“Everybody calls me Maria,” says Sonia Manzano. After all, the actress has played Maria on Sesame Street for the last 44 years. “Grown people who were raised on the show recognize me more [than children do],” she told EW last week following the announcement of her retirement from the series. “I love when they recognize me, but it does upset me when they start to cry, which happens a lot.” Probably because they remember when Manzano’s sweet Maria helped them learn their letters, or made them laugh, or taught them how to count.
It’s been a season of lies on Sons of Anarchy, but in this episode, it was all about telling the truth or hearing it. Oh, and pussy. Sweet holy pussy. How many times did you rewind that crazy Clay scene? Did you stop it before he bit the dude’s nose off? Kurt Sutter explained that, among other things, in our postmortem. Let’s dig in. We opened with shirtless Jax running water over his face and staring at his Abel tattoo on his chest, thereby giving us permission to stare at his chest, too.
I’d forgotten how much fun shows such as Xena: Warrior Princess were until the arrival of Spartacus: Blood and Sand. A slashing look at Roman warfare that trades on Zack Snyder’s 300 but has deeper roots in the Xena and Hercules shows produced by Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert, Spartacus is a Raimi-Tapert reunion. It stars Andy Whitfield in the brooding, sweaty title role. He’s forced into slavery by the Romans, and agrees to become a gladiator when his masters promise he’ll be reunited with his kidnapped wife (Erin Cummings).
Music has always been David Byrne's medium, though it's hardly managed to contain him; there's little the rock star, raconteur, playwright, erstwhile actor, and lifelong bicycle evangelist hasn't dipped into over the course of a nearly half-century career. Including, of course, documentary — most memorably in Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense, the now-legendary 1984 concert film that captured Byrne's inimitable misfit-toy charisma at the peak of its powers. At 68, the former frontman of seminal art-pop pioneers Talking Heads may no longer be that urgent young man in the oversize suit, but he wears the role of still-vital statesman very well, as evidenced by his vibrant 2018 album American Utopia.
Basically, you can’t be too loose on a basketball court. Or a pitcher’s mound, or a tennis court. It’s egotism, inappropriate anger, and fear of failure that rigidify your muscles and wreck your timing. What you’ve got to do is teach yourself to live completely and utterly inside the game and the moment; also to care passionately about winning without caring at all. Or something like that. Coach Phil Jackson of the Chicago Bulls, NBA champions in three consecutive seasons between 1991 and 1993, calls the attitude ”mindfulness,” a winning philosophy he’s pieced together out of his parents’ Pentecostal Christianity, Zen Buddhism, and the teachings of the Lakota Sioux.
Kyra Sedgwick is trying to compose herself. She was fine a minute ago. With pleasantries barely exchanged and refreshments offered, the 41-year-old folded her delicate limbs on the couch in her Hollywood trailer and began to talk about spending half the year in L.A., away from her family in New York City. Then came what seems like an innocuous question: How’s it working? ”Um…you know, it’s working out really well. I think so far the kids are…great,” she said, her eyes welling, her voice cracking as she chased away threatening tears.
Following her highly publicized exit from ABC's long-running Castle, Stana Katic returns on Amazon's psychological thriller Absentia, bringing another resilient cop to life—with a twist! In her new series, the 39-year-old actress plays Emily Byrne, a presumed-dead FBI agent who returns six years after being kidnapped, only to be framed for murder. Though Katic is playing another cop, the star says this character is very different from Kate Beckett, whom she portrayed from 2009 until her untimely exit in 2015, ahead of what was supposed to be a season 9 renewal for Castle, which was subsequently canceled less than a month after her ouster.
Oscar Isaac says Star Wars: Episode IX will continue to explore pilot Poe Dameron’s bond with General Leia Organa through the unused footage he shot with the late Carrie Fisher. We’ve known for months that director J.J. Abrams planned to use cutting-room scenes to conclude Leia’s story after the actress died unexpectedly in December 2016. But we haven’t had any hints of what those scenes contain. Isaac, in a new interview with Sirius XM Insight’s John Fugelsang, revealed that the link between the characters — the rock-steady veteran trying to stabilize the younger hotshot — is a part of the new story.
San Diego Comic-Con will bring Star Wars collectors straight into the eye of the Stormtrooper. The first wave of toys from this December’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens will debut at the annual geekosystem July 9-12, and today Entertainment Weekly has the exclusive reveal of three playthings that take inspiration from the redesigned white armor of that galactic army. More toys will be announced as the Dec. 18 movie approaches, but for now Lucasfilm has chosen to keep Daisy Ridley’s desert scavenger Rey, Oscar Isaac’s X-Wing pilot Poe Dameron, and homeward bound Han Solo and Chewbacca at bay in the toy department in favor of showcasing the sleek and sinister stylings of the First Order Stormtroopers.
The Star Wars universe is getting bigger. This week, Star Wars Resistance executive producers Athena Portillo, Justin Ridge, and Brandon Auman confirmed something about Orka and Flix, the lovable duo manning the Office of Acquisitions in the Colossus: They’re in love and an official couple. Fans, for the most part, gathered this, especially after the “Dangerous Business” episode in season 1 (shown in the video above) when the characters had to go visit Flix’s mother.