The Voice is launching a celebrity edition, hosted by Keke Palmer / Viola Davis to play a corporate fixer on Paramount+ / Heated Rivalry wants fans to back off amid Season 2 filming
PLUS: A.I.-generated Jimmy Kimmel Live! monologue videos have surfaced on YouTube.
The Voice is launching a celebrity edition hosted by Keke Palmer, with Joe Jonas, Queen Latifah and Riley Green as coaches
After 15 years and 30 seasons, the NBC reality singing competition will launch its first-ever celebrity edition in 2027, featuring actors, musicians, athletes, comedians, reality TV stars and influencers showing off their singing abilities. Keke Palmer will host The Voice: Celebrity, instead of The Voice’s usual host Carson Daly. Palmer already hosts NBC’s Password. Joe Jonas will serve as a The Voice coach for the first time, while Queen Latifah and Riley Green will stay on as coaches after sitting in the coaches chairs for Season 30 in the fall. “The Voice: Celebrity will also feature a few additions to the show’s usual format,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. “Viewers will see a Voice boot camp as contestants prep for their blind auditions and a ‘VIP room’ where the group gathers to watch other performances. Prior to the battle rounds, contestants will rehearse and come up with strategy in a workroom environment.” Celebrity participants will be announced at a later date.
Viola Davis to star in Paramount+ corporate fixer thriller series Ascent
The Oscar and Emmy winner will star as Catriona Vail, a problem-solver for billion-dollar corporate clients, who must deploy her damage control and crisis skills when her estranged daughter comes into harm’s way. Ascent is from Penny Dreadful creator John Logan, a three-time Oscar nominee for his screenwriting work on The Aviator, Gladiator and Hugo. “I am overwhelmingly excited about this journey with the great John Logan. We won the lottery with this one,” Davis said in a statement. “Work in which both story and character are bold, awe inspiring and deeply unique is why I became an artist. We at JuVee are deeply grateful to John Logan, Michael Aguilar, and Paramount. We are ready to create magic!”
A.I.-generated Jimmy Kimmel Live! monologue videos have surfaced on YouTube
Amid Jimmy Kimmel’s summer vacation, “dozens of AI-generated videos have used the Jimmy Kimmel Live! host’s face, voice and familiar monologue setup to deliver commentary on current political stories,” reports LateNighter’s Jed Rosenzweig. The videos have surfaced on multiple YouTube channels. “The imitation is strongest at the level most useful to YouTube: the thumbnail and opening seconds,” says Rosenzweig. “The fakery becomes more apparent on closer inspection. The synthetic Kimmel stands in his usual monologue position but gestures oddly, often emphasizing the wrong words. After about ten seconds, he disappears altogether, leaving the cloned voice to continue over news footage. The greater tell is the material itself. The clips contain few actual jokes, no audience reaction and none of the conversational rhythm of Kimmel’s actual monologues. Instead, they play more like partisan video essays wearing the visual packaging of Jimmy Kimmel Live!.”
Heated Rivalry team asks fans to “give our cast and crew the space they need” ahead of Season 2 filming
“If you happen to come across one of our filming locations, please give our cast and crew the space they need to do what they do best,” read a statement from production company Accent Aigu Entertainment, released on Tuesday over social media. “We promise it’ll be worth the wait.” The statement was released after Heated Rivalry leads Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams were spotted walking the streets of Toronto.
David Ellison says CNN is the root cause of the opposition to the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger
In a New York Times Op-Ed, the Paramount Skydance owner writes: ““I believe a plainer worry sits beneath the briefs and the news releases: the news. The issue is whether I can be trusted as a steward of Warner’s CNN. There has been speculation about my politics, my loyalties, my intentions. Unfortunately, I can’t give anyone a view into my heart and mind, but I can share this: I have regularly voted for candidates of both parties; I hold some views that would be called conservative and others that would be called liberal, just like most Americans; and when it comes to our news operations, I do not aspire to lead these companies to bend their newsrooms to my views. I believe that news should be based on facts and truth. Great news organizations like CNN and CBS News are here to tell it straight down the middle. That requires newsrooms that reflect the whole world, not one side of it. And it requires independence. Our journalists will continue to answer to the facts and to all the people they serve — not to any party or cause.”
Christina Applegate is said to be “doing very well” after months-long hospitalization
According to TMZ, Applegate, who suffers from MS, was recently discharged after being hospitalized since late March. Sources say “she is doing very well.” TMZ first reported on Applegate’s hospitalization on April 16, prompting her to write on Instagram: “Thank you for the outpouring of love and well wishes. Health issues are a constant for me, but I’m a strong chick and I’m getting stronger and better every day. I’m taking a moment to focus on my health, but I’ll be back with more to say soon enough.”
The Artful Dodger renewed for a third and final season
The Hulu and Disney+ Australian original series will return for a final season, with Thomas Brodie-Sangster reprising his title role. Set in 1850s Australia, 15 years after the events of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, The Artful Dodger has become the most-viewed Australian original title on Disney+, according to Disney.
Buc-ee’s files another lawsuit against a small business after John Oliver dared the popular gas station chain not to
Buc-ee’s filed a federal lawsuit on July 28 against Beaver’s Mini Mart, a small corner store that has been located in Beavercreek, Ohio for more than two decades. Buc-ee’s says Beaver’s Mini Mart’s smiling beaver logo could confuse customers, even though it doesn’t have gas pumps and is located nowhere near an interstate. The lawsuit was filed two days after Oliver detailed on Last Week Tonight Buc-ee’s penchant for filing suit against small business. Oliver ended the episode by daring Buc-ee’s to pick on a company its own size, using “Buc-Off” merchandise. “And that is where we come in,” Oliver said in the segment. “Because it turns out, we very much have the will to get into a fight with Buc-ee’s.”
UFC lost $30 million on UFC Freedom 250 event at White House on President Trump’s birthday
Despite TKO Group‘s executive chairman and CEO Ari Emanuel calling the June 14 event “a roaring success,” the company said it lost $30 million. TKO CFO Andrew Schleimer acknowledged that with UFC Freedom 250, “we incurred significantly higher-than-normal costs, which we partially offset with sold out global partnerships inventory. As a reminder, we did not sell tickets and therefore did not record any live events revenue. Given the event’s financial profile, which as anticipated, resulted in approximately $30 million loss, our margins at UFC as well as on a consolidated basis, were meaningfully impacted.”
Rosie O’Donnell: I’m not allowed to sing a Trump parody version of “If I Only Had a Brain” when I guest-host Jimmy Kimmel Live!
O’Donnell said on Kara Swisher’s podcast she couldn’t perform The Wizard of Oz-themed parody because “ABC execs told her “they couldn’t get permission for the parody because it’s political content.” O’Donnell did preview the parody for Swisher, singing: “His approval rate is 30, his diaper’s always dirty, I think the guy’s insane.”
Sen. Ron Wyden: Fired 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi’s investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s banking relationships never aired
The Democratic senator said in a new report that he sat for an interview with Alfonsi on Epstein’s banking relationships in March, two months before her contract wasn’t renewed. Speaking to Bloomberg about the new revelations, a CBS spokesperson confirmed that Wyden’s interview took place but said the story was not completed before the program’s season ended in May. The network declined to say whether the segment would be revisited when the show returns, according to Bloomberg.
Jimmy Fallon: The Tonight Show‘s first microdrama Who Billionaire? Me Billionaire’s first eight episodes amassed 20 million views
Before revealing the final two episodes on Monday, Fallon teased a second season of Who Billionaire? Me Billionaire after Season 1 became a hit online over the past week.
Hulu’s untitled Cable Guy pilot adds Rebecca Rittenhouse
The Maggie, His & Hers and Four Weddings and a Funeral alum will play Robin, who recently broke up with Steven (Damon Wayans Jr.) and is searching for answers in her own life, in the series inspired by the 1996 Jim Carrey movie The Cable Guy.
Amazon greenlights a U.S. version of LOL: Last One Laughing
The hit international format is coming to America. “The format is simple: 10 of the top comics and comedic actors are thrown together for six hours with one mandate — make everyone else lose it without so much as cracking a smile themselves,” according to Deadline. “Essentially, you laugh, you lose.”
Nielsen: Stranger Things and The Pitt were the most-streamed shows of the first half of 2026
Nielsen says Stranger Things had 23.26 billion minutes of viewing from Dec. 29, 2025 to June 28, 2026, including a single-week record of 8.65 billion minutes for the week the series finale debuted. The Pitt was No. 2 among series with 21.12 billion viewing minutes on HBO Max.
Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story reveals first-look photos
Ella Beatty stars as Lizzie Borden, who was accused but later acquitted of hacking her parents to death with an axe. Charlie Hunnam, who garnered an Emmy nomination for playing Ed Gein in the previous Monster season, appears in the new story as Andrew Borden, Lizzie’s father.
Colin from Accounts’ third and final season gets a premiere date and trailer
The Australian comedy from Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer will drop all Season 3 episodes on Sept. 10 on Paramount+.