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Here is a disturbing MadLib sentence: children’s author J.K. Rowling was hoaxed into appearing on a Zoom call with who she thought would be Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, but it ended up being Russian prank duo Vovan and Lexus.

Via The Hollywood Reporter, the author was allegedly under the impression that she was going to be speaking with Zelensky about her charitable work when she was pranked by the duo who have successfully fooled Elton John, Bernie Sanders, and Kamala Harris in the past.

Rowling was asked a series of awkward questions revolving around her franchise when things got weirder and weirder. The duo joked that they were writing the Harry Potter killing curse “Avada Kedavra” on the Ukrainian missiles, asked what Boris Johnson’s gender is, and questioned if Dumbledore is really gay.

They also asked Rowling if she would consider changing Harry Potter’s “Z” scar on his forehead to a Ukrainian symbol instead, as the Russian military has used “Z” on their tanks during the invasion of Ukraine. Rowling replied, “I will look into that.”

The author’s publicist called the prank “distasteful,” and gave the following statement to The Hollywood Reporter: “J.K. Rowling was approached to talk about her extensive charitable work in Ukraine, supporting children and families who have been affected by the current conflict in the region. The video, which has been edited, is a distorted representation of the conversation.”

(Via The Hollywood Reporter)

Last week, HBO announced a Game of Thrones sequel series focused on Kit Harrington’s Jon Snow, who was last seen traveling north of the Wall after being banished from Westeros in the series finale for murdering the very short-lived queen, Emilia Clarke‘s Daenerys Targaryen. While promoting her West End state debut, Clarke fielded a few questions about the spinoff series, which she apparently was already aware of thanks to Harrington.

“He has told me about it. And I know it exists. It’s happening,” Clarke told BBC News before shutting the door on hopes that she might return for the sequel or any other Game of Thrones spinoffs:

“It’s been created by Kit as far as I can understand, so he’s in it from the ground up. So what you will be watching, hopefully, if it happens, is certified by Kit Harington.”

Which raises the question – would she ever consider appearing in a spin-off to Game of Thrones, or is she done with dragons?

“No, I think I’m done,” she says firmly and laughs.

Despite Clarke seemingly moving on from starring in Game of Thrones projects — she’s already made the jump to Marvel in the upcoming Secret Invasion series for Disney+ — the actress did say she’ll be watching the first spinoff out of the gate, House of the Dragon, when it premieres in August.

“It’s going to be weird as hell,” Clarke said. “I’m going to watch this as a fresh viewer because it’s [set] a be-jillion years before our show, so it’s going to feel different.”

(Via BBC News)

The Umbrella Academy‘s third season arrived, fully formed, on Netflix this week. The second season proved to be another twist-filled blast, so the show decided to do what it does best: blend plenty of serious themes, drama, and conflict with sheer quirkiness. And that’s led the story to a place where live action is inarguably better than the printed page, although clearly, the graphic novels (by Gabriel Ba and My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way) are what anchored that spirit in the first place.

The third season wastes no time in keeping the brand strong while returning to the family of misfit superheroes. The Hargreeves siblings of the Umbrella Academy headed back (after halting a 1960s apocalypse) to what they believed was their timeline and their home. Yet unfortunately, there’s a new group of siblings that Reginald adopted, and that would be the incredibly powerful (and unfriendly) Sparrow Academy. Less than 10 minutes into the game, the group faces off for what appears to be a physical fight, and then this happens: a dance battle set to the tune of Kenny Loggins’ “Footloose.”

All of this, of course, is down to the power of Cazzie David’s Sparrow, Jayme, and the hallucinatory spit she launched at David Castañeda’s Diego. And yes, this perfectly sums up the entire aura of this show and that special “sweet spot” that no other superhero-involved project has managed to capture.

From there, the laughter was evident, as well as the appreciation. One user even declared, “i no longer need therapy i can just watch the footloose scene on repeat.” Oh if only one could bottle this stuff! Yet it’s a wonderful scene.

‘The Umbrella Academy’ Season 3 is currently streaming.

The Brooklyn Nets appear to be on the verge of a potentially tumultuous summer. Much of it revolves around the future of Kyrie Irving, as the star guard has a player option on his contract. Irving and the Nets have reportedly been in the midst of negotiating an extension, but Brooklyn is not willing to give him a long-term deal.

As such, talks have gone stagnant between the two sides, and teams are keeping an eye out for Irving’s potential availability in a sign-and-trade. But according to a new report from Shams Charania of The Athletic, Irving isn’t the only star whose future in Brooklyn is up in the air, as Kevin Durant is “considering options” regarding his future with the franchise.

An Irving sign-and-trade is not new, as many of the teams mentioned to have interest in him don’t have the ability to sign him outright. Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN reports that Irving does have a list of teams where he’d like to go if he cannot come to terms on a new deal, although it is unclear whether or not his interest in those teams is reciprocated.

On Wednesday, Wojnarowski wrote that the preference for all the parties involved is that the Nets and Irving are able to come to terms on a new contract. It is unclear if that has changed in the last day or if Durant and Irving are getting their ducks in a row should something drastic happen.

Denise Richards is keeping it all in the family. Or should I say, all in the OnlyFans-ly? No, I shouldn’t, that’s dumb. But the actress, who played the wonderfully-named Dr. Christmas Jones in The World Is Not Enough, has joined her daughter on OnlyFans. less than a week after ex-husband Charlie Sheen criticized the 18-year-old for being on the adults-only subscription service.

“She is 18 years old now and living with her mother,” the former-Two and a Half Men star told Us Weekly about Sami, his child with Richards. “I do not condone this but since I’m unable to prevent it, I urged her to keep it classy, creative, and not sacrifice her integrity.” Richards, meanwhile, said that her role as a parent is to “guide” Sami.

Now Sami has guided Richards to OnlyFans:

The former Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star shared a video to Instagram Thursday in which she could be seen walking barefoot along a beach while wearing a white dress. The straps of her dress had fallen down her shoulders, accentuating her cleavage.

“Ready… here we go,” she wrote on Instagram, along with a link to her OnlyFans page. A subscription costs $25 a month, or you can rent the trashy masterpiece Wild Things for $3.99 and get basically the same experience. I’ll leave that up to you.

(Via Page Six)

The ties that bind Carmen ‘Carmy’ Berzatto to his family business (a renowned neighborhood restaurant in Chicago) and to the culinary craft that he’s perfected in the years since he went away to prove himself have gotten all tangled at the start of The Bear, a new FX dramedy premiering with all episodes on Hulu today. Starring former Shameless star Jeremy Allen White, the show fixates less on the art of cuisine and more on the choreography through chaos on display when a team comes together to get people fed. The show is, in one word, intense, as expectations (some self-imposed, some not) and obligations push down on Carmy’s shoulders every day while he leads his mismatched team of old-school loudmouths and ambitious newcomers. But every day he pushes back, determined to take on the burden of a legacy that’s been thrust upon him by a death in the family.

“You’re really meeting him at his most fragile and vulnerable. The worst thing he could have imagined happening in his life just happened to him,” said White when we spoke with him recently. In this moment, he’s talking about what drew him to the character and the show. It was enough to topple concerns about typecasting after years of playing a taxed Chicago kid trying to do right by his dysfunctional family on Shameless. “It was just too hard to walk away from, my heart really broke for Carmy,” says White.

While the geography and a few other surface elements may seem similar, these characters are very different, with Lip on Shameless often driven to self-destruction and Carmy bottling everything up as he waits to see if he can succeed before bursting open. Here’s White on that intensity, the rigorous culinary training camp he endured, and the icon and iconic performances he borrows from in The Bear.

This kind of feels like Uncut Gems in a kitchen. It’s so busy and fast-paced. Is that exhausting?

I think that was a movie that Chris Storer [writer/executive producer/director]and I spoke about in prep. We wanted to kind of feel that anxiety throughout. The energy [is] really, really high. The pilot was exhausting and we also did it very quickly over six or seven days. But I think that kind of intensity and speed lent itself to the show.

And certainly, the environment that the show portrays within a kitchen.

Exactly.

Working on a line, the chaos of that, there’s a rhythm to it. How did you pull that off?

Before the pilot, we had a fair amount of time to kind of rehearse and be in that space. Ayo (Edebiri, who plays Carmy’s second in command) and I went to a two-week kind of crash course in culinary school. And then she went to work at a couple of restaurants, I think in LA. And I worked at a restaurant in LA, a different restaurant and then also worked with a really wonderful chef in New York. So, we kind of separated after that. But Ayo and I got to know each other through learning to cook, which was really nice. And then the rhythm of it and stuff like that. I see a lot of similarities between working in a kitchen and working on a film or television crew.

The pace is there, making the day. And I also think with kitchens, at a certain level, every night is a performance. There are moments where it’s magic hour and everybody’s really hustling. And there are moments on a Friday night at 9:00 where the line is fucked and everybody’s working really hard. I guess the anxiety of a kitchen felt sort of familiar to me through having worked on sets for a long time.

As you’re shooting the one-shot episode [episode 7, which takes place during a particularly tense day at the restaurant and which is shot as a single shot], you have a really explosive moment that has to come at the exact right time and at the exact right level. What’s in your headspace?

I think I really wanted Carmy throughout the season to feel really fragile. To feel like one wrong turn or somebody says the wrong thing and he could kind of pop. And so I think I knew going into that day, I just had to come in and kind of be wound up and anxious. I think the tension of possibly wasting time if I messed up a shot or if somebody else messed up the shot because we only had this one shot, that all kind of added to it. It felt like a tight rope walk for Carmy and it felt like a tight rope walk for me shooting it because I knew there was a lot at stake and one mistake could throw away a really amazing take for everybody else.

How old are you?

I’m 31.

31, okay. And how old were you when you started Shameless?

18, when I started.

Did you find yourself at the start pulling inspiration more directly from other performances and other performers? And then how does that kind of grow as you get older?

I don’t know if that is ever going to stop. Al Pacino was my guy when I was young, Panic In Needle Park will always be one of my favorite performances, Dog Day Afternoon. Obviously, I don’t have to go through his resume, but yes, I watch these guys. I steal things or try to steal things. I just get inspired. And I think I try to carry that with me a little bit. I think specifically for Bear, I watched Panic In Needle Park a lot before shooting the pilot. There was just something about his energy in that movie that I love, it’s magnetic. And I know I can never replicate that, but I think I was sort of chasing it and that it seems it suited this project a little bit. And then, of course, you get a little flick of a switch and a little bit of inspiration, and then yes, you run with it and you do whatever you’re going to do, but I don’t know if that’ll ever stop. I hope I can act for a very long time and people keep hiring me. And if they do, I think I’ll always be looking at actors that I admire for that inspiration or maybe a little bit of a way into a character just to get the door open a little bit. And then grow with it in your own way.

You’ve obviously spent a lot of time in Chicago. I’m curious, what’s some of the best food you’ve eaten in that area?

I experienced two very different Chicagos because for Shameless, we were there a couple of weeks a season and we would go out a lot, but I’d go out drinking a lot. Richard’s Bar is an excellent bar. It’s right next to a really great Italian restaurant called La Scarola. When I was shooting The Bear, it’s all research, I guess. And production was really lovely and set me up at some really amazing restaurants. I had one of the best meals I’ve ever had at this restaurant called Oriole, which is I believe a two, could be three Michelin stars restaurant. And it was absolutely incredible. But then also, I love to go to Portillo’s. There’s no shortage of excellent food in Chicago.

Have you always appreciated and understood the art of cooking?

I love to have a good meal and I had, I think respect, for the chefs. I like to go out to dinner. But my level of respect for people in kitchens has just exploded. I really got let in by a lot of people, so I’m really grateful. And I think it’s like being an athlete with the commitment, the amount of time. It’s really remarkable. And it’s like, I think, being an athlete or being an actor in some cases where I think you have to feel this is the only thing I can do with my life to really go far. Because it’s so much sacrifice. So, I have a tremendous amount of respect now, certainly.

What’s your skill level now in the kitchen?

Still, not great. I can fake it well. I can move around well. My knife skills are okay. And I have a couple dishes that I can do at home and stuff like that. I’m still trying to get better all the time. I hope we get to do more of the show and I just want to get better and better.

You mentioned working in a restaurant in LA in preparation for this. Can you tell me just a little bit more about that?

Totally. So, I worked at this restaurant called Pasjoli in Santa Monica. The chef there is chef Dave Beran. He worked at Alinea for a long time in Chicago and lived in Chicago for a long time. So, it was really nice to talk to him about Chicago. He knew Chicago well, he lived there for a long time. So, I felt I could ask him a lot about the food scene specifically in Chicago. But then he left and he opened a tasting menu place called Dialogue that was open for a couple years, they got a Michelin star. And then he opened Pasjoli, which is where I worked. They also just recently got a Michelin star. So, he’s very good at what he does. And it was incredible. They were all very welcoming. I just tried to show up and be respectful because I knew I wasn’t going to be helpful.

And I think they appreciated that I at least came serious and ready to work. And they really let me in, so I would do a lot of prep with them, which you’re not going to make a huge amount of mistakes during prep. I was there for around a month, I guess. And my last week or two there, they did let me work the line on Thursday nights, which is a pretty busy night. And it’s an open kitchen. So, all the diners, customers, they can see what’s going on in the kitchen. So, that was very stressful, but it also gave me a lot of confidence that they put me in that position and didn’t immediately take me off. So, I was cooking food that was served at this wonderful restaurant. And that was a really incredible experience.

And everybody lived.

And everybody lived. So, as far as I know.

‘The Bear’ is now streaming on FX on Hulu.

Who had YG and Tyga getting fully made-up as The Kardashians on their 2022 bingo card? Nobody? Ok. Well, it’s officially a thing as this looks to be the motif for the vieo for YG’s new song, “Run,” which is dropping on Friday, June 24 at midnight. In a teaser clip for the video posted by YG to his Instagram feed, the pair have gone full White Chicks and it’s well, pretty ridiculous.

The pair sit in the cleanest convertible Ferrari you’ve ever seen as “Run” starts to play on the radio. YG is in the driver seat rocking a blonde wig, presumably indicating that he is Khloé Kardashian, while Tyga rides shotgun in black hair with big sunglasses a la Kim. Tyga… err, Kim fixes their hair, while YG/Khloé dances to the tune and says, ““Calabasas forever!,” referencing where the Kardashian’s family home is located. Tyga — who seems really into the cosplay — then looks in the vanity mirror to touch-up his make-up and lipstick, before giving the camera a “blue steel” look.

The pair must have no doubt spent literal hours in a makeup chair to become the Kardashians and it’s unexpected to say the least. “Run” is also set to feature Bia and 21 Savage, and drops Friday at midnight. There’s no word yet on whether it will be included on YG’s upcoming album, Pray For Me, but the clip above certainly does it’s job: piquing curiosity for the full video this Friday.

As the Stranger Things gang gears up for its season four finale, the Duffer Brothers are hyping up the final two episodes with so much energy, the expectations are almost too high. Fans have been warned that the finale will be dark and potentially deadly, but the creators are also promising some emotional performances by some of the principal cast.

In an interview with Netflix’s Tudum, Millie Bobby Brown and Matthew Modine, who play Eleven and her papa/government guardian with sketchy intentions, confirm that the season is not only physically draining, but emotionally overwhelming as well. “I do a lot of physical and emotional stuff in the show, and when my heart rate goes up, my body thinks that it’s going through something,” Brown says after Modine explained that he had to warn her to take it easy. “So we have to really take care of our bodies and give them that healing that they need.”

Despite the intensity of the set, The Duffer Brothers add that they were “blown away” by both Modine and Brown’s performances in the final two episodes. “They have some scenes together [in Volume 2] that are, I think, the best acting either of them have ever done,” Matt Duffer says. The expectations keep rising!

Modine also hinted at an “emotional” scene between Eleven and Papa, which resulted in the Duffers stepping in to give a “really specific direction” during the scene. The pair even came up with their own “blinking” system while filming to check in on each other during tough scenes. Seems like that telepathic connection also made its way off-screen!

It’s not clear where Papa and Eleven will end up post-finale, but if the Duffer brothers have done one thing right, it’s to make sure fans are prepared for the absolute worst. At least we will get more Kate Bush.

(Via Tudum)

Last Summer, before Elon Musk set his sights on buying Twitter, he told the world he intended to make humanoid robots. Called “Tesla Bot,” the creations would stand under six feet tall, weigh 125 pounds and deadlift 150 pounds. And like all predictions Musk has made in recent years, well, it’s best not to hold your breath about any of those particulars.

Still, Musk has very much insisted that the humanoid androids are, indeed, in production. And this week he actually said a prototype is well on the way. According to the New York Post, Tesla’s next AI Day may feature a working prototype of the creation the company showed off during last year’s event. Well, kind of. If you recall, the “prototype” was actually just a skinny person in a robot costume that moved jerkily and then started dancing.

Still, Musk had tweeted that things are quickly moving from robot costume to robot prototype, and in an interview he reiterated that a working prototype is very close to reality:

During an interview at the Qatar Economic Forum on Tuesday, Musk said that the company is “tracking” toward a working prototype.

“Well, I hope that we will have an interesting prototype to show people,” he said.

“We have a very talented team at Tesla that I’m working with closely to have a prototype humanoid robot ready by the end of September.

“And I think we are tracking to that point.”

“Tracking to that point” of a working robot is certainly a far cry from having a working robot that can help build cars and walk around carrying 45 pounds like a real live boy. But it’s a bold claim, indeed, added to a list of bold claims Musk has made in recent years. Which is why many people were, to say the least, skeptical about the timeline offered here.

If we do get a prototype this fall, though, people are certainly expecting something a bit different than promised.

Can’t wait for September!

With James Corden announcing in April that he will be leaving The Late Late Show in 2023, the talk show host is pulling out all the stops in his final season. For a slate of episodes filmed in the UK that will air next week, guests on the show include Billie Eilish, Lizzo, Ed Sheeran, and President Joe Biden (as Variety notes). The shows will be broadcast from London’s Freemason’s Hall and these aren’t just your typical “sit down and chat” type of appearances for the illustrious guests.

For his “Take A Break” segment, Corden is going to fill in as an assistant of sorts to Biden, Lizzo is set to do a new “Carpool Karaoke” segment, and hilarity will surely ensue. Other guests on the upcoming slate of episodes include Star Wars actor John Boyega, singers Sam Smith and Alanis Morissette, Thor’s Tessa Thompson, David Harbour from Stranger Things, and Vin freakin’ Diesel.

It’s all set to air from Tuesday, June 28th to Friday, July 1st in its normal 12:37 a.m. timeslot on CBS (or on the Sky Comedy channel if you find yourself in the UK).

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