life

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.”

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.

DESPITE winning dream roles, Anya Taylor-Joy admits her real wish is to retreat from Hollywood and live on a farm.

The 29-year-old is one of the world’s best-known actresses but has spent years feeling nervous on the red carpet, struggled to watch her award-winning performances and now wants calm.

She voices love interest Princess Peach in the new Super Mario Galaxy movie, which is released on April 1.

But Anya described her ideal life as “on a farm”.

She said: “I want goats, chickens, ducks, horses — all of it. I want to work, come into the city when I want to, then disappear and ride all day.”

The film is the follow-up to 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which grossed more than £1billion worldwide.

Princess Peach is the main female character and head of state of the Mushroom Kingdom.

Anya said: “I was so touched by how strong she is and how cool. The fact that’s going to be a role model kids can have nowadays is unbelievable. I left feeling very inspired by her.”

Anya knows all too well that life can be difficult as a child.

She was born in Florida, then lived in Argentina for five years where she rode horses in the idyllic countryside.

Her African-Spanish mum, a psychologist, and Scottish-Argentine dad, who raced powerboats, then moved the family to London when she was six — and things became dramatically different.

Anya was bullied, “locked in lockers, barred from classrooms, not invited to things” and did not speak English.

Watching films helped her navigate through the traumas.

She told the Happy Sad Confused podcast: “I’ve never been good at being cool, this is why I didn’t get along well with people in school.

“If I like something, I love it and it just pours out of me.

“But if I was sad, like if my hamster died, my parents could put me in front of a movie and I would feel better at the end of it.

“I could get lost in something like that.”

It was her love of movies that eventually helped her learn English.

She says: “I learned English when I was eight. I stuck it out for two years in London, refusing to speak English because I wanted to go home. Then eventually I was like, ‘I have no friends, this is going to be a needed skill’.”

Anya told her parents she was going to be an actress.

But first, after being “picked up” outside Harrods, she became a model at 16.

She was recruited by Sarah Doukas, boss of Storm model agency, who had discovered Kate Moss.

But at first Anya thought she was a stalker.

She said: “It was absurd. A black car comes up, starts chasing me. I pick up my dog, start running and a head comes out of the window and they say, ‘If you stop, you won’t regret it,’ and I stop.

“It was the head of a modelling agency. I don’t encourage other people to do this.

“I had no idea what I was doing, but luckily it worked out and my parents came with me the next day to the modelling agency.”

Her parents always supported her. Anya said: “They’d had six kids, so were like, ‘Oh, just do whatever you’re going to do’.

“I’m so grateful for the approach my parents have had because I did some pretty ballsy things in my teenage years and luckily they paid off, but they were always supportive.”

She did many auditions before getting her breakthrough role at 19 in film The Witch.

Anya said: “I thought that audition went so badly. I truly thought I had messed that up massively because I had a huge panic attack before I went into it, and luckily that really worked for the scene.”

It was then that Anya found where she truly belonged.

She said: “Going into work every single day felt like such a joy.

“I could breathe because I’d found a place where I was doing something I loved, with people who didn’t think I was a psychopath. And I could have fun with it. I loved every second of making that movie.”

She found it “mind blowing” that The Witch was a hit and forced herself to watch the performance.

Anya said: “It’s like getting hit by a bus. I personally don’t agree with not watching your films, it’s not all about you. It’s a whole bunch of other people who have done a lot of work and different departments that you have to go and support, because they deserve it and you love them. So I have to watch it.

“But the first time, I always feel I’ve let people down and I’m always like, ‘Oh, I messed it up’.

“Then I process it and the second time I watch it, it’s slightly more palatable and I’m able to lose myself a bit more.

“By the third time I’m just like, ‘OK, whatever’. You just have to get over yourself and applaud the people you care about that worked with you.”

Anya became a household name in 2020 after starring in Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit, which led to a Golden Globe for Best Actress.

She went on to roles in horror film Last Night In Soho, black comedy The Menu and the apocalyptic film Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Anya said she works “very hard, very gratefully hard” because she feels lucky to do a job she feels passionate about.

But it is not always easy. Despite her modelling background, Anya struggles with the limelight.

She said: “When I first started doing red carpets, I couldn’t handle the notion of being pretty.

“I was like, ‘I don’t do that’. I am a scummy, mud-caked ferret and striving for anything different felt disingenuous and scary.”

She has even been known to dress up “like an East Berlin spy” at times so nobody recognises her.

Now she is trying to make time for some balance in her life.

She said: “I’ve been living on film sets for five years and, occasionally, I think it would be nice to find out what Anya would do with three months if she wasn’t playing another person.

“So I’m trying to be more careful with my time there.

“You spend 18 hours a day thinking, behaving and breathing as another human being. That doesn’t leave a lot of time to figure out what it is that you like.”

And the person she wants to spend it with is her husband, US musician Malcolm McRae, who she married in 2021.

The couple split their time between homes in the Hollywood Hills and London.

She said: “I’ve finally found someone who will happily sit in silence with me, reading. We’re basically 80 years old and seven at the same time, and it works really well.

“When you are together, you are really valuing the time you have. Everyday, mundane activities are so full of joy.

“I love going to the petrol station with him and filling up the car and going to get breakfast.”

But right now, her focus is all on Princess Peach.

Anya told US Today: “She wants to find out where she comes from and is on a quest for adventure and prioritising herself a little bit more.”

Princess Peach sounds very much like the actress playing her.

Tom Junod has devoted his long and distinguished career to writing about other people. He won two National Magazine Awards as a star feature writer for Esquire, GQ and ESPN: The Magazine, covering everything from athletes and movie stars to the victims of 9/11 with his elegant prose style. However, it took Junod years before he could tackle the toughest subject of all: His father, Lou, a decorated World War II veteran who fashioned himself as a kind of suburban Sinatra.

He was a hard-drinking philanderer who carried with him a complicated legacy that Junod untangles in his memoir “In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man.” I spoke with Junod about fathers and sons, and the difficulty of excavating his family’s fraught history.

✍️ Author Chat

You pondered this book for years. Was there a moment when you finally said, “Right, time to write this now”?

There was definitely a moment, when my brother Michael had lunch with a woman named Muntu Law, who was one of my father’s lovers. It was the late summer of 2015. She told him, “Of course, you know your Dad and I had an affair for 11 years.” And he didn’t know that. He called me immediately after and asked me if I knew about the affair and I said yes. He asked me why I hadn’t told him, and I responded that I both knew and didn’t know. I knew it the moment Muntu stood up at my father’s funeral.

You intuited it?

Yes. There was a split there that I needed to reconcile and explore. There was too much unresolved stuff.

Your father’s story is shot through with a lot of tragedy. What is the writing process like for you? Was it an unburdening, a catharsis or something else?

When you unburden yourself, what you wind up doing is taking up much heavier burdens, which is what the book was. But it’s very interesting, because now I’m talking about my father with people in my family, and some of these discussions are difficult, but at least I’m talking about him with them. It was mostly pain, writing the book. Exposing your secrets isn’t particularly a relief, but it allows you to carry on your life without the necessity of being silent.

Your Dad is emblematic of this kind of postwar American male that served in the war and came home flush with triumph and a kind of male privilege. Would you agree?

To the absolute max. My dad was an extreme character, and I think what the war did for a lot of men was it allowed them to reinvent themselves and create themselves. I look at my dad as a completely self-created phenomenon.

He clearly carried himself like a star.

There’s a line in the book where I say that Dad was the only celebrity I’ve ever known.

What’s remarkable is that you broke the cycle. You write about your marriage to your wife, Janet, in the book, whom you met in college. You have been together for over 40 years.

I think a lot of people are surprised by that when they read the book. People just thought I had it, you know — that I was successful and I was able to handle difficult situations. Back in the summer, I gave a copy to my friend, Lisa Hanselman, who I worked with at Esquire and GQ for a long time. And she called me up one morning and just said, “I didn’t know.” And that meant a lot to me. In my mind, it’s one of those things that justifies the effort it took to write the book.

(This Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)

📰 The Week(s) in Books

Mark Athitakis is agog over Lauren Groff’s new story collection “Brawler,” a book that “blends the depth of the long view and the drama of the pivotal moment.”

Acclaimed nonfiction writer Daniel Okrent has written “Stephen Sondheim: Art Isn’t Easy,” a short, sharp biography of Stephen Sondheim for Yale’s “Jewish Lives” series, and Julia M. Klein approves. “[Okrent] seeks to liberate Sondheim’s reputation from the encrustation of myth and to demystify his relationships, while offering a succinct analysis of his achievements,” she writes.

Actor Gina Gershon has written a freewheeling memoir called “AlphaPussy,” which looks back on her San Fernando Valley childhood as a proving ground for dealing with male toxicity as a woman in Hollywood. “I’m not that tough,” Gershon tells Cat Woods. “But I’d learned how to maneuver a lot just from growing up in the Valley, and it was a crazy time to be living there. So I thought about the stories that led me to be able to steer myself through toxicity.”

Finally, Yvonne Villarreal sat with Christina Applegate to discuss her new memoir, “You With the Sad Eyes.” “This book is not cathartic for me — let’s just go there,” Applegate says. “I just needed to dump this s— out somewhere.”

📖 Bookstore Faves

An inviting literary haven in Long Beach, Casita Bookstore prioritizes stories from underrepresented and marginalized voices from the BIPOC, immigrant, LGBTQ+ communities and what store owner Antonette Franceschi‑Chavez calls “other historically silenced communities.” I spoke with Franceschi‑Chavez about what readers are excited about now.

What kind of clientele do you get in the store, typically?

Our clientele is wonderfully diverse, but they share a common desire for stories, knowledge and community that center voices often underrepresented in mainstream spaces. We see a strong mix of local community members, educators, families and young readers, along with writers, activists and creatives who are drawn to our focus on books by [underrepresented and marginalized writers].

What’s selling right now?

That’s a difficult question, because we get a wide range of reader personalities. I can say that one of the top-selling trends in adult reading right now is dystopian fiction. Some of the top sellers in our bookstore are “Parable of the Sower” by Octavia Butler, “Chicano Frankenstein” by Daniel Olivas and Agustina Bazterrica’s “Tender Is the Flesh.”

Is there still a place for bookstores as community builders?

Of course! Indie bookstores are vital community hubs. Even in the digital age, bookstores provide physical spaces for connection, conversation and shared experience. You can’t replicate that type of connection online. We’re also living in a time when voices are being silenced or punished for speaking out about social justice, oppressive actions and, overall, what’s right. Bookstores are here to lend their spaces, share those stories and bring attention to needed causes. I’ve seen many bookstores, including ours, function as fundraising and donation hubs, protest art spaces, open-mic venues to allow for communities to unite in shared social causes.

Casita Bookstore in Long Beach is located at 272 Redondo Ave.

(Please note: The Times may earn a commission through links to Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.)

The photos currently flooding my social media stream are like a highlight reel of the life of Chicana civil rights icon Dolores Huerta.

The famous 1960s-era black-and-white shot of her looking like a bohemian in sweatshirt and black paints while she holds up a sign proclaiming “HUELGA” in the grape fields of California’s Central Valley.

Chanting at the front of picket lines, strands of gray in her hair, in the 1980s.

Beaming as President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012 for a lifetime of good work that expanded beyond the United Farm Workers union she co-founded.

What’s especially popular is admirers posting pictures of themselves with her — at protests, during art gallery openings, in classrooms, even dancing. It’s the type of public outpouring one usually sees when a celebrity dies. Sadly, there is grief involved in people sharing their encounters with her right now.

Someone didn’t die. But something did.

Earlier this week, Huerta’s disclosed to the New York Times that fellow Chicano civil rights icon Cesar Chavez raped her during the 1960s. It was part of a story that also interviewed two women who claimed the United Farm Workers co-founder sexually abused them when they were young teens in the 1970s.

One of the posts I saw soon after the story’s publication was an Instagram portrait Maricela Cueva took when the two met a few years ago during a conference in Burbank.

“Standing with Dolores Huerta,” said Cueva, president of the public relations firm VPE Communications, “means honoring her legacy in the farmworker movement as well as the victims who had the courage to come forward and acknowledging the personal sacrifices behind it.”

Former West Covina Mayor Brian Calderón Tabatabei shared on the platform formally known as Twitter a photo of him shaking hands with Huerta in Berkeley at a Working Families Party gathering for elected leaders in 2024, where she joined breakout sessions and listened to the next generation of leaders.

“I look at the folks who posted pictures and we are all children of the movement,” said Tabatabei, who’s also an El Monte High ethnic studies teacher. He kicks off each school year with a shout-out to Huerta. “She lived with that pain so we could be in these spaces. So we don’t have to be quiet.”

Together, the photos stand as a communal family album. It’s a show of love and solidarity to Huerta — but also a challenge to ourselves. Many of us immediately believed the longtime activist not just because of her stature, but because we’re sadly too familiar with the script playing out in real time.

A Latina abused by a trusted, powerful man. A terrible secret kept to not make him look bad and ruin his life. A need for the victim to consistently praise the abuser to others no matter what. A life of service in the form of sacrifice. Eternal grace masking an unimaginable pain.

Her story is the story of too many women I know and you know — and maybe the story of you.

Steely resolve in the face of suffering is not new in the Huerta story. For decades, reporters, activists, historians and others who formed the narrative of Chicano civil rights treated her as a modern-day Mary Magdalene — a woman who found purpose by following a man. Chavez was positioned as the Christlike figure who toiled for all of us at great personal cost and thus anointed the face of the farmworkers movement. Meanwhile, he and others relegated Huerta to sidekick status, both in the trenches and in the public — and the image makers followed his lead.

She found more prominence after his death in 1993, but Chavez’s shadow loomed over her for too long. Huerta became one of Chavez’s fiercest defenders even after revelations about his autocratic ways became public — but what else was she supposed to do when people tied so much of her identity to him?

Through it all, Huerta showed up not just for la causa but for those of others. People in Bakersfield, where Huerta lives, know she’s a supporter of arts and live music — she was seen dancing with family members at a Mardis Gras party just last month, gladly taking photos with well-wishers. I have run into her at my wife’s restaurant in Santa Ana, at movie theaters in Los Angeles, during online fundraisers for museums. My favorite memory is the time we both spoke to students at a high school summer conference. Afterward, the organizers told me her speaking fee was a pittance compared to that of a famous Latina author who demanded $25,000 for an hour-long chat.

That’s why Huerta’s recent revelations hit particularly hard — unlike the long-sainted Chavez, she always seemed more like one of us. Huerta has cycled through the stages of life in the public eye in a way that has seen Latinos relate to her over the decades as our daughter, our sister, our aunt. Our mother, grandmother and now great-grandmother in the winter of her years.

We all know women in one of those roles who suffered the same violations Huerta did. The same dismissals and insults. Who never spoke about their ignominies because they were afraid we wouldn’t be there for them.

Huerta was once one of them.

“I believed that exposing the truth,” Huerta wrote in a short essay, “would hurt the farmworker movement I have spent my entire life fighting for.”

By coming forward now, she’s speaking up for every woman who has kept their abuse private, every woman overlooked in favor of a man, every relative told to keep secrets lest they embarrass the family, every woman attacked for finally speaking up. By posting all those photos of Huerta — by herself, in a crowd, with others — people are publicly and unconsciously saying:

We can do better for the girls and women in our lives. We must do better.

“I have kept this secret long enough,” she concluded in her essay. “My silence ends here.”

May we all hear the Dolores Huertas in our lives. May we finally stand by them.

A deadly Coronation Street blaze will reportedly tear through Roy’s Rolls soon, causing the iconic set to burn down with the stunt apparently leaving a beloved character in danger

There could be a shocking blaze on Coronation Street very soon, with a famous part of the set thought to be destroyed.

Reports claim Roy’s Rolls, the iconic café owned by Roy Cropper, will be burned down in a cruel arson attack in upcoming scenes. Not only that but as the blaze spreads, it could leave poor Roy in serious danger.

It’s claimed Roy will be left fighting for his life in the incident. with the building said to be be burnt down. As the battle to save Roy commences, the legend will apparently be rushed to hospital.

But who would want to target Roy or his business, and will Roy be okay? According to sources, Roy will be seen trapped in the blaze in scenes that will air onscreen in April.

READ MORE: Emmerdale Tracy’s secret exposed as Vanessa confronts her ahead of exitREAD MORE: EastEnders ‘reveals’ who will join Mark’s stolen cars scheme – but it’s not Lauren

According to The Sun, it sparks questions about whether Roy was targeted and why the café was set alight. A source told the publication: “Roy’s Rolls is targeted by a mystery fires tarter who breaks in and douses the cafe with petrol whilst Roy sleeps upstairs in his flat.

“When residents spot smoke coming out of the windows, emergency services are called. As the fire rages and people realise Roy is trapped inside the race is on to get him out alive.

“Will Roy be rescued in time, and what about his precious collection of railway memorabilia and memories of Hayley? Is this the end of Roy’s Rolls as we know it, and who wanted to burn down the iconic cafe?”

The Mirror has reached out to an ITV spokesperson for comment. It comes ahead of a murder plot taking place in April that sees one of five villains killed off. Jodie Ramsey, Megan Walsh, Carl Webster, Theo Silverton and Maggie Driscoll are all at risk.

The death plot will then spark a whodunnit before fans find out who has killed them and why. Some fans already think they have worked out who the killer is and who the victim will be.

It’s left fans fearing a popular character is about to depart the show in the plot. They think Eva Price, who only came back to the show in October last year, could bow out in a killer twist.

With teacher Megan exposed for grooming young student Will for sex, Will’s stepmother Eva Price vowed she would pay for her crimes. Now, fans have wondered if Eva will kill Megan as she takes revenge, but would Eva really turn killer?

Coronation Street airs weeknights at 8:30pm on ITV1 and ITV X. * Follow Mirror Celebs and TV on TikTok , Snapchat , Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , YouTube and Threads .

I have never managed to score a reservation to Bar Cecil, the restaurant that opened in April 2021 as an homage to Sir Cecil Beaton, the famously flamboyant British photographer, designer, author and all-around Renaissance man who died in 1980. It remains, almost comically after five years in business, the most difficult place to book a table in the Coachella Valley. Long ago I made my peace with lining up before the restaurant opens at 5 p.m. and starting early at the unreserved 12-seat bar, or slipping in between 6:30 p.m. to 7:15 p.m. when the first wave of bar seating turns over. We all show up, whenever we can, for potent drinks and chef and partner Gabriel Woo’s menu, a worldly mix of Continental swagger, global-minded modernism and California realness.

In January, the same team branched out with Beaton’s at Bar Cecil, a posh affair next door that flips the script on the restaurant: more cocktail-centric, mostly snacky food you stretch into a meal. Tufted red velvet cascading from the ceiling drives the louche vibes. The mid-20th-century-era sketches and prints adorning the walls are significant enough that the staff composed a booklet full of descriptions and biographies. (You’ll need a phone light to read through it.) There’s an enclosed terrace where VIPs seeking privacy tend to hang out as the night wears on. Precision-engineered cocktails cover the spectrum of tastes: not-too-sweet Singapore slings, a sharp-tongued Vesper with lemon oil, a retro-chic grasshopper blending Creme de Menthe and pandan for a nightcap. I have always been fascinated that certain Hollywood hangouts serve pigs in a blanket, and here they are, mustardy and easy to down one after another alongside shrimp cocktail, duck-meat bao, oysters, fries and, of course, caviar. Beaton’s also takes reservations but walk-ins, however variable the wait, are welcome. Try your luck. This is absolutely the place to be in Palm Springs right now.

An eerie silence had settled.

As word evidently reached activists in the last few weeks that disturbing allegations of sexual abuse against Chicano civil rights icon Cesar Chavez were forthcoming, things started to happen without much explanation.

Groups began to cancel long-planned parades, dinners, lectures and fundraisers scheduled for Chavez’s birthday on March 31. People who I’ve known for years suddenly weren’t returning calls or texts about what was going on. Longtime defenders of Chavez — who stood by their hero even as revelations in this paper and in biographies over the past generation showed there was a dark side to the man — suddenly became hard to reach.

When the United Farm Workers and the Cesar Chavez Foundation put out statements Tuesday morning that “troubling allegations” against their patriarch were considered credible enough for them to offer help to his victims, the silence transformed into dread. There was a discomfort similar to waiting for a tsunami — that whatever was coming would change lives, shake institutions and make people question values and principles that they had long held dear.

And like a natural disaster, what emerged about Chavez was far worse than anyone could’ve expected.

Wednesday morning, the New York Times published a story where two women whose families marched alongside Chavez in the fields of California during the 1960s and 1970s disclosed that he sexually abused them for years when they were girls. Just as shocking was the revelation by Dolores Huerta, Chavez’s longtime compatriot and a civil rights legend, that he had once raped her at a time when their leadership in the fight to bring dignity to grape pickers earned national acclaim and amounted to a modern-day Via Dolorosa.

The silence has transformed into screams. Politicians and organizations that long commemorated Chavez and urged others to follow his ways are releasing statements by the minute. My social media feed is now a torrent of friends and strangers expressing empathy for Chavez’s victims and outrage, disgust and — above all — disappointment that someone considered a secular saint by many for decades turned out to be a human more terrible than anyone could’ve imagined.

There will be questions and soul-searching about these horrifying disclosures in the weeks, months and years to come. We will see a push for the renaming of the dozens of schools, parks and streets that bear Chavez’s name across the country and even the rebranding of Cesar Chavez Day, a California state holiday since 2000 devoted to urging people to give back to their communities and the least among us.

The reckoning is only right. Much of the Latino civil rights, political and educational ecosystem will have to grapple with why they held up Chavez as a paragon of virtue for too long above others just as deserving and, as it turns out, nowhere near as compromised.

In any event, the myth has been punctured.

Chavez’s biography always reads like an entry in the “Lives of the Saints” genre of books that Catholics used to read about the holy men of their faith. The son of farmworkers who became a Mexican American Moses trying to lead his people to the promised land of equity and political power. An internationally famous leader who lived a mendicant’s life. Who devoted decades to some of the most exploited people in the American economy. Honored with awards, plays, posters. Murals, movies and monuments. President Biden even kept a bust of Chavez at his Oval Office desk.

It was a beatific reputation that largely persisted even as the union he helped to create lost its influence in the fields of California and a new generation of activists looked down on Chavez for his long-standing opposition to immigrants who came to this country to work without legal status. Admirers kept him on a pedestal even as former UFW members alleged over the last two decades that the boss they once idolized purged too many good people in the name of absolute control. The hagiography continued even as a new generation of Latinos came of age not knowing anything about him other than an occasional school lesson or television segment.

I was one of those neophytes. I first heard his name at Anaheim High School in the mid-1990s and thought my teacher was talking about Julio Cesar Chavez, the famous Mexican boxer. I was thrilled to discover that someone had bravely fought for the rights of campesinos like my mom and her sisters, who toiled in the garlic fields of Gilroy and strawberry patches of Orange County as teenage girls in the 1960s, the same time that Chavez and the UFW were enjoying their historic wins.

“Who’s Cesar Chavez?” my Mami responded when I asked if his efforts ever made her work easier.

My admiration for Chavez continued even as I learned about some of his faults. I was able to separate Chavez the man from the movement for which he was a figurehead. Long-maligned communities seek heroes to emulate, to draw hope from, to hang on their walls and share their quotes on social media. We create them even as we ignore that they’re flesh and blood just like us.

Chavez seemed like the right man at the right moment as Mexican Americans rose up like never before to battle discrimination and segregation. Now, Latinos and others who admired Chavez have to grapple with his moral failings of the worst possible magnitude at the worst possible time: when there’s an administration doing everything possible to crush Latinos and we’re looking for people to look up to like never before.

He remains one of the few Latino civil rights leaders known nationwide — and Chavez is nowhere near as known as acolytes make him out to be. Some people will argue that it’s unfair he will likely get wiped away from the public sphere while other predatory men from the past and present largely maintain their riches and reputations.

But that’s looking at the abuse revelations the wrong way. For now, I will follow what those most directly affected by Chavez’s actions are telling us to do.

The UFW and Cesar Chavez Foundation were wise to not try to defend the indefensible in their statements and instead consider any victims first before deciding how to decide what’s next for them.

The Chavez family put out a news release that states “we honor the voices of those who feel unheard and who report sexual abuse.”

Huerta wrote in an online essay: “Cesar’s actions do not reflect the values of our community and our movement. The farmworker movement has always been bigger and far more important than any one individual.”

Another of his victims told the New York Times of Chavez’s legacy: “It makes you rethink in history all those heroes. The movement — that’s the hero.”

The face of that movimiento brought inspiration to millions and improved the lives of hundreds of thousands. That’s why we shouldn’t cancel the good that Chavez fought for alongside so many; we should direct the adulation he once attracted and the anger he’ll now rightfully receive toward the work that still needs to be done.

To quote an old UFW slogan that Chavez transformed into a mantra, la lucha sigue — the fight continues. It’s a statement that’s more pertinent than ever, damn its imperfect messenger.

Viewers of Stacey Solomon’s BBC show were left emotional during the latest episode of Sort Your Life Out.

Viewers were left reaching for the tissues as one mum revealed why she’d called upon Stacey Solomon and her Sort Your Life Out team on Tuesday.

The decluttering squad arrived in south London to assist single mum Almarie and her 10-year-old daughter Marie in transforming their three-bedroom semi, which had fallen into disarray.

Under Stacey’s guidance, Almarie tackled her husband Marcus’s possessions for the first time since his sudden passing three years earlier.

The widow shared the heartbreaking story of how he’d received a cancer diagnosis with a five-year prognosis – yet he died merely two months later, leaving his family devastated.

Almarie had kept all his belongings, and having previously fostered children, the house had accumulated numerous additional items.

For financial reasons, Almarie needed to take in a lodger but couldn’t manage it without clearing out two dozen unused chairs, 204 pairs of shoes, 55 coats, 2,765 plastic toys and considerably more, reports the Express.

Within minutes of hearing the tragic circumstances, viewers flocked to social media to confess they were in floods of tears.

Taking to X/Twitter, one viewer said: “#sortyourlifeout always emotional now,” as another echoed: “And I am gone [sobbing emoji] #sortyourlifeout.”

One more declared: “I’m late starting….. not 10 minutes in and I’m gone [crying emojis] #sortyourlifeout.”

Someone else said: “Oh, you do put us through the emotional wringer! I come to #sortyourlifeout for a cry.

“Lost her husband and Mum in 5 months, that poor woman and her daughter, just heartbreaking #SortYourLifeOut,” another viewer sympathised.

Last week, fans were reduced to tears as the BBC reality programme returned for its sixth series.

Audiences watched care worker Trish and her husband Gerry, alongside their three adult children, tackle the clutter in their family home.

Her devoted husband, who works as a technician and artist, spoke candidly about his recent dementia diagnosis and how it has affected the entire family.

He revealed: “I’ve now been living with dementia for seven years. Unfortunately, over the last year or so, things have been starting to progress. It’s not just my memory; it’s all the mobility I’ve lost, or I’m losing.”

He continued: “If anything was being done in the house or garden, it was me who would do it, the heavy lifting I’d be right in there, no problems whatsoever. Now, I’m lucky that I can lift a knife and fork; it’s been very frustrating.”

Sort Your Life Out is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.

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Kiki Shepard, the actor and entertainer best known for co-hosting the syndicated variety show “Showtime at the Apollo,” has died. She was 74.

LaShirl Smith, a representative for Shepard, confirmed her client’s death, writing in an Instagram post Tuesday that the loss “hurts an awful lot.” Shepard died Monday in Los Angeles after a heart attack, Smith confirmed to TMZ. On Tuesday, Smith honored Shepard with a video collage of their shared moments over the years, lamenting she will no longer be able to speak with her friend “three/four times a day everyday at least for an hour or two.”

“Rest easy cousin, heaven got a good one,” Smith said in her post.

The Texas native, born in July 1951, co-hosted “Showtime at the Apollo” from 1987 to 2002. During her tenure, she shared the stage with a variety of co-hosts including Steve Harvey, Sinbad and Mo’Nique, introducing a range of musical acts at the historic theater in Harlem. The Apollo honored Shepard on its marquee Tuesday, remembering her as a “true Apollo legend.”

“Together, [the hosts] carried the electrifying spirit of our legendary stage into living rooms across the nation, introducing rising stars, celebrating icons, and making millions feel Harlem from wherever they were,” the theater said on Instagram, “reminding the world that we have always been a place where Black excellence takes center stage.”

More than a host, Shepard had an entertainment career that included TV appearances — among them “Baywatch,” “A Different World,” “NYPD Blue” and “Grey’s Anatomy” — and a handful of stints as a choreographer. An alumna of what was then called North Texas State University and Howard University, Shepard also had a minor role in “The Wiz.”

Her television credits include “Thunder in Paradise,” “Baywatch Nights,” “Family Law,” “Everybody Hates Chris” and the 2025 series “Highly Favored.” Shepard also pursued a career on stage, appearing in Broadway productions of “Bubbling Brown Sugar,” “Reggae” and “Porgy and Bess.”

Beyond entertainment, Shepard devoted herself to raising awareness for sickle cell anemia after a friend died of the affliction. In 2006, she founded the Kis Foundation, an organization that seeks to support sickle cell disease patients and their families, following years of other advocacy efforts.

“KiKi believed that compassion, community, and education could change lives. Her voice uplifted countless individuals who often felt unseen, and her work created lasting pathways for hope, resources, and understanding for those living with this disease,” Shepard’s family said in a statement to ABC7.

To daytime talk show host Sherri Shepherd, the beloved “Showtime at the Apollo” personality “was the life of every party” who had a welcoming and warm presence.

“Kiki I am devastated that you are gone, but I am rejoicing because you LIVED and you lived boldly and joyfully,” the “Sherri” host wrote in an Instagram tribute.

“Your love of God was evident and I know you are having a ball up there,” she added.

Mo’Nique and Jackée Harry also honored Shepard’s life and legacy on Instagram. “Rest easy, my dear sweet friend,” comedian Harry said, “I’ll carry you with me always.”

Angelo Gasca, a one-of-a-kind high school football coach who grew up using football to escape from gangs and became a beloved special education teacher, mentor and coach for 36 years at Venice High, died Monday night while watching a Lakers game on television, according to longtime friend, Steve Clarkson. He was 65.

The 1978 Venice graduate never left his neighborhood. Gasca won his first and only City Section Division I championship in 2021. He was known for his innovative passing schemes and producing numerous top City Section quarterbacks, led by former NFL player JP Losman. He was such a fixture at Venice that coaching sons of former players became the norm. He loved the concept of “neighborhood team.”

Perhaps his most important contribution was training, supporting and preparing players to become teachers and coaches. Most of his staff at Venice has been made up of former players. He’d help them stick with the difficult task of earning a teaching credential and find jobs for them.

He was most proud of former running back Byron Ellis, who became an orthopedic surgeon, and receiver Brycen Tremayne, who walked on at Stanford, went undrafted and made the Carolina Panthers.

Last month, Gasca was asked if he ever learned anything from a player and he told the story of having a coaches meeting and one of his ex-players reminded him how he wanted to quit football but Gasca wouldn’t let him.

“I’m not accepting your resignation today,” Gasca told him. “You need to go home and think about it.”

Said Gasca: “He went home and thought about it and stayed on the team and was the starting center. He taught me the best thing we can teach kids is come to school and you never know what connections you’ll make at the school you grew up at. He taught me there’s more to coaching than winning games and scoring touchdowns. In our lives as teachers and coaches, we do learn from players. When we stop learning, it’s time to stop coaching.”

Even though there were rumors last season of Gasca retiring, he insisted he was coming back because he loved teaching and coaching and believed that sports competition can change someone’s life for the better.

“My parents didn’t attend high school,” he said. “When you play, you get a little taste of success and want to play harder and people come into your life and help you. It’s just as easy to do well as it is to do bad. Sometimes when your friends zig right, you have to zig left. The life lessons we learn together is what it’s about.”

This stunning 17th century estate was home to the Jones family for centuries and is now a real-life time capsule open to visitors

Near Moreton-in-Marsh in Oxfordshire sits a magnificent estate, which once belonged to the very same family for centuries.

Originally constructed as an enormous display of wealth and influence in the early 17th century, it has since transformed into a public space where visitors can explore and immerse themselves in British history.

Chastleton House remained a constant fixture within the same family for hundreds upon hundreds of years, as the estate continued to stay in their possession, handed down through the generations.

Today, the property stands in Oxfordshire as a genuine time capsule, barely altered, featuring an impressive great hall, gallery room and numerous collections that once belonged to the distinguished family.

Guests can wander the grounds and take a guided tour of the rooms that contain countless memories for the Jones family.

One visitor wrote on TripAdvisor: “Beautiful house and gardens with discrete but attentive guides. From the entrance to the exit, a fantastic visit. A huge family home with a fascinating past.”

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Early history

It’s thought that some form of settlement has stood in Chastleton for over 1,000 years, but by the 16th century, the site of the house as we recognise it today was owned by the Catesby family.

That was until Walter Jones bought the land and previous house from Robert Catesby, and it remained within his family for 400 years.

He demolished what remained of the original property and constructed a stunning building in its place, completed in 1612.

His acquisition was intended to mirror his illustrious legal career, and he sought to establish himself as a country gentleman, having now become a landowner.

Throughout the following century, the Jones family continued to form unions with several well-established gentry families, helping to cement this standing.

The final direct descendant of Walter Jones, however, was Arthur Jones, who inherited the estate in 1813 and carried out some structural enhancements to the residence.

Following his death, the property stayed within the family, though not with a direct descendant; rather, it was handed down to a distant cousin by marriage named John Henry-Whitmore Jones.

The final chapter of this family tree’s ownership concluded in 1991, when the National Heritage Memorial Fund purchased Chastleton and transferred it to the care of the National Trust.

Regrettably for the final occupants, the expense of maintaining the building was becoming far too substantial.

Preservation

The National Heritage Memorial Fund acquired Chastleton in 1991, and the majority of its original contents remained precisely as they were before it was transferred to the National Trust.

In an effort to maintain that mystical ambience that can only be attributed to centuries of tales and memories on the grounds, there was a plan to preserve the house, not restore it.

With this, they merely repaired parts that were damaged, which took a total of six years, to ensure the building was structurally sound and stable.

The stunning home was later reopened for the public to witness all its magic up close in 1998.

Visiting

It’s thought that one of the true treasures of the house is the Long Gallery, boasting the longest-surviving barrel-vaulted ceiling in the country. Due to neglect, the plasterwork required some refurbishment, which occurred in 1904.

Part of the room’s splendour is attributed to the mask heads located at the west end of the room, extremely rare survivals from the 1600s era, believed to have been used as a weapon to ward off evil spirits.

Beyond the confines of the house lies a vast, impeccably maintained garden, offering a sense of tranquillity and relaxation. Contributing to this glory is the Jacobean Pleasure Garden, also known as the Best Garden – a name that speaks volumes about its beauty.

To fully appreciate it all, visitors can embark on the Wilderness Walk, designed to provide not just a soothing stroll around the gardens but also the very best views of the house and the ever-changing gardens through the seasons.

One recent visitor said: “The house is amazing, a time capsule of a grand country house decaying over the years, with the fantastic result of being able to see how things really were without Victorian (or other) alterations. And top tip, do enjoy the Chastleton Teas at the church right next door.”

The property welcomes visitors from mid-March onwards with opening hours of 1pm until 5pm. Adult admission is priced at £15, while children’s tickets cost £7.50 and families can purchase a ticket for £37.50.

It’s been described as Game for a Laugh meets Saturday Night Takeaway – but Joel claims he was terrified during one particular challenge

Joel Dommett said he experienced “one of the most frightening moments of my life” after being disguised as a set of dog toys while trying to get a collar off a Great Dane in new show Celebrity Sabotage.

The Masked Singer star is joined by fellow disruptors GK Barry, Judi Love and Sam Thompson for the new Saturday night series which has been dubbed Saturday Night Takeaway meets Game for a Laugh. And at one point he was tasked with trying to grab the collar while GK tried to distract the owner from realising what was going on.

“I think it’s genuinely one of the most frightening moments of my life because we had this lady who had a Great Dane and so she was there with the dog. And so GK was there trying to distract the owner whilst I was dressed as dog toys, trying not to get caught by the owner, but trying to get the collar off the dog without being noticed.”

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The dog, at the time, was wearing a wig. “It turns out, not that safe,” he laughed. “Obviously the dog just wanted to eat me. Face to face with a dog, I can’t remember if I fell. You would bloody panic if you were on the floor. It’s called a Great Dane for a reason.”

GK admitted she was worried for him, telling him at the time. “Honestly, it’s not that deep, but I’d love you to still have a face after this episode. And he was like, ‘I’m going to go again’.”

Another time comedian Joel was made to hide inside a chair. “I dressed as that chair and I was just hidden in a room and we were all there. The entire time I was just thinking, ‘Please, nobody sit on me.’ That was all I was thinking.”

For the series, producers took over a manor house where they staged six fake reality shows, each with its own celebrity host, who were all in on the joke. Once the unsuspecting contestants arrived to take part, the four saboteurs set about carrying out missions being set for them by producers, with each set of players genuinely believing they were taking part in a brand new show for ITV. They were – but not the one they thought.

The good news for all of them, however, is that every time the saboteurs were successful, they were winning money for the unwitting contestants worth up to £30,000. Joel, 40, said that when they finally worked out what was going on, it made for great TV. “The reveal at the end when they realise that they’re winning money. It’s just like so heartwarming.” And he added “We just cause absolute chaos, carnage. I don’t know about you guys, but it’s the most fun I’ve had working on a show in a really long time.”

One of the challenges sees the team tasked with ruining the face masks being applied to people who were in on the joke in a fake spa – by lacing it with green dye, which stained their faces and left them filled with fake fury.

Judi said that one of the saboteurs spent a lot of time using one particular disguise. “We dress up as mad stuff. Basically every single episode GK is dressed as a bush,” she laughed. For herself, she said: “I think the skill I learned is that I can roll quite well. I’ll just leave it at that.”

Over the weeks the team are joined by guest saboteurs, one of whom was Jo Brand. ‘She was so funny. She just did not care about what we were saying,” they laughed. “There was one bit we were like, ‘Don’t get caught.’ She was just wandering around the corridors.

-Celebrity Sabotage starts on Saturday March 21 at 8pm on ITV1 and ITVX.

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Vogue Williams and Spencer Matthews have been married since 2018 and share three children, but she admits she initially didn’t fancy him and likes to keep a ‘separate life’

Vogue Williams has revealed she prefers to maintain a “separate life” from husband Spencer Matthews. The 40-year-old encountered the former Made in Chelsea star whilst filming The Jump on Channel 4 back in 2017.

The Irish podcast presenter initially admits she “didn’t fancy” Spencer and believed he “wasn’t for her”. Yet she says her mates “really wanted me to sleep with Spencer” and thought he’d fit in with their circle.

Nevertheless, shortly after their first meeting, romance flourished, and in January 2018 Spencer proposed during an outing to see The Lion King in London. The couple wed that June at Glen Affric, the Matthews family’s Scottish estate.

Speaking recently at Meta’s HQ in Dublin, Vogue acknowledged she enjoys maintaining a “separate life” from her spouse. This came as she recounted an incident where he irritated her whilst she was preparing to spend time with My Therapist Ghosted Me co-host Joanne McNally.

Asked who she favours between Joanne and Spencer, Vogue answered: “Well it depends what I need them for. I went for a walk with Joanne on Sunday morning and Spenny was insistent that he wanted to go for lunch and then Joanne was like, ‘I’m not hungry, I want to go home.'”

She continued: “So I was in a huff with Spenny, as I was going on a walk with Joanne and he interrupted it. I try to, I like to have a separate life as well, Spenny he has his friends and I have my friends.”

In her autobiography Big Mouth, Vogue confesses she worried a romance with Spencer wouldn’t “have gone very well” regardless because he “was yet to form a serious bone in his body”. Vogue meanwhile acknowledges she tended to find herself “getting serious quickly”.

The duo nevertheless “got on famously” following Spencer’s arrival at The Jump dressed in tracksuit bottoms, slippers, and “reeking of booze”. Vogue penned: “I had done a lot of work with my therapist up to this point; we had decided that if I continue to fall for guys I felt I needed to fix or help I was just repeating a pattern and that it always ended the same way (disastrously).

“Spencer, being a man made of red flags, was not for me I decided, and I didn’t really fancy him anyway so it was all good. I did, however, love his personality.”

The pair now have three children together – Theodore, Gigi and Otto. Vogue has previously revealed she would have “swiped past” Spencer had they encountered each other on a dating app.

She shared this during an earlier episode of Vogue and Amber, whilst responding to a listener finding it difficult to discover love through digital platforms. Vogue remarked: “You’re just judging someone completely on the way they look.

“And I always say this, Spencer is obviously gorgeous, but he wouldn’t have been my type when we met. And I would have swiped past him on a dating app.

“And then we met, and we were mad about each other because we just loved each other’s personalities. So, I think trying to meet somebody in real life, although it can be hard, can be a really amazing thing.”

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.

“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 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.”

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.”

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.”
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WHITE SALMON, Wash. — Seth McBride’s life was forever changed on a snowy mountainside in British Columbia.

McBride was — and is — a thrill-seeker. Growing up in Juneau, Ala., with the untamed outdoors as his stomping ground, he loved to rock climb, mountain bike and, especially, strap on his skis and fly, soaring headlong off heart-pounding cliffs, crags and cornices.

A few months before his senior year in high school, McBride was at a terrain park at Whistler Blackcomb resort. He was 17. He launched a maneuver he’d completed many times before, a back flip off a steep jump. Only this time, he over-accelerated, over-rotated and came down on his neck. Right away he knew something was wrong.

“As soon as I landed,” McBride recalled more than 25 years later, “I lost all sensation in my legs and my lower back.”

The prognosis was grim; doctors told McBride he probably would never walk again, and he hasn’t.

But that’s scarcely slowed him down.

Before they had kids, McBride and his wife biked 6,500 miles — McBride using a special, hand-cranked cycle — from Portland, Ore., to the southern tip of Argentina. He’s traveled the world as a wheelchair rugby player, winning gold, silver and bronze medals at Paralympic Games in Beijing, Rio de Janeiro and London.

McBride — adventurer, daredevil — appears unflappable. Until it comes to air travel.

It’s not the hassles and aggravation that most people put up with. Every trip requires McBride, 43, to undergo a special regimen, dehydrating himself so he won’t have to use the bathroom in flight. Every excursion includes the likelihood of being uncomfortably jostled or, worse, dropped as he’s being transferred to his seat. He can never be certain his wheelchair, his lifeline, won’t be damaged or missing once his plane lands.

“There are very few places or in my life that I feel less independent” than an airport, said McBride, who still plays competitive rugby at the club level. “None of the systems are set up for wheelchair users to be able to manage things on their own.”

For a time, as the Biden administration was winding down, it looked as though that was about to change somewhat. The federal government issued a set of regulations that would require airlines, among other things, to assume liability for damaged and delayed wheelchairs and improve training for staff working with passengers facing mobility issues.

But the Trump administration, which has made deregulation one of its highest imperatives, put those requirements on hold while a trade association and several major airlines sue to keep the changes from taking effect.

For McBride and others like him, it’s a disappointing setback that follows years of pressing Washington to make air transit just a bit more decent and humane.

“It sucks,” McBride said of the dignity-deflating status of a wheelchair traveler. “I know quite a few people who simply won’t fly anymore.”

::

When the Biden administration published new airline regulations in the Federal Register, it spelled out its reasoning.

Passengers forced to surrender their wheelchairs “must rely on airline staff and contractors to properly handle a wheelchair or scooter and return it in a timely manner in the condition it was received. Advocates have stressed … that, when an individual’s wheelchair or scooter is damaged by an airline, the individual’s mobility, health and freedom are impacted until the device can be returned, repaired or replaced.”

What’s more, “Advocates note that wheelchairs are often custom fitted to meet the needs and shapes of each user. Spending time in an ill-fitting chair can cause serious injury, such as pressure sores, and even death because of a subsequent infection.”

The Department of Transportation estimated that, in 2024, 1 of every 100 wheelchairs or scooters placed on a domestic flight was lost, damaged or delayed. Which may not seem like a terribly large number, unless you’re the person whose well-being, and even survival, depends on their wheelchair or scooter being at the ready and operational upon arrival.

Mia Ives-Rublee directs the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank. She said airlines, which cater to luxury travelers and treat everyone else like sardines, have long put profit and expedience ahead of the needs of their disabled passengers.

“We’ve seen this tension continue to build as disabled people become more active and the world becomes more accessible. They want to travel, or have jobs that require travel,” said Ives-Rublee. While discrimination is plainly illegal, “Airlines aren’t doing enough to protect our devices,” which has the effect of making it “very difficult for disabled people to travel.”

Ives-Rublee has had nearly a half dozen wheelchairs broken by airlines in the last 20 years, which can be costly as well as life-threatening. A manually operated wheelchair can run as much as $2,000, Ives-Rublee said. A mechanized wheelchair can cost as much as a used car.

(McBride said he’s suffered nicks and scrapes on his “everyday chair.” Worse, was the damage done to wheelchairs he uses in rugby competition, which “is obviously a big deal” when he’s traveling for a match.)

In their lawsuit opposing the rules change, airlines and their trade group said the Biden administration overstepped its authority and the new requirements were too burdensome. Strict liability for wheelchair damage also could expose air carriers to “unreasonable financial risk,” the suit claimed.

The wheelchair rules were supposed to take effect just before Biden left office. The Trump administration postponed them until March 2025, then pushed implementation to August 2025. Now, the Department of Transportation says it will issue a new rule this coming August, with a 60-day comment period to follow — meaning no change will come until at least 2027.

Ives-Rublee hasn’t much hope for relief.

“Given the nature of the administration right now, I doubt they’re putting much effort into protecting” the Biden-era regulations, she said

::

The last thing McBride wants is anyone feeling sorry for him. He’s no victim.

“It was something s— that happened to me,” he said of the accident that left him paralyzed. “But s— stuff happens to people all the time. What matters is how you move forward and what you can do with your life after that happens.”

McBride was seated at the kitchen table of his custom-built home, two miles above the Columbia River in rural Washington state. The house — one level, bright and airy, with concrete floors to smooth the path of his wheelchair — perches at the end of a steep dirt road. A forest in the backyard gives his children, ages 4 and 8, the same freedom to romp through nature he enjoyed growing up in Alaska. There’s also a climbing wall in his son’s bedroom.

Working remotely, McBride writes for New Mobility, a magazine for wheelchair users, and heads communications and marketing for the United Spinal Assn., a nonprofit advocacy group.

His politics run to the left side of the spectrum. (On a cold, drizzly morning, McBride wore a black Oregon Ducks hoodie, honoring his alma mater, the University of Oregon, and its home in liberal Eugene.) Yet while he’s no Trump fan, McBride doesn’t consider making life easier for wheelchair users to be a partisan issue. After all, he pointed out, it was a Republican president, George H. W. Bush, who signed into law the landmark Americans
With Disabilities Act.

“We’ve made a lot of progress as a community working with Republicans, working with Democrats,” he said, as the sun made a brief appearance, illuminating the Douglas firs outside his door. “The basic issues of people being able to access the same services and the same experiences as everyone else shouldn’t be political. … It’s a safety thing.”

He’s not unalterably opposed to deregulation, per se.

“I think it’s a huge issue within systems when it’s overly complex for companies or people to do anything,” McBride said. “But lots of time regulations are there for a reason. It’s when private companies aren’t necessarily doing a good enough job protecting the safety or the rights of all people within a society.”

Given a chance to address Trump or the head of his Transportation Department, Sean Duffy, McBride would say this: Come, let’s take a plane ride.

“Go on a trip with my rugby team and see what it’s like when you have multiple wheelchair users on the same plane,” he said, “and how difficult it is and why we feel like regulations are needed so we can have a modicum of safety and dignity when we’re flying.”

The cost of accommodation might take away some from the airlines’ bottom line. But certain things can’t be priced in dollars and cents.

Chase Infiniti has only been in the spotlight for two years but she has already brushed shoulders with Hollywood greats like Leonardo DiCaprio and Jake Gyllenhaal

Rising star Chase Infiniti has already become one of Hollywood’s most talked-about stars after just two big roles.

It’s hardly a surprise considering her unique name and stellar leading performance in One Battle After Another alongside industry giant Leonardo DiCaprio.

While Leo and other cast members managed to bag nominations at this year’s Oscars, Chase didn’t receive a nod.

However, she is set to present an award during the ceremony, which airs on ITV1 tonight (Sunday, March 15) at 10.15pm.

As viewers tune into the long-awaited award show, we’re certain many will be curious to learn more about Chase’s background.

How did Chase Infiniti get her name?

The 25-year-old actress was born Chase Infiniti Payne in Indiana, America. Her name was inspired by legendary films Batman Forever and Toy Story.

She shared in an interview with the Today Show that her parents “had watched Batman Forever and they were obsessed with Nicole Kidman as Chase Meridian”. They decided to name their child, whether it would be a boy or girl, Chase.

When the couple were searching for a middle name, they landed on Buzz Lightyear’s iconic catchphrase from the Toy Story series: “To infinity and beyond!”

Chase has reflected on her parents seemingly predicting she would have a career in movies, telling the Today Show: “It’s really crazy. I’m like ‘How did [they] predict that!'”

Are Chase Infiniti’s parents movie stars?

Chase’s parents are not movie stars. However, new fans may be confused by chatter on the internet suggesting that she is Kerry Washington and Tony Goldwyn’s daughter.

It is actually a running joke on the internet that Chase is the love child of Kerry and Tony’s characters in Scandal.

The hit political drama followed Tony as President Fitzgerald Thomas Grant III. He sparks a heated affair with former White House Communications Officer Olivia (played by Kerry), which he is determined to hide from the public.

The online joke came after viewers noticed a striking resemblance between Tony and upcoming actor Tyriq Withers, with others later bringing Chase into the conversation.

It went even more viral when leading star Kerry unexpectedly played into the social media discussion last month, sharing a playful selfie with her ‘Scandal children’.

She tagged her co-star in the caption, writing: “It’s a family reunion at the @naacpimageawards (Missing you @tonygoldwyn).”

What else has Chase Infiniti starred in?

The rising star is building an impressive career, having featured in Apple TV’s Presumed Innocence alongside Jake Gyllenhaal in 2024.

She then appeared in One Battle After Another in 2025, and has been nominated for a BAFTA, Critics Choice Award and Golden Globe for her part as Leo’s on-screen daughter, Willa.

Her recognition throughout awards season left film fans stunned when she didn’t earn an Oscar nominations, with many arguing she was ‘snubbed’.

The Gen Z star is also set to feature in The Handmaid’s Tale sequel, The Testaments, premiering on April 8.

The Oscars will air on ITV1 and ITVX tonight (March 15) at 10.15pm.

For the latest showbiz, TV, movie and streaming news, go to the new **Everything Gossip** website

Reporting from El Progreso, Honduras — Not long after Jesuit priest Jack Warner met a bearded, 22-year-old Midwesterner in 1980, the two Americans bonded, drawn together by the goals and questions that led them both to El Progreso, a small city not far from vast banana fields — the campos bananeros.

Warner was 35 and had arrived a year earlier to form the Teatro La Fragua, a theater company for Hondurans. As the young priest looked to forge a relationship with the campesinos, his friendship blossomed with Tim Kaine, who had taken a year off from Harvard Law School to join the Jesuit mission.

“He was 22 years old,” Warner said, “and it was the typical thing that a 22-year-old would do: What do I do with my life?”

Kaine, now a 58-year-old U.S. senator from Virginia and the Democratic vice presidential nominee, has often said that his time in Honduras helped him answer that question, giving him “a North Star” to guide his life toward public service. It’s central to his biography and likely to arise Tuesday night when he debates his Republican opponent, Mike Pence.

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When Kaine traveled to Honduras, the nation was in the throes of turmoil, flanked by countries torn by civil war and ruled by the heavy hand of a U.S-backed military bent on stamping out what it perceived to be communism spreading in the region.

“I got a firsthand look at a system — a dictatorship — where a few people at the top had all the power and everyone else got left out,” Kaine said in July at the Democratic National Convention.

He also witnessed extreme poverty. His experiences, coupled with the Jesuit goal of being “men for others,” led him to become a civil-rights lawyer for 17 years, specializing in housing-discrimination cases. Honduras convinced him, he said, “that we’ve got to advance opportunity for everyone.”

Kaine now serves on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and this year co-sponsored a bill that would increase aid to Central America’s “Northern Triangle” — Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

Key to his experiences in Honduras was the friendship and example of Warner and a handful of other Jesuits. And a Christmastime visit to a poor man’s house taught him a lesson that resonates decades later.

During his time in El Progreso, Kaine lived in a barracks, along with Warner and other Jesuits. After their work days wrapped up about 5 p.m., he and Warner frequently commiserated over office duties, students, the teatro and the poetry Kaine was writing. Warner, a former English teacher, worked with Kaine on his verse. Over time, they became confidants.

Both men grew up in the Midwest — Kaine in the Kansas City, Kan., suburb of Overland Park; Warner in St. Louis — and had been drawn to the Jesuit mission of social justice from an early age.

Kaine attended Rockhurst High School for boys, run by Jesuit priests who ran a demanding schedule of daily Masses, theology classes and community service activities with retreats.

Kaine, who earned a bachelor’s degree in economics at the University of Missouri, was at Harvard Law when he began to question his faith and the path he should take in life, he says. Because he had made a brief trip to Honduras in 1974 to deliver donations to the Jesuits, he decided to write them and see whether they could use some help. They said yes.

“He took a rather strong decision to seek out an answer — not everyone comes to Progreso,” Warner said.

Kaine had to tell his law school dean, and his parents, of this new direction. “The dean, not to mention my parents and friends, were confused about what I was doing and even questioned whether I would come back,” Kaine once recalled in a Virginia Tech speech.

By September 1980, Kaine was rumbling along in a bus into northern Nicaragua, where he visited another American Jesuit, Father James Carney. In Honduras months earlier, Carney had encouraged peasants to fight for their land, and he was expelled by the Honduran military, which saw him as one of the leftist priests who embraced liberation theology and the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua.

Activists, some of them priests or the peasants they worked with, would be banished or killed by authorities. Carney would later disappear in what was believed to be a clandestine Honduran military operation backed by the CIA.

“It was a time when anytime the police stopped you, you got really nervous. You never knew what was going to happen,” Warner recalled. “We were under a military dictatorship at the time and very heavy military control. It was scary, and one had to live very carefully.”

In El Progreso that September, Kaine soon met another Jesuit, Brother James O’Leary, a missionary also from Missouri.

O’Leary, who died in 2002, was often described as an outspoken, occasionally cranky but also skilled carpenter, painter and electrician who built houses and chapels for the poor. Kaine worked with him at his Loyola Technical Vocational Center, helping to boost the school’s enrollment and teaching carpentry and welding. As a youngster, Kaine had picked up skills working in his father’s ironworking shop in the Kansas City area.

Kaine declined to be interviewed for this story, but in a speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, he recalled what O’Leary taught him.

“I learned from a great mentor there, Brother Jim O’Leary, that faith is about more than words or doctrine — it’s about action,” he said. “And that led me to spend my life in public service.”

One of Kaine’s former students at the vocational center, Alex Hernandez Monroy, recalled the daily lessons in carpentry and welding from the shaggy-haired young American.

“His Spanish wasn’t very good, but despite all that he interacted with us,” said Hernandez Monroy, then 13 and now 48. Although Kaine couldn’t pronounce certain words, the students appreciated his efforts.

“Something very important that he did was that he visited the families of the students,” he said. “We were not used to interacting with Americans, so it had an impression on us to see someone like him educating us.”

Their debate might not matter much, but Mike Pence and Tim Kaine would be key White House players »

Using some of the skills he learned from Kaine and O’Leary, Hernandez Monroy teaches carpentry to a group of 15 students at the school. “They taught us that we could help our kids,” he said. “The majority of our youth are at risk, so that left an impression on us.”

::

About 35,000 people lived in El Progreso in 1980, when it was dominated by the presence of the United Fruit Co., the world’s largest — and often exploitative — banana company. Today it has a population of about 200,000, and the winding roads leading to the city are lined by brightly colored, one-story concrete homes.

During Kaine’s time there, however, it was a collection of dusty, rural villages and banana camps, with mountaintop towns accessible only by foot or mule. As a center for union activity, it became a target of the communism-fearing Reagan administration.

While war raged in neighboring El Salvador and Nicaragua, Honduras remained calm — but was gripped in fear. It was the staging ground for many of the United States’ clandestine operations aimed at toppling other governments.

People dared not speak about activism or union organizing lest they risk being among those who “disappeared.” More than a dozen priests were killed in the 1970s and 1980s after being associated with liberation theology, considered a Marxist-tinged doctrine that preached to the poor.

While Catholic priests in Central America were attacked for advocating on behalf of the poor, Kaine maintained a low profile and didn’t attract notice from the military.

Warner, a slender man with gray shoulder-length hair, recalled Kaine’s time in Honduras during a recent interview at the theater in El Progreso.

“His interest was in the students and what he was doing in his work, which is what we were all doing,” Warner said. “Trying to figure how we can do the work without being kicked out of the country for exploring it.”

Kaine also saw poverty and expressed his feelings about it through writing, as did Warner.

The priest maintained a daily newsletter with accounts of poverty and life in El Progreso. “We all have our defenses to shut out the existence of human misery, most of which consist of closing our eyes and pretending it doesn’t exist,” Warner wrote in a December 1980 newsletter. “Hopelessness then becomes a way of life for both parties.”

Warner published one of Kaine’s poems, titled “Still Life,” in which he described the “thick misery” of the town of San Pedro Sula. “In the saddest slum of San Pedro, lives are played out in the shade of a highway where buses glide like lost thoughts overhead.”

He likened the challenges, or “questions marks” facing the town to fingers testing the wind. “Each predicts change that just won’t come.”

Kaine spent nine months in El Progreso before returning to Harvard. He has kept in occasional touch with Warner and has returned to Honduras several times, most recently last year. This year, he and 25 senators called for an end to immigration raids in the U.S. targeting women and children who were fleeing violence in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

When he accepted the nomination for vice president, Kaine said that the three basic values he absorbed in Honduras hold true today: “Fe, familia y trabajo.” Faith, family and work.

“I came to understand the power of faith and communal worship,” Kaine said at Virginia Tech in 2006. “I learned how to speak Spanish and began to understand how the things which can seem to divide us — like language and skin color — were so much smaller than the dreams and fears that unite us.”

Kaine also has repeatedly recalled what became one of his most indelible memories of Honduras.

He and Father Jarrell Wade, a Jesuit known as Father Patricio, had traveled by mule to visit a dirt-poor family around Christmas. As they prepared to leave, the husband handed Wade a bag. “Merry Christmas, padre,” he said.

Inside the worn bag were fruits and vegetables he had saved for the priest. Wade took the bag and thanked him.

Kaine was appalled and angered that the priest would take food from such a poor family — “I was fuming” — until Wade imparted the lesson: “You must be really humble to accept a gift of food from a poor person, and the most important thing in life is the ability to give.”

veronica.rocha@latimes.com

Twitter: @VeronicaRochaLA

Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson in Washington contributed to this report.

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Alex Kingston was awarded eighth place in Strictly Come Dancing last year with her professional partner Johannes Radebe.

Alex Kingston admits she felt “worthless” after her high-profile divorce from a Hollywood icon.

Saturday Kitchen Live returns today, Saturday, March 14, on BBC One with presenter Matt Tebbutt joined by this week’s special guest Alex Kingston, famed for ER, Doctor Who and more recently Strictly Come Dancing.

As the 63-year-old returns to our screens this weekend, here’s an insight into the life of the fan-favourite actress.

Hollywood marriage

Alex Kingston was married to none other than Schindler’s List and Harry Potter legend Ralph Fiennes, after they met as students at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in 1983.

They dated for a decade, married in 1993 but divorced in 1997 after Fiennes had an affair with his Hamlet co-star Francesca Annis who was 18 years his senior.

For the latest showbiz, TV, movie and streaming news, go to the new **Everything Gossip** website.

After discovering the affair, Alex found it too difficult to stay in London and so started a new life in Los Angeles and joined the cast of ER in 1997.

Previously speaking about the break-up to the Daily Mail, she shared: “I was feeling worthless, that I would never find anyone else as good as my husband, which is ridiculous, but I had so little self-esteem.

“Divorce is awful, but it is also something I don’t regret happening to me because it has shaped who I am now.”

She went on to marry her second husband, German writer Florian Haetel, two years later and had their daughter Salome Violetta Haertel.

Their marriage wasn’t to last either though as they separated in 2009 and divorced four years later.

Two years after her second divorce, the star went on to marry TV producer Jonathan Stamp with the pair still happily together.

Strictly

Alex competed in Strictly Come Dancing 2025 with partner Johannes Radebe and proved to be a fan-favourite with BBC viewers.

However, she didn’t get the best critique from harsh judge Craig Revel-Horwood when he jibed that Alex looked like she was having a “midlife crisis” during her Halloween Week salsa routine to Mousse T Fellow’s Horny.

Reacting to the unexpected comment to Prima Magazine, she said: “When I did the Strictly Halloween ‘Horny’ number, I wasn’t fully aware of the scathing critique Craig had given me about looking like a woman who is having a midlife crisis.

“I didn’t realise that he was saying it or know about the follow-through in terms of people saying, ‘That’s just outrageous, how dare you say something like that?’

“It was a little mean-spirited for Craig to say that and also I just felt like it’s exactly the opposite of what I’m trying to advocate.

“It’s like, no, if you want to dance and swing a devil’s tail around and you’re in your 90s, do it. I mean, this is your life. So live it!”

Health scare

Alex was diagnosed with and treated for uterine cancer in 2024 and, after a hysterectomy and radiation, she is now in remission.

The star initially dismissed symptoms including boating as a sign of aging but suffered a “shocking” haemorrhage while on stage at Chichester Festival Theatre.

It was after this incident that Alex was given the unexpected diagnosis, telling the BBC: “I never went down the cancer road in my head.

“It was a shock, because I have a very positive outlook on life in general.

“Even though my body was telling me there was something very seriously wrong.”

Alex added that it was this experience in 2024 that pushed her to say yes to Strictly Come Dancing the following year as “life is too short”.

Alex appears on Saturday Kitchen on BBC One on March 14 at 10am

Greek divers surface around me shouting about “megalo” groupers. I’m surrounded by enormous grins above the water and big fish below. A happy place to be. A bunch of us, divers and snorkellers, are hanging around Agios Petros reef off the island of Alonissos, and there’s a reason the groupers are big here. The National Marine Park of Alonissos Northern Sporades, established in 1992, is Greece’s largest working marine protected area (MPA) – two bigger MPAs have just been created, but are not yet operational. The protective measures appear to be working, judging by the size, abundance and diversity of marine life – glassy waters teeming with colourful fish and precious shells make swimming here an absolute dream.

For those who like to go deeper, Alonissos is the site of Greece’s first underwater archaeological park and museum – the impressive Peristera wreck, with its giant cargo of amphorae preserved from the 5th century BC. This one is for certified divers descending with accredited local dive centres. I’m with one of those schools, Ikion Diving, but today we’re doing something more accessible. We’re in the village of Steni Vala for the launch of a citizen science project, the Highly Protected Mediterranean Initiative (much more fun than it sounds). Ikion is partnering with the universities of Thessaloniki and the Aegean to offer free snorkelling and diving trips logging native and alien species. I’m worried about my fish ID skills, but the effervescent biologist Katerina Konsta runs a great briefing and we’re given dive slates with images to mark (imparting a childish delight at playing scientist).

Everyone buddies up. I have come solo, so Katerina is stuck with me, and we complete two gentle transects of the reef. It’s a sea of colour: reds and blues, yellows, silver and gold. Friendly little wrasse, painted combers, sizeable parrotfish and 35 salema porgy accompany us as I try not to double-count them. No sign of invaders – lionfish, rabbitfish, redcoats or bluespotted cornetfish. Back at the dive centre, we input the data, and I’m gratified to find that my card matches Katerina’s, give or take a grouper.

It has been great fun – a very gentle introduction to fieldwork, in what I’m going to declare the best place in the Mediterranean to spot fish. I do not say this lightly. Over several years, I have sailed east to Greece from Gibraltar; my boyfriend, Wolfi, sailed west from Turkey. We both freedived. Neither of us has seen this much life underwater, though he is reminded of particular parts of the Turkish coastline where, as a teenager 20 years ago, he regularly found now-rare giant triton (Charonia tritonis) and giant tun snails (Tonna galea) – a great source of envy as I have never seen either in the wild.

With the smug glow of having done something worthwhile, I wander down to the charming harbour, where I find Wolfi soaking up the atmosphere, and I boast about all the groupers I’ve seen. Fish tavernas line the front, but I have a local person’s recommendation, so we’re heading for Tassia’s Cooking (if you can’t get in, Sossinola is also good). Having made friends with so many fish today, I find I just can’t eat one, so I opt for creamy fava bean and vine leaves, followed by moussaka – all homemade, well priced and really good.

A five-minute stroll from Steni Vala’s harbour, behind Glyfa beach, we find our night’s accommodation, Ilya Botanic Suites, by a shady olive grove. Calming and compact, these minimalist rooms reflect the landscape; fine-grained terrazzo softened with vertical wooden blinds and plants, and – the best bit – a small plunge pool to sink into after the hard work of counting fish.

The next day we head north to Gerakas, where I’m in the water for under a minute when I find a beautiful grouper snagged on the end of a tangled line. We get some pliers and release the distressed creature; it heads down to the safety of the rocks and we make for the tiny port of Kalamakia for the excellent Margarita fish taverna (owned by a fisher). Our meal of fresh Thunnus alalunga (Alonissos tuna), scorpion fish and lobster comes to about €180 for two with drinks – expensive by Greek standards, but all locally caught and the quality is excellent.

Away from the water, Alonissos is surprisingly lush for an Aegean island – Aleppo pines and oaks, maples and olive trees stud the hills. It even boasts a mountain (just, at 475 metres), Kouvouli. At 20km long, the island’s interior is easy to cover over a couple of days (you’re more likely to meet handsome goats than other humans), but, be warned, some roads only loosely resemble that description, and a quad bike is preferable to a car if you don’t want to lose your deposit. There are plenty of bike trails (and beautiful ravine hikes), but in the searing July heat we opt for shady forest walks and quick stops for clifftop views. And, let’s be honest, on a Greek island in summer, the best days start and finish in the sea.

Happily, you can access a range of beaches on both sides of the island for sunrise and sunset views. On the eastern shore is the much-loved Agios Dimitrios, a sweeping triangular stretch of white pebble. It’s organised with cafes and sunbeds, great for families, but for me it’s most stunning from above, that tongue of white plunging like an arrow into turquoise sea. Kokkinokastro is another beautiful beach, and Gialos, with its old windmill perched on the cliffs, offers a wonderfully moody sunset. But my favourite, hands down, is the small and secluded Kremisma beach. Absolutely beautiful. It’s a short walk from a car park and a slightly steep drop (ignore the frayed rope), and there are no sunbeds, no bars, nothing at all (perhaps literally – it’s said to be nudist-friendly, though personally I wouldn’t recommend stripping, which is not customary in Greece).

Off the pebble beach is a rocky little coastline that’s perfect for spotting marine life. Wolfi and I by now are on one baby moray eel each, and I have swooned over a shiny brown cowrie, but he’s ahead on octopus. Competitive, me?

The busy little port town of Patitiri, where you will arrive, is home to most residents and offers plenty of accommodation, shopping, beaches, tavernas and a museum (a steep climb makes a morning visit best). To get a sense of why Alonissos is important, visit the monk seal information centre, run by MOm (the Hellenic Society for the Study and Protection of the Monk Seal). The marine park was established to protect its population of monk seals (one of the most endangered marine mammals in the world). There are gifts, and footage of seals you won’t see up close (a sobering photo of someone with a nasty bite illustrates another reason you shouldn’t try).

For nightlife, don’t miss the tiny and eclectic Drunk Seal bar, at its best after midnight. Overlooking the port, you will find Kritamo restaurant, with great cocktails and a contemporary spin on Greek cuisine. Down among the throng of the town, the old-school taverna Archipelagos cooks Greek classics – goat in tomato, stifado – very well. A few kilometres along the coastline, pretty Votsi and Rousoum Gialos harbours are also worth a stroll for dinner.

Behind and above Patitiri sits Chora, the historic hilltop “old town”, where locals lived until it was devastated by an earthquake in 1965 (establishing the port as the new capital). Most of the stone houses have since been extensively restored, while several churches and the original Byzantine walls survived. It’s beyond charming – all cobbled alleys crowded with candlelit tavernas and flowering balconies. The views over both coastlines make it ideal for sunset and dinner (evening temperatures help with the steep streets). There’s also a museum where landlubbers can “dive” the Peristera shipwreck, using VR to navigate the piles of amphorae.

Great fun, but you don’t need scuba skills or simulation to find real treasures underwater in Alonissos. With Wolfi and I neck and neck in sightings, I end the week on an absolute high, spotting a stunning giant triton snail in the shallows, followed by a giant tun snail partly buried in the sand. Numbers of both have plummeted in the Mediterranean due to overfishing and shell collectors, so it’s a joy to see them alive and well in Alonissos’s practically pristine waters.

Ilya Botanic Suites in Steni Vala has double suites with a hot tub and garden view from £105 a night. Free scuba diving and snorkelling trips: to take part in a reef check in Alonissos, contact Kostas (info@ikiondiving.gr) or check the website (sporadesdiving.gr). Return ferry tickets to Alonissos from Skiathos, about £45; or from Volos, Thessaly (2.5 hours’ drive from Thessaloniki), or Mantoudi, Evia island (2 hours’ drive from Athens, connected by a bridge), about £80

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

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Recommendations from the film and TV experts at The Times

“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

“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

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

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