The Game of Thrones cast had an epic reunion at the Emmys on Sunday night (September 22). Emilia Clarke, Kit Harington, Lena Headey, Peter Dinklage, Sophie Turner, Maisie Williams, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Gwendoline Christie, Alfie Allen, and Carice van Houten all hit the stage together to pay tribute to the show, which ended this summer after eight glorious seasons.
The audience gave them a standing ovation when they first walked out, and the emotion was palpable. Each cast member had a chance to talk briefly, and their words were met with rapturous applause. When it came time for Christie to speak, fans screamed so loudly they muffled her speech. What can I say? This fandom runs deep.
Allen captured much of the reunion on his Instagram Story. Check out this cute selfie the group took before hitting the stage:
It’s hard to believe, but this month marks the 25th anniversary of Friends. And to celebrate, the cast members who are on Instagram posted touching throwback shots from the show’s early days. Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, and Matt LeBlanc each shared the same photo, which depicts the beloved group walking down the street in evening wear. They used the opportunity to thank their fans for loving and supporting the sitcom for more than two decades.
“Celebrating a Thursday night 25 years ago. Thank you to all of our loyal fans across the world. You’ve certainly been there for us! I love these guys!” Cox wrote. She also teased Jennifer Aniston and Matthew Perry for not having social media: “#seriouslyjen? #youtoomatthew.” Kudrow made a similar joke in hers: “Celebrating a Thursday night 25 years ago. We might be in different places but we are connect.ed. #STILLTHEREFORYOU #FRIENDS #friends25thanniversary #TWITTER@MATTHEWPERRY #COMEONALREADYJEN.”
Meanwhile, LeBlanc wrote, “Seems like yesterday. Thanks to all the fans for watching.” And Schwimmer added, “THANK YOU to all the fans out there!! We couldn’t have done it without you.”
These joint posts coincide with a few other recent tributes to Friends. Just this week, Ralph Lauren dropped a collection inspired by Aniston’s character Rachel Green. Over the summer, there was also some buzz that a Friends reunion could happen; Aniston got our hopes up when she said on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, “Listen, I told you this: I would do it. The girls would do it. And the boys would do it, I’m sure.”
We’re crossing our fingers, especially because we learned in June that Friends is leaving Netflix in 2020. So, if these posts gave you serious nostalgia, be sure to stream your favorite episodes while they’re still available on the site.
This article contains spoilers about the seventh—and final—season of Orange Is the New Black, now streaming on Netflix.
Adrienne C. Moore (Cindy Hayes, the inmate who converts to Judaism in season three) is in Atlanta for her 20-year high school reunion when she calls. “I’ve been to past reunions since the advent of Orange Is the New Black, and one thing I love about my friends is they know Adrienne,” she tells Glamour. They may occasionally blurt out that she’s on a show, she concedes, but “they’re Atlanta folks, and Atlanta folks are very down-to-earth kind of people.”
Like so many members of the sprawling Orange ensemble, Moore was a relative unknown when she was cast on the series. She was booking theater roles, commercials, and guest spots in New York, sure, but breakout opportunities for women, let alone women of color, were rare. Nobody knew who she was.
Adrienne C. Moore as Cindy Hayes
Netflix
“This industry is hard,” says Laura Gómez (Blanca Flores, who thought she was being released from Litchfield only to be sent to an immigration facility). “You’re put in a box.” She auditioned for Orange while she was writing and directing a short film at New York University; by that point, she remembers, “I was considering maybe going to Spain to turn things around. I don’t know that I was about to quit acting, but I was thinking of ways to quit the torture that I was experiencing here.”
Selenis Leyva (Gloria Mendoza, who at times was head cook and the leader of the prison’s Spanish Harlem) shares a similar story. “I started acting at the age of 18,” she says. “I did a lot of guest roles, theater—sometimes it was free and sometimes it was as if it was free. You name it.” She was two decades into her career and on the verge of dropping out when she was tapped to play Gloria. “Literally, I said, ‘I’m done with acting,’” she recalls. “And then Orange popped up.”
“What the show did for so many of us, if not all of us, was open or reopen big doors,” Gómez says. “It put us on the map.”
When Orange premiered in 2013, there was some skepticism about whether it would sugarcoat prison. After all, the series is based on a memoir by Piper Kerman—a white middle-class Smith graduate—and stars Taylor Schilling as the fish-out-of-water inmate. But as creator Jenji Kohan explained from the outset, Piper was her “Trojan horse”: a stock blond that gave entrée into a more expansive world, one where women of all colors, shapes, sexual orientations, and ages coexisted. Orange wasn’t a Pollyanna prison story, and Kohan wasn’t making TV as usual.
This post contains spoilers for Game of Thrones. Consider yourself warned.
Can you believe it’s actually only been two months since HBO aired the final episode of Game of Thrones?
It might feel like a lifetime since the finale wrapped up, deciding the fate of the show’s (remaining) characters: Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead-Wright) took over ruling Westeros while Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) became Queen in the North, and the youngest Stark, Arya (Maisie Williams), took off on a ship for parts unknown. But not everyone was pleased with the series finale—or the entirety of the eighth season—and the cast of the hit show hasn’t forgotten the backlash. Fans were upset with everything from Cersei and Jamie’s final moments and Dany’s turn as the Mad Queen to the choice of who took the Iron Throne and Jon’s banishment to the Wall.
There was even a fan petition requesting that showrunners reshoot the final season, which Turner (and Riverdale actress, Lili Reinhart) spoke out against earlier this year. “All of these petitions and things like that—I think it’s disrespectful to the crew, and the writers, and the filmmakers who have worked tirelessly over 10 years, and for 11 months shooting the last season,” Turner told the New York Times in May. “Like, 50-something night shoots. So many people worked so, so hard on it, and for people to just rubbish it because it’s not what they want to see is just disrespectful.”
Now some of her other cast members are sounding off, as well. “It was surprising the level of absurdity of the the online petition,” Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (who played Jamie Lannister) said at Comic-Con on Friday, per Vulture. “Of course HBO’s going to change the whole thing. Because that’s the power of the internet! Every season, we had huge controversies. From Ned Stark being killed—‘I’m never going to watch that piece of shit show again!’ And then there was the Red Wedding. And obviously, the end. “
Members of the Game of Thrones cast at Comic-Con on Friday.Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images
“I feel so lucky to have met so may fans of the show, and to realize this show has brought so many people together. Watching it, loving it,” he continued. “So obviously, It comes to an end, it’s going to piss you off no matter what. It’s the end! But at the end of the day, it’s absolutely fine. If you hated the ending, if you loved it, that’s great. Just don’t call people names.”
Everyone’s hearts skipped a beat earlier this week when Meghan Markle, Prince Harry, Beyoncé, and Jay-Z met at the London premiere of The Lion King. The foursome all looked so happy to be chatting: Beyoncé gave Markle a warm hug and reportedly called her “my princess,” and Prince Harry couldn’t stop smiling. To be a fly on the wall, am I right?
But underneath all these good vibes were some nerves from Beyoncé. In a new interview with Jimmy Kimmel, Billy Eichner (who plays Timon in The Lion King) says the whole cast was nervous meeting the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, including Queen B, who’s basically American royalty.
“It was great, and we were all kind of nervous, even Beyoncé,” Eichner revealed. And that’s not all the tea he spilled: Apparently, The Lion King cast was given some very strict instructions for greeting Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
NIKLAS HALLE’N/AFP/Getty Images
Per Eichner, “In the days leading up to it, they email you a protocol of how you’re supposed to greet Prince Harry and Meghan. They are very intense about it. I’m not kidding! You’re supposed to say, ‘Your royal highness.’ You can’t speak until your hands are, like, in a handshake with his. My plus-one—my guest I brought with me, my very good friend Jared—they said he had to stand behind me and not speak unless he was spoken to. I’m not kidding! I was like, ‘Does that same rule apply to Jay-Z?’ I have a feeling it doesn’t.”
It all worked out, though. Even though Eichner says he “completely freaked out,” Markle and Prince Harry were apparently “very, very nice and totally chill and down to earth and lovely.” That sounds about right, given Prince Harry’s reported annoyance with the stuffiness of royal culture. “Harry is a man who, as a young boy, resented being a prince, resented the weighted burden that came with his title,” royals expert Katie Nicholl told Glamour a few months back.
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Watch Eichner’s interview for yourself in the video, above. The Lion King is currently playing in theaters nationwide.
Ever since Gossip Girl went off the air in 2012, people have been waiting for it to come back. We are in the era of reboots, after all, and a show like Gossip Girl—with its soapy twists and diehard fan base—is ripe for revisiting. In February 2019 news broke that The CW was having “discussions” about rebooting the beloved series, which centered on a group of rich teens living on New York City’s Upper East Side, but nothing was confirmed. Still, fans are holding out for a full-fledged revival—and they may get it. Several of the show’s cast members have said they’re on board with a reboot if all the pieces fell into place. The latest to add his voice to the choir is Chace Crawford, a.k.a Nate Archibald, who told Digital Spy he could see GG coming back as a miniseries.
“I don’t know what it would look like with us being in our 30s now, but I always say, because it was such a big part of my life, I’m open to anything,” he said. “It would have to be really right, and really specific, and with TV and the golden age of the TV streaming service, maybe an eight-episode season.”
He continued, “It would be very tough to get everybody on board I think because of their schedules, Penn, Leighton, Ed… They’re all doing really good TV shows. It would be hard I think [to get them all together]. The reboot might come in the form of new characters. I would absolutely cameo. I’d have to.”
Crawford is referring to his Gossip Girl co-stars Penn Badgley (Dan), Leighton Meester (Blair), and Ed Westwick (Chuck), who are all currently starring in successful TV shows. That being said, they’ve also put in their two-cents about a GG reboot—as has Blake Lively (Serena). Here’s everything the Gossip Girl cast has put into the universe about a possible reboot:
“It sort of all depends. Would I do seven years of the show? No, because it’s hard work and I’ve got my babies, and I don’t want to be away from them that much. But I’ve just learned in life you never say never. I’m looking to do something that I haven’t done yet, not something that I did. But would I do that? Who knows—if it was good, if it made sense. We had so much fun shooting and living and working in New York City.” — Variety, 2017
