News

This post contains spoilers for "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" season 3, episode 4, "A Space Adventure Hour."

The latest "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" episode, "A Space Adventure Hour," opens in bizarre fashion. On the bridge of a starship, a captain and his first officer discuss the ship picking up some radiation. That doesn't sound too out of place, does it? Except the captain is played by Paul Wesley (who plays Jim Kirk) and the first officer by Jess Bush (who plays Christine Chapel), neither of whom are their usual characters. The costume, set design (magnetic computer tapes!), score, foggy camera quality, and tinny audio are all closer to the original 1960s "Star Trek" ... and that's exactly the point.

It turns out the Enterprise, specifically LA'an, is being tasked with studying a prototype holodeck. LA'an chooses the setting: a mid-20th century Hollywood murder mystery. She plays detective Amelia Moon in...

While many people remember actor, comedian, producer, and studio executive Lucille Ball for her time playing wacky housewife Lucy Ricardo on the classic CBS sitcom "I Love Lucy," she also played a massive role in shaping the future of television behind-the-scenes. Along with her then-husband, Desi Arnaz, Lucille Ball created the television production company Desilu, which would produce a number of shows throughout the 1950s and 1960s, including "I Love Lucy," "The Untouchables," "Mission: Impossible," "The Lucy Show," "Star Trek," and "Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse," which had an episode that ended up serving as the pilot episode of the TV classic "The Twilight Zone." Many of the shows were developed under Ball's guidance alone, as she and Arnaz divorced in 1960 and in 1962 she bought him out and became sole president of the company. 

During her tenure as president of Desilu, Lucille Ball championed "Star Trek" time and again. She allegedly helped...

I Love Lucy revolutionized television in a number of ways, but one of its more controversial claims to fame is being the first TV show filmed in front of a live studio audience.

Technically, everything in television’s early days was filmed before a live audience because it was a lot less Reacher and more Hamilton. They were essentially recorded plays, complete with audiences, beamed live into viewers’ homes. When Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz crafted their series, they decided to do it like the movies in a lot of ways but stuck with the live audience, combining “the strengths of stage plays and movies,” according to The Av Club.

It’s a good thing, too. Can you imagine Lucy without the audience reaction? Just a screaming woman pinned down in her otherwise silent kitchen by a neverending loaf of bread? That’s not a sitcom. That’s a literal nightmare.

Choosing a name for your baby boy is one of the most exciting—and challenging—decisions you’ll make as a parent. If you’re searching for something that stands out, unique and unusual boy names starting with D offer a world of possibilities. BabyNames.com features some fascinating options that break away from tradition, perfect for parents who want a name as distinctive as their little one. Names like Dempsey bring a vintage vibe, while intriguing choices like Damarion and Dzon feel bold and futuristic. Offbeat names are a great way to celebrate individuality, honor cultural heritage, or simply make a creative statement. Whether it’s mysterious or quirky, these uncommon names spark curiosity and leave lasting impressions. In a world where standing out is celebrated, giving your boy a rare and memorable name can feel like the perfect way to start their journey. Let’s explore some of...

Getting a TV spouse is a big gamble: If you hate them, you might have to pretend to love them for a reeeally long time. I Love Lucy was mostly an exception, because even if Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s marriage was never perfect and often a shitstorm, they were used to making kissy faces. William Frawley and Vivian Vance, however, lost that gamble big time. The actors who played Lucy and Ricky’s best friends and neighbors, Fred and Ethel Mertz, couldn’t stand each other so much that it affected the entire run of the show.

It all started when Vance expressed her frustration with audiences accepting her, at 42 years old, without question as the wife of a man Frawley’s age, which was 64 when the series premiered. Whether or not she had a point is up for debate. On one hand, Hollywood does love to cast...

If you were making a montage of classic TV for some of that sweet, sweet TikTok affiliate money, there are certain moments you would just have to include. Mary Tyler Moore throwing her hat in the air. Samantha Stephens twitching her nose. Arnold demanding to know what Willis is talking about. Two that definitely make the cut are Dick Van Dyke tripping over the ottoman in the opening sequence of The Dick Van Dyke Show and Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz frantically eating chocolates in a factory in the I Love Lucy episode “Job Switching.” They’re such iconic moments that they’ve both been referenced on Family Guy, a show no one over 23 has ever watched.

They were also both inspired by not only the same comedian but the same movie: 1936’s Modern Times, written, directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin. The film was a turning point in Chaplin’s career,...

Aaron Sorkin is going back into the world of Facebook. Sorkin and Sony Pictures are in development on “The Social Network Part II,” a follow-up film to the 2010 gem “The Social Network” about the founding of Facebook, an individual with knowledge of the project told IndieWire.

For now, the film is only in development, but Sorkin has already written the screenplay for the follow-up, and Sony has also tapped him to direct after David Fincher directed the first film.

Crucially, no cast is set on the project, and the film is being described as a follow-up rather than a sequel, so it’s unclear if Sorkin would look to again tap stars Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg, Andrew Garfield, or others.

This time, Sorkin is working from the Wall Street Journal’s series of articles called “The Facebook Files” from 2021, which exposed the inner workings of the social media giant...

Now that we do most of our television viewing at the press of a button from an exotic range of toilets, early TV feels like caveman stuff. Gather ‘round, children, and hear tell the tale of days when your weekly Severance appointment would have been beamed live to your TV, just like a radio show, which really would have made those special effects hard to pull off. If you were too far away, it would be replayed in scrambled-porn quality through the video equivalent of a Xerox machine. This was the primitive and dark reality of the times all the way back in… 1951.

That was the year I Love Lucy premiered, changing the medium in tons of important ways, one of which they never expected, so to speak. Don’t get us wrong — Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were a far cry from their bumbling fictional counterparts, stumbling in and...

According to Lucie Arnaz, daughter of I Love Lucy costars Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, it wasn’t affairs that ended her famous parents’ marriage, though she said dad Desi was unfaithful. “People say he had affairs,” Lucie said in a CBS News Sunday Morning interview that aired on June 15. “He never had an affair. He didn’t even know these dames’ names. You know, they were hookers.” But Desi’s infidelity wasn’t for a lack of affection for Ball or their two children, Lucie and her brother, Desi Arnaz Jr. “He loved my mother, he loved his family,” Lucie said. “It was a very unique, weird problem to have. And I think that’s the reason she stayed with him so long, is that she understood it. I don’t think I could do what she did. … But somehow, at the time, with what they had, with what they needed from each other,...

Not long after the end of I Love Lucy, Lucille Ball filed for divorce from Desi Arnaz, telling the world in 1960 that the marriage was “a nightmare” and nothing at all like the loving Ricardos on television. But that was the second time Ball divorced Arnaz. The first time occurred well before they made sitcom history.

Ball and Arnaz met in 1940 while filming the comedy, Too Many Girls. The comedienne and Cuban-born bandleader enjoyed a whirlwind romance before eloping in November of that year, but there was trouble from the start. Fierce fighting began right away, according to the biography Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television. Even though Ball once took a hammer and smashed every window in their new station wagon, “in those early years, our fights were a kind of lovemaking,” she remembered. “Desi and I enjoyed them, but they exhausted our family and friends, I’m afraid.

Lucille Ball had a hit show before I Love Lucy. The radio program My Favorite Husband had a similar premise to her later hit, featuring Ball as Liz Cooper, a young wife who stumbled through minor domestic conundrums that resulted from her harebrained schemes. Jess Oppenheimer, who’d later be one of the leading creative voices behind I Love Lucy, was the show’s head writer.

Play

My Favorite Husband featured Oppenheimer’s vision of a “stage-struck schemer with an overactive imagination that got her into embarrassing situations.” Sound familiar? The radio show was reaching the peak of its popularity just as television took off. In 1947, fewer than 200,000 TV sets had been sold in the United States; by 1949, two million sets glowed in American living rooms. The emerging medium needed content, and CBS believed a filmed version of My Favorite Husband would score.

Radio had been a compromise for Ball,...

Being the Ricardos got love from the critical community, with Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem garnering Oscar nominations for their portrayals of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. But while the Academy loved Lucy, her real-life daughter believes that Being the Ricardos didn’t always tell the truth.

Lucy and Desi’s oldest child, Lucie Arnaz, consulted on the film but was frustrated when the filmmakers she hired stopped listening to her feedback. “I tried to work on it and correct the incorrect parts, especially (Ball’s) relationship with the writers. She adored those people. They got along so well,” Arnaz said last week at a fundraiser on the Paramount lot, according to Remind Magazine. “None of that backstabbing, crazy, insulting stuff. That was such a crock of poop. It was so wrong.”

Misrepresenting Ball’s relationship with I Love Lucy’s writers was one misstep. Another plot line that the film got wrong?...

Like most classic television shows, Star Trek has its own creation myths and some facts shrouded in rumors. However, some of these have their basis in facts, and one of the most unusual is how a famous comedian helped save Star Trek from NBC’s ash can: Lucille Ball.

Lucy and Desilu Studios

I Love Lucy, which premiered on October 15th, 1951, was a massive hit and the top-rated show for all but the last two seasons of its run. By the end of the series, Lucy and her husband, Desi Arnaz, had the funding to buy and run their own studio, Desilu. After divorcing Arnaz, Ball bought out his share and ran the studio on her own. This was a bold move for a woman in 1962, and it made her one of the most influential individuals in a business mostly dominated by men at the time.

Lucy loves Star Trek...

At a screening of the 1993 special “Lucy & Desi Home Movies” on the Paramount Studios lot on June 5, Lucie Arnaz got candid about her feelings on Aaron Sorkin’s 2021 film “Being the Ricardos.” The movie, which followed Arnaz’s parents Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz during the production of the seminal ‘50s series “I Love Lucy,” garnered a mixed critical response — though Nicole Kidman earned praise and an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Ball. Lucie Arnaz served as an executive producer on the project.

“I was involved, and I tried to work on it and correct the incorrect parts, especially her relationship with the writers,” Arnaz said in a video posted by Vintage Los Angeles from the June 5 event. “Totally wrong, right? She adored those people. They got along so well, none of that backstabbing, crazy, insulting stuff. That was such a crock of poop. It was so wrong.”

Arnaz...

Javier Bardem emerged in Spain in the 1990s as a different kind of movie star. Scion of a notable acting family, his privilege and experience manifested in supremely confident leading roles in crossover hit “Jamon, Jamon” (1992) and Almodóvar’s “Live Flesh” (1997).

With his appealing features and compelling screen presence, there was little doubt Hollywood came calling, and indeed, in the new millennium, he has joined Antonio Banderas and his equally talented wife, Penélope Cruz, as the industry’s most prominent Latin imports. He was daring in “Before Night Falls” (2000), for which he received his first Oscar nomination and appeared in films by Michael Mann and Miloš Forman. He would eventually rise to superstardom as the embodiment of calculating evil in “No Country for Old Men” (2007); he won the Oscar this time for one of the most chilling depictions of villainy in recent memory.

Ever since, Bardem has acted with the...

While the theme song to I Love Lucy has no lyrics, anyone who’s ever caught an episode remembers the iconic script inscribing a heart resting on velvet, introducing Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz as the sitcom’s stars.

But if you were catching the show in the 1950s, the familiar heart wasn’t part of your I Love Lucy evening. In fact, that particular opening didn’t arrive until years later when the sitcom went into syndication. A curious viewer tuning into the initial episodes of I Love Lucy saw a very different way of opening the show.

In this version, animated stick figures of Ball and Arnaz dance atop a pack of Philip Morris cigarettes, a “special blend” promising pure tobacco refreshment. The cartoon was produced by William Hanna and Joseph Barbara, creators of Tom and Jerry and a host of other characters who’d become popular in the decades to come.

Milton Berle’s testimonial at a November 1958 Friars’ Club roast of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz was full of racially charged one-liners that wouldn’t fly today. But those jokes weren’t the most offensive part of the routine, at least to Ball and Arnaz, who took the brunt of some intensely personal punchlines.

Berle’s performance is largely forgotten, mostly because of another occurrence at the Roast — the death of comedian Harry Einstein, more famously known as radio comic Parkyakarkus and the father of Albert Brooks and Bob “Super Dave” Einstein. After he finished his hilarious tribute to the couple, he walked back to his seat and collapsed in Berle’s arms after a massive heart attack.

But before the dramatic events that ended the evening, Berle delivered some gags that landed a little too close to home, according to the new biography, Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television.

The gang just might be going back in time: Danny DeVito couldn’t help but compare his beloved sitcom “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” to another iconic TV series, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s ’50s comedy “I Love Lucy.”

DeVito told Variety while in discussion with Colin Farrell for “Actors on Actors” that after 17 seasons of “It’s Always Sunny,” he still finds the show to be as fresh as ever. “I always looked at it as ‘I Love Lucy’ on acid,” he said. “You could do anything you wanted.”

DeVito cited just how different “It’s Always Sunny” is to filming the 1992 feature “Batman Returns” in which he played villain Oswald Cobblepot Aka the Penguin. Farrell gives his own take on the character, now named Oz Cobb, in Max series “The Penguin,” which was a spinoff of Matt Reeves’ 2022 film “The Batman.”

“You can go anywhere you want. I love it,...

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

"The Twilight Zone" ran for 156 episodes total, and that's not even counting the extra backlog from the three attempts at rebooting the series. That long, television-defining legacy all began in 1959 with the first aired "Twilight Zone" episode, "Where Is Everybody?"

An amnesiac man (Earl Holliman) awakens in the desert and walks to a seemingly abandoned town. Soon, he's asking the question that gives the episode its title.

The twist? Our lead is actually astronaut Mike Ferris. He's undergoing a training exercise in an isolation chamber to see if he can handle a trip to the Moon by himself. When the episode began, he'd been in the chamber for three weeks. The town was a hallucination because the isolation had finally gotten to him. The episode ends with Ferris being "rescued," still intending to go to the Moon.

"Where Is Everybody?...

Before I ever watched a single episode of The Twilight Zone, I knew what it was. Everyone did. The phrase itself wasn’t just a title– it was a feeling. A shorthand for the surreal, the uncanny, the “something’s not right and I can’t quite explain why.” It showed up in conversations, in jokes, in casual references, in Halloween specials and music and sitcom punchlines. The Twilight Zone existed in the pop culture lexicon so thoroughly that you didn’t need to see it to feel like you had. But then I did watch it. I don’t remember where I was, or what episode came first. It was sometime in my early twenties, long after the show had premiered, long after creator, host and narrator Rod Serling had left us. But I remember the feeling of being locked in– drawn into the world he’d created. Or rather,...

Saturday Night Live’s legendary producer Lorne Michaels has seen it all in his five decades at the sketch comedy show. But even he has his limits when it comes to performers pushing themselves too hard.

On a recent episode of the Fly on the Wall podcast, actor Jack Black revealed an anecdote Michaels shared with him following his high-energy return to the show in April. Black told hosts David Spade and Dana Carvey that Michaels seemed concerned about Black's health.

“Lorne said the funniest thing. I don’t think he was trying to be funny,” Black recalled. After seeing Black rehearse his musical monologue, which included a tiger roll, live vocals, and a wild trek around the studio, Michaels pulled Black aside to share a cautionary tale from SNL’s early days.

“He told me about Desi Arnaz hosting the show back in the ‘70s,” Black said. Arnaz, the I Love Lucy icon,...

Hosting Saturday Night Live seems like an incredibly demanding gig, requiring long hours, sleepless nights and quick thinking. But at least hosts get paid a whopping five grand. Which is a lot of money for one week of work, but not a whole lot for starring in a network TV show produced by a guy who makes around $40 million a year.

One of this season’s better episodes was the one hosted by Jack Black. But despite the fact that he’s worshipped by children under 10 years old, Black isn’t exactly a kid himself anymore. Black is currently 55 years old. To put that in perspective, in just four years he’ll be old enough to play Indiana Jones’ dad in The Last Crusade.

This didn’t stop Black from giving it his all in Studio 8H, as evidenced by his raucous monologue, which found the A Minecraft Movie star...

If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Rolling Stone may receive an affiliate commission.

In the latest season of Black Mirror, Issa Rae’s Hollywood A-list actor Brandy Friday is thrown into an immersive high-tech remake of a vintage romantic movie, “Hotel Reverie”. There’s sweeping shots of a grand lobby in black and white, lush gardens, grand pianos, wealthy octogenarians with tiny dogs — and all the glamour and nostalgia of the bygone Golden Era of Hollywood.

It’s hard to still...

One of the most obnoxious sitcom tropes is when a show becomes popular enough that celebrities begin appearing on it as themselves. Now, some shows have made it work. Insane guest stars are The Simpsons thing, for example. And Curb Your Enthusiasm is about a guy in show business, so celebrities playing themselves makes total sense. But when a show is about ordinary people yet gigantic household names keep showing up on their doorstep the reality of that world is blown apart.

There have, however, been a handful of times when a celebrity played themselves on a sitcom and actually pulled it off. These are the top five…

5 Marisa Tomei on ‘Seinfeld’

Tomei’s appearance on Seinfeld worked out of sheer absurdity alone. The very idea that the pathetic George Costanza (Jason Alexander) would be exactly her type is funny on its own, but when George and Marisa meet, the comedy is sublime.

Star Trek: The Original Series premiered in 1966 and ran for three seasons. The series is widely known for its boundary-pushing storytelling with several aspects considered ahead of its time, including a diverse main cast, led by William Shatner.

For most fans, it is also considered one of the earliest instances of an on-screen kiss between two actors from different ethnic backgrounds, with William Shatner’s Captain Kirk sharing a kiss with Nichelle Nichols’ Uhura.

William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols in Star Trek (Credit: NBC).

Despite the common belief, Star Trek wasn’t the first TV series to showcase a kissing scene between actors from different races, especially during the 1960s when kissing on TV itself was considered taboo. Here is everything you need to know about the actual first interracial kiss on TV.

Star Trek most likely did not have the first interracial kiss on American TV

The Star Trek episode,...

The most exciting part of movie-going for many is right before it starts, when you settle into your AMC Theaters recliner to watch Nicole Kidman remind us why we love the movies. Nevermind the popcorn, previews, or candy: Nicole Kidman makes movies better.

Of course, the actress has had a long and storied career prior to becoming the face of AMC Theaters. The Australian actress made her film debut at only 16-years-old, before her profile slowly began to rise in the late '80s and early '90s with films like "Dead Calm," "Days of Thunder," and "Billy Bathgate." By the end of the last decade of the millennium, Kidman had become an A-list celebrity, making tabloid headlines for her marriage with Tom Cruise, and even racking up Oscar nominations as an established and profitable movie star.

Over 40 years after her on-screen debut, Kidman still generates awards buzz and attention...

Quick LinksStar Trek Has Faced a Tumultuous Road Throughout Its HistoryParamount and Skydance Agreed to a Merger That Would Save the StudioStar Trek's Studio Is Also at War With the US Government and the FCC

Shortly before the first Star Trekseries was canceled on NBC, Paramount took ownership of the nascent universe along with the rest of Desilu Studios. A new season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is imminent, and a new series called Starfleet Academy is reportedly gearing up for production on Season 2.However, the future of Star Trek hangs in the balance as legal woes threaten the merger between Paramount and Skydance Media that would save the studio. While a small group of less throughtful fans point fingers at shows like Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard, the universe created by Gene Roddenberry is holding its own in a crowded media landscape.

Like many studios,...

Actor Gregory Peck may be best known for his Oscar-winning performance as Atticus Finch in 1962’s To Kill a Mockingbird, but over the course of his decades-long career, Peck appeared in more than 50 projects, including a western that many may have forgotten. Peck, along with Desi Arnaz Jr, the son of iconic duo Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, starred in 1974’s Billy Two Hats,which is now streaming on Prime Video.

Billy Two Hats takes place after a bank robbery gone wrong and the titular character, Billy Two Hats (Arnaz Jr.) is captured by Sheriff Gifford, played by Jack Warden. Billy’s partner, Arch Deans, played by Peck, rescues him, but ends up getting shot in the leg, leaving him unable to ride a horse. Billy, refusing to leave his partner behind, builds a cot that can be carried by horse, and they continue their journey, which makes them more...

Lucille Ball wouldn’t be the first actor, comic or otherwise, to cringe while watching herself on screen. But Ball wasn’t universally opposed to watching her own work — it was a specific part of her sitcom portfolio that made her turn up her nose.

“I don’t like some of the shows that I look at,” Ball told the Roanoke Times, as reported by MeTV. “Some of the old I Love Lucy’s are silly.”

I Love Lucy? The original classic sitcom? “I study them and enjoy them and wish I’d done it differently a lot of times — most of the time — but very few I really laugh at,” she explained.

The fact that early episodes didn’t live up to Ball’s funny standards shouldn’t be a surprise, given how quickly the show came together. According to her memoir, Love, Lucy, Ball was four months pregnant...

Poppy is finally feeling the repercussions of a decision she made long ago on The Bold and the Beautiful. By hiding the fact that her nephew Finn is the father of her daughter, Luna, she’s created a chaotic situation that’s only going to get worse. However, in the real world, Romy Park is enjoying the calmness of one of her passions. She not only shared some words of wisdom with her fans but also showed off some impressive skills.

Life Without Ballet is Pointe-less

Park’s followers were loving her after she wrote on Instagram, “‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.’ Prospero in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest.” She added, “Here is where I can live in endless dreams, however fleeting. A place to drown out the outside world and be a child again. A safe haven to heal the mind,...

From ‘I Love Lucy’ to ‘Cheers,’ this streamer is a goldmine for classic TV fans.

I love comedy—and sitcoms in particular. There’s something about the canned laughter that somehow makes everything funnier. Or maybe it’s the predictable “set-up, set-up, joke” rhythms of the writing. Or maybe, in a world that seems more complicated every day, it’s just nice to wrap up all your problems in 22 minutes. Whether you grew up watching them on a boxy TV or you’re discovering them for the first time, classic sitcoms are the ultimate comfort watch. And if you’re looking for the best streamer to watch them all, in my opinion, there’s one clear winner: Pluto TV. Let’s get into why it’s the best place to stream classic sitcoms from the golden age of TV comedy.

Watch Now Free Pluto.TV Everything you need to know about...

The Bob Dylan song choices Timothée Chalamet picked for his “Saturday Night Live” musical appearance were… well, completely unknown to most of the viewing audience. The actor’s dip into more obscure choices delighted many Dylanologists who tuned in, even as his picks defied expectations that he would recreate songs he performed as Dylan in “A Complete Unknown,” which turned out to be the furthest thing from his mind.

In his opening monolog as host, Chalamet signaled that viewers would be surprised by the choices during his musical segment. “You might not know the Bob Dylan songs I’m performing, but they’re my personal favorites,” he told the audience. “I’m so grateful ‘Saturday Night Live’ is still doing weird stuff like this 50 years in. They’re either really nice for letting me do this or incredibly mean and this is all a big prank.”

In an unbilled cameo,...

In October, Timothée Chalamet showed up at his own look-alike contest in New York City’s Washington Square Park to help anoint the winner with a $50 prize. Now, he’s reteaming with some of those finalists for his latest Saturday Night Live promo.

“I’ve never done this before,” Chalamet notes in the video (watch above). “I’m having to be the SNL host and musical guest in the same week, so it’s a lot of work. And I want to focus on the songs. So I brought in some help to cover it with all the hosting duties.”

What follows is a montage of Chalamet’s look-alikes performing various duties around Studio 8H — meeting with the writers, working on the monologue, and listening to Mikey Day brag about hosting Is It Cake?

The real Chalamet tells the audience, “All things considered, it should be a great show.” But...

Timothée Chalamet's upcoming return for Saturday Night Live 50 will make his best skit character in the famed show even better. All season long, Lorne Michael and NBC have come up with a fantastic slew of shows to celebrate the project's milestone. SNL 50 has featured hosts and musical guests including Martin Short, Jean Smart, Chappell Roan, and Stevie Nicks. As the season moves forward, it will continue this with a string of more impressive tandems to front the remainder of its celebratory period. Chalamet is part of that upcoming pool of hosts, which is exciting, considering his past appearances.

When he steps into Studio 8H this year, Chalamet will find himself in a familiar setting, having hosted SNL twice before. The first time he fronted the NBC weekly late-night staple was in 2020 for SNL 46, which featured Bruce Springsteen as the musical guest — his fourth time. Chalamet returned in 2023 for SNL 49 with musical guest Boygenius.

As he finds himself in the midst of awards season, Timothée Chalamet will host Saturday Night Live in January during its ongoing 50th season and mark a significant milestone in the history of the renowned late-night sketch comedy show. The past few years have been some of the biggest yet in Chalamet's career, with the star having led the casts of the box office hits Wonka and both Dune movies. Most recently, he was seen in the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, for which he earned a Golden Globe nomination.

Now, the official Saturday Night Live X account has revealed the upcoming SNL hosts for this month, as the show returns during the final two weekends of January. While Dave Chappelle has also been announced, most notably, Chalamet is listed as both the host and the musical guest on the episode dated January 25. Check out the announcement below:

first shows of 2025! pic.

Like a rolling stone gathers no moss, Timothee Chalamet’s awards campaign for A Complete Unknown continues unabated. On Friday, NBC announced Chalamet will host the Jan. 25 edition of Saturday Night Live and serve as the night’s musical guest. The expectation is that Chalamet, who plays Bob Dylan in the new film, will perform Dylan songs on the broadcast.

Regardless of the playlist, Chalamet’s dual role on the broadcast will make some Saturday Night Live history. He’s among a select few non-professional singers or traditional musicians who have served as SNL hosts and performed as musicians on the same show, joining names like Lily Tomlin, Desi Arnaz, and Deion Sanders.

The SNL appearance is the latest high-profile stop on Chalamet’s press tour and awards campaign for A Complete Unknown. The actor has spent the last month promoting his work in James Mangold’s film – including a...

In the 50-year history of NBC’s Saturday Night Live, only 41 people have ever been invited by Lorne Michaels to serve as both host and musical guest on the same night, including icons like Paul Simon, Ray Charles, Elton John, Britney Spears and Taylor Swift. Of them, only four have been non-professional singers or musicians, the most recent example coming some 30 years ago: Lily Tomlin, on Nov. 22, 1975 and Jan. 22, 1983; Desi Arnaz, on Feb. 21, 1976; Gary Busey, on March 10, 1979; and Deion Sanders, on Feb. 18, 1995.

On Jan. 25, you will be able to add Timothée Chalamet to that list. The star of the hit new Bob Dylan drama A Complete Unknown, in which he impressively sings dozens of Dylan’s songs himself, has been invited to Studio 8H at 30 Rock to serve in that dual role. Chalamet is known to be a huge fan of rap music, but presumably he’ll limit his musical...

At first glance, Star Trek: The Original Series Season 3, Episode 18, "The Lights of Zetar" doesn't stand out among other entries in the series. In many ways, it's a very typical episode, as the Enterprise encounters a mysterious problem and needs to discover the source behind it before disaster falls. It arrived late in The Original Series' run, when the formula was well-established, and audiences knew what to expect. It's a solid piece of Star Trek, though it bumps into The Original Series' lingering issues related to sexism. Still, it doesn't appear otherwise notable at first glance.

The story comes with the screenwriting credits: Jeremy Tarcher and Shari Lewis. The second one should be familiar, as it belongs to one of the 20th Century's most beloved children's performers. Lewis and her puppet Lamb Chop entertained generations of children from the 1950s onward. How and why she came to pen an episode...

“Lucy, you’ve got some ‘splainin to do.”

It’s hard to miss, but sadly, someone did. Late last month, a pair of screenshots of a recently released Blu-ray box set of the entire “I Love Lucy” series went viral because of what looked like a horrifying case of remastering gone wrong. It appeared that when upscaling the original show’s image quality to HD, the process inadvertently created an eye-popping moment in which background characters’ faces suddenly became bizarrely enhanced.

It’s a short moment on a multi-year restoration project that otherwise looks pristine, but the images stand out nonetheless and had people on Reddit and other forums crying foul.

The images show a woman seen in the background just over Ricky Ricardo’s shoulder who now looks decidedly more masculine, with bulging, dead eyes, and a toothy smile floating over a necklace. A man to the left of...

The best Nicole Kidman movies and TV shows feature decades' worth of great releases that showcase the Australian actress' talents. After getting her start in smaller Australian films in the '80s, Kidman picked up her first major crossover role in the 1989 psychological thriller Dead Calm and this won her the attention of Hollywood, where her first big break came in the Tom Cruise action movie Days of Thunder in 1990. That led her on the path to becoming one of Hollywood’s top leading ladies.

Throughout her decades-long career, Nicole Kidman has won an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Primetime Emmy Award, and several Golden Globes Awards. She was also the first Australian actor to ever earn the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2024. She has taken on roles in just about every genre imaginable, from comedies and biopics to action movies, superhero fare, and even musicals. Kidman has worked with famed directors Stanley Kubrick,...

Plenty of comedy stars have popped in for a cameo when their old sitcom costars get a new gig — think Cheers’ Ted Danson visiting the original Frasier or most of the Community cast stopping by Ken Jeong’s Dr. Ken. But some sitcom stars have such amazing chemistry that they need to keep a good thing going.

Here are five pairs of funny people who costarred together in multiple sitcoms…

1 Danny McBride and Walton Goggins

McBride and Goggins headlined Vice Principals as competing a-holes vying to rule the school via promotion to the top job. When McBride went on to create The Righteous Gemstones for HBO, he again enlisted Goggins as a failed child star who once headlined a gospel song-and-dance team. Goggins told Conan O’Brien that McBride “is the funniest person I have ever met in my life.” The two even teamed to desecrate the reputations of Ronald McDonald and the Hamburglar.

Did Nicole Kidman Call Tom Cruise Sexist? (Photo Credit – Instagram/Facebook)

Nicole Kidman shut down a lazy Tom Cruise comparison while discussing Being the Ricardos, serving up sass and reminding everyone she’s not just defined by her past relationships.

When the conversation veered toward her ex-husband, Kidman snapped, “Oh, my God, no, no. Not.” She said, “That’s so long ago that that isn’t in this equation.” But it got juicy: “I would ask not to be pigeonholed that way, either. It feels to me almost sexist because I’m not sure anyone would say that to a man.” Mic drop

She was legitimately calling out an entire double standard. Because when it comes to her past with Cruise, it seems everyone’s still stuck on that ‘90s tabloid romance. Kidman, however, is so done with it. “Give me my life. In its own right,” she quipped. That’s her story,...

You can’t say Cher didn’t warn Hoda Kotb this morning on The Today Show. Cher was there to promote her new memoir, and Kotb asked Cher about advice she’d received from comedy icon Lucille Ball after her 1975 divorce from Sonny Bono. “I can’t say it on TV,” Cher insisted, asking if the show’s producers could bleep out the offending words.

Don’t worry, said Kotb. “We’ll bleep it!”

Play

Given the green light, Cher talked about reaching out to her longtime pal. The wacky redhead knew all about public divorces, shocking the world when she broke it off with Desi Arnaz after I Love Lucy ended. “I said, ‘Lucy, I’m calling you because, to my knowledge, there’s never been a situation besides mine except yours,’” Cher said.

Ball’s sage advice about how to handle the situation? “Fuck him,” she said. “You...

Aaron Sorkin has signed a deal with Warner Bros. to write and potentially direct a film about the unlikely father of the Israeli Air Force, Al Schwimmer.

The project is based, in part, on “America’s Greatest Gift to Israel,” an article published in Business Insider and written by David Kushner. Sorkin’s film will be produced by Gotham Group’s Eric Robinson and Ellen Goldsmith-Vein. It is currently in development.

Schwimmer’s story is certainly cinematic — he began his career as an aerospace engineer at Lockheed and, during World War II, worked for Twa and the U.S. Air Transport Command as a flight engineer. In 1948, as Jews were fighting to carve out a homeland for themselves, Schwimmer “masterminded a covert, illegal, international operation that was equal parts ‘Argo’ and ‘Mission: Impossible.’ Working with the Jewish underground paramilitary, the Haganah, Schwimmer led a team of WWII veterans to break...

When Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz dreamed up their new sitcom I Love Lucy, their creative imaginations led to several problems. Case in point: “I had insisted upon having a studio audience; otherwise, I knew, we’d never hit the right tempo,” Ball wrote in her autobiography Love, Lucy. That was a problem — no existing studios were large enough to accommodate a live audience. And even if there were, how could the crowd see with all the lighting, sound and film equipment in the way? To help solve those problems, Arnaz decided to turn to the guy who shot 1931’s Dracula.

“I was scarcely prepared for the many problems which were to confront me upon my initial excursion into the realm of television,” wrote Oscar-winning cinematographer Karl Freund in the December 1953 issue of Art Photography. “I expected very little variation from the ritual of photographing regular motion pictures, but I...

"I Love Lucy" was in many ways TV's first solid-gold hit, and it wasn't just because the show premiered when there were few television programs on the air. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, then a real-life married couple, made magic together on screen as clever but ridiculous Lucy Ricardo and her straight man of a husband, Ricky. Their chemistry and comedy made the show an enduring, medium-changing hit, rocketing it to the top of the Nielsen charts and beaming it into the hearts and homes of millions of people worldwide.

The show came to a close in 1957, and while Ball and Arnaz would continue dominating television in other sitcoms and specials — not to mention their powerhouse production company Desilu — for years to come, no follow-ups ever held the same unique magic as the original series. Arnaz passed away in 1986, and Ball followed three years later. Today, only three actors who...

The classic television sitcom “I Love Lucy” will make its long-awaited Blu-ray debut on November 5. Paramount Home Entertainment has announced the release of “I Love Lucy: The Complete Series” on high-definition Blu-ray discs. This comprehensive collection promises to offer fans both old and new an enhanced viewing experience of the pioneering comedy series.

Starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz as Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, “I Love Lucy” broke new ground when it first aired between 1951 to 1957. The show quickly became a massive success and cultural touchstone for its hilarious portrayal of an eccentric housewife and her Cuban bandleader husband. It continues to attract large audiences over 70 years later.

The upcoming Blu-ray set restores all 180 classic episodes to near-pristine quality. It also contains rare and previously unseen bonus features. An early pilot episode has been restored from film, allowing a fresh look at the show’s beginnings. One episode has also been newly colorized.

If you've ever wanted to be able to yell "Luuuucy, I'm home!" to your own "I Love Lucy" box set, then you're in luck. The classic 1950s sitcom that followed real-life spouses Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz as their fictional counterparts, Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, is coming to home media in a whole new way, courtesy of Paramount. The series was wildly popular during its era and has left its stamp on pop culture ever since — it's honestly hard to find a comedy series that hasn't referenced "I Love Lucy" or been influenced by it in some way. The series is deeply beloved and made a massive impact on television history, and this new box set is sure to delight fans both new and old.

"I Love Lucy" ran for six seasons, starring Ball and Arnaz alongside the Ricardos' neighbors, Ethel and Fred Mertz (played by Vivian Vance and William Frawley...

Nicole Kidman could be on the verge of receiving her sixth acting Oscar bid for the upcoming A24 erotic thriller “Babygirl,” directed by Halina Reijn, best known for the indie film “Bodies Bodies Bodies” (2022). With the movie already making its premiere at the Venice International Film Festival and Kidman taking home the Volpi Cup for Best Actress, let’s take a closer look at her five previous Oscar nominations, including her one win.

Her first recognition came for the Baz Luhrmann jukebox musical “Moulin Rouge” (2001), where Kidman portrayed a cabaret performer and courtesan in love with an English poet. It is certainly one of her most physical performances, as she performs extravagant musical numbers and showcases strong emotions as her character Satine suffers through an illness. Kidman won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy and was part of the movie’s eight Oscar nominations,...

"Saturday Night Live" certainly didn't kick off their milestone 50th season with a bang. However, we shouldn't really be surprised. Historically, the season premieres of "SNL" aren't great episodes, mostly because the writers and cast members are a bit rusty after having the entire summer away from the show, and they often have to cycle through some tired material that is already stale by the time it makes it in front of cameras in Studio 8H. 

Unfortunately, that means "Hacks" star Jean Smart didn't get their best material, and the result was a middling episode with the sketches ranging from average to embarrassing. It's nothing to worry about, but for anyone who needed to be convinced that "SNL" still has the goods, this episode probably didn't do the trick. But that's also what makes "SNL" one of the most interesting comedy shows to watch. Anything can happen, and sometimes it's great,...