Kathryn Shattuck

In “Patriot Act,” his topical comedy series on Netflix, Hasan Minhaj is ambitious. “The types of stories that I gravitate to are big international stories, big cultural stories or big domestic issues,” he said. “That’s the gamut for me.”

But in his personal life, intimacy rules: the cozy evenings spent cooking in his Hell’s Kitchen apartment with his wife, Beena Patel, who works in health management; the mornings with their 19-month-old daughter; the late nights watching a sketch comedy show or listening to his favorite sports podcast.

Minha, 34, tracked his cultural diary for The New York Times, starting with an appearance at Stand Up for Heroes at Madison Square Garden on Nov. 4 and ending with his weekly Wednesday-morning barber’s buzz. These are edited excerpts from an interview.

Monday Evening

The Bob Woodruff Foundation has this show called Stand Up for Heroes, which helps give aid and services to veterans. It was really cool, like a “Daily Show” reunion. It was me, Jon Stewart, John Oliver, Ronny Chieng, and then Bruce Springsteen and Sheryl Crow performed.

My parents immigrated here [from India] in the early ’80s, so my frame of reference for everything is late ’80s, early ’90s. Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie — these guys were never these huge temporal parts of my childhood. When I was walking backstage, I was like, “Oh, it’s Bruce just tuning his guitar.” It doesn’t mean that same thing to me as to everybody in the audience that was going, “Bruce!” And it’s actually incredibly liberating. Because for Jon, Bruce is the man. And for me, Bruce is this raspy-voiced dude that talks about growing up in a small town in Jersey. And I’m like, “All right, dude, we get it.”

My holy trinity is Jay-Z, Notorious B.I.G., Mitch Richmond, who played for the Sacramento Kings. Those are the guys that would make me go like, “Oh my God, they’re here!” Now, if Shah Rukh Khan, who is a huge Bollywood star, walked in, I wouldn’t be able to do my set.

Tuesday Morning

Morning is my time with our baby daughter because my nights go until pretty late so I don’t get a chance to put her down. She’ll get up at around 6:30, and we’ll listen to “The Lion King” Broadway soundtrack. She loves the opening song, “Circle of Life.” Then I’ll change her diaper and as I clean her off, I know that one day she will be changing mine. We’ll also watch this show called “Little Baby Bum,” where the characters will do everyday tasks that children do. They’ll sing songs: “I wash, wash my hair. I brush, brush my teeth.” In her music class at the library, one of the teachers speaks French. So there’s this song that she kept singing, and now I ask Alexa to sing “Alouette” to her. Then we’ll run down the hallway. She’ll knock on people’s doors because other people in our building have dogs. She loves dogs. And I understand why: They’re other creatures that are her height.

As soon as I get in my office, I have The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal on my desk. One of the things I’ve always tried to avoid is the endless scroll that is the news. What I love about a physical newspaper is that there’s a finite amount of news. I love turning to the Opinion page and being like: These are the eight opinions. That’s it. Whereas with Twitter, the opinions never end.

I read “Digital Minimalism” by Cal Newport and that really changed a lot of things for me. My cellphone is in black and white and has super low lighting, so it’s very ugly and I look at it less. And there are no social media apps. I use the screen only when it’s absolutely necessary. It’s about my own head space. We’ve become a sea of screen babies. I try to minimize that noise for my own humanity.

When I found out that the heads of all these [tech] companies — Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Steve Jobs — don’t let their kids use screens, I’m like, No way [am I letting my daughter]. It’s like finding out the CEO of McDonald’s never had French fries.

Tuesday Afternoon

The Buzzfeed article “How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation” has been making the rounds within the office because we’re doing a big episode on mental health this week. Mental health has been something that we’ve been tracking for a long time because it’s finally something we’re talking about in the cultural zeitgeist. Our show, I think, is at its best when we talk about things that actually affect people’s day-to-day lives, and then we talk about the mechanisms that are put in place to make it hard for people.

I scroll through Twitter and read Jess Dweck and Mike Drucker. Jess and Mike will always have a new angle to think about something that’s happening topically. Jess had this tweet the other day: “When Stephen Miller proposed, do you think he got down on one knee or all six knees.” Mike had this tweet on Halloween: “Just took 20 mgs of melatonin. let’s get this Halloween party started with some [expletive] nightmares.” I love how at the end of both of those jokes it just takes a hard left turn into absurdity.

Tuesday Evening

Beena is an amazing cook. She loves getting inspo from Chrissy Teigen’s Instagram story, or we’ll see a Tasty video, and I’ll be like, “Oh my God, that’s really good.” We’ll generally watch that stuff at night when I get home. There’s something so fulfilling about watching a task get completed via time lapse. Beena made this Southwest Tex-Mex rice bowl, and because it was in the Instant Pot, the chicken was really tender and the texture was amazing. I love the Instant Pot.

Because my whole life is politics and news, it’s really nice to have something that matters but doesn’t matter, and sports is a great outlet for that. Quentin Richardson and Darius Miles were two big Clippers players for me in the late ’90s, early 2000s. They now have a podcast, “Knuckleheads,” and they’re able to talk about their experience in ways that they never were able to when I was growing up. They’re able to get Kobe Bryant very comfortable because they’re like: “I played against you. What were you thinking when you did this to me?” They’re laughing and they’re really loose. It’s as if you’re in the locker room with them.

And then I watched an episode of “I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson.” First of all, Tim Robinson is hilarious, and I love that show because not only is it insanely funny, but — and this is rare for sketch comedy — the sketches are perfectly timed. It’s absurd and crazy, but the sketches are only two minutes long, and it just gets my mind off something as heavy as insurance companies denying people’s mental health care treatment.

Wednesday Morning

I get a haircut done in the studio the day we tape every week. I have this speaker in the makeup room, right where the chair is, and I’ll listen to a mix of hip-hop from, I would say, ’96 to ’98, like Jay-Z’s “Reasonable Doubt” and Biggie’s “Life After Death.”

I love my barber. When I first moved to the city, Jordan Klepper told me about this barbershop called Frank’s Chop Shop. There was always this long line for this one barber named Hiro. And when I finally got the show, I mustered up the courage to ask Hiro if he would cut my hair on show days. What’s great is it’s the one time of the week where I’m in the office before everybody else. Nobody can come down. There’s nothing that I have to immediately answer. The script was already turned in the night before. Everybody in the studio is already ingesting all the graphics. It’s this one hour where I’m basically alone, and it’s awesome.

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Hasan Minhaj, Steeping in the News

One weekend about four years ago, Elizabeth Olsen found herself in the enviable position of having a pile of scripts to read. Just barely into her career — not counting childhood cameos alongside her older sisters, Mary-Kate and Ashley — she’d already raked in indie accolades for “Martha Marcy May Marlene” and ascended into the Marvel universe as Wanda Maximoff, aka the Scarlet Witch.

But something about Kit Steinkellner’s pilot for “Sorry for Your Loss,” and the role of Leigh Shaw, a young widow mourning the death of her husband, who either fell off a cliff or jumped, captivated her.

“I was doing a bunch of stuff that felt outside of myself, and I really wanted to be a part of something that’s a little bit more close to home,” Olsen said. Better yet, it came with an offer to be an executive producer.

“Sorry for Your Loss” quickly evolved into a critical darling, with James Poniewozik of The New York Times calling it a “quiet gem.” Season 2, now on Facebook Watch, picks up six months after the death of her husband (Mamoudou Athie, still present in flashbacks) as Leigh moves forward with baby steps: getting his comic book published posthumously, skipping grief group to have sex with her Postmates delivery guy. Then there’s the disconcerting fact that her husband’s brother (Jovan Adepo) has fallen in love with her.

Perhaps because of her paparazzi-hounded siblings, celebrity has never been a pursuit for Olsen, 30, who muses about the children she hopes to have with her fiancé, Robbie Arnett of the band Milo Greene.

“I never wanted to have a certain amount of power in the industry,” she said. “I really do love my job, and I’m happy doing just that and the charity I do, and being as private as possible.”

These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Q: Grief isn’t something most of us long to confront. So why can’t we turn away from Leigh and her story?

A: I think going through grief, whether it’s losing a parent or a spouse or a best friend, is a really isolating experience. And I feel like we try and be as authentic to the truth as possible. We also try to handle mental illness and addiction the same way. For a show like ours to hopefully make people not feel alone and to feel seen, that’s a special experience. And the thing that’s been interesting with Facebook is that there’s a built-in community for people, if they want it.

Q: Is there any particular experience you find yourself drawing on to tap into her grief?

A: Yeah. But those are the private world of the worst thing, so you just kind of keep them to yourself and recycle them and use them. I forget who it is — I think it’s Al Pacino who says that every scene he does is with his mother. It’s like some version of that. [Laughs]

Q: And now you’re getting your own Marvel show, “WandaVision,” on Disney Plus alongside Paul Bettany as Vision. What can you divulge?

A: “WandaVision” is such an incredible concept. It’s the first time we get to understand her as the Scarlet Witch that she is in the comics, and that’s exciting for me, because I haven’t yet been able to give her that time onscreen. So that’s going to be fun. She’s always been a representation of mental health and illness in the comic book series, and her major role is handling that stigma within Marvel.

Q: I have to admit that I’m sort of a Marvel illiterate. Where does Vision come into all this?

A: That I can’t answer, because he died in the last movie. I’m sorry. [Laughs] I know you wouldn’t care. I tell my friends, but I can’t tell you. They’re like you — they know nothing, so I just tell them everything because it doesn’t matter. I know it will go nowhere.

Q: “WandaVision” is also a tie-in to the next “Doctor Strange,” in which you’ll star with Benedict Cumberbatch. Can you explain?

A: “Doctor Strange” I don’t know too much about, because it’s still kind of early. And then after that I would really love to do a five- or six-week independent film, with a beginning and an end.

Q: When you sign on as a Marvel character, do they monitor the kind of shape you’re in?

A: The thing that’s amazing about Marvel is that they never as producers tell anyone to get into any kind of physical shape. They don’t have expectations of you being thin or strong. They just assume that if you think your character needs that, that you will do that. It’s not something that they hold over you. I literally asked [Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel Studios] at one point, “So when can I have kids? When can I be pregnant?” And he goes, “Live your life, and we’ll work around it.” I don’t think it’s happening within the next five years, but it’s something I’m really excited for.

Q: In “Ingrid Goes West,” you played an influencer before that even seemed to be a thing. Do you ever feel like you paved the way?

A: Yeah, it was really weird — like six months later. It was all just happening so fast. The funniest thing for my friends with that movie was that I am social-media illiterate. I now have an Instagram because I saw it as a business opportunity and leaned into it. And I’m so ready to get rid of it when I’m allowed to in my contract [as an ambassador for Bobbi Brown]. But for right now it’s fine. It was really that movie where I was like, Huh, I guess I could see this as a business opportunity. I didn’t understand it at all, and now it’s a legitimate career, I guess.

Q: You have 6 million followers on Instagram, but follow no one. Who influences you?

A: I was following interior designers and I got into pottery people from all over the world, and it was amazing to watch their videos and their techniques. I got a lot of good tips, and I started to like it too much, so I actually unfollowed everybody, including my friends. I just thought that if I unfollowed, I’d have to be more conscious of the content I want to take in.

Q: What’s it like toggling between indie films and Marvel?

A: I really love working for Marvel. But the time part of it requires you to not be available for certain things, and that’s been heartbreaking. I think work is exciting as I get older. I’ve never really felt like a 20-year-old onscreen, and I’ve always felt excited to age. But when it comes to a career trajectory, I also really admire people who have lived many different lives in a lifetime, and I do want to play around with that. I have a lot of things I would like to do in my life, and it’s not just based in acting.

Q: So what would your next life look like?

A: I would love to get into more design things. I would love to go to school for architecture. I would love to flip homes. I would love to be a store owner. I’d love to live in a small town. It’s all based off people I’ve met, and I’m like, If you did that, I can do that. I just think about creating as healthy of a life as possible, and about kids and where should they grow up. I love thinking about all of that.

Elizabeth Olsen on Grief, the Scarlet Witch and Her Next Life

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After two years as the poster child for teen angst in “Dear Evan Hansen,” Ben Platt was over the accolades and ready to move on.

He’d sobbed-sung his way into a Tony, Grammy and Emmy, and become the youngest winner of the Drama League’s Distinguished Performance Award, bestowed once in a career. He’d ranked among the Time 100 list of the world’s most influential people when he was only 23.

But gradually, disconcertingly, people started to assume that Platt was Evan, replete with the character’s social anxiety and nervous tics.

Ryan Murphy, however, wasn’t one of them. After watching Platt onstage, Murphy was convinced that he’d found the star of his new Netflix series, “The Politician,” which arrives Friday.

“You just played someone that’s very anxious and nervous and mild-mannered,” Platt recalled Murphy pitching him. “And I want you to turn that on its head and play someone who’s more egomaniacal and confident and self-serving, and has a bit more sex to him.”

“Obviously, being the very smart person that he was, he was speaking exactly the language of what I was hoping to move into,” Platt added. “It was a no-brainer.”

As Payton Hobart, Platt is a Gucci-clad, ultraprivileged Santa Barbara high schooler running for student body president in laser-focused pursuit of Harvard and, eventually, the White House. It’s a darkly comic skewering of the 1% with rabid baby politicos, badly behaved parental figures (among them, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jessica Lange) and even a wink at the college cheating scandal.

Growing up in Los Angeles, Platt — one of five showtune-obsessed siblings whose father, producer Marc Platt, cranked up cast albums in the car — admits that his own ambitions were honed young. A theater nerd at the Harvard-Westlake School alongside the scions of other entertainment families, he added the roles of Benji Applebaum in “Pitch Perfect” and Elder Cunningham in the Chicago production of “The Book of Mormon” (later moving to Broadway) to his résumé not long after graduation.

“The level of ambition I certainly could relate to,” Platt said of his own high school experience. “We took ourselves very seriously in the arts and really wanted to make something of ourselves, and a lot of us are now.”

His latest project, Richard Linklater’s movie adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim musical “Merrily We Roll Along,” to be filmed in real time across nearly 20 years, unites him with his childhood bestie Beanie Feldstein. And on Sept. 29 at Radio City Music Hall (and in a Netflix concert special to follow), he’ll perform tunes from “Sing to Me Instead,” his debut album released in March, viewed by some fans as a public coming out, even though at 12 Platt told his parents he was gay.

At a Tribeca photo studio recently, Platt, who turns 26 this month, riffed softly to Maggie Rogers tunes in the aching falsetto that moved “Evan Hansen” audiences to tears, before heading to a rooftop garden to talk about the convergence of art and life.

Let’s begin with your desire to move on from “Dear Evan Hansen.”

I think it’s like 99 blessings and one curse, that experience. Because it opened every possible door, and it was my absolute to-the-T dream come true, as far as all I ever wanted to do was originate a role in a musical, and the Tonys of it all, and the fact that it was (songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul). It kept topping itself.

But the one underhanded thing when something goes so well and fits like a glove is that people have a hard time divorcing you from that character. And I started to feel a little bit like I was having to present as him and amplify my nervousness and my anxiety and my sheepishness. I wanted to remind myself that I can transform into a lot of different kinds of people and not just into that type of kid. And so I felt like something markedly different, that still used the right tools, would be the right next move.

So what should we expect from Payton and “The Politician?”

Payton is a young kid who’s hellbent on being president of the United States, and it’s one of the most natural things to him to strive for that power and that significance. And I think he has a lot of instincts to do good. But he’s also incredibly self-serving and somewhat egomaniacal, and his main goal is to make something of himself for not necessarily the right reasons. The show is sort of a microcosm of American politics, and it certainly deals with the buzzwords of elections and debates and gun control and sexual and gender fluidity — headline things. But in an overarching way, it’s also about a lot more human conversations like authenticity and what’s it like to curate yourself. How do you share who you are? And how do you feel for other people?

You perform Joni Mitchell’s “River” in the pilot and the onscreen audience weeps. Was Ryan nodding to all the people who cried along with you in “Evan Hansen?”

I’m sure there’s some sort of inspiration from him coming in to see me and this story hatching in his mind. But Payton is so shut off and unable to feel the way that everyone else is feeling. So I think the main idea of that whole sequence is everyone else can connect to what he’s doing except for him.

And yet there’s perhaps more kindness in him than he gives himself credit for.

I think it’s up for debate, and I don’t think anyone should make a hard-core decision about him. That’s sort of the fascinating thing on the show — finding yourself loving what he’s doing and rooting for him and then questioning what he’s doing. But I certainly think there’s kindness in him somewhere. And a lot of it comes from Gwyneth, his mother, the warmth of that relationship.

What was it like working with Gwyneth Paltrow and Jessica Lange?

Very overwhelming at first, because they were both larger than life people in my mind’s eye before I met them. But wonderful in totally different ways. Gwyneth is super quietly elegant and really maternal and warm, and made me feel very intimately familiar right away. And Jessica — you expect this brilliant dramatic actress, which she is, but also she’s so funny. To work with her and try to keep a straight face was not the challenge I thought I’d be having.

How is it being stuck in onscreen teendom in your mid-20s?

Well, it’s only just this season that that is the case, so I’m very excited to grow up with the character and start playing my own age.

You’ve committed the next 20 years to “Merrily We Roll Along” alongside your best friend, Beanie. Was that a tough decision?

I was like, “Are you punking me?” Sondheim is my idol and any Sondheim musical is like a dream. To be in an immortal version of that with my best friend since I was 14, in a show we both love and we’ve sung in the car together, it feels very sort of like the universe intervened.

How daunting is that prospect, production-wise?

It’s crazy. It’s technically 18 (years) in shooting, because it’s nine sequences and they’re trying to stick as close to the reality of the timeline as possible. I mean, it makes you take your health seriously. (Richard Linklater) will be, like, pushing 80 when we finish.

He really needs to …

How do you plan for such a long-term commitment?

It’s sort of a one-at-a-time situation. About a year out from the next increment, we’ll be like, “Let’s all get together and figure out our common few weeks that we can set aside and where we can make this happen monetarily, and what new characters we need to add for this sequence.” Just taking it short film by short film.

You’ve already shot the first segment. What was that like?

Just dreamy and wonderful and heady. It was like doing a little theater camp in Texas and spending a week living in that one sequence and with that great song, “Our Time” — taking pictures and thinking how we’re going to look back on this for the next two decades and keep checking in with ourselves. It made everybody feel very lofty and misty and existential.

Is Sondheim involved?

He gave his blessing; he loves the idea. I think he recognizes, like all of us, that the concept and the piece are a really perfect marriage. I’m told we’re going to have a meal with him at some point, which would be a wonderful thing. It’s definitely on my bucket list to sit across from him and tell him that he’s made my life infinitely better by existing and writing, so I hope that happens.

So by the time you’re in your 40s, you might finally win that Oscar to complete your EGOT?

I’m in no rush. It’s all happened plenty quick up to this point. I’m happy for it to slow down a little bit.

Your father has secured the film rights to “Dear Evan Hansen.” After all is said and done, is there any way you’d reprise that role?

It’s unclear at this point. It’s being developed and certainly if it comes together in the next year or so, when everyone can forgive me for still playing a teenager, then yeah, I would love to do it.

In 'The Politician,' Ben Platt Unleashes His Inner Egomaniac

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Matthias Schoenaerts became a sensation by playing the sexy beast. He portrayed the steroid-addicted Flemish cattle farmer in the Oscar-nominated “Bullhead” (2012); the tormented lover of Tilda Swinton’s rock star in “A Bigger Splash” (2016); and the street fighter who salved the body and soul of Marion Cotillard’s double amputee in “Rust and Bone” (2012), the French melodrama that alerted many of us to his tough and tender existence.

But none have packed quite the wallop of his latest role in “The Mustang.” Schoenaerts — brooding, wary — is Roman Coleman, a Nevada inmate with a violent past who is acclimating to the general prison population after a lengthy stay in solitary. He’s given the job of breaking and training an angry mustang he names Marquis, and in the process reconnects with his life.

Directed by Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, with Robert Redford as an executive producer, “The Mustang” has its inspiration in the Wild Horse Inmate Program, which partners prisoners with mustangs and burros culled from public lands, and leads to significantly reduced recidivism rates.

“I think the beauty of the program is that the connection with the animal requires you as a human to direct your attention outward and not inward” — something he experienced even as an actor, Schoenaerts said. “I kind of fell in love with my horse, basically.”

Schoenaerts, 41, still lives in Antwerp, Belgium, where he was born, preferring to “step in and hop out” of Los Angeles, he said in a phone interview. But distance hasn’t kept Hollywood at bay. He’ll soon appear in Steven Soderbergh’s “The Laundromat,” about the Panama Papers, and Terrence Malick’s “Radegund,” about Austrian conscientious objector Franz Jägerstätter.

During a break from shooting Jérémie Guez’s mob drama, “The Sound of Philadelphia,” Schoenaerts spoke about prison reform and why he wants to kick people in the heart.

Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Q: How did you prepare for this grueling role?

A: From an actor’s perspective, it’s a hell of a scary part. You can only put as much heart in as you can. Over the course of a year and a half, we went to visit four maximum security prisons, having long conversations with longtime inmates to get a sense of what it is to have a life in there — and what it is to maybe, after so long, have a life outside of it. And a lot of extras in the movie are former inmates that were part of that [WHIP] program, so we felt that we were constantly connected with the truth of the subject.

Q: I can’t imagine that they let you in the corral with some of those very spirited horses.

A: We had three different energies of horses. There was one that was freshly broken and one that was already properly trained and then one that was about to be broken. Of course, for safety purposes, they couldn’t take the risk of me getting smashed by the horse. I was ready to do it all, but I think production didn’t really love that concept.

Q: Seven years ago, after the double punch of “Bullhead” and “Rust and Bone,” there was a lot of talk about your Hollywood breakthrough. Now you’re working with Steven Soderbergh and Terrence Malick. Have you finally arrived?

A: I don’t make geographical distinctions like that. I like to work with fascinating artists with vivid minds, with people that have an attractive creativity. And the world is global now, so I don’t think about American movies and European movies. Of course, there’s a specificity to the cultural background and the context of it all — but in the end, it’s storytelling. It always comes back to, what is life? And what are we as people doing in that life within the time that is given to us on this planet? I think it’s important to kick people in the heart every now and then.

Q: Back then, one of our writers called you “the most versatile beefcake actor of our time.” Is being called a beefcake a compliment?

A: I don’t pay too much attention to descriptions of myself because I think every human being is in a permanent state of transformation and evolution. So I can understand that people perceived me that way at some point, and I can only hope that perception also transforms as I’m transforming myself. I definitely consider it a compliment, but I don’t sit on it too much. I’d rather keep moving.

Q: What do you think is the secret of your own allure?

A: I like to be respectful toward people, and whether it’s a woman or a man or a crew member, I think kindness is very important. Not that I’m always kind. I can be the opposite of kind as well, but I don’t like version of myself. But I think I can obviously say that by nature, yeah, I have a kind heart.

Q: You’re a co-owner of a Belgian casting agency that supports diversity. How did that happen?

A: I founded that because we live in a very multicultural society here in Belgium, and I hardly ever see that translated into our TV or cinematic landscape. Very few people in Belgium that have different cultural backgrounds find their way to a dramatic education. So I thought, man, we need to do something because the streets are filled with diamonds. There are so many talented people out there that should be discovered, and we need to create a platform for them to be revealed.

Q: Like rappers Jay-Z and Meek Mill, you’ve become involved in criminal justice reform. Did that come through “The Mustang”?

A: No, actually it’s coincidental. I’m part of Rescaled from Hans Claus, a former prison warden in Belgium who now devoted himself to developing programs to reform incarceration principles and mechanics. I was shooting “Mustang,” and then he reached out to me and wondered if I was interested in supporting this project to give it some strength. And that’s how synchronicity works — all of a sudden, life brings things together without people knowing about it.

Q: Can artists really make a difference in such a complicated system?

A: We live in such a complex world, in complex times. There’s so much polarization going on. People are reduced to numbers — but behind every number there’s a living soul with a beating heart. We’ve got to find a way to rehumanize people and let them become something else than a statistic. People need to care for each other. And if we as artists can contribute to that notion, and we can help each other to get one step closer to the realization of that, then I think we’re doing good stuff.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/movies/matthias-schoenaerts-the-mustang.html" id="8448c5f5-f7c5-3f87-a92d-42656f49e8c7">The New York Times</a>.

Matthias Schoenaerts Knows You're Ogling Him. But He Has Grander Goals, Too.

Matthew Goode has always exuded a whiff of danger: the slyly wicked smile. The devil-may-care charm. The sense that something rather naughty lurks beneath his suave exterior.

Which mostly explains why he was cast, no audition required, as Matthew Clairmont, an Oxford genealogist — and 1,500-year-old vampire — in “A Discovery of Witches,” streaming on Sundance Now and Shudder, starting Thursday.

Elegant and erudite with a seductively dark purr, Clairmont analyzes the DNA of witches in his secret lab to determine why their magic is waning. Then along comes the fresh-faced Diana Bishop (Teresa Palmer), a brilliant historian of alchemy and latent witch who has shunned her own supernatural abilities. But when an enchanted manuscript materializes for her eyes only at the Bodleian Library, she becomes the target of the creatures who hunger for its long-forgotten knowledge. And she also develops into the object of desire for Matthew, who lusts for the power in her witch’s blood, which is unlike anything he has witnessed in centuries.

“Boy meets girl — I’m really taking it down to the center of the Venn diagram,” Goode said drolly. “It’s about the complex relationship between a vampire and a witch, who famously shouldn’t get on, but for some reason sparks fly, while also trying to save all species of weirdos.”

It’s certainly not the first time Goode has devastated the ladies. In 2015 he traded “The Good Wife,” in which he played the prosecutor Finn Polmar — and Alicia Florrick’s romantic interest — for “Downton Abbey,” in which, as the race car driver Henry Talbot, he thawed Lady Mary’s icy core and swept her to the altar. And last year, in Season 2 of “The Crown,” he snared an Emmy nomination for his turn as Antony Armstrong-Jones, the royally inappropriate suitor and eventual husband of Princess Margaret, who was played by Vanessa Kirby.

Goode, 40, who lives in Surrey with his wife, Sophie Dymoke, and their daughters, Matilda and Teddie, and son, Ralph, spoke over the phone from Britain about the perils of the occult, the coming “Downton Abbey” movie and whom he hung out with on his Christmas vacation.

Q: “A Discovery of Witches” is spun from Deborah Harkness’ All Souls trilogy. Surely there are more seasons.

A: There’s going to be a second and a third. Teresa has been having a baby, so she’s given the writers plenty of time and no excuses, because we’re not starting again until June. She’s having her third, and I don’t think she’ll stop. She seems like the kind of girl who’s going to have, like, seven, and will have the energy to parent and work at the same time and not turn into, like most people do, someone who’s slightly angry.

Q: Hmm. Sounds as if maybe she took her children to the set and maybe you did not.

A: One of them was young, so he needed to be breast-fed quite a bit, always at surprising times. We’d be sitting there, having a conversation and wallop — there’s a boob in your face. Crikey! Oh, my goodness, my eyes! And she’d be [in Australian accent], “Oh for goodness sake, it’s just a way of feeding my baby.” And I’m like [in tough voice], “I wish a dingo would steal that so we could get on with some work.” [Laughs.]

Q: The series is steamy but chaste. Scarcely a ripped bodice, with talk of bundling, in lieu of mating. I guess I’m asking, is sex impossible?

A: Tune in to Season 2 to find out! I don’t want to give too much away, but in the first season, we have a bit of frottage, and that sort of heavy petting might involve a digit, and I really don’t want to go any further.

Q: Were those magic scenes — you bounding after a stag, Diana flying into the air — fun to shoot?

A: In general, the magic didn’t seem very magic when we were doing it. Because it was actually things moving being attached to fishing wire, or your castmate on a rope. It felt quite low-rent, but it looks fantastic on the screen now that we have special effects. I did manage to break a bone in my hand in the Bodleian Library because for some reason the stunt guy was upset and wasn’t there. So I decided to do it myself. And here’s a little note, children: If you’ve got a really good stunt man standing by, let him do it.

Q: What’s it like to bite a neck?

A: There’s giggling. Then there’s going hysterical.

Q: I know you’ve been sworn to secrecy about the “Downton Abbey” movie and appear briefly at the end. But Michelle Dockery has described Lady Mary and Henry Talbot as “settled” and “good friends.” Where did the passion go?!

A: There’s a huge respect between them. He knows that she’s taking on the whole of the estate and everything else. And I would imagine that there’s a sort of rumpy-pumpy pretty frequent between the two of them. They’ve got a kid now, things are good now. They’re settled. He’s working. When he’s not away, he’s in bed with her, I would say, most nights — unless he’s parked out by the decanter, which is where he should be.

Q: Sadly, you’re now too young for Season 3 of “The Crown.”

A: “The Crown” was a blast, actually. When you’ve got a brilliant actor [like Vanessa Kirby] opposite you and you’ve got great words to say and you’ve got a director like we had, it was just a joy. Ben Caron is really going places. And he’s directing the first four episodes of Season 3, which we shall all watch through gritted teeth because we would still like to be doing it ourselves. If you’ve seen Ben Daniels, he looks amazing as Antony Armstrong-Jones — he’s got the most piercing blue eyes — and I think he’s going to smash it out of the park. I just hope people will judge it for a different era rather than saying what I suspect they might: “Oh, he’s so much better than Goode.” [Laughs.]

Q: I’ve heard that you, Benedict Cumberbatch and Jamie Dornan are best friends. The thought of which ...

A: I wouldn’t say we’re best friends. We’re very acquainted. I play golf with Jamie. And I see Ben a bit. But I think they would have raised eyebrows if they were like: “My best friend’s Goodie? I mean, I like him.” And I love them both very much. They’re very nice people. What was the question?

Q: So you guys travel in a pack, leaving an awe-struck public in your wake?

A: It’s so bloody difficult hanging out with any of these other actors, because we’re always off doing a flaming job. I tried to get people together this Christmas for a party, and it proved so difficult I actually just gave up. I canceled the day and it was a real shame. So we went out for some supper with Colin Firth instead.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/11/arts/television/matthew-goode-interview.html" id="88cf80ec-c7e7-3b3d-a701-abf155064161">The New York Times</a>.

Matthew Goode Knows How to Charm. Just Ask Lady Mary and Princess Margaret.

Then her agent sent her the screenplay for Paul Downs Colaizzo’s “Brittany Runs a Marathon,” with a caveat. “You might relate to the character to the point where it might be a hard decision to make, but keep reading,” Bell recalled being told. “It’s a beautiful script.”

So Bell read and laughed and cried. “I just thought, ‘I’m terrified, but I don’t want anyone else to play it, because I love her and I know her and I’ve been her,’ ” she said.

As Brittany, Bell is a hard-partying, erratically employed 28-year-old who feels as if she’s idling while everyone races ahead. A doctor’s diagnosis only confirms the brutal truth: She needs to eat better, exercise more and lose 55 pounds — the equivalent, Brittany quips, of pulling a Siberian husky off her body.

But slowly, if not so surely, a transformation begins. And then a goal: to run the New York City Marathon.

To play Brittany, Bell had her sister tape her first runs to get a sense of posture and breathing. Then she trained for the stamina required in even the early scenes, when a simple jog around the corner might be shot 20 times.

Bell and a skeleton crew eventually lined up with the masses for the 2017 New York City Marathon to shoot the movie’s final, grueling act. And though she ran only a portion of the race, the experience was every bit as exhilarating as if she’d crossed the finish line for real.

Q: The movie required a serious physical commitment: miles of running and the willingness to show off your body in a vulnerable state. How daunting was that?

A: It was scary, because to me it symbolized, I’m really going to commit to doing this project and this is the beginning, and beginnings are rough. You doubt yourself constantly. But I had never been sent a script like this.

Q: When your agent said that you might relate to Brittany to the point of being uncomfortable, what did she mean?

A: There are certain things that Brittany says early on that I’ve said about myself. Being a woman is very difficult, and we have interesting relationships with our bodies. I have a complicated one. At times it’s great, and at times it’s not so great. And this was telling a transformation story without missing any of the big details that don’t usually get put in films.

Q: Brittany undergoes a dramatic transformation. Did you?

A: I actually lost 40 pounds doing the role. I wanted to experience what she goes through in her physical journey, and I thought it would connect me to the character more, which it really, truly did.

Q: This is your second film, right after “Sword of Trust,” with Michaela Watkins. How did that happen?

A: Michaela is one of my favorite people on the planet. I met her through Groundlings. I remember calling her to say: “There’s this thing I’m about to do, and I don’t want to pressure you, but please, please, please do it. It’s very special.” I really want to surround myself with talented people that have great hearts, and she’s got an A-plus in both columns. Then she recommended me for “Sword of Trust.” So now we just keep saying, “Let’s keep the train rolling.”

Q: You famously smoked weed for the first time a couple of years back while shooting “Rough Night.”

A: (Laughing) The thing my mom is the most proud of. It’s so funny because I’ve done so many projects with people who are very supportive of the marijuana movement, if you will. But, yeah, that was the first time that I just felt like I want to try it. And I got it from Ilana Glazer, which is the coolest story. I mean, I’ve done so many seasons of “Workaholics” and worked with Seth Rogen, and I was like, “Oh, it would be really cool to get it from Ilana.” And she was like, “I’m honored that you asked me.” She’s a good friend.

Q: So you’re a convert?

A: I don’t do it often, but now that people know that I finally tried it for the first time at, like, 32 years old, everyone gives it to me as gifts. So there’s a whole section in my closet that’s just pot.

Q: You’ve said that when you wrote for “SNL,” you saved your best material for yourself.

A: Yeah, which sounds very selfish. I just always thought that if there was a chance I would ever get to host, I would love to do some of my favorite stuff that I did at Groundlings. I was like, I think I might hold onto those.

Q: Was it worth holding out?

A: I don’t know, because I haven’t hosted. No one’s called. I have a lot of texts from my mother, but not from “SNL”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/20/arts/jillian-bell.html" id="b75af2ca-606d-3f4e-a05e-fe8b0fd65150">The New York Times</a>.

Jillian Bell on 'Brittany Runs a Marathon' and Chasing Down Roles

Jillian Bell had been searching for a leading role, and she didn’t really care what it was.

Milo Ventimiglia knows a little something about the power of a good cry. After all, for three season he’s spiked the tear-o-meter as Jack Pearson, the perfectly flawed husband and father who perished after saving a dog from a fire in NBC’s “This Is Us.”

Now comes “The Art of Racing in the Rain,” in which he stars as Denny Swift, a race car driver, devoted family man and — here’s the clincher — faithful owner of Enzo, a golden retriever intent on mastering life’s greatest lessons so that he can be reborn as a human when he dies.

Get out the Kleenex box. Make it two.

“I guess I’m just fortunate enough to be a part of projects that are tapping into emotions that maybe we need to feel right now,” Ventimiglia said.

Based on Garth Stein’s 2008 bestseller, “The Art of Racing in the Rain” accelerates through some hairpin turns as Denny falls in love with Eve (Amanda Seyfried) and has a daughter, Zoe (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), then finds their happiness threatened when his wife falls ill. Enzo (voiced by Kevin Costner), in thrall to the roar of the engine and the wind in his fur, narrates the ride with a philosopher’s wisdom from puppyhood to his final sprint around the track.

Ventimiglia has three more seasons to wring us emotionally dry on “This Is Us” and recently snared yet another Emmy nomination alongside Sterling K. Brown, who plays his son Randall.

“I was FaceTiming with Sterling the other night, and we were both just smiling because three years in a row we’ve managed to get nominated — him winning one of those years,” he said. “It’s pretty remarkable.”

Calling from Los Angeles after wrapping the first episode of Season 4, Ventimiglia, 42, explained why his game isn’t about grabbing the most golden statuettes — something he learned from those dogs.

Q: What’s it like acting across from an animal?

A: Technical, very technical. Animals are different. They have a specific A point and B point, and there’s usually a reward at the end of every take. When we started the film, I had some pretty long conversations with the trainers, asking them their opinion of helping me have a scene partner. And what we created was this relationship that I personally had with our dogs.

We had two hero dogs — Parker, our 2-year-old, who plays the younger Enzo, and Butler, our 9-year-old, who plays the older Enzo — so many puppies and three auxiliary dogs, one for running, one for barking and one just to hang out. I’m kind of a needy actor. I need a scene partner in order to feel what I need to feel at times. I can’t just pretend. And I really had willing partners through Butler and Parker.

Q: And they reacted to you in character?

A: Yeah, there were moments where Denny was stressed out and Parker, who was more emotional, would get very, very worked up. He was very sensitive to whatever I was feeling, so I had to find a way to let him know it was OK. And before every take I would whisper in his ear and talk to him as I would anybody else, tell him what was going on and just remind him if I needed to lose my temper or I needed to be frustrated or I needed some attention from him.

Q: Enzo is learning life lessons in preparation for being reborn as a human. Did you learn anything from working with the dogs?

A: Patience. Slow things down. Follow your gut. Sometimes it leads to food. To be around a dog, who is looking at things very simply, is a good reminder that we don’t always have to complicate life.

Q: I’ve read that one of the most searched Google questions about Jack Pearson is whether men like him actually exist. And Denny is another almost-too-good-to-be-true husband and father. Do you ever feel pressure in real life to be this guy?

A: Yeah, there is a pressure and a responsibility, but I also feel like those guys are kind of borrowed from me and men that I admire. So the expectation is very high. I’m not without my mistakes as a person, as a man, but I’m also trying to represent the good guys that are out there. I have a lot of people saying to me, “I’m married to the real Jack Pearson” or “I want to find a Jack Pearson.” And I think that raising of the bar is a very good thing — because we’re looking for men to be better and we’re looking for our partners to be better and that’s just something we need right now.

Q: Your TV wife, Mandy Moore, recently let it drop that there was a big hot plot twist at the start of Season 4. Can you hint at what we should expect?

A: I think I’m a little more of a Fort Knox than Mandy Moore. [Laughs] But she’s not wrong. There is a pretty big plot twist. I don’t even know if it’s a twist so much as it is just this beautiful reveal of what’s to come. And it set me back in my chair when I read it.

Q: In a show filled with twists, which one is your favorite?

A: I kind of go back to the original of Jack being dead in the present day. I think that was a cool one. And then the very first one [where it’s revealed that] they’re a family. I think it was such a beautiful device that [series creator] Dan Fogelman connected these people that seemed to only share a birthday.

Q: You reprised your first major role, as Rory’s troubled love interest Jess Mariano, in the 2016 “Gilmore Girls” sequel. Any plans for another round?

A: Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino are kind of busy on something great for Amazon called “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” which I’m a massive fan of. So I think they may stay in the ’50s for a little while. But you never know.

Q: You invited Sylvester Stallone to be on “This Is Us” after playing his son in “Rocky Balboa” and “Creed 2.” Should we expect more from that relationship?

A: I don’t know if there are any more, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was. I think opening up the Rocky Balboa universe is a good thing, because there’s nobody like Sly. Sly’s incredible. He is such a force to be around, but he’s also so welcoming and he inspires good work. The second those cameras roll, he’s right there looking you in the eye. And that’s a unique experience as an actor that I always try to embrace — living out the lives of these men that I play, making them real and then processing what that emotion is, processing what that life is the best I can for an audience while the cameras are rolling.

Q: By the way, congratulations on your Emmy nomination for “This Is Us.” Is the third time a charm?

A: Who knows? Maybe I’ll be television’s new Susan Lucci. But hold on, what’s bad about that? She’s an amazing, amazing actress who’s consistently been in the conversation for years and years and years.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/02/arts/television/milo-ventimiglia-jack-pearson-this-is-us.html" id="de51debe-a6c6-3ffc-a56c-0b5f1a9e11af">The New York Times</a>.

Kathryn Shattuck

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