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The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

ITEM NUMBER ONE — The Number One Boy

Most people — most of you, especially, I imagine — know Jeremy Strong best as Kendall Roy from Succession, the narcotics-riddled Number One Boy who can’t get out of his own way long enough to let a single good thing happen to him. That’s fine. It’s good, even. It’s a meaty role, and Strong does a nice job with it, wearing Kendall’s torment and desperation all across his face like a handlebar mustache of despair. But the tricky part of the performance is, to put a fine point on it all, that Kendall kind of looks and talks like Jeremy Strong looks and talks. There are degrees here, sure, and this is zero percent a knock on his performance. But it’s true. And it’s a shame, in a way, because if there’s one thing we’ve learned about Jeremy Strong over the years, it’s that he loves making Choices, capital C not a typo.

Start with The Trial of the Chicago 7, the Aaron Sorkin movie about the real-life fallout from the riots in Chicago at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Strong plays Jerry Rubin, a famous counterculture figure who was at the center of the whole thing, and an associate of Abbie Hoffman, played by Sacha Baron Cohen. If you knew nothing about Strong other than his role as Kendall going in, you’d think Cohen was the wild man on set, the prankster who got so deep into his character that it drove his co-stars a little nutso. You would have been wildly, galactically incorrect, for a few reasons I’ll get to momentarily, right after I show you this screencap of Strong in action, which will, I think, add some necessary color to the presentation.

Okay. That helped. The next issue we need to cover is that Jeremy Strong is Method, also capitalized, from the Daniel Day-Lewis school of acting, which leads to all sorts of fun quotes about the filming from people involved. Like, for example, this one, from Sorkin.

The most die-hard Method actor was Jeremy Strong, who once worked as Daniel Day-Lewis’s assistant and seems to have inherited his role model’s relish for total immersion. Filming the riot scenes on location in Grant Park, he insisted, before the cameras rolled, that a former Chicago cop playing one of the storm troopers hurl him to the ground before every take. “Jeremy begged me to spray him with real tear gas,” adds Sorkin. He declined.

“Jeremy begged me to spray him with real tear gas.” It’s perfect. And beautiful. Beautiful and perfect. And still not as good as this next thing, from an interview at Vulture. It turns out Strong got so deep into the role that he brought the prankster, rascal spirit to the set, to a very real degree. How real? Hmm. Is “secretly installed a fart machine into the bench of the judge, who was played by 82-year-old Frank Langella, a man who has the second-most Tolerates No Hooey face in Hollywood behind Tommy Lee Jones” real enough for you? Because…

So I planted a fart machine in the judge’s dais where he couldn’t find it. I would set it off sometimes before a close-up, and it would really piss him off. His face turned red. Those are the takes we used in the film. It was great — there was real, palpable tension in the room when that happened. I got in trouble sometimes with Aaron and the producers, but I kind of felt like … if I’m Jerry Rubin, and I’m not in contempt of some court, then I’m not doing my job.

God, poor Frank Langella. I mean, I adore almost everything about this, and please do stop here to picture Jeremy Strong in like a Spencer’s Gifts at a mall comparing four different fart machines to find the specific sound he’s looking for, but poor Frank Langella. I hope they at least let him keep the fart machine.

It’s not just The Trial of the Chicago 7, either. Strong showed up in Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen recently as Matthew McConaughey’s main drug-dealing rival, Matthew Berger, a Jewish American gangster in England who looked like this…

… and was absolutely bursting with can only be described as Stanley Tucci energy. And when I pointed out on Twitter how these two roles exhibited a fantastic degree of Choice-making, something like five people immediately yelled at me about his role in Serenity, which I have not seen but appears to fall into the same category based only on that reaction. And when I sat around thinking about it all this week, it led me to a very important question.

In the second season of Succession, a few episodes before performing the cringe-inducing rap song cooked up by his boy Squiggle, Kendall Roy pooped in his bed after a night of cocaine-fueled debauchery. We know this because he woke up naked with poop in his bed and a very irritated maid nearby. Which is about par for the Kendall Roy course. But here’s where my head is at now: Given what we know about Jeremy Strong as an actor, that he begged to be tear-gassed and drove Frank Langella mad with a fart machine and loves adding layers and layers to the characters he plays, do you think… do you think he really pooped in that bed? You know, for the realism? To drive home the shame and humiliation of it all? Do you?

I mean, it’s a fair question.

ITEM NUMBER TWO — It is very upsetting to me that it took us this long to create a John Wick roller coaster

Can you believe it? I mean, honestly, can you? Can you believe that we’re here in 2020, a full three films into the John Wick franchise, with a fourth and a fifth on the way, and there is still no fully operational John Wick-themed roller coaster at any theme park anywhere on this big stupid marble of a planet? It’s crazy. There are roller coasters for every movie. There are even, as we learned just last week, movies based on roller coasters now, and yes, I’m talking about the Space Mountain movie, again, partially because I’m still just flabbergasted that it is a real thing that is happening, and partially because it gets me back to the point I intended to make before this meandering sentence started: Finally, at long last, society and has stepped up and righted this historical wrong. The time has come for the John Wick roller coaster.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that the roller coaster will not be here in America. It will be in Motiongate theme park in Dubai. Although I guess that’s good news too if you live in Dubai. Lots to consider here. Anyway, from Variety:

The “John Wick: Open Contract” coaster will offer riders a choice as they board: They can help John Wick — the assassin played by Keanu Reeves in the 2014 movie and its two (so far) sequels — or they can hunt him.

The funniest thing would be if, when you choose the “hunt John Wick” option, you just get lit up with paintballs the whole time you’re on the ride. Possibly by the people in line for the “be John Wick” option. I don’t know. I suspect there are liability options here. We’ll get the lawyers on the phone later. Let’s get some more information first.

“I think what’s going to be amazing for fans is to have the opportunity to walk through the lobby of the Continental and experience different key moments in the settings that took place in the films,” Brown said. “This attraction in particular is really about setting the story by putting people in this very immersive environment, and then you really get the action as you get on the coaster. It’s 10 stories high, so there’s definitely a level of intensity that’s befitting of the ‘John Wick franchise that guests will experience.”

You want to know the crazy thing? I’m reading this last paragraph and I’m thinking, really cranking away on the lumpy parts of my brain, and the more I do it the more I think maybe the real moneymaker here is a full-on John Wick fantasy camp where you stay in a fake Continental and do paintball skirmishes and maybe someone kills your dog. Wait. No. Not that last part. That’s too real. And the lawyers definitely won’t like it.

Yeah, let’s just stick with this roller coaster. Probably the safer option.

ITEM NUMBER THREE — Sigourney Weaver rules

Sigourney Weaver is a legend for about a hundred reasons. She was in the Alien movies. She was in Ghostbusters. She was in Galaxy Quest, which is not as big a deal culturally as those first two, but still, Galaxy Quest whoops ass. She does not need to continue proving herself. She does not need to do physically risky stunts in sequels to action movies that came out over a decade ago. She does not need to hold her breath underwater for six minutes so some ocean-obsessed director can get his shots more quickly. She could very well just chill and relax and make money by showing up at fan conventions and stuff.

And yet! From a profile in the New York Times:

In “Avatar 2,” which is largely finished but not scheduled for release until December 2022 — to be followed by several planned sequels — she shot many of her scenes underwater. Never mind that she was closing in on 70. (She’s now 71.) Or that the preparation included dives in Key West, Fla., and in Hawaii, where she reclined on the ocean floor while manta rays glided over her. Or that she needed to train with an expert who had coached elite military divers so that she could hold her breath, after a big gulp of supplemental oxygen, for more than six minutes. That made the part more attractive to her. “My hope is that what I receive from the universe is even more outrageous than anything I can think of,” she told me. “I don’t really say to myself, ‘Well, you can’t do this.’ Or, ‘You can’t do that.’ Let me at it! And we’ll see.”

Okay, do me a favor. Right now. You have a few minutes. I know you do. Open up the stopwatch feature on your phone, take a huge deep breath, as deep as you can, and then start the clock and see you long you can hold that breath. Push yourself. Don’t, like, pass out or anything. I don’t want that on my conscience heading into the weekend. But don’t be a wimp, either. Be a champion. Stop the clock when you have to take another breath. Record your findings mentally.

Then go back and read that blockquote. Six minutes! Sigourney Weaver held her breath for six minutes! And don’t you dare point to the phrase “supplemental oxygen” in there. Don’t even think about it. Sigourney Weaver is 71 years old. Some 71-year-olds need supplemental oxygen to go food shopping. Sigourney Weaver was using it to sit on the damn floor of the ocean and chill out with manta rays. Come on.

My point here is twofold, I suppose: One, Sigourney Weaver is and apparently always will be a badass; two, you could never.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR — A brief note about what not to say

Hanlon’s Razor is a philosophical device that states, if I can paraphrase a bit, that you should try not to assume a person has bad intentions in a situation when simple ignorance can explain it, too. Less eloquently, it means “don’t assume evil when stupid will do.” I like this a lot and use it too much. Some of that is because, again, I like it a lot, as I generally like to believe people are doing the best they can most of the time. Some of it is because I like to be that insufferable guy who throws around terms like “Hanlon’s Razor” in conversation to sound smart.

I bring it up now for both of those reasons, but also because Back to the Future screenwriter Bob Gale gave an interview to Collider recently, and when the concept of a fourth movie in the franchise came up, he had this to say:

We told a complete story with the trilogy. If we went back and made another one, we’d have Michael J. Fox, who will be sixty next year, and he has Parkinson’s Disease. Do we want to see Marty McFly at age sixty with Parkinson’s Disease? Did we want to see him at age fifty with Parkinson’s Disease? I would say ‘No, you don’t want to see that.’ And you don’t want to see Back to the Future without Michael J. Fox. People say, ‘Well, do it with somebody else.’ Really? Who are you going to get? All you’re gonna do is beg comparisons to the originals, and you’re not going to match up.

Most of that is good and sensible. I do not want a fourth Back to the Future movie. Making one would be a transparent cash grab and would run the risk of diminishing the earlier films, kind of like how no one needed the Crystal Skull Indiana Jones movie, or the additional Star Wars movies that Gale went on to reference later. And I don’t want to see a movie that replaces Michael J. Fox or reboots the franchise with a new young actor. I’m with him on a lot of it.

The bummer part is how he lumped in Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s with the reasons “you don’t want to see” a new movie. I have a horse in this race, admittedly, as frequent readers of this column know, because I have a disability, too (spinal cord injury, wheelchair, the whole deal). I wrote a whole thing not that long ago about disability representation in television and movies, and why it stinks right now, and potential steps in the right direction toward fixing it. One of those steps is an attempt to normalize it in the eyes of the audience, to get them used to seeing characters with disabilities on their screens. Michael J. Fox did some of this himself since his diagnosis, my favorite being his guest spots on The Good Wife as a scummy lawyer who would use his disability to manipulate judges and juries, which was cool because it punctured the stupid “people with disabilities are inspirational angels” balloon.

There are a million reasons not to make a new Back to the Future movies. “Because no one wants to see the guy have a disability now” should not be one of them. I don’t think Bob Gale is, like, a bad person for saying that. I just think maybe he didn’t think about all the angles of it, maybe because he didn’t know. That’s all I’m doing here — educating, trying to help. But seriously, don’t make another Back to the Future. That much we can agree on.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE — Finally, a show for me

I have tremendous news. There’s no time to explain. I need to get straight to the blockquote, via Variety:

Amazon has announced a new Italian original series titled “Everybody Loves Diamonds” during Rome’s MIA market.

The heist series with comedic overtones is inspired by the 2003 “Heist of Antwerp,” dubbed by international media as “the biggest diamond theft in the world.”

Okay, first of all, hell yes. Hell yes to all of it. Hell yes to the title, Everybody Loves Diamonds, which is true and hilarious. Hell yes to the thing where it’s an Italian original series, because now I desperately want to watch this show in Italian with English subtitles. But most of all, hell yes to a show about the Antwerp diamond heist.

If you are not familiar with the Antwerp diamond heist, please familiarize yourself with it at once. Here’s a great longread about it from Wired. Here’s the Wikipedia page. Read the second one first and the first one second. It’s incredible. These dudes stole $100 million worth of diamonds at the end of an 18-month operation that involved fake identities and life-size recreations of the facility’s vault that they practiced on and a slew of other Ocean’s Eleven-ass tactics that will blow you away. This was an extremely sophisticated heist pulled off by a crew of meticulous professionals, which makes how they got caught powerfully funny in about four different ways.

From the Wikipedia:

The group was caught after [Leonardo] Notarbartolo and Speedy went to dispose of the evidence of their plans, planning to burn it in France. Speedy was overcome with panic at the prospect of transporting such incriminating evidence and insisted they dispose of it in a nearby forest. However, Speedy suffered a panic-attack and disposed of the evidence poorly, hurling it into the bushes and mud rather than burning it. Notarbartolo was busy burning his own evidence and when he discovered what Speedy had done, he decided it would take too long to gather everything up and they needed to leave, confident that nobody would find their rubbish. However, a local hunter owned the land and called the police when he found the rubbish the next day (believing it to be caused by local teenagers he had previously had disputes with). When he mentioned that some of the rubbish consisted of envelopes from the Antwerp Diamond Centre, the police immediately investigated. The evidence from the rubbish was enough to allow the police to gain a lead and they were eventually able to identify Notarbartolo from security footage from a nearby grocery store where he had purchased a sandwich (a receipt for the sandwich was amongst the rubbish)

A sandwich! They did all that work, for over a year and a half, crossing every T and dotting every I, spraying cameras with chemical concoctions to disable them and all of it, and they got caught because of a sandwich! That’s why I want to see this show. Because the real-life result is so bizarre that it almost exceeds anything even the most creative Italian writer’s rooms could concoct. I hope they keep everything the same but replace the sandwich with something more Italian. A plate of lasagna, maybe. Yes. That will work. And have them escape in a gondola. Otherwise, exactly the same. For me.

READER MAIL

If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at [email protected] (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.

From Tyler:

I started re-watching Happy Endings on Hulu. I noticed a few odd storyline inconsistencies during the first season that suddenly became jarringly weird in episode 10. Turns out episodes 10 and 11 were supposed to be episodes 2 and 3, and the season aired mostly out of the intended broadcast order to make the initial episodes more “stand alone” in an effort to get more people invested in the show. I had a hard time focusing on the funny when characters were moving into places I’d already seen them living and characters were struggling to get over issues I’ve already seen them come to grips with.

1. Should Hulu take it upon itself to air tv shows in the order they were intended?
2. Should the people at ABC responsible for this decision be sent to prison?

Tyler, thank you for this email. Kind of. Thank you, kind of. I don’t mean to be rude. It’s a good email. And it gives me an excuse to mention Happy Endings again, which was a delightful television program that I miss terribly. My only issue here is that now I’m angry again, both about its cancellation and the specific thing you mentioned. It happened nine years ago! I should have let it go by now! But here we are!

The most important takeaway here is that you are correct. Hulu should just go ahead and put them in the correct order. There’s no reason not to. Hulu, if you are reading this, please get on that. You don’t have to do it today. I’ll give you a week. But if it’s not fixed by next weekend… I don’t know what I’ll do, actually. Something, though. Unless I forget. Which I probably will. Just do it anyway.

The other takeaway is how silly this all seems now in the era of streaming and binge-watching. Netflix straight-up encourages shows to use an entire first season to establish a premise. Things can burn slower because we consume them faster, and we don’t need to cater to people who might check in at random on like the sixth episode of the first season to see if they like a show. Granted, we have other problems, like those shows that got a full season to explore themselves then getting the hook before they have a chance to grow from there. Nothing is perfect anywhere. I guess that’s the lesson here. That and that Happy Endings was a good show.

So two lessons, really.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To Florida!

This morning, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission announced charges for seven individuals it says were involved in an international wildlife trafficking operation involving thousands of native flying squirrels getting illegally shipped overseas.

Excuse me.

Hold on.

Is this…

Do we have…

Do we have an international flying squirrel smuggling operation on our hands?

The FWC opened the investigation in back January of 2019 after being tipped off that people were illegally trapping protected flying squirrels in Marion County, and other Central Florida areas, and then selling the animals to a licensed wildlife dealer in Bushnell, who then claimed they were captive bred, not wildlife, says the agency.

WE HAVE AN INTERNATIONAL FLYING SQUIRREL SMUGGLING OPERATION.

SCREW THE ANTWERP DIAMOND HEIST.

MAKE AN ITALIAN SHOW ABOUT THIS, NETFLIX.

The 19-month investigation discovered that the suspects used over 10,000 traps and captured over 3,600 flying squirrels, which equalled over an estimated $1 million in retail value.

A few notes in conclusion:

• I know this is bad and we should not be smuggling innocent little winged rodents halfway around the world
• It’s just so crazy
• Please do not ruin it for me
• If my math is correct, this means the retail value of a single flying squirrel is about $300, which feels… I don’t know, reasonable?
• Now I want to know the wholesale rate
• Imagine opening a mysterious shipping container and suddenly 250 flying squirrels come screaming out of it and into the night sky
• I would go straight to bed
• Wait a second
• I just realized something
• This isn’t just an international flying squirrel smuggling operation

This was…

A

MILLION-DOLLAR

INTERNATIONAL

FLYING SQUIRREL

SMUGGLING OPERATION

I demand this television show. By next year, if possible. Thank you.

Sacha Baron Cohen appeared as himself, not as Borat, on Good Morning America to discuss the Rudy Giuliani scene from Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, out today.

I will not describe “the Rudy Giuliani scene” (you can read about it here), because we’ve all suffered enough. Although not as much as the actress who plays Borat’s daughter, Maria Bakalova, who was in the hotel room with the disgraced former-mayor. When asked on GMA about what happened, she turned to Baron Cohen and replied, “I want to thank you, that I was sure that you were going to save me from everything.”

Giuliani has called the scene a “totally sensationalized” account and referred to Baron Cohen as a “stone-cold liar,” although he might also think Borat is a real person. It’s bizarre. But what does the actor, appearing out of character for the first time during the press tour (he previously responded as Borat), think about those accusations? “I would say that if the president’s lawyer found what he did there appropriate behavior, then heaven knows what he’s done with other female journalists in hotel rooms,” he said before suggesting that everyone should watch Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. “It is what it is. He did what he did, and make your own mind up. It was pretty clear to us.”

Baron Cohen said he was “quite concerned” for Bakalova during the scene, but that he was in a hideaway the entire scene so he could monitor what was happening. He said, “It’s my responsibility as a producer as well to ensure that the lead actor is looked after.

“I’ve always felt safe with our team, with our crew, with Sacha in my corner,” Bakalova said on GMA. “I actually never felt that I’ve been in danger. That’s why I’m lucky, because I had them.”

You can watch the interview below.

Sometimes when artists perform on late-night shows, they’ll get a guest to join them. Those guests are usually other musicians, but for Haim’s appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers last night, they got somebody who added to the performance in a different way: Robert Pattinson.

Following Meyers’ introduction, the band’s performance was prefaced by a short skit, which begins with a ringing phone. The call is from a contact named “Emotional Vampire,” which turns out to be Pattinson (who is of course famous for playing a vampire in Twilight). He leaves a late-night video message wondering if the person he’s calling is up, and from there, the band launches into their song, for which they look slightly zombified in their vintage wedding dresses.

The sisters also video chatted in for an interview with Meyers and they discussed how they got Pattinson on board: “The song that we’re doing is ‘3AM,’ and on record, it starts with a voicemail, someone calling at 3 a.m., and basically… it’s a booty call, right? So we needed someone to do this cameo who had game. Even when we were recording the album, we held auditions, so we thought this would be no different.” They said they tried to get Tom Hardy and Benedict Cumberbatch on board, but they didn’t hear back from either actor. Ultimately, Pattinson won the part.

Watch clips from the band’s appearance on Late Night above.

The best new hip-hop albums coming out this week include projects from Clipping., Comethazine, Dej Loaf, Joyner Lucas, Junglepussy, Tobi, and YRN Murk.

If last week was a doozy, this week is even more jam-packed with new releases from multiple sub-genres of hip-hop and artists both new and established. All of what’s coming out is high-quality though — depending on your taste, of course — and worth checking out.

Here are all the best new hip-hop albums coming out this week.

Blacc Zacc — 803 Legend

Coming from Columbia, South Carolina, Blacc Zacc brings his own unique twist to the bass-heavy crunk rap the Dirty South is known for. With a flair for plainspoken but clever boasts and vivid storytelling, BZ looks to put a new landmark on the Southern Rap map, right in the wide-open lane South Carolina currently inhabits.

Caleb Giles — Meditations

The Bronx, New York native Caleb Giles returns for the third year in a row with his latest album, which once again draws on heavy introspection and hypnotic, revivalist soul loops to build a lyrical wonderland for fans of rappers like Earl Sweatshirt and MIKE.

Clipping. — Visions Of Bodies Being Burned

Experimental hip-hop brings to mind visions of unusual soundscapes and off-kilter rhyme patterns and Clipping. is not only a big part of that, they’re also some of the sub-genres staunchest purveyors. Their latest is built up of all the material that wouldn’t fit on 2019’s There Existed An Addiction To Blood, but these aren’t throwaways. Rather, this is a companion of that album, as evidenced by their matching covers’ tooth and nail themes.

Comethazine — Bawskee 4

The St. Louis-born former XXL Freshman has been on a relentless release schedule, which makes sense considering the self-contained nature of his independent operation. Bawskee 4 is his second project of the year after Pandemic and is actually the fifth installment in his Bawskee series (as signified by its predecessor’s title, Bawskee 3.5).

Dej Loaf — Sell Sole II

It may be hard to wrap your head around, but Sell Sole II will be considered Dej Loaf’s debut album, despite being a fixture in hip-hop for eight years. The original Sell Sole came out in 2012 and since then, Dej has seen the highs and the lows of the game, getting her original debut shelved by Columbia Records despite a solid track record of hits including “Try Me,” “Back Up,” “Me U & Hennessey” and “Ryda.” Now, she’s back on her own terms, returning to the then-futuristic style that still sounds of a piece with where hip-hop is today.

Joyner Lucas — Evolution [EP]

Now that he’s gotten all his old records cleared out with ADHD, Joyner Lucas seems to be finding his stride. He promised that he had “zero intent to make mainstream records” with this project, which contains features from The Game and Ashanti.

Junglepussy — JP4

Two years removed from JP3, raunchy New York City rapper Junglepussy returns with another collection of fierce rhymes and spooky videos to accompany them — just in time for Halloween.

LA VanGogh — Shpeshftr

Breezing out of the Windy City, Chicago, VanGogh surprised me with the sonic quality of his intriguing beats and the rapid-fire wit of his rhymes. His flow is polished and poised and he has an interesting point of view.

Tobi — Elements, Vol. 1

Over the past several years, TOBi has generated an impressive buzz out of Canada with his music detailing his immigrant experience and crossing genres, incorporating dancehall, African music, hip-hop, and R&B.

Wesson Dessir — Apollo Archives

I can’t lie, this one spooked me at first. It seemed almost too geeky for even me, a second-gen, hardcore anime nerd and hip-hop backpacker with broad-spanning interests in Greek and Japanese mythology, philosophy, and Pan-Africanism. Then I realized that yes, this one covers all those bases pretty well. If Lupe Fiasco rapping about dinosaurs is your jam, Apollo Archives might just be one of your favorite projects this year.

YRN Murk — Cranberry Ways

Sprawling out of Migos’ YRN mantra — you may have noticed the acronym adorning many of their social handles — YRN Murk is difficult to find a whole lot of information on but like his compatriots, hails from Atlanta, embraces the finer points of trap rap, and relies heavily on a Lord Infamous-inspired triplet flow that should appeal to fans of the Quality Control brand.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Ariana Grande’s new song “Positions” has been out for a few hours now, and fans believe they have made an eyebrow-raising discovery while analyzing the lyrics.

Overall, the song seems to be about Grande’s commitment to boyfriend Dalton Gomez and her willingness to make the relationship work, as she sings on the chorus, “Switchin’ the positions for you / Cookin’ in the kitchen and I’m in the bedroom / I’m in the Olympics, way I’m jumpin’ through hoops / Know my love infinite, nothin’ I wouldn’t do / That I won’t do, switchin’ for you.” It’s some lyrics that come before those ones that are drawing attention, though.

The song’s opening words are, “Heaven sent you to me / I’m just hopin’ I don’t repeat history.” That doesn’t look like much on paper, but on the song, Grande takes an extended pause in the middle of “repeat.” So, it sounds like she’s saying “Pete,” which fans are perceiving as a nod to her failed relationship with Pete Davidson.

Some fans noticed this pretty quickly, and Twitter was flooded with Grande stans picking up what they believe the singer is putting down.

If this really is a nod to Davidson, it wouldn’t be the first time either has referenced the other in their work. In the Netflix stand-up special Davidson released earlier this year, he was transparent about his dig at Grande when he commented on her appearance.

After quarantine set in, it wasn’t long before Adrianne Lenker got to work on some more music, opting for a solo project since she was unable to see her bandmates. While Big Thief apparently were able to reconvene and record a new album over the summer, Lenker has shared the result of her musical exploration at the beginning of quarantine, two new solo LPs titled songs and instrumentals. On the new episode of Indiecast, Steven Hyden and Ian Cohen dig into the lore around Lenker and her band Big Thief, as well as their prolific and acclaimed output over the last few years. The conversation centers around one central question: is Big Thief is a band or just a front for Lenker?

The episode’s second half is focused on Fake It Flowers, the debut album from 20-year-old rocker Beabadoobee. With catchy songs and big choruses, Hyden argues that Beabadoobee’s debut album solidifies her role in the modern indie rock canon as Stone Temple Pilots, where Soccer Mommy is Nirvana and Clairo is Pearl Jam.

In this week’s Recommendation Corner, Cohen is looking to the ’90s and plugging Ida’s 1996 album I Know About You, while Hyden is digging Optimisme, the new album from Songhoy Blues.

New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 13 below and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts here. Stay up to date and follow us on Instagram and Twitter.

Netflix is still pouring out the movies and TV shows to binge this week, and we’re here to help you feel out what deserves a spot in your queue.

Godless director Scott Frank’s new meditation on what it means to be a champion is one of those picks. Starring Anya Taylor-Joy and a stellar supporting cast, the series is impressively intense and a slam-dunk bingewatch. There’s also new spooky mysteries from a Netflix revival series, a Rebecca movie remake, and more from the one and only David Letterman. You can’t go wrong by picking at least a few of these for the weekend.

Here’s everything coming to and leaving Netflix this week of Oct. 23.

The Queen’s Gambit (Netflix series streaming 10/23)

Yes, this is essentially a chess drama, but it’s a surprisingly interesting and tightly paced season worth binging. It’s also a meditation upon addiction and danger and what it means to be a champion, all wrapped up in a coming-of-age tale about a boozy chess grandmaster in the making. As fictional prodigy Beth Harmon, Anya Taylor-Joy’s piercing gaze is here to demonstrate how a board game can look like a battlefield in Scott Frank’s adaptation of the Walter Tevis novel. The supporting cast, including Marielle Heller as a tragic 1950s housewife, Moses Ingram as a kickass childhood friend, and Harry Melling and Thomas Brodie-Sangster as gameplay rivals, is also incredible.

Unsolved Mysteries: Vol. 2 (Netflix series streaming 10/19)

Following a successful summer revival, the second batch of cold-case deep dives are here to spook the hell out of you. We ranked the six episodes — which include a mysterious death in a luxury hotel, the disappearance and murder of a Washington insider, and a mass haunting following a tsunami — that invite citizen detectives to do their thing. This reinvigorated take on the classic series comes from the original creators (Cosgrove/Meurer Productions), who teamed up with the Stranger Things production company (21 Laps Entertainment), and hopefully, some justice and closure can be found for victims’ families.

My Next Guest Needs No Introduction With David Letterman (Netflix series streaming 10/21)

The venerable former late-night TV host returns for Season 3 episodes. This brand new crop of deep-dive conversations will feature Dave Chappelle talking about weed, along with Robert Downey Jr., Kim Kardashian West, Lizzo, and more.

Rebecca (Netflix film streaming 10/21)

Rebecca (Netflix film) — Armie Hammer and Lily James star in this fresh adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s beloved 1938 gothic novel. Underneath it all, the film’s a psychological thriller about a bride who finds herself living in the shadow of a wealthy man’s first wife, the Rebecca of the title, after a high-speed courtship in Monte Carlo.

Here’s a full list of what’s been added in the last week:

Avail. 10/18
ParaNorman

Avail. 10/19
Unsolved Mysteries: Volume 2

Avail. 10/20
Carol

Avail. 10/21
My Next Guest Needs No Introduction With David Letterman: Season 3
Rebecca

Avail. 10/22
Bending the Arc
Cadaver
The Hummingbird Project
Yes, God, Yes

Avail. 10/23
Barbarians
Move
Over the Moon
Perdida
The Queen’s Gambit

And here’s what’s leaving next week, so it’s your last chance:

Leaving 10/26
Battle: Los Angeles

Leaving 10/30
Kristy

Leaving 10/31
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
Burlesque
Charlotte’s Web
Clash of the Titans
District 9
The Firm
Fun with Dick & Jane
The Girl with All the Gifts
Grandmaster
Highway to Heaven: Seasons 1-5
The Interview
Just Friends
Magic Mike
Nacho Libre
The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!
The NeverEnding Story
The NeverEnding Story 2: The Next Chapter
Nights in Rodanthe
The Patriot
Set Up
The Silence of the Lambs
Sleepless in Seattle
Sleepy Hollow
Spaceballs
The Taking of Pelham 123
The Ugly Truth
Underworld
Underworld: Evolution
Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
Zathura

Conor Oberst and Phoebe Bridgers — the duo behind the supergroup Better Oblivion Community Center — have been active as a pair lately. Oberst joined Bridgers during a livestream for a mini BOCC reunion, and now Bridgers has teamed up with Oberst’s band Bright Eyes for a new single. The song is “Miracle Of Life,” a protest song about abortion rights that benefits Planned Parenthood. The song is currently exclusive to Bandcamp but will be made available on other streaming platforms beginning on October 28.

Lyrically, the song tells the story of a woman who doesn’t have easy access to abortion services: “We could be done with it tonight / The neighborhood doctor says it’s sanitized / Lay down on the hard cold ground / Crying’s such a soothing sound / Get cured with a coat hanger / Girl, you’re in America now.”

Oberst says of the song in a statement:

“This song should not exist in 2020 America. It is a protest song, I guess. Or maybe just a little story about what was, what still is in many parts of the world and what could be again here in this country if the GOP is successful in reshaping the Supreme Court and rolling back all of the hard fought progress made for reproductive rights in the last 50 years. Hopefully, if we all work together and vote, it will make this song sound as irrelevant and outdated as it should.”

Listen to “Miracle Of Life” above.

During Thursday’s presidential debate, President Donald Trump criticized Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) for “knowing nothing about the climate,” a shot at her Green New Deal package. “You know who developed it? AOC plus three,” Trump said, the other three being Reps. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. “They know nothing about the climate. I mean, she’s got a good line of stuff, but she knows nothing about the climate, and they’re all hopping through hoops for AOC plus three. Not a real plan, it costs 100 trillion dollars.”

Mind you, this is the same Trump who nine leading conservation groups called “the worst president for our environment in history,” whose administration “has unleashed an unprecedented assault on our environment and the health of our communities.” But outside of the you-can’t-put-a-price-on-it benefits of, y’know, saving the planet, Ocasio-Cortez also took issue with Trump’s “plus three” comment.

“It’s actually AOC plus 115 because that’s how many House and Senate members have cosponsored the most ambitious climate legislation in American history. I am so deeply proud of & grateful for each + every one of my House and Senate colleagues who stand for our future & champion the #GreenNewDeal, the boldest climate plan in US history,” she tweeted, along with a link to the plan. Ocasio-Cortez also didn’t appreciate Trump (or any colleague) calling her by her nickname. She wrote, “I wonder if Republicans understand how much they advertise their disrespect of women in debates when they consistently call women members of Congress by nicknames or first names while using titles & last names when referring to men of = stature. Women notice. It conveys a lot.”

This is especially true if your name is “Mike Pence.”

To learn more about the Green New Deal, click here.

Anya Taylor-Joy can do more with just a stare than most actors can with a ten-page monologue. That’s the thought that continuously runs through my head while watching the actress decimate grown men over a chessboard during the seven-episode run of Netflix’s upcoming drama mini-series, The Queen’s Gambit.

As Beth Harmon, an orphan with a troubled past who begins as a chess prodigy and grows to become one the most talented and controversial players in Scott Frank’s re-working of the Walter Tevis classic novel, everything rests with Taylor-Joy. More specifically, with her face. It’s there we see the aftermath of a cutting knight-rook combo, the desperation of a Sicilian Defense, the turmoil after being forced to resign to a steely Russian opponent decades older than her. We see things other than chess in Taylor-Joy’s face too — like her character’s addiction to alcohol and tranquilizers, one that begins at a young age; her loneliness, her otherness as a woman competing in a male-dominated space in the ’60s, her genius, her madness.

Taylor-Joy’s mastered that non-verbal style of acting – it’s what’s elevated her performances in films like Autumn de Wilde’s Emma, Robert Eggers’ The Witch, and M. Night Shyamalan’s Split – but she doesn’t rely solely on it for The Queen’s Gambit, instead carrying the series with the quiet charisma and solid assuredness of someone who’s discovered what she’s supposed to be doing. The “how” of doing it though continues to evolve, and when we caught up with Taylor-Joy to talk about the show and her insane schedule — she’s back with Eggers filming The Northman, she just finished a stint on Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho, and she’s about to board George Miller’s Furiosa spin-off — the actress describes her rise to fame as a kind of homecoming and, maybe, a lesson in setting boundaries.

Even for someone who knows nothing about chess, this show was more than a bit addictive. What about this story hooked you?

I heard that Scott Frank wanted to talk to me about a project. There was no script, but there was a book. I was like, “Oh, Scott Frank. Incredibly talented. I’m down.” I also love to read. I inhaled that book so quickly and there was something… To use like the 2020 expression, I felt seen by this character. I was just like, “Whoa, okay. I really think I can tell this story with sensitivity and empathy.” Then Scott and I met. I ran to the meeting, and I don’t run anywhere. I was so excited that I had to run to meet this man. As soon as the door was opened, I was like, “It’s not all about chess and she needs to have red hair!” Scott was like, “I agree.” It was a very passionate, breathless discussion the first time that we met. I have to say, he, as a filmmaker and as a person, is incredible because we decided that we were going to do this, knowing that I would have played two characters prior to that, with basically no time off. I was going to do Emma, have a day off, do Last Night in Soho, have a day off, and then arrive to play Beth. Scott was so respectful, so cool and so caring for me as an individual, that I can’t imagine a better collaborator.

Beth is a genius, but her talent makes her “other,” and I think the nature of her lifestyle just adds to that. Did you identify with that part of her?

Big time. I think her inherent loneliness is the first thing that I was like, “Oh, this hurts to read, but also, I get it.”

I mean, we’re all a bit lonely right now.

Oh, absolutely. But I also think most people are inherently lonely it’s just, a lot of people don’t talk about it. Which is why I’m the first to stick up my hand and be like, “I was very lonely as a child.” I just had this deep faith and desire that there was a world one day where I was going to be able to inhabit it, I was going to have something to contribute, and the people around me would like me for the way that I was. I think Beth finds that in chess and I was lucky enough to find it in art. It did feel that way. I stepped onto my first set and I was like, “Oh, it all makes sense. This is where I’m supposed to be. This is where I feel safe, wanted, and cared for.” I think I love the scene where Beth sees a professional chess tournament for the first time, because she’s like, “Oh my God, I found my people.”

You’ve kind of mastered the art of non-verbal acting over the years, and that really comes into play here. How do you tap into such a complicated character while also making note of all these moves you need to be making.

I’m not a chess prodigy. I did not know how to play chess prior to this. I think one of the best pieces of advice I ever got with acting, particularly in screen acting, is if you’re having the right thoughts, then you do the right things. I am not an actor that goes and — with all respect to the actors that this works for, it just happens not to work for me — I don’t learn my lines at night, reading into a mirror, seeing the way that my face moves. I just learn the lines in the morning, connect the thoughts, and then if you’re having the thoughts your body naturally does what it’s supposed to do. So if the thought is, “Oh, you have no idea that I’m about to massively screw you right now with this rook move,” your body naturally gives off all those signals. It makes it super fun. The game of chess is like a mini-war on a board, so it makes sense that if you stick a camera between the two people that it’s going down with, it’s tense and exciting. Then it’s performed and you get the added kick of punctuating your feelings with chess moves and that feels great.

So how good at chess are you now?

I had to have a theoretical understanding of chess, just because I know what it means to the people that really care about it. As somebody who applauds passion, I didn’t feel like I could waltz on set knowing nothing about chess and just being like, “I’m going to pretend like I know what I’m doing.” I do think knowing the theory of chess and then being able to execute it for a full game are two very different things. I can possibly write a good little booklet on chess but I’m not the best player there ever was. For the process of filming, the number of games, the number of sequences that I had to learn… I think the second day I just went up to Scott and I was like, “You have to show me these games five minutes before we play them. Let me log them into my short-term memory. I’ll do it. Then I can throw that away and act,” because otherwise you just get really confused and you never sleep. Unfortunately, as human beings, we need to do that.

It’s almost like memorizing a dance or fight choreography then?

Completely. Thomas [Brodie-Sangster] and I had the best time in the speed chess matches because chess is historically a solitary game. But when you’re learning sequences, you have a dance partner. You cannot move until he moves. So we both felt very chuffed and very proud of ourselves whenever we would finish those sequences, because it was like, “Oh, we achieved something together. You were great. I was great. This was great.”

Did you ever get competitive with the guys off-set, because, from this show, it seems like chess can get very combative?

Again, in terms of playing the game for real, no. Scott Frank is very competitive. We played chess between takes on a couple of days and then we were like, “We need to stop. We need to focus on what we’re doing because we’re getting very aggressive towards each other.” [Laughs]

Right. Yelling at each other over a chessboard might not be the best for on-set morale.

Yeah. With Thomas, I didn’t realize I couldn’t be competitive about speed chess, but I can, and that was pretty fun. Just trying to always be the one that was quicker. I think that really worked for Benny and Beth’s relationship as well, because when they first meet it’s the first time that they’ve each met their intellectual equal, and that makes them both really excited and really ticked off at the same time. So yeah, that was really fun to play with.

It’s also nice that this is a show about a woman competing in a male-dominated space and it doesn’t constantly focus on her gender. It feels more progressive than you’d expect.

It was one of the things I loved most about her when she entered my life. She was like this weird space creature that wasn’t handed a book like, “You’re a girl, this is what you’re allowed to want.” She’s genuinely baffled by the fact that people keep being like, “This is really extraordinary that she’s a girl,” and she’s like, “No, I’m really, really good. That’s the bit that’s extraordinary about me.” I love getting to play that because we’re still dealing with it now. It’s going to take a long time before we figure it out. In the sixties, it was worse. So I love being able to portray a character that… I guess it’s not that she doesn’t see gender, it’s that she just doesn’t think it’s the most incredible thing about her. I hope we’re moving towards a society that doesn’t dictate what dreams you’re allowed to have or not have based on your gender, or what you identify as. I hope that’s where we’re moving to. I hope that audiences, in watching this story, get lulled into the same way of thinking and it becomes less about, “Oh, let’s watch this girl chess prodigy kick-ass,” and it’s more about, “Wow, this human is very talented and we care about her as an individual and not because of her gender.”

You’ve been incredibly busy over the last couple of years, and you just signed on to George Miller’s Furiosa spin-off. You mentioned realizing the need for sleep with this project. Have you learned how to take care of yourself a bit better because of this series?

You really hit the nail on the head there. I learned that with Beth. In January, I was like, I might need to actually eat a vegetable if I’m going to survive this year. That might be something that I need to do. Then by the time I got to play Beth, it was like… I’d never existed on much sleep, and for the first time ever, I was like, “It is 8:00 p.m. I am up at three. I am going to bed. I cannot talk to another individual. I need to sit at home with my thoughts, otherwise, I’m not going to be able to play this character correctly.” Having that enforced on me, as a way for me to play the character, was a really clever way that my brain taught me about boundaries. Because I could do it for Beth, but I hadn’t been able to do it for myself before. Now post-Beth, I’m like, “Oh, I really love people. I am an extroverted introvert, but I require time to read and time to be by myself in nature. If I don’t have that, I’m not as good a friend as I want to be.” It’s what people talk about on the airplane: you have to put on your own oxygen mask first if you’re going to help anybody else. I think Beth taught me about the oxygen mask.

Netflix’s ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ premieres on Oct. 23rd.