Having spent the past months courting controversy, Isaiah Washington won't be courting the Emmys. While Mer (Ellen Pompeo), McDreamy (Patrick Dempsey) and the rest of Grey's Anatomy's regs have thrown their scrubs into the supporting-actor/actress rings, Washington has elected not to submit his name for consideration, Variety reports. Coulda been such an acceptance speech, too.
Comedy Central has greenlit the pilot Michael Ian Black Doesn't Understand, which Variety describes as a "scripted showcase" for the oh-so-dry, poker-faced funnyman.... BET on Wednesday unveiled a development slate that boasts 16 new series, including projects from Will Smith (Cipha, an animated sci-fi series), Vin Diesel (Hannibal, an animated look at the ancient African king), D.L. Hughley (S.O.B., a hidden-camera reality series) and Orlando Jones (Bufu, an [again] animated sketch-comedy offering). (Nice to see BET drumming up so much on-camera work for black actors.) Also in the mix is the 26-year-old cabler's first original sitcom, Somebodies, based on the indie film of the same name.
According to a poll conducted by AOL's teen site and Your Prom (which apparently is some sort magazine), 49 percent (of girls, I assume) chose Orlando Bloom as their dream corsage-giver, as Jake and Justin placed a distant second and third. Jessica Simpson was the top choice to style gals for their big night of peer-pressured sex and porcelain bus-driving.... The endless penguin movie and The Good Shepherd last week topped the DVD sales and rental charts, respectively.... Which upcoming reality-TV finale are you most looking forward to? Vote in today's poll!
• This Saturday at 9 pm/ET: Food Network premieres Gotta Get It, six specials looking at the latest must-have kitchen gadgets.• Monday at 8:30 pm: A "very special surprise guest star" plays an old high-school pal of Doug's on CBS' King of Queens.• May 25: AMC jumped through a plate-glass window, fell 17 stories and then broke a beer bottle over someone's head to grab the broadcasting rights to the 2007 Taurus World Stunt Awards, to he hosted by The Rock and include 300's Gerard Butler among the honorees.• January 27, 2008: TNT and TBS simulcast the 14th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Was Simon taking issue with Chris Richardson's somewhat clumsy name-checking of the Virginia Tech tragedy, or was his Tuesday-night eye roll directed at the J.T.-wannabe's "nasal defense"? American Idol executive producer Ken Warwick tells TVGuide.com that it was the latter scenario, and that Simon didn't even hear Chris' allusion to the national heartache. "It's quite difficult when the contestants are talking on their [lapel] mike for Simon to hear them," says Warwick. "And Simon was wound up because Chris was [justifying] singing through his nose, which Simon hates with a vengeance. Simon was rolling his eyes at the fact that Chris had come back with such an inane [comment]." Later, upon learning that some mistook the gesture for a dismissal of the Virginia Tech nod, Simon "was mortified," says Warwick.As for Simon's own Virginia Tech mention after Blake's performance, "It was always the plan that Ryan would [address] it in the cold opening and the judges would say something at t...
Joey told me just the other day that big news was pending (yet hush-hush), and here it now is: The former Blossom heartthrob is set to make his Broadway debut playing Billy Flynn in the musical Chicago, Broadway.com reports. Lawrence, who next Wednesday guests on a pivotal episode of CSI: NY, will fill the role from May 4 through June 17, at which point fellow Dancing with the Stars alum Harry Hamlin takes over (while wife Lisa Rinna steps in as Roxie). Pussycat Dolls castoffs, meanwhile, are being offered a five percent discount on Les Miz tickets.In related news: The aformentioned Lisa Rinna has been retained by TV Guide Channel to front forthcoming red carpet specials. See the TV Guide News Report for more.
Law & Order's Dick Wolf and NBC Universal are developing a series based on The Brotherhoods: The True Story of Two Cops Who Murdered for the Mafia, a book about the investigation of two NYPDers convicted of killing for an organized crime family, Variety reports.... AMC's development slate includes the miniseries Against the Guns of Quantrill (Confederate prisoners defend a Union town) and Berlin Mesa (centered on FBI and Nazi prisoners in the southwest U.S.).... Per Reuters, the BBC is teaming with Live Aid founder Bob Geldof on what is described as "the biggest sociological and anthropological project in the history of the world," aiming to accomplish no less than to record the history of every human society on the planet. (Oh, another of those.) The TV-Internet endeavor will include an eight-part, hi-def series called The Human Planet.
As miracle baby Suri Cruise celebrates her first bithday today amid the usual mystery — no details have been leaked as to party plans, though it is expected to be held in Shreveport, Louisiana, where Mom is lensing Mad Money — Katie Holmes has swapped publicists, retaining heavy hitter Ina Treciokas as her new mouthpiece. "It's part of a plan to normalize the PR, to get it back to what it was before Tom freaked out," a source tells the New York Daily News. "They realize the problems all began when Tom hired his Scientologist sister to run the show." This replaces the previous theory that the problems began when Xenu stacked aliens inside volcanoes.
Per the Hollywood Reporter, Chris Columbus is in talks to helm The Lightning Thief, a family fantasy based on the first novel in Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians series and concerning a boy who discovers he descends from a Greek god.... Eric Bana is a librarian who involuntarily juts to and fro in time and Rachel McAdams is the woman he falls in love with in The Time Traveler's Wife.... Writer-director Gideon Raff (The Killing Floor) is remaking 1980's Terror Train.... The soundtrack for Shrek the Third finds Eddie Murphy and Antonio Banderas dueting on Sly & the Family Stone's "Thank You" and Fergie covering Heart's "Barracuda." Also on the May 15 CD: Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" and Paul McCartney's "Live and Let Die."
At long last, the gloves are off. A bandanna-clad Sanjaya Malakar's Tuesday-night rendition of Bonnie Raitt's "Something to Talk About" gave his biggest critic lots to talk about. After Randy likened it to bad karaoke and Paula, I dunno, tittered, Simon declared the performance "utterly horrendous" and as awful as anything they'd heard during the audition rounds. At that point, Ryan (of course) stepped in to play peacemaker, but Cowell wouldn't be squelched. Waving off Seacrest, the brassy Brit said to Sanjaya — OK, to America, really — "I know this has been funny for a while, but because of the fact that we're supposed to be finding an American Idol, it was hideous. A ridiculous choice of song."Let's hope America got the message, stopped obliging sites like "FightTheEstablishment.com" and "BeAWackyVoteTamperingRebel.com," and got the job done this time.
Arnold Schwarzenegger visited the set of ABC's Brothers & Sisters on Monday to thank exec producers Ken Olin, Jon Robin Baitz and Greg Berlanti and the cast and crew for their commitment to keeping production of the hit drama in California for its freshman season. Of course, this account of what was said is all based on the best Schwarzenenglish-to-English translation available on such short notice.
Apparently it isn't whatever floats your boat. A July cruise organized by The View's Rosie O'Donnell for gay and lesbian fams has booted Bermuda from its itinerary because of possible protests by church groups in the British island territory, the AP reports. (In 2004, protesters chanting anti-gay slogans met one such cruise upon its arrival in Nassau.) A rep for O'Donnell's charter company says Bermuda will be replaced with two ports of call in Florida and a stop at a private island, explaining, "We feel that our cruise would be more enjoyable [visiting] ports where we know we are welcome by everyone."
Casting is under way for the new Bravo series Tim Gunn's Guide to Style, in which the Project Runway judge will use his "unmatched counseling skills" to transform "the fashion-weary into polished and dapper-looking individuals." Applicants age 21 and older can go here for details. Wait... why is everyone looking at me? A guy can't come to work with a tiny mustard stain on his sleeveless sweatshirt?
This Monday, as Dancing with the Stars (18.65 million total viewers) topped the night with typical numbers.... 8 pm/ETFox's Drive (5.64 mil) marked its regular time slot debut by dropping off another 410,000 passengers.9 pmTrailing Two and a Half Men (12.98 mil, -400K) and King of Queens (12.3 mil, down a mil), 24 (11.15 mil) dipped a bit, while Thank God You're Here (6.98 mil) hardly "improv'd" [giggle] week-to-week, plunging 2.5 mil.10 pmCSI: Miami (15.18 mil, -760 thou) and The Bachelor (8.62 mil, -600K) each slipped, while Dateline's Virginia Tech special drew 6.44 mil.
As happens with most every national tragedy, as the networks' news divisions scramble to cover an event like Monday morning's mass shooting at Virginia Tech, the entertainment divisions keep a sympathetic eye out for any imminent programming that might hit too close to home. Case in point: Fox acted quickly to pull an original episode of Bones that was to air Wednesday, which dealt with human remains being uncovered on a college campus. Instead, Variety reports, the episode will be replaced with a repeat.Where do you go for news updates when something like Virginia Tech happens? Share your preference in today's poll.
Aspiring to salvage her once red-hot pop career, recent rehab grad Britney Spears has given her manager, Larry Rudolph, the heave-ho, blaming him for, among other things, introducing her to the hard-partying, no-pantying likes of Paris Hilton. The New York Post's Page Six also reports that Spears is heavily frequenting the recording studio and dance classes. But the barber? Not so much.
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet stepped behind the camera to direct new commercials for the Ford Edge SUV, to debut during Tuesday's American Idol, the AP reports. The spots feature two men discussing how their Edges compare to vehicles from BMW and Lexus, and are part of the new "Have You Driven a &*%!&@ Ford Lately? Have You, You &*@%#ing &*@$@#er?" campaign.
MSNBC's Keith Olbermann will return to network sports coverage after a six-year absence when the former SportsCenter anchor joins Bob Costas, Chris Collinsworth and analysts Jerome Bettis and Tiki Barber in the booth for NBC's Football Night in America this fall, Variety reports.... As of May 7, Cold Pizza will shed the modern age's best TV show title and become known as ESPN First Take, says the Hollywood Reporter.
American Idol Carrie Underwood's "Before He Cheats" reaped video-of-the-year, female-video and best-director wins at Monday night's fan-voted 2007 CMT Music Awards. Other noteworthy winners included recent TVGuide.com interviewee Taylor Swift (her "Tim McGraw" grabbed breakthrough-video honors) and Sugarland (whose "Want To" topped the duo-video slot).
The Xbox LIVE Originals contest, hosted by Xbox 360 and the New York Television Festival, invites aspiring TV producers to create a pilot for what will be the online network's first original series. The winning entrant gets a $100K budget and a possible six-episode commitment. See here for rules.... Food Network's Paula Deen cohosts Fox's The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet on Wednesday.... Jaime Pressly and Robert Downey Jr. are among the stars who will surprise special people in their lives with custom cars during Season 2 of Speed's Payback, premiering May 31.... The 65th Annual Golden Globes will be held January 13, 2008, moving back to Sunday night for the first time in three years.
ABC, which on Monday ran an extended World News with limited commercial interruption, will continue its coverage of the shootings at Virginia Tech, the deadliest shooting rampage in American history, tonight with an hourlong edition of Nightline, originating from Blacksburg, Virginia. Then, on Tuesday's Good Morning America, Robin Roberts and Chris Cuomo will anchor from Blacksburg, and David Muir will report from the Virginia Tech campus. Charles Gibson will anchor Tuesday's World News from Blacksburg, an area he covered as a reporter earlier in his career.
Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony are suing the National Enquirer in European courts over a story published in the March 12 British and Irish editions alleging that the marrieds are "caught up in a heroin scandal," as "evidenced" by a photo of Anthony posing with Michael Star, a photographer facing charges of heroin possession here in the U.S. According to the AP, the story had a "source" claiming Anthony and Star were friends, though Anthony's attorney says he only posed for the 2004 photograph in keeping with his hospitality toward fans he meets. The lawsuit seeks "a six-figure settlement," an apology and a retraction for an article that appeared in versions of the Enquirer's U.S. and international editions.