actor

Riz Ahmed has created and stars in a marvelous new series, “Bait,” premiering Wednesday on Prime Video. There are no worms in it, though viral video plays a part, and fame — the pursuit of which is a subject — is a lure.

But what’s in a name? A comedy by any other name would be as funny — if it was funny, and this one very much is, in a way that’s crazy and serious and human, built around a character in crisis who refuses to believe his life is out of control and is so invested in putting up a front that he’s begun to believe his own lies. Almost. It’s a series in which hallucinations, dreams, magical realism and memories, which punctuate and interfere with the “normal” business of the story, all amount the same thing, and in which the style of the filming shifts with the action.

Ahmad plays Shah Latif, a British Pakistani actor, who, owing to the exertions of his faithful, often frustrated agent, Felicia (Weruche Opia), is improbably auditioning to be the next James Bond. But he repeatedly forgets his line when his scene partner, a girl with a gun, asks, “Tell me, when it’s just you all alone, how do you live with yourself? Do you even know who you are?” establishing a theme. (The line he can’t recall: “I don’t live with myself, I live with whoever you need me to be.” Spies and actors!)

Leaving the audition, he contrives to be photographed by one of the paparazzi lurking outside, sniffing for a Bond scoop; his picture is published, which creates a stir and some racist blowback, culminating in a package thrown through the front window of his parents’ home. (It is not a window that opens.) What’s inside the package I’ll leave for you to discover, but it will play a part through the rest of the show.

The recurring question of who will be the next James Bond generates a lot of pop cultural heat in our world; just type “next James Bond” into your search engine of choice. At one point, you may recall, Idris Elba was regularly bruited as a potential 007, which occasioned enough anti-Black reaction that he officially took himself out of the unofficial running. It may have been on Ahmed’s mind here — Shah claims high purpose for his Bondean aspirations, that he wants “to show them that this too is what British looks like.”

On the one hand, Shah has had enough of a career to have been made into a “limited edition collectible action figure,” starred in a well-regarded but underseen small film, played “the translator in ‘Homeland’ series seven” and earned a rising star award from some French festival; on the other, he is, professionally speaking, no Idris Elba — not a nobody, but not too many rungs above it. (He’s not Dev Patel, either, with whom he’s repeatedly confused.)

At the top of the second episode, Shah is seemingly being interviewed on a podcast, “Sir Chatwick Stewart, with me, Sir Patrick Stewart” — played by the man himself, whom we hear but never see — about his ambitions, though it’s soon clear that Stewart is a mental projection, an inner critic and inquisitor. He’ll stick around through the series, offering barbed commentary and something like support: “If I humiliate you, it’s to save you from the bigger humiliation of remaining as you are.”

As a protagonist continually getting in his own way, Shah is a classic sort of comic character. He creates opportunities only to squander them; finds himself voiceless after forcing himself onstage at a black-tie gala or in an underground club (he was once a politically provocative MC). After a newsworthy mishap, his agent advises him to lie low, which is impossible for him to do; there is no itch he won’t scratch, and no good advice he’ll actually follow. Apart from a rival actor (Himesh Patel) he’s a protagonist without antagonists, excepting himself. He’s insufficiently grateful to the people he owes, and insufficiently apologetic to those he’s wronged.

Shah’s self-involvement will be challenged by ex-girlfriend Yasmin (Ritu Arya), encountered first by accident, then sought out — a writer, she has published an op-ed headlined, “No, Shah Latif, We Don’t Need a Brown Bond” — in which she accuses him of “exchanging his political art for vanilla distraction.” His family, whom he neglects to visit for months, includes warm-hearted cousin Zulfi (Guz Khan), who has started a Muslim ride share company; a no-nonsense sister (Aasiya Shah) — the name of her character is rendered as “Q” on IMDb and elsewhere, but in the series itself she’s called Ainy — doting mother Tahira (Sheeba Chaddha); and his skeptical father, Parvez (Sajid Hasan), who has not been keeping his doctor appointments and asks Shah, “What do you even do? I watch TV all day — you’re never on it.”

Appropriate to a character who lives for being onscreen, “Bait” plays with the language of film — gritty procedural, a burst of Bollywood, romantic comedy — though not necessarily to the usual ends. Frame-filling titles identify the London neighborhoods where the action takes place — Wembley, Kentish Town, Brick Lane, Ladbroke Grove — as Paris, Moscow and Mexico City might appear in an international thriller. The series is at once satirical and celebratory; “Bait” feels abundant, both in its presentation of a culture, which has the ring of documentary truth, and as a beautifully realized work of art.

Bond can wait.

Victoria Pedretti was fresh out of Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama when she was cast in Mike Flanagan’s acclaimed 2018 horror series, “The Haunting of Hill House.”

In her breakout role as Nell Crain, the youngest and most sensitive of five adult siblings reckoning with wounds from a childhood summer spent in a cursed home, Pedretti became the undisputed heart of “Hill House,” anchoring the show with a spellbinding performance that christened her as a scream queen. Her subsequent appearances in “The Haunting of Bly Manor” and “You” were characterized by a similar dramatic intensity, solidifying her renown in the horror genre.

But in Pedretti’s new “Forbidden Fruits,” a horror-comedy directed by Meredith Alloway making her feature debut and produced by “Jennifer’s Body” screenwriter Diablo Cody, the actor shines in all-new soapy splendor.

Set in a Dallas shopping mall, “Forbidden Fruits” revolves around an elite clique of retail employees who run a witches’ coven out of the basement of their boho boutique Free Eden. Pedretti stars alongside Lili Reinhart, Lola Tung and Alexandra Shipp.

Victoria Pedretti in the movie “Forbidden Fruits.”

(Sabrina Lantos / Independent Film Company and Shudder)

Initially asked to look at both the roles of whimsigoth physics buff Fig and the bubbly yet emotionally complex Cherry, described by Alloway as a “Texas Brigitte Bardot,” Pedretti fell hard for the latter.

“She really popped off the page,” Pedretti, 31, says on a recent Zoom interview she takes while on a sandwich run in L.A. “I entered into this glorious flow state.”

“I can’t say I’ve had any experience quite like it, where I really didn’t spend a lot of time questioning myself,” the actor says. “She kind of took over.”

That confidence was perhaps the product of Pedretti performing in two stage plays before “Forbidden Fruits” — or maybe it was the nighttime filming schedule. Either way, Pedretti says she improvised constantly and always kept swinging until somebody said, “Cut.”

The result: Pedretti in Alloway’s instant cult classic is a laugh-out-loud-funny unending well of charm, packing humor into even her most routine dialogue. In her best quotable moments, she seamlessly infuses her sometimes shrill timbre with a dash of Southern drawl. One of her most iconic facial expressions in the film is already circulating as a reaction meme online.

“I was enjoying being in this character so much, I just wouldn’t stop,” Pedretti says, adding that Alloway, who was sensitive to cast members’ interpretations of their roles, supported experimentation.

Alloway praises the Philadelphia-born Pedretti for nailing Cherry’s comedic moments yet also grounding the character in a traumatic backstory — a balancing act the director knew she was capable of after watching “Hill House.”

“I saw her in that show and I was like, ‘Who is that?’” Alloway says. “She is magnificent and so raw. I didn’t feel like I was watching someone acting. I was worried for her.”

After later watching Pedretti nail her role in “You” as Love Quinn, a wealthy, charismatic chef who hides a psychopathic nature, Alloway was convinced of her star power.

Victoria Pedretti in the movie “You.”

(John P. Fleenor / Netflix)

Cody was most familiar with Pedretti’s performance in “You,” pegging the actor as an “intense brunet” that didn’t square at first with her interpretation of Cherry as an Anna Nicole Smith type.

“Then I see the movie and I’m like, oh my God, she has that fragility,” Cody recalls. “She has that humor. She has that sexuality. She has all of it.

“Victoria brought all of those layers and I’m really blown away by her,” the Oscar-winning “Juno” screenwriter adds.

Cody says she wasn’t surprised that the film drew such talent. From the moment Alloway and Lily Houghton, who wrote the play “Forbidden Fruits” is based on and cowrote the film’s screenplay, brought the material to Cody and her producing partner Mason Novick, she became obsessed.

“It feels spiritually like a film that I would want to be part of my body of work,” Cody says. She remembers being especially delighted by the echoes of “Jennifer’s Body” present in Alloway and Houghton’s screenplay.

“Jennifer’s Body” was widely considered a box-office flop and critical failure upon its release in 2009 — grossing only $31 million worldwide against a $16-million budget — but in recent years has enjoyed a reappraisal as a stealth-feminist essential, reclaimed by superfans.

“I don’t think that the world was ready for these kinds of themes,” Cody says of the movie’s ideas, including the cost of toxic femininity, the nuances of female friendship and the pervasiveness of the male gaze.

When it came to promoting “Jennifer’s Body,” the producer adds, “there was a huge emphasis on trying to market it to straight men, based on Megan [Fox] being attractive, and that was not at all the point of the film, so that was frustrating.” Conversely, “Forbidden Fruits” speaks intimately to the female experience and “doesn’t attempt to pander to any other demographic.”

“The current zeitgeist is a great place for a movie like this,” she says. “This movie is for the girls, gays and theys, as they say.”

Alloway, a trained actor who worked as a film journalist before moving into directing, was struck with a similar feeling when she first discovered Houghton’s play, right around the time she was consuming copious media about women criminals, such as Tori Telfer’s 2017 book “Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History.”

“I was so entrenched in why women commit acts of crime,” Alloway said, adding that she was disappointed to find that revenge films on the subject still often revolved around men.

Picking up Houghton’s script, the director recalls feeling relieved. “Oh, this is just about women,” she says, her face brightening. “This is about women friendships, women being pitted against each other.”

In an early meeting with Houghton, Alloway told the playwright she’d like to bring a genre lens to “turn up the dial on the emotions that you feel reading the play and make them accessible to people who haven’t had these experiences — or validate people who have.”

Outside of the opportunity to work with so many other young women, Pedretti said she was drawn to “Forbidden Fruits” because of its use of style and tone.

“It asks a lot of people to try to step into a world like this one,” the actor says of the unabashedly histrionic screenplay. “And as nerve-racking as it may be to take that big swing, you gotta take the big swing.”

“She has that fragility,” says producer Diablo Cody of Pedretti. “She has that humor. She has that sexuality. She has all of it.”

(Evelyn Freja / For The Times)

And swing she does: Pedretti plays up Cherry’s emotional volatility, giving her a full-bodied form of expression. The actor even did her own onscreen makeup (as did Reinhart) and collaborated heavily with costume designer Sarah Millman on Cherry’s wardrobe and styling. Plus, she performed her first topless scene — in a sequence that doesn’t involve men or even sex.

“I’m really proud of the way we use nudity to show a certain kind of unspoken comfortability among women,” she continues. “I remember always getting such a thrill at the comfort level of a girl being like, ‘We’re going to the bathroom together,’ and to me, that is that moment.”

It’s a perfect example of a scene that doesn’t try to speak to anyone except those it’s specifically written for, and one that you only get with women at the helm of a production.

Reflecting on the agency she had to shape Cherry, Pedretti says she is more inspired to explore directorial projects of her own.

“I am so interested in protecting these spaces to be positive, creative experiences for everyone involved,” she says.

Whenever Pedretti does make her feature debut behind the camera (she’s already made a short or two), perhaps Cody will pick up the phone.

Alan Ritchson, star of the series “Reacher,” appears to have engaged in a violent altercation with his neighbor over the weekend, though it’s not entirely clear who began the brawl.

The confrontation broke out Sunday in the suburban city of Brentwood, Tenn., and allegedly included the 43-year-old actor punching a man down to the ground multiple times, according to TMZ, which published video of the squabble. The video, seemingly recorded by a witness from their home window, also shows Ritchson attempting to pick up his motorcycle, which then veers onto the grassy patch by the sidewalk while his two sons, also on motorbikes, watch the confrontation play out. The other man, after getting to his feet, appears to continue scolding Ritchson before the actor and his family drive off.

A representative for Ritchson did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.

According to TMZ, the man on the receiving end of Ritchson’s punches was neighbor Ronnie Taylor, who accused the actor of speeding on his Kawasaki motorbike through the affluent suburb, revving his engine and “disturbing the peace.” Taylor told the outlet he flashed an obscene hand gesture at Ritchson, who allegedly returned it.

Tensions between the neighbors allegedly came to a head Sunday when the actor and his sons rode their motorbikes through the neighborhood, TMZ reported. Taylor reportedly approached Ritchson, pleading to “stop this please.” That reportedly led to the altercation, which allegedly left Taylor with bruises and swelling. Taylor said he reported the incident to police. The Brentwood Police Department did not immediately respond to a Times request for comment.

A source close to Ritchson denied Taylor’s claim that the actor began the altercation, telling TMZ that Taylor had pushed Ritchson off his bike twice and and ran into the street in an attempt to stop the actor’s bike in a “really aggressive manner.” The source also told the outlet Ritchson crashed, fell off his motorcycle and incurred cuts and bruises.

Ritchson, according to the source, attempted to defuse the situation after Taylor allegedly dared him to get physical. However, the source claims Taylor shoved Ritchson to the ground first, prompting the actor to throw punches.

TMZ reported that Ritchson “has been cooperative with the police” and that no arrests have been made in this case.

Ritchson, a former model and “American Idol” hopeful, is best known for portraying the powerful and highly intelligent leading man of Prime Video’s “Reacher.” The show, an adaptation of Lee Child’s “Jack Reacher” book series, premiered in 2022 and is set to return this year for its fourth season, according to Ritchson.

Though the actor has not publicly addressed the brawl, in the days before the incident, he posted several videos detailing his struggles with jet lag.

“The second best time to vlog … is after 48 hours of work and travel with no sleep,” he joked in one late-night video, “I think that’s how the saying goes.”

Valerie Perrine, the Las Vegas showgirl turned Oscar-nominated actor best known for playing Lenny Bruce’s wayward wife Honey Harlow in “Lenny” and Lex Luthor’s secretary Eve Teschmacher in the 1978 and 1980 “Superman” films, died Monday morning. She was 82.

Perrine’s death was confirmed by Stacey Souther, her close friend and the director of the 2019 documentary “Valerie,” which followed the star’s debilitating battle with Parkinson’s disease.

“It is with deep sadness that I share the heartbreaking news that Valerie has passed away,” Souther announced on social media. “She faced Parkinson’s disease with incredible courage and compassion, never once complaining. She was a true inspiration who lived life to the fullest — and what a magnificent life it was. The world feels less beautiful without her in it.

“I love you, Valerie. I’ll see you on the other side.”

Souther also shared a GoFundMe link and a note that Perrine’s final wish was to be laid to rest at the Hollywood Hills Forest Lawn Cemetery. “After more than 15 years of fighting Parkinson’s, her finances are exhausted.”

Perrine was born Sept. 3, 1943, in Galveston, Texas, to parents Renee and Kenneth, a dancer and a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. A military brat growing up, Perrine moved frequently and spent time in Japan, Paris and Scottsdale, Ariz.

She attended the University of Arizona, but her academic aspirations were short-lived. She skipped town, trading her textbooks for a feather headdress and G-string in Las Vegas. Soon she was a lead dancer in the star-spangled Lido de Paris show at the Stardust Hotel. She told the New York Times in 1974 that she spent some of her $800 weekly paycheck on experimenting with drugs: acid, mescaline, peyote, cocaine — you name it, she tried it.

Eight years after her foray into Vegas showbiz, her movie career kicked off unexpectedly during a visit to Hollywood. An agent at a friend’s dinner party took a liking to her, she told the Los Angeles Times in 2013. He asked if she had any publicity photos. The only one she had was in her topless Lido costume.

The sexy picture made its way to the desk of Monique James, the head of new talent at Universal. “She called me in and asked if I had ever acted before and I said ‘no,’” Perrine said. “She arranged a screen test.”

Paul Monash, the producer of “Slaughterhouse-Five,” which was based on Kurt Vonnegut’s acclaimed novel about World War II and time travel, directed the screen test. “They told me to wear a bikini because they wanted to see what my body looked like. I didn’t have a bikini. I wore my G-string and that was it.”

“I had been working in Vegas all the time and had been on the beach in St. Tropez, so being [naked] didn’t mean anything to me,” she told The Times. “It was my attitude that sparked his interest and the way I read the line, ‘Oh, you’re a moon child.’ He hired me.”

Dustin Hoffman as Lenny Bruce, left, and Valerie Perrine as Honey Harlow in a scene from the 1974 movie, “Lenny.”

(United Archives via Getty Images)

Soon after, she portrayed the love interest of NASCAR driver Junior Johnson opposite Jeff Bridges in the 1973 sports drama “The Last American Hero.” Perrine and Bridges dated briefly while working on the film. The same year she became the first woman to bare her breasts on television in the PBS telefilm “Steambath.”

Bridges described Perrine in the 2019 documentary “Valerie” as having a “real sense of fun and play.”

“She was excited about life and excited where she was and it’s a contagious feeling,” he said. “Growing up in a military family and traveling all over the world made her a really interesting person and as an actress, she had the ability to bring all of that into her performances.”

In 1974, she tapped into her showgirl background to portray the drug-addled stripper Honey Harlow opposite Dustin Hoffman as Lenny Bruce in the biopic “Lenny.” Her performance garnered rave reviews. She nabbed the lead actress award at the Cannes Film Festival, BAFTA named her most promising newcomer and she was nominated for an Oscar.

Perrine was perhaps best known for her portrayal of Eve Teschmacher, Lex Luthor’s secretary and love interest in the 1978 “Superman” starring Christopher Reeve, Gene Hackman and Marlon Brando. She played the role again in 1980’s “Superman II.”

She also starred in the 1980 disco flick “Can’t Stop the Music” alongside the Village People and Caitlyn Jenner. The movie flopped and Perrine was so mortified by the film’s poor reception that she moved to Europe. She didn’t officially retire from acting until around 2010, and by 2015 she had gone public with her Parkinson’s disease diagnosis.

The 2019 documentary short “Valerie,” directed by Souther, dropped the veil on Perrine’s battle with the illness, with her loss of bodily autonomy captured in the film. She said “the shakes” caused her to struggle and the level of care she required made her feel like a baby.

Still intact, though, were her sharp wit and self-deprecating sense of humor. In the film a doctor explains that there are times when physicians aren’t able to pin down a diagnosis or there are multiple diagnoses.

“The doctors don’t know what’s going on with me,” Perrine says. “They can’t figure it out.”

“What do you think it is?” the doctor asks Perrine.

“Karma,” she quips.

Ben Keaton, who is best known for playing Father Austin Purcell in the iconic Channel 4 sitcom, has died at the age of 70 – tributes have poured in for the ‘wonderful actor’

Father Ted actor Ben Keaton has passed away aged 70. Keaton, who portrayed Father Austin Purcell in the beloved comedy series, alongside appearances in Casualty and Doctors, died at Lincoln County Hospital on Friday, it has been announced.

His death notice reads: “Ben will be forever greatly missed, loved and fondly remembered by his ex-wife Polly, son Waldo and daughter Daisy, brothers Des and Thom, sister Jeanette.”

In tribute, the Nottingham Playhouse said: “We are so sorry to hear of the death of Ben Keaton, a wonderful actor who is fondly remembered in our 2008 production of Vertigo. Sending our deepest sympathies to his family and friends.”

READ MORE: Family friend of Brit, 22, left to rot in Dubai jail shares update on ‘year of hell’READ MORE: Donald Trump threatens to obliterate Iran’s power plants and gives 48 hour deadline

Ensure our latest headlines always appear at the top of your Google Search by making us a Preferred Source. Click here to activate or add us as your Preferred Source in your Google search settings.

Meanwhile, a Father Ted fan X account shared: “Saddened to hear of the passing of actor Ben Keaton. We knew him as Father Austin Purcell (one of my favourite one-off characters). He was a regular at ComicCon events, so I imagine many got to meet him over the years. My thoughts are with his family, friends, and many fans.”, reports the Daily Star.

Outside his television work, the Irishman was a distinguished stage performer. He dedicated much of his professional life to The Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, appearing in an eclectic array of productions from American Buffalo to Hay Fever.

A versatile artist, he co-established the improv group South Of The River and served in a senior position at the Creative Academy. His awards collection showcased his range, including the 1986 Perrier Comedy Award and two Best Actor accolades from the Manchester Evening News, culminating in a nomination for the esteemed Laurence Olivier Awards.

Honouring him in a message on X (formerly Twitter), one admirer wrote: “RIP Ben Keaton. A great actor and comedian – there can be little praise higher (if at all) in that he stole the scene every time he appeared in Father Ted. Off to the great parochial house in the sky.”

In 2022, Keaton witnessed an unexpected surge in digital popularity after being surrounded by fans seeking autographs at the CovCon event in Coventry. The frenzy intensified when he joined forces with fellow Father Ted cast members Joe Rooney (Father Damo), Michael Redmond (Father Stone), and Patrick McDonnell (Eoin McLove) to film an impromptu TikTok video.

Looking back on the viral sensation, Keaton told The Irish Sun: “The video went from 500 views to 50,000 and up and up. Joe now says we are up at half a million views on TikTok. It’s incredible.” He confessed he was frequently astonished by the lasting impact of his fleeting, scene-stealing turn as the world’s most tedious priest.

Drawing comparisons to his other roles, Keaton remarked: “I appeared in Casualty for three years, nobody cares. I did three minutes on Father Ted and it’s all people want to talk about and something which just sails through time.”

For more of the latest showbiz news and gossip, follow Mirror Celebs on TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Threads.

CHUCK Norris’ heartbreaking final post after his death has been revealed.

The 86-year-old actor died on Thursday after being hospitalized in Kauai for an undisclosed medical incident.

“I don’t age. I level up,” the actor captioned a video of him sparring with boxing gloves on.

“I’m 86 today! Nothing like some playful action on a sunny day to make you feel young. I’m grateful for another year, good health and the chance to keep doing what I love.

“Thank you all for being the best fans in the world. Your support through the years has meant more to me than you’ll ever know.”

The actor turned 86 on March 10.

GOODBYE, TEXAS RANGER

Chuck Norris dead at 86 after suffering ‘medical emergency’ in Hawaii

STILL FIGHTING

Legendary actor Chuck Norris ‘rushed to hospital’ after ‘medical emergency’

The medical emergency that landed him in the hospital reportedly happened suddenly and unexpectedly.

TMZ reported earlier in the week Chuck was training in Hawaii with friends, as shown in his final video.

The actor’s family confirmed his death in a social media statement.

“It is with heavy hearts that our family shares the sudden passing of our beloved Chuck Norris yesterday morning,” the statement, posted on his Instagram, began.

“While we would like to keep the circumstances private, please know that he was surrounded by his family and was at peace.

“To the world, he was a martial artist, actor, and a symbol of strength. To us, he was a devoted husband, a loving father and grandfather, an incredible brother, and the heart of our family.”

The family continued, “He lived life with faith, purpose, and an unwavering commitment to the people he loved. Through his work, discipline, and kindness, he inspired millions around the world and left a lasting impact on so many lives.

“While our hearts are broken, we are deeply grateful for the life he lived and for the unforgettable moments we were blessed to share with him.

“The love and support he received from fans around the world meant so much to him, and our family is truly thankful for it. To him, you were not just fans, you were his friends.

More to follow… For the latest news on this story, keep checking back at The U.S. Sun, your go-to destination for the best celebrity news, sports news, real-life stories, jaw-dropping pictures, and must-see videos.

Like us on Facebook at TheSunUS and follow us on X at @TheUSSun

Billy Porter says a poorly treated urinary infection nearly killed him.

On Wednesday, the 56-year-old Broadway icon appeared on “Today” to promote his new children’s book, “Songbird in the Light,” and discussed a recent health scare that’s given the actor a new outlook on life.

“I am on the road to complete recovery,” he said, tearing up. “It is a gift to be alive. It’s still emotional to talk about it.”

Last year, Porter crossed the pond and made his West End debut starring as the Emcee in the musical “Cabaret,” which ran Jan. 28 through May 24 at London’s Playhouse Theatre. The Tony-winning actor said he was having a ball and living his purpose, but then he got a urinary infection.

“The medicine in the U.K. is trash,” he told “Outlaws” podcast host TS Madison earlier this month. “Four rounds of antibiotics and 10 to 12 weeks later, it’s a kidney infection with kidney stones.”

Porter eventually thought the infection had cleared up and returned to New York, where last fall he was gearing up for a Broadway revival of the musical starring as the production’s first Black Emcee, but his history-making run was cut short.

“I go into rehearsals for ‘Cabaret’ on Broadway … and everything seems fine, and a month in, the kidney stone pain comes back,” he told Madison.

On a Tuesday in September, Porter checked himself into the hospital due to debilitating pain, and then the “Pose” star subsequently fell into a coma and woke up days later on a Saturday evening.

“They went in to do a routine check. They saw that the kidney stone was trapped in my urethra, and they went in to put a stent in, redirect the urine, blast me with real antibiotics — not U.K. antibiotics — and blow up the kidney stones. When they got in there, there was so much pus and bile and infection behind the stone, it bubbled up and I went uroseptic in minutes.”

“I was dead for three days,” Porter said.

Porter said he was placed on an ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) machine, which, according to Mayo Clinic, pumps blood outside of the body to a heart-lung machine, removes carbon dioxide from the blood and sends oxygen-rich blood back to the body. It’s essentially a life-support system.

While Porter was in a coma, he said, one of his legs went into compartment syndrome, which happens when there’s too much pressure around your muscles, causing reduced blood and oxygen flow and possibly leading to necrosis. “They had to cut me open on either side of my leg while I was in a coma, from my knee to my hip, and leave it open for two days so they could save my leg,” he told Madison, visibly choked up over the ordeal.

Porter told “Today” that the experience was mind-altering yet also inspiring. “My work here on this earth is not done, and that gives me hope.”

His new children’s book, “Songbird in the Light,” which follows a young boy who grapples with bullying while learning to embrace his talent and love himself, hit bookshop shelves this week.

PEAKY Blinders star Annabelle Wallis is expecting her first child with boyfriend Sebastian Stan, it has been reported.

According to TMZ, the actress and Hollywood heartthrob are bracing themselves to become first-time parents.

Annabelle and Sebastian went public with their relationship in 2022 after being spotted on holiday together in Greece.

While the couple have yet to confirm the news, insiders told TMZ they’re keeping the due date and gender under wraps.

It’s going to be a busy year for the stars with Sebastian gearing up for the release of two movies, Fjord and Avengers: Doomsday.

Meanwhile Annabelle is starring alongside Jason Statham in action film Mutiny which is set to be released in August.

BAFTA FEUD

Bafta’s bid to stop run-in between Pam & Sebastian Stan after he played ex

turned away

The Apprentice trailer with Sebastian Stan as Trump REJECTED by major networks

Sebastian and Annabelle are known for keeping their private life out of the public eye and last year he shared their reason for doing so.

Speaking to Vanity Fair, he said: “I feel like it’s really difficult nowadays to be able to have any privacy whatsoever.”

Sebastian added that their relationship “is not something either of them discuss” publicly.

As well as being known for playing Grace Burgess in Peaky Blinders, Annabelle also starred as Jane Seymour in drama series The Tudors.

Sebastian got his big break in 2007 when he took on the role of lovable rogue Carter Baizen in Gossip Girl, starring alongside huge names including Blake Lively.

An Oscars slugfest for the ages ran its course, with “Sinners” and “One Battle After Another” duking it out and tallying up wins while the low but steady hum of host Conan O’Brien’s patented brand of weirdness tied the room together. A few unnecessarily curt speech interruptions threatened the calm, but mainly, this was a smoothly run machine of a show, devoid of mishaps. Even the rare circumstance of a tie was handled expertly by live-action-short award presenter Kumail Nanjiani, never bringing to mind the immortal confusion of “Moonlight” vs. “La La Land.”

But what didn’t make it to the telecast? Here are some flavorful takeaways — small yet memorable — that stick in mind from our several reporters in the room on Sunday.

A parade of praise for Jessie Buckley

Jessie Buckley arrives on the red carpet at the 98th Annual Academy Awards.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

As she strode through the lobby of the Dolby Theatre pre-show, Jessie Buckley, nominated for lead actress for her role in “Hamnet,” was fanned with praise by other attendees. Even in the restroom, she couldn’t escape the well-wishers. On her way back to the buzzing lobby, she held the train of her red and pink Chanel gown graciously saying, “Thank you, thank you.” — Brittany Levine Beckman

The pressure’s off for stars during commercial breaks

Elle Fanning and Demi Moore hug during the 98th Academy Awards.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

During the telecast’s first commercial break, supporting actress nominee Elle Fanning of “Sentimental Value” took her loss in stride and leaned over her seat to chat with former “A Complete Unknown” costar Timothée Chalamet, nominated this year for “Marty Supreme,” and his partner, Kylie Jenner.

Across the aisle, “One Battle After Another’s” Leonardo DiCaprio stood up and reached over to lock fingers with Benicio Del Toro. — Yvonne Villarreal

The Oscars address inflation with a goodie box

A note from Conan O’Brien left for attendees in snack boxes.

(Jessica Gelt / Los Angeles Times)

Each year, guests at the Academy Awards are given a small cardboard box of snacks left beneath their seats to get them through the always lengthy ceremony. A note from the host is generally inside. This year’s note, signed by Conan O’Brien, read, “I hope you enjoy this Conan O’Brien ‘Moderately Happy Meal’ ™. These snacks may not look like much but in any movie theater they would run you $85.” The snacks in question were a box of Junior Mints (Times reporter Josh Rottenberg got Raisinets), a small bag of Skinny Pop and a tin bottle of water. — Jessica Gelt

Jesse Plemons won’t succumb to ‘peer pressure’

Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons arrive at the 98th Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

“Bugonia” star Jesse Plemons stood near the main lobby bar talking with friends and posing for pictures with fans while finishing the dregs of a drink. A server approached him and asked if he’d like another. Plemons politely declined and the server laughed, saying, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to give you any peer pressure.” — Jessica Gelt

Amy Madigan inquires about press room rules; ‘Is it like bingo?’

Amy Madigan after winning the Oscar for supporting actress for “Weapons.”

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

After taking the stage to accept her first Oscar win for “Weapons” on Sunday, Amy Madigan paused operations in the press room to ask how moderators decide who gets to ask questions of the night’s winners.

“Is it like bingo?” the actor asked. As laughter swelled across the crowd in response, she clarified hers was a “serious question.” — Malia Mendez

After a loss, Stellan Skarsgård knows the meaning of ‘Sentimental Value’

Megan Everett-Skarsgård and Stellan Skarsgård at the 98th Annual Academy Awards.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Stellan Skarsgård, of “Sentimental Value,” enjoyed a cocktail in a VIP room just off the main auditorium fresh off of losing the Oscar for supporting actor to Sean Penn for his performance in “One Battle After Another.”

Fans rushed Skarsgård anyway, shaking his hand and telling him how much his performance as a troubled alcoholic father and artist resonated with them. “We had four actor nominations on an international film,” Skarsgård told one of them. “That’s never happened before.” — Jessica Gelt

Two of this Oscar season’s tallest figures share a moment

During a commercial break, 6-foot-5 “Frankenstein” star Jacob Elordi and 6-foot-6 Oliver Laxe, director of international feature nominee “Sirāt,” greeted one another at the lobby bar. The pair, who have been impossible to miss as two of the tallest people at various events throughout awards season, shared a warm, high-altitude embrace and Elordi introduced the French-born Laxe to his date for the Oscars: his mother, Melissa. — Josh Rottenberg

‘The Singers’ and ‘Two People Exchanging Saliva’ winners are happy to share their Oscars success

From left, producer Jack Piatt and director Sam A. Davis, makers of “The Singers,” pose with Natalie Musteata and Alexandre Singh, co-directors of “Two People Exchanging Saliva.” All of them won Oscars for live-action short.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

Gasps erupted in the press room after presenter Kumail Nanjiani announced the seventh-ever tie in Academy Awards history Sunday evening, between live-action shorts “The Singers,” directed by Sam A. Davis and produced by Jack Piatt, and “Two People Exchanging Saliva,” directed by Alexandre Singh and Natalie Musteata.

Speaking to the press room after the ultra-rare event, Piatt was unbothered and even enthused by the outcome, saying he wished there could be a “five-way tie” among all the category’s nominees.

Davis agreed, confiding that he’d previously told the “Two People Exchanging Saliva” team “in confidence, that if we lost, I hope we lost to them.”

Shortly thereafter, Musteata said tying with “The Singers” folks was “such a dream.”

“Someone on Reddit asked us if we would be happy to share the award, and we were like, ‘Heck yeah, we would love to share it with another film that is equally beautiful and totally different.’ ” — Malia Mendez

Elle Fanning soothes Timothée Chalamet after lead actor Oscar goes to Michael B. Jordan

Elle Fanning talks with Stellan Skarsgård during the 98th Academy Awards. Timothée Chalamet was seated in front of Fanning during the show.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

When Michael B. Jordan walked off stage and the show went to commercial break, Timothée Chalamet, who was up against Jordan in the lead actor category, took a sip of his drink as Elle Fanning, sitting behind him, gave him a pat on the back.

Fanning talked to her “A Complete Unknown” co-star throughout the night, who barely turned around to look at her. Kylie Jenner kept rubbing and patting Chalamet’s hand while he nervously jiggled his right leg. — Yvonne Villarreal and Jessica Gelt

Autumn Durald Arkapaw receives standing ovation in press room after historic win

Autumn Durald Arkapaw accepts the Oscar for cinematography for “Sinners” — the first woman to win the award.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

“Sinners” shooter Autumn Durald Arkapaw on Sunday became the first woman to win the Oscar for cinematography. As she arrived backstage following her historic win, the press room erupted into applause, with many reporters delivering a standing ovation.

Arkapaw was equally thrilled, telling the room, “A lot of little girls that look like me will sleep really well tonight.”

“I heard Karen O say once at a concert… ‘You have to see you to be you,’” she said. “Ryan gives us, the women on this film, and our heads of department, he gives us those opportunities to shine and be ourselves and work in a creative environment where we’re leading.”

Such trust is rarely extended by directors, Arkapaw said, and she is grateful. — Malia Mendez

Sean Penn won the supporting actor Oscar on Sunday night for his performance as the ruthless, racist Col. Steven J. Lockjaw in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another.”

The win marks the third Academy Award for the 65-year-old Penn and his first in the supporting category. He previously earned lead actor Oscars for “Mystic River” (2003) and “Milk” (2008), and had been nominated three other times in leading roles before this year. He beat out fellow nominees Benicio Del Toro for “One Battle After Another,” Jacob Elordi for “Frankenstein,” Delroy Lindo for “Sinners” and Stellan Skarsgård for “Sentimental Value.”

With his victory, Penn joins Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson, Ingrid Bergman, Daniel Day-Lewis, Frances McDormand and Walter Brennan as three-time Oscar winners for acting. Katharine Hepburn is the only four-time acting winner.

Penn, who delivers a volatile, darkly comic performance in Anderson’s sprawling political thriller, emerged as the race’s front-runner after a surprise victory at the BAFTA Awards and the Actor Awards, whose voting body overlaps heavily with the motion picture academy.

Sean Penn did not attend the Oscars, so presenter Kiernan Culkin accepted the award on Penn’s behalf.

AUSTIN, Texas — “The Sun Never Sets” is filmmaker Joe Swanberg’s 10th indie to premiere at SXSW but his first to play the event since 2017. The astonishing pace with which he made his early work — loose, idiosyncratic stories that were progenitors of the emergent style known as mumblecore — has slowed significantly, but also given way to a newfound maturity as both a person and an artist.

Introducing “The Sun Never Sets” at its world premiere on Friday night to a sold-out crowd at the Zach Theater, Swanberg called his latest “my favorite film I’ve ever made.” Shot on 35mm in Anchorage, the movie follows a 30-ish woman, Wendy (Dakota Fanning in a vibrant turn), torn between pursuing a fresh romance with a reckless old flame (Cory Michael Smith) or continuing on with the settled-in-his-ways divorced father of two (Jake Johnson) she’s been seeing for a few years.

Dakota Fanning in Joe Swanberg’s “The Sun Never Sets,” filmed in Alaska.

(SXSW)

“I guess this is what they tell you about getting older and doing this job longer,” said a thoughtful Swanberg in a video interview from his home in Chicago shortly before the South by Southwest festival. “You get better at it and you sort of mature and all of this.”

The film marks Swanberg’s fourth collaboration with Johnson, a partnership that goes back to 2013’s “Drinking Buddies.” (The actor partly financed the new project along with his brother.) Following completion of the third season of the Netflix anthology series “Easy” in 2019, for which he wrote and directed all the episodes, Swanberg was planning to take a break. A divorce and the pandemic caused that pause to grow even longer.

In the intervening years Swanberg produced a number of projects for other filmmakers, did some acting and opened a small video store in Chicago. Swanberg knew Anchorage-based producer Ashleigh Snead, who encouraged him to consider shooting something there. The scenic location would give Swanberg the opportunity to expand his visual style from his usual couches, bars and apartments of much of his work. (There still are a surprising number of scenes on couches and in bars.)

“Joe’s a real filmmaker,” says Johnson in a separate interview. “And I think sometimes he doesn’t get that credit because he can make movies with nothing. This is a real adult movie. This is a film about how complicated breakups are and how messy they get. And it’s in beautiful Alaska.”

Swanberg, center, on the set of “The Sun Never Sets.”

(SXSW)

Swanberg has now gone from someone making talky, provocative and at times controversial films about the lives of post-collegiate 20-somethings to exploring the nuances and specifics of being a 44-year-old divorced father of two still trying to figure out his place in the world. His original cohort of SXSW-affiliated filmmakers, many of whom also fell under the rubric of mumblecore — nobody much liked the name, but no one ever came up with anything better, so it stuck — included Greta Gerwig, Lena Dunham, Barry Jenkins, Ti West and others who have gone on to more conventional mainstream success.

But Swanberg doesn’t seem to feel left behind. Rather, he only sees doors opening.

“It’s gone so much better than I thought it was going to go for me,” he says. “I mean, when I was making these really tiny, sexually explicit 71-minute movies, I was like, I’m just grateful to be here. I can’t even believe these festivals are showing this work and it’s so cool that there’s a space for me in this ecosystem.

“And so to watch my friends go off to do these giant movies, to see Greta doing ‘Barbie’ and stuff like that, to me it just opens up the possibilities,” he adds. “Each time a friend of mine sets some new record or moves into some new space, I’m kind of like: Oh, that just opened up for all of us now.”

His earlier work often featured raw sex scenes, sometimes featuring Swanberg himself. From practically the start of his career, well predating the #MeToo-era reckoning that began in 2017, Swanberg weathered accusations that he was exploitative and manipulative of his female performers. His stepback from productivity coincided with a moment when his explorations of sexual power dynamics fell out of favor. It would be easy to interpret that Swanberg preemptively soft-canceled himself to avoid a broader scandal. He doesn’t see it that way.

“Certainly in Chicago, where I’ve spent the last five years, I’m not unwelcome places,” he says, drawing a distinction between himself and “people who lose jobs or are capital-C canceled. But also my work has always pushed those boundaries and always attracted some amount of positive and negative attention.”

Though “The Sun Never Sets” has numerous kissing scenes, it doesn’t go too much further than that.

“I won’t do it,” Johnson says of more graphic scenes. “When I worked with Joe early on, I was like, ‘I love you, man — I’m not doing this.’”

For her part, Fanning had no reservations about working with Swanberg. He offered both Fanning and Smith the opportunity to work with an intimacy coordinator, but neither felt it was necessary.

“There was no planet where you’d ever be asked to do anything you were uncomfortable with,” Fanning says. “If there was ever a moment like, ‘I don’t want to do that,’ he’d be like, ‘Oh, then let’s not.’ There was a day where there was a scene and it was pouring rain outside. And we both looked at each other and he was like, ‘We’re not going to do it. The scene’s cut.’ He’s just open. And I just trusted him implicitly.”

Jake Johnson and Dakota Fanning in the movie “The Sun Never Sets.”

(SXSW)

Swanberg has long worked in an unusual style in which the script is essentially a detailed outline and the actors work to come up with their own dialogue during rehearsals. For “The Sun Never Sets,” Swanberg and Johnson developed the longest, most complete outline Swanberg has ever used, including some dialogue exchanges. Then the actors were allowed to make it their own.

Fanning recalled an early Zoom call with Swanberg and Johnson on which they explained the process.

“It’s still made like a real film,” Fanning says. “And Jake and Joe promised it’s not like we’re just flying by the seat of our pants: ‘You will know what to say, I promise.’ And then friends that know me asked, ‘Are you so nervous?’ And I was, but for some reason, I don’t know why, I just knew that it was going to be fine. And that just proved to be true.”

Even though it takes places in Anchorage, Swanberg calls “The Sun Never Sets” “extremely personal.”

“I was definitely writing a movie about a divorced mid-40s guy dating a younger person,” he says. “The questions of marriage and having children were sort of an amalgam of two real relationships that I merged into one onscreen.” He describes the material as “questions that I had and have about what my own relationships are going to look like post-divorce.”

That comes through in Fanning’s rich, layered performance, which might rank among the best of her already lengthy career. Swanberg’s style draws both an ease and an intensity from Fanning, who captures a woman at a pivotal moment of figuring out what she wants amid the emotional whirlwind she is going through. (At the film’s premiere, Fanning said, “I’ve never put so much of myself into a role before.”)

“I think the goal of Joe’s films, and I think at least my goal with this film, is trying to make everything feel real,” she says. “Things are just a mess some of the time.”

Dakota Fanning and Cory Michael Smith in “The Sun Never Sets.”

(SXSW)

Swanberg himself appears in a small role as the new husband of the ex-wife of Johnson’s character. And the characters of the two kids in the movie are named after the director’s own children. With a newfound maturity and emotional depth, Swanberg is continuing to make movies that are part diary, part generational markers.

“It’d be really cool in my 40s to make movies about characters in their 40s,” he says, “and in my 50s, 60s and 70s. It’d be neat to be making sexually explicit movies about 70-year-olds in their dating lives and sex lives and stuff. It’s really exciting to have movies about characters at this phase of their life, whether they’re finally settling down in their 40s or whether they’re getting out of relationships and reexamining their life. It’s where my head is at.”
.

THE OSCARS is back for another year, and will see the crème de la crème of Hollywood clamouring to snatch one of those famous golden statues.

But despite the prestigious nature of the Academy Awards, they don’t always guarantee an A-list life forever in Tinseltown – as these past winners have found out…

Mo’Nique

Let’s kick off our look at forgotten Oscar winners with Mo’Nique, who claimed she was “blacklisted” after her win at the Academy Awards.

When she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 2010 for her performance in Precious it was her acceptance speech that got people talking, which began: “First, I would like to thank the Academy for showing that it can be about the performance and not the politics.”

Mo’Nique was referring to a fallout which started long before the Oscars.

It came when she refused to travel the world to promote the film – against the advisement of director Lee Daniels and producers Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey – despite the movie having “Oscar buzz”.

STATUE SCOOP

Oscars 2026 nominations live stream FREE: Start time and how to watch ceremony

WORLDS COLLIDE

Watch moment A-list actress apologises as she steps on CBBC icon’s dress

Following this fallout, Mo’Nique declined to thank filmmaker Lee during her acceptance speech, leading to a HUGE Hollywood feud – during which the actress alleged that he had “blackballed” her from the industry.

And shortly after winning the coveted statue she practically vanished from Tinseltown.

The star has since reflected on being a victim of so-called “Oscarscurse” – where stars suffer bad luck in their career after winning an Academy Award.

Speaking to CNN in 2020, Mo’Nique said: “I believe winning that Oscar award, just as Hattie McDaniel, she said, ‘I felt like I was cursed instead of winning something that should be congratulated’.

“That award was something that I did not ask for, but because I didn’t respond the way people thought that I should have responded, as Lee Daniels said, I was blackballed.”

Mercedes Ruehl

At the 1992 Oscars, Mercedes Ruehl was having the time of her life after scooping the Best Supporting Actress gong.

Despite her movie The Fisher King being led by Hollywood heavyweights Robin Williams and Jeff Bridges, Mercedes was the one who took home that coveted gold statue.

But even though she won such a huge award, the movie roles failed to pour in after her night of glory and the actress “vanished” from Hollywood.

Reflecting on the “curse” of winning such a top prize, she told the HuffPost: “It’s hard to get a job after that.

“People think you want more money.”

Instead, Mercedes returned to the stage and went on to win a Tony award the same year as her Oscar – she has remained a fixture of Broadway ever since.

Harold Russell

Harold Russell’s Oscars tale is very different to the others.

The late star lost both his hands in World War II and had them replaced by hooks.

Harold had never acted before when he played the role of Homer Parrish in The Best Years of Our Lives in 1946.

He was cast after the director of the film saw him in Diary of a Sergeant, an Army film about rehabilitating war veterans.

Despite his lack of acting experience, Harold proved to be a huge hit in The Best of Our Lives, and he won not one, but TWO Oscars for his role.

At the 1947 Academy Awards he was awarded the Best Supporting Actor and a special Honorary Academy Award for bringing hope and courage to fellow veterans.

Harold was also the first non-professional actor to ever win an Oscar.

But despite all this glory, he took a step back from acting and didn’t appear in another film until 1980.

Instead, he decided to get a business degree and devoted his life to charity.

Speaking about why he didn’t continue his Hollywood career, he told the Los Angeles Times in 1996: “Wyler (the director) told me I should go back to college because there wasn’t much call for a guy with no hands in the motion picture industry.

“I figured he was right. [In the handful of roles I’ve taken since then,] I always play a disabled veteran.

“And this is what Wyler said, ‘After a while they’re going to run out of ideas’—and he was absolutely right. How many times can you play the same role?”

Harold died in 2002 at the age of 88.

Roberto Benigni

Next up we have Italian actor Roberto Benigni, whose double Oscar win in 1999 caused quite a reaction.

The star won two gongs for the foreign film La Vita è Bella (Life is Beautiful), taking home the statues for Best Actor and Best International Feature Film – as he directed the movie too.

The film was the first non-English speaking picture to win the Best Actor award.

But Roberto, who was up against Tom Hanks, Ian McKellen, Nick Nolte and Ed Norton for the award, faced a huge backlash for his “over the top” reaction to winning the coveted gong.

He was seen climbing over audience seats to accept the award, which was slammed as being “chaotic”.

Roberto was also criticised for his “disingenuous” acceptance speech, where he appeared to make light of winning such a huge award.

“This is a terrible mistake. I used up all my English!” he joked, upon being handed the award.

Despite his big win, the actor retreated back to his native-Italy to make films instead of in Hollywood.

Speaking about life as a two-time Oscar winner, Roberto once told The Guardian: “The most important thing is to continue to be yourself.

“The day after the Oscars, you have to get on with your life. To be honest and true to yourself. I could have made a small film and kept all the money from Life is Beautiful. Instead, I spent more money than I had on Pinocchio, a very risky film.”

The actor is referring to his 2002 movie Pinocchio, which was only released in Italy and received mixed reviews from critics, with one calling it “the worst movie ever made”.

Marcia Gay Harden

Marcia Gay Harden beat the odds to scoop the Best Supporting Actress award for Pollack in 2000.

The actress was up against massive stars including Judi Dench, Kate Hudson, Frances McDormand and Julie Walters, so her win was the HUGE surprise of the night that everyone was talking about.

Critics were also shocked that Marcia won the Oscar as she hadn’t been nominated for any other major award in the run-up to the ceremony.

Despite the actress’s huge win, her movie career stalled and she headed back to the small screen.

Reflecting on being a victim of the “Oscar curse”, Marcia once told the LA Times: “It’s disastrous on a professional level.

“Suddenly the parts you’re offered and the money become smaller. There’s no logic to it.”

Mira Sorvino

Mira Sorvino

Fans of the quirky movie Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion may be surprised to know that the film’s co-leading actress, Mira Sorvino, actually won an Oscar before starring in the cult classic movie.

A few years before, the actress won a huge amount of praise when she played a prostitute in Woody Allen’s Mighty Aphrodite.

She wowed so much, she scooped the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1996 for the role.

Despite going on to star in Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion the following year, the movie roles after that failed to pour in and she has switched her focus to TV.

Marisa Tomei

Last but not least, we have Marisa Tomei.

It may come as a surprise to film fans to find out that the actress won an Oscar in 1993 – but that is nothing compared to what happened on the actual night.

Shockwaves went through the prestigious ceremony when the relatively-unknown actress at the time scooped the gong for Best Supporting Actress, beating veteran stars like Joan Plowright and Vanessa Redgrave.

But it didn’t stop there, as poor Marisa, who won the award for her role in My Cousin Vinny, faced rumours that she had been given the Oscar “by mistake”.

Vicious gossip began to circulate that suggested that presenter Jack Palance had misread the envelope and mistakenly given the Oscar to Marisa instead of “its rightful owner”, Vanessa.

However, the Academy addressed the conspiracy theory and denied that she had been given it by “mistake.”

Speaking about the cruel rumour, Marisa once said: “That was really hurtful at first.”

Despite the fall out from her Oscar three decades ago, she has been nominated for two more since.

These days Marisa is best known for playing Spider-Man‘s mum in the famous franchise.

AN unexpected Brit name has been thrown into the ring to play the next James Bond.

Bookmaker Coral has announced the surprising news about who is currently in the lead to scoop the iconic role.

It has been revealed that Jack O’Connell’s name is flying high after seeing support rise over the last 48 hours.

The SAS: Rogue Heroes star is a big contender to jump into James Bond‘s boots with odds to 8-1 (from 33-1).

“Jack O’Connell’s next James Bond odds have collapsed over the last couple of days, with the British actor now just single figures in our betting for the iconic role,” said Coral’s John Hill.

The new movie will be written by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Steven Knight – who was behind iconic TV show Peaky Blinders.

NO, MR BOND

Hunky British actor tipped to play James Bond rules himself out of 007 role

FRONT RUNNER

New James Bond favourite in the running to land 007 role as he’s ‘set for job’

Steven also wrote SAS: Rogue Heroes and worked with Jack on the feature.

The 28 Years Later actor has come a long way since his days in the Skins cast.

O’Connell has played a variety of roles since he starred in the TV teen drama as James Cook from 2009 to 2010 – and for the show’s final season in 2013.

Ever since Daniel Craig said goodbye to the role in 2021 release No Time To Die, the role of super spy 007 has been up for grabs, with speculation rife over who should take over. 

Coral stated the odds: 4-5 Callum Turner, 3-1 Aaron Taylor-Johnson, 3-1 Theo James, 6-1 Henry Cavill, 8-1 Jack O’Connell, 10-1 Anthony Boyle, 12-1 Harris Dickinson, 16-1 Jack Lowden, 16-1 James Norton.

Actors thought to be in the running to play Bond include Spider-Man star Tom Holland, 28, Bridget Jones hunk Leo Woodall, 28, SAS Rogue Heroes leading man Connor Swindells, 28, plus Hero Fiennes Tiffin, 27, and Kit Connor, 21. 

Irishman Paul Mescal, 29, is also said to be in the frame along with Wuthering Heights heart-throb Jacob Elordi, 27.

Among the other names rumoured to be in the frame included Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Callum Turner and Henry Cavill.

The Sun recently revealed the latest 007 adventure — spearheaded by new owners Amazon Prime Video — will start filming before the end of the year.

Work has already begun on assembling the crew with a view to starting filming late autumn into early winter.

Amazon has yet to confirm anything about the new Bond movie and there’s no hint as to what it will be called.

But if the cameras start to roll this year it means it could wrap in 2027 and be on our screens by 2028.

The franchise was snapped up by the streaming giants after 2021’s No Time To Die featured the death of the super-spy, played by Daniel Craig.

The 10th season of “Love Is Blind” ventured to Ohio, yielded a record seven engaged couples and made structured cape blazers and the idea of daily Pilates classes feel like rage bait.

With the season over, and just two couples saying “I do,” the cast of the popular Netflix dating series came together for this week’s reunion special to share updates on their lives since the cameras went down — and to unpack the twists, turns and lies that played out over the season. The result was a reunion that finally provided (mostly) satisfying questions and answers about participants’ pasts and presents instead of dancing around topics.

Unable to budget the time for a trip to Cabo — or even Malibu — to process it all, TV editor Maira Garcia and I have brought our running “LIB” thread out of our Slack DMs to unpack our thoughts in this safe place.

Also in this week’s Screen Gab, our streaming recommendations include a spray-tan crime comedy and a Morgan Freeman-narrated mind trip about the rise and fall of dinosaurs. Plus, we tell you where you can stream the slate of best picture nominees ahead of this Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony.

This is your cue to block off some “couch time” in your calendar this weekend.

— Yvonne Villarreal

Turn on

Recommendations from the film and TV experts at The Times

Will Forte as Martin and D’Arcy Carden as Vicki in a scene from “Sunny Nights.”

(Lisa Tomasetti / Hulu)

“Sunny Nights” (Hulu)

D’Arcy Carden fans, and I can’t imagine anyone who’s ever seen her work isn’t one, will be elated to find her at full force starring in this dark, sometimes violent Australian crime comedy alongside Will Forte, who, yes, has fans of his own. They play brother Martin (cautious) and sister Vicki (impulsive), who have traveled to Sydney to flog a tanning spray at a lifestyle convention, though Martin has an ulterior motive, to win back his wife, Joyce (Ra Chapman). What with one thing and another, they find themselves repeatedly in need of cash and mixed up with a panoply of criminals, some fairly sympathetic (former rugby star Willie Mason, excellent as former rugby star Terry; Jessica De Gouw as Susi), and others not at all (Rachel House as kingpin Mony, just out of the jug). All are trying to change their lives, or at least their business plan, including Joyce, a journalist stuck writing clickbait articles for an editor who doesn’t want to know, and Megan Wilding as Nova, an animal control worker who knows something important about an exploding crocodile. — Robert Lloyd

A still from “The Dinosaurs.”

(Netflix)

“The Dinosaurs” (Netflix)

This four-part series will have you mentioning the Carnian pluvial episode in every conversation. Aptly narrated by Morgan Freeman and executive produced by Steven Spielberg, the sweeping CGI-enhanced nature documentary traces the evolutionary history of dinosaurs, from their origins in the Triassic period to their extinction 66 million years ago. And it’s more proof that attention spans, no matter a person’s age, will always lock in for dinosaurs. Before morning, your Google search history will include terms like “Marasuchus,” “Vulcanodon,” “Heterodontosaurus” and that Carnian pluvial episode (a.k.a. the longest downpour in history, which lasted more than a million years). Prepare to have your perception of time forever altered. Still, it’s a surefire way to give your mental health a break from current events — though, for a certain generation, it may also unlock those “Land Before Time” memories. — Y.V.

Catch up

Everything you need to know about the film or TV series everyone’s talking about

Scenes from “One Battle After Another,” left, “Hamnet” and “Sinners.”

(Warner Bros. Pictures; Focus Features)

The 98th Academy Awards will broadcast Sunday at 4 p.m. Pacific. How many of the best picture nominees have you seen? Is it less than the number of think pieces you’ve read on Timothée Chalamet’s comments on ballet and opera? We’re here to help. If you’re feeling inspired to be a studious viewer ahead of film’s big night, here’s where you can stream the best picture nominees:

• “Bugonia” (Peacock): Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, the surreal comedy thriller follows a paranoid bee keeper (Jesse Plemons) who kidnaps a pharmaceutical CEO (Emma Stone), convinced she is an alien responsible for destroying humanity. The film received four Oscar nominations.
• “F1” (Apple TV): From “Top Gun: Maverick” director Joseph Kosinski, the sports drama stars Brad Pitt as retired F1 driver Sonny Hayes, who agrees to compete in the globe’s most prestigious racing event to salvage his reputation and the failing team of his buddy. The film received four Oscar nominations.
• “Frankenstein” (Netflix): Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of the classic horror tale transforms Jacob Elordi into the tragic monster, known here as The Creature, and features Oscar Isaac as its titular mad maker. The film received nine Oscar nominations.
• “Hamnet” (Peacock): Based on Maggie O’Farrell’s novel, Chloé Zhao’s historical drama explores the grief, love and strained marriage of William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and his wife, Agnes (Jessie Buckley). The film received eight Oscar nominations.
• “Marty Supreme” (Available to rent or buy on platforms like Prime Video and Apple TV): Directed and co-written by Josh Safdie, the film is loosely based on the life of American table tennis player Marty Reisman, here called Marty Mauser and played by Timothée Chalamet. It is expected to be released on HBO Max later this spring. The film received nine Oscar nominations.
• “One Battle After Another” (HBO Max): Paul Thomas Anderson’s satirical political thriller, a loose adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland,” follows a paranoid ex-revolutionary (Leonardo DiCaprio) trying to save his daughter when an old enemy (Sean Penn) resurfaces. The film received 13 Oscar nominations.
• “Sentimental Value” (Available to rent or buy on platforms like Prime Video and Apple TV): Joachim Trier’s Norwegian drama follows two sisters (played by Renate Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) as they reunite with their estranged filmmaker father (Stellan Skarsgard). The film received nine Oscar nominations. It is expected to be released on Hulu later this month.
• “Sinners” (HBO Max): Ryan Coogler’s gothic horror drama is set in 1932 Mississippi and follows twin brothers (played by Michael B. Jordan) who, trying to leave their troubled past behind them, return to their hometown to start anew — only to face new horrors. It became the most-nominated film in Academy Awards history with 16 total nominations.
• “The Secret Agent” (Hulu, Disney+): Directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho, the Brazilian historical political thriller stars Wagner Moura as a former professor fleeing persecution during the 1970s military dictatorship while trying to protect his son. The film received four Oscar nominations.
• “Train Dreams” (Netflix): Based on Denis Johnson’s 2011 novella of the same name, the film is an intimate birth-to-death portrait of a quiet railway laborer (Joel Edgerton) as he watches the world change around him. The film received four Oscar nominations.

Break down

Times staffers chew on the pop culture of the moment — love it, hate it or somewhere in between

It’s crazy to think that about six years ago, golden goblets, pods and “the experiment” were disparate ideas and objects that were on the precipice of infiltrating the culture. Now, you can’t think of one without the others. “Love Is Blind,” the reality dating show that tests the premise of whether singles can find love sight unseen and marry at the end, marked a milestone this year with its 10th season, filmed in Ohio.

While the series has produced a number of marriages and engagements, some have ended in breakups and divorce, as we saw on Wednesday’s Season 10 reunion. So while the answer to the question “Is love blind?” seems to be no, the series has nonetheless made for entertaining television for viewers who have made dissecting the people, fights and makeups a sport. Why are we so invested? Because it’s a reflection of where we are as a society when it comes to relationships and what we expect from partners emotionally, politically, physically and financially. With that in mind, Yvonne and I sat down with our golden goblets to unpack the Season 10 reunion. Here are five moments that stood out. — M.G.

Jordan and Amber are now divorced

Jordan Faeth and Amber Morrison were one of two couples to say “I do” at the altar. Morrison, a single mom, discussed with Faeth over the course of the show if he was ready to be a stepparent and where they would live, given that Morrison owned a home and her daughter was happy at her school. At the reunion, the couple revealed that they never moved in together and that they divorced after four months. Morrison talked about how her daughter was distraught after the breakup, leading to an emotional moment where Morrison ran offstage in tears. It raised an important question that fans have debated closely: Should parents be on the show? Seasons 6 and 9 also featured single parents, neither of whom made it to the altar. Given the compressed timeline of when people meet, become engaged and head to the altar, deciding whether marriage should include parenthood at the start adds another layer of complexity, not to mention how it could affect a child, who suddenly has a stranger in their life. The outcome wasn’t necessarily surprising, but it was sad.

Vic and Christine: boring but perfect. More, please

The other couple to make it down the aisle was Vic St. John and Christine Hamilton, who hit it off from the get-go and seemed to exist in their own blissful bubble. According to Netflix production, the show only budgets for six couples to go on a trip after the reveal and engagement. But they continued to track them, with St. John and Hamilton spending time in Malibu instead, taping dispatches together and getting to know each other without the rest of the cast in proximity. Throughout the course of the show, you see their connection grow. Their mature and thoughtful conversations about being an interracial couple and potentially raising biracial children were exactly the type of discussions you would hope they’d have before proceeding down the aisle. It may not make for dramatic TV, but it was genuinely thrilling to see a couple so well-suited for each other continuing to thrive. And in an effort to make up for not getting to go to Cabo, Mexico, with everyone else, the show offered them a trip paid by … Turbo Tax? It was an odd product placement, but if they want to foot the bill for their honeymoon, no one’s complaining. As long as it’s somewhere tropical on a beach — and not Lake Erie.

Who took accountability?

Despite not making it to the altar on screen after the blazer cape breakup, Connor Spies and Bri McNees are still together. But the bigger record-scratch moment arrived later, when it was revealed that Devonta Anderson broke up with Brittany Wicker a few days after what he told her was a work trip but was actually a getaway to Austin, Texas, to attend a concert with McNees, Ashley Carpenter and Priyanka Grandhi. Wicker didn’t seem thrilled that she had to find out about the trip from Amber (who found out from Jordan, who can’t remember that he even knew about it). McNees didn’t like the implication that she may have broken “girl code” with the whole fiasco — but if all the women are as close as they say they are, why wouldn’t you check in about such an arrangement regardless of the relationship status? (It was weird, too, that Connor thought it was a girls’ trip.) And the fact that it was the same three women who listened to Chris Fusco talk poorly about his former fiancée Jess Barrett — giant sigh. During the reunion, after Barrett voiced her disappointment in her friends about that incident, Carpenter apologized for not doing more to defend her in the moment.

Meanwhile, Nick unleashed his best attempt to channel Andy Cohen and grilled Fusco about his highly questionable behavior and the backlash over his comments to Barrett about her body, specifically stating he usually dates women who do Pilates or workout daily, and for trying to make the moves on McNees. Fusco, mostly quiet and stone-faced (could it be the shame?), acknowledged he was not proud of the moments he watched back and apologized to Barrett. His seat mate, goalkeeper Alex Henderson, was also on the defense. The self-proclaimed nomad never fully seem to vibe with his fiancée, Carpenter. He admitted she’s not his usual type. She still maintained he wasn’t telling the whole truth about his job or dating history, and overall lifestyle. Throughout his segment, Henderson was noticeably irritated by the insinuation that his stories didn’t add up. But he did seem to enjoy being asked to describe his relationship with Carpenter as if it was a soccer match, prompting him to cite a Liverpool game that ended in a tie. Are you laughing too?

Can this be a TikTok?

To commemorate the milestone season, the audience for the reunion special consisted of 150 former participants of the series. And while the time spent getting life updates with some of them throughout the show felt less forced and time-consuming than reunions past, it still felt like an add-on better suited to live in a separate (shorter) special or as social media content. If we wanted an update on these people’s lives, we can find them on social media. A gender reveal courtesy of someone’s dead grandmother, as sweet and touching and lovely as that may for an expectant couple, is not the sort of jaw-dropping moment a show like this needs. And maybe the money saved — assuming production footed the bill for those flights — could have sent every couple to Cabo.

Did you hear? Nick Lachey is from Ohio, guys.

His constant mention of his hometown roots was unquestionably the biggest declaration of love in the 90-minute special. Sorry, Vanessa.

ICYMI

Must-read stories you might have missed

Just in time for the Oscars, Tilly Norwood, and by extension her creator, Eline van der Velden, gave actors at every level an unexpected gift — the chance to breathe a little easier.

AI will not be replacing you any time soon.

On Tuesday, the AI phenomenon known as Tilly debuted a single and music video titled “Take the Lead.” In it, Tilly sings a self-celebratory, pro-AI anthem with the big-eyed feisty longing of an algorithm marked “Disney princess: Big song” while she wanders through increasingly fantastic self-affirming scenarios that scream “Plus ‘Barbie.’”

Van der Velden was clearly trying to persuade actors to embrace the possibilities of AI but like Timothée Chalamet, who managed to prove that opera and ballet have many devoted fans by publicly suggesting the opposite, her attempt will likely backfire. The underlying message of the video, at least to performers, appears to be: Relax — AI hasn’t figured out how to lip sync properly, much less act.

It’s a bit of good news in a time of AI anxiety, some of which was Tilly-induced. Last year, Van der Velden, a Dutch actor and founder of the production company Particle6, debuted Tilly, via Instagram, as the “world’s first AI actress.” Around the time the account hit 50,000 followers, Van der Velden announced that several talent agents were interested in representing Tilly. Not Van der Velden, but Tilly Norwood, a “performer” who did not exist.

For a few minutes, Hollywood lost its collective mind. Not only were creators and performers facing a future in which their work, bodies and faces could be scanned and fed into an algorithm capable of imitating writing styles or creating images of actors doing things they never did (in a recent AI video, Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt duke it out on a war-torn rooftop), now some feared they would be competing for jobs with “actors” who could work 24 hours a day, required no health benefits and would never demand bowls of M&Ms with the green ones removed.

SAG-AFTRA, which had just ended a strike caused in part by concerns about AI, protested Tilly and the use of “stolen performances to put actors out of work.” Various actors were outraged and some called for the interested talent agencies to be identified. Even Emily Blunt was publicly disconcerted, begging Hollywood agencies to “please stop taking away our human connection.”

Van der Velden quickly responded, insisting that Tilly was “not a replacement for a human being, but a creative work — a piece of art … a new tool — a new paintbrush.”

Then, on Tuesday, “Tilly” released a music video that seems to argue the exact opposite.

In the video, which appears over the message “Can’t wait to go to the Oscars,” the computer-generated young woman trips through a montage of “famous person moments,” as Tilly insists that she is not a puppet but a star; she encourages all actors to embrace and use AI, to own their creativity and “be free.”

A note prefacing the video states that “18 real humans” were involved in its production (including Van der Velden who is the basis of the performance), who provide the subtext for Tilly warbling: “They say it’s not real, that it’s fake, but I’m a human, make no mistake.”

Whatever Van der Velden and her team hoped to achieve, one thing is very clear: Emily Blunt has nothing to fear from Tilly Norwood.

The questionable merits of the song, performance and production value aside, the video is the best argument yet for why AI “performers” are a limited threat. As Tilly walks the streets of London, poses for selfies, signs autographs, appears on talk shows, performs live in front of enormous audiences, interacts with photographers, we are reminded that Tilly could never do any of this. AI performances are, by their very nature, limited to a screen.

Instagram fame is a real thing and can be monetarily beneficial, just as animated and digitally enhanced characters can connect deeply with audiences. But beyond her ability to raise the spectre of wholly coded “performers” constructed from borrowed bits of humans (which, as anyone who has read or seen “Frankenstein” knows, never ends well), Tilly doesn’t appear to have anything like star power.

And to consider her as existing separate from her creators is like imagining that the ventriloquist dummy Charlie McCarthy could have a career, and an agent, separate from the real performer Edgar Bergen.

Though Charlie did have the advantage of being able to be seen live and in person.

Watching Tilly, one is reminded that the magic of actors is that they are human. Audiences are, after all, human too and whether facing a stage or a screen, we are captivated by certain performers’ ability to bring all manner of characters and stories alive, while also being, as Us Weekly says, “just like us.”

People with bodies that age and change, people who fall in love, get messy, say dumb things, say smart things, fall prey to illness and accidents, shop at Trader Joe’s, end up in court or trip when about to receive an Oscar.

Their faulty, glorious humanity allows them to connect to their art, but it also connects them to us. We may never get an Oscar or be able to masterfully deliver a Shakespeare soliloquy on a chat show, but we know what it’s like to trip or say something dumb or experience aging, illness or accident.

You can’t replace actors with algorithms, even if/when someone comes up with something more convincing than Tilly, because actors are not just about performances. They are people who are alive in the world and no amount of coding can replicate that.

Joshua Jackson says he knows he was “really just a footnote” in James Van Der Beek’s life, despite the “amazing” time they spent together as stars of the series “Dawson’s Creek.”

The star of “The Affair” is reflecting publicly for the first time about his former castmate, who died Feb. 11 at age 48 after a battle with colorectal cancer.

The time they shared on set was “formational” for them, Jackson said on “Today.” When the “Dawson’s Creek” pilot aired in January 1998, he was 19 and Van Der Beek was almost 21, playing characters who were 15.

“I know both of us look back on that time with great fondness, but I will also say that I know that I’m really just a footnote in what he actually accomplished in his life.”

Jackson spoke with great respect for his friend, who he said “became what we used to just call a good man, a man of the kind of belief, the kind of faith that allowed him to face the impossible with grace, an unbelievable partner and husband, just a real man who showed up for his family and a beautiful, kind, curious, interested, dedicated father.”

On the one hand, the 47-year-old said, “that’s beautiful.” On the other, “The tragedy of that loss for his family is enormous.”

Since Jackson and Van Der Beek played Pacey Witter and Dawson Leery three decades ago, both men had kids of their own — a 5-year-old daughter for Jackson, born during the pandemic with ex-wife Jodie Turner-Smith, and six kids for Van Der Beek with second wife Kimberly Brook. The latter couple’s children — two boys and four girls, ranging in age from 4 to 15 — were what Van Der Beek said changed everything for him.

“Your life becomes shared, and your joys become shared joys in a really beautiful way that expands your level of circuitry out to other people instead of just keeping it all for your own gratification,” the actor told “Good Morning America” in May 2023. “And the lessons, they keep on coming. It’s the craziest, craziest thing I’ve ever done, and it’s the thing that’s made me happiest.”

Knowing his colleague’s love for his family, Jackson said on “Today” that “for me as a father now, I think the enormity of that tragedy hits me in a very different way than just as a colleague, so I think the processing [of Van Der Beek’s death] is ongoing.”

The “Little Fires Everywhere” actor was on the morning show Tuesday to bring attention to colorectal cancer screenings.

Van Der Beek’s diagnosis, which went public in November 2024, was among the factors prompting Jackson to get involved with drugmaker AstraZeneca’s “Get Body Checked Against Cancer” campaign, which takes a lighter approach to a serious subject — cancer screening — through a partnership with Jackson, the National Hockey League and the Philadelphia Flyers’ furry orange mascot, Gritty.

“It is … true, the earlier you find something,” said “The Mighty Ducks” actor, “the better your possible outcomes are.”

Jennifer Runyon, a film and television actor known best for her roles on “Ghostbusters,” “A Very Brady Christmas” and “Charles in Charge,” has died. She was 65.

Runyon died Friday, according to a Sunday statement reportedly posted to her social media account, which has since gone private.

“This past Friday, our beloved Jennifer passed away. It was a long and arduous journey that ended with her surrounded by her family,” the statement read, according to ABC7. “She will always be remembered for her love of life and her devotion to her family and friends. Rest in peace our Jenn.”

“Bewitched” actor Erin Murphy shared in a Sunday post on Facebook and Instagram that Runyon died “after a brief battle with cancer.”

“Some people you just know you’ll be friends with before you even meet,” Murphy wrote in her tribute. “She was a special lady.”

On the 1980s sitcom “Charles in Charge,” Runyon portrayed Gwendolyn Pierce, a fellow college student of the show’s titular live-in housekeeper (portrayed by Scott Baio) and the target of his affections.

In his Facebook tribute, fellow “Charles in Charge” actor Willie Aames described Runyon as a “dear dear friend, muse, and encourager.”

“From the moment we met on set all those decades ago- I knew you ‘got me,’” wrote Aames. “Watching you slip away these last few months was one of the hardest times of my life… I can still hear your voice so clearly. No one will ever be able to fill the massive hole that’s been left in our hearts… ever.”

A Chicago native, Runyon made her television debut as Sally Frame in the long-running soap opera “Another World.” She also appeared in episodes of “Magnum, P.I.,” “Quantum Leap” and “Murder, She Wrote.” Runyon also portrayed the grown-up Cindy Brady in “A Very Brady Christmas.”

Her film credits include the 1984 classic “Ghostbusters,” where she appeared as one of the students participating in the ESP study conducted by Bill Murray’s Peter Venkman.

On Instagram, Runyon’s daughter Bayley Corman, an actor who has appeared on TV shows such as “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina,” “Bel-Air” and “Running Point,” described her mother as “the kindest most compassionate person i’ve ever known.”

“All of the best parts of me came from you,” Corman wrote in her tribute. “i would give anything for one more day together.”

As Hollywood writers continue contract negotiations with major studios, one topic remains front and center: the role of artificial intelligence.

On Friday, the Writers Guild of America released a list of contract demands, which 97% of the union membership supports. Though some details have yet to be revealed, many of the union’s asks involve expanding protections over the use and abuse of AI, in addition to improved health coverage and higher residuals.

AI and streaming residuals were central issues in strikes by actors and writers in 2023.

WGA’s current contract, which expires May 1, established that AI isn’t a writer and nothing it produces is considered literary material. It prohibits companies from giving writers AI-generated scripts for a rewrite fee or requiring writers to use AI software, and a company must disclose whether any written materials were developed using AI.

The union says its current demand is to simply “expand” these protections. Other priorities include increasing contributions to the WGA benefit plans, raising minimums for “page one” rewrites and boosting streaming residuals.

The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists has identified similar issues as it negotiates a new contract for actors. Last week, SAG-AFTRA and the bargaining group for the major studios disclosed that they are extending their negotiations for seven days. The discussions began Feb. 9.

The union, whose contract expires June 30, is expected to propose what has been called the Tilly tax, a fee that studios would have to pay to the union in exchange for using an AI actor. This demand is in response to the first AI actor, Tilly Norwood, being introduced to Hollywood. Though the bot has yet to star in a major project, the fear of AI-generated characters taking jobs is real for many actors. The bot’s creator, Xicoia, also recently announced the expansion of its AI actor universe, called the “Tillyverse.”

WGA’s negotiations are set to start Monday and will be led by Ellen Stutzman. The studios will be represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers’ new president, Gregory Hessinger.

The negotiations are happening as WGA West’s own staff members have been on strike, forcing the guild to call off its L.A.-based award show. The staff union, with more than 100 employees, are similarly demanding higher pay and protections against AI.

At the Basement, a haunted escape room experience in Sylmar, patrons attempt to evade a deranged serial killer by solving puzzles.

Now the actors, who work as game masters and perform as distressed abductees at the venue, will be frightening their guests while under union protection.

This week, the Basement’s union voted unanimously to ratify its first working contract, making it the first and only escape room to have a union and operate under a collective bargaining agreement. The group is recognized as part of the Actors’ Equity Assn., which represents more than 51,000 actors and managers in live entertainment.

Jenna Wagner, an actor at the Basement, said the new contract, bargained by a dozen employees including herself, will “improve general unit morale.” It addresses higher wages and greater safety provisions as well as scheduling and media protections.

The Basement’s workers are the first escape room actors to successfully unionize.

(THE BASEMENT: A Live Escape Room Experience and Elwood Walker)

“It’s, of course, setting a precedent. A lot of people don’t see working at an escape room as something worthy of being recognized. Sometimes when you say, ‘I’m an actor at an escape room.’ People just say ‘Oh, OK,’” Wagner said. “It feels very validating [to unionize like this] because we are actors. We are performing every day.”

The Basement’s union was formed two years ago. Management, led by founder and chief executive Kayden Ressel, voluntarily recognized its workers’ efforts to join Actors’ Equity. Ressel said he used to work as a scare actor at haunted attractions so he understood where his employees were coming from.

“Their values seemed to be in alignment with what I really wanted my business to be in the first place. So, we were excited” about the union efforts, Ressel said. He’s hoping the finalized contract “will raise the bar” for other escape rooms.

The Sylmar attraction first opened in 2014 and employs 15 people. Across 3,000 square feet, it offers four interactive room choices where groups get to decide between escaping different areas of the haunted house. Live actors are involved in three of the four experiences. (The Basement is one of the few escape rooms to hire actors.) Two other Basement locations can be found in Las Vegas and Kansas City, Mo.

Ressel said he’s considering offering a discount of 10% to 20% for customers who belong to unions.

The popularity of escape rooms in the U.S. goes back to the early 2010s, when interest in interactive experiences was at an all-time high. Today, there are around 75 escape rooms in the L.A. area and more than 2,000 across the country. According to data from the media company Room Escape Artist and the escape room app Morty, the industry stabilized at the current facility count in 2022, after shrinking more than 10% during the pandemic.

The Basement’s workers are the first escape room actors to successfully unionize.

(THE BASEMENT: A Live Escape Room Experience and Elwood Walker)

Noah Nelson, a professor at the California Institute of the Arts and founder of immersive arts publication No Proscenium, said Actors’ Equity’s recognition of the Basement’s workers is a step in the right direction as the union welcomes more nontraditional units.

“There’s something to be said about the value of live entertainment being recognized. It goes beyond the venues that people would traditionally associate with that whether that is a regional theater, a Broadway house or a concert venue,” Nelson said. “There is an industry here that stretches beyond just the big houses, and at the end of the day, I view the signs of organizing in these spaces as nothing but a good sign for the overall health of the industry.”

The Actors’ Equity Assn. was founded in 1913 and is known for representing live performers typically in theatrical productions. In recent years, the definition of live entertainment has expanded, and Actors’ Equity has recognized performers at the Griffith Observatory, Drunk Shakespeare companies and even the dancers at the Star Garden Topless Dive Bar in North Hollywood. There also are ongoing negotiations for Disneyland’s cast members and the entertainers at the Casa Bonita restaurant in Denver.

Stefanie Frey, the director of organizing and mobilization at Actors’ Equity, said in a statement that the union views “escape rooms and similar immersive entertainment experiences as another live stage.” She also said the union expects “others in this growing community will seek out our union for representation.”

Actress Brooke Shields, the president of Actors’ Equity, said, “Negotiating a first contract is always a challenge, and in this case, we had no other unionized escape rooms to use for a model.”

“These workers stuck together through a long process, and seeing what they’ve achieved, I’m sure they agree it was worth it,” she said in a statement. “They have made history for a swiftly growing sector of our industry.”

In its second week of release, the sophomore season of “Paradise” is already at its midpoint. And it just delivered one of the season’s shocking twists with the death of — don’t worry, we won’t spoil it for you.

The post-apocalyptic drama, which dropped its fourth episode this week, has ventured outside bunker life this season as our Secret Service protagonist Xavier (Sterling K. Brown) continues his journey through Atlanta to find his wife — and now, he’s got a baby to keep safe in the process. Meanwhile, back inside the idyllic simulated town in the depths of Colorado, which anchored the first season, things have started to unravel and the fight for control intensifies. And the mastermind behind it all — Samantha “Sinatra” Redmond (Julianne Nicholson), the tech billionaire who set up the bunker town after a massive catastrophe threatened the extinction of the human race — isn’t MIA anymore. Last seen unconscious in a hospital bed after being shot, she’s awake and ready to regain order and control. Nicholson stopped by Guest Spot to talk about what she finds intriguing about her character’s motivations.

Also in this week’s Screen Gab, our recommendations include an ever timely reminder from Anthony Bourdain on the gift and privilege of discovering a new culture and engaging it without judgment, as well as a suburban noir starring a trio of TV heavyweights that spins middle-age malaise, swinging and murder into an addictive tale.

Read on. Then press play and give your thumb a break from all the fast-forwarding you did while watching the wedding episode of this season’s “Love is Blind.” See you next week.

— Yvonne Villarreal

Turn on

Recommendations from the film and TV experts at The Times

Anthony Bourdain visits Havana in 2015 for an episode of “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown.”

(David Scott Holloway / CNN / Turner Entertainment)

“Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown” (HBO Max)

It was Bourdain’s masterpiece, the last and best of his several series, and arguably the greatest travel show ever. Bourdain will occasionally fetch up at some fancy eatery, but the heart of any cuisine is formed on the street, or in the country, or along the sea. As a story of how people live, with a good bit of historical context thrown in, the series is explicitly and implicitly political, philosophical and autobiographical; Bourdain has no time for bigots, fascists or bullies — or, one would imagine, McDonald’s cheeseburgers — but he revels in complexity and contradiction. (See Season 4, Episode 6, “Iran.”) The episode on Massachusetts encompasses clambakes and heroin. “I visited and learned to love many places not my own,” says the host, “cultures and beliefs very different from the Upper East Side of Manhattan.” They include, among many other places, Cuba, Ethiopia, Beirut, Buenos Aires, Hanoi, Sri Lanka, Puerto Rico, Scotland, Borneo, Los Angeles and Hanoi, where he sits down with then-president Barack Obama in a family-run noodle shop. Gorgeously filmed, the series can be heartbreakingly beautiful, and sometimes plain heartbreaking. There are 12 seasons running from 2014 to Bourdain’s death in 2018, and I can’t help but believe that anyone who watches them attentively will come out a better person. — Robert Lloyd

Jason Bateman, Linda Cardellini and David Harbour in “DTF St. Louis.”

(Tina Rowden / HBO)

“DTF St. Louis” (HBO Max)

The true-ish crime series about a deadly love triangle is so wonderfully twisted and unexpectedly deep, it’d be criminal to miss this dark comedy starring David Harbour, Jason Bateman and Linda Cardellini. Initially inspired by a real scandal (covered in the 2017 New Yorker article “My Dentist’s Murder Trial: Adultery, False Identities, and a Lethal Sedation”), it evolved into something else. Set in the suburbs of St. Louis, the seven-part series follows fastidious local news weatherman Clark (Bateman), the TV station’s guileless sign language interpreter Floyd (Harbour) and Floyd’s calculating wife, Carol (Cardellini), as each grapples with a middle-age identity crisis. Seeking to spice up their sex life, the men join the discreet, eponymous hook-up app, and one of them ends up dead. Solving this peculiar whodunit is anything but predictable, and the case consumes seasoned detective Homer (Richard Jenkins) as well as young crimes officer Jodie (Joy Sunday). But it’s the quest for connection among all these misfit characters, including Floyd and Carol’s troubled son Richard (Arlan Ruf ) and an unlikely hookup (Peter Sarsgaard), that makes this series so powerful. — Lorraine Ali

Guest spot

A weekly chat with actors, writers, directors and more about what they’re working on — and what they’re watching

Julianne Nicholson as Sinatra in a scene from Season 2 of “Paradise.”

(Ser Baffo / Disney)

If you see Nicholson on screen, you know things are about to get good. She consistently and compellingly delivers strong performances in some of your favorite films and TV shows, whether she’s expressing both quiet strength and palpable desperation as a mother in “Mare of Easttown” or bringing comedic pizzazz as a social media star in “Hacks.” Her latest captivating performance, in Hulu’s “Paradise,” brings power to a complicated character. She plays Samantha “Sinatra” Redmond, a deeply emotional and eerily ruthless billionaire mastermind responsible for the underground bunker city that grounds the series. Driven by the intense grief of losing a son and a desire to control her environment to protect her family, the character is faced with trying to regain order of the simulated utopia after tension and chaos erupts. Over email, Nicholson shared her thoughts on the morally ambiguous character and the Dustin Hoffman film that brings her comfort. — Yvonne Villarreal

Sinatra is not the usual “villain” in a post-apocalyptic story. Despite her approach, there is an altruistic motive, at least initially, that drives her actions. Which version of her fascinates you the most: pre-global disaster Samantha, who is trying to figure out a way to protect her remaining family, or post-apocalyptic Sinatra, who is closer to facing a reckoning in the aftermath of what she’s created?

I am especially interested in Sinatra after she wakes from the coma. Finding the balance between vulnerability and control. Taking back her power while also recognizing no amount of it or money will necessarily keep herself/her family safe. And then the idea that the bigger picture she’s been working towards the whole time may actually be coming true with the introduction of Link [Thomas Doherty], and who he may be to her, cracks her wide open.

There have been real-life assessments of the power billionaires wield and their influence in the White House — those figures are primarily men. How have those conversations shaped your performance or how you think about the power dynamics of “Paradise’s” fictional world?

I love that Dan Fogelman wrote the most powerful person in the room as a woman. Normalizing women in power can only be a good thing. Even if we don’t necessarily agree with her tactics, she sure is fun to play. I love her take no prisoners/no apologies attitude.

This season Sinatra wakes from her coma and faces a new obstacle in Jane (Nicole Brydon Bloom). What intrigues you about how they play off each other and how Sinatra is navigating the threat Jane may pose?

One of the most fun scenes to play in Season 2 was when Jane is trying to find out what Sinatra remembers of the shooting. The wonderful director, Ken Olin, really encouraged us to make a cat and mouse game of it with neither giving anything away. And I love we don’t ever find out what Sinatra remembers. I think it’s a real case of keep your friend close here. Sinatra realizes Jane is much more valuable as an ally than an adversary.

In “Paradise,” Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson), left, was last seen in a coma after being shot.

(Ser Baffo / Disney)

You delivered a brilliant performance in Season 4 of “Hacks” as TikTok sensation “Dance Mom.” What’s a memory that stands out from filming those scenes? And did you find yourself giving a dance lesson on the set of “Paradise”?

I loved every moment of working on “Hacks.” I loved having dance/choreography sessions with Cory Baker in the run up to filming and the utter absurdity of the “boofing” scene. I also almost lost it when DM was passed out on the stoop on Wisteria Lane and Jimmy [Paul W. Downs] and Kayla [Megan Stalter] come driving around in the golf cart looking for her and shouting, “Dance Mom!” That name alone is so funny to me. Alas, there were no dance lessons in “Paradise.”

What have you watched recently that you are recommending to everyone you know?

I was blown away this year by the film “Sirât.” I recommend but also warn as it is a deeply affecting, intense film and not for the faint of heart. I love its exploration of a world I know nothing about (a traveling rave culture set in Morocco), the humanity in it and the real faces and performances of the actors. [And] its originality and bravery.

What’s your go-to “comfort watch,” the movie or TV show you go back to again and again?

“Tootsie” is one of my favorite films and I can watch that any time. It’s partially nostalgic as I remember watching it in the theater when it came out and I was so taken with NYC at that time. The tall buildings, yellow cabs and hustle and bustle. It’s such a smart comedy with brilliant performances across the board, starting with Dustin Hoffman but each actor is as perfect as the next! So much heart and depth without ever taking itself too seriously. And just very, very funny.

ICYMI

Must-read stories you might have missed

Annabel Schofield, a model who was a fixture in 1980s L.A. nightlife and landed a guest-starring role in the 11th season of the CBS series “Dallas,” has died after a battle with cancer that spread to her brain. She was 62.

Schofield died Saturday in Los Angeles, according to the Hollywood Reporter, which confirmed the news via model and designer Catalina Guirado.

“I hate asking for help,” she wrote in December on a GoFundMe campaign she organized apparently out of necessity. “I’ve done it so much, but I have no choice. I have no other means of support. The small amount I was left by my dad has gone a long time ago, and any unemployment I was due was eaten up by the pandemic. I know begging for help is not sustainable in the long term, but I’m praying this ENT doctor will be able to remove this large tumor and I’ll finally be able to get back to a normal life, and to start working again.”

The final update was from Jan. 18, after she had emergency surgery to remove that tumor, and her mood was one of momentary relief. Boldface names donating to the cause included composer Hans Zimmer, singer-songwriter Donovan Leitch and actor Lisa Edelstein.

Born in Llanelli, Wales, on Sept. 4, 1963, she was the daughter of movie producer John D. Schofield, whose credits included “As Good as It Gets” and “Jerry Maguire.” Schofield started modeling in London, a city she later described to Mirror80 as being on the cutting edge of 1980s fashion with “the New Romantics, the tail end of punk, Vivienne Westwood, Katharine Hamnett, Body Map, Buffalo style … and all the resulting street styles.”

“[I]n London we ALL dressed up, both boys and girls all the time; especially for the clubs,” she told the retro-style outlet in 2012. “I really miss that sartorial creativity. Now it seems that girls just want to show as much flesh as possible.”

She worked with brands including Versace, Yves St. Laurent, Revlon, Avon and Levi’s, according to a biography posted in connection with a novel she wrote, and appeared on more than 60 magazine covers and in more than 120 TV commercials.

Schofield gained international recognition for a late ’80s jeans commercial that had her speeding through the desert in a black Ferrari, then screeching to a stop after spotting a strapping young man standing on the side of the road in jeans and a white T-shirt. Rolling down the passenger-side window, she said, “Excuse me. Are those Bugle Boy jeans you’re wearing?” Getting an affirmative answer, she told the man, “Thank you,” then rolled up her window and sped away, leaving him in the dust.

At the height of her modeling career, THR said, Schofield up and moved from London to L.A. She landed that “Dallas” guest-star gig in 1988. It was only her second acting credit, after a 1982 role in a movie about an adventurer who frees an aquatic monster that forces locals to sacrifice virgins. That movie, “Bloodtide,” was executive produced by her father.

As Laurel Ellis in the nighttime drama, Schofield entranced Clayton Farlow, played by Howard Keel. But there was no romance between their characters: In one episode, Laurel told matriarch Miss Ellie (Barbara Bel Geddes) — who would later marry Clayton — that Clayton was “almost a father figure” to her, and she had simply been trying to show him “what a wonderful man” he was. “Nothing ever happened between us,” Laurel told Miss Ellie.

Off the set of the hit series, “L.A. was having a moment” at that time, event producer David Rodgers told The Times in 2006. “Melrose Avenue was cool, Helmut Newton was out every night with Annabel Schofield, Greg Gorman, Herb Ritts, Sandra Bernhard, Barbara and Timothy Leary and Tina Chow. We saw a different mix then; it wasn’t just about celebrities. No one wore designer clothes. It was about, ‘Are you cool now?’”

Schofield’s other acting credits included lead roles in 1996’s “Exit in Red” with Mickey Rourke and “Midnight Blue” (1997) with Harry Dean Stanton and Dean Stockwell.

After the turn of the millennium, Schofield went behind the camera as a producer for several projects. She also worked as her father’s assistant on movies he executive produced including “The Brothers Grimm,” “Doom” and “How Do You Know.” The last was written and directed by James L. Brooks and starred Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd and Jack Nicholson.

She formed her own boutique production company, Bella Bene Productions, in 2010, and into September 2022 the company was working on short films, events and fashion campaigns, according to Schofield’s posts on Facebook.

That novel she wrote, by the way, was “The Cherry Alignment,” released in late 2013. The semi-autobiographical story “follows the roller-coaster life of the witty, uninhibited and gorgeous Angelika Douglas; a legendary ’80’s supermodel, actress and full-time bon vivant.” Amazon has it filed under “Erotica,” in the “Humorous” sub-category.

Schofield’s friends remembered her fondly, leaving tributes on Instagram over the weekend.

“She was beautiful inside and out: a model, actress, producer, animal lover, warm and weird in the best way possible,” writer and friend Merle Ginsberg wrote Sunday on social media. “She will be so missed. But at least she won’t suffer anymore.”

“RIP Annabel Schofield — an old friend and a truly gifted, beautiful British actress and top model whose career in print, television and film took her from the UK to Hollywood,” British TV producer, journalist and entertainment personality Sean Borg wrote Sunday. “You fought so hard, Annabel. You had such a special light about you. You will be missed by so many. Fly high and rest in peace.”

Shia LaBeouf says he isn’t too keen on seeking treatment to manage his sobriety after his two arrests over a drunken brawl in New Orleans.

The “Megalopolis” and “Holes” actor, 39, denied struggling with alcohol abuse and seemingly took accountability for his violent Mardi Gras behavior in a rambling interview. He spoke with Andrew Callaghan, the journalist best known for his Channel 5 News YouTube page.

“My side is this: My behavior, b—. I got to deal with that,” the former Disney Channel child star said in the interview published Saturday. “Does that mean I got to go to rehab again? I’m just not into it, bro. I don’t think my answers are there.”

A New Orleans judge last week ordered LaBeouf to begin substance abuse treatment and undergo weekly drug testing after he was arrested on suspicion of assaulting two men in the city’s French Quarter. The actor was initially charged with two counts of simple battery in the Feb. 17 brawl, but he racked up an additional charge for the same count on Saturday.

LaBeouf was released from jail shortly after his first arrest on Feb. 17 and posted $100,000 in bond. More than a week later, on Friday, New Orleans Police Department issued a warrant for LaBeouf’s second arrest in connection with the incident, a spokesperson confirmed. The actor turned himself in on Saturday and was released after posting bond again.

“No regular person would be required to post over $100,000 in bonds, and be jailed two separate times for one misdemeanor incident,” attorney Sarah Chervinsky said, according to the Associated Press. “Just as he does not deserve preferential treatment, Mr. LaBeouf also does not deserve to be treated more harshly by the police and courts just because he is a public figure.”

At the beginning of his chat with Callaghan, LaBeouf said he “1,000%” takes responsibility for the altercation and that he “had a great time” on Mardi Gras. A legal representative for LaBeouf — who has yet to enter a formal plea to the charges — did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.

The New Orleans Police Department said its officers responded to a report of an assault on the 1400 block of Royal Street early on Feb. 17. The former “Even Stevens” child star was “causing a disturbance” at the business, leading staff to remove him from the premises, police said. The actor allegedly “used his closed fists” on one of the victims “several times.”

Authorities said LaBeouf left the business but returned, “acting even more aggressive.” According to the incident report, an unspecified number of people tried to subdue him and eventually let him go “in hope that he would leave.” Instead, police said, LaBeouf began assaulting the same man as before, hitting his upper body with closed fists. The actor is accused of punching the second man in the nose.

People held down LaBeouf until officials arrived. He was taken to a hospital, treated for unknown injuries and arrested and charged upon his release.

An additional police report identified a local entertainer as one of LaBeouf’s alleged victims. The “Disturbia” actor, whose history of violent behavior has led to previous arrests and other legal troubles, allegedly threatened the man’s life and shouted homophobic slurs.

LaBeouf told Callaghan that he was drunk and that, leading up to the incident, he “felt infringed upon.” Elsewhere in the conversation, he said, “big gay people are scary to me,” and said he was wary that “three gay dudes are next to me, touching my leg.” He subsequently apologized and owned up to his homophobic comment.

“I wasn’t in my right mind so it’s on me,” he said elsewhere in the interview. “I said words not OK. I’m wrong for what I did.”

“I am wrong for touching anyone, ever and that’s the end of my statement on this whole s—,” he also said.

Additionally, LaBeouf confirmed his separation from “Frankenstein” and “Pearl” star Mia Goth (they share a daughter), discussed his on-and-off sobriety over the years and stated plainly: “I don’t think I have a drinking problem.”

Instead, LaBeouf said he has a “small man complex,” something akin to a Napoleon complex but more “to do with anger and ego more so than my drinking.” For reference, he stands 5 feet 9 inches.

Last week, Orleans Parish Criminal Court Judge Simone Levine shared a different take on LaBeouf’s habits. She alleged the actor “does not take his alcohol addiction seriously.”

Chervinsky said during her client’s court appearance that “being drunk on Mardi Gras is not a crime,” a sentiment LaBeouf echoed to Callaghan.

“I was drunk and it was Mardi Gras,” he said.