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How Jenny Slate swung between laughter and sorrow in 'Dying for Sex'

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How Jenny Slate swung between laughter and sorrow in 'Dying for Sex'

This article contains spoilers for the finale of FX’s “Dying for Sex.”

Jenny Slate hasn’t quite figured out how to respond when people tell her they found themselves sobbing at the end of “Dying for Sex,” the new FX show she stars in alongside Michelle Williams.

It’s an understandable reaction. The limited series, which began streaming on Hulu on Friday, follows Molly (Williams) as she upends her life when she gets a Stage 4 cancer diagnosis. Rather than stay in a sexless marriage with her husband, Steve (Jay Duplass), Molly decides to dive into a thrilling erotic journey, with the support of her best friend Nikki (Slate), who becomes her caregiver during the last months of her life.

A mess of an actor who adores Molly, Nikki becomes her best friend’s anchor, the grounding force she needs as Molly explores her kinks, her desires and her insatiable need to be wanted and obeyed in bed. Their friendship and mutual caregiving is at the center of “Dying for Sex.” It’s why creators Elizabeth Meriwether and Kim Rosenstock, who adapted the series from the Wondery podcast of the same name, knew it was a tall order to find someone who not only would need to go toe-to-toe with Williams but would need to serve as the heart of the show.

“We needed someone who could be really funny and also just break your heart and almost kind of in the same moment,” Meriwether said.

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But that was only part of the equation. “You have to believe that Nikki is a person you would want to die with, that would be the most enjoyable, pleasurable person to spend the rest of your time with,” Rosenstock added.

Jenny Slate, left, with Michelle Williams as Molly, Nikki’s best friend who decides to go on a erotic journey after a Stage 4 cancer diagnosis.

The two said that led to some rather strange casting conversations: “Would we want to die with this person?” they’d ask themselves. And when it came to Slate, the answer was simple: yes.

“I think she portrayed all the messiness of caretaking in such a beautiful way,” Rosenstock said. And that required a nimble comedic performer who could just as easily showcase Nikki’s curdling anger against her boyfriend after he mutes her phone from Molly’s urgent messages as she can dazzle a bedridden Molly with Shakespearean soliloquies and a full-blown one-woman “Clueless” show.

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Slate, whose recent work has included roles in “It Ends With Us” and “The Electric State” as well as a Prime Video stand-up special and a book of essays titled “Lifeform,” spoke to The Times about her character, navigating the tonal shifts in the series and what Nikki’s bag represents.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

We need to talk about that “Clueless” scene at the hospital where, to cheer up Molly, Nikki begins a mishmash of performances. Not just “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” but a whole throng of moments from that classic Amy Heckerling 1995 flick. Was that written into the script or do you just have “Clueless” in the back of your pocket?

I think a lot of us have “Clueless” in our back pocket. But that was written into the show, and I was delighted by it. Because I completely get it. I mean, I don’t know a lot of millennials who don’t know, “Oh, my God, I love Josh!” I knew a lot of those lines, but I did have to memorize Amber’s. I knew there are a lot of people that would be upset if I messed them up.

Less so with Shakespeare.

Oh yeah, he’s very good. I mean, he’s no Amy Heckerling, but he’s very good!

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The scene captures so much of what I found thrilling about the show, especially the way it shuttles between humor and sadness. There’s so much crying through laughs and so much laughter through tears. How did you come to navigate that tonal shift throughout?

For me, one of the signature characteristics of the show is that you don’t get the laughter without the sorrow. As Michelle puts it, Molly’s cancer diagnosis acts as a portal for her to explore the truth of who she is and how she’s operated in the world via her erotic journey. It’s this idea that you don’t have to separate things out. That you don’t have to compartmentalize parts of yourself because they upset you. This show really tries to be as inclusive, emotionally speaking and experientially, as possible. I think that allows for really interesting performances, for unexpected moments in the narrative. But it also allows one to feel very close to the story, because much like life itself, it is going to unfold on its own.

A woman with short black hair in a black strapless dress with her hands in front of her waist.

“For me, one of the signature characteristics of the show is that you don’t get the laughter without the sorrow,” Jenny Slate says.

(Justin Jun Lee / For The Times)

As much as the show is about Molly’s journey, this is also a story about caregiving — about the perils and the sorrows of it but also the kind of joy that can come from wanting to care for someone else, almost in spite of your own wellbeing. What did you learn about caregiving while playing Nikki?

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One thing I really loved about this character is that she sees caregiving as something that is really outside her own self definition. Not that she defines herself as selfish. But she doesn’t really look to herself to be the person in the room who’s going to know how to do your taxes. She’s just not the person that is responsible in a sort of pen-and-paper way. But the way that she is deeply dedicated and sure of her love allows her to participate in caregiving as a process that is definitely serious, and she has to learn to pick up the pace on that. But caregiving is also — even if it has an end point because someone has a terminal diagnosis — an open-ended, innovative process. That’s how I approached it. As an actor, I am going to keep myself open. I’m going to learn to innovate the more that I learn about Michelle as a performer and Molly as this character. And I worked with that openness. I allowed Nikki to stay in the moment. Nikki sees caring as an investigative process where you have to give someone room to grow. And so I gave myself room to grow while I was performing.

I think you see it in a prop. At the beginning, we see Nikki’s bag as an agent of chaos, and then it’s sort of this Mary Poppins-like bag, where anything that Molly would need, she’s gonna have it.

Yeah. She doesn’t end up with, like, a Clare V. clutch. Nikki is allowed to stay herself. The bag is still the bag. But the use is different. She doesn’t have to become someone else in order to be the best person she can be for herself and for Molly. But she does have to deal — to use the metaphor of the bag — with what is internal, and to understand that for Molly, a lot of stuff that she’s carrying is just not for right now and needs to go. And same for Nikki. They have different tasks as people, in terms of their growth. But by the end of it, Nikki’s bag has everything for Molly but so does Nikki’s brain. She knows exactly what type of vibrator Molly needs.

It’s what makes those scenes where they butt heads — like on New Year’s Eve, when Molly all but ignores Nikki’s plans (and their fab promlike dresses) to go hook up with a random stranger — all the harder to watch.

I think that’s a really important moment for Molly and Nikki, because even though they’re really bonded and they’re both committed to what they’re doing, they actually need to experience differentiation in order to experience success, whatever that means for both of them. One of the most beautiful things about this project is that there are so many inflection points. There are so many moments of necessary, and specific, and also pretty surprising, change. It’s not just one moment where everything comes to a head, falls apart and then comes back together. The characters are allowed the privilege of a complete ride. And as Molly says when she’s about to die, “It’s not that f— serious.”

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A woman with dark hair in a bright blue dress sitting on a bed next to a woman in a red long-sleeve dress.

“The characters are allowed the privilege of a complete ride,” Jenny Slate says. “And as Molly says when she’s about to die, ‘It’s not that f— serious.’”

And that comes from one of my favorite scenes in the final episode, which is when Amy (Paula Pell) explains dying in the most thoughtful, most hysterical way. That line of hers — “Your body knows how to die” — unlocked for me something quite profound about the show and its story.

Because of Paula and her incredible performance, and Liz and Kim’s brilliant writing, it’s like we’re very gently turned toward this thing that we see in life and we see in movies. It’s that people die. But Paula explains it from the inside out. I’ve heard parts of that when speaking to a hospice caregiver in my own life. But Paula’s nurse, Amy, at once makes dying natural and also extraordinary. In the same way that having an orgasm is natural and also extraordinary. It is physical, natural but also intensely personal. And that the body knows what to do and needs to do it. I, as a person, don’t think about dying a lot. But I found myself, while listening to Paula’s monologue, feeling soothed.

Soothing is the perfect word to describe that scene, yes. Especially because it tees up the ending not as depressing or dour but almost kind of uplifting, which is odd for a show concerned with death and dying. What are we to take from that final episode?

I think for Nikki, in the final episode, in that last scene, you see that she’s clearly been able to take a lot about what she learned about herself from being Molly’s caregiver but also just from her love with Molly, from the fact that she could love someone that much. She sees herself as someone with the capability for immense love and connection. And she knows it’s true. She has the proof. She’s proud of it. You see she’s utilized that knowledge in a lot of healthy, positive ways. She’s moving forward, there’s wind in her sails. She’s not in stasis. She’s not like a fossil because of Molly’s death. There are going to be times when she notices that kind of twang of a heartstring because of the experiences she will not be able to have with Molly. I like that the show is honest about that. She’s not better off at the end. She’s just different, and that’s OK.

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Roll On 18 Wheeler: Errol Sack’s ‘TRUCKER’ (2026) – Movie Review – PopHorror

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Roll On 18 Wheeler: Errol Sack’s ‘TRUCKER’ (2026) – Movie Review – PopHorror

I am a sucker for all those straight-to-video slasher movies from the 90’s; there was just a certain point where you knew the acting was terrible, however, it made you fall in love. I can definitely remember scanning the video store sections for all the different horror movies I could. All those movies had laughable names and boom mics accidentally getting in the frame. Trucker seems like a child of all those old dreams, because it is.

Let’s get into the review.

Synopsis

When a group of reckless teens cause an accident swroe to never speak of it.  The father is reescued by a strange man. from the wreckage and nursed back to health by a mysterious old man. When the group agrees to visit the accident scene, they meet their match from a strange masked trucker and all his toys with revenge on his mind.

Roll on 18 Wheleer

Trucker is what you would imagine: a movie about a psychotic trucker chasing you. We have seen it many, many times. What makes the film so different is its homage to bad movies but good ideas. I don’t mean in a negative way. When you think of a slasher movie, it’s not very complicated; as a matter of fact, it takes five minutes to piece the film together. This is so simple and childlike, and I absolutely love it. Trucker gave us something a little different, not too gory, bad CGI fire, I mean, this is all we old schlock horror fans want. Trucker is the type of film that you expect from a Tubi Original, on speed. However, I would take this over any Tubi Original.

I found some parts that were definitely a shout-out to the slasher humor from all those movies. Another good point that made the film shine was the sets. I guess what I can say is the film is everything Joy Ride should have been. While most modern slashers are trying to recreate the 1980s, the film stands out with its love for those unloved 1990’s horror films. While most see Joyride, you are extremely mistaken, my friend; you will enjoy this film much more.

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In The End

In the end, I enjoyed the entire film. At first, I saw it listed as an action thriller; I was pleasantly surprised, and Trucker pulled at my heart strings, enveloping me in its comfort from a long-forgotten time in horror. It’s a nostalgic blast for me, thinking back to that time, my friends, my youth, and finding my new home. Horror fans are split down the middle: from serial-killer clowns (my side) to elevated horror, where an artist paints a forty-thousand-year-old demon that chases them around an upper-class studio apartment. I say that a lot, but it’s the best way to describe some things.

The entire movie had me cheering while all the people I hated suffered dire consequences for their actions. It’s the same old story done in a way that we rabid fans could drool over, and it worked. In all the bad in the world today, and my only hope for the future is the soon-to-end Terrifier franchise. However, the direction was a recipe to succeed with 40+ year old horror fans like me. I see the film as a hope for tomorrow, leading us into a new era.

Trucker is set to release on March 10th, 2026

 

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Review: In ‘American Classic,’ Kevin Kline and Laura Linney deliver a love letter to theater

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Review: In ‘American Classic,’ Kevin Kline and Laura Linney deliver a love letter to theater

The lovely, funny “American Classic,” premiering Sunday on MGM+, is a love letter to theater, community and community theater. Kevin Kline plays Richard Bean, a narcissistic stage actor. He’s famous enough to be opening on Broadway in “King Lear,” but he has to be pushed onstage and is forgetting lines. After he drunkenly assails a hostile New York Times critic — caught on video, of course — he’s suspended from the play, and his agent (Tony Shalhoub) advises him to get out of town and lay low until the heat’s off, as they used to say in the gangster movies.

Learning that his mother (Jane Alexander, acting royalty, in film clips) has died, Richard heads back to his small Pennsylvania hometown, where his family — all actors, like the Barrymores, but no longer acting — owns a once-celebrated theater. To Richard’s horror, it has, for want of income, become a dinner theater, hosting touring productions of “Nunsense” and “Forever Plaid” instead of the great stage works on which he cut his teeth.

Brother Jon (Jon Tenney), running the kitchen at the theater, is married to Kristen (Laura Linney), Richard’s onetime acting partner, who dated him before her marriage; now she’s the mayor. Their teenage daughter, Miranda (Nell Verlaque) — a name from Shakespeare — does want to act and move to New York, as her mother had before her, but is afraid to tell her parents. Richard’s father, Linus (Len Cariou), is suffering from dementia, though not to the point he won’t actively contribute to the action; every day he comes out again as gay.

Across the eight-episode series, things move from the ridiculous to the sublime. Richard’s attempt to stage his mother’s funeral, with her coffin being lowered from the ceiling, while “Also sprach Zarathustra” plays and smoke billows toward the audience, fortunately comes to naught; but he announces at the ceremony that he’ll direct a production of Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play “Our Town” at the theater, to “restore the soul of this town.” (His big idea is to ignore Wilder’s stage directions, which ask for no curtain, no set and few props, with a “realistic version,” featuring a working soda fountain, rain effects and a horse.) Fate will have other plans for this, and not to give away what in any case should be obvious, the title of the play will also become its ethos, with a cast of amateurs, including Miranda’s jealous boyfriend, Randall (Ajay Friese), and ordinary people standing in for the ordinary people of Wilder’s Grover’s Corners.

The series has a comfortable, cushiony feeling; it’s the sort of show that could have been made as a film in the 1990s, and in which Kline could have starred as easily in his 40s as in his 70s; it has the same relation to reality as “Dave,” in which he played a good-hearted ordinary Joe who takes the place of a lookalike U.S. president. The town is essentially a sunny place, full of mostly sunny people, to all appearances, a typical comedy hamlet. But we’re told it’s distressed, and Mayor Kristen is in transactional cahoots with developer Connor Boyle (Billy Carter), who wants clearance to build a casino on the site of a landmark hotel. (Much of the plot is driven by money — needing it, trading for it, leaving it, losing it.) He also wants his heavily accented, bombshell Russian girlfriend, Nadia (Elise Kibler), to have a part in “Our Town.”

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As in the great Canadian comedy “Slings & Arrows,” set at a Shakespeare Festival outside of Toronto, themes and moments and speeches from the play being performed are echoed in the lives of the performers, while the viewer experiences the double magic of watching a fine actor playing an actor playing a part. Kline, of course, is himself an American classic, with a long stage and screen career that encompasses classical drama, romantic and musical comedy and cartoon voiceovers; the series makes room for Richard to perform soliloquies from “Hamlet” and “Henry V,” parts Klein has played onstage. He brings out the sweetness latent in Richard. Linney, who played against her sweetheart image in “Ozark,” is happily back on less deadly ground (though she’s tense and drinks a little). Tenney, who was sweet and funny on “The Closer,” and who we don’t see enough of these days, is sweeter and funnier here, and gets to sing. (All the Beans will sing, except for Linus.)

As a comedy, it is often predicable — you know that things will work out, and some major plot points are as good as inevitable — but it’s the good sort of predictability, where you get what you came for, where you hear the words you want to hear, ones you could never have written yourself. “American Classic” is not out to challenge your world view in any way but wants only to confirm your feelings and in doing so amplify them. Shock effects are fine in their place — and to be sure there are major twists in the plot — but there is a certain release when the thing you’re ready to have happen, happens, whether it brings laughter or tears. Either is welcome.

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‘Scream 7’ Review: Ghostface Trades His Metallic Knife for Plastic in Bloody Embarrassing Slasher Sequel

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‘Scream 7’ Review: Ghostface Trades His Metallic Knife for Plastic in Bloody Embarrassing Slasher Sequel

It’s funny how this film is marketed as the first Scream movie in IMAX, yet it’s their sloppiest work to date. Williamson accomplishes two decent kills. My praise goes to the prosthetic team and gore above anything else. The filmmaking is amateurish, lacking any of the tension build and innovation in set pieces like the Radio Silence or Craven entries. Many slasher sequences consist of terribly spliced editing and incomprehensible camera movement. There was a person at my screening asking if one of the Ghostfaces was killed. I responded, “Yeah, they were shot in the head; you just couldn’t see it because the filmmaking is so damn unintelligible.” 

Really, Spyglass? This is the best you can do to “damage control” your series that was perfectly fine?

I’m getting comments from morons right now telling me that I’m biased for speaking “politically” about this movie. Fuck you! This poorly made, bland, and franchise-worst entry is a byproduct of political cowardice.

The production company was so adamant about silencing their outspoken star, who simply stated that she’s against the killing of Palestinian people by an evil totalitarian regime, that they deliberately fired her, conflating her comments to “anti-semintism,” when, and if you read what she said exactly, it wasn’t. Only to reconstruct the buildup made in her arc and settle on a nonsensical, manufactured, nostalgia-based slop fest to appeal to fans who lack genuine film taste in big 2026. To add insult to injury, this movie actively takes potshots at those predecessors, perhaps out of pettiness that Williamson didn’t pen them or a mean-spirited middle finger to the star the studio fired. Truly, fuck you. Take the Barrera aspect out of this, which is still impossible, and Scream 7 is a lazy, sloppy, ill-conceived, no-vision, enshittification of Scream and a bloody embarrassment to the franchise. It took a real, morally upright actress to make Ghostface’s knife go from metal to plastic. 

FINAL STATEMENT

You either die a Scream or live long enough to see yourself become a Stab.

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