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There was something more than the Southern summer breeze blowing in the air above Charleston on Sunday night. There was Hollywood glitz. The South Carolina town hosted the premiere of The Map That Leads to You, the epic romance drama adaptation of the best-seller by J.P. Monninger, and it drew an A-list gathering of stars, reality TV stars, and socialites out for its big opening.

The Stars Step Out

The stars stepped out on the red carpet, including Madelyn Cline and KJ Apa, whose chemistry in front of the camera is going to underpin the emotional centre of the film. Cline, a Charleston native who has become a Netflix and film star, was stunning in a streamlined evening ensemble, while Apa rocked a crisp look, effortlessly pulling off a relaxed yet refined look that hinted at the magnetic appeal of his character, Jack.

They were joined by co-stars Sofia Wylie and Madison Thompson, both of whom added youthful energy to the event. The cast mingled easily with fans and photographers, radiating the camaraderie of a team that feels great about what they do.

The event was hosted by Leva Bonaparte, a well-known to fans of Bravo’s Southern Charm, whose presence added Charleston society elegance to the evening.

Notable Names in Attendance

Aside from the actors in the movie, the guest list was a who’s who of Charleston nightlife and pop culture. Some of them included Michols Pena, Lake Rucker, Madison Reese, Joe Bradley, Bradley Carter, Mia Alario, TJ Dinch, Salley Carson, Molly Moore, Justin Assada, Grace Lilly, Venita Aspen, Rodrigo Reyes, and Molly O’Connell. Most of them brought a reality TV glow, with connections including Bravo, The Bachelor, and Southern Hospitality.

A Story of Love, Fate, and Self-Discovery

The Map That Leads to You follows Heather (Madelyn Cline), a young adult who goes on a whirlwind adventure across Europe with her best friends before settling into what she believes will be her “perfectly planned” life. Plans are firmly derailed, however, when she meets Jack (Apa), a mysterious and charming vagabond. Their first spark of chemistry blossoms into a romance played out against the breathtaking vistas of European landscapes, but also forces both characters to confront secrets, make hard choices, and face unwanted realities.

From Academy Award–nominated director Lasse Hallström (Dear John, Safe Haven), the film weaves panoramic landscapes of romantic beauty with depth of emotion in an attempt to capture the bittersweet beauty of forging one’s own destiny in life.

Behind the Scenes Power

The pedigree of the film is loaded with industry moguls. The script is penned by Vera Herbert and Les Bohem, based on Bohem’s tale and Monninger’s popular novel. Behind the camera are Martin Bowen, Wyck Godfrey, John Fischer, and Isaac Klausner, while executive producers are Hal Sadoff and Matt Luber.

The cast is not limited to Cline and Apa, as Josh Lucas, Madison Thompson, Sofia Wylie, and Orlando Norman join the roster.

When and Where to Watch

96 minutes and PG-13 for thematic elements and romantic content, The Map That Leads to You promises an inclusive but emotionally resonant viewing experience. Audiences everywhere can stream the film exclusively on Prime Video starting August 20.

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Through the character of Peggy Scott (played by Denée Benton), “The Gilded Age” explores Black life in Brooklyn, New York in the later decades of the 1800s, both in parallel and intertwined with their white counterparts that inhabit Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue. While season two gave us a glimpse into the differences between Black life in the North versus life in the South, this season takes more time to show the internal conflicts of the elite Black communities in the North, using Newport, Rhode Island, as its backdrop.

Newport was featured in the show as a summer destination for the white Manhattan elite in previous seasons, but Peggy’s budding romance with Dr. William Kirkland (played by Jordan Donica), who comes from a wealthy, established family from the seaside city, introduces the audience to its Black society in season three. And though Peggy comes from a privileged family herself, she is met with classism and colorism from his family, specifically its matriarch, Elizabeth (played by Phylicia Rashad).

Elizabeth boasts that she comes from five generations of Rhode Islanders, including a free Black great-grandfather who fought in the Revolutionary War. The show’s writers said they included this detail to show that the Kirkland family did not have a history of enslavement, unlike the Scotts.

Newport’s free Black community was well organized long before the Gilded Age. In 1780, the city’s Black male residents created a Black mutual aid society called the Free African Union Society, which is considered the first of its kind. Its female counterpart was created later in 1809 and named the African Female Benevolent Society, which primarily worked to educate free Black people and their children. The Society established one of the first free Black schools in the nation. By the Gilded Age, Rhode Island’s schools were already desegregated. One of the real-life prominent Black Newport families that inspired the Kirklands was the Van Hornes, whose patriarch, Mahlon Van Horne, became the pastor for the Society’s Union Colored Congregational Church and Rhode Island’s first Black legislator. His son, Alonzo Van Horne, was Rhode Island’s first Black dentist.

Peggy’s character has previously been used to highlight the racism of the North, which was different from that of the South, but still very much present. Though she attains opportunities and access by befriending and working for the Van Rhijn family, Peggy’s interactions with New York white society range from discriminatory to deadly. In episode two of this season, she becomes sick at the Van Rhijn house and is bedridden, but their doctor refuses to treat her because she is a Black woman. This is how she eventually meets William, because her parents have to send a Black doctor to Manhattan to treat her.

What season three of “The Gilded Age” shows is that Peggy not only navigates her life as a Black woman, but as a dark-skinned Black woman who experiences colorism. Her love interest, William, is light-skinned, as is his entire family. Though the two lovers don’t seem to give this any importance, their families immediately clock this as an issue. Peggy’s father, Arthur (played by John Douglas Thompson), expresses his concern to Peggy’s mother, Dorothy (played by Audra McDonald), that if Peggy has lighter children, she’ll be looked at as their nurse instead of their mother. Or that if she has darker children, William’s family will resent them. He makes these comments after meeting William’s family, particularly the icy Elizabeth, and watching her make comments about how her grandchildren need to stay out of the sun to avoid getting darker.

During the initial meeting of the two families, Elizabeth reacts disapprovingly at Peggy’s family’s newer money, particularly Arthur’s, which comes from owning a pharmacy. But one of the most glaring slights by Elizabeth toward Peggy and her family happens when their conversation reveals that Arthur was born enslaved. This may confuse viewers, because given the period, many Black Northerners at the time would have come from the South and been born in slavery. But “The Gilded Age” shows that in elite Black circles, this could be seen as taboo. Dr. Kirkland’s mother uses this as one of many reasons why Peggy is not good enough for her son.

As the finale approaches, Elizabeth, who has failed to dissuade her son William from courting Peggy, might now have the ammunition she needs to break up their relationship. In the previous episode, a friend in Newport who comes over to gossip reveals to her that Peggy had a child out of wedlock from a previous relationship, and that another family adopted the child. Upon hearing this news, Elizabeth gleefully travels from Newport to New York to tell her son about the scandal. The finale preview shows that William will confront Peggy about her secret.

Fans of “The Gilded Age” will understand that the story is more complicated, and though Peggy did have a child when she was not married, she believed the child died during birth, and found out much later that her father had secretly given the boy away to a family in Philadelphia. When she went to find him, she was too late because he had died from scarlet fever.

We’ll find out if Peggy can (or is willing to) overcome her potential mother-in-law’s elitism to be with Dr. William. In the preview, her mother consoles her while she’s crying and tells her, “You are worthy.” Maybe that message, rather than whether she can secure a life partner, is the point of Peggy’s arc this season.

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The internet was sent into chaotic fits this weekend after Mia Khalifa decided to weigh in on a viral Batman discourse, making a claim so wild it immediately became meme fodder.

The social media storm began when the former adult film star reposted a viral clip featuring rapper Vince Staples and DJ Hed dissecting Gotham City’s most notorious foes with unapologetic bluntness. In the video, Staples insists that Batman’s rogues gallery is basically a lineup of “dope fiends” in fancy costumes.

The Viral Batman Breakdown

The original conversation between Vince Staples and DJ Hed, which Khalifa shared on her X account, plays out like an episode of “Comedians in Cars Getting Conspiratorial.”

• DJ Hed: “Batman only fight Dope Feins?”






• Vince Staples: “Facts.”






• DJ Hed: “That’s not a fact.”






• Vince Staples: “Who did he fight with Dope Feins?”

From there, Staples starts rattling off Gotham’s top-tier troublemakers with a drug-rehab twist:

• The Riddler? “Dope.”






• Two-Face? “Dope fein for sure, he fell in the acid, bro. That’s called MDMA.”






• Ra’s al Ghul? “For sure. Because he was a white man who said his name was Raja Goul.”

The tone is unfiltered, absurd, and instantly memeable, exactly the kind of content Khalifa tends to amplify.

The Batman Fan Who Took It Personally

One Batman defender wasn’t laughing. When Khalifa reposted the clip, an X user quote-tweeted her with a stern warning:

“We are not going to do Batman like this, respect his craft.”

Instead of backtracking, Khalifa doubled down, but not without clarifying her stance.

Mia Khalifa’s Now-Viral Reply

Her response? Equal parts savage and strangely pragmatic:

“I’m not disrespecting Batman, I genuinely believe it’s harder to fight a crackhead than a supervillain.”

That single sentence ricocheted across timelines, igniting a wave of comments ranging from agreement (“facts, they’re unpredictable”) to outrage (“Batman trained with ninjas for this exact reason”).

The Clip That Lit the Fuse

Ironically, the Vince Staples clip wasn’t even the first Batman-themed content Khalifa engaged with that day. Before reposting it, she had already reacted to another viral post, a fan video of Batman facing a bizarre villain, captioned,

“Gotham really has the craziest villains man, this guy really thought he was Zeus and thinks Arkham asylum is Olympus 😭😭”

Khalifa’s decision to stack one absurd Batman clip on top of another set the perfect stage for the chaos that followed.

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The activist Chris Smalls is ready to go back to Gaza.

In a few posts on X yesterday, he expressed his disdain for the Israeli forces that occupy Palestine and said he is ready to go again after he was arrested just two weeks ago on a mission to challenge the blockade that prevents food and other necessities from entering the Gaza Strip. The experience seems to have only motivated the Amazon union organizer to continue the mission.

“Damn right I will go back on another flotilla again and again until we break the illegal siege that Israel upholds and Palestine is finally free!” He wrote on X.

Smalls made national headlines as an organizer in 2022 when he successfully founded the first Amazon labor union at a Staten Island Amazon warehouse. With a group of activists this year, he’s formed the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, whose mission is to sail to Gaza to bring in humanitarian aid. He was the only Black person sailing on their ship called “Handala” when they were reportedly detained in international waters by Israeli naval forces on July 26. The group reported that he was also singled out and beaten because of his race.

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition reported that he was kicked and choked by seven uniformed officers upon arrival in Israeli custody. Smalls also said in an interview that one of the soldiers used his hair, which is in dreadlocks, and his chain necklaces to perform the choking while saying “racist remarks” to him. By July 31, Smalls was released from prison and returned to the US with the other organizers.

The posts from Smalls also reveal details of his arrest from his side. He wrote to his followers, “I did curse the IOF straight to their faces for all the bloodshed and it was worth every word.” He also speculated that the Israeli military did not release propaganda videos of his arrest because it would prove that the claims he was the aggressor were false.

“I would love to see the footage!… it would shock the world, ” He wrote in another post.

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Broadway and Hollywood star Rachel Zegler has just added one more accolade to her already stellar CV, and it was gilded. The 24-year-old New Jersey native, who is presently leading the superlatives as Eva Perón in Jamie Lloyd’s new production of Evita at The London Palladium, has taken the Number 1 spot on this week’s Official Vinyl Chart with her rendition of the Andrew Lloyd Webber–Tim Rice classic Don’t Cry For Me Argentina.

The news was dramatically broken. Official Charts Company representatives knocked on the door of Zegler’s dressing room backstage to break the news. Her reaction was pure shock:  “I’m freaking out! This is so wild! This feels incorrect, but I trust you, you guys are the experts!”

From Stage Sensation to Chart-Topping Artist

Zegler, a Golden Globe winner for West Side Story already and soon to appear in Disney’s Snow White, admitted the achievement was not something she ever thought would come about. “This is so cool on the list of things that I never thought would happen in my life, charting in music. It’s really, really crazy, and obviously for this, [Evita], it’s so special.”

Her version of the song, available to stream, download, and on 7-inch vinyl single, sits at Number 1 on both the Official Vinyl Singles Chart and the Physical Singles Chart and is not only the week’s best-selling vinyl single but the UK’s best-selling single across all physical formats.

The vinyl release features an extra track, Don’t Cry For Me Argentina – Live from The Balcony, which captures the viral “theatrical moment of the summer” as Zegler sings the song from the outer balcony of the Palladium to fans massing in Argyll Street. The moment has been viewed millions of times worldwide, further building the show’s global buzz.

FaceTime with a Musical Theatre Legend

Zegler was not afraid to inform composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, FaceTiming with him in the back.

“This is the only time I know something that Andrew Lloyd Webber doesn’t!” she joked.

Learning that their song topped the charts a second time was greeted with an audible gasp upon announcement to Lloyd Webber. “TWO?” he exclaimed before going on with a smile, “Well… we want a third!”

A Song with a Storied Chart History

Originally a number one hit for Julie Covington in 1977, Don’t Cry For Me Argentina has had a number of revivals on the charts. Covington’s original took ten weeks inside the UK Top 10, The Shadows covered it to Number 5 on an instrumental in 1978, Madonna’s 1996 version, the record she made for the film adaptation, reached Number 3, and even the cast of Glee broke into the Top 75 with their version in 2011.

Zegler, clearly aware of the song’s rich legacy, teased Lloyd Webber about a possible remix. “What was it that Madonna did? She did the Miami Mix? We’ll do the Miami Mix!” she suggested. Without missing a beat, Lloyd Webber proposed, “The Oxford Circus Mix!” a playful nod to the Palladium’s West End location.

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The UEFA Europa League is receiving backlash from its players for its response to the death of Palestinian national soccer player Suleiman Al-Obaid.

The Palestine Football Association confirmed on August 6 that international player Al-Obeid was killed in Gaza by Israeli forces while waiting for humanitarian aid to come to the Gaza Strip. According to his family, he was killed by a tank shell. He was 41 years old.

UEFA posted its own tribute to Al-Obeid on X, but left out the cause of his death.

Kim Coles is sharing more of what she endured behind the scenes during her days starring on “Living Single.” 

On a recent episode of the podcast she co-hosts with fellow “Living Single” alum Erika Alexander, “ReLiving Single,” the 63-year-old actress revealed the way producers were pressuring her to lose weight behind the scenes. 

“I would get a call at the beginning of every season to my manager saying, ‘Kim Coles has to lose some weight. She has to lose some weight. She has to lose some weight,’” Coles said.

Producers even went as far as to threaten to write in fat jokes if she didn’t. 

“She wouldn’t be gaining all this weight, and her friends wouldn’t say anything,” Coles explained as the producers’ reasoning. “That was the threat — lose some weight or we’re going to have to start writing fat jokes.”

However, Coles, who played the eccentric fan-favorite Synclaire, noted that when she brought it up with Alexander, her co-star declared, “I won’t read those jokes.” Although Alexander, who played Maxine Shaw, an attorney who lived across the street, didn’t remember the specific instance, she did recall the ethos among the cast. 

“No one,” among them would have read jokes like that, she noted, adding that you have to have “willing collaborators” to inflict that kind of harm. 

In addition to Alexander and Coles, “Living Single,” which premiered on Fox in 1993 and ran for five seasons through 1998, starred Queen Latifah, John Henton, Kim Fields, and Terrence C. Carson as a group of friends living, working, and dating in New York City. Another aspect Alexander remembered was how the pressure took a toll on her castmate. 

“You know, the sad part is it got in your mind because I do remember that you went on a very concerted effort throughout the series to keep the image that they wanted,” she recalled. 

During the episode, the women revisit the episode “Crappy Birthday,” in which the two of them, plus Fields, who starred as Regine, take Latifah to Atlantic City for a spontaneous birthday trip. While in the car, there’s a complaint about heavy “luggage” in the back, to which Coles’ character responds, “You better not be looking at me.”

Alexander affirmed that it was a derogatory joke. 

“It is a fat joke,” she said. 

Coles noted that despite the pressure, “We didn’t do a lot of that on this show, and I’m grateful that we didn’t do a lot of that on this show because I gained weight every year. And we could have a whole conversation about that.”

Of the luggage joke, she added, “I’m surprised we let that one go.”

A significant reason the show didn’t include those types of jokes was that Queen Latifah championed against them early on. 

Alexander said, “Latifah made it really clear, like, ‘We’re not going to be doing that,’ and then they disappeared.”

Even still, Coles noted, “There is an expectation by these suits in an office somewhere of what they think sexy is. And so I had a really hard time as I was gaining weight and feeling as if everybody was staring.”

Ultimately, though, the actress said of the four female leads, “I think what was beautiful about us is there were four completely different body types. And we looked like women that everybody knew in our community.”