Friday’s Headlines: Ingrid’s Side Gig Edition

She had already directed; what she really wanted to do is act.

Of all the sordid details of the multiple new charges against Mayor Adams’s former top adviser and “sister,” Ingrid Lewis-Martin, our favorite was that she allegedly sold out the notions of good government, democracy and decency for a tiny walk-on role in a minor Hulu TV series, “The Godfather of Harlem.”

It’s all there in the indictment, but also in our two stories written after Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg announced the new charges on Thursday: Yes, Lewis-Martin was allegedly paid a $2,500 bribe by the Argento family to block the McGuinness Boulevard bike lane, but she also got the Argentos to use their power as soundstage operators to get Lewis-Martin a two-line role in episode three of season three, which aired in January 2023.

First, watch the clip:

We can’t stop watching the mini-scene. There’s Lewis-Martin, swaying to the music and trying to be a good trouper for director Carl Seaton. She’s clearly in character, though her motivation seems off. Who is she? Why is she bothering to even interact with Forest Whitaker, the titual underworld boss of the title?

He doesn’t seem to know why she’s there, and can barely remember her name or even bother to finish the conversation before he’s off to pursue the real action of the scene. Including Lewis-Martin in the episode added nothing and cost Seaton and his writers probably less than 10 minutes of thought. But those five seconds of Hollywood magic became just the latest exhibit in a huge file folder of evidence of widespread corruption in the Adams administration.

We reached out to several members of the “Godfather of Harlem” production team, but didn’t hear back (apparently, just filming a show about the Mafia requires an oath of omertà).

So we called up our actor friend Charlie Todd, a director and also founder of Improv Everywhere, to help us assess Lewis-Martin’s acting chops. He was unimpressed.

“There is nothing more frustrating for a director than background talent or an under-five performer [fewer than five lines] who throws a scene off with weird energy,” Todd said. “But the real blame here goes to the Argentos for shoe-horning in an unnecessary cameo. I couldn’t imagine a worse note to get from producers than, ‘We need you give a random woman a speaking role so we can prevent a road from becoming safer for pedestrians and cyclists.'”

Obviously, coverage of Lewis-Martin’s quest for a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was muted in other outlets (though the Daily News mentioned it in a sidebar, and the Brooklyn Paper, Hell Gate and Gothamist hewed close to the McGuinness story). But everyone — the Daily News, the Post, the Times, amNY, The City, Gothamist, Hell Gate — jumped on the larger story of Lewis-Martin’s alleged $75,000 bribery scheme

We reached out to City Hall for comment, but got none.

In other news:

• Maybe the MTA should call it the Lost and Sometimes Found bureau. (NY Post)
• Yes, there are lots of bikes parked on one block in the East Village, but for some reason, the Post can’t get its head around how many cars are parked on every other block all over the city.
• A lot of outlets got a second-day story about how an Adams campaign adviser tried to bribe Katie Honan of The City (NYDN, NPR, The City), but the Times’s coverage would have earned an F in any journalism classroom: the paper claimed it witnessed other “red envelope” briberies “in July” — which means the Paper of Record sat on a major corruption story about Mayor Adams for a month!
• And, finally, this is New York City in a single skeet. It’s hilarious, but also true: