A Great Actor Who Is Also a Perfect Celebrity
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Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer or editor reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is Dan Zak, a senior editor who works on features.
Dan recently succumbed to the emotional pull of Paradise’s second season, and he enjoys watching Face/Off, just about any performance of Emma Thompson’s, and old episodes of What’s My Line?. He also has a unicorn named Stacy in his life. More on that later.
— Stephanie Bai, senior associate editor
An actor I would watch in anything: Emma Thompson, a splendid actor who is also the perfect celebrity: wise, witty, and excellent in any genre or form, as a character or as herself. She can do Merchant Ivory and Jane Austen and Tony Kushner and violent thrillers—specifically, violent thrillers with Dead in the title: Dead Again, in which she and Kenneth Branagh are haunted by their past lives, and Dead of Winter, in which she and Judy Greer beat the hell out of each other in northern Minnesota. Thompson can also do late night and Saturday Night Live and awards shows; just watch the subtle master class of her presenting an honorary Oscar to Angela Lansbury. Two undersung titles: The Tall Guy, her riotous first film (opposite Jeff Goldblum), and Wit, an adaptation of the stage play about a literature professor who’s dying of cancer. Thompson is also the only reason I will probably see The Sheep Detectives, the trailer for which is, frankly, insane.
The last thing that made me cry: Ugh, Paradise, on Hulu, finally got me a few weeks ago: the fourth episode of Season 2 (slight spoiler ahead), wherein Sterling K. Brown helps Shailene Woodley give birth in an abandoned diner. The show is postapocalyptic and emotionally manipulative—think The Last of Us meets This Is Us—but the supple acting and careful character development pay off in the latest season. Tragedy doesn’t really make me cry; human goodness does. Get to this episode, and you’ll see.
The last thing that made me snort with laughter: Whenever Ashley Padilla plays a mom or Sarah Sherman plays an animal on Saturday Night Live.
My favorite blockbuster and favorite art movie: Face/Off barely edges out Speed. And 10 years on, I still think about Mike Mills’s 20th Century Women, starring Annette Bening in her best-ever performance.
An author I will read anything by: Ottessa Moshfegh.
Something I recently revisited: Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation. The book is a fugue state—an incantation of privileged misanthropy—and I wanted to be under its spell again. Killer last page too.
A quiet song that I love, and a loud song that I love: Anything by Sade (okay, “Pearls”) and anything by Darlene Love—okay, “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).”
The last museum or gallery show that I loved: “The Stars We Do Not See,” featuring Australian Indigenous art, which closed last month at the National Gallery of Art.
A piece of visual art that I cherish: I have a giant original oil painting—5 feet by 4 feet—of a majestic unicorn dozing in a meadow of colorful orbs, by the D.C.-area artist Naomi Christianson. “Stacy loves energy balls,” she told me when I bought the painting, in 2017. And I love Stacy. She’s hanging over my dining table.
The last debate I had about culture: The merits of the TV show Jury Duty, which I find to be a boring, depressing stunt. Actually, “stunt” is too generous; that suggests excitement. The premise is that everybody is an actor except for one person, who is thrown into a situation that he believes is real but that gets crazier and crazier. The latest season (titled Company Retreat) makes no sense! The cast is collaborating on a prolonged prank but also staying in character for the camera—in the style of The Office—when their mark is not around. The fusion of reality show and mockumentary creates a disorienting clash of vibes, and I end up experiencing nothing but confusion—and pity for the real guy.
The television show I’m most enjoying right now: YouTube is full of episodes of What’s My Line?. The old game show features a panel of urbane socialites trying to guess the occupation of regular Americans (and, blindfolded, the identity of celebrities). The panel’s mid-century politesse is soothing, and the celebrity guests (Alfred Hitchcock! Eleanor Roosevelt!) are sort of mind-blowing, from today’s vantage point.
A musical artist who means a lot to me: Ella Fitzgerald, and I don’t know why. Her voice is like a hug. Desert-island tracks: “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered”; “Make Me Rainbows”; and “You’ll Have to Swing It (Mr. Paganini).”
A poem, or line of poetry, that I return to: The first two lines of “Sunday Morning,” by Wallace Stevens: “Complacencies of the peignoir, and late / Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair.” A life in 13 words, and you instantly feel both comfort and foreboding. Published more than 100 years ago, but very 21st century.
The upcoming event I’m most looking forward to: Is it weird to say that I will forever look forward to Laurie Metcalf and Rupert Everett in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?—even though it closed prematurely in 2020 because of the pandemic? Broadway, please put that production back together, thanks.
The Week Ahead
- The Things We Never Say, a novel by the Pulitzer-winning author Elizabeth Strout about a Massachusetts teacher whose family has been shaken by tragedy (out Tuesday)
- The Sheep Detectives, a comedy-mystery starring Hugh Jackman about a flock of sheep that attempt to solve their shepherd’s murder (in theaters Friday)
- Lord of the Flies, a TV miniseries adapted by Jack Thorne reimagining William Golding’s novel about schoolboys stranded on a deserted island (out tomorrow on Netflix)
Essay
Seven Death-Defying Books for the Adventurous Reader
By Eva Holland
When you stand at the summit of Mount Everest, the sky is a deep-blue bowl inverted above you, and the peaks of the Himalayas are a carpet at your feet. The sun on the snow is bright enough to blind you, even as your body starts failing in air so thin it can hardly sustain human life. I know that not because I’ve been there myself, but because I’ve read Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air and other books about the world’s highest mountain.
Krakauer survived a deadly ordeal on Everest—a high price to pay for a remarkable book. But thanks to the alchemy of his crisp, vivid writing, Into Thin Air genuinely manages to conjure the experience for readers, even those who might never trek there. The shine of this magic trick hasn’t worn off, and my favorite place to encounter it is in a truly harrowing adventure story. Life-and-death stakes? Dangerous mysteries? Motley crews pitting themselves against impossible odds? Sign me up—but only vicariously, please. I like my adventures paired with a cup of tea and my softest blanket.
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Catch Up on The Atlantic
- Rise of the blood populist
- Trump is focused on becoming one of history’s “great men.”
- What happens if Trump seizes AI companies
Photo Album
Take a look at some of the winning images from this year’s GDT Nature Photographer of the Year contest.
Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.
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