New Yorker staff writer. Books: "I Like To Watch" & “Cue The Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV." I’m not here— Find me at Bluesky/Insta: emilynussbaum
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Articles by Emily Nussbaum
“Degenerates” Is Funny, Pervy, and Startling
When the meeting ends, only Miller and Target remain in the chat. And then something odd happens: Target turns on his computer’s camera. The exchange that ensues is funny, pervy, and startling—and suddenly the play begins to glide along a fresh, unusual path, one that tracks the bond between these two people, who have very different but equally complex relationships with femininity. In the second act, the two rooms merge, so that Miller and Target can inhabit the same space.
Gut Renos of Ionesco and Chekhov
Igor Golyak’s “Delirium,” a madcap, sneakily emotional reinvention of the 1962 Eugène Ionesco play “Frenzy for Two, or More,” opens with an alarming tableau: a dust-coated man is lying face down, crushed by a heavy door that covers his back like a turtle’s shell. He wears an infantry helmet but also a fancy suit with a cummerbund, and after wriggling out from under the door he props it up so that it faces him, knocks on it in a panic, and finally “breaks in” to the room he’s created.
Seeing It All Hang Out at the Fringe
As it happened, both “Dracula” and “The Waves” also turned up in a very different context: Garry Starr’s bawdy, disarming “Classic Penguins,” a one-man show that is coming to New York this month, at the intimate Studio Seaview. In Edinburgh, at the enormous Pleasance Grand, the audience filed in to find Starr—the alter ego of the Australian performer Damien Warren-Smith—seated and facing the back wall, naked but for a top hat, a huge ruffled collar, a gentleman’s tailcoat, and penguin flippers.
Jane Wickline Is Down to Clown in “Dukes”
Other than that, not much happens. They sing a funny song about hating their jobs, a weird song about being firemen and saving pretty girls, and a surreal song about rescuing a lost crystal goose and winning a prize that fixes their lives. Between musical numbers, they collaborate on writing a double-date ad—“I have strong morals, but I often forget that I have them and unwittingly cause shocking harm to those around me”—only to have their “gorgeous dates” fall into a pizza oven.
“Birthright” and “Giant” Tackle Jewish Identity
Each act takes place at the suburban home of Chaya’s family: the first, “Two Jews, Three Opinions,” weeks after the trip, and the second, “A Palace in Time,” in October, 2016, around a hot tub, where the gang assembles to celebrate (and debate) Alona’s wedding to an Israeli. The final act, “Right of Return,” marks a sadder occasion, in 2024.
The Artistry of Tarot
The first tarot cards, from fifteenth-century Italy, were, essentially, playing cards. Known as carte de trionfi, the cards formed the basis of a popular game played in Milanese courts: in addition to the fifty-two pip cards one might find in a standard set of playing cards, the tarot deck added twenty-one cards to the mix, the trionfi, or “triumphs,” which featured mystical imagery combined with scenes of daily Renaissance life.
How Matthew Rhys Stays Hungry
The Welsh charmer Matthew Rhys, a RADA-trained actor who first broke out as a likable gay lawyer on the ABC family drama “Brothers and Sisters,” confirmed his status as one of the great leading men on television in 2013, when he landed the role of a gloomy, sensitive Russian spy on the FX series “The Americans.” Over six seasons, “The Americans”—a deep meditation on marriage and intimacy as well as global politics—evolved into TV’s most ambitious, wig-packed, and realistically sexy drama,...
Goings On Newsletter
New Yorker subscribers get an exclusive curated reading list, plus unlimited access to our seasonal previews and more. If you’re not already a subscriber, join us today » In today’s newsletter: beginning today, MOMA is screening some twentieth-century Westerns. Plus: • Hollywood’s Zoomer-horror renaissance • The rise of the meta-gay show • Our critics’ best advice for June Kirk Douglas and Jeanne Crain in King Vidor’s “Man Without a Star,” from 1955.
Cowboy Heaven, in MOMA’s Westerns Series
The series “Universal Westerns,” at MOMA through July 3, reveals the fruitful cinematic idiosyncrasies that Universal Pictures, founded in 1912, fostered in its heyday. John Ford, the supreme director of the Western, got his start there, at age twenty-four; in his first feature, “Straight Shooting” (screening June 6 and June 16), from 1917, his artistic personality is already on sharp display.
The Rise of the Meta-Gay Show
At times, this approach can wear thin, the air quotes so enormous that they dwarf what’s inside them. But, when the method clicks, it captures something profound: the deep craving to understand, cross-generationally, queer art that refused to play it small. At one juncture, Bassichis recounts a routine that Maya did about coming out as gay to his father, a devout Catholic who reassured him that their family would pay any price for a cure.
The Fear Driving “Well, I’ll Let You Go” and “Othello”
Like the recent Broadway play “Little Bear Ridge Road,” “Well, I’ll Let You Go” is a portrait of people living in isolation, their walls up—a situation ripe for an explosion.
Boots Riley, Marx Brother
On a cool, drizzly day in Oakland, California, the film director Boots Riley often seemed less like a person than like a landmark—clockable from a distance. In part, this was because Riley, who is fifty-five, wore a gargantuan, lumpy tomato-red felt hat with a wide brim, like the cowboy hat worn by Quick Draw McGraw in the old Hanna-Barbera cartoons.
Boots Riley, Marx Brother
Now For titans of industry in Silicon Valley, there is only a handful of enclaves where you might seek some R&R: Sun Valley, Lake Tahoe, Aspen – ‘the places bougie people go', one San Francisco-based entrepreneur in search of a family retreat says. ‘I didn't want that.' What he wanted was a place that …
The Surrealist Blues Poet aja monet’s Jazzy New Album
Electronic The English singer, producer, and d.j. Nia Archives stands at the forefront of the modern U.K. rave scene, working primarily in jungle and drum and bass. A rare star in a behind-the-decks profession, she is both bellwether and ambassador for one of the more niche music communities.
“Schmigadoon!” and “The Lost Boys” Are Killer Revamps
The first sign of the show’s commitment to the bit is the third song, a delirious hoedown called “Corn Puddin’,” a parody of inane but delightful vintage numbers such as “Real Nice Clambake,” “Shipoopi,” and the demented “Turkey Lurkey Time.” Josh rolls his eyes, repulsed by the elbows-out hoofing; Melissa goes native, twangily improvising a verse asking for an “extry” helping.
Sharp Claws at “Becky Shaw” and “Cats: The Jellicle Ball”
Still, what distinguishes Gionfriddo is not her ear for cruelty but her ability to see beyond it, and to shift the prism of audience sympathy, in tiny increments. This tension is intensified by Trip Cullman’s precise staging, which is smartly paced, down to the indie-sleaze anthems, such as “Zero,” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, that mark each set change. The costumes, by Kaye Voyce, are almost alarmingly on target, from Becky’s try-hard dress to Andrew’s fuzzy orange cardigan.
Sharp Claws at “Becky Shaw” and “Cats: The Jellicle Ball”
1 day ago New from Andrew Lloyd Webber comes the musical of our time.
Isa Genzken Finds Chaos in Order
Dance This spring is seeing a rare flocking of “Firebird” ballets: first, there was the return of Alexei Ratmansky’s, at American Ballet Theatre, and upcoming is the familiar appearance of Balanchine’s at New York City Ballet. But the most important sighting of the mythical Stravinskian fowl might be the revival of Dance Theatre of Harlem’s 1982 version, migrating back to New York for the first time in more than twenty years.
Broadway’s “Dog Day Afternoon” Is a Dog
The staging is equally frustrating. An impressive revolving stage, which displayed both the exterior of the bank and the bland lobby inside, toggled smoothly between scenes. Yet key dramatic moments—a shooting, the robbers’ realization that the bank vault is empty—occurred in a hallway invisible to the audience, described secondhand.
Elaine Reichek’s Needlepoint Revolution
A scene from “Marc by Sofia.”Photograph courtesy Marc Jacobs Marc Jacobs and Sofia Coppola are longtime friends, and it shows in “Marc by Sofia,” the relaxed and detailed documentary that she devotes to his career and, above all, to his sense of style. The anchoring action is the making of his Spring 2024 collection, but the heart of the movie is in archival clips that reach back to the birth of a sensibility.
Two Playwrights Tackle Father Figures
Still, the most remarkable performance at the Cherry Lane is by Peter Friedman, who plays the kind of father you rarely see in art: a good one. It’s a hard sort of acting to describe, a spectacle of humility and self-awareness, unshowy and confident. A businessman with a genial, chatty energy, Mae’s father, facing mortality, is eager to help his daughter to know him better, not as a child but as an adult, to create a closeness that she clearly craves but is frightened of.
"Hate Radio" Chucks the Transcript
"Hate Radio," which was recently onstage at St. Ann's Warehouse, began with a series of quiet, affecting accounts of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda-among them, a story about a young Tutsi woman who saw her sisters' legs get chopped off by her Hutu neighbor. Videos of these harrowing monologues, prerecorded by actors speaking in French, were projected onto a mysterious opaque box at the center of the performance space, as audience members listened through headphones and read English subtitles.
Mitski's Spellbinding Intensity
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For more than a decade, the singer-songwriter Mitski has been a totem for yearners. The artist has described herself as a black hole where people can dump their feelings, but her music moves beyond ugly emotions toward catharsis. "Still, nobody wants me / And I know no one will save me, I'm just asking for a kiss / Give me one good movie kiss and I'll be all right," she sings on her 2018 nu-disco single "Nobody," her voice at once covetous and wistful.
By Sheldon Pearce Verified, K. Leander Williams, Jillian Steinhauer Verified, Emily Nussbaum, Richard Brody Verified, Taran Dugal, Molly Fischer Verified
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The New Yorker
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A Century of Life in the City, at the Movies
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The lives of working people in the city-above all, New York City-have been at the center of movies from the industry's start, as seen in "Tenement Stories," Film Forum's teeming series of fifty-plus films, running Feb. 6-26. The series spans more than a century of cinema, from the nineteen-tens to last year, with the 2025 documentary "Heat," directed by Aicha Cherif, about three women whose housing becomes tenuous in the gentrifying Lower East Side.
By Richard Brody Verified, Zoë Hopkins, Emily Nussbaum, Sheldon Pearce Verified, Jillian Steinhauer Verified, Dan Stahl
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The New Yorker
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"An Ark" Imagines the Afterlife; "Data" Imagines a Corporate Hell
Before you enter "An Ark," a "mixed reality" performance at the Shed, you check your coat and, more oddly, your shoes. Contact lenses are recommended. Inside, there are three concentric circles of chairs arranged on a red carpet and, overhead, a white globe resembling a hot-air balloon. A docent explained that, through my virtual-reality headset, I would see four more chairs-and, ideally, they shouldn't float. They did float, so she adjusted the tech.
Emily Nussbaum on Jane Kramer's "Founding Cadre"
In late 1969, Jane Kramer was back in Manhattan after a spell in Morocco with her husband, an anthropologist. In her absence, the sparks of second-wave feminism had ignited, in two forms: there were the liberals of NOW and also the radicals, whose colorful speak-outs were catnip to journalists.
The Mental Pratfalls of Anne Gridley, in “Watch Me Walk”
Can it be that I first saw Anne Gridley in the extraordinary Nature Theatre of Oklahoma’s work more than fifteen years ago? It seems not possible, given how much I remember her as Juliet in the company’s brilliant “Romeo and Juliet,” against the wonderful Robert M. Johanson’s Romeo. But it’s true. Gridley’s performance was a standout in 2009, and it remains so in my mind.
In Tracy Letts’s “Bug,” Crazy Is Contagious
In Cromer’s framing, that hollowness begins to feel like the play’s sad theme: when someone is on a desperate hunt for meaning, the source of it ultimately doesn’t matter very much. It also turns the play into a story about Agnes, not Peter—her decision to believe, in “X-Files” terms.
Catch Marc Shaiman If You Can
At Joe’s Pizza on Carmine Street, Marc Shaiman, the celebrated composer and lyricist, dropped his slice on the floor. “Ugh, it’s the Shaiman vortex,” he said. “Everything I come near breaks.” Shaiman, sixty-six and a self-described Eeyore, with a scruff of white beard, was feeling fragile.
Keri Russell Isn’t Sure She’s an Actress
“My goal isn’t to go to Cannes.” Despite starring in beloved television for more than three decades, Keri Russell still isn’t sure she wants to be an actress. Plus: • Why Kamala Harris’s book feels like another defeat • Will A.I. make a “permanent underclass” of us all?
Keri Russell’s Emotional Transparency Has Anchored Three Decades of TV
In the twenty-first episode of Season 2 of “Felicity,” a sweet, slightly loopy television series about college life which débuted on the WB in 1998, the dreamy but unreliable Ben Covington, played by Scott Speedman, shows up at the Manhattan coffee shop where his ex-girlfriend, Felicity Porter, works, hoping to woo her back. Felicity, played by Keri Russell, looks a bit wary, her hair in short, meringue-stiff curls, the residue of a post-heartbreak haircut.
Ben Folds’s Latest Thing
At the Bergen Performing Arts Center, in Englewood, New Jersey, the singer-songwriter Ben Folds sat at a piano and picked out the opening bars of “Kristine from the 7th Grade,” a delicate, mordantly funny ballad about a former classmate turned MAGA troll. (“The misspellings, they must be on purpose / We went to a good school, Kristine.”) Then he swiftly ran his fingers down every key, pointer over thumb, hard, testing for trouble. “Two keys are sticking,” he announced.
Ready, Set, Libretto! Jesse Eisenberg Speed-Writes a Musical
Jesse Eisenberg and Meredith Scardino were trying to come up with an idea for a musical, in a conference room in midtown, one recent Sunday. Inspired by a heap of props, they tossed out vague prompts. “That van Gogh vest—I was thinking about how sad van Gogh would be if he saw that,” Scardino, a comedy writer who created the sitcom “Girls5Eva,” said.
Gertrude Berg, the Forgotten Inventor of the Sitcom
On May 9, 1954, on the set of the CBS game show “What’s My Line?,” the week’s “mystery celebrity” strolled past a panel of blindfolded judges and, to a roar from the studio audience, wrote her name on the chalkboard: Gertrude Berg. A zaftig woman with warm, expressive eyes and a dumpling nose, Berg was dressed with Park Avenue flair, in a regal fur stole and three strands of pearls.
7 Books to Read If You Love Reality TV Shows
By ThriftBooks and Likewise • May 20, 2025 Explore a curated list of reality TV-inspired books that blend romance, drama, and humor, perfect for fans of the genre. One to Watch by Kate Stayman-London This debut novel features Bea Schumacher, a plus-size fashion blogger who is tired of the unrealistic portrayals of beauty on reality television.
And the Oscar for Best Conversation Starter Goes To… These 6 Books
Between the suspenseful thrills of winner reveals during The Oscars, entertain your watch party with some thought-provoking discourse about Hollywood. Check out these six books so that you can light up the room with conversation as brightly as the stars shine onscreen. Book of the Day offers star-studded performances from some of the leading lights in nonfiction. To receive new posts and support smart content, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Holiday Gifts for Your Book-Loving Friends
The end of 2024 is rapidly approaching, and the holidays will be here before we know it. This time of year, I am frequently asked for bookish gift ideas. Accordingly, I thought I would create a list of books that make great gifts. For ease of browsing, I have categorized my suggestions to provide some guidance to anyone looking for the perfect book for a loved one, friend, coworker, or even a gift exchange.
Carolina Law Library’s Annual Holiday Gift Guide - Book Selection
Looking for the perfect holiday gift for the book lovers in your life? Let our talented law librarian, Kerri-Ann Rowe, guide your shopping with her thoughtful recommendations that will appeal to all kinds of readers. From exploring pivotal legal trials and the dawn of reality television to understanding AI’s impact and climate change, plus a beautiful celebration of North Carolina art, there’s a recent release here they’ll love unwrapping. By: Brenda Wineapple For the legal history buff.
Carolina Law Library’s Annual Holiday Gift Guide
Looking for the perfect holiday gift for the book lovers in your life? Let our talented law librarian, Kerri-Ann Rowe, guide your shopping with her thoughtful recommendations that will appeal to all kinds of readers. From exploring pivotal legal trials and the dawn of reality television to understanding AI’s impact and climate change, plus a beautiful celebration of North Carolina art, there’s a recent release here they’ll love unwrapping. By: Brenda Wineapple For the legal history buff.
“Nightbitch” and the National Mood
In today’s newsletter, getting to know the director Marielle Heller, and then: Heller and her kids. Her latest film, “Nightbitch,” is based on a novel about a marriage in trouble, upended when a modern couple slips into retro roles.
Marielle Heller’s “Nightbitch” Explores the Feral Side of Motherhood
Marielle Heller sat in a post-production facility in lower Manhattan, looking shaken. It was June, 2023, and for months she’d been finalizing edits on “Nightbitch,” a movie with a Kafka-adjacent premise: a former artist, struggling to adjust to life as a stay-at-home mother, discovers that she’s turning into a dog. That day in New York, things felt nearly as surreal.
The Best Nonfiction Books We Can't Stop Yapping About
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I have a bit of a reputation for being a filthy smut reader. It’s a hard-earned reputation that I’m rather quite proud of. But despite this achievement, I feel the need to come clean and admit that from time to time, I actually enjoy a nonfiction book. Please don’t hold it against me; I swear I’m not one of those people who look down on fiction or have Sapiens on my bookshelf. I’m very selective in my nonfiction books, far more than with my smutty fantasy picks.
By Emily Nussbaum, Eloise Skinner, Syeda Khaula Saad Verified, Rachel Varina Verified, Fleurine Tideman Verified
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Betches
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Time to Face Reality
EMILY NUSSBAUM, THE PULITZER-WINNING television critic and New Yorker staff writer, ends her well-researched, somewhat grueling book on the history of reality television, Cue the Sun!, with a reminder that critics have historically dismissed reality TV as a fad. Yet reality TV has not gone away. It’s more than just a fad, she writes, because “in the end, all our faces got stuck that way.” It’s a strange phrase to insert out of nowhere.
Low-stress nonfiction
BOOKS | REVIEWS 'Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV' By Emily Nussbaum With prose as bracing as a chilled Chardonnay tossed in your face, New Yorker critic Nussbaum delivers an essential book on the development of reality TV, which is not the faint praise it may sound like. Some pop-culture books can feel like overlong web posts, but Nussbaum digs deep into the genre's origins and often-queasy mix of high-flying rhetoric and lowdown showbiz chicanery.
CUE THE SUN! by Emily Nussbaum Read by Gabra Zackman
Gabra Zackman's narration fully embodies a balance of deep insight and affability--a perfect fit here. Nussbaum's approach to the topic of reality television transcends the usual narrative history as it captures key social commentary of programs unique to their time and place.
Check It Out! Book reviews from Ruth Enlow Library
OAKLAND — The Ruth Enlow Library, Garrett County’s public library system, offers reviews each month of books that are currently available for lending. The following includes the book reviews from July: The Greatest Knight: The Remarkable Life of William Marshal, The Power Behind Five English Thrones By Thomas Asbridge Published by Ecco Press Reviewed by Thomas Vose William Marshal started life as younger son with no prospects — a child hostage condemned to death for his father’s disloyalty.
Great book traces fallout of 'Real Housewives' and 'Survivor'
In the spring of 1992, I had brunch with a friend, a documentary filmmaker whose boyfriend had just wrapped a stint as a cameraman on the inaugural season of "The Real World," MTV's groundbreaking series. She claimed that what had happened off-screen was juicier than any on-screen flirtation or racially-charged argument.
Best history books of July 2024, as chosen by the Amazon Editors
Best history books of July 2024, as chosen by the Amazon Editors New York always provides a rich playground for historical action, so it’s no surprise two of our Best History Books of July take place in the iconic city. The Amazon Editors also have a juicy read on the Kennedys, one equally eye-opening on math (trust us), and so many more great book recommendations this month. If you enjoy narrative nonfiction, true crime, glamour, and New York history, you’re going to love A Gentleman and a Thief.
'Cue the Sun!' show how we got to 'The Real Housewives' and 'Survivor' and asks where we go from here
In the spring of 1992, I had brunch with a friend, a documentary filmmaker whose boyfriend had just wrapped a stint as a cameraman on the inaugural season of "The Real World,"MTV's groundbreaking series. She claimed that what had happened off-screen was juicier than any on-screen flirtation or racially-charged argument.
How reality TV got so cruel
The first season of "The Real World" almost ended in mutiny. MTV's cameras were supposed to capture what happens when seven strangers picked to live in a loft "stop being polite and start getting real" - but it turned out that cast's "real" was a little too polite and didn't make for terribly exciting television.
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