---

View Entire Post ›

Top Chef co-host Padma Lakshmi has managed the impossible. She’s made food and travel TV relevant again. Taste the Nation (my review) doesn’t bombard you with huge doses of food porn from chic restaurants most of us will never get to go to. Instead, Lakshmi and her team venture deep into the American psyche by digging into both the Indigenous and migrant communities that make up the cultural fabric of this country.

In the process, the show manages to strike a harmonious balance between being thought-provoking and educational while also offering a sense of escapism and wonder. In short, Taste the Nation is exactly the food show America needs right now.

As an immigrant, Lakshmi makes an ideal host for a show centered on immigrant food, which is to say: pretty much the majority of mainstream “American” food, from hot dogs to apple pie to pizza to gumbo and beyond. But the show goes well past these commonly explored dishes by paying homage to Indigenous food culture in a way that’s rarely seen on mainstream TV. That aspect is what Padma and I met up (over the phone) this week to talk about.

As Lakshmi and I discussed food history, the importance of representation in food TV, and how adaptation and evolution make our shared foodway great, her team informed me that we’d run out of time. She was generous enough to extend the conversation in a follow-up call and I’ve included both parts below. Check it out and then watch the full “The Gullah Way” episode below.

So let’s first talk about the show. It feels very unique; very creative. It’s a bit of an outlier, even in the world of food and travel television. Where did the idea for this show come from?

It came from my work as an artist ambassador with the ACLU — the American Civil Liberties Union — on immigration issues. Shortly after the 2016 election, I started getting involved with them. And as an immigrant myself, I felt really offended by a lot of the rhetoric coming out of Washington that, in my opinion, vilified immigrant communities and the contributions that they have made over generations to this nation.

So, it was through my work on the issue that I felt compelled to write a cookbook celebrating all the foods that immigrants had brought here. And then, in tandem, I was working on a TV project on immigration. My producing partner saw the research that I was doing for the cookbook and we melded the two ideas together. It’s been a real joy to see something that was just an idea in your head turn into a full-blown series.

I’m very lucky that I got to do it.

I come from an Indigenous background and full disclosure, you’ve actually judged one of my Indigenous dishes before for UPROXX. I made a blue corn tamale stuffed with blueberry and Juniper.

That sounds good. Did I like it?

You did! Because of that, the first episode I watched was the one with the Indigenous chefs. It touched my heart because when you’re with Felicia Ruiz, you ask her the same thing you asked me, “How do you know what’s safe to eat when you forage?” It’s really fascinating to watch these Indigenous ingredients get a moment in the spotlight.

How was the decision to include Indigenous food in the show made?

Well, I thought that if I was going to explore “American food” and be truthful about that, I needed to give credit where credit was due. That’s what the whole ethos of the series is. It’s to let people from different communities speak for themselves and create their own narratives — which has not been the case in mainstream media, in my opinion.

So I had to start at what was truly, natively American food before the colonial forces came in and before the European settlers came in and before Christopher Columbus. Depending on the region you’re living in, three sisters is what was in this country, right? Corn, squash, beans. So, I was really interested in embedding myself in a Native American community.

While I’m an immigrant, I’ve done most of my schooling in America. And I was appalled at how little instruction I was given on this part of our land’s history. So it was important for me to set the groundwork and say, “Well, this is what actual American food is and has been.” Everything else that we now consider American food was brought here by other people.

Precisely.

And the whole series proceeds to delve into different communities and what those foods are, but I felt I had a responsibility. Even from an intellectual point of view, I just wanted to learn what I had felt I was deprived of knowing because of a lack of representation in history books. So that’s why I went to San Carlos. That’s why I went to talk to Felicia and the people who are in that episode.

It was really, for me, one of the most eyeopening experiences I’ve ever had. I’ve never foraged for my own food. I’ve never eaten a rodent. I’ve never been on a reservation. It was really a learning episode for me and one that I hadn’t seen in food television. It’s a story that I wanted to let that community tell on as big of a platform as I could give them.

I teared up watching that last scene around the table. My dad’s from a reservation in the Pacific Northwest. And when I got into this business of writing about food, I did so because I wanted to highlight Indigenous food and Indigenous chefs. So seeing Indigenous chefs and food given their due on your show was … it feels like a big moment for American food, in general.

Thank you. From your lips to viewers’ ears, I hope that this show catches on because it was such a beautiful journey that I was fortunate enough to take. And I hope that I can take people watching the show on it vicariously, but I’d also like to keep going because there’s so much more to know and learn.

That’s what I was thinking, as well. As I said, I’m from the Pacific Northwest, our foodways have almost no parallels to the American Southwest. It’s like the difference between Norway and Iran, it’s just a different thing.

Yeah! And that’s the thing, we paint each other with these really broad brushes and obviously the food is going to be different in the Pacific Northwest to Arizona or Florida and so on. In a ten-part series, I have so much to cover. That’s why I hope I get another season greenlit because I want the privilege of exploring those differences in different Indigenous communities.

When you were trying the Indigenous foods down there, did you find any parallels in tastes or textures that were already familiar to you? Was there a connection?

Sure. For me, I really connected with the sumac because I’ve used a lot of sumac from my exposure to Middle Eastern cuisine. And it’s funny because when I was writing the Encyclopedia of Spices and Herbs, I found out that Native Americans used sumac, that it grows wild everywhere in America. So sumac was a taste that I identified with. Then, obviously, the wild onions, and the chilies.

If you see the stone that I’m grinding the chilies with at Felicia’s home, I used to do a very similar thing with my grandmother. So I felt right at home doing that with her. And how we used the chilies reminded me of a lot of different chutneys that my family has traditionally made.

It’s really interesting because the Indigenous side of the series seeps into most episodes, especially the El Paso one. You have this great segment where you take the time to talk about Indigenous Mexican cuisine. How did you navigate that for the show?

I try to approach my work holistically because often the truth is layered and complicated. So in order to get a full understanding of the subject matter that you’re investigating, you need to account for those overlaps.

I can remember having a conversation around some table with other food people saying things like, “No, no, no, if it’s taquitos, you use corn tortillas, but if it’s flauta, you use a flour tortilla.” And this was a table of food professionals and not one person mentioned that flour is a colonial addition to North America and that’s why you have flour tortillas. That it was brought by the Spanish. Traditionally corn is the grain of choice. But that’s why you have both corn and flour tortillas.

To me, that was really interesting. And that has to do with history and colonialism and the layers of how all of those cultures have combined to build into what is now understood as “Mexican” food.

Right.

More specifically, Mexican food to me is super interesting. In America, I think, we are very familiar with Northern Mexican foods because that’s what’s close to the border.

We didn’t have time to go into this, because it was a show about Mexicans in El Paso, but I traveled extensively in Mexico and I filmed extensively in different parts of Mexico as well. We’ve done actually more than one finale for Top Chef in Mexico. And I’ve also gone on my own time with my family. And the cuisine of Mexico is so sophisticated and so diverse. But I don’t think Americans have really scratched the surface of all that is.

It also reminds me of a lot of Indian cuisine with the recados and the seeds. That’s not really surprising when you look at the climate of South Asia and Central or South America. So you have a lot of the same ingredients. You have tamarinds, mango, cumin, coconut, chilies — which are Mexican but were brought to India, again by colonialists. Today you couldn’t imagine Indian food without chili.

Indian food did not have chilies because all chilies come from Mexico and people just don’t know that. I think it’s important because you can trace a country or culture’s history through the foods that they eat. You know, there’s a reason why cumin is in Mexico. It’s because it was brought to Spain by the Moors, which also brought pomegranates. This is why the city of Grenada is called Grenada because that’s the Spanish word for pomegranates. To me, all of that history is really fascinating. And I hope that other people think so too.

You are speaking my language right now. There’s a joke in the Indigenous community that’s basically, “Imagine Italy without the tomato. Imagine Thailand without chili. Imagine Ireland without the potato.”

Right, exactly.

While you were traveling around the country and embedding yourself in immigrant communities, did you get a better sense of what we “think” America is compared to what it is on the ground for migrants?

That’s really what the show is seeking to do. It’s seeking to be a rebuttal to a lot of the vilification and negativity that immigrants have suffered. It’s insulting and offensive to me. I was incensed enough to want to make it my work. Not just my advocacy work, but by actual work-work, my day job.

I think that migration is responsible for a lot of the most beautiful things about humankind. At no other time in our history, as a civilization, has there been more movement, more migration on this earth. This is a subject that deeply interests me because I think that is where the interesting community comes from. Even though there’s a lot of pain, blood, and plunder associated with this, the only good that can come from that suffering — all that pain of earlier times — is the sifting through it all, finding the good, and enjoying it.

So while it sucks that the French were in Vietnam, we wouldn’t have banh mi otherwise. It sucks that people were so interested in spices that they took a left turn when they should have taken a right. Still, it’s cool that India has chilis now. I think that there’s power in the pain that we have collectively gone through as a society. And if we are willing to look with open eyes, we can sift through our collective cultural rubble and at least enjoy the fruits of that very difficult and tumultuous part of our shared history.

I think you don’t get to own only the good things about your culture. You have to be willing to understand that some of those good things come from very dark, bad things.

I feel that.

A lot of the work that I’m trying to do, without hopefully being heavy-handed in the series, is to say, “Okay, nobody comes to a country and leaves everything they know unless they have to or unless there’s a need for it.” Whether it’s forced migration during the Trail of Tears or bringing in slaves from Africa or Iranians or Syrians fleeing the fundamentalist regimes, or… pick any group — that’s what creates migration.

But to me what’s most beautiful is the commingling of our cultures, of sharing, of breaking bread with each other and saying, “Well, I have noodles, I’ll bring that.” And someone else is saying, “Okay, I’ll bring my curry.” To me, that’s something valuable, precious, and worth acknowledging and celebrating.

When my mom came to this country, she was working and she couldn’t find a lot of Indian groceries that she needed. So we have a South Indian dish called upma. It’s made with cracked wheat that’s sauteed with vegetables and spices. It kind of resembles stuffing. And my mom could not find rava or suji, which is the kind of cracked wheat it is, so she used Cream of Wheat because that’s what was affordable and accessible to her at the American supermarket.

Then when I was younger and I wrote my first cookbook I made it with couscous. And then today, because I discovered quinoa, I’d make it for my child with quinoa. Now, is that authentic? Well, it’s pretty damn authentic to me and my life. But it’s interesting that I am using an ancient South American grain to make a very classic South Indian recipe that’s very homey to nourish my family. To me, those are the gifts and the precious stones that dropped out of some very, very dark parts of our history.

Hot on the heels of Alfredo, his widely-praised joint album with The Alchemist, Indiana rapper Freddie Gibbs has announced the impending arrival of his next solo project along with a new label partner: Warner Records.

In a press release, Gibbs expressed excitement in working with the new label, which is also home to rising hip-hop stars like Chika, IDK, and Saweetie. “I’m really looking forward to partnering with Warner and working with Aaron [Bay-Schuck, CEO of Warner],” said Gibbs. “He’s a young, progressive label head I can openly share ideas with. It was love and respect from the first meeting and always felt right. We’re working together to take everything to another level for my day one fans as well as the people just now discovering me.”

Freddie also teased that the follow-up to Alfredo is on the way, with more details forthcoming. His manager, Ben “Lambo” Lambert, explained the benefits of signing with a major like Warner after years of independently releasing critically-hailed, fan-favorite albums like Freddie, Bandana, and Alfredo, “Teaming up with [Warner] puts us in a strong position to build upon the work we’ve been putting in independently over the past decade or so. We’re excited for the next chapter in our journey.”

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

As the uprising centered around the killing of Rayshard Brooks swells throughout Atlanta, WNBA veteran and Atlanta Dream guard Renee Montgomery announced on Thursday morning that she will sit out the 2020 WNBA season to continue the fight toward social justice reform, writing, “Moments equal Momentum.”

A two-time champion with the Minnesota Lynx, the 31-year-old Montgomery figured to be a key part of Atlanta’s backcourt rotation, but she has been heavily involved in the protests that have occurred following the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor over the past several weeks.

Montgomery becomes the first pro athlete to announce they will not play the 2020 season because of the work to be done regarding systemic racism in America. Both the NBA and WNBA have been public about allowances that will be made for players to sit out (without pay) to take part in the ongoing movement. Still, both leagues have also reportedly worked closely with their players to find a way to use the platform of the pro basketball season to present a unified front against racism and toward systemic change.

The WNBA and its players agreed this week to move forward with plans to begin the season around July 24 in Bradenton, Fla., on the IMG Academy Campus.

In anticipation of August’s Comic-Con alternate event DC FanDome, Justice League director Zack Snyder shared the first teaser for the “Snyder Cut.” Watch it above.

In the clip, Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman looks upon an ancient artifact that teases the arrival of baddie Darkseid, while Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor (as heard in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice) ominously whispers, “But the bell has already been rung… and they’ve heard it. But in the dark, among the stars. Ding dong, the god is dead.”

Snyder debuted the teaser, but my man Jason Momoa, who played Aquaman in Justice League and his way-more-fun spin-off movie, shared it, too. “The best part about being aquaman is that zack synder created me so i get to see all this awesome shit before anyone,” he wrote on Instagram. “@hbomax #releasethesnydercut #DCFanDome Here’s a first ever peek at Zack Snyder‘s Justice League. cheeeehuuuuuuuuu aloha j.”

“It will be an entirely new thing, and, especially talking to those who have seen the released movie, a new experience apart from that movie,” Snyder said about the new cut, which could be four hours long. That’s 34 Quibis!

Zack Snyder’s Justice League, as it’s apparently now called, hits HBO Max in 2021.

Perfume Genius shared his euphoric album Set My Heart On Fire Immediately last month but the singer is continuing to give his fans more music. In celebration of Pride Month, the singer partnered with Amazon Music to offer a cover as part of their playlist spotlighting LGBTQ musicians. As a contribution to the playlist, Perfume Genius elected to rework Mazzy Star’s 1993 track “Fade Into You.”

Mazzy Star’s original version features wistful guitar tones and lead singer Hope Sandoval’s lethargic lyrical delivery. Perfume Genius holds onto the song’s initial melancholia while reimagining it instead with slow-burning synths. “I want to hold the hand inside you / I want to take the breath that’s true / I look to you and I see nothing,” Perfume Genius soulfully croons.

About the cover, Perfume Genius explained why he chose Mazzy Star’s renowned So Tonight That I Might See album opener: “I chose ‘Fade Into You’ because I carried it with me for a long time and I always looked to it for the warmth and the very heavy vibe that it always brings. It felt almost uncoverable but I wondered what I could do to make it sharper and maybe a little more desperate but still maintain the sort of beauty of it and the quietness of it.”

Listen to Perfume Genius’ cover of “Fade Into You” via Amazon Music here.

Set My Heart On Fire Immediately is out now via Matador. Get it here.

Revisit Uproxx’s recent interview with Perfume Genius here.

Hello, Isolators! After a brief hiatus, we are back, and it is possible that you, like some NBA players here and those who will soon travel to Orlando to live in a not entirely all the way baked social experiment where at least the rules around ping-pong are explicit, are no longer self-isolating. It depends on the country you’re in, how much that government is hellbent on moving forward, the state or province, the city, honestly even the time of day. Is it imperfect? Very. Risky? That too!

What does Self-Isolation Watch look like when we are in the middle of a collage of new and shifting rules that looks like they were made by a third grader’s art class? Well, it looks like some players still at home doing the same things they have been since the end of March, some out in the streets protesting in the largest civil rights movement since the civil rights movement, and others gearing up to spend the next four months on the shores of a swamp in the strangest Self-ISO yet. It’s a weird time, dude, and I am here to wade through it with you.

Aaron Gordon

A wonderful sentiment to start with is the one Aaron Gordon shared this week from the bottom of his pool. Well, to be fair, he first set the outlook rolling as he posed mid-practice in what I am very confident is a jumpsuit. “Be water my friends,” he captioned it, ball gently cradled as if levitating. At first this elicited a very even “K” from me and, as if sensing mine and probably many more people’s reluctance to opt into an entirely new lifestyle choice right now, Gordon doubled down hard, all the way to the bottom of his pool.

There he sat, encouraging us, to do the same. “That’s why they call it the deep end,” he said. No, he didn’t say that, he was underwater.

Rating: Many questions but the first is, does water always match its shoes to its jumpsuit?

Jaylen Brown

Brown climbed up Stone Mountain just outside of Atlanta to start off one of his days this week. The feeling that I have as a result of watching him handstand toward the horizon, at sunrise, is a heady mix of sheer joy and extreme concern!

Rating: A rush for us both.

Jimmy Butler

This is a little bit old now but was the last thing Butler shared and also a Happy Birthday wish to one of his closest friends, Carmelo Anthony, so it plays. There is a real grace in the way Butler inserts himself into the celebratory moments of others, and a real joy in the way that he knows that he’s doing it.

Rating: Which is the most buried lede — Melo’s birthday, Butler’s football equipment, all that wine? Please, never solve this puzzle.

Russell Westbrook and DeMar DeRozan

Brodie and Deebo joined the Black Lives Matter march in Compton and both spoke at the rally. Westbrook is from Long Beach while DeRozan is from Compton, and DeRozan, who can prefer to be private, has more and more been utilizing his powerful voice in recent seasons.

Rating: Chills and tears, together at last.

Kyle Lowry, Tobias Harris, Matisse Thybulle

Two Sixers and one of North Philly’s finest took to the streets with thousands more in hopes of putting another crack in that big damn bell.

Rating: I swear this was not a subtle Sixers dig.

Damian Lillard

Lillard led protests in Portland and marched throughout the day. There’s live video he recorded of the march, his voice heard as a part of the crowd in call and response, and the weight that he gives every word will make it so you never do not pay Lillard the kind of attention he deserves ever again.

Rating: And if you already weren’t I don’t know what to tell you.

Giannis Antetokounmpo

This is a very beautiful family enjoying themselves while simultaneously making every GM the league over sweat profusely.

Rating: Who are they very kindly ridiculing?

P.J. Tucker

Tucker, in life as in basketball, is always the voice of reason. In basketball, his voice is staring guys down until they gently back away from James Harden, and in life, it is calling out the anonymous bubble violation hotline for the snitch line it is.

Rating: In a court of law you should have to swear on an old Nike shoebox that used to contain a pair of P.J. Tucker’s shoes.

Bam Adebayo

What does Bam’s dog know that we don’t? Why is this dog always going to be the one to get the job opening, the last takeout special, and the only haircut cancellation for weeks?

Rating: Is this a person who is disguised as a dog or a dog with an optometrist to the stars?

Tim Hardaway Jr.

If you know self-iso then you know Hardaway has been handling it particularly well at all times. There were the few weeks where he languidly hosed down the pair of manatees that floated up to the dock in his backyard, the few weeks where he lay out on a recliner smoking a cigar and waiting for the manatees to return. With his isolation protocols just barely loosening, he took to some open cerulean waters this week to do this pose for however long he felt like.

Rating: The secret to self-isolation is to make isolation feel like it’s lucky to be alone with you.

Serge Ibaka

Brace yourselves, because Serge Ibaka let his cheekbones LOOSE. The big man got a big cut, his first in months, and his hair, wherever it is lucky enough to be around his head, is looking great.

Rating: I like to see his barber wearing gloves of course, and how entirely nonplussed Ibaka is in what we understand to be a moment of intense relief.

Paul Millsap

I was starting to miss Paul Millsap, a strong contender in the early days of ISO for the yet to be decided NBA Self-Isolation Watch MVP candidacy. The good news is he’s back. The even better news is he’s been putting down entire things of celery with the help of what ancient civilization might have called magic but we simply call a food processor.

Rating: A few more of these things and he absolutely won’t be stopped from winning it all.

Maurice Harkless

This is powerful and honest because you can see that the camera lens and the mirror maybe need a wipe, the bathroom stuff is just out there on display even with a subtle crop, but you know what no one is around to get these photos so once again, like the 90 some odd days before this, it is up to you to take your picture.

Rating: Is he awkwardly perched on the edge of the sink? Is he standing? This photo’s proportions are the newest kind of quarantine jigsaw puzzle.

Jusuf Nurkic

Nurk alert! The Bosnian Beast came through with a saying a little more lengthy and lost in translation than what Aaron Gordon was giving us from the deep end, but one that I have a hunch the majority of people reading this will be more willing to get behind.

Rating: The look he gives you in the first photo is Nurkic welcoming you to your coffee with him, the look he gives you in the second is him hearing you tell him what Aaron Gordon did.

Kentavious Caldwell-Pope

Caldwell-Pope skipped up to the edge of his pool and kind of blew the surprise that was coming by checking over his shoulder but when his kids showed up atop the waterfall over the pool and covered their eyes to do a synchronized dance with him it really made the roller coaster of a reveal worth it.

Rating: You can tell his son was really getting on him about making sure he worked his knees right.

Danny Green

Danny Green got engaged! On the beach! At or around sunset!

Rating: Congratulations, Danny!

Kyle Kuzma

This is cute, Kuzma put on an incredibly intricate fit to try and upstage his girlfriend, Winnie Harlow, who did the same thing but also, remember, does this for a living.

Then he went paddle boarding a little bit awkwardly, with the ankle strap firmly affixed and a tension line to grab onto, which is kind of the perfect analogy for a new relationship.

Rating: There’s a young love blossoming in the desert reference to be made here but I’m also not Sting.

Jordan Clarkson

This isn’t a food blog but Clarkson just had what looks like a really nice dinner.

Rating: I miss restaurants. The little lemon wedge plate. The overpriced bottle of sparkling water. The fries for the table. The goblet drink with a straw!

Otto Porter Jr.

Porter burned miniature rubber this week when he hit the go kart track with some (one?) friend(s). First I was going to say this seems like a good setting to wear a mask in but then I saw they were alone, with fresh air whipping into their faces at a speed of 12 miles per hour.

Rating: He really loved these karts.

Jarrett Allen

The tallest and most wonderful nerd you’ve ever seen, Jarrett Allen, built a new keyboard for himself this week. Every step had its own dedicated sequence — “KEYBOARD BUILD TIME,” “SOLDERING TIME,” “SOLDERING” (no B.S. here), “KEYCAP TIME” — and the finished product just a thing so sleek it doesn’t even have letters or numbers on it.

Rating: My heart truly cannot COMPUTE the love I have for Jarrett Allen.

Josh Hart

Even though he can’t get his favorite thing (beignets) right now, Josh Hart is making the most of it by enjoying a cup of Sno-Cone, so, a Sno-Cup.

Rating: And I hope he’s enjoying it from the comfort of his pickup truck at the pickup truck Sno-Cone Rally based on those other three trucks lined up in front of him.

Reggie Bullock

I am very ashamed to say that I either had no idea Reggie Bullock was a beautiful and talented painter or that an entire genre of fine art dedicated to painting portraits of Reggie Bullock casually dangling his legs over the abyss in a new kind of American Gothic had been invented until this moment.

Rating: Eat your heart out, the literal American Gothic.

Hassan Whiteside

Here is another dog in a car that looks like they’ve seen your future and can’t bear to have their deeply human eyes make contact with your own.

Rating: But at least Bam’s had a little bowtie on to distract you from the news.

Enes Kanter

To be fair, this was about a week ago and NOT in Orlando, but, is a pretty funny and sad and accurate depiction of what it’s going to look like, times a hundred more of these reusable packing boxes full of disinfected basketballs once everyone gets to Disney World.

Rating: How many balls must a man wash down/Before you can call them germ-free?/How many seas must the Lopez brothers sail/Before they get to ride Splash Mountain?/The answer, my friend, was probably to rescind the season/The answer was probably to rescind — Bob Dylan

Mitchell Robinson

Would it be wrong to say this seems like the most fun Mitchell Robinson has had all season? No, because he plays for the Knicks.

Rating: He caught a fish and nonchalantly walked away from it while it was still on the end of the line. Paul George, eat your heart out.

PAUL PIERCE’S PLACE

You will be relieved to know Paul Pierce has resurfaced and that it’s on a beach. He was kept away from the ocean for too long in isolation, no longer does he need to “break into” the beach itself, but is he happy? Or did he begin to live for the rush of sprinting heedless toward the waves, ignoring all cautionary signage, his mask never on properly? He wiggled his toes here, but it felt forced.

We’re still seeing fallout from one WWE developmental talent testing positive for COVID-19 after attending TV tapings, something the rest of the workers didn’t even find out about until basically when the public did. It doesn’t help matters nobody at the tapings has been wearing masks (whether or not WWE specifically told them not to). The company had to cancel tapings on Tuesday so they could test everyone for the virus, leading to chaotic and overstuffed tapings on Wednesday as they attempt to catch up. One WWE Superstar who didn’t attend those tapings, and may continue to stay home for the forseeable future, is Kevin Owens.

Fightful Select first reported that Kevin Owens has decided not to attend WWE tapings in light of Coronavirus concerns. They also added that WWE officials didn’t put pressure on him to attend when he decided not to, and that there’s reportedly no heat on him over this decision.

It would be in pretty poor taste if WWE wasn’t accepting his decision, considering that according to Dave Meltzer at the Wrestling Observer, KO’s wife’s grandfather just recently died from COVID-19, so understandably his family would be especially concerned about the virus. Although honestly, what seems strange to me at least is how unconcerned most other people seem to be.

It was around this time last year when Vanity Fair published the first major cover story about Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, even if it seems like that (and the public’s subsequent disappointment) was about 17 years ago. But it’s been long enough that the article’s writer, Lev Grossman, is now sharing what didn’t make it into the final piece.

One of the big things Grossman learned from speaking to the cast and crew is that Adam Driver wanted to explore Ben Solo/Kylo Ren’s backstory, “to show us more about why he turned to the dark side,” as the writer told Inverse Happy Hour. “[Adam] had a lot of interesting thoughts,” specifically about Ben Solo’s childhood. Grossman continued:

“This is actually something Adam Driver said. He said that both Han Solo and Leia were way too self-absorbed and into this idea of themselves as heroes to really be attentive parents in the way a young and tender Kylo Ren really needed. There wasn’t really that much of it in the movie, so I just think we have to assume his childhood sucked.”

That’s a fair assumption, and something that would have been interesting to see in The Rise of Skywalker (maybe Disney will make a Kylo prequel series about a young boy who turns to the Dark Side and becomes the ultimate evil — I don’t think that’s been covered in Star Wars before). Instead, we got Ben’s instantly iconic final words: “Ow.”

(Via IndieWire and Inverse)

Well, guess what: Perry Mason is back. Kind of. Perry Mason is kind of back. HBO is rolling out a gritty reimagining of the old Raymond Burr lawyer show from the 1950s this Sunday night, June 21. It’s got a loaded cast and a lot going on and, as we’ll get to shortly, bears little resemblance to any version of Perry Mason you might be familiar with. The show was developed and produced by Robert Downey’s production company (Downey himself was originally attached to star), and there are pieces in there that are very good and bordering on great. Unfortunately, there are also some parts of it that are… less great.

What I’m saying here is that if you, like me, were very excited about the idea of this show from the blurbs and teasers and general concept, I have some good news and bad news for you.

Good news

The cast of Perry Mason is incredible, top to bottom. Matthew Rhys plays the title character in his pre-lawyer private investigator days, all hard-scrabble and hard-boiled and unshaven and usually drunk or hungover or both. If you, like me, have been missing images of Matthew Rhys looking incredibly sad and beaten down by the world since The Americans ended its run, fear not, because there are so many shots of Matthew Rhys looking incredibly sad and beaten down by the world in Perry Mason. For such a giggly and fun man (please do watch him as himself in The Wine Show for reference), he plays downtrodden like he was born into it. His Mason is tough and troubled and burdened by a failing family farm and PTSD from World War I, and that’s before he even takes on the tough and troubling case that winds its way through the season. Matthew Rhys is good.

Also good: Tatiana Maslany as a thundering megachurch preacher whose family finds itself wrapped up in the case, too. Tatiana Maslany is the best. I’m not entirely sure she’s properly cast here, just because some of her top-end thundering doesn’t quiiiiite land, but who cares? She is such a dynamic performer, such a presence on screen, that most of the concerns fall away at some point. She does this thing where she looks at people and you can see the gears grinding away behind her eyes, revealing her true and sometimes devious intentions. She should be in more things, if not everything.

The rest of the cast is a sometimes literal murderer’s row, too. Stephen Root plays a duplicitous district attorney, John Lithgow plays the defense attorney who hires Perry to investigate, Shea Wigham plays Perry’s cohort. Put those three guys in anything and it’s going to be at least a B/B+. Chris Chalk turns in a really good performance as the one good cop dealing with the racism and corruption of 1930s Los Angeles. The real surprise here is Gayle Rankin (She-Wolf from GLOW) as a grieving mother. She’s in there with some big personalities and she holds her own in every scene. None of it really works without her pulling that off.

Bad news

This is a bleak affair. It’s all very dark and brooding, which is sensible enough for a 1930s noir, but it never really clicked for me. Some things seem to be done for shock value alone. The first 10 minutes feature a dead infant, full-frontal male nudity, and a sex scene involving food and the slathering of food that will definitely burn itself into your brain for a while. Possibly forever.

The plot slogs in places, too. Without giving too much away, it goes something like this: there’s a baby that is kidnapped and killed, there are hidden identities and corruption up through the justice system, the Tatiana Maslany mega-church gets roped in, and only Perry Mason can untangle things. It’s fine. It’s really fine. The biggest problem is that, with everyone involved (in addition to the cast, the show is helmed by Boardwalk Empire veteran Tim Van Patten, himself no stranger to violent period pieces about corruption), it feels like it should be better. I kept wanting it to be. It’s still a pretty good watch, but there’s something left on the table there.

This brings us to the larger question in all of this: why? Why are we rebooting Perry Mason, a show about a television lawyer from the 1950s, and making him a gritty private eye? I know having a familiar name can hook in a few extra viewers but a) the people who might be interested because of the old series will barely recognize the action here, and b) most of the viewers they’re shooting for are too young to be moved by the Perry Mason of it all. I wonder if this would have been better served by stripping away the IP and just making a gritty noir — everything else exactly the same — about a guy named, like, Rex Manhattan or Mick Rockledge. Those names are freebies for anyone else working on a noir project. My gift to you.

Good news

Really just a tremendous collection of mustaches in this sucker. Look.

That’s John Lithgow’s character up there sporting a bushy gray caterpillar on his upper lip. Solid, for sure, but not the best one on the show. Give me a pencil-thin old-timely mustache. Come on. Hit me.

There we go. God bless Stephen Root. The man has never been bad in anything. Newsradio, Barry, Justified, an all-around treasure. And here he is with a tiny little mustache that screams “I’m a corrupt public official who is up to no good.” It’s beautiful. Almost perfect. And still only the second-best mustache on the show. Allow me to present Shea Wigham in what I promise is a very real promotional picture that was released by HBO.

Just magnificent. If this show could have been 80 percent as successful at what it set out to do as Shea Wigham’s mustache is at what it’s doing, we could have just canceled the Emmys and dropped all the trophies off in HBO’s parking lot via dump truck. Perhaps you consider this hyperbole, or at the very least a silly and useless aside for a serious television review. I would disagree. And I stand by my statement.

Bad news

With increasingly limited options on the television and movie front due to various pandemic-related issues, I was really hoping Perry Mason could be the show that galvanizes everyone through the summer. One we could all watch and enjoy and dive too deeply into. This may have been unfair on my part. I might have been putting too much pressure on a show that wasn’t meant as a big broad smash. Again, the show is fine, good in some parts, loaded with great performances and mustaches, but it still feels like a missed opportunity.

If it does catch on, though, and it starts a trend of bringing back old detective shows from decades ago, and all that ends up getting me a fun Columbo reboot starring, say, Jake Johnson or Natasha Lyonne… well, then all will be forgiven.