Hollywood’s biggest night is finally here — and the stars did not hold back when it came time to bring the fashion to the red carpet at the 2024 Academy Awards on Sunday night. From statement gowns to the classic and dapper, this year’s group of nominees closed out the 2024 awards season with a (rather stunning) bang. Follow us all night for the best Oscar-worthy looks.
Wilson at the ‘Young Woman and the Sea’ premiere in 2024
Rebel Wilson appeared at the Federal Court of Australia in Sydney on Monday to begin hearing procedures for the defamation lawsuit filed against her by actress Charlotte MacInnes. MacInnes plays a lead role in The Deb, the debut directorial film from Wilson, the release of which has been significantly delayed due to legal battles. Legal representatives for the actress referred to Wilson as a “bully” in court, accusing her of using MacInnes as “leverage” in a separate dispute with producers of the film.
The lawsuit primarily pertains to a series of Instagram posts published by Wilson. MacInnes claims the actress-director shared posts that suggested she was sexually harassed by Amanda Ghost — a producer on The Deb whom Wilson previously sued for breach of contract and fraud — and in turn damaged her reputation.
MacInnes and Ghost allegedly shared a bath together, while clothed in swimming suits, after returning from Bondi Beach in 2023. Wilson stated that MacInnes told her she was uncomfortable with the situation, and later suggested on Instagram that the young actress retract her complaint after receiving professional opportunities from Ghost. “The fact that this girl has been employed now by this ‘producer’ in the lead role of a production called GATSBY (ART Boston) and given a record label — should be all the proof you need as to why she has now changed her story,” Wilson wrote in 2024.
Representatives for MacInnes referred to this as “a malignant allegation against my client, that she sold the allegation of sexual harassment in exchange for her own professional and commercial benefit,” per the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Wilson’s legal representation echoed her suggestion that MacInnes benefited from the dispute. “She’s suffered no harm to her reputation, indeed, her career has progressed,” her lawyer said, per BBC. “All of these wealth of prizes and opportunities that have materialized has come, we would suggest, because Ms. MacInnes decided to tie herself to Ms. Ghost’s version … MacInnes lied by denying she had made a complaint to Ms. Wilson, that a producer had asked her to have a bath and shower with her and it made her feel uncomfortable.”
A lawyer for Wilson did not immediately return Rolling Stone‘s requests for comment.
In a sworn declaration filed in November, as part of legal ongoings between Ghost and Wilson, MacInnes disputed Wilson’s account. “Ms. Ghost and I went swimming in the ocean near the apartment, and the cold water caused Ms. Ghost to have a medical reaction. I helped Ms. Ghost by bringing her back to the apartment and running a warm shower and bath to warm her back up. We both remained in our bathing suits, since we had been swimming in the ocean,” she wrote. “There was nothing sexual or inappropriate about the incident whatsoever. It was a medical situation.” (A lawyer for MacInnes did not immediately return Rolling Stone‘s request for comment.)
In January, a Los Angeles judge granted Ghost’s request to sharply narrow the breach of contract and fraud lawsuit filed by Wilson. That case now largely focuses on claims against the production company behind The Deb, rather than Ghost as an individual.
The defamation hearing is expected to last nine days and will be livestreamed on the Federal Court of Australia’s YouTube channel.
Katy Perry has denied Ruby Rose’s claim that she sexually assaulted the actress more than a decade ago at a nightclub in Australia.
“The allegations being circulated on social media by Ruby Rose about Katy Perry are not only categorically false, they are dangerous, reckless lies,” a representative for Perry says in a statement to Rolling Stone. “Ms. Rose has a well-documented history of making serious public allegations on social media against various individuals, claims that have repeatedly been denied by those named.”
Rose made the claim against Perry on Sunday night, responding to a post about Perry poking fun at Justin Bieber’s headlining Coachella set. “Katy Perry sexual[ly] assaulted me at spice market nightclub in Melbourne. Who gives a shit what she thinks,” Rose wrote on Threads.
She continued to share more details in subsequent posts. “[Perry] didn’t kiss me,” Rose claimed. “She saw me ‘resting’ on my best friend’s lap to avoid her and bent down, pulled her underwear to the side and rubbed her disgusting vagina on my face until my eyes snapped open and I projectile vomited on her.”
Rose, who is Australian, claimed she had corroborative photos and that numerous people witnessed the encounter. She also indicated that she filed a police report on Sunday, though she didn’t specify if she was reporting the alleged incident with Perry or another matter that she had been discussing on social media. (A spokesperson for the Victoria Police service in Australia told Rolling Stone that as a matter of privacy, “We don’t ever confirm the identity of who we may or may not be investigating.” A representative for Rose did not immediately return Rolling Stone’s request for comment.)
Rose did not pinpoint the exact date of the alleged assault, but acknowledged it had occurred more than a decade ago. Reports from Australian news outlets place Perry and Rose hanging out together and hitting up the popular nightclub Spice Market in downtown Melbourne in August 2010.
The actress claimed she hadn’t shared the full scope of her experience, in part, because Perry had written letters of recommendation for Rose that helped her secure a visa to come to the United States. In 2013, Rose starred in the breakout Netflix series, Orange is the New Black. “I told the story publicly but changed it to be a ‘funny little drunk story’ because I didn’t know how else to handle it,” Rose said. “Later she agreed to help me get my US visa. So I kept it a secret.”
“I was only in my early 20s,” Rose added. “I’m now 40. It has taken almost 2 decades to say this publicly. Though I am so grateful to have made it long enough to find my voice, it just shows how much of an impact trauma and sexual assault takes. Thank you for seeing me.”
Michaela Coel and Ian McKellen in ‘The Christophers.’
Two quick questions: What makes great art great? And: When does Steven Soderbergh sleep?
That first query is the quietly thrumming engine behind The Christophers, a dual character study that, at any given moment, threatens to swerve down the side streets of an art-world thriller, an odd-couple buddy comedy, and an off-the-cuff theater piece. In this corner, we have an incorrigible, politically incorrect painter of the old guard — a bad-boy archetype who thrived in the Swinging Sixties and isn’t above dropping famous names for effect. (He used to hang with Ringo, “but not the Ringo you’re thinking of.”) In the other corner, a young artist whose ambition was smothered and has entered his orbit under false pretenses. The raging immovable object will butt up against the cool, collected irresistible force. The fight is over quaint philosophical concepts such as legacy, standards, inspiration, talent, and whether any of those things actually play into channeling the divine onto a blank canvas.
As for the second one, well, your guess is as good as mine regarding a definite answer. But the ridiculously prolific cineaste has mastered the art of quality quick ‘n’ dirty filmmaking in a way that makes you feel like he’s not getting a helluva lot of REM time. How else to explain the rapid-fire manner of his constantly expanding filmography, or the sneaking suspicion that you’ve no sooner finished watching one Soderbergh movie than being informed that another is coming soon to a theater near you?
Yet a new work from the guy who gave you Sex, Lies and Videotape — and Traffic, and Erin Brockovich, and Out of Sight, and Magic Mike, and Black Bag, and literally dozens of other movies that run the gamut from intriguing to flat-out brilliant — is still worth clearing your schedule for. The hit-to-miss ratio continually favors the former. And with The Christophers, he not only pokes at the notion of who gets gallery shows, Sotheby’s auctions, and small fortunes from every brush stroke. Along with screenwriter Ed Solomon, Soderbergh also constructs the ideal showcase for two separate generations of British actors to cook. It’s not news that Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel are extraordinary performers. What’s surprising is the way that this particular duo turn a wonky art-world story into its own distinctly wonderful work of art.
Coel is Lori Butler, an art restorer with a gift for mimicking others’ styles. It’s a skill that comes in handy for the occasional side gig as a forger, which is why Butler suddenly finds herself inside the inner sanctum of a legend. Once upon a time, the great enfant terrible of the British art-world Julian Sklar (McKellen) was renowned for a series of portraits he did that were centered around a young male muse. These were known as “the Christophers,” and they cemented his reputation. Now the reclusive Sklar rests on his laurels, collects residual checks from a former career as a reality-TV show judge — think Simon Cowell, but for painting — and films Cameos for quick cash.
Except Sklar’s estranged grown children (played by James Corden and Baby Reindeer’s Jessica Gunning) know that their father has an abandoned series of Christophers stashed away in his attic. Heartbroken, he never completed them. The two want to hire Butler to find the canvases, finish them herself in secret, and return them to the house. When their elderly dad eventually dies — he may or may not be terminally ill — his offspring will “find” these “undiscovered” masterpieces. They will them sell them for millions, and give her a cut.
Michaela Coel in ‘The Christophers.’Claudette Barius/NEON
Butler gets a job as Sklar’s assistant, all the better to sneak into the attic at will and locate the hidden treasures. She also has a personal stake in this gig that goes beyond a hefty payday, which Soderbergh and Solomon don’t reveal (or at least fully confirm) until late in the game. As for Sklar, the elder statesman still gets off on pushing buttons and pretending he’s keeping barbarians from crashing the high-art gate. The longer the two of them tool around his townhouse — kudos to the production design team, who’ve turned this residential Xanadu into a bohemian enclave equally cluttered with faded dazzle and fresh debris — the more Sklar tests his new hire. Sometimes he’s traipsing around partially undressed. (“Weinstein ruined the robe for the rest of us,” he gauchely laments.) Sometimes he’s corrosively caustic in his criticism of all work, including his own. Other times he’s simply, eloquently abusive. “‘You made me want to be an artist,'” Sklar says, parroting the starstruck young fan he imagines Butler to be. “No, your fucked-up childhood made you want to be an artist. I’m just what you tripped over as you scurried to freedom.”
Soon, this ex-peer of David Hockney and Lucien Freud begins to suspect something’s afoot. Butler tries to keep her secondary agenda a secret. Meanwhile, the siblings are getting impatient. Tables are bound to get turned, all in good time. But whether or not the good are rewarded, the greedy get their comeuppance, or old creative sparks are rekindled soon become beside the point. If the idea of questioning what makes great art great merely becomes fodder for first-rate bickering, bantering, and buffet of food for thought, it also provides the foundation for two massive talents to sync their strengths. You can feel the second-hand thrill of McKellen having a crack at someone like Sklar, laying on the thick bluster and letting occasional notes of sorrow — over lost loves, wasted potential, selling his soul for celebrity and selling out for late-act relevance — waft through the toxic fog. As for Coel, there may not be a better practitioner of the art of silent acting working today. So much of her take on this artist in perpetual waiting revolves around sizing situations up, keeping cards close to vests, masking intents, letting tiny ripples in deceptively placid surfaces stand in for big displays. Coel’s casual readings have the right amount of bite. Her death stares speak volumes.
Put these two together, let them thrust and parry like Olympic-level fencers, and give them each the chance to strut and fret through a tale of creative frustrations — right there, your moviegoing dollar is well spent. Soderbergh still loves derailing expectations and avoiding “easy” dramatic payoffs, and as with so much of his stuff, you find yourself being nudged into detours that end up enhancing the overall story. Had The Christophers just been a cross-generational punch-up, the sort of flinty showdown designed to throw off pleasurable sparks, you’d still walk away content. It remains a conduit for two of the best performances you’ll see all year. But Soderbergh and his two stars want to concentrate on the embers, what fans them and what keeps them burning.
Matthew Perry in London, 2016.
The Los Angeles drug dealer prosecutors dubbed the “Ketamine Queen” was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Wednesday for supplying the powerful dissociative anesthetic that killed actor Matthew Perry in his backyard jacuzzi two and a half years ago.
Jasveen Sangha had asked for a lenient sentence of time served, citing her lack of a prior criminal record and the 20 months she’s been locked up since her August 2024 arrest. Prosecutors urged the court to give her the 15 years behind bars, one year more than federal probation officials recommended.
“I do find you were probably one of the most culpable in the series of defendants before this court,” Judge Sherilyn P. Garnett said from the bench. “This is not a reflection of you being a bad person [but] engaging in illegal conduct. … You’re going to have to show some epic resilience.”
The judge also ordered Sangha to serve three years of supervised release. She declined to let Sangha leave custody for a medical procedure before self-surrendering to prison.
Perry’s stepdad, Keith Morrison, gave a victim impact statement, calling Perry a “briliant” person with “a lot of ghosts.” “It’s a daily, grinding sadness and sorrow we all feel,” he said. Addressing Sangha directly, he said, “I don’t hate you … but the fact is, you supplied an addict. … None of us want this to happen to you, but the law is the law.”
In her own address to the court, Sangha said she had learned from her “own poor decisions” and wanted to make amends. “I shattered people’s lives,” she said. “I wear my shame like a jacket.”
Sangha, 42, pleaded guilty to five federal criminal charges last September, admitting she supplied a large quantity of ketamine to Perry, including the fatal dose, and that she sold four vials of the drug to another man, Cody McLaury, in August 2019. McLaury died hours later from a mixed drug overdose with acute ketamine toxicity.
Perry, best known for his role on Friends, died on Oct. 28, 2023, from the acute effects of ketamine, his autopsy determined. He was 54 and had published his best-selling memoir a year earlier, publicly detailing his decades-long struggle with alcoholism and addiction.
According to her plea agreement, Sangha conspired with middleman Erik Fleming, 55, to sell the ketamine to Perry in October 2023. Sangha admitted she sold 51 vials that were delivered to Perry’s live-in personal assistant at the time, Kenneth Iwamasa. On the day of his death, Perry received at least three intramuscular injections of Sangha’s ketamine from Iwamasa, prosecutors said.
After learning that Perry died, Sangha called Fleming on Signal and updated the settings on her encrypted messaging apps to automatically wipe their messages. She also instructed Fleming to “delete all our messages,” forensic evidence revealed.
Fleming pleaded guilty on Aug. 8, 2024, to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine and one count of distributing ketamine resulting in death. He is scheduled to be sentenced on April 29. Iwamasa, who was the first to reach a plea agreement with prosecutors, pleaded guilty on Aug. 7, 2024, to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine resulting in death. He admitted that he repeatedly injected Perry despite having no medical training. He is scheduled to be sentenced on April 22.
The sprawling criminal case nabbed two medical doctors as well. They eventually pleaded guilty to selling large quantities of liquid ketamine to Perry in the weeks before he started buying from Sangha. Dr. Salvador Plasencia was sentenced to 30 months in prison last December, while Dr. Mark Chavez was given eight months of home detention and three years of supervised release.
Last month, Slash’s ex-wife Perla Hudson wrote a letter to the court, defending Sangha as a “selfless” person who deserved mercy. She said their friendship dated back to 2012, and Sangha frequently attended her son’s birthday parties and other family events.
“Over the years she has become like a younger sister to me and a beloved ‘fairy godmother’ to my sons,” Hudson wrote in her letter to the court. “When I went through my divorce, one of the most difficult times of my life, Jasveen was a constant and loyal friend.”
When she pleaded guilty last year, Sangha admitted she packaged her liquid ketamine in unmarked glass vials that did not indicate its strength. Before her sentencing, Sangha’s lawyers contested the quantity of drugs seized from her apartment. They argued that investigators tested only 27 pills out of more than three pounds of suspected methamphetamine.
“The court should not attribute the full seizure weight to methamphetamine without evidence showing that the sample reliably supports that conclusion,” her lawyer, Alexandra Kazarian, wrote in a sentencing memo. She said the record does not explain how the 27 pills were selected or whether the larger batch was uniform, undermining the “extrapolation” used to calculate Sangha’s sentencing range.
Kazarian also disputed the government’s claim that Sangha operated a stash house. While acknowledging evidence of drugs, cash, packaging materials, a scale, and some transactions tied to the apartment, she argued that prosecutors had not shown that drug distribution was a primary use of the residence. There was no evidence, she wrote, of regular customer traffic, surveillance indicating the apartment functioned as an ongoing storefront, or any meaningful comparison between its lawful use as a home and its alleged use for drug transactions.
“Defendant’s sentencing position tries to rewrite history to paint defendant — not those who died ingesting her drugs — as the victim,” Assistant U.S. Attorneys Ian Yanniello and Haoxiaohan Cai wrote to the court. “But defendant is not a victim. She repeatedly sold dangerous drugs in high volume; she ran a stash house and directed others to help sell her drugs; she obstructed justice to conceal her actions; and she was fully aware that her drug dealing contributed to at least two deaths — yet kept selling the drugs to others.”
They said the decision to randomly test a sampling of the thousands of “identical orange counterfeit” pressed pills that they recovered from her apartment was a standard nationwide practice. They called it a “meritless” argument to suggest they should have tested each of the 3,792 pills to support their finding the pills all contained methamphetamine.
In an April 3 filing, prosecutors said Sangha showed a striking lack of remorse during a recorded jail call on Christmas Day 2024. When an unidentified caller said, “We’re gonna sell those book rights,” Sangha responded, “Oh I know, the plan is in, the fucking trademark is going down,” prosecutors wrote. “Even if said in jest, this conversation suggests defendant does not appreciate the severity of her offenses, and instead sees her crimes as a potential future revenue stream. It also shows that time in custody has, thus far, failed in getting defendant to adequately reflect upon the grave harms she has caused,” they added.
Sam Levinson attends HBO’s ‘Euphoria’ Season 3 premiere at the TCL Chinese theatre in Hollywood.
After Zendaya recently speculated that Euphoria will end after its upcoming third season, the show’s creator Sam Levinson confirmed that there are currently “no plans” for a follow-up.
Speaking to Variety on the red carpet of the Season 3 premiere last night, Levinson said he writes “every season like it’s the last season,” adding that he has “no plans” for Season 4. The creator said he is focused on delivering a solid third season instead.
“I want to finish this as strong as I can,” Levinson said. “I’m cutting [episodes] seven and eight still. I’m putting some finishing touches. I just want to deliver a fucking slam dunk season.”
Last week, Zendaya said during an interview on The Drew Barrymore Show that she believes the third season of Euphoria will be its last. Barrymore asked straight-up if this would be the last season of the hit HBO series, to which Zendaya replied: “I think so, yeah.” While Zendaya didn’t really elaborate further, as Barrymore said she liked knowing the “mind frame” to go into a potential final season, Zendaya jumped in and said, “That closure is coming.”
Euphoria Season 3 will premiere on HBO on April 12. It’s been four years since the show’s celebrated second season, and along with Zendaya, much of the core cast will return, including Jacob Elordi, Sydney Sweeney, Hunter Schafer, Alexa Demie, Maude Apatow, Colman Domingo, and Eric Dane (in one of his last filmed appearances following his death earlier this year). This will also be the first Euphoria season without Angus Cloud, who played Fez and died in July 2023.
Levinson told Variety that the new episodes will honor Cloud and “keep him alive” through the story. “Losing Angus was really hard for us as a production. I loved him very deeply,” Levinson said. “I fought hard to keep him clean.”
He added, “I wanted to deal with that. I wanted to deal with questions about faith, about a power greater than ourselves. What it means to surrender your life and your will to God as you understand him?”
Levinson also reflected on losing Dane, who did participate in the production of Season 3. Levinson said he told Dane there was “no pressure” to return, but the actor wanted to be there.
“When he showed up, I noticed that his speech was a little slurred,” Levinson said. “He was a bit self-conscious, and I said, ‘This works perfectly. We’re gonna put five beer bottles in front of you, and you’re about to say all of the shit you would never say if you were sober.’ And we just had a blast shooting. We had 28 cast members on Saturday for the wedding. There’s all these people around, and he just showed up with such grace and dignity. He’s a consummate professional all the way through, and I miss him.”
