ESSENTIAL INDUSTRY AND AWARD NEWS  MAY 07, 2019 Game of Thrones’ Sansa Stark Problem Still smirking over the rogue coffee cup that snuck into Westeros on Sunday’s new episode of Game of Thrones? Maybe it’s time to turn your attention to another puzzling element of that post-Battle of Winterfell sequence—something that’s been befuddling Sonia Saraiya. V.F.’s TV critic did a close reading of Sansa Stark’s curious Season 8, Episode 4 interaction with the Hound, a conversation heavy with shared history and meaning . . . and strange choices, and missed opportunities, particularly when Sansa tells the Hound that the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of men has made her into the Lady of Winterfell we see before us today. As Saraiya puts it: “Perhaps this is what Sansa really believes. Perhaps the show is telling us that suffering leads to strength. But what really makes no sense is that while Sansa apparently agrees that she was ‘broken in,’ transformed from a little bird into a queen through the brutalization of men, in this conversation, she exerts no power of her own. She doesn’t tell the Hound to fuck off with his metaphor. She doesn’t tell him that he’s wrong about protecting her. She doesn’t ream him about standing by silently as Joffrey and Cersei ruined her life. The only decisions she makes are to sit down, hold his hand, and then to stand up—and we don’t even know why she sat down in the first place.” Elsewhere in HWD, Oren Peleg goes inside the new movie Charlie Says, which looks at the 1969 Manson murders from a fresh perspective; Josh Duboff takes us behind the curtain of the 2019 Met Gala’s most exclusive after-parties; Joe Pompeo surveys a new era for CBS News; and Laura Bradley previews the next season of The Bachelorette, which looks both familiar and intriguingly different from the franchise’s usual fare.

Little Bird No More If you want believable female characters on your show, writes Sonia Saraiya, you would be wise to hire a few female writers. READ MORE » Helter Skelter Producer Dana Guerin, director Mary Harron, and screenwriter Guinevere Turner—who was raised in a cult herself—on their upcoming “Manson Girls”-focused film, Charlie Says. READ MORE » Post-Camp At Gucci’s after-party, the Boom Boom Room, and Up & Down, an array of stars mingled following the 2019 Met Gala. READ MORE » Brave New World Susan Zirinsky has overhauled the CBS News division’s programming slate and is shipping Cronkite and Rather’s show to D.C. Some staffers wonder if it’s “a move that’s being made out of convenience for the anchor.” READ MORE » All Aboard The Hot Mess Express is open and ready for business, as an entertaining trailer for a new season of The Bachelorettepromises. READ MORE »