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In Touch: Jessica Simpson is ‘hell bent on landing a Vegas residency’

When you think Jessica Simpson you think platform shoes, farts, and bags with needless fringe right? You don’t think “singer” at this point, but that’s how she got her start in the business. That and being ditzy on TV. According to In Touch, which would have little reason to make up a story about Jessica Simpson because it’s not like she’s a huge draw, Jessica wants to return to music for the next stage of her career. She wants a lucrative deal in Vegas like Britney, Mariah and Celine. Nevermind the fact that she hasn’t put out an album since 2010′s Happy Christmas. Watch out, Britney Spears! Jessica Simpson is looking to revive her singing career by seeking out a Vegas residency, In Touch has exclusively learned. “She’s hell-bent on landing a Vegas residency,” a source reveals, explaining that Jess recently built a recording studio in her LA home and began working with top songwriter-producers like Linda Perry. “With state-of-the art technology and backdrops paired with her sex appeal, she thinks she can give the other headliners a run for their money,” says the source. “After 20 years in the music business, Jess is excited to follow her dreams and become a Vegas legend.” [From In Touch] Quick name one song by Jessica Simpson. You can’t, can you? The only thing that comes to mind is a video she did with Eva Longoria which involved roller skating. I can name more Paris Hilton songs (one) than I can Jessica Simpson songs. Googling “Jessica Simpson hits” brings up her remake of “These Boots Are Made for Walking” and such singles as 1999′s “I Wanna Love You Forever” and 2006′s “A Public Affair.” I guess that’s the video with Eva Longoria, but the song is completely forgettable. I just listened to it again and am reminded that it’s a ripoff of Madonna’s “Holiday.” If this is true, and Simpson wants a Vegas residency, she has to have songs that people want to hear, it’s not enough to be able to writhe around on stage. None of her music videos have over 5 million views on YouTube. This isn’t happening for her. Jessica’s last venture was a commercial for Budget rent-a-car. Is her clothing line not doing well? Last week The Enquirer reported that Jessica and her husband, Eric Johnson, spend $50,000 every month on food and drinks and “have cases of the finest wines and champagnes delivered to their home every week,” eat at expensive restaurants and “get deliveries from places like Little Dom’s or La Poubelle.” So maybe their spending is a issue. Update: Jessica’s rep denies that she’s seeking a Vegas residency. She is working on new music. Maze to create ? @kristingram A photo posted by Jessica Simpson (@jessicasimpson) on May 24, 2016 at 6:53pm PDT ??? A photo posted by Jessica Simpson (@jessicasimpson) on May 11, 2016 at 7:35pm PDT photos credit: Budget Rent-a-Car via WENN.com

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J.K. Rowling on reaction to new Hermione: ‘I thought that idiots were going to idiot’

Character portraits for the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child were released over the weekend and they are all lovely; take a look on Pottermore. As we reported in December of last year, Olivier-Award winning actor, Noma Dumezweni, was cast as Hermione in this production. After the announcement, people with nothing better to do complained to the Twitterverse about her casting. The issue was not her credentials but the fact that she is not white and that somehow flies in the face of the characterization of Hermione. At the time, J.K. Rowling gave the following statement in support of the casting choice: Canon: brown eyes, frizzy hair and very clever. White skin was never specified. Rowling loves black Hermione ? https://t.co/5fKX4InjTH — J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) December 21, 2015 JK wrote the story upon which Jack Thorne’s play is based. HPatCC takes place 19 years after the gang has graduated Hogwarts. Harry is married with three children and the youngest, Albus, is reluctant to carry on the family legacy. The story is a continuation from the books, not the movies so it really doesn’t matter who played the part in the movie, even if they did a wonderful job in that role. Now that the dust up on social media has died down, JK expressed her annoyance about the controversy and did so in classic JK fashion. JK Rowling has revealed her frustration at online reaction by “a bunch of racists” to news that the role of Hermione will be played by a black actress in the eagerly awaited new play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. The production, which has broken records by selling 175,000 tickets in 24 hours, is tipped to be the theatrical event of the year. But the Harry Potter creator criticised those who have suggested that Hogwarts’ studious heroine could not be played by the Olivier-award-winning actress Noma Dumezweni. “With my experience of social media, I thought that idiots were going to idiot,” she said in an interview with the Observer. “But what can you say? That’s the way the world is. Noma was chosen because she was the best actress for the job.” While the vast majority of people responded positively to the casting decision, Rowling said: “I had a bunch of racists telling me that because Hermione ‘turned white’ – that is, lost colour from her face after a shock – that she must be a white woman, which I have a great deal of difficulty with. But I decided not to get too agitated about it and simply state quite firmly that Hermione can be a black woman with my absolute blessing and enthusiasm.” Dumezweni was cast by the play’s director, John Tiffany – known for the productions Black Watch and the musical Once – who has collaborated with Rowling and the playwright Jack Thorne, writer of This Is England and The Last Panthers. Tiffany said he was surprised by the opinions expressed online, but had stopped reading the comments. “I am not as Twitter-familiar as Jo and Jack, so I hadn’t encountered its dark side, which is just awful. But what shocked me was the way people couldn’t visualise a non-white person as the hero of a story. It’s therefore brilliant that this has happened.” [From The Guardian] I always cast books in my head and producers never go with my picks when they are made into movies. Shockingly, I am able to get over it and see the film without bias. I remain at a loss over the criticism of Noma; I would be thrilled to see someone of her caliber perform. Elphaba in Wicked needed to be green, it was a huge point in the story but Hermione’s skin color has no affect on her. I think I’ll save my outrage for the fact that I will never get tickets to this show and not the fact that Hermione is not alabaster or Ron not-ginger enough. Embed from Getty Images Photo credit: WENN and Fame/Flynet Photos and Getty Images

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Adele bitched out a concert-goer who was recording her: rude or totally fine?

Adele’s tour has been going pretty smoothly. She ends up making news for cute reasons, like when she wins awards in the middle of a show, or when she forgets the lyrics to one of her songs and has to stop everything to call herself out. But there have been no health problems, no meltdowns, no major flubs or anything like that. But over the weekend, Adele did have to bitch out one of her fans at a concert in Verona, Italy. Apparently, the Adele-fan was filming Adele and Adele stopped the show to drag this fan. In case you can’t make out what she says, Adele tells the fan: “Yeah, I want to tell that lady as well, can you stop filming me with a video camera because I’m really here in real life. You can enjoy it in real life, rather than through your camera. Can you take your tripod down? This isn’t a DVD, this is a real show. I’d really like you to enjoy my show because there’s lots of people outside that couldn’t come in.” What’s crazy is that this person had a whole set-up involving a tripod?!? Jesus H. I get that it’s “the thing to do” nowadays to film your concert-going experience on a shaky camera-phone, but seriously… why not just put the camera down and actually experience the concert? Maybe that sounds impossibly old-school, I know. Meanwhile, did you know that Adele has quietly purchased a home in Beverly Hills? IS SHE MOVING TO AMERICA?!?! Adele already owns property in England, obviously, but I do wonder if she wants to spend more time in America these days. She’s reportedly just signed a huge new recording contract with Sony and she obviously plans to keep making albums for a long time. Maybe she wants her next album to be recorded in LA. Photos courtesy of WENN.

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Blake Shelton & Gwen Stefani paying instagram users for relationship PR?

Embed from Getty Images I know that hardly a day goes by without a mention of omnipresent pop culture couple Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton, but today we’ve got a story packed with intrigue and shenanigans! Many of our commenters have remarked that the relationship between the pop/ska princess and the country singing cowboy is about as convincing as the Whitney Houston hologram. Well, you may be onto something, as evidence suggests that Gwake’s PR people may be paying social media influencers to promote them. The Cut’s Allie Jones put on her Nancy Drew hat when she saw d-list faux celebrities and Instagram-famous individuals posting gushing endorsements for Gwake and their (still awful) single, “Go Ahead and Break My Heart” on Instagram. What raised the red flag were a pair of posts which sounded like they may have come from somebody’s publicist. The first came from former Bachelor contestant, Becca Tilley. Tilly, who has over 700,000 followers, featured a shot of the couple singing their new duet at Blake’s album release party back on May 9. You can see the performance, if you haven’t had enough of them making goo-goo eyes at each other, below: This is strange as this happened a few weeks ago and Becca just posted this on Sunday. Becca wrote, “I have a weird obsession with these two right now!! Watching the whole performance for @iheartradio at iheartradio.com/hondastage — heart eyes!!!!’ ? @blakeshelton @gwenstefani.” Curious. I have a weird obsession with these two right now!! Watching the whole performance for @iheartradio at iheartradio.com/hondastage — heart eyes!!!!’ ? @blakeshelton @gwenstefani A photo posted by beccatilley (@beccatilley) on May 22, 2016 at 3:16pm PDT Soon afterward, The Hills alum Stephanie Pratt posted another photo from the same event with the same overly excited commentary (and pretty obvious promotional shout-outs), captioning the photo, “Saw these two cuties in concert w @ginaa_a … they are my new fave couple!!” she wrote. “Love ? you can watch Blake’s performance at iheartradio.com/hondastage” Saw these two cuties in concert w @ginaa_a …they are my new fave couple!! Love ? you can watch Blake’s performance at iheartradio.com/hondastage A photo posted by Stephanie Pratt (@officialstephpratt) on May 22, 2016 at 4:45pm PDT If this is true – and there’s been no confirmation or comment from Gwake’s camp, that’s kind of sad, and it does call the authenticity of the relationship into some doubt. Maybe they are in love but have realized what a auditory train wreck the song is. Blake’s still giving us “Aww, shucks,“ telling Entertainment Tonight, “I just like being with her, but when she’s all dolled up and we go places, it’s always fun for me. If she was here right now, not one person here would be looking at anybody else but her. It’s just cool to know that’s who I came here with.” He even wrote the song “A Guy with a Girl” from his new album If I’m Honest for her…that is, if he really is being honest! Blake made an appearance on Ellen recently and, to add more fuel to this latest fire, joked, “The last year of my life has been nuts, it’s been crazy, I just figure if all the magazines are going to cash in on me, I might as well too.” Hmmm… I get Blake and Gwen doing self-promotion on Instagram, but having third parties publicize their relationship and song is all kinds of tacky. Is anyone else rethinking their stance on these two after these interesting accusations? I have to admit I am – and I like both of them. Sick of them, yes, but I don’t dislike them. I’m very curious to see how this plays out. A photo posted by Gwen Stefani (@gwenstefani) on May 22, 2016 at 10:01pm PDT Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images Thanks to Jezebel for the tip! Photo credit: Getty Images, WENN.com, Instagram

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Blake Shelton claims Gwen Stefani ‘saved my life’: sweet or melodramatic?

Well, I hoped for a “Gwake Break,” but it doesn’t seem to be happening anytime soon, as the couple have continued to ride the publicity train for their new duet. Blake taped an interview for CMT’s Hot 20 Countdown. He told the show’s host, Katie Cook, that the staggering number of views on his debut performance of “Go Ahead and Break My Heart” with Gwen Stefani on The View is due to the “media craze around us being together.” I think a lot of it had more to do with people’s curiosity to hear the California-born ska/rocker sing with the country crooner than anything else. Blake also had this to say about his new relationship: “It’s not something anybody could’ve seen coming besides God I guess because it doesn’t look like it would make sense. All I can tell you is that it does. It just makes the most perfect sense for us and where we’re at in our lives. I tell people all the time, ‘Gwen saved my life last year.’ She did. I think she’d tell you something similar about me.” “This thing just happened because of some things we were going through. Even coming into [her] second season [working on] The Voice, I didn’t even really know her that well. All of a sudden this thing just happened because of some things we were going through and it saved my life, period.” [From CMT/E!] Wow. Chart-topping country hits, a successful TV show, adoring fans, but it’s Gwen who “saved his life?” That’s kind of a bold statement. I guess Blake is starting to run out of talking points – which he should by now. Blake continued to talk about his relationship on Thursday’s TODAY, saying out loud what a lot of people were thinking when he got together with Gwen. It’s a little weird. We could not be, on paper, any more different. I mean, I’m a country singer and she’s a ska, rock, pop, whatever it is…and it’s just an odd idea. But man, it’s a lot of fun. I’ve gotta be honest about that. [From TODAY/US] As he mentioned backstage after the song’s debut, Blake again told CMT (and TODAY…sheesh) that he wrote the song mainly to woo Gwen and was relieved that she liked it so much. Gwen admitted on an appearance on Chelsea Handler’s talk show on Wednesday that her biggest fear about the tune was, as she put it, “Whoa what if I don’t like it, huge turn off!” Fortunately for Gwake, that wasn’t the case. Gwen went on to say, “I listened to it and thought ‘Oh my God, I love this.’” I love @chelseahandler Gx A photo posted by Gwen Stefani (@gwenstefani) on May 17, 2016 at 1:53pm PDT Yes, Blake is all kinds of charming in his “aww, shucks” kind of way and Gwen is still pretty cool…and if it’s not a publicity stunt (which I hope it isn’t) I remain happy for them. But please you two, give it a rest already. We get it, you’re both over the moon about each other and your duet was well-received. I just think when you talk about your relationship this much, something about it just comes off as a touch of “trying too hard-itis.” Or is it just me? Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images Photo credit: WENN.com, Getty Images, Instagram/Gwen Stefani

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Larry David thinks white people only pretend to like ‘Hamilton’ to be ‘hip’

I’m going back and forth about whether I think these Larry David quotes are offensive. Larry David was doing an interview with the Mike Lupica Show this week, and he was asked about the smash Broadway musical Hamilton. Hamilton has been a phenomenon for more than a year, it’s pulled in tens of millions of dollars in ticket sales, and Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda has won a Pulitzer and a Peabody, plus the musical picked up no fewer than 16 Tony Award nominations. Basically, everyone thinks Hamilton is THE BEST. Full-stop. But no, says Larry David. Hamilton is popular because white people are just pretending to like it so they can be hip. “Hamilton” may be making history on Broadway, but Larry David, for one, is curbing his enthusiasm. The comic actor took to the “Mike Lupica Show” podcast, which debuted Tuesday, to express his theory that a lot of the demand comes from white ticket-buyers trying to “solidify their liberal bona fides.” “Yeah, ‘Hamilton’ — it was pretty amazing,” David told the Daily News columnist. “But I have a feeling there are a lot of white people who are saying they are completely blown away even though they didn’t really understand half of the things the people on stage were saying. They just want to solidify their liberal bona fides and how cool they are: ‘Yea, I love Hamilton. Yea I get it, I’m hip.’” Lupica made a connection to the kind of voters who mislead political pollsters. “I think some of them are. No but, the show is amazing,” said David. “No doubt about it, it’s an incredible show, but I do have this theory on a lot of the people that are seeing it.” [From The NY Daily News] I was going to make a point about how Larry David would never say “Leonardo DiCaprio’s films are so popular because white people just want to pretend that they’re cool.” But I actually do think that happens. By most accounts, The Revenant was a beautiful snoozefest, and I do think some people said they liked the movie because they wanted to look artsy and cool. So, is that happening with Hamilton? Or is Larry David showing off some racial microaggression about Hamilton, like the only reason it’s so successful is because white people are trying to be cool about something they don’t “get”? Photos courtesy of WENN, Fame/Flynet.

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Dr. Luke refuses to allow Kesha to perform at the Billboard Awards this Sunday

Here are some photos of Kesha at the Humane Society’s Rescue Gala a few weeks ago in LA. It’s good to see Kesha out and about these days, trying to reclaim her career and her life after everything that’s gone down legally and personally with Dr. Luke. The last time we checked in on Kesha’s legal situation, the federal judge had thrown out part of Kesha’s appeal, and Kesha was and is still legally and contractually tied to Dr. Luke and his label, Kemosabe Records. The judge seemed to believe that even if Kesha’s claims of physical and emotional abuse were true, Dr. Luke would still support Kesha’s music and give her free rein to record and perform, because capitalism. Let’s see how that’s working out, shall we? For several days, Kesha and her team were making a big deal about how she would be performing at the Billboard Awards on May 22 (this Sunday). She was going to perform a cover of Bob Dylan’s “It’s Ain’t Me, Babe.” She got written permission from Kemosabe Records, but then Dr. Luke rescinded the permission. So… yeah. FREE KESHA. Sad news for Kesha and her fans. The “TiK ToK” singer has been barred from taking the stage at the Billboard Music Awards on Sunday, May 22. Dick Clark Productions, which oversees the annual awards show, released a statement on Tuesday, May 17, revealing that the 29-year-old’s scheduled performance has been canceled by her producer, Dr. Luke, and her label Kemosabe Records. The singer has been in a contentious legal battle with Dr. Luke, 42, over allegations that he sexually abused her. “Kesha accepted an invitation to perform on the show and she received written approval from Dr. Luke’s record label, Kemosabe Records,” Dick Clark Productions said in a statement. “Kemosabe subsequently rescinded its approval following a media report on Wednesday May 11 regarding Kesha’s appearance on the BBMAs. Unfortunately, Kesha and Kemosabe have since been unable to come to an agreement for Kesha to perform on the show. Dick Clark Productions has a long standing relationship with Kesha. We hope that the parties can come to an arrangement such that we can continue that long standing relationship with a performance by Kesha on the Billboard Music Awards stage on May 22nd.” Not long after, Kesha took to Instagram to respond to the news that her BBMAs set has been canceled. “I was very excited to perform a tribute to Bob Dylan by singing a cover of ‘It ain’t me, babe’ at the Billboard awards this year. I’m very sad and sorry to say I won’t be allowed to do this,” she wrote. “I just wanted to make very clear that this performance was about me honoring one of my favorite songwriters of all time and has never had anything at all to do with Dr. Luke. I was never going to use a picture of him, speak of him or allude to my legal situation in any way. I simply wanted to sing a song I love to honor an artist I have always looked up to. thank u all for the continued support.” According to TMZ, Dr. Luke put a halt to Kesha’s performance after catching wind that it was reportedly going to make a “statement” about her legal war with her former collaborator and Sony. [From Us Weekly] Remember how the judge who threw out Kesha’s case and her appeal thought it would be easy-peasy for Kesha to record and perform without having to break her contract with Dr. Luke? That for Dr. Luke, it was always going to be about profit and money and not exerting control over his (alleged) victim? How’s that working out? It’s mind-boggling that Dr. Luke has the authority and the audacity to shut down Kesha in this way, and to do it so publicly. For the love of God… FREE KESHA. Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet and WENN.