Tonight on Comedy Central, the acclaimed comedy Awkwafina is Nora from Queensreturns for its second season with two episodes airing back to back at 10 p.m. ET/9 p.m. CT.
The comedy, loosely based on the life of the Raya and the Last Dragon and Shang Chi star, centers on her character and her friends and family in the New York City borough.
Bowen Yang plays Nora’s bestie Edmund. He tells ABC Audio that learning the show was renewed was a thrill.
“For sure,” the Saturday Night Live cast member says. “I mean…it’s always sort of a big question mark as you come out with something for the first time and the initial sort of stage of what the audience responds to. But then, there’s not only a comfort going into this season, but also just…a relief and an emotional aspect to returning to the season after being off for almost a year and a half.”
Yang adds that returning to set “was just…a nice, nice, nice feeling.”
Stage and screen legend Lori Tan Chinn steals nearly every scene she’s in as Nora’s outspoken grandmother. She tells ABC Audio that it’s been funny feeling fans’ love. “I’m surprised at the comments and the reaction,” she says.
“I get a lot of people who want to carry my dirty laundry to the laundromat,” Chinn adds, laughing. “People who congratulate me. So a lot of feedback.”
Law & Order and Jurassic Park series star BD Wong plays Awkwafina’s dad, Wally. He says of his onscreen daughter and show co-creator, “Special people, stars, bring special energy to all sorts of situations. And Awkwafina is definitely one of those people.”
Courtney B. Vance is headed back to the courtroom for a brand new role.
AMC has announced that Vance will play a public defender in the upcoming courtroom drama 61st Street. The series, which comes from BAFTA winner Peter Moffat, follows Tosin Cole as Moses Johnson, a “promising Black high school athlete who is swept up into the infamously corrupt Chicago criminal justice system.” Vance will play Franklin Roberts, the attorney who takes up Johnson’s case and hopes to “upend the entire Chicago judicial system.” A premiere date for 61st Street has not been announced.
In other news, Morgan Freeman is staying booked and busy. The History Channel has unveiled the first trailer for Great Escapes with Morgan Freeman, a new series hosted and executive produced by the Academy Award-winning actor. The eight-episode series profiles some of history’s greatest prison escapes, including escapes from Alcatraz; Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York; and the HM Maze Prison in Northern Ireland. Great Escapes with Morgan Freeman premieres Tuesday, November 9, at 10 p.m. ET.
Meanwhile, Freeman has landed a role opposite Cole Hauser in the upcoming action-thriller Muti, Deadline has learned. The film follows Hauser as Detective Boyd, a man still processing the death of his daughter while embarking “on a hunt for a serial killer who murders according to a brutal tribal ritual: Muti.” Freeman will play Professor Mackles, the “only man who can help Boyd.” A release date for Muti hasn’t been announced.
Finally, Angela Bassett and Courtney B. Vance’s Bassett Vance Productions have teamed up with MTV Entertainment Studios for One Thousand Years of Slavery, a new docu-series exploring the “legacy of slavery” that centers on personal Black experiences. The four-part series will air at a later date on the Smithsonian Channel.
(WASHINGTON) — In an exclusive interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, and the president’s first since the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban, President Joe Biden stood firm in his defense of the United States’ withdrawal, but asserted for the first time that he believes the chaos was unavoidable.
“So you don’t think this could have been handled — this exit could have been handled better in any way, no mistakes?” Stephanopoulos asked Biden.
“No, I don’t think it could have been handled in a way that, we’re gonna go back in hindsight and look — but the idea that somehow, there’s a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, I don’t know how that happens. I don’t know how that happened,” Biden replied.
“So for you, that was always priced into the decision?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“Yes,” Biden replied, but then amended his answer.
“Now exactly what happened, I’ve not priced in,” he said. “But I knew that they’re going to have an enormous — Look, one of the things we didn’t know is what the Taliban would do in terms of trying to keep people from getting out. What they would do. What are they doing now? They’re cooperating, letting American citizens get out, American personnel get out, embassies get out, et cetera, but they’re having — we’re having some more difficulty having those who helped us when we were in there.”
Biden’s decision to withdraw has led to scenes of pandemonium in Afghanistan, with as many as 11,000 Americans and tens of thousands of endangered Afghans scrambling to evacuate the country. Scenes of civilians swamping planes on the runway at the Kabul airport, desperate for escape, have triggered bipartisan criticism that the Biden administration handled the hasty exit poorly.
Biden grew defensive when Stephanopoulos referred to the scenes of distress.
“We’ve all seen the pictures. We’ve seen those hundreds of people packed in a C-17. We’ve seen Afghans falling –“
“That was four days ago, five days ago!” Biden interjected, although the photo Stephanopoulos referred to, of hundreds of evacuees packed into a C-17 cargo plane, was taken Monday.
“What did you think when you first saw those pictures?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“What I thought was, we have to gain control of this. We have to move this more quickly. We have to move in a way in which we can take control of that airport. And we did,” Biden said.
The U.S. said late Tuesday it has successfully evacuated 3,200 people from Afghanistan, including all U.S. Embassy personnel, except for a core group of diplomats at the Kabul airport. Officials have said they hope to ramp up to being able to evacuate 9,000 people each day.
But the U.S. government is not currently providing American citizens in Afghanistan with safe transport to the airport, and it remains unclear how many will be able to safely reach the airport, as Taliban checkpoints continue to harden.
Despite the reality in Afghanistan, Biden was adamant in defending his decision.
“When you look at what’s happened over the last week, was it a failure of intelligence, planning, execution or judgment?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“Look, it was a simple choice, George,” Biden said. “When you had the government of Afghanistan, the leader of that government, get in a plane and taking off and going to another country; when you saw the significant collapse of the Afghan troops we had trained, up to 300,000 of them, just leaving their equipment and taking off — that was, you know, I’m not, that’s what happened. That’s simply what happened. And so the question was, in the beginning, the threshold question was, do we commit to leave within the timeframe we set, do we extend it to Sept. 1, or do we put significantly more troops in?”
Biden noted that violent attacks in Afghanistan had paused in recent months due to a deal negotiated by the Trump administration with Taliban leaders that was predicated upon an eventual U.S. withdrawal.
“I hear people say, well you had 2,500 folks in there and nothing was happening. You know, there wasn’t any more — but guess what, the fact was, that the reason that wasn’t happening, was the last president negotiated a year earlier that he’d be out by May 1st and that the return, there’d be no attack on American forces. That’s what was done. That’s why nothing was happening,” Biden said.
“I had a simple choice. If I said, ‘we’re gonna stay,’ then we’d better be prepared to
(HAITI) — Luria Civil’s wails could be heard outside of the cemetery. As shovels scraped dirt onto her daughter’s grave, she chanted and sobbed.
She lost two children after Saturday’s 7.2 magnitude earthquake hit Haiti. Her house had collapsed on top of her and her family, she told ABC News. She, her husband, and her severely wounded son, who was medevacked to port au Prince, survived. But she still had to dig her two other children, now lifeless, out of the rubble.
The scenes across Haiti are devastating. Coffins strapped to the backs of motorbikes are being driven out of earthquake battered villages. Boulders the size of bulldozers are blocking roads. Landslides following Tropical Storm Grace have reshaped the landscape, mutating sides of mountains.
The death toll in Haiti, now at 1,941, keeps climbing, according to the Haiti Office of Civil Protection. While search and rescue teams on the ground keep pushing forward, hoping to find more survivors and provide much needed medical help, ABC News reports that thousands are still sleeping under tents, surgeries are being performed outdoors and hospitals in rural areas are in desperate need of the basics, including water, electricity, gloves and donated blood.
While Saturday’s earthquake is not as devastating as the 2010 earthquake, which killed more than 200,000 people, Haiti is facing multiple crises as the same time. The country has been reeling from the assassination of its president, leaving the government politically unstable. The coronavirus vaccination rate is less than 0.1%. And experts say gang violence is at its worst in two decades, according to the Associated Press.
Following the earthquake, United States response teams were activated, but due to the tropical storm, they had to suspend their critical operations on Monday, according to U.S. Agency for International Development Bureau of Humanitarian Affairs Assistant Administrator Sarah Charles.
“The safety and security of our partners and our operations is of the utmost importance, but our top priority really is getting assistance and assistance at scale to people,” Charles said. She later added that “the [Disaster Assistance Response Team] is now on the ground working to urgently assess needs and deliver life-saving assistance.”
Both USAID DART and the elite Fairfax County’s Urban Search and Rescue team are now on the ground in Haiti, helping local and international efforts to provide food, medical care, shelter, and search and rescue efforts.
The number of injured and homeless keeps rising, too, according to the Haitian agency. More than 9,900 people have been injured, and even more are left homeless. The earthquake left much of the countryside damaged, destroying more than 7,000 homes and damaging nearly 5,000.
The teams on the ground said they haven’t rescued any people still alive and trapped in buildings.
“We have not yet since found any signs of persons alive trapped in buildings,” John Morrison, the public information officer for Fairfax County’s Urban Search and Rescue team, said on Tuesday’s media call. He caveated his statement by adding that in previous earthquakes, his rescue team has managed to save people 8-10 days after a building collapse.
Getting supplies to the people of Haiti is a priority, officials said.
As of Tuesday evening, “the U.S. Coast Guard has flown 72 sorties [trips], saved 67 people, and assisted 89 people,” according to a USAID spokesperson. “They have also transported 143 medical and search and rescue staff, including members of the USAID DART, and 5,500 pounds of medical supplies into the area.”
“Food, healthcare services, safe drinking water, hygiene and sanitation, and shelter are all priority needs,” Morrison added.
Following the 2010 earthquake, USAID has been working closely with partners on the ground in Haiti for years to make sure local response capabilities can be immediately activated in case another disaster strikes, including being able to immediately provide food and types of shelter, officials said. Charles indicated that this pre-planning allowed USAID local partners to respond quickly following Saturday’s earthquake.
While USAID is already working with international organizations to provide significant humanitarian needs in Haiti, they hope to receive more help in the upcoming days and weeks, according to Charles.
The Pentagon announced Monday that eight U.S. military helicopters would be sent to assist in Haiti. Two U.S. Navy ships, seven more Coast Guard cutters, two reconnaissance aircraft, and four field hospitals are also being sent. This military equipment arrived on Wednesday morning, officials said.
This isn’t the first crisis Haiti has faced this summer. Just last month, President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated, which left the country in a political upheaval.
“We continue to work closely with Haiti’s interim government to assist with the investigation into the assassination,” State Department’s Western Hemisphere Affairs Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary Laura Lochman said on a media briefing call Tuesday. She also emphasized the U.S. government’s support in finding and creating Haitian-led solutions that are in the interest of the Haitian people.
“The United States stands ready to offer all appropriate assistance, and we’ll continue to work closely with our Haitian partners to determine how we can best support recovery efforts,” Lochman later added.
While teams on the ground are working non-stop, there just isn’t enough aid to go around.
“It’s just pure chaos,” Canadian paramedic Brian Johnston told ABC News. Johnston said he and Haitian medics know that if anyone has a cardiac arrest or internal bleeding in rural, countryside towns, “they’ll die here.”
Luria Civil took ABC News to what was left of her house. During the walk, she pointed to her neighbors’ homes, now all flattened. A set of twins were killed in the house next door.
A crowd had gathered around her home. When asked where they were sleeping, they all said, “outside on the street.”
ABC News’ Conor Finnegan, Luis Martinez, Matt Gutman, and Brandon Baur contributed to this report.
Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Universal Music Group
Despite frustrating fans by not revealing a new release date for his upcoming album Donda, Kanye West has announced plans to host his third stadium listening event for the new project, this one in his hometown of Chicago.
In only his third Instagram post ever for his 7.2 million follows, Kanye simply wrote on Wednesday, “Donda Soldier Field 8/26/21. Show starts 9 p.m. CST. [Tickets] on sale August 20 noon CST.” No additional ticket information was revealed.
Yeezy’s two previous listening events were held at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on July 23 and August 5. Named after his late mother, Donda West, Donda will be his 11th studio album, and his latest following 2019’s Jesus Is King.
Donda was originally scheduled to drop in July, then its release was moved back to August 6 before being delayed again. The new release features Jay-Z, The Weeknd, The LOX, Jay Electronica, the late Pop Smoke and more, according to Pitchfork.
(KABUL, Afghanistan) — It was on the third attempt that “Khan,” his pregnant wife and their 3-year old son made to get to Kabul’s international airport — the most harrowing yet, but finally successful.
Khan, whose real name ABC News is not using for his security, made it on a U.S. military flight out of Afghanistan on Wednesday, according to his U.S. lawyer, fleeing the Taliban takeover and the threats its fighters had made against him for years because of his service to the U.S.
Tens of thousands of Afghans remain behind in anguish and fear. The Biden administration has promised to evacuate “as many Afghans as we possibly can for as long as we can,” in the words of State Department spokesperson Ned Price, but the task remains immense and chaotic — not least because Taliban fighters continue to block access to the airport.
It’s unclear how many Afghans the administration is committed to evacuating, where they be brought to safety and who qualifies for a coveted seat on military and chartered flights.
Khan, a computer scientist by training who worked for a U.S. defense contractor alongside his brother “Mohammad,” had spent years waiting for a special immigrant visa.
After waiting 10 years for a visa, Mohammad finally learned last December that he was granted approval. Less than a month later, he was gunned down on his way to work, his 10-year old son by his side in the car. Khan was supposed to travel with them but had to run errands that morning in January.
He has spent recent months in hiding, receiving death threats by phone and text message and waiting for his family’s special immigrant visas to be finalized. On Saturday, hours before the U.S. Embassy in Kabul closed its doors, he and his family were able to pick up their visas.
But that is only half the battle. For U.S. citizens and Afghans with visas, reaching the airport and getting inside has been a nearly impossible task.
The State Department has informed a tranche of American citizens and Afghan visa holders to travel to the airport, warning in capital letters that they “cannot guarantee your security as you make this trip,” according to the embassy email notice.
Khan and his family made their first attempt on Sunday and tried again Tuesday, but there were too many Taliban fighters pushing back crowds to even get close.
On Wednesday, they tried a different approach, nearing a gate on the north side, only to encounter U.S. troops trying to disperse crowds by shooting into the air and using tear gas, according to Khan’s U.S. lawyer Julie Kornfeld from the International Refugee Assistance Project, who was FaceTiming with him during the episode.
IRAP has filed several petitions to order the State Department to evacuate all Afghans who have applied for special immigrant visas and their families — some 100,000 Afghans in total, the legal advocacy group estimates.
“The timing could not be more urgent. Now that the Afghan government has collapsed and the Talban have taken over, time is quickly running out. We need to get as many people on flights out of the country before it is too late, and the U.S. has a legal and a moral obligation to do so,” said Becca Heller, IRAP’s executive director.
Heller called on the U.S. government to secure safe passage to Kabul’s airport for Americans and Afghans like Khan. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Tuesday that the U.S. had an agreement with the Taliban to ensure safe passage, but several Afghans on the ground have told ABC News they have been blocked. In some cases, Taliban fighters beat back crowds with chains or by firing sporadic gunfire into the air.
But with their visas in hand, Khan and his family were determined to get through to the airport, according to Kornfeld, who told ABC News, “Ultimately, it was his persistence that got them in.”
In the hours when it seemed like it wouldn’t happen, Kornfeld said they considered other options, including Khan leaving his pregnant wife and son behind to see if he could push ahead and come back to get them — an agonizing decision, she said.
“It’s a dynamic situation. Things are rapidly changing on the ground, and one client’s success story of where the access points are is not going to hold up,” Kornfeld added.
Once inside, the process was more efficient, she added, with two of her clients and their families on flights within 30 minutes of entering the airport and being processed. Sullivan said Tuesday that since the U.S. military was able to secure the airport late Monday, more evacuation flights have been flowing in “one after another, hot unloading and hot offloading,” he told reporters.
But outside the airport, chaos continues to reign.
An alert from the U.S. embassy late Wednesday advised U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, or green card holders, they “should consider” travelling to the airport — sparking crowds of people rushing there again.
Crowds broke into the compound on Monday, rushing the tarmac and surrounding a U.S. military aircraft that was preparing for takeoff. Several civilians died in the incident, and the U.S. military eventually had to clear 15,000 people from the tarmac, according to a defense official.
“The unwillingness of the U.S. government to protect our allies after they sacrificed their safety and in many cases their lives is a historically unprecedented failure that only a sustained attempt to hold the airport and meaningfully evacuate people can begin to remedy,” said Heller.
The U.S. has surged diplomatic personnel, doubling the number of consular officers and dispatching former ambassador to Afghanistan John Bass to the airport to coordinate the chaotic evacuation effort even as all but a core team from the U.S. embassy were evacuated from the compound Tuesday.
Just days after Colin Jost confirmed that he and wife Scarlett Johansson were expecting a baby, the baby’s apparently here.
On Instagram, Jost posted a blue-text message on a black background, noting simply, “Ok ok we had a baby. His name is Cosmo We love him very much.”
Officially, a rep for the Black Widow star told People she had given birth, but the flack added no other details, like the baby’s name.
On Saturday evening, the Saturday Night Live star, who was performing two sold out shows at the Ridgefield Playhouse in Connecticut, told the audience that he and Avenger wife were about to become parents.
The child is Jost’s first and Johansson’s second. The actress shares six-year-old daughter Rose Dorothy with ex-husband Romain Dauriac.
Johansson, 36, and Jost, 39, confirmed their engagement in 2017 after two years of dating and tied the knot in October 2020.
Lifelong New York Knicks fan Fat Joe led the NBA team’s welcoming committee Tuesday as they introduced their new free agent acquisitions: former Boston Celtics players Kemba Walker and Evan Fournier.
The Terror Squad founder wore Kemba’s number eight Knicks jersey as he appeared with them at Madison Square Garden. Native New Yorker Joe grew up loving the Knicks, and is often courtside at home games, sitting near the ultimate Knicks fans, Spike Lee. In March, he performed at halftime of a game against Drake’s favorite team, the Toronto Raptors.
The Knicks made the playoffs for the first time in eight years this season, and the “Lean Back “rapper has high expectations for next season.
“The DNA of the Knicks, with Julius [Randle], RJ [Barrett] and D. Rose [Derrick Rose] is gonna be exciting,” Joe said in a team video.
“We got Fournier to knock down some shots,” he added. “I mean, we ready.”
Joe has always felt playing for the Knicks was special.
“You can come here, to the greatest city on Earth, under the brightest lights, in the greatest arena on Earth, and kick some butt and be the man,” he told the New York Times in 2012. “It’s like Frank Sinatra sang: If you make it here, you make it anywhere, baby. If you’re the king of this team right here, you’re the biggest person on Earth; I don’t care what anyone says.”
Fat Joe on Knicks fans:
“Win one game in the playoffs and you see what we do out here, don’t let us win a series man” 🤣 pic.twitter.com/kPKt9gG71P
Bastille has released a new song called “Thelma + Louise.”
As its title suggests, “Thelma + Louise” was inspired by the iconic 1991 film starring Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis. It’s even accompanied by a video that begins with frontman Dan Smith sitting in the front seat of a Ford Thurderbird convertible, the same car that — spoiler alert for a 30 year-old movie — Thelma and Louise famously drive off the rim of the Grand Canyon.
You can watch the “Thelma + Louise” video streaming now on YouTube.
“Thelma + Louise” is the third new Bastille song of 2021, following “Distorted Light Beam” and “Give Me the Future.”
Meanwhile, you can catch Bastille perform on the Good Morning America Summer Concert Series, airing August 23 on ABC.
A new illustrated biographical book about the late Jimi Hendrix geared toward young readers aged 7 to 11 will be published on October 19.
Song for Jimi: The Story of Guitar Legend Jimi Hendrix is a 56-page book that’s described as “a lyrical account” of Hendrix’s life.
Written by author Charles R. Smith Jr., the book tells Hendrix’s story through a series of rhythmic verses, and is enhanced by the psychedelic artwork of TIME art director Edel Rodriguez. Song for Jimi includes sections focusing on Hendrix’s turbulent childhood, his historic performances at the Monterey Pop and Woodstock festival, and more, while looking at the influential musician’s struggles as he forged an uncompromising path through his life.
“I wanted to celebrate a unique individual who inspired me,” writes Smith, who became a passionate fan of Hendrix while he attending art school. As the school’s youngest and only Black student, Smith says he felt a kinship with Jimi as an outsider. The author is hoping the book inspires other young creative people, and also helps introduce Hendrix’s music to new fans.
You can pre-orderSong for Jimi: The Story of Guitar Legend Jimi Hendrix now.
