Month: January 2023

Eight years ago next week, TV history was made. In the season four premiere of HBO’s Girls, Desi (played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach, who’s now on The Bear) performed anilingus on Marnie (Allison Williams). The scene inspired headlines like “Let’s Talk About the Marnie Butt Munching” and “ICYMI, There Was Ass Motorboating on Girls Last Night” (we were guilty of playing up the shock value, too), but there’s one headline in particular that still stands out to Williams, all these years later.

“I remember that headline very clearly,” Williams told Vulture, referring to a Barstool headline about getting her salad “tossed.” If that scene happened in 2022, “if I was on a show that was that predictably Monday-morning think piece–y, the pressure of that would be really overwhelming in a way that it wasn’t then,” she said. “I didn’t know anything else.” (If anything, the butt-eating scene is an inspiration to current HBO programming.)

In the years since the episode, Williams has weaponized her “good white person” image in Get Out, as well as The Perfection and the murder doll masterpiece M3GAN. “It has just kind of happened,” she told Syfy about her pivot to horror. “But, it has also been a choice from role to role, story to story, theme to theme. I would say that Get Out certainly set me on the path of seeing this genre differently. I am really scared when I watch horror movies, so I didn’t ever really consider this genre to be one that could feel like home to me because I can’t stomach most of the movies that exist under this banner.”

M3GAN opens this Friday.

(Via Vulture)

Last year, one of the most-discussed shows was Hulu’s new series The Bear, an intense eight-episode drama taking place in a restaurant kitchen. Ayo Edebiri, who plays one of the chefs alongside Jeremy Allen White, talked about her experience actually working in restaurants in her appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert last night (January 4), and one memorable anecdote she touched on was when Beyoncé and Jay-Z came in.

She explained:

“I worked at ABC Kitchen and that’s a place where a lot of celebs go when in New York. Beyoncé came in once. We all know… she’s a big one. She did the Super Bowl, remember? She came in with Jay-Z and I was doing reservations that night, which meant that I had to stay in the reservations office. So I’m on the phone, but I’m like, Beyoncé’s in the building. So I kept coming up and being like, ‘Does anyone want to ask about any reservations or anything,’ just to try to get a peek at Beyoncé.”

Colbert asked, “Did you get a shot?” She answered, “Not even a strand of hair. Didn’t even see an eyelash of Beyoncé.” Though it must’ve been disappointing, she’s come a far way since then and hopefully will get another chance soon.

Watch her full interview above; find the Beyoncé story starting at 4:26.

Laura Ingraham invited author Steve Almond onto her show to discuss the Damar Hamlin situation and how the NFL needs to do a better job protecting players. However, Almond switched things up by pointing out how Ingraham’s workplace, Fox News, has been accused of acting as egregiously when it comes to covering up problems like, for example, sexual harassment. Almond argued that, allegedly like Fox News, the NFL would only make a move to enhance player safety if there’s an economic incentive.

“It’s like at Fox News when you have hosts who are allegedly sexually harassing people,” Almond said. “Fox News throws money at that to make that PR problem go away.”

After Ingraham chided him for his “cute little move,” Almond pushed the boundaries even further by mocking Fox News for stirring up fears of a “woke mob.” Via The Daily Beast:

Ingraham interjected that she is not “trying to scare the viewers,” and that the sport is “not about politics.”

“Oh, I think that’s your entire economic model,” Almond responded. “Your entire economic model is to scare your viewers. That’s your whole gig.”

However, Almond finally hit a nerve when he brought up the time that Ingraham was forced to apologize for mocking Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg, which caused a flustered Ingraham to cut Almond’s mic.

“A couple of years ago when you taunted a survivor of the Parkland mass shooting, you apologized only because advertisers withdrew from your show,” Almond said before being booted.

“Nice try, little buddy,” Ingraham said while knowing Almond couldn’t respond. “This is what they always do.”

(Via The Daily Beast)

One of UFC President Dana White’s biggest detractors is officially joining the organization’s biggest competition. Jake Paul announced on Thursday that he is joining the Professional Fighters League as a fighter and an equity owner.

Paul joins the PFL as the head of fighter advocacy, per the New York Times, and has committed pursue MMA while continuing boxing, where he’s racked up a 6-0 record, including a recent win over 47-year-old Anderson Silva. Paul’s introduction to the PFL is not in the traditional sense of joining a weight division, rather the newly-formed Super Fight division, where fighters will earn at least 50 percent of the pay-per-view revenue, with bouts distributed by ESPN and the streaming service DAZN, per the report.

This division is in direct competition for some of the UFC’s top stars, coming off the back of fighters like Jorge Masvidal demanding more than 18 percent of UFC PPV revenues in recent years.

Paul plans to make a splash upon joining the PFL, challenging Nate Diaz to a boxing match followed by an MMA fight in 2023. In joining the PFL’s Super Fight division alongside two-time PFL champion and Olympic gold medalist, Kayla Harrison, the PFL is clearly looking to turn the sport of MMA on its head.

Takeoff was fatally shot in the early hours of November 1 while attending a private event with Quavo at 810 Billiards & Bowling in Houston. The Atlanta rapper, best known as a member of the Migos, was 28. In the two months since, Houston Police have slowly pieced together what led to the tragedy.

Ultimately, on December 1, 33-year-old Patrick Xavier Clark was arrested and charged him with murder, with bond reportedly set at $2 million. Clark requested a bond reduction to $1 million, which was successful, though his subsequent request was not.

This morning, January 5, Houston’s KHOU is reporting that Clark posted $1 million bond last night and was released from prison. The Houston CBS affiliate cited court records.

According to an affidavit that surfaced in December, Quavo was participating in a dice game outside the venue when an argument broke out and shots were fired. Takeoff has been identified as an innocent bystander at separate points along the investigation.

Late Wednesday night, January 4, Quavo released a song dedicated to Takeoff, his nephew and musical collaborator. Titled “Without Out,” the somber track is simple in delivery but carries a heavy, heartbreaking message. “Tears rolling down my eyes / Can’t tell you how many times I cried / Days ain’t the same without you,” Quavo sings before recounting better days with Takeoff and wishing he “had a time machine, just so you can take a ride with me.”

Spotify Wrapped filled everyone’s social media feeds at the end of November, shortly following the popularity of the Instafest app that turned a user’s listening history into a festival lineup. Now, Spotify is introducing a new feature for music lovers to play around with: Playlist In A Bottle.

Playlist In A Bottle invites users to make playlists that will be locked until January 2024 — a sonic time capsule. It’s only available until the end of this month, so it’s time to get curating. Users will also be given choices of time capsules, such as a bottle, a jean pocket, a gumball machine, a lunch box, a teddy bear, and an acorn. Prompts will help the user pick songs, including a song you’d pay to hear for the first time again, a song you want to hear live this year, a song that won’t make any sense a year from now, and more. The feature is live on the Spotify app now.

The Instafest app was so successful last year that the realistic nature of the fake festival flyers fooled many fans on Twitter into thinking they were real. “Found out these musical festivals are just generated by oomfs spotifys why I looked up how to buy tickets….” one user wrote in a viral tweet.

The next season of Stranger Things will also be the last season. Creators Matt and Ross Duffer made the decision to end the Netflix series after five seasons because “we never wanted to run on fumes,” producer Shawn Levy explained, “and we wanted to only tell as much story as [we] saw and feel with clarity.” It also doesn’t help that the young cast, who play high school students, will be in their 20s by 2024. That includes Sadie Sink, a real-life Taylor Swift fan who plays Kate Bush stan Max on the show.

The Whale actress discussed the final season on Wednesday’s episode of Today. “It’s going to be awful. It’s going to be horrible. These kids, this entire cast and crew, this is, like — I mean, it’s family. People say it all the time, but I genuinely mean it,” she said. “And to think that we have to kind of say goodbye to that security and knowing that we won’t be seeing each other for another season, it’s scary and sad, but I think it’s exciting to move on to the next chapter.”

The next chapter for Stranger Things will be spinoffs, but the next chapter for Sink hopefully includes a role in Swift’s feature-length directorial debut.

(Via the Hollywood Reporter)

At the top of 2023, Netflix debuted Kaleidoscope, a new eight-episode series with a novel twist: the episodes can be watched in any order. One episode in particular sent One Direction fans on an emotional roller coaster when they saw a reference to the now-defunct boy band but realized the show got an important detail wrong.

In the episode titled “Green,” a criminal named Judy (played by Rosaline Elbay) tries to smuggle SIM cards to imprisoned boyfriend Stan (Peter Mark Kendall) (as Billboard notes). However, a guard catches Judy, so she bribes her with One Direction concert tickets. The scene includes a clear shot of the tickets, which are for a Madison Square Garden show on March 6, 2016. The problem: the group went on hiatus in December 2015 and was certainly not touring in 2016.

Fans of the group picked up on this and lamented the error on Twitter, with one writing, “IT HURTS BEING A DIRECTIONER.” Another tweeted, “i HAD to go back on kaleidoscope cause I KNEW I SAW ONE DIRECTION on those damn tickets. 2016? smh.” Somebody else had a different perspective, though, tweeting, “everyone thinks they messed up in kaleidoscope with the one direction ticket but what if it was intentional who’s to say she didn’t screw over the guard on purpose.”

Today, SZA is one of the most successful musical artists we have, as evidenced by SOS being the No. 1 album in the country right now. Years ago, though, she was just a high school student facing bullying. Today, SZA actually credits that experience with giving her the drive necessary to achieve all that she has.

In a new interview with People, SZA explained, “I was bullied because I wasn’t quiet and I was awkward at the same time. I wasn’t this tiny sad victim, but I was more so attacked just because it was giving ‘What is wrong with you?’ energy. I always thought, ‘Oh my God.’ I’ll never have the approval of anyone in life, this must be my defining factor, this must be the bottom line.”

She continued:

“I realized that all the things that made me feel so lame were actually what made me into who I am,” she says. “It’s like, I didn’t go to prom because I didn’t have any friends and I had no one to go to prom with. […] It’s so weird that my life turned into [having] a bodyguard while traveling to parties. All these things, if I had such a fulfilling existence and experience in high school, I would’ve felt validated to the point where I didn’t need to do anymore. I just had to do more, I had to be more, because I was like, ‘This sh*tty experience can’t be the end of it because if it is, I am cooked.’ “

Read more from the interview here.

Wednesday night proved to be a great one in the NBA, as a number of games came down to the final possession or overtime, despite not necessarily looking like a stacked slate on paper.

Among those was Warriors-Pistons, where Golden State was visiting the team holding the NBA’s worst record, but they quickly found themselves in a hole that they struggled to dig themselves out of. With 4.2 seconds to go, Golden State trailed by three and ran a gorgeous sideline play to get Klay Thompson a clean look for the game-tying three with one second left.

That seemed like it might force overtime, but Saddiq Bey had other ideas, as he took an inbound, spun around, and fired in the game-winning three at the buzzer to give Detroit its 11th win of the season in dramatic fashion.

Bey finished the game with 17 points, as he provided a big lift for Detroit off of the bench, while Bojan Bogdanovic paced the Pistons with 29 points as he continues to be a steady performer offensively. On the other side, Klay had 30 points to lead all scorers, continuing his hot streak of late, and Jordan Poole had 24, but they were the only two Warriors starters to reach double figures as they continue to miss Stephen Curry and Andrew Wiggins’ presence.