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In February, 20-year-old John Hao was paralyzed from the chest down as he was among five survivors of a shooting at Michigan State that killed three students. Hao’s favorite basketball player is Sixers star James Harden, who donated to Hao’s GoFundMe and FaceTimed him in the hospital to try and raise the young man’s spirits after the tragic event.

“I love when you’re smiling,” Harden said. “I love when you’re smiling, all right? I’m with you. I know it’s tough right now, but you have to stay physically strong, you know what I mean? You just got to think positive things and keep pushing and fighting. I got you. I got some guys for you, too. I got some things coming your way, hopefully give you some encouragement and make you smile a little bit, you know what I mean? Let me know if you need anything else.”

In that call, Harden pledged his continued support, as Hao was set for a lengthy recovery, and also said he wanted to bring him to a game. On Sunday, as the Philadelphia 76ers got set to host the Boston Celtics in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals, Hao was courtside as a guest of Harden’s while the star guard went through warmups, with James running over to greet Hao behind the basket and thanking him for coming to the game — and making sure to note he liked that Hao was wearing a pair of Harden’s shoes.

It’s a touching moment and good on Harden to follow through on his promise to try and get Hao to a game and continue supporting him as he navigates life after the tragedy.

The rumor mill is stuck on the idea that Matty Healy and Taylor Swift are supposedly dating. However, the musician’s recent appearance at her The Eras Tour stop in Nashville could be explained away by work obligations. Swift and her featured opening act Phoebe Bridgers’ performance of “Nothing New” had fans jumping for joy. But that wasn’t the only memorable moment the rocker’s set had to offer.

Earlier in the evening, Matty Healy stepped in to play in Bridgers’ band for her The Eras Tour set. Dressed in Bridgers’ signature skeleton outfit, concertgoers were shocked to see Healy onstage.

Bridgers and Healy’s musical relationship has been well documented, having shared the stage several times in the past. But fans were confused to see the two musicians playfully kiss after their performance, especially considering Healy and Swift’s rumored budding romance. Oddly enough, this can also be explained. Last year, Healy uploaded a photo on Instagram of him kissing Bridgers regardless of her being engaged to actor Paul Mescal. Apparently, it is pretty normal behavior for them. Like Swift, Healy doesn’t hold back from lip-locking with fans at his shows either.

Swift’s The Eras Tour will return to Nashville’s Nissan Stadium tonight.

When King Charles III was crowned on Saturday, it was a historic occasion: the United Kingdom’s first coronation in 70 years. The oldest son of Queen Elizabeth is only the kingdom’s 13th monarch, and the event drew big crowds. It also drew Monty Python jokes, thanks to one of the funkier ornaments given to the erstwhile Prince of Wales. But that wasn’t the only coronation joke to take over parts of social media.

Perhaps the biggest scandal of the coronation was whether or not Prince Harry would attend. Charles’ younger son cut partial ties with the Royal Family, and has supported his wife, Meghan Markle, as she’s made numerous shocking revelations about how they treated her before she and her husband decamped for California. Harry did attend, though he was not seen on the balcony with the rest of his family after the ceremony.

Markle, meanwhile, did not attend, although upon seeing one of the attendees, people started a jokey conspiracy that perhaps she was secretly there in disguise.

Alas, it was not to be. As per The New York Post, the images of a scruffy older fellow with giant glassed and an epic mustache was not someone incognito. It was Sir Karl Jenkins, an esteemed Welsh composer and multi-instrumentalist who’s performed with Soft Machine, Mike Oldfield, and Elton John. (He plays the oboe on the Tumbleweed Connection track “Come Down in Time.”

But print the legend, even when it’s been easily disproven! There were general disguise jokes.

Some thought it might be the late Queen Elizabeth, who’s perhaps not quite dead.

Or Tilda Swinton.

There were Harry Potter jokes.

And jokes about people planning a heist.

While some were joking about Sir Karl Jenkins really being Meghan Markle — while sitting next to Andrew Lloyd Webber, no less — others were busy cracking wise about the antics of one Katy Perry.

(Via NY Post)

Cardi B fans might have another reason to celebrate. Last month, the “Money” rapper boasted about how her Grammy Award-winning debut album Invasion Of Privacy continues to rack in millions of dollars despite its age. Those comments led supporters to believe that she wasn’t rushing to drop an entire new album. However, those assumptions were put to bed in her latest Instagram Live.

During the stream, Cardi B promised fans that her “new album is coming” sooner than they might expect. This isn’t the first time she’s promised fans new music, but Cardi gleamed with confidence in the video as she chatted with fans.

Since her debut album’s release, Cardi has put out a string of singles, including “WAP” featuring Megan Thee Stallion, “Up,” and “Hot Sh*t” featuring Lil Durk and Kanye West. She’s also been a featured guest on several other musicians’ songs, most recently “Tomorrow 2” by GloRilla. However, it’s been five years since Cardi released a full-length project.

According to Cardi, the delay is due to ongoing personal issues. “I’ve been having a lot of anxiety because I know right after I drop my album, I have to go out on tour, and I have bad separation anxiety from my kids,” Cardi said. “When it comes to music and everything, I just be feeling like I don’t be liking anything,” she said. “I feel like I got so many songs, and I don’t like anything. I feel like nothing is good enough… And I got so much money saved up I just be like, ‘Yeah, whatever the f*ck.’”

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

Good news: Fox News shocked the world by firing Tucker Carlson. Bad news: That doesn’t mean Balrog is done for. Though the news network could very well keep their former biggest star off any airwaves until January 2025, reports are that Carlson is “preparing for war” to get back his “freedom.” He’s even allegedly met up with another disruptor who’s made it his business to relentlessly and tirelessly/tiresomely make news.

A new report from Axios details Carlson’s attempts to strike back at his old bosses and get back in the game. One option: teaming up with Twitter’s current honcho. Buried in the report (as caught by The Daily Beast) is word that Tucker met up with Elon Musk about potentially working together. No details are known about what they discussed, if they planned to take further steps, etc. But given Musk’s love of trolling and his ever-rightward turn, it’s not exactly promising news.

In the report, a “close Carlson friend” said that while the ex-Fox News star was initially planning a “quiet and clean” revenge, he’s now going “from peacetime to Defcon 1.” What that means exactly is anyone’s guess, though if he takes the advice of Megyn Kelly, it may involve dragging their butts to court. But then, Fox News should be used to lawsuits by now.

(Via Axios and The Daily Beast)

American Idol viewers have brought attention to Katy Perry’s — in their words — “unhinged behavior” on the show in several viral clips. However, the proud California girl’s meme-worthy unintentional humor apparrently traveled with her across the pond.

While attending the Coronation of King Charles III, Perry had difficulty locating her assigned seat before her scheduled performance. In a clip now viewed over two million times, she aimlessly paces inside the Westminster Abbey while accompanied by British Vogue editor-in-chief, Edward Enninful. The pair quickly became social media’s newest meme.

In the end, Perry was a good sport about the jokes. She responded to the viral video on Twitter, writing, “Don’t worry guys. I found my seat.”

The musician then took to Instagram to share her gratitude for the opportunity to attend the event, writing, “Was such an honor to be able to watch history being made today at the coronation of King Charles III! I am so grateful to have been invited by The King on behalf of The British Asian Trust and their Children Protection Fund, an organization I’ve deeply believed in and have been fortunate to support for the last three years.”

Perry knows just how hot and cold the internet can be. So, it’s always best to enjoy a good laugh when you can.

Jack Harlow may go to extreme measures to weasel his way out of interviews. However, he holds nothing back when it comes to trash-talking both on-screen and in his music. In his song, “They Don’t Love It,” featured on his latest album, Jackman, the rapper declared himself the “hardest white boy since the one who rapped about vomit and sweaters.” That was clearly a reference to Eminem and it prompted fans to flood social media with their thoughts on the matter. Now rapper-turned-rockstar Machine Gun Kelly is chiming in.

Instead of firing off a series of tweets, Machine Gun Kelly took it back to the essence of rap by dropping a diss track aimed at Harlow. Ironically enough, the diss was performed over the beat of Jay-Z’s 2001 song “Renegade,” which featured Eminem, his longtime rival. Throughout the freestyle, the musician takes subtle jabs, but near the end of the track, he goes in for the haymaker.

“I’m a great white I can eat these barracuda / See who I am? You’re stupid, it’s nice to meet you / I just put this hole in the ground for you like a soccer cleat shoe / I see why they call you Jackman, you jacked man’s whole swag / Give Drake his flow back, man, I eat rappers like Pac-Man / Must I regurgitate and show you who’s in my stomach / From the Last Dance? I battle rapped, no Instagrams,” raps Kelly.

Despite pouring all his energy into his creative endeavors late last year, Kelly ensured that he “never departed” from his rap music roots. This freestyle is just another example of that sentiment.

Watch the video above.

Jackman is out now via Atlantic. Find more information here.

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

The New York Times has a lengthy new profile of Elizabeth Holmes, the Theranos maven who was supposed to report to a Texas prison last month for a 11.25-year sentence. (After making a last-minute request, that was pushed back to an as-yet-undetermined date, possibly due to her recently giving birth to a second child.) The piece finds a very different Holmes than the one seen in public: a relaxed mother of two in a healthy marriage — that is, if you can trust that someone convicted of fraud isn’t simply trying to deceive a reporter. It also unearths a secret that should shock exactly no one: That ridiculous low voice? Yep, it’s a fake.

“In case you’re wondering,” writes reporter Amy Chozick, “Ms. Holmes speaks in a soft, slightly low, but totally unremarkable voice, no hint of the throaty contralto she used while running her defunct blood-testing start-up Theranos.”

But that’s not all she claims she was faking. She claims that the Elizabeth Holmes seen in interviews, at presentations, and in courtrooms or in award-winning TV shows — the one with the low voice and the Steve Job-ian black turtlenecks — was a “character” she created when she was a 19-year-old who founded a biotech company.

“I believed it would be how I would be good at business and taken seriously and not taken as a little girl or a girl who didn’t have good technical ideas,” she claimed. “Maybe people picked up on that not being authentic, since it wasn’t.”

Throughout the piece, which found her spending several days with Holmes and her family, Chozick finds herself questioning whether she can trust that the calm and reserved version of the disgraced Theranos honcho is itself also a character. Perhaps “Liz” — who works at a rape-crisis hotline and gives off the vibe of being “normal” — is as much a fiction as the “Elizabeth” who speaks with a thoroughly unconvincing fake voice.

(NYT)

Tucker Carlson has been off the airwaves for nearly two weeks, and there’s a chance his absence will last a lot longer. Fox News, which abruptly canned him late last month, could very well keep him on exclusive contract until January 2025. If they do, that means he can’t nip off to Newsmax or create his own rival media company. Another Fox News alum, Megyn Kelly, recently advised him to fight back. Reportedly he’s already thinking of doing just that.

A source described as a “close Carlson friend” told Axios that the guy who’s introduced millions of viewers to white supremacist conspiracy theories has been plotting his revenge on the downlow, telling people, “I want to get this done quiet and clean.”

But now he’s allegedly thinking of something more aggressive. “We’re going from peacetime to Defcon 1,” said Carlson’s friend. “His team is preparing for war. He wants his freedom.”

Another source told Axios that Carlson “knows where a lot of bodies are buried, and is ready to start drawing a map.”

Carlson has keep a low profile since his unexpected — and still unexplained — termination. He initially told reporters things were “going great” and that he finally had time to spend with the wife. A few days after, he released a cryptic video in which he called the media “stupid” and dropped what sounded like ominous dog-whistles for his base.

So you might see Tucker sooner rather than later. For now, enjoy the silence.

(Via Axios)

It’s been almost a week since the Writers Guild of America went on strike and not all Hollywood productions have reacted the same way. Late night chat and sketch shows, which rely on writers, have gone dark (unless they’re on Fox News). Some scripted shows, like House of the Dragon, have decided to soldier on with completed scripts, even though writers are regularly changing things during filming. But another, even more popular show ain’t doing that.

As per Variety, Stranger Things was supposed to start filming its fifth and final season this month. But since thousands of writers are picketing for things like fair pay and regulations on AI tech, they’re going on hiatus.

“Writing does not stop when filming begins,” wrote the Duffer brothers, the show’s creators, on its Twitter account. “While we’re excited to start production with our amazing cast and crew, it is not possible during this strike. We hope a fair deal is reached soon so we can all get back to work. Until then — over and out.”

The scripts for Stranger Things’ last season were completed last summer, but, as they said, that doesn’t mean they aren’t still tinkering with them during principal photography. And so one of Netflix’s biggest juggernauts has joined such shows as Cobra Kai and Big Mouth, which have faced delays or gone on hiatus until a deal has been reached with Hollywood studios and streamers. Till then, at least some of the striking writers can feast upon pizza — good pizza — given to them by Pete Davidson.

(Via Variety)