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The weird thing about interviewing Benedict Cumberbatch is he’s hilarious. And it’s an easy thing to forget because he’s not exactly known for making uproarious comedies. But during an interview, he’ll wait for his moment to strike with just the right amount of sarcastic wit and, well, it gets me every time. (On this occasion he wasted very little time.)

Though, on this occasion there was a slight sense of frustration radiating from his usually cool demeanor. And, honestly, it’s understandable. Cumberbatch is starring in The Courier and he’s pretty fantastic in it. It’s a role you can tell Cumberbatch put his heart fully into, going as far as to lose a dramatic amount of weight to portray the real-life Greville Wynne, a British businessman who was enlisted by the government to spy on the Soviet Union during the Cold War. (If you look back at photos of Cumberbatch from late 2019, he’s impossibly thin, representing Wynne after he was released from Soviet custody.) Yet, this is a movie flying under people’s radars. Cumberbatch is diplomatic about the whole thing, but, yes, it’s obvious he really wants people to see this movie and he’s got a really good case.

Also, as we were literally out of time, I asked Cumberbatch if we could just cut to the chase and he could say something hyperbolic about Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and the, again, always hilarious Cumberbatch did not disappoint. But, first, he asked why my Zoom video wasn’t working.

Honestly, I don’t have a good background and I’ve given up on the whole thing.

It’s alright. We all know you’re naked, it’s is absolutely fine. Don’t worry about it.

At one point I thought about putting a big poster up of whoever I was talking to behind me to see if they’d bring it up, but I never did that.

Life is too short, so don’t beat yourself up either.

See, you always catch me off guard because I always forget you’re hilarious. And it usually involves cuss words.

That’s cool. Thank you, Mike. I’ll try to be fucking funny this time too.

See. And the last time we spoke it was for The Grinch and you kept using phrases like “Grinchy” with cuss words. Combine the two, it’s very funny.

There must be an adult version waiting for me out there somewhere to play the Grinch. It’s like Bad Santa or something. It’s a market that Billy Bob Thorton cornered for a while. But I think the time is right for an angry Christmas movie.

I really enjoyed The Courier. I am curious, when someone initially comes to you with a spy movie, is your initial reaction, “Come on, I was in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy?

For me, the hook here was just the one about the character. It was Dominic [Cooke] who I’ve worked with before, who I wanted to work with again. And we’d been looking for a project for a while and he beat me to it. He directed me in Richard III.

Well, I’m glad you read this one.

Well, Dominic came and pitched it to me. I was like, this is an extraordinary story, an unknown character. The least likely candidate for a spy film. This will be a different version of the ticking bomb spy thriller genre. It’s not your usual starting point to have a charming, but highly dyslexic, to the point of near illiterate, businessman. There’s nothing James Bond about him. You look him up and the comparative between him pre-spy and post-release, which we’ll talk about in a minute, is physical transformation. There’s very little known about him.

What you just said is dead-on when I was watching this. You don’t know how it’s going to turn out. At least I didn’t and it doesn’t go the way you think it’s going to go. It’s not such a famous story where a person knows this already.

No, exactly. I think because of that element of leeway, it’s just a new angle to work with. I don’t reject projects because of them stepping on genres I’ve done before. I would reject them if the character was something I felt very repetitive from what I’ve done before.

What I meant by that was I bet you get pitched spy stuff all the time.

Not all the time. I said no to a few, so maybe you could get the idea that I’m not super keen to do it all the time. It’s really “for me.” My choices are based on who I’m working with, whether they can get me there and challenge me, and ask of me things I haven’t done before. And, whether the character could do that as well.

You mentioned we’d get to your character’s transformation, meaning weight loss. I take that as a lot of people were asking you about that.

The most cursory glance at him on the internet, you’ll face images, a very portly middle-aged spread of a man, who’s comfortably coasting towards early retirement. He’s got a round face, and he fills his suit, and he looks very healthy on one too many pub lunches. Then you cut to him being released in the same clothes and he’s absolutely lost in them. They are huge on him. He’s this shrink-wrapped skeleton, sort of. He looks like a hunted animal. Haunted and destroyed.

Did you do lose weight or is that movie magic?

No, I did that. We took three months off production. I took it very seriously and lost weight and exercised. A lot of exposure to cold. Then, obviously, the dietary thing as well, especially near the end. Apart from honoring his legacy, by showing what he endured, it also really helps you to put you in a place of vulnerability and weakness and confusion and disorientation. That being: that sort of calm, deprived, and weak, it mostly makes you very available and vulnerable. That was a small window into what he must have endured for months, if not years.

Well, it seems like when you put this film in front of people, people really like it. You obviously threw yourself into this. You lost all that weight. I’m wondering if, and I don’t really know the word, maybe frustrated, that it feels like this is like flowing under the radar a bit and it shouldn’t be. I know what happened in the world has a lot to do with that.

I mean, I think a lot of things that played into that. I think it’s going to find its place. It’s frustrating that the release is delayed and obviously that’s the COVID of it all. I would want to talk to Lionsgate about that a little bit. They’ve got other things in competition and it’s all those politics. To be honest, you just sort of push all that aside. And you just go, I’m really happy this film’s coming out. I’m really, really, really happy with the way people have responded to it. I don’t think my work’s been wasted. I don’t have to be standing somewhere giving an acceptance speech to feel that my work’s been validated. I really don’t. I understand what you’re saying…

Right, I’d just want people to see it.

But the important thing is actually really to do with it being seen. That’s the thing I’ll have a lot to say about. If it doesn’t have the life it deserves because of everyone’s work on it, not just mine. To be honest, whether this was going to be a small TV drama, or a big film, or medium-size film that it sort of is, I suppose, it feels important enough historically. I think, especially in this time, it’s going to resonate. You’ve got countless examples of people stepping up to the plate who have no form of experience of what it’s like to live under a pandemic. We’re also being exposed to the truth of the backroom heroes, the people in the backgrounds of our lives that keep the whole thing going, whether they’re cleaners or delivery people.

All the conditions at the front of the health care crisis, the doctors and nurses, as well as the specialists working on vaccines. There’s this huge machine that’s trying to sort this. Not just that. All the political movements we’ve seen exploded over the last year and continue. Whether it’s the Black Lives Matter movement, or Me Too, and the global climate crisis movements. It’s just, the point I’m making… the positive message that it’s a celebration of someone who we don’t know that much about. We’ve seen a lot of that and we need to continue to do that within our culture.

We are out of time. But before we go, if you say something hyperbolic about the next Doctor Strange movie, people will come to this and read it. Like, “Oh, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, you aren’t even ready for that?” Or just something like that and we’re off to the races and everyone will read about The Courier.

The multi-verse is going to twist your noodle into a pretzel in multidimensions in a way you’ve never experienced before!

There we go.

[Laughs] Okay, if that’s how it works.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

More of Maya Rudolph is always a good thing. The comedy actress and Saturday Night Live alum will star in a new half hour comedy series for Apple TV that will re-team her with the Emmy-winning creators behind Forever Alan Yang and Matt Hubbard. While the title for the project has yet to be announced, it has already received a straight-to-series order from Apple as the streaming service seeks to aggressively boost its original content offerings. Via Deadline:

On the new Apple series, Rudolph will play Molly, a woman whose seemingly perfect life is upended after her husband leaves her with nothing but 87 billion dollars. Creators/writers Yang and Hubbard executive produce alongside Rudolph through her production company, Animal Pictures, with the company’s Natasha Lyonne and Danielle Renfrew Behrens also executive producing.

Yang and Hubbard aren’t the only ones with Emmys under their belts. Rudolph knocked out an impressive double Emmy win in 2020 thanks to her work as Kamala Harris on SNL and her voiceover work for Big Mouth where she plays the female hormone monstress Connie. Thanks to Rudolph’s impressive vocal talents and comedic wit, the role has been a breakout hit for fans who can’t over the way the character pronounces “bubble bath.” Conan O’Brien has even admitted to being impressed by the unusual pronunciation, which Rudolph revealed was a process to create.

“I remember sort of doing it and I remember sort of being egged on to… can you find more? Can you actually find more?” Rudolph told Conan on his podcast. “And we were trying to make — I think maybe initially because she’s meant to be a hormone monsters we were trying to make her voice a roller coaster. Just like a roller coaster of emotions. So it was sort of that low, high, low dipping stuff.”

(Via Deadline)

It’s been three years since prolific band Big Thief released two LPs, Two Hands and U.F.O.F, just months apart from each other. Vocalist Adrianne Lenker has since released a solo project of her own, and guitarist Buck Meek is also recently debuted his sophomore solo LP Two Saviors. But that’s left fans wondering when the next time they’ll hear new Big Thief music is. Fortunately, Buck Meek has revealed that it won’t be too long from now.

Buck Meek sat down for an interview with Guitar where he discussed his unique guitar playing style, while offering insight into the status of Big Thief’s fifth studio album. The musician said the record is “pretty much done” and sounds “certainly different” from their last release. “Lockdown was a well-needed respite, I needed a break,” he said. “And then Big Thief ended up making new music for nearly six months, which was really nice because we’ve been touring so hard we’ve had little chance to record in the last couple of years.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Meek praised Lenker’s songwriting abilities:

“I loved her sense of invention. She works in so many alternate tunings, a new tuning almost every time she writes a song. Her sense of rhythm is so strong and fluid, with so many interweaving picking patterns and a complex sense of harmony, but all centered around the song. She’s constantly changing time signatures, but it doesn’t feel contrived, it moves with so much swing. Her rhythm is very straight, like a train. Coming from a ragtime and Western Swing background, my approach is more syncopated, I play behind the beat. That was one of the first moments of excitement for us, combining those two feels.”

Two Saviors is out now via Keeled Scales. Get it here.

Not only is Filipino tita-imitating Bay Area R&B singer H.E.R. a newly-minted Grammy Award winner but she is also a burgeoning movie star. She recently made her acting debut playing herself in Netflix’s new comedy Yes Day. In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, H.E.R. stated her ambition to continue pursuing acting.

“I’ve been so focused on making music but I think it’s time now for me to go full throttle with acting,” she said. “I’m working on that right now, following my passion for acting.”

However, that doesn’t mean she’s falling back from doing music anytime soon. In fact, she may soon join her fellow Filipino entertainer Bruno Mars in his latest endeavor. Posting a photo to Instagram with Bruno, his Silk Sonic musical partner Anderson .Paak, and their “Leave The Door Open” co-producer Dernst “D’Mile” Emile, H.E.R. joked, “Tried to audition to be in Silk Sonic. Idk if I made the cut.” Both acts performed at the recent Grammy Awards, where H.E.R. won her first award for Song Of The Year for “I Can’t Breathe.”

And although she just got started on her acting career, she’ll still be competing for an Oscar at the upcoming 93rd Academy Awards, as she’s nominated for her song “Fight For You” from the soundtrack to Judas And The Black Messiah.

Read H.E.R.’s full interview with Entertainment Weekly here.

The Los Angeles Clippers got trounced by the Dallas Mavericks on Wednesday night, 105-89. Despite being one of the few players on the team who had a big night, Paul George griped to the media after the game about the fact that the officials swallowed their whistles while the Clippers were trying to be aggressive and potentially get to the free throw line.

When asked about Los Angeles’ inability to draw fouls — it was noted that despite the team taking 30 shots at the rim, only three fouls were called — George accused the officials of being liars.

“Just a bunch of lies,” George said. “Can’t go too much further than that, it’s a bunch of lies. They know what’s going on.”

When asked about how the Clippers can change whatever he was implying due to the fact that they are making it a point to try and get fouled by attacking the rim, George more or less threw his hands up in the air.

“Our job is to be aggressive, attack,” George said. “We can’t do much more than that. If they not gonna call it, they not gonna call it. And that’s the sad part about it, because we’re not flopping players. We’re not players that’s, like, throwing our bodies into other players, we play physical, no different from any other player in this league. There’s nothing more than we can do.”

There will never be an NBA player who is satisfied with how their games are officiated, but having said that, George is right that he and Kawhi Leonard aren’t the sorts of dudes who egregiously flop in an attempt to get to the charity stripe. These sorts of public calls are oftentimes more attempts to sway refs outside of games, though, so maybe George, Leonard, and co. will start getting a more charitable whistle going forward.

Following the shooting in Atlanta earlier in the week that left eight people need after a gunman entered three separate massage parlors and predominantly shot Asian women, actress Olivia Munn has been doing her part to raise the alarm that this event was not an isolated incident and is part of a larger problem of increased anti-Asian violence. During an interview on Thursday morning, Munn explained how the coronavirus pandemic has been a catalyst for racial violence against Asian-Americans for over a year now, and as the shooting in Atlanta has shown, the situation is not improving. Via TODAY:

I think the thing that we need everyone to know is that the pandemic was weaponized against Asian Americans and we have a target on our backs. And it feels like it’s open season on us. And we need help and we need people to care about what is happening to us. You look at what happened in Atlanta. This doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

Munn’s statement echoes her previous appearance on MSNBC where she ramped up her message that the Asian community desperately needs their fellow Americans to do something to stop the violence. “We are living in a country that is attacking us simply for being us. And we really don’t know what we have to do to get help,” Munn told Nicole Wallace. “We need more people to care about us.”

The actress has also been vocal on social media following the Atlanta shooting:

While it would seem that the shooting was rooted in anti-Asian violence, Munn has every reason to be frustrated with how the country is responding to the deadly event. The Atlanta sheriff’s department has been hesitant to describe the shooting as a hate crime and even went so far as to say the shooter had a “bad day,” which did prompt considerable backlash. That backlash only intensified as it was later revealed that the spokesman who downplayed the shooting had posting images on Facebook that called the pandemic the “China virus,” which is the same rhetoric that former president Donald Trump has continued to used since the coronavirus arrived in America last March. According to the New York Times, there have been nearly 3,800 hate incidents against Asian Americans since that time.

(Via TODAY, MSNBC)

After WandaVision, especially those earlier episodes that offer barely a hint of what else was going on besides a classic sitcom, it might seem tempting to proclaim The Falcon and The Winter Soldier as Marvel returning to something more like what they usually do. After all, there’s Sam Wilson, aka The Falcon (Anthony Mackie), flying through the air over Tunisia trying to stop a terrorist from escaping to Libya. It’s a pretty nifty scene that, at least looks like, it involved some real parachuting stunts. But we’ve seen scenes like that before in Marvel movies. (The parachuting stunt in Iron Man 3 isn’t talked about near enough.) But what’s ambitious about The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is the groundwork being laid out for what’s to come. And this series could go in some interesting, pretty remarkable directions.

In the first episode of six (I’ve only seen one), Sam still owns the shield that Steve Rogers gave him at the end of Avengers: Endgame. He contemplates his life as a future Captain America and wrestles with the notion that he doesn’t believe it belongs to him. And officials from the United States government are all too eager to commend Sam on his “right” decision, not telling him that they have other plans anyway. As I watched that all unfold (and Mackie really sells the anguish over what he’s deciding and why he’s making the decisions that he’s making) it struck me that that’s how it would pretty much exactly go down in real life. The people in charge who don’t want Sam to be the face of America wouldn’t just tell him “no,” they’d somehow twist the whole thing into being “Sam’s own decision.”

And that’s part of the genius of what creators of this show are doing. Because there are going to be viewers who, if Sam had just taken over as Cap, would say, “Well, I like Sam, but I’m not sure he should be Captain America.” (Almost 100 percent of the people who think this way will be white people for what it’s worth.) By the end of this series, I suspect that the overwhelming majority of viewers who felt that way will be actively rooting for Sam to become Cap. (If he even wants it at that point.) And even that fact gets into a lot of tricky discussions about race and why would viewers need this kind of arc in the first place to accept Sam? But that’s what The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is here to do, to make people think about these kinds of questions. (I interviewed Malcolm Spellman, the head writer for the series and he is adamant about this aspect. The interview will run Friday after the episode airs.)

Meanwhile, Bucky Barns (Sebastian Stan) is lying low, going to therapy, and trying his best to atone for his past actions, even though they weren’t really his fault. (If you haven’t seen the movies, yes, Bucky’s past will probably be confusing.) But we see a lot of Bucky just hanging out. Actually, we see a lot of that from Sam, too. It’s nice to see what these two are doing when they are not fighting Thanos. There’s a very interesting scene with Sam and his sister trying to get a bank loan to keep their family business open. Sam is an Avenger and a national hero, but he’s also a Black man and he’s asked about where his income comes from. (Which is something that hasn’t really been addressed before over the course of these movies other than for people like Tony Stark who are just “rich.”) But after one episode we don’t even know how Sam and Bucky’s stories intersect yet.

The series also leans into the effects of “the blip,” which now takes on greater meaning in our own world due to the pandemic, and the series filmed during the pandemic so you can almost feel the notion of losing time having a greater effect on the overall mood of the show than if it had been filmed before. (Sam is also questioned by the bank why he hasn’t had a job in the last five years.)

And on top of all that we have the introduction of the Flag Smashers to the MCU. It’s unclear where that arc is going at this point, but it’s a good bet it will have something to do with the white nationalism we’ve seen spread throughout the United States and abroad.

This first episode is for sure in setup mode. And, no, it’s not weird like WandaVision. But my gosh there’s a lot going on in this series that will unfold over the coming few weeks. And then there’s the final scene of this first episode when a character shows up who puts a lot of things in laser focus. (This character has been publicly announced, but I’ll still not mention him specifically here.) It truly feels like this is a series trying to tackle the multiple things that are actually going on right now in our real world. It may not automatically feel ambitious in that, no, there’s no laugh track and live studio audience. But what this series is trying to do certainly feels like a lot. And my gosh I hope they pull it off.

‘The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’ debuts this weekend via Apple TV+. You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

Since its release last August, Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s song “WAP” has been drawing in criticism from pearl-clutchers and conservatives who apparently think children are being taught to read the raunchy lyrics in school (they’re not). The controversy surrounding the song was reignited last week with the two rappers took the 2021 Grammys stage to put on a showstopping and extremely censored performance of the track. Even still, Cardi and Megan’s stage presence prompted many viewers to file complaints with the FCC.

Texas television station WFAA was able to obtain dozens of the complaints submitted to the FCC following Grammys night. Despite Cardi and Meg’s dance moves receiving many positive reviews on social media, WFAA reports that over 80 people submitted their grievances about the performance to the FCC. “The outfits they were wearing and the movements they did were absolutely disgusting,” one viewer from Idaho wrote. “This network should face very stiff penalties.”

Another FCC complaint from a viewer from Texas compared “WAP” to the six Dr. Seuss books that his estate decided to stop publishing due to racist imagery. “The media has a problem with Dr. Seuss, yet allows Cardi B to sing about her [WAP] on national television,” they wrote.

They weren’t the first one to compare Cardi’s performance to the Dr. Seuss book discontinuation. Earlier this week, a conservative comedian said “WAP” is “more welcome in some schools than Dr. Seuss books,” which prompted a response from Cardi herself. The rapper, who has admitted to shielding her daughter’s ears from the track, told the comedian to “stop comparing a sensual song to books that has RACIST content,” adding: “How can ya not tell the difference?I see that common sense aint that common.”

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

If you thought Piers Morgan would go quietly into the night…. well, you never thought that would happen. Yet the former Good Morning Britain and chronic grumpyman is outdoing himself after scoring the highest number of complaints in British TV history. Now, Piers is turning his wrath upon Gayle King after she told the CBS This Morning audience that she spoke with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, and Meghan has proof of “everything” she told Oprah during the infamous CBS Evening News interview. Given that said proof would make Piers look even worse — since he stormed off live TV, quit his job, and thanked his haters over his claim that Meghan made up allegations of racism against the British Royal Family — Morgan is not happy at all with Gayle.

“Hi @GayleKing,” Piers tweeted. “[R]ather than acting as your Sussex friends’ PR mouthpiece to facilitate their ongoing public trashing of our Royal Family, how about doing your job as a journalist and ask them about all the lies they told in @Oprah’s interview? America should hear THE truth.”

It bears mentioning that Piers also declared that he doesn’t believe Meghan’s admission that she felt suicidal during her time with the British Royal Family, and much of this still reflects upon his admission that she ghosted him after a “pub date” years ago. Piers is definitely still looking out for #1, and this week, he told CNN Business, “There is a lot of interest in securing my services.” Will he land in a stateside gig? It’s actually not hard to believe that some entertainment-news outlet will pick him up since he’d certainly generate ratings, although complaints will arrive as well.

Then again, Piers might simply be angling for a Knightdom from Queen Elizabeth? His cheerleading for the Royal Fam is over the top, to put it mildly. “There’s a very deliberate & malicious campaign being perpetrated by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to smear, defame and trash Britain, our Monarchy & the Royal Family as a bunch of heartless racists,” Morgan recently tweeted. “It’s disgusting. Time to stand up for our Queen.” Well, “Sir Piers” would be an unexpected development, but never say never.

When Justin Bieber originally announced his new album Justice, a lot of folks noticed that the logo on the album art featured text that was stylistically similar to the logo the band Justice has used for years. The group’s label, Ed Banger Records, joked about it at the time, but they’re not laughing anymore. The band’s management accused Bieber earlier this month of stealing the Justice logo, and now the band has sent Bieber a cease-and-desist letter.

Justice’s co-manager, Tyler Goldberg of Jet Management, told Rolling Stone, “The morning Bieber announced his album, it was pretty tough to miss. Aside from seeing it all over the internet ourselves, we heard from hundreds of people throughout the day — industry people, Justice fans — and the Justice guys received a ton of messages, not only compelled to point out the similarities between the Justice Justin Bieber album, but confused. ‘Is this a Justice collaboration?’”

A March 10-dated letter from Justice’s counsel to Bieber’s lawyer and management reads in part:

“Your use of the Mark [the cross symbol] is illegal. You have not received permission from Justice to utilize the Mark. Moreover, Bieber’s work is in no way affiliated with, supported by, or sponsored by Justice. Such use of the Mark is not only illegal, but likely to deceive and confuse consumers. […] Through your illegal co-opting of the Mark, you are now subject to immediate legal action and damages including, but not limited to, punitive and injustice relief. […] Not only was Bieber’s team actually aware of Justice’s use of the Mark, they sought to use the same artist to essentially duplicate it for the Album. This is textbook bad faith and willful infringement.”

Goldberg also told the publication, “Global patent and trademark offices do not police the use of trademarks by third parties. As a result, trademarks need to be defended at all times by the trademark holder. The onus is on the trademark owner to protect against an unlawful use by third parties, regardless of the third party being a billionaire manager or a music superstar. We’ll continue to protect the Justice logo — the trademark that was established 15 years ago — at all costs.”

Neither Bieber nor his team have offered a public comment on the situation as of yet.