Category: News

Marjorie Taylor Greene has a knack for pissing people off. Just ask Trevor Reed, the former U.S. Marine who in 2020 was sentenced to spend nine years in a Russian prison after being accused of endangering the “life and health” of a Russian soldier in 2019. Reed, who was recently released after serving two years of his sentence living in horrific conditions, is now back in the U.S. with his family—who have never stopped fighting for him. And, as he told CNN’s Jake Tapper, he’s ready to exact a bit of revenge on lawmakers like Greene, who voted against measures that would help bring him home sooner.

In an interview that aired on Monday night, Reed told Tapper that he looked forward to meeting the many House Republicans who had kept him locked away in a Russian prison cell for so long and how he planned to “go to every single one of their campaigns and thank them personally about that.” While Greene wasn’t the only GOP member on Reed’s sh*t list, she took the brunt of his annoyance as part of a group of Republicans who had slowed down the passage of legislation that would allow him to be released. “How do you justify that?,” Reed wanted to know, before noting:

“That’s embarrassing to me that anyone that represents the United States would vote against something like that. I’m sure that the Russians loved that. I’m sure that they’re all big fans of all of those congressmen who did that. That’s completely unacceptable to me. it’s embarrassing. And I better not see that ever happen again to any other Americans because I promise that I will be at every single campaign that that person runs for the rest of their life to tell everyone that they did that.”

Joey Reed, Trevor’s dad, is just as bothered by Greene and what he describes as “her cronies and that small group of idiots.” Like his son, Joey is also a former Marine, and told Tapper that he was disappointed with the way the service branch handled his son’s imprisonment.

“We heard nothing from Marine Corps,” Joey Reed said. “Not a single representative from the Marine Corps. No Marine Corps groups.”

As Paul LeBlanc wrote for CNN:

Ultimately, Reed was returned to the US as part of a prisoner swap in exchange for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian smuggler convicted of conspiring to import cocaine. The US commuted his sentence.

“We need to do absolutely everything we can, as Americans, to advocate for those Americans who are being held illegally overseas and do every single thing we can possible to get them out,” Reed told CNN.

You can watch Reed’s full interview here.

(Via CNN)

For Time’s annual 100 Most Influential People issue, rapper Jack Harlow penned an essay about his buddy Pete Davidson and his comedic craft. Though the two had been online friends for months before their official in-person meeting, the two officially linked up for the first time before Harlow’s appearance on Saturday Night Live last year.

Since then, the two have remained close, and Harlow considers Davidson one of his biggest inspirations.

“Pete’s appeal to the world has everything to do with his authenticity,” wrote Harlow. “He doesn’t try to hide the person that he is. It’s a classic recipe for success and connection. I would consider myself truthful, but being around Pete makes me want to continue to reach even further for the realest version of myself.”

Harlow’s essay coincides with the season finale of SNL‘s 47th season, which marked Davidson’s last show as an SNL cast member. Ahead of his SNL swan song, Davidson took to Instagram (by way of Dave Sirus), saying, “I got to share so much with this audience and literally grow up in front of your eyes. We were together through the good and the bad, the happiest and the darkest of times.”

Jack Harlow is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music.

The late, great John Candy is Canadian royalty, and the favorite actor of another notorious Canuck, Ryan Reynolds. In the latest episode of David Letterman’s Netflix series My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, Reynolds revealed how far his appreciation for the Home Alone and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles actor goes.

“Growing up, I had a real obsession, quite genuinely, with John Candy. And I still do. Steve Martin, a lot of the guys that came out of SNL,” Reynolds said. “If I’m flummoxed in a scene or I can’t figure out a way in, I will just copy them. That sort of [Martin’s character] Neal Page, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, kind of aggressively unimpressed, kind of over-it character. I just love that, I can never get enough.” Reynolds added that in John Hughes’ 1987 comedy, Candy reads a “non-fiction soft porn” book called The Canadian Mounted, which he had recreated for Deadpool and Deadpool 2:

“It’s supposed to be this non-fiction soft porn, basically. One of those sorts of trash, way sub-Danielle Steel. We’re talking nasty. He reads it in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. And I have that book. Not the exact one he’s holding but I had it remade for Deadpool. I’m carrying it under my arm in a number of scenes. I don’t think anyone’s ever actually seen on camera, but it’s just those little things that you try to never forget those people that have helped you grow you where you are.”

Of course, Reddit caught it. But now everyone can be reminded of Candy’s greatness (and to watch Uncle Buck tonight).

(Via Comic Book)

The Better Call Saul Lie Detector Test is a weekly recap of the major events of the final season, separated out by their apparent truthfulness at the time. This is not one of those recaps that gets into granular detail about things. It will miss the occasional callback or foreshadowing. But it will be fun. Sometimes, that’s what’s important.

Season 6, Episode 7: “Plan and Execution”

Howard had a great day

This was never going to go great for Howard. There was just no reasonable situation where things played out in his favor. He’s on a short list of characters on Better Call Saul who do not appear, or even really come up at all, in Breaking Bad. There has to be a reason for that. The shows are too good and too thought-out to leave important threads dangling and blowing in the wind. We saw how that worked out for, say, Nacho. It’s one of the reasons that Kim and Lalo are now the most interesting characters on the show. The unknown is thrilling. And terrifying. It’s a lot of things.

And I’ll get back to the ending and Howard’s fate in a second. I couldn’t avoid it even if I wanted to. But I think it’s important to discuss how things got there. Howard was right, eventually, in a couple of ways. He was right in the way he put the pieces together, even if putting them together in front of another person made him continue to look paranoid and manic. He was right in his diagnosis of both Jimmy and Kim at the end, about Jimmy not being able to help himself and the two of them plugging their missing pieces together. And he was right that he didn’t really deserve any of it, even if he does drive a Jaguar with a “NAMAST3” vanity plate. They treated Howard like a supervillain when he was just a putz. It was never fair.

The plan did play out perfectly, though. Once they did the emergency reshoots, with Kim going half-Scorsese on the proceedings. If you’re trying to make your mark look crazy, I mean, getting them to say this out loud is pretty much ideal.

It was all so meticulously planned. We had, among other things:

• Liquid-based amphetamines soaking through his fingers
• Private investigator flim-flams
• Photograph ruses

All strung together perfectly, in order, like a maestro conducting various pieces of an orchestra. Two things become clear in all of this: One, if Jimmy and Kim ever really wanted to use their powers for good, if this wasn’t all so thrilling to them in the moment, the sneaking around and the subterfuge and the naughtiness of it all they could do almost anything; two, even the best-laid plans cannot fully account for a mustachioed agent of chaos.

This brings us to the ending.

I saw this coming

What I am going to do here is just present you with the notes I took as I was watching the last few minutes of the episode, typos and all, to give you an idea where my head was at as it played out…

Lalo sneaks in
Jimmy and Kim are freaking out
Howard doesn’t realize
LALO
KIMS FACE
JIMMYS FACE
SILENCER
HOWARD
LALO WANTS TO TALK
JIMMY FACE
KIM FACE
HOWAEDDDD
LET’S TALK

Which, I think, is both a fair representation of how I felt watching Lalo sneak in to make all these shenanigans suddenly very real and a nice little window into my writing process, to the extent I have one. I legitimately shouted a little. Television is fun.

Kim Wexler got what she wanted

Hoo buddy, she sure did not. This was all fun for so long. She and Jimmy even got a little handsy with each other when it was playing out, a little celebration nooky. The plan worked and they got what they had been working toward all season and then, suddenly… not so much. It’s all fun and games until a charming psychopath slips in and blows your former boss’s head all over your living room floor. People say this constantly.

A few things are worth noting here, and I’m going to do them via bullet points for the sake of efficiency:

• I still don’t think Kim ends up dead, for a lot of reasons, most of them related to Jimmy not being a shell of a person when we meet him in Breaking Bad, but I do think that card for the vacuum cleaner guy who makes people disappear that popped up the other week sure looks more interesting now
• It’s wild to trace this back and see how many potential exit ramps they both blew past that could have prevented this from happening, up to and including Kim literally disregarding an exit to pull a screaming U-turn to follow through with the plan that day
• Rhea Seehorn is very good at acting

All worth remembering as we move forward.

This is the beginning of the end of Lalo

I could be wrong on this and I’m sure someone will yell at me if I am but… was that moment in the sewer, when he heard the click and realized Gus was tapping the phone at the nursing home… was that the first time we’ve really seen Lalo lose his cool? It felt notable, even if it wasn’t the first time. Lalo does not crack like that. He’s cold and charming and suave and patient and surprisingly athletic, and he uses all of those things to create an aura of something approaching invincibility. The man has been doing surveillance alone in a sewer for lord knows how long and seems to enjoy it. As I’ve said before, he’s like John Wick crossed with Danny Ocean. Maybe with a little Bond villain tossed in. He delights me.

But this… this felt like a tiny crack in that exterior, right? Like maybe he’s about to let his emotions cause him to make a mistake? The thing about creating a character who seems invincible is that you have to find a way to slide in little slivers in the armor to make them vulnerable. (Superman, kryptonite, etc.) If Lalo starts to snap a little, the cold and calculating and smiling forcefield of his could weaken, and then suddenly that gun hidden in the superlab becomes a whole thing. Shoutout to Chekhov.

What we don’t know yet is how long this all takes. There are only a handful of episodes left. Lalo can’t have long for this universe. But if this is how it starts, if he gets angry and makes mistakes… that could explain a lot of things.

Hiding in a sewer seems cool

I don’t know. One on hand, sewers are smelly and dark and wet and I do not think I would enjoy hanging out in one for any amount of time at all, even just a minute or two. I am very much an above-ground/dry-land type of dude.

On the other hand, Lalo seemed like he was having fun. And the image at the top of this section made me laugh out loud. There is very little separating him and a ninja turtle in this moment. You know, besides, like, ooze. Still.

The real winner here is Irene

Extended litigation would have taken up to two years, by Howard’s own admission. Everything going to heck in dramatic tweaked-out fashion gets her a chunk of the settlement now, in cash, to enjoy in the remaining time she has. Good. Irene deserves everything. If this show does anything to harm her I might blow up a building.

I bet she will be sad about Howard, though. I do not want Irene to be sad. She’s a sweet woman. I hope one of the last episodes is devoted entirely to her blowing all the money on a fancy Mediterranean cruise. Let Irene live.

There is no going back at this point

Better Call Saul was always kind of two different shows at once: The fun lawyer shenanigans one with Jimmy and the serious drug one with Mike and Gus. The two worlds circled each other a lot and occasionally intersected, but for the most part, stayed in their own lane. That is no longer an option. It stopped being an option somewhere in those closing moments, as early as Lalo appearing in the shadows behind Howard and as late as Lalo depositing Howard’s brain on the carpet. Maybe when he screwed on the silencer.

Either way, welcome to the point of no return. It’s pretty stressful here. And it’s not going to get much less stressful as we press on. Everything is extremely real now, for the characters on the show, of course, but also for us watching at home. It is not a huge leap from here to Jesse getting kidnapped by meth Nazis. We are a lot closer to that than we are Slippin’ Jimmy. Might be time to work on some breathing exercises.

The people who make this show are very good at their jobs

I had chosen this heading already based on a number of things — the camera work when Kim and Jimmy were staging the scene at the bench, the damn Frisbee, the way the show took a throwaway reference to someone named “Lalo” from Breaking Bad and turned it into the most fascinating character on television, etc. — but then I noticed something else.

The title of this episode is “Plan and Execution.”

Plan and EXECUTION

These brilliant bastards went and told us the ending way before it happened. We all saw that and thought, “oh, right, of course, execute the plan,” but they meant, like, an actual execution. It was right there in front of us the whole time. I find this somehow hilarious and perfect and infuriating all at once. These rascals. They must have all been sitting around giggling about it for weeks. Imagine their faces when they came up with it. Full-on ear-to-ear Grinch smiles throughout the room.

Good for them.

This is a lovely and useful GIF

Yup. I suspect I’ll be dropping this one a lot. Has nothing to do with just about anything else on the show, and I respect that me devoting a whole bolded section to it might feel trivial after such a wild and heavy episode, but… also…

Look at him.

Better Call Saul is a pretty good show.

If there is one thing a rap fan will do, it’s criticizing female rappers for outlandish standards they refuse to hold anyone else to. Case in point: City Girls, the fun-loving Miami duo whose music is all about living the high life on someone else’s dime and turning up in the streets, has gotten more than their fair share of criticism that their music isn’t deep enough. While this echoes complaints that other women in hip-hop have made that they aren’t taken seriously enough as artists, City Girls defended themselves in a new interview with Complex.

“I feel like a lot of times, people tend to forget and try to discredit us and say we make bad music,” JT told Complex’s Speedy Morman during their interview. “And I never, ever, ever feel like that. I feel like everything we put out is fun and is a bop.” She took it a step further, insisting that the duo could just as easily switch up for a more socially aware style, but that it wouldn’t suit their true musical philosophy. “It’s not conscious rap, but I could definitely do a conscious rap,” JT insisted. “I feel like our music is for freedom and fun and partying and to make women feel good and to pop they sh*t.”

For what it’s worth, their approach is much more lucrative, as Cardi B once pointed out, reminding fans that when she made emotional, vulnerable songs like “Be Careful” she was rejected, but when she made “WAP,” the song went No. 1 basically overnight. ““When I did ‘Be Careful,’ people was talking mad sh*t in the beginning,” she reminded her fans on Instagram. “So it’s like if that’s what people ain’t tryna hear, then, alright, I’mma start rapping about my p*ssy again.” Meanwhile, Rapsody had an even better take on the “conscious rap” argument, saying that “[artists like] Cardi B makes conscious music — that’s conscious to what she was doing.”

Things are not going well in Russia. Granted, things are better in Russia than they currently are in Ukraine (due to Vladimir Putin’s big, dumb war), but still, it’s all a freaking mess. And the resulting confusion couldn’t be more evident from how the Russian government released a seemingly semi-random list of American public figures who will be permanently banned from having the pleasure of entering Russia. Granted, a lot of the names — like Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Vide President — do make sense when it comes to a list of perceived Russian enemies, given that Russia’s awfully sore about sanctions.

The list truly grew weird, however, with the appearance of the late John McCain, who passed away in 2018 from brain cancer and obviously would never be traveling to Russia in the first place. Then came Morgan Freeman, who was apparently banned because he narrated a clip (alleging “cyber warfare” on behalf of the Kremlin) within The Committee To Investigate Russia, a 2017 project directed by Rob Reiner, also of This Is Spinal Tap and The Princess Bride. Well, we haven’t yet seen a response from Freeman, but Deadline spoke with Reiner, who went the satirical/sarcastic route:

The veteran filmmaker, who was a surprise inclusion on a list published by Russia over the weekend, quipped to us: “No comment. Except to say that I’m heartbroken and will have to live with the disappointment.”

Yup, it’s time to adjust those (nonexistent) vacation plans. Then again, there’s probably no one heading into Russia for fun and pleasure these days, and this (confusing) list won’t help future tourism one bit. And the Kremlin sure can hold a grudge.

(Via Deadline)

Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers was one of the year’s most anticipated albums. Now that it’s out, it has unsurprisingly dominated the charts, landing at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with the biggest streaming week of 2022. It’s Kendrick’s fourth No. 1 album — even more impressive when you consider that it was his first album in nearly five years, with DAMN. releasing in 2017. Perhaps just as impressive is the fact that every song on the 18-track album has entered the Billboard Hot 100, a feat last accomplished by Drake with Certified Lover Boy at 21 tracks and J. Cole’s The Off-Season — which only had 12 tracks.

Of those, four landed in the top 10, making him one of seven artists to accomplish this feat (including Bad Bunny, Drake, Future, J. Cole, Juice WRLD, and Lil Wayne). While Jack Harlow held down the No. 1 spot for the third week with the frothy “First Class,” Kendrick took No. 3 with “N95,” No. 5 with “Die Hard,” No. 7 with “Silent Hill,” and No. 8 with “United In Grief.”

Meanwhile, the only other artists to have charted more than 13 songs are Drake, with the aforementioned 2021 release and with 2018’s Scorpion; Post Malone, who landed 14 tracks with 2019’s Hollywood’s Bleeding and 2018’s Beerbongs & Bentleys; and Lil Uzi Vert, who got 13 Eternal Atake tracks on the list in 2020. For a full list of Kendrick’s Mr. Morale Hot 100 rankings, see below courtesy of Billboard.com.

Hot 100 Rank, Title:
No. 3, “N95”
No. 5, “Die Hard,” with Blxst & Amanda Reifer
No. 7, “Silent Hill,” with Kodak Black
No. 8, “United in Grief”
No. 11, “Father Time,” feat. Sampha
No. 13, “Rich Spirit”
No. 16, “We Cry Together,” with Taylour Paige
No. 19, “Worldwide Steppers”
No. 20, “Count Me Out”
No. 22, “Purple Hearts,” with Summer Walker & Ghostface Killah
No. 23, “Savior,” with Baby Keem & Sam Dew
No. 33, “Rich (Interlude)”
No. 40, “Mr. Morale,” with Tanna Leone
No. 41, “Crown”
No. 47, “Auntie Diaries”
No. 51, “Savior (Interlude)”
No. 55, “Mirror”
No. 59, “Mother I Sober,” feat. Beth Gibbons
No. 77, “The Heart Part 5” (down from its No. 15 debut)

Presumably as part of his conversion to becoming a Republican — or at least looking like he’s becoming a Republican — Elon Musk is now complaining about birth rates in the United States, which the Tesla CEO feels are too low. Of course, bringing up this subject couldn’t come at a worst time as the Buffalo mass shooter was acting upon replacement theory, which Musk seems to be toying with here. It sounds like Dogwhistle Central.

“USA birth rate has been below min sustainable levels for ~50 years,” Musk tweeted before bragging about his virility. “Contrary to what many think, the richer someone is, the fewer kids they have. I am a rare exception. Most people I know have zero or one kid.”

Musk appears to be playing a game here, and he’s being thoroughly roasted on social media for using replacement theory as a trolling mechanism. The Buffalo shooter wasn’t the first to cite the racist theory in his manifesto, and Musk is arguably bringing it up to his millions of followers, which is a recipe for disaster. There’s also the issue of Roe v. Wade being overturned on the line, and Musk is stirring up that debate by backing right wing anti-choice theories that the U.S. isn’t making enough babies. These are very delicate and incendiary topics that Musk is gleefully juggling instead of treating them like the live grenades they are.

For some background, Musk’s troll game has been cranked up to 11 after being accused of allegedly propositioning a Space X employee for sexual favors, so the question might not be, “Does Elon Musk really believe in replacement theory?” Instead, it could be “What new, damaging story is he trying to distract from now?”

You can see the reactions to Musk’s birth rate tweet below:

(Via Elon Musk on Twitter)

For a series like Star Wars, where the smallest plot point can have an unnecessary amount of backstory, it’s kind of remarkable how much we still don’t know about Obi-Wan Kenobi. Here’s a character who appeared in the first six movies and had a starring role in four of them (and even got Sir Alec Guinness a Best Supporting Actor nomination for the original Star Wars) and we really don’t even know what planet he’s originally from. (Yes, a quick internet search will bring up the planet of Stewjon. If you read a little further you will learn this was invented in 2010 when Jon Stewart asked George Lucas this very question and then Lucas inverted Stewart’s name.) We don’t really know anything about Obi-Wan Kenobi other than he seems like a nice man and, at one point, was a great Jedi Knight. When Deborah Chow (who directed all six episodes) and her writers tried to crack this story, that’s what they were always drawn back to: Who, exactly, is Obi-Wan Kenobi? (Of course, once again played by Ewan McGregor.)

Starting this Friday, we are going to find out.

Before this interview, and as I type this, I have seen as many episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi as you have (unless you work for Lucasfilm, then I assume you have seen more), so the chance for any spoilers is pretty low. Though (as we posted last week), Chow does confirm that the droid in the trailer shooting at Obi-Wan is not fan-favorite 4-LOM, but a new droid named 1-JAC.

Ahead, we spoke to Chow about the upcoming series and she told us what she wanted to accomplish and why it’s been so difficult to get the story right about this period in the life of Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Why is it so hard to crack an Obi-Wan Kenobi story? There was a movie that never happened, then when this show was starting, the original scripts were scrapped and restarted from scratch. Why is it so difficult with a character that is so beloved?

You know, I think it is because that character is so loved.

I see.

It is this hugely iconic legacy character and we’re also in between two trilogies, and it’s just tough. Everybody knows what happened to this character before and after so you’ve got to figure out how to tell the middle acts of their lives. And, also, we’re starting a series where we’re coming out with a directive, “watch over the boy.” So you have to just…you know what I mean?

Right. That seems like the obvious answer: Well, he’s just hanging out, watching a kid in the desert. What do you do with that?

We don’t want a six-part series of him just watching over the kid for the whole thing. It’s just challenging… it was a challenging story to tell. But I think, for me at least – obviously, when I came on there was development before me – but from the point that I came on, I was grateful actually that they gave us the time and they gave us the support. Because this is the sort of story that you really want to feel confident going into production – that you’ve done everything you can to try to get it right.

He’s hiding from the Empire. Do we learn why he changes his name from Obi-Wan to Ben, but keeps the Kenobi?

I think in a large part of those… there are also questions obviously about Skywalker and keeping that. Those are questions for George. For me, I’m just respecting the canon on all those decisions. But I think for us, if you just think about it in a metaphorical way, which is not really going to answer your question. One of the things with our series that we were trying to do is, in a lot of ways, we were interested in Ben, because we were interested in not just the Jedi, but the man.

I’m glad you said that because, obviously Ewan’s great in the Prequels, but even after three of those movies we still don’t really know much about Obi-Wan personally.

Yeah. I mean that really, for us, both the writer and I, we felt the same way. And actually the more research we did on it and the more we got into it. He is a character that everybody knows and loves, but there really isn’t that much about him. So it was a really interesting thing to take this character that was so beloved, and to have some room actually where we didn’t know every single thing about him. So that was something that we were really, really interested in doing. Really exploring more about the character and having more depth.

The new Obi-Wan comic has a flashback with him as a kid, which even that felt like new information.

I mean, that was definitely our intention, to really have this series be about him first and foremost. And also, him at a point in his life, which is a really interesting point, dealing with everything and the history that came out in Revenge of the Sith, and the prequels, which was a very intense dark period. And then moving forward. So one of the things, I think, the biggest question, and one of the biggest questions we always looked at was how did he go from the warrior standing on the banks of Mustafar screaming, to the sort of the zen and the calm of Sir Alec Guinness in A New Hope. And obviously something happened in that character to change. And I think, in large part, that’s why we felt we had a story to tell.

Does this series allow more after this? I know how long it took for this to get made. But is the door open for more Obi-Wan Kenobi after this? Or is this its own thing and that’s it?

We definitely conceived it as one big story: beginning, middle, and end. And there was no thought of going beyond it. Who knows though, in the future. Obviously, we are in the middle. So there are 10 years before A New Hope, so there are obviously still years to go, but really, for us at this point, we were just conceiving it as this show.

We see 4-LOM in the trailer… Actually, is it pronounced 4-LOM or Four El Oh Em?

It actually is pronounced 4-LOM…

That’s what I’ve always said…

It’s actually not 4-LOM though.

Oh?

It’s different. It is actually a different droid named 1-JAC.

Really? Okay.

Yes. Everyone thinks it’s 4-LOM.

It looks like 4-LOM?

It’s similar.

So it’s like IG-11 and IG-88 situation in that they are similar?

Yes. You’re the first person and the only person to ask that, actually.

Okay, 1-JAC.

1-JAC.

What’s 1-JAC’s deal? Is he a bounty hunter?

That you’re going to have to wait and see.

He looks like he’s bad news.

[Laughs] They usually are.

Well, at least we cleared up the pronunciation of 4-LOM?

I know. But honestly, I will always refer you to Pablo Hidalgo. He knows exactly. He’s your guy. I may not always be correct, so I will always refer you to Pablo. (Who I did ask on Twitter about this and he did give his clarification, “That’s the Canadian way of saying it. Honestly say it however you want. I go by the old Kenner TV ad that spelled it out. “Four-Elloem.”)

One of the episodes you directed of The Mandalorian won an Emmy for cinematography. But there’s something about the Obi-Wan Kenobi trailer that looks even more cinematic than what we saw from the prior series. As far as I know, it’s the same filming technology, but has anything changed to achieve this look?

Oh, that’s great to hear. Thank you. We use kind of the same tools. Amazing stagecraft. So it’s a mixture. It’s some location, some stagecraft, some backlot and some studio. So it just depended on the scene. But it was something I was definitely trying to do. It feels like an epic story to me. So as much as I could, I was trying to make it feel epic. Obviously, I’m incredibly fortunate on The Mandalorian in that Greg Frazier won that cinematography award and he won the Oscar for Dune. So I had a very good cinematographer. You know what I mean?

Right.

And I had a fantastic cinematographer on this one, Chung-hoon Chung, who was amazing as well. So a lot of that is their credit.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

Wet Leg, whose self-titled debut album was released less than two months ago, is already earning a reputation as your favorite artist’s favorite artist. Foo Fighters leader Dave Grohl recently spoke about how much he loves “Chaise Longue” and declared Wet Leg is “about to take over America.” Now, the group also has Harry Styles’ attention, as he swung by the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge and delivered a cover of “Wet Dream.”

Styles and his band keep their rendition mostly faithful to the original recording. If anything, the rock elements of the song are actually amped up a bit here, as the guitars feel a bit more aggressive and forward in the mix.

Wet Leg’s Rhian Teasdale previously told Uproxx of recording Wet Leg, “As soon as we signed to Domino, we went into recording the album, just because of the times. We couldn’t gig. And so the way to make use of the time was to go straight into the studio and record the album. Maybe in the, I don’t know, in the ’80s or whatever, maybe that you could do that. But I know that now it’s certainly like a different landscape. When you get signed, maybe the label will send you on like a little tour so that you can get your material up to scratch, and tried and tested. And we took out loads of random stuff out of a Dropbox folder that we had going, and like, ‘This one? Yeah. This one? This one. Okay, let’s do this one.’ It’s a bit of a different approach.”

While Wet Leg have been getting love from their music forebears, Styles has had essentially the opposite experience lately, as he’s fresh off facing criticism from Mick Jagger.

Watch Styles cover “Wet Dream” above.