"ER" is adding star power for its final season. Angela Bassett will join the cast of the medical drama as a regular in the fall, the first full-time series gig for the Oscar-nominated star of "What's Love Got to Do With It."
Bassett will play a troubled physician who's coming back to Chicago after a few years in Indonesia doing tsunami relief. Her arrival in the second episode promises to shake County General's ER to the core.
Read more: Reuters
Television network NBC on Thursday dismissed speculation that O.J. Simpson, who was acquitted in 1995 of murdering his ex-wife, would appear on an upcoming version of its reality TV program, "The Apprentice."
"NBC representatives have never considered O.J. Simpson for the next season of 'The Apprentice,' nor will," NBC spokesperson Amanda Ruisi said.
Media reports this week have speculated that business mogul Donald Trump, who is the show's host and executive producer, had been approached by Simpson to participate in a new season of the show in which contestants compete against each other in a series of business endeavors.
Read more: Reuters UK
Warner Bros. Television Group is launching a series of initiatives in conjunction with Essence magazine, the companies said Monday, with an aim to make its Web site the top destination for black women and to take its content to television.
In the first step of the partnership, Essence.com will relaunch in the summer in collaboration with WBTVG's Telepictures Prods. The site will have news, video and community features focused on black women, with updates throughout the day.
Read more: The Hollywood Reporter
Wendy Williams, whose bold personality and unvarnished opinions have made her an institution on radio, will launch her long-awaited television talk show July 14 on Fox. .
The hour-long daily show is scheduled for a six-week run and will feature Williams interviewing prominent guests.
Airing in the daytime in a yet-unspecified time slot, it is being coproduced by Debmar-Mercury and Fox television stations.
Initially it will be seen in four cities: New York (Ch. 5), Los Angeles, Dallas and Detroit.
Read more: Daily News
Thirty-seven floors above Los Angeles, in a suite overlooking downtown, two half-naked actors struggle through a delicate scene. Paz Vega (Spanglish), wearing only a man’s V-neck and fuzzy slippers, tries to lure a bare-chested, presumably postcoital Jason Clarke (Showtime’s Brotherhood) away from his laptop. Suddenly, into this intimate moment charges Jada Pinkett Smith. With a tank top revealing her sculpted shoulders, the actress’s beauty easily rivals Vega’s, but Pinkett Smith is not here to play the other woman.
“Cut, cut, cut,” she barks. “When you come in, it should be like this.” She demonstrates a coquettish little sashay for Vega. The Human Contract, which stars Clarke as Julian Wright, a troubled executive who falls for an enigmatic free spirit, marks Pinkett Smith’s screenwriting and directorial debut. It may surprise some to see the actress step behind the camera—especially after strong performances in Collateral and Reign Over Me—but Pinkett Smith insists she made the transition out of necessity.
“I lost interest in acting because the roles and the stories were just not there,” she explains. “And that’s not just for Black women. It’s across the board.” It took her three-plus years of agonizing over plot and character, but Pinkett Smith eventually penned Contract, a dark, psychological drama she describes as a “coming-of-age story for a middle-aged guy.” At first she thought to take on the role of the seductive Michael Reed (played by Vega), but in the end, she decided the only way to deliver her vision intact was to direct the movie herself. She found the learning curve steep but ultimately invigorating. “I really feel excited about a craft again,” says Pinkett Smith. Contract’s stars sense her energy. For them, their director’s helming style is unobtrusive, but “she’s there when you need a firm hand,” says Clarke. Like at this moment when, after coaching Vega further on her sexy shimmy, Pinkett Smith trains her analytical eye on her male lead. Julian is rebuffing Michael’s advances rather harshly. “Still too grumpy?” asks Clarke. “We’re getting there,” assures Pinkett Smith with a laugh.
Source: Essence
Major League Baseball received its best grade for racial diversity in hiring, even as the percentage of black players dropped again last year.
MLB received its first A- for race Tuesday from Richard Lapchick, director of the University of Central Florida's Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports. Its grade was B+ in last year's study.
Among major leaguers, though, just 8.2 percent were black players, down from 8.4 percent in 2006 and the lowest level in at least two decades. The percentage of black pitchers remained at 3 percent.
"Baseball has probably lost a whole generation here," Lapchick said. "African-Americans just aren't playing it at this point. They're going to have to increase their efforts."
Although MLB has established its Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities program and urban youth academies, Lapchick said it will take many years for those efforts to pay off.
Read more: The Associated Press
The former football and baseball player Deion Sanders is blessed with a charm that leaks through the armor of his arrogance. Back in the early 1990s, when he was proving himself one of the greatest athletes in living memory, playing cornerback for the Atlanta Falcons and outfield for the Braves, Mr. Sanders responded to the critical comments of the baseball announcer Tim McCarver by dousing him with ice water. Still, the athlete’s status as a dazzler, a fun lover, a guy with whom you’d love to share a Coors Light or six, suffered no lasting fracture.
When the cameras show up, Mr. Sanders knows how to beguile. Seeing him on his new reality series, “Deion & Pilar: Prime Time Love,” (which begins Tuesday on the Oxygen channel), traveling through his mansion on a motorized scooter, like an 82-year-old navigating O’Hare, seems only to confirm his particularly entitled brand of genius.
“Prime Time Love” is the latest in a long list of reality shows that tries to tap into the wifely grievances of women across the class spectrum who can’t stop shaking their heads in disbelief at their husbands’ domestic inadequacies. It is a short distance from an Erma Bombeck column to something like “Snoop Dogg’s Father Hood,” which showcases the rapper’s suburban lollygagging and spousal disobedience.
Living on a hundred plus acres in the suitably named Prosper, Tex., Mr. Sanders and his wife, Pilar, a former model-actress, argue about chores and child rearing. In him you are meant to see your own lovable lug, but the conceit is a total canard. While your husband may not be able to tell the difference between a box of Cascade and a box of cake flour, he also hasn’t put you up in a 40,000-square-foot house with a video arcade and a marital bed that looks like a large pie.
Read more: The New York Times
Washington D.C.-based Black Television News Channel (BTNC) announced Tuesday it has reached a multi-year carriage agreement with Comcast Cable for distribution in several of the MSO’s urban-based systems beginning in 2009.
The network, created by former U.S. congressman J.C. Watts Jr., will launch in 2009 and will provide original news programming with a distinctively African-American perspective, according to a network press release.
The network would be the first cable service to offer 24-hour news targeted to African-Americans. Prior attempts to launch a full-time news channel have failed, mostly due to the high cost of developing news. Neither African-American targeted Black Entertainment Television nor TV One offer daily news shows, instead relying on short news briefs throughout the day.
“Our unique and vast content partnerships with African American newsmakers will provide our viewers live access to the stories and people in whom our viewers have a special interest,” said Watts in a statement. “With this agreement, Comcast continues to demonstrate its commitment to working with independent programmers with diverse points of view.”
Comcast representatives could not be reached for comment at press time.
Source: Multichannel News
Remember a few months ago when there were rumors about Jay-Z looking for a $100-million contract to start a new label, and many in the music industry snickered at the possibility of anyone paying that?
So-called "experts" were talking about how Jay, 38, was too old to command such a price, pointing out how his recent American Gangster album only went platinum, despite being critically acclaimed. They crowed that the days of the massive music contracts were over, because struggling music sales mean that artists can't command those prices any more. They jeered that such demands from Jay were 10 years too late.
Well, who's laughing now, chumps?
Word leaked out earlier this month that Hova will get $150 million U.S. from Live Nation for a 10-year partnership for all of his music-related businesses and possibly a piece of other new ventures.
Read more: Ottawa Citizen
The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy pupil who suffered a mental meltdown in her first term at the school has lost her status as one of the talkshow host's "bright-eyed wonders".
The 13-year-old girl is believed to have been expelled this week following a spell in Tara hospital.
And experts warn that if the school doesn't improve its support structures to help the girls, taking into account that their disadvantaged backgrounds were precisely the reason why they were chosen to attend the prestigious school, they could find themselves forced to expel more pupils.
"The academy has made it clear that it wishes to assist young women who come from disadvantaged circumstances," said a child psychologist who did not want to be named.
"[The girls] may have also suffered quite profound trauma in their lives. One hopes the school is fully equipped to deal with that."
The girl was yesterday due to leave Tara, where she has spent the past eight weeks receiving psychiatric treatment, and return to her home in an impoverished rural area.
Identified by her former school as a top achiever, she was sent to Tara by staff after she began "self-harming" and became increasingly disruptive.
Read more: The Star
