Entertainment

On Friday, HBO announced that the third season of its Emmy-winning dramedy The White Lotus will be set in Thailand and gets underway in February with all new guests.

Marvel movie player Leslie Bibb, Harry Potter franchise veteran Jason Isaacs, Beau Is Afraid‘s Parker Posey, Mission: Impossible movies co-star Michelle Monaghan, and fitness coach and actor Tayme Thapthimthong have all joined the series’ rotating cast for the show’s third installment.

They’ll be joining Natasha Rothwell, who returns as spa manager Belinda Lindsey; it’s not yet known if season 3 will see the return of Jennifer Coolidge, who won an Emmy for her portrayal of quirky guest Tanya McQuiod.

For the record, she’s told Entertainment Tonight that she’d “love” to come back, and the series’ award-winning creator Mike White told ET he can’t seem to get enough of her, either.

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Have no fear, your reality roundup is here! Here’s a look at what’s happened in the world of reality television this week:

Love Is Blind (Netflix)
Season five contestant Renee Poche has filed a bombshell lawsuit against Netflix and Delirium, the show’s production company, seeking to nullify the NDA she signed as part of her contract. Poche claims imprisonment while on the show and alleges she was matched with an abusive fellow contestant, Carter Wall. Her allegations follow a similar lawsuit from another season five contestant, Tran Dang. Both of their storylines never made it to air.

The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City (Bravo)
The season four finale revealed new cast member Monica Garcia was not who she said she was. Heather Gay exposed Monica as “Reality Von Tease” — the creator of an Instagram gossip account that was known for trolling RHOSLC cast members. The ladies all confronted her on a Bermuda trip, and she eventually admitted the truth in a confessional. The RHOSLC reunion airs January 9 at 8 p.m. ET on Bravo.

Jersey Shore: Family Vacation (MTV)
Is a Sammi and Ronnie reunion actually happening? A new trailer for season seven of the Family Vacation iteration of the show teases the former volatile couple will be living under the same roof again, and Sammi’s not happy about it. She’s been saying “hell no!” to the prospect of Ron returning. Aside from that drama, the trailer shows the crew returning to the original Jersey Shore house and taking a trip to Nashville. The new season premieres February 8.

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On Thursday evening, awards season got underway at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, where performers and movies that will likely soon be Oscar nominees were honored.

Among those, Meryl Streep presented Maestro‘s Carey Mulligan with the International Star Award; Robert Downey Jr. handed the festival’s Desert Palm Achievement Award to his Oppenheimer co-star Cillian Murphy, and Rustin‘s Colman Domingo was given the Spotlight Award by Lenny Kravitz.

Other honorees included Greta Gerwig, who was named Director of the Year in a presentation made by her Barbie stars Margot Robbie and America Ferrera; Gerwig in turn presented Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell with the Chairman’s Award. The pair contributed the hit “What Was I Made For?” to the soundtrack of Gerwig’s blockbuster.

Among the night’s other trophy winners, Emma Stone was honored by her Poor Things co-stars Mark Ruffalo and Willem Dafoe with the Desert Palm Achievement Award, and director Martin Scorsese and his Killers of the Flower Moon leads Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone were presented with the Vanguard Award.

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Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh is back onscreen, playing yet another complicated character in the Netflix series The Brothers Sun.

In the new action-packed drama, the Everything Everywhere All at Once star portrays a mom of two named Eileen Sun.

Created by Brad Falchuk and Byron Wu, and written by a nearly all-Asian writers room, the series follows the family story of a Taiwanese gang leader who was shot by a mysterious assassin.

Charles Sun (Justin Chien), raised as a hardened criminal and ruthless killer, is forced to leave Taipei and head to Los Angeles following the death of his father, in order to protect his mother Eileen and his naïve brother Bruce Sun (Sam Song Li), who was previously in the dark about his family history until his brother’s arrival.

Yeoh tells Good Morning America, “When I read the script, the complexities, the characters, and the story that he wants to tell — how it is set with a different tone — I went, ‘This is very interesting,'” she said.

“I think the most important thing was the story really jumped at me, because you know, violence is violence, but how they have set this violence, the gore, into a very dark humor where you go, ‘I don’t want to laugh at it, but I am, I can’t help myself,’ it is really funny,” she continued.

Gushing over her co-stars Chien and Li, who play her adult children on the show, she shared that both of the actors are “hysterical” and praised their martial arts skills.

Yeoh, 61, has been involved in the martial art world for decades, having starred — and stunt performed — in Hong Kong action films since the ’80s.

Yeoh tells GMA, “I basically exercise every day, I do a lot of stretching, because I want to always be ready.”

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In the new film Good Grief, which drops Friday on Netflix, complicated adult friendships take center stage. The movie marks Dan Levy’s feature writing and directing debut. He also stars in the film, and he told ABC Audio in order to establish the core relationships in the movie, he and co-stars Himesh Patel and Ruth Negga had to get to a vulnerable place together.

“You had to strip away a lot of ego parts of yourself and really kind of get to that vulnerable place that is really hard to earn with people you don’t know,” Levy said. “The time that we spent together, I think was so valuable and it was lucky in the sense that I really like these people a lot.”

The actors went away for a weekend together to help them establish a believable bond. They also met up for a few weeks before filming and discussed their different scenes and characters.

“I think this is sort of an alternative view of friendship, but actually it’s one that I think most people are more familiar with,” Negga said. “The flaws, the hurt, the laying bare, the fact that maybe these are the only people who find you funny.”

Levy is known for his starring role on the Emmy-winning sitcom Schitt’s Creek. He says his character in this film, grieving artist Marc Dreyfus, is the complete opposite of David Rose.

“He’s still and quiet and thoughtful and not quite as reactive or not nearly as reactive as David was,” Levy said. “It required an entire physical set of skills that were very different from that. So I was just trying to keep up with everyone, to be perfectly honest.”

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David Soul, one half of the ’70s buddy cop duo Starsky & Hutch, has died, his wife, Helen Snell, said in a statement. He was 80.

His widow said Soul, born David Richard Solberg, died Thursday “after a valiant battle for life in the loving company of family.”

Snell added, “He shared many extraordinary gifts in the world as actor, singer, storyteller, creative artist and dear friend. His smile, laughter and passion for life will be remembered by the many whose lives he has touched.”

Soul played Detective Kenneth “Hutch” Hutchinson to Paul Michael Glaser‘s Det. Dave Starsky in the television series that ran from 1975 to 1979. He and Glaser reprised their roles in the 2004 big-screen action comedy remake that starred Owen Wilson as Hutch and Ben Stiller as Starsky.

Soul, who also appeared in movies including Magnum Force opposite Clint Eastwood in 1973, was also a singer, charting in the U.S. and the U.K. His biggest hit Stateside was the 1976 romantic track “Don’t Give Up on Us,” which hit #1 on the Billboard charts in the U.S. and Canada, while 1977’s “Silver Lady” hit #1 on the U.K. singles chart.

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As they say repeatedly in Christopher Nolan‘s time-looping movie Tenet, “What’s happened happened.”

As reported, the Oppenheimer director revealed on Thursday that he was once “dying” during a remote session on his Peloton bike when the coach started dissing one of his movies — not realizing he was watching.

Just hours later, in a twist worthy of the English director’s films, Peloton users found the exact clip of Jenn Sherman‘s intervals and arms class from December 28, 2020, in which she grouses about his heralded, complex sci-fi film Tenet.

Although Nolan didn’t mention the movie’s title, there was the coach pedaling as she exercised with small weights and tried to make sense of “What the f*** was going on in that movie.”

Sherman griped that she “needed a manual” for it, adding, “seriously, you need to be a neuroscientist to understand” the film, which starred John David Washington and Robert Pattinson.

“That’s two and a half hours of my life I want back,” Sherman huffed.

For his part, Nolan said the criticism stung particularly bad because it came in the middle of the grueling sweat sesh. “When [film critic] Rex Reed takes a s*** on your film he doesn’t ask you to work out!” the filmmaker joked to the New York Film Critics Circle, as he collected his Best Director award for Oppenheimer.

For the record, the replies to the coach were split: “Facts,” more than one commenter replied, while others praised Nolan’s structure of the film, which basically requires you to watch it at least twice — preferably back-to-back — to fully enjoy.

“It’s funny to me that people complain about nothing being original these days …Then they have the audacity to bash tenet,” one of the movie’s fans posted.

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On the Max Instagram account, it was announced that the third season of the Emmy-winning comedy series Hacks will hit the streamer in the spring. The series earned Jean Smart an Emmy for her portrayal of Deborah Vance, an aging comedy legend who is paired up with Ava, a younger female writer, played by Hannah Einbinder. No official launch date was given for season three; the show launched its sophomore season in March of 2022 …

Showtime on Thursday dropped the trailer for the new mini-series The Woman in the Wall. Saving Mr. Banks actress Ruth Wilson stars as Lorna Brady, who “wakes to discover a corpse in her home with no recollection of how it got there.” Bad Sisters‘ Daryl McCormack plays Detective Colman Akande, who’s “drawn into a game of cat-and-mouse as he and Lorna search for answers in a small town full of long-buried secrets,” per the premium cable channel. The Woman in the Wall will be available to stream on January 19 on Paramount+. The series premieres January 21 on Showtime …

Glynis Johns, best known for playing Mrs. Winifred Banks in the 1964 Disney classic Mary Poppins, died Thursday, January 4, of natural causes, her publicist Mitch Clem tells KABC-TV. She was 100. Johns’ other film credits include Around the World in 80 Days and The Sundowners, the second of which earned her an Oscar nod. She won a Tony award for the 1973 Broadway hit A Little Night Music, where she also got to introduce one of Steven Sondheim‘s most well-known songs, “Send in the Clowns.” On TV, she appeared in Dr. Kildare, Burke’s Law and The Defenders, among others …

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“Everybody’s a critic” as the saying goes. Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan told a room full of legitimate critics in New York City Thursday about the time he learned that adage the hard way.

Nolan was on hand to accept his Best Director trophy for Oppenheimer from the New York Film Critics Circle, and according to Variety, he explained he once got an earful about one of his movies when he least expected it: while “dying” on his Peloton.

The would-be critic evidently didn’t know that the film’s director was tuning into the class remotely.

“I was on my Peloton. I’m dying,” Nolan recalled. “And the instructor started talking about one of my films and said, ‘Did anyone see this? That’s a couple hours of my life I’ll never get back again!’.”

The Englishman continued, “When [film critic] Rex Reed takes a s*** on your film he doesn’t ask you to work out!”

He also mentioned, “In today’s world, where opinions are everywhere … I for one think the critical appreciation of films … should be a profession.”

The professional critics also chose Martin Scorsese‘s Killers of the Flower Moon as Best Picture, its lead Lily Gladstone as Best Actress and Passages‘ Franz Rogowski as Best Actor.

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The Golden Globes has announced another round of presenters for Sunday’s awards telecast.

The Color Purple‘s producer Oprah Winfrey will be among those getting some time at the podium, the organization announced, as are Barbie‘s Simu Liu, America Ferrera and Issa Rae.

Across the Spider-Verse‘s voice talents Hailee Steinfeld and Shameik Moore will also be aboard, joining previously announced presenters including Angela Bassett, Michelle Yeoh and Suits‘ dynamic duo Patrick J. Adams and Gabriel Macht.

The Golden Globes are set to take place at the Beverly Hilton on Sunday, January 7, and will be broadcast live on CBS and stream on Paramount+. Easter Sunday actor and stand-up comedian Jo Koy is hosting.

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