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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These days, Wednesday nights are doubleheaders in the Smulders-Killam household. That’s when “Stumptown,” Cobie Smulders’ new show, is preceded by “Single Parents,” starring her husband, Taran Killam, on the ABC lineup.

Not that they were going for a matching set. Or that the network was banking on their relationship to reel in viewers.

“It’s very bizarre, a total fluke,” she said, laughing. “I don’t think that they’re believing in our marriage so much that they’re going to skew their whole schedule.”

Smulders — who recently ended two seasons of Netflix’s “Friends From College” after nine on CBS’ “How I Met Your Mother” and a recurring role as Maria Hill in a string of Marvel movies — wasn’t even shopping for a series when “Stumptown” came her way.

But she couldn’t get Dex Parios, an Army veteran turned private investigator in Portland, Oregon, who uses drinking, gambling and sex to numb her PTSD, out of her head. Adding to the allure: “Stumptown,” based on the graphic novels by Greg Rucka and Matthew Southworth, is both action-packed and comedic.

“When you decide to do something as long term as this could potentially be, you have to be really excited about the character and how that person could evolve,” she said. “The great thing about our show is that it isn’t just a drama. I’m getting a lot of really great fight scenes, and it’s also really funny. It’s this combination of all the things I like to do.”

Plus — and this is huge — it allowed Smulders, 37, to shoot close to home in Los Angeles, where she and Killam are raising two young daughters.

“We’re asking a lot of our children, and that is my top priority and his, too — and making sure they know that they’re a priority,” she said of the struggles of acting parents who have often found themselves working on opposite ends of the country. “I just feel so grateful to be able to be working and living in the same city with my family on a project that I love to do.”

Q: I’ve reached you on the set today. What are you up to?

A: I’m literally strapped into stunt gear, like pads and a backpack, in a really weird seated position on my couch. We are doing a pretty intense fight that’s taking place in a kitchen. It’s always a fascinating thing when you’re on a series and every week you have a fight sequence. I do all the hits and the kicks — anything but where I’m getting thrown somewhere at a very high velocity where something could go very wrong.

Q: That helps answer the question, Are you doing a lot of your own stunts?

A: Yes, I am. I have an amazing stunt double, Marie [Fink], who certainly does a lot of it, but it’s sort of half and half. I get a little bit controlling. [Laughs] I get really like, I want to do it — put me in there! Marie usually has to do the really big hits that legally, because of a liability issue, I’m not allowed to do because it could shut down production. Forever. So she gets thrown into a lot of walls. Today she’s getting slammed onto a chef’s table.

Q: Dex is an Army veteran with PTSD, and one of the ways she copes is through sex. In the graphic novel she’s bisexual. How about in the show?

A: This is a woman who does not want to label herself as anything — she doesn’t really adhere to social norms in that way. She’s more of the type of person who, if she’s going to be attracted to anyone, it’s because she’s at the bar super late at night and it’s whoever is left.

Q: What kind of research did you do for the role?

A; I’ve been lucky enough to play women who have been in the service more than once, and I’ve met a lot of women who were in the service. We had this wonderful woman [Dr. Barbara Van Dahlen, a clinical psychologist] who worked during the Obama administration — specifically with people who are dealing with PTSD and trying to get legislation passed. She was a really great source. But I found when I really got into it that everybody is suffering from some kind of PTSD. If you’re human and you have feelings, at some point in your life you have experienced trauma.

Q: It also brings up the issue of health care for veterans.

A: One of the greatest things about this show is being able to portray somebody like that, and hopefully we’re going to see her face that demon and get help. The way that we treat our veterans is quite appalling. It’s an opportunity to shed some light on that.

Q: It seems like all the classics are getting reboots these days, and every so often we hear wishful thinking about “How I Met Your Mother.” Would you be game?

A: I’ve literally not ever had a conversation about it with anybody. I would love to work with everyone again. I just feel like we’re all off doing our own thing. It also doesn’t feel like that long — though I guess it is becoming a long time since it has been on the air. Yeah, of course I would, I would love to. I would definitely not just say no.

Q: And what about more of Maria Hill, your Marvel character? That post-credit scene in “Spider-Man: Far From Home,” in which she and Nick Fury are revealed to have been portrayed throughout the movie by the Skrulls Talos and Soren in disguise, seems to beg a sequel.

A; It’s an interesting phase for Marvel. I love playing Maria Hill so much. And I’m always ready and willing to be a part of a project. I don’t have anything on the horizon right now that we’re discussing, but of course should they call, I will do everything to make it happen.

Q: This summer at Comic-Con, you were on a panel called “Women Who Kick Ass.” Do you find yourself searching out that kind of character?

A; No, I gravitate toward the opposite of what I have been doing, just to keep myself always learning, really. I’m lucky enough to be approached with these strong female roles because I think it’s such a wonderful thing to put out there in the world for young girls to see. When I started on the first “Avengers” movie, it was Scarlett [Johansson, as Black Widow], and that was it. Just to see that there’s an appetite out there is definitely an exciting time, and I want to ride that wave for as long as possible.

Q: So does kicking ass help you vent some kind of deep-rooted aggression?

A: It’s just not really who I am in my real life. [Laughs] I’m a pacifist. I’m a Canadian, for God’s sake.

How Cobie Smulders Met Her New Role

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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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>.

Milo Ventimiglia Finds a Good-Guy Lane

You can bet that T’Challa would never forget Queen Ramonda on Mother’s Day.

But in “Otherhood,” her new Netflix film, Angela Bassett — beloved by fans as the regal matriarch of Wakanda in “Black Panther” — plays a woman so accustomed to neglect by her adult son that she sends herself bouquets from him on the holiday each year. With this note: “You are the best mother ever.”

So when she and her similarly disregarded best friends, played by Patricia Arquette and Felicity Huffman, realize that they’ve become “others” instead of mothers, these suburban empty-nesters storm Manhattan in a Volvo station wagon in pursuit of their offspring’s attention and respect.

“I just thought it was hysterical — I was falling over,” Bassett said of the film directed and co-written by Cindy Chupack (“Sex and the City”). “That’s rare to read a script and to really laugh out loud.”

And dipping her toes into the comedic realm was a welcome counterbalance to her work on Fox’s “9-1-1,” which last season catapulted Bassett’s character, Field Sgt. Athena Grant of the Los Angeles Police Department, into natural disasters before marrying her off to the fire captain (Peter Krause).

Alas, mothering briefly got the best of “Otherhood” when its premiere was pushed from April to August after Huffman was arrested for her involvement in a college admissions scandal. “We all make mistakes. None of us is perfect,” Bassett said. “I think Felicity handled these unfortunate circumstances in a mature, responsible way. She held herself accountable and didn’t make excuses for her decisions, and I can only respect that.”

These days, Bassett is hoping to add a matching Emmy to that of her husband, Courtney B. Vance, with her nomination as narrator of “The Flood,” a National Geographic special about the Okavango Delta in Africa. Calling from Los Angeles, she happily chatted about how she’s trying to guarantee that Bronwyn and Slater, their 13-year-old twins, never let Mother’s Day go unnoticed.

Q: It’s been a while since you hung with girlfriends onscreen. How did you find your groove with Patricia and Felicity?

A: They were both warm, wonderful, delightful, talented, hardworking women that made you laugh. It was easy to establish a camaraderie.

Q: What are the joys to be found in the female squad-com?

A: I’ve done it a couple of times — “Waiting to Exhale” and then this. And the film “Gunpowder Milkshake,” which I just finished my portion of in Germany, is a female-driven action thriller, with the wonderful Michelle Yeoh and Carla Gugino and Lena Headey and Karen Gillan. It’s such a delight to be around women who get it — full of life, full of laughter and love. No egos. They just shared the best of themselves, their knowledge of their experiences.

Q: Your character, Carol, has a son who’s loath to invite her to a work party. But you recently took your son to see the rapper Logic and he seemed pretty great with it.

A: Before I went away to work this summer, in Berlin for six weeks, I surprised him. It was a Friday. That’s the No. 1 surprise: “You’re not going to school today.” Then I’ve got the Logic T-shirt. And then I said: “Oh, and last surprise. You have a private meet-and-greet with Logic before his show.” That’s when he really lost it. He was the best kid ever. I was the boss mom ever. I think it enhanced the relationship.

Q: They will not be forgetting you on Mother’s Day, right?

A: My daughter will give me something special. An ankle bracelet, jewelry, something sweet. My son will give me a book on tacos. “You like to cook, but I like tacos. Here, Mom.” That’s who he is.

Q: You’ve just started shooting Season 3 of “9-1-1.” What’s it like taking on a role that keeps you running?

A: You know what? It will keep me in line because polyester doesn’t stretch. My uniform’s a little tight this summer. It’s hard to run in tight polyester. You really have to mind your P’s and Q’s.

Q: Before “9-1-1,” you collaborated with Ryan Murphy for four years on “American Horror Story” as well. What’s the root of your loyalty?

A: As surprised as the audiences are from week to week, we actors are surprised as well when we sit down and open each ensuing episode. It’s mind-blowing but it’s great. I love behind the scenes, because it gives opportunity to those who are deserving. And in front of the camera, roles for women or for characters that may be on the outside. Things that are just the norm — that’s not interesting to Ryan.

Q: When is “Black Panther 2” coming out, and are you in it?

A: I have no idea but I assume that I will be in there. I didn’t ask that they roll my body in the ocean with my ancestors.

Q: Did the overwhelming embrace of “Black Panther” surprise you?

A: Absolutely. I’m not big in the comic book world. I would go online and see some of the fanboy-girl excitement, and so I had an inkling that it would be big with them. But that it would just cross so many boundaries and resonate with so many different people — 84-year-old women would come up to me and say, “Wakanda forever.” Or little boys from Ireland were like, “It’s Queen Ramonda!” It really was very satisfying to be a part of a project that touched audiences and made them feel good about themselves and about the world.

Q: You’ve said that you related to Carol’s blossoming in “Otherhood.” But you seem to be in full bloom, having stirred things up on Instagram with a bikini shot on your 60th birthday last year. What do you have planned for your 61st?

Kathryn Shattuck

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