Today's Entertainment

June 13 - 19, 2016 Page 3 ACROSS 1. Actor on "Modern Family" (2) 9. Voight or Stewart 10. Grandpa Munster's pet bat 11. "I'd like to buy __ __, Pat" 13. "__ the Dragon"; 1973 Bruce Lee movie 15. Olympics award 17. "Agents __ __" 18. Knox or Worth: abbr. 20. Lilith, to Frasier 21. "America's __ Talent" 23. Mr. Carney 24. "__ __ Z" (2014-15) 25. "Up in the __"; 2009 George Clooney film 26. Rosie's initials 29. Henry Fonda's state of birth: abbr. 30. Douglas and Jordan 34. Spitting __; exact likeness 36. India's dollar 38. Certain vote 39. __ Moore 42. Pen contents 43. Actress on "Of Kings and Prophets" (2) DOWN 1. "__-Stop"; 2014 Liam Neeson movie 2. "__ __ bigger and better things!" 3. Haughtiness 4. Initials for Gingrich 5. "__ On" (2012-13) 6. "Coffee, Tea __ __?"; 1973 TV movie 7. Alan or Diane 8. Modern crime lab evidence, for short 9. Actor on "The Gold- bergs" (2) 12. Game show host (2) 14. Alphabetic three-in-a- row 16. Whitney or Wallach 19. Oz visitor 20. Actress Gray 22. Word in the title of Viola Davis' series 23. Battery size 27. "__ Brother" 28. Actor Gulager 30. BLT spread 31. Relinquish 32. Actor Estrada 33. "__ City" 35. Ruin 37. School subject 40. Suffix for light or length 41. Edith, to Gloria Solution on page 2. By Jay Bobbin © Zap2it Bringing politicians and extraterrestrials together, a new series from the mentors of "The Good Wife" has a lot on its mind. Premiering Monday, June 13, creators and executive producers Rob- ert and Michelle King's seriocomic CBS show "BrainDead" couldn't be better-timed for the presi- dential campaign season ... to the degree that it invokes the names Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. However, rest assured it's fiction as political-family scion Laurel (played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who's also continuing to work on PBS' "Mercy Street") finds a huge complication upon starting a job in Washing- ton, D.C.: More and more Congressmen and others on Capitol Hill are getting "iZombie"-d by alien bugs that target their brains. You could insert your own joke here, but the Kings largely have tak- en care of that. "It's been strangely topical," Michelle says as she and her spouse chuckle knowingly, though Rob- ert adds "BrainDead" was sparked by "the last government shutdown, I guess, two years ago. No one seemed to be working off of strategy. Everybody seemed to be working off of emotion or some magical thinking. That the government could give up on its debt seemed like a very odd concept, so we started with the idea of how extremism grows from one person, and that moved us toward the idea of a 1950s 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' kind of movie." Indeed, Michelle King notes she and Rob- ert "didn't want to do a straight-on political story, because that could be- come earnest. We wanted to have more fun with it, and that (science-fiction) genre seemed like the way to do it." Citing such humorists as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, Rob- ert says the ultimate aim with "BrainDead" is to ap- peal to "people who aren't really drawn to political subject matter, but would be if there were a hybrid." No stranger to horror and suspense, with film credits that have included "Final Destination 3" and the recent "10 Cloverfield Lane" (which arrives on DVD and Blu-ray the day after "BrainDead" debuts) plus the earlier CBS se- ries "Wolf Lake," Winstead acknowledges she's "com- fortable" in the genre. "I think that might be why a script like this isn't so scary to me. Some actors might say, 'Oh, gosh, this is strange. I don't know how I'm going to under- stand this.' For me, it was exciting to jump into something like this. I like getting to do something that blends a lot of genres and tones, because you get to play all your cards." Tony Shalhoub ("Monk"), Aaron Tveit ("Grease: Live") and Danny Pino ("Law & Order: Special Victims Unit") also star in "BrainDead" with the friendly Winstead, who reasons that "we all feel a little bit overwhelmed by what's happening right now politically, in one way or another. I think the idea that people are losing their heads is something most of us can agree with, regardless of where you stand on all the issues. Ev- eryone involved in this proj- ect, we've just been kind of shaking our heads over how strangely close to real- ity some of the scenes are. Though it's seemingly so absurd and over-the-top, a lot of the time, it isn't." Robert King mentions "Scandal" — whose inspiration, former presi- dential aide turned crisis manager Judy Smith, is the co-executive producer of "BrainDead" — and "The West Wing" as set- the-bar examples of po- litically driven series, "so important to that genre. It's very hard to do a ver- sion of that and not feel (those shows have) done it better. We thought we would go in (to CBS) and they would laugh us out of the room, so we were pleased by how excited they were." Mary Elizabeth Winstead stars in "BrainDead," premiering Monday on CBS. CoverStory Aliens deem Washington, D.C., 'BrainDead' in CBS horror-and-humor series

• Cover