How does one of the planet’s most controversial superstars drive up even more attention for his latest high-profile appearance? If you’re Ye -- that would be, <a href="https://www.etonline.com/kanye-west-changes-his-name-to-ye-110653" target="_blank">the artist known until this weekend</a> as Kanye West --&nbsp;&nbsp;you pop up two days before your performance on the Saturday Night Live season premiere wearing a “Make America Great Again” baseball cap and a Colin Kaepernick sweatshirt.&nbsp;

Then, you announce on Twitter, about twelve hours before the gig, that you’re changing your stage name to something more, well, monosyllabic. (A longtime nickname, “Ye” is also the title of an album the rapper dropped last spring.)

But those shenanigans were just prelude to the rambling speech that West -- as he was still introduced on the show, both by the announcer and host Adam Driver -- delivered to the studio audience post-broadcast, <a href="https://www.etonline.com/kanye-west-wears-giant-water-bottle-suit-maga-hat-during-snl-season-premiere-110665" target="_blank">following sets that were relatively low on bombast</a> (even if the rapper pranced around in a facsimile of a Perrier bottle during one of them).

What TV viewers didn’t get to see -- at least until clips started circulating on social media, courtesy of Chris Rock and others -- was West defending, at some length, his support for President Trump. Having once again donned his MAGA cap for the show’s close, he referred to a “Democratic plan” to “take the fathers out of the homes and promote welfare.”&nbsp;

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Pacing the stage as some jeered -- though there were also sprinklings of applause -- West continued, “So many times I’ve talked to a white person about this, and he’d say, ‘How could you love Trump? He’s racist.’ Well, if I was concerned about racism I would have moved out of America a long time ago.’”

As an organ played behind West, evoking a sort of improvised sermon, he continued, “You got a situation where we need to have a dialogue and not a diatribe...It’s easy to make it seem like it’s so, so, so one-sided.” West later advised, “Follow your heart and stop following your mind. That’s how we’re controlled...You want the world to move forward, try love.”

Acknowledging the crowd’s relative patience, West thanked everyone for “giving me this platform. I know some of y’all don’t agree.” But clearly, whatever he calls himself, West isn’t going to stop stirring the pot any time soon.

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Elysa Gardner

News

Kanye West Delivers Uncomfortable Pro-Trump Rant on 'SNL' as Chris Rock Tapes It

Nathan Lane, nominated for playing Roy Cohn in Angels in America, is one of <a href="https://www.etonline.com/tonys-2018-the-standout-performances-on-broadway-102917" target="_blank">ET’s Standout Performances on Broadway</a>. 
&nbsp;

About eight years ago, one of our best comedic actors decided to embark on an experiment: Nathan Lane tried to stop being funny -- or at least to seek out roles that didn’t emphasize that talent as much.

“I was at a bit of crossroads,” Lane says. “I felt like I needed to shake things up and challenge myself, because I felt I had more to offer as an actor, and I wondered if I could shift other people’s perception of me a little -- if they would go along for the ride.”

For Lane, the role of Roy Cohn in the current Broadway production of Tony Kushner’s two-part epic <a href="https://angelsbroadway.com/" target="_blank">Angels in America</a> is “the culmination of all that work.” The performance landed the two-time Tony Award winner his <a href="https://www.etonline.com/2018-tony-award-nominations-the-complete-list-101347" target="_blank">sixth nomination</a>, this time for Featured Actor in a Play; it’s one of a whopping 11 nods collected by the revival, directed by Marianne Elliott (War Horse, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) and also starring <a href="https://www.etonline.com/tonys-2018-andrew-garfield-on-the-gift-of-performing-angels-in-america-exclusive-102911" target="_blank">Andrew Garfield</a>, both nominees as well.

In truth, Lane’s turn as Cohn -- a fictionalized incarnation of the notorious lawyer, a protégé of Sen. Joe McCarthy whose clients included our current president -- can be hilarious at points, as can Kushner’s writing generally. “There’s about 20 minutes of B-roll footage of the original production you can see on YouTube, and though it’s obviously a serious play, a masterpiece, you see people just roaring with laughter.”

Lane notes that, in life, “Roy Cohn was funny. If you talk to people who were friends of his, people he was loyal to, they would tell you he was great fun to be around. If you see television clips of him, he comes across as sort of nerdy and impolite, but he was a funny, charismatic personality.”

Angels, of course, in tracing the early AIDS era and its relevance in American history, ultimately paints a darker picture of Cohn. “He was a very contradictory human being -- a self-loathing Jew and self-loathing homosexual who would never let himself be vulnerable to attack that way,” Lane says. “He was a lifelong registered Democrat who only worked for Republicans and conservative causes. He’s a fascinating character for a writer to take on. Everyone’s aware of him now as Trump’s lawyer and mentor, but it’s really Tony Kushner who kept his name alive, through this character.”

Performing Angels’ two parts, Millennium Approaches and Perestroika -- which run seven and a half hours combined, including intermissions -- can be exhausting, Lane allows, “but it’s a good tired. Tony Kushner’s extraordinary writing carries you. Even when you’re saying, I don’t know how I’m going to get to the end, his words are always there to support you and guide you and inspire you. It’s one of those plays that costs you, but you feel very fulfilled by it.”

Lane certainly arrived prepared, having starred in a production of Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh (now being revived on Broadway with Denzel Washington, also a Tony nominee) that ran four hours and 45 minutes, first at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre in 2012, then at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2015. “Iceman prepares you for everything,” Lane muses. “After that, everything seems easier. And there are a lot of similarities: Tony’s a huge O’Neill fan, and he’s asking some of the same big questions.”

Critics have pointed to the timeliness of Angels, despite its 1980s setting and the fact that it premiered more than a quarter-century ago, arriving on Broadway in 1993. “We were in the Clinton era then, looking back on the Reagan period and height of the AIDS epidemic, and there was a sense of, ‘Aren’t we glad that’s over?’” Lane says. “Now we see the seeds being planted that led to something like [the election of] Trump happening, so it feels more resonant and necessary than ever, and Tony seems more prescient. As with all great plays, you come back to it and find new things. That’s why I think it’s one of the greatest plays of the 20th century, and that it will survive long after us.”

Asked about his plans for after the production wraps, Lane quips, “To go out to Long Island and lie down for a couple of weeks. Read a book again.” Awards season can be particularly trying, he admits, with its added demands. “But it’s a special thing that’s happening, and you have to embrace it.”

The <a href="https://www.tonyawards.com/index.html" target="_blank">2018 Tony Awards</a> hosted by Josh Groban and Sara Bareilles will be handed out live at Radio City Music Hall in New York City on Sunday, June 10, starting at 8 p.m. ET on CBS.

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Features

Tony Awards 2018: The Crossroads That Led Nathan Lane to ‘Angels in America’ (Exclusive)

Diana Rigg, nominated for playing Mrs. Higgins in My Fair Lady, is one of <a href="https://www.etonline.com/tonys-2018-the-standout-performances-on-broadway-102917" target="_blank">ET’s Standout Performances on Broadway</a>. 
&nbsp;

The celebrated stage and screen actress Dame Diana Rigg last appeared on Broadway nearly a quarter century ago, earning a 1994 Tony Award for the title role of Medea. The part that brought her back this past season -- to everyone’s delight -- is a very different type of mother: the elegant and wise Mrs. Higgins in Lincoln Center Theater’s revival of <a href="http://www.lct.org/shows/my-fair-lady/" target="_blank">My Fair Lady</a>, which is up for a total of <a href="https://www.etonline.com/2018-tony-award-nominations-the-complete-list-101347" target="_blank">10 Tonys</a>, including one for Rigg for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical.

The source material for this beloved Lerner and Loewe musical, George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion, is familiar turf for Rigg, who during her long career has played both Mrs. Higgins and Eliza Dolittle -- the feisty flower seller that Professor Henry Higgins tries to mold into a proper lady in 1914 England -- in different productions of the play. “When I played Eliza years ago, I had a Mrs. Higgins who actually knew Shaw, and had worked with him,” Rigg notes. “That’s something I absolutely love about theater -- that passing off of the baton.”

Of choosing My Fair Lady for her return to the New York stage, Rigg says, with characteristic modesty, “It’s the only offer I had. Let’s be truthful about this.” In the past, she adds, “I’ve had the great honor of carrying plays, of serving plays in that capacity. I’m no longer interested in that.” Additionally, this featured role did not demand a certain skill associated with musical theater: “I was grateful I wouldn’t have to sing,” Rigg quips, “and the audience should be, too.”

Another factor was the opportunity to work with director Bartlett Sher, also a 2018 Tony nominee and a past winner for LCT’s 2008 production of South Pacific. While she hadn’t seen any of Sher’s previous work, she knew of his “extraordinary reputation, and that I would learn something from working with him. And I knew that Bart would do justice to the play [Pygmalion], which is the lynchpin. The music is sublime, but it’s sort of the icing on the cake, as it were.”

Neither Sher nor Rigg knew when they signed on for My Fair Lady that the revival would premiere in the wake of the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements, making Eliza’s journey to self-actualization -- how she eventually stands up to a man who considers himself her superior and mentor -- seem especially timely to critics and audiences. “But I think we’re in a more reflective mood now, and the show reflects that,” Rigg says. “I think it’s measured.”

Having first become famous in the U.S. for playing Emma Peel on the 1960s TV series The Avengers, Rigg acquired a new generation of fans in recent years as Olenna Tyrell on <a href="https://www.etonline.com/tv/game-thrones" target="_blank">Game of Thrones</a>.

Rigg had not seen Thrones before joining the cast, but became aware of its massive popularity. “A program as far-reaching as this one, in terms of its audience -- it’s got to be good,” she reasons. “For me the priority is theater, but I don’t take the view, as some people do, that television is a sort of poorer cousin. If anything I do outside of theater feeds interest in the theater, then hooray.”

Awards, similarly, are “a welcome recognition of good work,” Rigg says, but mostly valuable “if they can put bums in the seats in theater. I’m all for anything that does that.”

As for her plans after My Fair Lady ends its run, the 79-year-old actress says, “I’ll tell you what I’m anticipating: being reunited with my grandson. He was born a year ago in March, and we’ve been separated such a long time. We do use Skype and wave at each other, but I’m missing his first steps, all those things. So that’s what I’m really looking forward to.”

The <a href="https://www.tonyawards.com/index.html" target="_blank">2018 Tony Awards</a> hosted by Josh Groban and Sara Bareilles will be handed out live at Radio City Music Hall in New York City on Sunday, June 10, starting at 8 p.m. ET on CBS.

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Tony Awards 2018: After ‘Game of Thrones,’ Diana Rigg Makes a Celebrated Return to Broadway (Exclusive)

It has been 10 years since Kate Rockwell, then in her mid 20s, made her Broadway debut as Margot, Elle Woods’ boy-crazy sorority sister in the 2007 musical adaptation of Legally Blonde. This spring, following several returns in other youth-centric shows -- among them Bring It On: The Musical, also inspired by a hit film -- Rockwell is back in yet another musical based on a movie that helped shape the teen zeitgeist of the early aughts: <a href="http://meangirlsonbroadway.com/" target="_blank">Mean Girls</a>.

“My roles seem to get younger as I get older,” muses Rockwell, cast as Karen Smith -- fondly remembered as the dumb blonde in the Plastics, the titular trio that terrorizes their high school -- in the critically acclaimed production, which features a book by the film’s original screenwriter Tina Fey.

Perhaps, though, dumb is too strong a word? “I like to call her singularly focused,” Rockwell says generously, albeit with an obvious wink in her voice, of Karen. “She’s very good at focusing on the task at hand. Unfortunately, that usually means checking out how she looks or how to get a boy’s attention.”

Rockwell was drawn into Mean Girls by its lyricist, Nell Benjamin, who co-wrote the music and lyrics for Legally Blonde with husband Laurence O’Keefe. (Fey’s spouse, Jeff Richmond, is Mean Girls’ composer.) “She connected me with Tina, who invited me to do the first table reading of the first act.” Having seen the film, Rockwell says, “I thought I’d love to play to Regina George,” the Plastics’ fearsome leader. “But as I’ve gotten older, comedy has become sort of my bread and butter.” And the creators as well as director Casey Nicholaw thought she would be a great fit for the goofy babe introduced on screen by a young Amanda Seyfried.

“I did go back and watch the film when we started the audition process, but I haven’t watched it since,” says Rockwell, who creates a very distinct character on stage, largely thanks to her quirky mannerisms and standout Halloween-themed number, “Sexy.” “I didn’t want to try to recreate what Amanda did so brilliantly. Fifteen years have gone by, and there were things Tina wanted to update, or, in her words, ‘fix.’”

On stage, for instance, the Plastics wield smartphones. “Karen with social media access is different than Karen without it,” Rockwell says. “I imagine she can spend hours watching cat videos, or searching YouTube for beauty tips.”

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Growing up in Ohio in the 1990s, Rockwell -- who admits to being “a bottle blonde” -- had little in common with the character she’s currently playing. “I was not the prettiest version of me, and I was not popular. But I saw those girls in such a hyperfocused way, and I think the attention I paid to them helped give me a unique voice in playing a person like that.”

Before appearing in Legally Blonde, in which she also understudied the part of Elle, Rockwell competed on NBC’s 2007 reality series Grease: You’re The One That I Want!, vying for the role of Sandy in a Broadway revival that ultimately launched the career of Laura Osnes. “I was 22, just out of college, and essentially doing a live audition on TV every week,” Rockwell recalls. “I quickly learned to not trust reality TV. Frankly, it’s one of the reasons I kept my passion for live theater, because of its authenticity.”

Of playing a succession of teenage characters still loved by both young adults and a new generation of adolescents, Rockwell quips, “In another life, I’d be old enough to have a teenager. But being part of this cultural moment gives me an opportunity to connect with young girls in another way.” Mean Girls’ advocacy, beyond its broad satire, of self-determination “is especially important,” she adds, “now that women are being told that it’s OK to be strong and powerful, to do what you want to do.”

As one of just a few married actors in the cast, Rockwell notes, “I can feel like an anomaly sometimes. People look at my ring, and they must think, ‘Oh, right -- you’re old.’” She met her husband, a former actor now working in hospitality, while on tour with Legally Blonde. “He’s my teammate and partner. But it’s fun to watch my castmates who are not in serious relationships; I get to live vicariously through their dating apps.”

While performing eight shows a week, Rockwell is also squeezing in time to promote her first solo album, cannily titled <a href="https://www.broadwayrecords.com/cds/kate-rockwell-back-to-my-roots" target="_blank">Back to My Roots</a>. The songs trace what she calls “the second Golden Age of musical theater,” from the late ’70s to the early ’90s. “It’s the music that inspired me to do this as a career, by people like William Finn and Andrew Lloyd Webber.” Rockwell cites the part of struggling wife and mom Trina in Finn’s Falsettos, in fact, as her “absolute dream role” in musical theater.

“I’m aware that I can’t play 17-year-olds forever,” says Rockwell. “I’d love to do a Noel Coward play at some point, to get into that classic, slam-the-door comedy. I’d also love to do a sitcom; that idea of living in a character, getting new material every week, is so cool. Are you listening, Tina?”

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‘Mean Girls’ Star Kate Rockwell Embraces Her Teen Zeitgeist Moment (Exclusive)

The first chapter in Leslie Odom Jr.’s new book, Failing Up: How to Take Risks, Aim Higher, and Never Stop Learning, is titled “The Mentor.” In it, the Tony and Grammy Award-winning performer -- who was catapulted to fame by his blazing portrait of Aaron Burr in the original Broadway cast of Hamilton -- remembers the schoolteachers who encouraged him early on. Special attention is paid to one Mrs. Turner, who prodded Odom to nurture his gift for oratory, even though, he admits, “I was a handful.” Odom writes, “Mrs. Turner was a vessel for small miracles.”

Mentors, and the courage and commitment they inspire, are celebrated throughout Failing Up. Odom’s book -- also available via Audible, where fans can hear the acclaimed actor and singer deliver his own words -- is part self-help, inspirational guide and memoir, though the 36-year-old says tells ET, he “felt I was too young” to embrace the last category: “Hopefully, I’m not even in the middle of my life yet.”

Odom’s publisher, Feiwel and Friends, suggested he approach the project “as if I were writing a commencement address, something that I could maybe deliver to the graduating class at my alma mater.” (That would be Carnegie Mellon University, the prestigious institution that also helped groom Josh Groban, Josh Gad and another Odom mentor, Billy Porter, to name a few.)

“I started writing it when I was an expectant dad,” Odom says; he and wife and fellow performer, Nicolette Robinson, <a href="http://www.etonline.com/news/216016_leslie_odom_jr_and_wife_nicolette_robinson_welcome_first_child_see_the_sweet_pics" target="_blank">welcomed their first child</a>, daughter Lucille, last April. “I didn’t work for a while after Lucy came, for about six or seven weeks. Once I started traveling again, doing concerts, I would snatch time wherever I could. I’d be writing in hotel rooms, after concerts, in cars on my way to airports.”

Odom’s own parents are significant figures in Failing Up; at one point the author recalls, movingly, how his mother called in tears after learning he had decided to put off college to accept a Broadway role, in Disney’s Aida. (Odom eventually reversed that decision.) “My parents were only 23 when they had me -- adults, technically, but very young. I think of some of the things I was doing at 23; I was not charged with that responsibility.”

Odom and Robinson “are figuring out all the time” how to juggle family and work life, he says. Robinson, who has recurred on Showtime’s The Affair, “has no intention of being a stay-at-home mom, but she has a tough time leaving Lucy.” The couple moved to Los Angeles to be closer to Robinson’s family: “We live just a few blocks away from her parents. We’re trying to have it all, to fulfill our childhood dreams of performing and writing and making music and art. It’s a balancing act, but we’re finding our way.”

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As Failing Up’s title suggests, Odom still adheres to the philosophy -- absurd as it may seem, given his talents and achievements -- that it’s best to surround yourself with more accomplished people. “I felt that way when I was on stage with Lin [-Manuel Miranda], and in Murder on the Orient Express,” <a href="http://www.etonline.com/media/videos/behind-scenes-staggering-scale-murder-orient-express-exclusive-89964" target="_blank">Kenneth Branagh’s 2017 adaptation</a> of the Agatha Christie novel, which teamed Odom with Gad, Johnny Depp, Judi Dench, Penelope Cruz and Willem Defoe. “I think if you’re the smartest person in the room, or feel like you can just hang back because you’ve got it all figured out, you’re in the wrong room.”

Odom recently shot a sci-fi movie with Freida Pinto, Only, and has his eye on another film script. Having struck gold on Broadway a couple of times -- before playing Burr, he was featured in Rent, the musical that drew him into performing (as documented in Failing Up) -- Odom is still eager to grow. “People ask, what do you do post-Hamilton, after such a phenomenon? I want to walk through doors that were not open to me before Hamilton. I want to work with great directors and actors. To get better.”

As an artist and new dad, Odom has also found encouragement in those with less experience, such as the students who have led recent marches against gun violence. “I’m so proud of those kids. There’s something they care about, and they’re getting out there and doing hard work. Change can happen -- I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I’ve seen things made fairer on Broadway, the cultural and artistic shift since Hamilton, with more opportunities for actors of color and more consciousness about race. We can’t lose ground, though, because there’s still much work to be done.”

<a href="https://us.macmillan.com/failingup/leslieodomjr/9781250139962/" target="_blank">Failing Up: How to Take Risks, Aim Higher, and Never Stop Learning</a>&nbsp;(Feiwel &amp; Friends) is out now. An <a href="https://www.audible.com/pd/Bios-Memoirs/Failing-Up-Audiobook/B07B9FZJZ9" target="_blank">Audible version</a> narrated by Leslie Odom&nbsp;Jr. is out April 10.&nbsp;

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‘Hamilton’ Star Leslie Odom Jr. Talks Fatherhood and ‘Failing Up’ (Exclusive)

“I’m always playing a waitress,” muses Katharine McPhee. The American Idol alumna notes that Karen Cartwright, her breakout role on the NBC series Smash, “starts out as a waitress, as many actors do.” Paige Dineen, whom she currently plays on CBS’s Scorpion, “was a waitress in the pilot.”

McPhee, however, has never actually had a job waiting tables herself, though she briefly worked in a restaurant. “I was a hostess, and they upgraded me to doing takeout, but I was horrible at it. I couldn’t handle all the stuff happening, the phone ringing and bagging food. So that lasted a very short time.”

Happily, McPhee’s professional life has blossomed since then, even if her latest part finds her once again slinging plates. On April 10, McPhee will begin performances in the hit Broadway musical titled, yes, <a href="https://waitressthemusical.com/" target="_blank">Waitress</a>. Adapted from the acclaimed 2007 film starring Keri Russell, the show, featuring a score by singer/songwriter Sara Bareilles, follows Jenna, a master piemaker working at a small-town diner who discovers she is pregnant by her abusive husband.

Jenna was introduced on stage by Tony Award winner Jessie Mueller (appearing this season in a revival of Carousel), and has since been played by fellow theater vet Betsy Wolfe, and by Bareilles herself.

“I always thought it could be easily transferred to Broadway, in a modern way,” says McPhee, elegant in a tastefully low-cut black top and flowing red pants, before recalling that the production wanted her to take on the role during a hiatus between seasons three and four of Scorpion. However, Bareilles decided to join the production for a while, “which makes total sense. And then last December, they asked if I wanted to step in later, and I was honored -- because I’d been obsessed with the music for two years.”

Though Waitress marks McPhee’s Broadway debut, she is hardly a musical-theater neophyte, having studied it during three semesters at Boston Conservatory. As a high school freshman, she was the only member of her class chosen for the annual musical -- “I felt really cool,” she recalls -- nabbing an ensemble role in Once Upon a Mattress; the following year she played Little Red Riding Hood in Into the Woods. At 20, McPhee beat out an Equity actress for the lead role in a professional production of Annie Get Your Gun in California.

<div class="ctd-shortcode" data-ctd-caption="Katharine McPhee posing as Jenna in &amp;quot;Waitress.&amp;quot;" data-ctd-entity-type="media" data-ctd-entity-uuid="5ade9a95-b957-485b-bf5a-39b69863eab3" data-ctd-shortcode-id="image" data-ctd-view-mode="content_full">&nbsp;</div>

Of Jenna, McPhee says, “I feel like I have lived this part. Not to dive too far into my personal life, but I can tell this story in a really honest way.” Though she hasn’t suffered domestic physical abuse, “I’ve been in dysfunctional relationships, and I can definitely relate to having someone not treat you kindly, and yet there’s something about that person that makes you not want to leave.”

She adds, “I know good people can make big mistakes. I’ve made huge mistakes, and the issue is how do you learn to move forward and try to redeem yourself, and make better choices in the future?”

Offscreen, the performer has generated headlines for her rumored romance with the longtime musician and producer David Foster. She and Foster have been <a href="http://www.etonline.com/david-foster-and-katharine-mcphee-cant-keep-their-hands-each-other-paris-93288" target="_blank">spotted out together</a>, looking very much a couple, though McPhee chooses not to define their relationship. Asked if he will see her in Waitress, though, McPhee says, “I hope so…” before breaking into a wide smile. “Of course he’ll come. But I don’t know which night, because he’s doing his own tour dates.”

Despite his many years in the music industry, Foster has not been helping McPhee prepare vocally for Waitress. “He’s not a voice coach,” she notes, adding: “He always says, ‘You don’t need a coach, you can sing; you either have it or you don’t.’”

And when it comes to Waitress, she has the singing down, as she does with the acting. But the Broadway stage is a whole new experience. “The only thing making me nervous is that things don’t yet come automatically,” McPhee says. “I’m not there yet, but I will be. It’s just a matter of trusting the process.”

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Katharine McPhee Finds Another Waitressing Role -- This Time on Broadway (Exclusive)

Whether crafting a colorful fantasy or a starkly realistic drama, Jack Thorne always find shades of grey. At a time when ambiguity and nuance can seem like endangered qualities, the English screenwriter and playwright, whose current projects include the smash stage hit <a href="https://www.harrypottertheplay.com/us/" target="_blank">Harry Potter and the Cursed Child</a> and a new installation of the acclaimed TV series National Treasure, insists they are necessary elements in art and life.

With National Treasure, an anthology series launched by Channel 4 in the U.K. in 2016 and available in the U.S. on Hulu, Thorne’s intent was to create “a trilogy of shows that would each tell a story about the way blame works in this world -- the way it’s so quickly apportioned in our media age, so that someone becomes either a victim or a perpetrator.”

The first season cast Robbie Coltrane as a popular performer accused of rape and sexual assault of a minor. In the second, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Kt2QjogpEY" target="_blank">National Treasure: Kiri</a>, premiering April 4, a young black girl in foster care goes missing during a visit to her birth family -- an outing suggested by the girl’s social worker to the white couple planning to adopt her. As gender was a prominent issue in the first season, Thorne wanted Kiri -- shown in four parts, like its predecessor -- to focus on race and its role “in the way we categorize people.”

As suspects emerge in the investigation of Kiri’s disappearance, fingers are also wagged at the social worker believed to have put the girl at risk. Thorne says that character, Miriam, played by veteran British actress Sarah Lancashire, was inspired by his mother, herself a care worker. “The central thing about my mum is that she believed she could make any situation better. There’s so much good in the character, but also some danger.”

That complexity and generosity of spirit are central to Cursed Child, which Thorne wrote from an original story developed with J.K. Rowling and celebrated stage director John Tiffany. The play, which debuted in London in 2016, is now in previews at Broadway’s Lyric Theatre, where it will officially open on April 22. It is performed in two parts, which give rich emotional lives to old and new characters -- among the latter are the sons of Harry and his old nemesis Draco Malfoy, who are only briefly introduced at the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final book in Rowling’s series.

As a huge Harry Potter fan -- Thorne was 18 when Rowling published the first book in the series, then found himself rushing to stores, “devouring [each new installment] as fast as I could” -- Thorne initially struggled “not to be overwhelmed” by the task of putting these characters onstage. “I’ve always loved fantasy, because the stakes are so huge, the possibilities massive,” he says. At the same time, “We knew that what Harry was going through and what [his son] Albus was going through would be the core of the show; that was at the heart of everything we discussed.”

<div class="ctd-shortcode" data-ctd-caption="Jamie Parker as Harry Potter in the London production." data-ctd-entity-type="media" data-ctd-entity-uuid="e077befb-7efb-449a-b790-d31eb9f6de21" data-ctd-shortcode-id="image" data-ctd-view-mode="content_full">&nbsp;</div>

Thorne notes that he and his wife were trying to conceive while he was working on Cursed Child and National Treasure. And that preparing for the arrival of his son -- who is now approaching his second birthday -- made him think more about parental responsibility, and the challenges posed by youth. “I wasn’t a very happy teenager,” he admits.

The 39-year-old writer is clearly grateful for, and gracious about, with his recent successes, including co-writing the acclaimed film adaptation of Wonder. Asked about reports <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/star-wars-episode-ix-gets-a-new-writer-1026003" target="_blank">he was attached to the third film</a> in the new Star Wars trilogy, and if and why he bowed out, he explains politely -- almost apologetically -- that he’s not at liberty to address it. However, Thorne’s plate is plenty full at the moment; he wrote the libretto for a musical adaptation of King Kong due on Broadway this fall, in which the central female character will be “less of a damsel in distress; we wanted to make it modern, though it’s set in the same period.”

There are more TV projects, as well, among them Netflix’s upcoming The Eddy, which will pair Thorne with La La Land director Damien Chazelle. Set in a Paris jazz club, the series will incorporate music and have “a political element, though I can’t discuss that in great detail.”

Thorne notes, “With TV and stage, the rhythm of the storytelling can be completely different. But the intention is the same -- which is to tell the truth.”

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‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ Playwright Jack Thorne’s Approach to Storytelling (Exclusive)

In her celebrated work as an actress, author, playwright and teacher, Anna Deavere Smith has made empathy an art form -- never more so than in the documentary theater she has crafted to address vexing social issues and events, such as the early ‘90s riots in Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Los Angeles, respectively the subjects of Smith’s Fires In the Mirror and Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992.

For her latest play, <a href="https://www.hbo.com/hbo-news/notes-from-the-field-announcement" target="_blank">Notes From the Field</a>, Smith once again did extensive research to bring a troubling phenomenon -- the school-to-prison pipeline that has led to the mass incarceration of underprivileged and minority youth -- to light through the perspectives of those who have confronted it most closely. Smith interviewed some 250 people for Notes, which ran Off-Broadway and in other cities to wide acclaim. “It was a transformative experience,” she tells ET.

Now Smith -- also known for her roles on <a href="http://www.etonline.com/tv/west-wing" target="_blank">The West Wing</a> and Nurse Jackie -- is bringing a film of the one-woman play to HBO on Feb. 24, where fans can see her morph into 18&nbsp;characters, from congressman and civil rights champion John Lewis to a South Carolina teenager who was jailed after making a cell phone video of a police officer assaulting her classmate.

“I had the opportunity to learn a lot about courage,” says Smith, who started working on Notes in 2011, before the Black Lives Matter movement formally took shape. The play wound up being greatly informed by a series of high-profile police shootings and other racially charged violent acts that followed; the Baltimore deli worker who shot the video of Freddie Gray’s fatal beating is a character, as is Bree Newsome, a young artist and activist arrested for civil disobedience after she climbed a pole to protest a Confederate flag’s presence on North Carolina state grounds.

“Bree had never climbed anything before, and she put this together in just two weeks,” says Smith, still sounding awestruck. “They were afraid a vigilante would try to shoot her, but she had decided that if that happened, everyone should just scatter. I said, ‘What? What?’ She had something in common with people in the ‘60s, who literally risked their lives.”

Smith hopes that in providing a wider audience for Notes, the HBO broadcast will serve as “a call to political action. There’s a sense in this country that people are once again concerned about race relations, but I honestly worry that these kids are being forgotten, because when you open the paper there are so many other things to pay attention to.”

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Onstage performing Notes the night of President Donald Trump’s election -- “a deadly night,” she recalls -- Smith is aware of the polarized climate and deep ambivalence surrounding politics right now. Having amassed a legion of fans playing national security advisor Nancy McNally on The West Wing, she is intrigued by current nostalgia for the series, evident in the growing popularity of the podcast <a href="http://www.etonline.com/my-5-west-wing-weekly-host-hrishi-hirway-93016" target="_blank">The West Wing Weekly</a>. Smith speculates that many in the drama’s original audience were “crestfallen about [George W.] Bush being in office, and felt the show was their alternative reality. And of course, the enduring nature has to do with [creator] Aaron Sorkin’s incredible imagination, the magnitude of the writing and the acting.”

Smith adds that Sorkin, with whom she also worked in the 1995 film The American President, “had a kind of romance at that time with the White House. There is something magical about the place.” Of her West Wing role, Smith muses that she and Condoleezza Rice both taught at Stanford University, and when the series was being prepared, “there was talk that if Bush won the [2000] election, he would make her his national security advisor. So I asked Aaron, ‘In casting me [as Nancy], were you thinking of Condoleezza Rice?’” she recalls, “and he said, ‘Who?’”

Smith’s next TV role will be Tina Krissman, a veteran court clerk in the Southern District of New York, in For the People, a <a href="http://www.etonline.com/people/shonda-rhimes" target="_blank">Shonda Rhimes</a>-produced series focusing on young lawyers, premiering March 13 on ABC. “I believe Shonda will have been the first African-American of either gender to have as much influence as she does through literature and letters,” says Smith. “Maybe it has something to do with this moment in history. You wonder, would Toni Morrison have written for TV, if it had been like it is today?”

As Tina, Smith quips, “My job is to whip everybody into shape. But she’s witty, and has a lot of love in her. And the young public defenders and assistant DAs all believe in something, they’re all fighting for something. There’s nothing jaded or sinister here. I hope that idealism will be inspiring for people, too.”

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Anna Deavere Smith Hopes to Inspire With ‘Notes From the Field’ and New Shonda Rhimes Series (Exclusive)

During her six seasons as Beltway workaholic Amy Brookheimer on Veep, <a href="http://www.etonline.com/people/anna-chlumsky" target="_blank">Anna Chlumsky</a> has repeatedly used breaks to return to stage acting. “It’s where I was born,” she says. “I use the metaphor of a cross-trained athlete: If you’ve been doing a lot of sprinting -- I liken that to TV, where you always have to make immediate decisions -- you have to give attention to that other side of your body and your craft. I’m always looking to sink my teeth into something on the boards, when I can.”

Chlumsky’s latest outing, <a href="https://2st.com/shows/current-production/cardinal" target="_blank">Greg Pierce’s Cardinal</a>, now running Off-Broadway at Second Stage Theater, casts her as Lydia Lensky, a take-charge type who returns to her economically depressed home town in upstate New York with plans to revitalize it. Pushing her agenda requires nurturing a fraught relationship with the town’s young mayor (played by Happy Endings star Adam Pally), who once dated Lydia’s sister, and its residents -- represented by a longtime bakery owner and her son, who face upheaval when Lydia interests a Chinese developer in their property.

The actress had long wanted to work with the production’s director, Kate Whoriskey, who recently charted similar terrain in <a href="http://www.etonline.com/features/218618_standout_tonys_performance_michelle_wilson_sweat" target="_blank">Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Sweat</a>. “I love Kate’s point of view, and she and I have been one degree away from each other for a while, as a lot of my friends have worked with her,” Chlumsky says. “There’s plenty of butt-sniffing when you’re working with a new director, in the first week or so, but Kate is the most patient and eloquent person; she astounds me in how she’s able to put these huge concepts into one sentence, and you’re like, ‘Yeah, I know what you mean.’”

Chlumsky was drawn to the aspirational but often alienating Lydia “as this very modern woman, someone I don’t think is depicted very often. It’s taking this strong, educated, empowered woman and stripping her naked, so that we’re all forced to deal with that part of ourselves. We don’t always say the right things, or even the things we want to say. And in the play you have the larger themes of change and longing and survival in a community -- how we adapt as human beings, how we figure out, whom am I and where do I belong?”

Of the struggles confronted by her Veep character, Chlumsky says, “Amy is just so funny: She keeps being faced with these challenges and failures that we all know are shaping her and making her grow -- but she’ll be damned if she’ll admit that. She hates the idea that life has more power than she does.”

Now approaching its final season, the series is on hiatus while star Julia Louis-Dreyfus undergoes treatment for breast cancer. (She completed chemotherapy in January.) Chlumsky’s Cardinal schedule is keeping her in New York this awards season, so she couldn’t be with her fellow cast members as they accepted this year’s Screen Actors Guild Award for ensemble in a comedy series, but Chlumsky did get to watch co-star Matt Walsh’s shout-out to Louis-Dreyfus, who also <a href="http://www.etonline.com/media/videos/julia-louis-dreyfus-breaks-record-most-sag-award-wins-ever-94768" target="_blank">won for female actor</a> in a comedy series.

“That was thrilling,” says Chlumsky, adding that the Veep team’s “priority right now is to just be as supportive as possible as Julia starts getting better. We try to keep in touch with her, as there’s never enough you can do. It’s her journey, and our part in it is to be her cheerleaders.”

While Chlumsky has seen plans for a few episodes of Veep’s farewell season, she says, “I don’t know how it’s going to end. But I think we’re going to stay the course. There’s no reason to change the tone. We’ve never considered it a parody -- other programs do that, extremely well. We’ve just got these characters in an insane industry in an insane world, and we trace those journeys truthfully, which leads us into political satire. We look at the human condition and find the absurdity in it; sometimes that makes us laugh, and sometimes it can make us nauseous.”

Though naturally wistful about the series drawing to a close, Chlumsky is also eager to explore new opportunities. “I’m a picky little diva,” she quips. “I want to do good work, so I’ll be drawn to the good stories, wherever they are. A lot of the time, that’s on stage, but this is such a great time for television, too. I’m just excited to see that’s out there.”

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