RASKIND/NETFLIX

“HOW DO YOU KNOW IF THIS KID HAS A GENUINE PAS SION, OR JUST A NORMAL INTEREST THAT YOU CAN DISCOURAGE OR SQUASH?”

“Would I rather be feared or loved? Easy. Both. I want people to be afraid of how much they love me.”

“ I’M NOT SURE THAT’S TECHNICAL LY IRONY.”

“WHAT? THIS IS LIKE O. HENRY AND ALANIS MORISSETTE HAD A BABY AND NAMED IT THIS EXACT SITUATION!”

↖ CY R I L A N D ST E R L I N G ↗ O N A R C H E R ( F X , 2 0 1 0 )

“IF WE GET SEPARATED, TRY AND JOIN A WHITE FAMILY. YOU WILL BE SAFE THERE UNTIL I CAN FIND YOU.” — J E S S I C A ( C O N STA N C E W U ) , TA K I N G S O N E D D I E ( H U D S O N YA N G ) T O A N O N - A S I A N G R O C E R Y S T O R E , O N F R E S H O F F T H E B O AT ( A B C , 2 0 1 5 ) In Nahnatchka Khan’s pilot about a TaiwaneseAmerican family, Eddie Huang has one mission: persuade his uncompromising mother Jessica to buy him “white people lunch,” a.k.a. Lunchables. Nothing prepares her for the journey “into the unknown” that is Food 4 All!!!! “Constance played it perfectly, the anxiety and seriousness; it’s not a joke to her,” says Khan of Mom’s directions, which set the table for FOTB’s sharp race-related humor. “In our focus groups, we got feedback that some white people felt persecuted because there were a lot of jokes at their expense. There was a discussion: ‘Should we take this joke out?’ Ultimately we were like, ‘Let it ride. If we get more chances, great, but if not, we’re going to be proud of the pilot— even if no one gets to see it.’” —DL

This nitpicky quip from the spry spy comedy’s second episode marks the first time that creator Adam Reed imbued the character with some of his own background as an English major—though we’re all aware that Morissette’s “Ironic” isn’t a textbook case of irony at all. “I’ve put a lot of my own quirks on Archer,” says Reed, “and one of them is not only having useless knowledge like that, but also a very faulty grasp of it.” —CHRISTIAN HOLUB

“I’D RATHER HAVE THE THIEVES THAN THE NEIGHBORS — THE THIEVES DON’T IMPOSE! THE NEIGHBORS WANT YOUR TIME. THE THIEVES WANT YOUR THINGS. I’D RATHER GIVE THEM THINGS THAN TIME.” — L A R R Y D AV I D ( L A R RY DAV I D ) O N C U R B YO U R E N T H U S I A S M ( H B O , 2 0 0 9 ) Larry David truly did pump up the grump. In this masterpiece of misery, when houseguest Auntie Rae (Ellia English) tells Larry that she heard from a neighbor about another break-in, David expressed concern… that she was talking to the neighbors. Curb involves improvisation from a detailed outline, and the writers huddled with David between takes to refine his alter ego’s surprising stance. “You can always get more stuff, but you can never get back the time you spent talking to your elderly neighbor about her cat,” notes exec producer Jeff Schaffer. “We were laughing about that, and then Larry distilled the per fect attitude down to the perfect language.” Shares the creator-star: “It’s

just something that seems to make sense once you examine it. It’s such an unexpected thing to say.” It also shines new light on the darkness of having neighbors. “They’re there all the time, there’s no getting away from them,” says David. “Then you’re stuck with stop-and-chats every day.” (“I don’t know him well enough for a stop-and-chat” could’ve made this list.) —D S

“That’s perfect—Brian being a seismologist, and you having so many faults.”

ARCHER: FX (2)

— F R A S I E R ( K E LS E Y G R A M M E R ) , M E E T I N G L I L I T H ’ S ( B E B E N E U W I R T H ) BOYFRIEND, ON FRASIER (NBC, 1994) When Frasier took his new girlfriend to Bora Bora, the last person he expected to see was his ex and her new beau. “The minute that Frasier and Lilith are together, this high-level sarcasm starts flying,” says David Isaacs, who co-wrote the episode with Ken Levine. Like most of Frasier’s small talk with Lilith, this bon mot carries sinister subtext. “The two rarely would just insult each other,” says Levine. “The insults were usually disguised in passiveaggressive banter.” —SAMANTHA HIGHFILL

Jes s Cagle • Editor, 2009–2014 → Once bet Zachary Levi $100 he couldn’t find a way to say “Sadly, Faye Dunaway…” in a Today interview. And lost.

EXTRA C EXTRA C EXTRA C EXTRA C EXTRA C M A G A Z I N E S D O N ’ T G E T I M D B P A G E S , S O C O N S I D E R T H I S O U R O N LY

JO SIE AND THE PUS SYCATS

THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW

BRUCE FRET TS

FRETTS: GARY GERSHOFF/GETTY IMAGES

In a season 2 episode of Garry Shandling’s groundbreaking HBO comedy about a (fictional) late-night talk show, a (fictional) EW reporter goes behind the scenes for a story. The set visit does not go well—and the resulting (fictional) cover says it all. That enterprising reporter was played by The West Wing alum Joshua Malina, but he was modeled after (the very real) former EW critic/reporter Bruce Fretts. The good-natured Fretts—who passed away in July at the age of 54—was an indispensable member of the staff from 1991 to 2003. He helped shape EW’s TV coverage in its formative years and was known for championing high-quality (and often underserved) series, as well as his in-depth reporting, discerning analysis, incisive wit, and an impressive collection of Pez dispensers. He particularly impressed NewsRadio creator Paul Simms, who first got to know Fretts during his tenure on Larry Sanders. “Bruce Fretts was really there through my career,” says Simms. “He did one of the first big pieces on Larry Sanders, he did one of the first big pieces on NewsRadio. Talk about a guy who just loved TV, loved pop culture, and was really funny about it.” We’ll never stop talking about him. R.I.P., Bruce. —DAN SNIERSON

Nary a frame of Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont’s 2003 Archie Comics adaptation—about a local rock band–turned–deadly government apparatus—passes without flashing a prominently placed brand logo. (Never mind the capitalist brainwashing! Pink is the new red, by the way!) EW gets in on the fun too, when the kitty-eared girl band hits it big. Of course Rachael Leigh Cook’s frontwoman lands our (fictional) cover. And of course bandmate Valerie (Rosario Dawson) bristles when she sees yet another Pussycats product featuring only Josie. It’s a tale as old as rock & roll—Josie and the Pussycats are, after all, just the new Du Jour. —MARY SOLLO SI

CREDITS CREDITS CREDITS CREDITS CREDITS C HAN C E TO B RAG AB O U T O U R O N S C R EEN R É S U M É

YOUNGER

SE X AND THE CIT Y

EW’s professional partnerships usually start in a conference room, but in the world of Younger, a collaboration kicks off in a rooftop pool. In the TV Land comedy’s third season, Kelsey (Hilary Duff) finds herself floating alongside an EW assistant who practically falls off her noodle at the chance to introduce the book editor to her boss, former EW and People editorial director Jess Cagle. When she arrives at the brands’ New York office, Kelsey gets what she calls “EW-itis,” excitedly pitching her new imprint, Millennial. Luckily, Cagle (who plays himself, center) kept his cool. “He nailed it,” Sutton Foster told (real) EW at the time. “He’s putting us all to shame.” We should be taking more pool meetings. —RUTH KINANE

TUCKER: GARY GERSHOFF/WIREIMAGE; MACFARLANE: JAMIE MCCARTHY/GETTY IMAGES

THE X-FILES

FAMILY GUY

KEN TUCKER

SETH M AC FARL ANE

It is a great understatement to say that former EW critic Ken Tucker wasn’t a Family Guy fanatic: He graded it a D on arrival, then named it the worst show of 1999, calling it “vile swill.” Creator Seth MacFarlane took notice—and action. In a 2000 episode, Peter uses EW as toilet paper. In a 2005 direct-to-DVD Family Guy movie, Stewie breaks the neck of an unnamed EW writer, who MacFarlane later admitted was Tucker. (He and EW repaired relations in subsequent years.) “Seth and I have a decades-long love-hate connection,” says Tucker. “Family Guy loves to hate me as much as I love to hate Family Guy.” —D S

In 1997, three years before Family Guy, Chris Carter & Co. used a similar shtick to stick it to EW after a spate of unfavorable reviews: A character named after EW editor Mary Kaye Schilling uses a copy to line her birdcage in 1997. —SEIJA RANKIN

DRAWN TOGETHER

The short-lived animated show (a Big Brother parody) lived long enough to air its grievances against EW: After giving the faux show a faux F, a faux EW critic named after EW writer Alynda Wheat faces real conse-

Over the course of six seasons, two movies, countless cosmos, and one Big romance, the ladies of Sex and the City were on the cover of EW five times—and the HBO dramedy blew a kiss back at the mag with a cameo in the series’ big-screen debut in 2008. After all, what kind of publicist would Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall) be if she didn’t score an EW feature for her star client/lover Smith Jerrod (Jason Lewis)? Living in L.A. at the beginning of the movie, the boldest member of the show’s central quartet decorates her sunny office with a poster of Smith’s smoldering (fake) cover, promising “all you need to know about television’s newest hunk.” Sadly, Smith and Samantha’s relationship gets canceled like an underperforming network drama; as Carrie’s (Sarah Jessica Parker) earnest voice-over observes, some love stories are short stories. Not unlike a diamond-encrusted flower ring, though, a magazine cover lasts forever. —MS

quences. —SR

19 9 0 F U N FACT →

Tim Curr y’s It miniseries debuted—the same year that future Pennywise Bill Skarsgård was born

THE

THE EARLY YEARS BENJAMIN SVETKEY

E D I TO R AT L A R G E

( Y E A R S O N STA F F : 1 9 9 0 – 2 01 3 )

A LL- STARS SOME OF EW’S MOST DISTINCTIVE VOICES REMINISCE ABOUT THEIR OLD STOMPING GROUNDS. PLUS: THE ALUMS WHO’VE GONE ON TO GREATNESS.

When I took the job mere weeks after the magazine launched, I figured it would last three months. Four, tops. Everybody was convinced that EW was doomed. One of the ﬁrst things I learned once I settled into my windowless, men’s-room-adjacent office was that another staff writer had started a pool over how many weeks our Time Inc. overlords would wait before pulling the plug. Nobody was crazy enough to guess the correct answer: 1,593 weeks and counting. A shaky start, yes. But as EW found its voice, it began to catch on. It was as if the world had been waiting for a smart popculturally obsessed weekly with lots of charts and boxes, and critics brave (or dumb) enough to give Pretty Woman a D. For a young pop-culturally obsessed writer, it proved to be a dream job. I ﬂew to Monte Carlo to watch Pierce Brosnan drive James Bond’s Aston Martin. (Or try to—he kept popping the clutch and setting off the car alarm.) I shared a tent with a half-naked Angelina Jolie and a tarantula (long story) on Lara Croft:Tomb Raider’s Cambodian set. I smoked stogies with Jack Nicholson at one of his mansions on Mulholland. That’s right, I do know Jack, or at least did, for a couple of very cool hours. It was a simpler time. No streamers, no binge-watching, just three broadcast networks (four, with punky upstart Fox) and fledgling cable channels like Ha! But it seemed like a pop culture feast to us, and boy, did we dig in, compulsively detangling Twin Peaks episodes and covering Melrose Place so much, we practically had our own table at Shooters. Today it’s a wildly different, more expansive entertainment menu. But that just makes EW all the more indispensable. After all, somebody’s got to tell you what to watch for the next 1,593 weeks.

I L L U S T R AT I O N S B Y C A M E R O N K . L E W I S

5 MINUTES AGO

OUT

ACTUAL DYSTOPIA

CINEMATIC DYSTOPIA

LITERARY DYSTOPIA

THE TRUE ME ANING OF ZIG-A-ZIG-AH

WE KNEW THEM WHEN…

ALBERT KIM

Gillian Flynn S E N I O R E D I TO R

( Y E A R S O N STA F F : 1 9 9 4 – 2 0 0 0 )

Back in the ’90s, Hollywood publicists expected news outlets to play by their rules, but we at EW tended to be a bit unruly on that front. The tighter the restrictions, the more we wanted to circumvent them. So when we were barred from the premiere of the Spice Girls film Spice World, we gleefully embraced the challenge. I decided we needed to put on our own star-studded premiere— i.e., “stage a dramatic re-creation using celebrity Barbie dolls.” We raided toy stores for every action figure we could find—Will Smith from Men in Black, Glenn Close from 101 Dalmatians—then posed them in various red-carpet scenarios for a story in the magazine. The A-listers breezed past the velvet ropes, while lesser names (*cough* Bill Pullman) strained to get attention. Some figurines couldn’t stand, so we gave them little bottles and let them revel on the ground. As we were setting all this up, an editor and her daughter stopped by my office. The wide-eyed girl watched for a bit, then noted: “Wow, you get to play with a lot of toys. You’re lucky.” And I remember thinking, “Yeah. We are. We really are.”

1998 – 2008 Wrote the mega-best-seller Gone Girl and the screenplay for its film adaptation. See also: Dark Places, Sharp Objects. EW Line of Merit: “You liver-spotted, nimblebrained purveyors of justice, I salute you! You unravel the misdeeds of guest stars from Fisher Stevens to Abe Vigoda. You give your TV exploits wickedly intriguing names like ‘Murder Takes the Bus.’ You are elderly and wily.” (On old people who solve TV mysteries, 2003)

Tim Carvell 2002 – 2004 Won 14 Emmys for his writing and producing on Last Week Tonight With John Oliver and The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. EW Line of Merit: “It would seem to me that once she’s put her thing down, flipped it, and reversed it, the question of whether it’s worth it is pretty much moot, no?” (On Missy Elliott, 2003)

Marc Bernardin 1996 – 2009 Writer for Castle Rock, Carnival Row. EW Line of Merit: “He’s teasing me, I know it. Toying with my emotions. Pawing at me like a very rugged cat playing with a ball of yarn.” (On his Twitter flirtation with Nathan Fillion, 2009)

EW CONTRIBUTORS WHO MADE IT BIG IN TV → RYAN

MURPHY (GLEE, POSE), FRANK SPOTNITZ (THE X-FILES, THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE)

THE SHAW REP ORT

THE CRITICAL CONDITION L I S A S C H WA R Z B AU M

FILM CRITIC

( Y E A R S O N STA F F : 1 9 91 – 2 01 3 )

The proposed idea was for me to single out a favorite review, as well as one I think I got wrong during my twentysomething years of writing about movies at Entertainment Weekly. This was a fine idea. It also didn’t interest me, and not just because it has been over 20 years since I infuriated those who were infuriated when I gave Fight Club a D, and I don’t have the fortitude to revisit David Fincher’s polarizing movie and my reasons at the time. Those were my reasons at the time. Movie criticism is a function of its time—as the anthologized work of the craft’s most famous practitioners exposes without mercy. Moviemaking is also a function of its time, but that’s a topic for another symposium. But oh, what a time it was to talk about movies in the 1990s and 20-aughts! When I joined EW’s founding movie critic, Owen Gleiberman, to cover the explosion of weekly releases, our reviews were loved or hated with a sincerity of reader passion not yet hardened by the tempo and combative stylings of social media. And we—Owen and Lisa, Lisa and Owen—had time to think longer before we declared what we thunk. EW was in the thick of the conversation. Weekly. I hated Pay It Forward so much, I gave away the ending! I made Dancer in the Dark my No. 1 movie of 2000! Loved him! Hated her! Here’s a story: I was fortunate enough to see Hamilton on Broadway in 2015 in the company of a Famous Person who was invited to meet the cast after the show. When the Famous Person introduced me to Lin-Manuel Miranda, the protean creator and star of Hamilton said, “You! I read you in school! You gave Fight Club a D!” Happy anniversary, EW! My work here is done.

FRONT ROW

F I N D &

E N T E R TA I N M E N T 09 2020

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G E E K

W E C O U L D N ’ T P I C K A FAVO R I T E , S O W E C O M B I N E D 7 0 C L A S S I C E W C O V E R S I N TO O N E . C A N YO U I D T H E M A L L — A N D F I N D T H E F I V E O S C A R S TAT U E S ? SEE THE ANSWER KEY AT EW.COM/PUZ ZLES

I L L U S T R AT I O N BY KYLE H I LT O N

54 E N T E R TA I N M E N T 09 2020

W E E K LY

EW ON THE RECORD

3 0 YEARS OF ESSENTIAL ALBUMS

CHALLENGE: PICK ONE INFLUENTIAL RECORD FOR E ACH YE AR FROM 1990 TO 2019. TWO THOUSAND ARGUMENTS AND A FEW BRUISED EGOS L ATER, WE ARRIVED AT OUR FINAL LIST. ENJOY.

B Y L E A H G R E E N B L AT T, S A R A H R O D M A N , A N D A L E X S U S K I N D I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y C R I S T I A N A C O U C E I R O

19 9 0 F U N FACT →

Milli Vanilli were forced to return their Grammy for Best New Ar tist won earlier in the year

1 9 9 0

PUBLIC ENEMY FEAR OF A BLACK PLANET

1 9 9 2

1 9 9 3

N I RVA N A NEVERMIND

DR. DRE THE CHRONIC

LIZ PHAIR EXILE IN GUYVILLE

With little more than four chords and a torn cardigan, Kurt Cobain unleashed the teen spirit of a generation starved for more meaning than hair metal and Michael Jackson’s Bad could give them.

Dr. Dre’s solo debut is the G-funk Gutenberg Bible—an album that transformed hip-hop, popularized a brewing subgenre, and introduced the world to Snoop Dogg. Few records have felt as lush, sharp, or hilarious since. —ALE X SUSKIND

A rare bird: perfectly of-its-moment and timeless. By turns brazen and vulnerable, lo-fi but speaking volumes, alt-rock built on a classic foundation, Guyville gave voice to a POV many rock fans had been waiting to hear. —SR

—LE AH GREENBL AT T

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1 9 9 4 ALANIS MORISSETTE JAGGED LITTLE PILL

NINE INCH NAIL S T H E D OW N WA R D S P I R A L A menacing whisper. A wounded howl. A palette that spans black to pitch-black. The perfect soundtrack for scribbling weepily in your diary and then leaping off the bed to bang your head. Angry? Sad? Outraged? Trent Reznor has your back. If NIN’s Pretty Hate Machine set the table for the industrial revolution, this follow-up five years later cemented his reputation as the foremost synthesizer of clangorous rattle, driving guitars, and pure pop sensibilities. It spawned the banger “Closer” and the hushed “Hurt”— which helped Johnny Cash expand his reach as a lion in winter. Icing on a delicious cake of rage. —SR

“THOUGH HE HAS MASTERED THE G R I T A N D D E TA I L OF THE CRIME STO RY, H E H A S N ’ T DEMONSTRATED A M B I T I O N S TO D O A N YT H I N G E L S E . ” — O N JAY - Z , F R O M OUR 2003 REVIEW OF T H E B L AC K A L B U M

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BECK O D E L AY

From the hell-hath-nofury catharsis of first single “You Oughta Know” to the surreptitious incense-burning of secret a cappella closer “Your House,” this was a revelatory red Pill for an entire generation. —SR

HOVA MEA CULPA

The surreal 1994 slacker anthem “Loser” was his calling card, but Odelay showed Beck had a lot more in his pocket: a joyful cacophony of rumbling funk, found sounds, and guitar freak-outs. —LG

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RADIOHEAD OK COMPUTER Following a grudging dalliance with the Top 40 set, Radiohead made a stunning left turn with their game-changing third LP—a mix of anthemic hooks and droning electronics that flipped rock on its head. —A S

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L AU RY N H I L L T H E M I S E D U C AT I O N OF LAURYN HILL “I treat this like my thesis,” raps Hill. Indeed she did. Her solo debut’s unique power—of finding strength in loss, of wading through heartache, of tackling motherhood—has yet to wane. —A S

16 O F T H E R EC O R D S ON OUR ES SENTIAL 30 L I ST W E N T A L L T H E WAY TO N O. 1 O N T H E B I L L B OA R D TO P 20 0 ALBUM CHART

B AC KS T R E E T B OYS MILLENNIUM Even if the fivesome aren’t your fire or one desire, this recordbreaking collection of harmonious confections was the commercial zenith of the Max Martin pop invasion. Listeners will still want it that way in a thousand years. —SR

Mat t B ean • Editor, 2014–2015 → He was born in the town where Groundhog Day was filmed (Woodstock, Ill., not Punxsutawney, Pa.)

(PREVIOUS SPREAD) RIHANNA: SERGIONE INFUSO/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES; BEYONCE: LARRY BUSACCA/PW/WIREIMAGE FOR PARKWOOD ENTERTAINMENT; WHITE STRIPES: TIM RONEY/GETTY IMAGES; COBAIN: GIE KNAEPS/GETTY IMAGES; HILL: TIM MOSENFELDER/IMAGEDIRECT/GETTY IMAGES; SWIFT: DAVE HOGAN/ABA/GETTY IMAGES; OCEAN: ROGER KISBY/GETTY IMAGES; BACKSTREET BOYS: KMAZUR/WIREIMAGE

One of many pop culture artifacts casting withering side eye on 2020’s state of affairs. This seminal release— a lyrical and aural maelstrom—was a 911 call to America. No one picked up. PE knows why. — S A R A H R O D M A N

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D’ANGELO VOODOO For a moment, it was the most famous six-pack on the planet. If the skin-ematic glory of D’Angelo’s nude, teasing torso in the nowiconic music video for “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” was the main headline on him in 2000, though, it was also a Trojan horse: Voodoo is a deep-cut R&B dream, 13 gorgeously supple tracks geared toward headphones and bedrooms, not the pop charts. There’s something almost intergalactic in the funk backbone of songs like “Devil’s Pie” and “Spanish Joint,” but it’s all grounded in his inimitable voice—an instrument so silky and sweet, it put even those improbable abs to shame. —LG

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G R E E N DAY AMERICAN IDIOT The evolution of the Bay Area trio from bracingly bratty pop punks whining about boredom to mature men (and still pop punks) lamenting the idiocracy in 10 years flat without losing any heat from their fastball is a true American success story. —SR

Recorded, rerecorded, reconfigured. The road was rocky, but the results were glorious, a pastiche of style and emotion meticulously handcrafted that felt as delicate as the gears of a Swiss watch and as reliable. —SR

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THE WHITE STRIPES WHITE BLOOD CELLS

WILCO YA N K E E H O T E L F O X T R O T

Raw, elemental, and pretty much perfect, Cells seemed to rise fully formed from a garage in Detroit— from the glorious guitar stomp of “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground” to the happy, galloping clatter of “Fell in Love With a Girl.” —LG

The work of a band breaking free from gravity with the confidence that strains of roots, prog, pop, and noise can peacefully coexist. You could listen a thousand times and still discover something new. —SR

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JAY - Z THE BLACK ALBUM Hov did not, in fact, “fade to black” as he said he would on this swan-song fake-out. But the end still looms large here—an MC returning to the autobiographical well while sounding more sagelike, reflective, and restful than ever. —A S

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HONORABLE MENTIONS 1995 Post Björk

2003 Speakerboxxx/ The Love Below OutKast

2 01 6 A Seat at the Table Solange

RIHANNA GOOD GIRL GONE BAD

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FIONA APPLE EXTRAORDINARY MACHINE

W E E K LY

AMY WINEHOUSE BACK TO BL ACK A gorgeous, aching, defiant mix of contemporary and vintage R&B from an artist at the top of her game, Winehouse’s album is all fire and nerve—and a brushback to critics who dismissed her as little more than a revivalist. —A S

She’d already had a handful of hits, but watching Rihanna go from ingenue to superstar on Good Girl felt like something else: a full cosmic event, from the instant hi-hat classic “Umbrella” (ella, ella) to the auto-erotic banger “Shut Up and Drive.” By the end of its run, the album would clock five smash singles, including the Michael Jackson-sampling “Please Don’t Stop the Music,” pensive love-isthe-drug ballad “Rehab,” and creamy Ne-Yo duet “Hate That I Love You”— though its walloping chart success still only hinted at the full artistic potential of a singer just beginning to find her true voice. —LG

19 9 0 F U N FACT →

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BEYONCÉ I AM...SASHA FIERCE

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In which two Frenchmen join robot-funk forces with the likes of Nile Rodgers, Pharrell, and Julian Casablancas, and go from cult heroes to Grammy kings on the deathless roller-disco wings of “Get Lucky.” —LG

Can we get much higher? Who knows? Until then, Kanye’s magnum opus—a rich and bombastic culmination of his career as a rapper, producer, and music-legend wrangler—will more than suffice. —A S

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ADELE 21 If her debut album, 19, was an introduction to The Voice, 21 was the full realization of The Talent. Adele alchemized pop, gospel, and folk into an irresistible musical mix and dug into her own heartbreak to create pure radio gold. —SR

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FRANK OCEAN CHANNEL ORANGE Frank had yet to go full musical mystic when he dropped this gorgeous, mango-sweet studio debut about life in L.A. and first-love butterflies. But he was just starting to defy convention, bending and shaping R&B in unique new ways. —A S

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TAY L O R S W I F T 1989

KAC E Y M U S G R AV E S GOLDEN HOUR

The one where Taylor shook off her starmaking country(ish) roots and emerged as a world-conquering pop icon. From "Blank Space" to "Bad Blood" to (yes) "Shake It Off," 1989 is charttopping stadium bliss.

Like the movie moment that the title references, there is ineffable magic in this eminently repeatable collection of songs that float in a gauzy ether over the adjoining neighborhoods of pop and country. —SR

—A S

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KENDRICK LAMAR T O P I M P A B U T T E R F LY

B E YO N C É LEMONADE

Butterfly is a bracing and urgent look at Black life in America from one of the best MCs of his era. Its crown jewel, the protest anthem "Alright," is the type of song that will be passed down to future generations.

Who could have guessed that Jay-Z’s infidelity would also be God’s gift to pop music? Galvanized by marital betrayal, Bey unleashed the manifesto of a woman in crisis—and also in total command of her singular talent. —LG

—A S

KA N Y E W E S T MY BEAUTIFUL DARK T W I S T E D FA N TA S Y

Merriweather is Animal Collective at the peak of their kaleidoscopic powers—an experimental pop record floating in textured synthscapes, experimental noise, and earworm hooks. —A S

DA F T P U N K RANDOM ACCESS MEMORIES

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ANIMAL COLLECTIVE M E R R I W E AT H E R P O S T PAV I L I O N

Was she freed by the alter ego, or just growing into her artistry? Either way, Sasha showcased a singer reaching a thrilling new level of pop-R&B supremacy, from “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” to “Halo.” —LG

In June, Mariah Carey dropped her debut album; 36 weeks later, it landed at No. 1 on the Billboard 200

LORDE M E LO D R A M A In 2013, a precocious 16-year-old with a preternatural ability for hookwriting and cultural commentary dropped a snappy debut album. Four years later, she upped the ante. Lorde’s sophomore effort was electric, filled with negative space and twitchy drums, lone piano riffs and plaintive synths. Her stories—of broken promises (“Homemade Dynamite”), illuminated dance floors (“Green Light”), life in the spotlight and finding comfort at home (“Liability”)—were bursting with the self-awareness of someone twice her age; tales so good you could hang them in the back of the Louvre. (Who cares? Still the Louvre.) —A S

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BILLIE EILISH WHEN WE ALL FA L L A S L E E P, W H E R E DO WE GO? Pop’s great new hope? Find it in the bedroom studio of an L.A. teenager cranking out woolly, intoxicating electro bops about Xanny bars and undersung Office characters. —LG

P R O M OT I O N

BADASS LIPSTICK: FOUR PERFECT SHADES GOT YOU COVERED. SHOP INSTYLEBADASS.COM

TITANS They gave us Purple Rain and Ziggy Stardust, “Schlemiel! Schlimazel!” and “fuhgeddaboudit,” an intergalactic princess named Leia and the questionably British Mrs. known as Doubtfire. Many we’ve had to say goodbye to much too soon— comforted, in our collective loss, by the immortal work they left behind. Here, EW looks back at just a few of the brightest lights of the past three decades through the recollections of the friends, family, and fellow artists who knew them best.

PRINCE

1958 — 2016

BY CHAK A KHAN He was a special human being. He was very other. And a genius, of course. Musically, it was the closest I ever came to working with someone where it felt like I was working with myself. I mean, we probably made an entire record in four weeks’ time. I’d write a poem, give it to him at night after we finished recording, and he’d come back the next evening with the music. Boom, done—just like that. Our whole relationship was just easy and natural and honest. I was always honest with him, and I think that was part of the glue that held us together, because he was a very lonely person. I’m lonely too! It’s a lonely-ass life that we lead. But one thing he told me, he said when you go on stage, it really doesn’t matter who goes on first or second or third. And it doesn’t! So that’s why, to my audience’s chagrin, I often go on first. [Laughs] Because it’s not a competition, it never is. —A S TOLD TO LE AH GREENBL AT T

KEVIN WINTER/GETTY IMAGES FOR NCLR

REMEMBER

THE

19 9 0 F U N FACT → Luke Perr y star ted breaking hear ts as Dylan on Beverly Hills, 90210 just eight months af ter EW’s debut

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1956 — 2016 | 1932 — 2016

B Y TO D D F I S H E R

Some people look at my mother’s death [the day after Carrie’s] and say, “That must have been really horrible.” But literally when I was in the hospital, I walked up the hallway and just had this epiphany about how beautiful it was. I’m not saying it wasn’t devastating. I stopped dead in my tracks and was like, wow, what just happened? I was there with her 24/7, from the day Carrie passed all the way forward to the moment when my mother looked in my eyes and said she needed to be with Carrie. And then she closed them and left. There’s no other way I could have accepted it but that way. The gift was amazing for all of us. We all would have selfishly loved to have her around. I was brought into this world so Carrie wouldn’t be alone. My mother left this world so Carrie wouldn’t be alone. —A S TOLD TO LYNE T TE RICE

—A S TOLD TO LR

SELENA

PENNY MAR SHAL L 1943 — 2018

B Y C I N DY W I L L I A M S Penny Marshall was an American original, extraordinarily talented in everything she did. The first time I saw her was on The Odd Couple playing Myrna Turner. She made me laugh out loud. I thought, “This girl is so much fun to watch, and what impeccable timing.” If she had been a drummer, she would have been Ringo Starr—bigger than life, yet subtle and masterful. She was [also] secretly sentimental, only showing that side of herself on rare occasions. We were attending the Golden Globes one year and the orchestra began playing “Send In the Clowns.” I looked at Penny and she was weeping. When she saw me look at her, she quickly turned away. Penny never thought she was pretty, but I thought she was beautiful. The last words we said to each other were “I love you, Pen,” “I love you, Cin.” I deeply miss her. —A S TOLD TO LR

W E E K LY

CARRIE FISHER & DEBBIE REYNOLDS

The thing I thought that was so cool about Heath— I mean, everything was cool about him—was just how creative he was. He put his whole body and voice into each character. I never knew what he was going to do. He was so present. Six days after he wrapped Lords of Dogtown, he was shooting Brokeback Mountain. And that is a completely different voice, different body language. You would have thought he had been up on that horse for six months or his whole life, compared to our laidback stoner surfer dude.

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FISHER AND REYNOLDS: ETHAN MILLER/GETTY IMAGES; LEDGER: J. VESPA/WIREIMAGE; MARSHALL: SILVER SCREEN COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES; SELENA: CESARE BONAZZA/CONTOUR BY GETTY IMAGES

B Y CAT H E R I N E HARDWICKE

B Y E VA L O N G O R I A

She was really a member of the Corpus Christi community, and so I grew up with her. I remember going to dances, very young, and her band playing and maybe a hundred people at the little dance hall. She was more than just a celebrity. She was a fellow Latina, she was a fellow sister. [To say I’m a] fan seems like such an understatement. We owe so much to her in blazing the trail for the rest of us to follow. —A S TOLD TO SARAH RODMAN

WHITNE Y HOUSTON 1963 — 2012

B Y C O U R T N E Y B . VA N C E Her “Star-Spangled Banner” at the Super Bowl [in 1991]—nobody has ever sung that song like that. The only other person who could is Aretha. It was like you were watching a thoroughbred. And she still had places to go in the song! She was not at the end of her range. For me, that was the epitome of Whitney Houston. She was America. She was our American girl. —AS TOLD TO LE AH GREENBL AT T

PHIL HARTMAN

1961 — 2013

BY STEVE BUS CEMI

1948 — 1998

B Y S T E P H E N R O OT

I was always a huge fan of Phil’s from Saturday Night Live. He was an Everyman who could do anything. What was brilliant about him was he was able to do large, broad comedy yet pull it into small, believable stuff, like Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer. When I was doing my early sitcom work, he helped me feel confident I could get work being subtle but still being big. Although Phil came from improv comedy, he had the sense of a theater actor, in being able to repeat a performance and have it be just as funny as the ﬁrst time. He would change a little something and keep it fresh. He was a very prepared guy. All of us [on NewsRadio] would take our scripts and just throw them around. He had his in a notebook, parceled out into every scene with different tabs and different colors. So he was like Dad in that sense to us. Phil was never afraid to look like a fool or be made fun of, because he had an underlying dignity. The funniest thing I ever saw was a fantasy episode [Hartman’s last] where we were on the Titanic, and Phil was very happy to put on a suit of french fries and sit there with Andy Dick dressed as a hot dog and watch people go by who were drowning. That is the mental picture that comes up when I think of Phil as the ultimate “I’ll do this for a laugh, yet it will be somehow stately.” I keep a picture of him dressed as a blue genie. He was doing some commercial [in an episode] as a genie, and I said, “Phil, I have to have this picture in my home.” He very graciously took a couple, and I keep it in my bathroom, so I can see him every day. —A S TOLD TO DAN SNIERSON

Jimmy was not like Tony Soprano at all, but he just made that character so believable that it was hard to get that image out of your head on set. He could do more with a single look than most actors could with monologues. He could express that incredible warmth with just a slight nod of his head. Conversely, when he wanted to convey that Tony was not happy, he would get this look, the tone in his voice would change, his breathing would get labored, and there was the threat of real violence. He was able to tap into that, but it was at a cost and it took a toll on him. He sometimes had to go to such a dark place, and it would stay with him. Other actors can turn it on and turn it off. Jimmy felt things very deeply. Sometimes he didn’t want to go there and would struggle. Then when he did, it’s like, “Oh my God, watch out.” —A S TOLD TO JAMES HIBBERD

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BY ED ASNER There was always a little jealousy on my part because Mary would spend more time with Valerie. I [said] in my biography that I should have been favored with her smile more! But Valerie got more time and space than I did. I was petty, but I didn’t show it. Valerie was a good Joe because she had come directly from improv and the New York stage. Mary was dedicated to the work intensively. She would take dance lessons during lunch. She was a workaholic. She was always open and never petty. I truly admired her. —A S TOLD TO LYNE T TE RICE

Rick Tet zeli • Managing Editor, 2002–2009 → When he was 11, a giraffe in a zoo mistook his blond hair for straw and took a bite

HARTMAN: DAVE BJERKE/NBC/NBCU PHOTO BANK; HOUSTON: 20TH CENTURY FOX/GETTY IMAGES; GANDOLFINI: ANTHONY NESTE/THE LIFE IMAGES COLLECTION VIA GETTY IMAGES; HARPER AND MOORE: CBS/GETTY IMAGES

JAMES GAND OL FINI

ARETHA FRANKLIN

DAVID B OWIE

1942 — 2018

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B Y M AV I S S TA P L E S

B Y I G GY P O P

When we first met [in Los Angeles in 1960] she said, “I live in Detroit,” and I said, “Well, I live in Chicago. We’re neighbors!” I thought she was beautiful. She had two sisters and a brother, and I had two sisters and a brother, so we turned out to be one family, you know? We would visit each other when we’d have some time off—cook, fry fish, just have fun. We just jelled. She was bold, you know? Really frisky. And she could hit some notes. For me gospel was always home, but she wanted to sing jazz and R&B. And it must have been what she was supposed to do, because she sang with so much feeling, even the secular songs. I’d say, “Oh, Ree”—that’s what I called her—“Ree, are you goin’ up there?” And she’d say, “Yeah, I’m goin’.” [Laughs] —A S TOLD TO LG

LUKE PERRY 1966 — 2019

Whenever Riverdale would do San Diego Comic-Con, we’d go to the Warner Bros. booth and people would come get posters signed. Every single person who came through that line, Luke shook their hand, asked their name, and talked to them. Often it would be fans of his from Beverly Hills, 90210, and he was so gracious to them. He meant so much to these people who grew up watching him. There wasn’t a single picture he didn’t take or a single person he didn’t make feel special. That, to me, was the essence of Luke. He was just a prince. —A S

KYLE ANDERSON

ROBIN WILLIAMS

W E E K LY

TOLD TO SAMANTHA HIGHFILL

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FRANKLIN: ANTHONY BARBOZA/GETTY IMAGES; PERRY; RON DAVIS/GETTY IMAGES; BOWIE: DONNA SANTISI/REDFERNS; WILLIAMS: JACK MITCHELL/GETTY IMAGES

B Y R O B E R TO AG U I R R E - S ACA S A

David Bowie wrote [Pop’s iconic 1977 single] “Lust for Life” on a ukulele. In fact, I think outside of Hawaiian music, it’s probably the most successful ukulele song of all time. We were sitting around his digs on the floor, because it was a no-chairs kind of place. We had a production contract and a schedule and he had to get it out of the way, so he said, “Let’s get a song here.” He picked up a little ukulele he had—I think it might have been his son’s—and just came up with that progression, which I thought was great. He came up with the title, too. Later I realized that it was a reference to van Gogh and the [1956] Kirk Douglas film. I think in the two albums we made, he wanted to make the comment that I was an idiot à la Dostoyevsky and insane à la van Gogh. Basically, “Here I am producing albums for this insane idiot.” [Laughs] Which is cool. —A S TOLD TO

BY JO SH CHARLES

Robin was incredibly kind and treated all of us young actors [in Dead Poets Society] really, really well. Even though he was the big star, he just really was part of the ensemble. I remember at a holiday party or something, we were at the Radisson in Wilmington [Del.] and he came to all of our rooms and gave us a copy of the script that he had leatherbound, and he wrote little personal notes for us. I have nothing but the fondest memories of working with him. He was a beautiful man. —A S TOLD TO SH

A M E R I C A N

BL ACK FILMMAKERS ARE R E V I TA L I Z I N G THE HORROR GENRE. WE GO INSIDE THIS FA L L’ S MOST CHILLING FILMS— ANTEBELLUM, BAD HAIR, AND THE NEW C A N DY M A N — AND EXPLORE HOW BL ACK HISTORY IS BL ACK HORROR.

CHANCELLOR AGARD @CHANCELLORAGARD

I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y

ADAM MAIDA

S T O R Y

H I S T O R I C A L LY, BEING A BLACK ACTOR IN A HORROR MOVIE HASN’T BEEN M U C H F U N. . .

S E PT E M B E R 2 0 2 0

EW ● COM

↑ “At its core,” says star Elle Lorraine, “[Bad Hair] is really about a young woman on her journey of self-discovery.”

BAD HAIR: TOBIN YELLAN/HULU

Tropes like the sacrificial Negro, the magical Negro, and the first one to die have been around as long as any jump scare or that call coming from inside the house. It’s something Elle Lorraine learned growing up in Texas. “If there was a Black person [in a horror film], I immediately hoped they would survive and their life wouldn’t be cut to two scenes,” the 35-yearold actress says. Well, the bloody tide has finally started to turn. Lorraine makes her film debut at the center of Justin Simien’s Bad Hair (Oct. 23 on Hulu), which subverts those racist tropes for sport. “Sometimes it takes us having to break the mold and

show people who we are, even when they aren’t ready to listen,” she says. “And also: The ﬁlm is fun.” This fall, Bad Hair is joined by Candyman and Antebellum; the trio of provocative films lead the charge in a new Golden Age of Black Horror, coursing with rage at a painfully apt moment. Arriving in the wake of Jordan Peele’s Oscar-winning social thriller Get Out and terrifying follow-up Us, the new movies employ familiar cinematic scare tactics to freshly explore the real-life terrors of racism—and, following the tragic high-proﬁle killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and subsequent unrest this summer, hold even more resonance now. “There’s an urgency to unpacking systemic racism. It is an evil we all have to live with in [the] present day,” says Bad Hair’s Simien. “In a lot of ways, what we’re doing is taking something like Rosemary’s Baby or Invasion of the Body Snatchers just a step further—because really good thrillers have already been interrogating the system.” Horror provides unique forms of catharsis. “For Black people in this country, survival is a hugely important story we need to see,” says Tananarive Due, who executive-produced and appeared in

SIMIEN: CINDY ORD/GETTY IMAGES; CANDYMAN: ©TRISTAR PICTURES/COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION; CANDYMAN: PARRISH LEWIS/UNIVERSAL PICTURES AND MGM PICTURES

Shudder’s Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror documentary, in which she maintains, “Black history is Black horror.” “[Horror is] a genre where we can take real-life trauma and unpack it in a way that both informs an audience that doesn’t know, and helps an audience that does know feel seen and validated.” Resistance is baked into the formula. “In fact, that’s one of the reasons I love horror,” says Due, who also teaches a Peele-approved class on Get Out at UCLA. “That’s the nutrient I get from horror: ‘How do I fight back?’ ” Representation of Black people in the genre has a grim history. “The truth is that horror movies really start with a fear of Black people,” says Simien, pointing to D.W. Griffith’s bigoted epic The Birth of a Nation (1915), which treated the Ku Klux Klan like superheroes and depicted Black people—portrayed by white actors in blackface—as the biggest threat to the country. While Birth of a Nation didn’t play like a horror movie to its intended audience, it certainly can be read as one. “Even in movies like King Kong [1933], the Other that these screaming white people, frankly, are so afraid of could be anything, but there’s a lot of reason to believe it could also be, specifically, Black people,” says Simien. The road to Get Out has been a long one, filled with milestones big and small: George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, from 1968, which notably cast Black actor Duane Jones as the lead; 1972’s Blaxploitation classic Blacula; 1995’s Tales From the Hood, an anthology film that explored police brutality, racist politicians, and domestic violence (and received a long-awaited sequel in 2018 following Get Out’s triumph); and perhaps most notably, the original Candyman. Directed by Bernard Rose, the 1992 movie starred Virginia Madsen as a graduate student researching the urban legend about the titular bogeyman (Tony Todd). As she discovers,

Candyman is the product of racial violence: In the late 19th century, a white lynch mob mutilated and murdered Candyman, the artistic son of a slave, when he fell in love with a white woman. He was left to die on what would eventually become Chicago’s Cabrini-Green projects—his presentday haunting grounds.

story gave the hook-handed villain a life that extended far beyond the movie. “When I was growing up as a kid who lived across the street from the projects, that was part of our atmosphere—that movie and the lore inside the movie,” says Brooklyn native Nia DaCosta (Little Woods), who directed 2020’s Candyman (due later this year) from a script co-written by Peele. Her star, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, who grew up in New Orleans, adds: “I remember being 5 or 6 and playing the Bloody Mary game”—in which one conjures a malevolent spirit using a mirror—“in the bathroom, but not [doing the same] with Candyman. I lived in the projects, and that’s where Candyman lived, too.” Peele also was shaped by Candyman. “It was one of the few movies that explored any aspect of the Black experience in the horror genre in the ’90s when I was growing up. It was an iconic example...that inspired me,” he said at the new ﬁlm’s trailer premiere back in February. In fact, the ﬁlm is what spurred Get Out,

C A N DY M A N ’ S H O R R I F I C O R I G I N

MEET YOUR MAKER BLACK HORROR’S NEW PIONEERS REVEAL THEIR C I N E M AT I C INFLUENCES

JUSTIN SIMIEN BAD HAIR DIRECTOR

THE WIZ

“When I was kid, it was proof positive that Black people and the stories of Black people—and I didn’t have this language as a kid—that my life and the lives of people that looked like me could be just as cinematic and just as important and just as universal. It could be all the things The Wizard of Oz was,” says Simien, 37, of the 1978 musical.

FRITZ LANG

The M director’s aesthetic and storytelling approach were “big influences on Dear White People,” says the Houston native. “He has this way of dissecting really complicated, kind of icky social modern conundrums, but in a way that’s inventive and whimsical almost.”

CHARLES BURNETT

“[Burnett] was one of the filmmakers— maybe along with Julie Dash—of that independent moment in cinema [in the] late ’80s to early ’90s that was playing with magical realism and was setting Black stories alongside these whimsical, kind of poetic ways of telling stories,” says Simien of the To Sleep With Anger director.

↓ OG Candyman, meet new Candyman

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MEET

YOUR MAKER

NIA D A C O S TA C A N DY M A N DIRECTOR

A P O C A LY P S E N O W

AMERICAN BE AU T Y

Annette Bening’s turn in Alan Ball’s dark comedy opened DaCosta’s eyes to the power of acting when she was 11. “The fact that I could enjoy a movie I didn’t really understand because of how forceful and thoughtful the performances were, and also the direction and everything, that made me realize film was what I wanted to do,” she says.

KASI LEMMONS

“Before I did my first film, I said, ‘Oh, I hope I can do this. And I hope I can make a movie.’ And [Lemmons was] like, ‘You can’t hope. You just have to do it. There aren’t that many of us, and you just have to do it,’ ” recalls DaCosta of the Eve’s Bayou director’s advice. “That really stuck with me, and it just kind of changed my viewpoint.”

more language and more knowledge about racism, racial violence, and “EVERYONE COLLECTIVELY HAS

BLACK IDENTITY IS A L R E A DY PA R T OF THE HORROR GENRE. I T ’ S J U S T T H AT NOW BLACK PEOPLE ARE TURNING T H E TA B L E S . ” —JUSTIN SIMIEN

those are so important to the dramatic core of [my] ﬁlm, the story of Candyman,” says DaCosta. “We were able to expand on it in a way that maybe you couldn’t in 1992.” Set in the present day, DaCosta’s take on the legend follows Abdul-Mateen II’s Anthony, a young artist who moves back to the now-gentrified Cabrini-Green. He’s at a low point in his career but ﬁnds inspiration in the macabre Candyman lore and other instances of racial violence in the neighborhood, awakening the supernatural killer in the process. “There’s something about perpetuation of a cycle of violence, about violence that’s done to people that lives on and has consequences for generations afterward,” says the 34-year-old Emmy-nominated Watchmen star. “We look at the ghosts that are left behind in violent incidents and the repercussions of that type of violence.” Going back in time, Antebellum (coming later this year) opts for a more grounded approach. The thoughtprovoking feature, marking the directorial debut of Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz, stars Janelle Monáe (Homecoming) as Veronica Henley, a successful author and outspoken voice on systemic racism and sexism who finds herself trapped on a slave plantation. Discussions about

A TIMELINE OF BL ACK HORROR G E T O U T M AY H AV E C H A N G E D T H E G A M E , B U T I T WA S H A R D LY T H E F I R S T O F I T S K I N D . HERE’S A RUNDOWN OF THE GENRE’S MOST GROUNDBREAKING FILMS.

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When DaCosta, 30, saw Francis Ford Coppola’s war epic in high school, she was roused by how “it was adapted from a book [Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad] but took place at a different time and place.” She adds, “Then, just, like the absolute f---ing audacity, I was impressed by it.”

a searing takedown of the notion that America was somehow post-racial following the 2008 election of Barack Obama. His bold story, about a young Black man (Daniel Kaluuya) who uncovers a horrifying racist tradition at his white girlfriend’s family home, ended up paying off: Get Out was a box office smash and received four Oscar nominations; Peele, 41, became the first Black writer to win Best Original Screenplay. The triumph promptly broke down barriers for others. Simien started developing Bad Hair shortly after his debut feature, the college satire Dear White People, premiered to acclaim at Sundance in 2014. Despite its success—as well as the subsequent Netflix TV series—he had trouble getting Bad Hair off the ground. People thought of Simien as a comedy director—that is, until Get Out. “Finally, this thing that I’d been talking about doing, there was a context for it, and there was financial context for it, too,” says the writer-director. “This Black horror movie stopped feeling risky to investors [after] Get Out.” (Made on a $4.5 million budget, Get Out ultimately grossed more than $255 million globally.) Inspired by Korean hair-horror movies like The Wig (2005), Bad Hair edges more toward satire than the relatively heavy Antebellum and Candyman. Set in 1989, it follows aspiring music video VJ Anna Bludso (Lorraine), who learns she needs to get extensions if she wants to ascend the ranks. What she gets, literally, is a killer weave. For Simien, Get Out’s frankness about racism was liberating when it came to making Bad Hair. “I realized I don’t have to mince words. The real evils are white supremacy and the patriarchy. I’m no longer afraid to say that because Get Out just did that,” says Simien. “You make horror movies about what terrifies you. What really terrifies me as a Black queer American is that I’m given what I’m told are choices, but I’m not given nearly the same amount or quality of choices [as] somebody who doesn’t look like me: a traditional straight white man.”

MEET YOUR MAKERS

GERARD BUSH AND

CHRISTOPHER RENZ ANTEBELLUM DIRECTORS

ANTEBELLUM: MATT KENNEDY; RENZ,BUSH: JOHN SCIULLI/GETTY IMAGES FOR AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USA; CANDYMAN: ©TRISTAR PICTURES/ EVERETT COLLECTION; TALES FROM THE HOOD: ©SAVOY PICTURES/EVERETT COLLECTION; GET OUT: ©UNIVERSAL/EVERETT COLLECTION

HARRY BELAFONTE

The JamaicanAmerican singer and actor is “a North Star in this sort of career I would like to have behind the camera— in written word, too,” says Bush.

’70S HORROR FILMS

↑ “There’s a lot at stake,” Janelle Monáe says of the urgency behind Antebellum. “We can’t stop fighting.”

the way Hollywood depicts slavery have intensified over the past few years, and Antebellum—which examines how we deal with the country’s disgraceful history—confronts that trauma head-on with unsparing depictions of brutality and torture on the plantation. “I never considered for a second that we wouldn’t honor the ancestry of these people who suffered at the hands of the oppressor,” says Bush. “It would also be doing a grave disservice to the truth to water this down because it’s triggering. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you [see it], that’s what good art does: It activates.” Conceived in 2018, Antebellum speaks chillingly to 2020, as protests against systemic racism press on nationwide. “[We] were very scared at first, because when we made the movie, none of this was

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happening,” says Bush. “So it started to feel beyond prescient and almost prophetic and really scary in that way, but also it’s a conversation that we need to have.” Adds Monáe, 34: “There is nothing more horrific than, in my opinion, America’s first big sin, and that was enslaving Black people, stealing Black bodies. I don’t know how much [more] horror you can get.” Horror, put simply, provides a fitting artistic vehicle for these narratives. Says DaCosta, “I think the fact that you can have all these movies that are ostensibly about racism, but are all about different aspects of it, just shows you how much storytelling is out there for Black filmmakers.” And these aren’t history lessons, either. They’re movies, after all— bloody, scary, and at times sharply funny. “Our responsibility is to thrillingly entertain our audience,” Bush says. “If you don’t do that, then the rest of it is a moot point. It doesn’t even matter.” Perhaps that’s where these films’ true power lies. (Additional reporting by Clark Collis and Marcus Jones)

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“That sensibility of films from the ’70s, we tried to bring and put a modern spin on it,” says Renz, referencing Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist.

S TA N L E Y K U B R I C K

For Bush, “the Shining filmmaker is the best to have ever done it,” he says. “Every time we go out and we do this thing that we do [we remember to] respect the craft, and that we understand that this is a privilege to be able to engage in this art form.”

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WHO WILL WIN THE E M M Y S ? WHO KNOWS? WE DO, MAYBE! ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY’S TV CRITICS TAKE A LOOK AT THE BIG PRIZES.

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THE

← Top row: Ramy Youssef, Regina King, Holland Taylor, and Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn Bottom row: Brian Cox, Daniel “Desus Nice” Baker and Joel “The Kid Mero” Martinez, Issa Rae, and Kayvan Novak

2020

EMMY

N O M I N AT I O N S

spread the love around the inﬁnite landscape of television. Netflix earned the most overall, but its eternal nemesis HBO earned the most noms for a single series, with 26 for Watchmen. Disney+ staged a bold assault on the TV Academy’s Death Star with a piece of franchise IP about a man with a helmet, while the comedy categories found room for eccentric up-and-coming sensations from FX and Hulu. The snubs hurt: No love for Desus & Mero, another year overlooking the best of Better Call Saul, and was there a plot against The Plot Against America? But who can complain about The Good Place’s Ted Danson carrying his Emmy-nomination track record into a ﬁfth decade? We don’t know what state the world will be in on Sept. 20, when

Emmy winners will be announced in ABC’s virtual ceremony hosted by Jimmy Kimmel. But we do have some educated guesses about the biggest races. Outstanding Drama Series The biggest question in this category was always, what show will replace Game of Thrones? But it’s unlikely that anyone had The Mandalorian on their Emmy Head-Scratchers bingo card. Of all the new streamers scrabbling for their first taste of Emmy glory, Apple TV+ seemed to have the most momentum with The Morning Show…but count out Baby Yoda you never should, guess we. The nomination is likely the prize for Killing Eve, Stranger Things, and The Handmaid’s Tale— three once-great shows that are

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NEWS + REVIEWS

CONTENTS ↓

still on—which means it’s the battle of serious family sagas versus one spectacularly shady lawyer. In this case, Succession’s Logan

“Is it just me or does Dr. Fauci look hotter than ever?”

Roy may be right: Money wins. –KB Better Call Saul (AMC) The Crown (Netflix) The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu) The Mandalorian (Disney+) Ozark (Netflix) Stranger Things (Netflix) ►

Succession (HBO)

Outstanding Comedy Series An even split among dynamic young sitcoms, legacy jalopies, farewell seasons, and the boomer-millennial talking point known as The Kominsky Method. Too much to demand more love for Ramy, maybe, though Curb’s surely had better seasons. Vamp farce What We Do in the Shadows is the most pleasant surprise, while the ever-buzzy Insecure returned from a long hiatus to score its first comedy nod. Its stylish fourth season found new notes of rom-com sweetness; that, plus co-creator Issa Rae’s rising stardom, make it a frontrunner. Expect a serious threat from The Good Place, which could be the last network sitcom to ever appear in this category. —DF

★

recent winners Donald Glover

performance, which was sublime.

(Atlanta) and Bill Hader (Barry).

Dead to Me (Netflix)

The Roy family patriarch has

In a race full of beloved old pros,

Insecure (HBO)

the advantage here, but Strong’s

give a slight edge to Ramy Youssef,

Schitt’s Creek (Pop TV)

finale showcase could bring

whose work on the spiritually sur-

The Good Place (NBC)

Kendall a long-awaited victory

real Jersey tale Ramy also netted

The Kominsky Method (Netflix)

over dear old Dad. —KB

him a directing nomination. This

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

Jason Bateman

category loves awarding the star

(Amazon Prime Video)

Ozark (Netflix)

of a new-ish, eccentric arty com-

What We Do in the Shadows (FX)

Sterling K. Brown

edy—see also, Donald Glover and

This Is Us (NBC)

Bill Hader—though we wouldn’t

Lead Actor in a Drama Series

Steve Carell

mind some recognition for Danson,

So…Better Call Saul is one of

The Morning Show (Apple TV+)

who made The Good Place’s ele-

Brian Cox

giac finale positively heavenly. —DF

the best dramas of the year,

★

but Bob Odenkirk—the man voters

Succession (HBO)

have nominated four seasons

Billy Porter

black-ish (ABC)

running—is not one of the

Pose (FX)

Don Cheadle

Outstanding Lead Actors? That’s

Jeremy Strong

Black Monday (Showtime)

some mind-boggling logic, voters.

Succession (HBO)

Anthony Anderson

Ted Danson The Good Place (NBC)

Certainly, the newcomers in this category (Succession’s Brian Cox and Jeremy Strong; The Morning Show’s Steve Carell) are all fine actors—but Carell’s very good turn as #MeToo’d morning-show anchor Mitch Kessler did not

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Should Win ► Will Win ★ Should and Will Win

Lead Actor in a Comedy Series

Michael Douglas

Anthony Anderson’s sixth straight

Eugene Levy

The Kominsky Method (Netflix) Schitt’s Creek (Pop TV)

nomination might mark his sixth straight loss, though this race looks pretty wide open without

►

Ramy Youssef Ramy (Hulu)

DEAD TO ME: SAEED ADYANI/NETFLIX; THIS IS US: RON BATZDORFF/NBC; MANDALORIAN: LUCASFILM LTD.

deserve to edge out Odenkirk’s

Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO)

Christina Applegate Dead to Me (Netflix) Rachel Brosnahan The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Amazon Prime Video) Linda Cardellini Dead to Me (Netflix) ►

Catherine O’Hara Schitt’s Creek (Pop TV) Issa Rae Insecure (HBO) Tracee Ellis Ross black-ish (ABC)

Outstanding Limited Series Prestige TV is women’s work—in the best way possible. All of these limited series centered on female characters, and they racked up a wealth of nominations for women both on screen and off. (Watchmen, Unorthodox, and Little Fires Everywhere earned nods for female directors, while Mrs. America, Unbelievable, and Unorthodox got writing nominations for episodes penned by women.) Of course, with its 26 nominations, HBO’s critically revered Watchmen is almost certainly a lock to win. —KB Little Fires Everywhere (Hulu) Mrs. America (FX) Unbelievable (Netflix)

SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE: NBC/NBCU PHOTO BANK VIA GETTY IMAGES; EUPHORIA: EDDY CHEN/HBO; LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE: ERIN SIMKIN/HULU

Unorthodox (Netflix)

Lead Actress in a Drama Series

Lead Actress in a Comedy Series

★

How do you like that, fellow kids?

Linda Cardellini joins a group of

Zendaya is an Emmy nominee! The

past nominees, including costar

Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series

left-field nod is a welcome surprise

Christina Applegate and past

It’s an SNL showdown, and we’re

in this expected lineup. The current

winner Rachel Brosnahan. Cathe-

worried that Brad Pitt’s (cute!)

front-runner is reigning Golden

rine O’Hara’s the immediate

virtual session as Dr. Anthony Fauci

Globe winner and Her Majesty the

favorite, thanks to a combination

will take the prize. He’s fine, voters,

Queen of Acceptance Speeches

of general love for Schitt’s Creek

he’s got an Oscar. Don’t overlook

Olivia Colman—predictably perfect

and general love for Catherine

the decades-in-the-making event

as Elizabeth II. Still, with Ozark com-

O’Hara. Then again, Maisel earned

of Eddie Murphy’s return trip to the

ing off a buzzy penultimate season,

the most nominations of any

late-night institution. —DF

Laura Linney’s Wendy Byrde may

comedy, and even people who’ve

scheme her way to the top. —KB

soured on the show will stump for

Saturday Night Live (NBC)

Jennifer Aniston

Brosnahan. Then again, Tracee Ellis

Luke Kirby

The Morning Show (Apple TV+)

Ross’ nomination after being

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

Olivia Colman

absent last year implies a ground-

(Amazon Prime Video)

The Crown (Netflix)

swell of support. Then again,

Eddie Murphy

Jodie Comer

Rae’s having a breakthrough year,

Saturday Night Live (NBC)

►

Watchmen (HBO)

Adam Driver

Killing Eve (BBC America)

releasing two movies alongside

Dev Patel

Laura Linney

Insecure. We’ll give the edge to

Modern Love

Ozark (Netflix)

O’Hara, but remember: Any year

Sandra Oh

without a Pamela Adlon nomination

Killing Eve (BBC America)

means we all have to scream,

Saturday Night Live (NBC)

Zendaya

“Better Things is amazing!” several

Fred Willard

Euphoria (HBO)

times through a megaphone. —DF

Modern Family (ABC)

(Amazon Prime Video) ►

Brad Pitt

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← Clockwise from left Deserving Dead to Me leading ladies Linda Cardellini and Christina Applegate; Brad Pitt’s faux Fauci on SNL; Euphoria star (and first-time nominee) Zendaya; Kerry Washington and Reese Witherspoon in Little Fires Everywhere; The Mandalorian’s megastar Baby Yoda; This Is Us (and Mrs. Maisel) nominee Sterling K. Brown

FIR ST LO OK

MARVEL GAMES THE MCU MAY BE ON HOLD, BUT THE VIDEO GAME VERSIONS ARE BIGGER—AND BETTER—THAN EVER. AN E XCLUSIVE LO OK INSIDE THE REVOLUTION. By Nick Romano

T H O R A N D H U L K A R E AT I T AG A I N .

E D I T E D B Y → D AV I D C A N F I E L D

Marvel Games—are rising to meet the need for fresh stories. This year alone will see the debut of Marvel’s Avengers (Sept. 4) from the Tomb Raider team at Crystal Dynamics,

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A swarm of MODOK’s robot minions converge on the heroes’ helicarrier—and still the raging green muscle finds time to hurl a projectile at Thor’s head. “Just like old times,” says the Asgardian, referencing a bit that began in 2012’s Avengers movie. Only this isn’t their next blockbuster sequel. It’s their ﬁrst blockbuster videogame. Since the MCU has been put on indefinite hold in the wake of the global COVID-19 pandemic (see: Black Widow’s release date, production on the next Spider-Man movie), games—and, specifically,

plus Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales (holiday 2020), a separate spin-off of Insomniac Games’ 2018 Spidey adventure that revives the breakout Spider-Verse star. “We always believed in the power of videogames,” says Bill Rosemann, who’s like the Kevin Feige of Marvel’s gaming division. “We’re happy that more people than ever are discovering—even though you may be physically in different areas—[that] games can bring you together.” This next phase (to use an MCU term), which ﬁnally gives fans playable Marvel adventures on large console platforms, began with Spider-Man. Earlier attempts to make games of this scale, like an Avengers project planned to coincide with the original movie, fell apart. The 2018 release, Marvel’s Spider-Man, webbed a green light thanks to “timing,” says Rosemann. “What talent is available? Do they want to work with Marvel? When you have all those things align, that’s when you can create something

BLACK PANTHER: MATT KENNEDY/©MARVEL STUDIOS 2018; DARK PHOENIX:DOANE GREGORY/FOX; DAREDEVIL: PATRICK HARBRON/NETFLIX; CAPTAIN MARVEL: ©MARVEL STUDIOS 2019; MARVEL’S AVENGERS: SQUARE ENIX

Casting Call FOUR MARVEL HEROES WHO DESERVE THEIR OWN GAME By Nick Romano

Black Panther The king of Wakanda introduced James Bond-style spy tactics via Chadwick Boseman’s performance as T’Challa in the Marvel Studios film. If Agent 007 can get his own gaming franchise, the high-tech world of Wakanda certainly deserves one.

AMAZING STORIES HAPPEN IN VIDEOGAMES WHEN THE RIGHT CREATORS WORK ON THEM.” BILL ROSEMANN, HEAD OF MARVEL GAMES

game on social media, they knew it had “reached another level.” They didn’t know if they could make a sequel. There were two post-credits scenes that teased big things to come—another element borrowed from the movies—but that was them stacking the deck. One stinger revealed Miles, a playable side character, realizing his new powers. “We knew really early that [Spider-Man] was going to end with him getting the spider bite,” Intihar says. “One of the reasons we put that out was to hopefully convince people that ‘He’s a SpiderMan now. Can we have a game with him?’ ” It paid off. Now, for the holiday 2020 season, Miles’ own

↖ Spider-Man, returning to a videogame console near you! ↙ Miles Morales, unmasked. (We’ll allow it.) ↓ Avengers, assemble...to face MODOK’s bots, the PS5/Xbox game

The X-Men If we’re not going to get a new X-Men movie anytime soon— and no, we’re not talking The New Mutants, either—how about a largescale console game? Maybe then an onscreen story will do right by the embattled Dark Phoenix Saga.

game will expand this virtual world with what Brian Horton, the game’s creative director, describes as “a very emotionally impactful” coming-of-age story. Rosemann isn’t actively overlapping his universe of interconnected games—at least not yet. He’s focused on giving game-makers as much freedom as he can. So, while this year’s Avengers won’t be linked

Daredevil Once upon a time, the Man Without Fear was going to get his own videogame. In this new age of Marvel Games, it’s time to finally make that happen. The mechanics of a player using superhearing to suss out enemies practically writes its own game code.

Captain Marvel Carol Danvers conquered the comic-book and movie worlds. This cosmically charged heroine should again cross mediums, this time with a superheroesin-space action adventure— kicking intergalactic misogyny in the butt all across the universe.

to Spider-Man, it’s just as expansive on its own. What they do have in common is the lead character. Just like Miles, Kamala Khan, a Pakistani Inhuman teen from New Jersey, started as a fan before becoming a hero herself, in Marvel’s Avengers. “That was the bedrock from the beginning,” says Scot Amos, who spearheaded the game. “Kamala feels like that new generational character.” Her starring presence deﬁnitely adds new representation to the playing field. For Rosemann, that part is about “putting the human in superhuman.” But there’s far more on the way: After Kamala’s story, players take on new adventures with notable characters like Hawkeye. According to Amos, voice actors are still recording, remotely and in secret, material for the next set of characters, to be revealed down the line. “This game isn’t just one and done,” he says. “It’s launching and then supported for years to come.” Funny. The same thing could be said for what’s coming from Marvel Games next. But to that, all Rosemann will say is, “Stay tuned, True Believers!”

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great.” It became the best-selling superhero game of all time, at over 13 million units. “We had a feeling it was gonna do that,” says Bryan Intihar, Insomniac’s creative director. Nevertheless, he adds, “there’s this ultimate fear of screwing up one of the most popular characters.” When Lin-Manuel Miranda started sharing images from the

B AC K S TA G E PA S S: IT ’S ALL HAPPENING, AGAIN. WE LO OK BACK AT CAMERON CROWE’S RO CKING 20 0 0 FILM, WITH TALES

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15-year-old journalist is on tour with America’s hottest rock band, and he’s about to get the story of his life. Cameron Crowe’s semiautobiographical film of music, fame, growing up, and “Tiny Dancer” sing-alongs may have premiered 20 years ago, but the experience of watching Almost Famous remains indelible. The performances are vivid: Patrick Fugit as young scribe William Miller; Billy Crudup as inscrutable rocker Russell Hammond; Kate Hudson in her starmaking (and Oscar-nominated) performance as ethereal “bandaid” Penny Lane. Not to mention memorable turns from Frances McDormand, the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, Anna Paquin, Jason Lee, Zooey Deschanel, and the rest of the ﬁlm’s starry cast. The music industry (and Hollywood) is very different now, but Famous remains as captivating as ever. In celebration of its 20th

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anniversary, Crowe and key cast members hopped back on the metaphorical tour bus to look through behind-the-scenes photos taken by famed rock photographer Neal Preston (Queen, Led Zeppelin), and reminisce about life on the

road. “[This] was his story, his life,” Hudson says of Crowe. “He had to get that right. And he did.” Consider this your backstage pass—complete with shout-outs to the soundtrack—for one of the greatest rock movies ever made.

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M OV I E S / T V / M U S I C / B O O KS

ALM O ST FAM O U S ABOUT THESE E XCLUSIVE BEHIND-THE-SCENES PHOTOS. B y J e s s i c a D e r s c h o w i t z a n d A l ex S u s k i n d

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MY CHERIE AMOUR

William may have spent the movie pining after Penny Lane, but Fugit (left) notes that it was Paquin’s Polexia (center) who his character should have had his heart set on. “Cameron [right] would put it like this,” Fugit remembers, “ ‘Polexia is the one that William will end up finding in 15 years and have a deep, long relationship with.’ ”

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“It’s not hard to fall in love with Billy Crudup. We didn’t have to work on it,” says Hudson. “What I loved about our relationship in that movie is that my personality and Billy’s personality are very different. Billy takes it very seriously. And I’m like, yeah, but let’s have fun while we’re doing it [laughs]—let’s have fun while we’re taking it really seriously. And he kind of made me focus.”

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R O U N DA B O U T

“They had to have production art for the albums that were going to be props on set,” Crudup (top, with John Fedevich, Jason Lee, and Mark Kozelek) recalls of this early Stillwater band shot. “We were still in our rehearsal phase. It’s a great behind-the-scenes of how people create a company. That’s us trying to figure out what Stillwater was.”

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This scene with McDormand’s Elaine (here with a 10-year-old Michael Angarano as young William) has many personal Easter eggs. “That’s the Strand Theatre [in San Diego], where I first saw Mike Nichols’ movies,” says Crowe. “That’s a dress like my mom used to wear. The two women looking in the window? That used to be a record store that [I’d] go to.”

EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY

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When Crudup and Crowe first met about the film, the actor says Russell was “a man of mystery.” His portrayal came through working with the director— and studying during downtime moments like this. Notes Crowe: “I love that photo because that’s Billy. That’s not Russell. That’s Billy Crudup at f---ing work.”

I’M WAITING FOR THE MAN

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“We were shooting a lot of stuff, and it was a long script, so that thing in my hand is just a collection of the scenes we were doing that day. What Kate’s doing—because I really remember that mannerism she had, chewing on a finger while I’m talking to her—is, ‘I hear what you’re saying, but in the end, I’m just going to wing it.’ That’s the magic of Kate.” Hudson’s take: “That picture of me and Cameron embodies me and Cameron.”

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“This was the original end of the movie,” says Crowe of this family breakfast scene, where Elaine (McDormand, left) surprises her kids by playing a Neil Young song. But there’s more to the sequence. Adds Fugit: “There is purposefully a chair left open at the table for William’s father. Cameron’s like, ‘You see your mom and your sister [played by Deschanel, center] synergizing again, but there’s something missing. I want you, at that point, to look over at the empty chair and...you realize your dad is not here. That’s the energy missing from the family.’ It’s f---ing sad.”

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Hudson and Preston took this photo during a break from filming. Note the bus—Stillwater’s first mode of tour transportation and site of the film’s most iconic scene—in the background. “See the rig? It was so hot in that bus,” says Hudson. “We were in Sacramento, I believe, and oh my God, it was so hot.”

VERY RARELY DO MOVIES JUST HOLD UP... I THINK IT BRINGS PEOPLE HOPE.”

Hoffman (left) gave one of his most memorable performances as Lester Bangs—impressive, considering he had the flu when he shot his scenes. “He was totally dehydrated and had to step away, basically to vomit,” says Fugit. “Philip...[was] cordial to me, but also a bit gruff. He’s like, ‘It’s great you’re here. You better f---ing perform.’ In a caring way.”

KATE HUDSON

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ROUND AND ROUND (IT WON’T BE LONG)

BREAKING BIG

J U S T G E T T I N G S TA R T E D WITH THE MIND-BENDING THRILLER I’M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS AND THE SPY DRAMA THE COURIER COMING OUT, JESSIE BUCKLEY IS HITTING HER STRIDE—NOT THAT SHE WANTS TO TALK ABOUT IT By Mary Sollosi

J JES SIE BUCKLEY HAS BEEN DRE AD-

ing this conversation. After living through nearly four months of quarantine, she admits, “I’ve been worrying about talking at all. The less I talk, the better.” Unfortunately for the 30-year-old Irish actress, her rich lineup of new projects demands discussion. So here she is, sitting in her garden in London, trapped on a Zoom call with EW. “I’m much better at talking in somebody else’s shoes than my own,” she insists. “I need other people’s shoes.” She’s got excellent taste in footwear. Having stolen every one of her scenes in last year’s Emmywinning HBO miniseries Chernobyl and Oscar-winning biopic Judy, the actress does standout work in two intense new films dropping later this year that are sure to get people talking—even if she’s reluctant to do so herself. The chatter began around Dominic Cooke’s Cold War drama The Courier in January when it premiered at Sundance (where it earned a B+ from EW). Set to be released later this year, the film marked an opportunity for the actress “to step into a different temperature of a person.” Benedict Cumberbatch stars as Greville Wynne, a real-life British salesman who was recruited to carry messages between MI-6 and a Russian

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P H OTO G R A P H B Y C H A R L OT T E H A D D E N

HAIR: EARL SIMMS @ THE CLUB NEW YORK; MAKEUP: MARY WILES/FORWARD ARTISTS; STYLING: NICKY YATES/THE WALL GROUP; SHIRT, TROUSERS: SIMONE ROCHA; I’M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS: MARY CYBULSKI/NETFLIX (2)

strangely profound, profoundly strange movie might speak to viewers more after months of confinement than it ever could have resonated before. “An imagination can be a survival, in a way,” Buckley reflects. And thank God for that. When quarantine began, the actress was busy shooting the Chris Rock-fronted fourth season of FX’s Fargo, which suspended production—with just two weeks to go—in March; the season currently has no release date. And Buckley has no idea when she’ll be able to finish shooting her role as “nurse with a dark side” Oraetta Mayflower, whom she describes as “the perfect storm of darkness and sweetness.” At the end of this year, she’s slated to shoot Maggie Gyllenhaal’s starry adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s The Lost Daughter. “I hope that will happen,” she says. Look at all these different pairs of shoes! “I hope they have nothing in common,” Buckley says, and she can offer no trend regarding how she chose them. “Sometimes it’s luck. Other times you’re kind of testing a different color that’s in yourself, and all of a sudden, when you’re looking to explore something, those things seem to reveal themselves in ways, in scripts.” She laughs at the suggestion of a dark undercurrent to her list of credits, and adds, “Everybody’s a bit dark. I like those things in life. I like the crunchy things in life.” Indeed, she’s giving us plenty to chew on.

→ “None of us really know who we are, anyway,” Jessie Buckley says of her confounding role ↙ Two for the road: Buckley and Jesse Plemons

I’M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS S T A R R I N G JESSIE BUCKLEY, JESSE PLEMONS, TONI COLLETTE, DAVID THEWLIS D I R E C T E D B Y CHARLIE KAUFMAN R A T I N G + T I M E R; 2 HRS., 13 MINS.

A C H A R L I E KAU F M A N P R O J ECT

often feels less like a movie than an unsolved mystery, a kind of meta puzzle box whose whirring gears and trapdoors drop only to reveal...more curiosities. In ﬁlms he strictly penned the script for, like Adaptation and Being John Malkovich, his wilder instincts are often tempered; in the ones he also directs (Synecdoche, New York; Anomalisa), his id runs free. And oh, does it sprint through I’m Thinking of Ending Things, a riddle wrapped in an enigma and staged like a passion play. Jessie Buckley is Lucy (or is she?), a young woman meeting her boyfriend Jake’s (Jesse Plemons) family for the first time. But as the couple bicker and parry through a driving snowstorm, she seems to be having more than second thoughts— doubts not exactly reassured by the uncanny American Gothic tableau that greets them: hysterically high-strung mother (Toni Collette); odd, insinuating father (David Thewlis); animals and objects that seem to move to their own time signatures. Buckley and Plemons are fantastically game, and I’m Thinking brims with the strange marvels—free-verse poetry, old TV jingles, a sort of pantomime ballet—contained in Kaufman’s great, jittery brain. But it can be exhausting, too; like being set down, without a compass or a map, in the center of someone else’s dream. B —LE AH GREENBL AT T

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spy, while his lonely, increasingly suspicious wife (Buckley) tries to keep a stiff upper lip at home. While Cumberbatch was “an absolute dream” to work with, “I actually found [the role] one of the saddest things to play,” Buckley says of her prim 1960s housewife. “There was just no valve for expression.” You might say her other new movie has the opposite problem. “It’s probably one of the most exposing things I’ve ever done,” Buckley says of Netflix’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Sept. 4, see review), a psychological thriller from the always mind-bending Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation). Here she takes the lead, a young woman going on a road trip with her boyfriend (Jesse Plemons) to visit his parents (Toni Collette and David Thewlis) on their farm. The plot defies description beyond that vague outline; within it, the characters are mutable, the details of their very reality a twisty riddle until the final frame. “It’s a questions film. It’s an art piece. You don’t get those pieces,” Buckley says of her fortunate casting. “There’s nothing finite about it; it has no answer, and I think people will find whatever they need to find in it wherever they are in themselves.” It can feel like there’s nothing finite about the present moment as well. In quarantine, Kaufman’s dreamlike vision reads as truer than stark realism, and the

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THE SHOT 30th Anniversary Edition

Ghost

EVERETT COLLECTION

INSIDE THE CREATION OF A CL ASSIC SCENE

→ Between becoming the highest-grossing film of 1990 and scoring five Oscar nominations (including a Best Supporting Actress win for Whoopi Goldberg), Ghost was an unqualified smash. But there was plenty of skepticism prior to production. “A lot of people wondered how we were going to mix the comedy and tragedy,” admits director Jerry Zucker, who made his solo debut with the supernatural romance starring Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore after co-helming hit parody films like Airplane! “I had to learn to trust the actors a little more.” He says Goldberg “[held] the movie together” as psychic con artist Oda Mae Brown, whose (fake) talent of speaking to the dead turns real when the recently murdered Sam (Swayze) pays her a visit. His arrival opens the floodgates in this scene: Another spirit soon possesses Oda Mae. “There was an air pipe connected to a cylinder that would push a huge gust of air up that gown to puff it up,” says Zucker, who reveals that it took a few attempts before Goldberg wouldn’t either laugh or jump. “Even though the scene was humorous in ways, she still played the fear. Whoopi [being] able to play that so believably just made the whole film work.” —DEREK L AWRENCE

F A R AND AWAY HIL ARY SWANK STARS ON AWAY, A NEW NETFLIX SERIES ABOUT A MISSION TO MARS, A FAMILY ON EARTH, AND THE WOMAN CAUGHT BET WEEN THE T WO WORLDS By Samantha Highfill

D E S P I T E W I N N I N G T WO A C A D E M Y

Awards for Best Actress—and a slew of other accolades—Hilary Swank didn’t always want to act. “I wanted to be an astronaut before I wanted to be an actor,” says Swank, 46. Now, thanks to her new show, she gets to do both. (Minus the actual “going to space” part.) On Netflix’s Away (Sept. 4), Swank stars as commander Emma

EDITED BY → GERRAD HALL

@GERRADHALL

Green, a former Navy pilot chosen to lead four fellow astronauts on the first-ever human mission to Mars. The assignment will take three years to complete, and there’s a chance Emma won’t survive. But it’s a risk she’s willing to take to achieve a dream. The catch? It means leaving behind her husband, Matt (The Good Wife’s Josh Charles), and their teenage daughter, Alexis (Love, Simon’s Talitha Bateman). “It just had this grand scale mixed with family drama,” Charles, 48, says of the show’s appeal. “It’s the contrast of the big and small, the landscape of space and the intimacy of family.” Or, as showrunner Jessica Goldberg puts it, Away is the “ultimate working-mom story.” And as a single mother of a 13-year-old, Goldberg can relate.

Before winning an Oscar for 1999’s Boys Don’t Cry, Swank was a shooting (guest) star on the small screen

Beverly Hills, 90210

Camp Wilder

AWAY: KATIE YU/NETFLIX (2); BEVERLY HILLS, 90210: EVERETT COLLECTION; CAMP WILDER: ©ABC/EVERETT COLLECTION; GROWING PAINS: WALT DISNEY TELEVISION VIA GETTY IMAGES PHOTO ARCHIVES

Growing Pains

“I love my work as much as my child,” she says. “I’ve never really seen that portrayed the way it is in this show.” Created by Andrew Hinderaker, the series was inspired by Chris Jones’ 2014 Esquire article that detailed astronaut Scott Kelly’s space journey. While in orbit, Kelly received a call informing him that his sister-in-law, then congresswoman Gabby Giffords, had been shot. In Away’s pilot, Emma experiences something similar: She gets a call about a family emergency and begins to question whether she made the right decision in leaving. As Swank explains, “There’s this gravitational pull, no pun intended, to Earth and our families there.” Except, as Kelly said in Jones’ article, there’s no going home.

For a show about space, Away presents a pretty grounded picture of family dynamics put to the test. However, it isn’t just the story of one family, but two. On her journey, Emma is joined by a pilot from India (Ray Panthaki), a Russian cosmonaut and engineer (Mark Ivanir), a chemist representing China (Vivian Wu), and a British botanist from Ghana (Ato Essandoh). And if spending three years in cramped quarters with four other people doesn’t form a familial bond, nothing will. Over the ﬁrst 10 episodes, any number of things can—and do—go wrong, forcing the crew to work together if they want to live. “It’s aspirational in a way,” says executive producer Jason Katims (Friday Night Lights, Parenthood). “[The show] is about people from different countries coming together for a common purpose, and I think that’s such an uplifting thing to see at a time when there’s so much division in our world.” But the timeliness of the story expands past a message of togetherness (and the relatable use of FaceTime). Unlike many movies and shows about space, Away centers on a woman. “Everybody got much more excited about [the mission having] a female commander once the idea came up,” Katims says. Although more than 60 women have been beyond Earth’s orbit, a woman has yet to land on the moon, much less lead a mission

I LOVE MY WORK AS MUCH AS MY CHILD. I’VE NEVER REALLY SEEN THAT PORTRAYED THE WAY IT IS IN THIS SHOW.” SHOWRUNNER JESSICA GOLDBERG

beyond it. Putting Emma in command “took something we were already excited about and gave it the potential to be more timely.” Casting Swank was crucial, says Goldberg: “There are so many wonderful actresses, but it’s so rare that you believe somebody could be an astronaut. I believe that [Hilary] would be an astronaut.” Known for transforming herself for her roles in Million Dollar Baby and Boys Don’t Cry, the actress prepared for her latest by visiting mission control in Houston and chatting with astronauts currently on the International Space Station. Those Oscar-winning chops come in handy for the show’s more emotional moments as well. “The mother-daughter aspect of the story was very moving to me,” says Katims. Because how is Alexis supposed to tell her mom about her first boyfriend if she’s not around? “Emma has to decide if she wants to be there for her daughter or if she wants to go down in history,” Bateman says. Or better yet, if she can do both.

↖ On the way to Mars, Emma (Hilary Swank) and her crew make a pit stop at the moon → “Alexis is going through a lot, but she doesn't take it out on her parents. She's not rebellious,” Talitha Bateman (with Josh Charles) says

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HILARY SWANK’S TOTALLY ’90S TV RÉSUMÉ ↓

ROLE CALL

J O H N S L AT T E R Y A S H E P R E P S F O R W H AT ' S N E XT ( P R E M I E R I N G O CT. 6 ) , O U R FAVO R I T E S I LV E R F OX S U RV E YS H I S ST E R L I N G CA R E E R

4 / Iron Man 2

By Sarah Rodman

1 / Homefront

1991

Many first discovered the Boston native on this ABC period drama. “It’s good dramatically to be someone with whom basically everybody has a conﬂict,” he says of his character, union organizer Al Kahn. “He stuck his nose in everybody’s business, and as an actor, it gives you something to go at, which reduces your level of self-consciousness.” 2 / Sex and the City

2000

Aspiring city treasurer Bill Kelley

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took dancing lessons and I got into it. I mean, I’m Irish, so even trying to identify with anything below your belly button is impossible. Just hips is all I’m talking about.”

had a specific bedroom request Carrie could not abide, so she ﬂushed him. “There’s a parade of sexual deviance on that show that I luckily am not at the top of,” he says with a laugh. “I’m just somewhere buried in the middle.”

5 / Mad Men 3 / Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights

2004

“It was really fun to be a part of,” he says of the role in the Cubacentered sequel in which he played ﬂeet-footed Bert Miller. “I

2004

Playing Tony Stark’s father, Howard, across four MCU movies (Ant-Man, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Endgame) has deﬁnitely upped Slattery’s recognizability factor. “But,” he says with a laugh, “there are people that have no idea of me being in anything else.”

2007

Ad exec Roger Sterling, the part that transformed his career. “It was the best. It’s hard to top that one as far as everything about it. The writing, the cast. It was the experience of a lifetime.”

NEXT: FOX; MAD MEN: MICHAEL YARISH/AMC; SEX AND THE CITY: CRAIG BLANKENHORN/HBO; SPOTLIGHT: KERRY HAYES; WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER: FIRST DAY OF CAMP: SAEED ADYANI/NETFLIX

LOVECRAF T COUNTRY

2011

He’s played a number of politicians in his 30-plus-year career, but none as hilariously profane as Mayor Larry Box. “[Co-creator Mike Henry] was my next-door neighbor in L.A. I bumped into him on the street and he just said, ‘Hey, I do this show. You want to do it?’ I was like, ‘Sure.’ And then I did a couple of them. I never saw it.” 7 / Spotlight

N E T W O R K HBO A I R S SUNDAYS T I M E 9PM

I N T H E LOV EC R A F T C O U N T RY P R E -

miere, Korean War veteran Atticus (Jonathan Majors) sets off to find his dad, Montrose (Michael K. Williams). Along with his brainy uncle George (Courtney B. Vance) and free-spirited pal Leti (Jurnee Smollett), “Tic” drives from Chicago’s South Side to woodsy Massachusetts. They meet guntoting white terrorists, murderous cops, and man-chomping monsters. There’s trench warfare, a block party, a car chase: No complaints! The problems start in episode 2, a mansion mystery full of cheesebag dialogue and spooooooky twists that wouldn’t pass the CW smell test. You came for the anti-racist road trip to the heart of America; you’re getting Assassin’s Creed cutscenes with shirtless Tony Goldwyn prattling about Eden. Episode 3 is all haunted-house tropes: killer elevator, Ouija, ghostface photographs, symbolic goat murder. The gang goes spelunking in episode 4, when Majors has to actually say, “This is some Journey to the Center of the Earth-type s---!” In fairness, H.P. Lovecraft couldn’t write dialogue either.

2015

For this Oscar-winning film, Slattery got to know his reallife counterpart, former Boston Globe editor Ben Bradlee Jr. “Couldn’t have been more generous with any and every aspect of his history, family life, anything that I found helpful to know or ask about. Nothing off-limits. That was really helpful in building [the character].” 8 / Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp

2015

“It was so goofy and hilarious,” he says of his time thespian-ing as Broadway vet Claude Dumet. Slattery loved working with the improv-minded gang “and just trying to keep up.” 9 / Mrs. America

2020

As Fred Schlafly, husband of the famously polarizing Phyllis, the 58-year-old was in heaven playing opposite Cate Blanchett. “I had some fake teeth and Cate had her fake choppers. So we’d be laughing, bumping our grills. She’s hilariously funny.”

ELI JOSHUA ADE/HBO

10 / NEXT

The influential writer crafted luscious nightmares—and was the kind of demonic WASP supremacist who thought the Irish weren’t white enough. Lovecraft Country evokes his genre legacy and challenges his vocal racism, remixing mystic terror into literal oppression. It’s a topical concept, visible in other meta-Lovecraft inquisitions like N.K. Jemisin’s exuberant The City We Became and Alan Moore’s despondent Providence. But the show’s lush 1950s setting gets overshadowed by paranormal clichés and un-scary jump scares. The most interesting character is Leti’s exhausted sister Ruby (Wunmi Mosaku), a singer who magically crosses race lines into a workplace parable featuring grody transformations and a nasty use of a stiletto heel. Beyond that, there’s too many limp CG thrills and goofy TV-MA sex scenes (on a sink, on the stairway, on top of a car!). Showrunner Misha Green adapted Matt Ruff’s novel alongside producers Jordan Peele and J.J. Abrams. I respect their ambitions, and hope this season finds its footing. For now, they’re skewering Lovecraft’s beliefs but can’t compete with his singular vision. They’re better people making worse art. C+ —DARREN FRANICH

2020

“It’s pretty timely,” he says of his new Fox series about AI gone rogue. “The part is someone who is an agitator. He’s created this computer company and then figures out this AI. Then it goes haywire. He gets kicked out because he recognizes how dangerous it’s going to be. But he also has this brain disease so he’s slowly going crazy while telling the world a really crazy story. No one knows whether to believe the guy or whether he’s just a crazy a--hole.” Thank u, NEXT.

→ Courtney B. Vance, Jurnee Smollett, and Jonathan Majors are miles from the dry cleaner’s

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6 / The Cleveland Show

S T R E A M E R APPLE TV+ A I R S FRIDAYS

TED LASSO HAS NO RIGHT TO BE THIS

funny. It’s got a one-joke premise, built around a character created for NBC Sports back in 2013. But the new Apple TV+ comedy— starring Jason Sudeikis as a soccer neophyte hired to coach a football club in the U.K.—is a wonderfully amusing, surprisingly thoughtful sports sitcom that is, of course, not really about sports at all. Former college football coach Ted Lasso arrives in London armed with a folksy twang and a full understanding that everyone thinks he is completely unqualiﬁed

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to coach AFC Richmond. “Heck, you could fill two internets with what I don’t know about football,” he tells the incredulous British press. But for Lasso, coaching isn’t about understanding the offside rule (he doesn’t) or being able to name other Premier League footballers (he can’t)—it’s about helping his players “be the best versions of themselves on and off the field.” He’s aided in this mission by his laconic right-hand man, Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt), and surreptitiously sabotaged by Richmond’s posh new owner Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham), whose reason for hiring Ted involves getting back at her cruel, philandering ex (Anthony Head). Much like Friday Night Lights, the football matches in Ted Lasso are used primarily to enhance the interpersonal dynamics of the characters off the field (sorry, pitch). Richmond is a team in disarray; its most famous players— cock-of-the-walk pretty boy Jamie Tartt (Phil Dunster) and aging anger junkie Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein)—openly loathe each other. Faced with these two facets of

↑ Ted Lasso’s Nick Mohammed, Jason Sudeikis, and Brendan Hunt ↙ Hannah Waddingham’s Rebecca gets to the point

’STACHETACULAR ↓ Behold, three more hall-of-fame TV mustaches

Alex Trebek

Steve Harvey

Ron Swanson

A– —KRISTEN BALDWIN

TED LASSO: CHRISTIAN BLACK/APPLE (2); JEOPARDY: ©ABC/EVERETT COLLECTION; CELEBRITY FAMILY FEUD: ADAM TAYLOR/ABC; PARKS AND RECREATION: CHRIS HASTON/NBC

TED LAS SO

masculinity, Coach Lasso, a sports fanatic who loves Broadway musicals and refers to God as “She,” tries to drill a little EQ into his men. He delivers life lessons in the form of classic literature (Jamie gets The Beautiful and Damned; Roy gets A Wrinkle in Time), puts a suggestion box in the locker room, and treats the team’s kit man, an insecure soccer savant named Nate (Nick Mohammed, stealthily hilarious), as an equal. Once a gum-snapping buffoon hyping NBC Sports’ coverage of the Premier League, today’s Ted Lasso—co-created by Sudeikis and Bill Lawrence (Scrubs)—is a warmhearted optimist whose sunny demeanor masks a shrewd understanding of human nature. The ﬁrst episode ends on an emotional note: Ted calls his family back in the States, and we’re given a wealth of backstory—a man desperate to save his marriage, a wife who needs space—through one side of a quietly tense conversation. Sudeikis, whose handsomeactor mien veers sinister or sweet depending on the project, brings unexpected depth to his performance as Ted—a man who came to terms with being underestimated long before he hopped the pond. The ensemble, a mix of writercomedians and British character actors, bounces nimbly off each other like a tight-knit sketchcomedy troupe. Hunt infuses a remarkable amount of humor into Beard’s monosyllabic dialogue, and Goldstein hits just the right balance between Roy’s macho bluster (“Oi! If I don’t hear silence, I’m gonna start punching d---s!”) and elder-statesman maturity. Juno Temple is a scene-stealing treat as Jamie’s quick-witted girlfriend Keeley, who helps Rebecca navigate her literal boys’ club. There’s nothing groundbreaking about the way Ted Lasso’s story beats play out, but the show—a mix of workplace antics, sentimental sports inspo, and soapy romance— is undeniably winning. And as Coach Lasso might say, you’re doggone right that pun is intended.

BEGINNING WITH POWER BOOK II: GHOST, STARZ HOPES TO L AUNCH ITS OWN VERSION OF THE MCU By Derek Lawrence

G H O ST ( O M A R I H A R DW I C K ) M AY B E

POWER BOOK II: GHOST: MYLES ARONOWITZ/STARZ; WE ARE WHO WE ARE: HBO

dead, but Power lives on. Just months after wrapping her groundbreaking hit series about a drug dealer’s unsuccessful mission to go legit with the “saddest ending of a television show ever,” creator Courtney Kemp says she’s taking inspiration from the Marvel Cinematic Universe for her ambitious four-spin-off plan. “A lot of people [said], ‘Why don’t you just call this Power season 7?’ ” says Kemp of Power Book II: Ghost (debuting Sept. 6), which picks up in the aftermath of Tariq (Michael Rainey Jr.) murdering his father, and his mother, Tasha (Naturi Naughton), taking the fall. “It’s not Power; it’s about how Ghost’s shadow looms over everyone—especially his son.” And by choosing to put the “young and arrogant” Tariq— perhaps Power’s most controversial character—front and center, Kemp knows she isn’t taking the easiest road. “He’s got this very millennial energy, and people are mad at that,” she says with a laugh. “People sometimes forget that Ghost was a little motherf---er too. There’s so much to tell about legacy and how you can’t outrun who you are. If people get to know this

version of Tariq, who is confused and alone, they will see that all he’s trying to do is survive, which couldn’t be more relatable.” When it comes to killing Ghost, Rainey says Tariq “did what he had to do.” But the patricide will “haunt him” as he tries to free the imprisoned Tasha, who refuses to let him confess. “She’s made a choice, like many mothers would, to do what’s best for her son,” says Naughton, who as “a Black woman in Hollywood knows that these kinds of roles are few and far between,” and felt it was “important to see [Tasha] through” to the end. As Tariq balances college and caring for his sister and grandmother, he’ll find a different parental figure in drug queenpin Monet Tejada (Mary J. Blige). Since secret-keeping doomed the St. Patricks, Kemp wanted to portray a family “openly in the [criminal] life.” But whether you’re a returning star or a Grammy winner like Blige and fellow new addition Method Man, Naughton knows there are no guarantees in this Power-ful world. “Ghost being killed was a shock. How do you kill the main character?” she asks. “Anybody can go.”

WE ARE WHO WE ARE N E T W O R K HBO P R E M I E R E S SEPT. 14 T I M E 10PM

I D ON’T KNOW ANY TEENAGER S , S O

↗ Jordan Kristine Seamón and Jack Dylan Grazer are living la dolce vita ← Power brokers: Method Man, Michael Rainey Jr., and Naturi Naughton

I can’t confirm whether Fraser (Jack Dylan Grazer) is a typical 21st-century adolescent. He’s got bleached hair, black-and-yellow fingernails, a Last Tango in Paris poster, and saggy leopard-print capris. (Sagging: Cool again?) Fraser’s the newest arrival to a base near Chioggia, Italy, where one of his moms (Chloë Sevigny) is taking command. All the Army brats are pretty dreamy. Caitlin (Jordan Kristine Seamón) reads Walt Whitman and ponders gender. Her brother Danny (Spence Moore II) is seriously considering Islam. And everybody gets naked! Like, full-frontal meet-cute naked. Writer-director Luca Guadagnino extends the dance-along romanticism of Call Me by Your Name through this series, and the sumptuous fourth episode is one long underage party. Think Euphoria with actual euphoria: poolside debauchery, Hawaiian-themed nuptials, a marvelously specific Uncharted 4 cameo. The year is 2016, which must mean something—though the MAGA hats are an empty provocation. Despite some ﬂat characters, Guadagnino exuberantly spotlights his cast of up-and-comers, especially Corey Knight as a sweetheart soldier with star-spangled boxer briefs. Do teens really still nudely rock out to the Stones? Has there ever been a military base this radiant with hedonistic pansexual yearning? I don’t believe it, but these kids are alright. B+ — D A R R E N F R A N I C H

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P OWER ON

of victims of street harassment say it improved the situation when a witness intervened.*

Get your training program at standup-us.com

*International study conducted in 2019 by Lâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;OrĂŠal Paris with IPSOS, with data gathered in 8 countries with over 15,000 participants.

WAT C H

YO U R GU I D E TO S EPT EM B ER ’ S S P L A S H I E ST T V. B y D a n S n i e r s o n

ji-xian-sheng

WE SPY BIG LAUGHS ↓ Archer made our “30 Perfect Punchlines” feature (page 38). Enjoy two more gems from the snarky secret agent that just missed the cut.

3 to Binge STILL LOOKING FOR PEOPLE LOOKING FOR LOVE? THESE DATING SHOWS MIGHT BE A PERFECT MATCH FOR YOU.

Hot on Cleveland

“Grover Cleveland called. He wants his watch back. He left two nonconsecutive messages.” Going Grain-ular

COASTAL ELITES

Bette Midler, Issa Rae, Dan Levy, Kaitlyn Dever, and Sarah Paulson team up at a safe distance not to sing “Imagine,”

SATURDAY 9.12 8PM HBO

but to star in a Paul Rudnick-penned, Jay Roach-directed satire about a teacher, an activist, an actor, a nurse, and

COASTAL ELITES: HBO; FIND ME MY MAN: NBCU PHOTO BANK/NBCUNIVERSAL VIA GETTY IMAGES; DATING AROUND: NETFLIX; ARCHER: FX NETWORK

a meditation guru who are scattered across the country during our politicized pandemic. Five different people, five different goals, all with the same hope to survive

“[To Woodhouse] Shut up, I have to go. And if I ﬁnd one single dog hair when I get back, I’ll...rub sand in your dead little eyes. I also need you to go buy sand.... I don’t know if they grade it, but...coarse.”

Average Joe (2003–05) NBC.COM

Nerds finally get their day— or do they?—when a beautiful woman is courted by schleppy guys before a few sand-kicking studs enter the fray. The confession in the season 2 finale and the winner’s reaction to it are two of the most absurd things you will witness on reality TV.

these trying, traumatic times. Find Me My Man (2013) AMAZON PRIME VIDEO

THURSDAY 9.3

WEDNESDAY 9.9

SEASON PREMIERE A.P. Bio

SERIES DEBUT Woke

STREAMING PEACOCK

STREAMING HULU

Ring the Pell: School’s back in.

A cartoonist (Lamorne Morris) starts to see racial injustice with the help of talking toast and trash cans.

FRIDAY 9.4 SERIES DEBUT Away STREAMING NETFLIX

Get your ass to Mars with Hilary Swank, who is deeply conflicted about leaving her family behind as she leads a risky international mission to the Red Planet.

STREAMING NETFLIX

Sarah Paulson goes from having her patience tested in Coastal Elites to testing her patients in Ryan Murphy’s origin story of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’s nasty nurse.

MONDAY 9.14 MINISERIES DEBUT The Third Day

SUNDAY 9.20 Primetime Emmy Awards

9PM HBO

8PM ABC

Jude Law and Naomie Harris visit a mysterious island. Objects don’t talk to them, but things do get weird.

Virtually unstoppable!

SEASON PREMIERE The Boys

WEDNESDAY 9.16

9PM SHOWTIME

STREAMING AMAZON PRIME VIDEO

SEASON PREMIERE Archer

You can watch Brendan Gleeson as Donald Trump here, or Donald Trump as himself in...

10PM FXX

MONDAY 9.7 Biography: The Nine Lives of Ozzy Osbourne

When he wakes up from a three-year coma and sees 2020, he’ll need a double.

9PM A&E

You know, nine lives. Like a cat! Which is an animal the Prince of Darkness has not bitten the head off of.

Tough-loving yet big-hearted, Miami matchmaker Natalie Clarice takes on single women who have stubbornly self-sabotaged on the dating circuit, surprising and challenging them while dropping know-your-worth wisdoms. Prepare to fall for Clarice at first lecture.

SERIES DEBUT Ratched

SUNDAY 9.27 MINISERIES DEBUT The Comey Rule Dating Around (2019–present) NETFLIX

Hostless. Sincere. Understated. Three words not often said about dating shows. Each episode follows someone on five first dates before revealing who they chose to see again. Warning: contains 2020’s most earnestly awkward bachelor.

TUESDAY 9.29 First Presidential Debate 9PM MAJOR NETWORKS

FRIDAY 9.18 SEASON PREMIERE PEN15 STREAMING HULU

Who’ll be the next president? Who’ll be the next Ken Bone? Will democracy die? Will we? Choose or lose, 2020!

CHECK OUT MORE TV RECOMMENDATIONS AT EW.COM/WTW OR FROM OUR “WATCH THIS” DAILY BRIEFING (GOOGLE HOME, AMAZON ALEXA) AND PODCAST (ITUNES, SPOTIFY, GOOGLE PLAY)

EW ● COM

S E PT E M B E R 2 0 2 0

M OV I E S / T V / M U S I C / B O O KS

W H AT

THE

T O P 1 0 T V P E T S OF PA S T 3 0 Y E A R S

THE

B ECAU S E YO U H OW L E D F O R I T : T H R E E D ECA D E S O F O U R FAVO R I T E A N I M A L STA R S . B y D e v a n C o g g a n

2 / EDDIE

3 / GHOST

4 / CHEDDAR

5 / GARY

Sabrina the Teenage Witch

Frasier

Game of Thrones

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

SpongeBob SquarePants

Sabrina’s wisecracking familiar (voiced by Nick Bakay) isn’t technically a cat but a warlock transformed as punishment for trying to conquer humanity. But he still tops our list for his distinctly feline sarcasm and quips, such as “Would you be terribly upset if I threw up in one of your shoes?”

Played by a Jack Russell terrier named Moose (and later Moose’s son Enzo), Martin Crane’s dog perfected the art of the stare—usually directed toward Frasier. Eddie was such a scene-stealer that he got his own EW cover in 1993. (“Hipper than Lassie, brainier than Tiger,” we wrote then.)

There are many memorable creatures in Westeros, from Ramsay Bolton’s ravenous dogs to Daenerys’ dragons. But none was as loyal as Jon Snow’s albino direwolf, who grew from being the runt of the litter to a ferocious ally, accompanying Jon in his (many) battles.

This charismatic corgi isn’t just some “common bitch,” to paraphrase Captain Holt. Cheddar— so beloved he also made our 2020 Animal A-List earlier this year— has done everything from assisting with Halloween heists to scarfing down Jake and Amy’s wedding cake.

Who knew sea snails made for such devoted companions (and had so much in common with house cats)? SpongeBob’s meowing gastropod is a faithful friend, whether he’s training for snail races, helping SpongeBob tie his shoes, or just chilling in his pineapple house.

6 / COMET

7 / SANTA’S LITTLE HELPER

9 / JAKE

9 / CHAMPION

10 / BRIAN

Full House

The Simpsons

Adventure Time

Parks and Recreation

Family Guy

The Tanners first adopted golden retriever Comet in season 3, and he stayed for the rest of the show’s run, famously chasing a “humongous wiener” car along the way. Fun fact: His real-life great-grandson Cosmo later joined the Tanner family on the Netflix reboot Fuller House.

The Simpsons’ family dog arrived in the first episode, when Homer and Bart bet on him at the dog track before bringing him home. The bug-eyed greyhound has since been mistreated by the family but gets along well with the cat, Snowball— especially that one time on New Year’s Eve.

Whether he’s rocking out on his viola or getting competitive in Card Wars, Finn’s canine BFF is less of a pet and more of a cool older brother. His stretchy superpowers also come in handy, especially when he needs to save the Land of Ooo (again) or craft the ultimate burrito.

April Ludgate and Andy Dwyer’s three-legged canine companion is a mixed-breed pit bull (and he was played by a real-life rescue dog named Lucy). But we prefer to describe the charming Champion the way Chris Traeger does: half amazing, half terrific.

The anthropomorphic Brian Griffin isn’t your average Labrador, preferring to write novels (still working on that compelling protagonist?) and discuss politics. The cynical canine proved so popular that even though he was killed off in 2013, the show ultimately brought him back to life.

Have a Heart. The Dog on One Tree Hill Did. Could any TV animal moment possibly top the lunacy of One Tree Hill’s now-infamous hospital dog scene? On a series already stocked with melodramatic moments, the teen drama peaked in season 6 when villain Dan Scott (Paul Johansson) is about to receive a long-awaited heart transplant. The hospital staffer carrying a cooler with his replacement organ trips, the heart spills out—and a peckish golden retriever picks it up and scurries away. Barely a minute elapses between the shots of ice skittering across the hospital lobby and the close-up reaction of a baffled Chad Michael Murray, but the scene lives on as one of TV’s most notorious—and greatest—canine performances.

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SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH: ABC PHOTO ARCHIVES/ABC VIA GETTY IMAGES; FRASIER: GALE M. ADLER/NBCU PHOTO BANK/NBCUNIVERSAL VIA GETTY IMAGES; THE SIMPSONS, SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS: EVERETT COLLECTION (2); FULL HOUSE: WALT DISNEY TELEVISION/GETTY IMAGES; ADVENTURE TIME: CARTOON NETWORK; FULL HOUSE: WALT DISNEY TELEVISION/GETTY IMAGES; FAMILY GUY: FOX

1 / SALEM

Purina trademarks are owned by SociĂŠtĂŠ des Produits NestlĂŠ S.A.

Farm raised beef is the #1 ingredient. No artificial flavors or preservatives. A great taste your dog will love. Learn more at Beneful.com/recipes

A BINGE GUIDE FOR THE AGES, PLUS T WO HIGHLY INDULGENT RECIPES. YOU DESERVE THIS.

TWIN PEAKS: ©ABC/EVERETT COLLECTION; THE FRESH PRINCE OF BEL AIR: EVERETT COLLECTION; THE BABY-SITTERS CLUB; ©COLUMBIA PICTURES/EVERETT COLLECTION; LAW & ORDER: ©NBC/EVERETT COLLECTION

W E L C O M E T O T H E ’9 0 S O H , S N A P ! W E ’ V E P U T TO G E T H E R A L I ST O F B I N G E - W O RT H Y S H O W S F R O M E W ’ S B I RT H Y E A R , A LO N G W I T H S O M E P H AT F O O D PA I R I N G S . ( B A B Y T E E A N D C H O K E R O P T I O N A L . ) By Ruth Kinane

1 / Twin Peaks Netflix

2 / Beverly Hills, 90210 Hulu

3 / The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air HBO Max

4 / The Baby-Sitters Club Amazon Prime Video

5 / Law & Order Peacock

THE PAIRING Cherry pie

THE PAIRING Mega Burger and a milkshake

THE PAIRING A Philly cheesesteak

THE PAIRING Doritos

THE PAIRING Coffee

(store-bought, please)

and Twizzlers

and (duh) doughnuts

Stream the quirky David Lynch mystery about a small-town murder just the way the denizens of the Double R Diner would want you to: while scarfing down “massive, massive quantities” of cherry pie, accompanied by a damn fine cup of coffee.

Make the Peach Pit’s signature dish: two beef patties, a slice each of Swiss and American cheese, tomato, lettuce, and Bermuda onion. Pull a Donna Martin and enjoy it with french fries, a milkshake, and Color Me Badd’s “I Adore Mi Amor.”

Honor Will’s West Philadelphia roots with a Philly cheesesteak, and add an extra squeeze of Cheez Whiz every time Ashley dons a doubledenim combo you’d totally wear today. And whatever you do, leave the flambéing to Geoffrey.

The best part of any babysitting gig is raiding the kitchen for junk food. We recommend Doritos and BSC fave Twizzlers— the salty-sweet pairing promotes compulsive consumption as you take in both the ’90s series and the Netflix reboot.

A drinking game for these times: Guzzle a cup of coffee—watered down for authenticity—every time you fall into a Law & Order rabbit hole and guess the twist before the detectives. Supplement with doughnuts to stave off the caffeine shakes.

I L L U S T R AT I O N S B Y F R E A K C I T Y

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S E PT E M B E R 2 0 2 0 9 5

M OV I E S / T V / M U S I C / B O O KS

E N T E R TA I N I N G W E E K LY

← “These cookies are completely crazy,” says food blogger Sally McKenney, who recommends no-stir peanut butter. “They’re absolutely No. 1 on my peanut butter cookie list.”

Laying It On Thick EW’S LIST OF THE MOST MEMORABLE PEANUT BUTTER MOMENTS IN POP CULTURE. By Ruth Kinane

Meet Joe Black (1998) Even the Grim Reaper (Brad Pitt) isn’t immune to the appeal of PB. Watching a baby-faced Pitt delicately lick peanut butter from a silver spoon is almost as satisfying as, well, watching Brad Pitt do anything.

GIMME SOME SUGAR DAMN RIGHT THIS IS CANDY INSIDE A COOKIE. UNPRECEDENTED TIMES CALL FOR UNPRECEDENTED STRESS BAKING.

STUFFED PEANUT BUTTER COOKIES

1 / Stir flour, baking soda,

and salt in a bowl until combined. Set aside.

INGREDIENTS 1¼ cups all-purpose flour ½ tsp. baking soda ¼ tsp. salt ½ cup unsalted butter, softened to room temperature ½ cup packed light or dark brown sugar

1 large egg, at room temperature ¾ cup creamy peanut butter 1 tsp. pure vanilla extract 18 Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Miniatures, unwrapped 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips 2 tsp. creamy peanut butter

3 / Cover and chill dough

for at least 1 hour (or up to 3 days). Chilling is mandatory. 4 / Preheat oven to 350°F. Remove dough from the refrigerator. Take 1 tbsp. of dough and roll into a ball. Take another tbsp. of dough and roll into a second ball. Put a peanut butter cup into one ball, like a “cradle.” Top the peanut butter cup with the other dough ball and

S E PT E M B E R 2 0 2 0 EW ● COM

The Parent Trap (1998) Director Nancy Meyers may be known for her enviable set design (those kitchens!), but her true cinematic legacy is the peanut-butter-on-Oreos combo made famous by Camp Walden’s two sassiest residents (Lindsay Lohan).

5 / Bake the cookies

on a cookie sheet for 10 to 11 minutes or until very lightly browned on the sides. Some cookies may be taller than others—press the cookies down a bit to flatten them out. Allow to cool on the cookie sheet for at least 10 minutes before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely. 6 / Melt chocolate chips and 2 tsp. peanut butter in the microwave, stirring often to prevent seizing. (Add 1 tsp. of shortening if the mixture isn’t smooth.) Drizzle over cooled cookies.

M A K E S 18 COOKIES A D A P T E D F R O M SALLY MCKENNEY’S RECIPE ON SALLYSBAKINGADDICTION.COM

Friends (2001, Season 7, Episode 17) Joey Tribbiani (Matt LeBlanc) might not know what “canapés” means, but he will hook you with his trademark dish, Peanut Butter Fingers—which consists of, yes, two fingers dipped into a jar. (Look of buttery rapture optional.)

Lost (2004, Season 1, Episode 8) Charlie (Dominic Monaghan) and Claire’s (Emilie de Ravin) love story really began when he used his imagination to re-create the peanut butter she craved. So heartwarming. If only the game worked for toilet paper.

COOKIES: SALLY MCKENNEY; THE PARENT TRAP: WALT DISNEY CO./EVERETT COLLECTION

¼ cup granulated sugar

2 / In a large bowl, use a hand mixer on medium speed to mix the butter and sugars together until combined. Beat in the egg, peanut butter, and vanilla on low speed. Switch to high and beat until light in color and smooth. Turn the mixer to low and slowly pour in the dry ingredients, mixing until combined.

seal the sides. Roll that large ball until smooth. Repeat with the rest of the dough and peanut butter cups.

UNTOLD STORY

B I R D S O F P R E Y ’S EGG SANDWICH P R O P M A ST E R A N D R E W S I EG E L S E RV E S U P S EC R E TS O F T H E D C U N I V E R S E ’ S — A N D, DA R E W E S AY, T H E WO R L D’ S — B E ST B AC O N - EG G - A N D - C H E E S E By Ruth Kinane

melty, mouthwatering goodness. He sourced the exact roll that director Cathy Yan wanted from an eatery in, ironically, Burbank. “We found the bakery that made [the rolls], but we had to order them special,” says Siegel. (The buns were similar to telera rolls, another departure from the technically correct kaiser, but that’s Hollywood.) With hundreds of rolls stored in the production freezer— and after swapping out chicken eggs in favor of duck eggs due to Robbie’s allergy— the next challenge was finding someone who could crack two eggs in a single, satisfying, one-handed movement. “Bruno [Oliver], who played [deli cook] Sal, practiced and

was really into it, but we needed a stunt double for insurance purposes,” Siegel explains. When the double came in with “arms the size of legs, covered in hair,” Siegel turned to the movie’s caterer, Juan Carlos Padilla, who wound up having the exact skill they needed. The final hurdle was filming the pivotal splat: Assistants had to run the sandwiches back and forth from a food truck down the street to the set. “We probably went through 250 of them,” Siegel says. The effort was worth it: The audience was right there with Quinn when she intones, “It took losing something I truly loved for me to see that the target on my back was bigger than I thought.”

Bring Home the Bacon FRY UP YOUR OWN FANTABULOUS NYC-STYLE B.E.C. SANDWICH

SAL’S BODEGA BREAKFAST SANDWICH INGREDIENTS 3 slabs (yes, slabs) of bacon 1 roll (telera, or your preference) 1 hunk of butter, melted

2 eggs, as un-organic as you can find them 2 slices of American cheese, ideally at least 6 months past their expiration date (the way Sal would want it) 1 dash (absolutely not too much) of hot sauce

1 / Play Barry White’s “I’m Gonna Love You Just a Little More Baby” on a sound system with as much bass as possible.

↓ Propmaster Andrew Siegel calls Harley Quinn’s (Margot Robbie) infamous egg sandwich “a topic of much discussion and experimentation” on set

2 / Fry the bacon until it reaches your desired level of crisp. 3 / Brush roll with melted butter. Toast the bread in a pan or griddle. Add bacon to the bottom half. 4 / Fry two eggs over easy. 5 / While eggs are cooking, place slices of American cheese on top of them. 6 / Add the now-cheesy eggs onto the roll, then top with a dash of hot sauce—but not so much hot sauce that you can’t taste the cheese. 7 / Top with the other half of the roll, wrap in foil, note that you’ve just saved yourself $2.75 and potentially a stray arm hair, and enjoy the sandwich on the go. 8 / Take absolute care not to embark on a foot chase, lest the sandwich sail out of your hands before you have the chance to enjoy it.

S E PT E M B E R 2 0 2 0 EW ● COM

BIRDS OF PREY (AND THE FANTABULOUS EMANCIPATION OF ONE HARLEY QUINN): CLAUDETTE BARIUS/DC COMICS

Last February’s Birds of Prey may have been a feminist superhero flick of epic proportions, but we here at Entertaining Weekly believe the movie’s most memorable takeaway was actually Harley Quinn’s (Margot Robbie) beloved egg sandwich. As every New Yorker knows, the bacon-egg-andcheese-on-a-roll is a NYC bodega phenomenon that is, like the classic bagel, impossible to recreate anywhere else. In order for the sandwich’s devastating fate—going splat on the street—to resonate, the audience had to truly understand Quinn’s pain. So it was propmaster Andrew Siegel’s job to create the sandwich in all its cheesy,

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K ATY PERRY A L B U M SMILE L A B E L CAPITOL G E N R E POP

THE ZEITGEIST IS A SLIPPERY THING

EDITED BY → ALE X SUSKIND

@ALEXJSUSKIND

CHRISTINE HAHN

to cling to; no one knows that better than a pop star. Katy Perry has spent some 12 years now in the public eye, nearly all of them at or near the top of her rarefied field: 45 million albums sold, nine No. 1 singles—ﬁve from 2010’s Teenage Dream alone—on the Hot 100. She’s been the reigning queen of whipped cream and wiggery, the girl next door and the girl

who kissed a girl, a happy mascot for painfully earnest Olympic anthems one moment and winking odes to lost weekends the next. But Smile, her fifth studio album, finds her in a place she hasn’t been since her self-titled debut as a young Christian-rock hopeful from Santa Barbara named Katy Hudson: releasing a record without a top 10 hit. Its leadsingle, “Never Really Over,” a sunny, Casio-stippled ode to reconnecting with an ex, peaked at No. 15 (though it did better overseas, and topped the Dance Club

chart Stateside). Two follow-ups failed to launch, and a third one, “Daisies,” stalled at No. 40—an odd outcome considering that the song, with its high-altitude chorus and spiraling synths, cleaves so closely to Perry’s proven formula. Had pop’s fickle fandom simply reached its capacity for Katy? If not, they’ll discover an artist largely the same as she ever was: “Cry About It Later” and “Teary Eyes” each make an airy case for sweating out heartache on the dance floor; plucky midtempo ballads “Resilient” and “Not the End of the World” offer turn-thatfrown-upside-down bromides for the mildly depressed; the sinuous disco-funk throwback

BEYONCE: KEVIN MAZUR/GETTY IMAGES FOR TIDAL; SWIFT: DAVE J HOGAN/GETTY IMAGES; BONO: STEFANIE KEENAN/GETTY IMAGES FOR GLAMOUR

“Champagne Problems” revels in the joyful entitlement of domestic bliss. Lovestruck “Harleys in Hawaii” swoons over heart-shaped highways and island vibes, while strummy, winsome closer “What Makes a Woman” could be a B side from peak-era Shania Twain. Perry has said that the songs on Smile emerged from one of the darkest periods in her life—which accounts, maybe, for the sense that she is sometimes less singer here than life coach. There’s always been a kind of conscious corniness to Perry’s presentation, a dad-joke sincerity that she readily embraces. She’s the eternal incurable optimist, the Hang In There kitten on an inspirational poster—and

perhaps the only millennial who can deliver a line like “I know there’s gotta be rain/If I want the rainbows” straight-faced in 2020. If that cheerleader-with-acherry-on-top affect has given free rein to haters, it’s also suited her; an artist knowingly playing to her strengths. She may not have the outsize voice of Ariana Grande or the chameleonic instincts of Lady Gaga; she rarely generates radical culture-shifting moments as Rihanna and Beyoncé regularly do. But she’s always held fast to her own goofball MO: a blithe, candycolored conduit for the shifting whims of ace songwriting teams and Swedish studio wizards. So if Smile is more of the solidly executed same, who to blame for its tepid landing? The strange vagaries of modern fame may have been captured best by Perry’s erstwhile frenemy Taylor Swift in the recent documentary Miss Americana: “We do exist in this society where women in entertainment are discarded in an elephant graveyard by the time they’re 35,” she says in a frank voice-over near the end of the film. “Everyone’s a shiny new toy for, like, two years. The female artists that I know of have reinvented themselves 20 times more than the male artists; they have to, or else you’re out of a job.” Perry, who turns 36 in October, will hardly be filing for unemployment anytime soon. But even at its sweetest, Smile still feels like the too-familiar work of a star committed to remaining pleasantly, fundamentally unchanged—and that may be the only mortal sin pop music can’t forgive. B– —LE AH GREENBL AT T

→ Beyoncé; Taylor Swift; Bono

Surprise, Surprise TAYLOR SWIF T ’S WHAT-THE-FOLK BOMBSHELL IS ONLY THE L ATEST IN A LONG LINE OF RECORD-DROP SHOCKERS. By Leah Greenblatt

EW staff poll

Is U2’s Songs of Innocence still in your iTunes/ Apple Music? Yes!

23% No!

65% I don’t know!

12%

folklore (2020) Taylor Swift The old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now—she’s in the woods with Bon Iver, weaving lowercase Lilith Fairy anthems from fallen leaves and broken dreams. ANTI (2016) Rihanna Good things come to those who work-workwork-work-work: After more than three years of teasing, the singer’s eighth studio album finally landed with a delirious R&B bang. Songs of Innocence (2014) U2 It’s a bird! It’s a plane! Nope, it’s just Bono, creeping unseen into the accounts of half a billion iTunes customers who, it turns out, did not necessarily enjoy free stuff. Beyoncé (2013) Beyoncé She woke up like this: Three years before the full outrageous pour of Lemonade, Bey first sipped from the “Welcome to my top secret visual album” cup with her stellar self-titled release. In Rainbows (2007) Radiohead Freed of their longtime major-label contract, England’s alt godheads stunned fans with a pay-what-you-want download, letting them taste the Rainbows for pennies if they chose.

CROS SING N E W B R I D GE S WITH A NE W EP (OUT SEPT. 1 1) AND A NE W AT T I T U D E , M I C K E Y GU YTO N I S F I N A L LY RE A DY F O R HER CLO SE-UP By Sarah Rodman

W H E N M I C K E Y G U Y TO N R E L E A S E D

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to countless industry events, sometimes as a clear sop to diversity; opening for major artists; and compiling reams of critical plaudits and press that boiled down to “Why won’t they let Mickey make a record?”—it appears that her moment has ﬁnally arrived. “It has been such a struggle to get people to listen to me,” says Guyton, 37, adding with a laugh, “I have been like, ‘I’m your huckleberry,’ for so many years.” On Sept. 11, Guyton will release an EP titled Bridges. In addition to the wistful, newly premiered track “Heaven Down Here,” it will collect the two buzziest songs of her career, released in the past few months: “What Are You Gonna Tell Her?” and “Black Like Me.” The

MATHIEU BITTON

her first single, “Better Than You Left Me,” in 2015, she thought she was ready. Ready to combine the knowledge she’d gained from years of studying her musical heroes with the fire she had in her heart and the words swirling around in her head. It would all be channeled through her powerful voice: a touch of Texas twang, a smidge of smoke, a caressing croon, and a boffo belt. The popcountry music industry claimed it was also ready, for a smart, effusive Black woman to finally take center stage in the Nashville mainstream. Turns out both parties were wrong. After five frustrating years—of releasing songs in fits and starts; showing up

former is a heartrending piano ballad asking a difficult question about how we answer to children when they find out the hard way that certain things we idealistically proclaim—about how society treats women and people of color—aren’t true. The latter addresses struggles Guyton, and many Black people, experience in their communities, from school to professional settings. “If you think we live in the land of the free/You should try to be Black like me,” she sings. “I’ve been feeling this weight for a very long time,” she says of the song she co-wrote last year, prior to the killing of George Floyd but in the shadows of the many senseless deaths that preceded it. “I’ve had my own personal experiences as early as being a little girl and having to go to a private school because the public school I was supposed to go to didn’t want black kids.” It is not lost on Guyton that she is finally gaining traction only after dropping an approval-seeking posture and writing songs that speak more speciﬁcally to her life. “I’d say 60 percent of it was my label, and the other 40 percent was myself,” she says of the brick walls she’s hit over the past few years even as an artist signed to a major label. “We all have the ability to stand up for ourselves. But for some reason, I was completely debilitated because I felt like I didn’t know how to please these people and I was just trying to satisfy them, and nothing was working, because that’s not naturally how it’s supposed to be.” Speaking her truth may not help her in the notoriously fraught arena of country radio, but Guyton knows that she’s on the right path and feels, at long last, the full support of her record label. (She gives special credit to Cindy Mabe, president of Universal Music Group Nashville. “She really did turn it around.”) Given the tumult of the past few months, a full-length album is still a 2021 proposition and the road a distant beacon, but, of the future, Guyton says she’s “very, very, very cautiously optimistic.”

MACHINE GUN KELLY: JUSTIN CAMPBELL; APOLLO THEATER: ROY ROCHLIN/GETTY IMAGES; COBAIN: FRANK MICELOTTA/GETTY IMAGES; SHAKUR: RAYMOND BOYD/MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES; YOUNG: HENRY DILTZ; SMALLS: CHRIS WALTER/WIREIMAGE

Machine Gun Kelly

The 30-year-old musician-actor—whose new album, Tickets to My Downfall, drops Sept. 25—on the sounds that shaped him. By Leah Greenblatt

My first concert It was Backstreet Boys, the Millennium Tour, when they dropped down on hoverboards. The girls were screaming so loud around me, and I don’t know why this was my reaction, but I puked everywhere. I was in second grade, maybe third? And then we had to leave because I puked on the people in front of us—so all I got was the hoverboards, and then, gone. The first song I learned to play The first lick I learned was “Come as You Are” by Nirvana (3). The first 1.

guitar solo was from that band the Darkness. Remember that song “I Believe in a Thing Called Love,” the part where he goes, “Gee-tar!”? I spent so f---ing long learning how to play that solo, and I finally got it.

The last song that made me cry (4) When I used to run away from home I slept at a train station, and “Pain” by Tupac, this bonus track off the Above the Rim soundtrack, gave me so much comfort. I defi-

nitely cried my eyes out to it. It’s just a beautiful song, and the lyrics,

The first album I ever bought

they hit really hard. That and “Old

“Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” (1) So

I bought Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory

whenever I hear Shania, it always

Man” by Neil Young, because that’s

and my friend bought Kanye

makes me think of her parading

the last song my dad and I listened

West’s College Dropout. This was

around the house singing that.

to together before he passed.

back when headphones weren’t

What a strong person she was.

pods so we broke them in half, and

The music I want at my funeral

every day on the bus we’d be

My most memorable performance

If I heard “Adam’s Song” by Blink-182

like, “Okay, which one do you want

Amateur Night at the Apollo (2),

I’d probably lose it. I like “The

to listen to?” That’s the good

I got booed before I even started....

Funeral” by Band of Horses, and

thing about our generation, we were

I was chosen to go on second-to-

songs with guitar solos that make

kind of stoked on everything.

last, and you can’t use a beat or anything so I was performing with

you cry, like Metallica’s “Nothing 5.

Else Matters.” And I gotta have one rap song in there, so “Sky’s the

My first musical memory

the house band, an original song. It

I lived with my aunt—me and my

was all kind of set up for me to lose.

Limit” by Notorious B.I.G. (5), just

dad, we shared a bed in her

But I ended up winning and that was

to assure my friends and my

basement—and I would always

my first rap check, $45. Of course

daughter that we’re gonna be all

hear her playing Shania Twain’s

I kept it! [Laughs] Never cashed it.

good, we’re gonna make it.

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4 Your Health fits into your life, not the other way around

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DISCLOSURE ARE F U L L O F E N E R GY T H E E L ECT R O N I C D U O D I S C U S S T H E I R T H I R D STUDIO ALBUM, A VIBRANT MIX OF U.K . GARAGE, AFRO HOUSE, AND DETROIT HIP-HOP By Steven J. Horowitz

BY THE TIME C OVID-19 SHU T THE

DISCLOSURE: HOLLIE FERNANDO; ANIMÉ: MICAIAH CARTER

world down in early spring, Guy and Howard Lawrence were already masters of quarantine. The brothers, who perform as the electronic duo Disclosure, had been taking some much-needed rest following a table-shaking run of releases—their explosive 2013 debut, Settle, as well as its top-billed sequel, Caracal, in 2015—and critically acclaimed gigs. “We were already self-isolating,” explains Guy from his London studio. “I spent all my f---ing time in this tiny room here, listening to loud noises.” Yet what was billed as a hiatus soon became a breeding ground for creativity: Disclosure wrote nearly 200 songs for their genrehopping third album, Energy. This burst came on the heels of a pair of their own EPs and production work for others including Mac Miller, Chloe x Halle, and Khalid (“Talk,” their collaboration with the latter, earned a Grammy nomination for Record of the Year).

Energy is a testament to its name, a collection of songs that play like an aural Pangaea of U.K. garage, Afro house, and Detroit hip-hop. The styles ebb and flow, but it feels centered by its experimental spirit, driven by the same craftsmanship and mastery of dance-music fundamentals that made Settle such a groundbreaking success. “The word energy for us has much more to do with the energy in the room, and that was, like, the 10 minutes that can make or break a song,” says Guy. Energy is a highly collaborative affair, with features from R&B singers like Kelis, Syd, and Kehlani; rappers Aminé and Common; as well as Cameroonian artist Blick Bassy and Malian crooner Fatoumata Diawara. “When we had been DJ’ing for all these years, we’ve always played stuff with that kind of inﬂuence in it,” adds Howard. “So we were like, it would be nice if we had a few of these that were ours to play.”

AMINÉ A L B U M LIMBO L A B E L REPUBLIC G E N R E HIP-HOP

IT’S EASY TO SEE WHY AMINÉ

titled his sophomore album Limbo. On it, the Portland rapper drifts noncommittally between several styles of contemporary hip-hop and R&B, resulting in a record that sounds at once in line with the pop-rap zeitgeist and also slightly ajar. Within the first six tracks he adopts a Roddy Ricch flow (“Woodlawn”), invokes the gravitas of DAMN.-era Kendrick (“Roots”), pulls out a snarling Drake impersonation (“Shimmy”), and employs a competent yet boring A Boogie sing-rap cadence (“Can’t Decide”). Later, on the sweltering pop-trap cut “Compensating,” he proves he can hang with Thugger, and the drill-esque “Pressure in My Palms” sees him boldly take on Vince Staples and Slowthai head-to-head by rapping circles around both of them. But the record falls off during its latter half as the melodic R&B cuts begin to blend together. And in lieu of a clear-cut concept, the random spoken-word tidbits that appear throughout the track list feel frivolous. Aminé is a dexterous rapper who sounds natural on nearly any type of beat, but Limbo’s highlights arrive when he exits that liminal space and hones in on one sound in particular. C+ —ELI ENIS

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T I M I N G IS EVERYTHING

By Seija Rankin

EDITED BY → SEIJA RANKIN

@ S E I JAW R I T E S

literary kismet. The author wrote her (award-winning, best-selling) first novel, Homegoing—an epic generational tale about the systemic effects of slavery—over seven relatively hopeful years of Barack Obama’s administration, only to release it into the vicious 2016 election cycle and a culture that both heightened awareness of

GYASI: CODY PICKENS

YAA GYASI, 31, IS SET TO UNVEIL HER SOPHOMORE NOVEL , TRANSCENDENT KINGDOM, IN A WORLD THAT NEEDS HER WORK MORE THAN EVER

YAA GYA S I I S A P O ST E R C H I L D F O R

line with,” Gyasi says. “It’s something like the source of my power to be a woman and to be Black, and it makes me sad that she couldn’t see it that way.” Gyasi’s publishing career has been imbued with its own power, the kind of rise that inspires authors coming up behind her. She developed Homegoing during an MFA program at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, sold it for seven figures when she was 25, and won the PEN/Hemingway Award at 27. While a debut of that magnitude can be stifling, Gyasi insists she is more at ease now than ever, feeling empowered within the publishing-industrial complex. “I think a lot of debut authors feel an immense gratitude that they’re being published in the first place,” she says. “And particularly for women and marginalized people, that can silence the voice that allows you to say no to things you don’t want to do. This time, I’m aware of my voice in the process.” As Kingdom awaits its Sept. 1 release, the New York Times bestseller list has been flooded with Black authors and antiracist reading material. In late June, Homegoing found its way onto the paperback best-seller list for the very first time—a milestone that Gyasi describes as complicated. “You’re wondering, where were [all of ] you when these books came out? Why weren’t you taking the Black people who wrote these books seriously when they first told you what they were experiencing, when they first shared their art with you?” A favorite (ironic) tweet of Gyasi’s likens this phenomenon of literary discovery to cramming for a final exam— one that is urgent, overdue, and entirely in the reader’s hands.

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the novel and transformed the surrounding conversation into something much more racially charged. Now her follow-up, Transcendent Kingdom, is arriving at a moment of upheaval caused by the very election that defined her previous book, a boomerang effect that feels fitting. “I found it really disorienting to promote Homegoing,” Gyasi says over the phone from her Brooklyn apartment. “But it prepared me for the idea that you can’t control the elements into which your book will emerge.” Homegoing was a sprawling narrative, each of the 14 chapters following a different character across generations. Kingdom is more singular in its storytelling— it follows one narrator in the first-person—but is deeply layered: It’s about addiction, religion, neuroscience. The narrator, Gifty, is the daughter of Ghanaians whose immigration to America would lead to the rupture of their marriage. She dedicates her life to a career studying the brain with a focused desparation, fueled by her brother’s deadly heroin overdose. Gyasi started a short story based on a childhood friend who works in the same field as Gifty as a break between drafts of Homegoing. She returned to it years later, weaving in elements from her own past: the Alabama upbringing, the childhood devotion to a predominantly white Pentecostal church. The book is at times wrenching—from Gifty’s memories of watching her brother succumb to his addiction to her ongoing attempts to pull her depressed mother back from the brink—and deeply introspective, as Gifty struggles to reckon her childhood faith with the seeming godlessness of her scientific work. Despite some biographical similarities, readers should take care not to conflate the author with her protagonist—and certainly not her opinions. Chief among them: a moment when Gifty is asked to join a group for women in STEM and immediately rebukes the label. “That perspective, of feeling limited by your womanhood and your Blackness, is not one I am in

DADDY A U T H O R EMMA CLINE P A G E S 288

SECOND

ACTS

A L WAY S

CARRY

expectations, but for those following a bona ﬁde literary smash of a debut, the bar is set awfully high. And if Emma Cline’s readers were holding out hope that she’d top her explosive breakout The Girls with a more seductive charge, well, a suggestive title like Daddy could hardly dash it. Yet this pitch-black collection of 10 stories emerges as its own kind of success by quietly rushing in another direction. None of the plots will elicit much intrigue on topic alone: A father confronts his mistakes in “Northeast Regional,” a retail employee contends with harassment in “Los Angeles,” a nanny escapes the fallout of her affair with a celebrity in, yes, “The Nanny.” It’s the stuff of niche literary darlings, not blockbuster best-sellers. The pieces soar independently—dark slices of life confidently weaving between styles—and in unison, portraits of young women seeking liberation, of older men doing wrong. True, the standout—“Marion,” a dizzyingly complex tale unfurling from an 11-year-old girl’s mind—feels closer to what made Cline a household name, but Daddy’s biggest reward lies in her showing us something new. A– —DAVID CANFIELD

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MY BO OKS, MY LIFE

SIGRID NUNEZ

By Seija Rankin

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The Last of Her Kind • 2005 Nunez was teaching at Smith College in Massachusetts in the early 2000s when several of her students wrote papers on their disdain for hippie culture. “I remember asking myself, ‘I wonder what these young women mean by hippies?’ ” she says. “I felt that the late ’60s and early ’70s were so interesting and confusing, and I realized I hadn’t read a novel about it that seemed to work for me.” The resulting story follows Barnard roommates Georgette and Ann, whose friendship is tested by Ann’s desire to shun her wealthy upbringing by devoting herself to ardent activism—and, eventually, violence. “People had very strong opinions about social justice and how the world should be,” she says. “Everyone changed and became much less radical, but I wondered what would it be like if someone remained completely attached to those ideals?”

NUNEZ: MARION ETTLINGER/CONTOUR BY GETTY IMAGES

On the heels of her National Book Award for 2018’s The Friend, Sigrid Nunez continues to forge a literary career that peddles unapologetically in the inner monologues of women. Here, she reflects on her most memorable novels, including the upcoming What Are You Going Through.

A Feather on the Breath of God • 1995 While many of her books can easily be mistaken for thinly veiled memoir, Nunez considers this her most autobiographical novel: The narrator’s ethnic background, family structure, and interests are nearly identical to her own. The young woman at the center of Nunez’s debut is the daughter of a ChinesePanamanian father and a German mother, who grows up in a New York City housing project after leaving postwar Germany, and looks to books and ballet for escape. “When I wrote this book, I knew that, like a lot of writers, I was using material [from my own life] that I had to work through and deal with before I could move on,” says the author, 69. “Once I finished, it was so memoir-like and it was so obvious that the distance between the narrator and the author was thin, I very much wanted to do the opposite with my next novels.”

Salvation City • 2010 This haunting book details the aftermath of a flu pandemic but resists veering into dystopian fiction. Rather, Nunez uses the sickness that spreads across the world in Salvation City as a device to explore religion: An agnostic 13-year-old boy is orphaned and sent to live with an evangelical pastor and his wife, forcing him to reconcile his starkly different upbringings. “While we have extreme polarization now, back when I was writing this it was only just becoming clear how polarized people were,” Nunez says of America’s religious makeup. “I wanted this young person to be at a very vulnerable point [in his life] and be forced to figure out what to believe in, what he thinks is right and wrong.” She also admits to feeling an eerie pandemic premonition ever since: “When all of this [COVID-19] started, I thought, ‘Wait, didn’t I write a book about it?’ ” [Laughs]

The Friend • 2018 “When I finished The Friend, it suddenly occurred to me that it flowed directly out of my first book,” says Nunez. “This is the same narrator as A Feather on the Breath of God, just much older.” Her awardwinning novel tells of a year in the life of a woman who unexpectedly loses her mentor to suicide and even more unexpectedly becomes the caretaker to his dog—despite a crippling depression and a very dog-unfriendly New York City apartment. The canine companion was the hit of the book, but the author admits to stumbling upon that element of the story by accident: “It didn’t enter until I was 30 pages in or so; I thought, ‘Oh, I could put a Great Dane in the story!’ It came from nowhere except for the fact that I’d always wanted to write a book where an animal, particularly a dog, played a major role. I was surprised by it.”

What Are You Going Through • 2020 Nunez’s latest novel reads like an answer to The Friend: Whereas the earlier book dealt with the impact of a sudden death, What Are You Going Through follows a woman tasked with keeping an acquaintance company as she nears the end of a battle with terminal cancer. There’s more closure but just as much heartbreak. Still, the author was deep into writing What Are You Going Through by the time her National Book Award came. “I didn’t get jolted and start having anxiety about ‘What if I can’t write another one?’ ” she says of her newfound fame. “And in a more general sense, I’d written so many books already and felt like I knew what I was doing, so while it was a wonderful pleasure and helped me in many ways, my life didn’t change and I didn’t make other plans about how I was going to conduct myself as a writer.”

HERE WE ARE

THE BASS ROCK

A U T H O R GRAHAM SWIFT P A G E S 208

A U T H O R EVIE WYLD P A G E S 368

In the summer of 1959, a young couple’s magic act becomes the sensation of the Britishseaside variety circuit; by September, their engagement is over and the Great Pablo is gone. Was his disappearance sleight of hand, or something else? Here We Are is a mystery, of a kind, but it’s also a meditation: part metaphorical ghost story, part tangled romance, part memory palace. Swift, the Booker Prizewinning author of Waterland and Mothering Sunday, writes in great incantatory loops, even as he keeps his story small; at 208 pages, Here’s plot revelations are slim, but the elegant melancholy of his prose lingers. B —LE AH

Wyld may corner the market on literary rage with this searing tale of abuse inflicted on women. Working between three timelines— present day, post–World War II, and circa 1700—the novel sticks to one location, around a tiny island off the coast of Scotland. The women in each section suffer and mourn, but the pulse of Wyld’s prose keeps them fully alive; the narratives bleed into each other with richness and surprising payoff. The closer, an anonymous story of male violence, is appropriately, tartly grim. Lest Bass sound too bleak, though, its furious current is too propulsive to deny. “She sounds mad,” we hear of one of Bass’ victims. You bet. B+

GREENBL AT T

—DAVID CANFIELD

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FICTION REVIEWS

DECEPTION BECOMES HER FA L L’ S L I T E R A RY L I N E U P I S R I F E W I T H C O M P L I CAT E D WO M E N , E AC H W I T H A S EC R E T H I STO RY O F H E R OW N

know if that’s a bad thing to admit. [Laughs] I think all of us have different identities that we inhabit when we move from one segment of our life to another. I really loved exploring that to the extreme— Becky comes from a place where everyone knows everyone, but when she enters this art world, she doesn’t know the social codes. I’m fascinated by the class issues in con-artist stories—there’s usually some [element of ] trying to inhabit a different class. The title invokes The Talented Mr. Ripley, another book about a brilliant con artist. Did you take any

/ I would hope I took kind of everything, because Patricia Highsmith is such a genius. I hope the title reads [as] homage to her, because I would certainly not compare myself to her. I love the Tom Ripley character; when you read those novels, you just cannot stop your own intense fear of him getting caught. You know he needs to, but you can’t bear the suspense. I wanted to play that same tune.

inspiration from him?

Q+A

E M I LY G R AY T E D R O W E

What ab out p eople like Anna Delvey or Elizabeth Holmes, from

KNOWN FOR HER NUANCED P ORTRAITS OF REL ATIONSHIPS, THE AUTHOR, 46, TAKES A DELICIOUSLY MACHIAVELLIAN TURN IN THE TALENTED MISS FARWELL

our current era of the high-stakes

/ Yes! Women in fiction who lead a double life [are] often portrayed in the domestic role or the relationships role, like a woman who has an affair or leaves her family. I very specifically wanted to explore the idea of a female con artist who is ambitious about pretty much everything except for relationships. To me, that was sort of the heart of Becky. She does have friendships, she sometimes has sex, but mostly she has her obsession. That’s kind of what she lives for.

scam?

By Mary Sollosi

What was the initial conception of

THREE MORE T WIST Y TA L E S

110

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captivated. So I set off to imagine my own version of this person. Becky Farwell exists between two worlds: her small town and the elite art scene. How did she take shape for you? / [She] just kind of

appeared to me instantly. I felt like I knew her right away. I don’t →

Evening by Nessa Rapoport (Sept. 1)

→

One by One by Ruth Ware (Sept. 8)

→

TEDROWE: YVETTE MARIE DOSTATNI

It’s very loosely based on a true story—there is a small town in Illinois where a woman was convicted of embezzling $50 million over 20 years as a tinytown government employee. I heard about half the headline [on the radio] and I was instantly

the novel? /

—LE AH GREENBL AT T

Monogamy by Sue Miller Annie is a photographer, Graham owns a bookstore; their love story is both ordinary and extraordinary, the long work of a messy but happy life. Until Annie wakes up one morning to find the cozy certainty of their coupledom— the wine, the dinner parties, the lazy Saturdays in bed—blown apart in a moment. None of what follows is particularly new, but in the hands of a master of domestic fiction like Miller (While I Was Gone, The Senator’s Wife), that hardly feels like the point. The richness of Monogamy is in its lived-in quality, and the fresh revelations she finds in the familiar: a portrait of a marriage suffused with earned wisdom and quiet empathy. B+ —LG

White Fox by Sara Faring (Sept. 22)

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Sisters by Daisy Johnson Family is both an endless source of fascination and a flytrap for Johnson, whose gothic motherdaughter mystery Everything Under made her the youngest novelist ever to be nominated for a Booker Prize, in 2018. Her heady follow-up traces the obsessive relationship between teenage siblings July and September: Born just 10 months apart, they exist together in a self-contained world even their own mother can hardly penetrate. But when an ugly incident at school disrupts their feverish pas de deux, September’s grip on her younger sister becomes more menacing, too—a fraught and feral thing that Johnson evokes with clammy, startling intimacy. B+

TRUTH AND FICTION AYA D A K H TA R ’ S H O M E L A N D E L EG I E S , A R I V E T I N G P E R S O N A L R EC KO N I N G O N TO DAY ’ S A M E R I CA , B LU R S T H E L I N E B E T W E E N N OV E L A N D M E M O I R By David Canfield

AYAD AKHTAR WANTS YOU TO KNOW:

Homeland Elegies is a novel. Even though the main character is a man named Ayad who, like the author, is a Pulitzer-winning playwright. Even though the book breaks narrative format for essayistic asides. Even though the book races at the speed of bare-your-soul memoir. And he’s right. A searing entrant in the burgeoning ﬁeld of popular autoﬁction—a category that boasts authors Ben Lerner, Rachel Cusk, and Sheila Heti—Homeland Elegies is as elastic in shape as it is dazzling in execution. A deeply personal work, the novel probes vital questions about American identity today. Its considerations are economic, political, cultural, and religious in scope, as Akhtar (the 2012 play Disgraced) explores his immigrant upbringing, his professional

success, and his ongoing, combative relationship with the country in which he was born (to Pakistani immigrants), but that has always regarded him as an “other.” Akhtar’s forceful, direct prose conveys a poetic sense of anguish. But while the critical insights are consistently sharp, Elegies’ family portraits linger longest—Ayad’s mother pining for her homeland, his father chasing after an illusory American dream. Donald Trump appears as a character here too, not as the cartoon villain who’s suffocated a good chunk of post2016 literature but as a man whose deception, empty promises, and (to some) inexplicable appeal get at the heart of a national identity crisis. So maybe this is more than a novel. It’s a document—furious, unwieldy, tragic—of our time. A–

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY (ISSN 1049-0434) (SEPTEMBER 2020) (#1594/1595) IS PUBLISHED 12 TIMES A YEAR, WITH 10 DOUBLE ISSUES AND SINGLES IN APRIL AND JULY, BY ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY INC., A SUBSIDIARY OF MEREDITH CORPORATION, PRINCIPAL OFFICE: 225 LIBERTY ST., NEW YORK, NY 10281-1008. PERIODICALS POSTAGE PAID AT NEW YORK, NY, AND ADDITIONAL MAILING OFFICES. POSTMASTER: SEND ALL UAA TO CFS. (SEE DMM 507.1.5.2); NON-POSTAL AND MILITARY FACILITIES: SEND ADDRESS CORRECTIONS TO ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY MAGAZINE, PO BOX 37508, BOONE, IA 50037-0508. CANADA POST PUBLICATIONS MAIL AGREEMENT #40069223. BN #888381621RT0001. © 2020 ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. CUSTOMER SERVICE AND SUBSCRIPTIONS: FOR 24/7 SERVICE, PLEASE USE OUR WEBSITE: WWW.ENTERTAINMENTWEEKLY.COM/MYACCOUNT. YOU CAN ALSO CALL 1-800-828-6882 OR WRITE ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY, PO BOX 37508, BOONE, IA 50037-0508. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED. YOUR BANK MAY PROVIDE UPDATES TO THE CARD INFORMATION WE HAVE ON FILE. YOU MAY OPT OUT OF THIS SERVICE AT ANY TIME. ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦

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30TH BIRTHDAY EDITION

Fun fact! The first time we ever mentioned him, the sentence started: “These may be dark days for Donald Trump…”

BY → DARREN FRANICH

Are we in the backlash, or the backlash to the backlash? Anyhow, lightsabers are still cool.

Here’s to 30 years of confused relatives asking if we work here...

@DARRENFRANICH

But Darren Franich was wrong about The Emoji Movie, according to his niece.

We stand by our reporting.

The Walking Dead’s been on our cover 11 times. Coincidentally, that’s the exact number of Walking Dead producers who’ve sued AMC.

When haters say we’re a mass-market, access-journalism-driven mouthpiece, you tell them Clark Collis wrote a 3,100-word feature about director Richard Stanley and a haunted French castle.

Also, Owen Gleiberman was right about Pretty Woman.

Thanks for getting us through the last recession, kids!

With apologies to legendary Lost recapper Jeff Jensen, here’s our ultimate fan theory: Nikki and Paulo were the real heroes.

In our very first issue, a preview item about Twin Peaks claimed “The Palmer mystery will take at least nine hours to play itself out.” Hey, we said at least... How it always feels now.

Okay, technically Entertainment Monthly...Except Also All the Time Online!

Keith Staskiewicz coined the phrase “DC Extended Universe” in an EW story, which legally means we can veto any future Batfleck movies.

Most people sue Ryan Murphy before they turn 100. We’ll miss you, Olivia.

The greatest movie series of the past 30 years. Disagree? Let’s race for it.

There was a bloody war between (arguably) funny News & Notes franchises. Now Bullseye stands alone, gloating over corpses.

You pay more attention to great shows with low ratings, because nobody ever asks for a JAG reunion.

Yes, it’s crazy Beyoncé hasn’t been on the cover more. Yes, it’s even crazier that twice, it was for Austin Powers 3.

Blogs disappear, but hidden gems shine forever. What do you think, PopWatchers? Sound off below!

FIGHT CLUB: MERRICK MORTON; PRETTY WOMAN: RON BATZDORFF; THE EMOJI MOVIE: SONY PICTURES ANIMATION; TWILIGHT: DEANA NEWCOMB/SUMMIT; LOST: BOB D’AMICO/ABC (2); AUSTIN POWERS IN GOLDMEMBER: SUE GORDON/NEW LINE; FEAR THE WALKING DEAD: RYAN GREEN/AMC; FAST FIVE: JAIMIE TRUEBLOOD/UNIVERSAL; OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND: SILVER SCREEN COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES; TWIN PEAKS: PARAMOUNT; JUSTICE LEAGUE: WARNER BROS./© DC COMICS; STANLEY: PHOTOGRAPH BY CLARK COLLIS; GEORGE LUCAS: TODD ANDERSON/DISNEY VIA GETTY IMAGES; TRUMP: RON GALELLA, LTD./RON GALELLA COLLECTION VIA GETTY IMAGES

The first rule of Fight Club is...Lisa Schwarzbaum was RIGHT about Fight Club.

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