Two days after reality TV personality Joseph Duggar was arrested on suspicion of molesting a minor in Florida, Arkansas police arrested his wife, Kendra Duggar, on misdemeanor child abuse charges.

Kendra Duggar, 27, and Joseph Duggar, 31, face four counts each of endangering the welfare of a minor and second-degree false imprisonment.

According to KNWA, the Tontitown Police Department confirmed that the Duggars’ charges in Arkansas were unrelated to Joseph Duggar’s case in Florida. The news outlet reported that Tontitown police said this separate investigation was “launched on the heels of the alleged incident in Florida.”

People magazine reported that a source close to the family told the outlet that the arrest on Friday was “the result of a home inspection, and the door locks being on the exterior of the doors. “

A spokesperson for the family told People that the charges filed against Kendra Duggar were “totally unrelated” to Joseph Duggar’s case in Florida. “She’s not suspected or accused of participating in his alleged crime.”

Last week, Joseph Duggar, known for the TLC series “19 Kids and Counting,” was arrested in Arkansas by local law enforcement on suspicion of molesting a minor in Florida, the Bay County Sheriff’s Office in Florida announced in a statement.

The Sheriff’s Office said it received a report on Wednesday of past sexual abuse involving Duggar and a 14-year-old girl. The girl alleged several incidents of abuse, including one when she was 9, police said.

The teenager, according to law enforcement, accused Duggar of molesting her in 2020 while she was vacationing with family and staying at a residence in Panama City Beach.

According to the statement, the victim said Duggar “eventually apologized” for the abuse. Duggar also “admitted his actions to the girl’s father and to Tontitown detectives” in Arkansas, Duggar’s home state, law officials said. The city’s Police Department confirmed Duggar’s arrest in a separate statement, noting it acted on a warrant issued by the Bay County Sheriff’s Office.

The former reality star was charged with molestation of a victim younger than 12 and “lewd and lascivious behavior conducted” by an adult. Duggar, who is jailed at the Washington County Detention Center, awaits extradition to Florida. He could not immediately be reached for comment.

Duggar; his parents, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar; and his siblings garnered reality TV fame in 2008 with the launch of “19 Kids and Counting.” The series followed the Christian fundamentalist clan who used their television platform to preach purity, modesty and religious devotion. The family’s facade shattered in 2015 when Josh, the firstborn Duggar child, was accused of molesting five younger girls — four of whom were his sisters — when he was 15. The series was canceled that year.

In a separate case, Josh was convicted on two counts of possessing and receiving child pornography in December 2021. He was sentenced to 12½ years in prison in 2022. The Supreme Court rejected his efforts to appeal his case last June.

Amy Duggar Kind, a cousin of Joseph and Josh Duggar and series regular on “19 Kids and Counting,” released a statement before the arrest of Kendra Duggar “praying for Joseph’s wife, Kendra, as she begins to process this, and for the protection of their children,” and then a follow-up statement once news of Kendra’s arrest went public.

“My statement released on Friday, March 20th was written and submitted before I had any knowledge of Kendra Duggar’s arrest,” she wrote.

“When I wrote that I was praying for Kendra ‘as she begins to process this,’ I was speaking to what I believed at the time — that she was a wife and mother blindsided by devastating news about her husband. I want that context to be unambiguous. Those words were written in a different moment, with different information. The world changed a few hours later.

“I have now learned that Kendra Duggar was arrested on Friday on four counts of second-degree endangering the welfare of a minor and four counts of second-degree false imprisonment. These are serious charges. They are not the same as Joseph’s charges, but they are not small, and I will not treat them as small.

“I am not going to rush to conclusions about what Kendra knew, when she knew it, or what her role was in any of this. That is the job of law enforcement and the courts, and I trust that process to unfold. What I will say is this: the moment a person faces criminal charges for the endangerment of children, my prayers shift. They shift entirely and without apology to the children.

“To the four children in that home — I see you. I pray for you. None of this is your fault, and none of this is your burden to carry.

“To the original victim, who is now fourteen years old and has watched this story explode across every screen in the country: I am so deeply sorry. You did an incredibly brave thing by coming forward. You deserve to have every institution around you work on your behalf — not to protect the people who hurt you, and not to protect the image of a family. You. I am still praying for you and your family above all else.”

Kendra Duggar was booked into the Washington County Detention Center on Friday and released on a $1,470 bond the same day.

Times staff writer Alexandra Del Rosario contributed to this report.

Pretty Lethal, 2026.

Directed by Vicky Jewson.
Starring Lana Condor, Iris Apatow, Millicent Simmonds, Maddie Ziegler, Avantika, Uma Thurman, Michael Culkin, Adam Boncz, Balázs Megyeri, Gary Cothenet, Krisztián Csákvári, Shahaub Roudbari, Miklós Béres, Gábor Nagypál, Julian Krenn, Tamás Szabó Sipos, Péter Végh, and Klára Spilák.

SYNOPSIS:

It follows a group of ballerinas as they try to escape from a remote inn after their bus breaks down on the way to a dance competition.

Forget that director Vicky Jewson and screenwriter Kate Freund’s ballerinas-vs-mobsters disposable streaming flick Pretty Lethal is failing at twirling by on the slimmest of narratives (it is a miracle that the running time even reaches 88 minutes); they can’t even settle on a consistent tone during the fight scenes. Within seconds, the film often goes from a grounded sense of danger in that these men cruelly mean business and can toss these nimble but agile women around like rag dolls, to something farcical that defies logic and physics with the dancing coming into play, often times with blades or other sharp objects going through similar rhythms.

There isn’t one of the usual reveals that we are watching characters with a secret past or hidden talents for violence, it’s just a movie that can’t decide if ballerina based attacks are no match for Hungarian mobsters (a silly concept I’m all for) or if this is a situation of real threat, especially considering one of the leaders of this establishment shoots their instructor point blank in the face 20 minutes into the proceedings.

That there isn’t a semblance of a plot beyond a dysfunctional dance troupe inadvertently finds themselves in trouble when their tour bus breaks down and receive help from shady individuals bringing them to their hangout spot who, as you already know from reading this, turn out to be mobsters, and must start working together if they’re going to survive, doesn’t help these jarring distractions in hand-to-hand battles that, if nothing else, contain the occasional bit of impressive manoeuvrability and physicality along with a clever stroke of violence (even that is frustratingly limited).

This might sound nitpicky to an outsider who hasn’t seen a single scene play out, but rest assured, the action doesn’t even make sense in terms of the characters. Played by an ensemble including Lana Condor, Maddie Ziegler, Avantika, Iris Apatow, and the only semi-interesting one of the bunch, A Quiet Place‘s deaf-mute revelation Millicent Simmonds, who is then disappointingly not given much of anything interesting to do (she heads to the bathroom before the mobsters get violent, for unclear reasons, where she meets a young man her age along the way and instantly becomes smitten as they goof around unaware of what’s happening around them), the ballerinas are personified as mean girls ditzy (none of these jokes land), cutesy, or rejecting the artform, yet can suddenly turn dancing into a superpower whether they are working together or not.

When it’s their turn to start taking punches and other blows back, it is excessively brutal for whatever this movie is going for, and it consistently feels as if these filmmakers have no idea what they want to do with the action they have conceptualized. Protagonists take a beating back all the time; that’s not the gripe here. It is done in a manner that muddies what type of action movie this is supposed to be. If, at one point, this was something darker and more of an attempt at a thriller before going through rewrites that ungracefully smoothed aspects over into action that takes too long to get nutty enough to work, that would explain a lot. Nothing can explain how flimsy and bare-bones the narrative is.

Regarding the villains, adjacent to the mobsters is Uma Thurman’s former dancer, Devora Kasimer, bad accent and all, who sees an opportunity to leverage the monsters’ screw-up to get out of a dicey situation of her own. Again, little of this matters or even makes sense, with Devora’s motives not coming into play until the final 15 minutes. At the very least, Pretty Lethal builds to an amusing and somewhat skillfully choreographed all-out brawl between the now-united ballerinas and the mobsters, set to a classical piece of music; it’s the type of sequence that functions more successfully as absurd, with more fitting flourishes of vulnerability and a sense of character through action. The rest is stuck somewhere in the middle, not ridiculous enough or too serious for its own good.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★

Robert Kojder

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=embed/playlist

After 50 years of being practically synonymous with New York City, “Saturday Night Live” has opened the door to London, with “Saturday Night Live UK,” following in the steps of “Law & Order UK” and possibly nothing else. Of all the cities in the world that might conceivably replicate the spirit of the NBC original, the British capital, with its urban dynamism, media concentration and 20,000 comedians, feels like the obvious, and perhaps only choice. (“Saturday Night Live Italia” might prove me wrong, if that day ever comes.) And, of course, we’ve been in a reciprocal comedy arrangement with Britain — or at least we have been nicking their ideas for shows — for years.

The show premiered in the U.K. this past Saturday on Sky One and NOW, and began streaming stateside Sunday on Peacock, with our own Tina Fey as the first guest host. (“It’s an absolute honor and kind of historic,” she said to studio audience. “Guys, I am the youngest person to ever host ‘SNL UK!’”)

As a “Saturday Night Live” star, writer and head writer; and the co-creator of “30 Rock” — her show about a sketch show set in the very same building as “SNL” — they couldn’t have appointed a better ambassador. Lorne Michaels doubtless has her on speed dial.

Here’s the short review: In the course of a single episode, “SNL UK” managed to feel very much like its parent show — which is to say, some of it worked well and some of it worked less well, but very little of it didn’t work at all. There were sketches that ran too long, or ended weakly, but were generally redeemed by a young(ish), confident 11-member cast that made the most of them. Some will already be recognizable to British viewers. Many have had notable, or anyway noticed, careers in stand-up; in the sort of stand-up that amounts to theater; in straight theater (including Shakespeare, naturally) and/or in television and film. Fey promised to “stay out of their way as much as possible,” but she came to play, and appeared in most every sketch.

The evening followed established protocol. Cold open. (Prime Minister Keir Starmer, played by George Fouracres, is afraid to tell President Trump, whom he regards as a sort of bad boyfriend, that he’ll send no more ships to the Strait of Hormuz: “I know how badly you want to start World War III, and that’s great. You absolutely do that but we can’t be part of it.”) Hammed Animashaun and Jack Shep accompanied Fouracres in the sketch and shared the glory of shouting, “Live from London, it’s ‘Saturday Night!’” They would continue to dominate the episode.

Next: Opening credits featuring the cast members out and about in the city. Monologue, with guest appearances from Nicola Coughlan, Michael Cera and Graham Norton. (The set is very much in the style of various American iterations over the years, clock included, with the band onstage.) Film bits and sketches. Musical guest. (Wet Leg, surly.) “Weekend Update.” More skits. Musical guest returns. More comedy. Whole cast onstage at the end, ready to party.

Among other things: A Shakespeare skit found the Bard (Fouracres again) returning to Stratford from London between plays, each time more affected, beginning with an earring and finishing with an electric scooter, sunglasses and a bag of ketamine. A Paddington Bear immersive experience, with an actual bear, turns bloody, recalling Dan Aykroyd’s 1978 classic Julia Child sketch. As a bra salesperson giving an ego boost to Fey‘s customer, Emma Sidi was funnier than the sketch she was in. (It did include a cameo by Regé-Jean Page, from “Bridgerton.”) In another, David Attenborough (Fouracres again, again), using “Jurassic Park” technology, hosts a “last supper” featuring great dead Britons including Winston Churchill, Isaac Newton, Agatha Christie (Fey), “Freddie Mercury, from Queen, Elizabeth the First, from being the Queen,” and Shep’s Princess Diana, pulling focus at Attenborough’s right shoulder; all they manage to discuss is how many starters to get for the table. It had the added bonus of getting the entire cast, and guest host, onstage.

The film bits were first-rate. (Not being live has its advantages.) One advertised an anti-aging cream — Undérage, with a soft “g” — “that works so well everyone will think your man is a nonce.” (That is, a pedophile.) “My skin looks so fresh,” says a happy customer, “my husband can’t go anywhere without being hunted by right-wing pedophile-catching militias.” “My husband lost his record deal and, some, but not all of his fans.” Another concerned a sort of command center where workers labored “to make the internet as bad as we can possibly get it.”

There are, to be sure, tonal differences to British and American comedy; just compare the respective versions of “The Office,” or “Ghosts,” or “Doc Martin” with its domestic remake, “Best Medicine”; the former tends to be darker, more cutting, more absurd. (A “Weekend Update” joke about the former Prince Andrew’s new home, Marsh Fair, “of course named after the nearby marsh where his body will be found.”) Despite that, and the old saw that Britain and America are two countries separated by a common language, the show translated well transatlantically. Apart from some local topical and cultural references, and an occasional unfamiliar word whose meaning was in any case obvious from context, and some swearing, most of it could have been played with few adjustments by the American cast.

“While we may not agree with everything America does,” Fouracres’ prime minister says at the end of the cold open, “we can still be civil and embrace their wonderful, unproblematic culture.” Back at you, buddy!

The season has been extended to eight episodes from the originally ordered six. (Riz Ahmed and Jamie Dornan are scheduled to host.) Why not 10?