Entertainment

(SPOILERS) Charlize Theron is giving fans a glimpse of her MCU character.

Taking to Instagram Tuesday, the actress shared two photos — a close-up headshot showcasing the deep purple eyeshadow around her eyes and her long, straight, ash blonde hair, and another of her standing in a full purple costume alongside Benedict Cumberbatch‘s Dr. Strange.

“Meet Clea,” she captioned the post.

Theron’s character appears in a post-credits scene of Marvel’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, where she recruits the sorcerer to help with a Multiversal emergency.

Created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, Theron’s character first appeared in the Doctor Strange comic Strange Tales #126, back in 1964.

According to Marvel lore, the sorceress is the niece of Dormammu, the planet-faced baddie Benedict Cumberbatch‘s Strange banished and prevented from conquering the world at the end of 2016’s Doctor Strange. Clea becomes a love interest, and eventually Strange’s wife in the books.

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

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Ellen DeGeneres‘ daytime talk show will come full circle when Jennifer Aniston, the very first guest when the show launched in 2003, returns for the final episode on May 26, People reports.

Also helping DeGeneres close out her nearly two-decade long run will be Pink, who wrote the show’s Emmy-winning theme song, and Billie Eilish.

Other guests slated to appear in the shows leading up to the finale include Zac Efron, Kate McKinnon, Justin Timberlake, Keith Urban, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Luke Bryan, Kerry Washington, Brad Paisley, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Oprah Winfrey, Mila Kunis, and Bruno Mars.

Cousins Sophia Grace and Rosie, who gained popularity after DeGeneres showed their cover of Nicki Minaj‘s “Super Bass” in 2011, will also appear on one of the show’s final episodes.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

West Side Story star Ariana DeBose has joined HBO’s Westworld in a recurring role, for the sci-fi series’ fourth season, the premium cable channel announced on Tuesday. She joins returning cast members Evan Rachel Wood, Thandiwe Newton, Ed Harris, Jeffrey Wright, Tessa Thompson, Luke Hemsworth, Aaron Paul and Angela Sarafyan. Details of DeBose’s role have not been revealed. Westworld returns for its fourth season June 6 after a two-year hiatus…

Hulu has cancelled the comedy Dollface after two seasons, according to TVLine. The series starred Kat Dennings as Jules, a woman who, after being dumped by her longtime boyfriend, set out to rekindle the female friendships she left behind. Brenda Song, Esther Povitsky, and Shay Mitchell also starred. Luke Cook, Lilly Singh, Jayson Blair and Corinne Foxx joined the cast for season two…

A day after CBS’ renewal of all three shows from Dick Wolf‘s FBI franchise — FBI and spinoffs FBI: Most Wanted and FBI: International — NBC announced on Tuesday that it has picked up Wolf’s Law & Order revival and Law & Order: Organized Crime for the 2022-23 season. They join Law & Order: SVU — which is in the second year of a three-season renewal — on the network’s lineup for next season. Law & Order ran on NBC from 1990-2010; Sam Waterston and Anthony Anderson reprise their roles from the original run, and Jeffrey Donovan, Camryn Manheim, Hugh Dancy and Odelya Halevi also star. Organized Crime, which brought Chris Meloni back to the Law & Order franchise a decade after departing SVU, will air its third season in 2022-23…

Starz has renewed its breakout freshman horror comedy Shining Vale, according to Deadline. The series follows Courteney Cox and Greg Kinnear as Patricia “Pat” Phelps and her husband, Terry, a couple stuck in a rut professional and personally who move their whole family into an old home that turns out to be haunted. Mira Sorvino also stars along with Gus Birney and Dylan Gage. Shining Vale also features Judith Light and Sherilyn Fenn. Season one is currently streaming on the Starz app…

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

When it comes to being nude, Jesse Williams says it’s not big deal. 

The actor, who currently stars in the Broadway play Take Me Out, appeared on Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen just hours after nude images of him from the play leaked online Monday, and said that he’s learned to be OK with being in the buff. 

“It’s a body,” he said. “Once you see it, you realize it’s whatever, it’s a body. I just have to make it not that big of a deal.”

Although the internet had a field day commenting on the leaked photos, Second Stage Theater, which produces Take Me Out, slammed the audience member responsible for the leak. 

“Second Stage Theater has worked to ensure the privacy of the ‘Take Me Out’ company by creating a phone-free space with locked phone cases at all performances. We are appalled that this policy has been violated and unauthorized footage of our acting company has been posted,” they wrote in an Instagram post. “It is deeply unfortunate that one audience member chose to disrespect the production, their fellow audience members, and, most importantly, the cast in this manner.”

“Taking naked pictures of anyone without their consent is highly objectionable and can have severe legal consequences,” the post continued. “Posting it on the internet is a gross and unacceptable violation of trust between the actor and audience forged in the theater community. We are actively pursuing takedown requests and ask that no one participates in the distribution of these images. Second Stage is also adding additional staff at the theater to enforce the policy.”

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Succession actor James Cromwell and another man superglued their hands to a Starbucks counter in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday to protest the company’s policy of charging extra for vegan milk, as other activists held signs protesting the policy.

“Non-dairy products all over the world…France, they give these things away. There’s no charge for it. Here, there’s an exorbitant charge,” Cromwell noted during the stunt. “Why, when it’s so important now to address climate change and to understand the violence to animals to go on to make dairy products that are served here? There’s no reason for it except greed.”

“My friends at PETA and I are calling on Starbucks to stop punishing kind and environmentally conscious customers for choosing plant milks,” Cromwell continued, reading from a prepared statement. “We all have a stake in the life-and-death matter of the climate catastrophe, and Starbucks should do its part by ending its vegan upcharge.”

“When will you stop raking in huge profits while customers, animals, and the environment suffer? When will you stop penalizing people for their ethnicities, their morals? The senseless upcharge hurts animals,” he added.

PETA has been calling out the surcharge for years, and last month, two activists glued themselves to the cafe counters at Starbucks’ Seattle headquarters in protest.

Police eventually arrived on the scene and asked the protesters to leave, which they did about 30 minutes later.

Cromwell became a vegetarian in 1974 and turned vegan while playing Farmer Hoggett in the 1995 movie Babe.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(SPOILERS) Michael Waldron, who broke open Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Multiverse with the hit Disney+ series Loki, is spilling spoilers about his latest success, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

The movie has Elizabeth Olsen‘s Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch “breaking bad,” as the writer puts it, after she got a hold of a black magic book called the Darkhold in the close of the Emmy-nominated series WandaVision.

Some had griped online that Wanda’s movie move to the dark side undoes her arc in WandaVision, which ends with her coming to terms with the loss of her love, Paul Bettany‘s Vision.

Waldron doesn’t see it that way, saying, “My interpretation of WandaVision is that she confronts her grief and she lets go of the people she has under her control, but I don’t think she necessarily resolves her grief in that show, and I don’t think she resolves her anger.”

He continues, “You see in the final scene of WandaVision — the mistake that our Wanda makes is she opens the Darkhold. So yeah, that was how I arrived there. It made sense to me and it made sense to our teams because we built the story.”

With Doctor Strange out of the way, Waldron is again working “in earnest” with Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige on a hush-hush Star Wars feature script.

“It’s a lot of fun,” Waldron teases, adding, “I’m enjoying having the freedom on that to do something that’s not necessarily a sequel or anything….it just doesn’t have a bunch of TV shows and movies that you’re servicing on top of it, the way I did with Doctor Strange.”

He calls dabbling in that galaxy far, far away, “nice,” adding, “It feels like a different exercise.”

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

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

The fifth Scream film, which debuted this year for the series’ 25th anniversary, has spawned a sequel. Paramount Pictures has announced that a sixth film has been given the go-ahead, with Ghostface Killer survivors played by Melissa Barrera, Jasmin Savoy Brown and Jenna Ortega returning.

Scream series O.G. Courteney Cox will also be back as Gale Weathers, she told the Just for Variety podcast back in March, teasing that production would get underway this summer.

The film is slated for a March 31, 2023, release.

A sequel to the fifth Scream was something of a no-brainer — the modestly budgeted 2022 movie earned $140 million worldwide, and reunited Cox with her series co-star Neve Campbell and the Friends alum’s ex-husband and former Scream partner David Arquette.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Celebrity chef Mario Batali has been found not guilty of indecent assault and battery for an alleged 2017 incident in Boston.

Natalie Tene, 32, said Batali forcibly kissed her and grabbed her breasts, buttocks and groin after meeting him in a Boston bar while having a drink with a friend in March 2017.

Judge James Stanton ultimately decided after two days of testimony and two hours of deliberation in Boston that while Batali “did not cover himself in glory, especially for a person of his stature,” the defendant had “serious credibility issues” and “a financial motive” for making the accusations.

Stanton rendered the verdict directly since Batali waived his right to a jury trial.

On Monday, at the start of the trial, Tene said she was speaking out “to be able to take control of what happened,” while Batali’s defense accused her of fabricating the account and showed text messages in which a friend advised her to “play up the story” to collect money from Batali, to which Tene replied “of course.”

Batali, 61, maintained that he was not guilty of the allegations. Tene has also filed a civil complaint for unspecified damages based on the same allegations.

In 2017, Battali was asked to step away from the ABC show The Chew, which he co-hosted, on the heels of a report from the blog Eater that multiple women had accused him of sexual harassment or misconduct.

In a statement to ABC News at the time, Batali did not deny the allegations and apologized to the people he has “mistreated and hurt.” He also stepped away from the day-to-day operations of his restaurant group in the wake of the Eater article.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

The U.K.-based auction house Prop Store is readying another collection of highly prized movie memorabilia ahead of an auction in Los Angeles beginning Tuesday, June 21.

Some of the props and other collectibles will be the Holy Grail for movie fans — in some cases, almost literally.

The Holy Grail diary kept by Sean Connery‘s Henry Jones Sr., and given to his son, Harrison Ford‘s Henry “Indiana” Jones, Jr., in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is up for grabs, with pre-sale estimates putting its hammer price at an estimated $60,000-$80,000.

Also going under the hammer is Samuel L. Jackson‘s ‘Bad Mother Fu**er’ wallet from Pulp Fiction. The brown billfold has an extra bit of provenance for Fiction fans: Legend has it it was Quentin Tarantino‘s before he gave it to Jackson’s character, Jules Winnfield. The wallet is estimated to fetch from $30,000-$50,000.

Tom Hanks‘ buddy Wilson, the volleyball from the 2000 film Cast Away, can be yours, too. The screen-used prop is estimated to sell for anywhere from $80,000-$120,000.

Other props include a screen-matched ILM “Red Leader” X-Wing starfighter model miniature from Star Wars: A New Hope (pre-sale estimate $500,000-$1,000,000); Chris Hemsworth‘s stunt Mjolnir hammer from Thor ($100,000-$150,000), and a Gizmo puppet from 1989’s Gremlins 2: The New Batch ($80,000- $120,000).

The auction will run from June 21 to 24, but if you can’t afford the items, feel free to window shop on Prop Store’s website.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Oscar-nominated actress Michelle Williams is expecting her third child, the second with her Hamilton director husband, Thomas Kail.

“It’s totally joyous!” Williams expressed to Variety. She and Kail welcomed their first child, son Hart, during the pandemic. She also has a 16-year-old daughter Matilda, from her relationship with the late Heath Ledger.

The 41-year-old Williams said of her news, “As the years go on, you sort of wonder what they might hold for you or not hold for you. It’s exciting to discover that something you want again and again, is available one more time. That good fortune is not lost on me or my family.”

She also shared having Hart during the lockdown days, saying, “it was a reminder that life goes on.”

“The world we brought a baby into is not the world we thought we were bringing a baby into, but the baby is ignorant of that. He experiences the unmitigated joy of discovery and the happiness of a loving home,” says Williams.

The Golden Globe and Emmy winner also tells the trade that being a mom helps her with her day job. “There’s nothing that makes you committed to a better world than raising a great kid. It’s the ultimate creative act,” she says.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.