On the latest installment of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, the eponymous host reacted to her friend Jason Sudeikis‘ SNL sketch spoofing her, called Mellen.
The conceit of the skit was that with more men sitting at home during the pandemic, network executives “took 10 seconds” to come up with a male-skewing alternative for DeGeneres’ long-running program.
The result of the execs’ poor planning was dressing Sudeikis like Ellen, dubbing him Mellen, and ripping off her show. “All the fun daytime energy of Ellen with a hard, masculine edge,” according to the SNL sketch.
The result is an admittedly poorly thought-out combination of vests, “awkward male dancing,” and fistfights in the audience. “Ellen’s lawyers called the series, ‘cease and desist,'” the sketch says.
On her show, the real Ellen explained she was surprised by the sketch, when she and wife Portia de Rossi were watching SNL “as we do every week.” She screened the SNL version for her own audience, and then admitted with a laugh, “I would actually watch that show.”
She then called out Sudeikis, saying, “Jason, when you’re ending Ted Lasso, we should do that show.”
One soon-to-be-wed couple not only enjoyed a nice sunny day for their beachside nuptials — they also received the surprise of their life when actor Tom Hanks crashed their ceremony.
Diciembre and Tashia Farries tell KTTV they were exchanging vows on Santa Monica beach in California when the actor unexpectedly walked up to congratulate the happy couple and their one-year-old son, who was also part of the big moment.
The Farries recall Hanks telling them their nuptials were beautiful and that he had been admiring their ceremony from afar. The actor also asked to take a photo with the couple, telling them he thought they were beautiful.
Tashia, who works as a private celebrity chef, said she was shocked by Hanks’ arrival, even though her job has her working with big-name stars.
However, it was Diciembre who discovered there may have been a special reason why the 65-year-old actor felt compelled to say hello. They told the outlet that their brother had tragically passed away, so they placed his photo on one of the chairs so he could still be part of the moment.
When talking with the actor, Diciembre learned both Hanks and their brother were born on July 9. They told the outlet, “It was like that was a message that he was there!”
Following last Thursday’s deadly accidental shooting involving Alec Baldwin on the set of the film Rust, the actor’s daughter, Ireland Baldwin, has broken her silence.
“Amongst some of the most abhorrent and threatening comments, emails, text messages, and voicemails I’ve been getting… this beautiful comment stands alone. I know my dad, you simply don’t. I love you, Dad,” Ireland shared Wednesday on Instagram, along with a user’s memory of her dad that portrayed him as an unpretentious actor and loving father.
The comment read, “So about a million years ago I was working in the production office in Toronto of the company that was making the Thomas the Tank Engine movie that he did. I’d dealt with typing up some pretty goofy celebrity riders in my day but NOT your dads.”
“He only wanted to make sure he had milk and cereal in his hotel room for when his daughter was visiting. That was it. That was the whole rider. I’ll always remember that,” the woman concluded.
Ireland previously announced that she will be stepping away from social media while her family deals with the tragedy.
Last week, while rehearsing a scene on the set of Rust, Baldwin fired a pistol allegedly containing a live round or other projectile that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injured director Joel Souza. The incident is currently under investigation.
Supermassive Games, the mastermind behind the indie horror survival games Until Dawn and The Dark Pictures Anthology, released their newest installment, House of Ashes, which stars Ashley Tisdale.
Tisdale plays CIA officer Rachel King, who is trapped underground and must escape a hoard of bloodthirsty vampire-like creatures. Rachel’s survival is dependent on the decisions players make during gameplay.
Tisdale, who is not a “huge horror film person,” tells ABC Audio what interested her in starring in a game meant to scare people.
“It looks like a cinematic movie. It’s beautiful,” she raved, adding she wanted to give it a shot because it was “something different and fun. And it was wild!”
Part of Supermassive’s charm is modeling the characters and their mannerisms off the voice actors, but Ashley explained she didn’t put on the motion capture suit or physically act out a scene in order to bring Rachel to life.
“It’s weirdly like a voiceover,” the High School Musical star described, saying it reminded her of working in animation. “If you were acting in a movie, you would be in the scene. You would see those things [you need to interact with,] but you don’t see those things. You are reacting in a studio… You have this camera on your face and you have to pretend everything is around you.”
Now that Tisdale has cut her teeth on her first scary project, it begs to question if she will consider starring in future thrillers.
“I love scary movies around Halloween, but I’ve never had this feeling of like, ‘Oh my gosh, I want to act in a scary movie!’ So probably not,” she laughed. “I don’t know if I’ll keep going in that area.”
House of Ashes is available to play on Windows, PlayStation and Xbox devices.
Netflix has released the preview to its pandemic smash, Tiger King, and in the new trailer, they promise they’ve “only scratched the surface.”
The follow-up will continue the story surrounding all of its main characters, including, obviously, the Tiger King himself, Joe Exotic. In the clip, he calls collect from behind bars, noting “there’s an innocent man in prison.”
Suffering from cancer while incarcerated on a 22-year hitch in a murder for hire plot centering on his nemesis Carole Baskin, 58-year-old Joe continues, “Everybody from the zoo is out there making money, and I’m paying the price for every one of them people. If you give a damn, it’s time to speak up.”
Speaking of Baskin, the mysterious disappearance of her first husband Don Lewis also resurfaces in the clip; Tiger King had fans speculating she had something to do with it. Baskin, now 60, has maintained her innocence in the disappearance in 1997; Lewis was declared dead in 2002.
Netflix’s official description reveals: “With Joe Exotic behind bars and Carole Baskin closing in on ownership of his disreputable zoo, the Emmy-nominated saga continues its twisted course with Tiger King 2 as newfound revelations emerge on the motivations, backstories, and secrets of America’s most notorious big cat owners. Old enemies and frenemies, including Jeff Lowe, Tim Stark, Allen Glover, and James Garretson return for another season of murder, mayhem, and madness. Thought you knew the whole story? Just you wait.”
Alyssa Milano revealed that she and Shannen Dohertyhave buried the hatchet following their decades-long feud.
When asked if she and Doherty are now on good terms, the Charmed alum toldEntertainment Tonight, “I would say we are cordial.”
“I could take responsibility for a lot of our tension that we had,” Milano continued, noting that their relationship started to suffer when they both starred on the supernatural drama. “I think a lot of our struggle came from feeling that I was in competition rather than it being that sisterhood that the show was so much about. And I have some guilt about my part in that.”
As for how the two mended fences, Milano said it began in 2015 when Doherty first announced her battle with breast cancer.
“When I heard about her diagnosis, I reached out to her,” the Insatiable star recalled, and the two started communicating again. “I will send her DMs every couple of months to just check in.”
Milano, who recently released her memoir Sorry Not Sorry, regrets that she missed out on friendship with Doherty and admitted, “I have respect for her. Great actress, loves her family so much, and I just wish I could’ve felt strong enough in who I was to recognize that back then.”
Doherty starred alongside Milano for three seasons on Charmed, before exiting the series in 2001. She was replaced by Rose McGowan.
Charmed ran on the WB, now the CW, from 1998 to 2006 for eight seasons.
Bill Hader was close to shooting the upcoming third season of his Emmy winning HBO series Barry last year when the pandemic shut the production down.
With the show’s filming back underway, and with about a month to go until they’re wrapped, Hader told ABC Audio what it was like to return to shooting after the forced hiatus as star, director, writer and producer.
“Yeah, at first, we were like, ‘Wait, what do we do?’ he said with a laugh. ‘I don’t know, how do I do this?’.
He recalled, “how exhausted I was. You know, just after midway through the first day and it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, I haven’t walked this much…I haven’t stood this much like a year and a half,” the SNL vet laughed.
That said, Hader says he feels “so lucky” to be working with fellow Emmy winner Henry Winkler and the other “phenomenal actors” in the cast.
Hader even joked he asked if he could shoot Barry “from my closet,” like he did when voicing his role as mad scientist Cyrus Strange in the animated Addams Family 2.
A fan of the Barry SonnenfeldAddams Family movies in the ’90s, he thinks the new movie is a blast. “I mean, I think it’s a fun thing to see in a theater just because, you know, as a parent, it’s hard finding those things where you…can all go and see a movie where you actually are also enjoying it.”
He adds, “I’ve done that too, where you take your kids to the theater and you see something and you’re like, ‘Oh God, I have to sit through this.’ And this is actually really fun, from top to bottom.”
Mark Sagliocco/Getty Images for National Geographic
In a press conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico, investigators addressed the latest news concerning the fatal Rust set shooting.
Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendozaconfirmed that “it was a bullet” that struck and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injured director Joel Souza, not a mishap with a blank round.
Sheriff Mendoza stated that a bullet from a .45 Long Colt was recovered from the shoulder of Souza; that was believed to be the same round that fatally struck Hutchins, but it needs to be forensically confirmed.
That projectile was removed from Souza by doctors, and handed over to investigators for analysis, he explained.
Mendoza also mentioned “approximately 500 rounds of ammunition” were recovered from the New Mexico set, including, “a mix of blanks, dummy roundsand what we are suspecting were live rounds.”
Blank rounds contain no lead bullet, but emit a muzzle flash when fired, and can still be harmful without proper precautions.
Dummy rounds are just empty cartridges that are meant to look like functioning bullets.
Live rounds are actual bullets — and have no place on a movie set.
The District Attorney on the case, Mary Carmack Altwies, told journalists that while it’s too early in the investigation to say, charges against Alec Baldwin have not been ruled out.
“If the facts and evidence and law support charges, then I will initiate charges at that time,” she said of anyone involved.
Investigators have already spoken to Baldwin, as well as the movie’s armorer Hannah Gutierrez, as well as the movie’s assistant director Dave Halls, who handed the pistol to Baldwin, after declaring it a “cold” — that is an empty — gun.
Baldwin not only fired the fatal shot, but he was also a producer on the Western.
The People’s Choice Awards will be held at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica and air on NBC and E! on Dec. 7 at 9:00 pm Eastern time.
Here are the nominees in the main categories:
THE MOVIE OF 2021
Black Widow Coming 2 America F9: The Fast Saga Dune No Time To Die Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings The Tomorrow War Venom: Let There Be Carnage
THE COMEDY MOVIE OF 2021
Coming 2 America Free Guy He’s All That Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard Jungle Cruise Space Jam: A New Legacy Thunder Force Vacation Friends
THE ACTION MOVIE OF 2021
Black Widow F9: The Fast Saga Godzilla Kong No Time To Die Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings The Suicide Squad The Tomorrow War Venom: Let There Be Carnage
THE DRAMA MOVIE OF 2021
A Quiet Place Part II Cruella Dune Fatherhood Halloween Kills In The Heights Old Respect
THE FAMILY MOVIE OF 2021
Cinderella Luca Raya and the Last Dragon The Boss Baby: Family Business The Mitchells vs. the Machines Tom and Jerry Vivo Yes Day
THE MALE MOVIE STAR OF 2021
Chris Pratt – The Tomorrow War
Daniel Craig – No Time To Die
Dwayne Johnson – Jungle Cruise
Eddie Murphy – Coming 2 America
John Cena – F9: The Fast Saga
Ryan Reynolds – Free Guy
Simu Liu – Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
Vin Diesel – F9: The Fast Saga
THE FEMALE MOVIE STAR OF 2021
Awkwafina – Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
Charlize Theron – F9: The Fast Saga
Florence Pugh – Black Widow
Jennifer Hudson – Respect
Leslie Jones – Coming 2 America
Margot Robbie – The Suicide Squad
Salma Hayek – Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard
Scarlett Johansson – Black Widow
THE DRAMA MOVIE STAR OF 2021
Anthony Ramos – In The Heights
Emily Blunt – A Quiet Place Part II
Emma Stone – Cruella
Jamie Lee Curtis – Halloween Kills
Jason Momoa – Dune
Jennifer Hudson – Respect
Kevin Hart – Fatherhood
Timothée Chalamet – Dune
THE COMEDY MOVIE STAR OF 2021
Dwayne Johnson – Jungle Cruise
Eddie Murphy – Coming 2 America
Emily Blunt – Jungle Cruise
Leslie Jones – Coming 2 America
Melissa McCarthy – Thunder Force
Octavia Spencer – Thunder Force
Ryan Reynolds – Free Guy
Salma Hayek – Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard
THE ACTION MOVIE STAR OF 2021
Charlize Theron – F9: The Fast Saga
Chris Pratt – The Tomorrow War
Daniel Craig – No Time To Die
Florence Pugh – Black Widow
John Cena – F9: The Fast Saga
Scarlett Johansson – Black Widow
Simu Liu – Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
Vin Diesel – F9: The Fast Saga
TELEVISION
THE SHOW OF 2021
Cobra Kai Grey’s Anatomy Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Loki Saturday Night Live The Bachelor This Is Us WandaVision
THE DRAMA SHOW OF 2021
Outer Banks 9-1-1 Cobra Kai Grey’s Anatomy Law & Order: Special Victims Unit The Equalizer The Walking Dead This Is Us
THE COMEDY SHOW OF 2021 Brooklyn Nine-Nine Grown-ish Never Have I Ever Only Murders in the Building Saturday Night Live Ted Lasso The Upshaws Young Rock
THE REALITY SHOW OF 2021
90 Day Fiancé Bachelor In Paradise Below Deck Jersey Shore: Family Vacation Keeping Up With the Kardashians Love & Hip Hop Atlanta The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills The Real Housewives of Atlanta
THE COMPETITION SHOW OF 2021
America’s Got Talent American Idol Dancing With The Stars RuPaul’s Drag Race The Bachelor The Bachelorette The Masked Singer The Voice
THE MALE TV STAR OF 2021
Anthony Mackie – The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
Chase Stokes – Outer Banks
Dwayne Johnson – Young Rock
Jason Sudeikis – Ted Lasso
Kenan Thompson – Saturday Night Live
Norman Reedus – The Walking Dead
Sterling Brown – This Is Us
Tom Hiddleston – Loki
THE FEMALE TV STAR OF 2021
Angela Bassett – 9-1-1
Elizabeth Olsen – WandaVision
Ellen Pompeo – Grey’s Anatomy
Kathryn Hahn – WandaVision
Mandy Moore – This Is Us
Mariska Hargitay – Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
Queen Latifah – The Equalizer
Yara Shahidi – Grown-ish
THE DRAMA TV STAR OF 2021
Norman Reedus – The Walking Dead
Angela Bassett – 9-1-1
Chase Stokes – Outer Banks
Ellen Pompeo – Grey’s Anatomy
Mandy Moore – This Is Us
Mariska Hargitay – Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
Queen Latifah – The Equalizer
Sterling Brown – This Is Us
THE COMEDY TV STAR OF 2021
Andy Samberg – Brooklyn Nine-Nine
Dwayne Johnson – Young Rock
Jason Sudeikis – Ted Lasso
Kenan Thompson – Saturday Night Live
Selena Gomez – Only Murders in the Building
Steve Martin – Only Murders in the Building
Wanda Sykes – The Upshaws
Yara Shahidi – Grown-ish
THE DAYTIME TALK SHOW OF 2021
Good Morning America Live with Kelly and Ryan Red Table Talk The Ellen DeGeneres Show The Kelly Clarkson Show The View The Wendy Williams Show Today
THE NIGHTTIME TALK SHOW OF 2021 Full Frontal with Samantha Bee Jimmy Kimmel Live! Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Late Night With Seth Meyers The Daily Show with Trevor Noah The Late Late Show with James Corden The Late Show with Stephen Colbert The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
THE BINGEWORTHY SHOW OF 2021
Cobra Kai Loki Mare of Easttown Outer Banks Sex/Life Squid Game Ted Lasso The White Lotus
THE SCI-FI/FANTASY SHOW OF 2021
Loki Lucifer La Brea Shadow and Bone
Superman and Lois The Falcon and the Winter Soldier The Flash WandaVision
Ahead of the season two finale of Wu-Tang: An American Saga, series creators RZA and Alex Tse are explaining how they stayed true to the real-life narrative of the pioneering hip hop group.
Founding Wu-Tang Clan member RZA tells ABC Audio that his focus for the critically acclaimed drama was to make sure it resonated with actual hip hop fans.
“Because every one of the Wu-Tang members have something…they attract…for different people for different reasons,” he explains. “And if we can get the nucleus of it…that alone can help tell their story.”
While RZA says season two didn’t capture “every detail” in the making of 36 Chambers — arguably one of the most influential hip hop albums of the 1990s — he, like his co-creator Tse, believes this season was “spiritually truthful… to the story.”
“There are things that actually happen. There are things that happen in a different version. And then there’s some stuff that we condensed and changed,” Tse explains. “But…then we have to examine and say, ‘Is this spiritually truthful? Are we honoring what these people meant to…not just hip hop culture, but to American culture too?’…So that’s the question we always want to ask ourselves when we make choices in the writers room.'”
As season two comes to a close, Hulu is giving fans another opportunity to experience a piece of hip hop culture. The network has partnered with famed streetwear brand Mitchell & Ness to launch a capsule collection inspired by the Emmy-nominated series. The new collection, which includes items like tanks, tees, hoodies, and caps, is now available in select stores and on the Extra Butter NY website.
The season two finale of Wu-Tang: An American Saga is now available to watch on Hulu.
