Read my Who's News column this week and you will find out what kind of car it is that Simon Baker's Patrick Jane drives on CBS' The Mentalist. Hint: It had a previous life in the 2008 movie Speed Racer. No, I'm not going to give it away here. Click to the column where a reader's curiosity is satisfied.
Once there, you'll also read:
• For the second time about NCIS' Cote de Pablo (we featured her two years ago as well). I get questions about all the NCIS cast members, but this year there seems to be an explosion of interest in de Pablo and her castmate, Pauley Perrette, who plays the overly tattooed brilliant scientist. (Perrette, too, has been featured before.)
• The anti-Jon & Kate. Meet a happier couple raising sextuplets, Jenny and Bryan Masche. They are on the WE channel and those are their kids, left. I love Jenny's quote: "Our biggest thing is you cannot quit real life." Right. Particularly if you are on a reality show!
• Oprah's BFF Gayle King. Gayle is editor-at-large of O Magazine and has been doing publicity for the magazine's fifth compilation of the year's best articles. This year the book is called Dream Big.
• Emily Procter and Matt Bomer, two sexy young crime show actors. I wrote about White Collar's Bomer earlier in the week; Brian Truitt, who interviewed CSI: Miami's Procter, will give us more from that interview in Monday's blog.
Don't forget you can leave me your questions on newsmakers and celebrities right here.
Today's talk about Oprah Winfrey's decision to wrap up her syndicated talk show in 2011 is bringing back memories of a conversation I had with her 11 years ago on that very topic. We were in her elegant but modest office at Harpo Studios in Chicago, steps away from where her shows are taped, and though she was game to talk about anything, it was her coming movie Beloved most on her mind. She confessed that when she went to Philadelphia to shoot that movie in 1997 — she produced and starred as a haunted former slave — she had decided to quit the talk show. She was tired of talk, she told me, and wanted to focus on films. But midway through the three-month shoot she had an epiphany. After an agonizing scene with her co-star Danny Glover, she said, "I thought, 'How dare
I think that I could be tired? Who am I to even say the words 'I am
tired'? I thought, 'You come from a people with no voice, no money, no
power, no vision, no vehicle for themselves and their children. You've
been given this.' " So she decided to continue and it was that fall of 1998 that she abandoned the sensational and announced her new TV mission — helping people improve their lives.
In that same interview, she said something I remember often: "Everything is about imagery. We're people who respond
to imagery. You need to see something different so you can feel
something different." Oprah is more of a national institution now than she was that summer she decided that she was meant to use her voice and vision on television. She has spent all of her adult life on TV. And while I understand that — as she said — "it feels right in my bones and it feels right in my spirit," to wrap it up after 25 years, the woman now has her own network. I think it's a pretty safe bet that she'll be back.
Photo courtesy of Harpo
Small-screen funnyman Joel McHale celebrates his 38th birthday today. He pulls double duty on a weekly basis, starring on NBC's freshman sitcom Community and hosting the E! network's The Soup. Bo Derek, who may forever be remembered as the beach babe with cornrows in the 1979 movie 10, turns 53. Sean Young, of Blade Runner and No Way Out fame, is 50. Stargate Universe's Ming-Na is 46, AFI singer Davey Havok turns 34, and former New York Jet sack machine Mark Gastineau is 53 today.
The Twilight sequel New Moon finally arrives in theaters at midnight tonight, which is apropos considering all the vampires and werewolves running around. Of course, a few monsters won’t keep the Twilight faithful who adore the romance in Stephenie Meyer’s book series from storming cineplexes this weekend. Our Brian Truitt (who wrote our recent vampires cover story featuring an interview with star Robert Pattinson) went to a packed screening last night for the sequel, and came back suitably impressed. Read below for his review, and check out a clip from New Moon featuring Pattinson.
Photos courtesy of Summit Entertainment
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Interview veteran Larry King, who recently suffered an awkward moment with former Miss California Carrie Prejean on his live CNN show last week, celebrates his 76th birthday today. (Watch a video of the trainwreck below.) Oscar winner Jodie Foster, who voiced Maggie Simpson in an episode of The Simpsons earlier this year, is 47. Her next project is one she's directing, The Beaver, starring Mel Gibson and Star Trek's Anton Yelchin. Screen sweetheart Meg Ryan, who stars in the holiday comedy Serious Moonlight with Timothy Hutton and Kristen Bell, turns 48. And media mogul Ted Turner is 71.
Owen Wilson celebrates his 41st birthday today. The actor has bounced back from a suicide attempt two years ago to star in the recent comedies Marley & Me (with Jennifer Aniston) and Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (opposite Ben Stiller). You can hear him these days as a voice in Wes Anderson's animated Fantastic Mr. Fox, in theaters now. New York fashionista Chloe Sevigny, now starring on HBO’s Big Love, turns 35; while Peta Wilson, best known for her TV role as Nikita in the show La Femme Nikita, is 39.
Grammy-winning jazz singer Diana Krall celebrates her 45th birthday. The wife of British rocker Elvis Costello recently released her latest, Quiet Nights, but if you're in the mood for some yuletide cheer this holiday season, check out her 2005 Christmas Songs disc. Emmy-winning CSI staple Marg Helgenberger turns 51. Cosby girl Lisa Bonet, who is also ex-wife to rocker Lenny Kravitz, turns 42. Martha Plimpton, a veteran of '80s films such as The Goonies and Parenthood, is 39. The acclaimed Broadway star will play opposite Twilight's Robert Pattinson in the upcoming Remember Me. And figure skating legend Oksana Baiul celebrates her 33rd birthday. (Look for a cameo from her in Will Ferrell’s 2007 skating comedy Blades of Glory.)
With all the recent cancellations of shows — Southland, Eastwick, Dollhouse — it’s time for some good news to come from TV-land. One of the favorite shows among our staffers is Chuck, the NBC action comedy starring Zachary Levi as a mild-mannered nerd-turned-spy. It just avoided the Grim Reaper last spring to be picked up for its third season, and is tentatively scheduled to come back in March. Not so fast, though, because there’s a rumor that Chuck may return as early as January. Our Brian Truitt caught up with Levi yesterday for a feature in the magazine next month pegged to his upcoming role in Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, and wanted to get the early premiere scoop from Chuck himself. “Yeah, that’s a pretty solid rumor,” Levi says, taking a break from the editing bay after wrapping an episode of Chuck that he directed (which will be the ninth of the next season). Read below for more of what Brian found out from Levi, including some hints about Chuck’s upcoming season.
Photos courtesy of NBC
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In this week's issue, we're spotlighting two longtime TV actors and their newest projects on the small screen. First, we talk with George Lopez, the popular standup comedian and star of The George Lopez Show, about his new Lopez Tonight talk show airing on TBS Mondays through Thursdays on late night. It started this past Monday (watch a clip of him and Ellen DeGeneres below), and in the feature, Lopez chats about how his show is different from the likes of David Letterman's and Jay Leno's, and what it's like playing golf with Clint Eastwood. Also, we tracked down former St. Elsewhere star Ed Begley Jr. about his latest passion: the environment. You can see him with wife Rachelle Carson on the Planet Green channel's Living with Ed, but just for our readers, the author of Ed Begley Jr.'s Guide to Sustainable Living gives some of his best tips on how to live eco-friendly and "off the grid."
Photo by Gavin Bond
Tony Shalhoub is one of the nicest men in Hollywood. He’s always been good to me and my Who’s News readers; saying yes to my many interview requests over the years. We talked for this week's column about his leaving Monk, his USA Network series. "I don’t know if the fans know how much we appreciate them," he says, and he explains that it
wasn’t easy to decide it was time to go. "So much is about timing," he tells me. So true.
Rocky Carroll is the only actor on two top hit shows — NCIS and NCIS: Los Angeles — but do
you think he and the family watch them at home?
No. They watch Dancing With The Stars. That's OK, Carroll tells us,"enough other people are watching." No kidding. Like 20 million of them.
Gladys Knight amazes me. The first time I met her was a million
years ago in a studio where she was rehearsing for a Super Bowl half-time appearance. This time we talk music, retirement and great grandkids – she has 3 greats, 17 grands (as she calls them), and she keeps track of 'em all.
Also this week, Paul Walker, of Fast and Furious fame, swims with
sharks. Well, OK, maybe not swims, but he does tag and lift and do everything any deckhand does in the National Geographic Channel's new documentary Great White Expedition airing Monday. Walker tells us he studied marine biology and "I hoped and prayed one day there would be a crossroads." So, some prayers DO get answered.
