Paula Deen's Savannah Restaurants Shut Down Suddenly
It's been some time since former Food Network star Paula Deen has been in the headlines, but on Friday, August 1, Deen announced that she and her sons were closing the Savannah flagship of the Lady & Sons and the Chicken Box.
Deen wrote, 'Thank you for all the great memories and for your loyalty over the past 36 years. We have endless love and gratitude for every customer who has walked through our doors. We are equally grateful to our incredible staff—past and present—whose hard work, care, and hospitality made The Lady & Sons what it was.'
The other outposts of the Lady & Sons will continue in Pigeon Forge, Myrtle Beach, Nashville, and Branson, Missouri. The Savannah location opened in 1996, following Deen's first restaurant, the Lady, and her catering business, the Bag Lady.
Deen rose to fame with her Food Network show Paula's Home Cooking, which showcased Southern cooking with tons of butter and sugar. She drew controversy in 2012, when she announced that she had Type 2 diabetes and was teaming up with drug maker Novo Nordisk to promote a program called 'Diabetes in a New Light.' Many questioned if her food was to blame.
In 2013, Deen was again in the spotlight when a former employee filed a lawsuit alleging racial discrimination and sexual harassment in Deen's restaurant, Uncle Bubba's Oyster House. During deposition, it came out that Deen used racial slurs. Food Network then decided not to renew her contract.
According to a source interviewed by AP News, the Lady & Sons in Savannah was still a popular place for lunch, and the closure came as a surprise.
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Los Angeles Times
17 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
‘Will Trent' author takes charge with new book series and ‘Good Daughter' TV adaptation
As Karin Slaughter talks about her new thriller book series, 'We Are All Guilty Here,' she's equally wry, reflective and ready take off on a whole new level. Her success is formidable: 24 novels have sold more than 40 million copies and been translated into 120 languages. They include the Grant County series featuring Sara Linton, a small-town pediatrician and medical examiner, which was followed by another centering on the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's Will Trent. The Will Trent series is the basis for the hit ABC TV series starring Ramón Rodriguez that was recently renewed for Season 4. Add to that a half dozen standalones, including 'Pieces of Her,' adapted into a 2022 Netflix series starring Toni Collette, and an upcoming Peacock adaptation of 'The Good Daughter,' and Slaughter's rise to the present moment makes sense. Two things are striking when talking to Slaughter over Zoom from her second home near the small town of Blue Ridge, Ga.: One, the massive deep-purple bookshelves that cover the entire back wall of her office and almost dwarf the petite writer do not resemble the brag walls I've seen in some writers' offices. Slaughter's bookcase — which she reveals she designed herself — includes work by Southern writers she admires and champions. (More on that later.) Two, she seems very much at ease as she prepares to launch the new book in the midst of a grueling schedule to bring 'The Good Daughter' to the small screen as a limited series next year. Pretty impressive for a writer who mentions that, early on, she sold only three books at a book conference where she appeared alongside the late mystery legend Mary Higgins Clark, who sold 'about 12,000 books.' Slaughter laughs at her exaggeration, but it's clear that it was a humbling experience. 'I was sneaking out the back with my tail between my legs,' she remembers, 'and Mary caught up to me, took some cash out of her wallet and said, 'I want to buy one of your books.'' It was an act of generosity that Slaughter has paid forward many times over as she's bought the books of lesser-known writers and championed their work, both in the U.S. and the U.K. But Southern writers are where Slaughter's heart is, her face lighting up as she talks about her favorites. 'My life changed when I read Flannery O'Connor,' she explains. 'I was a very strange little girl who didn't quite fit in and who wrote these really jarring, sometimes violent stories. The early ones were about my sisters being murdered or kidnapped or just disappearing. And the happy ending was always that I became an only child!' Joking aside, she adds, 'People were telling me I was weird, that what I was doing wasn't very 'ladylike.'' But when a local librarian put a book of Flannery O'Connor short stories in her hands, something shifted. 'I was like, 'Wait a minute!' she says. 'O'Connor was very weird; she lived in a small Southern town like me. She never fit in. And she was famous for writing these short stories. She created a whole freaking genre!' Later, reading Alice Walker, young Slaughter gained a deeper understanding of a world where slavery wasn't as romantic as 'Gone With the Wind' had led her to believe. 'Walker's writing was so eye-opening for me. That world was never presented to me, a little middle-class white child living in the South.' The Atlanta child murders from 1979-81 had an equally profound impact on the fledgling writer, a voracious reader of novels across all genres. 'It made me very aware of crime,' she says. 'And not just the crime itself, but how it changes communities and people, even in my idyllic small town.' How small was her hometown of Jonesboro in those days? 'When I was growing up, there was a guy on the corner of our street who had been convicted of being a pedophile. Story was, he wasn't sent to prison because he was a family man, and the prosecutors didn't want to ruin his life.' Her fingers make air quotes to emphasize the irony of the perpetrator being favored over his victims, an injustice she'd rectify decades later in her fiction. But the Atlanta child murders gripped the city and outlying suburbs like Jonesboro and changed her community's worldview. 'Before, we looked at bad people as 'different,' as a shaggy-haired stranger when we should have been looking at the guy on the corner,' Slaughter says. She explores that truth in 'We Are All Guilty Here.' Teenaged Madison Dalrymple, itching to escape with bestie Cheyenne Baker to the glamorous life in 2011 Atlanta, hates everything about her small hometown North Falls, including 70-year old Sheriff Gerald Clifton, whose 'great-great — however many greats — grandfather' was a founding father of the county. The Cliftons, especially Gerald, are treated like royalty by residents: 'Madison's dad joked that everybody who wasn't a Clifton either worked for the Cliftons or had been arrested by the Cliftons.' Gerald's daughter, Emmy, 30, is a sheriff's deputy working the town's Fourth of July fireworks show while trying to shake off an argument with her ne'er-do-well husband. In the process, she brushes off Madison, who seems desperate to talk. Hours later, Madison is missing, and a guilt-ridden Emmy, led by her father, joins other deputies racing against the clock to unravel the whereabouts of Madison and Cheyenne — with tragic results. Like many of Slaughter's novels, 'We Are All Guilty Here' is not for the squeamish — she is steadfast in her mission to realistically depict violence against women as a way of warning them about the dangers that can lurk in even the most trusting of relationships. And it wouldn't be a Karin Slaughter thriller without a few twists, not the least of which is a time jump from the disappearance of the girls until a second disappearance in North Falls 12 years later upends assumptions about the perpetrator of the first crimes and kicks off a new investigation involving an older and wiser Emmy and her son Cole, also a deputy sheriff, as well as Jude Archer, a mysterious, recently retired FBI profiler come to town to consult on the new investigation. It's a structure that shows off the veteran crime writer's meticulous plotting of a lot more than the crimes at hand. 'I planned all of it from the beginning,' she admits, relishing a discussion of some of the subtleties of the Clifton family dynamics that add depth to the novel. 'And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't completely unaware of the Murdaugh family when I created them.' The attention Slaughter gives to building out the world of North Falls and Clifton County in the novel also allows her to touch on issues of racism, xenophobia and homosexuality, territory also mined by other contemporary Southern writers she admires, including S.A. Cosby, Wanda Morris, Denene Millner and Connie Briscoe. 'I'm writing my Southern experience, but I also live in Atlanta, a very diverse, multicultural and vibrant city,' Slaughter says. 'I live in a state that has blood on its hands from the scourge of slavery. I live in a country that is still dealing with that. And I think that when you're writing a complicated, psychologically driven story, you have to acknowledge those things. But I don't think you have to jump up on a soapbox because readers will do their own work.' Slaughter took on a new kind of challenge when she adapted 'The Good Daughter' for NBC's streaming platform. 'It started just as a thought experiment to see if I could do it,' she says of the decision to write the 'Good Daughter' script before the book was optioned for TV. 'I didn't want to waste anybody's time.' But then Bruna Papandrea of Made Up Stories and Fifth Season came on as producing partners, and Peacock picked up the project straight-to-series. For much of the production, Slaughter was the limited series' lone writer and showrunner. Previously she served as an executive producer on 'Pieces of Her' and 'Will Trent,' but not in a hands-on way. 'On the other projects, I read the scripts and gave feedback with varying degrees of acceptance and collaboration,' she says. But for 'The Good Daughter,' Slaughter did almost everything, from script writing to making decisions on costumes and signing off on budgets. While it sounds daunting for a first-timer, Slaughter took it in stride. 'People forget that, as an author, you're really running a small business,' she explains. 'You've got to deal with contracts and business relationships with different publishers all over the world, so I felt like those skills translated. And there's a lot of hurry up and wait on book tours with the media and press junkets and book signings, so the production schedule for 'The Good Daughter' was like being on a book tour for 71 days as opposed to two weeks!' 'The Good Daughter' is the story of Charlotte and Samantha Quinn, daughters of controversial attorney Rusty Quinn, who survive a brutal invasion of their home in rural Pikesville, Ga., that's linked to one of their father's cases. The shocking crime, outlined in the book's opening chapter, is both violent and heart-wrenching, and it shatters the Quinn family and separates the sisters. Years later, they reunite when Charlie (as Charlotte is nicknamed), now a criminal attorney herself, witnesses another murder, this time a school shooting. When their father decides to defend the accused teen, it dredges up past traumas for Charlie and Sam as well as secrets Pikesville residents and the Quinn family have hidden for years. Slaughter found 'The Good Daughter' production exhilarating, working with many of the 'Will Trent' crew members as they filmed on location in and around McCaysville and Blue Ridge, where the story is set. She credits the crew, a collaborative relationship with director Steph Green and great performances — by Rose Byrne as Samantha Quinn, Meghann Fahy as Charlotte Quinn and Brendan Gleeson as their father Rusty — with making her first time as a showrunner memorable. 'Everybody really believed in this story. And I'm really proud that we were able to tell it through a woman's lens; everything that happens in the series is only told from Sam or Charlie's point of view. But it's also the first show I've ever seen that has a survivor of gun violence as a main character.' While Slaughter is mum on whether she'd undertake another showrunner role, she's excited about what's next, which definitely includes a second North Falls thriller. What's it about? 'Let's just say somebody dies and we find out why at the end,' she quips before adding more seriously, 'I know that doing all that-world building and work on my North Falls characters won't pay off until maybe next book or three books from now. It took a lot of discipline to not reveal so much, but over 24 books, I've learned to be patient and trust that readers will want to stay with me for the ride.'
Tom's Guide
18 hours ago
- Tom's Guide
How to watch ‘The Chicken Sisters' season 2 online: live stream the Hallmark family drama
We're can't clucking wait for more from 'The Chicken Sisters.' Debuting in 2024, this Hallmark Original series about two families' chicken shack rivalry was a finger-lickin' treat. That particular feud has now been laid to roost (sorry, rest!). But there's a heck ton more trouble awaiting the residents of Merinac. Simply read on below for everything about how to watch 'The Chicken Sisters' season 2 online now and from anywhere with a VPN. 'The Chicken Sisters' season 2 airs on the Hallmark Channel weekly from Sunday, August 10 at 8 p.m. ET/PT. • U.S. — Hallmark via Sling TV or Hulu plus Live TV• Watch anywhere — Try NordVPN risk-free Based on the bestselling novel by KJ Dell'Antonia (which won Southern gal Reese Witherspoon's seal of approval), 'The Chicken Sisters' stars Emmy-nominee Wendie Malick ('Just Shoot Me!') and Lea Thompson ('Back to the Future') as Gus and Nancy, the respective owners of Mimi's and Frannie's whose foul feud peaked when TV competition Kitchen Clash came to town. Packed with explosive revelations, betrayals, and breakups, Season 1 ended on a positive note when Nancy, Gus, and her daughters Amanda (Schuyler Fisk) and Mae (Genevieve Angelson) joined forces to become 'The Chicken Sisters.' But now they've got beef to squash with Mr. Chicken's Cluckery instead! Buried family secrets threaten to emerge, a tentative Amanda and Segio pursue newfound romance, and Gus receives a mysterious visitor in the form of Revival actor David James Elliott. Boasting a grade A cast and juicy drama, follow our viewing guide for everything to know about how to watch 'The Chicken Sisters' season 2 online now and from anywhere in the world. Get ready for another round of this Southern-styled drama. U.S. viewers can watch 'The Chicken Sisters' season 2 from Sunday, August 10, with new episodes airing weekly at 8 p.m. ET / PT on the linear Hallmark Channel. Don't have cable? There are multiple ways to get a live stream of Hallmark programming in the U.S. – among them Sling, Hulu plus Live TV, Fubo TV and Philo – or you can watch new episodes on-demand via Hallmark Plus: Sling TV gives you live TV at an affordable price. Delivering in excess of 35 channels, you'll want either the Sling Orange or Sling Blue plan, plus the Lifestyle Extra add-on for $6 more. That'll provide an additional eight channels, among them Hallmark, VH1, and the Cooking Channel. And right now, new subscribers get half off their first month. Hulu + Live TV offers over 95 channels, including the Hallmark Channel, Lifetime, ABC, FX, ESPN, Cartoon Network, MTV and more. Its $82.99 membership cost bundles in ad-supported Disney Plus and ESPN Plus, too. But first, new subscribers enjoy a 3-day free trial before paying anything. If you can wait a day, Hallmark Plus will have 'The Chicken Sisters' season 2 episodes available the following day (Monday). In addition to the returning family drama, the streamer boasts dozens of good series, movies, and heaps of signature Christmas-themed fare. It's $7.99 a month to subscribe, but there's a 7-day free trial available for those who've not signed up before. If 'The Chicken Sisters' season 2 isn't streaming where you're currently located, that doesn't mean you have to miss the show while you're away from home. With the right VPN (virtual private network), you can stream the show from wherever you are. We've evaluated many options, and the best VPN you can get right now is NordVPN. It meets the VPN needs of the vast majority of users, offering outstanding compatibility with most devices and impressive connection speeds. You can try it risk-free for 30 days if you take advantage of NordVPN's no-quibble money-back guarantee. NordVPN deal: FREE $50 / £50 Amazon gift card Boasting lightning fast speeds, great features, streaming power, and class-leading security, NordVPN is our #1 VPN. ✅ FREE Amazon gift card worth up to $50/£50✅ 4 months extra FREE!✅ 76% off usual price Use Nord to unblock Sling TV and watch "The Chicken Sisters" season 2 online with our exclusive deal. Using a VPN is incredibly simple. 1. Install the VPN of your choice. As we've said, NordVPN is our favorite. 2. Choose the location you wish to connect to in the VPN app. For instance, if you're visiting the U.K., and want to view your usual U.S. service, you'd select a U.S. server from the location list. 3. Sit back and enjoy the show. Head to your streaming service app — so Hulu, for example — and watch "The Chicken Sisters" season 2 online from wherever you are in the world. There's no upcoming release date for 'The Chicken Sisters' season 2 for those based in Canada. The Hallmark series only recently broadcast its inaugural season on the W Network (streaming on Stack TV), so it's unlikely that those in the Great North will see 'The Chicken Sisters' latest deep-fried antics until early next year. But don't get in too much of a flap about it… A U.S. citizen abroad? Cord-cutters out of the country can access their normal streaming services easily with a VPN like NordVPN. It's a frustrating situation for those looking to watch 'The Chicken Sisters' season 2 in the U.K.. The drama series still hasn't been picked up for broadcast outside of North America, despite the show getting its debut on Hallmark almost a year ago. NB: Americans hoping to access their home services while visiting a country like the U.K. can download a VPN to connect to their regionally restricted services, meaning it's possible to watch 'The Chicken Sisters' no matter where you're located. Moreish drama 'The Chicken Sisters' hasn't yet been snatched up for streaming Down Under, with Hallmark content being incredibly difficult to source and watch for those in least without a VPN. Away from home? U.S. citizens abroad can download a VPN to access your home OTT subscriptions and stream your favorite TV shows and movies just like you'd do back home. Take a beat before reading our how to watch 'The Chicken Sisters' season 2 guide and check out the trailer for the show's highly-anticipated return, below: As with its inaugural season, 'The Chicken Sisters' season 2 is expected to be made up of a total of eight episodes. No. But KJ Dell'Antonia's New York Times bestseller, published in 2020, was inspired by the fried chicken houses of Texas and Kansas where her parents grew up. Peacock was the go-to streamer for Hallmark TV shows and films until recently. Hallmark Plus launched its own streaming service in September 2024, which later saw its content transferred from Peacock onto the new platform, which is where you'll find 'The Chicken Sisters' season 1 and brand-new season 2 episodes. We test and review VPN services in the context of legal recreational uses. For example: 1. Accessing a service from another country (subject to the terms and conditions of that service). 2. Protecting your online security and strengthening your online privacy when abroad. We do not support or condone the illegal or malicious use of VPN services. Consuming pirated content that is paid-for is neither endorsed nor approved by Future Publishing.
NBC News
18 hours ago
- NBC News
The 'stomp clap hey' hate is back
The summer of millennial nostalgia is still going strong as pop culture and younger generations seem to be celebrating all things early 2000s. But there is one Obama-era music moment that the internet is desperate to leave in the past: the 'stomp clap hey' genre. It's a distaste that has been percolating online for years, only to burst across social media in recent days. 'This whole generation of stomp clap Ho hey indie folk was terrible,' one X user wrote this week. 'It is responsible for some of mankind's worst mistakes such as pumpkin lattes, Brooklyn's gentrification and Taylor Swift.' The rustic pop-indie folk subgenre that dominated the early to mid-2010s has always been a controversial moment in music history, best defined by its anthemic, often percussion-heavy sound made famous by The Lumineers, Mumford & Sons, and Of Monsters and Men. It's the kind of quirky music tailor-made for Coachella and Bonnaroo, group sing-alongs, hand claps, and, yes, literally stomping and shouting 'Hey!' that reigned supreme in the millennial-hipster zeitgeist. Over the last week, a clip of one of the defining moments of the subgenre has been making the rounds online: Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros performing 'Home' in their 2009 NPR 'Tiny Desk' concert. In the clip, the two lead singers of the 10-person troupe are dancing and singing in faux-Appalachian accents to their hit song that serves as the unofficial anthem of the era's hipster Americana aesthetic. And the internet is riled up about the reminder of the ' worst song ever made ' in the ' worst genre ever.' 'Go ahead. Put the 'Alabama, Arkansas' stomp clap video in my TL again. Do it,' Semafor politics reporter David Weigel posted on X this week, referring to a lyric from 'Home.' Outrage over the short-lived subgenre has been in the zeitgeist for a while, with the music even earning its nickname from a 2021 viral tweet that featured a picture of a man wearing a stereotypically corny hipster outfit. Since then, Reddit threads, TikToks and articles have emerged about 'stomp clap hey,' which some believe is one of the more cringeworthy moments of millennial culture. Comedian Kyle Gordon even made a parody music video a-la 'stomp clap hey' set in Brooklyn, New York, complete with a chant, skinny jeans and lots of hats. 'The fight over what's 'stomp clap hey' is a great example of Twitter music discourse because it wasn't coined by a musician or music journalist: it was a tweet that wasn't even about a band or specific subgenre but a type of guy,' one person wrote on X. For some haters, the genre is a reminder of a cultural and political flash point, when Americans were grappling with the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and desperate for the hope-filled Obama era as millennial hipsterdom hit its peak. Others, however, believe the genre is fun and represents a fleeting moment of social escapism, and the discourse is par for the course for varying music tastes. 'Stomp Clap Hey music is the perfect relic of the Obama era: inexplicably ascendant movement built from the worst bits and pieces of the past, cobbled together into vaguely hopeful yet ultimately meaningless chants and slogans,' an X user said in response to the 'Tiny Desk' clip. Martin Scherzinger, an associate professor of media, culture and communication at New York University, described the 'stomp clap hey' genre as 'a brand of invented nostalgia, coopted, on the one hand, by the music industry and the bland corporate logic of music streaming; but also, on the other hand, obviously continuous with (and legible to) a brand of genuine folkish (if globalized) Americana.' 'The periodic eruptions of collectivized hating on a music genre — branding 'stomp clap hey' as indie gentrification, the commercialization of whimsy, nostalgic inauthenticity, etc. — is often a kind of trend of its own, a slightly misguided target for a larger issue concerning social and class resentment,' he wrote in an email to NBC News. 'Like so many other cultural eruptions, this is identifying a dated genre as a bigger problem than it ever was; a cultural response to a structural issue facing us today.' The re-emerged hate for 'stomp clap hey,' however, is still slightly surprising given the newfound social adoption of all things millennial across generational lines and the ironic coolness that has returned to previously critiqued bands like Limp Bizkit and Korn. And as new artists, such as Noah Kahan, seem to invoke the same folksy soul, some are questioning whether 'stomp clap hey' is back. Gen Zers, who once mocked millennial culture as 'cheugy,' are now glamorizing it online, as hundreds of TikTok users pay tribute to all things early 2000s. Reboots of millennial classics such as 'The Devil Wears Prada' and 'Freaky Friday' are now driving Hollywood, while the Backstreet Boys are playing sold-out shows at the Sphere in Las Vegas. Kate Kennedy, author of 'One in a Millennial: On Friendship, Feelings, Fangirls, and Fitting In,' previously told NBC News that this recent surge of millennial-focused pop culture serves as 'the next level of escapism' for the generation. And if there is anything 'stomp clap hey' provided for fans in the 2000s — and could soon do again — it's nostalgia escapism.
