March 17, 2021 • No Comments • Entertainment News

Kotto and Weaver in center/Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images(LOS ANGELES) — Sigourney Weaver has issued a statement mourning the loss of her Alien co-star Yaphet Kotto, who died Monday in the Philippines. He was 81.

Kotto played engineer Dennis Parker, a crew member aboard the deep space mining vessel Nostromo in Ridley Scott’s groundbreaking 1979 classic.

Although their characters often butted heads, Parker eventually sacrificed himself to the movie’s titular xenomorph, allowing Weaver’s Ellen Ripley the chance to become the ship’s sole survivor. 

“Every day Yaphet Kotto blew me away on the set of Alien,” Weaver wrote, according to Deadline.

“He just went for it in every scene, making the stakes higher and higher and giving each scene a terrifying reality. It was a nonstop master class for me and I will always be grateful to him.”

Weaver closed with, “Rest In Peace Parker…Over and out, Ripley.”

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

March 17, 2021 • No Comments • Entertainment News

ABC(LONDON) — British actress Cara Delevingne is comfortable in the skin she’s in, but she admits she struggled to come to grips with her sexual identity when she was younger.

Delevingne, who is openly pansexual, chatted Tuesday with Gwyneth Paltrow on The goop Podcast about growing up in an “old-fashioned household” where being straight was the status quo.

“I didn’t know anyone who was gay, or I didn’t know that was a thing,” the 28-year-old actress confessed. “Actually, I think growing up… I wasn’t knowledgeable of the fact that I was probably quite homophobic.”

Admitting she used to be repulsed by “same sex anything,” Delevingne said she internalized and equated being queer to being “disgusting,” so she forced herself to believe she “would never” do anything like that.

So, when she started to suspect she wasn’t straight, it caused her mental health to spiral because of the shame.

“I had a best friend when I was a kid who actually I liked more than they liked me,” the Suicide Squad star explained, saying it triggered “massive depression” and “suicidal moments.” 

“I was so ashamed,” Delevingne furthered, noting how her old ideas still have maintained a “complicated” hold on her. “There is still a part of me where I’m like, ‘Oh, I wish I could just be straight.’ There is still that side to it.”

Now, the British actress says she has learned to”love so much and accept” that part of herself, adding she credits her “self-discovery” for giving her the courage to leave her modeling career — an industry she said made her “so unhappy” because “I wasn’t following my truth.”

“That whole thing of just having to fit into the box that feminine,” Delevingne expressed, “I’m an androgynous person, definitely, but I [also] love being a woman.”

By Megan Stone
Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

March 17, 2021 • No Comments • Entertainment News

Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images for Glamour(NEW YORK) — Mom to the Ond: Broad City star Ilana Glazer revealed to Entertainment Weekly that she’s expecting her first child with David Rooklin, to whom she’s been married since 2017.

The 33-year-old showed off her baby bump in a series of stunning pics for the magazine, while promoting her upcoming movie False Positive. 

The thriller, which she also co-wrote, has Glazer playing a woman desperately trying to conceive, and who undergoes what turns out to be a horrifying IVF treatment. The irony wasn’t lost on Glazer.

“This was not supposed to happen this way, but it’s just so eerie and cosmically funny that it has,” she says of being pregnant IRL after playing that character. “I’m lucky; I’m in control, unlike our protagonist. I don’t feel like I’m having the rug pulled out from under me in any way.”

Ilana noted she’s lucky to have “amazing role models” for pregnancy around her, adding, “There are certain trends in society of how pregnancy should look — the shoulda coulda wouldas that are put on women all the time but are so amplified in pregnancy. I’m specifically seeking out the most spiritually healthy and welcoming experience.”

The movie, in which Justin Theroux plays her husband and Pierce Brosnan her sinister doctor, debuts on Hulu June 25.

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

March 17, 2021 • No Comments • Entertainment News

Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2020 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved(LOS ANGELES) — The Chinese government has warned its media outlets to “stagger” and censor the April 25 Academy Awards telecast, after both Nomadland director Chloe Zhao and an anti-Chinese government documentary earned nominations. 

According to Bloomberg, the government dictated that Chinese networks not run the telecast live, and to be ready to excise moments related to Zhao and the documentary Do Not Split.

Zhao, who’s Chinese and the first Asian filmmaker to be nominated for Best Director, apparently made comments critical of the country.

Short-form documentary nominee Do Not Split deals with the anti-government protests that brought millions to the streets of Hong Kong before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bloomberg points out that while Zhao was born in Beijing but grew up in both London and the U.S., her father was a top executive at a Chinese state-owned company, and her mother is a famous comic actress there. In a 2013 interview, which has since been edited to remove the comment, Zhao called her native country “a place where there are lies everywhere.”

While Zhao’s Nomadland triumphs at the Golden Globes were initially touted on Chinese social media outlets like Weibo and elsewhere, when the interview was found by internet sleuths, hashtag bans on her name and Nomadland began.  The film, which stars Oscar nominee Frances McDormand, was supposed to be released on April 23 in China, but The Guardian and other outlets reported all references to the film — and to Zhao, who had been dubbed “the pride of China — have vanished there.

What remains to be seen is what will be the fate of the Zhao-directed Marvel Studios’ pandemic-delayed, unreleased film The Eternals in the lucrative Chinese movie market.

Marvel Studios is owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC News.

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

March 17, 2021 • No Comments • Entertainment News

ABC/Eric McCandless(LOS ANGELES) — After a year of being either partially or entirely closed, Disneyland will reopen on April 30, Disney CEO Bob Chapek announced Wednesday.

Chapek said the park will reopen with a limited capacity and observing guidance from California officials. The state previously advised the park to operate at 15% capacity of its fire code occupancy.

“We’ve been able to prove that we can do this and welcome our guests back in a responsible way,” Chapek said.

Chapek added that guests have been “very cooperative overall” when it comes to wearing masks, which they will be asked to continue doing until further notice.

“The day all of us have long been waiting for is almost here,” Ken Potrock, president of Disneyland Resort, said in a press release. “We’re excited to have more than 10,000 cast members returning to work as we get ready to welcome our guests back to this happy place.”

To help promote social distancing, attendance will be managed through a new reservation system and, until further notice, only California residents will be able to visit.

All of Disneyland — including the main park, Disney California Adventure and Downtown Disney District — closed its gates indefinitely on March 14 of last year in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Last July, Downtown Disney District has been opened in a limited capacity, and Disney California Adventure is beginning a limited-capacity ticketed experience beginning March 18.

It was announced on March 5 that Disneyland could open as early as April 1 since Orange County, where the park is located in Anaheim, dropped to the red tier of pandemic precautions.

Disneyland also has been operating as a mass vaccination site since January.  Disney World — located in Orlando, Florida — has been open since last July.

Disney is the parent company of ABC News.

By Carson Blackwelder
Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.