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The second installment of the ever-growing Real Housewives franchise returns for its 16th go-around on Sept. 8. RHONY‘s latest season premieres — and will air weekly — at 8 p.m. PT/ET on Bravo, which is available to stream live via DirecTV (with a five-day free trial), Fubo (with a five-day free trial), Sling and Hulu + Live TV.

Alternatively, new Real Housewives of New York City episodes will stream the following day on Peacock, and while the service doesn’t offer a free trial of its own, fans can claim two complimentary months of Peacock with any of DirecTV’s Signature packages, which offer the aforementioned five-day free trial period.

At a Glance: How to Watch The Real Housewives of New York City Season 16

RHONY season 16 premieres on Tuesday, Sept. 8 at 8 p.m. PT/ET on Bravo. New episodes will air weekly during the same time slot.

Where to Stream The Real Housewives of New York City Season 16 Online

Since the reality show airs on Bravo, new episodes will also be available to watch live on any streaming service that carries said network, including DirecTV (with a five-day free trial), Fubo (with a five-day free trial), Sling and Hulu + Live TV.

As mentioned, new episodes will drop the following day (Wednesdays) on Peacock. While Peacock doesn’t offer a free trial directly through its site, there is a little-known workaround through partner subscription DirecTV. Customers who sign up for one of DirecTV’s Signature packages — Entertainment, Choice, Ultimate or Premier — can get two months of the Movies Extra Pack + Peacock at no cost.

Plus, DirecTV offers a five-day free trial for any plan, meaning new members can stream Real Housewives (and everything else Peacock has to offer) at absolutely no cost during that period. Simply select your preferred Signature package, then opt to add “Movies Extra Pack + Peacock Premium” where it instructs you to pick your add-ons.

For another savvy streaming hack, a subscription to Peacock is available through Prime Video and unlike direct subscriptions on PeacockTV.com, Peacock on Prime Video offers a seven-day trial period for the Premium Plus plan.

Streamers can also get free Peacock access through Walmart+, which includes Peacock Premium in its membership. Even better, Walmart+ offers a 30-day trial for $1, giving nearly free access to Peacock for one month.

The Real Housewives of New York City Cast​ for Season 16

Carole Radziwill was initially announced as a “friend of,” but will instead be making her return as a full-time Housewife. Other season 16 castmembers include Jessel Taank, Erin Lichy, Sai de Silva, Daisy Toye, Hailey Glassman and Erika Hammond.

From 1960s Palm Beach chic to dystopian retro-futurism or a madcap style suitable only for Alan Cumming, winning costume designers at this weekend’s Creative Arts Emmys proved sartorial excellence can be achieved in unlimited forms.

Across five categories, the six design teams that took home 2026 Emmy Awards indeed proved that there’s no guaranteed formula for capturing a best costume win. The wide-ranging spectrum of this year’s winners starts with the country club quiet luxury Olga Mill envisions for Netflix’s Beef, while the polar opposite of that aesthetic is surely the wild theatrics Steven Lee and his team conjures for the extravagant character costumes seen on Fox’s The Masked Singer.

The latter’s design crew shared this year’s honor for outstanding costumes for variety, nonfiction or reality programming with The Traitors (as one of four juried awards at the Creative Arts Emmys, this costume category is often split between multiple winners). Given the fan frenzy over host Alan Cumming’s costumes — which this season has ranged from over-the-top kilts to a head-to-toe black look inspired by a coffin — this season-four victory by costume designers Sam Spector and Riki Finlay was perhaps the least surprising win among the six trophies captured this weekend by the wildly popular Peacock series.

“The coffin [look] has become iconic — Jonathan Bennett wore it on the GLAAD Media Awards to host [in March],” Spector said during a backstage interview following Saturday’s Emmy win. “I custom-made that and is one of my favorites so far. Then there was the [Black Banquet cape], with tons of pearls, really heavy and really fun. Every season keeps getting more and more ridiculous; for the next one, coming out next week, we were supposed to tone it down, and we did not. Alan was like, ‘This is what you call toned down?’ But [Riki and I] can’t control ourselves.” The Traitors will vie for its final nomination, for outstanding reality competition program — a category the series won in both 2024 and 2025 — at the 2026 Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, September 14.

Costumes that transcend a film or TV show to become a standalone conversation didn’t always happen like their current frequency, though it’s notable that popularity doesn’t always translate to an Emmy. Mad Men, with five nominations and zero wins for costume designer Janie Bryant, is a perfect example. But thanks to TikTok, launched the year after Mad Men ended its run in 2015, and other social-media platforms that place a high value on entertainment visuals, creating style that spawns clicks and conversation increasingly feels like an integral element in a show’s success. (Bryant did take home an Emmy for outstanding costumes for HBO’s Deadwood in 2005.)

That focus on creating viral moments via style likewise can be seen in other 2026 winners, starting with Palm Royale’s Alix Friedberg and her co-costume designer, Leigh Bell, who together with their team won outstanding period costumes Sunday evening. The Apple TV+’s show has spawned a wealth of attention for its retro-meets-colorful-meets-camp designs for stars Kristen Wiig, Laura Dern, Carol Burnett and others. “There’s a gala or a ball in almost every episode,” Friedberg explained to Vogue in 2024 about the show’s maximalist vibe. “We go from gowns to lunch to tennis to fittings at the boutique on Worth Avenue — there’s so much fashion and so many different levels to it.”

Two radically different takes on futurism, meanwhile, earned a pair of wins from Emmy voters. Designer Mirren Gordon-Crozier and her team channeled an undeniable whimsy to create Elle Fanning’s Barbarella-esque costumes for her role as a rising OnlyFans star in Margo’s Got Money Troubles — the Apple TV+ series that wrapped its first season in May and co-stars Michelle Pfeiffer, Nick Offerman and Greg Kinnear took home the trophy for outstanding contemporary costumes. For the post-apocalyptic world of Amazon Prime Video’s Fallout, costume designer Dayna Pink and her team channeled an aesthetic that was markedly darker, chief among the reasons they were rewarded with the Emmy for outstanding fantasy/sci-fi costumes Sunday night.

At a panel discussion featuring several Fallout creatives in August, Pink discussed the myriad challenges of conjuring a wide range of looks for the show’s dystopian world. Then again, she could have been speaking for any costume designer on any series when she summed up how she approaches being a creative amid the current entertainment landscape: “It’s no fun if you’re not afraid.”

As Netflix prepares to host its NFL kickoff game in Australia later this week, the streaming giant is also in the process of securing talent for its coverage of the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Brazil, and The Hollywood Reporter has learned that it is closing in on a deal with a soccer broadcasting legend.

The streaming giant is circling Andres Cantor to provide Spanish-language coverage of the event. He is also expected to have a role in the draw, which is set to be held in December.

Netflix declined to comment as of writing.

Cantor is one of the most famous soccer announcers in the world, having called some 14 FIFA World Cups, including the very first Women’s World Cup final in 1991. His signature “¡goooooooll!” call after a team scores has become synonymous with Spanish-language soccer coverage in America.

The Argentina-born broadcaster has been with NBCUniversal’s Spanish-language media division Telemundo for 26 years, though The Hollywood Reporter hears that his contract with the company will end in the coming weeks, thus allowing for his move to Netflix. He previously called games for Univision.

As it happens, FIFA is expected to bring its World Cup media rights up for bidding later this year, with future men’s and women’s and English and Spanish rights all up for grabs. With Fox, Disney, Netflix, NBCUniversal and perhaps others all expected to explore bids, broadcasters like Cantor would likely want to keep their options open for whichever company ultimately secures them.

No disrespect to the more high-minded entries, but a ripe genre detour can often be just what you crave during an intensive festival. Paolo Strippoli’s The Spiral (L’Estranea) scratches that itch with a psychological thriller seeped in supernatural horror, dread and vicious satire of middle-class Italians who would sooner sell their souls to the devil — or some random woman in a hospital chapel — than risk the embarrassment of damaged children. Led by a nail-biting performance from Jasmine Trinca and wicked support from Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, who really should play bad-bitch emissaries of evil more often, this is juicy entertainment that ought to travel well.

Though neither of them was widely seen internationally, Strippoli’s Flowing and The Holy Boy saw him honing his skills with dark-hearted chillers, dipping into nightmarish family friction and religious horror, respectively. His taut, stylishly directed third solo feature returns to the sacred institution of the well-heeled Italian family — affluent, beautiful, chic, prominently positioned in society — and the panic that can ensue when something threatens to dull their enviable golden glow. Even if the movie gets a bit crazy in an apocalyptic epilogue, its picture of bourgeois smugness due for a takedown is delicious.

There’s an amusing, retrograde cruelty in the suggestion that a status-conscious Italian mamma might completely lose it at the prospect of having a child with a disability or — Mio Dio! — obesity issues. Or one who’s a lesbian. The script by Strippoli and Salvatore de Chirico shrewdly underplays that hand, instead cushioning the vanity factor in sincere parental concern for the children’s health, well-being and preordained path to success.

The movie opens with Trinca’s agitated character Anna flying to Rome, where she turns up unannounced at the apartment of her semi-estranged daughter Alice (Romana Maggiora Hergano) in the middle of a Biblical thunderstorm. Alice is a theatrical costume designer; the rushed exit of her female “director” and everyone’s awkward embarrassment are a clear hint that Anna might be uncomfortable with her daughter’s sexuality.

Wasting no time, Anna blurts out that everything Alice has ever been told about the family is built on a lie, a secret that now must be shared for grave reasons revealed as the plot unfolds. That happens over four chapters, titled The Daughter, The Son, The Father and The Mother, each of them jumping back to various points in the past 25 years in Anna’s trembling account.

The family’s misfortunes began in 1999, when they moved into a sumptuous villa in Bari, acquired with profits from what used to be grandpa’s tailoring business, since transformed into the swankiest clothing boutique in town. With two magnificent external staircases leading onto pristine lawns dotted with palm trees, it’s obvious that the fancy villa will need to be shown off at a garden party.

When she’s not berating the housekeeper over some minor slip-up, Anna drapes herself over the outdoor stairs, eyeing her domain with satisfaction and kvelling over the news that 7-year-old Alice (Gabriella Telegrafo) has booked a pasta commercial. Never mind that the dream of becoming an actress is more about Anna’s ambitions than her daughter’s. 

The moment is shattered, in front of the guests, when Alice is brutally attacked by the family’s bull terrier during a dance recital with her friends, one of whom has already caught her eye in what looks like presexual longing. She’s rushed to hospital with serious injuries and Anna is horrified to learn from doctors that her daughter is at risk of losing a leg. 

But it seems there’s a rescue plan. Still shellshocked, Anna drifts down a long corridor lit like a surreally unsettling dream to visit the medical facility’s chapel. A trenchcoat-clad woman with good hair and expensive highlights (Bruni Tedeschi) at first comes off as sympathetic, though disconcertingly, she seems to know an awful lot about Anna’s family. The stranger informs her matter-of-factly that Alice’s leg will be amputated unless Anna opts into her payment-plan bargain. Saving Alice will require risking the health of her older sibling.

The two women’s performances are so locked in that we don’t even question why Anna would buy the creepy proposal. The witchy stranger speaks with such cool authority and lights up a cigarette with such flagrant disdain for the etiquette of this house of worship and prayer that she seems all-knowing. (The movie features much fabulous screen siren-style smoking, with both Anna and the stranger constantly sucking on super-slim lady cigs.)

Alice gets to keep her leg, albeit with extensive scarring, and Anna does her best to forget about the sacrificial part of the pact until she is awoken one night by a noise downstairs. Upon investigation, she finds Alice’s 13-year-old brother Tobia (Alessandro Carnbonara) gorging on sweet treats under the Christmas tree. The teen’s alarming weight gain and declining health over the next few years are especially irksome to his fitness-obsessed father Walter (Adriano Giannini), whose oily complacency almost makes Anna look humble. Walter is even more pissed when Tobia’s expanding body mass kills his football prowess, fat-shaming be damned.

Again, the mysterious stranger appears, offering a way out and establishing the domino-effect pattern by which every person saved from some grim fate demands that another be thrust into misery, or worse. When Anna urges the stranger — by now we can guess the identity of her infernal master — to take her instead, she’s told that’s not an option.

It’s around this point that the scenes between Trinca and Bruni Tedeschi really start to cook, dialing up the mordant humor. The stranger treats her traumatized pawn with tickled condescension, teasing and mocking her while rolling her eyes each time Anna pathetically scrambles to find a loophole in the deal. A psychosexual Sapphic frisson edges into their rapport, with a never-better Bruni Tedeschi hilariously nailing her character’s mix of mischief and malevolence.

As the Mephistophelian stranger’s conditions grow increasingly stringent, the family’s woes continue escalating, financial troubles included. The action cuts back and forth from Anna and Alice in Rome, the latter still deeply resentful and convinced the whole elaborate story is just some morbid fantasy hatched out of her mother’s self-absorption. 

Eat-the-rich thrillers have been multiplying like rabbits over the past several years, but the diabolical scenario outlined in Strippoli and co-writer Salvatore de Chirico’s screenplay is a particularly toothsome variation on the price to be paid for vainglorious perfection. 

The director and his DP Cristiano Di Nicola create striking visuals, with a strong sense of composition and lots of woozy, disorienting angles. And Quentin Collette’s turbulent soundscape — rumbling, clanking, with the unrelenting downpour stirring in elemental fury — mixes seamlessly with the tense synth riffs of French electronic composer Robin Coudert, known professionally as ROB. Strippoli also makes effective use of the 1998 Euro hit “Narcotic,” by German band Liquido.

The entire cast, which includes actors playing both of Anna and Walter’s children at three diifferent ages, is solid. But the movie very much belongs to Trinca and Bruni Tedeschi, just as Anna belongs to the merciless stranger. (The Italian title translates as The Stranger; presumably the switch was intended to let people know this is not Camus, especially coming so soon afer François Ozon’s film of the French lit classic.)

The movie seems a likely candidate for a U.S. remake and stands to be an international calling card for Strippoli. But The Spiral is well worth a look in its original form, its nefarious developments tied into European class pride and vanity with savage glee. It’s easy to imagine it catching on with audiences beyond Italian borders, hankering for atmospheric horror with a subversive twist.

The days of defining a sports capital simply by the number of championships its teams win are long gone. Today, cities used to competing for Fortune 500 headquarters and conventions are in a high-stakes competition to turn sports into an economic and cultural platform that can reinvent the economy and attract new visitors.

To broaden the fan experience beyond just the games, municipalities, team owners and private developers are scrambling to build mixed-use developments around stadiums and arenas. These districts could attract more than $100 billion in investments over the next 15 years, the Klutch Sports Group, in partnership with the Royal Bank of Canada, concluded in a report put out last year.  

“The real way that sports works is as an advertisement to bring people there regularly,” says Victor Matheson, a professor of sports economics at College of the Holy Cross. “If you’re trying to generate tourism, in general, by hosting big sporting events that get you that advertising, you’ve got to have something to offer people as well.”

Becoming a sports mecca in the 21st century requires not just sports infrastructure and broader tourism capacity but attractions beyond the field to keep folks coming back. 

“Even as tens of billions of dollars of capital flow into sports investments, the industry faces headwinds that could potentially derail future returns for new investors,” the Klutch report says. “For example, many major professional sports leagues’ media rights agreements globally have been recently renegotiated and are less likely to achieve the same fee increases necessary to support similar team enterprise value accretion that has occurred over the past 20 years.”

Here are six cities vying to be the sports and entertainment capital of the world:

Las Vegas

With no major professional sports teams a decade ago, Sin City is arguably this category’s fastest riser. The NHL expanded there in 2017 with the Golden Knights, and the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces relocated from San Antonio in 2018. The NFL’s Oakland Raiders moved in 2020 and subsequently rose from 19th to ninth in Sportico’s league franchise valuation table. MLB’s Athletics are slated to arrive soon, and the NBA is likely to follow. 

In addition to its usual high-profile fights, Vegas will be home to two Super Bowls, a CFP National Championship Game and an NCAA March Madness Final Four this decade.

“These premier events give you an opportunity to price discriminate,” Matheson says. “You basically turn Vegas into a really expensive town for a week during F1 and then you turn it back into a cheap gambling town the next week, so it’s kind of a way to change the settings on your city for a short period of time.”

With a whopping 150,000 hotel rooms, sports gambling in its DNA and Sphere as an elite, innovative cultural experience, Vegas was established as a tourism and entertainment destination.

Riyadh

With massive financial backing from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), Riyadh is a case study for whether government spending can buy global sports relevance.

It can certainly buy disruption. In 2021, Saudi Arabia launched LIV Golf and poached several top PGA Tour golfers including Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson. The next year, Al-Nassr signed Cristiano Ronaldo, the world’s most-followed person on Instagram, to a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually, paving the way for other superstars to follow. Riyadh is adding an ATP Masters 1000 event in 2028, which will force changes to the men’s tennis calendar. It will also host the FIFA World Cup in 2034.

As the country pours money into tourism megaprojects, obstacles remain. Geopolitical instability and war in the Middle East have led many organizations to pull sporting events from the region this year. The WTA Finals, for instance, has moved on after being played in Riyadh in 2024 and 2025.

There are ongoing discussions of “sportswashing” from human rights groups as well. Lastly, the financials may need to become more sustainable — after this year, PIF will stop funding LIV Golf after putting billions of dollars into the property.

Miami

Miami is at the center of luxury brands, music and sports. It is an Art Basel flagship location, and its cruise ship business drives international tourism.

Soccer has elevated Miami’s sports status during the 2020s. The city hosted matches for both the Club World Cup in 2025 and the FIFA World Cup in 2026 at the Dolphins’ Hard Rock Stadium.

This year marked the opening of Miami Freedom Park, a $1 billion mixed-use development including a new stadium for MLS’ Inter Miami CF. The club’s revenues nearly quadrupled from $55 million in 2022 to $215 million in 2025, thanks to Lionel Messi’s arrival in 2023.

“It’ll be really interesting to see if Miami is considered any sort of soccer hotbed once Messi goes into retirement,” Matheson said. “[But] they are certainly striking and taking the moment.”

Melbourne

Often overlooked because of time zone differences and geographic distance, Australia is a sports-obsessed country, winning the fourth most gold medals at the 2024 Olympic Games with a population under 28 million.

U.S. leagues have taken interest in Melbourne despite the logistical challenges of flying across the globe. The NBA played preseason games there in 2025, and the NFL will play an opening week regular season game there in September.

The city can hang from an infrastructure perspective. Melbourne Park hosts the Australian Open — the world’s most attended tennis tournament — and the adjacent Melbourne Cricket Ground, with a capacity of roughly 100,000, hosts the AFL Grand Final and the Boxing Day Test cricket match.

“Melbourne has a well-deserved reputation for being a sports-mad city,” Matheson said. “There’s no better place to put a sporting event on the planet.”

Paris

Paris overwhelms with its density of annual sporting events, from the Tour de France finish to Europe’s most lucrative horse race. It is also the only city hosting multiple top-tier tennis tournaments: Roland Garros and the Rolex Paris Masters.

In 2024, Paris became the second city ever to host a third Summer Olympic Games, and it will see another wave of tourism in 2030 when the Winter Olympics visit the French Alps.

Paris Saint-Germain, worth $5 billion, has become a soccer powerhouse since Qatar Sports Investments’ takeover in 2011. Earlier this decade, the team amassed three superstars in Messi, Kylian Mbappé and Neymar — but has actually done better since jettisoning their high salaries, winning the UEFA Champions League in 2025 and 2026.

Fashion also sits at the crossover of sports and entertainment, and Paris is its global hub, with athletes such as French basketball phenom Victor Wembanyama and NBA MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander converging on Fashion Week to show off their style.

Los Angeles

Roughly 50 million visitors pass through L.A. every year, including 6.5 million international tourists.

The sports teams’ financials speak for themselves. The Dodgers generated $1 billion in gross revenues last year. Lakers owner Mark Walter is selling the team for more than $12 billion. Los Angeles’ franchises in the five major U.S. men’s sports leagues are worth a combined $57 billion, just a shade behind New York’s $59 billion and more than twice any other city.

Any list of entertainment capitals has to include Hollywood, and while Los Angeles has been a sports capital for decades, the arrow is still pointing upward. It gained two NFL teams in the past 10 years, which play in SoFi Arena, the envy of the stadium industry. The Clippers also have a state-of-the-art basketball arena in the Intuit Dome. Angel City FC, the NWSL’s highest-valued team, began play in 2022.

Between 2022 and 2027, L.A. will have played host to two Super Bowls, NBA and MLB All-Star Games, a Final Four, the Laver Cup, WrestleMania, men’s and women’s golf majors, and the FIFA World Cup. Los Angeles’ run as the sports host of the decade will culminate in 2028 with the Summer Olympics. 

This story appears in The Hollywood Reporter‘s September 2026 Sports issue. Click here to read more.

The square and canals of Venice are famously packed with shorts-and-sneaker-sporting tourists in late summer and even historic homes on small cobblestone streets have been converted to Airbnbs. But across the water, on the barrier island of Lido, Laura Dern is chic in pale rose Prada, Rebecca Donaldson is turning heads in shimmering champagne and silver sequins, Claire Foy has chosen long scarlet opera gloves to match her ruched red gown and John Malkovich is sporting an Elizabethan ruffled collar with his Dior suit.

The Venice Film Festival is in full swing, and in addition to viewing Danny Boyle’s Murdoch saga Ink, there’s a lot to enjoy in the area — whether during the festival (assuming you’ve made arrangements far in advance) or on your next visit.

Rather than shuttling back and forth to Venice proper, you can stay right in Lido at The Excelsior, which was the scene of the first International Film Festival in 1932, and now hosts the opening ceremony on its beach as well as the opening and closing galas. It’s also less than a five-minute stroll from Sala Grande, where the screening of Lance Oppenheim’s Primetime was held.

The hotel’s entrance is lined with blown-up photos of legendary figures, from Greta Garbo to Federico Fellini. Water taxis that cross the Venetian Lagoon en route to the festival stop at the hotel’s dock, so even relaxing in the lobby puts you in the middle of some spectacular arrivals, and you can’t underestimate the convenience of having a room there in which to shower, change and nap. 

The Excelsior just reopened this past May after a major renovation, including a redesign of its nearly 200 rooms and suites and a new terrace restaurant called Amù Venice. The Iconic Hotels & Resorts property also has a spiffed-up beach club with private cabanas and views of the Adriatic — a perfect addition for the only five-star resort in the area that’s on the sand. Apart from sneaking in a dip in the large heated pool, guests can participate in stand-up paddle boarding, water skiing, boating and tennis.  Massages can be arranged in-room with the sea as a backdrop, and if you want to hop over to Harry’s Bar, the hotel has complimentary water taxis.

Near Lido is another island in the Venetian Lagoon, the 15-acre San Clemente, that is entirely occupied by a hotel, the Kempinski San Clemente Palace. It was built in a restored 12th century monastery that still houses a Medieval church. Each year people seeking a little privacy choose this spot, which has played host to Johnny Depp and Jennifer Lopez, as well as events for Armani and AmfAR.

The elegant, expansive rooms are palatial, with soaring ceilings, huge windows overlooking Mediterranean gardens or the canal, gilded mirrors and terrazzo floors. There is a large, tranquil heated pool surrounded by lush grounds, along with tennis and volleyball courts, a spa, and a waterside golf training area. The hotel has regular art and sculpture exhibitions, as well as outdoor screenings. There is a complimentary shuttle boat to Venice that runs all day, but if you want to remain on San Clemente, the main restaurant, Acquerello, sits on the lagoon and serves modern Venetian cuisine, with such dishes as scallops with sunchoke cream and tapioca chips, and lagoon spider crab with artichokes and lime bisque. For a more casual meal, diners can head poolside to La Specialità, which makes a variety of thin-crust pizza as well as salads, pastas and fish. 

Wherever you stay, it’s well worth booking excursions with SeeItaly, which can upgrade your trip with a 60-meter wooden sailing yacht that was a favorite of Maria Callas. There is no noise of a motor and a Michelin starred chef whips up dishes while you cruise the canals. The company can also curate other experiences including tours of local palazzos, intimate rooftop dinners overlooking the Grand Canal and appointments with local artisans, where visitors can have jewelry, scarves and shoes made. Fans of Eyes Wide Shut can even design their own Venetian masks.

Beloved Welsh musician Tom Jones has claimed he’s been fired from The Voice U.K. over “financial difficulty with insurance.”

The “It’s Not Unusual” and “What’s New Pussycat?” singer has featured on the British competition show on and off since it first aired on the BBC in 2012. Having been on the coaching panel for three years, Jones took a break before rejoining when The Voice U.K. moved to ITV, where it’s now produced by Lifted Entertainment, an ITV Studios company.

On Instagram on Tuesday, the 86-year-old said he has been let go as a judge and criticized the limited role he was offered instead. “To be clear, I did not want to leave The Voice as I love the show and really appreciate the audience,” he wrote. “ITV made this decision — obviously a while ago, and I was told just recently. The reason given is because of a financial difficulty with insurance.”

“They now say in the press they wanted to ‘refresh’ the show, and with a new coaching line-up there wouldn’t be a chair for me,” he continued. “They are offering a much-reduced role where I would make an appearance but without being actually involved from the start, and I’m not thrilled about that. So the only thing I know right now, is that there’s never a good time to fire an 86-year-old who’s still pretty good at his job.”

Jones’ post immediately earned hundreds of comments of support, including from English singers Olly Murs and Anne-Marie and fellow Voice coach Will.i.am.

“Love ya TJ,” said Murs. “I know how much that show means to you mate. Absolute legend and one of the very best to ever sit in that chair.” U.K. presenter Carol Vorderman wrote under the post: “Terrible decision [in my honest opinion]… I saw you perform at Car Fest and you remain simply incredible and A LEGEND. You ARE The Voice.”

ITV, which has yet to comment on the alleged firing and replacement judge, has also not responded to The Hollywood Reporter‘s request for comment.

Jones is currently appearing on season nine of The Voice U.K., in which amateur singers — some of whom are incredibly talented — perform while the judges’ backs are turned. Those who are successful are coached through to the final. Jones has won the show three times with his mentees.

His fellow coaches include McFly members Tom Fletcher and Danny Jones as well as Kelly Rowland.

The most moving relationship in Tenzing, Jennifer Peedom’s new narrative feature about the mountaineer, is not the one between Tenzing Norgay (Genden Phuntsok) and Edmund Hillary (Tom Hiddleston), who in 1953 would become the first humans to summit what the British call Mount Everest. It isn’t the hard-won mutual respect between Tenzing and his fellow Sherpa, Pasang (Tenzin Jigmey), nor his fierce love for his wife, Dawa (Thinley Lamo).

It’s the one between Tenzing and the mountain itself, known to him as Chomolungma. Where the Europeans see a battle to be won, and even the other Sherpa see a terrifying sacred force, Tenzing sees a heavenly mother — smiling down on him since childhood, bearing witness to his heartbreaks in adulthood, calling him now to come home.

It’s a subtle but lovely reframing of Norgay and Hillary’s historic climb, from an act of conquest to one of pure, spiritual love. But it’s not quite enough to free Tenzing as a whole from the usual sturdy-but-staid biopic formula. With its good-hearted heroes and pretty (but rarely breathtaking) landscapes, the Apple release is plenty likable, but also plenty forgettable.

The script, by Luke Davies, loosely braids three different timelines. In the 1920s, Tenzing is a little boy (Samdrup Dorje Lama, adorable) in a remote Tibetan village, fascinated by the foreigners (including Johnny Flynn as George Mallory) who’ve come to scale the mountain he thinks of as his.

Some years later, he’s a young man (Tenzin Dalha, gentle and sweet) headed to Darjeeling with his wife (Thinley Lamo, even gentler and sweeter) in hopes of getting a job as a Sherpa guiding European expeditions up Chomolungma. (In a respectful nod to Tenzing’s culture, the peak is almost never referred to as “Everest” in the movie.)

In the last and most central storyline, an all-grown-up Tenzing has been hired as head Sherpa for England’s latest attempt to complete the ascent — the one we know, but Tenzing does not yet, will become the first successful one. The movie follows the team through perilous terrain, grueling physical challenges and interpersonal disagreements and friendships over the course of the nearly two-and-a-half month trek.

Tenzing’s more spiritual perspective as a Sherpa is a welcome change of pace from the typically Eurocentric one represented by characters like expedition leader John Hunt (Willem Dafoe), who refers to the final ascent as “the Siege of Everest.” When Hillary bonds with Tenzing over their mutual admiration of Mallory, referring to the late explorer as “the reason we’re all here,” Tenzing amiably replies, “I was already here.” And when other Sherpas gripe to Tenzing that the Europeans are just playing at being heroes — they’re the ones doing most of the hard and dangerous work of lugging heavy cargo up this impossible mountain — we understand they have a point, even if Tenzing manages to calm their disgruntlement in the moment.

The trek is literally a matter of life or death, the pillowy pristine landscape hiding all manner of potential traps: snowdrifts that give way under one’s feet, impossibly sheer cliffs, air too thin and cold to breathe in without masks and oxygen tanks. It is surprising, then, that Tenzing rarely manages to quicken the pulse, to make you gasp with fear or applaud their daring.

You can chalk up some of this lack of tension to the fact that we already know how this story ends; even when Hillary suddenly finds himself dangling over a seemingly bottomless crevasse or Tenzing briefly passes out from lack of oxygen, it’s not as if there’s any question they’ll dust themselves off and press on.

But the bigger issue is that Tenzing keeps its title character and his closest ally (to say nothing of all the smaller characters around them) at a reverent distance, rendering them in broad strokes rather than fine shading. Phuntsok and Hiddleston are pleasant to watch and share a nice, friendly chemistry, with Tenzing as the relatively more excitable one and Hillary as the quieter one. But I couldn’t tell you what brings them together, other than a vague understanding that they both love climbing and both feel like outsiders within the team.

As an individual, Tenzing’s defining passions are his mountain, his wife and his daughters, seemingly in that order, but the only one of those three passions to get any real complexity is the mountain. His wife is an eternally supportive angel whose sole desire is to see Tenzing happy, their children are much the same, and the relationships between all of them are perfectly happy and perfectly nonspecific. (The only thing we learn about Hillary, randomly, is that he is unmarried but does have a lot of bees back in New Zealand. Sure!)

If there’s anything flawed or complicated or even slightly offbeat about its title character, Tenzing isn’t letting on. If there have ever been any hurdles in his path he’s struggled (or god forbid, failed) to overcome, Tenzing never shows us that either.

This Tenzing only seems to encounter minor blips. He bemoans that the British would never agree to make him a full climbing member of the team (as opposed to a lower-status Sherpa), and then a few scenes later Hunt agrees to do just that with a minimum of fuss. The tension between Tenzing and the other Sherpas, who regard him as an outsider because he’s technically from another tribe, simmers intriguingly under the surface for most of the climb, only to be healed for good with a single friendly conversation.

Tenzing is ostensibly about a man who’s overcome incredible obstacles to achieve something no other human ever had before; indeed, that great feat is the only reason for this movie to exist at all. Instead, accidentally, it tells the story of a man for whom obstacles just seem to fall out of the way at the slightest prodding. Tenzing’s historic ascent begins to look straightforward and inevitable, a matter of preordained fate, rather than one brought about by his choices, his efforts, his courage, his determination.

Maybe that makes the movie easier to swallow — something you can fire up on Apple on a lazy Friday night before bed. But I’d be hard-pressed to say it does its fearless subject justice.

Producer Scott Rudin is back on Broadway this season with the boldest works of his comeback thus far: a critically acclaimed play about four convicted sex offenders and a starry, but nearly wordless play, Small Mouth Sounds, with Julia Roberts and Paul Rudd. 

The play, Downstate, written by Bruce Norris, premiered in 2018 at Steppenwolf Theatre Company and Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in 2022, where it received positive reviews. Joe Mantello, who has led all of Rudin’s Broadway projects after his comeback, will also direct this piece, which runs this fall at the Booth Theatre starting Oct. 17, ahead of a Nov. 15 opening. 

Small Mouth Sounds, written by Bess Wohl, last season’s Pulitzer Prize winner for Liberation, will run this spring, starring Roberts and Rudd as well as Martin Freeman, Greta Lee, Sarah Paulson and Isaac Powell. The comedic play, which is set at a silent retreat, has the unique convention of having the majority of its characters barely speak, and rather rely on their physicality. It comes to Broadway after well-reviewed runs Off-Broadway in 2015 and 2016. 

Mantello also directs this play, which is set to begin performances Feb. 18, 2027 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, ahead of a March 18 opening. 

Downstate has previously attracted some controversy for taking on the topic of pedophilia, as one of the sex offenders, who lives with the others in a group home, is confronted by a former student. Sen. Ted Cruz responded to a positive review of the play in The Washington Post by tweeting “So now the corporate media is praising pedophilia,” alongside other critiques from right-wing commentators. 

The cast of Downstate will feature The Bear’s Liza Colón-Zayas, K. Todd Freeman and Francis Guinan, both of whom appeared in the original Chicago cast, Cassie Beck, Adrian Martinez, Al’Jaleel McGhee, Thomas Sadoski and Ivy Wolk. Rudin made the rare choice to tease the play, and its director, on signage that appeared above the Booth Theatre last month. He is producing both plays with Barry Diller. 

The announcements follow Rudin’s return to Broadway producing last season with Death of A Salesman, starring Laurie Metcalf and Nathan Lane, which won six Tony Awards, including best revival of a play, as well as Little Bear Ridge Road, last fall. 

Rudin also teased that he will present another work this season starring Metcalf which is yet to be announced.

Rudin had stepped away from producing in 2021, after a Hollywood Reporter story detailed multiple claims from Rudin’s former employees of bullying and verbal abuse as well as throwing objects at staff. This also sparked a protest on Broadway, and Rudin’s resignation from the Broadway League. While there has been some behind-the-scenes tension, there has been little outward pushback to his return to the industry.

Throughout his career, Rudin has been known for bringing newer works from modern playwrights to Broadway, to varying degrees of success,alongside big titles, like Death of a Salesman or Hello, Dolly! with Bette Midler. This time, in an effort to get patrons to both, Rudin is offering a discount ticketing deal on Small Mouth Sounds for the first group of attendees that also buy tickets to Downstate.

Andrew Garfield‘s character may be rebelling against a king in The Uprising, but he says billionaires are the ones who should also be “scared shitless” by the film.

During a recent Q&A, alongside director Paul Greengrass, Garfield explained why he hopes the film serves as a warning to the world’s richest. The Uprising, based on the uprising that inspired the legend of Robin Hood, sees Garfield’s character Ploughman form an army against the tyranny of King Richard II in a fight for justice.

“First, I hope they come and see it, for first thing,” the Artificial actor said when asked what he hopes audiences take away from the movie. “But secondly, I hope it’s galvanizing. I hope there’s some awakening that people feel, that they feel that their own, that we all feel like our own struggles are being reflected in the struggles of these characters from a distant time and place, and that it could be directive. And I hope that if any billionaires watch it, they’re scared shitless.”

The moderator later quoted one line from the film: “There will be no peace until we are healed.” In response, Greengrass noted the phrase is “true of today as it [was] 600 years ago, for sure.”

Garfield chimed in, adding, “I’m going to include the billionaires in that as well, because they’re the ones that might be the most soul sick. They’re the ones that might need the healing the most in a way.”

Though The Uprising is set in 14th-century England, the film’s themes about the abuse of power and dehumanization of the underclass seemed to resonate with Garfield.

“The truth of that period of time,” the two-time Oscar nominee told Esquire last month, “was that there were brutal conditions for working-class people, brutal taxation post-plague, incompetence in government, abusive practices, with the underclass being seen as sub-human creatures from the perspective of those in power.”

When asked whether those conditions could pertain to today’s world, Garfield said, “Yeah, here and in the United States, and all around the world.”

“One of the things that’s cool about this film is that it’s a bit of a Rorschach Test,” he continued. “A lot of differently politically aligned people will go, ‘Oh, it’s me!’ We get into really dicey territory — and to not see the [British far-right activist] Tommy Robinson stuff as anything but despicable is just ignorant — but I’m sure a bunch of people will look at this film and go, ‘England first! What about us?’ It’ll be very interesting in that regard.”

He later added, “What was inspiring and exciting in the making of [the film] was this possibility of justice, this possibility of healing.”

The Uprising hits theaters on Sept. 10.