This Week

• Everyone is horny for an assassin. 

• The dish on the perfect series finale.

• Patti LuPone 4ever.

• The casting that needs to happen immediately.

The Luigi Obsession 

I came to the realization this morning that I may be more familiar with the face of Luigi Mangione, the “hot assassin,” than I am my own. 

Part of that is because, after being offline for about three hours on Monday, I resurfaced to 79 texts from various group chats with memes about how Mangione, who has claimed credit and been arrested for the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City, is a total babe. 

Part of that is because this young man seems to have gone to prison in a JCPenney portrait studio—how many mugshots do we need? 

Maybe it’s because of the fact that, even on my walk from my office to the subway, I can’t escape him contributed to this; they’re now selling t-shirts with his chiseled, shirtless torso on them at the local market. 

And maybe it’s because we’ve all willfully and almost giddily espoused former ethical and safety boundaries that kept us—the royal “we” of my media colleagues and me, and also me and my fellow private citizens—from spreading information and photos about an accused murderer, for fear of glorifying and encouraging the crime. 

It’s been an onslaught: a barrage of news, which is to be expected, and a battering of memes—which, I suppose, is also to be expected. There has also been a proliferation of thirst. 

As a Very Online person, I could have predicted that too, but even so, I was not prepared for the positively feral nature of what I’ve seen in the last week: the filthiest, horniest, foaming-at-the-mouth (and, occasionally, hilarious) posts about this man. It turns out that something about a guy who unapologetically kills and also has eight abs just unlocks something carnal about people, or at least people with access to an X account.

This phenomenon…I don’t know what to make of it. It’s been fun? I guess? In recent years, it has been rare for there to be a monoculture moment for us all to bond over—though even that has been happening more and more recently. Think Barbie, Travis and Taylor, or Challengers. 

We’re not even starved for meme bonding. It was just days ago we were all still joking about holding space for the lyrics of “Defying Gravity.” How did we so quickly go from that to feeling power in that bodacious, CEO-killing bod? I have seen far more than a couple of posts. And as you know, I’m in queer media, so…

It’s been a strange thing to witness and to take part of, both as a person laughing at, liking, and sending those memes back and forth with friends and as a journalist at a publication trying to figure out the best and also most responsible way to report on what’s become an unfamiliar news figure: a folk hero who committed a murder that a loud majority of people are not just joking about, but applauding. 

The unequivocal worst movie I saw this year was Joker: Folie à Deux. Somehow, it’s become the most relevant. (If you’re lucky enough to have missed that movie and don’t know the plot, basically we’re all the Lady Gaga character now.)

I’ve been trying to understand and synthesize this particular cultural moment, which, I am fully aware, sounds insufferable. But fully awareness actually is what I think is making this news story so remarkable. 

Everyone who is goofily making humor and pearl-clutching lewd comments about Mangione seems to be doing so with a knowingness that is simultaneously cheeky and macabre. Not since we’ve all become OK with seeing a photo of the cartoon fox version of Robin Hood in the Disney movie and admitting “well, I would…” has there been a blanket forgiveness for an objectively problematic crush.

There’s a tinge of righteousness to it—obviously, many people are passionate about problems with the healthcare system. But the hyperbole behind the speed and extremity with which Mangione became a, for lack of a better word, “star” undercuts an argument that there is an issue-based morality behind it. The “fun” of it, weird as that is to say, has overridden any mission-oriented push to his virality.

I wondered if we’ve just become so desensitized about the news and violent nature of the world that we can now pivot this quickly to frivolity in the wake of an event like this assassination. There’s a metaphorical shrug with which we live our lives now. With friends last week, the vibe was of course there’s an assassin on the lam in New York City and we’re just having a beer like it’s not happening right now. This week, the vibe has been gossiping about him like he’s our friend Jessica’s hot, but questionable new boyfriend.

More often than “how are you,” the question I’ve been asked the most this week was “who is going to play the hot shooter in the Ryan Murphy series?” There is no Ryan Murphy series. But we’ve been conditioned to just fast-forward to that cynical inevitability. (The answer: Timothée Chalamet would never; Dave Franco is too old; and Isaac Cole Powell is the right choice, just Google him.) 

It’s counterintuitive: a numbness to news trauma has enlivened our sense of fun. Is it dastardly? Is it maybe healthy? I don’t know. I think we’ve all become experts at compartmentalization and, for now, the best we can do is: “Sexy assassin, let’s just enjoy that.”

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She’s Just Being Miley   

There’s always gonna be another mountain. I’m always gonna wanna make it move. Instead, I’m going to scale it and scream from its peak that the series finale to Somebody Somewhere, which is now available on Max, is one of the best half hours of TV I’ve seen this year—and featured an epic performance of a Miley Cyrus song.

The series stars Bridget Everett as Sam, a middle-aged woman who moved back to her Kansas hometown to deal with a family tragedy, sparking her own journey to finally figure out what she wants from life. It’s a scary path to walk down—the ambition of self-fulfillment of seeking happiness leaves a person extremely vulnerable to rejection and disappointment. 

Somebody Somewhere traveled that path with booming emotion and ribald humor, culminating in a moment in the series finale that can only be described as ecclesiastical. Sam finally centers on an understanding of her own worth and how she is valued to her friends, family, and community. She commemorates this epiphany with a song—her love language—and performs a barn-burning of Miley Cyrus’ “The Climb.”

“The Climb” is a ballad Cyrus recorded for The Hannah Montana Movie, which might signal that it’s juvenile; no, it slaps. Especially when Everett is performing it. 

“That was Bridget’s choice,” Somebody Somewhere co-creator Paul Thureen told me, after I confided that my soul just about left my body when I recognized the opening chords to the song during the scene. “What a way to end. What a way to go out.” 

Everett was emphatic. “It could only be ‘The Climb,’” she told me. “I'm just so f---ing happy that that happened.”

“I used to sing it a lot on the road to close my shows,” she continued. “I’ve been singing it for a while, and I think that there’s something about it that, like, you don't expect Sam to sing a Miley Cyrus song, especially a Hannah Montana song. And the lyrics are so sort of literal. But I just love it.”

If you’ve been watching Somebody Somewhere, it was a moment for which there were not enough Kleenex in the world. “It’s been a song that's been with me for a long time,” Everett said. “I’m so happy that we found a way to work it in.”

Crucial Patti LuPone Update 

How do I give proper backstory to this without writing 47,000 words? 

Patti LuPone was supposed to star in the original Broadway production of Sunset Boulevard after playing Norma Desmond in London, but was unceremoniously fired and replaced with Glenn Close. She sued over it, and now has what she calls the “Andrew Lloyd Weber Memorial Pool” at her house, which she partially paid for with the eventual payout. She also has been outspoken over the years about how bad she thinks the show is just as theater material. 

But this week, she went to see the splashy Broadway revival starring Nicole Scherzinger, and was ecstatic.

“I went in with trepidation because I have strong feelings about the show. Not what happened to me in the show, but the show, period,” she said. “I loved this production. I thought Nicole [Scherzinger] and Tom [Francis] were stunning. I thought Nicole was unbelievable. She broke my heart. She is a force.”

“I thought the cast was fantastic, the lighting,” she continued. “The use of the filming was something that I questioned because I don’t know where I am. Am I at a movie or at the theater? This worked brilliantly. The whole thing. The whole thing. I was energized when I left the theater. I loved it.”

If your interests overlap with mine, this is quite simply the biggest news to ever happen in your lifetime. As one user wrote on X, “This is like hearing Jesus complimenting the woodwork of the cross.”

This Needs to Happen 

It’s a lot of work juggling multiple fake husbands, but I’ve always had a strong professional ethic. 

Imagine how I’m reacting to the news that two of them are trying to collaborate with each other. 

In a recent interview, Jonathan Bailey said that he and his friend, Andrew Scott, are looking for a project to act in together. 

Bailey starred in Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s TV series Crashing, and Scott was famously the Hot Priest in her show Fleabag. In other words, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, this is your public duty, what you were put on this Earth for. Make it happen.

More From The Daily Beast’s Obsessed 

• We talked to married couple Carrie Preston and Michael Emerson about acting together in Elsbeth. Read more.
• This actor has played JFK in six different movies. Read more.
• Going back to the Jersey Shore house with Snooki, 15 years later. Read more.

• Carry-On: Finally, Netflix gives a legitimately great action thriller. (Now on Netflix)

• Paris & Nicole: The Encore: This The Simple Life reunion means so much to me. (Now on Peacock)

• Dream Production: Alert the kids! (OK, and all of the adults, too.) The Inside Out spinoff series is so charming. (Now on Disney+)

• Kraven the Hunter: One movie just assassinated the entire superhero genre. (Now in theaters)

• Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim: Banish it back to Middle Earth. (Now in theaters)

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