10 NEWS People
The real Tony Soprano Jr.
Michael Gandolfini shares many of Tony
Soprano’s iconic mannerisms, said Michael
Hainey in Esquire. The way he runs his fingers
through his hair. The way he rubs his nose with
the back of his hand. It’s no coincidence, of
course: He’s the son of James Gandolfini, whose
performance as the anxiety-plagued mob boss
in The Sopranos is considered some of the best
acting in TV history. Now Michael, 20, will play a young Tony
Soprano in David Chase’s feature-length Sopranos prequel coming
in 2020, The Many Saints of Newark. Gandolfini hesitated before
taking the part. He was present when James, 51, died of a heart
attack during a family vacation in Rome in 2013. Before audition-
ing for the movie, Michael had never watched even one episode of
The Sopranos. To play his father as a young man, he knew he had
to steep himself in his father’s work. That was “the hardest part
of this whole process,” says the New York University sophomore.
“I was just sitting alone in my dark apartment, watching my dad.
I started having crazy dreams. I had one where I auditioned for
David and I looked down at my hands, and they were my dad’s
hands.” One scene “crushed me,” he says: Tony yells at his teen-
age son, then apologizes, telling Anthony Jr., “I couldn’t ask for
a better son.” Watching that, Michael says, “I just knew he was
talking to me.”
A former basketball star’s cloistered life
Shelly Pennefather escaped basketball fame in the most radical
way possible, said Elizabeth Merrill in ESPN.com. Villanova’s all-
time leading scorer was 25 and had a $200,000 contract to play
in Japan when she shocked family and friends by instead joining
the Monastery of the Poor Clares in Alexandria, Va., one of the
strictest religious orders in the world. “I would never choose this
for myself,” Pennefather told a friend, “but this is what I’m called
to do. God is calling me.” As a cloistered nun called Sister Rose
Marie, she sleeps on straw mattresses and rises at 12:30 a.m.
with her sisters to pray. They walk barefoot and never leave their
monastery, believing their prayers will help the world’s suffering.
She gets two family visits a year through a see-through screen and
is allowed to hug her family every 25 years. In June, she had the
chance to do so when she renewed her vows. Her mother, Mary
Jane, held a long, first embrace, telling her 53-year-old daughter,
“I’ll be here at 103 if you can hang in there.” Sister Rose Marie
told her guests, “I love this life. It’s so peaceful. I just feel like I’m
not underliving life. I’m living it to the full.”
Taylor Swift feels that she can’t seem to do anything without being
called a phony, said Abby Aguirre in Vogue. For years she was criti-
cized for keeping her politics to herself, but when she endorsed a
Tennessee Democratic Senate candidate in 2018 (who lost badly)
and released the pro-LGBTQ song “You Need to Calm Down” this
summer, some dismissed her views as just another calculated
attempt to buff her image for young, woke fans. As a young coun-
try artist, Swift used to be called “America’s sweetheart,” but that
changed when she got into a renewed feud with Kanye West and
Kim Kardashian West, who called her “a snake.” On Twitter, people
siding with West and Kardashian have circulated the hashtags
#TaylorSwiftIsASnake and #TaylorSwiftIsCanceled. “Millions of
people saying you are quote-unquote canceled is a very isolating
experience,” says Swift, 29. “When you say someone is canceled,
it’s not a TV show. It’s a human being. You’re sending mass amounts
of messaging to this person to either shut up, disappear, or it could
also be perceived as, Kill yourself.” Her new music is angrier, and
she says it’s “a great thing” that she no longer has to be America’s
sweetheart. “That’s extremely limiting.”Shutterstock, Getty, APNo canceling Swift
QJay-Z came under withering
criticism by black activists after
he and the NFL announced
a new, multiyear partner-
ship to co-produce the
Super Bowl halftime show
and “amplify the league’s
social justice efforts.” The
deal, a source close to the billionaire hip-hop
mogul told TMZSports.com, will mean that
Jay-Z will have a “significant ownership
interest” in an NFL team “in the near future.”
Several NFL players and activists accused
Jay-Z of selling out to the NFL, which he had
previously criticized for allegedly blackball-
ing former San Francisco 49ers quarterback
Colin Kaepernick for starting the kneelingprotests during the national anthem. Eric
Reid, an activist and former teammate of
Kaepernick’s, tweeted that Jay-Z had made
“a money move,” adding, “The NFL gets 2
hide behind his black face 2 try to cover up
blackballing Colin.” Jay-Z said his deal would
bring real change to the NFL. “I think we’ve
moved past kneeling,” he said.
QJeffrey Epstein’s alleged procurer Ghis-
laine Maxwell was spotted last week at an
In-N-Out Burger in Los Angeles. Maxwell,
57 and accused of playing recruiter, trainer,
and paymaster to the late Epstein’s dozens
of underage sexual assault victims, has not
been charged criminally, although prosecu-
tors are reportedly looking for her. Rumors
had her living overseas in a British manor,
or at the Massachusetts compound of a tech
CEO. Instead, reports the New York Post,Maxwell was photographed “scarfing down
a burger, fries, and shake” while reading a
book. “Well, I guess this is the last time I’ll be
eating here,” Maxwell said when spotted.
QNews that disgraced journalist Mark
Halperin has a deal to write a new book on
the 2020 election has sparked a backlash
from women who have accused him of
sexual assault and harassment, as well as
other #MeToo advocates. Former Fox News
host Gretchen Carlson called Halperin’s deal
“a slap in the face to all women.” Journalist
Eleanor McManus, who said Halperin tried to
kiss her, said Democratic strategists James
Carville, Donna Brazile, and David Axelrod
set “the whole #MeToo movement back” by
giving interviews to Halperin. Axelrod and
several others said they regretted respond-
ing to Halperin’s questions.