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Fox News
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Fox News
'This is Us' star credits God for move from LA to Nashville
Chrissy Metz thanks God for her move to Nashville and getting into the music industry. The "This is Us" actress said she found herself talking to Kelly Clarkson's doctor at one point while she was going back and forth between there and Los Angeles, and he told her, "'You don't know me, but God literally told me to ask you about music.' And I was like, 'Wait, what?'" she told Fox News Digital about how she ended up in Music City. She continued, "And he's like, 'Do you want to write music? Do you sing? I don't even know that about you.' And I'm like, 'Yes, yes. Music was my first love.' And he was like, 'Well, I live in Nashville. If you want to come out to song-write, I'll set you up with meetings.' I was like, 'Are you joking? OK, thank you, God.' And then I came out to start just songwriting with incredible songwriters." The 44-year-old said she's originally from Florida, "so, the South is very familiar to me," and during the coronavirus pandemic her family lived there for eight months. "And it just sort of became like a very comforting place, and you can go anywhere, 10, 15 minutes," she said. "You can have the best food, see three different shows in one night and then write a song. Like, it's just... It's such a special place, and it feels very communal." She still owns a home in Los Angeles — before the move she had been going back and forth during hiatuses from "This is Us" — and when she was there recently, "my friends of 20 years are like, 'What are you doing?' So, I don't know that I'll ever completely give that up, but from what I'm doing now, I'm just, I am so happy here." "I am so happy here." Comparing L.A. to Nashville, Metz said that just running an errand is vastly different. WATCH: 'This is Us' star says she didn't really feel 'seen or heard' growing up "It took two hours and 15 minutes in L.A. It took me seven minutes here," she told Fox News Digital, adding that she feels like it gives her a better "quality of life" in Nashville, not having to sit in traffic for hours. "I hate to say quality of life, because for me, spending time in traffic is about quality of life. And listen, I'm grateful I have a car, I am able to drive, all those things, but I'm like, how much more productive could I be if I was doing something with that time? Not to say I don't roll calls or whatever, listen to music, rehearse, but it's just, I don't know, for right now in my life, in this season, it just feels good and comfortable and right." Along with working on music, the actress has also written a children's book called "When I Talk to God I Talk About Feelings." It is a follow-up to her first book, "When I Talk to God, I Talk About You." "I know as a kid, I had a hard time expressing my feelings," she explained. "And I think our world would be a very different place if we treated the soil and every kid felt like they were heard and seen from a very early age, that they could name their feelings, they could then express them, feel validated in them." "I know as a kid, I had a hard time expressing my feelings, and I think our world would be a very different place if we treated the soil and every kid felt like they were heard and seen from a very early age, that they could name their feelings, they could then express them, feel validated in them." She said she talks to God about her feelings "every single day, sometimes every single minute," which became the impetus for the book. While reading the first book to children at churches and schools, "they always wanted to talk about their feelings," she said. "We would ask about specific questions, and they would always want to talk about how they were feeling or something that made them scared or happy or nervous, and it certainly was a through line and a thread every single time, and I was like, 'Oh, I think the kids just completely created the second book for me,' you know?" WATCH: 'This is Us' star talks inspiration behind her children's book 'When I Talk to God, I Talk About Feelings' With 10 nieces and nephews and experience of having taught preschool, Metz remembered talking to children about a "particular toy or something that happened at home, but the underlining is, 'Hey, you know, I'm feeling a certain way. Will you listen to me?' And that just kept coming up, and it keeps coming up in any sort of conversation." She added, "If you really listen, you can hear what the kid, the adult, whomever you are talking to is really saying." Metz said she didn't really feel "seen or heard as a kid. I was a middle child of five. I learned a lot. I gleaned a lot, but it was tough." She continued, "So, you know, for those young people who may be in the same boat, I'm like, 'Oh, I see you, and I want to hear you, and I wanna see you.'" Metz hopes the book "will create conversation between" the reader and the listener. "And even if it's not a conversation you want to eventually have, hopefully it will just foster connection and time spent with who you're reading it to. Yeah, so, I mean, that's certainly our hope and the reason why I wanted to write it about feelings." "I hope that they take away that they're loved, that they are important and that their feelings are very valid," she added. Praying "from morning till night" is also an important part of her day. Along with praying before meetings, interviews, auditions and other things she does throughout the day, "whether it's friends or family who are going through something or if I see some, you know, an ambulance driving on the road, I will pray. I will just stop and pray for that person. And I think whether you call it prayer or however you call your higher power, I think positive collective consciousness is so important." WATCH: 'This is Us' star says she's 'so happy' after her move from LA to Nashville She said she starts every day with a prayer of gratitude, "and then I just continue through the day." "I'm always wanting to put positivity out there," she added. "And that for me looks like prayer in my connection and relationship with God." "When I Talk to God, I Talk About Feelings" is available now.
Yahoo
12-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Mandy Moore slams Amazon for delivering package to home lost in L.A. wildfire
Mandy Moore is blasting Amazon for delivering a package to her in-laws' burned-down home. 'Do better, Amazon. Can we not have better direction than to leave a package at a residence that no longer exists?' she wrote on her now-expired Instagram Stories on Feb. 11. 'This is my mother and father in law's home. SMH.' This boy band is headed to the Sphere, alright! In the photo, you can see the lone package placed in front of the destroyed residence, which was a casualty of the Eaton Fire. Amazon caught wind of the post and issued a statement. 'We've reached out to Ms. Moore via Instagram to apologize for this and to ask for more information from her in-laws so we're better able to investigate what happened here,' Amazon spokesperson Steve Kelly said in a statement obtained by PEOPLE. 'For weeks, we've advised those who are delivering on our behalf in southern California to use discretion in areas that were impacted by wildfires – especially if it involves delivering to a damaged home – that clearly didn't happen here.' Mariah Carey, Chubby Checker, Cyndi Lauper, OutKast and Phish get Rock Hall nominations The 'This is Us' star's family has been deeply impacted by last month's catastrophic wildfires in Los Angeles. She, her husband musician Taylor Goldsmith and their three children were forced to evacuate their Altadena home due to the Eaton Fire. Their home is still standing, but because of its proximity to the fires and other burning structures everything inside is 'near a total loss,' she said on Instagram. 'Clothes, furniture, pretty much everything will have to be disposed of…maybe even the walls too. We won't be there for a very long time as it and the neighborhood itself get sorted out and cleaned and the rebuilding starts.' The fire also destroyed the Altadena home of Moore's brother and sister-in-law Griff and Kit Goldsmith. The couple are currently expecting their first child and a GoFundMe has been set up to help them rebuild and recover. The Eaton Fire torched over 14,000 acres within the Pasadena and Altadena area after exploding on Jan. 7. It destroyed homes, businesses and schools and killed at least 17 people. It was completely contained as of Feb. 7. The cause is currently under investigation. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Chicago Tribune
29-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
‘Paradise' review: A Secret Service agent goes rogue
In the Hulu series 'Paradise,' Sterling K. Brown plays Xavier Collins, a Secret Service agent who shows up to work one morning to find the president dead on the floor of his bedroom. Looks like murder. But the official story — determined by those higher up the food chain than Xavier — will be natural causes. Why? Because there's a bigger story going on. Who killed the president, and why, is a MacGuffin in the eight-episode thriller. The real premise driving 'Paradise' is a spoiler that's revealed in Episode 1, but Hulu's secret is out with the release of the show's first three episodes, so I will be discussing that premise here. If you prefer to go in cold, here's your cue to set aside this review until after you've watched. The series comes from Dan Fogelman, the creator of the NBC family drama 'This is Us,' who is re-teaming with Brown for a very different genre. This time out, the pair have shifted their focus to speculative fiction wrapped inside an action-thriller. It's a big departure from the kind of show that turned them into household names, and creative variety like this is healthy. If only 'Paradise' didn't suffer from an issue affecting too many shows on streaming series: It should have been a movie. The president is named Cal Bradford, played by James Marsden. Instead of occupying the White House, he's wiling away his days in a mansion that's located in an eerily placid community with an uncanny 'Truman Show' quality, which is a tipoff. All is not what it seems. That's because the ultra-rich have decamped to a suburban fantasia constructed in an unusual location. How unusual? Well, it requires an artificial sky. Nothing is real, not exactly. Sequestered in perpetual comfort, this is where Cal is living in boring bliss before he's found in a pool of blood at the foot of his bed. 'Paradise' starts in the middle (the murder) rather than the beginning (the event that drove them into this place) and the jumbled timeline functions as an artificial spoiler that is parceled out through the generous use of flashbacks. Playing around with chronology can be intriguing. But sometimes it's a technique to hide flaws in an idea that isn't robust enough to unfold in order. It's all in the telling, right? And a shuffled timeline can't add what isn't there in terms of character development or emotional honesty. 'This is Us' relied on flashbacks too, exploring the formative years that shaped one family's dynamic. 'Paradise' attempts something similar (while not going quite so far back in time), and yet too often these moments come across as reductive explanations for complicated human behavior. A single father of two, Xavier brings a stoic quality to his work. He's buttoned up and formal, with the bearing of a man who never slouches. He is forever choosing his words carefully and clearly has many thoughts that he's decided are wiser left unsaid. In his marriage, Xavier's wife was the more emotionally expressive one, but in the present, she's conspicuously absent and eventually we learn why. There's a suggestion early on that Xavier might be suffering from a deteriorating memory or a brain injury. Before heading out for a morning run, he writes on a whiteboard the confusing words: 'Get brushed! Dress your teeth!' But any further hints that something is amiss are quickly abandoned; Xavier is very much on the ball and increasingly skeptical about the fakey-perfect surroundings he now calls home. Who can he trust and who is conspiring behind his back? He's ready to shed his quiet resignation and respectability politics in favor of something more proactive and renegade. It's a great performance, stuck in a show that doesn't fully know what to do with it. The architect of this faux city, where sunrises are sometimes delayed due to maintenance, is a tech billionaire played by Julianne Nicholson. Grief is what drove her to megalomania and we see in flashbacks which emotional buttons were pushed that led her there. But her backstory is too simplistic to work and the show isn't interested in the hows and whys of the corrupting power of massive wealth. Then there's the president himself, the handsome and charming son of billionaire Kane Bradford (Gerald McRaney). Cal has daddy issues and a habit of drinking away his self-loathing and disappointments. Most of the time he comes off as a ding-dong who failed his way to the top. 'Just another day in paradise,' he says sarcastically of their seemingly lovely but vaguely sinister community. Cal is actually the most intriguing character as written, because there's more to him than meets the eye (revealed through yet more flashbacks) and Marsden plays both sides of that coin — the spoiled rich kid who is his father's pawn, and the man of substance buried within — with real nuance and skill. Fundamentally, 'Paradise' falls into the narrative rut that befalls most sci-fi shows predicated on a population existing long-term somewhere else, where the powerful have a vested interest in maintaining lies and manipulating perceptions. There are only so many ways to tell that story, but I give 'Paradise' credit for finding a unique way into it. 'Paradise' — 2.5 stars (out of 4) Originally Published:
