Category: 5. Entertainment

Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby’s on-screen chemistry came easily after the duo had bonded in real life. The Fantastic Four: The First Steps couple even has a playlist for their characters.

Pedro, who plays Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic and Kirby, who plays Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman in the new film, opened up about their dynamic in a new interview.

When asked about the topic, the Game of Thrones actor said to Kirby in a sing-songy manner, “Time for you to say nice things about me!”

“I was so over the moon and relieved and just so grateful,” the Eden actress said of finding out that Pedro had been cast as Mr. Fantastic.

“We started voice noting each other, and we started talking about what we were daunted about, about what we were, you know, feeling at this moment in our lives,” Kirby shared.

“I just remember being so moved by how emotionally open he was. And then that made it really easy to begin the work,” she continued.

Elsewhere, Kirby shared that the duo have a playlist for their characters.

When asked what Reed and Sue’s wedding song would’ve been, Pedro replied, “It’s I Only Have Eyes for You by The Flamingos.”

The Fantastic Four: The First Steps stars Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm/Human Torch, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm/The Thing alongside Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby. The film is now in theaters and has already received critical praise. 

Brooke Hogan’s husband Steven Oleksy shared a tribute to her father Hulk Hogan after his death on Thursday.

Oleksy, 39, reshared a tribute posted by a close friend of Brooke’s honoring her father on Thursday, July 24. The friend, Ashley Kora, tagged Brooke in an Instagram Story and wrote that her “dear sweet friend” lost her father on Thursday.

Kora said Brooke, who has been estranged from her father since his wedding to Sky Daily in 2023, “loved him deeply, was fiercely loyal and only ever wanted him to be peaceful, happy and surrounded by people who valued him for who he really was.”

“He chose differently for himself, but we can still remember him as a doting father to a little girl with big dreams and a bigger heart,” Kora added.

Oleksy, who married Brooke in 2022 and welcomed twins with her in January, reposted Kora’s Instagram Story and wrote, “Thank you for the love and support for my beautiful wife. We are incredibly lucky to have you in our lives — not just during this challenging time, but always.”

Following the news of her father’s death, Brooke set her Instagram account to private.

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Brooke is the daughter of Hulk (whose real name is Terry Bollea) and Linda Hogan, whom he was married to from 1983 until 2009. They also share son Nick, born in July 1990. The Hogan Knows Best star then married Jennifer McDaniel in 2010 before filing for divorce in 2021.

On Friday, Hogan’s third wife Daily spoke out and said her heart is “in pieces” after her husband’s passing. Daily said the WWE star had been “dealing with some health issues” but said she “truly believed we would overcome them,” in a post on Instagram.

“I had so much faith in his strength. I thought we still had more time. This loss is sudden and impossible to process. To the world, he was a legend… but to me, he was my Terry. The man I loved. My partner. My heart.”

First responders were called to Hogan’s home for a reported cardiac arrest at 9:51 a.m. on Thursday. They spent 30 minutes attempting to revive Hogan before they were able to get him into an ambulance and to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

While widely celebrated for his wrestling accomplishments, Hogan also faced multiple controversies in recent years. He received backlash for his speech in support of President Donald Trump at the 2024 Republican National Convention, and after a racist rant leaked in 2015 — which he later called “unacceptable” in an apology — Hogan was removed from WWE’s Hall of Fame. Hogan also sued Gawker for $100 million, backed by billionaire Peter Thiel, over a leaked 2012 sex tape and settled for $31 million in 2016.

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Micheal Ward, the Bafta-winning actor who has appeared in Blue Story and Top Boy, has been charged with rape and sexual assault.

Ward, 27, of Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, has been charged with two counts of rape and three counts of sexual assault, the Metropolitan police said. The offences relate to one woman and are alleged to have taken place in January 2023.

Det Supt Scott Ware, whose team is leading the Met’s investigation, said: “Our specialist officers continue to support the woman who has come forward – we know investigations of this nature can have significant impact on those who make reports.”

Ward will appear at Thames magistrates court in east London on 28 August.

In a statement issued after the charges were announced on Friday, the actor said: “I deny the charges against me entirely. I have cooperated fully with the police throughout their investigation and will continue to cooperate.

“I recognise that proceedings are now ongoing, and I have full faith that they will lead to my name being cleared. Given those proceedings, I am unable to comment further.”

Catherine Baccas, the deputy chief crown prosecutor for CPS London South, said: “Having carefully reviewed a file of evidence, the Crown Prosecution Service has authorised the Metropolitan police to charge Micheal Ward, 27, with two counts of rape, two counts of assault by penetration, and one count of sexual assault against a woman in January 2023.

“We remind all concerned that proceedings against the suspect are active and he has a right to a fair trial. It is vital that there should be no reporting, commentary or sharing of information online which could in any way prejudice these proceedings.”

Ward first came on to screens in the TV series Brotherhood but is best known for his role as Jamie in Top Boy from 2013 until 2022.

The Jamaican-born actor was awarded the Bafta rising star honour in 2020 and was nominated for the best supporting actor Bafta for his role as Franklyn Cooper in Lovers Rock, part of the BBC series Small Axe, the following year.

He also starred in the 2022 film Empire of Light and was cast in the forthcoming US pandemic-era western movie Eddington, due to be released in the UK next month.

Joan MacDonald is an influencer. There’s no other word for it, though she winces a little when she says it. But she is an influencer, and an extremely successful one. The fitness maven has been on the covers of magazines such as Women’s Health, modeled as part of lucrative brand deals and launched her own fitness app, Train With Joan. On Instagram, where she has more than 2 million followers, she shares pictures of herself posing in bikinis in picturesque locales and training at the gym in color-coordinated workout sets.

But there’s one small difference between MacDonald and many other social media starlets. She is 79.

“I was 70 when I started [working out],” MacDonald says on a video call from her home in Ontario, white hair elegantly coiffed. “I keep thinking I’m in my 30s.”

MacDonald’s workouts are intense, whether you’re 30 or 70. She does deadlifts, weighted planks and kettlebell swings, and casually lifts dumbbells the size of fire extinguishers over her head. Her arm muscles could put professional rugby players to shame.

She is arguably the most famous older woman lifting heavy, but she’s far from the only one. There’s Ernestine Shepherd, 89, who has more than 101,000 Instagram followers and calls herself “the world’s oldest living female competitive bodybuilder”. Nora Langdon, in her 80s, recently shared a video of herself deadlifting 225 pounds. And earlier this year, the New Yorker published a documentary about Catherine Kuehn, who broke multiple world records for deadlifting in her 90s.

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Many of these lifters seem to delight in bucking the stereotype of the frail old woman who needs help carrying her groceries.

“Once you reach a certain age, it’s like you can’t do anything any more,” MacDonald says. “Trainers and coaches dumb down everything for older people, but old people are capable of more than they think.”

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As they age, women’s physical abilities are often underestimated by others as well as themselves, says Elaina Manolis, a physical therapist and assistant clinical professor at Northeastern University.

Manolis says the menopausal and post-menopausal women she works with often need help unlearning the negative messages about exercise they absorbed growing up. “This is a generation that has been wired to think women should never be in the gym,” she says.

MacDonald and Shepherd remember worrying they would “look manly” when they started lifting.

“At the beginning, I thought, ‘I don’t want to be lifting weights, I’ll look like a guy,’” recalls MacDonald. “But that’s just brainwashing. [Women] are told that so much that we believe it.”

Women who avoid strength training are robbed of its benefits, many of which are especially helpful for ageing bodies. In addition to building muscle – which one can do at any age, Manolis notes – strength training has a significant impact on bone health and cognitive function. The former is especially important for women, who have a much higher risk of developing conditions that weaken the bones, like osteopenia and osteoporosis.

And it’s fun. Shepherd says that as soon as she started strength training, her favorite thing about it was “the joy and the way that you felt”. She and her sister started lifting when they were in their mid-50s, and soon they were training others and building a community. “I would wear what my trainer would call my ‘costumes’,” she says – shorts, crop tops, leopard-print leggings.

MacDonald says she faced some criticism from people in her life when she first started working out and posting about it on Instagram. “I got some really awful remarks from people I thought were my friends,” she says. They commented on how she dressed – “because I wear form-fitting clothing”, MacDonald says – and her growing public profile.

“They said I didn’t have to prance around and keep telling people what I was doing,” she says. “That’s not what old women are supposed to do. You’re sort of told, ‘Go quietly out the back door, will you?’”

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Attitudes are shifting, though. Manolis says she has lots of patients coming to her saying: “I know I should start [lifting], I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts.” And this is the first year the National Senior Games – an Olympic-style, multi-sport competition event for adults over 50 that takes place biennially in the US – will include a powerlifting competition.

“Over the last three or four years, more and more people have been asking me when we’re going to add [powerlifting],” says Sue Hlavaseck, president and CEO of the National Senior Games Association (NSGA).

Roughly 12,400 athletes are expected to participate in this year’s National Senior Games, which are taking place in Des Moines, Iowa, at the end of July. Of those, 187 will be participating in the powerlifting competition – 99 men, aged 54 to 95, and 88 women, aged 50 to 82.

The oldest female competitor, 82-year-old Faith O’Reilly, says a friend took her to a powerlifting meet in her late 30s. “I was watching everybody and I thought, ‘Well, I can do that,’” she says.

O’Reilly has been lifting ever since. “It suits me,” she says. She likes setting goals for herself, and enjoys the camaraderie of gyms and meets. And she appreciates the independence and confidence it has brought her. “I’ve always liked being able to do things,” she says. “And that’s what powerlifting can do for you – you can handle your grandchildren, and your sacks of groceries.”

Regardless of age, if you’ve never picked up weights before, it’s best to start by working with a trainer or physical therapist who can help with form and individual needs. “In most gyms that I’ve been in, people are happy to help,” says O’Reilly.

Total beginners can see significant improvements in strength fairly quickly, says Manolis. She’s had patients say that after four to six weeks of training they were able to get out of a chair without using their hands, walk up a full flight of stairs, vacuum the whole house or load a dishwasher for the first time in years.

“As we age, what we really want to do is to keep our independence and remain functional,” Manolis says. Strength training facilitates both of these things.

That doesn’t mean it’s a cure-all.

“Being healthy and living life to the best of your ability doesn’t mean you’re going to be happy every day, or that you’re going to be without pain or accidents,” MacDonald says. “These things happen, but that’s life. You’ve got to keep pushing forward.”

Reuters

A menopausal assassin has been a long time coming, even though there is literally no more perfect pairing in the world than a woman rapidly emptying of oestrogen and a gun. I blame the patriarchy, but I understand its unwillingness to confront the truth that if women were free to express themselves instead of raised in mental straitjackets, then armed at 40, the world would look very different indeed.

Keeley Hawes, who just gets better and more impressive with every outing, is that menopausal assassin, in the aptly named six-part series The Assassin. Julie is her name and trying to live quietly in Greece and spurning every overture of friendship in the village is her game. Alas, she is called by her handler Damian, after 10 years of quietude, to perform one more time. This happens just as her son Edward (Freddie Highmore, absolutely shining in what is essentially a light comic part in a bloody, murderous caper) comes to visit for the first time in four years too! Even hitwomen have to juggle home and work demands. Oh, and Edward’s gone vegan since they last spoke and she got wagyu steaks in for tea. Handlers and kids, eh? Anyway, Edward’s here to ask her about the fortune that landed in his account when he turned 30 and if it’s anything to do with the father she has always refused to tell him about. She, more or less, tells him to shut up and eat his goddamn tofu.

The Assassin is perfectly crafted preposterousness. It is stylish, witty, tightly written, even more tightly paced and takes the job of massively entertaining us at every turn with the proper amount of seriousness. It establishes its various plotlines swiftly and has us looking forward to their intersection whenever we have enough attention to spare, given that excellent things – from barbed exchanges between unmaternal mother and exasperated son to endless action sequences – are always happening in front of us.

Obviously the main plot revolves round Julie. She soon realises the man calling is not her real handler (just in time to stop her killing the woman he has given as the target, which turns out to be doubly lucky for her, in a twist which adds much to the preposterousness and, I hope, the gaiety of the viewing nation). Then, after a massacre of almost the entire village by a very bad sniper trying to kill her, she sets herself the task of finding out what’s happened to the real Damian and hopefully finding out why she is now a marked woman and more and more people are trying to kill her.

This first involves pretty much commandeering the yacht belonging to her former target, Kayla (Shalom Brune-Franklin) and her berk of a brother Ezra (Devon Terrell), scions of a mega-rich mining family owned by a man called Aaron Cross (Alan Dale. One day “Him from Neighbours! My God, he’s doing well!” will not be my first thought when I see him, but that day is not yet here), and trying to get to Albania. An old colleague, Sean (Jack Davenport), arrives on a jet ski. Is he here to help or hinder? We, and a variety of weapons, soon find out.

Meanwhile! Another plot strand is unfurling in a Libyan prison. Its newest inmate is a Dutch man called Jasper (David Dencik), who possibly has dirt on Cross that will get him out of said Libyan prison but not before he has added – with the help of the terrifying Russians who “adopt” him in jail – his quotient of gory set pieces to the series. He, or most of him at least, eventually escapes and disappears into the desert to find Plot A.

Meanwhile again! Plot C begins in London, with the astonishingly unexpected but always welcome advent of Gina Gershon as a mysterious woman called Marie who attends an art class in order to draw a picture of someone we recognise as Edward and a speech bubble coming from his gobsmacked gob the narratively fertile phrase “You’re my father?” Aaaaand scene!

It’s so much fun. Hawes is so good, so funny, Highmore so nimble and perfectly pitched and everyone else – including Gerald Kyd as villager Luka, who survives the massacre and follows the woman who is clearly his best hope of safety to the yacht, where they bond over middle-aged medication – turning in brilliant performances. Do not come looking for realism or social commentary or anything else that clearly has no place here – or I will smash your head in with a rock, like Julie does to her adversaries, especially if I’ve not replaced my HRT patch on time. Consider yourselves warned.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have been issued a stark warning as their $100 million Netflix deal is near ending.

The warning has come from royal expert Rebecca English, who said the royal couple is taking a ‘big risk.’

She made these remarks while speaking on Palace Confidential, according to OK! Magazine.

Rebecca said, “Harry’s got a couple of paying gigs now, he’s still the Chief Impact Officer of the therapy company Better Up, he’s got his travel firm, but these are not the sort of things that would pay for or afford the sort of lifestyle they have become used to.”

The royal expert went on saying, “You have to ask yourself, is another book in the offing or are they literally betting everything on the As Ever brand and the rose and jams and teas affording that lifestyle in the future, that is a big risk.”

Royal expert Richard Eden said Meghan’s priority now is her own brand.

The fresh warning came amid reports of peace talks between King Charles and Prince Harry.

Meanwhile, royal expert Robert Jobson believes the California-based royal couple losing their Netflix deal is the sole reason for them suddenly wanting to make peace and get back in the good graces of the monarch.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have been issued a strong warning regarding their popularity with a royal expert saying their “star attraction has taken a nose dive.”

The royal expert’s remarks came days after reports the royal couple’s five-year Netflix deal will likely expire in September ‘quietly’ and it will not be renewed.

Speaking to the Fox News Digital, Helena Chard says’ “There are whispers that Harry and Meghan’s Netflix deal will expire quietly. I can’t imagine that either party would want to shout this news over the rooftops. They will hope it’s a smooth transition.”

The royal expert continued Meghan and Harry’s “star attraction has taken a nose dive.”

Helena went on to say “The majority of their material has received poor viewing figures and there doesn’t seem to be suitable appeal for any new productions starring the duo.”

The court of “public opinion” is key here, she said and added the public do not feel ‘kindly’ toward the royal couple.

“They trashed their family, created a huge amount of damage and monetized off of the back of the attacks,” Helena claims.

Meghan and Harry signed over $100 million deal with Netflix back in 2020 after stepping down from royal duties.