Steve Pond's Blog, page 133

Ari Melber Argues Elon Musk Exit Shows Some Pressure Against Trump ‘Is Actually Working’ | Video

MSNBC’s Ari Melber focused on positive vibes, kind of, in his opening on Monday night’s episode of “The Beat,” by focusing on what he argued is “the pressure that is actually working” to at least somewhat curtail whatever Donald Trump and Republicans are cooking up.

Melber started by arguing “there have been a series of bruising setbacks,” starting with what he said was “effective pushback” that pushed Elon Musk to step away, publicly at least, from the Trump administration.

“In first term, they called that resistance. Now it’s protesters that have been a part, by Musk’s own admission, of driving him out of government. Or take these law firms,” he continued, referring to firms that inexplicably chose to comply with Trump demands this year. “If you look on your screen and you think about, what are the scales of justice even mean? Well, usually they mean both sides fighting, not one side just giving up. And the law firms, who are fighting back, in some ways, are winning.”

Melber may have been referring to reporting such as this showing that said law firms are losing clients over their decision.

Then Melber noted the still-ongoing Republican town halls where their voters express almost unanimous outrage over what the Trump administration is doing, choosing as a recent example Republican Senator Joni Ernst, who made headlines over the weekend after a town hall where, when voters protested that cutting Medicaid and Medicare will kill people, she replied condescendingly “well we’re all going to die.”

Melber showed that clip as well as an excerpt from the bizarre video she released on Saturday effectively insulting her own voters as immature children, literally comparing their concerns about her indifference to government cuts harming them, to belief in the Tooth Fairy.

“You can see she’s feeling enough pressure that she has to say something… She recorded that video in a graveyard and brings up the Tooth Fairy to try to suggest that anyone criticizing her is somehow juvenile or not getting it, but the real world impact of the health care bill is what people care about. Apparently in Iowa, where this has become a problem for her, 9 million people across the country could lose their health coverage. So the very real question is whether the government is actively taking steps under Republicans that endangered people’s current health care, not whether the fact is that we all know we are mortal,” Melber commented.

After rolling through some other examples, Melber said as he headed to his conclusion, “This was a short stint for politics. Cabinet Secretaries serve years, sometimes across two terms. Musk is out in 130 days, and he finds himself down $70 billion since the inauguration. Musk also says Doge his work will continue. Others say, without him there as the muscle, it will fizzle out. That’s what one former staffer says. And that could be both. It can be hard sometimes to absorb all this in real time. In fact, there were people during it who said, Is this really happening? Someone who wasn’t elected anything, didn’t pass any transparency, vetting or divesting rules to even run a cabinet agency seems to be overseeing not only the administration at times, but disassembling parts of the government that were bipartisan, passed by lawmakers for years. Some of that did happen. Some of those jobs are gone. A lot of it was stalled once the courts got a hold of it, and now the guy doing it is gone, and he’s asking you, please, please don’t discuss this.”

Watch the whole thing below:

The post Ari Melber Argues Elon Musk Exit Shows Some Pressure Against Trump ‘Is Actually Working’ | Video appeared first on TheWrap.

Jesse Watters Quotes Maya Angelou to Prove Democrats Should Go to the Gym to Get More Manly | Video

Jesse Watters quoted Maya Angelou to support his theory that Democrats should go to the gym more to get manlier and feel better about themselves.

On Monday’s episode of “The Five,” Watters talked about the difference in physique between senators John Thune and Chuck Schumer. He hypothesized that if more Democrats hit the gym they’d feel better about themselves and more people would want to follow them.

“I saw Senator Thune at the gym. The man is jacked, the guy is in great shape and he lifts hard,” Watters said. “You look at Schumer, he’s built like a woman. Men do not want to be led by the party of women. Men want to be led by other men so Democrats need to become men, and then they can persuade men. But they have to lift first.”

He continued: “There’s a quote by Maya Angelou, ‘People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.’ People don’t like the way they feel around Democrats because Democrats don’t like the way they feel. If they lifted they’d feel better and then everyone around them would feel better.”

The group on the show were also commenting on recent headlines that Minnesota governor Tim Walz urged Democrats to “bully the s–t” out of President Donald Trump and how that may be the wrong tactic.

“Maybe it’s time for us to be a little meaner,” the former vice presidential candidate said at the South Carolina Democrat Party’s annual convention. “Maybe it’s time for us to be a little more fierce because we have to ferociously push back on this.”

Walz added: “When it’s a bully like Donald Trump, you bully the s–t out of him.”

The post Jesse Watters Quotes Maya Angelou to Prove Democrats Should Go to the Gym to Get More Manly | Video appeared first on TheWrap.

Blake Lively Moves to Withdraw ‘Emotional Distress’ Claims After Justin Baldoni Seeks Medical Records

Blake Lively is trying to withdraw previous claims Justin Baldoni inflicted emotional distress after the “It Ends With Us” director sought discovery of her medical records in their ongoing legal feud, a Monday filing shows.

Baldoni’s team wanted Lively to sign a HIPAA release to gain access to her therapy notes and other materials. Lively’s team moved to withdraw the emotional distress claims, but in a way Baldoni’s team deemed unsatisfactory.

“Ms. Lively has refused the Wayfarer Parties’ reasonable request that the withdrawal of such claims be with prejudice,” the filing read. “She is only willing to withdraw her claims without prejudice. In other words, Ms. Lively wants to simultaneously: (a) refuse to disclose the information and documents needed to disprove that she suffered any emotional distress and/or that the Wayfarer Parties were the cause; and (b) maintain the right to re-file her IED Claims at an unknown time in this or some other court after the discovery window has closed.”

The filing continued: “Ms. Lively cannot have it both ways. If Ms. Lively wants to withdraw her frivolous IED Claims, the Wayfarer Parties are entitled to a dismissal with prejudice to ensure they will not be re-filed. If Ms. Lively is unwilling to stipulate to the dismissal of her IED Claims with prejudice, then the Wayfarer Parties will continue to defend against them, and she must produce her medical information and documents as set forth herein.”

It is now up to Judge Lewis Limon and the court to decide whether or not Lively can withdraw her claims – and if so whether it is done with or without prejudice. The inflection of emotional distress claims were important pieces to her original lawsuit again Baldoni, which she filed in December 2024 following his defamation suit against the New York Times for a story written about set and press tour conditions on “It Ends With Us.”

“Once again this is a routine part of the litigation process that is being used as a press stunt,” Lively’s lawyers Esra Hudson and Mike Gottlieb said in a statement to TheWrap. “We are doing what trial lawyers do: preparing our case for trial by streamlining and focusing it; they are doing what they do: desperately seeking another tired round of tabloid coverage. The Baldoni-Wayfarer strategy of filing retaliatory claims has exposed them to expansive new damages claims under California law, rendering certain of Ms. Lively’s original claims no longer necessary. Ms. Lively continues to allege emotional distress, as part of numerous other claims in her lawsuit, such as sexual harassment and retaliation, and massive additional compensatory damages on all of her claims.”

The post Blake Lively Moves to Withdraw ‘Emotional Distress’ Claims After Justin Baldoni Seeks Medical Records appeared first on TheWrap.

Sophie Turner Survival Thriller ‘Trust’ Sets August Theatrical Release From Republic Pictures | Exclusive

“Trust,” the upcoming psychological survival thriller starring “Game of Thrones” breakout Sophie Turner, is coming the movie theaters this summer.

The latest feature from actress-director Carlson Young (“The Blazing World,” “Upgraded”) and screenwriter Gigi Levangie will hit theaters Aug. 22, TheWrap can exclusively reveal.

Along with the Monday announcement, Republic Pictures (a Paramount Pictures label) debuted a first-look at the feature’s key art, spotlighting a bruised and bloodied Turner. (Get a peek at that poster below.) “You can hide, but you can’t run,” the poster reads.

Turner stars as a Hollywood starlet who, after an unnamed scandal, “retreats to a remote cabin — but she’s not alone. Betrayed by the man she trusted most, she’s trapped in a brutal game of survival,” the official logline reads. “She can hide, but she can’t run.”

The project co-stars Rhys Coiro, Billy Campbell, Peter Mensah, Forrest Goodluck, Gianni Paolo, Renata Vaca and Katey Sagal. Monika Mikkelsen cast the project. Miles Koules of Koulest Productions, Ketura Kestin and Twisted Pictures’ Oren Koules are attached as producers. It marks the first film in a multi-picture deal from “Saw” producer Koules with Republic Pictures.

Executive producing are Claire Kupchak, Ksana Golod, Turner, Young, Lena Roklin and Daniel Jason Heffner.

“Trust” marks one of Turner’s first forays into producing. A 2019 Emmy nominee for “Game of Thrones,” in which she starred as the fan-favorite Sansa Stark, the British actress’ latest standout projects include the limited series “Joan” and “The Staircase.” She next stars as Lara Croft in Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s “Tomb Raider” series for Amazon. Turner is repped by CAA and the U.K.’s Independent.

Credit: Republic Pictures

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Miley Cyrus Says It Hurt to Be Overlooked by the Grammys for Hannah Montana: ‘At One Point, I Was the Best New Artist’ | Video

Miley Cyrus was hurt by the Grammys overlooking her at the height of the Hannah Montana craze.

While speaking on “The Interview,” Cyrus got candid about the music award show overlooking her when she was a Disney Channel star and her music was everywhere. She said she both understood but also questioned why she was never nominated while being one of the biggest names at the time.

“I think from starting from being on Disney, you already have something that you kind of have to overcome – which I’ve never understood needing to overcome Disney or being Hannah Montana because Hannah Montana was a singer,” she said. “I was never nominated for Best New Artist which was totally cool with me, but at one point I just think I kind of was the best new artist.”

She continued: “If it wasn’t the best it was the most impactful to a certain generation that there should be some sort of recognition of that. Also the amount of work I was putting in was so heavy.”

Cyrus won her first Grammy in 2024 for “Flowers.” Not only was she hurt about getting snubbed for her performances as Montana, but also for her other work once she left the character behind.

I think with the Grammys it was overcoming Disney, overcoming the character, and then when I left the character behind – like all the way behind – like it was ‘ok cut. I am officially so me.’ I think I just went so many steps ahead really fast and I don’t think that everyone could completely keep up.”

Cyrus just dropped her ninth studio album “Something Beautiful” on Friday, May 30.

The post Miley Cyrus Says It Hurt to Be Overlooked by the Grammys for Hannah Montana: ‘At One Point, I Was the Best New Artist’ | Video appeared first on TheWrap.

How Documentary Filmmakers Found New Stuff to Say About Sly Stone, Springsteen and The Beatles

It’s no surprise that this year’s Emmy nonfiction races are filled with films and series about iconic musicians, because music docs have been a main-stay at film festivals, in theaters and on television for decades. But the 2024-2025 season feels particularly robust, and particularly long on films about giants, from the Beatles to John Williams to Bruce Springsteen.

“I’m interested in story and conflict and characters and through lines in music,” said director David Tedeschi, who has worked with Martin Scorsese on documentaries about Bob Dylan, George Harrison, David Johansen and, this year, the Beatles. “And music is often a document of what artists were going through in the moment. So to tell those stories and to have the power of that music to go with it, it can be a very satisfying experience.”

This survey of a few of the most notable music films starts with Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, the musician turned Oscar-winning director who is in the thick of it with a Hulu film about Sly Stone and another on NBC about the 50-year history of music on “Saturday Night Live.”

“SLY LIVES! (aka The Burden of Black Genius)” (Photo by Stephen Paley)“Sly Lives! (aka the Burden of Black Genius)” and “Ladies and Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music“

Thompson worked on his two new music docs simultaneously: He spent his week- days chronicling the dark life and career of the protean funk pioneer Sly Stone, who squandered his talent and fame by losing himself in drugs, and his weekends escaping in the music of “Saturday Night Live” over the past half-century.

When we talked after you had made “Summer of Soul” but before it won the Oscar, you were already planning a film about Sly Stone, who appeared in that first film.
Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson: When we were doing the doc and I was watching the Sly footage (from a performance in the summer of 1969), I was like, wow, Sly doesn’t know that this is the chapter before the world will open. He’s about to play Woodstock, and he’ll be God in less than five months. And I always wanted to know: What was the experience of his success between ’70 and ’72 that resulted in (the dark, classic album) “There’s a Riot Goin’ On” but also resulted in the band breaking up?

I remember the avalanche of offers that came in after “Summer of Soul,” and the cold calls coming in: Elton John, Obama … Wait, what? But when Common pitched me Sly, it got real.

You are making a movie about a guy who had it all and squandered it, and a movie that explores the difficulties faced by the best Black artists. And you’re making this in the aftermath of having your first movie win an Oscar and bring you lots of other offers.
Oh, the irony. (Laughs) Three weeks ago, my mom saw an interview where I said, “I made this for Lauryn, D’Angelo, Frank Ocean, Will Smith, Kanye, Chris Rock, whoever …” And she was like, “I kind of think you made this film for you.” And my reaction was “Busted.”

Every day I wake up wondering: Is my takedown about to happen? Or let me say that I used to wake up that way every day. I think maybe I made this film to force me to accept love, accolades, things that make me uncomfortable. I mean, it would be painfully ironic if I do anything close to what Sly did in the film as I’m publicly telling the world, “Yes, I’m making this film for people who self-sabotage.”

(Laughs) Maybe subconsciously, I made this film to force me to … It’s almost like announcing a diet to the public. Now I got to see it through, you know what I mean? I guess that’s what I did.

“Ladies & Gentlemen … 50 Years of ‘SNL’ Music” (NBC)

The first ten minutes of the “Saturday Night Live” documentary is an insane mash-up of hundreds of snippets from “SNL” musical performances playing off each other. Was that the DJ part of your brain taking over?
The way that we structured it, I joke that this was my “CSI” crime board, as far as having pictures and yarn that connect them and all that stuff. Literally every song performance on “SNL,” I made a note. All the fast songs, all the slow songs, all the different genres. I went through about three to seven episodes a day for an entire year. And because I think like a DJ, I already know, OK, this song’s 112 BPM and it’s in E minor, but the bridge is in G and that way we can connect to the next song.

When we had a good five minutes, I showed it to NBC and said, “Guys, what do you think?” And their jaws dropped. I was like, “Is this going to be a clearance nightmare?” And they were like, “It absolutely is going to be a clearance nightmare.”

Twenty-four songs did not clear. And I said, “Dude, give me a month.” I pretty much had to go hand-in-hand (to all the musicians). And with the exception of a brilliant moment where Pavarotti is doing something with Mary J. Blige, I got everything cleared. Maybe for a few people, I had to physically fly to them and show them. “Wait, you flew all the way out to show me this?” “Yes. Please tell your lawyer to approve it.” And the answer was always “Yeah, I want to be a part of history.”

“Beatles ’64” (Disney+)“Beatles ’64“

In February 1964, less than three months after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Beatles touched down in New York City to make their first three appearances on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Rock ’n’ roll would never be the same, and neither would popular culture. The Disney+ documentary commemorates the 60th anniversary of that visit, with director David Tedeschi and producer Martin Scorsese utilizing footage shot by Albert and David Maysles for a 1964 doc, along with interviews with a variety of people whose lives were changed, including Smokey Robinson, David Lynch and Jamie Bernstein, an avid fan and the daughter of Leonard Bernstein.

So much has been said, written and put on screen about the Beatles, including Peter Jackson’s recent “Get Back” series and Ron Howard’s movie from a couple of years ago that covered some of the same territory that yours does. Making this film, how conscious were you of what else was out there?
David Tedeschi: We’re always conscious of what came before, and so we did feel at the very beginning, Gosh, how do we make yet another Beatles film? And how do we make it on the short deadline that we had? But we realized two things pretty quickly. One was that we were doing something only two years after “Get Back” that was almost a bookend. That was about the end of the Beatles, and we were doing something from the very beginning. Yes, the Beatles had been together for quite a while, but this was the beginning of Beatlemania as a worldwide craze.

It was a real advantage to be dealing with such a small amount of time. It’s about that moment when they came to New York. And in a way, it’s about the fans as much as it’s about the band. It’s about something that happened in the wake of the Kennedy assassination and all the changes that were building up from the ’50s and the ’60s: civil rights, women’s rights, the anti-war movement. There was a great richness of material in that moment.

When you sat down to look through all the footage that Jackson’s company had restored, even though you were dealing with a group as well-known as the Beatles, were there things that came as revelations?
Maybe it was the fans in that moment in New York. New York changes so quickly; that was a real revelation to me that these young girls and boys were so excited. And the people we interviewed, their lives changed upon hearing the Beatles’ music. It was fascinating on an energy level. I’ve lived in New York for 40 years, and I’ve never seen what happened in those days in 1964, you know?

You mentioned a short deadline.
They really wanted the movie to be released in 2024 for the 60th anniversary. So we had to move quickly.

Was it hard to finish it in time?
We made it. (Laughs) That’s all I’m going to say about it. Did I always think we were going to make it? Not necessarily.

“Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band” (Hulu)“Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band“

Over the past 24 years, director and editor Thom Zimny has made around 14 long-form films with Bruce Springsteen, most of them devoted to specific albums or concerts. But the Disney+/Hulu doc “Road Diary” focuses on Springsteen’s world tour after the pandemic, an outing that has recently drawn the ire of Donald Trump. The film is a broader and more expansive chronicle that delves into the history of the band and its relationship with its fans.

When you started filming rehearsals for the tour, did you have a sense of the kind of movie you and Bruce wanted to make?
Thom Zimny: The beauty of working with Bruce is that we don’t go in with a set POV. This started with Bruce saying, “We’re going to get the guys together, rehearse the band. Come on by and do some filming.” And for me, my collaboration with (Springsteen’s manager) Jon Landau and with Bruce is just to be present. And what happened was I saw an emotional story, because it was a story about a band returning after the world shut down. And also Bruce had new music that felt very in sync with the moment of coming back to a world now experiencing this community.

The concerts on this tour included lots of hits, but they also told a story about aging and loss.
I witnessed in the rehearsals, and also in the performances, Bruce talking to the audience in a way that felt very different, that was dealing with these themes of mortality. The songs had an emotional arc. You might have a song from the past that you loved in a certain context. But after our world changed and what we have survived in the last few years, and with time itself passing within the band, you felt like these songs were different. And Bruce was aware of that by setting up a setlist that had an emotional impact. I didn’t want to make a concert film with the clichés of rock ’n’ roll. I paid close attention to the storyteller.

But at the same time people will feel shortchanged if they don’t get to hear their favorite songs. How do you balance that?
It’s a great question. I think the way you balance a film is to look at your musical sections in what they are serving for the story. A lot of the songs that I picked were helping with the themes that the interviews were sharing, the themes that Bruce’s voice-overs were sharing. You don’t go down a road of music for music’s sake —you keep to the story.

“Music by John Williams” (Lucasfilm Ltd.)“Music by John Williams“

Composer John Williams has received an enormous number of accolades during his lengthy career, including 26 Grammys and 54 Academy Award nominations, more than any other living person and second only to Walt Disney in Oscar history. But while he’s written many of the most celebrated film scores of all time, he had never had a movie made about him until French-American filmmaker Laurent Bouzereau teamed with both Lucasfilm and Amblin to make this Disney+ film.

John was not necessarily eager to have a documentary about himself, was he?
Laurent Bouzereau: No. I’ve known John for quite some time, and I was not the only one asking him to do this. But he was always “No, no, no, no.” But then he turned 90 and there was a big event for him at the Kennedy Center. I was asked to film a bunch of directors wishing him a happy birthday, which turned into long discussions about their relationship with John, but also about film music and how John had legitimized an art form that I think even back in the ’70s was not necessarily recognized in the same canon as classical music.

After I did the 90th-birthday stuff, I said to Steven (Spielberg), “This is ridiculous. We have a bank of material between your home movies, the Lucasfilm archive and my own archive. Someone will do a documentary about John, and it would be a shame not to have us do it. So he asked John, and John said yes. But then John’s enthusiasm quickly started wearing down. He said to me, “Listen, I just don’t want to talk about myself.” I said, “John, it’s not going to be about you.” He said, “Well, what’s it going to be about?” “It’s about music. It’s about your music.”

I think that convinced him that I was out to tell a musical story as opposed to a personal story. But his music is directly linked to his life, so he was able to get there because we were talking in musical terms. I never asked him about his wife passing, ever. (Williams’ first wife Barbara Ruick died of an aneurysm in 1974, at the age of 41.) I said, “Tell me about the first Violin Concerto.” And he talked about his wife, because he wrote it after she passed.

The amount of iconic music that he wrote is staggering, but it must be hard to figure out what to put in the film and what to leave out.
The one thing you have to give up is thinking you’re going to be definitive. There was a fear of the film being a hit parade, so I tried to embrace a structure that felt a little more unpredictable. I tried to make it so that even if I’m playing iconic music cues, they still come as a surprise.

This story first appeared in the Race Begins issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

Photographed by David Needleman for TheWrap

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Cynthia Erivo Laughs Off Conservative Uproar Over ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ Casting: ‘You Can’t Please Everyone’

Cynthia Erivo said she laughed it off when people said it was “blasphemy” to cast her, a Black queer woman, as Jesus Christ in an upcoming Los Angeles production of “Jesus Christ Superstar.”

“Why not?” the “Wicked” star told Billboard with a shrug. “You can’t please everyone. It is legitimately a three-day performance at the Hollywood Bowl where I get to sing my face off. So hopefully they will come and realize, ‘Oh, it’s a musical, the gayest place on Earth.’ ”

The production, which will run from August 1 through August 3, will also feature Andrew Lambert in the choice role of traitor Judas.

Erivo said that trying to be positive right now is “the only way you can balance this stuff,” referring to the chaos caused by President Trump’s “anti-woke” campaign, including booting out the existing board at the Kennedy Center.

“I don’t know who gains what from that. I hope that it comes back,” she said. “It’s really sad to have to watch this happen to it. The Kennedy Center is supposed to be a space of creativity and art and music for everyone.”

Erivo, who now has two Best Actress Oscar nominations under her belt and a 2016 Tony award for “The Color Purple,” said that she didn’t consider that there might be a negative reaction when she came out in 2022. “Maybe I’m naive and wasn’t paying attention to it, because I’m sure there was [pushback],” she said.

The actress and singer’s new album, “I Forgive You,” is scheduled to be released on Friday. She said she hopes it will showcase more of her versatility.

“People see a very cookie-cutter version of me, and we do this thing with people where we isolate them or crystallize them in one space and go, ‘She’s just that,’ ” she said. “People don’t know me as a musician in the way they’re getting to know me now.”

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Andrea Mitchell Accepts Career Achievement Award at 85th Peabody Awards

NBC News chief Washington and chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell received a Career Achievement Award at the 85th Peabody Awards Sunday. In her remarks, Mitchell reflected on her career and the importance of having “women at every level” in journalism — women who are “smarter, stronger, and more fearless than we ever were – and more empowered” than ever before.

Mitchell was announced as the award winner in April. The list of past honorees includes Mel Brooks, Lily Tomlin, Rita Moreno, Dan Rather, Cicely Tyson and Carol Burnett. She has been with NBC News for nearly five decades and has spent three of those serving as the netowrk’s chief foreign affairs correspondent.

She previously won a Peabody Award for her coverage of the Texas abortion ban and was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Television Academy at the news and documentary Emmy Awards in 2019.

Mitchell’s remarks in full are below:

“Winning this award this year along with my NBC colleagues at SNL clearly shows that Peabody recognizes – people need some good laughs along with their news.”

“In all seriousness, this award means the world to me – not just for what it says about my work, but for what it represents about the importance of journalism.”

“It’s been a long journey for women in my profession. Consider this: my first job in a Philadelphia newsroom was as a ‘copy boy.’  That tells you how rare it was for a woman to be in the room at all, even doing an entry level job.”

“There weren’t many women role models in television news back then.  I had to fight my way in – and then fight for every promotion after that. I’ve been thrown out of many venues – from Philadelphia’s city hall to the state house in Harrisburg, to the oval office – for asking uncomfortable questions – to the campaign trail with what was then famously called by author Timothy Crouse, ‘the boys on the bus.’ Covering foreign policy, I’ve even been physically dragged out of rooms for challenging dictators in places like Damascus and Sudan. What I learned over the years is that if you don’t keep trying, you’ll never get any answers.”

“Women journalists have certainly come a great distance since those early days. When I look across our newsroom now, I see women at every level – as the President and Executive Vice Presidents of NBC News – as our Washington Bureau Chief – women producers, editors, camera crews, researchers and desk assistants. And no, they are no longer called ‘copy boys.'”

“I am grateful that many of these terrific journalists worked on my team and have since risen through the ranks to leadership positions. Mentoring the next generations of female journalists has been one of the great joys of my career.  And I can tell you, the women journalists of today are smarter, stronger, and more fearless than we ever were – and more empowered.”

“And all of us journalists have to be fearless. It is no exaggeration to say that strong journalism, providing accurate information to the American people, is critical to the survival of our democracy. As Thomas Jefferson wrote to the continental Congress in 1787, ‘were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.'”

“Whether it is warning communities about an approaching hurricane or informing them about how their elected leaders are responding to an overseas crisis, the work correspondents, producers and photographers do every day saves lives. Literally.”

“So thank you, Peabody and the University of Georgia, for respecting journalism and recognizing the importance of what we do. Thank you for honoring a former ‘copy boy’ who has never lost her love of chasing after the next story. Thank you to my wonderful husband for his enduring patience with my erratic work life for all these years – and my eternal gratitude to my NBC family, past and present, for believing in me. This award is for all of them.”

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‘Nobody Wants This’ Season 2 Sets October Premiere Date at Netflix

“Nobody Wants This” will be returning to Netflix this fall.

Season 2 of the rom-com series has set a premiere date of Oct. 23 at Netflix, the streamer announced during an FYSEE LA Emmy event Sunday. Series creator Erin Foster, executive producer Sara Foster, executive producer/star Kristen Bell and cast members Adam Brody, Justine Lupe, Timothy Simons and Jackie Tohn broke the news live on stage while celebrating Season 1.

See the cast celebrate the news below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1Xsb...

The news comes a few weeks after the second installment of the series wrapped production, cast member Jackie Tohn shared on Instagram.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jackie Tohn (@jackietohn)

“Nobody Wants This” stars Bell, Brody, Lupe, Simons, Tohn, Stephanie Faracy, Michael Hitchcock, Tovah Feldshuh, Paul Ben-Victor, Emily Arlook, Sherry Cola and Shiloh Berman. Season 2 guest stars include Leighton Meester, Miles Fowler, Alex Karpovsky and Arian Moayed.

“Nobody Wants This” was a hit comedy series for Netflix. Season 1 spent six weeks in Netflix’s Global English Top 10 TV list and reached the Top 10 in 89 countries. The series was also viewed 57M times from its September 26th release through the end of 2024.

Executive producers include Erin Foster, Steven Levitan, Kristen Bell, Sara Foster, Danielle Stokdyk, Jeff Morton, Bruce Eric Kaplan, Jenni Konner and Nora Silver. Oly Obst is executive producer for 3arts. Kaplan and Konner serve as showrunners. The series is produced by 20th Television.

“Nobody Wants This” Season 1 is now streaming on Netflix.

The post ‘Nobody Wants This’ Season 2 Sets October Premiere Date at Netflix appeared first on TheWrap.

First ‘Black Phone 2’ Trailer Debuts, Director Scott Derrickson Talks Horror Sequel

“The Black Phone” is ringing again.

The follow-up to 2022’s surprise hit, which made over $161 million worldwide on a budget of around $14 million, arrives on October 17. And this time, the villainous Grabber (Ethan Hawke), is on the other end of the mystical phone. Watch the brand-new trailer below and read on for from co-writer/director Scott Derrickson.

Derrickson, who also helmed Apple’s big hit “The Gorge,” which was out earlier this year, said that he “didn’t feel any obligation to do a sequel,” even after “The Black Phone” became a huge hit.

“The studio was pushing for one right away and I didn’t really think very seriously about it,” Derrickson said. But then Joe Hill, the writer whose short story inspired the original, sent Derrickson an email with an idea. He said the idea, which he used half of, cracked open his approach to the sequel. (The idea, Derrickson said, was not revealed in the trailer.)

What got Derrickson really excited, he said, was combining Hill’s idea with another element.

“When I realized, well, wait a minute, if I go make another movie now, especially if it’s a bigger movie, then by the time I finish, these kids are going to be in high school,” Derrickson said. “And I can make it a high school horror film in the same way ‘The Black Phone’ was a middle school, coming-of-age film. That became very interesting to me, because it’s a very different genre in a very different tone. And it gave me a lot of excitement to be able to continue these characters during a different phase of their lives.”

Based on the trailer, “Black Phone 2” looks to combine two staples of the horror genre – the summer camp movie (a la “Friday the 13th”) and the snowy horror movie, like “The Shining” (Hill’s father is Stephen King) or “Ravenous.” Derrickson said that he grew up in Denver and went to Christian camps in the summer and the winter, in awe of the mighty power of the Rocky Mountains. “I felt like that was a setting that I was interested in putting on film, because it was something I experienced so much growing up. I spent a lot of my teenage years in the Rocky Mountains during the winter,” Derrickson said. (He said 90% of the snow is the movie is real. “There’s nothing worse than fake snow,” Derrickson said.)

It’s the combination of the weather and the location that makes “Black Phone 2” so dynamic, according to Derrickson. “The snowbound environment is not something that has been pillaged as much as the summer camp environment has,” Derrickson said.

Of course, the big reveal in the trailer is that the Grabber is now on the other end of the titular phone. In the original phone, the Grabber is a child murderer who sequesters our hero, played by Mason Thames, in a dingy basement. Thames’ Finney answers the phone and hears from the ghosts of other child victims of the killer, who help Finney escape. And death has not mellowed the Grabber at all, by the looks of it.

“I knew that if we would make an actual sequel, and not a prequel of any kind, that that was going to have the case. That was an idea that I had early on. I thought, Well, it would be fun if I ever did this to have Ethan be a ghost. I thought that would be scary and menacing and we could have a lot of fun with that,” Derrickson said. As for Hawke, when Derrickson sent him the script, the actor sent him a note saying that he was nervous because he’d never done a sequel before. When Derrickson brought up the “Before …” movies that he’d made with Richard Linklater, Hawke said that those didn’t count since he had co-written them too. “When he read it, he texted me right away his incredible excitement for it and enthusiasm for it. And I think that he felt that there was a reason to make it, and that it, while being a very different kind of story, maintained some of the point of view of the first movie, which he really liked,” Derrickson said.

But would Derrickson push his luck and make a third “Black Phone” entry? He referred to a discussion that Quentin Tarantino and Bill Maher recently had about how few perfect trilogies there are. (They discussed “Toy Story” and Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name trilogy. This was the same discussion where Tarantino said he’d never watch “Toy Story 4.”)

“It really didn’t hit me until I watched that interview how few great trilogies there are. And in order to be a great trilogy, you’ve got to make a second film that tops the first and a third film that tops the second. And there have been a lot of sequels, in my opinion, that have topped the original movie. People talk about how that never happens. Well, it’s happened a lot,” Derrickson said. “There been a lot of a lot of sequels that are better films than the original, but the third film very rarely tops a great sequel. You really have got to have your game on if you dare to do something like that.”

All that said, Derrickson revealed that he does have an idea for the third film. Not that he’s ready to tell us what it is. “Not in a million years would I tell anybody,” Derrickson said.

Originally, “Black Phone 2” was going to debut this summer, but it got pushed to closer to Halloween. “I think that summer horror is a very distinctive thing, as opposed to fall and winter horror audiences. I think audiences have a certain expectation of feeling in the kinds of films that they go to see,” Derrickson said. “And summer movies are big fun movies for a reason. It’s not just because everybody’s out of school and there’s bigger audiences. The summertime just invites big pop entertainment. And summer horror that’s successful tends to be really funhouse horror.” (Summer horror movies include “The Conjuring,” “Midsommar,” “Jaws” and “The Frighteners,” among others.)

“Black Phone 2,” Derrickson said, “felt more like what people want at Halloween.” Derrickson conferred with Blumhouse head Jason Blum about the schedule. At the time “M3GAN 2.0” was scheduled for October and “Black Phone 2” was meant for June, around the same time the original opened in 2022. “I said, ‘I think we should switch, these dates. I think these are a better date for each film if we switch them.’ And he agreed, and we did it.” While it made more sense, overall, Derrickson said there was an ulterior motive too. “I’m not going to say that having more time to finish my film was also a motive,” he said.

“Black Phone 2” arrives on October 17. Get ready to see a lot of people in that freaky Grabber mask this Halloween.

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