Brad Pitt’s rumoured new girlfriend Nicole Poturalski gained worldwide attention last week after the pair were spotted jetting off to the south of France.
Pitt, 56, and Poturalski, 27, were seen after touching down at the South of France’s Le Castellet Airport via private jet.
Reports claim the pair will be spending time at Château Miraval, an estate the World War Z star bought for $67 million in 2011 with his ex-wife Angelina Jolie, 45.
New reports claim that Poturalski is actually married to 68-year-old Roland Mary with whom she has a son … but what else is there to know about the mysterious woman who has stolen the actor’s heart?
SHE’S IN AN OPEN MARRIAGE
The German model has been married to well-known German restaurateur Roland Mary for eight years. According to the Daily Mail, Mary “doesn’t mind” that his young wife is dating the Hollywood star.
“They are still married, but you could describe their relationship as an open marriage,” a source told the publication.
“He has been married several times and has five children. He is not interested in negativity or jealousy.”
Mary was spotted for the first time in public yesterday since Poturalski and Pitt started dating, heading to his Berlin restaurant Borchardt.
When asked about his wife’s trip with Pitt to France, he said simply: “No comment.”
In fact, reports claim that Pitt and Poturalski first met at Mary’s restaurant while he was promoting his film Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.
“Brad first met Nicole in August last year at Borchardt which is her husband Roland’s restaurant,” a friend of Nicole told MailOnline.
“Brad Pitt has been coming to Borchardt for years. He knows Roland and Nicole was at the restaurant when he came to celebrate his new film.
“Brad was introduced to Nicole and she passed him her number.”
One week later Poturalski flew to Los Angeles to meet with Pitt, and they were photographed together in November 2019 at a Kanye West concert.
SHE’S WELL-KNOWN IN GERMANY
While not many people have heard of Poturalski before, she’s a pretty successful model in Germany.
ELLE reports that Poturalski uses the name Nico Mary professionally and is represented by A Management, Official Models, and NEXT Models. She has already appeared on several magazine covers, including ELLE Germany.
SHE HAS BIG DREAMS
She wasn’t always set on being a model. According to the Daily Mail, she planned on being a marine biologist, but everything changed when she was discovered by a model talent scout at Disneyland Paris.
In a statement from her modelling profile, when asked what her ultimate superpower would be, she said: “Travelling in time so I can visit all those amazing and historical events myself, including the future.”
SHE FOUNDED A SHARK AID CENTRE
While she is an incredibly successful model, Poturalski completed her Abitur – German A levels – and founded an organisation devoted to helping sharks.
SHE IS A MUM
Poturalski and her husband Roland Mary are parents to their son Emil, 7. The model occasionally shares photos of him on her Instagram, in February calling him her “best friend”.
SHE IS POLITICAL
Poturalski hasn’t shied away from getting political on social media. In May, she uploaded a photo of herself wearing a shirt that read: “Protect Kids, Not Guns.”
In March this year, she posted to her Instagram Story to raise awareness for Black Lives Matter, stating: “They can’t raise their voice cause nobody hears them. It’s on us young people. Educate and watch out for your younger fellow humans. Change is needed. Be kind to anyone and your best. I will do the same.”
SHE IS MULTILINGUAL
The Daily Mail reports that the model can speak five different languages which stems from her international modelling experience, working on cover shoots and catwalks around the world, including New York, Paris and Milan.
SHE IS A CAPRICORN
Poturalski was born on January 2, 1993.
SHE SPORTS A TINY NECK TATTOO
She has a small tattoo that reads “moon” on the back of her neck.
"He was a gentle soul and a brilliant artist, who will stay with us for eternity through his iconic performances over his short yet illustrious career," Washington said in his statement. "God bless Chadwick Boseman."
On Sunday night, ABC USA aired the special Chadwick Boseman: A Tribute For A King following a commercial-free airing of Black Panther.
Actor Chadwick Boseman arrives for the Hollywood premiere of Black Panther in 2018. (Getty)
During the special, famed actress Phylicia Rashad told the story of when she mentored Boseman while teaching at Howard University when he was a student there.
Rashad said she received a call that a group of her students had auditioned for and been accepted into the British American Drama Academy's Midsummer program, but would not be attending because they couldn't afford it.
"I made a phone call to a friend of mine, and he called me back and we talked about it for about five minutes, and he said, 'OK, I got this money," Rashad said.
Denzel Washington called Chadwick Boseman a gentle soul. (AAP)
That friend was Washington and Boseman gratefully recounted the story last year during a speech honouring Washington when Washington was selected to receive the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019.
"As fate would have it, I was one of the students that he paid for," Boseman said. "Imagine receiving the letter that your tuition for that summer was paid for and that your benefactor was none other than the dopest actor on the planet."
Boseman added that he knew his story was not the only one of it's kind and added that "an offering from a sage and a king is more than silver and gold. It is a seed of hope, a bud of faith."
"There is no Black Panther without Denzel Washington," Boseman said. "And not just because of me, but my whole cast — that generation — stands on your shoulders."
A visibly moved Washington gave Boseman a standing ovation following his speech.
Having reopened in July, cinemas saw their first fresh blockbuster meat hit screens in August, with Christopher Nolan's Tenet.
It's not the only new film release in cinemas, but it may signal a shift in distributor attitudes, with some high-profile films finally re-scheduled for release.
In the meantime, we're spoilt for choice of streaming services: from Netflix, Stan, Foxtel Now and streaming package Binge, to Amazon Prime Australia, Apple TV+ and Disney+, arthouse specialists MUBI, and free services like ABC iview, SBS On Demand and Tubi.
We've asked our regular film reviewers to comb through all these services and share recommendations, with a mix of subscriber-based and free offerings. Expect new independent and arthouse, festival favourites, classics, and underrated films from the vault.
We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)
We Need to Talk About Kevin is adapted from the 2003 novel by Lionel Shriver about a teenage murderer.(Supplied: Paramount Pictures)
From the gritty social realism of Ratcatcher to the brutal rescue tale of You Were Never Really Here, Lynne Ramsay's oeuvre doesn't follow a straight line — but her sinister take on a strained (to put it lightly) mother-son relationship evokes the same fluid layering of sensory metaphor that marks her other works.
The opening shot — thin curtains swelling under a night breeze; silence cut by the sharp rhythmic spit of a lawn sprinkler — sets an itching, uneasy tone.
Starring the eternally ethereal Tilda Swinton, the film tracks Eva's twisted maternal feud with her son Kevin as he morphs from a shrieking bullhorn of a baby to an extravagantly petulant little kid (Jasper Newell) to an eerily sociopathic high schooler (Ezra Miller).
With hints of the film's tragic denouement splintered throughout, this thickly poetic thriller marinates in Eva's mixed feelings of guilt and trauma. Heavy as that may be, it's a light-headed thrill to witness Ramsay's tonal sorcery. VN
In Clueless, director Amy Heckerling transposed Jane Austen's Emma to the valley girl bratpack of Beverly Hills.(Supplied: Stan)
Two visions of American teen cinema at its most aspirational and utopian, where the popular kids aren't prom kings and queens but enterprising troublemakers who seem to unite the genre's subcultures. Is it any wonder they remain so beloved?
John Hughes's post-Breakfast Club jaunt still feels like his most personal work, imagining a mythically righteous dude — Matthew Broderick's almost obnoxiously charming Ferris Bueller — who might bind the geeks, sportos and wastoids in universal truancy and a shared disdain for boredom.
For all its prankster appeal, though, what lingers is the thread of melancholy; like all the best teen films, it's laced with the sense of youth that will never return.
If Heathers punctured the 80s illusion of high-school unity, then the improbable populist returned in Amy Heckerling's peppy Jane Austen riff Clueless, with 90s teen queen Alicia Silverstone as the headstrong matchmaker strutting her way through the rich-kid milieu of a Beverly Hills high school.
Heckerling trades the burnout SoCal kids of her Fast Times at Ridgemont High for something lighter and snappier but no less insightful, finding wisdom where it so often resides — in the superficial and the trivial. With Paul Rudd, and the late, great — greatest? — Brittany Murphy. LG
Watch Clueless on Netflix. Watch Ferris Bueller's Day Off on Stan from September 15.
Things to Come (2016)
French director Mia Hansen-Løve was formerly an actress, and appeared in two films by Olivier Assayas.(Supplied: SBS)
Mia Hansen-Løve's supernatural drama Bergman Island was one of the most hotly anticipated titles due to hit the film festival circuit this year, but, wouldn't you know it, the coronavirus pandemic has put the kibosh on the prospect of a 2020 release.
Take some comfort in the fact the French writer-director's fifth and best film to date has just been made available to stream on SBS. Winner of the 2016 Berlinale's Silver Bear for Best Director, Things To Come stars the magnificent Isabelle Huppert in particularly fine and subtle form (and what a year Huppert had, also giving an indomitable performance in Paul Verhoeven's Elle).
She plays Nathalie Chazeux, a philosophy teacher tested by significant life changes in her middle age — beginning with the sudden departure of her stolid husband (Andre Marcon) for another woman.
Nathalie is loosely based on Hansen-Love's own mother. From a filmmaker whose work is always rooted in the personal, comes a powerfully sensitive and unflinching portrait. KY
Edna Mae Harris was an actress and singer and appeared in many of the so-called "race films" of the late 30s and early 40s.(Supplied: TUBI)
Decades before blaxploitation, Spike Lee and Tyler Perry, pioneering director Oscar Micheaux was a one-man African American film factory, creating more than 40 so-called "race films" — movies starring predominantly black casts, marketed to black audiences — during an era when Oscar-nominated "coloured" performers weren't invited to their own awards ceremonies (His most famous film, the anti-Birth of a Nation classic Within Our Gates, is streaming on MUBI).
Among the dozen or so race films on Tubi is Micheaux's Lying Lips, which features musical performances from Edna Mae Harris as a nightclub singer framed for murder, and the familiar baritone of a detective played by Robert Earl Jones (father of iconic actor, James).
While many of these films trade in stock plots and archetypes (and plenty were helmed by white directors), they gave black performers spaces outside Hollywood's racist caricatures, and often showcased the period's swing, jazz and blues — see Ethel Waters' lively musical Bubbling Over (1934), the Nat King Cole-led Killer Diller (1948), or Harlem is Heaven (1932), featuring superstar tap dancer Bill "Bojangles" Robinson.
Of particular note, Spencer Williams' Go Down Death!, which reprises the vibe and nightmare imagery of the director's masterpiece The Blood of Jesus (1941) in its battle between morality and empathy, the sacred and the profane. LG
Watch on Tubi.
Mean Girls (2004)
Loading...
"He who fights monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster," wrote Friedrich Nietzsche — in a book that Cady Heron, the high school new girl played by a fresh-faced Lindsay Lohan in this totally fetch teen movie, obviously never read.
Initially befriended by the "art freaks", Cady soon falls in with The Plastics, a trio of rich bitches ruled by Rachel McAdams and feared and revered by their cohort in equal measure. What starts out as a sociological experiment inevitably gets real, and Cady herself morphs into a lip-glossed monster.
Tina Fey took a self-help book (Rosalind Wiseman's Queen Bees and Wannabes) and turned it into a timeless, sharp-witted parable about the cruel machinations of "girl world", stacked with solid-gold one-liners that have become beloved fixtures of the pop-cultural lexicon.
The Mark Waters-directed film is a classic of the genre, even more enjoyable once your high school years are safely in the rear-view. KY
Watch on Netflix.
Bumblebee (2018), Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)
British screenwriter Christina Hodson, best known for Bumblebee (pictured) and Birds of Prey, is penning the forthcoming Batgirl.(Supplied: Netflix)
The Transformers series got a much-needed makeover with Bumblebee, an 80s-set prequel that mixed the decade's teen and Amblin movie templates to pleasing — and maybe even a little emotional — effect.
The film is rich with period charm, with Hailee Steinfeld as a tomboy mechanic who air drums to the Smiths and salvages a junkyard Volkswagen Beetle who just happens to be an intergalactic robot. But what sells it is the genuine heart that screenwriter Christina Hodson puts into the chassis — even the film's concessions to the franchise universe can't dilute the rapport between teenage outsider and homesick mechanoid.
Hodson's writing also powers the female-centric friendships in Cathy Yan's fast and funny Harley Quinn spinoff Birds of Prey, with Margot Robbie and her gang injecting some bratty energy into a comic book genre sorely in need of it. If you missed it in cinemas, here's another chance. LG
Where the Green Ants Dream stars Wandjuk Marika, a Yolngu artist and key figure in the land rights movement.(Supplied: Stan) Set in the Martian harshness of the South Australian outback, this lesser-known film from German auteur Werner Herzog is a mix of fact and fiction that incited consternation upon its release — but should prove a fascinating artefact for the conscientious viewer.
It was inspired by the first major Aboriginal land rights case, and casts two of the Indigenous activists involved in leading roles: Wandjuk Marika and Roy Marika play tribal elders determined to protect the breeding ground of their sacred green ants from destruction by a mining company.
Not quite the fabrication some critics alleged, the green ant mythology was nevertheless something Herzog borrowed, with no regard for geography, from the West Arnhem Land Gunwinggu.
He's a filmmaker always in pursuit of "ecstatic truth" over mere facts, and his depiction of an encounter between natives and invaders perhaps says more about his own tendency towards romantic primitivism than it does Australian history: When Wandjuk Marika's character tells Bruce Spence's lanky geologist, "Your presence on this earth will come to an end. You have no sense, no purpose, no direction," I heard the words spoken in the director's deep Teutonic lilt. KY
Watch on Stan from September 21.
Hannah Arendt (2012)
German-American political theorist Hannah Arendt famously reported on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a key figure in the Holocaust.(Supplied: SBS)
German New Wave feminist director Margarethe von Trotta and her long-time collaborator Barbara Sukowa reunited for a third time — following Marianne & Juliane (1981) and their Cannes-prize-winning Rosa Luxemburg (1986) — for this study of influential political philosopher Hannah Arendt and the genesis of her evergreen concept, "the banality of evil".
Punctuated by perpetually lit cigarettes that are practically a running gag, von Trotta's exploration of mid-century American paranoia and media suspicion finds Arendt — then a tenured professor in New York — assigned to cover the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi war criminal she seeks to understand rather than outright condemn; or, as she puts it, to reconcile the staggering mediocrity of the man with his capacity for evil.
Dramatising court proceedings, let alone writers and thinkers, can be a grind, but von Trotta and Sukowa — so good in everything from Fassbinder's Lola to this year's moving Two of Us — capture the essence of a woman who sought to bring the complexity of her experience to the new world. LG
Film programmer SF Said described The Lighthouse as "an incendiary mix of war film, memoir and musical explosion".(Supplied: MUBI)
Although Maria Saakyan tragically passed away in 2018, aged just 37, her semi-autobiographical debut feature — which also happens to be the first film by an Armenian woman to be made in the country — has recently been rescued and restored, as part of an effort to share the director's work with the greater world.
The Caucasus Wars that broke out after the collapse of the Soviet Union left hundreds of thousands of Armenians, including Saakyan, in exile. Revisiting this scarred territory, her bittersweet wartime drama maps the inner world of its heroine Lena (Anna Kapaleva) — inviting comparisons to the poetic intensities of Andrei Tarkovsky — after she returns to her remote northern mountain village, desperate for her grandparents to leave with her for Russia.
Constantly surprising, the film's many unexpected treats include knockout sound design and a resurrected ghost — the late Sofiko Chiaureli, star and muse of the country's best-known filmmaker, Sergei Parajanov (The Colour of Pomegranates) — who pulls an offbeat turn as Lena's elderly aunt. ABB
Tsai Ming-liang is one of the most acclaimed "Second New Wave" directors of Taiwanese cinema.(Supplied: MUBI)
The hypnotic cinema of Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-Liang (Stray Dogs; Goodbye Dragon Inn) finds its purest form in his Walker trilogy, a series of films that use a kind of radical stillness — and a healthy dose of Tsai's impish visual humour — to disrupt the cacophony of modern life.
Dressed in monk's robes, Tsai's forever collaborator Lee Kang-sheng inches across various Hong Kong tableaux in Walker, his sub-glacial movement serving as both a meditative and comical counterpoint to the bustle of the city — whether he's set against a crowded marketplace or descending the fluorescent stairway of a strip mall like some cosmic wanderer alighting from the heavens.
The astonishing performance channels the spirit of everyone from Chaplin and Keaton to Jacques Tati and Denis Lavant (who, fittingly, appears in the sequel, Journey to the West).
No No Sleep offers graceful, enigmatic closure, as the walker creeps through Tokyo en route to a vaguely intimate rendezvous in a men's bathhouse, and a beautiful coda — set in a capsule hotel that may as well be a long-haul spaceship — seems to return this otherworldly traveller home. LG
Six masked celebs took the stage tonight, disguised as: Kitten, Bushranger, Puppet, Cactus, Queen and Frillneck.
It was Cactus forced to unmask, with musical theatre star Lucy Durack unveiled within.
Guessing extraordinaire Dannii Minogue locked in the correct call, noting the way Cactus stood on stage looked strangely familiar.
“What struck me from the first performance was the turned-out feet. I found a picture of Lucy Durack, who was standing exactly the way that I’ve seen you standing,” she said following Durack’s performance of Total Eclipse Of The Heart.
Follow our live coverage of tonight’s episode below.
Updates
See you tomorrow night.
LUCY DURACK.
Well done, Dannii!
Dannii locks in Lucy Durack, Hughesy guesses Amy Shark, Jackie locks in Em Rusciano and Urzila goes "top shelf" with Jane Seymour.
REVEAL YOURSELF, LUCY
It's down to Queen and Cactus!
He wonders whether it could be Celia Pacquola after the DWTS reference.
Dannii thinks Celeste Barber, Urzila goes with Rebel Wilson and Jackie (who is very on the ball tonight) is certain it's Julia Morris.
She seems to have the insider knowledge to back it up: "The plumbing thing – it actually made me think of a very funny story Julia Morris told once. It was when she was in her trailer for I'm A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! And the plumbing didn't work and something happened and it was very, very embarrassing for her."
Go Jackie!
What a way to spend a Monday night.
"Felines are vain.
"And I like to look good. In my underwear too.
"I hope the way I look doesn't blind you. Nobody can have a vision of the future.
"Sometimes we get what we hoped for… and sometimes we don't.
"If you hang in there, success can come at any age.
We've all done distasteful things in our lives.
"This is not the worst.
"The trick is to keep laughing, and keep some nobility about you.
"Or get a proper tradie to do it.
"I might be sweet on the outside but I pack a power punch, and tonight you'll hear all my power."
After a sweet rendition of Ed Sheeran's Thinking Out Loud, some interesting guesses for Puppet fly.
Jackie reckons it's Andrew Hansen from the Chaser, sticking with the law degree clues.
Urzila says it's Jonathan Coleman, and Dannii thinks it's opera performer Anthony Warlow.
Meanwhile, Hughesy is still stuck on his guess of the Hoff.
"As a teenager, I sat a career aptitude test. I was told my personality was suited to one job – owner of a gift card shop," Puppet adds.
"The other masked singers are on the run from me.
"They'd be easier to catch in my car.
"A puppet's life is a partnership. I can't do things on my own.
"My main partner is older than me and I mean a lot older. Millions of years! You have to be fit to do what I do.
"I'm the hardest working puppet in the business. I fight to find the fountain of youth. … I'm a lot less than just a pretty face.
"But it doesn't matter when you wear a mask, because I am the puppet who cannot die! And I'm not going to die on stage tonight!"
TV presenter Rose Jacobs is sporting a very different look these days.
The former Ten Eyewitness News star and ex-wife of Steve Jacobs, the Weekend Today weatherman until recently, flaunted a blonde cropped ‘do on Instagram as she shared the news of her latest career move.
Rose, a mother of two, announced on Sunday that she had landed a corporate hosting gig with Adviser Ratings presenting the Together Australia web series.
Telling her followers she was ‘beyond delighted’ to be in front of the camera again, those who hadn’t visited her page in recent months would be forgiven for thinking she was a different person.
“And for some happy news,” Rose captioned a screenshot from her web series.
“My new show has just launched! I’m beyond delighted to be behind this campaign that is helping all of us through tough times.”
A scroll through her page reveals she’s been rocking the cropped hairstyle over her shoulder-length look for some time, but went blonde recently.
Rose, 41, has hosted a variety of shows on Nine, 10, Foxtel and The Weather Channel over the years. She also worked as a producer on Today where she met her ex-husband Steve Jacobs in 2007.
They sold their five-bedroom matrimonial home in Coogee for a staggering $4.6 million in April 2018, and share custody of daughters Isabella and Francesca
“Steve and Rosie had such a public image of the perfect happy family but behind the scenes there were struggles that would put strain on even the best marriage,” a friend told The Daily Telegraph at the time.
Opening up about their split in 2018, she told news.com.au they were “on knife’s edge” by the time they arrived to their new life in paradise.
“I’ve been through hell and back with this,” she said of the divorce.
Steve famously left the Today show in 2016 to focus on his family and their Vanuatu sea change. He returned to the network in late 2017 to present the weather on Weekend Today, before rejoining the main Today show in 2019.
When the show underwent a second overhaul the same year, he was let go and replaced by Tim Davies.
Steve now hosts a breakfast program on Nine’s radio station Magic 1278.
It started, as these things so often do, with a spark. Single women – divorced, searching, hopeful, lonely – would come across the online dating profile of a man who called himself Richard Scott Smith (or Scott, or Mickey – more on that later) and it was as if they had come upon buried treasure.
Here was a man, in a suit, who claimed to be the full package. He was handsome, gainfully employed (Smith has identified himself to potential partners as everything from a pilot to a wine connoisseur and professional water skier), religious and tall.
“Dating in your 40s sucks,” Tracy, a 47-year-old single mum from Kansas says in the first episode of Love Fraud, a gripping new true crime documentary series streaming now on Stan. “You get there and they don’t have teeth, and you’re like, what the hell?”
After premiering at the Sundance Film Festival earlier in the year, the four-episode series is now available on the Australian streaming platform and has already been called better – and more bonkers – than Tiger King.
A SOCIOPATHIC CONMAN
The subject matter is familiar, especially to anyone who has listened to or watched Catfish or Dirty John: Aggressively charming, sociopathic conman swindles a woman out of her money, her emotions and her dignity.
Love Fraud serves as a chilling reminder that being conned by an intimate partner could happen to anyone.
Smith wasn’t only swindling Tracy – or Ellen, or Jean, or Sabrina, whose name he had inked on his back after only a few dates, or any of the dozen or so other women he smooth-talked. Smith was a serial con-artist, a man married so many times he struggled to keep track of the names of all of his ex-partners.
But in Love Fraud, there’s a twist.
When his many victims found solidarity after starting a blog to warn other potential victims of his scam, Love Fraud veered off script. These women, scattered across Kansas City, Wichita and beyond, decided to get revenge.
In the series, the women hire a foul-mouthed bounty hunter called Carla to track him down and bring him to justice. There are so many twists and turns over the course of the four-episode documentary, you’ll be pausing your screen and rewinding in disbelief. He can’t have done that, you’ll think. There’s no way that really happened. But it’s all true.
BANDING TOGETHER TO GET JUSTICE
Many of the women pictured in Love Fraud first found each other through the original blog, started by one of Smith’s victims named Lisa.
“Has this man victimised you?” the website asks. “Please DO NOT get involved with this guy personally or professionally,” a post on the site declares.
In the first episode of the series, this blog is what connects Smith’s disparate victims together. Many of them soon discover that they live near each other in Kansas City. They learn that their own relationships with Smith had similar hallmarks.
THE LOVE SCAM
Courtship was often brief and escalated quickly. The happy couple would talk for hours on the first date and Smith would leave messages and texts declaring his love immediately. The women would be showered with gifts.
And then – the proposal. Let’s buy a car. Let’s buy a house. Let’s start a business. Smith reportedly told women that he was about to come into some money, courtesy of a malpractice suit, but that he would need cash until then.
Some of them were asked to hand over hundreds of thousands of dollars. One woman was conned out of $US700,000 ($A952,000), according to the documentary. Then he would say: Let’s get married. Let’s go to Belize. Did you know that Belize doesn’t have an extradition treaty with America? (“That’s weird,” Ellen, one of Smith’s victims, recalls thinking, when Smith first floated the idea by her.)
In reality, Smith had pulled this trick on multiple occasions with multiple women. Towards some, he was romantic and kind – the perfect gentleman. To others, he could allegedly be abusive. Mostly, he was caught out when he started juggling too many women at once, quitting his job and acting strange under the exertion of all these fabrications, before leaving his partners unexpectedly and moving on to the next conquest.
For Tracy, one of the victims featured in episode one, the lies only came crashing down when her young daughter got into his car and discovered pill bottles with the labels removed and papers with multiple different names on them.
At first, she thought Smith was a drug addict. But the reality was that his addiction was something very different.
SMITH’S MANY WIVES
He was married to at least five women. He used 10 names, had 10 social security numbers, called victims from 43 different phone numbers. As ex-wife Jean put it in a 2017 Kansas City Star article: “Every word out of his mouth is a lie.”
For the women profiled in Love Fraud, the legal system offered no respite. When Smith eventually skipped out of town, some of his victims would try to take their case to the police. But given that he couldn’t be found, or that he was out of the county jurisdiction, the law was often unable to help.
Plus, there was an element of shame and humiliation. How seriously were people taking their story, the victims wondered, given that we dated this man and opened ourselves up to him. Which is how Carla, a bounty hunter from Kansas City, ended up on the case. A former victim of abuse and a champion of women, Carla was so moved by the plight of these women that she offered to work for free.
HUNTING THE CON-ARTIST
The rest of the documentary focuses on Carla’s tireless efforts to track Smith down. At first, he’s spotted on the Facebook page of a Wichita karaoke bar. Then it’s at a crab restaurant. At an apartment complex that he is clearing out. In a bar, with another woman. (Always, other women.)
Failed by traditional law enforcement officers, Smith’s victims seek their own revenge and mount their own investigation, taking Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, the Oscar-nominated directors of the documentary, along for the ride.
Filming took place in 2018, when warrants for Smith’s arrest were floating around but had never been actioned. While doing so, they dug deep into Smith’s life, speaking to everybody from childhood friends to his estranged sister, who they found hiding from him in Texas.
“I don’t want to be found,” she tells the documentary makers. “I don’t want to live with a monster in my life.”
When Ewing and Grady started working on the documentary, Smith was at large and terrorising women. Over the course of production, bombshells dropped left, right and centre, and each new development in the case led the network of victims further down the rabbit hole.
The documentary makers had no idea what would happen while filming the series. Would they catch Smith? Would he move onto another victim? Would he be remorseful? Would he slip through their fingers? Even in the last moments of the final episode, Smith’s behaviour manages to shock and chill you to the bone.
What Ewing and Grady wanted to do with their project was make sure that their documentary gave airtime to the reality of being a victim to a sociopathic con-artist. They wanted to treat these women with the respect that they had so far been denied. They wanted the series to be an honest portrayal of how easy it was for women to fall prey to men in the dating pool when the bar is so low it’s in hell.
“It wasn’t fair,” Ewing told The Salt Lake Tribune. “Here’s this guy … He takes their dignity. He humiliates people. He walks off with maybe thousands of dollars at a time, but also people’s assets and their good credit. And nobody was looking for him. And they felt that nobody cared about their story … And we thought, ‘Well, maybe we can all go find him.’”
Or, as Sabrina – one of Smith’s victims, who ends up losing her livelihood and is forced to move back in with her parents after he leaves her high and dry – puts it: “The best way to get over a guy is revenge. I’m sorry, it is. I’m getting tired of this bulls**t. Rick, you lying sack of sh*t, you f***ed me. I am f***ed, Rick.”
Love Fraud streams on Stan from August 30, with new episodes weekly.
Lady Gaga has dominated at this year's MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) event, where the coronavirus pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement and the death of actor Chadwick Boseman have been front of mind.
As the first major US awards show to take place during the coronavirus pandemic, the VMAs were held as a mostly virtual event.
While some performances took place in front of small audiences in New York City, most were recorded in advance to comply with health guidelines.
Here are some of the big moments and key takeaways of the night.
Opening the annual ceremony dedicated to the best in pop music, host Keke Palmer said Boseman's talent and passion were an inspiration to his fans and everyone he encountered.
Loading...
"We dedicate tonight's show to a man whose spirit touched so many," Palmer said.
"He's a true hero, not just on screen, but [in] everything he did.
"His impact lives forever."
Lady Gaga won a first-of-its-kind award plus many more
Lady Gaga's outfits didn't disappoint.(Twitter: @MTV)
Lady Gaga won the first-ever Tricon award.
It recognises an artist who is highly accomplished across three or more disciplines.
Gaga has won an Oscar, a Grammy and a Golden Globe.
"Sometimes you just have to invent a new award for a living legend," MTV Australia posted on Twitter.
With a trendy face mask as her accessory — reflecting the current coronavirus pandemic — Lady Gaga performed a medley of her songs and picked up several of the VMA's signature astronaut trophies during the night.
She took out three of those awards for her collaboration with Ariana Grande, titled Rain On Me.
"Me and Ariana Grande are truly soul sisters," she said.
"We turned our tears that felt like endless rainfall into diamonds."
Known for her outrageous costumes, Lady Gaga's VMA outfits didn't disappoint.
Ariana Grande and Lady Gaga both sang while wearing face masks.(MTV/AP/ABC)
And every new outfit on the night came with an accompanying face mask or shield. She urged her fans to also "mask up".
"I want you to love yourself tonight and every night," she said.
"Celebrate yourself, love who you are, be kind, mask up, be brave, and braver all the time."
Her most memorable moment of the night, however, came during her opening performance, when the piano she was playing took on the appearance of a human brain.
Lady Gaga performed on a piano that looked like a human brain.(MTV via AP)
Black Lives Matter was a key theme
Accepting his award, The Weeknd said it was hard for him to enjoy the moment.(MTV via AP)
Canadian Singer The Weeknd, who won the Video Of The Year and Best R&B awards for Blinding Lights, opened the show on the observation deck of a New York high-rise building as fireworks exploded behind him.
And he paid tribute to Jacob Blake and Breonna Taylor — two black Americans whose shootings at the hands of police have fuelled the Black Lives Matter movement.
"It's really hard for me to celebrate right now and enjoy this moment, so I'm just going to say: Justice for Jacob Blake and justice for Breonna Taylor," he said.
Loading...
Rapper DaBaby stuck with the theme, performing whilehandcuffed while in the back of what appeared to be a police car.
He then performed while jumping on top of the car with a burning city as his backdrop.
And singer H.E.R won Best Video in the Video For Good category for her song I Can't Breathe.
The track is about the death of black man George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police in May, a killing which sparked protests across the US.
Miley Cyrus made a Wrecking Ball comeback
Performing her latest track Midnight Sky, Miley Cyrus took viewers back to 2013 when she released the song Wrecking Ball.
But his time she used a giant disco ball to swing on.
Miley Cyrus took us back to 2013 with her performance on a disco ball.(MTV via AP)
There were new awards because of the COVID-19 impact
Ariana Grande picked up the award for Best Music Video From Home.
It was one of two new gongs MTV established to fit with the way artists had changed the way they worked during the pandemic.
She won the award for her duet with Justin Bieber, Stuck with U.
The award for Best Quarantine Performance went to CNCO for an MTV Unplugged At Home performance.
Other winners included Doja Cat, who won Best New Artist, Taylor Swift, who won Best Direction for The Man, and Colombian singer Maluma, who won the Best Latin award moments after he performed from Brooklyn.
K-pop all-stars BTS won the Best Pop, Best Group and Best K-pop awards.
Doja Cat performed her hit single Say So.(MTV via AP)
Here is the full list of nominees and winners:
Video of the year
Billie Eilish: Everything I Wanted
Eminem ft. Juice WRLD: Godzilla
Future ft. Drake: Life Is Good
Lady Gaga with Ariana Grande: Rain on Me
Taylor Swift: The Man
The Weeknd: Blinding Lights
Artist of the year
DaBaby
Justin Bieber
Lady Gaga
Megan Thee Stallion
Post Malone
The Weeknd
Best new artist
Doja Cat
Jack Harlow
Lewis Capaldi
Roddy Ricch
Tate McRae
Yungblud
Song of the year
Billie Eilish: Everything I Wanted
Doja Cat: Say So
Lady Gaga with Ariana Grande: Rain on Me
Megan Thee Stallion: Savage
Post Malone: Circles
Roddy Ricch: The Box
Best collaboration
Ariana Grande & Justin Bieber: Stuck With U
Black Eyed Peas ft. J Balvin: RITMO (Bad Boys for Life)
Ed Sheeran ft. Khalid: Beautiful People
Future ft. Drake: Life Is Good
Karol G ft. Nicki Minaj: Tusa
Lady Gaga with Ariana Grande: Rain on Me
Best pop
BTS: On
Halsey: You Should Be Sad
Jonas Brothers: What a Man Gotta Do
Justin Bieber ft. Quavo: Intentions
Lady Gaga with Ariana Grande: Rain on Me
Taylor Swift: Lover
Best hip-hop
DaBaby: Bop
Eminem ft. Juice WRLD: Godzilla
Future ft. Drake: Life Is Good
Megan Thee Stallion: Savage
Roddy Ricch: The Box
Travis Scott: Highest in the Room
Best R&B
Alicia Keys: Underdog
Chloe x Halle: Do It
H.E.R. ft. YG: Slide
Khalid ft. Summer Walker: Eleven
Lizzo: Cuz I Love You
The Weeknd: Blinding Lights
Best k-pop
BTS: On
EXO: Obsession
(G)I-DLE: Oh My God
Monsta X: Someone's Someone
Red Velvet: Psycho
Tomorrow X Together: 9 and Three Quarters (Run Away)
Best Latin
Anuel AA ft. Daddy Yankee, Ozuna, Karol G, J Balvin: "China"
Bad Bunny: Yo Perreo Sola
Black Eyed Peas ft. Ozuna, J. Rey Soul: Mamacita
J Balvin: Amarillo
Karol G ft. Nicki Minaj: Tusa
Maulma ft. J Balvin: Que Pena
Best rock
Blink-182: Happy Days
Coldplay: Orphans
Evanescence: Wasted on You
Fall Out Boy ft. Wyclef Jean: Dear Future Self (Hands Up)
Green Day: Oh Yeah!
The Killers: "Caution"
Best alternative
Machine Gun Kelly: Bloody Valentine
The 1975: If You're Too Shy (Let Me Know)
All Time Low: Some Kind of Disaster
Finneas: Let's Fall in Love for the Night
Lana Del Rey: Doin' Time
Twenty One Pilots: Level of Concern
Best music video from home
5 Seconds of Summer: Wildflower
Ariana Grande & Justin Bieber: Stuck With U
Blink-182: Happy Days
Drake: Toosie Slide
John Legend: Bigger Love
Twenty One Pilots: Level of Concern
Best quarantine performance
Chloe x Halle: Do It (from MTV Prom-Athon)
CNCO: MTV Unplugged At Home
DJ D-Nice: Club MTV Presents: #DanceTogether
John Legend: #TogetherAtHome Concert Series
Lady Gaga: Smile from One World: Together At Home
Post Malone: Nirvana Tribute
Video for good
Anderson .Paak: Lockdown
Billie Eilish: All the Good Girls Go to Hell
Demi Lovato: I Love Me
H.E.R.: I Can't Breathe
Lil Baby: The Bigger Picture
Taylor Swift: The Man
Best direction
Billie Eilish: xanny - Darkroom / Interscope Records - Directed by Billie Eilish
Doja Cat: Say So - Kemosabe / RCA Records - Directed by Hannah Lux Davis
Dua Lipa: Don't Start Now - Warner Records - Directed by Nabil
Harry Styles: Adore You - Columbia Records - Directed by Dave Meyers
Taylor Swift: The Man - Republic Records - Directed by Taylor Swift
The Weeknd: Blinding Lights - XO / Republic Records - Directed by Anton Tammi
Best cinematography
5 Seconds of Summer: Old Me - Interscope Records - Cinematography by Kieran Fowler
Camila Cabello ft. DaBaby: My Oh My - Syco Music / Epic Records - Cinematography by Scott Cunningham
Billie Eilish: all the good girls go to hell - Darkroom / Interscope Records - Cinematography by Christopher Probst
Katy Perry: Harleys In Hawaii - Capitol Records - Cinematography by Arnau Valls
Lady Gaga with Ariana Grande: Rain On Me - Streamline / Interscope Records - Cinematography by Michael Merriman
The Weeknd: Blinding Lights - XO / Republic Records - Cinematography by Oliver Millar
Best art direction
A$AP Rocky: "Babushka Boi" - Polo Grounds Music / RCA Records - Art Direction by A$AP Rocky & Nadia Lee Cohen
Dua Lipa: "Physical" - Warner Records - Art Direction by Anna Colome Nogu
Harry Styles: "Adore You" - Columbia Records - Art Direction by Laura Ellis Cricks
Miley Cyrus: "Mother's Daughter" - RCA Records - Art Direction by Christian Stone
Selena Gomez: "Boyfriend" - Interscope Records - Art Direction by Tatiana Van Sauter
Taylor Swift: "Lover" - Republic Records - Art Direction by Ethan Tobman
Best visual effects
Billie Eilish: "all the good girls go to hell" - Darkroom / Interscope Records - Visual Effects by Drive Studios
Demi Lovato: "I Love Me" - Island Records - Visual Effects by Hoody FX
Dua Lipa: "Physical" - Warner Records - Visual Effects by EIGHTY4
Harry Styles: "Adore You" - Columbia Records - Visual Effects by Mathematic
Lady Gaga with Ariana Grande: "Rain On Me" - Streamline / Interscope Records - Visual Effects by Ingenuity Studios
Travis Scott: "HIGHEST IN THE ROOM" - Epic Records / Cactus Jack - Visual Effects by ARTJAIL, SCISSOR FILMS & FRENDER
Best choreography
BTS: On - Big Hit Entertainment - Choreography by Son Sung Deuk, Lee Ga Hun, Lee Byung Eun
CNCO & Natti Natasha: Honey Boo - Sony Music Latin / RCA Records - Choreography by Kyle Hanagami
DaBaby: BOP - SCMG / Interscope Records - Choreography by Dani Leigh and Cherry
Dua Lipa: Physical - Warner Records - Choreography by Charm La'Donna
Lady Gaga with Ariana Grande: Rain On Me - Streamline / Interscope Records - Choreography by Richy Jackson
Normani: Motivation - Keep Cool / RCA Records - Choreography by Sean Bankhead
Best editing
Halsey: Graveyard - Capitol Records - Edited by Emilie Aubry, Janne Vartia & Tim Montana
James Blake: Can't Believe the Way We Flow - Republic Records - Edited by Frank Lebon
Lizzo: Good As Hell - Atlantic Records - Edited by Russell Santos & Sofia Kerpan
Miley Cyrus: Mother's Daughter - RCA Records - Edited by Alexandre Moors, Nuno Xico
ROSALIA: A Pale - Columbia Records - Edited by Andre Jones
The Weeknd: Blinding Lights - XO / Republic Records - Edited by Janne Vartia & Tim Montana
When Carlson talked to the Kyle & Jackie O show this morning, Kyle asked Jackie if she knew why the actress had made the dramatic move.
“Lindsay has reached out on WhatsApp to check in and see how everything is going. I think the reason why she has unfollowed – well she muted us actually – is because she doesn’t want to see The Masked Singer stuff because she really wanted to be part of it,” Jackie O said.
“So I don’t blame her in a way because you don’t want to be constantly reminded of the job you wanted but can’t do right now because of COVID.
“I’m assuming that’s why and not because there is any other reason.”
Carlson couldn’t help but agree, suggesting that Lohan could even return as a judge on the show next year.
“I reckon she will click follow back next year when she is back and hopefully COVID is gone,” she said during the chat.
When asked by Kyle if that means the comedian won’t be returning to the panel next year, Carlson joked that she’d probably be dragged onto the stage in a mermaid or unicorn costume instead.
A Network 10 spokesman told news.com.au: “Network 10 can confirm that 16 members of The Masked Singer production team have received a positive test result for COVID-19.
“All members of The Masked Singer production will undergo a 14-day period of self-quarantine as advised by the Department of Health and Human Services. All production crew will be adhering to this instruction.
“The health and safety of the community, and our staff and production partners remains our number one priority. Network 10 is providing all crew with all the support and assistance possible.
“We would like to thank the Victorian Government and the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services for their continued support and assistance during this time.”
