Marianne Smyth, the American whose elaborate con of a reality television producer was the subject of a 2020 Hollywood Reporter story, has been extradited to Northern Ireland to face trial over a separate alleged scam she ran there. Smyth…
The person sitting on a bed and being interviewed for a documentary is clearly in distress, tears welling. “Can we take a break for a second?” Delaney Colaio, 18, asks the co-directors of We Go Higher, a documentary about the life…
Deep in the lush mountains of the Caribbean island of Dominica, amid stands of lemongrass, giant ferns and palms, three roads converge where two lives ended, violently. A few weeks before Christmas, the bodies of Daniel Langlois, a French…
Marianne Smyth, an American woman who conned a reality producer and allegedly several other figures in and around Hollywood between 2013 and 2017, has been arrested in Maine as Northern Ireland seeks to extradite her to face charges. Smyth…
Norwegian pianist Rune Alver carefully unfolded the brittle sheet music and began caressing the keys of the baby grand. He had found the classical piece buried in an archive and believed it hadn’t been heard in maybe a century. But as he…
When, in a Feb. 7 report, short-sellers eviscerated Soho House — pronouncing it “a zero,” prophesying it would “meet the same fate” as notorious IPO flameout WeWork — the company’s crisis of cool had already been years in the making. The…
Michael Phillips — producer of The Sting, Taxi Driver and Close Encounters of the Third Kind — learned in early January 2023 that a Buddha sculpture he owned was plundered. An anonymous online activist collective, Lost Arts of Nepal, had…
On Oct. 21, 2021, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, then 24, arrived at the Bonanza Creek Ranch just south of Santa Fe, New Mexico, an hour or so before sunrise and reported to her job as the armorer and props assistant on the set of the low-budget…
Evelyn Arceo works 40-plus hours each week at Universal Studios Hollywood. During her overnight shifts, she prepares the pink-iced Simpsons donuts found in Springfield and the apple pies served at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. The…
Fred Rosen doesn’t mind if people consider him a villain. He made that clear during his fortune-making run at Ticketmaster, which he turned into a polarizing behemoth. “I was running ‘the evil empire’? I was running a business. You know…
By sharp contrast to the young cads with sixpack abs previously populating the hot tubs on ABC’s The Bachelor, Gerry Turner, the handsome, 72-year-old star of The Golden Bachelor spinoff, brought fresh
In July, TV legend John Amos’ 53-year-old son, K.C., ended up in a New Jersey jail after his 57-year-old daughter, Shannon, claimed that K.C. had sent her “terroristic” threats over text message that made her believe that her life was in…
This year, the head of American Legion Post 43, the nearly century-old private club for military veterans in Hollywood, faced a secret probe into his alleged misconduct. An employee at the organization’s theater, which is rented out for…
“So we’re down in Uvalde, right?” Anita Busch tells me in one of the lengthy, emotional conversations we’ve had this summer. She is describing the aftermath of the 2022 Texas mass shooting in which 21 grade-school students and teachers…
Standing on the ledge of a broken window next to a Beverly Hills esthetician with mascara running from the tear gas, a bearded man with wild blue eyes made an appeal to the crowd surrounding the U.S. Capitol. “Last chance, who wants to…
Like many independent filmmakers, Anthony Gomez has some quibbles with his own work. He wishes he’d had more time to shoot. His lead looks natural on camera but the voiceover delivery is stiff. A friend came through with some original…
Every episode of ABC’s blockbuster 1990s sitcom Home Improvement ended with a life lesson. For eight seasons and 203 episodes, Americans tuned in weekly by the tens of millions to watch Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor, wife Jill and their three…
For the impacted homeowners of New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, the August 2022 announcement that they were one step closer to being made whole — with relief coming in the form of a $20.5 million settlement — was long past due. Hurricane…
It’s long been an open secret that Jeff Bezos has yearned for his own Game of Thrones, and that Amazon’s big swing as it reached for its own massive hit was The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, believed to be the most expensive…
On Dec. 19, Evgeniya Chernyshova was driving to pick out a Christmas tree near her home in Los Angeles when she got a message that she’s been waiting for, in some form or another, for five years. “We have a verdict,” read the text from…
On Nov. 2, 2022, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced that she’d secured a $30.5 million settlement from CBS and its former president and CEO Leslie Moonves for misleading the company’s investors about his misconduct,…
On Jan. 9, Hulu debuted its animated comedy Koala Man, the latest installment in what was then Justin Roiland’s sprawling empire. An absurdist superhero series that features a voice cast with Hugh Jackman and Succession‘s Sarah Snook, the…
Lauren O’Connor was alone at a deli in an office park in Santa Monica, having a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich while on her lunch break from Amazon Studios, when she suddenly, terrifyingly, found herself front-page news. It was Oct. 5,…
Earlier this month, former LAPD commander Cory Palka made headlines for purportedly conspiring with CBS and its former CEO to prevent an explosive sexual assault allegation from going public. But long before the onetime head of the…
In 1998, Georgina, a 27-year-old college student, was enjoying a drink outside The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf in Studio City when a tall man approached her. Introducing himself as Eric Weinberg, he complimented her looks and asked if she was a…
On Oct. 24, the head of Hollywood’s most beloved charity, the century-old Motion Picture & Television Fund, warned of its “imminent demise” if it didn’t raise at least $10 million by the end of this year. CEO Bob Beitcher wrote in an open…
A year after Alec Baldwin accidentally shot and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the New Mexico set of Rust, the producers, still facing civil litigation and under a cloud of potential criminal liability, are looking to finish the…
Not long ago, Brad Herman, the right-hand man to hush-hush Hollywood, invited a longtime client, legendary Motown songwriter Eddie Holland, to a private visit with another client, The Supremes’ Cindy Birdsong, who since September 2021 has…
During the height of the pandemic and in the months since, Hollywood productions routinely cut corners while trying to balance tight filming schedules against strict COVID-19 safety protocols, some insiders say. In September, a former HBO…
When it was founded in the months after the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke in 2017, Time’s Up was supposed to put Hollywood’s considerable power and money — and its sudden outrage — to work fighting sexual harassment. Instead, today Time’s…