Entertainment

Sunday night’s Oscars telecast on ABC may be able to boast a performance by Rihanna, but unfortunately, Lady Gaga will be a no-show. 

Oscars EP and showrunner Glenn Weiss told reporters on Wednesday that Gaga, nominated for Best Original Song for her Top Gun: Maverick song “Hold My Hand,” wouldn’t be performing at the ceremony.

“I would love to say, ‘No I can’t confirm,’ but y’know what? I’m gonna tell ya,” Weiss told reporters. “So here’s where we are: We actually invited all five nominees — we have great relationships with Lady Gaga and her camp — [but] she is in the middle of shooting a movie right now, and here we are honoring the movie industry and what it takes to make a movie.”

Some had suspected that Gaga wouldn’t be able to make it due to her filming the movie Joker: Folie à Deux.  But the irony of Gaga not being able to attend a ceremony honoring movies because she’s busy making one isn’t lost on Weiss, either.

“After a bunch of back and forth,  it didn’t feel like she can get a performance to the caliber that we’re used to with her, that she’s used to,” Weiss explained. “So she is not going to perform on the show.”

“However, this is all from our point of view of somebody making a movie and us completely understanding that that’s what’s a priority in this business,” he noted. “Especially when we’re honoring movies.”

In addition to Rihanna, who’ll be performing “Lift Me Up” from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, viewers will see performances of songs from the movies Everything Everywhere All At Once, Tell It Like a Woman and RRR.

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While Tom Cruise fans don’t need another reason to see the seventh film in the billions-grossing franchise — especially after the blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick — Paramount’s CEO just gave them one.

The Wrap reports Bob Bakish saw Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One, with what must have been a test audience, and the trade quoted him as saying, “The audience lost their mind.”

The company’s CEO was speaking at Wednesday’s Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference, according to the trade. He admitted the film as it stands now is “still too long,” but added, “the movie is insane. It’s like a complete thrill ride.”

The movie stars Cruise, of course, as spy Ethan Hunt, as well as returning M:I players Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson and Vanessa Kirby, along with series newcomers Esai Morales, Guardians of the Galaxy vet Pom Klementieff and her Marvel movie colleague Hayley Atwell.

The movie once again has Cruise facing off with Henry Czerny, who appeared in 1996’s very first M:I movie.

Dead Reckoning Part One opens July 14.

Bakish even gave a hint about the forthcoming eighth installment, due out in 2024. “Tom’s walking on the outside of an airplane — in the air, not on a green screen. It’s quite the ride,” the exec gushes.

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James Cameron‘s spy movie True Lies is such a classic that it has spawned a CBS series decades after Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis saved the world on the big screen — but Ginger Gonzaga somehow missed it before starring in the show.

Covering her eyes for a moment, the former She-Hulk: Attorney at Law scene stealer admitted to ABC Audio Wednesday, “Oh, gosh, it’s always embarrassing. I hadn’t seen it. I tell everyone the only movies I had ever seen were Sister Acts 1 and 2 and Mrs. Doubtfire.”

She added with a laugh, “And then, I don’t know, I’ve seen maybe five movies since. I don’t know how I’m an actor.”

The star plays Helen Tasker, the role Everything Everywhere Oscar nominee Curtis played in the film: A bored woman who discovers her seemingly boring salesman husband is actually as super spy.

Ginger explained not seeing the 1994 movie was a blessing in disguise. “Watching Howie [co-star Steve Howie] be like, ‘Oh my gosh, I have to fill Arnold’s shoes,’ I was like, ‘I don’t know. I’m just playing this character, Helen.’ So I maintained not watching it prior to doing the pilot, so I could just do my Ginger version of a character named Helen. And I think that really took the pressure off of me.”

She added, “I love Jamie so much, and I know if I had watched it, I would have been judging every single move that I did, you know, like, ‘Oh, that’s too much like her’ or ‘No, you’re copying Jamie,’ so I want to let Jamie be Jamie. And I got out of that pressure by having been sheltered as a child, really,” she laughed.

True Lies airs at 10 p.m. ET on CBS.

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Paramount+ announced Wednesday that the second season of the reborn animated show Beavis and Butt-Head will return on April 20, otherwise known — to those who likely watch the show under the influence — as 4/20, marijuana’s official holiday.

“This 4/20, we’ve got another reason not to leave the couch,” a giggle-filled tease notes.

The second season will kick off with a pair of new episodes, according to the streaming service, which is also home to creator Mike Judge‘s original series of the same name, as well as the boys’ movies, 1996’s Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, and the recent Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe.

As for what to expect for the second season, well, Paramount+ calls the sophomore frame the triumphant return of “two guys who like things that are cool and don’t like things that suck.”

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Jenna Ortega won raves for her lead performance in Netflix’s hit Wednesday, and on Dax Shepard‘s Armchair Podcast, the actress explained how she was so “protective” of her character that she took it upon herself to change her dialogue, and yes, create that viral dance all by herself.

“…When I first signed onto the show, I didn’t have all the scripts,” she explained. “I thought it was going to be a lot darker….I didn’t know what the tone was…”

She continued, “I don’t think I’ve ever had to put my foot down more on a set in a way that I had to on Wednesday…Everything that…I had to play [in the script], did not make sense for her character at all…There were times on that set where I even became almost unprofessional in a sense where I just started changing lines.”

Jenna added, “I had to sit down with the writers, and they’d be like, ‘Wait, what happened to the scene?’ And I’d have to go through and explain why I couldn’t go do certain things.”

She credits the “collaborative” nature of director Tim Burton for letting her get away with it.

As for the dance, Ortega said she declined Burton’s offer to hire a choreographer. “…[A]t that point, I was so…protective of Wednesday, that I didn’t want anyone else touching her, because I stopped trusting outside opinion, and I was like, ‘No. I got it. I’ll handle it. I should know her at this point, don’t even worry about it.'”

And the Scream VI star also expressed she has other aspirations. “I think there’s a big part of me that would much rather direct than act, and I kind of look at my acting career as a [gateway],” she admitted.

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Nick Cannon and Kevin Hart recently announced a game show poking fun at Nick’s many children, but it turns out it was part of E!’s marketing plan. The prank was the network’s way of promoting its new competition series, which Nick and Kev will host together.

Celebrity Prank Wars, airing April 6 at 10 p.m. ET/PT, will capture the “all-out war” between two celebrities. Each episode will see them “planning and perpetrating some of the wildest and most viral pranks on each other,” with Nick and Kevin serving as judges.

The likes of Anthony Anderson, Lil Duval, Fantasia, Tiffany Haddish, Taraji P. Henson, Lil Jon, Ludacris, Killer Mike, Chance The Rapper, T-Pain, T.I. and more will appear as celebrity participants of the game show. 

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History Channel has snagged some Oscar-caliber talent for three separate documentaries: Academy Award winners Morgan Freeman and Kevin Costner, and nominee Bradley Cooper.

Cooper is executive producing FDR with Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author Doris Kearns Goodwin. The new three-night documentary will premiere on Monday, May 29, at 8 p.m. The project is being called “an epic portrait of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, unpacking how his own fight with polio prepared him for the challenges of leading the United States through the Great Depression and World War II.”

Freeman’s two-hour doc, Black Patriots: The 761st Battalion, “will tell the true story of the first Black tank unit to serve in combat during WWII, and explore in-depth the two major battles they faced – the expansion of Nazism in Europe and racism, oppression, and inequality at home.”

In a statement, the legendary actor calls it an honor to show the public “a story I’ve wanted to tell for more than two decades.”

He adds of these “incredible” men, “Their sacrifice for this country was crucial to our victory over Nazi Germany. But they have never received proper credit.”

Yellowstone star Costner will host and produce Kevin Costner’s The West, another History collabo with Goodwin. “This original series will transcend the clichés and myths of the ‘Wild West’ and … capture the spirit of opportunity, adventure and peril through the diverse, complex characters and untold stories that defined the era and continue to shape our country today.”

Costner said, “[These] people and their stories have always held a fascination for me, but there’s an urgency today to put those times and the men and women who we think we know in perspective, in the context of their times, without judgement.”

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Brian Tyree Henry is on the road to the Oscars for the first time.

The Causeway star is nominated for Best Supporting Actor for playing a disabled car mechanic dealing with serious emotional and physical trauma, opposite Jennifer Lawrence. The 40-year-old Yale School of Drama graduate tells ABC Audio he’s here now with an Oscar nomination after taking time to realize a few things about himself.

“To realize that me being, you know, considered unconventional actually worked in my favor. To really be true to myself. And to always surround myself with a community of people who believed in me,” Henry says.

“I find that the reason that I’m able to do what I do is that I had a lot of people standing behind me and beside me saying this is where you should be,” he continues. “And sometimes the monologue you have in your head is never really what you think you should be hearing. And so sometimes when you have people who are there advocating for you, it makes all your dreams possible. So that’s how I got here.”

Now that Henry’s “here”, there’s just a few things that he’s a little nervous about — for example, what might happen if he has to make his way to the Oscars stage.

“That if I win, that I will trip. One, because I’m a tripper, I will always trip. And then like literally getting up there and talking like Yoda,” he admits. ” It’s going to be terrible. But also, I don’t know, I’m just like, screaming like the wrong names at people. Like calling people by their character names rather than their government names, which I’ll probably do anyway.”

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Barry, the Emmy-winning dark comedy series, will end with its upcoming fourth season, premiering April 16, HBO confirmed on Tuesday.

“It’s been an amazing journey making this show, and it’s bittersweet that the story has come to its natural conclusion,” Barry star, co-creator, writer, and director Bill Hader said in a statement.

A teaser trailer for season 4 shows Hader’s titular character, a depressed hitman from the Midwest who dreams of becoming an actor, in prison, thanks to his former acting teacher, Gene Cousineau, played by Henry Winkler.

Over its first three seasons, Barry has picked up a total of nine Emmys, with Hader winning a pair for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series and another going to Winkler for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.

Barry‘s fourth and final season will consist of eight episodes, with the series finale slated for May 28.

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Attention celebrities: If Christian Siriano made your dress for Sunday’s Academy Awards, you may want to have your people call his people.

The star designer and Project Runway season four winner told his Instagram followers on Monday that a plumbing mishap at his studio made it rain — literally.

“Well it’s 6 days before the Oscar’s [sic] and a pipe burst in our studio,” he said, along with a video from the point of view of someone surveying the water-logged scene. Cardboard shipping boxes that could fit gowns were seen among the water-logged items, as the sound of dripping water could be heard throughout.

Siriano added sarcastically, “yay happy Monday to us! Ughghghg.”

He added, with not a few anguished emoji, “THE WORST EVER! Only a few dresses ruined.”

One of Christian’s followers, obviously a Project Runway fan, quoted its host’s advice for dealing with last-minute calamities: “I can almost hear Tim [Gunn] whispering ‘make it work.'”

Just as on the competition reality show, the clock is ticking: The 95th annual Academy Awards airs Sunday night at 8 p.m. on ABC.

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