show biz

LIAM Payne’s girlfriend Kate Cassidy has revealed that she’s removing her tattoo tribute to the late star – but later admitted that she will get it redone in the future.

Kate, 27, has had a number permanent reminders in honour of One Direction star Liam, following on from his death on October 16 2024.

Liam died after falling from a hotel balcony while on holiday in Buenos Aires, Argentina, two years ago.

Since then, Kate has had a rose, angel wings, his initials LP and their angel number 444 tattooed on her to remind her of him.

Taking to her Instagram story, the star, who dated Liam for two years before his death, shared a mirror selfie of her in the studio in Miami wearing some safety goggles.

Kate captioned the post: “Tattoo removal today,” with a white love heart emoji.

LIAM’S LETTERS

Liam Payne’s girlfriend Kate sobs as she reads old letters from late star

OVER & DONE

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In the next post she explained: “Decided to get some tattoos removed that were done poorly.

“Will be getting redone eventually.”

In the clip, Kate recorded the tattoo removal technician using their machine to zap away her ‘444’ inking – and the numbers have a special meaning.

Shortly after Liam’s death Kate declared the singer “her guardian angel” as she shared the details of their love letters.

In a heartbreaking tribute, Kate shared notes she found from Liam in which he vowed to marry her within the space of a year. 

Throughout the note, which is believed to be a manifestation pledge, he used the number 444 – which has now taken on a deeper, more resonant meaning than either he or Kate could have imagined. 

Angel numbers are believed to have mystic vibrational patterns, which help people attune themselves to the universe and what they desire. 

It’s a practice that dates back to Ancient Greece, but is still used to this day by many who believe it offers them direction in life, or messages from the spiritual universe. 

Kate, 25, revealed in the caption that they had planned their future and he wanted to get married “within a year”.

One photo showed the handwritten note from Liam, in which he wrote: “Me and Kate to marry within a year / engaged and together forever”.

His heartbroken girlfriend also described the singer star as someone who brought happiness to millions.

Calling Liam “the love of my life” and her “best friend,” she wrote in the tribute: “I don’t even know where to begin. My heart is shattered in ways I can’t put into words.

“I wish you could see the huge impact you’ve had on the world, even as it feels so dark right now.

“You brought so much happiness and positivity to everyone-millions of fans, your family, friends, and especially me. You are so incredibly loved.

“You are – because I can’t say were – my best friend, the love of my life, and everyone you touched felt just as special as I did. Your energy was contagious, lighting up every room you walked into.

“None of this feels real, and I can’t wrap my head around this new reality of not having you here.

“I’m struggling to figure out how to live in a world without you by my side. Together, we got to be kids again, always finding joy in the smallest things.

“Liam, you had the kindest soul and the most fun-loving spirit. It feels like I’ve lost the best part of myself. I can’t imagine a day without your laughter and love. You brought so much light into my life.”

She continued: “A few weeks ago, we sat outside on a beautiful evening manifesting our lives together.

“I keep your note close, even though you told me not to look at it.

“It said, ‘Me and Kate to marry within a year/engaged & together forever 444.’

“Liam, I know we’ll be together forever, but not in the way we had planned.

“You’ll always be with me. I’ve gained a guardian angel.

“I will love you for the rest of my life and beyond, carrying our dreams and memories with me everywhere I go.”

She ended the heartwrenching tribute, writing: “Forever yours, Katelyn 444.”

One balmy October day in Havana, as the Cuban French sister act Ibeyi plotted the video for “Offerings” — an electro-spiritual ballad from the new album “Offering,” released in June — Lisa-Kaindé Díaz unceremoniously asked her twin Naomi Díaz, to ceremoniously shave her head on camera.

Naomi was accustomed to Lisa-Kaindé’s whims long before they became professional artists. But to take a blade to her sister’s voluminous curls would be a bridge too far.

“I was like, ‘Hell no. I’m not doing that!’” Naomi recalled to The Times, over a Zoom call from Paris.

“As always, when I come with my woo-woo stuff, Naomi is eye rolling like, ‘Girl, what is this s—?’” said Lisa-Kaindé. “But this time around, Naomi was like, ‘OK.’”

The music video ended with Lisa-Kaindé releasing her locks into the sea.

At the core of Ibeyi, which translates to “twins” in the Yoruba language, is the polarity between sisters. Lisa-Kaindé is the bleeding heart who whispers divinity into her lyrics, and Naomi grounds them with the beating pulse of her percussion. They sing in unison, both in tension and harmony. This is the synergy that illuminates their atmospheric approach to the Afro-Cuban jazz tradition.

Born into a musical family in Paris — their mother the French Venezuelan singer Maya Dagnino, their father the Grammy-winning Cuban percussionist Anga Díaz (of Irakere and Buena Vista Social Club) — the 31-year-old sisters jump-started their music careers at 18 when they were discovered by British producer Richard Russell, who also helms the indie powerhouse XL Recordings. After releasing a self-titled debut in 2015, the Díaz sisters appeared in the utopian short film for Beyoncé’s “Lemonade,” then released two more albums under XL: 2017’s “Ash” and 2022’s “Spell31,” which Lisa-Kaindé admitted underperformed expectations.

For “Offering,” they parted with XL and braved the studio as independent artists, inviting new collaborators into the project such as producer Michael Brun (J Balvin, Victoria Monét)and the famed Cuban conguero Pedrito Martinez.

“Things didn’t go the way you wanted them to go, now what does it free?” said Lisa-Kaindé. “It freed a lot of things, in our personal and professional lives,” she added.

The duo returned to their roots in Havana last fall to film the visuals for “Offerings” — as well as other singles “Aset” and “Hurry Hurry,” which were co-directed by Corry Van Rhijn and Roman Pichon Herrera. Family, friends and neighbors filled the frames with dancing and dominoes; their apartments painted in shades of mint, butter yellow and palomino pink, flecked with a patina cultivated by humidity and time.

As Cuba remains a topic of heated debate in the U.S. — or a political football — the Díaz sisters remind listeners that the island nation is still home to over 10 million people, including their relatives, whom they’ve visited regularly since they were little girls.

In 2027, Ibeyi will embark on a North American tour, which kicks off Jan. 27 at the Fillmore in San Francisco and includes a stop at Pacific Electric in Los Angeles on Jan. 29. (“I want everybody to cry, dance and twerk that ass at our shows!” said Naomi.) The Díaz sisters spoke to The Times about their season of upheaval and the recovery that informed their first independent outing yet.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What has changed for you the most since you released “Spell31?”

Lisa-Kaindé: A lot has changed, personally and in the world. We needed to stop for a little bit and gather our thoughts, reflect on our career and all that we have done. We went from anger to sadness to acceptance. We left XL Recordings, which was our home for 10 years [and] three albums. We also stopped working with Richard Russell, whom we love. He was one of the first people to hear the album. But we really needed to experience something new.

Naomi: We started when we were 18, and now we’re independent and more in control than ever. We tried to find new producers with whom we felt a deep connection. That was like leaving a marriage and going on Tinder and having lots of bad dates… Our sound is so strong that we’d eat them, so we had to find producers whose sound could stay strong with ours.

I hear a lot of heartbreak in this album, but also making peace with that. How do you personally heal from the pain of such endings?

Lisa-Kaindé: We just go through the s—. There’s no other way. I think we should all be courageous to change. Look into the mirror and be like: “Who am I? What do I want to do?” And just live. L-I-V-E. It could also be L-E-A-V-E.

You have a T-shirt that says, “I used to make spells, now I make offerings.” What does that mean to you?

Lisa-Kaindé: “Spell31” [went] hand-in-hand with my high expectations. I felt like we needed to put a spell on the world, so that the world would love us. When “Spell31” didn’t meet the expectations I had, it was painful. I went into a meditation and came out thinking: “I used to make spells. Now I make offerings.” Suddenly it was so obvious I was trying to feed myself from the wrong source of protein. What if I just gave without expecting anything?

Some of your lyrics name orishas from the Yoruba religion, such as Elegua and Olokun. What does your spiritual practice look like?

Lisa-Kaindé: The older we grow, the more religious I’m becoming … but Naomi lives her spirituality in very different ways. For her, twerking in a sweaty club can be one of the most spiritual things ever. She’s getting more and more gangster.

Naomi: It’s how we grew up. We never use the word “spiritual,” but spirituality can be a lot of things. To me, there’s nothing more spiritual than being in [famed Atlanta strip club] Magic City. Some people are gonna light a candle. Everybody can do whatever the f— they want.

Lisa-Kaindé: It’s about living in a way that is aligned with what makes you vibrate, what makes you feel alive.

What was it like for Naomi to cut Lisa’s hair in the video for ‘Offerings?’

Naomi: I was scared that she would not like her reflection. She came [to me] with, “Can you be the one shaving my head?” And I was like, “Hell no. I’m not doing that!” She was like, “Please, [it’s] really important for me as a twin.”

We didn’t have any mirrors. It was tough, but [as] I was doing it, I was like, “I hope she’s gonna love herself.” At one point I looked at her and I was like, “Oh, you’re so beautiful!” And she was like, “If Naomi tells me I look beautiful, I am.” It was really powerful.

In the closing track, ‘Lucky,’ you sing: ‘We can’t manifest for s—; God will always choose for us.’ Be honest, is this in response to those trending videos on social media about manifestation magic?

Lisa-Kaindé: Funny enough, we’ve never talked about this to the press. … But I went kind of cuckoo with the manifestation while making “Spell31.” I started writing three times a day: “It’s gonna do well.” It was the first time I ever did that. And when it didn’t work, I was like, “What do you mean? I did all of the things y’all told me to do!” And that’s why I’m saying we can’t manifest for s—. What happened was exactly what was supposed to happen.

My own outlook changed after a priestess told me to keep an altar to bring offerings to my ancestors. If you want something … you have to give the universe something to work with!

Lisa-Kaindé: You need to give! That doesn’t need to be a religion or whatever. Just be kind. It’s an exchange. There’s always a price — and that doesn’t have to be a terrible thing. It could be a very beautiful thing. I think it’s better if there’s a price. You’re not just demanding the universe to give you something just because you say it enough times.

I sense more thunder in the sounds of ‘Offering,’ especially in Naomi’s percussion. ‘Mosh Pit’ is a storm of trap and acoustic elements. Can you talk about making this song?

Naomi: This was the first song we made for the album. We met Michael Brun, who is Haitian and lives in New York. We wanted a tough energy, we wanted dragon energy in this song. I listen to a lot of rap and trap, so there’s a little more of myself in this. Ibeyi is like a needle between Lisa and I; for 10 years, the needle moved a little more toward Lisa, but now it’s moving toward me. Life is like that.

You shot multiple music videos in Cuba. What made you decide it was time to make these videos in Havana?

Naomi: We recorded the videos in September and October. We wanted to show Cuba because it’s remembering our dad. Home is Paris, London and Havana for us.

Lisa-Kaindé: After having done the visuals from “Spell31” inside the studios … we needed something more personal. We had never done visuals in Cuba, but I think it’s because we’re very protective of Cuba. We’re protective of what the world sees Cuba as, whether it’s the old ladies smoking cigars, or the American cause. We’d go there in the summers [for] our whole lives. We wanted to show something beyond what tourists see. These are the people who actually live there. It’s important to know how people live.

Naomi: We wanted to be with our people and show the real Yoruba, Cuban way of living. Parties full of elderly people, young people … everybody twerking!

This big house party happens in the video for the song ‘Aset.’ Can you tell me about shooting the party scene?

Lisa-Kaindé: Funnily enough, I think our family was more involved behind the scenes. Naomi’s best friend helped with all of the wardrobe because she’s a fashion girlie. One of the directors we’ve known since we were 15 years old, he’s like a brother to us. We also worked with a conguero, like our dad, his name is Karín. We filmed the “Offerings” video in his house. Then we went to La Playita 26, which is not far from our old house, to look at the sea.

Naomi: What’s beautiful is that it was all real. It was also [full of] people we didn’t f— know. But it was raw.

Lisa-Kaindé: The day we filmed “Aset,” when I saw Naomi dance, I was like: “Here we are. Here is that freedom [we’ve been] missing.”

The ITV documentary series first aired three years ago and follows world-leading forensic scientist Dr Angela Gallop delving into complex cases.

Forensic scientist Dr Angela Gallop is back once again for a fresh crime series on ITV.

The harrowing true crime docu-series will see Dr Gallop and her team revisit complicated cold murder cases using advanced scientific techniques that may not have been available at the time of the crime.

Through the re-examinations, Dr Gallop and her team have helped bring notorious killers to justice in Cold Case Forensics, which is airing a brand new season.

On Tuesday night (July 28), ITV viewers will see the forensic scientist look into the chilling death of Italian banker Roberto Calvi, also widely known as ‘God’s Banker’

A synopsis for the episode reads: “Return of the documentary delving into the casebook of world-leading forensic scientist Angela Gallop and her team.

“When the body of Italian banker Roberto Calvi was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982, the investigation led to a murky world of financial deals with the Vatican and the Mafia. Nicola Walker narrates.”

Roberto Calvi was the chairman of the largest private bank in Italy and also had connections to the Roman Catholic Church.

However, the 62-year-old went missing in 1982 for nine days before his body was discovered hanging.

At the time, the coroner’s report didn’t find evidence of foul play on his body and ruled his death as a suicide.

Although UK police were puzzled by the strange circumstance, as his pockets were stuffed with bricks, he had a fake passport in a different name and had £10,000 ($14,000) in cash in different currencies.

It wasn’t until 2002 that Roberto Calvi’s case was officially reopened by Italian prosecutors, with the City of London Police opening it as a murder inquiry in September 2003.

As a result, Dr Gallop was hired by Roberto’s family in a bid to prove he had been killed and didn’t die by suicide decades ago.

Other cases explored in this series includes solicitor Cheryl Lewis and ten-year-old Damilola Taylor.

The first series included the cases of Rachel Nickell, Lynette White and Stephen Lawrence.

Cold Case Forensics airs on Tuesdays on ITV from 9pm

LEIGH-ANNE Pinnock has come under fire for telling fans they can pay to ‘follow her pregnancy’ by signing up to a paywall site.

It comes despite the former Little Mix singer, who is currently expecting her third child with her footballer husband Andre Gray, having an estimated net worth of around £5.9 million.

Taking to Instagram on Tuesday, Leigh-Anne explained to fans that she had set up a Patreon page where she will be sharing ‘pregnancy, bump updates, everyday life and all of the things in between’.

Fans can pay £5 per month to access the content.

Leigh-Anne, who already shares twins with Andre, wrote in her Patreon bio: “Hey It’s Leigh-Anne here!

“As some of you may know by now I’m pregnant with my third child and wanted to create a space for you all to get a deeper insight into my world, my pregnancy journey and general life as a mother, singer, wife and woman who’s trying her best.

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“Excited to see where this journey takes us and can’t wait to show you all the things I get up to along the way.”

Patreon is a platform used by influencers and creators to share exclusive content.

Following the page’s release, some fans were confused as to why the multi-millionaire singer is charging for her content.

One fan branded the move ‘out of touch’ as they said: “Genuinely this is extremly weird for someone as big of a name to start a patreon to… show a pregnancy? Tbh it feels a bit out of touch for my taste.”

Another asked: “Are you broke?”

A third slammed: “Wow.. she really needs that money eh?”

However, some were on board with the idea and have already signed up.

“Just signed up to follow your journey, can’t wait to see what it all brings!,” wrote a fan.

Another defended: “The Patreon is strictly for the fans that want to follow her pregnancy journey a little more closer. She doesn’t have to show anything at all but she’s choosing to on her terms. That’s the difference from posting publicly.”

On her Patreon page, Leigh-Anne urged fans to keep the content she shares exclusively for there and not share it elsewhere online.

There is a free option on Patreon which allows you to watch some videos, but not the subscription-only posts.

Alongside her ultra-successful run with Little Mix, Leigh-Anne has had a booming solo career since 2023.

Her husband, Andre, has played for football clubs such as Brentford, Burnley, Watford and Port Vale.

Other than “The Odyssey,” the biggest news in Los Angeles film circles last week was the return of the Cinerama Dome.

The iconic theater, which has been closed since March 2020, will be restored and reopened by Sony Pictures Entertainment and its Alamo Drafthouse theater chain. As my colleague Cerys Davies reported, renovations begin next month and will continue until early 2028.

For more than 60 years, the dome has been a landmark on Sunset Boulevard. With its 86-foot-wide curved screen, it has premiered such iconic Hollywood films as 1977’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” and made a cameo of its own in 2019’s “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.”

Ever since the dome closed at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been questions about whether it would return. Filmmakers like “Anora” director Sean Baker and “Baby Driver” director Edgar Wright publicly called for its reopening, while a “Save Your Cinema” preservation campaign led by Benjamin Steinberg kept the geodesic icon in the public eye.

“It was definitely the capital of, like, the movie-going experience in L.A.,” Steinberg told my colleague, adding that he plans to visit the theater two to three times a week when it reopens. “I can’t wait to go back inside the Cinerama Dome and watch movies.”

The theater will be operated by Alamo Drafthouse, though Sony says it plans to keep the “Cinerama” name and exterior branding, as well as the dome’s “traditional concession experience” — meaning you won’t be able to order food and drinks to your seat. (Cinephiles recently have criticized the chain for changing its in-seat ordering system to require use of mobile phones in the theater.)

Alongside traditional theatrical showings, the dome also will include some Alamo Drafthouse specials, including repertory screenings, premieres, events and filmmaker series.

Adjacent to the dome, the 14-screen former ArcLight Cinemas will reopen as an Alamo Drafthouse, Sony said, offering dine-in food and beverages, as well as karaoke rooms and “fan celebrations.”

Sony was interested in the dome even before the Culver City-based studio acquired Alamo Drafthouse in 2024.

“It’s such a great location,” Ravi Ahuja, chief executive and chairman of Sony Pictures, told me. “It’s historic, people love it and the theater was successful before it closed. It’s one of a kind, which is the kind of experience we’re after.”

The move also highlights the opportunity Sony sees in the experiences business — an increasingly important strategy for Hollywood.

The Alamo Drafthouse acquisition was part of this, as was the studio’s recent $100-million investment and minority stake in Cosm, a virtual reality venue operator that has a location at Inglewood’s Hollywood Park.

The studio also has “Wheel of Fortune Live!,” a touring version of the popular game show, “Jeopardy! Bar League,” which was incubated at Alamo Drafthouse, and events for its streaming service Crunchyroll at anime conventions.

“It’s another leg of the franchise stool,” Ahuja said. “Fans want to engage in person with each other. It’s part of a human need when you have deep fandom around something.”

As the theatrical market waxes and wanes and the television business has become more unpredictable, it makes sense that studios like Sony increasingly look to diversify and attract fans in new ways.

After all, people have a lot of things they can do with their time and money. And after a period of slow returns since the pandemic, they’ve increasingly been coming back to in-person activities. To keep loyal fans in the fold, studios need to give them more ways to interact with the stories and entertainment they love, or they’ll move on.

Betting on the experiences business isn’t new. Walt Disney Co. makes the majority of its operating income not from its theatrical movies or streaming service, but from its theme parks and cruise line division. Last year, Universal opened Epic Universe, a major investment in its Orlando theme park resort that indicates the importance of this business for the company and owner Comcast.

But not every company wants or needs to start a theme park business. For one, it’s expensive. And for a studio like Sony, which doesn’t have a lot of kid-focused franchises, it doesn’t really make sense.

As a result, some are getting into the experiences space in more specific and limited ways, such as studio tours or branded attractions.

For Sony, that’s meant building a business around these in-person offerings that align more with its adult-leaning audiences. Lionsgate has a “John Wick Experience” in Las Vegas, while Warner Bros., among other things, recently debuted “Harry Potter: A Hogwarts Express Adventure” train event at the Southern California Railway Museum in Perris. (Universal licenses Harry Potter from Warner Bros. for inclusion in its parks.)

For most studios without a major theme park presence, this kind of location-based entertainment is still likely a relatively small part of their corporate revenue, potentially less than 1%, said Dennis Spiegel, founder and chief executive of the International Theme Park Services, Inc. consulting firm. But what these experiences do is help lengthen the life of a franchise by keeping licensing revenue flowing and keeping brands relevant between film releases, he said.

“Hollywood increasingly sees it as an essential part of maximizing the lifetime value of its intellectual property,” he wrote in an email. “In many ways, we have seen how these experiences have become as much of a marketing engine as they are a profit center.”

As for the Cinerama Dome, don’t take it as a sign that Sony is looking to build out an exhibition empire. The studio is looking for only special and selective deals like the dome, Ahuja said, and there are no plans to add more L.A. exhibition locations.

Stuff We Wrote

Film shoots

Number of the week

Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” continued its dominance at the box office in its second outing with a three-day domestic haul of $90 million, down only 27% from its debut weekend.

Internationally, the Universal Pictures film raked in $137.6 million for a worldwide total of $652 million.

The big box office performance came as an unauthorized copy of the film leaked online over the weekend. The studio said it “immediately initiated takedown protocols” once it became aware of theillegal posting on X and “will pursue all appropriate remedies to protect our content and intellectual property rights.” The post was viewed more than 2.1 million times before a takedown notice replaced the copy of the film.

What I’m watching

I did not expect Amazon MGM Studios’ “The Sheep Detectives” to deliver a profound message on death and grieving when I sat down to watch it with a friend, but those talking ovine sleuths really got to me.

Emmy-nominated composer Bear McCreary has taken a reverse road to symphonic rock. Prog rockers have traditionally integrated symphonic elements; other rock bands have done orchestral versions of their songs. McCreary began creating television and film scores, discovered his inner metalhead, and has since bridged those worlds with his “Singularity” project. It all adds up to a different take on that time-honored formula.

The second of the two albums, “The Singularity: Ekleipsis,” is out Friday and features contributions from guitarist Steve Vai, Coheed and Cambria frontman Claudio Sanchez, Fall Out Boy frontman Patrick Stump and McCreary’s younger brother Brendan, who sings on half the tracks. The multifaceted album feels like “I am Bear, hear me roar.”

“I love that quote,” he says, laughing, during his two-hour interview with The Times. “I want to put that on the posters. I feel like ‘The Singularity’ is a temper tantrum of a record from someone who had been writing music for other people for 20 years, then all these ideas exploded out.” Two years after the release of the first “Singularity” album, “Ekleipsis” feels more focused and personal to him.

From Anthrax dinners to sessions with Slash, Stewart Copeland and Bulgarian choirs, McCreary’s restless curiosity drives genre-bending songs that wrestle with identity, diaspora and the world listeners are trying to survive.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

The first “Singularity” double album — which featured guests like Serj Tankian, Corey Taylor, Rufus Wainwright and Joe Satriani — tied into a graphic novel about a man who repeatedly experiences loss and death at the hands of a villainous character in his every life across their multiverse. This leads to a major revelation at the end. Although McCreary says that “Ekleipsis” is not disconnected from that universe, it is not strictly tied to a narrative.

“I wasn’t setting out to write a concept album again,” McCreary admits, “but there’s something immediate in all the lyrics. Half of them are specifically talking about the world that we all find ourselves living in and trying to overcome in some way.”

McCreary’s sonic diversity continues with “Ekleipsis.” Gojira frontman Joe Duplantier collaborated with the McCreary brothers and the Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices choir on “Black Box” to create a work of dissonant majesty. The composer improvised his way through the initial stages of “Pray for a Storm,” his high-energy collaboration with famed drummer Stewart Copeland.

“Let’s all go into your studio with nothing,” McCreary recalls telling the irrepressible percussionist. “I’m not even going to bring an idea. We’ll plug in our instruments, set the mics up and play. I want to capture your ideas and your energy, then shape it into a song based on the pieces that I get.”

McCreary sees new endeavors as a learning experience. He meets his collaborators in the way they like to work. He was awed while writing with Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan and Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith on the anthemic “Cool Kids.”

“Those guys are true songsmiths,” the composer declares. “I think they’re unrecognized as songwriters. They wrote for Ozzy Osbourne. They’re focused on hammering down a riff until it works. We walked into a studio with a riff that Duff had written and walked out with this song that we brought Slash onto. We got that band experience [with them].”

McCreary is best known for scoring series like “Battlestar Galactica,” “The Walking Dead” and “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” along with movies such as “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” and the “God of War” video game franchise. He gained entry into metal through a dinner with Anthrax guitarist and “Battlestar” fan Scott Ian two decades ago.

“‘I know you. You’re a guy who loves Sepultura,’” Ian told him, invoking a musical link for the composer. Intrigued, McCreary listened to Sepultura’s folk-infused Brazilian death metal and loved it. His metal journey began.

Ever since, McCreary has been itching to dive into that arena. He has an important collaborator in that quest.

“My brother’s my secret weapon when it comes to rock,” McCreary says. “His body of [rock] knowledge makes up for mine. Our emphasis is in a different place. He is a fantastic producer because he’s got a really good radar for when things are useless, when a part of a song isn’t pulling its weight. It’s a very good influence to have someone like that. He’s got a great lyrical sense and an incredible voice.”

McCreary says Brendan is often the driving force of their lyrical efforts, and “sometimes we co-write with other people. Claudio Sanchez wrote all the lyrics on ‘Sweet Misery.’ It just depends.”

The younger McCreary was the propelling wordsmith on “One Fine Day.” “It’s about our experience as being in the Armenian diaspora and exploring what that means to us,” McCreary elaborates. “All the songs are very personal, which is another thing that sets this record apart from the last record. Many of them were personal, but I also had a weird song about an automaton that fell in love.”

Mentored at USC by Elmer Bernstein, McCreary now leaps from “God of War” themes to a Higgs boson rock musical and a roaring Singularity tour that hits L.A. on Sept. 17.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Before he jammed with rock icons, McCreary was mentored by the late, iconic Elmer Bernstein for nearly the last decade of his life. The burgeoning young composer organized Bernstein’s music archives, sat in on recording sessions and audited his senior-level classes for three years while studying at the Thornton School of Music at USC. McCreary says that Bernstein “really set me on the path that I am now on, not because I learned how to orchestrate or how to write music from him. But he showed me the life that I could envision myself having when I was 15 or 16, that crucial time when you’re really setting the rudder for where you’re going to go in life.”

That rudder has steered him to many shores. McCreary has been co-writing the musical “Particle Fever” with Zoe Sarnak (“Galileo).” Pulitzer Prize finalist and Tony winner David Henry Hwang (“M. Butterfly)” wrote the book, and Tony nominee Leigh Silverman (“Suffs”) is its director. It is based on the documentary of the same name about the discovery of the Higgs boson — the “God particle” — at the Large Hadron Collider in CERN. It will debut at the La Jolla Playhouse in February 2027.

“It is a really kick-ass, earnest rock musical about a really ambitious discovery,” McCreary says. “My hope is that it actually has some of the swagger and fun that people found in ‘Hamilton,’ which also was a very dry subject that you learned about in eighth grade.”

The 47-year-old composer exudes an infectiously upbeat energy. He loves challenges and says he learned that charisma and charm are valuable assets to get in the door to prove one’s talents.

“I’m wired to be very positive and collaborative,” he concedes. “But I got so oppressively excited in my 20s that I started annoying people. My lesson was walk it back.”

His creative energy continues unabated. He’s even scored shorts for filmmakers he met through Twitter. (“I’m down to work.”) He has been blogging about his musical life for 20 years for a core group of followers. (“In hindsight, if Jerry Goldsmith had done that in the ‘80s, my God, my life would be different.”)

McCreary started as a high school keyboardist, then found the accordion in college, an instrument that gave him greater stage motion and which he later used to great effect in his music for the “Outlander” series. He loves to headbang while playing the hurdy-gurdy, an instrument he picked up in 2010 and later employed in the “Black Sails” show and “God of War: Ragnarok” video game. He learned guitar to play rhythm during his 2025 shows.

Those riffs will be on display at the Wacken Open Air festival on Friday and during McCreary’s eight-date September “Singularity” tour of the West Coast that hits L.A. on Sept. 17. McCreary has performed his symphonic scores in Europe and America with orchestras, but now he also loves to rock out (loud).

A big secret of the ambitious McCreary’s success harks back to lessons of simplicity that Bernstein taught him.

“The giant theme that I wrote for ‘God of War’ can be played with one finger on a piano,” McCreary reveals. “That is the thing that it boils down to, and that is what I listen for in music. Most of the time it means there’s a melody in there that sticks with you, and it doesn’t matter how well it is produced or how epic it is or how loud it is. A good song is a good song is a good song, and it really doesn’t matter how good a band performs. If the song is good, it will connect with people.”

A HUGE US singer shared the agonising moment that a fish hook was stuck in his HEAD.

In a gruesome video, Tyler Hubbard, who is best known for the band Florida Georgia Line, was seen with a wounded head as his wife Hayley pulled the hook out.

The horrifying moment came during a family fishing trip with his wife and their three kids.

The family were camping by the lake, when their vacation took a turn.

Posting on Instagram, the American star shared a video called: “Breakfast had to wait.”

Next fans were shown Tyler’s wife wrestling with the hook in his head.

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Although he didn’t reveal how he ended up with the fish hook buried in his head, Hayley was seen gently trying to prise it out.

She was then heard asking her family: “Are there any tricks to this?”

One of their children then reassured their dad that there was “no need to worry”.

“Mom is just going to pull it out right away,” the kid said.

After much wrestling with the hook, Hayley finally said: “Oh, we got it!”

The horrifying fish hook moment comes just days after Tyler teased more reunion plans with his former Florida Georgia Line bandmate Brian Kelley.

The pair called it quits four years ago after being together for a decade.

However this summer they reunited for a several performances, which included CMA Fest in June.

THIS is the shocking moment former glamour model Katie Price left her son Junior mortified as she talked about her “hairy bits.”

Katie made the comments on series three of her daughter’s show The Princess Diaries after finally being “allowed” to film.

During a glamping trip with her kids, Katie was asked by Princess when she started her first business.

The 48-year-old confessed she launched raunchy ironing board covers when she was just 18.

Katie said: “Ironing board covers. When you iron it, I go naked. Sorry Junior.”

“I’m doing my beauty range at 18 and that’s when you started,” said Princess.

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Katie replied: “That’s what I mean you’re following in my footsteps.”

Speaking candidly on her mum‘s cheeky venture, Princess said in her confessional: “It’s actually really interesting to hear mum talk about starting to build her career.

“Because like if a girl did that now at 18, it would be classed as very wrong so, it’s two different lives really.”

Podcast host Katie then went on to leave her kids – specifically Junior – gobsmacked by a surprise revelation.

She announced: “I had bit of a hairy muff back then though.”

Junior, who is following in his dad Peter’s footsteps as a singer, put his head in his hands.

Shaking his head he said: “Oh my god!”

Katie didn’t stop there, she added: “It was because I had red bikini on and the ironing board cover would take it off and I had like a little triangle.”

Junior said: “Mate that I…I don’t like…”

“It’s part of your mum’s journey and after that I bought out cups with me topless on them,” added Katie.

Mortified Junior decided to remain silent as his mum opened up on her sexy merch.

This comes as Katie has finally been “allowed” to film the show after previously being banned from production.

After fallout from Princess’ dad and his wife Emily being allowed on the show they both took a step back to avoid further drama.

Following Katie and Peter’s truce back in February, Princess hinted that both her parents would feature in series three – which they have.

In March, she said: “I mean, the good thing is now, obviously, my mum and dad have come out with an agreement to be fine.

“So hopefully season three, they will actually both be in it which is amazing. It’s so good now because there is just no issues.”

PRINCESS Andre has admitted she can’t keep up with mum Katie Price’s “extreme” love life and rollercoaster marriage to latest husband Lee Andrews.

The influencer and TV star, 19, spoke candidly on her reality series, The Princess Diaries, after her parent tied the knot with conman Lee in January.

Katie said I Do just 10 days after meeting Lee for the first time.

Princess, who is Katie‘s child with ex Peter Andre, along with big brother Junior, revealed in her ITV show: “Mum’s in Dubai right now to see her husband and to be honest I don’t really know much about it.

“I’ve never met him but mum’s love life is everywhere at the moment.

“Mum’s love life stories are quite extreme and honestly I don’t even follow it myself, but as long as my mum’s happy, we’re happy, and that’s all that matters”.

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Back in June, Katie’s new spouse Lee made a bizarre claim he had “adopted” Princess – alongside the former glamour model’s four other kids.

The suggestion prompted Princess’ dad, Mysterious Girl hitmaker Pete, to deny Lee’s words.

At the time, his rep told Metro that Lee’s claims were “categorically untrue” and are “yet another lie” from the self-proclaimed business man.

Since then, former glamour model Katie has been presented with an explosive dossier from The Sun’s Clemmie Moodie covering her spouse’s misdemeanours – including his mental health lies and damning texts.

At the time, The Sun’s files against Lee – including a “gay affair rumour” – had, according to a source, left Katie with no choice but to consult a divorce lawyer.

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KATIE Price tied the knot with Lee Andrews in January 2026. Yet who is he?

• Katie Price has married businessman fiancé Lee Andrews in a whirlwind wedding
• It is the fourth time Katie, 47, has been a bride. She has also been married to Peter Andre, Alex Reid and Kieran Hayler
• Katie and Lee met just after being introduced on social media
• Lee claimed he is a billionaire in a failed clip from his acting career
• He now claims to be a Dubai-based businessman
• Yet The Sun has unmasked him as a fantasist who faked celebrity links using AI-generated photos and recently talked about marrying two other women
• Failed actor is just another title to add to Lee’s questionable CV, after he claimed to have once worked as the Director of Philanthropy at The Prince’s Trust (now The King’s Trust)
• Lee also shared images – since proven to be AI – of him working with Elon Musk and Kim Kardashian
• It’s been revealed shameless Lee told former girlfriends that he had studied at Cambridge University, and has a PhD in biotechnology science
• But The Sun has seen a response from the university explaining it could not find a record of Lee being registered as a student with a date of birth they had provided
• His LinkedIn profile says Lee has been a Member of the Board of Advisors to the Labour Party since 2015
• Lee was also mocked for repeating the exact same wedding proposal on Katie – that he did for another woman just four months ago.

Clemmie also confirmed in her in-depth article that Katie is refusing to return to Dubai – where Lee lives and is currently locked up in prison.

Meanwhile Katie has vowed to quiz her husband over his offer to sell a sex tape of them – as her sister Sophie branded him a “d***head”.

It comes after The Sun revealed Lee’s sickening plan of hawking an alleged “sex tape” with his wife.

Speaking on the latest episode of her podcast, Katie addressed the video and insisted she has no knowledge of it – but said finds the whole things “ridiculous” and “overwhelming”.

She said: “I commented when he went missing but he’s in prison and I will be questioning him about a lot of things when he’s out. I’m just getting on doing what I’m doing.

“There is so much, there is no smoke without fire.”

Within days of Katie marrying Lee in Dubai, stories started to emerge of the lies the conman has told.

Lee claimed he had connections with some of the richest stars in the world, but it proved to be fake, and that he had used AI to fake meetings and pictures with Kim Kardashian and Elon Musk.

In one of Lee’s only interviews, he told The Sun he planned to buy Chelsea FC as part of a £2billion bid.

Lee has also claimed that he has degrees from some of the UK’s top universities, including Cambridge, but the institution quickly clarified that they had no trace of Lee having ever attended as a student.

Through it all, Katie has stood by her husband and jetted back and forth to Dubai to be with him.

The couple also recently got a dog together in the UAE city, and despite her family’s on-going protests over the relationship – she had been planning to jet back out for another reunion with Lee before Clemmie’s bombshell dossier was published.

If you get out to Joshua Tree and the night is clear, look up. You’ll see not just the stars, but a massive swath of the Milky Way. It’s a reminder that the vastness is always present, beyond the city’s bright lights. And once dawn comes, the desert performs the same magic: long horizons, unfamiliar landscapes, the creeping feeling that we are small, short-lived creatures on an immense ancient planet. No wonder some people find it unsettling.

Not the characters in Claire Vaye Watkins’ new novel “Yellow Pine,” who embrace the desert in the extreme. They live at the far side of the Mojave Desert where California meets Nevada. Wherefore the pines, you ask? The book’s title is a wry joke — “Yellow Pine” is not a forest, not a tree. It’s a massive solar array slated to be built nearby in the Nevada desert. A ragtag crew of desert dwellers are hoping to stop it, or at least slow down the grinding wheels of capitalism that see the desert merely as an empty space for the taking.

Primary among them is Rose, a 30-something single mom who lives near the end of a very, very long dirt road in a cabin she calls Nothingness Flats. Rose works for an environmental nonprofit that has gone remote because it’s the pandemic; she often spirals at the state of the world. “Sometimes I think I can feel the planet just hemorrhaging under all this greed. Like it’s tectonic,” she laments.

Rampant environmental destruction notwithstanding, the novel kicks off with the joyous return of Miles, the guy who got away. He is an outdoor person, like Rose; has trouble fitting into societal norms, like Rose; and he is an ideal intellectual partner for her, bantering, well-read and ready to engage. Also, they have great sex.

Lest I portray this as a typical summer beach read, Watkins’ writing is in a special, different mode. Her latest books somehow cut past narrative traditions and portray plot and emotion more directly. Another novel might find Rose, after she decides she loves Miles so much that she wants to get pregnant, going to a doctor, getting tests, worrying about being almost 40 and what that means. Rose does none of that — she just suddenly deeply wants a baby, and that desire is vivid in the text. Overexplained storytelling is set aside for something that’s striking and vivid.

When I reached Watkins via Zoom to talk about the book, I asked her how she does it. “Partly it’s an intuition I have about what makes an interesting story,” Watkins says. “A story requires a lot of improbable decisions. Maybe they’re not great decisions, but the person doesn’t know that at the time.”

In “Yellow Pine,” Miles is not without some red flags. In my reviewer’s copy, I found myself scrawling “bad idea!” in the margin, trying to warn Rose about him. It gives the story some tension, and shows that our heroine isn’t perfect — she’s just doing her best under desert skies.

Rose lives in Tecopa, population 120, among people who’ve chosen the isolation, quietude, natural beauty and brutal conditions on purpose. Of the real-life people in these communities, Watkins says, “It’s really tough. The environment is extreme. There are no amenities. There’s no jobs. … I think there’s a refusenik quality to them.”

Nevertheless, some of them come together to try to forestall the installation of the solar array. They point out that “solar farm” is a misnomer because the land — an alluvial plane with Yucca colonies dating back hundreds of years, creosote rhizomatic rings even longer — will be scraped and fenced. What happens to the endangered desert tortoises is awful. These activists are trying every legal recourse and have set up a tiny camp at the edge of the property. Sweetly, and with little hope, they make a small community of people who understand each other and the desert landscape that others see as a blank space on the map.

“In California most of the biodiversity in the state is in the inland deserts, partly because a lot of the other ecosystems have been totally destroyed, you know? It’s a very alive place,” Watkins explains.

In “Yellow Pine,” Rose’s conviction that she should get pregnant grows to a point where she comes up with a wild scheme to make that happen. It is very funny, outsized and unexpected. It’s a small individual resistance to the impending destruction of the desert.

Watkins is very good at making a humorous turn at the end of thoughts, sentences, books. This is her fourth. Her debut, the short story collection “Battleborn” in 2012, set her on a trajectory of accolades; 2021’s “I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness,” was an L.A. Times book prize finalist. She is currently a professor of writing at UC Irvine.

“The thing I love about novels, writing them and reading them, is that it’s private thoughts,” Watkins says. “It’s this cool technology that we’ve come up with to deal with the fact that we don’t know what’s going on in each other’s heads and hearts and how painful that can be.”

She adds that a novelist’s job is to care about the reader. “There’s something really beautiful about, I’m going to do my very best with my part and then I give it to you, and I let it go and I trust you and I respect you,” she says. “I love the world when I’m writing and my books are like acts of love, partly because I really struggle. I’m not walking around loving my fellow man easily.”

When our Zoom began, she apologized for the noises outside — construction, dog walkers, gardeners. I couldn’t hear them at all, but I got the impression that those intrusions and distractions were weighing on her. “I feel like I have a very sensitive instrument,” she says. “I get a little agitated and the pace is really, really different.”

I had been expecting to reach her at an improbable desert outpost, like a Death Valley library with Wi-Fi, but instead reached her in Orange County. It’s for her job, and also as a part-time parent, much easier for amenities. It’s a busy town where there are lots of people, lots of businesses, lots of traffic, the hectic pace of modern life — but still, the desert has its pull. She splits her time between the two locales.

“Yellow Pine” is a testament to her beloved remote corner of the Mojave, its beauties, hardships and endangerments. The place has been an essential part of her creative process and project. “What we do for fun in Tecopa is like, watch the sky. That’s our entertainment, you know?” she says, reflecting on the long moments of silence that stretch out over the evenings. “And it’s like, ‘wow.’”

“Furious,” which premieres Monday on Hulu, is technically a serial killer story, since there are multiple murders committed by a single character, but happily that is the least of it.

Broadly speaking, these kinds of stories — powered by a stop-them-before-they-kill-again clock, making their antagonists out to be finicky geniuses or horror movie monsters instead of opportunistic mediocrities — strike me as a low form of fiction. But “Furious” is as much relationship drama as procedural, animated by a quartet of excellent performances, with some things to say about abuse, exploitation and love along the way.

Although “Furious,” created by Elizabeth Meriwether (“New Girl,” “Dying for Sex”), acknowledges an inspirational debt to the 1987 Theresa Russell-Debra Winger film “Black Widow,” all it really preserves are a couple of names, the idea of a female serial killer and an emotional relationship with the woman hunting her. The killer is Catherine (Lola Petticrew), a petite young woman who goes about in a variety of wigs, under a variety of names, careful to mask in public. Her murdering is not a compulsion but a mission, like Jeanne Moreau in “The Bride Wore Black.”

Her nemesis is Alice Black (Emmy Rossum), a former police detective now answering phones for the FBI. She became persona non grata in the NYPD after identifying her detective boyfriend (Jake Lacy as Marshall) as the person who put her in the hospital, because, you know, cops. One day a request comes from former colleague Danny Kelly (Scoot McNairy) to assist him in investigating the homicide we see Catherine commit at the top of the series.

Various elements of the crime bring to mind an earlier killing; Alice believes they’re connected and might have something to do with sex trafficking or, eventually, a Jane Doe cold case. This brings her to the desk of Nora Washington (Quincy Tyler Bernstine), who also happens to be running the very FBI department Alice has been hoping to join. “You requested my squad,” says Nora. “Why do you want to work in the basement on sex crimes and crimes against children — do you hate yourself?” Maybe she does — she orchestrates internet dates where foreplay is a fistfight, and has some relevant trauma in her past.

Catherine (Lola Petticrew), a petite young woman whose murdering is not a compulsion but a mission.

(Sarah Shatz / Disney)

Sharing scenes with the other principal characters, intense or sensitive as the moment requires, Alice is the hub around whom the series revolves and hurtles forward. Danny, who found himself isolated in the department when he said he believed her, is her only friend. (“But here’s the crazy s—. You don’t … talk to me anymore, either.”) Nora, who has a hard edge and a drinking problem, has a few things to teach her, sometimes with a quote from Balzac (“Laws are spiderwebs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught”) and Beckett (the dead “make a noise like feathers”) or a tale from Greek mythology. (“I’m not a former cop. I went to a fancy school, and I’m very smart,” she says, very drunk.)

As to Catherine, she is a mix of a sly fox and a wounded bird. She may be manipulative and murderous, but as we’re given reasons to dislike her victims, a collection of rich white people — with one sad exception — and because Alice feels connected to her in some way, and because she’s had a terrible life, there is not a little of the protagonist in her antagonist. There are some sad ironies stitched into the plot, and an upsetting late twist, though the show doesn’t wallow in it. We understand that Catherine has her reasons, and in a strange way we want to see her carry out her mission. She may be a killer, but she isn’t the villain.

It’s not perfect. We are not surprised at least as much as we are. Some of the plot points strain credulity. There are some old-school jurisdictional clashes between the police and the FBI (as in every fourth episode of “The Closer”), and a heaping helping of professional jealousy within departments.

But the show stays fascinating less for the plot than for the performers. Rossum attacks her role as if playing a Greek tragedy. (The hair redoubles the impression.) McNairy, one of TV’s most likable actors, brings warmth. Petticrew evokes broken innocence. Bernstine finds new notes in a role that typically runs to cliche.

I also want to mention the great Hope Davis as the sister of a victim, the son of a well-connected mogul with something to hide, and especially Steve Way, as Alden (“Ramy”), a force for good in Catherine’s life, and for humor in the series; born with muscular dystrophy, he manages some excellent physical comedy in his motorized wheelchair. The direction (Brian Kirk helmed the first two episodes) is crisp and matter of fact, staying out of the way, which is all you can ask when the writing is good and the actors are too.

Twenty-five years after “Is This It,” the Strokes are as big as they’ve ever been — and not just among old heads eager to relive the wasted glamour of the early-2000s garage rock revival. Go to a Strokes gig these days — they’re playing arenas and headlining festivals like next month’s Just Like Heaven in Pasadena — and you’ll find teens and twentysomethings in the audience; open up Instagram and there’s frontman Julian Casablancas dispensing viral hot takes on the New York City subway. On Spotify, the band’s most-streamed song isn’t the Giuliani-era “Last Nite” but “The Adults Are Talking,” which came out at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic — a feat of cultural endurance unmatched by any of the Strokes’ Gen X or millennial peers.

So what better time to drop a new album full of arcane jokes, baffling vocal affects and light conspiracy theorizing?

The group’s first LP since 2020’s Grammy-winning “The New Abnormal,” “Reality Awaits” is easily the nuttiest entry in the Strokes’ catalog, with a spooky opening track, “Psycho S—,” in which Casablancas, his voice slathered in AutoTune, ushers the listener “past the hall of judging dead into the bed of nightly dread.” (Sexy!) “Falling Out of Love” is a lilting robo-country ballad about dancing alone under acid rain; “Liar’s Remorse” is a voice-and-guitar lament about submitting to artificial intelligence that Casablancas croons for some reason in a terrible Caribbean accent.

Then there’s “Lonely in the Future,” in which Casablancas name-drops John Legend and Josh Groban, appears to ding Harry Styles for cribbing the beat from the Strokes’ “Hard to Explain” and informs Anthony Fantano, the popular internet music critic, that he “would not recognize art in any age.”

Philosophically, “Reality Awaits” feels less like a Strokes album than like a Casablancas solo record or an effort by his other band, the Voidz, which he’s used for the last decade or so as a kind of finsta for his harder-edged sociopolitical musings. “Going Shopping,” the LP’s lead single, casts a condescending eye on anyone insufficiently troubled by what the singer views as the creeping tyranny of a super-rich ruling class: “The worse reality gets, the less you want to hear about it / Solidarity can be difficult when you got cool stuff to lose.” That “Going Shopping” is the album’s jauntiest cut — with a music video that restages Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al,” no less — only sharpens the critique.

Yet every now and then the Strokes, who absolutely ripped at Coachella in April, lock into a groove with the springy precision that’s been the band’s signature since the beginning. “Dine N’ Dash,” “Going to Babble On,” “Lonely in the Future” — it’s pure pleasure to hear the guitars in these songs slashing away over a rhythm section as crisp and nimble as this one. For all they’ve absorbed from their forbears, the Strokes don’t sound like anybody else, even when they seem to be trying to, as in “The Fruits of Conquest,” which suggests early Maroon 5 having a go at the Rolling Stones’ “Miss You.” (Obviously, I mean this as a compliment.)

You can view the indelibility of the Strokes’ style as the reason the band makes so many wacky decisions on “Reality Awaits”; looked at differently, the band is taking advantage of its persistent success to spend a bit of creative capital. Either way, Casablancas doesn’t actually seem worried at all in “Going Shopping” when he voices some anxiety about how long he can continue to matter. “I’ve been thinking about what I want to say,” he sings, “But I’m an old man now — at least that’s what they tell me anyway.”

Emily Wilson, whose translation of Homer’s “The Odyssey” published in 2017 served as inspiration to Christopher Nolan when crafting his blockbuster adaptation of the nearly 2,800-year-old poem, has some thoughts on the film.

In a biting missive for the London Review of Books, the British American classicist dissected Nolan’s work with a scalpel so sharp that he may need to borrow some of Matt Damon’s armor to read it all the way through. Last fall, the acclaimed director quoted Wilson’s translation when telling Empire magazine why he was drawn to the story. “I think it’s the Emily Wilson translation that begins, ‘Tell me about a complicated man,’” he said. “The genius of the character, the cleverness, the inventiveness of him, that was a huge part of what interested me. He’s not just a soldier. He’s an amazing strategist, a very wily person.”

Wilson, although admittedly “humbled” by the nod from the filmmaker, wrote: “But I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script.”

A professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, Wilson has also translated Seneca and Euripides, as well as Homer’s “Iliad.” In her takedown of the film, she likens Nolan’s nearly three-hour epic to Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and “Game of Thrones” and says that, by the end, she “almost expected everyone to break into Elvish.”

Earlier this month, The Times’ film critic, Amy Nicholson, wrote that “Nolan has sacrificed Odysseus himself to serve his own needs, scrapping the character’s prickly personality to Trojan-horse a message about how empires collapse. … Aghast at the ways of men, he’s dug his own Circe-like fingers into Homer to manipulate the tale into a moralistic ‘Oppenheimer’ prequel.”

Wilson appears to share the sentiment.

“Unlike some of Nolan’s other films,” she wrote, “‘The Odyssey’ is not boring, thanks to the source material, which is impossible to mess up entirely. It’s a family-friendly audiovisual spectacle, like an elaborate Fourth of July fireworks display — and with about the same level of narrative and emotional depth.”

When casting was announced for the film, it was no surprise that culture wars broke out over the choice of Oscar-winning actor Lupita Nyong’o to play Helen of Troy, with Elon Musk leading the charge.

Nolan responded, telling the Telegraph earlier this month before the film hit theaters, “These conversations that happen before people see the film — they’re always irrelevant, because no one having them knows what the film actually is yet.”

According to Wilson, Nolan’s race-neutral casting had “nothing progressive about it.”

“Most of the non-white actors — Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Himesh Patel, Corey Antonio Hawkins, Travis Scott — play versions of the Black best friend, whose only role in the drama is to provide aid to the white protagonist,” she wrote.

Wilson zeroes in on the portrayal of Homer’s female characters in another major critique: “There are more female characters than in most Nolan movies, thanks to the source material. But none of them has much to say, in contrast to the [characterizations] in the poem.”

Where Charlize Theron’s Calypso ought to have been angry, funny, skilled in rhetoric and libidinous, according to Wilson, she’s “an unpaid therapist.” On Anne Hathaway’s Penelope, Wilson writes that the script “gives her nothing to do except yearn for Matt Damon, for reasons unknown.” And Zendaya’s Athena “turns out to be a vulnerable victim of war, or perhaps a projection of Odysseus’ conscience — not a scheming and bloodthirsty war goddess.”

And then there’s the human cost of war — the central theme of the film, and one that Wilson says contradicts Homer’s poem.

“The representation of Odysseus as a reluctant warlord makes a nonsense of the movie’s imagined world,” she writes. “We are not shown that war or killing are bad, only that good men sometimes feel bad about it — a very different point. Any serious depiction of violence, ancient or modern, must show the perspectives of the victims as well as the perpetrators, and the Homeric poems easily clear the bar — but Nolan doesn’t.

“The film asks us both to be horrified at war and to celebrate the action-movie sequences in which the reluctant warrior finally gets his hands on his bow and the blood starts flowing.”

Since Nolan announced “The Odyssey” back in December 2024, various versions of the poem have been in high demand at bookshops and libraries — especially the only English version written by a woman: Wilson’s 2017 translation. Louise Brockett, spokeswoman and head of communications at W.W. Norton, told USA Today that domestic sales of Wilson’s translation surpassed a million copies this year.

Concluding her critique of Nolan’s “Odyssey,” Wilson says the release of the movie is “still an event to celebrate.”

“In what we are told is the streaming era, this epic is bringing audiences back to cinemas. In what we are told is a time of declining literacy and the ‘death of the humanities,’ translations of The Odyssey, including mine, are flying off the shelves.”

Nolan spent $250 million making “The Odyssey,” and on opening weekend the film brought in a total of $264.1 million worldwide, according to studio estimates.

DAN Osborne has lashed out at online trolls in a rant over negative comments as he “steps up” amid his split from wife Jacqueline Jossa.

The former TOWIE star, 35, took to Instagram stories today to address the trolls as he had a few choice words for them.

While sitting in his car, he began: “Hello people, just a little rant from me. So this is gonna have to go over two videos.

“I posted a picture of me and my kids, obviously posted the picture of me and my girls when we went to London, had a beautiful time and the same happened when I posted with Ted as well when I took him to Bruno Mars.

“I find myself having to delete negative comments from people on pictures of me and my kids.

“I don’t understand why anyone should have to do that, and also I do appreciate the nice comments of course.

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“There are people who say thing like, ‘well done for stepping up’ or being a good dad or whatever. I don’t ever want praise for that because I think that’s what every man should do for their kids.”

The Celebrity Big Brother star continued: “I also don’t understand why anyone should have to delete any comments on any picture.

“All of us are different, all of us are cracking on with our own lives, doing our own thing, we’re all from different thoughts and different beliefs.

“There should never be any negative comments. When you look at the people who leave these negative comments, you look on it, these people are not f***ing normal.

“They look like their auditioning for The Hills Have Eyes movie, they look like their probably married to their own brothers or sisters, they’re not normal people.

“Someone has to say it, I don’t like to be judgemental but you’re not normal.

“And if you do view yourself as normal and you are one that trolls people and leaves negative comments, then I promise you you’re not normal.

“You need to take a long hard look at yourself, you’re f***ing weird, just be nice or don’t say nothing.”

Dan concluded his rant by telling his viewers he felt better “after letting it off my chest” and thanked his true supporters.

He’s dad to daughters Ella, 11, and Mia, eight, with now ex-wife Jacqueline.

Dan is also dad to son Teddy, 12, from a previous relationship.

The Sun exclusively revealed in March that Dan and EastEnders star Jacqueline had split after 13 years together.

A source close to Dan told The Sun at the time: “Everyone knows they’ve had their troubles, but after spending some time apart this year, they’ve decided to make the split permanent.

“Their two daughters are their main priority.”

Our insider revealed: “After all Jac’s been through, she’s finally had enough. They’ve been living separate lives all this year and she’s over it.

“There’s only so many times she can put herself through living in limbo and taking him back.

“She has mentally checked out and Dan has panicked.

“He’s worried the grass isn’t greener and has had the shock of his life that he’s pushed Jac too far this time.”

Just days ago, The Sun revealed that Dan was moving on with fitness model Etila Santiago after he made a secret trip to Miami to visit her.

It comes after Essex lad Dan kept in touch with Brazilian Etila, 33, after a holiday romance in May.

And insiders claim the news has ruffled estranged wife Jacqueline’s feathers as the 33 year-old EastEnders star watches him enjoy a new lease of life with a stunning model.

A source close to Jac and Dan told The Sun: “Jacqueline is trying to focus on work and the girls, but it’s hard not to notice that Dan seems to have moved on so quickly.”

Love Island’s 2026 summer of love has come to an end, with Julia and Lorenzo taking £50,000 home after the public voted them as the winners

Love Island‘s 2026 winners have been crowned. Lorenzo Alessi and Julia Majchrzak were voted the winners by the public, taking home £50,000 between the two of them. The final aired on Monday 27 July.

Julia and Lorenzo went up against Jasmine Muller and Kavan Murphy for the title and it was the former who took home the crown. It came after Simba Kudyiwa and Angelista Gunda bagged a third place finish.

The winners looked stunned after their name was called, but it was a well received decision from the live audience and former islanders alike, with Lorenzo being lofted up high by his villa pals.

But despite loud cheers from the crowd, not all fans online were impressed. One user on X fumed: “Such an awful love island uk finale. love island usa may have had awful production, people, and couples too but they went off with the final dates & the audience went off with crowning brinity the winners #loveislanduk #loveisland.”

Another added: “I already said what I said: the winners of love island uk this year are AWFUL. y’all just failed this season.” And a third said: “the final is the worst episode of Love Island, it’s always boring, they need a to rethink it and maybe go down a big brother route.”

Going into the final, there were four couples who could have taken the crown: Jasmine and Kavan, Lorenzo and Julia, Simba and Angelista and Yasmin Hadlow and Tommy Stagg. But a twist in the game meant Yasmin and Tommy were dumped before the show went live.

On Sunday night, after Mica Harris and Samraj Toor were axed by their series’ dumped Islanders, it was revealed that the pair would be allowed to pick another couple to leave with them.

Knowing what was at stake, Samraj vowed not to make his decision based on who he was friends with. As such, though many fans predicted that the couple’s arguments with Julia would mean she and Lorenzo would be dumped, it was Yasmin and Tommy who went instead.

The remaining couples were fairly strong. Simba and Angelista had mostly been together since Simba entered as a bombshell. Though he returned from Casa Amor with Mara, leaving Angelista single, he soon decided to get back with the OG Islander and won her over with a poem.

Meanwhile, Jasmine and Kavan have been together for weeks. Kavan also returned from Casa with a bombshell, Charleen Murphy, but he and Jasmine got back together as well, after Kavan saw just how hurt Jasmine was by his actions. Though some fans have been hoping she and Lorenzo, her original partner would get back together, and rumours of an ‘affair’ had swirled around the villa, former Islanders have said that Jasmine and Kavan are head over heels for each other.

Likewise, Sean Fitzgerald told Maya Jama on Aftersun that Julia and Lorenzo were well suited to each other. The two became a favourite to win after returning from Casa, not just because Lorenzo was a one of the public’s favourite boys, but because they felt Julia hadn’t been treated well by the other Islanders.

This came amid a feud with Lola Deal, who objected to how Julia flirted with Sean during Casa. Shortly afterwards, Julia and Lorenzo were voted favourite couple. They were given the opportunity to dump a couple, but Lola and Sean decided to volunteer to be dumped.

This was the 13th series of Love Island. Last year’s winners Toni Laites and Cach Mercer have since split, but have gone on to feature in other reality series. Toni has taken a role on new Love Island spin off The Debrief, providing commentary on the main show, while Cach will appear on Strictly Come Dancing later this year.

The show is expected to return in January for an All Stars addition, which could include some Islanders from this season. Earlier this summer, All Stars winners Tom Clare and Molly Smith married after meeting on series two of the spin off.

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Love Island All Stars has been confirmed to return in 2027 and it remains to be seen which of the latest series might give the villa life another go in South Africa

The latest Love Island winner might have just been announced, but some fans aren’t ready to let the reality TV fun leave us. With Julia and Lorenzo being crowned this year’s winner, they have high hopes they won’t have to feature in the upcoming All Stars offering.

But for others, they could be chomping at the bit to head to the South African series and give love – or drama – another go. And it might only be months away after bosses revealed its return.

The last All Stars cast took to the South African villa on Monday 13 January, and it’s expected the next edition will be at a similar time next year.

One bombshell that has already been tipped to appear from the current line-up is Dublin-based social media influencer Charleen Murphy. She entered the ITV2 dating programme during the Casa Amor phase of the current series, but despite making it into the main villa, her link-up with Kavan wasn’t strong enough to continue.

Viewers were shocked when Kent-based Kavan experienced a swift change of heart on his return to the main villa and almost immediately broke things off with Charleen when choosing to recouple with Jasmine at the first opportunity.

Geordie bombshell Tommy revealed in the live final that he had already been making moves outside the villa with Charleen, but it seems as though she might have her eyes on another shot at villa life. And it wouldn’t be a surprise if Tommy followed her after a drama-filled stint of his own.

In this year’s All Stars, villa hopefuls headed to the show for six weeks instead of five. Speaking on the renewal at the time, Mike Spencer-Hayter, Creative Director at Lifted Entertainment, said: “Love Island: All Stars has quickly established itself as a stand-alone hit, keeping fans of the show gripped by iconic Islanders from the past 10 years returning for another chance to find love.

“We are very excited about series 3, and you can expect the twists and turns to continue in All Stars, after an incredible smash hit summer series.”

The season saw Samie Elishi and Ciaran Davies, but sadly the relationship didn’t work on the outside.

And while we know All Stars is set to grace the small screen again, it remains to be seen whether Maya Jama will be presenting it once again. Maya took over from Laura Whitmore in 2022, but speaking to Deadline, the TV host was open and honest about her potential Love Island future.

She said: “I never know. I never decide if I’m doing the next series until the end of one. So it’s fake news that I’m leaving, but I always decide at the end of a series if I’m going to continue the next year. So we’ll find out.”

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Paramount Skydance Chief Executive David Ellison isn’t waving a white flag.

After Paramount agreed Friday to delay its proposed merger with Warner Bros. Discovery to battle a stiffer-than-anticipated antitrust challenge from California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and 11 other state attorneys general, Ellison is resetting expectations. In a Monday memo to employees, Ellison wrote that he still believes his mammoth merger will be consummated in the coming months.

Paramount stock has lost about 20% of its value since the beginning of July amid concerns that the company will have to shoulder higher costs to get its $111-billion Warner Bros. acquisition across the finish line. Friday’s agreement with the state attorneys general to delay the merger’s close until after an antitrust trial, which will likely be held in 2027, also was unsettling to shareholders and some employees.

Paramount Skydance shares closed at $8.03, down 2.19% Monday afternoon.

“Let me be clear: we remain highly confident that this transaction does not pose any legal issues, and we will complete it and bring these two companies together,” Ellison wrote in the memo shared with media outlets.

Paramount’s internal teams and Warner Bros. have been diligently working to lay the groundwork for the two rival companies to integrate their operations. The rush had been on because Ellison wanted to close the deal this week — or at least by the end of September — to avoid a higher payout to Warner shareholders.

However, Paramount suspended such ambitions on Friday, agreeing to delay the merger until after a trial to litigate the merits of the antitrust case brought by Bonta and the other Democrats. Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, New Jersey and New York are among the states joining California in the fight.

The Writers Guild of America separately sued this month, alleging the merger would harm writers. Over the weekend, SAG-AFTRA announced that it supports the state attorneys general as they try to beat back the merger.

“Our members have every right to expect that the government will do thorough regulatory oversight when a deal of this magnitude takes place,” SAG-AFTRA President Sean Astin said in a statement.

“The workers in this industry should not have to rely on promises and aspirational statements,” he added. “This isn’t a conversation about shareholder value, it’s about the survival of the entertainment business in America.”

Teamsters already have spoken out against the deal.

Bonta and fellow attorneys general from Democrat-led states have argued the deal would violate the century-old Clayton Antitrust Act in three markets: wide-release theatrical films, potential blockbuster movies and cable television channel concentration.

U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín, who is overseeing the antitrust suit filed by Bonta two weeks ago, wrote in an order last week that the plaintiff states had presented “compelling evidence” that the proposed merger may violate U.S. antitrust law.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta is leading an effort of 12 state attorneys general attempting to block Paramount Skydance’s $111-billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Paramount disputes that. The firm, controlled by the Larry Ellison family, has pointed to regulatory approvals it has already garnered, including from the U.S. Department of Justice, which found its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery would not harm competition.

The deal also won clearances from regulators representing 65 jurisdictions, including Australia, China, the European Commission, Germany, France, Spain and Canada. Paramount has pointed to those approvals as proof that the law is on its side.

In his memo, Ellison said delaying the deal until after a trial before Martínez-Olguín made sense.

“We believe this is the right path because the facts and the law are on our side, and a full hearing will demonstrate why the plaintiffs’ arguments should not prevail,” Ellison wrote.

Emma Roberts and Cody John have said “I do!”

After four years as an item, Roberts and John tied the knot during an intimate ceremony at John’s family estate in Sun Valley, Idaho, on Saturday.

Page Six published photos of the outdoor nuptials that showed Roberts’ 5-year-old son, Rhodes (whom she shares with ex Garrett Hedlund), walking his mom down the flower-lined aisle, the bridal party dressed in coordinating black ensembles, Roberts throwing her head back in laughter while John appears to be reciting his vows and Roberts’ Oscar-winning aunt, Julia Roberts, taking her seat.

Notably not in attendance was the “American Horror Story” actor’s father, Eric Roberts. He addressed skipping the party, telling Page Six, “I love my daughter, always have, always will.”

“It is perfectly wonderful for her to celebrate however she wants, with whomever she wants.”

Among the famous friends who gathered for Roberts’ big day were “American Horror Story” co-stars Sarah Paulson and Billie Lourd, Demi Moore, Kristen Stewart and wife Dylan Meyer, “Pretty Little Liars” star Ashley Benson and her husband, Brandon Davis.

Roberts and John — an actor who has appeared in television shows including “In the Dark,” “Wu-Tang: An American Saga” and “The Rookie” — have been together since the summer of 2022. John popped the question two years later, in 2024. Roberts announced the news via Instagram with a photo of the two beaming near a river and a caption that read, “putting this here before my mom tells everyone.”

Roberts shared a glimpse into the planning of her wedding look with Vogue, who captured designer Monique Lhuillier discussing the concept of the dress. “Working with Monique has been an absolute dream,” she told Vogue. “I wanted it to feel very vintage-inspired. I’m obsessed with antique books and and treasure hunting, and I love collecting old ephemera.

“So I really wanted that to like shine through in the dress. So for me, it wasn’t so much about the cut; it was like about what the color was going to be. So Monique actually designed a custom color, and it’s this antique kind of tea-stained color that is so beautiful. Because I realized that, on my wedding day, I kind of wanted to look like a ghost, a little like [an] antique ghost doll.”

Lhuillier posted some clips from the Vogue fitting on social media and wrote that designing Roberts’ gown was about capturing a feeling of timeless romance through a modern lens. “Every detail, from the custom Vintage Rose hue to the hand-draped silk chiffon, delicate lacework and sculpted corsetry, was created to reflect her effortless spirit while celebrating the artistry of couture.”

This is the first marriage for the “Holidate” star. Roberts split from “Tron” and “Country Strong” actor Hedlund in 2022 after an on-again, off-again three-year relationship. She was also famously linked to “American Horror Story” actor Evan Peters. The pair had a tumultuous seven-year relationship that spanned 2012 to 2019.

BuzzFeed is cutting roughly 35% of its workforce in its first major restructuring since media mogul Byron Allen bought a majority stake in the firm two months ago.

The layoffs, outlined in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Monday, will affect about 180 staff and contract positions across BuzzFeed and its sister brands HuffPost and Tasty.

“We’ve been actively managing costs for some time, working through scenarios to save as many jobs as possible,” BuzzFeed’s leadership team said in the memo. “Unfortunately, the elimination of certain roles is still required.”

The company, which maintains a Hollywood office, said the changes are necessary to “put our business on a path to profitable and sustainable growth.”

This restructuring comes after the millennial-focused media company, best known for quirky video content and online quizzes, sold a majority stake to Allen in May in exchange for $20 million in cash and a $100 million promissory note. Allen also became chairman and chief executive of the company.

Through the restructuring, BuzzFeed’s leaders said, the company will aim to grow its audience and bolster its positon in free streaming content.

The BuzzFeed purchase is the latest in a series of business moves Allen has made in recent years to build his entertainment empire. The former stand-up comedian recently purchased a portion of CBS’s late-night block earlier this year, taking over the time slot for the 2026-2027 season. The slot once belonged to “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” which was canceled last year and aired its final episode in May.

Allen’s company holds a slate of network-affiliate stations and owns the Weather Channel network. The company bought a 10.7% stake in cable channel Starz for $25 million in March.

Allen could not be reached for a comment on the new layoffs at BuzzFeed.

In its own statement, BuzzFeed said “We are extremely fortunate that Byron has enormous confidence in our management team and moved very quickly to reposition this company and unlock its value.”

BuzzFeed was founded in 2006. The website became known as a pop culture hub, where readers could indulge in the latest celebrity gossip or discover a unique cooking recipe. But over the years, the company has declined and faced mounting financial struggles. BuzzFeed reported a $15-million net loss in the first quarter of the year. The company generated $31.6 million in revenue, a 12.4% decline compared to the year-ago period. Ad revenue fell nearly 20% year-over-year to $17.1 million. However, content revenue grew roughly 69% to $7.5 million. The company is expected to release its second-quarter results Aug. 4.

Times Staff Writers Meg James and Stacy Perman contributed to this report.

Betye Saar, a Los Angeles artist who transformed collections of bigoted bric-à-brac — Sambo dolls, ceramic mammies and crude renderings of pickaninnies — into potent works of assemblage that mined the searing history of race in the United States, and whose works influenced generations of artists, has died. She was 99.

Saar died in her sleep — just a few days short of her 100th birthday — in Los Angeles, her longtime gallerist Julie Roberts at Robert Projects said. Saar’s death was confirmed by her publicist Hannah Gottlieb-Graham.

“Betye Saar was one of the greatest artists of our time, and it has been an immense honor to work with her for nearly 20 years,” Roberts said. “Her singular vision transformed the course of contemporary art, and her legacy will continue to inspire generations of artists, scholars, and audiences around the world.”

A diminutive woman with a low-key manner that belied a steely resolve, Saar was known for combing garage sales, flea markets and junk piles for objects that she employed in collages and assemblages large and small. These explored difficult aspects of American history — including slavery and Jim Crow — but also touched on more personal themes of family, memory, magic and spirituality.

“My work has to do with recycling,” she told a documentary crew in the 1970s. “Each item I collect has a certain energy from its previous function that carries over into its new use.”

Artist Betye Saar in her Laurel Canyon home in 2016.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

In a 1984 profile, Times art writer Suzanne Muchnic described Saar as an artist who used found objects in a way that “draws on the power of mystery, the hurt of discrimination and the authenticity of individual vision.”

As Saar’s 100th birthday approached, her work and its groundbreaking importance were celebrated afresh in a slew of articles, including two recent profiles in The Times. As she approached the momentous milestone, Saar appeared more interested in creating new art than in dissecting her legacy. “That’s what art is,” she told The Times in an interview in late June. “Making something where there was nothing.”

Saar first rose to prominence in the 1970s, after crafting a small assemblage — roughly the size of a shoebox — that featured at its center a stereotypical Black mammy figurine bearing a rifle in one hand and a grenade in the other. The piece was first shown at the Rainbow Sign, a community center in Berkeley that was located near the headquarters of the Black Panthers.

The artist had begun her professional life as a designer of greeting cards and home accessories. But 1972’s “The Liberation of Aunt Jemima,” as the assemblage was called, catapulted her into the center of the Black Arts Movement and connected her with a broader tradition of assemblage in California and the art world at large. Three years after its creation, she had a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Decades later, activist Angela Davis credited “The Liberation of Aunt Jemima” with spurring the Black women’s movement.

“It’s like they abolished slavery, but they kept Black people in the kitchen as mammy jars,” Saar said in a 2015 interview. “I had this Aunt Jemima, and I wanted to put a rifle and a grenade under her skirts. I wanted to empower her. I wanted to make her a warrior. I wanted people to know that Black people wouldn’t be enslaved by that.”

In June 2020, in the wake of the uprisings following the murder of George Floyd, Quaker Oats announced that it would retire the Aunt Jemima brand. Saar took to Instagram with an image of her famous work and a message: “She’s liberated! Finally at long last! And it’s about time!”

“Liberation” now resides in the collection of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, not far from where it was first shown.

Betye Saar was born Betye Irene Brown in L.A. on July 30, 1926, the eldest of Jefferson Maze Brown and Beatrice Lillian Parson‘s three children. Her father, with whom she was close, died when Saar was about 5. And shortly thereafter, Parson relocated the family to Pasadena to live with her maternal aunt, Hattie Parson Keys. (Years later, Saar created a series of works in honor of Keys, employing objects that her aunt had left behind — something she would do for other family members as well.)

Saar’s parents weren’t artists, but art was in the air. When she was a child, her mother encouraged her to sew and make crafts. And, in the summers, she spent time at the home of her paternal grandparents in Watts, where she saw Simon Rodia building the Watts Towers and was struck by his use of materials.

“The one I find the most amusing is the corn cob,” she told the podcast “The Modern Art Notes” in 2016. “He had a piece of space with wet cement so he just put the corn cob in there. And I just love the kind of freedom to make the piece. Anything can go in there.”

After graduating from high school, Saar spent two years at Pasadena City College before transferring to UCLA in 1947. She majored in design, figuring that she would become an interior decorator — and, for a time, she did indeed work in that field, teaming up with Curtis Tann to form a cleverly named studio called Brown and Tann. Operating out of Tann’s home, the company produced an array of decorative and functional objects, including bowls, ashtrays and jewelry.

To market their goods, they turned to an informal network of African American artists, staging pop-up exhibitions in people’s homes and in other impromptu locations. In 1951, the pair was featured in Ebony magazine.

It was through that circle that she met a ceramicist of German American descent by the name of Richard Saar. In 1952, they married. The following year, their daughter Lezley was born. Two other daughters followed: Alison in 1956 and Tracye in 1961. (Lezley and Alison are now respected artists in their own right. And, in fact, on more than one occasion, all three women have shown their work together, most recently at the Museum of Art & History in Lancaster in 2018.) In 2024, the Equal Justice Initiative Legacy Gallery installed Saar’s “Seeking Secrets of Destiny” alongside her daughter Alison’s sculpture “The Beckoning.”

Betye Saar, flanked by her daughters, stands before a painted brick wall.

(Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)

In 1962, the Saar family moved to a rambling hillside home in Laurel Canyon, then a very rustic part of L.A. It put them in a hotbed of hippiedom right as the 1960s got rolling.

“Down the road was Frank Zappa,” Saar recalled in one interview. “There weren’t that many houses. We had the long skirts and long hair, and it was very casual. You’d go to a love-in or a concert.”

“We were as hippie-ish as hippie could be, while still being responsible.”

By the late ‘60s, she and Saar had divorced. But she remained in Laurel Canyon, where she would live and work until the end of her life.

Saar came to art almost by accident. In the late 1950s, she enrolled at Cal State Long Beach to pursue a master’s degree so that she could teach. But a stroll through campus led her past the university’s printing department.

“I walked past the print workshop and I was like, ‘Heyyy!’ ” she later recalled.

The master’s degree never happened. Instead, she poured herself into printing.

“I loved making prints,” she recalled. “The move into fine art, it was liberating. It gave me freedom to experiment.”

A pair of other, longer journeys, also proved formative.

There was a trip to Chicago’s Field Museum, where she immersed herself in the institution’s extensive collection of African art, followed by a trip to Haiti in the early 1970s. Saar was drawn to the Caribbean nation because of her interest in voodoo and magic — and the power that these could confer on inanimate objects.

“In the early 1960s I began going to coffee houses and they’d have books on the occult,” she told the New York Times in 1978. “I was attracted to signs and diagrams of alchemy and palmistry, and I began to use them in my prints. I also haunted second-hand and junk stores, and I started to frame my prints in old window frames.”

But it was a visit to an exhibition of the work of Joseph Cornell at the Pasadena Art Museum (now the Norton Simon Musuem) that inspired her to take a three-dimensional turn in her work. Saar was moved by the surreal qualities of the New York artist’s intimately scaled assemblages, which were often presented in small boxes.

“I immediately started collecting stuff after I saw that show,” she told the L.A. Times in 2016. “I started going to yard sales and estate sales.”

During the ‘60s and ‘70s, she took on a series of part-time jobs to provide for her children, designing costumes at a cultural center and teaching at area art schools. These provided her with necessary income, but also allowed her enough time to make work — which she often did at the kitchen table.

Saar’s creations from that era are on display through Aug. 22 at Roberts Projects. Titled, “Let’s Get It On: The Wearable Art of Betye Saar,” the show covers the years Saar spent in the costume department for the Inner City Cultural Center’s theatrical productions.

“Art comes from the heart and the head,” she once said. “You don’t need to have a separate space in which to make it.”

Plus, art gave Saar a crucial political voice at a time of the civil rights and Black power movements. “If you are a mom with three kids, you can’t go to a march,” she once stated, “but you can make work that deals with your anger.”

“The Weight of Betrayal,” 2015, by Betye Saar.

(Brian Forrest / Roberts Projects)

In her assemblages, she incorporated symbols that channeled dark episodes of U.S. history and African American struggle: the schematics of slave ships, the hackneyed images of vintage kitsch and the cruel sobriquets used by white supremacists to describe Black children.

At first she was apprehensive about using this type of imagery in her work. “Blacks were ashamed of those derogatory images,” she told the New York Times. “I like to think I recycled those images from negative to positive.”

But there was power in those images — and Saar knew just how to harness it.

“Saar’s assemblage doesn’t just describe history,” wrote former Times art critic Christopher Knight of her work in 2019, “it embodies a visceral connection to it.”

She would go on to deploy these tropes in myriad ways throughout her career — in particular the stereotypical figure of the Black mammy.

This included one particularly potent work: a glass bottle featuring the visage of a smiling mammy, which she transformed into a Molotov cocktail. The piece, which for decades had been in a private collection, reappeared in the traveling exhibition “We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85,” which went on view at the California African American Museum (CAAM) in 2017.

“Historically, the mammy was the ultimate image of Black female servitude in the American psyche,” wrote historian Steven Nelson in the catalog that accompanied a 2017 exhibition of Saar’s work at the Craft Contemporary (then known as the Craft & Folk Art Museum). “She was kind and giving. She cooked and cleaned and did the laundry. She took care of the children. She was harmless.”

By arming her mammies with revolvers, rifles and bullets, Saar turned a symbol of servility into one of militancy and power.

“Liberation of Aunt Jemima: Cocktail,” 1973, shown at the exhibition “We Wanted a Revolution” at CAAM in 2017.

(Jonathan Dorado, Brooklyn Museum / Betye Saar, Roberts Projects)

Her work also frequently touched on the personal: family, dreams, magic and the body (particularly the Black female body). In the process, she influenced a younger generation of artists, key figures such as Houston Conwill, Senga Nengudi and David Hammons.

“You can really see the impact she had on them,” said Kellie Jones, a scholar and independent curator who organized “Now Dig This!: Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980” at the Hammer Museum in 2011. “She had this multimedia practice. It was about Africa, but it was about the world. She has works with Mexican milagros, she has titles in Spanish, she at certain points has Asian influence and Haitian influence. She was really looking at the globe. She was a person in the world, and she really modeled that for people like Hammons and Conwill and Nengudi.”

Saar’s work resides in the permanent collections of more than 80 international museums, and in recent years, she was the subject of solo shows at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Prada Foundation in Milan and the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Arizona (which hosted a retrospective).

In L.A., she had regular exhibitions at her Culver City gallery Roberts Projects, as well as one-woman shows at CAAM and the Craft Contemporary. In 2019, a small but potent show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art explored the ways in which her drawing process factored into her assemblage work. But a full retrospective at one of her hometown’s major museums eluded her.

Saar told The Times that she didn’t let it bother her: “I’ve always done what I did and never felt I was competing with what was going on.”

An installation view of “Mojotech,” 1987, by Betye Saar at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.

(Tim Lanterman / Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and Roberts Projects)

If anything, she competed only with herself.

Well into her 90s, she continued to get up every day to craft assemblages out of the objects she had amassed in her studio. At 96, she scoured the Huntington Library gardens for a commissioned installation she called a “full-circle” project.

“I used to come to the Huntington with my mother when I was a child. She loved to garden, especially African violets, and she passed that love of plants and nature on to me,” Saar told the New York Times Style Magazine in 2024.

That love is palpable in “Drifting Toward Twilight” and its accompanying documentary, which sees Saar fawning over the orange tint of sloughed bark and the mystical qualities of garden scraps.

“Even in death those things can be really beautiful,” Saar said in the short documentary.

After working with a 17-foot canoe as a centerpiece for the Huntington exhibition, Saar told Curate LA that she felt compelled to return to small-scale pieces. The result was her 2024 Roberts Projects exhibit, “Betye Saar: New Work,” an objet trouvé medley in bronze and gold hues.

“At first, the new works were more nostalgic, with vintage photos and female ephemera, like gloves and such,” Saar said. “Then I brought in the tall ship bookends and African masks, and the works moved in a more ancestral and political direction.”

Even her grandson’s discarded computer parts made a cameo, a testament to Saar’s uncanny ability to mine inspiration from the most mundane objects.

“The worst problem for an artist is having nothing to say,” she once said in an interview. “I just have so many ideas. … Look at things that are important to you, what’s happening in your life. If you have that, you never run out of ideas.”

With her centennial on the horizon, Saar in 2025 formed the Betye Saar Legacy Group, a committee of her trusted curators and collaborators charged with preserving her vast archive and keeping her name fresh in the minds of new generations of artists.

A Saar biography penned by Zoé Whitley, who co-curated “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power,” is expected in 2027.

Saar is survived by her daughters Lezley, Alison (both artists) and Tracye (a writer), and her grandchildren Kyle Leeser, Maddy Inez, Sola Saar, Gen Saar Agustsson, Spencer Saar Cavanaugh, Megan Cavanaugh

Times staff writers Malia Mendez and Jessica Gelt contributed to this report.