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Most of Chad Stahelski’s press obligations for John Wick: Chapter 4 were over by the time we learned of the great Lance Reddick’s passing. For reasons that don’t matter, my interview with the director had been delayed until Wednesday and I assumed, given the circumstances — which were totally understandable — it wouldn’t happen.

But I did wind up talking to Stahelski and I asked if he wanted to talk about Reddick’s passing — and if he didn’t, again, completely understandable. It turns out Stahelski did want to talk about Reddick and had a lot to say about this man that he obviously so admired and is still trying to process what happened. But what he relayed to us are really great stories that I’m really happy he shared.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t first bring up Lance Reddick. What you wanted to say. If you want to say anything or not. If you don’t, that’s fine too. I understand.

Oh no, of course. I’ll just start from the beginning. When Dave Leitch and I were doing the first (John Wick movie), Lance is one of the first people we cast, obviously after Keanu, of course. We were big fans of his from The Wire. We had never met him, but you can remember this is back in 2013, we hadn’t directed anything yet. We were just second unit stunt guys coming in. And think back for a second about the first John Wick, let me sum it up for you: “So let me get this straight. You want to do a Keanu Reeves movie about an assassin in retirement, comes out of retirement, kills 86 people over a puppy. His wife is going to die, but she never dies on camera.” John Wick doesn’t read well on paper. When you’re going out to sell this, it’s Dave and I on the phone trying to convince people that we’re going to do something cool. That it’s going to be something different.

Right, it was literally your first movie.

We’re out there in the ether. We’re asking somebody to give a good five months of their life and risk their career. To Lance’s credit, when we explained it, we were like, “Look, it’s not just the concierge. This has got a Greek mythological overtone to it, so you are literally reading the character Charon to be like Charon from the river Styx.” Lance, he sat there and he looked up and goes, “I get it. I’m in.” It was that fast. And we’re like, “Oh, this directing thing is not going to be that hard!”

Oh yeah, smooth sailing from here on out. But that’s a great story.

Lance, for that tone that he created, because Lance is a very kinetic actor, to be that reserved and that zen? So Lance is a bit of a mentor. All the cast were in the first one, but Lance especially because he’s so easy to talk to. And he’s so infectious with his positive attitude. To actually direct someone that’s been your mentor at the same time, much like Keanu and Laurence Fishburne in the later ones, it’s been pretty incredible. So you find people that love what they do and if you love the same things they love, you’re usually going to get a pretty good result. That’s Lance.

And correct me if I’m wrong, but he had finished his work on Ballerina, is that right? He’s going to be in that still?

He has a role in that as well. Him and Ian McShane and Keanu. they all did roles in Ballerina.

That’s really cool to hear he got this movie right away.

I’m sure you’ve lost people…

I have.

You know what? You can go with the philosophy of being thankful of knowing him. You go through the sadness of it, and then you try to be empathetic with his family. I’ve known Stephanie for a while on and off. I met his family, so we feel terrible for them. But at the same time, we know Lance very, very well. Lance loves his job. You couldn’t get this man off set. He just loves to be on set meeting the crew and watching the process. He loved what he did every minute. So we found out about it. We had just gotten off the plane in Toronto, and we got hit with that phone call and you’re just like, “What? I just talked to him two days ago. We just saw him a week ago. We talked to him two days ago.”

And it hits you. It messes with your head. You’re supposed to be in this celebratory mode of promoting something that you just spent three years of your life on. And I’m very, very, very proud of my cast and my crew for the work they’ve done. Whether you like the movie, don’t like the movie? Whether you like what I do as a director or the tone? That’s apart from you cannot deny that my cast is fantastic in the movie. You cannot deny that my crew has done an amazing technical job. So you’re trying to really promote that and have that, and at the same time, you just realized someone that you were looking… [Pauses] Literally Lance and I high-fived each other four nights before going, “Now, I’ll see you in LA.”

And you share that. Because, now, we’re on the red carpet Monday night and it’s the first thing. As soon as you see Laurence Fishburne, it’s a hug. You see Shamier, it’s a hug. The first thing you do, every single cast member looked up and goes, “Fucking wish Lance was here.” Not one single person in the cast didn’t have that emotion.

I hope he knew how well people appreciated him as an actor. There’s been an outpouring of love for him on social media.

I hope he does, too. But Lance was… I mean, I would say all of them, no one’s in it for the accolades. I mean, it’s always nice to read a good review, I guess. It’s some kind of justification of why you spent so much of your life doing this job. But Lance did it for the work. He did it for the relationships. But everyone that worked with Lance – again, Keanu, Laurence, anybody in the cast – they loved working with him.

Well, I think for someone like me, or just any viewer, there’s something about his acting style that you feel a connection with. I think people connect with him in a way a lot of actors wish they could get that.

I mean, God, I wish I’d be so lucky when it’s my time just to have that kind of love and just to make people feel that connected. But I mean, that goes beyond that. On set, any day with Lance on set is a good day. We’d always joke, I’d jab him a little bit, “Are you ever not positive?” To your point, honestly, I think Lance had that much humility. Lance was a gentleman like a true gentleman in every sense of the word with etiquette and his humility. So I don’t know if he knows how connecting… I don’t know if he’s touched on that. Lance just tried to do two thing: be a great human and be a great artist. And I think that just comes across.

So there’s no great segue to go from a subject as emotional as that to back to the movie. But I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about it with you a little bit. You know this movie is better than the rest. Like, the Man with No Name movies are good, but now here’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

No, that was the roadmap. You just nailed it. Jesus, after we wrapped number three, or after number three had come out…. And then we’re just like, “Okay, we didn’t quite nail that one.” We didn’t feel like it was finished. We thought it was good…

Yeah, it is good. It’s really good, but this one is on a different level…

We just, look, well, it’s got to start with me. I have to be a better director. I have to have bigger ambitions. I’ve got to be brave. I’ve got to try. I got to be better at storytelling. I got to be a better writer. So we just went to work for the next year thinking if we could do it. It’s not about set pieces, it’s about different character perspectives. How do we have a story that when I’m not shooting people in the head, how do we make this more interesting?”

And we’re going to take this Good, The Bad, The Ugly model and kind of roll around into ethics and morality, and we’ll twist it in like that. Anyways, we just wanted to do something that was epic, but not just in look or scale, but in storytelling as well. And that’s hopefully, me and my crew, my cast, we all got a little better for the last one and collectively we got… If everybody gets this much better, you get a thousand people and you get that much better.

I’ve read you say the John Wick movies are on pause now. Obviously, this movie does end in a place where you could walk away. But I think you even said something like, “Unless people just go nuts for this one and we’ll see.” And that’s what seems to be happening. So it’s like, what do you want to do?

Look, I’m…

I can’t help but notice David Leitch has never directed a sequel… and you’ve only directed John Wick movies…

Yeah, no, everything you said is absolutely true. You got to remember, they see, just like myself at the time, you see Hollywood from the outside. You get all these things, like this is my first time here too. I’m not going to lie to you. We start off as this tiny little thing, and when we’re on sets, we still consider ourselves a tiny little action movie. Well, a couple of degrees off-center. We have weird methodologies, we have weird themes, we have obviously weird characters, a weird world, but it’s also so incredibly flattering when people want to see more of the stuff that’s coming out of your head.

Keanu and I look at them like love letters to things we love. Obviously, you’ll see The Good, The Bad, The Ugly. You see The Warriors? You see David Leitch? Lawrence of Arabia? You’ll see Crouching Tiger You see Tarantino, right? I mean, pick any film that we love!

I even saw a little Barry Lyndon at the end with the duel.

Sorry … you’re the first interview that got that with the rules of the duel. Thank you for noticing that.

Well, to be fair, I saw it on the big screen recently and it’s been on my mind.

No, that’s good. They all thought I was crazy! I’m like, “Nobody moves for the next day, so pick a comfortable spot. This is the way we’re doing it.”

Oh, yeah. I saw it right away. This is Barry Lyndon.

Look, it’s a new spot for me too. It’s always flattering. Yes, of course I have other ideas, but at the same time, I want to keep the mythology. There’s so much I can’t tell you! If you looked in this room and saw the stack of notebooks of John Wick ideas that didn’t make any of the films, we literally could write the most awesome TV series. We could write a series of films that doesn’t just involve Wick! And it seems like the studio’s very interested in what we have. So I’d like to continue it, but maybe with other mediums, the animation of video games or the TV show. If people were really that hungry for it, which couldn’t be more fortunate if they did, I’d like to stay involved and keep creating with that.

But at the same time, yeah, of course. I’m, again, so fortunate to be attached to so many other great things between Highlander and Rainbow Six and Ghost of Tsushima, these other TV shows I’m supposed to work on. That’s great. I mean, there’s only so many hours in the day, but I’m going to be a greedy bastard and try to do as much as I can. But make no mistake! Whether I did, or someone else did, or whatever my involvement is in the John Wick property, whatever you want to call it, I would be fortunate there’s someplace I want to keep a foot in at all times. I mean, I love it. You can tell…

So it sounds like what you’re saying is, “Yeah, I have other ideas for other stuff, but at the same time, if I made 20 successful John Wick movies and that’s my legacy, I’m fine with that.”

I think I’d already be happy. If I got hit by a bus tomorrow, sir, I’d be pretty happy just to have the life I’ve had.

I’m out of time. I wanted to bring up Donnie Yen and how great he is too but…

I’ll give you a free 15 seconds.

Okay.

Donnie Yen is awesome. He’s been a hero of mine since I was growing up. You know what it’s like the first time he comes on set?

No, I don’t. Tell me.

You walk up on set. He comes in for his first day, which is the fight scene with him and Keanu in the Japanese art room. Donnie comes in and Donnie’s so fast that we have to change the choreography. He’s not sped up at all in this movie. Like, him and Keanu were supposed to do the first little interactive. This choreo, it’s not going to work.

Wow.

We don’t want to slow Donnie down. So we’re just going to make John Wick run away. No one’s going to believe it. So Keanu and I are like, “Well, John’s just going to run from it. Donnie’s going to do the cat and mouse.” But I actually got to stand up on set with Donnie and work moves out, so you’re actually touching hands. So I’m choreographing with him, with the camera guys, and I’m like in the middle, I just stopped and I’m like, Donnie’s like, “You okay?” I’m having a moment here where I’m like, “I’m choreographing with Donnie Yen.” You know what that’s like for somebody who’s been choreographing for 20 years and watched movies? I had a full fanboy meltdown. I actually took him on, we all started busting out laughing. I was like, “Hey, somebody get a picture of this. This is awesome.”

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

While the death of Takeoff at just 28 years old was already tragic, the tragedy was exacerbated by the fact that at the time of his death, he and fellow Migos member Quavo were apparently on the outs with the third member of their trio, Offset. As Quavo and Takeoff promoted their new album as a duo, Offset hinted at plans of releasing a solo project of his own.

Offset put those plans on pause with the death of his former bandmate, but now, it looks like he’s ready to begin his rollout once again. And, on an especially bittersweet note, it appears that he may have still been working with the late Takeoff. On Monday, he shared a clip of a new song on his Instagram Story that features a verse from Takeoff alongside another from fellow Quality Control records rapper Icewear Vezzo. The clip eventually circulated online:

While it’s currently unknown if this posthumous verse was recorded specifically for Offset’s solo project or taken from an older recording session, it’s both encouraging and deflating to know that there was a possibility the two cousins could be mending fences. Before Takeoff’s death, it did appear that whatever the issue was, it appeared to center on Quavo and Offset, who were rumored to have gotten into an altercation at the recent Grammy Awards over a tribute to their fallen bandmate. Both rappers denied that a fight took place.

Donald Trump was pretty sure he was going to be arrested on Tuesday. He said so on Truth Social: “The far & away leading Republican candidate & former President of the United States will be arrested on Tuesday of [this] week. Protest, take our nation back!” Spoiler: he was not arrested on Tuesday (there’s always today!). To celebrate, Trump spent the night listening to his favorite music at Mar-a-Lago and doing the weird dance that he always does.

Trump was “surrounded by supporters, fist-pumping, and giving the thumbs-up” at his Florida compound on Tuesday, a source told Page Six. “He had a political dinner with five pals without Melania… The Donald was deep in serious conversation with what looked like political advisers.”

The failed recording artist also “couldn’t stop smiling as he played ‘Maria’ from West Side Story, the theme from Phantom of the Opera, and a chorus of ‘Hallelujah’ that had people scratching their heads as to exactly what that meant.” Does he only listen to the same six songs on repeat? Those three, “Memories,” “YMCA,” and “Gloria”? Drop your Spotify Wrapped, Trump.

If Trump does get arrested, he wants the whole world to see it.

We were even told that team Trump is planning to “try and film and document it with their own camera crew, they want a shot of him in cuffs and will release the mugshot. They are loving this stuff.”

The footage will be soundtracked to, you guessed it, “YMCA.”

(Via Page Six)

As a proud Donald Trump hater, Jimmy Kimmel has been getting antsy waiting for the former president’s supposedly pending indictment to finally happen. Over the weekend, Trump launched one of his trademark all-caps statements, claiming that he would be arrested on Tuesday, but that day came and went without any legal action. According to the latest reports, there might not be any movement until next week thanks to the next grand jury hearing being postponed.

“They decided to push the hearing to tomorrow to give Trump supporters time to iron their confederate flags,” Kimmel joked before barely hiding his giddiness over the pending arrest. “Now I’ll tell you something, if this happens on Saturday, so help me God, I will run into this studio and do a monologue in my bathrobe. I don’t care if there’s anyone here. I’ll just be alone with no lights on talking to this not-working camera.”

The late night comedian then went to town on reports that Trump has been obsessing over his perp walk and how it will play on TV. The topic was a field day for Kimmel, who slipped in a solid Stormy Daniels joke.

Via The Wrap:

“He’s been telling people he’s excited about the idea of getting paraded in front of the cameras like it’s the red carpet at some kind of Guilty People’s Choice Awards or something,” Kimmel continueed. “He’s also saying he specifically wants to get handcuffed behind his back. Which weirdly, this is the same request he had for Stormy Daniels when he got into this mess.”

Kimmel also worked in a gag about Melania, who is probably just as excited as half the country at the prospect of Trump’s arrest.

“He’s been even asking friends if he should smile when he gets arrested,” Kimmel said. “He’s been asking friends if he should smile, and Melania’s been debating whether she should play ‘Party in the USA’ or ‘Celebration’ by Kool & The Gang.”

(Via The Wrap)

Nick Cannon explained why monogamy isn’t for him on several occasions in the past year-plus. He has 12 children — the most recent baby arrived in December — with six different women because he just has too much love to give.

“I never want to generalize the relationships I have now, [like], ‘Oh, these my ladies!’ That’s sill. I have individual relationships with each person in my life, and I respect … their peace,” Cannon said in an interview with The Shade Room shared last week. “I’m not a private person, but I try to give everybody who wants to operate in privacy and keep their life personal, I love it. … I’ve had every type of relationship with a woman that a man could ever imagine.”

But moments later, the one-time Emmy winner reflected on two particularly lovable exes. When asked to name the love of his life, Cannon gushed over Mariah Carey, his ex-wife with whom he shares twins Monroe and Moroccan:

“I always talk about that, and then it goes viral and all her fans get mad at me. I’ll say, I was 12 years old with Mariah Carey pictures on my wall, and that becomes my wife. And the fact that she’s the coolest person I ever met. I get a lot of this delightful disposition from her. She’s just always happy, always doing for others — no matter what’s happening in life. I’m like, wow, a person can really operate like that and don’t allow negative energy into their space. When I found that out about her and saw how remarkable she was, like, that woman is not human. She’s a gift from God.”

That led directly into an even dicier question: Which ex does he wish he’d had a baby with?

“Everybody talks about having kids,” Cannon responded. “If I say this, I know it’s gonna go viral, but […] when Christina Milian were doing [the 2003 movie] Love Don’t Cost A Thing, I remember when I found out she was pregnant — did I have kids yet? I don’t know, but I was like, ‘Dang, man.’ But I was so happy for her.”

He added, “We was kids in love early on, and so you talk about that, but […] life plans it out. The universe gives it how it’s supposed to be given. […] That was the homie, and we definitely had our romantic conversations about what it would be like back then.”

Cannon and Milian dated in the early 2000s, years before Cannon married Carey in 2008. Cannon and Carey split in 2014 and finalized their divorce in 2016 (as noted by People).

Watch Cannon’s full The Shade Room interview below.

Last month, Caroline Polachek unleashed her breathtaking new album Desire, I Want To Turn Into You. The follow-up to 2019’s Pang is as idiosyncratic and hypnotic as that record, possessing moments with unexpected bagpipes and features from Dido and Grimes on one track.

The “Bunny Is A Rider” singer brought the track “Welcome To My Island” to The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon last night (March 22). The performance is bewitching, beginning with her showing off her uninhibited soprano vocals. Her voice is stunning throughout, even when she’s whisper-rapping during the verses, Billie Eilish-style. At one point, she shreds on an electric guitar, making her look like a rock star.

The song has been appreciated on TikTok after she unveiled a remix with Charli XCX and The 1975’s George Daniel.

Because of the eccentric nature of Polachek’s music, she’s drawn many comparisons to Kate Bush. “while I realize it’s a huge compliment,” she wrote in response, “i’m endlessly f*cking annoyed by being told i’m ‘this generation’s Kate Bush.’ SHE is our generation’s Kate Bush, she is an active artist who’s topping the charts, and is irreplaceable. I, meanwhile, am this generation’s Caroline Polachek.”

Watch her performance of “Welcome To My Island” above.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Last fall, we heard about how Putin allies were beginning to truly fear that he’ll lose his war in Ukraine. This led them to worry about would happen to their butts — if they, too, could be accused of war crimes — in the aftermath. Well, no one has lost this war yet, but Putin has already been made the subject of an International Criminal Court warrant over his “unlawful deportation” of Ukrainian children to Russia. Team Putin, of course, publicly scoffed and made a toilet-paper joke after news broke about the warrant, but privately? Things reportedly aren’t so chill.

As relayed by The Daily Beast (originally via independent news outlet Verstka), private Kremlin chat transcripts revealed outrage and “unprintable” reactions of anger following the ICC warrant. However, the tune reportedly changed to concern, “with some wondering if they’d become the next Heinrich Himmler and Joseph Goebbels.” Oh boy. The spiral continued over fears of their own war crime charges:

“There was an instant thought that there are not only sanctions against [us], but also more serious things, that it would be impossible to leave the country,” one source in a government ministry was quoted saying. He said he himself did not expect to face any criminal prosecution, but that other members of the government could “maybe” go down.

One of Putin’s allies (Dmitry Medvedev), however, came forward (via Reuters) to claim that anyone who did try to arrest Putin would effectively be declaring war on Russia.

Meanwhile and according to The Daily Beast, Putin-aligned members of parliament began to fret as well because “it’s as if we really are in complete global isolation.” A direct response from Putin himself has yet to surface, although he’s been busy making propaganda clips and worrying about cabbage, so who knows if reality has hit him yet.

(Via The Daily Beast & Reuters)

Tess, Brie Larson‘s mysterious character in Fast X, has a “very strong” connection to the rest of the franchise. She also has a very strong connection to head-of-the-Fast-family Vin Diesel, as revealed in a profile of the Oscar-winning actress in Harper’s Bazaar.

Larson based Tess on Diesel’s eight-year-old daughter, who was wearing a jacket with “Good Vibes Only” printed on the back when they met. “Brie went to the wardrobe department and had them re-create the jacket,” Diesel said. “She wore it throughout the movie.”

Larson, an indie favorite for roles in Short Term 12 and Room, also discussed joining mega-franchises like Fast and Furious and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. “I was scared of what would happen to me,” she said, but “what I always come back to is, I have to live with myself in a way that nobody else has to. The choices I make, I have to live with, whether I regret them or not.”

Here’s more on Fast X:

Over many missions and against impossible odds, Dom Toretto and his family have outsmarted, out-nerved, and outdriven every foe in their path. Now, they confront the most lethal opponent they’ve ever faced: A terrifying threat emerging from the shadows of the past who’s fueled by blood revenge, and who is determined to shatter this family and destroy everything that Dom loves, forever.

Fast X opens on May 19, while Larson also stars in Apple TV+’s Lessons in Chemistry, which premieres later this year.

(Via Harper’s Bazaar)

Tawny Cypress is begging me to not hate the entire cast of Yellowjackets before the season ends.

We’re wrapping up an interview where we’ve discussed everything from her character’s nightmarish season two arc — Taissa’s got a new dog and an even more terrifying manifestation of her sleepwalking episodes — to how her co-star Melanie Lynskey helped her embrace being Queer when she was a teen. She’s teased her co-star Lauren Ambrose’s role as the show’s Adult Van and explained how most nights, a couple of glasses of “bubbly” with Christina Ricci helped her decompress from long days of filming this heavier, scarier installment.

Cypress loves being kept in the dark about where the show is going, but she realizes fans might want some answers they’re not likely to get. At least, not yet. Instead, season two is content to take them on a merry chase for meaning amongst all the mysticism, cannibalism, and teenage angst that drives this story of a group of high school soccer players surviving a plane crash in the wilderness and the trauma its wrought decades later.

But who can really complain when the mystery is this good?

We chatted with Cypress about Tai’s “feral” alter-ego, her love of horror, and winning the lottery with her role on Yellowjackets.

In season one you told the showrunners you wanted to know as little as possible about Taissa’s journey. How much did you know going into season two?

I knew just slightly more than last season. I do like to be kept in the dark, only because I want to know what the character knows. I don’t want to live ahead of the character, so I tend not to ask questions beyond what my character would know then and there. So in that regard, I was kept in the dark quite a bit this season as well, and I prefer it that way.

Was there anything that you were shocked to learn when the script came in season one?

Well, yeah. The fricking dog head. They said the dog ran away, and then in the final episode, I read that there’s a freaking altar with the dog’s head on it. And I wrote to them immediately and I was like, “You sons of b*tches.”

We dive into Taissa’s sleepwalking episodes this season. How were those explained to you?

It was a conversation Jasmin [Savoy Brown] and I had with Jonathan [Lisco], Ashley [Lyle] and Bart [Nickerson], really sussing out who this other Taissa was by herself and who she was in relation to our Taissa. It really came down to a lot of minute details. How does the other Taissa hold herself? Is she a feral creature or is she more advanced than that? Does she like our Taissa? Is she trying to hurt our Taissa? All these questions we had a huge conversation about beforehand before we ever put the other Taissa on screen. So that was very helpful.

Did you ever nail down the science behind these psychotic episodes? Did you give her a diagnosis?

In the same way, the supernatural aspect of the show is never really nailed down, we like to keep it interpretive. I did not want to put a label on it. I did not want to say multiple personality or dissociative personality disorder or anything like that. I didn’t want to put a label on it because there are actual cases of that in the world, and it’s not portrayed the way it is on our show. So there’s no way I’m going to put out what I do and be like, “Yeah, that’s what multiple personalities look like.” It doesn’t.

We really created our own thing out of thin air. It was the most I’ve ever felt like a kid playing dress up, because we really just said, “Hey, why don’t we make her like this? And leave it up to the viewer to interpret what they think they’re seeing.”

That must feel really gratifying, to create something wholly your own on the show.

Listen, this whole show has been a dream as far as that aspect goes. I’ve done decades in this industry where I didn’t have a voice, where I would craft a history and a character and I present that to the powers that be and they’d be like, “Good for you. Good second-grade work.” And this is the first time I felt so appreciated and like I am on a team. Acting as a team sport. It’s not something we can do by ourselves. Even a one-man show has people behind the curtain that help make it go. And that’s always been one of the biggest things that I wanted out of being an actor. That’s one of the things that make me happiest as an actor, is creating something with a team of people. So yeah, it’s thrilling to have people that listen to what I have to say, have a clear idea of what they want, but are also willing to listen to input and have that inform the character. It’s very freeing.

Like so many of the older cast, you’ve been working in this business for a long time. How do you hold onto your passion for the work, even when the project and material aren’t there?

My career has mostly been paying the bills, and I’m thankful for that no matter what that entails. I’ve done some B-rated movies out there that hopefully never get seen, but they paid the rent and I never had to get a second job, so I am very thankful for my career as it is. But yeah, I wish it was different. At this point in my career, I never even thought I was going to get a show. I didn’t even know that a show like this was out there for me. So I do feel like I’ve won the lottery. And the girls? I mean Melanie Lynskey, Juliette Lewis, Christina Ricci, are you kidding me? I gotta to pinch myself, it’s a dream.

How did you and Lauren Ambrose craft the relationship between adult Van and Tai?

Well, again, we talked to the creators, and we nailed down when the relationship ended, how it ended, who ended it, all these sorts of questions — because of course that’s going to color their relationship as adults. But I think Tai, she’s so desperate to fix what’s going on with her, and the last time this happened to her, she had Van to rely on. So she falls back into relying on Van very quickly this season.

Is Tai coming back into her life going to dredge things up for both of them?

Of course. God, this is probably the worst thing Tai could do. Honestly, she should just go to therapy, for crying out loud. If she wants to fix her life there are so many other better, healthier things she can do than seeking out an ex-girlfriend and expecting that ex-girlfriend to fix her. So yeah, I think that Tai really only thinks about herself, and going to Van disrupts Van’s life in a way that stirs things up for her and it’s not fair. Nothing Tai does is fair.

She’s like the toxic ex-boyfriend you can’t get rid of.

[laughs] Oh my God, what a good way to put that.

Is Tai actually serving as a Senator yet?

First of all, no. But also, you have to know that the events of season two take place over about a week and a half to two weeks. It’s going to seem long, everybody’s going to be like, “What the f*ck? Why isn’t Tai working?” I know, because I asked the questions and they were like, “No, it hasn’t been that long. You haven’t really even been sworn in yet.” I asked all these same questions, and I gotta to tell you, at end of the season, you’re not going to get any answers. Not for Tai, not yet. Series three is yet to come and she’s got a lot to answer for.

In a Queer for Fear horror docuseries, you credited Beautiful Creatures with helping you to embrace your own sexuality. Have you told Melanie Lynskey any of that story?

God, yes. As soon as I met her. It was the first thing I said to her. And she’s so gracious about it, honestly. But thinking back on it, it’s probably not something people want to hear about their 15-year-old self. Because she was 15 when she shot [that movie]. And I’m like, “You helped me with my sexuality, darling. I love you.” In fact, to this day, I work with all these legendary women, but Mel’s on … I hold her above everybody. She’s just affected my life in a different way than everybody else. And that was just a story that relates to my life. It happened; it wasn’t like I was coming out. I’ve never been in the closet. I’ve just been who I am, take it or leave it. I’ve never hidden it. It’s just never come up before.

And now you’re carrying the torch with your character on this show.

I’m so proud to do that. About half the characters I’ve played throughout my career, have been under the queer umbrella, and it’s something I’m super proud to represent. It’s who I am. The important thing is to see that people come in many shades and you have to celebrate them all.

What’s your favorite horror film?

The Strangers with Liv Tyler scares the sh*t out of me because it actually could happen. But my favorite scary movie of all time is Halloween, the original with Jamie Lee Curtis. She’s just phenomenal. It’s just this lurking-around-the-corner bad guy that scares the sh*t out of me.

I think in season two, you’ll be scaring the sh*t out of people. Maybe you’ll be someone’s nightmare.

Wouldn’t that be cool?

Showtime’s ‘Yellowjackets’ returns on March 26.

The lives of celebrities are different from those of the average non-famous person in a number of ways, but some things stay the same. For example, no matter how noteworthy or wealthy you are, as an American, you can still be summoned for jury duty. That just happened to Lizzo and she shared some of the process with her fans.

In a TikTok video posted on March 21, Lizzo takes viewers through her morning of getting ready for jury duty. As she does, she explains, “I’m not excited about jury duty. I’m actually really stressed about it because I’ve just heard people getting really gruesome, violent cases, and I have a really sensitive mind and I don’t like hearing or seeing that. I would cry.”

In a follow-up video, she responded to a commenter who wondered if she was chosen to serve on the jury. Sharing a photo of herself outside a jury assembly room, Lizzo wrote, “I GOT RELEASED FROM JURY DUTY YALL I WONDER WHY THO [thinking emoji].”

There were some funny comments on both videos. One user wrote, “IMAGINE you’re on the stand trying to prove to Lizzo you’re innocent.” Another wrote, “Your Honor she’s slaying.” Another said, “I would pass away if it were my trial and I turned and saw LIZZO in the stands.”

Lizzo is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.