Central Park, the animated musical comedy from creator and star Josh Gad, is back with its first three episodes of season 3 on Apple TV+.
The sitcom centers around the Tillerman family as they strive to save Central Park from being bought up by money-hungry land developers. Gad developed the show with Bob’s Burgers creator Loren Bouchard, and gave ABC Audio insight into how they brought the series to life.
“I basically said, ‘I want to do a musical. Here’s who I would love to work with. Here are the people that I think would be great.’ And then we started developing characters around them,” Gad said.
First, he wanted to “build a show around these people,” he said, and then “kind of figure out what the characters are. It was more of a proof of concept for us, like, does a musical animated series work?”
Four Emmy nominations and three seasons later, Gad says he thinks that part of the show’s success should be credited to the location of Central Park itself.
“It’s a place that is a melting pot of society where you can be the richest person in the world, or you can be somebody with no money, and the two of you are on equal footing in this park,” Gad said. “It is a park that belongs to everyone.”
These themes of belonging resonate with Emmy Raver-Lampman, who voices Molly Tillerman in the series.
“At the core of it, and the thing that I am learning from Molly — not learning, but the thing that I am constantly reminded about — is her love for her family,” Raver-Lampman said. “I just admire that so much. She’s helped me grow and actively pursue being a better daughter myself.”
(NEW YORK) — Tropical Storm Kay is expected to bring heavy rain and strong winds to Southern California on Friday, as well as some relief from a prolonged heat wave, as it moves in from Mexico.
Kay made landfall Thursday over the Baja California Peninsula as a Category 1 hurricane, before weakening and downgrading to a tropical storm. The storm has brought heavy rainfall to the area, with flash flooding and landslides possible across the Baja California peninsula and portions of mainland northwestern Mexico through Saturday morning, according to the National Hurricane Center.
A flood watch has been issued for parts of California, just outside of Los Angeles and San Diego, as well as southwestern Arizona and parts of Nevada, including Las Vegas. Rainfall totals are expected to range from 1 to 2 inches close to the coast, with up to 8 inches possible inland.
“Flash, urban, and small stream flooding” is likely across Southern California, Arizona and southern Nevada, the National Hurricane Center said.
The tropical system is also bringing strong, gusty winds, and a high wind warning has been issued for Southern California, including San Diego. Some spots of the San Diego County mountains saw gusts reach over 90 mph Friday morning, with the strongest winds still expected this afternoon and evening, the National Weather Service in San Diego said.
The region will get some relief from triple-digit temperatures thanks to the tropical storm, with record-breaking heat expected to wane Friday.
The storm is forecasted to travel north parallel to the coast of Baja California Friday, before veering left and moving farther offshore.
The last time a tropical system was close enough to Southern California to have impacts was in 2018.
Meanwhile, Hurricane Earl is bringing tropical storm conditions to Bermuda, with winds over 100 mph.
A tropical storm warning has been issued for the island, which has been hit with tropical storm-force gusts and swells.
As it moves away from Bermuda, Earl is forecast to become a powerful post-tropical cyclone on Saturday. “Dangerous” rip currents are likely across the Western Atlantic through the weekend, including Bermuda, the East Coast and portions of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland through the weekend, the National Hurricane Center said.
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(BLOOMINGTON, Ind.) — Indiana Special Judge Kelsey Hanlon has agreed to preside over a lawsuit brought by abortion providers challenging the state’s abortion ban after two judges recused themselves from the case. A near-total ban on abortions is set to go into effect in Indiana on Sept. 15.
Plaintiffs have asked the court for a preliminary injunction to stop the ban’s implementation until the lawsuit is resolved.
Monroe Circuit Court Judge Holly Harvey recused herself from presiding over the lawsuit last week. Her office declined to comment to ABC News on her decision. The case was transferred to Judge Geoffrey Bradley, but Bradley declined jurisdiction of the case on Thursday without listing a reason for his recusal in court filings.
Indiana’s ban makes it a felony to provide abortion services and only allows for three exceptions, according to the lawsuit. Abortions up to certain stages in pregnancy are permitted if the woman’s life is in danger, the fetus is diagnosed with a fatal anomaly or if the pregnancy was a result of rape or incest, according to the lawsuit.
Providers who violate the ban will have their license revoked and could face between one to six years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.
The lawsuit also alleges that the ban infringes on a resident’s right to privacy, therefore violating Indiana’s guarantee of equal privileges and immunities. Moreover, the law violates the state constitution’s due course of law clause because of its unconstitutionally vague language, the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit was filed by abortion providers including Planned Parenthood, the Lawyering Project, the ACLU of Indiana and WilmerHale on behalf of abortion providers including Planned Parenthood, Women’s Med Group Professional Corp and All-Options. The suit was filed against members of the Medical Licensing Board of Indiana and county prosecutors.
Hanlon scheduled an initial telephone hearing for Monday.
Paul McCartney and Queen Elizabeth II in 2012; Dave Thompson – WPA Pool/Getty Images
Following Queen Elizabeth II‘s death Thursday at age 96, Sir Paul McCartney issued a brief statement paying tribute to the monarch. But now the rock legend has penned a lengthy homage looking back at all the times he met the queen.
In the message, which was posted on his official website, McCartney starts by noting, “I feel privileged to have been alive during the whole of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign. When I was 10 years old I entered an essay competition in Liverpool and won my division for my essay about the British Monarchy so I have been a fan for a long time.”
He also recalls watching the queen’s 1953 coronation on a black-and-white TV.
Sir Paul says he met Queen Elizabeth “eight or nine times,” adding that “each time she impressed me with her great sense of humour combined with great dignity.”
The first time McCartney met the queen was in October 1965, when The Beatles received the Member of the Order of the British Empire honor.
One of the most memorable occasions, according to Paul, was in 1997 on what he describes as “a very proud day for me” — receiving his knighthood.
“I felt very honoured to be offered a Knighthood and of course it would have been rude to turn it down!” he says.
Other meetings took place in 2002 and 2012, respectively, when Paul performed at the Queen’s Golden Jubilee and Diamond Jubilee celebrations.
McCartney recalls that the last time he saw Queen Elizabeth in person was in 2018, when she presented him with the Companion of Honour medal.
As Sir Paul recalls, “I shook her hand, leaned in and said, ‘We have got to stop meeting like this,’ to which she giggled slightly and got on with the ceremony.”
(WASHINGTON) — Since returning to the campaign trail last month after a mid-May stroke, Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democrat vying for the state’s open Senate seat, sometimes speaks haltingly to voters — pausing in the middle of sentences and slurring his words.
Otherwise, he has said, he has “no physical limits” and no issues with memory or language comprehension. In an interview on MSNBC last week, Fetterman, who works with a speech therapist, said he was “expecting to have a full recovery over the next several months.”
But Republicans have seized on his public appearances and his post-stroke behavior to suggest that he is not fit to serve in the Senate, a claim outside medical experts reject as reductive.
“It’s just not possible to be an effective senator if you cannot communicate,” retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey, whose seat Fetterman hopes to fill, said Tuesday at a press conference with Dr. Mehmet Oz, the GOP nominee and Fetterman’s opponent.
Rick Santorum, a former Republican senator from Pennsylvania, was even more blunt in his criticism last week on Newsmax: “John Fetterman is simply not capable of doing this job. He’s hiding in his basement, he’s not able to talk, he’s not able to process.”
The scrutiny of and questions about Fetterman’s health underscores the stakes of his race against Oz, which could decide who controls Congress’ upper chamber next year. Major politicians suffering health challenges mid-campaign — when they would normally be stumping for voters, night and day — is also relatively rare, and Fetterman’s campaign has been careful of overexposing him while he recovers.
His aides did not respond to requests to make his medical team available for this story. He has, however, previously responded directly to the GOP jabs at his recovery: “I know politics can be nasty, but even then, I could *never* imagine ridiculing someone for their health challenges,” he tweeted in August.
“Anyone who’s seen John speak knows that while he’s still recovering, he’s more capable of fighting for [Pennsylvania] than Dr. Oz will ever be,” a spokesman said earlier this week.
His campaign has said his stroke was the result of a condition called atrial fibrillation, or irregular heart rhythm, which led to a clot; he subsequently had a pacemaker and defibrillator implanted.
The attacks on him increased as he remained mum on debating Oz, who has pushed to share a stage. Last week, Fetterman declined an invitation from KDKA, a Pittsburgh station, to participate in a debate that would have taken place on Tuesday.
“John Fetterman is either healthy and he is dodging the debates because he does not want to answer for his radical left positions, or he’s too sick to participate in the debate,” Oz said in the news conference with Toomey, where the two men spoke in front of photographs of debates in previous Senate cycles.
Fetterman then told Politico on Wednesday that he would debate Oz once. In response, an Oz spokeswoman accused Fetterman in a statement of still not being forthcoming on details about the time, place and the topics.
“It was just simply only ever been about addressing some of the lingering issues of the stroke, the auditory processing, and we’re going to be able to work that out,” Fetterman told Politico.
Outside medical experts said stroke victims’ speech difficulties are not indicative of their cognitive abilities at work.
“You certainly should not conflate language troubles with cognitive trouble,” John Krakauer, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for the Study of Motor Learning and Brain Repair, told ABC News in an interview. “That’s just being mean. It’s not scientifically valid. It would be like saying that a stutterer has a cognitive problem.”
ABC News spoke with several neurologists in general terms about stroke recovery. None of the experts interviewed have treated Fetterman or reviewed his medical history.
“Let’s say you have a little tiny stroke in the part of your brain that controls your right arm,” suggested Robert Friedlander, Chair of the Department of Neurological Surgery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. “Your right arm is not going to move, but you’re still thinking as you did before.”
“You can impact the speech part of the brain [and] might not sound the way you did before the stroke, but the cognitive component could be preserved,” added Friedlander, who said that, in some cases, language and cognition could both be affected.
If elected, Fetterman wouldn’t be the first stroke victim in the Senate. For example, both Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., and Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., suffered strokes earlier this year and have both returned to work. (Luján told ABC News in an interview in May that his stroke left him “wobbly” and a “little weak on the left,” but without any motor movement or voice issues.)
Fetterman also wouldn’t be the first politician to have a health scare while running for office. In late 2019, Sen. Bernie Sanders suffered a heart attack while seeking the Democratic nomination for president. Sanders was hospitalized but quickly returned to the trail.
“Everyone who experiences a stroke will have their own unique recovery process, which is why the only people who can judge fitness for work are the individual’s treating physicians,” said Dr. Leah Croll, stroke neurologist and assistant professor of neurology at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University.
After an earlier period of well wishes and relative silence on Fetterman’s health, the Oz campaign has made his stroke a part of its campaign — sometimes in sharply personal terms. Last month, an aide, Rachel Tripp, was quoted asserting that if Fetterman “had ever eaten a vegetable in his life, then maybe he wouldn’t have had a major stroke and wouldn’t be in the position of having to lie about it constantly.”
In a recent statement, the Oz campaign said that it would “pay for any additional medical personnel he might need to have on standby” during a debate.
“I offered John Fetterman numerous opportunities to explain to me how I can make it easier for him to debate, but at this point, since he’s given numerous reasons for not showing up, including the fact he didn’t have time in his schedule, I’m of the opinion that he’s hiding his radical views,” Oz said on Fox News in August.
Krakauer, who overlapped with Oz at Columbia University as a medical student but has no relationship with the GOP Senate candidate, told ABC News that stroke victims tend to fatigue when speaking for long periods of time.
“Your best level of performance can drop over time,” he said. “A half an hour debate, an hour debate, over and over again is a lot to expect someone with aphasia [language difficulties from brain damage] to do. But that doesn’t mean they’re not cognitively capable.”
Some Democratic voters told ABC News they hope Fetterman debates Oz but insist they’re not concerned.
“People have illnesses all the time, but I think he got the right care,” said Geraldine Eckert, from Mercer County, who attended a recent Fetterman event. “I’m not worried about John Fetterman’s health.”
After stunning photographers and fans on the red carpet, Ana de Armas‘ trip to the Venice International Film Festival to promote her upcoming Marilyn Monroe film, Blonde, got even better Thursday evening.
When the movie’s premiere screening ended, the audience took to its feet and showered applause on the actress for 14 full minutes; de Armas blew kisses to the crowd and had tears streaming down her face, according to footage shot by those in attendance.
Joining de Armas on the red carpet were director Andrew Dominik, Adrien Brody and Julianne Nicholson. Variety reports that the surprise appearance of producer Brad Pitt, clad in a black tuxedo and black-and-white Adidas kicks, caused quite the commotion, as the COVID-masked star signed autographs and mugged for selfies with fans.
Brody plays Monroe’s ex-husband, playwright Arthur Miller, in the film based on Joyce Carol Oates‘ bestseller that shares the film’s title; Bobby Cannavale, who was also on hand at the screening, plays another of Marilyn’s exes, Joe DiMaggio.
(NEW YORK) — The United States recorded its one millionth organ transplant Friday afternoon, a historic milestone for the medical procedure that has saved thousands of lives.
The record achievement was confirmed at 12:50 p.m. ET by the United Network for Organ Sharing, a nonprofit that runs the only organ procurement and transplantation network in the country.
It’s unclear which organ was the record one millionth and details about the patient are unknown at this time.
The very first successful organ transplant occurred In 1954 at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston when doctors transplanted a kidney from 23-year-old Ronald Herrick into his identical twin brother, Richard, who was suffering from chronic kidney failure.
The lead surgeon, Dr. Joseph Murray, received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his role in the procedure.
Up until the early 1980s, the number of transplants every year remained low. However, success in transplants organs other than kidneys — such as hearts, livers, and pancreases — and the advent of anti-rejection medication led to a rise in transplants, according to UNOS.
Since then, transplants have become a far more common procedure.
More than 500,000 transplants have been performed since 2007 and, in 2021, more than 41,000 transplants occurred, which is the highest number ever recorded and twice as many as occurred 25 years ago.
Despite more patients undergoing transplants than ever before, it doesn’t mean the agency is without its faults.
Approximately 5,000 people die waiting on transplant lists ever year. And a study published today in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology in October 2020 found that many donor kidneys in the U.S. are unnecessarily discarded.
But organ donors and recipients hope that by sharing their stories, they will inspire people will sign up to donate and help reduce those long waiting lists.
When Nicholas Peters was killed in a motorcycle accident in 2020, his mother, Maria Clark, honored his wishes to be an organ donor.
His heart went to Jean Paul Marceaux, a sixth grader in Arkansas who had been suffering from heart conditions for years.
The families have since met and have become close ever since. Clark, of Madisonville, Louisiana, was even able to listen to her son’s heart beating in Marceaux with a stethoscope.
“This is why we tell our story — so that people will sign up to be donors,” Candace Armstrong, Marceaux’s mother, said in a statement.
Clark added, “We are all going to leave here. You have to talk to your family and let them know you want your organs to go on, to extend the lives of other people. I want people to know that Nick was love, he was the element of love, always helping, and it is just like him to keep giving and spreading love.”
(LONDON) — Prince Harry and Meghan’s children, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor and Lilibet “Lili” Diana Mountbatten-Windsor, are in line to get new titles following the death Thursday of their great-grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II.
Archie, 3, could assume the title of HRH Prince Archie of Sussex.
His younger sister, Lili, 1, could become HRH Princess Lili of Sussex.
His or Her Royal Highness or HRH are titles used by royal family members and usually reserved for those closest in the line of succession.
With the accession of King Charles III to the throne, Archie and Lili are now grandchildren of the sovereign.
The change in Archie and Lili’s titles would follow the royal rules set in 1917 by then-King George V, Elizabeth’s grandfather.
To remove an HRH title, the ruling sovereign would have to issue a formal Letters Patent to make the change.
When Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, stepped down from their roles as senior, working royals in 2020, they had to stop using their royal titles, including His or Her Royal Highness or HRH.
In his first address as king, Charles acknowledged Harry and Meghan, saying, “I want also to express my love for Harry and Meghan as they continue to build their lives overseas.”
The Sussexes moved to California in 2020.
Archie’s title, if changed, would be particularly noteworthy since Meghan told Oprah Winfrey in a 2021 televised interview that Archie’s title, and subsequent security protection, had been a point of discussion within the royal family and was not a result of her and Harry choosing to forego a title for their firstborn son.
“This went on for the last few months of our pregnancy, where I’m going, ‘Hold on a second,'” Meghan recalled to Winfrey at the time, adding there was “no explanation” for what she described as a “change in protocol.”
“I thought, ‘Can you just tell them the truth? Can you say to the world you’re not giving him a title and we want to keep him safe, and that if he’s not a prince, then it’s not part of the tradition? Just tell people and then they’ll understand,’ but they wouldn’t do that,” she said.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s titles will not change but Harry and his kids have now moved up in the royal family’s line of succession.
Harry is now fifth in line to be king while Archie and Lili are sixth and seventh in line for the throne.
Harry’s older brother Prince William is first in line to the throne and William’s children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis are second, third, and fourth in the line of succession, respectively.
Allen Payne is reprising his role as Gee Money in a new touring stage version of the 1991 hit film New Jack City. The musical will also star Treach from Naughty By Nature, Big Daddy Kane and Flex Alexander from the TV sitcom One on One.
Je’Caryous Johnson wrote, directed and produced the touring stage adaptation of New Jack City, which will open November 4 in Philadelphia. Tour stops will include Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Detroit, Charlotte, Atlanta, New York and Los Angeles. More cities will be added through spring 2023.
“In bringing New Jack City to the stage, I have the beautiful privilege of celebrating and paying homage to the Black actors that excelled at their craft and created an unforgettable movie and characters that became classics to Black culture,” Johnson said in a statement.
“I am delighted and excited to reunite these unforgettable characters with the fans that they’ve left their indelible mark on, and I am grateful to Warner Bros. for entrusting me to breathe new life into this cultural centerpiece,” he added. “I look forward to the challenge of updating this classic story with a modern twist.”
The original film starred Mario Van Peebles in his feature film directorial debut. The cast also included Wesley Snipes, Ice-T, Chris Rock and Christopher Williams, with cameos by Keith Sweat, Levert, Guy and Nick Ashford.
For tour information, visit the New Jack City Livewebsite.
The midterm elections are fast approaching, but a startling number of young adults are still not registered to vote. Enter Lizzo, who hopes to change that.
The Grammy winner has teamed up with HeadCount, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization that works toward registering all eligible voters. To help this organization reach its goal, she’s inviting HeadCount volunteers to be a part of her upcoming tour.
HeadCount volunteers will be front and center to interact with fans and explain why it’s important for them to vote in every election. Volunteers will also help concertgoers check their registration status and, if they have yet to register, can help them register to vote.
HeadCount has since opened volunteer positions for people to help out at Lizzo’s concerts, which they can do on the group’s official website.
According to HeadCount, nearly half of all individuals between 18 and 24 years old are still not registered to vote. That accounts for roughly 8 million votes.
To help close the gap, the nonprofit has teamed up with other A-list celebrities, including Harry Styles, Billie Eilish and Ariana Grande, to engage young voters.
“Gen Z represents a significant demographic that could greatly affect laws and policies across the country,” HeadCount explains. The organization hopes that by working with the “About Damn Time” singer, more people will be inspired to let their voices be heard during the midterm elections, which take place on November 8.
