Top Story: O.J. Simpson Angry at Dead Wife
O.J. Simpson tells Fox News Channel’s On the Record host Greta Van Susteren that he is mad at his dead ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson. “There are things that she could be doing with the kids better than I, you know? When, it’s emotional stuff, especially with my daughter, I am angry with her,” the former football star said in excerpts released by the cable channel Thursday. “I am angry that she found herself hanging out with the group of … who are these people?” The sit-down interview, conducted in a Florida hotel, is set to air in full on Monday’s edition of On the Record. Simpson, 56, was acquitted of murder charges in the June 12, 1994 double murder of Brown Simpson and her friend, Ronald Goldman. Although he was found liable for their deaths in a civil trial brought by the families of the murder victims in 1997, Simpson has consistently maintained his innocence, claiming his ex-wife mingled with the wrong crowd and fell victim to a world of crime and drugs. After the trial, Simpson, who lives on a $4 million pension that is exempt from civil court judgments, relocated his family from California to Miami.
Juliette Lewis Desperately Seeking Chihuahua
Juliette Lewis tells Entertainment Weekly she is considering seeing a pet psychic to find out what happened to her Chihuahua, Chowie, who was snatched from her back yard seven years ago. “As crazy as that is,” she tells the magazine, “I want to go to her (the pet psychic) and say, ‘Where is my Chowie? Is he reincarnated? And how can I find him?'” Lewis‘ band The Licks is performing at the Warped Tour starting June 25.
Sotheby’s To Auction Hepburn’s Estate
Items from Katharine Hepburn‘s estate will be auctioned next week at the New York auction house Sotheby’s, Reuters reports. Hepburn‘s white crushed-velvet dress she wore for her 1928 marriage to Ludlow Ogden Smith is expected to fetch up to $3,500. The pair split after six years and although Hepburn never remarried, she was later linked to Howard Hughes and Spencer Tracy, with whom she had a 27-year relationship. Other top items in the sale include manuscripts, photos, letters, furniture, a telegram announcing her birth, a Toulouse-Lautrec print, nearly 100 drawings and paintings by Hepburn and a bronze African mask of which she was particularly fond. Hepburn, a four-time Oscar winner, died last June in Connecticut at 96. The sale is expected to bring in about $1 million with proceeds going to Hepburn‘s family. Her four Oscar statues will be donated elsewhere.
Bill Clinton Launches Book Tour
Former President Bill Clinton launched his book tour yesterday for his soon-to-be published 1,000-page memoir My Life, which bookstores June 22. The two-term president told a bookseller’s convention in Chicago that although he never suffered writer’s block, he had to stop for a few hours because of renewed anger at special prosecutor Kenneth Starr’s treatment of his Arkansas friends. “Things I thought I wasn’t mad at, I got mad about all over again,” he said. Clinton, however, made did not mention Monica Lewinsky, the White House intern at the center of the sex scandal that dominated much of his second term.
Arrested Gets Kudos from TV Critics
Fox’s critically acclaimed comedy Arrested Development topped the 2004 Television Critics Association nominations, leading the pack with five nods including best comedy series, Reuters reports. Other perennial favorites to snag nominations included HBO’s series The Sopranos and Deadwood as well as their miniseries Angels in America and Comedy Central’s The Daily Show. The winners, selected by the Television Critics Association’s 200 members, will be announced July 17 at the Century Plaza Hotel in Century City, with Bill Maher tapped to open the ceremony.
Motown Comes to NBC
NBC is developing a 12-hour series about the famed Motown Records music empire and its founder, Berry Gordy, AP reports. Berry Gordy’s Motown will dramatize Gordy’s rise from Detroit’s inner city to the head of an entertainment empire with artists that included Diana Ross and the Supremes, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Temptations, and Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5, the network said Thursday. It’s expected to air in the 2005-06 season.
Role Call: Kidman Pads Up for Producers Role, Columbia Eyes Israeli Spy Thriller
Stick-thin Nicole Kidman will need a little help making the transformation to a buxom Swedish secretary for her next role, starring with Matthew Broderick in the film version of Mel Brooks‘ stage hit The Producers. “Mel says we’ll pad her,” Broderick told Reuters. Broderick will be reprising his role as meek accountant Leo Bloom in The Producers opposite Nathan Lane, who created the stage role of devious Broadway producer Max Bialystock … Boys Don’t Cry director Kimberly Peirce will helm a film about the legendary Israeli spy Eli Cohen for Columbia Pictures. Variety reports Cohen was an Israeli spy who infiltrated the Syrian government. He was discovered and hanged in 1965, but the information he provided was largely responsible for Israel’s capture of the Golan Heights in 1967. The film will focus on Cohen’s double life as a businessman/spy, spouse/lover as well as someone who knew the Koran as well as the Talmud.
Kit Bowen contributed to this report.
