In a Manhattan courtroom Wednesday, Oscar-winner Cuba Gooding Jr. pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor forcible touching charge to resolve his forcible touching and sex assault case in Manhattan.
The actor had been accused of forcibly kissing a woman at a nightclub in September 2018. He also admitted to subjecting two other women to non-consensual physical contact in October 2018 and June 2019.
The actor could avoid jail time if he continues for six more months the alcohol and behavior modification treatment he began in 2019, and have no new arrests. If he does both, the Jerry Maguire star is allowed to re-plead to a lesser charge of Harassment in the Second Degree, with a sentence of time served and a permanent stay of sealing. If he does not comply, he faces up to one year in jail.
Gooding’s next court date is October 13, 2022.
Gooding, 53, was arrested in June 2019 after a 29-year-old woman said he squeezed her breast at the Magic Hour Rooftop Bar & Lounge in Times Square. Prosecutors added additional charges after two other women came forward and accused him of unwanted sexual overtures, including a server at TAO Downtown and another woman at the nightclub LAVO.
Gooding had long denied the charges, with his attorneys contending he was unfairly accused in the fervor of the #MeToo era.
Fernando Gutierrez-Juarez/picture alliance via Getty Images
Amanda Bynes hasn’t said anything on her social media since her mother’s conservatorship of her affairs was terminated last month, but on her Instagram, she just posted that she and her fiancé, Paul Michael, have just dropped a single.
“Diamonds,” a song on which Michael raps, and Bynes provides the chorus, is available on Spotify and other streaming services.
“Diamonds, diamonds, diamonds on my neck, on my wrist,” Bynes chants, following with what sounds like, “diamonds, diamonds, diamonds on my fish, yeah I wish.”
While not assessing the quality of the track, which is apparently about partying and dropping money in Los Angeles, Bynes’ rapping style might be judged to be culturally questionable.
The nominations are out for the 82nd Annual Peabody Awards, spotlighting 2021’s “most compelling and empowering stories released in broadcasting and streaming media2.”
Among the nominees this year are Questlove‘s Oscar-winning documentary Summer of Soul (…Or When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised), Hulu’s opioid crisis drama Dopesick, which previously earned Michael Keaton an Emmy award, and ABC’s reboot of The Wonder Years.
Other nominees in the Entertainment category include Netflix’s lockdown comedy special Bo Burnham: Inside; Hulu’s coming of age comedy Pen15; HBO Max’s post-apocalyptic drama Station Eleven; FX’s heralded comedy Reservation Dogs, HBO Max’s Sort Of; HBO’s Emmy-winning comedy Hacks; The Underground Railroad from Amazon Studios; Showtime’s black comedy Yellowjackets; PBS’ miniseries The Long Song, and Peacock’s punk music-celebrating series We Are Lady Parts.
“Demonstrating the immense power of stories, these nominees exposed our societal failures and celebrated the best of the human spirit,” noted the organization’s executive director Jeffrey Jones. “They are all worthy of recognition, and Peabody is proud to celebrate them.”
All told, PBS led the nominations with thirteen; HBO earned eight; Hulu and Netflix tied with five nominations; The New York Times and NBC both earned four; and ABC, Amazon Prime, BBC, and Showtime tied with two apiece.
Amy Schumer made a remote appearance onSirius/XM’s The Howard Stern Show Wednesday, and she held little back about her recent stint as Oscars co-host.
“I don’t think it was traumatizing for me, I think it was traumatizing for all of us,” she said of Will Smith‘s slapping and then cursing out Chris Rock, after he made a joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, during the broadcast.
“It was upsetting as a person,” Billboard quoted the comedian aS saying. “I was in an abusive relationship years ago. …I thought right away, ‘Oh my God, Will Smith must be in so much pain.’ I felt bad for him, too. That’s probably not the right instinct,” she admitted.
Amy added, “To see your friend get hit and, also Will Smith, who we’ve all loved forever…it was upsetting for so many reasons.
Calling it “shocking,” she added that as a stand-up, having the video endure forever would be a “nightmare.”
As for how Rock has dealt with the situation, Schumer said, “[H]e knows what he’s doing. I have a bad poker face, and I need to share what’s on my mind in a compulsive way. But I think he’s really smart…He hasn’t spoken publicly about it, so I shouldn’t speak for him. He’s a pro, he’s a sweetheart.”
The incident had another “trigger” for Schumer, as she suffers from trichotillomania, a condition that makes her compulsively pull out her hair.
Seeing as Jada’s baldness, which Rock made fun of, was caused in part by her alopecia, Schumer told Stern, “Growing up, if somebody talked about my hair, it was like the biggest fear of my life, and I’m sure that’s a big deal for their family.”
Schumer also revealed her Hulu show, Life & Beth, was renewed for a second season.
Tonight on CBS is another installment of the 42nd (!) season of Survivor.
Way back in 2001, the winner of the third season, Survivor: Africa, was Ethan Zohn, and he’s still watching the show, so ABC Audio wanted to get his perspective on the current iteration of the Emmy-winning series.
“I’m torn because I’m an…old-school Survivor player. I played back in the day,” he says. “I just feel the way the game’s organized now, it’s not better or worse. It’s just different.”
He explains that, as opposed to his season’s 39-day adventure, “today’s game is 26 days,” adding with a laugh, “Like, seriously, anyone can last 26 six days, you know?”
Zohn admits that the current game seems confusing to him,” noting with a laugh, “I get through an episode like, ‘What just happened?!’ Like…there’s two idols, there is a clue, there is an advantage, there’s a disadvantage — all in one episode. I’m like, ‘Ahh! What’s going on?!'”
That said, Ethan’s still a fan. “I still think it’s so exciting, I think [host and producer Jeff Probst has] done a great job. I mean, the cast this year is pretty diverse and unique and [there are] a lot of backstories that you’re seeing that makes them interesting.”
Zohn, who not only is a Survivor winner, but a two-time cancer survivor, is running the Boston Marathon on Monday — marking his return to the race for the first time since 2014, when the deadly Boston bombings cut the event short.
He’s celebrating 10 years of being in remission, and he’s running to raise funds for the foundation AKTIV Against Cancer and its mission to make physical activity part of cancer treatment.
Serena Williams is one of the most celebrated, decorated and beloved tennis stars of all time. But her superstar status as an Olympic medalist doesn’t negate the fact that as a Black woman, she’s at times overlooked and undervalued.
In a personal essay for ELLE magazine, the 40-year-old star shares the harrowing story of what happened after she gave birth to her now 4-year-old daughter, Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr., when Serena developed life-threatening blood clots throughout her body.
Generally speaking, Williams described her journey as a “wonderful pregnancy,” saying, “I guess I’m one of those women who likes being pregnant.” The fun of it all came to a halt after giving birth, when her requests for medical attention were ignored by nursing staff, she says.
As someone who’s already at-risk for blood clots, Williams asked of her nurses, “When do I start my heparin drip? Shouldn’t I be on that now?”
The apparent disregard for her health and safety made her worry. “All I could think was, ‘I’m dying, I’m dying. Oh my God,'” Serena wrote. Her constant coughing, which she was told “might burst her [C-section] stitches”, finally prompted a CT scan, which revealed clots in her lungs and arteries. After four subsequent emergency surgeries, they were successfully removed.
Unfortunately, that isn’t the story for many other Black women in the U.S. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Black women are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women are.
Thinking of those women who don’t have the same “happy ending” to their birthing story, Williams said, “Being heard and appropriately treated was the difference between life or death for me; I know those statistics would be different if the medical establishment listened to every Black woman’s experience.”
Black Maternal Health Week is celebrated every year from April 11-17.
L-R: Maisie Williams, Isaac Hempstead Wright, Sophie Turner — HBO/Macall B. Polay
For eight seasons Maisie Williams played Arya Stark on the hit HBO show Game of Thrones and now she’s opening up about a time she “resented” the role.
In a recent interview with GQ UK, the 24-year-old actress got candid about her time on the fantasy drama, which spanned from 2011 until its finale in 2019, and revealed that growing up while on the show was a tough time.
“I think that when I started becoming a woman, I resented Arya because I couldn’t express who I was becoming,” she shared. “And then I also resented my body, because it wasn’t aligned with the piece of me that the world celebrated.”
With GoT now three years in the rearview mirror, is there anything Maisie misses?
“I don’t think it’s healthy [to miss it], because I loved it,” she said. “I look at it so fondly, and I look at it with such pride. But why would I want to make myself feel sad about the greatest thing that ever happened to me? I don’t want to associate that with feelings of pain.”
But, that doesn’t mean she’s opposed to doing a reboot or spin-off of some sort, adding, “I’m not saying [a revival] would never happen, but I’m also not saying it in this interview so that everyone goes, ‘The spinoff! It’s coming!’ Because it’s not.”
“It has to be the right time and the right people. It has to be right in the context of all the other spinoffs and the universe of Game of Thrones,” she said. “It has to be the right time for me.”
Millie Bobby Brown is getting real about what it’s like growing up in the limelight.
While on Tuesday’s episode of The Guilty Femininst podcast, the Stranger Things actress, who turned 18 in February, opened up about how she’s navigated the industry while coming of age.
“I deal with the same things any 18-year-old is dealing with: navigating being an adult and having relationships and friendships, and it’s all of those things. Being liked and trying to fit in, it’s all a lot, and you’re trying to find yourself while doing that,” she shared.
“The only difference is that obviously I’m doing that in the public eye. So it can be really overwhelming,” Brown added.
The Enola Holmes actress went on to explain that she’s also noticed a change in how she’s been treated since reaching her milestone 18th birthday earlier this year.
“I have definitely been dealing with that, more within the last two weeks of turning 18,” she said. “Definitely seeing a difference between the way people act and the way the press and social media have reacted to me coming of age.”
Although Millie feels turning 18 “shouldn’t change anything,” she admits, “it’s gross, and it’s true. I think it’s just a very good representation of what’s going on in the world and how young girls are sexualized. And so I have been dealing with that, but also have been dealing with that for forever.”
Netflix just dropped a new trailer for the forthcoming fourth season of Stranger ThingsVol. 1, which debuts May 27.
Bridgerton season two is Netflix’s third-most popular English-language TV series, the streaming service announced on Tuesday. The list is calculated based on a shows’ first 28 days on the streaming service, but Bridgerton managed to accomplish that in just 17 days. “The series had 115.75M hours viewed on the English TV list, appearing in the top 10 in 91 countries, making it the most-viewed title for the third week in a row. The season also entered the Most Popular list at #3, with 560.50M hours viewed. Shonda Rhimes now holds three spots on the Most Popular list with Bridgerton seasons 1 and 2 and Inventing Anna, per Netflix…
The password is “reboot.” NBC is reviving the classic game show Password, with Keke Palmer taking the reins as host, the network announced on Tuesday. Just like the original, contestants from all walks of life will partner with celebrities in the word-association game in which they try to guess a word based on single-word clues offered by their partner. Password launched in 1961 hosted by Allen Ludden. NBC revived the show in 1979 and 1984 prior to becoming a hit game on both Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and The Tonight Show. Fallon, who’s a co-producer, will play in each of the eight hour-long episodes. The premiere episode will be dedicated to Betty White, who regularly played on the original series and who was married to Ludden until his death in 1981…
Hulu on Monday released an extended trailer for Conversations with Friends. Based on the 2017 novel by Sally Rooney, the 12-episode series follows a college student named Frances — played by newcomer Alison Oliver, in her first-ever screen credit — who finds herself involved in a “series of relationships that force her to confront her own vulnerabilities for the first time.” Conversations with Friends, premiering May 15, also stars Sasha Lane, Jemima Kirke and Joe Alwyn…
(NOTE LANGUAGE) The entertainment world is reacting to the news of actor and stand-up comedian Gilbert Gottfried‘s death on Tuesday after a “long illness.” He was 67.
Jon Stewart: “RIP Gilbert. Opening for Gilbert Gottfried at Carolines and Princeton Catch was one of the great thrills of my early stand up life. He could leave you gasping for breath…just indescribably unusually hilarious…Damn.”
Judd Apatow: “Nobody was funnier than @RealGilbert on a roll. He could put you into convulsive hysterics. He was also the sweetest man. His podcast is a comedy treasure. What a terrible loss. Sending my condolences and love to Dara and his family.”
Jimmy Kimmel: One of a million crazy-funny Gilbert memories is when he made a deranged caller to the @HowardStern show repeat a LONG story 15 times, each time pretending he couldn’t hear what he said.”
Mark Hamill: “He was a unique voice in comedy on so many levels. Unpredictable, one-of-a-kind, hilarious & irreplaceable! Thank you for the lifetime of laughs, sir.”
Jason Alexander: “Gilbert Gottfried made me laugh at times when laughter did not come easily. What a gift. I did not know him well but I loved what he shared with me. My best wishes and sympathy to his family.”
Kevin Smith: “We cast @RealGilbert as Patrick Swayze in the Clerks Cartoon because a) Patrick refused and b) I was a big Gilbert Gottfried fan. I first saw him on SNL and Mtv (https://youtu.be/QHd56BRUOjs) but grew to love him via USA Up All Night, the Stern show & his epic Iago. RIP, Comedy King.”
Seth MacFarlane: “Gilbert Gottfried made me laugh so hard [on the set of A Million Ways to Die in the West], I could barely do my job. A wholly original comic, and an equally kind and humble guy behind the scenes. He will be missed.”
Marlee Matlin: “I am so sad to read about the passing of Gilbert Gottfried. Funny, politically incorrect but a softie on the inside. We met many times; he even pranked me on a plane, replacing my interpreter @655jack(they’re like twins). Sending love to Dara & his children. RIP #gilbertgottfried”
Conan O’Brien: “I saw Gilbert perform in 1985 and when he entered to applause he said, “Thank you, thank you very much.” He then continued to say “thank you” repeatedly for ten full minutes. It was the nerviest, funniest thing I had seen. So sorry to lose this sweet and delightfully funny man.”
George Takei: “I shall miss you, my friend, my sometimes foil, my always pain in my side, usually from the belly laughs. The heavens are a great deal louder with you out there now, I’m sure. Keep ‘em shaking their heads and smiling, Gilbert.”
Dane Cook: “Sending love to @RealGilbert’s wife Dara, his family & fans. Gilbert Gottfried was never not funny. He was a lovely guy, always friendly & made many people happy.”
Kathy Griffin: “Gilbert would be the first one to make a joke about this picture today. The first. And he would not hold back.”
Al Franken: “Big loss to the world of comedy. Gilbert Gottfried has left us. Fearless and hilarious!!! A truly lovely man, loved by all in comedy. May his memory be a blessing to his family, his friends & all he made laugh!”
Richard Lewis: “Gilbert, I don’t want to believe this. I loved him. I’m heartbroken for his beautiful family. Say it ain’t so. For almost 40 years his spectacular comedy blew me away. You can’t be funnier. My God, all who experienced him are crushed. Say it ain’t so.”
Bill Burr: “Rest In Peace Gilbert Gottfried! First time I saw him live he did his Jackie Kennedy bit: “Jackie do you remember where you were…” in front of drunk Bruins fans at Nicks. #RIPGilbertGottfried”
Tom Green: “Sad to hear of the passing of the groundbreaking and legendary Gilbert Gottfried. Here was the last time I saw you in Miami. My condolences to the family and friends of this genius comic, artist, and provocateur. Comedy mourns tonight. #comedy”
Stevie Van Zandt: “RIP Gilbert Gottfried. A completely unique comedian and classic voice. Our contemporary connection to Comedy’s Old School. Forever a ‘50s and ‘60s guy. Not too many of us left. Seems like I just did his Sirius/Podcast. Will always be the legendary example of making miserable fun.”
Meghan McCain: “I really love Gilbert Gottfried’s comedy and documentary on his life and – I really wish God would stop taking all the people who make us laugh and happy. Way too young, way too soon. Love and light to his family and loved ones.”
Alan Zweibel: “No one made me laugh more than Gilbert Gottfried and no one I know had a bigger heart. R.I.P. my friend. I enjoyed every minute of knowing you. #GilbertGottfried @RealGilbert”
Joy-Ann Reid: “Posting this to laugh while I cry. That time I got to Gilbert Gottfried with Gilbert Gottfried at COMICON, back in the #AMJoy days. What a great and funny guy. Rest in peace and deepest condolences to his family.”
Jackie Hoffman: “I guess all the great comedians are dying because no one‘s allowed to make jokes about anything any more #RIP Gilbert”
Treat Williams: “RIP Gilbert Gottfried I’m so sorry we did not have that last dinner You were delightful”
Diane Warren: “Make ’em laugh in Power forever Gilbert Gottfried”
