Entertainment

“Talent without training is nothing” says Luke Skywalker in the season 2 finale of The Mandalorian, and it seems that Hayden Christensen took that to heart when reprising his Star Wars prequel role of Anakin Skywalker for the forthcoming series Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Fans were thrilled when news broke that Christensen was returning, and the actor took the commitment to heart by binging all of the Star Wars-related content made since he first donned Darth Vader’s helmet at the close of 2005’s Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.

Of particular importance was the Emmy-winning animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and its follow-up, Star Wars: Rebels. The former delved deeply into the battle brother relationship between his character and Ewan McGregor‘s Obi-Wan Kenobi, which sours when Skywalker turns to the Dark Side.

The latter series also featured Vader, and climaxed with a heartbreaking confrontation between Vader and his former Clone Wars student, Ahsoka Tano.

“They did a lot with these characters in those shows,” Christensen tells Entertainment Weekly. “And they did further explore the relationship. There was interesting stuff there to learn about. It was great fun getting to go back and re-immerse yourself in this world that just continues to grow and become more and more vast.”

Obi-Wan Kenobi debuts May 27 with two episodes on Disney+.

Disney is the parent company of ABC News.

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This year’s Tribeca Film Festival will be unspooling 110 feature films, as well as shorts and documentaries, its organizers have announced. All told, 150 filmmakers from 40 countries will screen their work there.

As previously reported, this year’s fest opens Wednesday, June 8 with Jennifer Lopez‘s Netflix documentary, Halftime.

Also debuting will be Somewhere in Queens, directed by Ray Romano and starring The Conners‘ Laurie Metcalf and stand-up comedian and actor Sebastian Maniscalco.

Also playing for the first time will be Jerry and Marge Go Large, a “feel great comedy” starring Bryan Cranston and Annette Bening as recent retirees who figure out a legal loophole to game the lottery.

Other entries are the documentaries Butterfly in the Sky, about Emmy winning Reading Rainbow host and Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s LeVar Burton; Loudmouth, about spiritual leader and political activist Rev. Al Sharpton; and Nothing Compares, about singer Sinead O’Connor.

The Tribeca Film Festival runs from June 8 through June 19 in New York City.

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Four-time Emmy winner Jean Smart is getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame next Monday. 

Hollywood Chamber of Commerce Chair Lupita Sanchez Cornejo made the announcement, calling the Hacks and Mare of Eastown lead “a triple threat,” thanks to her work on TV, on the stage and in movies.

Smart’s Hacks co-star Hannah Einbinder and venerated TV producer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason will be on hand to unveil the 2,721st star; Smart’s spot will be located at 6150 Hollywood Boulevard.

On Monday, Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul‘s Bob Odenkirk unveiled his Walk of Fame star, with the help of his friend and fellow cast member Giancarlo Esposito, and comedy legend Carol Burnett.

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In his new movie, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Nicolas Cage plays an over-the-top version of himself that pokes fun of the public’s perception of him. However, in real life, the Oscar winner says he’s far more grounded.

In fact, Cage tells People, “[T]here’s no version of Nic Cage in reality that doesn’t want to spend time with his children.”

“There’s no version of Nic Cage that didn’t put family first over career. I turned down Lord of the Rings and I turned down Matrix because I didn’t want to go to New Zealand for three years or Australia for three years because I needed to be home with my son, Weston, that’s a fact,” the 58-year-old says.

Weston is now 32; Cage is also the father of 16-year-old Kal-El, and is expecting a baby with his fifth wife, Riko Shibata.

When it comes to his filmography, which is peppered with Oscar winners like Leaving Las Vegas, action hits like Con Air, recent acclaimed performances like Pig and Unbearable Weight, and plenty of more forgettable straight-to-streaming titles, Cage is circumspect.

“I always say to myself, ‘I never had a career, only work.’ What I mean by that is sometimes — and I won’t mention names — but when you get into this career-minded perception of one’s self it can be a slippery slope, and it can lead to things where you start believing in your own mythos, and you start taking yourself way too seriously.”

He adds, “You become pretentious and then you fall into the realm of diva, and that’s when mistakes happen in your personal life and on camera.”

Also starring Pedro Pascal, Tiffany Haddish, and Neil Patrick Harris, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent hits theaters Friday.

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Mayim Bialik has been making a splash since taking over as the host of Jeopardy! after the death of Alex Trebek in 2020, but being the show’s first female host has its drawbacks as well.

The 45-year-old Big Bang Theory alum tells Entertainment Tonight though the gig has “changed my life in enormous ways,” she has a unique set of problems compared to her predecessor.

“Alex wore a different suit every single show, but people didn’t think about it that much because it was navy, or it was gray,” Bialik explains. “Whereas I might wear colors sometimes and you might recognize that jacket because we also have a budget. [But] it’s not about what Mayim Bialik’s wearing, it’s about these contestants and, like, all the random, amazing things that they know.”

Adds Mayim, “I think it’s OK to say there aren’t a lot of females in this kind of position and so I think we’re all learning, you know, the different ways we look at women or think about — you know, it’s not like it’s rocket science. Like, this is all stuff that we’ve been reckoning with for thousands of years.”

Of course, the long-running ABC game show isn’t the only thing on Bialik’s mind these days. She’s also wrapping up season two of her Fox sitcom, Call Me Kat. On top of that, her feature directorial debut, As They Made Us, starring Dustin Hoffman, Dianna Agron and Candice Bergen, is playing in theaters and on demand.

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CBS has renewed its chat show The Talk for a 13th season. Show hosts Amanda Kloots, Jerry O’Connell, Akbar Gbajabiamila, Natalie Morales and Sheryl Underwood all made the announcement during Monday’s installment of the syndicated program. The series has undergone several high-profile staff shakeups, including Sharon Osbourne‘s on-set argument regarding racism that led to her ouster last July. Original co-host Julie Chen stepped down in 2018, after her husband, former CBS head Les Moonves, became embroiled in a sexual misconduct scandal…

Rio Hackford, a character actor who appeared Swingers, and later performed in that movie’s writer, Jon Favreau‘s, series The Mandalorian, has died at 51. The Hollywood Reporter notes that Hackford, who also appeared in Pam & Tommy, and American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson, as well as HBO’s Treme, had been suffering from an unspecified illness. Hackford was the son of Oscar-winning filmmaker Taylor Hackford. He was memorialized in a photo posted on Instagram by his stepmother, Helen Mirren, who called him “El Rio”…

Aquaman and Dune star Jason Momoa is in final talks to star in the Warner Bros.’ live-action movie adaptation of the popular video game Minecraft, which Napoleon Dynamite filmmaker Jared Hess is on board to direct, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Minecraft, which allows players to use blocks to create structures and worlds, reached 100 million users just a few years following its 2011 debut. It’s the latest movie based on a video game to hit the big screen, following the success of Ryan Reynolds’ Free Guy last year, and Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog 2 earlier this month…

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Just one night after determining the Top 20, it was time to narrow down the competition yet again on American Idol.

Monday’s episode saw the remaining 20 contestants take the stage one by one as it was revealed whether or not America voted them into the Top 10. Each singing hopeful then gave a showstopping performance regardless of their status, but those who were not voted into the Top 10 had the added pressure of knowing that this performance would determine their future in the competition, as the judges would have the power to save four of them from elimination. 

After deliberating, Luke, Katy, and Lionel decided to save Allegra, Jay, Mike Parker, and Tristen to round out the Top 14.  

Here’s the official Top 14:
Ava Maybee: “Cuz I Love You” Lizzo
Christian Guardino: “Creep” Radiohead
Lady K: “Bust Your Window” Jazmine Sullivan 
Huntergirl: “Vice” Miranda Lambert
Dan Marshall: “Stuck On You” Lionel Richie
Leah Marlene: “Wisher to the Well” Original Song
Nicolina: “She Used To Be Mine” Sara Bareilles
Noah Thompson: “Cover Me Up” Jason Isbell
Emyrson Flora: “Love In The Dark” Adele
Fritz Hager: “Golden” Harry Styles
Allegra Miles: “Tainted” Original song
Jay: “Believer” Imagine Dragons
Mike Parker: “Bed on Fire” Teddy Swims
Tristen Gressett: “Are You Gonna Go My Way” Lenny Kravitz

Eliminated:
Cameron Whitcomb – “If It Hadn’t Been For Love” The Steeldrivers
Katyrah Love “Through The Fire” Chaka Khan
Cadence Baker “I’m Your Baby” Whitney Houston
Sage: “Brown Eyed Lover” Allen Stone
Jacob Moran: “Rise” Katy Perry
Elli Rowe: “All I Want” Kodaline

American Idol returns Sunday, April 24 at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.

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After Chris Rock’s younger brother, Kenny Rock, told TMZ that he wants to fight Will Smith, Ray J says he’ll offer a fortune for Chris and Will to face off in a boxing match.

When asked if he thinks Chris and Will should box, Kenny said: “No, they shouldn’t. But I should get in the ring with Will Smith.”

The Shade Room posted Kenny’s response on Instagram, and Ray J responded, “It can only be Will vs. Chris, my investors are ready right now — $50M fight no less. That’s each.”

In other news, Anthony Anderson admitted Monday on The Ellen DeGeneres Show that he cried while taping the final episode of black-ish.

“I didn’t cry as much as Tracee Ellis Ross, though. She cried every day. I think I cried a little bit more than [Ross] did, and I didn’t think it was going to hit me the way that it did,” Anderson added.

“In the last scene on the last day is when I lost it, and it was unexpected for me,” the 51-year-old actor continued. “I didn’t expect to lose it the way that I did, but that just goes to show how much I love what I do [and] love doing it with the people that I did it with for the last eight years.”

The final episode of black-ish airs Tuesday, April 19 at 9 p.m. on ABC.

Finally, over the weekend, Major League Baseball celebrated the 75th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in 1947. LeBron James is paying tribute to the late Hall of Famer by producing a documentary about how Robinson’s paved the way for minority players. Titled After Jackie, it’ll premiere Saturday June 18 on The History Channel.

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Piers Morgan, who famously stormed off the set of Good Morning Britain last year following his comments that he didn’t “believe a word” of the racism accusations Meghan Markle leveled last year against the Royal Family, is coming back to TV.

Following the incident, some 500,000 people complained about his comments to a U.K. watchdog group, and he chose to walk rather than apologize. He now tells the Daily Mail that he’s looking to help those who were in his shoes — or as he puts it, to “uncancel those who have been cancelled” — with his new show Piers Morgan Uncensored on TalkTV.

The show will air in the U.K., but will also be available via YouTube, and via streaming on Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV and other services. It debuts on April 25.

He tells the paper, “I want to re-platform those who’ve been de-platformed. I want to uncancel those who have been cancelled.”

He adds, “I want to basically make a point that cancel culture is as dangerous to society, in its own way, in terms of its attack on free speech and freedom of expression, as coronavirus has been.

Morgan continues, “So, I think if a democracy, like ours, or America or Australia, where this show will be airing, if a democracy loses that sense of what free speech means, and stops defending an individual’s right to an opinion, you’re not a democracy. This show, I hope, and the network will be standing up for democracy.”

Incidentally, another collaborator on TalkTV will be Sharon Osborne, who herself was canceled, dismissed from The Talk for defending Morgan’s right to make his comments. She later called the segment “an ambush” that network executives orchestrated against her.

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Actor Brett Goldstein got great mileage out of the “f” word in Ted Lasso — and even out of character used it profusely in accepting his Emmy last year. But now he’s taught it to the fuzzy residents of Sesame Street.

However, it’s not the same F-word we’re used to seeing TV’s Roy Kent saying: it’s “fairness.”

“Today’s word begins with the letter ‘F'” says the Muppet Tamir, in the just-posted sketch.

“Ooh, I love the letter ‘F’,” Goldstein growls, smiling.

With the help of his puppet pals, Goldstein gives Cookie Monster a lesson in fairness — by sharing the cookies the actor just baked, rather than gobbling them all up like, well, a monster.

“I had no idea you liked to bake!” Tamir also comments in the bit.

“I do. It relaxes me,” Goldstein deadpans.

ABC Audio recently spoke with Sonia Manzano, who played Maria on Sesame Street for 44 years before leaving in 2015, about the decades-old tradition of stars getting starstruck when they cameo on the celebrated kids show.

“I love to see these big celebrities, absolutely, get gaga over Elmo and Big Bird, and they’re just thrilled to meet the characters, and they’re very disarming!” said Manzano. “I love it when great actors who can are in great movies are sort of disarmed by Elmo, and Elmo makes them forget their lines and break their concentration because they can’t keep a straight face when they’re talking to these fuzzy monsters.”

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