Category: Entertainment

Deadline is reporting that a defamation lawsuit centering on Netflix’s Emmy-nominated hit Baby Reindeer could have its day in court in May 2025.

A federal judge has set a trial date of May 6, 2025, in the $170 million suit against the streamer from Fiona Harvey, who claims the show’s stalker, Martha Scott, was based on her interactions with its creator, writer and star Richard Gadd.

As reported, Gadd claimed a chance meeting with Harvey at the pub where he worked led to her sending him “thousands of emails, hundreds of voicemails, and a number of handwritten letters” that “often included sexually explicit, violent, and derogatory content, hateful speech, and threats.”

In the series, Scott does the same to Gadd’s character, Donny, eventually leading to her being charged by police — something Harvey claims never happened in real life.

Gadd had previously said he’d testify against Harvey should the need arise, but insisted that his series “is not a documentary” and that “Martha Scott is not Fiona Harvey.”

He also said it was Harvey who outed herself, claiming she inspired the Martha character in an interview with Piers Morgan. In the same interview, she also denied sending Gadd “thousands” of messages — some of which Gadd attached to his formal statement as proof.

The trade notes there is a strong chance the matter will be settled before going in front of a jury.

Meanwhile, Baby Reindeer already won a pair of trophies at the Creative Arts Emmys, and Gadd is nominated for Sunday night’s ceremony for both his writing and his performance in the Best Limited or Anthology Series and Lead Actor categories.

His onscreen stalker, played by Jessica Gunning, snagged a nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

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Oprah Winfrey is offering her take on artificial intelligence ahead of ABC’s AI and the Future of Us: An Oprah Winfrey Special.

Speaking to ABC News’ Rebecca Jarvis in an interview with Good Morning America which aired on Thursday, the multi-hyphenate media mogul said, “We are in for the ride of our lives” with the technology.

“Life for all of us is about to be very different,” she said.

Winfrey told Jarvis she has always seen herself as “the surrogate viewer” of the topics she explores and understands that if she is curious to understand something, she isn’t the only one.

“If I don’t know the answer, I know that the other millions of people who are watching are feeling the same,” she said, adding that her first encounter with the AI didn’t happen until her first conversation with Sam Altman, the CEO of Open AI, the company behind the AI-based virtual assistant ChatGPT.

She continued, “After he was telling me about all the things that I could do, I was saying, ‘Okay, don’t be scared. Don’t be scared. You can get the ChatGPT app.'”

Winfrey shared her first experience with ChatGPT was asking the app to provide AirBnb listings for a friend.

“And it was miraculous to me that before you can practically finish the requests, the answer has come back to you,” she said.

In the new ABC primetime special, Winfrey explores “the profound impact of artificial intelligence on people’s daily lives, demystifying the technology and empowering viewers to understand and navigate the rapidly evolving AI future,” according to a press release.

AI and the Future of Us will premiere on Thursday, Sept. 12 on ABC at 8 pm E.T. and be available to stream on Hulu the next day.

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The Wrap reports The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives has become its most-watched unscripted season premiere of the year so far, based on three days of streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+, according to Disney internal data. The series follows the “scandalous world of a group of Mormon mom influencers,” led by self-acclaimed MomTok founder Taylor Frankie Paul, which “implodes when they get caught in the midst of a swinging sex scandal that makes international headlines,” per the streaming service …

The soap opera All My Children, which aired on ABC from 1970 to 2011, then briefly ran as a web series in 2013, may get a revival via a series of Lifetime TV movies, sources tell TV Line. The proposed series would feature legacy characters from the classic daytime drama project, which is in the very early stages, with one insider warning the talks are just “exploratory” at this point …

Judd Apatow and Steven Spielberg are attached as the respective director and producer of Cola Wars, a film in development at Sony Pictures, according to Deadline. The project follows the true story of Pepsi’s attempt to end Coca-Cola’s centurylong reign as the world’s top cola, dubbed the “Cola Wars” of the mid-1980s, highlighted by Michael Jackson’s fiery hair mishap and the New Coke debacle. The film is still in early development, per the outlet …

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Shailene Woodley stars in the new limited series adaptation of Lisa Taddeo’s New York Times bestselling nonfiction book, Three Women.

The show follows Woodley as Gia, a character loosely based on Taddeo, as she interviews three different women from across the United States, exploring their varied sexual and emotional experiences.

Woodley told ABC Audio that after she read Three Women, she felt Taddeo had written everything she “felt but didn’t know how to articulate.”

According to Woodley, crafting a character based on Taddeo was more than just collaborating with her.

“It wasn’t a collaboration as much as it felt like a connection and then a true desire to honor what our natural connection elicited,” Woodley said. “Gia is not Lisa, but Gia also isn’t me. It almost felt like she was the intersection of both of us.”

Taddeo wholeheartedly agreed, saying Woodley’s performance made her feel seen “in the most dynamic way.”

“Shailene’s performance made me feel seen without even, like, mimicking or mirroring me,” Taddeo said. “She’s one of the most talented actors out there, but she also has one of the warmest hearts.”

The show covers many serious topics ripe for discussion. So, what does Woodley hope viewers take from it?

“I hope that they walk away feeling a little less alone and maybe feeling like it isn’t weird or obscure to go through things that are very normal, everyday experiences that women have, like miscarriages or, like, having sex on your period or having body dysmorphia,” Woodley said. “I don’t know one woman who hasn’t been through one … if not all of those things. And I think it’s important that we take these situations that have become such taboo in our culture and really normalize them.”

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