It wouldn't be a 30 Rock season if Alec Baldwin didn't have a much-awarded actress come in to play his new girlfriend, and E! reports that Julianne Moore (soon to be Oscar-nominated for A Single Man) is this year's model. The two have started filming scenes together in New York, and between takes, we'd like to imagine Baldwin's is using Moore as a sounding board for both potential Oscar banter and Huffington Post blog subjects. Let's hope she has a big German following! [E!]
This morning, Nikki Finke rattled the cages at CBS by breaking news that Oprah Winfrey will leave her syndicated talk show in 2011, taking her program to the long-awaited Oprah Winfrey Network, which Finke alleges will launch the same year. The move is surprising for everyone including CBS Television Distribution, the company that syndicates Oprah's show and had not heard of her 2011 plans, and Roland Emmerich, who realized that this is the single apocalyptic event he overlooked in the making of 2012.
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Golden Girls star Rue McClanahan, best known for her Emmy Award-winning role as Southern belle Blanche Devereaux, was hospitalized this week for heart bypass surgery. The actress was scheduled to appear at Golden: A Gala Tribute on November 14, an event in her honor that has since been canceled. McClanahan released the following statement from her New York hospital room: "My darlings, I'm just devastated that I am going to have to miss my own tribute at the Castro Theatre. Unfortunately, my doctor has laid down the law, and I'm currently having some maintenance on the old ticker. Trust me, I'd much rather be in San Francisco having fun and being adored by all of you." Get well soon, Rue. [Popeater]
Combining the staggering innuendo levels of Nina Simone's "I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl" and Schneider from One Day at a Time, Mo'Nique appeared on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson last night to seduce the emcee and return from her unofficial Precious promotional sabbatical. Watch as Mo'Nique backs the gleeful Scot into what looks like the corner of a manor study.
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Ever since Will & Grace went off the air and the underrated In the Motherhood was snuffed out mid-season, we've been piecing together our Karen: The Musical vision boards, saving up for the Starz cable package, and counting down the days until Megan Mullally's next network guest spot. Tonight, Parks and Recreation slips us our much-needed Mullally fix (with a little tongue), when the brassy actress joins her offscreen husband, Parks regular Nick Offerman, onscreen.
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Rihanna's eagerly awaited ABC News blitz commenced this morning with part one of her interview with Good Morning America's Diane Sawyer, though the singer still hasn't divulged enough about the Chris Brown incident yet to force DJs into exclusively spinning "Disturbia (Felix Da Housecat's Mournful Remix)." Instead, Rihanna wore a short white dress and sat in lighting so reminiscent of Sharon Stone's interrogation scene in Basic Instinct that I half-expected an ominous reading of the line, "'Bitch,' mostly, but he meant it affectionately." Chills. Video after the jump.
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Roland Emmerich, the director/producer behind next week's apocalyptic 2012, is planning to extend his disaster franchise into television. Despite popular belief that there is no way to follow up on a White House-crushing tidal wave, Emmerich told Entertainment Weekly that there is still "plenty to do in a TV show." Along with Mark Gordon of Grey's Anatomy, Emmerich wants the show to focus on the resettling of earth, picking up with "a group of people who survived but not on the boats ... maybe they were on a piece of land that was spared or one that became an island in the process of the crust moving." Emmerich is reportedly in talks with ABC. [EW]
Since Craig Ferguson took the helm of CBS's Late Late Show in 2005, the Scottish American comedian has steered late night into uncharted talk show waters full of inanimate sharks and Tim Gunn Aquaman skits. Dispensing the standard monologue jokes for afro wigs and the kind of Britney Spears lip-synch routines you used to practice in the mirror, Ferguson has reinvigorated the late-night format and deposited some much-needed silliness into the Tiffany Network. Two weeks ago (before that Alicia Silverstone power outage), Movieline sought out the Late Late Show's producer Michael Naidus, who kindly discussed Ferguson-behind-the-scenes and the refreshingly relaxed, puppet-punctuated talk show.
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Meryl Streep's daughter Grace Gummer will launch her acting career with a starring role in TeenNick's coming-of-age drama Gigantic. In a stretch, the 23-year-old will play the teenage daughter of celebrity parents, struggling with Hollywood's "star-making promotional machinery." She will co-star alongside Joe Mantegna's daughter, Gia, 19, in the series set to premiere in early 2010. Gummer is the third of Streep's four children and performed onstage in 2008's The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents. [Reuters]
· MTV will air an exclusive interview with Chris Brown on Friday. From the preview, Brown is clearly not wearing powder blue or a bow-tie, and for that alone you can tell he's not sorry.
· Colin Hanks is set to co-star with Bradley Whitford on the Fox series Jack & Dan, an action-comedy (a la Burn Notice) about a detective and his drunken cop partner. This sounds juicier than Hanks's woefully under-explored Mad Men arc.
· Michelle Obama will host Mario Batali, Bobby Flay, and Emeril Lagasse at the White House for an episode of Iron Chef America. All of Obama's food commentaries are rumored to start with, "Well, anything tastes better than being on The Jay Leno Show, I can tell you that."
· Taylor Swift has already used up one of her three allotted Kanye West jokes on a lame SNL promo.
· Get this: Some parents want to prevent the Gossip Girl threesome from airing.
· Dammit. Michael Rady seemed so nice. Turns out his Melrose Place character is interested in only (drum roll, please) deceit.
I'm reluctant to admit that Spencer Pratt could be an authority on anything besides growing a daffodil-colored chinstrap, but he's onto something with his new book How to be Famous. Co-authored by wife and The Hills co-star Heidi Montag, the book uses a bunch of pictures, splashy headlines, and even some text to guide amateurs into a life of baiting paparazzi and achieving that elusive sixteenth minute of fame. Their quest isn't exactly noble, but their instructions are direct, truthful, and oddly self-effacing.
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There's a certain amount of street cred to be gained from refusing entertainment honors. George C. Scott declined his 1970 Oscar, calling the ceremony a "goddamn meat parade," Marlon Brando protested his 1972 Academy Award to publicize the Native American cause, and twice, Bill Cosby refused the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, explaining that he did not agree with the profanities used in the '98 ceremony honoring Richard Pryor. Tonight, watch as the comedy legend finally takes the award.
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A year ago, American folk legend Pete Seeger celebrated President Obama's inauguration by performing a rare concert at the Lincoln Memorial. Last night, the Biggest Loser contestants celebrated Obama's first year as president by storming the same monument for dramatized, Subway-sponsored weigh-ins. Fortunately for those that missed last night's historic episode, we've captured the photo highlights, including the money shot of the president biting into a Low-Fat Buffalo Chicken Sub.
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ABC's V, a semi-enjoyable series revamp of the pivotal '80s miniseries, scored the highest premiere ratings for a scripted show this season. With 13.9 million viewers and a 5.0 preliminary rating in the 18-49 demo, the series seems poised to thrive during its four-week November stint, just before its four-month hiatus. Showrunning is a rough business these days. In the meantime, let's think of more "V" puns. Like "V is for Vidal Sassoon-Sponsored Aliens." That's all I've got so far. [THR]
Sesame Street turns 40 this month, which means a number of things: 1) Google has already rendered an adorable Google Doodle; 2) Oh my God, Bob McGrath is close to 80 years old; 3) Oh my God, Big Bird is still 6 years old; 4) There is still no comprehensive Sesame Street songs compendium! Movieline can't quite do the show justice within the space of a single entry, but here are 10 songs that make Sesame Street more than a show about street-urchin puppets and their antics at the hardware store.
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