Welcome to your weekly Pop Culture Fix, the place where Riese and I tell you the news and sometimes an adorable photo of an animal surprises you at the bottom of the page.
Hey, Let’s Talk About Samira Wiley
+ Samira Wiley has joined the cast of You’re The Worst, which was just nominated for a Television Critics Association Award.
Wiley will recur in season three of the comedy, created by Orange alum Falk, and play Justina, the therapist to star Aya Cash’s Gretchen. The character will be featured prominently throughout the season as Justina helps Gretchen dip her toe into the waters of mental health, both in recovering from her recent depressive episode and dealing with new challenges. Justina has the unique ability to cut through Gretchen’s layers of crap and remain (mostly) unflappable, even when Gretchen is at her worst.
+ She gave an interview to Vulture about OITNB’s fourth season, which you absolutely should not read unless you’ve finished the season.
+ She also talked to the New York Times.
+ She also chatted with E! about her most memorable fan encounters, which is a much more light-hearted interviews than all the ones I listed above.
Teevee
+ Person of Interest ended last night (more on that later this week), and Jonah Nolan really wants to make sure you know it was Root on the phone talking to Shaw at the end.
I think [the smile] is much about hearing Root’s voice [on the phone]. And one of the few regrets I have about the way the finale cuts together is that’s not totally clear. We had a moment between them at the end, dialogue in that moment with Sarah on the phone, and it just didn’t “fit.” At that point, “the train was running,” the main score was going, and it felt like it stepped on the moment. But the clear implication is that that relationship continues in this new form … she leaves with a relationship with a dog and a god.
+ Even the actresses who play Daenerys Targaryen and Yara Greyjoy are shipping it.
“There’s mild flirtation, which is exiting to say the least! Get rid of Daario; bring on the ladies!” – Emilia Clarke, Mother of Dragons
+ The docuseries We’ve Been Around, which explores and celebrates the lives of transgender pioneers, is beginning its push for Emmy consideration. If you want to help it make some noise, social media is the key.
+ Logo/VH1’s Traileblazer Honors will celebrate Billie Jean King this year.
+ New York City is getting a Golden Girls-themed restaurant!
+ The queer things up for trophies at this year’s TCA Awards are: Sarah Paulson for Individual Achievemen in Drama for her turn as Marcia Clark in The People vs. O.J. Simpson. I Am Cait for Outstanding Achievement in Reality Programming. And Jessica Jones, Master of None, and UnREAL for Outstanding New Program.
+ Wonder Woman herself, Ms. Lynda Carter, will be the president on the new season of Supergirl!
Movies
+ Here is the trailer for Cara Delevingne’s new film, Kids In Love.
+ Oh, hello, this is an adorable clip from Finding Dory.
Queer and Trans People, Out and About
+ Wanda Sykes and Margaret Cho got super real with Elle this week. The whole interview, which they did with Abbi Jacobson, Rachel Bloom, and Ilana Glazer, is insightful and hilarious. I recommend reading the whole thing.
CHO: I would love Jennifer Lawrence’s money. But I’m just so grateful that I’m not cleaning fish, which is what I would be doing. [Group laughs] When we’re talking about feminism, I get sort of lost in the argument. Because as a woman of color, I don’t know where I belong in this argument. Where do I say, ‘I would be happy to have less money’? How do you fight for your rights when I’m super-grateful to be here at all?
+ Oh just Laverne Cox and Queen Latifah hanging out, talking hairography.
+ Cynthia Nixon won the Excellence in Acting Award at this year’s Cape Cod Film Festival.
+ Next year’s American Crime Story will focus on Hurricane Katrina, and Sarah Paulson will be back for it.
“The Katrina story, to me, is a literal American crime,” Paulson explains. “It says something about a uniquely American attitude, and I find it incredibly potent.”
Also.Also.Also.
Rachel and I both watched this video yesterday and it brought us a lot of peace and joy.
Ok, that moment between Laverne and Queen really brought me a lot of joy.
That clip is not cute. Knowing that Dory gets lost from her family, that clip is sad, sad, sad.
OK THANK YOU AM I NOT THE ONLY ONE FOR WHOM THE IDEA OF TRYING TO RAISE A BABY WITH SHORT TERM MEMORY LOSS IN THE FREAKING OCEAN WITH NO HANDS SOUNDS LIKE AN ABSOLUTELY NIGHTMARE AND IS WONDERING HOW TO MANAGE MY ANXIETY ABOUT THIS MOVIE
Seriously, when I worked as a nanny I had dreams like that, where I couldn’t effectively keep the baby safe because of weird impediments like four feet of standing water on the floor that I wasn’t able to remember existed, or a special sun that sunburns extra fast, or car seats made of butter.
*absolute nightmare
YES THAT PANDA VIDEO I’VE SHOWN IT TO EVERYONE I KNOW.
Seriously I laughed so hard at work the first time I saw it !
I feel like the only way it could get any better would be setting it to the song Killing in the Name. Those little pandas will NOT do wh
I feel like the only way it could get any better would be setting it to the song Killing in the Name. Those little pandas will NOT do what you tell them.
Oh sweet baby Dory(I was worried her parent secretly also suffered short term memory loss, and this was gonna be hella sadder) Oh sweet baby pandas(I first saw this vid under the tagline “caring for your drunk friends” which is extremely accurate) I’m also glad Samira Wiley is getting paid out the wazzu for interviews for having to do this to us, I’m sure season four was even harder for her.
Heather, I hope you can find some time to write about POI’s last season in-between all the recaps for summer shows (you seem really busy though!). It messed up monumentally in its last stretch, but it still gave us these two amazing characters and their relationship and I’ll forever be grateful for that.
Plus, since the actual dialogue was cut I’m pretty sure we’ve all decided to headcanon that the voice on the phone was either Root in person, or the Machine telling Shaw where to find her because she’s still unconscious from that giant sniper bullet after the Machine faked her death. Yup. *nods* I’m going with that.
Please please please on POI! Very interested to hear reactions to the finale.
Thirded!
The finale was a bit all over the place, and the quality of the last few episodes was so far below the season standard, but I look forward to processing them with fellow straddlers.
I feel like I need a therapy group session after the finale.
That was absolutely epic,imho.
Shaw, the bisexual who lived.
(I’m re-reading HP atm)
Margaret Cho in the Elle interview: “I just think women are funnier than men.” So glad someone finally said it.
I agree
So maybe Netflix could redeem itself and pick up PoI?
http://4aspinoff.com/
My personal spin off idea would be Root’s life before she met Team Machine.
Hacker, assassin for hire, Lesbian extraordinaire.
I can go for that one too.
But also, taking a look at the state of our representation nowadays, I can settle with Shaw just shooting people for 40 minutes in each episode.
I would watch the shit out of Shaw+Machine+Bear if netflix were to pick poi up after all!
+1!
I was actually intrigued by her alternate outcome! Or maybe I have a soft spot for awesome female villains that are preferably ladyloving folk :)
Who doesn’t?
I’m sure that my dating life would have gone a lot differently if I wouldn’t have been influenced by images of hot (and maybe salvageable) lady villains from a young age.
No, Heather, I’m not stalking you, but maybe a little something about Orphan Black?
I can settle with a couple gif, some emojis and one or two mentions of Cophine.
lol i am not a fan of the idea that the machine and shaw are a couple now?? like especially with the whole simulation shit shaw went through 7000+ times it just feels really fucked up to have her date the machine.. not a fan at all lol
The simulations Shaw went through were made by Samaritan, not the machine. And technically if she is with the machine it’s a reincarnation, not quite the original.
But yeah, it’s strange.
SPOILER
I’ve just finished watching POI and…
Spoiler..
(Does anyone even still care?)
Spoiler:
When they killed off Root, I withheld my judgment in case they’d end up offing the entire team, and while they didn’t do that, they nixed the primary asset and oh so manly John, because that was his planned character arc, just like Root’s.
And I actually got why they killed Root in the first place and why it had to be her. It’s about visualizing the machine as this silent observer, this angel of death, while it expresses its grief in impersonating the person it loved and lost the most.
Very poetic, very sci fi, very well done.
I’ve made peace with it.
A still heartbroken peace.
But the reason I’m so thrilled is the arrow thing!
The approach to mental illness on national TV.
There is Shaw, a sociopath, and she gets told that she is beautiful not despite but because of it.
In blunt, beautiful, open Root logic.
And in the end,at the very end, it’s Shaw, the bisexual sociopath, who gets to walk out of this story the hero.
Hers is the last shot.
Hers is the story that continues.
Thank you for the spoiler tag, it is appreciated. I yelled earlier at a well-meaning AS commenter in the other thread, but I hadn’t watched it then and got mad at accidentally knowing stuff beforehand.
Anyways, back to your comment. Yes to everything. If they had let the big lug live, I would have been raging, but they did killed him off and let Shaw be the one who walks into the sunset. And Bear, god I’m glad he is ok. During that subway ride, my only thought was ‘where is Bear????’.
Oh POI, breaking my heart into a million pieces.
I hope that there will ultimately be a dedicated thread to the last half of this season of POI, so that I can share all of my thoughts in too many words.
But really, you’ve already summed up my feelings, much more profoundly than I ever could. So if we don’t get such a thread, I’ll be okay.
A heartbroken peace indeed.
Yeah that’s awesome. Yes to a place to talk about how poi ended
Wow, the parts of the interview with Lauren Morelli (from the NY Times article with Samira Wiley) trot out pretty much all of the worst things “well-meaning” white people can say about the OITNB storyline.
Saying it had to be Poussey for this storyline to work because she actually has a future (aka was raised middle-class and embodied all the respectability politics) and that it was important to humanize Bailey – trust me, the white folks you supposedly wrote this for to teach them a lesson had started humanizing Bailey before the end of that scene was even over – is just the worst.
Another TV thing, on last night’s America’s Got Talent, Julia Scotti, a 63-year old transwoman stand up comedian and performed, got huge laughs and four “yes” (and a standing ovation from Howie Mandel). Here’s a clip of here audition:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HxkZNX9r_0
That was so good
So, Roland Emmerich is trying to get himself killed? Because, in the name of god, what a fuck is this?
“My movie was exactly what they said it wasn’t. It was politically correct. It had black, transgender people in there. We just got killed by one voice on the internet who saw a trailer and said, this is whitewashing Stonewall. Stonewall was a white event, let’s be honest. But nobody wanted to hear that any more.”
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jun/18/roland-emmerich-on-independence-day-resurgence
Oh, Roland…
Okay can we please talk about how sexy Laverne Cox is though??? Girl never stops looking incredible lol
Yes, I’m so happy Samira will be somewhere on TV again. I’d probably watch anything she was cast in at this point.