Television

Gillian Anderson has been cast as Eleanor Roosevelt in the upcoming Showtime anthology series The First Lady. Anderson joins previously announced series leads Viola Davis and Michelle Pfeiffer, who will portray Michelle Obama and Betty Ford, respectively. “Gillian Anderson is an actress of incredible range and exquisite talent — she is the perfect choice to complete this powerhouse trio, who will inhabit the roles of these iconic women,” Showtime Executive Vice President of Scripted Programming Amy Israel said. “It’s inspiring to have Gillian, Viola Davis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Susanne Bier, and Cathy...

When Willow Smith was 11, she made a request of her mom, the actress and musician Jada Pinkett Smith: “I know you as my mother, but I want to know who you were before you were my mother.” Pinkett Smith was shocked that her daughter was already curious in that way. She was also open to revealing more of herself. So, that Mother’s Day, Pinkett Smith called up her own mom, Adrienne Banfield-Norris, and the three of them settled in for a deep, mutigenerational talk. “We saw how much it...

Saturday Night Live opened with a talk show sketch where Britney Spears attempted to coax apologies from Ted Cruz, Andrew Cuomo and Gina Carano, each coming off a scandal-ridden week. “You all know me from my upbeat Instagram videos and the word ‘conservatorship.’ Basically, I started this show ‘Oops, You Did It Again’ so people can come on and apologize for things they’ve done wrong,” Chloe Fineman’s Spears said. “Because after the ‘Free Britney’ documentary came out, I’m receiving hundreds of apologies a day.” The singer then welcomed the trio...

Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update ripped Ted Cruz for the Texas senator’s decision to vacation in Mexico during the state’s catastrophic weather emergency. “Well, if you hate Ted Cruz, this was a pretty fun week. And if you like Ted Cruz, then you’re Ted Cruz,” anchor Colin Jost said. “Senator Cruz, whose face is slowly being reclaimed by nature, felt that his decision to go on a family vacation to Cancun while Texas was facing a weather emergency was ‘obviously a mistake,’ as was the tattoo he got there.” “Cruz...

In Season One, Episode Three, a young Emily Dickinson and her siblings decide to throw a house party after their parents go to Boston for the night, in the hope of having a carefree, wild night. Fueled by opium, Emily and her friends eventually start dancing aggressively to Carnage and ILoveMakonnen’s “I Like Tuh.” It’s what Dickinson creator Alena Smith considers a “quintessential” moment that’s been repeated throughout the show’s first two seasons.  When Dickinson premiered on Apple TV+, the coming-of-age period dramedy, starring Hailee Steinfeld as the American poet,...

Allen v. Farrow “I was over the moon happy,” says Mia Farrow about her relationship with Woody Allen. “But that’s the great regret of my life. I wish I’d never met him.” The newest trailer for the HBO documentary about the accusations of sexual abuse against Allen involving his then-7-year-old daughter traces the full scope of the actress and director’s relationship – from power couple to parties in a great legal battle. In addition to police reports, home videos, and family interviews, the film also promises never-before-heard audiotapes.  (February 21st)...

Amazon Prime Video has released a new trailer for the upcoming TV adaptation of Robert Kirkman, Cory Walker, and Ryan Ottley’s comic book series, Invincible. The hour-long, adult animated show is centered around 17-year-old Mark Grayson (voiced by Steven Yeun), who’s struggling to grow up in the shadow of his superhero father, Omni-Man (J.K. Simmons). Eventually, Mark begins to develop and grow into his own powers, and even links up with a group of other young heroes for plenty of crime-fighting, world-saving action. But the trailer takes a gruesome and...

Actor Ian McShane kicked off the most recent episode of The First Time with the story of how he first got involved with American Gods. McShane initially didn’t think he was the right fit for the series after being offered the role of Czernobog (played by Peter Stormare in the series) back in 2016, but he became fond of his character, Mr. Wednesday, after reading the script. “I said is a little more interesting,” McShane recalls. “And Michael said, ‘Well you know, we’ll talk about it. I thought you might...

Jimmy Kimmel, Trevor Noah, and other late-night hosts took aim at Texas officials on Wednesday for failing to prevent the ongoing blackout crisis during the state’s unprecedented snowstorms. “The main reason Texas has plunged into darkness is that its natural gas industry has been crippled by this storm,” Noah explained in his Daily Show monologue. “And that might — might — have been preventable, except that Texas deregulated its power supply in the Nineties, which was clearly not the wisest decision. I mean, trust me, as a man who lived...

Billie Piper’s face has its own microclimates. Her smile can grow sunny even as her eyes fill with barely held-in tears; her brow can furrow in anger even as she lets loose a bright laugh; her mouth can turn down in a frustrated frown even as her eyebrows melt into an expression of pure love. All of which makes it the perfect canvas for I Hate Suzie, a show that invites its viewers to consider that people — and women in particular — are complicated as hell, and there’s no...

Tim Burton will direct and executive produce a new live-action series, Wednesday, about the Addams Family’s death-obsessed daughter, Wednesday Addams. Described in a press release as a “live-action coming-of-age comedy,” Wednesday will center around Wednesday’s years as a student at Nevermore Academy. “Wednesday attempts to master her emerging psychic ability, thwart a monstrous killing spree that has terrorized the local town, and solve the supernatural mystery that embroiled her parents 25 years ago — all while navigating her new and very tangled relationships at Nevermore,” the longline reads. Wednesday will...

Last March, Julia Garner shot an all-day subway scene with 400 extras in New York for the upcoming Netflix series Inventing Anna. By the time she took off her wig, she heard production had shut down due to the pandemic. So, she flew home, fell asleep for a month, found two suitcases she hadn’t unpacked since 2018, and for the first time in four years, spent some extended time in her own skin. Which, as pale and platinum-curled and recognizable as that skin is, couldn’t be more different from the...

Welcome to the latest episode of Too Long; Didn’t Watch, a new podcast produced by Rolling Stone and OBB Sound, presented by Google Assistant, and hosted by yours truly. In each episode, we attempt a new method of scaling Peak TV, by pairing a celebrity guest with a series they’ve never seen and showing them only the very first and very last episodes, to see if they can figure out what in the world happened in between. This week, we welcome actor Eliza Coupe, whom you might know from, among...

Late in It’s a Sin, HBO Max’s limited series looking at the dawn of the AIDS crisis through the eyes of a group of young Londoners, a character lies on his deathbed, recalling with a smile all the parties he threw and men he slept with before he got sick. “That’s what people forget: that it was all so much fun,” he says. “Do you understand what I mean?” This is the crucial idea behind the way It’s a Sin creator Russell T. Davies (Queer as Folk, Doctor Who) chooses...