The Daily Beast Obsessed

(Editor’s Note: This piece contains a survivor’s account of rape and touches on abuse and trauma.) If you ask survivors what has made them strong, you can be sure most won’t credit the harms they suffered or the assailants who harmed them. Yet Game of Thrones writers David Benioff and D.B.

Introducing Yesterday at the closing night of the Tribeca Film Festival, festival co-founder Robert De Niro had a unique reason for endorsing the film. It made him think of a world in which there was no Donald Trump. It’s outlandish and almost unthinkable given the state of the world right now and Trump’s omnipresence in the news and our every consuming thought.

“Everything in the film was real,” Slick Woods says about her starring role in Goldie, the latest from writer and director Sam de Jong. That’s not, strictly speaking, true. Woods’ Goldie does have a good deal in common with the model and actress. Both of their mothers were arrested, leaving them to fend for themselves at a young age. Both consistently struggled to make money and find somewhere to sleep.

Late Night host Seth Meyers dedicated his “A Closer Look” segment Wednesday night to Wednesday’s testimony of Attorney General William Barr in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Barr, who was handpicked for the AG role by President Trump, had to answer for why his four-page summary of the Mueller Report “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of the report—this according to the office of Robert Mueller.

When Maya Erskine and I meet, we start talking about weddings. Your Instagram and Facebook feeds likely already alerted you to the fact that last weekend marked the unofficial start to wedding season, a time in which people in their late twenties and early thirties spend every other weekend traveling the country and bankrupting themselves in the name of attending the nuptials of friends, family, and former college roommates.

n 2014, former Oakland Raiders cheerleader Lacy Thibodeaux-Fields sued the team, claiming that she had been paid less than minimum wage for her work at practices and games—not to mention work-related expenses like transportation, clothing, and beauty upkeep. Her lawsuit launched a movement.

Thanos may have murdered half the universe—including many fan-favorite superheroes—at the end of Avengers: Infinity War, but the Marvel Cinematic Universe is as healthy as ever thanks to Avengers: Endgame, which opened this weekend to record-breaking numbers. That’s certainly deserved since it’s the best MCU film to date, as well as the stellar culmination of an 11-year undertaking that’s resulted in 22 films, dozens of characters, and billions of dollars in profit.

In a late April bout of lack of self-awareness, a string of celebrities have come out this week against what they’ve perceived as unfair or overly critical media coverage. I will give celebrities a lot—money that they don’t need, complimentary coverage that they probably don’t read, and endless amounts of my own time and energy. But even I have to draw a line, and I’m drawing it at pity.

In the festival’s 18-year history, it’s something the Tribeca Film Festival programmers and planners have never had to consider. The awards ceremony and most of the events thrown for filmmakers are typically sponsored by liquor companies, and are 21-and-over. This year, however, one of their marquee competitors is underage. “We were like, hmm, do you think he has a fake ID?” one of the festival’s programmers joked to me. “Obviously we did not ask him that.

It’s not an unusual occurrence: Childcare needs and work commitments have forced single dad Freddy McConnell and I to shuffle our interview appointment a few times. So when we finally connect and I can hear the faint cries of a child in the background, I am surprised and delighted. Is that his son? No, McConnell laughs, explaining that he’s taking the call from the beach in Deal, England, where he lives. “That’s another random baby. Wants an ice cream, I think.