Sara Bareilles says her return to Broadway has been an emotional journey.
Sara made her grand return to the stage this week, reprising the lead role of Jenna Hunterson in her hit Waitress for a limited-time engagement. And in a preview clip of a new NBC News Now special called Return to Broadway, which you can watch on E!, she discusses her feelings about the Great White Way reopening.
“It’s been so intense, deeply emotional, very surreal, completely exciting and joyful,” Sara says in the preview clip, describing being back on stage after the COVID-19 pandemic shut down Broadway for 16 months. “I cannot get over how quickly it starts to feel just like ‘we’re back.'”
One of the new aspects of the pandemic theater experience is that guests are required to be fully vaccinated and wear a mask — requirements that the singer is in full support of.
“A thousand percent,” Sara affirms about whether the mandate makes her feel more comfortable performing for a live audience, calling it a “no-brainer.” “We’re a progressive industry and we have to hold these high standards.”
Sara stars in Waitress until October 17. The NBC News Now special Return to Broadway premiering on September 6 at 7 p.m. ET. NBC News Now is available on Peacock, The Roku Channel, YouTube TV, Tubi, NBCNews.com and other streaming outlets.
Mod Sun has released a new song called “Down,” featuring Travis Barker.
The Blink-182 drummer lends his signature skills to the pop-punk track, and also appears on the single cover, which features Mod sitting down next to a wall covered in photos of Barker.
“Down” follows Mod’s 2021 album, Internet Killed the Rockstar, which includes his Avril Lavigne collaboration, “Flames.”
Mod and Barker previously worked together on Machine Gun Kelly‘s Downfalls High, a musical film based on the “Bloody Valentine” rocker’s 2020 album, Tickets to My Downfall. They also collaborated on Mod’s 2014 song, “Never Quit.”
Last week, it was announced that Mod and MGK would be reuniting to write and direct a new film together titled Good Mourning with a U. The pair also co-directed and co-wrote Downfalls High.
Carrie Underwood and Dan + Shay just dropped their stunning collaboration, “Over Us.” The song, which was produced by Dan Smyers, is from the upcoming Dear Evan Hansen movie.
Dan + Shay spoke out about their duet on social media, saying they are “super fans” of Carrie.
“It’s always been a dream to collaborate with her,” they wrote, adding that the duet is “quite possibly the coolest thing that’s ever happened to us.”
Other artists appearing on the Dear Evan Hansen soundtrack include Sam Smith with Summer Walker, SZA, FINNEAS, Tori Kelly and more. The Dear Evan Hansen soundtrack will be released on September 24, which is the same day the film will be released nationwide.
L-R: Kanye West, Kenny Burns and Drake in 2015; Prince Williams/WireImage
As Drake takes over the music world with Friday’s release of his long awaited Certified LoverBoy album, Kanye West has taken another jab in their feud right in Drizzy’s hometown.
After the Champagne Papi erected billboards in Toronto with lyrics from CLB, West countered with billboards with the name of his new album, Donda, right next to them, as captured on Twitter by DJ Akademiks.
Kanye dropped Donda on Sunday, and now the superstars will battle for supremacy of the charts.
Certified Lover Boy features an all-star cast including Jay-Z, Travis Scott, Rick Ross, Future, Young Thug, Lil Wayne, Lil Baby, Lil Durk, Ty Dolla $ign, Kid Cudi and 21 Savage. Seven of those artists are also on Donda: Jay-Z, Scott, Lil Baby, Lil Durk, Young Thug, Cudi and Ty Dolla $ign.
The beef was reignited two weeks ago when Drake dissed Kanye on Trippie Redd‘s “Betrayal.” On the track, Drake raps, “All these fools I’m beefin’ that I barely know / Forty-five, forty-four (Burned out), let it go / Ye ain’t changin’ s*** for me, it’s set in stone.”
Forty-four-year-old Kanye responded by sharing Drake’s address in Toronto in a posted-and-deleted Instagram obtained by TMZ.
Kanye West bought out hella billboards for DONDA right next to CLB billboards in Toronto… pic.twitter.com/99xlgNzoH7
Director Pablo Larraín‘s movie Spencer just debuted at the Venice Film Festival, and Kristen Stewart is already winning raves for her portrayal as Princess Diana.
The Hollywood Reporter, for example, piled on the superlatives for the film, calling Stewart “incandescent,” and declares that the actress “has seldom been more magnetic, or more heartbreakingly fragile.”
Variety also praised the Oscar-nominated Jackie director’s new film as “masterly” and “enthralling,” and Stewart a “superb” in the story, which takes place over a Christmas weekend in the 1990s in which Diana’s rocky marriage to Prince Charles finally comes apart at the seams.
For her part, Stewart spoke about the role after the screening, saying she, “took more pleasure into my physicality making this movie than I have on anything.” According to Deadline, she continued, “I felt more free and alive and able to move, and taller even. Now put a leash on that.”
Stewart praised Diana, who eventually divorced Charles and remained an icon of fashion and a tireless humanitarian before her tragic death in a car accident in 1997. “There are some people that are endowed with an undeniable penetrating energy,” the actress explained. “I think it’s just something she was born with.”
Stewart continued, “I think the really sad thing about her is that as normal and casual and disarming her air is immediately, she also felt so isolated and lonely she made everyone else feel accompanied and bolstered by this beautiful light and all she wanted was to have it back.”
(CHICAGO) — Chicago Cubs manager David Ross and president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer have both tested positive for COVID-19, the team said on Friday.
A spokesperson for the Cubs said that both men are quarantining and feeling fine. Both are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus.
In Ross’ absence, bench coach Andy Green will manage the club. Green previously served as manager of the San Diego Padres from 2016 to 2019.
All of Ross’ close contacts were tested on Friday, the Cubs said, with none returning a positive test. There was no immediate indication that any players would be unavailable.
The Cubs are one of seven teams in Major League Baseball that have failed to reach the 85 percent vaccination threshold required to enter relaxed COVID-19 protocols. They did, however, issue a vaccine mandate for non-playing employees, the team told ESPN Thursday.
That policy goes into effect next month, with employees needing to be fully vaccinated by October 4. A source tells ESPN that at least 90 percent of team employees have been vaccinated.
The video for Bring Me the Horizon frontman Oli Sykes‘ collaborative song “Salt” with buzzy Filipino-Australian musician daine is out now.
The clip begins with some Lord of the Rings-esque cosplay, with daine playing a Galadriel-type royal elf. Sykes, meanwhile, shows up as a sort of ghostly specter that appears in daine’s mind’s eye.
You can watch the “Salt” video streaming now on YouTube.
The song “Salt” premiered last week. When it dropped, Sykes called “Salt” his “fave collab so far.”
You’ll also get to hear Sykes on the upcoming new Bring Me the Horizon song “Die4U,” set to premiere September 16.
Texas State Capitol in Austin, TX (Credit: dszc/iStock)
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court issuing an unsigned order refusing to block a Texas abortion ban while it faces a legal challenge stunned many and marked a significant moment in the United States’ history of reproductive rights.
The playbook for years by anti-abortion legislators was to slowly chip away at the right to an abortion via mechanisms like “targeted restrictions on abortion providers” or “TRAP” laws, while outright pre-viability bans were seen as unrealistic.
“This was really bad and really unexpected,” Robin Marty, operations director at the West Alabama Women’s Center and author of “New Handbook for a Post-Roe America,” told ABC News. “We thought it would be slower and not nearly as, ‘all right, we’re done, rights are gone.'”
The Texas law bans physicians from providing abortions “if the physician detects a fetal heartbeat,” including embryonic cardiac activity, which can be as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. Before Wednesday, no law was in effect that banned abortions earlier than 20 weeks of pregnancy. Many states had tried to enact early gestational bans, but they had all been blocked by courts.
That’s because of clear precedent. In 1973, the Supreme Court declared abortion a protected right in Roe v. Wade. Twenty years later, in 1992’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Supreme Court reaffirmed “the constitutionally protected liberty of the woman to decide to have an abortion before the fetus attains viability and to obtain it without undo interference from the State.”
“Viability” means a fetus can survive outside of a uterus, and that typically happens around 24 to 28 weeks. So laws that outright ban abortion before that stage have been systematically knocked down by courts.
“Every time the states have passed them, the federal courts universally blocked them,” Marc Hearron, lead attorney on the Texas case and senior counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, told ABC News. “This is the first time that a federal court has allowed a six-week ban to take effect.”
A six-week ban in Georgia, for instance, was struck down last year.
“A ‘heartbeat’ ban isn’t even close to viability. So there’s nothing about that that was even an attempt to be within the confines of the Constitution. That standing alone would make it unconstitutional,” Kimberly Mutcherson, co-dean and law professor at Rutgers Law School, told ABC News about the Texas law.
Before the Georgia law was struck down, it was blocked from going into effect while courts heard the challenge. That is how these cases usually go and was what the Center for Reproductive Rights was asking for from the Supreme Court.
“The thing that the federal court should do when a law is going to pose grave harm is preserve the status quo while if there are difficult issues, you can litigate those difficult issues,” Hearron said.
This was something Chief Justice John Roberts called for in his own dissent, writing: “I would grant preliminary relief to preserve the status quo ante — before the law went into effect — so that the courts may consider whether a state can avoid responsibility for its laws in such a manner.”
The Texas law is different from previous bans in that it prohibits the state from enforcing the ban, instead authorizing private citizens to bring civil suits against anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion.
With that, Mutcherson said, “they created this sort of confusion and this hook that the Supreme Court was able to use in order to say, ‘We’re not going to stay the law, we’re going to allow it to go into effect, and then we’ll see what happens.'”
Marty believes one thing that will happen is “people are going to have to decide for themselves whether this is a just law that needs to be followed or not, and what sort of risks they’re willing to take in order to essentially bring it down.”
What’s also different now is the makeup of the Supreme Court since President Donald Trump’s appointments and the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. To Mutcherson, this was a sign of “raw politics coming out of the Supreme Court,” and many saw this as the result of years of increasingly bold state laws being proposed by lawmakers emboldened by the new conservative majority and a slate of federal appellate judges appointed by Trump.
It is important to note that the Supreme Court’s order stated it “is not based on any conclusion about the constitutionality of Texas’ law.” Rather, the order not to issue an injunction was on technical grounds, and the legal challenge against the law is ongoing.
“The law remains that these bans are unconstitutional. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court let one take effect anyway,” Hearron said.
This order also in no way overturned Roe.
“Where we stand right now is that Texas has a law on the books that is completely unconstitutional under the precedent of Roe and Casey, but that law has not yet been enjoined or officially declared unconstitutional by any court,” Mutcherson said, adding, “The right to abortion continues to exist and continues to be protected by Roe and by Casey.”
And in the meantime, Mutcherson said, “The women who are going to suffer are women of color, poor women, young women, women who are undocumented — those are the folks that these kinds of laws really strike at.”
Apparently, Chieftain Mews isn’t cutting it on Radiohead‘s TikTok.
Earlier this year — on April Fools’ Day, in fact — the “Creep” outfit launched their own TikTok starring Mews, the strange character Radiohead previously used for their old web broadcasts. In keeping with the band’s ever-enigmatic vibe, each TikTok would feature Mews sitting at a desk repeating random phrases with unsettling vocal effects. That is, until now.
In Radiohead’s latest TikTok, which went up Friday, frontman Thom Yorke makes his debut appearance, alongside frequent artistic collaborator Stanley Donwood. The clip begins with the pair going over the low, “embarrassing” amount of views and follows Chieftain has brought with the broadcasts.
“You’ve promised us you that could give us a strong identity on TikTok, promote the music, get us back into the marketplace,” Yorke says to Mews, who can be heard from offscreen. “But instead, you’ve just become a source of acute embarrassment.”
“It’s not the ’90s anymore, is it?” he adds.
One can only hope that Radiohead’s TikTok use means new music is on the way — the band’s most recent album is 2016’s A Moon Shaped Pool.
(NEW YORK) — An agreement has been reached that will allow NHL players to participate in the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing, China.
The deal was brokered between the NHL, the NHL Players Association, the International Olympic Committee and the International Ice Hockey Federation, allowing NHL players to return to the Olympics after they were not allowed to participate in 2018. It does, however, contain an opt-out clause that would allow the NHL and NHLPA to pull players if the schedule for the upcoming NHL season is disrupted by cancellations and the Olympic break is needed to make up games.
NHL players not participating in the 2018 Games ended a string of five consecutive Olympiads where the league allowed its stars to compete on the international stage.
“As any Canadian kid, your dream is to play in the NHL, and then your dream is to play for Team Canada at the Olympics. I think that’s always how it is, and I’m no different,” Edmonton Oilers star Connor McDavid told reporters last week. “Obviously, with not going to the Olympics, it’s been a long time since we’ve been able to represent our country at a best-on-best tournament. So, my last time would have been a world juniors [in 2015], so it’s been a long time, and I’m certainly looking forward to, I guess, having the ability to chase down a spot and hopefully make the team and represent my country at the Olympics.”
The deal stipulates that the IIHF and IOC will pay for travel and insurance costs for players, and will cover players’ guests as well.
The NHL’s Olympic break is scheduled to run from February 3 to February 22. All-Star Weekend will begin on February 4, whether players participate in the Olympics or not.
Any NHL players who take part in the Olympics would be required to be vaccinated against COVID-19, with limited exceptions on a case-by-case basis. Multiple league sources told ESPN that “an overwhelming majority” of NHL players have already been vaccinated.
Sources also say that players are being advised to prepare for strict protocols during the 2022 Games, which could include a bubble environment, daily testing, restrictions on movement and interactions, and even the possibility of wearing GPS devices to help with contact tracing and compliance.
