Summer is an ideal time for podcast listening, I think. The weather’s nice, which makes for plenty of opportunities for a long stroll while chugging through your audio playlist. You’ll likely do some traveling, which generally involves hours of dullness as you soar down the highway or through the sky. A favorite show could accompany you as you stretch out on a blanket, sunglasses donned, thinking about how chill life is.

All of these podcast-listening opportunities obviously need podcasts to go along with them. If your regular-rotation shows aren’t quite doing it for you, or you just want some new voices in your earbuds, try one — or all! — of these 11 quality shows. 

“On She Goes”

If you already love Aminatou Sow from the popular “Call Your Girlfriend” podcast, add this one to your lineup. “On She Goes” focuses on travel stories and advice for women of color, in order to both empower and serve as a practical resource. Even if travel plans aren’t in your immediate future, the stories Sow highlights will inspire your sense of adventure.

Listen on Apple Podcasts or SoundCloud.

“The Pitch” and “Pitch Makeover”

It’s “Shark Tank”’s world, and we’re just living in it. Fans of the ABC show, or recent readers of Doree Shafrir’s Startup, will dig these two entrepreneur-minded shows. “The Pitch,” from Gimlet, follows a business founder hoping to get funding in each episode. The concept for “Pitch Makeover” is pretty straightforward: It’s like a fashion makeover, but for business pitches. In each episode, the hosts listen to an entrepreneur give their elevator pitch and offer thoughtful critiques on what to highlight and what to skip.

Listen to “The Pitch” on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher.

Listen to “Pitch Makeover” on Apple Podcasts or PlayerFM.

“Nancy”

Come to WNYC’s “Nancy” for the thought-provoking and heartfelt stories about the LGBTQ experience, stay for the hosts Kathy Tu and Tobin Low, who provide hilarious and lovable banter at the top of each episode. We recommend you start at the beginning: In Episode 1, Tobin and Kathy get their moms on the phone to discuss coming out, and it’s heartwarming and -breaking in equal measures.

Listen on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher.

“Very Bad Words”

Chances are you’ve uttered a curse word or two in the last 24 hours, but have you stopped to think about why we use obscenities the way we do? This new linguistics show brings you close-up with people who have thought way more about “shit” and “fuck” and their many uses than you have. There’s only one episode out so far, but it will give you a new appreciation for any lovable foul mouth who crosses your path.

Listen on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher.

“Reading Glasses”

As an avid reader, I am 100 percent the target audience for this kind of podcast, a new addition to the bookish internet. The two hosts discuss ways to read better with each episode. So far, they’ve discussed how to break out of a reading slump and how to cut through the new arrivals to find a book you’ll love. They also share what they’re reading — Borne by Jeff VanderMeer and Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders were two titles mentioned — so you’ll get ideas for your next library trip.

Listen on Apple Podcasts or Maximum Fun.

“Stoner”

It was only a matter of time before the podcast world got a smart, compelling show about none other than marijuana, and “Longform” podcast co-host Aaron Lammer is the one behind it. Lammer chats with filmmakers and musicians alongside scientists and activists about the changing shape of weed in America. It’s a compelling new addition whether you puff or pass.

Listen on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher.

“Terrestrial”

While we often hear about climate change on a larger scale, what does it mean when it comes down to the individual? Ashley Ahearn ponders that question by going around the U.S. to learn personal stories that come from a changing environment. In the few episodes already released, she covers eco-anxiety, composting one’s body and the ethics of having children in the midst of global warming. A recent review on iTunes called the podcast a blend of “Radiolab” and “Planet Money,” which feels right — an informative show in a sound-rich and powerful audioscape.

Listen on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher.

“Ear Hustle”

This is one podcast that’s undeniably unique in its premise. Earlonne Woods, Antwan Williams and Nigel Poor work to put together a podcast — all from within San Quentin State Prison. Both Woods, a co-host and -producer, and Williams, the sound designer, are serving out yearslong sentences, while Poor is a visual artist who works with incarcerated individuals. The glut of prison-centric shows (“Prison Break,” “Orange Is the New Black”) proves there’s an audience who wants to hear what goes on behind bars, and “Ear Hustle” aims to share real-life stories of what it’s like.

Listen on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher.

“Hi-Phi Nation”

Philosophy is a topic that can feel inaccessible to some. That’s not the case for this podcast, hosted by Vassar philosophy professor Barry Lam, which extrapolates philosophical inquires from real-life situations. In the first season, Lam explores the philosophy of war, religion, parapsychology (think: ESP and clairvoyance) and more, first approaching each big question with a relatable anecdote and going from there.

Listen on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. 

“Part-Time Genius”

There’s a whole subgenre of podcasts meant to make you feel just a little bit smarter, or at least have a tidbit or two to share about face mites or computer security at parties. “Part-time Genius” from HowStuffWorks is an enjoyable addition to the list. So far, the hosts have explored questions worthy of Reddit’s ShowerThoughts community with humor, history and insight: How much sleep humans really need, the curious runaway success of Ayn Rand and whether it’s possible to be too clean are just some of the topics covered thus far.

Listen on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher.

Psst! HuffPost has some great podcasts of our own. Feel free to check out the new “IVFML,” about a couple trying to conceive, or our “Bachelor” franchise recap show, “Here to Make Friends.”

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In the real world, anonymous street artist Banksy is about as close to a masked superhero as there is. Only instead of saving the world, he critiques and satirizes the ugly truths of contemporary life with graphic imagery that will make you laugh before leaving you with an uneasy feeling in your stomach. 

For years, civilians have fancied themselves amateur sleuths after his true identity, offering up one potential name after another, most of which were discredited after a short spurt of internet chatter. 

Except this time, Banksy’s identity was alluded to by a slip of the tongue. And the accidental nature of the information coming out gives the impression that this grand Banksy reveal may actually be the real thing. 

The news came during a podcast interview between English musician DJ Goldie and poet and musician Scroobius Pip on Pip’s podcast Distraction Pieces on Tuesday. Goldie, when discussing the street artist, said this: 

Give me a bubble letter and put it on a T-shirt and write ‘Banksy’ on it, and we’re sorted. We can sell it now. No disrespect to Robert, I think he is a brilliant artist. I think he has flipped the world of art over.

The name Robert raised eyebrows, immediately recalling journalist Craig Williams’ theory, published in 2016, that Banksy was in fact Robert del Naja of trip-hop group Massive Attack, a friend of Goldie’s born and raised in Bristol. 

To corroborate his theory, Williams traced Banksy murals and exhibitions as they popped up around the world, noting that most emerged just before or after Massive Attack performed at a destination close by. For example, when Banksy’s work appeared in Australia in 2003, Massive Attack was touring the country.

Further evidence: Del Naja was known to be a graffiti artist himself ― at least allegedly ― eventually leaving visual art behind to pursue music. According to Williams, Del Naja “is held in high regard as one of the pioneers of the stencil graffiti movement, helping to bring hip-hop and graffiti culture to Bristol in the 1980s. And his work has been featured on all of Massive Attack’s record sleeves to date.”

If Del Naja is indeed Banksy, he’s certainly an overachiever, being not only one of the greatest musicians of all time ― at least according to Rolling Stone ― but also perhaps the most hyped visual artist of the contemporary moment. 

In 2016, Del Naja responded to the flurry of Banksy rumors by cryptically telling a concert crowd “We are all Banksy.”

We are still waiting for his response this time around.

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“Transformers 5” is probably best summed up by the person sitting beside me through the critics screening this week.

“That was ... an experience,” she said.

Yeah, it certainly was.

The “plot” ― which has something to do with a floating alien queen, dragon robots and Mark Wahlberg becoming a knight ― is too complicated to try to think about. And the dialogue, such as when Josh Duhamel approaches a giant alien ship and says something like, “Oh my God, a giant alien ship!” is perhaps a little too much at times.

Despite all that, the overall experience makes this the best “Transformers” movie since Michael Bay’s original ― and that has a lot to do with Sir Anthony Hopkins.

Though a role in the movie seems like a bizarre choice for the actor, he is the knight in shining armor for “Transformers: The Last Knight.” Hopkins steals every scene and brings charm and laughs to an otherwise confusing movie.

This makes what happens to his character all the more baffling.

(Warning! “Transformers 5” spoilers ahead.)

(OK, seriously. Big, huge, major spoiler.)

In the movie, Hopkins’ Sir Edmund Burton has sort of a robot butler named Cogman. During an emotional scene toward the end of the film, Burton is dying, and Cogman says goodbye, telling him of all the people he’s served, Hopkins’ character is “the coolest.”

Whoa. Wait. What?

Anthony Hopkins is lying there, and you call him “the coolest”?

The line drew some unintentional laughs from the audience, though it seems innocuous enough, unless you know this one fact about Hopkins ...

He hates the word “cool.” (We mean haaaaates it.)

I learned this the hard way.

Let me take you back to 2016, when I was a young, eager journalist (not so young but eager ... and a journalist) interviewing Hopkins over the phone for Starz’s “The Dresser.”

I had just asked Hopkins if he had any plans to do other screen adaptations of plays. He said that he may be doing one for “King Lear.”

That’s when I made an unforgivable error. I said that sounded “cool.”

Hopkins was not pleased.

“What’d you call it? You called it ‘cool’?” he said, “What is ‘cool’ about it? You tell me, what does ‘cool’ mean?”

Dear God, no.

The moment after that seemed like an eternity. I reevaluated my life, going back through all the past mistakes that led me to this point. I shant repeat the same foibles again!

Then, like an idiot, I answered:

“‘Cool’ is just slang for ‘that’s really awesome.’”

(“What the hell are you saying?” I thought in my head. “‘Cool’ is slang for ‘awesome’? Can you hear yourself?”) 

Hopkins didn’t like that response either.

“Well, what does ‘awesome’ mean?” he said.

This time I pulled it together. 

“Awesome means it gives you a lot of joy because it’s an enjoyable event,” I said, not quite sticking the landing, but at least getting my point across.

Hopkins preached:

”[Someone] says, ‘Where’d you get those shoes?’ [They] said, ‘They’re awesome.’ What’s ‘awesome’ about? We have a whole new language. Everything’s ‘cool’ or ‘awesome.’”

After all that, I finally got in another question.

“What slang do you use for when you enjoy something other than saying ‘awesome’ or ‘cool’?”

The actor relented a bit:

“Oh, I’m just teasing,” he said ...

... before lamenting the deterioration of the entire English language.

“It’s funny that ‘cool’ is a word that covers everything or ‘awesome,‘” he continued. “To me, it doesn’t make much [sense]. What’s happened to the language of our culture, you know? It’s either ‘cool’ or ‘awesome.’”

Getting called out by Anthony Hopkins was awkward (so awkward ... so, so awkward), but it was a learning experience. Sir Anthony taught me to never neglect your audience, resist the temptation to rest on old habits and, above all, that he hates the word cool.

Noted.

Now, let’s go back to 2017. I’m sitting in the “Transformers 5” screening and the robot butler calls a dying Sir Anthony Hopkins “the coolest.”

Many thoughts ran through my head, but I kept coming back to one:

“Not cool.”

How come Cogman gets away with it? Why is he allowed to say “cool”? But, more importantly, how could the movie do this to Hopkins?

You have Anthony Hopkins — check that ... SIR Anthony Hopkins — the guy who’s carried your whole movie, and while he’s lying there lifeless you call him “the coolest”? You call him the word Hopkins seems to blame for the downfall of modern society?

It just doesn’t seem very cool.

“Transformers: The Last Knight” is now in theaters. 

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For Tori Scott, no song reflects her thoughts on America’s divided political climate more than Queen’s “The Show Must Go On.”

“It’s about trying to come to terms with what’s happening and keep on moving forward. It symbolizes, I think, the moment right now,” the singer, actress and comedian told HuffPost. “We have to keep moving and getting through all of this bullsh*t.”

Scott featured the song in her New York cabaret performances this spring, which have been captured for posterity on her new album, “Tori Scott: Plan B! Live at Joe’s Pub.” HuffPost got an exclusive first listen to “The Show Must Go On,” and it’s safe to say Freddie Mercury would be proud of Scott’s take on his 1991 hit.

Listen to “The Show Must Go On” below. 

The album, which also features songs made famous by Annie Lennox, Kings of Leon and Madonna, is quintessential Scott, whose mix of diva-esque belting and raunchy jokes have garnered her a loyal gay following.

She emerged on the New York cabaret scene after years of trying out for Broadway musicals like “Hairspray” proved fruitless. Seeking an opportunity to perform outside of an audition room, she teamed up with co-writer Adam Hetrick of Playbill and music director Jesse Kissel to create a one-woman show she felt would find humor in “things I’ve experienced that I think a lot of people deal with, whether it’s drinking too much or putting my foot in my mouth.” 

Five years after her first cabaret evening, Scott finds herself in what appears to be a bit of a creative blitz. In addition to her new album, the Texas native, 37, is gearing up to hit the road this summer with a series of concerts that will include her first-ever performances in England. First up, however, is “Making America Gay Again,” her much-anticipated Pride weekend show at New York’s Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater.

Watch Scott perform a Miley Cyrus/Judy Garland mashup below, then scroll down to keep reading.  

“I’d say that this is the gayest show, though some people would argue that every show I do is gay,” Scott said. Her set, she explained, will be an “ultimate gay playlist” of tunes by Donna Summer, Beyoncé and more that will follow a “musical journey through my bad decisions, my life choices that I can laugh at, and the people in my life — especially gay men — who enable me.”

It’s fitting that Scott, who cites Bette Midler and Margaret Cho as influences and has been billed as a “[Judy] Garland for the Grindr era,” would dedicate her Saturday performance to “celebrating — and making fun of — the gay men in my life.”

But “Making America Gay Again” won’t just be 90 minutes of pure levity. While performing on a gay cruise through the Caribbean in February, Scott spoke with men who had lived in the closet for much of their adult lives. The experience, she said, helped refresh her perspective on the LGBTQ community’s ongoing struggles, and gave her Pride performance a new focus.

“You really take for granted the way New York allows everyone to live however they want,” she said. “I wouldn’t have a career if it weren’t for gay men. So this year in particular, I want to be able to celebrate everyone’s bravery and struggle, and put a spotlight on what is right.”

Tori Scott performs “Making America Gay Again” at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater in New York June 24. Head to Joe’s Pub for more details, then head to Scott’s website for additional dates. 

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THE AIR THAT I BREATHE

“I didn’t know what I wanted to do next, but I knew I wanted to do something that was really beautiful.” 

Sofia Coppola’s movies reveal her contradictions. She is a director whose Hollywood inauguration was a birthright, thanks to an illustrious family tree and a luckless child-acting stint she never wanted. Fleeting youthfulness lies at the center of her stories: the troubled teens in “The Virgin Suicides” and “The Bling Ring,” the aging actors adrift in “Lost in Translation” and “Somewhere,” the callow duchess thrust into notoriety in “Marie Antoinette,” and now the repressed boarding-school denizens in “The Beguiled.” Her characters seek better horizons, but Coppola is nothing if not resolute, sophisticated, singular.

In the words of “Bling Ring” star Israel Broussard, Coppola has a “motherly essence and gracefulness.” According to “Virgin Suicides” matriarch Kathleen Turner, who also co-starred with Coppola in the 1986 comedy “Peggy Sue Got Married,” “She gives you a lot of freedom, but you feel she knows what she wants.” Stephen Dorff, the “Somewhere” headliner in whom Coppola spotted a “vulnerability” that no other director saw, waxes about her observant and “confident” disposition. Bill Murray, who netted his only Oscar nomination to date for “Lost in Translation,” has been known to call her the Velvet Hammer. 

Not many filmmakers can claim palettes ― or personas ― as idiosyncratic as Coppola’s. She is known for getting the performances she wants from her actors and the sun-splashed aesthetics she wants from her cinematographers. She can take on the gravity of the French Revolution or the Civil War, imbuing a contemporary milieu that might make you forget you’re watching a period piece. She has tackled the insularity of suburbia and the disconnectedness of a metropolis, ensuring you relate to both. Every time you think you know Sofia Coppola, she challenges your assumptions, while still maintaining a fixation on adolescence’s ephemerality and the inhibitions that accompany maturity. 

“The Beguiled,” which opens in limited release June 23, is more contained than her previous features, taking place entirely at the Miss Martha Farnsworth Seminary for Young Ladies. The institution’s resources have grown scarce as the Civil War roars on, invoking a malaise that defines the Coppola catalog. 

″‘Somewhere’ was an exercise in how minimal we could make that movie and still have it be a movie,” she said during our recent interview in New York. “The script was not even a script — it was like 30 pages and it was just very, very simple. After ‘Marie Antoinette’ was so decorative and so many people, I wanted just to strip down how simply you could make a movie. That was the thinking. And then after ‘Bling Ring’ was such an ugly world, I wanted to do something beautiful. That was the starting point for ‘The Beguiled.’”

AGE OF CONSENT

“Sometimes I can’t just relax and enjoy a book without looking at it as something to adapt, which is annoying because I enjoy just reading books.”

Across her six movies ― seven if you count the hourlong Netflix holiday special “A Very Murray Christmas” ― Coppola has adapted novels fixated on young women, told poignant original stories of self-rumination and depicted larger-than-life episodes from history. 

Coppola, 46, never wanted to do a remake, but she gravitated toward “The Beguiled” after her production designer recommended the vampy 1971 original directed by Don Siegel and starring Clint Eastwood as an injured Union soldier being nursed to health at the New Orleans boarding school. The few girls and women who remain there are transfixed by the mystifying man’s presence.

Siegel’s version, derived from a Thomas P. Cullinan novel that Coppola dismisses as “pulpy,” portrays the headmistress Miss Farnsworth (played by Geraldine Page) and her students as erratic and feral ― “crazy,” as Coppola puts it. While watching them plant seeds of flirtation and seduction, Coppola pondered what a less masculine perspective would entail, though she swears she’s not the type to consider what she would have done had she directed whatever movie she’s experiencing. 

“I just wanted to connect with each character on a human level, so I just tried to think about what it was like for her,” Coppola said, referring to Farnsworth, brought to life in this rendition by Nicole Kidman’s commanding subtlety. “I wanted her to have dignity and be attractive. Just because she’s older doesn’t mean she needs to be crazy. And also just because they have desire, that shouldn’t be something crazy either — that should be something human and natural. In the other one, they had to become perverted. She had an incest story, and there’s a lesbian dream montage. Maybe it’s just the style of that time and that point of view, but I wanted to make her more human and relatable.”

These are, after all, women who have been subjected to a sort of finishing academy. They’ve read manuals on how to behave like a proper lady, what men expect from them, where their places in society lie. Played by Coppola veterans Kirsten Dunst and Elle Fanning, along with a handful of lesser-known young actresses, the characters engage in a battle royal, each pining for the affection of the interloping soldier (Colin Farrell, more strapping than ever).  

“The Beguiled” harks back to Coppola’s 1999 debut, “The Virgin Suicides,” in which five 1970s teenage sisters shelter their sexuality inside a suburban Michigan home run by parents who implement similar Victorian confinements. The frilly white frocks adorning “The Beguiled” resemble the pale floral gowns the Lisbon sisters don on prom night, not long before collectively ending their lives. Josh Hartnett’s cool Trip Fontaine, who turns heads as he glides down the school’s halls like a true magic man, is to “The Virgin Suicides” what Farrell’s Corporal John McBurney is to “The Beguiled.” 

Jeffrey Eugenides, the Pulitzer winner who wrote the novel on which “Virgin Suicides” is based, emailed Coppola to say he was “excited” she was adapting “The Beguiled,” a movie he loves. “I feel like there must have been something that he had in the back of his mind — there’s some relation” between the two stories, she said.

Despite our conversation about the threads that travel throughout her work, Coppola has no idea what anyone says about her online and in magazines. Her stories, largely centered on privileged white people, have inspired a derby of think pieces and Twitter debates, but Coppola is “too sensitive” to engage with those who accuse her films of, say, favoring style over substance. In fact, when I mentioned the passionate debates surrounding her work and its relation to her life as the daughter of the Hollywood legend who directed the “Godfather” trilogy (and the cousin of Jason Schwartzman and Nicolas Cage), she responds with her typical “Oh!” Your opinions about Coppola, whatever they may be, are likely to take her by surprise. It’s almost as if ― imagine! ― she is not here to substantiate critics. Her characters are always searching, just as she sought an identity independent of the biography that so many of us scrutinize. (She once started a fashion line and studied painting at the California Institute of the Arts. She has since helmed music videos, commercials and an opera.)

“I’m flattered that anyone’s thinking about that,” she said, indicating no desire to elaborate.

JUST LIKE HONEY

“I think about a young audience. I want them to have something. I never understood why movies for teenagers didn’t look good or weren’t good quality.”

On and off movie sets, Coppola is known for her gentle hand. She can come across as aloof, but during our time together earlier this week, her eye contact was warm and she seemed game to discuss whatever topic arose, even if she doesn’t necessarily enjoy annotating her own work. 

“She appears almost passive,” Kathleen Turner told me. “She kind of lets things happen and then says, ‘Hmm, nah, that’s not quite how I saw it’ or ‘That’s not quite what I was thinking.’ There’s no outright criticism, per se, or it’s so seldom that it’s very surprising if there is.”

With that temperament, actors want to give her what she’s looking for. It’s why Dunst has returned to Coppola’s charge time and again, and why the elusive Bill Murray became an unlikely muse for her as a screenwriter, and why the image-conscious Emma Watson went total Valley Girl sleaze in a what felt like a left turn after “Harry Potter” and “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.”

Working with her costume designers and art directors, Coppola gives her casts photographs and films to study. For “The Bling Ring,” a story about real Los Angeles teens who preyed on opulent celebrity homes, she asked Watson and the other actors to watch heist capers like “Ocean’s Eleven.” For “The Beguiled,” Coppola looked to Roman Polanski’s “Tess” and David Hamilton’s ethereal photos of girls.

To create a Southern Gothic mood, smoke machines cast a fog over the Louisiana plantation’s oak trees. Coppola imagined a rich backstory for the manor that houses the Martha Farnsworth Seminary, once the site of antebellum balls. “It had its grand days,” she said. “The party’s over.” 

Therein lies a key theme coursing through Coppola’s work: The party is over. It was over for Murray’s and Dorff’s fame-fatigued slouches in “Lost in Translation” and “Somewhere,” respectively. It came to a fatal end in “Marie Antoinette,” and a legally and spiritually fraught stopgap in “The Bling Ring.” In the case of “The Virgin Suicides,” the party could never begin. In a bold move that’s rare for a mainstream Hollywood debut, teen girls were ascribed a sort of ennui and restraint that regularly haunts adults. 

“When I was starting with ‘Virgin Suicides,’ I wanted to make something about young women because I felt they weren’t always depicted in a way that I could relate to,” she said. “Besides [John Hughes movies like ‘The Breakfast Club’ and ‘Sixteen Candles’], there were always 35-year-olds playing teenage girls.” 

Despite numerous childhood and young-adult screen credits ― including her infamously derided turn as Michael Corleone’s daughter in “The Godfather Part III” and an appearance in Madonna’s “Deeper and Deeper” video at age 21 ― Coppola blanches at the notion that she herself was something of a child starlet. Regardless, she clearly has a kinship with young actors and actresses that feeds into her recurring themes surrounding the power of youth.

Israel Broussard, for example, said she’d make the “Bling Ring” cast run and jump up and down before a scene to “get the heart racing.” Coppola said she employed the same tactic on “The Beguiled,” ordering the actresses to dash around in their characters’ nightgowns to prepare for a scene in which they’re hysterical. 

Such anecdotes speak to the essence of a Coppola set. Kidman may be one of the few older actresses with whom Coppola has collaborated, but the idea of her sprinting though a New Orleans mansion ― which, by the way, belongs to actress Jennifer Coolidge ― conjures up an image of girlhood, fleetingly recaptured just as Sofia would want it.

CROWN ON THE GROUND

“I just want my movies to do well enough so I can keep making movies.”

In Hollywood, Coppola has been given what some might call a blank check. Few directors can make virtually any movie they want without interference from the studio backing the project. Coppola, who maintains final-cut approval, has said that securing the necessary financing for “The Beguiled” ― a reported $10 million ― wasn’t easy. Nonetheless, she has avoided the box-office litmus test that plagues many women, whose misfires are not granted the free pass their male counterparts enjoy. 

Coppola’s highest-grossing film is easily “Lost in Translation,” which opened in 2003 and collected $119.7 million worldwide (in addition to Oscar nods for Best Picture and Best Director; she was the first American woman nominated for the latter). Despite 2010′s “Somewhere” petering out at $13.9 million and 2013′s “The Bling Ring” stalling at $19.1 million, she’s continued her track record, making a movie every three or four years.

Some of that goodwill was inevitably aided by her father’s legacy, even though Coppola’s work stands on its own. But Coppola only cares about ticket revenue insofar as she wants assurance that she can continue to work with the same freedom. (In 2015, she exited Disney’s live-action “Little Mermaid” reboot, which she would have filmed underwater, because the studio wouldn’t grant her creative license.) This time, however, she’s more invested in the profits.

“It would be fun if [‘The Beguiled’] is successful, just because there’s such a feeling right now with ‘Wonder Woman’ being a hit,” she said. “Ours is not on that scale, but it would just be nice for female-driven stories. The studios don’t always think that’s a valid audience, which it is. [...] So in that way, I hope it does well.” 

Understanding that the marketing of films is a commercial art unto itself, and that any project’s success is dependent on it opening at the right time and reaching the right demographics, Coppola was disappointed that the “Beguiled” trailer gave away so much of the plot. It’s advertised as a standard thriller, featuring an “over-the-top” score that doesn’t appear in the film, a nearly music-free production that’s striking for someone associated with eclectic soundtracks. She does, however, love the posters and T-shirts with “vengeful bitches” scrawled in cursive, a reference to one of Farrell’s lines of dialogue. In an odd moment of cross-brand synergy, “Real Housewives of New York” cast members posted Instagram photos wearing the shirts and promoting the film’s release date. 

Setting aside her family name and the strain of being a woman in a male-monopolized industry, Coppola’s distinctive visual flair and languid pacing are key to the creative immunity she has attained.

“Sofia also has an uncanny ability to communicate her vision in a few incredibly evocative and well-chosen words,” Sarah Flack, who has edited Coppola’s movies since “Lost in Translation,” wrote in an email. “I often tell directors that I can get them from A to Z (from the dailies to a cut scene, or from one version of a scene to another version, or a new version of the film) if they just tell me what Z is. They don’t have to figure out how to get to Z with the footage we have ― that’s my job ― as long as they know what Z is. Sofia not only knows what Z is at all times, but she can describe Z in the most perfect way.”

Coppola is the rare woman who invites few, if any, comparisons to her male predecessors and equivalents. Having long ignored her father’s advice to “say ‘action’ louder so they know you’re in charge” (and survived just fine, thank you very much), Coppola doesn’t need a penetrating presence in Hollywood’s macho auteur club or dazzling box-office returns to make the movies of her choosing. She simply needs her own biography, displaced and refracted upon each endeavor.

We faithful peasants will continue to eat her cake.

“The Beguiled” opens in limited release June 23 and expands nationwide June 30.

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It’s pretty obvious that female hosts aren’t a top priority when it comes to late night. Actually, Samantha Bee is the only woman featured in the lineup of men, which includes Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, James Corden, Seth Meyers, Conan O’Brien, Trevor Noah and John Oliver. 

“I’m lonely here,” Bee put it simply in an interview with the “Today Show.” 

Well, as it turns out, Bee could have had some company with actress and comedian Jane Lynch, who revealed to HuffPost that she pitched her own program to CBS when they were looking to hire for “The Late Late Show.” (The job obviously went to James Corden, whom Lynch is a big fan of, FYI.) 

I will say that CBS did ask me to come in and pitch them something for late night, before they got James Corden, and I went in with a dumb idea and I kind of regret it.
Jane Lynch

During a Build Series interview, Lynch told us that she’d “love” to host a late-night show, it’s just that women aren’t chosen for the positions.

“I’m a little long in the tooth, I think, in the wrong sex right now, but that’s OK. If it were offered and it looked like it was going to be fun [I’d do it],” Lynch said of the possibility. “I will say that CBS did ask me to come in and pitch them something for late night, before they got James Corden, and I went in with a dumb idea and I kind of regret it. I said, ‘You know, it’s late night, let’s just have a five-piece band, no studio audience and maybe one or two guests. Maybe even people [who are] not celebrities. Maybe somebody who’s just interesting.’ And their eyes were glossing over as I was telling them and I wish I said, ’I have an idea! We’ll do like “The Graham Norton Show.”′ And I would be working at CBS late night right now!” 

Still, Lynch is very impressed with the hosts currently airing in the evening, expressing her particular interest in “Late Night with Seth Meyers.” Although she gets a little wary of sharing her political ideals, she respects those who have the guts to take down the current administration.  

“I’ll tweet politically every once and a while ― you just got to be careful, for me anyway. I’d rather sit around and talk to people without a microphone about what I think is going on and what I’m afraid of. In a way, I don’t want to get involved in that in a public way,” she said. “But I’m really grateful ... I think Seth Meyers is just killing it. He just stepped up, if you get a chance to see, his ‘Closer Look’ [segment], which he’s doing more of. It used to be once every couple of weeks and now almost every night he’s doing a ‘Closer Look.’”

For now, Lynch is happy to represent women hosts in the current game show revival. Believe it or not, she is, in fact, the only woman hosting one of these shows on network television: NBC’s “Hollywood Game Night.” (Good news: “So You Think You Can Dance” host Cat Deeley does front “Big Star Little Star,” on cable network USA.)

″‘Hollywood Game Night’ might have started this revival, but there’s still no more female hosts, I’m the only one. There’s just kind of an inability to open up the mind, I think, to females hosting things and I think the same thing with late night,” the Emmy-winning host said. “Samantha Bee is in there and she’s doing such a great job, but I love what the guys are doing so I have a hard time saying, ‘Why did we have to go across the pond to get James Corden?’ Because he’s awesome. He’s really good. Trevor Noah, too. He’s wonderful.”

Let’s get Lynch on late night, shall we? 

For more with Jane Lynch, watch her full Build interview below: 

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Warning: spoilers ahead!

Because Season 1 of “The Handmaid’s Tale” ended in the same way as its source material ― with its heroic central handmaid Offred being escorted out of her assigned home, either by the corrupt government or by the burgeoning resistance group ― Season 2 seems shrouded in mystery.

We have a few predictions: Offred (Elisabeth Moss) will visit the environmentally toxic colonies; she’ll stray further from her husband, Luke, before they’re reunited.

On Thursday, Hollywood Reporter shared news that sheds light on next season’s plans: Alexis Bledel, who plays Offred’s confident Ofglen, will return for at least one more go-around.

At the end of last season, Ofglen was presumed dead ― at least by Offred, who witnessed her attempt to steal a car in the middle of a farmer’s market. Before that, Ofglen was mutilated by Gilead officials, punished for her sexual orientation.

So, what does the return of Ofglen mean for Season 2? It could be that Ofglen is actually a member of the resistance, an underground group that Offred will learn more about in coming episodes.

In Atwood’s 1985 novel, the story stays close in on Offred and her small attempts to find joy in language and the quiet details of the world, as well as her memories. It’s effective, but perhaps not enough fodder for a multi-season drama. So, showrunner Bruce Miller has said that he’ll deviate from the book, while staying true to its spirit and intentions.

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There are lots of awesome Harry Potter-themed products for babies ― from onesies to bibs to nursery decor. But if you’re pregnant, you don’t have to wait until your baby is born to get in on the action.

Moms-to-be can enjoy a variety of maternity shirts and baby shower products inspired by the wizarding world. 

In honor of the 20th anniversary of the first Harry Potter book, we rounded up some of the best options on Etsy. Keep scrolling for some magical gift ideas for pregnant women. 

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Nickelodeon heartthrob Jace Norman got his start with a single appearance on “Jessie.” From there, he rose through the ranks to nab a leading role on “Henry Danger.” This year, Jace won the Kids’ Choice Award for Favorite Male TV Star. And last month, it was announced that “Henry Danger” is getting its own big screen adaptation. Huge things on the horizon for Norman, but more importantly ... who would he like to personally slime? Find out his answer below.

How did you first get started acting?

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Hello, world.

We have some news for you about Harry Potter, a book series you might have loved very much when you were a child.

Yes, you read that right, this groundbreaking information that may just shatter your world is about Harry Potter.

The book series that may have inspired you to ink this tattoo ...

... Or this tattoo ...

... Forever and ever on your body for eternity, because the characters, themes and moral compass present in the books shaped the very fiber of your being.  

We’ll give you a moment to settle in before revealing this new information. You may want to grab a cup of tea or snuggle up in with a Crookshanks type of furry friend.

OK, are you ready for this?

Great.

So, it turns out that The Boy Who Lived had lived before. 

Or at least someone with the same name.

In a Pottermore entry, author J.K. Rowling revealed that in her magical wizarding world, there are technically two Harry Potters. (Though the post was created in 2015, it’s recently gained traction online.)

The author wrote:

Henry Potter (Harry to his intimates), was a direct descendant of Hardwin and Iolanthe, and served on the Wizengamot from 1913 - 1921.

She also wrote:

Henry caused a minor stir when he publicly condemned then Minister for Magic, Archer Evermonde, who had forbidden the magical community to help Muggles waging the First World War.

 And this was also mentioned:

His outspokenness on the behalf of the Muggle community was also a strong contributing factor in the family’s exclusion from the “Sacred Twenty-Eight”.

It should be noted that the “Sacred Twenty-Eight” are the families in the wizarding world that were still “truly pure-blood” by the 1930s.

Rowling goes on to say that O.G. Harry had a son who was called Fleamont Potter, who married Euphemia. Together they had a son, named James.

James then married a Muggle-born woman named Lily Evans and they had a son named Harry — the Harry Potter in the book series.

So, basically, the info everyone is freaking out about is that Harry Potter’s great-grandfather’s name was also Harry Potter.

Yeah.

But the information about why the Potter family was not included in the Sacred Twenty-Eight and that Harry descends from a line of wizards who stand up against discrimination is pretty cool.

Here’s just hoping — for the sake of humanity — that there’s more than one Hermione Granger out there in the world.

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As if having cancer isn’t awful enough, many of the things people say ― however well-meaning ― can really sting.

Most friends and family are likely coming from a good place when they offer their sympathy or advice to someone with the disease. But as artist Matthew Mewhorter, who dealt with cancer himself, points out, these platitudes often don’t have their intended effect.

“I don’t want them to feel pity or guilt, but just be better informed,” he told HuffPost. “There’s so much misinformation about the cancer experience in the media and Hollywood, which has a negative effect on the way cancer [patients] are treated in real life.”

Mewhorter summed up the emotionally taxing experience of dealing with people trying to cheer up cancer patients in the comic below:

Mewhorter, who has been in remission for two years following a stage II rectal cancer diagnosis, channeled his experiences with the illness into his artwork. He created a series of comics like the one above called Cancer Owl, which details the everyday realities of living with and fighting the condition. He draws both his own stories and the stories of others who reach out to him.

“My therapist originally proposed that I art journal my experience and share it with others as a form of self care,” Mewhorter said. “I started drawing an owl with cancer in my hospital bed after my first surgery, and it just felt right. Drawing cute animals with bright colors made talking about cancer easier somehow.”

It’s estimated that more than 1.5 million people were affected by cancer in 2016. Mewhorter hopes his artwork helps people dealing with the condition to find some relief and community through humor about their illness.

“I hope it helps cancer patients and survivors not feel so alone,” he said. “I hope they feel permission to laugh in the middle of their situation, and consider a perspective that has given me vitality and hope in the midst of suffering.”

Head over to Cancer Owl to see more of Mewhorter’s comics.

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Aside from the one-of-a-kind storylines presented in the hit Netflix show “Orange Is the New Black,” the cult series also stands out from other mainstream shows for its depiction of characters from diverse racial, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds. 

Actress Amanda Stephen plays Alison Abdullah, a black Muslim woman who represents one of several marginalized groups viewers see in the series. 

Stephen spoke with HuffPost on Tuesday about the pride she takes in representing such a rarely portrayed demographic. 

“I’m proud to be playing Alison Abdullah, a black Muslim here in America,” said Stephen, who doesn’t practice Islam in her personal life. 

Muslim characters on TV are so often typecast as terrorists that even former President Barack Obama once felt compelled to call out the media’s stereotyping. 

“Our television shows should have some Muslim characters that are unrelated to national security. It’s not that hard to do,” the 44th president said during his visit to a Baltimore mosque in February 2016. 

While having a Muslim TV character without a terror-related storyline is rare in itself, it’s even rarer for such a character to be a black woman. Stephen noted this lack of representation, saying she can only recollect one instance of seeing someone in that role on television. 

“Regina King playing a Muslim woman in ‘American Crime’ was really the first time I’d seen a modern African-American black Muslim woman played and it showed so many different layers of her,” she said. 

“Any underrepresented group deserves to be represented ... entertainment and arts is supposed to be a reflection of society,” Stephen continued. 

But there is one thing that differentiates King’s and Stephen’s characters: Stephen’s Alison Abdullah is in prison. 

“Having a black Muslim inmate is just saying, ‘Whatever your preconceived notions of black Muslims are, hey, this is her story. Hey, maybe by seeing her story you’ll start to think more about seeing a black Muslim lady walking down the street and think about what her story is.’”

And she believes “OINTB” is doing its part to encourage this line of thinking. 

“I think ‘OINTB’ tries to find the humanity and similarities among us all on this earth and try to find more empathy amongst ourselves,” she said.

The actress, who posed for a political photo shoot in March and recently gave birth to her first child, is just as uncertain as the rest of us about how her character landed in prison. 

“I believe in my heart that ― because she’s bright ― I’m not sure if she did some kind of forgery,” she speculated. “I think something dealing with her [halal food] business [and] trying to make ends meet. So maybe she dabbled in something illegal to boost her business.”

We’ll just have to wait and see. 

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Jill Soloway knows how to make great television. That much has been established. But for Soloway, making TV isn’t just about creating something that receives critical praise ― it’s about changing the world. 

“For me, the belief that my TV show is going to change the world is a lot of what makes me wanna do it,” Soloway, who prefers gender-neutral pronouns they/them, said. 

Enter “I Love Dick.”

The Amazon series, created by Soloway and Sarah Gubbins, is based on the feminist, semi-autobiographical novel of the same name by Chris Kraus. The show centers around Chris, played by the incredible Kathryn Hahn. After she and her Holocaust scholar husband Sylvere (Griffin Dunne) arrive in Marfa, Texas, Chris becomes obsessed with the eponymous Dick (Kevin Bacon). Dick becomes the object of her overwhelming sexual desire, and, ultimately, her artistic muse. It is a shifting of roles ― the man as object and muse, the woman as subject and creator ― that seems simple, but feels wonderfully radical. 

Much of what makes “I Love Dick” so special is the specificity of the dialogue and the stories, something that’s hard to separate from the show’s writers.

The writer’s room for “I Love Dick” was made up entirely of female and gender non-conforming people. In 2017, despite some progress, Hollywood remains overwhelmingly white, straight and male. And often, the lack of diversity that we see on screen can be traced to the people behind what’s on screen: the writers, producers, and directors. 

“I Love Dick” centers its women characters. (Though the show’s cisgender, straight, male characters, are also some of the most complex and fascinating I’ve seen on TV.) As HuffPost’s Priscilla Frank put it: ”‘I Love Dick’ is a triumphant scrambling of art and life, a ‘matriarchal revolution,’ a battle cry for any woman who has yearned to make something of herself, while only ever knowing how to criticize herself.”

In a political moment where it can feel as though everything is at stake, it’s easy to write off pop culture as frivolous ― something we consume to distract ourselves from the outside world, rather than impact it. But what if television isn’t just an escape? At its best, pop culture allows us, even forces us, to rework and expand our notion of what normal is. It lets us practice radical empathy without even realizing it.

HuffPost spoke with Soloway and “I Love Dick” co-creator, Sarah Gubbins, about the making of the show, and subtle revolution that comes from letting women and gender non-conforming people shape their own on-screen narratives. 

HuffPost: Did you go into the creation of “I Love Dick” knowing that you wanted to put together an all-woman and gender non-conforming writer’s room?

Jill Soloway: I’d learned, when we were looking for trans writers on “Transparent” that I couldn’t actually ever say, “I would like to hire a trans writer.” I had to say things like, “I would like to hire somebody who’s very familiar with the trans experience.” So, I guess I would say in this case, we wanted to hire people who we felt were familiar with the experiences that Chris [Kraus] had. And it turned out, of the people we spoke to, the people who were the most likely to write about this in the most fearless, bombastic, vulnerable human way ended up being all women and gender non-conforming people.

Cis men grow up assuming the world is meant for them and that they are the subjects. So as you start to move that and pull this subjectivity into femaleness, I think it makes men uncomfortable.
Jill Soloway

Sarah Gubbins: It wasn’t something where we said, “OK, when they pick us up and we put together a writer’s room, we’re going to make sure that it’s all women.” When Jill and I were talking about the kind of writers that we were interested in, whose work we are attracted to, and we thought would make great additions to the show, the list was a lot of women. At a certain point, we kind of looked at that and thought, “You know, I think we should just, uh, have an all female and gender non-conforming kind of room.”

I think what later emerged was as we were talking about the kind of show that we were making, and our hopes for the season, we knew that we were going to be bringing in the ways that Chris Kraus the author brought her own biography so intensely to the character of Chris Kraus. We knew that were going to be doing that in terms of when we were bringing our stories, and our experiences, and our point of views as it pertained to our genders. I think it just made sense. It actually was more nuanced than us just kicking it going, “Let’s only have chicks.”

What do you say to people who say it’s “unfair” or “discriminatory” to have a writers room without cisgender men in it?

Soloway: There’s a false equivalency that is a lot of people’s first response to these things. They say, “Well, isn’t that discrimination?” And I think, you have to really kind of knock that argument off ― or not knock off the argument, but take it in. You have to ask, “What are we doing when we create spaces that are all one anything?” And I think a lot of women feel like it’s about [creating a] safe space. And by safe space I don’t mean, “Oh, nobody’s going to offend my sensibilities,” because it was a really, really dirty room. And it’s not safe from being triggered, ’cause I’m sure, you know, there were all kinds of things that got said that were totally painful to hear and to say.  

So this when I want to talk about false equivalencies. Like if somebody was to say to Donald Glover [who put together an all-black writer’s room on ‘Atlanta’], “Oh, would it right for me to have an all white men writer’s room?” You’d have to be like, “Well, no,” because there has been all-white, male writer’s rooms since forever. And so again, I’m gonna do one last comparison. If somebody said to Donald Glover, “Hey, you just need at least one white guy in [the ‘Atlanta’ writer’s room]. You must have at least one guy in there to make sure that your content is dot dot dot, question mark.” To make sure that your content is what? Approved by white people? Makes sense to white people? That would be a totally insane thing to say. It would be an insane thing to demand. And so, for women, it’s the same thing.

Were there conversations that you think wouldn’t have happened had there been cis men in the writers room?

Soloway: I think a lot of women have grown up being told unconsciously, “Just be a little bit careful. Shape what you’re saying. Shade what you’re doing. Massage who you are just a little bit to make sure that men feel comfortable.” So when you don’t have that male perspective in the room, what happens is that women start to really relax and really let their guard down, and really take off that discernment that says, “Well, hold on a second. Don’t do that, ’cause that’s ugly.” Or, “Don’t do that because it’s too slutty.” Or, “Don’t do that because it’s too sad.” 

I think it felt like a relief for the women in the writers room to not feel like they were being kept in check by a guy, or multiple guys, who would be representing something that would so-called “normal.” I think we were trying to upend what normal meant. And a lot of the women in the writer’s room had been the only woman in another writer’s room.

Again, cis men grow up assuming the world is meant for them and that they are the subjects. So as you start to move that and pull this subjectivity into femaleness, I think it makes men uncomfortable.

Gubbins: I think there’s a line in the book: “What women say to each other is the most interesting thing right now.” I think there are very aware, dare I say “woke,” cis dudes that probably could participate in those conversations, and weave space, and be observers to what those conversations would be and not active authors. But I think it was easier that we weren’t negotiating that.

A lot has been written about how “I Love Dick” embraces the “female gaze.” Can you talk about what leaning into the female gaze meant to you in terms of the way the show came together? 

Soloway: I think my understanding of the binary is shifting and it feels a little bit reductive to just say the female gaze is the opposite of the male gaze. We know that “male gaze” means more than just a picture of a woman in a bikini. And we know that the “female gaze” means more than just Kevin Bacon’s butt as he goes into the water. I think of [the female gaze] as a filmmaking tool that I use.

Here’s a perfect example of what the female gaze is. You know that scene where Toby [an academic and artist studying in Marfa] was sitting in the middle of all those men? [Editor’s note: The episode shows Toby live-streaming herself laying nude in the middle of an oil camp.] Jim Frohna, who’s a man, he shot it and he did a great job. But when I watched it, there [was] something missing. And we went back and shot some more, and this tim he took his pants off and sat in his boxers in the middle of the circle as he filmed. He sort of became Toby. He wanted to record how it felt to be her, instead of look at her. It was amazing.

Gubbins: Every step of the way of making the show was an investigation into what it meant to try to enact the female gaze. I think it meant the way in which we actually made the show, the way we actually shot the show. The kind of set that Soloway has put together is an incredibly inclusive one where they really don’t rush. They don’t worry about time. They really just try to stay as emotionally honest and present as possible. It’s leading with those kinds of intentions and principles as a guide post.

I just don’t think there’s one easy definition for this is what the female gaze means, like “this is how you make a television show shot in the female gaze.” I think it’s intention, it’s process, it’s deliberation, and it, for me, always was about giving Chris Kraus agency and a voice. That also meant she wasn’t going to be contained in one rendition, and that she was going to be complicated, and sometimes frustratingly abject. She didn’t have to be an ideal for us. That’s part of broadening the idea of the protagonist.

Episode 5, “A Short History of Weird Girls,” which shows four female characters ― Chris, Toby, Devon and Paula ― speaking about their sexualities and sexual histories straight to camera, was a revelation for me. I really felt like I had never seen anything like it before. Can you talk a little bit about that episode?

Soloway: We were trying to get really granular, naming our moments of witnessing our younger selves and how we came into contact with the idea of sexual shame. And I think that in a room with all women, we felt compelled to tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Because we weren’t just trying to do that extra bit of shading that you start to do when there’s a cis man around.

Gubbins: We really started with the book, and we started with our responses to the book. In investigating the book, you really do spend time thinking about Chris’s history of desire and shame, and the shame that she felt in her sexuality, and her heterosexualness ― being a feminist, but also being so abject in her obsession. That led us down a path of talking about what our own personal histories were, and it led us back to childhood and when we first understood that we were sexual beings, and being sexualized, and our relationship to that.

Then Annie Baker and Heidi Schreck, [who wrote the episode], I remember they spent a weekend watching experimental films from feminist filmmakers. You really thought of giving voice to all the women, or major women characters in the show, in the ways that we were sharing those conversations about ourselves, our mothers, our sisters, our friends. So, that really is how the episode was born. 

Why do you think that in 2017, there’s still something jarring about seeing women’s desires laid bare?

Gubbins: Because we don’t see it. You think about the ways in which we’re accustomed to seeing violence, or we’re accustomed to seeing a hyper-sexualized female bodies, or desexualized intelligent female bodies. We have a tradition and a long history of bifurcating our female protagonist. It’s part of what our culture does to women. 

Even in the 40 years since Roe V. Wade, it’s like we still have yet to give women complete control of their bodies. I’m not [taking] a political position here, I’m just saying this is our culture. We have a vice president who won’t go to dinner with a woman, for fear that it might be somehow inappropriate to his marriage. This is someone who is leading our government. So, there is still space for that kind of bifurcation. So, I don’t think that when popular culture is reflecting what’s happening in our political climate that we’ve ever kind of come out the other side.

[Women are] hungry to be seen. It’s a basic human want.
Sarah Gubbins

Soloway: [“I Love Dick”] exists as a corrective for the way that so many young women see female bodies and sex, which is like, “My body has to be perfect. I have to hold my stomach in. I need to make the right kinds of noises. I need to make the right kinds of faces.” These things that kind of get in us when we’re teenagers about what sex is, and it really is about experiencing ourselves as the object while we’re having sex. 

These things don’t go away easily. They stay with us into our 20s, and they stay with us into our 30s. And you’re kind of always having to experiencing yourself through the eyes of others if you’re a woman in America. This is how we all grew up: This is sexy. This girl in Playboy. Then there’s some other kind of sex that other people might be having, and I don’t know what that is, but it’s gross. It’s not sexy, it’s gross. Everything that’s not a beautiful girl looking beautiful is disgusting. 

And so, sometimes it’s those little things. I think about what would it have been like for me if I were 19 or 20 and I was in college, and I had seen [the kind of sexuality that’s portrayed on “Dick”], not only on TV, but on TV with that stamp that says, “Yeah, this is a regular television show. This is just people. This isn’t anything weird.”

So, what power do TV shows have in expanding ― or limiting ― our ideas of what is possible and acceptable? 

Gubbins:  Pop culture allows a viewer to come in and exercise their imagination and to have an empathetic experience, be it through humor, through drama. That’s what we do when we consume pop culture. We have an empathetic exchange. By allowing people to experience the fullness of a very controlled gender dynamic, I think it allows them to alter their perceptions. There’s an engagement that they have with characters.

I think [TV can] demystify things that seem scary or are misunderstood. I’m thinking about the way in which gay culture has evolved, and the ways in which our representation of queer culture on TV has allowed for some sort of acceptance and normality at an accelerated rate that legislation alone couldn’t tackle. That’s a very positive belief, but I think it is the power of storytelling, and I think we have this great ability to entertain people, make them laugh, and make them feel things that they didn’t expect to. We get to do that, and we get to do it on a show where we get to represent ourselves. I think people, women especially, are hungry for that. They’re hungry to be seen. It’s a basic human want.

Soloway: There are so many shows that are hypnotic suggestions about how girls act and how women act. And those are things that make me crazy. I think about growing up on “The Love Boat,” watching “The Love Boat” and just watching the way an attractive man would be fought over by two really hot women. And sometimes, I can just get so enraged when I think about that as the writer of that show, writing his own propaganda of how he wishes the world were for him.

That writing really is propaganda for the self. I know it more than ever with “Transparent” and “Dick,” is that I’m a writing a reality. I’m writing a reality that I want to live in. And men have been doing that to us since forever, and then you start to kind of wake up to it, you know? And you realize even something that might be an earnest, creative submission to the canon by another white, heterosexual cis male really is also propaganda.

Is the answer just to have a wider variety of people making that “propaganda”?

Soloway: I just think get the tools in other people’s hands ― in the hands of women, in the hands of people of color, in the hands of queer people ― and start to share the wealth a little bit. That storytelling really does create empathy. It really, really does. I mean, I’ve been the beneficiary of that. I look at the very moment where my parent came out to me on the telephone, and in the very first moments and days my first feelings were fear. And I remember thinking, how am I going to tell my friends? How am I going to tell my in-laws? How am I going to tell my kids?                                 

And then to look here four years later, now, and see what “Transparent” was able to do out of just that one feeling of trying to create a safe place for myself to live in. For my dad to live in. For my family to live in. To make it OK. And it actually made it OK. That’s the crazy part. Is that it actually worked.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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On Thursday, going back on years of tradition, the White House announced that they would not allow audio or video recording during the day’s press briefing. They later changed their minds and agreed to allow audio recordings only, inexplicably.

Today, CNN pretty hilariously trolled the White House by sending their Supreme Court sketch artist Bill Hennessy to the press room to capture the scene.

It’s really paints a wonderful picture, doesn’t it? You can almost see Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s fumble his way through another Trump tweet storm.

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The ladies of Twitter never fail to brighten our days with their brilliant ― but succinct ― wisdom. Each week, HuffPost Women rounds up hilarious 140-character musings. For this week’s great tweets from women, scroll through the list below. Then visit our Funniest Tweets From Women page for our past collections.

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Craig David spoke his career into existence when he titled his debut album “Born To Do It.”

The British-born singer came on the scene in 2000 with a soulful single titled “7 Days,” breaking into the booming R&B era of the early aughts with a song that carried the smooth melodies and sensual lyrics that defined the genre at the time. His second single, “Fill Me In,” which came with a faster tempo, dropped shortly after to much fanfare.  

With the release of several other bangers like “Walking Away” and “Rendezvous,” David’s popularity rapidly grew. Although he was just 18 years old when his first album dropped, he proved that he had the appeal to quickly amass a legion of fans worldwide while selling millions of records.

Within months of the album’s debut, David had become a superstar ― and over the years, he has effectively cemented his status as one of Britain’s biggest black music stars. 

David’s debut album was a powerful and well-executed project that truly catapulted his career, which has spanned nearly two decades, six studio albums, countless collaborations and endless sold-out shows in cities across the world.

The singer, who was based in the U.K. throughout much of his life, was named the 2017 British Male Solo Artist for the influence of his latest album, “Following My Intuition.” Now, he splits his time between England and Miami, traveling to perform at packed venues and build better connections with audiences around the globe. In light of June being Black Music Month, HuffPost spoke to the star during his recent tour stop in New York about his evolution over the years and just how much of a roller coaster ride his journey to success has been.

“The ride I’ve been on has been amazing because there’s been a lot of character-building,” David told HuffPost in an interview at the New York office for Sony, his record label. “What are you really doing this for and where are you going? You ask those questions and when you answer them honestly, I realize that the only thing I ever really loved is being in the studio and making music and going out and performing and positively impacting people’s lives.”

For David, life is all about the journey and the experiences that build the memories, connections and foundation that help to define who he is ― and, perhaps more importantly, who he wants to become. 

“It used to be about getting from one place to the destination and always looking for the next thing ― which is great, that’s drive and passion for what you do,” he said. “But one thing I’ve learned over the last 16 years is that it’s about the journey. It’s OK to have the goals, but what was fun was leading toward it.” 

David’s journey has indeed been a remarkable one ― but he said his success is simply a result of him learning to listen to his heart and better believe in his abilities to provide unforgettable musical experiences. This new approach led him to title his latest album “Following My Intuition.” The 18-track album was released last September and boasts a repertoire of songs that reflect various styles of music like pop, garage and EDM. There are upbeat singles like “16,” featuring Justin Beiber, which mashes together his classic hit “Fill Me In” with “Where Are Ü Now.” And then there are soothing numbers like “Got It Good” with music star Kaytranada. 

While many of the songs are a departure from the slower-paced R&B ballads he was known for on his first album, David said he enjoys the process of experimenting with and evolving his musical style by exploring new songs with new artists and identifying new ways to express himself. Whatever the case, staying true to himself remains his top priority.

“Authenticity comes up to me as being the key to everything that I’m experiencing now and maybe in the earlier parts of my career, which was a very dynamic moment,” he said. “It’s been a roller coaster ride … but it’s all come down to authenticity. It’s like as soon as I start to follow my intuition ― yes, that is a pun ― that’s when it all started to happen.”

“[Growing up] I was exposed to a lot of R&B, a lot of hip-hop, a lot of dance, I was hearing this mix of music, I was very aware,” he added, going on to explain what makes “Following My Intuition” so special for him: “When I made the album, it connected on such a level that I never expected.”

David’s deep love for music also led him to dabble in DJ’ing, which he said has always been a passion of his. In fact, he frequently hosted lavish personal parties at his mansion in Miami, which quickly drew plenty of buzz and helped to establish his early start as a DJ. He has since mastered the skill of DJing to create TS5, a stage name he established for himself in 2013 for all of his live sets and singing performances.  

“TS5 is an experience,” he said. “It’s everything I’ve learned in the last 16 years as a life performer, all encapsulated with what I learned when I was doing vinyl mixing in clubs back before I released ‘Born To Do It.’”

TS5 is now a large component of David’s presence at his concerts. He DJs and sings at the same time, and opts to use a “very simplified situation” in regard to performance equipment. There are no dancers or elaborate stage props ― merely a small DJ booth and a mic ― making for a much more intimate and personal experience.  

“It’s very hands-on and my thing is not to stay behind the booth, but to come out of the booth,” he said. “It’s a performance, a live performance and an open format of what I’m gonna play. I want to keep your attention for every single minute I’m on that stage.”  

“I want to give 110 percent onstage,” he added. “I just feel like I want to give everything on that stage and in the studio. No regrets, no would’ve, could’ve, should’ve, I’ve got to give it everything.” 

I attended his show that evening following the interview, and David delivered on his word. By mixing his own vocals, songs and instrumentals with classic throwback songs from artists like Whitney Houston and TLC, David dominates onstage and does not disappoint. And if selling back-to-back sold-out shows isn’t any indication of his current success as a performer, simply check out a clip from a recent show and note the rousing crowd reaction:

David said he wouldn’t be the artist he is today if it weren’t for the influences from classic R&B legends including Boyz II Men and R. Kelly. He also credits rappers like Biggie, Big Pun and Tupac for the inspiration they have given him. As for more contemporary artists he admires, David mentioned Drake ― and while he notes that “a lot of people compare me to him,” he said he’s “never seen it like a competition.”

David did admit, however, that he has his sights set on building more traction with American fans and expanding his exposure in cities around the country. This year alone, he has already sold out several shows in the States and is returning in October for more performances.

“I’m coming for you, Miami, I’m coming for you, Madison Square Garden,” he said with confidence ― and if his unstoppable rise so far is any indication, David only has more dreams to accomplish. 

“I know, first hand, that when I do something and I actually have conviction with it and I just go, special things happen,” he said. “It’s a force to be reckoned with when you speak on it, act on it and you keep it going.”

“You’ve got to follow your intuition,” I said, to which he replied with a smile: “You know the drill.”

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Few performers are as perfectly suited for Pride weekend as Seth Sikes.

The 33-year-old cabaret star has been thrilling audiences with his tribute concerts to Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli for nearly three years. On June 24, however, he’ll go all out with a no-holds-barred show at New York’s Feinstein’s/54 Below featuring songs made famous by the aforementioned divas, as well as Bernadette Peters and Barbra Streisand. (Catch a sneak peek of Sikes performing a tune from the musical “Gypsy” above.) 

“Usually my goal is to keep the songbook alive and celebrate the ladies,” Sikes told HuffPost. “But this time, the goal is to get people in a happy, happy mood to go out dancing afterward... what celebrates Pride more than a bunch of diva songs?” 

What began as a “one-night-only stunt” in 2014 has taken Sikes across the country, and even internationally, since then. Most recently, he celebrated what would have been Garland’s 95th birthday with a performance in London ― a particularly fitting tribute, as the “Wizard of Oz” star capped off her unparalleled career with a string of shows in England’s capital. 

Of course, Sikes is aware that his Pride weekend show comes at a time when many LGBTQ people are still reeling from the election of President Donald Trump, who ran on an explicitly anti-queer platform. The performer, who has not shied away from politics on social media, won’t mention Trump during his performance, but rather “have some fun” while reminding people that the LGBTQ community is “mighty and not going away.” 

“I talked a little bit about Trump in my last show,” he said. “But frankly, at this point, I’m so sick of hearing about him and talking about him, I probably won’t bring it up at all this time. Let’s forget the asshole for a moment!” 

For now, Sikes couldn’t be happier to be honoring Pride with a brand-new show. “I think Pride is about family and community and a celebration of our unique culture. We have a lot of that to celebrate right now ― including our lady icons ― and we have a lot to be grateful for, including marriage equality,” he said. “But we can’t take any of it for granted.” 

Seth Sikes performs at New York’s Feinstein’s/54 Below June 24. Next up, he’ll visit the Crown & Anchor in Provincetown, Massachusetts on July 8 and Aug. 7. 

Find ways to celebrate Pride by subscribing to the Queer Voices newsletter. 

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The New York Public Theater’s presentation of William Shakespeare’s 400-year-old play, “Julius Caesar” was embroiled in controversy this month, with protests over a choice to costume the titular character as President Donald Trump. This wardrobe decision was controversial because senators plot to stab Caesar to death in the play. 

Now that this run of “Julius Caesar” has come to an end, actor Corey Stoll has written a piece for Vulture about what it was like to star in the play. Stoll had the role of Marcus Brutus, a reluctant assassin of Caesar.

Although the play is explicitly about the pitfalls of assassination, Stoll wrote that following through with the play amid the protest eventually felt like a contribution to the “resistance.” These days, that term is loaded to evoke the phrase ”#resist” which refers to a rallying cry against Trump.

“The protesters never shut us down, but we had to fight each night to make sure they did not distort the story we were telling,” wrote Stoll in the piece that was published Friday. “At that moment, watching my castmates hold their performances together, it occurred to me that this is resistance.”

Watch video of two protestors disrupting a performance:

Stoll, who memorably played an eventually murdered politician in the first season of “House of Cards,” said that he had no idea this production would portray Trump so explicitly before signing on to the role.

After four weeks in the rehearsal room, we moved to the theater and I saw Caesar’s Trump-like costume and wig for the first time. I was disappointed by the literal design choice.
Corey Stoll

Stoll was frustrated by the choice at first, as he feared involving Trump would overshadow the rest of the performance. 

A passage from Stoll’s piece:

When I signed on to play the reluctant assassin Marcus Brutus in this production, I didn’t know Caesar would be an explicit avatar for President Trump. I suspected that an American audience in 2017 might see aspects of him in the character, a democratically elected leader with autocratic tendencies. I did not think anyone would see it as an endorsement of violence against him. The play makes it clear that Caesar’s murder, which occurs midway through the play, is ruinous for Brutus and his co-conspirators, and for democracy itself ...

After four weeks in the rehearsal room, we moved to the theater and I saw Caesar’s Trump-like costume and wig for the first time. I was disappointed by the literal design choice. I had little fear of offending people, but I worried that the nuanced character work we had done in the rehearsal room would get lost in what could seem like a “Saturday Night Live” skit. I was right and wrong.

After the president’s eldest child, Donald Trump Jr., blamed this production for the actions of the gunman who fired on a baseball team made up of Republican congressmen, Stoll began to fear for his own life.

“Like most Americans, I was saddened and horrified, but when the president’s son and others blamed us for the violence, I became scared,” wrote Stoll.

The production was plagued with disruptions from protestors, but fortunately had none that caused physically critical harm.

Read the whole piece at Vulture.

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The wait is over, pitches. 

The trailer for “Pitch Perfect 3” is here and by the looks of it, the new installment in the a cappella franchise is action-packed. (What is this, “Mission: Impossible”?)

After the Barden Bellas graduate college, they struggle to find a place in the real world. That’s when they decide to reunite and hit the road on the USO tour in Europe to prove they still got it. But what would a “Pitch Perfect” movie be without some intense competition? 

Beca (Anna Kendrick), Chloe (Brittany Snow), Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson), Emily (Hailee Steinfeld) and Aubrey (yes, Anna Camp is back!) battle it out with Calamity (Ruby Rose) and crew to earn back their distinction as one of the best singing groups out there ― instruments and explosives included. 

This should be aca-awesome. Watch the full trailer above.

“Pitch Perfect 3,” written by Kay Cannon and directed by Trish Sie, hits theaters in December.  

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With a great “Spider-Man” movie comes a greatly diverse cast.

Marvel and Sony’s new spin on the story, “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” includes actors from all different backgrounds, ethnicities and ages taking on pivotal roles. Zendaya and Jacob Batalon play Spider-Man’s friends, Laura Harrier is his love interest, and Marisa Tomei plays a younger version of Aunt May.

Everyone seems flipped around in one way or another, and the actors are into it.

At the “Spider-Man: Homecoming” press conference in New York on Sunday, Latino actor Tony Revolori thanked producers for giving him the role of Flash Thompson, which is traditionally a white character.

“Thank you to Jon [Watts], Amy [Pascal] and Kevin [Feige] for casting a 5-foot-8 brown guy to play a 6-foot-2 blond, blue-eyed guy,” said the actor. 

The actors and producers of “Spider-Man: Homecoming” were asked about the inspiration behind the casting during the press conference, and producer Amy Pascal stepped up and dropped the mic.

“I would say the inspiration for it was reality,” said Pascal.

Yup. Reality.

The response was met with applause and “amens” from the cast and audience. 

It appears everyone in production was on the same page from the beginning. Director Jon Watts previously addressed the diversity topic, similarly telling The Daily Beast:

Peter Parker goes to high school in Queens, and Queens is one of ― if not the ― most diverse places in the world. So I just wanted it to reflect what that actually looks like. 

By looking at the “Spider-Man: Homecoming” cast, it’s clear this is not the same old “Spider-Man” movie we’ve become accustomed to. This is something better, and it has the positive social media reviews — and will likely get the box-office numbers — to prove it.

“Spider-Man: Homecoming” swings into theaters July 7.

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