Celebrities – BestWithThem.Com — Pop Culture News, Movie Updates & Celebrity Interviews

BESTWITHTHEM.COM

Jon Bon Jovi is officially gearing up for a major return to the global stage, eyeing a massive stadium run with the upcoming 2027 Forever Tour. Speaking in a recent interview with Spectrum News NY1’s Shannan Ferry at MetLife Stadium, the legendary rocker reflected on his renewed energy and upcoming performances following a challenging four-year hiatus that once left him questioning his future in music.

The frontman’s absence from touring was driven by severe vocal cord damage that required surgery and nearly two years of intensive rehabilitation. Admitting that he used to white-knuckle his way through performances, Bon Jovi said his rigorous recovery has finally restored the stamina and vocal range he needs to feel completely confident tackling deep cuts from his extensive catalog once again.

This physical and mental renewal comes on the heels of a triumphant return to New York’s Madison Square Garden earlier this summer, where the band played nine sold-out shows. Cruising through nearly three-hour sets without any special vocal accommodations, the singer described the milestone not just as a professional comeback, but as a genuine second chance to experience performing with fresh enthusiasm.

Offstage, life has also evolved for the musician, who recently embraced a new role as a grandfather. Reflecting on his priorities, Bon Jovi emphasized that navigating health challenges and personal loss has given him a renewed perspective, making this chapter of his career feel remarkably grounded, joyful and entirely earned.

Teri Hatcher has slipped into the iconic role of Miranda Priestly for the West End musical adaptation of The Devil Wears Prada, a bold new chapter in her stage career. Speaking from the couch of BBC’s The One Show in London during her first week at the Dominion Theatre, the actress reflected on taking over the part previously held on stage by Vanessa Williams, her former Desperate Housewives co-star. Hatcher revealed that Williams had been putting her name forward to the producers for roughly a year, and that the encouraging words of both Williams and her own daughter finally convinced her to say yes.

Hatcher described a compressed rehearsal period of about three and a half to four weeks, beginning in late September, before her first preview in front of a paying audience on October 20. Stepping into the fearsome fashion editor Meryl Streep made famous in the 2006 film, she recalled the thrill of her dramatic entrance — rising onstage in an elevator to an ovation that seemed to go on forever. Her director, she joked, knew her insecurities well enough to quip before she could speak: “No, we did not pay the audience to do that.” The production pairs the film’s sharpest dialogue with an original score by Elton John, which Hatcher described as a genuine joy fest.

Now 61, Hatcher said choosing such a demanding musical is a deliberate attempt to leave her comfort zone and confront the insecurities that linger at any age. “The older you get, the less you have to, but the more you should put yourself out of your comfort zone,” she explained, adding that she felt the universe was handing her a chance to grow. She has performed live before — as Sally Bowles in Cabaret some three decades ago, while breastfeeding a young baby, and more recently as Morticia Addams in The Addams Family — but relocating to London for a limited run of just 16 performances has been its own adjustment. To stay grounded in a city where grocery stores, routines and self-care habits all feel unfamiliar, she brought her therapy cat along, greeting her each evening before heading to the theatre: “Okay, Mommy has to go to work now.”

She has also had to adapt to British small talk, admitting that the casual greeting “Are you all right?” still catches her off guard. “I’m internalizing it like, ‘Do I look like there’s a problem?'” she said, before conceding she is getting used to it. Hatcher, who also noted she once played a role other actresses have played well — Lois Lane — said there is always room to bring your own spin. With a kitchen calendar on which she ticks off every remaining date, she is intent on savoring each night of her run, which ends on February 6, 2027.

Ethan Hawke came to his Drew Barrymore interview wearing the uniform — a bolo tie he borrowed from the aesthetic of The Lowdown, the FX series whose second season is airing right now — and by the end of the conversation he had delivered one of the clearest accounts yet of what Tommy Lee Jones brings to the show. Jones plays Lee Raybon Sr., the estranged father of Hawke’s Tulsa bookstore owner and citizen journalist, in a role FX announced in March that trade press have described as his first scripted television part in nearly four decades. Hawke, an Austin native, said growing up on Lonesome Dove made Jones the great Texan actor of his childhood, so having him play his father carried a weight that felt personal beyond the job. What impressed him most, he added, is that Jones is not there for a token appearance — he delivers a substantial performance that lands hard across the season.

The role makes sense for a show that has quietly become one of FX’s best-reviewed series. Created by Sterlin Harjo, The Lowdown premiered September 23, 2025, with an eight-episode first season that currently sits at 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and 87 on Metacritic. Season 2 opened October 14 on FX and Hulu with two episodes and runs eight episodes weekly through the fall. Hawke described Jones as stoic and genuinely formidable in person — Barrymore, who worked with Jones on Batman Forever back in 1995, remembered the same energy — while noting his résumé is almost absurdly broad: Harvard football, a famous roommate in Al Gore, years of sailing the world. In a small Tulsa bookstore drama, that gravitas is the point.

The conversation also landed on the adaptation Hawke has queued up at home. He admitted he had somehow gone through life as a James Dean fan and a Steinbeck reader without ever finishing East of Eden, and that the Netflix series finally forced his hand — he finished John Steinbeck’s novel two days before the interview and called the ending one of the greatest ever written, a rare case of the hype holding up. The seven-episode Netflix limited series, which premiered October 1 with Florence Pugh, Christopher Abbott and Mike Faist, was created and written by Zoe Kazan — Elia Kazan’s granddaughter, and thus the inheritor of the story her grandfather brought to the screen in 1955. Hawke said he owed it to Kazan as a friend to read the book before watching her version, and he has a specific claim to that friendship: he directed her and Paul Dano in the 2007 Off-Broadway play Things We Want, where the two met, fell in love and built a family. He considers himself their matchmaker, which made the viewing homework a duty of honor.

Rounding out the appearance were the two habits that revealed the most about where his head is at. At 18, his son informed him that The Strokes had put out a new album — news to the man who considers them his band and who has credited them with saving rock and roll since the early 2000s. That record, Reality Awaits, arrived July 24, and Hawke said seeing the band live recently confirmed they still play at full force. Barrymore, for her part, told him she dated the band’s drummer for five years, a piece of trivia that perfectly closed a conversation where a New York rocker, a Steinbeck epic and a stoic Texan legend all crossed paths in the same hour. Between The Lowdown’s second season, Netflix’s East of Eden and a new Strokes record, Hawke’s watchlist and his playlist have rarely been this aligned.

Dame Joan Collins is back in the conversation at 93 with a specific purpose: promoting Shooting Star Unwrapped, a new charity podcast she recorded for Shooting Star Children’s Hospices, which launched on September 15 with her episode alongside Michael Ball’s. Collins appeared on ITV’s This Morning with Cat Deeley and Ben Shephard this week to talk about it — and the conversation, hosted by the same show where Elizabeth Hurley had raved about her a few days earlier, covered everything from the charity’s work to the time a Dynasty catfight sent her to the emergency room. The hospice connection is not a celebrity favor of the moment: Collins has been a vice-president of the charity since 2003, and Shooting Star supports children with life-limiting conditions and their families across Surrey and London. The podcast, hosted by the charity’s executive vice-president Karen Sugarman, ties into a virtual auction running through December 15, for which Collins donated a Valentino clutch that was a birthday gift from the designer roughly 20 years ago.

What made the interview land was her explanation of why the cause matters to her personally. Collins described how, after her daughter was hit by a car and spent a long stretch in a coma, hospital staff told her she could take her home once the girl could breathe on her own — even though she couldn’t walk or talk yet — because rehab was her family’s problem to solve. Collins had the resources to bring in a full care team, and her daughter recovered completely; she used the story to point out that most parents don’t have that option, which is exactly where a hospice like Shooting Star steps in, including support rooms for parents to grieve. She was blunt about why the charity needs more attention than it gets, arguing that children’s hospice care is not a fashionable cause in the way breast cancer awareness is — while carefully adding that Breast Cancer Awareness Month, now underway, is hugely important too.

The Dynasty stories filled the middle of the appearance, starting with the show’s most famous catfight. Collins recalled being told she’d have to do the lily-pond fall herself instead of using her double — she literally flew into the water, hat first, in a shallow pool — and that during the final struggle with Linda Evans, the director never called cut before Evans threw the scripted punch, sending Collins’ head into the side of the pool and earning her a trip to A&E with a minor concussion. She also pushed back on the label that has followed Alexis Carrington for four decades: in her telling, Alexis is not a villain but a woman getting revenge on a man who banished her from her children for 16 years and killed her lover, and that is precisely why audiences rooted for her. Collins added that she barely saw the show air at the time — she’d spend six or seven months a year filming in Los Angeles and then return to England, in the pre-recording era — and it wasn’t until COVID that she and her husband, Percy Gibson, watched long stretches of it together, mostly appalled by the wardrobe and the hats Aaron Spelling insisted on.

Also on the table: her friendship with Elizabeth Hurley, whose mother she played twice on The Royals, and her memories of arriving in Hollywood at 20 during its golden age, shoulder to shoulder with Ava Gardner, Humphrey Bogart and Frank Sinatra, too young to realize what she was witnessing. Of everyone she met, she said Elizabeth Taylor was the one who fully lived up to the legend — enchanting, funny, a girl’s girl who’d talk clothes and gossip — and that she later played Taylor’s agent in the 2001 television film These Old Broads, Taylor’s final screen role before her death a decade later. Collins, who has published 19 books and says she is working on a twentieth, has plenty of material left. But the through-line of the appearance was the one she kept returning to: seven decades in front of a camera, and the current project that actually needs her is a hospice podcast and a designer handbag on the auction block.

Grant Show is opening up about the cost of 1990s superstardom, a career-altering near miss, and the behind-the-scenes tensions that led to his exit from Melrose Place. In a wide-ranging conversation on the interview series Still Here Hollywood, hosted by Steve Kmetko, the actor best known as Jake Hanson reflected on how the Fox hit changed his life — and revealed the one role that got away: he says he was offered the part that Brad Pitt played in Thelma & Louise before Pitt was cast, but a scheduling conflict with another job made it impossible to accept. Show said the loss has stayed with him for years, though he’s made peace with it, noting that he’s proud of the career he built and still has work ahead of him.

Perhaps the most striking part of the interview was Show’s unflinching take on what that level of fame actually felt like. He described a dynamic in which the public stops seeing the person behind the character and engages only with the fantasy — an experience he called deeply dehumanizing, not just for him but for everyone in his circle. He went further, suggesting that this erosion of humanity is where much of the notorious bad behavior of famous people comes from, and admitted that he can look back on moments of his own conduct during those years and barely recognize himself.

Show was equally honest about his departure from Melrose Place in 1997 after five seasons playing Jake Hanson. He said he left because he felt series producer Aaron Spelling was holding him down and getting in the way of outside job offers, making the decision an easy one at the time. But he was quick to add that there was no lasting bitterness — he shed genuine tears when Spelling died, and said the five years he spent on the show, which he credited as the role that gave him a career, made him who he is both professionally and personally. The actor also offered a piece of television history: Melrose Place began as a much sweeter, softer show that struggled in its first season, and only took off like a rocket after Heather Locklear arrived and the series pivoted to sharper, more duplicitous storytelling.

Show, who came to acting almost by accident after abandoning childhood dreams of becoming an astronaut and, briefly, an Air Force pilot, also touched on where he stands now. The grind of Melrose Place — shooting 34 episodes a year, sometimes several at a time, with almost no rehearsal — taught him to deliver fast, a soap skill he still credits, even though he says he barely remembers much of what he filmed. Now he describes himself as hard on himself and still striving, learning to sing, working on comedy, and hoping one day to tackle Shannon in Tennessee Williams’ Night of the Iguana, a role he admits he’s probably too old for but can’t let go of.

As for a potential Melrose Place reboot, Show said Jake Hanson could realistically go anywhere after all these years, but he believes the rough-edged character — whose defining need, he said, was simply to have a family and be loved — would have ended up in the quiet nuclear family life he always chased. He also made clear he’d be useless on social media, saying he doesn’t see its value and would rather live an experience than document it. For fans, the Still Here Hollywood conversation is a rare chance to hear Show reckon honestly with the fame that defined him — the good, the disorienting, and the parts he’s still working through.

Rob Estes is talking about his latest project — and leaving the door wide open for a return to the show that made him a household name. In a conversation with Entertainment Tonight for its “Then and Now” series, the actor discussed The Italians, the family comedy now streaming on Prime Video, and revealed he would happily sign on if the Melrose Place reboot that some of his former castmates are trying to get off the ground actually moves forward. Estes even joked that he’d fabricated a headline announcement of the reboot on the spot before confirming he is genuinely interested, saying the original show hit at exactly the right time and that he’d love to work with that crew again.

In The Italians, Estes plays Vincenzo, the old-school patriarch of an Italian-American family whose world is shaken when his son brings home a girlfriend — played by Abigail Breslin — who doesn’t fit the family’s traditions. Estes said he was drawn to Vincenzo because the character leads with his heart, and he admitted the role hits close to home: in his own house, he said, he’s the softer counterweight to his wife, who has their household running on a tighter schedule. He told ET that he hopes audiences take away a simple message from the film — that people with different beliefs and backgrounds can still speak honestly and remain a community. The project reunites him with the kind of warm, ensemble comedy that has punctuated a career spanning Silk Stalkings, And Suddenly Susan and Gilmore Girls.

The reboot talk is notable because Estes has deep roots in Melrose Place. He first appeared in two episodes opposite his then-wife, Josie Bissett, before returning full time as chef Kyle McBride in season 5, after Aaron Spelling personally recruited him away from Silk Stalkings. While he acknowledged he never fully understood the show’s cultural footprint while he was living it — the cast was grinding through 12- to 15-hour days — he now counts some of his favorite television moments from that era, including the legendary pool fights between Laura Leighton’s Sydney and Bissett’s Jane. Several former castmates are now working on a reboot effort, and Estes made clear he’d be in.

Estes was equally candid about what he’d tell his younger self during those hectic years: take it less seriously and hold onto the joy, something he admitted he lost for a while before finding it again. He also looked back with good humor on his pre-fame days, from training as a stuntman and breakdancing in the Flashdance era to bombing an audition for Steven Spielberg’s The Goonies. Now 62 and living in Southern California with his wife, teacher and surfer Erin Bolt, and their son, Estes said meeting her helped him grow up — a piece of personal growth that seems to inform his warm portrayal of Vincenzo. For now, fans can catch The Italians on Prime Video, and keep an eye out for whether a certain Melrose Place chef makes his way back to West Hollywood.

Keri Russell is heading into the biggest season of her hit Netflix political thriller with a spring in her step, and her latest chat on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon made clear why the moment matters. The actress has been riding a wave of recognition for The Diplomat — including a Screen Actors Guild Actor Award earlier this year and two Emmy nominations — and she told Fallon that the new run, which premieres October 15 on Netflix, raises the stakes considerably. Season 4, she explained, zeroes in on a timely dilemma: loving your country and your work while your boss asks you to do things you disagree with, or even things that might be illegal. Russell described the season as big and full of twists, and her enthusiasm for the project came through as she said she’s having the time of her life with it.

Russell also offered a candid look at how she survived awards season, and it turns out her favorite kind of show is one she doesn’t win. She joked that her dream is always to be nominated but never take home the trophy, because that way she avoids the pressure of giving a speech — a wish that came true at this year’s Emmys, where Rhea Seehorn took the category and then gave Russell a shout-out. The moment was made sweeter by a tradition of Russell’s: before the ceremony, she sent handwritten notes to every nominee in her category, along with a Gloria Steinem message about women being linked rather than ranked, and a small light. She argued that acting awards aren’t really a competition, and that the gesture matters especially for women in a high-pressure room — a point underscored when Zendaya came up to thank her.

Her partner, Matthew Rhys, had his own nervous run through the ceremony, where he picked up two Emmys plus one for the show itself. Russell revealed that the couple deliberately take each other off their thank-you lists before they speak, so Rhys’s failure to mention her twice onstage was entirely by her own design — and she insisted she’s already thanked enough. The good-natured exchange captured the down-to-earth dynamic the couple has kept even as their awards-season profile has climbed.

There was also a note of welcome nostalgia when Russell reacted to Felicity, the 1998 J.J. Abrams and Matt Reeves series that launched her career, landing on Netflix. She called the show a sweet little poem and said she’s been touched by a new generation of fans who tell her they discovered it while raising their kids — though she admitted the timing of the arrival, right as The Diplomat returns, is something she still can’t quite believe. For Russell, the message is a simple one: she took The Diplomat partly because it shot in London while Rhys was working in the UK, it made little sense for her life, and it turned out to be exactly the right call — which is why the October 15 premiere of Season 4 is the thing she most wants viewers to have circled.

Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett are in the middle of promoting Verity, the Amazon MGM thriller based on Colleen Hoover’s novel that opened in theaters October 2, and a new “Ask Me Anything” video for ELLE shows how they talk about the film. Johnson said what drew her to the project was the chance to play someone who is a psychopath through and through, and Hartnett told her she pulled it off. Directed by Michael Showalter, the movie follows Johnson’s Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling writer hired to finish the novels of Anne Hathaway’s Verity Crawford, whose husband, Jeremy, is played by Hartnett. The chat was playful and full of running jokes, but it also offered a clear look at how both actors view their work right now.

On the question of whether they are Team Manuscript or Team Letter, a reference to the story’s central mystery, the pair declined to steer audiences, saying they would rather viewers argue about it. Speaking as herself, Johnson said she sides with the letter, while joking that Lowen is firmly in the manuscript camp, which she described as the team of murder. The Hathaway connection came up again when Johnson called Rachel Getting Married brilliant and named The Princess Diaries a childhood staple. Hartnett said that one wasn’t a staple for him, though he still praised it and said his kids love it. Both named Cate Blanchett as the actor they would most like to work with next.

Fame was a recurring thread. Hartnett said he lives somewhere nobody cares what he does, so he can still go about his life anonymously, while Johnson said there is almost nothing she can do without being noticed, from working out to eating to walking. Hartnett recalled that being unable to go anywhere at 21 was miserable, and Johnson described fame as a rose and a thorn that is fleeting and not real. Asked about the online buzz around a Josh Hartnett renaissance, Hartnett said he didn’t know whether it was actually happening. When the conversation turned to teen heartthrobs, both named Leonardo DiCaprio as the standard, and their advice to today’s crop was to resist the label and build a career with longevity, with Hartnett adding that good work leads to more good work.

Each actor also named the roles they are most grateful for. Hartnett chose Trip Fontaine in Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides (1999), the first film where he felt he was making something truly artistic, and Johnson picked Penelope in A Bigger Splash (2015), with each saying they are glad for the other’s pick too. Hartnett said he would happily get the Lucky Number Slevin (2006) crew back together, and Johnson said she recently made a film she enjoyed so much she would do another in a heartbeat. Hartnett also revealed that his children have never seen anything he has made, a policy he is keeping because they would be honest about his acting, and if he had to pick one title to show them, it would be his 2024 thriller Trap.

The lighter answers rounded things out. Johnson described a sleep routine built around lavender, and said hosting Saturday Night Live demands bravery and a willingness to let the writers carry the jokes. On set, they bonded over a mutual dislike of schedules that crawl in the morning and panic after lunch, and both are fans of French hours. With Verity now in theaters, the interview doubles as a relaxed preview of a film built around Johnson’s turn as a character she was happy to play without any restraint.

In a interview with documentary filmmaker Raquel, front man Jon Bon Jovi reflected on a profound shift in his personal priorities, revealing how age, family, and recent loss have fundamentally reshaped his view of success. Speaking over a cup of tea, the 64-year-old rock icon explained that while his 20s and 30s were characterized by an intense, single-minded focus on his music career, his current life stage is centered on being of service and prioritizing human connection. Bon Jovi underscored how entering a new decade—and expanding his family to include four adult children and a growing line of grandchildren—has transformed his self-image from the center of his universe to merely one part of a larger, interconnected unit.

The legendary musician pointed to significant family milestones, including the passing of his mother, as pivotal moments that prompted him to slow down and seek a deeper understanding of his own roots. He shared how losing his mother motivated him to actively engage with his father to learn more about his personal history before time runs out. The singer noted that such desire for intergenerational wisdom and connection was largely absent during his youth, reflecting a broader cultural shift in how younger generations relate to their elders and community.

Illustrating this need for genuine human bond, Bon Jovi recounted a transformative encounter in remote Iceland over the summer, where a local girl expressed sadness upon learning he had lived next to neighbors in New York without ever meeting them. Contrast: the tight-knit Icelandic village relied on mutual interdependence for daily survival, highlighting for him how modern society often trades true community for isolated convenience. This realization reinforced his belief that people share fundamental human dependencies regardless of proximity, and that modern life has largely severed necessary social ties.

This evolving perspective on love and community also extends to his long-standing marriage, where simple, daily acts of care have taken center stage. Bon Jovi revealed that preparing a morning cup of tea for his wife is an irreplaceable daily ritual meant to show constant thoughtfulness. This intimate routine even inspired lyrics in his recent songwriting, where he questions if the quiet tenderness of bringing someone tea will endure through the vulnerabilities of aging, serving as a reminder that the simplest acts of service often hold the greatest meaning.

One of Netflix’s most trusted hitmakers is officially expanding his empire. On September 28, Variety, Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter all confirmed that Shawn Levy and his company, 21 Laps Entertainment, have signed a multi-year overall deal with Disney’s 20th Television — a move that lands roughly ten years after he first became the backbone of “Stranger Things,” Netflix’s flagship series, as one of its executive producers. And here’s the part worth pausing on: the man who helped build Netflix’s biggest show is signing with the studio house of its biggest competitor, right after the show that made him a streaming power player aired its final episode.

The Netflix chapter, to be clear, was a historic run. Levy signed an exclusive multi-year TV deal with Netflix back in December 2017, extended it in November 2020 with a film first-look added, and spent the decade delivering at every turn. “Stranger Things” ran five seasons — its fourth crossed 1.15 billion hours viewed, its fifth’s Volume 1 opened to 59.6 million views in five days, the biggest English-language series launch Netflix had ever logged — and the franchise overall has topped 1.2 billion views, with 13 Emmy wins and 64 nominations to its name. Along the way, Levy also directed and executive-produced “All the Light We Cannot See” (four Emmy nominations), executive-produced “Shadow and Bone” and “The Perfect Couple,” and directed “The Adam Project,” which opened to 92.43 million hours viewed in its first week. Not bad for one decade at one studio.

So why does this deal matter right now? Timing. The final season of “Stranger Things” wrapped its run on New Year’s Eve 2025, meaning the show that anchored Levy’s Netflix tenure is complete — and yet he isn’t walking away from Hawkins: Variety reports he will continue collaborating with creators Matt and Ross Duffer on the “Stranger Things” universe at Netflix, including the animated spin-off “Stranger Things: Tales From ’85,” whose second season just premiered on September 17. Meanwhile, his Disney relationship is already deep and growing — the new deal, which begins in October 2027, follows Levy’s blockbuster work inside the Mouse House’s other kingdoms: he directed “Deadpool & Wolverine,” which grossed $1.338 billion worldwide, and he’s behind “Star Wars: Starfighter,” starring Ryan Gosling, due in theaters May 28, 2027 — plus a reported Gosling-led “Ghost Rider” film dated for July 28, 2028. In other words, the Disney-TV deal formalizes what was already happening organically: Levy has quietly become one of Disney’s most valuable directors without ever holding an official title.

The people around this move make it even more interesting. Disney Television Studios’ leadership — president and chief creative officer Dana Walden among them — made it clear this was a courtship, with Walden praising Levy’s talent for stories that are “wildly entertaining and deeply human.” Levy, in turn, called Disney a “kindred spirit” and said the new chapter “honestly just feels like home.” And the Duffer Brothers connection continues even as Levy’s TV home base changes, keeping the creative partnership behind Netflix’s most valuable franchise intact for future projects. Ten years ago, Levy was the director of “Cheaper by the Dozen” and “Night at the Museum” reruns. Today he’s the rare producer who helped Netflix define a generation of streaming — and now gets to build something new at the studio house of Marvel, Star Wars and a certain animated mouse, all while his Hawkins roots stay exactly where they are.