Michael Appler: Last News

Michael Appler When Nicole Scherzinger entered her dressing room at the St. James Theatre on Sunday afternoon, accompanied by an entourage befitting a Pussycat Doll-turned Broadway diva, a bouquet of roses awaited her. It was opening night of “Sunset Boulevard,” and any Norma Desmond preparing to open the breakout Broadway show of the season should expect her lavishing of gifts and florals.

Michael Appler Blake Lively says producing and starring in “It Ends With Us,” Sony Pictures’ film adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s best-selling romance novel, took just about everything she had to give. “It was so important to me to work off camera,” Lively, who plays Lily Bloom, told Variety at the film’s New York premiere on Tuesday. “The work I did as a producer was far more all-consuming than anything I did playing Lily.

Michael Appler When Tony and Emmy-nominee Danielle Brooks was 17 years old, at home in Greenville, S.C., she picked up a copy of August Wilson’s “Century Cycle,” a canon of 10 plays spanning the 20th century which chronicled African American life in its most vivid, lyrical and intimate settings yet written for the stage. Sifting through the collection, she picked out “The Piano Lesson” and read it, thumbing across the names of African American actors and actresses whom she didn’t yet know. “Today is about preservation,” she told Variety on Thursday at the opening night of the first Broadway revival of “The Piano Lesson,” in which Brooks stars as Berniece alongside Samuel L. Jackson and John David Washington.

Michael Appler In 1958, an unknown actor spoke just one line from the stage of the Cort Theatre on Broadway: “Mrs. Roosevelt, supper is served.” Then, a 27-year old James Earl Jones could barely make it through his five words. His stutter had yet to smooth into a defining voice. On Monday afternoon, in a ceremony attended by Samuel L. Jackson, Phylicia Rashad, Debbie Allen and Mayor Eric Adams, that same theater was rededicated in honor of the now 91 year-old actor. “I spoke my first line ever on Broadway in this theater,” Jones said in a video played during the ceremony, taped when Jones and his family toured the renovated theater privately. “I was a kid,” he said from the stage, looking out to an empty audience.

Michael Appler On Wednesday evening in New York City — about 60 miles and a ferry ride away from its subject— “Fire Island,” Joel Kim Booster’s romantic comedy about a weekend spent in New York’s chosen queer haven, held its premiere at the SVA Theatre.On 23rd Street in Chelsea, guests including Alok Viad-Menon, Jackie Cox, Peppermint and John Cameron Mitchell, as well as stars Bowen Yang, Matt Rogers, Conrad Ricamora and James Scully assembled to celebrate the film as part of New York’s NewFest Pride. You could have lifted the premiere’s guest list from any summer weekend spent at the Pines, something to be celebrated for a new film distributed by a gatekeeper studio like Searchlight Pictures.

Michael Appler On Wednesday evening in New York City, Colin Firth and the cast of HBO’s “The Staircase” celebrated its premiere at the Museum of Modern Art.Created by Antonio Campos with showrunner Maggie Cohn, “The Staircase” marks HBO’s turn at the true crime story of Kathleen Peterson, who was found dead at the bottom of her staircase in 2001. The story of what followed and came before — her husband Michael Peterson’s indictment and trial, unearthed secrets, treatment by prosecutors and twisting family drama — was first the subject of a 2004 documentary miniseries, then republished and given new episodes by Netflix, and now fictionalized in HBO’s limited series led by Firth and Toni Collette. “I think about Truman Capote and ‘In Cold Blood,’ which was itself a first of its kind,” Parker Posey, who plays the prosecuting attorney Freda Black in the series, told Variety at the premiere.

Michael Appler Jesse Williams and Jesse Tyler Ferguson celebrated the Broadway opening for “Take Me Out” on Monday evening in New York at Second Stage’s Hayes Theater.A revival of the 2003 Tony-winning best play, headlined by Williams, Ferguson and Patrick J. Adams, “Take Me Out” is the third of 19 new shows that will open this month, continuing the march of star-driven offerings in Broadway’s first regular season since its return after the COVID-19 pandemic struck.

Michael Appler On Monday evening in New York City, “Plaza Suite,” a Neil Simon comedy starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, opened on Broadway with a comedic crash nearly three years in the making.Set in the late-1960s, “Plaza Suite” comprises three one act plays in which Broderick and Parker — married in real life — portray couples staying in a suite at the Plaza Hotel. In the final act — a grand farce in which the pair play parents whose bride-to-be daughter has barricaded herself in the bathroom — Broderick takes a slapstick run at the locked-shut door. On Monday, in front of a star-studded crowd including Mayor Eric Adams, Broderick busted right through the set in an opening night gaff for the Broadway books.

Michael Appler On Wednesday evening in New York City, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer offered its return to the original movie musical with “Cyrano,” director Joe Wright’s musical adaptation of “Cyrano de Bergerac,” starring Peter Dinklage and Haley Bennett.At the New York City premiere, held at the SVA Theater, cast and studio executives reflected on the film’s unusual journey from an off-Broadway musical to a $30 million MGM feature film.“The whole reason I set out to do this project was because I really, really wanted to be on Broadway,” Bennett, who plays the leading role of Roxanne, told Variety at the premiere. “We started out in this tiny room six or seven years ago, and in my imagination, we might have ended up on a Broadway stage together.

Michael Jackson's kids are celebrating his legacy. On Tuesday night, the late pop star's daughter Paris, 23, and sons Prince, 24, and Blanket, 19, were spotted at the Neil Simon Theatre in New York City. The famed theater is currently home to "MJ The Musical," which recounts the King of Pop's creation of his 1992 Dangerous World Tour.

Michael Appler On Tuesday evening in New York City, “MJ The Musical,” a new biographical musical celebrating the life and work of Michael Jackson, opened on Broadway.“MJ The Musical,” written by two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage and produced in arrangement with the Michael Jackson estate, depicts the rehearsal process for Jackson’s 1992 “Dangerous” world tour—set one year before allegations of sexual misconduct first surfaced about the artist.And the show’s backers were quick to shut down any mention of the scandal that still clouds the King of Pop’s life and legacy at the red-carpet premiere of the musical, kicking out a Variety journalist for bringing up the topic of Jackson’s alleged abuse. In response to questions that asked how audience members should balance potential discomfort with enjoyment of the show’s theatrical artistry, cast members gave considered and conscientious responses.

Michael Appler “Whenever I see the word ‘sex’ nowadays, it’s usually written in pink, not black,” Michael Patrick King said gleefully on a boundless red carpet, stretched through the lobby of the Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday evening in New York City, where “And Just Like That,” HBO’s revival of “Sex in the City,” held its world premiere.“There’s a reason for that,” the series creator said, while celebrity guests like Matthew Broderick, Andrew Rannells, Anna Wintour, Gayle King and Andy Cohen walked the carpet. “‘Sex in the City’ offered a new kind of television.

Michael Appler On Wednesday evening in New York City, Anna Wintour, Huma Abiden, Joel Gray, Don Lemon, Phylicia Rashad, Kenny Leon and a host of New York theater luminaries filed into the Golden Theatre on Broadway for the opening night of Keenan Scott II’s “Thoughts of a Colored Man”—intrigued, arguably, to attend a play so polemically titled as desiring to take part in the celebrated march of Black playwrights to Broadway this season. “15 years ago, while I was still in undergrad studying acting, I hadn’t seen myself on the American theater stage. I didn’t see myself.

Michael Appler On Friday night in New York City, Madonna, joined by Jon Batiste, his band and a small group of fans, gave an intimate cabaret performance in the basement of Marcus Samuelsson’s restaurant Red Rooster, before spilling out into the Harlem streets for a 2 a.m. parade set to “Like a Prayer.”The midnight cabaret turned New Orleans-style street party rang in Friday’s release of “Madame X,” a documentary concert film of Madonna’s 2019 tour, released by Paramount Plus. “Obviously, Madame X has been born,” Madonna said to the basement crowd, dressed in a black cocktail dress, lace gloves and long blonde wig.