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After the release of their 2016 effort Going By, Felix Walworth took a hiatus from live performances under the name Told Slant. Instead, much of the last four years have been spent writing and refining Told Slant’s third album Point The Flashlight And Walk. Clocking in at exactly 40 minutes, the LP delicately balances influences of experimental folk and indie-pop, channeling the lo-fi aesthetic of earlier Told Slant releases while still pushing forward into new uncharted territory, sonically.

To celebrate the new album, Walworth sat down to talk about resisting change, Bitcoin, and Lord Of The Rings in the latest Indie Mixtape 20 Q&A.

What are four words you would use to describe your music?

Sophisticated Genius Prophetic Invincible

It’s 2050 and the world hasn’t ended and people are still listening to your music. How would you like it to be remembered?

I would like my music to be unanimously loved by all people and used as a reference point in college level courses across many disciplines as an example of the best possible art.

What’s your favorite city in the world to perform?

New York.

Who’s the person who has most inspired your work, and why?

Joanna Newsom because she is very good at writing songs.

Where did you eat the best meal of your life?

Clif Bar outside a gas station somewhere near Laramie, Wyoming.

What album do you know every word to?

Boxer by The National.

What was the best concert you’ve ever attended?

I played a show in a basement in Flagstaff, Arizona, once. This guy put a bunch of reverb on his voice and read the description off the side of the can of a Monster Energy, then poured it into a plastic red bucket. He did the same thing for 4 other flavors of Monster, and then drank the whole bucket. I thought it was cool.

What is the best outfit for performing and why?

It is important to wear expensive clothes while performing because it makes people like you more.

Who’s your favorite person to follow on Twitter and/or Instagram?

I don’t really enjoy following anybody on social media. I used to follow an account that tweeted a different closeup of a Hieronymus Bosch painting every hour, and I liked that one.

What’s your most frequently played song in the van on tour?

No music allowed in the van.

What’s the last thing you Googled?

“Hieronymus Bosch spelling”

What album makes for the perfect gift?

I don’t know. One album? For anyone? Maybe some field recordings of birds or waves or something.

Where’s the weirdest place you’ve ever crashed while on tour?

We crashed on i90 outside of Philadelphia once but I guess that’s not super weird.

What’s the story behind your first or favorite tattoo?

My first tattoo was a pine tree and it was about resistance to change.

What artists keep you from flipping the channel on the radio?

Typically whoever is in the car with me.

What’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for you?

This question is taking me too long and frankly it is making me upset.

What’s one piece of advice you’d go back in time to give to your 18-year-old self?

Invest heavily in Bitcoin.

What’s the last show you went to?

No idea, I haven’t been to a show in 7 months at least.

What movie can you not resist watching when it’s on TV?

The Fellowship Of The Ring

What would you cook if Obama were coming to your house for dinner?

Human flesh.

Point The Flashlight And Walk is out now on Double Double Whammy. Listen on Spotify here.

Up until now, the “battle” aspect of the popular live stream series Verzuz has been a technicality. For the most part, the event has been celebratory, looking to highlight hits and little-known underground classics as its participants good-naturedly trade stories and praise for each other — although some of the early R&B battles did get delightfully shady. That trend may very well change with the upcoming show featuring bitter rivals Gucci Mane and Jeezy, whose decade-long feud saw the duo butting heads over money, song credit, and the 2005 shooting of Jeezy’s friend by Gucci Mane.

Gucci seems to have taken a pugnacious stance to the whole thing, selling the animosity like a professional wrestler cutting a promo. Not only did he share memes taunting Jeezy over the death of his friend — whom Gucci claimed to have shot in self-defense — but now he’s also taking potshots at Jeezy’s upcoming album cover. Jeezy smartly deemed November 20 the perfect time to release his new album, The Recession 2, to take advantage of the Verzuz buzz, but his cover art has become the target of jokes online thanks to his outfit, which fans deemed incongruous with his history and catalog.

Gucci Mane couldn’t resist getting in some jabs of his own ahead of their meeting tonight, appearing in a video on the Verzuz Twitter account. After assuring skeptical fans that the battle was real, he then set his conditions: No more sartorial snafus on the part of his opponent or he’s out. “For everybody who asking me, the Verzuz is real,” he confirmed. “Me and Snowcone will be in the same room. But this what I wanna know. Is fashion a part of the Verzuz? Because I’ma have that shit on tomorrow and if buddy have that same funny ass shirt and that dumb ass hat he had on that God damn album cover, I ain’t doing it.”

Watch Gucci’s mocking video above and catch the battle tonight at 5 pm PT / 8 pm ET on Apple Music and Verzuz’s Instagram Live.

Is expensive bourbon (climbing into the hundreds of dollars) really that much better than mid-shelf expressions?

That depends on who you’re asking. If you’re new to the bourbon drinking game, a really spendy bottle — perhaps a limited edition release — might mean that you end up paying for nuance that you either A) don’t recognize or B) don’t care about. On the flips side, if you’ve been drinking bourbon for a while and find yourself loving it, you may see value in paying more for longer aging and unique barrelling techniques. At that level, drinking becomes another expensive hobby, like golf, SCUBA, or high fashion. And who are we to judge how much people spend on their passions?

All of that being said, there are definite flavor notes and textures that align with how old a bourbon — or any aged spirit — tastes. When you’re drinking well-aged bourbons, you’ll hear about leather, oak, must, funk, oiliness, and overall boldness. When you’re drinking younger bourbons, you’ll hear about fruit, corn, thinness, and maybe even butterscotch. Naturally, there are scores of expressions that fall somewhere between those two poles.

For this exercise, we grabbed eight bottles of bourbon — four mid-level (not bone cheap) and four expensive — to see how they’d match up in a blind tasting. This wasn’t a one-to-one comparison, it was a look at how four bottles in the $30 to $70 price range taste compared to four bottles in the $200 to $700 price range (granted that’s not MSRP for all of those expressions, as the expensive bottles have seen their prices driven up, but it is retail). Among these, we put two 10-year-old bourbons into the mix, one from Michter’s ($199) and one from Basil Hayden’s ($70), but we didn’t set out to directly compare the two.

In the end, this was all about how these bottles tasted and whether I could tell the expensive drams from the more affordable ones. It definitely wasn’t as easy as it sounds. In fact, I had more bottles marked down as expensive in the end than there were expensive bottles in the flight. I also got two completely wrong. Read on to find out which!

Part I — The Blind Taste Test

Taste 1

Tasting Notes:

There’s a nice hit of candied fruit, nuts, and vanilla up top. The taste adds to that nose with a clear Christmas cake vibe next to subtle wood and sherry plumminess. The end is slightly sweet while wallowing in all that candied fruit and spicy Christmas cake with a hint of oak on the end.

Bottom Line:

I’m calling this as expensive. It’s full of bold Christmas cake and candied fruit flavors. It also feels like something you could serve with a rock at a party and people would absolutely adore.

Taste 2

Tasting Notes:

This is all about cinnamon and oak up top. There’s an oily vanilla nature that’s counterpointed by a bitter oak char and a distant note of worn leathers. This is old, big, and lingers on the senses for a loonnnnggg time.

Bottom Line:

This is 100 percent an expensive bourbon.

Taste 3

Tasting Notes:

I can see from the funky green tint on this dram that it’s not cheap. The nose is slightly funky, herbal, and full of orchard fruit. That herbal nature draws you in and there’s almost a sense of an Almond Joy with a dark chocolate and toasted coconut vibe.

Bottom Line:

There’s no way this isn’t an expensive bottle of booze. The green twinge from what must be a unique barrel, the heavy funk from very long aging, and the overall abstractness of the palate all point to something really, really old.

Now though, I’m getting worried. I know there are only four “expensive” bottles and I’ve already called out three of the four?

Taste 4

Tasting Notes:

This opens with a nice vanilla pudding creaminess next to mild spice. The taste leans into a butterscotch sweetness with a dose of corn, mild Christmas spice, and a whisper of espresso bitterness. The end is medium-length, warm, and holds onto the butterscotch.

Bottom Line:

The corn and butterscotch are dead giveaways as to the youth of this bourbon. It’s definitely a cheaper bourbon but, to be honest, I’m not sure which.

Taste 5

Tasting Notes:

There’s real thinness to the juice in this dram. The nose has a mix of pecans and orange with a light spice. The spice kicks in a bit on the tongue as caramel mingles with more nuttiness. It’s light but really approachable and has a fairly long end that basks in the pecan, orange, and spice.

I think I got a bit of grassiness on the very end, which was a nice touch.

Bottom Line:

This is way too thin to be particularly old. I’m saying this is a cheap bourbon… but it’s also a really interesting one.

Taste 6

Tasting Notes:

Damn. There’s a lot going on in this Glencairn. The nose hits on big notes of spice, leather, vanilla, oak, and cherry with a capital “C.” The spice gets peppery with a light caramel nature. The end leans back into the oak and leather with a very clear hit of mustiness next to the cherry.

Bottom Line:

That musty oak, cherry, spice, vanilla, and leather is almost unmistakably an expensive bottle of booze.

That means the next two have to be cheap if I’m on track.

Taste 7

Tasting Notes:

Toasted oak meets maple syrup up top. Those notes marry vanilla … and I already know I’m screwed because this is 100 percent Michter’s 10 and a very expensive bottle. Damn it.

Anyway, there’s a nice buttery toffee sweetness with a subtle Christmas spice next to a very musty oak edge. The end is long, musty, oaky, spicy, and hits that maple syrup note one last time.

Bottom Line:

Michter’s 10. I drank half of this bottle when celebrating Trump losing the election, so the flavor profile is very much in my active memory.

Taste 8

Tasting Notes:

There’s a subtle but very concise matrix of vanilla, oak, and spice that greets you. It’s classic and very enticing. The spice gets peppery. The oak leans into a toasted oak feel, The vanilla gets creamy with oily vanilla beans mixed in. There’s a dark cacao bitterness underneath with a slight caramel sweetness. The end brings about a musty oak feel as the spice, vanilla, and bitterness all slowly fade out.

Bottom Line:

I don’t know. This is another old bottle and could easily be a very expensive bottle. I’m just going to say it’s expensive and find out which bottles I got wrong.

Part II — The Answers

Woodinville Bourbon Port Cask Finished (Affordable/ Incorrect)

ABV: 45%
Average Price: $50

The Whiskey:

Woodinville Whiskey has been cleaning up awards recently. Their Port Cask takes their 5-year-old bourbon and ages it for a final six months in Ruby Port barrels to add a whole new dimension to the whiskey.

George T. Stagg 2020 Antique Collection (Expensive/Correct)

ABV: 65.2%
Average Price: $500

The Whiskey:

This year’s George T. Stagg is a 15-year-old expression. The mash has a little rye in the bill. The barrels are stored in very specific parts of three different warehouses where 59 percent of the juice is lost to the angels.

Heaven’s Door Bootleg Series Mizunara Oak Whisky 26 Year (Expensive/Correct)

ABV: 55.75%
Average Price: $550

The Whiskey:

This 26-year-old whiskey was finished in the much-hyped Mizunara oak casks from Japan. Those barrels are made exclusively from oaks that are over 200-years-old when harvested and impart the color and funk mentioned above.

Woodford Reserve Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey (Affordable/ Correct)

ABV: 45.2%
Average Price: $38

The Whiskey:

This bourbon is the entry point to the wider world of Woodford Reserve’s line. The juice is fairly high rye with 18 percent of the grain in the mash bill. The whiskey is then aged between six and seven years before it’s married, brought down to proof, and bottled.

Pinhook Bohemian Bourbon High Proof (Affordable/ Correct)

ABV: 57.25%
Average Price: $52

The Whiskey:

Pinhook Bourbon was created by a master sommelier and restauranteur who became a master blender of whiskey. The whiskey is made at Castle & Key under the watchful eye of Pinhook. It’s then blended exactly to Pinhook’s specifications and is typically under four or five years old.

Eagle Rare 2020 Antique Collection (Expensive/Correct)

ABV: 50.5%
Average Price: $700

The Whiskey:

This is Buffalo Trace’s jewel in their whiskey crown. The expression spends 18 years in the barrel in one specific spot in one specific warehouse. In that time, almost 60 percent of the juice is lost. The whiskey is then cut down to a very drinkable 101 proof.

Michter’s 10 Year Kentucky Straight Bourbon (Expensive/Correct)

ABV: 47.2%
Average Price: $199

The Whiskey:

Michter’s 10 is a single barrel expression that exemplifies the brand’s craft. The juice is hand-selected for its exactness before it’s cut down to proof and bottled in a heavy bottle with a waxed cork.

Basil Hayden’s 10 Year Bourbon (Affordable/ Incorrect)

ABV: 40%
Average Price: $74

The Whiskey:

This expression from Basil Hayden’s takes the standard Basil Hayden’s bourbon and lets it rest for around six more years. The result is a limited edition release that drops every year around the holidays and then goes away again for 12 months.

Part III — Final Thoughts

It’s interesting how well the Woodinville and Basil Hayden’s stood up again bottles that are, at times, ten times more expensive on shelves. Full disclosure, the MSRP for Eagle Rare and George T. Stagg are marked at $99. But we don’t live in a world where those bottles cost that. Both of the ten-year expressions were remarkably close in taste and character yet very different in price ($70 vs. $199). Basil Hayden’s for the win on that count.

The other big winner is Woodinville’s Port Cask. That’s just a goddamn delicious bourbon that’s like going to only get more expensive as it keeps racking up awards and accolades.

If I had to rank these, I’d rank them by “bottle I most want to drink again.”

8. Heaven’s Door Bootleg Series
7. Woodford Reserve
6. Pinhook Bohemian Bourbon
5. George T. Stagg
4. Basil Hayden’s 10
3. Michter’s 10
2. Eagle Rare 17
1. Woodinville Port Cask

That Heaven’s Door Bootleg Series haunts me. It’s so funky and different that I can’t stop thinking about it. At the same time, I’m fine not drinking it ever again. The Woodinville — on the other hand — is quickly becoming one of my favorite bourbons of the year.

Charli D’Amelio, a TikTok superstar so famous that she has her own drink at Dunkin, recently started a YouTube channel with her family, the accurately-titled The D’Amelio Family. In the first episode of the “Dinner with the D’Amelio’s” series, Charli, along with sister Dixie (also TikTok famous) and their parents, are served dinner by a mystery chef. Exciting stuff. The video has led to a major backlash against Charli and Dixie, however, due to the latter’s reaction to the delicious-looking meal made by guest Aaron May, who has made “multiple appearances on The Food Network alongside big names such as Guy Fieri.” If he’s good enough for Guy, he should be good enough for the D’Amelios:

The personal chef whipped up a multi-course meal, including a fresh salad and seafood paella dish, but the D’Amelio sisters were far from appreciative. Charli, 16, was caught making faces as May described the menu. Once the main dish was served, Dixie, 19, squeezed a fresh lemon over her paella, then placed the rind on her father’s plate. The situation came to a head when Dixie found a snail in her paella — something that May described as “an omen of good luck and fortune” — and made faces and gagging noises.

Dixie eventually excused herself to the patio, where she claims she threw up, while Charli requested dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets from May (I’m sorry, but I laughed at that). Charli also complained about not having 100 million subscribers on TikTok yet, to which the family’s dining-mate, internet personality James Charles, responded, “Was the 95 [million] not enough for you?” He, not the parents, is the one who’s embarrassed by the D’Amelio sister’s actions. “It’s also kind of the parents fault. They didn’t even stop them, James did. Straight up embarrassing,” reads a top comment on YouTube, while another added, “it’s obvious that the damilos grew up spoiled and james didn’t.”

As BuzzFeed points out, Charli D’Amelio, who has the most-followed account on TikTok (Dixie is number seven), has been shedding subscribers. She was at 99.4 million on Wednesday, but it was down to 98.9 million by Thursday. Charli’s still number one by nearly 30 million, but it doesn’t look like she’ll hit her target goal of 100 million by 2021.

You can watch the “Dinner with the D’Amelio’s” video below, if you dare.

(Via BuzzFeed and Today)

This morning, Myles Powell, the former Seton Hall Pirates guard who was named the Big East Player Of The Year, was trending on Twitter, as many were shocked that he wasn’t selected in yesterday’s NBA Draft. He wasn’t the only big name who went undrafted last night, though. Yesterday, Sheck Wes, the rapper who last played competitive basketball in high school, revealed that he had declared for the draft. Perhaps unsurprisingly, no NBA team saw a Sheck-sized hole in their roster, so the rapper was not picked.

Posting a photo of himself playing ball ahead of the draft, he wrote, “Damn… it’s really real , The 2020 NBA DRAFT , all my life I always wanted to follow my passion for music and basketball . Playing basketball and going to play pro in the @nba is something that I always strived for . Tonight that dream comes true!” It turns out Sheck’s draft aspirations were a promotional stunt: Following the draft, he released a new single and video, “Been Ballin (Draft 2020).” The video is very much Uncle Drew-inspired, as Wes put on aging make-up and surprised younger players at a park court.

Sharing the video, he wrote on Twitter that he intends to try his luck at the draft again next year: “STRANGEST DRAFT EVER , I AINT TRIPPING I WILL COME BACK NEXT YEAR 29 TEAMS WILL REGRET THIS NIGHT. BACK TO THE GYM. BEEN BALLIN !!!!” He also wrote in another tweet, “Next Draft.”

Watch the “Been Ballin (Draft 2020)” video above.

Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat 2 took the U.S. by storm at the right time in October. The whole project certainly surprised Rudy Giuliani, and one of the more pleasant side effects is that the world’s now getting to know Maria Bakalova, who played Borat’s daughter, Tutar, in the movie. Bakalova beat out more than 600 other candidates for the role, which she originally feared — due to the secrecy of a project — might be a human trafficking operation. It all turned out well, though. Bakalova got acting tips from Cohen that she’ll use for a lifetime. As for her mom? She may never recover.

Alright, that’s an exaggeration, but as Bakalova related to James Corden earlier this week, her mother barely knew anything about the project. And after she watched the movie at home, there was an intense emotional outpouring. She could not stop crying because she found Tutar to be so “sad.” And an animated Bakalova demonstrated how her mom kind-of melted down over Facetime.

“Her eyes were full of tears,” Bakalova related. “She was crying for maybe two hours. Because she’s kind of a masochist, obviously, she watched it twice, and she was even more sad.” The actress then mimicked her mother crying: “I never seen something like Tutar, it’s so sad.”

What was the saddest part to mom… the Rudy scene or the one where Tutar opens a bottle with her “small hole”? We may never know. Bakalova did, however, reveal that one of her audition videos that she sent to the production included her uttering the following doozy: “My daddy is the best daddy in the whole flat world because he gives me cigarettes, he allows me to drink, and everything is amazing.”

No wonder she got the role, and she’s getting Oscar buzz, too. Maria Bakalova’s emergence might be one of the best things to happen in 2020.

The New York Knicks selected Obi Toppin, a New York native from the University of Dayton, with the eighth overall pick in the 2020 NBA Draft Wednesday night. Born in Brooklyn, Toppin is the first player born in one of New York’s five boroughs to be drafted by the Knicks in the Top-10 in the Modern Draft Era (since 1966), according to Elias Sports Bureau.

As the 22-year-old forward sat surrounded by family in his home, he told ESPN’s Malika Andrews how much it meant to him to be able to wear the Knicks colors.

“I’m from New York,” Toppin said. “That’s why it’s important. Me reppin’ my city, it’s amazing. A lot of people pray to be in this position and I’m not going to take it for granted — I promise you that.”

Toppin, who attended Melbourne Central Catholic High School and Ossining High School, did not receive any Division I college offers and opted to play a post-graduate year at Mt. Zion Prep. After committing to Dayton in 2017, he won the A-10 Freshman of the Year award after averaging 14.4 points and 5.6 rebounds while shooting 66% from the field and a strong 52% from beyond the arc.

After a superb sophomore year at Dayton, Toppin was named the 2020 Naismith Player of the Year. In his final year, he averaged 20 points, 7.5 rebounds and 2.2 assists per game while shooting 63% from the field and 39% from three-point range. A dominant offensive player, Toppin’s highlight reel is filled with monster dunks and fiery energy on both sides of the court.

With 2019 rookies RJ Barrett and Ignas “Iggy” Brazdeikis along with Kevin Knox, Mitchell Robinson, Frank Ntilikina and now, Obi Toppin, who is older than all of the aforementioned players, the Knicks are continuing their rebuild. While his rebounding can still improve and it remains to be seen how his defensive abilities will shape up against the NBA’s talent, Toppin is a pure scorer and his high productivity rate will likely be a welcome sight in Madison Square Garden.

ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski tweeted earlier in the night that the Knicks were” excited” about Toppin and following the pick, team president Leon Rose explained why the team was so interested in him to reporters.

“As one of the highest ranked players on our draft board, Obi was someone we really coveted,” Rose said. “He’s an explosive athlete and one of the most dynamic players in college basketball.”

Portland Trailblazers guard C.J. McCollum tweeted his support for Toppin, remembering the time he watched the forward’s explosive play and looking ahead at his potentially bright future.

As is typical among the franchise’s ardent supporters, Knick fans’ feelings ranged from pleased with the hometown hero pick to disappointed in the team adding yet another forward to a roster filled with them.

“Toppin is showtime, it’s box office in the open court watching him dunk — I get it,” said ESPN analyst and passionate Knicks fan, Stephen A. Smith in a video posted to Twitter. “But how many forwards can you have if you’re the New York Knicks? […] I needed a guard!”

The Knicks history in the draft hasn’t exactly earned them the benefit of the doubt with fans, so this reaction was to be expected, but there’s no doubt Toppin will bring, if nothing else, an added energy to the Knicks going forward as a native New Yorker who genuinely loves the franchise. Whether that passion is matched with success on the court will be the determining factor in how beloved a figure Toppin becomes among Knick fans, because if he helps lift the team, his love for the franchise will be reciprocated by its fans tenfold.

The end of a long-running TV show or movie franchise must feel bittersweet for actors. On one hand, they’ve usually negotiated quite the residual or kickback deal by the time the project ends, so they don’t really have to worry much about securing future successful projects. On the other, actors usually want to, you know, act. They want to prove that they’re not simply one-trick wonders who lucked into an enduring role at the right time and in the right place. Instead, they hope to prove their range and make daring choices. It’s a (fortunate) conundrum that we’ve seen many casts (Harry Potter, Twilight, Friends, and Seinfeld, among others) grapple with to varying degrees of success. Then there’s The Big Bang Theory, which ended in 2019 after twelve seasons.

Despite the Jim Parson-led show’s enduring nature (and someone must have loved the thing), this wasn’t a quality show by any stretch. The formulaic arcs and well-worn tropes stood in abundance, so much so that so-called “real” nerds, at best, strongly disliked the series. In the middle of it all stood Kaley Cuoco, who portrayed Penny, the stereotypical “dumb blonde” neighbor, to lucrative effect. And following the show’s end, Cuoco stood at a crossroads. Could she step away from the Penny box?

The odds were stacked against Cuoco. Her position when BBT ended was similar to that of Jennifer Aniston (who’s still best known as Rachel from Friends), or even Katherine Heigl (Grey’s Anatomy, which is obviously now in motion without her), both of whom succeeded in movie-romcom-land. Yet that route largely dried up years ago. If romcoms exist now, they’re streaming affairs. Aaand she also needed to overcome winning two Razzie awards (for Alvin & the Chipmunks: The Road Chip and The Wedding Ringer) that she “won” during her BBT tenure. It’s all good though; Kaley’s doing just fine without romcoms, and she’s not punching above her weight in an Oscar quest.

So far, she’s succeeded mightily as the voice of animated Harley Quinn, the DC-Universe-turned-HBO-Max animated series about the Joker’s ex-girlfriend striking out on her own and experiencing delicious personal growth. That show found new life after two seasons on DC Universe as an HBO Max Season 3 pickup, and she’s launching The Flight Attendant (which had a planned release date of November 26, but HBO Max went ahead and released the first episode for free on November 18). Both are highly entertaining series (we are very fond of Harley Quinn here at Uproxx, and we’ll review The Flight Attendant before more episodes release). Is it surprising, though, that Cuoco’s career appears to actually be reaching new heights, when it’s usually pretty tough to move on so quickly after a long-term role ends (and with two Razzies)?

Yes, it’s unexpected, especially with Kaley veering far away from Penny. She landed two high-profile projects that aren’t exactly for the “girl next door,” which is what she played for twelve seasons already. Instead, she went profane and nerdy and darkly comedic. Time will tell if The Flight Attendant fares well, after the rest of the season surfaces. What is fairly telling, though, is that I don’t really think that many people (not even the biggest comic book nerds out there) expected the Harley Quinn TV series to be, you know, better and more successful than Birds Of Prey, the Harley emancipation movie starring Oscar-nominated actress Margot Robbie that struck many of the wrong notes. Of course, there are a lot of reasons why that movie fared only decently at the box office and with critics, whereas Harley Quinn has been a resounding success on both ends.

It’s fair to say that Kaley’s Harley did not succeed through not sheer luck for the actress who voices her. She has, after all, executive produced the series since signing onto the project, so it’s safe to assume that she has a voice in where Harley goes. And Kaley’s Harley has shown a ton of character growth over two seasons while still maintaining her sweetly anarchic spirit. It’s kinda crazy how one role in an animated series has done a lot to distance Kaley from being stereotyped inside the BBT box for good.

What I appreciate most about the current state of Kaley Cuoco’s career is the chutzpah factor. She’s not punching above her weight, but instead, she’s damn savvy at picking roles that work with her strengths. These roles are punchy and profane, and she is seriously convincing at freaking out in The Flight Attendant. We’ll talk about that more soon, but it’s clear that Kaley’s doing a heck of a lot better after Big Bang Theory than people expected. I’m looking forward to seeing how audiences receive The Flight Attendant and what more will come for these daring career moves for an actress who probably never needed to act again at all. Kaley Cuoco’s doing something very simple and admirable with her new projects: she’s entertaining the hell out of people. Some “serious” actors forget do forget… that’s what showbiz is all about, so yep, keep your eyes on Kaley Cuoco. She’s (surprisingly) going places.

HBO Max’s ‘The Flight Attendant’ will drop future episodes on November 26.

Many people have celebrity crushes, or could at least come up with one without too much thought when asked. That’s true of celebrities, too, including Lorde. One of hers isn’t an obvious heartthrob pick, though, as she revealed that she “definitely” would have had sex with legendary artist Pablo Picasso.

Lorde and Cazzie David recently had a conversation for Interview, in which they discussed their friendship and various other topics. At one point, the chat drifted towards art and Picasso. David asked Lorde if she would have had sex with the artist, and Lorde responded, “Yeah, definitely.” David pressed her for more, and she continued, “He was tiny but had an epic potbelly. That’s my whole vibe. I’d be down. He was kind of freaky.”

Elsewhere during the conversation, Lorde showed her appreciation for the government of her native New Zealand, saying, “I feel like our government is more proactive about acknowledging that we are living in a rapidly changing climate and legislation has to reflect that. People care in New Zealand. You can’t not when you live there. It’s in every part of who we are and how we live. It’s the only thing that matters. There’s nothing less cool than not caring about the environment in New Zealand, which I love. […] We had a solid 100 days without COVID. It was a good run.”

Read the full chat here.

The last time The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air co-stars Will Smith and Janet Hubert, who played the original Viv, spoke was 27 years ago. She was replaced by Daphne Maxwell Reid after season three of the NBC sitcom, with Smith claiming that “Janet Hubert wanted the show to be The Aunt Viv of Bel-Air Show because I know she is going to dog me in the press,” and Hubert responding, “He probably is responsible for my firing. He has a lot of clout. It’s too bad that it’s a Black-on-Black attack. I tried not to name names. I have more class than that.” It got ugly. But the pair finally settled their feud for the Fresh Prince‘s 30-year reunion special, now out on HBO Max.

“I just wanted to know one thing: Why?” Hubert asked Smith. “You guys went so far. I lost so much. How do we heal that?” The actress was going through a lot in her personal information that Smith didn’t know about, including the network wanting to cut her salary for season three and an “abusive” marriage. “During that third season when I got pregnant, there was a lot of things going on in my life and Will’s life as well,” she said. “Home life was not good at all. I was no longer laughing, smiling, joking because there were things going on that nobody knew about. Cast had no idea what was going on.”

Smith replied, “During that time of her pregnancy, I wasn’t sensitive, wasn’t perceptive. Now that I’ve had three kids, I’ve learned some things I did not know at the time. I would do things very differently. I can see where I made the set very difficult for Janet”:

“You took all that away from me with your words,” Hubert told Smith. “Words can kill. I lost everything. Reputation. Everything, everything. I understand you were able to move forward. You know those words — calling a Black woman ‘difficult’ in Hollywood is the kiss of death. It’s hard enough being a dark-skinned Black woman in this business. I felt it was necessary for us to finally move forward. And I’m sorry I have blasted you to pieces.”

The duo ended up apologizing and embracing. “You’re still my Aunt Viv,” Smith said.

(Via E! Online)