‘Couples Therapy' Renewed for Season 5 Following 30% Surge in Viewership
This decision comes after the documentary series saw a significant boost during its fourth season. The premiere episode for the second half of Season 4 delivered a 30% increase on cross-platform viewership compared to the premiere for the prior season. 'Couples Therapy' scored its renewal as the series is in the middle of airing its fourth season, which returned on May 23. All episodes are currently available to watch on Paramount+ with Showtime with new episodes premiering on Fridays.
'Couples Therapy' first premiered in 2019 and follows the work of Dr. Orna Guralnik. Each season jumps between three or four different couples as they participate in a 20-week therapy program. Not all parts of these sessions are shown, but the point of the series is to chronicle the deep and often messy work that therapy requires rather than presenting audiences with another overly dramatized or sanitized version of therapy. With cameras hidden behind a one-way mirror, the series gives viewers an intimate look into these couples' conflicts and their personal breakthroughs.
The documentary series has long been a critical darling. In 2021, 'Couples Therapy' won the Television Critics Association (TCA) Award for Outstanding Achievement in Reality Programming, and in 2024, it won the American Cinema Editors (ACE) Award for Best Edited Non-Scripted Series. The show has also been nominated by the International Documentary Association, the Cinema Eye Honor Awards and the Critics Choice Real TV Awards.
'Couples Therapy' is produced by Edgeline Films. Josh Kriegman, Elyse Steinberg and Eli Despres, known for their work on 'Weiner' and 'Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show,' serve as the series' executive producers alongside Vinnie Malhotra. Matt Parker, Bennett Elliott and Carly Hugo produce the second installment of Season 4, which is directed by Pax Wassermann and Bennett Elliott. Paramount Global Content Distribution distributes the series.
The post 'Couples Therapy' Renewed for Season 5 Following 30% Surge in Viewership | Exclusive appeared first on TheWrap.
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New York Post
an hour ago
- New York Post
‘Naked Gun' director Akiva Schaffer ‘threatened to quit' to save this ‘polarizing' scene
Warning: spoilers below for 'The Naked Gun.' Leslie Nielsen would be proud. Director Akiva Schaffer, 47, has revealed that he 'threatened to quit' the 'Naked Gun' reboot to save a scene that the movie's other writers wanted to cut. 8 Akiva Schaffer speaks onstage during the 'Chip 'N Dale: Rescue Rangers' premiere at El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California, on May 18, 2022. Getty Images for Disney 8 Pamela Anderson and Liam Neeson in the newly released 'The Naked Gun' reboot. ©Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection 'It was polarizing in script reads,' Schaffer said on Monday's episode of IndieWire's 'Filmmaker Toolkit' podcast. 'People I really respect, like Andy Sandberg, when he read it for me, he was like, 'Snowman's the best. Do not let them cut it,' knowing it would be cuttable.' 'It makes sense once you see the movie, but at one point I did have to threaten to quit,' he added. The 'polarizing' montage in question comes when Frank Drebin Jr. (Liam Neeson) and Beth (Pamela Anderson) share a short romantic getaway in a snowy cabin. 8 Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr. and Pamela Anderson as Beth in 'The Naked Gun' (2025). ©Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection After using a magical spell book to bring a snowman to life, the pair engage in a threesome with the snowman until he suddenly turns violent. Schaffer, who co-wrote the reboot with Dan Gregor and Doug Mand, admitted that he did cut down part of the montage just in case it was completely removed from the film. The Lonely Island alum was ultimately proven right when the sequence became 'the No. 1 scene' in the entire movie. 8 Paul Walter Hauser, Akiva Schaffer and Liam Neeson on the set of 'The Naked Gun' (2025). AP 'After the first test screen, it was the No. 1 scene in the movie,' Schaffer said. 'The people who really fought me on it after ate a lot of crow without me asking. I tried to let them off the hook easy, and go, 'That's fine,' but they were like, 'No, dude, we were wrong.'' Elsewhere during the podcast, Schaffer revealed that they only included the snowman montage as a throwback to the original 1988 'Naked Gun' starring Leslie Nielsen as Frank Drebin and Priscilla Presley as Jane Spencer. In the original, Nielsen and Presley's characters appear in an absurd scene that shows them running hand-in-hand on the beach and laughing during a showing of the dark war drama 'Platoon' while Herman's Hermits play in the background. 8 Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr. in the new 'The Naked Gun' reboot. AP 8 Pamela Anderson as Beth in the new 'The Naked Gun' reboot. AP 'We got to the point in our script, we were like, 'Wow, this love story deserves a montage,'' Schaffer explained. 'The original 'Naked Gun' has a very famous, very good montage set to 'I'm Into Something Good.'' 'We knew it had to be different than that,' he continued. 'And then also, there's been 30 years of making fun of montages, whether it's 'Team America' doing a montage or whatever, there's not a lot of room left in the montage. We were debating not doing a montage and had a few other ideas.' It wasn't until the 'Hot Rod' director got up to use the bathroom late one night that the snowman idea popped into his head. 8 A poster for 'The Naked Gun' featuring Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson. Copious Management/Paramount 'When I got back in bed, it had been percolating that day in the writers' room, and I just saw the entire thing and wrote it into bullet point notes, and then texted it to Dan and Doug,' he shared. 'The next morning, I came into the writers' room and they were like, 'Yeah, done.'' But Schaffer was not the only one to 'love' the 'polarizing' montage, because Pamela Anderson has also spoken about how much she enjoyed shooting that particular scene with her rumored new beau, Liam Neeson. 'I remember Liam and other people saying, 'What is this?'' the 'Baywatch' alum, 58, told Entertainment Weekly. 'But I was like, 'It makes perfect sense to me.' It feels like Akiva's signature.' 8 Akiva Schaffer, Erica Huggins and Seth MacFarlane attend a 'The Naked Gun' special screening at Paramount Pictures Studios on July 14, 2025, in Los Angeles, California. Getty Images for Paramount Pictures 'I know he fought really hard to keep that in because as things grow and then there's budgets and they figure out what they want to use, he was insistent that had to stay in,' she added. 'He's throwing himself on the sword for that one, so he knows something we don't.' Anderson joked that it was even more fun filming the snowman montage than watching it. 'She was in bed with us, so the threesome with the snowman was quite interesting,' Anderson said of the snowman's puppeteer. 'There are very specific rules dealing with people in costumes — you're not supposed to directly talk to the puppeteer. And this was a full-on, Hansen-level costume.' 'Inside, there's a person with these night vision goggles, or whatever you want to call them, in there telling which way to turn,' she added. 'It's very, very complex. It's very robotic.'


Chicago Tribune
4 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Paramount Theatre cancels its Bold subscription series due to Aurora funding cut
In an uncharacteristic retrenchment, the growth-oriented Paramount Theatre in Aurora has canceled one of its two theater subscription series for 2026, its board of directors announced on social media late Monday, citing an anticipated large reduction in city funding. The cancellation means that the previously announced Chicago-area premiere of 'Covenant' by York Walker, which was to be directed by Malkia Stampley, and a new staging of the cult musical 'Ride the Cyclone,' not seen here since its world premiere in 2015, are now off. The theater said it would refund the money of those who bought tickets for the stagings at the city's Copley Theatre. The current production of 'True West' by Paramount in the Copley, recently reviewed in the Tribune, will be allowed to complete its run at the end of the month. Aurora has seen political change in recent weeks. Former mayor Richard Irvin, who had staked much of the city's future on downtown Aurora becoming a long-term hub for arts and entertainment, was defeated by John Laesch, who is now in office and has said Aurora now faces a gap between revenue and expenses. As the Tribune has reported, Laesch already has canceled plans for the proposed construction of new 4,000-seat music venue to be known as the City of Lights Center, and has said at a public meeting both that the city faced a 'significant hole' between revenue and expenses and that the city's subsidy of the existing historic theater was 'too much.' The Aurora Civic Center Authority operates (and largely does business as) the Paramount Theatre and has an annual budget of about $31 million. The board of directors is appointed by the mayor. Its CEO Tim Rater said that he had anticipated a flat budget for the coming fiscal year but that the city now has signaled that it was going to significantly reduce the level of its annual support to the theater, which represents about 20% of the Paramount's budget. 'The city has indicated they have a shortfall in their budget and are not going to provide the full $7 million we were anticipating, so we have to look at various ways in which we can save money,' Rater said. 'We are sure we will not be the only community organization that will face these reductions.' Rater said the main subscription season of Broadway musicals at the theater, the Paramount's theater school and a sit-down production of 'Million Dollar Quartet' currently are unaffected.
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Yahoo
A Liam Neeson-Ricky Gervais Clip Convinced Akiva Schaffer a ‘Naked Gun' Reboot Wasn't a ‘Horrible Idea'
If you had grown up with the original 'Naked Gun' trilogy (1988-1994) like writer/director Akiva Schaffer, chances are you, too, would've thought a 2025 franchise reboot was a horrible idea. Schaffer, 47, watched the original 'Naked Gun' countless times in middle and high school, but his 'trepidation and pessimism' when he got a call about the remake went beyond the typical kneejerk nostalgia to protect a cherished childhood memory. The 'SNL' and Lonely Island alum is as serious a student of spoofs as anyone in comedy, and it was his considerable professional opinion that a reboot was a fool's errand. More from IndieWire Inside 'The Naked Gun' Scene Director Akiva Schaffer Had to Fight to Keep 'Ella McCay' Trailer: James L. Brooks Directs Emma Mackey as Jamie Lee Curtis' Ambitious Niece 'I definitely thought it was a bad idea,' said Schaffer when he was a guest on this week's episode of IndieWire's Filmmaker Toolkit podcast to discuss his new 'The Naked Gun.' 'The first movie, specifically, is a perfect movie. It's almost a magic trick. Every time you think you figured out what they did to make it work in terms of the rules, the next scene breaks that rule in a way — somehow, their instincts were so good as to what the audience cared about and didn't care about.' Schaffer said he took the meeting with Paramount out of 'morbid curiosity,' wondering what the studio's plans were for the respected property. 'The thing that changed my mind was them saying Liam Neeson was interested,' said Schaffer. One of the keys to success for brothers David and Jerry Zucker, along with Jim Abrahams —the ZAZ producing-directing trio behind 'Airplane,' 'Top Secret,' and the 'Naked Gun' films— was the casting of dramatic actors in Hollywood's first spoof films. 'It's not that they're playing it straight; it's that they're playing it real,' said Schaffer. 'When people think of playing it straight, they think of playing it serious, meaning they could get very humorless and flat, and it's not that. It's that you're playing it like you're an actor who is so dumb, they don't know that what they're saying is crazy. That it's so genuine.' Schaffer is not alone in believing no one was better at this than the original 'Naked Gun' star Leslie Nielsen, but more importantly, stepping into his Detective Frank Drebin's shoes would be a mistake. 'Leslie Nielsen is irreplaceable, one of one, as they say,' said Schaffer. 'Any actor that would be trying to do a Leslie Nielsen impression of any sort would be a failing idea.' The reason the possibility of Neeson intrigued Schaffer, opening the door a crack to the potential of doing the reboot? A four-minute bit the 'Taken' star did in Warwick Davis, Stephen Merchant, and Ricky Gervais' 2011 comedy series 'Life's Too Short.' It's a well-known clip in comedy circles that Schaffer had watched countless times. In the scene, Neeson plays a severe version of himself, the dramatic actor wanting to try his hand at comedy, but seemingly unaware that AIDS, cancer, famine, and his 'Schindler's List' preparation aren't suitable comedic premises to riff off. You can watch the scene below. 'It's all in that clip. He's playing Liam Neeson in it, but it's clearly a caricature. That's an amalgamation of every action movie he's made for the last 10 years, and he's playing it so serious and so humorless and saying crazy shit,' said Schaffer. 'That's also why when they said Liam Neeson, I went, 'Oh,' because when you see that clip, you're like, what an amazing untapped resource. The leading-man, old-school gravitas — that doesn't exist anymore, but also [he] hasn't used his power for comedy yet, almost ever, except that clip and a cameo in 'Ted 2.'' Schaffer pointed to other handsome leading men, like Alec Baldwin and Jon Hamm, who had successfully made the pivot to comedy, but afterwards kept one career foot firmly planted in the comedy world. 'Liam never did that pivot. He's just really rare in that way,' said Schaffer. 'It let me know that we wouldn't be doing an impersonation.' With Neeson, there would be no need to try to replicate or impersonate Nielsen's work in the 1980s and '90s films. Neeson would instead draw from his own well-established, onscreen dramatic persona. 'What you see in that Gervais clip, what he showed me, he's willing to poke fun at this iconic persona he's been developing,' said Schaffer. 'I could be like, 'Oh, that's who he is. That's his version of it.' It's not Leslie's version. That specifically is why Liam opened it up, because I could see a new version happening.' At the beginning of Schaffer's 2025 'Naked Gun,' it's established that Neeson's Detective Drebin is the son of the Nielsen character. His character honors his father's legacy, from which he could draw lessons, but he is his own man living in his own time. It's a tidy analogy for how Neeson's presence allowed Schaffer to approach the original films. A Paramount Pictures release, 'The Naked Gun' is now in theaters. To hear Akiva Schaffer's full interview, subscribe to the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform. Best of IndieWire The 16 Best Slasher Movies Ever Made, from 'Candyman' to 'Psycho' Martin Scorsese's Favorite Movies Include 'Eddington': 87 Films the Director Wants You to See The Best Thrillers Streaming on Netflix in July, from 'Vertigo' and 'Rear Window' to 'Emily the Criminal' Solve the daily Crossword