Support independent journalism, free from the trades and other publications that are part of the tinsel town machine.
For 12 years, Showbiz411.com has been covering Hollywood, Broadway, the music business and the business of celebrity. Ads are our main source of funding, but contributions (not tax exempt) from readers who enjoy the scoops, exclusives, and fact based reports are always welcome and very appreciated. To inquire about ads, email us at showbiz411@gmail.com.
“The White Lotus” jumped back in the ratings this past Sunday.
Total viewers on HBO were 677,000. HBO says the total total with Max and myriad devices was 3.4 million. Okay, maybe, but that can’t be verified.
The prior week was down to 507,000. But that may have been because of the Oscars.
The rise could also have to do with Jason Isaacs’ moment of exposition. We’ll need the Men in Black Neuralyzer for that one!
Coming this week and next is stuff that should either send the ratings way up, or be a turn off. In this culture, probably the former and not the latter.
Tune in for an Oscar winning actor to make a cameo. When you see who it is, you’ll understand why they were in Thailand.
Meantime, we wait for numbers on Sunday’s episode of “The Righteous Gemstones,” which featured Bradley Cooper in a surprise performance. The show has never been great, but Cooper was so beyond their usual presentation he will get an Emmy nom and maybe a win. So, there!
“American Idol” viewers have been on the warpath ever since January 20th.
That’s when Carrie Underwood sang for Donald Trump at the presidential Inauguration. Fans were incensed. How could she support the small handed megalomaniac?
On social media, “American Idol” loyalists declared they would not watch the new season in which Underwood serves as a judge succeeding Katy Perry.
It turns out they really meant it.
Sunday night’s show — the official season debut — was down 18.18% in the key demo, ages 18 to 49.
In total viewers, the show was down 2.73% to 4.5 million.
That number was down substantially from the previous season’s last five episodes. It was also down from last season’s debut.
What happens next? For better or worse, Underwood is now associated with Trump for generations to come. His own numbers are sliding as he destroys the economy. Will that affect “Idol” in the coming weeks?
When actress singer Selena Gomez and record producer Benny Blanco first got together, it seemed sweet.
Maybe she’d found someone with a big career independent of hers. A happy ending beamed in distance.
But now they’ve gone so public, it’s out of control. They’ve actually turned into a modern Sonny and Cher.
He’s the straight man, she wisecracks.
She has the solid acting career in addition to making records.
And they’ve started making records together. They’ve got a second single coming on Thursday night, and an album in two weeks!
They’ve got a marketing plan on social media! See below.
What’s next? A summer variety show? Benny as the killer on “Only Murders in the Building”? They could be the new Camilla and Shawn!
(They’re nice people, but this does have a weird vibe.)
And the beat goes on.
Welcome to 12 days of Really Rare Stuff Stay tuned for updates and keep your eyes peeled, my fans will know where to look. I can’t believe we’re just 12 days away from the album! #12DaysofReallyRareStuffpic.twitter.com/CnwLUcpT3O
Lady Gaga’s amazing music performances on “Saturday Night Live” last week were not the ratings giant I imagined.
Her score of 4.63 million viewers during her solo outing fell short of Timothee Chalamet’s two weeks earlier by about 300,000.
Still she’s not a complete unknown.
Lady Gaga has sold millions of records since Saturday night, so still she wins the contest. Timmy lost the Oscar, you see.
Gaga’s “SNL” ratings put her in the middle of the pack of all the series’ shows this season. “SNL” fields some version of 4 to almost 5 million viewers every week.
The biggest episode of season 50 was back in November featuring John Mulaney and Chappell Roan. Paul Mescal and Shaboozey were the lowest, under 4 million, as “Gladiator II” was a bust and the performer has just the one novelty song.
Meantime, what’s the story with Wayne and Garth? Afted appearing in most of the pre-SNL 50 episodes this season, Dana Carvey didn’t show up for the special. There was no “Wayne’s World” moment. Mike Myers came in for “Coffee Talk” only.
Now the special has passed, Carvey is gone, and Myers is playing Elon Musk (hilariously) since then. Can these former partners not be in the same room anymore?
Last night’s Ringo Starr special was a hit. Ringo and Friends at the Ryman — the former Grand Ol’ Opry — has sent his country album back up the charts.
“Look Up” is number 2 on Amazon this morning and number 3 on iTunes. Two great Ringo singles, “It Don’t Come Easy” and “Photograph” — are on the iTunes top 100.
The album is written and produced by T. Bone Burnett, and features a bunch of great young country stars. All of them were featured on the special including Jack White, Sheryl Crow, Rodney Crowell, Mickey Guyton, Emmylou Harris, Sarah Jarosz, Jamey Johnson, Brenda Lee, Larkin Poe and Billy Strings.
Ringo’s fellow Beatle, Paul McCartney, even taped a bit introducing one of last night’s songs.
What a great tribute to Ringo that the whole “Look Up” project has been a rousing success. He’s destined for a lot of awards next winter. If Beyonce can win Best Country Album, so can Ringo!
Donald Trump is insane. His base must be feeling the pinch. How much are they into masochism? We’re going to find out.
The Dow Jones average is down 500 points at 10:46am. Worried yet? The Dow has dropped 3,100 points in a month. Your savings are being wiped out, MAGA. Wake the f up1
If I knew how to do it, I would add the music from “Curb Your Enthusiasm” to these videos. (Photos for now until embedding comes back.)
Here’s Timothee Chalamet with Kylie Jenner at an Indian Wells tennis match. It’s one week since he lost the Oscar. He’s with other Kardashians, too. They’ve kidnapped him.
You can tell from the look on Timmy’s face he knows she’s the reason lost to Adrien Brody. He looks away, raises an eyebrow, bites his lip. He looks like he wants to be somewhere else.
How can we rescue him? Maybe Gavin Newsom can send someone in to do it. Timmy cannot go through another movie cycle this way.
In the last week, both the Tamron Hall show and the New York Post featured stories about people who’d been injured in their weight loss-GLP1 treatments.
Now Brad Roberts is suing Dr. Tony Puopolo, who he alleges over-prescribed a combination of “overlapping” drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro.
Roberts has never met Puopolo in person according to a complaint filed in the Southern District of New York. Roberts found him through an outfit called LifeMD, a telehealth company he worked for at the time and then left — contentiously– when he became ill. Roberts says they never had any kind of follow up.
Roberts, who was very overweight, shed pounds quickly and became a spokesperson for the company, even making a successful commercial.
But he says in the complain that to keep the weight loss going fast between November 2022 and November 2023, Puopolo “over-tritrated” him, upping the dosage to the point where it made him extremely ill. He says he lost a whopping 143 pounds in six months, going from 300 to 157.
In the complaint, Roberts says Puopolo “did not follow the manufacturer prescribing and titration guidelines. The titration of a GLP-1 regulates the dosage to the patient. In addition to the GLP-1s, Dr. Puopolo prescribed non-FDA approved synthetic compound peptides to enhance the speed of Brad Roberts’s weight-loss. Dr. Puopolo’s combining experimental peptides and weight loss medications with GLP-1s caused debilitating injuries.”
Roberts isn’t suing LifeMD, but says he was assigned to the doctor through the telehealth service. He says in the complaint “Neither Dr. Puopolo nor anyone else affiliated with the Defendant conducted formal clinical follow-ups while prescribing GLP-1s and other weight-loss drugs to Brad Roberts.”
LifeMD trades on the NASDAQ for about $4.55. It hit a high on February 19th of $8.54. There’s an earnings call this afternoon at 4:30pm in which they’ll have to explain what’s going on.
For Roberts, his is a cautionary tale for people not in Hollywood, where these injections of weight loss medications have run rampant. (During awards season I ran into people who no longer looked like themselves! They were shrunk!)
Roberts says his injuries — especially to his inner ear — led him to six surgeries.(see below)
Patients always think the doctors they’re dealing with know what they’re doing. But Roberts says in his complaint that the “GLP-1 regimen exceeded the manufacturer recommended guidelines and conflicted and/or overlapped with other prescription drugs” prescribed by Puopolo.
Roberts’ case file is already full of affidavits backing him including one from Andrea Danielle Brown, the former HR person at LifeMD who’s since left the company and fully vouches for him. (See part of her affidavit below).
Here’s Roberts’ informercial, which I found online:
Is Meryl Streep ever going back to work on serious movies?
The three time Oscar winner has spent the last few years appearing in TV shows like “Big Little Lies” and “Only Murder in the Building.”
Her last real meaty film role was a comedy turn in “Don’t Look Up,” in 2021 which squandered her talents. Right before that she was in HBO’s “Let Them All Talk,” and the film version of “The Prom.”
More recently, Steep has been getting headlines for dating Martin Short, star of “Only Murders.” They did the rounds on Saturday night, going backstage on Broadway for “Oh Mary” and then taking in “Saturday Night Live.”
Streep has only one project now, a sequel to the hit “The Devil Wears Prada,” which won’t be much different than the original.
Meryl doesn’t care much about awards anymore, I’m sure. She was nominated for her two TV roles but didn’t win most likely because she didn’t campaign.
But there was a time when each movie she made yielded an Oscar nomination. Her last win was in 2012 for “The Iron Lady.” But she had a run of the table for a dozen years, scoring Oscar noms every other year and twice consecutively.
Streep has nothing to prove, but we miss her headlining important films. She’s deserving of a life and victory laps, but let’s hope she comes roaring back if the material is right.
There’s a reason that Smart is Jean Smart’s last name.
She’s coming to Broadway this spring in a new play but not to get a Tony Award.
“Call Me Izzy” will open in May, after Tony Award eligibility closes.
So many “Hollywood” stars come to Broadway looking for a Tony, only to be turned away. This way, Smart can pick up accolades without that stress. Very ‘smart’!
The former “Designing Women” star has been on Broadway twice before – in 1981, and in 2000. So, once a generation.
The play, written by Jamie Wax, is directed by Sarna Lapine, niece of famed director James Lapine. Sarna is a hot director herself having steered the 2016 revival of “Sunday in the Park with George” with Jake Gyllenhaal and Annaleigh Ashford.
“Call Me Izzy” will have a 12 week run at Studio 54, although won’t be part of the Roundabout Theater. This does mean that Smart, who’s won dozens of awards for “Hacks,” could be a featured presenter at the Tony Awards on June 8th. So it’s a win-win for everyone.
