The play takes place in the same world as the hit Netflix series “Stranger Things,” but it is based on an original story by “Stranger Things” creators the Duffer Brothers as well as Jack Thorne and Kate Trefry. Trefry wrote the play with Justin Martin and Stephen Daldry, serving as co-directors.

As previously announced, Louis McCartney will reprise his award-winning performance as Henry Creel to make his Broadway debut when the production makes it way to New York this spring.

The rest of the cast of 34 were announced Friday, including Janie Brookshire, Kelsey Anne Brown , Malcolm Callender, Ta’Rea Campbell as Patty’s Mom, Juan Carlos as Bob Newby – replacing Nicholas Eldridge, Antoinette Comer, Robert T. Cunningham as Charles Sinclair, Ayana Cymone as Sue Anderson, Tom D’Agustino, Victor de Paula Rocha , Ian Dolley as Walter Henderson, Dora Dolphin as Karen Childress, Nya Garner, Logan Gould as Lonny Byers, Shea Grant as Claudia Yount, Rebecca Hurd, Ted Koch as Chief Hopper, Timothy Lawrence, Jamie Martin Mann as Ted Wheeler, Patrick Scott McDermott, Stephen Wattrus, Maya West and Eric Wiegand as Alan Munson and Graham Winton.

The newcomer cast has 16 Broadway debuts. 

Earlier this month the production announced principal actors joining the cast, including Emmy Award nominee T.R. Knight as Victor Creel, Alex Breaux as Dr. Brenner, Emmy Award nominee Gabrielle Nevaeh as Patty Newby, Rosie Benton as Virginia Creel, Andrew Hovelson as Principal Newby, Alison Jaye as Joyce Maldonado, and Burke Swanson as James Hopper Jr.

Breaux will also be a series regular in the fifth and final season of “Stranger Things.” 

McCartney’s performance of “The First Shadow” on The West End earned him the Stage 2024 Debut Award for Best Performer in a Play as well as the Critics’ Circle Award for Most Promising Newcomer. Additionally, the play has won Laurence Olivier Awards for Best Entertainment or Comedy Play and Best Set Design.

The show’s description is as follows:

In 1959 Hawkins, Indiana, the Creel family seeks a fresh start, especially their teenage son Henry, who is eager to escape his troubled past. Initially, things go well — he finds friendship and joins the school play. But when a wave of shocking crimes strikes the town, Henry is forced to confront a terrifying truth: is there something inside him that connects him to the horrors unfolding around him?

As this thrilling mystery races forward, shadows of the past are unleashed, relationships are tested, and the town of Hawkins faces the ultimate question: can the power of friendship outshine the darkness within?

“Stranger Things: The First Shadow” will open at Broadway’s Marquis Theatre. Performances will begin on March 28, 2025, and the show will officially open on April 22, 2025. Tickets are now on sale.

The post ‘Stranger Things: The First Shadow’ Full Cast Revealed appeared first on TheWrap.

Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan, Charli XCX, Doechii, Sabrina Carpenter, Shakira, Benson Boone, Teddy Swims and Raye will all perform at the Trevor Noah-hosted awards show Feb. 2 on CBS.

This first batch of musicians notably includes six of the eight Best New Artist nominees — Boone, Roan, Doechii, Carpenter, Swims and Raye — notably omitting Khruangbin and Shaboozey, at least for the time being.

“The upcoming Grammy Awards won’t just be about celebrating and honoring the best in music this year. They will also show how the power of music can help rebuild, uplift and support those in need,” Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. said in a statement. “We are thrilled that so many artists in our community are banding together at this time to show support for their fellow music makers and others impacted by the recent wildfires.”

The ceremony will indeed be raising additional funds to support wildfire relief efforts in Los Angeles while also honoring the first responders who continue to risk their lives to protect others and fight the flames. The Recording Academy and MusiCares have already pledged $1 million towards that end.

In the meantime, for a full list of 2025 nominees, click here.

The 67th Grammy Awards air live on CBS and Paramount+ on Feb. 2.

The post Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan, Charli XCX, Doechii, Sabrina Carpenter and Shakira to Perform at 2025 Grammys appeared first on TheWrap.

Trump is visiting, ostensibly, to review the damage caused by the devastating wildfires. But like pretty much all Republicans, he has also responded to them with incredible cruelty and petty bitterness. That includes using the fires as an excuse to say bigoted things, spreading conspiracy theories and attempting 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 Thursday lamented that the president is actually on his way “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,” he 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 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.

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 Hills” stars banded together with more than 20 other Pacific Palisades residents, filing a suit Tuesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The suit alleged that the city’s water supply system failed its residents.

“On information and belief, the Palisades Fire was an inescapable and
unavoidable consequence of the water supply system servicing areas in and around Pacific Palisades as it was planned and constructed,” the lawsuit read. “The system necessarily failed, and this failure was a substantial factor in causing Plaintiffs to suffer the losses alleged in this Complaint.”

The plaintiffs are suing for an undetermined amount from the city, but they will have to prove how the city’s water system caused damage to the property. The “inverse condemnation” suit also demands a jury trial.

The lawsuit specifically outlined how Santa Ynez Reservoir was “completely offline and emptied before the fires erupted in the area.” The plaintiffs also alleged that fire hydrants in Pacific Palisades “failed after three tanks
each holding one million gallons of water went dry within a span of 12 hours.”

Pratt has been vocal on social media about his family’s loss during the fires, even promoting his wife’s music on TikTok to bring the family revenue during the difficult time. Both Pratt and his parents lost their homes in the Palisades fire. His parents are also plaintiffs in the suit.

This case is one of many inverse condemnation cases that have been filed against the city. In total, the L.A. wildfires have burned just over 50,000 acres since they began on Jan. 7. Additionally, at least 28 people have been killed and more than 15,798 structures have been destroyed. While the Eaton fire is nearly contained at 95% after burning 14,021 acres, the Palisades fire has now reached 23,448 acres at 72% containment.

Analysts have estimated that this is the costliest fire in American history, with estimates of around $250 billion.

The post Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt Sue City of LA Over Wildfire Damage, Saying Its ‘System Necessarily Failed’ appeared first on TheWrap.

The new two-man team of John Dickerson and Maurice Dubois will take over the evening slot beginning Monday. The broadcast, which had been based in Washington D.C., will return to New York, and Margaret Brennan will serve as lead correspondent from Washington, D.C.

O’Donnell will stay at the network as a senior correspondent, promising viewers that they’ll see her on CBS News programs including “60 Minutes” and “Sunday Morning.”

In July, O’Donnell shared a note with CBS staffers announcing her exit, “There’s so much work to be proud of! But I have spent 12 years in the anchor chair here at CBS News, tied to a daily broadcast and the rigors of a relentless news cycle. It’s time to do something different.”

“Norah will have the time and the support to deliver even more of the exceptional stories she is known for across our shows and streams, across CBS network and Paramount+,” president and CEO of CBS News Wendy McMahon added. “She will have the real estate and flexibility to leverage big bookings on numerous platforms.”

As she said her final good night Thursday, her CBS News colleagues gathered around her and applauded.

O’Donnell follows a short but powerful line of women who have helmed their own news broadcasts. In 1993, Connie Chung was the first woman to co-host a network news show: She was given second billing behind Dan Rather on “CBS Evening News With Dan Rather and Connie Chung,” which ran through 1995.

Over a decade later, in 2006, Katie Couric became the first woman to anchor a news program by herself. She hosted the CBS Evening News through 2011.

Over at ABC, Diane Sawyer served as the nightly news anchor for ABC World News Tonight from 2009 to 2014.

The post Norah O’Donnell Signs Off From CBS News, Oprah Winfrey Praises Her ‘Incredible Impact’ | Video 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.

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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.”

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