New series may take Fellowes away from Downton Abbey
Bad news, I think, for Downton Abbey fans: writer Julian Fellowes has hinted broadly that he may be leaving the show. Mind you, it’s still not assured of a fourth season, so this could be the usual playing-hard-to-get to drive up his price. Or it could be something else. Fellowes told The New York Times that he might need to concentrate on The Gilded Age, a new series he’s doing for NBC, and he can’t be writing and show-running on both sides of the Atlantic at once.
“If I’m doing a series at NBC, I would not be able to write all of Downton … at the same time. … If Downton goes on — of course, that’s not my decision — then it would be with other writers. Perhaps with me supervising, but with other writers.”
Pamela Anderson, not working much any more, has decided it’s time to sell the Malibu home she has lived in since she married Tommy
Lee of Mötley Crüe in 1995. She’s asking $7.75 million.
Rihanna, who turned 25 on Wednesday, celebrated by accepting a large sum of money — amount not stated — to shill for MAC Cosmetics.
She’s starting with a lipstick known — I am not making this up — as RiRi Woo; it’ll be out in May.
You’ll recall that her clothing line, for the U.K. retailer River Island, just come out last week. Critics hated it — too many exposed navels — but the gear seems to be flying off the shelves over there.
Choreographer Benjamin Millipied, better known as Mr. Natalie
Portman, is upset because Nat is in a new movie starring opposite her old boyfriend, Brazilian Rodrigo
Santoro. Worse still: Nat, who also has a producing credit on the picture, suggested Rod for the gig.
The picture is called Jane Got a Gun, and Ben is “livid” about this. He and Portman “have been fighting for the past week about it, the usual Nameless Insider told In Touch Weekly. I wonder if they’ll make it to their first anniversary in August.
Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars movie, tells Entertainment Tonight that he and Harrison Ford are negotiating to appear in the new instalments of the franchise.
This was George Lucas’s idea, Hamill said, but now J.J. Abrams is good with it. And they have a promise from Lucas: “He did say that if we didn’t want to do it, they wouldn’t cast another actor in our parts — they would write us out.”
Next step: The two will meet scriptwriter Michael Arndt.
Hamill, in his mid-20s in 1977 when the first movie came out, is 61 now. Ford is 70.
Quote of the day: On Letterman the other night, Bruce Willis revealed a career change:
“There comes a time in every man’s life when you gotta take a good, cold, hard look at what you want to do, and I want to give this acting thing up. I’m Pope material.”