Entertainment

Television salutes television on Sunday night with the 76th annual Emmy Awards. And if it seems like we just had an Emmys telecast, you’re right: due to the Hollywood strikes, the 75th ceremony was held in January this year, which made for an interesting challenge for the production team. 

At a press conference Thursday, production designer Brian Stonestreet spoke about how he had “to very quickly turn, pivot to a brand-new look that felt fresh, energetic, exciting, that kind of followed a similar concept, but definitely one that has evolved.”

The last Emmys leaned heavily into the classics, with recreations of TV show sets and cast reunions.

“One of the things that was very successful about January was the nostalgia, and people really connected with seeing those TV show sets and, you know, people from these shows that they watched,” said executive producer Dionne Harmon. “And so we wanted to take that energy into the show on Sunday.”

She continues, “But instead of focusing on TV shows as a whole, we’re focusing on characters. And so you’re going to see your favorite characters from shows of yesterday, today; you might see your favorite TV moms or TV villains all come together to just celebrate the genre.”

Her fellow executive producer Jeannae Rouzan-Clay adds, “I think it was a lot of fun for us because we got to throw out our favorite television characters into the conversation and get to the point where we are today, where we have these amazing groups that are going to represent these archetypes on television.”

There will reportedly be a reunion of the Happy Days cast, and Saturday Night Live‘s 50th birthday will be celebrated, but the producers tease another “big” reunion that you’ll just have to tune in to see on Sunday at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.

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ABC News Studios has announced it will continue its successful true crime collaboration with Hulu with the new three-part docuseries Little Miss Innocent: Passion. Poison. Prison. 

The series follows the story of 31-year-old Kaitlyn Conley, a former receptionist who claims she was wrongly convicted of the poisoning murder of Mary Yoder, her former boss and the mother of her ex-boyfriend Adam. 

According to the series’ producers, Conley’s conviction for the 2015 crime “sent shockwaves” through her small town of Sauquoit, New York, “dividing the town about what and who to believe.”

The series will see Conley speaking out for the first time, “staunchly maintaining her innocence, detailing her toxic relationship with Adam and offering her theories on who killed Mary and why.”

“The docuseries also features never-before-seen police interviews, exclusive audio recordings of the victim on the day she was poisoned, and a never-before-heard audio interview with the victim’s husband, Bill Yoder,” the tease continues.

“With unrivaled access to friends, families, investigators, local press and townsfolk, this docuseries is the first time in seven years the Yoder family has gone public and the first time since their daughter’s conviction that Kaitlyn’s parents have spoken out.”

The series begins streaming on Hulu Sept. 20.

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ABC News’ parent company, Disney, has announced that Disney and Pixar’s Inside Out 2, now officially the highest-grossing animated movie of all time, is coming to Disney+ on Sept. 25.

The follow-up to the 2015 original set a number of records after its release on June 14, 2024, and became the fastest animated film to reach $1 billion globally. It is currently the eighth-highest-grossing film in global box office history.

The movie stars the original characters of Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust and Anger — voiced in the sequel by Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Tony Hale, Liza Lapira and Lewis Black — as well as newcomers Maya Hawke, Ayo Edebiri, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Paul Walter Hauser and June Squibb.

The latter respectively play Riley’s new teenage emotions Anxiety, Envy, Ennui, Embarrassment and Nostalgia.

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TV personality Ross Mathews is now a regular on The Drew Barrymore Show, and while on assignment for the hit chat show in a segment that aired Thursday, he had an impromptu reunion with his old boss Jay Leno. 

That’s where Jay also revealed he used to babysit Drew.

Ross got his start on camera as one of Leno’s Tonight Show interns, and while he and Barrymore were on the Universal Studios lot interviewing current interns about breaking into showbiz, Ross was surprised by Leno, rolling up in a golf cart. 

Leno told the interns, “Ross was my favorite intern. We had a lot of them, but he was the most annoying. That was the fun part,” Entertainment Weekly says.

Later, Ross and Drew hopped into the cart and they reminisced. 

During the chat, Jay revealed that once upon a time, he babysat for Barrymore, who is now 49.

“I met Drew when she was 3 years old. I was dating her aunt,” Jay recalled. “She was asked to babysit, and I picked you up and bounced you on my knee,” calling it, “just very funny.”

“How did we never talk about that!?” Drew asked.

He didn’t remember all that much about Drew at the time — “Well, you were a baby! I was the boyfriend of the babysitter. You would come in and sit and you’d make the kid laugh,” he told Drew. 

That said, when he saw E.T. a few years later he immediately recognized Drew as “that little girl” he once minded.

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Nikki Garcia has filed for divorce from Artem Chigvintsev after two years of marriage and two weeks after Artem’s domestic violence arrest.

A rep for the WWE Hall of Famer confirmed the news to Good Morning America and said, “She continues to ask for privacy for her and her family at this time.”

Nikki filed for divorce from Artem at the Napa County Superior Court in California on Wednesday, an online court docket viewed by GMA showed.

Artem was arrested for felony domestic violence on Aug. 29 just before 10 a.m., according to Napa County, California, jail records.

The 42-year-old, who was released on $25,000 bail, was booked on California penal code 273.5(a), which makes it illegal to injure a spouse, cohabitant or fellow parent in an act of domestic violence.

Napa County Sheriff’s Office deputies said Artem did not resist arrest and was booked at the Napa County Jail on suspicion of domestic violence.

Officials did not share details on who the alleged victim was at the time, but told ABC News that they were giving the person “adequate time to deal with what unfolded before making the person talk more to detectives” and that the alleged victim had been forthcoming with initial information to deputies.

Artem has competed on 12 seasons of Dancing with the Stars to date and met Nikki when they competed together on season 25.

The couple married in August 2022 and share a child, 4-year-old son Matteo.

GMA has reached out to reps for Artem for comment.

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Paramount+ with Showtime has dropped a teaser to Dexter: Original Sin, a prequel series based on the hit avenging serial killer series that starred Michael C. Hall. 

À la Young Sheldon — but far darker — Hall will serve as a narrator of the show, which serves as an origin story with Patrick Gibson playing the younger version of Dexter Morgan.

“I’m a killer but I wasn’t born this way; I was made,” Hall intones. “I was made by my history, by the people around me. They say it takes a village to raise a killer.”

Among those are Christian Slater as Dexter’s dad, who helps him adopt “a Code designed to help him find and kill people who deserve to be eliminated from society without getting on law enforcement’s radar.”

The ’90s-set series sees the younger Dexter interning in the forensics department of the Miami Metro Police Department — a gig the adult Dexter kept, which helped keep the police off his trail as he dispatched all manner of bad people over the original show’s eight-season run that ended in 2013.

Dexter: Original Sin also stars Patrick Dempsey, Christina Milian and Sarah Michelle Gellar. It debuts on Dec. 13 for subscribers of Paramount+ with Showtime. 

For Showtime subscribers, the series launches on Dec. 15.

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One of the most recognized names in Hollywood is going after one of the most recognized trades about Hollywood. 

Francis Ford Coppola is suing Variety — and two of its writers specifically — for libel over articles that alleged he made unwanted advances toward female extras on his movie Megalopolis. 

The coverage claimed Coppola hugged, kissed and danced with extras behind the scenes of a party scene in the film.

Incidentally, Lauren Pagone, one of those actresses quoted in an Aug. 2 follow-up article, has sued “the filmmaker and others in Georgia for civil battery, civil assault, and negligent failure to prevent sexual harassment,” according to Deadline. 

Coppola’s motion, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Tuesday, doesn’t mention that lawsuit. 

However, the trade says his suit claims the original July 26 article contains “false and defamatory statements” meant to “damage” his reputation and cause him “severe emotional distress.” 

Deadline quotes the suit from Coppola’s attorneys: “Some people are creative. Very few people are creative geniuses. In the world of motion pictures, Plaintiff Francis Ford Coppola … is a creative genius. Some people are jealous and resentful of genius. Those people therefore denigrate and tell knowing and reckless falsehoods about those of whom they are jealous.”

Further, it says, “Variety Media, LLC … its writers and editors, hiding behind supposedly anonymous sources, accused Coppola of manifest incompetence as a motion picture director, of unprofessional behavior on the set of his most recent production,” adding, “Each of these accusations was false and knowingly so.”

Coppola is seeking $15 million in damages.

After the original Variety piece broke, Deadline ran an interview with another extra, Rayna Menz, who insisted the director “did nothing to make me or for that matter anyone on set feel uncomfortable.”

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Deadline is reporting that a defamation lawsuit centering on Netflix’s Emmy-nominated hit Baby Reindeer could have its day in court in May 2025.

A federal judge has set a trial date of May 6, 2025, in the $170 million suit against the streamer from Fiona Harvey, who claims the show’s stalker, Martha Scott, was based on her interactions with its creator, writer and star Richard Gadd.

As reported, Gadd claimed a chance meeting with Harvey at the pub where he worked led to her sending him “thousands of emails, hundreds of voicemails, and a number of handwritten letters” that “often included sexually explicit, violent, and derogatory content, hateful speech, and threats.”

In the series, Scott does the same to Gadd’s character, Donny, eventually leading to her being charged by police — something Harvey claims never happened in real life.

Gadd had previously said he’d testify against Harvey should the need arise, but insisted that his series “is not a documentary” and that “Martha Scott is not Fiona Harvey.”

He also said it was Harvey who outed herself, claiming she inspired the Martha character in an interview with Piers Morgan. In the same interview, she also denied sending Gadd “thousands” of messages — some of which Gadd attached to his formal statement as proof.

The trade notes there is a strong chance the matter will be settled before going in front of a jury.

Meanwhile, Baby Reindeer already won a pair of trophies at the Creative Arts Emmys, and Gadd is nominated for Sunday night’s ceremony for both his writing and his performance in the Best Limited or Anthology Series and Lead Actor categories.

His onscreen stalker, played by Jessica Gunning, snagged a nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

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The Wrap reports The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives has become its most-watched unscripted season premiere of the year so far, based on three days of streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+, according to Disney internal data. The series follows the “scandalous world of a group of Mormon mom influencers,” led by self-acclaimed MomTok founder Taylor Frankie Paul, which “implodes when they get caught in the midst of a swinging sex scandal that makes international headlines,” per the streaming service …

The soap opera All My Children, which aired on ABC from 1970 to 2011, then briefly ran as a web series in 2013, may get a revival via a series of Lifetime TV movies, sources tell TV Line. The proposed series would feature legacy characters from the classic daytime drama project, which is in the very early stages, with one insider warning the talks are just “exploratory” at this point …

Judd Apatow and Steven Spielberg are attached as the respective director and producer of Cola Wars, a film in development at Sony Pictures, according to Deadline. The project follows the true story of Pepsi’s attempt to end Coca-Cola’s centurylong reign as the world’s top cola, dubbed the “Cola Wars” of the mid-1980s, highlighted by Michael Jackson’s fiery hair mishap and the New Coke debacle. The film is still in early development, per the outlet …

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Shailene Woodley stars in the new limited series adaptation of Lisa Taddeo’s New York Times bestselling nonfiction book, Three Women.

The show follows Woodley as Gia, a character loosely based on Taddeo, as she interviews three different women from across the United States, exploring their varied sexual and emotional experiences.

Woodley told ABC Audio that after she read Three Women, she felt Taddeo had written everything she “felt but didn’t know how to articulate.”

According to Woodley, crafting a character based on Taddeo was more than just collaborating with her.

“It wasn’t a collaboration as much as it felt like a connection and then a true desire to honor what our natural connection elicited,” Woodley said. “Gia is not Lisa, but Gia also isn’t me. It almost felt like she was the intersection of both of us.”

Taddeo wholeheartedly agreed, saying Woodley’s performance made her feel seen “in the most dynamic way.”

“Shailene’s performance made me feel seen without even, like, mimicking or mirroring me,” Taddeo said. “She’s one of the most talented actors out there, but she also has one of the warmest hearts.”

The show covers many serious topics ripe for discussion. So, what does Woodley hope viewers take from it?

“I hope that they walk away feeling a little less alone and maybe feeling like it isn’t weird or obscure to go through things that are very normal, everyday experiences that women have, like miscarriages or, like, having sex on your period or having body dysmorphia,” Woodley said. “I don’t know one woman who hasn’t been through one … if not all of those things. And I think it’s important that we take these situations that have become such taboo in our culture and really normalize them.”

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