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Taylor Swift once dreamed a dream of starring opposite Eddie Redmayne in Les Misérables, but unfortunately, that dream quickly turned into a nightmare.
The 32-year-old pop star was a guest on The Graham Norton Show episode airing Friday (Oct. 28). Also on the couch was Eddie Redmayne, whom Swift recalled meeting 10 years prior during a screen test for Tom Hooper’s 2012 film adaptation of the musical based off Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel.
“Basically I was up for two roles,” the “Anti-Hero” singer explained, according to People and Entertainment Weekly. “I had the look of Cosette and the range vocally of Éponine, so it was established I was there for a good time but not for a long time.”
She went on to say that she knew immediately she probably wouldn’t be cast, but still decided to go through with the screen test knowing she would get to meet Redmayne. The Fantastic Beasts star had already been confirmed for the part of Marius in the film, and Swift said he was one of her “favorite” actors at the time.
“I wasn’t going to get the role,” she told Norton. “[But] this isn’t an experience I am going to get again in my life.”
When she arrived in London to audition next to Redmayne, however, it wasn’t the glamorous cinema experience she’d been expecting. “When I got there they put me in full 19th century street-urchin costume and told me they were going to paint my teeth brown, and I was like, ‘You are going to do that after I meet Eddie Redmayne right?’” she joked.
“They made me look like death and it became a nightmare,” she continued. “When I met Eddie I didn’t open my mouth to speak!”
It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows for the Theory of Everything actor either, though. “I thought we would just be singing off each other — I didn’t know we would be in each other’s arms,” he said. “My overriding memory of it is that I had pizza and garlic dough balls beforehand and all I could think about was my garlic breath while Taylor was dying in my arms and I was trying to show emotion.”
Suffice to say, Tay didn’t get the part. She did, however, end up getting cast in another of Hooper’s films just a few years later. When the director started working on his 2019 live action Cats movie, he immediately thought of Swift, who ended up starring in the project as Bombalurina.
“She rather brilliantly auditioned for Éponine. I didn’t cast her, but I got very close to it,” he told Vulture in 2019. “Ultimately, I couldn’t quite believe Taylor Swift was a girl people would overlook. So it didn’t quite feel right for her for the most flattering reason.”
“I knew she was curious to work on a musical,” he continued. “When [Cats] came up, I wrote to her and just said, ‘Would you like to meet? Would you like to see the world I’m creating?”
The Graham Norton Show episode featuring Taylor Swift and Eddie Redmayne — as well as U2’s Bono — airs Friday at 11 p.m. on BBC America.
Add Stephen Colbert to the increasingly lengthy list of people who are banning Kanye West. The embattled rapper (who now goes by Ye) has seen his once-formidable music and fashion empire crumble to dust, and on Thursday night (Oct. 28) he got the bad news that he will never be invited to visit the Ed Sullivan Theater, either.
In the midst of the outrage over West’s repeated amplification of hateful antisemitic tropes, Colbert tried to inject some levity into what is otherwise a not-at-all funny story about hate speech in the monologue to last night’s show. “After much thought and soul-searching I, Stephen Colbert, am banning Kanye West from the Ed Sullivan Theater,” the host announced grimly to hearty applause from the studio audience.
“Have to. I have to. Line in the sand,” Colbert said before getting serious for a moment and running down a list of completely fake “high profile collabs” the two men have (not) released. Among them: their collection of “spreadable jams” entitled “Strawbeezy Jelleezy,” as well as the now-cancelled release of their duets album, Ye & Phen: Sing Fiddler on the Roof.
“I know this has been too long in coming, I have no excuses for why I didn’t do this before,” Colbert said of the action he took to ban the rapper. Well, maybe one very good one. “Except, perhaps, that he has never been on the show, had no plans to be on the show, we’ve never asked him to be on the show and I am not sure he is aware that I have a show.”
But, Colbert said, he had to take immediate action for fear that Ye might “show up at any moment,” kind of like West did earlier this week when he arrived uninvited at Skechers headquarters and was summarily escorted from the premises. That move came after Ye lost his mega-lucrative deal with Adidas due to the company’s disdain for his hate speech against Jews, a decision that former billionaire West has claimed cost him nearly $2 billion.
“In five years the idea of an unannounced visit from Kanye has gone from ‘Amazing!’ to: ‘sir, you need to leave this Skechers,” Colbert joked. “It gets worse. Unlike with Adidas, Kanye never had any deal with Skechers, apparently Kanye is so desperate he’s just driving around searching Google maps for ‘shoes near me.’”
Watch Colbert’s monologue below.
Quentin Tarantino loves a good tall tale. But on Thursday night (Oct. 28) QT went on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to pour water on a recent stem-winder that Kanye West told in which the embattle rapper (now known as Ye) claimed that he originally conceived the idea for Q’s 2012 historical revamp tribute to Spaghetti westerns Django Unchained.
After West said in a recent interview that he pitched a similar concept to Tarantino while working up the treatment for the video for his 2005 hit “Gold Digger” — which features Jamie Foxx, later the star of Django — Tarantino told Kimmel that’s not exactly how it went down.
“There’s not truth to the idea that Kanye West came up with the idea of Django and then he told that to me, and I go, ‘Hey, wow, that’s a really great idea! Let me take Kanye’s idea and make Django Unchained out of it.’ That didn’t happen,” said Tarantino of the 2009 Ye video that feature the rapper and Foxx frolicking with scantily clad models.
“I’d had the idea for Django for a while before I ever met Kanye,” Tarantino continued. “He wanted to do a giant movie version of [his 2004 debut album] College Dropout the way he did the album – so he wanted to get big directors to do different tracks from the album and then release it as this giant movie – not videos, nothing as crass as videos, it was movies, movies based on each of the different tracks.”
That story differs significantly from the one West told British talker Piers Morgan in a recent interview. “Tarantino can write a movie about slavery, where actually — him and Jamie [Foxx] — they got the idea from me, because the idea for Django I pitched to Jamie Foxx and Quentin Tarantino as the video for ‘Gold Digger.’ And then Tarantino turned it into a film,” Ye said during the interview, in which he also continued to lean into his recent string of antisemitic comments that have caused his once sprawling business and music empire to crumble.
The Hype Williams-directed “Gold Digger” video consists almost entirely of West rapping the song in a raspberry-hued void while Foxx croons the refrain and buxom, lingerie-clad models dance with the men at a nightclub and pose for magazine covers. Tarantino’s controversial Oscar-winning film tells the story of a freed slave named Django (Foxx) who embarks on a killing spree across the South with a German bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) as they search of Django’s wife (Kerry Washington); there does not appear to be any obvious narrative correlation between the “Gold Digger” video and Tarantino’s film.
Which is exactly what QT told Kimmel, though he did reveal that he did have a meeting with Ye that didn’t amount to anything.
“We used it as an excuse to meet each other and and so we met each other we had a really good time. And he did have an idea for a video,” Tarantino said, adding that the kernel could have turned into something. “I do think it was for the ‘Gold Digger’ video, that he would be a slave. And the whole thing was the slave narrative where he’s a slave and he’s singing ‘Gold Digger.’ And it was very funny. It was a really, really funny idea.”
When Kimmel quipped that it sounds like it could have been a “funny slave video,” Tarantino responded, “It was meant to be ironic. And it’s like a huge musical. I mean, like no expenses spared with him in this slave rag outfit doing everything. And then that was also part of the part of the pushback on it. But I wish he had done it. It sounded really cool. Anyway, that’s what he’s referring to.”
Watch Tarantino on Kimmel below.
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.Don’t Worry Darling is now streaming on Prime Video. Amazon’s streaming platform makes it easy for movie lovers to stream newer releases that are still in theaters from home.
To make things even easier, we did some of the searching for you and rounded up a handful of in-theater releases (and movies that recently left theaters) that you can rent on Prime Video and watch on your TV, laptop, phone or another compatible streaming device.
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Prime Video lets users access countless hours of content including action and adventure movies, dramas, comedies, documentaries, sci-fi, mysteries and thrillers, and kid-friendly programs. Not signed up for Amazon Prime? Join today under a free 30-day trial ($14.99 a month after the trial ends) and enjoy tons of great perks such as fast and free shipping, exclusive deals on millions of items and a free one-year subscription to GrubHub+. There’s also an option to join Prime Video by itself (free trial included, but you won’t get as many perks as you would with a Prime membership).
Movie lovers can rent Bullet Train, Top Gun: Maverick, Elvis, Nope, Orphan First Kill, Minions: The Rise of Gru, Jurassic World Dominion, The Black Phone, Everything, Everywhere All At Once and other films on Prime Video for around $5.
Not to be confused with Amazon Originals, which are free to Prime Video members, the majority of the releases listed below cost $19.99 to rent and $24.99 to buy, depending on the film. After deciding on a rental, you’ll have 30 days to start watching the film, and 48 hours to finish once your start.
See the lineup below.
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‘Don’t Worry Darling’
$19.99 (rent)
Don’t Worry Darling centers around a 1950s housewife living in a “utopian experimental community” but cracks in their seemingly blissful life begin to appear, exposing something more sinister lurking beneath the façade. The film is directed by Olivia Wilde and stars Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Wilde, Gemma Chan, KiKi Layne, and Chris Pine.
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‘Bros’
$19.99 (rent)
Billy Eichner, Luke MacFarlane and Guy Branum star in Bros, directed by Nicholas Stoller. Bros is the first gay romantic comedy from a major studio starring openly gay male leads. Eichner wrote, stars in and executive produced the film. Judd Apatow, Stoller, and Joshua Church are producers.
[embedded content]
‘The Silent Twins’
$19.99 (rent)
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever star Letitia Wright and Tamara Lawrence play identical twins in The Silent Twins. The film is based on real-life twins, June and Jennifer Gibbons, who became known as “The Silent Twins” because they only communicated with each other. The sisters endured constant racial bullying in school and were eventually locked up for nearly a decade in England’s notorious Broadmoor psychiatric hospital following a string of petty crimes. Jennifer Gibbons died in 1993.
[embedded content]
‘Beast’
$19.99 (buy)
A widowed father and his two daughters become prey for a rogue lion in Beast, starring Idris Elba, Iyana Halley, Leah Sava Jeffries, and Iyana Halley. Beast is also streaming on Peacock.
“Do you think rock stars are special people?” That’s the question that kicks off the trailer for Taurus, the upcoming music industry drama starring Machine Gun Kelly.
In the video, released Thursday (Oct. 27), the musician otherwise known as Colson Baker plays Cole, a depressed musician on the verge of self-destructing amid his seemingly glamorous L.A. lifestyle. As the events of the trailer get increasingly bleak, Kelly’s character begins writing new music. “I want it to sound far from everything,” he says while seated at the piano with a female collaborator. “Like everything’s upside down.”
The untitled song that then plays over the second half of the trailer finds the Mainstream Sellout singer intoning, “Life imitates art/ Bury me alive/ Disappear underground where they found me/ Before I ever had this career.”
Written and directed by Tim Sutton, Taurus also stars MGK’s real-life fiancée Megan Fox as well as Maddie Hasson, Scoot McNairy and Ruby Rose and will feature a soundtrack of new music by Kelly. The trailer didn’t offer a concrete release date for the flick.
The pop-punk rocker’s previous film roles include 2021’s Midnight in the Switchgrass and 2019 Mötley Crüe biopic The Dirt, in which he played Tommy Lee.
Earlier this month, MGK wrapped up the European leg of his Mainstream Sellout Tour with a show in Amsterdam. This December, he’s slated to play at Tampa, Fla.’s MIDFLORIDA Credit Union Amphitheatre before hitting the stage at Audacy Beach Festival 2022 in Fort Lauderdale.
Watch Kelly’s brooding turn in the trailer for Taurus below.
Girls5eva is getting the band back together and hitting the road — to a new streaming home.
The star-studded comedy, which aired as a Peacock original for its first two seasons, has been renewed for a third round — on Netflix.
Stars Sara Bareilles, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Paula Pell and Busy Philipps will all return for the musical comedy’s third season on the streaming giant. The deal for the series also includes rights to Girls5eva’s first two seasons, which will stream on both Peacock and Netflix. The series is expected to arrive on Netflix sometime next year, ahead of the third season’s debut, in a move similar to what the streamer did when it acquired Cobra Kai from YouTube.
“Our deepest thanks to Peacock for bringing Girls5eva to life and supporting us creatively at every turn since the first pitch. And we are endlessly grateful to our partners at NBCU for their boundless commitment,” said executive producers Meredith Scardino, Tina Fey, Jeff Richmond and Robert Carlock. “Today, we are thrilled to announce that our reunited girl group will be re-reunited at Netflix. We are so thankful to everyone at the streamer who fell in love with our music-filled comedy. We cannot wait to introduce Dawn, Wickie, Summer and Gloria to the global Netflix audience. Well, not fully introduce, if you look closely, Girls5eva can be seen in the background of the Woodstock ’99 documentary setting a porta potty on fire.”
Sources say the show didn’t find an audience on Peacock, the NBCUniversal-backed streamer that also has struggled to cut through a crowded landscape and fierce competition from such other newly launched platforms as HBO Max and Apple TV+. Netflix, which previously rescued the Fey-produced Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt after NBC passed on the straight-to-series comedy, stepped in and made a deal for a third season of Girls5eva with the hopes that its global platform could help the series find an audience in a way similar to the way it did with Pop’s Schitt’s Creek, Lifetime’s You and broadcast rejects Lucifer and Manifest.
Also helping matters was Netflix’s relationship with Fey and Kimmy co-creator Robert Carlock as well as with writers Meredith Scardino and Jeff Richmond. Girls5eva was created by Scardino, who earned an Emmy nomination for writing for the series. Fey, Carlock and Richmond are among the show’s exec producers. Netflix global head of TV Bela Bajaria developed Kimmy during her tenure atop Universal Television, where Fey has been based for years with an overall deal, and eventually sold the show to the streamer after NBC passed on the series that starred Ellie Kemper and ran for four seasons.
Sources also note that Netflix head of comedy Tracey Pakosta originally wanted to buy Girls5eva for NBC when she, alongside Lisa Katz, served as co-presidents of scripted for the broadcast network. Ultimately, the project was earmarked for Peacock and Pakosta, a former Universal TV comedy exec, wound up leaving NBCU to reunite for Bajaria at Netflix.
“We are so happy to bring Girls5eva to Netflix,” said Pakosta, vp comedy at Netflix. “Just like the show, we are so excited to reunite with this amazing team.”
Peacock, meanwhile, will continue to have streaming rights to the first two seasons of Girls5eva and will share them with Netflix. Season three will be exclusive to Netflix. The decision to drop Girls5eva comes as Peacock has struggled to find a platform-defining, must-watch show. Comedy has been especially challenging for the streamer, which canceled critical darling Rutherford Falls and its Saved by the Bell update after two seasons apiece. No comedy has made it to a third season at Peacock. The platform, overseen as part of a content group that includes NBC and various cable networks, has Pete Davidson comedy Bupkis, a Ted reboot and a Pitch Perfect spinoff in the works, among others.
This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.
What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas — mostly because Kourtney Kardashian can’t remember most of it.
The Poosh founder opened up about her unofficial wedding to Travis Barker in Las Vegas on the newest episode of Hulu‘s The Kardashians, explaining that she had a bit too much to drink.
“I blacked out,” Kourtney tells her friend, Simon Huck in the show, later explaining to the camera, “I didn’t even remember Elvis, like, sang to me walking down the aisle. I didn’t remember I had a bouquet.”
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The Elvis impersonator also had the reality TV star in a fit of laugher after he couldn’t get her name right, and kept calling her by her sister Khloe’s name. “When Elvis was marrying us, he was like, ‘I, Khloe, take thee, Travis,’ and I just lost my mind, fell straight on the floor, and we couldn’t get up,” she recalls.
While the wedding seemed like a blast, the later part of the evening took a bit of a turn. “I did throw up after, though, and took my top off and unbuttoned my pants,” Kourtney shares. “I had to walk back through the hotel with a million people taking my photo. I was a hot slob kabob.”
Barker and Kardashian tied the knot earlier this year in an elaborate ceremony in Italy on May 22, 2022, after the unofficial Las Vegas ceremony without a marriage license and their legal marriage in a small ceremony in Santa Barbara, Calif. The over-the-top nuptials were dripping in the couple’s favorite gothic glam aesthetic, with the bride and groom both rocking looks by Dolce & Gabbana on their big day.
Watch the full episode of The Kardashians on Hulu here.
Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton have been bringing laughter, mentorship and hearty competition to season 22 of The Voice, but the husband and wife duo will go their separate ways — as coaches, not spouses — for the show’s next season. Shelton announced his departure from the long-running NBC singing competition earlier this month, which Stefani revealed on Thursday (Oct. 27) makes her feel sad for fans of the show.
“He’s brought so much joy. He’s so talented,” the “Hollaback Girl” singer told Entertainment Tonight. “I know people just wait around to laugh and watch him on TV, so I feel sorry for everybody [that] he’s gonna be gone.”
“It’s so weird Blake Shelton is leaving The Voice. I wasn’t ready, you know what I mean? I have to figure out who this new Blake’s gonna be,” she added. “I’m just so proud of him.”
Speaking with Extra, Stefani explained that she was initially nervous to be working alongside her husband, as season 22 marks her first time working alongside Shelton on The Voice since they married and after a hiatus from the show.
“I was nervous because I hadn’t been on for a few seasons and I hadn’t been on since we were married, and it is different … It’s like, ‘OK, wait, how are we gonna act?’” Stefani admitted. But once the pair was on set together, her nerves faded away.
She added, “It was like nothing … Blake, he would look so handsome because he’s all made up … It was like a flow of, like, memories from meeting him on ‘The Voice’… It was just super natural.”
Watch Stefani talk about Shelton and The Voice below.
Fans across the globe know the Queen Diva of bounce Big Freedia for her high-energy features and larger-than-life dance prowess. But the New Orleans-born star wants you to know that when it comes to her career, she means business.
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On Thursday (Oct. 27), Billboard can exclusively announce that after five years, Big Freedia is finally returning to Fuse’s airwaves with a new series, Big Freedia Means Business. Co-produced with World of Wonder (the production team behind RuPaul’s Drag Race), the show is set to air starting in summer 2023 on both Fuse and Fuse+.
The new show will follow the bounce icon as she navigates the various different business opportunities that have come her way in the last few years, including opening a boutique hotel in the French Quarter, starting her own cannabis line and much more. Another big focus? The show will follow Big Freedia as she prepares to launch her upcoming album.
“The No. 1 question we get at Fuse is, when are we bringing back Big Freedia,” Marc Leonard, Fuse’s senior vp, head of content and marketing, said in a statement. “We are beyond excited to announce that Big Freedia is coming home to where she belongs at a moment when she is ready to scale new heights of success. We can’t wait to share those new triumphs with her legions of devoted fans.”
The last time Freedia appeared on Fuse’s airwaves was with her hit show Big Freedia Bounces Back (formerly known as Big Freedia: Queen of Bounce), which followed the NOLA performer as she attempted to bring her local success to a mainstream audience.
Of course, in the time since the show went off the air in 2017, Freedia has unequivocally achieved that goal. Along with collaborating with the likes of Drake, Kesha, Rebecca Black and plenty of others, Freedia has now become a two-time collaborator with Beyoncé, who sampled the star’s work most recently on her chart-topping Renaissance single “Break My Soul.”
It was date night for the Fenty-Mayers household Wednesday evening (Oct. 26). Hitting the purple carpet for the Marvel Studios premiere of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Rihanna and A$AP Rocky stepped out in matching outfits and shared a few sweet moments of PDA before heading inside the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.
While posing for cameras on the carpet, the couple — who became first-time parents when they welcomed a baby boy together in May — squeezed close together, sometimes holding hands. At one point, Rocky (born Rakim Mayers) leaned in to kiss a grinning Ri on the cheek.
Rihanna and A$AP Rocky attend Marvel Studios’ “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” premiere at Dolby Theatre on October 26, 2022 in Hollywood, California.
Amy Sussman/WireImage
Both stars were dressed in head-to-toe khaki-colored material, with the Fenty Beauty founder sporting a glittering floor-length gown adorned with light-blue trimming, silky opera gloves and open-toe heels. Rocky, on the other hand, rocked a tan oversized jacket and sneakers, with a train extending from his pant legs and billowing out over his ankles — just like the train attached to Ri’s dress.
Rihanna and A$AP Rocky attend Marvel Studios’ “Black Panther 2: Wakanda Forever” Premiere at Dolby Theatre on October 26, 2022 in Hollywood, California.
Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic
The same day the “Love on the Brain” singer attended the film premiere, it was announced that she would be contributing an original song titled “Lift Me Up” to the Wakanda Forever soundtrack. Written in tribute to late Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman, who passed away at age 43 in 2020, the track drops Friday (Oct. 28), marking Rihanna’s first proper music release in six years.
“I wanted to write something that portrays a warm embrace from all the people that I’ve lost in my life,” Tems — who co-wrote the song with Rihanna, Ludwig Göransson and Panther director Ryan Cooglerin — said in a statement. “I tried to imagine what it would feel like if I could sing to them now and express how much I miss them. Rihanna has been an inspiration to me so hearing her convey this song is a great honor.”
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever arrives in theaters Nov. 11.
