Amazon's New ‘War of the Worlds' Features a Head-Scratching Twist
A new version has arrived this week, directed by Rich Lee (making his feature debut after many music videos and commercials) and starring Ice Cube. Set very much in the present day, it digs into themes of surveillance in ways that are intriguing… until it makes a wildly ironic choice.Ice Cube plays Will Radford, a domestic terror analyst for the Department of Homeland Security. His job basically involves monitoring surveillance feeds that keep a watchful eye on crucial Washington, DC, targets (the Pentagon, the White House, airports, etc.) and occasionally tracking down hackers intent on looting government data—or preventing them from disseminating said data, as the case may be.
This version of War of the Worlds takes place completely on screens—similar to the 2018 thriller Searching—so we watch Will from a webcam POV and we also see everything he looks at: Zoom and WhatsApp calls, text messages, social media feeds, streaming news reports, and so on. It takes only minutes to see Will exploit his high-level security clearance and tech savvy to keep tabs on his two adult children, especially Faith, his pregnant daughter. He's less worried about Dave, his video game-playing son, but he's literally got a way to peep inside Faith's fridge to make sure she's keeping her nutrition on track.
Intrusive? Yes. Creepy? Definitely. But War of the Worlds isn't about cyberstalking your kids; it's about an alien invasion, and Will is on the front lines (well, while seated at his desk) when a mysterious meteor shower turns into battle-ready tripods making their presence felt on Earth. We follow along as Will clicks around, realizing in real time what's happening and using his extraordinary access to check on his loved ones. (At one point he remotely hacks a Tesla so that Faith can get to a hospital.) He's also drawn into the official response—including Eva Longoria, representing NASA, and Clark Gregg as the DHS director—as the government scrambles to make sense of the situation and plan its response.
It's a reasonably fresh way to approach Wells' familiar story, which has inspired many, many similar stories after its publication back in the 1890s. But the movie's script (by Kenneth A. Golde and Marc Hyman) makes some choices that would feel off-putting even if this War of the Worlds wasn't brought to you by Amazon Prime Video.
Amazon is called out by name early on; Dave sighs that his dad's job is 'spying on what's in people's Amazon carts,' and that turn of phrase comes back around a few times. Notice that it doesn't say anything about Amazon's own desire to collect information about its customers—but that can't help but loom in the viewer's mind, especially as Will begins to realize the aliens have come to Earth specifically to feast on the planet's vast data stores.
As the invaders slurp down the planet's data—financial records are drained, GPS systems fail, and even Will's Facebook page paying tribute to his late wife disappears—it becomes clear that their real target is a top-secret, highly powerful surveillance network launched despite the government's knowledge (cut to X-Files-style documents and vintage photos) that such a move would be akin to 'ringing a dinner bell' for the tech-hungry ETs.
Naturally, Will and his family (it turns out his son is a genius hacker, and his daughter is a genius biologist) come up with a plan to save the world—but they also need the help of Faith's boyfriend, Mark, who is… an Amazon driver. When Will has a sudden, desperate, ticking-clock need of a thumb drive, Mark is able to power up an Amazon drone and fly it to him—but only after Will places 'an official order on Amazon to activate the drone,' a process we all get to see as if we don't know exactly what it looks like. Add to cart!
If that wasn't enough, Amazon has humanity's back yet again when the drone crashes and requires a manual assist to flip it right-side-up. The only person on the crumbling streets is… an unhoused man, who emerges from the safety of his tent to perform the deed after Faith, who's triangulated his cell phone number, bribes him with a $1,000 Amazon gift card.
He accepts these terms after turning down a year of free internet from the government, because he figures that's just asking Big Brother to spy on him. Because that's not what Amazon essentially does to its customers?
'There's more important things to do than worry about what's in people's Amazon carts,' Will declares at the end of War of the Worlds, which wraps up very tidily despite the hideous destruction we've just seen unfold on a global scale. The strategic determination to keep Amazon's hands clean in a movie about the dangers of rampant online privacy violations is actually impressive. Making Amazon one of its heroes, however, is downright dystopian.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what's next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
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Washington Post
5 hours ago
- Washington Post
A dirtbag tour of D.C. with memoirist Rax King
Rax King is not going to steal anything from the Georgetown Brandy Melville. Not today, anyway. But she's eyeing those lace camisoles. 'You, like, pretend to be looking at it, and then you just crumple it in your hand,' she says. The M Street store, she notes, is staffed by a bunch of bored-looking teenagers. 'But you gotta not look around. That is key.' 'Shoplifting from Brandy Melville' is one of the chapters in 'Sloppy,' King's latest book of irreverent personal essays about her history of indulging in bad behavior and vices including cocaine, petty theft and dishonesty. She's sober now, but she isn't about to let that get in the way of a good time. So we're having, in King's words, a 'dirtbag' tour of D.C., her hometown — a journey through highfalutin Georgetown to visit all the places that made King the sloppy broad she is today. 'Are you gonna go shmy around?' That's what King's father would ask her whenever he used to drop her off in Georgetown as a teenager. Shmying — 'Yiddish for, like, wander aimlessly,' she says — is something that King has been doing all her life, professionally, spiritually, existentially. There, near the Key Bridge, is the first place she ever purchased alcohol. Over there, by the canal, is where she used to meet up with her dad for his office smoke breaks. And our next stop is up the hill toward Good Guys, the Wisconsin Avenue strip club — not the same one where she used to work as a dancer, but it will do. 'I don't really have a lot of shame around the sorts of things that I think we are taught to feel shame around,' she says. 'It's not embarrassing to me, really, to talk about times I was blackout drunk, times I hooked up with somebody unsuitable.' Lucky for us. We get to read about it. To misquote Tolkein: Not all who shmy are lost. Maybe they're just collecting material. King, 33, and I have several things in common — careers as writers, a deep love for and long residence in D.C., an affection for Yiddish. We're even wearing a version of the same outfit: black maxi dress with chunky shoes. But I'm like a cheugy, goody-two-shoes, uncool version of her, and I'm losing this game of 'Never Have I Ever,' big time. I have no tattoos. I have never shoplifted or done hard drugs. I've also never been to a strip club. That's about to change. King warns me that the ATMs at the club will charge a fee, so we stop at a bank nearby with machines that somehow, miraculously, dispense singles. The touch screen asks me how many I want. 'The etiquette is you should tip a dollar per dancer per song,' says King, advising me to take out $75. 'It adds up kind of quickly.' Because the machine does not allow you to type in the amount of each bill you want, I begin hitting the plus sign 75 times. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. 'I'll show you how to fold your money' in the club, says King, offering up a Strip Club 101 lesson — the seats right beneath the three stages, called the 'tip rail,' are seats where 'you have to be tipping the whole time,' she says, though not every customer respected the etiquette. BeepBeepBeepBeepBeep. Some guys, she says, 'would do anything to get out of tipping. I had a guy open a newspaper' — The Washington Post, probably, she notes — 'in front of his face once when I came around.' Beep. Beep. Beep. The machine dispenses a pleasingly fat wad of cash. No, it's not her real name. The name 'Rax' sounds like one of the syllables in her given name, and King just sounded good with it, she says. But unlike many authors who use a pen name to maintain a separation between their writerly persona and their real life, Rax King is just who she was always meant to be. 'I don't even think of it as my real name anymore,' she says of her given name, which she has asked The Post not to include here. 'Even my mom calls me Rax.' Though she now lives in Brooklyn with her husband and nearly toothless Pekingese, King can recite her D.C. bona fides: She went to the Field School. She used to go to punk shows at Fort Reno and Mt. Pleasant group houses. King has two D.C. flag tattoos — one between her shoulder blades and another on her upper arm. Her book name-drops old-school D.C. institutions, including boutiques Annie Creamcheese and Commander Salamander. King went to college at St. John's, the liberal arts college in Annapolis, Maryland, known for its Great Books curriculum. Though she loved developing a deep well of literary references, she didn't fit in on campus — 'I found myself at odds with the culture of the place a lot' — and struggled to complete her degree, in part because she was in an abusive marriage, the subject of several of her essays, including 'Love, Peace, and Taco Grease,' her James Beard-nominated essay about how watching Guy Fieri's 'Diners, Drive-ins and Dives' gave her courage to escape her abuser. That essay became a chapter in her first book, 'Tacky,' which examined the pleasures of lowbrow taste — of loving the band Creed, 'The Jersey Shore' and the Cheesecake Factory, and not even in a detached, ironic, guilty pleasure sort of way. She wrote about getting drunk, doing drugs and sleeping around. And then she got sober. It's 4 p.m. on a Monday, which ranks among the most depressing times to visit a strip club. After our eyes adjust to the darkness, it's clear that there are only two other patrons there. Wimbledon is playing on the televisions, and a stripper is gyrating on the stage. King orders a Shirley Temple — 'It's kind of my sobriety drink' — counting seven maraschino cherries in her glass. She tells the bartender that she used to dance but has retired. 'Once a midnight ballerina, always a midnight ballerina,' says our bartender, chirpy in a corset and fishnets. King was not a very good dancer, she writes in the 'Sloppy' essay 'Temple of Feminine Perfection.' She auditioned to become a dancer at a D.C. club — one that has since closed and come under new ownership — for two men who 'never looked any less bored,' only to be told to slow down instead of doing spastic choreography 'like I was leading a Jazzercise class,' and 'sweating and panting with exhaustion before the song even hit its halfway mark.' 'I quickly adopted the same thing as many of my co-workers: just go up, move as little as possible, as little effort as possible,' she says now, watching the girls of Good Guys twirl languidly on the pole. Oh, and the way to fold the bills is longitudinally. 'My theory is that the vertical way, they don't slide out' of a garter belt, King says. Somewhere in Washington, someone orders a burger from the strip club via delivery. We know this because a confused driver walks into the club to procure his customer's order. The staff makes him wait outside. No free shows. Ella, a skinny dancer wearing a crop top that says 'Can U Not' and not much else, comes over. 'Are y'all together?' she asks us. 'Y'all look good together … I'mma come sit with you. I love your tattoo,' she says to King about her collarbone ink, which says 'I can't go on, I'll go on,' from Samuel Beckett. Before Ella is called up to dance, she chats with us about her dog (150 pounds), how she does her lashes ('Get the clusters and put them on underneath'), her ex-boyfriend (a cheater!) and her poetry. 'How did you get out of the stripping? It's addicting, right?' Ella asks, and King agrees — it's how she paid her student loans. But it was stripping that, eventually, rejected her: 'I'd moved to a new place and I auditioned at one club. They didn't want me. I had a shaved head at the time and I think they didn't like it. And then I just kind of gave up.' Ella notices that I'm wearing a wedding ring. 'What's your husband look like?' she asks me. 'If I ever see him in here, I'll kill him.' A girl's girl. Ella! We love her, and it seems like she returns our affection, but King reminds me that it's her job to make every single person feel like she is excited to see them. It was the part of the job she loathed. 'I hated talking to customers,' King says. 'I loved to get off stage and hide.' 'You're the best,' King tells Ella, when we're ready to depart. 'Stop!' Ella says. 'I'm going to cry, baby, I cry every day.' 'Me too!' King says. 'For no reason sometimes.' 'You know what's crazy?' Ella says. 'I've told these girls I haven't cried in years, and I cry every day. I cry, I really cry.' 'Every day there's something to cry about,' King says. It may be true that cutting drugs and alcohol out of one's life helps one become a better person who feels and loves more deeply. That cliché exists for a reason. But it's still a cliché. In 'Sloppy,' King subverts it by being the same person she always was. She still tells lies, and sort of hates having to interact with people. She finds sobriety deeply boring, a feeling she constantly struggles to get past. She still gets sticky fingers: 'The last time I went into a Brandy Melville with an intent to steal was, like, six months ago.' 'She is capable of being so emotionally honest and forthright and raw, and still so incredibly funny. And it is hard to do that in a way that doesn't feel hokey,' says her friend Calvin Kasulke, author of 'Several People are Typing.' 'Talking about recovery and not sounding incredibly trite is incredibly difficult.' 'While your life is supposedly improving, every minute of it is dilating,' she writes in the book's final essay, a meditation on addiction inspired by 'The Wolf of Wall Street.' 'It's not that you never feel good; it's that the good feelings now burble up so slowly to the surface of your bog, leaving you mired in monotony the rest of the time.' She quotes Jordan Belfort, from the film: 'It's so boring I want to kill myself.' The writing isn't boring, though. 'Her sense of humor and her sense of righteousness and desire to engage with the world is all still there and super vibrant,' says comic Josh Gondelman, a former writer for 'Last Week Tonight with John Oliver' and a friend. The same goes for all of the other character-building moments that King revisits for the sake of the book: Growing up the child of alcoholics ('My family are drunks the way other families are Teamsters or actors'). Her smoker father ('A filthy, smelly, weak hero') and his battle with chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder. Her time spent in a psychiatric hospital after a suicide attempt. (Making friends there was 'like speed dating in Jonestown, or doing a fun icebreaker exercise with the hostages during a bank robbery.') 'I still catch myself with these, like, low-life instances and tendencies for no reason at all. There's an essay in that book about lying, and to this day, my husband will ask me, 'What'd you do today?' And there's this little voice in my head, like, lie about it, when I haven't done anything bad, just for sport,' she says. 'Even when you get rid of the substance, the behavior doesn't go away on its own.' 'Sloppy' is, in part, about what it's like to be a screwup in a city of try-hards. It's just as much of a D.C. story as any political memoir, even though King's only interactions with D.C.'s political class have been when they were her customers. 'For all that my book is an unusual piece of D.C. lore,' King says, 'it's not an unusual experience.' After all: People grow up here, and make art, and do drugs, and get in trouble, and work in strip clubs, and fumble around between jobs. The shoplifters, the dirtbags, the midnight ballerinas: It's their city too. They shmy around until they figure out who they are. Or maybe they never do.
Yahoo
15 hours ago
- Yahoo
37 Celebs Who Confessed Shocking Secrets That Range From Losing Their Virginity To Straight-Up Murder Allegations
an Instagram Live, Cardi B revealed that when she worked as a stripper, she used to invite men back to her hotel room and drug and rob them. When this video resurfaced at the height of her fame, she wrote a response on Instagram, saying, "I never glorified the things I brought up in that live [video], I never even put those things in my music because I'm not proud of it." However, she wrote, "Whether or not they were poor choices at the time, I did what I had to do to survive." Dogg once revealed that he smoked weed in the White House. On his show GGN: The Double G News Network, he told Jimmy Kimmel that he excused himself to use the bathroom, telling the "alphabet boys" (the CIA or FBI) that he had to go "No. 2." He told them, "Look, when I do the No. 2, I usually, you know, have a cigarette or I light something to get the aroma right.' They said, 'You know what? You can light a piece of napkin.' I said, 'I'll do that.'" Indicated an imaginary blunt, he concluded with, "And the napkin was this." Call Her Daddy, Miley Cyrus revealed that she lost her virginity at age 16 to Liam Hemsworth, who she dated for a decade afterward. However, she also revealed that she'd lied to him, telling him she was not a virgin "so I didn't seem like a loser." She actually gave him a name — this man later ended up marrying Hemworth's friend when Miley was 24, at which time she finally told Hemsworth the truth. In the interview, Cyrus also revealed she had been initially attracted to women (Cyrus is pansexual), and that her first sexual experience was with two other women who she went "past first base" with. She also talked about her preference for women's bodies, at least when it comes to foreplay. her "Used to be Young" TikTok series, Cyrus also revealed more about her divorce from Hemsworth, saying she knew it was over with him just before going onstage at Glastonbury Festival in late June 2019. "Glastonbury was in June, which is when the decision had been made that me and Liam's commitment to being married really came from, of course, a place of love first — because we'd been together for 10 years — but also from a place of trauma and just trying to rebuild as quickly as we could," she said. "The day of the show was the day that I had decided that it was no longer going to work in my life to be in that relationship. So that was another moment where the work, the performance, the character came first." "And I guess that's why it's now so important to me for that to not be the case — that the human comes first," she added, mentioning how she's always dealt with past trauma through performance and work, until the pandemic forced her to slow down. Related: 5.A few years after her divorce from Russell Brand, Katy Perry revealed to Vogue that he had ended their marriage via a text message. "Let's just say I haven't heard from him since he texted me saying he was divorcing me December 31, 2011," she told the publication. She also revealed the heartbreaking moment she came to surprise him at one of his comedy shows, only to hear him making jokes about her, not knowing she was in the audience. However, Perry wouldn't reveal the "real truth" of why the relationship ended, which she found out after the fact, saying, "I can't necessarily disclose because I keep it locked in my safe for a rainy day." one of the most bizarre entries on this list is that Keith Richards once snorted his dad's ashes along with some cocaine. "The strangest thing I've tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father," he revealed in an interview. "He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn't have cared, he didn't give a shit. It went down pretty well, and I'm still alive." year, Dave Grohl admitted having had a child out of wedlock in an Instagram post, writing, "I've recently become the father of a new baby daughter, born outside of my marriage. I plan to be a loving and supportive parent to her. I love my wife and my children, and I am doing everything I can to regain their trust and earn their forgiveness. We're grateful for your consideration toward all the children involved, as we move forward together." 2011, Arnold Schwarzenegger similarly revealed that he'd fathered a child with a woman on his household staff — back in 2001. She was kept on the staff while Schwarzenegger reportedly paid for the child's care, claiming all the while it was her husband's child. Schwarzenegger did not reveal the truth to his then-wife, Maria Shriver, until after his term as governor ended. The two ended up splitting. Letterman also admitted his live TV after being extorted. In 2009, he found a box in his car with a letter that said, "I know you do some terrible things," and that the writer was working on a screenplay about Letterman. "He's going to take all this terrible stuff he knows about my life and put it in a movie unless I give him some money," Letterman later said the letter revealed. He was actually able to find out the identity of the blackmailer with the help of the Manhattan district attorney's office. CBS producer Robert J. "Joe" Halderman was arrested, and that very same night, Letterman went on his show and admitted, "Yes, I have had sex with women on my show." He was married at the time with a five-year-old child. one of the biggest celeb reveals of the last few years, Pusha T basically revealed the existence of Drake's secret son in the diss track "The Story of Adidon" in 2018. The song calls Drake a "deadbeat" and says he has a four-month-old son named Adonis that he was planning to reveal in an Adidas campaign that summer. Drake would ultimately confirm Adonis' existence months later on his album Scorpion. Bryan Bedder / Getty Images, Mark Blinch / Getty Images an interview for the 2003 documentary Living with Michael Jackson, Jackson admitted to sleeping in bed with young boys. "I've slept in the bed with many children. I'd sleep in the bed with all of them," he said. "When Macaulay Culkin [was] little, Kieran Culkin would sleep on this side, Macaulay Culkin's on this side. His sister's in there. We'd all just jam in the bed. And we'd wake up at dawn and go in the hot air balloon." When questioned on if this was "right," Jackson said, "It's very right, it's very loving. ... What's wrong with sharing the love?" He also said he had footage of them all sleeping together. On other occasions, Jackson denied sharing his bed with children, saying he'd slept on the floor: "I didn't sleep in the bed with the child. Even if I did, it's OK. I slept on the floor. I gave the bed to the child," he told 60 Minutes in 2003, the same year as the documentary referenced above. This was a bombshell revelation, given Jackson had settled in 1993 after being accused of child sexual abuse and was constantly plagued by rumors regarding his relationships with children. Jackson was later found "not guilty" in 2005 after another accusation, and the sexual abuse allegations continued after his death in 2009, most notably in the documentary Finding Neverland. unforgettable reveal comes from Frank Farian, a name you might not recognize. Back in the late '80s, R&B duo Milli Vanilli reached worldwide fame with their debut album, leading them to win the award for Best New Artist at the 1990 Grammy Awards. But producer Frank Farian soon revealed they didn't sing on their albums. When the two "singers" were confronted by the Los Angeles Times, member Rob Pilatus admitted it was true. "I feel like a mosquito being squeezed. The last two years of our lives have been a total nightmare. We've had to lie to everybody. We are true singers, but that maniac Frank Farian would never allow us to express ourselves," he said. The Grammys would then revoke their award and essentially end their careers. Related: 2020, Jada Pinkett Smith famously admitted to an "entanglement" with singer August Alsina while she and her husband, Will Smith, were separated but still married. She made this admission on an episode of her show Red Table Talk, with husband Will present. in 2023, Jada Pinkett Smith revealed on The Today Show that she and Will had been separated since 2016, living "completely separate lives." She later revealed that she and Will had not referred to each other as "husband" or "wife" in years — and that she was surprised to hear Will refer to her as his "wife" when he slapped Chris Rock. The Smiths apparently do not plan on divorcing. of Will admitted in his memoir Will that he once considered murdering his father. This came decades after witnessing his father punch his mother in his youth, "so hard that she collapsed." He continued, "I saw her spit blood," stating that the moment — and his failure to stand up for her — defined who he is. As an adult caring for his father, who had cancer, he thought again of this moment. "One night, as I delicately wheeled him from his bedroom toward the bathroom, a darkness arose within me. The path between the two rooms goes past the top of the stairs. As a child I'd always told myself that I would one day avenge my mother. That when I was big enough, when I was strong enough, when I was no longer a coward, I would slay him." He realized, at the top of the staircase, "I could shove him down, and easily get away with it." However, "As the decades of pain, anger, and resentment coursed then receded, I shook my head and proceeded to wheel Daddio to the bathroom." her memoir, Jessica Simpson admitted to having had an "emotional affair" with Johnny Knoxville. She was married to Nick Lachey at the time, though she said things never got physical. "But to me, an emotional affair was worse than a physical one," she wrote. "It's funny, I know, because I had placed such an emphasis on sex by not having it before marriage. After I actually had sex, I understood that the emotional part was what mattered. Johnny and I had that, which seemed far more of a betrayal to my marriage than sex." Spears also had a lot to reveal in her memoir, especially when it came to her relationship with Justin Timberlake. In the book, she confirmed the longstanding rumor that she had cheated on Timberlake, revealing she'd made out with Wade Robson one night, but also said he had already cheated on her multiple times in their relationship. also revealed that she'd had an abortion while the two were together and claimed she hadn't wanted to but that Justin had pushed her to abort. Harry had plenty to reveal in his memoir Spare, including that the first time he had sex was "a humiliating episode with an older woman who liked macho horses and who treated me like a young stallion" and took place in a field behind a pub. He wrote, "I mounted her quickly, after which she spanked my ass and sent me away." Related: also revealed a story about getting frostbite on his penis after a charity expedition to the North Pole. His ears and cheeks also got frostbite, but quickly healed: "While the ears and cheeks were already healing, the todger wasn't. It was becoming more of an issue by the day," he wrote in the book. He tried using Elizabeth Arden cream, eventually giving in and going to a doctor when that didn't work. Unfortunately, he was still dealing with the issue at his brother William's famous wedding to Kate Middleton. more Prince Harry reveal from his book: he clarified old reports about him and William not being circumcised. "Mummy had forbidden it, they all said, and while it's absolutely true that the chance of getting penile frostbite is much greater if you're not circumcised, all the stories were false. I was snipped as a baby," he revealed. Grande once seemingly revealed the size of Pete Davidson's penis, tweeting that it was "10 inches." Davidson denied the rumors, calling them "simply not true" and saying that Ariana "has very little hands. Everything is f—ing huge to her." one of the more bizarre confessions in this post, Colin Farrell revealed on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon that he was once an attempted murder suspect. During a "true confessions" game, he said that as a teenager, he'd been brought in for questioning about an attempted murder — which, by the way, was never solved — because he looked like the pencil sketch of the perpetrator. "I was in Sydney, Australia, and I was pulled in by the cops. And they showed me a photo of the pencil sketch of the guy that had attempted to murder this other gentleman, had beat him up and left him in his own apartment and set the apartment on fire and split, thereby leaving the guy to burn to death, and it was me. They said, what do you think about that picture? And I went, 'I think I'm in trouble,'" Farrell revealed. "Yeah, it was terrifying. I was there for about six hours, and then thankfully, a friend of mine had kept a journal, and that particular night, and that particular time, we were at a party on the other side of town doing Ecstasy." another bizarre confession, Kevin Gates once revealed he not only had sex with his cousin but continued a multiyear relationship with her. After the two were already sleeping together, he introduced her to his grandma, who revealed, "Baby, that's your cousin!" But, Gates continued, "I ain't about to stop! The damage has been done. I didn't know you my whole life. I just found this out. We've already been thuggin'. And we still good friends to this day." kind of iconically revealed that G-Eazy had cheated on her while performing onstage at SNL in 2019. During her performance of "Without Me," text appeared on the stage behind her, reading "I'm so sorry Ashley I cheated" with multiple places popping up, such as "At home in Los Angeles," and "In Minneapolis," along with "more places I can't even remember." Fans assumed this was in reference to Halsey's most recent ex. Schafer revealed that Dominic Fike had cheated on her during an episode of Call Her Daddy. She said she'd discovered his cheating by going through his phone, which she wasn't proud of. However, she chose not to go into more detail: "What happened with that was between me and him, and I want to keep it, and I want to protect that," she told host Alex Cooper. appearing on the Call Her Daddy podcast, Megan Fox revealed the plastic surgeries that she's gotten done — a nose job and three boob jobs. She also said there's a third procedure that she's done, but she declined to say what it was. "There's one thing I had done that I'm gatekeeping because it was really good, and it's not a known plastic surgery. People don't even really know about it," she told Cooper. Jenner similarly admitted she had gotten lip fillers after long denying the rumors on an episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians. She later told Complex she had been worried about being a bad influence on young fans and that she "didn't want people to think you had to get your lips done to feel good about yourself." She continued, "But they thought it was crazier that I was lying about it because it was so obvious. I wish I had just been honest and upfront." also having previously denied plastic surgery, Bella Hadid admitted to having had a nose job at 14 — and said she regretted it. "I wish I had kept the nose of my ancestors. I think I would have grown into it," she said. However, she also said, "I have never used filler. Let's just put an end to that. I have no issue with it, but it's not for me. Whoever thinks I've gotten my eyes lifted or whatever it's called - it's face tape! The oldest trick in the book." Related: contrast, Heidi Montag revealed pretty much right away that she'd gotten plastic surgery at age 23. And not just one procedure — she'd gotten ten done in one day. "I think I look way better and I'm way happier," she told People. "Nobody ages perfectly, so I plan to keep using surgery to make me as perfect as I can be." Later, in 2018, she revealed she actually died for a minute as a result of the surgeries, scaring her husband, Spencer Pratt. "Spencer thought he lost me," she said. "My security guards called Spencer and told him, 'Heidi's heart stopped. She's not going to make it.' And I easily could've. Cutting yourself up isn't something I'd recommend." She has continued to express regret in later years, revealing she had long-term health complications and saying, "I was way too young to make such a life-changing decision." more Call Her Daddy example: Cole Sprouse admitted on the podcast that he'd lost his virginity at age 14. He was on a family vacation in Florida and "met this girl who was older." After initially making out the first night, he knocked on her hotel door the next night and invited her to the beach. There: "I finally mustered up enough courage to deliver a line that my brother has never, ever let down for me. I looked at her, and I was like: 'So are you, like, DTF?' She goes: 'What?' And I go: 'You know, down to fuck?'" They had to kick Cole's brother Dylan and a friend out of the room, and Cole told Dylan "to go play chess or something." Cole revealed he "lasted about 20 seconds and never talked to her again." Kutcher has also told the story of the first time he had sex. He called his first time "horrible" and "really awkward" and said that it happened "out in the woods with a girl I had just met" when he was only 15. "The whole thing lasted two seconds," he said. However, a couple of years later, he had sex with her again "just to show her the first performance was a fluke and I'd gotten better.' Malik admitted he wasn't sure if he'd ever been in love, despite having been engaged and sharing a child with Gigi Hadid after a long-term relationship. "When you ask me, 'What is love?' I think the reason that's hard for me to answer that question is I don't know if I've ever actually truly been in love," he said, waxing poetic about what love is. While he loves his child, he said, he wasn't sure he'd been "in love with somebody who is a complete separate entity. They're not my family. I have no blood with them, like, 'I'm in love with this person.' I don't know." "You can never really pinpoint, I think, what is love. There's ways you can show love. You can express it. That's our human understanding of it, but what is love? It's an intangible thing, right? We can't hold it in our hands. It's not something that exists," he said. Looking back at times he thought he'd been in love, he said, "Your perspective changes it, right? You look back on it with new eyes, and you're like, 'Well, maybe I wasn't in love there.' But that's time. So, is it love? Or is it life experience that we are going through? Who knows?" Shepherd similarly admitted in 2019 that he wasn't sure he wanted to be with Kristen Bell when they were first dating. "I never ever was like, 'Oh, I hope I can keep Kristen.' I was going, 'Do I want to be with a Christian, who has eight people living in her house for free, who has to get out of a car when there's a dog who doesn't have a leash and ruin her whole day to rescue this dog? That's great, and she's good, but that's not what I want to do," he said he thought. "I'm not that good. I don't want to spend my day finding the owner of a dog. So I wasn't fearful I would lose her. I wasn't certain I wanted to be with someone like that." also admitted that the two actually broke up a few months into dating and that Shepherd was seeing other people. "He sat me down and said, 'I can't have this right now. I think you're wonderful, but I am still dating other people.' And then I, like, liquefied and fell to the ground, but I felt incredibly respected that he had the balls to tell me we weren't in the same place." However, Shepherd changed his mind, calling Bell to tell her, "I don't know what I was thinking. I was dating someone else, but they're just not as interesting as you, and I don't know what I'm doing." Frankel admitted that she had never liked sex with her ex-husband Jason Hoppy, saying on her podcast that she used to have to "force" herself to have sex with him. "He used to say to me, 'You're like a block of ice,' because I did not want to be intimate. I did not want to have sex," she said. "I used to force myself, gag myself through doing it…it is torture." finally, I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but Chad Kroeger revealed years ago to Playboy that he'd once performed oral sex on himself. So...I guess it is possible. What celeb reveal can you never forget? Let us know in the comments. Also in Celebrity: Also in Celebrity: Also in Celebrity:
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Josh Brolin Explains Why He's Uncertain About A Sequel To ‘The Goonies'
While The Goonies has long inspired hopes of a sequel, star Josh Brolin isn't embarking on that quest just yet. Speaking to Entertainment Tonight at the premiere of Zach Cregger's much-anticipated horror film Weapons, Brolin explained his hesitation toward a potential followup and what it would take to get him onboard. More from Deadline 'Gremlins 3' Script Is Waiting On Steven Spielberg's Approval; Zach Galligan Says Warner Bros. Is "Incredibly Interested" Steven Spielberg's Amblin & 'The Tinder Swindler' Producer Raw Teaming On Netflix Diamond Heist Doc 'Jaws' Star Richard Dreyfuss Axes SharkCon Appearance After Being Hospitalized With Viral Bronchitis 'I hope it does [happen] because the experience was so great,' he the outlet. 'The movie is received so well, generation after generation. It's just everything good about it. The trepidation that I have is that you release something else that taints that. I don't want to taint what my memory of it [is].' The Oscar nominee then joked about what the sequel's storyline would entail, given the fact that its release would come over four decades after the 1985 debut of the classic adventure comedy about a group of misfit kids hunting treasure in a bid to save their house from foreclosure. 'It's like, 'Oh, we came out with another,' and then the Goonies grew up, and then they came out with their walkers and then they fell off a cliff because they couldn't see very well, like, what are you going to do? I don't know. Maybe it could be great. If it's great, you'll know, like if [story writer Steven] Spielberg approves it, you know it's going to be good. But I think there's been five scripts so far through the years and he hasn't approved anything yet — so me being picky, Spielberg is picky, and he has a reason to be because he has great taste.' The Dune star's comments come several months after Deadline broke the news that the Goonies, indeed, never say die: Traction appears to be gaining on The Goonies 2, with Potsy Ponciroli coming aboard to pen the script for Warner Bros. While there is no filmmaker currently attached (the late Richard Donner helmed the original), Steven Spielberg, Kristie Macosko Krieger and Holly Bario will produce for Amblin Entertainment alongside original scribe Chris Columbus, with Lauren Shuler Donner executive producing. Plot details are currently under wraps, and news of the sequel's development came just weeks after a cast reunion at TCL Chinese Theatre, in celebration of Ke Huy Quan's hand and foot imprint ceremony. Best of Deadline 2025 TV Cancellations: Photo Gallery 2025 TV Series Renewals: Photo Gallery 2025-26 Awards Season Calendar: Dates For Emmys, Oscars, Grammys & More
