The Britney Spears Conservatorship Fiasco Is About To Become A Juicy Netflix Documentary

Britney Spears has had it rough for a while, but recently things have been on the up-and-up. She recently got engaged. What’s more, the long battle over her conservatorship, which saw her father, Jamie, still in control over much of her life and her fortune, appears to be coming to an end. It’s the latter that will be the focus of a new Netflix documentary.

It’s called Britney Vs. Spears, and it will be the second high-profile doc about the pop star’s life, following Hulu’s Framing Britney Spears. That one, released earlier this year, chronicled her rise to stardom, her oft-negative treatment by the media, her highly publicized breakdown, and, finally, her conservatorship.

Britney Vs. Spears will delve deep into that last thing, exploring how her father spent 13 years overseeing her wealth and career and shielding her from media appearances, and how Britney ended up being so tightly controlled she reportedly had to ask to borrow other people’s phones to make calls.

Jamie Spears recently offered to end his conservatorship following a long and very public battle, in which his daughter repeatedly petitioned to have a judge give it the axe. Shortly after that happened, Britney became engaged to her longtime boyfriend Sam Asghari.

Britney Vs. Spears will be directed by Erin Lee Carr, award-winning documentarian, who has often focused on true crime stories, as in Netflix’s How to Fix a Drug Scandal and HBO’s I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth vs. Michelle Carter. She is also the daughter of the late New York Times journalist David Carr.

(Via Variety)

Lil Nas X Approves The Teletubbies’ Request For A Collaboration In A Heartwarming Twitter Exchange

On Lil Nas X’s new album Montero, he recruited a handful of collaborators, including Jack Harlow, Doja Cat, Elton John, Megan Thee Stallion, and Miley Cyrus (but not Drake and Nicki Minaj). Now he’s apparently fielding requests for featured guests on his next album, because he responded to a collaboration-seeking message from a legendary four-piece: the Teletubbies.

The twitter account for Teletubbies shared mock-ups of the Montero cover art but with Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa, and Po replacing Lil Nas X. Along with the images, the characters put in a request to link up with Lil Nas X, asking, “.@LilNasX can we get a feature on the next album?”

Lil Nas X is totally on board, as he responded with an idea of how he thinks their collaboration could work out: “alright bet! me and tinky winky on the hook, dipsy & po on the verses and we’ll let laa laa do the outro.”

While a potential collaboration with the Teletubbies is a fun and silly thing, it wouldn’t be the most surprising thing if Nas, who is always up for a good time, actually got together with the beloved children’s characters and made it happen. He did once visit Elmo’s talk show to cover “Elmo’s Song,” after all.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Octavia Spencer Has Apologized To Britney Spears After That Prenup Joke About Her Engagement

Britney Spears has been through a lot. But things for her seem to finally be back on the up-and-up. Her lengthy conservatorship battle, which saw her trying to wrestle free from the legal clutches of her father, seems to be coming to an end. And she’s now engaged, having said yes to Sam Asghari, her boyfriend of four years. Fans are so protective of her, so adamant that she be happy again, that when Octavia Spencer made a joke in her Instagram feed, it did not go well.

When Spears broke the news of her engagement on Instgram, the Oscar-winning actress did like many: She left a comment. But she didn’t just congratulate her. She winkingly advised her, “Make him sign a prenup.” Spears’ base came for Spencer. And now Spencer had left a big apology for what she said.

“Y’all, a few days ago Sam and Britney announced their engagement and me being me I made a joke,” she wrote in her own Instagram post. “My intention was to make them laugh not cause pain. I’ve reached out to this lovely couple privately to apologize and now want to restore just a smidge of happiness they were robbed of. Britney’s fans have seen her through a lot of pain and she’s found happiness. We’re thrilled for her. So let’s show them love.”

Asghari responded to Spencer’s post, telling her there’s no ill will. “You are very kind to clarify but I have had no hard feelings whatsoever,” he wrote. “Jokes and misconceptions come with the territory.” As for his fiancée, well, she happily deleted her Instagram account the other day, though she says she’s just on a break.

(Via Variety)

Pete Davidson Explained How He Fell Off The ‘SNL’ Stage With Machine Gun Kelly

Saturday Night Live will return next month for a new season, but the cast that will put on sketch comedy on short notice still seems up in the air. That includes Pete Davidson, who had an eventful Season 37 that saw him falling off the stage thanks to rapper Machine Gun Kelly during the show’s closing credits.

That moment went viral in its own right in January, and on Wednesday night Davidson explained what went wrong during the goodbyes. Davidson appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to talk about his upcoming movie and address what happened between himself and Machine Gun Kelly.

The moment happened early in the interview, and he sets the scene starting with an injury that the rapper endured during the production week.

“He bruised his coccyx that week,” Davidson said. “If you don’t know what a coccyx is, it’s the bone in your ass.”

The bruise meant that his mobility was limited, and he had to sit on a “little tooshie pillow.” But despite that, Kelly wanted to do something special during the show’s farewell.

“He got really excited and he went to pick me up, and he forgot he had a bruised coccyx,” Davidson said after explaining that he told the rapper to simply just enjoy the moment and, you know, wave. “So he went to pick me up and he couldn’t go up, so he just started to slowly tilt back.”

Davidson said the fall happened so slowly that they actually held a conversation on the way down.

“It was such a slow fall, we had time for him to go, ‘Oh no,’” Davidson said. “And I went, ‘You’re a f*cking moron.’”

It still remains to be seen if that will go down as one of the last times Davidson appears on the Studio 8H stage. But at least we now know that we’ll have an answer one way or another by October 2.

People Had A Lot Of Reactions To James Corden And Others Stopping Los Angeles Traffic For A ‘Cinderella’ Stunt

James Corden is an oddly controversial public figure: an entertainer who seeks only to bring joy to the world. But sometimes he goes too far. (Then again, sometimes he gets texts from Tom Cruise about landing a helicopter in his yard.) An example of this happened recently, when he and three cast members from the forthcoming musical movie take on Cinderella — in which he plays one of the mice turned into a footman — ran into a Los Angeles street, all for a flash mob stunt meant to advertise the film. But for some, the move did the opposite of delight.

Footage disseminated on social media Saturday showing Corden, star Camila Cabello, Billy Porter, and Idina Menzel dancing and singing in traffic to Jennifer Lopez’s “Let’s Get Loud,” in costumes as their characters. (Porter plays the gender-neutral fairy godparent while Menzel is the evils stepmother). And what better way to make the throngs aware of this than to stop traffic in one of the most car-clogged cities on earth?

Indeed, rather than charmed, some people on social media found themselves livid. They pointed out that Corden and company probably made people late for work.

Others questioned the logic of the happening in the first place.

And there were lots of movie and TV jokes.

For what it’s worth, Cinderella — which comes a mere six years after Disney’s live-action stab, which starred Lily James and Cate Blanchett — hits Amazon Prime on September.

HER Lands Her First Acting Role For The Upcoming Musical, ‘The Color Purple’

HER is a woman of many talents, and she’s looking to expand to a different part of the entertainment world. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the singer will appear in her first Hollywood film, namely director Blitz Bazawule’s new adaptation of the musical version of The Color Purple. HER will play Squeak, who progresses from a juke joint waitress to an aspiring singer. HER is working with the filmmakers to possibly create an original song for the movie as well. As for Bazawule, he was also the filmmaker behind the Beyonce-led film Black Is King.

Corey Hawkins from In The Heights will also star in the film. Oprah Winfrey, who earned an Oscar nomination for the 1985 (non-musical) film version will produce the film through her Harpo Films banner while Steven Spielberg, who directed that movie , is also listed as a producer. The Color Purple is set for a release on December 20, 2023.

While the film will be HER’s first acting role, it will continue the recent success she’s had in the film industry. Earlier this year, she landed her first Oscar for “Fight For You,” which appeared in the Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Steinfield-led film Judas And The Black Messiah. The win brought her halfway to the coveted EGOT award as she already has four Grammys to her name.

Barbra Streisand Was Not A Big Fan Of The Bradley Cooper-Lady Gaga Version Of ‘A Star Is Born,’ Saying It Took The ‘Wrong’ Approach

There have been four movie versions of A Star is Born — five, if you count 1932’s What Price Hollywood?, which tells basically the same story. The one before the smash hit 2018 version with Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga hails from 1976, and it starred another powerhouse duo: Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson. While also a box office cash cow, that Star‘s the one with the worst reviews. But at least according to Streisand, it’s the Cooper-Gaga one that deserves the scorn.

In an appearance on the Australian talk show The Sunday Project (as caught by Deadline), Streisand had some very critical words about the 2018 iteration, which tracks one singer as her star rises and another as his falls.

“I thought it was the wrong idea,” the musical and acting legend said. “Look, it was a big success. I can’t argue with success. But I don’t care so much about success as I do originality.”

It’s true that the Cooper-Gaga Star had the same general idea as the 1976 one, which moved it away from Hollywood movie stars and relocated it to the music industry. That said, she thought one of the original ideas for the 2018 version — starring Will Smith and Beyoncé, with Clint Eastwood directing — was a good one.

“I thought…that’s interesting. You know, really make it different again—a different kind of music, integrated actors. I thought that was a great idea,” Streisand confessed. “So, I was surprised when I saw how alike it was to the version that I did in 1976.”

Streisand took credit for moving her Star into the music biz, although arguably the most famous version — from 1954, starring Judy Garland and James Mason — did take place in the world of movie musicals. And as brilliant as Streisand is as both a singer and an actress, she didn’t want to compete with Judy.

“When I did A Star Is Born…Judy Garland was so great in it, I thought, ‘Oh my God, how am I going to do this?” she said. “‘I have to change it. I’ll become a guitar-playing singer-songwriter, and Kris Kristofferson is already a singer-songwriter, and we’ll change the story a bit.’”

If you want to see if Streisand’s right, you can watch her version on HBO Max alongside the Cooper-Gaga. You can stream the Garland-Mason on there as well. For the original one from 1937, with Janet Gaynor and Frederic March, you’ll have to head to IMDb TV.

(Via Deadline)

‘Wom/n Worldwide’ Breaks Down The Fem Superheroes That Ruled The Summer

Who ran the world this summer? Women, that’s who.

In Uproxx’s latest video series, Wom/n Worldwide, we’re giving a much-deserved shout-out to the fem superheroes that are filling up our timelines with some much-needed good news. And women? They’ve been BUSY this year. Host Drew Dorsey breaks it all down in this, shining a light on the athletes, activists, actors, and all-around badasses affecting positive change in their respective fields. From decorated Olympians like Simone Biles putting a spotlight on mental health — and inspiring us all to take self-care more seriously — to the hip-hop queens ruling the charts, and the women revolutionizing the film industry from behind the camera — we’re hyped for it all.

The Olympics are still on everyone’s mind so now’s a good time to remind fans of how superstars like Biles, Katie Ledecky, and Naomi Osaka changed the game when it comes to how we view excellence in sport, and a couple of 13-year-old skateboarding phenoms blew our minds in Tokyo too. Speaking of empowerment, plenty of female artists have been delivering body-positive bangers this summer — we see you Cardi B — as icons like Billie Eilish, Lorde, and Halsey get ready to drop new music this Fall. (Our playlists needed updating anyway.)

We’re also ready for the world to update its beauty standards so naturally, we had to applaud Nikkie Tutorials for leading the way, and if you didn’t have enough to watch already, we’ve got a couple more female-helmed films to add to your binge-watching queue. All that and an update on the historic Generation Equality Forum that took place in Paris this summer pops up in our inaugural episode.

Check it out above!

Nancy Wilson Tells Us How She Taught Billy Crudup About LSD And To Be A Rock Star For ‘Almost Famous’

Nancy Wilson is, of course, along with her sister Ann, the headliners of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame band Heart. But, today, we are here to talk to Nancy Wilson because she was highly involved in the making of Almost Famous (with her then-husband, Cameron Crowe): from writing Stillwater’s “hits” like “Fever Dog,” to recreating what backstage at a ’70s rock concert actually looked like, to teaching Billy Crudup and Jason Lee how to physically look like rock stars on stage. (Almost Famous has just been released on a new 4K disc.)

Oh, yes, and then there’s the famous, “I am a golden god,” scene after Billy Crudup’s Russell Hammond takes LSD. You see, Billy Crudup had never taken LSD and didn’t know quite how to act. Nancy Wilson was familiar with the experience and gave Crudup some advice that, well, let’s just say that scene is just about perfect.

Ahead, Nancy Wilson explains how the song “Fever Dog” happened and what ’70s band she based the style on. And she explains why they had to teach Billy Crudup and Jason Lee to play while panties and gummi bears are flying at their heads.

Here’s how you can tell a movie has stuck around. When the Matt Damon movie Stillwater came out, there were a lot of “Fever Dog” jokes on social media.

Oh my God. That’s so funny. It’s great when it all connects. All the references all connect with each other, that’s great.

Speaking of “Fever Dog,” I’m always fascinated when someone has to create, in the universe of the movie, what would be a hit song. Because making a hit song sounds very difficult. Though, obviously, you know how to do that.

It’s a play within a play. It’s a fictitious band in a film that has, in their own era, in their own universe, has their own hit song. So it was a really fun project to write the Stillwater songs. And we had to come up with a coinage, to coin a phrase. Just based on, like, “Radar Love,” or something like that where you coin a phrase and you come up with a caricature of the nastiest person in rock, that would be “Fever Dog.” You make it up. At the time, me and Cameron were hanging out at the beach in Oregon where we’d done a lot of writing before. And we were in hysterics, we were paralyzed in hysterics with tears coming out of our eyes when we thought of “Fever Dog.” Because it’s the iconography of the mid to late ’70s blues rock: a fictitious, mid-level band song. We were just aiming at focusing straight into one exact spot. And I think with “Fever Dog,” we nailed it.

What’s also interesting is you’re not writing a number one hit. You’re writing like a number 20 hit.

It’s Top 20, yeah. It’s not as good as Led Zeppelin. It’s got to be mid-level good. So yeah, exactly, you totally get it. It’s not a tall order to fill because it’s got to be in the pentatonic, bluesy world of how a lot of what maybe Bad Company songs would go. Allman Brothers songs would go like that. A lot of the songs, radio songs, but not necessarily big, big hits.

Was there ever a time where you thought to yourself that “Fever Dog” was becoming too good. That it would be a number one song and you have to dial this back a little bit?

Yeah, just dial that back. Yeah, just take a little poetry out. But, no, we didn’t have that problem. But that would be a good problem to have! It was really, very, very Bad Company for the most part. We were borrowing off Bad Company, mainly.

The other thing I keep thinking about, Heart evolved over time. From the ’70s stuff into the ’80s stuff. And then into the ’90s with The Lovemongers. By the way, I still listen to your version of “The Battle of Evermore” all the time

Oh, that’s a good one! Oh, that’s so cool.

But how do you get back in the ’70s mindset? You evolved as a musician over all these years and then all of a sudden be like, “I have to write a ’70s hit.”

Well, it’s just like, when you’ve lived through an era like that, you’ve absorbed into your DNA so much of the information from radio and from listening to records and going to shows. And it’s part of your persona by that point. If we wanted to, for instance, try to write a Joni Mitchell song, it would be much harder, obviously, because there’s the poetry right there. Even in the film itself, there were such authentic, rich, granular details that we made sure were in the film itself. Just the scenes in the film and the backstage areas and the detail of the roadies asleep, sleeping off a hangover on some road case in the background. Just the camaraderie and the community and the family of being. And then the whole aspect of putting on a show in these big arenas and having the moments that are bigger than life, larger than life, where the music happens? I think all that stuff is portrayed really perfectly in this film. I think a rock film is really hard to accomplish realistically because usually it’s a Hollywood translation of a rock lifestyle. But in this case, I had. And Cameron also had lived the rock life and been on the road and traveled with the band and been on the buses and the hotels and the bad pizza and all of it. So it was a real love letter to the authenticity of what it really is like to be out there on the traveling minstrel circuit with all the actors.

You taught Billy Crudup and Jason Lee how to create their stage personas?

Oh, yeah. We took a couple of weeks in a rehearsal space, we called it Rock School and watched a million Who videos and Zeppelin videos. And Crudup was not a player. So, the other guys were players already, but he was the one who really needed to perfect.

And he’s supposed to be one of the greatest guitarists in rock at the time.

Peter Frampton came and helped out and was another consultant on the Rock School project. But it was a lot between me and Billy Crudup, that I think he got the body language and stuff. Because I said, “You can’t look healthy and upright. You cannot have good posture. You have to be slouchy and you have to lean on one leg and go backwards and look like you’re standing in water all the time.” A lot of these cues I gave him for body language, he was really good at picking it up and adding it to his performances.

Okay why is that? I don’t know anything about this, so why would you need bad posture and standing like you’re in a puddle?

You’re kind of standing in some water because you’re like some seaweed in the water. So you’ve got this fluidity going on in your body language.

I see.

So you’re not like an upright Olympian player. Gravity is all over the place for you and you’re slinky and slouchy and crouchy. And if you’re going to be in your other world, there’s another world you’re in when you’re playing. And people might just run up to the front of the stage in front of you while you’re trying to concentrate on your music, playing your songs. And they’ll be like, “Please, please, please, please, please, sign, sign, sign something, sign something, sign something.” And you know, you can’t sign anything. So that was some of the stuff: I would run up to them when they were rehearsing the song stuff. I would go, “Please, please, please, please…”

So you’re actively trying to distract them to get them used to it?

Yeah.

Oh, that’s interesting.

And throwing stuff at them! And there’s panties flying at your head. And there’s Gummi Bears and stuff coming at you. So, it’s not a war zone, but sometimes-

It sounds like a gauntlet.

It’s a gauntlet. That’s the right word. But once in a while, an M80 would go off behind the stage. We’re glad it wasn’t on the stage. And I gave them some other advice for the Golden God scene where he’s on the roof at the party.

Oh, what was that?

Yeah, he was like, “Have you ever been on LSD?,” because he wanted some more direction. So I said, “Yeah, I have been on LSD in the late ’60s. I wouldn’t do it now.” But he said, “What was it like?” And I said, “Well, your brain is like an observatory that opens up to see all the stars above. And you have this electricity coming out the ends of your fingers and your hair. There’s electric bolts, little lighting bolts coming out of the ends of your fingers. And you’re in the heavens.” And I think he did a really good job with that scene.

Wow.

He looked like he had electric lightning bolts coming out of his fingers. It’s a funny story and it speaks so well of him as an actor. He’s so suggestible and I thought he just really nailed it.

Billy and Jason, were you modeling their stage presence after you and Ann? Were you Billy? Were you like, “This is how we interacted on stage and if you do this this is going to work”?

That’s a good question. I think with me and Ann it was a different dynamic just because we’re sisters … and female. But with guys in the band, with the egos of guys, and the way guys’s egos interact, that’s what we, with Cameron, too, were trying to portray. The best scene that explains that most of all would be the argument over the T-shirt.

Yes.

It’s like, “I do the biggest job in the band and you’re just a guitar player with mystique. Your looks have become a problem.” And that’s the male ego. To me, that’s pretty brilliant the way that scene was pulled off. Because it just speaks volumes of the rock and roll male ego trip.

Speaking of that, re-watching this in 4K now, I had never noticed before that there’s a scene a few scenes later where it shows Jason Lee as Jeff Bebe, wearing a shirt that just says, “Jeff Bebe.” It’s so funny.

That’s really funny. I know, that’s really funny. I remember that day when we were shooting that scene that he wore the Jeff Bebe shirt, really funny. There’s so much authenticity going on in that film that Hollywood could never really get right with a rock film. They always get rock and roll wrong if you ask me, because it’s just through the lens of Hollywood.

Yeah, it seems like, especially the biopics, they have a way of showing the band together and starting to write their songs. And they somehow come up with all their hit songs all at once as they’re sitting there in one session.

It just magically appears out of thin air.

Well, I’m glad we’re still talking about this movie and we’re talking about Stillwater. And there’s a movie called Stillwater in theaters.

Oh my God. I must see that.

They do not play “Fever Dog” in it, so don’t go in expecting that.

Okay then.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

A Botched Cher Tweet Led To Utter Chaos (From Herself And Others), And People Couldn’t Handle It

Cher’s already thrown her support behind Britney Spears during her conservatorship fight, and she did so again on Thursday night over a report that Jamie Spears would be stepping down. Before that happened, however, the legendary singer and actress had a slip of the fingers, and all hell broke loose. This turned into a rare moment of real fun on Twitter, so we must talk this out.

Things were going well, given that Cher had been previously tweeting about an HSN (Home Shopping Network) appearance. When all was said and done, however, Cher popped onto her phone and simply tweeted, “I had a great time on H.” Oh no.

So, very clearly, this was a typo, yet Cher’s immediate replies turned into a mixture of people playing along and/or wondering what the heck was going on (especially since Cher’s former husband, Gregg Allman, was a heroin addict, and Cher is anti-drug and even campaigned against marijuana use in the 1960s).

Very quickly, Cher realized what had happened, but (like a champ) she did not delete her erroneous tweet. Instead, she explained (in her frequent ALL-CAPS fashion) that she’d pushed send too early. Then Cher communicated that the camera work on HSN was less than desirable, and had ‘MADE ME LOOK LIKE’ she had… eaten a turkey? Alright.

Cher then lamented losing all her ‘CRED’ over a ‘MANGLED’ tweet. The Oscar winner then declared a divorce from grammar, so please lighten up, everyone.

Fair enough. And here’s the aforementioned support for Britney Spears, even though her dad hasn’t stepped away from the conservatorship quite yet. Cher ‘COULDN’T HAPPIER 4 HER IF I WAS TWINS.’ Same, Cher!