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Sisters Bridey and Abby Elliott followed in the show-business footsteps of their father, absurdist comic Chris Elliott, and grandfather, the late radio star Bob Elliott. While Abby’s best known for her work on television as a second-generation Saturday Night Live cast member and as Brooke von Weber on Bravo’s Odd Mom Out, Bridey turned to film, with roles in Sundance darling Fort Tilden and 2017’s Battle of the Sexes. Bridey, Abby, and Chris Elliott have been individually entertaining their own niche audiences for years, but they’d never actually all worked together before, which was one impetus for Bridey to write a script that would make the family an ensemble cast and — in classic Elliott-family fashion — dredge up everyone’s insecurities and darkest fears for a laugh. [Read More]

Is it too late to throw a line about the library into “Empire State of Mind”? The Brooklyn Public Library debuted a massive exhibit dedicated to Jay-Z’s life and career, called “The Book of Hov,” on July 13, in the same borough where the rap mogul grew up. Now that it’s in the books, Jay celebrated the exhibit alongside Beyoncé, Blue Ivy, and friends at a starry opening ceremony that closed down the library on Thursday. [Read More]

Cameron Esposito. Cameron Esposito hadn’t been planning to talk about her sexual assault onstage. Then things kept happening in our culture — the release of the Access Hollywood tape; the election of the man featured in it; the revelation of sexual misconduct by prominent men in Hollywood and in comedy specifically; the fact that comeback narratives are already being written about those disgraced prominent men — that made her feel as if she “just couldn’t not talk about it anymore. [Read More]

This story originally ran on January 16, 2020. We’re republishing it today as Peacock begins its launch with a two-week rollout to Comcast’s Xfinity X1 and Flex customers. The post has been edited to reflect the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. NBC’s Peacock has landed — and it’s what most TV-industry insiders thought it would be. Comcast-owned NBCUniversal has just started presenting the details of its long-anticipated streaming play to investors and the media via a no-doubt splashy spectacle at the famed SNL Studio 8H. [Read More]

Sunday night’s Mad Men mid-season premiere had a lot going on, but truly nothing as wonderful and pleasantly surprising as Roger Sterling’s new mustache. Why? Well, just see for yourself: Damn, that’s a good ‘stache. The ‘70s are here, in case you haven’t noticed. Thanks, Roger’s new mustache, for giving us such an exact place and time to work with. Like the hero he is, John Slattery won’t reveal whether Roger’s mustache is authentic. [Read More]

Roxana Hadadi is a TV critic who also writes about film and pop culture, with the closed captions on and motion smoothing off. Roxana Hadadi is a TV critic who also writes about film and pop culture, with the closed captions on and motion smoothing off. Candy is soundtracked by exasperated sighs. This five-episode Hulu miniseries about the gruesome 1978 axe murder of Betty Gore (Melanie Lynskey) and the involvement of her former friend Candace “Candy” Montgomery (Jessica Biel) in the crime coalesces around the sounds of the women’s dissatisfaction. [Read More]

The glamorous Carrie Brownstein. In Carrie Brownstein’s speech accepting the Moth Award at last night’s glam-rock-themed Moth Ball, the Portlandia actress described her first brush with glamour, in middle school, which involved her favorite soap opera, Days of Our Lives. “I was so obsessed with Days of Our Lives that when a character named Kayla temporarily lost her hearing and her boyfriend, Patch — because he had an eye patch — learned sign language, I also learned sign language,” she said. [Read More]

Cate Blanchett. Cate Blanchett could play a bowl of soup if she so wished. But she does know there are some roles that she would be wrong to take, even if she doesn’t understand why. “I don’t think about my gender or my sexuality,” she told Vanity Fair in a February 13 profile when asked about playing Lydia Tár, a self-described U-Haul lesbian. “For me in school, it was David Bowie, it was Annie Lennox. [Read More]

The scrapbook on the dining-room table is unexpected. You picture Chelsea Handler in her free time enjoying vodka on the rocks, maybe, but never fussing with photo tabs and mounting tape. Yet here are the supplies, and scattered around are photos: a black-and-white one of Handler at dinner with BFFs Sandra Bullock and Mary McCormack, another of a younger Chelsea holding a cigarette and standing leapfrog-style over a friend. It is only 11:30 in the morning, after all. [Read More]

A normal response to getting ghosted after one date would be to take the hint and scram. Chris Evans thinks otherwise. In the trailer for the upcoming action rom-com Ghosted, Captain America has a life-changing first date with a mysterious woman (Ana de Armas) only to find himself heartbroken after she ignores his bajillions of texts. “Go to her,” his mother says when he mentions the girl of his dreams is in London for work. [Read More]