{"id":94504,"date":"2025-12-08T00:18:19","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T08:18:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/?p=94504"},"modified":"2025-12-08T00:18:19","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T08:18:19","slug":"pranks-and-pucks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/blog\/2025\/12\/08\/pranks-and-pucks\/","title":{"rendered":"Pranks and Pucks"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s just been announced that Nathan Lane<\/strong> will helm a Broadway <\/em>revival of Death of a Salesman<\/em><\/strong>.  He\u2019ll be joined by Laurie Metcalf <\/strong>as his devoted wife Linda.  I guess the real news is that the producing team of this revival will be Barry Diller <\/strong>and Scott Rudin<\/strong>!  The casting of Lane in a quintessentially heterosexual role belies the argument that gays can only play gay.  Note his most recent effort was Hulu<\/em>\u2019s Mid-Century Modern<\/em><\/strong>.  Surely, two roles couldn\u2019t be more different.  But Lane, one of our greatest actors, effortlessly transcends pigeonholing.<\/p>\n

\"colorbar1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This issue came up again with HBO<\/em>\u2019s new series Heated Rivalry<\/em><\/strong>.  Given the subject matter, I\u2019m surprised more of you haven\u2019t written in.  Surely my mentioning it will translate into tens of more viewers and an inevitable ratings spike.  The show centers around two closeted hockey players in their mid-20s.  Since it\u2019s a \u201crivalry\u201d, you won\u2019t be surprised to learn one of the players is Canadian, while the other is Russian.  And the \u201cheated\u201d part \u2013 well, I suppose that\u2019s self-explanatory.  CNN <\/em>said it best in the headline for their review: \u201cHeated Rivalry <\/em>is everything you love about rom-coms but with less pants\u201d.  Believe it or not, that didn\u2019t even come from Anderson Cooper<\/strong>!<\/p>\n

While nobody has sent in a question, series creator Jacob Tierney <\/strong>was asked about the sexuality of his leads, Hudson Williams <\/strong>and Connor Storrie<\/strong>.  So I guess this week it\u2019s an Ask Jacob<\/em><\/strong> question.  And this is how he answered: \u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s any reason to get into that stuff.  I\u2019ll tell you something about the casting of both of these roles.  You can\u2019t ask questions like that when you\u2019re casting, right?  It\u2019s actually against the law.  So what you have to gauge is somebody\u2019s enthusiasm and willingness to do the work.\u201d  Clearly he found two people who did just that \u2013 enough so that people are speculating about their sexuality.  \u201cThat\u2019s what\u2019s so impressive about both of these guys is they came into this being like, \u2018Yeah, we\u2019re here to do this, and we are here to make this story feel authentic and to be as real as possible.\u2019  And they fucking hit it out of the park.\u201d  And isn\u2019t that the point?  I don\u2019t believe Nathan Lane was ever a travelling salesman…or married to a woman!  But if he can make me believe that, then he\u2019s done his job.  If you believe you have a shot with either of these hockey players, they\u2019ve done their job.  And speaking of jobs, there’s quite a few “jobs” the boys perform on each other, which you can see on BillyMasters.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"colorbar1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Some people believe certain things should remain private.  Obviously some people ain\u2019t me.  Last week, Matt Rogers <\/strong>was on Elle<\/em> magazine\u2019s Phoning It In<\/em><\/strong>.  If, like me, you have no idea what this is, the guest makes prank calls to friends and tries to rile them up with an outrageous lie.  For instance, Matt called Bowen Yang <\/strong>to accuse him of sexting with his \u201cBelow Deck\u201d beau, Fraser Olender<\/strong>.  Obviously a lie.  However, things got dicey when Matt called the aforementioned Olender to say he\u2019s been asked to do a full-frontal nude scene in a film.  Fraser\u2019s response?  \u201cAbsolutely not.  I really don\u2019t think that\u2019s a good idea.\u201d  Rogers doubled down, saying the film starred Jessica Chastain <\/strong>and had Oscar <\/em><\/strong>buzz \u2013 clearly only a foreigner would believe that!  Fraser stuck to his guns: \u201cAbsolutely not.  I mean, listen, you do you.  I\u2019ll support you 100%.  Some things are not necessarily meant to be televised.  That could be the British in me.\u201d  When Matt got home, perhaps the British was in him!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s just been announced that Nathan Lane will helm a Broadway revival of Death of a Salesman.  He\u2019ll be joined by Laurie Metcalf as his devoted wife Linda.  I guess the real news is that the producing team of this revival will be Barry Diller and Scott Rudin!  The casting of Lane in a quintessentially<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94504"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94504"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94505,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94504\/revisions\/94505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}