Stars on Screen
Building gratitude: Cast aside your preconceptions of celebrity entitlement, because HGTV is offering Hollywood A-listers an opportunity to show gratitude to those who had a hand in their success.
Premiering Monday, April 13, “Celebrity IOU” may be HGTV’s most starstudded project yet. Each week, “Property Brothers” Drew and Jonathan Scott will travel across the country to team up with a different celebrity for a classic Scott brothers-styled home renovation.
Except the stars aren’t looking to improve their own homes — no, they’re hoping to surprise a mentor, friend or family member who made a difference in their life or career.
From converting a detached garage to updating a condo’s ‘70s decor, “Celebrity IOU” will feature genuine, personal acts of kindness and uplifting stories from the stars themselves. It’s a rare glimpse into their lives away from the camera and, of course, the people who played a big role in their lives.
So which celebrities will be rolling up their sleeves and getting their hands dirty?
The most famous name of all is recent Oscar winner Brad Pitt (“Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood,” 2019), whose passion for architecture and design is well known. Giving back is also nothing new to Pitt, who founded the Make It Right Foundation in 2007 (though his good intentions in New Orleans did land him in legal hot water).
Pitt joins a roster that includes Melissa McCarthy (“Can You Ever Forgive Me,” 2018), Viola Davis (“How to Get Away With Murder”), Rebel Wilson (“Jojo Rabbit,” 2019) and singer Michael Buble. No stranger to house flipping, actor Jeremy Renner (“Avengers: Endgame,” 2019) will also be featured in an episode, as teased in a trailer that showed McCarthy wielding a drill and Davis removing a countertop.
Back to sea: If you’ve watched “Deadliest Catch” on Discovery Channel, you’ll remember Phil Harris, the chain-smoking, gruff but immensely likable captain of the Cornelia Marie. It’s been a decade since Harris tragically died while filming the sixth season. Season 16 of “Deadliest Catch” is ready to launch this Tuesday (April
14), but so is a new spinoff series that will retrace one of Harris’ lesser-known journeys on the open seas.
“Deadliest Catch: Bloodline” will follow Harris’ oldest son, fellow Alaskan fisherman Josh Harris, who purchased the Cornelia Marie in
2014 with the help of investors. During recent renovations, he and business partner
Casey McManus happened upon a bunch of Hawaiian fishing charts covered with Phil’s handwritten notes about fishing adventures and secrets, as well as island adventures. So the pair set out on a quest to learn more about Phil’s Hawaiian adventures, and that’s the premise for “Bloodline.”
Jeff Silva, a top commercial fisherman who knows his way around the Kona coast, will help guide the two in their journey. Silva will teach them to interpret Phil’s charts and fish for the most sought after bounty, ahi tuna. They’ll also have to battle the elements, though it’s hard to imagine they’d face anything quite as extreme as the conditions in the Bering Sea.
Speaking of northern waters, you’ll still see Harris and McManus in action in “Deadliest Catch” Season 16. The special two-hour premiere on April 14 will set the stage (and tone) for this year’s competition, which will pit the Alaskan crab fleet against their biggest rivals, the Russians, for the first time in the show’s history.
Final ‘Vida’: There is good news and very bad news for fans of “Vida.” The groundbreaking Starz series is still on track to debut its third season on Sunday, April 26, and that’s significant considering the number of premieres that have been delayed or indefinitely postponed due to COVID-19.
So that’s the good. What’s the bad?
Sadly, this will be the final season. Series creator/showrunner Tanya Saracho broke the news to fans in a heartfelt letter that thanked them for their support: “Because you championed our delicate and darling little series, we were gifted three beautifully compelling, trailblazing seasons of television.”
Starz’ decision to end “Vida” comes as a surprise given the dramedy’s critical, but not commercial, success. It hasn’t pulled in huge ratings, although it did provide Starz with a nice boost in Hispanic viewership. But it is a top-rated critical darling — it has a rare 100% aggregate critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes — and it also won last year’s GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Comedy series.
Nonetheless, Saracho reportedly had an ending in mind while filming Season 3.And Saracho hopes viewers will be able “to give this, our last season, a good send-off, because let me tell you, it is a powerful one. It is just as compelling as ever with some imagery and themes I’ve never seen on television before. I’m profoundly proud of it.”