The new episode of The Mandalorian on Disney+ features some very recognizable faces from our planet, playing in that galaxy far, far away.
A trip to uncharted planet Plazir-15 to meet up with her former Mandalorian allies leads Katee Sackhoff‘s Bo-Katan Kyrze and Pedro Pascal‘s Din Djarin to a meeting with the leaders of “the only remaining direct democracy in the Outer Rim.”
Those leaders — The Duchess and Captain Bombardier — are played, respectively, by Lizzo and Jack Black, who are revealed wearing finery at a lavish dinner party attended by various alien species.
Lizzo’s Duchess explains she was part of the planet’s royal family, and they now act as the leaders of the democracy with Black’s character, a former Imperial tasked with rebuilding the planet.
The pair met and fell in love in the interim, she explains. “We are both royals and elected leaders,” he says proudly.
Before hiring Din and Bo-Katan to deal with a problem of rogue droids, Lizzo is seen babying Baby Yoda, aka Grogu, excitedly feeding him by hand after catching the hungry child, who flips into her lap.
For the fangirl who once dressed up as Grogu for Halloween, it was a full-circle moment.
The episode also features another familiar face in Back to the Future star Christopher Lloyd, playing Commissioner Helgait, who oversees the increasingly troublesome droids on which the pampered society relies.
On Wednesday, MTV announced the nominations for the 2023 MTV Movie & TV Awards, and Top Gun: Maverick topped the competition with six.
On the TV side, Stranger Things and The Last of Us matched that, tying with six nominations apiece.
On the unscripted side, there was a four-way tie with two each for Jersey Shore Family Vacation, RuPaul’s Drag Race, The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills andVanderpump Rules.
Fans can vote for their faves between now and April 16 at 6 p.m. ET at vote.mtv.com.
The show will air live on May 7 from Barker Hangar in Los Angeles starting at 8 p.m. ET.
Here are the nominations:
BEST MOVIE Avatar: The Way of Water Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Elvis Nope Scream VI Smile Top Gun: Maverick
BEST SHOW Stranger Things The Last of Us The White Lotus Wednesday Wolf Pack Yellowstone Yellowjackets
BEST PERFORMANCE IN A MOVIE
Austin Butler – Elvis
Florence Pugh – Don’t Worry Darling
KeKe Palmer – Nope
Michael B. Jordan – Creed III
Tom Cruise – Top Gun: Maverick
BEST PERFORMANCE IN A SHOW
Aubrey Plaza – The White Lotus
Christina Ricci – Yellowjackets
Jenna Ortega – Wednesday
Riley Keough – Daisy Jones & The Six
Sadie Sink – Stranger Things
Selena Gomez – Only Murders in the Building
BEST HERO
Diego Luna – Andor
Jenna Ortega – Wednesday
Paul Rudd – Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania
Pedro Pascal – The Last Of Us
Tom Cruise – Top Gun: Maverick
BEST VILLAIN
Elizabeth Olsen — Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
Harry Styles – Don’t Worry Darling
Jamie Campbell Bower — Stranger Things
M3GAN – M3GAN
The Bear — Cocaine Bear
BEST KISS
Anna Torv + Philip Prajoux – The Last Of Us
Harry Styles + David Dawson – My Policeman
Madison Bailey + Rudy Pankow – Outer Banks
Riley Keough + Sam Claflin – Daisy Jones & The Six
Selena Gomez + Cara Delevingne – Only Murders in the Building
BEST COMEDIC PERFORMANCE
Adam Sandler – Murder Mystery 2
Dylan O’Brien – Not Okay
Jennifer Coolidge – Shotgun Wedding
Keke Palmer – Nope
Quinta Brunson – Abbott Elementary
BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMANCE
Bad Bunny – Bullet Train
Bella Ramsey – The Last Of Us
Emma D’Arcy – House of the Dragon
Joseph Quinn – Stranger Things
Rachel Sennott – Bodies Bodies Bodies
BEST FIGHT
Brad Pitt (Ladybug) vs. Bad Bunny (The Wolf) – Bullet Train
Courteney Cox (Gale Weathers) vs. Ghostface – Scream VI
Jamie Campbell Bower (Vecna) vs. Millie Bobby Brown (Eleven) – Stranger Things
Keanu Reeves (John Wick) vs. Everyone – John Wick 4
Escape from Narkina 5 – Andor
MOST FRIGHTENED PERFORMANCE
Jennifer Coolidge – The White Lotus
Jesse Tyler Ferguson – Cocaine Bear
Justin Long – Barbarian
Rachel Sennott – Bodies Bodies Bodies
Sosie Bacon – Smile
BEST DUO
Camila Mendes + Maya Hawke – Do Revenge
Jenna Ortega + Thing – Wednesday
Pedro Pascal + Bella Ramsey – The Last Of Us
Simona Tabasco + Beatrice Grannò – The White Lotus
Tom Cruise + Miles Teller – Top Gun: Maverick
BEST KICK-ASS CAST Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Outer Banks Stranger Things Teen Wolf: The Movie
BEST DOCU-REALITY SERIES Jersey Shore Family Vacation The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Family Reunion: Love & Hip Hop Edition The Kardashians Vanderpump Rules
BEST COMPETITION SERIES All-Star Shore Big Brother RuPaul’s Drag Race: All-Stars The Challenge: USA The Traitors
BEST HOST
Drew Barrymore – The Drew Barrymore Show
Joel Madden – Ink Master
Nick Cannon – The Masked Singer
RuPaul – RuPaul’s Drag Race
Kelly Clarkson – The Kelly Clarkson Show
BEST REALITY ON-SCREEN TEAM
Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino, Vinny Guadagnino, Pauly D (MVP) – Jersey Shore Family Vacation
Tori Deal and Devin Walker – The Challenge: Ride or Dies
RuPaul Charles and Michelle Visage – RuPaul’s Drag Race
Ariana Madix, Katie Maloney, Scheana Shay, LaLa Kent – Vanderpump Rules
Garcelle Beauvais and Sutton Stracke – The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills
Because of the Easter holiday weekend, The Super Mario Bros. Movie jumps into theaters Wednesday. Inspired by the video game phenomenon, Chris Pratt voices Mario and Always Sunny‘s Charlie Day his brother Luigi, who team up to fight the minions of the evil Bowser (Jack Black).
Speaking of Easter, the movie is chock-full of Easter eggs for video game fans and features an all-star cast, including Golden Globe winner Anya Taylor-Joy playing Mario’s love, Princess Peach. Seth Rogen voices Donkey Kong, Keegan-Michael Key voices Toad, and Fred Armisen is Cranky Kong.
Black tells ABC Audio he’s finally made it as an actor playing the King of the Koopas. “You know, a lot of actors, their dream is to play Hamlet because that’s the most iconic of all the characters you can play: Shakespeare‘s finest moment as a writer. A lot of actors are like, ‘Oh, I just really want to play Batman,’ you know? Bowser, to me, trumps them all.”
He adds, “It’s the greatest villain in video game history. I got to play Bowser, dude! I could just mic drop and call it a career. I might!” Jack enthuses before poo-pooing the other choices: “Hamlet. Batman. I’m Bowser, baby!”
Rogen had another goal in mind: to make fans forget 1993’s widely panned movie adaptation starring Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo.
Seth explained, “These games … were like a huge part of my childhood, you know? I remember when I was a kid how excited I was for a Mario Brothers movie to come out, and then it sucked. And so it’s nice — it’s exciting to potentially create the movie that I wish I saw when I was 11 years old and instead of got what I got.”
Ahead of his debut as the voice of the titular wily plumber in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Chris Pratt got serious on The Drew Barrymore Show. He talked about finding faith and “the woman of his dreams,” wife Katherine Schwarzenegger.
“There was a moment in my life when I was really struggling and felt really broken,” said the Marvel movie star, who was separated from first wife Anna Faris in 2017, after eight years of marriage. They formally divorced in 2018.
“For me, my own journey, [it was] finding a higher power and leaning on that and being like, ‘Please save me,’ and then feeling saved,” he commented.
Pratt said he first met Schwarzenegger, the daughter of Arnold, “five, maybe six years ago,” in church.
“I was in the front row of church – which is like, you kind of don’t want to be like, ‘Woah, who’s that?’ at church,'” Pratt admitted. “But I was sneaking some glances and wondering, ‘Who is that?’ Anyway, ‘What am I doing? Come on, I’m broken, help me. But who’s that?'”
The pair hit it off, and “later on” began dating, he explained. They were married a year later, in 2019.
“God has a fast-forward button,” Pratt said. “When it’s right – boom! – you’re hit. You fall in love, you get married.” He added, “The minute you have faith, it all falls into place.”
He also likened finding Schwarzenegger to spotting a missing puzzle piece: “It just fits together…’Oh, it fits because it was the piece that was made to fit there.’ It felt like that.”
The couple now have two daughters, two-year-old Lyla Maria, and Eloise Christina, 10 months.
Pratt also has a 10-year-old son, Jack, from his marriage to Faris.
Mo’Nique is opening up about her Netflix special, My Name Is Mo’Nique.
The project is a concept that was conceived in 2017, but hit a few bumps in the road, including being dropped by the streamer and her filing a racial and gender discrimination lawsuit against them in 2019 claiming they were paying her less than other stars. The lawsuit was settled and now, over five years later, the special has been released on the platform.
“I think that things happen when they’re supposed to,” the comedian told Entertainment Tonight about the special that premiered on April 4.
Mo’Nique also shared how the content she would have originally put out changed, given that so much time has passed.
“Now, I’m a 55-year-old woman. I’ve seen more life [and] I’ve had more experiences. I’m even more unapologetic now than I was then,” she said. “So I think that with life comes experience comes wisdom comes knowledge comes freedom… I have nothing to hide. I wear everything on my sleeve so I have nothing to hide.”
“You know, sometimes people say, ‘Well, why did you say that?’ Because it’s mine. And because it’s mine, my experience, my journey, my walk, I can say it how I choose to,” she continued. “I can say it when I want to because it is mine. So April 4, baby, the world will hear. It’s mine to tell.”
Coming up, Mo’Nique’s also set to star in Netflix’s The Deliverance, directed by Lee Daniels, whom she feuded with for 13 years over accusations he blackballed her for not promoting the 2009 film Precious during awards season. They have since patched things up.
In a first look for Jeremy Renner: The Diane Sawyer Interview — A Story of Terror, Survival and Triumph, airing Thursday, April 6, at 10 p.m. ET on ABC, the Avengers star reflects on the January accident involving his seven-ton snowcat.
“If I was there, on my own, that’d [have] been a horrible way to die. And surely I would’ve. Surely,” Renner said. “But I wasn’t alone. It was my nephew. Sweet Alex. And the rest of the cavalry came.”
Renner, who says he suffered more than 30 broken bones as a result of the accident, along with blunt chest trauma, said he wrote a goodbye note to his family while in critical condition at the hospital.
“I’m writing down notes in my phone to — last words to my family,” he recalled, tearing up.
Renner said he remembers the pain from the accident. “I was awake through every moment,” he told Sawyer, but said that he would “do it again — because it was going right at my nephew.”
The exclusive also features harrowing recollections of the accident from Renner’s family members, including his nephew he was trying to protect, and behind-the-scenes snapshots from his ongoing journey to recovery.
He told Sawyer that he “chose to survive” after the accident and refused to let it kill him.
When asked about his hope for the future when it comes to stunts that come with action-packed roles, Renner said, “I’ve lost a lot of flesh and bone in this experience, but I’ve been refueled and refilled with love and titanium.”
The special airs Thursday, April 6, on ABC and the next day on Hulu.
Game of Thrones alum Kit Harington has joined the season 3 cast of HBO’s financial drama Industry, according to Entertainment Weekly. The series, per HBO, gives “an insider’s view of the blackbox of ‘high finance’ through the eyes of an outsider, Harper Stern — played by Myha’la Herrold — a talented young woman from upstate New York. Following a group of young grads fueled by ambition, youth, romance and drugs.” Harrington will play Henry Muck, the CEO and founder of green tech energy company Lumi. Marisa Abela, Harry Lawtey, David Jonsson, Nabhaan Rizwan, Conor MacNeill, Freya Mavor, Will Tudor and Ken Leung also star…
Deadline reports Robert De Niro is attached to star in the crime drama series Bobby Meritorious, in the works at Paramount+. De Niro would play an informant poised to take down the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York — “a sovereign kingdom with seemingly unlimited power and scope,” per the outlet. “Only one man — an ex-cop-turned prosecutor affectionately known as Bobby Meritorious — can stop him”…
A series adaptation of the 1999 cult film film Cruel Intentions is in the works at Amazon Freevee, according to Deadline. The new take, based on Choderlos de Laclos‘ novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses, follows, “two ruthless siblings who will do anything to preserve their power and reputations after a brutal hazing incident at an elite Washington, D.C. college — even seduce the daughter of the Vice President of the United States.” The original 1999 film, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, Reese Witherspoon and Selma Blair, spawned a prequel in 2000, a sequel in 2004 and a jukebox musical in 2015…
It’s time for more adventures with Lil Dicky and friends: the FXX comedy Dave is back Wednesday for season 3.
This season picks up where last season left off, with the gang out on tour — perfect for star and creator Dave Burd aka Lil Dicky. He tells ABC Audio what excited him most was being in different cities in the first episodes and having “all these different types of themes and short film vibes all around every single time, all while certainly having a cohesive story together throughout the season.”
It’s a life he and Davionte “GaTa” Ganter — Dicky’s real-life hype man — know well.
“Before any of the show, me and GaTa were touring musicians,” he explains. “Those experiences being so incredible, and interesting and enlightening … was such a light bulb moment in my brain to be like, ‘This is a TV show,’ you know?”
Season 2 premiered back in June 2021, and Burd shares why so much time passed between seasons: “I’m still just as active as a musician as ever … I have to be able to make my album, I have to be able to work on my music career.”
Besides, says Burd, “The idea of making a show about my life becomes almost false if you’re not living a life.”
Despite the show’s success, Burd says only about one in 10 people call him Dave rather than Dicky. But he notes, “Before the show, it was zero in 10 people. As much as that is my rap name, I don’t relate to being called [Lil Dicky] the same way I would be called Dave.”
It’s time for more adventures with Lil Dicky and friends: the FXX comedy Dave is back Wednesday for season 3.
This season picks up where last season left off, with the gang out on tour — perfect for star and creator Dave Burd aka Lil Dicky. He tells ABC Audio what excited him most was being in different cities in the first episodes and having “all these different types of themes and short film vibes all around every single time, all while certainly having a cohesive story together throughout the season.”
It’s a life he and Davionte “GaTa” Ganter — Dicky’s real-life hype man — know well.
“Before any of the show, me and GaTa were touring musicians,” he explains. “Those experiences being so incredible, and interesting and enlightening … was such a light bulb moment in my brain to be like, ‘This is a TV show,’ you know?”
Season 2 premiered back in June 2021, and Burd shares why so much time passed between seasons: “I’m still just as active as a musician as ever … I have to be able to make my album, I have to be able to work on my music career.”
Besides, says Burd, “The idea of making a show about my life becomes almost false if you’re not living a life.”
Despite the show’s success, Burd says only about one in 10 people call him Dave rather than Dicky. But he notes, “Before the show, it was zero in 10 people. As much as that is my rap name, I don’t relate to being called [Lil Dicky] the same way I would be called Dave.”
Donald Glover‘s career went through a rough patch during his pre-Atlanta days. His request to perform at the BET Awards was turned down, as they wanted Kendrick Lamar, and he got booed while opening for Kid Cudi at New York’s Terminal 5. If there’s one door he’s happy closed, however, it’s his former desire to be on the cast of SNL.
“I dodged so many bullets,” Glover tells GQ. “Me being on SNL would’ve killed me. I got friends who made it on SNL and, at the time, I was like, damn. But if I got on SNL, my career wouldn’t have happened.”
“And thank God,” Glover continues. “Thank God I didn’t get some of those pilots. I wanted so desperately to be on Parks and Rec because it was the cool, hipster show. I am the bullet dodger. I feel like Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction. That wasn’t a mistake, you know? God did that.”
Glover says he heard his stint with stand-up was the reason he failed to secure a position on SNL, but chalks his comedy experience up to the fact that “everybody’s got to pay a price.”
“If I hadn’t done that stuff, I probably wouldn’t have been in The Daily Show’s writers room,” he says.
As bad as his stand-up was, Glover says he received some words of encouragement from a fellow comedian. “I was with Chris Rock, and he was like, ‘People aren’t good [at stand-up] until they’re your age. The only one who was better when he was younger was Eddie [Murphy]. Why aren’t you doing this s***?’”
Though he’s building his new production company/incubator/cultural library Gilga, Glover’s now down to take another stab at comedy.
