Steve Pond's Blog, page 146

Kevin Spacey Compares His Plight to Hollywood Blacklist in Fiery Defense in Cannes: History ‘Often Repeats Itself’

Kevin Spacey compared his own career collapse to victims of the Hollywood blacklist of the mid-20th Century on Tuesday as he accepted an award at the Cannes Film Festival, where the Better World Fund Gala honored the two-time Oscar winner the Award for Excellence in Film and Television.

“I’d like to congratulate [Better World Fund founder Manuel Collas de La Roche] for the decision to invite me here tonight to accept this award,” the “House of Cards” actor said. “Who would have ever thought that honoring someone who has been exonerated in every court room he’s ever walked into would be thought of as a brave idea. But here we are.”

The Better World Fund is an organization that says it has “brought together celebrities, artists and leaders from all around the world, fueled by the desire to positively influence the future of our society.” It is unrelated to the festival.

Spacey was accused of multiple instances of sexual misconduct in recent years, but was found not liable in a 2022 New York civil lawsuit and acquitted of criminal charges in 2023 in London. He has yet to land a major studio role since, but is working again in independent and international films.

In his remarks, Spacey compared himself to Dalton Trumbo, who was blacklisted in the 1947-1960 Communist scare.

“It was a long, long time ago, but we have to think about the pushback that [Kirk Douglas] received after he made the brave decision to stand up for fellow colleague, two-time Oscar winning screenwriter Dalton Trumbo … He couldn’t find work in Hollywood for 13 years.”

Spacey noted that Douglas stuck his neck out for Trumbo in 1960, despite threats that his career would be ruined.

“[Douglas] said this: ‘It’s easier for us actors to play the heroes on screen,” Spacey continued. “We get to fight the bad guys and stand up for justice. But in real life, the choices are not always so clear. There are times when one has to stand up for principal. I’ve learned a lot from history — it often repeats itself. The Blacklist was a terrible time in our history so that it never happens again.”

Hundreds of Hollywood professionals had their careers trashed over accusations of Communist leanings – many of them false.

“Today we find ourselves once again at the intersection of uncertainty and fear in the film business and beyond,” Spacey said, naming Tim Doyle, the “Last Man Standing” producer punished by the WGAW for a lynching image he posted during the 2023 writers’ strike.

“Because the Writers Guild decided to send out a censure of him to all 17,000 guild members, predictably, Tim hasn’t been able to get work since,” Spacey said. “No studio will touch him because of a joke he posted. It took a friend of Tim’s, a comedy writer by the name of Rob Ulin to try to get the Writers Guild to reverse their censure.”

Spacey said history repeats itself – “but only if we allow it to.”

“Two weeks ago, the Writers Guild in a vote with all their members reversed their censure of Tim and at the same time Manuel invited me here to accept this award!”

Asked by a reporter on the red carpet whether this was the beginning of a comeback, Spacey responded: “Well, I’m glad to be working — I’ll tell you that!”

The post Kevin Spacey Compares His Plight to Hollywood Blacklist in Fiery Defense in Cannes: History ‘Often Repeats Itself’ appeared first on TheWrap.

Live Nation Names Trump’s Kennedy Center Head Richard Grenell to Its Board

Live Nation on Tuesday elected Richard Grenell, President Trump’s recently-named head of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, to its board of directors.

The appointment of Grenell, a longtime confidant of Trump who previously served as ambassador to Germany from 2017-2020, comes as Live Nation fights a U.S. Department of Justice antitrust lawsuit. Filed in May, 2024, the suit alleges Live Nation holds a monopoly on the events sector, and if it succeeds the company would likely be forced to sell its subsidiary Ticketmaster.

The lawsuit came in response to years of complaints from consumers about high fees, poor customer service and anticompetitive practices that, according to DoJ, include retaliating against stadiums and arenas that opted to use other ticketing companies.

“We are pleased to welcome Ric to our Board,” Randall Mays, Chairman of the Board of Live Nation Entertainment, said in a statement. “His background will bring a valuable perspective as Live Nation continues to contribute to a growing live music industry around the globe.” 

Prior his ambassadorial stint, Grenell also served as the acting director of national intelligence for a few months during the first Trump Administration.

More recently, Grenell was named the interim President of the Kennedy Center in February — a move that, coupled with several other changes made by President Trump at the Center, led to anger from some members of the arts world; others responded with apathy.

He will join a board that includes Klutch Sports CEO Rich Paul, record mogul Jimmy Iovine, and Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei among its members.

The $34 billion live entertainment company has seen its stock price increase more than 13% since the start of the year.

The post Live Nation Names Trump’s Kennedy Center Head Richard Grenell to Its Board appeared first on TheWrap.

‘The Daily Show’ Host Jordan Klepper Dissects the Dangerous and Hopeful Sides of Young MAGA for ‘Fingers the Pulse’

Ever since the 2024 election showed a wave of young voters supporting Donald Trump, Jordan Klepper and “The Daily Show” have been interested in exploring the reasons behind that shift. The Comedy Central senior correspondent and occasional host knew the topic would be perfect for a deep dive. But what he didn’t expect was how hollow this new wave of ideology would feel.

“There is more movement and excitement about the MAGA movement, but there’s not an ideological yearning for it,” Klepper told TheWrap.

The topic lies at the center of Klepper’s latest “Fingers the Pulse” segment. Though it’s part of a satirical comedy show, Klepper views these segments as a kind of anthropological experiment where his own preconceived notions are tested by reality. Over the course of the roughly half-hour special, “MAGA: The Next Generation” travels everywhere from the “Gulf of America” during spring break and a UFC fight to the campus of Texas A&M, all in the pursuit of answering one question: Why did so many Gen Z people — specifically Gen Z men — vote for Donald Trump?

“For some people, they were into some of the trappings of MAGA culture and what the ideology behind that is. But more often than not, MAGA felt empty. It felt in some ways cool,” Klepper explained.

That emptiness Klepper describes can be seen in the special itself. Though most of Klepper’s interviews start with his college-aged subjects enthusiastically praising Trump and rightwing influencers, the more the “Daily Show” host presses them on their values, the more they falter. A telling example comes during Klepper’s interview with the Tampa Bay Young Republicans, the group that made headlines for inviting charged human trafficker Andrew Tate to their campus. When Klepper pressed the group on whether they support sex trafficking, all of the young men backpedal, trying to distance themselves from Tate.

“They didn’t agree with what [Tate] had been accused of, yet they were playing this adult version of MAGA with all its cruelty and attention-getting. They are younger versions of this, playing the cruel blueprint of the elderly, and they’re struggling with it,” Klepper said.

“There’s a cruelty to the MAGA movement, to the things that Donald Trump does — a lack of empathy for people in need, at times a loss of humanity. It’s what we see happening with deportations, what we see happening with cutting cancer research. I think cruelty is not just a byproduct of the MAGA movement. In some ways, it is a defining feature and something that attracts people to it,” he explained. “I expected to see that reflected in the younger MAGA movement, and I rarely saw when I was out there. That gives me hope. I don’t think people are drawn, at least that at that age, to the cruelty that is inherent in it.”

Klepper’s on-the-ground experience also aligned with what the research shows. Though there is a so-called “Trump bump” among all of Gen Z, Gen Z men are more likely to align themselves with the sitting president than Gen Z women.

“We’ve heard about this vibe shift, this move towards the right for the youth, but you can’t quite lump the male experience in with the female experience. We saw that every step of the way,” Klepper said. Whereas young men were typically the ones “The Daily Show” found enthusiastically sporting Gulf of America swag, the female Trump supporters Klepper spoke to often cited religious values for their political alignment.

“When they talked about what they liked about the MAGA movement, they would point to Charlie Kirk specifically and how he talks about traditional values and bringing religion back to American culture,” Klepper said. “As with all of these specials, we’re zooming in on a few different spaces, and we can’t speak for the entirety of the experience. But from what we came away with, the manosphere and the broness is, in and of itself, a different experience than the entire youth experience.”

So why are the kids going MAGA? Old school rebellion may be an answer to that question as is the sense of community these rightwing influencers offer. It’s in that alluring kinship that this ideological shift takes on a more nefarious tone. Part of the special zooms in on a Turning Point USA event at Texas A&M. Just as credit card companies and nebulous startups used to shell out free hats in exchange for personal information from college students, now that role has been filled by a conservative political organization peddling the influencer of the week. In the case of “MAGA: The Next Generation,” that influencer was Charlie Kirk.

“So many people [at this event] were looking for somebody to articulate the world to them, and they were surprisingly open about it,” Klepper said. “One guy literally says, ‘I’m bad with words. I want somebody who can articulate those words so that I can memorize those words and have a point of view.’ To me, that was very telling.”

Klepper noted that many of the conservative college students he spoke to were “very critical” of what they were being taught in the classroom. Yet at the same time that skepticism and paranoia did not translate to the adult influencers who showed up on their campus to beg for their attention.

“What the special explores is the manipulation of the adults on the younger generation. That is what seems most dangerous. The bad guy in our special is not the naiveté of the youth. It is the predators who are older who are trying to manipulate that naiveté and that desire to find identity for their own means,” Klepper said.

As dark as political influencers courting young men through swag may seem, diving into this world did leave Klepper hopeful that conversations and “real information” will change these voters’ identities as they mature.

“I don’t think the MAGA movement in its current form truly fits them,” Klepper said. “I wouldn’t want to be 19 years old right now, navigating social media and platforms that are attacking your eyeballs and trying to manipulate what you think and what you buy. It’s overwhelming for me, a 46-year-old man who has some experience with it and has formed an identity and a life through living it. Nineteen-year-old me would be lost at sea. So I feel for the youth, but I also feel a little bit of hope.”

The post ‘The Daily Show’ Host Jordan Klepper Dissects the Dangerous and Hopeful Sides of Young MAGA for ‘Fingers the Pulse’ appeared first on TheWrap.

‘A Private Life’ Review: Jodie Foster Goes French in Wry Murder Mystery Thriller

Walking out of Tuesday’s Cannes premiere, a local remarked how delightfully New York-y “A Private Life” felt. At first, the comment struck me as odd – Gallic spirit so suffuses this Paris-set cerebral thriller that even star Jodie Foster spends most of the film drinking wine, puffing on cigs, and speaking in la langue de Molière. But I could also see what my colleague meant, given director Rebecca Zlotowski’s choice to plays her murder mystery as a wry and Woody Allen-esque riff on neuroses.

Flexing her French-language skills for the first time since Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s “A Very Long Engagement,” Jodie Foster ably slips into the role of an expat shrink, and thankfully so, because the filmmaker wrote the film for the American star. And so it should come with little surprise that playing Dr. Liliane Steiner plays to Foster’s strengths; hitting notes of head-strong fragility, she finds peak form as a psychiatrist whose own professional acumen is a bit more ambiguous.

In any case, Dr. Steiner is certainly a busy shrink, running her practice out of a Parisian flat spacious enough to let you know that she’s not wanting for work. But time is money, of course, and once longtime patient Paula Cohen-Solal (Virginie Efira, in flashbacks) fails to show for her third consecutive appointment, Liliane gets more than a little mad. That anger quickly dissipates upon the news that Paula is no more, before turning inward when the cause of death is revealed to be suicide using medication Liliane prescribed.

Or was it suicide? Circumstantial factors could point towards foul play, while Liliane keeps on turning up motives from her patient’s daughter (Luàna Bajrami, of “Portrait of a Lady on Fire”) and husband (Mathieu Amalric, of half the French films you’ve ever seen) the closer she looks. And lest you think it’s all in her head, how else can you account for the ominous calls, cabinet break-ins and escalating aura of menace that begins shading her personal and private lives? The doctor has grounds for suspicion and cause for concern, but she doesn’t exactly have the skillset of a detective: She’s trained to ask questions in order to prolong and delay any sense of resolution.

“A Private Life” almost plays as anti-thriller as Zlotowski and co-writer Anne Berest (“Happening”) detail all the ways the doctor is not up to the task. Liliane looks inward in lieu of looking for clues, turning to a hypnotherapist to unlock secrets from her past life. Turns out her estranged son was once a Nazi – a revelation that doesn’t sit too well in this Jewish French clan – while her ex-husband never showed up in her subconscious at all. Still, that does little to faze the amiable ex (a very winning Daniel Auteuil) who joins the investigation as a kind of Watson – only this one actively trying to get into the great detective’s pants.

Overlaying codes of film noir with marital farce, “A Private Life” aims for a similar tonal register to “Elle” – or, towards a lighter end, to “Manhattan Murder Mystery” – without quite achieving the same deft footing. Though certain tonal leaps don’t always land, the film still offers plenty of fun, especially when centering around two exes more interested in each other than the case at hand. The same could be said of Zlotowski herself, who revels in suspenseful set-ups and stylized set-pieces, only to deflate them with a winking diagnosis of paranoid psychobabble. Intriguingly, the film never fully commits to a stance on the talking cure: it’s too engaged and genuinely curious to play as outright satire, yet too mischievous to pass as in-depth analysis. Without making too many assumptions about the filmmaker’s private life, her work here belies an irreverence born of deep familiarity.

And if I may – speaking as someone who saw elements of their own private life reflected on screen – that familiarity is sublime. Foster is extraordinarily believable as an expat almost-but-not-quite integrated after decades abroad. She breaks up her almost-but-not-quite fluency with the odd grammatical slip or break into her native tongue, if only to get her idea across in the most efficient way. Liliane stands at a vast and barely perceptible linguistic divide from even those closest to her – a fitting predicament for shrink who can’t get out of her own head, and a testament to the observation and precision both Zlotowski and Foster bring to this film.

The post ‘A Private Life’ Review: Jodie Foster Goes French in Wry Murder Mystery Thriller appeared first on TheWrap.

Comscore Sued for Monopolizing Box Office Data

Comscore was hit with an antitrust lawsuit Monday, in which film distribution company Atlas claims the media measurement company leveraged its monopoly on box office data to “suppress competition” and ultimately forced them to shutter its CinemaCloudWorks software app.

Atlas claims in its suit that Comscore’s “unlawful conduct” has caused financial harm and reputational damage, and seeks to regain access to the company’s box office data and be rewarded an amount to be proven at time of trial.

Representatives for Comscore did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.

According to the suit, filed in Los Angeles, Atlas is a longtime partner of Comscore, and since 2014 licensed its data of real-time and historical box office performance of U.S. theatrical releases for its web-based platform CinemaCloudWorks, which provided data visualizations and other “essential theatrical releasing services to itself and other theatrical motion picture distributors.”

But in 2020, Atlas alleges that Comscore began restricting its access to its data after identifying CinemaCloudWorks as a competitive threat, all despite Atlas still being still under a valid license agreement.

In 2024, Atlas claims that Comscore more than doubled its subscription rate from $13,885 to $29,000 per year, alleging that Atlas’ data usage had “substantially exceeded” expected limits. Atlas says in its lawsuit that Comscore did not provide evidence of this despite repeated requests before abruptly pulling access to the data in April of last year in a move that the company claims was a deliberate attempt to get Atlas to cease use of CinemaCloudWorks.

Atlas is seeking a preliminary injunction requiring Comscore to reinstate its access to box office data under the prior subscription rate of $12,000 annually while the lawsuit proceeds. It also seeks unspecified monetary damages, in addition to attorneys’ fees and interest.

Disclosure: Comscore provides TheWrap with digital audience measurement data.

The post Comscore Sued for Monopolizing Box Office Data appeared first on TheWrap.

Jimmy Fallon Jokes Trump Thinks America’s Worst Enemies Include Bruce Springsteen, Movies With Subtitles and Big Bird but Not ‘My Bestie Vlad’ | Video

Jimmy Fallon had a little fun on Monday’s “The Tonight Show,” imagining the conversation between Donald Trump and his advisers before speaking to Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin on Monday.

“President Trump had a two hour phone call with Vladimir Putin. Two hours at a certain point Putin is like this meeting could have been a half email. That’s right. Trump just had a big phone call with Putin. Here’s what happened in the Oval Office when it was time to start the call,” Fallon said. This cued up a gag where a fake recording of Trump and his adviser played.

“Mr. President. It’s time for your call with America’s greatest enemy,” the bit began.

“Bruce Springsteen,” Fallon, doing his Trump impression, asked. “No,” replied the fake advisers. Here’s how the rest of the bit went:

“Rosie O’Donnell?”

“No.”

“The Prime Minister of Canada?”

“No.”

“The prime minister of Greenland?

“No.”

“The prime minister of Wakanda?”

“No.”

“The Supreme Court?”

“No.”

“Obama?”

“No.”

“Obama?”

“No.”

“Obama?”

“No.”

“Movies with subtitles?”

“No.”

People with green text messages?”

“No.”

“People who reply to emails with ‘bumping this up’?”

“No.”

“People who use the word ‘mouthfeel’?”

“Leslie Stahl at CBS?

“No.”

“David Muir at ABC?”

“No.”

“Big bird at ‘Sesame Street’?”

“No.”

“SnowChat?”

“No.”

“Whoever discontinued the Mc Hot Dog?”

“No.”

“Melania’s yoga instructor, Chet?”

“No.”

“Melania’s Pilates instructor, Sebastian?”

“No.”

“Melania? Don Jr?”

“No.”

“Eric?”

“No.”

“Tall one?”

“No.”

“Obama?”

“No.”

“That’s it, I gotta go. I have a phone call with my bestie Vlad.”

Earlier in the monologue, Fallon gushed about having Tom Cruise as his guest and spent some time talking up some of the movie star’s greatest stunts, which he then compared to mundane things everyone else does.

You can watch the whole monologue below:

The post Jimmy Fallon Jokes Trump Thinks America’s Worst Enemies Include Bruce Springsteen, Movies With Subtitles and Big Bird but Not ‘My Bestie Vlad’ | Video appeared first on TheWrap.

‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Bosses Unpack the Tragic, Noble Deaths of Those 2 Major Characters

Note: This story contains spoilers from “The Handmaid’s Tale” Season 6, Episode 9.

“The Handmaid’s Tale” showrunners Eric Tuchman and Yahlin Chang unpacked the tragic, heartbreaking but “noble” deaths of Commander Nick Blaine (Max Minghella) and Commander Joseph Lawrence (Bradley Whitford).

“It felt like the end of his story,” Tuchman told TheWrap of Nick’s decision. “This was a guy who was trying to straddle two worlds, and he ultimately had to make a decision, and we gave him that pivot. That kind of crossroads point — is he going to get on that plane or not? He hesitates at the top of that staircase, and he has an opportunity to turn around and say, ‘You know what I’m going to call Mark Tuello (Sam Jaeger) and see if I can still get me, Rose (Carey Cox) and my unborn child out.’ He could have done that, but he doesn’t do that. He still decides to go all in and get on the plane.”

Whew … Episode 9, titled “Execution,” was everything but easy to watch. Between June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss) almost being killed to our hearts being torn apart slowly watching the two ally Gilead officials fly out into their deaths.

For those who haven’t watched the episode or just need a reminder, all characters’ endings start with June and U.S. representative Mark Tuella requesting Commander Lawrence’s assistance. After June learned the remaining group of commanders were flying to Washington, D.C. following the massive Mayday-handmaid rebellion, the pair needed Lawrence — a fellow commander — to drop off a bomb on their plane and escape before anyone noticed. Lawrence reluctantly agreed and June tagged along for moral support.

As he was walking to the plane to execute the plan, things took a turn for the worse: All the commanders arrived early, which forced Lawrence to literally make a life or death decision. Again, with much hesitation and a sad, deep, mournful sigh of sorrow, Lawrence chose to board the plane, where he’d soon meet his demise.

Max Minghella in “The Handmaid’s Tale” Season 6 (Hulu)

But wait, there’s more! Just when we’d accepted Lawrence’s fate, an all-black SUV pulled up. The driver opens the rear car door to let out Nick, who is also joining the commanders on their trip. Though he too shows doubt in his decision as he enters the plane, fans learn in this moment that Nick has chosen to give Gilead his loyalty.

“It seemed like we needed that character to finally to make the choice; it was time to stop walking the tightrope,” Tuchman said. He added that the writers pitched Lawrence’s death to Whitford in early 2023.

“We had already figured out what we wanted to do with Commander Lawrence, and we went out to lunch with Bradley and told him what we were thinking. Not knowing how he was going to react,” Tuchman said. “Fortunately, he embraced the idea. I think he really sparked to it. It felt like an honest ending and a noble ending for this character.”

Bradley Whitford in “The Handmaid’s Tale.” (Disney/Steve Wilkie)

“He loved it and was relieved,” Chang said. “He was so happy because he was worried about him. He was worried about where we might take Lawrence, and he was afraid that Lawrence might turn out to be more evil. So he loved that there was a like a moment of redemption for him.”

The end of the episode closes with June Osborne looking up to the sky as the plane bursts into flames from the bomb’s explosion as tears fill up her eyes.

“The Handmaid’s Tale” series finale premieres Tuesday, May 27, on Hulu.

The post ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Bosses Unpack the Tragic, Noble Deaths of Those 2 Major Characters appeared first on TheWrap.

Colbert Jokes That Sesame Street Sponsor the Letter D Is on OnlyFans After Trump PBS Cuts | Video

Stephen Colbert spent most of his monologue on Monday’s “The Late Show,” starting with Trump’s bitter reaction to businesses being forced to raise prices due to his tariffs. This helped him transition to Trump’s bitterness about celebrities who don’t like him.

The president, Colbert said, “is also trying to intimidate another important sector of American economy: Our precious celebrities.” First Colbert talked about Trump’s out of nowhere attacks on Taylor Swift, which eventually led him to joke that Trump has fired Santa Claus and appointed Marco Rubio as “interim St. Nick.”

Then Colbert moved on to Trump’s bizarre, personal attacks on Bruce Springsteen in response to Springsteen calling him “corrupt, incompetent and treasonous” at a concert in England last week. This include Trump ranting, “[Springsteen’s] skin is all atrophied. Ought to keep his mouth shut until he gets back into the country. That’s just standard fare. Then we’ll all see how it goes for him.”

“Pretty bold to say someone else’s skin is atrophied when your own complexion can best be described as tandoori catcher’s mitt,” Colbert joked.

Then Colbert noted Trump’s (baseless) accusation that Beyonce was paid millions to endorse Kamala Harris, which led him to joke, “and you know right now, some agent in Hollywood is getting this phone call, ‘why am I not on Trump’s list? Why does, why does Oprah get sent to all the good gulags. Listen, I went to Juilliard. Why can’t I get arrested in this town?”

This brought him to the topic of Sesame Street. “A few weeks back, Donald Trump signed an executive order canceling all government funding for PBS, and as a result, Sesame Street laid off about 20% of its staff this year, yeah. On top of that, they lost some of their biggest sponsors to other platforms. The letter D is now doing targeted ads on OnlyFans,” he joked.

There’s a lot more, and you can watch the whole monologue below:

The post Colbert Jokes That Sesame Street Sponsor the Letter D Is on OnlyFans After Trump PBS Cuts | Video appeared first on TheWrap.

Benito Skinner Says ‘Overcompensating’ Finale Cliffhanger Was Loosely Based on His Own Life

Benito Skinner’s sexy college comedy “Overcompensating” ends in a heartbreaking cliffhanger – the creator, writer, executive producer and star said he always knew the first season’s ending from his first conversations with producing partner Scott King. 

“Overcompensating,” Skinner’s first foray into long-form comedy, is semi-autobiographical. He stars as a closeted high-school football star Benny from Idaho, who must confront his sexuality in a way he never had to before when he goes off to college. 

After a season of failed attempts, missteps with friends and countless discoveries, Benny finds himself betrayed by the person he trusts most. After a heart-to-heart with his first college kiss turned best friend Carmen (Wally Baram), he finds her kissing his campus crush Miles (Rish Shah). Moments later Carmen accidentally outs him at the party, while both his sister and his crush are within earshot. 

Skinner said that this sequence of unfortunate events was loosely based on his own college experience and said he and King crafted the finale and worked their way backwards from there.  

“We had that last moment, and then we came up with the last back and forth between Benny and Carmen, and it was like all right, let’s find the in between,” Skinner told TheWrap. 

The creator and star said that one of the hardest parts of being in the writers’ room was forcing characters he fell in love with to continue to make mistakes. 

“It was hard at times, because in the room – I’m excited that people felt this way – but we would start to really love some of the characters, but then we would have to have them do awful things because we’re in college,” Skinner said. “They’re drunk, they’re insecure, they want to be loved.”

Whether it is Adam DiMarco’s Peter putting his secret society on blast to the entire school or Carmen kissing her best friend’s crush or Benny ditching Carmen for Flesh & Gold, each one of the leading characters mess up their closest relationships by obsessing over themselves and their own self image.

“College is a bit selfish, and it’s self preservation,” he said. “They’re not just going to stop overcompensating. I think people do their whole lives.”

Season 1 ended on a cliffhanger, cutting just seconds after Carmen spills Benny’s big secret, but Skinner says he has big plans for Season 2 – he just needs the greenlight. 

“I can’t believe this was my first experience of it because I’m addicted now, and we have to make Season 2,” Skinner told TheWrap. “Can you text Amazon right now?” 

Skinner’s supporting cast members agree. Baram and Mary Beth Barone, who plays Benny’s sister Grace, both worked in the writers’ room for the Amazon series before signing on as series regulars. The two women told TheWrap that Season 2, if renewed, will allow the characters to find new ways to overcompensate. 

“If Benny is living as a gay man in season two, what does the overcompensation look like for that person? And if Grace is more into the counterculture, what does that look like for her to be overcompensating? Is she going to get a septum piercing? Is she gonna dye her hair black?” Barone told TheWrap. “And then I think we might see them slip back into their old ways.”

DiMarco, who plays Grace’s toxic boyfriend Peter and leader of Flesh & Gold, told TheWrap that “Overcompensating” needs a Season 2 because he knows what is up Skinner’s sleeve. 

“It’s a tough question to answer because I know exactly what Benny has planned if there is a Season 2 for most of the characters,” “The White Lotus” star told TheWrap. “Everything Benny has planned is just insane and hilarious, and you just wouldn’t see it coming.”

For Peter, DiMarco said he will grow and change in an “unhinged way.” Baram hopes that Benny and Carmen can mend their relationship after her big slip in the finale episode. 

“Her overcompensating with intimacy is an example of, ultimately, artifice, because she wants to feel loved so very badly,” she told TheWrap. “I really hope for Benny and Carmen’s relationship that they’re able to mend that because I think it’s really the heart and soul of the show.”

All eight episodes of “Overcompensating” are available to stream on Prime Video.

The post Benito Skinner Says ‘Overcompensating’ Finale Cliffhanger Was Loosely Based on His Own Life appeared first on TheWrap.

‘Toy Story 5’ Casts Conan O’Brien

Conan O’Brien will lend his voice to Smarty Pants in Disney and Pixar’s “Toy Story 5,” TheWrap has learned.

Disney made the announcement on Monday at the Licensing Expo during the Consumer Products section of the studio’s presentation. This time around, it’s toy meets tech when Buzz, Woody, Jessie and the rest of the gang’s jobs are challenged after being introduced to what kids are obsessed with today—electronics!

“You’ve got a friend in …Conan,” O’Brien said on social media.

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Directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Andrew Stanton, co-directed by McKenna Harris and produced by Jessica Choi, “Toy Story 5″ opens only in theaters on June 19, 2026.

Stanton is one of the founding fathers of Pixar, having served as writer or co-writer on all five “Toy Story” films. “Toy Story 5” will be his fifth Pixar film as a director, joining “A Bug’s Life,” “Finding Nemo,” its sequel “Finding Dory” and “WALL-E.”

Released in 2019, “Toy Story 4” earned $1.07 billion world wide at the box office. If the fans loved it the first three times, why not a fourth? In “Toy Story 4,” Woody and Buzz branched out onto a road trip with Bonnie and new toy Forky.

While out on the journey, they reunited with Woody’s old flame Bo Peep. However, the two learned that what they wanted out of life as toys changed drastically over the years.

The post ‘Toy Story 5’ Casts Conan O’Brien appeared first on TheWrap.