Tag: rumors

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‘Will & Grace’ Creators Acknowledge Rumored Cast Feuds

L-R Eric McCormack, Debra Messing, Sean Hayes, Megan Mullally (via Instagram)
As NBC was preparing for the (second) series finale of Will & Grace this week, Will & Grace creators Max Mutchnick and David Kohan addressed the rumors of discord between series stars Debra Messing and Megan Mullally with Entertainment Weekly. You may recall Mullally quietly took a leave of absence during two episodes this season, and fans noticed she and Messing ‘unfollowed’ each other on social media. While Kohan and Mutchnick didn’t get into the details of the reported feud, they did acknowledge there were ‘tensions’ on set. Mutchnick said: “We always work under this kind of motto that everything’s about the work. It’s just about the work. And so if we stay true to that, then we just keep you guys out of whatever happened on the set this year because it would have done nothing but get in the way of the stories that we wanted to tell. It was not an easy year, but the permanent legacy of the show is much more important to us than any temporary squabble that would take place on the stage.” Mutchnick also shared that it was Messing’s “pain-in-the-ass” contract that forced producers to get to the series finale before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down Hollywood. “Oh my God, thank God. It would have been the most unfinished feeling to not get to the end of this season,” said Mutchnick laughingly. “Thank God Debra had it in her contract that we had to be done by Christmas. I finally found the silver lining in that really pain-in-the-ass clause.” Check out the full interview on EW here. I personally thought it felt a bit ‘by the numbers.’ Like something that had to be done, but there wasn’t the snap that once was there. I’m glad the series came back – we needed it after the election of 2016. But I also think the creative team and cast were wise to bring the curtain down at an appropriate junction. Who watched the finale? What did you think? Yay? Nay? Blase?

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Wendy Williams Denies Lesbian Rumor: ‘I Like Men And I Like The D’

Wendy Williams (screen capture)
During a lengthy rant on her daily gabfest on Tuesday, Wendy Williams declared in no uncertain terms she is not a lesbian because “I like men and I like the D.” Williams was apparently addressing a recent Radar Online piece – “Sorry Whitney! Houston’s Lesbian Lover Robyn Crawford Now BFFs With Wendy Williams” – that seemed to imply the talk show host had been crushing on Robyn Crawford, Whitney Houston’s alleged lesbian lover. Radar based the report on Rob Shuter’s podcast, Straight Shuter, where gossip guy Shuter opined that Crawford and Williams “really hit it off” during Crawford’s November 12 appearance on the talk show promoting her new book, A Song for You: My Life With Whitney Houston. “Since the taping, Wendy and Robin have been texting each other,” read the Radar article. “They have become close and are getting dinner next week.” Williams came across the insinuating chatter and took it to the cameras. “In between commercials and everything, I go on the googler schmoogler and I go to Radar Online, speaking of how you doin’, and I see that Rob Shuter – he’s insinuating that something romantical is going on between me and Robyn Crawford,” Williams shared as the studio audience chuckled. “I am no lesbian, I like women for friendship. I like men and I like the D,” said Williams before reaching for her coffee cup. Underscoring her point, Williams added with a playful tone, “First of all, I’m not down with that – all due respect to the lesbians.” Williams, who recently divorced her husband of nearly 22 years,  also pointed out Crawford is married with children and Miss Wendy is “not a homewrecker.” “I’ve never even been curious,” she made a point to include. “It’s so complicated being a woman,” Williams said. “I just couldn’t imagine two of us in a relationship.” “I mean, yesterday after the show, I got the surprise of my life – at 55, I got a period,” said the recent divorcee in a bit of oversharing. “I just can’t deal with two of us under the same roof,” she said. Maybe she was just short of material for her Hot Topics segment, but it seems like a lot of acting out over a lesbian rumor in 2019. You can watch the bit in the clip below.

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No, Billy Porter Did Not Give RuPaul ‘Side-Eye’ At Emmys

Billy Porter slams reports that he gave RuPaul side-eye during Emmy Awards

Billy Porter slams reports that he gave RuPaul side-eye during Emmy Awards Folks love to stir up stuff even when there’s nothing there. Speaking to reporters backstage at the Emmy Awards last night after his historic win as ‘Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series,’ Billy Porter was asked about some Twitter activity that imagined him giving some side-eye during RuPaul’s acceptance speech for winning the trophy for ‘Outstanding Reality-Competition Series.’ This was the screen capture folks were bouncing around the Twitterverse:

But when a reporter from Essence brought up the minutes-new meme, Billy shut that down and quick. “Let me make this clear right now in this room to everybody. Right now. There was never a side-eye coming from me. There’s never anything negative coming from me. You’re never going to get from it. Okay. It’s all love, all love, it’s all positivity. Don’t come to me with that mess. They can catch me and it can look like a side-eye, [but] RuPaul is a friend of mine. I am so proud of him. I stand on his shoulders. I stand on his shoulders. He is doing it. He paved the way for me, so there’s never a side-eye about that.”

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Lady Gaga On Stage Chemistry With Bradley Cooper: “Fooled Ya!”

Lady Gaga on ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’

One of THE highlights of the Academy Awards this past Sunday was Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s stunning performance of the (now) Oscar-winning song, “Shallow.”

While Cooper had announced in advance that he would not be singing as his character from A Star is Born, “Jackson Maine,” there was still some intense romantical connection between the two stars during the performance.

So much so, that social media began to wonder if the duo were becoming an item?

I should note that while Gaga recently called off her engagement with longtime beau, Christian Carino, Cooper is in a relationship with model Irina Shayk.

In case you missed it, here’s the performance:

During an appearance Jimmy Kimmel Live! last night, Kimmel asked about the sparks that flew during the song.

“You had such a connection with Bradley that, instantly – and I guess this is a compliment – people started saying, ‘Oh, they must be in love,’” said Kimmel.

Will a roll of her eyes, Gaga shot down the rumors.

“First of all, social media, quite frankly, is the toilet of the Internet,” said the newly-minted Oscar winner. “And what it has done to pop culture is abysmal.”

“People saw love, and guess what, that’s what we wanted you to see,” she added in a triumphant note.

“This is a love song, ‘Shallow,’ the movie A Star Is Born is a love movie,” explained Gaga. “We worked so hard all week on that performance.”

The pop diva credited Cooper with coming up with the concept and staging of the Oscar performance from their entrance from the audience to lighting the audience during the song to the intimacy they projected.

Gaga added that she’s had a lot of experience with love songs.

“Look, I’ve had my arms wrapped around Tony Bennett for three years touring the world,” said the ‘Bad Romance’ singer. “When you’re singing love songs, that’s what you want people to feel.”

“I’m an artist,and I guess we did a good job,” she added. “Fooled ya!”

Watch the full chat with Jimmy Kimmel below:

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Olivia Newton-John: “The Rumors Of My Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated”

Olivia Newton-John knocks down exaggerated rumors of declining health in new video

Because my husband, Michael, is Olivia Newton-John’s publicist, it’s been a strange couple of weeks watching as stories of Olivia’s health “rapidly declining” took flight.

It began with that bastion of journalism, The National Enquirer, and then other tabloids ran with it.

This week the story reached Australia where all the rags there also ran headlines of “Olivia near death’s door” or “Olivia on her death bed.”

In reality, Olivia has been feeling better and stronger as she continues treatment for her cancer, and enjoying her Christmas holiday.

Today, she sent this video to let the world know the rumors of her death “are greatly exaggerated.”

Please let me know if Olivia looks anywhere near ‘death’s door” to you 😉

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NFL teams reportedly worried that Manti Te’o is gay

Seriously.  When you’re a player at Manti’s level, do teams really care?

From ThinkProgress:

National Football League teams want to know the same thing of the projected first-round draft pick at the league’s annual scouting combine, according to NBC and Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio, who told radio host Dan Patrick that the issue of Te’o’s sexuality has become “the elephant in the room” for NFL teams interested in drafting him. CBSSports.com’s Mike Freeman has the transcript, part of which is here:

“On the field, you still have to account for what happened in the BCS National Championship Game against Alabama,” Florio told the Dan Patrick Show. “Here’s the elephant in the room for the teams and it shouldn’t matter, but we have to step aside from the rest of reality and walk into the unique industry that is the NFL. Teams want to know whether Manti Te’o is gay. They just want to know. They want to know because in an NFL locker room, it’s a different world. It shouldn’t be that way.” […]

Patrick interrupted Florio to ask: “You’re telling me that you’re hearing from teams who want to know this, but how do you ask it? Are they trying to find a finesse way to ask that question, or are they going to do investigative work on finding out if Manti Te’o is gay?”

Florio said: “It’s been described to me as the proverbial elephant in the room and I don’t think anyone knows how to solve this dilemma yet. It’s just that they want to know what they’re getting. They want to know what issues they may be dealing with down the road. We just assumed that at some point there would be an openly gay player in an NFL locker room and the team would have to work with the realities and make sure that everything’s fine.”

Manti, apparently, is not the only player to be asked about his sexuality, the HuffPost reports:

NFL prospect Nick Kasa was asked by scouts about his sexual orientation at the NFL Combine, the tight end said in a radio interview on Tuesday.

Kasa, a senior at the University of Colorado, is one of a few hundred players who participated this week in the NFL Scouting Combine, an annual showcase for NFL prospects in advance of April’s draft. Over the course of the Combine, participants submit themselves for a variety of physical and mental tests, as well as interviews with NFL teams. According to Kasa, it was during these interviews that the topic of his sexual preferences came up.

“[Teams] ask you like, ‘Do you have a girlfriend?’ Are you married?’ Do you like girls?’” Kasa told CJ and Kreckman of ESPN Radio Denver on Tuesday. “Those kinds of things, and you know it was just kind of weird. But they would ask you with a straight face, and it’s a pretty weird experience altogether.”

NFL spokesman Greg Aiello told Outsports the league is investigating:

“Like all employers, our teams are expected to follow applicable federal, state and local employment laws. It is league policy to neither consider nor inquire about sexual orientation in the hiring process. In addition, there are specific protections in our collective bargaining agreement with the players that prohibit discrimination against any player, including on the basis of sexual orientation. We will look into the report on the questioning of Nick Kasa at the Scouting Combine. Any team or employee that inquires about impermissible subjects or makes an employment decision based on such factors is subject to league discipline.”