Entertainment

Denise Dowse, best known for her roles in Insecure, Beverly Hills, 90210 and Grey’s Anatomy, is currently in a coma after contracting meningitis, her sister Tracey Dowse revealed over the weekend.

“I am requesting support and prayers be offered me and my sister, and my only immediate family Denise Dowse,” Tracey wrote on the actress’ Instagram. “She is currently in the hospital in a coma brought on by a virulent form of meningitis. Her doctors do not know when she will come out of the coma as it was not medically induced.”

Tracey adds that her sister “is a vibrant actor and director that should have many years ahead of her” and that “thoughts, prayers and support are greatly appreciated.”

Most notably, Dowse played Mrs. Yvonne Teasley on Beverly Hills, 90210. Her other roles included playing Judge Rebecca Damsen on CBS’ The Guardian and Dr. Rhonda Pine on HBO’s Insecure. Her numerous TV credits also include Grey’s Anatomy, The Resident, Good Trouble, The X-Files and Criminal Minds.

Dowse made her feature film directorial debut with the upcoming biopic Remember Me: The Mahalia Jackson Story, which follows the legendary gospel singer’s contribution to the Civil Rights Movement, as well as her friendship with Martin Luther King Jr. Keith David. Corbin Bleu and Vanessa Williams are set to star.

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Apple TV+ has given a season order to Land of Women, a limited series starring and executive-produced by Eva Longoria. The dramedy, per the streamer, follows “a New York empty nester whose life is turned upside down when her husband implicates the family in financial improprieties, and she is forced to flee the city alongside her aging mother and college-age daughter.” The women flee to Spain where they hope to “start anew and hope their identities will remain unknown, but gossip in the small town quickly spreads, unraveling their deepest family secrets and truths.” Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown‘s Carmen Maura will also star in the series, which is based on a best-selling novel by Sandra Barneda…

Netflix released 10 new images from Cobra Kai‘s upcoming fifth season that confirm the return of The Karate Kid Part III star Sean Kanan to the franchise as Mike Barnes, according to Entertainment Weekly. “As Terry Silver — played by Thomas Ian Griffith — calls upon some old friends to put the Valley in a stranglehold, Daniel and Johnny — played respectively by Ralph Macchio and William Zabka — are going to need all the help they can get to stop Cobra Kai in its tracks,” executive producers Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg teased at Netflix’s Tudum event on Tuesday. Cobra Kai season five launches September 9…

Deadline reports Jane Lynch will leave Broadway’s Funny Girl even earlier than expected, the play’s producers announced on Tuesday. Lynch will end her run on August 14 — several weeks before her previously announced September 4 date, which was already earlier than the originally planned Sept. 25 date. The host of NBC’s The Weakest Link had a long-scheduled vacation set to begin on Monday, August 15 and was set to return to the show on Tuesday, August 23, before departing for the Creative Arts Emmys on Thursday, September 1, producers said in a statement. “Rather than return for one week of performances, the producers have agreed to adjust her final performance to Sunday, August 14.” Lynch is an Emmy nominee in the Best Comedy Guest Actress category for her work on Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building…

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Mindy Kaling is paying no mind to speculation that her ex B.J. Novak is the father of her children. 

“It doesn’t bother me,” the 43-year-old, who is mom to four-year-old Katherine and one-year-old Spencer, said of the rumors in an interview with Marie Claire published Tuesday.

“He’s the godparent to both my kids — and they have such a great relationship — and so far [the rumors haven’t] affected my happiness at all, it hasn’t affected my kids or BJ,” she continued. “If that’s what is going to be titillating to people, I’ll take it.”

Since welcoming her children, Kaling has remained tight-lipped about their conception and their father and there’s a reason for that. 

“I want them to be old enough to talk to me about it and [tell me] how they want me to talk about it,” The Office alum explained. “I’m the only parent my kids have…I think I err on the side of super cautious so that there’s less things that they can potentially be mad at me about down the line.”

Kaling and Novak dated on and off from 2004 until 2007. 

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Lin-Manuel Miranda, the EGOT-winning creator of Hamilton, is putting the musical phenomenon to work to support abortion access in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Miranda has created Ham4Choice in collaboration with the online fundraising platform Prizeo for a “once-in-a-lifetime Hamilton experience” to raise “much-needed funds for organizations providing abortion access and reproductive health services.”

For a donation of as little as $10 given between August 9 and September 22, donors get a chance to win the grand prize.

The grand prize winner and a guest will be flown to Hamburg, Germany, to attend Hamilton‘s opening night on October 6. Before seeing the first German translation of the musical, the winner and their guest “will meet Lin-Manuel Miranda at an exclusive pre-show reception and attend the post-show celebration.”

From there, it’s off to London for another showing of Hamilton — this time in English — and a meet and greet with the cast there. A performance in New York City is next, as is memorabilia to commemorate their travels.

Hotel and airfare for the three-city tour is all included.

They add the more one donates, the more chances you’ll get to win — and “the more support will go toward funding abortion access and care.”

In a statement, Miranda noted, “We are devastated by the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling eliminating the right to abortion which has been a right since 1973. … We’re stronger when we work together. We can stand up for every person’s right to make decisions about their own body and their own lives. Join Hamilton & Friends in the fight for reproductive access and reproductive choice today.”

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Johnny Depp will remain one of the faces of Dior.

The actor, whose partnership with the fashion line via its Sauvage fragrance remained intact throughout his headline-grabbing divorce and subsequent legal drama, has reportedly re-upped his contract with Dior for what TMZ is calling a seven-figure deal.

Dior’s decision to stand by Depp, even before a Virginia jury in June handed him a legal victory in his defamation case against his ex-wife Amber Heard, has paid off for the iconic fashion label.

The Wall Street Journal reports sales for Sauvage — which was already a top seller, promoted in commercials starring Depp since 2015 — actually boomed during the trial.

A full-length spot of the former Pirates of the Caribbean star and Hollywood Vampires guitarist shredding to “Wild Thing” has been viewed more than 117,440,000 times on YouTube since it debuted last October.

Meanwhile, a new Dior Instagram photo of Depp, guitar in hand, has generated more than 1.3 million views and counting. The caption reads in part, “Fearless yet human, just like Sauvage.”

The post also generated lots of fan love for the actor, and for the company for sticking by him. “Thank you Dior,” one user commented.

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The movie Prey hit Hulu last Friday, and immediately scored with longtime fans of the Predator franchise and critics alike. It’s “Certified Fresh” on the Rotten Tomatoes ratings aggregator, debuting with a 96% critics score, despite little of the marketing blitz that usually accompanies a franchise reboot.

It also became Hulu’s #1 premiere to date, and the most-watched film on Star+ and Disney+ in foreign territories.

Indigenous actress Amber Midthunder plays Naru, a young Commanche woman whose tribe happens to find itself sharing hunting grounds with the series’ titular alien hunter species in the year 1719, as it works its way up the chain to the planet’s apex predators, from animal to man.

Midthunder recently told Good Morning America‘s Ginger Zee that the 1987 original starring Arnold Schwarzenegger came out in theaters some 10 years before she was even born and that she didn’t even realize she was trying out for a Predator movie.

“I mean, it’s very exciting. It’s only now … kind of setting in,” she told GMA.

She also shared a secret about the movie’s scene stealer, Coco, the American dingo dog who played her faithful furry companion, Sarii. “She’s not a trained movie dog, she was a dog [adopted and] trained for this movie because she happened to be the right breed for the time period and the location,” Midthunder explained.

“So they had to teach her all the movie things. And a huge part of it is, like, I talk to her a lot, so she had to look me in the eyes. So to teach her to look me in the eyes, I had a pair of glasses with the eyes popped out and a nail on the front and they would stick a piece of meat on it. So she would stare at it … and then … eat the meat off my face.”

“It was very high tech,” Midthunder giggled.

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As he heads into his 20th season on Saturday Night Live, Kenan Thompson has been selected as the host of September’s 74th annual Emmy Awards.

The telecast will be carried on NBC and, for the first time ever, will stream live on Peacock. The celebration of the best in TV will be held at the Microsoft Theater at L.A. Live in Los Angeles at 8 p.m. ET.

In the announcement, the former Kenan lead and six-time nominee said, “Being a part of this incredible evening where we honor the best of the television community is ridiculously exciting, and to do it on NBC — my longtime network family — makes it even more special.”

He added, “Like all TV fans, I can’t wait to see the stars from my favorite shows.”

Also of note, the Television Academy announced the 2022 Creative Arts Emmy Awards will be held on Saturday, Sept. 3, and Sunday, Sept. 4, with an edited presentation of the events airing Saturday, Sept. 10, at 8 p.m. ET on FXX.

Heading into the Primetime Emmy Awards, HBO’s Succession leads the pack with 25 noms. Another HBO drama, The White Lotus, scored 20, tying with Apple TV+’s previous Emmy sweeper Ted Lasso in the Comedy category.

HBO’s Hacks and Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building each scored 17 noms.

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Serena Williams is gearing up to say goodbye to professional tennis after serving up inspiration to the sports world for more than two decades.

The 23-time Grand Slam winner penned a new personal essay for Vogue magazine that was revealed exclusively on Good Morning America Tuesday. Titled “The Hardest Thing,” she says farewell to the game in her own way and in her own words.

Williams said she hates the word retirement, writing: “The best word to describe what I’m up to is evolution. I’m here to tell you that I’m evolving away from tennis, toward other things that are important to me.”

The former #1-ranked women’s tennis player and four-time Olympic gold medalist said there is “no happiness in this topic for me,” but that she wants to focus on family and her business investment empire. Williams explained that she doesn’t feel she can do that while also playing tennis.

“But these days, if I have to choose between building my tennis résumé and building my family, I choose the latter … In the last year, [husband] Alexis [Ohanian] and I have been trying to have another child, and we recently got some information from my doctor that put my mind at ease and made me feel that whenever we’re ready, we can add to our family. I definitely don’t want to be pregnant again as an athlete. I need to be two feet into tennis or two feet out,” Williams wrote.

Although this is the closest Serena’s come to a possible retirement, it’s not the end for the champ just yet. Williams recently scored her first tournament singles win in over a year at the WTA National Bank Open in Toronto and plans to play in the U.S. Open in New York City.

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(NOTE LANGUAGE, CONTENT) While sex and sexual discussions on TV are nothing new, the sex-friendly site Roam analyzed some of the most popular shows in history to see how the act is portrayed, talked about and even joked about — all to see which shows are moving the needle forward in a positive way.

To that end, Roam’s experts scrubbed through some 10 million lines of dialogue culled from 40 different shows, ranging from The Office to Orange is the New Black, and made some interesting finds.

For example, the long-running Always Sunny in Philadelphia topped the others with some 231 mentions of sex, just one above How I Met Your Mother. Sex and the City clocked in at a comparatively chaste 173, good enough for third place, topping Friends (149). OITNB rounded off the top 5 with 94.

That said, there was a quality element, too. For example, Roam’s experts judged each mention on inclusivity and whether contraception or consent was mentioned. There’s “room for improvement,” the site’s experts say.

Sex and the City “was considered really progressive for its time,” the site’s expert says, noting, “Much like the other series we’ve covered [it] is a product of its time and … the conversation around sex and sexuality has changed a lot since it was on the air.”

In other words, in many ways it doesn’t hold up compared to today’s sensibilities. That said, it did get credit for leading the way in bringing female pleasure to the forefront.

OITNB was hailed with bringing LGBTQ issues to the mainstream, both in terms of same-sex relationships and bringing issues like transphobia to TV.

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Taika Waititi, the Oscar-winning Jojo Rabbit writer-director whose Thor: Love and Thunder is now playing in theaters, has reportedly wed his recording artist fiancée, Rita Ora.

The U.K. tabloid The Sun reports the pair tied the knot in an “intimate” ceremony two months after their purported engagement, and the recording artist is hyphenating her last name to reflect it.

A source tells the paper the event was small but “super special for everyone there. Their nearest and dearest can see how madly in love they are.”

The source continues, “Despite living in the spotlight, Rita is determined to keep the relationship as private as possible and didn’t want to make a big song and dance about the wedding,” but that said they’re also planning, “A big, showbiz-style bash” to celebrate the good news.

If true, this is the second marriage for Waititi, 46, and the first for 31-year-old Ora.

Despite the pair not shy about packing on the PDA, they’ve been less forthcoming when it comes to their relationship: Waititi recently cut off a news program’s interview about Lightyear when he was asked if a wedding was in the offing.

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