Steve Pond's Blog, page 53

Tom Cruise Turned Down Trump’s 2025 Kennedy Center Honors Due to a ‘Scheduling Conflict’

Country icon George Strait, actor Michael Crawford, Sylvester Stallone, disco legend Gloria Gaynor and the rock band Kiss will be honored at this year’s highly unusual John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts honors. But according to one report, the biggest movie star in the world was also invited to join their ranks — but he declined.

On Wednesday the Washington Post reported that Tom Cruise was also invited to be feted by the Kennedy Center, but turned the offer down due to a “scheduling conflict.” WaPo cites “several current and former Kennedy Center employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss event plans” for this report, but notes neither Cruise nor his representatives have commented on the story.

Representatives for the actor didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from TheWrap.

But while Cruise won’t be attending the ceremony, the 5 honorees who do will experience what is likely to be the most unusual version in the 48-year history of the awards. Continuing from Trump’s takeover — and subsequent right wing political makeover — of the Kennedy Center earlier this year, Trump chose all of this year’s nominees and he also plans to host this year’s event.

Indeed, in his statement announcing this, he also complained about having never been so honored, saying in part, “I wanted one, I was never able to get one. It’s true, actually. I would’ve taken it if they would’ve called me. I waited, and waited, and waited.” Ok then.

“Then I said to hell with it, I’ll become chairman. And I’ll give myself an honor. Next year we’ll honor Trump, OK?” the president continued.

Trump also complained about the fact that he is hosting, claiming in his remarks that he was “begged” to do it.

With or without Cruise, this year’s honors happen Dec. 7, 2025, which incidentally also happens to be Pearl Harbor Day.

The post Tom Cruise Turned Down Trump’s 2025 Kennedy Center Honors Due to a ‘Scheduling Conflict’ appeared first on TheWrap.

UTA Vice Chairman Jay Sures Ordered to Pay $150K in Legal Fees to Pro-Palestine UCLA Grad Student

Jay Sures, vice chairman of United Talent Agency who also serves as a UCLA regent, was ordered on Thursday to pay $150,624 in legal fees to a UCLA graduate student who participated in a protest outside of Sures’ house back in February.

In early February, grad student Dylan Kupsh and around 50 other UCLA students demonstrated outside of Sures’ house in Brentwood where, among other things, one of the protesters left a bloody handprint on his garage door and others held up a sign that said “Jonathan Sures you will pay, until you see your final day.”

Sures, who is Jewish, told TheWrap in February the bloody handprint in particular was “an anti-Semitic act. If I wasn’t Jewish, they wouldn’t do this.”

The students were protesting what they said was Sures’ role in protecting “UC investments in genocide and weapons manufacturing.” The protest was organized by Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA and Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA. Both student groups were suspended 2 weeks after the demonstration.

Meanwhile, Sures identified Kupsh as one of the main organizers of the protest and filed a restraining order against him. Kupsh’s attorneys countered with an Anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) against Sures, arguing that Sures provided no evidence Kupsh led the protests and that Sures was attempting to qush his first amendment rights. A judge ruled in favor of Kupsh in May, which made Sures liable for the student’s legal fees.

Sures’ attorney didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from TheWrap. In a statement to The Daily Bruin, Kupsh said in part, “I think this hearing really represents the first occasion where real accountability is happening. Hopefully these legal fees represent something more than just one case alone.”

Sures was appointed to the UCLA Board of Regents by former Gov. Jerry Brown in 2019. He previously served as an assistant visiting professor at the UCLA School of Theatre, Film, and Television in 2005 and 2006.

The post UTA Vice Chairman Jay Sures Ordered to Pay $150K in Legal Fees to Pro-Palestine UCLA Grad Student appeared first on TheWrap.

Making Sense of That Bad ‘And Just Like That’ Ending and an Eroded ‘Sex and the City’ Legacy | Commentary

Note: This story contains spoilers from “And Just Like That” Season 3, Episode 12.

And just like that … we don’t have “And Just Like That” to kick around any longer. The HBO Max reboot we all loved to hate but couldn’t stop watching ended Thursday with its Season 3 finale, “Party of One,” written by showrunner Michael Patrick King and Susan Fales-Hill, a half hour of television that feels very hard to believe was conceived as the final word on its legacy-brand mothership “Sex and the City,” though the announcement of this chapter’s end implied that all parties involved were on board with concluding the story here.

While it had some nice final moments that almost lived up to the franchise’s significance, the rest was a hodgepodge of filler — a wayward group of annoying Gen Z-ers, way too much Victor Garber (something I don’t say lightly) and way too many bathroom hijinks. It’s hard to take most of this as a serious summation of 27 years of these once truly significant pioneers of single womanhood on television.

In its better moments, the episode presented itself as a meditation on what it means to go through your later decades alone or in a committed relationship, which honestly sounds like a great uniting theme for a series that I would like to watch sometime. Instead, “And Just Like That” consistently backed away every time it got vulnerable or interesting, like a commitment-phobic lover. I had been encouraged in earlier episodes by the introduction of heavier themes like Harry (Evan Handler) being diagnosed with prostate cancer and Lisa (Nicole Ari Parker) eyeing an affair, but somehow Harry’s cancer was ultimately played for laughs and Lisa’s possible infidelity was wrapped up without consequence in one hasty scene.

In this final episode, the women attend a bridal fashion show together under a very flimsy pretense — one of the subjects of Lisa’s documentary is the designer, or something? — and they have an all-too-brief discussion on the merits of marriage. TLDR: Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Lisa, the married ones, have their complaints but would do it all over again, Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) felt “chosen” when she married Big and Seema (Sarita Choudhury) thought she wanted to get married, but maybe she doesn’t because her current beau told her he didn’t believe in marriage while peeing in front of her that morning(!?). Carrie actually speaks Big’s name aloud here and admits that he died, which is more than we’ve gotten in previous episodes, so there’s that.

But the rest of the episode, until the final moments, sells these characters far short of their due. Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) hosts a Thanksgiving that almost everyone bails on, except for Carrie, Miranda’s son Brady (Niall Cunningham), Brady’s baby mama and her random Gen Z friends, and Mark Kasabian (Garber), a gallery owner whom Charlotte seems to be setting Carrie up with. Mark finally leaves after a literally execrable scene in which Miranda’s toilet overflows and we actually see poop on screen. Choose your favorite metaphor here for how this series is ending its run. To emphasize: Literally one of the final scenes of Miranda Hobbes on screen is her cleaning up human waste. Meanwhile, Charlotte and Harry celebrate the holiday with their own family and are thrilled when he gets his first post-cancer boner as she’s cooking Thanksgiving dinner, declaring himself, I’m sorry to say, “crisp and ready to baste.”

It’s hard to overstate the insult this all feels like to characters we have loved and followed for decades.

Kristin Davis and Nicole Ari Parker in “And Just Like That.” (HBO Max)

This series finale purports to have a thesis, that all along it was about how it’s fine to grow old without a mate, as long as you have your friends beside you. The final moments were some of the best of the entire series, showing Carrie blasting Barry White’s “You’re the First, the Last, My Everything” in her beautiful house, alone, eating pumpkin pie while standing in the kitchen, still in her striking red tulle skirt that feels like an homage to the tutu in the original’s iconic opening credits. She’s finally relishing being alone, indulging in what the original series memorably dubbed “secret single behavior,” stuff you can do only when by yourself at home. Then she types a new ending to her book: “The woman realized she was not alone, she was on her own.” I have many complaints about this book she’s writing, but this was a nice denouement.

To be honest, I like this ending better than the original’s over-the-top romantic antics between the toxic Big and Carrie. I always thought she should have ended up unattached and back in New York with her friends.

But in its three seasons, “And Just Like That” has not shown much interest in Carrie counting on her friends instead of a man, as she went from grieving one man (the deceased Big) to clinging to another (her longtime ex Aidan), while Seema has, if she had any discernible plot, continued to pursue a happily-ever-after. Meanwhile, the women have been so busy with their work and romantic or family lives that they have barely ever been together. Unlike the original series, “And Just Like That” did not center the women’s friendships, and suffered for it. Perhaps it wouldn’t be realistic for particularly the characters with husbands and kids still at home to be flitting off to brunch with friends, but this show was hardly concerned with realism in any other way. And, in fact, Carrie seemed to hate Miranda whenever they were together this season, a tension that remained unacknowledged and unresolved. I was particularly disappointed that the final half hour failed to unite at least the original three women — Carrie, Charlotte and Miranda — for a nice Thanksgiving moment together.

So what, if anything, was “And Just Like That” about? Carrie grieved Big, and dragged out a once-again-revived relationship with Aidan that mainly proved that he was awful. Miranda expanded her sexuality at midlife, which is interesting. But her relationship with the unfunny nonbinary comedian Che Diaz (Sara Ramirez) destroyed the confident and grounded Miranda we all loved from the original series, and the character never fully recovered. Nothing of consequence really happened to Charlotte in these three seasons, aside from a glancing struggle with her child coming out as nonbinary and her husband having mostly humorous cancer. And the women of color added to the cast — Seema, Lisa and the forgotten Dr. Nya Wallace (Karen Pittman) from the first two seasons — never quite came into their own, a waste of the actresses playing them.

Having written an entire book about “Sex and the City,” and having spent two decades defending it as a truly great and significant show, it has been painful for me to watch the reboot erode its legacy. I know many of my fellow fans have felt the same, as this series became an outlet for our rage week after week. But this is the chance we take when we keep tapping the well of nostalgia with works that have nothing new to say, no animating principle that makes them vital in the moment.

“And Just Like That” could have redefined how we see women over 50 the way that “Sex and the City” redefined singlehood during its original run, but it too often made the characters pathetic or turned them into jokes. It also often, as many fan rants have pointed out, simply didn’t make sense and lacked attention to detail. During this season in particular, this relationship began to feel truly toxic.

Sarah Jessica Parker in “And Just Like That.” (HBO Max)

I had the strangest feeling watching those delightful final moments of Carrie looking truly joyful alone in her house. I could see the Carrie spark back in Sarah Jessica Parker’s performance after she spent so much of these three seasons mourning Big or moping about Aidan, and I thought, This could be the beginning of a great show.

That’s what this show does to me, and to so many of us. We keep wanting to watch, hoping for something better that never manifests. I will miss it, this perpetual hope, and the bonds I could instantly form with fellow fans by complaining about “And Just Like That.” But it is really, really, really time to say goodbye.

The post Making Sense of That Bad ‘And Just Like That’ Ending and an Eroded ‘Sex and the City’ Legacy | Commentary appeared first on TheWrap.

‘And Just Like That’ Finale: Michael Patrick King on Carrie’s Bold Closing Statement and Why It Was Time to Walk Away

Note: This story contains spoilers from “And Just Like That” Season 3, Episode 12.

“And Just Like That…” Carrie Bradshaw’s latest saga ended exactly as showrunner Michael Patrick King intended: With a bold statement about being alone and lots of life left to live.

Episode 12, titled “Party of One,” followed as Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) grappled with the possibility of spending the rest of her life alone. It’s an existential quandary most people face in their lifetime, regardless of age, and one that carries extra weight coming from television’s signature love expert for the past 27 years. After losing one love of her life at the start of the “Sex and the City” spinoff series and letting go of another near the end of its run, Carrie spent the final moments of the series finale celebrating herself — as the people in her life enjoyed their own joyful respite from life’s unpredictable shenanigans (and one very graphic overflowed toilet sequence).

The series ended with Carrie rewriting the end of the novel she’d been working on all season, her first foray into fiction: “The woman realized she was not alone, she was on her own.”

“That’s a really interesting response to the end of ‘Sex and the City,’ where she says the most significant relationship you have is the one you have with yourself, but she’s holding a phone and Mr. Big is calling to join her,” King told TheWrap of crafting the final moments of “And Just Like That.” “I always thought, the evolution of that is to realize, ‘I’m OK if maybe no one else is coming.’”

A good place to leave them

Beyond Carrie’s powerful statement on solitude, the finale followed as the “And Just Like That” ensemble went from initial plans to celebrate Thanksgiving at Miranda’s (Cynthia Nixon) to splintering off to individual celebrations with their families.

King said this was also by design, so as to not repeat himself from the large gathering in the Season 2 finale honoring Carrie moving out of her beloved New York apartment. But the show still emphasized Carrie as the group’s “connective tissue” when she delivered Thanksgiving pies to each of their homes during the episode, and viewers watched them enjoy the desserts as Carrie celebrated herself in her apartment as she listened to Barry White’s “You’re the First, the Last, My Everything” in the show’s final moments.

Harry and Charlotte took advantage of his first erection since finishing cancer treatment before having dinner with their daughters. Miranda recovered from a chaotic dinner with her son Brady (Niall Cunningham) and his baby mama-to-be that ended with her cleaning up overflowed poop in her bathroom — certain that she’d build a relationship with her future grandchild and continue her relationship with new girlfriend Joy (Dolly Wells). LTW (Nicole Ari Parker) and her husband Herbert (Chris Jackson) re-committed to each other after flirting with cheating and a professional setback. And Seema (Sarita Choudhury) realized she was happy giving up gluten and the idea of a traditional marriage to embrace her newfound love Adam (Logan Marshall-Green), Carrie’s fancy gardener.

Even Anthony (Mario Cantone) and Giuseppe (Sebastiano Pigazzi) settle the uncertainty in their recent engagement, choosing to laugh through whatever comes their way next together.

Cynthia Nixon in “And Just Like That.” (HBO Max)

“Everyone’s in a good place to leave them so that the audience can continue their fan fiction of what they want to have happen next,” King said.

He even left the door open to anything for Carrie’s future, as King noted her conversation with Adam before the Thanksgiving festivities, in which he refused to tell her what he had planted in her renovated garden so she’d be surprised in the spring.

“That’s us saying you’ll always be surprised in life. Maybe it’s a man, maybe it’s a crocus,” King said. “But also in that scene, Carrie says, ‘Let’s go back to what the garden was, something wild. That’s more me.’ That’s for everyone who wants Carrie to always be the wild one and be the one outside the lines.”

Walking away

Reiterating his Aug. 1 announcement that “And Just Like That” would end with Season 3, King said he made the call during the writing process. He then went to Parker, who is also an executive producer on the series, and told her he had gone “as far as this can go before it becomes something else.”

Together, he said, King and Parker went to HBO Max leadership with their decision to end the series, which led to an additional two-episode order to allow for them to craft a proper conclusion. King commended the platform for valuing creative decision-making in backing their decision, despite the series still driving cultural conversation and ratings (although, HBO Max has not shared viewership data for Season 3).

“It’s an odd decision to make, but I feel like it’s the right decision for the world that we created,” King said.

Michael Patrick King and Sarah Jessica Parker on the set of “And Just Like That.” (HBO Max)The right time to share

Viewers and critics alike were thrown when the announcement dropped just two weeks before the finale airing, leading to speculation that HBO Max opted to cancel the expensive series after it had devolved from a comforting nostalgia thinkpiece machine into a divisive show hemorrhaging viewers.

But King maintains the rollout of the news was by design, meant to keep viewers engaged until the right time came to feel the show’s loss. The way he sees it, putting “final season” on the episodes from the start meant audiences would stop “worrying about” what would happen next — especially as it related to Carrie and Aidan (John Corbett), her longtime lover who returned to her life after the death of her husband Mr. Big (Chris Noth).

“One thing I wanted to do with Carrie and Aidan, that we succeeded at, was getting people involved,” King said. “They were quite anxious about it all and concerned. They were mad at Carrie and then they were happy when she let him go.”

He added that the storyline of Charlotte’s (Kristin Davis) husband Harry (Evan Handler) being diagnosed with prostate cancer would have also taken a more serious meaning should fans have been aware of it being the final season — when it was meant as an exploration of the beloved characters’ relationship when sex isn’t always in the picture.

“The show has always been very alive in front of the camera. It’s been alive in the press, so I didn’t want to kill it,” he added. “Then after that beautiful episode with Duncan [Episode 10], that was a really good place to announce. Now you can feel things. You have two episodes to feel everything you want to feel.”

When asked if fans’ love-hate relationship with the show contributed to the decision to end it here, King reframed it by calling it a “love-party piñata relationship.”

“It’s just fun to hit this little pink unicorn with a stick at a party. It’s just a press piñata,” he said. “I don’t think that’s hate as much as it is chatter.”

“And Just Like That” Seasons 1-3 are now streaming on HBO Max.

The post ‘And Just Like That’ Finale: Michael Patrick King on Carrie’s Bold Closing Statement and Why It Was Time to Walk Away appeared first on TheWrap.

Denzel Washington, Spike Lee Couldn’t Have Made ‘Highest 2 Lowest’ Without Apple Streaming Deal: ‘Industry Has Changed’

Spike Lee and Denzel Washington’s “Highest 2 Lowest” hits theaters on Aug. 15 and in a joint interview with Vanity Fair published Thursday, the pair discussed the film’s limited theatrical release and how Apple played a big part in getting the film made.

The film will hit the streamer in September. While discussing the shifting landscape of film distribution they acknowledged how limited theatrical rollout is now the name of the game in the industry.

“That’s the nature of the business now—they also gave us a lot of money to make the film,” Washington said of Apple’s involvement. “The industry has changed. Time has changed. So we’ve got to change with the times.”

“This film would not have been made without Apple,” Lee said. “That’s just the truth.”

Though Washington and Lee are regarded as an iconic actor/director pairing, it’s been a long time since they last partnered in this way. Their first collaboration was “Mo’ Better Blues,” released in 1990, followed by “Malcolm X” (for which Washington scored a Best Actor nomination) and “He Got Game” later that decade. Their most recent team-up was “Inside Man,” which came in 2006 — nearly two decades prior to “Highest 2 Lowest.”

Now, they’re playing with house money at A24, with the film (produced in part by Apple Studios) scheduled to land on Apple TV+ on Sept 5.

It’s a move that gave the pair the freedom to make the film, which adapts Akira Kurosawa’s “High and Low” in the modern day, how they saw fit. It also meant “Highest 2 Lowest” would have a truncated theatrical window of three weeks — with major chains like AMC and Cinemark not screening the film at all.

“We’d done this four times already, and the last time was a great box office success,” Lee said. “Not to say that all success is built upon box office, but—”

“But it is called show business,” Washington added. “No business, no show. No business, no next show.”

“That’s true,” Lee said. “We understand the ramifications of this business.”

When the pair made “Inside Man,” they brought in more than $180 million at the box office. Washington’s last theatrical film, “Gladiator 2,” made roughly $462 million with a budget in the hundreds of millions. A more modest effort, Lee’s last solo theatrical effort, “BlacKkKlansman” (starring Denzel’s son, John David Washington) made over $90 million on an approximate budget of $15 million.

“Highest 2 Lowest’s” theatrical strategy all but guarantees these numbers will be impossible for Lee and Washington’s latest film. Still, the pair urged those who are able to go out and see the film before they stream it in September.

“I’ll keep saying August 15,” Washington said.

“No matter how big that TV on the wall in your home is, see it in theaters first,” Lee said.

The post Denzel Washington, Spike Lee Couldn’t Have Made ‘Highest 2 Lowest’ Without Apple Streaming Deal: ‘Industry Has Changed’ appeared first on TheWrap.

‘Mamma Mia!’ Broadway Review: The Bride Has Seen Better Days

Walking into the Winter Garden Theatre this week to see the new revival of “Mamma Mia!,” I suddenly found myself back on Oct. 18, 2001. I was there at the Winter Garden then not as a critic but a theater reporter who had already written a lot about 9/11 and its devastating effect on the theater in New York City. Box office figures had plummeted and a few shows had closed. “Urinetown,” which opened that September, had to re-stage a scene where a character fell from the top of a tall building, and in early October, Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren opened in August Strindberg’s “Dance of Death,” a title that sent people rushing away from the box office. The money-losing revival clocked in just over 100 performances.

“Mamma Mia!” was another story, having been a big hit in London. Here was a feel-good show that recycled a bunch of songs by ABBA’s Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, and asked nothing more of us than to be entertained and forget all our troubles, which continued to feel downright apocalyptic. The Broadway community needed a hit and even the critic at the New York Times had to comply by repeating his female date’s positive take on the show. What Ben Brantley really thought of “Mamma Mia!,” no one ever knew from that carefully crafted money review.

The “Mamma Mia!” that opened Thursday at the Winter Garden is a touring production, and at intermission I was not thinking of the recently destroyed World Trade Center. I went much further back, to the 1970s when vanity productions like “Angel,” “Doctor Jazz,” “Got tu Go Disco” and “Platinum” took up their brief residences on the Rialto among now-classic shows by Sondheim, Kander & Ebb and Lloyd Webber. The current “Mamma Mia!” remains under the control of its original director, Phyllida Lloyd; production designer, Mark Thompson; and other creatives. Frankly, the show looks so tacky that it could be the original 2001 production with a not-very-good paint job.

“Mamma Mia!” (Joan Marcus)

The songs by Andersson and Ulvaeus have never had much to do with Catherine Johnson’s book about a bride-to-be who invites three men to her wedding, thinking that one of them may be her father. Generally, the first line of songs like “S.O.S.” and “The Winner Takes It All” have something to do with that story, and then the lyrics go off in another direction. That disconnection bothered me back in 2001. Now, I was just relieved that the actors were singing and not reciting lines from Johnson’s book, which failed to elicit more than a few isolated giggles at the preview performance I attended. Most of the big laughs come from some slapstick business, like the chorus boys wearing swim flippers.

I missed the eye candy of Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgard, the three possible inseminators from the 2008 movie. On stage, in the Brosnan role of Sam, Victor Wallace emotes enough for a dozen actors. It’s contagious. After intermission, Amy Weaver’s bride and Christine Sherrill’s mother-of-the-bride also caught his overacting bug.

As the mother’s sidekick friends, Jalynn Steele and Carly Sakolove manage to rise above the dispiriting mess around them.

“Mamma Mia!” opens Thursday and runs through Feb 1, 2026.

The post ‘Mamma Mia!’ Broadway Review: The Bride Has Seen Better Days appeared first on TheWrap.

‘Ma’ Actor Gianni Paolo Says Octavia Spencer Paid for His Publicist When He Was Still in Debt | Video

In “Ma,” Octavia Spencer’s deranged horror villain takes an iron to the stomach of Gianni Paolo’s teenaged character, Chaz. In real life, Spencer surprised the early-career actor by covering the costs for a publicist.

Paolo told the story of Spencer’s good deed on the “Boyfriend Material” podcast, relaying how he filmed the cult classic horror movie before he’d made enough money to afford a publicist. When Spencer learned about this, the on-camera villain did an off-camera good deed for her young co-star.

“This was pre ‘Ma’ coming out, and I was like, ‘I just can’t spend $5,000 a month for a publicist. I only made $6,000 on the movie, I’m in $20,000 worth of credit card debt.’ So I’m like, ‘Eh, I’m just not going to get a publicist,'” Paolo recalled. Cut to Octavia Spencer having the “Ma” cast over for dinner ahead of the premiere.

“She was talking about doing press for the movie. And this was my first real, big thing, so I didn’t know anything. And she basically was like, ‘Yeah, so you guys all, like, we’re going to do press, publicists.’ And I’m like — ‘I don’t have the money to do that.’

“That was on a Friday. On Monday, she had called her publicist, paid for it completely, and then set me up with her whole team, and then said, ‘Now you have a publicist.'”

You can watch the interview clip below.

“Ma,” directed by Tate Taylor and written by Scotty Landes for Blumhouse, follows Spencer as a woman named Sue Ann Ellington. When a group of teenagers asks Sue Ann to buy them alcohol, she begins to befriend the high schoolers, asking them to call her “Ma.” Over time, this relationship takes on a more sinister nature, revenge for an incident involving Ma and some of the teenagers’ parents in their youth.

“Ma” was a success for Blumhouse upon release, generating more than $60 million off of an approximately $5 million budget. Over time, the 2019 horror film began to develop a strong cult following, with several waves of “Ma” memes taking over social media. One such meme recently appeared in Ari Aster’s “Eddington,” a recent-history period piece set in 2020 during the pandemic.

Paolo said Spencer never asked for the money back, but he eventually reimbursed her the $10,000 after booking “Power.”

“Didn’t ask for the money back. Never,” he said. “I got great opportunities from it. When I booked ‘Power,’ I shot my first episode, got my first paycheck for ‘Power,’ and then I wired her the money back.”

“Holy s–t,” “Boyfriend Material” host Harry Jowsey said. “So she never asked for it? She just did it?”

“Never asked for it,” Paolo said.

From 2018 to 2024, Paolo appeared on the Starz crime drama “Power” and its follow-up “Power Book II: Ghost.” In the second series, he was elevated to main cast member status for the show’s four seasons. On Aug. 22, he will appear in the Sophie Turner-starring thriller film “Trust.”

Paolo expressed gratitude for Spencer’s help in securing important representation early on — though he told Jowsey that actors who are just starting out shouldn’t seek a publicist as a first priority.

“I would tell everyone, if you want to be an actor, first thing you’ve got to get is a manager, because your manager, now it’s like the lines are kind of blurred, but your manager can get you auditions, and they’ll get you an agent,” he said. “An agent is strictly, like contract and get you auditions, but, like, the more people you have on your team, the more cooks there are in the kitchen that can get you opportunities.”

The post ‘Ma’ Actor Gianni Paolo Says Octavia Spencer Paid for His Publicist When He Was Still in Debt | Video appeared first on TheWrap.

TIFF Re-Invites ‘The Road Between Us’ to Festival After Pulling Oct. 7 Documentary From Lineup

Toronto International Film Festival reinstated its invitation to screen Oct. 7 documentary “The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue” on Thursday. The film will now once again be in the lineup for the September festival.

“Over the past 24 hours, there has been much discussion about TIFF’s decision to
withdraw its invitation to ‘The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue’ for this year’s festival. Both TIFF and the filmmakers have heard the pain and frustration
expressed by the public and we want to address this together,” TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey and “The Road Between us” filmmaker Barry Avrich said in a joint statement. “We have worked together to find a resolution to satisfy important safety, legal, and programming concerns.

“We are pleased to share that ‘The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue’ will be an official TIFF selection at the festival this year, where we believe it will contribute to the vital conversations that film is meant to inspire. In this case, TIFF’s communication around its requirements did not clearly articulate the concerns and roadblocks that arose and for that, we are sorry.”

This news comes after the film, directed by Avrich, was pulled from the festival on Tuesday due to a lack of proper clearance for Hamas footage.

“The invitation for the Canadian documentary film ‘The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue’ was withdrawn by TIFF because general requirements for inclusion in the Festival, and conditions that were requested when the film was initially invited, were not met, including legal clearance of all footage,” TIFF said in a Wednesday statement to Screen Daily after the film was pulled.

In the wake of this decision, Bailey denied claims of censorship over the matter, stating that the film was removed from the festival lineup for a lack of adherence to TIFF standards rather than political reasons.

“I want to be clear: claims that the film was rejected due to censorship are unequivocally false,” Bailey wrote in a note. “I remain committed to working with the filmmaker to meet TIFF’s screening requirements to allow the film to be screened at this year’s festival. I have asked our legal team to work with the filmmaker on considering all options available.”

“The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue” will be one of nearly 300 films at the TIFF50. The festival will run from Sept. 4 to Sept. 14.

“Both TIFF and the filmmakers have always been committed to presenting diverse
perspectives and a belief in the power of storytelling to spark and encourage
dialogue and understanding. We thank our audiences and community for their
passion, honesty, and belief in the importance of film. We look forward to
announcing more details including the World Premiere date on August 20th.”

Deadline first reported this story.

The post TIFF Re-Invites ‘The Road Between Us’ to Festival After Pulling Oct. 7 Documentary From Lineup appeared first on TheWrap.

Beto O’Rourke Calls Ted Cruz ‘A Curse Upon the People of Texas,’ Suggests His Vacations Incite Natural Disasters | Video

Beto O’Rourke thinks that Ted Cruz might be a curse on all the people of Texas.

On Wednesday’s “Hasan Minhaj Doesn’t Know” podcast, the host pointed out that Cruz seems to be on vacation when disasters strike Texas. He was out of the country during the statewide blackouts in 2021 and during the flood disaster over the summer. O’Rourke suggested that the senator might just be cursing the state of Texas.

“I think he’s a curse upon the people of Texas any way that you put it,” O’Rourke said. “It’s clear that he doesn’t care about the people that he purports to serve or represent. You know, that should be damning in and of itself. And for me, it is. Even worse – and you know, this wasn’t the case in 2018, but it certainly was in 2021 – his effort to incite an insurrection against the country’s government in which he serves, to try to overturn a lawfully, fairly, democratically decided election.”

He continued: “In my opinion, that should bar him from any public service and really should prompt an investigation by the Department of Justice into his role in that insurrection attempt on the 6th of January 2021. And I think it’s one of the big failings, honestly, of the previous administration and their Department of Justice. They didn’t prosecute those like Donald Trump or like Ted Cruz who are responsible for that insurrection. And the fact that we nearly lost what Lincoln called The Last Best Hope of Earth.”

On top of the ridicule over the summer Cruz got for being in Greece during the Texas flooding, the senator also went viral for getting in a shouting match with Tucker Carlson over Trump’s battle with Iran back in June.

“How many people live in Iran, by the way?” Carlson asked. “I don’t know the population at all … I don’t know the population,” Cruz replied.

“You don’t know the population in the country you seek to topple?” Carlson asked. He then clarified that Iran currently has an estimated population of 92 million. “How could you not know that?”

Watch the full interview between Minhaj and O’Rourke above.

The post Beto O’Rourke Calls Ted Cruz ‘A Curse Upon the People of Texas,’ Suggests His Vacations Incite Natural Disasters | Video appeared first on TheWrap.

Taylor Swift’s ‘New Heights’ Episode Breaks Podcast’s Record With 13 Million YouTube Views in a Day

Taylor Swift’s Wednesday appearance on the latest episode “New Heights” podcast racked up an impressive 13 million YouTube views within its first 24 hours.

In the Aug. 13 episode, co-hosted by her boyfriend Travis Kelce and his brother Jason, Swift announced that her new album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” will drop Oct. 3. She also revealed the cover art, a full tracklist, which includes a collaboration with Sabrina Carpenter on the title track, and discussed the inspiration behind the album.

“I wanted melodies that were so infectious that you were almost angry at it and lyrics that are just as vivid, but crisp and focused and completely intentional,” Swift said. “It just comes from like the most infectiously joyful, wild, dramatic place I was in in my life.”

The livestreamed episode drew so many viewers that the YouTube stream crashed roughly an hour and 44 minutes in, at which point the audience count had climbed to 1.3 million. Fans were still able to continue watching via Apple, Amazon, Spotify, and Usery.

The episode absolutely shattered previous viewing records for “New Heights” which normally averages around a few hundred thousand views.

“The Life of a Showgirl” will be Swift’s 12th studio album, featuring 12 tracks. She confirmed during the episode that no deluxe editions or bonus songs are currently planned.

“With ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ I was like, ‘Here’s a data dump of everything I thought and felt in two or three years. Here’s 31 songs.’ This is 12. There’s not a 13th, there’s not other ones coming,” Swift said on the podcast. “This is the record I’ve been wanting to make for a very long time … Every single song is on this album for hundreds of reasons, you know, and you couldn’t take one out, and it’d be the same album. You couldn’t add one. It’s just right.”

You can watch the full “New Heights” podcast in the video above.

The post Taylor Swift’s ‘New Heights’ Episode Breaks Podcast’s Record With 13 Million YouTube Views in a Day appeared first on TheWrap.