Lifestyle
How to have the best Sunday in L.A., according to J.B. Smoove
Over the course of J.B. Smoove’s decades-long career as a comedian, actor and writer, he’s become known for many things. His fast-paced, New Yorker cadence and quick-witted comebacks. His wide-brim hats and dapper suits. And of course, his most beloved character, Leon Black, on HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” which catapulted him into superstardom.
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
The improvisation-based comedy came to an end earlier this year after 12 seasons (six of which Smoove starred in), but Smoove, whose credits include “Saturday Night Live,” “Real Husbands of Hollywood,” “Spider-Man: Far From Home” and “Mapleworth Murders,” is showing no signs of slowing down. Smoove is set to host “Buy It Now,” a competition series where entrepreneurs pitch their products in front of a live audience and esteemed judges in hopes of being featured on Amazon.com and winning a cash prize. It premieres Oct. 30 on Amazon Prime Video.
Smoove knew he was perfect for the job when he got the call to host the show. “I’m not on the level of Jamie Siminoff or Tabitha [Brown] or Gwyneth [Paltrow],” says the Emmy winner, who recently launched a production company. “But I understand the animal that it is because I am still on my journey to be a great entrepreneur. It takes time and patience.”
We recently caught up with Smoove to ask him how he’d spend the perfect Sunday in Los Angeles, where he’s lived since 2007. Ideally, he and his wife, Shahidah Omar, wouldn’t leave their house, which they call the “777 Resort,” a nickname that commemorates their wedding date and contains everything they could possibly want. But he indulged us by crafting an action-packed day filled with hiking, jet skiing to Catalina Island, drinking an “Herb Your Enthusiasm” cocktail at one of his favorite vegan restaurants and catching up on “Love is Blind.”
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.
6:30 a.m.: Wake up and walk my dogs
I wake up every morning at 6:30 a.m. All of my family is on New York time, so my phone starts ringing at 6 a.m. I’m three hours behind them and they’re already up and kicking. When my alarm goes off in the morning, my dogs want to come to the side of the bed. Their names are Hustle and Flo like the movie “Hustle and Flow.” Hustle has a habit of touching my arm over and over again with his big paw when he’s ready to go out. So I get those guys out, walk the neighborhood a little bit and let them say hi to their [dog] friends.
8:00 a.m.: Cook my special vegan breakfast
Then I’ll bring them back home and now I need to get some breakfast. My wife and I are vegan, but she is a raw vegan right now, so she doesn’t eat what I eat in the morning. On a good day like Sunday Funday, I would make my vegan chicken fried mushrooms and waffles. Sometimes they’re blueberry, sometimes they’re banana. Sometimes they are blueberry-banana. I pick and choose depending on how my taste buds go. A lot of people have a sweet tooth, I have sweet teeth. I also love a little sausage and a little Just Egg, which is one of my favorite egg substitutes.
9:00 a.m.: Crank up my 1968 Lincoln Continental
I crank up the old school. I got a 1968 Lincoln Continental. So I crank the engine up, get it warm, get the bags pumping up and hit the little button in the car that raises it off the ground because I let it take a nap at nighttime. “Old School Sunday” should be an unofficial holiday.
10:00 a.m.: Hike at Fryman Canyon
Next, my wife and I would hike at Fryman Canyon. One lap because we don’t want to wear ourselves out. The heat starts to build up a little bit especially in the summertime. A lot of people are out there early because they don’t want to get hot. It’s an amazing walk. There’s Runyon up the block and then there’s Fryman. Now, Fryman has more trees and shaded areas where you can stop to look at the view. Then the last quarter of it, you walk through a neighborhood with beautiful homes. It’s a beautiful area of town. And sometimes you’ll get lucky and you’ll catch an open house on a Sunday, which I recommend.
12 p.m.: Ride a jet ski to Catalina Island
We’ll finish our walk at Fryman around 11 a.m., then a great thing to do is to go jet skiing in Catalina. A lot of people don’t know about this. You can jet ski to Catalina with this company called Jetski2Catalina and I’m telling you right now, it’s a trip. You go down to Long Beach and you can hop on a jet ski and ride all the way to Catalina. It’s about two hours, but it’s well worth it. Do the one-way trip because your arms are going to get tired if you’re not used to working out or your body vibrating for a long period of time. Ride to Avalon on the island.
2 p.m.: Grab lunch at Maggie’s Blue Rose
By the time you get there, you’re going to be hungry again so grab some lunch to replenish your energy. A place with some good, authentic Mexican food is Maggie’s Blue Rose. I recommend the street corn, but we don’t get cheese on ours because we’re vegan. We’d maybe get a vegan burrito with some beans, rice and sauteed vegetables rolled up nice. A good burrito should be rolled as tight as a cigar if you know what you’re doing.
3:30 p.m.: Rent a golf cart and go zip lining
Then you gotta rent a golf cart to ride around the island and look at the houses. People don’t know that there aren’t many cars on Catalina Island, that’s why everyone has golf carts. So some of the golf carts are tricked out and look cool because people who live there want to have the nicest one. They also have zip lining on the island — this is a must do. The zip lining is sickening because you can hear the people screaming. [Imitates zip line and screams] I recommend tying your shoes tight because you don’t want to lose a shoe halfway down. You’ll be very upset. Also, don’t ever wear flip flops on a zip line.
7 p.m.: Catch a boat back to Long Beach
By the time you finish zip lining, you’ll want to take the ferry back to Long Beach. Get there early and get a good seat by the window, preferably in the front of the boat so you can see where you’re going. Or some people like to see where they’ve been and watch the island get further and further from them. It’s up to you. It’s a shorter trip going back. You get back in about an hour.
9 p.m.: Enjoy an “Herb Your Enthusiasm” cocktail at Planta
Now, you want to get back into your vehicle and head to Planta in Marina Del Rey. This is a straight vegan spot, but the food is excellent. They have a cocktail there called the “Herb Your Enthusiasm,” a play on words to “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” So every time I go there, the bartender recognizes me and says, “Hey man. I see what the hell you’re doing, the ‘Herb Your Enthusiasm.’” That’s my favorite cocktail. My wife and I will kick it at the bar. We might order something light since it’s getting late like some avocado cucumber sushi.
11 p.m.: Drive home in the classic whip
We’ll get back into the old school and head back to the crib. Now, this car has suicide doors. All the doors open from the middle outward. So we’ll roll all the windows down and play some good, old school R&B music. Sometimes I’ll light up a cigar.
11:30 p.m.: Binge watch our favorite shows
Once we get home, we’ll watch our favorite shows. We’re zombie fanatics. We’ll watch “Walking Dead,” “The Last of Us,” something in that genre. Or we’ll watch something silly. Have you seen this new pop the balloon dating show? It’s a mess, but it’s hilarious to us because people stand up there trying to find somebody. It’s just funny to see them struggle. It’s always funny when someone walks out there and all the balloons pop before they even open their mouth. I’m like, “Let the dude speak! Give him a chance.” We like “Love is Blind” too. My wife and I bet money on who’s going to say yes at the altar and who’s going to say no. We’re not big on comedies. You would think a comedian would like comedies. I never watch comedies. My favorite genre are James Bond movies. I just love James Bond and Daniel Craig. If he needs a replacement, I’ll put my name in the hat. I got two O’s in my name. [Laughs]
1 a.m.: Debate about “Love is Blind” before bed
Then we’re going from the living room to the bedroom and we’ll say, “One more episode” before we go to bed and we never make it through that episode. We always get halfway through it and our heads start nodding. Then we’ll turn the lights on and talk about who we think is still going to be together on “Love is Blind” and that will keep us up for another 30 minutes. We’ll go to bed around 2 a.m., then I’ll have four and a half hours of sleep before I gotta get up at 6:30 a.m. again.
Lifestyle
‘Hamnet’ star Jessie Buckley looks for the ‘shadowy bits’ of her characters
Jessie Buckley has been nominated for an Academy Award for best actress for her portrayal of William Shakespeare’s wife in Hamnet.
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Kate Green/Getty Images
Actor Jessie Buckley says she’s always been drawn to the “shadowy bits” of her characters — aspects that are disobedient, or “too much.” Perhaps that’s what led her to play Agnes, the wife of William Shakespeare, in Hamnet.
Buckley says the film, which is based on Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel, offered a chance to counter a common narrative about the playwright’s wife: that she “had kept him back from his genius,” Buckley says.

But, she adds, “What Maggie O’Farrell so brilliantly did, not just with Agnes and Shakespeare’s wife, but also with Hamnet, their son, was to bring these people … and give them status beside this great man. … [And] give the full landscape of what it is to be a woman.”
The film is nominated for eight Academy Awards, including best actress for Buckley. In it, she plays a woman deeply connected to nature, who faces conflicts in her marriage, as well as the death of their son Hamnet.
Buckley found out she was pregnant a week after the film wrapped. She’s since given birth to her first child, a daughter.

“The thing that this story offered me, that brought me into this next chapter of my life as a mother was tenderness,” she says. “A mother’s tenderness is ferocious. To love, to birth is no joke. To be born is no joke. And the minute something’s born into the world, you’re always in the precipice of life and death. That’s our path. … I wanted to be a mother so much that that overrode the thought of being afraid of it.”
Jessie Buckley stars as Agnes and Joe Alwyn plays her brother Bartholomew in Hamnet.
Courtesy of Focus Features/Courtesy of Focus Features
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Courtesy of Focus Features/Courtesy of Focus Features
Interview highlights
On filming the scene where she howls in grief when her son dies
I didn’t know that that was going to happen or come out, it wasn’t in the script. I think really [director] Chloé [Zhao] asked all of us to dare to be as present as possible. Of course, leading up to it, you’re aware this scene is coming, but that scene doesn’t stand on its own. By the time I’d met that scene, I had developed such a deep bond with Jacobi Jupe, who plays Hamnet, and [co-stars] Paul [Mescal] and Emily Watson, and all the children and we really were a family. And Jacobi Jupe who plays Hamnet is such an incredible little actor and an incredible soul, and we really were a team. …

The death of a child is unfathomable. I don’t know where it begins and ends. Out of utter respect, I tried to touch an imaginary truth of it in our story as best I could, but there’s no way to define that kind of grief. I’m sure it’s different for so many people. And in that moment, all I had was my imagination but also this relationship that was right in front of me with this little boy and that’s what came out of that.
On what inspired her to pursue singing growing up
I grew up around a lot of music. My mom is a harpist and a singer and my dad has always been passionate about music, so it was always something in our house and always something that was encouraged. … Early on, I have very strong memories of seeing and hearing my mom sing in church and this quite intense mercurial conversation that would happen between her, the story and the people that would listen to her. And at the end of it, something had been cracked between them and these strangers would come up with tears in their eyes. And I guess I saw the power of storytelling through my mom’s singing at a very young age, and that was definitely something that made me think I want to do that.
On her first big break performing as a teen on the BBC singing competition I’d Do Anything — and being criticized by judges about her physical appearance
I was raw. I hadn’t trained. I had a lot to learn and to grow in. I was only 17. I think there was part of their criticism which I think was destructive and unfair when it became about my awkwardness, or they would say I was masculine and send me to kind of a femininity school. … They sent me to [the musical production of] Chicago to put heels on and a leotard and learn how to walk in high heels, which was pretty humiliating, to be honest, and I’m sad about that because I think I was discovering myself as a young woman in the world and wasn’t fully formed. … I was different. I was wild, I had a lot of feeling inside me. I could hardly keep my hands beside myself and I think to kind of criticize a body of a young woman at that time and to make her feel conscious of that was lazy and, I think, boring.
On filming parts of the 2026 film The Bride! while pregnant
I really loved working when I was pregnant. I thought it was a pretty wild experience, especially because I was playing Mary Shelley and I was talking about [this] monstrosity, and here I was with two heartbeats inside me. Becoming a mom and being pregnant did something, I think, for me. My experience of it, it’s so real that it really focuses [me to be] allergic to fake or to disconnection.
Since my daughter has come and I know what that connection is and the real feeling of being in a relationship with somebody … as an actress, it’s very exciting to recognize that in yourself and really take ownership of yourself.
I’m excited to go back and work on this other side of becoming a mother in so many ways, because I’ve shed 10 layers of skin by loving more and experiencing life in such a new way with my daughter. I’m also scared to work again because it’s hard to be a mother and to work. That’s like a constant tug because I love what I do and I’m passionate and I want to continue to grow and learn and fill those spaces that are yet to be filled — and also be a mother. And I think every mother can recognize that tug.
On the possibility of bringing her daughter to travel with her as she works
I haven’t filmed for nearly a year and I cannot wait. I’m hungry to create again. And my daughter will come with me. She’s seven months, so at the moment she can travel with us and it’s a beautiful life. And she meets all these amazing people and I have a feeling that she loves life and that’s a great thing to see in a child. And I hope that’s something that I’ve imparted to her in the short time that she’s been on this earth is that life is beautiful and great and complex and alive and there’s no part of you that needs to be less in your life. You might have to work it out, but it’s worth it.
Lauren Krenzel and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
Lifestyle
‘Evil Dead’ Star Bruce Campbell Reveals He Has Cancer
Bruce Campbell
I’m Battling Cancer
Published
Bruce Campbell has revealed he has cancer, but says it’s a type that’s treatable, though not curable.
“The Evil Dead” actor shared the news Monday in a message to fans, writing, “Hi folks, these days, when someone is having a health issue, it’s referred to as an ‘opportunity,’ so let’s go with that — I’m having one of those.” He continued, “It’s also called a type of cancer that’s ‘treatable’ not ‘curable.’ I apologize if that’s a shock — it was to me too.”
Campbell said he wouldn’t go into further detail about his diagnosis, but explained his work schedule will be changing. “Appearances and cons and work in general need to take back seat to treatment,” he wrote, adding he plans to focus on getting “as well as I possibly can over the summer.”
As a result, Campbell says he has to cancel several convention appearances this summer, noting, “Treatment needs and professional obligations don’t always go hand-in-hand.”
He says his plan is to tour this fall in support of his new film, “Ernie & Emma,” which he stars in and directs.
Ending on a determined note, Campbell told fans, “I am a tough old son-of-a-bitch … and I expect to be around a while.”
Lifestyle
‘Scream 7’ takes a weak stab at continuing the franchise : Pop Culture Happy Hour
Neve Campbell in Scream 7.
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Paramount Pictures
The OG Scream Queen Neve Campbell returns. Scream 7 re-centers the franchise back on Sidney Prescott. She has a new life, a family, and lots of baggage. You know the drill: Someone dressing up as the masked slasher Ghostface comes for her, her family and friends. There’s lots of stabbing and murder and so many red herrings it’s practically a smorgasbord.
Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture
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