“I think it is one of the most profoundly transformational experiences as an actor, and for audiences, that I’ve ever been a part of, no doubt.” -#AndrewGarfield

A post shared by Angels in America on Broadway (@angelsbway) on Mar 5, 2018 at 10:03am PST

Who knew that the guy who played the Amazing Spider-Man would leap out as one of the great stage actors of his generation?

Or that famed comic actor Nathan Lane could turn serious and rip your heart to shreds?

Lane and Andrew Garfield (the former Spider-Man) are at the center of an extraordinary Broadway revival of Tony Kushner’s much-awarded play Angels in America. The play has two parts—Millennium Approaches and Perestroika—and lasts some 7 ½ hours (with two additional hours as a dinner break). So the other surprise of the night was that after all that time in the theater, I just didn’t want the play to end.

When Angels In America premiered 25 years ago, it was a loud cry in the wilderness of the AIDS crisis. Now that the disease is no longer a death sentence and gay marriage is accepted across the country, I wondered if the revival would feel like a historical drama. Instead, it has never been more powerful, potent and of the moment.

Its deeper themes ring even stronger now, and it lands timelessly as a play about the many kinds of love in the world, of the complications of loss and loneliness, of the power of loyalty. Kushner’s writing is so extraordinary that you cling to every word.

Lane plays Roy Cohn, the sleazy and scandal-ridden lawyer who considered power the ultimate currency, and who Donald Trump has hailed as a much-admired mentor. An opening scene with Cohn on the telephone screaming at clients and trying to manipulate everyone around him immediately sets the tone. Nobody does bigger-than-life better than Lane, which makes it all the more heart-rending when Cohn is cut down by AIDS. He lies shrunken in his hospital bed, visited by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg who he helped send to the electric chair. She gently sings to him as he fades to death, the ultimate act of forgiveness.

But Cohn does not die with gentleness. He wakes up to bark one final, nasty retort, viciously trying to assert that he is still in control. At first you wonder why Kushner would undermine one of the most touching, Kleenex-grabbing moments in the play. And then you realize that it reflects how Cohn himself undermined everything good and legitimate, treating kindness with cruelty. His legacy of nastiness and his sense that power matters more than humanity has been the terrible lesson he passed along.

Garfield plays Prior Walter, a gay man of 30 battling death. Garfield is so riveting that even when he wears a long sequined dress and heavy eye makeup to channel Norma Desmond (from Sunset Boulevard), his humanity feels real.

Playwright Kushner gives Prior wonderful lines, but Garfield’s brilliance in the role is almost visceral. His terror of death and loneliness, his fight not just to live but to be alive, comes across in every movement and tilt of his head. In earlier interviews, Garfield has wondered if he has the right to play a gay man. But it is hard to imagine anyone understanding the character better.

Prior’s live-in lover Louis leaves him after the diagnosis, unable to handle the idea of illness. Abandoned, Prior hallucinates about his ancestors coming to him. One of them died from the plague and so identifies with Prior as he deals with a current plague. Now that AIDS has receded, the scene makes us realize how every generation has its own battles and plagues.

In many scenes, the rawness of Prior’s emotion is so searing you can hardly breathe. He is ultimately comforted by an upright Mormon woman named Hannah from Salt Lake City. He assumes she finds him a sinner—but in a lovely moment of human connection, she suggests that they not try to guess what is in each other’s hearts.

It’s a fine lesson all around. Our hearts are both more vulnerable and more pliable than we sometimes admit. Love comes in many forms. The world is complicated.

In an interwoven plot line, the handsome young Mormon lawyer Joe Pitts (played superbly by Lee Pace), finally realizes that he is gay, but he feels great love and loyalty to his confused wife, Harper (an excellent Denise Hough). Joe is Hannah’s son, but you don’t really have to know about that.

In one climactic scene, the two couples—Prior and Louis and Joe and his wife Hannah—have conversations next to each other on the stage and they physically weave past each other. The confrontations make you think differently about love. Can you love someone if you leave them in a time of need? How do you love once you discover that you have been hiding your true self?

Al Pacino and Meryl Streep were among the stars of the 2003 HBO mini-series of Angels in America, and the show has become an American classic. It touches on issues of environmentalism and democracy and an eroding planet that seem even more crucial now than when it was first written.

Like Prior, we are terrified of the unknown. The angel of the title appears with wide wings—and Prior actually wrestles her. In the second play, he wraps himself in a long black cloak, as if haunting the world he is trying to re-enter.

That Angels in America ends with Prior offering hope and anticipation for the future is something of a miracle. The devastations and confusions or our lives are real—but so is the hope. And I can’t think of a better guide than Kushner and Garfield to lead us through them both.

It’s anniversary time for The Young and the Restless, which will mark its 45th year on the air starting today.  The CBS soap is also celebrating the fact that it has been the No. 1 daytime drama for 29 consecutive years.

For its anniversary week, Y&R will mark the occasion with the return of several characters to Genoa City, including Lorie Brooks (Jaime Lyn Bauer) and Leslie Brooks (Janice Lynde),  members of Genoa City’s first family, the Brooks; Julia Newman Martin (Meg Bennett); Mackenzie Browning Hellstrom (Kelly Kruger); Raul Guitierez (David Scott Lago); and Brittany Hodges (Lauren Woodland).

In honor of its anniversary, Parade.com has a Y&R wedding photo album. Launch the gallery to take a look at the soap’s weddings through the years.

“The Young and the Restless will celebrate its 45th anniversary by proudly looking back at the rich history of the show while propelling our characters into exciting new stories,” said Executive Producer and head writer Mal Young. “Viewers will be treated to a week-long, can’t-miss-a-minute celebration as storylines take unexpected turns and we welcome faces from the past.”

Also coming up for the anniversary week, are the following story developments:

•The long-running feud between Victor Newman (Eric Braeden) and Jack Abbott (Peter Bergman) reaches its breaking point, irrevocably changing the lives of both men.

•Ashley Abbott (Eileen Davidson) and her daughter, Abby (Melissa Ordway), uncover a shocking secret.

•The relationship between Victoria Newman (Amelia Heinle) and J.T. Hellstrom (Thad Luckinbill) takes a dramatic turn.

•Nikki Newman (Melody Thomas Scott) finds her loyalty tested like never before.

•Nick Newman (Joshua Morrow) and Sharon Newman (Sharon Case) confront their heated past.

•The return of several familiar faces shakes things up in Genoa City.

The Young and the Restless Wedding Album

Business tycoon Victor Newman (Eric Braeden) and former stripper Nikki Reed (Melody Thomas Scott) married in a lavish 1984 ceremony. Nikki’s dress, 10-foot train and royal crown were hand-beaded with more than 20,000 small beads and pearls.

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The Young and the Restless Wedding Album

Following a nervous breakdown, and some scheming by her sister, Lorie, who wanted the same man, Leslie Brooks (Janice Lynde) married Brad Eliot (Tom Hallick). (1975).

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The Young and the Restless Wedding Album

Lauren Fenmore (Tracey Bregman) married Scott Grainger (Peter Barton), a physician at Genoa City Memorial Hospital, unaware that nurse Sheila Carter (Kimberlin Brown), also in love with Dr. Scott, would wreak havoc on her life for years to come. (1989)

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The Young and the Restless Wedding Album

Jill Foster (Jess Walton) found her way into ex-husband John Abbott’s (Jerry Douglas) heart a second time, much to his children’s chagrin. (1993)

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The Young and the Restless Wedding Album

Ashley Abbott (Eileen Davidson) fell for both her mother's lover, Eric Garrison and her mother's stepson, Marc Mergeron . And while she fantasized about both, she didn't marry either one! (1984)

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The Young and the Restless Wedding Album

After betrayals by their respective partners, Sharon Newman (Sharon Case) and Jack Abbott (Peter Bergman) fell for one another. (2007)

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The Young and the Restless Wedding Album

John Abbott (Jerry Douglas) married Gloria Fisher (Judith Chapman) in spite of the fact that his adult children detested her. (2005)

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The Young and the Restless Wedding Album

In a surprise move, Victor Newman (Eric Braeden) married Leanna Love (Barbara Crampton), author of his unauthorized biography, “Ruthless.” (1988)

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The Young and the Restless Wedding Album

Presumed-dead Victor Newman (Eric Braeden) rescued blind Hope Wilson (Signy Coleman) from a would-be rapist at her Kansas farm. The two eventually fell in love, married, and had a son, Adam. (1994)

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The Young and the Restless Wedding Album

Reservations about her engagement to Billy Abbott didn’t stop Nick Newman (Joshua Morrow) from walking his sister Victoria (Amelia Heinle) down the aisle in a 2010 wedding that ended with the bride’s arrest.

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The Young and the Restless Wedding Album

Sixteen-year-old Nick Newman (Joshua Morrow) returned from Swiss boarding school, quickly became interested in an attractive, sweet young woman -- Sharon Collins (Sharon Case), who lived with her single, paraplegic mother -- and decided to stay in Genoa City. Nick and Sharon were married in 1996.

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The Young and the Restless Wedding Album

Young lovebirds Christine Blair (Lauralee Bell), a former teen model, and Danny Romalotti (Michael Damian), international rock star, exchanged vows at a small ceremony in Maui. (1990)

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The Young and the Restless Wedding Album

Nikki and Victor have been married four times total. Wedding number three, in 2002, followed an invalid deathbed wedding.

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The Young and the Restless Wedding Album

Attorney Michael Baldwin (Christian LeBlanc) and department store heiress Lauren Fenmore (Tracey Bregman) enjoyed an elegant wedding featuring entertainment by trumpeter Chris Botti.

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The Young and the Restless Wedding Album

A hit-and-run accident spoiled their original wedding plans, but Christine Blair (Lauralee Bell) and Paul Williams (Doug Davidson) eventually made it to the altar (1996). Although that union ended in divorce, the couple married for a second time in 2013 and remains happily together.

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The Young and the Restless Wedding Album

Because of their age difference, Lily’s (Christel Khalil) father Neil (Kristoff St. John) initially disapproved of her relationship with Cane Ashby (Daniel Goddard). The couple eventually married (2009), remarried, had twins, and survived a number of obstacles including Cane’s apparent death in 2011.

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The Young and the Restless Wedding Album

Devon Hamilton (Bryton James) was smitten with Hilary Curtis (Mishael Morgan) – his father’s wife! The pair eventually got together and married, only to be separated again when Hilary disappeared on their honeymoon. (2015)

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The Young and the Restless Wedding Album

Katherine Chancellor (Jeanne Cooper), whose mantra was “live ‘til you die,” found late-in-life-love with Patrick Murphy (Michael Fairman). (2009)

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The Young and the Restless Wedding Album

Friends and family gather at the newly rebuilt Newman ranch house for Victor (Eric Braeden) and Nikki’s (Melody Thomas Scott) 2013 wedding. When a gun-toting waiter interrupts the reception, Victor’s son Adam throws himself in front of the bullet meant for Victor.

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Garry Shandling may not have quite the same level of name recognition among the general public as comedians such as Jay Leno or David Letterman, who have hosted late-night television shows, but when you watch, The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling, premiering tonight on HBO, you will discover that it was by choice.

Shandling had the opportunity to sign on as host of The Tonight Show following Johnny Carson‘s retirement — he had guest-hosted many times — but his belief that his comedy was more of an art that he wanted to pursue in his own way, led him to turn down the opportunity.

That is not to say that Shandling wasn’t successful. He is one of the most respected comics by his peers. 

“He was defintely interested in the art and doing good work,” says Judd Apatow, a close friend of Shandling’s and the executive producer of the four-hour documentary. “I think he thought there was no way he could make It’s Garry Shandling’s Show as strong as it needed to be and host The Tonight Show well if he was doing both at the same time, so he gave up hosting The Tonight Show.”

If that is a surprising fact, there are many more revealed in the detailed examination of Shandling’s ability to survive the ups and downs of a life in show business, which features conversations with more than 40 of Shandling’s family and friends, including James L. Brooks, Jim Carrey, Sacha Baron Cohen, David Coulier, Jon Favreau, Jay Leno, Kevin Nealon, Conan O’Brien, Bob Saget, Jerry Seinfeld and Sarah Silverman.

Parade.com has an exclusive interview with Appatow in which he talks about his friendship with Garry, how he located the personal journals, private letters and candid home audio and video footage that are featured in The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling, and more. 

This is personal for you because of your connection to Garry. So how much convincing did it take to get HBO to say yes?

Garry has a long history with HBO. After he did It’s Garry Shandling’s Show for Showtime, he did an HBO special, which is really one of the great HBO specials of all time, and then he did The Larry Sanders Show for HBO.  In the early days of HBO, there were a lot of shows like 1st & Ten, and they hadn’t really found their groove. People at HBO say that when they saw The Larry Sanders Show, they realized, “Oh, this is who we should be. We should be the quality network. The bar should be this high.” Then they began looking for shows of a certain quality.

I think the show inspired people. I heard a story that David Chase saw The Larry Sanders Show and said to himself, “Oh, we’re allowed to do this now,” and it inspired him as he was creating The Sopranos.

So, when Garry passed and we put on a big memorial service for him, HBO paid for it. I said, “I think this service was so inspiring that we could probably make an amazing documentary about Garry,” and [Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of HBO] Richard Plepler instantly said yes.

Tell me about meeting Garry.

I met Garry when I was 16. I interviewed him over the phone. He was a comedian. He had just hosted The Tonight Show for the first time. This is in the early ‘80s and I was interviewing comedians for my high school radio station.

Then I became a comedian and I met him at The Comedy & Magic Club in Hermosa Beach in 1991. He needed someone to write jokes for the Grammys, and I became friends with him when I did that job. Then when The Larry Sanders Show was created, he asked me to join the staff. Later he asked me to direct an episode and I had never directed before. He just had some sense that I would be good at it.

Throughout my life, he’s been a mentor both creatively and spiritually because he was the first person to ever talk to me about Buddhism. He would give me these books and we would talk about them. It had big effect on my life.

In the documentary, did you direct people as to what to say about Garry, or did they have free rein? 

I just did normal conversations. I felt like I knew Garry so well. I didn’t want to be in the first person telling Garry’s story. I felt like it was important for the interviews to be conversational. I didn’t do the type of interviews where I would cut myself out and not show the questions. I wanted it to be friends of Garry chatting about Garry.

What’s incredible is the amount of footage that you found and his notes. How did you get access to it? Some of the notes, you make it look as if he’s writing it. Is that a special process?

Yeah, that’s modern CGI. When Garry passed, we went through his house and he had saved so much. What was interesting was that in life, he had none of it out. It’s like he saved everything but just chucked it in a box and put it in a closet. Then when you went through everything, it was all there. He had kept journals for 30 years, since the mid-’70s. He kept every notepad with a joke on it, every script, photographs from his childhood, none of which I had ever seen.

I just started going through everything, reading everything, and at one point Garry was thinking about doing some sort of TV special or series where he went through his journals. So he shot a little bit for that. It was something that didn’t happen, but we also took it as a sign that he was okay with us reading and exploring this because he had considered doing it.

Now that you have all this memorabilia, are you going to put it in a library or somewhere?

We’re going to put out a book down the line. We’re putting a book together, and then at some point, it will live on a website, and I’m sure we’ll donate it to some institution.

One of the things I learned in the documentary is that Garry changed modern comedy. Can you talk about in what way you think that is?

Sitcoms were very traditional in the early ‘80s, and with It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, he came up with a premise that was very imaginative and very groundbreaking. It basically said you can do anything in this format. It doesn’t just have to be people talking in their apartments. A lot of the people who wrote for that show went on to work on or create The Simpsons, and people like Mike Reiss and Al Jean are in the documentary talking about how a lot of the ideas from It’s Garry Shandling’s Show and the philosophy had a giant effect on a show like The Simpsons.

In the same way, The Larry Sanders Show was one of the first really innovative single-camera comedy shows in the early ‘90s, and that seems to have inspired everything that we’re seeing with single-camera comedies like The Office, 30 Rock, and Girls.

So his impact was more on TV than standup?

Well, he was a fantastic stand-up. He was a brilliant stand-up, but I think that his television writing was very groundbreaking.

There is a comment from Conan O’Brien that Garry saw comedy as art as opposed to just telling jokes. Is that one of the things that made him stand out?

I think that he was always trying to be innovative, but I think his main intention was to be honest and to go deep. He wanted to show the struggle that people have to be happy, to make connections, and I think he brought an intention to his work that we hadn’t seen as much in television comedy before then. The Larry Sanders Show was a very deep satirical exploration of people with big egos who want everything.

In a way it all relates to the Trump Era, people who think that the only thing that matters is success and everything that goes wrong when you believe that. He used to say The Larry Sanders Show is about people who love each other but show business gets in the way, and that’s what he was interested in, what prevents people from connecting.

You mentioned that he wanted to show people what makes them happy, but then there is that quote from you that he was either the happiest person or he had lost his mind.

I think that he was a complicated person. I think he would probably say he was happy most of the time, but he certainly had his issues and things that weighed upon him. He was a big thinker. I think a lot of the reason why he was interested in Buddhism was a lot of Buddhism is about trying to live more in your heart than in your head. I’m sure that’s something that he struggled with and, hopefully, was able to get better at throughout his life.

So that’s why the Zen is in the title?

Yeah. Sarah Silverman has a great line she says, “Garry wasn’t interested in Zen because he was Zen. He was interested in Zen because he needed Zen.”

Would you say that the defining point in Garry’s life was the death of his brother when he was 10?

I think that certainly was a defining moment in his life. He was a 10-year-old boy, and his brother, who he looked up to and seemed to have a really very close, beautiful relationship with, was 13. Then suddenly Garry’s alone in his house with his parents, and all the dynamics changed. That seemed to have created a lot of his emotional issues.

And then you see how that led to his interest in comedy, because he became a young kid who was spending a lot of time alone. He was on his Ham radio all day and he was watching TV. I think  a common thread for a lot of comedians is sometimes when you’re a kid you’re alone, you want to be heard, you want to be seen. You see comedy as a way to express yourself and get some attention that you need.

Also of note to me was that he took his jokes to George Carlin and George Carlin actually took the time to read them and have him come back, and then he gave him a critique.

Yes. Yes.

I always think of the comedy world as being really competitive. Do comedians really help each other out like that, or is that unusual?

I think that comedians do help each other out. It really is a tribe and people have a lot of love for anyone who attempts to do it. That’s an amazing story because Garry was in college and he wrote all these jokes for George Carlin, and he asked George Carlin to read them after a show at a club, and George Carlin said, “Come back tomorrow, and I’ll let you know what I think of them.” Then he said, “I don’t buy jokes, but there’s a great joke on every page, so if you want to pursue this, I think that you should.” That was all Garry needed. He moved to California and set out to try be a comedy writer and a comedian, and I often think that’s why he was nice to me and mentored me.

Right, pay it forward.

I think that in his mind somewhere he thought, “Oh, this is what you’re supposed to do.” I think I felt like that when I met all the kids from Freaks and Geeks. On some unconscious level, I thought, “Yeah, you’re supposed to help the next generation.”

When you were researching this, did you learn anything about him that you didn’t already know? Were there any surprises for you?

Most of it was surprises because as close as I was to Garry, he never told me about his childhood. I didn’t have the deepest conversations about everything he was going through. We talked a lot about his relationship with his mom because we both had complicated mom’s that caused us a lot of pain at different times of our lives, so we talked about how we were navigating those issues, but tons of it I didn’t know.

The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling premieres tonight at 8 p.m. ET/PT on HBO. The documentary will also be available on HBO NOW, HBO GO, HBO On Demand and affiliate portals.

Kicking off with a quirky and dramatic instrumental spaghetti Western theme, Lindi Ortega’s new album, Liberty, takes us on a cowboy-inspired journey. Ortega’s ethereal voice winds through the 15 tracks that span from ballads to theatrical south-western fare with some wavery steel guitar, vibes and even trumpets thrown in for good measure. Mysterious, wistful, sweet and nostalgic, Liberty showcases Ortega’s artistic spirit.

Due out March 30, 2018, and recorded in East Nashville, Tennessee, Liberty is produced by Skylar Wilson (Justin Townes Earle, Rayland Baxter) with Steelism as the backing band and Country Music Hall of Fame member Charlie McCoy on harmonica and vibraphone.

Ortega shares this inspiration behind the album, “This album follows a character who traverses through the dark and into the light. It is meant to encourage and give hope to those who are struggling with their own demons and help them get through their own darkness. While these songs might speak to and reflect some of my own tumult in life, I hope it gives everyone something they can relate to and they can see themselves in the songs. My goal with Liberty is to leave fans with the positive message that life itself is a gift and we must cherish the one we have.”

Listen now:

Channeling ’60s-’70s western country music and spaghetti Western of the same era, Lindi Ortega is inspired by Ennio Morricone and Sergio Leone on much of her record. The common element in a spaghetti Western film is that a hero emerges and is broken free — much like the demythologized triumph of breaking free on Liberty.

Hailing originally from Toronto, Canada, Ortega, a Juno award nominee, also found instrumental inspiration in the soundtracks to Quentin Tarantino films, which can be easily heard on the three “Through The Dust” breaks on the record, each dividing Ortega’s three concepts on the album — loss, resurrection and freedom.

Ortega wrote roughly half of the tracks on Liberty solo, and she enlisted co-writers Aaron Raitiere, Bruce Wallace and John Paul White (The Civil Wars) for the rest. It was recorded at Battle Tapes studio in East Nashville with producer Skylar Wilson and was polished to reflect Ortega’s Mexican lineage.

Find out more at https://www.lindiortega.com

After seven seasons of intrigue, duplicity, exquisite wardrobes, Gladiators, white hats, good guys gone rogue (and vice versa) and several elections, D.C.’s favorite fictional fixer Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) and her evolving team of spies, politicians, attorneys and assassins on Scandal will be bidding TV audiences a final farewell.

To commemorate the occasion, Sunset Gower Studios (the lot where the show is filmed) commissioned a limited edition gift print of the entire cast given to cast/crew on the night of the final taping earlier this month. According to the digital artist who created the print, Matt Hirschfeld, only 100 were made numbered and signed. “The feedback from the cast has been overwhelming & terrific,” he told Parade. Hirschfeld explained that the gift was sort of a last-minute idea, but he had a week to complete the drawing and another few days for editing. He created the print from screenshots and publicity stills. He said it’s “very rare” that he meets the cast for a drawing. “Usually, I go through some type of intermediary,” he said.

So, how did Hirschfeld manage to capture the quirks and individual features of such famous faces? “Mostly I try to capture people’s personalities and mannerisms and bring their characters to life on paper,” he said. “It’s the little things I might catch an actor doing over and over again and I’ll try to incorporate it.”

In case you’re wondering, you, too can commission a piece like this for a wedding or anniversary gift. But, Hirschfeld said, people need to ask well in advance. “I never know how many projects I may be working on in a given time,” he said. As for what it might cost, Hirschfeld, who in 2013 also created NBC’s National Emmy Campaign, said it depends on many factors, including the number of people and the amount of detail and time that goes into a project. “I will say that I try to make all my commissioned artwork as affordable as possible to people and stay away from high-gallery prices,” he said.

Fun art trivia: If Hirschfeld’s name and art style seem somewhat familiar, there’s a reason. Though they’re only very distant relatives, Matt Hirschfeld is the stylistic heir apparent to legendary New York Times caricaturist Al Hirschfeld. On his website, Matt Hirschfeld reminds us that in a 1997 documentary, Al Hirschfeld said that one day an artist might be able to do what he does but on the computer rather than with a pen.

If we accept that every tv series set in America inhabits the same universe, and each of these Americas has an Attorney General…

I’m saying there could be work for me.

— Joshua Malina (@JoshMalina) March 16, 2018

What’s next for the cast? Meanwhile, late last week, Vanessa Williams reminded me that she and Bellamy Young (President Mellie Grant) were shooting a pilot for a fun new show on ABC. Both Tony Goldwyn and Joshua Malina tweeted about wanting to work on the next Guardians of the Galaxy installment. Malina later also tweeted, “If we accept that every TV series set in America inhabits the same universe, and each of these Americas has an Attorney General… I’m saying there could be work for me.” I’m inclined to agree. Hey, Shonda Rhimes! What about a series that’s a mashup of David Rosen/Preet Bharara/Eric Schneiderman with Malina in the lead role? (I’m also thinking that a quirky journalist might make for an excellent series regular as well. )

Rachel Weingarten is a beauty, smarter shopping and lifestyle expert and beauty historian and the award-winning author of three non-fiction books. In early 2018 she launched The Evolved Foodie. Get social with her on Facebook, or Twitter. Rachel regularly writes for many top media outlets, read some of her recent stories at readsomethingby.me

There’s no shortage of Easter-themed programming on April 1. Before you tune in test your knowledge of Easter movies past and present with Parade’s Easter quiz. At least a few of these questions will stump even die-hard movie fans—whether you’re watching Turner Classic Movies full day of films, including the epic Ben-Hur at 1 p.m. ET and the musical Easter Parade at 8 p.m. ET or watching John Legend play the main character in Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert at 8 p.m. ET on NBC. Test your Easter movie IQ by taking Parade’s ultimate Easter movie quiz.

In 1964, when American author James Lord was visiting Paris, he agreed to let his pal, acclaimed artist Alberto Giacometti, paint his portrait. Giacometti assured his friend, who was scheduled to be in Paris for a short time, that the sitting would last only a few days. But for Giacometti who famously said, “The more one works on a picture, the more impossible it becomes to finish it,” it took weeks to complete.

Such is the subject of Stanley Tucci’s film Final Portrait, which delves into the friendship of two polar opposites united through creativity. Written and directed by Tucci and starring Geoffrey Rush as Giacometti and Armie Hammer as James Lord, Final Portrait reveals the beauty, chaos and exasperation of the artistic process and the angst to truly feel satisfied.

“I loved the story and how James Lord wrote so beautifully about him,” said Tucci at a special screening of the Sony Pictures Classics film. In fact, he adapted Final Portrait from Lord’s memoir, A Giacometti Portrait. Lord wrote the book after his epic encounter with the accomplished artist.

“Directing the film made me even more enamored and interested in Giacometti, which I didn’t think it would,” said Tucci. In fact, making the film which took ten years to get to the screen required much patience. What kept Tucci going? As he explained, “You see it so clearly you have to tell the story.”

Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, Felicity Blunt, Elvis Costello, Diana Krall, Laura Prepon, David Hyde Pierce, Aidan Quinn, Lorraine Bracco, Steve Buscemi, Maura Tierney and other stars attended a special screening of the film hosted by Sony Pictures Classics, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Dominique Lévy and Brett Gorvy.  Click through the next pages to see photos from the screening and after party at Lévy Gorvy Gallery.

In the new FX series Trust, which examines the Getty dynasty, J. Paul Getty Jr. (Michael Esper) asks: “When you can have everything you could ever dream of, what do you value?”

For this ridiculously wealthy and tortured family, the answer seems mystifying. Especially for patriarch J. Paul Getty Sr. (Donald Sutherland), who famously refused to pay his 16-year old grandson’s ransom when the boy was kidnapped. As Trust creator and writer Simon Beaufoy believes, Getty Sr. was devoid of empathy. “There was something missing in him.”

Told over several seasons and inspired by multiple events, the series starts with the 1973 kidnapping of Getty oil heir John Paul Getty III (Harris Dickinson). “You think, why would a billionaire not pay $17 million, which is peanuts to him?” says Beaufoy.

The first season is told in ten episodes and also stars Hilary Swank as Gail Getty and Brendan Fraser as J. Paul Getty’s irresistible security guy/fixer. “In terms of this story, it was shocking. It was tragic it was strange, and difficult to fathom,” says Dickinson, who plays the idealistic and troubled Getty III. “You begin to empathize with the story and go on a journey with so many different settings and elements. It’s sad, fun, beautiful, tragic, comedic. There’s Rome, London, America. You get a real sense of the intricate reality of this family.”

Simon Beaufoy, whose credits includes  Battle of the Sexes, The Full Monty, Slumdog Millionaire, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and 127 Hours shared more with Parade.com. 

What stood out the most to you as you began researching the Getty family and the kidnapping?

We suddenly unearthed lots of discrepancies in the story. We realized that was because John Paul Getty III kind of kidnapped himself to begin with. I thought, wow. I can’t ignore that as a line of narrative. I started digging around about that. Why would a kid who was set to inherit untold wealth decide to kidnap himself? The more I dug, the bigger the story got.

What was one of the most surprising elements you discovered about the family?

It was full of events that you can’t really make up. When John Paul Getty II was shown a photograph of his son’s severed ear, he said Gail, his ex-wife [and kidnapped boy’s mother] wouldn’t know the difference between an ear and a piece of prosciutto. [John questioned that Gail could properly identify her son’s ear.] That is how removed they were from any kind of empathy. There were these shocking things that I wouldn’t dare make up as a writer.

They also had a plan to offer $600, plus expenses, as part of the ransom. Because it would put the kidnappers legally in the clear. There was a weird bit of Italian law that said under a certain threshold, which was $600, it wouldn’t be kidnapping. They thought, “That’s a good strategy. Let’s offer them $600 and see how that goes down.” As you can imagine, it didn’t go down well.

What did you take away from this family?

I seems obvious now, but it took me a while to understand the psychology of people and the way they bring up their children cascades down the generations for good or bad. It started way back before this series even began with John Paul Getty I’s family who dismissed him. They showed and then withdrew love, which left this huge hole in his heart. He thought he could fill it with money. And then that cascaded down to the next generation and the next generation. You see how difficult it is to break that cycle.

Chrissy Metz is in Winnipeg, Manitoba, for hair and makeup tests for her upcoming movie, The Impossible, which is the inspiring true tale of one mother’s faith and love, based on Joyce Smith’s autobiographical book of the same name. “When I read the book, I was like, ‘Wow! this is such a beautiful story of truly believing in something greater than ourselves,’” says Metz, who plays the starring role. “It’s about the unconditional love and faith that Joyce and her whole town had during a tragic event that turned into something beautiful.”

And now Metz, who gained national acclaim for her portrayal of Kate Pearson on the NBC hit family drama This Is Us and inadvertently became a role model for body positivity, is sharing her own powerful story—and offering up insightful life lessons—in her new book, This Is Me.

“I thought it might be too soon,” Metz, 37, explains of writing a memoir now. “But I had so many women and men come up to me and say really wonderful and kind things. They would ask, ‘How did you do this? How did you get to this point in your life? How did you find success?’ I wanted to make sure that they knew that it didn’t happen overnight. It didn’t happen the way I wanted it to or when I wanted it to…not in my ego time. I thought that if I could help by speaking my truth that other people might relate to it. Then I was like, ‘I don’t know if I should do this. This is too scary. This is too weird. Why am I doing this?’

“So much of that was F.E.A.R: which is False Evidence Appearing Real,” Metz continues, citing one of her favorite mantras. “I was just concocting these stories in my mind…people are going to judge me, people are going to hate me. I had to be like, ‘Stop! You don’t have to worry about what other people think, because their perception is their reality.’ I realized that there is something very freeing in speaking your truth.”

As it turned out, sharing the intimate details of her struggles turned out to be a journey all its own.

“We really find freedom in speaking our truth, and in turn it helps other people to do the same thing. To know that they are not alone and that we are all just trying to figure this life thing out,” Metz explains. “I am a work in progress. I have not figured it all out. Some days are awesome, and some days are really difficult. So when I was writing my story, I would be like, ‘Oh wow. I’ve already gotten through that…maybe I shouldn’t tell that story.’ Then I would think, No, it’s important that I tell that story. I came to realize that people deserved my whole story, to know how I have grown through a particular situation or healed from this particular issue in my life. And there was something really cool about sharing it on such a big level so that I could make peace with it.”

One of Metz’s favorite sayings is: “You have to accept yourself as you are now.” But she acknowledges that some people get confused by that idea.

“That does not mean that you don’t believe you have to change. But in order to effect change in your life, you have to start by first accepting yourself for who you are right now. That is the only way to get to the place you want to be,” she offers. “If all you are thinking about is that you want to lose weight or get a new job, but you feel like you are not going to be able to because you’re not worthy of it, then you won’t ever get that job. It is so important that you realize that just as we are, we are enough.”

She continues: “I was constantly comparing and disparaging myself, feeling like I didn’t measure up. We get on this cyclical train of I’m not this, I’m not that. And once you’re there, you can’t see a way to get off that ride. We need to all love ourselves a little more and, in turn, love others. That was the big pivotal moment for me.”

Another pivotal moment for the actress came when she was invited to share a quiet lunch with one of her heroes, Oprah Winfrey. On a visit to her Santa Barbara estate, Winfrey told Metz, “You know, you’re one of our lifetime’s heroes.”

“What’s really funny is I was like, ‘Did she really say that? Did I make that up?’” Metz says. “Oprah is such a beacon for so many people for so many reasons, but she is also so human. We’re all the same. We are all equal. If I am a role model for anybody, then it is just about being a good person. It was incredible to hear that, but I am just trying to be me. If that encourages and inspires other people, then I will take it, Oprah. I will take it!”

What Metz also wants to encourage is the power of forgiveness. In the book, she shares her own struggles with finding forgiveness for some of the abuse and neglect she experienced as a child—a topic she also speaks to on Instagram.

It won’t always be easy but it will be worth it

A post shared by Chrissy Metz (@chrissymetz) on Mar 2, 2018 at 9:41am PST

“There is something very powerful about the freedom that comes with forgiveness. It’s really about forgive people, for they know not what they do,” she offers. “And you not only have to forgive others for whatever it is that they have done, but forgive yourself…because fair is fair.”

In This Is Me, Metz also revisits a particularly painful time in her teenage years when she was so consumed with anger at someone that she had contemplated using a gun to kill them. In the wake of so many tragic shootings, she felt it was something she had to share.

“When you are 12 or 13 years old and you feel so emotionally and physically beaten down, you really don’t know how to escape those feelings,” she says. “Some people take their own lives, and some people take other people’s lives. It’s not OK. Hurt people hurt people. There are so many issues surrounding these shootings and these terrible tragedies that are just so unnecessary. I know that every person and situation is different, but I believe it really starts with mental health and gun control. We have to make a really big change. We need to get better at listening to each other and connecting in a way that people feel that they have been heard and listened to. It’s something we have to continue to talk about and find a solution for it.”

Metz has a message for anyone struggling with these sorts of feelings. “If you do have the slightest inkling of that feeling, then let’s get to the bottom of it,” she says. “I always believed that if you had certain feelings or cried that it meant you were weak, but that is so the opposite of the truth. Don’t get isolated. Talk to someone.”

The actress says she’s especially grateful that This Is Us is a vehicle to help people along this path.

“What is so special about our show is that it is really helping people to understand their feelings, whether they are judgmental or loving, and making it okay to talk about it,” she says. “People just want to be heard and listened to and we have to make it okay to talk about these things.”

So what’s up next for Metz, an autobiographical movie…a fashion collaboration? Yes and yes.

“I am working on a screenplay about my time growing up in the ’90s,” she says. “I have a bit of a treatment and a couple of scenes written. I would probably be in it, but I wouldn’t star because it will be a sort of period thing.”

And she’s doing some serious thinking about a clothing line or collaboration. “I am definitely very interested.” She explains. “It is something I want to do, but I want to be really hands on when I do it.”

As we go about the hustle and bustle of our daily lives, it’s sometimes easy to forget how extraordinary this place we call home really is. That’s where National Geographic’s One Strange Rock steps in.

A 10-episode limited series narrated by eight astronauts, hosted by Academy Award nominee Will Smith and executive produced by Oscar-nominated director Darren Aronofsky, One Strange Rock is a vivid, surprising and moving take on this 4.5-billion-year-old planet.

Parade spoke with the filmmakers and astronauts involved in the production about One Strange Rock and what sets it apart.

1. This is planet Earth like you’ve never seen it before—and very few ever have. 

“The breakthrough we had was when we were trying to figure out who was going to host this show,” says Aronofsky. The Harvard-educated social anthropology major notes he’s merely a “collaborator” on One Strange Rock and it’s not his singular vision.

Each of the show’s 10 episodes is narrated by one of eight astronaut storytellers. Themes explored in each individual episode include breathing, human intelligence and the nature of survival. The themes are woven together as a vivid and unprecedented tribute to this fragile, mighty and wondrous globe we’re living on.

“They’re the very few, the very brave who have witnessed this planet from a different perspective than the rest of us,” says Aronofsky. “They left the game, then looked down on the game. As we were researching [the astronaut hosts’] stories, it became clear there was this moment of majesty and awe—some would call it spiritual—that many of them experience when they leave the atmosphere.”

2.  One Strange Rock is beautiful to behold, an inventive blend of science and art.

Shot in 45 countries, on six continents and from outer space aboard the ISS, One Strange Rock is technically stunning.

“Art and science don’t know they’re separate, of course,” says Chris Hadfield, the first Canadian to walk in space and command the ISS. “The way that was hammered home for me was outside on my second spacewalk. We went through the Aurora. It is an extremely complex, scientific thing, but the beauty of it is phenomenal. It is perhaps the most magnificent moment of my entire life.”

Hadfield hosts two episodes of One Strange Rock, Gasp and Escape, and he’s widely known for his space-set cover of David Bowie‘s “Space Oddity.”

“We are sort of the little scientific emissaries out there in the most magnificent artwork that exists, trying to express it back,” says Hadfield. “Art and science—gosh, they’re the same thing.”

Showrunner Arif Nurmohamed of Nutopia also notes it was important for One Strange Rock to work for all audiences and to be broadly enjoyable. “It’s not just about being profound. We hope that it’s entertaining and accessible. We hope it’s spectacular. It’s cool for students to turn it down and just be washed with the visuals. Growing up with National Geographic [the magazine], I probably read one in every four, but I remember flicking through all the pictures.”

“What One Strange Rock does is allow me to transfer information in such a way that people don’t feel preached to,” says astronaut Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman to travel to space and the host of two episodes: Genesis and Alien. “People don’t absorb things when they feel preached to; this is much more experiential.”

3. One Strange Rock will hit you right in the feels.

“We tried to take our storytelling skills and link all of this science into something that could be emotional for audiences,” says Aronofsky.

“We’re building a picture, and we hope audiences will go along,” says Nurmohamed. “The last episode is called Home, and it encapsulates that idea that there’s no place like home.”

“[One Strange Rock] really does end up being about home,” says Nicole Stott, the first astronaut to paint in space. She hosts the episode Storm, about the cosmic violence that shaped our planet. “This powerful idea of us all being Earthlings comes from the show. That was what I took away. There was an evolution I went through in looking at Earth, and when I got there I wanted to see things that were familiar. I wanted to see Florida, where I grew up. I had an immediate connection with that.”

4. Will Smith brings his signature exuberance.

Who better to complement a panel of experts than one of the most charismatic movie stars of the past 50 years? A welcome contrast to the highly scientific and the artistically ambitious, the effortlessly engaging Oscar nominee brings his trademark enthusiasm to every word as emcee, linking all 10 episodes together into a cohesive, charismatic whole.

If this seems an unlikely combination of elements and personalities, it is—and it proves to be inspired. It’s impossible not to get pretty jazzed about the information you learn on One Strange Rock with the one and only Will Smith at the helm.

5. One Strange Rock uses science to give us hope for the future.

“People ask me a lot after I made mother! if I’m an optimist,” says Aronofsky. “I answer with what Margaret Atwood said to me: I’m a realist. The means for our survival exist. I do have hope.”

“What I love about science—the hope in science in general—is that we’re human beings.” says Stott. “We’re curious, and science allows us that path to learn more about who we are and how we fit in to all of it.”

“I have a lot of hope,” says Hadfield, “In the last century, 400 million people died of smallpox; that’s more than all of the World Wars by almost a factor of 10—and yet we eliminated it. We’ve wiped out polio on most of the planet, human literacy is increasing, all kinds of extraordinary things are happening around the world. To fly a rocket, you have to be an optimist. Flying around the world as many times as I have, it gives you an internal, uncrushable sense of optimism. The age of the planet, the toughness of it.”

Just over 500 people have ever traveled past the Earth’s atmosphere. One Strange Rock aims to offer audiences the next best thing.

There’s no place like home. One Strange Rock airs Mondays at 10 p.m. ET on the National Geographic Channel.

Based on the podcast StartUp, Zach Braff’s new ABC series, Alex, Inc, is about a journalist, Alex (Braff), who quits his job to start his own podcast company and discovers that it’s a lot harder than he thought.

The series also stars Michael Imperioli as Alex’s cousin Eddie, Hillary Anne Matthews as his assistant Deirdre, Elisha Henig as his son Ben, Audyssie James as his daughter Soraya and Tiya Sircar as his wife Rooni.

In this interview with Braff, we talk about the family-friendly aspect of the series, how great the two child actors are, Braff’s favorite podcasts and more.

Was part of the attraction of this that it is a family-friendly show?

When this one came up, I thought, “Oh, my God, I love this.” There’s so much television today, but there isn’t a ton of stuff that parents can watch with their kids and this was so entertaining to me. This feels like Black-ish or Modern Family that a parent can enjoy and the kids can enjoy and they can all watch together.

We’re so happy they gave us the 8:30 p.m. time slot because it really is something that an 8-year-old can watch, but a parent is not going to roll his eyes. The parents will, hopefully, love it, too. I feel like ABC does that better than anyone in half-hour comedy, so when I heard the podcast, I was like, “Eureka, this is it!”

What about this story made you want to make it?

This is inspired by a true story about a man named Alex Blumberg who left This American Life because he had this idea that no one had quite yet mastered how to monetize a podcast, which comes mostly from selling short ads within the podcast and having sponsorship much like television, but often these days they’re woven in, in creative ways to the podcast.

That was his idea, and he said to himself, “I can’t believe no one’s done that yet. Someone should really do that.” And then he said to himself, “Maybe I should do that.” And so he said, “But I know nothing about starting a business.  That would be crazy.” And he said, “I have an idea. My very first podcast will be this meta story. I’ll tell the story of a guy with a family, who has no idea how to start a business trying to start a business.”

We knew you as a single guy on Scrubs, but you’re a dad on this.

I think it’s more of a family show than Scrubs. Scrubs was pretty risqué. [Alex Inc. creator] Matt [Tarses] was saying his teenage son is watching Scrubs and he can’t believe how much sex there was on the show. We’re not doing that. We’re doing ABC family, in the spirit of Black-ish, Modern Family, and The Middle. We want a show that parents aren’t going to cringe and go, “Oh, my God, earmuffs, kids!” So, it is a different tone in that way, but I’m hoping that a lot of people that grew up with Scrubs, who are parents themselves now, will love the tone.

What’s it like working with kids?

The kids are so amazing. They are so spectacular. Elisha’s going to steal the show. I don’t know if you know the anecdote … I don’t even know if it’s true … but the story is that Family Ties was written as a vehicle for Meredith Baxter and Michael J. Fox stole the show.

So, I’m like, “This kid’s going to Michael J. Fox me.” He’s so incredibly charming and funny. I love it. I love letting them shine, and Audyssie is just a phenomenal little actress. The casting of them was so key and because they’re so good, they have real good parts in the show.

Are there any limits to the number of  people that share the office space with Alex and the craziness they get into?

We do take some out, like the baby people aren’t back, because at a certain point they’re there in service of an episode, or a guest star, or a joke. The baby thing is a physical comedy beat. Once it’s been played out, you don’t really want to see that every week, so we rotate them out and bring in a new thing. Like in the reality of these places in New York, businesses rotate in and out, so we can do that in the show.

Because you are writing, directing, and starring in the show, does it help you relate to Alex, who is a one-man band when StartUp starts?

I think I can relate to that also because I often am wearing so many hats in my projects. I think I relate to Alex going, “I’m going to do it all.” That’s one of the things I really tapped into and probably related to so much when I heard the podcast, so I was like, “Oh, my God. It feels like me jumping into something I might not know how to do yet and figuring it out come hell or high water.”

Have you met the real-life Alex Blumberg and what did he tell you? Any advice about playing his experience?

We didn’t really go there. He was just very warm. He visited the set. He, bizarrely, was wearing almost, I’m not kidding, almost exactly the same thing I was wearing for my wardrobe. I think he didn’t want to overstep his bounds at all. He was just a very menschy, sweet guy who wanted to visit the set.

We told him, “Look, we want you and the fans the of the podcast to know, we’re really using it as a jumping off point. We don’t want to you to think when we go do something wacky that we’re trying to say that’s your life.” We’re turning it into a network comedy, so we wanted him to rest assured that we were using his idea as a jumping off point.

Will the fact that Alex is Jewish and his wife Rooni (Tiya Sircar) isn’t be brought up in future episodes?

It comes up and, of course, the mother-in-law does not love me. All that stuff comes up and in a lot of ways it’s addressed, and probably in even a more overt way, it’s not addressed, because it’s the norm for this couple living in Brooklyn, where it is accepted.

What are your favorite podcasts?

StartUp really was one of my favorites because it stopped me in my tracks. I went, “Oh, my God.” Now I love podcasts, and I started listening to others including S-Town; Serial, which everyone in the world listened to; and This American Life.

Will you make a podcast in connection with this?

I think that’s a really good idea, but we just haven’t had a chance to do it yet. I think it would be cool to do a behind the scenes of making Alex, Inc.

Alex is a jump-in-with-both-feet person. Are you like that?

I am. When I commit to something, I go all in. This, for example, was harder than anything I’ve ever done because even with the films I’ve starred in and directed, I’m not also doing posts for episodes that we just did, or helping in the writer’s room for episodes that are coming up. This became 100 percent of my life because it demanded more of me than anything than I’ve ever done before.

Alex, Inc. premieres Wednesday, March 28 at 8:30 p.m. ET/PT on ABC.

From the opening retro Amblin and Universal logos, the trailer for The House With a Clock in Its Walls looks like it could very well be announcing a new family classic.

In the tradition of Steven Spielberg‘s Amblin Entertainment classics, where fantastical events occur in the most unexpected places, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle darling Jack Black and two-time Academy Award-winner Cate Blanchett star in The House with a Clock in Its Walls. The magical adventure tells the spine-tingling tale of 10-year-old Lewis (Owen Vaccaro) who goes to live with his uncle in a creaky old house with a mysterious tick-tocking heart. But his new town’s sleepy façade jolts to life with a secret world of warlocks and witches when Lewis accidentally awakens the dead.

Based on the beloved children’s classic written by John Bellairs and illustrated by Edward Gorey, The House with a Clock in Its Walls is directed by master frightener Eli Roth and written by Eric Kripke (creator of TV’s Supernatural). Co-starring Kyle MacLachlan, Colleen Camp, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Vanessa Anne Williams and Sunny Suljic, it is produced by Mythology Entertainment’s Brad Fischer (Shutter Island) and James Vanderbilt (Zodiac), as well as Kripke.

This comes as a startling change of pace for Roth, who to date has generally directed hard-R horror movies (Hostel, The Green Inferno, Cabin Fever). Could he successfully twist his genre sensibilities for a modern-day horror classic in the vein of Gremlins and The Witches? It’s no secret that kids love to be scared…within reason. And how about that cast?! Black is on fire right now; he was the best part of Jumanji 2, which just shocked with a near-$1 billion box office haul. Blanchett, it goes without saying, is always flawless– and it looks like she’s having a ball here.

The House With a Clock in Its Walls opens September 21. Watch the enchanting trailer below.

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In this week’s episode of The Royals, the total blackout that King Robert (Max Brown) has instigated sparks chaos in London. Because of the blackout, Helena (Elizabeth Hurley) is stuck in the palace wine cellar along with some unsavory guests, while Jasper (Tom Austen) is being transported back to the palace – and to Eleanor (Alexandra Park). When the ambulance comes across a burning vehicle and a riotous mob, the EMTs abandon the ambulance and Jasper. Eleanor opens up the palace to those in need and even though Willow (Genevieve Gaunt) has taken herself off the list of potential brides for Robert, she finds her feelings for him growing stronger and stronger. Take a look at the gallery…and look who has returned! Dame Joan Collins returns as Helena’s mother, Alexandra, the Grand Duchess of Oxford.

Will Jasper survive the angry mob? Will Eleanor see her love again? Who’s in that cellar with Helena?

The Royals airs Sundays at 10 p.m. ET on E!

Kids of all ages know the classic fairy tales written by Hans Christian Andersen—”The Little Mermaid,” “Thumbelina,” “The Princess and the Pea”—and now Academy Award winner F. Murray Abraham leads an all-star cast bringing these tales to life in Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales (Listening Library), a new audio adventure for listeners age 10 and up.

Abraham, best known for his Oscar-winning role in Amadeus, is joined by the vocal talents of 11 actors, including Edoardo Ballerini (The Sopranos), award-winning audiobook narrator Marisa Calin and January LaVoy (One Life to Live), and the musical renderings of Emmy-winning composer Michael Bacon.

Why have Andersen’s fairy tales stood the test of time? LaVoy remembers practically wearing out her “Little Mermaid” book-on-tape growing up. “I would listen to it with rapt attention, cry at the end, and then immediately start the tape over again,” she says. “I think it’s that level of complexity and depth that makes fairy tales so accessible and irresistible to adults and children alike.”

Ballerini agrees: “These fairy tales are as relevant to our world today as when they were written. Pay particular attention to ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes!'”

Listen below to an exclusive excerpt from “Thumbelina,” narrated by Abraham.

Growing up in a working-class family in the mean streets of New York City’s Little Italy neighborhood, Martin Scorsese admits he didn’t have access to books. He got his education about the world by going to the local cinema.

“I learned a lot about American ideals primarily from the movies,” Scorsese recalls. “Something like The Grapes of Wrath . . . that was an exploitation of labor done in an extraordinary way.”

Now the Oscar-winning director, 75, hopes to pass on the lessons to schools across America. Scorsese was on-hand on a grey afternoon in New York City on Tuesday, March 27 to help announce a new program for The Story of Movies, the first film study program created by filmmakers, film scholars and educators. The curriculum, free of charge, has been used across the U.S. by more than 100,000 teachers in every state since 2000. Explains Scorsese (on a panel with other historians and educators), “It’s absolutely crucial that young people learn how to sort the difference between art and commerce and the difference between a sequence of images that are individually crafted versus images that are mass-produced and used to grab your attention. . . Our hope is that this will inspire teachers and students to go deeper and deeper in engagement with history and politics. There is no difference between verbal and visual literacy.”

The new educational program, titled “Portraits of America: Democracy of Film” explores 38 films from 1917 (Charlie Chaplin’s The Immigrant) to 2006 (the Al Gore documentary, An Inconvenient Truth) that, he says, “expand the history of America and looks squarely at the struggles and violent disagreements and tragedies in our history and its false promises. The films also embody the best of America.” (The program is in conjuction with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and Scorsese’s Film Foundation.)

The curated curriculum is divided into eight “nodule” lesson plans, including “The Immigrant Experience,” “The American Laborer,” “Civil Rights,” “The Press” and “Soldiers and Patriots.” Two works from the famed director are on the list — 1993’s The Age of Innocence (“The American Woman”) and 2004’s The Aviator (“The Auteurs”). Each lesson includes a Teacher’s Guide, built-in PowerPoint presentation, reading selections such as reviews and editorial cartoons and supplemental DVD that includes various film clips.

The “Democracy on Film” theme was inevitable: “We’re in a time of division, conflict and anger in our culture.” Noting that he just watched the 1957 paranoia drama The Incredible Shrinking Man one night earlier on Turner Classic Movies, he added, “Movies actually reflect the culture that they come out of. No matter what the intended purpose, fake special effects or bad screen protection, images are records of the moments in time of which they were made.”

And if you want to watch one of the selections on a palm-sized screen, that’s OK too. Sort of. “I first watched Citizen Kane on the Million Dollar Movie on Channel 9! Ultimately, the language itself communicates,” he says. “But is it ideal conditions? Can you still retain that information when a film was made to be seen in a certain way and you needed to make the commitment and sit there for two hours? The idea is to see it in a proper context.”

For more information, go to www.film-foundation.org

With apologies to Civil War buffs and the president of the Confederacy, many of us don’t spend much time thinking about Jefferson Davis. But Charles Frazier, bestselling author of Cold Mountain and the new novel, Varina, says Davis’ wife is actually worth a much-closer look.

“The thing that first caught my imagination was shortly after [her husband] died, her packing her bags and moving to New York City to be a writer. In her early 60s. I just thought, That’s an interesting person,” says Frazier.

The author recently talked to Parade about Varina, and among other things,  how current events, namely heated debates about Confederate monuments, influenced the novel as he was writing it.

Do you ever feel like a book is done, even when it’s printed and out in the world?

I have a hard time realizing it’s done, that there’s no work left to do on the writing. When I’m reading from books that had been done a long time—at a bookstore or an event—sometimes I kind of make editorial changes on the fly, make a little revision.

People have asked me if I’ve ever gone back and read Cold Mountain. I’ve never reread it other than the bits I read sometimes at events. Because I know I’ll find things and think, “Oh gosh, I wish I’d done that just a little differently.

At some point, you have to type “The End.”

I remember something that my agent said when I was working on Cold Mountain. At that point I’d been working on it for seven years or more. She said, “You know, I’m just going to come down to Raleigh and take it from you because the changes you’re making now are not making the book better. They’re making it different, and that’s when you need to stop.”

How did you feel about that? 

At the time, I didn’t totally agree with her, but I’ve tried to use that distinction since then to try to get the book to the point where I feel like most of the changes I would be making would just be making it different.

Do you enjoy going on book tours?

What I like is going to bookstores and talking to people, getting reactions, seeing what people are saying and seeing where I feel some energy coming back on different parts of the book. That’s always helpful and interesting.

What have readers been saying about Varina?  

People have been asking if the events taking place in the real world, in the four years or so that I worked on this book, had an impact on the book. My response is, “How could it not have?” Just the shootings in Charleston and the violence in Charlottesville, the debates over the legacy of the Civil War is not going away, and I think it’s not going away because we haven’t managed to resolve those issues of race and slavery that have been haunting us for 150 years and will continue to do so until we do find some resolution.

Controversial Civil War-era monuments have been in the news recently. How did that discussion inform your story?

They didn’t start building most of those monuments right after the Civil War. They were largely a product of the Jim Crow era. For example, when that atrocious carving on Stone Mountain [the Confederate Memorial Carving in Georgia’s Stone Mountain Park] was finished—and it went on for quite a long time—I didn’t realize it wasn’t actually finished until the 1970s. Part of the impetus for those monuments was this continuation of white supremacy and that sort of thing. I find it hard to defend those monuments on that level.

How did you choose Varina, the wife of Jefferson Davis, as your subject?

I didn’t know anything about her and really have never been interested in him. [But] when I found a few interesting tidbits about her, I was interested in finding out more. But I kept thinking, writing a book about her is going to involve him way more than I want to have to do. He’s in the book as little as possible. The thing that first caught my imagination was shortly after he died, her packing her bags and moving to New York City to be a writer. In her early 60s. I just thought, That’s an interesting person.

The other thing that intrigued me was that she had benefited the first half of her life from the slave economy in the South; she’d been completely complicit with that. In one week she would say something incredibly progressive and infuriating to people in the South, like, “The right side won the war,” and then a week later she’d say something less progressive. I’m not that interested in perfection, so that kind of internal contradiction was interesting to me.

Can you talk a little bit about the character of Jimmie, the black boy who came to live with the Davis family? He’s based on a real person, right?

Yes. If you google “Jimmie Limber” you should find a photograph of him. He was living in the Confederate White House. He looks like he’s maybe 5 years old. He’s mentioned in Mary Chestnut‘s journals and several [other] memoirs. When Richmond was about to fall, Varina left town with the children and took him with her. He was with her all the way down to when they were captured in South Georgia and was separated from her.

Pretty much as it is in the novel, he lived with a teacher from Boston for a little while, and then he disappears from the historical records. I was interested in that unlikely seeming situation of that little boy living with Jefferson Davis’s children in the Confederate White House, and then interested in the idea of what might have happened to that little boy and what would a reunion when he’s middle-aged with Varina in old age be like? That part of the book is, the Saratoga Springs Hotel part, is all imagined, but I really enjoyed writing that part of the book. 

Do you read a lot when you’re writing?

When I’m really, really in the thick of writing, like when the deadline’s looming, I don’t get a lot of recent books, recent novels, read. Mostly when I’m really writing I’m just reading stuff related to the job.

When you have time to read, is it novels or is it non-fiction? 

Mostly novels. I also read a bit of older stuff. I mean, just looking back, the other day I was on Amazon looking for something that I had bought a year ago and realized most of the books I’ve bought have been those New York Review Classics, probably about 15 of those in the past couple of years. I read a lot of that kind of thing.

It may be Reba McEntire’s birthday, but she’s the one giving gifts this year!

The country singer, who turns 63 on March 28, surprised country artists with a phone call to tell them they had won Academy of Country Music awards.

The calls were caught on film, and the artists’ reactions were priceless.

Singer-songwriter Lauren Alaina burst into tears when McEntire told her she had just been named New Female Vocalist of the Year.

Later on Twitter, Alaina joked that it was “the best thing that has happened to me in my ‘McEntire’ life … Today, my country-loving heart is exploding.”

Over the weekend @Reba called the ACM New Artist of the Year winners to let them know they had won! Let’s just say our New Female Vocalist of the Year had us all in tears. Congrats @Lauren_Alaina! #ACMawards pic.twitter.com/q0DN9jJuje

— ACM Awards (@ACMawards) March 26, 2018

Country pop singer Brett Young also found out from McEntire that he was named New Male Vocalist of the Year.

In case you didn’t know, the ACM for New Male Vocalist of the Year goes to @BrettYoungMusic. Check out his reaction when @Reba broke the news… #ACMawards pic.twitter.com/dWs81CMl1j

— ACM Awards (@ACMawards) March 26, 2018

And the members of Texas-based country band Midland couldn’t contain their emotions when McEntire told them they had been named New Vocal Group of the Year — though at first, they couldn’t believe it was really Reba on the line.

The ACM for New Vocal Group of the Year goes to @MidlandOfficial! And yes, that really was @Reba on the phone! #ACMawards pic.twitter.com/yfYJptBejW

— ACM Awards (@ACMawards) March 26, 2018

McEntire will host the 53rd annual ACM Awards, which air on April 15 at 8 p.m. ET on CBS.

Congratulations to all the early winners!

Carrie Underwood Releases First Music Video Since Her Serious Facial Injury

We’ve been treated to plenty of tantalizing details about the upcoming royal wedding as May 19 continues to draw closer. With less than two months to go, we now know that a lemon and elderflower wedding cake will be served at the reception (intended to convey “the bright flavours of spring”, per Kensington Palace) and that the couple has specified a dress code of uniform, morning coat or lounge suit, or day dress with hat.

Now it’s time to take a closer look at the historic setting of Frogmore House, where the evening reception for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle—who at that point will be husband and wife—will be held.

The couple are to marry in St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle at 12 p.m. GMT, and later that day Queen Elizabeth II will host a lunchtime reception for the 600 or so wedding guests in the grand St George’s Hall. (See Prince Harry and Meghan’s beautiful invitations!)

But it’s at Frogmore House’s more intimate reception that evening, hosted by Prince Charles for about 200 of Harry and Meghan’s closest friends and family, at which the newlyweds will truly be able to relax and enjoy themselves.

Frogmore House is about half a mile south of Windsor Castle, and is a beautiful Grade-I listed country estate that dates from the 17^th century. It has been a royal residence ever since it was bought by King George III for his wife Queen Charlotte, who used it as a country retreat in which she and her daughters could pursue their pastimes such as painting and needlework.

Charlotte had a particular interest in the craft of botany, and during her lifetime oversaw the creation of woods, lakes, glades, follies and bridges in the land surrounding Frogmore House, which had previously consisted only of flat marshland.

Since then, the extensive grounds have become one of the estate’s most notable aspects. They are home to more than 4,000 trees and shrubs, as well as the 13^th-century-Italian-style mausoleum where Queen Victoria and Prince Albert are laid to rest.

These grounds are already a significant part of Harry and Meghan’s history. It was here, on a sunny winter’s day, that they posed for their official engagement photographs not long after November’s announcement that they were to be married. The photographs were noted for an intimacy not usually portrayed in royal snaps—but the love and tenderness that existed between Victoria and Albert is well documented, so perhaps the gardens of Frogmore House was the perfect place in which Harry and Meghan felt they could reveal this aspect of their relationship.

As for the reception, you could not ask for a more elegant setting than the residence’s interior. We can only imagine the light of a hundred candles dancing on the 18^th-century murals depicting scenes from Virgil’s Aeneid in the Staircase Hall, or the garlands of painted flowers in the Mary Moser Room.

Then there’s the enigmatic Black Museum, which Queen Mary decorated with black papier-mâché furniture (err, perhaps the reception will only see Harry and Meghan ducking in here for a moment’s brief respite) and the Britannia Room, which commemorates the interior of the Royal Yacht Britannia after it was decommissioned in 1997. It was this yacht, as it happens, on which Prince Charles and Princess Diana took off on their honeymoon tour of the Mediterranean in 1981.

Sadly, we’re unlikely to get a real glimpse into Harry and Meghan’s evening reception, as this event will be a much more private affair than the day’s earlier celebrations. Still, at least now we can form a picture of where the happy couple will be as their wedding day draws to a close.

Even though Marcia Clark left the district attorney’s office shortly after the O.J. Simpson trial, she never gave up her interest in crime and the perpetrators who commit it. In fact, she tells Parade.com, “Hi, I’m Marcia. I’m a true-crime addict. I mean, I really am, and I have been so since I was a little kid.”

After exiting the D.A.’s office, Clark segued to a career as a legal analyst and author, writing the 1997 memoir Without a Doubt and then becoming a fiction writer with the series of Rachel Knight novels about a prosecutor in the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office, and the Samantha Brinkman series, featuring a woman who is a defense attorney.

But last year’s airing of The People vs. O.J. Simpson brought renewed interest in the legal eagle and people approached her with a variety of offers for speaking engagements and projects, among them an offer to do A&E’s Marcia Clark Investigates The First 48, in which she examines some of America’s most shocking crimes that have remained unsolved or ended with controversial outcomes.

“That was like the dream job come true because it’s everything that I would want to do in this genre,” she says. “But, I thought, ‘If I do a show like this, I want it to actually have a point.’ It’s not just a rehashing of the freakiness of this crime or whatever. I want to enlighten people, I want to be able to show them, explain to them, how a case works, how the justice system works, theoretically shine a light on injustice in these cases, and that’s why we choose the ones we did. So, it was like the perfect storm. It was, ‘How can I turn this down?’”

The seven-part series premieres with a look at the the death of Casey Anthony’s daughter Caylee. It will be followed by the murder of actor Robert Blake’s wife Bonny Lee Bakley; the disappearance of Drew Peterson’s wife Stacy; the shocking death of Federal Bureau of Prisons intern Chandra Levy; the fatal shooting of Run D.M.C member Jam Master Jay; the Billionaire Boys Club’s obsession with money and power that may have turned to homicide; and the suspicious death of Rebecca Zahau at the Spreckels Mansion.

“This series feels like a continuation of a mission I’ve been on my whole life,” says Clark. “To discover the truth, bring that truth to light and seek justice has always been a driving force for me. I couldn’t be more excited or more honored to be a part of it.”

When you stepped away from the district attorney’s office did you ever consider a different career?

Oh, no. I was interested in true crime when I was four years old. So, it didn’t stop. I left the D.A.’s office, but I was still always investigating, reading about cases, writing about cases, commenting on cases. I was on cable shows all the time, and for a while, I was a substitute host for Rivera Live about cases of the moment. So, no, it never stopped.

Why is it The First 48? Why that number?

The First 48 is a show that’s been on A&E for many years, and they picked that because it’s an axiom of investigation that if you don’t solve a case in the first 48 hours, your chances of solving it to drop to 50 percent. So, we’re a spin-off of that original show.

You’re a self-professed crime addict. Why do you think there’s such a preponderance of interest?

I guess that would have to be a question that everybody answers for themselves. I can’t speculate about what other people see in it, though, I feel like I am other people. You know what I mean? I’m everybody. So, I can say, for me, it’s always fascinating to see what people do and why they do it, and the ultimate in terms of what people do are these horrible crimes.

Committing murder is something that’s outside the realm of most people’s experience. And so, there’s a fascination with how did that happen, why did that happen, and, I think, the fascination with solving these puzzles has been an enduring one throughout the centuries. If you look back at Greek tragedy, you have this examination of what we do and why we do it. The ultimate act of murder is the perfect example of that.

Do you actually think that you can go back and find information that the police didn’t?

This is not that unusual. The police do an amazing job of picking up everything that they can in time for trial, but it’s invariable that some things get missed. A perfect example of that is Casey Anthony, where the police expert who examined the family desktop computer missed the fact that a search was conducted for foolproof suffocation shortly before Caylee Anthony died. They missed it because they searched one browser and not another.

Well, the defense expert did find it, and Jose Baez wrote about it in his book, and said, “Yes, foolproof suffocation was a subject that was searched on the family computer, but it was searched at 1:51 p.m., when George Anthony could still have been home before he would go to work at 3 o’clock. So, their theory was, in his book, that George Anthony did that search because he was thinking about committing suicide.

We got into it, did the research, and investigated that and discovered, with the help of computer experts, that actually, the program for the timing of that search was wrong, and the actual timing of that search for foolproof suffocation was 2:51 p.m., when George was gone, and Casey Anthony was home alone in the house. So, it could only have been her who conducted that search, and we know it was not for the purpose of committing suicide because we know it happened to Caylee.

Then, we discovered something that the police did not know at that time. I think it’s because computer experts for police departments were a new phenomenon back then, so they just weren’t as hip as they are now.

We discovered that Casey had been arrested by the police 31 days after Caylee was missing. But, what they did was they came and they spoke to her, they got a statement from her about her. Supposedly, the baby was with the nanny Zenaida Gonzalez — Zenny the Nanny, they were calling her — and Casey theorized three different places that the baby could be with Zenny. They took her to each of those three places and proved that they were impossible: One was a retirement home, another one was an apartment complex where no one had heard of her, and so on.

It wasn’t true. They interrogated her after they discovered she was lying about her employment as well, and then they took her back to the house and left her there while they figured out what to do next. During those four hours, her search history that included foolproof suffocation was deleted. So, none of that was known to the police. We found that out in the course of investigating.

Have all of the cases you look at been to trial?

No.

So, there is a possibility that you could provide the police with information?

Yes. I’m crossing my fingers because that’s what we hope for. I have a mission. That’s why I love this show and that’s why this was the best possible fit for me. I have a mission and that mission is to prove the truth, to bring justice, to acquit the wrongly convicted, to convict the ones who did it, and to bring all of the effort that we can to shine a light on the evidence that we uncover and, hopefully, get the police to take a second look at these cases.

Do police departments like this or does it show them up in a way that makes them not want to cooperate? What’s the working relationship like with the PDs, or does it depend on the particular police department?

It’s as you surmise. It depends on the police department. Some are very happy to get anything. They understand that they have limitations in terms of time, money, and resources. They can’t find everything. When a film crew comes in, and we’re not the police, we’re a non-threatening entity, and we come in, and we look, and have a chance to find things that sometimes people hide from the police. Not even necessarily because it makes them look guilty. They’re just afraid to talk to police. It just happens.

So, there are those who are going to be very happy to cooperate and get what we give them, and others who might be a little reluctant to accept the help. But, I’m hopeful that, overall, the most important thing is justice and that they’ll see that and understand that we’re just trying to help.

Any concerns about a possible lawsuit? I think Cold Justice had a lawsuit from somebody who didn’t like what was found.

With Cold Justice, I am aware. Look, it happens that you uncover information and it hurts one person or another. It makes them look bad, guilty, if you will, and when that happens, people are going to get unhappy with you. But, you can’t not investigate. You can’t be afraid to tell the truth because of that. You have to still go after the case, investigate, do it fairly, and honorably, and the truth is what it is.

Will you be writing more books?

I’m actually working on a new series, the Samantha Brinkman series, which is about a criminal defense lawyer. I’m on the fourth book of that series, so it’s my eighth novel.

Marcia Clark Investigates The First 48 premieres Thursday, March 29 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on A&E.

Music legend Paul Anka was just a teenager when his song “Diana” became a #1 hit in 1957. Since then, the singer/songwriter has penned over 500 songs including iconic hits like “Put Your Head On My Shoulder”, “My Way”, and the famous theme song from The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Anka’s musical contributions have been performed over 100 million times and have made him the only artist in history to have a song in the Billboard Top 100 during seven consecutive decades. I caught up with Anka to discuss his non-stop career, upcoming Las Vegas shows and his advice for making creative dreams come true.

Listen to the conversation with Paul Anka here.

A constant collaborator who has never hesitated to cross-genres to make great music, Anka was in the studio working on a new record with Drake when I cornered him. After decades of music making, he has no plans to take a break from his work, because he doesn’t consider it work at all.

“I don’t really have a job. I don’t work. This is my passion,” says Anka about his music.

The man, whose 2013 autobiography My Way highlights an extremely star-studded creative journey, has also learned that while the writing process can be cathartic and you might have an idea of the direction your music will take you, the audience is absolutely a key piece of the magic.

”There’s a huge black hole in front of you and you don’t really know until you’re in touch with people, or you sing for them, the effect that you’ve had on their lives. And that’s really what’s kind of transcended into my appearances and why I still work.”

While making his debut at the Wynn Las Vegas, Anka notes that his history with the company goes back to his early days performing at the Golden Nugget and the Mirage. “So I’m very excited about working there, that kind of completes the circle in terms of my relationship with that company. So we’re ready for it. We’re just getting the music ready. It’s going to be very eclectic in the sense that it’s going to be a lot of the original stuff that I wrote for myself, a lot for other artists that I’ve written for— in fact right now I’m in the middle of the new record, believe it or not, with Drake. And I think we might have it out by the time May comes around.”

Of course Vegas shows require artists to leave a little time for audiences to try their luck in the casino. That means some creative editing for the hit-maker. Chuckles Anka, “If you’re going to do six decades where I’ve been successful, I’ll be singing everything very quickly in a quicker tempo.”

What advice would Anka give those who are trying to follow their creative dreams? ”Don’t give up on that dream and don’t stop believing in yourself.”

“You know a lot of us that have been fortunate enough to be in the business— we’re not born sophisticated. And when we’re given that gift, as I have been, I feel there’s always somebody better out there. Never stop being a student, because ego is the big enemy. And in terms of yourself, you’ve got to…put the mileage in, and put in a lot of hours and days, and what have you, because it’s just not going to happen when you fall out of bed. You’ve got to put [in] a lot of hours to find out who you are, what you’re about, so you can feel confident in that, because when success does hit you, you don’t have full control of yourself. You’re just kind of crawling along that voyage in the hopes that someday you get wise enough and old enough that you know how to deal with success. But initially, you’ll find out who you are, feel who you are. And keep after it— get in the ballpark. And if you’ve got it, if you’ve really got something, even though you know good is the enemy of great, somebody will find you, as long as you’re in the ballpark.”

Great advice from the man who seems to always know how to hit it out of the park.

Get ticket information for Paul Anka at the Wynn Las Vegas.  

Find more Paul Anka music on iTunes and Amazon Music.

Follow Nancy’s conversations on Apple Podcasts and Facebook. 

Nancy Berk, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist, author, comic and entertainment analyst. The host of the showbiz podcast Whine At 9, Nancy digs a little deeper as she chats with fascinating celebrities and industry insiders. Her book College Bound and Gagged: How to Help Your Kid Get into a Great College Without Losing Your Savings, Your Relationship, or Your Mind can be seen in the feature film Admission starring Tina Fey and Paul Rudd.