The background radiation is still there, two decades later, from the infamous 1993 Whitney Biennial — the so-called multi-cultural, identity-politics, political, or just bad biennial. Establishment art history circa 1993 was a broken model, built on white men and Western civilization and certain ossified ideas about “greatness” and “genius.” New artists looking for new ways to speak to new audiences couldn’t get their voices heard or work seen. There had been artists fighting this fight before, but that 1993 show was the major crack in the façade.

Timothy Simons as Jonah Ryan. Writing comedy is not a scientific or mathematical endeavor — except, perhaps, when it comes to devising ways to insult Jonah Ryan, who is played by the extremely tall (six-foot-four) and thin Timothy Simons. “The Jonah insults are probably the most math-y of the insults [we write],” says David Mandel, “because there we are using insulting words hung around the frame of something that’s large or tall or big.

Oh no, Satine! Let’s set the scene: You’re on set filming a movie, heading over to craft services, and suddenly, there, right in front of you, Nicole Kidman is dying. She coughs. She gasps. She coughs again! She says a whole speech about how she has always loved Ewan McGregor. Sweat materializes all over her brow. She pales even further beyond her natural level of pale. She dies!

Ninth swipe’s the charm! Maybe no TV show in 2020 has surprised me as much as How to With John Wilson, a documentary/comedy/personal essay/glorious portrait of weirdos unlike anything else I’ve seen. Much of the pleasure of the show comes out of its strange sense of humor, and it absolutely benefits from a hefty dose of surprise. Wilson has this fantastic capacity to notice unusual moments in everyday life.

Bowen Yang discusses his parents and SNL in Judd Apatow’s new book of interviews. Bowen Yang on SNL. Photo: Will Heath/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images Bowen Yang on SNL. Before he made emotionally resonant, character-driven comedy films like The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, and Trainwreck, Judd Apatow wrote for landmark comedy television shows like The Ben Stiller Show, The Larry Sanders Show, and Freaks and Geeks. For his entire professional life, he’s worked for, with, and alongside comedy greats, a behavior that goes back to his days as a talk-show host, interviewing ’80s stand-ups like Jay Leno and Jerry Seinfeld for his high school’s radio station.

Idris Elba. When reading this interview, please picture the man who played The Wire’s Stringer Bell sitting in front of you on a bench in the back garden of the Crosby Street Hotel. He is six-foot-three and dressed smartly and simply in a tweed cap, black Nike sneakers, gray jeans, and a black long-sleeved shirt — that fits perfectly. Have you seen him on Luther, the British TV series in which he plays a brilliant but possibly sociopathic London police detective prone to violence and fervent ardor, often in the same instance?

You just can’t drop big news at midnight these days without stans thinking Taylor Swift is involved. The NFL and Apple Music learned that lesson last night, after making an announcement that the platform would sponsor future Super Bowl halftime shows, ending a longtime partnership with Pepsi. As die-hard Swifties know, Swift has a deal with Coke, making an appearance at a Pepsi Super Bowl Halftime Show near impossible.

Anonymous in Hollywood Vulture’s Anonymous in Hollywood asks people to share their most unbelievable, tragic, common, hilarious reflections on the industry, no names attached. Anonymous in Hollywood Vulture’s Anonymous in Hollywood asks people to share their most unbelievable, tragic, common, hilarious reflections on the industry, no names attached. An actor and a showrunner on the politics of speaking out about Israel and Palestine in Hollywood. A Middle Eastern Actor I have played Palestinians, Israelis, Iraqis, Afghans — every version of that you can imagine.

L-R: Devi and Nalini Vishwakumar. In Never Have I Ever, the primary love story might seem to be between Devi Vishwakumar and her crush, Paxton Hall-Yoshida. Or even between Devi and her academic nemesis, Ben Gross, a kid who starts to show his soft side. But the actual love story that anchors everything is between Devi and her mom, Nalini. The Netflix series, which has drawn in pandemic-moored audiences since its debut in late April, begins with a tragedy: Devi’s father Mohan, played with theatrical cheeriness by Sendhil Ramamurthy, drops dead at an orchestra recital where Devi (the brash and likeable newcomer Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) is playing the harp, an instrument first gifted to her by her doting father.

Toni Collette, a true Joy in Netflix’s Wanderlust. Wanderlust begins with a longtime married couple in the throes of bad sex that doesn’t end well. Joy (Toni Collette) was recently in a bicycling accident and hasn’t been in the mood for a while. Alan (Steven Mackintosh) thinks she’s just making excuses and is actually no longer attracted to him. Later in that first episode, after each has a sexual encounter outside their marriage, Joy proposes something: What if they try seeing other people — purely for physical reasons — but remain happily married to each other?