“Magnificent life”: Peter, Paul and Mary folk star dies at 86

Peter Yarrow, the singer-songwriter best known as one-third of Peter, Paul and Mary, the folk-music trio whose impassioned harmonies transfixed millions as they lifted their voices in favor of civil rights and against war, has died. He was 86.

Yarrow, who also co-wrote the group’s most enduring song, Puff the Magic Dragon, died Tuesday in New York, publicist Ken Sunshine said. Yarrow had bladder cancer for the past four years.

“Our fearless dragon is tired and has entered the last chapter of his magnificent life. The world knows Peter Yarrow the iconic folk activist, but the human being behind the legend is every bit as generous, creative, passionate, playful, and wise as his lyrics suggest,” his daughter Bethany said in a statement.

READ MORE: Hugh Jackman photographed on ‘date night’ with Sutton Foster

During an incredible run of success spanning the 1960s, Yarrow, Noel Paul Stookey and Mary Travers released six Billboard Top 10 singles, two No. 1 albums and won five Grammys.

They also brought early exposure to Bob Dylan by turning two of his songs, Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right and Blowin’ in the Wind, into Billboard Top 10 hits as they helped lead an American renaissance in folk music. They performed Blowin’ in the Wind at the 1963 March on Washington at which the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

After an eight-year hiatus to pursue solo careers, the trio reunited in 1978 for a Survival Sunday, an anti-nuclear-power concert that Yarrow had organised in Los Angeles. They would remain together until Travers’ death in 2009. Upon her passing, Yarrow and Stookey continued to perform both separately and together.

Born May 31, 1938, in New York, Yarrow was raised in an upper middle class family he said placed high value on art and scholarship. He took violin lessons as a child, later switching to guitar as he came to embrace the work of such folk-music icons as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.

Upon graduating from Cornell University in 1959, he returned to New York, where he worked as a struggling Greenwich Village musician until connecting with Stookey and Travers.

Although his degree was in psychology, he had found his true calling in folk music at Cornell when he worked as a teaching assistant for a class in American folklore his senior year.

“I did it for the money because I wanted to wash dishes less and play guitar more,” he told the late record company executive Joe Smith. But as he led the class in song, he began to discover the emotional impact music could have on an audience.

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“I saw these young people at Cornell who were basically very conservative in their backgrounds opening their hearts up and singing with an emotionality and a concern through this vehicle called folk music,” he said.

“It gave me a clue that the world was on its way to a certain kind of movement, and that folk music might play a part in it and that I might play a part in folk music.”

Soon after returning to New York, he met impresario Albert Grossman, who would go on to manage Dylan, Janis Joplin and others and who at the time was looking to put together a group that would rival the Kingston Trio, which in 1958 had a hit version of the traditional folk ballad Tom Dooley.

But Grossman wanted a trio with a female singer and a member who could be funny enough to keep an audience engaged with comic patter.

For the latter, Yarrow suggested a guitar-strumming Greenwich Village comic he’d seen named Noel Stookey.

Stookey, who would use his middle name as a member of the group, happened to be a friend of Travers, who as a teenager had performed and recorded with Pete Seeger and others.

Gripped by stage fright, she was reluctant to join the pair at first, changing her mind after she heard how well her contralto voice melded with Yarrow’s tenor and Stookey’s baritone.

“We called Noel up. He was there,” Yarrow said, recalling the first time the three performed together.

“We mentioned a bunch of folk songs, which he didn’t know because he didn’t have a real folk-music background, and wound up singing Mary Had a Little Lamb. And it was immediately great, was just as clear as a bell, and we started working.”

They could also show a soft and poignant side, particularly on Puff the Magic Dragon, which Yarrow had written during his Cornell years with college friend Leonard Lipton.

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It tells the tale of Jackie Paper, a young boy who embarks on countless adventures with his make-believe dragon friend until he outgrows such childhood fantasies and leaves a sobbing, heartbroken Puff behind. As Yarrow explains: “A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys.”

Some insisted they heard drug references in the song, a contention at the heart of a famous scene in the film Meet the Parents, when Ben Stiller angers his girlfriend’s tightly wound father (Robert De Niro) by saying “puff” refers to marijuana smoke. Yarrow maintained it reflected the loss of childhood innocence and nothing more.

After recording their last No. 1 hit, a 1969 cover of John Denver’s Leaving on a Jet Plane, the trio split up the following year to pursue solo careers.

That same year Yarrow had pleaded guilty to taking indecent liberties with a 14-year-old girl who had come to his hotel room with her older sister to ask for autographs. The pair found him naked when he answered the door and let them in.

Yarrow, who resumed his career after serving three months in jail, was pardoned by President Jimmy Carter in 1981. Over the decades, he apologised repeatedly.

“I fully support the current movements demanding equal rights for all and refusing to allow continued abuse and injury — most particularly of a sexual nature, of which I am, with great sorrow, guilty,” he told The New York Times in 2019 after being disinvited from a festival over the sentence.

Over the years, Yarrow continued to write and co-write songs, including the 1976 hit Torn Between Two Lovers for Mary MacGregor. He received an Emmy nomination in 1979 for the animated film Puff the Magic Dragon.

Later songs include the civil rights anthem No Easy Walk to Freedom, co-written with Margery Tabankin, and Light One Candle, calling for peace in Lebanon.

Yarrow, who with Travers and Stookey had supported Democratic Sen. Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 presidential bid, met the Minnesota senator’s niece, Mary Beth McCarthy, at a campaign event. The couple married the following year. They had two children before divorcing.

In addition to his ex-wife and daughter, he is survived by a son, Christopher, and a granddaughter, Valentina.

The Story Behind Netflix’s Jerry Springer Documentary

Fights broke out all the time on The Jerry Springer Show, the NBC talk show that ran from 1991 to 2018, where guests went on to discuss their deepest, darkest secrets and confront their biggest enemies.

But the drama that played out on TV was only half the story. In the two-part documentary, Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action, out Jan. 7 on Netflix, former producers reveal what went into creating the show and how they primed guests for those fights. Springer died in 2023, and none of them have a bad word to say about him. But there is so much trash-talking among the producers about how the show was run, it’s surprising that a fight doesn’t break out in the docu-series itself.

Here’s a look at the juiciest tidbits about what went into the making of The Jerry Springer Show.

Springer, a former news anchor who served as the mayor of Cincinnati from 1977 to 1978, initially wanted to host a serious show and had dreams of running for Congress. Instead of becoming a politician, he became a subject of politicians’ inquiries: Jerry Springer includes footage of a Chicago city council hearing into the violence of the show.

The docu-series argues that the sensational tone of the show can be traced back to its Executive Producer Richard Dominick, who worked at tabloids like Weekly World News and the Sun before he became The Jerry Springer Show showrunner from 1994 to 2008. Under Dominick’s tenure, ratings went through the roof. Guests included a man who cut off his own penis and a man who left his wife and two daughters and married a horse.

Dominick appears in the series and has no regrets about his approach. As he explains, “Life is hard,” and weird news “takes you away from your world.”

Annette Grundy, one of the producers under Dominick, says that the aim was to put together a program that would catch people’s eye even with the sound turned off.

When the show first started out, it was pretty tame. Springer would interview guests like a teenager excited about going to college. Then Dominick was hired, and he knew those softball interviews were not going to get the kind of high ratings that the networks wanted.

Producers say they got marching orders to make sure guests got into fights after an explosive 1997 episode called “Klanfrontation,” in which members of the Ku Klux Klan got into a brawl with Irv Rubin, the founder of the Jewish Defense League. The KKK members had just been initiated into the Klan, and the point of the episode was to see if they could give up their allegiance to the Klan before they got in too deep.

After this episode, show producers focused on setting up more explosive arguments through the guests.

Show guests were initially treated like royalty, shuttled to the studio in a limousine. When they got to the studio, the producers would coach them on what to say on air and try to get them worked up. In Jerry Springer, one guest recalls receiving drink tickets and being encouraged to get drunk.

In Jerry Springer, there is footage of producers doing mock interviews with guests in which they are literally screaming at them. One named Toby Yoshimura recalls, “I would throw the door open to the dressing room, pick up a chair, throw it across the green room and start screaming.” Footage of his mock interview with a guest shows him calling her a “meth-head piece of s***.” As he explains what he was trying to do, “you’re starting a s***-fight. You rev them up to tornado level and then you send them out on stage.”

As for Springer’s approach to the show, he once described the difference between himself and the popular TV show host Oprah Winfrey by saying, “she does a real talk show. I don’t do a talk show. I do a circus. There are just no lions.”

Springer viewed the show as a place to “demonstrate outrageousness,” he says in archival footage included in the docu-series. He always maintained that all opinions deserve to be heard, no matter how out-there they are.

“In a free society, the media should reflect all elements of that society, not just the mainstream. On our show, for example, we have Klansmen on, we have neo-Nazis on — they killed my family,” Springer, the son of Holocaust survivors, says in another interview shown in the series. “I hate these people. I hate what they stand for. I may hate what you say, but I’ll fight to the death for your right to say it.”

Peter Yarrow of folk-music trio Peter, Paul and Mary dies at 86

Peter Yarrow, founding member of the folk group Peter, Paul and Mary, in 2017

Peter Yarrow, the singer-songwriter best known as one-third of Peter, Paul and Mary, the folk-music trio whose impassioned harmonies transfixed millions as they lifted their voices in favor of civil rights and against war, has died. He was 86.

Yarrow, who also co-wrote the group’s most enduring song, “Puff the Magic Dragon,” died Tuesday in New York, publicist Ken Sunshine said. Yarrow had bladder cancer for the past four years.

“Our fearless dragon is tired and has entered the last chapter of his magnificent life. The world knows Peter Yarrow the iconic folk activist, but the human being behind the legend is every bit as generous, creative, passionate, playful, and wise as his lyrics suggest,” his daughter Bethany said in a statement.

During an incredible run of success spanning the 1960s, Yarrow, Noel Paul Stookey and Mary Travers released six Billboard Top 10 singles, two No. 1 albums and won five Grammys.

They also brought early exposure to Bob Dylan by turning two of his songs, “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” and “Blowin’ in the Wind,” into Billboard Top 10 hits as they helped lead an American renaissance in folk music. They performed “Blowin’ in the Wind” at the 1963 March on Washington at which the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

After an eight-year hiatus to pursue solo careers, the trio reunited in 1978 for a “Survival Sunday,” an anti-nuclear-power concert that Yarrow had organized in Los Angeles. They would remain together until Travers’ death in 2009. Upon her passing, Yarrow and Stookey continued to perform both separately and together.

Born May 31, 1938, in New York, Yarrow was raised in an upper middle class family he said placed high value on art and scholarship. He took violin lessons as a child, later switching to guitar as he came to embrace the work of such folk-music icons as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.

Upon graduating from Cornell University in 1959, he returned to New York, where he worked as a struggling Greenwich Village musician until connecting with Stookey and Travers. Although his degree was in psychology, he had found his true calling in folk music at Cornell when he worked as a teaching assistant for a class in American folklore his senior year.

“I did it for the money because I wanted to wash dishes less and play guitar more,” he told the late record company executive Joe Smith. But as he led the class in song, he began to discover the emotional impact music could have on an audience.

“I saw these young people at Cornell who were basically very conservative in their backgrounds opening their hearts up and singing with an emotionality and a concern through this vehicle called folk music,” he said. “It gave me a clue that the world was on its way to a certain kind of movement, and that folk music might play a part in it and that I might play a part in folk music.”

The American singing group Peter, Paul and Mary performs on “The Jack Benny Program,” circa 1963.

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Soon after returning to New York, he met impresario Albert Grossman, who would go on to manage Dylan, Janis Joplin and others and who at the time was looking to put together a group that would rival the Kingston Trio, which in 1958 had a hit version of the traditional folk ballad “Tom Dooley.”

But Grossman wanted a trio with a female singer and a member who could be funny enough to keep an audience engaged with comic patter. For the latter, Yarrow suggested a guitar-strumming Greenwich Village comic he’d seen named Noel Stookey.

Stookey, who would use his middle name as a member of the group, happened to be a friend of Travers, who as a teenager had performed and recorded with Pete Seeger and others. Gripped by stage fright, she was reluctant to join the pair at first, changing her mind after she heard how well her contralto voice melded with Yarrow’s tenor and Stookey’s baritone.

“We called Noel up. He was there,” Yarrow said, recalling the first time the three performed together. “We mentioned a bunch of folk songs, which he didn’t know because he didn’t have a real folk-music background, and wound up singing ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb.’ And it was immediately great, was just as clear as a bell, and we started working.”

Peter Yarrow, right, sings an anti-war protest song to Vietnamese children affected by Agent Orange at the Friendship Village for Agent Orange victims, on the outskirts of Hanoi, Vietnam, in 2005.

Richard Vogel/AP

After months of rehearsal the three became an overnight sensation when their first album, 1962’s eponymous “Peter, Paul and Mary,” reached No. 1 on the Billboard chart. Their second, “In the Wind,” reached No. 4 and their third, “Moving,” put them back at No. 1.

From their earliest albums, the trio sang out against war and injustice in songs like Seeger’s “If I Had a Hammer” and “Where Have all the Flowers Gone,” Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “When the Ship Comes In” and Yarrow’s own “Day is Done.”

They could also show a soft and poignant side, particularly on “Puff the Magic Dragon,” which Yarrow had written during his Cornell years with college friend Leonard Lipton.

In addition to daughter Bethany, he is survived by his wife, Marybeth, son Christopher, and granddaughter Valentina.

Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck finalize their divorce, officially ending Bennifer 2.0

Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck have finalized their divorce half a year after the singer filed for a dissolution of marriage. According to the Associated Press, Lopez filed documents on Monday, Jan. 6 in Los Angeles Superior Court to show that the former couple settled their divorce through mediation in September.

Per the terms of their split, neither star will pay the other spousal support. The singer has also requested that her former name, Jennifer Lynn Lopez, be restored and will drop Affleck from her legal name once a judge finalizes their breakup. Additional financial details of the settlement were not filed publicly.

TMZ, the first to break the news of the divorce settlement, reports that the exes also reached an agreement on the $61 million home purchased during their marriage, but the details remain confidential. The property has been put up for sale.

Entertainment Weekly has reached out to representatives for Lopez and Affleck for comment.

After marrying on July 16, 2022 in Las Vegas, Lopez and Affleck separated in April 2024, and Lopez officially filed for divorce four months later on Aug. 20 2024, the two-year anniversary of the couple’s 2022 Georgia wedding ceremony. They cited “irreconcilable differences” as the reason for their split. This marked the second marriage for Affleck, the fourth for Lopez, and the culmination of their highly-publicized 22-year-long romance.

The former couple first met in 2002 on the set of their panned crime drama Gigli (while Lopez was married to her second husband, Cris Judd), and they were engaged soon after. They went on to share the screen for Lopez’s “Jenny From the Block” music video in 2003, and Affleck was the subject of several tracks on her third studio album, This is Me… Then. But before they could walk down the aisle, their whirlwind romance came to an end: the couple announced their first split in 2004, citing the excessive media attention. In the years to follow, they would speak at length about how the overwhelming press coverage complicated their relationship.

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To the shock and delight of many, Lopez and Affleck would rekindle their romance two decades later, in 2021. April of that year saw the couple unexpectedly spotted together, immediately sparking relationship rumors that were soon confirmed when they announced their second engagement. In July 2022, Lopez revealed that she and Affleck had eloped in Las Vegas, on what she described as the “best night ever.”

Public scrutiny continued to play a role in their relationship the second time around; in addition to the general media frenzy, Lopez got intimate and explicit about her relationship with Affleck on her latest album, This Is Me… Now, and the Air actor featured prominently in the documentary about the making of said visual album.

By 2024, reports emerged that Bennifer had hit a rough patch, as the couple began attending events separately. In May, PEOPLE reported that Affleck and Lopez were not living together in their Los Angeles home and two months later, Lopez filed for divorce.

The couple have no children together but both have kids from prior marriages. Lopez shares twins Max and Emme, 16, with ex-husband Marc Anthony while Affleck shares three children — Violet, 18, Seraphina, 15, and Samuel, 12 — with ex Jennifer Garner.

‘SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night’ Trailer: Amy Poehler, Pete Davidson, Molly Shannon, Tracy Morgan, and More Revisit Their ‘SNL’ Roots

Acclaimed Academy and Emmy award-winning documentarian Morgan Neville is honoring the 50th anniversary of “Saturday Night Live” with docuseries “SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night,” which he executive produces. The four-part series offers a behind-the-scenes look at the history of the beloved sketch series, with each episode taking a different perspective on how the show began.

More than 60 SNL alums are interviewed onscreen, including Amy Poehler, Andy Samberg, Bill Hader, Jason Sudeikis, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Molly Shannon, Pete Davidson, Stephen Colbert, Tracy Morgan, Bob Odenkirk, Tina Fey, Seth Meyers, John Mulaney, Larry David, Will Ferrell, Rachel Dratch, and Fred Armisen.

The first installment, “Five Minutes,” is about the audition process. Emmy Award winner Robert Alexander directs the first episode, which includes never-before-seen audition footage and firsthand accounts from alums as they reflect on their preparation and journey to the “SNL” stage.

The second episode, tilted “Written By: A Week Inside The SNL Writers Room,” offers a behind-the-scenes look at the writing process from script to screen. Academy Award winner Marshall Curry directs.

“More Cowbell” follows as the third episode, and it will examine the making of the now-iconic sketch starring Will Ferrell and Christopher Walken. Emmy nominee Neil Berkeley helms it.

Emmy nominee Jason Zeldes directs the fourth and final episode in the docuseries, titled “Season 11: The Weird Year.” Per the official synopsis, the installment is “an exploration into ‘SNL’s 11th season, examining the pivotal year that reset the show’s direction and cemented its enduring DNA with Lorne Michaels at the helm.”

Neville and Caitrin Rogers executive produce, with Juaquin Cambron serving as the showrunner and executive producer.

“I’ve been obsessed with ‘Saturday Night Live’ as long as I can remember,” Neville said in a press statement. “For ‘SNL50,’ I’ve been lucky to collaborate with some of my favorite independent filmmakers to tell some deeper stories of ‘SNL.’ Taken together, these standalone episodes give a new perspective of ‘SNL’ and what makes it work.”

Neville recently directed the Steve Martin documentary, another “SNL” tie, and Pharrell Williams’ Lego feature “Piece By Piece.”

“SNL” will mark its 50th anniversary with a celebratory weekend culminating in a live primetime special airing on Sunday, February 16 on NBC and Peacock. Music documentary “Ladies & Gentleman… 50 years of ‘SNL’ Music” will premiere January 27 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on NBC and stream the next day on Peacock.

Every season of “SNL” can also be exclusively streamed on Peacock, with new “SNL” episodes streaming live on the platform in addition to the broadcast on NBC (11:30pm ET/8:30pm PT).

Here’s the full list of “SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night” contributors.

“SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night” premieres January 16 on Peacock. Check out the trailer below.

Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster pictured holding hands

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Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster have seemingly confirmed their romance.

The ‘Deadpool and Wolverine’ actor – who worked with the acrtess in 2022 Broadway production ‘The Music Man’ – stepped out for dinner in Santa Monica with the 49-year-old beauty on Monday (06.01.25) , with the pair arriving together and holding hands.

In photographs obtained by People magazine, Hugh dressed casually in white jeans, a grey t-shirt and a black jacket, while Sutton had a camel trench coat over a long olive green dress, and the pair were seen looking into each other’s eyes and smiling broadly.

The couple have been romantically linked for some time, but this is their public first outing tgether and comes three months after Sutton filed for divorce from Ted Griffin after 10 years of marriage.

But on Saturday (04.01.25), the 56-year-old actor was seen in the audience of one of Sutton’s final performances of ‘Once Upon a Mattress’ at Los Angeles’ Ahmanson Theatre.

The award-winning actress previously hailed Hugh – who split from Deborra-Lee Furness, with whom he has Oscar, 24, and Ava, 19, in September 2023 after 27 years of marriage – one of her “best friends”.

Speaking to Vogue magazine in 2022, she said: “He has an impeccable reputation of being the hardest working man, incredibly kind, and generous–and all of that is true.

“He’s now become one of my best friends, which was a surprise, because you usually go into these things thinking, ‘Well, I hope we get along.’ But we just spent Memorial Day with our families. It’s really fun to meet new friends after 40.”

And Sutton – who has seven-year-old daughter Emily with Ted – addressed the onstage chemistry that had wowed fans.

She said: “One of the things that our director said early on was when you’re watching two characters fall in love, you look for the moments where they make each other smile.

“So it’s sort of birthed out of that, and it’s a spontaneous moment that’s different every single night. It toes that line of, is it Harold and Marian, or Hugh and Sutton?”

Man accused of selling Liam Payne drugs hands himself in after going on the run

The ‘on-the-run’ hotel worker accused of selling Liam Payne drugs has turned himself in four days after the singer’s other alleged dealer was arrested so he could be remanded in custody.

Ezequiel David Pereyra, 21, is said to have negotiated his surrender to the authorities through his lawyer. Police had come away empty-handed after heading to his home on the outskirts of Buenos Aires on Friday with an arrest warrant so he could be taken into pre-trial custody.

Pereyra’s unnamed lawyer informed officials yesterday his client would hand himself in at a building at Hornos 200 according to local reports. It was not immediately clear if it was number 200 of a main road called General Hornos near Buenos Aires’ famous La Boca neighbourhood or the same location in a smaller residential street a short drive from Pereyra’s home address in Lomas de Zamora on the outskirts of the Argentine capital.

A well-placed source told respected Argentinian news daily La Nacion: “After Friday’s operation a place where police believed he was working and other residential addresses were put under surveillance and because of the pressure he did the right thing with help from his lawyer.”

Pereyra, suspended from his job at CasaSur Palermo Hotel where Liam plunged to his death from his third-floor balcony on October 16 after binging on drink and drugs, is understood to have been formally read his rights before being taken into custody so he could be hauled to prison on the orders of Judge Laura Bruniard.

Mrs Bruniard had ordered his capture when he failed to honour a 24-hour deadline to hand himself in for pre-trial detention after she charged him on December 27 with supplying former One Direction singer Liam with drugs. Public prosecutors confirmed late last month the judge had accused him of “selling Liam cocaine on October 15 at 3.25am and between 3.30pm and 4pm on October 16 so that he could consume it during his hotel stay.”

They also claimed witness statements and CCTV analysis supported the allegation Pereyra had received US dollars 100 from Liam to buy narcotics for him and the singer had sent a car to his home on another occasion to pick up more drugs.

In November TMZ published footage showing Liam stepping out of a lift at the CasaSur Palermo Hotel and chatting with a man it identified as Pereyra shortly before the singer died, claiming the 31-year-old Brit had asked him for “seven grams of the same drug he had handed him earlier.”

Like Liam’s other alleged dealer Braian Nahuel Paiz, he is facing a prison sentence of between four to 15 years if convicted as charged.

Paiz was arrested at his home in Berazategui to the south-east of Quilmes near Buenos Aires on Friday so he could start his pre-trial detention.

His lawyer Fernando Madeo had previously claimed it was “impossible” the charges against his client would stick following Liam’s hotel death.

He also insisted the 24-year-old was the victim of a “witch hunt” sparked by the authorities’ desire for culprits.

Waiter Paiz, who met Liam at a restaurant in the upmarket Buenos Aires neighbourhood of Puerto Madero where he had gone to eat with his girlfriend Kate Cassidy and friends, has confessed to consuming drugs with the singer at the hotel where he died but refuted claims he sold him any narcotics.

The other three men indicted, Liam’s close friend Roger Nores, chief hotel receptionist Esteban Grassi and the hotel’s head of security Gilda Martin, have all been charged with manslaughter but allowed to remain free while their prosecution continues.

They are facing between one and five years in prison if convicted as charged although they have been told they could be eligible for suspended jail sentences.

Laura Bruniard pointed the finger at the hotel chiefs over their decision to move Liam from the lobby to his third-floor room when he couldn’t stand on his feet because of his prior drink and drug binge, saying it “created a legally unacceptable risk to his life” which had “foreseeable” consequences.

Argentinian prosecutors referred to Liam’s friend Roger Nores in a lengthy statement they released last week as the “victim’s representative” although they identified him only by his initials R.L.N.

Judge Bruniard in her indictment ruling accused the businessman, currently banned from leaving Argentina because of the charges against him, of “failing in his duty of care, assistance and help” towards the singer and “abandoning him to his fate, knowing he couldn’t fend for himself, aware he suffered multiple additions to alcohol and cocaine and fully conscious of the state of intoxication, vulnerably and defenceless he was in.”

Mr Nores told a recent TMZ documentary examining the life and death of Liam Payne that he was “in good spirits and perfectly balanced” the day he died as he refuted claims the singer was acting erratically and was intoxicated shortly before his fatal fall.

The businessman had previously protested his innocence and refuted claims he was Liam’s ‘de facto’ manager.

He said in a statement shortly after it emerged he was being officially investigated before being charged: “I never abandoned Liam, I went to his hotel three times that day and left 40 minutes before this happened.

“There were over 15 people at the hotel lobby chatting and joking with him when I left.

“I could have never imagined something like this would happen.

“I’ve given my statement to the prosecutor on October 17 as a witness and I haven’t spoken to any police officer or prosecutor ever since.

“I wasn’t Liam’s manager. He was just my very dear friend.”

‘Severance’ Season 2 Review: More Kooky Fun, Even Less Answers

How’s work? How have the last three years been for you? Do you feel more fulfilled, more appreciated, more committed? After all, you’ve spent so many hours working. If you work 40 hours a week, that’s 6,240 hours of labor since 2022. How many hours do you remember, and were they good? Were they what you might call… your life? If you could forget them, would you? Are you expendable? If you resigned, and your employer replaced you within two weeks, how much of a difference would it make? Have you even met your employer? Not the shift manager or your supervisor, but the person who owns the company. Do they know who you are? Are you expendable? What do you do?

Severance premiered on Apple TV+ at the beginning of 2022, just after the post-COVID world had been reckoning with the meaning and worth of labor. More people were working at home and coming to terms with the fact that so much of their previous working lives was superfluous bullsh*t, and they could instead accomplish so much more from the comfort of their own homes. People were realizing they were ‘essential’ for perhaps the first time in their lives. They figured out that the owning class needed them more than they needed the owners. People were ‘quiet quitting,’ and workers around the world were questioning the weighted scales of their work-life balance.

Severance depicted people who had a neurological procedure to cut out their work life from their actual conscious experience. They would go to work, clock in, and in their minds, eight hours would pass by in less than a minute. They quite literally left their work lives at the office. As such, Severance seemed like the perfect show for the time, a dystopic bit of sci-fi that we could all actually relate to. Now, though, three years have passed since that first season’s guttural cliffhanger left us breathless. While the second season picks up right after that finale, our world feels very different. It’s been a while. Everything and nothing has changed, each in different ways. Does Severance still matter?

The Outies Get Their Time to Shine

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4 /5 Severance – Season 2 TV-MA Drama Sci-FiComedyThriller

Mark leads a team of office workers whose memories have been surgically divided between their work and personal lives; when a mysterious colleague appears outside of work, it begins a journey to discover the truth about their jobs.

Release Date January 17, 2025 Cast Adam Scott , Britt Lower , Zach Cherry , John Turturro , Tramell Tillman , Michael Chernus , Jen Tullock , Christopher Walken , Gwendoline Christie Creator Dan Erickson Streaming Service(s) AppleTV+ Directors Ben Stiller , Sam Donovan , Uta Briesewitz Pros Still an extremely stylish and thoughtful series that wonderfully blends different genres. The performances are better than ever, especially Britt Lower and Tramell Tillman. You stay hooked throughout thanks to an expanded scope, clever twists, and a kooky mystery. Cons The surfeit of mysteries without many answers can be frustrating and alienating.

The long and short of it is… sure, kinda. We may have lost the class war, but labor and the way it defines us (and vice versa) will always be an issue for society. At this point, Severance is less about the practically clandestine plot and more about the characters (and the absurdist, comically unsettling reality they exist in). It continues to be an issue for the quartet of Lumon employees we grew to love in 2022 — Mark (Adam Scott), Dylan (Zach Cherry), Irving (John Turturro), and Helly (Britt Lower, who owns this season with her incredible work).

We last saw these Lumon ‘Innies’ (the part of their human experience that’s only conscious during work hours) as they triggered a company failsafe after hours, which let them inhabit the consciousness of their ‘Outies’ (who they are outside work, with no memory of work). There’s apparently a huge difference between Innie and Outie, raising some interesting neurological and philosophical questions. The show never gets into the weeds about this, but there’s still a lot of fun in speculating about the logical and psychological consequences of the severance procedure.

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Mark discovered that his dead wife was actually alive and working at Lumon for some reason. Irving learned that he’s a depressed veteran and painter, and makes contact with his Innie lover, Burt (Christopher Walken). Arguably the most disturbing reveal, though, was seeing Helly’s Outie — Helena Eagan, daughter of Lumon CEO Jame Eagan, who underwent the severance procedure as a PR stunt for the company. That obviously backfired horribly, and Season 2 is all about the ramifications of this, from the side of the employees (the Innies) and their employers (Lumon and, to some extent, the Outies).

One of the best parts of Season 2 is seeing more of these characters’ Outies. We were really only used to seeing Mark on the outside in Season 1, but now we see Helly running damage control as her cold, efficient, and possibly psychopathic Outie. We see Dylan’s Outie as a slightly irresponsible and flaky man who nonetheless cares deeply for his children and wife (an excellent Merritt Wever). We spend time with Irving’s Outie as well, mainly through his attempts to get closer to Burt. It’s truly fascinating — we’re essentially following the same characters we already know, and yet they’re very different. It’s almost like being introduced to a new cast in some ways, which contributes to the intended dissonance of it all. Their Innie and Outie stories intersect in very cool ways.

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Posts The Mysteries & Frustrations of Season 2

There are so many details we can’t reveal here (seriously, the spoiler sheet for reviewing the season is pretty meticulous), so it’s difficult to explicate the plot in any cohesive way. Suffice it to say, Severance continues to throw more narrative curveballs than Sandy Koufax. You’re hooked by great new developments from the very first minute. Dan Erickson and his writing team do a great job at pacing out the twists, too, so that you never exactly feel overwhelmed by all the mystery. Along the way, the direction by Ben Stiller, Sam Donovan, and Uta Briesewitz is consistently stylish, often like Wes Anderson making a sci-fi thriller, and the score and cinematography are top-notch.

Severance has always been a mysterious show with myriad small but important details. So after that three-year absence, it’s strongly advised to binge the first season before diving into the second, which premieres on Jan. 17, 2025, with episodes airing weekly on Apple TV+ through March 21. The series doesn’t spoon-feed the audience narrative clues and character details, and it doesn’t do much in the way of a refresher course, so if you’ve forgotten some of the first season (even minor characters) or, God forbid, haven’t watched it, just go back and do that. Season 2 will be a frustrating and unhappy experience without an understanding of Season 1.

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Unfortunately, though, Season 2 of Severance is still somewhat frustrating even with a strong memory of the first season. Not many mysteries are answered; instead, colorful questions are refracted and transformed into many more enigmatic shades, creating a weirder, richer tapestry of lore and history that is sometimes simply impenetrable. Characters experience the most patently absurd things, and then continue with their lives after a “Well, that happened” style shrug, which the audience is suggested to do as well. It’s annoying, but hopefully creator Dan Erickson is setting up a bigger world with satisfying payoffs and not haphazardly leading us into some Lost-type dead end.

Do We Learn Anything New About ‘Severance?’ Close

There are even more goats, strange hallways and doors, doppelgängers, confounding clues, lengthy lore, and open-ended scenes than in Season 1. After the six episodes of Season 2 screened for review, we still don’t know what Lumon is and what Macrodata Refinement actually does. We don’t have any more information about Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette, ferociously great but underused) and her strange, cult-like history with Lumon and the Eagans.

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Likewise, we don’t learn much about Mark’s wife. No light is shed on the strange, constantly snowing, possibly contained town in which the show is set. We don’t find out what’s behind the door in Irving’s disturbing black paintings. No luck with the goats, either. Yet there’s a feeling that things are building and coalescing, if we only have the patience to stick with it.

What does it all mean? It’s impossible to tell, which may annoy some viewers. For the most part, though, Severance successfully strings us along and leaves us wanting more. (I will go on the record, however, even if there’s no actual discussion or direct evidence of this, and thus nothing to spoil — I believe the secret of the show and Lumon is all about cloning.)

Everything Is Working All the Time Close

This is a much less Mark-centric season of Severance, as well, thanks to the increased focus on the Outies and the whole ensemble (along with much more time with the delightful Tramell Tillman as Seth Milchick, who is a standout this season). Nonetheless, Season 2 makes it clear just how important Mark is to this whole story, and Adam Scott remains truly excellent here, essentially playing two roles. On the outside, Mark was about as broken as a person can get. After all, like Freud wrote, “Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.” Mark, on the other hand, lost his love and severed himself from his work.

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These 10 series will undoubtedly scratch the same itch as Dan Erickson’s AppleTV+ series, Severance.

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The second season, though, finds him more invested in life through a different kind of work — the labor of learning about Lumon and just what exactly is going on there, and if his wife is somehow trapped in its confines. It’s like Mark is learning to find fulfillment and excitement in working towards something, all of which sounds like the ideal version of labor. It’s ironic that Mark, who was severed in order to not be conscious of working at Lumon, is now spending his ‘unsevered’ hours trying to understand or penetrate Lumon.

So where does ‘work’ end and ‘life’ begin? To sever them implies that they’re separate, but what if they’re the same? When we see the Outies in this show, they’re often sadder or less zealous than the Innies at Lumon. They’re not on the clock, so they’re technically not working — but they kind of are. It’s the work of raising children or maintaining a relationship, the work of finding a friend and sharing yourself, the work of organizing a business that’s bigger than yourself, the work of being a brother or a husband. Season 2 of Severance is exquisite at showing us how just being a human is laborious. Everything is work (and if everything is work, then the severance procedure is a kind of suicide for the soul). So how’s your job?

Season 2 of Severance begins streaming on Jan. 17, 2025, with episodes released each Friday on Apple TV+ until March 21. You can stream Severance through the link below:

Watch Severance

NAACP Image Awards Nominations: ‘The Piano Lesson’ Leads Film Nods With 14

WME Insists Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively Didn’t Pressure Agency to Drop Justin Baldoni

The 2025 NAACP Image Awards nominations have been revealed, with The Piano Lesson, the Malcolm Washington-directed film adaptation of August Wilson’s play starring Danielle Deadwyler and John David Washington, up for 14 nominations, the most of any film this year.

Other top film nominees include six-time contenders Bob Marley: One Love and The Book of Clarence and five-time nominees Wicked, The Six Triple Eight and Nickel Boys. In addition to Wicked’s nods, star Cynthia Erivo is also up for the Image Awards’ top prize of entertainer of the year.

For entertainer of the year, Erivo faces off against Keke Palmer, Kendrick Lamar, Kevin Hart and Shannon Sharpe, with the latter’s Club Shay Shay podcast also landing a nod for outstanding culture and society podcast.

In the music categories, GloRilla received a leading six nominations, followed by four-time nominees Doechii, Lamar and Usher.

“We look forward to celebrating the brilliance of Black talent and creativity whose stories shape

culture, ignite change, and inspire generations,” NAACP president and CEO Derrick Johnson said in a statement. “Through film, music, literature and more, their voices weave a rich tapestry that honors

our heritage, celebrates our identity and proves that storytelling is a powerful force for driving

true progress.”

BET Media Group president and CEO Scott Mills added, “The NAACP Image Awards stand as a testament to the brilliance, resilience, and impact of Black creatives, innovators, and changemakers. BET is proud to continue our long-standing partnership with the NAACP to celebrate Black excellence in all forms. Together, we shine a light on the stories, voices, and artistry that shape culture and drive progress.”

The 56th NAACP Image Awards are set for Saturday, Feb. 22 at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, with the broadcast airing at 8 p.m. on BET and CBS. Winners in multiple categories, however, will be revealed prior to the main telecast at the Creative Honors Ceremonies on Friday, Feb. 21, which will stream on the Image Awards’ website.

Winners in select categories are determined by public voting on the Image Awards’ website. Voting closes on Feb. 7 at midnight ET.

Read on for a complete list of this year’s nominees.

Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture

André Holland — “Exhibiting Forgiveness” (Roadside Attractions)

Colman Domingo — “Sing Sing” (A24)

John David Washington — “The Piano Lesson” (Netflix)

Kingsley Ben-Adir — “Bob Marley: One Love” (Paramount Pictures)

Martin Lawrence — “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” (Sony Pictures)

Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture

Cynthia Erivo — “Wicked” (Universal Pictures)

Kerry Washington — “The Six Triple Eight” (Netflix)

Lashana Lynch — “Bob Marley: One Love” (Paramount Pictures)

Lupita Nyong’o — “A Quiet Place: Day One” (Paramount Pictures)

Regina King — “Shirley” (Netflix)

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture

Brian Tyree Henry — “The Fire Inside” (Amazon MGM Studios)

Corey Hawkins — “The Piano Lesson” (Netflix)

David Alan Grier — “The American Society of Magical Negroes” (Focus Features)

Denzel Washington — “Gladiator II” (Paramount Pictures)

Samuel L. Jackson — “The Piano Lesson” (Netflix)

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture

Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor — “Exhibiting Forgiveness” (Roadside Attractions)

Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor — “Nickel Boys” (Orion Pictures/Amazon MGM Studios)

Danielle Deadwyler — “The Piano Lesson” (Netflix)

Ebony Obsidian — “The Six Triple Eight” (Netflix)

Lynn Whitfield — “Albany Road” (Faith Filmworks)

Outstanding Breakthrough Performance in a Motion Picture

Brandon Wilson — “Nickel Boys” (Orion Pictures/Amazon MGM Studios)

Clarence Maclin — “Sing Sing” (A24)

Danielle Deadwyler — “The Piano Lesson” (Netflix)

Ebony Obsidian — “The Six Triple Eight” (Netflix)

Ryan Destiny — “The Fire Inside” (Amazon MGM Studios)

Outstanding Ensemble Cast in a Motion Picture

Bob Marley: One Love (Paramount Pictures)

The Book of Clarence (Sony Pictures)

The Piano Lesson (Netflix)

The Six Triple Eight (Netflix)

Wicked (Universal Pictures)

Outstanding Animated Motion Picture

Inside Out 2 (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

Kung Fu Panda 4 (DreamWorks Animation)

Moana 2 (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

Piece by Piece (Focus Features)

The Wild Robot (DreamWorks Animation)

Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance – Motion Picture

Aaron Pierre — “Mufasa: The Lion King” (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

Anika Noni Rose — “Mufasa: The Lion King” (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

Ayo Edebiri — “Inside Out 2” (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

Blue Ivy Carter — “Mufasa: The Lion King” (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

Lupita Nyong’o — “The Wild Robot” (DreamWorks Animation)

Outstanding Short Form (Live Action)

Chocolate with Sprinkles (AFI)

Definitely Not a Monster

If They Took Us Back

My Brother & Me (MeowBark Films)

Superman Doesn’t Steal

Outstanding Short Form (Animated)

if(fy) (OTB/The Hidden Hand Studios)

Nate & John (Unity Animation Project, LLC)

Peanut Headz: Black History Toonz “Jackie Robinson” (Exhibit Treal Studios)

Self (Pixar Animation Studios)

Walk in the Light (419 Studios)

Outstanding Breakthrough Creative (Motion Picture)

David Fortune — “Color Book” (Tribeca Studios)

Malcolm Washington — “The Piano Lesson” (Netflix)

RaMell Ross — “Nickel Boys” (Orion Pictures/Amazon MGM Studios)

Titus Kaphar — “Exhibiting Forgiveness” (Roadside Attractions)

Zoë Kravitz — “Blink Twice” (Amazon MGM Studios)

Outstanding Youth Performance in a Motion Picture

Anthony B. Jenkins — “The Deliverance” (Netflix)

Blake Cameron James — “We Grown Now” (Sony Pictures Classics)

Jeremiah Daniels — “Color Book” (Tribeca Studios)

Percy Daggs IV — “Never Let Go” (Lionsgate)

Skylar Aleece Smith — “The Piano Lesson” (Netflix)

Outstanding Cinematography in a Motion Picture

Andrés Arochi — “Longlegs” (NEON)

Jomo Fray — “Nickel Boys” (Orion Pictures/Amazon MGM Studios)

Justin Derry — “She Taught Love” (Andscape)

Lachlan Milne — “Exhibiting Forgiveness” (Roadside Attractions)

Rob Hardy — “The Book of Clarence” (Sony Pictures)

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series

Damon Wayans Jr. — “Poppa’s House” (CBS)

Giancarlo Esposito — “The Gentlemen” (Netflix)

Kenan Thompson — “Saturday Night Live” (NBC)

Tyler James Williams — “Abbott Elementary” (ABC)

William Stanford Davis — “Abbott Elementary” (ABC)

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series

Danielle Pinnock — “Ghosts” (CBS)

Ego Nwodim — “Saturday Night Live” (NBC)

Janelle James — “Abbott Elementary” (ABC)

Sheryl Lee Ralph — “Abbott Elementary” (ABC)

Wanda Sykes — “The Upshaws” (Netflix)

Outstanding Drama Series

9-1-1 (ABC)

Bel-Air (Peacock)

Cross (Amazon Prime Video)

Found (NBC)

Reasonable Doubt (Hulu)

Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series

Aldis Hodge — “Cross” (Amazon Prime Video)

Donald Glover — “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” (Amazon Prime Video)

Harold Perrineau — “FROM” (MGM+)

Jabari Banks — “Bel-Air” (Peacock)

Michael Rainey Jr. — “Power Book II: Ghost” (Starz)

Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series

Angela Bassett — “9-1-1” (ABC)

Emayatzy Corinealdi — “Reasonable Doubt” (Hulu)

Queen Latifah — “The Equalizer” (CBS)

Shanola Hampton — “Found” (NBC)

Zoe Saldaña — “Lioness” (Paramount+)

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series

Adrian Holmes — “Bel-Air” (Netflix)

Cliff “Method Man” Smith — “Power Book II: Ghost” (Starz)

Isaiah Mustafa — “Cross” (Amazon Prime Video)

Jacob Latimore — “The Chi” (Paramount+)

Morris Chestnut — “Reasonable Doubt” (Hulu)

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series

Adjoa Andoh — “Bridgerton” (Netflix)

Coco Jones — “Bel-Air” (Peacock)

Golda Rosheuvel — “Bridgerton” (Netflix)

Lorraine Toussaint — “The Equalizer” (CBS)

Lynn Whitfield — “The Chi” (Paramount+)

Outstanding Limited Television (Series, Special or Movie)

Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist (Peacock)

Genius: MLK/X (National Geographic)

Griselda (Netflix)

Rebel Ridge (Netflix)

The Madness (Netflix)

Outstanding Actor in a Limited Television (Series, Special or Movie)

Aaron Pierre — “Rebel Ridge” (Netflix)

Colman Domingo — “The Madness” (Netflix)

Kelvin Harrison Jr. — “Genius: MLK/X” (National Geographic)

Kevin Hart — “Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist” (Peacock)

Laurence Fishburne — “Clipped” (FX/Hulu)

Outstanding Actress in a Limited Television (Series, Special or Movie)

Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor — “The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat” (Hulu/Searchlight Pictures)

Naturi Naughton — “Abducted at an HBCU: A Black Girl Missing Movie” (Lifetime)

Sanaa Lathan — “The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat” (Hulu/Searchlight Pictures)

Sofía Vergara — “Griselda” (Netflix)

Uzo Aduba — “The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat” (Hulu/Searchlight Pictures)

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Television (Series, Special or Movie)

Don Cheadle — “Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist” (Peacock)

Luke James — “Them: The Scare” (Amazon Prime Video)

Ron Cephas Jones — “Genius: MLK/X” (National Geographic)

Samuel L. Jackson — “Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist” (Peacock)

Terrence Howard — “Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist” (Peacock)

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Television (Series, Special or Movie)

Brandy Norwood — “Descendants: The Rise of Red” (Disney+)

Jayme Lawson — “Genius: MLK/X” (National Geographic)

Loretta Devine — “Terry McMillan Presents: Tempted By Love” (Lifetime)

Sanaa Lathan — “Young. Wild. Free.” (BET+)

Taraji P. Henson — “Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist” (Peacock)

Outstanding Performance by a Youth (Series, Special, Television Movie or Limited-Series)

Caleb Elijah — “Cross” (Amazon Prime Video)

Graceyn Hollingsworth — “Gracie’s Corner” (YouTube TV)

Leah Sava Jeffries — “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” (Disney+)

Melody Hurd — “Cross” (Amazon Prime Video)

TJ Mixson — “The Madness” (Netflix)

Outstanding Host in a Talk or News/Information (Series or Special) – Individual or Ensemble

Abby Phillip — “NewsNight with Abby Phillip” (CNN)

Henry Louis Gates Jr. — “Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.” (PBS)

Jennifer Hudson — “The Jennifer Hudson” (Syndicated)

Joy Reid — “The Reidout” (MSNBC)

Sherri Shepherd — “Sherri” (Syndicated)

Outstanding Host in a Reality/Reality Competition, Game Show or Variety (Series or Special) – Individual or Ensemble

Alfonso Ribeiro — “Dancing with the Stars” (ABC)

Keke Palmer — “Password” (NBC)

Nick Cannon — “The Masked Singer” (Fox)

Steve Harvey — “Celebrity Family Feud” (ABC)

Taraji P. Henson — “BET Awards 2024” (BET Media Group)

Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance (Television)

Angela Bassett — “Orion and the Dark” (Netflix)

Cree Summer — “Rugrats” (Nickelodeon)

Cree Summer — “The Legend of Vox Machina” (Amazon Prime Video)

Dawnn Lewis — “Star Trek: Lower Decks” (Paramount+)

Keke Palmer — “The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy” (Amazon Prime Video)

Outstanding Short Form Series or Special – Reality/Nonfiction /Documentary

In the Margins (PBS)

NCAA Basketball on CBS Sports (CBS)

Roots of Resistance (PBS)

SC Featured (ESPN)

The Prince of Death Row Records (YouTube TV)

Outstanding Breakthrough Creative (Television)

Ayo Edebiri — “The Bear” (FX/Hulu)

Diarra Kilpatrick — “Diarra From Detroit” (BET+)

Maurice Williams — “The Madness” (Netflix)

Thembi L. Banks — “Young. Wild. Free.” (BET+)

Vince Staples — “The Vince Staples Show” (Netflix)

Outstanding Male Artist

Chris Brown (RCA Records/Chris Brown Entertainment)

J. Cole (Dreamville/Interscope Records)

Kendrick Lamar (pgLang, under exclusive license to Interscope Records)

October London (Death Row Records/gamma.)

USHER (mega/gamma.)

Outstanding Female Artist

Beyoncé (Columbia Records/Parkwood Entertainment LLC)

Coco Jones (Def Jam Recordings)

Doechii (Capitol Records/Top Dawg Entertainment)

GloRilla (Collective Music Group/Interscope Records)

H.E.R. (RCA Records)

Outstanding Gospel/Christian Album

“Heart of a Human” — DOE (Life Room Label/RCA Inspiration)

“Live Breathe Fight” — Tamela Mann (Tillymann Music Group)

“Still Karen” — Karen Clark Sheard (Karew Records/Motown Gospel)

“Sunny Days” — Yolanda Adams (Epic Records)

“The Maverick Way Reimagined” — Maverick City Music (Tribl Records)

Outstanding International Song

“Close” — Skip Marley (Def Jam Recordings)

“Hmmm” — Chris Brown feat. Davido (RCA Records/Chris Brown Entertainment)

“Jump” — Tyla (Epic Records)

“Love Me JeJe” — Tems (RCA Records/Since ’93)

“Piece of My Heart” — Wizkid feat. Brent Faiyaz (RCA Records/Sony Music International/Starboy Entertainment)

Outstanding Music Video/Visual Album

“Alright” — Victoria Monét (RCA Records/Lovett Music)

“Alter Ego (ALTERnate Version)” — Doechii, JT (Capitol Records/Top Dawg Entertainment)

“Boy Bye” — Chlöe (Columbia Records/Parkwood Entertainment LLC)

“Not Like Us” — Kendrick Lamar (pgLang, under exclusive license to Interscope Records)

“Yeah Glo!” — GloRilla (Collective Music Group/Interscope Records)

Outstanding Album

“Alligator Bites Never Heal” — Doechii (Epic Records)

“Cape Town to Cairo” — PJ Morton (Morton Records/EMPIRE)

“Coming Home” — USHER (mega/gamma.)

“Cowboy Carter” — Beyoncé (Columbia Records/Parkwood Entertainment LLC)

“Glorious” — GloRilla (Collective Music Group/Interscope Records)

Outstanding Soundtrack/Compilation Album ● “Bob Marley: One Love (Soundtrack)” (Tuff Gong/Island Records) ● “Genius: MLK/X (Songs from the Original Series)” (Hollywood Records) ● “Reasonable Doubt (Season 2) (Original Soundtrack)” (Hollywood Records) ● “The Book of Clarence (The Motion Picture Soundtrack)” (Geneva Club under exclusive license to Roc Nation Records, LLC) ● “Wicked: The Soundtrack” (Republic Records)

Outstanding Gospel/Christian Song

“Church Doors” — Yolanda Adams (Epic Records)

“Do It Anyway” — Tasha Cobbs (TeeLee Records/Motown Gospel)

“God Problems (Not By Power)” — (Tribl Records)

“I Prayed for You (Said a Prayer)” MAJOR. — (NowThatsMAJOR/MNRK Music Group)

“Working for Me” — Tamela Mann (Tillymann Music Group)

Outstanding Jazz Album

“Creole Orchestra” — Etienne Charles (Culture Shock Music)

“Epic Cool” — Kirk Whalum (Artistry Music)

“Javon & Nikki Go to the Movies” — Javon Jackson and Nikki Giovanni (Solid Jackson Records)

“On Their Shoulders: An Organ Tribute” — Matthew Whitaker (MOCAT Records)

“Portrait” — Samara Joy (Verve Records)

Outstanding Soul/R&B Song

“16 CARRIAGES” — Beyoncé (Columbia Records/Parkwood Entertainment LLC)

“Here We Go (Uh Oh)” — Coco Jones (Def Jam Recordings)

“I Found You” — PJ Morton (Morton Records/EMPIRE)

“Residuals” — Chris Brown (RCA Records/Chris Brown Entertainment)

“Saturn” — SZA (RCA Records/Top Dawg Entertainment)

Outstanding Hip Hop/Rap Song

“Mamushi” — Megan Thee Stallion feat. Yuki Chiba (Hot Girl Productions LLC/Warner Music Group)

“Murdergram Deux” — LL Cool J feat. Eminem (Def Jam Recordings)

“Noid” — Tyler, the Creator (Columbia Records)

“Not Like Us” — Kendrick Lamar (pgLang, under exclusive license to Interscope Records)

“Yeah Glo!” — GloRilla (Collective Music Group/Interscope Records)

Outstanding Duo, Group or Collaboration (Traditional)

Adam Blackstone & Fantasia — “Summertime” (BASSic Black Entertainment Records/Anderson Music Group/EMPIRE)

Leela James feat. Kenyon Dixon — “Watcha Done Now” (Shesangz Music, Inc. under exclusive license to BMG Rights Management (US) LLC)

Maverick City Music feat. Miles Minnick — “God Problems (Not By Power)” (Tribl Records)

Muni Long & Mariah Carey — “Made for Me” (Supergiant Records/Def Jam Recordings)

Sounds of Blackness feat. Jamecia Bennett & Buddy McLain — “Thankful” (McLain Music, LLC)

Outstanding Duo, Group or Collaboration (Contemporary)

FLO & GloRilla — “In My Bag” (Island Records)

GloRilla feat. Kirk Franklin, Maverick City Music, Kierra Sheard, Chandler Moore — “RAIN DOWN ON ME” (Collective Music Group/Interscope Records)

USHER & Burna Boy — “Coming Home” (mega/gamma.)

Victoria Monét feat. USHER — “SOS” (Sex on Sight) (RCA Records/Lovett Music)

Wizkid feat. Brent Faiyaz — “Piece of My Heart” (RCA Records/Lovett Music)

Outstanding Original Score for Television/Motion Picture

Challengers (Original Score) (Milan Records)

Dune: Part Two (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (WaterTower Music)

Star Wars: The Acolyte (Original Soundtrack) (Walt Disney Records)

The American Society of Magical Negroes (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (Back Lot Music)

The Book of Clarence (Original Motion Picture Score) (Milan Records)

DOCUMENTARY CATEGORIES

Outstanding Documentary (Film)

Daughters (Netflix)

Frida (Amazon MGM Studios)

King of Kings: Chasing Edward Jones (Freestyle Digital Media)

Luther: Never Too Much (Sony Music Entertainment/Sony Music Publishing/CNN Films)

The Greatest Night in Pop (Netflix)

Outstanding Documentary (Television)

Black Barbie: A Documentary (Netflix)

Black Twitter: A People’s History (Hulu)

Gospel (PBS)

Simone Biles Rising (Netflix)

Sprint (Netflix)

Outstanding Short Form Documentary (Film)

Camille A. Brown: Giant Steps (American Masters and Firelight Media)

Danielle Scott: Ancestral Call (American Masters and Firelight Media)

How to Sue the Klan

Judging Juries

Silent Killer (Kaila Love Jones Films)

WRITING CATEGORIES

Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series

Ashley Nicole Black — Shrinking – “Changing Patterns” (Apple TV+)

Brittani Nichols — Abbott Elementary – “Breakup” (ABC)

Crystal Jenkins — No Good Deed – “Letters of Intent” (Netflix)

Diarra Kilpatrick — Diarra From Detroit – “Chasing Ghosts” (BET+)

Jordan Temple — Abbott Elementary – “Smoking” (ABC)

Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series

Azia Squire — Bridgerton – “Tick Tock” (Netflix)

Ben Watkins — Cross – “Hero Complex” (Amazon Prime Video)

Francesca Sloane, Donald Glover — Mr. & Mrs. Smith – “First Date” (Amazon Prime Video)

Geetika Lizardi — Bridgerton – “Joining of Hands” (Netflix)

Lauren Gamble — Bridgerton – “Old Friends” (Netflix)

Outstanding Writing in a Television Movie or Special

Brandon Espy, Carl Reid — Mr. Crocket (Hulu)

Bree West, Chazitear — A Wesley South African Christmas (BET+)

Juel Taylor, Tony Rettenmaier, Thembi L. Banks — Young. Wild. Free. (BET+)

Rudy Mancuso, Dan Lagana — Música (Amazon Prime Video)

Tina Mabry, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Cee Marcellus — The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat (Hulu/Searchlight Pictures)

Outstanding Writing in a Motion Picture

Barry Jenkins — The Fire Inside (Amazon MGM Studios)

RaMell Ross, Joslyn Barnes — Nikel Boys (Orion Pictures/Amazon MGM Studios)

Steve McQueen — Blitz (Apple Original Films)

Titus Kaphar — Exhibiting Forgiveness (Roadside Attractions)

Virgil Williams, Malcolm Washington — The Piano Lesson (Netflix)

DIRECTING CATEGORIES

Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series

Ayo Edebiri — The Bear – “Napkins” (FX/Hulu)

Bentley Kyle Evans — Mind Your Business – “The Reunion” (Bounce TV)

Robbie Countryman — The Upshaws – “Ain’t Broke” (Netflix)

Tiffany Johnson — How to Die Alone – “Trust No One” (Hulu)

William Smith — The Vince Staples Show – “Brown Family” (Netflix)

Outstanding Directing in a Drama Series

Carl Franklin — Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story – “Blame It on the Rain” (Netflix)

Marta Cunningham — Genius: MLK/X – “Protect Us” (National Geographic)

Marta Cunningham — Genius: MLK/X – “Who We Are” (National Geographic)

Paris Barclay — Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story – “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” (Netflix)

Rapman — Supacell – “Supacell” (Netflix)

Outstanding Directing in a Television Movie, Documentary, or Special

Kelley Kali — Kemba (BET+)

Marcelo Gama — BET Awards 2024 (BET Media Group)

Shanta Fripp — Black Men’s Summit (BET Media Group)

Thembi L. Banks — Young. Wild. Free (BET+)

Tina Mabry — The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can Eat (Hulu/Searchlight Pictures)

Outstanding Directing in a Motion Picture

Jeymes Samuel — The Book of Clarence (Sony Pictures)

Malcolm Washington — The Piano Lesson (Netflix)

RaMell Ross — Nickel Boys (Orion Pictures/Amazon MGM Studios)

Reinaldo Marcus Green — Bob Marley: One Love (Paramount Pictures)

Steve McQueen — Blitz (Apple Original Films)

Outstanding Directing in a Documentary (Television or Motion Picture)

Bao Nguyen — The Greatest Night in Pop (Netflix)

Dawn Porter — Luther: Never Too Much (Sony Music Entertainment/Sony Music Publishing/CNN Films)

Deborah Riley Draper — James Brown: Say It Loud (A&E)

Jason Pollard, Sam Pollard — Ol’ Dirty Bastard: A Tale of Two Dirtys (A&E)

Nneka Onuorah — Megan Thee Stallion: In Her Words (Amazon Prime Video)

Outstanding Literary Work – Fiction

A Love Song for Ricki Wilde — Tia Williams (Grand Central Publishing – Hachette Book Group)

Grown Woman — Sarai Johnson (Harper – HarperCollins Publishers)

Neighbors and Other Stories — Diane Oliver, Tayari Jones (Foreword) (Grove Atlantic)

One of Us Knows: A Thriller — Alyssa Cole (William Morrow – HarperCollins Publishers)

What You Leave Behind — Wanda M. Morris (William Morrow – HarperCollins Publishers)

Outstanding Literary Work – Nonfiction

A Passionate Mind in Relentless Pursuit: The Vision of Mary McLeod Bethune — Noliwe Rooks (Penguin Press – Penguin Books)

Love & Whiskey: The Remarkable True Story of Jack Daniel, His Master Distiller Nearest Green, and the Improbable Rise of Uncle Nearest — Fawn Weaver (Melcher Media Inc.)

Picturing Black History: Photographs and Stories that Changed the World — Daniela Edmeier, Damarius Johnson, Nicholas B. Breyfogle and Steven Conn (Abrams Books – Harry N. Abrams)

The 1619 Project: A Visual Experience — Nikole Hannah-Jones and The New York Times Magazine (Clarkson Potter – Crown Publishing Group)

The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie Transformed America — Larry Tye (Mariner Books – HarperCollins Publishers)

Outstanding Literary Work – Debut Author

A Kind of Madness — Uche Okonkwo (Tin House Books)

AfroCentric Style: A Celebration of Blackness & Identity in Pop Culture — Shirley Neal (HarperCollins Amistad)

Grown Woman — Sarai Johnson (Harper – HarperCollins Publishers)

Masquerade — O.O. Sangoyomi (Forge Books – Tor Publishing Group)

Swift River — Essie Chambers (Simon & Schuster)

Outstanding Literary Work – Biography/Autobiography

Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, and Me — Whoopi Goldberg (Blackstone Publishing)

By the Time You Read This: The Space Between Cheslie’s Smile and Mental Illness — Her Story in Her Own Words — Cheslie Kryst and April Simpkins (Forefront Books)

Do It Anyway: Don’t Give Up Before It Gets Good — Tasha Cobbs Leonard, Sarah Jakes Roberts (Foreword) (WaterBrook – Penguin Random House)

Lovely One: A Memoir — Ketanji Brown Jackson (Random House)

Medgar and Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story That Awakened America — JoyAnn Reid (Mariner Books – HarperCollins Publishers)

Outstanding Literary Work – Instructional

Black Joy Playbook: 30 Days of Intentionally Reclaiming Your Delight — Tracey Michae’l Lewis-Giggets (Ink & Willow – Penguin Random House)

I Did a New Thing: 30 Days to Living Free (A Feeding the Soul Book) — Tabitha Brown (William Morrow – HarperCollins Publishers)

Loving Your Black Neighbor as Yourself: A Guide to Closing the Space Between Us — Chanté Griffin (WaterBrook – Penguin Random House)

Radical Self-Care: Rituals for Inner Resilience — Rebecca Moore (Author), Amberlee Green (Illustrator) (The Quarto Group/Leaping Hare Press)

Wash Day: Passing on the Legacy, Rituals, and Love of Natural Hair — Tomesha Faxio (Clarkson Potter – Crown Publishing Group)

Outstanding Literary Work – Poetry

Bluff: Poems — Danez Smith (Graywolf Press)

Good Dress — Brittany Rogers (Tin House Books)

Load in Nine Times: Poems — Frank X Walker (Liveright Publishing – W.W. Norton & Company)

Song of My Softening — Omotara James (Alice James Books)

This Is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets — Kwame Alexander (Little, Brown and Company)

Outstanding Literary Work – Children

All I Need to Be — Rachel Ricketts (Author), Tiffany Rose (Illustrator) with Luana Horry (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers)

Cicely Tyson — Renée Watson (Author), Sherry Shine (Illustrator) (Amistad Books for Young Readers)

Crowning Glory: A Celebration of Black Hair — Carole Boston Weatherford (Author), Ekua Holmes (Illustrator) (Candlewick Press)

My Hair Is a Book — Maisha Oso (Author), London Ladd (Illustrator) (HarperCollins Publishers)

You Can Be a Good Friend (No Matter What!): A Lil TJ Book — Taraji P. Henson (Author), Paul Kellam (Illustrator) (Zonderkidz – HarperCollins)

Outstanding Literary Work – Youth/Teens

American Wings: Chicago’s Pioneering Black Aviators and the Race for Equality in the Sky — Sherri L. Smith and Elizabeth Wein (G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers)

Barracoon Adapted for Young Readers The Story of the Last Black Cargo — Zora Neale Hurston, Ibram X. Kendi (Adapted by), Jazzmen Lee-Johnson (Illustrator) (Amistad Books for Young Readers)

Black Star: The Door of No Return — Kwame Alexander (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)

Brushed Between Cultures: A YA Coming of Age Novel Set in Brooklyn, New York — Samarra St. Hilaire (Samarra St. Hilaire)

Clutch Time: A Shot Clock Novel (Shot Clock, 2) — Caron Butler and Justin A. Reynolds (HarperCollins Publishers)

Outstanding Graphic Novel

Big Jim and the White Boy: An American Classic Reimagined — David F. Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson (Ten Speed Graphic – Penguin Random House)

Black Defender: The Awakening — Dr. David Washington, Mr. Zhengis Tasbolatov (Illustrator), Mr. Billy Blanks (Foreword) (Washington Comix)

Gamerville — Johnnie Christmas (HarperAlley – HarperCollins Publishers)

Ghost Roast — Shawneé Gibbs, Shawnelle Gibbs, Emily Cannon (Illustrator) (Versify – HarperCollins Publishers)

Punk Rock Karaoke — Bianca Xunise (Viking Books for Young Readers)

Outstanding News and Information Podcast

#SundayCivics (LJW Community Strategies)

After the Uprising (iHeartPodcasts, Double Asterisk)

Into America: Uncounted Millions (MSNBC)

Native Land Pod (iHeartPodcasts, Reasoned Choice Media)

The Assignment with Audie Cornish (CNN Audio)

Outstanding Lifestyle/Self-Help Podcast

Balanced Black Girl (Dear Media)

Is This Going to Cause An Argument (Seven14Seven Media)

The R Spot with Iyanla (Shondaland)

Therapy for Black Girls (iHeartPodcasts)

We Don’t Always Agree with Ryan & Sterling (ABF Creative & Indian Meadows Productions)

Outstanding Society and Culture Podcast

Baby, This is Keke Palmer (Wondery)

Club Shay Shay (Shay Shay Media & The Volume)

Higher Learning with Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay (The Ringer)

We Don’t Always Agree with Ryan & Sterling (ABF Creative & Indian Meadows Productions)

What Now? with Trevor Noah (Spotify Studios in partnership with Day Zero Productions and Fulwell 73)

Outstanding Sports, Arts and Entertainment Podcast

Naked Sports with Cari Champion (The Black Effect Podcast Network)

Nightcap (Shay Shay Media & The Volume)

Questlove Supreme (iHeartPodcasts)

R&B Money Podcast (R&B Money)

Two Funny Mamas (Mocha Podcasts Network)

Outstanding Podcast – Limited Series/Short Form

About the Journey (Marriott Bonvoy, AT WILL MEDIA & mntra)

Squeezed with Yvette Nicole Brown (Lemonda Media)

Stranded (Broadway Video)

The Wonder of Stevie (Audible, Higher Ground and Pineapple Street Studios)

When We Win with Maya Rupert (Lemonada Media)

COSTUME DESIGN, MAKE-UP & HAIRSTYLING CATEGORIES

Outstanding Costume Design (Television or Film)

Ernesto Martinez — Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist (Peacock)

Megan Coates — Shirley (Netflix)

Gersha Phillips — The Big Cigar (Apple TV+)

Francine Jamison-Tanchuck — The Piano Lesson (Netflix)

Paul Tazewell — Wicked (Universal Pictures)

Outstanding Make-up (Television or Film)

Carol Rasheed — Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist (Peacock)

Debi Young — Shirley (Netflix)

Rebecca Lee — Shōgun (Netflix)

Matiki Anoff — The Book of Clarence (Sony Pictures)

Para Malden — The Piano Lesson (Netflix)

Outstanding Hairstyling (Television or Film)

Terry Hunt — Bel-Air (Peacock)

Lawrence Davis — Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist (Peacock)

Nakoya Yancey — Shirley (Netflix)

Brian Badie — The Penguin (HBO/Max)

Andrea Mona Bowman — The Piano Lesson (Netflix)

‘Severance’ review: Season 2 is more than worth the wait

It’s taken nearly three years for Severance to come back to us, yet somehow, it’s more relevant than ever. The series follows Mark Scout (Adam Scott), a widower who has his work-related memories surgically separated from his personal memories. Lumon Industries, which pioneered “severance,” promised Mark that the technology would make his life better — but as he and his severed colleagues discovered, the procedure is part of the conglomerate’s unsettling plan to consolidate their control over the global labor force. Now, the lauded Apple TV+ drama from creator Dan Erickson returns with a briskly paced sophomore season that refines its many themes into a timely, rewarding, and challenging debate about the power and parameters of personhood.

The new season (premiering Jan. 17) opens five months after Mark and his Macrodata Refinement Department coworkers — Helly R. (Britt Lower), Dylan (Zach Cherry), and Irving (John Turturro) — alerted the world to the exploitation of severed workers, also known as “innies.” Lumon, following a recognizable corporate playbook, publicly promises vast “reforms” to the controversial program — including new incentives like “pineapple bobbing” and additional snacks in the company vending machines. Though suspicious of Lumon’s intentions and the daunting assurances of a “fresh start” from supervisor Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman), innie Mark willingly returns to MDR and resumes his search for Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman) — the woman he now knows to be the presumed-dead wife of his outside self.

Once back in the office, Mark encounters new faces, including severed-floor employees Mark W. (Bob Balaban) and Gwendolyn (Alia Shawkat); pre-pubescent deputy manager Ms. Huang (Sarah Bock); towering Lumon enforcer Mr. Drummond (Darri Ólafsson); and a stern, cowbell-wielding Lumonite named Lorne (Gwendoline Christie). But the true revelations come above ground, as the story devotes more time to the outies and their loved ones. Outie Mark, enraged that his former Lumon boss, Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette), masqueraded as his neighbor, reluctantly agrees to stay at the company until he and his sister, Devon (Jen Tullock), can figure out what’s really going on in that basement he disappears to eight hours every day. Dylan and his wife, Gretchen (Merritt Wever), work opposite schedules while raising their three kids, and Irving seeks to understand his innie’s connection to Burt (Christopher Walken), a former employee of Lumon’s Optics and Design department. In the wake of Helly’s role in the MDR revolt, Helena Eagan — daughter of Lumon CEO Jame Eagan (Michael Siberry) — does damage control with her ghastly father and engages in a power struggle with Ms. Cobel.

The more we learn about the outies — and the more they learn about their innies — the harder it is to deny that Mark, Helly, Dylan, and Irv each comprise two distinct and worthy individuals. In season 2, Severance forces both its characters and its viewers to confront our ugly tendency to assess another’s worth based primarily on how that person’s needs and desires align with our own. Though they’re being exploited themselves, Mark and his fellow outies realize the dreadful power they possess over their other selves, who are just one resignation away from annihilation.

That looming sense of trepidation is only strengthened by the nuanced performances of the series’ stellar leads. Scott manages subtle but identifiable differences — in voice, in cadence, in bearing — between Mark S., optimistic innie, and the grief-beaten man who spawned him. Cherry titrates Dylan’s outie with notes of resignation and resentment, and Turturro bolsters outside Irv — a lonely artist — with genial warmth. Nowhere is the dichotomy more evident than Helly/Helena, elegantly individuated by Lower. On the severed floor, Helly is thoughtful, wry, and compassionate, while Helena Eagan is calculating and inscrutable. Her chilly showdowns with Ms. Cobel — though brief — are some of the best scenes of the season. The new season also gives Tillman a welcome boost in screen time, as Mr. Milchick works to maintain his hold on the MDR department while facing unwelcome scrutiny from the imposing Mr. Drummond.

Severance’s puzzle-box narrative spawned dozens of questions in its first season: What happened to Mark’s wife, Gemma? What does the microdata refinement department do, anyway? And what’s the deal with those baby goats? Fear not, (some of) those answers are forthcoming. One of the 10 episodes this season centers on Gemma/Ms. Casey, and another focuses on Harmony Cobel’s past and her shocking history with Lumon Industries. There are also some grand additions to the mythology of Kier Egan — Lumon’s enigmatic, prophet-like founder — and the company’s unsettling, somewhat infantilizing corporate culture. (“Marshmallows are for team players, Dylan.”)

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Once again, Jeremy Hindle’s impeccable production design is integral to Severance’s mood of retrofuturistic ennui. But it’s not always clear if the peculiarities of Lumon life are essential for the story or just another chance for a phenomenal visual flourish. Take that goat pasture revealed in the trailer: Are those grassy hills and dales rolling inside a fluorescent-lit square of Lumon office space a metaphor for how capitalism has consumed not just our daily lives but the planet itself? Or does it just look cool? Only Kier, or frequent Severance director Ben Stiller, know for sure. At least the goats’ purpose is made clear — or clearer, I should say — by the final episode.

Of course, one very important mystery remains unsolved. “Why did you do this?” Mark howls at Ms. Cobel. “What the f— is this all about?” The season builds to a wrenching and suspenseful finale which reveals some of the specific logistics of Lumon’s plan — but the endgame is still frustratingly cryptic. That’s what season 3 is for, I suppose. And there is one constant that runs through all this maddening ambiguity, which gives Severance its beautiful, undeniable power: Even in the most punishing of environments, the human heart is undefeated. Grade: A-