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Comedian and actor David Cross is probably best known to comedy audience for his roles in Arrested Development and Mr. Show or perhaps even the three seasons of The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret, a show he created and starred in. Alas, however, to younger audiences, Cross is probably best known for playing Ian in three Alvin and the Chipmunks movies, which earned over $1.1 billion worldwide.

Cross’s disdain for those films, however, is not a secret to anyone. “All I wanted was to get the f**k out of there as soon as possible … and buy a summer home with the check,” he once told Conan O’Brien during an appearance on his late-night talk show. He also called working on the third movie, Chipwrecked, “literally, without question, the most unpleasant experience I’ve ever had in my professional life,” and has long held a producer on the film responsible for mistreating Cross on that final film, which essentially saw him “forced at legal gunpoint” to spend an entire week on a Carnival Cruise.

“There was no reason for me to be there,” he had told Conan back in 2012.

It turns out, bad-mouthing the film actually cost David Cross a $150,000 bonus for violating his non-disparagement clause, as Cross told Justin Long on this week’s episode of his Life is Short podcast. It was one of many grievances Cross had with the movie, for which he has eaten “a lot of sh*t” over the years. In fact, one person who gave mocked Cross for taking the role was Patton Oswalt, who turned originally turned down the role. “Comedian Brian Posehn and I both threw the script across the room in disgust,” Oswalt joked. “David Cross caught it.”

Cross took the gig, he said, because he hadn’t worked in over six months, which felt like “an eternity” to him at the time. He had no idea that the first film would be so successful, so he had never anticipated being contractually locked into the franchise for three films.

Nevertheless, Cross said that shooting the first film was “fine,” and the second film, “OK,” but he put shooting the third film “in a different category of bad experiences. They were disrespectful of me, and just so mean to me, and so petty and weird … they were so sh*tty to me … it was so inexplicably awful. Just awful. They were sh*tty in every single way at every single point.”

Many of his problems with the movies revolve around a specific producer, who Cross has long accused of being antisemitic. Cross gave a couple of examples of how petty the producer on the movie was being. At the time, Cross says, he was in London doing pre-production on Todd Margaret, a show upon which a number of jobs were dependent. Cross had no idea if he’d be in the third Alvin movie, and the producer wouldn’t tell him, even though he repeatedly asked, because was working on another project and needed to align his schedule. He finally got the call right before Christmas, and when his agent called, he asked Cross to sit down.

“They are doing the third one,” his agent said. “You are in it, and they want you in Hawaii in ten days.”

“I was in London at the time,” Cross said. He told his agent — because he was in the midst of pre-production on Todd Margaret — that he couldn’t possibly do that, and the Chipmunks producers told him that if he didn’t show up, “we’ll sue him for breach of contract.” Keep in mind, too, that Cross was forced to shoot the film on a Carnival Cruise, in spite of the fact that he was under a pelican suit nearly the entire time and had no lines. They forced Cross to appear in the third film, Cross has explained, for no other reason than to torture him.

Another example of how petty they were being to Cross was the fact that, though he was number two on the call sheet — in other words, billed second, only below Jason Lee — they gave him a “broken down, smaller trailer” that was “about 40 years old, covered in rust and discolored” and it was placed amid a lot of very nice trailers. “I knew exactly what they were up to,” Cross told Justin Long.

The film earned an anemic 12 percent from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, but it made $350 million worldwide. Cross said that he’s still recognized worldwide for his work on the film, and takes some small solace in the fact that a number of parents have told him that he made an otherwise miserable film tolerable to watch for them.

Source: Life is Short with Justin Long

AMC renewed Fear the Walking Dead for its seventh season earlier this week, which might have felt like a surprise two months ago — before the debut of season six — but now feels inevitable given the creative resurrection of the series. It felt all the more inevitable when AMC announced that the 11th season would be the last for The Walking Dead meaning that, theoretically, the spin-off could outlast the original. Indeed, Fear could be the SVU to Law and Order, a spin-off that outlasts the original.

There’s still a long way to go to get there, and with The Walking Dead ending and AMC ordering up two more series from the same universe, a Carol and Daryl spinoff, plus Tales of the Walking Dead, AMC could decide to pull the plug on the series in its seventh season and go out on a creative high. Should AMC decide that the 7th season be the last for Fear, it would actually be a great time to bring back Madison Clark, an original Fear character played by Kim Dickens, who was “killed off” in the fourth season.

Although Madison wasn’t actually very popular with fans when she was on the series, killing her off has proven to be the most unpopular move (among many) executed by Andrew Goldberg and Ian Chambliss, the showrunners who replaced the OG showrunner Dave Erickson in the fourth season.

Fans may recall that Erickson had loosely mapped out Fear the Walking Dead through the seventh season, envisioning that it would end there with a surprising villain: Madison Clark. She’d become a Governor-like figure. Killing her off in season 4, however, made that impossible.

Or did it?

There has been speculation since she left that Madison could return, and both the series itself and fans have hyped that possibility. In fact, some Fear recappers hyped a Madison Clark “Easter egg” in the midseason finale, which turned out to be little more than a mention by Madison’s daughter, Alicia, of the stadium where Madison “allegedly” died.

That said, while it felt like Madison’s return had been foreclosed, both the showrunners and the chief architect of The Walking Dead universe, Scott Gimple, have lately been suggesting just such a possibility. In fact, Ian Goldberg has not only teased the possibility of Madison returning but that she might have been the mysterious person who saved Morgan in the season premiere. “There’s always a chance. There’s always a chance,” he told ComicBook.com.

I’d still be skeptical of that possibility, save for the fact that Scott Gimple has also teased the possibility of Madison’s return in an interview with The Insider:

“I believe that not only within ‘Fear,’ but just within the greater ‘Walking Dead’ universe, there’s absolutely a chance that we could see Madison. There’s a lot of narrative possibilities that we’re exploring and then certainly, you know, [we] got to work it out with everybody involved and Kim Dickens is a very, very busy person. But I think it’s entirely possible.”

That sounds like more than a possibility. That sounds like it’s actively being discussed. I suspect that would come as very welcome news to the other two original cast members, Alycia-Debnam-Carey and Colman Domingo, who have openly mourned the loss of Dickens over the last couple of years. Dickens was last seen in USA Network’s Briarpatch, which was canceled after one season, so Dickens may very well be available to return for the seventh season, if not sooner.

The back half of Fear the Walking Dead continues to shoot in Texas. No airdate has been set for its return.

Plenty has happened in the political world in SNL’s few weeks off since the conclusion of the 2020 election, so it’s no surprise that the show’s cold open stayed with election fodder. The same can be said for Weekend Update, which took aim at Donald Trump’s failing attempts to overturn the election he lost.

Calling the prolonged attempt to overturn results in several states an “Advent calendar of losing,” host Colin Jost joked that the ordeal has proven the Trump campaign will “never stop fighting, except the coronavirus.”

Jost also poked fun of Trump’s “psychotic OnlyFans” video where he rambled through all the various ways the election was stolen from him. The show, unfortunately, taped too early in the day to include anything from Trump’s latest rally where he insisted he didn’t lose the election by millions of votes and the same margin he beat Hillary Clinton by in the electoral college in 2016.

“Trump said this was a ‘rigged election at the highest level.’ Dude, you’re the highest level. You were in charge when the election happened,” Jost said. “And, hey. Look, I’ll believe any conspiracy theory you want as long as in 44 days, you leave.”

He then spoofed some of the various conspiracy theories that have made the rounds both online and in the mouth of the president. Later in the segment, Michael Che made a joke about the White House Christmas decorations as well.

Saturday Night Live didn’t waste any time in giving the people what they wanted in its latest episode, leading things off with a spoof of Rudy Giuliani’s Michigan election hearings for its latest new episode on Saturday. That included a pitch — or perhaps pitcher — perfect impression of one of his star witnesses by Cecily Strong.

The cold open stayed political for the Jason Bateman-hosted episode, as despite the election being long over Donald Trump’s lawyer has put together an impressive string of legal losses that continue to make headlines. And possibly rumblings out of Giuliani himself that have made them go viral for all the wrong reasons.

And with Strong ready to knock her impression of a slurring, unhinged “star witness” for the Trump campaign for Kate McKinnon’s Giuliani out of the park, the cold open topic was a no-brainer. There was Giuliani making noise of his own to start, then a rotating cast of characters making things up about the election and false claims of widespread fraud that somehow mean the election was stolen from Trump.

Strong’s impression of Melissa Carone was actually the more accurate parts of the sketch, in that she falsely claims a lot of what was said in the sketch in real life. Still, those fabrications are lined up with some equally untrustworthy claims such as aliens fabricating ballots seven years ago, a large number of ballots being eaten out of a food truck and that Nicole Kidman’s accent from The Undoing was supposed to be from America. In a week where reality seemed to become more and more like an SNL sketch than ever, it was somehow refreshing to know that SNL can sometimes hit their layups, too.

Mike Lindell, also known as the MyPillow Guy, has made quite a name for himself and his product thanks to Donald Trump. Which is probably why he’s just as convinced as the current president that his term isn’t ending next month. Lindell has already gone on Fox News supporting Trump’s already-lost effort to overturn the election he, well, already lost.

His latest antics, other than constantly posting his support of Trump and his phantom second term on social media, is appearing at any rally in support of Trump he can despite a still-ongoing pandemic and the fact that the election ended last month. The latest of those happened in Georgia on Saturday, where Trump appeared in support of two Republican senate candidates headed to a runoff election in January.

Most of that appearance, however, was a rambling Trump rally where he bemoaned the election that already happened and spread more misinformation about the results of said election. And there was also the MyPillow guy there, too, saying the path forward for a Trump victory was for the Republican governor in Georgia, Brian Kemp, to break the law for the president.

Lindell advocated for the legislature in charge of picking electors in Georgia to “pull down” the vote of Georgia’s members of the Electoral College, and for the same thing to happen in other states, so Biden would not officially get to 270 votes despite those votes being given to him by voters in the November election. And in case you thought this might be just the ramblings of one man at a rally, it’s something that Trump said on stage later that night, too.

It’s difficult to count the number of times Trump has obliterated norms during his four years in office. But on a day where Trump reportedly asked Georgia’s governor directly to break the law in regard to the election, it’s just another thing to add to the pile.

Before Star Wars fans got a chance to freak out about the big Boba Fett reveal on The Mandalorian they were abuzz about a potential shooting location for another Star Wars show on Disney+. More specifically, a lot of people got to make some jokes about Boston accents because of a website that appeared to reveal Boston, Massachusetts as a shooting location for the Obi-Wan Kenobi show.

That news garnered a lot of laughs on social media, but there was always something a bit off about that news despite it being widely reported. As a local Boston journalist noted on Friday, that news didn’t seem to line up for a number of reasons, starting with the other filming location noted: London. As it turns out, there’s a Boston in the UK that’s nearby, which may be a much more likely location to recreate a galaxy far, far away.

And the news outlet that helped the story go viral earlier in the week reported the same thing on Saturday — they got the wrong Boston listed on the website the information came from. So Star Wars isn’t coming to that Boston: the show will be filmed entirely in the UK.

A posting by the Film & Television Industry Alliance on productionlist.com said on Thursday that the new series “Star Wars: Kenobi” was set to shoot in London, England and Boston, Massachusetts on Jan. 4, 2021.

Someone at the website appears to have made an error. After the story became an online hit, the location was changed to Boston, England, United Kingdom and London.

That Boston is about 100 miles north of London.

WBZ Boston also posted a screengrab of the updated website which, indeed, does list Boston, England along with London. It’s unfortunate news for those that hoped the Boston accent could further engrain itself in the Star Wars canon — though if you watched the last episode of The Mandalorian you know all hope is not entirely lost in that regard.

Still, you can’t make something go un-viral. Which is why the Boston, MA version of the Star Wars: Kenobi show already has a Cheers-influenced theme song thanks to Stephen Colbert.

Perhaps those in the UK can react to this news with some very good jokes about their Boston, but I wouldn’t hold out hope. It seems like yet another piece of misinformation in a year of fake news. At least we’ll always have this also-fictional theme song to remember it by.

College football’s game of the year was not some out-of-conference epic between two major conference programs in an NFL arena, nor was it an SEC or Big Ten showdown that served as a de facto College Football Playoff play-in game. No, the distinction goes to a matchup between 13th-ranked BYU and No. 18 Coastal Carolina in a game that was finalized on Thursday.

The two undefeated programs exchanged haymakers for 60 minutes on Saturday in Conway, SC, in a matchup that only happened because the schools had openings on their calendar. Ultimately, thanks to a CJ Marble rush at the start of the fourth quarter and a breathtaking stop to end the game, the Chanticleers came out on top, 22-17.

BYU had a chance to win the game at the very end, getting the ball on their 18 yard-line with 55 seconds left. Heisman hopeful signal caller Zach Wilson marched them down the field, and with seven seconds left, they got the ball down to the opposite 18. In their only attempt for the end zone, Wilson found Dax Mine, who came this close to scoring. Unfortunately for him, Coastal’s players swarmed him, and safety Mateo Sudipo threw him to the ground.

I, for one, did not expect a game thrown together hours before to have a Kevin Dyson against the Rams ending, but it was absolutely the sort of ending this game deserved. It was that close and that hotly contested that it’s unfortunate that someone had to lose it, but ultimately, the Chanticleers made the play they needed to make to come out on top. Now please, put them in the Playoff, committee.

Black Panther star Letitia Wright was heavily criticized earlier this week for sharing a conspiracy theory-filled video that included openly questioning vaccinations in the middle of a pandemic. And now it appears the backlash to that has caused her to leave social media.

Wright, who is likely to see an increased role in the Black Panther sequel following the death of star Chadwick Boseman earlier this year, shared a 75-minute video that spread vaccine conspiracy theories and other wild misinformation. The tweet, which was widely seen as a co-sign on the contents of the video, came the same day a COVID-19 vaccine was given approval for use in the UK. And despite an apology of sorts for being complicit in vaccine disinformation ahead of one of the most important vaccine distributions in more than a century, the backlash proved too much for her to remain active on social media.

As Deadline reported on Saturday, Wright appears to have at least deactivated her account on Twitter and Instagram.

“This account doesn’t exist” and a blank page is what Twitter users will encounter when they try to search Black Panther star Letitia Wright on the social media platform.

The video and its amplification by Wright was widely condemned online. Don Cheadle, another actor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, was one who criticized Wright for sharing the conspiracy-filled video. But also said he “won’t throw her away” over it.

In a time where confidence in public health policy is more important than ever, the dissemination of misleading or outright incorrect information about mask wearing, vaccines and other health initiatives can have very deadly consequences for tens of thousands of people. Getting pushed off a platform in the face of criticism is never a positive thing, but it’s another lesson that people with large followings online need to take the audience they’ve created seriously and not make what’s already been a difficult year any worse with an errant tweet.

The New York Knicks did not have the lofty free agent goals they have in years past, instead opting to go about their business and acquire a handful of veterans to put alongside some of their younger players. One such dude who fits this bill is Austin Rivers, as he moved from Houston to the Big Apple on a three-year deal worth about $10 million.

New York wasn’t the only team that wanted to acquire this services, as a new piece by Marc Berman of the New York Post indicates that the Philadelphia 76ers had him on their list of players to acquire. That did not come to fruition, though, in part because Rivers’ father, Sixers coach Doc Rivers, helped sell him on playing in New York.

“I kept telling him, ‘New York is a great place,’’ Rivers said. “I had a great experience there. That’s what I shared with him. It’s a tough city — in a positive way. He said, ‘What do you mean by that?’ I said, ‘It’s similar to Boston and Philly. Their fans are real. They want you to play hard, give you everything you can and play like a team.’

“I told him, ‘The Knicks fans are still Red Holzman’s Knicks fans. They remember how that basketball was played. They want team basketball, hard-nosed, tough basketball.’”

Doc, who played for the Knicks from 1992-94, and Austin apparently stayed together in Orlando during free agency, at which point the pair discussed the younger Rivers potentially going to the Knicks. The elder Rivers apparently discussed his son with current Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau as well, telling his former assistant that, “Whenever we talked about Austin — and we will a lot less now — Thibs loves competitors.’’

As for that earlier thing about Austin going to Philly, Pittsburgh will remain the only city in Pennsylvania where prominent rivers come together. Doc explained that he was clued in on the team’s interest but talked them out of it.

“He was high on Philly’s list before I took the job,’’ Rivers said. “It was one of the guards they wanted. When I took the job, I said, ‘You don’t want that. You got too many other things we have to deal with.’

“For Austin it’s better. He’s his own player. Unfortunately for him, me being the dad, he’s just an easy guy to target. I have felt since the separation, it’s been really good for him.’’

Austin famously played for Doc for three and a half years with the Clippers. Their relationship was frequently the source of much intrigue, and not always for the better. Perhaps that wouldn’t have been as prominent of an issue in Philly, but when it comes to Austin’s next team, father knows best.

Russell Westbrook is onto his third team in as many seasons. The former league MVP was traded from the Oklahoma City Thunder to the Houston Rockets last offseason, and after a year in H-Town, Westbrook was moved to the Washington Wizards in exchange for John Wall and a future Draft selection.

The move reunites Westbrook with Scott Brooks, his former head coach in Oklahoma City, and makes him one half of an interesting backcourt alongside Bradley Beal. It also includes a fun quirk: For the first time in his NBA career, Westbrook will wear something other than zero on his jersey. The team announced on Friday that Westbrook will adopt the number four on his shirt this year, instead.

For a guy as superstitious as Westbrook — his free throw percentage once dipped because an NBA rule change meant he could not do his usual routine at the line — it’s a bit strange to not see him wear the number he’s always worn. But as he explained on Saturday afternoon during his first media appearance as a member of the Wizards, there are some sentimental reasons for Westbrook to throw this number on his uniform this season.

It might take a little getting used to, but it’s a really cool gesture that pays tribute to a number of things and people who are near and dear to Westbrook’s heart. Still, it won’t take as much getting used to as Russell Westbrook in the Eastern Conference.