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Discussed in today’s email: Adam McKay, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Dr. Oz, Mel Gibson, Keith Redmon, Peggy Siegal, Norah O’Donnell, Peter Chernin, Jimmy Miller, and a prosthetic penis.
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Who Won the Week: Susan Arnold
The longtime Disney board member scores the chairman role as Bob Iger exits, becoming the first openly gay leader in the company’s 98 years.
Before we begin…
Who’s getting Chris Cuomo’s 9 p.m. perch? How about: Who cares? In all likelihood, the CNN talent shuffle is only temporary until Discovery closes on the spinoff of parent WarnerMedia. Warner Bros. Discovery C.E.O. David Zaslav is known to want changes at CNN, and it’s hard not to see the recent comments from John Malone, an influential Discovery board member, as being meant for an audience of one: CNN chief Jeff Zucker. “I would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with” means fewer political talking-head shout-fests and a shift away from the anti-Trump content strategy.
My Puck colleague Dylan Byers has a good run-down of the talent sweepstakes here, but there’s another wildcard: Norah O’Donnell. The CBS Evening News anchor’s deal is coming up for renewal, and there’s chatter at CBS that she might not be a priority. CNN doesn’t have a major female primetime host, and O’Donnell’s down-the-middle brand might be just what Malone—er, Zucker—prefers as the face of New CNN.
More: I discuss the Cuomo/CNN situation with my Puck colleague Peter Hamby on this week’s The Powers That Be podcast, and with Kim Masters on The Business. We recorded before Cuomo was fired on Saturday, but the points are the same.
Quote of the Week
“I should have called him and I didn’t.”
–Adam McKay, explaining to Vanity Fair how his refusal to cast long-time partner Will Ferrell in the upcoming HBO series about the 1980s Lakers, and his failure to let Ferrell know he had instead cast Ferrell’s friend John C. Reilly, led to the implosion of their company, Gary Sanchez Productions.
I’ve got more on this below...
As with most public breakups, there’s more to this story of bruised egos—including a botched timeline and the threat of blowback from Lakers greats like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. “What an asshole!” I’m pretty sure that text I received this week, from a young writer-producer, was at least somewhat representative of the response around Hollywood to Adam McKay’s profile in Vanity Fair, where he finally explained the real reason for the 2019 demise of his 25-year creative partnership with comedy legend and universally-recognized nice guy Will Ferrell.
If you didn’t see it, writer Joe Hagan lays out an explosive timeline of the end of the duo’s friendship and their Gary Sanchez Productions, purveyor of everything from Step Brothers to Succession: McKay and Ferrell had been drifting apart creatively, but “the final straw,” according to the story, was when McKay cast Ferrell as L.A. Lakers owner Jerry Buss in the upcoming HBO series about the 1980s team—and then abruptly recast the role with John C. Reilly, Ferrell’s best friend, failing to let Ferrell know before Reilly did. “I should have called him and I didn’t,” McKay says. “And Reilly did, of course, because Reilly, he’s a stand-up guy.” Ferrell and McKay then released a pleasant divorce statement to the media, but “it wasn’t true,” Hagan writes, with McKay saying, “I’m like, ‘Fuck, Ferrell’s never going to talk to me again. So it ended not well.’”
Pretty dramatic. I—like many others, I suspect—cringed when I read the story, and not just because Ferrell is probably my favorite comedic actor. (My Elf Halloween costume is still a reliable crowd-pleaser.) The Ferrell-McKay partnership, via Gary Sanchez and Funny or Die, had always struck me as one of the rare drama-free meldings of huge and complementary talents, dating back to their SNL days. But here, even as McKay was ostensibly issuing a mea culpa for mistreating his friend, he was also revealing that friend’s embarrassing rejection, while simultaneously claiming that said friend had such a thin skin that he cut personal and professional ties over a measly casting decision—all in the service of promoting McKay’s latest movie, Don’t Look Up.
The whole thing felt patronizing and passive-aggressive, especially considering that McKay’s post-SNL career got huge boosts thanks to his connection to Ferrell—and, if we’re honest, their divergent trajectories lately. It wasn’t lost on insiders that McKay is doing Oscar-level movie work with actors like Leo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lawrence (I’ve seen Don’t Look Up; it’s fantastic), and Ferrell is starring in dreck like Eurovision and the Apple misfire The Shrink Next Door. McKay even seemed to twist the knife in recounting that Ferrell took the Buss recasting “as a way deeper hurt than I ever imagined and I tried to reach out to him, and I reminded him of some slights that were thrown my way that were never apologized for.”
Yuck. But as with most public breakups, there’s more to this story. I talked to a bunch of people around the situation, and it feels much different (and more complicated) than V.F. reported. First off, most insiders knew Gary Sanchez was all but dead way before the Lakers show ever came together. McKay had fired Jimmy Miller, his and Ferrell’s longtime manager, back in 2015, and people at both Gary Sanchez and Funny or Die knew there were Adam projects and Will projects. Succession, for instance, was very much a McKay endeavor, as was the Lakers show. And even a cursory look at the trade announcements reveals the Gary Sanchez split was formally announced on April 6, 2019, a few weeks before the Lakers pilot was ordered on April 23. I know pickups sometimes aren’t revealed when made, but sources close to McKay and HBO say the split indeed predated the pickup.
Also, while it’s true Ferrell very much wanted to play Buss, he was never actually cast. The creative team thought he didn’t look or carry himself like the flamboyant owner, but it was Michael Shannon, not John C. Reilly, who was cast and announced four months later, on Aug. 23. Ferrell is said to have been disappointed but understanding of Shannon as a radically different choice for the role. But Shannon tanked the read-through, so he was soon fired, and then McKay enlisted Reilly to replace Shannon, which was announced on Sept. 10. McKay began shooting the pilot a week later.
According to sources, Ferrell was indeed livid at not even being a fallback option once McKay’s first choice didn’t pan out, and it was doubly insulting that he heard about the rejection from Reilly, not McKay. But the company was already split, so it didn’t cause any breakup. V.F. seems to have been informed of this fact because it has corrected the story, acknowledging it “misstated the timing” of the split. McKay’s comments are still in there, though, which prompted me to wonder: If Ferrell was a Talladega Nights-era movie star, would McKay have refused to cast him, even as his backup? I’m guessing no, though HBO would probably point me to 10 times it passed on big stars who weren’t right for a role.
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Bizarrely, the story doesn’t end there. According to two separate sources, Ferrell has been telling friends and business associates that he didn’t do the Lakers project because of its negativity toward the team and his concerns over the tone, and he wants to be able to “hold his head high.” (Ferrell’s publicist, Meredith O’Sullivan Wasson, didn’t respond to my texts or email.) That sounds like sour grapes, but it’s true that Ferrell, a big L.A. sports fan, is a semi-regular presence courtside at Lakers games. And it’s absolutely true that the Buss family, the Lakers leadership, its 80s-era players, and the NBA in general all absolutely hate this show.
None of those people are making any money off this, which might explain some displeasure—and the fact that Jeanie Buss, Jerry’s daughter and the team’s controlling owner, has set up her own behind-the-scenes Lakers project with Mindy Kaling at Netflix. But they also feel HBO and McKay have taken real people and turned them into a fictionalized ‘80s version of Entourage or Ballers. According to someone who’s seen the pilot, it’s raunchy, filled with drugs and womanizing, and it is said to portray Buss as a misogynist party boy. (Reilly may or may not wear a prosthetic penis to accentuate Buss’s “bulge”; one person told me that, but I didn’t confirm it, and I didn’t really want to spend my time that way.)
The Lakers declined to comment on the show when I reached out, and I’m told the NBA is wary of providing free publicity. That’s how the NFL handled the Will Smith movie Concussion when Sony released it, in 2015, at the height of the C.T.E. conversation, mostly just pretending it didn’t exist. But behind the scenes, I’m told NBA lawyers have already traded correspondence with HBO, warning they are “monitoring” and will take legal action if team trademarks and logos are used. (HBO declined to comment, but it handles the trademark issue on Ballers by using them judiciously and within fair use guidelines; and yes, I know that show is not about real people or presented as factual, so it’s a bit different.) NBA vs. HBO would be an interesting dispute, given that HBO’s sister company is Turner Broadcasting, which airs NBA games. I’m guessing Charles Barkley won’t be plugging the show during Inside the NBA.
HBO and McKay, for their part, are leaning heavily on the facts as presented in Jeff Pearlman’s book Showtime, which depicts a wild NBA lifestyle and posits that the era of Lakers greatness started with the 1979 drafting of Magic Johnson and ended with Magic’s announcement in 1991 that he was H.I.V. positive. Ex-Laker Rick Fox is a consultant, and Norm Nixon’s son plays him, but none of the Showtime greats are participating.
I don’t know Magic, but I happen to be friendly with his teammate Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who is also depicted in the show, and whom I worked with at The Hollywood Reporter. In addition to being the NBA’s all-time leading scorer and a lynchpin of those Lakers teams, Kareem is a fantastic writer and thinker, so I was curious about his take, sight-unseen, on the idea of the show. “While I respect other artists’ rights to choose their subjects, I think the story of the Showtime Lakers is best told by those who actually lived through it because we know exactly what happened,” Kareem told me this weekend. His longtime manager, Deborah Morales, was less judicious with her words. “When the guy they cast to play Kareem got the part, he was super excited and reached out to me,” she texted me. “I don’t think that he realized the response that he was going to get, which was not very nice!” Morales predicts a backlash to the show: “I don’t think anybody who has accepted a part playing any of these characters will be embraced by anyone in the NBA or any of the players or any of their friends—and I certainly hope that I never bump into anyone associated with this show.”
HBO and McKay don’t have to care about Magic, Kareem, or Kareem’s manager, of course, and backlash is usually great press (just ask MGM execs what they think of the Gucci family coming out against House of Gucci). But it’s a long way from McKay and Kareem chatting like friends at a THR party I hosted in February 2019—right before McKay announced he was doing the Lakers show. That event led to this now unfortunate photo of the three of us.
None of that has to do with McKay’s relationship with Ferrell, which, according to insiders, hasn’t changed since the V.F. article (and its correction) came out. Another interpretation of McKay’s willingness to discuss this stuff is that he’s implicitly reaching out to Ferrell via the article, and that Ferrell might be more willing to engage now that McKay has fallen on his sword (sort of) publicly.
Who knows. Creative partnerships are tough; they often implode. Hopefully, the Lakers show is great, Ferrell finds some better projects, and this all ends with McKay, Ferrell and Reilly reuniting for Step Brothers 2.
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It Ain’t Cheap to Run for U.S. Senate. Just Ask Sony TV
TV physician and New Jersey resident Dr. Mehmet Oz’s decision to run for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania is costing his employer, Sony TV, a pretty penny. Citing equal time regulations, stations have yanked Dr. Oz in key markets like New York and Philadelphia, which translates to significantly less ad revenue for its production company. Sony is bracing for a loss in the $10 million range, according to sources. (Sony declined to comment.)
There’s a lot that’s still unfolding, including whether the show continues in some way or what might replace it. But Oz, who’s running as a Trump-friendly Republican, will personally also lose a chunk of that money. And if he wins (a longshot), the show might just go away forever. Hmm, I can’t decide whether that’s a good enough trade-off.
My Reading List
Peggy Siegal Has Returned to Oscar Events
With the Ghislaine Maxwell trial in full swing, I was reminded of the many connections between Jeffrey Epstein and various Hollywood people. That, of course, got me thinking about Peggy Siegal, the NYC event planner and awards-season publicist whose entanglements with Epstein spilled into public when he was arrested and jailed in 2019. After Epstein’s previous incarceration for soliciting a prostitute, Siegal had facilitated her friend’s return to elite entertainment circles via invites to her star-studded events. So when the toxic connections were made public, Siegal became persona non grata among the studios that once hired her during Oscar season. One of New York’s most public people essentially went into hiding.
But two years and one pandemic later, someone sent me a Peggy sighting from Searchlight’s Nightmare Alley premiere at Lincoln Center last week. She was also spotted at Amazon’s Being the Ricardos event as a guest of her longtime pal, journalist Roger Friedman. That led me to wonder, is Peggy Siegal back? And if so, are studios working with her this season?
So I called her up, and, as is typical of Peggy, she was very busy and late for a meeting. She either didn’t have time or didn’t want to chat—but no, she’s not doing studio work this season. Of course, there aren’t many Peggy Siegal-style events at all these days, with the pandemic having killed most large tastemaker lunches and dinners. Many of the venues that Siegal favors—21 Club, Lambs Club, Le Cirque—have closed.
Instead, Peggy’s living much of the year in Southampton and working on a book about her decades of celebrity adjacency. And Friedman, for one, hopes she’ll be welcomed back to the Oscar season if, and when, those events return. “This is ridiculous,” he told me. “She’s been maliciously attacked. She did nothing wrong. Nobody really knew what [Epstein] had done.”
The Feedback
My look at whether Facebook will lean into professional content in the metaverse prompted some skeptical responses. A sampling:
“Sorry, it’s gaming, defined broadly, that Meta cares about and will care about (and not typical Hollywood content, unfortunately). Yes, those lines will blur, but it will tilt more toward games, live entertainment, shopping and socializing than it will the next Hollywood golden age (at least in Zuckerberg’s construct).” –An executive
“Facebook half-assed TV shows just like they half-assed Facebook Live [video content from publishers] and just like it is half-assing journalism [with its new newsletter program Bulletin]. They have no respect for creative people and only see the world in terms of clicks and ads and ‘engagement.’ That won’t change in the metaverse.”–Another executive
“You’re giving Facebook too much credit here. 2019 was not the first screw-up with content. It’ll be Apple [that wins Web3].” –A journalist
And Finally…
A couple updates on items from previous emails...
It’s been a month since Black Bear Pictures C.E.O. Teddy Schwarzman told me he would conduct an investigation into the allegations of abusive behavior against manager-producer Keith Redmon by Anonymous Content, Redmon’s former employer. So I checked in with a Black Bear rep, who tells me the investigation is ongoing.
It’s been even longer since Mike Richards was ousted as Jeopardy! host and executive producer after the old podcasts surfaced. I’m told Richards’ exit deal is still being negotiated by Sony TV. No urgency there, I guess.
No, Alec Baldwin shouldn’t have done that interview. For these reasons and many more.
Have a great week, Matt
Got a question, comment, complaint, or a holiday message of joy and inspiration? Email me at Matt@puck.news or call/text me at 310-804-3198.
FOUR STORIES WE'RE TALKING ABOUT 
Premium video didn’t work for Facebook before. But the metaverse might change Zuckerberg’s strategic thinking. MATT BELLONI 
Washington is run by an aging class of lawmakers totally unwilling to relinquish their power. But, actually, is that as bad as it sounds? JULIA IOFFE 
The line between philanthropy and politics has been obliterated. The upshot is that even more money is moving into the shadows. TEDDY SCHLEIFER 
A tale of the embattled Ozy founder, a turkey club sandwich, and a misadventure in crisis management. WILLIAM D. COHAN 
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