Tag: Entertainment-Variety

Though it was not entirely without precedent as the progenitor of faux-found-footage horror, few films have been more widely imitated than 1999’s “The Blair Witch Project” — if only because its premise was so, well, economical. With no pressing need for FX, sets, name actors or stunts, just about anyone could make a marketable knockoff. Unfortunately, almost everyone did, creating an overtaxed genre where mediocre, sometimes barely-watchable titles far outnumber the few inspired entries.

A notch above-average on that narrow scale, but still falling a bit short, is Canadian actor Markian Tarasiuk’s feature directorial debut. “Hunting Matthew Nichols” earns points for self-awareness: Not only does “Blair Witch” get name-checked here, but the missing-persons cold case it centers on involves two aspiring-filmmaker teens who were obsessed with that popular hit, and indeed may have been trying to recreate it when they disappeared in the forests of Vancouver Island. The film we’re watching is an effort by one boy’s surviving sister to solve the mystery decades later, with Tarasiuk and Ryan Alexander McDonald playing themselves as professionals helping her make a documentary about that quest. Needless to say, something very sinister and deadly lies at the end of their path. 

That climax is sufficiently creepy. But “Hunting” takes a long time getting there — not even entering the island’s woods until its last lap — a buildup overfilled by that least-appealing staple of found-footage horror movies, i.e. nervous or frightened characters yelling at each other. The result is a competently crafted if unmemorable thriller perhaps most impressive for its off-screen enterprise. The self-distributed indie production opened on over 1000 North American screens (in partnership with various theater chains) on June 10, following an even wider sneak preview the prior week. 

Mock vintage TV news clips and direct-camera-address from Tara Nichols (Miranda MacDougall) spell out what’s being “hunted” here: Twenty-two years earlier, her older brother Matthew (James Ross) vanished with best friend Jordan Reimer (Issiah Bull Bear) on Halloween night, 2001. They were last seen traipsing into a vast, densely wooded parkland just outside town. When they failed to re-emerge, an extensive search began. Police eventually found their camcorder in a remote abandoned cabin, but no other sign of the boys, and no evidence of foul play. It was assumed they had, like numerous unwary hikers before them, fallen to accidental deaths off a cliff, or into a ravine. Nonetheless, nasty rumors circulated for a time — most casting unfounded suspicions on Jordan’s family, for little reason beyond their being Indigenous people.

These events occurred when Tara was a child, haunting her since. Now she’s returned from the mainland for the first time since her father’s funeral, in search of “a better answer” to her sibling’s absence. Perhaps as tribute to his passion, she’s turned that inquiry into a film project, with Tarasiuk as director (it’s rather murky whether they’re also in a romantic relationship) and McDonald as cinematographer. They interview her mother (Susinn McFarlen), Jordan’s father (Trevor Carroll), the cop once in charge of the now-cold case (Christine Willes), a former mayor (Bernard Cuffling), and others. Little is gained beyond resuscitated creaky gossip about speculated “Satanic rituals,” and spooky local folklore regarding a 19th-century religious commune that a modern-day anthropologist dismisses as “just an old story to keep kids out of the woods.”

Still, Tara begins to suspect the authorities are hiding some intel, which is confirmed when she gains possession of the original evidence box. It holds surprises, as well as indications that still more might be missing. Tara grows obsessive to a point of near-hysteria, suggesting she ought to step back and take a mental-health break. Instead, she insists on pressing onward — into the forest itself, with or without her colleagues. Needless to say, that turns out to be a very bad idea.

It was also arguably a bad idea to keep our protagonists out of the woods for the feature’s entire first hour, though faux archival footage plus actual cinematographer Justin Sebastian’s occasional gorgeous scenic shots provide teasing earlier glimpses. Nonetheless, there’s no immediate peril until the trio finally go camping, at which point things get more actively suspenseful. 

Tarasiuk doesn’t try all that hard to maintain the mock-doc illusion, with those more-polished images, MacDougall’s histrionic performance, and an effective if sometimes overblown score (by Jeff Griffiths and Christopher King) all poking holes in that ruse. Which would be fine if at least some scares arrived earlier, rather than being held in reserve for so long. Their lack leaves us too much time to grow weary of Tara — whose unraveling under pressure is understandable, yet has an effect on the viewer more exhausting than empathy-inducing. 

The actress throws herself into it, but less might have been more. It’s also a minus that, by contrast, her costars get so little character definition, despite a surplus of often cliched dialogue. Nor do investigation subjects Matthew and Jordan, seen in old video footage, warrant any deeper interest from Sean Harris Oliver’s screenplay.

The last few minutes of belated payoff are strong enough. But not so much so that they fully redeem the preceding 80, let alone will make anyone eager for a sequel. 

Who could’ve guessed that the biggest water-cooler moment from night 1 of Coachella 2026 would not be a musical cameo or a particularly galvanizing moment from one of the evening’s headliners, but… a seven-minute monologue by a legendary Hollywood actress in her late 70s? Talk about stunt casting at its most unexpected. Susan Sarandon was brought in to play an elder version of Sabrina Carpenter, midway through that pop superstar’s set. Whatever else may transpire over the weekend, this will surely stand as the festival’s most puzzling, polarizing, dig-it-or-hate-it moment… although “moment” may be too modest a word for an epic scene that its detractors felt seemed to go on just shy of forever.

It couldn’t have seemed much more incongruous, in the middle of an hour-and-a-half performance that was otherwise 98% a musical sex comedy, as is the singer’s entertaining custom. Amid the nonstop choreography and gags, suddenly things came to a crawl for seven minutes of actual seriousness — as if Carpenter were outsourcing the depth of the set to Sarandon. The actress sat in a car in a makeshift drive-in that was set up in the middle of the main stage field, hair blowing in the desert breeze as she reminisced from some point in the future about what it had been like to once be the pop tart Sabrina Carpenter, with plenty of rumination about fame and family and the pros and cons of constantly projecting positivity.

Questions abounded as it went on. Why drop such a sober sequence into a performance whose other cameos — by Will Ferrell (also live) and Samuel Jackson Jr. and Sam Neil (pre-recorded) — leaned toward pure fun? Who wrote this soliloquy? Was it all scripted, or partly improvised? Was it intended to go on that long? And are we looking a gift horse in the mouth if we complain about such an unusual interruption in an otherwise pretty pro-forma pop festival?

Well, that last question is mine, and maybe mine alone. I seem to be in a distinct minority when it comes to getting an admiring kick out of Sarandon’s cameo, which I’ve now rewatched a couple of times, in bootleg clips. (Coachella is pretty good at having anything quickly pulled down that home viewers might try posting to social media from the livestream, but it’s out there.) Variety‘s own recap late Friday night said “the scene, a bungled reflection on wish fulfillment, brought the pop show to a screeching halt.” I’d probably have to agree that it did just that, or brought it to a crawl, at least… but is that necessarily a bad thing? Is momentum everything, even in pop music? You could argue that it’s a lot. But I’m also a fan of those outlier dynamic moments where something that is supposed to be about escapism tries to get real for a minute — even if, at this point in her career and persona, Carpenter felt compelled to hire someone to suggest she can foresee going all mature on us someday.

I’m also fascinated by the idea that the whole thing might’ve been partly an accident. Sources on the ground at Coachella indicated that the monologue was originally supposed to be shorter, and that Sarandon was asked to stretch to cover a changeover that was taking longer than intended. That hasn’t been confirmed, and there was nothing about Carpenter’s subsequent costuming that looked like it should have taken seven minutes to pull off, by itself. But the actress didn’t appear to be reading off a prompter, and if indeed she was making some of it up as she went along, it was a pretty good example of an age-old actors’ class exercise in improv. Did Carpenter script all the stuff about the (apparently) fake sister and niece, or was Sarandon freestyling some of that? The fact that we’re even wondering about this makes the bit at least as fun as the old-school song-and-dance of the big production numbers, if you have a liking for the kind of risk-taking that may or may not go off the rails a little.

And however much the whole thing was or wasn’t 100% pre-scripted, it made for an amusing punchline to take the piss out of the monologue’s philosophizing by having her “Girls Meets World” co-star Corey Fogelmanis show up at the end as a carhop, getting bogged down in the minutiae of closing out tabs and tapping credit cards. On top of how good the key casting was: Who could have been a better (or more aspirational) choice to play a Carpenter with a few more decades of mileage on her?

One hates to read too much into any of this. You only had to go on X during the livestream to say fans commending Carpenter for hiring Sarandon to play her shortly after the actress complained she’d been blacklisted for her pro-Palestinian activism. It’s less likely the singer brought her idol in for the gig to make a statement on the Middle East, or even show-business blackballing, than it is that she just really loves “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” But, regardless of what you think of anyone’s latter-day politics, Carpenter just has good taste in screen sirens.

The “Aunt Sabrina” interlude will no doubt be held up by many as an example of how to stop a show, in the wrong way. But maybe we’d be better off if more pop stars thought of more ways to throw quietly interesting and unexpected asides into their shows, even at the risk of having audiences scratching their heads for a minute. Or, sure, seven. Take a note, Addison Rae — although maybe you want to play it safe and only have Helen Mirren or Sally Field pop in for a mini-monologue.

SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers from Season 1 of “Big Mistakes,” now streaming on Netflix.

Dan Levy knows exactly what keeps him up at night, as the possibility of being blackmailed into committing crimes has haunted him for years. So naturally, he made a TV show about it.

Six years after “Schitt’s Creek” wrapped, Levy has returned to television with “Big Mistakes,” a darkly comic crime thriller he co-created with Rachel Sennott. The show follows Nicky (Levy) and Morgan Dardano (Taylor Ortega), a pastor-and-teacher sibling duo from New Jersey who stumble into organized crime after Morgan steals a necklace from a postal store to bury with their dying grandmother. What follows is a season-long descent into grave robbing, drug running and enough accessory-to-murder charges to keep the Dardano family lawyer very busy. However, the deeper they sink, the better they get. “The worse they were, the better they got at their jobs,” Levy tells Variety. “And the more they were needed.”

The chaos is matched only by the cast assembled to deliver it. Laurie Metcalf plays Linda, the siblings’ mother and accidental mayoral candidate, whose parallel bid for local office manages to feel just as high-stakes as the organized crime subplot. Abby Quinn rounds out the family as Natalie, the well-behaved sister who got the good genes — and Elizabeth Perkins delivers a season-ending shocker as Annette, whose reveal as the crime boss orchestrating everything is the kind of twist that sends viewers immediately back to Episode 1 to uncover what they missed.

Levy spoke with Variety about building his follow-up to “Schitt’s Creek,” the very pre-planned criminal path ahead and what a potential second season might look like for two siblings who are now, definitively, in too deep.

You’ve spoken about taking a real break after “Schitt’s Creek” before developing this. What was the creative kernel that got you moving?

You really have to sit with the question of what excites you. We were lucky enough to get 80 episodes of “Schitt’s Creek,” and I knew how much I loved working on it — I wanted that same love for whatever I did next. I never go into something assuming it’s just going to be one season, so I needed to find an idea that would excite me enough to keep telling the story. I just kept thinking about being blackmailed into crime. It scares the shit out of me; I would not do well if I ever found myself in that situation. And at its core, a random person finding themselves blackmailed into crime is just endlessly entertaining. I wanted a buddy comedy, a brother-sister dynamic, a whole new family story — and I knew I wanted a female perspective on Morgan. I called up Rachel Sennott, who I just assumed would also not fare very well in the face of organized crime. She said yes, we spent six, eight months figuring out the show, brought it into Netflix, and they loved it. And that was it.

You’re clearly a fan of Rachel Sennott’s. Any chance we’d ever see you on her show “I Love L.A.”?

I don’t even know what I would play on that show.

Anything — anything would be believable. 

If she ever wants to write me in, just say the word. I’ll do it.

Why was the family dynamic so important to carry over from “Schitt’s Creek”?

I just think family dynamics are the funniest. Families in times of insane crisis — that can be the funniest times. I’m often laughing in times of insane crisis, so I’m endlessly fascinated by it. I think it’s also just a really excellent way of revealing character. So I knew I wanted to make another family show. And that’s also why I wanted to involve Rachel, because I love her comedy, I admire her comedy, but it’s a little bit different than mine. Our voices overlap, but they’re also very different. So I wanted to really push the possibility of what the tone of this show could be. Between the two of us, we found this really nice place of chaos and comedy and suspense. I do think there has to be some comedic thread to the way that I write. I just love dialogue.

The show balances the crime world against something as comparatively mundane as a local mayoral race — and somehow both feel equally high-stakes. How did you connect that?

This is a family that has inherited anxiety from their mother’s mother. You see Nona pass away in the first episode — that’s sort of where it all stemmed from. She was nuts, and it’s all trickled down through the family tree. A lot of this show is an examination of what we inherit from our family, from our parents, from their parents. We are a byproduct of our family tree. So anxiety runs rampant in this family. Not handling stress runs rampant in this family. Linda running for mayor, and Natalie helping her — that is the be-all, end-all for them. There is nothing more important, and the stakes are high. And I just found there to be a lot of comedy in that as well. The more seriously people take things, the funnier it is.

Nicky and Morgan keep failing upward — the worse they are, the more indispensable they become. Was that dynamic intentional?

As much as they wanted to get out, it’s like an undertow. The more you swim towards shore, the more you’re pulled out. The worse they were, the better they got at their jobs, and the more they were needed. And then by the end, they are fully in.

You mentioned you already know how the entire series ends. How mapped out is this world?

There is a very pre-planned criminal path that has already been laid out. We just need the opportunity to get there.

You’ve talked about circumstance shaping character — how does the crime world change Nicky and Morgan specifically?

I love the idea that circumstance makes people better. On “Schitt’s Creek,” moving to a small town made that family a better family. In the same way, I hope that parts of this world will make Morgan and Nicky more fully realized versions of themselves. For Morgan, she’s always been a rebellious person. She’s always wanted the spotlight, always wanted attention — and I think she’s getting it in this world. There’s a part of her that really enjoys it and gets thrills out of it. For Nicky, he’s not there yet. But my hope is that at some point it’ll force him out of his shell a little more, give him more confidence, make him feel a little more accomplished.

The season-ending reveal — Annette as the crime boss — is a big swing. When did you and Rachel decide that was where the story was going?

Rachel and I knew from the start of developing this season.

I didn’t see that coming. Were there signs that I missed?

I think if you were to go back and watch knowing how it ends, there are signs. Annette is a very savvy businesswoman, and when you operate in organized crime, you need to get your fingers in a lot of political pots. As soon as the tide turned on the election, she knew exactly who was going to be at the forefront of that race, and that’s when certain things shifted and she came on board. My hope is always that if someone chose to rewatch, there would be a lot there for them — we did weave in a lot of little hints. But I mean — your in-laws being a huge crime boss.

What does Season 2 for Morgan and Nicky look like then?

A Season 2 would just be: There’s no way out now.

That kind of negates my point that Nicky and Morgan kept succeeding due to their own charisma. In actuality they survive because Annette says so, and because of Morgan’s relationship to her son. Does Max know any of this?

She needs to keep him happy. Morgan and their dynamic, their relationship, is a great way of keeping her son happy. She can’t mess that up. And also — Nicky and Morgan know too much now. So even if they wanted to leave, they have a lot to answer for.

So Max has no idea.

[Levy shrugs]

This interview has been edited and condensed.

“The Christophers,” the story of a past-his-prime painter (Ian McKellen) and the mysterious assistant (Michaela Coel) he hires to destroy some priceless works of his half-finished art, defies easy categorization. It’s funny and sad, veering between a crime thriller and a character drama, as it examines the precarious nature of talent. Why, it asks, do some artists lose their creative spark?

“We didn’t really think about genre,” says Steven Soderbergh, the film’s director. “Human behavior was our compass. Our characters’ evolution as people determined the film’s trajectory.”

Soderbergh is scrunched next to Ed Solomon, the writer of “The Christophers,” at a comically small desk at the Warren Street Hotel in Manhattan. The two have worked together previously on the noir thriller “No Sudden Move” and the twisty mysteries “Mosaic” and “Full Circle.” It’s the day before “The Christophers,” their latest collaboration, opens in limited release on April 10, and the men are finishing off the promotional rounds for the low-budget indie.

It’s a press tour that courted controversy after Soderbergh, one of the most candid and thoughtful A-list directors in Hollywood, was open about using AI on an upcoming documentary about John Lennon and talked about its creative possibilities. His remarks sparked a torrent of criticism on social media, where some commentators faulted him for embracing technology that could kill jobs in the entertainment industry.

But Soderbergh is never one to shy away from a debate. In our discussion, he doubled down on his views about AI’s potential, while also talking about his working relationship with Solomon, the artistic anxieties that “The Christophers” explores and the “Star Wars” project he was forced to abandon.

Who came up with the idea for “The Christophers”?

Steven Soderbergh: It started with a one-sentence pitch to Ed over drinks. Basically it was, there’s an older artist at the end of his career, and a young apprentice-type rolls up, and there’s something not on the level about her presence. In my mind, she was more of a Tom Ripley character. Ed immediately started filling that idea out. He was like: “What if there are children? What if there’s some issue about the value of the estate?” Over time he shoved these deeper themes of mentorship, insecurity and ego into it. It really became about asking the question, what is a legacy?

Ed Solomon: I hadn’t even planned to write something. It emerged after I asked, what are you thinking about? And then we just started throwing stuff around. I drew on the emotional relationships I’d had with quite a few different artists — directors, writers, comedians — and how fame could turn into a prison for them. But sometimes there are things that enter from the subconscious. Like two weeks ago, I turned to Steven and said, “Oh my God, my mom’s a painter!” It’s funny how sometimes you don’t realize what you’re writing about.

Julian, the character that Ian McKellen plays, was a major painter who squandered his talent after becoming a reality show judge. Have you seen people who achieved at a very high level and then lost their creative way?

Soderbergh: That’s the terror for every creative person. I call it the slackening. It’s night sweat material for me. I’m very interested in the lives of artists. How can somebody maintain their output right up to the end? What is it about their personality that enabled them to keep their level high? And why does the opposite happen? What makes someone incapable of sustaining that quality? Nobody wants to be described as an artist whose stuff fell off. But also, how do you determine that? Sometimes critics are wrong. Sometimes your work showed up too soon, and you were ahead of the audience. I focus on what I can control, which is the method of making things. I set up circumstances and environments with trusted collaborators that allow for the alchemy that creates good stuff to take place. All I can do is bring the ingredients together in a pot. That’s the best chance you’ve got of making something that tastes good.

Last year, you released the spy thriller “Black Bag.” It had two big stars in Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender. Critics loved it, but it struggled at the box office. Did its commercial failure make you recalibrate anything about how you choose projects?

Soderbergh: Well, yeah. It made me realize I need to find material that I like and that has a shot of reaching a sizable audience. “The Christophers” is a very accessible movie, but it’s not going to turn into “Weapons,” right? But going forward, I want to find something that has scale, because it’s been a while since I’ve made a movie of real size, and has a hook that gets people to go to the theaters in big numbers. I want to find something that I can event-ize, that I also love.

Ed, your previous collaborations with Steven, like “No Sudden Move” and “Full Circle,” were intricately plotted. “The Christophers” feels more like a chamber piece where two razor-sharp characters circle each other, often jousting verbally. Do you find it easier to work out the plot of the film or to write the dialogue?

Solomon: When it works best, everything is intertwined and coming together at the same time. What I’m interested in is finding truthful moments that are surprising. To do that, I have to constantly go back to the question, what would actually happen here, and what would this character say or do that feels truthful and not stock? That requires getting into the emotional space of a person. Once I feel what they’re feeling, I know where they need to go. When I get too plot-oriented, characters start to become little more than chess pieces you’re moving around. That’s a problem with how they teach screenwriting. More and more, they teach it as a structural event. Now, there is an inherent structure in movies. You need a beginning, a middle and an end. But the more time I spend doing this, the more I go back to the most basic questions, why is this person here? What do they want? And what’s the truth of the situation?

Ian McKellen is so wonderful in this film — he’s vibrant and larger-than-life, but also vulnerable and insecure. He had a terrible accident in 2024 and injured himself falling off the stage. Do you think that experience influenced his performance?

Soderbergh: I didn’t see any lingering physical manifestation from the fall. But it’s a type of event that anybody would be affected by. There’s a sense of precarity that it must conjure up.

Solomon: Before we started filming, there was this moment when Ian said, “I don’t know what I would do if I weren’t acting.” We were talking about how meaning and purpose get funneled through a creative person’s work. He didn’t say anything explicitly about the fall, but he did admit how scared he would be if he couldn’t perform any longer. I’m guessing that an accident like that puts everything in stark relief and that the feelings he was having were, in some way, related to the character of Julian. They both were asking, “Who am I if I don’t have my art?”

Steven, what made you think of Michaela Coel for this film?

Soderbergh: I was just blown away by her show, “I May Destroy You.” It was an entirely new thing. She’s a thoroughbred. She’s got all the tools. It’s kind of ridiculous how talented she is.

I’ve seen the movie twice. The first time, Julian’s children (James Corden, Jessica Gunning) seemed like miserable, greedy wretches. The second time, I felt a lot of sympathy for them. They obviously had no love growing up.

Soderbergh: In the film, Julian glibly dismisses their upbringing. It is indicative of what they experienced. As a child, you’re wired to seek the approval of your parents and at no stage of their lives were they given any approbation or affection from him. And that corrodes you. They’re feral because nobody taught them to be different.

Solomon: My heart breaks for them in a strange way. At the same time, we didn’t want to do the typical, let’s resolve that relationship thing, because we also wanted it to stay honest. We wanted the changes these characters experience to be internal, and not overt and tectonic.

Soderbergh: The same thing is true with Julian. He hasn’t changed much by the end of the film. He’s only come to a place where his behavior has changed around Michaela’s character. He can be with her in a way that he isn’t with other people, and probably never has been. That’s as far as he’s able to go. He’s still a jerk.

Steven, congratulations on getting into Cannes with your documentary “John Lennon: The Last Interview.” Your recent comments about using AI on the film have been heavily criticized. What do you make of the debate?

Soderbergh: [Pauses] This is mystifying to me.

Are you unaware of the blowback?

Soderbergh: No, I’m aware. I found out from people looking at me like they’d seen my chest X-ray. I was like, “What’s up?” And they’re like, “These AI comments!” And they read me back what I had said, and I honestly felt, “Where’s the smoke here?”

You used AI on that film and said you are going to use it on an upcoming film about the Spanish-American War. Clearly, you see it as a useful tool?

Soderbergh: I’m just not threatened by it. I’m only scared of things I don’t understand. So I felt obligated to engage with it, to figure out what it is and what it can do. It turned out to be a very good tool for certain passages of the Lennon documentary where I needed surrealistic imagery that was impossible to shoot. It allowed me to solve a creative problem about how to visualize what John and Yoko are speaking about philosophically. Ten years ago, I would have needed to engage a visual effects house at an unbelievable cost to come up with this stuff. No longer. My job is to deliver a good movie, period. And this tool showed up at a moment when I needed it. I don’t think it’s the solution to everything, and I don’t think it’s the death of everything. We’re in the very early stages. Five years from now, we all may be going, “That was a fun phase.” We may end up not using it as much as we thought we were going to. There are some people that I have absolute love and respect for that refuse to engage with it. That’s their privilege. But I’m not built that way. You show me a new tool. I want to get my hands on it and see what’s going on.

Ed, as a writer, what do you think of AI?

Solomon: I’m not interested in using it as a writing tool because it takes away from what I love about what I do, which is the process. It makes it result-oriented. I’m not scared of it. I just don’t see myself using it in any kind of a significant creative way.

Steven, your “Star Wars” film, “The Hunt for Ben Solo,” got cancelled. What did you learn from the process of trying to get that movie made?

Soderbergh: That there’s no such thing as wasted creative time. It was great to work on that with Adam Driver and [writers] Rebecca Blunt and Scott Burns. Sometimes that’s just the way things go. I know what we came up with was good. I think it would have excited audiences. Working with smart people, trying to solve shit, is how you get better. Adam felt bad for having gotten me into it. I think he felt like he wasted my time, and I made it clear to him, “Dude, that was not wasted time.” It’s a problem solving experience that will get applied to everything I do going forward. I’m not upset. I feel positive about everything that we did together.

What movie would you recommend someone watch to get in the right frame of mind for “The Christophers”?

Soderbergh: Making this, I thought a lot about the great John Schlesinger. His film, “Sunday, Bloody Sunday,” is one of my favorites. It’s a great London film. And I was influenced by his treatment of the characters. They’re so complex and he has this willingness in his movies to allow all the various shades of people to be expressed. He never judges his characters, and that’s what we tried to do with “The Christophers.”

Coachella attendees who turned out to watch Katseye perform got a “Golden” treat when the singers behind Huntr/x — Ejae (Rumi), Audrey Nuna (Mira), and Rei Ami (Zoey) — made a surprise appearance.

Fresh off winning the Oscar for best original song, the “KPop Demon Hunters” stars joined Katseye (Daniela Avanzini, Lara Raj, Megan Skiendiel, Sophia Laforteza and Yoonchae Jeung) on the Sahara stage to perform “Golden.”

Katseye kicked off the festival’s opening night and are set to perform both weekends. Among the songs they performed were “Internet Girl,” “Pinky Up” and “Mean Girls.” The group climbed the ranks as K-pop trainees on the 2023 reality competition series “Dream Academy.” They became breakout performers following the Netflix docuseries “Popstar Academy: Katseye” along with their aptly-titled first single “Debut.” Earilier this year, they landed a Grammy nomination for best new artist. Their song “Gabriela” was nominated for best pop duo/group performance.

The group has released two EPs, 2024’s “SIS (Soft Is Strong)” and last year’s “Beautiful Chaos,” as well as a handful of singles. “Gnarly,” which was co-written by Alice Longyu Gao, became their first song to hit the Billboard Hot 100 last year. They followed with “Gabriela,” “Gameboy” and “Internet Girl,” the latter of which debuted at No. 29 on the charts.

Aside from the Oscar, “Golden” scooped up a string of awards including the Golden Globe and Critics Choice Award for best original song. It also won the Grammy Award for best song written for visual media.

“Golden” was written by EJAE, Mark Sonnenblick, IDO, 24 and Teddy Park, and became a massive hit since debuting on the Billboard Hot 100 in June 2025. It scored eight non-consecutive weeks atop that chart, becoming the longest-leading hit on the tally by an animated act.

Speaking with Variety about the song’s success, Ami described the feeling as “vindicating,” adding that there’s finally “validation. It’s long overdue,” she said. “We worked our asses off. We’ve had the door shut in our faces. We were told we were too little, too much.”

Sabrina Carpenter is Friday night’s headliner. Justin Bieber will take to the stage on Saturday night. He’s set to perform at 11:25 p.m. on the festival’s hump night. It’s expected that he will likely play the two “Swag” albums in their 25-song entirety, based on the warmup shows he has done at the Roxy and Troubadour.

Emmys…paging Dr. Abbot.

After winning the Primetime Emmy Award for guest actor in a drama series for his turn as Dr. Jack Abbot, Shawn Hatosy returns in Season 2 with expanded visibility, appearing in six of the show’s 15 episodes. In the 50-year history of guest acting races, repeat winners are rare, and repeat winners for the same show are even rarer. Only five actors in the guest drama actor category have ever won more than once: Patrick McGoohan for “Columbo” (1975, 1990), Ed Asner for “Rich Man, Poor Man” (1976) and “Roots” (1977), John Lithgow for “Amazing Stories” (1986) and “Dexter” (2010), Charles S. Dutton for “The Practice” (2002) and “Without a Trace” (2003), and Ron Cephas Jones for “This Is Us” (2018, 2020).

Notably, no performer has ever won back-to-back guest drama actor Emmys for the same role. It is a lane Hatosy could create entirely for himself.

That kind of streak has been achieved in other guest categories, most famously by Mel Brooks, who remains the only three-time consecutive winner for “Mad About You,” and Jay Thomas, who won back-to-back for “Murphy Brown.” On the drama side, Margo Martindale pulled it off for “The Americans,” while the guest comedy actress category has seen consecutive wins from Jean Smart for “Frasier” and Maya Rudolph for “Saturday Night Live.” Expanding the lens further underscores the rarity, with only a handful of performers winning multiple times for the same show in nonconsecutive years, including McGoohan for “Columbo,” Patricia Clarkson for “Six Feet Under,” Cephas Jones for “This Is Us,” Colleen Dewhurst for “Murphy Brown,” and Kathryn Joosten for “Desperate Housewives.”

The HBO Max medical drama broke out in a major way with its first season, winning five Emmys, including outstanding drama series, lead actor for Noah Wyle and supporting actress for Katherine LaNasa, alongside Hatosy’s guest victory. It enters this year’s race as the clear show to beat.

Hatosy’s work is central to that momentum. As Dr. Abbot, he delivers a grounded, lived-in performance that plays effectively opposite Wyle, anchoring the show’s high-stakes storytelling. His slightly expanded role in Season 2, along with stepping behind the camera to direct the episode “3:00 P.M.,” could even position him for a potential double nomination. With six episodes under his belt, including the upcoming season finale, he once again sits in the gray area between guest and supporting, a space that Emmy voters and Television Academy officials continue to debate.

Still, narrative matters. Repeat winners often benefit from a compelling story, whether it is overdue recognition or sustained excellence. Hatosy brings both, bolstered by his long collaboration with producer John Wells and standout roles on “Southland” and “Animal Kingdom.”

With “The Pitt” it gives a chance to redefine what a guest acting win looks like in today’s television landscape. Dr. Abbot might just make Emmy history when he comes off the night shift.

Coachella 2026 is underway, and for home viewers, so is Couch-ella. Most of the performances from weekend 1 will be streamed live on YouTube, across seven channels for seven stages — check out the full schedule of streams, below.

Although most sets will be seen live, some will be shown on a delayed basis, like Jack White’s 3 p.m. Saturday show, which won’t be viewable until the afternoon streams get underway at 4 p.m So for those tuning in at home, it pays to make sure you are checking the streaming schedule and not just the on-site lineup.

Once each day’s performances conclude, the seven channels will spend the overnight and early morning hours serving night owls by rebroadcasting the full lineup from top to bottom, starting at around midnight in most cases and going through breakfast time.

The three main stage headliners will, of course, be going out live from Indio: Sabrina Carpenter on Friday from 9:05-10:35 PT; Justin Bieber, getting a really late start Saturday at 11:25 p.m., with no announced end time; and Karol G on Sunday beginning at 9:55 p.m. On Friday, the main stage has what amounts to an additional post-headliner headliner, as electronic music artist Anyma goes on as the clock strikes midnight, an hour and a half after Carpenter has wrapped up.

Here is a full list of the streams scheduled for weekend 1, all in Pacific time, with embedded video links to take you right to the corresponding YouTube channels. While these lineups are separated by stage and channel, if you want to see how the sets overlap as you map out what to prioritize, scroll down for a grid that lists the steams side by side.

Main Stage Channel Schedule

Friday, April 10

5:30 – Teddy Swims
7:00 – The xx
9:05 – Sabrina Carpenter
12 a.m. – Anyma Presents ÆDEN

Saturday, April 11

5:30 – Addison Rae
7:00 – Giveon
9:00 – The Strokes
11:25 – Justin Bieber

Sunday, April 12

4:00 – Tijuana Panthers
4:45 – Wet Leg
6:10 – Major Lazer
7:50 – Young Thug
9:55 – Karol G

Outdoor Theatre Channel Schedule

Friday, April 10

4:00 – Dabeull
5:20 – Lykke Li
6:40 – Dijon
8:05 – Turnstile
10:35 – Disclosure
11:55 – Bonus Set from Do LaB

Saturday, April 11

4:00 – Los Hermanos Flores
5:10 – Alex G
6:10 – Blondshell
7:05 – Sombr
8:30 – Labrinth
10:20 – David Byrne

Sunday, April 12, 2026

4:00 – Gigi Perez
5:15 – Clipse
6:45 – Foster the People
8:40 – Laufey
10:30 – Bigbang

Sahara Channel Schedule

Friday, April 10

4:00 – Youna
4:50 – Hugel
6:15 – Marlon Hoffstadt
8:00 – Katseye
9:15 – Levity
10:50 – Swae Lee
12:05 a.m. – Sexyy Red

Saturday, April 11

4:00 – Zulan
5:00 – Hamdi
6:15 – ¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U
7:15 – TEED
8:00 – Nine Inch Noize
9:10 – Rezz
10:30 – Adriatique
11:55 – Worship

Sunday, April 12

4:00 – Girl Math (Vnssa x Nala)
5:05 – Bunt.
6:10 – Duke Dumont
7:25 – Mochakk
9:05 – Subtronics
10:45 – Kaskade

Mojave Channel Schedule

Friday, April 10

4:15 – Bini
5:30 – Central Cee
6:45 – Devo
8:10 – Moby
9:20 – Slayyyter
10:35 – Ethel Cain
11:55 – Blood Orange

Saturday, April 11

4:00 – Jack White
4:50 – Fujii Kaze
5:50 – Royel Otis
7:30 – Taemin
8:55 – PinkPantheress
10:15 – Interpol

Sunday, April 12

4:25 – Little Simz
5:35 – Suicidal Tendencies
6:30 – Samia
7:10 – Iggy Pop
8:45 – FKA Twigs

Gobi Channel Schedule

Friday, April 10

4:00 – Bob Baker Marionettes
4:45 – NewDad
5:30 – Joyce Manor
6:15 – CMAT
7:20 – Fakemink
8:25 – Holly Humberstone
9:50 – Joost
11:05 – Creepy Nuts

Saturday, April 11

4:05 – Whatmore
5:10 – Luísa Sonza
6:15 – Geese
7:05 – Noga Erez
7:50 – Davido
9:00 – BIA
10:10 – Morat

Sunday, April 12

4:05 – Cobrah
5:15 – Oklou
6:30 – Black Flag
7:10 – Flowerovlove
7:45 – Tomora
9:05 – The Rapture
10:00 – The Chats

Sonora Channel Schedule

Friday, April 10

4:00 – Wednesday
4:50 – Fleshwater
6:00 – The Two Lips
7:10 – Ninajirachi
8:25 – Cachirula & Loojan
9:15 – Febuary
10:00 – Hot Mulligan
10:55 – Carolina Durante
11:50 – Not for Radio

Saturday, April 11

4:20 – Ecca Vandal
5:30 – Ceremony
6:40 – Rusowsky
7:50 – 54 Ultra
8:45 – Die Spitz
9:45 – Mind Enterprises
10:45 – Freak Slug

Sunday, April 12

4:00 – Model/Actriz
4:45 – Jane Remover
5:30 – Los Retros
6:40 – RØZ
8:00 – Drain
9:10 – French Police
10:15 – Glitterer

Quasar Channel Schedule

Friday., April 10

5:00 – Tiga

7:00 – Deep Dish

9:00 – PAWSA 1

11:00 – Disco Lines

Saturday, April 11

5:00 – Joezi

7:00 – Afrojack x Shimza

Sunday, April 12

4:00 – Jazzy

6:00 – JOY (Anonymous)

8:00 – Fatboy Slim

And here are the livestreaming schedules on a day-by-day grid, for help in making those tough viewing choices: