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TV/Film

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Anyone who has been involved, even tangentially, in pop duo Tegan and Sara‘s fanbase over the course of the last two decades can attest to just how tight-knit the Canadian performers are with their followers. Seen as a community of like-minded (and largely queer) individuals keen on making safe, inclusive spaces for one another, the Tegan and Sara fan community is commonly lauded as a good example of what pop fandom can look like.
Seated at a desk in her hotel room, Tegan Quin describes to Billboard a very different feeling she’s developed about her fans. “If we’re being truthful and honest, then I have to say that I’m afraid of our audience,” she offers, grimacing as she says it.

It may sound like an odd statement coming from Tegan — that is, until you’ve watched the new documentary Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara (debuting Friday, Oct. 18 on Hulu). Over the course of an hour and a half, Tegan, Sara and documentarian Erin Lee Carr (Britney vs. Spears, Mommy Dead and Dearest) walk audiences through an elaborate scheme that began around 2008, in which an anonymous individual posed as Tegan online and proceeded to exploit, manipulate and harass both the duo and their fans for over a decade.

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Throughout the course of the film, the Quin sisters and Carr detail how Fake Tegan (often referred to in the doc as “Fegan”) hacked the singer’s personal files in 2011, giving them access to everything from unreleased demo recordings to photos of her real passport — much of which they used to convince fans and friends alike that they were the real Tegan. As they try to uncover the culprit, Tegan and Carr simultaneously interview a number of the fans who found themselves on the receiving end of Fegan’s scheme, examining how these scams work, and the emotional toll they take on their victims.

It’s a story that Tegan originally never intended to tell the public — the doc details the band’s efforts to protect themselves and their fans by not giving more voice to the online imposter. But after listening to the hit podcast Sweet Bobby, which details a similar true story of a woman caught in an intricate web of internet deception, she felt the urge to finally speak about her own experience.

“I ended up telling the Fake Tegan story to a friend, and he said, ‘You should write that down,’” Tegan tells Billboard. After writing out everything she could remember from her experience with her catfisher, Tegan approached podcaster and Rolling Stone contributing editor Jenny Eliscu to ask for advice on what to do with it. Eliscu introduced Tegan to Carr, who urged her to tell the story on camera.

“Obviously, I wrote the story, so I was ready to tell the story. Was I ready to hand it off to somebody? Was I ready to have a full film made about this? No,” Tegan says, still squirming in her seat. “I was projecting fear — fear that we’d alienate our audience, fear we would agitate Fake Tegan, fear that people would be like, ‘Who cares?’”

Even before Fake Tegan began terrorizing their community, Sara describes how she and her sister had begun to grow slightly wary about the reality of fame. Where the early days of their career saw the duo regularly interacting with their fans after shows, continued success and more frenzied interactions with fans forced the pair to reconsider their approach.

“It was such a part of indie and punk culture to bro down with the people in the audience, to go sell merch and have a beer with your fans after the show,” Sara says. “To then say at some point that you don’t want to stand outside in the dark with strangers after we’ve played a show and done press all day … those were such small changes we made, but they had such a big cultural punch within our community.”

Enter Fegan; after successfully hacking an iDisk for the pair’s management, the catfish began posing on early message boards and social media sites like Facebook and LiveJournal as Tegan, creating connections, friendships and occasionally even romantic relationships with fans. They would send through unreleased recordings and unposted, personal photos of both Tegan and Sara, using them as supposed proof that they were who they said they were to the fans they were scamming.

In detailing multiple fans’ conversations with Fegan, Fanatical does not aim to criticize or mock people who fell for this scheme — it often does the opposite, taking great lengths to show that, given the right set of circumstances, anyone could be entrapped by a scammer.

Tegan even explains that earlier cuts of the documentary featured an FBI investigator hired by Carr to talk the band and their team through just how complex Fegan’s operation was — and how they created multiple accounts using a variety of different IP addresses to fool everyone. “Witnessing that forensic investigation removed any part of me still thinking, ‘Why would people fall for this?’ This took time and money and sophistication, and yet we so often just go, ‘Well, that person clicked on a link, what an idiot,’” she says. “You can’t watch this film and think that our fans fell for an easy-to-figure-out ruse — Erin was so clear that she wanted people to watch this film and actually feel compassion and empathy for these fans.”

As the documentary goes on, Carr and the Quin sisters begin to examine how fan behavior can turn toxic. The film shows how, as time went on and the band’s fan base grew, online interactions with fans began to grow scarier, where addresses and phone numbers for the band’s family members and significant others would getting posted on message boards, leading to the kind of harassment that’s become all too common for celebrities in the modern day.

“This happens to almost every celebrity [who reaches that level of fame] — actors, politicians, athletes. musicians, you name it,” Sara tells Billboard. “And I think we, as a culture, have to look at the way that we treat people in positions of power and celebrities.”

It’s a refrain with renewed significance in 2024, as artists like Chappell Roan begin to confront the harsh reality of what bad behavior from fans looks like. But Sara points out that this kind of behavior was perpetuated long before Roan asked her fans to leave her alone, and yet we only find ourselves at the beginning of this conversation today.

“What’s the real problem that causes this? Why is it a story right now, and why wasn’t it a story when other people asked to be left alone?” she posits. “This is a product of the culture we’ve created. If we don’t like the behavior — and it seems that most of us don’t like it — then what does that say about the culture we’ve built around art?”

That culture, Tegan notes, was largely built by one specific group of people. “The billionaires that own the record labels and the streamers and the people working for them are guilty,” she says. “They are driving artists to build obsessive, parasocial, frantic fanbases on social media platforms where we basically have to pay to access our mailing lists. So many artists are walking around, millions of dollars in debt so that our fans can listen to music for free on streaming services but spend $5k to go see a show, which only builds even more frantic competitiveness among the fans. Every part of our industry is broken, so I understand why people in the industry say ‘I don’t know how to fix bad fan behavior,’ and then run away.”

In one particularly wrenching scene of the doc, Tegan participates in a tense phone call with a fan (referred to anonymously in the film as “Tara”) who fell victim to Fegan’s scam. In earlier scenes, it’s revealed that this fan also actively fought with and bullied other fans, and even wrote and published a fan-fiction story about Tegan and Sara involving incest.

When Tegan called out this behavior and asked Tara to explain why they would do that, she’s immediately met with a stunning response: “You weren’t affected in that capacity,” Tara said, claiming her actions had no impact on the pop singer’s life. “It barely skimmed the surface.”

As shocking as the scene is, Tegan says that it’s a refrain she heard from multiple victims of Fake Tegan. “[There were] multiple victims who didn’t think that I would care about what was happening to me. That I was rich and famous and didn’t give a s–t,” she explains. “I was like, ‘Oh no! We’re f–ked if we think that just because someone is in a band, they are somehow impervious to judgement and vulnerability and sadness!’”

It’s why, as Sara points out, so many artists feel fear when it comes to their fans. “We seem like we have all the power, and in a lot of cases we do — we have security, and barricades in place [at concerts]. But that security and those barricades are there because we are vulnerable to the mass of people who are coming to see us perform,” she explains. “We don’t say to our audience, ‘Hello, Cleveland! We’re super afraid of all of you, because there are 5,000 of you, and if you decided to, you could overrun Bill, John and Mark here up at the barricade and tear us limb from limb!’ The power structure is weird.”

At the film’s screening at the Toronto International Film Festival, both Tegan and Sara say they found themselves surprised when the audience began laughing during a section of the film that showed social media messages from other fandoms threatening to dox their favorite artists’ critics. While Tegan says they likely laughed because “this is the first time in the film that it’s not about us, and they’re trying to get that nervous energy out,” she couldn’t help but feel a little concerned.

“They were also laughing because that’s just what we do now — we laugh at each other. We watch videos of each other failing and doing stupid s–t and saying dumb s–t, and we take glee and pleasure from that,” she says, sighing. “It’s why I hope people just experience some compassion watching this movie.”

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. Prime Video is bringing the creepy factor all throughout October with a practically endless library of Halloween movies and TV series […]

Gracie Abrams’ Emily in Paris synch earns the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s Top TV Songs chart, powered by Tunefind (a Songtradr company), for September 2024.
Rankings for the Top TV Songs chart are based on song and show data provided by Tunefind and ranked using a formula blending that data with sales and streaming information tracked by Luminate during the corresponding period of September 2024.

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“Close to You” appears in the fourth-season finale of Emily in Paris, the Lily Collins-starring Netflix series. The full season premiered Sept. 12.

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The song earned 21.7 million official on-demand U.S. streams and sold 3,000 downloads in September, according to Luminate. It peaked at No. 49 on the June 22-dated Billboard Hot 100 and ranks at No. 90 on the most recently published, Oct. 19-dated chart.

Rihanna’s “Love on the Brain,” which appears in the debut season of fellow Netflix series Nobody Wants This, places at No. 2 on Top TV Songs. It racked up 16.4 million streams and sold 2,000 in September.

The track, from her album Anti, is heard in the third episode of the series, which stars Kristen Bell and Adam Brody. The single hit No. 5 on the Hot 100 in 2017.

The song is one of three from Nobody Wants This on the 10-position Top TV Songs chart, joined by Frank Sinatra’s “Theme From New York, New York” (No. 8; 3.4 million streams, 1,000 sold) and HAIM’s “Now I’m In It” (No. 10; 515,000 streams).

Netflix continues its domination of Top TV Songs’ top three with Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” at No. 3 after playing in Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. The song, a No. 2 Hot 100 hit in 1987, drew 8.1 million streams and sold 2,000 in September.

The classic also reaches Billboard’s Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart dated Oct. 19 (with older songs eligible to make Billboard’s multimetric song charts if ranking in the top half and with meaningful reasons for their resurgences). It enters at No. 16 and finds its way onto Rock Digital Song Sales at No. 14 and Alternative Streaming Songs at No. 23.

Milli Vanilli’s “Blame It on the Rain,” also featured in Monsters, likewise hits Top TV Songs, at No. 6 (3.4 million streams, 2,000 sold). Catalog gains for the duo — multiple songs by the pair are featured in Monsters — drives its 4 EP onto the Billboard 200 at No. 197 with 8,000 equivalent album units. It marks Milli Vanilli’s first appearance on the chart in nearly 34 years, since the chart dated Oct. 27, 1990.

See the full Top TV Songs top 10, also featuring music from The Penguin, Tell Me Lies and Agatha All Along, below.

Rank, Song, Artist, Show (Network)1. “Close to You,” Gracie Abrams, Emily in Paris (Netflix)2. “Love on the Brain,” Rihanna, Nobody Wants This (Netflix)3. “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” Crowded House, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story (Netflix)4. “9 to 5,” Dolly Parton, The Penguin (HBO)5. “Ms. Jackson,” OutKast, Tell Me Lies (Hulu)6. “Blame It on the Rain,” Milli Vanilli, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story (Netflix)7. “Heads Will Roll,” Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Agatha All Along (Disney+)8. “Theme From New York, New York,” Frank Sinatra, Nobody Wants This (Netflix)9. “The Promise,” When in Rome, The Penguin (HBO)10. “Now I’m In It,” HAIM, Nobody Wants This (Netflix)

Auditions for Simon Cowell‘s Britain’s Got Talent were postponed Thursday (Oct. 17) in light of Liam Payne‘s shocking death the day prior.
The decision was confirmed by Applause Store, which handles ticketing for the talent competition show, on X the morning auditions were set to take place in England. “Due to the tragic passing of Liam Payne, BGT has decided to postpone today’s auditions in Blackpool,” the company wrote. “We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.”

According to the audition venue’s website, Thursday was supposed to have been the final of three back-to-back days’ worth of auditions in the city. At press time, the show has not indicated when the auditions will be rescheduled.

Cowell launched Britain’s Got Talent in 2007, three years after he started the U.K. version of The X Factor. The late “Strip That Down” singer — who died at 31 years old Wednesday (Oct. 16) after falling from the third floor of a hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina — got his start in 2010 on the latter talent program, which placed him in the group One Direction with fellow contestants-turned-bandmates Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik and Louis Tomlinson. The band went on to have four No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200 and six top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 before parting ways in 2015, after which Payne embarked on a solo career.

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In the wake of his death, The X Factor shared a touching tribute to the late pop singer. “We are heartbroken by the sad passing of Liam Payne,” read a message posted to the show’s social media accounts Wednesday. “He was immensely talented and, as part of One Direction, Liam will leave a lasting legacy on the music industry and fans around the world. Our thoughts are with his friends, family and all who loved him.”

Countless musicians, entertainment industry peers and fans have also taken to social media to mourn Payne in the past 24 hours, including Zedd, Paris Hilton, Charlie Puth, the Backstreet Boys, Ty Dolla $ign and more. The “Get Low” artist’s family shared a statement with the BBC Thursday. “We are heartbroken. Liam will forever live in our hearts and we’ll remember him for his kind, funny and brave soul,” the message read. “We are supporting each other the best we can as a family and ask for privacy and space at this awful time.”

See Applause Store’s tweet below.

Due to the tragic passing of Liam Payne, BGT has decided to postpone today’s auditions in Blackpool. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.— ApplauseStore® (@ApplauseStoreUK) October 17, 2024

Cynthia Erivo has seen the internet’s Wicked memes, and she’s not a fan.
On Wednesday (Oct. 16), the singer-actress blasted a few of the viral edits of the upcoming film’s new poster, which finds Erivo staring at the camera as costar Ariana Grande whispers in her ear in a reimagining of the original Broadway poster for the Wicked musical. When the new poster dropped earlier this month, however, some fans were unhappy that it wasn’t a more exact recreation, which led to people editing the new poster so that it looked more akin to the original — but Erivo isn’t letting it fly.

“This is the wildest, most offensive thing I have seen,” said the artist — whose album Ch. 1 Vs. 1 peaked at No 77 on the Top Album Sales chart in 2021 — sharing one of the edits on her Instagram Story. “The original poster is an ILLUSTRATION. I am a real life human being, who chose to look right down the barrel of the camera to you, the viewer …because, without words we communicate with our eyes.”

“Our poster is an homage not an imitation, to edit my face and hide my eyes is to erase me,” she continued. “And that is just deeply hurtful.”

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Erivo added that the edited posters were “equal to that awful Ai of us fighting” — referring to a viral AI-generated video that animates a fight between the EGOT winner and “Yes, And?” singer using their likenesses on the movie poster — and “equal to” a past meme joking about the color of her famously green-skinned character’s private parts. “None of this is funny,” she wrote. “None of it is cute. It degrades me. It degrades us.”

The Pinocchio star plays Elphaba — aka the Wicked Witch of the West — in the upcoming film duology, the first installment of which hits theaters Nov. 22. Grande is locked in as Glinda the Good Witch, with Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh, Jonathan Bailey, Bowen Yang and Ethan Slater rounding out the cast.

After saying her piece on the edits, Erivo shared the Wicked movie’s actual poster on her Story to “cleanse your palette,” she told viewers. About three hours later, Grande also shared the poster on her own Story.

See the official artwork 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.
Travis Kelce may be known for his football skills, but now he’s leaning on his natural charm as the host of Prime Video‘s new game show Are You Smarter Than a Celebrity? The series will join the streamer’s “winning Wednesdays” lineup with a three-episode premiere airing Oct. 16 for a 20-episode run.

Kelce was confirmed as host for the show back in April, with Taylor Swift even making an appearance on set to support the 35-year-old.

Each episode will feature a new contestant vying for a $100,000 grand prize. All they have to do is successfully answer 11 questions with the help of a classroom of celebrities. If the concept sounds familiar, you’re not wrong: Are You Smarter Than a Celebrity? is MGM Alternative’s (a division of Amazon MGM Studios) spinoff of the 2007 game show Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?

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Keep reading to learn the streaming options available.

How to Watch Are You Smarter Than a Celebrity? Online for Free

You can watch Are You Smarter Than a Celebrity? online exclusively on Prime Video. The first three episodes are available to stream, and new episodes will arrive every Wednesday. If you’re already a Prime member, you just need to log into your account and head to Prime Video to watch the game show for no additional cost.

Don’t have a Prime membership? Amazon is offering a 30-day free trial for new users who sign up. You’ll be able to watch Are You Smarter Than a Celebrity? for free in addition to everything else within the Prime Video library. Once the free trial is over, you’ll be charged the regular subscription fee of $14.99 a month, or $139 a year.

Looking for more savings? Adults 18-24 and college students can get a six month free trial and 50% off subscription when you sign up for a student membership. Qualifying government programs can also get you a 30-day free trial and half-off membership fee when you sign up for the EBT/Medicaid membership.

In addition to being able to stream Are You Smarter Than a Celebrity? for free, a Prime membership will let you watch Prime Originals including The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Killer Heat, Fallout, The Idea of You, The Boys, Gen V, My Lady Jane, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Expats, Citadel Diana, Tragically Hip No Dress Rehearsal and The Legend of Vox Machina.

To expand your content options, you can add premium channels to your subscription through the Prime Channel storefront including Paramount+, Max and Starz.

Watch the trailer for Are You Smarter Than a Celebrity? below:

Megan Thee Stallion is ready to tell her story on her own terms and In Her Words. Amazon’s Prime Video gave fans a first glimpse at the candid Megan Thee Stallion: In Her Words documentary when the revealing trailer was released on Wednesday (Oct. 16). Hotties have another reason to celebrate Hottieween, as its shaping […]

BLACKPINK’s JENNIE performed her hit solo single “Mantra” on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Oct. 15, following the song’s recent release. The track marks the singer’s first release since signing as a solo artist with Columbia Records in partnership with her label ODDATELIER in September. Performing packed crowd on Kimmel, JENNIE did not disappoint as she gave […]

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. Good news — Crocs has dropped a collection of official Wicked clogs that’ll finally have you decide whether you’re more of […]

Reba McEntire finds her mini-me on the next episode of The Voice, when 18-year-old country singer Katie O. takes the stage for her blind audition airing Tuesday night (Oct. 14).

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The Jacksonville, Florida, native performs LeAnn Rimes’ 1996 hit “One Way Ticket (Because I Can)” in the audition, premiering exclusively on Billboard below, and her breezy-yet-steady vocal ability, paired with her charming country twang, immediately catches the attention of Gwen Stefani, who turns her chair around within the first few notes of Katie O.’s performance.

Snoop Dogg follows, as do Michael Bublé and country superstar McEntire — much to the dismay of Stefani, who playfully whines at one point, “Why is Reba here?”

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“You got a lot of heart and soul when you’re singing, and you were so cute when I turned around, so I thought that was cute,” McEntire tells Katie O., who was visibly excited to see the “Fancy” singer on her side. “I love that. I love your smile too.”

Stefani, however, put up a good fight by telling the teen, “I pressed my button as fast as I could, as soon as I heard your voice. I really like to work with young girls. … You know what’s crazy? — and it’s before you turned around, Reba — you were moving around, walking around, your voice was so secure and strong and so composed. I would love to have you on Team Gwen.”

Snoop was no help to Stefani’s cause, when he points out how much Katie O. and McEntire are alike. “You know what? When you talk, you sound exactly like her,” the rapper tells the young musical hopeful.

Watch Katie O.’s full audition below, and tune in to The Voice on Tuesday night to see who she picks as her coach. New episodes air Mondays and Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on NBC. Episodes of The Voice stream on-demand via Peacock the next day after they air on TV, but you can also watch live with Peacock Premium Plus.