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‘My 600lb Life’ star, Latonya Pottain, dies at age 40Entertainment
‘My 600lb Life’ star, Latonya Pottain, dies at age 40Entertainment
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Denzel Washington Cannes 2025 video shows paparazzi confrontation
Denzel Washington has altercation with Cannes Film Fest photographer
Denzel Washington attended Cannes Film Festival for the premiere of his new movie “Highest 2 Lowest,” directed by Spike Lee.
Tensions rose on the Cannes red carpet when Denzel Washington appeared to share a heated exchange with a photographer.
In the May 19 incident, captured on video, Washington scolds a photographer, pointing directly at the cameraman and appearing to say to get his hands off him after he reached out and grabbed the actor’s arm.
When the photographer then grabbed him again, the “Othello” actor swatted away his arm and continued to chide him, seeming to repeat the phrase “stop it,” before walking away.
Washington’s rep told USA TODAY, following the interaction: “It was a great evening at the Cannes Film Festival.”
The incident is not the first red carpet controversy at Cannes. Last year, video emerged of several stars, particularly women of color, being rushed through the carpet by security personnel. The instances, which sometimes got physical, prompted outrage on social media, with some claiming discrimination.
Kelly Rowland, whose confrontation with a security guard was caught on video, told the Associated Press at the time: “I have a boundary, and I stand by those boundaries, and that is it. There were other women who attended that carpet, who did not look quite like me. And they didn’t get scolded or pushed off or told to get off.”
Denzel Washington receives surprise awards at Cannes
Washington received a surprise honorary Palme d’Or award at the famed French film festival in recognition of his outstanding career, according to organizers.
The Oscar winner, 70, was at Cannes for the premiere of Spike Lee’s latest film “Highest 2 Lowest,” an adaptation of legendary Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa’s “High and Low.” The movie will hit theatres in the U.S. on Aug. 22.
Washington, who was joined by co-stars A$AP Rocky and Jeffrey Wright on the red carpet, stars in the crime thriller, representing the fifth time he and Lee have worked together.
With movie roles that have ranged from Black activist Malcolm X, to a drunk but heroic pilot in “Flight,” Washington’s prolific career was at the center of the surprise awards ceremony May 19.
Robert De Niro also received a Palme d’Or honorary award for lifetime achievement, though his was announced in advance. At the festival’s opening ceremony last week, he used his acceptance speech to call for protests against President Donald Trump.
Contributing: Anna Kaufman, USA TODAY; Miranda Murray, Reuters
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Jon Stewart slams CNN, Jake Tapper for Biden health book
Jon Stewart agrees to do ‘unedited’ interview with Elon Musk
Jon Stewart criticized Elon Musk after highlighting a contradiction in the billionaire’s claim of political neutrality. Musk said he would appear on “The Daily Show” if the interview aired “unedited.”
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Jon Stewart is slamming CNN for continuing to promote a tell-all book about former President Joe Biden’s health after he announced a prostate cancer diagnosis.
The book “The Original Sin,” out May 20, was co-written by Axios correspondent Alex Thompson and CNN’s Jake Tapper, but Stewart jokingly questioned their journalistic integrity during the May 19 episode of “The Daily Show.”
The “Daily Show” segment began with clips of Tapper repeatedly promoting his book on CNN, telling viewers they “will not believe” what the coauthors “found out” during his reporting.
“Don’t news people have to tell you what they know when they find it out?” Stewart asked. “Isn’t that the difference between news and a secret? ‘You won’t believe what we found out.’ No, that’s why I’m watching you.”
A Biden spokesperson announced May 18 that the former president, 82, has an “aggressive form” of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones. He was diagnosed days earlier on May 16 after “experiencing urinary symptoms,” and a “nodule” was discovered on his prostate, according to the statement.
On May 19, Biden’s official account posted a picture with former first lady Jill Biden and a cat with the caption, “Cancer touches us all. Like so many of you, Jill and I have learned that we are strongest in the broken places.”
Jon Stewart mocks CNN’s promotion of Biden tell-all ‘The Original Sin’
During the “Daily Show” segment, Stewart pointed out how other news outlets have used terms like “massive tsunami,” “bombshell allegations,” “damaging new details” and “damning claims” during their coverage of “The Original Sin.”
Stewart mocked the book’s premise, quipping that “nothing could slow down this coming, feeding news frenzy about Biden’s cognitive health, other than maybe a report on his actual physical health, which was not good.”
Stewart said that Thompson and Tapper created a “smorgasbord based on what you thought would be a relatively uncomplicated story about mental decline.” He added that “now, doing the story seems almost disrespectful” after Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis.
“Can CNN thread the needle? How do you pivot from excitedly promoting your anchor’s book to somberly and respectfully promoting your anchor’s book?” Stewart said. The comedian poked fun at CNN’s coverage of the former president’s health scare using a clip of Tapper’s “State of the Union” co-anchor Dana Bash discussing the diagnosis.
“This was already going to be a tough week, and this makes it much harder. And that is a reference to the fact that our colleague, Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson have a book that’s set to be published on Tuesday,” Bash said in a clip.
Another clip showed “CNN News Central” anchor Kate Bolduan saying, “This very tough news, this very challenging news and at the same time, the backdrop of our colleague Jake Tapper’s book with Alex Thompson coming out this week.”
After playing the clips of CNN anchors, Stewart jokingly said: “It’s so hard, it’s such a difficult time, so unfathomable in terms of the pain his family must be feeling and yet, if you act now, you use the code ‘backslash tap that book.’
“Forgetting about the fact how … weird it is that the news is selling you a book about news they should have told you about a year ago for free,” Stewart said.
Contributing: Zac Anderson
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Sarah Silverman’s ‘PostMortem’ standup special: Parents died days apart
What’s next for Nate Bargatze?
USA TODAY’s Erin Jensen caught up with Nate Bargatze on his new book “Big Dumb Eyes” and what’s next after stand up.
There’s an art to transforming the worst days of your life into causes for laughter.
In Sarah Silverman’s latest standup special, she turns an unimaginable gut punch – the 2023 deaths of her dad and stepmother, just days apart − into punchlines, and her heartbreak into wisecracks.
“I worry that people are going to think it’s soft, (but) if anything it’s the opposite because it’s the hard stuff,” Silverman says, looking cozy in a gray sweater with a bubblegum pink beanie atop her raven-colored locks. “It’s something that we’re all terrified of, that none of us can avoid.”
Silverman’s father, Donald “Schleppy” Silverman and her stepmother, Janice, both died in May 2023. Her dad, who she has described as her best friend, had kidney failure, just nine days after Janice’s bout with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer came to an end. Sarah Silverman devotes time in the 63-minute “PostMortem” (now streaming on Netflix), to each of her parents, including her mom, Beth Ann O’Hara, a stickler for enunciation and blunt honesty, who died in 2015. From the stage of New York’s Beacon Theatre, Silverman remembers her dad’s days as owner of Crazy Sophie’s Factory Outlet, his enthusiastic Yelp review for their dentist and the days leading to his death. Silverman shares stories of Janice, “just the sweetest lady you could ever meet,” and her parents’ starkly different reactions to Janice’s diagnosis.
Janice’s “reaction is so Janice,” Silverman, 54, says in “PostMortem.” “She just goes, ‘Well, I’ll just do everything you tell me. I’ll just do every single thing you say, and I’ll fight it.’” Meanwhile, Silverman’s dad had “the craziest” response. “You just hear him go, ‘I’m alone!’” Silverman says. “Then he goes, ‘I’m a widow!’”
“As awful as those last weeks were, it was really cathartic to spend, like, a year on tour talking about it,” Silverman tells USA TODAY. The PostMortem tour began Sept. 19 in St. Louis and wrapped in London April 28. Donald and Janice’s deaths coincided with the release of her HBO special “Someone You Love,” in May 2023, after which Silverman needed material for a new hour of comedy. So she pulled out the eulogy she delivered at her dad’s funeral.
“When I started doing standup, this was all that I was thinking about,” she says. “I would get to Largo (a club in Los Angeles) after cleaning out my parents’ apartment with my sisters and just unload.”
Near the beginning of the tour, it felt “heavy to get myself onstage and to figure it out,” she says. She had to finesse bits that weren’t working. “And then once I had it together, I was so excited to tell people about my parents every night.”
Silverman and her dad grew closer as she got older. “He was always really funny, but he was really scary when I was a kid,” she says, remembering his “screaming out of control. … He had a lot of rage issues,” but over the years he became “a very chill, joyful, grateful man.”
In “PostMortem,” she says family and joy filled Donald’s final days.
“We all got into bed with him,” she says. “It was a great death. We were singing old camp songs. He loved camp. And telling funny Silverman family stories.”
The honesty with which Silverman shares her stories has allowed her to connect with fans on a deeper level.
“One of my last shows, I think it was New Jersey or something, I could see a woman just losing it,” she remembers. “And then when the show was over, she couldn’t even get up because she was just sobbing.” Silverman called the woman over and the two embraced. “She had just lost her dad and taken care of him just on her own. She didn’t have any siblings,” Silverman says. “I could feel her tears at my whole side (getting my) shoulder wet.
“Everybody relates to it in one way or another,” Silverman adds. “Even if they go, ‘I didn’t have that relationship with my dad,’ it seemed to really connect with people, and as a comedian, that’s your dream.”
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Denzel Washington argues with photographerEntertainment
Denzel Washington argues with photographerEntertainment
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‘Handmaid’s Tale’ spotlights song from Taylor Swift’s ‘Reputation (TV)’
I’m sorry the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now. Why? Oh, cause she’s featuring “Look What You Made Me Do (Taylor’s Version)” on a recent episode of “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
In the midst of a content drought, Taylor Swift rose up from the dead for “Execution,” Episode 9 of Season 6 of the Hulu series, which aired on May 19.
During the opening credits, the haunting organ notes for the “Reputation (Taylor’s Version)” track plays for two minutes and 16 seconds. We checked it once, then we checked it twice. The red-robed heroines of Gilead walked in unison down a street after a night of mayhem with sirens blaring in the background. Swift’s anthemic tune played underneath a flurry of gunshots for the first verse, first chorus, second verse and ending “Look What You Made Me Do” repetitions. Mark it in red, underlined.
Like anything involving Swift’s highly anticipated re-release, the permission to use the song ignited social media fan pages. On Instagram, @thetorturedpoets may have summed it up best by posting the clip with the caption, “SCREAMS GUYS A LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO SNIPPET REP TV IS A THING ITS ALIVE ITS THERE OMG.”
This isn’t the first time the re-recorded version has been used commercially. In March 2024, Apple TV+ previewed the new version in the docuseries “The Dynasty: New England Patriots.” Former wide receiver Danny Amendola talks about Tom Brady’s comeback after “deflategate” as “Look What You Made Me Do (Taylor’s Version)” plays. The hit track was also spotlighted in the trailer for Amazon Prime’s “Wilderness.”
“Handmaid’s” lead actress Elisabeth Moss, who plays June Osborne, told Billboard Magazine: “I’ve been wanting to use a Taylor song for many years on the show and we finally found the perfect spot for a track from her, and I’m so glad we waited because there could not be a more perfect song for a more perfect moment.”
Moss attended the penultimate Eras Tour stop in Toronto with co-star Bradley Whitford, who plays Commander Joseph Lawrence.
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“Taylor has been such an inspiration to me personally,” Moss told Billboard. “As a Swiftie myself, and I think I can speak for (costar) Yvonne (Strahovski) and our entire cast as well, who are all Swifties, it’s such an honor to be able to use her music in the final episodes of our show.”
When is ‘Reputation (Taylor’s Version)’ coming out?
So when could “Reputation (Taylor’s Version)” drop? Fans have been mythologizing since Swift’s São Paulo, Brazil, stop in November 2023. But the most recent theory is that she may announce something if she attends the American Music Awards on May 26 in Las Vegas. Her team updated the “Shop” tab of her home page to include: “Apparel, Music, Accessories and Sale” to spell out “AMAS.” And they marked down 12 items to 26%, which fans thinks points to the 26th.
No official word on if the superstar will appear.
Don’t miss any Taylor Swift news; sign up for the free, weekly newsletter This Swift Beat.
Follow Bryan West, the USA TODAY Network’s Taylor Swift reporter, on Instagram, TikTok and X as @BryanWestTV.
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Cheryl Burke slams comments about appearance, plastic surgery claims
‘Dancing with the Stars’ finale: Anna Delvey returns, new winner named
The “Dancing with the Stars” finale featured a number of big moments before a new winner was crowned.
Cheryl Burke is shutting down “cruel” speculation about her appearance.
In a video shared on TikTok and Instagram, the “Dancing with the Stars” alum, 41, spoke out against body-shaming from followers who she said have been commenting that she looks different and speculating as to why.
“I’m not on Ozempic,” she said. “I’m not sick, I didn’t get a face transplant, and no, I didn’t get a brow lift. The level of projection that is happening and that I’m witnessing is wild.”
The “Dance Moms” star added that “the accusations are completely cruel” and that it’s “shocking and hurtful” that “so many” of these comments are “actually coming from women.” She also said it’s disappointing to see fans saying that they “miss the old Cheryl,” noting that “my body has changed” in the 20 years she has been in the public eye. “My face has changed because I’ve changed,” she said.
“The saddest part of all is the way I’m seeing women tear down other women, while pretending it’s from concern,” she continued, concluding, “If you’re here to speculate, compare or demand answers that you’re just not entitled to, you’re not welcome in this space that I have created.”
Burke posted the clip along with the hashtags “#stopbodyshaming” and “#mentalhealthawareness.” May marks Mental Health Awareness Month.
The dancer previously opened up about suffering from body dysmorphia during a 2024 appearance on “The Amy and T.J. Podcast.” Burke, who started on “DWTS” when she was 21, recalled dealing with cruel comments about her weight and claims that “she’s too fat for TV.”
“I am curvy in comparison to a lot of the other professional women so whenever I did gain weight it was a thing,” she said, noting that she felt pressure to lose weight due to this commentary.
She added on the podcast that she is “still healing” from body dysmorphia but has made an “effort to compliment myself in my gratitude journal – it’s a whole thing, because my brain has been trained to pick out the negatives, in general.”
Contributing: Naledi Ushe
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The enduring wisdom of Jesse Jackson’s 1971 visit to Sesame Street
When this month, the Trump Administration announced plans to axe the grant that once helped to power “Sesame Street,” a powerful poem came to mind.
What’s the difference between a child’s brain and a ball of putty? It’s smaller than you might think.
Easily molded and warped, the folds not yet folded − metaphorically speaking, of course − how young people take in the world is as much up to the world as it is to them.
Perhaps that’s why, in years past, the government has shelled out a few bucks (ahem, $5 million) to help pay the rent of various fuzzy and colorful tenants on “Sesame Street.” Moved briefly to HBO, the show is now back at PBS − and on Netflix − soon to premiere new episodes across the public airwaves for children from Alaska to Alabama to Altadena to get a little schooling and song for free.
A live-action, if not sillier version of Jane Jacobs’ sidewalk ballet, the children’s show distills a difficult world into easily understandable lessons: difference is powerful, for example, or it’s good to say you’re sorry.
When President Donald Trump’s administration in early May announced plans to axe The Ready To Learn grant, which doles out funds to public television stations, historically for children’s programming like “Sesame Street,” I thought immediately of those lessons lost.
Some of the edicts may feel milquetoast, classic practices of polite society that we all have to learn. But anyone who sticks around for long enough will notice a more insurgent teaching at play: build your identity, guard it, and do it on purpose.
That was at least the central tenet of a chant Reverend Jesse Jackson led in a 1971 appearance on the show, entitled “I am somebody.”
“I may be poor,” Jackson says, “but I am,” he continues, “somebody,” the real-life children who have seemingly wandered onto “Sesame Street” repeating each phrase after he drops it. The format remains roughly the same throughout, with Jackson offering up various “I may be’s,” and the children echoing defiantly back: “But I am somebody.” It’s a less Black-power oriented version of a poem Jackson first published in 1970.
“I am Black, Brown, White, I speak a different language, but I must be respected, protected, never rejected,” he finishes. “I am God’s child. I am somebody.”
It’s a call and response I got to know well when, starting in the early 1990s, my father and his team-teacher wove it into their high school curriculum. Hip to its enduring wisdom, they felt it was as appropriate for a group of 17- and 18-year-olds as it was for kindergarteners.
They would go out into parks on field trips or the quad at the California high school where they taught and chant loudly, early adopters, I guess, of the wellness-y affirmations that would rise to popularity decades later. Saying it aloud, they thought, would help their students believe it.
“Sesame Street” may be safe now, subsidized by Netflix’s big bucks, but children’s programming like it is still worth government investment.
When the public airwaves grow dry of civic-minded shows, and teaching worthiness to our children becomes an activity safeguarded behind the fences that make good neighbors, our social fabric frays.
‘Somebody’ may seem like something pretty ordinary to be. But as my father and his teaching partner, Jesse Jackson and Big Bird all understood, to believe that everybody is somebody is a radical idea. And one America desperately needs right now.
While our children’s brains are still like putty, there couldn’t be a more worthy cause than publicly funded children’s television that teaches the next generation to ask: “Who are the people in my neighborhood?” And whether the answer is a bright blue cookie fiend or a regular day-laborer, lawyer, hairdresser, first-generation, fifth-generation, neo-con, libertarian, democratic socialist or whatever falls in between – to answer with that radical affirmation “they are somebody. And so am I.”
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Peppa Pig welcomes new baby sister Evie
New Peppa Pig Theme Park in North Texas opens Saturday
A popular pig amongst the young ones has a new amusement park opening in North Richland Hills this weekend.
Fox – 4 News
Peppa Pig and her little brother George are officially older siblings of a baby girl, according to an announcement posted to Peppa Pig’s Instagram.
“Peppa and George have a baby sister!” a towncrier is seen shouting in a video posted to Peppa Pig’s official Instagram.
Mommy Pig gave birth to another baby girl on Tuesday, May 20, at the Lindo Wing of St. Mary’s Hospital, according to the U.K. talk show Good Morning Britain. The same hospital where Kate Middleton gave birth to all three of her children.
Daddy Pig sent photos of Mommy Pig, Peppa, George, and the new baby to the show’s correspondent, Richard Arnold.
In the photo, Mommy Pig is holding the baby while lying in a hospital bed, while Peppa and George stand on the side of the bed, smiling and looking at their new sister.
The baby girl arrives three months after Mommy Pig announced in February that the family would have a new addition coming soon.
What is the baby girl’s name?
Mommy and Daddy Pig’s third baby’s name is Evie, according to People Magazine.
Mommy Pig’s birth wasn’t easy, but she’s “thrilled Evie is finally here, happy and healthy!” she told People Magazine in an exclusive interview.
Watch Peppa Pig meet her new baby sister
Peppa Pig fans will be able to watch her and George meet their new baby sister during a Cinema Event that premieres at theaters on Friday, May 30
“Peppa Pig Meets the Baby” will feature 10 “oinktastic” new episodes and six new songs fans of the show can sing and dance along to.
The event will play at theaters from Friday, May 30 to Sunday, June 1 in select cinemas.
To check if there are showings near you, you can visit the event’s website.
Julia is a trending reporter for USA TODAY. Connect with her on LinkedIn, X, Instagram and TikTok: @juliamariegz, or email her at [email protected]