‘Dancing with the Stars’ to celebrate its 500th episode: What to expect
Disney
Dancing with the Stars is approaching its 500th episode and the show is celebrating the milestone in a big way.
The show will kick off with a dance number to “Crazy in Love” by Beyoncé featuring Jay-Z, which will be choreographed by Pasha Pashkov and Daniella Karagach.
The dance number will be a nod to the first episode of the show, which aired in 2005 and opened with a dance to “Crazy in Love,” according to a press release for the upcoming episode.
Familiar faces from over the years will also return to the ballroom, the press release stated.
Carrie Ann Inaba, who has been a judge on DWTS since the show first premiered, spoke about the forthcoming 500th episode during a Nov. 4 appearance on Good Morning America.
“It just feels like it keeps getting better and better, and that’s such an honor — especially after so many seasons. Thirty-three?!” she gushed.
Inaba praised the “new vibe” of the show in its current form, which features her alongside her fellow original judge Bruno Tonioli and fan-favorite pro-turned-judge Derek Hough on the judging panel and Julianne Hough and Alfonso Ribeiro as co-hosts.
Will the judges dance during the 500th episode? “[That’s] the big question,” Inaba teased. “You’ll have to tune in to see that.”
In addition to the big celebration, the season’s remaining couples will perform dance numbers paying tribute to past memorable dances.
The couples will also take part in the Instant Dance Challenge during a second round dance on the show, where they won’t know the style or the song until five minutes before performing it live.
The 500th episode will air on Nov. 12 at 8 p.m. ET and simulcast live across both ABC and Disney+ in local time zones and the next day on Hulu.
Officially titled From the World of John Wick: Ballerina, the action movie stars Ana de Armas as a young woman with vengeance on her mind.
The trailer opens with the Wick series’ Winston (Ian McShane) asking a bloodied little girl, “Do you like to dance? I know a school that teaches dancers.”
However, it’s more than a ballet school. It’s an assassin training academy glimpsed in John Wick: Chapter 3, led by Anjelica Huston‘s The Director.
It’s there that de Armas’ Eve undergoes a master class in killing. “You will always be weaker. You will always be smaller,” her class is told.
“You want to win? Improve. Adapt. Cheat.” To that end, she’s shown dispatching a much larger male foe with strikes to his nethers.
The trailer brings Eve to New York City’s Continental Hotel, where she is greeted at the front desk by the concierge, Charon, played again by the late Lance Reddick.
“What a pleasure it is to see you again,” Winston tells the now-grown assassin.
De Armas dispatches enemies in all manner of ways — including one with an ice skate and another with a grenade stuffed into his mouth — as she works her way up the chain to her father’s killers.
Co-star Norman Reedus warns her, “You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into.”
The action culminates with the assassin fighting a flamethrower-wielding baddie with a raging firehose, but the trailer saves the best for last.
A train pulls up, and a mysterious figure descends. “You’re him,” Eve says. “The one they call the Baba Yaga. How do I start doing what you do?”
Keanu Reeves is then revealed as John Wick. “Looks like you already have,” he says.
Back in June, Sir Ian McKellen seemed to downplay a fall off a London stage during a performance of the Shakespeare adaptation Player Kings. A statement at the time said he was in good spirits and would make a speedy recovery. But now, several months later, McKellen reveals the whole thing was pretty scary.
“Apparently, I’m told by the company manager who’s holding my head as I lay on the floor, I said to her, ‘I’ve broken my neck. I’m dying,'” McKellen told ABC Audio in an interview from his home in London. “Now, I don’t remember saying that, but I must have felt it.”
He says he’s fine now, after fracturing his wrist and hurting his back, crediting the fat suit he was wearing in order to play rotund Knight John Falstaff with protecting his ribs and hips in the fall. And while physically he’s almost completely back to normal, the mental effects linger.
“I’m left with some disappointment,” McKellen confesses. “I’m ashamed that I didn’t complete — you know, my pride was bruised. How could this happen to me?” he asks with a chuckle. “And I suspect that although physically I’m healing, I wonder whether deep down there’s something mental or emotional that was jolted that needs to be attended to. And I’m attending to it by not working at the moment and resting.”
McKellen appears to be in a reflective mood as he discusses the fall, and his new film The Critic, in which he plays a prominent 1930s London theater critic named Jimmy Erskine, a once feared and respected tastemaker trying to recapture his glory days. Reviews, McKellen reveals, are a necessary evil for actors.
“We are seeking for approval. And we’re probably rather pathetic people who need that approval. We’re not confident enough of ourselves. So if you get a good review — oh, it’s an added pleasure. And if you get a bad review, it can be very hurtful,” McKellen admits.
And although he hasn’t been on the receiving end of a lot of bad reviews, the ones he has had are seared in his brain. Take for instance his turn in a Bernard Shaw revival in London’s West End when he was much younger. He starred in the play alongside a pre-Dame Judi Dench and recalls how he overheard a few fellow actors discussing his performance one night at a restaurant.
“One of them was going on and on and on about how dreadful I’d been. And I was typical of these modern young actors, using my voice in the wrong way and drawing attention to myself. And he just simply hadn’t enjoyed it.” McKellen says he laughed off the criticism, but the next night onstage it crept into his consciousness. “And as I looked into the audience talking away, I suddenly thought, ‘My God, every single person in this audience agrees with that actor that I heard last night. They all think I’m rubbish. I shouldn’t be here.’” He says he froze, forgot his lines and Dench had to rescue him.
Still, he swears if there’s a bad review out there, he’s going to read it. “I like to know. If people haven’t enjoyed the film of Cats I’d like to know about it.” 2019’s film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Broadway musical Cats was savaged by critics, probably the worst-reviewed film McKellen has ever been in. McKellen didn’t get the blame, though. His portrayal of Gus the Theater Cat was mostly praised. And he may be returning to a role that garnered him some of the most praise of his film career: the mighty wizard Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings movies.
“There are going to be a couple of more films, I think, with some of the same characters in it. And I’ve been asked to stand by,” McKellen says. “But there’s no script that I read, and no date. All I can say, as far as I’m concerned, they better be quick.”
Quick, because at 85 years old, McKellen isn’t sure how much time he has left. “I’m rather living a year at a time, rather than two or three years at a time,” he says.
Gandalf is a part of his legacy, so if he can, he’s going to go to New Zealand and put on the robes. Legacy is a theme in The Critic, as well. In his downtime, legacy and what’s next are things McKellen has been thinking about a lot. He remembers going to visit a friend in the hospital, a friend who was dying, and asking him what he was thinking about as his life neared the end.
“And he said, ‘I don’t want to miss anything.’ And that’s rather my view,” McKellen says wistfully. He wants to know what’s going to happen. “How is AI going to really take over? I mean, what is life going to be like? When is the world going to settle down? Is the world going to survive? I won’t know. I won’t know. And I suppose I won’t care because I won’t exist.”
On Thursday, Apple TV+ dropped a trailer to the second season of its Emmy-nominated dramedy Shrinking, which returns on Oct. 16.
The sneak peek of the sophomore season shows recent widower Jimmy (Jason Segel) trying to reconnect with his daughter, Alice (Lukita Maxwell).
“I think that Alice is worried about me,” he confides in Harrison Ford‘s Dr. Paul Rhoades. “That’s rough to realize your kid knows how fragile you are,” Ford deadpans.
Alice says about her dad, “I can’t help thinking he’s gonna go back to the way he was after mom died.”
Rhoades warns, “If you don’t truly deal with your past, it comes back for you, and then ‘Boom!'”
The trailer also shows Saturday Night Live‘s Heidi Gardner behind bars. “I pushed my husband off a cliff,” she says. “I’m a psycho with good hair.”
“I like the ‘good hair’ part,” Jimmy offers cheerfully.
Rhoades, who has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, is facing his fears as he continues his relationship with his neurologist, played by Wendie Malick.
Later, Jimmy tells Rhoades they should be working together, “Like Batman and Robin,” offering, “You even sound like him!”
Christa Miller and Jessica Williams also star in season 2, as do Luke Tennie, Michael Urie and TedMcGinley. As reported, Ted Lasso co-star and Shrinking co-creator Brett Goldstein will appear as a special guest star in season 2.
The 12-episode second season will premiere with two episodes on Oct. 16, followed by one new episode every Wednesday until its finale on Dec. 25.
