Prosecutors in Spain said they would ask a court to sentence Colombian pop star Shakira to eight years and two months in prison, if she is convicted.
MADRID -- Prosecutors in Spain said Friday they would ask a court to sentence Colombian pop star Shakira to eight years and two months in prison, if she is convicted in her expected trial for alleged tax fraud.
Shakira, whose full name is Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll, is charged with failing to pay the Spanish government 14.5 million euros ($15 million) in taxes between 2012 and 2014. The prosecutors said they would also seek a fine of 24 million euros ($24 million).
The indictment details six charges against Shakira. The singer this week rejected a settlement deal offered by prosecutors, opting to go to trial instead. A trial date has yet to be set.
Her publicists in London said in a statement Friday that Shakira "has always cooperated and abided by the law, demonstrating impeccable conduct as an individual and a taxpayer." The publicists accused the Spanish Tax Agency of violating her rights.
Shakira's Spanish public relations team said earlier this week that the artist has deposited the amount she is said to owe, including 3 million euros in interest.
Prosecutors in Barcelona have alleged the Grammy winner spent more than half of each year between 2012 and 2014 in Spain and should have paid taxes in the country.
Shakira recently ended an 11-year-long relationship with FC Barcelona star Gerard Piqué, with whom she has two children. The family used to live in Barcelona.
Article From & Read More ( Shakira could face 8-year prison sentence if convicted in trial for alleged tax fraud in Spain - KABC-TV )
https://ift.tt/Cj3AOzT
Entertainment
Article From & Read More ( 3 People Injured After Unsanctioned Fireworks Set Off at Dua Lipa Concert in Toronto - PEOPLE )
https://ift.tt/RZfiPaO
Entertainment
Country singer Amy Grant was rushed to Vanderbilt Hospital hospital in Nashville, Tennessee on Wednesday after she fell off her bicycle.
The 61-year-old crooner spent the night in the hospital and is now in 'stable condition,' according to the musician's rep who spoke with People.
The wife of 65-year-old singer Vince Gill suffered from cuts and abrasions from the accident. She was wearing a helmet during the fall.
The beauty was enjoying a bicycle ride in Nashville with a friend when the fall occurred.
She is doing fine, her rep said, but the musician stayed overnight in the hospital only as a precaution, it was shared.
Grant is best known for the songs Baby Baby, Could I Have This Dance, This Is My Father's World and El Shaddai.
She began her career in contemporary Christian music before crossing over to pop music in the 1980s and 1990s.
It has been a bumpy few years for the star.
In June 2020 she had open-heart surgery to take care of a rare condition she was born with: PAPVR (partial anomalous pulmonary venous return).
'I think women tend to put their health on the back burner,' the singer told Good Morning America in 2021.
'It's more like, "Oh my children, my grandchildren, my work, my spouse." All of those things and we need the gift of each other.
'So even if you go, "Oh, I got nothing on the radar,' just get somebody else to check it out."'
In December Grant will be honored in Washington DC at the Kennedy Center Honors.
'Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine ever receiving this prestigious Kennedy Center Honors,' said the musician this week when she was named as one of the honorees alongside George Clooney and U2.
'Through the years, I've watched so many of my heroes serenaded by colleagues and fellow artists, always moved by the ability of music and film to bring us together and to see the best in each other.'
Grant continued, 'I cannot wait to celebrate with my fellow honorees, friends, and family. Thank you for widening the circle to include all of us.'
PHILADELPHIA — A Baltimore family is suing a Sesame Street-themed amusement park for $25 million over claims of racial discrimination, alleging multiple costumed characters ignored a 5-year-old Black girl during a meet-and-greet event last month.
The lawsuit comes in the wake of a video, shared widely on social media, showing two other Black girls apparently being snubbed by a costumed employee during a parade at the park in Langhorne, outside Philadelphia. Sesame Place apologized in a statement and promised more training for its employees after the video went viral earlier this month.
The suit, which seeks class action status, was filed in a federal court in Philadelphia against SeaWorld Parks, the owner of the Sesame Place, for “pervasive and appalling race discrimination.”
The lawsuit alleges four employees dressed as Sesame Street characters ignored Quinton Burns, his daughter Kennedi Burns and other Black guests during the meet-and-greet on June 18. The lawsuit says “SeaWorld’s performers readily engaged with numerous similarly situated white customers.”
The 5-year-old girl’s family is asking for $25 million in their lawsuit alleging racial discrimination.Shutterstock
During a press conference held Wednesday, one of the family’s attorneys, Malcolm Ruff, called for transparency from SeaWorld and for the company to compensate the Burns family. The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
This summer, Sydney Sweeney experienced her first glimpse of millennial burnout. At 24, the actress is by definition a member of Gen Z, but this feels like a technicality given the amount of life experience she has. The panic attacks began in June, fast and furious events that convinced her brain she was probably dying. “I was losing my shit,” she says.
She went home to the Pacific Northwest for two weeks of family-mandated phone-free time, grounding herself in the region’s fresh air, “hiking and skiing and doing what I truly love.” The regimen worked in the immediate sense — though, she adds, “I still can’t get my mind to shut up, and I don’t sleep” — and helped her realize that her punishing schedule of back-to-back film and TV projects was working against her. It’s a hard lesson to accept, given the amount of pressure Sweeney feels to maximize this pivotal moment in her career — and the way the very same anxiety often will convince her that the momentum could stop at any time.
Related Stories
Sydney Sweeney
We’re having breakfast in New York, three days after the Emmy nominations were announced; she scored nods for both Euphoria (supporting actress in a drama) and The White Lotus (supporting actress in a limited series). She has just flown down from Boston to New York, where she’s spending several months in production for Marvel’s Madame Web movie, with very little publicly known about her character. I’ve been asking her about her time in the New England city in hopes of gleaning something — anything — about the highly secretive Spider-Man offshoot.
“I’m a very open person,” she says. “I love to talk about everything,” noting the fact that it eats at her that she can’t open up about Madame Web. I eventually learn that she’s preparing for the role with fight training, movement training and something called Reformacore Pilates, and that she was drawn to the film because she “liked the personal struggles that the character goes through.” She spends a lot of time talking about the cross-country road trip she took — with her mother and her rescue dog, Tank — to get to Boston and how she much prefers that city’s slower pace to New York’s frenetic nature. Here on the rooftop of Sweeney’s favorite Manhattan hotel, though, we’re insulated from the chaos of midtown.
The venue is different than the places one would expect to find burgeoning A-listers — the Sunset Tower it is not — but she’s become friends with the staff and even good-natured ribbing from friends and family hasn’t persuaded her to decamp for fancier pastures. Her loyalty proves to be valuable currency when, later, endless boxes full of designer fashion for this shoot start arriving at the happily accommodating front desk at record pace.
Over the course of her short career, she’s had to learn how to make herself at home pretty much anywhere. White Lotus introduced a certain Eloise at the Plaza energy into her life: The HBO miniseries, a darkly satirical examination of white privilege at an upscale Hawaiian resort, was shot on location at the Four Seasons in Maui during the throes of the pandemic. The sequestration was a COVID-protocol necessity but lent itself greatly to the project, giving the cast — fellow Emmy nominees Connie Britton (who plays her mother), Murray Bartlett, Jake Lacy, Steve Zahn, Jennifer Coolidge, Alexandra Daddario and Natasha Rothwell — a chance to immediately bond via what Sweeney describes as an idyllic routine of celebrating each day’s wrap with a sunset swim. Britton mentions during a phone call that she and Sweeney actually met for the first time in the pool at the Four Seasons. “To be honest, the shoot was more fun for the cast than for me,” show creator Mike White says with a laugh when asked to corroborate the set environment. “I would look out from my balcony while working and see them having drinks. But it gave everyone a camaraderie and depth of relationship that, particularly with Connie and Sydney, we could exploit for the show.”
Sydney Sweeney was photographed July 15 at 1896 Studios and Stages in Brooklyn. Fendi top, Fred Leighton jewelry.
It also was Sweeney’s first time at an exclusive resort, giving her a front-row seat to a class divide that she’s still grappling with: balancing her lower-middle-class upbringing and the wealth-filled spaces she finds herself in now. For much of the shoot, she had the run of the place, getting to know the staff well enough to pop in to the kitchen and grab food from the refrigerator. “We were all friends, and [the resort] felt like a house that belonged to all of us,” she says. “Then toward the end, they opened up the resort to guests, and it became clear I did not belong [among the clientele]. I would go to breakfast in my sweatshirt and pajama shorts and get the most disgusting glares from the guests that I dared to show up like that.”
White describes the introduction of the real world into the cast and crew’s COVID bubble as “almost traumatic” but ultimately powerful in the way it served the narrative: “Suddenly we’re watching employees, our family, get bossed around — it added to the meta feeling of the show reflecting life.”
Euphoria, with its rampant drug use and unflinching sexual politics, sets fire to everything one thought a high school drama could or should be — it’s also HBO’s most-watched show after Game of Thrones. Sweeney was initially told that Euphoria‘s casting director didn’t think she was right for the role of Cassie — a sweet, popular girl whose insecurities and daddy issues drive her into the arms of boys at school — and that she shouldn’t bother coming in to audition. Her agent — she’s been with the same reps at Paradigm for her entire career— had other clients who’d gone in to read for the part and was willing to pass Sweeney the script. She eventually put herself on tape, reading with her mom, and sent it to the Euphoria team. They booked her directly. (“No hate to the casting director,” she adds. “I love her now.”)
Sweeney is frank about what she went through — and what she says she’s still going through — to make it in this business. “The rejection you get while you’re trying to learn to be yourself is insane,” she says. “It’s insane how adults look at you.” Even with two Emmy noms, she says her sense of being a Hollywood outsider remains. “I had no idea getting into this industry how many people have connections. I started from ground zero, and I know how fucking hard it is. Now I see how someone can just walk in a door, and I’m like, ‘I worked my fucking ass off for 10 years for this.’ ”
Sweeney spent her childhood in a small town near Spokane on the Washington-Idaho border, an experience she describes as simultaneously idyllic and wholesome, bordering on chaste. She was deeply committed to her education at a pastoral private school; she took multiple languages and was her high school valedictorian. Unlike the hedonistic characters on Euphoria, she never went to a party, opting to study and then be on call for the inevitable 3 a.m. phone call from friends requesting a ride home. Her parents were strict — she recalls having to sneak episodes of the Shailene Woodley-starring ABC Family sitcom The Secret Life of the American Teenager — but she never rebelled. To this day, her drink of choice is water, and over breakfast she tells me she’s never even tried coffee. “If I’m celebrating, or it’s a very rare occasion, I’ll have a Shirley Temple,” she says.
Money was limited at home — financial aid helped pay for private school and college — but never an urgent problem until the family moved to L.A. when Sweeney was 13 to facilitate her acting dreams. She can’t pinpoint where or when that itch started, describing it more as an emerging “idea in my head, a goal, of who I wanted to become.” Sweeney’s parents gave up their house and life in Spokane, but the extreme cost of L.A. living priced them out of the real estate market and into a motel: “We lived in one room. My mom and I shared a bed and my dad and little brother shared a couch.” Sweeney was relatively unaware of their financial hardships until her parents’ relationship started falling apart, a combination she says of losing their home and savings and the strain of the disapproval of their life moves by family and friends back in Washington. She kept auditioning throughout her teens, taking “really shitty projects” for little pay (sometimes $100 a day), hoping it would be enough to keep her parents’ faith and maybe even make the family whole again. “I thought that if I made enough money, I’d be able to buy my parents’ house back and that I’d be able to put my parents back together,” she says. “But when I turned 18, I only had $800 to my name. My parents weren’t back together and there was nothing I could do to help.”
Sydney Sweeney was photographed July 15 at 1896 Studios and Stages in Brooklyn. Styling by Molly Dickson Gucci look with hat, Fred Leighton jewelry, Christian Siriano skirt (hanging).
****
Sweeney says that SharpObjects, Marti Noxon’s 2018 HBO miniseries based on the novel of the same name, was her first truly successful audition. She read with the director, the late Jean-Marc Vallée, and it felt “amazing.” She booked a role as Alice, a patient at a mental health facility whose death haunts star Amy Adams. It would be her first of several dramas on the premium cable network as well as the first of many jobs alongside established actresses, including Elisabeth Moss on The Handmaid’s Tale. Sweeney remembers Adams for her advice about balancing a successful acting career and her desire to have a family — in March, reports surfaced that Sweeney was engaged to restaurateur Jonathan Davino after she was photographed with an engagement ring; she declines to comment on her relationship status and doesn’t wear a ring to the interview. “I want to have a family, I’ve always wanted to be a young mom, and I’m worried about how this industry puts stigmas on young women who have children and looks at them in a different light,” she says. “I was worried that, if I don’t work, there is no money and no support for kids I would have.”
Adams assured her it could be done, but the insecurities over her financial health and the momentum of her career remain years later. There’s no longer a pressure to say yes to every offer, and she’s learned not only to negotiate her salary but to revel in the process of standing up for herself, yet she’s filling her schedule with as many movies and series as she can pack in. “If I wanted to take a six-month break, I don’t have income to cover that,” she says. “I don’t have someone supporting me, I don’t have anyone I can turn to, to pay my bills or call for help.” Surely HBO paychecks afford a lifestyle immune from rising gas prices? “They don’t pay actors like they used to, and with streamers, you no longer get residuals,” Sweeney notes. “The established stars still get paid, but I have to give 5 percent to my lawyer, 10 percent to my agents, 3 percent or something like that to my business manager. I have to pay my publicist every month, and that’s more than my mortgage.” It’s not that she wants people to feel badly for her, but she is adamant that the luxuries of the job not gloss over the realities of the business. To stay relevant as a young actress, particularly one so deeply entrenched in and reliant on the internet generation, requires investment. There’s a lot of press to do, and the associated costs — styling, tailoring, hair and makeup, travel — aren’t always covered by a network. She says this is what motivated her pivot into brand deals, taking gigs as a Miu Miu ambassador and starring in an Armani beauty campaign: “If I just acted, I wouldn’t be able to afford my life in L.A. I take deals because I have to.”
After five years of constant work, she was able to buy a home in Los Angeles — something that’s still deeply out of reach for many of the city’s residents — and almost instantaneously the location leaked onto real estate blogs. She was scrolling through TikTok one day and discovered a trend in which college students (the house is near one of the city’s universities) drive past her front door and try to get a picture. Paparazzi have been camped out, ignoring personal pleas from her mother to pack up and leave. I mention the Kardashians, ensconced in their gated communities far outside the city, and she deadpans that she maxed out with this home purchase; there’s nothing left for a gate. “I couldn’t believe I was even able to buy a house,” she says. “I want to be able to stay there.”
Sydney Sweeney was photographed July 15 at 1896 Studios and Stages in Brooklyn. Fendi look with shoes, Fred Leighton jewelry, Piers Atkinson headpiece.
***
“The first time I saw her transform into this petulant child [on The White Lotus], I was shocked,” says Britton. “But she’s also so funny. We were exploring these vitriolic relationships while we had the time of our lives.” In the audition process, White was taken by Sweeney’s decision to play Olivia Mossbacher with an air of intimidation rather than the straightly funny approach other actresses took. “And then she’s obviously nothing like that as a person, so that all felt really exciting,” he says. “She’s very likable and charming, but then you put her in front of a camera and — I don’t want to sound like some Old Hollywood freak — but she has these powers. Certain actors have a certain kind of magic, and she is definitely one of them.”
Due to network scheduling, The Handmaid’s Tale made it to air before Sharp Objects, marking it as her onscreen introduction for many viewers. She played Eden, a teenaged handmaid assigned to an arranged marriage with Max Minghella’s Nick in the second season. It was a supporting but impactful role. It became the first time she was recognized in public with frequency, often by women who felt compelled to tell her they hate her character: “I think most people wanted Elisabeth’s [Moss] and Max’s characters to be together, and Eden disrupted that.”
Sweeney in The Handmaid’s Tale as Nick’s young wife, Eden, the role that first got her noticed in public, often by women who’d tell her how much they hated her character.
Handmaid’s Tale was nominated for 20 Emmys that year, with the entire cast in attendance. This year’s telecast, which NBC is set to air Sept. 12, Sweeney’s 25th birthday, will mark her return. Zendaya was the only Euphoria castmember to receive a nod, for the show’s first season, and Sweeney says her own nom came as a surprise: “Of course I was hoping for Euphoria because I’m so proud of my character and I put a lot into it, but I didn’t think I was going to get it because of the other actresses who gave such incredible performances this year.”
Francesca Orsi, head of drama and executive vp programming at HBO, calls the double nomination a thrilling moment for the network: “Sydney has an incredible ability to create unforgettable, breakout performances, and with Cassie and Olivia, she brought such versatility to her portrayal of these two very different young women.”
The show’s second season, for which she is nominated, focuses on the burgeoning addiction of Zendaya’s Rue while also pitting Maddie (Alexa Demie) against Cassie as Sweeney’s character self-destructs with her best friend’s ex-boyfriend (Jacob Elordi’s Nate). Sam Levinson, who has near total creative control over the show (he’s the creator, director and sole staff writer), called Sweeney during the hiatus between the first and second seasons. “He read me that first scene where Cassie and Nate go into the bathroom,” she says of the ill-fated couple’s first secret hookup. “And I was like, ‘Oh my God, Sam, you’re a madman.’ ” The plot twist paid off, spurring one of the constantly memed series’ most viral images (of Cassie hiding in the bathtub, face struck with fear) and laying the groundwork for her eventual snot-ridden breakdown monologue (“I have never, ever been happier!”) that felt like the star’s clear Emmy submission. “I feel really bad for Cassie; she’s losing herself so much,” Sweeney says of her character. “But I thrive doing that shit. People talk about how heavy this season is, but I love it.”
Sydney Sweeney was photographed July 15 at 1896 Studios and Stages in Brooklyn. Area headpiece.
There also have been reports about the way Levinson handles the making of the show: Guest stars like Minka Kelly have given interviews about initial drafts of scripts they felt were overly sexual, there were rumors of actress Barbie Ferreira feuding with the creator, and HBO was forced to issue a statement in response to concerns over long working hours, saying the set was in “full compliance with all safety guidelines and guild protocols.” Levinson declined to participate in this story, and Sweeney declines to discuss this element of the show in much detail, noting, “I fully trust in the filmmakers that I work with, and I’m always so excited for whatever Sam writes.” She adds that she forgets a lot of the minutiae of her shows and what it’s like behind the scenes: “It’s as if it’s someone else’s life.” This could be an evasion, but at the photo shoot a few hours after our breakfast, I see her lose herself so completely, I’m almost willing to buy it. When the cameras click on, Sweeney gets so laser focused, it’s almost like she’s dissociating. She tells me that, in photo shoots and on red carpets, she’ll even create a persona for herself, a way to calm her nerves and add a layer of armor between who she really is and who the job requires her to be. (The version you see in the cover photo is “Daphne.”)
“People forget that I’m playing a character, they think, ‘Oh, she gets naked onscreen, she’s a sex symbol,’ ” she says, referring to her many nude scenes in Euphoria. “And I can’t get past that. I have no problems with those scenes, and I won’t stop doing them, but I wish there was an easier way to have an open conversation about what we’re assuming about actors in the industry.”
Left: Sweeney (with Brittany O’Grady, right) in HBO’s The White Lotus. Right: The actress on the cable network’s Euphoria. She received Emmy nominations for both shows.
She’s trying to put a bit of that power back into her own hands with the launch of her production company, Fifty-Fifty Films. The first project on the slate is an adaptation of Jessica Goodman’s 2020 YA novel They Wish They Were Us; it’s set as a limited series at HBO Max under the new title The Player’s Table. It’s a murder mystery that takes place at an elite East Coast private school, and Goodman describes it as a story about a young woman (Sweeney) grappling with class dynamics and sexual politics and trying to find agency in her life. “When we met, it was immediately obvious to me that Sydney was very savvy, that she was very self-aware about the way she is viewed in the world and that she wanted to take charge of her own career,” says Goodman. “People underestimate young women in all industries, but especially in media and entertainment. She is such a force and really knows how to get things done in a way that might surprise people who only watch her on TV.”
As Sweeney starts to transition into the next phase of her career, she’s thinking a lot about her professional values. One of the most disconcerting things she’s noticed about the industry is the way it fails to facilitate loyalty — whether to yourself and your beliefs or to the people around you. “It’s built to try to make you backstab people,” she says. “It’s insane. My agent is my best teammate, and I’ll have her forever.” But, she adds, “I see how people are like, ‘We support each other’ — and I’m like, ‘No. You fucking don’t.’ ” I ask her whether she has people to commiserate with. No. Not the other girls from Euphoria? “We don’t really talk about that kind of stuff,” she says.
While fame has expanded her awareness of the way the world works, it’s having a chilling effect on her personal life. “I can feel my bubble of who I can talk to and share intimate things with and have relationships shrinking, shrinking, shrinking,” she says, explaining that she experiences it as a loss of control. “You’ll write about this and people won’t believe what I say. And that’s really, really hard.”
This story first appeared in the July 27 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
Sydney Sweeney was photographed July 15 at 1896 Studios and Stages in Brooklyn. Area dress, headpiece and necklace, Giuseppe Zanotti boots.
Article From & Read More ( Sydney Sweeney on Fame, Hollywood Fakery and the Pressure of Paying the Bills - Hollywood Reporter )
https://ift.tt/9g2inpK
Entertainment
(CNN)According to Candace Cameron Bure, everything is "all good" between the actress and JoJo Siwa after Siwa pegged her as the "rudest celebrity" she's ever met.
Siwa posted a video on TikTok over the weekend that went viral in which she shared a photo of Bure, but no details about how she was rude.
It had the internet trying to theorize what happened between the former "Dancing With the Stars" contestants that could have caused drama.
"I had no idea where it came from and so I immediately tried to reach out to her through a mutual friend," Cameron Bure said. "My publicist contacted her manager and I DM'd her because I didn't know what happened."
CNN has reached out to Siwa for comment.
She said she was able to speak with Siwa and asked what had happened because as far as Cameron Bure could recall, they had had a "great" time meeting on "The Kelly Clarkson Show."
Cameron Bure said the singer and former "Dance Moms" star was at first hesitant to tell her why she felt slighted by Cameron Bure since she was just participating in a TikTok trend and "didn't think it was a big deal."
But the "Fuller House" star said they kept talking.
"She said, 'I met you at the Fuller House premiere when I was 11 years old, and we were all on the red carpet. I had come up to you and said, "Can I have a picture with you?" and you said to me, "Not right now." And then proceeded to do what you were doing and take pictures with other people on the red carpet,'" Cameron Bure recalled Siwa explaining.
She said the now 19-year-old Siwa told her, "You weren't even mean and I get it now, as an adult, when you're on the red carpet and everything's happening and you're being pulled in different directions, but at that time I was 11."
"I kind of broke your 11-year-old heart, I didn't take a picture with you!" Cameron Bure said, adding, "I feel crummy. JoJo, I'm so sorry!"
Cameron Bure said it's now "all good on the JoJo front."
And she learned from it.
"I think that the lesson we can learn is to be mindful of no matter how many followers you have, even a 10 second trending TikTok video can do damage," Cameron Bure said. "Because our words matter and our actions matter and whether you have 50 million followers or 500 followers or five followers, we all influence the people around us."
Top Chef vet Howard “Howie” Kleinberg, who finished in seventh place in the Bravo competition series’ Miami-set third season, died last week of a heart attack. He was 46.
“The Top Chef family is saddened to learn about the unexpected passing of Howard Kleinberg from Season 3,” Bravo said in a statement posted on Twitter late Tuesday. “Howie’s passion for cooking filled so many and our deepest sympathy goes out to his family and friends.”
Kleinberg made a name for himself on the Miami restaurant scene, opening several eateries, including Bulldog Barbecue, following his Top Chef run.
“I am just finding out how many lives he touched,” Kleinberg’s mother, Susan, told the Miami Herald. “He was married to his passion in life, which was his cooking.”
