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Meet Todrick Hall, a Taylor Swift pal who preaches inclusion - NBC News

Posted: 31 Aug 2019 09:45 AM PDT

Todrick Hall has been preaching about inclusion, self-acceptance and gay pride for much of his career. So it made sense that he would preach about those messages as he accepted an MTV Video Music Award on behalf of Taylor Swift for her anti-hate anthem "You Need to Calm Down."

The clip, which he co-produced, stars himself and close friend Swift, and a host of other LGBTQ entertainers like Billy Porter, RuPaul and Jesse Tyler Ferguson in an a colorful, effervescent but forceful takedown of the haters of the world, including those who spread homophobia.

When the video made its debut, some questioned whether Swift was jumping on the gay-pride bandwagon, but Hall said the superstar is simply evolving, and using her voice.

"I've been friends with Taylor for the past four or five years and I have seen people drag her because they say that she's not opinionated enough, that she's not using her platform to speak out for women's rights, for the gay community, to tell people to vote a certain way — they don't feel like she's used her voice," he said in a recent interview.

"And then the second she does, people drag her because they feel it's opportunistic. And I'm just so glad that she right now is in a place where she knows that what she's doing is right."

It's also a place where Hall feels he's at these days. The entertainer — known for his stint on Broadway in "Kinky Boots" and his dazzling YouTube minimusicals that take inspiration from the likes of "The Wizard of Oz" and "Singin' in Rain" — released his "Haus Party, Pt. 1″ album earlier this summer; "I Like Boys" is a coming-out dance anthem, while "Nails, Hair, Hips, Heels" shows him rocking stilettos with a form that would make Beyonce proud. Ciara is featured on the recently released remix.

For Hall, the album has been another form of self-pride and a way to give others who aren't as bold a reason to try and do so.

"This is the music that people want; they want music that makes them feel fabulous. They want music that makes them want to dance in heels and want music that makes them feel free and unapologetic about who being who they are," he said.

After a brief Broadway stint in "Waitress," he'll take the album on the road in a production he promises will be more liberating than his previous tours, where he admits to feeling a bit handcuffed because he was playing characters based on his YouTube videos.

"This is my first album that I've ever done where it's music that just is fun music that I wanted to write, that represents an aspect of me and who I am as a person/artist," he said. "This tour is called 'The Haus Party,' and if it doesn't feel like a party then I have not done my job well."

Hall's party vibe was on full display at the MTV VMAs, where he showed up with Swift sporting purple and pink dreadlocks, and the pair laughed and danced together throughout the show.

Hall counts Swift among his closest friends; she stood by his side while he spoke as "You Need to Calm Down" won "Video for Good" at Monday's ceremony.

The performer said Swift has helped him as he navigates his growing fame and has become "a good solid friend; that's something that you want to hold on to for life."

"It's been really, really awesome to be someone that she loves and trusts. And for her to tell me her deepest darkest secrets and know that I'm going to keep them safe and for me to be able to do the same with her and know without a shadow of a doubt that she's not going to repeat them to anyone, it's just really awesome."

Hall says Ru Paul and Porter have also helped him navigate fame as a black gay man, particularly the Emmy-nominated "Pose" star Porter, whom he describes as his "fairy godmother, fairy godfather."

"He's told me about the struggles that he went through to get to this place where he feels comfortable enough to show up to the Oscars in a gown," said Hall. "It's been a very huge fight for him and he's seen it being from a world where that was not a safe thing to do that; that was a life or death decision to wear a ball gown to a red carpet to being now in a place where he can wear it and be celebrated and be all over the news."

While more gay performers are finding acceptance in Hollywood and beyond, Hall says more work needs to be done. He'd like to see a world where gay performers are the featured performers at a musical show and not the backdrop; where gay characters are introduced regularly in children's programming; and movies about gay people don't involve a plotline where "being gay is not the problem."

"I would love to see two Disney princes fall in love one day like in a cartoon or in an animated feature," he said.

He added: "I think that I'm a content creator for a reason and that's what I kind of want to devote my life to doing is like creating content that normalizes these things and makes people who are spending the millions of dollars to make movies be like, 'Oh it's OK. The world didn't end.' People watch the movie, they loved it actually and everyone's alive. And we needed to calm down."

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Dax Shepard Totally Embarrassed Kristen Bell Sitting Next to Jay-Z at the Met Gala - Showbiz Cheat Sheet

Posted: 26 Aug 2019 09:21 AM PDT

Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell are two A-list celebrities, but they still have cringe-worthy moments just like anyone else, especially when meeting their idols.

A few years ago, Shepard got to meet his favorite rapper, Jay-Z, at the Met Gala. According to Bell, her husband was anything but cool. In fact, he was quite embarrassing. Read on below to find out what exactly Shepard did and what Bell had to say about it.

Dax Shepard was being a huge Jay-Z fanboy at the Met Gala

Kristen Bell
Kristen Bell | Christopher Polk/Getty Images for People's Choice Awards

On a recent episode of the YouTube series Hot Wings, Bell shared the story of how she and Shepard got to sit next to Beyonce and Jay-Z at the Met Gala a few years ago.

"When we found this out, we were… forget it, we were so excited," she said. "I was like, 'This is going to be great. After tonight, we'll have them in our phones. We'll be best friends.'"

Bell and Shepard even made sure that the seating arrangements at the table would allow for Shepard to sit next to his "man crush" Jay-Z. However, perhaps that was a bit of a mistake on their end.

"Dax talked his ear off, and I don't think Jay was that interested," Bell recalled. "I think at one point [Dax] even hit him with a lyric. He was like 'real recognize real' and I was like 'Dax, Dax…don't. Don't.'"

It's safe to say that Bell and Shepard did not end up becoming best friends with Beyonce and Jay-Z like they had hoped. However, Bell admitted that she was proud of her husband for going all-out.

Dax Shepard told a different story about his meeting with Jay-Z

Back in April on the Late Late Show with James Corden, Shepard also talked about his Met Gala encounter with Jay-Z. However, he did not say anything about him being an embarrassment to Bell at all.

Shepard actually shared that he was not initially planning on going to the Met Gala that year, but he ended up going when he learned that Jay-Z was going to be there and sitting with them at their table.

"It was an exciting table," Shepard said. "It was not only Jay-Z and Beyonce. Kanye was there, and Sacha Baron Cohen, and Isla Fisher. We did not belong there – that's the point."

Shepard, of course, focused a lot of attention on talking to Jay-Z. Instead of saying that he "talked Jay-Z's ear off," though, Shepard described it differently: "I gave Jay-Z what I call the platinum package. Everything was on the table – jokes, sincerity, admiration, you name it. I gave him 120 percent."

Shepard did admit that he could have gone a bit too far. When James Corden brought up the fact that Shepard and Jay-Z never saw each other again after the Met Gala, Shepard said: "I think that's intentional on his part, but you know, we'll see."

In fact, if Dax Shepard meets Jay-Z again, he said that he would not fanboy over the rapper like before. "I'd now treat him like the hottest girl in high school and I'd ignore him. It'll drive him crazy… It'll get in his mind."

Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell have a history of embarrassing each other

The story of Shepard embarrassing Bell at the Met Gala is just one example of how the couple likes to poke fun at each other. Both Shepard and Bell are known for having comedic talents, so it's not surprising that they often end up being at the butt of each other's jokes.

Bell once said that they are "people who like embarrassment" because it "makes everything lighter and brighter when you can be cool about your embarrassing stories."

It goes without saying that fans can continue to expect more funny stories from Shepard and Bell in the future.

Beyonce Cried While P!nk Told Off Drunk Kanye After Taylor Swift Drama at 2009 MTV VMAs - TooFab

Posted: 23 Aug 2019 12:00 AM PDT

Who could forget the moment Kanye West hopped on stage to snag a microphone out of a 19-year-old Taylor Swift's hand to give Beyonce the praise he felt she, and not the budding pop star, deserved for Best Female Video?

Those cringe-worthy 15 seconds -- "I'mma letchu finish, but Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time!" -- will go down in MTV Video Music Award history. But now, almost 10 years later, there's apparently more to the story.

After chatting with journalists, MTV writers, producers, correspondents and executives who were present for the Sept. 13 you-know-what show, Billboard was able to make the safe assumption that Kanye was pretty near wasted that night. He was photographed carrying a Hennessy bottle on the red carpet as he stood with his arm around then-girlfriend Amber Rose.

"Holding the neck of that bottle and seeing the level of it go down and down in picture after picture, as he made it into the venue and kept drinking. That struck me," Jayson Rodriguez, former staff writer for MTV, told Billboard. Several other insiders echoed similar sentiments.

"I was walking around and I talked to Pete [Wentz] and he told me, 'Man, Kanye is so drunk. Kanye came up to me inside Radio City and gave me his bottle of Hennessy, and he made me take a swig. The dude is so wasted,'" said James Montgomery, former senior correspondent/on-air talent for MTV News. "I remember seeing later photos of him with Amber Rose with the bottle in one hand, and a handful of her ass in the other."

Van Toffler, former president of Viacom Media Networks Music & Logo Group, explained that while Kanye was not scheduled to perform that night, he was given a front-row seat -- though Jim Cantiello, former correspondent/producer for MTV News, says that wasn't the original plan.

"Because we were always concerned about how everything looked on television, we didn't want these big bulky bodyguards on camera, so we didn't have security in the front of the talent section," Toffler said.

Cantiello added, "Days before I did a 'seat card' segment from Radio City, where I showed off where the celebs would be sitting on the big night. And Kanye's seat card was several rows back, like in the eighth row. I cracked a joke like, 'Jeeeez, who decided to put Kanye alllllll the way back here? Who did he piss off at MTV? He's not gonna be happy about this. Somebody's gonna get fired.' And then the morning of the VMAs, the producers realized that they didn't have enough men towards the front of the theater for cutaways. So at the eleventh hour, they moved Kanye up towards the front."

After a cold-open homage from Madonna and a tribute performance from Janet Jackson -- both in honor of Michael Jackson, who had died not even three months before -- the Kanye-Taylor thing happened.

"I vividly remember the cut-away of Beyonce half-smiling in disbelief and her mouth like, 'Oh Kanye!' It's now a gif that is used in every comment ever in a Kanye story," Cantiello said. "I remember thinking, 'This is just for female artist, not video of the year -- why is he so bent out of shape about this?'"

The execs all recalled being just as stunned and numb as the audience and viewers at home were. They toggled with the idea of cutting Kanye's mic but ultimately opted not to. After all, "the whole thing was less than a minute," and like 2009 VMA director Hamish Hamilton put it, it was "TV gold."

"There was a real dilemma in my mind as to whether you cut to Taylor," he explained. "The Beyonce reaction shot was important in my mind, then I thought about, 'Do we cut to Taylor or not?' And I said no. It was difficult to register where her head was at an in that moment, so I took the safe option not to cut to her. There was just so much going on and it was so noisy, so chaotic [in the truck]. It's instinct and experience."

And just like that, Kanye became the evening's most hated man -- except for when "Wale made a remark about Kanye -- 'You can't fault a man for speaking his mind' -- and people groaned and booed."

"The crowd in Radio City just turned on [Kanye] -- people were booing and hissing," Montgomery recalled. "During the commercial break, he went back down to his seat and P!nk walked up to him and got in his face. I wasn't close enough to hear the conversation, but she was pointing in his face and nodding her head back and forth, and giving him her two cents about how f--ked up this was and then stormed off. Then he was sitting there next to Amber Rose with his arm around her, and you could feel everyone in Radio City glaring at his back."

Rodriguez recalled getting instantly flooded with emails from reporters on the scene, giving him details like, "P!nk giving Kanye the middle finger."

"[Kanye] was kind of hunched over, and you could tell he could feel the weight of everyone's stares," Montgomery said. "Within the next 5-10 minutes, he was ushered out of his seat and I followed behind him ... Kanye was very upset about this, and he was kind of shocked that he was being asked to leave. I just remember it being a very chaotic moment where everyone was [going], 'Is this really happening?' and everyone being very angry."

Meanwhile, Toffler walked backstage, "and sure enough there is Beyonce and her dad, and she is crying. She was like, 'I didn't know this was going to happen, I feel so bad for her.' And that's when it started to click in my head, and maybe hers, about potentially having the whole arc play out in that one night."

"I think perhaps for the only time in history at the VMAs -- we knew who was going to win the awards, we had a plan for it [but did not tell the artists ahead of time] -- at some point I let her know that she was probably going to be up on the podium at the end of the show for an award," he said. "And wouldn't it be nice to have Taylor come up and have her moment then? I had to indicate to her that she needed to stay, and perhaps this is a way to have this come full circle and let [Taylor] have her moment. I would normally not say anything, but I had two crying artists."

Taylor was set to perform shortly after the debacle. She was crying, her mom was crying, it was pure panic for former senior vice president of production at MTV, Jonathan Mussman, who was tasked with getting Swift prepped for stage. "Thank God she's a real pro," he said. "She did an amazing performance."

"It was not easy [to get Kanye to leave]," Toffler recalled. "But after [Swift's] performance, I had to go back to Taylor and Scott [Borchetta] and her mom and say, 'This is what could potentially happen at the end of the evening and you can have your moment to do your speech.' There was a lot of begging, but fortunately she agreed to stay, and Beyonce agreed to do a wonderfully gracious thing. So the Shakespearean arc played out over the course of the evening."

Footage of Kanye bum-rushing the stage as Swift accepted the award for "You Belong With Me" has been scrubbed from MTV's archives but is still available in bootleg versions on YouTube. For your convenience -- and to get you ready for Monday's 2019 VMAs -- we've dropped one of those versions below.

Got a story or a tip for us? Email TooFab editors at tips@toofab.com.

View Photos Kayla VMA Feuds: 15 Times Music Artists Ignited or Squashed Beefs

YouTube's 2018 Global Hits: From Obama's Dancing Step-Grandma To A Beat Beyonce Loves - NPR

Posted: 29 Dec 2018 12:00 AM PST

Each year, YouTube releases a list of the top videos from 40-plus countries, ranked by how many times they're viewed, liked, shared and commented on.

The 2018 list is a lively mix of humor, catchy beats and social commentary — not to mention a cameo from Barack Obama's step-grandmother busting some moves.

Here's a sampling of top international videos from the countries we cover in our blog.

Mexico — Roast yourself

YouTube

YouTube vloggers get a lot of likes — and sometimes a ton of nasty comments. Mexico's YouTube has an ongoing "Roast Yourself" challenge in which the vloggers take the insults they've seen and create a song in response.

The same-sex couple Daniela Calle and María José Garzón, who have their own YouTube channel, had the most popular "Roast Yourself" video — and in fact the most popular YouTube video in Mexico — with an astonishing 95 million views.

Their song calls out viewers for mocking everything from their looks and fashion choices to their sexual orientation. "Quien es el hombre de la relacion? Soy yo, soy yo," they both sing. Who is the man in the relationship? It's me, it's me.

Bahrain/Middle East — A day as a supermarket employee

YouTube

In a video filmed in Bahrain that became popular across the Middle East, Omar Farooq just wants to buy one thing but the supermarket isn't open yet.

So he sneaks in, slips on a uniform and makeshift hairnet and then decides to learn what it's like to work in a supermarket. He weeds out spoiled peppers, fillets fish and bakes bread (sneaking a bite). Then he races against the clock to deliver groceries to music that ranges from Middle Eastern to operatic.

The video, which racked up 4.1 million views, is part of a series called "Omar Tries," in which the young filmmaker puts himself through wacky experiments. He's also the star of his own TedXYouth talk.

Nigeria — A presidential joke

YouTube

Comedian and social commentator Francis "I Go Dye" Agoda isn't afraid to use Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari as his punchline. In a video that's the third most popular in the YouTube ranking, Agoda critiques the president for turning a deaf ear to the country's problems.

"Everybody knows that no matter [what] you tell him, he will not listen," he jokes. Instead of explaining why he hasn't addressed complaints, Agoda suggests Buhari feign actual hearing loss: "The best is to tell them that 'I get the ear problem.'"

South Africa — Do the "Nayi le Walk"

YouTube

Beyonce is a fan of the song "Nayi le Walk" from renowned South African producer DJ Maphorisa, with its slinky, propulsive beat. She even posted it on her Instagram. But her dance moves can't compare to the impressive footwork in this video featuring local dancers on a lonely road at night.

They step in unison, then show off their own kicks, swivels and dips. "Nayi le Walk" (which means "there's that walk") is currently a top hit in South Africa. This dance video ranked No. 1 in the country's 2018 list, beating out the likes of Trevor Noah and Kylie Jenner.

India — True-life crimes against women

YouTube

Among the movie teasers and creative choreographies that topped India's list of most popular YouTube videos this year is an episode of the long-running reality series Crime Patrol. The TV show, presented in Hindi (without English subtitles) dives into actual cases through reenactments. This harrowing episode, which garnered more than 30 million views, recounts several rape cases of young girls in Mumbai in 2016.

Indonesia — Gold ticket for a 13-year-old singer

YouTube

In her audition for "Indonesian Idol Junior," then 13-year-old Nashwa Zahira smiles shyly before wowing the judges with a sweet rendition of Marshmallow and Anne-Marie's 2018 pop hit "Friends." The hijab-clad teen won a "gold ticket" to go to the next stage in the TV contest — and more than 32 million views on YouTube.

Kenya — Obama (and his step-grandmother) have moves

YouTube

It wouldn't be a complete list of YouTube hits without a clip of a politician dancing. In one of the top videos in Kenya, with 2.3 million views, former U.S. President Barack Obama sheepishly but suavely dances during a 2018 summer visit to his father's homeland, Kenya. He's soon upstaged by his 90-plus step- grandmother, who rises from her wheelchair and waggles her hips.

Philippines — A ghost's got talent, too

YouTube

Pilipinas Got Talent isn't just for humans. On the talent show, a ghostly contestant tries to impress the judges with a popular party trick. Clad in an ethereal white gown, her pale face hidden by a veil of black hair, she cleanly pulls a towel from underneath a pot. But when she tries the trick with a fan, the fan goes flying.

A spirited performer, she tackles the tablecloth trick with bigger and bigger items: an old TV, a laundry machine, even one of the hosts. Succeed or fail, she sends the audience into gales of laughter and prompts one judge to exclaim, "Amazing talent. How did she do it?"

Linda Poon covers science and technology for The Atlantic's CityLab blog. Find her on Twitter @linpoonsays.
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