Watch Westworld

“Westworld” star Thandie Newton compared shooting nude scenes on the HBO show to having a fourth baby, while talking with Oprah Winfrey during Variety‘s “Actors on Actors” series.

Newton, who plays android host Maeve Millay, had given birth to her third child just five months ago when she began filming the show, and she said the impact of the moment was less about looking a certain way and more about having the courage to do it. She said she felt more in control while playing the role than she ever had before.

Read the rest of this article at Page Six.

Thandie Newton has also appeared in ER and Rogue.

Eager for the second season of Westworld to begin? You probably should relax a little, because the next season of the hit HBO series won't be ready until sometime next year. This week, however, we got some news that can at least give you something to look forward to.

Deadline reported this week that Talulah Riley, the actress who played a host named Angela in the series' first season, will be promoted to a series regular cast member for the second season. Although Riley appeared in the majority of episodes in the first season, her role was relatively small, and she didn't have regular status.

Riley's promotion hints at some intriguing possibilities for an expanded storyline. Angela had functioned as both a greeter who prepared guests for their adventures in the park and, in the series' future timeline, an in-world host who seemed to have some knowledge of the upheaval that was going to take place at the season's climax. With Angela playing a bigger role, she could become a host that determines the fate of many guests in-world.

There's no definite premiere date for Westworld's season two, but creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy have said they want to take their time with the new episodes. In order to do that, they've pushed the premiere date to sometime in 2018.

Sunday's season finale of HBO's Westworld was a ratings success, setting a new series high and ending the show's first season in positive territory. Now viewers just have to wait more than year, and perhaps as long as two years, until the next season hits the air.

The season-ending episode, which clocked in at 90 minutes instead of the usual hour, drew 2.2 million viewers to the live broadcast on the HBO cable network. When you take into account those viewers who watched Sunday night on HBO's digital streaming platforms, that number rises to 3.6 million.

Those ratings are very good for Westworld when compared to itself; the episode rose compared to last week's ratings and set a series high mark. But, more importantly, they're good numbers compared to any other HBO series. Westworld's average of 12 million viewers per episode (when delayed viewing is figured in) makes it the most-watched first season of any HBO series to date.

The only problem now is that Westworld will be on hiatus until sometime in 2018. That leaves HBO with a fantasy-drama vacuum until Game of Thrones premieres its seventh season, and there is not yet a definite official date for that premiere. It also leaves Westworld fans in limbo for a very long time, running the risk that the series will have to start all over again to build a fan base for its second season.

The Walking Dead is still, by far, the most-watched series on cable TV, but its ratings trend so far this season has been consistently in a downward direction. Over on HBO on Sunday nights, Westworld looks like it's starting to pick up steam to become the second-most-popular cable-TV fantasy on Sunday nights.

This week's fourth episode of TWD's seventh season continued to lose viewers, as the episode turned in ratings that were down by 5 percent compared to the week before. The season's debut episode delivered huge ratings--along with huge controversy--but each subsequent episode has racked up lower and lower ratings. Episode four was down a staggering 36 percent from the season premiere in the 18-49 age demographic.

The news is better for Westworld, which saw its ratings edge up this week compared to last week. The new series is holding steady, and although its ratings are a fraction of TWD's, Westworld still manages to be the most-watched Sunday-night cable show that doesn't involve zombies or Real Housewives.

TWD has a long way to go to turn the season around; it's just halfway through the first half of its seventh season. Westworld, on the other hand, is beginning to wind down; it has just three more episodes to go in its debut season.

HBO tried an interesting strategy for keeping its expensive new series Westworld from being totally obliterated by last week's presidential debate, and it's too early to tell if it worked. Judging by traditional ratings numbers, though, was no match for the real-life political intrigue over the weekend.

Westworld was up against the debate and NFL football on Sunday evening, and the debate won handily. Debate broadcasts and debate analysis on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News Channel all drew more viewers than Westworld did. That wasn't anything to be ashamed of, since no other programming was able to compete with the debate.

Perhaps more concerning, though, is the fact that Westworld's ratings tied with those of Basketball Wives: LA and Family Guy on Adult Swim. Westworld's ratings were also down by about 12 percent compared to ratings for its debut episode the previous week.

To avoid being totally shut out by the debate, however, HBO made the second episode of Westworld available for streaming on its HBO Go and HBO Now platforms two days before its air date. HBO says that 2.7 million people watched the episode via those streaming platforms and on the air by the end of the weekend. That's down substantially from the viewership of the first episode, but it's not terrible considering the inhospitable situation the series faced.

Next weekend's third episode should give a clearer picture of just how much fans are enjoying the new series.

Last weekend's premiere of Westworld was the most eagerly anticipated series launch on HBO in quite some time, and with the season premiere of Game of Thrones nowhere in sight, much of the channel's hopes are pinned on the new sci-fi thriller. Did the debut of Westworld live up to the elevated expectations?

Well, yes and no. The series premiered on Sunday night opposite the first hour of the season finale of Fear the Walking Dead. In terms of pure numbers, Westworld didn't even come close to FTWD, drawing just 1.9 million viewers as compared to FTWD's 3.6 million. Westworld was also edged out by reruns of The Big Bang Theory on TBS.

On the other hand, live broadcast ratings don't mean as much to HBO as they do to traditional TV networks, and when streaming is taken into account, the debut of Westworld fared better. HBO puts total viewership of the episode at about 3.3 million. That brings it virtually even with FTWD at the top of the charts for the night.

The bottom line is that Westworld debuted with viewership that is essentially typical for an HBO series - not as good as The Newsroom or True Detective, but better than The Leftovers and Vinyl. It doesn't look, though, like a series that is going to draw subscribers to HBO the way GoT does, and that could be a problem for a series with a first-episode production budget of $100 million.

HBO's new series Westworld has big names attached to it and a long history in Hollywood. But as the venerable story is adapted for a 21st-century audience, it's being infused with some very of-the-moment themes. That could make the series an extremely topical hit, or it could seem like something we've already seen quite a few times.

The series concerns a futuristic theme park in which visitors interact with androids acting out scenes built around a Wild West theme. Unfortunately, things get out of hand, and the androids start killing the guests. The original story was written by novelist/director/producer Michael Crichton and was originally adpated to film in 1973. Crichton himself rehashed the out-of-control theme park concept in his novel Jurassic Park, which was, of course, transformed into a mega-successful film franchise.

This update of the story, penned by screenwriter Jonathon Nolan (The Dark Knight, Interstellar) and his wife Lisa Joy (Burn Notice), tweaks the motivation of the androids. This time, they're not simply malfunctioning; they're becoming self-aware and beginning to question the meaning of their existence. It's a theme that's recently been explored in films such as Ex Machina, and not so recently in stories like Frankenstein.

Westworld premieres on HBO on October 2.