Entertainment

Now that Rihanna is a soon-to-be mother of two, it’s no wonder she wants to take on a family-friendly project.

The superstar will play Smurfette in an upcoming animated Smurfs film, it was announced Thursday at CinemaCon, the Las Vegas convention for movie theater owners. And that’s not all: Rihanna will also be a producer on the movie, which is currently being called Untitled Smurfs Animated Film, and write and perform original music for the project. 

According to Variety, Rihanna appeared onstage to talk to the convention attendees and joked, “I tried to get the Papa Smurf role but it didn’t work out.” The pregnant singer, who’s expecting her second child, also confirmed she’s in her third trimester.

Paramount Pictures/Nickelodeon CEO Brian Robbins told the crowd, “With Rihanna’s singular creative appeal and musical talents, there is an enormous opportunity to elevate the cultural touchstone of The Smurfs universe in a way that’s never been done before.”

Back in 2011, a movie called The Smurfs, a 3D combination of live action and animation, hit theaters.  Coincidentally, it starred Rihanna’s pal Katy Perry in the role of Smurfette. The cast also included Neil Patrick Harris, Hank Azaria, Sofia Vergara and George Lopez.

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MTV has announced its first round of presenters for May’s 2023 MTV Movie & TV Awards.

Newly minted Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis will log some podium time, as will Halle Bailey from the live-action The Little Mermaid, Wonder Woman‘s Gal Gadot and Daisy Jones & the Six nominee Riley Keough.

The show will air live on May 7 from Barker Hangar in Los Angeles starting at 8 p.m. ET.

Here’s the full list of the first round of presenters:

Anthony Ramos – (Transformers: Rise of the Beasts)
Ariana Madix – (Vanderpump Rules)
Ashley Park – (Joy Ride)
Ayo Edebiri – (Bottoms)
Busta Rhymes
Camila Morrone – (Daisy Jones & The Six)
Chelsea Lazkani – (Selling Sunset)
Chrishell Stause – (Selling Sunset)
Christopher Briney – (The Summer I Turned Pretty)
Courtney Eaton – (Yellowjackets)
Dave Burd “Lil Dicky” – (Dave)
Dominique Fishback – (Transformers: Rise of the Beasts)
Gal Gadot – (Heart of Stone)
Gavin Casalegno – (The Summer I Turned Pretty)
Halle Bailey – (The Little Mermaid)
Havana Rose Liu – (Bottoms)
Jamie Lee Curtis – (Haunted Mansion)
Jonah Hauer-King – (The Little Mermaid)
Jasmin Savoy Brown – (Yellowjackets)
Kaia Gerber – (Bottoms)
Katie Maloney – (Vanderpump Rules)
Lala Kent – (Vanderpump Rules)
Liv Hewson – (Yellowjackets)
Lola Tung – (The Summer I Turned Pretty)
Nick Viall – (Host, The Viall Files Podcast)
Rachel Sennott – (Bottoms)
Riley Keough – (Daisy Jones & The Six)
Sabrina Wu – (Joy Ride)
Sam Claflin – (Daisy Jones & The Six)
Samantha Hanratty – (Yellowjackets)
Sarah Michelle Gellar – (Wolf Pack)
Scheana Shay – (Vanderpump Rules)
Sherry Cola – (Joy Ride)
Sophie Nélisse – (Yellowjackets)
Sophie Thatcher – (Yellowjackets)
Stephanie Hsu – (Joy Ride)
Suki Waterhouse – (Daisy Jones & The Six)
Tiffany Haddish – (Haunted Mansion)

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On Thursday, Paramount+ dropped the trailer for the eighth season of RuPaul‘s Emmy-winning Drag Race All Stars.

As always, returning performers from RuPaul’s Drag Race will compete for a chance to compete for a spot in the Drag Race Hall of Fame, along with a cash prize of $200,000. But this time around, there’s another way to win: Fans can vote as to which eliminated queen gets named Queen of the Fame Games.

The trailer also gave peeks of some of this year’s celebrity judges, including Zooey Deschanel, SNL‘s Ego Nwodim, Carson Kressley and Jojo Siwa.

As reported, All Stars season 8’s competitors are: Alexis Michelle (RPDR season 9), Darienne Lake (season 6), Heidi N Closet (season 12), Jaymes Mansfield (season 9), Jessica Wild (season 2), Jimbo (Canada’s Drag Race season 1, UK vs. the World season 1), Kahanna Montrese (RPDR season 11), Kandy Muse (season 13), LaLa Ri (season 13), Monica Beverly Hillz (season 5), Mrs. Kasha Davis (season 7) and Naysha Lopez (season 8).

The new season kicks off on Paramount+ on Friday, May 12, with two all-new episodes.

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Carol Burnett owes her life — or at least her Better Call Saul character’s life — to series star Bob Odenkirk.

Burnett, who joined the sixth and final season of AMC’s Breaking Bad prequel, played Marion, the mother of Pat Healy‘s Jeff, who recognizes Saul from his days in Albuquerque. The penultimate episode, titled “Waterworks,” ends with Marion recognizing Saul before calling the police and Saul making a run for it.

“Carol, there’s something that you should know,” Odenkirk told the audience during Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love on NBC Wednesday night. “[Series creator Vince Gilligan] wanted my character to kill you in that scene. Look at him, he’s shaking his head. His exact words to me were, ‘Saul ends up killing Carol Burnett.’ And if I remember correctly, he didn’t say, ‘Kill Carol’s character,’ he said, ‘Kill Carol Burnett.’ But I refused, and I told him I’d walk.”

“I was willing to risk my career and never working in this town again. Because I didn’t want little children who watched our show — and I hope many of them did — to see me on the street and say, ‘Mommy, that’s the man who killed Carol Burnett,'” he joked. “That’s all I wanted to say. That I’m your real friend and Vince is not. And one more thing, Vince and I, and everybody on our show, we think you’re the greatest.”

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Jerry Springer, the former mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio, whose eponymous daytime show transformed talk television, has died, ABC News has confirmed. He was 79.

According to his rep, Springer “died peacefully Thursday at his home in suburban Chicago.”

Jene Galvin, a lifelong friend and spokesman for the family, added: “Jerry’s ability to connect with people was at the heart of his success in everything he tried whether that was politics, broadcasting or just joking with people on the street who wanted a photo or a word.”

He continued, “He’s irreplaceable and his loss hurts immensely, but memories of his intellect, heart and humor will live on.”

The statement concluded, as his shows did, with a final thought: “To remember Jerry, the family asks that in lieu of flowers you consider following his spirit and make a donation or commit to an act of kindness to someone in need or a worthy advocacy organization. As he always said, ‘Take care of yourself, and each other.'”

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On Thursday, Paramount Pictures dropped an action-packed trailer for its June 9 release, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.

Set in 1994, the movie has In The Heights‘ Anthony Ramos as a human caught in the middle of an intergalactic conflict: Fan favorites like Bumblebee and Optimus Prime (veteran Peter Cullen) must team up with once-hidden robots in disguise that take the form of fearsome jungle creatures known as The Maximals, to face Unicron, a massive, planet-eating robot.

“How big is this guy?” Ramos’ military vet character asks Prime, only to have one of the Autobots, Mirage (Pete Davidson), quip, “Well, he eats planets, so, like, way bigger than a planet.”

Later, Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh‘s voice can be heard coming from a robotic eagle, Airazor, who urges Prime, “Optimus, we must trust each other to protect the home we all share.”

The gorilla-like leader of The Maximals, Optimus Primal, is voiced by Ron Perlman. He tells Prime, “This is about the fate of all living things.”

Prime answers, “Let them come.”

What follows are clips from a bonkers action set piece, which has the Autobots riding on the backs of the bot beasts, fighting an army of robotic scorpions.

The movie also features Dominique Fishback, and the voices of Pose Emmy nominee Michaela Jaé (MJ) Rodriguez as the Transformer ninja Nightbird, Game of Thrones Emmy winner Peter Dinklage as Unicron’s enforcer Scourge and Ted Lasso‘s Cristo Fernández as the Autobot Wheeljack.

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Ghosted, starring Chris Evans and Ana de Armas, has become the most-watched movie debut to date for Apple TV+, according to Deadline.

The movie, which debuted April 21, saw viewership climb through Tuesday, pulling in 328,500 viewers, according to numbers crunched by streaming tracker Samba TV.

That tops the first two days of Apple TV+’s previous hits, the 2021 sci-fi film Finch with Tom Hanks, 2022’s Ryan Reynolds/Will Ferrell holiday musical Spirited, and last month’s video game-centered thriller Tetris, according to data quoted by the trade.

Ghosted has Evans playing a man whose “grand romantic gesture” — following the “perfect” woman who ghosted him to Europe — exposes her job as an international spy.

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After his surprise ousting at Fox News, Tucker Carlson addressed his fans in a video posted to Twitter Wednesday night that has gone viral.

Sitting at his home studio, wearing a suit and tie, Carlson opened by noting, “One of the first things you realize when you step outside the noise for a few days is how many genuinely nice people there are in this country…people who really care about what’s true…So that’s heartening.

He continues, “The other thing you notice when you take a little time off is how unbelievably stupid most of the debates you see on television are. They’re completely irrelevant. They mean nothing…Trust me, as someone who has participated in them.”

Seemingly hinting at grist for a future platform, Carlson added, “And yet at the same time…the topics that will define our future, get virtually no discussion at all: War, civil liberties, emerging science, demographic change, natural resources…Debates like that are not permitted in American media.”

He expressed, “Both political parties and their donors have reached consensus on what benefits them. And they actively collude to shut down any conversation about it. Suddenly, the United States look very much like a one-party state.”

Calmly taking “the liars” to task, Tucker added, “Where can you still find Americans saying true things? There aren’t many places left, but there are some, and that’s enough. As long as you can hear the words, there is hope.”

The tweet from who was, until his exit Monday, the host of the highest-rated cable news program on television, drew equally impressive numbers on Twitter: It’s been viewed more than 44.6 million times and counting, and liked nearly 650,000 times.

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Deadline reports Cara Delevingne has joined the 12th season of FX’s American Horror Story, as a series regular, joining season 9 vet Emma Roberts and franchise newcomer Kim Kardashian. Details of Delevingne’s character haven’t been revealed. The latest season — based on Danielle Valentine’s thriller novel Delicate Condition, due out in August — is described as a feminist update of Rosemary’s Baby. It reportedly follows “a woman who becomes convinced that a sinister figure is going to great lengths to make sure her pregnancy never happens,” per the outlet…

ABC’s General Hospital leads all other nominees for the 50th Daytime Emmys with 19 nods, followed by CBS’ The Bold and the Beautiful with 14, The Young and the Restless with 13 and NBC/Peacock’s Days of Our Lives with 11. The Kelly Clarkson Show leads the talk field with 11 noms, followed by The Drew Barrymore Show and The Jennifer Hudson Show with seven and six, respectively. The full list of nominees can be found at The 50th Annual Daytime Emmys’ website…

Better Call Carmy: Bob Odenkirk is joining the cast of FX’s heralded drama The Bear, according to Variety. The trade says the Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul veteran will fill an as-yet-unrevealed guest role. The series, which follows Golden Globe winner Jeremy Allen White‘s hotshot chef Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto, who in the second season will be trying to transform his family’s troubled Chicago eatery into a fine dining establishment. The series returns in June…

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Another Bachelor baby is on the way!

Former Bachelorette Becca Kufrin is expecting her first child with fiancé Thomas Jacobs, the couple announced Wednesday. 

Sharing a video montage of the happy couple — complete with ultrasounds, sonograms, and their two pups — the parents-to-be captioned the post. “Party of 5 coming September 2023.”

“Little Bebe, we can’t wait to meet you, hold you, and watch you grow,” they added. “We already love you to the moon and back – mom & dad. #pregnanyannouncement #bebe #momanddad #pregnantnotpasta.”

Becca, 33, and Thomas, 30, who met on season 7 of Bachelor in Paradise, were flooded with congratulatory messages from other members of Bachelor Nation. 

“Speechless! Beyond happy! Sending so much love,” wrote season 10 Bachelorette Andi Dorfman. 

“WHAT!!!! Omg I’m crying,” chimed Becca Tilley. “I’m so thrilled for y’all!”

Ashley Iaconetti, Kaitlyn Bristowe, Wells Adams, former Bachelor host Chris Harrison and more also left well wishes for the couple.

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