Emmys 2021 predictions: who will win and who should win?

Will Ted Lasso sweep the comedy awards? Will it finally be I May Destroy You’s time? How will The Crown, with 24 nominations, fare?

Nominees: The Boys (Amazon), Bridgerton (Netflix), The Crown (Netflix), The Mandalorian (Disney+), Lovecraft Country (HBO), Pose (FX), The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu), This Is Us (NBC)

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Alanis Morissette criticises ‘salacious agenda’ of HBO film about her life

The singer has spoken about about Jagged, premiering at the Toronto film festival, for its ‘reductive take’ on her life

Alanis Morissette has spoken out against a new HBO documentary about her life and its “salacious agenda” as it premieres at the Toronto film festival.

The 47-year-old singer had agreed to be interviewed for the film Jagged but has released a statement to express disappointment in how her story has been told. She said she was interviewed “during a very vulnerable time” during her third postpartum depression amid lockdown.

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The Wire star Michael K Williams dies aged 54

The actor was best known for his role as Omar Little in the HBO series, and also starred in Boardwalk Empire

The actor Michael K Williams, best known for his role as Omar Little in The Wire, has died at the age of 54.

Confirming his death to the Hollywood Reporter, Williams’s representative said that it was “with deep sorrow that the family announces the passing of Emmy-nominated actor Michael Kenneth Williams. They ask for your privacy while grieving this unsurmountable loss.”

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Life, death and gabagool: how The Sopranos explains everything

Ahead of the release of prequel The Many Saints of Newark, a look at how David Chase’s classic mob drama saw the world in a grain of parmigiano

In 1999, a 40-year old Italian-American man started a course of therapy and created a new template for prestige television. The Sopranos, David Chase’s smash-hit TV series, was about the nasty inner workings of the DiMeo crime family. It was also about a mafioso’s midlife crisis, his children and his marriage, his debilitating anxiety and lurid nightmares.

Related: The Guide: Staying In – sign up for our home entertainment tips

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The D’Amelio Show: what do you do with TikTok fame?

The new reality show on Charli and Dixie D’Amelio attempts to transfer one kind of gargantuan fame into another with mixed results

“I get asked why I’m famous a lot,” says Charli D’Amelio, the most followed person on TikTok, early in the third episode of her family’s new Hulu reality show. Just two years ago, she was a high school sophomore in suburban Connecticut posting snippets of dances and jokes with friends to the app. Now 17, she has 123.6 million followers on the app; she and her sister Dixie, 20, are two of the most recognizable faces among Gen Z, superstars on the most culturally influential social media platform in the country right now.

Yet “I don’t consider myself famous,” she says. “I’m just a person that a lot of people follow for some reason. I think it was right place, right time. I think it was a vibe, maybe, that I give off.”

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Why is Spike Lee’s 9/11 docuseries so controversial?

His new HBO series has been re-edited after backlash over featuring 9/11 ‘truthers’ – but a thread of distrust remains

Spike Lee is no stranger to controversy, but pre-emption is new for him. His incendiary work has inspired scandals both righteous (Do the Right Thing frightened a complacent America with its vision of urban unrest) and regrettable (the Jewish club owners in Mo’ Better Blues attracted charges of antisemitism), and now, his new docuseries NYC Epicenters 9/11 —> 2021½ has landed him in the same hot water that never seems to cool.

Related: Two decades after 9/11, the real threat to the US is our own far right | Harsha Panduranga

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Ed Asner, who played Lou Grant in two hit shows, dies aged 91

  • Actor shone in The Mary Tyler Moore Show and spin-off
  • Spell as Screen Actors Guild president ended over liberal views

Ed Asner, a burly and prolific character actor who became a star in middle age as the gruff but lovable newsman Lou Grant, first in the hit comedy The Mary Tyler Moore Show and later in the drama Lou Grant, died on Sunday. He was 91.

Related: Ed Asner obituary

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More than Friends? Are David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston really dating?

The Friends reunion seemed pointless – until now. If it paved the way for Ross and Rachel to get together in real life, the world might explode with joy. So why do I have a sinking feeling?

Initially, this year’s Friends reunion didn’t exactly offer much in the way of entertainment. There was Justin Bieber dressed as a potato, and there was that meme about Matt LeBlanc looking like someone’s Irish uncle. Apart from that, the whole thing felt like an elaborate attempt to give James Corden even more air time.

But that was then. Because now that David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston are dating, the Friends reunion has become an important historical document and must be preserved for ever.

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Kitchen nightmares: do we need more celebrity cooking shows?

The release of Paris Hilton’s Netflix series where she semi-cooks semi-dishes is the latest in an increasing trend of stars spending more time in the kitchen

To state the obvious, nobody is going to watch Cooking With Paris to sharpen their culinary skills. The new Netflix series piggybacks on last year’s bizarre, almost Lynchian YouTube video where Paris Hilton cooked what can only be described an anti-lasagne, and stretches it out to a painful degree. In episode one, Hilton attempts to make marshmallows for Kim Kardashian and grunts with disgust when they make a mess of her lace gloves. In episode two, Hilton takes time out from making a funfetti flan to pose in the photo booth she installed in her living room. If you hang around long enough to find out what happens in episode three, you’re a braver soul than me.

Related: Cooking With Paris review – Hilton in the kitchen? Prepare to have your mind blown

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‘A malignant narcissist’: uncovering the dark side of John DeLorean

The defining car mogul’s ego and criminality are explored in the eye-opening new Netflix docuseries Myth & Mogul: John DeLorean

In Northern Ireland, many still revere the automotive magnate John DeLorean as a local hero for situating his car factory in Belfast at the height of the Troubles, a time of extreme economic deprivation during which the influx of jobs came as a godsend. Others – his family, his personal confidantes, his colleagues, the FBI officials responsible for his eventual arrest – remember the business tycoon as a greedy, flagrantly unethical megalomaniac. The new miniseries Myth & Mogul: John DeLorean triangulates the truth in hiding somewhere between these two characterizations.

Related: Myth & Mogul: John DeLorean review – how years of lies felled an automotive giant

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‘You are the worst human being’: man confronts Fox News host Tucker Carlson

In viral video, Instagram user Dan Bailey harangues primetime anchor at outdoor goods store in Montana

In a confrontation that swiftly went viral, a Montana man told Fox News host Tucker Carlson: “You are the worst human being known to mankind.”

Related: Michael Wolff: Murdoch hates Trump but loves Fox News money more

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Emily in Paris but no Small Axe? This year’s Emmys snubs and surprises

An exciting selection of newcomers can’t fully take away the sting of some egregious snubs, such as Steve McQueen’s acclaimed anthology series

I just have to point this out upfront: there is a chance that Emily in Paris is going to win an Emmy this year. Emily in Paris, for crying out loud. A show so mesmerisingly awful that, when it was nominated for a Golden Globe this year, it caused such a crisis that it almost permanently ended the Hollywood Foreign Press Association as an entity. At least that nomination could be racked up to good old-fashioned jury manipulation. But this one – an Emmy nomination for best comedy series, no less – can’t be written off so easily. Did … did people actually like Emily in Paris? If so, this is not a world I want to live in.

Related: Emmys 2021: The Crown and The Mandalorian lead nominations

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‘Republicans are defunding the police’: Fox News anchor stumps congressman

The Fox News anchor Chris Wallace made headlines of his own on Sunday, by pointing out to a senior Republican that he and the rest of his party recently voted against $350bn in funding for law enforcement.

Related: Keith Ellison urges Congress to act on stalled police reform after Chauvin sentencing

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‘It made my walk a little taller’: the inspiring LGBTQ legacy of Pose

As the groundbreaking show ends its award-winning three season run, those involved with the show talk about its importance for trans and queer people of color

Gold crowns inset with emeralds, fur-trimmed capes and gowns embellished with glittering diamonds and pearls clothed The House of Abundance as they made their last-minute entrance into a New York City ballroom and their first entrance on to our TV screens in the premiere episode of Pose in June 2018, which aired its final episode on Sunday.

Related: 'I binged Six Feet Under just for the gayness of it': LGBT celebs on their favourite queer TV

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Christina Hendricks: ‘We were critically acclaimed – and everyone wanted to ask me about my bra’

The star of Good Girls discusses Mad Men, sexual harassment and squaring her glamorous reputation with her ‘weird, goofy’ personality

Christina Hendricks appears on our video call with the most dramatic backdrop. Art deco gold peacocks bedeck a black wall, making her look, as she has so often in her career, a bit too good to be human. Perfectly poised, perfectly framed, perfectly lit, she is more like a dreamy vision of what humans look like. “I, erm, like your wall,” I say, pointlessly. She flashes a smile, as if to say: “Obviously.”

We are here primarily to discuss the comedy-drama series Good Girls, the fourth season of which will resume in the US this month after a midseason break. The elevator pitch would be Breaking Bad for girls: three suburban women, each hovering on the edge of bankruptcy, unite to embark on a life of cack-handed crime, only to discover they are good at it. The ensemble – Hendricks, Mae Whitman, who plays her sister, and Retta, their friend – works strikingly well, their pacey comic rapport instilling a sense of perpetual motion. You just can’t imagine Good Girls ending. Every time a plot line seems to be reaching its climax, something worse – and funnier – happens.

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Mare of Easttown finale review – Kate Winslet drama is a stunning, harrowing success

The actor’s turn as a complex, fallible detective has been a privilege to witness, in a murder mystery that kept us guessing right to the profoundly moving end

In interviews, Kate Winslet always said it wasn’t a thriller. And she was right. Yes, Mare of Easttown (Sky Atlantic) began with a murder in a small, bleak Pennsylvania town and Winslet’s police detective Mare Sheehan being called upon to investigate. But it was almost immediately clear that the seven-part drama was setting up to be so much more – and even clearer soon after that it was likely to succeed in all its endeavours.

It was a character study, of how a woman ground down by life after the loss of a son to drugs and suicide, the consequent divorce from her husband and raising of her grandson in the face of a custody battle with his mother (her son’s former girlfriend, rehabbed but fragile) endures.

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Ellen DeGeneres: toxic workplace allegations are ‘misogynistic’

In her first interview since announcing the end of her talkshow, the daytime star has called reports of behind-the-scenes bullying ‘orchestrated’

In her first on-air appearances since announcing the end of her eponymous daytime talk show, Ellen DeGeneres called the press cycle around allegations of toxicity at her workplace “orchestrated” and “misogynistic”, and elaborated on her reasons for stepping down after 19 years.

Related: The end of Ellen’s show signifies how celebrity culture has shifted | Adrian Horton

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Ellen DeGeneres to end TV show next year

The long-running daytime talkshow’s ratings have tanked recently following allegations of bullying and a toxic workplace

Ellen, the long-running daytime television chatshow hosted by Ellen DeGeneres will end next year, it was reported on Wednesday, after allegations of bullying by employees and a toxic workplace environment caused ratings to tank.

An official announcement by DeGeneres and Warner Brothers, which produces the show that has run for 18 seasons and more than 3,000 episodes, was expected on Wednesday afternoon, according to the Daily Mail website. The show was regarded, for many years, as a groundbreaking addition to daytime television as DeGeneres was one of only a handful of openly gay celebrities at the time.

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‘You’re toxic!’ Can TV shows survive when their star becomes a scandal?

From Jeffrey Tambor to Joss Whedon, high-profile accusations of improper behaviour are a minefield for TV makers – especially if the A-listers go rogue

In 2018, HBO breathlessly announced a brand-new drama from one of television’s most celebrated auteurs. The network was, it said, “honoured” to be providing a home for The Nevers, Joss Whedon’s long-awaited return to the small screen. A complex Victorian-era fantasy led by tormented female protagonists with supernatural powers, it had the Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator’s fingerprints all over it. Whedon would be writer, director and executive producer, and described his “odd, intimate epic” as “the most ambitious narrative” he had ever created.

Then, in November the same year, Whedon abruptly abandoned his passion project. He attributed his exit to tiredness (“I am genuinely exhausted, and am stepping back to marshal my energy towards my own life”). In a statement, HBO said: “We have parted ways with Joss Whedon. We remain excited about the future of The Nevers and look forward to its premiere.” But behind the scenes, a reputation-destroying storm appeared to be brewing. In July last year, the actor Ray Fisher claimed Whedon had been abusive while directing the blockbuster Justice League. Then he was accused of being “casually cruel” and perpetuating a “toxic” atmosphere on the Buffy set by the actors Charisma Carpenter and Amber Benson. Michelle Trachtenberg, who was 14 when she was cast as Buffy’s younger sister, claimed that Whedon was not allowed to be in a room alone with her. (In February, HBO’s chief content officer Casey Bloys said that the company had received “no complaints or no reports of inappropriate behaviour” against Whedon. Representatives for Whedon did not immediately respond when approached for comment for this piece.)

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It’s not just racism and sexism. The Golden Globes have been sunk by sheer stupidity

The preposterous Hollywood Foreign Press Association gravy train might have chugged on for ever if its members had just swallowed their pride and done more for diversity

An investigative report by the Los Angeles Times into the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, that notoriously rackety organisation which administers the Golden Globes, has shown an eminently corruptible body drenched in antediluvian attitudes; this has resulted in NBC cancelling its TV coverage of next year’s ceremony and Tom Cruise handing back the three Globes he has personally won over the years.

Related: Golden Globes backlash: Tom Cruise hands back awards and NBC drops broadcast

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