Digital: Last News

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Padma Lakshmi is exiting “Top Chef.” The reality show host announced on social media that “Top Chef” Season 20 will be her last run with the beloved Bravo cooking competition series. Lakshmi’s news arrives just a week before the Season 20 finale. “After much soul searching, I have made the difficult decision to leave ‘Top Chef,'” Lakshmi wrote in a statement. “Having completed a glorious 20th season as host and executive producer, I am extremely proud to have been part of building such a successful show and of the impact it has had in the worlds of television and food.” “After 17 years, many of the cast and crew are like family to me and I will miss working alongside them dearly,” she continued. “I feel it’s time to move on and need to make space for ‘Taste the Nation,’ my books and other creative pursuits. I am deeply thankful to all of you for so many years of love and support. Sincerely, Padma.”

When guilty verdicts were announced in "That ‘70s Show" star Danny Masterson’s rape retrial Wednesday, the actor's wife, model Bijou Phillips, gasped. Her husband of nearly 12 years was found guilty on two counts of forcible rape; the jury was hung on a third charge. Phillips wept while Masterson was taken away in handcuffs from a Los Angeles courtroom.  Masterson, 47, could face 30 years to life in prison.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Disney, after removing dozens of shows and movies from Disney+ and Hulu last week, said it will incur a $1.5 billion impairment charge for the June quarter. In an SEC filing Friday, the company said that on May 26, 2023, it removed “certain produced content” from its direct-to-consumer streaming services. As a result, Disney will record a $1.5 billion impairment charge in its fiscal third quarter financial statements “to adjust the carrying value of these content assets to fair value.” Disney said it’s continuing to review content on streaming platforms and “currently anticipates additional produced content will be removed from its DTC and other platforms, largely during the remainder of its third fiscal quarter.” As a result, Disney currently estimates it may incur further impairment charges of up to about $400 million related to produced content.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor On Dec. 9, 2020, YouTube enacted a ban on videos that falsely claimed then-President Trump won the U.S. presidential election. Since then, according to the platform, it has removed “tens of thousands” of videos that violated the policy. As of June 2, 2023, YouTube has reversed that decision: The video giant announced that it “will stop removing content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors or glitches occurred in the 2020 and other past U.S. Presidential elections.” Why is YouTube making this change? The Google-owned service, in an unsigned blog post Friday, tried to explain it this way: “In the current environment, we find that while removing this content does curb some misinformation, it could also have the unintended effect of curtailing political speech without meaningfully reducing the risk of violence or other real-world harm.”

Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor It’s been a tough couple of years for live music in the U.K., but now AEG Presents UK CEO Steve Homer sees light at the end of the tunnel. “Last year, we had some big successes and some big losses,” he tells Variety. “Now, we’re over that hump, sales patterns are almost back to pre-COVID levels in terms of predicting how things will sell. The business is in reasonably good shape, bearing in mind all the difficulties with people’s available money to spend.” Homer has been in sole charge for 18 months now, following the surprise exit of co-CEO Toby Leighton-Pope, now MD at TEG Europe. And having made several key hires in recent months – including former Royal Albert Hall exec Lucy Noble as artistic director; former Live Nation exec Lee Laborde as SVP of the promoting division; and former SJM promoters Chris Wareing (SVP of global touring) and Paris Harding (promoter) – Homer is now leading the company’s expansion into several new areas.

Teresa Giudice has steadily been making progress to settle her debts after she was served a $17,000 tax lien.

Lacey Chabert gets on the dance floor with Will Kemp one more time in their brand new movie together, The Dancing Detective: A Deadly Tango.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director In his upcoming memoir “Pageboy,” Oscar-nominated actor Elliot Page reveals he was once confronted by a homophobic actor at a birthday party in Los Angeles (via People magazine). The year was 2014, shortly after Page publicly came out as gay during a speech made at a Human Rights Campaign conference (“I’m here today because I am gay,” Page told the crowd). Page later came out as transgender in December 2020. As Page writes in a chapter aptly titled “Famous A–hole at Party,” an actor that he considered an “acquaintance” approached him at the party and said, “You aren’t gay. That doesn’t exist. You are just afraid of men.” Page writes the actor also threatened him by saying: “I’m going to fuck you to make you realize you aren’t gay.”

Jacky Oh, a former cast member of Nick Cannon’s "Wild ‘N Out," has died at the age of 32. A BET Media Group spokesperson confirmed her death to Fox News Digital. "We are deeply saddened by the passing of Jacklyn Smith, known to the world as Jacky Oh, a talented ‘Wild N’ Out’ family member whose impact will be forever treasured and missed.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are still involved in a court battle over a French vineyard they owned together while married. Pitt has maintained that Jolie intentionally sought to "inflict harm" on him by selling her interest in the former couple's vineyard, Château Miraval, in an amended complaint filed June 1 and obtained by Fox News Digital.The "Moneyball" actor claimed Jolie sold her interest in the vineyard without his consent, something they had previously agreed was a requirement. Jolie and Pitt bought a controlling stake in Château Miraval in 2008 and spent time at the home throughout their relationship.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director In HBO’s controversial new series “The Idol,” Lily-Rose Depp plays a young pop phenom who falls for a self-help guru and modern day cult leader named Tedros (played by Abel “the Weeknd” Tesfaye). Depp recently told Entertainment Weekly that no one in “The Idol” cast went “full Method [actor],” but that doesn’t mean some of them didn’t go at least half. Or that what it sounds like, at least. “I don’t think anybody went full method — nobody lost their minds,” Depp said. “Well, sometimes when Abel would get — I don’t want to reveal too much about where Abel’s character goes, but when he would be in full Tedros mode sometimes, I would steer clear of him. I’d be like, ‘He’s in his zone right now.'”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Harrison Ford is taking some responsibility for the tension that developed with Brad Pitt during the making of their 1997 thriller “The Devil’s Own.” The film, which notably marked the last directorial effort from Alan J. Pakula (“All the President’s Men,” “Klute”), earned mixed reviews but grossed $140 million worldwide. Ford has often said in past interviews that it was difficult filming “The Devil’s Own.” When Esquire magazine recently asked why, Ford said it was due to creative differences he had with Pitt. “Heh. Yeah, I remember why,” Ford said. “Brad developed the script. Then they offered me the part. I saved my comments about the character and the construction of the thing—I admired Brad. First of all, I admire Brad. I think he’s a wonderful actor. He’s a really decent guy. But we couldn’t agree on a director until we came to Alan Pakula, who I had worked with before but Brad had not.”

DEALSDefected has signed dance collective Yours, which brings together Maverick Sabre, New Machine, Jake Hall and Sonny Hall. The first track under the deal, ‘Dónde Está, will be released on 7 Jun.

K.J. Yossman The BBC has appointed an acting chair following the ousting of Richard Sharp in April. Elan Closs Stephens has been appointed in the role by the U.K.’s culture secretary Lucy Frazer She will take over from Sharp once he steps down on June 27. Closs Stephens has been a non-executive director of the board since 2017. Before that she was the BBC Trust’s trustee for Wales and has also been chair of the commercial holdings board for BBC Studios, chair of Welsh broadcaster SC4 and is currently Aberystwyth University’s Pro-Chancellor and Professor Emerita in Communications and Creative Industries.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Ella Irwin, after less than seven months as head of trust and safety at Elon Musk’s Twitter, has resigned from the company. Irwin confirmed to Reuters that she resigned but did not provide a reason for her exit. Earlier, Fortune reported that Irwin’s Slack account at Twitter appeared to have been deactivated. Neither Irwin nor Musk have publicly tweeted about her departure. An email to Twitter’s press account requesting comment returned an autoreply with a poop emoji. Attempts to contact Irwin were unsuccessful. As Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Irwin oversaw enforcement of its content moderation policies. Musk, a self-described “free-speech absolutist,” has eased some restrictions in Twitter’s content policies — and reinstated thousands of previously banned accounts. Third-party groups have criticized Twitter for apparent increases in instances of hate speech and lax policy enforcement since Musk assumed control; Musk has previously denied that an increase in hate speech on Twitter.

At the heart of most talented singers is their innate ability to write meaningful music. In the country music world, there is a premium for artists who can not only sing but write their own hits, so for some country stars, the concept of artificial intelligence being used in the music industry is nonsense. "I would struggle to think something that couldn't feel could really write a song, to make somebody else feel," musician Riley Green told Fox News Digital of the threat of AI in music at the ACM Awards.

With the cost of living crisis showing no signs of letting up, we've got just the thing to help with your next shopping bill.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor In a symbolic rebuke of Netflix’s top executives, company shareholders voted against approving the compensation packages of leaders including co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters. At the streamer’s June 1 annual shareholders meeting, investors failed to approve the proposed exec pay packages for 2023. But the vote was a non-binding “say on pay” measure, meaning Netflix’s board can disregard the result. The vote came after the WGA had urged investors to vote against Netflix’s exec compensation measures in a letter Tuesday. “While investors have long taken issue with Netflix’s executive pay, the compensation structure is more egregious against the backdrop of the strike,” WGA West president Meredith Stiehm wrote in the letter to Netflix shareholders.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are "nowhere near done" speaking out about their experience within the royal family, experts told Fox News Digital. Kinsey Schofield, host of the "To Di For Daily" podcast, told Fox News Digital that Prince Harry is possibly shopping around the film rights to his memoir, "Spare." The Duke of Sussex is also interested in making a documentary about his mother, the late Princess Diana, a source told the royal commentator.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director While Heath Ledger, Joaquin Phoenix and Jack Nicholson are the faces that pop into one’s head when the name “Joker” is said, no list of the best on-screen Jokers is complete without Mark Hamill. The “Star Wars” icon voiced the Batman villain on “Batman: The Animated Series,” which originally aired for 85 episodes on Fox Kids from 1992-1995. Hamill earned acclaim for the voice role, but it would have never happened without Michael Keaton’s casting as Batman in Tim Burton’s 1989 comic book film. As Hamill recalled during a recent Wired video interview, Keaton’s casting as Bruce Wayne/Batman earned backlash from comic book fans, considering he was more known as a comedic actor in films such as “Mr. Mom” and Burton’s own “Beetlejuice.”

It’s no secret that Christopher Nolan made “ Oppenheimer ” to be seen on the big screen. But not all big screens are created equal.