Category: 5. Entertainment

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Meghan Markle’s new show has no sign of Prince Harry, notes an expert.

The Duchess of Sussex, who has released the second season of her lifestyle program titled ‘With Love, Meghan,’ has not taken her dear husband into consideration.

Speaking to The Sun, royal expert Phil Dampier says : “But certainly, Meghan, I think, is doing her own thing, and this new Netflix series is evidence of that.

“There’s no sign of Harry in this program… maybe he has bigger fish to fry.

“To spice it up a bit, Megan starts talking a little bit about her time in the royal family.

He adds: “She drops a few things here and there and talks about her time in the UK.

“I think if there’s any opportunity for them to have another dig, they will use it – even if it’s in a more subtle way.

“I think they’ve exhausted their ammunition, in terms of Harry’s Book ‘Spare’, the Oprah Winfrey interview and the six-part Netflix series.

“I think they’ve done about as much damage as they can,” the experts note.

Radiohead have entered the US singles chart with a song from their album OK Computer that has gone viral on social media 28 years after its release.

Let Down, the third single from the British band’s 1997 album, entered at No 91 on the Billboard Hot 100 this week after rising in popularity on TikTok.

It marks only the fourth time the band have charted in the US. In 2008, the song Nude, from the album In Rainbows, entered the chart at No 37 for one week. Before that, 1995’s High and Dry peaked at No 78, staying on the Billboard 100 for eight weeks. The band’s most successful single in the US is Creep, released in 1993, which stayed in the charts for 20 weeks, peaking at No 34.

The band have been far more commercially successful in Britain, having scored seven Top 10 singles. Let Down spent seven weeks on the UK singles chart when it was released, peaking at No 85.

The song was used in the season one finale of Disney+’s hit show The Bear but has soared in popularity on TikTok in recent months, with users commenting on the song’s emotional nature. The most liked video using the song shows AI-generated fictional couples from famous films taking a selfie with their imaginary children. It has racked up 4.2m likes.

Another viral video shows a man looking around before approaching his wife with the words on screen: “Why am I crying at this video of my husband looking for me and then finally finding me.”

OK Computer is widely considered one of the greatest albums of all time. In 2015, it was added to the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry. The band has not released an album since A Moon Shaped Pool in 2016. In March, they registered a new limited liability partnership, RHEUK25 LLP, prompting speculation that a new project is under way.

Band members came together last summer to rehearse before an expected reunion. Colin Greenwood, the band’s bassist and brother of the lead guitarist and keyboardist, Johnny, told NME: “We got together in the summer just for a couple of days and just ran through all the songs and picked up where we left off in 2018. It was really fun and nice to see everyone.

“We were going to do three or four days but knocked it on the head after two because it was fine and we could still do it. My brother said that we’d just need a couple of weeks’ rehearsal and we could go on the road, no problem.”

The band have faced backlash for performing in Israel in 2017. At the time, the band’s frontman, Thom Yorke, said: “Playing in a country isn’t the same as endorsing its government.”

This criticism has intensified since October 2023. At a solo concert in Melbourne last October, Yorke was heckled by a man who asked him: “How could you be silent?” A flustered Yorke rebuffed him and briefly left the stage.

Meghan Markle has released a new product under her lifestyle brand, As Ever — a traditional British orange marmalade, or simply, jam.

The launch, which took place on Tuesday, August 26, came alongside the premiere of the second season of her Netflix series ‘With Love, Meghan’.

The new marmalade joins a restocked collection of teas, baking mixes, and her signature flower sprinkles.

Described as “golden and fragrant, with a lively zest that lingers,” the marmalade pays tribute to the classic flavours of a British teatime. It can be used in a variety of ways — spread on toast, swirled into yoghurt, served with cheese, or even used as a glaze on roast chicken or cakes.

The marmalade is priced at $9 for a standard jar or $24 for a keepsake version.

Fruit preserves have been central to Meghan’s lifestyle brand from the beginning. She first introduced her jam-making interest with a strawberry jam sent to celebrity friends such as Mindy Kaling, Chrissy Teigen, and Abigail Spencer.

The As Ever brand is a rebranded version of American Riviera Orchard, which Meghan launched earlier. She timed this relaunch to match the premiere of her Netflix show, continuing her mix of modern lifestyle products with traditional British influence.

With Love, Meghan’s second season is here on Netflix, and critics have shared their verdict.

Writing in The Guardian, Lucy Mangan said the show was “so boring, so painfully contrived and so effortfully whimsical that it does become almost fascinating.”

The writer, though, praised the guest appearance of Chrissy Teigen, calling it the “high point” of the show and insisting the celebs making cameos weren’t “paid enough.”

The Times, meanwhile, penned a further critical review, as she called the Duchess of Sussex “a woman in need of some cash.”

Its author, Hilary Rose, said the show was “baffling” as it is “the sweet spot where irrelevant meets intolerable and made her rock back and forth in a darkened room.”

Likewise, Anita Singh in The Telegraph wrote, “With Love, Meghan as tone-deaf because the episode about cocktail-making in Malibu is dedicated to the first responders and victims of the California wildfires.”

She described Meghan as “Montecito Marie Antoinette, a needy host, adding the Suits star is “dropping her Type-A perfection and seeming relatively normal in some self-deprecating and likeable moments.”

Despite the critical reviews, Meghan slammed her show’s haters during an interview with Emily Chang.

“I knew who I was trying to meet. If you know your audience, you know your demographic, they loved the show. My partners loved the show,” she added.

“That’s why they have a Season 2, and why we have more fun coming,” the mother-of-two noted. “Are they saying negative things and then going home and secretly making single skillet spaghetti? Possibly.”

It is relevant to mention that Meghan and Prince Harry inked a deal with Netflix for $100 million in 2020.

Key Facts

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Boy band Saja Boys.

NETFLIX

Surprising Fact

“KPop Demon Hunters” grossed an estimated $18 million at the box office last weekend, two months after its streaming release, making it the first Netflix release to later reach No. 1 at the box office. The film opened at roughly 1,700 theaters in the U.S. and Canada for a limited singalong run and sold out an estimated 1,100 screenings.

Key Background

Netflix released “KPop Demon Hunters” on June 20. The film follows K-pop girl group Huntr/x (secret demon hunters) as they challenge rival boy band Saja Boys (secretly demons). The movie was an instant hit. With a 97% critics score and 91% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, it has been praised for its “catchy hits” and as a “dazzling watch.” “KPop” knocked “Happy Gilmore 2,” which had Netflix’s biggest opening weekend ever in the U.S., out of the No. 1 spot after just two weeks and, of its nine weeks on the chart, has been the most-watched English film for four.

Tangent

The movie’s soundtrack has 12 songs and, as a Spotify artist, the KPop Demon Hunters Cast has 51.8 million monthly listeners on the platform. In addition to the record it broke Monday, “KPop Demon Hunters” is only the fifth soundtrack ever to achieve four Hot 100 top 10s at all, and the first since “Waiting To Exhale” in 1995. “Golden” in the chart’s No. 1 spot makes singers EJAE, Audrey Nuna and REI AMI the first K-pop girl group to top the Hot 100 and the first all-female trio to do so since Destiny’s Child topped with “Bootylicious” in 2001. When it hit No. 8 on the Billboard 200 on July 1, “KPop Demon Hunters” became the highest-charting soundtrack since “Wicked” ranked No. 8 on Jan. 25.

What Are Netflix’s Most-Watched Movies? (as Of Aug. 25, 2025)

1. “KPop Demon Hunters” (2025) — 236 million views
2. “Red Notice” (2021) — 230.9 million views
3. “Carry-On” (2024) — 172.1 million views
4. “Don’t Look Up” (2021) — 171.4 million views
5. “The Adam Project” (2022) — 157.6 million views
6. “Bird Box” (2018) — 157.4 million views
7. “Back in Action” (2025) — 147.2 million views
8. “Leave the World Behind” (2023) — 143.4 million views
9. “The Gray Man” (2022) — 139.3 million views
10. “Damsel” (2024) — 138 million views

Further Reading

Forbes‘Kpop Demon Hunters’ Jumps To No. 1 At Box Office During Limited Release—Two Months After Streaming DebutBy Zachary FolkForbes‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Directors On How They Made The Netflix Animated HitBy Regina KimForbesSony Lost Big On KPop Demon Hunters’ Record Success, Says ReportBy Paul Tassi

If you want to show off how fit you are, you drop and do push-ups. That’s what happens on TV, anyway. In Top Gun: Maverick, buff fighter pilots do hundreds of push-ups on a hot tarmac. In the late 90s, Demi Moore wowed audiences by doing one-armed push-ups in the movie GI Jane, then again on David Letterman. Once, Michelle Obama and Ellen DeGeneres competed to see who could do the most push-ups (Obama won).

Are push-ups really worth the hype? According to fitness experts, absolutely.

“In my opinion, push-ups are one of the most underrated movements in fitness,” says Dr Andrew Jagim, director of sports medicine research at the Mayo Clinic Health System. Jagim says they are often overlooked because they seem basic, but if you practice them regularly, over time, you’ll likely notice improvements in upper body strength, as well as “posture, core control and overall athleticism”.

Push-ups can be a good way to assess one’s general fitness. “I’ve learned that how well someone can perform a push-up tells me a lot about their overall movement quality,” says Mark Bohannon, chief experience officer and personal trainer at Ultimate Performance. They also cost no money and can be done just about anywhere.

Here’s what you need to know about how to start doing push-ups correctly.

How do you do a push-up?

Push-ups require significant upper body strength, but really they are a full body exercise.

Begin in a plank position, with your hands and toes on the ground. Hands should be placed slightly outside shoulder width, says Bohannon, with fingers spread and facing forward. Feet can be set wide or narrow – the closer they are, the more challenging the push-up will be, says Joslyn Thompson Rule, Peloton tread and strength instructor. “The wider your feet are, the more stable your base,” she explains.

In this position, you activate chest, shoulder and arm muscles, and also your core muscles and glutes. “The push-up requires full-body stabilization,” says Bohannon.

Lower yourself until your body is almost touching the ground, keeping your elbows at a 45-degree angle. Then push yourself back up.

“Think of the push-up as a moving plank,” says Bohannon. “Your body should maintain one unbroken line from the crown of your head to your heels.”

What are some common mistakes?

One of the most common mistakes people make during a push-up is not maintaining that line from head to heels. Jagim says he often sees people “letting their hips sag” and “letting the head drop”. (This happens to describe every push-up I’ve ever done.)

To prevent this kind of cooked spaghetti push-up, brace your core – “as if someone is about to punch you in the stomach”, Bohannon says – and squeeze your glutes.

Jagim says another common mistake he sees is people “rushing through reps with poor control and/or just dropping to the ground and pushing [themselves] back up”.

Speed doesn’t equal effectiveness, he says. Instead, he suggests aiming for slow, controlled repetitions with proper alignment. This will “maximize muscle engagement and time under tension, and reduce injury risk”, he says.

Are there different push-up variations?

If you can’t do a push-up with proper form, don’t worry – you’re far from alone, and there are alternatives.

Bohannon says when he works with clients on push-ups, he often has to “regress” back to a beginner level to ensure people have the proper form.

If you have never done the exercise before, start with wall push-ups. Stand arm’s length from the wall, then put your hands on the wall and do a push-up with correct form: the body in a straight line, core braced, glutes tight and arms bending at a 45-degree angle. Once you’ve mastered this, you could progress to doing push-ups with your hands on a bench, or with your hands and knees on the ground to reduce the load on your muscles.

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As you build strength, you can make them more challenging, says Jagim. He suggests progressing to decline push-ups (where your feet are elevated on a box or another stable surface), tricep push-ups (where you keep your hands narrow and elbows tucked close to your body as you descend) or adding weight, like a weight plate, on your back.

How do you incorporate push-ups into your fitness routine?

Learning how to do push-ups doesn’t have to consume your life. Rule says she likes to think of push-ups as “a skill that you could spend three to five minutes working on at the start or end of your workout, twice a week”.

To start, she suggests building up your strength in a plank position: hold a plank for 30 to 60 seconds, three to four times. Once that feels comfortable, Rule suggests trying negative push-ups. Start in plank position, and slowly lower down in a controlled way, building up to a 10-second lowering before pushing back up. Repeat this three to four times. After that feels good, she recommends trying isometric holds – lowering down to a challenging position, and holding for three to five seconds. Do this for a few holds with as much rest time in between as you need.

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Performing these variations elevated – say, with your hands on a bench – can be a good way to maintain form and build strength when you’re starting, Rule says.

Is there anyone who should avoid doing push-ups?

“If you have any kind of shoulder impingement or injury, push-ups will aggravate it, so it’s best to avoid,” says Rule.

Others may need modifications, especially those with injuries. Push-up handles – these look like pull handles you place on the floor – can be helpful, he says, as they reduce wrist strain and keep shoulders in a more stable position. And if in doubt, ask a personal trainer how to do push-ups safely for your body.

If you hate push-ups, what can you do instead?

If you absolutely can’t stand push-ups (maybe they evoke bad memories of the presidential fitness test), there are alternatives. But Bohannon says it’s worth asking yourself why you hate them.

“Most exercise hatred stems from repeated failure or poor instruction,” he says. “If we can regress to the right movement level, improve the quality over time and appropriately progress, the hatred often disappears.”

That said, he adds, exercises like dumbbell bench presses and machine chest presses can act as alternatives that target many of the same upper body muscles that push-ups do. But they’re not nearly as effective as full body workouts: “We are losing the extra stability challenges that make push-ups such a valuable exercise,” Bohannon says.

The runaway animated hit has broken Netflix records, topped the Billboard charts and even dominated theaters. Northeastern experts say it’s an extension of Korean culture’s global reach –– and a sign of things to come.

If you haven’t seen the Netflix movie “KPop Demon Hunters,” you’ve probably heard its chart-topping songs. If you haven’t experienced either, you probably will soon.

Netflix released the animated fantasy action musical in June and it quickly — and unexpectedly — became a bonafide, almost unavoidable global phenomenon. The movie centers on a fictional K-pop group, Huntrix, as they perform for their adoring fans and, of course, fight demons. 

By every metric, it’s been a huge hit. The movie has remained steadfast in Netflix’s own viewership ratings, with 949 million minutes watched in July alone, as kids and parents have reported re-watching the movie upwards of a dozen times. Its songs have charted on the Billboard Top 10 for weeks. “KPop Demon Hunters” has been such a success that Netflix even put the movie out in theaters for a limited set of sing-along showings, giving the streamer its first theatrical hit.

Why has an animated demon-hunting musical taken over the world? 

Part of it has to do with “KPop Demon Hunters” itself and part of it has to do with the global reach of Korean culture, specifically K-pop, that exists today, says Viviane Kim, an assistant teaching professor of design at Northeastern University.

“KPop Demon Hunters” is the latest beneficiary of the massive global audience that exists around K-pop and the wave of Korean culture that has hit the West, otherwise known as Hallyu. The South Korean government estimated that global Hallyu fans numbered more than 200 million in 2024. In other words, Korean culture is global culture.

However, the movie’s success can’t just be chalked up to the current cultural moment, says Kim, who hails from South Korea and teaches her students about K-Culture. The movie itself actually mirrors the same branding, marketing and creative playbook that K-pop itself uses to build a fanbase, albeit with a slight twist, Kim says.

“How K-pop [labels] usually market their boy band or girl band is they come up with a really strong storytelling strategy,” Kim says. “Before they even launch the music or reveal who they are, they [release] a bunch of short videos with a story of why they exist. That makes all the songs that they release very strong and meaningful so that people start to get curious about what’s coming up next because it’s like a series of dramas or episodes that we are longing to watch.”

The way co-directors Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans weave music into the movie effectively mimics that approach, stringing the audience along with one K-pop earworm after another.

Those earworms are another reason the movie has been such a hit, Kim says. 

Kang and Appelhans didn’t just want the music to imitate K-pop — they wanted certified K-pop hits. So, they enlisted a team of music producers, including Teddy Park, co-founder of The Black Label, the label behind the chart-topping K-pop group Blackpink. 

That approach worked. Songs like “Golden,” “Your Idol” and “Soda Pop” have remained on the Billboard Top 10 — and in viewers’ ears — for months.

The moment has finally arrived: Kpop Demon Hunters has officially become Netflix’s most popular film of all time.

The animated musical added another 25.4M views from August 18 to 24, bringing its total since its June 20 premiere to 236M views. It has now surpassed Red Notice to take the top spot on the Most Popular English Films list, as expected.

What’s even more impressive is that this doesn’t seem to be even close to the end of the road for the title’s performance. Last week marked the third consecutive week that the film has exhibited nearly 0% audience decline, after two straight intervals of 26M views.

Thanks to the launch of KPop Demon Hunters The Sing-Along Event, the film is likely to see another big boost in viewing over the course of this week. Deadline understands that Netflix plans to combine the viewership for the sing-along and the original movie, even though they are separate titles on the streamer, so we expect some pretty huge numbers in the next report as audiences tune into this new version. The singalong was also released theatrically this weekend, delivering a huge win for Netflix as the film beat out Weapons for No. 1 at the box office with $19M.

KPop Demon Hunters has 24 days left in its 91-day premiere window to keep racking up views and widening the distance between it and now-No. 2 Red Notice (which had 230M views in 91 days).

Over on the TV side of things, the first episodes of Wednesday Season 2 took the top spot with 13.4M views. Season 1 also made an appearance at No. 4 with 4M views as audiences refreshed their memories and/or caught up before diving into Season 2.

Wednesday is likely to stick around the charts for quite a while, as Part 2 of the second season is poised to launch on September 3.

In second place was the British political thriller Hostage, which generated 10.8M views. The series stars Queen Charlotte‘s Corey Mylchreest as the activist stepson of the president of France (Julie Delpy), who costars alongside Suranne Jones as the British prime minister whose husband has been kidnapped.

Speaking of Mylchreest, he also had a presence on the film list with My Oxford Year‘s 5.9M views putting it at No. 4.

As always, there was also some reality titles on last week’s Top 10. Fit For TV: The Reality of the Biggest Loser took No. 3 with 8.5M views, while America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys came in ninth place with 1.9M views.

Elsewhere in film, Happy Gilmore 2 enjoyed a fifth week in the Top 10 at No. 6 with 4.5M views.