Lifestyle
A Quirky Auction to Support Crew Members Affected By the Writers Strike
A typical Hollywood charity auction, like the Baby2Baby Gala, might consist of beauty sessions with sought-after dermatologists, autographed books and set memorabilia, and the occasional five-minute photo op. It might also be closed to the public, available only to those connected individuals who can afford to bid richly.
The charity auction organized by the Union Solidarity Collective, a group of writers and directors who came together this year to help crew members affected by the Writers Guild strike, is trying something different: It offers dozens of quirky experiences, many featuring hidden talents of celebrities that have little to nothing to do with their current career paths. (For example: The “Oppenheimer” actor David Krumholtz has pledged to donate a three-song Zoom serenade to the highest bidder.)
The strike, now in its fourth month, has left writers and crews without paychecks and health care coverage. All of the net proceeds from the T.U.S.C. charity auction will go to the Motion Picture & Television Fund’s crew health care fund. Qualifying crew members (those with less than $10,000 in assets) can enroll for a $350 grant, which — depending on their income — can help cover most if not all of their monthly insurance costs.
“Right now the W.G.A. is on strike, and SAG is on strike. At the end of the day we’re going to get a better contract that’s going to give us different levels of money,” said the actor and comedian Paul Scheer, who donated a meet-and-greet for his popular podcast “How Did This Get Made?” “But the crew members who are not negotiating with us because they’re on a different cycle — they’re just losing work and there’s no benefit there.”
Many of the listings have bids of thousands of dollars. Ms. Dunham’s mural, which must be painted in Los Angeles, New York or London, is currently going for $5,100. “I really hope whoever wins my mural is prepared to give me a lot of coffee, tell me about their life in detail so I can translate that into colors and shapes — and that it can be its own new bonding experience,” Ms. Dunham said in an email.
John Lithgow, the Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning actor who donated an original watercolor dog painting, said he’d painted numerous pet portraits for other silent auctions. “I was going to be an artist until I heard too much applause, and then I became an actor,” he joked.
The set crews, he said, “work harder than we do: They’re two hours before we arrive and they leave an hour or two after we’re finished, and they don’t have a trailer to retire to 20 times a day.”
The auction, which started on Sept. 13 and runs for 10 days, is one of the many ways in which the members of T.U.S.C. have tried to help their projects’ crew members stave off financial hardship. In July, the group organized a fund-raiser in Los Angeles featuring a performance by the band Fishbone, which, coupled with another small celebrity auction on the website Give Butter, raised $315,000. .
T.U.S.C. is a “scrappy, very democratic organization” with “no hierarchy and nobody in charge” said the writer and producer Liz Benjamin, whose credits include “Dead to Me,” “Bridgerton” and “The Black List.”
Ms. Benjamin, the actress and filmmaker Amy Seimetz the writer Aviva Yael and the filmmaker Moira Fett have been helping to plan, organize and advertise the T.U.S.C. auction, courting celebrity contributions and working with Matchfire, an auction management service, to get each item up and running.
Other items and experiences up for bidding include having Mr. Lithgow paint a watercolor of your dog, a half-hour visual story basics lesson from Ms. Dunham and Spike Jonze, and an in-person dinner with the “Mr. Show” creators David Cross and Bob Odenkirk, which is currently going for more than $9,000. “I cannot believe how unique and special each item is,” Ms. Benjamin said.
Ms. Benjamin said T.U.S.C. is planning to continue to add listings in the coming days, including an “online experience” with the actress Nicole Kidman and the director Lulu Wang, and the chance to play 30 minutes of online Mortal Kombat I with the Hollywood couple Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon.
Having the auction be uncharacteristically open to the public is part of T.U.S.C.’s marketing strategy. “The fan base of a Brit Marling sweatshirt goes so far beyond people who work in Hollywood,” said the director Susanna Fogel. “They’re probably just big fans of the show who live anywhere, and now they can have access to information about what our work force is striking for.”
As with anything celebrity related, the listings come with plenty of fine print: “The winner may invite up to two additional friends and the session can be recorded but please no questions about personal lives,” reads the listing for Ms. Dunham and Mr. Jonze’s master class.
“Respect for talent and their staff will be expected at all times,” all of the listings warn. “Inappropriate behavior or solicitation for personal gain by the winner could result in the immediate conclusion of the experience with no refund. The talent has the right to end the experience at any time, for any reason, with no refund. A background check for the winner may be required.” Bidders willing to spend more than $2,000 must also undergo a prequalification process run by Matchfire.
Of course, the auction has spawned plenty of reactions (and memes); some featured Photoshopped listings people wished would be auctioned off.
Even the T.U.S.C. members participating in the auction have their own dream listings. “I know that I suggested this: Would Nicole Kidman walk through an AMC theater with someone?” Mr. Scheer said, referring to Ms. Kidman’s widely beloved (and oft-imitated) AMC movie monologue. “And maybe we’ll get her to do it. But if you could walk through that theater and just take a couple pictures with her — that’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
The auction has been up for about 48 hours, and it has already raised more than $93,000. “Our goal was $150,000,” Ms. Benjamin said. “I think we’re going to go well past that.”
Alexander Skarsgård in Murderbot.
Apple TV
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Apple TV
Alexander Skarsgård in Murderbot.
Apple TV
Murderbot is a very smart, very funny new sci-fi comedy series on Apple TV+. It stars Alexander Skarsgård as a cyborg who works security for a team of hapless, bumbling scientists exploring a dangerous planet. He’s hacked his own system and gained free will – a fact he tries to hide from them, even as he sardonically judges their naïve and foolhardy actions, and craves nothing more than to be left alone to watch his soap operas.
To access bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening for Pop Culture Happy Hour, subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+ at plus.npr.org/happy.
“This play is about a woman with a dream that no one around her understands,” Cole Escola says of their Tony-nominated play Oh, Mary!
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Grapevine PR
The Broadway comedy Oh, Mary! is an intentionally ridiculous reimagining of first lady Mary Todd Lincoln. It portrays her as having become addicted to alcohol, not because of the Civil War, but because she’s desperately yearning to become a cabaret star. For playwright and actor Cole Escola, the show is deeply personal.
“This play is about a woman with a dream that no one around her understands. A dream that the whole world is telling her is stupid and doesn’t make any sense. And I feel that way,” Escola says.
A native of Clatskanie, Ore., Escola describes their hometown as “1,500 people, lots of trees, and nothing much else.” Escola never imagined they’d one day star in a Broadway show.
“I was like, ‘Oh, OK, so if I want to be an actor, I’m going to have to go to school and learn how to move less gay and talk less gay and play these boring boy parts,’ ” they say. “And I was, like, I don’t think I want to do that.”
After moving to New York City about 20 years ago, Escola became involved in the city’s cabaret and alt comedy scenes. One day, while walking around Lincoln Center, their mind drifted towards the president’s widow.
“I had the thought: What if Abraham Lincoln’s assassination wasn’t such a bad thing for Mary Todd?” Escola says. “And it was just an idea that tickled me so much.”
Escola began to imagine a “second chapter” for Mary Todd Lincoln, an idea that evolved slowly over 12 years. In 2024, Oh, Mary!, starring Escola in the title role, debuted off-Broadway. It’s since transferred to Broadway, where it received five Tony nominations.
“I can’t believe that my big break came from doing what I wanted to do, like not compromising,” they say. “June 21st is my last performance, and I’m slowly starting to wrap my head around the whole experience and I will say I’ve been crying a lot.”
Interview highlights
On being surprised by the success of Oh, Mary!‘
I always assumed that if I ever had any sort of “real career success” I would be the gay best friend on a sitcom. … I mean, who would ever think, like, “OK, Cole, a play where you’re in drag playing Mary Todd Lincoln as a wannabe cabaret star — I think you should pursue this as a big Broadway hit.” I mean, absolutely not. We were, like, over the moon that we got eight weeks at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. And I still think that’s really cool. I can’t believe that we did get that. But I still can’t really wrap my head around it.
On handing off Oh, Mary! to Betty Gilpin and Tituss Burgess to star in the show for limited engagements in 2025 while Escola took a break from the role
I was scared. I was afraid for all the reasons. Like, what if they don’t quite get it? I was just scared because I didn’t know what to expect. And then the way that they both embraced this role, like, it was their dream role — is so satisfying. … As someone who was always begging their friends to like, “Please be in my movie,” like, “Can we please make this little movie? Can we please put a skit together for the talent show?” To now have two of my favorite actors in the world, Betty Gilpin and Tituss Burgess, who are both so deep and so funny, take on a role and love it as if it was given to them by Mike Nichols or George Cukor, it’s like I can’t think of a better feeling.
On being inspired by their grandma’s stories
She told this story a lot about her 10th birthday when she found out her dad had a stroke and died, working in some sort of mine in Canada. And then there was also a story about how she really couldn’t see, her eyesight was really bad, but her family couldn’t afford glasses. But then one day a doctor came to town and gave her a free pair of glasses. These aren’t great stories. It was always the way that she told them and the details and the way she disappeared into the story in the telling of it. … And just the seriousness. I’m laughing because I’m just now realizing it was a cabaret act. I’d never put that together. That was my first exposure to cabaret was hearing my grandmother with Alzheimer’s retell me stories about her childhood in Alberta, Canada.
On getting started in community theater
My first professional acting job was in a production of Grapes of Wrath. I played Winfield Joad and it was in a town 30 miles away from Clatskanie, where I grew up. And during that time, my grandmother lived in a nursing home, and it was close, and it was much, much, closer to the theater than where I lived, so some nights after rehearsals I would stay over at her nursing home. … I wasn’t sure that I was allowed to be there. Like, I knew I could visit. I was pretty sure I wasn’t allowed to spend the night, but I did anyway, and it was weird. I was lying to so many adults just so that I could be in this play. I think I lied to my mom, and I told her like, “Oh no, the play feeds us.” And meanwhile, I wasn’t eating, because I knew if I said, “I need money for food,” she would say, “Well, we can’t do that. I’m sorry, you can’t do this play.” And I lied to the adults in the play saying, like, “Oh yeah, I can stay with my grandma in the nursing home so I can [stay] late at rehearsal.”
On making comedy videos when they first got to New York
I was miserable. I was truly suicidal. I was bulimic. And I was walking around near Bloomingdales, and I remember I was having these thoughts about not wanting to be alive. And then I started having those thoughts, of a character’s voice, a voice not unlike my grandma and her friends. And I came up with this character, Joyce Conner, who was a really sort of cheery, innocuous middle-aged woman who was just kept having to put off her suicide because so many things kept popping up over the weekend. For some reason that was, like, this huge release valve. Like, it both allowed me to feel what I was feeling, but also relieved me from feeling burdened by what I was feeling.
Lauren Krenzel and Anna Bauman produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
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