News

Saturday Night Live boss Lorne Michaels is facing some serious accusations from a veteran actor who claims being gay kept him from getting an SNL audition. And it's not the first time the topic has come up regarding Michaels.

Former Groundlings member Tim Bagley discussed Saturday Night Live during an appearance on The Julia Cunningham Show. Bagley claimed that despite his success with the improv group, he never got the opportunity to audition for Saturday Night Live.

Bagley said the reason was because he "was out as a gay man.” He went on to say that it was widely known SNL "would not hire openly gay people."

“All my friends did, and I was always kind of a standout at The Groundlings, but I was out,” Bagley, 67, said. “That’s the problem with being out back then was there were no guardrails. I mean, if somebody didn’t want to have you on their show,...

NBC celebrated Saturday Night Live on Friday night with over three hours of music history on SNL50: The Homecoming Concert. The special hosted by Emmy winner Jimmy Fallon streamed live from Radio City Music Hall in New York City and is now available to stream on Peacock.

Musical acts included Arcade Fire, Backstreet Boys, Bad Bunny, Bonnie Raitt, Brandi Carlile, Brittany Howard, Cher, Chris Martin, Dave Grohl, David Byrne, Devo, Eddie Vedder, Jack White, Jelly Roll, Lady Gaga, Lauryn Hill, Miley Cyrus, Mumford & Sons, Post Malone, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Robyn, Snoop Dogg, St. Vincent, the B-52s, the Roots, and Wyclef Jean. Surprise comedy musical performances included Bill Murray, Paul Shaffer, Andy Samberg, Chris Parnell, Will Ferrell, Ana Gasteyer, Maya Rudolph, Fred Armisen, and Tracy Morgan.

But that doesn’t end the festivities. Sunday night’s SNL50: The Anniversary Special will switch over from mostly music to almost...

There likely wasn’t a path to a win for Jean Doumanian when she took the reins from Lorne Michaels at Saturday Night Live in 1980. The show not only lost Michaels but all of the original Not Ready for Primetime Players, several of whom had gone on to be major movie stars. The new cast would inevitably be compared unfavorably to the first, but it didn’t help that Joe Piscopo was the closest thing Doumanian had found to a star. She’d also cast young Eddie Murphy, but inexplicably kept him relegated to the bench for the first part of the show’s sixth season.

“I could never describe to you in words how painful those first 10 months really were,” Piscopo said in oral history Live From New York. “You just knew that this was America’s favorite television show, and yet here we were, taking it right into the toilet.

Nearly 30 years since its series finale, and a quarter century since it last saw the light of day, HBO’s Dream On is at last available to stream.

All six seasons of the beloved sitcom have quietly surfaced on the ad-supported Roku Channel, which is accessible via the Roku app and TheRokuChannel.com — free of charge.

More from TVLineYour October Streaming Guide Is Here! 100+ Premieres Across Netflix, Apple, Disney+, Hulu, Prime Video and MoreBest Streaming Deals in October: Free Peacock With Instacart, $2.99/Month Starz Plan and MoreHBO's The Franchise Moviemaking Spoof Reminded MCU Vet Daniel Brühl of a Certain '...

Fox is developing the one-hour drama “The Miracle Department,” Variety has learned exclusively.

The official logline states, “Based on a real Catholic organization, ‘The Miracle Department’ is a heartfelt, comedic, hour-long series about a brilliant, but disgraced, former FBI agent who joins forces with a quirky task force to hunt for genuine miracles.”

Brendan McCarthy and Alex Kavallierou serve as writers and executive producers on the project. “Friends” co-creator Marta Kauffman will also executive produce via Okay Goodnight along with Robbie Rowe Tollin and Hannah K.S. Canter. Fox Entertainment Studios will produce.

The project marks a reunion for Kauffman, McCarthy, and Kavallierou. Kavallierou and McCarthy were previously writers on the Netflix series “Grace and Frankie,” which Kauffman co-created with Howard J. Morris. Kavallierou has also worked on shows like “Sullivan and Son” as well as “Rob Brydon: Live.”

Kauffman and the “Friends” producing team won the Emmy Award for best...

Variety Awards Circuit section is the home for all awards news and related content throughout the year, featuring the following: the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and Tony Awards ceremonies, curated by Variety senior awards editor Clayton Davis. The prediction pages reflect the current standings in the race and do not reflect personal preferences for any individual contender. As other formal (and informal) polls suggest, competitions are fluid and subject to change based on buzz and events. Predictions are updated every Thursday.

Visit the prediction pages for the respective ceremonies via the links below:

Oscars | Emmys | Grammys | Tonys

2023 Emmy Predictions:

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series

Weekly Commentary: Commentary to be added in the coming weeks.

Read: Variety’s Awards Circuit for the latest Primetime Emmy predictions in the major categories.

Read: Variety’s Awards Circuit for the latest Creative Arts predictions in all categories.

And...

Paint is a film written and directed by Brit McAdams starring Owen Wilson.

It is a comedy that boasts the flag of quirkiness, and, in its 60s hippy vibes, it is attractive… for a while.

One of those comedies that, unfortunately, runs out of fuel in its initial approach without having a clear idea to develop.

Paint Movie review

There’s some charm to it as a nostalgic product and as a chance to recall for a while the times in which Forrest Gump found love… to the rhythm of Dolly Parton. It has some style regarding the recreation more than in the interpretation or the story, which don’t want to be memorable at any time.

This film has the dubious merit of being told as it renders the life of this painter, something that ends apparently without leaving any trace, transitioning between light comedy and an acid sense...

(Welcome to Best Actor Ever, an ongoing series where we explore the careers and performances of the greatest performers to ever grace the screen.)

We're only six articles into this series, and I've already violated my critic's creed by furthering one of the most egregious filmmaking fallacies in existence. While I stand wholeheartedly behind my selections of Meryl Streep, Denzel Washington, Cate Blanchett, Robert De Niro, and Viola Davis, these artists are venerated for capital-a acting. They play serious, complicated people beset by demons both personal and societal. Critics expect them to dazzle us, to shed inspiring or unsettling light on the human condition. For too many years, they did not expect them to make us laugh.

When Streep, after a decade-plus of electrifying dramatic performances, appeared in the 1989 dark comedy "She-Devil" opposite TV superstar Roseanne Barr, many critics felt she was slumming. Ditto De Niro in Martin Brest's 1988 buddy-comedy "Midnight Run.

IFC has dropped the trailer and art for its upcoming comedy “Paint,” and leading man Owen Wilson goes full-on Bob Ross mode in it.

The film stars Wilson as Carl Nagyl, Vermont’s top TV painter who has everything going for him, from a fanbase to a van and even a perm, until a younger artist takes his spotlight. Nagyl is reminiscent of beloved TV icon Bob Ross, who led PBS’ instructional TV program “The Joy of Painting” from 1983 to 1994. He passed away in 1995 at 52 years old.

Wilson leads the film, having been previously featured in “Zoolander,” “The Royal Tenenbaums,” “Bottle Rocket,” “Loki” and “The French Dispatch.” The actor also has the upcoming film “Haunted Mansion” on his docket with Jamie Lee Curtis, Jared Leto and Winona Ryder.

Joining the Oscar-nominated star, the “Paint” cast includes Michaela Watkins, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Ciara Renée, Lusia Strus, Stephen Root and newcomer Lucy Freyer.

It’s time for a new episode of our Wtf Happened to This Horror Movie? video series, and in this one we’re looking back at the 1992 mess that’s known as House IV (get it Here). Unlike the previous sequels in the anthological House franchise, this one is a direct follow-up to the original House… but it’s one that left many fans wishing the filmmakers had just left House alone. To find out why, check out the video embedded above.

Directed by Lewis Abernathy from a screenplay by Geof Miller and Deirdre Higgins (with R.J. Robertson and Jim Wynorski receiving story credit), House IV – which is also known as House IV: The Repossession and House IV: Home Deadly Home – has the following synopsis:

After Roger Cobb is killed in a car accident, his wife and young daughter move into an old house haunted by a Native American curse.

The new Broadway musical, An American in Paris is currently in previews at the Palace Theatre Broadway at 47th Street. An American In Paris is directed and choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon. Inspired by the Academy-Award winning film,An American in Paris brings this classic tale to Broadway for the first time with music and lyrics by George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin and a book by Tony nominee and Pulitzer Prize finalist Craig Lucas. Lily Tomlin and Denny Dillon saw the show last night and you can check out photos from backstage below...

Eddie Murphy was a miracle. Today, there is an industry around the show that is designed to be a sort of star-making assembly line, and I think many of the people who have used the show as a springboard to other things deserve that success completely. But when Eddie Murphy made his debut on the show in 1980, "Saturday Night Live" wasn't even guaranteed a spot on TV for much longer. After all, the original cast was gone by that point. The new cast, including Denny Dillon, Gilbert Gottfried, Charles Rocket, Ann Risley, and Joe Piscopo, seemed like a poor replacement for the likes of Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Gilda Radner, and Bill Murray. I was a ten year old nascent comedy nerd, and for me, it was mystifying to see something that had been the absolute center of the comedy universe suddenly drop completely out of relevance. Everything about that...

Exclusive: A few weeks ago, I made my off-Broadway debut in someone else’s one-man show. Playing a veterinarian who has to put down a beloved dog in Every Brilliant Thing, I earned polite applause though not the standing O accorded the star, Johnny Donahoe. To be brutally honest, he deserved it, notwithstanding the sensitivity, insight and passion I brought to my performance. After all, the kindly-vet-with-syringe role is recurring — the actor is not. If you were told that this play, co-written by Donahoe and Duncan MacMillan, is about a suicidal mother and her son’s determination — beginning in childhood and advancing into adulthood — to deter her, you might be tempted to politely decline an invitation. Even more so when told that there’s audience participation — a lot of audience participation — in the show, which is running at the intimate Barrow Street Theatre in Greenwich Village.

And yet Every Brilliant...

I've always believed that the "Saturday Night Live" cast you begin watching the show with will always be your favorite, regardless of its actual quality. (Somewhere, there's a 45-year-old going on about the glory days of Denny Dillon, Gilbert Gottfried, Gail Matthius and, um, whatsisname, that Eddie Murphy kid.) I was lucky enough to start watching the show around 1986 or '87, in what was then rightly known as the Dana Carvey/Jon Lovitz cast, but what may be remembered more now as the Phil Hartman/Jan Hooks cast, and not just because both Hartman and Hooks died much too soon — Hooks today at the age of 57. Phil has gotten his just due as the ultimate "SNL" glue guy: he's the subject of a new biography, and when Grantland did a bracket of the best all-time castmembers, he finished second to Will Ferrell. Hooks, meanwhile, couldn't even get out of a...

Gabi tells Will and Sonny about her job offer … but will she tell them the whole story?

Gabi goes off on Sonny, belittling his very existence and chewing his head off. Yep, she’s already a model. Will comes out and wants to what the hell is going on.

Hope and Brady wait anxiously as the day player cop brings out the “woman who was hiding in the park.” He brings her out and it’s … Denny Dillon?

Sonny explains that Gabi’s bag fell on the floor and he was just picking it up. Will wonders what the fuss is about, he thought they were getting along so well. He wants to know why it’s suddenly changed.

Jordan comes in to the bar to see Abby, and meets …. Tad! T immediately falls in love.

Gabi is in full Shrew mode today. Sonny explains again that he wasn’t looking through her crap,...