After Showtime submitted their name for Emmy consideration in 2017, nonbinary Billions actor Asia Kate Dillon made headlines by challenging binary-gender conventions and asking to be nominated under the supporting actor category as the term “actor” is a gender-neutral description for theater players. This move led to Dillon gratefully having their identity recognized by the Critics Choice Awards who included them in the supporting actor that same year without requiring a formal request.

However, Dillon’s activism is far from over. After being selected to serve on the 27th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards Motion Picture Nominating Committee, they wrote an open letter in Variety asking the SAG Awards to end the practice of separating actors into binary-gender categories. According to Dillon, the notion behind the categories is antiquated and fails to prevent discrimination.

The distinction between male and female acting categories was implemented as a means of combating the chronic and systemic overlooking of cis-women, particulary white cis-women, when it came to acting awards. This was despite the fact that there were no other categories similarly revised (as in directoress, best female or best male director/cinematographer/sound designer, etc.) I say “particularly white cis-women” because it’s important to note how dangerous it has been to defend the separation of male and female acting categories, as well as other awards shows’ use of the actress category, as being motivated by wanting representation for all womxn (cis and trans alike). In fact, Black, POC, indigenous, trans, and disabled womxn are still the most underrepresented groups at any awards show.

As Dillon notes, gender-neutral categories have already been implemented at the MTV Movie & TV Awards where the actor had the honor of presenting the first gender-neutral acting award to Emma Watson. If SAG were to make a similar move by abolishing binary categories, it would send a powerful message to “non-binary and gender non-conforming members.” But until that decision is made, Dillon will not be participating in the nominating committee. As of this writing, the Screen Actors Guild has yet to comment.

(Via Variety)

The number of NBA players reportedly disenchanted with the league’s momentum toward a return to play is growing, according to new reports from across the NBA media. Taylor Rooks of Bleacher Report indicated players wanted to reiterate to league stakeholders what their stance is on this moment of political revolution in the wake of George Floyd’s death, and unify behind it.

Rooks’ Bleacher Report teammate, Howard Beck, added to that reporting to specify the call could include up to 200 players, and that increasingly, it has been Nets guard Kyrie Irving leading the charge against the league’s plans. Beck called Irving a “driving force” behind raising concerns over playing out the season amidst social unrest and while the country attempts to get a handle on the coronavirus pandemic.

Over at Yahoo! Sports, Chris Haynes added to his earlier reporting on the “bad optics” of the NBA return to indicate Irving has organized a call in which players are expected to consider the possibility of not playing at all.

Despite the memes and silliness that often surround Irving’s public comments, the ability to rally hundreds of colleagues around an issue of this magnitude is admirable. As the Nets’ representative in the players’ association, Irving has been part of the conversations from the jump, but it appears he was the one willing to risk bothering other players, owners, and league officials by starting a dialogue about the hesitancy on many players’ minds. Even if all of these issues end up getting worked out, it is important that they get addressed as soon as possible, and it’ll be fascinating to watch what happens in the coming days and weeks on this front.

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It turns out that odor-removing gel, rainbow film tile, and bed sheet holders actually make very noticeable improvements.

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If you’re intimidated by the thought of cooking fish and shellfish at home, let these recipes change your mind.

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“Put a finger down if you did something with a man that you didn’t want to do because you were scared to say no…”

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A lot of stories have emerged from the nationwide protests that have been going on following the death of George Floyd. One of the most prevalent was the arrest of Givionne “Gee” Jordan Jr., who was peacefully protesting in Charleston, South Carolina when, seemingly out of nowhere, officers arrested Jordan. A video of the incident went viral, and it has nearly 30 million views on Twitter as of this post. Jordan was taken to jail and charged with “disobeying lawful order” before being released on June 1 on a $465 bond. He has a court date scheduled for June 16.

Following the arrest, Charleston Police Chief Luther Reynolds told the Post And Courier, “We specifically asked for them, numerous times, to disperse. We said if you don’t, you will be arrested.”

Now, Team Roc, a social justice-focused part of Jay-Z’s Roc Nation, wants something to be done about the situation.

Team Roc has been involved since the start, actually. The day after Jordan’s arrest, Team Roc lawyer Jordan Siev sent a letter to the city of Charleston, in which he wrote, “It has come to Roc Nation’s attention that in the course of retaliating against and attempting to control these protests, some of Charleston’s police have gone so far as to arrest nonviolent, non-threatening protesters solely on the basis of their constitutionally protected speech. Here one sees a single protester — who does not threaten, provoke or even approach the dozens of armed police officers facing him, kneeling peacefully and expressing his well-justified grief — hauled away from his fellows and unceremoniously arrested by multiple officers. A more clear-cut violation of this protester’s First Amendment rights could hardly be imagined. […] Act now to release all protesters who have been arrested without lawful cause, and make it known that further acts of repression by Charleston police will not be tolerated.”

On June 11, Team Roc received a response from the city, and assistant corporation counsel Heather Mulloy wrote, “The City is continuing to navigate through the unprecedented and violent attack by rioters on the City and its citizens on Saturday, May 30, 2020, and continues to hold the safety and security of citizens and visitors as a top priority. Protests have continued throughout the City since that evening and the City and the police department have strived to preserve the individual constitutional rights of protestors. As solidarity with lawful peaceful protestors and trust with the community are also goals of the City and the police department, the City and the police department continue to work hand in hand with leaders of protest groups to protect their safety and that of the citizens of Charleston throughout these trying times.”

Team Roc did not love that response, as Team Roc Director Of Philanthropy Dania Diaz issued a statement that reads, “We are outraged by the Charleston police department’s reprehensible arrest of Givionne Jordan Jr. — not to mention their dismissive response to our concerns about their conduct. Giovionne’s arrest was unlawful and the Charleston police clearly violated his Constitutional right to peacefully protest. We applaud Givionne and demand that his charges are immediately dismissed.”

This news comes after Roc Nation took out ads in newspapers across the US in honor of Floyd.

Dave Chappelle’s surprise comedy special appearing on Youtube wasn’t the only comedy news on Friday, as Hannibal Buress announced he would drop a new stand up special on the same platform next month.

Burres shared details Friday about a July 3 release of standup that, like Chappelle’s, is sure to reference police treatment of Black people amid ongoing protests against police brutality and systemic racism. The special, called Miami Nights, references Buress’s 2018 arrest that was captured on a police body camera during Art Basel in Miami. Video of the incident went viral, and the comedian has claimed he didn’t think the arrest was warranted given the circumstances.

From a Miami Sun-Sentinel report at the time:

Minutes later, a crowd of onlookers gathered to witness a handcuffed Buress being lowered into a police cruiser. The comedian hollered, “You don’t have probable cause for anything and you look hella stupid right now.” When bystanders asked Buress why he was being arrested, he laughed again and said, “I’m under arrest right now for calling him a bitch-ass n—-.”

Police later booked Buress at Miami-Dade County jail for disorderly intoxication, a misdemeanor. Reached by phone in Las Vegas on Monday, Buress admits that the body-cam footage looks damaging “out of context.”

The preview video above actually uses some of that footage, which started with him peering into the body camera and saying ““Hey, what’s up? It’s me, Hannibal Buress.” For this video, however, the word “YouTube” is added after “what’s up,” which is a nice touch given the intended release platform. Buress also shared the video on Twitter on Friday, along with a link to a news story about the police officer who arrested him.

It’s clear that the incident and perhaps police brutality as a whole will be addressed during the special when it arrives in early July, which should make it an interesting pairing with Chappelle’s 8:46.

This season’s Top Chef saw one chef dominate for most of the competition: Chef Gregory Gourdet. A man so effortlessly cool he can pull off a fringed leather motorcycle vest. Especially following Restaurant Wars — Top Chef‘s signature challenge, in which chefs design, open, and start serving food in their own pop-up restaurants in a 48 hour span — in which Chef Gregory’s Kann, a Haitian food concept, handily defeated Chef Kevin Gillespie’s Country Captain, it looked like Chef Gregory might cruise to the finale without even breaking a sweat.

Instead, he showed up to Italy suffering back spasms, gritted his teeth through an aperitivo-based quickfire challenge, and ended up going home for a truffle dish that didn’t taste like truffles. His run in this season, made up of all-stars from past seasons, ended up being a lot like his initial run on season 12, in which he at one point won four challenges in a row but ended up losing in the finale to Mei Lin. Now, fellow season 12 contestant Melissa King looks poised to win this season.

Of course, there’s TV and then there’s life, and for as much as we pretend cooking is sports for entertainment purposes, likely most people’s takeaway from Gregory Gourdet on Top Chef isn’t “this guy can’t close the deal” but rather “that guy’s food looks good and I would like to eat it.” Which is why even established and successful chefs still submit themselves to the grueling Top Chef process.

As with many chefs, Gourdet’s success has been a journey. Now 10 years sober, he grew up in Queens, moved west for college, and then returned to New York to attend CIA and work for Jean-Georges Vongrichten. From there he went to Portland, where he’s planned pan-Asian fare as the executive chef for Departures for the past 10 years. After cooking modern French, then pan-Asian, he’s now attempting to incorporate the flavors he grew up eating for a Haitian food concept similar to Kann (I ate there; it was wonderful). He also just finished a cookbook, reflecting his passion for healthy food and global cuisine.

Of course, you can’t talk about opening a restaurant in 2020 without talking about COVID, and the way the mass quarantine is exposing cracks in an already shaky business model. I spoke to Gourdet this week about how he’s dealing with his Top Chef elimination and with… well… (*gestures to everything*).

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So how’s your back doing?

My back’s just like a thing, it’s just okay. It’s been hard to get care with lockdown, but it’s okay. It’s not like it was on TV.

Yeah, so what happened with that on elimination week?

As we were packing to leave for Italy, I had a huge back spasm and I was pretty much in pain the whole entire time. It was a 19-hour trip to get to where we were. We flew to Philly, and then we had to drive like five hours. It was a really long trip. And then we actually had a day and a half off from filming and I was hoping to get better. But we got right into the first quickfire and I had a huge back spasm in the middle of a quickfire, and that really just made things worse. So basically I was in extreme pain.

But I told the producers as soon as I got there, I just wanted to push through, I wasn’t going to try to use the injury as an excuse. There’s nothing to do, you’re at the Top Chef finals, I’m not going to stop. So I think in the end my condition influenced my judgment on what to make and how to execute it. I felt like I still couldn’t use it as an excuse as judges’ table, so I didn’t say anything, really. I know that the judges knew, because Tom asked me how my back was doing, but I’m not sure he knew the extent of how bad it was. Literally, I was getting shots in my ass between takes. We had like chiropractors and doctors coming to set and stuff like that, trying to help me. But alas, whatever happened, happened, and I was just going to push through and just make the dishes I made and not try to use my back as an excuse. And in the end, I made a poor decision with what I made and how I executed it and it got me sent home.

If you had it to do over, is there something else that you would have made or something you would have done differently?

I chose that dish to make because I knew I could make it in the timeframe. And I think maybe if I wasn’t in so much pain and concerned about being able to execute, I probably would have given it more time and thought.

How much different is the Top Chef environment versus a normal cooking environment? Like if had two hours to prep, as opposed to 30 minutes most of the time, how much differently would you do it?

I think the biggest risk came with just making that dish altogether, which was an Italian dish, but it was something I’ve never made before. The flavors just drew me in. Like the boar and the cocoa and the prunes. It’s kind of like this play on sweet and bittersweet and sour. But the reality of Top Chef is that we have just a handful of minutes to make all these decisions. From Padma announcing the challenge to us mentally preparing our list and getting to the store and we have to shop in Italian, which was challenging in itself. So it’s a pretty tight window. As soon as you can figure out what you want to make, you get rolling and you start your prep list and you want to make sure that you don’t forget anything at the store and all these things. I think being in so much pain, I was just really rushed to land on a dish so I can start checking boxes off.

What do you think are the best and worst things about the way they judge your food on the show?

Honestly, I tasted my dish, when I finally tasted everything together, I didn’t taste any truffle either. So I felt the judges’ critique was pretty accurate. And that is actually why I panicked at the last minute and I threw some truffles in and tried to warm it up, which is like a cardinal sin in Italy, you just don’t cook white truffles. And that’s why I was putting so much truffles on top, because I knew that the truffle was lost by the time I finally tasted the dish all together. I think maybe if I was in a better place, I would have had the courage to only serve them polenta and the truffle, make that huge pivot. But in that moment I didn’t have the courage to do that.

It seems like Italians have very specific ideas about what’s right or wrong about ways to cook things. Were there any things that you were consciously trying to avoid going into that?

No. Honestly, they schooled us. They go into pretty good detail about how to use the truffle. I don’t think any of us knew all those details. I think that’s one of the ways that that challenge was so hard and so challenging because I’m not sure who could know that level of detail about truffles, especially white truffles. And that’s just how you make a good game.

Tell me about your life as a younger chef. How did you find your way to cooking and what were some of the early jobs that you had?

I actually started working at Jean-Georges. I was going to college in Montana for wildlife biology and that was the first time I was cooking for myself. I realized I enjoyed cooking. I’m not sure if I realized I had a passion for it just yet, but I definitely enjoyed it. And a friend… I started washing dishes at a restaurant and I started cooking at a deli. And the chef at the restaurant saw something in me and he suggested I go to culinary school. So I graduated from University of Montana and I went off to CIA and I did my internship at Jean-Georges and I worked for him for about six and a half years after culinary school. I worked at three of his restaurants.

What was the original plan when you were a biology major?

I actually grew up just thinking I’d be a doctor until I went to premed. I did premed at NYU for a year and just realized my brain doesn’t work that way and that it wasn’t something I wanted to do. And then I thought I’d want to do wildlife biology. So I moved out west and I realized that that’s not what I wanted to do either. I think it’s more when I moved out west, I wasn’t as interested in the classes I was taking and I started cooking for myself, and that kind of became what I realized that I was more passionate about.

Did you ever feel like you were disappointing parents or whatever by not becoming a doctor?

No. My grades made it pretty clear that I wasn’t going to be a doctor (laughs). Both my parents worked in hospitals. They’re retired now. So I think that was always in the background and I just grew up always kind of wanting to be a pediatrician. But one year of premed made it very, very obvious that the other side of my brain was far better than the math-science side of my brain. But there’s some biology and chemistry in food, so I guess I’m okay now. But my parents have always been extremely supportive of anything I’ve ever wanted. So when I told them I wanted to go to culinary school, they were supportive and they wanted me to go to CIA.

So Kann, your concept in Restaurant Wars, you’re trying to make that into a real restaurant, is that right?

Yeah. So at the end of last year, the end of 2019, I transitioned out of my executive chef position at Departure, where I was for 10 years. I’m still consulting as a culinary director, but my goal was to take this year to finish my cookbook which is about to be all done. Travel a little bit, I wanted to go to Thailand, I wanted to go to Haiti, I wanted to go down South and study American barbecue and some other stuff. And then start planning the restaurant to open in January. But with COVID, I’m just taking a slower pace and seeing what’s going on. I know there are some restaurant spaces opening up, unfortunately, but at the same time, I’m still trying to figure out my best move.

But Kann was a concept created specifically for the show because it had be razor-focused for Restaurant Wars. It’s actually a little bit different than what I pitched because I truly think I’m a more of a global chef and I definitely wanted to have a strong Haitian focus, but I’m definitely inspired by so many different other cultures and have a lot more cooking in my repertoire and a lot more that I want to make, but definitely a strong Haitian focus will be at the foundation of the restaurant opening.

What are some of your favorite Haitian dishes that inspired you to do that type of cuisine?

There’s just a series of super iconic Haitian dishes. Literally everything I made on the show is a very well known, traditional, iconic, Haitian dish. I think that’s why the Haitian community was so amazed and so responsive and the Haitian Twitter just went nuts because everything I made for the Restaurant Wars episode was a dish that they’re extremely familiar with. Those are the dishes that we had every Sunday. And those are the dishes that I’ve done at Haitian popups and I’ve cooked Haitian at the Beard house and I’ve done food festivals in Haiti. The chicken and Creole sauce, the rice and beans, the patties, the pork, the fried plantains. Pineapple pound cake is the most iconic Haitian dessert, all those dishes are super, super traditional Haitian dishes.

How important is the idea of authenticity when you’re doing those kinds of foods?

So I think for me, I didn’t grow up cooking, at all. I didn’t start cooking until I was in my early twenties, but we grew up pretty much just only eating Haitian food. I grew up in a very Haitian-American, African American community and all we ate was Haitian food growing up. Because we were always taken care of by relatives and we always had people over, coming to and from Haiti and people transitioning into life in the States. So we had a pretty strong Haitian family community. And pretty much that’s everything I ate growing up, all the time, like every day.

So for me, not growing up cooking, ever, really, I had to go back and learn how to make this. And it was really important to me to start from a point of authenticity. And I might take some liberties in modern equipment and stuff like that, but even for Restaurant Wars and the couple dishes that other people helped with, like Lee Anne’s salad and Stephanie’s salt cod patties, I didn’t have the recipe memorized for the traditional Haitian dough. I let Stephanie make a different type of dough and Lee Anne, we discussed her just making up a salad, but I wanted to make sure that if we did something that wasn’t extremely traditional, at least only featured ingredients that were found in Haiti. So there was no deviation. Everything in that salad is something that you would find on a Haitian table.

So I think that’s where I stand. I think as I keep making more Haitian food, it will be the same. It’ll be dishes that are made of ingredients and sauces and marinades and parts of dishes that are traditionally Haitian, 100%.

Do you ever feel pressure to represent chefs of color or Haitian chefs? Is there ever a conflict between having to be an ambassador and just wanting to be yourself?

No, I don’t think there’s really a difference. I think even before this reckoning that we’re in now, I think just, I understood that since my first run on Top Chef, I’ve had a platform, and I’ve understood that I can bring a lot of things to light and people will pay attention and I’m grateful for that. I think I accept that and I enjoy that. I think how excited I was for both the pitch and for Restaurant Wars and I think that’s probably why I did so well. I mean, I think Tom said it best. I can’t remember his quote exactly. But he said something about, if you truly feel passionate about the food, it’s just going to be good. And for both those challenges, once I decided what I wanted to make, I was just so excited to make it that I didn’t really think about anything else. I didn’t think about, “what if I go home?”

Because for Restaurant Wars, I think I’ve seen maybe one or two episodes in like 17 years where the executive chef or front of the house manager doesn’t go home if they mess up Restaurant Wars. And I mentioned it briefly with Kevin, the first night. But for the next two days that we were in Restaurant Wars, I didn’t think about going home once. And that’s not to say I was feeling so confident and so cocky that I didn’t think there was any way that we could lose. We were obviously the underdog, but I was just so happy to make this food and so excited about it, that I only thought about making the best food possible, and it worked out. So to answer your question, there is no me without feeling that I have to be a positive voice for black chefs in America, and I have to represent my culture, that’s hand in hand in who I truly am.

With COVID, and you touched on a lot of restaurants going under, it seems like this crisis has exposed certain problems in the restaurant industry. Do you see things changing because of this? What do you think that the quarantine has shown us about the restaurant industry?

I think COVID has completely exposed the frailty of the restaurant business model. It’s extremely unsustainable and that’s been extremely obvious for a long time. And to be completely honest, I think we’re still trying to figure out how to fix it. Currently, I sit on the independent restaurant coalition and we’re asking Congress for even more help, I think for another $120 billion to help support restaurants for the rest of the year. Because the way it is, people are having huge challenges opening, from small towns to major cities. Social distancing in a restaurant is extremely challenging because so many restaurants are small, especially independent restaurants. And there are lots of numbers. A third of all restaurants are owned by minorities, people of color. Almost half of all restaurants are run by women. So there are a lot of communities that are important that are at risk of losing their livelihood.

I don’t think we have an answer yet. Portland isn’t even in phase one yet. So people are who have been able to find resources and have been able to get a game plan going are still talking about not opening for six months. And that’s people who have found resources. A lot of the people that I talked to almost every day, they don’t know what to do. They can’t bring their teams back, they don’t know, with a to-go model, what percentage of revenue will that make compared to what they were at. So there’s still a lot of questions. And I don’t think there’s an answer yet. I think it’s going to take this entire year for us to really see what we need to do to fix the American restaurant and how we can.

What are some of the things that you like about the Portland food scene and what are some of the things that you think makes that food culture special?

I think one of the best parts of Portland is that we are such a small community. I think we’re definitely clearly an American food destination. But at the same time, even with the gentrification of Portland and its expansion, I do think that we’ve been able to stay a very close community. If you think about Portland’s dining scene, it’s really just over a decade old. There are iconic old-school restaurants, like Paley’s Place and Higgins, which kind of laid the groundwork, quite a bit ago, like 25 years ago. But really when you talk about Pok Pok and Le Pigeon and Beast, that kind of ushered in modern Portland dining as we know it. And all the restaurants that opened up in those years since, like Ox and all these really iconic American restaurants.

And I think the best part is, it’s two-fold. A) we have amazing resources, we have 12 months of growing season, from the mountains to wine country, to the ocean, to the woods, we have all these places where all these amazing things grow. So there’s just a constant, amazing chain of supply, which is also threatened right now because restaurants are closed. But I think we are progressive in the sense that we represent a lot of different cultures. Being one of the whitest cities in America, I think we are most diverse in our culinary scene here. And I can easily just get great West African food just as quickly as I can get amazing Thai food. Just as quickly as I can go to a Haitian cooking class or have great Russian food or have great Ethiopian food or have great Mexican food. So I think for where we are and the size that we are, I think there’s a really great representation of global cultures for a city being as white as we are. I think there’s a pretty fair amount of ethnic representation in our culinary scene.

Vince Mancini is on Twitter. Read more of his cooking commentary in UPROXX’s Cooking Battles and Viral Cooking. For past Top Chef Power Rankings, go here.

You may not have seen Andre 3000 at any protests recently, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t down for the cause. In a new interview with media newsletter Blackbird Spyplane about his new slogan T-shirts in support of Movement For Black Lives, Andre explained why he felt reticent to join the masses in the streets like some of his fellow artists, admonishing fans to use caution when pressuring their favorite musicians to join the crowded protests.

“I haven’t gotten out to any protests, to be honest,” he admitted, but says he has a solid reason. “I would love to be out, but I haven’t been: personally, I felt like I wouldn’t want to risk the virus at all.” While some artists felt compelled to join, Andre asked for a little more empathy for those who felt like they couldn’t or shouldn’t protest in person and tried to help in other ways. “I saw a lot of rappers getting pressured by people, with fans saying, ‘You need to be out here, where are y’all,’ but you have to think about it: How much of it is just for the people to say, We saw a celebrity there? What if your favorite rapper goes out — I’m not even talking about me, ‘cause I’m from the ‘90s, but the kids’ favorite rapper now, say they go out and catch corona and die? Were they more effective and valuable to all of us at home writing music, and doing what they do best?”

Andre also pointed out that as a natural loner with social anxiety, the thought of diving into the sea of humanity stressed him out too much. However, he also acknowledged that folks who went out had valid reasons, as well. “People screaming and touching!” he said, “And when you scream there’s projectiles in the air. And yet, even with people knowing they could get the virus, they still turned out! So either they were really bored or they were so angry they said, ‘F*ck it,’ and went out anyway.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Andre explains how he ethically sourced his shirts, why the slogans felt so important to share, and his hope that this round of protests helps to make a last change. Read the full interview here and see Andre’s new line of shirts here.