Entertainment

The Mandalorian creator Jon Favreau appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live Wednesday night, and surprised the chat show host and geek with his very own Star Wars action figure — but Kimmel returned the favor with a surprise of his own.

After Kimmel happily received his custom figure — a miniature of him smiling, frozen in a block of carbonite like Han Solo — Kimmel shocked Favreau by revealing a “secret” video Jon had shot on the set of 2008’s Iron Man.

Favreau recalled asking Samuel L. Jackson — a “real geek” — to take part in a “top secret shoot” that would become the first of many Marvel post-credit scenes. In the movie, Jackson’s Nick Fury made his first appearance and informed Robert Downey Jr.‘s Tony Stark about what Fury called The Avengers Initiative, which laid the groundwork for the eventual Marvel Cinematic Universe.

But Favreau said he shot an alternate take “for me, I knew it wouldn’t be in the movie … just for fun.”

That’s when Kimmel interrupted and, to Favreau’s apparent shock, said he had the footage and played it.

Sure enough, there were Downey and Jackson once again in Tony’s living room, but acting out new dialog.

“Who the hell are you?” Stark asks Fury.

“Nick Fury, motherf***er,” Jackson replies, deadpan.

Favreau was asked if he knew that film would lead to dozens more movies and a shared cinematic universe. “We didn’t know, honestly,” he said.

“When Robert Downey was cast, that’s when I thought, ‘Oh, this could be cool and really special.’ And we attracted, because of Robert, I think, a lot of great other actors like Jeff Bridges and Gwyneth [Paltrow], and … the characters became interesting and comedy was offbeat.”

(Video contains censored profanity.)

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

When Steven Spielberg wants to write a movie with you, you write a movie with Steven Spielberg. That’s what happened to Tony Kushner, who co-wrote and produced The Fabelmans alongside the acclaimed director. Their film is up for seven Oscars at this year’s Academy Awards, including nominations for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay.

So, how does one go about co-writing a film? Kushner tells ABC Audio about their process, which started during the COVID lockdowns in 2020.

“First, we just did Zoom calls, and talked about the outline and stuff like that,” Kushner says. “Then, when it was time to write – Final Draft software has a feature called collaboration, where two people can type on the same document at once.”

While both men had access to the document, Kushner says he was doing most of the heavy lifting, typing-wise.

“I’m a much better typer than Steven is. I’m not a great typist, but Steven really isn’t fast. So, I did all the typing, but he could see what I was doing,” Kushner says. “We were on Zoom so we could look at each other. And we did it three days a week, four hours a day for two months, and we finished the screenplay.”

The Fabelmans, which follows a fictional story inspired by Spielberg’s childhood, has already taken Kushner around the awards circuit this year.

“You get to meet people whose work you really love, and then sometimes they become friends and that’s a nice thing,” Kushner says.

There was one celebrity interaction in particular that Kushner considers his highlight.

“The day after the Golden Globes my husband and I got to have breakfast with Jennifer Coolidge,” Kushner says. “I think it was, like, the prize for the whole season.”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Emma Heming Willis, Bruce Willis‘ wife, posted a sweet throwback video of her husband in an Instagram Story, weeks after revealing that his aphasia condition has developed into frontotemporal dementia.

“What’s this new memory thingy on IG!? OMG my biggest fan. I’m in love with him,” Emma said of the video, and her husband since 2009.

In the footage, the Die Hard franchise star reads a headline about his wife’s skin care line. “USA Weekly: ‘Interview with Emma Heming Willis, founder and CEO of CocoBaba,'” he reads.

“How about it?” she replies off-camera.

“‘How about it?’ I’m crazy about it!” Bruce says.

Emma also posted a video of herself scrolling through hundreds of replies from her more than 619,000 followers. Set to The Rascals “A Beautiful Morning,” she notes, “I see you all. I read all your stories. There’s so much love and support in here,” adding “Thank you” with a heart emoji.

Last month, Emma explained there’s no cure for the “cruel disease” Willis is facing.

On Monday, she posted a picture in which she’s embracing dementia specialist Teepa Snow, “who has helped me add to my dementia care toolbox.” Calling her a “gift,” Heming Willis said, “She’s a loving, compassionate and skilled leader in this space who navigates herself with pure empathy.”

In response, Snow expressed, “@emmahemingwillis has done an absolutely remarkable job of providing the right support for Bruce as his abilities have changed and created a place space and life that continues to provide him with what he needs to live well.”

She added, “Frontal temporal dementia is never easy but with the right programming and support, it truly is possible to continue living life.”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Booksmart director Olivia Wilde is back on the market following her split with Harry Styles, a source tells Us magazine.

“Olivia is ready to date again, making it clear she’s available, and she isn’t looking for anything less than an amazing guy,” says the insider.

The 38-year-old actress/filmmaker and the “As It Was” singer, 29, met in September 2020 while filming Don’t Worry Darling and seemingly confirmed their relationship by holding hands in January 2021. They both kept their relationship private and declined speaking about it publicly.

Reports surfaced in November that the pair was “taking a break” and the decision to part ways was “amicable.”

The former couple began dating a year after Wilde and ex-fiancé Jason Sudeikis ended their nine-year relationship. Olivia and the Ted Lasso star share son Otis, 8, and daughter Daisy, 6.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Jay Leno made an appearance on Wednesday’s installment of The Kelly Clarkson Show and talked about his recovery from that fiery garage accident in November of last year that left him with serious burns to his face, and body. 

“You look great, though,” Kelly said, to which the 72-year-old comic replied, “Well, this is a brand new face.”

Leno explained, “I was working on a car and I got a face full of gasoline. It caught fire,” Leno explained, recalling the November, 2022 freak accident. “I had been eating a Flamin’ Hot Dorito, and when I bit into it, it set my face [on fire],” the former Doritos pitchman joked.

“It was all third-degree burns, it was pretty bad. It was pretty bad,” Leno said, getting serious for a moment, to which Clarkson added that “you can’t even tell” anything had happened.

“Yeah, you’d think there’d be a zipper here or something, but no,” Leno said, pointing to his famously large chin. 

“Only for the second time in my career am I the new face of comedy,” Leno said, cracking Kelly up. “I got in once in the ’80s and now I get it again,” before pointing to the left side of his head and his “brand-new ear.”

Jay underwent skin graft surgery and other therapies during a 10-day stay at the Grossman Burn Center after the accident, which occurred when he was working on a vintage car in his collection. 

In January, the former Tonight Show host suffered multiple broken bones in a motorcycle accident, to boot.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Deadline reports Daisy Ridley, best known for playing Rey in the J.J. Abrams Star Wars trilogy, has been tapped to star in The Better Liar, a drama series based on Tanen Jones‘ book of the same name, in development at Amazon. Ridley will also executive-produce the adaptation, along with True Blood writer Raelle Tucker, who will script the show as well. The Better Liar, per Amazon, follows “a woman who hires a lookalike in an effort to conceal her sister’s death and claim their shared inheritance,” but “her deception exposes a web of dangerous secrets”…

She’s a cool mom: Girls5eva star Busy Phillips is the latest addition to the cast of Tina Fey‘s movie adaptation of her hit Broadway musical Mean Girls, according to Entertainment Tonight. Philipps will play the mother of Plastics leader Regina George, the role originated in the first Mean Girls film by Amy Poehler. Phillips joins previously announced cast members Jenna Fischer, Angourie Rice, Reneé Rapp, Auli’i Cravalho, Jaquel Spivey, Fey, Tim Meadows, Avantika, Christopher Briney and Bebe Wood. The first Mean Girls film in 2004 grossed over $130 million worldwide…

Kristen Bell is set to star in a new comedy series headed to Netflix from Modern Family creator Steve Levitan and Erin Foster, co-creator and star of VH-1’s Barely Famous, according to Variety. The as-yet untitled series is said to center on “the unlikely relationship between an irreverent, outspoken, agnostic woman — played by Bell — and an unconventional rabbi,” per the streamer…

Fox has given a third season renewal to Rick & Morty co-creator Dan Harmon’s upcoming animated comedy Krapopolis, according to Deadline. Additionally, the premiere of the show — most recently set for May — has now been pushed to the 2023-2024 season. Billed as the first-ever animated series curated entirely on the Blockchain, Krapopolis, which features the voices of Ted Lasso Emmy winner Hannah Waddingham and What We Do in the Shadows star Matt Berry, will center on “a flawed family of humans, gods and monsters that tries to run one of the world’s first cities without killing each other.” Susan Sarandon, Will Forte, Michael Urie, Jane Lynch, Amber Stevens West, Yvette Nicole Brown and Dave Franco are set to guest star…

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Will Smith took the stage at the African American Film Critics Association Awards, where he and Emancipation director Antoine Fuqua accepted the organization’s Beacon Award. It marked Smith’s first in-person speech at an awards ceremony since the 2022 Oscars, where he slapped Chris Rock onstage.

“Emancipation was the individual most difficult film of my entire career. It was all outdoors, that is true,” Smith joked, drawing laughs from the crowd, according to Variety.

“It was the second day of shooting and 110 degrees…I was in a scene with one of the white actors. The actor decided to ad-lib. So we’re doing the scene. I did my line. He did his line. And then — ad-lib — he spit in the middle of my chest,” Smith recalled generating groans from the audience. “The actor felt that the ad-lib had gone well. So we do take two. I do my line. He does his line — and spits in the middle of my chest again…In the distance, I hear a voice. And Antoine says, ‘Hey, let’s do a take without the spit.’ And in that moment, I knew that God was real.”

“I want to thank [AAFCA co-founder Gil L. Robertson] and AAFCA. I want to thank all of you in this room for doing what you do, keeping our stories alive,” Smith continued. “I want to thank Apple because the budget was one thing. And then the budget was another thing. And then the budget was another thing. And Apple never flinched. It was the first time I had heard from a studio that the story was more important than how much it costs to get it done…They make iPhones. They can do it.”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Paramount+’s further adventures of Kelsey Grammer‘s Frasier Crane have landed a major foil: That’s right, Lilith has entered the building.

Stage and screen star Bebe Neuwirth will reprise as Crane’s intelligent, icy ex-wife in an episode of the reboot, ABC Audio has confirmed.

The couple, who first appeared on Cheers, did reunite occasionally on NBC’s spin-off Frasier, with the pair leaving off on good terms as co-parents to their child, Freddy.

However, things are back to normal between Frasier and Lilith on the new show, Paramount+ teases. “When they reunite at Freddy’s birthday party, Lilith, in classic form, is far from pleased about having to share Freddy (Jack Cutmore-Scott) now that Frasier is back living in Boston. What begins as a fun party with friends and family, inevitably becomes a Lilith-and-Frasier showdown for the ages!”

The new Frasier show got underway on Wednesday in Los Angeles live in front of a studio audience, with former Frasier and Cheers director and producer James Burrows calling the shots on the first two episodes.

The streaming service explains the new series follows Frasier Crane “in the next chapter of his life as he returns to Boston, Mass., with new challenges to face, new relationships to forge and an old dream or two to finally fulfill.”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Legendary actor Robert De Niro has locked in his first-ever television series with a Netflix project called Zero Day.

According to the streaming giant, the limited series is a “conspiracy thriller” that will be co-produced by the actor and executive-produced by its creators: Narcos franchise alum Eric Newman and The Maze Runner‘s Noah Oppenheim.

Netflix teases of the six-episode project, “Zero Day asks the question on everyone’s mind — how do we find truth in a world in crisis, one seemingly being torn apart by forces outside our control? And in an era rife with conspiracy theory and subterfuge, how much of those forces are products of our own doing, perhaps even of our own imagining?”

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael S. Schmidt, a co-executive producer on the project, was given a shout-out by Oppenheim, who noted he was inspired by “the stories that kept him up at night.”

Oppenheim, who incidentally was the former president of NBC News, added, “To see this ripped-from-reality thriller come to life, starring the legendary Robert De Niro, is more than we could have hoped.”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Actress Jena Malone shocked fans with a heavy revelation captioning a picturesque photo she posted to Instagram Wednesday: She had been the victim of sexual assault.

Explaining the photo was taken in a field in France when she’d wrapped work on 2015’s The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part Two, Malone wrote, “…I asked the driver to let me out in this field so I could cry and capture this moment.”

She continued, “Even tho this time in Paris was extremely hard for me , was going thru a bad break up and also was sexually assaulted by someone I had worked with , I was so full of gratitude for this project, the people I became close with and this amazing part I got to play. A swirling mix of emotions im only now just learning to sort thru.”

Malone expressed, “I wish it wasn’t tied to such a traumatic event,” noting, “I’ve worked very hard to heal and learn…how to make peace with the person who violated me and make peace with myself.”

One follower replied to the actress, saying, “whoever violated you got to walk away with no reprocussions.” But Malone said that isn’t true, adding, “I used restorative justice to allow healing and accountability and growth with the other person. It was a hard process but one I believe truly helped me move thru some of the hardest parts of the grief.”

The former Goliath star also said she didn’t want to name her alleged attacker. Malone added, “I also don’t fully see how the criminal justice system could fully repair my healing…”

If you are affected by abuse and needing support, or know someone who is, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673). You can also chat online at thehotline.org or online.rainn.org, respectively.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.