Entertainment
‘Naked Gun’ Director Limited Reboot to Only 1 O.J. Simpson Joke to Be ‘Respectful’
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NEED TO KNOW
- Akiva Schaffer is directing the latest iteration of the popular police movie, The Naked Gun
- The comedy creator was tasked with following the franchise’s storied legacy, while still acknowledging the fresh cast
- To do so, Schaffer said the new film needed to acknowledge O.J. Simpson’s previous role in the original films
The Naked Gun is making a comedic reference to all of its previous stars, including controversial athlete O.J. Simpson
Director Akiva Schaffer confessed to The Hollywood Reporter that when people learned he was taking on the newest iteration of the spoof franchise, he was immediately asked about what he would do about Simpson’s Naked Gun character, Detective Nordberg. The late athlete starred in the 1988 original, plus the sequels in 1991 and 1994.
“When I first told friends, ‘Hey, I’m actually about to write a Naked Gun,’ they’d go, ‘What are you going to do about O.J?’ So, right away, I was like, ‘Oh, right. That’s the elephant in the room that has to be addressed,’ ” he recalled for the outlet. But he confessed they only needed one joke to address audience questions.
Paramount Pictures
Schaffer, 47, admitted that after writing the initial joke acknowledging Simpson’s character, he and the writers “never wrote another O.J. joke.”
The sole Simpson joke appears in the film’s trailer, as stars Liam Neeson Frank Drebin Jr. and Paul Walter Hauser pay tribute to framed photos of their late parents in a police Hall of Legends. It then transitions to a framed portrait of Nordberg (Simpson), before cutting to his son Nordberg Jr. (Moses Jones) breaking the fourth wall and shaking his head in appallment.
“We just went, ‘Yep, that takes care of that,’ ” Schaffer said. “I didn’t know that the joke would kill as hard as it did at our first test screening. If I had known that, then maybe I would’ve written other jokes,” he continued.
“But you want to be respectful of everything that revolves around him, so it’s not something I really took glee in. We just had to acknowledge it in a way we thought was not dancing on anybody’s misfortunes,” he said, seemingly referencing Simpson’s infamous 1995 murder trial for the homicides of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ron Goldman.
Unique Nicole/Getty for Paramount Pictures
He also explained that he and the team “didn’t get pushback or anything.”
“On the edgy jokes, people would go, ‘Ooh, I don’t know.’ And I’d be like, ‘Don’t worry. The movie is going to be 85 minutes. A fourth of the script is getting cut. Anything that doesn’t work is going to be cut,’ ” he explained. “So that’s the way I made everyone relax all the time.” (The film was intended to be 85 minutes long to mirror the original two films’ runtimes, but is ultimately 83 minutes.)
The movie, produced by Seth MacFarlane, is based on the Jim Abrahams and David Zucker and Jerry Zucker franchiseThe Naked Gun, which originally starred Leslie Nielsen as self-serious detective Frank Drebin, who managed to rise through the ranks of the police squad.
In the new film, Neeson stars as Lt. Frank Drebin Jr., son of Nielsen’s character, as he follows in his father’s footsteps. The cast includes Hauser, Pamela Anderson, CCH Pounder, Kevin Durand, Cody Rhodes, Liza Koshy, Eddie Yu and Danny Huston.
Frank Masi/Paramount Pictures
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The Naked Gun premiered in theaters on Friday, Aug. 1.
Entertainment
Savannah Guthrie vows not to ‘fall apart’ for kids’ sake amid mom Nancy’s disappearance

Savannah Guthrie promised not to “fall apart” for the sake of her two children during her “Today” show interview on the disappearance of mom Nancy Guthrie.
“I will do it for my kids,” the journalist told Hoda Kotb during the emotional sitdown Friday, referencing daughter Vale, 11, and son Charles, 9.
Savannah, who shares the little ones with husband Michael Feldman, added, “I will not let whoever did this take my children’s mom away.”
The 54-year-old went on to say Nancy modeled the same strength when Savannah’s dad, Charles, died when the NBC personality was a teenager.
“She taught me,” Savannah explained. “I saw her grief, I saw her world shatter — but I saw her get up, saw her love, saw her faith.
“She taught all of us,” the “crushed” and “heartbroken” former attorney continued, referencing brother Camron Guthrie and sister Annie Guthrie. “I may not do it as well as her, but will do it.”
Savannah’s conversation with Kotb comes nearly two months after her 84-year-old mom was kidnapped from her Arizona home on Jan. 31.
The TV personality, who discussed her April 6 “Today” show return elsewhere in the interview, sobbed while sharing how she was in “agony” over Nancy’s disappearance in the portion that aired Thursday.
“I wake up every night in the middle of the night, every night, and in the darkness, I imagine her terror, and it is unthinkable,” Savannah said. “But those thoughts demand to be thought, and I will not hide my face.”
She learned on Feb. 1 that Nancy was missing when she received a call from Annie.
“I said, ‘Is everything OK?’ And she said, ‘No.’ She said, ‘Mom’s missing,’” Savannah recalled. “And I said, ‘What? What are you talking about?’ She said, ‘She’s gone.’”
The NBC personality explained that she and Annie thought their mom may have had “some kind of medical episode in the night,” describing how the “back doors were propped open.”
However, the matriarch’s cell phone and purse remained in the home.
Savannah, additionally, called out the “cruel” allegations that her family was involved in Nancy’s disappearance.
She will “never understand” the speculation, adding that it “piles pain upon pain” as she fiercely defended Camron and Annie’s husband, Tommaso Cioni.
Nancy was reported missing after she didn’t attend church service on Feb. 1.
Surveillance footage of a masked and armed person outside of Nancy’s front door the night she was abducted was later released by the FBI.
Savannah and her siblings have accepted the possibility that their mom might be dead, but have offered $1 million for her return.
Entertainment
Antonio Banderas reveals why he fled Hollywood after major health scare

Antonio Banderas gave up his ritzy Hollywood lifestyle and has zero regrets almost 10 years later.
The actor, 65, moved back to his home town — Málaga, Spain — back in 2017. Banderas said it was his near-fatal heart attack that triggered his big move.
“Mine was a really serious warning,” he said of the heart attack in an interview with the Times published Wednesday. “It changed the way I look at life.”
The outlet noted that prior to his major health scare, Banderas was living between the US and the UK, and had a mansion in Cobham, Surrey.
The “Desperado” star then immediately quit smoking, sold his private jet, returned to Málaga and bought a theatre.
“Faced with death, it made me look back and realize that I am, in fact, a theatre actor,” he explained.
Banderas now lives in a flat with his longtime girlfriend, Nicole Kimpel, and owns multiple restaurants. But his not-for-profit theatre, Teatro del Soho, is his greatest passion.
“I have never been so happy,” he noted.
Banderas also reflected on how he became a superstar in Hollywood, sharing that his insecurities about English not being his first language went away after he married his now ex-wife, Melanie Griffith. The two divorced in 2015 after 18 years of marriage.
He shared that while he was originally told that as a Spaniard, he could only play “the bad guys” in films, he proved them wrong with 1998’s “The Mask of Zorro.”
“The problem was a few years later I had a mask, hat, sword and cape and the bad guy was Captain Love, who was blond and had blue eyes,” he said.
He continued, “Even more important is [his 2011 film] ‘Puss in Boots,’ because it’s for young kids. They see a cat that has a Spanish, even an Andalusian accent and he’s a good guy.”
Banderas spoke to Page Six in December 2022, and said his heart attack was “one of the best things” that ever happened to him.
“I realized that it probably was one of the best things that ever happened in my life because the things that were not important and I was worried every day about them, meaningless,” he explained.
He told us that after his near-death experience, he began to detach from “things that I thought were important before but weren’t really.”
“I was like, why am I worried about that if I’m going to die?” he recalled. “I knew always [that I was going to die], but now I know. I’ve seen it right here.”
Entertainment
Pussycat Dolls’ Jessica Sutta claims her MAGA politics cost her a reunion tour

Former Pussycat Dolls member Jessica Sutta is speaking out after being excluded from the girl group’s upcoming reunion tour, saying she believes her political views, including her support for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., made her a “liability.”
On March 12, the Pussycat Dolls announced their PCD Forever Tour, featuring only three members — Nicole Scherzinger, Kimberly Wyatt and Ashley Roberts — while other original members, including Sutta, Carmit Bachar and Melody Thornton, were left out.
During a March 22 appearance on “The Maverick Approach” podcast, Sutta, 43, claimed that she, Bachar and Thornton were not told about the reunion in advance.
“None of us were called. None of us were told about anything,” Sutta said. “In fact, we were blindsided.”
The singer explained that she heard rumors about a potential reunion and claimed she repeatedly tried to contact Pussycat Dolls founder Robin Antin, 64, but could not reach the choreographer until the night that the news leaked.
“She didn’t give me all the details, but I just — I started just to cry. I was like, ‘How dare you?’ Like you had no respect at all,” Sutta said.
Sutta said Scherzinger, 47, called her the following day when the tour was announced, but Sutta was too hurt to answer.
“I don’t plan to call her back,” Sutta said. “I love Nicole. This is very bittersweet for me. I respect her as an artist. I even cried with joy when she won her Tony just recently.”
In June 2025, Scherzinger won her first Tony Award, taking home the best leading actress trophy for her role as Norma Desmond in “Sunset Boulevard.”
“I definitely was rooting for her, but the way they did this just showed me exactly why I’m not in the group,” Sutta said. “And they showed exactly, to me, who they are.”
In recent years, the singer has been outspoken about experiencing serious, ongoing health issues that she said began after she received a COVID-19 vaccine in 2021. Sutta, who said she is also dealing with a neurological condition, shared her opinion that she was sidelined from the reunion tour due to her support for RFK Jr.
Sutta publicly backed RFK Jr. during his 2024 presidential run, attending campaign events, posting about him on social media and speaking at rallies, citing shared views on health and vaccines following her own medical struggles.
“It’s a cash grab. I mean, come on. Let’s keep it real, right?” Sutta said of the reunion tour. “And I was a liability.
“I align with Bobby Kennedy, which is aligning with MAGA,” she continued. “Do I love what [President Donald] Trump is doing? Absolutely not. I do not believe in war. [But] we didn’t have a chance for the [vaccine]-injured community to get help without him.
“People are screaming at me, ‘You’re MAGA, you’re MAGA.’ Yeah, I am. I triple down on it because I’m like, I’m so sick of people telling me who I should be.
“So, it’s unfortunate,” Sutta said. “I was never political, but I had to because my life depends on it.”
Sutta described helping RFK Jr. with his presidential campaign as “incredible” and admitted it was “a little bittersweet” when he dropped out and endorsed Trump.
“I wanted to see him as president,” she said. “I think he’s an amazing human. I think he’s too good to be president though. Like he has too big of a heart.”
Sutta was a member of the Pussycat Dolls from 2003 to 2010, joining as the group transitioned from a burlesque dance troupe into a recording act and remaining through its peak success.
After her departure, Sutta launched a solo career, releasing two studio albums, including “Feline Resurrection” (2016) and “I Say Yes” (2017) and scoring four No. 1 singles on Billboard’s US Dance Club Songs chart.
Sutta previously reunited with the Pussycat Dolls for a planned 2019 reunion before it ultimately fell apart in 2020.
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