Category: 5. Entertainment

King Charles is set to make an important decision about his grandchildren, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, as the monarch calls for a high-level meeting.

The monarch, who is well-aware of the training his heir Prince William and Kate Middleton are getting for their destined role, wants to make sure that he is involved in one of the most crucial decision about the future of the monarchy.

While the doting grandfather has not yet met the children of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle since their exit in 2020, the King still yearns to have a relationship with them. However, the doting grandfather will be putting aside his emotions for the upcoming meeting to finally decide a direction for the future.

Senior members of the royal family are expected to gather for the annual Balmoral summit at to mark the end of the summer. According to sources cited by Closer Magazine, a major royal meeting is scheduled for August.

Insiders revealed that it will “feature secret high-level talks about the future of the monarchy” and especially the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

Meghan’s new lifestyle brand, As Ever, has seemed to cause quite a stir behind Palace walls as especially with her brother-in-law, William. The Prince of Wales is not happy how freely the Sussexes are using their royal titles despite having an agreement at the Sandringham Summit in 2020 about not using them. 

“Harry and Meghan will be the main focal point of discussion at the summit, and Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet’s future will be looked at,” the source added.

“The future of the Wales children will also be on the agenda, as well as Kate’s position – and even Princess Eugenie and Beatrice’s ever-developing roles.”

Despite the ongoing royal rift, reports recently surfaced that the King has featured the Sussexes “at the heart” of his funeral plans. It also indicated that Archie and Lilibet would be having key roles.

This was reportedly a final attempt at reconciliation with his estranged son. However, it remains to be seen if those plans will see any change.

BBC

Stuart Woodward/BBC

It seems as if Dexter Morgan just cannot die. Remember the first Dexter finale 12 years ago? It climaxed with Morgan sailing his boat into an unsurvivable storm, a sure sign that our favourite serial-killing blood spatter analyst had finally met his end. But then the show lost its nerve and he somehow ended up in a postscript with a new job (lumberjack) and a new beard (unconvincing).

Next came 2021’s Dexter: New Blood, a series that was conceived as a definitive full stop for the character. That run ended with – spoiler alert – Dexter being shot dead by his son Harrison. However, now Morgan finds himself back yet again in Dexter: Resurrection, in which we quickly learn that this apparently fatal injury was merely a flesh wound.

“Well, you know, he didn’t get shot in the head,” shrugs Michael C Hall, who plays the titular character. Hall is attempting to explain Dexter’s latest miraculous comeback to me over Zoom – and if he’s getting tired of people like me telling him that they thought he was dead, he’s doing a pretty good job of hiding it.

This might be because it was his idea to bring Dexter back. “The conversation started as a result of my saying, ‘What if he didn’t die?’” he says breezily. “I can’t take credit for the whole scope of what we’re up to, but it was a notion that I casually floated. What if the end of New Blood was something that enabled Dexter to relinquish some burden that he’d been carrying for a long time?”

What changed his mind? “Time passing, perspective shifting, recognising what a wonderful thing it is to collaborate with this family,” he says. “And realising that how New Blood seemingly ended could be a way to move the character into a place he hadn’t quite earned until then.”

How well the character moves into that place remains to be seen. As we speak, the show is still in production, and only the first episode has been made available to view. Its early scenes might creak with tortured exposition – hardly surprising, given the near-impossible task of bringing someone back from the dead – but happily, the old Dexter magic is still present. There are callbacks and cameos and grisly scenes of dismemberment. Better yet, the season promises all kinds of warped bonding between Dexter (a serial killer) and Harrison (his son and, until quite recently, murderer).

“Harrison has been through a lot, and has a sense of maturity that he didn’t have when we first met him in New Blood,” says Hall. “Dexter initially is very much compelled to check in on his son, but is also daunted by the proposition of making contact, because he’s afraid his son will reject him, or won’t want him, or will wish he’d stayed dead. But I think finding themselves on the other side of this traumatic event will result in both Dexter and his son growing up a little bit.”

We also have a new fleet of faces to look forward to. Peter Dinklage and Uma Thurman are there, respectively playing a billionaire venture capitalist and his head of security, plus Neil Patrick Harris, Eric Stonestreet, Krysten Ritter and David Dastmalchian will all appear as villains invited to what sounds an awful lot like an international murder convention. “Dexter sort of trips into a literal and figurative invitation to a gathering of unsavoury …” teases Hall of this year’s plot, before trailing off for fear of spoiling anything. “Actually, I’m not sure how much I can say. But it’s really validating and gratifying, the fact that the show remains compelling to the kinds of actors who’ve agreed to join us.”

Perhaps another reason for Hall’s willingness to return was this year’s Dexter: Original Sin. A prequel series that took the form of Dexter’s life flashing before his eyes post-shooting, Original Sin didn’t star Hall (although he provided the voiceover), instead casting Shadow and Bone’s Patrick Gibson as Morgan.

I had wondered if the simple envy of seeing someone else do his job drove Hall back to Dexter, but apparently this wasn’t the case. “I thought it was interesting, once all those blanks had been filled in, to find the character on the other side of it,” he says. “But it was weird to see Patrick embody some of what had evolved as Dexter’s characteristic ways of being. Yes, it’s very strange. In fact, at one point I was like, when I go back to work, I gotta make sure I’m not just doing a Patrick Gibson impression.”

There will be more Original Sin (a second season was greenlit this spring): another sign of what looks like an ever-expanding Dexterverse. There’s likely to be continued Resurrection – more about that shortly – plus there are rumours of a spin-off focused on John Lithgow’s Trinity Killer. All of which perhaps underlines how much better television as a whole was in Dexter’s heyday.

The original Dexter came out in 2006 at the height of the golden age of TV, with its focus on anguished male antiheroes. Much has been made lately of the demons that plagued James Gandolfini before his death, some attributed to the burden of having to play a character as dark as Tony Soprano for so many years. As Dexter, though, Hall played a serial killer who had to murder and dismember countless people. Did the darkness of the role ever get to him?

“I think Dexter exists in a world that is, to some degree, dialled away from reality,” he explains. “It’s fantastic in its way and, because of that fantastical element, maybe it doesn’t play the same trick on me that it might otherwise. And you know, as intense as it might be to convey someone who’s wrestling with such formidable darkness, it’s maybe therapeutic. You can endow these victims with whatever it is you’d like to do away with in your own world. Maybe I’m a healthier person for having done all this.”

There is also the question of how comfortable Hall is with returning to the same character over and over again. After all, Dexter aside, his stock in trade is playing a dizzying breadth of characters – he was JFK in The Crown, the Emcee in Cabaret, the lead in David Bowie’s Lazarus musical, a professional bowler in a Tim Robinson-written episode of Documentary Now!. Yet he keeps being drawn back to Dexter. Surely he must be aware that this will be the first line of his obituary.

“I mean, what are you going to do?” he shrugs. “That’s the way it’s unfolded. Whether I were to do more of this or not, I think that would remain the case, and it’s OK. None of it fundamentally matters anyway. But it’s been really fun. Being able to work as an actor feels like getting away with something. Being able to work as an actor while playing a character like Dexter feels exponentially so. I feel very lucky to have gotten away with this.”

A knottier question to bring up is the internet. As well as the initial finale routinely being brought up as one of the worst in television history, a Hollywood Reporter interview with showrunner Clyde Phillips last year suggested that fans weren’t exactly happy with how New Blood ended, either. “The internet hated it,” Phillips said bluntly. With this in mind, I ask Hall if he keeps up with the ins and outs of reactions to the show.

“No, that would make me crazy,” he replies. “But some fans found the notion of Dexter surviving more plausible than him dying. There’s something about the character that people just don’t want to see him die. They don’t want to see his agency extinguished.”

The good news for these fans is that Dexter: Resurrection is intended to be a long-running affair. The introduction of so many guest stars this season is designed to trickle out across several years, or, as Phillips put it to USA Today, the duration of the comeback is “up to Michael”.

“Well, I guess it’s hard for Dexter to happen if I’m not there,” Hall sighs when I mention this to him. Does this mean he would like Resurrection to run and run? Is there a world where it could end up rivalling the length of the original series? “That sounds insane,” he laughs. “All I can say is that I don’t think we resolve things at the end of this season, and we’ve done it with the reasonable expectation that there will be more to come.”

So you don’t get shot at the end of this one? “We still have two and a half weeks left of filming, and I suppose someone could present some new pages to me,” he smiles. But what would be the point? After all, Dexter Morgan cannot die. And we should all be thankful for that.

“The Salt Path is an unflinchingly honest, inspiring and life-affirming true story,” reads the description of Raynor Winn’s bestselling memoir on its publisher Penguin Random House’s website.

Which is unfortunate wording if accusations made at the weekend turn out to be true: an investigation by the Observer alleged that the 2018 book – which has recently been adapted into a film starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs – is not all that it seems. Winn writes in The Salt Path that she and her husband, Moth, had their home repossessed due to an investment in a friend’s company that went on to fail. With nowhere to live, as she tells it, the couple decided to walk the length of the South West Coast Path, wild camping along the way and relying on the kindness of strangers. The Observer piece suggests Winn’s account of becoming homeless is untruthful, and reports that she took £64,000 from her former employer. It also questions the legitimacy of Moth’s diagnosis with the neurological condition corticobasal degeneration (CBD), a core part of the memoir.

Winn’s immediate response called the article “highly misleading”, adding: “We are taking legal advice and won’t be making any further comment at this time.” She stood by her book being “the true story of our journey”. Still, after the report, PSPA, a charity that supports people with CBD and formerly worked with Winn and her husband, terminated its relationship with the couple.

On Wednesday, Winn published a more detailed statement, defending her book’s truthfulness and giving more detail about the events that led to the couple losing their home. She also provided medical letters addressed to her husband in defence of allegations relating to his illness.

This is not the first time a much-hyped memoir has come up against accusations of lying. Belgium-born Misha Defonseca’s 1997 book about how she was raised by wolves during the second world war turned out to be completely fabricated. Love and Consequences by Margaret B Jones, which was sold on release in 2008 as the true story of the author’s experience growing up as a mixed-race foster child in South Central Los Angeles, turned out to have been written by Margaret Seltzer, a white, privately educated woman who grew up with her biological family.

Perhaps the most famous instance is James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces, a 2003 memoir of drug addiction and alcoholism that, after being championed by Oprah Winfrey in 2005, shot to the top of the New York Times bestseller list and remained there for 15 weeks. It was billed as “brutally honest”, but later it came to light that chunks of the book had been made up. Winfrey in particular was furious with Frey, telling him it was difficult to talk to him when he came on her TV show to explain himself in 2006. “I feel duped,” she said. “But more importantly, I feel that you betrayed millions of readers.”

“How could they lie?” is a question many readers ask when a memoir they love is proved to be untrue. But there’s another question that needs to be answered, too: how could the author get away with it? How did they manage to get their lies past an agent and multiple editors, all the way into a published book labelled as a true story?

The short answer is that if someone is lying about their own life, it is often very difficult for others to tell. Dr Pragya Agarwal, the author of books including the 2021 memoir (M)otherhood and a teacher of memoir writing, says that a big part of writing nonfiction “is about trust between the writer and the reader. I am not really sure how someone’s life story can be factchecked in its entirety.”

Others say it is not the publisher’s role to investigate whether an author is telling the truth or not. Grace Pengelly is a freelance writer and editor who formerly worked as a nonfiction commissioning editor at HarperCollins. An editor’s role “is to help the author craft their story as compellingly and accurately as possible”, she says, and that requires believing in the writer. “Without a certain degree of trust from the outset, it is difficult for an editor and author to work with each other effectively.”

That doesn’t mean that memoirs are not fact-checked. “Prior to acquiring a memoir, a publisher would look into the background of the author and their story to see if it checks out,” says Pengelly. Any “question marks around the veracity of an author’s story would definitely be a reason why a publisher wouldn’t offer on a book”. But the research undertaken at this stage wouldn’t tend to involve checking whether someone was actually incarcerated for as long as they said they were (one of the major falsities in A Million Little Pieces), or whether a couple who claimed to be homeless actually owned a property in the south of France, as was alleged by the Observer regarding Winn and her husband (a property Winn has since described as an “uninhabitable ruin”).

Finding out that kind of information might be possible only if publishers had specific teams dedicated to it. The publishing consultant and editor Katy Loftus, who previously worked for Penguin Random House, says she isn’t aware of any publishing houses with a factchecking department. “Other than top executive salaries, publishing is run on a shoestring. Books make much less money than people think,” she says. The big publishers have legal departments, “who will give an opinion on something flagged up to them by a commissioning editor, and occasionally do a complete legal read if requested”, she adds. But the main factchecking responsibility tends to fall to the commissioning editors, who are “responsible for hundreds of tasks” – from briefing book cover designers, to negotiating deals with authors, to managing teams of people. The editing itself “is often at the bottom of the list, and factchecking is only part of the editing process.”

Even when it comes to legal checks, the main concern is that a book doesn’t contain anything that might lead to the publisher being sued, rather than actually analysing the factual content, says Ian Bloom, a media lawyer who has worked in publishing. “To some extent, nobody much cares if they’ve got dates wrong and facts wrong, as long as there’s no legal implications.”

Bloom suspects that a number of celebrity memoirs in particular contain omissions or embellishments. “There’s no real harm done if they gloss over certain things in their lives,” he says, as long as it’s not defamatory to anyone else.

Aside from rare exceptions – such as when a group of readers successfully sued Frey’s publisher, claiming they were defrauded as they bought his book under the impression that it was true, and were refunded the cover price – publishers do not face serious material repercussions for lies told in memoirs. Reputational damage, meanwhile, is usually put on the author. “When an author signs a contract with a publisher, there are usually author covenants that include clauses about the truthfulness and integrity of the material to the best of the author’s knowledge and belief,” Bloom says. The publisher is then entitled to cancel that author’s contract, should a book’s veracity be called into question.

Of course, authors can get around this by writing “autobiographical fiction” rather than memoir: books such as the actor Carrie Fisher’s Postcards From the Edge, based on her own life but categorised as a novel, or the Booker-winning autofictional novel Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart, don’t come under fire for being made up, because we all know that’s what fiction is. So why didn’t authors like Frey turn their stories into novels? Perhaps the books wouldn’t have done as well marketed in that way – in a true-crime-obsessed world, we’re all familiar with the strength of desire for real stories. “Autofiction isn’t as well-established a genre as memoir,” Pengelly says. “So marketing teams face discrete challenges in framing and taking these stories to the public. A ‘true story’ has historically proved easier to build a campaign around.”

Once a book is out in the world, any inaccuracies tend to be spotted by journalists or academics – there is no regulator of the publishing industry equivalent to the Independent Press Standards Organisation and Ofcom for the media in the UK. With approximately 200,000 books published annually in the UK alone, “There’s no regulator on Earth who can read them all … it’s impossible,” Bloom says.

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So how do we stop fake memoirs from being published? In light of the Salt Path allegations, Pengelly is sure publishers will be considering ways to avoid such a scenario coming up again. “If a narrative arc seems too neat and tidy to be true, perhaps it’s worth considering why, and employing a freelance factchecker to investigate,” she says.

The trouble is, neat and tidy narrative arcs are often exactly what many readers – and viewers of film adaptations – want. A memoir Pengelly worked on, Zig-Zag Boy by Tanya Frank, is about a mother coming to terms with her son’s experiences of psychosis. That book was a more modest commercial success than The Salt Path, but could it have been more of a hit if Frank had ended it with her son being “healed”, rather than with her accepting his altered state? Quite possibly. Triumph in the face of medical adversity is a seductive concept, as readers of Winn’s books will know from their stories of Moth’s ability to overcome the symptoms of his illness and undertake long walks.

Nic Wilson, whose memoir Land Beneath the Waves is about how the natural world helped her to navigate and accept her chronic illness, is disparaging of the “nature cure” trope we often see in popular books about health. It creates an unrealistic expectation that the order of events should be “diagnosis, illness, recovery. And I think readers come to expect that,” she says.

Clearly, authors may have something to gain by bowing to such expectations and embellishing or omitting certain facts of their life stories. But they also have the most to lose if lies in their books are exposed: they could have their publishing deal dropped, which might mean having to pay back their advance, and they risk no publisher wanting to be associated with them again.

Frey’s publisher, Nan Talese, was particularly aggrieved by the way her author’s reputation was attacked. Winfrey displayed “fiercely bad manners – you don’t stone someone in public, which is just what she did”, she told the Dallas Morning News at the time.

“Scandal has stalked memoir since the genre was invented,” Loftus says – an early example being the 1836 memoir Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, a 20-year-old woman’s story of life in a Montreal convent, which was vilified as a hoax. “In practice the publicity rarely does more harm than good to the publisher, whereas an author’s life can be left in tatters.”

That’s not to say that they won’t continue to make money: A Million Little Pieces kept selling even in its second iteration, which had passages rewritten and contained a “note to the reader” addressing its inaccuracies. And whatever happens after the allegations made against Winn, having already sold more than 2m copies of The Salt Path, she has been made rich by this book and its sequels, and will continue to receive royalties for as long as people keep buying them.

The fact that there is money to be made – with very few legal repercussions – by telling the most marketable version of a story, rather than the true one, makes it difficult to believe that this controversy will be the last of its kind. After all, no memoir can be completely true. “Memories are fallible and selective; we always remember half-truths, and the story an author chooses to tell is only ever one story of a particular situation,” Agarwal says. “But what any reader wants to believe is that the story they have put their faith in is closest to the writer’s truth, that they have not been deliberately misled, that they have not been manipulated. This is essential.”

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Kate Middleton radiated glow as she welcomed French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte Macron, to UK, with Prince William.

According to a body language expert, the Princess of Wales looked radiant and happy during the French state visit, with her warm smile towards William drawing attention.

Speaking with The Mirror, body language expert Judi James noted that Kate appeared genuinely delighted, showing no signs of strain despite her ongoing recovery from illness. 

“Macron has been all charm and smiles, winking at Kate during the banquet dinner and bending to kiss her hand on arrival like a true gallant,” she said of the guests.

The expert added, “And his hosts have been equally fulsome in their displays, despite their obvious background circumstances, like their treatment and recovery from illness.

“Charles has rarely looked as chipper, chuckling and giggling in a state of fine good humour throughout the evening despite his cancer and despite suffering from one very bloodshot eye.

“William and Kate were tactile, flirty, loving and positively glowing, with Kate’s gleaming smile signalling what looked like genuine delight, exuding gracious charm despite her ongoing recovery from illness.”

The appearance came after Kate candidly spoke of her life following completion of her cancer journey.

“You put on a sort of brave face, stoicism through treatment,” she said while meeting cancer patient at Colchester Hospital.

“Treatment’s done, then it’s like, ‘I can crack on, get back to normal,’ but actually, the phase afterwards is really, is really, really difficult.”

The Princess of Wales continued, “You’re not necessarily under the clinical team any longer, but you’re not able to function normally at home as you perhaps once used to.”

“And actually someone to help talk you through that, show you and guide you through that sort of phase that comes after treatment, I think is really valuable.”

King Charles’ decision to invite French chef Raymond Blanc to assist with the state banquet honoring French President Emmanuel Macron has sparked criticism from Darren McGrady, the personal chef to the late Queen Elizabeth and Princess Diana. 

McGrady believes that Charles’ move is “a huge slap in the face” to the Buckingham Palace royal chefs.

The state banquet, held at Windsor Castle’s St George’s Hall, featured a lavish meal with French inspiration and twists. Blanc, a renowned chef and King’s Foundation ambassador, was invited to help create the first course and dessert. 

However, McGrady questioned the decision, saying, “I get that Raymond Blanc is one of the best chefs in the world… but it’s a huge slap in the face to the palace royal chefs.”

Blanc, who has a long friendship with King Charles, emphasized the importance of collaboration and respect. He stated, “We all have an opinion – and I’ve got a different one. I like to bring people together.” 

Blanc also praised the Royal Household’s head chef, Mark Flanagan, who prepared the main course, Rhug Estate chicken with British produce and a French-inspired tarragon sauce.

McGrady also pointed out that Macron would likely not bring British chefs to a state visit in France. However, others have praised King Charles’ decision, seeing it as a mark of respect for the French president and a celebration of culinary collaboration.

“Never more than two.”

That’s Kumail Nanjiani’s general assessment of the modest serving of Asian performers on a typical comedy show lineup (if any at all) when he was starting out in comedy. Even as an actor who’s gone on to find success on hit TV shows like “Silicon Valley” and has flown high in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with “Eternals,” the stereotype of ethnic comedy quotas from his roots in stand-up — which he’s recently returned to a couple years ago — still sticks with him.

Nanjiani recently spoke with The Times about this weekend’s Belly Laughs Festival, a two-day event at L.A. Live that spotlights Asian comedians, cuisine and culture. He was joined by fellow festival performer Jonnie Park (a.k.a. rapper Dumbfoundead) and comedian/actor Sherry Cola (who is no longer performing at the festival due to a scheduling conflict) to talk about the importance of Asian representation in comedy.

During the chat, Nanjiani described not only his love for food (specifically Biriyani Kabob House in Koreatown, which will be at the festival) but also for stand-up. After returning to performing live shows again in 2023, Nanjiani is slated to release “Night Thoughts,” his first comedy special in 12 years, on Hulu later this year. Inspired by the Hollywood slowdown and the writers’ strike that prevented him from pursuing TV and film work, Nanjiani says he returned to doing comedy in order to keep working on stage while the rest of Hollywood was mostly shut down.

“I missed being good at something that I wasn’t good at anymore,” he said. “I didn’t like the feeling like I used to have so much confidence in this now it feels like [I’m] a different person, and so in the strikes, I was like, I want to try again and see if I still love it.” Since then, the Pakistani-born comedian says he’s still hungry for both the craft of comedy and the community that gathers to devour it.

For all three comedians, though moving into acting has elevated their profile on the small and big screen, stand-up is the art form that makes them feel the most sharp. ”I do find being a stand up comedian as a superpower, stepping onto a set, for sure,” says Cola, who most people know from her role as a series regular in the TV show “Good Trouble” or in the 2023 raunchy road-trip comedy “Joy Ride.” “I think because we’re good at crowd work, we have a quickness that not every actor has.”

Belly Laughs, happening Saturday to Sunday, offers a buffet of top-tier Asian comedians performing all weekend inside the Peacock Theater at L.A. Live. Nanjiani takes center stage along with Hasan Minhaj, Margaret Cho, Bobby Lee and over 30 of the funniest Asian comedians to perform headlining shows in L.A. at theaters and clubs around the country.

Outside the venue on L.A. Live’s outdoor plaza, an array of food and activities like mah-jong, karaoke and cooking demonstrations with star chef Tue Nguyen will be available for fest-goers to enjoy throughout the tasty sprawl of Mama’s Nightmarket.

The idea for Belly Laughs took shape about three years ago when Michelle K. Sugihara, executive director and chief executive of the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment (better known as CAPE), joined forces with volunteer festival producer Viv Wang who helped bring on AEG as a venue partner, followed by L.A. outdoor food staple Mama’s Nightmarket and event promotions company Nederlander Concerts. For CAPE, the world’s longest-running nonprofit creating opportunities for Asian and Pacific Islander artists, actors and storytellers in Hollywood, Belly Laughs is a natural extension of its mission over the last 35 years.

“Food and comedy is really a chance to celebrate our culture with the broader L.A. and Southern California communities, but also it’s a celebration of how food comedy culture just brings people together, which is needed now more than ever,” Sugihara said.

For Park, who is also performing at Belly Laughs, his transition from music to stand-up comedy and podcasting more than 10 years ago was an effort to find a new way to express himself as he matured and became mildly more responsible. “I started [rapping at] 14 years old and it had a lot of youthful energy to it. And as I got older, there’s a lot of things I wanted to talk about that I didn’t want to [express] over beats,” he said. “I didn’t want to share those adult things about my finances and doing taxes. I didn’t want to make ‘doing taxes rap,’ he jokes.

Park said his ability to use humor to give back to his community as a longtime resident of L.A.’s Koreatown helps foster more opportunities for Koreans from his neighborhood to see stand-up shows and festivals like Belly Laughs.

“When I was growing up, a lot of Koreans in my neighborhood had never seen a stand-up show,” he said. “I’ve thrown a couple of all-Asian stand-up comedy shows in my neighborhood, and a lot of people who come, it was their first stand up show. They don’t even go to the Comedy Store, the Laugh Factory — none of that. So [a festival like Belly Laughs] might be their first one.”

If that’s the case, any newcomers to L.A.’s comedy scene are likely to leave full and happy by the end, as the fest serves up not only amazing food but an inclusive environment to see comedy from an Asian perspective without feeling othered as part of a quota on a comedy lineup or the butt of any scathing racial humor — at least not by non-Asian comedians.

“If anyone’s gonna roast my people, it’s gonna be me,” Park said with a grin. “I think there’s a little bit of that with us as [Asian] comedians and talking about our own culture. We have to take ownership of that.”

Cola concurs, adding that after being the subject of racial jokes for decades, the best way to counteract the sting of the stereotypes is for Asian comedians to write jokes about their cultures that help their communities laugh the hardest—just hopefully not while chewing their food.

“I don’t know if it’s just society trying to define us and put us in a box, but it’s almost like we just recently got permission to laugh at ourselves,” Cola said. “Because we’ve been the punch line for years in the media, but now it’s like [a chance to] exhale, because this is a safe space. That’s kind of what Belly Laughs is giving.”

He can outrun a train, hold up a collapsing tower on a fiery oil rig and fly around the world to turn back time. But Superman’s greatest challenge might just be saving the DC film franchise.

The Warner Bros.-owned superhero brand — one of Hollywood’s most important — has hit a rough patch in recent years.

Films such as 2023’s “Shazam! Fury of the Gods,” “The Flash” and last year’s “Joker: Folie à Deux” struggled at the box office. Despite owning a lucrative stable of well-known superheroes like Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman, the studio has failed to become a consistent competitor to Walt Disney Co.‘s Marvel Studios.

Now under the new leadership of filmmaker-producer pair James Gunn and Peter Safran, DC Studios is counting on its new “Superman” film, hitting theaters Thursday, to revive not only the Man of Steel series but the entire DC universe.

Choosing the flying Kryptonian refugee to kick-start DC’s new era was a risky bet for Gunn, who wrote and directed the new film.

Although Superman is recognizable all over the world, his aw-shucks demeanor and nearly limitless superpowers have made him a tough character to make relevant to today’s audiences. His global reputation, as an overgrown godlike Boy Scout spouting American ideals, for years made him less hip for modern viewers than his brooding billionaire vigilante counterpoint, Batman.

“DC has been playing catch-up with Marvel,” said Arlen Schumer, a comic book and pop culture historian. “They’ve given James Gunn the keys to the DC kingdom and said, ‘You’ve got to restore Superman. He’s our greatest icon, but nobody knows what to do with him. We think you know what to do with him.’”

“Superman” is expected to gross $130 million to $140 million in the U.S. and Canada in its opening weekend on a reported budget of about $225 million, according to analyst estimates. The movie received an 85% approval rating on aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. (Times critic Amy Nicholson said it wasn’t “quite the heart-soaring ‘Superman’ I wanted,” but enough to be “curious to explore where the saga takes him next.”)

Gunn’s efforts on “Superman” faced intense scrutiny online almost from the moment he started working on it. Fans and critics have picked apart the trailers, grousing about the heavy screen time for Krypto the Superdog (inspired by Gunn’s own dog, who is also a foot biter), or how actor David Corenswet, who plays the iconic superhero, is a relative unknown.

Warner Bros. itself is counting on “Superman” to continue a box office rebound stemming from a string of hits including “A Minecraft Movie,” “Sinners,” “Final Destination Bloodlines” and “F1.”

Shortly before its release, “Superman” came under fire from right-wing commentators, who criticized comments Gunn made to the Times of London about how Superman (created by a Jewish writer-artist team in the late 1930s) is an immigrant and that he is “the story of America.” He’s an alien from the planet Krypton, after all.

“I think this is a movie about kindness,” Gunn told Variety on Monday at the film’s Hollywood premiere in response to the backlash. “And I think that’s something everyone can relate to.”

That appeal is what Warner Bros. and DC Studios are counting on.

“You need a track record of success to build a brand,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore. “This is a monumental moment for DC with one of their biggest characters of all time and that’s very important to the box office, to the future of DC and to the perception of DC as a brand.”

DC Studios did not respond to requests for comment.

Superman returns

This summer’s Gunn-directed “Superman” is the first stand-alone film about the famous hero in more than a decade, following a history of dramatic ups and downs.

The 2013 blockbuster “Man of Steel,” directed by Zack Snyder and starring Henry Cavill, introduced a grittier, darker tone to the superhero’s story, including Superman’s controversial neck-snapping kill of a villain. “Man of Steel” received mixed reviews from critics, though it hauled in about $670 million in global box office revenue.

That was followed by 2016’s “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice” with Cavill returning and Ben Affleck as Batman, which was panned by critics but made more than $874 million worldwide. Then came the even more reviled “Justice League” the following year, both a critical and commercial disaster for the studio. Ironically, Cavill’s portrayal of Superman was reclaimed by an unruly online fan base demanding that Warner Bros. #ReleaseTheSnyderCut, which it eventually did.

For many, the gold standard of Superman films was 1978’s “Superman,” starring Christopher Reeve and directed by Richard Donner.

Schumer remembers watching the sweeping wheatfield scene when Clark Kent says goodbye to his adoptive mother after his father’s death and embarks on his journey to learn who he truly is. Schumer marveled at the camera sweeping from the golden fields to the blue sky, symbolizing the fledgling Superman’s look toward the future. He ended up seeing the movie 10 times in theaters.

While 1980’s “Superman II” was still well-received, the third and fourth installments of the franchise “went off the rails” and became “campy,” Schumer said.

Unlike Marvel, which centralized control under president Kevin Feige, DC and Warner Bros. for years allowed Snyder’s vision to determine the direction of the film universe. Batman, on the other hand, has been successfully molded by multiple filmmakers (e.g. Christopher Nolan, Snyder and Matt Reeves), allowing new aspects of the character to shine through, Schumer said.

“DC Comics, [Superman] is your flagship property, but they’ve often never really treated it like their flagship property,” he said. “This affected the way DC made movies, versus Marvel.”

The studio has also been criticized for its lack of a cohesive vision and framework for its superhero universe, analysts said. The studio allowed its intellectual property to be splintered into parallel storylines, which became chaotic.

It’s why Gunn and Safran were installed as co-chairmen and co-chief executives of DC Studios in 2022.

Gunn seemed a surprising choice to co-run DC Studios. He started as a screenwriter at indie production house Troma Entertainment — known for B horror pictures — and eventually achieved global success in the superhero genre by directing Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy,” beloved for its irreverent humor. He also had experience with DC, directing 2021’s “The Suicide Squad.”

With the pair at the helm, the goal was to standardize the superhero universe and kick-start a new epoch for the studio. “Superman” is intended to lead off for several upcoming DC movies, including “Supergirl,” starring Milly Alcock, “Clayface,” and “Dynamic Duo” about the Robins — Batman sidekicks Dick Grayson and Jason Todd.

“It’s a table setter,” said Shawn Robbins, director of movie analytics at Fandango and founder of site Box Office Theory. “It’s really intended to be the launching of an entirely new era for DC movies and where that might lead.”

Selling an American hero

But while Superman has generated toy sales, animated series and multiple movies, the character is hard to get right.

Schumer remembers how audiences laughed when Reeve’s Superman tells a scoffing Lois Lane that he was fighting for truth, justice and the American way in the 1978 film, at a time when America was reeling from the Watergate scandal and the end of the Vietnam War.

“This idea of truth, justice and the American way was deemed, even back then, hokey,” Schumer said. “And in a sense, it kind of still is.”

From the beginning, Superman has been a quintessential American immigrant story.

Two sons of Jewish immigrants, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, introduced the superhero in 1938 in “Action Comics #1,” which told the tale of the alien, eventually known as Kal-El, who was sent to Earth to escape his dying planet. The comic was “an overnight smash success” that helped launch the comic book medium and the idea of the superhero, Schumer said.

In later stories, Superman’s Midwestern upbringing in Smallville, Kansas and his eventual move to the big city of Metropolis also mirrored the journeys many Americans were making during that time.

But today, there’s questions about whether Superman’s strong American symbolism will be a turnoff for global audiences, who have recently bristled at tariffs and trade policies enacted by President Trump.

“That assumption of Superman being a challenging character in some territories is a legitimate factor,” Robbins said. “What it’s going to come down to is the movie itself and how well it connects with international audiences.”

One advantage: The film snagged a coveted Imax slot — which can boost box office revenue and make a film more of an “event.”

The movie also comes as the once white-hot market for superhero films has cooled, both domestically and abroad. Even Marvel has recently seen lower box office results for its films — despite critical praise, “Thunderbolts*” grossed about $382 million worldwide on a budget of $180 million, paling in comparison to past films.

The potential for “Superman” overseas earnings could be big. Forecasts from entertainment industry analytics firm Cinelytic based on publicly available data found that “Superman” could make about $531 million in global box office revenue, with the top four most likely international markets in Britain, Germany, France and Australia.

Gunn brushed off questions about Superman’s archetypal American symbolism, telling the Times of London in an interview that his own market research found that international audiences viewed the Man of Steel as a global figure.

“He is a hero for the world,” he said in the interview.

But Superman has long-suffered from his lack of flaws and inability to really examine the American ideals he represents, said Annika Hagley, associate dean of the school of social and natural sciences at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, who teaches a course on superheroes and politics.

Over time, Superman’s advocacy of America has remained constant, despite the evolving perception of the U.S. both at home and abroad, she said. That’s in contrast to his Marvel counterpart, the seemingly U.S.-centric Captain America, who evolved from fighting Nazis during World War II to questioning the morality of government surveillance, Hagley said.

While Superman’s immigrant backstory could lend itself to complex narratives about the treatment of newcomers in the U.S., DC has so far failed to evolve his story to address those questions, she said. He did, however, change his motto to the more borderless “truth, justice and a better tomorrow” in recent years.

As an immigrant in a post-9/11 era, “Superman is a security threat, but he’s also boring,” she said. “They’ve tried to make him less American, they tried to make him more alienated and it just hasn’t hit home for an audience in the way that the Marvel characters have.”

Gunn’s “Superman” does touch on America’s role in geopolitics. In a recent trailer for the film, Rachel Brosnahan’s Lois Lane interviews Corenswet’s Superman, questioning whether his involvement in a foreign country’s conflict and “seemingly acting as a representative of the United States will cause more problems around the world.”

“I wasn’t representing anybody except for me,” he interjects. “And doing good.”

Fresh from his retirement concert with Black Sabbath at the weekend, Ozzy Osbourne has announced a new project: a visual art collaboration with chimpanzees.

Osbourne is a keen amateur painter, and for his latest works he painted multicoloured base coats on to five canvases, with the chimpanzees then adding daubs of their own.

The finished abstract expressionist works are being sold at auction to raise money for Save the Chimps, a sanctuary in Florida for chimpanzees who have been rescued from animal testing labs, poorly run zoos and wildlife traffickers.

“I paint because it gives me peace of mind, but I don’t sell my paintings,” Osbourne said. “I’ve made an exception with these collaborations as it raises money for Save the Chimps.” His wife Sharon Osbourne added: “Chimps are our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, and I’m really proud of Ozzy for helping look after them.”

Osbourne is now settling into retirement, having concluded his performing career in spectacular style on Saturday night.

He performed two sets at the conclusion of farewell concert Back to the Beginning, first solo, then with the reunited Black Sabbath. “It’s so good to be on this fucking stage, you have no idea,” he told the crowd, performing seated in a giant bat-adorned throne. “I’ve been laid up for six years, and you’ve got no idea how I feel … Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

Osbourne has suffered a series of health problems in recent years. He was diagnosed with a form of Parkinson’s, and then had numerous surgeries on his neck and spine after a fall in 2019. He also suffered pneumonia, and an infection that required him to remain on antibiotics for a prolonged period.

The injuries and illnesses looked as if they might prevent him from performing again. “You wake up the next morning and find that something else has gone wrong,” he told the Guardian in May. “You begin to think this is never going to end. Sharon could see that I was in Doom Town, and she says to me: ‘I’ve got an idea.’ It was something to give me a reason to get up in the morning.”

This was the Back to the Beginning concert which not only brought together the original Black Sabbath lineup for the first time since 2005, but also a series of metal greats who performed their own music as well as Black Sabbath cover versions. Metallica, Slayer, Guns N’ Roses and many more appeared, along with surprise guests such as Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and the Rolling Stones’ Ronnie Wood.

The auction for Osbourne’s collaborative chimpanzee paintings is open now, with bids for each artwork starting at £1,000.