Kate Aurthur: Last News

Kate Aurthur editor The #Scandoval has, predictably, been great for ratings: Bravo’s “Vanderpump Rules” is soaring.  According to the network, the March 8 episode of “Vanderpump Rules” — the first to air since the news broke about Tom Sandoval and Raquel Leviss’ months-long affair — drew 2.2 million viewers across all platforms in Live + 3 ratings. In live viewing, that episode doubled its ratings from the previous week.  The network’s nightly talk show, “Watch What Happens Live,” which featured series matriarch Lisa Vanderpump being interviewed by Andy Cohen, also benefited, drawing 593,000 viewers in the 18 to 49 demographic alone. 

Kate Aurthur editor SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers from Season 4 of “You,” now streaming on Netflix. “You” can go home again: At the conclusion of Season 4 of the Netflix thriller, Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) is back in New York City, alongside his billionaire girlfriend Kate (Charlotte Ritchie) — sitting on top of the world. He nearly died by suicide earlier in the episode, in some warped attempt at redemption. But by the finale’s ending, Joe, who’s has killed his way through London (in his fake identity of Professor Jonathan Moore), has emerged exultant. He’s fused with his murderous side, and seemingly happier than he’s ever been on “You.”

Kate Aurthur editor In spring 2020, during the earliest phase of the pandemic, production on Season 3 of “Barry” was shut down before it could even begin. But co-creators Bill Hader and Alec Berg — along with the writing staff of the dark HBO comedy — would soon put that time to good use. They wrote the fourth season of “Barry,” and then went back and rewrote the show’s third, which still hadn’t started filming. As Hader and Berg wrote Season 4, they started to realize that “a very clear ending presented itself,” Hader told Variety in an interview last week. On April 16, the eight-episode final season of “Barry” will premiere — and Variety can exclusively reveal that date, as well as unveil its first teaser and first look.

Kate Aurthur editor “Grey’s Anatomy,” which in last week’s episode said goodbye-ish to Ellen Pompeo as Meredith Grey, will say hello to the actor William Martinez in the March 2 episode this week. In a recurring role, Martinez will make his debut as Trey, a character who’s an important figure from Simone’s (Alexis Floyd) past. In last week’s episode, Simone, one of Season 19’s new class of surgical interns, entered into a situationship with Lucas (Niko Terho). Their courtship is complicated, though, by the fact that they’re now both living in Meredith’s old house, along with fellow intern Mika Yasuda (Midori Francis) — fixing it up after a fire nearly destroyed it. Trey will be coming along to make that incipient romance even knottier, presumably.

Kate Aurthur editor SPOILER ALERT: This essay contains spoilers from “I’ll Follow the Sun,” the Feb. 23 episode of “Grey’s Anatomy.” From her first episode as Dr. Meredith Grey on March 27, 2005 — when “Grey’s Anatomy” premiered on ABC and became a once-in-a-generation pop-culture sensation — to what’s being billed as a (kind of, sort of) goodbye episode on Feb. 23, 2023, Ellen Pompeo could forge chemistry with anyone. Along with its lexicon-changing writing and intricate yet rowdy plotting by Shonda Rhimes, what’s made “Grey’s Anatomy” a phenomenon was watching Meredith just live her life. She was a character network television never seen before: a brilliant woman whose life had been marred by tragedy (an Alzheimer’s-afflicted mother, an entirely absent father), yet who wasn’t going to let her dark and twisty past get in her way. Meredith had a lot of fun; she saved a lot of lives; she had a lot of sex.  

William Earl Variety is pleased to announce the return of its Entertainment Marketing Summit, presented by Deloitte, on April 19 in Los Angeles. This year’s summit will feature Karen Bronzo, chief marketing officer, Warner Bros. Discovery; Dwight Caines, president, domestic marketing, Universal Pictures; Marc Weinstock, president, worldwide marketing and distribution, Paramount Pictures; Lisa Vanderpump, TV personality and executive producer of “Vanderpump Rules,” businesswoman, author and philanthropist; Terry Crews, actor, bestselling author, entrepreneur and host; among other elite creative and industry speakers. Bronzo, Caines and Weinstock will be among participants of a Keynote Entertainment Marketing Roundtable, moderated by Claudia Eller, chief production officer, Variety, in which leading film and TV marketers will share how they are promoting their projects to today’s audiences.

Kate Aurthur editor Penn Badgley has been in the headlines recently, and not only because Part 1 of the fourth season of “You” dropped on Feb. 9: On his podcast “Podcrushed” last week, Badgley talked about his strong dislike of filming intimate scenes — and the internet exploded with thoughts about his remarks. He also said that he’d shared his feelings with Sera Gamble, the “You” showrunner, ahead of the season. In turn, he said, Gamble had a “really positive response and they came back with a phenomenal reduction” for Season 4. In two wide-ranging interviews for this week’s Variety cover story, which will be released on Feb. 15, Badgley spoke expansively on the subject. In our story, Badgley details how the number of sex scenes he knew he’d have to do for “You” had been a major factor in 2017 in him not wanting to play the role of serial killer/love addict Joe Goldberg. The whole series, after all, revolves around Joe’s romantic fixations, and how he gets the women he’s fallen for to submit to his charms. By design, “You” has a ton of sex.

Kate Aurthur editor SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains light spoilers for the first four episodes of “High School,” now streaming on Amazon Freevee.  When Clea DuVall first met the Canadian indie musicians Tegan and Sara Quin years ago, “I was not familiar with their music,” she recalled in an interview this week. Nonetheless, after DuVall — a prolific actor in movies such as “But I’m a Cheerleader” and “Argo” — was introduced to the duo when she joined some friends who were seeing them perform, the three women eventually all became good friends “through being in the same circles.” As DuVall began to explore directing, the first things she ever did were promotional videos for Tegan and Sara’s “Heartthrob” record, released in early 2013. Since then, she’s collaborated with them a number of times: Among other things. Sara Quin scored DuVall’s 2016 feature debut as a writer-director “The Intervention,” and Tegan and Sara wrote the Christmas song “Make You Mine This Season” for her second film, 2020’s lesbian romcom “Happiest Season.”  

Kate Aurthur editor SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for “Everything Has Changed,” the premiere of Season 19 of “Grey’s Anatomy,” which first aired on Oct. 6 on ABC and streams on Hulu starting on Oct. 7. “Grey’s Anatomy” is diving back into its past to begin its future. The Season 19 premiere of ABC’s long-running medical drama kicked off with a slew of brand-new cast members — the class of surgical interns on their first day at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, much like the pilot episode of “Grey’s Anatomy” introduced that cast on March 27, 2005. These freshmen interns, though, are the opposite of the Meredith Greys and Cristina Yangs we met all those years ago. Because the Grey Sloan surgical residency program was shut down last season after a patient’s death, this new group was selected in desperation: They’re the rejects and malcontents who didn’t make it elsewhere. New series regulars Harry Shum Jr., Adelaide Kane, Alexis Floyd, Midori Francis and Niko Terho play the interns, and their backstories will unfold throughout the season.

Kate Aurthur editor When the 19th season of “Grey’s Anatomy” premieres on ABC on Oct. 6, Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) will be front and center in the episode, as she’s been since the series made its debut on March 27, 2005. Meredith is now the chief of surgery at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, and she’s been charged with rebuilding its surgical intern program after it was dismantled last season following a patient’s death. Five of those interns will be new characters this season. Yet as Variety reported over the summer, Pompeo (and Meredith) will soon be taking a step back, and will appear in only eight of this season’s episodes — though all the episodes will still have Meredith’s voiceover at the beginning and end. Along with the development she’s shepherding at her production company Calamity Jane, Pompeo is starring in and executive producing an as-yet untitled limited series at Hulu about a couple who adopt a child they think is an 8-year-old with dwarfism — but then things begin to go awry within their family.

Kate Aurthur editor During her career, Elizabeth Olsen has played a broad range of characters, from a damaged cult escapee in 2011’s “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” to an in-over-her-head FBI agent investigating a murder in “Wind River,” to a narcissistic influencer in “Ingrid Goes West” — and, of course, the tragic, terrifying Wanda Maximoff (aka Scarlet Witch) in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Next year, she’ll star in “Love & Death,” an HBO Max limited series about Candy Montgomery, a Texas homemaker who in 1980 had an affair with her friend’s husband — and then murdered her friend, hitting her 41 times with an axe. It’s based on a true story. Yet “Love & Death,” written by David E. Kelley, and directed by Lesli Linka Glatter, isn’t grim, according to Olsen — in fact, “I think we were trying to find the humor as much as possible,” she says. And as for playing a murderer in Candy, she compared the experience to getting into the character of Wanda. “What’s fun for me is trying to understand why people make the decisions they make,” Olsen says. “I just feel like that’s my role is to defend, defend, defend. And so I adore her, and I’m impressed by her.”

Kate Aurthur editor Penn Badgley’s production company Ninth Mode and producer Raven Tahzib have acquired the rights to the David Sedaris short story “Jamboree,” in order to develop it into a feature film. “Jamboree” was part of Sedaris’ 1994 book “Barrel Fever,” his first published collection of short stories and essays. In the story, a 16-year-old boy who lives in his older sister’s garage ends up being the caretaker of her baby. “Jamboree” would be only the second time that Sedaris’ work has been adapted for film: 2013’s “C.O.G.,” from Kyle Patrick Alvarez, was based on an essay from the 1997 collection “Naked.” Badgley recently wrapped the fourth season of “You,” which will be released on Netflix in two parts next year: The first batch of episodes will premiere on Feb. 10, with the rest dropping a month later, on March 10.

Kate Aurthur editor The cold open of the Sept. 28 Season 3 premiere of “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” featured at the bottom of this post harks back to a more innocent time for the Bravo cast members — before it then reveals how their lives and friendships have exploded during the show’s run. The scene begins in December 2019 with the first confessionals the women filmed for the show’s freshman season, as they introduce themselves, and present their relationships to other cast members. Jen Shah — who in July of this year pleaded guilty to criminal fraud charges, and will be sentenced (likely to prison) in November — attempts to explain her job, which she calls “direct response marketing.” As the audience now knows, Shah was in fact — as she’s now admitted — a high-up figure in a telemarketing scheme that defrauded tons of (often elderly) people. She was arrested during the filming of Season 2, practically on camera. And as Shah protested her innocence, the second season made much hay of her legal issues.

Kate Aurthur editor The coalition of showrunners, TV creators and directors formed in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in June to overturn Roe v. Wade are continuing to put pressure on Hollywood studios to put safety protocols into place in abortion-hostile states. But on Sept. 28, in a full-page ad in the Power of Women issue of Variety, the still-unnamed coalition thanked those studios “for fully engaging and being thought leaders with us,” as the message reads in part. (The page was donated to the coalition by Variety‘s sales team without charge. The full letter is included below.) The coalition’s efforts became public on July 28, when Variety reported that 411 showrunners had sent nine major studios a letter demanding that new safety protocols be established for productions in states where abortion has been outlawed. Four days later, 594 male showrunners and creators backed up that demand — and the group was soon joined by nearly 400 directors.

Kate Aurthur editor Elizabeth Olsen is one of creative leaders honored for Variety’s 2022 Power of Women presented by Lifetime. For more, click here. Elizabeth Olsen’s film career began — explosively — with the 2011 Sundance sensation “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” after which she went to co-star in a number of independent films. But she soon noticed, Olsen tells Variety in an interview for her Power of Women cover story, that she was perhaps being pigeonholed. “I wasn’t being considered for studio films,” Olsen says. “I asked my agent and manager why, and they said, ‘Well, you don’t do them.’”

Kate Aurthur editor Sarah Paulson is no stranger to playing real people: Among other roles, she won an Emmy award for her portrayal of Marcia Clark in 2016’s “The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story,” and was recently nominated for an Emmy for “Impeachment: American Crime Story” for playing Linda Tripp. Now, Paulson is attached to star and executive produce the scripted adaptation of “The Way Down: God, Greed, and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin,”  which HBO Max is developing from its own five-part docuseries. Michelle Dean, who was the co-creator of the 2019 Hulu limited series “The Act,” is the showrunner of the scripted adaptation. HBO Max dropped the first three episodes of Marina Zenovich’s investigative docuseries “The Way Down” on Sept. 30 of last year. It detailed Gwen Shamblin Lara’s rise from being a diet guru with her Weigh Down Workshop (launched in 1986) to the founding of her Tennessee church, Remnant Fellowship, in 1999. According to ex-congregants and diet followers featured in “The Way Down,” Shamblin Lara exerted unwelcome, cult-leader-like control over their lives.

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large And this is it, the final 25 categories from the 74th Emmy awards will be revealed, and winners crowned, on Monday at the Microsoft theater in Downtown Los Angeles. Will it ultimately be a roster of predictable victors and repeats from past years? Or are we in for some surprises? On this episode of the “Variety Awards Circuit Podcast,” it’s an all-roundtable edition as we go through all of the remaining categories and give out final best guesses and biggest dreams. Will predictable winners wind up on stage, or are we in for some big surprises from the likes of “Squid Game” or “Abbott Elementary”? What hints can be found in last weekend’s Creative Arts Emmys winners? Listen below!

Kate Aurthur editor On Aug. 15, a coalition of showrunners, TV creators and directors sent a list of demands to studios, outlining the urgent need for abortion safety protocols for productions in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in June to overturn Roe v. Wade. It was the organization’s second letter — the studios had collectively answered the first one, sent on July 28 — with a response one member of the group, who spoke anonymously to Variety, called “patronizing” in an interview. The group’s second letter more clearly detailed the medical dangers for pregnant women in states where abortion is illegal because of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision — not only for those who want an abortion, but for women whose medical care might be otherwise compromised. Ignoring the collective response, which had been issued by the Motion Picture Association, the Aug. 15 appeal was sent directly to studio presidents, and members of the boards of directors at AMC Networks, Amazon Studios, Apple TV+, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Paramount, The Walt Disney Company and Warner Bros. Discovery. They gave a deadline of Labor Day for responses from the studios.

Kate Aurthur editor The Aug. 6 address before the assembly at Remnant Fellowship — delivered to an in-person gathering in Brentwood, TN, and via webcast to anyone who might want to watch — began typically enough, with congregants watching an old video sermon from Gwen Shamblin Lara, the church’s late founder who died in a plane crash on May 29, 2021. What happened after the video portion ended, though, was unusual. In a portion of the sermon, obtained by Variety, Elizabeth Hannah, Lara’s daughter and a leader at Remnant, called in, as she sometimes does. But instead of her usual teachings for Saturday service, Hannah delivered a homily of schadenfreude aimed directly at HBO Max, the enemy of Remnant and the Shamblin family.

Kate Aurthur editorIn its finale in January, “Yellowjackets” posed a terrifying question: Who the fuck is Lottie Matthews? And now, Showtime has an answer. With Season 2 of the show starting production later this month in Vancouver, the network announced that adult Lottie will be played by Simone Kessell, who recently starred as Princess Leia’s mother Breha Organa in “Obi-Wan Kenobi” and as the mother of Blackbeard (Taika Waititi) on “Our Flag Means Death.”Lottie, who is played as a teenager by Courtney Eaton, emerged as the central antagonist of the show in the first season of “Yellowjackets.” A rich kid whose parents furnished her soccer team with a private plane in order for the Yellowjackets to travel to nationals, Lottie had been forced to go off her anti-psychotic medication after that plane crashed in the wilderness, where the show’s 1996 timeline is set.

Kate Aurthur editorTaylor Armstrong, an original cast member of Bravo’s “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” is joining the upcoming season of the “Orange County” version of the franchise, though she won’t be a full cast member. Armstrong — according to People magazine, which broke the news of her casting — lives in Orange County with her husband John Bluher and her daughter, Kennedy, now 16.“The Real Housewives of Orange County” premiered on Bravo in March 2006, and Armstrong is the first “Housewives” cast member to jump from one series to another.Armstrong appeared on the first three seasons of “Beverly Hills,” and has been seen on it since as a guest star, never leaving the Bravo-verse.