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‘The Last of Us’ Star Young Mazino on Jesse’s Evolution After Show’s ‘Exceptionally Brutal’ Death

Note: This story contains spoilers from “The Last of Us” Season 2, Episode 3.

Sunday’s episode of “The Last of Us” saw the inhabitants of Jackson picking up the pieces after the infected horde battle — and fiercely debating whether to go after Abby and her crew for murdering Joel (Pedro Pascal) in cold blood.

Young Mazino, who plays Jesse in the HBO adaptation, told TheWrap he found Joel’s death “exceptionally brutal” to watch.

“I understand the nature of revenge and losing someone dear to you, but Abby really tortured and made it a gruesome, slow death, which I think was unnecessary. That’s just karma that Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) will reap for herself,” he explained. “It’s very emblematic of what happens in real life situations. There’s a lot of conflict going on around the world. Some things are very media-facing, some conflicts in other parts of the world are more obscure, but I can see how Joel’s death is a microcosm in the larger human condition issue. The nature of revenge is this diabolical thing that takes over one’s soul and and you get lost in the sauce, and the sauce is very red.”

He added that Joel’s death is a “harsh reminder” of what Tommy’s son Benjamin said back in Episode 1: “There are monsters outside of the gates.”

Episode 3 picks up three months after the tragic events, with Tommy (Gabriel Luna) leading rebuilding efforts alongside Jesse. Ellie (Bella Ramsey) has been released from the hospital after recovering from being kicked in the ribs at the end of Episode 2 and is hell bent on revenge against Abby. But others in the community are worried about risking more of their own in the name of vengeance, especially as Jackson is still vulnerable.

“Because Jesse has such a huge emphasis on community, he’s focused on rebuilding and helping Jackson get back to its feet,” Mazino said. “I think, if anything, more than ever, community becomes more valuable because it’s the only reason why those people are alive.”

Throughout the episode, it’s evident that Jesse has emerged as one of Jackson’s potential future leaders in the wake of Joel’s death. One example is a simple interaction between Tommy and Jesse in which the former lets the latter take over the task of hammering in a wood plank with a sledgehammer.

“I think in the background, Tommy has been mentoring Jesse. After that crazy, insane battle where Tommy’s face to face with a freaking bloater, I think that was a moment where Tommy is realizing everything he has to lose – his family. He’s much older in age, he almost lost everything and I think he wants nothing more than to just be around for his family and loved ones,” Mazino said. “He’s getting ready to pass on the torch to the next generation and I think that scene was a really cool example. If you notice, Tommy’s grabbing on his hands, he has some arthritis and he’s probably still not fully recovered from the events. So Jesse’s there waiting, strong, capable and ready, to take the mantle of responsibility.”

Despite Joel’s death being personal, Jesse is also put in a tough situation after being elevated to serve on Jackson’s council, which sets a meeting to receive community input and vote on whether to dedicate more resources towards going after Abby.

“He’s a stickler for the damn rules, so he’s not allowed to talk about the upcoming vote,” Mazino explained. “There’s a scene that got cut out where you find out he only joined the council because someone on the council got killed and he just was next up. So even though he’s somewhat reluctant about taking this job, he takes it seriously.”

When Ellie confronts him about the vote, Jesse declines to say whether he’ll support her or not, but instead gives her the advice to write her thoughts down, adding “no one wants to vote for anger.”

Liane Hentscher/HBO

“He leaves it up to Ellie and he respects her feelings. He knows how close Ellie was to Joel and he respects that tremendously. And I think regardless of his vote, he cares more about his community’s vote. And if the community happens to vote yes, he’s going to get armed to the teeth and go hunting, and he’ll be all for it,” he continued. “But if the community votes no, he’s going to also want to respect that. Jesse has that conflict where he cares about his friends tremendously and yet he has to put the community first. And the death of one person does not outweigh the safety of the entire community.”

Mazino adds that Jesse serves as a “reflection or bounce off of Ellie’s choices.”

“Ellie is hell bent on revenge and all she can think about is revenge. And Jesse — although he’s affected tremendously by the events — is choosing to look towards the light and towards the people that survived, and maintaining that,” Mazino said. “That’s a perfect Jesse response: to be level headed, to counter losses and rebuild and strengthen the interior of what you have that’s precious to you and maintaining that strength and resolution in the face of disaster.”

In addition to his thoughts on Episode 3, Mazino opened up about the pressure of playing a character from a popular video game franchise and finding the balance between honoring the source material and making the character of Jesse his own.

“I did my best to train physically and get the physicality and then I trust in the process. I trust in the writing, I trust in directors. And then I give them my take on it and we’ll narrow it down on the day and then I see later in post, in Final Cut, which takes they go with and see the character that they end up building,” he said. “Regardless of what’s seen, I try to provide a different range of emotional responses or different choices, and then they narrow it down to what they what they like. So I trust the process. The final result is huge amalgamation of a lot of different things and so for me as an actor, I just do my best to prepare physically.”

He acknowledged that some of the online discourse towards both the show and its source material can be “quite vicious and rabid” and “very mean.”

“I just try to block out the white noise and focus on the things that I can change and am able to bring to it. And then the rest of it, I just let Jesus take the wheel, I suppose — 0r Craig Mazin in this situation,” he said. “I hope the fans of the game are happy with my portrayal and my take on it and then I hope that also the people who haven’t played the game will like the character.”

Young Mazino and Bella Ramsey in “The Last of Us” (Liane Hentscher/HBO)

He also reflected on the experience of working on Season 2 and the key lesson he learned from his co-stars that he plans to take with him into future dramatic projects.

“I noticed, especially between Isabella Merced and Bella Ramsey, they had this big switch. Regardless of what kind of heavy scene we were doing, outside of the scene, they would be so light and there was a lot of levity and jokes and laughter. Meanwhile, I’m like, ‘This is heavy shit.’ I’m brooding in the corner,” he said. “But I realized I’m just using up all my fuel when we’re not even rolling. It’s important to drop into it.

“There’s a pacing that I feel like I need to work on when I do more dramatic things, because it’s not sustainable to hold on to a heavy, heavy emotion for 12, 14, 16 hours a day. So I’m learning, I was taking a lot of notes, it was like scene study for me, to be honest,” he continued. “I just can’t wait to work on something similar, or Season 3, to put that to the test. But yeah, what I learned was less brooding. Save the brooding for the scene and chill out.”

“The Last of Us” airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and streams on Max.

The post ‘The Last of Us’ Star Young Mazino on Jesse’s Evolution After Show’s ‘Exceptionally Brutal’ Death appeared first on TheWrap.

‘The Last of Us’ Season 2, Episode 3 Recap: New Scars, New City

The death of Joel (Pedro Pascal) hangs heavy over all of “The Last of Us” Season 2, Episode 3. Picking up just hours after where last week’s “Through the Valley” ended, this Sunday’s “Last of Us” begins in Jackson’s makeshift morgue. There, a distraught Tommy (Gabriel Luna) enters to finally look upon the dead body of his brother. As he begins to wash Joel’s arm, Tommy’s hand and eyes get caught on the broken watch that Joel never took off, the same one given to him by his daughter Sarah (Nico Parker). Gazing at his brother’s covered face, Tommy whispers, “Give Sarah my love.”

This moment of quiet grief and reflection is followed by another, much louder one. Hooked up to tubes in Jackson’s bustling, crowded hospital, Ellie (Bella Ramsey) awakens only to immediately have Joel’s murder at the hands of Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) flash before her eyes again. She screams and sobs until Maria (Rutina Wesley) has her put back to sleep. From there, “The Last of Us” flashes forward three months. The episode, which is directed by Peter Hoar (who also helmed Season 1 standout “Long, Long Time”), finds Ellie fully healed and recuperated, physically at least. Before she is released, however, she must first convince Gail (Catherine O’Hara) that she has recovered enough emotionally to return to everyday life.

Gail asks Ellie about the last moment she saw Joel. “When I got home, he was on the porch, and I should’ve talked to him, but I didn’t,” Ellie says, remembering her return home after Jackson’s New Year’s dance. While Ellie says she is not going to let one final regret define her entire relationship with Joel, Gail is unconvinced. “In my last moment with Joel, he said he wronged you. Maybe bad,” Gail says, and Ellie does not cover up her surprise well. “What is it that he said that he did?” she asks. “Well, that’s the thing. It didn’t really make sense,” Gail responds. “He said, ‘I saved her.'” “He saved me a lot of times,” Ellie counters. She is lying, of course, when she pretends not to feel wronged or know what Gail is talking about, but the therapist lets her walk away nonetheless.

Bella Ramsey in “The Last of Us” Season 2, Episode 3. (Liane Hentscher/HBO)My Gun, It Comforts Me

As soon as Ellie exits her hospital room, her tough facade fades. She returns to Joel’s home and finds a box on his bed. In it, she discovers his broken watch, as well as his signature revolver, which she takes. Her tearful sobs into one of Joel’s coats are interrupted by Dina (Isabela Merced), who arrives with cookies and a confession that she not only knows the names of most of Abby’s crew, but also that they are members of Seattle’s Washington Liberation Front (W.L.F.). “It occurred to me, if you wanna find someone, and the only thing you know about them is where they’re gonna end up, maybe let them get there,” Dina says, defending her decision to withhold this information until now.

The two girls go to Tommy to ask for his help seeking out Joel’s killers. While he offers his support, he tells them it is not up to just him. He and the rest of the Jackson town council, including a newly inducted Jesse (Young Mazino), hold a meeting to vote on assembling a posse to avenge Joel. Most of the town is against it. One citizen preaches that Jackson should treat its enemies with mercy, while another declares that they do not have the resources to avenge just one person. Seth (Robert John Burke) is the only dissenting voice. He insists that Jackson can not set a precedent of letting its attackers walk away unpunished. Ellie, for her part, tells everyone in a prepared speech that she does not want to go after Abby and her friends because she wants revenge, but “justice.” As impassioned as her speech is, it’s not successful. The Jackson council votes 8-3 against avenging Joel.

In the wake of that development, Tommy seeks out Gail. “I just don’t want her to go down the paths Joel did,” he says. “Comin’ up with justifications and such. All he was really doing was lashing out.” Gail tells him that’s not a concern he should have because of Joel. “Turns out nurture can only do so much. The rest is nature,” she argues. “If she’s on a path, it’s not one that Joel put her on. No. No, I think they were walking side-by-side from the very start.” She concludes that “some people just can’t be saved,” reinforcing “Last of Us” showrunner Craig Mazin’s ongoing effort to convince viewers of a natural darkness within Ellie that apparently puts her beyond most people’s reach.

Rutina Wesley and Gabriel Luna in “The Last of Us” Season 2, Episode 3. (Liane Hentscher/HBO)Scars, New and Old

Tommy’s concerns are justified when Ellie is next shown cleaning Joel’s revolver and preparing to go with it and a whole lot of other guns on a solo mission to kill Abby and her fellow Wolves. She is interrupted by Dina, who helps Ellie plan her journey to Seattle and tells her that she will be coming with to avenge Joel, too. The pair meets up with Seth on the outskirts of Jackson, who gives them a bag full of medical supplies and trades Ellie her rifle for his “better” one. In one of the most cinematic and visually striking moments that “The Last of Us” has ever achieved, Ellie spends the episode’s following minutes visiting Joel’s grave at sunrise. With its golden light and yellow plains, this scene establishes a Western vibe that the rest of “The Last of Us” Season 2, Episode 3 delivers on, especially in its subsequent montage of Ellie and Dina traveling to Seattle on horseback.

One night, the two take cover from the rain in a shared tent. Before they fall asleep, Dina asks Ellie about their kiss at Jackson’s New Year’s dance. “You were super high,” Ellie says. “And you were super drunk,” Dina responds. When Dina asks Ellie to rate her kissing skills, Ellie gives her a six out of 10, much to Dina’s displeasure. “You asked, and I told you. You can go on back to Jesse,” Ellie concludes. “I already did,” Dina counters with a grin, just in case any “Last of Us Part II” players had started to hope the HBO series would cut out that game’s worst storyline. Dina, a natural-born flirt, then ends the conversation by telling Ellie, “I wasn’t that high,” when they kissed. As fun as this scene is, it falls short of the pair’s basement make-out sesh from “The Last of Us Part II,” which a lot of gamers were not happy was cut from “Through the Valley.”

As Dina and Ellie get closer to Seattle, they pause to inspect the dead bodies of an entire group of bow-and-arrow and sword-carrying, religious worshippers with matching facial scars known as Seraphites, a.k.a. Scars, who were introduced earlier in the episode. While Ellie and Dina believe their quest will be easy, the final scenes of this Sunday’s “Last of Us” prove otherwise. As the two ride slowly into Seattle, the episode cuts to Manny (Danny Ramirez), who communicates via radio with another W.L.F. soldier from the top of the Space Needle. The episode’s final image of dozens of marching soldiers then reveals the truth of the post-apocalyptic Seattle that Ellie and Dina have wandered into. They do not just have a pack of Wolves waiting for them in the city, but an entire army of them.

Bella Ramsey in “The Last of Us” Season 2, Episode 3. (HBO)The Land of Wolves

Thus ends an episode of “The Last of Us” that, in its interest in post-apocalyptic factions like Jackson, the Scars and the W.L.F., feels more like an installment of “The Walking Dead” than any of the HBO drama’s past chapters. (It does not help that a scene like the Scars’ introduction is ultimately little more than a clunky kind of exposition dump.) With all that in mind, it seems fair to say that “The Last of Us” has an uphill climb ahead of it, now that Pascal’s Joel is dead.

The only thing previously separating “The Last of Us” from other, lesser zombie shows like “The Walking Dead” has always been its high-level, cinematic budget, and the star power of actors like Pascal. “The Last of Us” Season 1 was compelling not because of its human and infected villains, but because of the deeply felt, believable relationship that grew throughout it between Pascal’s Joel and Ramsey’s Ellie. With the loss of Pascal, “The Last of Us” has lost a lot of its star power, and it has also lost the central relationship that elevated it and made it seem distinct in the first place.

Moving forward, viewers are going to have to decide for themselves what it was that they found intriguing about the end of “The Last of Us” Season 1. Was it that both Joel and the Fireflies took Ellie’s agency away from her in the moment when it mattered most — and that Joel subsequently lied to her out of a selfish fear of losing her? Or was it the violence that Joel unleashed in his quest to save Ellie? The question, in other words, is what is more interesting: Physical violence or personal, emotional betrayal? Plenty of the former is still to come, but it does not seem like there is going to be as much of the latter from here on out.

“The Last of Us” airs Sundays on HBO and Max.

The post ‘The Last of Us’ Season 2, Episode 3 Recap: New Scars, New City appeared first on TheWrap.

‘60 Minutes’ Calls Out Paramount for Supervising Content ‘In New Ways,’ Explains Bill Owens Exit

“60 Minutes” spent the last few minutes of its CBS broadcast Sunday explaining the hasty exit of longtime executive producer Bill Owens, with correspondent Scott Pelley saying that parent company Paramount “began to supervise our content in new ways.”

“None of our stories has been blocked, but Bill felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires,” Pelley said, adding that “no one here is happy about it – but in resigning, Bill proved one thing: He was the right person to lead ’60 Minutes’ all along.”

The explanation was the topic of the show’s “Last Minute” segment Sunday night, and aired as CBS News parent Paramount Global is working on a merger with Skydance Media. Owens made the surprise announcement last week, saying he would be leaving as Paramount fights a lawsuit by President Donald Trump alleging “60 Minutes” altered former Vice President Kamala Harris’ candidate interview.

“Stories we pursued for 57 years are often controversial,” Pelley said Sunday. “Lately, the Israel-Gaza war and the Trump administration. Bill made sure they were accurate and fair. He was tough that way, but our parent company Paramount is trying to complete a merger. The Trump administration must approve it. Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways.”

Owens wrote last week that over the last several months it has “become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it. To make independent decisions based on what was right for ’60 Minutes,’ right for the audience.”

Pelley concluded by saying: “It was hard on him and hard on us, but he did it for us and you.”

The post ‘60 Minutes’ Calls Out Paramount for Supervising Content ‘In New Ways,’ Explains Bill Owens Exit appeared first on TheWrap.

Cyndi Lauper, Outkast, Bad Company Among 2025 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Inductees

Cyndi Lauper, Outkast, the White Stripes, and Bad Company lead the list of 2025 inductees into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The list also includes Chubby Checker, Joe Cocker and Soundgarden. Salt-N-Pepa and Warren Zevon will each receive the Musical Influence award.

In addition to those accolades, Thom Bell, Nicky Hopkins and Carol Kaye will receive the Musical Excellence Award and producer and Warner Records president Lenny Waronker is this year’s Ahmet Ertegun Award recipient.

The induction will take place on November 8 at the Peacock Theater and will also stream on Disney+.Ticket sales information has not yet been announced.

“Each of these inductees created their own sound and attitude that had a profound impact on culture and helped to change the course of Rock & Roll forever. Their music gave a voice to generations and influenced countless artists that followed in their footsteps.” said John Sykes Chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, in a statement.

This year’s nominees list also included the Black Crowes, Mariah Carey, Joy Division/New Order, Oasis, and Phish.

Artists and bands become eligible to be nominated 25 years after their first record or release. Outkast, Cocker, Bad Company, and Checker are being inducted in their first year of nomination. Lauper and the White Stripes were nominated in 2023, Soundgarden was nominated in 2020 and 2023, and Oasis and Carey were both nominated in 2024.

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Shedeur Sanders’ Prank Caller During Draft Was an NFL Coach’s Son

As he awaited news of when and where he’d be drafted in this year’s NFL Draft, quarterback Shedeur Sanders received a phone call from the New Orleans Saints to a phone number he’d set up specifically for the event. The call was revealed to be a prank, and on Sunday the son of an NFL coach publicly apologized for antagonizing Sanders in this way.

The Falcons released a statement Sunday that explained what happened in a statement shared on social media. Jax Ulbrich, the 21-year-old son of defensive coordinator Jason Ulbrich, also issued an apology on Instagram.

“The Atlanta Falcons do not condone this behavior and send our sincere apologies to Shedeur Sanders and his family, who we have been in contact with to apologize to, as well as facilitate an apology directly from Jax to the Sanders family,” the team wrote in part. “We have also been in contact with the NFL and will continue to cooperate fully with any inquiries we may receive from the NFL league office. We are thoroughly reviewing all protocols, and updating if necessary to help prevent an incident like this from happening again.”

Falcons’ statement on the involvement of defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich’s son, Jax, in the draft weekend prank call to Shedeur Sanders: pic.twitter.com/PgSxURroaY

— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) April 27, 2025

“On Friday night I made a tremendous mistake,” Jax wrote in his apology. “Shedeur, what I did was completely inexcusable, embarrassing, and shameful. I’m so sorry I took away from your moment, it was selfish and childish. I could never imagine getting ready to celebrate one of the greatest moments of your life and I made a terrible mistake and messed with that moment.”

The call was streamed live by the Sanders team and shared in a video uploaded by a friend of Jax Ulbrich. He pretended to be an executive from New Orleans and told Sanders, who at one point was expected to be drafted in the first round and even as a top 5 pick of the night before he fell to the fifth round toward the draft’s end, that he would need to wait “longer” before he was drafted.

The NFL also opened an investigation into the phone call.

The Sanders family has yet to comment publicly on the prank call and Deion Sanders’ management team have not replied to TheWrap’s request for comment.

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‘Real Women Have Curves’ Broadway Review: Latinas Take Cover to Break Free

Great novels and great movies rarely translate into great musicals, much less very good ones. When it comes to suitable source material, a second-rate book or film often makes a more successful transition to the stage. If a novel or a movie is classic, it fits the chosen medium to perfection. Adapting them to the stage automatically destroys what’s great.

In scene after scene, Lisa Loomer and Nell Benjamin’s book for the new musical “Real Women Have Curves” is a vast improvement on George LaVoo and Josefina Lopez’s screenplay, which is based on Lopez’s play. Where the 2002 film dawdles, the musical defines and drives with great narrative precision its timely tale of Latina immigrants who make dresses in a Los Angeles shop.

“Real Women Have Curves” opened Sunday at the James Earl Jones Theatre, and it’s obvious you’re in good hands under Sergio Trujillo’s expert direction when the show kicks off with not one but two What I Want songs. Even a darker-than-the-abyss musical like “Sweeney Todd” needs a What I Want song at the top. Sondheim’s demon barber wants revenge, so he sings “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd.”

As soon as the curtain goes up on “Real Women,” the seamstresses let us know they want to work. It’s why they immigrated to the United States, and because they’re also proud of their dresses, they sing “Make It Work.”

Moments later, Ana (Tatianna Cordoba), the only Latina among them who’s a U.S. citizen, has secured a scholarship to Columbia University, and she wants to  be ”Flying Away.” Unfortunately for Ana, her sister (Florencia Cuenca) and mother (Justina Machado) run the dress factory and need her hands there, not across the country in New York City. The conflict comes fast and sharp, and these three very real women are off and running without ever taking a breath to look back.

We remember classic musicals by their composers, but the far more important creative talent is the unsung book writer. Great scores have been seriously diminished by problematic books, “Candide” and the recently revived “Floyd Collins” being two prime examples. Great books, on the other hand, can rescue second-rate scores.

Fortunately, Joy Huerta and Benjamin Velez’s songs for “Real Women” are better than second-rate if, now and then, a little derivative. There’s nothing here you haven’t heard before. No boundaries are pushed, but the tunes are foot-tapping and fit perfectly into the story. What’s annoying are the orchestrations (by Huerta, Velez, Nadia DiGiallonardo and Rich Mercurio). There’s a jangling TV- commercial quality to much of the music.

Indeed, “Adios Andres” looks to be the show’s big breakout hit, the perfect ad jingle for any menopause medication. In the film version, the mother’s mid-life pregnancy turns out to be the onset of menopause. It’s a dreary subplot that the stage musical handles both comically and efficiently in this one showstopper. It helps, too, that Justina Machado grounds the story with her unerring comic timing and strong maternal presence. The show is also smart to make this mother, and not the whole Mexican-American culture in L.A., the major roadblock to Ana’s going to Columbia.

Amid the comedy in the dress factory, “Real Women” keeps an eye on what’s going on beyond the proscenium arch. The staging of an immigration raid at the pillow factory next door is harrowing.

Despite a powerfully sung “”Flying Away,” Cordoba’s performance as Ana is a little unfocused — until she gets to dance with her love interest, Mason Reeves’ sweet Henry. Trujillo’s buoyant choreography provides the Cinderella moment that gives Cordoba shades of Tracy Turnblad from “Hairspray.” Reeves’ pixillated Prince Charming makes this transformation absolutely magical.

Unlike the movie version, Ana is now an intern at a local newspaper, and “Real Women” is one of the few current musicals or plays to treat the profession of journalism with any respect. Ana’s nascent reporter skills serve to defend the dressmakers from an evil wholesaler.

“Real Women” neatly bucks another theater trend here. The villain isn’t another white straight guy; instead, she’s a Latina in disguise. In other words, women of color have the right to be bad, too. Monica Tulia Ramirez plays this “pendeja” to perfect.

The post ‘Real Women Have Curves’ Broadway Review: Latinas Take Cover to Break Free appeared first on TheWrap.

‘Dead Outlaw’ Broadway Review: Never Before Has a Musical Been So Strangely Alive

The makers of the outrageous new musical “Dead Outlaw” give us the equivalent of what Alfred Hitchcock did in “Psycho” when his star Janet Leigh gets killed 40 minutes into the movie. The bumbling outlaw Elmer “Missouri” McCurdy can’t rob trains or blow up bank safes with any success, but he tries and tries. And then he’s shot dead by gunfire less than halfway through the 100-minute “Dead Outlaw.”

Where is a show supposed to go from there? Frankly, that’s where this wild ‘n’ crazy roller-coaster ride of a musical goes wonderfully off the tracks. “Dead Outlaw” had its world premiere last season Off Broadway, and promptly won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle award for best musical. On Sunday, it reopened uptown at the Longacre Theatre, where it’s now the weirdest, funniest and saddest show on Broadway.

Clearly, it takes a while to fall in love with Elmer McCurdy, and our love affair with him doesn’t really begin until he’s mummified. Is it love or is it pity? Since he’s a miserable failure alive as a crook, there’s a decidedly slow-burn to the narrative. Itamar Moses’ book is mildly clever, with much of the action told by a singing narrator (Jeb Brown). David Yazbek and Erik Della Penna’s score swerves from country to rock to bluegrass, all of it strung together by s–tkicking orchestrations.

Especially effective is Durand’s tendency, when he sings, to resemble either a country angel or a young Jerry Lee Lewis. However, McCurdy is such a loud loser on every level that his over-the-top act begins to grow stale rather fast. Only half an hour into “Dead Outlaw” and you might be ready to give him the hook, and that’s when the sly makers of this musical beat you to it. They kill off this creep with a shotgun. It’s the moment when “Dead Outlaw” goes from merely quirky to downright bonkers. It’s also when we begin to feel sorry for Elmer.

No longer alive, McCurdy is now a traveling-show mummy, billed as “The Bandit Who Wouldn’t Give Up,” that makes its way across the country in a variety of venues. I’ve buried the lede: “Dead Outlaw” tells a true story.

Unlike Janet Leigh in “Psycho,” Durand doesn’t leave the stage after McCurdy is murdered in 1911. Embalmed with arsenic, the corpse stands in an open coffin for all to see. No family member claims the body, but passers-by are so intrigued they begin to pay money to gawk.

His eyes open, Durand moves only occasionally, usually to illustrate some state of mind that the narrator gives the dead body. (If ever Durand blinks, I missed it.)  If you don’t identify with this reprobate when he’s living, you will feel great compassion for him when he’s dead. Suddenly famous, the dead McCurdy gets passed from one sleazeball impresario to another.

In the 1970s, the mummified stiff continues to attract voyeurs in an amusement park spook house in Long Beach, California. Discovered by crewmembers of the TV series “The Six Million Dollar Man” — you can’t make this stuff up — McCurdy’s body finally ends up on the autopsy table of Los Angeles’ chief coroner Thomas Noguchi in 1976.

It’s here that Yazbek and Della Penna switch gears, writing a lounge song for the famous “coroner to the stars,” played to sleazy perfection by Thom Sesma. The tune manages to link Marilyn Monroe, Natalie Wood and Sharon Tate to the mummy in question. Yes, America is a land of the strange, the cruel, the downright sick. And the song is truly delightful.

Yazbek never repeats himself. His Broadway career started with “The Full Monty” in 2000, and along the way he has written a couple of great scores (the Tony-winning “Band’s Visit” and the wrongfully ignored “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown”) that bear no resemblance to his work on “Dead Outlaw,” except for the fact that he’s once again operating in top form.

Right from the start, David Comer’s direction knocks us off center. Take his use of Arnulfo Maldonaldo’s scenic design. At first glance, the set doesn’t amount to much more than a big box that houses the show’s five band members. It leaves almost no room for the actors to perform, so Comer relegates them to odd spaces on the peripheries of the stage: on top of the box or off to the sides, almost in the wings.

Cramer also keeps the lights very low. In these early moments, Heather Gilbert’s dim lighting lets us know that nothing good is about to happen. It’s all a crazy directorial scheme that pays off when Durand’s life in crime goes south, and the box wanders all over the stage, seemingly pushed by the actors. Like McCurdy’s corpse on Noguchi’s table, you have to see it to believe it.

On this strange journey, Dashiell Eaves and Julia Knitel bring an inspired loopiness to a variety of characters.

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Justine Bateman Blasts ‘Woke Mob Mentality’ and Celebrates Kamala Harris’ Loss: ‘It Got Really Insane’

Justine Bateman celebrated the night Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election.

In an interview with The Irish Times published April 27, Bateman decried the “woke mob mentality” in Los Angeles and explained, “To me, the American spirit is: come over here and live your life however you like as long as that doesn’t impinge on my right to do the same. Don’t get in my face and start telling me how I am supposed to behave or relate to other people.”

The wide-ranging interview also covered Bateman’s thoughts on cosmetic surgery. She published a short story collection about aging and cosmetic surgery in 2022. “Face: One Square Foot of Skin” was a hit with people all over the world, many of whom reached out with an intensity that surprised her. “I knew it would strike a chord with some people. But it was immediate and huge,” she explained.

“I got over a thousand DMs from women – and some men – and the feeling was: relief,” she continued. “Under this accusation that their faces were broken and had to be fixed for so long, and you don’t realise how much you were holding it in your body.”

Bateman added that the book may even have a larger cultural impact and likened it to the political dynamics at play in the United States in 2025. “The conversation had moved to: which procedures should you get? You know? It was a fait accompli. And I felt it was insane. So, people are saying perhaps that book was a tipping point – just like this election was a tipping point for the woke mob mentality momentum. Perhaps my book changed that ‘your face is broken’ momentum.”

That “woke mob mentality” has made life in Los Angeles different, she also said.

“Up until eight years ago, it had that: ‘hey man, you do you’ attitude. It can be annoying but that was LA. And then we had the invasion of the hall monitors and the party-poopers and the finger pointing and people telling you what to do,” she said.

Most film business takes place via Zoom now, something she ascribed to “woke” culture as well. “The parties that used to take place weren’t just for fun. You could talk about films and you were in this pot of truly gifted artists. And studio executives. And producers. And marketing gurus. Now, that has completely shrunken down to some private clubs.”

“I don’t like politics or politicians, generally speaking. I was so glad that enough people were like: we are done with this. It got really insane and I kept thinking a senator or world leader or someone will say: enough,” Bateman said of her political position. “To me, the American spirit is: come over here and live your life however you like as long as that doesn’t impinge on my right to do the same. Don’t get in my face and start telling me how I am supposed to behave or relate to other people.”

You can read the interview at The Irish Times.

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The WHCA Dinner Skips Comedy but Delivers a Message, and Some Soul-Searching

Last year Colin Jost and President Joe Biden provided the entertainment at the White House Correspondents Assn. dinner, with the former bringing along his wife, Scarlett Johansson, and jokingly telling the crowd she had agreed to “individually meet everyone in this room.”

The WHCA proceeded again Saturday night, just without the sitting president, a comedian or any kind of entertainment. But the event still delivered a message about the importance of journalism’s mission — amid an assault on the press by the Trump administration — as well as some soul-searching about its failings.

The latter came from Axios reporter Alex Thompson, one of the evening’s honorees. During his acceptance speech he referred to diminished trust in the press, and how coverage of President Biden contributed to the problem.

“President Biden’s decline and its coverup by the people around him is a reminder that every White House regardless of party is capable of deception,” Thompson said. “But being truth tellers also means telling the truth about ourselves. We, myself included, missed a lot of this story, and some people trust us less because of it. We bear some responsibility for faith in the media being at such lows.”

Thompson also used the occasion to promote his new book on the topic with CNN’s Jake Tapper, “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.”

Other winners spoke of the importance of what WHCA members do, while it fell to organization president Eugene Daniels to address the absence of the president, or any entertainment, while delivering a full-throated defense of the press’ role in democracy.

“There’s no president. There’s no comedian. It’s just us,” Daniels, an MSNBC correspondent, said in kicking off the evening, adding that it has been “an extremely difficult year for all of you. It’s been difficult for this association. We’ve been tested, attacked.”

In closing the evening, Daniels spoke about what the association seeks to accomplish, before pointedly adding, “What we are not is the opposition. What we are not is the enemy of the people, and what we are not is the enemy of the state,” a comment that elicited a standing ovation from much of the room.

Daniels also thanked the Associated Press for “never wavering or compromising” in the face of Trump’s attacks on the service, and gave a shout out to the Voice of America, another besieged group under the current White House.

Colin Jost at the 2024 White House Correspondents Dinner (Getty Images)

Although Trump wasn’t mentioned by name in that context, another award recipient, BBC News correspondent Anthony Zurcher, spoke of reporting without fear or favor — a basic journalistic premise, he noted, that “means something more now.” He closed by urging his colleagues to “keep being fearless.”

The idea behind the WHCA dinner has always been that the two sides in the normally contentious relationship between Washington officials and the press can declare a one-night truce every year, enjoy a few laughs and benefit the organization. With Trump proclaiming the press “the enemy of the people,” that formula didn’t exist in his first administration and shows no signs of returning in the second.

The decision to do without entertainment followed the WHCA inviting and then disinviting comic Amber Ruffin in the stated effort to avoid divisiveness, not that choosing not to subject the attendees to playful roasting did anything to make the event more attractive to members of the current administration.

Even the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, whose job description involves interacting with reporters, stayed away.

Once one of the hotter tickets in Washington, the so-called “nerd prom” turned out to be a relatively low-key and unusually brief affair, lacking the media-friendly sizzle associated with dinners past.

Frank Sesno, a former CNN Washington bureau chief and now a professor at George Washington University, said on C-SPAN that the event had become “too much of a spectacle,” before Trump, and the organization itself, brought that to a halt.

“The basic purpose of the thing should be what it started out as, which is to bring those who cover and those who are covered together,” Sesno said.

Jost ended last year’s event on a semi-serious note — telling print journalists, “Your words bring light to the darkness,” before adding, “Your words train the AI programs that will soon replace you.”

The WHCA hasn’t come up with a replacement for its annual fundraiser yet, but the evening did seek to shift the focus to journalists, as opposed to the A-list guests who attended.

Lacking Trump, the presentation ran a clip package of past presidential appearances at the event going back over 40 years, including Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden.

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‘Just in Time’ Broadway Review: Jonathan Groff Is Great! But Where’s Bobby Darin?

Get ready to book the Palace, the Palladium, the Hollywood Bowl and the Baths of Caracalla! “Just in Time,” the new Bobby Darin bio-musical that opened Saturday at Circle in the Square, makes it clear that headliner Jonathan Groff is ready for his own solo show on any of the world’s most famous stages.

Groff won a Tony last season for “Merrily We Roll Along,” and there were deserved Tony nominations for his earlier turns in “Hamilton” and “Spring Awakening.” All three are ensemble shows, and in each, Groff delivered a performance that fit beautifully into the story being told.

But never has he sounded this good. He begins the Darin songfest with “This Could Be the Start of Something Big” and follows it with “Just in Time.” It isn’t Bobby Darin, but it is Groff. And most important, it is great Groff. Having seen him in the three aforementioned Broadway musicals, I would not have expected Groff to command the stage the way he does here as a top-notch song-and-dance man.

Then something very peculiar happens. I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced anything quite like it in the theater. Warren Leight and Isaac Oliver’s book for “Just in Time” has its star telling us, “I’m Jonathan. I’ll be your Bobby Darin tonight.”

OK, so this is not Groff being Darin but rather his playing at being Darin? The “I’m Jonathan” remark brings to mind the recently opened Broadway musical “Smash”: Robyn Hurder isn’t playing Marilyn Monroe; rather, she’s playing an actress playing Marilyn in a Broadway musical.

Got it.

What I don’t get is Groff then telling the audience, “I never would’ve guessed I’d have anything in common with [Darin], the playboy crooner and me in Mom’s pumps, but it turns out I do.” As it turns out, Darin lived to entertain, and so does Groff. We’re not told if Darin ever sweat and spit a lot on stage, but apparently Groff does, because he tells us he sweats and spits a lot. Regarding Groff’s personal perspiration notice, “Just in Time” should come with an audience warning that Circle in the Square is the most refrigerated theater on Broadway, even colder than when Alec Baldwin last performed on stage.

But back to Darin and Groff playing on different teams. Sorry, that “Mom’s pumps” just kind of gobsmacks me. Bobby Darin today is not an icon on the level of Marilyn Monroe, and impersonations are not in order. With “Just in Time,” one might expect what Barbra Streisand did with Fanny Brice in “Funny Girl”; it’s more an evocation than a recreation.

Frankly, Groff doesn’t even evoke Darin. He runs 180 degrees in the other direction from the slightly leering insouciance of someone born Walden Robert Cassotto who always appeared to have smoked one too many cigarettes, drank one too many martinis and screwed everything not bolted to the Copa stage. Darin’s charm wasn’t the flat-out debauchery of Dean Martin, but he was definitely an Italian bad boy from the rough streets of East Harlem. As “Just in Time” points out, there’s a reason why the father (Caesar Samayoa) of singer Connie Francis (Gracie Lawrence) and the mother (Emily Bergl) of teen idol Sandra Dee (Erika Henningsen) wanted nothing to do with the libidinous Darin.

Groff, on the other hand, is the very white-bread boy-next-door from Pennsylvania Amish country, and it’s a testament to his enormous talent that he can project such a squeaky-clean persona and still entertain us in this age of rampant cynicism.

Groff playing Groff playing Darin embodies what the two men share: the need to entertain, it’s when they’re most alive. But again, there’s a big difference. Darin’s vocals possess swagger. Groff’s vocals are almost ethereal. His head voice is gorgeous without having to resort to falsetto. It’s the difference between the streets and the angels.

Groff needs a musical written to showcase his unique gifts, not someone else’s. He could have simply sung the Darin songbook, but why? It’s not a great collection of songs. Do we need to hear “Splish! Splash! I Was Taking a Bath” ever again? And even if Groff delivered a spot-on impersonation of Darin, “Just in Time” would be a substandard bio-musical. Leight and Oliver repeatedly stick Wikipedia details into the dialogue, right down to how many Golden Globe nominations somebody received. Let’s not forget that the Globes, back in the 1960s, were even more of a joke than they are today.

A particularly smarmy moment arrives in Act 2 when Henningsen, being a most enchanting Sandra Dee, reveals, “There I was, doing a picture with Rock Hudson and I had no chemistry with him whatsoever.” This remark is the only reference to the dead gay movie legend in “Just in Time,” and it’s both absurd and loathsome.

First of all, in “Come September,” Hudson romances Gina Lollobrigida, not the much younger Dee, who is Darin’s love interest in that film. And second, is this remark by Henningsen supposed to excuse her lack of chemistry with Groff? Frankly, I found them very charming together.

Gracie Lawrence’s Connie Francis is another story. Her shrill vocals will make you wonder why anyone ever bought a single copy of “Who’s Sorry Now?”

Alex Timbers directs. He has had his share of bombs on Broadway, “Rocky” among them. On the plus side, he has also been at the helm of such simple delights as “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” and “Peter and the Starcatcher.” When Groff is singing and dancing (stunning choreography by Shannon Lewis), “Just in Time” absolutely dazzles. It doesn’t matter if what’s happening on stage ever makes you think of Bobby Darin. But Groff doesn’t always sing and dance, and when he or anybody else stops to recite dialogue from Leight and Oliver’s book, “Just in Time” simply deadens. Since Timbers also receives a “developed by” credit here, he should have developed a completely different book.

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