‘Saturday Night Live' 50th anniversary special watched by nearly 15 million people
NEW YORK (AP) — The 'Saturday Night Live' 50th anniversary celebration is NBC's most-watched prime-time entertainment telecast in five years, reaching nearly 15 million viewers.
Sunday night's 3½ hour extravaganza packed with comedy sketches, superstar musical performances and unexpected cameos, delivered the biggest audience for the network for a night-time entertainment show since the 2020 Golden Globes.
Only the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade has been a bigger viewership draw in recent years, NBC said Monday.
The viewership totals for the 'Saturday Night Live' special, which opened with Paul Simon and Sabrina Carpenter and Steve Martin delivering the opening monologue, include live streaming figures for Peacock, NBC's streaming service.
The show featured numerous cameos, including Aubrey Plaza, Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson and stars who have appeared on the variety show since it first aired in October 1975. Paul McCartney delivered the closing musical number and the iconic 'SNL' stage brimmed with stars as the show ended Sunday night.
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‘The Americas' producers on NBC's ambitious docuseries, Earth's most varied landscapes, and ‘absolute joy' working with Tom Hanks
Five years. 180 expeditions. One supercontinent. NBC's The Americas takes viewers on an epic journey from pole to pole, unveiling Earth's most dazzling landscapes, jaw-dropping wildlife, and never-before-seen phenomena — with a little help from Tom Hanks and Hans Zimmer. Buckle up, this is not your ordinary nature doc! The unprecedented scale and ambition delivers remarkable world firsts: new species, new intimate courtship, dramatic deep sea hunting and some of nature's strangest stories. Each hourlong episode features a different iconic location across the Americas: 'The Atlantic Coast,' 'Mexico,' 'The Wild West,' 'The Amazon,' 'The Frozen North,' 'The Gulf Coast,' 'The Andes,' 'The Caribbean,' 'The West Coast' and 'Patagonia.' More from GoldDerby Everything to know about 'Toy Story 5': the Pixar franchise returns June 2026 with new themes and familiar faces 'It almost killed me': Horror maestro Mike Flanagan looks back at career-making hits from 'Gerald's Game' to 'Hill House' to 'Life of Chuck' First look at JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette in 'American Love Story,' 'A Minecraft Movie' sets streaming premiere date, and more of today's top stories Executive producer Mike Gunton and editor Holly Spearing recently spoke to Gold Derby about their most ambitious project yet and collaborating with a legendary pair of two-time Oscar winners. Gold Derby: The Americas was five years in the making with over 180 expeditions, land and sea. So how do you even begin to conceptualize this sort of ambitious series? Mike Gunton: The word ambitious, I think, is the key word, because that was the goal, to do something that had the same level of ambition as something like a Planet Earth 2, which is a series I had just been working on. Is there anything on the planet that could match that in scale and ambition and that hadn't been done before? I scratched my head quite a lot, thought about Africa, maybe a few other places, and then thought, "No, there isn't anywhere." But then I thought, "Well, hold on a minute. North America's been looked at, maybe, South America. But what about thinking about them together?" As far as animals are concerned, and as far as nature is concerned, it is all joined together. It's a kind of a supercontinent. So I thought, "Well, maybe somebody must've done that," and then looked around and they hadn't. It doesn't have lions and it doesn't have elephants, but that's about it. In fact, it does have some kind of lion — it has mountain lions. It has all the biggest, the longest, the most impressive natural phenomena you can imagine. So it just had to be done. You've both worked on so many nature documentaries and series in your careers, what separates this from what you've done previously? Holly Spearing: Well, I think the scale is a big part of it. Ten episodes and covering an entire supercontinent that actually has its head up in one pole and its feet down in another pole — that is absolutely massive. It does really set it apart from anything I think either of us have done before. Gunton: Also, doing a project for this audience was a really interesting challenge because. ... We work for the BBC and so we make programs for British audiences. They do, of course, get shown around the world and they do get shown in America. But to make a series that directly speaks to an American audience on a national level is something I've never done. Nobody's ever done it to be absolutely honest with you. The opportunity of doing that was a very big part of why we wanted to do it. Did each location have an independent film crew? Were they taking place simultaneously, or how do you work that out logistically for these 10 episodes? Spearing: It was massively ambitious to cover the area, all the different seasons, all the different animal behaviors. And of course, yes, some of them were happening all at once. So the series is broken down into its 10 different episodes, and those teams work on their shoots, so it was a huge logistical exercise. It was 180 separate shoots, and these are expeditions. They're not just driving up to a location and getting out of a vehicle. Some of them are scaling up a mountain. They're going to one of the most remote islands off the end of South America where you actually have to take a medic with you because it would take so long to get to facilities that you'd need if anything happened. These were really ambitious shoots. And of course, we were covering different habitats from underwater to scaling up trees, deserts, all of those things that we had to face and encounter. But our crews, I have to say, are absolute masters at this. They're experienced and they did an absolutely outstanding job. Gunton: Holly's like a military commander. This is like a military operation. You have got so many resources to deploy because it's not just personnel, it's the most extraordinary variety of equipment, as you hinted at: ships, and we're not talking about little boats, we're talking about massive, really huge boats, helicopters, airplanes, submersibles, and cave divers. There's a sequence there — which I think is probably the bravest thing I've ever seen — where two guys go through those underground caves in Florida. There's no escape. If anything goes wrong, you've got nowhere to go. That's an insanely dangerous thing to do. And all of this has to not just be coordinated in terms of logistics but also has to be made safe. How has technology changed how you approach these topics throughout the years? Gunton: Over the years, we've started to use drone technology a bit more. But what was very fortunate with this series is that the stars aligned and and drone technology has improved – they're smaller. The camera quality was better. The pilots were not necessarily better, but more exposed to shooting in nature. The cameras have to move slowly, they have to get close to the animals, but very, very carefully. And also, the recruitment of real natural history experts at the controls of those drones was just a perfect marriage. We were able to get cameras to places that four or five years ago, we wouldn't have even attempted. Spearing: I think ultimately, what we're trying to do with this new technology is immerse ourselves in the world of the animals so we can see these locations through their eyes, and as Mike says, get really close to them. We think we had about 35 different camera rigs throughout the whole series just to cover all the different environments from underwater to filming things the size of a grain of rice. We talked about drones, but there are crew members within feet of wolves, bears, pumas. Is there anything that feels like it's too dangerous? Spearing: Well, really interesting you mentioned the puma story because our camera operator, John Shire, had actually built a relationship with this particular individual puma over many years. In fact, he filmed her as a cub and many people believe that she still recognizes him by scent. Many of our camera operators are absolute experts on animal behavior as well, and they have to be. They're constantly reading cues from the animals and working with that because they're looking for the behavior that we want to capture. You mentioned Tom Hanks, who narrates the series. How did he become involved? Gunton: When I first pitched this to NBC I didn't mention a narrator. But I did actually write in my notebook at the time, "Ooh, Tom Hanks would be the right person to do this." I didn't think about that for another two or three years. When we finally mentioned him they responded "Oh, yeah, of course. There's only a list of one. It has to be Tom Hanks." Luckily, he had been aware of the series. So I went out to LA, sat down in this little viewing theater with a rough cut of one of the episodes and showed it to him. It was quite nerve-wracking. You're sitting next to a two-time Oscar winner. About a minute into it, he went, "Oh, God," and then turned around to the guy who was running things and said, "Guys, have you seen this? This is insane!" And from then I just thought, "We're sold. He's got this. He absolutely knows what we're doing." He was an absolute joy. He is what you hope your heroes will be — the loveliest man you could imagine; smart, funny, and added so much value to it. Spearing: He was so collaborative to work with as well and just wanted to do the very best he could. He is a filmmaker after all, and he was also incredibly interested in how we got the shots. He loved all the stories from behind the scenes and the cameras. And then finally, one of the more maybe unsung heroes of a docuseries like this is the music. You have the great Hans Zimmer composing music, how did that come about? Spearing: He wrote an extraordinary theme for The Americas, which I think then set the style for all the other music that followed behind it for the individual sequences. Mike is a long-time collaborator with Hans. Gunton: When we've done panels or or live screenings, people put up their hands and say, "We love the music." I think he and his team just got it dead right; not too much. It was incredibly evocative and deeply enriched the drama while also capturing the essence of the locations. One of the key aspects of this series was not just telling stories about life and animals but placing them within their environments — highlighting the personality and unique signature of where they lived. That was the foundation. It was like a "super safari." If we could take you on the most extraordinary journey across the Americas, where would we stop, what would we show you, and what makes those places special? A crucial role of the music was to evoke that sense of wonder, and I think he accomplished that superbly. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. The Americas is streaming on Peacock. SIGN UP for Gold Derby's free newsletter with latest predictions Best of GoldDerby Asif Ali and Saagar Shaikh admit they 'never had the audacity to realize' a show like 'Deli Boys' was possible From 'Housewives' overload to the 'shadiest queens' alliance: The dish on 'The Traitors' Season 4 lineup Leslie Bibb breaks down her aha moments filming 'The White Lotus': 'Kate suddenly got jealous' Click here to read the full article.
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From ‘Housewives' overload to the ‘shadiest queens' alliance: The dish on ‘The Traitors' Season 4 lineup
Welcome to Reality Derby, Gold Derby's weekly deep dive into all things reality TV, hosted by senior editors Marcus James Dixon and Denton Davidson. Watch the video above. The cast of The Traitors Season 4 was unveiled on Friday, with a whopping 23 reality TV stars and notable figures about to compete for up to $250K. Among the roster are some of our favorite former gamers from Survivor and Big Brother, a pair of sassy Olympic figure skaters, and a whopping five women from The Real Housewives. More from GoldDerby 'The Americas' producers on NBC's ambitious docuseries, Earth's most varied landscapes, and 'absolute joy' working with Tom Hanks Inside the comedy pressure cooker: How 'SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night' exposed the madness behind the magic of 'Saturday Night Live' 'The Traitors' Season 4 casts a different Rob from 'Survivor,' a K-pop star, and Taylor Swift's potential future mother-in-law "I do feel like this is a little Real Housewives heavy," Davidson declares. "It's just not a show that I follow. And I understand the fan base is massive. So, the fact that they keep inviting more and more back, it clearly means that it's doing well for them. It's just not my wheelhouse. And they don't know how to play the game!" Says Dixon, "I really think that one of the Housewives are going to be a Traitor this year, because we did not get one last year in Season 3. In Season 2, we had Phaedra Parks, one of the best Traitors ever." The Housewives in this cycle are Dorinda Medley (returning from Season 2), Candiace Dillard Bassett, Caroline Stanbury, Lisa Rinna, and Porsha Williams. They both openly wonder if returning contestant Dorinda might be a Traitor this time around, since she was a Faithful last year. "If I was there, I would immediately target her again," laughs Davidson. "Poor Dorinda! Because they're going to think, 'Of course, she's coming back as a Traitor.'"for Churchill Downs When Davidson initially saw the cast list, he felt "meh," until he noticed Olympic figure skaters Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir in the lineup. He explains, "These are two people I didn't expect to be on a reality TV show — not because they don't have the personality, but because it just wasn't on my radar. Tara Lipinski was an Olympic gold medalist, and Johnny Weir is a very eccentric male figure skater, and they are two of the shadiest queens that do the commentary for the Winter Olympics. They're like every bestie pairing you would see in West Hollywood ... and it's going to be hilarious if one of them is actually a Traitor." Survivor star Rob Cesternino being cast on The Traitors is a big "F you" to the long-running CBS reality TV show, Dixon says. "He was in the running for Survivor 50, and I guess at the last moment he didn't get the call. And so The Traitors swoops in two weeks later, and they're like, 'OK, we want you in the castle.'" In other words, Survivor's "loss" is The Traitors' "gain." Other competition gamers about to go for the gold in Scotland include Yamil "Yam Yam" Arocho from Survivor, Natalie Anderson (without her twin sister, Nadiya Anderson) from The Amazing Race and Survivor, and Ian Terry and Tiffany Mitchell from Big Brother. "It's been a long time since we've seen [Ian]," Davidson realizes. "It'll be interesting to see what he's like now at age 34. He was so young when he was on Big Brother a thousand years ago." Tiffany was "the creator of the Cookout" and "America's Favorite Houseguest" on Big Brother, so "people love her," remembers Dixon. "I loved that whole season of Big Brother 23. I think it's the best season they've ever done, so I can't wait to see her. She's got a little villainous side." Dixon wonders if Carolyn Wiger "had any sway" in getting her Survivor 44 buddy, Yam Yam, onto The Traitors, since she was so popular in the castle last year. Just like Rob, Carolyn was in the running for Survivor 50, but she was ultimately cut, possibly because of her time on the rival series. "Jeff Probst is very jealous and protective, and does not like it when his Survivors are on The Traitors," Davidson warns. They also discuss the hot topic of Donna Kelce, the mother of NFL bros Travis and Jason Kelce, and whether Travis' girlfriend, Taylor Swift, might be posting about The Traitors this year. "You know she's going to watch," Davidson smiles. "She probably already does. I mean, I'm sure Donna had an advisor and got some advice from from Taylor and her kids, or at least spoke to them about it, so it'll be interesting to see their take." Season 4 of The Traitors is expected to air in early 2026, as the first three seasons all began in January. The show has already been picked up for a fifth season. Peacock SIGN UP for Gold Derby's free newsletter with latest predictions Best of GoldDerby Asif Ali and Saagar Shaikh admit they 'never had the audacity to realize' a show like 'Deli Boys' was possible Leslie Bibb breaks down her aha moments filming 'The White Lotus': 'Kate suddenly got jealous' 'Agatha All Along' star Ali Ahn: Getting Patti LuPone's approval while singing was 'like I had died and gone to heaven' Click here to read the full article.
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Why Is Everyone Mad at One of Our Biggest Pop Stars? It's Complicated.
I wonder what ever happened to the Twitter user who niche-famously posted last fall about being '17 and AFRAID of Sabrina Carpenter.' Are they now head of DOGE or some other important government agency? Whatever the case (the user seems to have deactivated for the time being, at least), their worldview has been ascendant over the past year, because Carpenter has found herself at the center of controversy again, this one about her yet-to-be-released new album. And this time, being afraid of the pint-sized pop star seems less and less like a fringe position. Sabrina Carpenter shared the news on Thursday that she will release her next album, Man's Best Friend, later this summer. Two photos accompanied the announcement, but most people haven't said much about the one of a dog wearing a collar with Man's Best Friend engraved on it, focusing instead on the artwork that features Carpenter herself wearing a short dress and heels and kneeling in front of a figure in a dark suit whose head is out of frame. She's not quite on all fours—sorry, Miranda July!—but she's got one arm on the floor and one reaching, like a dog doing its best handshake trick, toward what is presumably a man, who is meanwhile grabbing and holding up some strands of her blond hair. At the risk of outing myself as a prude, I'm going to admit that my first reaction to the image wasn't to chuckle to myself and marvel at another clever move from my girl Sabrina. No, I was kind of put off by it, to be honest. In contrast to Carpenter's past year of perfectly pitched visuals marrying bubblegum and bawdy, this photo is undeniably darker and more suggestive. I even thought of that HBO series from a couple years ago, The Idol, which I may be cursed to be one of the only people who remembers: There's a moment in one episode when a music-industry character suggests making lemonade of a public relations fiasco that the pop musician at the center of the show has become embroiled in due to a fairly explicit leaked picture of her. 'I would take that photo with the fucking cum on her face and I'd make it her album cover,' proposes the creative director, winkingly played by Troye Sivan, who is himself a pop artist. Carpenter's album cover isn't going nearly that far, as it's blessedly free of body fluids, but at the same time I don't think it would be a stretch to call the image softcore, or at least softcore-adjacent. I wasn't alone in my visceral reaction, and the photo has quickly proved to be a veritable discourse magnet. In comments under Carpenter's Instagram post and elsewhere online, some fans immediately bristled at the singer's subservient pose. Even after my own response, I was surprised by how overwhelmingly negative much of it was. The main problem, as fans and detractors saw it, was that Carpenter was catering to what they called 'the male gaze'—attempting to appeal to men and generally objectifying and debasing herself. Many made a point of gesturing to our current political climate in their critiques, talking about how it was particularly offensive to roll out an image like this at a time when women's rights are being rolled back and messages like 'Her Body, My Choice' are on the rise. Despite my qualms, I don't actually want to be on the side of a bunch of puriteens, so I'm glad some fans and observers stepped in to defend Carpenter, arguing that she's being playful and satirizing the public's view of her and men's treatment of women. Like many of them, I worry that we're at risk of bullying women so hard for the sin of 'being male-centered' that we loop back around to shaming them for being at all sexual. It's not fair for us to expect female pop stars to embody some corny notion of empowerment, and I'm also glad Carpenter isn't giving us an album cover as nonsensically boring as the one Gracie Abrams put out last year, which I'm still mad about. I think it's possible, conveniently enough for me, that both factions may have it a little wrong here. I certainly think it would behoove the people hating on the cover image to learn more about the origins of the phrase 'the male gaze,' for one thing. But I also think some of the defenses of Carpenter have been a little too quick to champion an image that isn't landing successfully for a reason. I generally find Carpenter's 'horned-up gal' persona charming: I thought it was hilarious, for instance, and not at all inappropriate, when she made an Eiffel Tower visual joke at her recent tour stop in Paris. A lot of what Carpenter is doing with the character she's playing when she's performing is subtle and strangely difficult to articulate—what for another person might look like an elaborate play for male attention plays differently when it's something that tiny, silly-mannered Carpenter is enacting for an audience of primarily women. I guess those of us, like me, who enjoy this act of Carpenter's are susceptible to feeling worried that she's going to drop it in favor of something more overtly sexual, because that's what this new kind of imagery has frequently signaled in the past. Thinking about it more, the photography style, evocative of an era with some pretty regrettable sexual politics, is a big part of why. As others have pointed out, the aesthetic is pure Terry Richardson and American Apparel—Carpenter may be dressed like a 2020s office siren, but I know indie sleaze when I see it. It's impossible to see the hair grab outside of the context of our overly pornified culture. But I would also argue that the album cover is just flat-out less funny than Carpenter's usual antics. I like how goofy and exaggerated the Carpenter I've gotten to know is; that doesn't mean she shouldn't evolve, but it's understandable that Carpenter going from carrying herself like a sexy cartoon bunny to channeling Maggie Gyllenhaal in Secretary is going to inspire a little whiplash. It's totally OK that this specific image isn't landing for some of us, and I find the impulse of some people to basically start a crusade against Carpenter as an enemy of women over this troubling. Messy rollouts are one of the dangers of being a pop star and a woman in the public eye, something Carpenter knows all too well. Ironically, just as she revealed this album cover this week, Rolling Stone published a new cover story about her, and in it she spoke about how much emphasis the public puts on the sexier aspects of her persona. 'It's always so funny to me when people complain,' she said in the Rolling Stone piece. 'They're like, 'All she does is sing about this.' But those are the songs that you've made popular. Clearly you love sex. You're obsessed with it. It's in my show. There's so many more moments than the 'Juno' positions, but those are the ones you post every night and comment on. I can't control that. If you come to the show, you'll [also] hear the ballads, you'll hear the more introspective numbers.' She has a point—it's true that we could all just choose not to talk about this. (Like that's ever stopped anyone on the internet.) In the same interview, Carpenter spoke of now feeling pressure to be funny. Maybe the most generous interpretation of this cover, then, is just that it was a misfire, an attempt at satire that only sticks out because of how weirdly perfectly Carpenter has managed to pull off a very hard-to-pull-off tone for the better part of the past year. We'll never know, at least until she comes out with a vetted public statement, or her new album reveals precisely where she's taking her image next. I know it's easy to be paranoid, and I'm paranoid too that Carpenter's reign of being a subversive bimbo genius is going to give way to something flatter and defanged of its bite. But she deserves more credit than that for all the genuinely tricky feats she's accomplished so far. That's that her espresso, and it hasn't truly failed us yet.
