E.Jordan Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

McKinley Franklin editor “Abbott Elementary” and “P-Valley” are among the top winners of the African American Film Critics Association (AAFCA)’s fifth annual TV Honors, which recognizes exceptional achievements in broadcast television and streaming with an emphasis on entertainment representing the Black diaspora.  “Abbott Elementary” took home titles for best TV comedy and best TV writing (awarded to Quinta Brunson) alongside “P-Valley” for best TV drama. Niecy Nash-Betts and Jessica Williams were also awarded best TV acting (female) and breakout star, respectively. They join a slate of awardees including J. Alphonse Nicholson and Nicco Annan for best ensemble and best TV acting (male) and Mary Lou Belli, Debbie Allen, Tasha Smith, Henry Chan and Jordan E. Cooper from “The Ms. Pat Show” for best TV directing.

Ain’t No Mo star and playwright Jordan E. Cooper, KPOP composer Helen Park, and Ojibwe and Oneida performance artist Ty Defoe are among the new members of the Tony Award nominating committee.

Topdog/Underdog co-stars Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Corey Hawkins are both in the running for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play at the 2023 Tony Awards, but the duo presented a unified front on the red carpet.

EXCLUSIVE: BET+ has renewed its Emmy-nominated series The Ms. Pat Show for a fourth season.

Lena Waithe is now a first-time Tony nominee as one of the producers of  The production scored a total of six nods, tying it with  as the most-nominated new play, for the 76th annual Tony Awards. Following the announcement, which was revealed live by Lea Michele and Myles Frost on Tuesday, Waithe shared her excitement about the play's recognition. " is a monumental play and I was honored when Lee Daniels asked me to join the team," she said in an exclusive statement to ET. «I saw a reading of it years ago and I knew it deserved to be on Broadway.

Gordon Cox Theater Editor The nominations for the 2023 Tony Awards are out — and for every pleasant surprise on the list, there were a few disappointments. Here are the biggest snubs and surprises from this morning’s Tony nominations announcement, plus the one great big question that could cast a real shadow over the ceremony. SURPRISE: Big Love for “Ain’t No Mo'”Jordan E. Cooper’s “Ain’t No Mo’,” a blistering comedy about racial injustice in America, was certainly one of the buzziest plays of the season, and many critics raved when it opened in December. But the show proved unable to find a foothold at the box office and closed just a few weeks later — a brief lifespan that could have put the play in danger of getting forgotten come awards season, especially in a crowded field of contenders. But nominators remembered “Ain’t No Mo'” so well they gave it six noms (including one for play and an acting nod for writer-performer Cooper), making it one of the most-nominated plays of the season.

William Earl Variety will return in-person with its TV FYC Fest on June 7 in L.A., featuring HBO/Max Chief Casey Bloys, Kerry Washington, Elle Fanning, Janelle James, Gina Rodriguez and Weird Al Yankovic. Fanning (“The Great”), James (“Abbott Elementary”), Rodriguez (“Not Dead Yet”) and Washington (“UnPrisoned”) will participate in a roundtable celebrating Disney’s TV female comedy standouts. Bloys, chairman and CEO of HBO and Max Content will offer his vision for TV storytelling with Cynthia Littleton, co-editor-in-chief of Variety, in what will be his first interview following the series finale episode of “Succession.”

Hong Chau (“The Whale,” “The Menu”), Anna Camp (“Pitch Perfect”), Melanie Lynskey (“The Last of Us”) and Sheryl Lee Ralph (“Abbott Elementary”) are among the presenters for its 38th Artios Awards taking place in both Los Angeles and New York City. Also presenting at the Los Angeles gala alongside host Yvette Nicole Brown are Utkarsh Ambudkar, Paul Walter Hauser, Andrew Leeds, Sam Richardson, Britt Robertson, Glynn Turman and Tuc Watkins. Sarita Choudhury, Jordan E. Cooper, Rory Culkin, Khris Davis, Alex Edelman, Raúl Esparza, Katie Finneran,Katrina Lenk, Nicole Ari Parker, Peppermint, Morgan Spector,  Celia Rose Goodin, Chris Sullivan and Kuhoo Verma will present at the New York ceremony, with Amber Ruffin as host.

Katie Reul editor Ms. Pat is back for a third season of shenanigans as the Emmy-nominated comedy series “The Ms. Pat Show” continues. In celebration of Feb. 23 season premiere, series star Patricia “Ms. Pat” Williams and showrunner Jordan E. Cooper sat down for a Variety TV Screening Series conversation, presented by BET+, to discuss classic sitcoms, getting “The Jeffersons” star Marla Gibbs to curse and tackling society’s ongoing obsession with Botox. “The Ms. Pat Show” is based on Williams’ personal life, drawing from the comedienne’s past as a teenage mom and ex-felon. Williams concurrently serves as a writer and producer on the series, which she developed alongside Cooper. The Season 3 premiere also marks Cooper’s directing debut and he helmed three of the nine new episodes.

Funny Girl broke a house record with more than $2 million in receipts at the August Wilson Theatre, A Beautiful Noise continued its $1 million-plus weekly take, and The Piano Lesson topped the list of highest-grossing non-musical productions with $914,752, each contributing to Broadway’s $37M box office tally for the week ending Dec. 18.

Ain’t No Mo’, playwright Jordan E. Cooper’s acclaimed but struggling Broadway comedy, has extended its run for another week and will now play through Friday, December 23, at the Belasco Theatre.

The holiday spirit – at least the kind measured at the box office – seemed to arrive on Broadway last week, for some shows anyway. Obvious case in point: A Christmas Carol, starring Jefferson Mays in his tour de force as every last ghost, miser and Cratchit in the story, was up a bountiful 34% in receipts, taking in $742,010 and filling 83% of seats at the Nederlander.

Ain’t No Mo’, the Broadway debut of author and star Jordan E. Cooper, opened at the Belasco Theatre on Dec. 1 to the sort of reviews producers and playwrights dream about. Even the few critics who weren’t completely won over couldn’t help but point out a singular brilliance at work here, not to mention a stars-in-the-making cast and more laugh-out-loud moments than most of the rest of Broadway combined. A celebrity-packed opening night, with producer Lee Daniels greeting a crowd that included Gabrielle Union, Dwayne Wade and C. J. Uzomah – who happen to be among the starry cohort of co-producers – as well as Matthew Broderick, Tamron Hall, Deborah Cox, Stephanie Mills, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Susan Kelechi Watson, Camryn Manheim, Tony Kushner, Tituss Burgess, Gayle King, Pat Williams, Christopher Sieber, Jennifer Simard, Colton Ryan, Ari’el Stachel and Timothy Olyphant suggested nothing less than the buzzy arrival of Broadway’s next big thing, out-of-the-box division.

For the second time in a week, Broadway is losing a worthy production that attempted to find an audience that encompassed but reached beyond the usual white, middle-aged demographic: Jordan E. Cooper’s Ain’t No Mo’, the often visionary, relentlessly brilliant and forever fearless take by its Black creators and performers on the stubborn subject of race in America will close next week.

A Beautiful Noise, The Neil Diamond Musical took in more than $1 million at the box office in the week leading up to, and including, its opening night on Sunday. Filling 91% of seats at the Broadhurst, the jukebox bio-musical joins & Juliet, Leopoldstadt and The Piano Lesson as one of the strongest newcomers of the fall season.

Two new productions opened on Broadway within the last few days, demonstrating that Broadway, at the very least, can accommodate works of remarkable diversity – a diversity in levels of ambition not least. One takes remarkable chances and all but announces the arrival of a singular new theatrical voice. The other, with a team of immensely talented Broadway veterans both on stage and behind the scenes that so relies on overused formula and tired tropes that it can’t even breathe life into some of the most irresistible pop songs of the last half-century.

EXCLUSIVE: Slave Play author Jeremy O. Harris and New York Jets tight end CJ Uzomah are the latest high-profile names to sign on as co-producers of a currently running Broadway production: The two join the recently announced NBA champ Dwyane Wade, actor Gabrielle Union and Drag Race star RuPaul on the producing team of Ain’t No Mo’, a Lee Daniels production of Jordan E. Cooper’s comedy in previews at the Belasco Theatre.

Mariah Carey has signed on as a co-producer of the new musical comedy Some Like It Hot, becoming the latest in a trend of celebrities lending their clout and popularity to support Broadway productions during previews.

Broadway’s Ain’t No Mo’ producer Lee Daniels announced today that NBA champ Dwyane Wade, actor Gabrielle Union and Drag Race star RuPaul will join the co-producing team of the comedy that begins previews tonight at the Belasco Theatre.

William Earl Variety has announced the lineup for its annual Business of Broadway breakfast presented by City National Bank in New York on Oct. 17. Samuel L. Jackson and LaTanya Richardson Jackson will join the event for a keynote conversation about their collaboration on the revival of August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson,” currently playing on Broadway. The programming will also include a Broadway producers panel moderated by Erik Piecuch, senior vice president and entertainment banking leader of City National Bank. The panel will feature Lee Daniels (“Ain’t No Mo’”), Cindy Tolan (“Death of a Salesman”), LaChanze (“Kimberly Akimbo” and “Topdog/Underdog”) and Ken Davenport (“A Beautiful Noise”). The producers will speak about their experiences premiering new productions on Broadway this season and how the business has changed since Broadway’s return.

BET has signed comedian, actress and producer Patricia “Ms. Pat” Williams to a multi-year overall deal under which she will produce, write and perform in new series and other projects—both scripted and unscripted— across BET and Paramount Global.

NEW YORK -- Fiction authors Steven Dunn and Tope Falarin and dramatists Jordan E. Cooper and Sylvia Khoury are among this year's winners of the Whiting Awards, honors with a cash prize of $50,000 that are presented to each of 10 emerging writers.Previous winners of the award, established in 1985 and managed by the Whiting Foundation, include Colson Whitehead, Michael R.

Also Read: 'Evil Eye' Star Sunita Mani on the 'Spooky' Similarities Between the Movie and Her Life“We are thrilled to welcome powerhouse creators Lee Daniels, Brian Grazer, and writing phenom Jordan E. Cooper home to the BET family.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticThe first annual Antonyo Awards honoring black Broadway and Off Broadway theater artists is set for streaming on June 19 (aka Juneteenth, the date commemorating the end of slavery in America).Created by Broadway Black, a multimedia organization that includes a website and podcast, the new awards ceremony will feature presenters and performers including Audra McDonald, Tituss Burgess, Alex Newell, Jordan E.