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TV/Film

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Jeremy Allen White has already picked up two Emmys for playing a chef. Now, the buzzy actor is eyeing his first Oscar nod as he morphs into Bruce Springsteen. On Monday (Oct. 28), Disney’s 20th Century Studios shared the first look at The Bear actor as The Boss in Deliver Me From Nowhere, a new […]

Olivia Rodrigo is celebrating the release of her new concert film.
During the premiere of Olivia Rodrigo: Guts World Tour in Los Angeles on Friday (Oct. 25), the 21-year-old pop star walked the red carpet in support of her forthcoming movie, which was filmed over two shows at L.A.’s Intuit Dome in August.

The singer-songwriter, who graces the new cover of Billboard, took a moment to reflect on the Guts World Tour film, reminisce about her recent Billboard photoshoot, and the discuss the support she’s received from friends like fellow musician Chappell Roan, who was in attendance at Friday’s premiere.

“I love all my friends who make music and it was so sweet that some of them came by to support me. It means the world,” Rodrigo told Billboard News‘ Tetris Kelly.

Other stars in attendance at the L.A. event included singer-songwriter Laufey, actress Xochitl Gomez, and alt-pop artist Remi Wolf.

Trending on Billboard

Asked what type of advice she’s given to Roan, who’s been outspoken about her mental health issues, Rodrigo said: “She actually gives me so much advice on taking care of myself and being me in an industry that’s so overwhelming sometimes. I really appreciate her. If I give her any advice, I’m not so sure. But I get a lot from her.”

Rodrigo also reflected on the photoshoot for her recent Billboard cover. “It was incredible. We shot that whole cover right before a show. I was worried, ‘Like, I don’t have a lot of time,’ but I love the photos. It turned out great. Your team killed it, thank you,” the “Vampire” singer said.

Guts World Tour premieres through Netflix on Tuesday (Oct. 29). The film documents Rodrigo on her trek in support of her sophomore album, Guts, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in 2023. Over the past year, the Guts World Tour has traveled through North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

“I’ve never actually gotten to watch the Guts World Tour,” Rodrigo said on the red carpet. “It’s a really fun experience and I just love everyone that’s involved with the show so much — all my band and all my dancers. I’m just such a fan of them, so I was just watching it admiring them the whole time.”

And what’s her favorite part of the new concert film? “I’m so excited for everyone to watch ‘All-American B—-,’” she said. “That was my favorite one to perform.”

Watch Billboard‘s interview with Rodrigo at the Guts World Tour L.A. premiere on Instagram below.

The latest person to join the cast of Adam Sandler’s upcoming Happy Gilmore sequel is Mr. Rager himself: Kid Cudi. As announced Friday (Oct. 25) by Deadline, the rapper is officially set to appear in the Netflix follow-up to the 1996 cult-classic film, which stars Sandler in the title role as an amateur golfer. Details […]

Pianos anchor both Abigail Barlow’s and Emily Bear’s Los Angeles apartments. Self-described “Barbie girl” Barlow, 25, has a shiny magenta lacquered Yamaha U1, as brightly hued as her hair and her bedazzled Stanley mug. The “old-ass” Steinway upright — a refurbished turn-of-the-century specimen purchased from “a random warehouse downtown” — belongs to 23-year-old Bear.
It would be tempting to assume that the two musicians are polar opposites, based on their instruments as well as their backstories. Barlow is a pop singer-songwriter who first dreamed of becoming “a musical theater actrice”; Bear was a wunderkind classical and jazz pianist, a Quincy Jones protegée who played for Beyoncé on the Renaissance tour and was intent on writing film/TV scores. And while both entered the industry in their teens, it wasn’t until a mutual friend introduced them in 2019 that they started writing songs together. Their creative partnership (and friendship) has been, as Barlow says, “just like alchemy,” ever since.

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, Barlow & Bear co-wrote The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical Album, inspired by the book series and hit Netflix drama, which became a viral sensation, racking up 60.3 million on-demand U.S. streams, according to Luminate, and winning the duo the best musical theater album Grammy Award in 2022. (Netflix sued the pair that July for copyright infringement when it put on a live, for-profit performance of the album at the Kennedy Center; the suit was reportedly settled out of court a few months later.) But now, their collaboration is about to hit the mainstream. Barlow & Bear’s music for Moana 2, in theaters Nov. 27, will make them the youngest (and only all-women) songwriting duo to create a full soundtrack for a Disney animated film. Two of their songs — “Beyond,” a soaring showcase for star Auli’i Cravalho (Moana), and “Can I Get a Chee Hoo?” for Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (Maui) — will, Disney reveals, be submitted for Academy Award consideration.

Trending on Billboard

Like much of the musical theater-­loving world, Walt Disney Music president Tom MacDougall first became aware of Barlow & Bear as a team through Bridgerton. (For Bear, it was also a full-circle moment: As an 8-year-old pianist, she had met MacDougall, who gifted her a Tangled score signed by storied composer Alan Menken that still hangs on her wall.) About three years ago, he met them for lunch to “sort of put it on our radar that he might have a project for us,” Barlow recalls. She and Bear didn’t expect much to come of it — but MacDougall was impressed by the storytelling in their Bridgerton music. “That spirit of deciding to musicalize this thing that wasn’t a musical gave me the confidence they could pull [a Disney film] off,” he says. “If they could conjure up the spirit to create songs where they didn’t exist, I had a good feeling that if we gave them moments to build songs around, they’d be able to deliver.”

Abigail Barlow (left) and Emily Bear

Maggie Shannon

A year later, in 2022, Barlow & Bear met with the creative team for Moana 2 — a sequel to the 2016 animated film about the titular young girl who sets out to save her Polynesian island — which was then planned as a Disney+ streaming series. “Both of us, weirdly, were going through similar struggles to what Moana faces in this new journey,” Bear explains. “It was easy to put ourselves in her shoes and understand that she’s just a young woman trying to find her place in the world, as are we.”

Around the middle of last year, Disney reenvisioned Moana 2 as a feature film — by which point Barlow & Bear were immersed in learning the ropes of composing for Disney, absorbing some imparted wisdom of their Moana composing predecessor, Lin-Manuel Miranda. “He gave me a stack of books about how to structurally craft a lyric not only to be storytelling-­accurate, but to roll off the tongue, to fly off the page and into people’s minds and hearts,” Barlow says.

For her part, Bear dove into the treasure trove of foundational material from Moana by their soundtrack teammates, composers Opetaia Foa’i (a Samoan-born singer whose Polynesian music group, Te Vaka, performs on both Moana soundtracks) and Mark Mancina. “They recorded a huge library of logs and skins and vocal samples, so there were grooves that inspired entire songs,” Bear says. “Even if we started or wrote a song on our own, the root of it was still Opie.”

Though Barlow and Bear both admit that working on Moana 2 still feels surreal, they don’t have much time to soak it in: They’re booked and busy, in part because of that Grammy win. But both say the award’s significance to them was more symbolic. “We grew a lot as human beings through the whole [Bridgerton] process, and becoming like, ‘mature, professional girlie’ was something my soul desperately wanted and needed,” Barlow says. Bear agrees. “I’ve done a lot, but mostly as a kid, and for some reason that felt like it didn’t really count. I’ve been working so hard to outrun the ‘prodigy’ label,” she says. “[The Grammy] was really big for me because it was the first time people purely judged me based off music I did as an adult.”

Abigail Barlow (left) and Emily Bear

Maggie Shannon

Their post-Moana 2 slate as a duo includes the forthcoming biopic of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers starring Jamie Bell and Margaret Qualley and their first produced stage musical, currently in development with a creative team attached. Bear (who is also an Emmy winner for her score for the PBS documentary Life) has scored two forthcoming films: Anderson .Paak’s feature debut, K-Pops, and Our Little Secret, a Netflix Christmas film starring Lindsay Lohan. Barlow, with a chuckle, says she may soon “release the album I wrote, like, a year-and-a-half ago.”

And then there’s the mystery “little musical idea” that first brought them together, a “very production-heavy” show “bringing you down the rabbit hole of what pop musical theater can be… which is very dear to us,” Barlow says with a knowing grin. It’s a reminder of the excitement they felt when they first met — and still feel in any session together. “We’re in love, musically,” Barlow says, “for real.”

This story appears in the Oct. 26, 2024, issue of Billboard.

SZA is super stressed out in the first trailer for her upcoming film debut in the buddy comedy One of Them Days. The R-rated movie co-starring Keke Palmer focuses on a super relatable problem: paying the rent. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news According to a description of […]

Megan Thee Stallion is still in shock that nobody told her how great Sex and the City is.
The rapper and singer shared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon Wednesday (Oct. 23) that she just recently started watching the iconic series starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon and Kim Cattral.

“Nobody told me Sex and the City was this good?” Stallion quipped. “I’m pissed. Nobody said, ‘Megan, you should be watching Sex and the City. Girl, this for the culture. Watch it! I don’t even know how I like stumbled upon it. I think I just kept seeing like pictures of Sarah Jessica looking pretty as f—.”

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She continued, “Her hair, her shoes, her outfits were always so beautiful. And I was like, what is this show? Let me just watch it, let me get into it because nobody put me on. So I started watching the show and I’m like, I cannot look away. This is the best thing! I’m watching it while I’m working out, I’m watching it while I’m in glam, I’m watching it when I don’t have nothing else to do, and I’m a busy girl. I’m like squeezing Sex and the City in there. And I’m like asking everybody, ‘Have you seen Sex and the City?”

Trending on Billboard

The “Body” artist later informed host Jimmy Fallon that she has yet to see the 2008 Sex and the City movie as well as its 2010 sequel.

“The way Sex and the City ended, you know, I was a little upset, and they said, ‘No, no, no, no, no, you have to watch the movie.’ And I say, ‘OK, take me there because I don’t understand what’s happening,’” she said.

Fallon also asked Meg if she would be open to sharing her reviews for each of the show’s characters, including Carrie [Parker], Samantha [Cattral], Charlotte [Davis] and Miranda [Nixon], and she didn’t hold back on her thoughts.

Up first was Samantha: “When Sex and the City first started for me, I said, ‘Oh, I hate this character.’ Like why are y’all making her like, oh my God, sex is like the ruler of my life. And it’s like, I’m just so desperate. I was like, this is horrible, this is a horrible character. But then as the show kept going, I was like, ‘OK, hold on. Wait a minute.’ I’m glad I hung in there, because she runs men. Like she does not let men run her and she keeps trying to tell the girls, like stop making the man the center of your life. Like go shopping, have a good time, make your money and then have fun with your little toys. And I’m like, yes, I did that.”

As for Charlotte, Stallion said, “She is a little delulu, but it’s cute. She would be my bestie because she’s so emotional and I feel like it’s OK to cry. It’s OK to be a little crazy. She might be a cancer in the show, her character has to be a cancer… I’m sorry, cancers, but y’all are very emotional and I feel like caners and Aquarius go together very well.”

Miranda was next on the list: “Miranda, this is the worst character on the show. I cannot stand Miranda. She never got nothing good to say. She’s so sad all the time … How could anybody even fix their lips to be mean to Steve [David Eigenberg] and Miranda figured out a way to be mean to Steve. The only thing Steve ever wanted to do was love this crazy lady.”

And for Carrie, Stallion added, “Her hair is good, her makeup is great. I’m pretty sure this dress is great paired with a pair of Manolos. Like she’s always attractive, doing these sick old things. She’s nuts. But you know what [Laughs]? I see a lot of myself in this character, like Carrie really loved drama. Like she would literally wake up and figure out how can I mess up everybody’s day? How can I be my cutest messing up everybody’s day? How can I make my life more complicated? Simply, she could have always made the right choice. She could have chosen sanity, but she always chose insanity. And then I had to wonder, is that me?”

Sex and the City, which ran from 1998 to 2004, follows the lives of four women living in New York City as they navigate love, friendship and sex in the big city, all while remaining inseparable and confiding in each other. A series spinoff, And Just Like That, which sees Parker, Davis and Nixon return, has also been renewed for a third season.

Via 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. Sailor Moon made its TV debut in 1992 but decades later continues to remain integrated in pop culture — especially for […]

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. Tricks and treats! Just before Halloween, Netflix and Disney+ are bringing spooky specials to families and highly-anticipated new releases from two […]

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.
Just in time for Halloween. Dr. Martens’ Wednesday Addams collection arrived on Wednesday (Oct. 23), and it’s already selling out online.

The six-piece collection is comprised of boots, loafers, creepers and more inspired by the “moody iconography” of the Netflix series, according to a news release from the shoe brand. The Dr. Martens x Wednesday collection is the latest collab from the shoe brand after the Nine Inch Nails collection released in July.

To capture Wednesday’s vibe, Dr. Martens remixed some of its classics and incorporated design details inspired by the supernatural series such as the stained-glass window seen in Wednesday and Enid’s dorm room and the Nevermore Academy Logo. The shoes also feature phrases such as “Snap Twice” and “Outcasts Are In” and removable charms.

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Dr. Martens x Wednesday

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The full collection includes Jadon Wednesday Platform Boots ($210), Corran Wednesday Heeled Loafers ($170), 1461 BEX Wednesday Platform Shoes ($160), Ramsey Wednesday Platform Creepers ($190), a Wednesday-inspired leather backpack ($140) and knee-high socks ($26).

Dr. Marten’s announced the Wednesday collection last week, giving shoppers a chance to sign up in advance to be first in line for the new release. For those who missed the chance to snag the sold-out Wednesday boots, you can find other things in stock, such as the platform creepers, platform shoes and Wednesday loafers. The collection is available at drmartens.com and in select stores while supplies last.

Jenna Ortega stars as Wednesday in the Netflix series which premiered in 2022. Although Netflix hasn’t announced a release date for the new season, if you’re a fan of the show, you can pass the time with a little retail therapy. Shop Dr. Martens x Wednesday and other merch releases including Wednesday x Crocs, Mattel’s Monster High Wednesday dolls and the Wednesday Little People Collector Set.

Dua Lipa performed a special one-off show at London’s historic Royal Albert Hall on Oct. 17, with the British-Albanian artist and her band joined by a 53-piece orchestra, 14 choristers and, most memorably, Sir Elton John for a performance of “Cold Heart,” the pair’s 2021 smash hit. And now, fans who didn’t get to attend will get to watch it from home.
The show was filmed for a TV concert program set to air later this year. Writing on her Instagram, Dua revealed that the concert will air on CBS in the U.S. and on ITV in the U.K., adding, “I wanted to remember this show forever so we captured it to share with you too”.

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An Evening with Dua Lipa — featuring performances of some of her greatest hits — is set to premiere Dec. 15, and is produced by Fulwell 73 Productions and Radical22. Executive producers for the special include Ben Winston and Sally Wood (Fulwell 73), and Dua Lipa, Dukagjin Lipa and Peter Abbott (Radical22). The concert was commissioned for ITV by Lily Wilson.

During the concert, Dua performed her 2024 album Radical Optimism in full with new arrangements provided by The Heritage Orchestra, conducted by Ben Foster. The show saw live debuts for songs such as “End of n Era” and “French Exit,” as well as singles “Houdini” and “Training Season.” Her entry to the Barbie soundtrack, “Dance Rhe Night,” also got its first live airing.

The setlist also contained performances of “Don’t Start Now” and “Levitating” from her 2020 album Future Nostalgia, and “Be The One” from her 2017 self-titled debut. In the show’s encore, Sir Elton John appeared to duet with Dua on “Cold Heart” to a rapturous response.

Alongside the performance, the show will also include interviews with Dua reflecting on her career and 2024 to date.

This past weekend, Dua performed with musical icon Cher at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony in Cleveland, Ohio. The pair sang “Believe” on the night when Cher was inducted by actress Zendaya, who called her “so iconic, she only needs one name.”

Dua Lipa will head to Asia in November to continue her Radical Optimism tour before it hits the U.S. and Europe next summer.

See Dua Lipa’s announcement and the trailer for An Evening With Dua Lipa below: