60 | MAY 11 • 2023 

DANA BASH/JOHN KING 
& WOLF BLITZER, MORE 
BEL POWLEY AND FOOL
’S 
PARADISE

On April 27, it was 
announced that CNN cor-
respondent Dana Bash, 
51, would take over as the 
anchor of Inside Politics, a 
daily CNN program. Bash 
wasn’t happy, however, 
when the Los Angeles Times 
headlined this news with this 
original headline: John King 
Exits CNN’s ‘Inside Politics’ 
for New Role. His Ex-Wife 
Dana Bash Will Succeed 
Him.
She posted this Tweet: 
“Yes, John and I used to be 
married [2008-2011]. We 
are now friends and share 
a wonderful son together. 
In this context I am not an 
‘ex- wife.’ I am a veteran jour-
nalist with decades of expe-
rience who worked hard for 
this role. Do better please.”
The Times changed the 
second sentence of the 
headline to, simply, Dana 
Bash Will Succeed Him.
As I have noted before, 
Bash’s mother was an author 
and educator, teaching 
Jewish studies. John King
converted to Judaism before 
their marriage. I don’t believe 
that King has ever disclosed 
whether he continued to 

identify as Jewish after the 
divorce. 
CNN has not fired King, 
who has been battling mul-
tiple sclerosis for years. He 
was given a new job as a 
traveling correspondent 
focused on reporting on the 
presidential campaign in the 
battleground states. 
On April 20, CNN 
streamed a 20-minute seg-
ment about Bash and CNN 
anchor Wolf Blitzer, 75. They 
were filmed as they visited 
Auschwitz. On the grounds 
of Auschwitz, they first talk-
ed about their respective 
families. Blitzer’s parents sur-
vived Auschwitz. However, 
his grandparents (all four), 
two uncles and two aunts on 
his father’s side were all mur-
dered there. Bash’s maternal 
grandparents managed to 
leave Hungary in 1941 and 
got to America. But her 
maternal great-grandparents 
were killed in Auschwitz in 
1944.
Bash showed Blitzer a 
letter that her “great-grands” 
wrote to her “grands” in 
early 1944. Despite the 
war, this letter, mailed in 
Hungary, managed to reach 
her “grands” in America. In 
it, Bash’s great-grands con-
veyed their dread that things 
were rapidly getting worse 
for Hungarian Jews. 
The pair walked around 
Auschwitz and, during the 
yearly March of the Living, 
they talked to Holocaust 
survivors and their children. 
They also talked to a histo-
rian about the 80th anniver-
sary of the Warsaw Ghetto 
uprising. (The whole seg-
ment is posted, by CNN, on 
YouTube. The YouTube title 
is: CNN Anchors Tour Nazi 
Death Camp Where Their 
Relatives Died.)
I previously wrote about A 
Small Light, an eight-episode 
series (Disney+/Hulu) about 

Anne Frank and her family. 
It began streaming on May 
1 and concludes this month. 
I noted that Mies Giep, the 
Dutch woman who helped 
hide the Frank family, is 
played by British actress
Bel Powley, 31, and I men-
tioned that Powley’s mother 
is Jewish. Well, Powley 
dropped a few “Jewish nug-
gets” in an April 30 Guardian 
newspaper interview. She 
referred to herself as 
“Jewish,” and she explained 
how her mother’s family set-
tled in the U.K. 
Her great-grandparents 
left Lithuania for America. 
Their ship stopped in Dublin, 
Ireland (then a city in the 
U.K.) and her “great-grands” 
got off, really thinking they 
were in America! Her grand-
mother was born in Dublin 
and, Powley says, “She 
spoke Yiddish with a heavy 
Irish accent.”
Powley also stars in the 
British series Everything I 
Know About Love. This sev-
en-episode series got very 
good reviews, and it began 
streaming on the Peacock 
channel last August (still 
available). I only recently 
caught up with this series, 
and I just watched the first 
episode. Until this week, I 
didn’t know that the lead 
character, Birdy, is supposed 
to be Jewish. 
In the Guardian interview, 
Powley, who plays Birdy, 

said: “I got amazing respons-
es from the [U.K.] Jewish 
community. People were so 
happy there was a Jewish 
character on the show, but 
it’s incidental. I was adamant 
she’d wear her Star of David, 
like I did when I was young-
er, but the show doesn’t 
focus on her Jewishness. It’s 
just a side point, which was 
kind of cool.”
Fool’s Paradise, a satirical 
comedy, opens in theaters 
on May 12. The plot reminds 
me of Being There (1980), 
a hit film that starred Peter 
Sellers, another Brit whose 
mother was Jewish. He 
played a very simple man, 
mentally, whose way of 
expressing himself makes 
many think he is a sage, and 
he becomes a top presiden-
tial adviser. 
In Fool’s, a publicist (Ken 
Jeong) discovers a man, 
Lotta (Charlie Day), who was 
recently released from a 
mental hospital. Lotta looks 
just like a top actor who 
refuses to act anymore. With 
the help of a top producer 
(Ray Liotta), the publicist 
makes Lotta a huge star. 
Kate Beckinsale plays a 
beautiful actress who mar-
ries Lotta.
The publicist and Lotta 
meet a lot of Hollywood 
biggies. They are played 
by Adrien Brody, 50, Jason 
Sudeikis, Edie Falco and 
John Malkovich. 

CELEBRITY NEWS

NATE BLOOM COLUMNIST

ARTS&LIFE

HARALD KRICHEL

Adrien Brody

BY PATRICK L.

Bel Powley

GAGE SKIDMORE 

Dana Bash

