Variety

CO-EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Everyone has their favorite Jennifer Coolidge role. For Daniel D’Addario, our chief TV critic, she initially stood out as a woman trying to get her poodle to win a dog show in Christopher Guest’s 2000 comedy. “I became a fan of Jennifer Coolidge when I first saw ‘Best in Show,’” D’Addario says. “That movie is full of angry people vying for attention — and her character is serenely on her own cloud, unaware of what’s going on. It takes a seriously smart performer to be that out of it.” For this week’s cover story, D’Addario traveled to Noto, Italy, to visit Coolidge on the set of Season 2 of HBO’s “The White Lotus.” Playing the grieving socialite Tanya McQuoid has earned Coolidge her first Emmy nomination, and she’s considered a front-runner…

Warner Bros. Discovery is about to find out whether bigger and broader really is better when it comes to streaming. Ever since he took over the merged company in April, CEO David Zaslav has been clear about his vision for one global platform, and with the company’s latest earnings release this week, Wall Street anticipation about details regarding a combo HBO Max and Discovery+ offering is growing. This would enable people who signed up to binge-watch “Barry,” “Succession” and “Last Week To night With John Oliver” to get their fill of “Naked and Afraid” and hundreds of hours of the excitable Food Network personality Guy Fieri hosting supermarket competitions and chowing down on chicken-fried steak or meatloaf at dining hot spots. Will the two fit together? The names HBO and Discovery “do…

Dan Trachtenberg was still developing “Prey,” an 18th-century-set installment in the “Predator” action series with a Native storyline, when he was informed that the Fox project would debut on Hulu rather than in theaters. But the director wasn’t going to let altered distribution plans derail his aspirations for the project. “I’ve worked in a lot of television where we’re always boxed in the format we have to work in,” says Trachtenberg, who made his feature directorial debut with “10 Cloverfield Lane.” “That was not the case here.” “Prey” transports the “Predator” franchise first fronted by Arnold Schwarzenegger back to the Great Plains at a time when encroaching Colonial forces had not yet affected some Native Americans. A Comanche Nation woman named Naru (Amber Midthunder) is hungry to prove her hunting abilities, but…

Patton Oswalt is OK with making you squirm. After all, the actor and comic once performed a number called “The Cringe” on an episode of “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” a title that could describe his approach to making people laugh. “Real comedy comes from those moments,” Oswalt says. “I fully ascribe to Tracy Morgan’s maxim that ‘Cool is the enemy of funny.’ Cringe and awkwardness are real humanity, and that’s where the real funny stuff comes from.” A comic’s comic adored by peers and audiences for wry, observational humor that often comes at his own expense, he’s also proven to be a skilled dramatic actor, recently playing Nixon’s hatchet man Chuck Colson in the limited series “Gaslit.” But his new film, “I Love My Dad,” ups the ante in discomfort while offering Oswalt a showcase…

When a major entertainment industry figure dies, I make a point of searching Variety’s archives to find the person’s first appearance in our pages. The timing and context of a showbizzer’s Variety debut is often extremely telling about the arc of their career. I did my usual search after the sad news broke July 31 that actor-singer Nichelle Nichols, the legendary Lt. Uhura of the original “Star Trek” series and a true TV pioneer, had died at age 89. What I found made me wince. This trip back in time brought me face to face with the ugly history of racism and segregation in the entertainment business, as documented in our coverage. It was jarring to see how utterly commonplace it was for the industry to otherize Black performers in the 1960s and…

Mo Ostin, who died July 31 at age 95, transcended tectonic events in the business. Starting at Verve and then joining Frank Sinatra at Reprise, he always knew there was something more than the expected. Verve was a jazz label but signed Ricky Nelson; it’s an understatement to suggest that Sinatra wasn’t fond of rock ’n’ roll, but somehow, Mo convinced him to sign the Kinks. Ostin was open-minded: He went beyond the predictable and took chances on real artistry. He signed the Beach Boys when they were thought to be passé; he brought Jimi Hendrix to Burbank from what seemed to be outer space and backed artists of dubious commercial potential just because they were good at what they did. He believed in talent and that belief usually paid off. There’s…