State Champ Radio TV/Film
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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
James Corden got emotional on Tuesday night (Nov. 1) while remembering the Migos‘ Takeoff, telling viewers that he was “utterly devastated” to hear the news about the rapper’s killing on Monday morning. “It’s heartbreaking to anyone who knew him and to all of his fans around the world Takeoff was… oh man, he was funny and kind,” the Late Late Show host said of the 28-year-old MC who was gunned down at a Houston bowling alley by an as-yet-unknown assailant on Halloween night.
Corden said his most vivid memory of the time he spent with the rapper was “how much he loved music. He lived for it and it was that love of much that essentially willed Migos into existence,” he said of the drive that helped the Atlanta trio rise from cooking up early tracks on Windows Movie Maker video editing software to landing a string of Billboard Hot 100 hits with such indelible songs as “Stir Fry,” “Versace” and “Bad and Boujee.”
He noted that bandmate and uncle Quavo himself said that Takeoff was the strongest member of the group, which also includes Takeoff’s second cousin Offset. “They called him Takeoff because he’d record his verses often in just a single take,” Corden said, calling the trio one of the “most influential” rap groups of their generation. “Takeoff helped define trap music and he put it on a national stage.”
Counting himself lucky to have spent time with Takeoff over the past few years, Corden recalled that the “warm and generous” rapper even had a personal nickname for his late night pal: Big Drip. “We have lost someone incredibly special today,” Corden said. Migos made a number of appearances on the Late Late Show over the years, including a classic 2018 visit for a “Carpool Karaoke” segment (see below).
The trio’s label, Quality Control Music, took to Instagram on Tuesday to mourn the loss of the rapper. “It is with broken hearts and deep sadness that we mourn the loss of our beloved brother Kirsnick Khari Ball [Takeoff’s given name], known to the world as Takeoff,” a statement posted to the label’s social media read. “Senseless violence and a stray bullet has taken another life from this world and we are devastated.”
Takeoff was at a private party at 810 Billiards & Bowling in downtown Houston with Quavo around 2:35 a.m. when investigators say shots rang out during an afterparty attended by around 40 people. Takeoff was pronounced dead at the scene, and two other victims — a 23-year-old male and 24-year-old female — checked themselves into a hospital with non-life threatening injuries. Houston police said the incident is still under investigation, encouraging anyone who was there or has any information to come forward to help authorities crack the case.
Check out Corden’s monologue and the Migos’ “Carpool Karaoke” episode below.
If you caught a glimpse of Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell’s promo clip for their upcoming holiday movie musical Spirited on Monday (Nov. 1) and something seemed a bit off with their voices there’s a very good reason. “I’m excited for you to see our movie musical, Spirited,” Reynolds says in a halting, foreign-sounding voice as he lounges by a roaring fire with his co-star.
“Now, we want to dispel the rumors that we didn’t do all the singing ourselves. This is 100% pure Ryan and Will here,” Ferrell explains for the doubters out there who wonder how two comedic geniuses not known for their vocal abilities were tapped to topline the Apple TV+ original film that turns the beloved Charles Dickens holiday tale A Christmas Carol on its head.
Reynolds asks for a brief break just a few second in, during which he hops on his walkie talkie to speak with someone in the recording studio. “Get your act together, your lip synching is for s–t,” the Deadpool star berates the heavily accented voice-over artist who is clearly doing all the talking for the two actors. The camera then cuts to none other than Milli Vanilli singer Fabrice Morvan, who, along with late partner Rob Pilatus is best known for the lip synching scandal that resulted in the duo being forced to return their best new artist Grammy in 1990 after it was revealed that they didn’t sing in concert or on their hit records.
“Sorry Ryan, it’s been a long time since I’ve done this,” Morvan sighs. The full trailer for the film that also stars Octavia Spencer dropped on Wednesday morning (Nov. 2); Spirited hits theaters on Nov. 11 and premieres on Apple TV+ on Nov. 18. In the re-imagining, Reynolds plays Clint Briggs, who turns the tables on the Ghost of Christmas Present (Ferrell) in a remix of the Dickens tale of hope and regret that, for the first time, tells the story from the three ghosts’ perspective.
Spirited was directed by Sean Anders (Daddy’s Home) and features original songs by Oscar-winners Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (La La Land).
Check out the Morvan bit and the full movie trailer below.
The Voice is doing three-way knockouts for the first time this season, and on Tuesday night (Nov. 1), three of John Legend‘s best team members went head-to-head-to-head for a spot in the competition’s next round.
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First up, Ian Harrison took views down a more alternative route with a smooth rendition of Young the Giant‘s “Cough Syrup,” before Omar Jose Cardona took on Imagine Dragons‘ “Radioactive,” which led to a standing ovation from Legend and fellow coach Camila Cabello. Morgan Taylor wrapped things up with a fresh, feminine take on the James Brown classic, “I Got You (I Feel Good).”
“You got a problem now, don’t you?” Blake Shelton told Legend after the three impressive performances.
The “All of Me” singer then began to address his contestants directly. “Ian, you sound like you should be making alternative records. No question,” he told Harrison. “But when you perform live, you need to make sure people feel it, not just vocally but physically. I think that’s the only thing that’s missing.”
Legend then told Taylor, “You started to open people’s eyes to how amazing you can be, and that’s exciting. You just nailed it, it was so good.”
Lastly, he gushed over Cardona’s performance, telling the singer, “You were building the performance and holding back in the right moments and then unleashing the dragon when necessary. You just built a journey in that short time.”
Fans will have to wait until the episode tonight to see who wins the knockout round, but check out the performances exclusively on Billboard below. The Voice airs at 8 p.m. ET/PT on NBC.
No one but OutKast could make us shake it like a Polaroid picture. Kique, however, shakes it with his very own style.
Robert “Kique” Gomez, a Miami-based Cuban singer, stepped into the Knockout Round of NBC’s The Voice on Monday night (Oct. 31), for a reboot of OutKast’s classic 2003 single and nine-week leader on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
The teen did it his own way, inserting a new groove, style and some low, low notes.
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Just 18 years of age, Kique opened Team Gwen’s three-way knockout, going up against Destiny Leigh (performing Christina Aguilera’s “Impossible”) and Rowan Grace (Billy Joel’s “Vienna”).
“One of my favorite things to do is change songs,” Kique remarks. “I really want Gwen to see that I’m not just a singer. I’m also a musician. I like to create compositions and make music and change things and make them my own.”
With his switcheroo, he got the place jumping and created for himself a good chance of staying the distance in this competition.
John Legend enjoyed what he heard. “For you to take that song and do what you did with it was so audacious,” the EGOT star says. “Truly one of the most compelling performances we’ve seen in three rounds on this show.”
“If this was a video game,” Camila Cabello notes, “you just skipped 20 levels today. For you to do a cover that was on the cutting edge of a song that was on the cutting edge was, like, Inception. I felt like a star was born. It was beautiful to watch.”
Stefani was left with a “very hard decision” decision to make. In the end, she sent Kique through to the live rounds.
“Kique is just a very unique type of singer, and I can’t wait to see what we do together next,” she explains.
It’s not all over for Rowan Grace, a student at Rapid City Central High School, who earned Blake Shelton’s steal.
Watch below.
Still running up that hill! Nina Dobrev and Shaun White treated their fans to a spooky surprise by dressing up as Vecna and Max Mayfield of Stranger Things for Halloween.
“Happy halloween,” the Vampire Diaries actress captioned the video on Instagram, which depicted the lovebirds reenacting the now-famous scene set to Kate Bush‘s “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” from season four of the Netflix sci-fi hit.
In the clip, the Olympic snowboarder steps into Sadie Sink’s character with help from a long red ponytail, ’80s-style windbreaker, Walkman and fake blood running from his eyes. Meanwhile, Dobrev goes all-out as Jamie Campbell Bower’s big bad from the Upside Down in a head-to-toe costume rendering her completely unrecognizable.
Thanks to its inclusion in Stranger Things, Bush’s defining single from 1985 earned a massive second life more than 35 years after its initial release, becoming one of the biggest radio hits of the summer and roaring all the way to No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. The new wave anthem also blew up into a 21st century hit all over the world, reigning atop the charts in Bush’s native U.K., Australia and beyond.
The resurrected success of the song even led to the famously reclusive Bush giving a rare interview to the BBC back in June, during which she said, “It’s so exciting. It’s quite shocking really, isn’t it? The whole world’s gone mad.”
After Max escaped Vecna’s clutches, “Running Up That Hill” was also remixed for the trailer teasing the final episodes of season four in July.
See Dobrev and White’s take on Nancy and Vecna below.
Justin Timberlake fans might just cry Ryan Murphy a river when they find out which Glee character the show creator had in mind for the pop star. In a revealing Monday (Oct. 31) appearance on a new podcast called And That’s What You REALLY Missed, the show’s creator dropped a bombshell on Gleeks everywhere: The character of choir director Will Schuester was originally written for JT, not Matthew Morrison.
“When we were writing the pilot — I’ve never really talked about this — that pilot was written for Justin Timberlake,” Murphy told the podcast’s hosts Kevin McHale and Jenna Ushkowitz, who starred on Glee as Artie Abrams and Tina Cohen-Chang, respectively. “Mr. Schue was written for Justin.”
That was all Murphy could divulge before the episode ended. However, more of McHale and Ushkowitz’s interview with the Emmy Award-winning screenwriter will be shared in a second episode next week.
The Timberlake tease wasn’t the only revelation Murphy shared before the episode wrapped, though. The American Horror Story creator also revealed that Glee was originally imagined as being much darker, and that Mr. Schue was first written as a drug addict.
The first ever script that would eventually become Glee was written by the show’s co-creator Ian Brennan, whose friend presented the script to Murphy at a gym. “Like serendipity, I went to the gym and I was in a towel and a guy went up and handed me a script and he said, ‘I had a feeling you were in show choir, am I right?’ And I was like ‘Yeah,’” Murphy shared with Ushkowitz and McHale, who brought up that Mr. Schue had also inappropriately touched his students in early imaginings of the show.
“Mr. Schue, I believe, was a crystal meth addict in Ian’s script,” Murphy added. “The NC-17 version of show choir with a weird protagonist who was unraveling.”
Listen Ryan Murphy talk about Justin Timberlake in the full episode of And That’s What You REALLY Missed below:
Back before she was a world-renowned pop star, actress, mental health advocate and documentary-maker, Selena Gomez was teen witch Alex Russo, star of Disney Channel’s Wizards of Waverly Place. Ten years have passed since the show wrapped, but in a recent Instagram photo, she revealed that she went back to her roots by revisiting the real-life place where her former character used to live: Waverly Place in New York City.
Gomez revealed that she’d taken the sacred pilgrimage to the Greenwich Village street where Wizards took place in a nostalgic Saturday (Oct. 29) post. In her photo, she’s standing in front of Julius’ — a famed gay bar stationed at the corner of Waverly and 10th Street — gazing up at a tall street sign reading “WAVERLY PL.”
“Where it all began,” she captioned the post.
As expected, fans who grew up watching Wizards could barely handle all the feels attached to the “Lose You to Love Me” singer’s sentimental tribute. “DONT DO THIS TO ME,” commented one, while another wrote, “CRYING U CANT DO THIS.”
Gomez starred on the sitcom from 2007 to 2012, during which she and castmates David Henrie, Jake T. Austin, Jennifer Stone, Maria Canals-Barrera and David DeLuise filmed four seasons and a feature-length movie. In 2013, they reunited for a one-off TV special called The Wizards Return: Alex vs. Alex.
Since then, the Grammy nominee has starred in and produced a number of screen projects, including Only Murders in the Building — the second season of which debuted on Hulu in June. Gomez is now gearing up to release a documentary on her mental health struggles titled Selena Gomez: My Mind and Me on Apple TV + Nov. 4. She also recently announced that she’d be dropping a single of the same name one day prior to the film’s premiere.
See Selena Gomez pay tribute to Wizards of Waverly Place in her new Instagram post below:
Jennifer Coolidge definitely thought Ariana Grande‘s Halloween costume was the best in show this year. After the pop star revealed on Instagram Friday (Oct. 28) that she had dressed up as the Emmy winner’s character from the 2000 mockumentary comedy Best in Show — and even recreated some of the movie’s scenes with former Victorious costar Liz Gillies — Coolidge took a moment to share her approval.
“This is f—–g great,” commented the actress, who previously made a cameo in Grande’s 2018 “Thank U, Next” music video. “I was gonna go as the young boy’s pet weasel from The Watcher, but now I think I’m gonna go as @arianagrande’s dog, Toulouse.”
“@theofficialjencoolidge we thank you, we love you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” replied Grande. “And miss you so.”
In her post, which was also shared to Gillies’ account, Grande is captured in hilarious photos and videos cosplaying Sherri Ann Cabot, a ditzy poodle owner played by Coolidge in Christopher Guest’s fan-favorite film about a collection of people with dreams of winning the upcoming Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show. The Dynasty star dressed up as Jane Lynch’s character, Christy Cummings, a dog trainer who helps Sherri Ann prepare her dog for an event — before the two become an official couple and start a magazine aimed at lesbian purebred dog owners.
“Happy Halloween,” Gillies captioned the joint post. “We did this in May.”
Not only did the two stars recreate the likenesses of Coolidge and Lynch, they also dressed up as a handful of other Best In Show characters and recreated a number of scenes from the film. In one, they reflect on losing the Mayflower competition and starting their magazine, named American Bitch.
“We didn’t win the Mayflower…it was devastating,” Gillies says. “But the silver lining of this cloud, of course, is that it brought us to a new level in our relationship.”
“Mmhmm,” chimes in the “Positions” singer, nailing her impression of Coolidge’s voice.
See Ariana Grande and Liz Gillies all dressed up as Jennifer Coolidge and Jane Lynch in Best in Show below:
