One couple got the surprise of their lives thanks to Brad Pitt.
In 59-year-old Pitt’s cover interview for W Magazine‘s Best Performances issue published Monday, the Babylon actor revealed that he once crashed a wedding party while he and ex-wife Angelina Jolie filmed their 2005 movie Mr. and Mrs. Smith back in 2003.
“I have crashed a wedding party,” Pitt told the outlet during a wide-ranging conversation about his new movie, his breakout role in 1991’s Thelma and Louise and more.
“It was on the set of Mr. & Mrs. [Smith]. We were filming down in this Deco building downtown, and up in the penthouse above, we kept seeing people going up and down.”
“It was a wedding party, so I crashed it,” Pitt laughed to the outlet about the experience. “And they were okay with it.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Pitt noted that the “melancholy” he exhibits as Jack Conrad in director Damian Chazelle’s 1920s Hollywood epic Babylon “may be my natural mode of being.”
“Some congenital melancholy,” the actor said, in relation to his Babylon character’s struggle to adapt from the era of silent film to talkies. “But no, I think there’s a weariness that takes over with the character as he moves on. There’s a world-weariness that I can certainly relate to a little bit.”
“At this time, more of us are trying to tear each other down than help each other up,” Pitt added in the interview. “I get a little weary.”
Dr. Dre has made his feelings known about Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) using his song “Still D.R.E.” as the soundtrack for a new video in which she celebrates her part in helping get Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) finally elected as speaker of the House — and, not surprisingly, he didn’t mince words.
“I don’t license my music to politicians, especially someone as divisive and hateful as this one,” the superstar producer told TMZ Monday morning.
Greene’s self-promotional video immediately became the subject of derision when she posted it earlier Monday morning, with the political website Mediaite calling it “bizarre” and saying it “left many scratching their heads.” The video starts with slow-motion video of her triumphantly walking through the halls of Congress as the familiar opening chords of the D.R.E./Snoop Dogg classic kick in. The video eventually includes shots taken on the House floor of Greene appearing to text with “DT” — aka Donald Trump — in her attempts to influence Republican holdouts who were refusing to vote for McCarthy as a four-day stalemate continued.
“It’s time to begin.. and they can’t stop what’s coming,” Greene posted as the caption to the D.R.E.-soundtracked video montage.
Among the mockers was Republican gadfly Rick Wilson, who quote-tweeted Greene’s video with his own caption: “ChatGPT, show me an example of peak cringe.”
Even before Greene’s first triumphant appearance in the video, it begins with a shot of a sign bearing the words “There are two genders, male and female!,” a subject that Greene apparently considers germane to the fight for the speaker’s gavel. Much of the rest of the nearly two-minute video consists of slo-mo footage of the politician getting into elevators, riding elevators and getting out of elevators, all set to Dr. Dre’s suspenseful music. The video ends with a news announcer remarking upon how Greene rushed down to take a selfie with McCarthy following his victory speech, a selfie that “may have been his first act as speaker.”
“Still D.R.E.,” one of the most famous hip-hop songs of all time, was originally released in 1999 and returned to the Billboard Hot 100 in 2022 after it was used in the Super Bowl halftime show.
Fire Country is certainly burning bright at CBS: The drama has snagged a Season 2 pickup, midway through its freshman run.
Coming in hot, so to speak, Fire Country with its Oct. 7 debut delivered the largest audience (5.9 million total viewers) for any freshman series premiere this fall. Season-to-date, it boasts the largest audience of any freshman series (averaging 8 million weekly viewers with Live+7 playback), and it is also the highest-rated rookie (averaging a 0.7 demo rating).
“It’s pretty remarkable to see a new series resonate like this with both broadcast and streaming audiences right out of the gate,” CBS Entertainment’s recently installed new president, Amy Reisenbach, said in a statement. “Fire Country has so many appealing entry points for the audience. It combines high-stakes action with small town charm, mystery and romance, and a family franchise at its core. We’re blessed to have an incredible team in front of and behind the camera led by amazing producers and writers and an exceptionally talented cast.”
Currently airing Fridays at 9/8c, Fire Country stars SEAL Team alum Max Thieriot as Bode Donovan, a young convict who, in pursuit of redemption and a shortened prison sentence, joined a firefighting program that returned him to his small Northern California hometown, where he and other inmates work alongside elite firefighters to extinguish blazes in the region.
When last we tuned in, a car crash had left one vehicle half-on/half-off the side of a bridge, teetering with the driver and passenger siblings inside. With traffic impeding the arrival of further assistance, it was decided to carefully extricate the passenger from the car — after which Bode made the bold decision to clamber inside the vehicle and free/pull out the awakened driver.
But just as he helped Bode pull the driver out, all battalion chief Vince (Billy Burke) could do was watch as the car toppled off the bridge and into the river sorta-far below, with his son still inside.
In the clip above, see who swims to an unconscious, drowning Bode’s possible rescue in tonight’s winter premiere, all as an internal investigation into the car crash/rescue gets underway….
Meghan Markle may have held back on details about the much-sensationalized pre-wedding fight that she and Kate Middleton had over flower girl dresses during her Oprah interview, but Prince Harry is now filling in the blanks. Page Sixshared his personal recount of the situation from his forthcoming memoir Spare, which explains exactly why Meghan ended up in tears after having a conversation with Kate just four days before the couple’s wedding.
The dispute was over Kate’s daughter Princess Charlotte’s flower girl dress fitting.The Daily Mail alleged that Harry wrote that Meghan said Kate, who had delivered Prince Louis just one month before the wedding, had “baby brain,” which contributed to what happened.
According to Page Six, Harry wrote that Kate texted Meghan the week of the wedding about there being a “problem” with Charlotte’s dress, made by then-Givenchy creative director Clare Waight Keller, who also created Meghan’s wedding dress.
The girls’ “French haute couture dresses [were] hand-sewn based solely on [the bridesmaids’] measurements,” Harry wrote, so the fact that they needed tweaks wasn’t exactly a surprise.
Meghan replied to Kate and told her to bring Charlotte to the palace where a tailor “was waiting to perform alterations for all six of the bridesmaids,” Page Six wrote that Harry shared. Harry claimed this response was “not sufficient” for Kate, who asked for time to talk with Meghan herself.
During their talk, Kate allegedly told Meghan that Charlotte’s dress was “too big, long and baggy,” and Charlotte “burst into tears when she tried it on.” Meghan repeated again that Kate should take Charlotte to the tailor in the palace. Kate then responded that all the bridesmaid dresses needed to be “completely remade,” and that she had consulted her own wedding dress designer, Alexander McQueen’s Sarah Burton, about it. The wedding was only four days away at this point.
Ultimately, Kate took Charlotte to the tailor, but the “altercation” she had with Meghan really hurt the bride-to-be, Harry wrote. He shared he found Meghan crying “on the floor” after. Like Meghan herself revealed earlier to Oprah, Kate apologized and brought flowers and a card to Meghan the next day.
In her 2021 Oprah interview, Meghan discussed how hard it was for her to see the tabloids twist this story into her making Kate cry. Meghan’s details are consistent with what Harry himself shared in his memoir, albeit purposely more vague to protect Kate’s privacy.
Meghan told Oprah: “The narrative with Kate, which didn’t happen, was really, really difficult and something that I think, that’s when everything changed, really.”
“No. [I didn’t make Kate cry],” she continued. “No, no, the reverse happened. And I don’t say that to be disparaging to anyone, because it was a really hard week of the wedding, and she was upset about something, but she owned it, and she apologized, and she brought me flowers and a note apologizing and she did what I would do if I knew that I hurt someone. To just take accountability for it.
“What was shocking was, what was that, six, seven months after our wedding, the reverse of that would be out in the world [the story suggesting Meghan made Kate cry]. I would’ve never wanted that to come out about her ever even though it had happened. I protected that from ever being out in the world. A few days before the wedding, she was upset about something pertaining—yes, the issue was correct about flower girl dresses, and it made me cry and it really hurt my feelings, and I thought in the context of everything else that was going on in those days leading to the wedding that it didn’t make sense to not be just doing what everyone else was doing, which was try to be supportive, knowing what was going on with my dad and whatnot.
“There wasn’t a confrontation, and I actually think it’s…I don’t think it’s fair to her to get into the details of that because she apologized and I’ve forgiven her,” Meghan admitted. “What was hard to get over was being blamed for something that not only I didn’t do but that happened to me and the people that were a part of my wedding going to my comms team, saying, ‘I know this didn’t happen. I don’t have to tell them what actually happened, but I can at least go on the record saying she didn’t make her cry.’” Everyone in the institution knew it wasn’t true. I’m not sharing that piece about Kate in any way to be disparaging to her. I think it’s really important for people to understand the truth, but also I think a lot of it that was fed into by the media. Look, I would hope that she would’ve wanted that corrected. And maybe in the same way that the Palace wouldn’t let anybody else negate it, they wouldn’t let her, because she’s a good person, and I think so much of what I have seen play out was this idea of polarity where if you love me you don’t have to hate her, and if you love her, you don’t need to hate me.”
Washington Post tech journalist Geoffrey A. Fowler set up an account and tweeted as Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) — with Markey’s permission — to duplicate the same stunt he pulled shortly after Musk purchased Twitter in October.
Fowler got away with it all over again, just as he did earlier, even though he paid $8 for what Twitter claims is an improved blue check mark verification process confirming he was who he said he was. He wasn’t.
It was “dead simple,” Fowler noted.
“Elon Musk said he would fix Twitter’s problem with impostors. The blue check mark on my fake U.S. senator suggests he still has a long way to go,” Fowler wrote in the Post Thursday.
Sorry for the delay, we’re tentatively launching Verified on Friday next week.
Gold check for companies, grey check for government, blue for individuals (celebrity or not) and all verified accounts will be manually authenticated before check activates.
Fowler’s latest prank went viral on Tuesday when Gisele Barreto Fetterman, the wife of Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), thanked@SenatorEdMarkey in a tweet that garnered 140,000 views.
The “problem is” that the Markey account was “actually me,” wrote Fowler in his test of Musk’s check mark.
After Fowler’s first stint as an imposter, Markey challenged Musk — on Twitter — about the social media platform’s poor verification system. Musk tried to blow him off by dissing Markey’s real site as “sounding like a parody.”
This time around, Fowler said he discovered that Twitter still “isn’t verifying much of anything.” While some requirements slowed down the so-called verification process, Twitter never asked to see some form of identification from Fowler to actually demonstrate that he was who he claimed to be, he reported.
The point, Fowler wrote, is that Twitter doesn’t understand the “dangers of misinformation or the value of authenticated sources.” With Musk at the helm, users face a greater likelihood of “seeing something fake and thinking it is real,” he noted.
Zach Shallcross is on the hunt for his soulmate once again! The former “Bachelorette” contestant wasn’t lucky in love when he appeared on the ABC dating show last season, but he’s giving it another go as the latest star of “The Bachelor.”
Lucky for us, we don’t have to wait long to watch the 26-year-old tech executive begin his quest for romance. The 27th season of “The Bachelor” premieres on Monday, Jan. 23 at 8 p.m. ET and from the looks of the trailer, there will be plenty of romance and drama.
As a contestant on “The Bachelorette,” Shallcross had chemistry with Rachel Recchia, but their romance didn’t go the distance and he ultimately decided to leave the show towards the end of the season.
This time around, the California native will be putting his heart on the line to find “the one,” and there are 30 ladies vying for his attention. Per the tech executive’s bio, he’s looking for a connection similar to the one his parents have (which he characterizes as “true love”).
If Shallcross is truly seeking a soulmate, he might have luck with Aly, a “Southern sweetheart” and “hopeless romantic” who is ready for marriage, per her ABC bio.
The self-described “family man at heart” could also vibe with Anastasia, who comes from a “big, loving Greek family,” or or Becca, who says her mom is the person she “loves most in this world.” If Shallcross is looking for a bit of excitement, thrill-seeker Ariel might be a great match.
Read on for photos of all 30 women. We’ll be updating this cast list as the show goes on – so you can see who stays and who goes.
Julia Fox is opening up about an extravagant date she went on, which may or may not have been with famed rapper Drake.
During an appearance on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen on Thursday, the Uncut Gems actress recalled the best celebrity date she’s ever been on when asked about it by a viewer.
“Being on a private jet, cuddled on the jet, landed, got some Chanel bags,” Fox, 32, recalled, prompting laughs from the studio audience after dryly adding, “It was great, yeah.”
Asked by host Andy Cohen who it was, Fox played coy. “I can’t say. I really can’t say,” she replied, teasing, “obviously an A-lister.”
Later, during the WWHL After Show, Cohen asked Fox if Drake had taken her on that date.
“Maybe,” Fox replied a couple beats later, visibly reacting with an eye roll before telling the Bravo host with a smirk, “Shouldn’t have given me that shot.”
Julia Fox opens up about her best date with a celebrity & teases that it was with rapper Drake. #WWHLpic.twitter.com/wXqq5cWm8O
his isn’t the first time that Fox has hinted about a Drake dalliance.
In February 2022, she addressed a report on her Forbidden Fruitspodcast that she dated the “Hotline Bling” hitmaker in 2020.
“He’s a great guy and a gentleman… and that was it. Nothing really happened, we were just, like, friends hanging out,” Fox said of the 36-year-old, adding: “I wouldn’t say that we were dating.”
ox had more of a whirlwind romance with rapper Kanye West last winter after partying it up with the controversial artist at a Miami nightclub over New Year’s Eve. They went on to date for a couple of months before the rapper began his concerning rants on social media amid his divorce to Kim Kardashian.
While Fox was dating West, 45, she shared about the lavish attention she received from the controversial artist, whose divorce from Kardashian was finalized in November.
“His energy is so fun to be around. He had me and my friends laughing, dancing, and smiling all night,” Fox wrote last January, before describing a second date in which West surprised her with a hotel suite stocked with clothes.
“I’m still in shock. Ye had an entire hotel suite full of clothes. It was every girl’s dream come true. It felt like a real Cinderella moment,” Fox recalled. “I don’t know how he did it, or how he got all of it there in time. But I was so surprised. Like, who does things like this on a second date? Or any date!”
Romeo and Juliet stars Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey are suing Paramount Pictures over a nude scene in the 1968 movie, which was filmed when they were minors.
In a complaint filed Dec. 30 in Santa Monica, Calif., and reviewed by EW, Whiting and Hussey, who were 16 and 15 at the time of production, accused the studio of exploitation, sexual harassment, fraud, sexual abuse, negligence, and the distribution of nude images of children.
The actors, who are now in their 70s, say they have suffered mental anguish and emotional distress in the five decades since the film’s release, and have lost out on job opportunities. According to the lawsuit, “Paramount owed a duty to protect their minor children employees from child and sexual exploitation.”
They are seeking damages “believed to be in excess of $500 million,” per the suit.
Everett Collection Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting in ‘Romeo and Juliet’
Representatives for Paramount didn’t immediately respond to EW’s request for comment Tuesday.
Hussey and Whiting’s complaint alleges that Romeo and Juliet director Franco Zeffirelli assured them there would be no nudity in the movie, and that they would instead wear flesh-colored undergarments to shoot an intimate scene between the titular star-crossed lovers. However, in the final days of filming, Zeffirelli allegedly encouraged them to film the bedroom scene nude with body makeup, or the movie “would fail.”
Hussey and Whiting also allege that Zeffirelli — who died in 2019 — misrepresented where the camera would be and filmed them naked without their knowledge. The finished film included images of Hussey’s breasts and Whiting’s buttocks.
“What they were told and what went on were two different things,” Tony Marinozzi, a business manager for both actors, told Variety. “They trusted Franco. At 16, as actors, they took his lead that he would not violate that trust they had. Franco was their friend, and frankly, at 16, what do they do? There are no options. There was no #MeToo.”
The lawsuit was filed under a California law that temporarily suspended the statute of limitations for claims of child sexual abuse.
Solomon Gresen, an attorney for Whiting and Hussey, told Variety, “Nude images of minors are unlawful and shouldn’t be exhibited. These were very young naive children in the ’60s who had no understanding of what was about to hit them. All of a sudden they were famous at a level they never expected, and in addition they were violated in a way they didn’t know how to deal with.”
Hussey has defended the nude scene in past interviews. In 2018, she told Fox News that it “was done very tastefully” and “wasn’t that big of a deal.”
Representatives for Hussey and Whiting didn’t immediately respond to EW’s request for comment.
Romeo and Juliet was a critical and commercial success at the time of its release, and was nominated for four Oscars. Hussey went on to appear in films such as Black Christmas, Death on the Nile, and Undeclared War. Whiting’s subsequent film credits included The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Say Hello to Yesterday, and War Is Hell. The two also reunited in the 2015 film Social Suicide
R. Kelly silenced Aaliyah and her family through a non-disclosure agreement, following his marriage and subsequent annulment to the then 15-year-old singer.
The new allegations were made in the final installment of Lifetime’s “Surviving R. Kelly,” which aired on Jan. 2 and Jan. 3. The docuseries centered around R. Kelly’s 2022 federal trial where the NDA was brought up in the courtroom as evidence. The late Aaliyah was Jane Doe #1 in the trial.
“Surviving R. Kelly” utilizes Aaliyah’s story to spotlight her as a victim of R. Kelly, after years of the media and music industry scandalizing her marriage to the now-convicted singer in the 90’s.
Aaliyah’s debut album in 1994 was titled “Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number” and was recorded when she was 14-years-old. R. Kelly — who was Aaliyah’s mentor and was first introduced to her by her uncle, music executive and manager Barry Hankerson — was a lead songwriter and producer of the album. At the time the album was released, rumors circulated that there was a relationship between the 15-year-old Aaliyah and the 27-year-old R. Kelly.
The pair secretly married in August 1994. Aaliyah was 15 at the time, but the marriage certificate falsified her age as 18. The marriage was annulled by Aaliyah’s parents in Feb. 1995.
In “Surviving R. Kelly,” on-camera interviews with individuals from R. Kelly’s camp who were in the room when the duo wed express their regret over the marriage. Individuals who were close to both R. Kelly and Aaliyah share new details about the legal agreement that was allegedly forged between R. Kelly and Aaliyah’s family.
Members of Aaliyah’s family declined to comment to producers of “Surviving R. Kelly,” per a statement that aired as part of the Lifetime docuseries.
A childhood friend of R. Kelly and his former security, Gem Pratt, appears in “Surviving R. Kelly” and claims that Aaliyah’s father was furious over the marriage and forced the annulment. Pratt alleges that Aaliyah’s family had a contractual arrangement with R. Kelly that stated they wouldn’t press charges against him for the illegal marriage after it was annulled; in turn, R. Kelly sold the rights to his first three albums to Aaliyah’s family, giving them a financial incentive.
“Her dad didn’t want her anywhere near him,” Pratt says in the docuseries.
Various on-camera guests in “Surviving R. Kelly” described the marriage as a way to get R. Kelly to avoid jail time for statutory rape of a minor.
The final episodes of “Surviving R. Kelly” dedicate time to covering the enablers in R. Kelly’s camp, who turned a blind eye to his abuse over three decades and helped the convicted musician make arrangements to see his victims, including booking flights for underage girls to cross state lines for private meetings. One prosecutor who appeared as a legal expert in the docuseries described R. Kelly as “running a criminal enterprise.” Another expert said “everyone had a financial incentive to look the other way.”
“He couldn’t do this by himself. It’s impossible…It’s clear as day there were enablers,” said R. Kelly’s former security guard, Pratt. He later said, “This was not a one-man operation. Most people in that camp knew that a lot of these girls were underage. They had to.”
The NDA was brought up in R. Kelly’s New York trial in 2022, but did not receive widespread coverage. The use of NDAs has become a hot-button issue in sexual harassment cases, particularly in the workplace, highlighting an imbalance of power with the perpetrator or corporations silencing victims through forced legal documents.
Prior to R. Kelly’s trial, journalist Jim DeRogatis — the reporter who first broke news of R. Kelly’s sexual abuse more than two decades ago — uncovered the NDA that R. Kelly used against Aaliyah. A few years ago, DeRogatis spoke about the documents that were leaked to him, stating in an interview that the annulment and Aaliyah’s legal claim against R. Kelly had been sealed.
“It’s a harrowing document,” he said. “A non-disclosure agreement on both her part and Kelly’s, vowing not to pursue further legal claims for physical abuse. So, it wasn’t just an underage sexual relationship, he hit her, allegedly, according to that court document.”
Speaking to Variety about the final installment of “Surviving R. Kelly,” executive producer Jesse Daniels said that the producing team was careful not to exploit Aaliyah in the docuseries, and hoped to highlight the abuse she tragically endured by R. Kelly when she was a teenager. “We have had a lot of conversations about how to tell Aaliyah’s story every time because we really want to be respectful of her legacy. But what she went through, we can’t turn our backs on,” said Daniels.
