#NAB Show 2017

[jbaileyfansite]

Interview with Backstage (2024)

Jonathan Bailey is still marinating in his thoughts, andthey taste pretty sweet. Top notes of red wine, he says. 

These are busy times for the witty British heartthrob. He’s speaking over Zoom from Malta, where he’s filming the next “Jurassic World” installment. And two days prior, he received his first Emmy nomination for his supporting turn on Showtime’s “Fellow Travelers.” 

What’s lingering in Bailey’s mind after reaching such a huge milestone? “The nature of the story, and how that story’s come to be told,” he says of Ron Nyswaner’s limited series, a decades-spanning gay drama that’s chock-full of steamy sex scenes. For him, the Emmy nod is “an acknowledgment of [the show] meaning something much bigger.” 

The 36-year-old actor radiates humility and surges with pride for his collaborators; “Fellow Travelers” also picked up nominations for lead actor Matt Bomer and for Nyswaner’s writing. Bailey believes the fact that executive producer Robbie Rogers was able to get the project on television at all is a “brilliant signifier” of changing times. He feels lucky to have been the right person for the job. And after a couple of decades in the industry, the actor’s star is about to go supernova. 

Childhood stage work and gigs on 2000s teen TV shows led to roles on acclaimed series like ITV’s “Broadchurch” and Channel 4’s “Crashing.” He nabbed an Olivier in 2019 for his performance in Marianne Elliott’s West End revival of “Company.” Households on the other side of the Atlantic learned his name in 2020 when he courted lockdown audiences as Anthony, the strident head of the titular family on Netflix’s period-romance smash “Bridgerton.” 

Then came the game-changing “Fellow Travelers.” Bailey plays the idealistic Tim Laughlin, a closeted congressional staffer who pursues a clandestine relationship with another man amid the witch hunts of McCarthy-era Washington. The actor is keeping up that momentum in the coming months with part one of Jon M. Chu’s highly anticipated film adaptation of the Broadway musical “Wicked” (out Nov. 22), followed by the fourth “Jurassic World” in 2025. 

“Fellow Travelers” is a fitting inflection point for Bailey, considering it reflects aspects of his own gay identity. Tim’s story also illuminates a thread connecting the actor’s work, both in and out of character: always embracing the truth, shame be damned. 

Born in Wallingford, England, Bailey made a beeline for the arts as a kid when he began studying music and ballet. After getting a taste of performing at a young age, he secured an agent when he was a teenager. Even now, he feels the sense of joy and wonder he discovered in those early days. 

He chose not to attend drama school, instead throwing himself into professional theater, where he encountered the performance process in its most essential form. “You start with your own instincts, and then you share with others in the room in real time,” Bailey says. “You academically approach text, then you emotionally explore it. Then, you physically put it on its feet.”

Theater taught him to be observant. In rehearsals, he witnessed actors being brilliant and bold, but also making crucial mistakes. Weeks of rehearsing helped him learn how to spend time with a character as he watched his castmates play against type and expand themselves through performance. Those lessons both tested and encouraged him, and they’ve carried him throughout his career. 

Since then, Bailey has gotten the chance to see plenty of giants at work. He reverently discusses performing Stephen Sondheim’s music alongside Patti LuPone in “Company” and reciting Shakespeare opposite Ian McKellen in the Chichester Festival Theatre’s 2017 production of “King Lear.” 

His contemporaries also made for great teachers. He worked with Phoebe Waller-Bridge on “Crashing” and Michaela Coel on “Chewing Gum”—two certified television geniuses whose creative successes Bailey likens to the magnesium flame of a meteor. It’s an apt comparison—Waller-Bridge called him “a meteorite of fun” in a 2022 interview with GQ. (“I think I’ve always been quite naughty,” he says playfully.)

“There’s so much you take on via natural osmosis,” Bailey explains. “It’s what you watch and how you interpret things.”

For example, he thinks that every actor should see Sandy Dennis’ Oscar-winning turn as Honey in Mike Nichols’ 1966 film “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Her performance whet his curiosity about the craft: “She is so fluid. I mean, that might be the most exposing answer I’ve given about what my inner world is like.”

Bailey’s technique is rooted in music. He plays piano and clarinet, and he approaches acting like an instrument, too. When reading a script for the first time, he experiences his character’s arc as the phrases in a song. “The way my brain works is that I see the images of what they’re doing,” he says. “When I say ‘phrasing,’ it’s like, how you get from that image to this image.”

When he was playing the bottled-up Anthony on “Bridgerton,” Bailey found inspiration in songs by Echo and the Bunnymen and Nirvana. While filming “Fellow Travelers” in Toronto, he went on long walks while listening to expansive pop music to help him explore Tim, a character whose energy radiates outward.

Considering Bailey’s process plays like a song, connoisseurs of his work might notice a motif. Sam from “Crashing,” a party boy Bailey calls “a wild, untamed animal in a tiny little cage,” aggressively maintains a facade of heterosexuality while pining for his male housemate Fred (Amit Shah). On Season 2 of “Bridgerton,” Anthony locked himself into a prison of duty and a loveless engagement to avoid acknowledging his desire for the fiery Kate Sharma (Simone Ashley).

Tim of “Fellow Travelers” is the latest in a series of sharply drawn characters confronting the tension between their assigned roles and their personal truths. Viewers first meet a straitlaced rule-follower whose Catholic piety is only matched by his loyalty to the infamous Senator Joseph McCarthy. All that changes when he crosses paths with Hawkins “Hawk” Fuller (Bomer), a crystal-eyed, debonair State Department official. Their respective closets combust on contact, and they enter into a forbidden love affair just as McCarthy’s Lavender Scare has begun purging queer people from the halls of government.

Bailey’s interior work tends to be more emotional than cerebral, but he’s a generous conversation partner who’s always game to riff on the deep stuff. Whether it’s yearning, going against expectations, or facing high stakes, the phrasing is what draws him in. 

He finds a lot of gorgeous notes to play across the eight episodes of “Fellow Travelers” as the action moves from the 1950s to the ’80s, making pit stops along the way. While Hawk settles for a life of straight domesticity, Tim hurtles through a sexual and political awakening: The Beltway boy becomes an activist priest who refuses to diminish himself, especially when the AIDS crisis begins to rip his community apart.

Bailey loved being inside Tim’s head; in fact, the actor thinks of him as a hero. After experiencing the isolation of his secret relationship with Hawk, he opens himself up to the world: He comes out, moves to San Francisco, cobbles together a found family, and builds a life as his true self. 

“Ron Nyswaner has spoiled Matt and me for the operatic detail that existed between [our characters],” Bailey says, “and also with Tim’s political fervor: the truth and the honesty that he demands of himself and the world around him, and the grappling with anything that is an obstacle to his own and other’s happiness.”

You can’t talk about “Fellow Travelers” without discussing its rapturous sex scenes—and not only for titillation’s sake, though the kinky encounters between Tim and Hawk certainly call for smelling salts. These sequences gave Bailey the opportunity to commit authentic queer intimacy to the screen, which members of the LGBTQ+ community rarely come across as they search for ways to understand their identities. 

The trust between Bailey and Bomer informed everything they did onscreen. Before filming those scenes, the two actors talked through their approach at a café (Goldstruck Coffee on Cumberland Street in Toronto—a ribald little detail that still makes Bailey laugh). The filming itself was incredibly technical, and the actors worked with an intimacy coordinator on set. “We sort of hit the ground running, knowing exactly what was going to be required but also how to communicate throughout it,” Bailey says. “It felt immediately quite safe.”

He sensed an exciting opportunity to tell a story about transformative love amid the “wild, oppressive moment” of the Lavender Scare, dismissing any reservations about the explicit nature of the material. “Honestly, this is exactly why this show is going to be brilliant,” he remembers thinking.

The series’ milestone dramatic moments, with buttons still done up and no skin showing, carried that same sense of significance. No matter how much Tim grew over the course of his arc, Bailey says that his bond with Hawk remained an “extraordinary, material thing.”

This summer, the actor made a very Tim move when he founded the Shameless Fund, a charity that supports LGBTQ+ causes under the tagline: “Raising cash. Erasing shame.” The initiative grew directly out of his acting work—first inspired by the platform afforded to him by “Bridgerton” and further influenced by his experience on “Fellow Travelers.” 

Playing Tim—or, as Bailey puts it, spending “five months doing a dissertation on queer oppression and liberation”—catalyzed his thoughts about the people who created a world where such a show could even exist. “I think in ‘Fellow Travelers,’ it’s so clear what Tim wants,” he says. “But as the world around him develops, you realize there’s so much that he can’t have, but that he can help change.”

Bailey sees that progress playing out in the next generation. He has a small role on the upcoming third season of Netflix’s queer YA hit “Heartstopper” as a dreamy academic who’s the celebrity crush of the series’ protagonist, Charlie (Joe Locke). Based on creator Alice Oseman’s graphic novel series, the show has found a passionate following of young LGBTQ+ fans. 

When he watched “Heartstopper” for the first time, Bailey remembers wondering what it would have been like to see such representation on television when he was growing up. “I was so celebratory of it,” he says. “But it was obviously kind of a melancholic watch for people above a certain age, because it allowed them to grieve what they didn’t have.”

Having conquered the Regency and Cold War periods on the small screen, Bailey’s blockbuster era is imminent. He’s playing dashing love interest Fiyero in the “Wicked” films (based on Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel), singing and dancing alongside Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande. It’s a perfect fit for the actor’s particular lens: “Musically and theatrically, I understand it massively.”

Since “Wicked” came with its own well-known songs to study, Bailey spent a lot of time with composer-lyricist Stephen Schwartz’s music in his ears rather than Kurt Cobain’s. He explored Fiyero’s interiority through the musical theater form itself: What does the act of singing express for him?

And for a character whose signature number is called “Dancing Through Life,” what metaphorical direction are his steps leading him in? 

Bailey sees Fiyero as part of the same club as Tim, Anthony, and Sam, as the heightened world of Oz sends him on a journey of radical transformation. “I think about where he starts and where he ends up; he’s literally a changed person,” the actor says. “I savored the arc over two films.” 

Next year, Bailey will become an action star in Gareth Edwards’ next installment of “Jurassic World” opposite Scarlett Johansson. Though details have yet to be announced, including the movie’s title, production is well underway; Bailey just finished filming in Thailand before shooting moved to Malta. A few days before we spoke, he was interacting with a fake blue-screen dinosaur (which is only a spoiler if you thought Hollywood has actually been cloning big reptiles this whole time).

But Bailey is still keeping his theater muscles toned. Next year, he’s starring as the titular monarch in Nicholas Hytner’s production of Shakespeare’s “Richard II” at London’s Bridge Theatre. “I have to go and sharpen up,” he says of returning to the stage. “You feel so sharp and dexterous at the end of a theater run—but also, you know, without a soul. Carcass levels of absolute exhaustion.”

Bailey lights up at the prospect of getting back onstage and experiencing the kinetic energy between the actors, crew, and director. He believes that the emotional and intellectual rigor of theater leads to a tight, specific piece of work. It’s an art form that requires continuous creation night after night.

This stamina comes in handy in front of a camera, too. “When you’re exhausted, you have to rely on technique,” he explains. “Technique does get you over the finish line, and you can deliver a performance that is honest and tell the story effectively and truthfully.” 

Until then—and until he’s back on set with those fake dinosaurs—he’s going to soak up that Emmy-nomination afterglow for a little while longer. 

“I’m actually going to go and have another glass of wine to celebrate,” he says.

Source

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

As expected, great haul for DESPICABLE ME 4, animation is #1 yet again at the domestic box office and will likely be next week. If so: 5 weeks in a row, a run in animation that had only opened back in 2016, when FINDING DORY and THE SECRET LIFE OF PETS - a Pixar and an Illumination - held the top slot back-to-back for 5 weeks.

No wonder Pixar loves the mid-June slot and Illumination always nabs the 4th of July frame.

DESPICABLE ME 4 landed a little above DESPICABLE ME 3's unadjusted opening weekend take from 2017, $75m estimate, with $122m for the five-day. Already more than doubled its $100m budget, too. Illumination's always smart with those. With little else in terms of family stuff, DESPICABLE ME 4 kinda has the rest of the summer to itself. THE WILD ROBOT and TRANSFORMERS ONE pretty much walk us into autumn, so I expect good legs for this film, maybe even challenges $300m stateside.

Either way, expect a fifth one to be announced, lol. Still plenty of juice left in this tank, for sure. At my theater, the audience response - of all ages - was pretty enthusiastic. Average moviegoers really dig these movies, they're a "just right" sort of combo of silliness and "warm fuzzies" for them. Slapstick also lands, if done well enough, too. They're a bit like Tom & Jerry in that regard, you don't have to fret translating that for any age group or anyone around the world. "Yellow thing hit other yellow thing. Funny."

But going by how big the MINIONS movies opened, I think it's clear audiences just really like those chittering yellow tictacs. I wouldn't be surprised if MINIONS 3 goes forward first, or instead of DESPICABLE ME 5. But really, it was Gru and the girls that launched everything to begin with, so I expect both to happen. As long as Illumination uses some of that moolah for more original stuff, I'm fine. It looks like they don't have a movie out next year, so the spring 2026 release of MARIO 2 will be the follow-up offering. Still would love to know what's going on with projects like BIG TREE, and... That Pharrell Williams project announced way back in like 2018...

INSIDE OUT 2 only took an estimated 47% dip against DESPICABLE ME 4, and is not only now up to $533m domestic (not too far from MARIO's $574m haul last year), but it's ready to surpass INCREDIBLES 2 worldwide. To be Pixar's highest-earning picture... All-animation wise, it's also now below CG LION KING ($1,663m), FROZEN II ($1,453m), MARIO ($1,361m), and FROZEN ($1,280m, w/o re-releases)... I think it has a legit shot at topping MARIO at the very least, not sure if LION KING '19 and FROZEN II are doable, though.

Anyways, yeah... Animation to the rescue, it seems. The summer box office got a boost from the so-called kiddie cartoons... But let's also not leave out BAD BOYS 4, and of course DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE is gonna do big numbers, but after a fairly dry May, it's these two livening things up. Whereas THE GARFIELD MOVIE, now at $244m worldwide (against a $60m budget, sequel announcement definitely imminent), was a quieter affair...

Still, it goes to show that when it comes to animated movies...

Sequels are still the bona fide blockbusters, while the reasonably-priced "original" (or untested/untried IP) movies aren't.

Ideally, that's great.

Animated smallies should be commonplace, they shouldn't all be expected to be $500m-and-up behemoths (I've only been screaming about that for years)... Problem is, while everyone else is okay with that nowadays, Disney still isn't for some reason, and they still pump $150-250m into their pictures - across both of their flagship animation studios. They really got to adjust there. Expecting a sci-fi adventure to outdo ELEMENTAL by a wide margin is either an ambitious bet, or an incredibly short-sighted decision.

Disney is pretty much why we're here with animation, and right now, they gotta get with it. INSIDE OUT 2 is saving their day at the moment because it's a sequel to a beloved movie that made big bucks in a much different world, a much different marketplace. Ditto the original MOANA, whose sequel is sure to make an ocean-full of bucks this coming holiday season. The original INSIDE OUT, if made and released recently, could've possibly struggled. And if it did, that would be blamed on it being "too autobiographical".

Disney needs to course-correct there, not by watering down their movies. They too can ride this new wave with everybody else, and maybe find a new way through it...

[dissociacrip]

YIL portugal the man (responsible for "feel it still") has a member who is a wheelchair user!

From his bed in the ICU, the first thing Howk asked for was a guitar. Still able to use his hands, he started working on new ways to hold and position the instrument, even as he struggled to sit up without passing out. But his objective was steadfast: “It was my therapy to get back into music,” he says.

By September of that year, Howk was playing onstage, but he yearned to be on the road again. He began playing with any band that would let him come along, and he drove himself to gigs up to 1,000 miles away. “Figuring out how to play a show is one thing,” he says. “Figuring out how to tour was a much longer process. And that’s still something I’m trying to figure out.”

For years, the rock band Portugal. The Man had their eyes on Howk to join the group. Howk grew up in Wasilla, Alaska, with founding members John Baldwin Gourley and Zach Carothers, but Howk was always busy in other bands.

“Growing up with Eric, he was always the best guitarist we knew,” says Gourley, PTM’s frontman. “He was always the dude you’d see in the hallway, just hanging out and playing guitar every day.”

But joining a major touring band as a wheelchair user presented a myriad of accessibility challenges for Howk. In the years that followed his injury, he avoided flying on planes, but PTM played gigs across the U.S. and traveled abroad. When it came to venues, most didn’t have a working wheelchair lift—and many didn’t even have a ramp. And accessible tour buses? According to the band, only two exist in the U.S.

“In our brain, we were just thinking about logistics, trying to plan everything out with buses, stages, with backstage, with festivals,” says Carothers, PTM’s bassist. “We were overthinking, just lost in our minds.”

As they struggled to come up with a strategy, Gourley told the band they’d simply make it work. “John is a real good person when something demands action,” Carothers adds. “He brought out the Alaskan and was like, ‘Let’s just do it.’ That’s how we do everything in life, so let’s just jump in and learn to swim.”

So, as a band, they swam. And they flew. And they lifted Howk on and off the tour bus—or wherever he needed to be if it was inaccessible. Together they made touring work, taking on each challenge day by day.

“They make it accessible, just by carrying me on and off, you know?” Howk says with emotion in his voice. “There’s this one-size-fits-all approach to accessibility for a lot of things. But having flexibility and adaptability gets things done better. Sometimes it’s smarter. Sometimes it’s harder. But with every situation that we’re in, we approach it as the situation comes. That’s very much the spirit of this band, and I don’t think I could do this with anybody else. I know I couldn’t.”

Since Howk joined PTM in 2015, the band’s profile skyrocketed. In 2017, Portugal. The Man released its eighth studio album, Woodstock. The album produced two No. 1 hits on the alternative charts in the U.S., including the explosive megahit “Feel It Still.” That song nabbed the group a Grammy in 2018, and they took their success on the road. The band toured across the U.S., Europe and Australia with Howk, who gathered data on the accessibility of every venue they visited—the good, the bad, the despicable.

[...]

Portugal The Man wanted disabled fans to get the opportunity to see them live, so for their most recent North American tour in 2022, they launched PTM Night Out, a charitable initiative created to make their concerts ADA accessible. Select winners were given VIP treatment, with transportation to and from the venue, as well as an on-site escort and an exclusive meet-and-greet with the band. “It’s a discovery and research project more than anything,” Howk says. “I don’t think that accessibility in ticketing for a lot of companies is working the best way. We know that it’s not one-size-fits-all, so it’s about having conversations. It’s easy to get hyperfocused on mobility access, but that’s just a tiny part of it.”

Howk says solutions emerge from asking people what they need and not by shoving them into a designated area. It’s about asking concertgoers where they want to be, depending on their needs.

After a successful pilot program—and with a new album on the horizon—the band hopes to take PTM Night Out on tour around the world, pushing venues to do better. “We’re seeing actual concrete getting mixed in wheelbarrows, like real-time repairs in venues where they’re listening,” Howk says. “We’re doing audits and doing the work.”

dated jan. 4th, 2023

would've been really cool to watch them play at the festival yesterday in light of this news but i had no clue 🥲

[meret118]

There are hundreds of nonfiction and fiction books that show us what poverty looks like—Charles Dickens immediately comes to mind, as does Barbara Kingsolver’s excellent Dickens adaptation, Demon Copperhead (scroll down for our review). Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond, who won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction for his last book, Evicted, and whose own family struggled financially during his Arizona childhood, chose instead to focus on why: Why is poverty—especially deep poverty, a ghastly state of existence for 1 in 18 Americans—so stubbornly persistent? In this enlightening and well-argued book, Desmond examines the reasons Americans face destitution at rates so much higher than, for example, Europeans. He also offers solutions and calls upon not only policymakers but everyday people of privilege to acknowledge our complicity—indeed, to remake ourselves as “poverty abolitionists.” We have the resources to eliminate this scourge, this national embarrassment, Desmond writes. It’s surprisingly cheap, and we know what has to be done. We need only to summon the heart and the will. —Michael Mechanic

After reading this fascinating book, I can no longer countenance people talking about how America is turning into a surveillance state. Too late, I’ll say. Privacy was dead and buried ages ago. Funk, a talented magazine journalist, chronicles how the late Hank Asher—brilliant, obsessive, and volatile—pioneered the business of harvesting every available scrap of information about every American back in the early 1990s. These snippets, including court and DMV records, residence addresses, data about our travels, families, relationships, professional pursuits, money owed, consumption habits, social interactions, and more, resided in far-flung public and private databases. Asher’s innovation was to gain access to these disparate troves and merge them into a single, high-speed storage-and-retrieval system that knew more about us than we knew about ourselves. To win over high-level clients, including law enforcement brass who presumed their information was sacrosanct, he only had to run the person’s name through his system. The universe of data services he unleashed, now peddled by firms like LexisNexis, Equifax, and Cambridge Analytica, can be put to good uses—like improving health outcomes and nabbing child abductors—but also deeply problematic ones. Readers will learn how Asher’s work likely cost Al Gore the presidency in 2000, and how police and immigration authorities used his products to seize and deport otherwise law-abiding immigrants with American-born children. This deeply reported book is required reading for people who want to comprehend American culture and where it’s headed. —Michael Mechanic

From Mother Jones

[hismercytomyjustice]

Oh I also forgot I wound up in a Welcome to Night Vale fic rabbithole the other day while looking for one that’s lived in my head rent free for over a decade now (did not find it T_T). Probably confused the hell out of a bunch of folks by leaving a storm of kudos on fics from 11 years ago.

Was hugely into WTNV for a while there, hence my AO3 username. Got on AO3 just in time to nab it.

Went to several of their live shows too, including Condos at Geeksboro in October 2013.

I think that’s around when they just started getting really big? I think it was their first live tour. I remember going with some friends and that the WTNV folks seemed gobsmacked by how many people showed up and how excited everyone was. They stayed for hours after outside, talking to fans, signing things, and taking photos. Such amazingly nice folks. I have a photo with them buried somewhere or other.

It was so weird to go see them live again later on when they’d hit the point that kind of fan interaction just wasn’t doable anymore. It’s gotta be weird having a fan base big enough to regularly interact with only for it to become massive to the point where you just can’t anymore.

I started relistening to the WTNV podcast today. I’d been thinking about doing it for a while before then. I don’t remember at what point I stopped listening. I think it was before they started doing “Good Morning Night Vale” because I don’t remember hearing about that. Maybe some time in 2017?

I didn’t stop listening for any reason in particular. I still enjoyed it. Can’t remember if I just fell further and further behind or what. I feel like it might have been around the time the fandom demographic started to shift too? Or it could have just been due to my, at the time, undiagnosed ADHD. Regardless, I was jazzed when I looked them up recently and saw they were still going strong.

It’s been a lot of fun relistening to the episodes and getting some of the behind the scenes stuff on the companion podcast. Dunno if I’ll keep going. Brain has been doing weird things lately because of waaay too much work having a major impact on my ADHD. It’s been so hard to focus on anything lately when I’ve been forced to go into the negative on my executive function spell slots for work for the past few months on the daily. But it’s been fun getting to re-experience the show!

Highly recommend if you haven’t checked it out before! It’s creepy, hilarious, and touching. Tbh the world building is one of my fave parts too.

[jpriest85-blog]

Recently, I got into a new IF called The Decoy by @alternatewriter and came up with some concept art of my MC, Rachel Dawud, and her royal doppelganger Princess Serida Cretillon. I'm not sure if it would be considered ironic or foreshadowing that she was wearing a Queen and Adam Lambert 2017 Brooklyn tour shirt when she gets nabbed and taken into another world 🤔. Either way, it should be fun if she manages to teach the Eternia court musicians how to play Bohemian Rapsody.

General info

Name: Rachel Dawud

Age: 24

Gender: identifies as female

Sexual preferences: Bisexual

Height: 5ft 6 1/2"/168.91 cms.

Hair: Black shoulder length and curly

Eyes: Brown

Face claim: May Calamawy

Headcanons

Rachel is a polyglot and can fluently speak English, Arabic, and Spanish. She has picked up some Mandarin since she started working with Clementine.

Rachel is a divorced single mother. Her ex-husband, Jake Hernández, was her high-school sweetheart. They've been together 7 years and married for 3 of those years before they broke up. One of those married too young and realized they weren't right for each other type situations, and while the divorce was painful, neither Rachel nor Jake have any ill will towards each other.

They have a 5 year old son together, Joey Dawud-Hernández. Jake has primary custody of their son, and Rachel gets custody of Joey on alternate weekends, certain holidays, and for 2 weeks during the Summer when he's out of school.

Since Rachel and her husband have separated, she promised her son to call or face time him every night before bed. She wants to stay involved in her son's life and not wind up like her parents, and she's kept that promise... until Azriel abducted her.

Her son Joey, like most young children, has a fixation with superheroes, his favorite being Spider-Man, especially since his uncle Johnathan showed him the movie "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse" which ironically is how Rachel was able to actually grasp the concept of alternate univierses.

Despite having been divorced for 2 years, Rachel still has her wedding ring. It's one of the few valuable things she has that she can sell or pawn in case they're in desperate need of cash, and wearing it at work keeps drunks and creeps from hitting on her.

Despite the fact that Rachel's friends and co-workers joke about her being the "Mom friend," Rachel has yet to tell Kenji and Clementine that she has a son. They do know she and Peter have been raising her younger brother since her father walked out and that she is recently divorced. Which is part of the reason they keep inviting her out clubbing, to have some fun, and hopefully meet someone that can help her move on, or at least score a rebound hook up. They've had mixed results so far.

Something when work has been especially slow Rachel, Kenji and Clementine will keep themselves amused by singing and dancing in the empty Isles to a popular song on the radio. There was at least one instance where the store security cameras have captured the three of them doing a fully choreographed dance routine to a Lady Gaga song.

[simply-sithel]

I've never seen nor read any Beckett but still intensely enjoyed last night's opening performance of On Beckett, a re-run of a Bill Irwin's one man show initially performed back in 2017.

First saw Irwin in Rachel Getting Married though I'm more familiar with him from Legion, which A and I were both overly fond of and is basically the reason we nabbed tickets-- that and the fact that all through COVID we bemoaned everything being shut down and swore we'd do a better job attending things when given the chance.

Really enjoyed the performance, especially since we had amazing third row seats! The way he shifted in and out of various characters was fascinating and even better was hearing him share his thoughts as an actor interpreting a particular author's words/voice/intentions.

A brief 90 minutes, no intermission, and only running till Sunday, October 23rd here in SF. Would strongly recommend.

[globaltimesnewslive]

Diazepam dealers: Pharmacists sentenced for ‘industrial’ illegal supply

Mandip Sidhu and Nabeil Nasr illegally supplied more than 55 million doses of controlled drugs, the MHRA has revealed.

Two pharmacists have been sentenced for the “industrial scale” illegal supply of class C controlled drugs (CDs), the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) announced yesterday (May 16).

Mandip Sidhu of Littleover, Derby, and Nabeil Nasr of Cheadle, Greater Manchester, were found to have illegally supplied more than 55 million doses of class C CDs, including over 47m doses of diazepam, between May 2013 and June 2017, it said.

Both were registered pharmacists at the time of the offending, it added.

Sidhu, 47, was the director of Derby-based Pharmaceutical Health Limited (PHL) while Nasr, 42, owned “several pharmacies” in northwest England, according to the MHRA. 

It revealed that PHL bought 4.27m tablets in August 2014 and 4.5m tablets in March 2015 but had not “legally dispensed” any prescribed medicines since July 2013.

The MHRA added “for perspective” that a total of “around five million” tablets of diazepam were legally dispensed in England during 2014 – figures “dwarfed by the quantities of drugs passing through the hands of Sidhu and Nasr”.

Neither Sidhu nor Nasr possessed a Home Office Controlled Drug Licence (HOCDL), it said.

Nasr pleaded guilty to two counts of supplying diazepam and zopiclone and two counts of wholesale dealing without a licence, while Sidhu pleaded guilty to five counts of supplying diazepam, zolpidem and zopiclone, it added.

Attempted deception

The watchdog revealed that Sidhu tried to dupe an MHRA inspector with a forged invoice claiming that the CDs had been “sold to a company outside the European Economic Area”.

For this attempted deception, she pleaded guilty to a charge of forgery, it said.

Sidhu and Nasr were both yesterday sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for their crimes at the Southwark Crown Court, suspended for two years, it added.

Sidhu also received an additional suspended sentence of four months’ imprisonment to run concurrently, while both of their suspended sentences are conditional on completing 200 hours of community service, according to the MHRA.

MHRA deputy director of criminal enforcement Andy Morling paid tribute to the “exceptional determination, skill and professionalism” shown by the authority’s Criminal Enforcement Unit in its investigation.

Morling said that the “successful prosecution” was a show of the MHRA’s “full range of powers and tools”.

Fraud-fighting pharmacists

In sharp contrast, C+D exclusively revealed the story of Noman Ahmed earlier this month, a Kent locum pharmacist who helped to uncover a years-long prescription fraud involving over 20,000 tramadol tablets after he noticed an “unusual” script.

Similarly, in July last year, C+D reported on a vigilant pharmacist who helped to nab another fraudster who was sentenced to 18 months in prison after he used faked prescriptions to acquire around £40,000-worth of drugs.

Also in July, a C+D investigation revealed that no fraud reports lodged against community pharmacy contractors had been converted into prosecutions by the NHS fraud office in over two years.

[biglisbonnews]

The Bad Bunny and Kendall Jenner Mystery Deepens It's getting weird everyone.Page Six nabbed pics Tuesday night of Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny out and about in WeHo, where people embroiled in illicit affairs tend to end up. According to the outlet, the two grabbed dinner together and later kissed in full view of photographers, flanked by security guards on all sides.The outlet added that elusive little sister Kylie Jenner was also in attendance at the restaurant and arrived with Kendall before the rapper showed up in an oversized varsity jacket and khakis. Kylie wore sunglasses at night and Kendall was seen in a trench coat, like spies. In February, Deuxmoi posted a blind that read: “This single, famous model sister was seen playing tonsil hockey with Bad Bunny at a private LA club last night." They added, "I have witnesses on the scene who saw [Kendall] leave the club. Kendall left the club, got into her car, two minutes later they pulled Bad Bunny’s car around.”Related | Kendall Jenner's Ex Unfollowed Her Amid Bad Bunny Dating RumorsIt was later revealed to be Bad Bunny and Jenner, which initially shocked fans. To the average onlooker, the musician was still with on and off again girlfriend Gabriela Berlingeri, who he's dated since 2017. Immediately gossip speculated that he and Berlingeri were in an open relationship, although neither has commented publicly on whether or not they're still together. When the news dropped that Jenner and Bunny had been spotted multiple times out and about, a source told People that "they were introduced by friends. He moved to L.A. a few weeks ago and bought a house." Later, fans discovered that Jenner's longtime NBA boyfriend Devin Booker had unfollowed the model on Instagram shortly after pictures surfaced of the two together. No wonder, of course, as perhaps Kris had finally set him free to do as he pleased. His decision to unfollow her could also have been influenced by all the pap shots of Bunny and Jenner out at private clubs, friend's houses, kicking it with the Bieber-Baldwin family, and elsewhere.Photo via Emma McIntyre/Daniele Venturelli/Getty https://www.papermag.com/kendall-jenner-bad-bunny-dating-2659564861.html

[jrtnotes]

Butterflies and Other Bits of Nabokov's Life, Dispersed to the Wind

May 6, 2004

To Vladimir Nabokov's favorite translator and only son, the thought of selling the books his father so intricately annotated with fantasy butterflies and personal asides was distressing, but it had to be done. That son, Dmitri Nabokov, who turns 70 on Monday, felt his own death approaching, he said in an interview, and he wanted to leave no loose ends.

So he decided to sell his father's memorabilia collection, which included an elaborate sketch on the flyleaf of a book showing the imaginary ''Verina raduga Nab.,'' with its dappled wings of violet and blue, blood-orange glimmers and iridescent greens. It was auctioned in Geneva on Wednesday.

''Of course it tugs at the heartstrings to let go of these lovely butterflies,'' Dmitri Nabokov said at his home in Montreux, Switzerland. ''The little, simple ones are so touching. But I would rather do a thing like this lucidly,'' he said. ''Having seen death close up on three occasions, it's frightening to think you might leave such precious loose ends.''

Dmitri has no direct heirs, so when his parents were still alive, it was decided that the books would be auctioned before his death. The collection, a few items excepted, sold on Wednesday for nearly $750,000, a lower price than anticipated. Various private collections, most from France and Switzerland, bought parts of the collection, which will now be scattered to the breeze.

Vladimir Nabokov died near Montreux in 1977. Dmitri Nabokov's library consisted of a wide array of his father's novels, short stories, poems and translations, as well as a small set of critical studies. Dedicated for the most part to Dmitri and his mother, Véra, the books were often autographed and annotated. Many are deftly adorned with butterflies, drawn in ink or color pencils on the first page of every work.

Putting a Price Tag on Art

Hot commodities. Paintings and other art pieces are regularly sold at auctions around the world. Here are some of the most expensive works to be sold in recent years:

“Untitled” by Jean-Michel Basquiat. A 1982 Basquiat painting of a horned devil sold for $85 million with fees in May 2022. It was the third-highest price paid for a Basquiat work; the highest price was recorded in 2017, when one of Basquiat’s coveted large-scale skull paintings sold for $110.5 million at Sotheby’s.

The first major series of Vladimir Nabokov archives and manuscripts was acquired in 1991 by the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library. This second series, and perhaps the last, constitutes more than 100 volumes and 30 titles, a remarkable medley of Russian and American literature.

''I am an American author, born in Russia, educated in England, where I studied French texts,'' Nabokov once noted. After publishing eight novels in Russian, he began a flamboyant writing career in English with ''The Real Life of Sebastian Knight,'' written in 1941 when he was 42. ''Lolita'' came 14 years later, and Nabokov called it ''the record of my love affair with the English language.''

Others read ''Lolita'' as a record of a more scandalous sort of affair, which brought that novel and its author international notoriety, along with immense critical acclaim.

From then on Nabokov endured ceaseless scrutiny. Who was this man who could write with such heart-rending poignancy about the ever-crafty charms of a nymphet?

In this light the books of Dmitri's library each offer a particular insight into the private Vladimir Nabokov, whose psyche was a far cry from the myriad personas of his characters. Nabokov was deeply in love with his wife, who died in 1991, and was a tender and attentive father. In a collection of short stories that sold on Wednesday, Nabokov wrote: ''For Véra. Adorata adorata. From V. Jan. 5, 1970. Montreux.'' In ''Despair'' he jotted for his Mitioucha, the diminutive for Dmitri: ''For Dmitri. From translator to translator. With love. Vladimir Nabokov. Papa. Montreux. 1966.''

The collection also presents ample handwritten notes. On opening pages or in the margins Nabokov points out plentiful misprints and errata, revealing unusual concern for minute revisions and retranslations. The first page of an early edition of ''Ada, or Ardor'' reads, among a web of other notes: ''p. 257 last line should be 'he was pregnant' (not 'she'!).'' Occasionally other hands, namely Véra's and Dmitri's, make cameo appearances.

Perhaps the most original piece is a book of expenses (1949-1952), which provides an endearingly scrupulous shopping list: ''New Yorker $00.40, Coca-Cola $00.10, movies $1.80, groceries $4.80, April rent $125.''

Then there are the fantastical butterflies, each selling for anywhere from $1,500 to $25,000. Those intended for Véra are perhaps the most resplendent and sold for the highest prices.

They have variegated colors, delicate artistry and fanciful names. Only on these pages appear the blue ''Colias verae,'' the dark ''Maculinea aurora Nab.'' and the translucent ''Parnassins concinnus Nab.''

Aside from his writing, Nabokov was a world-class lepidopterist who became the curator of the butterfly collection at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard in the late 1940's. He discovered numerous real species, which bear his name, and created a revolutionary taxonomy still used today.

Nature, Nabokov once said, conjures up the same sort of mystification and magical spell as art. And like so many diaphanous signposts of Nabokov's celebrated ''other worlds,'' these ''pretty insects'' inhabit his prose: ''A butterfly in the Park, an orchid in a shop window, would revive everything with a dazzling inward shock of despair,'' utters Van Veen in ''Ada''

Dmitri Nabokov observed that there is a tiny consolation to selling these books now. ''Today it is possible to scan and preserve superb copies of all the graphic materials,'' he explained. As for the near future, he said that the earnings from the sale have not been earmarked for a specific project. In time they will probably contribute to the PEN Nabokov literary award, a literary foundation and the Nabokov Museum in St. Petersburg, which the Russian government has threatened to close. Dmitri said he harbored the hope of buying the museum, his family's former home, which is estimated to be worth about $18 million without its contents.

Jacques Tajan, a well-known auctioneer, presided over the sale. ''People who buy these books need to pay a significant amount of money,'' he said. ''Only then will they conserve them adequately.'' Mr. Tajan emphasized the sentimental value of the auction: ''It is bliss for me to do this. It will be a terrific memory in my career.''

No matter, Nabokov's butterflies were separated. And the distant echo of his ''Speak, Memory'' seemed to be touching them with its fragile grace: ''To love with all one's soul and leave the rest to fate.''

[noticiasdoceara]

BREAKING NEWS! HE'S GOING! PATRICK BEVERLEY! LOS ANGELES LAKERS NEWS TOD...

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[lokitvsource]

'LOKI' STAR TOM HIDDLESTON SECRETLY WATCHES MARVEL MOVIES AS A FAN IN THEATERS

When "Avengers: Endgame" debuted in April 2019, Tom Hiddleston rushed to a local theater to catch the epic conclusion to the superhero saga — just like millions of other Marvel fans across the globe. According to the June 2021 issue of emmy magazine, which hits newsstands on June 4, he threw on a hoodie and ducked into a midnight showing on opening night in London.

Catching each installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in theaters became a bit of a tradition for the English actor after his on-screen alter ego was killed off for the second time — he was murdered by Thanos in 2018's "Avengers: Infinity War" after faking his own death in 2011's "Thor."

"I became an ordinary cinema-goer who would see the films on opening weekend," Tom tells emmy in Wonderwall.com's exclusive first-look at the June 2021 issue, adding that "with films like 'Doctor Strange' and 'Black Panther,' it felt like the Marvel Cinematic Universe had become more ambitious and profound, with deeper and richer characters."

The two-time Emmy nominee — who's brought Loki to the big screen six times so far — was fully prepared to bid adieu to playing the god of mischief after shooting his part in "Infinity War" in early 2017.

"The producers were on the set my last day, and we had some very sincere goodbyes," he recalls. "There were hugs and a 'Come see us anytime' and 'Thank you for your hard work.' I thanked them for the opportunity and certainly thought, 'Oh, this is it.'"

Fortunately for Loki stans, it wasn't.

Tom — who celebrated a milestone birthday earlier this year — is set to return to the role on the Disney+ series "Loki," which debuts on June 9.  

"I'm 40, and I was 28 when I was cast as Loki. When I say it like that, it blows my mind. I don't think any actor could have imagined playing a character as long as this," he tells emmy.

"Loki" will see the titular antihero answering for his crimes against the universe — specifically, as the actor puts it, his "crimes against the timeline." The six-episode limited series — which he describes as a "really positive series with a huge amount of action and spectacle" — picks up after Loki nabs the Space Stone in a scene from 2019's "Avengers: Endgame" that's set in 2012. By using the Space Stone to evade imprisonment when the Avengers go back in time to stop Thanos, Loki inadvertently creates a new timeline, which lands him in the custody of the Time Variance Authority.

"The TVA represents order to the chaos," Tom tells emmy. "Loki confronting this institution is a thrilling jumping-off point because he must take in an environment that he doesn't understand and can't control."

Adds the actor, "One of the themes of the show is about identity and raising a question whether Loki can run from who he is and is capable of change. It's only once we accept who we are that we can evolve and grow."

If Marvel decides to move forward with a second season of "Loki," Tom is, of course, fully on board: "I'm here for the ride," he says.

He then waxes poetic on why he relishes the role: "What I love about Loki is that he's playful and charming and witty and dangerous and mercurial. He's also fragmented and broken and solitary and isolated," he says. "As one character says in the show, no one good is ever truly good and no one bad is truly bad. That's a fascinating anchor."

According to emmy, the role is so important to Tom that before anyone shot a single frame of "Loki," he gave a formal presentation to the crew's department heads to ensure everyone was on the same page regarding the character's background and motivations.

It's incredible to think now — a decade after Tom first brought Loki to life in "Thor" — that he first auditioned to play the other brother after connecting with director Kenneth Branagh in London. After the Oscar-nominated actor-director suggested Tom could be perfect for the part of the god of thunder, he submitted a self-taped audition and participated in a now-iconic screen test.

He never even auditioned for the role of Loki.

"Most of the world knows that the right guy was cast as Thor," Tom jokes to emmy.

And clearly the right guy was cast as Loki, as well!

Read more about Tom's next chapter as Loki when the June 2021 issue of emmy magazine debuts on June 4, and catch "Loki" on Disney+ on June 9.

[cricketnationrise]

HI! Love your writing! Ollie/Wicks, Saturday April 15, 2017 (Post the NCAA Championship win!), the Haus. Thanks for doing all you do!

Thank you so much! 💜💜💜 this prompt made me grin so much when I read it, and writing it was a joy. Hope you love it as much as I do!

_X_ _X_ _X_

The Haus, Apr. 15, 2017

Not even two hours after the final horn signaled Samwell’s win against Brown, the team was back at the Haus, kegster in full swing. Three different kegs are flowing, Shitty had showed up with premade tub juice to augment his and Wicky’s own brew, and Louis managed to fend off Ransom and Holster trying to take over DJ-ing by playing strategically timed line dances. Lardo already has a crowd around her, spectators and hopeful (naive) challengers alike. Ollie’s voice is already basically gone from the amount of shouting he’s done today.

He still can’t believe they actually won. Four years of hard work, of tears, of overworked muscles, and they finally did the damn thing. Bitty might have been shocked at getting voted captain, but there was no tougher fucker on their team. Bitty’s ten pounds of crazy in a five pound bag. (Maybe a three pound bag.) Ollie never doubted that he would get them to the final.

He and Wicky have been joined at the hip since the bus dropped them at Faber – unwilling to drop their hands as they quickly stowed gear and hustled over to the Haus. They’ve been in constant contact while dancing, drinking, during fruitless rounds of pong against Lardo for old times sake, and as they steal bites of Bitty’s post-win-drunk-as-a-skunk cookie dough on their way to get refills.

Wicky stole his hat hours ago, but Ollie doesn’t mind. He’s never minded, not when it's Pace. Seeing Wicks wear his clothes has always made his whole soul sing, warm with pleasure and pride. (Watching the increasingly drunk team try to figure out which of them they're talking to is an entertaining bonus tonight.)

They’re not so much dancing right now as hugging tightly and swaying drunkenly in the middle of the makeshift dance floor, not paying any attention to the beat as they move. Every now and then, one of them will just start giggling again – still high on their win and basking in the atmosphere. It’s like the team is at the end of a movie. They vanquished their foes and now, in the denouement, they get to be giddy and romantic and fucking happy as hell. It feels like any minute now, their world will fade to black and play a pop song, or freeze frame on a group shot of everyone grinning, orchestra swelling. 

Suddenly the thumping base cuts off, and Ollie pulls away from where he was fully octopused on Wicks to look over at Louis’ set up. 

Oh shit.

“HEY Y’ALL!”

Bitty has a megaphone. Luckily people are feeling indulgent tonight so they just cheer louder instead of booing their captain for interrupting the music.

“WE ARE THE FROZEN FOUR CHAMPIONS, Y’ALL!”

“Yo, Jack, do we need to start Bitty Patrol?”

“You hush your face, Mr. Nurse, I will not be disrespected in my own Haus,” Bitty chirps back. He takes a breath and then frowns, looks at Jack. “Where was I, sweet pea?”

Ollie joins in the team-wide yell of FIIINNNNEEEE without even thinking about it. He doesn’t even need to look at Wicky to bump his fist in their own private version of nice one, dude.

“RIGHT. As I was saying. WE WON THE FROZEN FOUR and y’all, it has been an honor, and a  privilege to captain this team this year. I love all y’all so much! We’ve been through it, and we fucking earned this! So go forth and celebrate y’all—”

Whatever else Bitty was going to say is drowned out by cheering. He beams out over the crowd and hops down off the chair he was standing on, making a beeline to Jack as We Are The Champions kicks on. Wicks tugs on his arm and jerks his head toward the backyard, and Ollie lets himself be led outside without complaint.

Without a word, Wicky nabs a water bottle from the cooler Ollie had hidden back here at the start of the night and hands it to Ollie.

“Thanks babe, I’m fuckin’ parched.”

“I could tell,” Pacer says with a soft smile as Ollie gulps down the water. He drains half of it and passes it back to his boyfriend to finish off. There’s some fireflies out tonight and Ollie finds himself drifting further into the yard to watch them, letting the peace of the moment wash over him. The sounds of tub juice-soaked Queen lyrics being shouted through the walls of the Haus are somehow perfect for this moment.

“Ollie?”

“Hmm?” he asks without turning around. 

“I wanted to ask you something.”

“Fire away, babe.”

“Could, shit, okay, could you turn around, at least?” A little reluctantly, he turns around and his breath catches in his throat. 

Pacer is on one fucking knee.

HOLY SHIT.

Pace grins at him nervously before he takes a deep breath.

“Oliver Oscar O’Meara.” Ollie can’t help but interrupt, giggling slightly hysterically. “How the fuck do you know my middle name?”

“I called your mom, now shut up and let me get this out, okay?”

Ollie just nods, not trusting his voice anymore as he tears up.

“Ollie. You’re my partner, my best friend, the person I want to wake up next to and fall asleep beside every day for the rest of my life. I love you so much, and I was going to wait till graduation and I don’t even have a ring yet, but after today I couldn’t wait one more second to ask you: Will you marry me?”

Ollie is outright crying now, but he’s also smiling so wide his cheeks hurt. He tackles Wicky to the ground, laughing in delight.

“Is that a yes?” Wicky asks between messy kisses.

“Yes! As if there was ever going to be a different answer, you fucker! Yes!” he yells before leaning in again. Now Wicky will be really surprised when Ollie proposes at graduation.

_X_ _X_ _X_

followers only have one week left to request their own ficlet - details here 💜

[lokiondisneyplus]

When "Avengers: Endgame" debuted in April 2019, Tom Hiddleston rushed to a local theater to catch the epic conclusion to the superhero saga — just like millions of other Marvel fans across the globe. According to the June 2021 issue of emmy magazine, which hits newsstands on June 4, he threw on a hoodie and ducked into a midnight showing on opening night in London.

Catching each installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in theaters became a bit of a tradition for the English actor after his on-screen alter ego was killed off for the second time — he was murdered by Thanos in 2018's "Avengers: Infinity War" after faking his own death in 2011's "Thor."

"I became an ordinary cinema-goer who would see the films on opening weekend," Tom tells emmy in Wonderwall.com's exclusive first-look at the June 2021 issue, adding that "with films like 'Doctor Strange' and 'Black Panther,' it felt like the Marvel Cinematic Universe had become more ambitious and profound, with deeper and richer characters."

The two-time Emmy nominee — who's brought Loki to the big screen six times so far — was fully prepared to bid adieu to playing the god of mischief after shooting his part in "Infinity War" in early 2017.

"The producers were on the set my last day, and we had some very sincere goodbyes," he recalls. "There were hugs and a 'Come see us anytime' and 'Thank you for your hard work.' I thanked them for the opportunity and certainly thought, 'Oh, this is it.'"

Fortunately for Loki stans, it wasn't.

Tom — who celebrated a milestone birthday earlier this year — is set to return to the role on the Disney+ series "Loki," which debuts on June 9.

"I'm 40, and I was 28 when I was cast as Loki. When I say it like that, it blows my mind. I don't think any actor could have imagined playing a character as long as this," he tells emmy.

"Loki" will see the titular antihero answering for his crimes against the universe — specifically, as the actor puts it, his "crimes against the timeline." The six-episode limited series — which he describes as a "really positive series with a huge amount of action and spectacle" — picks up after Loki nabs the Space Stone in a scene from 2019's "Avengers: Endgame" that's set in 2012. By using the Space Stone to evade imprisonment when the Avengers go back in time to stop Thanos, Loki inadvertently creates a new timeline, which lands him in the custody of the Time Variance Authority.

"The TVA represents order to the chaos," Tom tells emmy. "Loki confronting this institution is a thrilling jumping-off point because he must take in an environment that he doesn't understand and can't control."

Adds the actor, "One of the themes of the show is about identity and raising a question whether Loki can run from who he is and is capable of change. It's only once we accept who we are that we can evolve and grow."

If Marvel decides to move forward with a second season of "Loki," Tom is, of course, fully on board: "I'm here for the ride," he says.

He then waxes poetic on why he relishes the role: "What I love about Loki is that he's playful and charming and witty and dangerous and mercurial. He's also fragmented and broken and solitary and isolated," he says. "As one character says in the show, no one good is ever truly good and no one bad is truly bad. That's a fascinating anchor."

According to emmy, the role is so important to Tom that before anyone shot a single frame of "Loki," he gave a formal presentation to the crew's department heads to ensure everyone was on the same page regarding the character's background and motivations.

It's incredible to think now — a decade after Tom first brought Loki to life in "Thor" — that he first auditioned to play the other brother after connecting with director Kenneth Branagh in London. After the Oscar-nominated actor-director suggested Tom could be perfect for the part of the god of thunder, he submitted a self-taped audition and participated in a now-iconic screen test.

He never even auditioned for the role of Loki.

"Most of the world knows that the right guy was cast as Thor," Tom jokes to emmy.

And clearly the right guy was cast as Loki, as well!

Read more about Tom's next chapter as Loki when the June 2021 issue of emmy magazine debuts on June 4, and catch "Loki" on Disney+ on June 9.

[wild-aloof-rebel]

In a candid conversation with the Star, Manji said “Schitt’s Creek” producers did not instruct him as to how Ray should sound.

“It is a very slight Indian accent — somebody who was probably raised in Canada, but probably was born in India or Pakistan,” he said from his home in Los Angeles.

“I don’t regret that because I think it actually works for Ray. He wasn’t like everybody else in that town. He was from somewhere else.”

Manji said he’s OK with viewers questioning his choices, but rather than focus on accents, he said, critics could ask why his character didn’t have a more fully developed story, like a relationship or a family.

“If you want to criticize something, do that,” he said. “We need to have three-dimensional characters.”

[full article text below the cut]

At the start of Rizwan Manji’s acting career in the 1990s, the only roles available to him were those playing convenience store clerks and cab drivers. The parts usually required him to fake an Indian accent — just for laughs.

“We would joke about it. ‘This is so offensive, this is so offensive,’” recalls the Toronto native. “It’s not like we didn’t know.”

More than two decades later, Manji’s grin-and-bear-it perseverance has paid off. At 46, Manji now boasts a long — and diverse — list of TV and film credits. In September, he joined castmates from the hit CBC comedy series “Schitt’s Creek” in celebration as the show nabbed a record-breaking nine Emmy Awards.

That doesn’t mean, however, he still doesn’t grapple with questions about his acting choices.

While “Schitt’s Creek,” about a wealthy family that loses its fortune and is forced to move to a backwater town, won raves for its messages of inclusivity and positive queer representation, a segment of viewers took to social media to criticize Manji’s character, Ray Butani, the town’s bumbling jack of all trades — who speaks with an accent.

What irked them was that Ray, one of the few recurring people of colour on the show, seemed like a caricature — a rehash of the stereotypical, emasculated South Asian male. They also complained that Manji’s accent came across as “cringey.”

“Why go to the effort of writing in a character with an Indian name, played by an Indian actor, whose main personality trait is that he is stupid and has an accent?” Rishi Maharaj, a Port Hardy, B.C., engineer and avid TV viewer, wrote on Twitter days after the show’s Emmy sweep.

Across North America’s TV and film industry, there is broad consensus about the need to fight stereotypes and offensive tropes in casting. But the debate among actors of colour over whether they should fake accents remains fraught.

Some Hollywood actors, such as Aziz Ansari and John Cho, have reportedly turned down roles, citing the history of Hollywood playing up accents for laughs. (Think Mickey Rooney’s portrayal of Mr. Yunioshi in the 1961 romantic comedy “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” complete with taped eyelids, buck teeth and cartoonish accent).

They worry that parts requiring them to speak with accents do nothing to help the cause of minority actors who are often typecast in secondary roles or as sidekicks, and who continue to be under-represented on TV and film.

Others say it’s important to represent linguistic diversity and see no harm portraying characters who speak in broken English, as long as their accent is not the butt of a joke and in keeping with a character’s backstory.

In a candid conversation with the Star, Manji said “Schitt’s Creek” producers did not instruct him as to how Ray should sound.

“It is a very slight Indian accent — somebody who was probably raised in Canada, but probably was born in India or Pakistan,” he said from his home in Los Angeles.

“I don’t regret that because I think it actually works for Ray. He wasn’t like everybody else in that town. He was from somewhere else.”

Manji said he’s OK with viewers questioning his choices, but rather than focus on accents, he said, critics could ask why his character didn’t have a more fully developed story, like a relationship or a family.

“If you want to criticize something, do that,” he said. “We need to have three-dimensional characters.”

The character that has generated one of the most heated debates in recent years when it comes to accents is Apu, the Indian-American shopkeeper on the long-running animated series “The Simpsons.” Until recently, the thick-accented character was voiced by actor Hank Azaria, who is white.

In 2017, American comedian Hari Kondabolu came out with a documentary, “The Problem With Apu,” in which he pressed the case that the show fomented racial stereotypes about Indian people.

In interviews at the time, Kondabolu shared that, as a kid, Apu was “the only Indian we had on TV” and that he was happy for “any representation.” But then on the playground, he had to deal with kids mimicking Apu’s accent.

In the documentary, he gets Dana Gould, a former writer on the show, to admit, “There are accents, that by their nature, to white Americans, sound funny. Period.”

With criticism mounting, Azaria, who had voiced Apu for three decades, announced he was stepping away from the role, telling the New York Times earlier this year: “Once I realized that that was the way this character was thought of, I just didn’t want to participate in it anymore.”

There is growing sensitivity among artists, writers, directors and producers to avoid stereotypes and invest in “fully humanized, realized characters,” Steven Eng, an actor and voice and speech instructor at New York University, told the Star.

“There’s certainly been a whole history — that I don’t think any of us can deny — in film and television and the theatre where characters were stereotyped,” he said. “I think there’s so much more awareness, so much more determination to not go that route.”

But even “groundbreaking” shows, such as “Kim’s Convenience” and the recently cancelled “Fresh Off the Boat,” which were heralded for elevating Asian-Canadian and Asian-American visibility and immigrant experiences, have not escaped criticism, accused by some viewers of employing storylines and accents that do not ring true.

Cast members, in turn, leapt to the defence of their shows — and their accents.

“Some people are like, ‘Oh, stereotypical accent!’” Constance Wu, lead actress on “Fresh Off the Boat,” told Time magazine regarding her character’s Taiwanese accent. “An accent is an accent. If there were jokes written about the accent, then that would certainly be harmful. But there aren’t jokes written about it. It’s not even talked about. It’s just a fact of life: immigrants have accents.”

Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, the lead actor in “Kim’s Convenience” told Maclean’s his character’s Korean accent is “part of who he is, but it isn’t the joke.”

“Yes, we’re in the entertainment field, and we will mine some of that because it is situational humour. You will get a point where we’ll say, ‘Here’s where some fun can be made, playing with the accent, and his inability and people mishearing what he says.’ But at the same time, that’s not all it is,” he said.

Jimmy O. Yang, who starred in the HBO series “Silicon Valley” and whose character spoke with a heavy Chinese accent, told Huffington Post the key is to portray immigrants with humanity.

“It’s maybe a better thought to change the perception of an accent than to avoid it all together,” he said. “I take offence (when people don’t go for parts with accents) ― it’s like saying, ‘I’m better than my immigrant brother with an accent.’”

Yang added he drew inspiration from his mom and relatives in Shanghai to develop his accent for the show. “It’s not just a (lousy) impression of a Cantonese Bruce Lee accent.”

Still, some actors have declared outright they will not do it.

“For me, personally, any time I’ve been asked to do that, I feel like — it feels like it’s making fun of people that have that accent if I do it and don’t have that voice,” comedian Aziz Ansari told NPR in 2015, years before he faced a public allegation of sexual misconduct.

“It feels like you’re doing it so white people can laugh at Indian people,” he said at the time.

That’s kind of how Maharaj felt watching Ray on “Schitt’s Creek.”

“I did find it cringey. The first thought that came to mind was it reminded me of Apu in ‘The Simpsons,’” he told the Star.

In The Problem With Apu, South Asian-American comedian Hari Kondabolu confronts his long-standing “nemesis” Apu Nahasapeemapetilon – better known as the Indian convenience store owner on The Simpsons. Creator and star Kondabolu discusses how this controversial caricature was created, burrowed its way into the hearts and minds of Americans, and continues to exist – intact – nearly three decades later. Featuring interviews with Aziz Ansari, Kal Penn, Whoopi Goldberg, W. Kamau Bell, Aasif Mandvi, Hasan Minhaj, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Aparna Nancherla

“To me what it sounds like is what a person from Saskatoon thinks a person from India sounds like. ... I’m sure he could’ve been a funny part of that show without an accent.”

Maharaj wasn’t alone. Arif Silverman, an actor and playwright in New York, posted a lengthy Facebook post in October sharing his conflicted feelings about the show.

“Schitt’s Creek has become one of my all-time favourite shows. But they did their South Asian characters dirty,” he wrote.

“Especially Ray, who plays directly into the racist South Asian trope of being an emasculated, goofy buffoon who no one takes seriously, not least in part because of his accent.”

Silverman told the Star Ray’s accent seemed “part of the joke” and struck him as a “betrayal” from a show that preached inclusivity and whose main romance was a gay love story.

“I’m half South Asian — my mother is from Bangladesh. … And so I think a lot about representation of South Asians in the media,” he said. “If you’re really going to talk about inclusivity it can’t be at anyone’s expense.”

Manji says he faced a lot of struggles as a brown actor at the start of his career.

Back then, he was often pigeonholed into narrow roles, such as the cabbie or 7-Eleven store clerk. One hundred per cent of his roles required him to fake a South Asian accent.

“It was very strictly, like, the joke was on the accent,” he said.

But he accepted the parts because he needed the work.

He did draw a line with one type of role.

“I’m Muslim, so I was more the guy who was like, ‘I’m not being the terrorist.’”

There was one time, however, when he auditioned to play an Islamic Studies professor on the show “24.” He was given limited information about the character. It turned out he was a bomb maker.

But the money was too good to pass up. He took the part.

“I rationalized it in my head, ‘Oh, it’s season 8, and they have good Muslim characters. … I don’t know if I made the right decision,” he said.

“To be clear, I’m OK with being the bad guy. I’d love to play the bad guy. It’s just when it’s this kind of thing where you’re screaming ‘Allahu akbar’ and bombing people.”

In 2010, Manji was cast in the short-lived NBC sitcom “Outsourced” set in an Indian call centre. He and his castmates employed accents, which some critics derided for lack of authenticity.

It’s fine if people want to criticize the quality of the accents, he said, but it wouldn’t have made sense for these characters not to have accents.

“The show was shooting in America about living in India. I don’t know what the other option was,” he said, adding that he channelled his father in developing the accent for that show.

Another thing to keep in mind is that accents have to be understandable to North American audiences, Manji said. For instance, during the filming of the movie “Charlie Wilson’s War,” Manji, who played a Pakistani colonel, said he settled on a “sweet spot” where his accent “sounds foreign” but is “not so thick that it becomes comedic or unintelligible.”

Manji said he did not have to audition for “Schitt’s Creek” but was offered the role of Ray, the town’s real estate agent, travel agent, photographer and Christmas tree salesman.

When he went for his first table read in Toronto, he’d had no prior discussion with the show’s writers or producers about what Ray would sound like.

Because most of his demo tape consisted of his work on “Outsourced,” Manji assumed that was the kind of voice producers were looking for. He went with a slightly toned-down version.

“Afterwards, I went up to Dan (Levy, the show’s co-creator) and said, ‘Hey just want to check in.’ He said, ‘I love what you did. It was funny.’ That ended up being the character for six years.”

Maharaj says he can’t help but feel Manji was selling himself short — playing to what he thought “a white audience might expect or respond more favourably to” to get the job. He likens it to job applicants of Asian descent who anglicize their names on resumes.

“I’m encouraged to hear he had agency, that they weren’t like, ‘We need you to do the accent,’” he said.

“I’d feel better if they were asking him to do a British accent or Brooklyn accent because if you’re doing this Indian accent and the character is comedic, it is nonetheless playing into that trope.”

Levy, who is also from Toronto, declined an interview request. Instead, he released a statement through his publicist.

“Ray was conceived as a character of Indian decent which we cast with Canadian-born actor Rizwan Manji, who is of Indian decent. No accent was called for in the casting or specified in the scripts,” it said.

“The thoughtful choices that Rizwan made in his portrayal in the audition room perfectly encapsulated the warmth and the energy of Ray. All characters on our show were created with love, respect and humanity. It has been gratifying to have these intentions reflected through the overwhelming audience support for these characters. That said, I welcome any perspectives that encourage conversations about diversity, especially in entertainment.”

Despite what critics might think, Manji said he has felt more empowered in recent years to make creative decisions about his characters.

Manji, who had a role in NBC’s musical comedy “Perfect Harmony,” which was cancelled this year, said when he was approached about playing the part of a pastor, he was the one who initiated the idea of giving the character a foreign accent.

Because the character was raised by missionaries, it wouldn’t have made sense for him to not have one.

Conversely, when he was asked a couple years ago to read for a pilot for a dramatic series in which his character was a Muslim father he told the casting director he didn’t want to do an accent.

“I said, ‘You know what? I’d rather not. That’s not going to excite me about this part,’” he said.

“I ended up getting the job. I found my voice.” (The pilot never made it to series).

Manji, who guesses about 60 per cent of his roles in more recent years have involved accent work, says remarks by actors who refuse to do accents are “dangerous” because they could end up limiting the types of roles available to minority actors.

His worry is casting directors will go to India in search of authentic accents, overlooking North American-born actors, like him.

“I’m already marginalized.”

Nobody fusses when Meryl Streep performs with an accent, he adds.

Ishani Nath, a freelance entertainment and lifestyle journalist in Toronto, says anytime she sees an accented character who also provides comedic relief, it raises a bit of a red flag.

But she’s hesitant to criticize actors for taking those roles, knowing that opportunities are not easy to come by.

“I’m way more interested in criticizing writers, producers, (and asking): Why are you asking for these roles to be accented? … Is there an actual reason and backstory?”

Nath says she is starting to notice deeper conversations about how different cultures are represented on screen and what nuances can be added to make characters more complex.

She says a good example of this is the hit movie “Crazy Rich Asians,” whose actors exhibited a range of regional Asian accents.

“It’s important to note that the problem with accent roles isn’t the accents themselves — plenty of characters in ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ have accents, but no one has the exaggerated or generic ‘Asian’ accent that has historically been played for laughs in Hollywood,” she wrote in a 2018 article in Flare.

Jhanik Bullard, a writer and member of BIPOC TV & Film, a collective of Black, Indigenous and people of colour working in Canada’s entertainment industry, says it is no longer acceptable for characters to have accents “just because.”

“It should actually have an authentic origin as to why this character sounds the way they sound,” he said.

Audiences are also not as forgiving as they may have been in the 1990s if the accent sounds botched or inauthentic.

What is encouraging, he says, is that more doors are being opened for people of colour to tell their stories and there are more platforms for those stories to be to told.

To that end, Manji says he and his partners have initiated a handful of projects that are in various stages of development. One is a show about a Muslim guy who becomes mayor of a major city. Another is a sitcom about a “normal Muslim family” — something that “resembles me more.”

Does the character he envision for himself speak with an accent?

“Since I want it to be closer to me, then I would say not.”

[coochiequeens]

Who would have guessed?

A Drag Queen who performed in front of children has been charged with 25 counts of child sexual abuse media possession after a lengthy investigation by law enforcement officials connected him to a disturbing Dropbox account.

Brice Patric Ryschon Williams is currently being held at Franklin County Jail in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania on a $100,000 bail he was unable to post. He has been charged with 25 counts of felony Class 2 child pornography, and 18 counts of criminal use of a communications facility.

According to the Tri-State Alert, Williams was nabbed after a lengthy investigation by law enforcement officials after the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) submitted a tip to the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General’s Child Predator Section in May of 2020. 

The tip noted that over 70 pieces of child sexual exploitation media had been uploaded to Dropbox, and the email associated with the account belonged to an account named ‘Ana D.’ A subsequent search of the IP address associated with the uploads led officials to subpoena Comcast for the location of the user’s login.

Two months later, NCMEC submitted another tip to the Attorney General’s office stating that 10 more sexually explicit child exploitation files were uploaded by the same user. Inspection of those files confirmed that at least 9 of the 10 files depicted child sexual abuse.

In September of 2020, a search warrant was issued to Dropbox on the account. Additional child sexual exploitation materials were uploaded during this time.

On October 23, 2020, the search warrant for the Dropbox account uncovered 135 files, including those previously tipped to the Attorney General’s office by NCMEC. Months later, additional child sexual abuse materials were uploaded to the Dropbox as investigators continued to attempt to validate the files.

This month, investigators were finally able to obtain a search warrant for the Chambersburg-area home that had been suspected of being the origin of upload for the child sexual abuse material found on Dropbox. Williams was a resident of the home, and would later admit to being the sole user of the electronic devices in the residence. Investigators would find that ‘Ana D,’ the name associated with the Dropbox account, was a shortened version of Anastasia Diamond, Williams’ Drag stage name.

While initially denying any wrongdoing, Williams would admit to searching for, possessing, and uploading child sexual abuse materials after investigators found exploitative videos on his phones. He also told police that he first saw child abuse media in 2014 on a messaging app, and that he eventually started uploading the files to cloud storage websites to trade files with other pedophiles.

Williams performed as a Drag Queen under the stage name Anastasia Diamond. Since his charges were announced, internet sleuths have uncovered videos and pictures of Williams performing for children.

In a video uploaded to his Instagram from 2017, Williams is seen dancing and strutting in front of a crowd of youth at the Pride Festival of Central Pennsylvania.

One of Williams’ most recent posts on his Instagram is from February, in which he promotes the 2022 LGBTQ Pennsylvania Health Needs Assessment apparently in collaboration with the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center.

Williams appears to have been a very active member of the Pennsylvania LGBTQ and Drag Queen communities, with frequent posts to his social media pages showing he was a regular guest on podcasts and participated in many Drag events in his area. Last year, he was a featured speaker at GLO Harrisburg, which bills itself as a “safe space” for LGBTQ youth. 

Williams next appearance in a large Drag show was scheduled for July 4.

Drag shows and their appropriateness for youth have become hot topics over the last few years, especially since the controversial spread of Drag Queen Story Hours across North America and Europe. In 2019, it was discovered that a registered sex offender had been performing at a Texas library for children as a Drag Queen.

In May, footage from the DragCon LA convention sparked backlash after it was discovered that children had performed on stage with the drag queens, collecting cash ‘tips’ from the audience as they danced. 

Earlier this month, a video of ‘drag queens’ performing provocatively for an audience of children at a gay bar in Texas went viral on Twitter, prompting massive backlash and raising concerns about child safeguarding.

The event had been subject to protests by right-wing advocacy group Protect Kids Texas, which stated on Twitter that they had 80 people outside of the venue voicing their concerns. The group also posted a video showing police showing up to the bar and escorting children from the venue.