Sam Catling lived the dream by ditching a supermarket job for a supposedly fun role as a cruise ship entertainer. He opens up about his day to day life on a cruise ship, the long hours he worked, and how much he took home each month
Sam Catling landed the dream job despite never working on a ship before(Image: Sam Catling)
Working on a cruise ship is the kind of job everyone fantasises about now and again. And when Sam Catling was just 18, he landed what many people would consider a dream role – a cruise ship entertainer.
Sam, now 38, now shares his memories of his time at sea, as well as interviewing others from across the maritime industry in his podcast Deck Tales, and he’s even written a book, Seems Like Smooth Sailing, that gives an unflinching account of what it’s like to work at sea for months on end.
He jokingly refers to himself as a former ‘trolley wally’ and says his CV consisted of a paper round and a job collecting trollies at Asda when family members suggested he’d be a great cruise ship entertainer. His mum and granny had just come back from a cruise and had chatted to onboard entertainers about how they got into the role, before suggesting the idea to the outgoing Sam.
He spoke about how he managed to land the role, despite his lack of previous boating experience: “I used to get The Stage magazine delivered to my newsagent on a weekly basis, and I kept looking through the ads, and eventually I saw one that said ‘now receiving applications for entertainment hosts’ so I applied.
“The first question was ‘What previous experience do you have working in entertainment?’, and eventually I wrote ‘Ive had extensive experience pushing trolleys around Asda car park for the past two years’.”
With a drama GCSE and a few workshops under his belt, Sam soon found himself in Gibraltar on a boat that was in dry dock, attending two weeks of rehearsals as the ship was refurbished. In addition to entertainers such as himself, who did events from game shows to karaoke, there were a show team with West End-style performers who Sam said were a “triple threat” with dancing, singing, and acting skills.
The job was gruelling, with Sam revealing he worked seven days a week. Visits home were extremely rare, crew stayed on the ship the duration of their contracts, which for Sam’s first cruise was six months. The days were long too, with Sam admitting he became “quite the social drinker” due to his schedules requiring him to sit down and socialise with guests.
His shifts would often finish past midnight, and he’d head to the crew bar after work until 2am, before getting up at 7am to face the next day. Sam said he became skilled at power napping: “Between your different activities that you’d host I was down in my cabin having a power nap. If I had an indoor cabin I’d just close the door and you were in pitch black darkness, so it was really easy to just have a 30 minute nap.” But he admitted: “You wouldn’t know what time of day it was because you’re cutting out all the sunlight.”
His accommodation was included, as was food and expenses, and Sam said: “You’re not paying rent, your food’s taken care of, you’ve no heating and electric and gas bills and all of that stuff. It’s all taken care of, which is nice! You don’t have to worry about all those things. But then you are spending money when you go ashore, you know, going to eat out, because after a couple of weeks of being on board you are sick of the food.”
Sam revealed that, when he worked on ships around 2006, he was taking home about £1,200 to £1,300 a month from working seven days a week. Accommodation was shared, and Sam said only managers and the top talent such as the main singers in the shows would get their own cabins.
Despite this salary being representative of a job over 20 years ago, cruise ships don’t pay much more now. According to career site prospects.ac.uk, which advises students on employment routes, those with little experience shouldn’t expect big money for their long hours: “Entry-level cruise ship jobs, such as hospitality, housekeeping, retail, or waiting staff positions, typically pay around £1,000 to £1,500 per month, often with accommodation and meals included.”
But it claims that experienced crew can get decent salaries at sea: “With experience and progression into specialist or management roles, salaries can rise to between £2,000 and £4,000 per month. Senior officers, entertainment managers, engineers, and technical staff may earn considerably more.”
Sam worked on cruise ships for four years, and nowadays he runs his podcast, which he describes as his “passion” with over 60 episodes available, as well as taking on handyman jobs and occasionally working as a TV extra.
“I want to continue doing this until I’m an old man, because there’s 70% of the planet that’s covered in ocean, so I don’t think I’m going to run out of guests anytime soon. The podcast started with just being a platform for cruise ship crew, but now it’s something else. It’s cargo ship captains, I’ve spoken to a pirate, I’ve had a deep sea salvage scuba diver and tugboat captains.”
He added: “I just really wanted to drill down into something unique and authentic, and within a specific niche that people might not know about; the stories at sea that most people don’t hear. The public might not have an interest in ships, but people are still people, and the stories that happen at sea are there for everyone to hear about.”
Kids’ favourite TV character Bob the Builder – complete with a voice over by actor Neil Morrissey – has been hired to encourage more people to learn green energy skills
Bob the Builder has returned for a one-off advert in his original stock motion form (Image: E.on)
Much-loved cartoon character Bob the Builder is making a return in his original form after 15 years – to plug green energy.
The kids TV favourite, voiced by Men Behaving Badly actor Neil Morrissey, appears in a new advert from energy giant E.on.
And he also reveals what he has been doing since the original stop motion version of the show ended in 2011, including taking up yoga, bird watching and travelling to Australia.
It is Down Under, so the new story goes, that Britain’s best known tradesman twigs the importance of green energy, such as solar panels and home batteries. On returning home, he decides to learn the skills needed to fit the new kit, with the advert ending with his famous catchphrase: “Can we fix it? Yes we can.”
The 90 second piece, which will run across E.ON UK’s social media channels, is designed to encourage many more people to learn the same type of skills.
It comes as new research commissioned by the company found that around one third of professionals in the UK energy sector believe the workforce is not yet fully equipped to install the technologies needed for the transition to green energy.
At the same time, 89% agree that greater investment and closer collaboration between government and industry are needed. And the vast majority say that upskilling the existing workforce will be just as important as attracting new talent to meet future demand.
Helen Bradbury, chief people officer at E.ON UK, said: “Bob the Builder has always inspired people to solve problems and build things that matter. Today, those same qualities are needed to help deliver the UK’s transition to clean power.
“By embracing green skills and fronting this campaign, he’s a shining example of how we can make new energy work for everyone.
“If we invest in people’s homes, we can build a new energy system from the ground up. One that uses low-carbon, connected technologies like solar panels and batteries to put customers back in control of their energy use and lower their bills.”
The reporter may have misheard the comment, or maybe the person being quoted actually said it, or something odd happened in the editing process.
For the record:
4:45 p.m. Sept. 9, 2026A previous version of the story misspelled the name of the curator of a new exhibit at the California Museum in Sacramento. His name is Sean Manwaring.
Whatever: This is what appeared in the Feb. 20, 1985 edition of the Oakland Tribune, quoting a UC Berkeley professor about a protest against immigration sweeps in the Bay Area.
“This probably won’t stop the Iron Ass [federal government] from making raids in the Eastbay.”
“Iron Ass” is how someone might hear the acronym INS, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the forerunner to ICE.
And now, 40 years on, it fits right into the kind of angry, derisory language many Americans use for the present-day hammer-handed operations of federal immigration officers, around the country, especially here in California.
California has always been — and that’s a couple of centuries of “always” — at the fulcrum of the immigration-deportation seesaw in the U.S., with national policies yo-yoing between kicking workers out and inviting them in. Consider the foreign-born who joined the Gold Rush, the Chinese railroad workers, and still and always the Latino population along the long, wide international border.
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That underlies the name of a new exhibition at the California Museum in Sacramento, “Help Wanted/Leave Now!” about the “revolving door” of programs and practices that have alternately enticed and expelled workers, legal and undocumented.
The U.S. border with Mexico represents a political borderline but it cannot sever many decades of complicated history and culture. And it’s left us with endless paradoxes and contradictions of who belongs where, with the U.S. government shifting to and fro on deciding and enforcing that, depending on the American economy, and American politics.
Sean Manwaring is curator of the exhibit. “We have historically recruited foreign workers who set down roots, become members of the community, and then, when there’s an economic downturn or it becomes politically expedient, it’s kind of a revolving door.”
The endless argument is that undocumented immigrants, who work for less because of their needs and their vulnerability, take jobs that Americans will, or that Americans won’t do. Something else Americans won’t do: pay higher prices for food, 90 years ago or now.
Last year, the Kansas City Federal Reserve bank, one of 12 regional Feds, noted on its website, “Historically, the supply of U.S.-born farm workers has not been sufficient to meet demand for farm jobs at the going wage rate, contributing to a largely foreign-born workforce.” Even the H-2A legal process for hiring seasonal foreign workers “would likely be more expensive than employing undocumented workers.”
A 1924 immigration law that created the Border Patrol also revealingly put it under the control of the federal labor department. Cheaper Mexican workers had been welcomed during World War I, and were still coming north more casually back then, even as a U.S. labor group was beginning to agitate for organizing American migrant farmworkers.
But when the 1929 market crash and the Depression knifed the American economy, the blame for unemployment in the southwest and California in particular fell on these Mexicans, and the government’s “Mexican Repatriation” program sent hundreds of thousands back to Mexico, some voluntarily, some not, and some numbers of them American citizens.
Once, border migration patterns resembled a loop: thousands of laborers, mostly men, commuted here once or twice a year from Mexico to jobs in the fields, then on to other jobs once harvests were over. Then they’d take their earnings home to Mexico as breadwinners and comparatively rich men, and stay until the next year’s season.
But as U.S. policies over decades squeezed the border shut on this back-and-forth commuting, some workers chose to stay on the side of the border where they could find work, and a number brought their families north to settle, legally or otherwise.
Oct. 15, 1963: Mexican workers in the bracero program work in pepper fields in the Firebaugh area in Fresno County. This image is from the Los Angeles Times Archive at UCLA.
(Bill Murphy / Los Angeles Times)
And then that pendulum swung again. In 1942, Americans by the millions left their peacetime jobs for the war and wartime industries, and the “Bracero” program — from “brazo,” the Spanish word for “arm” — filled in the gaps in the domestic workforce with contracts for employers of Mexican workers, usually in agriculture or on railroads.
Under the program, the U.S. screened Mexicans for aptitude for the work, and for attitude. Manwaring shared with me the notes of Henry P. Anderson, a historian and farm labor organizer, who took a guided tour of a Calexico bracero processing center in 1958:
“Those deemed expendable were described one at a time: this one is too tall, he is too ‘cocky,’ that one a ‘loafer,’ another ‘lazy and irresponsible,’ he’s a ‘smart aleck,’ this one a ‘ladykiller’ and not ‘peon’ enough. On the other hand the ‘right man,’ according to the guide, was ‘built right. He’s a farm worker, you can tell that … he hasn’t got any big ideas. He’s got the right attitude. He’s humble, not fresh and cocky. He’s an Indian type, probably from Jalisco or Guanajuato.’”
Feb. 1, 1954: Unpublished photo from the Mexicali border crossing during the bracero program. Not known if these men are entering or leaving United States.
(Frank Q. Brown / Los Angeles Times)
Through the bracero program’s 22-year span, as many as 4 million workers came in and presumably went home — though not always; a generation of families came here, or were born here, and stayed. About 15 years after it ended, a former Texas labor commissioner and ranking Labor Department official overseeing the program went public. He characterized wages for braceros as unconscionably low, the food substandard and the housing prison-like. “It was not altruistic at all. The bracero program was definitely created by the farmer who needed to make a dollar.”
And then America’s policy yo-yoed again: in 1953, even as the bracero program was still operating, the federal government launched “Operation Wetback,” to rid the country of undocumented immigrants.
With its heavy-handed “sweeps” of labor camps and factories, American citizens were indiscriminately caught up in the operations, just as ICE is doing now.
Consider the breezy tone of a 1931 story in the Los Angeles Evening Citizen News, reporting on 1,200 Mexicans deported from L.A. County in a day, with the casual note that “virtually none of them” was “an undesirable alien — many are American citizens.”
“L.A. was really ground zero for these raids during Operation Wetback and the Mexican deportation,” said Manwaring. Those 1,200 deportees were among at least 50,000 deported from LA County in five months of 1931 — as much as a third of the county’s Mexican and Mexican American population.
Emilia Castaneda was no more than 10 years old when her Boyle Heights family was deported in the 1930s. In an archival videotaped interview made when she was in her late 70s or 80s, and now part of the exhibition, she remembered being teased by the girls in the parochial school she ended up attending in Mexico. “You’re not one of us,” they mocked her. “Go home.”
Just like today, as agriculture and other food chain businesses were hard-hit by Trump’s aggressive deportations, some industries and regions in earlier “sweeps” also asked for carve-outs and exemptions.
“I wouldn’t say there was a backlash but it really impacted agricultural networks across California and Arizona,” said Manwaring. “We came across specific requests from county officials like in Yuma, Arizona, asking for exceptions because they needed these workers, they didn’t have enough help.”
What’s called the Texas Proviso was a wink-and-nudge agribusiness-friendly federal loophole crafted in the early 1950s that for more than 30 years made it a crime to harbor or transport undocumented immigrants — but not a crime to hire them. (Federal law criminalized that in 1986.)
From the Los Angeles Times, June 18, 1954 front page headline: 500 Nabbed by L.A. Wetback Raiders.
(Los Angeles Times)
The 1950s enforcement drive also put the word “wetback” into casual use. Official statements and news stories used it to mean anyone here without documentation. It was derived from the people who waded across Texas’ Rio Grande into the U.S., but it was sometimes used interchangeably with any Latino workers. Sometimes it just got clipped to “wets.”
In 1961, as astronaut Alan Shepard sat aboard his Redstone rocket waiting to become the first American launched in space, hours of delays forced him to urinate in his space suit. “Well,” he remarked nonchalantly, “I’m a wetback now.”
Not much has changed. Court records released this July confirmed that ICE agents had been referring to immigrants during raids with such slurs as “wet” and “tonk,” the last term reportedly derived from the sound an agent’s utility flashlight makes when hitting a migrant’s head.
A 1956 crime drama called “Wetbacks” was a B picture about a human smuggling ring victimizing the undocumented. The Los Angeles Examiner’s movie reviewer called it a “tedious, amateurishly made picture [that] supposedly deals with how illegal Mexican immigrants are smuggled into this country.”
One of the paradoxes of these periodic anti-undocumented worker campaigns is how they divided Latino communities: the “I did it the right way” people who managed to get visas, the people whose forebears may have come illegally but are now themselves established, and the paperless people who have just arrived, or who have lived here for years under the radar.
Cesar Chavez with Richard Ybarra during the 1973 Coachella Grape Strike.
(Richard Ybarra)
César Chávez lived that paradox. The co-founder of the United Farm Workers — along with Dolores Huerta, an advisor on this exhibition — was a U.S. citizen. In the 1960s and into the 1970s, he wanted immigration officials to keep out undocumented workers, believing they’d be exploited as strikebreakers for growers and erode his union’s bargaining power. By the 1980s, though, he was endorsing immigration reform and protections, especially in the face of President Reagan’s recession-era 1982 “Operation Jobs” sweeps.
A Los Angeles Times survey that same year found that within three months of those raids, 80% of the booted-out workers were back on the job. Many of the Americans hired to replace them soon quit. They didn’t like the wages or the working conditions.
The employment manager of B.P. John furniture maker, in Santa Ana, told The Times, 75 of the American-born workers soon quit on him. “They told me they found another job, that the work was too hard, that there wasn’t enough pay.”
In June 1954, The Times covered the Border Patrol’s plans for L.A. Herman Landon, the local immigration chief, described a “stockade” being built in Elysian Park to “imprison illegal Mexicans flushed out” of factories, hotels, and “skid row saloons” at the rate of a thousand or two per day.
Farmers had once requested immigrant workers from smugglers by the truckload, and counted by “the head,” like livestock. When the feds moved in, workers were deported south of the border, sometimes far south, by bus, by ship, by plane. The feds briefly charged each worker $10 each for the cost of being deported.
The caption of a June 1952 photo in the McAllen, Texas, Evening Monitor that showed men boarding a deportation plane read, “It’s a quick bite to eat then off into the wild blue yonder for these wetbacks.” The newspaper offered a $5 prize in a contest to name the airborne deportations. Not all readers were cheering. One acidly suggested calling it “Truman’s Gestapo Airlift.”
The human numbers for any of these programs, coming in or kicking out, are hardly ever confirmed, but over all this time we are talking about the movement of millions — and the deaths, still uncounted.
Trump said he always planned to model his deportations on the Eisenhower-era operation.
“We’re rounding them up in a very humane way, a very nice way,” Trump told “60 Minutes.”
In July 1954, under Eisenhower, 88 workers died of sunstroke in the desert below Calexico, where they’d been deported.
A poster size photo in San Pedro of Alex Pretti, a registered nurse who was fatally shot by ICE agents in Minneapolis.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
In the first 17 months of the second Trump administration, at least 52 people died in ICE custody. ICE agents have shot and killed at least six more people, some in their cars, and some right out in public, like Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, and Keith Porter Jr., shot last New Year’s Eve in front of his L.A. apartment building by an off-duty ICE agent.
The deaths recall a deportation sweep in 1948, when a plane carrying 28 workers back to Mexico, with a crew of four, caught fire and crashed near Coalinga. The press coverage then identified the crew but not the dead Mexican workers, whose individual stories were finally told 70 years later in Tim Z. Hernandez’s book “All They Will Call You.”
The grave marker for the Mexican nationals killed in a 1948 plane crash did not include their names.
(Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times)
The title is a line from Woody Guthrie’s celebrated song “Deportees,” about the crash, and what it signified in a nation that used and used up its foreign workers, and it ends like this:
“Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?/Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?/To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil/And be called by no name except ‘deportees’?”
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Monty Don recently quit Gardener’s World after more than two decades but has now landed something new, teaming up with one of the most famous footwear brands in the country
22:53, 10 Sep 2026Updated 22:53, 10 Sep 2026
Mont Don has landed a new job after quitting Gardeners’ World (Image: ACN / New Balance)
Monty Don has landed a new job just days after quitting Gardener’s World. The TV star,71, is best known for having fronted the BBC agricultural programme, and on air for more than two decades.
“Created as a dedicated space for rest, reflection and connection, the garden brought New Balance’s manufacturing heritage with Burnham’s distinctive creative language and longstanding relationship with the natural world.”
Just days ago, the presenter said the time had come for change and he was ready for his next adventure, but promised his fans that the move does not signal the end of his TV career.
Monty said: “I have decided that the current series of Gardeners’ World is to be my last. I began hosting the programme 23 years ago, first at Berryfields and for the past 16 years here in my own garden, Longmeadow.
“Throughout that time – and around seven hundred programmes – I have had the privilege of sharing my own abiding passion for gardens and gardening with an equally passionate, and often equally knowledgeable audience.
“That connection with millions, not just in Britain but across the world, who share a love of gardens, plants and the natural world is something I have always treasured and which I increasingly believe to be at the heart of a life well lived.
“I have also always relished the craft of programme making and to do so, week in week out, as part of a superlative BBC team has been a deeply rewarding experience. But now is the right time for a change.
“I look forward to continuing to work with and for the BBC on other projects, as well as following new avenues. There are more books to write, more programmes to make. And of course, I will still be gardening, dog by side, here at Longmeadow.”
Born in Germany and raised in England, Monty made his television debut on This Morning in 1989 after his home garden was featured in several publications. After repeat appearances, he got additional TV work on BBC shows Holiday and Tomorrow’s World.
He also began putting his ideas and tips into words, and has published over 25 books since 1990. In 2002, he was recommended by Alan Titchmarsh to replace him as the lead presenter of Gardeners’ World. Monty then became the first self-taught horticulturist presenter in the show’s history.
Strictly Come Dancing’s new hosts were summoned to a shock zoom call at short notice which meant Emma Willis was sat on the loo when she was told she was told she had a new job.
Johannes Radebe, Emma Willis and Josh Widdicombe in the promo for the new Strictly series.(Image: Guy Levy/BBC/PA Wire)
Comedian Josh Widdecombe was in grave danger of giving away the news he was a new Strictly Come Dancing host whilst it was top secret – after finding out the news whilst walking around a cemetery.
Stand up star Josh, 43, revealed the bizarre moment as he and co-hosts Emma Willis and Johannes Radebe were quizzed in a new podcast. And he wasn’t the only one being given the life changing news in a weird place, with Emma flushed with the success of a new job whilst in the toilet at her hairdressers.
The trio said after their final audition they had to wait around two weeks before they were summoned to a zoom call at short notice by BBC execs.
Emma said: “We were all in very random places. But we also didn’t know the call was happening did we? It was a very weird situation.
“The reason it kept getting put back was because I was at the hairdressers.
“I was like this could be an either way Zoom so I’m not going to get excited. And I said ‘I can’ [go on a call] but literally I’m just I’m having my hair washed. And she said okay okay.
“And then they took ages washing my hair. And they’re like ‘do you want a massage?’ I’m like ‘no no just crack on’.
“She[show boss] said can you go somewhere private? And I said the only place I can go is outside in the street or in the loo.
“So I was sat on a toilet at the hairdressers.”
Johannes was at his home when he was on the same call waiting to head out to do a stage show, and then there was also Josh who was desperately trying to find a quiet spot.
Josh explained: “I was in Birmingham because I was on tour. So I was sat in a graveyard in Birmingham because I wanted somewhere quiet.”
Looking back on the moment he knew he had the job, he added: “I didn’t like stand up and go ‘yes’ because obviously it wasn’t public then either.
“Not that anyone would have gone ‘wait a minute, he got the Strictly gig – that guy punching the air by the grave’.”
Speaking on The Rest Is Entertainment podcast, the trio also explained the role of Johannes on the show, and denied previous reports he would act as a ‘roving reporter’ with the other two as main hosts.
The trio, who start fronting the show later this month, are replacing Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman who previously hosted the BBC hit series together for 11 years.
Emma said: “There’s no like for like, so no one’s kind of replacing anybody and at the minute it’s all very kind of open. We’re having lots of production days where we go in and we play around and we’re kind of feeling each other out – well, they’re feeling us out really.”
Josh Widdicombe: “It’s going to be like total football. We’re going to be moving everywhere.”
And Emma added: “There’s definitely no backstage roving reporter, which is what has been reported quite a bit. That’s not a thing.”
* The full interview is on The Rest Is Entertainment Podcast out today.
Bruce Davis spent more than two decades as the motion picture academy’s chief executive. Even when he retired in 2011, it was not because he didn’t still love the work. In fact, he kept at it in retirement, retaining an office at the Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study where he focused on writing a definitive history of the early days of the Oscars.
“I don’t think I’ve been bored for a minute in 30 years here,” Davis told the Associated Press upon leaving the academy. “I feel like such a rube sometimes. To this day, when I get out of the car on Oscar night and step up there onto that carpet, you get that rush of energy. The lights are popping — not that anybody’s aiming at me — but still I think it’s one of the great rushes, emotionally speaking, that a person can have.”
Following a battle with leukemia, Davis died Saturday. He was 83.
Davis’ career at the academy was, according to wife Joann, partly a matter of being in the right place at the right time.
“Not that he wasn’t really good at what he did,” she says by phone. “But he was also a lucky man.”
Davis was working as chair of the theater department at Juniata College in Pennsylvania when he and Joann loaded all of their belongings atop their Mazda GLC and headed to Los Angles in pursuit of Hollywood dreams. Davis had been working on a few screenplays while teaching, and his agent told him needed to move closer to the action to network and take meetings.
“Neither of us had jobs when we left Pennsylvania,” Joann says. “We just bit the bullet and drove out. It was a leap of faith.”
Shortly after arriving, Davis met someone at a party whose wife worked at the motion picture academy. That soon led to Davis taking a job arranging lectures and seminars and, later, overseeing the organization’s public programming.
Davis became the academy’s seventh executive director in 1989, leading it through a sizable expansion of staff, relocating the academy’s Margaret Herrick Library to the Beverly Hills Waterworks building in 1991 and setting up its film archive at the Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study in 2002.
“Bruce would drive back and forth to work and see that Waterworks building at the time that they were looking for places for the library to expand,” Joann says. “And one day, it just occurred to him that maybe that would be a building, and so initiated conversation with Beverly Hills. It was kismet.”
Davis had hoped to build an academy museum next to the Pickford, convincing the group’s board of governors to purchase a nearby 3.5-acre site in 2006 for a reported $50 million, but the 2008 recession derailed those plans. His successor, Dawn Hudson, led the push to partner with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, eventually building the museum at the former May Co. building at Wilshire and Fairfax. It opened in 2021.
“That way, best picture reflects the choice of the greatest number of people,” Davis told The Times.
Davis’ Oscar book, “The Academy and the Award,” was first published in 2022, long after he originally anticipated it would hit stores.
“He thought a couple months of research, a couple more months to write it, and voila, in two years, he’d have it done,” Joann says. “But he kept finding new things he wanted to explore.”
Shortly before it published, Davis told The Times that he hoped the book would dispel myths surrounding the Oscars, including Susan Orlean’s assertion in her Rin Tin Tin biography that the dog received more votes than any male actor at the first Academy Awards and that Bette Davis gave the golden statue its nickname because its backside mirrored that of her then-husband Harmon Oscar Nelson.
“There’s a lot of nonsense out there,” Davis said, “and the real story is almost always more interesting.”
“He was deeply committed to preserving the academy’s history, establishing dedicated homes for our library and film archive, and relaunching the concept of creating a museum,” current academy CEO Bill Kramer and President Lynette Howell Taylor said in a statement. “He had a profound love for the academy.”
Davis loved to read and collect books, devouring anything from John Updike and Margaret Atwood, among other authors, a passion that necessitated having bookshelves in every room of his home. Language itself was an obsession, with many family dinners ending with Davis pulling out his unabridged Oxford English Dictionary to share the derivation of a word.
“He was a really fascinating guy,” Joann says.
Perhaps the only thing Davis didn’t like about the Oscars was the ceremony’s annual in memoriam segment, which pays tribute to those who died in the previous year.
“It is the single most troubling element of the Oscar show every year,” Davis told the Associated Press, “because more people die each year than can possibly be included in that segment.”
Next year’s ceremony now has one certain addition.
In addition to Joann, Davis is survived by four daughters: Brangien Davis, Alexandra Davis, Archer Davis and Roxanne Davis.
Thousands of union workers, their family members and supporters marched through the streets of industrial Wilmington on Monday, taking part in a Labor Day parade whose festive mood overshadowed their serious concerns about the future.
Jesse Munoz, a 63-year-old longshoreman, who belongs to International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 13, talked of how automation has eliminated more than 2,000 jobs over the last 15 years or so and worries that foreign-owned companies will do more to shrink the workforce and worsen working conditions.
“The concern is the future,” Munoz said. “I have a son that’s on a list to become a casual worker, which is a worker that will accumulate his hours, and then hopefully within time become a regular member of the union. But the future is not as promising as we would like it to be.”
“If you eliminate the workforce, you eliminate taxes. You eliminate pensions,” he said.
International Longshore and Warehouse Union members throw candy to onlookers at Monday’s Labor Day parade.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
The Wilmington rally joined Labor Day events throughout the nation Monday, a holiday that also marks a prime campaign opportunity for candidates in midterm elections and other political races.
The first U.S. Labor Day celebration took place in New York City on Sept. 5, 1882, with 10,000 marchers. In 1894, President Cleveland signed a congressional act establishing the first Monday of September as a legal holiday, which has become known for promotional sales as well as a day off for many.
The holiday has particular resonance in Southern California, where the labor movement remains large in numbers and powerful in political influence. Across the nation, that’s far from a given.
The number of workers represented by unions rose by 463,000 in 2025, according to data collected by the pro-labor American Prospect, and national density — meaning the number of U.S. workers who are unionized — edged from 9.9% to 10.0%. However, private-sector union density stayed at 5.9%, meaning the numerical gain came chiefly from government employment.
Munoz said he has a message for President Trump, who has used steep tariffs on foreign-made goods in an attempt to return more manufacturing to the United States, leading to price increases domestically.
“Stop those tariffs and stop this automation,” Munoz said. “Just get the people back to work. Help the economy build itself up again with the workers, not with politicians.”
Giovanna Mendez, right, hugs her sibling’s elementary school teacher during the Labor Day parade in Wilmington.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
While the Wilmington crowd was heavily Democratic, one longshoreman in his early 60s showed it was possible to be pro-labor and pro-Trump.
“We’re a lot better than when [President] Biden was in, way better,” said the worker, who also spoke of his union as “wonderful.”
Jordan Gonzales, a 20-year longshoreman, expressed worries about the future of trade work.
“A lot of people would rather be in the office and in the AC,” said Gonzales. “We’ve lost our workers that are outside of an office.”
He was enjoying a hearty free breakfast at a union hall and looking forward to his 12-year-old’s marching band performance in the parade, where she played a glockenspiel.
Participating school bands included San Pedro High, Banning High, Harry Bridges Middle, Port of Los Angeles High and Garfield High.
Delegations from many unions marched with their local chapters and a procession of restored and souped-up cars completed the picture. L.A. Mayor Bass was front and center behind the banner of the shore workers.
Politicians at work on Labor Day
In the pre-parade free breakfast inside the Longshoremen’s & Warehousemen’s Memorial Assn. cavernous meeting hall, a parade of elected and aspiring politicians introduced themselves, straining to be heard and noticed in brief remarks over a sometimes inattentive din.
Xavier Becerra, the Democratic candidate for California governor spoke briefly, thanking union members for their daily labors and campaign support.
“None of us should forget where we came from,” Becerra said. “Let us work hard,” he said, referring to election day. “November 3rd belongs to us just the way Labor Day belongs to us.”
Also on hand were both Los Angeles mayoral candidates: incumbent Bass and challenger Nithya Raman.
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1.L.A. Mayor Karen Bass speaks to security during the Labor Day parade in Wilmington.2.L.A. mayoral candidate Nithya Raman greets parade watchers.(Photographs by Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
Bass praised the city and union movement for positive strides “even in the midst of Donald Trump, who has done everything he can do against working people, including invading our city, but we are back, and we stay united, and we’re going to continue to do that,” she said. “L.A. is a labor city, and I am there with you 100%.”
Labor leaders also are almost 100% behind her in terms of endorsements. One exception is the Western States Regional Council of Carpenters, which endorsed Raman. The union represents about 65,000 members across 10 states.
“We need more housing in L.A.,” said Doug Hicks, the union’s vice president and director of organizing. “How many cranes are there in downtown Los Angeles today?”
In her brief breakfast remarks, Raman, an L.A. City councilmember, said that “automation, AI, are taking away jobs all over this country, and it is up to us to step up and fight back, and that is why I’m here to stand alongside the workers of this country.”
Master carpenter Joseph W., who did not want to give his last name, declined to speak about endorsements, focusing instead on the challenges of workers.
“We build the houses, but we can’t buy them,” he said. In 1977, his dad bought a house in Norwalk in 1977 for less than $50,000. Now that property is worth close to a million dollars.
“That’s 20 times what my dad paid for it,” said Joseph, who is 55 and rents his own home. “I don’t make 20 times what my dad got paid.”
The younger workers included members of ILWU Local 56, the “ship scalers” union, which cleans up hazardous materials and provides environmental remediation both in the ports and beyond. Its members were involved in wildfire cleanups and removing waste from the hazardous Lineage warehouse fire in Boyle Heights in June.
Two members of the Western States Regional Council of Carpenters bump fists after Monday’s Labor Day parade.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
Evan Briseno, 18, would like to move on to safer work before his health is potentially affected. But fellow union member Francisco, 21 — who declined to give his last name, wants to move up in the trade, while noting that some areas are so dangerous that every patch of skin needs to be covered.
Neither follows politics, but they’re both concerned with workplace safety issues.
Other unions included Teamsters, Service Employees International, SAG-AFTRA (for performers) and teachers — along with their students.
Mark Ramos wore multiple hats as chair of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party and president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Western States Council and UFCW Local 1428.
Ramos said one current union battle is to make self-serve checkout lines manageable for the workers who must supervise them.
The exterior of the two-story, beige-colored building looks like any other drab office space near the Hollywood Burbank Airport. But on a recent weekday afternoon, the inside was bustling with activity: hairstylists carried brightly colored wigs between soundstages, a prop artist was building a fake leg for an upcoming video and YouTube stars gathered in a lobby, fidgeting with their phones while they waited to film their next scene.
They were among more than 100 employees of Smosh Productions, which this spring moved into the 32,000-square-foot facility, from a much smaller location in the city, to accommodate their programming needs.
It’s the latest creator-run company deepening its roots in Burbank, a neighborhood long defined by such iconic studios as Disney,Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures.
Other influencer-led companies that have expanded production footprints in the city include Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal’s Mythical Entertainment and Alan Chikin Chow.
“Being ‘Media City’ is a part of Burbank’s tagline. And it’s still true; we are just a different kind of media,” said Katelyn Hempstead, Smosh’s executive coordinator, on a tour of the new facility.
Shoot days for digital productions rose 47% in the second quarter to 661 compared with the same period a year ago — even as the overall number of on-location shoot days dropped 13% during that period, according to FilmLA, the nonprofit group that tracks local filming.
“When people have an opportunity to work for a few days on a vertical series or [when] they make an income out of being an influencer and producing regular content for their various social channels, that does help the economy,” said Philip Sokoloski, a spokesman for FilmLA. “They still purchase things. They still utilize equipment. They may rent things from local supply houses.”
Cameras inside the “Who Meme’d It?” studio at Smosh Studios in Burbank.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
Burbank has more than 1,000 media and entertainment companies that generate about 66,000 jobs.
Although the city does not give a breakdown of jobs by category, the creator economy has fueled some of the growth in the city’s entertainment employment over the last six years, said Patrick Prescott, Burbank’s community development director.
Most occupy flexible industrial space in the Airport district, leasing space for $1.65 to $2.81 a square foot, he said.
“It’s definitely a transitional period,” Prescott said. “There’s still something really valuable about sitting in a theater with a bunch of other people. But there’s also a lot of scrolling going on. Who’s generating that content? A lot of it’s generated here.”
Filmmakers work in the theater set at Dhar Mann Studios.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Due to anemic production activity, soundstages across L.A. have struggled to fill their studio spaces. That has opened up opportunities for new types of internet productions to fill at least some of the gap, said Sam Glendon, an industrial broker who’s handled several such deals. Creators building out their own space can pick up a discounted soundstage as a result, he said.
“There’s been this big supply-and-demand imbalance,” Glendon said. “It’s still a very niche type of clientele, but I’m certainly searching YouTube much more for who these people are and how many followers they have. Five years ago, I never did that.”
Controlling a studio matters to creators because it lets them move fast without a major studio’s bureaucracy, and platforms such as YouTube reward a steady, frequent posting cadence.
Alan Chikin Chow, behind the scripted YouTube high school drama series “Alan’s Universe,” moved his 13-person operation into a 10,000-square-foot Burbank facility in 2024 after outgrowing his Koreatown apartment.
“YouTube creators are the new trendsetters, and so we wanted to be associated with the big media in Burbank,” said Moris Zingman, the show’s lead producer. Proximity to the Warner Bros. lot helps land celebrity guests, too — Jacob Moncrief, Mythical’s studio president, said it’s an easy sell for shows like “Last Meals” when guests are already a few minutes away.
Filmmakers rehearse a scene in the restaurant set at Dhar Mann Studios.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Traditional media have taken note. Mythical Entertainment and Alan Chikin Chow both struck deals with Netflix in July. “Good Mythical Morning,” “Mythical Kitchen,” “Last Meals” and “Alan’s Universe” are all set to stream there alongside their YouTube releases starting later this year.
Dhar Mann Studios, one of Burbank’s biggest creator-run operations, added a deal with Disney last week for 20 episodes of family-oriented programming — its second major-studio partnership after a 40-title vertical-video deal with Fox Entertainment earlier this year.
Mann, 42, started making YouTube content in 2018 under the Dhar Mann Studios banner, centered around morality and motivational videos. The company now runs a 125,000-square-foot, three-soundstage facility with roughly 220 employees producing rotating sets — restaurants, school hallways, a courtroom, jail visitation rooms — designed to mimic a small town.
But Dhar Mann Studios doesn’t own its Burbank building — it leases the space — and this month the company bought a 108,000-square-foot production campus in Chatsworth for $23 million, with plans to relocate there by 2027, the Real Deal reported.
It’s the same pattern playing out across L.A.’s creator economy.
“The scale that creators have gotten to is ginormous,” said Sean Atkins, Dhar Mann Studios’ chief executive. “Media companies are always looking at what the next thing is. The answer isn’t that they become us or we become them. It’s somewhere in the messy middle, of which nobody knows right now.”
Most internet content work is mostly non-union and typically pays less than traditional film and TV jobs. SAG-AFTRA and the Motion Picture Editors Guild have started drafting new-media-specific contracts in response.
Even so, some workers welcome the opportunity.
Austin Scott, an editor who built a career cutting reality shows like “MasterChef” and “Dancing With the Stars,” recently landed his first big gig after three years of being unable to find post-production work, editing a YouTube series for Kevin Hart’s Hartbeat. Over eight weeks, he’ll work 12-hour days for $3,500 a week — below the $5,000 to $6,000 a typical TV editing job pays.
“My expectations are that it’s going to be harder work, longer hours, more notes, less money,” Scott said. “But there’s no work, so people are kind of forced to take what they can get.”
Tina Peters, who served prison time for tampering with voting machines on behalf of the MAGA movement, has declined a job offer helping to oversee elections in a conservative Northern California county.
“She declined the offer because she’s running around the country right now trying to secure the elections,” Clint Curtis, the Shasta County registrar of voters, said in an interview Tuesday. “Shasta County lost out.”
Last month, Curtis set off alarm bells across California by telling reporters he planned to hire Peters, a former county clerk in Colorado who was released early from prison this summer amid a pressure campaign by President Trump.
Curtis, himself a longtime election denier, told The Times he had planned to hire Peters as a consultant “to assist with supervision of the November election.”
Peters’ attorney, Peter Ticktin, said in an interview Tuesday that she had given serious consideration to the job offer but that he had not discussed it with her in recent days. It would “not have been a full-time position,” because she is so busy, he said.
“There’s far more for her to do than get tied up in one county,” Ticktin said. “At this point, she is an American icon. I mean, think about it: How many people meet with the president of the United States in the Oval Office?”
In California, talk of hiring Peters drew swift condemnation from Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democratic lawmakers who vowed to fight her employment.
The public observation area installed at the Shasta County elections office in Redding by Clint Curtis, the registrar of voters.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
On Monday, Newsom wrote in a sarcastic post on X: “A convicted MAGA election tamperer working in an elections office. What could possibly go wrong?”
He added, in all caps: “TINA, NOT IN CALIFORNIA! ELECTION DENIER FELONS NOT WELCOME HERE!!!”
In a separate social media post, the governor’s press office called the job offer “a disgrace” and said Newsom had directed corrections officials to “make every effort” to reject transfer of her parole supervision into the state.
Peters is not supposed to leave Colorado without permission from her parole officer, although she did visit Trump at the White House.
Curtis called the governor “crazy” and said he was amused that Newsom — who has advocated for prison reform and rehabilitation for criminals — was focused on Peters’ felony conviction.
“California is kind of a second-chance state,” Curtis said. “Except for Tina Peters. No second chance for her in Shasta County.”
Peters, the former clerk in Mesa County, Colo., was convicted in 2024 and sentenced to nine years behind bars for breaching her county’s voting machines as part of a scheme to show that the 2020 election was rigged against Trump, a claim that has been repeatedly debunked in court.
She was found guilty of helping an associate of MAGA conspiracy theorist and MyPillow founder Mike Lindell gain unauthorized access to Mesa County’s Dominion election equipment in 2021 and make copies of its hard drive before and after a software upgrade.
In interviews with right-wing media, Curtis said Peters essentially would do the job of assistant registrar but would be brought on as a consultant to get around the county’s slow hiring process.
Brent Turner, the Shasta County assistant registrar, said his job was not open because he had not quit. He told The Times on Tuesday that he was happy Peters had declined his boss’ offer.
Shasta County Registrar Clint Curtis stands in the election counting area on Feb. 25 in Redding.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
“I’m glad that Gavin is paying attention,” said Turner, a Democrat from San Francisco and a longtime election reform activist who has pushed for non-proprietary open-source voting systems with software code that can be examined by anyone.
Curtis handpicked Turner as his assistant last year.
Last month, Curtis told the hosts of “Jefferson State of Mine,” a radio show by leaders of the State of Jefferson secession movement, that Turner “got sick on me” and that he was hoping his assistant would “just, like, retire on June 2 and go away and let me fill [the position], but he didn’t.”
Turner, who is on medical leave, said he had not given Curtis permission to speak publicly about his health and that he had not spoken to his boss since Curtis began talking about hiring Peters.
“It’s been aggravating and unfortunate,” Turner said. “But we’re undaunted, as election officials and workers. And the fact is, there’s work to be done now, so the sooner we put this behind us, the better.”
Curtis was appointed by the Shasta County Board of Supervisors last year after two previous registrars resigned. He will be out of office in January after losing the June primary to Joanna Francescut, a longtime assistant registrar whom he had fired.
Curtis has sequestered primary ballots in a room in the elections office in Redding, sealing the doors with locks and duct tape and telling reporters that the ballots did not look, feel or smell right.
Both Curtis and county officials — who have condemned his actions — have asked the FBI and other authorities to investigate.
WASHINGTON — Army Secretary Dan Driscoll is stepping down after 18 months on the job, the White House said Monday, in the latest departure of a top military leader during the Trump administration.
No reason was given for the departure of Driscoll, who is a friend of Vice President JD Vance, but tensions with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have been widely reported. It marks the latest in a series of shakeups of the military leadership, with the Army especially seeing major upheaval.
“Secretary Driscoll has been highly effective in advancing President Trump’s agenda to Make America Strong Again at the Department of the Army by providing outstanding leadership during historic military operations, restoring an emphasis on readiness and lethality, assisting with negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, and more,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement.
“The United States Army is more powerful than ever thanks to his work alongside the Commander-in-Chief and Secretary of War,” she added.
A U.S. Army official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said Driscoll spoke with President Trump on the current state of the Army and submitted his resignation. The official did not provide additional details. The Pentagon referred questions to the Army. Driscoll’s resignation was reported earlier Monday by The Wall Street Journal.
Exit follows other Army departures, rollback of drone program
Driscoll’s departure follows the ouster of one of his allies from the Army as well as the rollback of a drone program he had championed. Hegseth had suddenly ousted the service’s top uniformed leader, Gen. Randy George, in April, while the Army’s commander in Europe and Africa, Gen. Christopher Donahue, unexpectedly stepped down in June.
Gen. Christopher LaNeve, who has made a meteoric rise under Hegseth, took George’s place as the Army’s acting chief of staff. Under LaNeve, the service is pulling the plug on a drone modernization program. An Army unit based in Europe was building its own drones before LaNeve directed it to end its efforts and return to being a traditional infantry battalion, officials said in August.
Driscoll was a George ally and lamented his departure, along with both Republican and Democratic lawmakers. He told Congress in April that he and his family drove to George’s house following his resignation “and we all gave him a hug.”
“That being said, the civilian leadership, the design of our system, is that they get to pick the leaders that they want,” Driscoll added.
Republicans and Democrats respond to departure news with praise for Driscoll
Rep. Steve Womack, an Arkansas Republican who had served in the Army National Guard, said on X that Driscoll is “a transformative leader who brought common sense and discipline to the Department of the Army.”
“I had the pleasure of working with him closely, and appreciated how engaged he was from mentoring cadets at West Point to leading the Army at the Pentagon,” Womack wrote. “The Army is better equipped and prepared to tackle emerging threats because of his leadership that strengthened the force while putting our Soldiers first.”
Rep. Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat and former Army Ranger, told reporters that he worked well with Driscoll despite their policy differences.
“It was actually nice, I will say, having somebody who was smart, that knew the policy, that wanted to do the work, that had a background in these issues,” Crow said, adding that “it’s unfortunate that somebody like that can’t last in this administration.”
Crow, who serves on the House Armed Services Committee and co-chairs the House Army Caucus, said the “Pentagon right now is, in some cases, rudderless,” with so many senior leaders gone. “So, I’m gravely concerned about it,” he said.
Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement that Driscoll “worked to transform the Army for the battlefield of the future, and he engaged with Congress candidly and consistently.”
“Secretary Hegseth is cultivating a culture where dissent is punished and competence is secondary to personal allegiance,” said Reed, a former Army officer, while noting that “hundreds of thousands of soldiers are deployed around the world, many in combat zones.”
Driscoll was an unlikely negotiator in Ukraine-Russia war
Driscoll is an Iraq war veteran, tech investor and former adviser to Vance, whom Driscoll met at Yale Law School. When nominating Driscoll in 2024, Trump called him “a disruptor and change agent.”
As Army secretary, Driscoll was tapped for the unusual role of key negotiator to try to end the war between Russia and Ukraine. He was also a major force behind trying to cut the red tape for military contractors to quickly develop more drones and counter-drone capabilities as warfare rapidly changes around the world.
The Senate confirmed him in February 2025, voting 66-28, following an Armed Services Committee hearing that was largely unconfrontational and focused on how the Army could modernize its systems, improve recruiting and beef up the military industrial base.
Driscoll noted that his father and grandfather served in the Army, and he vowed to be a secretary focused on the needs of soldiers. According to the Army, Driscoll served as an armor officer from August 2007 to March 2011, deploying to Iraq from October 2009 to July 2010.
He also ran unsuccessfully in the Republican primary for a North Carolina congressional seat in 2020, getting about 8% of the vote in a crowded field of candidates.
His departure comes after Hegseth ousted several other generals and admirals, including the head of the Navy.
The Pentagon abruptly announced in April that Navy Secretary John Phelan was leaving the job, becoming the first head of a military service to depart during Trump’s second term.
Finley and Madhani write for the Associated Press.
“Just want it to be crisp [and] clean,” Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh said. “Want to see improvement. … Everybody doing what they’re supposed to do.”
Here are four things to watch for — from the Chargers’ perspective — during Thursday’s game at 7 p.m. PDT (CBS, KCAL).
Who rises or falls as roster cuts loom?
The pressure is on for players on the bubble of earning a roster spot.
“From a player standpoint, how you feel, it’s so important it’s like life or death,” Harbaugh said. “Your football life is at stake; your lifestyle’s at stake, your job. That’s how important it is to the individual player. And then, to the team — I use the analogy [of] a deck of cards [and] the shuffle — you’re trying to create your best hand.”
How many offensive linemen will the Chargers keep in the wake of starting center Tyler Biadasz’ season-ending left knee injury? Which linebacker will turn heads enough to earn a spot? Which wideout or defensive back will literally and figuratively drop the ball?
Left guard competition
Chargers guard Kayode Awosika speaks during a news conference on June 8.
(William Liang / Associated Press)
It appears the starting left guard spot is all but Kayode Awosika’s.
“Kayode has kind of taken the lead,” offensive coordinator Mike McDaniel said. “It’s almost his job to lose, just because of his growth in the last two weeks.”
Awosika wants to seal his top spot on the depth chart, so keep an eye on him. With Jake Slaughter becoming the Chargers’ starting center, their depth at left guard after Awosika is slim.
McDaniel mentioned that Trey Pipkins is still in the mix for the starting left guard spot. But Awosika probably would have to play terribly for that debate to pick up steam.
Trey Lance vs. DJ Uiagalelei
Chargers quarterback Trey Lance passes against the 49ers on Aug. 20.
(Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)
The competition is fierce for the role of Justin Herbert’s backup.
Lance and Uiagalelei have each seen similar amounts of action throughout training camp, and neither seems to have an advantage so far.
Whoever looks better against the Rams could secure QB2 on the depth chart, while the other will likely receive a practice-squad opportunity, if not a shot elsewhere.
“I feel like I’ve made strides,” Uiagalelei said. “Each and every day I go out there, I try to get better [and] attack a certain thing.”
Although each signal-caller is still in the hunt for No. 2, Lance does have experience in McDaniel’s offense from their shared time with the 49ers. A decent showing from Lance could be enough to keep him in the same position he held last season.
“I’m talking to [McDaniel] more than I did when I was in San Francisco,” Lance said. “He hasn’t changed — same energy, same guy.”
Real glimpse of starters?
Most of the Chargers’ starters didn’t play against the Texans. And against the 49ers, they called it a game after one series.
Harbaugh said starters will be in for six to nine plays against the Rams.
“It’s been a good camp so far,” special teams coordinator Ryan Ficken said. “Ups and downs; some things we’ve been learning [and] going through; some good plays, some bad, obviously; coming off last week’s game, obviously wasn’t the expectations we were hoping for … but again, it’s a learning process.”
THE world’s most famous nepo-baby North West has revealed she is planning to land a job at Starbucks next year.
The 13-year-old star is arguably the most famous child-star and nepo-baby thanks to her parents being Kim Kardashian and Kanye West.
Nepo-baby North West reveals she wants to work at Starbucks and get a ‘regular job’Credit: Kim & North @TikTokThe daughter of Kim and Kanye has already been chasing fame – but now she’s after a regular jobCredit: TikTok/kimandnorth
She has already carved out an impressive career having released her own music, appeared in stage productions and taken part in fashion editorials all before becoming a teenager.
But despite already living the life of luxury in the fame world, North has now admitted that she wants to give it all up and bag a “regular job”.
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In a brand new interview with Dazed magazine, North confessed that as well as her music career, her dream role is to be work as a barista at Starbucks.
Speaking to the publication, North said: “I still wanna work.
Kim and Kanye’s daughter has already broken out into the music and fashion industriesCredit: GettyShe has also been open about her very unique look at such a young ageCredit: Kim & North / TikTok
“I wanna work at, like, Starbucks next year.
“I think I can next year ’cause I’m gonna be 14, so… I think I can.
“I want to have a regular job, I guess.”
It marks a major U-turn for the young star to pivot away from the mega Kardashian brand.
In her first magazine interview, North also opened up on her well-discussed look.
Despite her tender age, conversation has swirled around her dyed blue hair and multiple body piercings.
Clapping back, she said: “Everyone’s in love with boys, vaping and doing all kinds of bad stuff.
“All I want is blue hair and piercings.”
But North did reveal that she had been disallowed from getting her “bridge pierced” – a piercing that goes through the top of your nose and under your eyebrow.
A prominent Latino group is raising fresh concerns about Paramount Skydance’s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, saying the blockbuster deal would crush Latino workers and small businesses that support Hollywood.
In an open letter to California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, the League of United Latin American Citizens urged the state’s top prosecutor to continue his legal fight to block Paramount’s proposed $111-billion takeover of the media company that owns HBO, CNN, HGTV and the Warner Bros. film and television studios.
“No state has more to lose from this disastrous merger … than California,” LULAC National President Roman Palomares and Chief Executive Juan Proaño wrote in the six-page letter sent to Bonta late Sunday.
Thousands of jobs would be lost, and Latino voices could be squelched should the deal go through as it is drawn, the LULAC leaders said.
“The current form of the consolidation would have a devastating and unacceptable impact on Latinos, including those who reside in the Los Angeles community,” they wrote, noting Latinos make up 40% of the state’s population and nearly half of Los Angeles County, where HBO and the Paramount and Warner Bros. studios are based.
Paramount’s proposed merger has carved deep divisions and become increasingly contentious.
In recent days, Gov. Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Democratic gubernatorial nominee Xavier Becerra publicly pressured Bonta to settle the lawsuit to avoid a drawn-out court fight.
Politicians have been reacting to Paramount’s threat to move its studio, and potentially Warner Bros., from Hollywood to Tennessee or Texas unless Bonta backs down.
Theater owners and two major Hollywood unions — the Directors Guild of America and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees — have joined the parade pleading for a settlement. But the Writers Guild of America and Teamsters have steadfastly opposed the merger, warning about its potential impact on working writers and film crews.
Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison was set Monday to meet Bonta and others representing the 12 states that sued to block the transaction. But Bonta abruptly canceled the mediation session, accusing Paramount of “playing games,” leaking details and making misrepresentations about the talks despite agreeing to keep them confidential.
Paramount later denied that it was the source of the leaks.
Paramount didn’t immediately comment on the LULAC letter, but previously has touted the merger as a way to build a stronger competitor amid a pullback in local production. The company said it would “invest $30 billion annually in production and release at least 30 films a year,” a commitment that would lead to “more jobs over time, and ultimately, a stronger, more durable entertainment industry for generations to come.”
“To have it thrown in your face that Paramount will leave Los Angeles if they don’t get what they want is really just tantamount to a threat … one that will be devastating to Latinos,” Proaño said in an interview with The Times.
“There is a significant number of small businesses — Latino small businesses — and Latino residents, employees and workers that support this industry,” Proaño said. “We’ve been invisible, we’ve been silent — but we wanted to make sure that LULAC is not silent in this moment.”
In its letter, LULAC pointed to Hollywood’s most recent mergers, including Discovery’s 2022 acquisition of WarnerMedia from AT&T, saying such tie-ups underscore how media consolidation tramples over Latino voices, particularly when companies resort to job eliminations and other cost cuts to balance the expense of a corporate takeover.
After Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Executive David Zaslav took the helm, his company plodded through years of turmoil and massive layoffs. The movie “Batgirl,” which was set to feature a young Afro-Latina as lead actor, was shelved to gain tax benefits. Warner also canceled “Gordita Chronicles,” a TV show about an immigrant Dominican family, despite solid viewership.
Latino families make up “a significant portion of the film and television industry audience,” the letter said, adding that Motion Picture Assn. data show Latinos annually attend more movies per person in theaters than any other demographic group.
“Hollywood returns almost nothing for that loyalty,” the letter said. “Latino characters filled only 5 percent of speaking roles across 1,300 top-grossing films.”
“These and other harms are not collateral to the antitrust case,” LULAC’s letter said. “They are consequences of the diminished competition that will result. Every studio absorbed by a rival is one fewer buyer for a script, one fewer employer for a crew and one fewer distributor willing to bet on a story its franchise slate does not need.”
Warner Bros. Discovery nearly drowned in debt that it took on to finance its $43-billion buyout from AT&T in 2022. Ellison’s proposed Warner Bros. takeover also will be heavily leveraged with nearly twice the debt that resulted from Zaslav’s previous deal.
David Ellison has lined up nearly $80 billion in debt financing to buy out Warner investors. The tech scion is relying on a guarantee from his billionaire father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, and $24 billion in equity financing from three Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, representing the royal families of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi.
The deal comes one year after the Ellison family bought Paramount, which had been on the ropes because of significant under-investment over the years.
“Paramount followed the same script: within months of closing its Skydance merger in August 2025, it laid off roughly 2,000 employees, about ten percent of its workforce, just after dismantling its diversity programs earlier that year,” the LULAC letter reads.
“This time, Zaslav’s going to walk away with a billion-dollar parachute and Paramount may end up with these crown jewels assets when it comes to movie-making and television programming,” Proaño said.
Edwin Díaz said he understands the decision of the Dodgers to use him in lower-stake situations rather than immediately relying on him as a closer. The rationale is that strategy will help him rediscover his confidence.
“I know I haven’t done my job,” said Díaz, speaking to reporters at his locker before Sunday’s game against the Pittsburgh Pirates. “If I had done my job, I would be in the ninth inning.”
He praised Tanner Scott, who has thrived in that role.
“He’s doing a great job,” Díaz said. “I’m really happy for him.”
Díaz, the team’s biggest offseason acquisition, had elbow surgery early in the season and was out from April to late July. His return wasn’t triumphant, as he had three blown saves and two more shaky outings in non-save situations.
Díaz said he underwent an MRI scan on his neck and nothing unusual was revealed. He’s working with coaches on making a small adjustment to his delivery.
“They showed me a couple videos from last year — my arm slot’s always a little low,” he said. “We’re working now to get it higher and more consistent in that position.”
The goal, naturally, is to make good on the expectations the Dodgers had for him when they signed him to a three-year, $69-million deal.
“That’s why they signed me here,” he said. “To be the closer.”
Paramount Skydance’s proposed $111-billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery could result in 4,500 jobs eliminated in Los Angeles over a three-year period, according to a new report.
Los Angeles County supervisors earlier this year wanted to explore the potential economic impact of David Ellison’s proposed union of two historic Hollywood studios. The report, completed this week by CVL Economics, paints a sobering picture of the potential aftermath of the debt-laden deal, including the prospect of an estimated $1.26 billion in lost wages.
“Los Angeles County’s film and television economy is already undergoing a significant structural contraction,” the report said. “The proposed merger of Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Skydance introduces an additional source of risk into that already changing market.”
California Atty. General Rob Bonta is leading a coalition of 12 states attempting to block the merger on antitrust grounds. A trial has been set for March. Paramount and other groups, including cinema chain owners and some Hollywood unions, have agitated for a settlement to curtail months of uncertainty over whether the deal will go through.
The goal of the county’s report was to provide “a comprehensive assessment of the merger’s production workforce implications,” amid the ongoing decline of L.A. based film and television production work. Los Angeles has witnessed the elimination of more than 50,000 entertainment jobs since 2022.
The 120-page report, from the county’s Department of Economic Opportunity and Film Office and requested by Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, found that more than 15,000 corporate roles would be at risk, including an estimated 2,495 jobs based in Los Angeles County.
The two companies would have an overlapping workforce within its linear cable channel divisions, film and television studios, streaming operations and corporate functions, including marketing, technology and advertising sales.
“Effects on crews, crafts, post-production personnel, vendors, and production-serving small businesses,” could also be substantial, the report said.
“LA County’s own economic report underscores what we have been saying all along: our industry is in decline, production is down and jobs are being lost — and lost for good if we don’t act,” Paramount said. “Our plan to invest $30 billion annually in production and release at least 30 films a year.”
That commitment, Paramount said, would lead to “more jobs over time, and ultimately, a stronger, more durable entertainment industry for generations to come.”
Paramount has received clearances from the U.S. Justice Department and 65 other regulators around the globe to complete the merger.
Paramount has promised investors the deal would lead to at least $6 billion in cost savings through the consolidation of operations. The company has said the merger would ultimately be good for consumers and workers because a combined Paramount-Warner Bros. would have greater resources to compete with tech giants that are investing heavily in entertainment.
But the report pointed to the high level of debt that Paramount would have to take on — nearly $82 billion — to buy the stock of Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders to finalize the takeover.
The two companies already are carrying substantial interest costs due to their existing debt structures. “In the quarter ended June 30, 2026, the two companies reported a combined $712 million in operating income and $737 million in net interest expense,” the report said, meaning that the companies were producing less profit than what was needed to support their debt obligations.
Despite Paramount predicting cost savings and reduction in debt over time, “those savings will take several years to fully realize,” the report said.
David Ellison was hoping to wrap up his $111-billion merger with Warner Bros. by September.
(PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)
Television production in Los Angeles could be especially vulnerable, in large part, because Paramount and Warner Bros. already have moved most of their feature film projects outside of L.A. High levels of TV production continues at Warner Bros. complex in Burbank and Paramount’s and CBS’ soundstages in Hollywood and Santa Clarita.
“The economic impact extends well beyond employment,” with an expected elimination of $547 million in tax revenue, including $78.6 million in local taxes, the report said.
It noted that Warner Bros. and Paramount films were “particularly employment-intensive.”
“Their theatrical releases carry 2.74 times as many screen credits as the average theatrical release, while their streaming films carry twice as many,” the report found.
The document also highlighted a pre-existing pull-back in production at the two studios in recent years — something that Ellison plans to correct.
Paramount was struggling to remain solvent prior to the Ellison family’s purchase of the media company last year. Warner Bros. had scaled back offerings following Discovery’s $43-billion takeover of WarnerMedia in 2022 as it struggled to contain the debt from that deal.
“Between 2019 and 2025, Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount accounted for a net reduction of approximately 195 major U.S. releases,” the report said. At the same time, other major distributors combined “added about 67 projects.”
Ellison is looking to finalize his massive Hollywood deal — folding CNN, HBO, TBS, Food Network and the Warner Bros. film and television studios under Paramount — as quickly as possible. He must hold together Paramount’s coalition of financiers and manage rising expenses, primarily legal fees and escalating obligations to Warner shareholders.
The state attorneys general, including from Colorado, Oregon, Nevada, Washington and New York have argued that the blockbuster merger — the largest in Hollywood in decades — would violate the century-old Clayton Antitrust Act.
Paramount hoped the trial over Bonta’s lawsuit would begin in November but U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín set the trial for March 2.
If the deal goes forward, just four studios — a post-merger Paramount-Warner, Disney, NBCUniversal and Sony Pictures — would control 86% of movies that are widely released (in more than 3,000 movie theaters), according to the attorneys general lawsuit. Paramount has argued that projects from Amazon MGM, Netflix and Apple should be included because they compete with the traditional companies for talent and audiences.
Paramount-Warner Bros. would also own more than 50 cable channels, including HGTV, Animal Planet, BET, MTV and Comedy Central.
