A clear capital rotation unfolds as a single whale shifts from Ethereum into a high-risk memecoin, reshaping short-term liquidity.
Over two days, the address sold about 497 $ETH worth roughly $1.14 million and accumulated approximately 3.84 billion Asteroid Shiba [ASTEROID] with the price near $0.00029.
Source: X
This move stood out because it is not passive accumulation.
It reflects a deliberate shift from a large-cap asset into a micro-cap, which signals a higher risk appetite and a search for outsized returns.
This concentration affects price behavior.
In a thin market, sustained buying can push prices higher faster than usual. However, the same structure increases fragility, as exits can reverse gains just as quickly.
Source: Etherscan
The remaining 368 Ethereum [$ETH] adds uncertainty. It suggests the whale may continue accumulating, which extends upward pressure, yet it also leaves room for a staged exit.
This implies the market may see short-term momentum, while participants face higher volatility and timing risk.
Thin liquidity amplifies price swings
As the whale rotation directs over $1 million from $ETH into Asteroid Shiba, the price begins to react sharply, which signals a liquidity-driven move. This shift happens as capital seeks higher upside, moving from large-cap stability into a thin, high-risk market.
The structure then shapes the reaction.
With only about $7.6 million in liquidity against a $165 million valuation, depth remains limited. As volume rises near $88 million, flows begin to dominate price, which pushes rapid gains through shallow pools.
This buildup creates momentum, yet it lacks broad participation. As a result, the price reflects concentrated demand rather than sustained market interest.
With roughly 22,000 holders, control stays narrow, which implies participants face higher volatility, where gains depend on continued inflows and remain vulnerable to quick reversals.
Momentum and liquidity trap risk
At the time of writing, Asteroid Shiba had rallied by over 15% in 24 hours. This rally reflected reflexive momentum, where an initial large buy triggered rapid price acceleration and drew market attention.
As visibility increased, retail FOMO followed, with traders rushing in to capture short-term gains rather than assess fundamentals.
This reaction builds through social amplification, where rising discussion pulls in momentum traders and reinforces the uptrend. As more participants enter, demand feeds on itself, which pushes prices beyond sustainable levels.
However, this same structure creates a liquidity trap.
With a small holder base and thin depth, buying pressure becomes fragile once it slows. As momentum fades, a large holder can distribute strength, which turns late entrants into exit liquidity.
This implies sharp reversals, where thin liquidity amplifies downside as selling pressure quickly overwhelms limited demand.
Final Summary
Asteroid Shiba rally reflects whale-driven liquidity concentration, where thin depth amplifies gains but leaves price highly sensitive to sudden capital shifts.
ASTEROID’s momentum risks a liquidity trap, where fading demand can turn late buyers into exit liquidity and trigger sharp reversals.
More than four in every 10 deaths and disappearances occurred on sea routes to Europe, the UN agency says.
Published On 21 Apr 202621 Apr 2026
Nearly 8,000 people died or disappeared on migration routes last year, with sea routes to Europe the most deadly, according to the United Nations.
The UN’s International Organization for Migration said that many of the victims were lost in “invisible shipwrecks,” as it released new figures in a report on Tuesday.
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“These figures bear witness to our collective failure to prevent these tragedies,” Maria Moita, who directs the UN agency’s humanitarian and response department, told a news conference.
The figure of 7,904 people that the UN counted as died or missing in 2025 constituted a fall from the all-time high of 9,197 in 2024, the IOM said in its report. However, it added that the drop was partly due to 1,500 suspected cases that went unverified due to aid cuts.
Total deaths since 2014 exceed 82,000, with about 340,000 family members estimated to have been directly affected.
Shifting routes
More than four in every 10 deaths and disappearances occurred on sea routes to Europe, the IOM reports.
“In Europe, overall arrivals declined, but the profile of movements changed, with Bangladeshi nationals becoming the largest group arriving while Syrian arrivals fell following political and policy shifts,” the report reads.
Many cases were so-called “invisible shipwrecks” where entire boats are lost at sea and never found.
The West African route northwards accounted for 1,200 deaths, while Asia reported a record number of deaths, including hundreds of Rohingya refugees fleeing violence in Myanmar or misery in crowded refugee camps in Bangladesh.
The organisation stressed that the data showed migration routes “are shifting rather than easing, with risks remaining high along increasingly dangerous journeys”.
“Routes are shifting in response to conflict, climate pressures and policy changes, but the risks are still very real,” said IOM Director General Amy Pope.
“Behind these numbers are people taking dangerous journeys and families left waiting for news that may never come,” she added.
“Data is critical to understanding these routes and designing interventions that can reduce risks, save lives and promote safer migration pathways.”
Washington, DC – Requests for legal support related to pro-Palestine advocacy remained high in the United States last year, as President Donald Trump threatened activists and universities with penalties.
In an annual report released on Tuesday, Palestine Legal, an organisation that “supports the movement for Palestinian freedom in the US”, said it received 1,131 queries for legal support in 2025.
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The figure is below the record 2,184 requests the group received in 2024, when pro-Palestine protests swept US campuses — and were regularly met with crackdowns from both school administrators and law enforcement.
Despite universities enacting new restrictions on protests across the country, the figures from 2025 show that pro-Palestine advocacy has persisted, according to Dima Khalidi, the executive director of Palestine Legal.
“Our 2025 year-end report shows that while universities have largely cowered and caved to coercive pressure from the Trump administration and its pro-Israel supporters, student activists for Palestinian and collective freedom remain a model of moral conviction and courage,” Khalidi said.
“Even when facing punitive consequences for speaking out, they are holding the line of dissent against injustice from the US to Palestine, because they understand the cost of surrender for all of us.”
Palestine Legal said that the “overwhelming majority of requests” for legal support came from university students and faculty in 2025, but a growing number, 122, were categorised as “immigration and border-related”.
The group received 851 requests from people or organisations targeted for their Palestine-related advocacy, as well as 280 more asking for legal guidance on conducting advocacy.
Despite the drop from 2024, the rate of complaints last year remained 300 percent higher than in 2022, the year before Israel began its genocidal war in Gaza on October 7, 2023.
Since then, at least 72,560 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza.
Pressure campaigns
In 2024, Trump campaigned for a second term in the White House in part on a pledge to crack down on the pro-Palestinian protest movement, which sought to shine a light on the human rights abuses unfolding during the war.
He has framed such protests as anti-Semitic, and since his inauguration in 2025, he has led a campaign to penalise schools that played host to pro-Palestinian activism.
To date, five universities have struck deals with Trump after he threatened to withhold billions in federal funding. They include Columbia University, where a pro-Palestine encampment and resulting police crackdown drew international attention.
Columbia eventually reached a $200m settlement with the Trump administration and moved to make several policy changes it said were aimed at combatting anti-Semitism.
Rights groups have condemned such policies as conflating pro-Palestine advocacy with anti-Jewish sentiment. They also warn that Trump’s actions risk dampening free speech, a protected right under the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
All told, nearly 80 of the students who took part in Columbia’s protests faced serious academic discipline, including expulsions, suspensions, and degree revocations, as of July 2025.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration used immigration enforcement to target pro-Palestine protesters and advocates, including scholars like Rumeysa Ozturk, Mohsen Mahdawi, Badar Khan Suri and Mahmoud Khalil.
To date, the deportation proceedings against Ozturk, who was in the US on a student visa, and Mahdawi, a US permanent resident detained at his citizenship hearing, have been abandoned.
Ozturk has since voluntarily returned to her native Turkiye after completing her doctoral studies at Tufts University.
The government is still proceeding with deportation efforts against Khan Suri, a Georgetown University researcher, and Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and permanent US resident.
Separately, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raided five homes connected to pro-Palestine activists at the University of Michigan in April 2025, sparking outrage. Federal authorities seized properties, but no arrests were made.
Legal victories
Despite the restrictive climate across the country, Palestine Legal hailed a string of legal victories in 2025 that upheld the right to pro-Palestinian protest.
Last August, for instance, a federal court dismissed a complaint that sought to penalise UNRWA USA, a non-profit that supports the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), under the Antiterrorism Act of 1990.
A separate lawsuit launched by Palestine Legal and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) charged that the University of Maryland had tread on the free speech rights of students by banning Students for Justice in Palestine (UMD SJP). That case resulted in a $100,000 settlement.
Meanwhile, federal judges have sided with Harvard University and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), in their challenges to the Trump administration’s defunding efforts.
“The fights that Palestine Legal and our partners have waged affirm that the Trump administration, universities, and Israel advocacy groups cannot, without consequence, run roughshod over growing demands to respect and protect Palestinian rights,” Palestine Legal said at the conclusion of its report.
“The developments throughout 2025 made crystal clear that if we allow our right to stand for Palestinian freedom to be trampled, all of our fundamental rights will be in jeopardy in the face of an authoritarian slide.”
Bill Mechanic, the former CEO of Fox Filmed Entertainment, recently spoke to Business Insider to mark the upcoming 4K re-release of David Fincher’s “Fight Club,” the dismal box office for which in fall 1999 set the stage for Mechanic’s exit. He served as Fox’s studio boss from 1994-2000 and oversaw box office hits such as “Die Hard with a Vengeance,” “Independence Day” and “Titanic,” all of which were the highest-grossing films of their respective years.
But according to Mechanic, he was never able to make a fan out of Rupert Murdoch. Fox was owned at the time by Murdoch’s News Corps. Mechanic claimed Murdoch wanted the film studio to be like Page Six (which Murdoch also owned) in favoring flashy fare over artistically-driven projects
“He didn’t think movies were there to challenge,” Mechanic said of his boss.
If Murdoch didn’t want to be challenged, then there was no way he was going to like Fincher’s “Fight Club.” Based on Chuck Palahniuk’s novel and starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, Fincher’s brooding and violent vision allegedly outraged Murdoch. Mechanic remembered attending one News Corps. meeting where “[Rupert] started attacking, and he said, ‘What kind of sick fucking human being would make a movie like this?’ I said, ‘Me. David Fincher. We’re not embarrassed.’”
“I knew he hadn’t seen the movie yet,” Mechanic added. “That’s probably the nexus of when he wanted to get rid of me.”
Mechanic said his tumultuous relationship with Murdorch is one reason he asked Fincher if at the end of “Fight Club” he could put the Fox Plaza Tower amidst the movie’s final shot, which depicts a bomb blowing up a skyline of buildings.
“David took me through the sequence. I think I was up in the actual building talking to him, and I asked David if he would put the Fox building in there for my tribute to Rupert,” Mechanic said. “I just realized I went to work for the wrong person. I think I got movies made that wouldn’t have been made, and there’s a price to pay.”
Variety has reached out to Murdoch’s reps for comment.
“Fight Club” was a box office bomb out of the gate and would only emerge as a cult classic upon its DVD release. Mechanic was hit with other failures after “Fight Club” such as Leonardo DiCaprio’s “The Beach.” He left Fox in June 2000, one month before the first “X-Men” movie opened in theaters and would provide the studio with one of its biggest franchises. But Mechanic said his bosses thought “X-Men” would be a trainwreck, which he figures also played a role in his demise at the studio.
“They saw it and thought it was a disaster — why would anybody make a Marvel comic into a movie?” he said.
Head over to Business Insider’s website to read Mechanic’s “Fight Club” interview in its entirety.
Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of social-media platform Truth Social and other businesses whose mission is “to end Big Tech’s assault on free speech by opening up the internet and giving people their voices back,” announced the appointment of Kevin McGurn as interim CEO effective immediately.
McGurn, who has previously worked as an executive at Hulu, Vevo and T-Mobile, has served as an adviser to Trump Media since December 2024. He will succeed Devin Nunes, the former U.S. congressman who has been TMTG’s CEO since 2022 and is now exiting the company.
“I want to thank Devin Nunes for his dedicated service to the company over the past four years, and congratulate Kevin McGurn on his appointment as Interim CEO,” Donald Trump Jr., a TMTG board member, said in an April 21 statement on behalf of the company’s board of directors. “Kevin brings deep experience across media, technology and capital markets, as well as a strong understanding of Trump Media’s operations and strategic priorities. His familiarity with the Company and alignment with our leadership team uniquely position him to guide Trump Media through this important period.”
Last December, Trump Media & Technology Group announced a merger agreement with nuclear fusion company TAE Technologies in an all-stock deal valued at more than $6 billion. The companies said the transaction is expected to close in mid-2026. In February, Trump Media said it was considering a potential spin-off of “businesses including Truth Social into a new publicly traded company” following the closing of the pending merger transaction between TMTG and TAE.
For full-year 2025, Trump Media & Technology Group reported $3.7 million in revenue and a $712.3 million consolidated net loss. According to the company, the net loss included non-cash losses related to changes in the fair value of digital assets and digital assets pledged ($403.2 million) and non-cash losses stemming from the fair value mark to market of digital asset related securities ($178.8 million). The figure also includes $59.2 million in non-cash stock-based compensation and $27 million in non-cash interest expense on outstanding debt.
TMTG said that at the end of 2025, it had financial assets of approximately $2.5 billion comprising cash, restricted cash, short-term investments, equity securities, note receivable, digital assets and digital assets pledged.
In a statement on Truth Social, Nunes said in part that “having achieved Trump Media’s original mission of giving the American people their voices back, and with the Company’s future secured through our strong balance sheet, it’s an appropriate time for Kevin McGurn, a Trump Media advisor with deep experience in media, mergers, and acquisitions, to take over the Company’s leadership and steer Trump Media through its current transition phase.”
Nunes continued, “This will allow me to focus more intently on my role as Chairman of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board and on other ventures, knowing the company is in safe hands under Kevin’s stewardship.”
A recent American Bankers Association (ABA) ad running across Washington shows a clear edge in a campaign that has been running for months.
The ad reads:
“Protect local lending while embracing innovation. Tell Senators to close the stablecoin loophole.”
ABA’s advertising archive documents Politico Morning Money placements during the week of Mar. 9, urging senators to act on stablecoin yield, as well as a separate digital campaign targeting Congress, the White House, and regulatory agencies.
In January, more than 3,200 bankers signed a letter calling on the Senate to close what they called the “payment of interest loophole.”
ABA-backed trade groups followed with a joint letter asking Congress to codify a comprehensive ban on stablecoin inducements paid by issuers, affiliated platforms, or third-party partners.
ABA’s Community Bankers Council added that $6.6 trillion in deposits could migrate if the language stays loose. Those are advocacy figures documenting how coordinated and sustained the campaign has been.
All of it is now landing on a Senate calendar that has very little room.
The House passed the CLARITY Act on July 17, 2025, by a margin of 294 to 134, wide enough to give the Senate a clear mandate to act. Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott announced a committee markup for Jan. 15, 2026.
The committee still lists that session as postponed on its official markup page, with no replacement date. The committee’s current public schedule features a Kevin Warsh nomination hearing on Apr. 21, with no CLARITY markup listed.
Reports point to a possible markup in the final week of April or the second week of May, and that floor time before the summer campaign season is limited, and that the bill still carries unresolved disputes over ethics and illicit-finance provisions beyond the banking fight.
Each additional round of negotiation over stablecoin yields further narrows the window. Keeping the yield fight alive long enough to compress the timeline is itself a win for the bank lobby.
The CLARITY Act’s Senate path has narrowed across nine months, from a bipartisan House passage to a still-unscheduled markup amid escalating bank lobbying.
What the fight is actually about
The GENIUS Act already prohibits stablecoin issuers from paying interest or yield directly. The bank lobby is targeting the current draft language for containing no explicit prohibition on affiliated platforms or third-party partners paying rewards in tokens.
A crypto exchange holding a yield-bearing stablecoin could, under that architecture, effectively compete for deposits. Banks want that channel closed. That is the substance behind the word “loophole.”
The White House’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) found that prohibiting yields on stablecoins would increase bank lending by just $2.1 billion, or 0.02% of the current base, at a net welfare cost of $800 million.
Large banks would capture 76% of the added lending, with 24% going to community banks, the constituency at the center of the local-lending argument.
ABA said five days later that CEA had studied the wrong question, arguing that the real exposure is a future scenario where yield-bearing stablecoins scale large enough to compete directly with deposits, pulling funding out of the banking system before regulators can respond.
The two sides are arguing from different assumptions about the size of the stablecoin market, and senators now have to resolve this dispute.
BIS chief Pablo Hernandez de Cos said on Apr. 18 that deposit shifts may be smaller if stablecoins stay unremunerated and interest bans can be enforced, a direct validation of the scale-dependent logic ABA has been running.
The White House analysis and the BIS warning are compatible in acknowledging that, in worst-case scale assumptions, a yield ban could eventually produce $531 billion in extra aggregate lending.
Washington is writing rules now for a market that may be substantially larger later.
The coordinated campaign
The public-private combination on the bank side makes this moment different from earlier rounds of crypto lobbying. The ads create visible congressional heat while the bankers’ letters give members a constituent-volume argument.
The CEO-level appeals establish executive accountability, and ABA’s active rebuttal of the White House report confirms the lobby is contesting the economics directly, on quantitative terms.
That combination puts CLARITY’s Senate timeline at a specific kind of risk. The bill carries White House backing, a strong House vote, and broad industry support.
Resolving the committee scheduling problem requires an agreement on yield language before the calendar forces a recess or conflicts with Warsh’s confirmation proceedings. Without that, the postponed January markup becomes a pattern.
The two paths ahead
The constructive path runs through a yield compromise that closes the affiliate and third-party channels clearly enough to satisfy at least the community-bank argument, while preserving enough flexibility to keep stablecoin-adjacent products viable.
The White House report gives negotiators a quantitative basis for holding the line, as the near-term US lending benefit of a comprehensive ban is documented and modest.
Senators Thom Tillis and Angela Alsobrooks have been among the most visible members engaged on the stablecoin language. If either emerges with a narrow compromise that addresses the affiliate channel dispute, a markup could move quickly enough to preserve whatever momentum the House vote still carries.
Language should close the affiliate channel clearly enough to remove ABA’s loophole argument and be flexible enough to keep Circle, Coinbase, and their allies at the table.
Extending that logic to affiliates and platforms faces an obstacle of political will.
The harder path is already visible in the Senate’s public calendar. If banks conclude that maintaining the current position yields better long-run terms than accepting a partial win, the yield fight will stay alive through May.
A quick resolution to the stablecoin-yield dispute leads to a scheduled markup, while a prolonged fight stacks additional issues and risks another delay.
The ethics and illicit-finance disagreements mean CLARITY arrives at markup carrying more than one open question. Multiple unresolved provisions in a compressed calendar lead to a coalition-management failure, and they run deeper than any scheduling fix can address.
The ABA ad confirms that the association still treats the stablecoin section as unfinished business and is willing to spend public campaign capital saying so.
Combined with a committee homepage that shows a Warsh hearing and a postponed markup page that still carries January’s date, the ad falls within a documented record of coordinated lobbying, active economic contestation, and a Senate calendar with no announced path forward.
The bank lobby’s escalation, the White House’s quantitative rebuttal, and the Senate’s public silence on a new markup date all point to the same variable that yield language must close in days for CLARITY to reach markup before the campaign season consumes the floor schedule.
The race to tokenize stocks is no longer theoretical. It’s a multi-horse competition with competing models, real issuers, and billions in potential liquidity at stake.
In a recent interview with TheStreet Roundtable discussion, Solana Foundation’s head of institutional growth Nick Ducoff broke it down in terms retail investors rarely hear and explained why Solana is especially well suited for this type of use case.
“Solana’s vision of becoming the on-chain Nasdaq and home of internet capital markets is getting closer and closer,” Ducoff said.
The different approaches to tokenized equities
There are currently four distinct approaches to tokenized equities, each with real trade-offs.
The first is the digital twin model, pioneered by Ondo Finance. A token represents a share of the underlying asset: the issuer buys the stock, holds it in custody, and prices trades via a request-for-quote system.
Trading runs Sunday night through Friday night, a 24/5 model.
The second is the 24/7 model, led by Kraken’s xStocks. These trade around the clock using automated market makers (AMMs), decentralized protocols that automatically price trades without a central exchange. The trade-off is real, though.
“You may have wider spreads because you’re not getting a quote directly from the market,” Ducoff said.
The third is the direct transfer agent model, championed by SuperState through its Opening Bell platform. Companies like Exodus, Forward Industries, and Galaxy serve as issuers of record.
“You know you’re getting the same stock that you would be getting if you were buying it on your brokerage account,” Ducoff said.
That distinction carries real weight for compliance and legitimacy.
The fourth, and newest, is the DTCC entitlement model.
The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), the backbone of U.S. equity settlement, retains custody of the underlying security but allows holders to use it as on-chain collateral.
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Solana’s bet
Ducoff didn’t crown a winner, but he was clear on one point: Solana supports all four.
“I’m not exactly sure which model is ultimately going to win in the market, but Solana supports all of these models,” he said.
That’s a meaningful structural advantage. If tokenized equities go mainstream, and the current momentum suggests they are, Solana’s infrastructure could sit at the center of it all.
Regulatory clarity and liquidity depth remain open questions, but for the first time, the plumbing for a 24/7 global stock market is actively being built. And it’s being built on crypto rails.
A number of shows saw their attendance fall last week, as spring break crowds dissipated, and as several productions comped tickets in the lead up to openings.
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was the highest grossing show last week, bringing in $2.4 million at the Lyric Theatre, followed by Hamilton with $1.9 million and The Lion King with $1.8 million. Moulin Rouge! brought in $1.6 million, on the continued strength of Megan Thee Stallion’s run in the musical. Every Brilliant Thing, starring Daniel Radcliffe, also cracked the top five for the first time with $1.5 million and the top average ticket price last week of $198.
Last week saw the openings of The Fear of 13, starring Adrien Brody and Tessa Thompson, which opened to mixed reviews, Proof, starring Ayo Edebiri and Don Cheadle, which opened to mixed to positive reviews and Fallen Angels, starring Rose Byrne and Kelli O’Hara, which opened to largely positive reviews.Six more shows were in previews last week, with all set to open before April 27, the Tony Awards eligibility cutoff.
Overall gross fell 10 percent and attendance fell five percent.
Among the lower grossing shows, the new musical Beaches saw capacity fall to 61 percent in its third week of Broadway previews, and will need to see a turnaround after opening at the Majestic Theatre April 22. Total gross fell to $473,027.
Amidst the number of new show offerings, Chess fell to 71 percent capacity at the Imperial Theatre and Two Strangers Carry A Cake Across New York fell to 69 percent capacity at the Longacre Theatre (both opened in the fall). Stranger Things: The First Shadow fell to 73 percent at the Marquis Theatre and Death Becomes Her fell to 91 percent at Lunt-Fontanne after both opened last season.
Post-opening, Cats: The Jellicle Ball and Death of a Salesman were all trending up, with Cats: The Jellicle Ball hitting $1 million in grosses for the first time and Death of a Salesman, starring Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf, hitting $1.3 million.
The much-anticipated film, starring Ryan Gosling, Amy Adams, Matt Smith, Mia Goth and Aaron Pierre, doesn’t it theaters until May 28, 2027.
“I’m in the beautiful sanctity of the edit room,” Levy told me at the Breakthrough Prize Ceremony on Saturday. “We don’t come out until next year, and so it’s a rare movie where I don’t have a release date looming. So I’m in the dark quiet of the edit room finding the best possible shape for the film.”
From the sound of it, AI will not be a significant tool in finding that shape. “To date, I’ve not incorporated AI in any meaningful way in any phase of my storytelling process, but I have no doubt that in the course of my career we will see its integration,” Levy said.
A prolific director and producer, Levy’s projects have included “Stranger Things,” “Deadpool & Wolverine,” “All the Light We Cannot See” and “The Adam Project.”
“To the point that many smarter people than I have made, it’s about integrating these technologies responsibly and with still the primacy of the creative voice and not a potential replacement for that voice because I think that what you get from creative voice and vision is singular and irreplicable, but if we can use these emerging AI capacities to support storytelling in still a kind of creative and human first workflow then I think it’s something to embrace, not fear.”
Regulation is key, Levy said. “I spend a part of everyday trying to increase my fluency around the regulatory options surrounding [AI],” he said. “I think it’s going to be essential, but I think to hide our heads in the sand and pretend that it’s not going to be not just an emergent but an essential part of our lives, not just filmmaking lives, [but] lives lives, I think that would be naive and foolish.”
“I think people really care about the human beings behind the stories and the art and the creative work that matters so much, so my instinct is it’s going to go the other way and people will care more about humans and more about human creators in the future, not less,” he said.
When “The Devil Wears Prada 2” hits theaters on May 1, audiences will notice a few famous faces — though there’s a couple of notable absences.
The sequel, which premiered Monday night in New York, is loaded with cameos from the fashion and entertainment worlds. Lady Gaga makes an appearance, and also recorded a Doechii-assisted track, “Runway,” for the film’s soundtrack. Donatella Versace, who stepped down as creative director of her family’s brand, filmed a scene in Milan for a cameo. Supermodel Naomi Campbell also appears, having been seated next to Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly at the Dolce & Gabbana spring 2026 show, which was shot live during Milan Fashion Week.
But not everyone who showed up on set made it onto the screen.
Sydney Sweeney‘s cameo was cut from the film, Entertainment Weekly first reported.The “Euphoria” star filmed a roughly three-minute scene near the top of the movie in which she played herself, being dressed for an event by Emily Blunt’s character, Emily Charlton — now running Dior’s U.S. operations. According to a source, the scene did not work structurally with the rest of the sequence, and the team found the decision to remove it a difficult one.Sweeney, for her part, has hardly been hurting for screen time lately: She recently returned to the project that launched her to superstardom, appearing in the long-awaited third season of “Euphoria” on HBO.
Also trimmed from the finished film is “How to Get Away With Murder” actor Conrad Ricamora, who had been cast as Andy’s roommate. Sources say the character didn’t survive test screenings (audiences kept questioning why Andy needed a roommate at all). The final film instead leans into her spending time at Tracie Thoms’ character’s place, a dynamic that sources say plays more realistic to the 2006 original.
When speaking with Variety’s Marc Malkin at the Vanity Fair Oscar party in March about a possible cameo, Anna Wintour remained quiet telling him, “That’s for you to find out.”
Consider it found out. The Condé Nast global content chief visited the sequel’s Milan set, where director David Frankel captured her in what he called a “gag take” that will appear as a bonus feature on streaming — though Wintour got ahead of her cue, leaving the shot partially out of focus. “I can’t ask Anna to do take two,” Frankel told the “Back Row” podcast. Her contribution behind the camera proved more consequential anyway: While watching a scene roll in the fictional Dior offices, Wintour zeroed in on the flowers in frame, declared there were too many and they were too pink and informed the crew that Dior would only ever have white flowers. The blooms were promptly swapped out.
