After Barbie Ferreira saw her character’s presence notably whittled down in Euphoria Season 2 amidst reports of behind-the-scenes drama, the actress announced she would not be returning to the HBO series for Season 3. In an August 2022 Instagram post, Ferreira revealed that she was leaving Euphoria. In the brief message she provided no reason for the exit nor did she thank creator Sam Levinson for her time on the show, which has reignited rumors that the two didn’t get along on set.
“After four years of getting to embody the most special and enigmatic character Kat, I’m having to say a very teary-eyed goodbye,” Ferreira wrote (via Deadline). “I hope many of you could see yourself in her like I did and that she brought you joy to see her journey into the character she is today. I put all my care and love into her and I hope you guys could feel it. Love you Katherine Hernandez.”
During Euphoria‘s Season 2 run, Ferreira has denied that there’s tension between her and Levinson despite her character taking a noticeable backseat. However, a behind-the-scenes report from The Daily Beast claimed that Ferreira stormed off set during the troubled production:
Adding fuel to the fire is a persistent rumor about tensions between some cast members and Levinson—specifically Ferreira, who allegedly butted heads with Levinson over some elements of the direction of her character. The talks are said to have gone south, with Ferreira allegedly walking off set and Levinson cutting back her screen time. These strains were also referenced by the Euphoria leaker, who claimed that HBO wasn’t all that pleased with the direction the season had headed.
Of course, the only person who knows why Barbie Ferreira quit Euphoria is Barbie Ferreira. That said, her exit does arrive after a notoriously difficult production for a season that saw her character get pushed into the background. It’s hard to ignore the math on that one.
This story was originally published on HistoryBuff and first appeared on 8.16.16
I’m pretty positive that Edgar Allan Poe had (has?) the power to travel through time. Hear me out on this one.
It’s not just the well-known circumstances of his life — orphaned at a young age, father of the mystery novel, master of cryptology, maestro of the macabre. Nor am I referring to the head-scratching details of the days leading up to his death: how he was found on the street near a voting poll wearing someone else’s clothes, and during his subsequent hospitalization, he was alleged to babble incoherently about an unidentified person named “Reynolds.”
And I won’t even get into the confounding reports of a nameless figure who, for seven decades, would show up to Poe’s gravesite in the early hours of his birthday with a glass of cognac and three roses.
Tragic and curious, yes, but hardly evidence that the acclaimed horror writer could transcend the limits of space and time. No, my time travel theory concerns the author’s creative output, which you’ll soon see is so flukishly prophetic as to make my outlandish claim seem plausible — nay, probable!
The proof is in the pudding, and the pudding is a loosely linked map of flesh-eating floaters, crunched skull survivors, and primordial particles. OK, here we go…
Exhibit A: “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket”
Published in 1838, Poe’s only completed novel details a mutiny on a whaling ship lost at sea. Out of supplies, the men revert to cannibalism, drawing straws to elect a sacrifice. A boy named Richard Parker draws the shortest straw and is subsequently eaten.
Now here’s where it gets weird(er): In 1884, 46 years after the novel’s publication, four men would be set adrift following the sinking of their yacht. Shipwrecked and without food, they too would go the survival cannibalism route, electing to kill and eat a 17-year-old cabin boy. The boy’s name: Richard Parker.
The extraordinary parallel went unnoticed for nearly a century, until a widely-circulated letter from a descendant of the real Parker outlined the similarities between the novel’s scene and the actual event. The letter was selected for publication in The Sunday Times after journalist Arthur Koestler put out a call for tales of “striking coincidence.” Striking indeed.
Exhibit B: “The Businessman”
In 1848, a railroad worker named Phineas Gage suffered a traumatic brain injury after taking an iron spike through the skull. Somehow he survived, though his personality would change drastically. These behavioral changes were closely studied, allowing the medical community to develop the first understanding of the role played by the frontal lobe on social cognition.
Except for Poe, who’d inexplicably understood the profound personality changes caused by frontal lobe syndrome nearly a decade earlier. In 1840, he penned a characteristically gruesome story called “The Businessman” about an unnamed narrator who suffers a traumatic head injury as a young boy, leading to a life of obsessive regularity and violent, sociopathic outbursts.
Poe’s grasp of frontal lobe syndrome is so precise that neurologist Eric Altshuler wrote, “There’s a dozen symptoms and he knows every single one… There’s everything in that story, we’ve hardly learned anything more.” Altshuler, who, to reiterate, is a medically-licensed neurologist and not at all a crackpot, went on to say, “It’s so exact that it’s just weird, it’s like he had a time machine.”
Exhibit C: “Eureka”
Still unconvinced? What if I told you that Poe predicted the origins of the universe 80 years before modern science would begin to formulate the Big Bang theory? Surely, an amateur stargazer with no formal training in cosmology could not accurately describe the machinery of the universe, rejecting widely-held inaccuracies while solving a theoretical paradox that had bewildered astronomers since Kepler. Except that’s exactly what happened.
The prophetic vision came in the form of “Eureka,” a 150-page prose poem critically panned for its complexity and regarded by many as the work of a madman. Written in the final year of Poe’s life, “Eureka” describes an expanding universe that began in “one instantaneous flash” derived from a single “primordial particle.”
Poe goes on to put forth the first legitimate solution to Olbers’ paradox — the question of why, given the vast number of stars in the universe, the night sky is dark — by explaining that light from the expanding universe had not yet reached our solar system. When Edward Robert Harrison published “Darkness at Night” in 1987, he credited “Eureka” as having anticipated his findings.
In an interview with Nautilus, Italian astronomer Alberto Cappi speaks of Poe’s prescience, admitting, “It’s surprising that Poe arrived at his dynamically evolving universe because there was no observational or theoretical evidence suggesting such a possibility. No astronomer in Poe’s day could imagine a non-static universe.”
But what if Poe wasn’t of a day at all, but of all the days?
What if his written prophecies — on the cannibalistic demise of Richard Parker, the symptoms of frontal lobe syndrome, and the Big Bang theory — were merely reportage from his journey through the extratemporal continuum?
Surely I sound like a tinfoil-capped loon, but maybe, maybe, there are many more prophecies scattered throughout the author’s work, a possibility made all the more likely by the fact that, as The New York Times notes, “Poe was so undervalued for so long, there is not a lot of Poe-related material around.”
I’ll leave you with this quote, taken from a letter that Poe wrote to James Russell Lowell in 1844, in which he apologizes for his absence and slothfulness:
“I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass… You speak of “an estimate of my life” — and, from what I have already said, you will see that I have none to give. I have been too deeply conscious of the mutability and evanescence of temporal things, to give any continuous effort to anything — to be consistent in anything. My life has been whim — impulse — passion — a longing for solitude — a scorn of all things present, in an earnest desire for the future.”
Have you ever come across something online that instantly made you smile? That’s what happens when people see Locklan Samples pop up on their Instagram feed. The cute dimple-faced toddler has a rare condition known as uncombable hair syndrome, which results in locks that stick straight up no matter how you try to manipulate them. It also causes the hair to be extremely fragile, so frequent combing can cause it to break off. The syndrome is so rare that Locklan is just one out of 100 people known to have it.
Locklan’s parents spoke with People magazine about how they discovered he was living with this ultra rare condition. Katelyn Samples, Locklan’s mom, explained that when he was born he had a head full of jet black hair, but eventually it fell out and was replaced with peach fuzz. A newborn baby’s hair is often completely different than the hair they end up with by the time they’re toddlers. It’s not uncommon for their hair to fall out in one spot or another, but it’s also not unheard of for their whole head to end up bald while their second sprigs of hair grow in.
Hair can grow back coarser, curlier or a completely different color. In Locklan’s case, his hair went from being jet black to platinum blonde peach fuzz, which eventually grew into hair that stood on end. Locklan’s parents said the color of his hair matched his brother’s hair, so it wasn’t a surprise, but the texture threw them for a loop.
When Katelyn posted pictures of Locklan on Instagram, a stranger messaged her asking if he had “uncombable hair syndrome.” This started Katelyn on a journey to find answers to what was going on with her infant’s hair, and if the condition was something she needed to be concerned about health-wise. Katelyn told People, it sent her into a “tailspin on Google.” Eventually, after climbing out of the Google rabbit hole, Katelyn called her son’s pediatrician to get answers. This turned out to be the first step toward an accurate diagnosis.
Locklan’s pediatrician had not heard of the condition and referred them to Atlanta’s Emory Hospital to see a specialist. It was there they got the diagnosis. Katelyn explained to People, “We went to see her and she said she’d only seen this once in 19 years.” The doctor “didn’t think it was uncombable hair syndrome because of how rare it is, but they took samples and a pathologist looked at it under a special microscope,” and confirmed the diagnosis, she said.
He joins the very small club of people with the syndrome. Thankfully, this condition only affects the toddler’s hair and he is developing normally in all other aspects of his childhood. Katelyn revealed she hardly ever has to wash his hair unless it gets visibly dirty as it doesn’t collect oils at the scalp. Everywhere they go people are fascinated by Lock’s locks and ask to touch his soft tresses.
The family documents their journey on their Instagram account, and have found a support group via Facebook, where Katelyn says “it’s cool to see how other kids’ hair has changed over the years—for some people it does not go away, and for others it becomes a little more manageable.” For now, Locklan enjoys the attention he gets from strangers, and he continues to bring a smile to people’s faces wherever he goes.
There are some people who live under the illusion that everything they say is deeply interesting and have no problem wasting your time by rambling on and on without a sign of stopping. They’re the relative, neighbor or co-worker who can’t take a hint that the conversation is over.
Of all these people, the co-worker who can’t stop talking may be the most challenging because you see them every day in a professional setting that requires politeness.
There are many reasons that some people talk excessively. Therapist F. Diane Barth writes in Psychology Today that some people talk excessively because they don’t have the ability to process complex auditory signals, so they ramble on without recognizing the subtle cues others are sending.
It may also be a case of someone who thinks they’re the most interesting person in the conversation.
For others, it’s a symptom of a disorder. Michelle C. Brooten-Brooks, a licensed marriage and family therapist, writes that excessive talking can also be a symptom of, among other things, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or anxiety.
“Anxiety can cause someone to speak excessively,” Brooten-Brooks writes at Very Well Health. “While many with social anxiety may avoid social interactions, some may inadvertently talk excessively when in social situations out of nervousness and anxiety.”
So what do we do when we’re stuck in a situation where someone just keeps talking? A Reddit user by the name of Spritti33 asked for some advice about how to “politely end a conversation with a person who won’t stop talking” and received some very practical and funny responses from members of the online forum.
A lot of folks pointed out that it’s not impolite to walk away from a person who is incessantly talking because they are being rude by disrespecting your time. Others shared how, in some cultures, there are ways of shutting down a conversation while allowing both parties to save face.
Here are 19 of the best responses to Spritti33’s question, “How does someone politely end a conversation with a person who won’t stop talking?”
1.
“In Flanders we have a word for it, ‘bon,’ and then you say something ‘I have work to do,’ ‘It’s time to go home,’ ‘It’s time to get drinks.’ And people realize the other person wants to leave without being mean,” — ISuckAtRacingGames
2.
“In Ireland we do like a little clap/slap our thigh/clap the person’s shoulder and say ‘Right! Shur look, I’ll let you go…’ as if we’re being polite and letting the other person off the hook, but actually, it’s like get me the fuck out of here haha!” —funky_mugs
3.
“If they keep talking over polite cues, I have found there really isn’t a polite way to exit the conversation,” — Binder_Grinder
4.
“This is so true. People that do this don’t care whether you’re into the conversation or not, they’re talking simply because they want to. I’ve gotten better at just interjecting (even mid-sentence if I’ve already tried everything else) with, ‘I’m sorry, I have to go. (start walking away at this point) It was nice talking to you.’ Don’t give any excuses or reasons for leaving, just do it otherwise they’ll try to talk about your reasons.” — PSSaalamader
5.
“As a teacher, I have learned how to interrupt people who do not leave any pauses when they’re speaking: start nodding and verbally agreeing with them, ‘Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh…’ You can’t interrupt these people, but you can start agreeing while they speak, then raise your voice and say, ‘Yeah, wow, excuse me but I must go,'” — Janicegirlbomb2
6.
“Remember that it is them who is being impolite by talking incessantly about things of no interest to their audience,” — Orp4mmws99
7.
“Source: am a therapist. What you do is recap their last story and in the same breath add a goodbye.
I.e. ‘Sounds like you guys found a bunch of great deals at the mall, that’s awesome! Thanks for meeting with me, you’ll have to tell me more next time we run into each other. It was great to catch up!'” — pikcles-for-fingers
8.
“Just start coughing these days it’ll clear a whole room in seconds,” — Sinisterpigeon
9.
“People who are like this expect folks to just walk away from them while they are talking because that’s the only way the conversation ends. It’s not rude to them, it’s normal. So, it’s entirely okay to say, ‘all right this has been great, see you later,’ and then just walk away smiling,” — Underlord_Fox
10.
“If you can practice this, start to train one of your eyeballs to slowly drift off whilst the other eye remains locked on theirs. That should do the trick,” — The-Zesty-Man
11.
“At 62, I just walk away. My bullshit filter has disappeared,” — Negative_Increase
12.
“You gotta realize that everyone else they talk to just walks away. They’re used to that. They think a conversation is you just talk at someone til they walk away. It’s not weird to them,” — DelsmagicFishies
13.
“I don’t know why some people are so afraid of this. It is not rude. You don’t need to lie. ‘We can speak more other time. Goodbye,’ is fine,” — Kooky-Housing3049
14.
“On a more serious note, I typically do an ‘oh shit’ type of face like I’ve just remembered I had something important scheduled. I say ‘Sorry, what time is it? check the time Ah crap, I hate to cut you off but if I don’t head out now I’m going to be late for ____.’ Then I scurry away like I’m really in a rush. If you’re in a situation where you can’t straight up leave, I swap ‘gotta head out’ for ‘I told someone I’d call them at [time] and they’re waiting on my call’ and then make a fake phone call,” — teethfairie
15.
“‘Wow, you have a lot of opinions about this subject…’ and then never stop angling the conversation back to how weird it is that they’re still talking,” — Ordsmed
16.
“Had a friend who would put his hand gently on your shoulder and kindly say, ‘I love you , but I just don’t care, good (night/day),'” — Think-Passage-5522
17.
“While not exactly polite, my Aunt Sophie had a great way of ending a conversation. When the monologue got too much she would nod her head like she was listening and then at the slightest pause she would go, ‘The end.’ And walk away.
She mostly did it with kids who didn’t realize they were yabbering on about Thundercats too long. (It was me, I was yabbering on about Thundercats too long.)” — theslackjaw727
18.
”Change your stance, instead of facing them head on turn 90° your body language will end the conversation quickly without being rude,” — Zedd2087
19.
“Where possible, I’ve always found it best to tell these people up front that you have somewhere to be 15, 30, 45, etc minutes from now. If that’s not realistic, I’ve found that if you can usually find a gap to say you need to run if you focus on doing only this for 3-5 minutes,” — Pretend_Airline2811
Following the release of its second episode, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law continues to be a fourth-wall breaking legal sitcom that’s not afraid to poke fun at the MCU’s most taboo topics. (See: Captain America’s virginity) This time around, the show made a surprising reference to a sticky piece of Marvel lore: Edward Norton‘s time as the Hulk.
Granted, the MCU films have made reference to 2008’s The Incredible Hulk starting with Mark Ruffalo mentioning that he “broke Harlem” during his first appearance as Bruce Banner in 2012’s The Avengers, obviously, there’s never been a direct mention of the actor switch. As far as MCU canon is concerned, Ruffalo and Norton’s Banner/Hulk are the same person. However, She-Hulk found a clever way to take a jab at the whole thing.
During a scene where Tatiana Maslany’s Jennifer Walters reveals to Bruce that she’s representing Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth), a.k.a. The Abomination, Ruffalo’s green Avenger is totally cool with it because people change. “That fight was so many years ago,” Bruce says. “I’m a completely different person now. Literally.”
While Bruce is technically referring to the fact that he’s the “Smart Hulk” instead of the rage monster he used to be, the line was absolutely a crack about Norton, which Ruffalo has already confirmed to Entertainment Weekly:
“I think it’s really funny. It’s just the reality that we all are often dancing around, but it’s true,” he tells EW. “I actually joked with Ed about this. I was like, ‘It’s like our generation’s Hamlet. Everyone’s going to get a shot at it.’ And there’ll probably be another couple before it’s all over. People will be like, ‘Remember when the Hulk used to look like Mark Ruffalo? Now it looks like Timothée Chalamet.’”
As for Marvel fans on social media, they immediately clocked the Norton gag and here for it. You can see some of the reactions below:
THEY ACKNOWLEDGED THE EDWARD NORTON SHIFT TO RUFFALO AS HULK BY BREAKING THE 4TH WALL BY JEN WALTERS. BRAVO MARVEL, BRAVO.
I love how meta #SheHulk is. The line today from Bruce about how he was “literally a completely different person back then” when talking about his fight with Abomination is so great…
B/c ppl forget Edward Norton played Bruce Banner in 2008’s The Incredible Hulk
Greta Gerwig hasn’t starred in a live-action movie since 2016’s (terrific) 20th Century Women. That’s because she’s been busy with her side gig: writing and directing Oscar-nominated movies like Lady Bird and Little Women (and god willing, Barbie). But Gerwig will make her return to acting in White Noise, the latest film from her long-time collaborator (and Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted co-writer), Noah Baumbach.
Netflix‘s White Noise — which is based on Don DeLillo’s U.S. National Book Award-winning novel of the same name and not the terrible 2005 Michael Keaton movie — also stars Adam Driver and Don Cheadle. It’s tough to make out the plot from the teaser above, but it involves a family “grappling with the universal mysteries of love, death, and the possibility of happiness in an uncertain world” after a chemical spill pollutes the air.
Here’s the official plot synopsis:
At once hilarious and horrifying, lyrical and absurd, ordinary and apocalyptic, White Noise dramatizes a contemporary American family’s attempts to deal with the mundane conflicts of everyday life while grappling with the universal mysteries of love, death, and the possibility of happiness in an uncertain world. Based on the book by Don DeLillo, written for the screen and directed by Noah Baumbach, produced by Baumbach (p.g.a) and David Heyman (p.g.a.)
The recent announcement of Björk‘s new album Fossora was nothing short of a big deal. She’s back today with another announcement, this time of a podcast titled Björk: Sonic Symbolism.
The Icelandic singer released a trailer for the podcast, in which she says, “Most of us go through phases in our lives that take roughly three years, and it is not a coincidence that this is often how long it takes to make an album, a book, or a film. In the conversations on this podcast, me and my friends try to capture which moods, timbres, and tempos were vibrating during each of my 10 albums.”
She added in the press release:
“When I get asked about the differences of the music of my albums, I find it quickest to use visual short cuts. That’s kind of why my album covers are almost like homemade tarot cards. The image on the front might seem like just a visual moment, but for me it is simply describing the sound of it. I try to express it with the colour palette, the textures of the textiles, with what I am holding, the posture I am in, and the angle of it shows its relationship to the world. Also, the emotion of the mouth tries to share the overall mood of the album. Perhaps you can call it some sort of a sonic symbolism? Most of us go through phases in our lives that take roughly three years, and it is not a coincidence this is also how long it takes to make an album or a film. This podcast is an experiment to capture which moods, timbres, and tempos were vibrating during each of these phases.”
The Umbrella Academy fired on all cylinders to pull off a sublime Season 3, which managed to tweak the canon ever so slightly to introduce Elliot Page as Victor Hargreeves in a completely organic way. The show’s got so many individual, intertwined threads in such a juggernaut of a story, but it’s one that could doom itself by repetition in the long run. One can only have so many apocalypses and so much time f*ckery, you know? Largely for that reason, Netflix has decided that the Hargreeves siblings should have one more go to wrap up their stories.
As such, the show will get a fourth and final season, which is a marvelous way to end the streak of deciding not to renew wildly popular, eternally lovable shows after three seasons because a re-up costs too much. And that third season ended with a bit of a cliffhanger by not only solving the Kugelblitz issue but also taking away the siblings’ powers and setting them loose upon the world to experience life afresh. In a press release, showrunner Steve Blackman revealed how happy he is to properly finish:
I’m so excited that the incredibly loyal fans of The Umbrella Academy will be able to experience the fitting end to the Hargreeves siblings’ journey we began five years ago. But before we get to that conclusion, we’ve got an amazing story ahead for season four, one that will have fans on the edge of their seats until the final minutes.”
In a vote of further confidence, Netflix also announced that they’re partnering with Blackman for two other projects (under his Irish Cowboy production company): Orbital, a sci-fi series, and Horizon Zero Dawn, an adaptation of the Sony PlayStation game. So, this is not a cancellation of The Umbrella Academy in any sense of the word; it’s more like knowing that some stories should end at the right time. And at that point, the incredible cast — Robert Sheehan, Tom Hopper, David Castañeda, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Aidan Gallagher, Justin H. Min, Ritu Arya, and more — will go on to broader (and hopefully less apocalyptic) horizons.
Kenny Beats, who has spent a decade producing for the likes of 03 Greedo, Denzel Curry, Freddie Gibbs, Rico Nasty, Vince Staples, and many, many more, has never put out an album of his own, incredible as it may seem. Despite hosting a popular YouTube series based on his experiences with making beats for his rapper friends in his studio, “The Cave,” all of Kenny’s full-length projects to date have been collaborations with those rappers like FM!, Anger Management, Netflix And Deal, or Unlocked.
However, next week, that changes as Kenny drops his debut album, Louie, which he first began teasing on Twitter and Instagram earlier this month. Today, he made the official announcement, revealing the mysterious “Louie” caption with which he accompanied teasers of new beats is the title of his first-ever solo project, which is due August 31 via XL Recordings. In addition, he shared the cover art and tracklist for the album, which does not appear to contain any features — although he could just be keeping those a surprise for his longtime fans.
There really are endless things you could talk with Danny DeVito about, considering the man has been a TV legend, a big screen star, director, mega-producer, and honorary member of One Direction. So how did we wind up talking about snakes with arms, Satan, heartfelt parenting advice, and lipsynching with Michael Douglas? Well, some of that can be explained and some of it is just the flow of a conversation when you’re talking with an icon and trying to ask him something he doesn’t normally talk about.
With the whole parenting thing, it’s natural, DeVito is a dedicated father of three grown children who have, themselves, taken to creative paths much like their parents, DeVito and his wife, Rhea Perlman (Cheers). He’s actually working with two of them on his most recent project, an animated sitcom called Little Demon produced by (among others including DeVito and his son Jake) Dan Harmon for FXX, the home base of DeVito’s other TV family, Always Sunny.
In the show (which debuts tonight at 10PM on FXX), DeVito voices Satan, an absentee father looking to connect with his daughter, aka the anti-Christ (who is voiced by Lucy DeVito, Danny’s daughter). Standing in the way is the child’s mother, who DeVito describes as a Sarah Connor type dedicated to protecting her daughter even as she starts to take after her father in some ways (the mother is voiced by Aubrey Plaza). It’s a show that, true to its wild premise, pushes envelopes in the outrageous ways one might expect from the likes of DeVito and Harmon. But maybe not as far as the Always Sunny guys have pushed DeVito before.
To hear about that, DeVito recounting a legendary (and utterly fucked up) Always Sunny prank, his scene-stealing role in a classic ’80s music video, and a little more about playing the Devil, keep reading.
What do we have there [on your hat]?
That’s a snake in arms.
That’s going to freak me out the whole interview. That’s going to distract me. Snakes. Did you see the video with the snake in the tube that was walking? It was a paralyzed snake that had arms and legs.
Snake with arms is one of [our characters]. Snakey. He’s my bartender. He’s my confidante. He’s my everything. It’s fun.
So, how did Little Demon come to be?
Well, Lucy DeVito, my darling daughter who plays Chrissy, the antichrist in Little Demon — she’s good friends with Darcy Fowler and Seth Kirschner and Kieran Valla who are the creators of the show, and also with Aubrey Plaza, who plays Laura [the woman Satan impregnated 13 years prior]. I can’t remember exactly when, four years ago or something, Lucy called me and said her friends had this idea for a show, would I be interested in listening? And then she pitched the fact that I would play the devil. I immediately said “Yes.”
I’ve always dug Aubrey. I like whatever she does. And I always want to work with Lucy. So we started putting the thing together, the demons — we call Seth and Darcy and Kieran the demons. So I’ll refer to them always as the demons. And they put together a pitch, whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah. We brought it to [John] Landgraf at FX, who I’ve been working with forever.
This whole story is about being a family that’s torn with the devil and the antichrist. Chrissy’s in the middle of Laura and Satan. I want her, she wants her. She’s trying to protect her. And then the pandemic hit. And you realize that animation in the pandemic seemed to go hand in hand because you do everything on this [via Zoom]. I mean, it’d be great to hang out and be together and pitch and do story stuff.
This is our first time producing an animated show. I’ve done many movies and television things. What a learning curve. Amazing what goes on to put an animated show [together]. This is like doing a feature every week almost.
What’s the approach to playing Satan?
Well, it’s complex. There are so many things coming at me [Satan], whether it’s demons who want my shit, or the realms, hell and temptations, and things that I’ve got to deal with in a Tony Soprano way, where there’s a lot of people gunning for me. But needing allies is a real big thing. And when I fall head over heels, which is not hard to imagine, for Aubrey (Laura). [Satan has] had many women.
He’s a bad boy. Women love the bad boy.
The bad boy.
Yeah. You know.
I know. We know. So, when Laura gives birth to the antichrist, I mean, not that I [Satan] haven’t tried before, which I won’t get into because I don’t want to spoil anything down the line in the show. But the idea is that it’s my dream come true. I was looking for a boy, but as Satan says, that future is female. So let’s embrace it and go with it. And I need an ally. And Chrissy is proving to be very formidable. Of course, because she was raised for 13 years by Laura, who is a force to be reckoned with. She’s created this Sarah Connor-esque kind of [character]. She has to be on top of things, knowing that down the pike, this guy [Satan] is coming, and he’s going to show himself or find them.
FXX
I love the family dynamic and the parallels of broken families and stuff like that with the bad dad trying to overachieve in certain ways. Again, that’s really cleverly done.
Yeah. “You’re trying too hard, dad.” That kind of thing.
That domestic relatability, I did not expect that coming into the show and it was nice.
Yeah. It’s a good touch. And these demons — Darcy, Seth and Kieran — they have that in mind. There’s this nugget of turmoil with the family unit, which a lot of us go through. Everybody has their own little things that they have to navigate in their family dynamic. And then it broadens out into the realms of the magic world and these realms that Satan brings into it, which pushes certain buttons that we have to deal with. So we’re having a good time actually pushing that envelope, which I always like in projects. I always like it when we are going to tread on things that are not going to make everybody comfortable.
Well, obviously, Always Sunny.
Yeah. Just go. You want to shoot me in the back of the head and take part of my memory away, or I fall down? I always say to them, the Sunny guys, take it as far as you they’ll let you. And Landgraf and FX have been very, very good about all that. We once in a while, run into things. There was one show that we didn’t do. That was a joke that they did for me. It was an April Fool’s joke. “I’ll do anything, basically,” I said to them. Come out of a couch naked. You do this, you get slimed, whatever it is.
They once put me in a situation that was like, I was in jail being raped by various inmates and I was at the end of my rope. This was not recent. This was a while ago. Somewhere in the middle. And I got a script that my assistant said, “Oh, the guys, Charlie and Glenn and Rob called up this morning.” I was going to work that day. We were going to read through. He said, “Well, they’re changing it up. They’re doing this one first instead of that one. So you should read it.” And I thought, “Really? It’s like 10 o’clock in the morning.” I said, “Well, I’m going to work at 1:00.” “No, you should read it. They want you to read it.” So I read it and I go to pick up a hooker and I get busted and I get raped in the jail, in a shower. Then they throw me in the lockup, the big lockup. I get raped by everybody and the cops. And they kept going back to the bar and then Frank would get raped. And I go back to the bar, Frank would get raped. And I said, “What the fuck, man? Call my lawyer.” Right? And then I got to the end of the script. And the last guy that nailed me leans in. Well, Frank is now laying on the ground, [his] face is on the ground. He’s been fucked by every… And the guy leans down and he says, “April fools, bitch.” And I realized it was April 1st. They wrote this script in order to break my balls.
The amount of craft and time that they put into that, that’s love. To put that much time into something, that’s love.
It’s love. They love me. I called them up. They were all on the call, laughing their asses off. And then we went and did some other crazy show.
Your daughter’s involved in Little Demon, your son is also a producer, right?
Right.
With your kids working in the industry, how anxious does that make you? How much do you offer as far as advice?
Our kids are all our treasures. I have a couple of things, adages. If you raise your kids right they leave you. That’s one of them. And the other one is, when your kid is born, it’s like birth and death. You die and the I, the id, and everything, all the focus goes on your children. I have three great kids and they were raised here in Hollywood. They went to school in the valley. They’re great, great kids. Oh, Lucy was always the actress. I mean, even in kindergarten, grade school. And Jake did music, all kinds, was a movie buff, loved the movies. They all went to different colleges. Gracie, my middle daughter, is a painter. She’s an artist.
Every moment, a parent has anxiety about the well-being of their children. That’s it. I mean, that’s what you live for. Basically, you want to create, and you want to do your thing and you are yourself and you keep that and you embrace them. And you know that you will try to be always there. I’ll be there, try to be there. And they go off and do their thing.
In Lucy’s case, we’ve worked together several times. We’ve always done things. When she does an audition, we’ll talk about it or whatever. And it’s always been that way. And Jake was riding a dolly when he was a little boy. When I was doing Matilda, he was nine. He was always there. In fact, Lucy and Gracie brought me the book of Matilda when we started reading chapter books. That’s how I got introduced to Roald Dahl’s work. Rhea being in Cheers, they were always on the set. They were always in the middle of all that. So it’s all born in the trunk, born in that kind of thing. Do you have kids?
No, not yet.
You’re a baby. You’ll get there. It’s a great thing. I mean, if you’re planning on it, if you’re thinking about it, it is a great thing because it’s like you watch it all. I’ll tell you one little story about kids. The girls were born. Jake, I don’t think was born yet. And I was in an airport waiting for the plane. And we had a blanket laid out and I had the kids on the blanket. I had the toys and they were two and four maybe, or maybe younger.
Rhea went to get magazines and some guy came over and he said, “Red Buttons [legendary comic and actor] would like to come and talk to you.” And I said, “No kidding, man?” Red Buttons. I remember him from when I was a kid. And he came over and he said, “I was watching you play with your kids. And I think it’s great that you’re down on the ground playing blocks,” or whatever we were doing. He said, “I’ll give you some advice. I just had the occasion to do therapy with my children.” And he was an old man at the time. And he said, “we figured it out with the psychiatrist that being on the road, doing movies, doing everything, going out of town, I took 15 years away from my kids.” Well, that sunk in. It really hit. And from that bit of advice, I tried to tailor whenever I could.
I have a weird question. I’ve always been fascinated by this. The Billy Ocean music video, when you and Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner played backup singers.
So much fun. The big saxophone.
How does that come together?
Okay, what happened was we were promoting Jewel Of The Nile. They had the Billy Ocean song, “When the Going Gets Tough the Tough Get Going.” This was in the early days of music videos, right? Michael said, “we’re going to go to London when we’re promoting the movie and we’re going to do a music video.” And we went to this really cool rundown place that obviously is always used in London for videos and various and sundry nefarious things. And we went and shot this video and we had so much fun, man. We had a ball doing that and it worked out great. I haven’t seen it in a while.
The moves are amazing. The choreography is great, you were like The Supremes.
We were like the Motown kind of [thing]. Yeah, we did all the moves. We had a great choreographer.
I got to say, I feel like Michael Douglas was the most invested in it. I feel like he was really giving it his all.
He was really into it.
‘Little Demon’ premieres with its first 2 episodes tonight on FXX at 10PM. They’ll be able to stream the next day on Hulu.
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