When Grosse Pointe ingenue Lindsay Sloane sees starlets modeling tube tops and thongs in horndog monthlies like Maxim, she thinks that "it's not even a step up from Playboy," she tells TV Guide Online. Yet in the current issue of Stuff, there she is, wearing a blouse that's so sheer, she could catch pneumonia in Maui. What gives?
"I'll do anything to save our show," she explains, "and that's an audience that wouldn't know about it except if you do the men's magazines and they see you in revealing clothes."
Unfortunately, Sloane's desperate action is called for — these are desperate times for the stage-door Beverly Hills, 90210 parody that casts her in (essentially) the Tori Spelling role. Though critics reacted to the sitcom as orgasmically as Stuff subscribers do to the glossy's layouts, audiences avoided even the series's February season finale as if it was Shannen Doherty before she's had her morn
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John McDaniel — The Rosie O'Donnell Show's giddy bandleader — has quietly emerged as a daytime heartthrob, thanks to those "magic fingers" of his.
"Oh stop!" McDaniel balks at the suggestion, letting loose his hearty, sugar-laced cackle. A music lover since age five and the proud owner of over 3,000 albums, O'Donnell's accompanist isn't one for straining his Yamaha's ebony and ivory keys. "The music is never meant to call attention to itself," he tells TV Guide Online. "It's only to support the company [of a show]."
At home, however, McDaniel's dinner guests often do call attention to themselves with their impromptu performances. Fortunately, his neighbors — who've become accustomed to his star-studded shenanigans — never really complain. "I have a big loft," he laughs. "Can you imagine someone yelling for that Carol Burnett to shut up?!"
O'Donnell's name will be noticeably absent from busy McDaniel's datebook once she departs
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The finale of Survivor: The Australian Outback wasn't the only major entertainment event that took place last Thursday night. On stage at Broadway's Neil Simon Theatre, The Music Man's departing star, Craig Bierko — en route to his dressing room to prepare for that evening's show (and an interview with TV Guide Online) — bumped into his successor as Professor Harold Hill, Will & Grace's Eric McCormack. On the surface, such an encounter would seem as riveting as, well, the first hour of the Survivor conclusion. But just one day earlier, the New York Post ran a scathing story alleging that McCormack refused to watch Bierko in the role because he "can't bear Craig" and "thinks he is just a dreadful actor."
Although McCormack denied any ill will — he told the Post that he has avoided Bierko's performances because it "would be more intimidating than helpful" — the s
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American High is proving to be quite an overachiever for PBS. Since being relaunched on the network last month, the acclaimed reality series — which got prematurely expelled by Fox back in August — has helped PBS post solid year-to-year gains on Wednesday nights among kids 12-17 (up 33 percent) and adults 18-24 (up 150 percent). What's more, traffic on PBS.org has reached an all-time high.
It should come as little surprise, then, that a follow-up is being discussed. But according to executive producer R.J. Cutler, don't expect American High: The College Years. "We would go into a second season in a new high school," he tells TV Guide Online. "We'll find a community that provides a natural contrast to the [suburban Chicago locale] we worked in for the first series."
Still, Cutler says that regardless of American High's setting, the show's basic themes will likely remain the same. "I believe we'll see that kids in South Central L.A. or i
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Los Angelenos are used to seeing just about anything on the freeway, but when Malcolm in the Middle's Frankie Muniz gets behind the wheel, he draws some strange looks. "People look at me like, 'He's too young to be driving,'" says the 15-year-old, who just got his learner's permit. "They think I'm that kid I play on the TV show, who's only 12."
Even if he doesn't quite look his age, Muniz heads into L.A.'s notoriously rough traffic undaunted. "I never feel scared," he insists. "Sometimes, when I get a little nervous because someone is tailgating or driving too fast, I just try to relax and act cool because I really love driving a car — I bought a couple of them!"
And since his learner's permit requires that Muniz be accompanied by a licensed driver, his mother's usually in the passenger seat — though she doesn't backseat-drive too much. "My mom is very cool about it," he says. "She never has to tell me which way to
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Oops, they're spoofing her again.
At last year's MTV Video Music Awards, Britney Spears seemed none-too-pleased with the jokes hosts Marlon and Shawn Wayans made about her — so much so that she turned down a cameo the brothers offered her in Scary Movie 2. Now we're about to see just how thick Spears's skin is as the pop princess becomes the basis for two in-the-works parodies.
Julie Brown, who skewered Spears's idol, Madonna, in her 1992 mockumentary Medusa: Dare to Be Truthful, tells TV Guide Online that this summer she plans to direct a super low-budget Spears send-up in which she'll play Britney's mom. Additionally, '80s rock-ette Deborah Gibson has signed a deal with VH1 to develop Teen Queens, a fictionalized TV-movie inspired by the intense competition between Spears-like divas.
"It looks at the pre-fabricated rivalries and how showbiz people will stop at nothing to hold onto their fame," says
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Though he's straight offscreen, there's no denying that playing gay has made Kerr Smith's acting career thus far. He recently made headlines with yet another same-sex kiss on Dawson's Creek, and even flirted with Superman Dean Cain in last year's gay indie hit, The Broken Hearts Club. Even so, Smith denies there's any same-gender lovin' in his current vampire flick, The Forsaken.
Some sharp-eyed (and perhaps wishfully thinking) viewers can't help but notice a bit of homoerotic subtext in the fangfest, which features Smith and Roswell's Brendan Fehr as very close buddies on the road trip from hell. In fact, so cozy and concerned for one another's welfare are they that the duo tend to ignore Smith's supposed love interest, Izabella Miko — who barely has any dialogue in the film.
Actually, women contribute mainly to the body count in Forsaken
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Michelle Trachtenberg will not be swayed. The cute-as-a-button Buffy the Vampire Slayer co-star feels the pain of viewers dying to know what happens to her character — the title heroine's otherworldly kid sister, Dawn — in the series's May 22 season finale (and WB swan song). But she still adamantly refuses to satisfy the audience's curiosity.
"I was a huge Buffy fan myself [even before getting cast], and I would go on the Internet a lot," she tells TV Guide Online. "But I'd always stray from websites that revealed any information prior to the airing of the episode. Like in the third season, when Buffy stabbed Angel... if I'd read that he dies, I would have been expecting it, and it would have ruined it for me. So I will not speak of any occurrences in the Buffy world."
As galling as Buffy aficionados may find the whippersnapper's resolve, it is sure to be indispensable to her in a loomin
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The current issue of Newsweek features one of the first reviews of Pearl Harbor, the summer's most anticipated blockbuster. Critic David Ansen applauds the pic's dazzling special effects ("Pearl Harbor is the very model of a modern blockbuster... [it's] violent and thrilling"), but pans the love triangle at the heart of the $135 million epic ("...almost nothing about its human drama rings true"). In related news, plans for a special Pearl Harbor edition of ABC's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire — featuring U.S. senators and stars from the film — have been scrapped. According to USA Today, it didn't meet Senate guidelines.
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Rapper K-Ci of K-Ci & Jo Jo has plead no contest to four charges of lewd conduct, the Los Angeles Times reports. Though K-Ci (aka Cedric Hailey) previously denied allegations that he publicly exposed himself during an L.A. concert last December, he's apparently thought better of it. "It was in his best interest to put this matter behind him," said his attorney, Kenneth Markman. "He's regretful of what happened. He just got caught up in the moment."
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