ESSENTIAL INDUSTRY AND AWARD NEWS  NOVEMBER 14, 2019 Sesame Street at 50 When Wayne Brady stepped onto the set of Sesame Street to perform a song explaining the word between, he says, “I’m not ashamed to admit, I teared up big time.” For Bill Irwin, who still stops by to play the goofy, silent character Mr. Noodle, “It’s like going to Yankee Stadium or Wrigley Field.” For 50 years now Sesame Street has been a place of pilgrimage for all manner of celebrities, who get to hang out with Elmo and Grover, sing a song or two, and, if they’re lucky, become beloved by millions of children. Sesame Street turns 50 this week, and in honor of that golden anniversary, Donald Liebenson talked to a wide range of stars—from Anderson Cooper to Amy Sedaris—about their time with Big Bird and company. As Richard Kind said in an email, “It’s amazing that at 50 years old they still look as young as they do.” Elsewhere in HWD, Laura Bradley shares an exclusive clip from this Friday’s episode of The Morning Show,featuring Oscar winner Marcia Gay Harden; Yohana Desta talks to Trey Edward Shults, who mined his own high school experiences for his new drama, Waves; and Richard Lawson reviews Frozen II, which thrilled the kids in his audience but left him wondering why, exactly, the film had to exist at all.

A Is for Anniversary When Oscar winner Marlee Matlin was a child, Sesame Streetwas one of the few places she saw a deaf actress. Years later she appeared alongside Billy Joel to perform “Just the Way You Are” for Oscar the Grouch: “As soon as the music started, all the jitters went away and there I was signing along with Billy Joel.” READ MORE » The Morning Show Drama Ramps Up “It’s never straightforward when women try to take control of a male-dominated empire, you know?” says Jennifer Aniston’s Alex in this exclusive clip from the Apple TV+ show. But as The Morning Show slowly reveals, she’s not as much of an innocent victim in this situation as she would like everyone to believe. READ MORE » Ice Cold “From my sorry adult view,” writes Richard Lawson of Frozen II,“this sequel is entirely unnecessary, except in its duty to serve the needs of capital.” READ MORE » Riding the Waves Thirty-one-year-old writer-director Trey Edward Shults made his third feature by tapping directly into his high school experiences—and those of his magnetic star, Kelvin Harrison Jr. “I just felt a connection to him,” Shults said of the first time he saw Harrison Jr.’s audition tape for their previous collaboration, It Comes at Night. “It’s only grown stronger, and he’s like my brother. I love that kid.” READ MORE » Earbuds Time Tracy Letts is a Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright who regularly acts in films written by other people. So what does he look for in a script? For Ford v Ferrari, it helped that “it was a human story. It was about people.” READ MORE »