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Chuck D is a key figure in the history of hip-hop. There’s no denying that. In Jeff Chang’s seminal 2005 book, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, — arguably the definitive document on the history of hip-hop culture — The Public Enemy MC is featured prominently as a source and Public Enemy are justifiably a major part of the book’s comprehensive tracking of hip-hop’s sociopolitical shift in the late-80’s and early 90’s. So it’s fitting that Chuck D is now bringing The Story Of Hip-Hop With Chuck D, a four-part docuseries for TV that will document the history of hip-hop and air on PBS.

Produced by BBC Studios, the series is set to trace the history of hip-hop over the course of the past 40 years and will feature appearances from hip-hop legends like Run DMC, Queen Latifah, and LL Cool J. Chuck D, who developed the series with his manager Lorrie Boula shared a statement on the project:

“The hip-hop community has, from the start, been doing what the rest of media is only now catching up to,” said Chuck D. “Long before any conglomerate realized it was time to wake up, hip-hop had been speaking out and telling truths. Working with PBS and BBC is an opportunity to deliver these messages through new ways and help explain hip-hop’s place in history and hopefully inspire us all to take it further.”

The Story Of Hip-Hop With Chuck D is entering production and no word on yet on when it will be released.

For years, organized religion was mostly a source of derision for mainstream Hollywood, and, justifiably, for liberals in general. Ronald Reagan and Jerry Falwell spent much of the 80s and 90s weaponizing evangelicals against progressive causes far and wide, even on issues that didn’t seem to have much to do with God, Jesus, or the Bible. It was also rich with irony, considering Falwell’s Moral Majority was formed in 1979 expressly to get Jimmy Carter out of office, even though Carter was a born again Southern Baptist from Georgia and Reagan a Hollywood actor whose wife had a personal astrologer (not that pointing this out ever accomplished much).

The split only seemed to grow, through abortion, AIDS debates, and the satanic panic in the 80s and 90s, and on into the Bush/Ashcroft era, when being born-again was practically a prerequisite for a Republican candidacy. In return, the prevailing attitude among the moneyed liberal camp, which has long been closely associated with the creative class in the movie industry, was a Neil DeGrasse Tyson-esque kind of pedantic scorn, a teacherly identifying of holes in religious logic and flaws in the ideology. This seemed to peaked with the release of Bill Maher’s 2008 documentary Religulous and the publication of Richard Dawkin’s 2006 much-read book The God Delusion. Organized religion and erudite professional liberalism seemed permanently at odds.

Yet the “smug atheist” eventually turned into as much of a punchline as the 80s church ladies had been. Even in times of plenty, professional class liberalism failed to offer adherents much in the way of meaning. Sure, we could clown the born again and skewer their hypocrisy, but what did we get for being right? An Office Space existence of blandly comfortable corporate servitude? Like many a rural overachiever, I went from feeling hemmed in by the “Bible thumpers” I grew up surrounded by as an adolescent to begrudgingly envying their sense of community as an adult.

This idea of bland suburban living being its own kind of comfortable hell was rampant in late 90s cinema, from Fight Club (1999) to Donnie Darko (2001). 9/11 seemed to postpone that mass soul-searching, in those early days offering a sense that maybe this tragedy would sow the seeds of the kind of shared purpose that we assumed our WWII-generation grandparents had had (Dan Taberski’s 9/12 podcast brilliantly explores this phenomenon).

That hope quickly faded, and it was all but gone by the time we got bogged down in Iraq. In “Johnny Cakes,” perhaps my favorite episode of The Sopranos, released in Spring 2006, Patsy Parisi and Burt Gervasi try to shake down a Starbucks-esque coffee shop for protection money, under the guise of “The North Ward Merchants Protective Cooperative.” The manager patiently explains that “every bean has to be accounted for” and everything has to go through corporate. If they beat up this manager, the remote higher-ups will just replace him with another local stooge. A defeated Parisi exits the coffee shop, shaking his head sadly and grumbles, “It’s over for the little guy.”

It’s a hilarious sentiment coming from a professional extortionist, yet hard to argue with the inherent truth of it. It’s easy now to get nostalgic about the days when Starbucks, Jamba Juice, and Blockbuster (the latter of these also appear in “Johnny Cakes”) were the big villains of the day. But even in those times of relative prosperity that prosperity seemed crushingly bland.

Astute pedantry felt like a much more viable ideology when times were good. My generation entered adulthood being told that a decent work ethic and a good education promised at least a comfortable existence, if not necessarily a fulfilling one. The bloom came off that rose some time around 2008, when even the educated classes lost any guarantee of security.

In these days of fractured, expanded universe culture war, Donald Trump has somehow become the unifying champion of evangelicals. This despite being a queeny, twice-divorced New Yorker who, when asked his favorite Bible passage, famously responded: “two Corinthians, that’s the whole ballgame, right?”

It would be a very girl’s-dorm-art choice of scripture, even if he hadn’t bungled the title. He quite plainly has never been religious and probably even most of his evangelical supporters would admit this.

All of which is to say that the conditions were ripe for Hollywood to form a less adversarial relationship towards religion. There are signs that this is already happening, or at least that liberals want it to. Mostly overlooked in the debate over Adam McKay’s climate change satire, Don’t Look Up, was its treatment of religion. (Even I glossed over that aspect of it, it just didn’t fit into a review).

About halfway through the film, the hero, Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence), a doctoral student who discovers the planet-killing comet, meets a squinty little skater named Yule, (Timothee Chalamet). After hooking up on a pile of pallets behind a liquor store, Kate asks if he believes in God. “Yeah, I mean my parents raised me evangelical,” Yule answers. “And I hate them, but I found my own way to it eventually.”

He swears her to secrecy. “I won’t tell anybody,” she says “Actually, I think it’s kind of sweet.”

Later, after the billionaire tech magnate’s plan to mine the killer comet fails and it’s about to destroy the Earth, Kate and Yule get together with Dr. Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Dr. Teddy Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan) at Dr. Mindy’s house for one last family dinner. With little experience in the saying-grace process, the irreligious scientists turn to Yule, who closes his eyes and earnestly asks God for his love to soothe them through these dark times as they all join hands. “Wow, Yule’s got some church game,” Oglethorpe beams.

In a movie that was otherwise, and maybe crucially, lacking in sweet moments, this one lands. It’s hard to think of a more obvious symbolic olive branch between secular Hollywood and evangelicals than this scene — essentially a tacit admission that “science is real” (in the words of that obnoxious yard sign) is cold comfort when you’re actually facing extinction.

Sure, liberals have long had crystals and bee pollen and cold-pressed juices (their own forms of magical thinking), but Don’t Look Up invokes evangelism, specifically and by name.

The sequence preceding the dinner is equally loaded. Dr. Mindy receives a phone call from President Orlean (Meryl Streep) who informs him that Earth is about to be destroyed — but she has saved seats for his family on a spaceship built by the Jeff Bezos-esque tech magnate (Mark Rylance). Top figures in government and the tech industry plan to escape the ruined planet and freeze themselves until they find a new habitat. Dr. Mindy tells her thanks but no thanks, choosing instead to die with friends and family rather than potentially live with the rich and the powerful on some new unspoiled rock out in the galaxy.

I’m old enough to remember when the dominant rejoinder to evangelicals, at least among the artistic class, was something along the lines of “if Heaven is full of joyless assholes like you, I’ll take hell.”

It was a sentiment to which I probably would’ve subscribed myself at the time, and yet this scene turns it on its head with elegant symmetry. Dr. Mindy effectively skewers the new secular religion with a ruthlessness that would’ve made George Carlin proud: “If colonizing space and repopulating humanity means living forever among the alabaster princelings of the metaverse like Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, I’ll die on Earth.”

In a movie that doesn’t always work, with satire that occasionally feels dated, Don’t Look Up‘s final few scenes feel both cathartic and prescient.

While Don’t Look Up is a movie with new ideas about the role of religion in the present, another film attempts a fresh look at the past. To that end comes The Eyes Of Tammy Faye, a biopic of Tammy Faye Bakker directed by Michael Showalter, originally released in September but which just hit HBO Max this month.

When I was growing up, I remembered Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker as, basically, weird freaks, consciously or subconsciously folded into the “greedy pastor/sex hypocrite” file along with so many other demagogues. “Crying TV evangelist” was its own kind of cliché. And again, this wasn’t without justification, given Jim Bakker’s conviction for fraud, the rape allegations against him by Jessica Hahn, his possible homosexuality, etc. The Righteous Gemstones is a winningly absurd portrayal of basically the same milieu.

The Eyes Of Tammy Faye, written by Abe Sylvia, based on the 2000 documentary of the same name, urges us to consider a more sympathetic view. It largely sidesteps the thorniness of Jim’s legacy by focusing on Tammy Faye, who at least has a modicum of plausible deniability for her husband’s antics. In Showalter and Sylvia’s hands, Tammy Faye becomes the painted face of what evangelical Christianity could look like, unshackled to political conservatism as it has become. The centerpiece of the film is Tammy Faye’s 1985 interview with a gay pastor named Steve Pieters, who was battling AIDS at the time.

Through tears, Tammy Faye (Jessica Chastain, in easily her best role) asks Pieters (Randy Havens) about coming out to his parents. “I think it’s very important that we as mom and dads love through anything,” Tammy Faye crackles, her face shining with both tears and garish makeup. “And that’s the way with Jesus, you know? Jesus loves us through anything.”

“Jesus loves me,” Pieters replies, earnestly. “Jesus loves the way I love.”

Whatever else the movie glosses over about Tammy Faye (I’m sure it’s plenty), it’s hard to argue the bravery of interviewing a gay Christian with AIDS on Christian TV at the height of the AIDS scare. (The way the movie tells it, Jerry Falwell, a man in part responsible for evangelism’s association with modern conservatism, was just off-camera, trying to pull the plug the whole time). The obvious question the whole scene raises is, why is it so hard to imagine an evangelical preacher preaching this kind of acceptance today when it already actually happened almost 40 years ago?

Is the movie a case of Hollywood trying to retcon evangelical Christianity in its own image? Certainly, to some extent, it is, but there seems to be sufficient justification. That Pieters, who was diagnosed with both full-blown AIDS and terminal cancer in 1985, is still alive today seems miraculous, even to the secular.

Tammy Faye also makes for a refreshing kind of hero. Jessica Chastain plays her as someone who mostly seems like a nightmare to be around — the “too loud” girl in the choir in every situation — but paradoxically the kind of person society could probably use more of. In the age of uncompromising, win-at-all-costs boy and girl boss protagonists (which is to say, most of Aaron Sorkin’s output and most of Chastain’s filmography), a terminal oddball with superpowered empathy is a nice twist. She wins not because she’s calculating or worldly than anyone else, but simply because she’s nice.

I’m not naive. I know this isn’t the first time Hollywood has dabbled in humanizing evangelicalism. Nor do I imagine that this is the first chapter in some glorious future where evangelical Christians and secular artists walk hand in hand toward an edifying, less judgmental conception of God. It feels more like what we’re witnessing is simply mass culture starting to acknowledge the limits of the “smarter management” brand of liberalism. That maybe the way to win an argument with someone who appeals to baser emotions isn’t to fact check them.

It’s hard to be optimistic about much these days, but I feel at least slightly hopeful about the signs that, after years of back and forth lib and MAGA ownership, maybe we’re starting to realize that these aren’t appreciable assets. Or maybe billionaire, utopian tech lords and divisive opportunists just make better villains than your average dope trying to find meaning in their existence.

Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

The friction between Gunna and Freddie Gibbs continued through the weekend, as Gibbs undercut Gunna’s self-serious shot at him on the Atlanta rapper’s new album with a series of posts on his unofficial Instagram. You may remember that Gibbs’ original account was banned from the platform due to his constant flouting of the Terms of Service, but that didn’t stop him from starting a new, lower-key account. Over the weekend, Gibbs used the new account to troll Gunna for both his substandard diss record and for trying to kick off a new slang term with “Pushin P.”

Adopting Gunna’s newfound habit of replacing the letter “P” in his social media with a bright blue emoji of the letter, Gibbs poked fun at Gunna’s shape and again accused him of snitching, captioning posts “That ain’t P” and “Pushin Paperwork.” In another post, he flips through a menu while misquoting Gunna’s shot at him, humming, “I can’t f*ck with Freddie Gibbs / N****s eating ribs.” He also roasted one of Gunna’s Instagram fit pics, writing, “It’s giving hotel carpet.” Meanwhile, Gunna, who recently explained the origin of their feud and accused Freddie of reaching out to collaborate with him, seems to be more focused on celebrating the fact that his new album DS4EVER debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, edging out The Weeknd’s Dawn FM.

Freddie also recently showed off his comedic chops in a more official capacity, appearing in an SNL sketch that was cut for time.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Welcome to Euphoria Style Watch, your one-stop shop for where to cop the latest episode’s best fits. Sunday’s “Out of Touch” wasn’t quite as stylish as the premiere, since there weren’t any huge house parties for the cast to attend. But a lot of characters went bowling and in the process looked ridiculously stylish for a bunch of teenagers who are… you know, bowling.

Oh, also, Maddy rocked a bikini while lounging on a pool floaty in the middle of January. So if you watch Euphoria regularly and feel like the show doesn’t make any sense — you’re right, it doesn’t. The entire internet spends each Sunday night talking about how their high school experience doesn’t match up with the chaos of your average episode, but I’m just sitting here wondering what state this show takes place in (Euphoria‘s East Highland is a fictional town).

Anyway, let’s talk about this week’s best fits. We might not have had any high glamour party outfits but a few styles still caught our eye, here is episode two’s best dressed.

Rue —Aries Tailored Column Jacquard Trousers

So far this season Rue has been rocking a whole lot of vintage pieces that aren’t quite as easy to find as the rest of the cast’s fits. If the Euphoria stylists are trying to tell us this is because Rue is on the grungier side and picks up most of her clothes from thrift stores we have one question: where the hell are these thrift stores?

Seriously, most of Rue’s clothes are old, but they’re all coveted vintage pieces worth hundreds and even thousands! Vintage wear aside, Sunday’s episode also saw Rue wearing these easy-to-find tailored jacquard coursers from Aries. Made of 100% cotton, these tailored pants feature a high waist with button fly fastening, with crimson jacquard patterning.

If you’re looking to complete the look Rue is also rocking Vans socks and Converse Chuck Taylors. Classy.

Pick up a pair of Aries Tailored Column Jacquard Trousers at FarFetch for $476.

Fezco — Dolce & Gabbana Maiolica Tile-Print Polo Shirt

Fezco stepped up his game this week by ditching his usual brand, Palace, for some high-end luxury threads. His outfit’s centerpiece was this Dolce & Gabbana Maiolica all-over print polo. The luxurious polo shirt (which is a bit of an oxymoron isn’t it?) features an all-over print of the god Neptune and looks more like something that should be hanging in a fine art museum than the closet of a teenage drug dealing liquor store owner.

Pick up the Dolce and Gabbana Maiolica Tile-Print Polo Shirt at Neiman Marcus, or aftermarket sites like Grailed.

Lexi — Her Whole Damn Outfit

I think we can all agree that no character has stolen our hearts this season quite like Maude Apatow’s Lexi. Her scenes with Fezco are so full of warmth it’s hard not to smile when they share the screen together and she’s the only character this season that seems likable and not about to enter a downward spiral of bad decisions (looking at you especially Cassie and Rue).

On Sunday’s episode, Lexi rolled up to Fez’s liquor store in one of her best outfits to date, a modest and simple cardigan, pants, and short heel combo that is equal parts classic and adorable. It’s not as out there as some of the usual Euphoria fits, but it reflects the more reserved character (so far) perfectly.

For the long sleeve ribbed cardigan, hit up Calle Del Mar, the flared Luca Plaid Pants by Rachel Come can be found here, and try Ssense for the Nodaleto Black Bulla Cara Heels.

Maddy — Chanel Dress/ Rome By Falize Bikini

In truth, we could’ve run an entire article just on Maddy’s looks from Sunday’s episode, but the two pieces we think people are going to be most hyped for are the vintage Chanel dress she wore during the closet montage scene, and the green Rome by Falize bikini she rocked during the pool scene. I’d like to point out once again that given the current timeline of the show this pool scene takes place in January.

Swimming pools. In January. Does nothing from this Euphoria universe line up with our own?! Are we getting a covid episode?

The dress is a vintage piece from Chanel’s 1997 Spring/Summer season and features a pastel graffiti-style floral print and can be found at designer vintage outlets like Cara Mia Vintage and Etsy. The Rome by Falize light green bikini bottoms, top, and skirt can be found at Rome By Falize.

Kat — Danielle Guizio Mohair Cardigan/ Miu Miu Frames

Kat hasn’t gotten a whole lot of screen time so far in season two but she’s definitely delivered the most relatable moment in the show’s history. Who amongst us hasn’t laid in bed depressed while snacking on Goldfish crackers? That’s been everyone’s experience at one point during this pandemic! I can’t personally say the same for that Dothraki sex fantasy she had though.

This week Kat’s best fit featured this ribbed moss-colored mohair cardigan over a vintage Cramps graphic t-shirt. Later in the episode, Kat was seen rocking some pale-gold cat-eyed frames by Miu Miu eyewear.

The cardigan is by Danielle Guizio and can be found here, and the Miu Miu cat-eyed frames can be found here or here.

Last week, the hit Encanto song, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” scored Lin-Manuel Miranda his first-ever top-ten song when the banger managed to hit number five on the Billboard charts. It was a notable accomplishment considering Disney hasn’t been able to crack the top five since “Let It Go” from Frozen in 2014. If you’ve had the song stuck in your head since Encanto started streaming on Disney+, then you probably won’t be surprised that “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” is showing no signs of slowing down.

According to the latest Billboard charts, the Encanto hit is now at number four, which is something Let It Go was never able to achieve despite becoming the first top-five Disney hit since 1995’s “Colors of the Wind” from Pocahontas. After breaking a 19-year streak, Let It Go was taken out in a little over seven years. Via The Wrap:

In the latest data from Billboard, the Lin-Manuel Miranda hit became the highest-charting song from a Disney animated movie since 1995. With the No. 4 spot, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” ties with “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” from “The Lion King” — peaking at No. 4 in 1994 — and “Colors of the Wind” from “Pocahontas,” which peaked in the same spot in 1995.

In an interesting note, Encanto director Jared Bush recently revealed to The New York Times that the character of Bruno was originally named “Oscar” until Miranda stepped in and suggested “Bruno” after the production team realized there were way too many Oscar Madrigals in Columbia, which could’ve caused some thorny legal issues. Plus, “We Don’t Talk About Oscar,” doesn’t really have that same earworm hook that just burrows right into your skull and never leaves. Ever. Seriously, get this song out of our heads, for the love of God!

(Via The Wrap)

It was revealed earlier this month that the 2022 Grammy Awards had been postponed due to concerns about the Omicron variant of COVID-19. A new date wasn’t revealed at the time, but now it has been set: The event is now planned to take place on April 3, as Variety reported and The Recording Academy later confirmed. Furthermore, the ceremony has been moved to the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas from its original venue, Los Angeles’ Crypto.com Arena. The new venue (which has 17,000 seats) is one the Academy knows well, as the 2021 Latin Grammys were just hosted there in November.

Details about other official Grammy Week events — like the Premiere Ceremony, the MusiCares Person Of The Year benefit concert (in honor of Joni Mitchell this year), and the Clive Davis Pre-Grammy Gala (honoring Sony Music’s Rob Stringer) — will be announced soon. The CMT Awards were originally scheduled to take place at the MGM Grand on that date, but the event will be moved to a later date in April.

This marks the second year in a row that the Grammys were forced to postpone, as the 2021 event was also pushed back due to coronavirus concerns.

Find the full list of this year’s Grammy nominees here.

With under a month until the NBA trade deadline, we can expect rumors and reports about teams having conversations to pick up in the coming weeks, although most fans know that talks typically drag on until the last possible moment before a deal actually gets done.

On Tuesday, one of the top players expected to be on the move, Myles Turner, was announced as having a stress reaction injury in his left foot that will sideline him for a minimum of two weeks and likely through the February 10 trade deadline, putting a serious damper on his hopes that he would find a new situation with “more opportunity.” With Turner dealing with a foot injury that figures to make teams a bit apprehensive about dealing for him, Jerami Grant becomes the player with the most trade buzz around the league.

Detroit’s rebuild has placed Grant on the market, as the Pistons seek out draft assets and younger talent to go along with Cade Cunningham, and after a strong year in 2020-21 and a summer with Team USA, Grant is a coveted player for teams both in the contender realm and those hoping to become one at the deadline. Because so many teams can see Grant as a fit and the type of player that can take them to the next level (both play-in team to playoff team and playoff team to contender), there are a lot of interested franchises, according to Jake Fischer of Bleacher Report.

The Lakers, Trail Blazers, Knicks, Jazz, Wizards, Celtics, Pacers, Timberwolves and Kings have all signaled interest in the 27-year-old.

The frenzy comes one year after Pistons general manager Troy Weaver swiftly declined any inquiry about Grant’s availability after the forward surprisingly chose Detroit in free agency. Sources say Detroit is now asking for two first-round picks or one first-round pick plus a high-upside young player.

As Fischer goes on to note, Detroit’s asking price is in line with what the Magic got for Aaron Gordon a year ago, and, like Gordon, Grant will be seeking a healthy extension in the 4-year, $112 million range this coming offseason. As for that group of teams that are interested, the Lakers and Jazz have little in the way of draft assets and young players, making them look like longshots to land Grant, while the Wizards are the favorites, per Fischer, given Grant’s ties to the D.C. area as well as Washington having the right combination of young players, filler contracts, and draft picks (and motivation to be a playoff team) to make a deal happen.

Still, the expectation is that the Pistons will let talks continue up to the deadline, as they hope to spark a bidding war as teams grow increasingly desperate to make a move and solidify their position. Like Turner, Grant is currently sidelined after thumb surgery, but that hasn’t put a damper on trade inquiries as he’s not expected to see long-term effects from the injury and should return not too long after the trade deadline for whatever team he’s on.

Heartbreaking news for library card holders everywhere: the long-running animated series Arthur is set to end its legendary run next month, after PBS announced its cancellation last year. The good news is that the audience will finally get what they’ve been waiting for: to see Arthur as an adult.

The series will conclude with four new episodes featuring a flash-forward showing grown-up versions of the show’s iconic characters. The new episodes will air as a part of a special 25th anniversary marathon of the children’s show, featuring nearly 250 episodes and movie specials all part of the ACU (Arther Cinematic Universe). No word yet on just how old the animals will be, and if they will experience the same adult problems that adults face these days, such as taxes and TikTok hierarchy fights.

Arthur has been on air since 1996 and follows the titular aardvark and his pals as they navigate childhood and beyond. The marathon will air on PBS Kids and livestream on the PBS Kids YouTube channel for free. The four new episodes will air on Feb 21st.

For all the Arthur fans out there, fear not: according to PBS, Arthur will still have a presence online, including digital shorts, games, and a podcast in the works, in addition to the show’s meme legacy.

Last week, Kanye West dropped the proverbial “lyric heard the world” on his new single “Eazy” with The Game. In the midst of a diatribe about his divorce, therapy, and his ex-wife Kim Kardashian’s new boyfriend Pete Davidson, Ye fires the ultimate shot at the actor when he spits, “God saved me from that crash, just so I can beat Pete Davidson’s ass.” The song is propped up on a sample of Eazy-E’s “Eazy-Duz-It,” which might’ve raised some eyebrows with hip-hop purists. But now Eazy-E’s daughter Ebie Wright has weighed in on using the sample and on the lyrics.

In an impromptu interview, a TMZ cameraperson asked Wright about her thoughts on the song. Wright quickly voices her approval for the track, saying, “I think it’s a great song. I’m a huge Kanye fan, I love Game. It’s an incredible record and it was also produced by my buddy Hit-Boy so shout out to all my guys.”

That’s a nice co-sign from Eazy’s offspring, but it’s what she said about the Pete Davidson line that was really revealing.

“My father literally represents revolutionizing everything, he also represents gangster rap. What Kanye did and what he said on it, I mean, it don’t get no more gangster than that.”

She elaborates a bit further and on whether her father would’ve wanted to be a part of this song were he alive today. But clearly sees it as an homage to her father and added of Kanye that “Eazy taught him. And Eazy taught me.”

Watch the entire interview with Ebie Wright in the video above.

Taika Waititi is an Academy Award winner who directed one movie that made nearly $1 billion at the box office, and appeared in another movie that grossed over $2 billion. He’s also one of the select few who are part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Star Wars, um, universe. With that kind of success, Waititi can make whatever TV show or movie that he wants, and like Daniel Radcliffe, he’s using his powers for good.

Waititi plays “history’s most feared and revered pirate” Blackbeard in Our Flag Means Death, an HBO Max comedy that also stars the extremely funny Rhys Darby as a fellow buccaneer. The official description reads: “Our Flag Means Death is loosely based on the true adventures of Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby), a pampered aristocrat who abandons his life of privilege to become a pirate.” You can watch the trailer above.

“They are like an old married couple in certain ways,” showrunner David Jenkins told EW about Waititi and Darby, who worked together on Flight of the Conchords and What We Do in the Shadows. “If a scene isn’t quite working, Taika will be able to grumble about Rhys, and vice versa, in the way that only friends can. And then when it is popping, they know how to get the best out of each other. There’s a generosity and a real sweetness between them that you wouldn’t get if you weren’t using those two friends.”

An Oscar winner playing Blackbeard doesn’t make up for Tim Curry not even being nominated for a measly Golden Globe his performance as Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island (a true tragedy), but it’s a start.

Our Flag Means Death, which also stars Leslie Jones and Kristian Nairn (a.k.a. Hodor from Game of Thrones), premieres on HBO Max in March.