Entertainment
When 'English Teacher' wanted to tackle jocks in drag, Stephanie Koenig said, 'Pick me, coach'
![When 'English Teacher' wanted to tackle jocks in drag, Stephanie Koenig said, 'Pick me, coach' When 'English Teacher' wanted to tackle jocks in drag, Stephanie Koenig said, 'Pick me, coach'](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/66a5217/2147483647/strip/true/crop/8185x4297+0+581/resize/1200x630!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F89%2Fde%2F671da0c54edc8d5cb198e00833bc%2F1472158-et-0827-stephanie-koenig-english-teacher-cmh-09.jpg)
Stephanie Koenig first met Brian Jordan Alvarez 11 years ago, when they were both cast in a UC Santa Barbara student film, although both were already out of college. Their friendship was instant.
“We were making each other laugh so hard, and you could just feel it,” Koenig said in a recent video interview. “It was kismet. I remember leaving that night and going to my car, and I knew that I had met a good friend and something really special was happening.”
It’s still happening, except on a much bigger stage. When Alvarez created “English Teacher,” the new FX comedy in which he plays a gay teacher navigating the politics of a high school in Austin, Texas, he picked his frequent web comedy collaborator Koenig to play fellow teacher Gwen Sanders.
The daffy-but-sharp best buddy of Alvarez’s Evan Marquez, Gwen is infused with can-do optimism and an energy that would be right at home in a classic Hollywood screwball comedy. Koenig also wrote one of the season’s best episodes, “Powderpuff,” which runs Monday after the pilot (both episodes will be available to stream on Hulu). It gleefully demonstrates one of the series’ strengths: a deft ability to wrap a hot-button issue — in this case, drag — in a friendly package without watering anything down.
In FX’s “English Teacher,” Stephanie Koenig stars as Gwen Sanders alongside her friend and frequent collaborator Brian Jordan Alvarez, who plays Evan Marquez.
(Steve Swisher/FX)
Koenig, fresh off her strong supporting dramatic performance as the go-along-to-get-along Fran in Apple TV+’s “Lessons in Chemistry,” now has a major platform to show off her considerable comedic chops, including a knack for physical comedy that feels like a natural outgrowth of countless hours as a competitive dancer growing up in Rochester Hills, Mich.
Asked whether she and Alvarez share a sense of humor, Koenig deadpans: “No, we don’t.” But it’s pretty obvious they’re on the same comedy wavelength. After a decade of collaborating, including multiple web projects, the besties are now sharing the spotlight, and the classroom.
Asked what makes Koenig funny, Alvarez flipped the script in a video interview: “What doesn’t make her funny? Everything she does is funny,” he said.” “She just has these thoughts that you see in her eyes, and it just makes you laugh and laugh.”
He also praised her abilities as a performer. “She and I often talk about how the best acting is something that we wouldn’t be able to re-create if we were prompted to; [its] just some little series of expressions that come from real thoughts that the camera picked up on,” he said. “She does so much of that. She’s so free on camera, but she’s also so reliable.”
![A woman with red hair in a green suit leans on a wood fence.](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/e94a741/2147483647/strip/true/crop/5106x7354+0+0/resize/2000x2881!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fa6%2Fa3%2F97d139f14e599a08bed740179bac%2F1472158-et-0827-stephanie-koenig-english-teacher-cmh-13.jpg)
Brian Jordan Alvarez on his co-star Stephanie Koenig: “She just has these thoughts that you see in her eyes, and it just makes you laugh and laugh.”
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
Plus, he adds, “her writing is exceptional.”
Indeed, it’s her writing that drives “Powderpuff.” It stems from a tradition popular in Texas (and in the Midwest, where Koenig grew up), in which high school girls face off on the football field, and the football players dress up as cheerleaders.
Drag shows have become a conservative bête noire in Texas, condemned by some as a bad influence on today’s youth. But in “English Teacher,” it’s a student LGBTQ+ group that complains, arguing that the jocks are cross-dressing as a joke and undermining students who are actually trans or nonbinary.
So when the football players come to Evan for help, he decides that the guys are going to be “authentic and respectful in their performance” while going “full out.” Enlisting the help of a local drag queen named Shazam (played by real-life drag superstar Trixie Mattel), he gets the guys to go beyond just wearing dresses and applying makeup. Meanwhile, the school’s football coach, Markie (Sean Patton), brings in Gwen to coach the powder-puff players. Except after he hears about the girls’ fears and listens to a true-crime podcast, the practice turns into self-defense demonstrations that end with some variation of “boom, you’re dead.” “Powderpuff” intercuts these sessions with the drag lessons in a dual-montage sequence set to Laura Branigan’s ’80s anthem “Gloria.”
Stephanie Koenig as Gwen and Sean Patton as Markie in the “Powderpuff” episode of “English Teacher.” “When it was time to do the outline and pick who was going to write the specific episode, I was like, ‘Pick me, coach,’” Koenig said.
(Steve Swisher/FX)
“It’s a beautiful image to see a bunch of jocks dressing in drag and just dancing,” Koenig said. “It was all just very exciting. When it was time to do the outline and pick who was going to write the specific episode, I was like, ‘Pick me, coach.’”
The episode also demonstrates the series’ refreshing tendency to zig when you expect it to zag. “What the show does so well is take a topic that people have opinions about, but then it goes the opposite way that you’d expect,” Koenig said. “It’ll take a left turn. This episode was obviously something that was going to work with that approach.”
There’s also a little behind-the-scenes irony in the gridiron scenes. Where Gwen is portrayed as inept in the ways of football, Koenig and her sister actually learned to play from their father (“He wanted boys, but he got two girls,” she said).
As a youngster, however, Koenig spent most of her time practicing jazz dance. She studied drama at Michigan State University, and after graduating in 2009, she moved to New York, figuring she would try to crack Broadway as a means toward a film career.
“I waited in those non-equity lines at 4 in the morning in the freezing cold,” she said. “I was living in a railroad apartment in Queens and just was like, ‘This is it.’” Then, her boyfriend at the time gave her some valuable advice. If she really wanted to act in movies and television, move to Los Angeles. She did when she was 23.
“I don’t have any regrets,” she said. “But I do wish somebody had told me earlier: ‘No, no, no, just go straight to L.A.’ You have to be here for such a long time to get your footing, and to move here when you’re 23 is playing catch-up.” (In fact, the shoot for this story took place at the Escondite in downtown L.A., where she worked as a server while trying to catch her break.)
![A woman with red hair in a green suit leans against a framed image of buildings.](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/3b67267/2147483647/strip/true/crop/7927x5266+0+0/resize/2000x1329!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fac%2F32%2Fc7ca16d942b3b077c09117608f12%2F1472158-et-0827-stephanie-koenig-english-teacher-cmh-17.jpg)
Stephanie Koenig, at the Escondite, where she worked while trying to break into Hollywood. “You have to be here for such a long time to get your footing, and to move here when you’re 23 is playing catch-up.”
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
She met Alvarez soon after she arrived, picked up roles in shows including “The Offer” and “The Flight Attendant” and wrote and directed a spy movie spoof (2021’s “A Spy Movie,” starring herself and Alvarez) for the web. A pilot collaboration with Alvarez came close to getting picked up but fell short. Then came “English Teacher.”
In a sense, both Koenig and Alvarez are poster children for the YouTube age. They got their work out to a loyal audience chunk by chunk, including the absurdist comedy series “Stupid Idiots” (written and directed by Koenig, starring Koenig and Alvarez). When it was time to make bigger moves, they were polished and ready.
“I’m so grateful for YouTube,” Koenig said. “We were able to find our own fans. I’m grateful that I didn’t work really early on in the industry, because I had to use my voice in order to be seen and get work. I had to direct and write. I had to put myself in my own things and just show what I could do.”
![](https://newspub.live/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/np-logo.png)
Movie Reviews
Movie Review: ‘Reagan’ | Recent News
Nobody is going to mistake cut-rate biopic “Reagan” for a great movie. At best, it’s a pretty standard greatest-hits collection of important moments in the former President’s life. At worst, it’s a laughably underfunded production made by people who, for whatever reason, want to sell America on Ronald Reagan in 2024. But the movie is not always at its worst. It’s a subpar movie that I think some critics are mistaking for a terrible movie.
Reagan’s life story is told by former KGB agent Viktor Petrovich (Jon Voight) as he teaches a young Russian politician about the mistakes the Soviet Union made in underestimating Reagan in the 1980’s. Petrovich understands his enemy so well that he can have flashbacks to Reagan’s childhood, where the takeaway is that his faith got him through family drama. Then he became a lifeguard, where he mostly “saved” women who weren’t really drowning, and really saved others before they knew they were drowning. Petrovich observes that Reagan forever remained a lifeguard.
It’s not long before we get to Reagan as an adult, played by Dennis Quaid. Sadly we don’t see much of his acting career (this movie could have really used a monkey), but we do see him as an increasingly-frustrated commercial pitchman as his career fizzles out. We also see his marriage to Jane Wyman (Mena Suvari) fall apart. But things perk up when he becomes vice-president of the Screen Actors Guild. Not only does he meet his wife Nancy (Penelope Ann Miller) through the position, but he learns that political-type leadership might be his strong suit. After that, it’s the California governorship, a failed run at the Republican Presidential nomination in 1976, and then of course, the Presidency in 1980.
As President, Reagan bravely gets the economy back on track, survives an assassination attempt, and negotiates a near-end to the Cold War. And he does it with all the charisma that a talented actor like Dennis Quaid can bring to the role. There is barely any mention of scandals like Iron-Contra or the controversial War on Drugs or Reagan’s reluctance to address AIDS. Yes, this movie is a pro-Reagan puff piece, one whose goal is almost certainly to get Americans excited about a Republican President just a few months before an election. It’s a pretty transparent political tactic, but I’d rather get positive productions like this instead of the ugly documentaries that accompanied the 2012 and 2016 elections.
The movie doesn’t creep into “memorably, hilariously bad” territory as much as some people are saying. The makeup in most scenes is tolerable, except for one in a hospital bed where the poor makeup is clearly struggling with gravity while Quaid is lying down. At that point, his face might as well be one of those creepy puppets from the Genesis “Land of Confusion” music video. Ill-advised cameos from Pat Boone (as a preacher talking to Reagan, next to Chris Massoglia playing a young Boone) and Creed frontman Scott Stapp (as Frank Sinatra, though I thought it was just some gaudy cover artist until the credits) go by too quickly for them to register. In fact, the same can be said for many historical figures in this movie, they’re in and out before their role in the Reagan’s life or administration is clear.
This brings me to the thing I liked most about “Reagan” – the pacing. It’s not “good” pacing in that I won’t argue with critics who say the movie is too rushed and choppy. But at the same time, I’m grateful for the way that the movie skips briskly along, whether it’s appropriate or not. Reagan led an action-packed life, and an aggrandizing biopic like this could have gone three, maybe four hours. I know this is a cold compliment, but the movie will have to settle for it since I don’t have many other nice things say: I left the theater feeling like I’d gotten off easy.
Grade: C
“Reagan” is rated PG-13 for violent content and smoking. Its running time is 135 minutes.
Robert R. Garver is a graduate of the Cinema Studies program at New York University. His weekly movie reviews have been published since 2006.
Movie Reviews
Wolfs: Brad Pitt, George Clooney in laid-back comic thriller
![Wolfs: Brad Pitt, George Clooney in laid-back comic thriller Wolfs: Brad Pitt, George Clooney in laid-back comic thriller](https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/og_image_scmp_review/public/d8/images/canvas/2024/09/02/b322f52e-7718-4e8a-9d5e-d3d46a88f2d8_8e7cd11b.jpg?itok=VE7zHZ_O&v=1725235416)
3/5 stars
Unveiled out of competition at the Venice Film Festival, Wolfs is a comic thriller that skates along primarily thanks to the laid-back bonhomie of its two stars, George Clooney and Brad Pitt.
These two long-time buddies, who first worked together in Ocean’s Eleven, are back playing rival “cleaners” in this New York-set tale. Both dressed in blacks and greys, uttering the same gnomic phrases, as Austin Abrams’ Kid points out, “You’re, like, basically the same guy.”
Neither Pitt nor Clooney has a name in the film, perhaps because their star power is so enormous we’ll only ever know them as Brad and George.
One chilly night in the Big Apple, Clooney’s fixer is called to a penthouse in a plush hotel by a shaken District Attorney named Margaret (Amy Ryan). In the bedroom is the Kid (Austin Abrams), who she thinks is dead, after he fell and crashed into a drinks trolley. Running a campaign to get tough on crime, the DA knows that if this gets out, it could ruin her.
Then Pitt turns up, it soon emerging he’s been hired by the hotel owner to clean up this mess. With identities compromised, it means that he and Clooney will have to work together, a job that becomes increasingly complicated when a bag of drugs is found and the Kid turns out not to be dead.
As set-ups go, it’s compelling enough, and kicks into gear when Euphoria star Abrams wakes up and makes a bolt for it, in just his underwear, through the freezing cold streets of the city.
You’ll find out next to nothing about the Clooney and Pitt characters, as their shadowy, lone-wolf status dictates. But Watts mines pleasing humour from his veteran A-listers (jokes about fading eyesight), and even includes the Bill Withers classic “Just the two of us” on the soundtrack.
Weighed down by a plot that is entirely secondary – the whole backstory as to why the Kid has a stash of drugs, and who it belongs to, feels almost incidental – Wolfs is the sort of slick, empty-headed entertainment that Hollywood (or in this case Apple) does well enough.
![Brad Pitt (left) and George Clooney in a still from Wolfs. Photo: Sony Pictures.](https://img.i-scmp.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=contain,width=1024,format=auto/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/2024/09/02/3a52de19-255b-469b-83b7-4e7c8af5b092_dab7fc58.jpg)
Abrams is charming as the innocent caught up among the high rollers, while Ryan is excellent in her extended cameo. As for Pitt and Clooney, well, they bring the sizzle if not the surprises.
Wolfs will start streaming on Apple TV+ on September 27.
Entertainment
Seeing 'Chimp Crazy' led PETA to urge criminal charges against Tonia Haddix
![Seeing 'Chimp Crazy' led PETA to urge criminal charges against Tonia Haddix Seeing 'Chimp Crazy' led PETA to urge criminal charges against Tonia Haddix](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/0e63c47/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3000x1575+0+0/resize/1200x630!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Ffb%2Fb1%2Fd413009d4cea95b31f38b1a0c601%2Fchimp-crazy-tonia-haddix-0.jpg)
The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That’s the oath Tonia Haddix swore to uphold in January 2022, when she logged into a Zoom court hearing to deny that she had anything to do with the disappearance of a famous chimpanzee.
During the proceedings, Haddix tearfully recalled how she’d found Tonka — one of seven apes whose care she’d overseen at a former chimp breeding facility in Missouri — dead the previous May. Sitting in front of her laptop at her home near the Lake of the Ozarks, Haddix became so overwhelmed with emotion during her testimony that a judge interrupted her racking sobs and ordered a 10-minute recess for her to compose herself.
Shortly after court came back in session, a verdict was announced.
“It is my belief that Ms. Haddix makes things up,” said Missouri Senior District Judge Catherine D. Perry. “But does that convince me that Tonka is alive and she has hidden him? No, it does not.”
Haddix mumbled her thanks and slammed her screen down. A huge grin spread across her face as she pumped her fists in the air.
“We won, guys. We f— won,” she said, looking around at a film crew who had been shooting the whole thing for the HBO Max docuseries “Chimp Crazy.”
“You won for now, though,” her husband noted.
“Yeah, but we gotta just keep him hidden.”
Haddix and Tonka the chimp in Max’s “Chimp Crazy.”
(HBO)
It’s one of the most astonishing moments in the series — and that’s saying something, considering the documentary, directed by “Tiger King’s” Eric Goode, features a woman describing how she breastfed her chimp. It’s when the audience realizes that Haddix, 54, in fact kidnapped Tonka just before he was about to be relocated from the Missouri facility to an ape sanctuary in Florida. As she lied in court about his supposed death, Haddix was sitting right above Tonka, who she had hidden in a basement cage.
With the third episode premiering Sunday, Haddix’s lies on that Zoom call raised the question: Will she face any legal ramifications for her actions?
After Tonka was eventually located and seized in June 2022, the judge in Haddix’s case with the animal rights group wrote to the assistant U.S. attorney to suggest a criminal investigation into Haddix and her husband, Jerry Aswegan.
The government has yet to prosecute either Haddix or Aswegan, though PETA continues to push for charges. Brittany Peet, the PETA Foundation’s general counsel for captive animal law enforcement, sent a letter to the assistant U.S. attorney about a month before “Chimp Crazy” premiered last month to detail the extent of Haddix’s lies in the series. (Peet is interviewed in the docuseries and had access to early screeners.)
In the letter, Peet said that the nonprofit was told the attorney’s office “has thus far declined to move forward with charges against Haddix because you felt you lacked sufficient evidence to prove that the chimpanzee who was removed from Haddix’s home on June 5, 2022 was actually Tonka.”
Peet proceeds to describe scenes in “Chimp Crazy” that she believes provide “incontrovertible proof” about Tonka’s identity, noting that “it is even more urgent to proceed with charges now that Haddix’s blatant and unrepentant perjury and obstruction is about to be broadcast to a national audience.”
If charged with and convicted of perjury, Haddix could face up to five years in prison, with up to an additional year in prison if charged and convicted with obstructing court orders.
Carrie Costantin, the assistant U.S. attorney to whom the complaints about Haddix were addressed, did not respond to a request for comment from The Times. Haddix, meanwhile, did not answer multiple phone calls and messages seeking an interview.
![A woman in a pink outfit stands in front of a mini-golf place.](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/330035a/2147483647/strip/true/crop/2500x1410+0+0/resize/1200x677!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F72%2F1d%2Fd78b8d464f78a87ee62474daf4b6%2Fchimp-crazy-tonia-haddix.jpg)
“Chimp Crazy” depicts Haddix lying about Tonka’s whereabouts during a 2022 virtual court hearing.
(HBO Max)
PETA would also like the U.S. Department of Agriculture to terminate Haddix’s Animal Welfare Act license. This license allows her to operate her Missouri zoo, Sunrise Beach Safari, where guests can hold sloths, see kangaroos and feed llamas. The permit also enables her to sell exotic animals through her business Primarily Primates, LLC. During her court case with PETA, Haddix declared that she makes approximately $80,000 per year selling creatures like caracal wildcats, Asian small-clawed otters, Egyptian fruit bats and African crested porcupines.
In September 2023, an enforcement official at the Animal Plant and Health Inspection Service — the division of the USDA that administers licenses — said in an email that the agency did not believe Haddix was fit to keep her credential after she “repeatedly provided false information and false statements to a government agency pertaining to the ownership of animals.”
The USDA did not respond to an inquiry regarding the status of Haddix’s license, which expires in September 2025.
After “Tiger King” was released on Netflix in 2020, many of its subjects had their licenses terminated by the USDA. Peet told The Times she’d complained to the organization about big cat owners like Joe Exotic and Jeff Lowe for years, but it was only after “Tiger King” that “it forced their hand because we were able to get international press on animal welfare complaints.”
![A man feeds a tiger with a bottle](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/fd2dfa0/2147483647/strip/true/crop/2840x1893+0+0/resize/1200x800!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Ffa%2Fc8%2F81b8d89a4b14a74c5e2e756d8665%2F121118-0972-20jepa-r.jpg)
Joe Exotic in “Tiger King.”
(Courtesy of Netflix)
The final punishment Haddix could face for her involvement with Tonka would come from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. If the bureau determined that her treatment of the chimpanzee violated the Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Department of Justice could bring a case against her. If found guilty, Haddix could face up to a year in prison and/or a fine of up to $50,000.
The USFWS did not respond to a request for comment.
Peet said she believes there is strong evidence to suggest Haddix’s behavior breached the law protecting Tonka.
“You’re not allowed to cause an endangered species physical, psychological or veterinary injury,” the lawyer said. “In other cases, judges have found solitary confinement of a social species, failing to provide animals with appropriate enrichment, diet and enclosures — those things violated the Endangered Species Act.”
-
Connecticut1 week ago
Oxford church provides sanctuary during Sunday's damaging storm
-
Politics1 week ago
2024 showdown: What happens next in the Kamala Harris-Donald Trump face-off
-
Politics1 week ago
Why won't Pennsylvania voters have results on Election Night?
-
World1 week ago
Portugal coast hit by 5.3 magnitude earthquake
-
Politics1 week ago
With 13 days until voting starts, 'election season' kicks off sooner than you think
-
World1 week ago
Solingen stabbing: Three killed in attack at Germany festival
-
World1 week ago
French police officer injured in synagogue arson attack
-
Politics1 week ago
Trump sets intense pace with campaign events as questions swirl about Harris' policy positions