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Tag: exclusive

  • Exclusive: Event startup Partiful wasn’t stripping GPS locations from user-uploaded photos

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    Social event planning app Partiful, which calls itself “Facebook events for hot people,” has firmly replaced Facebook as the go-to platform for sending party invitations. But what Partiful also has in common with Facebook is that it’s collecting a tsunami of user data, and Partiful could have done better at keeping that data secure.

    On Partiful, hosts can create online invitations with a retro, maximalist vibe, allowing guests to RSVP to events with the ease of ordering a salad on a touch-screen. Partiful aims to be user-friendly and trendy, propelling the app to #9 on the iOS App Store’s Lifestyle charts. Google called Partiful the “best app” of 2024. 

    Now, Partiful has evolved into a powerful Facebook-like social graph, easily mapping who your friends are and who your friends’ friends are, what you do, where you go, and all of your phone numbers.

    As Partiful grew more popular, some users became skeptical of the company’s origins. One New York City promoter announced that it was boycotting Partiful because its founders and some staff are former employees of Palantir, Peter Thiel’s data mining company, which produces the software that powers ICE’s master database for the Trump administration’s deportation crackdown.

    Given some of the speculation around the app, TechCrunch set up a new account and tested Partiful. We soon found that the app was not stripping the location data of user-uploaded images, including public profile photos.

    TechCrunch found it was possible for anyone, using only the developer tools in a web browser, to access raw user profile photos stored in Partiful’s backend database hosted on Google Firebase. If the user’s photo contained the precise real-world location of where it was taken, anyone else could have also viewed the precise coordinates of where that photo was taken.

    Almost all digital files, like the pictures you take on a smartphone, contain metadata, which includes information like the file size, when it was created, and by whom. In the case of photos and videos, metadata can include information about the kind of camera used and its settings, as well as the precise latitude and longitude coordinates of where the image was captured.

    The security flaw is problematic because anyone using Partiful could have revealed the location of where a person’s profile photo was snapped. Some Partiful user profile photos contained highly granular location data that could be used to identify the person’s home or work, particularly in rural areas where individual homes are easier to distinguish on a map.

    It’s common practice for companies that host user images and videos to automatically remove metadata upon upload to prevent privacy lapses like this. 

    TechCrunch verified the bug ourselves by uploading a new Partiful profile photo that we had previously captured from outside of the Moscone West Convention Center in San Francisco, which contained the photo’s precise location. When we checked the metadata of the photo stored on Partiful’s server, it still contained the exact coordinates of where the image was taken down to a few feet.

    TechCrunch’s profile photo containing GPS coordinates uploaded to Partiful.Image Credits:TechCrunch
    a photo showing a Google Maps dot where the photo of outside Moscone West was taken.
    The location of where our Partiful profile photo was taken on a Google Map.Image Credits:TechCrunch

    After discovering the security flaw, TechCrunch alerted Partiful co-founders Shreya Murthy and Joy Tao by email, as Partiful does not have a public means for reporting security flaws. TechCrunch shared a link to a Partiful user’s raw profile photo containing that user’s real-world location at the time the photo was taken, a residential address in Manhattan.

    Tao told TechCrunch on Friday that the vulnerability was “already on our team’s radar, and was recently prioritized as an upcoming fix.” 

    Partiful initially provided a timeline to fix the flaw by “next week,” but given the sensitivity of the data involved, Partiful fixed the bug by Saturday at TechCrunch’s request.

    TechCrunch confirmed Saturday that metadata was removed from existing user-uploaded photos. The profile photo that we uploaded with our real-world location also had the metadata removed. 

    Partiful disclosed the security lapse in a tweet shortly before the publishing of this story.

    When asked by TechCrunch if Partiful has the technical means, such as logs, to determine if there was any direct or bulk access to user profile photos stored in its database, Partiful spokesperson Jess Eames said this was “still under investigation but we have found no evidence of this yet.”

    Eames said the company “regularly perform security reviews with experts in the field, not just as a one-time action but as part of our ongoing processes.” Partiful did not provide TechCrunch with the name of the experts when asked.

    Partiful has raised over $27 million from investors since its founding in 2022, including a $20 million Series A funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. TechCrunch asked Partiful’s co-founders if they had commissioned a security review of their product before launch, but would not say.

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    Zack Whittaker, Amanda Silberling

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  • Is Mossimo Giannulli Dating Hannah Harrison? Stylist Addresses Rumors

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    Stylist Hannah Harrison is addressing online speculation that she is dating Mossimo Giannulli just one day after he and wife Lori Loughlin confirmed their separation.

    Us Weekly can exclusively confirm that Harrison was the mystery woman seen out with Giannulli, 62, earlier this week in Beverly Hills, but the 32-year-old stylist exclusively tells Us Weekly that their relationship is strictly platonic.

    “I feel like it was bad timing. I went to the [G/FORE Supply] store not knowing that his separation had been announced,” she exclusively tells Us in a Friday, October 3, statement, noting, “I was going there to meet him.”

    Harrison explained that she was there to work when photographers snapped pictures of her and Loughlin’s ex. “He was introducing me to the guys there so I could pull clothes [for Giannulli’s brand G/FORE].”


    Related: Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli: A Timeline of Their Relationship

    Before they made headlines for their involvement in a nationwide college admissions scam, Lori Loughlin and her husband, Mossimo Giannulli, kept their private life largely out of the spotlight. After more than 20 years of marriage, the Full House alum and the fashion designer came under fire for their part in the scandal that saw […]

    “I was there shopping and as I was leaving I saw the photographers,” she adds, clarifying, “We did not drive together. We drove separately.”

    Harrison shut down rumors the pair are romantically involved, telling Us, “We were not there together [and] we are not dating. We are good friends. He was just meeting me at the store.”

    Us learned from another source that Giannulli and Harrison are not an item in the wake of the designer’s separation from Loughlin, 61, which was announced publicly earlier this week. “She is just friends with him,” the insider echoed of Harrison. “She is a stylist. She was pulling items from his studio yesterday.”

    The Daily Mail originally published photos taken of the fashion designer and the stylist in Beverly Hills on Thursday, October 2. Harrison wore a black sweater and a yellow miniskirt, while Giannulli was also dressed casually in a white shirt and belted Levi’s blue jeans.

    The two were snapped carrying shopping bags as they waited at the valet stand at trendy clothing retailer G/FORE Supply, before leaving together in a Mercedes-Benz G-Wagon.

    As noted via her Instagram, Harrison is an “LA based stylist” and owner of the cruelty-free and vegan cosmetic brand TYS Beauty. She has previously worked on notable campaigns for the ESPY Awards, the Los Angeles Lakers, Ralph Lauren and Gatorade. She was previously linked romantically to NBA star Devin Booker.

    Us has reached out to Giannulli’s spokesperson.

    Loughlin’s representative confirmed to Us on Thursday, October 2, that the designer and former Full House star had recently separated after nearly 28 years of marriage.

    “They are living apart now,” her spokesperson told Us. “There are no legal proceedings underway.”

    Photos later emerged of Loughlin having dinner with actor James Tupper at The Bird Streets Club in West Hollywood on Wednesday, October 1 — mere hours before her separation from Giannulli was announced.

    However, Loughlin’s rep quickly clarified to Us that the actress was simply catching up with a longtime friend and former costar. (Loughlin and Tupper starred together in Great American Family’s A Christmas Blessing and Fall Into Winter.)

    “Lori and James have worked together and are old friends,” her rep confirmed to Us.

    Loughlin and Giannulli have been married since 1997 and share two daughters: influencers Isabella Rose, 27, and Olivia Jade Giannulli, 26. They were each married once before — Mossimo shares a son, Gianni, 35, with ex-wife Chris, while Loughlin was with investment banker and eventual Lionsgate vice chairman Michael R. Burns from 1989 to 1996.

    What s Really Going on With Glen Powell and Olivia Jade Giannulli After NYC Dinner 2214987307 2203096982


    Related: What’s Really Going on With Glen Powell and Olivia Jade Giannulli

    Don’t place your bets on Glen Powell and Olivia Jade Giannulli becoming Hollywood’s hot new couple. “They are close friends and are not dating,” a source close to Giannulli, 25, exclusively shared with Us Weekly on Monday, September 8. “They have been friends for several years.” According to the source, the two stars met due […]

    The couple had endured the 2019 college admissions scandal and their respective jail sentences prior to their separation. (Both pled guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud for falsifying college admissions documents. Loughlin was sentenced two months behind bars, while Giannulli received five months behind bars and was ordered to pay a $250,000 fine.)

    Loughlin has rarely spoken publicly about her family since the scandal, though she did briefly address their hardships during a FIRST for Women interview in 2024.

    “Every day, we’re met with different obstacles. But, for me, it’s like that song says, ‘I get knocked down, but I get up again,’” Loughlin said. “Nobody said life was going to be a breeze; we all make mistakes, but the important thing is to persevere.”

    Loughlin said that she was most passionate about “my family and my children,” in addition to offering an upbeat response when asked to describe herself now.

    “I’m kind and I’m strong,” she said. “And open — open to life, open to experiences. And I’m grateful. So I’d say I’m strong, grateful, open and kind.”

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    Justin Harp

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  • Exclusive: Naveen Rao’s new AI hardware startup targets $5B valuation with backing from a16z, sources say

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    Naveen Rao, who was formerly the head of artificial intelligence at Databricks, is in talks to raise $1 billion at a $5 billion valuation for a new startup called Unconventional, Inc., that’s building a new type of computer, according to four people familiar with discussions. 

    Andreessen Horowitz has agreed to lead the investment, and Lightspeed and Lux Capital are also participating in the deal, two of the sources said, although none of those VC firms responded to our request for comment. Databricks is also said to be investing in Rao’s new company, Bloomberg reported last month. 

    Rao has already raised hundreds of millions and plans to begin building the startup without waiting for the full $1 billion round to close, our sources said. He plans to raise the rest of the capital in installments, a funding approach commonly referred to as a “tranched” round. 

    Rao declined to comment, although he did publicly acknowledge the new startup on X last week, confirming its name and describing its hoped-for product as “rethinking the foundations of a computer to build a new substrate for intelligence that is as efficient as biology. Brain Scale Efficiency without the biological baggage!”

    Databricks acquired Rao’s previous startup, MosaicML in 2023, for $1.3 billion. Founded by Rao in 2020 with a focus on training and deploying large AI models, MosaicML raised $33.7 million from investors, including Lux Capital, DCVC, Playground Global, and Samsung Next, according to PitchBook. Prior to MosaicML, Rao co-founded the machine learning platform Nervana Systems, which Intel Corp. acquired in 2016 for reportedly more than $400 million. 

    Rao, who spent over two years as VP of AI at Databricks (now valued at $100 billion and generating $4 billion in ARR), left the company last month to focus on his new startup, according to his LinkedIn profile and earlier reporting by Bloomberg.

    Our sources say Rao’s vision will essentially compete with Nvidia by designing a novel AI machine that includes both custom silicon chips and server infrastructure. 

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    Marina Temkin

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  • Crime Movie Luderdale Gets Trailer & Release Date | Exclusive

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    ComingSoon is debuting an exclusive trailer for Luderdale, the upcoming mystery crime thriller, which hails from filmmaker Thom Mills. The movie will be distributed by Freestyle Digital Media after recently acquiring its VOD rights.

    “Luderdale is a story about outsiders trying to find their way in and insiders trying to find their way out,” Mills said in a statement. “Whatever direction they’re going, the story’s characters – a drifter, a lost soul, two mafia exiles, and a killer in pursuit – arrive at a twisting and chilling climax. Ultimately, Luderdale explores themes of fate, loyalty, and loss, and what it means to be family.”

    Check out the Luderdale trailer below (watch more trailers):

    When is the release date for Luderdale?

    Luderdale will be available to rent or own on North American digital HD internet, cable, and satellite platforms, as well as DVD, starting on October 21, 2025.

    The movie is written and directed by Mills, who is also producing alongside Wendy Winston and Melissa Vitello. The cast includes John Gargan as Hutch, Austin Valli as Nicky, Christian Shupe as Tommy, Ayden Skye as Candy, Joe Chambrello as Mr. J, Sophie Swiszcz as Lude Girl, and Rachel Lookshin as Violet. The creative team consists of cinematographer Gavin V. Murray, editor Robert Torrance, production designer Yongkai Lin, costume designer Hunter Freedman, and composer P.J. Labinski.

    “The film tells the story of a young stranger who mysteriously appears at the front door of a shuttered, beachfront hotel in Ft. Lauderdale in 1980. Inhabiting the closed hotel are two cousins who are on the run from gangland enemies who may have discovered their hidden location. They live in paradise but rarely experience it, not daring to venture outside. But boredom and growing stress from being confined cause the shut-ins to allow the new arrival inside their hidden world,” reads the official synopsis.

    “What starts as a deep mistrust between the trio soon evolves into an unlikely bond as they face threats from local drug dealers and mobsters from New York. Secrets between them threaten to shatter their fragile union as they begin to realize that maybe their chance encounter isn’t as random as it first appears. Living at the other end of the hotel is a damaged but beautiful young woman who holds secrets of her own. Who really are these people, and will their bond survive whoever the next person is to come through the door?”

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    Maggie Dela Paz

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  • Kirsten Dunst on Why Her Kids Skip Jesse Plemons’ Movies

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    Kirsten Dunst and husband Jesse Plemons may be household names courtesy of their extensive Hollywood careers, but that doesn’t mean their own children are huge fans of their varied movie roles.

    “I mean, they’ve seen Jumanji and Spider-Man,” Dunst, 43, exclusively told Us Weekly while attending the Roofman premiere in Los Angeles on Monday, September 29. “Every time I’m like, ‘Do you want to watch Like Mike?’ they’re like, ‘No.’ So… Small Soldiers, my kids like, too.” (Plemons starred in 2002’s Like Mike, a kids comedy about a boy who dreams of becoming a famous basketball player.)

    She then clarified, “One of my kids likes [it].”

    The Civil War star shares Ennis Howard, born in May 2018, and James Robert, born in May 2021, with fellow actor Plemons. The pair got engaged in 2017 and expanded their family before eventually tying the knot in Jamaica in 2022.


    Related: Kirsten Dunst Doesn’t Allow Her Kids to Have Electronics at Home

    Kirsten Dunst is keeping her kids offline. Dunst, 41, shares two sons, Ennis, 5, and James, 2, with husband Jesse Plemons and told Variety that the kids are not allowed electronics while they’re at home. “We’ve got record players,” Dunst said. Dunst added that by keeping her children off the internet, she hopes they will […]

    Dunst and Plemons recently starred alongside one another in the hit film Civil War — a last-minute cameo on behalf of her husband that had the pair working opposite each other in what can be described as an intense exchange.

    “It happened during rehearsal that the actor dropped out, and Jesse was there [in Atlanta, where the movie was filmed] with the kids,” the actress told Seth Meyers during an April 10 appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers. “And I suggested him.”

    She added at the time of her husband’s unruly character, “Nobody wants to play this role. It’s very intense.”

    GettyImages-2074191325 kirsten dunst on husband movie her kids dont watch

    Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons     John Shearer/WireImage

    “I will say, it helps that I feel like we’ve seen Jesse over the years, both play good guys and bad guys, and we know him to be a good guy,” Meyers responded at the time. “You’re right, if it was some actor I’d never seen before, I would be, like, repulsed every time I saw him ever since. So I feel like Jesse took one for the team.”

    “He really did,” Dunst agreed. “He’s a brilliant actor.”

    Dunst’s kids are likely to be unfamiliar with her latest film, Roofman, as well. Starring Channing Tatum as escaped convict and professional thief Jeffrey Manchester, the film follows Tatum’s character after he finds solace inside a Toys “R” Us, managing to evade arthritis for months before he falls in love with Dunst’s character, Leigh Wainscott, a divorced mom.

    When asked what drew her to the role, Dunst made it clear that it had less to do with the story itself and more to do with who was involved in telling it.

    “To be honest, working with Derek Cainfrance,” Dunst told Us of the chance to create alongside the film’s director. “I love his movies, and I love acting in his films and I wanted to be a part of that process. So he could have asked me to do anything, and I would have worked with him.”

    Kirsten Dunst Describes Very Tense and Emotional Civil War Scene With Husband Jesse Plemons


    Related: Kirsten Dunst Has ‘Very Tense’ Scene With Jesse Plemons in ‘Civil War’

    Kirsten Dunst is reflecting on sharing a very challenging scene with her husband, Jesse Plemons, in the upcoming dystopian film Civil War. In the futuristic movie, California and Texas have seceded and united to form the separatist “Western Forces” in an attempt to overthrow the established government. Dunst, 41, portrays Lee, a renowned photojournalist traveling […]

    Based on a true story, Dunst also had a chance to meet the real-life Leigh Wainscott in preparation for the role — an experience she said helped her better portray her in the film.

    “She has a lot of grace,” Dunst said. “And she’s so, you know, forgiving of what happened and still talks to Jeff. And she was just very giving of her presence — her natural presence. So that’s something that I could take with me in portraying Leigh.”

    Dust also dished on what it was like to work alongside Channing.

    “He’s lovely,” she gushed of her costar. “He’s a wonderful guy, and also just a very present actor and really kind.”

    Roofman hits theaters nationwide on October 10.

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    Danielle Campoamor

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  • Whoop opens blood-testing service to what it says is a 350,000-person waitlist | TechCrunch

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    Fitness band maker Whoop formally opened Whoop Advanced Labs for business on Tuesday. Some 350,000 people were on the waiting list after the service was previewed in May, the company told TechCrunch.

    Whoop Advanced Labs offers health-screening blood tests from Quest Diagnostics that cover a variety of markers from calcium to white blood cells. The platform integrates those results with the band’s continuous monitoring of activity, sleep, respiratory rate, and blood pressure to offer more personalized wellness advice.

    Advance Labs costs $199 for one annual test, $349 for two, or $599 for four per year. The Whoop device itself is also a membership ranging from $200 to $350 annually depending on the wearable strap’s features.

    Whoop joins a growing number of startups offering wellness through lower-cost, out-of-pocket blood screenings on a subscription basis. Others include Dr. Mark Hymen’s Function Health, which costs $500 a year for tests at three-month intervals, plus optional body imaging, and Fountain Life, the longevity startup from Tony Robbins and Peter Diamandis, which costs more than $20,000 a year.

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    Julie Bort

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  • Chicago Med’s Steven Weber Reacts to The Pitt’s Success

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    The Pitt’s freshman season earned critical acclaim for its unique take on documenting an emergency room shift — but according to Steven Weber, Chicago Med’s grit and grind shouldn’t be overlooked.

    Weber, who has been playing Dr. Dean Archer on Chicago Med since 2021, weighed in on The Pitt’s recent hype, exclusively telling Us Weekly on Thursday, September 25, “I love The Pitt.”

    He noted that he’s “friends” with The Pitt’s Noah Wyle, who plays Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, and the show “deserves their success.”

    However, Weber, 64, explained that the two shows are very different despite both revolving around doctors and nurses in emergency situations.


    Related: Noah Wyle Breaks His Silence About ‘ER’ Lawsuit Over ‘The Pitt’

    NBC; Max/Warrick Page Noah Wyle‘s newest medical drama The Pitt feels reminiscent of his days playing John Carter on ER — but that doesn’t mean the shows are the same. ER, which aired from 1994 to 2009, followed the inner life of an emergency room in a fictionalized version of Chicago’s real Cook County Hospital. […]

    “It’s a different world they’re looking at than the world we’re looking at. And ours is no less realistic. Ours is no less gritty,” Weber said of Chicago Med, which focuses on the Windy City’s “ED” or emergency department.

    The actor added, “It’s just that they have, they’ve got a different approach. But I absolutely believe that both of these shows serve to show the humanity and the challenges in the medical field in as realistic a way as possible.”

    Chicago Med premiered in 2015 as the third Dick Wolf series about Chicago. It follows surgeons and nurses who cross over at times with the characters on Chicago Fire and Chicago P.D., which follow firefighters and police officers, respectively, in the same city.

    Chicago Med Steven Weber Reacts to The Pitts Success
    Elizabeth Sisson/NBC

    Unlike Chicago Med, The Pitt takes place in Pittsburgh and season 1’s 15 episodes showcased 15 hours of one shift.

    The Pitt premiered in January and is described by HBO Max as “a realistic examination of the challenges facing healthcare workers in today’s America as seen through the lens of the frontline heroes working in a modern-day hospital in Pittsburgh.”

    With each episode, fans learned more and more about the characters in a way that hadn’t been done before — at least when it comes to medical dramas.

    The Pitt


    Related: What to Know About ‘The Pitt’ Season 2: From Cast Exits to Spinoffs

    The Pitt has been renewed for a second season — but the Max series has already gone through several changes. The medical drama, which premiered in January 2025, highlighted the highs and lows of working in emergency medicine with an unconventional approach — 15 episodes that showcase 15 hours of one shift. The Pitt ultimately […]

    “It feels very natural because it means there’s less prologue that you need to be adding into every episode. You’re not trying to catch up all the time,” Isa Briones, who plays Dr. Trinity Santos on The Pitt exclusively told Us in February. “Everything is minute by minute, so the audience is very much in on it with us and we don’t have to catch the audience up at all. That leads to very realistic dialogue. It is kinder to us actors since it makes it roll off the tongue more.”

    The unconventional format earned the series 13 Emmy nominations this year and five wins at the September awards show. Chicago Med, meanwhile, has not been nominated for an Emmy in its tenure.

    Critical acclaim aside, the Chicago Med team is happy that The Pitt — and Wyle — is doing well.

    “I was a writer’s assistant on ER, and I interacted with Noah a handful of times,” Chicago Med showrunner Allen MacDonald exclusively told Us on Thursday. “He is the nicest, gentlest guy. I don’t know him well at all. I wouldn’t even say I know him, but I’ve met him, and he’s just a lovely guy.”

    While fans will have to wait until next year for more episodes of The Pitt, Chicago Med returns this week for season 11.

    Season 10 left off with Dr. Hannah Asher (Jessy Schram) learning she is pregnant but not revealing who the father is.

    Many fans think it’s Dr. Mitch Ripley (Luke Mitchell), whom she romanced on and off last season. However, the season finale teased that Hannah goes to tell Archer (Weber) about the baby news before Ripley — which, MacDonald previously told Us makes for a “very complicated story” that fans will have to wait and see “play out.”

    The showrunner teased in May that Hannah “deeply trusts Archer and that is where she goes when she’s feeling destabilized.”

    Chicago Med returns for season 11 on NBC Wednesday, October 1, at 8 p.m. ET. The Pitt season 2 will premiere on HBO Max in January 2026.

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    Johnni Macke

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  • Exclusive: Complex Chaos thinks AI can help people find common ground | TechCrunch

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    Making democracy work isn’t easy, as recent events have made clear. Some critics would argue that technology is making it worse. But one startup is hoping that AI could help bridge some differences instead of widen them.

    “I had an a-ha moment one day when I realized people are asking AI to explain something like they’re five years old,” Tommy Lorsch, co-founder and CEO of Complex Chaos, told TechCrunch. “What if we use it as a facilitator to help people understand each other and find common ground?”

    He and co-founder Maya Ben Dror are developing tools to help people arrive at a consensus. One of their first test cases involved climate negotiations, but it really doesn’t matter what the issue is. His goal is to foster cooperation and shorten the time it takes for groups to come to agreement.

    “Everyone is building software for collaboration like Slack, Google Docs, whatever,” Lorsch said. “Cooperation is a different piece.”

    Facilitating cooperation isn’t something that scales well, he said. Typically, trained facilitators will spend time with groups to help them arrive at a consensus, but that process can slow down when negotiations or preparations happen across time zones or even in different rooms.

    Lorsch was buoyed by a recent LLM developed by Google called the Habermas Machine, which was developed explicitly with that goal in mind. “This is basically an AI that generates group consensus statements where people feel represented both majority and minority point of view,” he said.

    Lorsch and Ben Dror recently trialed their startup’s tool to help young delegates from nine African nations prepare for climate-related negotiations at a United Nations campus in Bonn, Germany. The tool incorporates both Google’s Habermas Machine and OpenAI’s ChatGPT to generate questions, come up with goals for conversations, and help summarize long documents.

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    The goal, Ben Dror said, is to help the delegates arrive at consensus as a bloc before they began negotiations with others. 

    Ideally, the tool would help speed things during negotiations, too. When blocs, or delegates fro groups of aligned countries, encounter new information in the process of a large negotiating session, they often need to regroup to process the new information. “Blocs are usually the reason why negotiations have to stop. The bloc has to come out, renegotiate, reposition, and then go back in. And that creates a lot of friction,” Ben Dror said. Complex Chaos hopes that its tool can help shorten that time.

    In the trial with the delegates from African countries, Complex Chaos said that participants reported up to a 60% reduction in the time it took to coordinate, and that 91% of participants said that the AI tool helped them see perspectives they would have otherwise missed.

    Complex Chaos is also pitching its cooperation tool to companies, including tech companies and large consultancies. “Strategic planning by AI and basically the same problem,” Lorsch said. “The annual strategic planning process of most companies takes about three months of the year with back and forth negotiations, multi-layer, across time zones, across teams, and so on and so forth.”

    But Lorsch and Ben Dror are most enthusiastic when talking about climate negotiations. 

    “If AI can shorten these processes, simplify them, then we’d be so much better off. Not just for climate, for anything sustainability, for any big challenge that we’re facing,” Ben Dror said.

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    Tim De Chant

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  • Paid, the AI agent ‘results-based billing’ startup from Manny Medina, raises huge $21M seed | TechCrunch

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    Manny Medina, previously best-known as the founder of sales automation startup Outreach ($4.4 billion valuation), has wowed investors with his young startup, Paid.

    Paid just closed an oversubscribed $21.6 million seed round led by Lightspeed. With the €10 million pre-seed round it raised in March, London-based Paid has already raised $33.3 million and hasn’t even hit its Series A yet. A source familiar with the deal says the startup’s valuation is over $100 million.

    Paid came out of stealth in March offering an interesting contribution to the AI agentic world: The company doesn’t offer agents. It offers a way for agent makers to charge their customers for these worker algorithms, based on the value their agents provide. This is a growing theme in AI, sometimes called “results-based billing.”

    Paid promises to help agent makers “start charging for points of margin saved by their customers,” Medina describes. 

    It’s a new way of charging for software for the AI age. This is instead of the unlimited use, per-user fees of the SaaS era, or the unlimited use, buy-it-once-and-install-it fees of the client/server era. 

    Per-user fees don’t work because agent makers pay usage fees to the model providers as well as to cloud providers. Unlimited use could drive them into the red. (The vibe coding startup world tends to suffer from this issue.) 

    Agent providers instead “need to show the value the agent is delivering to your customers, because agents are running in the background for the most part,” Medina tells TechCrunch. If agents do work as advertised, then they’ll be assigned increasingly more, with their growing workloads going unnoticed.

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    “If you’re a quiet agent, you don’t get paid,” Madina says. “You need an infrastructure that allows the agent to charge for the additional work that the agent is doing,”  

    But charging a monthly fee for a limited number of credits — following the model makers and vibe coders — is risky for agent-makers, too. That’s because companies don’t want to pay for AI slop, which is still what most AI produces. After billions spent on AI pilots, some 95% of enterprise projects were found to have no value, with only 5% put into production, according to a recent study from MIT.

    Companies don’t want to pay agents to produce more emails that no one reads. 

    One of the startup’s early customers, for instance, is Artisan, the viral sales automation startup. (By the way, you can hear Artisan’s CEO Jaspar Carmichael-Jack speak on the topic at TechCrunch Disrupt next month.) 

    But Paid is also starting to see success with SaaS companies looking at agents for their next big growth. The startup just landed ERP vendor IFS as a new customer, it said. 

    Lightspeed’s Alexander Schmitt says the venture firm has invested “more than $2.5 billion into AI infrastructure and application layer companies over the last three years,” and has witnessed firsthand that most AI pilots fail.  

    “The core of that problem is that no one can really attach value to what agents are doing today,” Schmitt said.  

    Schmitt thinks that Paid is, so far, unique in its approach, saying “it’s something that we haven’t seen someone else build.” No doubt more competition for agentic results-based billing will come if it really does help agents enter the workforce en mass.

    New investor FUSE and existing investor EQT Ventures also participated in the round. 

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    Julie Bort

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  • Mira Sorvino Teases Romy and Michele Sequel With Dance Number (Excl)

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    Mira Sorvino has some updates on the highly anticipated sequel to Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion.

    “The plan is right now to shoot it late spring,” the actress, 57, exclusively told Us Weekly on Friday, September 26, while discussing her upcoming appearance on the game show Name That Tune. “The script is great. Robin Schiff, the original writer, wrote the sequel, and Lisa [Kudrow] and I have had a lot of input in it.”

    Sorvino added that not only are she and Kudrow, 62, reprising their roles, but they are also serving as executive producers.

    “It’s not like us just visiting and other people being [in] it,” she continued. “Romy and Michele again, and we’re seeing what they’re up to nowadays, and the whole gang is back.”

    In the 1997 cult classic, Sorvino starred as Romy, a former popular girl who works as a cashier after high school, while Kudrow played an unpopular classmate named Michele who is also down on her luck post-grad. After high school, the women end up being roommates. As their 10-year reunion approaches, they devise a plan to make their lives appear better than they actually are.

    “In the original, they have this hurdle where they re-examine their lives all of a sudden, based on some external benchmark, and that starts happening to them in this too,” Sorvino teased. “But it’s sort of all, what would they be thinking about now at this point in their life.”


    Lisa Kudrow, Mira Sorvino     Buena Vista / Courtesy Everett Collection

    While Sorvino can’t share a lot about the sequel’s premise, she teased that the story is “really funny” and “moving”

    “I think part of Romy and Michele is that it has, like, a lot of emotion underneath it, and that’s why people have always related to it,” she told Us. “It’s about being yourself and loving your best friends, no matter what other people think of you, and just being your authentic self, even though they’re idiots.”

    Sorvino explained that while Romy and Michele had fun elements with its music, fashion and dancing, the “enduring” storyline helped it “become such a cult favorite.” She teased that fans can “of course” expect a big dance number just like the original had.

    Mira Sorvino Shares New Details About 'Romy and Michele' Sequel — Which Includes a Dance Number

    Mira Sorvino     Courtesy of Chicago Broadway/Avery Brunk

    While fans have to wait a little longer for the Romy and Michele sequel, Sorvino will make her Broadway debut as Roxie Hart in Chicago and appear in an upcoming episode of Name That Tune. On the game show, Sorvino will face off against friend Aisha Tyler as the Oscar winner is playing for the charity End Human Trafficking.

    “It was really fun. It was a treat,” she recalled. “It was great to work with [host] Jane [Krakowski] and we actually shot it in Ireland, which was amazing. My husband and I got to take a little driving trip to the Cliffs of Moher.”

    Sorvino shared that she grew up watching Name That Tune so getting the chance to compete for a good cause was a dream come true. Her episode airs on Monday, September 29, on Fox at 8 p.m. ET.

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    Kaitlin Simpson

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  • Mark Wahlberg Details Finding a ‘Balance’ Between Fatherhood and Work

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    Mark Wahlberg is trying his best to have it all.

    In addition to finding success in Hollywood on the big screen, the actor also works hard to be the best father to his four kids with his wife, Rhea Durham.

    “For me, everything I do now, it’s for my kids. It’s for their future,” Wahlberg, 54, exclusively shared with Us Weekly at Amazon’s Play Dirty world premiere on Wednesday, September 24. “I try to find that balance. They came to Australia while I was making this movie to visit.

    While stepping out at the SVA Theater in New York City, Wahlberg had the support of several family members, including his four children, Ella, 22, Michael, 19, Brendan, 17 and Grace, 15.


    Related: Mark Wahlberg’s 4 Kids Look All Grown Up in Rare Red Carpet Appearance

    Mark Wahlberg and wife Rhea Wahlberg love doting on their four children. The Uncharted star and the handbag designer — who wed in 2009 — share Ella, born in 2003, Michael, born in 2006, Brendan, born in 2008, and Grace, born in 2010. “[My fame] is a nonissue for them. They only pull the ‘Dad’s famous’ card when they want to go to […]

    “[I’m] trying to find that balance of spending quality time with them,” Mark explained to Us, “and then also being able to fulfill my creative endeavors.”

    Play Dirty is described by Amazon Prime Video as an action-packed thriller from director Shane Black. Parker (Mark), along with Grofield (LaKeith Stanfield), Zen (Rosa Salazar) and a skilled crew stumble onto a score that pits them against the New York mob.

    When asked if his kids are impressed by dad being an action star, Mark tried his best to play it cool.

    “Ehh, a little bit,” he said. “Here and there. Every once in a while.”

    Mark Wahlberg Details Finding a Balance Between Fatherhood and Staying Creatively Fulfilled

    Mark Wahlberg     Jasin Boland / Amazon MGM Studios /Courtesy Everett Collection

    Before the New York City premiere, Mark’s kids were able to watch the movie in Paris. The actor said he got bonus points when he helped his daughters meet one special costar.

    “I introduced my daughters to LaKeith Stanfield, who they adore and are huge fans of,” he said. “Then that’s cool for a little bit.”

    Throughout his career, Mark has had a variety of roles in hits like Ted, Boogie Nights and The Departed.

    While his latest film is full of action, Mark assured fans that there’s so much more than just the epic stunts.

    Mark Wahlberg Details Finding a Balance Between Fatherhood and Staying Creatively Fulfilled

    Mark Wahlberg     Cindy Ord/WireImage

    “Jumping out of the window, getting shot, all of that stuff. I’ll do whatever is required of me,” Mark told Us. “But for me, it was much more about making sure that we took the Parker character, elevate it, and I made it my own. I got a lot of help from the writers because the comedy is so strong in this movie, and the other ones really lacked comedy. I think that’s how we differentiate ourselves, but still staying true to the essence of who Parker was.”

    Movie projects aside, Mark previously opened up to Us about raising four children while also being a famous actor.

    According to both Mark and his wife, their kids focus less on the lights and cameras and more on the hard work both parents showcase day after day.

    Mark Wahlberg Wishes His 'Smokeshow' Wife Rhea Durham 'Happy Birthday'


    Related: Mark Wahlberg and Rhea Durham’s Unconventional Romance: A Timeline

    A romance for the history books. Mark Wahlberg and Rhea Durham may not have followed the typical relationship rules, but their connection still grows stronger by the day. The pair began dating in 2001 and welcomed their first child together, daughter Ella Rae, two years later. They went on to have three more children: sons […]

    “It’s a nonissue for them. They only pull the ‘Dad’s famous’ card when they want to go to a concert or meet someone famous,” the actor told Us in 2018. “They see me as dad and that’s all I want. They see it as more of a pain when we are being followed on the street, but they deal with it really well and I’m proud of them.”

    Durham added, “They see how hard their dad and I work and how busy we both are running the day-to-day life we lead. … The kids see both of us always working harder than anyone else they know. Instilling a strong work ethic is so important to us.”

    Play Dirty premieres on Amazon Prime Video Wednesday, October 1.

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    Mike Vulpo

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  • ‘NSync Reunion Tour on Hold Over Justin Timberlake Diagnosis (Excl)

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    ‘NSync is saying “Bye Bye Bye” to a reunion — at least for now.

    The iconic boy band had been closer than ever to getting back together for a massive stadium tour, but multiple sources exclusively tell Us Weekly that their plans are now on hold indefinitely.

    While one insider says JC Chasez, Lance Bass, Joey Fatone and Chris Kirkpatrick “were all on board,” the “timing wasn’t right” for Justin Timberlake because he was on his solo Forget Tomorrow World Tour from April 2024 until this past July and is now battling Lyme disease. (Timberlake, 44, announced his “relentlessly debilitating” diagnosis the day after his final show, writing in part via Instagram, “I honestly don’t know what my future is onstage but I’ll always cherish this run! And all of them before!”)

    The insider notes that Chasez, 49, Bass, 46, Fatone, 48, and Kirkpatrick, 53, “don’t want to” hit the road without Timberlake, whom they publicly supported following his health update.


    Related: Justin Timberlake Through the Years

    Justin Timberlake has come a long way since his humble beginnings in Memphis, Tennessee. Timberlake competed on Star Search in 1992 one year before he became a cast member on The All-New Mickey Mouse Club with Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, JC Chasez, Ryan Gosling and Keri Russell. Timberlake and Chasez stayed friends after their Mouseketeer […]

    “Proud of you, brother,” Bass wrote via his Instagram Story in July. “Wishing you some well-deserved rest and so much love. Congrats on an amazing tour.”

    Chris Kirkpatrick, JC Chasez, Justin Timberlake, Joey Fatone and Lance Bass posing together in 2000.

    Chris Kirkpatrick, JC Chasez, Justin Timberlake, Joey Fatone and Lance Bass of ‘NSync in 2000     Tim Roney/Getty Images

    Kirkpatrick, meanwhile, told his followers that he “couldn’t be more proud” to call Timberlake a friend, adding, “I’ve always known my little bro was tough—but this tour showed me a whole new level of strength. Watching him battle Lyme disease day in and day out, while still getting on that stage night after night, was something I’ll never forget. The long days, the travel, the exhaustion—and yet, he never gave up. No complaints, no excuses—just heart, grit, and pure determination. That kind of resilience is rare.”

    Kirkpatrick continued, “Tour life is already a grind, but doing it while fighting Lyme disease? That’s superhero status. Here’s to strength, perseverance, and one hell of a tour. Love you little bro!”

    Everything NSync Has Said About Reuniting


    Related: Everything ‘NSync Has Said About Reuniting

    Fans aren’t ready to say “bye, bye, bye” to ‘NSync — and the boy band is well aware of the desire for a reunion. Members Justin Timberlake, JC Chasez, Lance Bass, Joey Fatone and Chris Kirkpatrick have alluded to a reunion for decades since they first went their separate ways in 2002. However, their messages […]

    ‘NSync has reunited several times in recent years — most memorably at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards, where they performed “Girlfriend” and “Bye Bye Bye” as part of Timberlake’s career-spanning Video Vanguard medley — but they haven’t toured as a fivesome since 2002.

    A second source shares that the Grammy-nominated group — who in 2023 released their first new song in two decades, “Better Place,” on Timberlake’s Trolls Band Together soundtrack — “had a lot of things planned” to celebrate their milestone 30th anniversary this year, which are also now postponed.

    When the band does finally get back together, fans will be in for a treat, as Fatone teased to Us last year, “If we happen to go on tour and if it happens to take place, people are probably gonna see something they’ve never seen before — and everything they’ve seen before.”

    Us Weekly has reached out to reps for Timberlake, Chasez, Bass, Fatone and Kirkpatrick for comment.

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    Nicholas Hautman

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  • Jessica Carter Altman Shares Why She Left Law Career Behind for Music

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    Jessica Carter Altman left law behind to pursue her passion for music — five and a half years later — she is only looking forward.

    Altman, 34, exclusively told Us Weekly what led her to make the drastic decision.

    “I’ve said this before, but I wanted to be an artist. I wanted to be a singer for as long as I can remember, but it felt like a foolish dream,” Altman told Us. “I grew up in Washington, D.C., a lot of people don’t graduate high school thinking, ‘OK, I’m gonna go hit the road.’ So, I just shoved it aside.”

    The “Mirror Mirror” singer decided to go to college and then law school but soon realized that she wasn’t sure if this is what she wanted to do.

    “There was a moment where I kind of realized that inertia was taking over, and I hadn’t really made a decision about what it is that I wanted and what I wanted my life to look like, and I started performing again,” Altman said. “When something just feels right, it just feels right, and I was trying to figure out how [music] could be in my life.”

    Altman told Us that after graduating from law school, she knew that she wanted to find a way to “really go for” music or she would always have regrets.

    “I [would] go to a live show, and I love seeing live music, but I would be really sad that I just wasn’t brave enough to go do it, and you’re seeing somebody else live out a dream that you’ve had forever,” Altman said. “So it’s like, ‘OK, I guess I have to try,’ and even if I fail or fall on my face, I can’t regret never doing [it].”

    Altman told Us that no one in her circle was shocked by her sudden career shift.


    Related: Hailey Bieber Was a ‘Big Influence‘ on Justin Booking Coachella 2026

    Hailey Bieber remains her husband’s biggest fan. After Justin Bieber announced he will perform at the 2026 Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, multiple sources exclusively tell Us Weekly that his wife was the one to encourage him to book the gig. “Hailey was a big influence on Justin’s decision to headline Coachella,” one source […]

    “I don’t think anyone was surprised. I remember my brother, because I told him that right before I started working at my law firm, and he goes, ‘Well, don’t work at your law firm. Just go, move straight to Nashville, go do the thing,’” she told Us. “And I go, ‘Well, it would be nice to have a paycheck. Let me just feel the water out a little bit and make more of a plan.’ And that’s how he and I are different a little bit. But eventually I found my way. But everybody was immediately so supportive.”

    Altman is currently working on new music after the success of her 2024 album, Aftermath. She is slated to release a new single in October, with an EP coming after.

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    Christina Garibaldi

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  • Kelsea Ballerini Initiated Chase Stokes Split After Arguments (Excl)

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    Kelsea Ballerini and Chase Stokes‘ nearly three-year relationship came to a rocky end, a source close to the former couple exclusively tells Us Weekly.

    “It was a hard split,” the insider shares. “They had been arguing a lot recently, and their communication wasn’t great in the last month. They were both traveling so much and trying to juggle everything, and the arguments piled up.”

    Ballerini, 32, “initiated the conversation,” according to the source, but she and Stokes, 33, acted like “mature adults and had the same understanding that they needed space.”

    “There is still a lot of love between them,” the insider tells Us, noting that Ballerini and Stokes are both “extremely busy right now” and, prior to calling it quits, “were trying to make it work.”


    Related: Kelsea Ballerini and Chase Stokes‘ Relationship Timeline

    Kelsea Ballerini and Chase Stokes quickly became a fan-favorite couple after confirming their relationship status. The country singer and the Outer Banks star were first linked in January 2023 after they were spotted together at the College Football Playoff National Championship in Los Angeles. Thank You! You have successfully subscribed. Subscribe to newsletters Please enter […]

    Ballerini’s rep confirmed to Us on September 14 that the country singer and Stokes had broken up — only two days after the Outer Banks star posted a gushing tribute to his “love” via Instagram for her birthday.

    Stokes was the first person Ballerini dated since her 2022 divorce from fellow musician Morgan Evans.

    “Although it’s been a few years, Kelsea is still coming out of a divorce and figuring out what she really wants, and she’s not in a place where she’s going to just settle,” the source tells Us. “Chase understood that, but in the end, they realized they weren’t aligning the way they hoped.”

    Us Weekly has reached out to reps for Ballerini and Stokes for comment.

    Celebrity Splits of 2025 Stars Who Have Called It Quits This Year


    Related: Celebrity Splits of 2025

    2025 kicked off with a slew of celebrity breakups. Two months after first sparking split rumors, Jessica Simpson announced that she and Eric Johnson had called it quits after 10 years of marriage. “Eric and I have been living separately navigating a painful situation in our marriage,” she told Us Weekly in a January 13 […]

    The now-exes went public with their relationship in January 2023, one month after Ballerini admittedly slid into Stokes’ Instagram DMs.

    “I was ready to open back up,” she explained on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast in February 2023. “I just felt, why not? I’ve never really dated; I don’t know how it works. I’m like, let’s just put ourselves out there. Let’s just vibe. And it’s been fun.”

    Ballerini shared at the time that she had “never seen” Stokes’ Netflix show, which notably stars his ex-girlfriend Madelyn Cline. However, the Grammy nominee “knew of” the actor, so she “just swan dove” into his messages.

    The pair immediately hit it off, making their red carpet debut in April 2023 at the CMT Music Awards. One year later, they moved in together, which inspired the song “Baggage” on Ballerini’s most recent album, Patterns.

    “We both slept on a mattress with ‘I love you’ people / And s***, I even took it all the way to the steeple,” the lyrics read. “So, boy, I know the weight and gravity / Of keychains with same keys / But if you want that welcome mat, then roll it out with me / Clear out a drawer, clear out a shelf / I wouldn’t wanna do it with anybody else.”

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    Amanda Williams

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  • Matthew Lillard Teases Stu’s Role in ‘Familiar’ Scream 7

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    Matthew Lillard is thrilled to be returning to the Scream franchise nearly 30 years after he originated the role of Stu Macher.

    “I was giddy. I was freaking out,” Lillard, 55, told Us Weekly exclusively on Thursday, September 18, of getting the call to join the cast of Scream 7 while promoting his partnership with Exact Sciences’ Cologuard test. “I had been sort of tongue-in-cheek pushing the fact that Stu’s still alive, he went to prison. Like, I’ll go get superhero jacked like [I’ve] been in prison for the last 20 years. And, you know, the Radio Silence [Productions] guys left a lot of breadcrumbs in the movies that Stu was still out there.”

    After he was revealed as one of the original Ghostface killers alongside Skeet Ulrich as Billy Loomis in the original 1996 slasher film, Lillard’s Stu was presumed dead after a television set was dropped on his head in addition to several stab wounds.

    Despite being vocal about his desire to return to the franchise and fans’ insistence that the beloved character had survived, Lillard says he was disappointed when screenwriter Kevin Williamson confirmed that Stu was never coming back at a fan convention. Turns out, his faux confirmation was just to throw fans off the trail of the filmmaker’s real plan.


    Related: Which OG Stars Are Returning for ‘Scream VII’? What the Cast Has Said

    Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, Inc What’s your favorite scary movie? Another Ghostface is coming to up the kill count in Scream VII — but who from the OG cast will make an appearance? After sitting out from the franchise’s sixth installment, Neve Campbell revealed in March that she would be reprising her role of final girl Sidney […]

    “When I got [Kevin] on the phone that day, I was like, ‘You’re such a jerk. You said I was never coming back,’” Lillard recalled. “He was like, ‘Yeah, because you kept arguing to come back, and I was trying to distract everyone.’”

    After writing the screenplays for Scream (1996), Scream 2 (1997) and Scream 4 (2011), Williamson signed on to direct Scream 7, which is set to hit theaters on February 27, 2025.

    MSDSCRE_EC011.jpg Matthew Lillard Teases Scream 7 Stu

    Matthew Lillard and Rose McGowan in ‘Scream’     Courtesy Everett Collection

    While the details surrounding Lillard’s role in the new film — which also stars franchise alums Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Scott Foley, Mark Consuelos, Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown — remain under wraps, the actor teased the upcoming slasher with three adjectives.

    “Smart,” he told Us. “Familiar — [Because] Kevin’s back, and there’s a familiarity about Ghostface — and exceptional.”

    Mason Gooding Says Scream 7 Will Be Domestic Teases an Unconventional Return for the Film GettyImages 2071669256


    Related: Mason Gooding Teases an ‘Unconventional’ Return for ‘Scream 7’ 

    Scream 7 star Mason Gooding is sharing a small glimpse into what fans can expect the next time they meet back up with Ghostface. “I’ll say [the movie is] domestic, I’ll say it’s homely and unconventional,” Gooding, 29, exclusively tells Us Weekly about the upcoming horror film. The actor, who has played Chad Meeks-Martin since Scream […]

    Yet, Lillard admits that he did have some hesitations about revisiting the role of Stu.

    “The reality is that I’m a little terrified,” he told Us. “My standing in this film is great. The original Ghostface — spoiler alert! A hundred years later — and I come back into the franchise and ruin it, or people don’t like me, or people are like, ‘That was lame,’ you know, there’s a lot of risk.”

    He continued: “But reading the script, having Kevin at the helm, having Neve back, it just sort of made sense. And as a fan of the franchise, as someone that dearly cares about the franchise, I was really excited to be asked. I’m not gonna lie.”

    While fans wait patiently for Scream 7, Lillard paid homage to his scream king status in a new campaign with Exact Sciences’ Cologuard test.

    Matthew Lillard Cologuard Scream 7.jpg
    Exact Sciences

    “I’m kind of an expert at scary,” he says in the ad, which begins with an ominous knock at the door interrupting the actor cutting tomatoes. After Lillard realizes it’s just a delivery man dropping off his Cologuard test, he adds “a grown man with frosted tips” — a nod to his ‘90s hairdo — to a list of scary things, including “forgetting to screen for colon cancer when you turn 45.”

    “I personally have seen the ravages of cancer. It’s a horrible disease,” Lillard shared of his involvement with the campaign. “At the end of the day, if this little spot can inspire people to get tested, that’s a win for humanity.”

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    Molly McGuigan

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  • Matthew McConaughey swears queen-size bed helped marriage of 13 years

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    NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

    Don’t sleep on Matthew McConaughey’s biggest relationship secret.

    The Academy Award-winning actor, who has been married to wife Camila Alves for 13 years, has a simple recipe for maintaining a healthy marriage. 

    McConaughey, 55, put pen to paper and offered a few of his life lessons in his new book, “Poems & Prayers.” He told Fox News Digital that one small change in his household helped him further connect with the lady in his life. 

    In an excerpt from his new book, McConaughey encouraged couples to downsize their mattress to “get ahead.”

    MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY LOST OUT ON ‘TITANIC’ LEAD ROLE AFTER REFUSING DIRECTOR’S REQUEST: BOOK

    Matthew McConaughey insisted on one trick that helps his marriage with wife Camila Alves. (Kevork Djansezian)

    “The best thing you can / do for your / marriage,” he penned. “One way to surely / get ahead, / is get rid of that / king-­size mattress, / and sleep in a / queen-­size bed.”

    McConaughey delved into the reason why a smaller bed could provide a more fruitful connection.

    WATCH: MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY REVEALS MARRIAGE SUCCESS SECRET

    “We have kids and we go to our friend’s house and he has one of these double king-size beds put together and all the kids sleep in the bed,” McConaughey told Fox News Digital. “The wife’s on one side with her side table and the husband’s on the other side and it’s great when you got all three kids, but all of a sudden the kids get too big. They’re out of the bed.”

    The cover of Matthew McConaughey's book.

    The front cover of Matthew McConaughey’s new book. (Courtesy of Robbie Fimmano)

    MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY’S BLUNT ADVICE TO TEENAGE SON AS HE BEGINS ACTING CAREER

    “I wake up one morning … I’m looking over there and Camilla’s like a football field away man. Then you go to bed at night, like you want to snuggle up and … ‘Well, we’ve got to cover you up. Come about 12 feet and I’ll come 12 feet.’”

    He added, “You’re like, man, this damn king-size bed is not good for the marriage, man. Get rid of that son of a b—-. So we got a queen size where we’re shoulder to shoulder. I’m telling you, it’s good for your marriage.”

    Matthew McConaughey in a white jacket and blue undershirt matches his wife in a light blue plunging dress with cutouts at the shoulders in Austin, Texas

    Matthew McConaughey and Camila Alves married in 2012. (Rick Kern/WireImage)

    LIKE WHAT YOU’RE READING? CLICK HERE FOR MORE ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

    “We got a queen size where we’re shoulder to shoulder. I’m telling you, it’s good for your marriage.”

    — Matthew McConaughey

    The “Dazed and Confused” actor noted that there’s “no room” for any kids in the bed.

    Themes throughout McConaughey’s latest written work include love stories, faith, doubt, compassion and forgiveness. “Poems & Prayers” features writings inspired by both proverbs and the Old Testament, in addition to intentions and words of affirmation. 

    Maintaining healthy family relationships not only as a father to three children, but also as a partner to Camilla, is important to McConaughey.

    Matthew McConaughey and his children walk the red carpet at the 2024 Mack, Jack & McConaughey Gala

    McConaughey and his wife share three children together. (Photo by Rick Kern/Getty Images)

    When McConaughey and Camila married in 2012, the family moved from California to Texas. The couple share three children: Levi, Vida and Livingston.

    CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THE ENTERTAINMENT NEWSLETTER

    “You’ve got kids, so you don’t … you’re spending as much time being a good mother and father of them, but you also gotta make sure – and I can do a better job of this – of going, ‘No, this is our time.’ You can’t 100% live with the kids as a parent,” McConaughey said. 

    WATCH: MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY PRIORITIZES HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH CAMILLA ALVES

    “You gotta make to remember that one of the best examples you can give the kids of how to treat a woman or a man or how to someone they end up falling in love with down the line is how you treat their mother and how the mother treats the father.”

    Alves and McConaughey are so committed to finding time for each other that they launched their own alcohol brand in 2023, Pantalones Organic Tequila. They regularly star in cheeky campaign ads for the company, which offers three varieties of tequila.

    “You gotta make to remember that one of the best examples you can give the kids of how to treat a woman or a man or how to someone they end up falling in love with down the line is how you treat their mother and how the mother treats the father.”

    — Matthew McConaughey

    Matthew McConaughey and wife Camila in white tennis outfits look back at the camera on tennis court with their bums blurred

    Matthew McConaughey and Camila Alves go pantless in an advertisement for their tequila brand. (PANTALONES ORGANIC TEQUILA)

    Matthew McConaughey and Camila Alves playing croquet without pants.

    The couple regularly go pantless for their tequila brand ads. (PANTALONES ORGANIC TEQUILA)

    “We enjoy ourselves,” McConaughey said. “You know, like the tequila, we put damn good juice in a bottle. We were formal. We were buttoned up on that. As soon as we got good juice and a bottle, he said, pants off.”

    “Let’s have a good time with the ads.”

    “Poems & Prayers” is available now.

    CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

    Tracy Wright is an entertainment reporter for Fox News Digital. Send story tips to Tracy.Wright@fox.com.

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  • New Kansas City Chiefs Announcer Talks ‘Tough Situation’ With Dale Carter (Excl)

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    New Kansas City Chiefs public address announcer Nate Rohr had a whirlwind few days before stepping behind the microphone at Arrowhead Stadium for the team’s home opener last weekend.

    Rohr acted as the Chiefs’ new PA announcer for the team’s game against the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday, September 14, replacing longtime announcer, Dale Carter, who abruptly announced his resignation on Thursday, September 11. 

    “The Chiefs reached out Thursday inquiring about my availability for the game that Sunday,” Rohr exclusively told Us Weekly on Friday, September 19. “They were saying there was a possibility they might need me for the game. I said, ‘Yeah, I would be.’ They said they’d get back to me as to whether or not they would need me. They got back to me later on Thursday and said, ‘Hey, we need you.’”

    Rohr, who also works as the public address announcer at Memorial Stadium for University of Nebraska football, is friends with Brad Young, the Chiefs’ Director of Live & Gameday Production. 


    Related: Former Chiefs PA Announcer Wanted a ‘Graceful‘ Exit Before Team Drama

    Former Kansas City Chiefs public address announcer Dale Carter originally hoped his surprising resignation from the team would go much differently. Last week, Carter announced he was quitting his job as PA announcer at Kansas City’s Arrowhead Stadium after 16 years. “Seems I caused quite the stir with my news about resigning from the PA […]

    When the team needed a fill-in secondary public address announcer for their home opener in 2018 against the San Francisco 49ers, Young called Rohr. 

    “I think they liked what I had done, so that was how they selected me,” Rohr explained of his new role. “Obviously, I was very excited when they reached out.”

    The public address announcer role became available after Carter announced he was leaving the job after 16 seasons. 

    In a Facebook post on Friday, September 12, Carter said the team had crossed a “red line” in telling him he would no longer be permitted to perform his iconic “It’s. Third. Down.” call during games, instead going with a new voice who would “shake things up.”

    “I reached out to [Carter] on social media to thank him, because he’s been really supportive,” Rohr said. “In a tough situation like this where a change is made, even though he resigned, it could be a situation where the prior announcer could make things difficult for the new guy coming in.”

    Rohr continued, “He’s said publicly, and he’s also said to me privately, that he’s supportive of me. He congratulated me for getting the role. He wished me the best of luck in the role and said he hoped to see me in it for a while.”

    Promo Who Is Former Chiefs PA Announcer Dale Carter


    Related: Who Is Dale Carter? Meet the Former Kansas City Chiefs PA Announcer

    Dale Carter made waves throughout Chiefs Kingdom last week when the beloved public address announcer at Arrowhead Stadium revealed he had quit his job after 16 seasons. Carter announced his decision on Friday, September 12, saying that the team had crossed a “red line” when it came to his in-game duties. Since 2009, Carter and […]

    As for Rohr’s fresh take on the third down call, he explained he likes to “hold out [the word] ‘third’ for as long as I can.”

    “One rule I didn’t know about until Sunday that will be a continued adjustment for me is that, by NFL rule, you can’t have anything coming over the public address system after 20 seconds on the play clock,” Rohr said. “In college, or at least in the Big Ten [Conference], you can have stuff going over the public address system until the center comes over the ball.”

    He added, “As much as I’d love to have an increased impact on third down, the NFL rules think otherwise.”

    Rohr will resume his duties at Arrowhead Stadium when the Chiefs return home to host the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday, September 28. 

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    Daniel Trainor

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  • XG Brings Fashion to the Front in New Single ‘GALA’

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    Clear the runway for XG. The global girl group is ready to strike a pose with the first single “GALA” from their highly anticipated debut full-length album. 

    Since we last caught up with the seven members in 2023, they’ve dominated stages on their world tour,
    “The first HOWL,” made their Coachella debut at the Sahara Tent, and achieved a career milestone by selling out the world-famous Tokyo Dome. It’s a lot to take in over the course of two years, but the members are taking it in stride to prepare for their upcoming release. “The tour helped us experience and explore a lot of new things, whether it’s fashion or music,” MAYA says in our interview over Zoom. “I think that made us connect to our new identity in this new full album. Through that, I hope [our fans] ALPHAZ, could really see a different side of XG.”

    “GALA” ushers in a new era for the group, and one that’s packed with a fashionable punch. The song is sprinkled with vibrant 80s-esque house synths and lyrics that are overflowing with self-confidence. The whole concept also champions uniqueness, with the members scoping out outfits that feel true to themselves, while also being out of this world. In the middle of the music video, magazines are lined up with the members plastered on the covers, and paparazzi camera flashes flood carpeted stairs that are super similar to the Metropolitan Museum of Art steps, where celebs usually pose for their innovative outfits for the Met Gala. However, XG truly takes everything to a level that’s beyond our wildest imaginations as they flaunt it all by rapping, “I just turned the Met Gala into an X-GALA.”

    Related: BINI Shares Their ‘Must-Have’ Tour Essentials—Including 1 That Makes Them Feel ‘Reborn’

    Below, we talked to the members about the song, their fashion inspirations, and what they look forward to for their debut album.

    How has seeing ALPHAZ on your world tour inspired your own fashion sense?

    CHISA: While we were doing the world tour, we noticed a lot of our ALPHAZ were taking inspiration from our music videos in what they were wearing. It actually came full circle and inspired us. And for the new album, we’re really looking forward and feeling confident to bring that new sense and spin of XG. Hopefully, we can continue to inspire our ALPHAZ around the world.

    What was the creative process like when making “GALA”? What were your first impressions of the track?

    JURIN: When we first heard it, we were like, “This is new! Wow!” But at the same time, it feels so XG. There are so many elements of hip hop, pop, and very diva-esque parts to the music, which created the sense of diversity and cultural layers that stay true to the XG brand and XG’s signature style.

    I really enjoy that the lyrics embrace everyone’s individual style. Specifically, the rap “Everything I wear is a masterpiece.” How does your own fashion allow you to be confident in your music and endeavors?

    HARVEY: Each outfit [in the “GALA” concept] reflects our own thoughts, and you can see the seven of us expressing the version of ourselves we want to be. We shared the looks we wanted to try with our company, and later with our stylists to make them even better. It’s actually the styles we would love to wear if we ever get invited to a fashion show someday.

    How did each member choose their outfit?

    JURIA. Photo: XGALX

    JURIA: I really wanted to do a princess-inspired dress, but with an alien and robotic futuristic twist as well. So I added some mechanisms and accessories to fuse the two images together.

    JURIN. Photo: XGALX

    JURIN: For me personally, and for all of our members as well, we wanted to incorporate the question, “If we were to rock the runway, what would we wear?” My spin on my outfit was to be elegant, dressy, and mystical. But, I wanted to keep the XG taste, so I also put that futuristic and alien type of element in there as well.

    HINATA from XG
    HINATA. Photo: XGALX

    HINATA: There’s a lyric in the song that goes “Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto.” I wanted to play off of that and create this cute Japanese robot outfit.

    Chisa from XG
    CHISA. Photo: XGALX

    CHISA: I actually had a conversation with my stylist, and I asked her to create a look that resembles the lyric in the song, “Glamor me gold.” So, I asked her to make two different kinds of looks. One is just all-out gold everything, and the other one is more of a natural, simple, elegant kind of beauty.

    HARVEY. Photo: XGALX

    HARVEY: My main theme is the conductor and instructor. So, I really wanted to create a look that was all white with black accent weights.

    COCONA. Photo: XGALX

    COCONA: When I first listened to “GALA,” I thought I wanted to do something chic, or something that resembles an outfit that I would wear for a fashion show if I were to come to Earth from outer space. So immediately, I thought of two things. The first one was very chic, which was an all black alien. For the second one, it was inspired by the first time that I challenged myself to do break dancing.  I wanted to contrast it with a black and white look.

    MAYA from XG
    MAYA. Photo: XGALX

    MAYA: I feel like this song had a lot of confidence in the lyrics and the choreography. I really wanted to go for a more edgy and tighter fit. I told my stylist that I thought those components would show off my style, and I was more into a diva look. I also went for a short haircut. I was in my bob era, and I loved it.

    How do you think “GALA” kicks off this new era for XG?

    MAYA: “GALA” is more than just a song. It makes you feel like you’re stepping onto a surreal stage. For us, “GALA” is a gateway into XG’s identity and universe, and also the prologue to our first full album. We tried out so many different styles in this album. I feel like it allows our ALPHAZ and listeners to experience a fresh side of our music and to get an even deeper glimpse into our world, or what we call XG World. 

    XG
    XG.Photo: XGALX

    Has there been anything other than fashion that’s been deeply inspiring you in the process of music and choreography?

    MAYA: We received a lot of inspiration from R&B artists. Some of the tracks we have in this album, we have a fun, easy-going song, and we can’t say what just yet, but those are definitely inspired by those individual artists. We’re really excited for the reactions to it. 

    JURIN: Ah, voguing! [Making vogue gestures] We learned that voguing was actually a form of self-expression back in the day, and knowing that we wanted to express that through “GALA”, and we wanted to express our own individuality throughout this album. We really wanted to create an impact with our performance, choreography, and music. We hope people feel inspired by this to embrace their own individuality. 

    Is there anything you learned about yourself while making the album? Were there any epiphanies that made you understand yourselves better?

    COCONA: This is the first time I challenged myself to break dancing. All the other members were doing other forms of dancing, like voguing or acrobatics. I’ve never had the opportunity to teach and challenge myself to break dance. I was a little nervous at first, and I really only had one month to pull it off. But I really put my mind to it, and in the end, I was able to successfully do it.

    It taught me that no matter how challenging or how impossible something might feel, if you really put your mind to it and believe in yourself, you can make anything a reality. It was heartwarming to see the other members also practicing beside me, and that we were all in the same unit together and doing something new. That really taught me a lot about putting my mind to something and believing in myself.

    MAYA: There’s no end to discovering new versions of ourselves. We always say we want to try new things, but I feel like there’s no end to it. We just keep discovering more new versions of ourselves, and new styles. That’s the one thing I learned about us — is that we love to keep trying, keep challenging ourselves, and going for more. 

    This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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    Lea Veloso

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  • Josh Duhamel Weighs In on Ransom Canyon, Virgin River Crossover Idea

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    If you ask Us, Netflix could have a crossover hit on their hands with Ransom Canyon and Virgin River — but have conversations already started?

    Josh Duhamel weighed in on the concept during an exclusive interview with Us Weekly while promoting London Calling, saying, “That’s the first I’ve ever heard of that idea.”

    Before returning to playing the role of Stanton in season 2, Duhamel, 52, showed his support — under one condition.

    “If it’s good, I’m in,” he added. “If it’s forced, no thanks.”

    Based on Jodi Thomas‘ book series about a town that is full of drama, romance and hope, Ransom Canyon introduced Us to the locals in Texas Hill Country. Duhamel’s character, Staten Kirkland, is grieving two major losses while navigating his undeniable connection to childhood friend Quinn (Minka Kelly), who has also caught the eye of Staten’s brother-in-law and love triangle rival Davis (Eoin Macken).

    There is also newcomer Yancy (Jack Schumacher), who had a past he was hiding from Ellie (Marianly Tejada). Viewers further found themselves invested in a love triangle between high school students Lucas (Garrett Wareing), Lauren (Lizzy Greene) and Reid (Andrew Liner).


    Josh Duhamel as Staten and Minka Kelly as Quinn.     ANNA KOORIS/Netflix

    “We start shooting [season 2] in a few weeks. I’m excited about that. I literally just got the scripts,” Duhamel told Us. (The group has since confirmed cameras are rolling.) “I haven’t read anything yet. But I do know from the department heads who have read it, they say it’s fantastic. They liked it even better than last year. So I’m excited to find out.”

    He continued: “I know that there’s going to be some friction between me and my dad — who wants to do things with the property that I completely disagree with. I’m guessing it’s going to be a lot of drama. And [drama] with me and Minka, which I’m looking forward to. She’s just fantastic in the [show]. I’m as curious as you are.”

    The aforementioned drama at the center of the series sounds familiar for those who love another Netflix hit: Virgin River. Drawing inspiration from a book series written by Robyn Carr, Virgin River centers around the lives of residents living in a small town in Northern California, including Mel (Alexandra Breckenridge) and her love interest, Jack (Martin Henderson). The series also stars Colin Lawrence, Annette O’Toole, Tim Matheson, Benjamin Hollingsworth, Sarah Dugdale, Zibby Allen, Marco Grazzini, Mark Ghanimé and Kai Bradbury.

    Is Ransom Canyon the Next Virgin River


    Related: Is ‘Ransom Canyon’ the Next ‘Virgin River’? Here’s What the Cast Thinks

    Is Ransom Canyon the next Yellowstone or the new Virgin River? Depends on who you ask. At first glance, Netflix’s foray into Westerns checks everything off our checklist from hot cowboys to feuding ranch families to love triangles. But just one episode in, Ransom Canyon makes it clear that they aren’t trying to compete with […]

    In addition to starring in Ransom Canyon, Duhamel got the chance to be challenged while playing a deadbeat dad in his new film.

    “It was fun to look at some of the things that I could even do better as a dad,” Duhamel, who shares sons Shepherd, 20 months, with wife Audra Mari, and Axel, 12, with ex Fergie, shared about the film, which is out Friday, September 19. “I work a lot, and I often have a lot of guilt about not being there as often as I could be. So I try to maybe overcompensate or do things to be there often.”

    He continued: “But at the same time, you want your kid to look and see [that] this is what you have to do to provide for your family. So on the one hand, you can’t be there all the time, because you’ve got to be setting an example. But on the other hand, you might be missing out on life moments that you’d [be there for] if you were a 9 to 5 dad who went to work every day and came home. So it’s a constant struggle in this business. It’s not easy.”

    London Calling is out in theaters now.

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    Yana Grebenyuk

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  • Why Jordon Hudson’s ‘Dancing With the Stars’ Casting Really ‘Fell Apart’ (Excl)

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    Jordon Hudson was close to quickstepping her way toward the mirrorball trophy, but her busy schedule prevented her from putting on her dancing shoes. 

    A source exclusively told Us Weekly that Hudson, 24, was “in talks” to compete on the current season of Dancing With the Stars, which kicked off Tuesday, September 16. 

    However, Hudson “thought doing the show was going to be a conflict of interest with her other projects, so talks fell apart.”

    Social media users and other outlets have been looking into reports of Hudson’s involvement since the season 34 cast was revealed September 3 on Good Morning America.


    Related: Jordon Hudson Spotted at Boyfriend Bill Belichick‘s UNC Game

    Jordon Hudson supported her boyfriend, Bill Belichick, as his University of North Carolina football team scored a commanding victory in Chapel Hill on Saturday, September 13. Hudson, 24, was spotted watching the action from the sidelines at Kenan Memorial Stadium on Saturday, as the Tar Heels scored an impressive 41-6 win over the Richmond Spiders. […]

    Us Weekly has reached out to Hudson and Dancing With the Stars for comment. 

    Hudson — a former collegiate cheerleader and competitive beauty queen, who finished second runner-up in the Miss Maine pageant in May — has been busy making headlines as the girlfriend of University of North Carolina head football coach Bill Belichick. The couple made their relationship official in October 2024 after months of speculation.

    Belichick, 73, formerly guided the New England Patriots to six Super Bowl titles during his tenure as head coach from 2000 to 2023. 

    Hudson has hinted about her involvement in University of North Carolina’s upcoming Hulu docuseries, which will follow the inner workings of the football team. 

    Around the time the project was announced in August, Hudson shared a picture of herself with Belichick at the team’s spring game earlier this year, blowing a kiss for the camera. She tagged Hulu, Disney+ and EverWonder Studio, who will produce the series, which does not yet have a release date.

    “It’ll show our commitment to winning,” Belichick said in a social media video posted on August 24. “It’ll show our commitment to the team, and that’s our priority.”

    The Hulu series comes on the heels of a deal for the North Carolina football team to be featured on the HBO docuseries Hard Knocks. 

    The Athletic reported in April that Hudson “played an instrumental role in stopping the production, related to her request to be heavily involved in the project.”

    Hudson’s role in Belichick’s life has been the topic of much speculation, which led to the University of North Carolina issuing a statement about her earlier this year. 

    “While Jordon Hudson is not an employee at the University or Carolina Athletics, she is welcome to the Carolina Football facilities,” Carolina Athletics said in a statement to Us on May 9. “Jordon will continue to manage all activities related to Coach Belichick’s personal brand outside of his responsibilities for Carolina Football and the University.”

    In Hudson’s absence, season 34’s cast includes social media personality Alix Earle, comedian Andy Richter, NBA star Baron Davis, actor Corey Feldman, actress Danielle Fishel, TV personality Dylan Efron, actress Elaine Hendrix, entrepreneur Hilaria Baldwin, reality star Jen Affleck, Olympic gymnast Jordan Chiles, singer Lauren Jauregui, TV star Robert Irwin, singer Scott Hoying and reality star Whitney Leavitt. 

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    Daniel Trainor

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