Fans of the offbeat hip-hop comedy series Dave can rest easy — Lil Dicky‘s heartfelt yet absurdist brainchild has been renewed for a third season, as confirmed by the show’s official Twitter.
While the confirmation announcement is light on details — when does the show return? Who are the guest stars? How does the show’s Lil Dicky restart his career after blowing off the opportunity of a lifetime to remain loyal to his hype man and the show’s best character, GaTa? — it’s enough to reassure those of us who have been re-bingeing the show on Hulu for the last six months that at least the answers to those questions are forthcoming.
The show is named after its creator — Dicky’s real name is Dave Burd — and loosely based on his life and early career as an aspiring albeit awkward rapper, reproducing such moments as his first radio appearance, his XXL Freshman cypher, and his first big television performance, all while heightening both the drama and the comedy of those events to borderline belief-straining levels of ridiculousness.
The approach has paid off, making Dave one of the most beloved new comedies of the past two years and earning it comparisons — however misguided — to other contemporary classics like Donald Glover’s Atlanta. It’s also revitalized Lil Dicky’s entertainment career, giving him an outlet for his comedic proclivities while finally letting the rest of the world in on the joke. Whenever the show returns, it’ll be with a huge audience — and while we won’t know exactly what to expect, we’ll at least be expecting to laugh and sob in nearly equal measure.
The biopic is centered around the relationship between Presley (played by Austin Butler) and his long-time manager, Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks), who helped turn Elvis: the musician into ELVIS: the brand. “In that moment, I watched that skinny boy transform into a superhero,” Colonel Tom says while Presley performs “Heartbreak Hotel” in front of a screaming audience that’s losing its mind from hormones (Luhrmann does not shy away from highlighting a certain part of the body). “He was my destiny.”
You can watch the trailer above. Here’s the official plot description:
The film explores the life and music of Elvis Presley (Austin Butler), seen through the prism of his complicated relationship with his enigmatic manager, Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks). The story delves into the complex dynamic between Presley and Parker spanning over 20 years, from Presley’s rise to fame to his unprecedented stardom, against the backdrop of the evolving cultural landscape and loss of innocence in America. Central to that journey is one of the most significant and influential people in Elvis’s life, Priscilla Presley (Olivia DeJonge).
Elvis — which also stars Yola as Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Alton Mason as Little Richard, Gary Clark Jr. as Arthur Crudup, and Shonka Dukureh as Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton — opens in theaters on June 24.
Clairo kicked off her tour in support of her sophomore album, Sling, this past Wednesday. At the first stop in Charlotte, North Carolina, she debuted an unreleased song called “Nomad.”
While her debut album, Immunity, made her a staple in the realm of bedroom pop, Sling sees Clairo taking on a more vintage, chamber sound. “Nomad” is a continuation of these musical stylings.
“I’d rather be alone than a stranger to come visit me late at night / I’d rather wake up alone than be reminded of how it was a dream this time,” Clairo sings while playing the piano, supported by drums, guitars, and a saxophone.
It is unclear whether “Nomad” is an upcoming single from a new Clairo album or a deluxe version of Sling, or simply an outtake from Sling.
Clairo announced her North American tour, with opener Arlo Parks last July, noting in a press release that she “has partnered with SafeTour and Calling All Crows to provide a safe and harassment-free concert experience,” and is “integrating a dedicated representative from Calling All Crows into her touring team who will respond to requests for support through a text helpline and proactive canvassing of each concert, and provide messaging and educational support so that attendees can take part in making these shows and their own communities safer.” Her tour is expected to conclude in April, at Tabernacle in Atlanta, Georgia
The Chicago Tribune reports that R. Kelly, who was recently convicted on charges of racketeering in New York, has dismissed his Chicago-based legal team to employ the attorney who successfully appealed Bill Cosby’s conviction as his defense for his upcoming Chicago sex abuse case. Calling into court from the Brooklyn jail where he’s awaiting sentencing in his prior conviction, Kelly told US District Judge Harry Leinenweber that he was switching representation to Jennifer Bonjean for the August trial.
Bonjean represented Cosby’s appeal in Pennsylvania after he was convicted of sexual assault in 2018. The conviction was overturned by a split court which found that Cosby had been unfairly prosecuted due to an agreement made with a previous district attorney in exchange for his cooperation in a civil lawsuit from one of his alleged victims. The incriminating statements he made while under this agreement were used as a driving factor in his eventual conviction, which caused justices reviewing the appeal to write, “Denying the defendant the benefit of that decision is an affront to fundamental fairness, particularly when it results in a criminal prosecution that was foregone for more than a decade.”
Bonjean is already working on Kelly’s New York appeal, for which he was granted an extension due to a COVID-19 diagnosis. However, she’ll have little time to get up to speed on the Chicago case; Kelly’s two co-defendants, Derrel McDavid and Milton “June” Brown, want the case to proceed to trial on schedule. Meanwhile, Kelly could receive up to 10 years in federal prison when he’s sentenced in May. Meanwhile, his Chicago case primarily revolves around his efforts to bribe or coerce witnesses in his 2008 child pornography trial. Incidentally, Cosby says he believes R. Kelly was railroaded.
Hot off her Oscar nomination for Best Actress, Kristen Stewart opens up about channeling the sadness and physical turmoil of Princess Diana for her role in Spencer. According to Stewart, it was important to capture Diana’s intense loneliness from being a part of the royal family, which also left the actress dropping F-bombs about the whole situation.
“One of the remarkable things is that she was so friendless,” Stewart said. “I’m constantly going, ‘Where was your f*cking homie?’”
Stewart was also adamant about portraying Diana’s eating disorder, but when it came to making herself throw up on camera, she didn’t have the stomach for it. Vomiting on command just wasn’t in her repertoire. Via Vanity Fair:
Stewart sank as far as she could into every aspect of the princess’s pain, including her battle with bulimia. Spencer depicts her disorder frankly, showing her violently purging in a bathroom. “I wanted to make sure that was not glossed over,” says Stewart. She prepared herself beforehand and, in the scene, attempted to really purge. (“I’ll do f*cking anything.”) Larraín, who was operating the camera, pushed in on her anguished face, capturing the act, but Stewart struggled. “I couldn’t throw up on this movie, even when I really should have,” she says. “I felt like absolute shit and I could not get it up, and I know it was because my body was just like… the idea of that was so untouchable.”
Despite literally putting herself in Princess Diana’s shoes, Stewart admitted that even she can’t help but be mesmerized by media coverage of the royal family. When she learns that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle moved to California, she immediately finds herself caught up in the gossip.
“That’s so funny. I wonder where,” Stewart said before catching herself. “I’m no better than anyone! Of course I want to know.”
The cat-and-mouse drill will soon continue on Killing Eve, but are the fun and games about to come to an end for good? Sadly, that is the case (at least with this flagship series) with the fourth season being the (official) final face off between Villanelle and Eve, as BBC America and AMC Networks previously revealed. Do not fear, however, because there are a lot of loose ends to be tied up in the impending batch of episodes, even if we don’t see any more killer clowns or gymnasts or trash-can babies onscreen. (And there’s more, as we’re talking about in a moment.)
In other words, expect these two leading ladies to wrestle with their love-and-hate-and-begrudging respect for each other, all after Villanelle got so flipping angry that Eve didn’t realistically see how they could live life in the same place. The former MI6 officer and the assassin who can’t give up the life (or all of those cool outfits) could never, ever survive daily life together, and this season, that conflict is accompanied by Carolyn determining to avenge Kenny’s death. Villanelle appears (in the trailer) to have found religion, laughing Konstantin still can’t take anything seriously, and hopefully, unfortunate Niko is somewhere on a beach and living his best life, even in his affected state.
The very good news in all of this is that AMC Networks has been plugging away on spinoff ideas that will dig into the same universe and hopefully emerge with gold. Do we call it the Villanelliverse? The Eveverse? Regardless of the label, we’ll await further word on this darkly offbeat world.
Killing Eve‘s fourth and final season debuts (with two episodes) on Sunday, February 27 on BBC America and Monday, February 28 on AMC.
In the latest episode of HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones, Uncle Baby Billy Freeman stands in front of a backdrop of a forest with a cascading waterfall. The bright green leaves are almost as bright as his shiny white hair and teeth, the green leaves a perfect contrast to his burnt orange, fake-tanned skin. Uncle Baby Billy, desperate for money after abandoning his pregnant wife (the second time he has abandoned a woman and his child), is recording an ad for his new health elixir with a biblical formula based on scripture that is allegedly guaranteed to cure every disease with ease, including “Covas.” When Baby Billy leaves the studio, he lights a cigarette as he walks – pigeon-toed and frantic – to his vehicle, which has a branded truck full of elixirs attached to it. When his wife Tiffany, niece Judy and her husband BJ surprise him, he hides behind the truck with his own name and face on it, pretending he’s not the most unmissable person on the planet. He ultimately gives in and spanks BJ in the parking lot while calling him a bad boy. The fight concludes with Uncle Baby Billy giving the finger and weeping with his massive white teeth smiling before he drives off.
The wig and the teeth and the skin and the tinted aviator glasses and the stuck-in-the-late-80s suits would be a challenge – albeit a fun one – for any actor. Walton Goggins makes playing Uncle Baby Billy seem about as effortless as using your blinker, entering your PIN number, or opening social media every five minutes despite your best interests. Goggins is so absorbed in Baby Billy – despite being about twenty years younger than the character in most episodes – that it feels more like muscle memory than a performance. As Uncle Baby Billy Freeman on The Righteous Gemstones, Walton Goggins is giving one of the most fully committed performances film or television has ever seen. Meryl Streep wishes she could, but she could not.
Ten or so years ago, a regular in Danny McBride productions was not the career track anyone would have predicted for Goggins. The slender, smooth character actor with sparkling eyes that pulls you in like a black hole first came into prominence in prestige television in the early 2000s when he joined The Shield as Detective Shane Vendrell. Later, he would star as the terrible but – like Uncle Baby Billy – sympathetic against our wishes Boyd Crowder on the FX series Justified, and he played off his stirring, slightly-sexual chemistry with co-star Timothy Olyphant. Goggins was nominated for an Emmy for his performance as Boyd Crowder in 2011. In the 2010s, Goggins became a regular player in Quentin Tarrantino films including Django Unchained, The Hateful Eight, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
It was a surprise then when Goggins, primarily known for his dramatic work which was just gaining steam, joined as the co-lead on the underappreciated Danny McBride series VicePrincipals, which aired two seasons on HBO from 2016-2018. But Goggins assimilated to McBride’s tone and improvisational atmosphere as well as he did on FX dramas in the aughts. While The Righteous Gemstones is a riotously funny comedy that makes me laugh so hard that I almost fall off my couch and roll on the floor nearly every week, it is, at its heart, a family drama. The Christian, southern but equally vulgar equivalent of Succession. Uncle Baby Billy is, perhaps, the Connor Roy (Alan Ruck) equivalent. Although in comparison, Connor might be more level-headed and generous.
HBO
Goggins uses his body (from walking pigeon-toed to singing with his legs weirdly close together), a drawn-out southern accent, and creative word pronunciation of words like “now” (only rivaled with Adam Driver’s pronunciation skills) as Uncle Baby Billy. The original song “Misbehavin’” from the first season, which includes the line Goggins sings, “runnin’ through the house…with a pickle in my mouth,” instantly had people wondering if running around a house with a pickle in your mouth was a thing. I still don’t know the answer to that. The line on its own is funny but Goggins, in clogging shoes and a crisp but billowing white 1980s suit sold it even more. In the show’s second season, Goggins has not appeared in as many episodes, but he has made the most out of his limited screen time by doing the absolute most, down to every second he is on screen from selling his elixirs, wearing a red Marlboro Miles sweater, or singing a weird Christian Christmas song in a red and green suit opposite Jennifer Nettles, who plays his sister, Aimee-Leigh Gemstone.
Goggins also uses his relentless and intoxicating charm in his performance. Uncle Baby Billy is a terrible, manipulative person with a tendency to abandon his family at difficult times, only to swoop back into their lives at his own convenience. He, like most of the characters on Gemstones, is materialistic and uses religion to gain wealth and fame, while relying on his faith as an excuse for his bad behavior. Goggins is acutely aware of Baby Billy’s flaws, but also of his own magnetism, which gives the character a smidge of humanity. There’s a little bit of pain inside him, buried deep behind selfishness and cowardice. No matter how far Uncle Baby Billy goes – for example, selling an elixir that promises to cure “Covas” – there’s always a voice in the back of your head rooting for him to do the right thing you know he absolutely will not do, which is all a testament
Despite limited screen time, outrageous costumes, and even more outrageous storylines and dialogue, Uncle Baby Billy is even more omnipresent than God on The Righteous Gemstones. Standing out among a cast of scene-stealing comedy performers including McBride and living legend John Goodman, Walton Goggins has proved he’s something of a legend himself, a character actor with leading man energy.
The lawsuit against late rapper Lil Peep’s record label First Access Entertainment will proceed to trial according to Rolling Stone, which reports that a Los Angeles judge denied the label’s request to dismiss the suit filed by Peep’s mother Liza Kathryn Womack.
Womack filed the suit in 2019, two years after the rapper’s death from an overdose of fentanyl in November of 2017, citing negligence and wrongful death due to FAE’s tour manager Belinda Mercer providing artists on the Come Over When You’re Sober tour drugs including cocaine, ketamine, Percocet, and Xanax. Among Womack’s other bases for suing were allegations that no one on the tour bus was trained in “life-saving apparatuses” for treating overdose such as Narcan or defibrillators — neither of which were provided — nor even to recognize signs of an overdose in the first place.
Judge Teresa A. Beaudet declared that the evidence provided by Peep’s mother was enough to establish a “causal connection” with Peep’s death, although she also ruled statements from Peep’s fellow musician and labelmate Cold Hart inadmissible as hearsay. Hart had claimed Peep’s managers telling the rapper to make “himself sick from taking a bunch of Xanax” to get out of a show without losing money. However, because he had not personally witnessed this, it could not be considered evidence.
Part of his statement was eligible though, as he was able to attest to Mercer providing the drugs to those on the bus. Beaudet acknowledged this part in her ruling, saying, “There’s no question there’s a triable issue as to whether (Mercer) provided the drugs or not. If you’re going to create an environment like that where drugs are flowing, and you’re providing it, and hey, you actually don’t have any life-saving device or any Narcan to help people who are going to have a problem with these drugs, it seems to me you are creating a very dangerous situation there… The fact (that the defendants) didn’t give the decedent adequate protection for that environment, I think that could add up to causation here.”
Unfortunately for Womack, Beaudet did dismiss similar charges against Peep’s co-manager, Bryant “Chase” Ortega, saying that the evidence did not show Ortega “directed” the negligence leading to Peep’s death. Peep’s mom also says that the label owes her $4 million from the rapper’s merch and music sales, which is being withheld in an effort to stall her lawsuit against them.
On Wednesday, Netflix tweeted a photo of a billboard. But this was no ordinary billboard. The text, which reads, “EVERY ENDING HAS A BEGINNING,” was upside down, leading many to believe that a premiere date for Stranger Things season four was coming. That might be the case, but for now, it appears the tweet was in reference to Netflix releasing posters for the upcoming (and long-delayed) season.
The first poster shows Hopper, Joyce, and Murray outside of a Russian prison.
Feel free to wildly speculate about what it all means.
“It’s an unholy gap. I want to say what I can say and speak freely on this. As much as it pains our viewers, that it will have been so long. Trust me, it pains [creators Matt and Ross Duffer] and I more,” producer Shawn Levy told Collider about the break between seasons (season three premiered on July 4, 2019). “It is a kind of perfect storm, combination of COVID shutdown, slower pace of filming in COVID protocols and health protocols, which are necessary. And coincidentally, we chose season four to be by far and I mean, by far, far, far, the most ambitious of the seasons.”
Stay tuned for the ST4 premiere date and trailer… eventually.
The reigning ARIA Artist of the Year with the Album Of The Year award as well at essentially Australia’s version of the Grammys, Genesis Owusu is coming to the US for his first headlining tour in the country. Backing his stellar release, Smiling With No Teeth, he’s also shared the new video for the bombastic “Black Dogs!”
“It’s a straight-to-the-point song encompassing a day in the life of me, or just any Black person in Australia,” Owusu said in a statement. “It’s not that I’m getting abused by police every day, but it’s all the little microaggressions. Sonically speaking, it plays into how I feel every day, going into white spaces and feeling a bit paranoid.”
The video is an intense expression of the above sentiment and it showcases the pointed aesthetic that has made the Ghanaian-Australian soar as an artist. He’s an important voice for Australian hip-hop and will be surely welcomed with open arms when he arrives in the US next month.
Watch the video for “Black Dogs!” above and check out Genesis Owusu’s full US tour dates below. Tickets are now on sale here.
03/20 — San Francisco, CA @ The Independent
03/21 — Los Angeles, CA @ The Roxy
03/24 — Boise, ID @ El Korah Shrine (Treefort Music Fest)
03/25 — Seattle, WA @ Neumos
03/28 — St. Paul, MN @ Turf Club
03/29 — Chicago, IL @ Schubas
03/31 — Philadelphia, PA @ Underground Arts
04/02 — New York City, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
04/03 — The Sinclair @ Boston, MA
04/08 — DC9 Nightclub @ Washington, DC
04/09 — Durham, NC @ Motorco Music Hall
04/10 — Atlanta, GA @ Terminal West
04/12 — Nashville, TN @ Basement East
04/14 — Austin, TX @ Antone’s
04/15 — Studio at the Factory @ Dallas, TX
04/16 — Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall [upstairs]
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