March 9, 2021 • No Comments • Entertainment News

PG/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images(LOS ANGELES) — Modern Family alum Jesse Tyler Ferguson and husband Justin Mikita are finding fatherhood agrees with them, even as they’re working to figure it out.

During a virtual hang out on The Ellen Degeneres Show, Jesse spoke of parenting their eight-month-old son, Beckett Mercer. “We’re still figuring out his personality… It’s a new person in your life, and just like anyone new that comes into your life, you’ve gotta figure out if you like them. It takes a little bit of time,” Ferguson joked to DeGeneres.

“No, I really do like him, he’s a really good boy,” Ferguson said, adding that he’d “wanted to be a dad for a really long time.” 

Ferguson explained that the boy is being fed a steady diet of the actor’s favorite music –show tunes — and that his first taste of music was Britney Spears, in the car ride home from the hospital. 

“So we’re raising him gay until he decides he’s straight,” Ferguson said to laughs.

“Justin and I were saying, he’s absolutely going to be such a straight kid,” he said with a laugh. “Who knows,” the actor-turned cookbook author admitted, noting he and his husband said they’d love to see Beckett play football someday, but that they’lll love him whatever he turns out to be.

Ferguson also admitted that Taylor Swift sent them the “nicest” baby clothes for Beckett, so much so that they’re still “stuffing his sausage legs” into the clothes, which he’s grown out of, but which they can’t part with because Taylor sent them.

By Stephen Iervolino
Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

March 9, 2021 • No Comments • Entertainment News

Courtesy of CBS Communications(LOS ANGELES) — Queen Latifah will get to keep kicking butt. After only four episodes, CBS announced on Tuesday that they’ve renewed Latifah’s The Equalizer series for a second season.

According to the network, the show is television’s number-one scripted series in the key demos, averaging 14.6 million viewers. Its premiere on Super Bowl Sunday, February 7, was the most-watched debut of the 2020-2021 season, delivering 23.8 million viewers. It also scored the best viewer and demo numbers for any entertainment program since the 2020 Academy Awards on February 9.

Led by Latifah, who also serves as a producer, The Equalizer follows the star as an “enigmatic figure” who uses her extensive skills to help those with nowhere else to turn.”  The show has been described as “new take” on the character first played by Edward Woodard in the 1980s CBS TV series, and most recently portrayed by Denzel Washington in two Antoine Fuqua-directed and produced films.

Although currently on hiatus until March 28, new episodes of The Equalizer air Sunday nights on CBS. 

By Candice Williams
Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

March 9, 2021 • No Comments • Entertainment News

Bennet, Cameron, Parault — Saty + Pratha/Adria Vaidila/Marcus V. Richardson(LOS ANGELES) — The CW has found its Powerpuff Girls.

ABC Audio has confirmed that the live-action version of the hit cartoon about the pint-sized superheroes has cast Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. veterans Chloe Bennet and Dove Cameron, as well as Jagged Little Pill stage actress and recording artist Yanna Perault. 

Bennet, Cameron, and Perault will play grown-up versions of, respectively, Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup in the forthcoming CW series. 

Based on Craig McCracken’s hit Cartoon Network animated show, the three Utonium Sisters got their start as lab-created super-girls. But according to a description from the network, the show, co-produced by Juno Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody, paints the heroes as “disillusioned twenty-somethings who resent having lost their childhood to crime fighting.”

Bennet’s Blossom was a “spunky, conscientious, Little-Miss-Perfect child who holds several advanced degrees,” but in the new show, her, “repressed kiddie-superhero trauma has left her feeling anxious and reclusive, and she aims to become a leader again.”

Former Disney star Cameron — who played one of Bennet’s enemies on S.H.I.E.L.D. — is Bubbles, the blue-skirted sweetheart of the trio. “She still sparkles as an adult,” the network notes, “but her charming exterior belies an unexpected toughness and wit. She’s initially more interested in recapturing her fame than saving the world.”

Perrault’s character was the brunette butt-kicker of the group in her crime-fighting days. Now, “more sensitive than her tough exterior suggests, Buttercup has spent her adulthood trying to shed her Powerpuff Girl identity and live an anonymous life,” says the network.

There’s no release date yet for the series.

By Stephen Iervolino
Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.