The Parting Shot with H. Alan Scott Newsweek Radio & Podcasts

Michelle Buteau is proof that you can strike it big anytime. At 46, she's out with her new film Babes (May 17), she has a hit Netflix series based on her memoir Survival of the Thickest and is the first woman to film a comedy special at Radio City Music Hall. She says there's this idea you should "have it all figured out by 40, you should be doing your thing. It's like, no, we don't have it all figured out. We're still growing." Babes, directed by Pamela Adlon and co-starring Ilana Glazer, who also co-wrote the script, shows the role of friendships at pivotal times. "I don't think we talk about how hard relationships are." One thing Buteau does talk about is the need to celebrate yourself, which she does on her Netflix series. "Season one, thick girls were the moment and now it's like, nah, now we all the movement. There's zero apologies. It is bigger. It's Blacker. It's b*******. It's all the things 2.0." As for her comedy special, it's for all those voices "who need to be on the stages" but are rarely given the opportunity she has. "How can we be seen like that unless we see someone?" 

 

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Comedian Nikki Glaser never wants to offend. “I never want to say offensive or raunchy [things] or push the envelope, because that speaks to some kind of comedian who wants to rile people up,” Glaser told Newsweek’s H. Alan Scott. Instead, on her new HBO comedy special Someday You’ll Die (May 11), she wants to hit you with “honest and really funny, precise, acute jokes throughout.” Those jokes are about classic topics discussed in ways unique to Glaser: sex, being a woman and struggles “with trying to be my authentic self, but also molding to what other people want of me.” On that, she’s clear about not wanting things women are often expected to, like kids and a home. “Why do people want kids? I think it’s narcissistic, and that’s OK. I don’t want to buy a home, but I wanna want to buy a home.” Also the host of CW’s FBoy Island, she also is dabbling in music, she wrote the single “Someday You’ll Die” which will be released the same day as the comedy special. Glaser ultimately knows she’s able to explore the topics she does in comedy because of luck. “I got really lucky with how things lined up. Even being born a decade later, I would have been probably mystified by YouTube and TikTok. I don’t think I have a brain for that.” 

 

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What do you do when Hollywood wants you to be one thing, but you have a wholly different outlook about yourself? For Chris Pine, breaking the mold of expectations meant creating the new film Poolman (May 10). “Believe it or not, it’s probably the most personal thing I’ve ever made.” And it should be, considering he not only stars in it as Darren Barrenman, a colorful pool man on a mission to protect the city—and the pool—he loves, but Pine also co-wrote and directed the film. The idea for it is rooted in Pine’s own search for joy. “It was COVID and I was going through a lot of personal stuff and feeling a lot, and I said, ‘Why not just lead from the heart instead? Lead from instinct and joy and giggling and catharsis in a kind of positive, joyful way? [That’s] all I really wanted to do.” You can feel that watching the movie, and for Pine, that’s all that matters. “There’s a bunch of yelling in the world and if we can just shut up for just the briefest of seconds and allow the other person their moment, maybe there would be more, I don’t know, joy—who knows?” 

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After a nearly two-year hiatus, the Max-original Emmy Award-winning series ‘Hacks’ is back. And Hannah Einbinder, who plays Ava, the comedy writer to legendary—and difficult—stand-up comic Deborah Vance (Jean Smart), used the time off to figure out how to be a person again. “I went on the road, I did stand-up, but I kind of had to fill in the rest of my time with various hobbies and things. It made me go like, ‘OK, I gotta like be a person. Do sh** that isn’t just work,’” Einbinder told Newsweek’s H. Alan Scott. Now that the dark comedy series is in its third season, Einbinder is no longer intimidated by Smart. “At this point in our relationship it’s familial close.” And now Einbinder has more than just Hacks in the works, she will also debut her first stand-up comedy special this June on Max. But she gives the credit to ‘Hacks’: “It is single handedly because of this acting gig. That boosted the visibility for me to be able to tour and develop. To run an hour, to sharpen it, it’s hard to get that opportunity. I am so grateful to do that and to work it out in a way that is not common. I hope people like it.” 

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For Eugenio Derbez, making the transition from being one of Mexico’s most recognizable faces in comedy to the American market was not easy. “We don’t laugh at the same things. Humor in Mexico and in the U.S. is completely different. I had to reinvent myself,” Derbez told Newsweek’s H. Alan Scott. He’s done a good job of reinventing himself because his Apple TV+ series ‘Acapulco’ (May 1) is now in its third season. “I’m so glad that the series is bilingual and it’s getting its third season.” The success of the show is directly tied to Derbez’s success stateside. Loosely based on his character Maximo from the 2017 film ‘How to Be a Latin Lover,’ Acapulco shifts between telling the backstory of young Maximo in the 1980s at a popular resort and the character in modern day. Part of why he wanted to do Acapulco was because “there’s still a big opportunity to tell beautiful things about Mexico. I was always concerned that Mexico equals violence.” With his success in the U.S., Derbez is looking to adapt his popular Mexican sitcom La Familia P. Luche into English. “It’s so different from anything that you’ve watched before in the U.S.” 

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Because of ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race,’ drag has exploded. But what is often lost with all this drag we’re seeing on our televisions are the stories from small-town America, what’s really happening in cities that are sometimes overlooked and where, often, these “drag bans” are popping up. That’s where HBO Max’s ‘We’re Here’ comes in. ‘We’re Here’ shows drag superstars going to small cities to put on a drag show, but along the way stories are told that you rarely here. Stories about the struggles of being LGBT in America today, life in a small town, and how drag can be a force for good. Newsweek’s H. Alan Scott spoke with creators  Stephen Warren and Johnnie Ingram and director Peter LoGreco about the impact of ‘We’re Here,’ and two of the new hosts for this new season, Sasha Velour and Latrice Royale from ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race.’  

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