Month: August 2022

Sean Bean could probably use an interview coordinator right about now after making some not great comments about how modern productions handle sex scenes. During an interview with The Sunday Times, the Game of Thrones star lamented the use of “intimacy coordinators,” which started appearing on more and more sets thanks to the HBO series and its penchant for gratuitous sex scenes. However, Bean is not a fan.

While the role of an intimacy coordinator is to make sure everyone feels comfortable filming sensitive scenes through choreograph and dialog, Bean prefers the old method of winging it even though that approach is exactly why intimacy coordinators exist.

“I think the natural way lovers behave would be ruined by someone bringing it right down to a technical exercise,” Bean lamented. He also brought up how an intimacy coordinator wasn’t used while filming a bizarre sex scene with Lena Hall in Snowpiercer. Via Variety:

When the interviewer pointed out that intimacy coordinators can help to protect actors in the wake of #MeToo, Bean responded: “I suppose it depends on the actress. This one [referring to Hall] had a musical cabaret background, so she was up for anything.”

In the aftermath of the interview, several people reached out to Hall to check on her, and she set the record straight that she is not “up for anything.” In a multi-point Twitter thread, Hall shot down Bean’s characterization of the mango sex scene, but also praised him for being a respectful scene partner.

“Just because I am in theater (not cabaret, but I do perform them every once in a while) does not mean that I am up for anything,” Hall tweeted.

“Sean is an awesome actor and made me feel not only comfortable but also like I had a true acting partner in those bizarre scenes. It was us against the world and we were gonna tell that story,” Hall continued. “If I feel comfortable with my scene partner and with others in the room then I won’t need an intimacy coordinator. BUT if there is any part of me that is feeling weird, gross, overexposed etc… I will either challenge the necessity of the scene or I’ll want an IC.”

You can see the full thread below:

(Via Lena Hall on Twitter)

George R.R. Martin didn’t always get his way with Game of Thrones, but things are different for House of the Dragon.

House of the Dragon co-showrunners Miguel Sapochnik and Ryan Condal revealed the three things that the A Song of Ice and Fire author requested be in the prequel series. “[Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss] skipped over Jaehaerys for reasons of clarity that [Martin] really didn’t understand,” Sapochnik told Insider. “He had a bee in his bonnet about it. He wanted us to right that wrong.” Jaehaerys II Targaryen (Daenerys’ grandfather) was mentioned to have sat on the Iron Throne in the books, but he was left out of the show to simplify the Targaryen family tree.

Martin’s other demands: more colors, especially for the dragons.

Martin was hopeful that House of the Dragon would be the perfect time for fans to see dragons of varying size, shape, and color… Martin also asked that House of the Dragon include a lot of symbolic color related to all the major and minor Houses of Westeros. He spoke with Condal about the heraldry fans would see and that detail’s importance in the story.

The series will feature at least 17 dragons, which Condal told the Hollywood Reporter was the “biggest difference” between Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon. “Dragons exist in this [era], whereas they were an extinct species that came back to life in the original show,” he said. “So there’s an infrastructure built around them. There’s a dragon pit, saddles and dragon keepers — this monk-like order that takes care of them.”

No wonder Martin hasn’t finished the books: he’s too busy making sure Syrax is the right shade of yellow. House of the Dragon premieres on August 21.

(Via Insider)

The 1975 are gearing up to drop their next album, Being Funny In A Foreign Language. Indeed, the album is meant to be funny, and Taylor Swift and Bo Burnham see the humor in it.

A new Pitchfork interview with Matty Healy notes that Swift got an early listen of the album and said of it, “It’s so funny.” It also says that Healy played the LP for Burnham and “was pleased when Burnham laughed at all the right times.”

He also said he was playfully upset with Bo Burnham over “That Funny Feeling,” saying, “He needs to stay in his lane a little bit. When he did that song, I was like, ‘You motherf*cker.’”

Healy also addressed the omnipotence of his penis on the album, saying, “There’s so much of it [laughs]! There are so many good dick jokes on the record. It’s all about my dick. I’m obsessed with my dick for some reason. I’m trying to figure out what that represents. I think it’s because there’s such potency to the idea of the dick, and so much fragility in modern masculinity, and my masculinity. I’m obsessed with that duality, of just, like, having a dick.”

Of the album, he noted, “We’ve done very clever and very cool a lot. But what about — brace yourself — earnest. If you dethrone sincerity with irony, you get an equal tyrant by the end of the day, and I’m kind of tired of it. Because what makes me feel uncomfortable is saying, like, ‘Do you mind telling me that I’m good, or that you love me, just so I can feel OK?’ That’s the sh*t I’m scared of, being seen as some f*cking lame dude. It’s way harder to be a bit naive and soppy without going ‘not,’ or ‘lol,’ or ‘I jack off all the time.’”

Check out the full interview here.

Being Funny In A Foreign Language is out 10/14 via Dirty Hit. Pre-order it here.

Guess who’s back? I guess it’s time to trot out this old standby because yet again, a rapper has reneged on a promise to retire to rap. This time it’s Iggy Azalea, the Australian rapper whose career became a bumpy road of criticism, trolling, and record label frustrations after her initial early success. While she announced last year that her 2021 album, End Of An Era, would be her last, it seems that while promoting the album she rediscovered her creative spark — and a vindictive streak that she will seek to exercise with more new music.

On Twitter, she explained, “A year ago I was willing to walk away from music because I was tired of the negative energy it attracted.
But what I’ve learned is that even when I’m minding my business, y’all gonna be negative AND nosey. So if I can’t have peace, neither can you. I’m coming back. Cry about it.” She followed up later tweeting, “They can only be mad at themselves. Shoulda left me be. Now I’m on my petty Gemini sh*t.” She also posted a gif from Buffy The Vampire Slayer and a still from Quentin Tarantino’s revenge epic, Kill Bill, letting fans know exactly what time she’s on.

And while she didn’t give any further details, she did confirm that future music would again be released independently and that she wasn’t “gonna talk about dates, direction or anything just know it’s happening and there will be a budget.”

A recent example of the negativity she said she’s dealt with since “retiring” is the response she received after a fan posted a video of her twerking during a Long Beach Pride performance. While the original user praised the performance, writing, “Iggy really be tossin that big mf” in a complimentary way, the replies were less than nice, disparaging her physique and prompting her to comment, “It’s a good thing I genuinely feel happy about myself & my body cause y’all stay in every comment section talking the most shit about me & it’s very mean spirited & ugly.”

When the Chicago Bears drafted Georgia linebacker Roquan Smith with the eighth overall pick in the 2018 NFL Draft, it seemed like a perfect fit. Here was one of the best middle linebacker prospects in years going to a franchise that has arguably the greatest lineage of middle linebackers of any team in the NFL.

Since being drafted, Smith has played in 61 of a possible 65 games, missing four games to injury in 2019, and has eclipsed 101 tackles in every season, including a preposterous 163 last year (95 solo). He has five career interceptions and 43 career tackles for loss, serving as the central cog in the Bears stout defense, but entering a contract year, Smith has not received the offer he feels he deserves for being one of the best middle linebackers in all of football.

As such, on Tuesday, Smith publicly requested a trade from the organization, asking to be dealt to a team that “truly values what I bring to the table” after being offered a “take it or leave it” contract that Smith says would’ve been bad for him and the linebacker market as a whole to take.

According to Ian Rapoport, the deal in question featured backloaded money that would’ve left his deal shy of being the highest among middle linebackers in the league, along with de-escalators that no one else making his kind of money has in their deal.

As Smith notes, it’s possible the Bears could come correct with an offer and salvage the relationship, but as of this moment, he won’t be putting pen to paper on any deal that’s similar to what they’ve offered him. It’d be one thing if this was an issue of a guarantee amount and signing bonus, but to backload a deal and put de-escalators in it that could pay him less when literally no one else of his stature has those in their contract is pretty blatantly disrespectful of Smith and it’s hard to blame him for making this decision — although surely some will.

Someone out there will happily pay for a tackling machine in the middle of their defense and we’ll just have to wait to find out who that is — but it’ll more likely than not be a contender or fringe contender.

Following Monday’s surprise FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago, Republicans have been dutifully falling in line to defend Donald Trump, who is naturally fuming bad about the whole thing. (They broke into his safe, folks!)

Ever the faithful GOP soldier, Marco Rubio entered into the fray on Monday night where he proceeded to launch into somber diatribes about how America is becoming a third world country while also threatening retaliation against President Joe Biden.

“Biden is playing with fire by using a document dispute to get the @TheJusticeDept to persecute a likely future election opponent,” Rubio tweeted. “Because one day what goes around is going to come around. And then we become Nicaragua under Ortega.”

Rubio also made a video where he doubled down on settling the score with Biden.

Via Newsweek:

“I’m telling you, you’re playing with fire,” Rubio said. “This is dangerous, because someone else will be in power one day, and now you have created the precedent for them to do this back to you. And then we become the Third World, and then we lose our country, and our system of government and the meaning of being one nation under a real constitution.

“This needs to stop and the people responsible for this decision, [Attorney General] Merrick Garland, the director of the FBI [Christopher Wray], need to be held to account for going along with something so undemocratic, unconstitutional, and flat out destructive and dangerous to our republic.”

Of course, it didn’t take long for someone to point out the hypocrisy of Rubio’s lecturing. Florida State Rep. Anna Eskamani took Rubio down by a notch pulling out an old tweet where he was completely fine with the FBI announcing an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails right before the 2016 election.

“This you in 2016?” Eskamani tweeted along with a screenshot of Rubio saying that Clinton’s mishandling of classified emails “proves that she is DQ’d from being Commander in Chief.”

Sarah Huckabee Sanders is getting a similar treatment as Twitter users have latched onto an old tweet from October 2016 where she wrote, “When you’re attacking FBI agents because you’re under criminal investigation, you’re losing.” Whoops.

(Via Rep. Anna V. Eskamani on Twitter)

Fans are eager for new music from SZA. Back in May, The “Good Days” singer hinted at “a SZA summer,” and while we’ve received an expanded edition of her 2017 debut album, CTRL, as well as a remix of her labelmate Doechii’s “Persuasive,” we still have heard nary a title, release date, or even a single from her much-anticipated sophomore album.

Last month, SZA hinted at a disagreement between her Top Dawg Entertainment label head Punch, as well as RCA Records. In a recent interview with Vulture, Punch indicated that he and SZA have since reached an agreement. According to Punch, a release date is imminent.

“We know exactly when it’s coming out,” he said. “But on the internet, you only get a certain amount of characters. You don’t have time to really go into a full explanation of what’s going on like that when you’re in the moment and tweeting something.”

In the past, SZA has mentioned that her and Punch’s relationship has been tumultuous, but elsewhere in the interview, Punch insisted that there is more than meets the eye.

“I’m not going to say there’s never been contention,” he said. “There’s always contention, especially when you’re dealing with creative. Difference in opinions, it happens, but that doesn’t mean somebody is unhappy or anything. It could’ve been a conversation in the moment. Then a lot of speculation happens. I get it. We have to remember that context is important and you never get the full story through tweets.”

Kevin Smith is returning to New Jersey in Clerks III — and by purchasing the movie theater of his childhood. The weed-loving filmmaker revealed that he’s buying the Atlantic Moviehouse in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, “where I’d go to the movies with my Dad and where I spent the many frivolous Friday nights of my Jersey teenage youth,” he wrote on Instagram. The theater will be renamed SModcastle Cinemas.

The deal to co-own the 250-seat property with his wife, Jennifer Schwalbach Smith (the inspiration for The Tweet), and other business partners isn’t expected to close until September 14, but Smith is already dealing with the perils of proprietorship: bomb threats. “So… @SModcastle Keeper @ernieodonnell7 forwarded me this text from Tony, our friend who runs the movie theater we’re buying (and will also run @SmodCinemas),” he tweeted, along with a screenshot of the message. It reads:

“I don’t want to alarm you but, we just got a call at the theater. The person asked my manager if Kevin Smith was buying the theater. They said that we shouldn’t do that and that if we did, there would be bomb threats. I have informed Fred Rast who instructed us to inform the police. My manager has called the police to report it. The number is a California number. I’m sure it was some a-hole kids. But I thought you should know. I’ll keep you updated.”

[extremely old man voice] Back in the 1990s, teenagers hung out by convenience stores and argued about Star Wars. Now they’re making bomb threats to movie theaters and, well, they’re still arguing about Star Wars. I guess some things never change.

Smith’s daughter, Harley Quinn Smith, is “worried” that this is a legitimate threat, but he thinks “it’s a joke about how my movies have ‘bombed’ in theaters. Thoughts?” Come on, Yoga Hosers wasn’t that bad… OK, yes, it was, but not “bomb threat” bad.

(Via NJ.com)

The Rock and Kevin Hart are pulling out the stops to promote the DC League of Super-Pets, in which the former voices Krypto and the latter takes on Ace. That includes doing things like smacking each other with tortillas to fulfill an online challenge that’s not quite as weird as the Cinnamon Challenge. That wasn’t as palatable as The Rock delivering his verdict on In-N-Out burger, so a one-upping was in order.

That’s precisely what happened in the below Instagram video, in which Johnson’s asked which celebrity that he’d like to be a pet for, and his answer is unequivocal: Megan Thee Stallion.

Yep, he fired that answer off without hesitation.

Naturally, Twitter was totally into this answer. “LMFAOOOOO I FEEL YOU MY BOY” is definitely a thing.

From there, everyone joined in on the laughter (with slightly inappropriate dog videos and other clips) and also in wondering how The Rock’s wife, Lauren Hashian, might feel about this development.

In very related news, BET reports that Megan Thee Stallion’s boyfriend, Pardison Fontaine, responded (and deleted) on social media as follows: “All our dogs named after #s. Just teach your wife to use seasoning … You’ll be iiight … Moana is the sh*t tho.” Well, The Rock’s initial answer had Kevin Hart totally amused, and that’s what it’s all about.

The greatest women’s tennis player will officially step away from the game at the end of this year, as Serena Williams announced her retirement from the sport at 41 years old on Tuesday in a lengthy piece she penned for Vogue.

As of now, Williams carries a career 855-153 singles record including 23 grand slam championship wins — 7 Australian Opens, 7 Wimbledons, 6 U.S. Opens, and 3 French Opens — the most in the Open era and one shy of Margaret Court’s 24. She also has 14 doubles grand slam titles with her sister Venus, and a pair of mixed doubles grand slams from 1998 in her trophy room that is so large she sometimes forgets what’s in there. Williams first ascended to the No. 1 ranking in the world in 2002 and has held that title for 319 weeks overall, including a record 186 consecutive week stretch where she dominated the sport.

However, Williams says it’s time for her to focus on her other passions, citing growing her family and pursuit of business interests as the things pulling her away from the court. Even so, there’s some frustration in Williams’ announcement, as she notes that while many of her friends in tennis and other sports feel relief when they retire, she “hates it,” noting that if she was a man she wouldn’t have to make this decision and could pursue a Tom Brady or Tiger Woods-like longevity.

Believe me, I never wanted to have to choose between tennis and a family. I don’t think it’s fair. If I were a guy, I wouldn’t be writing this because I’d be out there playing and winning while my wife was doing the physical labor of expanding our family. Maybe I’d be more of a Tom Brady if I had that opportunity. Don’t get me wrong: I love being a woman, and I loved every second of being pregnant with Olympia. I was one of those annoying women who adored being pregnant and was working until the day I had to report to the hospital—although things got super complicated on the other side. And I almost did do the impossible: A lot of people don’t realize that I was two months pregnant when I won the Australian Open in 2017. But I’m turning 41 this month, and something’s got to give.
…
I’m going to be honest. There is no happiness in this topic for me. I know it’s not the usual thing to say, but I feel a great deal of pain. It’s the hardest thing that I could ever imagine. I hate it. I hate that I have to be at this crossroads. I keep saying to myself, I wish it could be easy for me, but it’s not. I’m torn: I don’t want it to be over, but at the same time I’m ready for what’s next. I don’t know how I’m going to be able to look at this magazine when it comes out, knowing that this is it, the end of a story that started in Compton, California, with a little Black girl who just wanted to play tennis. This sport has given me so much. I love to win. I love the battle. I love to entertain. I’m not sure every player sees it that way, but I love the performance aspect of it—to be able to entertain people week after week. Some of the happiest times in my life were spent waiting in that hallway in Melbourne, and walking out into Rod Laver Arena with my earphones in and trying to stay focused and drown out the noise but still feeling the energy of the crowd. Night matches in Arthur Ashe Stadium at Flushing Meadows. Hitting an ace on set point.

Williams says she will dive into the business world further with her venture capital firm, Serena Ventures, as well as looking to have another child with husband Alexis Ohanian after their daughter, Olympia, has been not so subtle about her desire to be a big sister.

For the past few years every time Serena has stepped on the court at a grand slam there’s been a sense that it could be the end, but the hope that we’d get to keep watching her play forever. That, of course, wasn’t going to happen, but with an all-time great it’s hard to say goodbye — for them or for us — and the next few tournaments leading into her farewell at the U.S. Open will be emotional for everyone involved, a bittersweet celebration of the greatest tennis career any of us have ever seen.