Entertainment

There was a lot of flight time for the cast of Top Gun: Maverick, which opened on select IMAX screens Tuesday and will hit all theaters on Friday. Monica Barbaro plays one of the new fighter pilots, call sign Phoenix, and she tells ABC Audio she was a little nervous at first to go up in the military jets. But now?

“I love flying,” she shares. “Getting to be in the sky was, it became like actually, as intense as it all was, it became actually quite peaceful in the moments between takes and the moments between training.”

Thanks to training, Barbaro says that “depending on the plane” she might be able to step in if there was ever a pilot emergency.

“Obviously, a commercial airliner, a lot of bells and whistles that are quite complicated,” she notes, adding, “A Cessna, I can fly. I can fly a Cessna…But obviously in an emergency situation…If there were no licensed pilots on that plane, I would be the closest thing to it.”

In the future Barbaro might be able to go bigger than a Cessna thanks to co-star Tom Cruise, who she reveals “gifted us a lifetime membership to basic ground school.”

Learning to fly wasn’t the only training for Barbaro, who says the biggest challenge was the underwater training they had to go through in case they had to eject over the ocean. She recalls “almost panicking” before following through with everything and coming out just fine on the other side.  

“I never felt happier in my whole life,” she says.

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Matthew McConaughey is speaking out following Tuesday’s horrific mass shooting at an elementary school in the actor’s Texas hometown of Uvalde that left 19 children and two adults dead.

“As you all are aware there was another mass shooting today, this time in my home town of Uvalde, Texas,” McConaughey wrote in a message on social media. “Once again, we have tragically proven that we are failing to be responsible for the rights our freedoms grant us.”

He went on to call for action and asked Americans to not “make excuses” and to not “accept these tragic realities as the status quo.”

“As Americans, Texans, mothers and fathers, it’s time we re-evaluate, and renegotiate our wants from our needs,” he wrote. “We have to rearrange our values and find a common ground above this devastating American reality that has tragically become our children’s issue.”

McConaughey continued, “This is an epidemic we can control, and whichever side of the aisle we may stand on, we all know we can do better. We must do better. Action must be taken so that no parent has to experience what the parents in Uvalde and the others before them have endured.”

The shooting took place at Robb Elementary School. The 18-year-old suspect, identified by law enforcement sources and Gov. Greg Abbott as Salvador Ramosa, a student at Uvalde High School, is also dead.

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CBS pulled Tuesday night’s season four finale of FBI in light of the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, that claimed the lives of 19 students, two teachers and the alleged gunman earlier in the day. The episode has been pulled due to the fact that the storyline concerned a school shooting, according to Variety. The episode’s official synopsis reads, “As the team investigates a deadly robbery that garnered a cache of automatic weapons for the killers, they discover one of the perps is a classmate of Jubal’s son, who is reluctant to cooperate with the case.” FBI aired a repeat in the finale’s place. A new airdate for the finale has yet to be announced…

Samuel L. Jackson has been tapped to star alongside Chris Pratt in a new animated Garfield film, according to Deadline. The film is based on Jim Davis’ titular lazy comic strip cat and his interactions with his owner, Jon Arbuckle, along with his fellow pet, Odie the dog. Jackson will reportedly play a brand-new character, Garfield’s father, Vic. This will mark the third time Garfield has been brought to the big screen. Bill Murray previously voiced the character in 2004’s Garfield and 2006’s Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties, both of which were a combination of live-action and animation…

The Bachelorette star Tayshia Adams is set to host the 2022 MTV Movie & TV Awards: Unscripted, according to Variety. The show will take place live at the Barker Hangar on Sunday, June 5, at 10 p.m. ET. This year, the MTV Movie & TV Awards and the Unscripted show will air back-to-back and simulcast across BET, BET Her, CMT, Comedy Central, Logo, MTV2, Nick at Nite, Paramount Network, Pop, TV Land and VH1. Before the Unscripted awards, Vanessa Hudgens will host the 2022 MTV Movie & TV Awards. The tick, tick…BOOM! star previously hosted the MTV Movie & TV Awards: Greatest of All Time special in 2020…

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To quote Darth Vader, Friday “will be a day long remembered” by Star Wars fans, with the two-episode debut of Obi-Wan Kenobi on Disney+. 

“We’re very close. It’s very exciting,” director Deborah Chow tells ABC Audio. “You know, I’ve been working on this for three years to sort of finally be at this point of it coming out, it’s incredibly exciting.”

“And honestly, they’ll just be nice to be able to talk about it openly for once!” The Mandalorian veteran added with a laugh. 

Moses Ingram plays a new character called Reva [REE-vah], one of the fearsome Inquisitors tapped by Vader to hunt down the remaining Jedi, like Ewan McGregor‘s titular character, after the events of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. 

Moses is also feeling the relief of not having to keep any more spoilers. “And that’s going to feel really good, too!” she laughs. 

“It’s hard, you know…I was really good about keeping it from my people. And so a lot of my friends…have been, ‘I mean, I knew you were in Star Wars, but I didn’t know you were like in Star Wars. I thought. I thought maybe…you’d…have a walk-on or something like that, but. Wow!'”

Moses adds with a laugh, “It’s like ‘Wow…you give me no credit whatsoever.'”

She says of her newfound Star Wars fame, “It’s been a whirlwind.”

“I mean, it’s so crazy….and people are going to see it in a matter of days now, which is just blowing my mind the closer we get to it.” 

The series also stars Star Wars prequel stars Hayden Christensen, Bonnie Piesse, and Joel Edgerton, as well as Eternals alumni Kumail Nanjiani.

Star Wars is a property of Disney, parent company of ABC News.

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On May 25, 2020, the world watched in shock as George Floyd laid on the ground, restrained under Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin‘s knee for nearly 10 minutes. Floyd was gasping for air and repeating his final words, “I can’t breathe.” Floyd’s death sparked a nationwide reckoning around social justice, police reform and systemic racism but the authors of a new biography say they set out to tell the story of the man behind the movement.

As recounted in His Name is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice, authors Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa embarked on an extensive research journey to humanize Floyd beyond his unknowingly impactful death.

“We knew that he was much more than the 10-minute video that everyone had seen … no one should be reduced to that,” Olorunnipa told ABC Audio. “He was a human being. He loved people. He was loved by people. And it was important for us to show his full humanity.”

With access to Floyd’s family members and close friends, and drawing on over 400 interviews, the authors’ findings include personal life details such as Floyd’s relation to a formerly affluent great-great-grandfather.

“I was surprised that there was actually great wealth in his family history,” Olorunnipa said, noting there were many revelations he found interesting. He described the grandfather’s story from “one of the wealthiest people in eastern North Carolina” to a poverty-stricken man whose descendants suffered the consequences of systemic racism.

Through that example and countless others, the authors were able to draw a direct line between Floyd’s life and the book’s other main focus: institutional racism in America.

As for Olorunnipa’s wishes for the book on the second anniversary of Floyd’s death, “We need to remember what it was about George Floyd’s death … that caused so many people to say, ‘This is not right.'”

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Things aren’t always what they seem. Case in point, after pictures of Florence Pugh and Will Poulter hanging out sparked romance rumors, the English actress took to social media to set the record straight. 

“Ooookay. Man. This is getting a little silly now. No, Will Poulter and I are not dating,” Pugh, 26, wrote via her Instagram Stories on Tuesday.

“We went to the beach with our friends, who are always about a half a metre away from us in every picture, but have been cleverly cut out/ framed out so that it looks otherwise,” she explained. “You can LITERALLY see my best friend in the corner of so many shots and Archie’s arms at the sides.”

The Midsommar star continued, “I understand that the nature of this job is that you sometimes get your privacy completely bulldozed by paparazzi, but to fabricate this stuff actually does more damage than good. Thanks for saying we look sexy..doesn’t mean we’re doing the sexy.”

The lengthy statement comes days after photos of Pugh and Poulter hanging out in Ibiza went viral. To further prove her point, Pugh shared a few photos of other friends who were along on the friendly trip, before sharing a message urging people to be mindful of what they say online. 

“Another note, a very important note. There’s no need to drag people through this,” she wrote. “Regardless of your opinion on who I should or shouldn’t be with, at the end of the day, if you’re complimenting someone by trolling another person…you’re just bullying. There’s literally no need to be horrible online- no need.”

“Think about what you write. Think about who it affects,” Pugh added. 

Prior to the recent link to Poulter, Pugh has been romantically linked to actor Zach Braff, 47, since 2018. 

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Lenny Bruce, Joan Rivers and Bill Hicks blazed their own trails for comedy before they passed on, and now they’re blazing new ground: as action figures.

The trio is being immortalized in plastic — though Rivers might have joked she already has been — as part of the Nacelle Company’s Legends of Laughter action figure line.

The figures are a pretty natural fit for the company behind the documentary series The Toys That Made Us and A Toy Store Near You, and its award-winning Comedy Dynamics label.

Each figure will come packaged with a QR code giving collectors access to a previously unreleased track from that artist, personally curated by the estates of Rivers, Hicks and Bruce.

In a statement, Melissa Rivers, Joan’s daughter, joked, “I think the term, ‘Action Figure,’ may be a bit ambitious for a woman who considered making a martini exercise.” She added, “Nonetheless, It is a treat to see my mother captured, and I do mean captured.”

Preorders will start August 16, in celebration of National Joke Day, at NacelleStore.com.

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While comic book geeks might have technical reasons to disagree, Doctor Strange can beat Batman … at the box office, that is.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness might not have gotten the level of praise as The Batman seemed to, but the Sam Raimi-directed Marvel movie crossed the $800 million mark at the worldwide box office.

Matt Reeves‘ The Batman, it should be said, was no slouch, standing at some $760 million worldwide, enough to motivate Warner Bros. Discovery to green-light a sequel to the Robert Pattinson-led film.

The Doctor Strange sequel has officially become the second-highest-grossing film of the pandemic period, a distant second to Sony Pictures’ nearly $1.9 billion-grossing Spider-Man: No Way Home, in which Madness’s Benedict Cumberbatch also starred.

Marvel Studios is owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC News.

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Alec Baldwin‘s Instagram use has gotten him into hot water once again. In a now-deleted Instagram post found by The Shade Room, Baldwin apparently weighed in on workplace safety regarding a viral fight video.

Former NFL player Brendan Langley was shown punching an employee last week after an apparent dispute over his use of a wheelchair to roll his luggage through Newark Airport. Langley was arrested after the scrum, and the airline employee, who was left bloodied, was fired.

In response to The Shade Room posting the video, Baldwin opined, “The guy working at the airport is the victim. He came to work to do a job.”

He added, “The other guy, with his big mouth, is guilty of workplace abuse, where people come to work with an expectation of safety, even civility. This a**hole who hit this guy should be put on a no-fly list.”

The fact that cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was killed last year at her own workplace — on the set of Baldwin’s Western Rust — didn’t go unnoticed by commenters.

“Sit this one out,” one Instagrammer opined.

“The privilege goes crazy,” noted Essence‘s official Insta account, getting more than 23,000 likes.

“If ‘shoot first ask questions later’ was a person!” another snarked.

In April, the New Mexico Environment Department’s Occupational Health and Safety Bureau fined the producers of the Western $136,793 for on-set safety violations stemming from Hutchins’ death.

The agency issued a “Willful-Serious citation,” declaring that “Rust Movie Productions, LLC management knew that firearm safety procedures were not being followed … and demonstrated plain indifference to employee safety …”

The vintage Colt-style revolver Baldwin was holding had mistakenly been loaded with a live round.

A criminal investigation into Baldwin, who allegedly fired the fatal shot, remains ongoing.

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The first trailer has dropped for Netflix’s most expensive film to date, the spy thriller The Gray Man, starring Chris Evans and Ryan Gosling.

For the film, Evans reunited with Joe and Anthony Russo, the directors of four Marvel films, including Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame.

The film has a mustachioed Evans getting the order to “locate and destroy” Gosling’s character, a secret agent so secretive he goes by the moniker The Gray Man.

“That could be fun,” Evans’ Lloyd says. “The man’s got some street cred.”

As proof, Gosling is shown dodging machine gun fire and RPGs, and dispatching henchmen in hand-to-hand fighting while obscuring himself with a smoke grenade.

“Are you hurt?” Ana de Armas’ character asks him. “I think my ego’s a little bruised,” Gosling says in true action hero fashion.

Gosling’s character is apparently in possession of a microchip MacGuffin; one scene in the trailer has a battered Gosling face to face with Evans. “You must be Lloyd,” he says. “What gave it away?” Evans’ character asks. “The trash ‘stache. It just leans ‘Lloyd,'” Gosling says, dropping a live grenade between their legs.

“Ballsy,” Evans smirks, as they both dive for cover.

The trailer also showcases some amazing stunt work, including cars, gunplay, explosions and more, as “every wet team from here to Reykjavik” hunts Gosling.

“I can kill anybody,” Evans later boasts to Billy Bob Thornton‘s character. “Maybe not ‘anybody,'” the Oscar winner replies.

The Gray Man, which also stars former Bridgerton heartthrob Regé-Jean Page, debuts in select theaters July 15 and on Netflix July 22.

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