Patrick Renna touched down in Iowa last week to attend the MLB’s Field of Dreams game in Dyersville, Iowa featuring the Philadelphia Phillies and the Minnesota Twins. The interleague matchup, which streamed live on Netflix, took place inside a newly built stadium just a ball’s throw from the original movie site used for the 1989 sports classic starring Kevin Costner, Ray Liotta and James Earl Jones.

“Theo Von, baseball players, great food and there’s a baseball game to see tonight at the Field of Dreams — it’s spectacular. It’s once in a lifetime,” Renna told The Hollywood Reporter of the scene during a brief interview against the backdrop of the house used for filming. As Renna recapped his experience, a line of fans formed over his shoulder as people waited for a chance to take a photo with the actor best known for starring in another beloved baseball classic — The Sandlot.

In a chat with THR, Renna opens up on the nostalgic moment, being starstruck by the MLB commissioner and his recent reunion with his Sandlot pals on the series Dugout Dads.

How did it happen that you were able to be here for the game?

The [Sandlot] guys came out a couple years ago but I couldn’t make it for some reason, and I had such major [fear of missing out]. The fact that this [site] is still standing here is so epic, and they built a whole stadium. It’s great.

You’re wearing John Deere merch. Did they bring you out?

Yeah, they brought me out. I have a partnership with them that I’m doing here, and we shot a little fun thing in the cornfields. They brought me out for the game and I head home tomorrow.

Anything baseball must always kick up a lot of interest around you and the film. What is it like to be so closely associated to this sport?

It’s a great sport to be attached to — it’s America’s pastime so it’s really special. The sport itself is almost nostalgic when you think about it; the experience of families watching the game together in the stands with all the food. It’s cool and it’s humbling. It doesn’t get lost on us how lucky we are to have been part of something like [The Sandlot]. We have now three generations of people coming up to us saying, “You’ve been in our living rooms for 30 years.” To be able to provide that is special.

What’s the other most common thing people say when they come up to you?

“You’re killing me, Smalls.”

It’s nice to see you embracing it, taking all the photos and engaging with the fans. Some actors lean into it, while others might say, “I’ve done 30 years of other work since then.” But you really enjoy it?

Yeah. As an actor, you kind of always worry about the things that you’ve done that are negative and you think to yourself, “Oh god, I hope nobody sees it.” But the great thing about doing something negative is that nobody sees it. So, yes, I’ve been working for 30 years but I haven’t topped Sandlot and that’s OK. It still gives me something to shoot for and hopefully I do. There are major movie stars that don’t have a movie like Sandlot. There’s something there for people, and all the credit goes to the director, [David Mickey Evans], who write, directed and narrated it. It was lightning in a bottle for a movie to mean something and become so important to families. It’s mind-boggling to even be in it it because it’s not really about me or the guys. It’s bigger than all of us.

How hard is it to be an actor today?

I do more producing and directing now. I have Dugout Dads coming out in August, which I brought all the Sandlot guys back for. That was fun. I’m an actor in that. But I don’t go out often [for acting jobs]. If something comes to me because I’ve been doing this so long, that’s exciting to me and I’ll do it. So acting isn’t that hard for me today because I just don’t do it often. I’m on the other side mostly now.

Can you describe the atmosphere here? You’re getting a lot of attention and I just saw you hanging out with Theo Von.

Super nice guy. Also, the commissioner of baseball is here. I was so starstruck and wanted to meet him. Theo Von, baseball players, great food and there’s a baseball game to see tonight at the Field of Dreams — it’s spectacular. It’s once in a lifetime.

Who are you rooting for between the Philadelphia Phillies and Minnesota Twins?

I got no skin in the game. I’m just looking for a good ball game that is hopefully high-scoring and down to the ninth inning. Maybe the Phillies? Maybe the Twins? I don’t know really. It’s going to be a good game either way.

Interview edited for length and clarity.

EXCLUSIVE: Jordan (Michael Evans Behling), Layla (Greta Onieogou) and the rest of the Vortex are helping to pick up the pieces in Monday night’s episode of All American.

Deadline can share the above clip exclusively ahead of the episode, featuring the OG members of the Vortex presumably in the hours after both Amina (Alexis Chikaeze) and Preach (Kareem Grimes) were arrested by ICE agents while protecting students and faculty during a raid on South Crenshaw High School. In the clip, Jordan shows up to their home, where Layla waits with Coop (Bre-Z) and Breonna (Sasha Lance), with a box of doughnuts in tow.

“Doughnuts have a way of de-stressing even the worst situations,” he earnestly tells Layla when she questions the gesture.

It might’ve worked, if he hadn’t had to drop the news on Layla that KJ (Nathaniel McIntyre) is also missing after taking off in the middle of a fight between Cassius (Osy Ikhile) and Jordan.

Looks like they’ve got their hands full in this upcoming episode. Watch the full clip above.

Focusing on the three pillars that have always been at the heart of All American – football, family and friendship – Season 8 picks up six months after the football cliffhanger at the end of last season and will span just one week in our favorite Beverly and Crenshaw crew’s life. A week that will have them wondering if everything they’ve been through over the course of their lives has prepared them for this moment. A week that will ultimately reunite old with the new, friend with enemy, and alter the course of each of their futures forever. 

The series stars Michael Evans Behling, Greta Onieogou, Bre-Z, Osy Ikhile, Alexis Chikaeze, Nathaniel Logan McIntyre, Antonio J. Bell, Kareem Grimes, and Lauryn Hardy.

All American is produced by Warner Bros. Television and CBS Studios in association with Berlanti Productions, with executive producers Nkechi Okoro Carroll (“Found,” “The Resident”), Greg Berlanti (“You,” “Brilliant Minds,” “The Flash”), Jameal Turner (“Rosewood”), Sarah Schechter (“The Flight Attendant,” “Riverdale,” “You”), and David Strauss (“One Tree Hill”).

Jimmy Fallon has spent most of the summer as the sole torchbearer for late-night on broadcast television.

The Tonight Show host has been palling around with Katseye, trying on QVC wigs, starting his own microdrama, interviewing almost everyone involved in The Odyssey and making fun of the President.

He has, essentially, held down the fort of late-night all by himself. Jimmy Kimmel has been on his annual summer holiday and Seth Meyers has been largely off since the middle of June and will return at the end of September. Stephen Colbert, of course, is off writing a Lord of the Rings movie after being unceremoniously axed by CBS.

Meyers was off between June 18 and July 13, returning for two weeks before departing on July 30 and will eventually be back on September 21. This is much longer than recent breaks; last year he was off between July 18 and August 12 as well as the last week of August and in 2024 he was off the last two weeks of August (although admittedly it was an election year, which may have played into things).

“We got a break coming up. I wish we didn’t. We like being here with you guys, but we’ll be back, we’ll be refreshed,” he said on an episode of his YouTube series Corrections.

“We’re about to take a very long hiatus and when we take very long hiatuses, one of the things that people say is that we’re going to miss so much. Because of that, we, through back channels, reached out to the White House and he agreed he’s not going to be weird. Until we get back,” he joked.

Kimmel has been taking the summers off since 2020, having baked in the idea to his contract with ABC. His show has been guest hosted by the likes of Anthony Anderson, Colman Domingo, Ike Barinholtz and Tiffany Haddish with Rosie O’Donnell filling his seat this week.

This long summer break is also interesting given that it coincides with Emmy voting season. Only John Oliver is on air this week as voting starts tomorrow so voters won’t be swayed by the latest monologue from Kimmel or Stewart as they choose who will win Outstanding Variety Series (although given the current rules, all five nominees – The Daily Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Last Week Tonight, The Late Show and Saturday Night Live – could win an award in September).

Late-night hosts taking time off during the doldrums of summer is not a concern, in itself, but this year’s broadcast line-up feels like a harbinger. Many believe that the storied Tonight Show will be the last late-night franchise on air – Fallon is currently signed up to host through 2028, much like Meyers – but the cancelation of The Late Show, CBS deciding to move away from late-night altogether and the likelihood of Kimmel leaving sooner rather than later makes it feel like a sign of things to come.

The fact that Last Week Tonight’s John Oliver only signed up for a one-year deal, rather than his traditional three years, is also a worry, although that says more about the state of his employer, Warner Bros. Discovery, which is in a complicated corporate takeover situation, than the state of late-night comedy.

Yes, there’s still The Daily Show but the Comedy Central show is itself is on a longer hiatus than last year, essentially taking all of August off, returning on September 8, and Andy Cohen’s Bravo talker Watch What Happens Live is still a thriving spot for reality gossip.

Ad spending on linear late-night shows is clearly continuing to fall; ad intelligence agency Guideline noted that spend went from $439M in 2018 to $221M in 2024.

The narrative is that late-night is being replaced by YouTube shows.

Trevor Noah and Conan O’Brien are prospering with the former Daily Show host having nearly 5M subscribers on the Google-owned platform and the former Tonight Show has nearly 10M subs for his Team Coco channel.

But the new breed of “late-night” shows on YouTube such as Julian Shapiro Barnum’s Outside Tonight and Ben Gleib’s Good Night are struggling to break through. Some of Barnum’s Outside Tonight episodes are receiving hundreds thousand viewers, but the channel has fewer than 8,000 subscribers, while many clips of Good Night get only a few hundred views.

Fallon hasn’t addressed the fact that he’s largely alone on late-night island this summer, but he did recently tell USA Today that he feels some responsibility to carry the genre into the next generation

“The idea of it is that it’s just someone that you can talk to that’s there for you, that you can laugh, and you can know what’s going on in pop culture in the world,” he said. “I think that’s just needed.”