Dating and Relationships

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    Reality TV Wades Into Cross-Generational Dating Pools

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    Bravo’s “Love Hotel” and ABC’s “Bachelor in Paradise” are widening the age range of prospective love matches.Age-gap relationships are nothing new when it comes to depictions of older men in TV and film plots. But a wave of recent releases, including “Babygirl,” “The Idea of You,” “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” and “Lonely Planet,” have zeroed in on romantic and sexual relationships between women in midlife and younger men.Two new reality dating spinoffs are now catching up. Bravo’s “Love Hotel,” which premiered Sunday, features three over-50 “Real Housewives” — Luann de Lesseps, 59, Gizelle Bryant, 54, and Shannon Beador, 61 — looking for love among eligible bachelors whose ages range from their 30s to their 60s at a luxury resort in Los Cabos, Mexico. (Ashley Darby, 36, rounds out the group of bachelorettes.)In the first episode Bryant asks Wale Alesh, 38, if he wants children. When he responds that he does, the cameras cut to Bryant in an interview filmed after. “Gizelle doesn’t have a uterus, so that means we aren’t compatible,” she says, speaking in the third person.Meeting Jay Bramble, 46, Bryant explained: “My three daughters are in college. I have the house to myself, so I just walk around naked.” He responded, “You’re living the dream.”Bryant, who is divorced and who dated the “Winter House” cast member Jason Cameron, 38, on a past season of “The Real Housewives of Potomac,” said it’s important that audiences see mature women living vital love lives. “Hey, ain’t nobody dead because they have, like, jumped over 39,” she said in an interview.Bryant added that the program gives the women a chance to show “we can spend whatever days we have left in a happy place with somebody that, you know, you really want to rock out with.”

    @bravotv Be cool, the wait for #BravosLoveHotel is over. #CountessLuann ♬ Luanns Right Back from Bravos Love Hotel – Bravo We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Soulja Boy Is Ordered to Pay $4 Million in Sexual Assault Case

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      The rapper, known for songs like “Crank That (Soulja Boy),” was found liable of assaulting a woman who said she was his assistant over two years.A jury in Los Angeles found the rapper Soulja Boy liable for sexual battery and assault, ordering him to pay $4 million to a woman who said that he became violent toward her as their once-professional relationship turned romantic, the woman’s lawyer said.The decision on Thursday, which was also reported by The Associated Press, came after a nearly monthlong trial, in which the woman said that she had started as the rapper’s assistant.She accused him of physically and sexually assaulting her over two years. Soulja Boy — known for songs like “Crank That (Soulja Boy),” “Kiss Me Thru the Phone” and “Pretty Boy Swag” — denied the claims during the trial.“Our client is pleased with and vindicated by the verdict,” Neama Rahmani, a lawyer for the woman, whose name was not revealed in the proceedings, said in a statement. “Yesterday’s verdict is just the beginning of justice for Soulja Boy’s victims and a reckoning for the entire music industry.”Reading a statement on his phone, Soulja Boy, whose real name is DeAndre Cortez Way, criticized the verdict outside the Superior Court in Los Angeles County after the verdict.“I believe this entire process has been tainted by a system that is not designed to protect the rights of the accused,” Mr. Way said. “I want to make it clear that I am innocent.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Television

      Chelsea Handler at 50: Still Hustling and Dreaming of Margaritas

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      The comedian Chelsea Handler is unapologetic in her latest book, “I’ll Have What She’s Having.” Well, of course, she is. She’s Chelsea Handler, and that’s always kind of been her thing.There are many of the stories you would expect from the former host of the E! show “Chelsea Lately” in her seventh book, which came out last month, such as confronting rudeness in men, shamelessly propositioning Andrew Cuomo for sex when he was governor of New York and ruthlessly pushing out a business partner for a lemonade stand. (She was 10 at the time.)But Handler also weaves in more life advice, a healthy dose of cheerleading (both for the reader and herself) and insights gained from therapy and various breakups.The book includes chapters about her very public relationship with the comedian Jo Koy, but fans looking for the details of the breakup will be disappointed: She doesn’t say much, and mostly speaks well of Koy. A sign of growth, she says.“While I am sure that is of interest to people, I will no longer throw someone I once loved under a bus,” Handler writes. “My sharing what exactly went wrong in our relationship would negate all the work I have done on myself while also creating a headline I don’t want to create.”The main takeaways: She’s 50. She’s hustling. There’s a Netflix special coming later this month, and a residency in Las Vegas. And she’s sure of herself. That’s all she needs, and she’s finally realized it. In an interview, Handler discussed the new book and the newish Chelsea.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares109 Views

      in Movies

      Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco Announce Their Engagement. The Internet Rejoices.

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      The couple, who have been publicly discussing their relationship for a year, were deluged with congratulations on social media.The actor and singer Selena Gomez announced her engagement to Benny Blanco, the record producer and songwriter, in a social media post Wednesday night, and Taylor Swift, one of Gomez’s closest friends, quickly offered to be her flower girl.Gomez, who received two Golden Globe nominations this week, shared a stack of pictures of the marquise-cut diamond along with the caption, “Forever begins now.” In one photo, Gomez marvels at the ring while sitting on a blanket on a lawn next to a picnic hamper, a Champagne bucket and a couple of boxes from Taco Bell.“I said yes to this,” Gomez shouted in a short video posted to her Instagram stories. “It’s so pretty.”Blanco wrote, “Hey wait… that’s my wife.”By Thursday morning, the engagement post had received more than 15 million likes and scores of comments from Gomez’s friend group.Jennifer Aniston, Lil Nas X, Nina Dobrev, Gwyneth Paltrow and Lily Collins offered their congratulations.Swift, one of Gomez’s besties, wrote, “yes I will be the flower girl.” That comment alone has received more than one million likes.Representatives for Gomez and Blanco did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday.The pair’s connection dates back to at least 2015, when Blanco produced songs for Gomez’s album “Revival.” They have since worked together on other projects, including “Single Soon,” a song released by Gomez last year.Since making their relationship public in December 2023, the couple have not shied away from the cameras, and have discussed their romance in interviews.“She’s truly just like my best friend,” Blanco said on “The Howard Stern Show” in May, adding that he was already thinking about having children. “When I look at her, I do say, I don’t know a world where it can be better than this.”Gomez echoed similar sentiments in a recent interview with CBS Sunday Morning, calling Blanco her best friend.“I am beyond proud to know that there is someone in the world that deeply cares about every tiny detail about who I am,” she said. “And to have someone support me, encourage me, inspire me and motivate me. It brings me a joy.”Gomez told The Hollywood Reporter also last month that she decided to share her pictures and videos of her relationship online because “I guess this is the safest I’ve ever felt in one, and I see a future with this person.”She added: “And when you put a little bit out there, people are not as hungry to hunt you down.” More

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      in Movies

      Falling in Love With Nora Ephron

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      Ilana Kaplan’s new coffee table book pays tribute to the godmother of the modern rom-com.“I’ll have what she’s having.”There are few writers whose voices have been so indelibly stamped on our psyches that they can be conjured up with just one line. Nora Ephron, the godmother of the modern rom-com, is one of them (even if she didn’t take credit for the line in question).Her spiky heroines, epistolary romances, cable knit sweaters and explorations of intimacy and heartbreak transformed American cinema, giving rise to a generation of screenwriters and directors who have striven to follow in her oxford-clad footsteps (not to mention the swarms of fans for whom films like “You’ve Got Mail” and “When Harry Met Sally” are annual viewing traditions, bookending that sepia-tinged, pencil-shaving-scented season known as “Nora Ephron Fall”).Meg Ryan in a climactic scene in “When Harry Met Sally,” one of Ephron’s many films that took women — their neuroses and their desires — seriously.Columbia Pictures, via Everett CollectionRyan and Rosie O’Donnell in “Sleepless in Seattle.” The movie is as much a celebration of their characters’ friendship as of romantic love.TriStar PicturesIlana Kaplan explores this legacy in NORA EPHRON AT THE MOVIES (Abrams, $50) — a tribute, despite its title, not just to Ephron’s screen work but also to her essays, plays and searingly autobiographical novel, “Heartburn.”Each of them gets a chapter here, as do the fastidious enthusiasms that illuminate them all: Ephron’s love of language, her eye for fashion and her devotion to food. This is a woman, Kaplan explains, who turned ordering a piece of pie into an art form and whose version of a postcoital cigarette, in “Heartburn,” was an in-bed bowl of homemade spaghetti carbonara.Ephron’s passions — for language, fashion, food — infused her work.Katherine Wolkoff/Trunk ArchiveShe also drew on her personal heartbreaks, particularly in her novel, “Heartburn,” and its subsequent film adaptation, which starred Meryl Streep as an Ephron-esque food writer.Paramount, via Everett CollectionStanley Tucci and Meryl Streep in “Julie and Julia,” Ephron’s final film.Jonathan WenkEphron’s clarity of voice gave her work a steely backbone, bolstered by a screwball wit. She did not invent the meet-cute, the swoony set piece or the friends-to-lovers trope, but she made them so thoroughly her own that you’d be forgiven for thinking she did. Above all else, she took women seriously — their desires and neuroses, their careers, their friendships, their great beating hearts.Whatever she wrote about, we wanted what she was having. More

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      in Theater

      ‘Strategic Love Play’ Review: A Slightly Dark, Not-Quite-Romantic Comedy

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      In this first-date comedy, Michael Zegen and Heléne Yorke play people who might just be willing to settle for each other.There comes a time in some adults’ dating lives when the search for love slides down the priority list, and with it the pesky urge to be particular about who might qualify as life-partner material.What’s far more vital, suddenly, is simply to couple up — less as a bulwark against the world than as a defense against the paired-off friends who fret about your singleness. So what if you and your new plus-one aren’t besotted with each other? At least you’re not alone.This is where Jenny (Heléne Yorke) and Adam (Michael Zegen) find themselves in “Strategic Love Play,” Miriam Battye’s slightly dark, not-quite-romantic comedy at the Minetta Lane Theater in Greenwich Village. Directed by Katie Posner for Audible Theater and Chase This Productions, it unfolds over the course of a single rocky date.For both Jenny and Adam, who evidently matched on an app, the prospect of having a default person to stand with the next time they go to a barbecue is a potently soothing thought. Which is maybe why they persevere through this awkward first encounter in a charmingly lit bar, where sconces hang on the bare brick walls. (The set is by Arnulfo Maldonado, lighting by Jen Schriever.)Reserved and wary of Jenny’s big personality, Adam wants to bolt pretty much immediately, while Jenny is the kind of person who reacts to silence by trying to rile things up, get a reaction, be outrageous. From his rigid posture, his lack of interest is clear, but she is all about leaning in.“Two-drink minimum,” she stipulates, meaning he’d better not leave before then. “Anything less would be — rather unmerciful.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in Television

      7 Books Like ‘Heartstopper’ to Read After You Binge Season 3 on Netflix

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      Earnest love stories by Rainbow Rowell, TJ Klune and Talia Hibbert will tug at your heartstrings while grappling with real, often dark, issues.Break out the heart eyes and rugby kits: The much-anticipated third season of the gushingly earnest teen romantic dramedy “Heartstopper” arrives on Netflix on Oct. 3.The show, based on the best-selling graphic novel series by Alice Oseman, follows Nick Nelson, a golden retriever of a rugby player, and Charlie Spring, a sensitive drummer, who meet-cute one day in homeroom. They and their friends cover every stripe of the L.G.B.T.Q. rainbow. They’re also goofy and anxious and smart and exuberant, all of the things teenagers are as they discover love and attraction for the first time. The show deals frequently with difficult issues — bullying, eating disorders, gender dysphoria, housing insecurity — while also painting an effervescent picture of adolescence that, in a homage to the comics, is sprinkled with hearts and fireworks.There are five volumes of “Heartstopper” — plus two spinoff novellas and a stand-alone novel, “Solitaire,” about Charlie’s prickly, fan-favorite older sister — available to read while you wait for a sixth book (and a potential fourth season). But if you’ve already blown through Oseman’s oeuvre and are craving more young adult love stories that grapple with darker themes, these books are for you.I’d like a grounded, heartfelt love storyAristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the UniverseBy Benjamin Alire SáenzWhen we first meet Aristotle Mendoza, he is 15, bored and miserable, staring down another summer in El Paso. Then he meets Dante Quintana, who teaches Ari how to swim at the community pool. Their friendship blooms from there, growing out of comic books, bus rides and heated debates about the literary merits of Joseph Conrad.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Television

      ‘Love Is Blind’: Body Language Expert Offers Clues for Season 7

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      As Season 7 begins, an expert says figuring out a participant’s motivation is both an art and a science.Grab a golden goblet. The Netflix series “Love Is Blind” is back, with the first episode of its seventh season having been released on Wednesday, with the host Nick Lachey learning what a situationship is. The series that inspired drinking games (take a sip every time someone says the phrase “genuine connection”) — and is both a reality show and a social experiment — set up shop in Washington, D.C., this time to help 29 singles find love.The premise, of course, is that the singles can’t see whom they are dating because of a glowing blue wall between them intended to eliminate all of the superficial things that might get in the way of love. Once a couple decides to get engaged, they see each other for the first time and attempt to make their relationship work, with all of the complications that phones, work and physical attraction bring.Over the past few seasons, the nagging question concerning the show’s participants was: Are they here for love or for clout? (The recent season, “Love Is Blind: U.K.,” was hailed by many as a return to the show’s original vibe, for its generally emotionally healthy and low-drama cast.)CC Rice, a voice teacher, associate professor and energy reader who posts body language breakdowns of the show under the social media handle @guidedinspiration, says that figuring out a participant’s motivation is both an art and a science.“‘Love is Blind’ is this incredible opportunity to see people in private,” she said. “I’m listening for all of the cues: What do they bring up? Where do they look while they’re speaking? Are they avoidant? Are they trying to connect?”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      5 Books to Read After Watching ‘Nobody Wants This’

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      These romance novels feature cross-cultural connections, charming banter and plenty of heart.There’s a long history in Hollywood of cross-cultural rom-coms — films and TV shows such as “Keeping the Faith,” “Bend It Like Beckham” and “The Nanny” that mine clashing traditions to find hilarity and heart. Colliding heritages naturally lend themselves to moments of comedic gold: Just think of a nonplused Andrea Martin in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” reassuring John Corbett’s vegetarian leading man, “That’s OK: I make lamb.”The series “Nobody Wants This,” which premieres on Netflix on Sept. 26, is the latest entry into this oeuvre. Joanne (Kristen Bell) is an agnostic, sex-positive podcast host with a history of toxic relationships; Noah (Adam Brody — Mr. Chrismukkah himself, no stranger to interfaith high jinks) is a pot-smoking rabbi with a fiercely protective mother who spends his free time playing basketball with the Matzah Ballers. Their story is as much about the universal awkwardness and hilarity of a budding romance as it is about the complex differences in their worldviews.Interfaith and cross-cultural romances are nothing new in the literary sense, either. If you’re craving more stories about clever people drawn together by chemistry and circumstance who also face the difficult work of navigating disparate backgrounds, these romance novels have got you covered.I think hot rabbis may be the new hot priestsThe Intimacy ExperimentBy Rosie DananNaomi Grant is a bisexual adult film actress with a master’s degree who runs a successful online sex-ed platform; she wants to expand into live seminars, but she’s having trouble finding an institution to support her. Enter Ethan Cohen, an unconventional (and very attractive) straight rabbi who invites Naomi to teach a course on human sexuality and relationships at his synagogue — a gamble aimed at reaching more young Jewish people and saving his dwindling congregation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More