Busy Philipps, from top, Sara Bareilles, Renée Elise Goldsberry and Paula Pell star in Netflix’s “Girls5Eva.” “It’s not just the chemistry,” that makes the show work, Goldsberry says of their camaraderie. “It’s the writers’ understanding of who these women are.”
(Annie Noelker / For The Times)
Three seasons in and the reunited-girl-group sitcom “Girls5eva” is singing a righteous truth: The Emmys need an ensemble award. All hail the dynamite alchemy of singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles, actor-writer Paula Pell, actor and sometimes talk show host Busy Philipps and Tony-winning “Hamilton” star Renée Elise Goldsberry as their characters reconcile ambition, personality clashes and showbiz unkindness to live their best second-chance lives.
Even in interview mode after a photo shoot, this superbly cast, gifted foursome shows conversational harmony about any given topic, with warmth, humor and insight on full display. (At one point, Pell and Goldsberry even break into a song from “Fame.”) “It’s not just the chemistry, which we think is amazing,” Goldsberry says of their camaraderie, “it’s the writers’ understanding of who these women are, their rhythms. It feels like an orchestrated score. We all have our own tonal area, but for whatever reason, it works.”
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That they clearly dig each other so much seems to mirror how creator-showrunner Meredith Scardino envisioned the arbitrary-family nature of the premise. “Workplace comedies work so well because characters don’t choose to be together at first, they’re thrown together,” Scardino said recently over Zoom. “And now, they would choose each other. They’re real friends. I pinch myself getting to work with them.”
Pell, a respected comedy writer of 30 years, returns the gratitude, saying television is starved for what Scardino has birthed: “To have feelings and deep-hearted, ridiculous, densely intercut, big jokes that have punchlines that make people laugh out loud. We need more of this.”
On what each loves about her character:
Sara Bareilles: My favorite thing about Dawn is that she’s messy. I relate to that so much, the low-grade anxiety, the good intentions but making mistakes. That it’s not all good or bad. Especially this season, I love that she’s clarifying that she really does have this big dream. It’s not just, she wants to write songs. It’s, “I want to shoot for the moon.” I love seeing that in the character. I’m actually in a phase right now, creatively, where I’m trying to loosen the grip of judgment, to kick the editor out of the room a little bit earlier in the process.
Paula Pell, from left, Sara Bareilles, Renée Elise Goldsberry and Busy Philipps star as the reunited girl band in “Girls5eva.”
(Heidi Gutman/Peacock)
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Paula Pell: What I love about Gloria is it parallels my personal life, going through my second chance, believing you can have magnificent things happen in your 60s. Women are always told, especially in show business, just put it in neutral and let it coast to the toll bridge. Well, Gloria has that thing of making up for lost time. I took up acting again, I started doing these things, I got married again and I want to experience it all. That hunger and joy.
Renée Elise Goldsberry: I’m a perfectionist and tremendously self-aware. “Is this right? Is my motive correct?” That’s me. Wickie is pedal to the metal. Literally the opposite. She has a high standard but going somewhere is the point. “I booked Radio City Music Hall on Thanksgiving morning.” That’s [my] nightmare. Because it’s so self-involved. We suffer the consequences of that part of Wickie, but because she’s doing it with this group of women, it all ends up working out. It’s how different she is, and that it’s happening at this moment in my life is a miracle.
Busy Philipps: I love Summer’s resilience, her openness, her ability to try. On the surface, it’s a loud, blond, excitable woman who maybe doesn’t have the brightest takeaway, so I have to find the under layer of sadness and depth. I was fascinated by the idea of a person who was stuck at a certain age, in a certain place, and was having just a really difficult time moving forward. Getting to try again for these girls forces Summer to live in the present, as opposed to being able to remain in the fantasy of what it was.
Paula Pell, from left, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Sara Bareilles and Busy Philipps star as a reunited musical group in “Girls5eva.”
(Heidi Gutman / Peacock)
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On female solidarity in show business:
Goldsberry: If you’re around this long, the only way you made it is because you did not see another woman as competition, you saw a sister. That’s the formula for surviving this thing. Even if our experiences are different, another woman can look at you and in their eyes it’s, “I’m here. You’re not alone.”
Pell: Now, when there are creators, directors, producers that are female, bringing together genuine female stories, you see the power of it. How much people love it. For years, I’d pitch something and was told, “Would 14-year-old boys like that?” Then “Bridesmaids” happened and those same executives, all they talked about was “I want it to be like ‘Bridesmaids.’” You know what “Bridesmaids” was? About female friendship. And everyone loved it.
Bareilles: It’s making me think about the music industry in particular, though. I’ve had experiences where it was either you can be pitted against this person or not. And I am not competitive in any way at all. I would much rather be in alignment. I do think in music, especially right now, I’m sensing a little regression, which is why it’s great to name it. So I agree with you 1,000%. If you want to exist for a long time in this industry, the only way to move forward is to make friends with other powerful, beautiful, creative women.
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Philipps: I came up with so many actresses I was constantly testing against, and these girls are still my close friends. The trick society always tries to pull, in every industry, is that there’s only room for one — but there’s room for 17 men. Culturally, we’re all battling that. And I just heard about someone pitching a show about four women and [the response was], “We actually just bought a show about four women.” And that does feel like a bit of a backslide because of the constriction of this industry right now.
At the centre of Madhuvidhu directed by Vishnu Aravind is a house where only men reside, three generations of them living in harmony. Unlike the Anjooran household in Godfather, this is not a house where entry is banned to women, but just that women don’t choose to come here. For Amrithraj alias Ammu (Sharafudheen), the protagonist, 28 marriage proposals have already fallen through although he was not lacking in interest.
When a not-so-cordial first meeting with Sneha (Kalyani Panicker) inevitably turns into mutual attraction, things appear about to change. But some unexpected hiccups are waiting for them, their different religions being one of them. Writers Jai Vishnu and Bipin Mohan do not seem to have any major ambitions with Madhuvidhu, but they seem rather content to aim for the middle space of a feel-good entertainer. Only that they end up hitting further lower.
After more than two and a half years of research, planning and construction, Dataland, the world’s first museum of AI arts, will open June 20.
Co-founded by new media artists Refik Anadol and Efsun Erkılıç, the museum anchors the $1-billion Frank Gehry-designed Grand LA complex across the street from Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. Its first exhibition, “Machine Dreams: Rainforest,” created by Refik Anadol Studio, was inspired by a trip to the Amazon and uses vast data sets to immerse visitors in a machine-generated sensory experience of the natural world.
The architecture of the space, which Anadol calls “a living museum,” is used to reflect distant rainforest ecosystems, including changing temperature, light, smell and visuals. Anadol refers to these large-scale, shimmering tableaus as “digital sculptures.”
“This is such an important technology, and represents such an important transformation of humanity,” Anadol said in an interview. “And we found it so meaningful and purposeful to be sure that there is a place to talk about it, to create with it.”
The 35,000-square-foot privately funded museum devotes 25,000 square feet to public space, with the remaining 10,000 square feet holding the in-house technology that makes the space run. Dataland contains five immersive galleries and a 30-foot ceiling. An escalator by the entrance will transport guests to the experiences below. The museum declined to say how much Dataland, designed by architecture firm Gensler, cost to build.
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An isometric architectural rendering of Dataland. The 25,000-square-foot AI arts museum also contains an additional 10,000 square feet of non-public space that holds its operational technology.
(Refik Anadol Studio for Dataland)
Dataland will collect and preserve artificial intelligence art and is powered by an open-access AI model created by Anadol’s studio called the Large Nature Model. The model, which does not source without permission, culls mountains of data about the natural world from partners including the Smithsonian, London’s Natural History Museum and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. This data, including up to half a billion images of nature, will form the basis for the creation of a variety of AI artworks, including “Machine Dreams.”
“AI art is a part of digital art, meaning a lineage that uses software, data and computers to create a form of art,” Anadol explained. “I know that many artists don’t want to disclose their technologies, but for me, AI means possibilities. And possibilities come with responsibilities. We have to disclose exactly where our data comes from.”
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Sustainability is another responsibility that Anadol takes seriously. For more than a decade, Anadol has devoted much thought to the massive carbon footprint associated with AI models. The Large Nature Model is hosted on Google Cloud servers in Oregon that use 87% carbon-free, renewable energy. Anadol says the energy used to support an individual visit to the museum is equivalent to what it takes to charge a single smartphone.
Anadol believes AI can form a powerful bridge to nature — serving as a means to access and preserve it — and that the swiftly evolving technology can be harnessed to illuminate essential truths about humanity’s relationship to an interconnected planet. During a time of great anxiety about the power of AI to disrupt lives and livelihoods, Anadol maintains it can be a revolutionary tool in service of a never-before-seen form of art.
“The works generate an emergent, living reality, a machine’s dream shaped by continuous streams of environmental and biological data. Within this evolving system, moments of recognition and interpretation emerge across different forms of knowledge,” a news release about the museum explains. “At the same time, the exhibition registers loss as part of this expanded field of perception, most notably in the Infinity Room, where visitors encounter the 1987 recording of the last known Kauaʻi ʻŌʻō, a now-extinct bird whose unanswered call becomes part of the work.”
“It’s very exciting to say that AI art is not image only,” Anadol said. “It’s a very multisensory, multimedium experience — meaning sound, image, video, text, smell, taste and touch. They are all together in conversation.”
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