Latest news with #TheJeffersons
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'80s Sitcom Legend, 66, Is Unrecognizable in Super Rare Outing
Julie Brown—an '80s sitcom star who appeared in Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, The Jeffersons and more—was unrecognizable during a recent, rare outing. On Wednesday, May 21, Brown, 66, was photographed during a casual stroll in Los Angeles. 🎬 SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox 🎬 For the occasion, the former MTV star wore a black jacket over a navy blue shirt, pairing the look with gray leggings and a pair of sneakers. She also had a pair of sunglasses resting on top of her dressed-down look was a major departure from her '80s and '90s heyday. From 1989 to 1992, the actress starred in the MTV music video comedy show Just Say Julie—typically sporting signature big hair and eye-catching outfits. However, her signature red hair has remained. Additionally, Brown was known for appearing in films like Clueless (1995) and Earth Girls Are Easy (1988) and lending her voice to movies and TV shows like A Goofy Movie, Pinky and the Brain, and Aladdin and The Edge, among many others. Per IMDb, Brown has two upcoming credits—in a TV series called Thank You Come Again and in a TV movie titled Alien Vacation. Next: '80s Sitcom Legend, 66, Is Unrecognizable in Super Rare Outing first appeared on Parade on May 24, 2025
Black America Web
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Black America Web
Lenny Kravitz Shows Off His Parisian Home That's Inspired By His Mother
Black America Web Featured Video CLOSE Source: HENRY NICHOLLS / Getty Lenny Kravitz is someone the world looks to for effortless style, so when a new video dropped on Architectural Digest 's YouTube channel featuring his Paris home, the expectations were high. And they were fulfilled, as Kravitz showed off his residence in the city's 16th arrondissement. Now 60, Kravitz has owned the house for decades. He says he fell in love with the city after first coming to Paris to promote his debut album Let Love Rule in 1989. But the palatial mansion is also special to Kravitz because it was his mother's dream to live in Paris, a dream that wasn't realized in her lifetime. Kravitz's mother, Roxie Roxer, died of breast cancer in 1995 at the age of 66. She was an actress best known as Helen Willis on the classic sitcom The Jeffersons, where she was part of TV's first interracial marriage. In real life, she was married to Lenny's father, TV executive Sy Kravitz, who was also white. 'This place is called Hôtel de Roxie. It's named after my mother, because it was her dream to come live in Paris,' Kravitz told AD. 'She wanted to retire after doing 11 seasons on The Jeffersons , and she never got to do it.' This is Lenny's second time on AD's 'Open Door' series, featuring celebs showing off their fabulous homes. Hamilton actor Daveed Diggs and his partner Emmy Raver Lampman earned millions of views with their eclectic L.A. home, and Viola Davis and Julian Tennon showed off their traditional but cozy place. Kravitz, who owns real estate in New York, Miami, Paris, Los Angeles, the Bahamas and Brazil, let AD record him at his farm in Brazil in his last video. His Paris home was once owned by Countess Anne d'Ornano who, once widowed, spent more time at her estate in suburban France, so she decided to sell. Kravitz says he was looking for more of a pied á terre at the time (a bachelor pad, basically) but fell in love with the place when a savvy realtor told him it was something he had to see. Once married to Lisa Bonet with whom he has a daughter, actress Zoe Kravitz, he's rarely been in a public relationship and hasn't remarried or had any other children. He remains good friends with Bonet, who split from her longtime partner, Jason Momoa, back in 2022. (The couple were officially divorced last year.) Kravitz dedicated the petit salon, or sitting room, to Roker, with several pictures of her prominently displayed there. He calls it The Roxie Room. 'She was the love of my life. I was a momma's boy,' he says proudly. 'I found a bunch of photos that my father had taken of my mother in the late '60s and got them framed by the same framer that does a lot of framing for the Louvre. I just wanted to have a room where I was surrounded by her image.' His design studio – because of course, he has one – designed a chandelier named after Roker that hangs in the great room. His Paris spot also acknowledges his entire family with images of them throughout the space. 'This house continually pays tribute to my ancestors and as you'll see as we walk through the house, there's photographs of them everywhere. All of this photography tells a story throughout the house through Black history, American and African,' Kravitz told AD. Other highlights include a wood and bronze piano with African carvings he designed with famed piano manufacturer Steinway, and recording studio and club in the basement. Watch the entire video below: SEE ALSO Lenny Kravitz Shows Off His Parisian Home That's Inspired By His Mother was originally published on
Yahoo
17-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Quinta Brunson says Sheryl Lee Ralph reminds 'Abbott Elementary' kids that acting is a job, not just being cute
The child actors on Abbott Elementary better bring their A-plus work. Actress Sheryl Lee Ralph, who plays teacher Barbara Howard, is expecting excellence from them. "I watch her help make little actors out of the children who star on our show," Quinta Brunson, who co-created the series and plays teacher Janine Teagues, revealed Wednesday at Ralph's Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony, "by giving them tips to enunciate and to remind them that being an actor is a job and an honor, not something you get to do just because you're cute." The ABC comedy, which debuted in 2021 and has aired for four seasons, focuses on the staff at an underfunded public school in Philadelphia. Ralph and Brunson costar on the Emmy-winning show with a cast that includes Tyler James Williams, Lisa Ann Walter, Janelle James, William Stanford Davis, and Chris Perfetti. Brunson shared some favorite anecdotes about Ralph, who won the Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her role on Abbott Elementary in 2022. "I can always count on Sheryl to be the actual star that people want to see," Brunson said. "I tend to hide when the cart comes by on the Warner Bros. lot. Because, in reality, I'm a little shy, and I want to just get to makeup. But Sheryl, Sheryl sings to the people. She asks them, 'How is your trip to Hollywood so far?' And she tells them to stream Abbott while giving them a smile brighter than the Hollywood sign itself. One they will never forget. Sometimes, she doesn't even have her wig on yet, and she is giving these people the show of a lifetime."Since the ʼ70s, Ralph has appeared on shows such as The Jeffersons, Designing Women, Moesha, and Instant Mom. When she wasn't on the air, she was in films including Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, White Man's Burden, and The Flintstones. Not that it was ever easy. "Oh, the dreams I dared to dream," Ralph, 68, said during her own emotional speech. "But you see me now. I don't look like my journey. There were days, and not so long ago, I couldn't get into the room for the audition. And now I am literally cemented as part of the industry's foundation." Watch the full event above. Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
Buzz Feed
16-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
Lenny Kravitz Has A Whole Paris Mansion Dedicated To His Late Mother, And That's The Type Of Lavish Spending I Can Get Behind
Lenny Kravitz just proved why being a self-proclaimed "momma's boy" is sometimes a good thing. Lenny is a lot of things — a creative, a songwriter, a musician, a producer, an actor — but I believe one of his proudest titles is a family man. Most people know about the strong bond Lenny shares with his daughter and only child, Zoë Kravitz, but he's also still the best of friends with his ex-wife and Zoë's mom, Lisa Bonet. But this high regard he holds for family didn't start with the one he created for himself. No, this connection was deeply rooted in him from the time he was born, and it all started with his mother, actor Roxie Roker. Instagram: @lennykravitz And if that last name sounds familiar, it's because beloved weatherman Al Roker is her cousin. Roxie was widely known for portraying Helen Willis on the hit CBS sitcom The Jeffersons, which ran from 1975–1985. She guest-starred on a string of shows and was even nominated for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her work as Mattie Williams in the Broadway play The River Niger. Roxie was married to television producer Sy Kravitz in 1962 until they divorced in 1985. Lenny is their only child. Unfortunately, Roxie died in 1995 at the age of 66 after a battle with breast cancer. The "I Believe in Love Again" singer has always been vocal about the love he had for his mother and how much he cherished their connection. He likes to find ways to honor her, so when he gave a recent house tour for Architectural Digest, I knew we were in for a real treat. Architectural Digest / And if you're familiar with his previous AD episode on his beautiful Brazilian compound (which has more than 12 million views), then you already know Lenny takes great pride in the pieces he chooses for his homes and the unique details he adds to them. For their latest Open Door episode, Lenny invited fans to explore Parisian living with his French regal mansion that once belonged to Countess Anne d'Ornano, the widowed former mayor of Deauville. He transformed it into a love letter to his mom and a home for creativity. Paris has always felt like a home away from home, so picking the location was a no-brainer for the artist. "This place is called Hôtel de Roxie. It's named after my mother, because it was her dream to come live in Paris. She wanted to retire after doing 11 seasons on The Jeffersons, and she never got to do it." Architectural Digest / "So, I'm doing it for both of us. This place is a real gift. I've been in this house for 22 years now, but I've been in Paris my whole career. When my first album, Let Love Rule, came out in '89, they weren't quite sure how to market me in America because I didn't fit in a box, so they sent me to Paris. It's my favorite city in the world." The 36-year-old star opened up about how the city has inspired him in a multitude of ways, culturally and through various mediums like music, art, fashion, cuisine, and more. He also revealed that his humble abode is filled with things that represent himself, "his ancestors, Black history, American history, and African history." And while the entire home is a way to honor his mom, he has a special room dedicated specifically to her. "This is the petit salon; it's called the Roxie Room, and it's dedicated to my mother. She was the love of my life. I was a momma's boy." Architectural Digest / "I found a bunch of photos that my father had taken of my mother in the late '60s and got them framed by the same framer that does a lot of framing for the Louvre. I just wanted to have a room where I was surrounded by her image." "This is my favorite photograph of my mother. It's just a moment. I love the composition, the hat, the look on her face." Architectural Digest / As he went from room to room, it became very clear just how much influence his mother had had on his life and the ways he was able to reflect that back into the interior design. Vinnie Zuffante / Getty Images Like his library, which was filled with several of her old books... ...or the grand salon, which featured a stunning chandelier that was crafted by Lenny's conceptual creative studio, Kravitz Design, and named after his mother. What a gorgeous way to pay homage to your mom! I'm genuinely in awe of his taste. But it's Lenny, so I wouldn't expect anything else. River Callaway / WWD via Getty Images And fans were loving it too:
Wall Street Journal
04-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
TV and Movies for America's Vast Middle
Grapevine, Texas I grew up in the 1970s and '80s. My conception of life in the adult world was formed to a great extent by television and movies. As a teenager I didn't have much in the way of insight, but I did notice one difference between my own experience and the world portrayed on screen: In the worlds of 'Happy Days,' 'The Jeffersons,' 'Three's Company' 'Family Ties' and a thousand other shows and movies, religion had no place, except occasionally as an object of ridicule. No character in these productions, or none I recall, expressed a serious thought about God or faith or religious practice or doctrinal leaning. Millions of Americans for whom religious belief is a normal part of life learned to accept this absence. But it felt unnatural. Based in New York and Los Angeles, America's entertainment industry has long ignored the interests and worldviews of ordinary religious people in the country's vast middle. That has begun to change. Technological improvements—roughly from the development of the digital camera to the rise of streaming platforms—have enabled independent filmmakers across the country to produce high-quality movies and series that explore themes mainstream studios don't understand and prefer to ignore. That's the supply side. The demand side is ready for new stuff. That there are enormous numbers of American viewers who will pay to watch well-made films that avoid gratuitous crudity and sacrilege and present religious sentiment as typically human was made evident by the unpredicted success of 'Sound of Freedom,' the 2023 movie starring Jim Caviezel as a former government agent whose belief in God leads him to rescue children from sex traffickers. It was distributed by the Provo, Utah-based Angel Studios and took in $250.5 million in gross revenue against a $14.5 million budget. Two of the most talented filmmakers in this burgeoning field are the brothers Jon and Andrew Erwin. Their films aren't 'Christian' in any didactic or proselytizing sense. Erwin movies are what might be termed faith-adjacent. Their films' protagonists, like most people in most places at all times in human history, respond to life's blows by turning to God for aid and direction. 'American Underdog,' a 2021 movie about Kurt Warner, the quarterback who didn't make the NFL draft but eventually led the St. Louis Rams to a Super Bowl victory, is as well-acted and skillfully filmed as any Hollywood sports movie. The Erwin brothers' 'Jesus Revolution,' starring Kelsey Grammer and Jonathan Roumie, is a sympathetic but not uncritical account of Southern California's 'Jesus people' movement of the late 1960s and '70s. 'Jesus Revolution' grossed $54 million against a $15 million production budget. Jon Erwin's latest venture is a streaming series released on Amazon on Feb. 27: 'House of David,' a dramatic adaptation of the life of Israel's second and greatest king, co-directed by Mr. Erwin and Jon Gunn. The first season was filmed in Greece last year under the auspices of the Wonder Project, a new company headed by Mr. Erwin and former Netflix executive Kelly Merryman Hoogstraten. 'I've been dreaming of telling the story of David since I was 16 years old,' Mr. Erwin, 42, says in an interview at the Gaylord Texan hotel, where the National Religious Broadcasters are hosting their annual conference. As a young boy, Mr. Erwin traveled to Israel with his father. 'He bought me my first camera, the best gift I've ever had. We made this walk-and-talk documentary. It was just the two of us, and we went to all the holy sites.' What he remembers most is going to the tomb of David in Jerusalem. 'Right there, my imagination started turning.' In our conversation he refers to himself as an 'artist,' and the term isn't amiss—'House of David' is a superb piece of filmmaking. But apart from the black ring on his left hand, there's no outward sign Mr. Erwin is a creative type at all. No tattoos, no oddball eyeglass frames or retro attire, just close-cropped light brown hair, ordinary jacket and chinos. His filmmaking debut, he says, came when he was 15 and somebody was short a cameraman at a University of Alabama football game: 'Some guy got sick and they needed a replacement. That's how I got into this industry.' With each of his previous films, Mr. Erwin says, he has been 'trying to get good enough at the craft to take on what I consider the Mount Everest of stories,' the epic of David. He's right to revere that story. The biblical Book of Samuel, where most of David's story is told—I and II and Samuel in modern Bibles—is a masterpiece: an epic history of the origins of Israel's monarchy and of the rise, near-fall and restoration of Israel's greatest king; a political-philosophical treatise on the necessity and dangers of human government; and a model of stylistic efficiency, thematic unity and unsparing realism. 'The story of David,' the Hebrew scholar Robert Alter writes in his 1999 commentary on the Book of Samuel, 'is probably the greatest single narrative representation in antiquity of a human life evolving by slow stages through time, shaped and altered by the pressures of political life, public institutions, family, the impulses of body and spirit, the eventual sad decay of the flesh.' I have felt for many years that the story of David is ripe for cinematic treatment. But I worried that any attempt by a Hollywood studio to dramatize it would ride roughshod over the Book of Samuel's beautifully constructed narrative and extract from it 21st-century social-political messages that aren't there. Mr. Erwin can be trusted not to commit those errors, believing as he does—readers may agree or disagree—that the text is revelatory of God's character. He grew up in a churchgoing family in Birmingham, Ala., and like many Protestants of a conservative bent was made to read the Bible cover to cover and memorize large parts of it. When Mr. Erwin was 6 or 7, a Sunday school teacher promised to take any student who memorized a stack of verses to an amusement park. 'I wanted to go to Six Flags,' he says. 'I memorized them all. And I went.' Thus began a life of scriptural study and memorization. I'm not surprised, then, watching 'House of David,' to note the care with which it treats biblical texts. The series contains plenty of dramatic material not in the Bible—the Hebrew histories are famously laconic, and any screen adaptation would require narrative supplements—but nothing in the biblical text is substantively changed. The extrabiblical story lines, moreover, consist of interpretations of, not deviations from, the text. One example: In the Bible, when the prophet Samuel visits David's home and asks his father, Jesse, to gather all his sons, he calls only seven of the eight—for reasons not specified in the text. Jesse is forced by the prophet to call the eighth and youngest, the shepherd David, from the fields. Why is the father ashamed of the boy? In 'House of David,' Mr. Erwin has interpreted verses from two Davidic Psalms—'I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me' (51:5) and 'I have become a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my mother's sons' (69:8)—to speculate that David was the son of a non-Hebrew mother whom his father married after the death of his first wife. There is no record of such a union, but the scenario would explain the contempt with which David's eldest brother, Eliab, treats him when he arrives to hear Goliath taunting the Israelite army (I Samuel 17:28). Everything in the show is not in the Bible, Mr. Erwin acknowledges more than once, but he insists 'everything in the Bible is in the show. We talked to theologians and historians and rabbinic scholars. In the end, the goal of the thing was to create a great TV show.' Which, in my view, it is. And I'm not alone. 'House of David' debuted at No. 8 on Variety's streaming original charts, behind the second season of '1923' and the third of 'Reacher' but ahead of 'Landman.' Since I spoke to Mr. Erwin just before its release in late February, 'House of David' has done well enough to merit a second season. He is back in Greece filming it now. Meanwhile, the finale of its first season—in which the young shepherd encounters the massive warrior Goliath in the Valley of Elah (I Samuel 17)—appeared on Thursday. I wonder if the success of the Erwin brothers' films, and of other faith-adjacent productions generally, signifies some broader cultural shift: a new openness to unironic virtue, perhaps, or a discontent with stories that studiously ignore the sacred. 'There is a longing for content that, as I like to say, restores faith in things worth believing in,' Mr. Erwin says. 'Things you can watch with your kids or your parents. If you think about what that screen'—he gestures to a nearby wall-mounted television—'when it first came out, it was something that gathered everybody around it. 'I Love Lucy,' Andy Griffith, Carol Burnett. It gave multiple generations a common experience, and typically that common experience left you feeling you could aspire to a better version of yourself.' Mr. Erwin repudiates any suggestion that movies, TV shows and documentaries—'content,' to use his bloodless word, for which alas there is no convenient synonym—must be morally disinfected or artificially wholesome. 'House of David,' like the biblical story on which it's based, is full of envy, violence, lust and strife. But its hero is—here I have to use dated language—a clean and upright man. Mr. Erwin points me to remarks recently delivered by Vince Gilligan, creator of 'Breaking Bad,' the AMC series (2008-13) featuring one of the great antiheroes of modern television: the onetime school teacher, later meth dealer and all-around crime lord Walter White. 'For decades, we made the villains too sexy,' Mr. Gilligan said on receiving an award from the Writers Guild of America. 'Maybe what the world needs now are some good old-fashioned Greatest Generation-types who give more than they take—who think that kindness, tolerance and sacrifice aren't strictly for chumps.' Mr. Erwin thinks of his work as in some way supplying newer, nobler heroes. 'In my career, I can't recall a moment like this, when these types of resources are being given to creators like me'—that is, to filmmakers telling biblical and faith-adjacent stories—'in a way that allows us to keep creative control. It really is an amazing moment.' Two items make me think Mr. Erwin might be on to something about this cultural 'moment' we're in. First, 'Anora' won five Academy Awards on March 2, including best picture and best director. The movie is about a tough-minded stripper and prostitute—sex worker, to use the current term. A finely crafted film, I gather, but hardly one that can, as Mr. Erwin might put it, attract a multigenerational audience. That the major Hollywood-based studios have declined in both revenue and cultural influence over the past decade is, perhaps, not so hard to explain. Second, a Pew Research study published last month concluded that the share of Americans identifying as Christian has held more or less steady for the past five years, halting—'at least for now,' as the study says—a decades-long decline. Is America poised for a resurgence in religious belief? If so, I have to think 'content' creators like Mr. Erwin will find themselves in the center of it. In the meantime, Mr. Erwin offers the simple hope that his biblical adaptation will spur viewers to read the book on which it's based, rather as Peter Jackson's 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy persuaded many of its viewers to read J.R.R. Tolkien's original. 'I remember when some Amazon executives read the scripts for 'House of David' for the first time,' Mr. Erwin recalls. 'They said, These are really good. I said, It's based on a best-seller, man. Five billion copies sold. It's a good book. You should check it out.' Mr. Swaim is an editorial page writer for the Journal.
