Category: Viral

This year at the 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards, things are still a little bit strange. Yes, we’re still in this bizarre time that 72nd Primetime Emmy winner John Oliver has been calling a “white void” before, during, and after wearing a fancy hoodie to accept his award for fifth consecutive Best Variety Talk Series. Yet last year’s ceremony, as hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, went pretty well, considering the awkwardness of a virtual-at-home-fire-starting-event, so fingers are crossed that they’ll do it again.

It’s already a completely different year where the ceremony will be mostly virtual with a limited in-person event, and predictability is likely out the door for the ceremony itself. As far as the nominees go, though, one can expect the HBO’s Kate Winslet-starring Mare at Eastwood to bring home multiple nods, with Apple TV+’s Ted Lasso and Netflix’s The Crown and The Queen’s Gambit to fare well, too. Cedric the Entertainer will host the actual ceremony, and the nomination announcements are arriving courtesy of Ron Cephas Jones and his daughter, Jasmine Cephas Jones.

Here’s the complete list of nominees, and The Emmys will air on Sunday, September 19.

This list is being updated…

Outstanding Limited Series
WandaVision
Mare of Easttown
I May Destroy You
The Underground Railroad
The Queen’s Gambit

Outstanding Actor in a Limited Series or TV Movie
Paul Bettany, WandaVision
Hugh Grant, The Undoing
Ewan McGregor, Halston
Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton
Leslie Odom Jr., Hamilton

Outstanding Actress in a Limited Series or TV Movie
Michaela Coel,
Cynthia Erivo,
Elizabeth Olsen, <emWandaVision
Anya Taylor-Joy,
Kate Winslet,

Drama Series
The Boys
Bridgerton
The Crown
The Handmaid’s Tale
Lovecraft Country
The Mandalorian
Pose
This Is Us

Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series
Sterling K. Brown, This Is Us
Jonathan Majors, Lovecraft Country
Josh O’Connor, The Crown
Regé-Jean Page, Bridgerton
Billy Porter, Pose
Matthew Rhys, Perry Mason

Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series
Uzo Aduba, In Treatment
Olivia Colman, The Crown
Emma Corrin, The Crown
Elisabeth Moss, The Handmaid’s Tale
Mj Rodriguez, Pose
Jurnee Smollett, Lovecraft Country

Outstanding Comedy Series
Black-ish
Cobra Kai
Emily in Paris
Hacks
The Flight Attendant
The Kominsky Method
Pen15
Ted Lasso

Outstanding Actor in a Comedy Series
Anthony Anderson, Black-ish
William H. Macy, Shameless
Michael Douglas, The Kominsky Method
Jason Sudeikis, Ted Lasso
Kenan Thompson, Kenan

Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series
Jean Smart, Hacks
Kaley Cuoco, The Flight Attendant
Tracee Ellis Ross, Black-ish
Aidy Bryant, Shrill
Allison Janney, Mom

Variety Talk Series
Last Week Tonight With John Oliver
The Late Show With Stephen Colbert
Conan
The Daily Show With Trevor Noah
Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Reality-Competition Series
The Amazing Race
Nailed It!
RuPaul’s Drag Race
Top Chef
The Voice

Outstanding Lead Actor In A Drama Series

Outstanding Lead Actress In A Drama Series

Outstanding Competition Program

Outstanding Lead Actor In A Limited Series Or Movie

Outstanding Lead Actress In A Limited Series Or Movie

Outstanding Limited Series

Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series

Outstanding Writing For A Drama Series

Outstanding Variety Sketch Series

Nominees for the remaining categories can be found here.

After Loki Episode 5, “Journey into Mystery,” dropped last week, it wasn’t hard to pinpoint the two breakout characters who absolutely blew fans’ minds: Richard E. Grant’s Classic Loki and the hand-biting lizard trickster, Alligator Loki. While the other Variants who appeared in The Void were great and all, Classic Loki and his reptilian colleague easily stole the show, and Grant is wisely striking while the iron is hot.

During a new interview on how the veteran actor found himself donning the comic book accurate Loki tights and delivering a show-stopping scene, Grant didn’t waste an opportunity to announce that he’s game for a spinoff series starring Classic and Alligator Loki. Heck, he practically demanded it.

Via Collider:

Is there anything else on your bucket list? Are there other franchises, and/or other fantasy costumes you want to wear?

GRANT: Classic old Loki with muscles and Alligator-dot-com, the subseries of the sub-sub-sub series. That’s what I want.

Given the audience reaction to Alligator Loki, I think that there would be a fan base for that.

GRANT: Yeah and classic Loki is the only one that can talk to him and understand him. It’s a given. It’s a scriptwriter’s dream. Get it done.

Of course, Grant’s instincts are spot-on. While Marvel fans clamored for more classic comic book costumes thanks to Grant’s performance, Alligator Loki’s popularity also instantly sky-rocketed following Episode 5’s debut with some calling him the Baby Yoda of the MCU. Slapping the two Variants together is a no-brainer at this point.

(Via Collider)

On Monday, a group of Texas democrats left the state in an attempt to prevent Republicans from passing restrictive new voting laws. “Fifty-one of the 67 State House Democrats flew on the planes, leaders of the delegation said, and several others arrived separately in Washington,” according to the New York Times. That’s enough “to prevent Texas Republicans from attaining a quorum, which is required to conduct state business.” GOP politicians are predictably in a tizzy about the effective maneuver.

Texas governor Greg Abbott, who nixed a bipartisan bill that would have made it illegal to chain up dogs without leaving them drinkable water, proclaimed that the Democrats who “fled” the state “will be arrested” when they return and “brought back to the Capitol and we will be conducting business.” And you know Ted Cruz had to add his two cents!

“What you’re seeing the Democrats do here is a political stunt,” the senator said on Fox News on Tuesday. “It’s ironic because they were getting on their private jet to fly to Washington DC, they almost surely had to show identification to get on that jet.” He continued to say that Democrats are throwing a “fit” for protesting legislation that would “make it more difficult to vote — especially for people of color,” but no one could hear him. Everyone was laughing too hard at Cruz, of all people, criticizing anyone for leaving Texas.

The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow, and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.

I stumbled upon a tweet recently that read, “No Swedish-Iranian white woman should be this good at R&B but here we are.” Comedic commentary aside, the music Snoh Aalegra creates is oftentimes mind-blowingly good. She thrives in a pocket of her own that’s equidistant from the trapsoul artists of the world and the traditional R&B vocalists that lay on the other side of the spectrum. Both her 2017 debut Feels and subsequent sophomore effort, Ugh, Those Feels Again shine brightly on her portfolio and provide proof towards her impressive artistry. However, the aforementioned tweet begs the question that needs answering: What makes Snoh Aalegra so good?

The answer to that question can be approached from many different angles. However, using her newly-released third album, Temporary Highs In The Violet Skies, as a starting point seems fitting enough. The effort arrives less than two years after Ugh, Those Feels Again, a short return time compared to her R&B contemporaries. In this brief period, Aalegra was able to create a shift in her outlook towards love. It went from deeply longing for a forever partner as she unveils on her first two albums to make the very most of these perfect moments on Temporary Highs In The Violet Skies, regardless of its brevity.

One thing to note about Snoh Aalegra is her ability to string the most impactful words together without the fiery dose of infatuation, sadness, or anything in between that conveys the expected emotions on a given song. Actions speak louder than words, but for the singer, her most heartfelt moments appear with grace, and the painful ones arrive with elegance while her words, quite literally, do all the talking. Staying cool, calm, and collected seems to be her forte, one she portrays so well.

To introduce the album, Aalegra begins with “Indecisive,” a steady-paced effort driven by her nonchalance as chants repeat through the song — “I don’t really care” — but it’s a mere scratch compared to the other things she says on the track. Other lines like “Let me make it clear / Everything is not about you” and “You should have thought about that while you was with me,” cut much deeper. These nonchalantly wrapped declarations come from a hurt place, but the singer stays in control to deliver her message exactly how she wants to. Similar sentiments are expressed to close the album on “Save Yourself.” On it, she bids goodbye to a relationship that proved to be nothing but a failure and dismisses them with one final reminder: “But just know I’m good without you.”

This control and taming of emotions that Aalegra exhibits may not be a natural quality, but rather, a choice to alter her perspective on situations and expense her energy or what’s worth it in her eyes. Perhaps the best example of this comes from the best song on Temporary Highs In The Violet Skies: “Tangerine Dream.” The song is a dreamy tale of two lovers who depart on their separate paths but not before one last run-in on a flight. The potential reignition of their relationship only exists in the clouds their plane flies through, providing a double entendre for a temporary high. In Aalegra’s eyes, it’s better to spend her time at cruising altitude immersed in the warm thoughts that she and her co-passenger once shared. It’s a far better option than fixating on the separate path she’ll walk on once she retrieves her bags from baggage claim.

Her love for these brief moments in paradise turns her into a frequent flyer of sorts as she admittedly revisits these temporary highs to reside in the violet skies she loves so much. Aalegra blatantly ignores the poor qualities of an insufficient lover on “Lost You” simply because they bring her a healthy dose of euphoria. “I won’t hold the past against you,” she sings. “When you hold me, I forget to / I can never draw the line with you.” She clings to cloud nine and avoids addressing the issues that pain her on “We Don’t Have To Talk About It” while “Dying 4 Your Love,” the lead single from the album, seeks the answers she wants rather than the ones that stand so obviously before her.

Temporary Highs In The Violet Skies is a testament to enjoying the moment and keeping the mind off what might happen next, whether it be an inevitable end or an uncertain future that lies ahead. It’s an approach that Aalegra makes clear on “In My Eyes,” an outlier record of sorts on the project thanks to upbeat production from The Neptunes. “Some things don’t work and that’s the way love goes,” she sings on the record. Love guarantees nothing, and Aalegra is very much aware of this, which is why she indulges in these temporary highs as often as she does, an attribute that points to what makes her great. The singer uses the briefest emotions of love, pain, and everything in between to create pieces of art that portray the most-telling worlds, just like she did on “Tangerine Dream.” Keeping your head in the clouds is a bad thing, as some might say, but the way Snoh Aalegra tells it, these Temporary Highs In The Violet Skies are everything and more.

Temporary Highs In The Violet Skies is out now via Atrium Recordings/Roc Nation Records. Get it here.

Dust off your velour Juicy tracksuits and dig your favorite designer dog carrier out of the closet: Paris Hilton is back! After what seems like decades of relative silence (no, it hasn’t really been that long), the socialite/reality star who claims to have invented the selfie and really did trademark the phrase “that’s hot” is making a major comeback—and has just landed her own cooking show.

On Monday, Netflix announced that the “multi-hyphenate heiress is embracing her very newly domesticated side and welcoming us into her kitchen while she learns to sauté, sear, and zest” in the form of a new reality cookies series, Cooking With Paris. Here’s the official synopsis:

“Paris Hilton can cook… kind of. And she’s turning the traditional cooking show upside down. She’s not a trained chef and she’s not trying to be. With the help of her celebrity friends, she navigates new ingredients, new recipes and exotic kitchen appliances. Inspired by her viral YouTube video, Paris will take us from the grocery store to the finished table spread – and she might actually learn her way around the kitchen.”

According to The Wrap, the six-episode series was inspired by a YouTube video Hilton shared in early 2020 of her making her “famous lasagna,” which has been viewed more than 5.1 million times.

Cooking With Paris isn’t the only series Hilton has in the works; she’s also working on another reality docuseries, this one with Peacock. Tentatively titled Paris In Love, the series follows Hilton as she prepares to wed venture capitalist Carter Reum.

Cooking With Paris will premiere on Netflix on August 4, 2021. That’s hot!

(Via The Wrap)

Indie-pop greats The New Pornographers are celebrating the 21st anniversary of their 2000 debut, Mass Romantic, with a limited-edition LP reissue, coming in December via Matador Records. The reissue will feature a bonus 7-inch containing two B-sides, “The End Of Medicine” and “When I Was A Baby.”

Also, The New Pornos have mapped out a fall tour in the US and Canada where they’ll play Mass Romantic and Twin Cinema (celebrating the latter’s 16th anniversary) in their entirety. Joining them will be original members Neko Case and Destroyer‘s Dan Bejar (!), plus AC Newman, Joe Seiders, John Collins, Todd Fancey, and Kathryn Calder. In a statement, Newman had this to say about the reissue and coming tour:

“Everyone wants to be successful but, hand to my heart, I had no delusions of success for The New Pornographers. To be here over 20 years later, still in the game, is something that I simultaneously take for granted (you just get used to it) and feel eternally grateful for. Been here so long that we can do one of those ‘let’s play that old album all the way through!’ gigs. And we are doing just that. 2 nights per city: 1 Mass Romantic, 1 Twin Cinema, plus assorted ‘hits’ from our storied career. Bejar is coming and God knows if we’ll get him again. When he moved to Spain 2 months after Mass Romantic came out, I thought he was done in the band and now 21 years later we’ve convinced him to come along for another ride. Just the nature of our band that it’s a special occasion when all the singers show up. Here’s to you showing up as well!”

Check out the tracklist and tour dates below.

1. “Mass Romantic”
2. “The Fake Headlines”
3. “The Slow Descent Into Alcoholism”
4. “Mystery Hours”
5. “Jackie”
6. “Letter From An Occupant”
7. ‘To Wild Homes
8. “The Body Says No”
9. “Execution Day”
10. “Centre For Holy Wars”
11. “The Mary Martin Show”
12. “Breakin’ The Law”

11/29 — Woodstock, NY @ Levon Helm Studios #
11/30 — Woodstock, NY @ Levon Helm Studios &
12/01 — Washington DC @ 9:30 Club #
12/02 — Washington DC @ 9:30 Club &
12/03 — New York, NY @ Webster Hall #
12/04 — New York, NY @ Webster Hall &
12/06 — Toronto, ON @ Danforth Music Hall #
12/07 — Toronto, ON @ Danforth Music Hall &
12/09 — Seattle, WA @ Neptune #
12/10 — Seattle, WA @ Neptune &
12/11 — Vancouver, BC @ Vogue Theatre #
12/12 — Vancouver, BC @ Vogue Theatre &

# performing Mass Romantic
& performing Twin Cinema

The New Pornographers’ Mass Romantic reissue arrives on 12/10 via Matador. Pre-order it here.

When the Philadelphia 76ers got knocked out of the second round of the playoffs by the Atlanta Hawks having twice blown massive second-half leads, there was a sense that some significant changes could be on the way. Team president Daryl Morey has never been shy about making big swings with a roster, particularly when it’s clear that something isn’t working.

The Joel Embiid-Ben Simmons pairing has long had its doubters, who had been quieted by a tremendous regular season effort but were awakened with the postseason struggles of Simmons offensively. His continued refusal to assert himself as a scoring force became the focal point of Philly’s playoff failure, even if there is plenty of blame to be passed around, and as such there was an immediate push from many Sixers fans to breakup the young All-Star duo by trading Simmons and trying to officially build around Embiid.

It appears that Morey concurs with that public sentiment, as The Athletic’s Shams Charania brought word on Tuesday morning that the Sixers have opened up the phone lines and are engaging on Simmons trade talks, although they are keeping the asking price, understandably, high.

The 76ers have opened up trade conversations surrounding Simmons and have engaged with teams, sources told The Athletic. Those sources also say that teams that have engaged with the 76ers about Simmons have been met with a high price threshold for the three-time All-Star.

“(The 76ers) want an All-Star-caliber player in return,” one source with knowledge of the ongoing talks said.

The asking price of an All-Star caliber player shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone given that Simmons himself is a three-time All-Star. The “caliber” part is also interesting and opens up the opportunity for someone like Portland’s CJ McCollum to be the centerpiece of a trade as someone who’s never made an All-Star team, but certainly could in the East given his productivity.

At this point, a Simmons trade feels more likely than not to happen, it’s just a matter of what team blinks first in terms of putting up an aggressive offer for the 25-year-old. Someone is going to believe they can be the team that can unlock his full potential, because his talent is too immense for at least one organization not to be enamored by the prospects of adding him and thinking their culture and their staff can get him to be his best self, which could be a dominant force in the league.

Americans are a diverse bunch, but as a culture, we can skew towards an overconfidence-bordering-on-outright-arrogance that’s less than likable on the world stage. We also have that whole “ugly American tourist” stereotype to contend with, not to mention our wonky politics as of late, so it can feel like we’re viewed with disdain or pity more than admiration by our fellow humans on planet Earth.

However, when Reddit user u/Rebuildingz asked this question: “Non-Americans of Reddit, what do you admire about Americans?” the answers were kind and lovely enough to make us feel proud of our unique contribution to our global tapestry.

Here are some of the more than 7,000 comments, many of which are more about the U.S. itself than the American people, but still nice to see:

“How the national identity is so culturally mixed. it seems like If you move to France, you don’t become a French; you just become a foreigner. While everyone who lives in America at all is American.” – lTheReader·

“The hospitality. Americans get a bad rap for being xenophobic, which I think is unfair and just based on the bad incidents we’ve seen in recent years. I go to the USA pretty often (I’m Irish/British), and everyone I meet is always so welcoming and friendly. Well, not EVERYONE, everywhere has bad people, but it just seems like Americans generally are a lot more open and hospitable to strangers than I’m used to at home. Like, they’ll just strike up a casual conversation with you just while you’re standing at a street crossing or whatever. I remember one afternoon I went into a bar in Austin for a beer, and the guy next to me just sits down and says “Yep. So I just drove a truck down from New York. Helluva trip.” and we chatted for like an hour about his road trip hauling wood (or something, I can’t remember lol). That doesn’t happen where I’m from; just shooting the breeze with a stranger.”

– kutuup1989·

---

“The Smithsonian Museums. Very cool and very fun to walk around and see. And they’re free.” – GullibleIdiots

“I had lunch with some Chinese friends who gushed and raved about the National Parks system. And I asked them What about China? China is as large (larger?) than America and has all the beauty, history, and different geography, etc. They said that unfortunately there is no National park system like in America. That if you want to visit a beautiful mountain range, for example, you have to pay an entry fee to access each individual mountain. Not just a general entry fee for the whole park, mind you. Everything costs money. Made me realize how fortunate we are to have the system in place. My husband gets a National Park annual pass for Christmas from his mom every year and it’s so awesome to visit a park and just whip that card out and get waved through. Highly recommended.” – crabblue6

“Your national parks. There are so many parks that I want to visit down there. Hopefully soon after the border restrictions pass…..” – IamMillwright

“Having lived in 6 countries across EU and Asia, I can say the thing I admire most about America is that I can literally get anything I want. I may have to pay for them when other places offer them for free (e.g. health insurance), but whatever desire/need I suddenly form, I am 99.99999% certain I can get it. And sometimes it’s not even that unique of a desire; sometimes they’re just everyday things some take for granted. Like:

1. I want to video call my family but i can’t use Skype/Facetime because governments have their own paid version they force us to use.
2. I want [to] buy arts and crafts supplies but I’m limited to a local bookstore because we don’t have an infrastructure for e-commerce.
3. I want to ship packages to my family abroad from a ‘tech hub’ in EU but it’s a hassle because nowhere sells shipping boxes.

In comparison, America does not have the aforementioned issues and allows for satisfying the most complex or specific needs as well. Are you an immigrant who wants a taste of home? There are likely mini insert-your-country-here parts of town (even if it’s a random supermarket that sells specific ingredients). Develop a unique interest or hobby? Odds are there’s a convention happening within a few hours drive in the next few months. Thinking of getting some cosmetic work done? You’ll probably have a pool of specialists with online ratings to choose from. Want to give up on society and live off of what you grow? There’s plenty of land to choose from. Want a pet tiger? You can and will be offered a Netflix series.

America has its problems but damn I have never felt more able to pursue anything I wanted anywhere else.” – Nut-Flex

“Drinking fountains everywhere. And nearly all public toilets are free.” – bounded_operator

“The scale and grandeur. I’m used to nature being small, but everything in America is bigger – bigger storms, bigger mountains, bigger horizons. Even the sky seems more. People in America are casually dealing with everything from alligators to bears, pitching tents on the sides of cliffs and walking their dogs through literal wilderness, I genuinely feel like a hobbit watching Aragorn saunter through Middle Earth like it’s nothing while I’ve never been beyond the end of farmer Maggot’s farm before. I love it.” – coffee_up

“It’s like each state is a whole different country and I’d like to visit them all.” – F*ck-tiktok·

“Fruity pebbles.” – Z00TH0RNZ

“How madly diverse it is. Admittedly I’ve only seen it on tv but the fact that the bronx and Texas are the same country is mind boggling.” – cdbman

“New York City. Hot Dogs. Your Friendliness. Hollywood. Yellowstone. Baseball. Ford GT. Road trips. Coke. NASA. Southern BBQ. Burgers. Yosemite. Your infectious love of the outrageous. Jaws. Your love of English accents ;). Harrison Ford. Rock and fuckin roll. Nike. Magic Mountain. Pamela Andersen. Red Vines. The Video games / animation industries. Dr Pepper. Maine Lobster Rolls. Skateboarding. Ralph Lauren. The Sopranos. Jack FM. Baskin Robbins. Car park cookouts. Wake boarding. Ruby’s Diner. Long Island (Iced Tea). Eddie Murphy. Technological innovation. Soul. Southern California. Star Wars. Bronco jeeps. Key Lime Pie.” – liam_crean

“The power and quality of their film and TV industry. They can make dreams and fantasies come to life. Jurassic Park to me as a child was like all my dreams had come true.” – SaveSwedishBeauty

“Americans always know how to get a conversation going! “Hey, where are you from?” And then they are genuinely interested in hearing the answer even if perhaps they’ve never heard of that place. They are great at small talk, and friendly (doesn’t matter if it is “fake” sometimes, e.g. the waitress, it is still a skill to be that friendly and welcoming, in my opinion). They make people feel like a million bucks.” – BaileysBaileys

“I think that Americans are often quite friendly compared to Europe where I live.” – balticromancemyass

“Entrepreneurial spirit. In a lot of countries, including my own, failing at a business you started is seen very negatively, to the point most people will never try, as opposed to the USA where a business failing is seen as a normal part of the process and you just keep trying, taking the lessons you learned forward.” – Rarotunga

“I like how open-minded the people are and how much they seem to enjoy varied interests. I’ve found in my country, we tend to be pretty judgmental of anything we aren’t used to seeing, and most people have basically the same hobbies.” – purple-nomad·

“That a lot of Americans are pretty chill, open, and kind people. You wanna just talk about nothing? You can do that. You have mental health issues? People aren’t gonna judge. There’s a problem going on and you wanna talk about it? You can do that.

In my family’s culture, you must always keep to yourself if something’s bothering you, always tell white lies, put up this facade of your life being rainbows and unicorns, and mental illness/disabilities/neuro divergence is frowned upon and shows you’re weak. It’s so suffocating.” – TakenByDeletedAccou

“I’ve always admired the American sense of rugged individualism. I’ve met a number of Americans and they all seem to have it to one degree or another. In its best form, it shows up as a kind of honesty that comes from supreme self-confidence and self awareness. It also includes selflessness, a kind of ‘I’ve got all my stuff together, so I can help you out, friend.’ These are the folks that worked together to tame the wild frontier, as it were. Even though he wasn’t born American, I see Arnold Schwartzenegger as the ultimate American. Tom Hanks is another great example most people know.

At its worst… you get Karen.” – Ken_Meredith

There we have it. National parks, free restrooms, open-minded people, Arnold, Tom Hanks, and a few Karens thrown in so we don’t get too big for our britches.

The U.S has its flaws and so does its people, but there really is a lot to love about us. High five, fellow Americans.

There are a lot of things Donald Trump Jr. is not very good at: sitting, staying married, dating women his dad doesn’t have to pay, and speaking coherently are just a few of the things that come to mind. Now we can add being (intentionally) funny to that list, too.

Seth Meyers returned from a two-week vacation on Monday night, just in time to see the video evidence of Don Jr. attempting to be funny—and failing spectacularly.

Over the weekend, Donald the Younger managed to snag some stage time to talk about… actually, we’re not sure what he was talking about. Or why anyone would be interested to hear what he had to say. But from what we, and Meyers, can decipher, he definitely tried to deliver some jokes, which didn’t just fall flat—they inverted. What Junior seemed to be saying was that those darn liberals in Austin were starting to become the norm in reliably conservative Texas and that the rest of the Lone Star State needed to “work on that stuff, because those people have lost their minds.”

After being met with an actually stunned silence, Junior’s face dropped like something you’d see in a Looney Tunes cartoon, forcing him to add a pathetic, “Right?” To which no one replied, prompting Meyers to note that, “Last time somebody bombed that badly, they became the Joker.” But his mocking didn’t end there:

“Don Jr. looked like he just walked into the scene in a student improv show and blanked. ‘Don, you said freeze, you gotta have something!’ Don Jr. has all the charm and charisma of a dude selling time shares in a hotel conference room whose PowerPoint just crashed.”

Clearly, he gets his sense of humor from his dad.

Have you watched the original Space Jam recently? To be fully prepared for the new film I rewatched the original and it’s … maybe a lot weirder than you remember? (At one point Michael Jordan is folded into a basketball and dribbled. At another point Wayne Knight’s Stan Podolak is inflated with an air pump and he expands and floats away.) Here’s the thing: Malcolm D. Lee’s sequel, Space Jam: A New Legacy, starring LeBron James, does not skimp on the “weird.” It’s now not just a simple Toon vs. Goon storyline with a star NBA player caught in the middle. Now the whole story is about an AI character named Al-G Rhythm (played by Don Cheadle, who hams it up like never before) who has access to a servers with every bit of IP that Warner Bros. owns and uses it to stage a basketball game with pretty much every character from the history of Warner Bros. in attendance.

When I spoke to director Malcolm D. Lee over zoom, a torrential storm was just starting to hit New York City (you may have seen the viral videos of people swimming through subway stations), which was so loud (Lee was at his offices in the Bronx, I was in Manhattan) we had to shout our answers at each other and a couple of times had to repeat what we were saying. Ahead, Lee goes into his strategy working with a lead actor, LeBron James, who isn’t really best known for acting (though, far from a lead role, he was pretty great in Trainwreck); if there was ever a possibility Michael Jordan would have come back to do a cameo; and, out of all the characters he had at his disposal in the Warner Bros. archives, what character he was most happy to have in this movie.

In the last 20 minutes, the weather has changed dramatically outside.

You can hear it out my window as well, man!

And now my natural light is gone and you can’t see me…

Yeah, I don’t know what this is. A tropical storm moving through?

I went through your old movies to see if you sneak some of your own characters into this movie, but most of your prior movies are Universal.

If I had done a Warner Bros. movie prior, I definitely would have put somebody in there.

Who would you have picked? Who would you want watching the game next to The Mask?

You mean for one of my movies?

Yes.

Yeah, Tiffany Haddish or Kevin Hart. Tiffany Haddish from Girls Trip and Kevin Hart from Night School.

I watched the original Space Jam again the same day I watched your new one. I forgot how weird the first movie is and I also think you made a very weird movie.

You’re saying that the first Space Jam was actually the weird movie?

I think both of them are weird movies.

Well, listen, they start out grounded, but then we’re going through this other world: the world of Space Jam: A New Legacy. Where Al-G Rhythm lives in a computer, and lives in a Warner Bros. Server-Verse, and is the commander of all these different IPs, but doesn’t get the credit for it and then it brings it all to Tune World. Yeah, it’s loony, man.

I guess they don’t call them Looney Tunes for no reason. There is lunacy happening.

No question.

So, based on the first movie, how crazy did you want to get with this one? Because it feels like you went all-in on that.

I mean, look, the technology is at our disposal at this point – all the special little effects that we have from the movie, all the world-building, all the worlds that existed already – and how we can turn those on their head and make these IP planets was something that was in the script, was baked into it. And then we just helped to bring it to life. And I think we certainly wanted to be a different movie than the first Space Jam, because animated movies and family movies have evolved in such a way over the past 25 years that where it’s not just for kids, it’s for adults. It’s something that everyone is going to get something out of. Plus, they are emotionally resonant nowadays. You look at something like Toy Story 3 and they’re about to all get incinerated, you’re just like, oh my gosh, really feeling something.

I still think about that scene a lot.

Iron Man sacrifices himself in Avengers: Endgame, it totally makes sense, but it’s still sad. It still makes you feel something. So we wanted to be on that level of the movies that proceeded us at this point and then bend in between the two projects.

When you mention some things in there for adults, the scene that stood out to me was the MC Hammer “You Can’t Touch This” reference, a song six years older than the original movie. How many kids are going to be like, “Ah, yes, my old pal, MC Hammer?” Maybe they do know that song…

They’ve used that song in a lot of commercials lately.

That’s true.

My youngest, my 12-year-old knows that song. And by the way, before MC Hammer it was Rick James’s song.

Gen Z, also big “Super Freak” fans…

[Laughs] Right. Exactly. I love that joke. I love that thing with Bugs Bunny dancing to that with the chalkboard dance. It’s hysterical to me.

I’m curious what it’s like to enter this project and going, okay, the success of this movie rests, at least partially, on the acting of an athlete. Who has been in movies, in Trainwreck he’s great, but he’s not the star of Trainwreck.

Well, I think that, yes, he is the lead. But what I thought about was, okay, it’s the Tunes that are also going to bring us a lot of humor. And the actors around him that are going to elevate his performance and elevate the other stuff around it as well. So I guess, whenever I take on a project, you don’t know how an actor is going to be. Are they an edited actor or are they truly legitimately delivering their takes like bang, bang, bang? They’re just on? And so I thought, well, it’s going to work out. And I felt like in the limited interaction that I’d had with LeBron previously, I felt like he could do it. And I think he could be better than what he did in Trainwreck and what he did on SNL. I thought he’d have accessibility and that I’d be able to, as long as I got him to trust me, I think I can get him to certain levels.

I noticed in the first movie, Michael Jordan always seems to have a famous actor around him, almost in every scene. Even Wayne Knight as Stan Podolak, kind of hanging out, just so he doesn’t have to carry every scene. And LeBron is carrying a lot of scenes in this.

He does. He does. I mean, look, LeBron, I think, wanted to be good. He took it very seriously. He likes to have fun. He likes to be funny. He’s very open to direction, just like I think he’s open to being coached. It’s the same kind of principle. And so, he didn’t have an ego about any of it. I told him if I want to make an adjustment in the note, he’s like, “I got it.” And then he would try it. And if I needed him to do it again, he’d do it again. No ego whatsoever.

Was there any thought during the production if Michael Jordan was going to show up for a cameo in this?

I mean, by the time I got involved with starting to shoot it, my head was just down, and I was just like, “Okay, we’re just doing the movie.” As time went on, yeah, I mean, it would have been nice, particularly when you’re editing the movie during the time of a pandemic where nothing is on TV but The Last Dance.

He’s in a lot of people’s heads right now because of that…

Right. So it would have been great to have him. But it couldn’t happen.

Obviously, you know LeBron pretty well now, but in my head, both of them are very competitive and I could see LeBron not wanting Michael to upstage him and I could see Michael not wanting to play a small role in LeBron’s movie.

I will tell you, I think LeBron, I think he would love to have had him. You know what I mean? And I think LeBron is very secure in his legacy and where he is in the world, in terms of the impact he’s made on the world and the game of basketball.

Oh, no doubt.

And there seems to be, I don’t know if you’d call it a rivalry or whatever, but I think it’s more the fans than anybody.

Having all the characters from the history of Warner Bros. is really something. The Clockwork Orange Droogs are watching the game…. That is kind of stunning to see them show up to watch the Space Jam game.

Yeah, we wanted to have a mix of bad guys rooting for the Goon Squad. When people are in the stands, rooting for their teams, they get rabid. So we wanted to make sure we added the clown in It, we added the Penguin in there…

I saw Barney Rubble. I saw him up there getting very excited.

[Laughs] A real rabble-rouser, man.

But who are you most proud you got in there?

Probably Captain Caveman. That’s my guy, Captain Caveman. And during the Tune montage, the one I’m most proud of is Austin Powers and Dr. Evil. Love that cameo.

Captain Caveman and Austin Powers are in the same movie. You did that.

Yep, I did. I did. Not by myself though. A lot of support, a lot of collaboration.

‘Space Jam: A New Legacy’ opens in theaters and streams via HBO Max this coming weekend. You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.