State Champ Radio TV/Film
Page: 301
While RuPaul’s Drag Race‘s set of 16 new racers start their engines, the guest judging panel is ready to declare the best drag queen the winner.
On Monday (Dec. 19), RuPaul’s Drag Race officially unveiled its new slate of celebrity guest judges for the season 15. Alongside previously announced premiere guest judge Ariana Grande, Ru will be joined on the judges panel by stars including Maren Morris, Janelle Monáe, Hayley Kiyoko, Orville Peck, Ali Wong, Amandla Stenberg, Harvey Guillén, Julia Garner and Megan Statler. Meanwhile, beloved past guest judge Ts Madison has been upped to become a rotating member of the permanent judges’ panel, alongside Michelle Visage, Ross Mathews and Carson Kressley.
To celebrate the big announcement, Drag Race also unveiled the first official trailer for season 15, giving fans their long-awaited first look inside the workroom. Throughout the new trailer, the 16 new queens enter the work room and begin to compete in what looks to be a series of fan-favorite challenges (including a photoshoot mini-challenge as well as a talent variety show) before serving their looks on the runway.
The new slate of guest judges and trailer come on the heels of RuPaul’s Drag Race’s move to MTV after spending four years on the Viacom sister channel VH1. Season 15 also boasts more queens on a single season than ever before, now competing for the highest cash prize on a main season of the show — $200,000.
RuPaul’s Drag Race season 15 premieres Friday, Jan. 6, at 8 p.m. ET on MTV. Check out the official first trailer above.
MTV Entertainment Studios is teaming up with Glass Entertainment Group for the brand-new docuseries MTV’s Family Legacy, which will dive into MTV’s most celebrated events and iconic artists through the eyes of their children.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
The intimate docuseries will capture musicians through the lens of their kids, with exclusive footage and brand-new interviews with the children of beloved music stars, including Van Halen’s Sammy Hagar, Backstreet Boys’ Brian Littrell, *NSYNC’s Joey Fatone, Boyz II Men’s Nathan Morris, TLC’s Chili, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Brandy and Melissa Etheridge. The kids of late legends The Notorious B.I.G. and Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington are also featured in the series, which will be narrated by actor and musician Quincy Brown, the son of Al B. Sure and Diddy’s late ex Kim Porter.
While the MTV’s Family Legacy docuseries doesn’t arrive until 2023, a special around the series is set to premiere as part of the monthlong “We Speak Music” programming on MTV starting Dec. 19.
In other big news for MTV, RuPaul’s Drag Race announced a “global expansion” of its brand, which includes a new deal that will see the flagship show move over from VH1 (its home for the last six years) to MTV for its long-awaited 15th season.
In alphabetical order, season 15 of RuPaul’s Drag Race will see Amethyst, Anetra, Aura Mayari, Irene Dubois, Jax, Loosey LaDuca, Luxx Noir London, Malaysia Babydoll Foxx, Marcia Marcia Marcia, Mistress Isabelle Brooks, Princess Poppy, Robin Fierce, Salina EsTitties, Sugar and Spice all compete for the title of America’s Next Drag Superstar — as well as a newly increased cash prize of $200,000.
On Sunday afternoon (Dec. 18) , Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney, Hunter Schafer and Maude Apatow took part in an awards season Q&A for their hit show Euphoria, accompanying a screening of season two’s fifth episode, “Stand Still Like the Hummingbird.”
The episode was largely seen as the season’s breakout, as Golden Globe nominee Zendaya’s Rue runs throughout the night to evade police, drug dealers and her mother’s attempts to bring her to rehab — while also revealing Cassie’s (Sweeney) secret relationship with Nate (Jacob Elordi). Creator Sam Levinson had originally written an entirely different version of the season, but Zendaya said that the plan for this stand-alone episode always remained pretty constant.
“There was a much sadder ending to this season, and so we were thinking, ‘We can’t leave her here, she means too much to us,’” Zendaya told the crowd inside the Paramount Theater. “I think, collectively, as a people, we all needed a little bit of hope. We needed something to look forward to, some goodness and some joy, and trying to find that in a very painful time,” as they worked on the second season amid the pandemic.
“That felt very relevant to, I think, a lot of people, but also important to me when it comes to Rue. I want people to know that there is something beautiful inside of her, whether she can see it at that time or not,” the star and executive producer continued. “So then, he proceeded to completely change the ending, and it ended in the most beautiful way and the most incredible performances that you guys brought to life that blow my mind. And really, the idea [is] that art can save lives in many ways. So it went through many iterations, but I’m grateful where it ended, and I’m grateful for all the stories that were then shared with me after that ending.”
The cast also discussed each of their characters’ arcs in that pivotal episode (which originally aired in February) and the logistics of that Rue run (which surely played a part in Zendaya’s second Emmy win in September). With a third season on the horizon, the stars were also asked what “euphoria” looks like to each of their characters going forward.
Sweeney said that for Cassie it would be a family, as “she’s looking for a family in everyone else. She looks for it and her friends, she looks for it in the guys,” and Apatow said for Lexi it’s “freedom from yourself and your thoughts and negative thoughts, negative self-talk. Once that’s out of the way. you can realize your full potential, and I think that’ll probably [be] hers: stop attacking herself.”
“Each of these characters have their own vice in a way, and I think the product of Jules’ vice that she’s looking for is closeness with other people and feeling affirmed in that closeness without any judgment or real connection and safety in that connection,” Schafer added for her character. “I think she finds it in not the best ways a lot of the time, but I think end of the day, it’s what she’s looking for — what she knows is there with, Rue but there’s stuff in the way; what she knows is with her dad, but there’s stuff in the way; what she knows could be with Elliot, but he’s an addict and everything.”
Finally, Zendaya said for Rue, her one wish “is literally just to be able to be alive and maybe enjoy it.” She said Rue feels like she’s always drowning and hopes that she can, for a moment, just be able to breathe and keep her head above water with “a little bit of happiness and a little bit of joy.”
“And I know that she can do it because Sam wrote it, and Sam is Rue, and he’s done it,” Zendaya continued, as her character is famously based off of the creator’s own struggles with addiction. “He’s proof that there is hope for Rue and anyone like Rue, and from the beautiful letters and people who have reached out — I am so grateful for those experiences when somebody comes up to me, and they speak about Rue and how they’ve connected to her or whatever part of their healing journey she has been able to be a part of. To me that is the greatest, greatest gift I can ever ask, it gives me euphoria and purpose in what I do.”
“I just hope for a little bit of joy and for her just to be able to breathe and love without the fear of losing,” she added. “I mean she’s gonna have to go through some things, yes, but you know, we’ll get there.”
This article originally appeared on The Hollywood Reporter.
Jessica Chastain says a scene was altered in George & Tammy with the help of co-star Michael Shannon to give country icon Tammy Wynette more agency in the Showtime limited series.
In the first episode of the series, based on Wynette’s personal and professional relationship with fellow musician George Jones, the duo is confronted with their future while Wynette is still married to her soon-to-be ex-husband Don Chapel.
In an interview with Marie Claire, the actress and producer on the Golden Globe-nominated show shared that, in an early outline of the scene, Jones gets Wynette alone by distracting Don with an escort. For Chastain, the sequence around this moment was upsetting.
“I read it, and I was deeply disturbed,” Chastain recalled. “[Tammy] was just kind of sitting there. People were creating stuff so she could be caught rather than her making decisions.”
Giving the country music icon and voice behind hit “Stand By Your Man” agency in her narrative was incredibly important to Chastain. “The song isn’t about being a doormat,” she said of Wynette’s famed single. “And the reality is Tammy Wynette was married five times.”
Ultimately, the subplot was nixed and during filming, Shannon would make a tweak of his own, changing a line that implied George didn’t acknowledge Wynette’s agency in their physical relationship into one that underscored it.
“[Michael] changed the line from, ‘Yes, I’m going to f— her’ — excuse the language — to ‘I sure would like to,’” Chastain remembered. “The second he said, ‘I sure would like to,’ it was like, ‘Oh, yes, this is happening.’ Because he sees her as someone who gets to make the decision. And that’s working with an actor who’s very aware he doesn’t own me.”
Shannon, who worked with Chastain on 2011’s Take Shelter and celebrated their shared collaborator Guillermo del Toro during his recent MoMA career tribute, said the line switch was a byproduct of them being “so in tune with one another.”
“The notion of sitting in front of another man and looking at a woman and proclaiming that you’re going to f— her seems a little neanderthal to me,” he said. “I mean, if I was the woman in question, I wouldn’t enjoy that so much.”
The scene is ultimately just one way Chastain saw to not just assert Wynette’s choices and humanity in the limited series about her life and relationship — “she made decisions in her life,” the actress noted — but ensuring she was equally respected within the storytelling.
“To be a producer, and to have a production company, means you get to police that in the writing,” she said. “You get to say, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa. We need to honor women as human beings. And they make their own choices — just like men do.’”
This article originally appeared on The Hollywood Reporter.
Austin Butler brought his “casual” version of Elvis to Saturday Night Live, and SNL cast member Sarah Sherman graced the stage as “Jewish Elvis.”
Sherman’s “Jewish Elvis” was the star of Butler, Cecily Strong, and Ego Nwodim’s retirement home in a sketch Saturday night. Butler dressed like a grandma and appeared to be the performer’s biggest fan in the theater — even revealing a T-shirt under her blouse with her catch phrase, “This is a zizzaster!”
“The first night of Hanukkah, they really kick things off with a bang,” Strong says in the clip below.
“Oh my god, I’m so horny I’m gonna friggin’ explode,” exclaims Butler, who was the host of SNL for the night in an episode that featured Lizzo as musical guest.
“Oh! I’m like Niagara Falls over here,” adds Butler later in the sketch. “My chair is gonna friggin’ drown. Ruin me, Jewish Elvis!”
Butler at one point throws a pair of underwear on stage, and at another jumps on stage to kiss Sherman’s Elvis. (The actor starred as Elvis Presley himself in Baz Luhrmann’s film released this year.)
Watch the “Jewish Elvis” sketch to see how the retirement home performance ends.
Cecily Strong is the latest cast member to depart NBC’s Saturday Night Live.
Strong’s final show will be Saturday night’s (Dec. 17) edition. The news was announced Saturday on SNL’s social media accounts (see below).
She joined the sketch show, executive produced by Lorne Michaels, in 2012, its 38th season. Over the years, she created such characters as “The Girl You Wish You Hadn’t Started a Conversation With at a Party” and impersonated such celebrities as Kendall Jenner, Megyn Kelly and Liz Cheney.
It’s understood that the plan had been for Strong to return for only the first half of the current season. Fans had noticed her absence from the opening credits of the season premiere in October, but at the time she was appearing in The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles and thus was unable to tape SNL in New York.
Strong next stars in the second season of AppleTV+ Schmigadoon!, which is also executive produced by Michaels. She also took a hiatus from SNL while filming that series.
Strong follows on the heels of other cast members who have recently left SNL, including Kate McKinnon, Aidy Bryant and Pete Davidson.
Saturday night’s SNL features host Austin Butler and musical guest Lizzo.
It sounds like Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again director Ol Parker might be ready to take a chance on pursuing another film in the musical franchise.
Parker, who helmed Universal Pictures’ 2018 follow-up to director Phyllida Lloyd’s 2008 hit Mamma Mia!, told Screen Rant in an interview published online Saturday (Dec. 17) that producer Judy Craymer has always intended to make a film trilogy. Craymer has credits on both films and also the ABBA-centric jukebox musical of the same name, which was the basis for the first movie and has had runs on the West End and Broadway.
“Judy Craymer, the genius producer behind the musical and the first two films, always plans for it to be a trilogy,” Parker teased. “That’s all I can say. The first one made an enormous amount of money, and I think we made a fair amount too.”
The Ticket to Paradise filmmaker continued, “I know that there is a hunger for a third, and I know that she has a plan. Wouldn’t it be lovely?”
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again brought back such castmembers from the first film as Meryl Streep, Amanda Seyfried, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgård, Dominic Cooper and Christine Baranski, along with adding new players including Lily James and Cher.
In her review for The Hollywood Reporter, film critic Leslie Felperin noted that the sequel’s selection of ABBA tunes was less notable than that of the first: “Indeed, the movie’s biggest failing is that so much of its soundtrack, the very engine that propels it, is made up of far too many actual B-sides, or at least lesser-known tunes from the back catalogue of Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, the two Swedish singer-songwriters who made up half of the 1970s pop quartet ABBA.”
Here We Go Again collected $395 million worldwide, which was well below the 2008 film’s $609 million global take.
This article originally appeared on The Hollywood Reporter.
Austin Butler tried to make a quick visit with Jimmy Fallon to get some advice before his SNL hosting gig this weekend. Instead of finding Fallon, he found an Elvis on the Shelvis in a skit for The Tonight Show.
“Who is this?” Butler — who starred in a biopic about rock ‘n’ roll icon Elvis Presley — asks in the skit, picking up the doll off the mantle.
Elvis on the Shelvis, played by Fallon, then comes to life for a musical performance.
“Well, I move around the house when I’m a-home alone/ You did what you did/ You done what you done/ Elvis on the Shelvis never tell no one,” Fallon’s Elvis sings.
“You’re going on the top of my tree,” Butler says after the Elvis on the Shelvis show.
Butler’s SNL episode with musical guest Lizzo airs Saturday (Dec. 17) on NBC.
Watch his clip with Fallon below.
Donald Glover is finally getting a Spider-Man movie. It’s just not quite what you think.
Glover is attached to star and produce a feature set in Sony Pictures’ Spider-Man universe of Marvel Comics characters, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter.
Myles Murphy, the son of actor and comedian Eddie Murphy, is on board to write the project, which has no title but is said to revolve on the Hypno-Hustler, one of the more obscure Spider-Man villains.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Created by Bill Mantlo, the writer who also created Rocket Racoon, and artist Frank Springer, Hypno-Hustler was very much a product of the disco music scene when he first appeared in Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man No. 24 in 1978. His real name was Antoine Delsoin, the leader of a band called the Mercy Killers and used hypnosis technology in his instruments on his audience in order to rob them.
Hypno-Hustler is not considered one of Spider-Man’s top villains — in fact, he regularly shows up on worst supervillains lists — but sources say Glover sparked to the musical aspect of the character and the fact that he has less Marvel canon baggage, freeing him to greater interpretations. The project could be anything from a disco period piece to a re-imagined modern hip-hop version or even a cyberpunk future play. Adding to the spark was Murphy’s take, whose details are being kept below the bass clef.
Glover’s name has circled Spider-Man for years, with fans clamoring for him to portray Spidey, particularly in 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man. That didn’t happen — Andrew Garfield landed the role as Peter Parker — but Glover did voice Spider-Man/Miles Morales in the Disney XD series Ultimate Spider-Man in 2015. He also appeared in a very brief role in Tom Holland’s Spider-Man: Homecoming. (A deleted scene from the movie pointed to him playing Miles Morales’ uncle.)
Sony, which owns the film rights to the Spider-Man and related characters, has a whole slate of film based on not just villains but also heroes that make up the Spider-Man family. With movies such as Venom and Morbius under its belt, the studio has Kraven the Hunter set for an Oct. 6, 2023 release. Hero projects in development include Madame Web and Spider-Woman.
Glover is repped by WME and Johnson Shapiro. Murphy is also repped by WME.
This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.
All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.
A new generation of Duttons emerges in 1923, the latest addition to the Yellowstone franchise, premiering Sunday (Dec. 18) on Paramount+.
Helen Mirren and Harrison Ford star as Jacob and Cara Dutton in the prequel series exploring the Dutton family’s life during the early 20th century, amid pandemics, historic drought, the Great Depression and Prohibition.
The cast of 1923 includes Darren Mann, Michelle Randolph, James Badge Dale, Marley Shelton, Brian Geraghty, Aminah Nieves, and Jerome Flynn. 1923 is the latest Yellowstone prequel to land on Paramount+ after 1883, starring Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, debuted last year. All three shows are created by Taylor Sheridan.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
How to Watch 1923 on Paramount+
1923 is expected to drop on Sunday at midnight PT (3:00 a.m. ET) for Paramount+ subscribers in the U.S. and Canada. The show will debut on Monday, Dec. 19, for subscribers in the U.K. and Australia.
Additionally, the premiere episode of 1923 will air on the Paramount Network directly after Yellowstone on Sunday. If you don’t have cable or satellite, you can access the Paramount Network on Philo, SlingTV, DirectTV Stream, FuboTV, Vidgo and other streaming platforms that offer live TV.
Paramount+ starts at just $4.99 a month, plus you’ll get the first week free. Subscribers have the option of streaming Paramount+ from Prime Video and ExpressVPN allows you to stream from outside of the U.S.
Looking for a streaming deal? There’s still time left to save 50% on the Paramount+ annual plan dropping the price down to $24.99 for the year (offer ends Jan. 2, 2023). Paramount+ is also free for Walmart+ members and T-Mobile offers a year of free Paramount+ with select mobile and internet plans.
Paramount+
$4.99/month
Stream original shows, movies, sports and more on Paramount+, including The Game, Mayor of Kingstown, At Midnight, 1883, The Challenge: All Stars, Behind the Music, Ink Master, Fantasy Football, Monster High, and Star Trek: Prodigy.
Watch the trailer for 1923 below.
