People: Oscar producer says Rock rewriting monologue
Academy Awards producer Reginald Hudlin says host Chris Rock is hard at work rewriting his material for next month’s Oscar show.
Hudlin told “Entertainment Tonight” on Saturday that Rock is eager to host the 88th Academy Awards on Feb. 28, even as a few black celebrities have decided not to attend the show for its lack of diversity.
Hudlin said Rock had written a draft for the show, but threw it out and started anew as “things got a little provocative and exciting.”
He said he expects Rock to make jokes about the OscarsSoWhite hashtag, and that the film academy welcomes such humor.
Hudlin said he’s confident Rock’s material “will deliver something that people will be talking about for weeks.”
Miss Universe sets sights on Bond
The reigning Miss Universe has her eyes set on her next big dream: being a Bond girl.
Pia Alonzo Wurtzbach returned home to the Philippines for the first time since her crowning – and that awkward moment when host Steve Harvey mistakenly announced Miss Colombia as the winner instead of her. She said Sunday she’s using the intense attention she got after that controversy to focus on her causes like fighting HIV and AIDS.
“I’m using the attention to talk about my causes. Now, I have everybody’s attention,” she said.
She told a news conference that she plans to be tested for HIV publicly in New York to encourage other people to be tested, including in the Philippines, where HIV cases have risen alarmingly in recent years.
Miss Colombia Ariadna Gutierrez Arevalo was briefly crowned Miss Universe at the pageant in Las Vegas last month before Harvey returned to center stage to apologize and announced he misread the card, which had Miss Philippines as the winner and Colombia as the first runner-up.
Asked about her plans after her reign, Wurtzbach said she would consider possible job offers in the United States, adding: “I might be the next Bond girl, who knows? So, we’ll see, that’s the next dream.”
Many international actresses have been cast alongside actors playing British agent James Bond and are popularly known as “Bond girls.” Wurtzbach, 26, worked as an actress and model in the Philippines before winning the crown.
On Monday, Wurtzbach will meet President Benigno Aquino III, a bachelor who is rumored to have gone on a date with her before.
The birthday bunch
Actress Leigh Taylor-Young is 71. Actress Dinah Manoff is 58. Actress Christine Lakin is 37. Rhythm-and-blues singer Alicia Keys is 35. Pop musician Calum Hood (5 Seconds to Summer) is 20.