Angelique Jackson Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Angelique Jackson Veteran communications executive Claudia Russo has joined United Talent Agency (UTA) as SVP of corporate communications. Russo joins the global talent, entertainment, sports and marketing company from Verizon Business Markets and previously spent 15 years at Fox Television Stations. She begins in her new role immediately and will relocate to Los Angeles from New York this summer. “As our business continues to grow in size, influence and complexity, Claudia’s deep knowledge and experience with both media relations and investor relations will help us continue to elevate our game as we tell UTA’s story on a global stage,” UTA chief communication officer Richard Siklos, announcing Russo’s hiring.

Angelique Jackson John Cena, Awkwafina and Simu Liu are set to star in the action-comedy “Grand Death Lotto” for Prime Video. Paul Feig will produce and direct the film from a script by Rob Yescombe (“Outside the Wire”). “Grand Death Lotto” is set in the very near future, where a competition known as “the Grand Lottery” has been established in “economically challenged California.” But, as the film’s official logline explains, there’s a catch: “Kill the winner before sundown and you can legally claim their prize.” The logline continues: “New LA transplant Katie (Awkwafina) accidentally finds herself with the winning ticket and must join forces with amateur jackpot protector Noel (Cena) to make it to sundown in order to claim her multi-billion dollar prize, all while dealing with Noel’s protection rival Louis Lewis (Liu), who also wants to get her to sundown in order to claim his rich protection commission.”

Angelique Jackson When Jonathan Majors was recently profiled by The Cut, he revealed that after playing physical roles in “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” plus the upcoming “Creed III” and “Magazine Dreams,” he wants to star in a romantic comedy. During the conversation (and his subsequent Ebony magazine cover), Majors shared a few of his favorite romantic films, including “The Notebook,” “Love Jones,” “Blue Valentine” and “Love & Basketball.” He also claimed to “fall in love every day,” telling the reporter, “Life is so beautiful. Love is everywhere.” After appearing as a presenter at the NAACP Image Awards on Saturday night alongside “Insecure” creator and star Issa Rae, Majors’ fans are clamoring to make his rom-com dreams come true sooner rather than later.

NAACP Image Awards on Saturday evening. “The Woman King” director penned an essay in The Hollywood Reporter after her historical drama found itself completely shut out of the Academy Awards, despite landing several precursor noms across other awards bodies and craft institutions. Prince-Bythewood called the season “an eye-opener” and that “the Academy made a very loud statement, and for me to stay quiet is to accept that statement.” “We know the issues exist, but they felt amplified this year,” Prince-Bythewood told Variety senior entertainment writer Angelique Jackson on the red carpet, discussing her essay. “The responses have been really amazing. The number of people that have reached out and sharing it — whole companies are sharing it — and then going to the BAFTAs and having people reference it as well, there’s no denying some of the things I put in and people were able to see firsthand what happened.”

J. Kim Murphy Angela Bassett has simply done the thing once again. After being name-dropped by Ariana DeBose in a rap that opened the BAFTA Film Awards, the “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” star tells Variety that she reached out to DeBose in the aftermath to check in on her. “I DM’d her last night. I did. It was beautiful,” Bassett told Variety senior entertainment writer Angelique Jackson on the red carpet at the NAACP Image Awards on Saturday evening. “I just wanted to make sure she was okay because, you know, it’s a lot of attention. And she is A-Okay.”Angela Bassett DM'd Ariana DeBose. "I just wanted to make sure she was okay, because it's a lot of attention." https://t.co/JAcEviI0Qj pic.twitter.com/anzVhOZ0cc Bassett’s mention was one of the catchier lyrics in DeBose’s opener. DeBose, who won last year’s BAFTA and Academy Award for best supporting actress for her performance in “West Side Story,” kicked off the British Academy Film Awards on Feb. 19 with a rap that name-dropped several of the evening’s nominees, including directors honored in debut feature and women competing in both the lead actress and supporting actress categories. The production also featured renditions of “Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves” and “We Are Family.”

Angelique Jackson Marvel fans will have to wait just a little longer to go “Higher. Further.

Angelique Jackson Baseball fans are getting a first look at “Reggie,” a new documentary which chronicles the life and career of MLB Hall of Fame player Reggie Jackson. Described as the “definitive, first-hand account of the five-time World Series Champion, beloved New York icon and one of baseball’s most influential superstars,” “Reggie” will premiere March 24 on Prime Video. Directed by Emmy-winning filmmaker Alexandria Stapleton (“Shut Up and Dribble” and FX’s “Pride”), the documentary chronicles the ’70s sports megastar’s story, in his own words, as he contemplates his legacy as a “trailblazing Black athlete fighting for dignity, respect and a seat at the table.”

Angelique Jackson The 2023 American Black Film Festival (ABFF) Honors is set to recognize Kerry Washington, Courtney B. Vance, Charles D. King and Janelle Monáe with special honors during the annual award ceremony saluting excellence in the motion picture and television industry. Washington, an Emmy winner and SAG and Golden Globe-nominated actor, director and producer, will be presented with the Excellence in the Arts Award (Female), while two-time Emmy winner Vance will accept the award for Excellence in the Arts (Male). MACRO founder and CEO King will be presented the Industry Leadership Award, while eight-time Grammy-nominated artist, producer and actor Monáe receives the Renaissance Award. Kasi Lemmons’ 1997 drama “Eve’s Bayou” will be honored with the Classic Cinema Award.

Nominations for the 60th annual International Cinematographers Guild’s Publicists Awards were announced today honoring individual publicists, unit still photographers and entertainment journalists. Winners will be revealed at an awards luncheon on March 10, 2023, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. The announcement was made by Tim Menke and Sheryl Main, ICG Publicists Awards Chairs.

Angelique Jackson Tina Mabry’s “The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat” has rounded out its cast with the addition of Kyanna Simone (“American Horror Stories”), Tati Gabrielle (“You”), Abigail Achiri (“The Underground Railroad”), Julian McMahon (“FBI: Most Wanted”, “Nip/Tuck”), Vondie Curtis-Hall (“Blue Bayou”) and Tony Winters (“National Champions”) as Big Earl. Uzo Aduba, Aunjanue Ellis and Sanaa Lathan lead the movie, based on Edward Kelsey Moore’s 2013 bestselling novel, playing best friends affectionally dubbed “The Supremes.” According to the film’s synopsis, the trio — Clarice, Odette and Barbara Jean — “have weathered life’s storms together for two generations through marriage and children, happiness and the blues,” and they “find their paths at a crossroads that test their lifelong bond.” Simone, Gabrielle and Achiri will play younger versions of Ellis, Lathan and Aduba’s characters, respectively.

Michaela Zee editor As the “Halloween” franchise comes to a conclusion with “Halloween Ends,” director David Gordon Green is ready to reintroduce another horror classic on screen: “The Exorcist.” “We start in a couple of weeks, and we’re ready to roll up our sleeves and dive into the next great franchise,” Green told Variety senior entertainment writer Angelique Jackson at the “Halloween Ends” premiere Tuesday night. “We’ve got an amazing cast coming together and scripts we’re all excited about.” Universal spent $400 million on the forthcoming “Exorcist” trilogy, produced by Blumhouse, with Ellen Burstyn set to reprise her role as Chris MacNeil, the mother who hired two Catholic priests to perform an exorcism on her demonically possessed 12-year-old (Linda Blair) in the 1973 original movie.

Angelique Jackson When Oscar-winner Diane Keaton accepted the Brass Ring Award at the 2022 Carousel of Hope Ball on Sunday night, she dedicated her speech to the event’s chair, Barbara Davis, highlighting Davis’ work toward finding a cure for type 1 diabetes and the state-of-the-art center she founded, which treats more than 7,500 patients a year. “I just want to honor one amazing, fearless, generous woman for spending much of her life championing an incredible cause,” Keaton said, pointing Davis out in the center of the Beverly Hilton Hotel ballroom. “I am surprised and humbled to be the recipient of this important award which represents a very urgent and universal cause in the world today.”

Angelique Jackson Robert Eggers’ long-awaited “Nosferatu” is starting to take shape, with Bill Skarsgard in talks to play the title character with Lily-Rose Depp as his co-star. Eggers is set to write, direct and produce the new imagining, which follows the gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman (Depp) in 19th century Germany and the ancient Transylvanian vampire (Skarsgard) who stalks her, bringing untold horror with him.

Angelique Jackson Jonathan Majors is in early talks to play Dennis Rodman in the upcoming Lionsgate movie about the basketball star’s infamous trip to Vegas during the 1998 NBA finals. News of Majors’ interest in the project comes amid a busy stretch for the Emmy-nominated actor, with the Korean War-set pic “Devotion” set to debut in November, his highly-anticipated feature debut in Marvel Cinematic Universe with “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” out in February, followed by “Creed III” in March.

William Earl The “On the Carpet” pre-show powered by DIRECTV at Variety Power of Women presented by Lifetime will be livestreamed on Variety.com and Variety’s Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages starting at 6:45 p.m. PT on Sept. 28. The red carpet will feature this year’s honorees: Ava DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey, Chelsea and Hillary Clinton, Malala and Elizabeth Olsen. Presenters include Kathryn Hahn, Sandra Oh, Quinta Brunson and Diane Guerrero. Halsey will give a special musical performance to kick-off the night. Variety senior entertainment writer Angelique Jackson and senior TV features editor Emily Longeretta will host the carpet with commentary provided by senior culture and events editor Marc Malkin and senior correspondent Elizabeth Wagmeister, live from the Variety HQ Studio.

Angelique Jackson In Amazon Prime Video’s “The Idea of You,” Academy Award winner Anne Hathaway stars as a divorced mother who sparks a passionate love affair with a pop star she meets after taking her daughter to a music festival. And now, the object of her on-screen desire has been cast. Nicholas Galitzine will play Hayes Campbell — the 24-year-old lead singer of the “hottest boy band on the planet,” August Moon — who has been speculated by fans of Robinne Lee’s bestselling debut novel to be inspired by Harry Styles. The film follows Hathaway’s Sophie, who saves the day after her ex-husband Dan (who left her for a younger woman) cancels his Coachella trip with their 15-year-old daughter. When she decides to brave the crowds and desert heat to take her daughter to the music festival, Sophie meets Hayes (Galitzine), and the 40-year-old’s life really heats up.

BreAnna Bell Variety received three Eddie & Ozzie Awards for editorial design excellence on the evening of Sept. 13. Presented by Folio, the winners and special mentions were announced at this year’s gala event at the City Winery New York. The publication took home the Eddie award for website in the business-to-business category. Honorable mentions for the category included SevenFifty Daily, Fierce Pharma and strategy+business. Variety also won the Ozzie award for best photography, business-to-business, for its 2021 Power of Women cover featuring “I May Destroy You” creator Michaela Coel. The cover story, written by senior entertainment writer Angelique Jackson, followed Coel’s shift in focus to new stories following the success of the HBO limited series. Coel won an Emmy award in the category of writing for a limited series for the show in 2021.

BreAnna Bell Tracee Ellis Ross is busier than ever despite closing the chapter on “Black-ish.” The actor, producer, entrepreneur and CEO’s focus has turned toward a list of projects including the Hulu/ OWN/ Onyx Collective docuseries “Hair Tales” (which she’s producing through her production company Joy Mill Entertainment), voicing the lead character in MTV’s animated Daria-spinoff movie “Jodie” and launching the podcast “I Am America.” In addition, she’s celebrating the three-year anniversary of her hair care company Pattern Beauty. During her keynote conversation at Variety’s Entertainment and Technology Summit presented by City National Bank, Ross explained how she keeps all these different pursuits in “harmony.”

Angelique Jackson Mindy Kaling is known for her creating groundbreaking content — including the hit Netflix comedy “Never Have I Ever,” HBO’s “Sex Life of College Girls” and “The Mindy Project,” plus serving as a producer on the Broadway musical “A Strange Loop” — and now her efforts are being recognized the USC’s School of Dramatic Arts (SDA). The Tony Award-winning producer, Emmy-nominated writer, actor and NYT bestselling author will receive the Multi-Hyphenate Award on Sat., Sept. 17 at the kickoff event for the school’s series of Multi-Hyphenate Masterclasses, 10 co-curricular weekend intensives designed to support the next generation of storytellers on their path to become “media-agile, multi-hyphenate dramatic artists.”

Angelique Jackson Thanks to a successful launch at the Toronto International Film Festival, the Sanaa Lathan-directed movie “On the Come Up” has nabbed a day-and-date theatrical release from Paramount. Initially set to launch exclusively on Paramount+ on Friday, Sept. 23, the studio announced Monday that the film will now also be released in limited theaters across the top 50 market. The movie marks the feature directorial debut from Lathan, who pulls double duty on the project, co-starring in the film as Jayda “Jay” Jackson, mother to the story’s central character Bri (newcomer Jamila C. Gray, who Lathan hand-picked out of more than 200 audition tapes).

Wilson Chapman editor Next year, Nicolas Cage will be portraying the world’s most famous vampire Dracula in “Renfield,” a horror comedy about the count’s lovestruck familiar. And while the role has been portrayed in film by hundreds of actors over the years — from Bela Lugosi to Gary Oldman — the idiosyncratic actor is set to leave his own unique mark on the horror legend. During an interview to promote his western drama “Butcher’s Crossing,” Cage spoke in the Variety TIFF Studio, presented by King’s Hawaiian, about developing his own take on the iconic Transylvanian accent of the vampiric count. Specifically, he revealed he took inspiration from Christopher Lee’s famous portrayals of the character while adding other elements to the part — including his own father, academic August Coppola.

Angelique Jackson “The world belongs to the weird,” so says the tagline for “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story,” but the wee hours of Friday morning belonged to Daniel Radcliffe as the comedy made its world premiere as the clock struck midnight at the Toronto International Film Festival. Radclifffe stars as the beloved parody musician in the upcoming Roku original film, which made its world premiere at the Royal Alexandra Theatre, kicking off TIFF’s Midnight Madness programming lineup. It was a full house at the theater and the crowd ate up every second of the parody biopic, cheering loudly for every surprise cameo (of which there were many) at the first “backstory” behind Yankovic’s biggest hits from “My Bologna” to “Eat It.” Some of the most raucous applause was saved for the Radcliffe-fronted rendition of “Amish Paradise.”

Thania Garcia Surprise! BTS’ “Permission to Dance on Stage” Los Angeles concert is now available to stream on Disney+ worldwide. The streaming service is kicking off their annual Disney+ Day by unveiling the BTS concert film, which showcases the boy band’s string of shows at SoFi Stadium in late 2021, where the group took over for a four-night run. The concert film, produced by HYBE and directed by Sam Wrench and Junsoo Park, is said to be “stage-focused” and includes performances of the group’s biggest hits like “Dynamite,” “Butter” and “Permission to Dance.” Tickets for BTS’ mini-residency at SoFi Stadium sold out immediately for all four nights and notched a historic boxscore total that, according to the Billboard Boxscore, was the largest gross for a run of shows at a single venue since 2012.

Angelique Jackson When “Queen Sugar” star Dawn-Lyen Gardner’s Charley Bordelon was missing from the trailer and key art for Season 7 of the OWN drama series, fans questioned where the middle Bordelon sibling had gone. When the footage debuted, Variety reported that Gardner would not be a series regular for the final season’s 13 episodes, noting that at the end of Season 6, the character made her reconciliation with estranged husband Davis (Timon Kyle Durrett) more official, accepting his remarriage proposal and planning to move back to Los Angeles. With the primary action of Season 7 taking place in the fictional Louisiana parish of St. Josephine, Charley’s storyline would instead be tracked in a number of episodes across the season.

Angelique Jackson When “The Woman King” star Lashana Lynch began training to play Izogie, a warrior in the Agojie, an all-female fighting force that defended the African kingdom of Dahomey in the 19th century, she was in the middle of filming “Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical,” where she stars as Matilda’s kindhearted teacher, Miss Honey. “It was such a juxtaposition,” Lynch says about embodying both characters simultaneously. “There were little conversations about Miss Honey becoming really muscly.” The preparation for “The Woman King” was some of the most intense work she’d ever done — she’s had roles in both the latest James Bond movie, “No Time to Die” (in which she played the first female 007), and the Marvel Cinematic Universe (“Captain Marvel”) — but her growing biceps ended up being the least of the “Matilda” production’s concerns.

Angelique Jackson When “Trees of Peace,” a drama set during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, surged into the top 10 English-language films on Netflix in June, some may have been amazed that a low-budget, albeit critically acclaimed indie was among the most-watched movies of the week. But executive producer Nicole Avant (“The Black Godfather”) wasn’t among them. “It was incredible. I was surprised how quickly it got so much attention, but I wasn’t surprised,” Avant tells Variety about learning that the film racked up more than 9.3 million hours viewed in those first few days. To Avant, the numbers indicated that audiences was ready for and interested in stories like this, despite its heavy subject matter.

Angelique Jackson Antonio Fargas (“Starsky and Hutch”) and Stephanie Sigman (“Miss Bala”) have joined star Mike Colter in Tubi’s ‘Murder City,’ the second movie filmed under Village Roadshow Pictures’ Black Noir Cinema franchise, co-founded by NBA great Kevin Garnett. Last December, Variety exclusively announced “Murder City” as one of the first films slated for Black Noir Cinema, a lineup of genre movies developed and produced by Village Roadshow and Tubi, which will exclusively debut on the Fox-owned free streaming platform. Described as a “thrilling contemporary crime story,” the film follows Neil (Colter), a disgraced former cop, who after losing his job on the police force is forced to work with the city’s most notorious — and ruthless — kingpin, Ash (Sigman), to settle the debts of his estranged, deadbeat father, Graham (Fargas), and protect his wife and son.

Angelique Jackson Beauty entrepreneur Nyakio Grieco has signed with CAA for representation. Grieco is the founder of the clean skincare brand Relevant: Your Skin Seen and co-founder of the beauty e-commerce destination Thirteen Lune. Grieco has spent more than 20 years in the beauty business, launching the award-winning eponymous brand nyakio™, based on her family’s Kenyan beauty secrets, in 2002. Thirteen Lune, a first-of-its-kind e-commerce destination designed to inspire the discovery of beauty brands, debuted in 2020, co-founded by Grieco and Patrick Herning. Among Grieco’s other professional partners are activist and film producer Nicole Avant and Oscar-winning actor and Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow.

Angelique Jackson When Brian Tyree Henry punched his ticket for Sony’s “Bullet Train,” he instantly realized that this movie would be a ride unlike any other.The film follows Brad Pitt’s unlucky assassin, codenamed “Ladybug” as he aims to complete a snatch-and-grab job that goes completely off the rails as he fights off an ever-growing number of fellow assassins with their own agendas.“I really had not seen a story like this in quite some time, with such crazy characters in such crazy circumstances, all trying to kill each other on a train,” Henry told Variety over Zoom in late July, shortly before the movie’s debut. “I had always dreamt of being a part of something like that.”The ensemble cast is populated with mysterious and nefarious characters, including his “Atlanta” co-star Zazie Beetz as “The Hornet” and Bad Bunny as “The Wolf.” Henry plays Lemon, a blonde-haired, British assassin who spends just as much time proselytizing about “Thomas the Tank Engine” as he does bashing people’s brains in.