Latest news with #SundaySitdown
Buzz Feed
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
Robin Williams Protected Nathan Lane Being Outed On Oprah
Back in 1996, Robin Williams and Nathan Lane starred in the hilarious comedy movie The Birdcage, where they played a gay couple who pretend to be heterosexual when meeting the conservative family of their son's fiancée. Nathan was around 40 years old at the time, and while he'd been enjoying a lucrative acting career on both stage and screen since the '80s, The Birdcage was his first major movie role — and with it came a newfound focus on his personal life. The actor had been out as gay in his private life since he was 21 years old, but when the film came out, he did not yet feel comfortable with addressing his sexuality on such a public scale, which he confided to his co-star ahead of the movie's press tour. "I just wanted to talk about [how] I finally got a big part in a movie, and I didn't want to make it about my sexuality," Nathan recalled during a 2023 episode of Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist. "Although it was sort of unavoidable because of the nature of the film and the character."In the same conversation, he praised 'beautiful' Robin for how protective he was of him during this time, with one specific incident coming to mind. In 1996, Nathan and Robin appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show to promote The Birdcage, and Oprah put Nathan in a pretty uncomfortable situation. In the interview, Oprah asked the two men if they were concerned about people constantly questioning their sexuality after playing gay characters onscreen. She said: 'Were you afraid of taking that role and being, like, typecast, and people forever saying: 'Are you? Are you not? Is he? Isn't he? Honey, I don't know!'' 'Uhm,' Nathan awkwardly began before Robin seamlessly interjected to protect Nathan's privacy. 'Girl, you changed just in the middle of that sentence,' he joked, going on to leave both Oprah and the live studio audience in hysterics with his impersonation of the host. "I don't think Oprah was trying to out me, but I said to Robin beforehand: 'I'm not prepared. I'm so scared of going out there and talking to Oprah. I'm not prepared to discuss that I'm gay on national television, I'm not ready,'" Nathan explained on Sunday Sitdown. "And [Robin] said: 'Oh, it's alright, don't worry about it, we don't have to talk about it, we won't talk about it.'"He then recalled how Robin "sort of swoops in and diverts Oprah and goes off on a tangent and protects [him] because he was a saint." "I just wasn't ready to do that, to make this whole thing… the public side of it, the celebrity side," Nathan added of publicly coming out. "'Oh, now you're a public figure, and you have to make some sort of public statement about it.' I was terrified. I wasn't ready to do that." And clips from both the Oprah interview and Nathan's podcast appearance recently resurfaced in a TikTok video, where Robin, who died by suicide in 2014 at age 63, has received widespread praise for how he looked out for his co-star. 'The empathy Robin Williams expressed. may we all be so kind,' one person commented on the clip. Another wrote: 'We did not deserve Robin Williams but damn I'm glad we got him, even if it wasn't for long enough.''Robin keeps looking at him like I got you 💖' one more observed, as somebody else echoed: 'I love how his face got so serious every time he looked at Nathan Lane like don't worry I got you.''she wanted to use him for her ratings thank god robin was there,' another user claimed, with many others expressing their disappointment in Oprah in the up the discourse, one person wrote: 'Oprah knew exactly what she was doing. Robin was always a treasure.' Nathan came out as gay in an interview with the Advocate in 1999, three years after the Oprah incident. He referenced this moment in the interview, saying: 'Robin saw my face, and he jumped in and protected me.'
NBC News
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- NBC News
Mariska Hargitay opens up about discovering identity of her biological father
Mariska Hargitay revealed a decades-long secret about her biological father in her new documentary. The 'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit' star is the daughter of the late Jayne Mansfield and Mickey Hargitay. Mansfield died in 1967 when her daughter was 3, while Mickey Hargitay died in 2006. However, as revealed in the new documentary 'My Mom Jayne ' and a corresponding interview with Vanity Fair, singer Nelson Sardelli is her biological father, not Mickey Hargitay. Mansfield and Mickey Hargitay married in 1958, though Mansfield filed for divorce in 1963 and began dating Sardelli. She and Mickey Hargitay eventually reunited months before Mariska Hargitay was born, with her dad ultimately raising her and her siblings after her mom's death. Reflecting on her relationship with her late father, Mariska Hargitay told the outlet, 'He was my everything, my idol. He loved me so much, and I knew it. I also knew something else — I just didn't know what I knew.' Mariska Hargitay described feeling different from the rest of her siblings — including two brothers and three half-siblings — and understood why during her 20s. During that period, somebody showed her a picture of Sardelli, and she recalled instinctually knowing that he was her biological father. However, when she brought it up to Mickey Hargitay, he denied the claim, and she said she never brought up Sardelli to her father again. Mariska Hargitay didn't drop her suspicion though, and when she was 30, she saw Sardelli perform in Atlantic City and introduced herself to him, causing him to cry. 'I went full Olivia Benson on him,' she told Vanity Fair. 'I was like, 'I don't want anything, I don't need anything from you .… I have a dad. There was something about loyalty. I wanted to be loyal to Mickey.' Over time, Mariska Hargitay was able to form a bond with Sardelli and his daughters, but she understood why her mom reconciled with Mickey Hargitay. 'I grew up where I was supposed to, and I do know that everyone made the best choice for me,' she said. 'I'm Mickey Hargitay's daughter — that is not a lie.' She called the documentary 'a kind of love letter' to her father 'because there's no one that I was closer to on this planet.' The documentary includes cameos from both families, including Sardelli, and her siblings Jayne Marie, Zoltan and Mickey Jr, per Vanity Fair. She also hosted a private screening with her sisters on the Sardelli side, sharing that they 'wept and wept and wept' at the film. 'These two women that I love so much — I made them secrets! It's so heartbreaking to me,' she said, recalling a time she introduced them as 'family friends' in conversation. 'I'm not good with lies. So I also made this movie to unburden all of us.' Mariska Hargitay previously opened up about the lessons she learned from Mickey Hargitay during an appearance on Sunday Sitdown with TODAY's Willie Geist in January. 'High school sports and my father's training taught me how to get back on the horse and have the stamina to do 'SVU.' 'Cause there were hard years,' she said. 'There were times when I (thought), 'I don't know if I have it. I don't know if I can continue this.' But then, we would do an episode, and I fell so madly, deeply in love with my co-stars. And I was working with such great actors.'
NBC News
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- NBC News
The true story that inspired 'Nonnas'
This ain't your parent's cooking. But it might be your grandma's. 'Nonnas,' a new film that released on Netflix on May 9, stars Vince Vaughn as Joe Scaravella, a real-life figure who founded an Italian restaurant on Staten Island called Enoteca Maria to honor his late mother, sister and his own nonna. But the restaurant has a unique twist — to honor his family, Scaravella hires a staff of rotating grandmothers to cook. Now, Scaravella's original vision, which debuted nearly 20 years ago, will be seen on a silver screen. 'Eight years ago, they bought the rights to my life, which is a little bizarre,' Scaravella tells 'I'm a little taken aback by it all; it's a little difficult to digest.' Scaravella calls the director, Stephen Chbosky, 'amazing,' the actors 'incredible,' and says he 'loves' the writer Liz Maccie. In the film, Vaughn plays Scaravella, who appeared on Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist on May 4 to discuss his connection with the film. 'I really got moved when I read this script and the way that it was really focusing on the grandmothers,' Vaughn said on TODAY. 'These matriarchs of a family that did so much and loved people, and that they get to continue that process, this craft that they're great at, which is cooking, and still loving to feed people and create that atmosphere.' The film adaptation follows Scaravella's journey to create his restaurant. Manganiello plays opposite Vaughn as Bruno Tropeano, Scaravella's real-life best friend and champion. The four nonnas featured in the film are portrayed by Lorraine Bracco, Brenda Vaccaro, Talia Shire and Susan Sarandon. The Italian grandmothers rediscover themselves through cooking at Enoteca Maria. The movie-making process has been a lot to process for Scaravella. He got another shock when he found out Vaughn would star as Scaravella in the film. 'It's too unreal to think that Vince (Vaughn) would play me,' Scaravella said on Sunday Sitdown. 'I still don't believe it, really.' During the movie premiere at the Paris Theater in New York on April 30, Scaravella got to see what was once a grief-driven vision that turned into a movie-worthy script. Scaravella said on Sunday Sitdown that he 'cried through the whole movie.' 'The audience, you can hear them crying and laughing and gasping, and it was just received so well that it's really, it's going to be an amazing hit,' Scaravella said. While Scaravella initially started the restaurant to honor his Italian heritage, hiring exclusively Sicilian grandmothers, Enoteca Maria has been featuring grandmothers from international backgrounds since 2015. The kitchen has welcomed in grandmothers from Bangladesh, Algeria, Trinidad, Syria, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Japan, Belarus, Poland and France. The restaurant features a fixed Italian menu along with food from whichever grandmothers are cooking that night to represent their culture. There's even a 'nonna's calendar' that details which grandmothers are in house on a given night. 'The Greek lady, you know, that's her food. She grew up with that. She knows exactly what that's supposed to taste like,' Scaravella tells 'And the Italian lady, and so on and so forth. I think that these ladies are the source and so they really are able to represent the culture, and that's what we do.' With the big release, Scaravella says there are plans to do a sequel called 'Nonnas of the World.' Scaravella has even started developing an idea to do a television series.
The Independent
11-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
SNL star Bowen Yang reflects on ‘painful' memory of teenage conversion therapy
Saturday Night Live star Bowen Yang has spoken candidly about the emotional toll of undergoing gay conversion therapy as a teenager, describing the experience as 'painful and detrimental'. In a preview clip for this Sunday's episode of Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist, Yang revisits a chapter of his adolescence that he says he never really processed. 'I didn't really get to work through it,' he told Geist. 'I think I probably wasn't brave enough back then to express that or to package it in a way that [my parents] could understand. It felt completely foreign to them.' Yang, one of only a handful of openly LGBTQ+ cast members in Saturday Night Live 's 50-year history, first publicly shared his experience with conversion therapy in an interview with The New York Times. He was 17 when his parents discovered what he described as 'lewd conversations' on AOL Instant Messenger, inadvertently outing him. Yang presently reflects on his parent's reaction with a degree of empathy now he recognises the cultural disconnect. 'They were like, 'Oh, we didn't realise this is what we were dealing with. Where we come from, this doesn't happen.' That was their concept of it. And so I give them a lot of grace for that - because they had no context.' His parents then presented him with an ultimatum: undergo conversion therapy and attend New York University alongside his sister, or remain in Denver and study locally. Yang said the draw of New York was irresistible: 'I just knew I had to live there,' he said. 'So I kind of played along - I humoured them, and I humoured myself - into seeing what it was. Not knowing that it was ultimately very painful and detrimental. And there was a lot of healing that happened after that.' Yang has previously spoken about the long-term psychological impact of the experience, which he has explored in both his comedy and personal reflections. In speaking out again, he joins a growing number of LGBTQ+ public figures challenging the practice of conversion therapy and highlighting its lasting harm. Last year, the new Labour government said it planned to introduce a Conversion Practices Bill to ban treatment aimed at changing or suppressing someone's sexual orientation and gender identity in England and Wales.
