2019 was a hell of a year for Kim Petras. Releasing her first full-length project, Clarity, via the rather unconventional strategy of sharing a new track every week, Kim went from opening for rising pop stars like Troye Sivan at the Greek Theater at the end of 2018, to headlining a set at the Shrine Auditorium herself just a year later. And despite the sh*t show that 2020 has turned out to be, with fear and anxiety mounting due to concerns about the pandemic, the 27-year-old pop star is more determined than ever to keep putting out music that’s a distraction and a relief from the worst parts of the outside world.

Releasing her latest, sunshine-y single “Malibu” yesterday to kick off her next era, Petras is clearly entering a phase that will contain some of her most upbeat and brightest work yet. “I just hope it makes people forget about everything that’s going on right now and just takes them into this little pop bubble,” she said of the track, when we spoke over the phone earlier this week. “I hope everybody’s staying safe and sane, I just wish everybody all the best and I’m sending so much love.”

“Malibu” is definitely a love letter of a song, featuring big, bombastic synths and a golden era pop sound that evokes what Kim calls the “superstar-feeling pop” sound. It’s imperial in tone, and breathless in feeling, and a complete 180 from the dark, trap-inflected pop she was leaning toward on Clarity. As the lead track off what will be her formal debut album, “Malibu” sets the bar high, and is the perfect escapist fantasy to lose track of reality inside. While observing the to safer-at-home ordinances in LA as much as possible these past few weeks, I absolutely had to take my car for a quick spin around the block just to hear this in full cruise mode — it’s a perfect soundtrack for that, and a reminder that a more light-hearted future exists out there, somewhere.

Calling me from her own personal quarantine, Kim took the time to break down the timeline of the writing this song — it was actually one of the first tracks she wrote — and what to expect from her upcoming new era, along with how she’s built her career as an independent artist running her own label. Read a condensed and edited version of our conversation below.

What was your headspace when you were writing “Malibu”? Because tonally and sonically it feels a lot different from the Clarity era.

I wrote the initial demo three years ago actually, before I ever put anything out. And ever since then I’ve just been trying to get this song right. With my lyricist, my best friend Aaron who I’m also quarantined with, back in the days we would just write a million songs. So, it just never really came up again. But then friends of mine would be like “Where’s ‘Malibu?’ I love that song!” And people would start hearing about it and I’d get all kinds of questions about it.

So we were like, all right, we’re going to try and get this right and write a new version and write a new riff, and we did and it just started felt really perfect, and felt like exactly what I wanted to do next. Because I don’t feel heartbroken anymore, I feel like I got that out of my system with Clarity. I just wanted to make a song that makes me feel good and makes me want to dance. And make me feel like an ’80s superstar. This is the kind of song that reminds me of Prince and MJ and it reminds me of early Madonna stuff, and Cyndi Lauper and that’s my favorite kind of music.

We got the song down and it sounded like the perfect first single for my next, real first album. We always called Clarity a project and not an album, so now it’s time for a debut album. Especially putting it out now, because I really feel like it’s going to make people feel like they’ve just been to the beach, and make people forget about the bad things that are happening for like three and a half minutes. I couldn’t ask for better timing for this to come out.

I love how it’s such a feeling of escapism. That’s what I always turn to pop music for. What is your own relationship to Malibu itself?

I actually wrote it when I had never really been to anything else but the beach in Malibu. And my imagination of it was so great, but then I was like, ‘Wait, it’s just a bunch of rich people living by the ocean.’ I wanted to write a song about my imagination of it and how I wanted it to feel — I think I just haven’t been to Malibu with the right people. But this song is an ode to my imagination, like how Malibu looks on TV, to somebody who’s from Germany and how it seems in the movies and stuff like that. So it’s really romantic because I’m comparing love to my dream version of Malibu, that’s what the song is all about to me. But I would love for people to make it about anything they want to make it about.

I love that. What else can you tell us about your next era and what “Malibu” is previewing as far as your next body of work?

I feel like it’s a new sound for me. I’m definitely going into that direction of, like, superstar-feeling pop. I’m really excited to make my debut album a concept album. I’ve been working on songs and I’m really excited about this next chapter. I already have the title, and I know what I want it to be, and I definitely don’t want it to be sad. Like this one is not going to be sad. But I think I’m going to be showing a lot of sides that people don’t know about me and also I think vocally, I’ve never been stronger. I’ve never been more capable of high notes and different personas and different tones. I just feel really free now. I’m going to make the music that I started out making music for, now. I think “Malibu” is the first taste of that. And a very exciting first taste to me because it’s the first single. So all my focus right now is going on to “Malibu” and that song, and I think it’s my best song yet, so I’m really excited about it.

Let’s talk a little bit about the impact that releasing Clarity had on your career last year. It was such a high-profile project for you, and it really put you on the map for people who maybe hadn’t heard you yet. How did releasing that project shift things for you?

I’m an independent artist, so for me, really the best way to do this, that I figured out — and I think I was one of the first to figure out — was putting out a monthly song. It’s really amazing what that can do for an independent artist. And I would encourage everybody to do the same thing. I think as a new artist, you can’t make a classic album with a full cycle or anything like that because you don’t have a fan base and you can’t get people excited about you if you don’t have that loyal fan base.

I’ve been so blessed that I did kind of find that right away when I dropped “I Don’t Want It At All.” But my hit is my entire discography, you know? It’s not like there’s one song that made me break through. It’s all the songs combined, it’s constantly putting out stuff and putting up 48 songs over the last few years nonstop. I felt like it was really cool, dropping a song a week with Clarity and it just snowballed so hard. It just helped me to get to this point, and now I’m finally at the point where I can say, ‘Okay, I’m going to put out my debut album and my first legit rollout.’

Not that I’m not going to be releasing songs in an unconventional way, because I love doing that, and I think that that’s honestly the future of music. And for the audience — I think it’s really great for the fans. But I just, I just feel like it’s all been a perfect storm to this point. You know, now I have a fan base, I need to really do the damn thing. For me everything was just building until this point. I just think these days, there’s no guarantees for anything and all you can do as an artist is constantly put out good music and I feel really proud of what I’ve done. But this still feels kind of different. It just feels like a moment for me with this song.

You already started touching on this, but I would love to talk about the fact that you’re a pop star who is also running an independent label with BunHead — which has become a little bit more common, but it’s still pretty groundbreaking. Can you talk a little bit about that aspect of your career and why that’s important to you?

I have always been really inspired by Robyn. I love Robin and she was one of the first people that I remember running their own label — she had Konichiwa Records. I think if I would’ve gone to a major label and I wouldn’t have had a smash hit immediately, I would have gotten shelved or dropped or been in some kind of weird contract. And I just, I knew that I wanted to wait as long as I could, if I ever signed so I would be in the position to sign a deal that was actually good for me and that doesn’t prevent me from dropping as much music as I’m dropping and gives me full creative control. That’s something that my career was made by, dropping songs and not having to worry about oh that’s the weekend Taylor Swift’s album comes out, so I can’t drop it. Or this big artist, or The Weeknd — whatever it was. I just didn’t have a big enough fan base that I would be a priority anywhere. I’ve been burned so many times with signing bad contracts in my life.

I’ve had bad managers since I was 14-years-old that signed my whole life off and left me not making money ever. So now, I’m really lucky because I have great management, and my friends who support me. And even though I can’t pay people big numbers to produce my songs or anything, that’s okay with the people I work with. I really feel like it’s not as important for me to get there, as much as how I get there. I want to get there on my own terms, with my own timing and I have my own definition of success. And I feel very successful. I’m really grateful for the support I’ve been getting from radio stations and people like Radio One and Apple Music and Spotify, so great, without them I would not have been able to do this so I guess it’s only been a few years that I have actually been able to do this. I’m just lucky that the time is right, and social media exists, and you can build your own fan base and do it any way you want it.

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Jason Isbell is gearing up for the release of his upcoming album, Reunions. Ahead of the record’s release, Isbell virtually sat down with Trevor Noah on The Daily Show to perform a track from the album, discuss the record’s themes, and detail how the coronavirus has affected him.

Performing from a barn in his backyard, Isbell gave a soulful performance of his single “Only Children.” While Isbell reared his signature acoustic guitar, the singer was also accompanied by his wife and frequent collaborator, Amanda Shires, on the violin.

Chatting with Noah after his performance, Isbell further detailed the theme behind Reunions, saying he wrote it as a reflection on the years he was struggling with sobriety:

“I went through this period after I got sober, a little over eight years ago, where the person I used to be, I looked back on him with a lot of judgment and disdain. It took me a good six-and-a-half or seven years before I felt, ‘I could be friends with that guy again.’ Where I felt that was safe. Because I didn’t want to forgive myself too quickly for fear of turning back into the person I used to be. Finally, in the last couple of years, I felt comfortable looking back at the music I made then and the relationships I made then and the person I was then, and revisiting that. Going and sitting down and having a conversation with that person and not just hating his guts. Because it was safer to do that. So, when I started thinking of those things and those people, a lot of memories came back and sometimes in the form of ghosts. They came back to me in a way that I’m more equipped now to write about than I was ten years ago when I was falling down drunk and only had a couple of hours a day where I could be productive. Now, I can use the writing skills and the focus that I have to make music that that guy wanted to make ten years ago but wasn’t capable of.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Noah asked Isbell about his experience living in Tennessee and seeing restaurants begin to reopen amid the pandemic. Isbell responded by detailing his thought-out theory for why people around him were so willing to go back to their pre-pandemic lives. “I think a lot of people, in America and everywhere, a lot of people I grew up with and a lot of people that I still know, they see the same things pretty much every day,” he said. “They go to the same jobs, they see the same people.”

But, because Isbell himself chose to instead hit the road and gain new experiences, he’s used to seeing things he’s never seen before: “I think a lot of folks make the mistake of thinking they’ve seen this before because they don’t have a lot of experience with something they have never seen before. They’re not in the practice of experiencing new things. And that scares me.”

Watch Isbell perform “Only Children” and open up about Reunions on The Daily Show above.

Reunions is out 5/15 via Southeastern Records. Pre-order it here.

It’s been over a month now since the the faux-finale of The Walking Dead, and there’s still no date set for the actual finale. Jeffrey Dean Morgan, however, has suggested that that when it eventually airs, it will feel like a mini-movie, but that it may not arrive for several more months.

While that is upsetting in the short them, the long-term view may actually help the ability of The Walking Dead universe to line all of its ducks up in a row, specifically as it concerns the Rick Grimes’ movie. Before the pandemic hit, AMC had essentially lined up 40 consecutive weeks of The Walking Dead content, between the parent series, Fear the Walking Dead, and the two-season spin-off, The World Beyond. However, the architect of The Walking Dead universe, Scott Gimple, still had not yet totally cracked all the details on how and where the Rick Grimes’ movie would fit in, and last we heard, he was still trying to figure out one of two ways he was going with the script.

The pandemic, however, will give Gimple some necessary time to figure that out and slot it in between seasons at the appropriate time, says executive producer Greg Nicotero in an interview with SyFy:

“From what I understand from Mr. Gimple, the script is well underway,” Nicotero said. “I’ve looked at a couple of early drafts, but I haven’t seen anything lately, but from what I understand they’re digging away at it. One thing about this kind of situation is people that work at home… you know, writers… they’re able to take advantage of this time, and it’s a good time.”

“I have a feeling that when people push the play button again, there’s going to be a lot of material that’s going to be ready to go, because everyone’s getting scripts, and getting stuff just right to the point where they can get it ready before you start shooting. I think there’s going to be a lot of busy people, hopefully… hopefully in a few weeks?”

The interview, published yesterday, was recorded a few weeks ago, so by now, Scott Gimple must have all three Rick Grimes’ movies written, along with a map of the next decade of the universe. Right?

In the meantime, AMC announced that The Walking Dead spin-off, The World Beyond, would air in the fall (probably when the 11th season of The Walking Dead would normally air), as would at least some episodes of Fear the Walking Dead. During an earnings call, AMC also stated the the writers were continuing to work on the 11th season of The Walking Dead (and the final season of Better Call Saul), so when production resumes, both of shows should be poised to shoot their next seasons quickly.

Source: SyFy

Spike Lee is staying busy during quarantine. He’s gearing up for the release of his upcoming Netflix movie, Da 5 Bloods, which arrives on June 12 (and stars Chadwick Boseman, Jean Reno, Delroy Lindo, Jonathan Majors, and Paul Walter Hauser). He also dropped a new short film, which he’s often prone to do, on Instagram, and this one’s geared toward a message of survival.

As Lee explained, this movie is titled New York New York because it’s “A Love Lettter To Its People.” The acclaimed filmmaker also appeared on a Thursday night CNN town hall, where he discussed his experience living in the Big Apple during this unprecedented time. “It’s painful when you see there is nobody there,” Lee explained to Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta. “But at the end of the film, that is when we see New Yorkers.”

Over the course of three whirlwind minutes, Lee’s eyes emotionally tours the deserted streets of Manhattan as people buckle down inside to ride out the virus. By the end of the short film, he moves to first responders and views of people on balconies, and the entire project feels like a shout of solidarity. New York City’s risen through the ashes before, and they’ll do so again. Watch Lee’s short film below.

One of the biggest ongoing feuds in the music industry right now is the one between Taylor Swift and her former label, Big Machine. That relationship isn’t exactly a positive one, and it looks like things have taken a strange turn on that front.

Fans have noticed that Taylor Swift’s artist page on Spotify is in a weird state right now. On the artist page, instead of the regular (or deluxe) versions of Swift’s albums released on Big Machine (everything pre-Lover), the page is populated with “Big Machine Radio Release Special” versions of the albums. These versions of the albums feature all the songs from the original releases, but each track is preceded by a commentary track that spans from about a minute to three minutes in length.

As of this post, the Big Machine editions of the albums appear on Swift’s artist page on the desktop Spotify app, but regular versions of Swift’s albums show up on the mobile app, where the Big Machine editions aren’t present at all. On desktop, the normal deluxe edition of 1989 and the “Platinum Edition” of Fearless are shown. The non-Big Machine versions of the albums are still on Spotify, but can only be found on desktop when searching for them directly.

It appears these “Radio Release Special” versions of Swift’s albums started popping up on Spotify in 2018 before re-emerging to take over Swift’s artist page today. In light of all this, fans have taken to Twitter to share their thoughts about the situation, and the common sentiment seems to be that Big Machine and Scooter Braun are up to no good.

It’s not all bad/weird news for Swifties today, though, as Swift announced this morning that a concert special will be airing on TV soon.

Which fast-food burger tastes the best after it travels all the way to your house? That is the question.

Okay, not the question. There are much bigger questions right now. But it’s the question we’re willing to tackle at the end of another long week, during a rough era, in a scary season of our collective existence. That’ll have to be enough for now.

As we adjust to our new locked down lives, we’re gradually becoming accustomed to eating all of our purchased meals at home in a lukewarm state. Sure, drive-thru’s have always been a thing, but in the old days when we ranked our favorite burgers no one was thinking about what they’d taste like after sitting in your car for 15 minutes while you or a delivery driver raced back to your quarantine pals and performed whatever self-sanitization rituals you put yourself and your food through in order to feel clean enough to eat something that someone else touched during a global pandemic. That’s a whole new ballgame.

In May of 2020, the biggest question to ask when ranking fast-food cheeseburgers is “which one travels the best.” Because it turns out, not all delicious burgers stay delicious once they aren’t hot anymore. How a burger is packaged, the quality of the ingredients, how hot it is when it comes off the grill — if it comes off a grill at all –, and the texture of the meat as it cools are crucial factors on what your burger tastes like when you finally eat it.

It’s a whole new ballgame. The past is prologue. So here’s our ranking of which fast-food burgers taste best after being delivered or driven home during quarantine.

Carl’s Jr.

By far, Carl’s Jr travels worse than any other burger. Something about the way Carl’s cooks or wraps their burger results in a cool-down process so quick that you’d have to live directly next-door to one for that mess to stay hot. By the time you unwrap a Six Dollar Burger the thing is a straight-up mess.

WHY?! Is it the box? Is it a local thing? Because I’ve had Carl’s Jr. up and down the entire state of California and it’s ALWAYS been a lukewarm experience. Is it because the person cooking my burger isn’t a person at all, but a giant yellow star with a face and the reason the burger is so cold is that the star takes its sweet time wrapping the burger because it doesn’t have opposable thumbs, just crispy crunchy nubs? Probably that.

The Verdict: Wait until after quarantine. Or just get the chicken stars.

Burger King

Burger King is a solid “I’m being irresponsible during the quarantine by recklessly ordering a ‘just okay’ burger, not reckless like endangering the lives of others”-pick. It’s mid-level reckless. Like buying with stimulus checks, or accidentally forgetting that you ordered weed from two different dispensaries because your placed both orders while high, and now two delivery drivers are on their way and you only have enough cash on you for one of them so you have to slip on gloves, put on a mask, race to the bank, pull out another $60.

I guess what I’m trying to say is: get high and go to Burger King. They’ll serve up a better-charbroiled experience than Carl’s Jr.

The Verdict: Charbroiled done right… ish! It’s better than Carl’s Jr. Does it taste as piping hot as the burger from your local burger joint? Not even close. In fact, go eat there instead. Burger King is rich fam, they’re owned by a freaking king.

McDonald’s

In a pre-COVID 19 world, if you asked me to rank fast-food cheeseburgers, McDonald’s would be at the bottom of the list. But for whatever reason the few times I’ve had McDonald’s while in quarantine — and trust me, this was only because I missed El Pollo Loco by five minutes in one instance, and couldn’t handle the grueling grind of the 23-times-as-long In-N-Out line in the other — they’ve been killing it.

McNuggets have been piping hot, the fries in particular travel well, their ice cream machine mysteriously works for once and isn’t “out of order,” but the cheeseburgers? They’re so good that you’ll actually turn to the person nearest you — which might just be a houseplant…sorry — and say, “Did McDonald’s change shit up or am I going stir crazy?”

The answer to that question might very well be “you’re going stir crazy,” but, so long as we’re in quarantine, there is nothing wrong with living that truth. A quarter pounder travels excellently, the insulation melts McDonald’s plastic-y American cheese by the time you get home, and the beef patty holds heat decently. Skip the Big Mac though, that middle bread is useless after an 8-minute car ride.

The Verdict: Hey not bad, look at you McDonald’s! Quarantine has made some of us better people, the same applies to the old burger flippin’ clown.

Jack in the Box

Maybe it’s because Jack in the Box is a stoner paradise, or maybe it’s just because I have mad respect for them for choosing a literal faceless corporate stooge as the avatar of their company, instead of a creepy King, a little girl in Pigtails, a totally not mean or threatening clown, and an evil living chicken star, but gotdamn does Jack in the Box travel well. The paper boxes the burgers are packed in is so thicc that I’m convinced it traps the heat inside.

Hitting Jack in the Box can be tricky though, some of the burgers on their line are wrapped in paper instead of boxes, and I can’t attest to the quality of those burgers. From what I can tell it’s the special burgers like the Buttery Jack or the Bacon Triple Cheeseburger that get the box treatment. You could always ask the drive-thru person if your burger comes in a box, you know, in case you want them to KNOW you’re insane rather than just finding out by looking at your unshaven face and unruly quarantine hair.

The Verdict: Better from the drive-thru and very solid when driven home. Don’t even bother ever eating inside a Jack in the Box again. Everything on that menu is better from the bag.

In-N-Out

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Sure, third place isn’t so bad, but this in In-N-Out we’re talking about folks. The burger chain that people argue over, a cheeseburger so delicious that it has inspired a coastal rivalry every bit as intense as Biggie vs. Pac. Having to eat a drive-thru Double-Double from In-N-Out has us looking at the beloved chain the same way the Rebel Alliance looked at Chewbacca at the end of A New Hope. Which is to say, if we were handing out medals to the best burgers on this list, we’d let In-N-Out stand with the other two winners, but we wouldn’t go as far as to give them a medal.

So what’s the problem? Traditionalism. In-N-Out is so obsessed with their own “California in the 50’s” aesthetic that they refuse to advance their packaging beyond simple paper wrappings. I can’t believe I’m saying this but In-N-Out? That’s some boomer-ass shit.

The Verdict: Get it “for the car.” In-N-Out offers two options for take out orders, getting your burger “for the car” will have it boxed up rather than in a bag. You could opt to eat it right there in the parking lot — it’ll be delicious — but having it travel in an open box rather than a steamy bag will help retain the experience of eating it in the restaurant. It’ll be slightly colder, but it’ll still taste like In-N-Out, which is still pretty damn good.

Wendy’s

Wendy’s snagging spot number two on a list where In-N-Out is at three is pretty damn good if I do say so myself, and I know, I made this list. Wendy’s saving grace is their weird paper aluminum hybrid wrapper that they wrap their burgers in. It improves the burger tenfold.

Once wrapped up, the soft and buttery brioche bun soaks up all the burger juices of a Dave’s Single resulting in a juicy and savory flavor bomb in your mouth. The only downside of the experience is that that weird single piece of slippery almost-white iceberg lettuce that pops up in every Wendy’s order is slippier than ever after a five-minute car ride.

The Verdict: For the money? It’s your best bet. Wendy’s may not have claimed the top spot, but at just over $8 for a whole meal? It’s the best your money will buy. Unless…

Five Guys

That aluminum paper that Wendy’s uses? That was inspired by the idea of wrapping a burger in aluminum foil and now I’m convinced that like a burrito, a burger is best wrapped in foil. Five Guys pre-COVID-19 was a three-and-a-half star experience at best, but now? I’m all about those dudes. The burgers emerge from the bag hotter than if you had unwrapped it immediately, the flavors perfectly melded together, working in tandem with Five Guys’ central gimmick of letting you pile an endless amount of ingredients on your burger.

I use to view the gimmick as a hindrance, a powerful suggestion to load up, only for the burger to be a haphazard mess once you open it at your table. Now, the TIF — time in the foil, for you laypeople — pulls your entire creation into a single juicy entity. This week you kept it simple with grilled jalapeños and onions. Next week you can go for a mushroom, bacon, BBQ burger. Five Guys offers enough variety to always feel like a fresh experience, even if you make it a once a week habit.

There is also something insanely appealing about the greasy bag that Five Guys’ food comes in. By the time you arrive at your house, the bag is practically transparent with oil. It makes me feel like I’m at a county fair — which I miss, believe it or not.

The Verdict: Better in quarantine! In summary and summation — Five Guys should be your lockdown burger spot.

Pete Davidson is The King of Staten Island, but he wants people to stop visiting his mom’s house in New York’s forgotten borough. Or at least stop bringing her drugs.

The SNL star, who is spending his quarantine in his mom’s basement (“it’s not just” — bloggers), told a story on Thursday’s The Tonight Show about an unexpected visitor he and his mom received. “Me and Judd released this video to try and get it out there that the movie’s coming out, and I mentioned that I wasn’t doing drugs, that I was trying not to,” Davidson said. “And then, literally three hours later, a lady rang my doorbell with a full bag of weed and gave it to my mom and said, ‘I heard your son needs this.’” It was a nice gesture (and a “couple weeks’ worth” of pot), but Davidson didn’t keep the delivery.

Fellow guest Judd Apatow joked that Davidson, who said he will “sell” any future drop-offs, is a “drug dealer now,” but Jimmy Fallon is taking Davidson’s sobriety seriously. “He’s trying, folks, he’s trying! Do not give him drugs,” the host said, before adding, “Oh, my heavens. I love that. Three hours, that’s not bad, dude.” It will surprise no one from the northeast to learn that the weed lady came from Bayonne, the Staten Island of New Jersey.

Watch the interview above. The King of Staten Island comes out on June 12.

I Know This Much Is True isn’t a TV show that most people would want to bingewatch, especially during our current situation. HBO‘s upcoming drama series starring Mark Ruffalo is rough stuff, the heaviest of the heavy, and based upon Wally Lamb’s 1998, 900+ page novel (an Oprah Book Club title back in the day) of the same name. There’s nothing at all cheery about the lives led by the identical twins portrayed by Ruffalo, and god only knows that he endured a few lifetimes of (pretend) misery to embody these shattering roles. Yet it’s easy to see why he signed onto this project. Ruffalo not only seized the coveted task of playing twins — done in the past with varying degrees of success by Nic Cage, Tom Hardy, Armie Hammer, Christian Bale, Adam Sandler, and Lindsay Lohan (who’s actually done it twice) — but he sends up a pair of award-worthy achievements. Ruffalo also does so within an astonishing example of storytelling.

In adapting Lamb’s tragic book into six episodes, director Derek Cianfrance comes by the challenge honestly. His Blue Valentine and The Place Beyond The Pines are both movies that I admire and appreciate but don’t especially want to watch again. The same goes for I Know This Much Is True, although the grueling plunge did provide the experience of an expansive story and phenomenal performances across the board. Ruffalo’s dual turn obviously takes center stage, and although he’s always been known for possessing true acting chops — far beyond simply Hulking Out for the MCU — he puts himself through the paces here. Part of the challenge was a physical one: after shooting all of his scenes as Dominick, a divorced housepainter, he spent five weeks away from the set and gained 30 pounds before returning to film as Thomas, a paranoid schizophrenic whose illness also holds Dominick in its grips as well.

The story’s an epic one that spans multiple generations and, to a significant degree, explores the idea of inherited (or, at least, passed-on) trauma. It’s a theme that has received other treatments in the past year, including HBO’s Watchmen and Apple TV+’s Defending Jacob (starring Ruffalo’s fellow Avenger, Chris Evans) both putting different spins on the subject. Yet I assure you that there’s been no more visceral recent examination of generational scarring than in I Know This Much Is True. Part of the exploration sources through the mystery identity of the twins’ father, which serves to frame the story and enlist a supporting cast that doesn’t contain a weak link.

Beyond Ruffalo’s domination of the screen, five female supporting players bring their own gravity. In particular, Rosie O’Donnell puts in a rare dramatic performance as a social worker on Thomas’ case. She is so outstanding in the role that it makes me truly wonder if that talk-show path of hers (along with the anger-bear years to follow) wasn’t the wrong detour to take. Elsewhere, Kathryn Hahn makes a multidimensional turn as Dominick’s long-suffering ex-wife, Melissa Leo crushes souls as the twins’ mother, Archie Panjabi is reliably good as a therapist, and Juliette Lewis crashes in as (no surprise here) an offbeat character. She’s the closest thing to resemble sunshine on this series, and again: if you desire comfort viewing, this ain’t it.

Still, this is a fascinating story to watch unfold. Clearly, there’s a massive emotional component involved, but how Ruffalo handled the differences in the twins’ physicalities is notable. Gaining (or losing) a significant amount of weight in a short amount of time certainly isn’t healthy, and it also is jarring in terms of learning how to inhabit a changed body. Ruffalo’s so at-home in both incarnations that he’s striking in those moments where we see him “onscreen” as both twins at the same time. His reactions to and chemistry with himself are all so fluid, it’s practically a masterclass in acting. However, there are a number of story components that make this show a hard sell. It’s stuffed to the brim with shattering events, and it’s almost impossible to accept that two twin brothers can endure so many terrible things in their world. Dominick even makes a comment to that effect toward the end of the series.

Yet it’s not as though this series is unaware of being a bit of a grief parade. The story begins with physical trauma, a self-inflicted one on behalf of Thomas, who does so in a very public way. That lands him in a maximum-security mental institution, and Dominick spends a great deal of the runtime attempting to get him outta there. Throughout the course of six episodes, the story touches upon child abuse, cancer, rape, assault, and racism (that’s not all, but you get the picture). There are glimmers of hope amid all the gloom, but yes, it’s overall bleak stuff. Given what the world’s going through right now, I’d suggest putting this show on your list for when the world gets a little brighter. For sure, it will also be best to parcel out on a weekly basis, just like the HBO scheduling gods are releasing it to the world.

HBO’s ‘I Know This Much Is True’ debuts on Sunday, May 10 at 9:00pm EST.

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