Category: BUSINESS

Olivia Munn says postpartum was ‘more difficult’ than breast cancer

Olivia Munn is revealing more details about her health difficulties over the past few years.

The “Newsroom” alum is set to star in the Apple TV series “Your Friends & Neighbors,” premiering Friday, and opened up to Self magazine about returning to acting after yearslong health struggles.

In a story published Thursday, Munn told Self that after having 5-year-old son Malcolm, she “didn’t even have the ability to fake it” after “feeling very depressed” during her “brutal” postpartum journey. Due to the rocky post-birth process, Munn made the decision to welcome daughter Méi with comedian John Mulaney through surrogacy.

‘How does anybody do this?’: Olivia Munn gets candid about life with 2 kids

Last May, Munn got candid in a Vogue interview about how she also underwent a hysterectomy amid her breast cancer battle. The actress and Mulaney were married last July, and in September, they welcomed Méi.

“It was devastating for me not to be able to carry (Méi). I loved carrying my son (Malcolm),” Munn told Self.

Munn said that during her postpartum journey, “my eyes pop open at 4 a.m. I’m gasping for air. I get the tightness in my chest, and it’s like that all day long. It felt like the end of the world. … It was like when you watch a horror movie – the worst, scariest horror movie you can think of – that’s how my body felt.”

She added: “I would have to sometimes hold John’s arm from room to room. It was physical, almost as if I had sprained my knee.” The “Daily Show” alum told Self that she “could not make any breast milk,” and that “I think (that) kicked off the anxiety.”

“When you stop breastfeeding immediately, your hormones drop, and postpartum can come in like a tornado. And I didn’t clock any of that and I didn’t tell anybody about that,” Munn continued. “Then it was like I fell off a cliff, and I was just falling and falling and falling and falling. It was more difficult than going through cancer.”

Olivia Munn, John Mulaney still keep in touch with surrogate

The power-couple parents found their surrogate, who lives in Massachusetts, through an agency. Munn said that “the surrogate’s still in our life, she was a better pregnant woman than I ever could have been.”

“First of all, she doesn’t know any celebrities,” Munn said, telling Self the duo valued one thing most in their search: “Above everything else, I just wanted her to be kind.”

According to Munn, the surrogate is “an incredible mother, an incredible human being, an incredible friend, just wonderful.”

“I needed (her) to understand that I needed to go this route. It wasn’t for superficial reasons or because I wanted to put my work first. I’m not saying that any of those reasons aren’t valid for those people. And I’m not judging anyone who makes those decisions based on that, but I needed her to understand this would be hard for me,” Munn added.

Contributing: Brendan Morrow

April 10, 2025
Shaboozey talks recording process with Beyoncé for ‘Cowboy Carter’
- Shaboozey discussed his collaboration with Beyoncé on her album “Cowboy Carter” in an interview on “The Rebecca Judd Show.”
- He revealed that he wasn’t in the studio with Beyoncé during the recording process but recorded his parts separately.
- Shaboozey expressed his appreciation for Beyoncé keeping his original recordings intact on the final tracks.
- He also highlighted his own success with “Tipsy (A Bar Song),” which broke records on the Billboard charts.
Shaboozey is giving fans more insight into his historic collaboration with Beyoncé, which became the start to what proved to be a banner year.

The “Cowboy Carter” collaborator appeared on the latest episode of “The Rebecca Judd Show on Apple Music 1,” where he opened up about his breakthrough year in 2024, being featured on Beyoncé’s latest album, his hopes for the future and more.

Shaboozey is featured on two songs, “Spaghettii” and “Sweet Honey Buckiin,’” from Beyoncé’s eighth studio album “Cowboy Carter,” which she released March 29, 2024. Beyoncé’s hit “Spaghettii,” which also features country music pioneer Linda Martell, was nominated for best melodic rap performance at the 2025 Grammy Awards.

During the interview, Judd asked Shaboozey about the recording process with the 35-time Grammy-winning singer. He said he wasn’t actually in the studio with Beyoncé.

“I know how it gets, you want to be locked in and focused when you’re finishing your album,” he said. “I think it was that point where it’s like all the songs are done and you want to get the collaboration. So I wasn’t able to be in the room with her then, but I was right next door. I ran into Raphael Saadiq and The-Dream, and everybody was in there. Just being in your own room, just super-focused and super just getting it done.”

He said he recorded his two tracks over two days.

“I remember when I did ‘Spaghetti,’ I looked at the engineer, I was like, this is crazy,” he said. “I was like, this is the one right here. I feel like everyone else maybe liked the other one, but I was like, nah, she’s going to hear this one and get it. You know what I mean? And I feel like she probably heard it and got it.”

He said his recordings weren’t changed in the production process.

“Everything I recorded, they kept in there, which I thought was beautiful,” he said. “I’m really huge on respecting an artist, I think everything I did, they just kept it in there.”

And it’s clear the collaboration had a lasting impact on the Nigerian-American singer-songwriter with him calling it his favorite moment of last year.

The same year, Shaboozey made history with his own smash hit “Tipsy (A Bar Song).” The record-breaking tune became the longest-leading No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart by a solo artist. Shaboozey also made history as the first Black male artist to top that chart and and Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart simultaneously, amongst many other accolades and firsts.

The “Tipsy” singer wrapped the year with five nominations at the 2025 Grammys, where he performed. And he was sure to speak about the hit tune, too.

“I think when you listen to the song, it definitely has that emotion in there,” he said. “People can relate to that.”

The full interview is available on Apple Music.

Follow Caché McClay, the USA TODAY Network’s Beyoncé Knowles-Carter reporter, on Instagram, TikTok and X as @cachemcclay.
April 10, 2025
James Toback to pay $1.68 billion to women after sexual assault trial

A judge is ordering director James Toback to pay $1.68 billion in damages Wednesday, following a jury finding him liable in a sexual assault trial in New York, during which he was accused by 40 women of sex crimes over decades.

Attorneys for the accusers believe the sum represents the largest sexual assault civil suit verdict in state history.

“The jury’s verdict is about justice,” Brad Beckworth, an attorney for the accusers wrote in a statement to USA TODAY. “But more importantly, it’s about taking power back from the abusers — and their and enablers — and returning it to those they tried to control.”

Toback, who has previously denied any wrongdoing, was not reachable for comment. He did not have legal representation during the trial.

The screenwriter behind films like “Bugsy” and “Two Girls and a Guy,” Toback, 80, was one of the first major Hollywood names to be thrown out during the #MeToo reckoning over sexual violence in the entertainment industry nearly a decade ago. Along with the aspiring actresses listed in the suit, he has also been accused by big-name stars like Rachel McAdams, Selma Blair and Julianne Moore of on-set harassment.

‘Grey’s Anatomy’ star Ellen Pompeo: James Toback once asked me to get naked in a movie

“Several years ago, when the Me-Too movement began, I think many of us thought that we were past the point where men in positions of power would prey on women and try to steal their dignity and honor in exchange for allowing them to advance in their careers,” Beckworth continued. “We now know that the movement didn’t go far enough. We still have a lot of people in this country who abuse their power—and there are many more who turn a blind eye to it.”

James Toback allegations: Civil suit ends in trial victory for accusers

The lawsuit in New York, which loops together over a dozen named accusers and several anonymous ones, alleged that Toback over the course of 40 years used his “reputation, power and influence” to “lure young women … through fraud, coercion, force and intimidation into compromising situations where he falsely imprisoned, sexually abused, assaulted, and/or battered them.” Many of the women are now in their 30s and 40s.

Filed under the Adult Survivors Act, the lawsuit was allowed to proceed despite the large amount of time that had lapsed since many of the assaults by way of a one-year look-back window. The state opened the window in 2022 to allow accusers a brief opportunity to skirt the statute of limitations. That same look-back window was used by journalist E. Jean Carroll to sue President Donald Trump over an alleged assault during the mid-1990s.

The original suit also ensnared the Harvard Club of New York, where lawyers for the women allege Toback was a frequent customer, often taking his victims there for meals and drinks before attacking them. Because of his status as a prestige member, the club turned a blind eye to the abuse, the lawsuit alleged − the organization was ultimately not part of the trial.

Toback was a graduate of the Ivy League university and directed a 2001 dramedy about the school entitled “Harvard Man.”

McAdams and Blair both told Vanity Fair in 2017 that during the production of the movie Toback engaged in inappropriate sexual behavior, asking them to take their clothing off during auditions, masturbating in front of them or discussing personal pleasure habits and threatening them about speaking out.

Blair, who originally spoke to the Los Angeles Times anonymously, said she decided to come forward after Toback’s blanket denial.

“When he called these women liars and said he didn’t recall meeting them and that the behavior alleged could not be attributed to him, I just felt rage and an obligation to speak publicly now,” she told Vanity Fair.

“For decades, I carried this trauma in silence, and today, a jury believed me. Believed us,” Mary Monahan, the lead accuser in the case resolved Wednesday, told Variety. “That changes everything. This verdict is more than a number — it’s a declaration. We are not disposable. We are not liars. We are not collateral damage in someone else’s power trip. The world knows now what we’ve always known: what he did was real. And what we did — standing up, speaking out — was right.”

Contributing: Lorena Blas

April 10, 2025
Who is Jillian Shriner? Meet author and wife of Weezer’s Scott Shriner

Jillian Shriner, a bestselling author who is married to Weezer bassist Scott Shriner, is facing an attempted murder charge after police shot her in an altercation Tuesday.

The Los Angeles Police Department said in a press release that officers were pursuing three hit-and-run suspects Tuesday when they tracked one of them to the backyard of a house. As the officers arrived, they allegedly observed Shriner, 51, “armed with a handgun” in the yard of her own home nearby. She was not involved in the hit-and-run.

Officers ordered her to drop the handgun, but she refused, the LAPD claimed. Shriner allegedly pointed the handgun at officers and was shot by police before fleeing into her residence. She was later taken into custody and transported to the hospital, police said.

Author Jillian Lauren published books like ‘My Life in a Harem’ before shooting

Shriner, also known as Jillian Lauren, is the author of several books across multiple genres. In 2010, she published her memoir “Some Girls: My Life in a Harem,” which chronicled her time spent in the harem of Prince Jefri Bolkiah, brother of the Sultan of Brunei.

Weezer bassist’s wife, Jillian Shriner, shot by police and arrested for attempted murder

“At eighteen, Jillian Lauren was an NYU theater school dropout with a tip about an upcoming audition,” the book’s synopsis explains. “The ‘casting director’ told her that a rich businessman in Singapore would pay pretty American girls $20,000 if they stayed for two weeks to spice up his parties. Soon, Jillian found herself on a plane to Borneo, where she would spend the next eighteen months in the harem of Prince Jefri Bolkiah, youngest brother of the Sultan of Brunei.”

Shriner followed the bestselling book up in 2015 with another memoir: “Everything You Ever Wanted,” in which she discussed learning “the steadying power of love when she and her rock star husband adopt an Ethiopian child with special needs,” per her website. Her novel “Pretty,” about a woman left scarred after a car accident, was published in 2011.

Shriner also published a true crime book in 2023: “Behold the Monster,” for which she interviewed prolific serial killer Samuel Little. The Starz documentary “Confronting a Serial Killer” followed Shriner during the investigation. “I have access to him, so my deal with the devil is, you will not die alone if you tell me the truth,” she said in the documentary’s trailer.

In a conversation with The Crime Vault, Shriner said that when a detective told her about Little’s case, she “saw a chance to jump on an underreported story and to bring some heat to the failure of the justice system to protect the most vulnerable among us.”

Jillian Shriner, Weezer bassist Scott Shriner married 20 years ago

Shriner has been married to Scott Shriner, bassist for Weezer, since 2005. They share two children, both of whom they adopted.

In a TEDx talk in 2014, she shared that her son Tariku, whom she and her husband adopted from Ethiopia, was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. “He’s having these violent tantrums like 10 times a day, and we have to go to a therapist to learn how to contain him safely so that he doesn’t hurt himself and anyone else,” she said. Shriner describes herself as an adoption advocate on her website.

Contributing: KiMi Robinson

April 10, 2025
'The Amateur': See Rami Malek go from CIA nerd to assassinMovies

‘The Amateur’: See Rami Malek go from CIA nerd to assassinMovies

April 10, 2025
Paul Giamatti, Issa Rae headline new episodes of Netflix's 'Black Mirror'TV

Paul Giamatti, Issa Rae headline new episodes of Netflix’s ‘Black Mirror’TV

April 10, 2025
Paul Giamatti stars in emotional Season 7 episode

How Paul Giamatti knows he’s made it: The Oscar-nominated actor gets to wear one of those super-cool signature Experiencer Disks in “Black Mirror.”

“That was very thrilling,” says Giamatti, a noted sci-fi fan and headliner of a new episode in the Netflix anthology series’ seventh season (streaming now). In “Eulogy,” he plays an older man who, courtesy of a virtual Guide (Patsy Ferran) and a nifty device he places on his temple, enters pictures from his youth to help recall memories of a lost love.

Giamatti is known for his cinematic work, including “The Holdovers” and “Sideways,” but the 57-year-old actor also co-hosted the “Chinwag” podcast, which discussed science, the occult, mysteries and more, so “Black Mirror” is “very much” his sort of jam: “I like stuff like this.”

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Though many episodes veer toward the bleakly dystopian or technology-run-amok variety, “Eulogy” is one of the few, like “San Junipero,” that leans emotional and more life-affirming than heartbreaking. Giamatti, for one, is glad to hear that.

“It was always a little bit of a debate, whether it was (positive) or not,” he says. “But when the episode was all put together, I was like, ‘Oh, it is kind of a good thing that happens for the guy.’ ”

“Eulogy” centers on Phillip (Giamatti), a grumpy sort who lives on Cape Cod and gets a message that Carol, a former flame, has died in England. Her daughter is putting together an immersive online memorial, and Phillip is asked to contribute memories from his mind via a virtual-reality device. The problem is, Phillip has done his best to forget her after a nasty breakup several decades ago, including angrily scratching out or tearing up her face in old Polaroids. With the Guide’s help, Phillip is able to immerse himself in these photos from the past to try to piece together what she looked like and what happened in their relationship.

Though punching a viewer in the gut is a “Black Mirror” specialty, creator/writer Charlie Brooker hopes “Eulogy” is “equally powerful, but in a different way. It’s evocative (and) bittersweet, tragic and warm at the same time.” Brooker was inspired by recent efforts to “polish up” the past, like Peter Jackson’s Beatles documentary, “Get Back”: “We are not just the near-future dystopia show. Sometimes we’re the future nostalgia show.”

And Giamatti was “the perfect fit” for the episode, Brooker says. Not only is he “one of the best actors ever to walk the Earth,” but “he can walk the fine line between grouchy and standoffish and sort of inherently warm and likable, which is no mean feat.”

As his character goes through the paces of recalling this difficult period in his life while revisiting the beautiful feelings as well, Giamatti recalled “the intensity of the relationships you have when you’re that age, and all of that was very much coming back” while filming. “What’s nice is he’s allowed to find her again and fall in love with her again, but let go of it, too.”

The story resonated with Giamatti; it took him back to his early years as an artist. “The first photograph that you see (in the episode) looked in an uncanny way like the rooftop of a lot of places in New York. I wasn’t a musician, but I was trying to be an actor. I was living in a loft like that, in a kind of crappy building on the Lower East Side. A lot of this is just already in my own head because it’s very similar to my youth in 1989,” when he was 22.

Phillip, however, is a very analog person and not very technological − Giamatti says he’s “frozen a little bit in time” − so he gives the delivery drone that brings him his nifty device a curmudgeonly look. In real life, Giamatti thought it was pretty cool. “I had not seen this happen yet with a package. I live in New York City; I don’t imagine it needs to happen here. It’s like, ‘Oh, that works pretty well, actually.’ I thought if I lived out in the desert in Utah, it’d be kind of a great way to have this arrive.”

And like his character, Giamatti has a bunch of old photos, but he confesses he’s “not a nostalgia guy in that way. I’ve kind of inherited them from people who have passed away. I just never pull them out and look at them a lot (or) put them in scrapbooks.

“But they’re there, and I haven’t gotten rid of them. I’ll look at them at some point.”

April 10, 2025
Dad John Mellencamp planning her burial amid cancer

Teddi Mellencamp says famous father John Mellencamp is planning her burial amid her stage 4 skin cancer battle.

The “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” alum opened up about her “Jack & Diane” singer’s plans, after her melanoma metastisized, on Tuesday’s episode of her “Two T’s In A Pod” podcast with co-host Tamra Judge.

“Yesterday my dad calls 11 times in a row. Finally, I answer, I’m like, ‘I’m in the bath. Let me live a little.’ He goes, ‘I just want to make sure you’re going to be in our group family mausoleum,’” the reality TV star recalled, to which Judge replied, “John, no!”

During the episode, Mellencamp also shared that “the Cougs makes me talk to him more than he’s ever made me talk to him,” referring to her dad’s former stage name John Cougar.

Teddi Mellencamp reveals stage 4 cancer spread with new tumors

The former “Celebrity Big Brother” houseguest told Judge she asked the music legend if there would be room in the family’s mausoleum in Indiana for her three kids — 12-year-old Slate, 10-year-old Cruz and Dove, 5 — whom she shares with husband Edwin “Eddie” Arroyave. Mellencamp and the home security entrepreneur have hit pause on their pending divorce during her cancer treatment.

“He’s like, ‘Well, there’s going to be the top five and then we’re going to have little areas around it, and then that’s where everyone’s going to get buried,’” Mellencamp said, later revealing that her dad told her “you’re doing your will right now, so you may as well put it in there.”

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In her signature sarcasm, Mellencamp told Judge that the “Real Housewives of Orange County” star would have to travel to Indiana to visit her grave site, adding that “hot girls never die” would be on her tombstone.

Teddi Mellencamp stage 4 cancer metastasizes

Mellencamp’s burial comments come after a significant update in her health journey shared last week. In an Us Weekly interview published April 2, Mellencamp announced that her stage 4 cancer metastasized, and doctors found four new tumors after the melanoma spread to her brain and lungs.

“There are some days (where) I think you’re allowed to say, ‘I don’t feel confident right now, I feel very uncomfortable and I want to wear a wig.’ And there are some days that I’m like, ‘It is what it is.’ Some days, I’m really sad and really scared, and some days, I’m like, ‘I got this; I’m not worried,’” Mellencamp told the magazine.

Teddi Mellencamp has numerous brain tumors, will undergo emergency surgery

“I’m fighting for my life, but also for my family’s life and all the people I love,” Mellencamp added.

Earlier this year, Mellencamp revealed she underwent emergency surgery after several tumors were found on her brain. The podcaster has long been open about her health on her hit iHeartMedia podcast “Two Ts.”

The former Real Housewife first revealed the news in a statement shared to Instagram on Feb. 12.

April 10, 2025
Jean Smart, on savage sparring, real-life friendship

A gleeful mischief spreads over Hannah Einbinder’s face as she talks about her inspiration for the fourth season of “Hacks” taking center stage on Max (first two episodes now streaming, then weekly on Thursday).

The 10-episode return of the award winning series (which has earned Smart an Emmy for each of three previous seasons and series a best-comedy award in 2024) resumes where last May’s shocking finale left off: Ava Daniels (Einbinder) secured the head writer position on Deborah Vance’s (Jean Smart) new late-night talk show only after threatening to reveal Deborah’s dalliance with married Bob Lipka (Tony Goldwyn), CEO of the corporation that owns Deborah’s network.

Einbinder, 29, thought to herself, “Every mob movie I’ve ever watched is about to go into this moment,” she says in a joint interview with Smart, who cannot contain her laughter. Einbinder’s been “studying” those films. “I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, Ava big boss moment,’” Einbinder adds. “She’s like the Don right now.”

In Thursday’s premiere, Deborah confronts Ava in her new head writer’s office: “Well, aren’t you a big, brave girl?” she asks, glaring at her traitorous protégé.

“I guess I am,” Ava responds. “It’s for the best.”

“We’ll see,” Deborah says, letting the threat linger as she exits.

“Everybody’s world is shifting now that Deborah’s gotten this late-night show,” Downs says of the impact on those in the host’s world. “Jimmy and Kayla (Megan Stalter) have launched their own management firm, and so they’re starting their own office. They’re in their own new workplace environment with a whole new host of characters. For Marcus (Carl Clemons-Hopkins), things maybe shift the most, because as Deborah starts to do this late-night show it means there’s less of a place for him in her orbit. So his relationship to her is shifting a bit, which is not easy, because Deborah really likes people to stick around and be loyal.”

Which begs the questions: Will Ava and Deborah ever make up? What will happen with the new late-night show? And will Deborah’s tryst stay under wraps?

Smart, 73, savors the wit-drenched war of the words with Ava, “especially when they trade funny insults,” she says. “Even when I’m pissed off, like when I’m wearing that yellow dress (in Season 3), and you say it’s giving Big Bird. And I’m really insulted, but it’s so much fun.”

“It’s the basis of their relationship,” Einbinder says, bringing up the barbs exchanged in their very first meeting, when Ava interviewed to be a joke writer for the struggling comedian and knocked Deborah’s Las Vegas home as Cheesecake Factory chic.

“And I’m upset because you tracked dirt in on my rugs with your boots,” Smart recalls. “And then you said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know this was a shoes-off thing.’” The costars then deliver the punchline in unison: It’s “shoe dependent.”

“We love it,” Einbinder says chuckling, in a “Sorry we can’t help it” sort of way.

“At the end of the day,” says Lucia Aniello, who cocreated the series with Downs (her husband) and Jen Statsky, “Deborah and Ava’s relationship is bonded by comedy and comedy writing. And that’s the thing that does matter the most to them. I think the thing that hyper complicates that this season is their egos, especially Deborah’s.”

Landing her long-pined-for late-night gig “means so much” to Deborah, Aniello says. “And she also is still reeling at the blackmail from the end of Season 3. As for Ava, she’s doing her best while still trying to remain true to herself, yet also stand up for herself, which is a really difficult thing to do for anybody who’s now a boss, but especially when you’re going toe to toe with Deborah Vance.”

Offscreen, it seems Einbinder and Smart are less likely to go toe to toe and more likely to proceed hand in hand.

“Strangely, I think it would almost be harder to do those really biting, insulting scenes if we were two actresses that didn’t really get along,” Smart says. “It would feel very uncomfortable and get in the way of the work. But because we love each other, it’s fun to say awful things.”

Smart denies hurling a couple of unprintable names at Einbinder before shrinking with embarrassment, merely seconds later. “I can’t believe I said that,” she says with her hands over her mouth. Einbinder wraps her arms around her costar to playfully comfort her.

“The way that they laugh together, the way that they bond and connect, is true to us,” Einbinder says. But none of the “psycho” behavior, she says, or anything cruel, Smart adds.

“It’s really all just kind of positive,” Einbinder says.

April 10, 2025
Photos of the family through the years

© Copyright Gannett 2025

April 10, 2025