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The Big Bang Theory‘s unaired pilot isn’t as infamous as the original first episode of Game of Thrones, but everyone involved sounds relieved that it never aired on TV.

The pilot “didn’t work for a bunch of reasons,” co-creator Bill Prady told Entertainment Weekly in a respective for the CBS sitcom, which premiered 15 years ago this month. “In the first pilot, the female character [who, at that point, was named Katie] is kind of rough. She’s dangerous in a way and wasn’t very nice to the guys.”

And the in-studio audience wasn’t very nice to Katie.

“Yeah, the audience hated her,” co-creator Chuck Lorre said. Prady agreed, but “what was amazing was that they were defending Leonard and Sheldon so much.” Lorre continued, “Yeah, we didn’t realize early on that the audience viewed them as children. They were very naive and childlike, regardless of how intelligent they were. They were very vulnerable, and the audience didn’t want a toxic presence around them.”

That’s when Katie (played by Amanda Walsh) was re-written to Penny (Kaley Cuoco), and it “made her much more charmed by the guys and kind to them, as opposed to a woman who would take advantage of them,” Lorre said. Both creators agree that Walsh was “terrific,” but “the role was misconceived. It was our responsibility.”

Prady continued:

“She was actually a very sweet person, and it was a lot of work for her to become that rough character. Afterward, she wanted to come back in for the new version of Penny, but she had been so identified as that first character that it wasn’t able to happen.”

It’s only fair for Cuoco to cast Walsh in the next season of HBO Max’s terrific Harley Quinn. The time is right for Lady Clay to make an appearance.

(Via EW)

Halsey has been on the rise for a while, dominating the pop world with her rock-leaning anthems. But she has been transparent about the trouble she’s experienced along the way — from the way the music industry treated her pregnancy to struggles with chronic illness. Today, she shared an Instagram story opening up about her current emotional state, expressing concern that she may have “chose the wrong life for [herself].”

Read what she posted below.

“I find that often there is a deep sadness inside me that no amount of worldly pleasure can touch, a loneliness, an emptiness.

I wonder often if I chose the wrong life for myself. And the weight of it is suffocating. I’m sorry that melancholy has penetrated my art in a way that hasn’t served a greater purpose other than my own self loathing. I’m sorry that melancholy has penetrated my art in a way that hasn’t served a greater purpose other than my own self-loathing. I am approaching my 28th birthday in a week and just now exhaling and gasping for air for the first time since I took a single breath in this new life at 18. A breath that was meant to sustain me for a decade. I am wandering lawlessly, and I hope to find my way somewhere meaningful soon so that I can give you the guts I’ve always known to scoop heapings of into your ears. They are shrivelling lately. If you cannot be kind, at least be gentle. With love”

You’d be forgiven for not knowing DaBaby had an album coming out this week. Ever since his debacle at Rolling Loud Miami in 2021, he’s dropped in public esteem, losing endorsement deals and watching his ticket sales plummet. The fact that it’s mostly his own fault seems lost on him because even if he’s down horrible, he has to have known that his latest stunt to get attention would backfire in his face.

On the new album, Baby On Baby 2, DaBaby claims to have had sex with Megan Thee Stallion the day before she was allegedly shot by Tory Lanez after a Hollywood party. In the song “Boogieman,” he rhymes: “You play with me, that shit was childish / The day before she said that Tory Lanez shot her, I was fucking on Megan Thee Stallion / Waited say that shit on my next album / Hit it the day before too, but I kept it player, I ain’t say nothing bout it / Had her pretty-boy boyfriend tweeting me, ready to die ’bout the bitch like a coward.”

Nah, fam. That is an atrocious look. As a wise person once said: “Dig deep and think about the messiest bitch you know… it’s a man ain’t it?”

Now, DaBaby is being utterly ransacked on Twitter by fans rightly pointing out that the antics not only make him look bad but that they still won’t actually generate the streams he needs to bounce back after refusing to own up to his own mistakes. Just a disaster for him no matter how you slice it (of course, there are random guys tweeting messages supporting him, but let’s be serious here). Below is just a sampling of the smoke DaBaby’s latest shenanigans have incurred.

Megan Thee Stallion is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Just when you think Donald Trump has said the most ridiculous thing ever uttered by a human being — let alone a former president — he manages to outdo himself. Especially when he’s attempting to wriggle out of taking responsibility for one of his many wrongdoings. But even Trevor Noah seems to think that Trump’s latest excuse for why he had hundreds of highly classified documents at Mar-a-Lago “may have topped them all.”

On Wednesday night, Trump plopped down for an interview with Sean Hannity, who is famous for throwing softball questions to his disgraced pal. But even the Fox News host seemed momentarily stunned when Trump basically claimed that being president gives you Yoda-like powers.

“When you’re the President of the United States, you can declassify just by saying, ‘It’s declassified’ — even by thinking about it,” Trump explained of what he believes is a president’s ability to perform Jedi-like mind tricks, and have them be legally binding. “There doesn’t have to be a process,” he added. “There can be a process, but there doesn’t have to be.”

But Noah wasn’t buying it:

Whoa, whoa — hold on, hold on, hold on. Donald Trump can declassify documents with his brain? How? HOW? He can’t even read documents with his brain. How does this happen?

I really hope that, ‘I can make things happen with my mind’ is going to be their actual argument at the trial. That would be great. ‘Your honor, the defendant pleads Jedi.’

But Noah brought up a good point when explaining why Trump’s story doesn’t really hold up:

So Trump is saying that he declassified these documents just by thinking about it. Which I don’t even believe, because that would be the first time in his life that Trump has thought something and not said it out loud.

You can watch the full clip above.

After model Sumner Stroh revealed an alleged year-long affair between her and Maroon 5 lead singer Adam Levine, others who viewed her TikTok post began coming forward with messages of their own. Stroh claimed that Levine, who married model Behati Prinsloo in 2014, messaged her (after the two ended their affair) to ask if he could name the child Prinsloo is currently expecting after her. “I really wanna name it Sumner. You ok with that? DEAD serious,” the message read.

Levine issued a statement this week via his Instagram Story. “I used poor judgment in speaking with anyone other than my wife in ANY kind of flirtatious manner. I did not have an affair, nevertheless, I crossed the line during a regrettable period of my life,” he wrote.

TMZ has since published screenshots Levine of other flirty conversations he allegedly had with a comedian named Maryka and a woman named Alyson Josef. “I shouldn’t be talking to you you know,” he messaged Josef.

YouTuber Tana Mongeau shared screenshots of Levine seemingly sliding into her Instagram DMs, but appears to have unsent the message. “Check this one out … he said unsent,” she wrote on Twitter, before also dropping a screen recording as additional proof. Following Mongeau’s screenshot of the musician’s disappearing messages, another woman came forward.

In the replies to Mongeau’s post, Lottie Moss (Kate Moss’ half-sister) shared Levine’s request to message her on Instagram also. However, since there are no longer messages in the screenshot, it means something was sent to warrant the DM request, but has since been unsent by Levine.

According to Newsweek, there are even more women included in Levine’s cheating allegations. Alanna Zabel, his yoga instructor from 2007 to 2010, told Page Six, “One day he texted me saying, ‘I want to spend the day with you naked.’” Finally, Ashley Russell, a 21-year-old college student and exercise influencer, noted that Levine would reply “daily” to her Instagram stories, but he typically deleted them after she had read the messages. Russell’s messages were received throughout March of this year.

As the news of Levine’s messaging scandal continues to make the waves online, there is a possibility of even more women coming forward with infidelity allegations.

(A spoiler from the Law & Order crossover event will be found below.)

This week saw Dick Wolf’s Law & Order (current three) shows crossover in one long mega-night of programming. So, the SVU and Organized Crime gangs joined up with the cast of the revived O.G. series proper. This event may have set up the exit of Kelli Giddish, given that Detective Rollins took a bullet in the line of duty. Social media isn’t pleased about this, but we’re here to talk about a promo filmed by Ice-T, who portrays Sergeant Fin Tutuola but can’t seem to catch a break with cops IRL.

This isn’t a new spin on reality, but hearing Ice-T talk about it will never get old. He previously spoke to us about how, when he accidentally blew through a toll booth, they cops arrested him, and it was (obviously) all over the news. “They could’ve given me a ticket,” he declared. “A lot of times when a cop arrests a celebrity, it gives them the chance to be famous. They never arrested anyone, but they arrested JLo. So now, they get to say, ‘Ahhhh, I put JLo in handcuffs.’”

Well, a crossover promo showed the cast reflecting upon how Mariska Hargitay is the (self-admitted) queen of getting out of speeding tickets. Ice-T had a ball with this while explaining his own situation. “She might say, ‘I’m Captain Benson from SVU.’ And they say, ‘Oh I know you, I like you,” and get out of the speeding ticket,” he figured. Then came the kicker: “With me, I’m Black.”

His delivery never stops being spot-on on this subject, and Ice-T remains one of the best parts of SVU. The Law & Order crossover event (which John Oliver undoubtedly didn’t watch) is now streamable on Peacock and NBC.com.

Grimes has a new album on the way; This past weekend, she revealed that it’s done and just in the mixing stages now. Speaking of music production, Grimes just hit a significant setback, revealing today (September 23) that she just lost “80 hours worth of work that cannot be recovered.” The silver lining, though, is that the lost work wasn’t her new album.

This morning, Grimes shared a photo of a home studio setup and tweeted, “My work realm is rly peak rn but my computer just ate about 80 hours worth of work that cannot be recovered RIP. I am depressed about this ngl.”

It’s not clear if “80 hours worth of work” means 80 hours of music or 80 hours of time spent working on the now-lost music.

Somebody suggested seeking help from a computer expert and Grimes replied, “Nah I’ve tried every angle – ableton had a saving issue it Couldn’t y save and I was trying to take bits of the file to new sessions and every session that got a piece of the original session also for cursed and couldnt save and then it all disappeared.” Somebody else commented, “we never gonna get these albums i’m done,” and Grimes responded, “No it was extra, album is done, it’s just if I make 2 more songs it’s a double album so that’s preferable but maybe it’s not destiny cuz I’m too tired.”

At the very least, Grimes still has her post-plastic-surgery recovery to look forward to.

Tucker Carlson has become something of a political hero in Russia, where he’s a regular face seen to those who don’t even think to question the validity of the “news” being spouted on state-run TV. Fortunately, Americans are different. And even some devoted Fox News viewers had to be a bit skeptical when, on Thursday night, Carlson — who has regularly spread falsehoods and misinformation about Russia’s position in its war with Ukraine (hint: they’re not winning) — issued a dire warning to his viewers that continuing to support Ukraine in its war with Russia is likely to end in the imminent destruction of the United States. No, we’re not kidding.

According to Carlson, this war could have been over almost just as soon as it started if Ukraine has just bent over and submitted, but the U.S. made sure that didn’t happen. Because, says Tucker, “Biden’s advisors wanted a total regime change war against Russia, apparently to avenge the election of Donald Trump, which they believed Putin was responsible for. And they were willing to fight to the last Ukrainian to get it.”

As Carlson explains it, Russia and Ukraine were all set to come to an agreement just days ahead of Putin’s invasion of the country. But it was the U.S. and the UK, working together, who put a stop to any sort of peaceful accord. Because we were still smarting from the fact that Trump had been in office at all — even though he had been voted out more than a year before all of this. “This was the moment where the goal changed from restoring Ukraine to what it was before the invasion — and that seems reasonable to everyone in the West — to something very different: to a war designed to topple Vladimir Putin, just like we toppled Saddam Hussein, and then hoping for the best afterward. That is clearly insane and dangerous.”

“Insane” and “dangerous” are definitely two words that come to mind listening to Carlson. But the Fox News host took his doom-and-glooming to another level when he insisted that all this political maneuvering has put us “the closest we have ever been to nuclear conflict in history.”

Why? Because Carlson thinks that Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky — the voice of Paddington — is playing it pretty fast and loose with threatening nuclear war against Russia. Despite the fact that Ukraine has no nuclear weapons. But Tucker pointed to an article that ran in The Guardian, in which Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior aide to Zelensky, said:

“The other nuclear states need to say very firmly that as soon as Russia even thinks of carrying out nuclear strikes on foreign territory — in this case the territory of Ukraine — there will be swift retaliatory nuclear strikes to destroy the nuclear launch sites in Russia.”

According to Carlson, however, this quote came from Zelensky himself. As he told his audience: “This week, President Zelensky of Ukraine gave an interview to the left-wing newspaper The Guardian. And in it, he casually called for the United States to nuke Vladimir Putin.” Except Zelensky didn’t say that, and Tucker’s misrepresentation of the “interview” was clearly intentional, as the attribution he gave on the screen for the quote indicated.

He went on to break down the quote word by word, and got stuck on the “as soon as Russia even thinks of carrying out nuclear strikes” part — which to Carlson meant “before Russia actually launches missiles, the U.S. needs to launch nuclear weapons.”

Podolyak’s quote was in response to a video that Putin himself issued on Wednesday, in which he noted: “I want to remind you that our country also has various means of destruction… and we will certainly use all means at our disposal. It’s not a bluff.”

It’s that threat that Carlson says has pushed “Ukraine’s government to call for an immediate nuclear attack on Russia. An attack that would, without question, result in the immediate destruction of New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles; the deaths of tens of millions of Americans. That’s what [Zelensky] just said. Sane people do not talk this way. Ever!”

Again, Zelensky didn’t say that.

Regrettably, Tucker didn’t even end it there. He went on to state that Biden is the only person with the power to put an end to these threats right now. But that instead, he’s essentially pushing for World War III. “This is complete craziness,” Carlson concluded. “This is a, quote, ‘strategy’ that could easily bring the total destruction of the west, and soon — and maybe that’s the point.”

(Via Media Matters)

Phew. We made it. We survived the Don’t Worry Darling press tour.

Things were looking bleak there after director Olivia Wilde got served legal papers at CinemaCon, and leading man Harry Styles supposedly spit on Chris Pine (who skipped a late-night show appearance), and the whole Shia Labeouf thing, and the alleged beef between Wilde and star Florence Pugh. But after getting roasted by NBC, the film is finally out — and critics do not care for it. Was all the attention paid to a sexy thriller that is neither sexy nor thrilling worth it? Yes, because it gave us Nick Kroll eating a plum.

Kroll, best known for being in one of your favorite shows (The League, Big Mouth, Kroll Show, What We Do in the Shadows, etc.), is arguably the only cast member who made it out of the Don’t Worry Darling press tour unscathed and/or won’t be asked about it for the rest of his career, like Pugh. It helps that he’s self aware about not being as famous as, say, the guy whose song has been number one on the Hot 100 for 14 (!) weeks.

Along the way, Kroll smooched Styles (as they do in Don’t Worry Darling); dressed like the Joker; promoted his upcoming comedy special, Nick Kroll: Little Big Boy; and seems like the only cast member to genuinely enjoy all the attention. Also, he smells like plums. Not rotten plums, either, but “very sweet summer plums.”

We should all be so lucky.

Stormzy released Heavy Is The Head, his sophomore album, in December 2019. With his first solo single in three years, the UK grime pioneer is putting everyone on notice that he still wears the crown. Produced by Knox Brown and mixed by MixedByAli, “Mel Made Me Do It” arrived Friday (September 23). “I been the GOAT so long, I guess it’s not exciting when I win,” Stormzy spits in the opening line. And the flex only gets stronger from there.

The cinematic KLVDR-directed music video spans nearly 11 minutes and packs in over 30 cameos, including Dave, Ian Wright, Jose Mourinho, Stylo G, and Usain Bolt. 90 seconds in, we’re transported to a fictional talk show aptly titled Mel Made Me Do It hosted by Jonathan Ross and Zeze Millz. Stormzy is their guest alongside British sprinter Dina Asher-Smith and journalist Louis Theroux (aka the “My Money Don’t Jiggle Jiggle” guy). Ross asks Stormzy what’s on his mind, which launches him back into his braggadocios bars: “Any time I do a big flex, just ignore me / N****s wanna hear my side of the story / N****s wanna hear a n**** chat like it’s Maury / F*ck that, you n****s better bask in my glory.”

Midway through, Stormzy is flanked by Mourinho. He delivers the line, “I prefer not to speak like I’m Jose.” The former Chelsea and Manchester United manager (currently with A.S. Roma) puts his finger over his mouth as audio cuts in of his famous quote, “I prefer not to speak. If I speak, I am in big trouble.”

Despite all the clever references and name-drops, the song’s inspiration is singular and simple. According to press release, “Mel Made Me Do It” is “a direct reference to the influence of his long-time personal stylist, Melissa’s Wardrobe.” Her appearance in the video comes roughly one minute before a soul-stirring monologue about Black excellence written by Wretch 32 is narrated off-camera by Michaela Coel, the Emmy-winning creator and star of I May Destroy You.

Over the summer, Stormzy received an honorary doctorate from the University Of Exeter for “outstanding achievements in the field of higher education philanthropy and widening participation.” If anything, “Mel Made Me Do It” reaffirms that he’s more locked into his greater purpose than ever.

Watch the powerful video above.

Stormzy is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.