Pulitzer Prize winner Katori Hall has a lot to celebrate this year. After recently receiving the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her off-Broadway play Hot Wing King, the P-Valley creator is now nominated for her first Tony Award for her work on Tina: The Tina Turner Musical.
Although Hall could easily take home the Best Book of a Musical Tony on Sunday night, the writer tells ABC Audio that winning awards has never been her focus as a creative.
“I appreciate an award… but I usually give it to my mom, my dad,” she reveals. “My [Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play] is in Mississippi, chillin’ on the shelf. And I think it’s because awards don’t necessarily — for me — make me a better writer.”
Hall explains that while “it’s good to be recognized, and it’s good to be honored,” winning awards doesn’t equal success to her.
“It don’t help you write the next thing. I tell you that,” she laughs.
However, this time around may be different. Hall shares that after such a tough year because of the pandemic and the killings of Black unarmed men and women, she feels it’s important to take a “moment” to pause and “celebrate.”
“Because I feel like a lot of times we don’t get an opportunity to just celebrate ourselves, and celebrate our accomplishments,” she explains. “I think because of everything that has happened this year…that if I won, I would be popping my Champagne and doing my little twerks before I do my acceptance speech.”
Hall continues, “I would be very, very happy, ’cause I think this year…taught me a lot about being present in your life and prioritizing happiness and your joy.”
The Tony Awards airs Sunday night at 9 p.m. ET on CBS.
Oops…they did it again: made another Britney Spears documentary.
Tonight at 10 p.m. ET, it’s the premiere of Controlling Britney Spears on FX and Hulu, which is somewhat of a sequel to Framing Britney Spears from earlier this year, Variety reports. Director Samantha Stark returns to focus on Britney’s conservatorship.
Variety quotes Stark as saying that after Britney told a judge earlier this year that she hadn’t spoken up about her conservatorship previously because she felt people wouldn’t believe her, it inspired insiders to come forward and back up Britney’s claims with evidence. These insiders describe Britney’s daily life and the kind of surveillance she’s been under over the past 13 years.
Framing Britney Spears reignited the #FreeBritney movement, and on September 29, a court hearing will bring her one step closer to the termination of her conservatorship, which she’s said she’s wanted for years.
Meanwhile, Netflix is airing its Britney conservatorship doc, Britney vs. Spears, on September 28.
As for Britney herself, she took to Instagram to reminisce about the 2001 VMAs, during which she did her famous “I’m a Slave 4 U” dance with a huge snake and other animals. Posting a series of photos of herself from that night with Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, she writes, “ I will tell you this…before I went on that night I was feeling kinda out of body with nerves…I mean…I was in a cage with a live tiger!!!!!”
“I will never forget the moment before I went in the cage!!!! Justin [Timberlake] saw I could hardly talk so he held my hand and gave me a 5 minute pep talk which obviously worked!!!”
Released on September 24, 1991, Nevermind brought the grunge and alternative scene to the masses as it became perhaps the definitive rock album of the ’90s.
Coming off the excess and bombast of ’80s hair-metal culture, Nevermind spoke to a generation of disaffected youth with songs of self-hatred and rebellion, set to Kurt Cobain‘s yelping vocals and distorted guitar over Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic thundering drums and bass.
Even after building an underground following with their 1989 debut, Bleach, no one could’ve predicted Nirvana’s meteoric rise with Nevermind. Things began to change with the premiere of lead single “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and its high school pep rally-meets-anarchist punk mosh pit video.
While it debuted at a modest 144 on the Billboard 200, Nevermind‘s popularity continued to build and build as more people heard “Teen Spirit” and saw the video. By January 1992, Nevermind had hit number one on the Billboard 200, dethroning the King of Pop himself, Michael Jackson.
As Nirvana’s popularity grew, they ushered in the grunge frenzy as bands including Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains earned mainstream attention. The scene also inspired its own fashion, signified by flannel shirts, ripped jeans and Cobain’s thick-framed sunglasses.
Cobain himself was deemed an icon and a voice of his generation, a label with which he felt increasingly uncomfortable. His reaction to his sudden superstar status can be heard in the lyrics of Nirvana’s 1993 Nevermind follow-up, In Utero.
Sadly, that would be the last studio album Nirvana would record. Cobain, who struggled with mental-health and substance-abuse issues throughout his life, died by suicide in April 1994.
The legacy of Nirvana and Nevermind, though, has endured — the album is now certified Diamond by the RIAA.
Here’s Nevermind‘s full track list:
“Smells Like Teen Spirit”
“In Bloom”
“Come as You Are”
“Breed”
“Lithium”
“Polly”
“Territorial P***ings”
“Drain You”
“Lounge Act”
“Stay Away”
“On a Plain”
“Something in the Way”
Goodbye “Hot Girl Summer” and hello Fit Girl Fall, thanks to Megan Thee Stallion‘s new partnership with Nike, where she will act as your personal trainer.
Meg has joined Nike’s Training Club app to help fans whip themselves into shape, and will share her workouts alongside trainer Tara Nicolas across several installments.
The “Savage” rapper took to Instagram to make the announcement and reminisced about the journey she took to find herself, during which she learned to drown out those telling her who she should be. Meg, who dubs herself “Thee Hot Girl Coach” in her promo video, let fans know that finding one’s self is a time-consuming but worthwhile process.
The Grammy winner explained that strangers used to make assumptions based off her height and physique when she was growing up in Houston, Texas, which often led into unwanted suggestions about what sport she should play. Meg revealed she tried basketball, volleyball and track to appease everyone, but “They just weren’t for me. I knew I had to find my passion.”
Her passion, she says, is performing, and she asserted why that, as well as dancing and rapping, should be considered sports.
“Let’s see you run through 12-hour dance rehearsals, train five days a week, then perform in front of 50,000 people squatting 50 percent of the time,” she quipped.
Megan’s main message? “People like to tell us what we can and we can’t do. But we ain’t hearing that. Real Hot Girls know, no one can define us.”
“I am an athlete, and so are you,” she wrote in the caption.
The NTC app is available for iPhone and Android devices.
(WASHINGTON) — The House on Friday passed a bill to uphold abortion rights for women, taking swift action in response to a new Texas law that bans nearly all abortions in the state.
The final tally was 218-211 with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announcing the vote.
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The House bill has little chance of becoming law and is largely symbolic given Republican opposition in the Senate.
The House bill would codify protections provided by the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade ruling, which legalized women’s right to an abortion.
The Texas law that passed in September prohibits abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy and allows “any person, other than an officer or employee of state or local government,” to bring a civil suit against someone believed to have “aided or abetted” an unlawful abortion.
People who successfully sue an abortion provider under this law could be awarded at least $10,000.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed the so-called “heartbeat ban” on May 19 and it went into effect on Sept. 1.
The U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 on Sept. 1 to allow SB8 to take effect on procedural grounds, despite what the majority acknowledged as “serious questions” about constitutionality. The justices did not address those questions.
Pelosi has said taking congressional action would make a “tremendous difference” in Democrats’ efforts to maintain access to abortion rights. She called the Supreme Court’s decision “shameful.”
Ahead of Friday’s vote, Pelosi said the House legislation should “send a very positive message to the women of our country — but not just the women, to the women and their families, to everyone who values freedom, honors our Constitution and respects women.”
Since Texas’s abortion ban went into effect, lawmakers in 11 states, including Florida, have announced intentions or plans to model legislation after the state’s law, according to NARAL Pro-Choice America.
The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in a Mississippi abortion case in early December. The high court is expected to consider the legality of Mississippi’s ban on most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, a law that is intended to challenge Roe v. Wade.
The “Welcome to the Jungle” rockers have premiered a new song called “Hard Skool.” It’s the second fresh tune from GN’R in as many months, following the August release of “Absurd.”
The new track is available now as a digital download and via streaming services.
Like “Absurd,” the origins of “Hard Skool” date back to sessions for Chinese Democracy, the long-fabled GN’R album that finally became a reality in 2008, with frontman Axl Rose as the only original member still in the band.
Chinese Democracy remains the most recent Guns N’ Roses album. “Absurd” and “Hard Skool” mark the band’s first new music since Slash and Duff McKagan rejoined in 2016.
Amazon’s legal drama Goliath drops its fourth and final season today. Oscar-winning lead Billy Bob Thornton returns as loose-cannon lawyer Billy McBride, who this season is taking on a massive pharmaceutical company implicated in the opioid crisis.
“It’s been really amazing,” Thornton says of the show’s four-season ride. “I’ve had so many great experiences on it. I loved playing the character and the writers did such an amazing job.”
He adds, “And as you go further into a series like this, the writers…as they watch and listen to the actors, they start to capture their voices more and more.”
Thornton says, “I think that’s one of the advantages to the whole streaming idea, is that you have a chance to make an eight- or 10-hour movie, whatever it is, and people settle into it and start to understand, ‘Oh, that’s what this is.'” He adds with a laugh, “And so, by season four, we were like…’We are this!'”
Tania Raymonde plays Brittany, Billy’s confidante — a brilliant, beautiful part-time escort-turned-Billy’s paralegal. The actress says she’ll miss the character dearly, but she’s satisfied with the way things ended.
“I feel like this last season is such a great send-off for the series and such a nice final chapter,” she maintains. “And we left them in like a good place.”
Tania adds with a laugh, “So now they can go exist in like ‘post finale movie character world’ where they’re…all chilling and happy. I feel like we did them justice….So as long as…everyone, I think, was left in a better place than they were when we picked them up in year one. And that makes me happy.”
(ATLANTA) — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has endorsed an independent advisory panel’s recommendation for seniors and other medically vulnerable Americans to get a booster shot of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, six months after their second dose.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, also partially overruled her agency’s advisory panel in a notable departure by adding a recommendation for a third dose for people who are considered high risk due to where they work, such as nurses and teachers — a group which the panel rejected in its recommendation. Some panelists said that without further data, they weren’t comfortable with automatically including younger people because of their jobs.
In a statement announcing her decision late Thursday, Walensky pointed to the benefit versus risk analysis she had weighed, and data rapidly evolving.
“In a pandemic, even with uncertainty, we must take actions that we anticipate will do the greatest good,” Walensky said. “While today’s action was an initial step related to booster shots, it will not distract from our most important focus of primary vaccination in the United States and around the world.”
With Walensky’s final sign-off, booster shots will now quickly become available for millions more Americans at pharmacies, doctors’ offices and other sites that offer the Pfizer vaccine as soon as Friday.
The CDC’s independent advisory panel voted unanimously on Thursday to recommend Pfizer boosters for people aged 65 and older, along with long-term care facility residents and people as young as 18, if they have an underlying medical condition.
People younger than 49, however, should only get that third dose if the benefits outweigh the risks, the panel said — a personal consideration to discuss with their doctor.
Walensky’s endorsement at least in part buttons up what has become a seething scientific debate after the Biden administration announced “boosters-for-all” ahead of any reviews from the regulatory bodies, or their independent groups. While the White House’s political appointees had endorsed Biden’s timeline, some of their career scientists and advisers vehemently objected to the incomplete data they were being asked to assess.
Ahead of Thursday’s vote, Walensky addressed the panelists and thanked them for “leaning in” to the complex issue at hand and “trying to put the pieces together.”
“You’re tasked with difficult decisions, weighing the risks and benefits extrapolating from sometimes a wealth and sometimes a paucity of data available,” Walensky said, but reminded them that despite the complex and contentious debate they share the goal of pulling the nation out of the pandemic.
“We all recognize that the science and data of COVID-19 are moving faster than any data we’ve ever seen before. And while I recognize a tremendously heavy lift of the past year, we all know that the pace is unlikely to let up anytime soon,” she added. “We will continue this dialogue, you will have more data to review and more recommendations to make and I will be here with you.”
Not every panelist was excited about the idea of boosters, insisting the vaccines still provide remarkable protection and that it was unvaccinated Americans who remained most at risk.
“I feel like we’re putting lipstick on hogs. This is not going to solve the pandemic,” said Dr. Keipp Talbot, a voting panel member and infectious diseases professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.
The panel’s vote narrowed Wednesday’s authorization from the Food and Drug Administration, which did agree to make the shots available to frontline workers.
The vote also followed weeks of a contentious back and forth among top health experts over who should get a booster dose and when — and whether it’s still premature to be asking the question.
Scientists agreed that while vaccine protection is waning slightly, on the whole, vaccines are still working to dramatically reduce the risk of hospitalization. And many feared endorsing booster doses for most would imply vaccines are no longer working.
“I feel that we’re getting too much ahead of ourselves and that we have too much hope on the line with these boosters,” said voting member Dr. James Loehr of Cayuga Family Medicine in Ithaca, New York. “Having said that, you shouldn’t let the perfect be in the way of the good.”
Panelists initially pushed back on the proposals that American adults, 18 to 64, who are at risk for severe COVID-19 infection due to underlying medical conditions, or due to their occupation and setting receive a Pfizer booster dose. Many members stressed that in order to truly “move the dial” on the pandemic, more people need to complete the initial vaccination series.
“I think two and three are fraught with peril,” said member Dr. Oliver Brooks, chief medical officer of Watts HealthCare Corporation in Los Angeles, California. “They’ll be superfluous and they’ll create great inequities and problems within the implementation, so I’m really concerned about the data for boosters in general.”
One repeated sticking point for the CDC’s panelists during deliberations on Thursday: the still-open question over whether boosting with mixed vaccines might be permitted — since for those who received the Moderna or Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, there is no third dose protection currently available.
The FDA’s vaccine chief, Dr. Peter Marks, addressed the CDC’s panelists ahead of Thursday’s vote and acknowledged their frustrations.
“I think we understand at FDA the relative urgency here of trying to have a solution for anyone who has been vaccinated with any of the authorized or approved vaccines,” Marks said. “Unfortunately, we’re not in a place right now which I can give you an exact timeline, but I can tell you that we will proceed with all due urgency to try to get there as rapidly as possible.”
Ever wonder how The Spice Girls got their iconic nicknames? Melanie C, a.k.a. Sporty Spice, revealed the answer in a recent interview with E!’s Daily Pop.
“Originally, when we were forming as a girl band, we were trying to find out a look,” she explained. However, she says they were “uncomfortable” all dressing alike, as was typical for pop bands at the time.
So one day, she and her singing partners, which included Victoria Beckham, Mel B, Geri Halliwell and Emma Bunton, noticed they all had their own distinctive sense of style — Mel C in her sweatpants, Geri in something quirky and Mel B like “a leopard.”
Mel C says they thought, “We kind of look great as this mish-mash, let’s just do it.”
And subsequently, when a London-based magazine gave each Spice Girl a nickname — Baby, Sporty, Ginger, etc. — based on their respective styles, Mel C says they decided to “embrace them and run with it.”
Mel C is a contestant on this season’s Dancing with the Stars and even channeled her Sporty Spice alter ego for the premiere: She and her partner Gleb Savchenko danced to the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the group’s debut album, Spice.
Dancing with the Stars, now in its 30th season, airs Monday nights at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.
Today, Apple TV+ launches Foundation, the sprawling sci-fi epic based on Isaac Asimov‘s groundbreaking book series.
Executive produced by David S. Goyer, the show — which some have dubbed “Game of Thrones in space,” centers on an all-powerful, dynastic galactic empire, and a mathematician who predicts, as all empires do, that it’s doomed to fail.
Goyer told ABC Audio he’d been approached to adapt the Foundation books years ago, but didn’t think a movie could capture it — but for a streaming series, it’s perfect.
“I first read it when I was 13 years old,” Goyer said of Asimov’s seminal work. “My father gave it to me. He said, ‘This is the greatest science fiction work of all time.’ No pressure,” he laughs. “Before he died, he said, ‘I want you to make Foundation.’ No pressure.”
Guardians of the Galaxy‘s Lee Pace plays Brother Day, one in a familial line of Emperors, who sees the math genius, played by Chernobyl Emmy winner Jared Harris, as a threat.
“I wasn’t good at mathematics,” Harris admitted, noting that he still had to deliver long, “challenging” mathematical monologues. Fortunately, he’s a veteran Shakespearean actor, and as such has experience with complicated language. “Yeah, I fell back on a lot of my theater training for that,” Harris says.
For Pace, the role was a blast. “It’s…surreal…to play the Emperor of the galaxy…[He] is someone who has…power over life and death…prosperity and failure. The best metaphor I could find for him is like he is like the sun of the Milky Way galaxy. Everything is spinning around him.”
Pace adds with a laugh, “His ego is the size of the galaxy. Is it fun to play? Absolutely. Absolutely!”
