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CNN’s Scott Jennings Is Early Favorite for Press Secretary: Reports

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Scott Jennings is being eyed to replace Karoline Leavitt as White House press secretary.

White House chief of staff Susie Wiles recently met with Jennings at Mastro’s Steakhouse in Washington, D.C., at the Trump administration’s request, CNN reported Thursday, citing two sources familiar with the meeting. Multiple staffers believe Jennings has Wiles’ backing, though the search remains in its early stages.

“He’s competent and good on TV,” one senior White House official told CNN.

The report follows Politico’s reporting that Jennings was making a push for the position and had privately met with senior administration officials. Jennings reportedly sought the meeting after clips of him defending Trump aide Natalie Harp circulated within the White House, including some he sent to senior staffers himself.

President Donald Trump has told his team that Jennings “looks the part” and performs well on television, according to CNN. Some administration officials, however, have questioned whether the longtime Republican strategist could handle the extensive behind-the-scenes responsibilities that helped make Leavitt an influential figure inside the White House.

Jennings declined to say Wednesday whether he was interviewing for the position or had discussed the opening with White House officials.

“I don’t have any comment about that,” Jennings told Abby Phillip on “CNN NewsNight.”

Jennings then appeared to outline his view of the position, saying every president deserves someone who can publicly defend the administration and explain its actions to the American people. He described the press secretary as an important conduit for transparency, both in front of the camera and behind the scenes.

Jennings has served as a CNN contributor since 2017 and has become one of the network’s most prominent conservative voices, frequently drawing attention for his combative defenses of Trump and often intense clashes with fellow commentators on “CNN NewsNight.” He previously worked in the George W. Bush administration and has been a longtime adviser to Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell.

Leavitt is scheduled to leave the White House at the end of August to spend more time with her family. Wiles is expected to meet with several other potential candidates before a decision is made, while Trump has indicated that he is not rushing the process.

Representatives for Jennings and the White House did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s requests for comment.

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Camila Morrone Joins ‘Miami Vice ’85’

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Camila Morrone has joined Michael B. Jordan and Austin Butler in the cast of Joseph Kosinski’s “Miami Vice ’85,’ Universal’s upcoming film revival of the hit ’80s TV series, TheWrap has learned.

Morrone’s role is being kept under wraps, but the film, written by “Nightcrawler” Oscar nominee Dan Gilroy, will be based on characters created by Anthony Yerkovich from the series executive produced by Yerkovich and Michael Mann. Eric Warren Singer wrote an earlier draft of the screenplay.

The original 1984 “Miami Vice” pilot episode saw the beginning of the partnership between Sonny Crocket and Rico Tubbs, now played by Jordan and Butler, as they take on drug lords and other criminals on the streets of Miami Beach.

Alden Ehrenreich and Whitney Peak recently joined the cast as well.

Filming for “Miami Vice ’85” is set to begin later this year with a release scheduled for May 19, 2028. Dylan Clark is producing alongside Kosinski, who is best known as the director of hit Best Picture Oscar-nominated films “Top Gun: Maverick” and “F1.” Executive Vice President of Production Development Sara Scott and Creative Executive of Production Development Christina Hoffrogge will oversee the project for the studio. 

Morrone first broke out in Prime Video’s “Daisy Jones & The Six,” for which she received an Emmy nomination. She is currently generating strong reviews for her role in the Netflix series “Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen.” Other credits include the second season of “The Night Manager” opposite Tom Hiddleston.

Morrone is repped by WME, Brillstein and lawyers Steve Warren & Huy Nguyen.

Deadline first reported the news.

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LA Mayor Karen Bass Calls for Paramount-WB Lawsuit Settlement

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Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is urging David Ellison and California Attorney General Rob Bonta to “find common ground” and settle a lawsuit seeking to block the pending $110 billion Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger.

“While there are varying perspectives on the proposed transaction, today we are united around one clear message: It is time for all parties to come to the table,” Bass said during a news conference on Thursday. “The continued uncertainty is not good for workers, not good for productions and not good for the future of this industry. Too many productions in L.A. are now at a standstill, which means Angelenos are out of a job and they’re not getting paid.”

“As mayor, I cannot stand by while the job security of thousands of hardworking union members is being put at risk. That is why we are calling on Paramount, Attorney General Rob Bonta, and all relevant parties to come together, engage directly and in good faith, and work urgently to find common ground and keep our vital industry in Los Angeles at a time when film and television production is already facing significant challenges,” Bass continued. “We cannot afford prolonged uncertainty that delays investment, puts production on hold, and creates greater instability for thousands of workers and family.”

Bass emphasized that any resolution must put workers and the “long-term health of our entertainment industry” at the center and include “meaningful and enforceable commitments” to keep Paramount and Warner Brothers Discovery in L.A. as well as maintaining jobs, productions, and investments in the region and California.

She added that Los Angeles is the “entertainment capital,” with “unparalleled talent, unlimited creativity, a skilled workforce, and the highest amount of production space in the world” and that she is speaking up to “protect this legacy.”

“This is not about taking sides. This is about fighting for Los Angeles, standing up for our union workers, keeping Paramount here, and protecting the future of this industry,” she concluded. “L.A. has been home to the entertainment industry for generations, and we intend to do everything we can to keep it here.”

Bass’ call for a settlement comes after TheWrap was first to report a new study by L.A County’s Department of Economic Opportunity and CVL Economics, which found that the merger could result the loss of nearly 4,500 TV and film jobs over the next three years.

It could also risk 2,661 indirect jobs at small businesses that support production — such as prop houses, printers, transportation companies and other vendors — and 3,204 induced jobs that exist because film and TV workers spend money in the local economy — including restaurants, retailers and service providers.

Overall, the economic impact of losing these jobs would be $1.26 billion in wages, $2.78 billion in economic value, $4.06 billion in total business output and $547 million in tax revenue, including $78.6 million in local taxes — most of which (63%) comes from property taxes, per the study.

In a statement to TheWrap, Paramount said that Los Angeles County’s report underscores underscores that the entertainment industry is “in decline, production is down and jobs are being lost — and lost for good if we don’t act.

“Our plan to invest $30 billion annually in production and release at least 30 films a year is how we regain that ground: more production that supports more jobs over time, and ultimately, a stronger, more durable entertainment industry for generations to come,” the company added.

The $110 billion deal is currently headed to an antitrust trial in March. Paramount has agreed to delay the closing until five days after the outcome of a trial, or June 1, 2027, whichever is earliest. Starting Oct. 1, Ellison is on the hook for a 25 cent per share ticking fee, which translates to a payout of $7 million per day, or $650 million per quarter until closing. The final deadline for the deal to close is June 4, 2027.

While Ellison himself has called for a settlement, he has also threatened to begin the process to move Paramount’s operations out of the Golden State starting Oct. 1 if Bonta does not come to the negotiating table. Bonta has called the threat of a move “blackmail” and maintains that he is open to a settlement, but that Paramount needs to offer structural remedies, such as divestments, rather than behavioral remedies.

Experts have warned TheWrap that Paramount moving out of the state would be “devastating” for the L.A. entertainment community at a time when it has already faced cutbacks from the strikes and the end of the peak-TV era post-pandemic. They added that it would take years to execute and is “extremely dangerous” for Paramount from both an optics and financial standpoint.

Per CVL Economics and DEO’s study, 17% of Paramount’s total workforce and 13% of WBD’s total workforce are located in L.A. County. When looking by unit, 35% of Paramount and 27% of WBD’s studios unit workforces are based in L.A., while direct-to-consumer/streaming make up 15% and 17% and TV/media and global linear networks make up 10% and 2%, respectively.

In addition to Bass, Xavier Becerra, the Democratic nominee in California’s gubernatorial race, has called for a settlement. The Wall Street Journal reported that California Gov. Gavin Newsom has also privately urged Bonta to reach a settlement.

The Directors’ Guild of America and IATSE have also presented a settlement proposal that would include conditions such as keeping operation of Paramount and WBD’s film and TV studios and their production, distribution, marketing and exhibition groups separate; keeping HBO available on third-party platforms; and commitments around content licensing, theatrical releases, U.S.-based productions and remaining based in Los Angeles.

Others who have come out in support of the merger include the CEOs of AMC Theaters, Regal and Cinemark, as well as Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer. Trade organization Cinema United has also called for settlement after previously opposing the merger.

In addition to Bonta and 11 other state attorneys general, the Paramount-WBD merger faces lawsuits from the Writers’ Guild of America and a Paramount shareholder. A group of consumers also filed a lawsuit seeking to block the merger, but it was dismissed.

In a statement, the WGA said it was “disappointed” that Bass has “chosen to join Paramount’s pressure campaign on public enforcers, to push through a merger that is being rightfully challenged as illegal and will lead to job losses in the entertainment industry.”

“Industry workers deserve a mayor who believes in upholding the law and protecting the working people of Los Angeles, not serving the interests of powerful corporations,” the union continued. “Paramount has created a false choice for entertainment industry workers: The company argues that enforcing antitrust law hurts us by creating uncertainty, which is of their own making as the company attempts to dominate the industry. We reject the claim that beleaguered industry workers must choose the possibility of a job today, in exchange for the certainty of job losses tomorrow.”

A spokesperson for Bonta’s office did not immediately return TheWrap’s request for comment.

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Daveed Diggs on HIs Emmy Nominated Song From ‘The Boys’

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When actor and rapper Daveed Diggs was cast as superhero preacher Oh Father for the fifth and final season of Prime Video series “The Boys,” he didn’t think his musical skills would be called on for the gig. But the show’s composer, Christopher Lennertz, had other ideas.

“When they announced that he was going to be in the show, I immediately texted our showrunner, Eric (Kripke), and said, ‘We need to have him do a musical number.’” Lennertz said. “And he was like, ‘I don’t know. That wasn’t part of the plan. Let me think about it.’”

Kripke thought about it for a few months before bringing it up to Diggs. “He very apologetically approached me and was like, ‘You can say no, but we do these musical numbers sometimes. Would you be interested in doing one?’” said Diggs, who won a Tony and a Grammy for his performance in “Hamilton.” “I really don’t do stuff like that post-‘Hamilton,’ but I just loved the way it fit into the show, so I said, ‘OK, but I have to be involved in the writing.’”

After a false start on a contemporary hip-hop song, Diggs and Lennertz collaborated on what turned into the Emmy-nominated “Raise Him Up,” a roaring funk-gospel number sung by Oh Father as he struts across a glitzy altar surrounded by scantily clad dancers dressed as angels. The style is pure church but the message is not, with Oh Father proclaiming that the psychopathic superhero leader Homelander (Antony Starr) is, in fact, God: “Now the world’s too dark for a Jew in robes and sandals/I’ll take a god who lasers vandals,” run the opening lines.

Christopher Lennertz and Daveed Diggs
“Raise Him Up” songwriters Christopher Lennertz and Daveed Diggs (Prime Video)

“Once we got going, it just got down to the business of ‘How far can we take it?’” Lennertz said. “And Eric’s notes are usually of the variety that’s like, ‘Great, can you make it even crazier?’”

It wasn’t hard for the songwriters to find inspiration. “Eric told me about stuff they were reading in the writers’ room about the trajectory of the religious right,” Diggs added, “about the very intentional co-opting of religion in the United States, and places of worship being turned into places of politics. It’s gotten so ubiquitous at this point that we don’t even notice it most of the time. It just feels normal.”

“What I like about the song is that you really have to think about it to realize that ‘We’ve got a God who’s strong and just an American like us’ is an insane thing to say.”

He laughed. “If it weren’t so specifically about American politics, it would’ve felt like a shark jump. But it never does, because the more they push it over time, the closer our political system has come to what they’re talking about. It’s not really a funhouse mirror. It’s just a mirror.”

Lennertz agreed. “It was probably written a full year before the (2024) election and filmed half a year before the election,” he said. “So we didn’t know that there was going to be a meme with a politician pretending to heal a sick person with glowing lights. We certainly didn’t know that there was going to be a giant life-sized golden statue on the lawn of a resort when we made a giant golden Homelander statue that looks just like it.”

“You’re like, ‘Wait, how did you know?’ But we didn’t know. We just were guessing, partly because that’s the way it always works with people who are corrupt and trying to pull a fast one.”

“That’s the point of the song, but it’s also the point of the series. The whole concept of ‘The Boys’ from Episode 1 was, you think you’re seeing what you know and love about superheroes, and then slowly you’re going to realize that this is not Captain America or Wonder Woman. This has all been corrupted by power and greed and money and corporations, just the way everything else gets corrupted like that.”

“So this song is absolutely not making fun of a religion or a deity or a belief system. This song is making fun of corruption and greed and power-hungry people who don’t have anything good or holy or noble in mind.”

This story first appeared in the Down to the Wire: Drama issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

Sarah Pidgeon photographed for TheWrap by Roman Koval

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