Hollywood's Chief Diversity Officers Tell All   

►"I’d been in go-go-go mode; I hadn’t stopped to acknowledge I wasn’t OK." After George Floyd’s killing by police in May 2020, demands on Hollywood's diversity and inclusion leaders "exploded." THR's diversity and inclusion editor Rebecca Sun writes that since that moment, heads of inclusion in Hollywood and at companies across the country have been working nonstop to provide a critical balancing act between CEOs and employees, leading to burnout. The story.  

—"Offensive, humiliating and outright racist." Soprano Angel Blue says she won’t perform in an opera in Italy this month because blackface was used in the staging of a different work this summer on the same stage. The singer said she will be bowing out of La Traviata at Verona’s Arena this month because the theater recently mounted another Giuseppe Verdi opera, Aida, that had performers in blackface. The story.

—Worrying trend continues. Mr. Saturday Night, the Tony-nominated stage show co-written by and starring Billy Crystal, is coming to a close on Broadway. The stage show becomes the latest from the 2021-2022 pandemic season to announce it would be shuttering in the fall. Mr. Saturday Night, which originally opened on March 31, will end its run at the Nederlander Theatre on Sept. 4. The story.  

—"Best night of our lives." It finally happened, Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck are married. The Grammy-nominated singer and actress wed her fiancé in Vegas on Saturday according to the singer’s newsletter On the JLo. Lopez had special thanks for the Little White Wedding Chapel for letting them use a break room and men’s room to change into their wedding outfits. The story. 

—"Due to circumstances outside of our control." Kanye West will no longer be performing at Rolling Loud Miami 2022. The festival’s organizers took to social media on Sunday to announce that the 45-year-old rapper and fashion mogul, who now goes by Ye, will not be headlining the event’s opening night on July 22. The story. 

Box Office: 'Where the Crawdads Sing' Impresses With $17M

►Sony with another win. As expected, Thor: Love and Thunder handily took No. 1 in its second weekend at the North American box office with $46m, far ahead of the new entry Where the Crawdads Sing, which earned a better-than-expected $17m. 

The domestic total for the fourth installment in the Thor standalone franchise stands at $233m, while global ticket sales at $498m.

Sony's Crawdads took in its weekend haul across 3,650 locations after a promising $2.3m in Thursday previews. The $24m budgeted drama is based on Delia Owens' best-selling book. Crawdads has been ill-received by critics, with a 36 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. THR’s review called it “a muddled moral fantasy.” Still, it’s earned an A- CinemaScore from moviegoers and a 4.5 rating in PostTrak exit polling. The box office report.

—Quiet week for Hollywood. Hong Kong crime thriller Detective vs Sleuths surged to the top of China’s box office in its second weekend of release, earning $18.4m. Chinese hitmaker Chen Sicheng’s much anticipated sci-fi comedy Mozart From Space, meanwhile, made a disappointing start in second place, taking $16.6m. The China box office report. 

Stallone Slams 'Rocky' Producer Irwin Winkler Over Ownership

►"The remarkably untalented and parasitical producer." Sylvester Stallone came out swinging with social media messages criticizing Irwin Winkler, producer of the Rocky and Creed franchises, and his son David Winkler, who also produces the Creed films. Stallone took to Instagram on Saturday to criticize David’s recently published memoir, calling it “by far the worst” book he had read. The story. 

—Nightly News for Gen Z. NBC News' Stay Tuned celebrates the five-year anniversary of its debut on Snapchat this week. The punt worked and the daily news show, that lives on Snapchat’s Discover page, now boasts an average of one million views per episode. THR's Alex Weprin writes that Stay Tuned has big plans including a documentary, a podcast, and a return to YouTube. The story. 

—"Thanks be to God no one was hurt." Comedian Craig Robinson says he’s safe after evacuating from a North Carolina comedy club on Saturday after a suspect with a firearm entered the building. The Office star was scheduled to perform at the venue when a man entered the building around 9 p.m. and brandished a gun, according to police. Those inside the venue were evacuated, after which the suspect discharged his weapon. The story. 

—Rising star. THR's man in London Alex Ritman has the scoop on The Nevers star Zackary Momoh taking the lead role in AMC’s remake of British drama The Driver. The six-part drama stars Giancarlo Esposito as a taxi driver whose life is turned upside down when he agrees to chauffeur a New Orleans-based Zimbabwean gangster, played by Momoh. The story. 

The Many Lives and Dying Words of Aesop Aquarian

►"I'm going, 'Wait a minute, they want me to kill these people?'" A longtime character actor, Aesop Aquarian was the Zelig of L.A.'s free-love counterculture, roaming from the Manson Family ranch to the commune of Father Yod. Think Forrest Gump, but sharp-witted; Barry Lyndon, but downwardly mobile; Cliff Booth, but a hippie. Think fiction, but it happened. At the end of his life, Aquarian finally decided to tell his story to THR's Gary Baum. The story. 

—"This Mad Max war dog situation." THR's Abbey White spoke to Westworld actress Aurora Perrineau about that shocking twist in the show's season four premiere. Perrineau talks about her character's big revelation and what's next for the humans taking on Charlotte. Warning spoilers. The interview. 

—"Streaming allows me to get to make projects that maybe normally wouldn’t have been made." THR's Hilary Lewis spoke to director Hannah Marks about her latest, the adventure comedy Don’t Make Me Go that premiered at Tribeca. The young helmer opens up about making the Mia Isaac-John Cho movie for Amazon, the challenges of filming in New Zealand, and being attached to the upcoming Turtles All the Way Down during a long development process. The interview.

In other news...

—The Weeknd and Lily-Rose Depp go on a wild ride in first teaser for HBO series The Idol

—Rapper Kodak Black arrested on drug charges in Florida

—Bryan Cranston hit by line drive during all-star celebrity softball game

—Ryan Phillippe and Evan Ross invest in new Beverly Hills restaurant The Hideaway

—Knott’s Berry Farm closes early due to “unruly behavior”

What else we're reading...

—Ahead of Netflix's next quarterly report, Lucas Shaw wonders whether season four of Stranger Things will be enough to change the conversation around the streamer [Bloomberg]

—Critic Jason Zinoman writes a lovely piece reflecting on Janeane Garofalo's career [NYT]

—Roxana Hadadi writes that the TV Academy chose monotony by nominating the same old shows for the Emmys [Vulture]

—Another interesting piece from Roxana Hadadi I missed when it first came out: "The working-class sitcom strikes back" [Vulture]

—Nikhil Inamdar has a fascinating piece on Bollywood's continuing box office woes [BBC]

Today...  

...in 2004, HBO debuted Entourage, a new half-hour comedy featuring a “slimeball” agent, a “slacker” star and a few stray friends navigating the “suffocating egocentrism” of Hollywood. Entourage quickly became a mainstay of the network for eight seasons and even spawned a movie. The original review.

Today's birthdays: Vin Diesel (55), Elsa Pataky (46), Kelly Reilly (45), Chace Crawford (37), Kristen Bell (42), James Brolin (82), Priyanka Chopra Jonas (40), Michiel Huisman (41), James Norton (37), Elizabeth McGovern (61), Paul Verhoeven (84), Ambyr Childers (34), Taylor Russell (28), Margo Martindale (71), Audrey Landers (66), Andre Royo (54), Jared Hess (43), Jason Weaver (43), James Faulkner (74), Alex Désert (54), Wendy Williams (58)