Nicki Minaj may have dissed Iggy Azalea at BET Awards - New York Daily News

FilmMagic/BET/Getty Images Nicki Minaj (left) declared she writes her own songs, but said she didn’t mean any ‘shade’ at anyone — which many took to be a jab at fellow rapper Iggy Azalea.

Nicki Minaj may have thrown some serious shade at fellow female hip hop star Iggy Azalea during the BET Awards Sunday.

The "Starships" singer, 31, took the stage at the Nokia Theater to accept her fifth consecutive win for Best Female Hip Hop Artist, beating out the Australian newcomer whom many considered the favored pick.

In a rambling speech — and not mentioning Azalea, 24, by name — Minaj talked proudly about her ability to write her own music.

"This is always very, very emotional for me," Minaj said. "Because this is my fifth year winning this award and I don't take it for granted. I really don't … I thank god that I've been placed in a position to do something and represent women in a culture that is so male-driven … But my point is, what I want the world to know about Nicki Minaj is, that when you hear Nicki Minaj spit, Nicki Minaj wrote it."

The Queens-born rapper took the moment to strike a diva pose before continuing — and clarified that her comment was not to be taken as shade towards anyone, but many took it as a dig at Azalea — who is rumored to have several ghostwriters on her music.

Kevin Winter/Getty Images for BET Minaj accepts the award for Best Female Hip Hop Artist at the BET Awards Sunday, her fifth consecutive win. She delivered a lengthy speech.

"No, no, no shade," Minaj continued. "I used to sit in the studio with (Lil Wayne) and I would literally take sometimes three, four days to write a verse. And he was like, 'No, you can't be taking days to write no verse, you gotta write your verse right here in the studio.' And that's why I love him 'til this day. Because he pushed me to push my pen, and I'm still one of the only emcees that's out here spitting metaphors and making you think. And I really don't even care if I get my credit or if I don't. I don't look at myself as a female rapper, because I know what I do."

The rapper went on to herald BET as a "big" and "different" institution for black people, but then her rant took a serious turn.

Allen Berezovsky/WireImage The ‘Fancy’ rapper, 24, has not responded to Minaj’s alleged diss.

"I just wanna say that, the other day, literally I didn't tell anyone this, I really thought I was about to die," Minaj said.

"Like I was saying my prayers to die. And I didn't even wanna call the ambulance because I thought well if I call the ambulance, it's gonna be on TMZ. And I would rather sit there and die. And it made me realize, I don't care what anybody gotta say. I'ma do me. I'ma do me."

Before she left the stage, the "Beez in the Trap" rapper took what bloggers and social media users consider another shot at Azalea.

"I hope and pray that BET continues to honor authenticity," she concluded. "And that's all I'm gonna say about that."

Azalea, who performed her hit song "Fancy" on stage with rapper T.I., has not responded to the apparent jab.

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See Robin Thicke's Latest Attempt to Win Back Paula Patton - seattlepi.com

Robin Thicke wants his wife back.

On Sunday's BET Awards, the singer debuted his new song - aptly titled "Get Her Back" - and opened the performance by dedicating it to Paula Patton saying, "I miss you, I'm sorry." The couple announced their split in February, but Thicke has repeatedly made attempts to win her back.

Check out photos of Robin Thicke and Paula Patton through the years

Following the show, Thicke tweeted to his "Forever love," writing:

To my #ForeverLove pic.twitter.com/yXXzrcwuS3

- Robin Thicke (@robinthicke) June 30, 2014

In case those bold statements weren't enough, Thicke's newest album is titled Paula.

Watch This Tonight: See why Under the Dome is our editors' pick:

View original See Robin Thicke's Latest Attempt to Win Back Paula Patton at TVGuide.com

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Swan song for dead parrot? Pythons say reunion will be last - Reuters

(Reuters) - The dead parrot routine, the Spanish Inquisition and the silly walk will all be performed on stage this week for what the five remaining members of the Monty Python comedy team, all in their 70s, said on Monday will probably be their last reunion.

"Monty Python Live (mostly): One Down, Five to Go" opens at London's cavernous O2 arena on Tuesday for 10 performances with the last one on July 20 to be broadcast worldwide.

In addition to famous Python skits, it will be a fully staged theatrical extravaganza with dancers and an orchestra. It will also feature a filmed appearance by Python Graham Chapman, who died in 1989, and a cameo for British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, the Pythons said at a news conference.

The surviving members of the comedy team, which became an international sensation in the 1960s with their quirky comedy programme "Monty Python's Flying Circus", said they did not expect to perform together again on stage - and that is why they are broadcasting the last show.

"When we thought it was going to be the last one, we thought, 'Wouldn't it be wonderful to put it on around the world so it's a world event?'" Eric Idle, who directed the show, said.

"It means that you're actually going to say goodbye publicly on one show and no one has the chance to do that. The Beatles didn't get a last good night and I think that's rather lovely. I think it's dear and sweet and gracious and I'm very grateful that that's come to be," Idle said at a London theatre.

He and fellow Pythons John Cleese, Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam sat at a long table with a screen behind them showing a graveyard with a tombstone engraved "G Chapman".

Before they came on stage, a video clip was shown featuring Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, who is also in his 70s, wondering - tongue in cheek - why anyone would want to see a comedy team that old.

Idle said that while the show would have dancers and an orchestra, they were basically going to perform their most famous routines, with a tweak here and there - much as veteran rock groups like the Rolling Stones do on tour.

"If you go out and do a stadium, and you're going to look at your material, they're going to want to see, they want to see the parrot, they want to see 'Let's Spend the Night Together'," Idle said, referring to a Stones classic, and their own famous routine about a man trying to return a dead parrot to a shop.

"It would be folly to try and write better things than our best at this age. It would be stupid so we've changed it up and put some surprises in, there's a bit of filming and then there's some guests... a couple of really interesting guest stars which I'm just going to tease you with.

"Can I say? Stephen Hawking is actually in the show. He's coming to it too and he's a big Python fan so he was asked if he wanted to do the show and in one minute he said yes."

Palin said the costume changes and performing the routines take stamina, but he thought the Pythons were up for it.

"We want to be energetic. I mean, the opening number is energetic. We leap around and all that. And that really sets the standard. I'm really quite worn out even after the first number," Idle said.

"But throughout that, you've got Mick Jagger. You've got to take that example that we can still move fast around the stage so a slight madness takes over and you leap about at certain points. Well, I do."

"Yeah, it's the next day when you realise what you've done to your body," Gilliam added.

(Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Zendaya Coleman Drops Out of Aaliyah Biopic - People Magazine

TV Watch

By Zakiya Jamal

06/30/2014 at 01:00 PM EDT

Zendaya (left) and Aaliyah

Jeff Kravitz/Filmmagic; Evan Agostini/Imagedirect/Getty

Only two weeks after announcing she'd be playing Aaliyah in a TV movie about the late star, Zendaya Coleman has decided to pull out of the role.

The Lifetime network confirmed Coleman's departure from the project by posting on Twitter on Sunday, announcing, "Production is currently on hold."

Coleman, 17, told reporters at the BET Awards in Los Angeles on Sunday that she felt uneasy about the production.

"I felt like something with the production [wasn't] all the way there, the project wasn't all the way there," she said. "If I'm going to do something for someone I care about so much, I have to do it the right way."

"I just felt that because I love her, and because I respected her so much as an artist, I don't want to do anything that's half or anything that's less for her," Coleman said.

After the biopic was announced, Aaliyah's family was reportedly against it.

Coleman says she is still open to playing Aaliyah in the future.

"By all means, when the right project comes along, and it's done the right way, I'll be the first person ready to play Aaliyah. But, this wasn't the right one for me," she told MTV News.

The film was originally set to premiere this fall.

• Reporting by CHRISTINA DUGAN

'True Blood': Why Jason And Eric's Sex Scene Was A Triumph - MTV.com

by Shaunna Murphy 50 mins ago

Last Sunday night (June 29), you might have seen something a little peculiar — a little old school — trending on your Twitter and/or Facebook feed, depending on your particular social media poison. That something was “True Blood,” the bloody, hyper-sexual relic of the late 2010′s that famously went off the rails somewhere in the middle of its run, but is still currently airing its final season — while everybody else has moved on to “Game of Thrones,” “Teen Wolf,” and the 37 other supernatural television shows on The CW.

But “True Blood”‘s remaining loyal fans were freaking out for good reason. After months (years?) of teasing and anticipation, the show aired a soft-core “slash” sex scene between two characters, Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgard) and Jason Stackhouse (Ryan Kwanten), that didn’t exactly advance anything plot-wise, but still reminded everybody of what was so thrilling about the show in the first place — its willingness to depict relationships, sexual or otherwise, that defied norms.

“The real question was how we would approach it, because historically with the men-with-men sex dreams, they’ve just been sort of straight sex—no subtext—and we wanted to do something a little different with this one,” writer Kate Barnow told Entertainment Weekly .

Barnow is referring to the fact that “True Blood” has aired many “love” scenes of varying intensity between two male characters before, be they dreams or otherwise. This (thankfully) doesn’t seem like such a big deal nowadays, but back when the show premiered in 2008 — before “Thrones,” “Glee,” “Orange is the New Black” and more made LGBT characters in popular television series a rule, and not an exception — its taboo sex scenes were a major talking point. Heck, the entire season one plot about the struggle for vampire equality is popularly known as an allegory for LGBT rights. (See: the “God Hates Fangs” poster in the show’s opening.)

Years of ill-advised plot lines and other, even more NC-17 cable series (again, “Thrones”) have certainly dulled “True Blood”‘s cultural impact, but the power of last night’s Jason/Eric sex scene shouldn’t be ignored — not only because it appealed to the often-ignored slash-shipper fan base, but because it brilliantly managed to appeal to that fanbase while also introducing yet another widely experienced (but rarely explored) element of human sexuality into the mix: the bi-curious sex dream.

(*Often ignored for good reason, when it comes to storytelling — just because a slash fan base, or any shipper fan base, thinks that two characters should end up together, doesn’t mean that they should. Just wanted to clear that up.)

HBO

“Bucky [showrunner Brian Buckner] and Kate asked me for my input, and I felt like the more ownership of the scene I gave Alex and Jason, the more they’d be able to channel it,” director Howard Deutch continued. “So it wouldn’t be me being a puppeteer or them just acting, they could be it. This is Jason’s dream, so Alex kept saying, ‘Well, you tell me what to do, Ryan. It’s your dream.’ And Ryan would go, ‘Well, I don’t know. What do you want to do?’ It started like that until Alex said, ‘Well, you know, I could f— him or I could kill him. I’m not sure.’ And out of that came the notion that there’s violence in the eroticism… We didn’t want to shy away from what a real love scene would look like with them.”

Knowing that Kwanten, who has been playing Jason Stackhouse for seven years now, had control over this scene — which depicted his own character’s deepest, darkest desires (or, at the very least, curiosities) makes the whole thing even better. The point of that dream (again, besides pleasing the fan base) was not that Jason is gay or has gay fantasies, because we know that that’s not true. But the fact that he has complicated feelings and even admiration toward Eric is totally understandable — the man is a 1,000-plus year old viking demi-God who can fly, for God’s sake. For a simpleton with Rambo-esque aspirations like Jason, Eric is a freaking superhero — and a superhero who recently saved his life, so having a dream or two with complicated, sexual undertones (overtones?) involving physical power struggles is something that, theoretically, could very likely happen.

Did the show present Jason’s dream as a complex, multi-layered aspect of human sexuality that is typically ignored? Of course not — it was an Anne Rice-esque, porny sex dream, through and through. But as “True Blood” enters its final stretch, the fact that the show has never shied away from showing its hyper-masculine, heterosexual male characters experience feelings that aren’t necessarily indicative of a zero on the Kinsey scale should be applauded, no matter what you think about those damn were-panthers.

Pippa Middleton On 'Embarrassing' Attention Over Royal Wedding Dress, Talks ... - Access Hollywood

Pippa Middleton made headlines at sister Kate Middleton’s Royal Wedding to Prince William in 2011 for her flattering maid-of-honor dress, and she said she was surprised by all the attention.

“It was completely unexpected,” Pippa told “Today” show host Matt Lauer in an interview that aired on Monday. “I think the plan was not really for it to be a significant dress, really just sort of blend in with the train. And, I suppose it’s flattering.”

But did she find the attention a little embarrassing?

PHOTOS: Sexy Royal Sister Pippa Middleton

“Embarrassing, definitely, because I suppose, it wasn’t planned. The dress was almost meant to be insignificant,” Pippa said.

Pippa, 30, said the famed gown is at home in her wardrobe, and she has no plans to wear it any time soon.

PHOTOS: The Royal Wedding: The Family

“I think it’s the sort of thing I’m sure I’ll bring out if someone wanted to see it, or my children one day want to see it, I’ll show them, but it’s tucked away,” Pippa said.

Pippa, an author and charity campaigner, said she didn’t realize how big her sister’s wedding was until later, when the families were on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, looking out at the crowds.

“Even sort of walking through the Abbey, there were a lot of people, but I didn’t maybe… see any TV cameras. So, to me, it was just performing in front of a lot of people, not necessarily the whole world,” she told Matt.

But while standing on that balcony, Pippa said she felt the enormity of the event.

PHOTOS: From Kate Middleton To Duchess Catherine: Regular To Royal

“It was surreal. You sort of slightly don’t know if you’re living it through yourself [at] that moment,” she said. “I think it was whenever we sort of saw crowds rushing ‘round to the balcony, and I suddenly was like, ‘Wow, this is pretty special.’”

Now, three years after her big sister’s wedding, Pippa is regularly followed by the paparazzi, who often find out her location when people Tweet about where they saw her. And Pippa told Matt she has found being in the public eye, and all the criticism that comes with being famous, isn’t always easy.

“It’s hard sometimes because I have felt publicly bullied a little bit just by, you know, when I read things that clearly aren’t true or that, you know, whichever way someone looks at it, it’s a negative side and it is quite difficult because eventually I’m just paving my way and trying to live a life like any 30-year-old,” she said.

When Matt suggested many young people on Twitter might also feel bullied, Pippa said social media takes away the filter many people have in real life.

“And I think people feel they can say something about you online or on a web page when they would never say it to your face. But they think that’s okay,” she said. “So it’s been difficult. And I think, you know, just to sort of keep bouncing back and carrying on and trying not to let it affect you is hard, but it’s just… it’s trying to just be yourself and not read too much and make decisions based on what I feel is right and wrong.”

-- Jolie Lash

Copyright 2014 by NBC Universal, Inc. All rights reserved.

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Earl Gibson III/Kevin Mazur/BET/Getty Images for BET - E! Online

Earl Gibson III/Kevin Mazur/BET/Getty Images for BET

First things first: White ensembles dominated last night's 2014 BET Awards' red carpet. We counted at least 15 looks—and that's not including the fellas. Which is what made Kerry Washington 's bright floral Dolce & Gabbana dress that much more refreshing. In only her second red carpet event since giving birth two months ago, the Scandal star managed to steal the show by bucking the trend. Well played, K.W.!

Not that we didn't enjoy the all-white fad. In fact, our second-favorite frock of the night was an ivory Jason Wu frock worn by Gugu Mbatha-Raw. And we also adored Regina Hall's plunging white pantsuit sans shirt. The Think Like a Man Too actress managed to look ultra-cool in long sleeves and pants—quite the feat in 85-degree weather!

PHOTOS: Kerry Washington's Best Looks

Earl Gibson III/Kevin Mazur/BET/Getty Images for BET

Meanwhile, Gabrielle Union seemed to be dressed for the wrong season in a Maria Lucia Hohan gown with thigh-high black boots. The gown would have been ideal for the occasion if only she would have opted for simply strappy sandals.

Moving on to more confusing fashion statements, we raised an eyebrow when we saw Zendaya's Emanuel Ungaro ensemble. Is it just us or did it sort of seem like she dipped into Jennifer Lopez 's closet and snagged something the singer wore back in the late '90s?

And finally Malina Moye's color-clashing neon dress stood out on the red carpet but not in a necessarily in a good way.

Who do you think was best and worst dressed at last night's awards?

PHOTOS: All the red carpet arrivals at the 2014 BET Awards

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