Latest in New Yorker Festival

Maya Rudolph, who won an Emmy for playing Kamala Harris on Saturday Night Live, said she felt anxious watching Harris debate Vice President Mike Pence, knowing it would be fodder for this week’s show. Then along came the fly. “I don’t think it was until the fly landed on his head that I kind of took a breath and sort…

Jerry Seinfeld gave a shout out to Netflix for helping shift perceptions of comedians — and their paydays — as he and Steve Martin trash talked the genre-snubbing Oscars. "I think for a long time, and actually until Netflix, comedians were just not as important, not as valuable, not considered major artists or real…

"I'm getting some pretty meaty offers in the past few days that I am going to attribute to Loy Cannon," said Chris Rock, who plays the head of the eponymous Cannon crime syndicate in the fourth season of Fargo. "Yeah, I am ready to do more stuff like this. More meaty roles," the standup comic-actor-director announced…

EXCLUSIVE: The New Yorker Festival, which has become a cultural fixture in New York over the past two decades, has confirmed it will hold its 21st edition in October in virtual form. As with most public events, even in a gradually reopening city far from the dire state it was in during March and April, the risks of…

Kenan Thompson, who is in his 17th season as a performer on Saturday Night Live, covered a wide range of show lore in a 90-minute appearance Sunday at the New Yorker Festival. The firing of debut cast member Shane Gillis in September before his first episode and after racist jokes and comments surfaced online…

Emmy Award-winning Pose actor Billy Porter said when he tried to break into Hollywood in the 1980s, the industry was only looking for three types of African American actors — "James Earl Jones, the patriarch. Denzel Washington, the sex symbol, or genius clown, Eddie Murphy." Porter was none of the above, he told the…

With the impeachment inquiry raising the possibility of Vice President Mike Pence elevating to the Oval Office, Pete Buttigieg talked about what to expect. “Nothing good,” the Democratic presidential candidate said of a Pence presidency. Buttigieg was speaking to a friendly crowd at the New York Society for Ethical…

It took an audience member with a question late in a New Yorker Festival panel on “The Female Gaze” to inspire three renowned women writers of television, fiction and poetry to address the most agonizing recent example of male vs. female expression: the Brett Kavanaugh Senate hearings. Pulling no punches, Rachel…

Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney (No Stone Unturned), who took producing reins on Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes, told a panel at the New Yorker Festival Sunday that while the late founder of Fox News — whose career was derailed by sexual harassment claims in July 2016 — is gone, his…

Despite the “partisan inferno” evident during the last week with the Kavanaugh hearings, journalist Ronan Farrow said Friday that “our culture has crossed a Rubicon and is not going back” in recognizing sexual violence. “Survivors have stood up,” Farrow told an audience at the New Yorker Festival in Manhattan during a…

Morning Joe co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski envision possibly four more years of Trump in 2020 — just not Donald Trump. “Ivanka Trump Is going to run for president,” Brzezinski declared during an on-stage conversation with editor David Remnick on opening night of the New Yorker Festival. Remnick did a…

2ND UPDATE, 6:50 PM: Never one to mince words, Steve Bannon has fired back in his battle with The New Yorker. After being scheduled as a headliner of the October 5-7 event, the former White House Chief Strategist was disinvited after a slew of people including Judd Apatow, Jim Carrey and John Mulaney said they…