Will Smith, Coco Jones perform at event celebrating upcoming third season of ‘Bel-Air’
With the upcoming third season of Bel-Air on the way, Peacock hosted a summer barbecue to celebrate, which featured a surprise performance from Will Smith.
Will, who serves as executive producer for the series, was invited onstage by Coco Jones, who plays Hilary Banks. After singing her new song “Here We Go,” Coco called Will out in the crowd and asked him to perform “Summertime.” He then walked onto the stage, mic already in hand, and rapped the 1991 track.
Also at the Bel-Air event were cast members Jabari Banks, Adrian Holmes, Jimmy Akingbola, Olly Sholotan, Akira Akbar, Jordan L. Jones and Simone Joy Jones.
The event featured food trucks, photo ops and yard games.
Bel-Air season 3premieres Aug. 15 with three episodes.
Ian McKellen says he’s been approached by director/actor Andy Serkis for his Lord of the Rings follow-up film The Hunt for Gollum, but he only has one caveat about reprising his role: Time. The 85-year-old tells Big Issue, “When? I don’t know. What the script is? It’s not written yet. So they better be quick!” The movie is set for a 2026 release…
Oscar-winning filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar screened his first film in English, The Room Next Door, at the Venice Film Festival on Sunday, and was rewarded for his latest cinematic effort with an 18-minute-long standing ovation, according to Deadline. His two leading ladies, Oscar winners Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, were on hand, and also applauded along with the crowd. The film centers on the pair, playing friends who reunite in New York City after decades, as Swinton’s character battles cancer…
James Darren, who was a teen idol thanks to Gidget, and went on to star in shows including T.J. Hooker and Star Trek: Deep Stace Nine, has died. Variety reports the actor passed away on Monday, August 26, at Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai Hospital. He was 88…
In a new profile in Vanity Fair, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice star Jenna Ortega is expressing some regrets over comments she made regarding her hit Netflix show Wednesday.
As reported in 2023, Ortega drew fire from writers — particularly during the extended Hollywood strikes — when she told Dax Shepard and Monica Padman‘s Armchair Expert podcast she had to “put [her] foot down” regarding scripts for the show.
“There were times on that set where I even became almost unprofessional in a sense where I just started changing lines,” she said in part. “I had to sit down with the writers, and they’d be like, ‘Wait, what happened to the scene?’ And I’d have to go and explain why I couldn’t go do certain things.”
The words “toxic” and “entitled” were bandied about in tweets and headlines after her comments made the news.
To VF, Jenna looked back, saying, “I probably could have used my words better in describing all of that,” calling herself “a rambler.”
She added, “I think it was hard because I felt like had I represented the situation better, it probably would’ve been received better.”
She added of the flap, “Everything that I said felt so magnified. … It felt almost dystopian to me. I felt like a caricature of myself.”
Jenna confessed, “I got sick of myself last year. My face was everywhere … so it’s like, fair enough, if I were opening my phone and I saw the same girl with some stupid quote or something, I would be over it too.”
Ortega reveals she successfully lobbied for a producer credit on the second season of Wednesday, which debuts on Netflix in 2025, in an effort to secure more “agency” for herself and her character, Wednesday Addams.
Whoopi Goldberg is heading to the stage as part of the world-renowned musical Annie.
Goldberg, a co-host on The View, will play the role of Miss Hannigan in the New York City performances of Annie, which will run at The Theater at Madison Square Garden for a limited engagement from Dec. 4, 2024, through Jan. 5, 2025, according to a press release.
“I love the theatre, and in my mind, there is no better way to spend the holidays than to get back on stage,” Goldberg said in a statement included in the release. “I can’t wait to step in to the delicious role of Miss Hannigan and perform for the greatest audiences in the world — in my hometown of New York City.”
Miss Hannigan, the show’s antagonist, runs the orphanage in which the main character, Annie, lives; Hannigan sings the song “Little Girls” in the production.
Goldberg achieved EGOT status — an acronym for the four biggest awards in the entertainment industry, the Emmy Awards, Grammy Awards, Academy Awards and Tony Awards — in 2002 after taking home a Tony Award for Best Musical for Thoroughly Modern Millie.
Jenn Thompson, who played Pepper in the original production of Annie, directs the show. Annie has been revived on Broadway two times and turned into a movie on three separate occasions.