Month: June 2021

In a shocking legal twist, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has overturned Bill Cosby’s sexual assault conviction. He will go free after serving less than three years of his ten-year prison sentence. Few people expected this to happen, ever, let alone after a judge denied parole to the disgraced TV star and comedian after he refused to participate in prison treatment programs. As it turns out, though, the court’s opinion (which followed a criminal court judge labeling him a “sexually violent predator”) is a procedural matter.

The legal process got all botched up due to a previous prosecutor (Bruce Castor, who gave a My Cousin Vinny-esque speech during Trump’s second impeachment trial) agreeing not to prosecute Cosby. A subsequent prosecutor ran with the case after several accusers came forward, years after Cosby’s $3.3 million settlement to Andrea Constand and his 2005 admission that he’d drugged and raped her and other women. And when the PA Supreme Court ruled that Cosby should go free (on a technicality), this was music to the ears of his former Cosby Show co-star, Phylicia Rashad.

“FINALLY!!!!” A terrible wrong is being righted,” The woman who played Claire Huxtable tweeted. “[A] miscarriage of justice is corrected!”

As one might expect, uh, this wasn’t the wisest thing in the world to tweet. Rashad’s got her Twitter replies (from the general public) turned off, but that hasn’t stopped anyone from quote-tweeting her while wondering how Rashad’s employer, Howard University (where she’ll be dean of the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts), will view her vigorous celebration of her former TV husband.

CNN’s Jake Tapper summed things up pretty well: “The actress who played Mrs Huxtable weighs in.”

Yep, Rashad does appear to overlook what actually happened here, in that no justice was corrected, and Cosby certainly wasn’t acquitted. He’s only going free because of prosecutorial error, and people have noticed.

Others urged Rashad to sit down and maybe, you know, delete that tweet.

Throughout his case, Cosby has steadfastly refused to express remorse or admit wrongdoing regarding his alleged actions. He even insisted that he’d prefer to serve his entire sentence than make such an admission. Details of his impending release should be forthcoming.

(Via PA Supreme Court)

Summertime ’06 was a huge release for Vince Staples. Following a handful of mixtapes in the years prior, the rapper’s 2015 debut album was the first time a lot of fans were exposed to him. Additionally, the album remains Staples’ one of his biggest chart successes, at is has his highest peak on the Billboard Hot Rap Albums chart at No. 2. That album came out six years ago today, and Staples’ celebration on Twitter made him a trending topic.

This afternoon, he tweeted, “Summertime ’06 was 6 years ago. Thank you to everyone who listened. [heart emoji] N.I.P. TSkrap.” He then added a couple hours later, “Favorite song from Summertime ’06?” Sure enough, he got his answer, as “Norf Norf” started trending.

He went on to describe his humble housing arrangement while making the album: “When Summertime ’06 was being made we stayed off 7th & Temple four deep in a one bedroom apartment with one 380. Life change fast lol.”

Back when Staples first announced the album, he wrote of it on Instagram (as Stereogum notes), “Love tore us all apart. Love for self, love for separation, love for the little we all had, love for each other, where we came from… Summer of 2006, the beginning of the end of everything I though I knew. Youth was stolen from my city that Summer and Im left alone to tell the story. This might not make sense but that’s because none of it does, we’re stuck. Love tore us all apart.”

Ready to feel old? Terminator 2: Judgment Day turns 30 years old this week, and to commemorate the blockbuster sequel that set the mold for blockbuster, sci-fi action, The Ringer put together a pretty tremendous oral history that takes a look back at the making of the Arnold Schwarzenegger classic.

At the time of its release, the film was a showcase of cutting-edge visual effects thanks to Robert Patrick’s T-1000 who could morph into liquid metal and change its appearance at will. (The role almost went to Billy Idol, so try not to think about how amazing that would’ve been.) More importantly, T2 was a notable departure from the first film, which was basically a horror film where Schwarzenegger played a ruthless, murdering machine villain on the hunt for Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor.

This time around, Hamilton wasn’t a damsel in distress, and Schwarzenegger would be the hero of the film, as he shows up to protect her son and leader of a future rebellion, John Connor. Played by Edward Furlong, John’s addition to T2 added heart and levity to the heavy threat of a future apocalypse, and a surprisingly candid James Cameron revealed how he decided to include him in the sequel. Via The Ringer:

I remember sitting there once, high on E, writing notes for Terminator, and I was struck by Sting’s song, that “I hope the Russians love their children too.” And I thought, “You know what? The idea of a nuclear war is just so antithetical to life itself.” That’s where the kid came from.

OK, so the answer turned out to be drugs, but let’s not pretend that wasn’t the case for every single movie from the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. And probably huge chunks of Avatar because have you seen that movie? They have sex with their hair. It’s wild.

(Via The Ringer)

Disney’s Cinderella has been remade countless times over the years. Who could forget Hilary Duff’s portrayal of the princess as a modern-day California teen, or Brandy’s iconic role in the 1997 made-for-TV remake (which is finally coming to Disney+)? Now, Amazon Studios has acquired the rights to a live action remake of the classic Disney tale, tapping Camila Cabello to take on the titular role, and they’ve just shared a first look at the film.

The teaser shows how Amazon Studios has put their spin on the classic Cinderella tale. It opens with an ambitious Cabello gearing up to open her own clothing shop in town. By the looks of it, the remainder of the film follows the original movie’s plot line as Cabello finds a way to make it to an extravagant ball.

Along with Cabello, the teaser depicts Billy Porter as Fab G, Cabello’s gender-fluid fairy godparent. According to Consequence Of Sound, the remainder of the cast includes Idina Menzel as Cinderella’s evil stepmother, Pierce Brosnan as King Rowan, Minnie Driver as Queen Beatrice; John Mulaney and James Corden as the mice John and James, Missy Elliott as a town crier, and Nicholas Galitzine as Prince Robert (aka Cabello’s love interest).

In a statement alongside the teaser, Cabello wrote: “this was one of the most magical experiences of my life. I can’t wait for you to see it.”

Watch Amazon’s Cinderella teaser above.

Cinderella is out 9/3 on Amazon Prime.

In a scene from season 2 of Dead To Me, uptight real estate agent Jen Harding (Christina Applegate) and sweet optimist Judy Hale (Linda Cardellini) decide to let off some steam at a bar after burying the body of Cardellini’s ex-husband, Steve. Judy starts to talk about how Steve was her “person” – the first person who ever truly made her feel loved – and starts crying. Jen, overcome with emotion, joins her in crying. “You’re the kindest person in the whole f*cking world. I love you so much, I really do,” Jen manages through her tears. The two friends hug tightly and Jen asks Judy if she’ll be her person.

“Hey there,” interrupts a well-dressed man holding a drink, sidling up behind the two women. “Do you guys wanna dance?”

“Excuse me? Do you see that we’re in the middle of something here? Does it look like my friend wants to f*cking dance? Read the room, f*cko!” Jen bursts out.

In one single line, the heaviness of the scene is broken, and in the span of three minutes, the show has seamlessly morphed from making you tear up to making you laugh out loud. The moment may be one of the gold standards of what makes Dead To Me the definitive dramedy of this moment, and what showrunner Liz Feldman strove to create with the series.

“I joke around with Christina and Linda all the time because on most shows, or traditionally on shows or in movies, actors are generally playing one thing per scene. Or they have one objective. Their arc is kind of a hero’s journey, beginning, middle, and end,” Feldman told Uproxx. “And on our show, in any given scene, the actors are playing like, five or six things. There’s just so much going on and there’s so much sort of story layered in there that it’s complicated. It’s definitely not the way that I learned how to tell a story, but it is the way I do experience life — you know, one conversation can be about one topic, but there can be about a million feelings running underneath.”

The above-mentioned bar scene is a prime example of that, but over the show’s two seasons and twenty episodes, there are multiple instances — sometimes two or three times in one episode — where those complicated layers come to life. And those instances range from everything as serious as a funeral to as celebratory as a birthday party.

“I think I had for a very long time wanted to branch out of the broad comedy genre that I had been pretty firmly fixed into. Because I found as an audience member, as a fan, I was enjoying darker and darker material,” Feldman said. “I was given a real gift in developing Dead To Me, because I didn’t develop it under the auspices of any specific producer or mandate. It just sort of sprung from somewhere inside of me. And it was so weird and outside of the norm of what I would usually bring to the marketplace, that I was almost like allowing myself as an exercise to create a show that bridged all the genres that I like to watch so much.”

While Feldman acknowledged that she “leaned into creating a world that felt at least emotionally textured and complicated in the way that life is,” it’s Applegate and Cardellini who bring the nuances of those complicated emotions to life. And when it comes to balancing those comedic and dramatic tones, the showrunner trusts her two leads implicitly.

“Because Linda and Christina have embodied these characters who are funny themselves, they’re not just saying jokes that were written to be jokes. The characters themselves are making the jokes,” explained Feldman. “And because of that, it allows us to sort of surf in and out of comedy and drama, because they themselves can feel in any given scene when it’s time.” The showrunner recalls that early in the filming of season one, when they were still trying to find the tone of the show, Applegate would instinctually make a joke in the middle of a filming a serious scene to ease her own heavy feelings that Cardellini would riff off of.

“There were several moments like that, where I would then yell from the back of the monitors, ‘that’s the tone!’ We found it just by them sort of experiencing it in the moment,” said Feldman. “I always knew that I wanted [the show] to be funny, but I knew that I wanted it to feel real. And my goal was always to make the audience feel. I want them to feel sad, I want them to feel their own grief reflected back to them. And then I want them to also feel the joy of this friendship, and the catharsis of this relationship that is getting these characters through that difficult time, but hopefully, also getting the audience through it as well.”

Dead To Me may be one of the smartest programs for this reason, but while Feldman — who has written for Two Broke Girls and The Ellen DeGeneres Show — agrees that there’s been an evolution in how well television shows meld genre, she’s quick to acknowledge she’s far from the first showrunner to play with that balance.

“There are shows that have certainly rode the wave of comedy and drama,” Feldman said, referencing Six Feed Under and Weeds. “I’m happy to see that there are more shows that are just sort of defying multiple genres. There are more comedy thrillers, there are more dramedies, there are more half-hour dramas. I think people are allowing themselves to think beyond their own little box that we often get put in as writers and creators. And I think because of streaming, and because there are now 500 shows on TV, you know, there’s room for it. And it’s great because I love to watch those kinds of shows.”

Season 2 of Dead To Me premiered in May of 2020 and ended up being a welcome reprieve of laughter and a release of emotional grief in the thick of a pandemic that upended the country. The show’s third season, which is currently filming after a year of COVID-related delays, will be its final one. And while Feldman wouldn’t spoil how a year of quarantine had changed any storylines when it came to balancing the comedy and dramatic tones of the show, she did elaborate on what she hopes the show’s legacy will be.

“I try not to put too much expectation on the takeaway, just because so much of working on this show is just the journey of getting there,” Feldman admitted. “I am just honestly striving to entertain and to potentially help people see themselves a little bit more clearly, and to give people permission to feel a multitude of feelings that they may not feel comfortable or allow themselves to feel in their daily life. I think the takeaway here is that if people have a catharsis of some sort watching the show, if people feel seen or their stories feel reflected, that will make me feel like maybe this show has some important impact.”

Ultimately, Feldman hopes that her show will “inspire other creators to look beyond the binary genre options.”

“It doesn’t have to just be a comedy, it doesn’t just have to be a drama. It’s incredibly satisfying, I think, when great actors are given roles that allow them to express the full spectrum of humanity,” she said. “And that’s what we try to do on Dead To Me.”

People sometimes use the term “the NBA family” to discuss how people in the league have a bond simply by being part of a select group who are able to work and play at the highest level of professional basketball. What that mostly means is people are cordial and somewhat familiar with one another, with those who actually play together on a team building those real, familial bonds.

However, sometimes the NBA family thing is very real, as we learned on Wednesday when Pacers coach Rick Carlisle had his introductory press conference. Carlisle was on the Portland coaching staff as an assistant from 1994-1997, which meant he got the chance to coach Arvydas Sabonis and now will have his son, Domantas, as his leading star in Indiana. It’s a cool full circle thing and makes for a nice story, but as Carlisle noted in his presser, thanks to Arvydas’ excitement about the birth of his son in 1996, he is maybe a bit too familiar with his new budding star big man.

I have to assume this is the first time an NBA coach will have a player who he has actually seen at birth that isn’t his own, and it definitely made for a funny moment in Wednesday’s presser. For Domas’ sake, we’ll hope Rick never brings this up in a practice to humble him — the “I’ve literally known you since you were a baby” line is certainly available to Carlisle if he needs it. As noted by Tony East, who asked the question that got this answer, Carlisle seems very excited about the prospect of coaching the younger Sabonis, and already has some thoughts on how to continue maximizing his All-Star talent.

Elysian Brewing is an icon of the Pacific Northwest beer scene. The brewery was founded by Joe Bisacca (a banker and avid homebrewer), David Buhler (a beer broker), and Dick Cantwell (a homebrewer turned pro) back in 1995. 25 years later, the brewery is one of the most renowned across the entire craft beer scene, even though some purists tut at the brewery’s partnership with Anheuser-Busch InBev, launched back in 2015.

Across the decades, Elysian has managed to remain one of the craft touchstones of the Seattle scene because it’s still producing great beers and pushing boundaries with innovative craft. Perhaps even more importantly, Elysian has built a community that’s spawned music/beer collabs, pumpkin festivals, and a support system for up-and-coming brewers in the region. The latter aspect has certainly helped them stay relevant as much as the former.

We were lucky enough to catch up with Joe Bisacca and David Buhler (Dick Cantwell moved on after the A-B InBev merger) on the phone recently. We caught up with them as they were celebrating the 25th anniversary of the brand, for which they created a whole line of merch and beer. They’re also celebrating the return of live music (something near and dear to every Seattleite’s heart) with their Cheers to Live Music program. They’re offering discounts on live show tickets nationwide with every purchase of one of their six-packs. The conversation spanned how Bisacca and Buhler got started, what it takes to make an iconic beer, and what beer they actually like drinking after all these years.

How did you get into this 25 years ago?

Joe: I hated my job. I was in banking. I knew Dick [Cantwell] through my brother, George. They moved out to Seattle about six months before I moved out here too. So I got here and I didn’t really know anybody else. I was home brewing with a couple of guys that I met over on Alki Beach.

Dick got a job as a brewer at Pike Place and we started making some beer together and screwing around and started joking about “Dick and Joe’s brewery”. And I kind of really liked that idea. I was in my late 20s. I just remember thinking that I’d love to try it because if it doesn’t work, I can brush myself off and get back up and you go back to banking or something. And so we started jotting down some notes on napkins and things.

David: So I was down in Portland where I had a brokerage business. I was the 10 state rep for Rogue Ales. I had a couple of other small brands. And at the time, I was going down to this conference to meet with Bob Leggette for Manneken-Brussels Imports because they were looking to maybe hire me to take the Chimay and Schneider brands for the Northwest. And Dick was at the conference.

I didn’t know him really well but I knew the Pike guys because I worked for Rogue. And he said, “Hey, are you driving back today? Because I could use a ride.” And I went, “Yeah. I’m leaving in like an hour or so.” So as we’re driving back to Seattle, he asked me what’s next? And I said, “Well, I’ve got a business plan…” And so I’m talking to and explaining things and Dick and finally, he goes, “You need to meet Joe.”

Let’s fast-forward a bit. When was the moment where you felt you sort of broke through the static? Was it when you put that first keg out? Was it when you got onto the shelves at Safeway?

Joe: It’s not a light switch. It’s a dimmer switch. For me, it’s kind of was the last thing I was paying attention to. You’re always trying to keep the doors open and the toilets unclogged. Or we need more tanks because of overcapacity now or something. So there are all these issues that are coming up every single day that you have to deal with. Then when you step to the side and sort of you catch those moments in hindsight. But in the moment … I don’t know that I caught it. Something felt all of a sudden. I remember like, holy shit, we’re in stores. I think there was a point where we switched wholesalers to the Anheuser-Busch network in the state and I started seeing on-premise takeoff.

Seeing us in the grocery store setting, that’s like, “oh, we’re legitimate. Wow!”

David: I agree with Joe. It’s interesting… There is no “one” moment. I’ll be honest. Without some naive thinking and ambition, would we even have started this project? In the beginning, you think, “oh, we’re raising the money and building the brewery then we’re done.” Then you realized that it’s on the day you open that you actually just started. You realized that you haven’t done any hard work. The real hard work is now getting consumers into your establishment. And learning what they want and listening to them and growing and building a real business in a community. And we did that but we’re still doing that every day 25 years later.

What’s the process of choosing a beer that becomes part of your core line as opposed to a one-and-done? Is there a sort of sense while you’re brewing that it’ll be a winner or is it the reaction that you get from the crowds?

Joe: I think you have this ramp, right? Innovation is the first stage. The innovation stage for me in brewing is like baseball. If you suck at it 70 percent of the time you’re batting a .300, right? So it’s a risk tolerance. Try it. See if it works. Most of the time when something doesn’t work, it’s that maybe we should have used less of something in what we’re trying. So when we back off a bit on a recipe, that’s when things ramp up and maybe break through.

But I can say all of that and still think it’s still always driven by the customer. If you’re going to make a large volume of stuff, it doesn’t matter if we like it. The customer has to like it because they’re the ones that are going to pull it off the shelf.

Right. What’s a good example of a beer that broke through?

David: Night Owl, the pumpkin that Marcus brewed. To us it was kind of like, “oh, we brewed with pumpkin, interesting.” It wasn’t really anything special to us. But then the response from our customer was off the charts. When we took it to a beer festival, we had the longest line and ran out immediately. We knew immediately we would be doing more of that the next year. It was big and we’re still brewing it.

It feels like you guys were at the forefront of building a deep culture around your beer. The pumpkin ale is a good example because now you have a huge festival around it. People come from all around the country to be part of that experience. How do you build a culture around your beer that creates an in-real-life community?

David: We love beer. We take pride in it, sure. But we just love it. There’s no doubt about that.

But when you look at Seattle in the mid-1990s and the revolution of music, art, and dance that was going on… We were right in the middle of it in Capitol Hill, which to me is the edge of the forest where all these different groups come together into one area. All the demographics were right there. So we put a place in the middle of it all. We started hosting shows and donating kegs to the dance companies and art showcases. And we started going to the shows to pour those beers. It was vibrant. Our beer was part of the community. But these weren’t beer geeks. These were people who were just learning to love good beer. We were the ones that were showing people what good beer could be.

Joe: The space kind of told us what it needed to do. We needed to be that welcoming because that’s what the neighborhood was. Everybody’s always invited. Everything’s always cool. And I think that welcoming environment was the start of building that kind of cultish brand that everybody wanted to join in on.

You’ve become renowned for doing some amazing collaborations with bands, labels, Rolling Stone magazine… What drives you to do these collaborations?

Joe: We’ve done a bunch. Some have worked and some haven’t. I think the big thing is that it has to feel natural. You’re not going to pull the wool over the eyes of a customer out there. It’s got to be an honest partnership, something you’re doing together that actually makes some sense for it to work. Working on the beer together, there’s got to be a story behind it that is real. If it doesn’t have that, it will fizzle.

David: The other thing is that it has to make our pulse race. We did the Sub Pop Loser Pale Ale with Jon Poneman. Hey. They came to us and said, “it’s our anniversary, can we make a beer?” I went, “yeah! That’d be fun.” Stuff like that makes our pulse race. We love it.

The world’s your oyster in that you can brew whatever you want. But then the rubber hits the road and there are only X amount of barrels to age your beer in. And there are only X amount of hops or malts you can get from some certain source. There are finite realities to brewing beer. What’s the path you take to find that next thing to brew?

David: There are so many times where I’ve tasted something and thought, “oh my God, that is awesome.” Then the first thing I’ll ask is, “what hops are in it?” Because if it’s experimental T107 or whatever, we know we can’t do this in bigger batches or we need to find a substitute.

Then we have to ask what level of play this style might get. Is that something that could just be for the pubs? Is it something that could just be for Seattle or for another market because it makes sense? Or is it really something we really feel? And then you have to think and ask everyone if this could be the next thing.

Joe: For sure, there’s the following of trends and then there’s creating the trends. Following the trends, you’re a voice in a chorus. It’s kind of stupid. I don’t want to make a style just because everyone’s making a style. We want our own beers to stand for themselves.

Is there some magic? We did Salute the Sun pale ale with black limes. Black limes are weird. It’s a polarizing taste. But we thought, “let’s put it out there and try it.” Will it have some traction? What if it draws some attention to the brand? What if it sort of pulls people into our world a little bit too? So there are those tried and true things and then there are some of these wild things that show somebody something new.

David: And you know how hard it is to get a whole bunch of pallets of black limes?!

That’s got to be hard…

David: So, yes, the supply chain comes into play because after we taste a beer then it goes to the to where do we get it? How do we get it? And some things work and some things don’t.

What was the last beer you’ve had that you really, really fell in love with?

David: Would it be stupid to say the one in front of me?

I talk to my team and my friends about drinking beer and sometimes we tend to look at it and smell it and look at it and taste it, you know. Where other times I’ve just come off the ski hill and you could give me a beer and I drink half of it in one gulp. And that’s how a lot of people drink beer. They don’t taste it. They don’t swirl it.

But I will say I had a SuperFuzz yesterday and it was spot on, and we make a lot of beer. I just thought was, “oh my God, this is a great beer.” It made me so happy to be making it.

Nice. I love that beer on a hot day.

Joe: I think I like the weirder beers. I kind of get into those a little bit. We brewed a beer this last year called Gator Pie, which was a key lime pie beer. It’s a kettle sour, which I’m into. We’re mashing the sour beer and folding it back in a new batch to help build the sour base. Then we actually crumbled up boxes of Graham crackers and threw them into the mash. You could really taste the Graham cracker crust with the lime and the sour. It had the right balance.

When I drank it, I thought, “God, this is weird…” But it was really good. For me, I love that moment of “this is bizarre.”

“Throwing your money away” is a common expression that means somebody is wasting their funds on useless things or are otherwise living with a lack of financial smarts. Kodak Black, however, decided to take that statement literally by actually getting rid of stacks of hundred dollar bills.

In a video shared on Instagram last night, the rapper is on a boat, grabbing stacks of hundreds and throwing them overboard into the water. He captioned the post, “I Broke You Off When Dem F*ck N****s Wouldn’t Give You A Dime !!! I Ain’t Owe You Sh*t N**** I Just Wanted To See You Shine !!! Yeen Never Gave Me Sh*t N**** I Had My Own Grind !!!!”

Then, in a tweet from earlier today, he tweeted a video of himself trying (and failing) to flush more $100s down a toilet.

Notably, this comes after the rapper tweeted that he would donate $1 million to charity if he received a pardon from Donald Trump in his final days in office. Sure enough, Black got the pardon he was looking for, but the tweet in which Kodak made his philanthropic promise was deleted. At the time, his lawyer said in a statement, “A statement promising something for something in exchange is not appropriate and although Kodak has always given to charity his whole career and will continue to do charity, not in exchange for anything. Some think this is a story. It isn’t.”

The Los Angeles Sparks have signed 2020 No. 3 WNBA draft pick Lauren Cox, the team announced on Wednesday. The 23-year-old forward was inexplicably cut by the league-worst Indiana Fever on Sunday after a lackluster start to her still-very-early career.

“We’re excited to add Lauren Cox to our organization,” General Manager and Head Coach Derek Fisher said in a release. “Lauren delivered on the biggest stage in college as an efficient scorer, skilled passer, and tenacious rebounder for one of the nation’s most accomplished programs. We believe in her potential to be an impact player in this league and look forward to welcoming her to the Sparks family.”

Cox has played just 25 games in the WNBA, and 14 of those were in the 2020 bubble season after she had contracted Covid-19. She joined the team late and never found her footing, averaging just 3.6 points on 41.9 percent shooting with 3.3 rebounds, 1.4 assists, and 0.3 blocks per game. In 2021, she’s hardly had a chance to play. In 11 games, she averaged 8.6 minutes and scored 1.4 points with 2.0 rebounds.

This signing was a no-brainer for the Sparks, and it’s a great opportunity for Cox, too. The Sparks will compete for a chance to make the playoffs, but are under no pressure to succeed further than that. L.A. is in a semi-rebuild after losing both Candace Parker and Chelsea Gray as free agents. Taking a swing at the No. 3 pick from 14 months ago makes a ton of sense for the team.

On paper, L.A. seems like a great match for Cox, too. With Nneka and Chiney Ogwumike both sidelined with knee injuries, she should have plenty of opportunities before the Olympic break to prove herself as a WNBA player. The Sparks are 6-8 this season and led by veterans Kristi Toliver, Amanda Zahui B and Erica Wheeler. Cox should learn a lot and have a chance to make an impact for a solid team.

The Baylor standout averaged 12.5 points, 8.4 rebounds, 3.7 assists, and 2.6 blocks in her senior college season two years ago. The Sparks will look to get her back there.

After making some of her first on-the-record statements regarding her “abusive” conservatorship last week, many are showing their public support for Britney Spears. Spears’ sister, Jamie Lynn, posted a a video message addressing the situation for the first time and celebrities like Christina Aguilera, Stephen Colbert, and even Piers Morgan followed by voicing their support. Now, legendary singer and viral tweeter Dionne Warwick is the latest to show Britney some love.

On Wednesday, Warwick posted a two-minute video message saying her “heart goes out” to the singer and calling to “set her free” of her conservatorship:

“My heart goes out to Britney Spears, it really does. I feel her pain. How in the world could anyone endure what she has been enduring: thirteen years of bondage, because that’s exactly what it is. The who, what, when, where, how, and why’s, not giving her an opportunity to express that on her own. Do you realize the amount of work this young lady puts in to bring you joy? Remembering all those verses to the songs she has to sing, the combinations of the dances she has to do, getting up at the crack of dawn to do exercises to getting her body and keeping it in shape to make you feel good. And we feel she is not able to have that kind of joy and feel good to herself? How fair is that? Bondage is not something 2021 should even recognize. She has the wherewithal [to say] how she wants to live, where she wants to live, and with whom she wants to live. Give her back her rights, give her back her life, set her free.”

Watch Warwick’s full video message below.