LOS ANGELES – Celebrities Brad Pitt and Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers used their platform for good and contributed to a community food giveaway Friday to help feed Watts residents in need during the coronavirus pandemic.
“The community gives back to me…I like being a part of it, I like building bridges, I like making friends. When corona hit and I was sitting around and going to the beach and stuff, I did a lot of thinking about people who really might be struggling because they’re not getting enough to eat and not making money during COVID times,” Flea said.
Every Friday morning, the Nickerson Gardens Clubhouse located on Compton Avenue hosts a community food giveaway.
Tonya Dorsey started Watts Community Core as a free boxing program to show at-risk youth a different path. However, the program was put on hold due to the coronavirus crisis as Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an order that temporarily prevents many businesses from operating indoors, including fitness studios and gyms.
Instead, the program shifted its efforts and is now using the space as a place to feed the community, serving about 700 people on a weekly basis.
“There’s more than one story. We’re having stress because of COVID, we’re scared, we don’t know what’s going to happen next and then for a blessing like this to go on it lets us know that there is a God and someone who cares and that’s the core,” Dorsey said.
Flea was introduced to the program through a mutual friend.
“I just love being a part of it, but honestly, I don’t even think about it as giving as much as I get given to. I get welcomed here…we’re all working together doing something beautiful” he added.
Also on Friday morning, A-lister Brad Pitt drove a delivery truck and donated food baskets to the cause.
Pitt declined an interview but did wave to cameras as he unloaded the truck.
Residents said the giveaway is making a big difference during this difficult time.
“It’s a lot of help because I have four kids so it’s a lot of help right now,” Watts resident Jennifer Torres said.
The program is currently only able to feed about 700 people due to funding.
If you’d like to help, visit the Watts Community Core website.
Brad Pitt Follows Oscar Win with Surprise Emmy Nom for Playing Dr. Anthony Fauci on ‘SNL’
He’s got an Oscar under his belt in 2020. Could the Emmy be next?
Brad Pitt could follow up his Oscar win earlier this year with an Emmy Award this September. The actor landed a surprise Emmy nomination in the category for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series thanks to his stint guest-hosting the April 25 installment of “Saturday Night Live.” Pitt’s Emmy nomination singles out his performance playing Dr. Anthony Fauci during the episode’s quarantine cold open.
The Oscar-winning actor kicked off the April 25 installment of “SNL” by impersonating Dr. Fauci in a sketch that found the medical professional reacting in shock and disbelief to many of Donald Trump’s outrageous and dangerous responses to the coronavirus pandemic. The sketch ended with Pitt taking off his Dr. Fauci wig and saying, “And to the real Dr. Fauci, thank you for your calm and your clarity in this unnerving time. And thank you to the medical workers, first responders, and their families for being on the front line.”
The Pitt-Fauci sketch went viral and has amassed over 13 million views on YouTube since its April debut. Pitt’s impersonation even earned acclaim from the real Dr. Anthony Fauci, who said during an appearance on Telemundo’s “Un Nuevo Dia” that Pitt did “a great job.”
“I’m a great fan of Brad Pitt, and that’s the reason why when people ask me who I would like to play me, I mention Brad Pitt,” Fauci said. “He’s one of my favorite actors. I think he did a great job and I think he showed that he is really a classy guy when at the end he took off his hair and thanked me and all of the health care workers. So not only is he a really great actor, but he is actually a classy person.”
Pitt won his first acting Oscar this year for his performance as Cliff Booth in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” The beloved performance also earned Pitt supporting actor prizes at the Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild Awards, and Critics Choice Awards. Pitt is one of three “Saturday Night Live” guest hosts nominated this year in the Outstanding Guest Actor In A Comedy Series category, including Adam Driver and Eddie Murphy
Brad Pitt Commits To Board ‘Bullet Train’; David Leitch To Helm Sony Pictures Action Film
Brad Pitt is set to star in Bullet Train, the Sony Pictures action movie that just got as director David Leitch, the helmer of Deadpool 2 and Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw.
Zak Olkewicz wrote the script, based on the Japanese novel Maria Beetle by Kotaro Isaka. In the novel, five assassins find themselves on a fast-moving bullet train from Tokyo to Morioka with only a few stops in between. They discover their missions are not unrelated to one another. The question becomes, who will make it off the train alive and what awaits them at the terminal station?
Pitt is coming off an Oscar-winning performance in the Quentin Tarantino-directed Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The actor is firming up his dance card, eyeing several projects but committing only to this one for now. A start date for later this year is eyed.
Antoine Fuqua developed the project originally with Fuqua Films’ Kat Samick, and they are producing along with Leitch and Kelly McCormick (Atomic Blonde) through their company 87North. Ryosuke Saegusa and Yuma Terada of CTB Inc are exec producers and rep Isaka and the IP. Leitch is overseeing a rewrite by Olkewicz to get the film ready to shoot.
Brittany Morrissey is the executive overseeing the project for Sony Pictures. Pitt is repped by CAA and Brillstein Entertainment Partners.
Harvill Secker will publish the novel Bullet Train in English next year.
BP Gallery Update
• x001 Showbiz
• x005 Tempus
• x003 June 07 – Hollywood, CA
• x005 June 23, Los Angeles, CA
PS. We also added the Tempus interview (July 2020). Thanks also Shann!
Brad Pitt, Sandra Bullock and More Thank Essential Workers in ‘United We Sing’ Special
Brad Pitt, Sandra Bullock, Oprah Winfrey, Jamie Foxx and more stars took the time to honor essential workers amid the coronavirus pandemic in Harry Connick Jr.’s CBS special, United We Sing: A GRAMMY Tribute to the Unsung Heroes, on Sunday.
Connick began the show by acknowledging that it was filmed prior to the movement for racial justice across America and around the world in the wake of the May 25 death of George Floyd.
“Just so you know, this special was filmed a few weeks ago and since that time our world has changed,” Connick said during the special. “Our focus has broadened from the coronavirus to include a painful dialogue about racism in America.”
The special, which was filmed in part with the help of Connick’s 24-year-old daughter, Georgia, featured the New Orleans native traveling around his hometown to thank essential workers with the help of some celebrity pals.
One such A-lister was Pitt, who spoke with a shocked sanitation worker named Darnell Rudolph.
“Man, I love the work you’ve done after Katrina,” Rudolph told Pitt of the 2005 hurricane that destroyed much of New Orleans.
“That’s so appreciated, I’ve got such a love for that city, and we so appreciate what you’re doing,” Pitt told him before asking about his family.
ET’s Rachel Smith spoke with Connick last week prior to the special airing, where he talked about the exchange between Pitt and Rudolph.
“There was this one guy who’s a sanitation worker in New Orleans. We talked to him and he said, ‘Why are you talking to me?’ Georgia and I are like, ‘Because our lives, they would suck without you,'” Connick told ET of Rudolph. “Brad Pitt was on a Zoom on the iPad, we flipped the iPad around and Brad Pitt says, ‘Hey man, I just want to thank you,’ and the guy goes, ‘Oh wow!'”
Plan B, Searchlight Pictures Team to Adapt ‘The World According to Fannie Davis’
Author Bridgett M. Davis is adapting her own work while Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage is consulting on the project.
Plan B Entertainment, the Brad Pitt-fronted production banner behind Oscar winners Moonlight and 12 Years a Slave, has teamed up with Searchlight Pictures to adapt The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life in the Detroit Numbers, a memoir by Bridgett M. Davis.Davis is writing the script. The project is also getting an assist from Lynn Nottage, who is acting as a consultant. Nottage, the only woman to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice for her plays Ruined and Sweat, is known for her work as a mentor of playwrights and a dramaturge, and will apply that skillset to the film project.
Plan B will produce.
Fannie Davis tells the true story of Davis’ mother, a woman who “made a way of no way” her motto as she did whatever it took to offer her children a middle-class life in 1960s and 1970s Detroit. In this case, it meant that Davis’ mother became part bookie and part banker to run a numbers racket out of her home, allowing her children to go to good schools and have nice clothes, all the while keeping the entire operation a secret.
The book was praised for being a look at a slice of Black America, showcasing what a marginalized class had to do to break down obstacles to the middle-class American Dream. The numbers, as the long-standing racket was known, was dominated by men and offered ways for the Black community to lift itself up from poverty by giving them access to cash when normal mainstream ways didn’t.
Director of production Zahra Phillips and manage of production Apolline Berty are overseeing for Searchlight. Gabby Shepard is running point for Plan B.
The banner last produced Ad Astra, which starred Pitt, and indie The Last Black Man in San Francisco.
Davis, the creative writing and journalism professor at Baruch College, is repped by CAA and Anjali Singh of Ayesha Pande Literary. Nottage, who is additionally an associate professor of playwriting at Columbia University, is repped by CAA and Manage-ment.
