Trump, is visiting, ostensibly to review the damage caused by the devastating wildfires. But like pretty much all Republicans, he has also responded to the them with incredible cruelty and pretty bitterness. That includes using the fires as an excuse to say bigoted things, spread conspiracy theories, attempt to punish California for being a blue state by holding aid hostage. Which of course is par for the course.

So it makes perfect sense that Kimmel during his monologue on Thueresday lamented that Trump is actually coming here “to blame us for the fires in person.”

“It’s the first time in history that a natural disaster will be visited by an even bigger natural disaster,” Kimmel joked. “He’s coming to, I guess to survey the damage and meet with the governor, mostly to get away from Elon for a couple of days.”

“You know, we knew Donald Trump was gonna be terrible. When I say ‘we,’ I mean you know ‘us’  here in the room. But what we didn’t know? He would be so terrible that he would actually threaten to not help us in an emergency situation if he doesn’t get what he wants,” Kimmel said, at which point he played a clip of Trump doing just that.

“Great point Jacques-Off Cousteau,” Kimmel retorted. “He is so ridiculous. And we have to sit around with the place on fire, hoping he gives us our own money back.” This was of course a reference to the very real fact that the vast majority of taxes come from blue states, especially California, and get sent to red states.

“Trump and his minions are planning to leverage any federal aid that they might give to force us to help him round up and deport our neighbors,” Kimmel explained, referring to their racist demands that California cooperate with unconstitutional treatment of immigrants or lose federal disaster aid.
 
“As if we’re Eric and he’s cutting off our allowance to teach us some kind of a lesson. Which, on one hand you might think, ‘wow, what a truly, only a despicable human being would use disaster relief money as a bargaining chip,’ but on the other hand… there is no other hand.  It’s just that hand,” Kimmel declared. “It’s just that grubby, grabby little hand of his.”

It should be noted that blue state leaders and Democrats have never demanded that disaster aid be withheld from red states in retaliation for racist, anti-democratic or similar policies that are nearly ubiquitous in states controlled by Republicans.

Watch the full monologue below:

The post Jimmy Kimmel Jokes Trump is Coming to LA ‘to Blame Us for the Fires in Person’ | Video appeared first on TheWrap.

Despite everything Mark S. (Adam Scott) put Lumon through at the end of “Severance” Season 1, the powers that be desperately need him to get back to work on his current assignment – the Cold Harbor file.

The second episode of Season 2, titled “Goodbye, Mrs. Selvig,” unpacks what the fallout looked like in the outside world after the MDR team activated the overtime contingency. Lumon activated Milchick (Tramell Tillman) to make the rounds and fire Irving (John Turturro) and Dylan (Zach Cherry) but bring Mark back. Mark spent much of the episode trying to convince his sister (and himself) that him screaming “she’s alive!” was in reference to his niece and not Gemma (Dichen Lachman).

Back at Lumon HQ, Helena (Britt Lower) plans to bring in a stringer team to replace Mark’s crew because they’re bent on him finishing the Cold Harbor file — which was about 68% done. Helena says they don’t need to have chemistry with Mark S., they just need to be around so he can focus on work.

But if the company was fine firing Irving and Dylan after the overtime contingency was activated, what’s so important about the Cold Harbor file, and Mark, to get him back to work?

Here’s what we know about the Cold Harbor file and what it could actually be.

Where is Ms. Casey?

Toward the end of Season 1 it was revealed that Outie Mark’s dead wife — whose death precipitated him agreeing to the severance protocol — wasn’t dead at all. In fact, dead wife Gemma was alive and well (to some extent at least) serving as the counselor Ms. Casey on the severed floor at Lumon.

Our last shot of Ms. Casey in the Season 1 finale shows her being let go from her post as wellness counselor and being sent to someplace ominously called the “testing floor.”

What is known about Cold Harbor?

Cold Harbor was the name of the encrypted file Mark S. was working on when all the craziness of Season 1’s finale went down. The Season 2 premiere also gave viewers a glimpse of Ms. Casey surrounded by readings.

What do the Cold Harbor readings on Ms. Casey mean?

There is a lot to parse from the brief image of Ms. Casey and her Cold Harbor readings. To start simply, one seems to be a heart rate monitor and other stats keeping track of her vitals.

At the bottom are five percentage bars lined up much like the sorting boxes that the MDR team place their encrypted data in once it makes them “feel something.” There are a four acronyms featured beneath each of Ms. Casey’s percentage bars as well: WO, DR, FC, and MA. Eagle-eyed fans drew a connection in Season 1 between these acronyms and the Four Tempers Lumon’s cult-like founder Kier Eagan claimed every soul possessed — Woe, Dread, Frolic and Malice. It’s likely these four emotions are close to the ones the MDR team “feels” when refining their data at work.

One of the more mysterious and possibly terrifying bits of the reading is the label ITNO: 25.00. This could be an acronym for Iteration Number 25 meaning this is the 25th attempt at creating/recreating Ms. Casey/Gemma.

What Could Cold Harbor be?

We’re in full-blown theory territory here but one thing seems relatively ironclad. Mark’s work on the Cold Harbor filed is directly tied to whatever is happening on the testing floor. Based on the fact that the Season 2 premiere ended with Mark dropping data into his Cold Harbor file and the percentages increasing both for him and on Ms. Casey’s readings, it’s clear their tie could relate to many assumptions it has to do with reintegration of people — possibly clones.

The file — like most of the others seen on the show — references a place in the real world. Cold Harbor is located in Virginia, near Mechanicsville. It is not clear where Lumon is based — maps and glimpses state the company town Kier is in a state labeled PE, which could be near Virginia. One theory wonders if the file name could correspond to the place Gemma “died” which later prompted Mark to go through the severance process.

Another possible — but long-reaching — connection is the file’s name in relation to a battle in the Civil War. The Battle of Cold Harbor was fought in 1864 and saw the Confederacy earn a decisive win against the Union. In the show’s lore, Kier Eagan founded Lumon in 1865 when he was 24 years old. Throwaway dialogue in Season 1 also mentions he was a military doctor before he founded Lumon. All this lends some ground to the theory that the South might have won the Civil War as questions about the state of the larger world mount.

A fun note that doesn’t say much about what Cold Harbor could be, but does point to the clear importance of it to the show – “Cold Harbor” was the working title for the show while they shot Season 2.

Why does Mark need to be working on Cold Harbor?

Season 1 revealed that Mark S. has a unique aptitude for refining the encrypted data assigned to MDR. Cobel (Patricia Arquette) has obviously taken a shining to him as he’s had one success after another — it’s become an obsession to the point that she’s inserted herself into his outie’s life — and it’s implied that some of the projects he’s worked on helped keep her in Lumon’s good graces.

Toward the end of Episode 2, Helena and Milchick discuss Mark’s plea to the board from the premiere, and it’s revealed that despite choosing to fire Irv and Dylan, they’re going to bring them back because they need Mark working on Cold Harbor.

“We need Mark S. back to work long enough to complete Cold Harbor,” Helena says.

It might just be that they need Mark working on Cold Harbor because he’s particularly talented at refining data, but the fact that the file is directly connected to Gemma/Ms. Casey points to how Mark’s proximity to them both inside Lumon and out might play a larger factor in their plans.

“Severance” airs new episodes Fridays on Apple TV+.

The post ‘Severance’ Season 2 Episode 2 Ending Explained: What Is Cold Harbor? appeared first on TheWrap.

“The Sex Lives of College” wrapped up Season 3 with an unexpected reveal: A coming out story for Amrit Kaur’s Bela.

Despite only dating guys throughout her time at Essex, Bela’s romantic interest is piqued by Hailey (Melinda Belle Adams), the host of the storytelling show she joined in last week’s episode. After kissing Hailey at a party, Bela officially comes out as bisexual to her roommates — a twist showrunner Justin Noble said hasn’t been in the works since Season 1, but one that doesn’t surprise him.

“Bela has always been this character who’s down to try anything, do anything,” Noble told TheWrap, adding that many sheltered teens like herself have “massive discovery journeys” in college. “I wanted Bella to be a counterbalance to the story we did with Leighton (Reneé Rapp) — Leighton came into college knowing exactly who she was. But she was closeted, and that’s what made it tough.”

“Bela is not that person,” he continued. “She’s the form of queer representation where she’s discovering it on her own in real time as we watch.”

Though Kaur only found out about Bela’s coming out story before the Season 3 finale’s table read, Noble recalled that Kaur weighed in on how Bela might come out to her mom, given stigmas in certain South Asian families. Tracing back Bela’s fears of disappointing her parents during her first family weekend at Essex, Noble and Kaur wanted to show that coming out might be scary for Bela.

“Coming out stories are usually not for the person who came out at 14 and had an easy time doing it — it’s always like that kid who lives in an area that’s not super accepting whose parents are saying off-putting things as TV show characters are playing in front of them or on the news, and that it could be a little difficult for them to come out,” Noble said. “Our show and other shows can be a little bit of a road map of watching someone do it, watching someone honor that fear that they might have, that struggle that they might have, but then getting through it and giving a happy ending, because God who wants to see a bad one?”

Below, Noble unpacks the rest of the girls’ Season 3 journeys and teases what’s ahead for a potential Season 4, once he and cocreator Mindy Kaling get the official greenlight from Max.

TheWrap: That twist with Arvind caught fans off guard. Did you consider keeping him around longer?

Justin Noble: Arvind was obviously very uncool in the way he handled that, but in the scheme of life and thinking about relationships and even friendships, and what people go through and have fights and come back from, I think we could end up seeing Arvind again. I think there’s a possibility for it. I believe in the power of forgiveness for people. It’s not usually very common in TV watching.

Kimberly (Pauline Chalamet) also has an interesting arc in the last few episodes. How does the protest shift how she might go about her professional goals?

Kimberly came into school so nervous — so much of Kimberly is weirdly inspired by a little bit of me, because I went to a school like this and I didn’t know anyone there, and I was terrified of that aspect and my parents thought they were out of the right class to be there. Her goal is the ultimate example of rule following, so she can’t have anything wrong, and then we see her make a couple mistakes that give her pause, and people are like, “Chill. You don’t need to put this pressure on yourself.” This protest is an interesting fork in the road for her, because she knows what she thinks is right, but it does not align with the rules she has put upon herself given the person that she wants to be professionally. She, of course, makes the decision to be true to what she believes, but that comes at a cost, so we’ll have to see what that means for her.

There definitely seemed to be a spark with her and the protest organizer. Would he ideally be back in Season 4?

I think he could be.

Whitney’s (Alyah Chanelle Scott) storyline spotlights the pressures of being a student athlete. How did that come about?

This is something that we had decided very early on, because we knew Whitney was going to be the soccer player — it felt like a type of person you meet in college, the student athlete who’s in your room, who has to take on other things that other people don’t. They have to wake up early for practices, they have to get their lifts in. They struggle to keep up on their classes because of all the time. We talked to a bunch of female student athletes and some soccer players, and we just felt deeply for how much they had on their plates, compared to some other people who were like, “Oh, I think I might audition for this comedy group” — they didn’t have the luxury of doing things like that. I was so inspired by Naomi Osaka’s story a couple years ago in tennis, and I wanted Whitney to be like a poster child for pushing back against this.

Whitney is not a doormat character — she pushes for what she wants, and I think she sees injustice. She’s had a particularly — intentionally — rough go of it in soccer, dating back to Coach Dalton, and it was time for her to speak up and demand change, and we see her get it.

Kacey (Gracie Lawrence) also went through her first post-Calvin break up. Why did you decide to end this one pretty quickly and how will it be a learning experience for her?

Kacey was the opportunity to tell a story about confidence, which felt so important for all college students, but particularly young, female college students. From the moment we meet Casey, there’s this front of extreme confidence, and then mom comes to visit, and mom cracks that veneer a little bit, and we see that maybe she’s not as strong as she puts out in front. In the gay rodeo episode, we see that it’s much deeper than we thought — when she’s facetuning the photo of herself and changing everything about her face, it just kills me. Just one little throwaway comment, where they’re asking what exes would say about you, totally sets her off on this journey where she has to know from Calvin what it was about. Calvin basically says, I don’t think I could have stayed a virgin for four years, and then adds this one haunting, lingering comment, saying, “I don’t think any guy could.” And she makes a bad decision, in a true way that felt like what our writers in the room talked about. She got a little too attached too quickly. But the friends are there. The show is always about the love story between these girls, and they build her back up, and she has her biggest confident win of the season.

Taylor (Mia Rodgers) seems to be finding the strength in herself to stay sober, but moving off campus means she’s a bit more isolated. Do you think this was a positive decision for her? 

Totally. A lot of Bela’s advice over the course of the season has been correct, and she’s like, “God, this girl doesn’t quite get it.” And then I love in Episode 9 when Bella’s like, “this is bad — you shouldn’t be doing this,” but Ash is a good person, and she’s a good person for Taylor to have around. I just wanted to set up a nice, happy queer story with the two of them, as opposed to another mistake made in relationships. There’s so many queer women in my life who have lived up to the stereotype of U-Haul lesbians, and we’re just going to show a version of it that’s very positive. They move in together, they have different amounts of makeup, and they’re there for each other.

I’m anticipating that some fans might start shipping Bela and Taylor — do you get any romantic vibes from them?

I have been seeing those comments all season — I desperately wanted to be like, “Do you not realize how deeply inappropriate it would be for Bela to put a move on her?” She’s not only a first-year student who Bela has under her care, she’s in a vulnerable, sober journey space, so I truly don’t see them that way. I think they’re a nice friendship, but because queer audiences, for decades, remain so thirsty for love stories between queer characters, as soon as a show has two queer characters, they end up together, because shows at large don’t have a plethora of bonus queer characters. Our show just has a lot of queer characters, so it’s a little different in that there’s just queer friends. That being said, nothing’s off limits in future seasons. Hopefully Taylor wouldn’t be a first year student, but I think they have a cute friendship that I like — I like how much Taylor needles Bela, and they’re a little different. I love what Ruby Cruz brings to Ash, and I love the dynamic between Taylor and Ash, even though we don’t see a tremendous amount of it this season.

What are some storylines you’d like to dig deeper into in a potential Season 4?

Kimberly has the cliffhanger of this season — she thinks that the school is going to sue her for property damage. I’d love to see how that goes down and if Tig Notaro’s character would play into that if she has to come to her aid. We have multiple new love interests that appear in these two episodes at the end of Season 3, we have the closing of some doors and different extracurriculars and school things, so there’s a lot of momentum heading into a Season 4, and lots of ways we can go. So pending a phone call, Mindy and I and the writers will be at the ready to decide which way to go.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

“The Sex Lives of College Girls” Season 1-3 are now streaming on Max.

The post ‘Sex Lives of College Girls’ Season 3 Ending Explained: Showrunner Breaks Down Bela’s Big Reveal appeared first on TheWrap.

“The Night Agent” Season 2 ended with a realization many refuse to confront: We’re more like our parents than we think.

After abandoning his mission to save the ones he loved, Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso) must make amends for the wreckage he left in his path. While attempting to halt a chemical weapons threat to the United States, he released a witness, stole intelligence and ultimately swung a presidential election.

Even though he saved Rose (Luciane Buchanan), Peter is not proud of his choices. The Night Agent turned himself in to his trainer Catherine Weaver (Amanda Warren), but she did not let him off the hook just yet.

Catherine tells Peter that he made the same mistakes his father did to protect the ones he loved, and she gives Peter the same chance he did to atone for them: a new mission as a double agent.

“He’s realizing the amount of hatred he probably had for his father, the amount of bitterness he probably had for their relationship and lost time,” Basso told TheWrap. “The more he learns about this business, I think he realizes the harder it is to make good decisions in that environment, and the decisions my dad was making were the best given his options.”

Showrunner Shawn Ryan said that Peter’s complicated relationship with his deceased father was what drew him to develop Matthew Quirk’s novel for Netflix initially, telling TheWrap that the hit Netflix series wouldnt exist if not for the mystery surrounding his own dad’s death.

“It was very personal to me, because I lost my father very quickly and unexpectedly, and the 10-year anniversary of his death actually will be premiere day, which I found to be a very symbolic thing this year,” Shawn Ryan told TheWrap ahead of the Jan. 23 premiere of Season 2.

“There were things I learned about my father after his passing that were very mysterious to me, nothing as nefarious as Peter’s father being a traitor or anything, but this has always been the core, important part of the show to me,” he added. 

Peter must confront before accepting his next mission that what he had resented about his father may be the thing that makes them alike.

“He’s becoming him, I think sort of freaks [Peter] out,” Basso said. “He doesn’t want to be his father, but maybe that’s not a bad thing.”

“To me, this has always been the core emotional anchor of this show: Is Peter trying to be a better man than his father was?” Ryan said. 

Peter accepts the mission, perfectly setting up Season 3. This time he will commit his life to an even more exclusive position than the night agent team. He must determine the exact nature of Monroe’s relationship with Hagan from the inside by gaining their trust and turning over classified information.

Peter and Rose’s relationship is also on the line in the finale. The agent has to make the hard decision to tell Rose that they can not communicate as long as he’s on this new mission. Rose wants security, but Peter craves the rush of the night agent lifestyle. Ultimately, she agrees not to call him or come looking for him, and they tearfully part ways.

Filming has already started for Season 3, and Ryan teased that “it’s just the beginning.” Basso teased to TheWrap that the team wrapped up Episode 1 in Istanbul and will return to New York to shoot the remainder of the series.

“What we were able to get on-camera is just sort of mind-blowing to me,” Basso said of the first episode’s Istanbul sequences. “We were getting stuff that I felt like would have taken months and months and months of prep to plan, and we were doing it accidentally. There were things that happened on camera that weren’t planned, that were just sort of mind-blowing, so I’m psyched about it.”

“The Night Agent” Season 2 is now streaming on Netflix.

The post ‘The Night Agent’ Season 2 Ending Explained: Gabriel Basso Teases ‘Mind-Blowing’ Season 3 Opener appeared first on TheWrap.

Yes, ditching Acosta — who has had a well-publicized contentious relationship with President Donald Trump, who reentered the White House this week — was a notable move, one that many will perceive as an olive branch to the new administration.

Still, the changes are more cosmetic than colossal: Jake Tapper, perhaps the network’s most respected anchor, saw his start time moved back an hour to 5 p.m. ET; Wolf Blitzer, who has been with the network since 1990, will now do his two-hour show in the morning instead of the evening; and both Kaitlan Collins and Anderson Cooper’s shows will remain in their same nightly time slot.

It is hard to expect a major ratings boost when the channel’s main faces remain the same.

Before the formal announcement Thursday, several of the changes had been leaked to media outlets. But even if some of the moves appear warranted, they don’t address the other challenges with which the network is grappling. Those hurdles include, but aren’t limited to, dwindling ratings, declining revenue driven by “cord cutting” that has assailed the entire cable business, and a collapse in public trust of mainstream journalism.

CNN’s primetime viewership — just like MSNBC’s — cratered in the weeks following the 2024 presidential election. The network’s primetime ratings dropped 35% to 470,000 viewers by mid-November. By contrast, Fox News — which enjoys a much cozier relationship with Trump — saw its primetime audience grow 34%, to 3.157 million viewers following his electoral victory.

While Fox’s rivals have regained some audience after losing viewers to what many saw as election fatigue, a full ratings recovery has still not occurred for CNN, with its primetime lineup averaging 501,000 viewers during the first week of January.

A person with knowledge of CNN’s changes said it is too simplistic to point to the network’s ratings being down. The CNN source pointed out there were only 161 million cable subscribers in the U.S. on Inauguration Day 2025, compared to 251 million in 2017 — a byproduct of the aforementioned cord cutting — so a ratings decline is expected.

Instead, the changes, the person said, signify a fundamental shift for CNN, which intends to prioritize its digital and streaming business moving forward. CNN announced a $70 million investment into its digital business on Thursday, and said it would add at least 100 new roles this year for a new streaming service. (Those announcements came at the same time CNN laid off another 200 staffers.)

Whether revenue growth comes from CNN’s cable or digital business, one side needs to pick up the slack because the network is not making as much money as it used to.

In a defamation lawsuit that CNN lost last week to a U.S. Navy veteran, a forensic economist for the plaintiff found the company’s revenue had dropped 18.1% from 2021 to 2023, sliding from $2.2 billion to $1.8 billion. CNN’s net worth was nearly sliced in half during that same period, from $4.4 billion in 2021 to $2.3 billion in 2023, according to the forensic economist.

A CNN spokesperson said those figures were inaccurate.

“The numbers represent the Plaintiff’s interpretation of a subset of data as presented in litigation, and they do not represent financial data for the whole of CNN’s business,” the spokesperson told TheWrap.

Perhaps more importantly, the defamation lawsuit came at a time when the American public’s trust in mainstream outlets like CNN has eroded.

CNN was ordered to pay the veteran $5 million, after a segment on Tapper’s show in 2021 said he “exploited” desperate Afghans fleeing the country on the “black market.” The network then settled with the veteran, Zachary Young, before a Florida jury could decide on punitive damages — a move that was reminiscent of CNN settling its defamation lawsuit with Covington Catholic student Nicholas Sandmann back in 2020.

Headlines like that will not help CNN win back viewers or readers in an already-difficult climate for news outlets. An October Gallup poll from earlier this month found only 31% of Americans expressed a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in the media to accurately report the news — a new all-time low. Americans are now turning to alternative sources like YouTube to get their news and opinions, while gravitating toward more partisan political sites that share their ideology.

In March, CNN’s Thompson laid out a five-point plan to restructure the network for the future in a difficult news environment. To the extent that Thompson is revamping the TV component of his business, leaving its core anchors in place will likely do little to reverse those trends.

The post CNN’s Lineup Changes: The Flawed Thinking Behind Mark Thompson’s Latest Move | Analysis appeared first on TheWrap.

Speaking to the “Hollywood Raw” podcast, the former CNN anchor gushed that, as far as he can tell, “people love” the former “Today” show host, who was fired in 2017 by NBC for “inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace” which the network determined “may not have been an isolated incident.”

2 years later, in Ronan Farrow’s 2019 expose “Catch and Kill,” Lauer was accused on the record of sexually harassing several former NBC colleagues, and one former NBC producer accused him of raping her. The book also reports that Harvey Weinstein once attempted to use his knowledge of Lauer’s behavior to convince NBC to back off reporting about his own sexual misconduct. Lauer has denied all accusations.

Lemon added, “Whenever I see Matt out and about — or if we go out to dinner, my husband and I go out to dinner with him and his fiancée — people love him. Women love him! They’re like, ‘Matt, oh my God, can I get a picture? I love you. I miss you on television, blah, blah, blah.”

Lemon continued, “I think the public loves him. The public misses him, but it’s the people inside the business who are afraid.”

For his part, Lemon was fired from CNN in 2023 for remarks that were considered sexist and ageist. He briefly hosted a talk show on Elon Musk’s X, but has now found a new home on YouTube with “The Don Lemon Show.”

When asked on the podcast if Lauer could mount a comeback to the news industry, Lemon answered: “If he could come back to digital, he can set his own course.”

Lemon’s comments about Lauer begin at the 30:46 mark in the embedded video below.

Lemon suggested, “maybe in this whole Trump era where canceled is over,” there’s a greater chance for Lauer to make a comeback. “I think the general public would accept Matt back. And I think people would watch him and I think the ratings would be great,” he said.

“I don’t know anything about what happened, I know nothing about that at all,” Lemon concluded, referring to the allegations against Lauer. “Women can feel the way that they feel and I understand that but that’s their business. I know when I’m out with him, everybody loves Matt, and everybody flocks to Matt and everyone wants a picture and everyone says ‘I miss you and we wanna see you back on television.’ I hear it every time.”

Lemon clarified that he “only got to know Matt after, you know, the whole situation happened” and that they met through mutual friends. Lauer denied assaulting anyone, but admitted at the time, “there is enough truth in these stories to make me feel embarrassed and ashamed.”

The post Don Lemon Thinks Matt Lauer Needs a Comeback: ‘Women Love Him’ | Video appeared first on TheWrap.

The Season 2 debut of “Squid Game” boosted the Netflix series to reach the biggest weekly streaming audience any show has seen in 2024, according to Nielsen’s streaming charts.

With the second installment debuting Dec. 26 on Netflix, “Squid Game” drew 4.92 billion minutes over its two seasons in the interval between Dec. 23 to Dec. 29. Viewership for “Squid Game” was more than double that of Netflix’s “Virgin River,” which scored a whopping 2.25 billion viewing minutes as the second most-watched streaming program of the week.

Dwayne Johnson-led “Red One” also scored an impressive streaming viewership as the holiday movie scored 1.81 billion viewing minutes on Prime Video during the week, clocking in as the third most-watched program of the week. Next up was holiday thriller “Carry-On,” which scored 1.54 billion viewing minutes on Netflix, and “The Six Triple Eight,” which drew a streaming viewership of 1.33 billion minutes on Netflix.

Beloved kids show “Bluey” took the sixth spot on the list with 1.17 billion viewing minutes, outpacing “Landman,” which scored 1.08 billion viewing minutes on Paramount+, as well as “The Equalizer,” which drew 1.05 cumulative billion minutes across Paramount+ and Netflix.

The holidays also boosted Christmas classics “Home Alone” and “Elf” into the ninth and tenth spots on the overall most-watched list with 917 and 848 million viewing minutes, respectively.

On the top 10 most-watched streaming originals list, Netflix series “Black Doves,” “No Good Deed” and “La Palma” all made an appearance, with “Black Doves” clocking in fourth place behind “Squid Game,” “Virgin River” and “Landman” with 448 million streaming minutes. “No Good Dead” and “La Palma” scored 446 and 435 million minutes, respectively, during the interval.

Prime Video’s “Beast Games” also notched its way into the top 10 streaming originals in the No. 7 spot with 406 million minutes, outpacing stand-up comedy special “Your Friend, Nate Bergatze,” which took eighth place with 394 million minutes on Netflix.

The post ‘Squid Game’ Season 2 Reaches Biggest Weekly Streaming Audience of 2024 With 4.9 Billion Viewing Minutes appeared first on TheWrap.

Further details on the agreement will be made public following approval by the guild’s national board. SAG-AFTRA first reached a deal with the United States’ largest employer of Spanish-language talent in 2018, negotiating wage increases as well as participation by the NBCUniversal-owned network in the guild’s health and pension plan.

“This was a crucial and productive negotiation, and I’m grateful to my fellow negotiating committee members and our staff for their dedicated work in securing this deal,” said SAG-AFTRA Negotiating Committee Chair Carmen Olivares. “It’s an honor to serve my fellow Spanish-language television performers, and I’m proud to be able to secure these new terms on their behalf.”

SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director and Chief Negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said, “My deepest thanks to Negotiating Committee Chair Carmen Olivares and all of the members of the negotiating committee, alongside our extraordinary negotiating staff, for your dedication to bringing your colleagues a groundbreaking contract that addresses their needs and ensures the terms and compensation performers deserve. I look forward to presenting this agreement to the National Board.”

Javier Pons, Executive Vice President for Telemundo Television Studios said, “This updated agreement represents the commitment of Telemundo Studios to its talented performer community, and the continued development of a productive relationship with SAG-AFTRA.”

The post SAG-AFTRA, Telemundo Reach Tentative Agreement for Spanish-Language TV Performers appeared first on TheWrap.

Following the clip, Chieng grabbed his stack of papers and furiously wrote, mimicking Trump, “New executive order: We are banning church!” The recurring “Daily Show” star then turned his sarcasm on Budde, jokingly reminding her, “We don’t go to church to hear a lecture about having mercy on the less fortunate. That’s not what church is for!” Trump, Chieng asserted, only showed up in the first place because he heard there would be “free crackers.”  

“He was probably looking up at Jesus on the cross and thinking, ‘Hey, you and me both, brother,'” Chieng continued. “To be fair, I mean, can you imagine going to church and the pastor is only addressing you?” The comedian and actor, of course, noted that there are many public figures who are angry at the president right now. “Trump was also getting yelled at by everyone just because he released hundreds of violent insurrectionists back into the streets or something,” Chieng noted, referencing Trump’s sweeping executive order pardoning those involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection.

You can watch the full segment below.

“The Daily Show” spent several minutes of its Wednesday show taking aim as well at the Republican representatives who have avoided commenting substantially on the president’s Jan. 6 decision by claiming that they “haven’t seen” or “didn’t see” the actions of those pardoned. “Daily Show” correspondent Troy Iwata jokingly explained that this isn’t because the figures in question are trying to dodge reporters’ questions but because they “actually have medical conditions that literally make it impossible for them to see the Jan. 6 footage.”

“[Alabama senator] Tommy Tuberville actually has that disease from ‘Memento,'” Iwata quipped, referring to the Christopher Nolan film about a man who suffers from short-term memory loss. “[Colorado congresswoman] Lauren Boebert was hypnotized at a child’s birthday party and just never fully recovered. [Florida senator] Rick Scott, he couldn’t see the footage because he’s actually half-horse, so he always has those blinders on, and [Tennessee congressman] Tim Burchett couldn’t see it because he got kicked in the head by Rick Scott because he walked behind him too quickly and it spooked him.”

The American people should start showing a lot more sensitivity to Republicans going forward, Itawa jests, promising, “There’s a lot of things coming down the pipeline in the next four years that they’re not going to be able to see, or hear, or remember, or legislate against, or understand, or consider, or acknowledge.”

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The longtime actress detailed her reservations during an interview with AARP published Thursday, during which she shared that her two daughters, Olive and Frankie, are encouraging her to dip her toes in the dating pool.

“My girls say I should go on dates, but I also know how I felt when men were around when I was little — it didn’t feel safe to me, so I’m probably overcautious from those experiences,” Barrymore explained.

In Barrymore’s 1991 autobiography “Little Girl Lost,” the actress said she experienced abuse from both her parents and shared that her father was a violent alcoholic. Through her developmental years from a child into older adolescence, Barrymore fell into a drug and alcohol addiction and at 14 emancipated herself from her parent’s guardianship.

In 2011, Barrymore found love with actor Will Kopleman (“The Intern”), whom she shares her two daughters with. The former couple stayed together for four years before divorcing in 2016, a hurdle Barrymore said was hard to overcome.

“My dream family was falling apart and I didn’t know how to put one foot in front of the other,” she said. “And I had grown up so fast but now I didn’t know what age to feel — I just knew that my life was heavy and painful and sad — and I sat in that for a while. Eventually, thank goodness, I lifted myself out of it. I had two kids and I had to figure it out.”

While Barrymore now hosts her own talk show, “The Drew Barrymore Show,” where she’s become known for her compassionate and intimate conversations, the world first knew her for her work in television and film — a world she stepped away from to focus on her children.

“I was in my early 40s, and not learning how to be my own healthy, independent individual, how to be the parent I dream to be,” Barrymore said. “Being other people doesn’t help me figure that out right now. And the long hours of doing films were hours I wouldn’t have with my kids. I wasn’t going to do that.”

As she approaches her milestone 50th on Feb. 22, the actress told AARP life couldn’t be better.

“It can’t come soon enough,” Barrymore said. “I feel like Frodo [in ‘The Lord of the Rings’]. I see that brass ring and I’m so excited! I have no issues with aging—this is the happiest I’ve been in my life.”

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