Scarlett Johansson Gave Us the Best Meme of the Week

This week:

• Please don’t bring back Ted Lasso.

• Scarlett Johansson changed my life.

• Two legends unite.

• My favorite video of the week.

• My favorite new fact of the week.

ScarJo Gifts Us a New Life Mantra

Kim Cattrall saying, “I don’t want to be in a situation for even an hour where I’m not enjoying myself.”

Whoopi Goldberg saying she won’t get married again because “I don’t want somebody in my house.”

You can have your Brené Brown. You can have your Tony Robbins. You can have your Esther Perel. These celebrity women are my life coaches, and those are their words that I live by.

Now, I’m a changed man. I look at life anew. My perception of the world has shifted on its axis because a third instant-classic actress quote has come out, and immediately joins Cattrall and Goldbergs’ words in the Hall of Fame of Wisdom.

In a new interview, Scarlett Johansson said why she doesn’t take selfies with fans, explaining, “I don’t want to be identified as being in this time and place with you.”

I don’t want to be identified as being in this time and place with you.

It’s logical, honest, reasonable, and completely clear in its meaning. It’s also ferocious in its utter bluntness, in a way that I don’t just find empowering, but kind of fabulous. I’ve spent the week daydreaming of what it would be like to say it to someone and walk away, leaving them slack-jawed and stunned, but unable to refute or contest it.

I want to print it out on business cards to hand to the people trying to stop me on the street to get me sign up for GreenPeace, to people filming TikToks when I’m in the background trying to mind my own business, or to anyone I encounter throughout the day I find generally annoying.

I want to set it as an autoreply to essentially every email I receive at work.

I am in the process of petitioning Partiful to make the sentence an RSVP option on invitations.

This has the potential to change my life. I look forward to living by its message in my house that nobody else lives in while exclusively experiencing situations in which I’m enjoying myself.

I Need a Collab Immediately

Jennifer Lopez and Meryl Streep both attended the Broadway hit “Oh, Mary!” (which, if you recall, is absolutely the funniest play I have ever seen) on the same night.

I need to know everything they talked about. I need to know every opinion they had of the show. I need to know how hard they laughed when [spoiler character] [did spoiler thing]. And I need to know how quickly Hollywood can turn this pairing into a movie. The Dream-Casting Manifestation of Kevin Fallon Productions will be thrilled to finance it.

An Icon. A Legend. The Moment.

Bernadette Peters appeared on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon this week to promote her new Broadway show Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends, and broke out into an “impromptu” performance of the Sondheim standard “Broadway Baby.”

As is the requirement that GLAAD notifies you of when you first come out as gay, I have watched countless videos of Peters performing “Broadway Baby” at various venues at various times over the span of decades. It is thrilling each and every time. It’s rare to watch one of art’s greatest talents get to deliver a tour de force with a piece that is exactly suited to their skills and personality.

The abbreviated performance on The Tonight Show is an absolute blast. By the way, she is 77 and performing with that level of vibrancy. Meanwhile, I winced and said “oof” as I stood up from the couch a few minutes ago.

Oscar Is a Nudist

As someone who fancies himself curious about the world but who generally is a lazy idiot, I always find it fun when a factoid comes my way that reveals something that I had never considered—but then when you think more about it, you’re like, “Oh yeah! That’s true!”

That happened this week when Conan O’Brien revealed that he had an idea for a comedy bit at the Academy Awards where he and Oscar were domestic partners who irritate each other like an old married couple. The Oscar statue would wear an apron while cleaning the house, but the Academy turned down the pitch saying, according to O’Brien, ““No clothing on Oscar. Oscar is always naked.”

I had never thought about whether I’d seen an Oscar statue with clothes on. Turns out I hadn’t, and this is why. The Academy is insistent that he be a nudist.

What to Watch This week:

Adolescence: The best new show of the year and unlike anything you’ve seen. (Now on Netflix)

Long Bright River: If you ever thought, “What if they did Mare of Easttown, but with Amanda Seyfried,” then this show’s for you! (Now on Peacock)

Black Bag: The best movie in theaters right now, and it goes wide this weekend. (Now in theaters)

What to Skip This Week:

Novocaine: Should be funnier. Should be more violent. Should be more like Looney Tunes. (Now in theaters)

Opus: Just about everything in this movie is a misfire. (Now in theaters)

The Parenting: Not even Brian Cox’s erect penis can save this one. (Now on Max)