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Photos of Ana de Armas and Ben Affleck’s daily strolls got me (and others) through the early months of the pandemic, but the Dunkin-aided experience wasn’t always a fun time for the Blonde actress. She called the media attention the couple received “horrible” in an interview with Elle, adding that it’s one of the reasons why she left Los Angeles.

“Going through it [myself] confirmed my thoughts about, ‘This is not the place for me to be.’ It became a little bit too much. There’s no escape. There’s no way out,” she said. de Armas, who called Los Angeles the “city that keeps you anxious,” now lives in New York, the city that never sleeps, with her boyfriend, Tinder executive Paul Boukadakis.

He was a Raya boy (allegedly); she was a Tinder girl. It wasn’t meant to be.

de Armas also discussed what it’s like being an action movie star, with roles in No Time to Die (she’s the best part); The Gray Man, alongside Ryan Gosling and her Knives Out co-star Chris Evans; and the John Wick spin-off, Ballerina.

“The truth is, I never thought I was going to be an action actor. It wasn’t my thing,” she said. “You have to be careful, because it’s not what I want to put the focus on. This is not where I’m the most comfortable, to be honest, because I feel ridiculous. And it takes a lot of work.” Not as much work as not killing snails, however.

Blonde comes out on September 23.

Sebastian Stan’s first Emmy nom led to him pointing out the fantastic work from everyone else on Pam & Tommy. That actually sounds about right (coming from him), but there’s no denying that Stan really went all out as Tommy Lee while (literally) letting it all hang out. And the show’s being roundly recognized by the awards shot with ten nominations, including acting nods for Lily James (as Pam, obviously) and Seth Rogen (as mulletted sex-tape thief Rand Gauthier) and a Best Limited Series nomination.

There’s no newly created Animatronic Talking Penis category for the Emmys, sadly, but them’s the breaks. As for Stan, he wants to recognize those who put him in a chair for several daily hours of hair and makeup, and yup, the limited series got a nod in the Period And/Or Character Makeup (Non-Prosthetic) category. Nipple rings and tattoos are not easy to replicate!

“Massive congratulations to our INCREDIBLE hair and make-up team spearheaded by @davidwilliamsmakeup and @barryleemoe,” Stan wrote on Instagram. “[A]s well as our costumer @kameronlennoxcostumes who transformed us right before our eyes!! YOU DESERVE EVERYTHING.” Also, he referred to Lily James as “my partner till the end of the line.” Man, Steve Rogers is gonna be so jealous when he reads this from Bucky:

Notably, Stan took the time to acknowledge how the show embraced the discomfort when it came to parsing out how Gauthier’s crime (along with he and Tommy Lee’s beef) smacked Pamela right in the soul, and the show’s also a critique of the public response:

#PAMANDTOMMY is about a crime that took place without Consent. It was a crime on privacy, a crime on love, a crime on family, and a crime that we were ALL a culprit of, as media and audience combined, and it’s now more timely than ever. I hope this can only help continue the conversation we had hoped to bring to light, and that we can remember to re-examine our projections and our salacious attitudes not only towards @pamelaanderson and @tommylee, but also towards ourselves and our exploitation of one another.
SEE YOU AT THE EMMYS!!!

The Emmys will broadcast on September 4 (on NBC and Peacock).

The world has been enjoying the new season of Stranger Things, and it’s affected some more than others — just ask Kate Bush who was the world “Running Up That Hill.” For Doja Cat, the fourth season of Stranger Things had a different impact on her as it gave her someone new to swoon over, that being actor Joseph Quinn. In hopes of sparking a new romance in her life, Doja inquired about Quinn in an Instagram private message to Stranger Things co-star Noah Schnapp. However, things went a bit left as Schnapp ended up sharing the DMs in a TikTok he posted.

Doja voiced her complaints about Schnapp’s move in a live broadcast, calling his decision to share the private messages “borderline snake sh*t” and “weasel sh*t.” This is after she noted that Schnapp is “a kid” and “when you’re that young, you make mistakes. You do dumb sh*t.” Her comments have seemingly backfired on Doja as she’s lost 200,000 followers on Instagram since her livestream, according to Daily Mail. This is a relatively small number compared to Doja’s now 24.14 million followers (about 0.8 percent), so the impact won’t be too much for the Planet Her artist on the social front.

However, while Doja lost followers, Schnapp has seen an increase of nearly a million Instagram followers, as his count went from 24.25 million to 25.17 million, according to social media analytics company Social Blade. That actually puts Schnapp ahead of Doja on that front. The uptick is most likely because of the new Stranger Things season, but the Doja incident surely helped the boost in some way.

In recent days, Britney Spears and Sam Asghari have been enjoying an extended honeymoon vacation, and it appears they’re still out there enjoying the beach. Spears particularly seems to be experiencing it in her purest form, as her latest photos show her enjoying a naked underwater swim.

The underwater pics see Spears swimming in nothing at all, although some post-production scribbles do a somewhat effective job at obscuring her more NSFW areas. Spears captioned the post, “Keep swimming … keep swimming !!!!”

Meanwhile, in another post from yesterday, she shared a handwritten message that reads, “I just want to go somewhere where nobody knows my name.” In the caption, Spears writes vaguely about books, truth, and dreams while expressing her love of author Danielle Steel’s books. The post starts, “Make-believers on a compass would reverse a map always… why ask anyone for directions when only YOU know where you’re going … sometimes I’m an idiot and reach out when what I’m trying to find is right before my very eyes … honestly could it be that simple ???”

This comes a few days after Spears shared another provocative video of herself, wearing a swimsuit on the beach as she poses in shallow water, rain falling all the while. She wrote, “In the rain … literally … on the bucket list … never done it before.”

The Daily Show correspondent Jordan Klepper has spent a lot of time around Trump supporters, more than is medically advisable. He’s been to rallies; he attended the Conservative Political Action Conference; and he was even there for “one of the darkest days in American history,” the MAGA riot on January 6th. Klepper has put himself in harm’s way (“I went down to the Million MAGA March with three security guards, which [felt] absurd, but as we got in there, the anger, the vibe, three wasn’t enough,” he told us), but he believes another member of the GOP is even more dangerous than Trump.

“I don’t think Donald Trump is as popular as he was. I do think Ron DeSantis is catching up, and I hear his name pop up more and more,” he said on Anna Faris’ Anna Faris is Unqualified podcast. “I think for those who have progressive ideals, I think Ron DeSantis perhaps is even more dangerous than a Donald Trump.”

Fox News is reportedly kicking Trump to the curb and going all-in on DeSantis, the Florida governor who welcomes support from famous African-Americans like, sigh, Elon Musk, among other misdeeds, so Klepper is probably right. You can hear more of his thoughts on Trump, DeSantis, and attending rallies in the podcast below.

(Via the Huffington Post)

The Goon Sax were supposed to head out on the road with Spoon and Interpol as well as do some shows with Pavement this year. But that won’t be happening. The Australian indie trio announced their breakup today, albeit with an overwhelmingly positive spin, in a decision that calls this decision their way of having “a happy ending.”

Though the statement is optimistic, it’s fairly vague and doesn’t offer real reasoning as to what caused their dissolution. Read the full thing below.

“To all friends of the Goon Sax we have some bittersweet news…after nine years of giving it our everything we’ve decided to draw the curtain on this band. It’s taken us places stranger, more beautiful, and far beyond anything we could have imagined, and brought us to meeting and working with so many special and incredibly inspiring people. Our gratitude to everyone who’s been with us and allowed the madness of the last 9 years to happen is far beyond anything we can palpably express. Although this means we won’t be doing our US tour anymore, including the Interpol & Spoon tour and the Pavement shows, we promise we will play one or two more shows in Australia before we finally say goodnight. For us it feels like a happy ending. We love each other and we love you! thank you for everything
Riley, Louis & Jim”

Better Call Saul began its final run of episodes Tuesday, which will find it finally linking back up with Breaking Bad. That means nail-biting episodes featuring shocking twists. It also means they’ll be showing else that’s big: the episode they were shooting when star Bob Odenkirk had his relatively minor heart attack. And Odenkirk himself says it’s coming pretty soon.

The Hollywood Reporter rang up the beloved actor and filmmaker to congratulate him on another Emmy nomination. They also discussed his health and how the show changed to ensure he wasn’t pushing himself too hard.

“I feel very good. I’m in great shape. I’m gonna go to a workout right now!” he said. “I didn’t go back to shoot for five weeks. I had a five-week break to recover. And then when I went back, we limited our shooting to 12-hour days… And so they took care of me and I was able to do it, and hopefully you can’t tell when I had the heart attack and when I didn’t.”

However, he decided to tell everyone which one it was: the one airing on July 18th. It still might be hard to tell. He said they had “probably about three quarters of the scene was shot before I had the heart attack, the day of the heart attack, and then the other quarter scene was after.”

Odenkirk also talked about watching that episode. “The strangest thing about it is that I really have no memory of that day,” he said. “I’m really watching something that I don’t have any memory of acting in, which is a rare thing. I mean, usually you watch some, and you have some recall of that even if it was shot months ago. But in this case, it’s such a complete blank. It’s very strange. I gotta tell you, it’s a weird thing to have lost basically about a week and a half. Clean, just clean, clean nothing. That’s a strange experience anyway. Otherwise, I’m fine.”

When news broke that Odenkirk had suffered health issues during a shoot, there was an avalanche of well-wishes, followed by widespread relief when it turned out it wasn’t as bad as it first sounded. It’s such a relief that he’s doing fine and dandy.

(Via THR)

At his press conference after the NBA’s Board of Governor’s Meetings in Las Vegas, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver was asked about Kevin Durant requesting the Brooklyn Nets trade him. His response was clear: he’s not for players asking out.

“We don’t like to see players requesting trades and seeing it play out the way it is,” per the Washington Posts’s Ben Golliver. “The basketball was fantastic this past season. I don’t want to be naïve, but I would love the focus to be on the play.” He added that he’d like to find ‘remedies’ in talking to the NBPA about players not asking out early in their contracts in the next round of CBA negotiations.

Silver’s comments on players demanding trades aren’t new. On All-Star weekend last February, Silver said that players asking out was ‘bad for the league’. So it’s not a shock that he’s not thrilled about Durant asking out with four years left on his contract with the Nets.

What feels notable here is saying he’d like to work with the NBPA to find ways for players to not ask out of their contracts right after they’ve signed them. The counter the players will surely make is that teams can trade them at basically any time with a few restrictions. They’ll reasonably argue that them demanding out on their terms is simply taking back from power from the owners. It’s also a problem that only reasonably affects the NBA’s top-end players like Durant who have enough sway to ask out.

That certainly makes a solution that works for everyone hard to figure out, but it’s clear that the league’s ownership isn’t happy with the current state of affairs with regards to stars asking out and will make that a bargaining chip in the next labor negotiations.

Phoebe Bridgers has always been outspoken, but she’s been even moreso as of late due to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The singer discussed her own abortion in an interview with The Guardian, as well as started a “F*ck the Supreme Court” chant at the Glastonbury festival. Today, she talked more about the issue on MSNBC’s The Beat With Ari Melber.

“I’ve only actually seen it a couple of times, people walking out,” she said about fans leaving her shows because of political beliefs she’s expressed on stage. “But it always is validating in some way. I think I get pretty self-conscious of having a fanbase [where] it can feel like when I talk I’m preaching to the choir, so it’s nice to know that a message is getting to somebody who disagrees with me.”

About the way younger people have been reacting to the overturning of Roe V. Wade, she said, “I think people are terrified. We have a dollar of each ticket going to the Mariposa Fund, which is an abortion fund based in Santa Fe, and there’s all kinds of things we can do. But I hate that the responsibility has been thrown on these grassroots organizations instead of the government.”

She added: “I think I’ve been raised my whole life thinking, ‘Everything’s moving up! It can only get better!’” she said. “As a 27-year-old, that’s how it feels to me. But I definitely talk to 20-year-old people who are like, ‘What do you mean? It’s been a trash fire since I was watching the news with my parents.’”

Watch the full interview above, and also watch her discuss the pandemic and the way it affected her career below.

The NBA has voted to officially implement a new penalty for take fouls, after adopting the rule for Summer League competition this month.

According to the league’s announcement, the change takes affect for the upcoming 2022-23 season and will look to stop the scourge that is players breaking up transition opportunities with a purposeful foul. When a player commits a take foul — defined as ‘an intentional foul committed by a defender to deprive the offensive team of a fast-break opportunity’ — the offensive team will get a free throw that any player on the court can take, they get to keep the ball, and the person who committed the foul is assessed a common foul.

The only time a take foul will now be allowed is in the last two minutes of the fourth quarter or in the last two minutes of an overtime period. A similar overall rule set has been used in the G League since the 2018-19 season.

In the same news release, the NBA announced that the play-in tournament will now continue on a full-time basis after it was used for the 2020-21 and 2021-22 seasons.

The take foul rule change makes a lot of sense and, frankly, is overdue. Take fouls have long been used by teams to bail themselves of bad turnovers on transition. Until now, a foul in the open court — even, and often, away from ball — stopped a team from an easy two points. This should largely limit those types of fouls and, in theory, lead to more transition baskets and highlight plays on the break.

There are two small kinks to watch in the rule. The first is the last two minute exception, which surely will be something coaches and players will have to think about in the last two minutes of games now. It also could, in theory, slow down the end of games. The league’s announcement stated that take fouls are allowed in the last two minutes of the fourth quarter and overtime because it allows teams ‘to use the longstanding tactic of taking a foul to stop the clock during an attempted comeback or prevent the opposing team from potentially tying the game on a three-pointer.’

The second is that the offensive team obstructed by a take foul gets to pick its free throw shooter. That eliminates the possibility of teams trying to manipulate the take foul penalty by fouling a bad free throw shooter and sending them to the line. Whether this completely eliminates take fouls or not remains to be seen, but it is at the very least a much stiffer penalty and should lead to fewer of them, which is great for fans because they often prevent some of the most fun opportunities in a game.