Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman are expected to receive a big raise when they return to the set of Big Little Lies for season two. The actresses will rake in around $1 million per episode (plus executive producer fees and back-end points), up from the $250,000 to $350,000 they previously made. Co-stars Zoe Kravitz and Shailene Woodley are also said to be scoring significant bumps in their pay. The salary spike is reportedly related to Reese’s new deal with Apple, which is allegedly paying her and Jennifer Aniston $1.25 million per episode for their upcoming morning-news drama. Season two will begin shooting this spring but won’t air until 2019.
According to my source, Ben Affleck wants to marry Lindsay Shookus. I have been told that they can’t bear to be apart and spend every free moment they have together. I guess he has fallen hard. They both want to spend the rest of their lives together. Once their divorces are both out of the way, Ben plans to walk down the aisle with Lindsay. A friend of Ben’s says is the happiest he’s ever been.
In the wake of five women accusing him of sexual exploitation, James Franco is reportedly taking a closer look at his past. My source says “James has been reaching out to former girlfriends to ask about his behavior.”
When Louis Tomlinson found out that a nine-year-old One Direction fan suffering from cerebral palsy needed $10,000 for medical expenses, he happily donated the full amount.
Louis made the donation to the fundraising page for 1D fan Rylee Sanord, which was created by Rylee’s older sister. Needless to say, the entire family was blown away by his generosity.
On Tuesday, reporter Jacob Weisberg said he had a series of phone conversations with porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016, a time when she was apparently prepared to expose her alleged affair with Donald Trump for fear that he wouldn’t pay her $130,000 in promised hush money.
Jacob says that Stormy basically said Trump was bad in bed describing him as “textbook generic,” and that Trump compared her to his daughter, Ivanka.
Again, this allegedly took place in 2016, which means Trump was married to his third wife, Melania Trump.
Jenni “JWoww” Farley says that her Jersey Shore co-star Mike “the Situation” Sorrentino is a completely different person today than he was on the show’s initial 2009 to 2012 run. “Mike was ‘the Situation’ on the show, and he was arrogant and he was cocky and he was very full of himself. It was very hard to accept that person as a friend,” she tells People. “He’s sober, he’s clean, he’s a different human being now. And he’s so positive, he’s so supportive of all of us–I’m like if there’s anyone who deserves this show to come back, it’s [Mike] because I want everyone to see this side of Mike.”
JWoww says the cast plans on keeping an eye on Mike to ensure he doesn’t go back to his hard-partying ways when they reunite for Jersey Shore Family Vacation. Regardless, Mike has other problems to worry about as well: He’s expected to plead guilty to tax fraud in New Jersey this Friday and faces up to 15 years in jail.
Kim Kardashian and Kanye West aren’t messing around when it comes to the privacy of their new daughter. My source tells me they’ve been getting serious offers for her first photos . . . some in the neighborhood of $5 million, but they’ve rejected them all. Obviously they will post pictures when they’re ready. They waited about two months to post the first photos of North and Saint.
Meanwhile, the paparazzi caught up with Kanye yesterday, and asked him the baby’s name. He claimed they hadn’t thought of one yet.
Kim did post a Louis Vuitton monogram last night . . . so people are thinking it might be a clue to the kid’s name. LV West perhaps?
Michael Jackson’s daughter, Paris got to meet Paul McCartney when she attended his daughter Stella McCartney’s Autumn-Winter 2018 collection launch on Tuesday night in Los Angeles. Paris shared a photo of her and the 75-year-old Beatles member and captioned it, “I cried like a godd**n baby.” Paris has said before that Paul was her idol. “He’s the love of my life,” she gushed. “I actually already wrote a song I’d like him to sing, but it probs won’t happen.”
In a new interview, Justin Timberlake admitted that the ‘Wardrobe Malfunction’ was brought up during his negotiations to headline this year’s Super Bowl Halftime Show.
He said, “Naturally, that’s something we talked about . . . to be honest, it wasn’t too much of a conversation. It’s just one of those things where you go like, ‘Yeah, what do you want me to say? We’re not going to do that again.'”
He also said that he and Janet Jackson have made peace, and for once he kinda owned up to it being his fault saying, “I stumbled through it . . . I had my wires crossed, and it’s just something that you have to look back on and go like, ‘Okay, well you know, you can’t change what’s happened, but you can move forward and learn from it.'”
Drake has extended his partnership with his hometown NBA team, the Toronto Raptors. According to Rap-Up, Drake’s partnership with the Raptors will now include charitable contributions and six OVO-themed home games this season. Per the Welcome Toronto initiative, the Raptors and OVO have pledged $1 million over the next three years to renovate local community basketball courts. They also plan to donate $2 million to Canada Basketball over the next five years. Drake spoke on the expansion of his partnership with the Raptors and said, “As this team and Toronto continues to grow, we have seen how much we can do together. Welcome Toronto is about celebrating our team and our city, but also working together to give back to the community and creating a place where the youth of our city can come together to play. These same courts could also potentially shape the next generation of Canadian basketball superstars.” Drizzy recently unveiled the alternate black-and-gold uniforms to match the OVO theme.
Dolly Parton has been awarded two Guinness World Records. And because she’s Dolly and is a national treasure, the Guinness people made the trip to Nashville for a personal presentation. Let’s start with the two World Records.
One is for the “Most Hits On a U.S. Hot Country Songs Chart by a Female Artist.” She accomplished that by having a total of 107 hits. (So far.)
The other is the “Most Decades with a Top 20 Hit on the ‘Billboard’ Hot Country Songs Chart”. That spans six consecutive decades . . . starting in 1967 with a song called “Something Fishy”, to last year’s version of “Jolene” with Pentatonix.
She answered a few questions too. They asked her to pick a favorite from all of her hits. She named two. She loves “Coat of Many Colors” because it’s about her family and is very personal. But as a singer and songwriter, that favorite is “I Will Always Love You”.
They asked how her music has evolved over the years, and that’s a good question because it’s tough for artists to stay relevant in two different decades, let alone six.
She said, quote, “I’ve always written from my heart. I try not to dwell on trying to be commercial. Usually when an idea hits me it comes from my heart, but I still try to be alert and to be aware and try to be as up-to-date as I can be.”
When you’re as successful as Dolly, everyone wants to know if there’s a secret. She said it’s all about the work. Quote, “You’re not going to do it without hard work. You certainly have to have the talent [and] a lot of people helping you out.
“I’ve been blessed with good people through the years. [But] I’ve still had to be there on the spot. I’m the one up in the wee hours coming up with what I need to do next to get things done. I don’t think anybody comes to great success without working for it.”
And her advice to new artists is, quote, “Be true to yourself. You can’t expect someone else to do it for you. Nobody else can live your dream. You have to take the initiative and you have to really see it through in order to make it happen.”
