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“Weird Al” Yankovic and Daniel Radcliffe are big fans of each other.
While promoting his new biopic, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, the award-winning artist got candid about why he wanted to recruit the Harry Potter actor to play him, saying he had the “right energy for it.”
“I’m a big fan of Dan’s. He does amazing dramatic acting and amazing comedic acting, and he gets it,” Yankovic tells The Hollywood Reporter. “I mean, I knew that he’s a huge comedy fan. He’s a huge nerd, just like me, and I knew that he would just really lock into the tone that we were going for in this movie, which is so important.”
It wasn’t as important to Yankovic that Radcliffe wasn’t an “exact physical doppelganger” because the film is meant to be a parody of biopics, and it was more important for the star to be able to grasp that than to look exactly like the main character.
“I just thought that he would just really be able to capture the spirit of the character that we’ve written for the movie,” he says.
Radcliffe didn’t realize Weird: The Al Yankovic Story was supposed to be a parody until he began reading the script. When he initially got it, he wasn’t sure why he was being asked to read for this role.
“I was already a big ‘Weird Al’ fan, and I was confused about why they would ask me to play him in a movie of his life because I was like, ‘I don’t look very much like him,’” Radcliffe tells THR. “But then I read it, and I was like, ‘Oh, right. It’s fine. We’re not doing that. We’re doing something different, and it doesn’t matter.’”
However, it didn’t take very long for him to realize that there’s nothing else a “Weird Al” biopic could be other than a parody of biopics.
“Seeing that and seeing how well they’d like done that joke, and then talking to them and being like, ‘Yeah, Eric Appel is lovely. Al seems lovely,’” says Radcliffe. “You just want to make a movie with these guys.”
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is now streaming for free on Roku.
This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.
JoJo Siwa is enjoying the holiday season with a little help from Ocean Spray. The 19-year-old singer, dancer and actress spoke with Billboard this week about her new partnership with the cranberry product company, as well as their new collaborative TikTok challenge.
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“I genuinely put the cranberry sauce on everything,” Siwa tells Billboard of the fitting partnership. The star’s cranberry-loving habits didn’t develop on their own, as Siwa says even age-old family recipes would be paired with the cranberry product.
The star, who originally rose to fame after becoming a series regular on Lifetime’s popular series, Dance Moms, explains that she grew up using Ocean Spray’s cranberry sauce on meals like relish and, of course, Thanksgiving dinner. She even witnessed her mom using the sauce on her family’s generational chicken and broccoli.
“I remember my mom would make our favorite meal — It’s called chicken and brocooli, and it’s a fancy casserole that’s been in her family for years.” Siwa shares. “And on the side, we’d have Ocean Spray cranberry jelly sauce. It’s the perfect opposite taste of every meal you put it with.”
Siwa, who’s since moved to Los Angeles from Nebraska, now says her favorite way to use the company’s cranberry spread is on deli sandwiches when cooking for herself.
To announce her partnership, Siwa fittingly took to TikTok. She posted her first “jiggle with us” challenge on TikTok with the aim of getting everyone of all ages wiggling and jiggling, just like the cranberry sauce famously does. “It’s a fun, easy, inclusive challenge,” said Siwa.
See it below.
As we head towards the end of the year, take some time to listen to some new tunes from your favorite LGBTQ artists. Billboard Pride is proud to present the latest edition of First Out, our weekly roundup of some of the best new music releases from LGBTQ artists.
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From Brockhampton’s lead single of their final album, to Pabllo Vittar’s victory song, check out just a few of our favorite releases from this week below:
Brockhampton, “Big P—y”
With the looming release of Brockhampton’s final album The Family later this month, the group is prepping their fans for what’s to come. “Big P—y,” the first taste of the project, sees Kevin Abstract taking center stage, rapping openly about the fact that, no, this is not a joke — after The Family, Brockhampton is done. With a bombastic beat and some of Abstract’s best flow to date, “Big P—y” promises an explosive finish to a dynamic career from this fan-beloved hip-hop boy band.
Pabllo Vittar feat. Gloria Groove, “AMEIANOITE”
After a contentious election in Brazil over the last few weeks that say right-wing populist Jair Bolsonaro get unseated by leftist trade unionist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, drag superstar Pabllo Vittar is ready to celebrate. She’s doing so on “AMEIANOITE” (translated to “ATMIDNIGHT” in English) with fellow Brazilian drag queen Gloria Groove. Taking on the persona of a witch being burned at the stake, Vittar brings a hard-hitting club vibe to the new track, basking in revolutionary ideals and nonconformist messages. It’s a fitting theme song for an important moment in her country’s history.
Cavetown, Worm Food
The cosmic insignificance of the human condition has long been a running theme of art — so it’s fascinating to watch as indie-pop star Cavetown takes the concept and carefully examines it on Worm Food. On what could have been a deeply nihilistic album, Robin Skinner instead looks at life through a semi-hopeful lens, comforted by the understanding that we’re all headed for the same destination (as he spells out on the title track, serving as the album’s thesis). Skinners takes listeners on a journey through love (“Frog”), heartbreak (“Wasabi”), anxiety (“Heart Attack”) and so much more, on an album as sonically diverse as the subject matter being tackled.
Fletcher, “Suckerpunch”
Fletcher may have just gifted her fans with an entire album of heartbreak-to-healing anthems with Girl of My Dreams, but that doesn’t mean that she’s done. “Suckerpunch,” the first song off the upcoming deluxe version of the album, builds on the project’s narrative, this time taking listeners back to the origins of the relationship that inspired the entire album. Walking fans through the emotional euphoria of first love, Fletcher delivers a dance-pop anthem for anyone feeling themselves falling in real time.
Billy Porter, “Stranger Things”
Singer/actor Billy Porter doesn’t hold back, ever — so it’s fitting that his latest single, “Stranger Things,” takes a maximalist approach to its call-to-action. The soulful new anthem sees Porter flexing every inch of his impressive vocal range, while commenting on the state of affairs around the world (in summary: things are looking bad). But in the brassy, exhilarating chorus, Porter makes clear that to despair in the face of hard times is to relinquish control; and he’s not willing to do that. “I’mma make the world see/ And be more than a memory/ ‘Cause stranger things have happened to me,” he wails.
Carlie Hanson, “Illusion”
“We plan, God laughs” may as well be the tagline of Carlie Hanson’s new single “Illusion.” On the revelatory new pop anthem, the singer-songwriter contends with feeling stuck in a life that she didn’t anticipate, despite her best efforts. Putting her pen to good use, and her voice to an even better one, Hanson speaks for anyone who has ever felt lost when she belts on the infectious chorus, “This isn’t what I thought it’d be like/ Just an illusion, doesn’t sit right.”
Bob the Drag Queen feat. Ocean Kelly & Basit, “Black”
On “Black,” Bob the Drag Queens’s pounding anthem to Black pride featuring fellow stars Ocean Kelly and Basit, the Drag Race winner and TikTok phenom laces her stellar bars with gas for her people and venom for anyone who would try and shame her. Not only does Bob flex her lyrical acuity with lines that land (“Cause this Mary is a Mac, and I’m sick of wearing black/ Keep dodging silver bullets, cause they coming for my back” stands out immediately), but her production (courtesy of Kelly and longtime collaborator Mitch Ferrino) is on a whole new level. Bow down, because the queen has arrived yet again.
While Selena Gomez has always been open about her struggles with mental health, lupus, heartbreak and the highs and lows of fame, but fans got a closer look than ever in her new, aptly titled AppleTV+ documentary, My Mind & Me, which hits the streaming service on Friday (Nov. 4).
The Alek Keshishian-helmed film is a raw look at mental health, pulling back the curtain of fame to reveal a young woman who is actively working on her complicated relationship with loving and accepting herself. “It’s OK to feel not good enough and to feel like you’re complicated and complex. It’s just about having a healthy relationship with how you talk to yourself, how you seek help, how you talk to other people,” Gomez said at the Los Angeles premiere of the film, of what she hopes people will take from the film. “I hope this starts a chain reaction of people saying, ‘Hey, I want to say something about my mental health. I want to talk about it and seek help.’ That’s one of the bravest things someone can do. Even if just one person is impacted by this film, I would consider myself the luckiest girl.”
Ahead of the film’s official release, we’ve compiled the most revealing moments. See below.
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“This love is all-consuming.” My Policeman, a heartfelt portrait of three people caught in a love triangle amid “the shifting tides of history, liberty, and forgiveness” will make its Prime Video debut this week.
The romantic drama, starring Harry Styles, Emma Corrin, Gina McKee, Linus Roache, David Dawson and Rupert Everett, will be released on the platform on Friday (Nov. 4).
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Directed by Michael Grandage, My Policeman shares a story of forbidden love that spans decades. Set in 1950s Britain, the LGBTQ+ drama centers around a married policemen who falls in love with another man.
This heart-pounding story unfolds over the course of four decades, following the impassioned journey of policeman Tom (Styles), his teacher wife Marion (Corrin) and museum curator Patrick (Dawson).
The story jumps ahead to the 1990s and finds Tom (Linus Roache), Marion (Gina McKee), and Patrick (Rupert Everett) reeling with longing and regret, but they get one more chance to repair the damage of the past.
“For me, the reason why the story is so devastating is that, ultimately, the whole story is about wasted time, and I think wasted time is the most devastating thing,” Styles said of the film’s central themes during the world premiere in Toronto last month, per The Hollywood Reporter.
“Because it’s the one thing we cannot control,” he continued. “It’s the one thing you can’t have back. And I think the one thing that I think matters – whatever kind of life you’ve lived – at the end when you think back on time with people you love.”
Ron Nyswaner wrote the film’s script, while Grandage, Michael Riley McGrath, and Caroline Levy are executive producers.
My Policeman is based on the book of the same name, written by Bethan Roberts. The story was inspired by the life of English author, E.M. Forster and his long-time companion, married policeman Bob Buckingham, and Buckingham’s wife.
How to Watch My Policeman on Prime Video for Free
My Policeman is a Prime Video original – meaning Prime members and Prime Video subscribers don’t have to pay extra to watch the film.
Not subscribed to Amazon Prime? Sign up today and receive a free 30-day trial to stream My Policeman and other Amazon Originals on the platform. Once you have successful signed up (click here to begin), navigate to the Prime Video homepage to begin streaming.
If you’re already a Prime member and want to save yourself the time searching for the film in the dashboard, click the link below to start streaming.
My Policeman
How much is Amazon Prime? The membership is $14.99 a month or $139 a year after the free trial ends. Prime offers 50% off the membership price to eligible students and EBT/Medicaid recipients.
Prime members get free same-day, one-day or two-day delivery on millions of items, member-only discounts, two-hour grocery delivery through Amazon Fresh, unlimited photo storage, a one-year subscription to GrubHub+, plus access to Amazon Prime Music, Prime Gaming, Prime Reading, and Prime Video.
From action and adventure to romance, Prime Video has an extensive selection of bingeable movies and addicting shows, and a nice offering of exclusive programs — including must-watch movies. With Prime Video, movie buffs can stream for free, buy or rent movies digitally, and add channels like Paramount+, BET+, AMC+, STARZ, Showtime, for an additional fee.
The lot of programs available only on Prime Video include The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, A League of Their Own, Them, The Boys, Wheel of Time, Reacher, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Harlem, Invincible, and The Legend of Vox Machina.
Watch the emotional My Policeman trailer below.
Harry Styles and Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele have teamed up on a brand new collection, aptly titled Gucci HA HA HA, and the superstar duo unveiled an official look at the collaboration on Thursday (Nov. 3).
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“When Harry met Alessandro,” the designer brand captioned a video posted to Twitter, in which the “As It Was” singer is seen trying on a variety of colorful, patterned outfits from the collection, including plaid pants, sleek suits and brightly hued accents.
“I’m so happy to see this project finally come to life,” Styles said in a statement about the collection, according to GQ. “I’ve known Alessandro for years now, and he’s always been one of my favorite people. I’m always inspired watching him work, so doing this collaboration with my friend was very special to me.”
During a conference presenting the collection back in June, the Gucci creative director said he and Styles started making a concentrated effort to work on the collection about a year ago, though most of it was conceptualized over WhatsApp and over dinners with each other. Of their work dynamic, Michele said working with Styles on the collection was “kind of like working at home on a rainy day between two friends, doing something to have fun.”
The 28-year-old has worn Gucci pieces several notable times throughout his career: He made history as the first solo male star to make the cover of Vogue in 2020, and he did it in a Gucci dress; he also arrived alongside Michele at the 2019 Met Gala in a Gucci ensemble.
Selena Gomez introduced the world to the complexities of her mind and mental health through her new, aptly titled AppleTV+ documentary, My Mind & Me, which held its premiere at AFI Festival in Los Angeles, Calif., on Wednesday night (Nov. 2).
“I was going to release this documentary multiple times and it never really felt right,” the star told Billboard on the red carpet at the event. “Then the pandemic hit and a lot of people started having conversations around mental health, the isolation, people feeling depressed or anxious — never feeling those feelings before but have now. I just hope that this will carry on to something like a conversation that people will use to help later on.”
The theme of connection and starting a conversation rang true throughout the film, as Gomez sought healing from her bipolar disorder and lupus diagnoses as well as her 2017 kidney transplant through spending time with others — whether that be her best friend Raquelle Stevens, her childhood neighbors in Grand Prairie, Texas, or the children of Kenya during a 2019 philanthropic visit.
The Alek Keshishian-helmed film is a raw look at mental health, pulling back the curtain of fame to reveal a young woman who is actively working on her complicated relationship with loving and accepting herself. It’s rare to see a high-profile star show the more uncomfortable versions of herself to a global audience, allowing a camera crew to film her as she cries over her insecurities, undergoes a medical IV therapy for lupus and speaks at length about what it’s like to have a psychological disorder.
At one point in the documentary, Gomez likens learning about her bipolar disorder to reading about thunder and lightning as a child to help subside her fear of storms — which is a lesson she told Billboard she still uses to this day. “Knowledge eliminates fear in my opinion, because then you start having a relationship with your mental health, so I would suggest to learn as much as you can,” she shared as her advice to those going through similar struggles that she has gone through.
At an onstage Q&A following the premiere, Gomez elaborated on that same thought. “It’s OK to feel not good enough and to feel like you’re complicated and complex. It’s just about having a healthy relationship with how you talk to yourself, how you seek help, how you talk to other people,” she said of what she hopes people will take from the film. “I hope this starts a chain reaction of people saying, ‘Hey, I want to say something about my mental health. I want to talk about it and seek help.’ That’s one of the bravest things someone can do. Even if just one person is impacted by this film, I would consider myself the luckiest girl.”
Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me is out on Apple TV+ starting Friday (Nov. 4).
When filmmaker Alek Keshishian first met Selena Gomez, her management had asked him to direct the pop star’s 2015 “Hands to Myself” video, as she was a huge fan of his work on the 1991 Madonna documentary Truth or Dare.
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Over the years, the two remained close, and even tried to film a documentary of Gomez’s 2016 Revival Tour — but the timing wasn’t right. “She was going through a lot of stuff, and it didn’t feel proper for me to have cameras constantly in her face,” Keshishian tells Billboard, adding that the two later met up in 2019 to film Gomez’s philanthropic trip to Kenya.
“I said, ‘Let me shoot a few days before we go to Kenya to see where you’re at now,’” the filmmaker recalls. “On that first day of filming, I realized that there was a bigger story, and I suggested that we just keep shooting more in LA before we went to Kenya. There was a story here about a girl just coming out of a mental health facility, recovering, but also keen to help others. There was an interesting tension there, between being a patient still in your own recovery, but wanting to also step up and try to bring healing to other people.”
Thus, the new Apple TV+ documentary Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me was born, documenting the star’s yearslong journey through the heights of fame and the lows of a very personal crisis and back again. It’s perhaps the most vulnerable fans have ever seen Gomez, and creating a safe space for the 30-year-old to be herself was of the utmost importance to Keshishian.
“I’m a really empathetic person and I really become invested in my subject,” he explains. “I’m living their life with them, in a sense, and I do tend to become very close to my subject matter. [Selena] really became like a sister to me, and someone I felt protective over.”
Keshishian noted that he was “delicate” in his filming style, making sure Gomez was completely comfortable along the way. Notably, in one poignant scene in the film, the Only Murders in the Building star is visibly suffering from lupus. “I was like, ‘Are you sure I can film this?’ And she was like, ‘Yes, you can film it,’” he says. “By that point, we were so aligned in what we were trying to do that I think she felt invested in sharing those really unguarded moments. If she doesn’t feel that [empathy] from me, she’s not going to be OK with being filmed.”
And while, at this point, Keshishian has known Gomez for nearly seven years, there were still things that surprised him about the star while filming. “I just learned that this is a really special soul,” he explains. “I do think she’s on Earth to help others. When I first started working with her, I was like, ‘She’s a young pop star,’” he recalled with a shrug. “But during the course of the six, seven years now that I’ve worked with her, I realized she’s much, much more than a pop star. This girl is a humanitarian in the deepest definition of the word, and I think that will be her legacy.”
His affection for and connection to Gomez is exactly why he wanted to create something special with My Mind & Me — not only for her fans, but also for anyone going through mental health troubles. “I tried to tell this story that is very specific, but there’s also kind of a larger, almost mythological [story] in terms of the hero’s journey,” he says. “You get that sense that she’s just this young girl from Texas from the poor side of the tracks who is, on one level, on this meteoric rise to stardom, but on an internal personal level, faces some deeper existential quandaries in her life like, ‘What is this for? What am I doing?’”
He continues, “On that level, I think it’s universal and, hopefully, it’s also inspiring to remember that you can be broken and still change the world. We all have our darkest moments, but it’s a question of what we do with them. I suffer from depression and anxiety as well, so I think that that connection was big for me and Selena.”
Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me is out on Apple TV+ starting Friday (Nov. 4).
Jennifer Lawrence was on an epic box office and awards run… until 2016. That’s when she pulled down a major payday and earned top-billing in the box office sci-fi dud Passengers, one of the last big-budget blockbusters she starred in before taking a break from the spotlight and slowing her pace for a few years.
According to a new New York Times profile of the Oscar-winning actress posted on Wednesday (Nov. 2), she might have avoided that ding in her resume if she’d just listened to her pal Adele.
“Adele told me not to do it! She was like, ‘I feel like space movies are the new vampire movies.’ I should have listened to her,” Lawrence said of the movie about two astronauts on a giant spaceship who are accidentally woken up 90 years early from hibernation that grossed more than $300 million globally but drew so-so reviews.
The piece opens at the Greenwich Village, New York gay bar Pieces, where we’re told Lawrence tackled the “Easy On Me” singer to the ground in March 2019 after she lost a heated game of musical shots. The original plan was for JLaw to meet Adele at a concert, but since Lawrence was already at Pieces, she suggested the singer meet her there instead. Though both women are careful about their public exposure while out on the town and frequently disappear for months, or years, at a time when not on-cycle, they decided Pieces was a fine place to let loose.
And, according to the article, they did just that, with Adele competing in an onstage drinking game that prompted the very competitive Lawrence to yell, “How could you lose?,” before the aforementioned public takedown. They even indulged in a bit of karaoke, which is a gutsy move when your partner is a Grammy-winning global superstar whose album releases are massive cultural events. Lawrence, however, is a frequent presence at Adele’s concerts, including a cameo at last year’s star-studded “Adele: One Night Only” special.
Lawrence, 32, will return to screens this weekend with the Apple TV+ drama Causeway. Speaking to the Times, she dove into the period in her mid-20s after her run as the star of the Hunger Games franchise when suddenly her movies were not clicking with audiences as much and she could feel like they were losing interest. “I was like, ‘Oh no, you guys are here because I’m here, and I’m here because you’re here. Wait, who decided that this was a good movie?’,” she said.
As she enters a period of higher exposure following the Feb. 2022 birth of her first child with husband Cooke Maroney, Lawrence told the Times her carefree night out with bestie Adele was proof that she’s moved on from being afraid of the tween Hunger Games fans who got too in her head for a while.
“I can tell things are different by my interactions in the real world, just by the way that I can move about life,” she told the paper. “There’s an occasional article about me walking out in Ugg boots, but other than that, the interest has lessened, God bless it.”
Peacock is gearing up to release its Pitch Perfect spinoff series, Bumper in Berlin, on Nov. 23, and the streaming service unveiled the official trailer for the show on Wednesday (Nov. 2).
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In the clip, Adam Devine reprises his role as Bumper Allen, the former leader of the Treblemakers. He gets a call from Pieter from Pitch Perfect 2‘s Das Sound Machine (played by Flula Borg), inviting him to come to Germany to launch his music career after a video of his went viral on the Internet. Devine then reunites with his Modern Family co-star Sarah Hyland, who plays his assistant. Lera Abova and Jameela Jamil also star in the series.
“To think this journey began over 15 years ago – from the discovery of Mickey Rapkin’s book, to three incredible films, and now a television series,” said Elizabeth Banks, who returns as an executive producer on the project after acting in all three Pitch Perfect films and directing Pitch Perfect 2. “We could never have imagined the life that this story would take on. It was really important to us that Bumper in Berlin be recognizable to the fans, for its irreverent comedy and phenomenal music, but also entirely distinct from what you’ve seen before.
“We wanted to honor The Barden Bellas and the Pitch Perfect world, while expanding into a fresh and brilliantly weird character journey,” she continued. “This story is about second chances, friendship, and the idea that your dreams can come true in unexpected ways – anywhere in the world, at any point in your life.”
Watch the new trailer below, and sign up for Peacock here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIbx-Rj0MpY