This Week

• Our dream cast for Knives Out 3.
• The Trump verdict made X great again.
• That Hacks finale was an absolute banger.

• Audra McDonald is coming to save us. 

• Jerry Seinfeld is back at it.

The Hollywood Hunger Games 

It must be so humiliating to be an actor in Hollywood who hasn’t been cast in a Knives Out movie yet. 

As casting news for the upcoming third film in the trilogy, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, comes out this week at a dizzying clip, one can imagine the phone lines at the big Hollywood agencies jammed with clients fuming over the fact that they haven’t yet gotten a call. With the ensemble filling out quickly ahead of a production that’s expected to begin shortly, writer-director Rian Johnson likely has dual status as the industry’s most valued figure and greatest villain. Actors are either setting up a prayer altar with his headshot all over it or sticking needles into a voodoo doll in his likeness, depending on how their bids to join the film are going. 

We’re, of course, exaggerating (mostly), but it has been a thrill to see the roster of actors announced for the film in the last week: Josh O’Connor! Cailee Spaeny! Kerry Washington! Andrew Scott! Freaking Glenn Close!!! And, it was reported Thursday, Jeremy Renner will join the cast, in his first film role since his traumatic snowplow accident. 

Whenever there’s a casting spree like this, social media becomes its own casting department, imagining and dreaming about who they would love to join the hot new film—especially when it's a franchise like Knives Out, known for its sprawling ensembles of quirky characters. 

Who else would we want to participate in the new murder mystery alongside Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc?

There was a rumor online that Lindsay Lohan was in talks, which, if that actually happens, I’ll be the titular dead man they’ll need to wake up. 

With this week’s absolutely brilliant season finale of Hacks fresh on my mind, I have no trouble dreamcasting Jean Smart or Hannah Binder into the universe. More fun, though, could be Paul W. Downs and Meg Stalter, in character as bumbling—yet surprisingly effective—agents Jimmy and Kayla.   

Speaking of groupings, what if talk-show icons, who happen to also be fantastic actresses, Oprah Winfrey, Whoopi Goldberg, and Rosie O’Donnell are cast as some sort of triumvirate. (I can’t think of a better way to kick off Pride Month than with that announcement.)

Regina Hall should be in the cast, because it is one of my strongest-held beliefs that Regina Hall should be in everything. Jonathan Bailey should be in the cast, too, because I want to ensure my husband stays booked and busy. And how about someone we haven’t heard from in a while like Bonnie Hunt? Bonnie Hunt, where have you been???

If Johnson wants to satisfy the straight audience, maybe he can do something silly like make Mr. and Mrs. Met characters, who are plotting the murder of Gritty. 

What if, to appeal to millennials, Benoit Blanc enlists the help of nostalgic detectives to solve the case: Michelle Trachtenberg as Harriet the Spy, Kristen Bell as Veronica Mars, and the cast of the live-action Scooby-Doo?

This kind of dream casting is fun because it’s utterly pointless, save for the fleeting serotonin you get when thinking about actors you love. Who knows if there are even more parts left to cast in the film. Doesn’t matter! I’m over here smiling to myself for three-to-four seconds each while thinking about some of my favorite performers and then moving on with my day, which, as far as afternoons at work go, is pretty solid. Geena Davis! Colin Farrell! Rita Moreno! Ted Danson! Kristen Chenoweth! Sandra Oh! Ellen Burstyn! That’s about 27 consecutive seconds of happiness I just had while typing those names out—rare!

I could do this all day. Give me a call, Rian.

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Thirty-Four More Times the Fun

Finally, a reward. 

While many people understandably fled the toxic cesspool that is X because of its new direction under Elon Musk (that direction is “straight to Hell”), there’s a contingent of us who have lingered. Why? Perhaps it’s Stockholm syndrome. Maybe it’s because it’s still where I gather breaking news and trending topics like people’s reaction to TV episodes. It’s also because, frankly, the people who post on there are genuinely funny. The memes, the reaction to the news: When you just want to read a good joke—TikTok videos are a whole other thing—X still beats any of the rushed, inelegant, and, frankly, boring copycats.

The main reason we stayed, though, even if we maybe didn’t consciously know it, was for times like this week. 

When Donald Trump’s guilty verdict was read (34 times!), X fleetingly became the playground we once loved again: full of community, gallows humor, and comedy-tinged elation that can’t—or at least hasn’t—been replicated anywhere else. 

As one person posted, there was an element of “we deserve this” among the X holdouts: “this is why you don’t leave the cursed website,this is the moment for the ones with real fortitude.” There also was a resounding giddiness that these could be the most fun days on the site since Trump got Covid and people thought he might die. As in, several people on my timeline literally posted: “This is gonna be the best day on here since he almost died of covid.” (Listen, everyone has different taste levels when it comes to dark humor.) 

“What’s the opposite of doomscrolling?” another person wrote, relishing how joyous it was for a lot of us to see post after post relishing in the verdict. 

In celebration of X, even if oh-so briefly, being made great again, here’s a sampling of the posts:

Give Hannah Einbinder an Emmy

That was a marvel of a season finale of Hacks, a roller coaster of catharsis and dread that, as the series always does, delicately vibrated between emotional and sardonically funny. There were two bangers of a scene between Jean Smart’s Deborah Vance and Hannah Einbinder’s Ava that I’ll be screaming about for weeks. 

Smart was, of course, phenomenal in them, and will win her third Best Actress Emmy in three seasons because of it. But I was struck by Einbinder’s performance because, in a shift, Ava was the one controlling the tenor of the showdowns with Deborah in reaction mode, versus the usual dynamic. Einbinder escalated from a whimper to a lion’s roar in how Ava dresses down Deborah, and their final face-off unveiled a whole new tenor to their relationship. 

Immediately after the finale was made available on Max, a Season 4 was announced. Hell yes.

Here Comes Mama 

There was a communal moment Thursday morning as me and all my fellow frociaggines joined the virtual line to buy tickets to the first performance of Audra McDonald’s just-announced production of Gypsy. It’s almost as if Audra knew: “You might be feeling alienated that the Pope is just willy-nilly using gay slurs in meetings, so as a gift to you, I, the greatest musical theater performer of our lifetime, will be performing the greatest musical theater role ever written.”

Anyway, I got tickets. Hours later the Trump verdict was read. Aside from the hit on my credit card bill, a good day! 

Important Information 

This week, Jerry Seinfeld, a person who has complained about woke culture ruining comedy while on a press tour for his *check notes* Netflix movie about Pop-Tarts, apparently had more to say!  

Seinfeld misses “dominant masculinity,” he said on Bari Weiss’ podcast. “I like a real man.” Ah, yes:

I am once again asking why extremely rich people speak. If I had all that money, I would be on a yacht, drinking pina coladas, and eating pigs in a blanket at every meal. What I would not be doing is making movies about Pop-Tarts, and what I simply would never be doing is speaking.

More From The Daily Beast’s Obsessed 

I chatted with the Top Chef judges (!!!) about rebooting the show after 20 seasons. Read more.

Here’s how Elsbeth became the surprise hit of the TV season. Read more.

The Kardashians are officially in their flop era. Read more.

• Clipped: Ed O’Neill plays scandal-ridden LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling. That casting! (Tues. on Hulu)

• In a Violent Nature: You’d never guess by the title, but this movie is quite violent. (Now in theaters)

• Below Deck Mediterranean: In which I spend a TV season imagining I’m on a yacht in Europe. (Mon. on Bravo)

• Ezra: Hoo boy, is this a sappy mess. (Now in theaters)

• Eric: Not a great week for four-letter titles that start with “E.” (Now on Netflix)

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