Entertainment

Actor, recording artist and producer Idris Elba had a wide-ranging discussion on the Changes with Annie Macmanus podcast earlier this week, in which he touched on his childhood, fatherhood, the Hollywood strikes and why he found himself in therapy.

“It’s not because I don’t like myself or anything like that,” the 51-year-old Luther star says. “It’s just that I have some unhealthy habits that I’ve just really formed and they, you know, I work in an industry that I’m rewarded for those unhealthy habits.”

Idris added, “I’m an absolute workaholic. And that isn’t great for life generally … but I’m rewarded massively to be a workaholic, to [be] someone that can go, ‘Oh, I’m not going see my family for six months.’ I’m in there grinding and making new family and then leave them.”

The performer expresses, “I’ve got to adjust. Got to adjust.”

However, Idris admits, “The thing is that the things that make me relaxed end up being work,” adding, “I could have worked 10 days on a film, underwater sequences holding my breath for 6 minutes and come back and sit here [relaxed] more so than sitting on the sofa watching TV with the family, which is bad, right?”

Elba adds that’s what he needs to adjust in his life. “Can’t be all work,” he says.

Regarding the studios’ treatment that prompted the Hollywood strikes, Idris called it a tragedy, adding of acting, “Yes, it is a living, but we do it from our souls. When you and I give our souls to the work that we do, it’s not like punching a bunch of numbers in a calculator, you’re giving a part of yourself and that should be sacred and treasured and remunerated properly.”

Elba underlined, “And that’s why we’re striking.”

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Tuesday is Mean Girls Day — “It’s October 3,” as Lindsay Lohan‘s Cady famously says in the 2004 hit film — and Paramount is celebrating with some big news.

The studio has revealed that the big-screen version of the movie’s Broadway musical adaptation will come to theaters January 12.

Senior Year and Spider-Man: Homecoming co-star Angourie Rice has been tapped to fill the role Lohan originated: the daughter of a pair of anthropologists who finds herself transplanted from the wilds of Africa into the social jungle of a typically cliquey Chicago high school.

Reneé Rapp, who on Broadway played Rachel McAdams‘ role of Regina George, the head of the clique The Plastics, reprises for the movie, as previously reported. The cast also will star Moana‘s Auli’i Cravalho as Janis, played by Lizzy Caplan in the movie.

Another Mean Girls on Broadway vet, Jaquel Spivey, will reprise as Damien. Damien, Janis’ bestie, was played by Daniel Franzese in the film.

Mean Girls writer and co-star Tina Fey penned the script for the movie musical. She will appear in this version, too, along with The Office‘s Jenna Fischer and Cougar Town‘s Busy Philipps.

In related news, Paramount is hosting a live watch party of the original film at 7 p.m. ET on Tuesday, October 3, on the studio’s TikTok account, @ParamountPics.

Mean Girls opened on Broadway in April 2018 at the August Wilson Theatre and ran for 833 performances before the curtain finally fell on March 11, 2020 — the day before the COVID pandemic officially shuttered the Great White Way.

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Adam Devine and his wife, Chloe Bridges, are gearing up to embrace parenthood!

The Pitch Perfect star, 39, and Pretty Little Liars alum, 31, announced they are expecting their first child together. Taking to Instagram with a playful post of the couple each holding their bellies, Devine quipped, “Look, we’re pregnant! Well, I’m just fat now, but Chloe is all preggo with a human baby!”

“Obviously, very exciting stuff! This will mostly be a baby page now, as I will be dedicating my life to my child in hopes he doesn’t use my decades of recorded dirty jokes against me,” he added.

Meanwhile, Bridges posted two charming photos from a Newport Beach dock. She captioned it with, “We have news!! can’t wait to get this lil family started.”

The couple, who began dating in 2015, tied the knot in October 2021 after several setbacks due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Anya Taylor-Joy and her musician beau, Malcolm McRae, are reportedly married, tying the knot in a lavish Italian ceremony over the weekend.

The Daily Mail reports that the pair exchanged vows in front of approximately 150 guests, including fellow celebrities Cara Delevingne and Julia Garner.

Taylor-Joy, 27, and McRae, 28, who began dating in May 2021, have kept it a relatively private affair, with the couple choosing to keep the details of their romance under wraps.

However, in a rare insight into their bond, Taylor-Joy shared with British Vogue in March 2022 that their compatibility stems from their shared passions and personalities.

“We’re basically 80 years old and 7 at the same time, and it works really well,” she joked.

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NBC experienced the “Taylor effect” on Sunday when Taylor Swift brought her celebrity friends — including Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively — to watch her rumored boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and his teammates squeak by The New York Jets. NBC, which leaned heavily into Swift’s appearance, got a win as well, reporting an average of 27 million people watched the broadcast across NBC, Peacock and various other platforms — the most watched Sunday game of the season so far and the biggest streaming audience ever for a regular season game on NBC.

CBS confirmed on social media Monday, that The Talk — the daytime talk show hosted by Akbar Gbaja-Biamila, Amanda Kloots, Jerry O’Connell, Sheryl Underwood and Natalie Morales — will return for its 14th season on Monday, October 9. The series, which went dark in May due to the writers’ strike, previously announced an early September return, before the Writers Guild of America had struck a new deal with the AMPTP. Following backlash and picketers, the show paused its season premiere…

Nearly six months after former Dancing With the Stars judge Len Goodman died at the age of 78, his cause of death has been attributed to prostate cancer spreading to his bones, according to his death certificate obtained by The Daily Express. Last November, Goodman announced his exit from the U.S. show after 17 years. Ahead of DWTS’ season 32 premiere, the ABC dance competition show announced that their famed Mirrorball trophy would be renamed and redesigned in Goodman’s honor…

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Monday, October 2 marked the long-awaited return of late-night TV, and the hosts addressed it in their respective monologues.

Stephen Colbert applauded the new contract “that includes protections from A.I., cost of living increases, [and] better pay for streaming.”

“Plus, thanks to the picket lines, my writers got fresh air and sunshine — and they do not care for that,” he quipped. “Now they’re back safely in their joke holes, doing what they do best: Making my prompter word screen full of good and ha-ha!”

Over at The Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon joked, “My dad called me up and said, ‘Finally I can watch [Jimmy] Kimmel again.'”

Fallon went on to express his joy over the writers “getting the fair deal they deserved,” and added, “You have to hand it to them, only writers would spend the whole summer fighting to go back to the office.”

Meanwhile, Kimmel opened his show laying down on a therapist’s couch. “And the thing is the strike has been going on for so long, I just don’t know if I’ll be back,” he wondered.

The camera panned out to show Monday’s guest, Arnold Schwarzenegger, telling Jimmy, “You’ll be back” and “Get to the chopper,” his classic Terminator lines.

Kimmel later joked during his monologue, “We’ve been gone so long, The Bachelor is now a grandfather.”

Seth Meyers took a more serious tone, saying, “I never take this show for granted, but being away from it for as long as I was away from it really hits home how much I love having this as a workplace.” He then thanked the WGA negotiating committee and the guild leadership “for all the time they put in … negotiating for the very fair deal that all the writers deserved.”

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Discovery’s hit reality show Gold Rush just returned for its 14th season, and for one of its stars, Rick Ness, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

“For me, this is a rebuilding year. You know, I stepped back and I took a year off. And that’s a tough thing to come back from. So financially, it hurt,” he tells ABC Audio on location from his dig site in the Yukon territories.

“I basically start over with nothing,” he continues, teasing this season. “We’re going for a thousand ounces with a very, very small team. It’s a very real rebuilding journey this year, that’s for damn sure.”

ABC Audio also asked Rick about a recent ABC News story on regular folks who, fed up with the economy, are looking to get rich quick by panning for gold.

“There’s a saying up here that the best way to make a million in gold mining is to start with 2 million,” he says with a laugh.

He admits the search for the shiny stuff is as American as apple pie. “[I]f you’ve got the b****, if you’ve got the heart . . . There’s gold in the ground and like, you can dig it up, it’s yours! You know, on the surface, I mean, that would, to me, be the definition of the American dream,” he says.

However, he adds, “I mean, it could also be the American nightmare . . . You know, I’ve seen a lot of people come up here . . . with a lot deeper pockets than me. And it does not take them long to go home very broken people…”

Gold Rush airs Friday nights at 8 p.m. ET Discovery; the season 14 premiere is now streaming on Discovery+.

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Sony Pictures and Apple Originals on Monday released a new behind-the-scenes video of their forthcoming Napoleon, this one highlighting Oscar winner Joaquin Phoenix in the title role.

His Gladiator director, Academy Award winner Ridley Scott, says, “I cast Joaquin because of his passion. He comes alive. He’s evolving into Napoleon Bonaparte.”

Scott calls the actor “one of the best.”

For her part, Vanessa Kirby, who plays Napoleon’s love Josephine, describes Phoenix as incredible. She enthuses that scenes with him felt really authentic, hailing his “capturing the idiosyncratic psychological portrait of this unpredictable personality.”

She added, “It was really amazing to watch him touch the really dark places.”

Of course, the featurette is also intercut with scenes from the biopic about the gifted soldier who becomes the emperor of France.

In fact, it shows the Joker star in character, crowning himself.

According to the studio, the film tracks “Napoleon Bonaparte’s relentless journey to power through the prism of his addictive, volatile relationship with his one true love, Josephine, showcasing his visionary military and political tactics against some of the most dynamic practical battle sequences ever filmed.”

Napoleon will be released in theaters on November 22 by Sony Pictures; after that, it will stream on Apple TV+.

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His penchant for showing skin aside, a producer of Unsolved Mysteries says Matthew McConaughey‘s acting has come a long way since he got his first screen credit on the series.

Way before he won an Oscar and became a bestselling author — in 1992, in fact — an up-and-coming McConaughey played a murder victim called Larry Dickens in the season 5 “Texas Most Wanted” episode of the long-running series.

Now celebrating its 35th birthday, the series, which lives on thanks to Netflix, is center stage in a new documentary called Unsolved Mysteries: Behind the Legacy, and Entertainment Weekly got a sneak peek.

“Matthew McConaughey had to do a fairly robust death scene,” a producer says. “He was working in his garage and he was shot by a man who pulled up with a shotgun.”

The producer added, “Let’s just say … his acting has come a long way since then.”

Evidently McConaughey was allowed an ad-lib: The director let him perform with his sleeveless flannel shirt open, as his doomed character toiled on his lawn in the Texas heat.

However, having six-pack abs likely had more to do with that than the future star’s acting chops.

Unsolved Mysteries: Behind the Legacy takes a look behind the revolutionary series famously hosted by Robert Stack. According to the trailer, the show, which asked the public for help in bringing fugitives to justice and cracking cold cases, led to 260 such cases being solved and 180 arrests.

Unsolved Mysteries: Behind the Legacy premieres October 4 at Alamo Drafthouse locations nationwide and debuts exclusively on Pluto TV on October 5 before streaming on other platforms October 19.

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Star Wars fans may have May the Fourth, but Mean Girls die-hards have October 3.

That’s right, Tuesday is officially — or at least “officially” among fans — Mean Girls Day.

The day honoring the 2004 film was so commemorated thanks to what happened to Lindsay Lohan‘s Cady Heron: Her crush, Aaron Samuels (Jonathan Bennett), asked her the date, to which Cady replied, “It’s October 3.”

Back in 2011, somebody on social media noted the date, dubbing it “Mean Girls Day,” and a tradition was born.

For its part, Paramount+ is observing in a big way, with a Mean-themed takeover of its social media platforms: the Paramount+ logo will turn pink across Instagram, Facebook, Threads and TikTok.

Further, the streamer says, “The social campaign will also include a Mean Girls watch party checklist, fun video clips and reels, an interactive Instagram quiz and more.”

And of course, you can stream Mean Girls on Paramount+, too. Isn’t that so fetch?

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