In a recent interview with The New York Times, Jennifer Nettles never once mentions the musical “Sweeney Todd.” Lots of interviewees at the Times don’t mention Hugh Wheeler and Stephen Sondheim’s great musical; then again, those people haven’t written a new stage musical about a serial killer. As subject matters go, serial killers are rare indeed for musicals. “American Psycho” and “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder” come to mind. Even the many killers in Sondheim’s “Assassins” are just one-shot wonders.

How many times has Nettles seen “Sweeney Todd” or listened to its recording? Obviously, not enough.

“Giulia: The Poison Queen of Palermo” opened Friday at PAC NYC. Nettles not only stars as the title character; she also wrote the songs and the book, and, indeed, the show hits a number of notes struck in “Sweeney Todd.”

First off, there’s a serial killer, based on the real life Giulia Tofana, who, in the 17th Century, poisoned a few hundred men who probably deserved to die for abusing their respective wives, girlfriends and pet dogs. In that respect, Giulia has a definite leg up on Sweeney, who simply slits a number of throats for no other reason than he hates all of mankind. Unlike London’s demon barber, however, this deadly Italian druggist lacks a Mrs. Lovett to lighten up the multiple murders.

In that Times interview, Nettles reveals that she worked with other book writers, but they all had a “campy” approach to the material. In the end, Nettles had to hire herself, not only to write the songs but the book, too.  

“Sweeney Todd” isn’t campy, but it is often very funny, thanks to Sondheim’s witty lyrics. Wheeler also gave the show’s serial killer an accomplice, Mrs. Lovett, who brings ditzy low humor to the whole grizzly enterprise.

In “Giulia,” the title character has to carry the moral weight of all those murders alone, and, frankly, as played by Nettles, she’s something of a one-woman dirge. Giulia is also the local abortionist, helping pregnant women not give birth to babies with lousy fathers.  

Not that Giulia doesn’t have her scruples. When the Duchessa (Didi Romero) wants to off her husband because he’s a bore, Giulia must say no. Only wife abusers deserve to die. To their credit as serial killers, Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett never cop to having a moral code that exonerates them of guilt.

Regarding the Duchessa, one has to wonder why she doesn’t just lie to Giulia and say her husband forces her to have sex with his brother? It’s a scenario that’s good enough for another woman to receive Giulia’s deadly brew. Apparently, Giulia has an infallible BS-detector when it comes to poisoning only the right bad men.

It’s telling that “Giulia,” unlike “Sweeney Todd,” never shows its title character royally screwing up. Sweeney is so possessed he accidentally kills his long-lost wife in his killing spree. It turns the musical from an exercise in Grand Guignol into a genuine tragedy. A similar transformation could have been achieved with “Giulia” if the Duchessa had duped Giulia, only for the druggist to learn later that she had helped to kill an honest husband.

Instead, Giulia never stops delivering all the high-minded sanctimony of an Aimee Semple McPherson, one who sings female empowerment ballads, the most self-congratulatory being “Call Me David,” as in the slayer of Goliath. Giulia’s fatal flaw may be that she possesses an overbearing superiority complex.

Nettles gives the other Devil all the funniest lines, not that there are many. In scene after scene, the Governatore, played with devilish charm by Christopher M. Ramirez, steals the focus from the righteous serial killer, whose head remains stuck in a feminist manifesto written centuries later by Valerie Solanas. Compared to Giulia’s multiple crimes, the Governatore emerges as something of a piker. He just wants to screw Giulia’s underage daughter, Vitoria (Naomi Serrano), amidst all the murder.

It’s a scenic treat to watch Sweeney Todd repeatedly slice throats. Poison is a decidedly sneaky way to murder, and, as such, not very theatrical.

The real villains in “Sweeney Todd” are Judge Turpin and his servant, Beadle Bamford. Those bad guys in “Giulia” are the Governatore and the Cardinale (Quentin Earl Darrington), both of whom are given a confusing scene at the top of the show that identifies the one as a politician and the other as a clergyman, and therefore bad. The Cardinale, despite eating up lots of stage time, has nothing to do except to deny he’s syphilitic in the face of Giulia’s diagnosis. He sings the self-flagellating “Shame,” a clear rip-off of the Judge’s “Johanna (Mea Culpa)” from “Sweeney Todd.” He does better with his vengeance credo, “The Wolf,” in which, late in act two, he finally finds his raison d’etre for killing Giulia. Unfortunately, the very grandly delivered “Wolf” comes after several equally loud and pompous anthems. Even little Vitoria, stuck away in a convent, gets her big caterwauling moment with “When I Still Believed.”

In “Sweeney Todd,” the chorus’ song “City of Fire” thrills because, in part, it’s preceded by the quiet, plaintive ballad “Not While I’m Around.”

There are kernels of good songs in Nettles’ score, but every catchy tune gets swamped by Cian McCarthy’s orchestrations that bring a “Les Miz”-overstatement to each of them. Watching “Giulia” is like sitting through the season’s grand finale of “American Idol” where every singer is out to win the contest. What can be exciting in a TV singing contest is numbing in the musical theater. At the end of “Giulia,” all that’s missing is Ryan Seacrest appearing to announce, “And the winner is…!”

There is some good news: The physical production is exquisitely restrained under the direction of Mary Zimmerman, who has better luck with her designers than her actor-singers. Daniel Ostling’s scenic design features three doors and a grand staircase off to the side, sinisterly lit by designer T. J. Gerckens. Whenever an actor opens one of those doors, we don’t know what to expect – the bay of Naples, shop windows, a convent — and after a few scenes, the major suspense of “Giulia” is what we’ll find there. Less is always so much more.

Just days after Meta introduced its Muse Image AI generator, the Mark Zuckerberg-run company has done a complete U-turn.

Under pressure from a now-victory-lap-taking CAA and SAG-AFTRA, the tech giant late Friday revealed that the Instagram-trolling Muse Image is essential DOA.

“Earlier this week, we announced that one way for people to generate images in Meta AI is by @-mentioning public Instagram accounts that they want to reference,” Meta said in an IG post Friday. “Our intent was to provide a useful creative tool and to give people control over whether their public content could be referenced in this way. We’ve heard the feedback that this feature missed the mark, so it’s no longer available.”

Meta added, “We’ve heard the feedback that this feature missed the mark, so it’s no longer available.”

A quick scan of Instagram shows that Meta has, in fact, disabled Muse.

At its core, a Muse user just needed to tag a public or unprotected IG feed, and it instantly becomes meat for the AI generator to create its own images or “remixes,” as they are sometimes called, after which the images are available online permanently.

Friday’s announcement comes after CAA called for Meta to implement guardrails for Muse, despite the agency rolling out its own AI Vault program to archive its members’ likenesses forever. “No one’s name, image, likeness, voice, or creative work should be used by any third party, including AI models, without clear, documented consent,” the uber-agency said Wednesday.

In a statement on Friday, CAA said: “We commend Meta for its swift decision to remove the Muse Image feature. Putting individual rights and consent at the forefront is essential to building responsible technology. We look forward to ongoing conversations to ensure creators stay protected as technology evolves.”

The actors union echoed CAA’s concerns about what appears to be a case of Big Tech overreach. In a statement issued Friday, SAG-AFTRA said: “With the dangers of nonconsensual digital replicas well known to all, a feature that encouraged that behavior is unwise.  We appreciate its discontinuance.  It is the responsible thing to do.”

The use of AI in Hollywood continues to be a hot-button topic in recent years. SAG-AFTRA has endorsed the Trump administration’s AI policy framework, which calls for Congress to enact legislation that includes parental controls, intellectual property rights protection, First Amendment protections, expanding AI workforce development, allowing data centers to generate their own power and removing legal barriers that limit AI innovation.

Last month, Trump signed an executive order for voluntary framework in which AI companies would provide the government with access to new models for a 30-day review period before their release.

Erik Pedersen contributed to this report.

“Dutton Ranch” closed out its first season as Paramount+’s biggest freshman series to date, TheWrap can exclusively reveal.

The “Yellowstone” spinoff series climbed the ranks of the streamer as it wrapped up its first installment with an average 13.3 million views per episode, based on seven-day viewing data from Paramount.

The viewership boosted “Dutton Ranch,” which has already been renewed for a Season 2, to rank as the No. 1 title on Paramount+ globally every week since its May launch.

“Dutton Ranch” also made ratings waves as it ran on Paramount Network, ranking as the No. 1 show on cable during its run among total viewers. Season 1 averaged 2 million viewers on Paramount Network alone, becoming the most-watched new cable series among total viewers in three years.

“Dutton Ranch” has also appeared within Nielsen’s top 10 weekly streaming original series since its launch, pulling ahead of other buzzy series like Prime Video’s YA hit “Off Campus” and Apple TV’s “Your Friends & Neighbors.”

Most recently, “Dutton Ranch” was the No. 3 streaming original for the week of June 8 with 746 million minutes viewed on Paramount+ following the debut of Episode 6 on Friday, June 12, landing only behind Peacock’s “Love Island USA” and Netflix’s “Sweet Magnolias.”

The full season builds on the strong ratings from its series premiere, which tallied 12.9 million views globally in the week of its launch. The debut marked the biggest original series launch in Paramount+ history.

Ratings success has continued to follow Taylor Sheridan even past “Yellowstone,” with Paramount+’s “The Madison” debuting to 8 million views in March and “Landman” closing out its second installment in January as Paramount+’s biggest show to date with episodes averaging 14.9 million views within their first week of viewing.

Produced by Paramount Television Studios and 101 Studios, “Dutton Ranch” is created by executive producer and showrunner Chad Feehan based on characters created by EPs Taylor Sheridan and John Linson. Additional EPs include David C. Glasser, Art Linson, Ron Burkle, David Hutkin, Bob Yari, Christina Alexandra Voros, Michael Friedman, Kelly Reilly, Cole Hauser and Keith Cox.