Entertainment
How Martin Luther King III Emerged From His Iconic Dad’s Shadow
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In 2022, Martin Luther King III, the son of the legendary slain civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr., talked to PEOPLE about what it was like spending the first 10 years of his life living in the same house as the man who inspired so many people of all races around the world.
“He was like our little buddy, like our playmate,” recalled Martin III, who was the second of Martin Jr. and his wife Coretta Scott King‘s four children. “I remember one time, him coming up the steps as we looked out of the window to see him. It was amazing to see the transformation. As he was coming up the stairs, he seemed to be pulling 100-lb. iron weights on his legs.”
Donald Uhrbrock/Getty
“He was exhausted,” King III continued. “But as soon as he saw us, an exhilaration came over him, because we were so excited to see him: ‘Daddy’s home! Daddy’s home!’ When he got to the top of the stairs and the door was open, a renewed energy came across him.”
King III explores his father’s legacy and his own (which is a work in progress) in the new book What Is My Legacy?: Realizing a New Dream of Connection, Love and Fulfillment (Flashpoint). It’s a collaboration with his wife, Arndrea Waters King, and their fellow human-rights activists Mark and Craig Kielburger.
In the excerpt below, King III, 67, discusses living under the shadow of his father’s enormous legend, and how he’s managed to push himself out from under the weight of it, honoring the path of his father while forging one of his own.
Flashpoint
On August 28, 1963, in front of a crowd of nearly 250,000 people spread across the National Mall in Washington, DC, my father, the Baptist preacher and civil rights leader Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. That speech now stands out as one of the twentieth century’s most unforgettable moments and celebrated speeches.
After laying bare the brutal facts of racism in America, my father offered up a dream of an America in which people of all races and faiths live together in harmony and mutual respect, free of economic and employment inequalities. Among the most quoted lines of the speech are “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Hulton Archive/Getty
I was five at the time, too young to attend. Instead, I stayed at home in Atlanta. But I have since listened to his dream many times over the years. Every time, it brings tears to my eyes. His message of hope is something that I’ve continued to share throughout my life. My father’s dream is not just a speech he gave or an idyllic view of what could be. His dream is something we must all choose each day to work toward. What my father was asking for all those years ago was to create a world where every person can realize their dreams. That is something I also want for each of us. My father’s dream remains unfulfilled, but it is still very much alive.
After leading the March on Washington, he went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize, the youngest person awarded the honor at that time. Then when I was ten years old, in 1968, my father was assassinated. He was frozen in time at the height of his influence as a vital, passionate civil rights leader who has inspired millions of people to take nonviolent action for peace and social justice.
My dad will always be larger than life. And for me, the struggle of my life has been, first and foremost, growing up without him. As a boy, I longed to shoot hoops, wrestle, and ride bikes with my dad, as we used to do before he was killed. As a man, I wish he’d seen me graduate from college, marry the love of my life, the incredible Arndrea Waters King, and raise a fierce daughter—his only grandchild—Yolanda Renee King, with his oratory gifts running through her veins.
Marvin Koner/Corbis/Getty
My mom, the incomparable Coretta Scott King, who died in 2006, would sometimes tell me, “Your father would be so proud of you.” This would bring tears to my eyes. I would almost melt into the moment, wanting so badly to hear those very words from his mouth and feel the warmth of his approval.
As you can imagine, I have thought more about legacy than most people. My father passed a huge legacy to me, and so did my mother — combating hate, racism, violence and poverty while trying to build the Beloved Community with room for us all. An important part of my life has been furthering their work. What a great honor it is to pursue this mission, in the hopes that my efforts — on the wings of their legacy — will help create a better world.
Even so, I’ve grappled with my parents’ legacies and my role in them. I’ve spent my life in the shadow of my dad’s accomplishments, and I’ve often struggled to figure out how to emerge from my father’s vast shadow to define my own legacy. Many times, I have asked myself whether the purpose of my life will be defined by my father or by me.
While there were times in my life when I lived in the shadow of my father’s legacy, the truth is that inheriting my father’s name and legacy has been a privilege and a deep honor. So, in answer to the question “Have I done enough?” the answer can only be “There is so much more to be done.”
My Legacy?: Realizing a New Dream of Connection, Love and Fulfillment, published by Flashpoint, is available wherever books are sold.
Entertainment
‘Euphoria’ kills off Jacob Elordi’s Nate Jacobs

He’s not feeling euphoric.
Warning: Spoilers ahead! Do not proceed unless you’ve watched “Euphoria’s” seventh episode of Season 3.
“Euphoria” catapulted Jacob Elordi, Sydney Sweeney and Zendaya into their current status as A-listers, and now, one has been axed from the show.
Season 3 killed Elordi’s controversial character, Nate Jacobs.
He was buried alive in a coffin, with a pipe leading to the surface so that he could breathe. A rattlesnake slithered down the pipe and bit him.
He had been placed there by Naz (Jack Topalian), the gangster he owes about a million dollars to.
Naz’s plan was to leave Nate down there (with a pipe to breathe) for 72 hours while his wife, Cassie (Sweeney) could get the money together.
Unfortunately for Nate, before 72 hours was up, a snake got him. Naz also didn’t make it out alive, as he was fatally shot by Season 3’s other gangster, Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). Cassie and Maddy (Alexa Demie) scrambled to get the money together as Nate got dug up, but they got a nasty surprise, as they were met with his dead body.
In the “inside the episode” segment at the end, Elordi said in his post-mortem interview, “It was a cool way to go, Nate is somebody who’s made so many mistakes and so many dark choices.”
First premiering in 2019, the Sam Levinson-created drama initially followed its characters in high school. Elordi, Zendaya and Sweeney were lesser known at the time.
“Euphoria changed my life,” Elordi, 28, told Variety in 2023.
“Saltburn” was the Australian star’s big-screen breakout that same year. Per Vogue Australia, his “Wuthering Heights” co-star Margot Robbie (who produced “Saltburn”) suggested him for the role at the time after watching him in “Euphoria.”
The “Frankenstein” star told GQ UK in 2023 that before landing on the HBO show, “I wasn’t booking jobs. I think I had – I don’t know, $400 or $800 left in my bank account – and ‘Euphoria’ was my last audition before I went home for a little while to make some money and recuperate.”
In the first two seasons, Nate was the show’s villain. He was a high school jock with anger issues – he manipulated, threatened and blackmailed everyone around him, choked his then-girlfriend, Maddy (Alexa Demi), and struck up a relationship with her best friend, Cassie (Sweeney).
Nate’s issues stemmed from finding his father Cal’s (Eric Dane) sex tapes at a young age.
In Season 3, which is set five years after high school, Nate had a dramatically different personality.
His rage issues inexplicably seemed vanished, his demeanor was softer and nicer and he appeared to genuinely love Cassie (instead of using her, like he was in Season 2).
Instead of being menacing, he did a goofy dance at his wedding. After he didn’t get his way in front of a board of bureucrats, rather than blackmail or threaten them, he just pathetically cried and begged.
Outraged fans criticized “Euphoria” for Nate’s inexplicable personality change and slammed it for giving the character a “lobotomy.”
Season 3 saw Nate take over his dad’s construction business, but he ran into issues when he had to stop his build because of an endangered flower – the white fritillary.
The show also revealed that he conned people into giving him money for his construction projects, including the gangster Naz.
In the third episode of Season 3, when Nate didn’t pay Naz the half a million dollars he owed him, Naz interrupted Nate and Cassie’s wedding and had him brutally beaten on his wedding night. It all culminated in Naz cutting off Nate’s toe. However, Nate later got it sewn back on.
Topalian exclusively told Page Six that Elordi did most of his own stunts during the scene where Naz’s henchmen threw Nate around.
“That’s [Elordi] really doing the struggling and the fighting and the falling and all of that,” he told us.
He called Elordi “committed,” “giving,” and “prepared,” but “between scenes, he’s back to being Jacob.”
“Obviously, he gets back into character really quickly,” he went on. “But once [the director calls ‘cut’] even though he’s been beaten and abused, he’s still having a lot of fun. He’s still cracking jokes and doing things like that.”
Elordi told Entertainment Weekly in November that his acting process was different in Season 3. He noted that he likes to “obsess over” his work, and take the time to prepare by going through “every element and construct it and put it together.”
The booked and busy actor – who was in “Frankenstein” and “Wuthering Heights” back to back – noted that he had “no time” to prepare for Season 3.
“And I didn’t have scripts in any kind of full sense. I sort of just had creative conversations with Sam, so I had no choice.”
The “Priscilla” actor also noted that he “loves” Nate, even though most fans hate him.
“I act to understand a different experience, to express an experience that’s different to my own,” said Elordi. “Playing him taught me a lot about empathy and patience, which is strange with a character like that.”
Elordi also told the outlet that Nate’s dark deeds didn’t bother him.
“It’s a real treat to be a part of that show, and to play the quote-unquote bad guy,” he said. “It’s always more fun. You don’t wanna play some morally superior, world-saving loser.”
Entertainment
Robert De Niro had no idea ‘Taxi Driver’ would become a classic

You talkin’ to him?
Robert De Niro had no idea his 1976 film “Taxi Driver” would be lauded as a classic.
“You never can think that you’re doing something that’s going to have an impact,” the actor, 82, exclusively explained to Page Six in a recent interview alongside his fellow Tribeca Festival co-founder Jane Rosenthal to promote next month’s event.
The Oscar winner “just never look[s] at it that way,” he adding, noting that success is “out of your control.”
The neo-noir drama, directed by Martin Scorsese, stars De Niro as an unhinged taxi driver named Travis Bickle, whose mental state deteriorates over the course of the movie.
De Niro acted in the iconic role alongside Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd, Harvey Keitel, Peter Boyle, and Albert Brooks.
The project generated controversy at the time for graphic violence and 12-year-old Foster’s casting as a child sex worker — and, later, for inspiring John Hinckley Jr.’s attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan.
Nevertheless, it is considered one of the greatest movies ever made and, in 1994, was designated as “culturally, historically or aesthetically” significant by the U.S. Library of Congress when selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
The movie, which turned 50 this year, is being screened at the June film festival — and De Niro and Scorsese, 83, will reunite for a conversation about the project.
Their sitdown is just one of many special talks and screenings taking place at this year’s 25th Tribeca Festival.
Not only are interviews with Madonna, Sean Penn and Josh Safdie also scheduled, but there will be special anniversary screenings of “Cable Guy” and “Bridget Jones’s Diary.”
“There are so many great things to see,” Rosenthal told us. “There’s so much music, everybody from Earth, Wind and Fire and Madonna to Noga Erez and Sarah Bareilles and Peter Frampton.
“There’s just a lot to see,” the 69-year-old continued, stressing that the festival is “a welcome festival for all New Yorkers [with] tickets available” now.
The annual event, which runs from June 3 through June 14, was established in 2002 to spur the revitalization of Lower Manhattan following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
Entertainment
Laura Clery praises first responders after being crushed by fridge

Comedian and social media star Laura Clery praised the first responders who helped her after she was pinned beneath a 600 pound fridge in a freak accident.
Clery was seen in an Instagram video wearing a neck brace while speaking with emergency workers in an ambulance.
“So I was crushed by a 600 pound fridge,” Clery said as she looked up at two firefighters. “Is that correct?”
One of the mean — both of whom wore navy blue uniforms — responded, “Yes.”
A dazed Clery then looked into the camera before the clip ended. She wrote atop the video, “Shout out to these actual HEROES who pushed a 600 pound fridge off of me.”
“This was right after the fentanyl hit and all of my pain [went] away (instantly) I just need to say THANK YOU to these AMAZING firefighters who saved my life!!” the YouTuber captioned the video on Saturday.
“Truly. They got there so fast, broke through my garage door, and 3 of them pushed a 600 pound fridge off of me and got me safely to the trauma unit before things got worse.”
Clery also reflected on how “differently this could have gone” and said she felt “overwhelming gratitude.”
“No broken bones, my kids are okay and safe, I can walk… I’m so lucky!” she continued, praising the personnel as being “calm, kind” and handling “everything like absolute heroes!”
“And then right as one of them pushes the fridge off me, he goes, ‘Wait… I watch all of your videos!’ and they all start hyping me up 😭 like sir… I am currently being flattened but thank you 😂”
She concluded the post, “Forever grateful for these men. Real life angels. 😭🙏❤️”
In the comments thread, Clery admitted that she was “nervous” about fentanyl before it was administered, “but the pain was so severe that they injected it into me and thank God I had no craving to do it again as a recovering addict,” she wrote.
“That’s something we have to think about even when facing an immense amount of pain.”
Clery, 39, shared details of the “most terrifying night of [her] life as a single mom” in an Instagram upload on Thursday.
She said she was getting ready for bed earlier this week when her “600 pound fridge slammed into me and pinned me against the counter.”
During the terrifying incident, she “couldn’t move” and “couldn’t breathe” and that her kids Alfie, 7, and Poppy, 5 — whom she shares with ex-husband Stephen Hilton — were in the house at the time.
“Thank God it didn’t fall on my kids,” she wrote atop a video of her being transported to an ambulance.
The social media personality was able to reach into her pocket for her phone and call 911. “It took three firefighters to lift it off me,” she said. “I’m still shaking.”
She was also able to text Hilton writing, “I’m dying. Come by now now now.”
In the video, Clery could be heard complaining of severe pain following the incident.
She later shared that her son Alfie, who is autistic, had toppled the weighty refrigerator while climbing on it and that it wasn’t “properly mounted into the wall.”
Clery also stated that she wants to “f–king sue the contractor” who installed the fridge and called the oversight “negligence.”
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