‘Gossip Girl’ reboot casts newcomer Savannah Smith in HBO Max series

When HBO Max announced it was working on a reboot of Gossip Girl, we didn’t have high hopes for diversity considering the original was seriously lacking in that department. It turns out, the lead in the reboot will be played by a lovely new actress named Savannah Smith.

The brown-skinned beauty is currently a student at NYU’s prestigious Tisch School of the Arts and the reboot will be her big break into Hollywood. She has been excitedly been posting about her new gig on Instagram.

According to Shadow and Act, Smith will play a lead role as part of the school’s in-crowd. She’s not the only Black face we’ll see when the series hits HBO Max because Whitney Peak has nabbed a role as well.

READ MORE: HBO sets release date for fourth season of ‘Insecure’ and drops trailer

Other confirmed cast members include Emily Alyn Lind, Tavi Gevinson, Eli Brown, Johnathan Fernandez, Jason Gotay. Thomas Doherty, Adam Chanler-Berat and Zion Moreno.

“This time around the leads are nonwhite,” the show’s executive producer, Joshua Safran said in a statement.

READ MORE: PHOTOS: ‘Insecure’ cast spills season 4 secrets at Sundance: “We are examining everybody’s relationship”

“There will also be a lot of queer content on this show. It is very much dealing with the way the world looks now, where wealth and privilege come from, and how you handle that.”

The original Gossip Girl was a huge hit for the CW from 2007-2012 and followed the lives of super spoiled teenagers wreaking havoc on the Upper East Side of NYC. The new iteration will pick up focus on this new diverse generation and how technology has changed how they interact and of course, gossip according to the teaser:

Eight years after the original website went dark, a new generation of New York private school teens are introduced to the social surveillance of Gossip Girl. The prestige series will address just how much social media — and the landscape of New York itself — has changed in the intervening years.

The debut is set for May with Kristen Bell reprising her role as the narrator of the series.

 

The post ‘Gossip Girl’ reboot casts newcomer Savannah Smith in HBO Max series appeared first on TheGrio.

from TheGrio https://ift.tt/3dSaDjr

Amazon To Deploy Face Masks, Temperature Checks By Next Week

The retail giant Amazon has announced that it will roll out temperature checks and face masks for staff at all its U.S. and European warehouses plus Whole Foods stores by early next week.

According to Reuters, Amazon said it would start testing hundreds of thousands of employees a day for fevers using forehead thermometers. Anyone registering more than 100.4 Fahrenheit will be sent home. Additionally, all locations will have surgical masks available by early next week.

Amazon said the mask rollout and temperature scans have begun at facilities near its Seattle headquarters and in New York. Workers from at least 19 warehouses have tested positive for the novel coronavirus since the outbreak began. Employees also held walkouts in New York and near Detroit this week.

The company will also use machine-learning software to monitor building cameras and determine whether employees are staying at safe distances during their shifts.

Workers who record a high temperature will be forced to stay home for three days without a fever before they can return. Unions and elected officials have criticized Amazon’s response to the coronavirus outbreak, with some even saying the retail company should close.

Dave Clark, Amazon’s senior vice president of worldwide operations, said the company has changed more than 150 processes to promote social distancing. Clark added Amazon has begun to stagger warehouse work start times and ended stand-up meetings during shifts.

“Nothing is more important to us than making sure that we protect the health of our teams,” Clark said.

Walmart also announced it would begin taking temperature checks and providing masks to its employees. Both companies have increased their hiring process during the coronavirus outbreak as online orders have skyrocketed due to quarantine orders across the country. Amazon has announced that it has hired 80,000 workers across the country and reported a full and part-time workforce of 798,000 as of Dec. 31.

from Black Enterprise https://ift.tt/349j7hH

NYC landlord cancels April rent on 80 apartments due to coronavirus

One landlord in New York – which has widely been called the epicenter of the coronavirus in this country – has decided to forego the rent of the 80 apartments he owns for the month of April.

According to a local NBC affiliate, on March 30, Mario Salerno made the announcement to his Brooklyn tenants by posting a notice on the front doors of all his buildings.

READ MORE: Oprah donates a hefty $10 mil to coronavirus relief

“Due to the recent pandemic of Coronavirus COVID-19 affecting all of us, please note I am waiving rent for the month for April,” the message read. “STAY SAFE, HELP YOUR NEIGHBORS & WASH YOUR HANDS!!!”

The 59-year-old whose approximately 80 apartments house between 200 to 300 tenants in total in the Williamsburg and Greenpoint neighborhoods said he came to the decision after a number of tenants reported they were having a hard time making ends meet during the pandemic.

“I want everybody to be healthy,” he told NBC New York. “That’s the whole thing.”

READ MORE: Steph and Ayesha Curry help to donate 1M meals to students

READ MORE: Lizzo thanks ER staff nationwide with lunch for hard work amid coronavirus

“For me, it was more important for people’s health and worrying about who could put food on whose table,” continued Salerno, who was born in Williamsburg. “ I say don’t worry about paying me, worry about your neighbor and worry about your family.”

Kaitlyn Guteski is a tenant and owns a hair salon that was shut down due to the national health crisis. She has been out of work ever since and admitted that this was an unexpected kind gesture.

Guteski had no idea how she would make rent and is floored by her landlord’s generosity.

“He’s Superman,” she said. “He’s a wonderful man.”

 

The post NYC landlord cancels April rent on 80 apartments due to coronavirus appeared first on TheGrio.

from TheGrio https://ift.tt/3bTHAdt

Susan Rice Defends Yamiche Alcindor Against Trump on Twitter

Former National Security Advisor Susan Rice is the latest to go at President Trump. The president was recently criticized for how he attacked and berated PBS correspondent Yamiche Alcindor in a White House coronavirus media briefing. President Trump told Alcindor at the meeting to “be nice” and to not be “threatening” in response to a question about Trump’s claim that state governors were requesting supplies to fight the coronavirus pandemic that they didn’t actually need. In a firestorm of tweets, Rice condemned Trump over his inappropriate behavior and defended Alcindor.

“President Trump today at the White House said to me: ‘Be nice. Don’t be threatening.’ I’m not the first human being, woman, black person or journalist to be told that while doing a job,” Alcindor wrote on Twitter and later retweeted by Rice. “My take: Be steady. Stay focused. Remember your purpose. And, always press forward.” Rice accused Trump of feeling insecure in the face of an intelligent black woman as this comes in a repeated pattern of the president attacking black female journalists.

“He has a particular problem, it seems, with black women, but as was pointed out in your earlier segment, it’s a problem that applies to women with strong personalities and a willingness to stand up for themselves and their beliefs across the board, said Rice to MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell.

The White House has not responded to a request for comment.

“It’s a sad thing. It’s a reflection of one’s own insecurity. It’s not a reflection of the talent or the capacities of the women we’re talking about,” she continued. “And I hope very much that we can move beyond that. It’s so unbecoming in the context of a national crisis for the president to lash out at individuals, whether the governor of Michigan or the speaker of the House or a reporter who asked a very fair, tough question.”

You go, girl. Pathetic when insecure men can’t stomach strong black women. https://t.co/ExjC9z5p1J

— Susan Rice (@AmbassadorRice) March 30, 2020

from Black Enterprise https://ift.tt/3aGCktP

T.C. Carson Explains the Reason for Being Fired From ‘Living Single’

Having an issue with Friends may end up with you Living Single. Actor T.C. Carson, who you may know as Kyle Barker from the Living Single series, says he was fired from the TV show after accusing Warner Bros. of neglecting the show in favor of Friends, according to Essence.

In a recent interview with Comedy Hype, Carson shared that he was fired from the show because he vocalized that Warner Bros started to neglect Living Single for another Warner Bros series, Friends. His firing came because he constantly spoke up about their show not getting the attention that was being given to Friends. “I got fired,” he said.

“We would come to them as a cast but I would be the spokesperson for it,” he continued. “So, that last season before I left, they called me in and they basically said, ‘Well, all these problems we’ve been having, they listen to you. You’re the person they listen to. So if you said something else, then they would do that.’ I looked at them and said, ‘Well, first of all, we’re dealing with five grown people, and they have their own mindset and own ideas about what we’re doing. Everything we come to you with is a group decision, not my decision. But if you think I have that much power, then I need to have a different job.’ I don’t think they liked that.”

There have been recent discussions about the television series Friends being a ripoff of Living Single due to Friends co-star David Schwimmer saying he’d like to see a reboot of Friends but with an all-black cast. Fellow Living Single co-star Erika Alexander had to remind him—and the world—that Friends was actually a ripoff of Living Single.

Carson also reiterated the expectation that blacks should be happy that they have a job and to stay in their place when dealing with being employed with a white company.

“Part of it is, even now, if you’re African American, you shut your mouth and do your job,” he added. “Don’t ask questions. Be happy that you have a job.”

“My whole time on Living Single, I was happy I had a job, but I understood the importance of the job I had. I understood the importance of what these characters meant to my community. And so when I come to you with a problem, it’s because of that, not because of ego. They looked at it as ego.”

from Black Enterprise https://ift.tt/2x254yj