Entertainment

The group of 30 men who will compete for Michelle Young‘s heart on The Bachelorette season 18 has been revealed.

Young, a 28-year-old fifth grade teacher and former Division I college basketball player from Edina, Minnesota, will meet a group that includes a professional football player, two firefighters, a mathematician, two personal trainers and someone who describes himself as a “pizzapreneur,” which we can only assume is a combo of the words “pizza” and “entrepreneur.”

She will also have help from former Bachelorettes Tayshia Adams and Kaitlyn Bristowe, who will return as co-hosts.

Young first appeared as a late arrival to Matt James‘ season of The Bachelor earlier this year. During James’ After the Final Rose special, it was announced that she and her fellow contestant Katie Thurston would be the franchise’s next two Bachelorettes. Thurston’s season ended with a proposal from Blake Moynes last month.

Young’s season of The Bachelorette premieres Tuesday, Oct. 19, at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.

Meet the 30 men who will vie for Michelle’s heart:

Alec, 29, an engineer from North Charleston, South Carolina
Brandon J., 26, a traveling nurse recruiter from Portland, Oregon
Brandon K., 29, a brand manager from Austin, Texas
Bryan, 31, an NFL player from Chicago, Illinois
Casey, 36, an advertising creative director from Miami Beach, Florida
Chris G., 28, a motivational speaker from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Chris S., 28, a commodities broker from West Hollywood, California
Clayton, 28, a medical sales rep from Columbia, Missouri
Daniel, 26, a firefighter from Austin, Texas
Edward, 27, a wellness coach from Los Angeles, California
Garrett, 33, a tech CEO from Salt Lake City, Utah
Jack, 30, a former Army officer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Jamie, 32, a biotech CEO from San Diego, California
Joe, 28, a real estate developer from Minneapolis, Minnesota
JoMarri, 26, a personal trainer from Fresno, California
Leroy, 27, a biomedical Ph.D. student from Dallas, Texas
LT, 38, a yoga guru from Bellevue, Washington
Martin, 29, a personal trainer from Miami, Florida
Mollique, 36, an academic administrator from San Diego, California
Nayte, 27, a sales executive from Austin, Texas
Olu, 27, an IT analyst from Newark, New Jersey
Pardeep, 30, a neuroscientist from Brooklyn, New York
Peter, 26, a pizzapreneur from Port St. Joe, Florida
PJ, 30, a firefighter from Houston, Texas
Rick, 32, a medical sales rep from Los Angeles, California
Rodney, 29, a sales rep from Rancho Cucamonga, California
Romeo, 32, a mathematician from New York City, New York
Ryan, 30, an environmental consultant from San Jose, California
Spencer, 25, a financial crimes analyst from Cleveland, Ohio
Will, 28, an academic interventionist from Grand Rapids, Michigan

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Girls creator and star Lena Dunham‘s secret London wedding to musician Luis Felber was an intimate affair, where sources tell the New York Post that Taylor Swift was the guest of honor.

Swift didn’t perform at the ceremony, held in the Soho section of London’s West End under strict COVID-19 protocols and also due to Dunham’s various health issues, but she did deliver a speech.

The “Wildest Dreams” singer attended without her longtime boyfriend, actor Joe Alwyn, according to the outlet.

Swift has been a longtime friend and fan of Lena and even cast the actress in the 2015 music video for, “Bad Blood.”

Dunham and Felber, both 35, began dating earlier this year.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

With the first elimination of the Dancing with the Stars season looming heavy over the ballroom, the pressure was palpable on the dance floor.  However, the journey came to a screeching halt for Cobra Kai star Martin Kove, who failed to impress the judges during his ballroom debut.

Kove reacted to his elimination by telling host Tyra Banks he was “beyond belief” that he was going home.

While the ballroom has lost a little of its fighting spirit with the actor’s dismissal, two front runners for the Mirrorball Trophy emerged Monday night when The Talk co-host Amanda Kloots and Nickelodeon star JoJo Siwa ended the night tied on top of the leaderboard.  

For Kloots, she honored her late husband Nick Cordero by dancing an emotional foxtrot to their wedding song, “It Had to Be You,” of which he sang to land a role in Bullets Over Broadway — the musical where they first met.

“This song holds such a special place in my heart, and our wedding will always remain in my mind as one of the happiest times of my life,” Kloots told the camera and bravely smiled through her graceful routine that landed her the highest score of the season, a 32 out of 40.

Siwa also brought the judges to their feet with her vivacious cha-cha to Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande‘s “Rain on Me” and proved that she and pro dance partner Jenna Johnson are a force to be reckoned with.  

Another notable dance came from Melanie “Sporty Spice” C, who enjoyed a surprise shout out from Ringo Starr following her upbeat foxtrot to “Here Comes the Sun.”

Ringo wasn’t the only celebrity who crashed the night.   Earlier in the show, NBA legend LeBron James also taped a special shout out for Imam Shumpert, which aired after his rumba.

The most memorable moment of the night, however, happened mere hours before the competition kicked off, with Peloton instructor Cody Rigsby and partner Cheryl Burke having to take a step away from the competition to quarantine after the latter tested positive for COVID-19 despite being vaccinated.

Because the two were in isolation, the judges were tasked to judge one of their rehearsal videos of their salsa.  All four agreed that, while the routine lacked the polish, it was enough to secure Cody and Cheryl another week in the competition.

Both assured the audience that they are feeling okay and are looking forward to competing next week.

Dancing with the Stars will celebrate all things Britney Spears when it returns next Monday at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.  

Here are the current standings:

JoJo Siwa, Nickelodeon star, with Jenna Johnson — 60/80
Amanda Kloots, The Talk co-host, with Alan Bersten — 60/80
Melanie C, Spice Girl, with Gleb Savchenko — 57/80
Suni Lee, Olympic Gold medalist, with Sasha Farber — 56/80
Melora Hardin, The Office actress, with Artem Chivensky — 53/80
Olivia Jade, influencer, with Val Chmerkovskiy — 52/80
Kenya Moore, Real Housewives of Atlanta star, with Brandon Armstrong — 50/80
Michael “The Miz” Gregory, WWE superstar, Witney Carson — 50/80
Christine Chiu, Bling Empire actress, with Pasha Pashkov — 49/50
Cody Rigsby, Peloton instructor, with Cheryl Burke — 48/80
Matt James, former Bachelor, with Lindsey Arnold— 46/80
Brian Austin Green, Beverly Hills, 90210 alum, Sharna Burgess — 47/80
Jimmie Allen, country music singer, with Emma Slater — 49/80
Imam Shumpert, NBA player, with Daniella Karagach — 46/80

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Saturday Night Live is making some cast changes before its upcoming 47th season: Beck Bennett, who joined the cast in 2013, and Lauren Holt, who was made a featured cast member last season, are out. 

The Emmy-winning sketch show also announced the addition of new featured cast members Aristotle Athari, James Austin Johnson and Sarah Sherman. Meanwhile, Bowen Yang and Chloe Fineman — both of whom, incidentally, do double duty on Awkwafina Is Nora from Queens — have been upped from featured performers to the main cast.

Saturday Night Live returns on October 2 with host Owen Wilson and musical guest Casey Musgraves. The show’s other returning cast members are Aidy Bryant, Michael Che, Pete Davidson, Mikey Day, Heidi Gardner, Colin Jost, Kate McKinnon, Alex Moffat, Kyle Mooney, Ego Nwodim, Chris Redd, Cecily Strong, Melissa Villaseñor, and the show’s most-senior star, Kenan Thompson.

On his Instagram, Bennett wrote, “Love you, SNL. Gonna miss you so much. Thank you for 8 years
of remarkable people and incredible experiences that completely changed my life. I had so much fun,” and also shared pics of some of his favorite memories and folks behind the scenes, including his last table read with Mooney, and, well, his “nipps.”

Holt hasn’t acknowledged the career change on her social media.

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by Saturday Night Live (@nbcsnl)

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NOTE LANGUAGE) Dancing with the Stars pro Cheryl Burke announced on her Instagram that although she’s vaccinated, she tested positive for COVID-19 and as such won’t appear on tonight’s show — and likely the following week’s, either.

She says learned the news on Sunday, and admitted she’d “been feeling progressively worse” before she got tested.

“I feel so bad. I feel so bad for Cody,” she said of her celebrity partner, Cody Rigsby. “I feel like I’m letting him down. I just feel like s***.” 

“It’s so overwhelming,” Cheryl admitted, then tearfully continued, “I just hope I didn’t spread it. For those of you who don’t think COVID is a real thing, it’s f****** real, dude.”

Burke, 37, was said she needs to quarantine for 10 days. “I’ll be in bed,” she commented. “I can’t believe this happened.” 

Burke also lamented, “I’m fully vaccinated. Fully Moderna vaccinated. This is crazy.”

(Video contains censored profanity.)

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by Cheryl Burke (@cherylburke)

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

On Monday’s The View, Joy Behar explained Friday’s dramatic episode, in which co-hosts Sunny Hostin and Ana Navarro were unexpectedly pulled out of the studio ahead of an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. 

“It was a mistake of some sort,” Behar said at the show’s open Monday. “I’m happy to report that Sunny and Ana’s Friday results turned out to be false positives and everyone is safe, healthy, and COVID-free. No one got it,” Behar explained, to applause.

On Friday, the pair apparently gave positive COVID-19 tests before the chat with Harris, forcing the sit-down to proceed remotely. 

The View‘s executive producer Brian Teta also appeared Monday and apologized for how abruptly the situation came to pass on-air. “It was just an unbelievable set of circumstances,” Teta maintained. “We found out moments before we came back on the air.”

He added, “I really want to acknowledge and apologize to Sunny and Ana…they were in this position where they had this information put out on television, and then to make it even worse it turned out not to be true later on.”

Hostin said the affair was “particularly triggering,” because she’d lost an in-law to the virus. “So you can imagine how I felt thinking that I could possibly be COVID-positive and my family could experience another loss…,” she said, and further explained that her surgeon husband had to be pulled out of the operating room and her children’s school was notified following her false positive. 

Navarro said she felt guilty because she’d spent time before the interview with Harris’ family members. “I’m thinking, ‘I’m Typhoid Mary and I’m going to wipe out the entire Harris family in one week,'” she joked.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Will Smith is speaking candidly about his unconventional marriage with wife Jada Pinkett-Smith.

In a new GQ magazine cover story, which includes excerpts from Smith’s upcoming memoir, Will, Smith reveals that he and Pinkett-Smith didn’t always practice monogamy in their marriage.

“Jada never believed in conventional marriage…Jada had family members that had an unconventional relationship,” Will says of his wife of 23 years. “So she grew up in a way that was very different than how I grew up. There were significant endless discussions about, what is relational perfection? What is the perfect way to interact as a couple? And for the large part of our relationship, monogamy was what we chose, not thinking of monogamy as the only relational perfection.”

Smith, who shares son Jaden, 23, and daughter Willow, 20, with Jada, says he and his wife decided to do a Red Table Talk about their relationship as a way to protect themselves from “public scrutiny” following singer August Alsina‘s comments that he and Jada had an affair.

“The pursuit of truth is the only way to be happy in this lifetime,” Will shares. “And we sort of came to the agreement that authenticity was the release from the shackles of fame…”

Smith believes that their openness has allowed for “trust and freedom.”

“Marriage for us can’t be a prison,” Smith says. “And I don’t suggest our road for anybody. But the experiences that the freedoms that we’ve given one another and the unconditional support, to me, is the highest definition of love.”

During the interview, Smith also admits that he’s been working with an intimacy coach and that one of his greatest fantasies was to have a harem of girlfriends — which included Misty Copeland and Halle Berry.

Smith says he eventually realized, “That would be horrific.”

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

When one is playing a god-like character, it’s safe to say you say you can’t prepare by sitting around with Pringles and Netflix. Lee Pace certainly didn’t do that to play the magnificently fit emperor of the galaxy in Apple TV+’s Foundation. 

“We started shooting before the pandemic and and I was lifting a whole lot of weights, and then the pandemic started, and I basically cleared off a corner of the barn and did a bunch of yoga,” Pace tells ABC Audio about how he got into shape to better look the part. “I did yoga every day for about two hours. And that was my kind of, you know, throughout the entire quarantine, through that time.”

The regimen helped both Pace’s body, and his acting.”It was such an opportunity to think about my health, to think about, you know, this character that I was playing and really kind of think about…you know, your balance, thinking about what you’re stretching, thinking about a specific part of the body and how you can control it,” he says. I thought so much about the character and what the limits of control are, the fantasy of what control is.”

In the series, Pace’s Brother Day confronts the reality that his family’s grip over the galaxy is under threat, because he learns that every empire eventually falls.

“That’s what the character is, he’s about control,” says Pace. “It’s like, you know, trying to hold sand in your hand. It’s a slippery thing. You can try to keep it, but you won’t be able to.”

Foundation, also starring Chernobyl’s Jared Harris, is now streaming on Apple TV+.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Netflix unfurled its “global fan event” TUDUM over the weekend, and as one would guess with a three-hour run-time, there was lots to talk about — including video peeks at new and returning series, and premiere date anouncements.

The event began with an action scene in which the streaming giant’s celebs like Lilly Singh, Army of the Dead‘s Matthias Schweighöfer, Stranger Things stars Galen Matarazzo and Millie Bobby Brown, William Zabka and Ralph Macchio from Cobra Kai, and more were frantically hunting for their missing TUDUM — that is, the introductory sound you hear when you click on Netflix. 

After a global search and lots of cellphone calls, the sound was restored, thanks to Lupin star Omar Sy, this time with the show’s titular thief posing as an Internet repairman.

As noted, the special afforded fresh peeks at upcoming shows and movies on Netflix, starting with an exclusive action scene: a fight between Ryan Reynolds and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson vs. Gal Gadot in their forthcoming movie Red Notice. 

The special also gave Stranger Things fans new content to pore over. It was the same for watchers of The Witcher, as well as other returning hits like Bridgerton, Emily in Paris, Ozark, Money Heist, Tiger King 2 and others, and also revealed a teaser for the sequel to Chris Hemsworth‘s action hit, Extraction. Spoiler alert: As the trailer reveals, his character, Tyler Rake, survived the original’s cliffhanger ending.

The TUDUM event also gave sneak peeks of anticipated new projects, including the live-action adaptations of Neil Gaiman‘s The Sandman and the anime classic Cowboy Bebop, the trailer to Schweighöfer’s Army of the Dead prequel Army of Thieves, and others that will be rolling out this year and well into the next.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Former Grey’s Anatomy star Katherine Heigl is speaking out again, in a social media post in which she revists past comments that branded her “difficult” to work with.

In a lengthy post emblazoned with the logo of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), the strike-bound showbiz union representing tens of thousands of behind-the-scenes workers, Heigl threw her support behind the union’s push for fairer working conditions. 

“They have been family…and I have always and will always continue to support and stand by them,” Heigl noted.

“…[O]ver ten years ago I was very vocal about the absurdity of the working hours crews and actors were being forced into by production. Even Diane Sawyer…not so kindly informed me ‘no one feels sorry for you.'”

“I very publicly and for many…years after got my a** kicked for speaking up,” the actress continues. “I let myself be convinced that I was wrong…That speaking out made me seem ungrateful or precious or as if I were ‘biting the hand that fed me’.”

Today, Heigl declares, “…that nasty insecure voice in me has started to go from a roar to a whisper….So I speak up today and say with zero hesitation or regret…14, 16, 17, 18-hour workdays are NOT safe….They can not and should NO longer be tolerated.”

“The number of people who have fallen asleep at the wheel is staggering,” Heigel asserts. “The number of accidents that happen on set due to exhaustion is shocking…There is nothing glamorous or sexy about working past the point of exhaustion. There is nothing, NOTHING that warrants pushing yourself into an early grave.”

Her post was liked nearly 200,000 times as of Monday morning, by fans, union members, and industry supporters. 

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by Katherine Heigl (@katherineheigl)

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.