‘American Crime’ Adds Andrew Benjamin

TV Tattle

American Crime adds Andrew Benjamin

The Hey Ya! rapper/actor, better known as André 3000, has joined Season 2, playing an architect who’s married to Regina King. Benjamin previously worked with American Crime creator John Ridley, who directed him in the Jim Hendrix biopic All Is by My Side. “It’s fair to say American Crime might not exist were it not for our previous collaboration,” says Ridley.


K.C. Undercover
is under fire for using a white stunt double for Zendaya

Zendaya’s character, K.C. Cooper, is the daughter of black parents. Yet in Season 1, she had a white stunt double. And now several black stuntwomen are demanding that Zendaya use a black stuntwoman for Season 2. PLUS: Raven-Symoné to guest on K.C. Undercover.


What’s up with Carrie Mathison’s Homeland hair?

Is Claire Danes wearing a wig in this behind-the-scenes Season 5 clip?


SNL’s Jay Pharoah: I battled depression as a child

The Obama impressionist says he was “massively overweight” at age 12, which led to a painful battle with depression.


Sense8
used brain waves to create its theme music

The Netflix series used transformed the brain waves of eight people into musical notes.


Here’s a rundown of TLC’s many scandalized shows

Pedophilia or violence seems to be a recurring theme on troubled TLC shows from Honey Boo Boo to 19 Kids and Counting.


UC Berkeley’s Game of Thrones class requires students to read Rousseau and Foucault

The summer course at UC Berkeley — where more than 100 fossilized dire wolf remains are curated — challenges its 27 students to “explore questions about what Game of Thrones may be saying about democracy, climate change, comparisons or contrasts of medieval battles and today’s warfare and torture, corruption of the American Dream, global havoc, and how human bodies – especially those of women, the disabled or poor – both possess, and yield to, power,” according to a university press release. PLUS: See Game of Thrones stars when they were young.


Why I Am Cait’s focus on clothes is so important to Caitlyn Jenner’s transgender narrative

“To say that Caitlyn is a fashion icon after watching the first episode of I Am Cait is far too simplistic,” says Eliza Dillard. “To criticize the emphasis on clothing in the episode is ignorant. This entire episode revolves around clothes because our identities are so bound up in what we put on our bodies.” PLUS: Caitlyn Jenner has final say on what goes on her show.


Mad Men
auction: These are the most bizarre props

From Meredith’s TAB can to the beating spoons from the house of prostitution from Don Draper’s childhood.


There will be a slow build for Fear the Walking Dead zombies

“We purposely built the show a bit more slowly than the original,” says showrunner Dave Erickson. “We call them ‘infected’ and not ‘walkers.’ There’s absolutely going to be walkers, (but) there will be a build.

HBO’s Ballers would be better off being less NFL-friendly

The Dwayne Johnson serious doesn’t seriously address the NFL’s system failures.


How Alamo Draft House convinced Kyle Chandler to reprise Friday Night Lights‘ Coach Taylor

“After some back and forth with one of our managers, we planted the seed of, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to do one of these?’ And he was all for it,” says the theater chain’s John Gross. “Throughout the entire process he was such an easy person to deal with, because he gets it.”


Why Taylor Swift is like the daughter of Seinfeld

As Nick Murray explains, “despite the tonal difference between Taylor’s bubble-girl naiveté and Jerry Seinfeld’s bleacher-bum sarcasm, both share an optimism about what it’s like to work, live, and be single in the city. When people who didn’t live in Manhattan imagined Manhattan, they often saw it through Seinfeld’s lens.”


Bill Nye reads his mean tweets

The Science Guy didn’t need Jimmy Kimmel to look at his mean tweets.


Girlfriends Guide to Divorce
books Barry Bostwick and Lesley Anne Warren

They’ll guest as Lisa Edelstein’s parents.


Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp
proves TV reboots can work

The prequel, says Willa Paskin, “is a stroke of genius rather than a money-minting strategy. It means, among other things, Wet Hot American Summer, still has an ending. It leans into the joke of its cast members’ increasing age: in 2001, when the movie came out, the 20- and 30-something actors were playing 16 and 17. Fourteen years later, the even older actors are playing even younger. (Hollywood being what it is, most of them look exactly the same age.)” PLUS: It’s not better than the movie, it’s perfect mindless entertainment for the summer, it works so well that Netflix should consider rebooting other camp classics, what a terrible idea, and “the heart of its appeal is the oldest and most effective form of nostalgia: seeing how old pals have changed after all these years.”